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Devon Energy Corporation (DVN)

Q1 2014 Earnings Call· Wed, May 7, 2014

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to Devon Energy’s First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the prepared remarks we will conduct a question-and-answer session. The call is being recorded. At this time, I’d like to turn the conference over to Mr. Vince White, Senior Vice President of Communications and Investor Relations. Sir, you may begin.

Vince White

Management

Thank you and welcome everybody to Devon’s First Quarter Earnings Call and Webcast. Before we get started, I want to make sure that everyone is aware that we have prepared a handful of slides to supplement today’s presentation. The slides are integrated with today’s webcast but they’re also available for download in PDF form on Devon’s home page at devonenergy.com. For those that are not participating via webcast, we’ll make sure we refer to slide numbers during our prepared remarks so that you can follow along. Today’s call will follow our usual format and as I will first cover a few preliminary items and then turn the call over to our president and CEO, John Richels, for this comments; then Dave Hager, our chief operating officer will provide an operations update and we’ll wrap up our commentary with a financial review by our CFO, Tom Mitchell. After our financial discussion, we’ll have a Q&A session and we’ll conclude the call after about an hour and replay will be available later today on our website. The investor relations team will also be available this afternoon should you have any follow-up questions. On the call today, we’re going to update some of our forward looking information. In addition to the updates that we are providing in the call, we will file an 8-K later today containing the details of our updated 2014 estimates. The copy of this updated 8-K will be available within Investor Relations section of the Devon website. The guidance that we are providing today includes plans, forecast, expectations and estimates which are all considered forward-looking statements under US Securities Law and these are of course subject to a number of assumptions, risk and uncertainties many of which are beyond our control. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and for a discussion of the risk factors relating to our estimates see our Form 10-K. Also in today’s call, we’ll reference certain non-GAAP performance measures. When we use these measures there are required specific related disclosures and those can also be found on our website. At this point, I’ll turn the call over to our president and CEO, John Richels.

John Richels

President and CEO

Thank you, Vince, and good morning everyone. Before we get in to the business of the quarter, I’d like to take just a moment here to welcome our latest edition to Devon’s team of senior executives and that’s our chief financial officer, Tom Mitchell. Many of you already know Tom and you know that Tom brings a wealth of industry experience and considerable financial sophistication and we’re thrilled to have him on board. As Vince already mentioned, you’re going to hear from Tom later on in the call and as you have the opportunity in the coming months to meet with him, please join us in welcoming Tom to Devon. So with that, let’s take a look at our results. The first quarter was another excellent one for Devon. As shown on slide three, our disciplined focus on high-margin oil development opportunities led to another quarter of outstanding growth in oil production that drove significant operating margin improvements. Additionally, we made meaningful progress in our efforts to high grade our go-forward asset portfolio. This progress was evidenced by the closing of our Eagle Ford acquisition, the completion of the EnLink Midstream combination, our exit from the conventional gas business in Canada, and our recently announced bolt-on [ph] acreage acquisition in Cana. In addition, we once again raised our dividend during the quarter. Now, let’s take a look at some of the highlights in more detail. In the first quarter, we achieved year-over-year oil product growth of 21% from go-forward asset base reaching an average daily rate of 176,000 barrels per day. As can be seen on slide four, this growth was driven entirely by light sweet crude production from our retained US assets which increased an impressive 56% compared to the first quarter of 2013. With our success in growing…

