Marcus Rowland
Analyst · Simmons & Company
Thanks, Aubrey, and good morning, everyone. Very solid and profitable quarter in our opinion. Also, one that's a lot of attractive financing transactions. Notably, we completed in May the issuance of $2.6 billion of cumulative convertible preferred stock, including approximately $1.5 billion that was sold to prominent Asian investors for the first time ever. We used the proceeds to redeem $1.3 billion of senior notes in June, and additional $0.6 billion of notes that were redeemed in July after the quarter closed. The remaining proceeds were used to reduce our bank debt. So with the issuance of $2.6 billion of face amount of preferred, we reduced our debt by a similar amount. In June, we closed on our VPP number seven, or volumetric production payment, for $322 million of proceeds or about $8.75 per Mcf equivalent for around 38 Bcf of sales. Obviously, monetization at a rate well above what our company is valued at in total. We also concluded two other asset sales that we had spoke about earlier in the year for $330 million in proceeds, one in the Permian Basin and one in the Appalachian area. So a busy quarter that resulted in end of quarter cash and undrawn credit facilities of $2.8 billion. As Aubrey noted, our hedging gains over the last many years, particularly powerful in quarter two, giving us an additional unrealized cash revenues of $2.26 per Mcf equivalent. Subsequent to quarter end, we were successful in launching our Chesapeake Midstream Partners' IPO, New York Stock Exchange symbol CHKM. We priced 21.25 million primary units at $21 per unit, the high end of our expected range. Today, those units are trading for about $23, giving CHKM an enterprise value of around $3.2 billion or $1.34 billion to Chesapeake's 41.45% interest. There's nearly $1 billion of cash and unused credit facilities to accomplish CHK drop-down acquisitions or other acquisitions inside of CHKM, something we intend to pursue in the near future. And as a sidebar to that, our remaining Midstream assets that were not put in CHKM have nearly the identical production profile as the assets that we've transferred to date. You may have also noticed that last night we announced a cash tender offer for an additional aggregate $1.5 billion of senior notes of various maturities. We intend to finance these with notes of longer maturities and the tenders conditions on our successfully placing these notes in the near future. I would end by saying our finding costs, the power of our joint ventures and substantial remaining drilling carries, along with the other ventures we are pursuing, particularly in the Eagle Ford and in the Midstream, lead us to be in excellent position to continue with outsized returns on our invested capital. Moderator, I turn it to questions please.