Operator
Operator
Welcome to the First Quarter 2016 ConocoPhillips Earnings Conference Call. My name is Christine and I will be your operator for today's call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Ellen DeSanctis, VP-Investor Relations and Communications. You may begin. Ellen R. DeSanctis - VP-Investor Relations & Communications: Thanks, Christine, and good morning everybody. Again, thank you for joining our First Quarter Earnings Call. Our speakers for today will be Ryan Lance, our Chairman and CEO; Don Wallette, our Executive Vice President of Finance and Commercial and our Chief Financial Officer; and Al Hirshberg, our Executive Vice President of Production, Drilling and Projects. Ryan will cover the company level comments, Don will then review the quarterly financials and Al will review the operational highlights for the quarter and our outlook for the rest of the year. Before we start, I wanted to let all of you know that we have set a date of November 10, 2016, for our analyst and investor meeting, this year's analyst and investors meeting. The event will be held in New York and we will provide some additional details soon, we just wanted to make you got that on your calendars. Finally, we will make some forward-looking statements this morning. The risks and uncertainties in our future performance have been described on page two of today's presentation as well as in our periodic filings with the SEC. And of course that information, in addition to some supplemental data for today's earnings, can be found on our website. Now it is my pleasure to turn the call over to Ryan. Ryan M. Lance - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Thank you, Ellen, and thanks to all for joining the call today. Before I jump into the quarterly results, I want to make some general comments about the company and the environment that we find ourselves in today. On the next couple of slides, I'll address how ConocoPhillips is positioning to create value as an independent E&P company. I'll describe our value proposition and how we'll compete in a world of lower mid-cycle and more volatile prices. I'll also describe how we're prioritizing our business activities in the short term, the medium term and the long term. I think it's important for investors to know how we're thinking about the current environment, but also how we have positioned the company for strong performance when prices recover. So if you please turn to slide four, we'll get started. We believe that our value proposition lies in the combination of our unique portfolio attributes and our capital allocation principles. Let me start with the left side of this slide. Underlying our value proposition is a portfolio that we think is quite unique among E&Ps. We've listed several attributes that distinguish our asset base. We have a diverse, relatively low decline base production. We expect our decline rate to moderate somewhat over the next few years as we bring on additional tranches of low to no decline oil sands and LNG projects. Growth will come from investments in our large low cost to supply resource base. We continue to analyze and calibrate this resource base as we believe it holds profitable investment inventory to keep flat production or grow modestly for well over a decade. Within this captured resource base, we have a mix of flexible short cycle projects and lower risk medium cycle investment projects. We see a roll for both of these types of assets in our portfolio. And finally, the key to being successful in a cyclical business is to have a sustained low cost structure. Now, on the right side of this slide, are the capital allocation principles that describe our value proposition. Conceptually, the principles are similar to the ones we had at the time of the spin, namely, give cash back to shareholders, maintaining strong investment grade balance sheet and exercise disciplined growth. Obviously, these elements have been reset, but this is still how we expect to deliver returns to the shareholders. Now let me go through these principles. We reset the dividend, but we still intend to return a meaningful portion of our cash back to our shareholders through a cash dividend. In February, we set the dividend at a level that we believe can be sustained through the price cycles, but that also results in a competitive yield compared to the broad market, as well as to the E&Ps. The dividend will remain a core part of our offering and we are targeting annual, real growth in that dividend going forward. We remain committed to have a strong investment grade balance sheet. The recent downturn has emphasized the importance of a strong balance sheet. We've set a target to get our debt to less than $25 billion. The pace of that debt reduction will depend on prices and asset sales progress, but de-levering is a top priority as we come out of the downturn. We have positioned the company to compete on financial returns. So despite having a large low cost to supply portfolio, we won't grow for growth's sake. We'll continue to be very disciplined about how we allocate our growth capital. We're in a strong position to do that as we come to the end of a significant major project investment phase. You'll notice that we're stating that our growth could be on an absolute or per share basis. Again, financial returns are at the core of our value proposition. If we get the returns right, the rest will follow, and we're committed to getting the returns right. So the way we think about creating value through the cycles is to have clear principles that align with a competitive portfolio to generate strong returns for the shareholders. One without the other is not sufficient and we believe we have both. We believe we have a sound value proposition, but what also matters is how we are executing our value proposition for the short, medium and long term and it's important to be disciplined across all three time horizons, especially coming out this price downturn. Now, I'll cover this on the next slide. First, the short term. For us, it's all about defending against low prices in 2016 and 2017. In the first quarter, we raised $4.6 billion of low-cost debt. We announced this morning that we're further cutting 2016 capital from $6.4 billion to $5.7 billion. We reset the dividend for the lower end of the