Dave Hager

Chief Operating Officer

Thanks, John. Good morning everyone. Let’s begin with a quick recap of our first quarter capital expenditures. Exploration development capital for the first quarter totaled $1.2 billion, just below the bottom end of our previous guidance range. Based on our planned activity levels to the remaining three quarters of 2014, we remain on track with full year drilling and completions capital guidance range of $4.8 billion to $5.2 billion for our go-forwards assets. As John indicated earlier, our focus on high margin oil projects led to another quarter of outstanding growth in oil production. Let’s take a closer at some of the first quarter operating highlights, beginning with the Permian; first quarter production averaged a record 91,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. This record was driven by robust growth in oil production, which increased 36% compared to the first quarter of 2013 and with 9% higher than the previous quarter. Light oil production continues to account for 60% of our total Permian production. In the Delaware Basin our Bone Spring horizontal program is the most significant driver of our Permian oil growth. In the first quarter, we bought 35 Bone Springs wells online with an average 30 day IP raise approaching 700 barrels of oil equivalent per day of which 80% was light oil. Also in the Delaware Basin, we commenced production on two high rate oil wells targeting the Delaware Sands and Lee [ph] New Mexico. Initial 30 day production from these two wells averaged in excess of 1,000 BOE per day and consisted of nearly 90% light oil. The tremendous results we continue to see from our Delaware Basin drilling programs coupled with our ongoing reservoir characterization work has allowed us to substantially increase our risk inventory in the Delaware Basin. To help you more fully appreciate…

Tom Mitchell

Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Dave, and good morning everyone. Today, I’ll take you through a brief review of our financial and operating results in the first quarter and where called for provide a state of guidance. Before I get started, I wanted to remind everyone of the changes in our first quarter financial reporting resulting from the EnLink transaction. Now that Devon is the majority owner in EnLink, accounting rules require that 100% of EnLink’s revenues, expenses, debt and capital are consolidated within our financial statements. The minority ownership interest from the portion that we do not own will be netted and deducted on a line item in the financials entitled non-controlling interests. Due to these accounting changes, the comparability of first quarter results to prior quarters from a trend analysis perspective is challenging. However, in our earnings release and in our upcoming SEC filings, we’re providing supplemental schedules that will break out the results of our upstream business on that of EnLink. Since John covered the first quarter production highlights earlier in the call, I will begin with a quick review of our outlook of production. In the second quarter, we expect our go-forward asset portfolio to deliver total production of 609,000 to 631,000 BOE per day. This represents top line growth from our retained assets of approximately 15% compared to the second quarter of 2013. Most importantly, this expected increase on production is underpinned by a strong, high-margin oil growth. For our go-forward properties, we are forecasting oil production in the second quarter to increase by roughly 30% year-over-year to a range of between 200,000 and 210,000 barrels per day. This excellent growth in the high-margin oil production is driven by a full quarter of Eagle Ford production and continued success in our Permian development programs. For the full year,…

Vince White

Management

Operator, we are ready for the first question.

Operator

Operator

Your first question comes from the line of Arun Jayaram of Credit Suisse. Your line is open. Arun Jayaram – Credit Suisse: Good morning, gentlemen. It seems like the strong of the quarter was the Delaware Basin inventory update. So I just wanted to know if you can maybe elaborate a little bit on what drove the increase in the inventory. I believe your type curve was around 500 Mbo. Any thoughts on overall well performance? And I know you’re not ready to talk about the program next year. But could we see a pretty significant increase in activity? And how many rigs you’re running today in the Delaware?

Dave Hager

Chief Operating Officer

Hi Arun, this is Dave. I’ll take a stab at that. We’re currently running 12 rigs in the Delaware. And yes, as we said, we do anticipate a significant increase next year as we work our way through all the limitations that currently exists out there – the availability of cash processing capacity, availability of rigs, completion crews, manpower, et cetera. And we’re working through all of those factors as we speak. Yes, this was a big story for us. And there are really two key things that factored into this, one is we have continued to appraise our acreage position throughout the Delaware Basin particularly in Lea and Eddy County. And so as we’re getting those results, it’s given us greater confidence to up our risk inventory. And obviously the results from those wells have been outstanding throughout our acreage position. And second, frankly, we’ve just taken the time to look at it in a more comprehensive manner than we’ve been able to do previously. And then we looked at it more comprehensively coupled with the outstanding well results across our entire acreage position. We suspected it was there, but we were basically able to move into our risk inventory. And so we feel very good. And I would point that the slide that we included there, Slide 11, did not include anything for the Wolfcamp. And the Wolfcamp we think has tremendous prospectivity in Southeastern Mexico. There’s just not a lot of wells have been drilled there yet. So we think as there’s additional wells drilled in that area that that inventory is going to increase also. Arun Jayaram – Credit Suisse: Okay. My question is on the Eagle Ford. It sounded like you’re well on track in terms of ‘14 despite the lower March. But as we think about the ‘15 program, a lot of confidence here around production north of or in excess of 100,000 barrels a day. Can you just talk about the confidence in the ramp and what’s given you that confidence? Is there early well results or what?

