Devon Energy Corporation (DVN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Devon Energy Corporation 2020 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. At this time, I would like to turn the conference call over to Duane Radtke, Chairman of the Board. Sir, please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Will the meeting please come to order? I am Duane Radtke, Chair of Devon Energy Corporation's Board of Directors. On behalf of the company and the rest of the Board, I would like to welcome you to the 2020 Annual Stockholders' Meeting. Thank you for joining us today. As you know, we are hosting this year's annual meeting in virtual-only format in light of the public health concerns around the COVID-19 pandemic. On behalf of the Board, and management, we would like to express our hope that all of our shareholders and stakeholders are healthy and safe. The notice of this meeting and the related proxy materials were sent to each stockholder of record. As indicated in the proxy materials, there are 3 items of business to be conducted today. You will also notice that the meeting website provides an agenda that lists those items as well as rules of conduct for the meeting. As many of you are aware, the business portion of this meeting needs to be conducted with some formality in order to comply with applicable legal requirements. Please bear with us as we complete the formal part of the meeting, which will include an opportunity for discussion of the items of business. After the business portion of the meeting is completed, Dave Hager, Devon's President and Chief Executive Officer, will report on the company's operational highlights and outlook for the future. Dave also plans to comment on Devon's response to the COVID-19 pandemic and Devon's performance on environmental, social and governance matters. Following Dave's presentation, we will have an opportunity for questions. Only validated stockholders may ask questions in the designated field on the meeting website. Please note that this meeting is being recorded. However, no one attending via the webcast or telephone is permitted to use any audio recording device. Though we may not be able to answer every question, we will do our best to provide a response to as many as possible. Before proceeding to the business items, I would like to introduce the members of the Board, all of whom are standing for reelection today. We have an extraordinary group of directors who have extensive knowledge of the oil and gas industry and who have varied backgrounds. This diversity of thought and experience on our Board is a great asset to Devon, and they bring much passion, wisdom and expertise in fulfilling their important roles as directors of the company. In addition to myself, the company's directors are Barbara Baumann, John Bethancourt, Ann Fox, Dave Hager, Robert Henry, Michael Kanovsky, John Krenicki, Robert Mosbacher, Keith Rattie and Mary Ricciardello. In addition to our directors, I would also like to recognize a few other people who are present at the meeting today. First, it gives me great pleasure in recognizing Larry Nichols, Chairman Emeritus of Devon, who, together with his father, John Nichols, founded this great company almost 50 years ago. Larry's hard work, innovation and leadership has promoted a corporate culture that continues to propel Devon forward today. I would also like to introduce and welcome Joel Smith, our current lead audit partner at KPMG LLP. The company's independent auditors. Also in attendance is Jamie Brickman, who served as our lead auditor partner until he rotated off Devon's audit team with the completion of Devon's audit for the year ended December 31, 2019. Joel and Jamie, thank you for attending our meeting today. They will be available during the question-and-answer session after the meeting to respond to questions. And finally, the company has appointed Broadridge Financial Services to act as inspector of election. Don Hagar from Broadridge is with us today. So with that, let's move on with the business of the meeting. At this time, Chris Kirt, our Corporate Secretary, will report certain formalities about the proxy vote.

Thank you, Duane. Mr. Hagar will tabulate the ballots cast and will certify the votes taken at this meeting. On April 6, 2020, the record date of this meeting, there were 382,743,231 shares of common stock of Devon Energy Corporation outstanding and entitled to vote. Broadridge has delivered the oath of inspector to us and informed the company that approximately 85% of the company's issued and outstanding stock entitled to vote is represented in person or by proxy at today's meeting. Thus, we confirm that a quorum is present today. Broadridge has also delivered an affidavit, certifying that the notice of this meeting and the related proxy soliciting materials were sent to each stockholder of record. The voting results of today's meeting will be disclosed in a Form 8-K that will be filed with the SEC.