price cycle. We have strong liquidity, including about $5 billion of cash on hand at the end of first quarter. We think we took the right short-term steps to protect against an extended period of weak prices. At the same time, we're staying disciplined and continuing to safely execute our operating plan. And Al will provide more details about that in a moment. But we're running well and our key projects are on track. Finally, we're focused on lowering the breakeven cost of the business. Now for perspective, if we were in a steady-state world of sustained $45 per barrel oil prices, we believe we could cover the capital required to maintain flat production and pay our dividend with cash from operations. Now, this steady state for us comes after completion of our major projects and a reallocation of capital to our low cost to supply conventional and unconventional portfolio. This positions us to accelerate performance as prices improve in the medium-term. Debt reduction will be a priority and we'll target growing the dividend on a real annual basis. We remain focused on safely executing the business. We'll complete several major projects in the medium term, then we'll wrap up production from those projects. Finally, when prices start to recover, it will be important to stay diligent our cost efforts. Our long-term goal is to execute predictable performance in a world of lower, more volatile prices. We can do this by achieving our target debt level and striving to maintain cash flow neutrality. Now, we define cash flow neutrality as CapEx for flat production, plus our dividend, equals cash from operations. As we generate cash in excess of cash flow neutrality, we have choices about how to allocate those funds. We can return cash to shareholders through share repurchases or we could fund more investments in our low cost to supply resource base. Growth CapEx will compete with distributions to shareholders. That means we're not setting a target for absolute growth because we're willing to grow on a per-share basis if that makes more sense. We'll continue to high-grade the portfolio and those proceeds will be allocated to debt reduction, distributions and CapEx. We could also choose to keep additional cash on hand, especially if we thought another low price cycle was approaching. The decisions on how we allocate the cash flows will be based on staying disciplined, achieving the best returns and maximizing value for shareholders. Now certainly, the last 18 months have really brought home some fundamentals for how to thrive in a cyclical business. We believe it's essential to have a high degree of capital flexibility, a low cost to supply portfolio, best in class cost structure and a strong balance sheet. Most of all, you have to be disciplined. The way to win in a cyclical business is to have a low cost of supply portfolio and to be the most resilient when prices are low and the most disciplined when prices are high. Now, I hope these short comments were helpful, but on slide six I will summarize the results for the quarter. The left column recaps the strategic actions that I've just described. The middle column captures our operational highlights and Al will discuss those in a bit more detail. We met our goals in and our important capital programs are progressing well. The right column summarizes the financial results for the quarter. And there's no getting around it, it was a very weak quarter, financially. Underlying performance on the things we can control, like operating costs, was strong, but the bottom line was a large adjusted net loss that clearly reflected the weak commodity price environment. So now, let me turn the call of the Don for a few comments on our financial results. Donald Evert Wallette - CFO, EVP-Finance & Commercial: Thanks, Ryan. I'll start with our first quarter adjusted earnings on slide eight. As Ryan mentioned, we had a strong quarter operationally, but low commodity prices continued to dominate the quarter's financial results. We reported an adjusted net loss of $1.2 billion, or $0.95 per share, with realized prices down 20% sequentially and 38% year-over-year. First quarter adjusted earnings by segment are shown in the lower right side of the slide. Our segment-adjusted earnings are roughly in line with expectations. The supplemental data on our website provides additional financial detail. The only notable item to call out this quarter is in the lower 48, where earnings were negatively impacted by approximately $70 million, as a result of a dry hole at the Melmar prospect in the Gulf of Mexico. A couple of other items of note, while we have lowered capital guidance, we are not changing any other guidance items at this time. This includes operating expense, which ran light to expectations this quarter. We expect to give you an update at midyear. Also, we've updated our sensitivities in the appendix of this deck. We changed Henry Hub to reflect the impact of last year's asset sales and WTI to reflect production decline in the lower 48, due to reduced drilling activity. Turning to slide nine, I'll cover production. First quarter production averaged 1.578 million BOE per day, which was the upper end of guidance, reflecting increased ramp at APLNG and better performance across the portfolio. Last year's first quarter volumes were 1.61 million BOE per day, but after adjusting for dispositions, first quarter 2015 volumes would be 1.54 million BOE per day. As a reminder, the majority of those dispositions were natural gas properties, so as a result, North American gas represents only 19% of our overall production this quarter, compared to 24% in the year ago period. Continuing through the waterfall and netting out the differences in downtime, we saw an underlying increase of 34,000 BOE per day, or 2%. That increase came primarily from APLNG gas and Canadian bitumen, partly offset by a decline North American gas. This gets you to 1.578 million BOE per day of production for the quarter, so underlying performance is strong. If you turn to slide 10, I'll cover the cash flows during the quarter. We started the year with $2.4 billion in cash and generated $700 million from operating activities, excluding working capital. Working capital was an offset of about $400 million in the first quarter, but we expect it to be a wash for the