Dave Hager

Chief Operating Officer

Yes, I’ll take a stab at that again, Arun. Absolutely, the well results have been 100% consistent with our acquisition expectations. These are outstanding wells. These are wells in the core of the core of the Eagle Ford. And so that gives us tremendous confidence, our infrastructure needs, our continuing to be build out. Frankly we think that already in the first couple of months that we’ve owned the asset, that grains [ph] have improved efficiency to the overall process and all of that put together gives us tremendous that we’re going to have the ramp that we talked about.

John Richels

President and CEO

And Arun, it’s John. One thing I’d just toss in here to what David has already said, you’ll recall that when we did that acquisition, we indicated that GeoSouthern and BHP prior to the acquisition had drilled at least one well on every drilling unit across the DeWitt County acreage. So this confidence that Dave is talking about at Wall Street by the fact that we’ve got pretty darn good idea about what every drilling unit on that acreage looks like. Arun Jayaram – Credit Suisse: Okay, that’s great. Then just final question, as we think about heavy oil for the balance of the year, just thoughts on how you see that market playing out. And I know in ‘15, one of the potential headwinds exists on the Alberta Clipper, which hasn’t been approved yet by the State’s requirement. Any thoughts on ‘15 heavy oil differentials and is there enough rail maybe to soften the blow of the Alberta Clipper?

Darryl Smette

Analyst · Credit Suisse

Yes, this is Darryl. You’re exactly on point. We do expect that we’re going to see increased takeaway capacity with the Flanagan South pipeline. That’s due to come on mid-2014 probably later part of July is the date that we’re getting out to Enbridge. That’s a 585,000 barrel a day pipeline. We have a couple of permits that we have to get from the BOM, but anticipate that that will come on stream. That will bring additional capacity from Chicago down to the Cushing hub and then onto the gulf coast. The Alberta Clipper is the line that runs from Hardisty in Alberta down to the neck points in the mid-continent. That would add about 800,000 barrels a day of capacity. That is generally requiring only additional pump stations or more horse power, not additional line looping. We’re awaiting on or they’re awaiting – Enbridge is waiting on the government to issue those permits. The latest indication, we have from them is that they will expect those permits later on this year and so that capacity should be operational sometime in 2015. Arun Jayaram – Credit Suisse: Thanks a lot.

Vince White

Management

Darryl, could you just bring that all together and summarize – I mean you have a lot of detailed knowledge there clearly, but summarize what this means for differentials.

Darryl Smette

Analyst · Credit Suisse

Well, in terms of differentials, they’ve been fairly volatile. And supply and demand have been fairly balanced over the last couple of years. And we have seen that volatility ranging anywhere from $20 up to as high as $40.5. With that additional capacity coming on stream including some additional capacity, some of the refineries, we think those differentials will have downward pressure. So while they’ll still remain volatile, we think that they’ll be on that $20 to $25 barrel range and maybe $26 barrel range consistently rather than the volatility that we’ve seen from $20 up to $40 or $45.

Vince White

Management

Thank you.

Darryl Smette

Analyst · Credit Suisse

And no, Vince, I might also add just as an addition there, is that we do have as an industry as lot of rail capacity now. Two years ago, as an industry, we had about 125,000 barrels or rail capacity out of Canada to United States. By the end of this year, that will be close to 650,000 barrels a day. So not only are we hopeful with the pipelines coming on stream, but there is also the additional rail capacity that makes us feel very good about where differentials are going.

Vince White

Management

Great. Operator, I want to remind everybody to limit their questions to one initial inquiring and one follow up. And we’re ready for the next participant.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Doug Leggate from Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is now open. Doug Leggate – Bank of America Merrill Lynch: Thanks. I appreciate you getting me engaged. I’ll try to do a quick one hopefully. So I’m trying to understand how we should interpret the balance sheet comment because you’ve obviously got substantial inventory potential in the Delaware, but also the Eagle Ford inventory is going up and now you’ve got the Rockies and – I guess the Cana is audited [ph] as well. Should we think of you spending your cash like old Devon or should we think about you starting to use your balance sheet to accelerate the overall pace. I know you’re not ready to give details specifically yet, but just high level how should we think about activity roles?

Vince White

Management

This is Vince, Doug. My first observation is while we have this growing resource inventory, we also have a lot of growth in cash flow. So when you look at 2015 with the free cash flow thrown off by the Eagle Ford over and above the capital requirements and by our thermal projects, we’ve got a lot of capacity to invest in this expanding inventory.

Dave Hager

Chief Operating Officer

And Doug, we’re in a position now – the reason we’re so excited about where we are as a company frankly, we’re in a position now where we think we can grow our oil productions which is obviously our highest margin product by 20% of more for a considerable period of time while living within cash flow. And with a $9 billion debt level, we’re probably at a fairly appropriate place for us to be. And we haven’t been in the position in the past few years of being able to grow that kind of production which – and the important part of it is of course is that we’re also commensurately growing our cash flow per share without ramping up debt or summoning [ph] bunch of equity out the door. And that’s pretty exciting position for us to be in. And that kind of growth rate for company our size I think stacks up pretty well. Doug Leggate – Bank of America Merrill Lynch: Yes, a big change from six months ago for sure [ph]. My follow up real quick is ownership in the GP, just a big picture of comments there in terms of – 70%, it just seems there’s no need to really have that big of a position. I’m just curious as how you’re thinking about that and all these matters [ph]. Thank you.

Dave Hager

Chief Operating Officer

Yes, that’s turned out really well for us. As you know, as we said, we put those assets in at about $4.8 billion worth [indiscernible] today. So there’s been a huge amount of accretion and it’s a strategic asset for us. We’ve always wanted to keep control of those assets or have some influence over those assets because they’re so integral to our operations. And we think there’s going to be a lot of value accretion at the EnLink level over the next few years not only from a bunch of really exciting ideas that are – the management team at EnLink has but also through the continuation of the dropdowns from the general partner and also from Devon. And you’ll recall we’ve given a right of first offer to EnLink to purchase the expanded access pipeline in Canada when it’s complete. So we’re going to see a lot of growth. Now having said that, you’re absolutely right that they’re – we got a larger position today than we ultimately need to control. But that’s not lost [ph] on us. We always look at ways to realize that. But frankly, we got to do something that is creative and innovative, Doug, because just selling a bunch of units and paying a lot of tax isn’t the way to do it. So we’re really actually excited about that position and the continued growth, but we’ll always keep our eye on that. Doug Leggate – Bank of America Merrill Lynch: I appreciate the answers. Thank you.

Vince White

Management

Operator, we’re ready for the next question.

Operator

Operator

Great. Your next question comes from the line of Brian Singer from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Brian Singer – Goldman Sachs: Thank you. Good morning. You touched on Canadian oil realizations earlier but I wanted to ask on U.S. oil realizations which looks like they widened out a bit. I assume some of that is adding condensate in Eagle Ford but I wanted to see how you think your differentials will fall out as we go forward both on the condensate front of Eagle Ford and then if you expect any bottlenecks in the Permian both from a midstream ability to get oil out and then also if there are any changes in your gravity in related realizations of the Delaware Basin.