full year. During the quarter, we received about $100 million of net proceeds from dispositions. Net debt increased by $4.5 billion, and capital spending for the quarter was $1.8 billion, which we expect to be the high watermark for the year. After dividend payments of $300 million, we ended the quarter with $5.2 billion in cash and short-term investments. It was a tough quarter financially, but we ended the quarter with a significant amount of cash on hand and strong liquidity to manage through the price environment. We can't do much about prices, but the key is to continue executing the business well and we're doing that, as you'll now hear from Al. Alan J. Hirshberg - EVP-Production, Drilling & Projects: Thanks, Don. I'll provide a brief update on each of our operating segments and then we can move on to your questions. I'll start with the Lower 48 and Canada segments on slide 12. In the Lower 48, our production in the first quarter was 491,000 barrels oil equivalent per day. That's down 15,000 barrels per day, or 3%, compared to our first quarter production last year, once you adjust for asset sales. The reduction is primarily due to our reduced rig count last year, which is impacting our production this year. We further exercised our capital flexibility in the Lower 48 and dropped down to three operated rigs in April, and we plan stay at that level through 2016. Now that said, even with the lower rig count, we are continuing to realize strong efficiencies in the Eagle Ford and Bakken and we'll keep leveraging technology and working with our vendors to improve performance and capture deflation where possible. In exploration, the non-operated Gibson well is currently drilling. However, that's the last exploration well that we plan to drill in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico. In this price environment, we don't feel it's prudent to continue allocating capital to new deepwater prospects, so we no longer plan to drill Horus or Socorro, which we had planned to drill with the Maersk Valiant drill ship. By the way, these changes account for about half of our 2016 capital reduction from $6.4 billion to $5.7 billion that Ryan referred to earlier. Looking at Canada, our production was 293,000 barrels per day; that's an increase of 2% compared to first quarter 2015 production of 288,000 after adjusting for dispositions. The increase is driven mostly by improved well performance in Western Canada and ramp up at Surmont 2. In the past year, we've increased our bitumen production by 6% and reduced underlying gas production by 3%. But when you include asset sales, though, gas is down 23%, so we've significantly changed our production mix in Canada. So moving over to slide 13, I'll cover the Alaska and Europe and North Africa segments. These regions have many of our legacy assets that still compete for capital. As you can see, the low cost of supply projects we brought online over the last couple of years are beginning to offset natural declines. In Alaska, we're seeing favorable results from our CD5 and drill site 2S projects, which both started up in the fourth quarter of last year and are contributing to a 3% production increase over the first quarter of 2015. We also just approved an additional phase at CD5, which will bring more wells online in late 2017. We're starting activity at GMT1, which was sanctioned at the end of 2015, and is expected to come online in late 2018. In Europe, production is also up 3% versus the first quarter of 2015, and we have several more projects underway which are expected to start up over the next couple of years. In late 2015, we successfully took over operatorship at Britannia, which was previously operated by a joint venture. We're seeing cost savings from this action and it's a good example of efficiency improvements that we've been able to implement. Slide 14 covers our last two segments, Asia Pacific and Middle East and Other International. I APME, production is up 36,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, or 10% year-over-year, primarily as a result of the ramp up at APLNG. Train one is running well and ramped up more quickly than anticipated with 11 cargoes loaded in the first quarter. And as of earlier this week, we've actually now loaded 15 cargoes at APLNG. In Malaysia, we're ramping up the Gumusut after starting up the gas and water injection and we're continuing to progress the Malikai project, which should start producing next year. As the Other International segment is exploration focused, the main news for the quarter is from Senegal, where we completed several successful appraisal wells and drill stem tests to further evaluate this new play-opening discovery. So, Ryan started the call with details of our value proposition and strategy and then Don covered the financial results. If you'll turn to slide 15, I'll wrap up with our operational outlook of the year. While we continue to focus on lowering capital and reducing costs, we're committed to safely delivering on our operational commitments. As we previously guided, we expect our 2016 production to be essentially flat to 2015 when you exclude the full year effects of asset sales. This result is driven by some decline in the Lower 48 unconventionals as we continue to exercise our capital flexibility there, offset by growth in the other segments. In the second quarter, production is expected to be between 1.5 million and 1.54 million barrels per day. The reduction from first quarter is a result of major turnaround activity we had planned, primarily in Europe. Turnaround activity will continue into the third quarter, mostly in Europe and Alaska. By the fourth quarter, we expect production to increase as our major turnarounds are completed. We're continuing to ramp up at Surmont 2 in Canada and have ongoing project developments in Alaska, Europe, and Asia-Pacific that will also add to production. Finally, in Australia, we expect to deliver the first cargo from APLNG Train 2 in the fourth quarter of this year. So, the price environment continues to be challenging, but as always, we'll continue to focus on the things we can control – delivering best in class safety performance, bringing our projects online, on time, and on budget, and meeting or exceeding our operating targets. So now, I'll turn the call over for Q&A.