Darryl Smette

Analyst · the Delaware Basin

Yeah, this is Darryl again. Let’s first take the Permian. We have seen differentials widen there since the end of last year into the first quarter where differentials both for West Texas sour and West Texas sweet were about $3.50. Fourth – or the second quarter this year looks like that’s going to be closer to $8 as driven by a couple of facts. We’ve just been increased production out of the Permian Basin, plus there were some refinery maintenance that extended longer than was anticipated, about three weeks. That’s caused a bottleneck and a buildup of supply. All of that should be relieved by the end of this quarter as we have another 350,000 barrels a day of pipeline capacity coming on stream – 50,000 is an expansion of the longhorn system that was put in place last year; 300,000 of that is BridgeTex. So when you add all of that capacity, that gives you about 5.6 million barrels of export capacity. There’s about 400 million, I guess, of refining and production out there that’s around 1.5 million. So right now, we think the differentials while they’re $8, that’s going to narrow somewhat less than 250 as we go through the rest of the year. So we feel pretty good about that. As we look at differentials in the Eagle Ford, our average gravity in Eagle Ford is about 52 degrees. First month that we had that asset, our net differential of WTI was about $7. We expect that to continue to be volatile as more of that type of crude is produced. But we think that’s going to be volatile in a range of about $6 to $12 of WTI. That should work itself up. We think based on the projects that are ongoing in terms of splitters that will allow some of that lighter end product to be split out. In the next board, we think that differential will narrow down to the $6 to $8 range as we go forward. All of these are things that we have anticipated when we made the acquisition. Our view still hasn’t changed. Brian Singer – Goldman Sachs: Great, thank you. That’s helpful. And then just thinking in the 2015, your comments on increasing activity again particularly on the Permian Basin, what are you doing to mitigate the cost inflation and what level of cost increases are you expecting or able to withstand when you think about that in CapEx and activity levels?

Darryl Smette

Analyst · the Delaware Basin

Well, the economics on these plays are pretty robust. So although the plays could handle higher CapEx, we do a lot of work to avoid that situation obviously. And we have just actually finished for this year and just recently our rebidding [ph] of all our stimulation work for the year were able – we have very good relationships with the key vendors, have had them over multiple years. We were able to avoid any significant price increases. That’s going to be basically flat in 2014 versus 2013. And we anticipate that these type of relationships are going to help us significantly in the future. I can’t predict exactly what 2015 is going to look like but when you think of 2014, it’s already had rapidly increasing activity in the Permian. But there is at the same time a lot of additional capacity coming into the Permian. So I don’t think we’re going to have a significant issue there. Brian Singer – Goldman Sachs: Great, thank you.

Darryl Smette

Analyst · the Delaware Basin

Operator, next question.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Subash Chandra from Jefferies. Your line is open. Subash Chandra – Jefferies & Company: Yeah, hi. I just want to confirm that Eagle Ford guidance did not include Lavaca County.

Darryl Smette

Analyst · Subash Chandra from Jefferies

It does include Lavaca County. That includes our entire Eagle Ford position, the 17,000, 18,000 which is what we originally got into also. Subash Chandra – Jefferies & Company: Right, okay. Got it, okay. And the second one on the Permian and Bone Springs and it looks like it’ll be a Bone Spring heavy program. What sort of initiatives are there or potential for more water recycling out in the Delaware and what are sort of the technical challenges of doing that, if any?

John Richels

President and CEO

Yeah, probably one of the biggest challenges that we have is – and you can get an idea from the map that we included in there, but our acreage is spread out throughout DeWitt and Eddy County. So to the degree that we have contiguous position that has sufficient scale, that allows us to get into where water recycling can work more efficiently. And we’re working through that right now. We’re already doing that in the South Midland Basin as we speak and we’re looking for opportunities to expand that into the Delaware Basin. Subash Chandra – Jefferies & Company: And just along those lines, some of these other horizons, Leonard, et cetera, are they dryer than the Bone Springs –

Darryl Smette

Analyst · Subash Chandra from Jefferies

Well, we have included in our account essentially the oil areas of each of these because these are the ones that we think are economic. So I know these are – with Leonard, I think some of the industry competition has been talking about wells or drilling in the Leonard and we’re right in and amongst those wells. But frankly, we have as good, if not, better acres positioned. Some of the other people are talking about it. So we feel very good and actually, the Wolfcamp extends further to the west than we have outlined on the map but we’ve just really highlighted what we think is the oily portion of the Wolfcamp on that map. So, no, these are essentially – these are really oil opportunities that have strong economics right now. Subash Chandra – Jefferies & Company: Okay. I guess I was referring in terms of dry, in terms of not having quite as much formation water as the conventional targets like Bone Springs.

Darryl Smette

Analyst · Subash Chandra from Jefferies

No significant difference that I’m aware of but I may have to research that a little more. But I’m not aware of any significant changes. Subash Chandra – Jefferies & Company: Okay, great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Jeffrey Campbell from Tuohy Brothers Investments. Your line is open. Jeffrey Campbell – Tuohy Brothers Investment Research: Thank you and good morning.

John Richels

President and CEO

Good morning, Jeff.

Dave Hager

Chief Operating Officer

Good morning. Jeffrey Campbell – Tuohy Brothers Investment Research: I wanted to ask – kind of jump to the Powder River. How contiguous is your position there? And along with that, do you have multiples on exposure on some of the acreage or do the frontier in the Parkman and Turner tend to occur individually on discrete locations?

John Richels

President and CEO

We have acreage throughout Campbell County but we also have some very nice positions that our contiguous in that area. To give you an idea, we have so far been what I would consider appraisal mode – appraising areas throughout Campbell County. Now we are in the position into Parkman and to a large degree also into Turner. But we’re going to go into full development mode on those formations. And so what you’re going to see from us in the future is better economic – overall economic results as we can focus on development and get our costs down, get our EURs up even more consistently. So we’re seeing outstanding results. And I can tell you that our program in the last quarter really delivered good results and you’re going to see a continuous movement in that direction as we get out of the mode of appraising our entire acreage position and get into the mode of focusing on the most economic development areas. Jeffrey Campbell – Tuohy Brothers Investment Research: So just to follow up on what you just said, as you go into development mode, will you start to see a significant rise in rigs as we’re going to see in Delaware or does there still need to be some more work done before you –

John Richels

President and CEO

We think the opportunity is there. We’re going to have three rigs working right now. We want to walk before we run, I guess you’d say. But there’s certainly opportunity to raise the rig count in the future. But we’re going to see how these developments go. And if they work out the way we think they’re going to work out, the opportunity is certainly there to raise the rig count in the future. Jeffrey Campbell – Tuohy Brothers Investment Research: Great. And if I can ask just another quick question. Can you tell me what your current well spacing assumptions are for your 2015 production projections in Eagle Ford?

John Richels

President and CEO

There are various well spacing assumptions depending on exactly where the wells are located throughout our acreage position. They vary on the order of 40 acres to 80 acres for the average about 60-acre spacing. Jeffrey Campbell – Tuohy Brothers Investment Research: Okay, great. Thank you.

John Richels

President and CEO

Okay. Well, folks, we’re sure on top of the hour and if there are any other questions, don’t hesitate to call us. We’ll be around all day. And just before signing off, let me leave you with just a few takeaways from today’s call. First, I think we’ve done an excellent job of improving our portfolio on a very short period of time. Devon’s emerged with a formidable portfolio that’s on track to deliver multi-year growth production – oil production growth in excess of 20% while generating free cash flow. And as evidenced by our Q1 results, our pursuit of high margin production is significantly expanding our margins and profitability. And finally, the resource potential associated with our world-class Permian position continues to get better with time and is clearly a cornerstone growth asset for Devon. As I mentioned earlier, as I look ahead, I’ve never been more excited about the future prospects for Devon. Even with all of the exciting changes, our approach to the business remains unchanged. We will continue to aggressively pursue our top strategic objective of maximizing shareholder returns by optimizing long term growth and debt adjusted cash flow per share. So we look forward to talking with you again at the next call and thank you very much for joining us today.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.