Thank you, Chris. With the proxy solicitation materials having been duly circulated and a quorum being present, I declare this meeting as properly and lawfully convened and ready for the transaction of business. Now I will present the matters to be voted upon. Please note that we will give stockholders an opportunity to comment on these proposals themselves after all proposals have been presented. The first item of business is the election of directors. The Board of Directors has nominated the 11 Director nominees who were introduced to you earlier for election to a term expiring at the 2021 Annual Stockholders' Meeting and until his or her successor has been duly elected and qualified. Additional information concerning each of the nominees was provided in the company's 2020 proxy statement. The second item of business is the ratification of KPMG as the company's independent auditors for 2020. On the recommendation of the Audit Committee, the Board of Directors has appointed KPMG as the independent auditors of the company for 2020, subject to the ratification by shareholders. The third item of business is the proposal regarding executive compensation. This proposal calls for a stockholder advisory vote to approve the compensation of our named executive officers as required by law. The proxy statement includes extensive disclosure on executive compensation, and the Board has recommended a vote for this proposal. It is a nonbinding vote, although the Compensation Committee and the Board take the results of the vote into account when making future compensation decisions. If any shareholder would like to comment on any of these proposals, please submit your comment through the meeting website. I will pause for a few seconds to determine whether any comments on the proposals have been submitted. There were no comments. The majority of our stockholders have voted by proxy and are not virtually present here today. Any stockholder who hasn't yet voted or who wishes to change their vote may do so now by clicking on the voting button on the meeting website and following the instructions there. Stockholders who have sent in proxies or voted via telephone or internet and do not want to change their vote, do not need to take any further action. I will pause for several seconds to allow for voting. [Voting] There are no comments. So now that everyone has had the opportunity to vote, I now declare the polls closed for the 2020 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. With the inspector of election, Mr. Hagar, please report the preliminary voting results on the first item of business, the election of directors.

For the election of directors, the nominee is elected if the votes cast for the nominee's election exceed the votes cast withheld. The tabulation of the balance confirms all nominees received a greater number of votes for election and withheld, and the average percentage of shares voted for all nominees was 96%. And all of the nominees are declared to have been duly elected as directors.

Thank you, Mr. Hagar. The second and third items of business on the agenda are proposals sponsored by the Board of Directors. The inspector of election will now report the respective votes on these 2 items of business.

With respect to the second item of business, the tabulation of the ballots confirms that at least 95% of all voted shares has been cast for ratification of KPMG's appointment. This constitutes a majority. Therefore, the appointment of KPMG as the company's independent auditors for 2020 has been ratified. And the vote for the executive compensation proposal read the following: with respect to the third item of business, the tabulation of the ballots confirms that at least 61% of all voted shares has been cast for the approval of the compensation of the named executive officers. This constitutes a majority. Therefore, the compensation of the named executive officers has been approved.

Thank you for the confirmation of the voting on these 2 items of business, Mr. Hagar. This concludes the formal business portion of the meeting as no other matters have been properly submitted for consideration. Following the meeting, Broadridge will certify the voting results for each item of business and will file their certificate with the Corporate Secretary. With that, the business portion of the meeting is hereby adjourned. Before Dave gives his presentation, Tim Brennan with the Unitarian Universalist Association has asked to make a statement on behalf of the Climate Action 100 initiative.

Great. Mr. Chairman, members of the Board, fellow shareholders. My name is Tim Brennan. I'm representing the Unitarian Universalist Common Endowment Fund. I'm making the statement on behalf of the UUA, Miller/Howard Investments and 6 other investment funds. We are shareholders in Devon Energy and supporters of the Climate Action 100+, a 5-year investor-led initiative that aims to partner with the largest CO2-emitting companies in the world to do 3 things: one, implement a strong climate governance framework that describes the Board's accountability and oversight of climate change risks and opportunities; two, reduce greenhouse gas emissions across their value chain consistent with the Paris Agreement's goal of eliminating global average temperature increase to well below 2 degrees Celsius; and provide disclosure in line with the task force on climate-related financial disclosures. To date, over 450 investors with $40 trillion in assets under management have signed up to support the initiative. These investors view climate change as one of the largest systemic risks the world faces. Any weakness or delays in climate change policies and responses by companies will increase these risks to our portfolios. Devon Energy was selected as one of the target companies of the Climate Action 100+ on the basis of its relatively high greenhouse gas emissions from operations and, more importantly, from the use of its products or what is called [indiscernible]. I want to thank you for the productive dialogue we had this spring, discussing Climate Action 100+ priorities. We would welcome the Board's participation in future meetings. We commend Devon for its actions it has already taken to address climate change. In particular, we note the publication of the [ 2000-page ] climate change assessment report; the formation of the ESG Steering Committee; in the natural gas business, advances in leak detection and significant reduction in flaring; and setting a target to reduce methane emissions. However, we are convinced that additional steps are necessary to curb greenhouse gas emissions in your value chain. My questions now to the Board are, does the Board support the goal of the Paris Agreement on climate change? Second, how does the company strategy align with this goal? And public companies set Paris-aligned targets for all emissions, including scope 3 [indiscernible]. In closing, I would like to thank the investor groups who have committed time and resources to this engagement. Miller/Howard, As You Sow, BMO Asset Management, Harvard Management Company, Guinness Asset Management, Mercy Investment Services and the State of Vermont. And we would all like to thank the Devon engagement team, Chris, Maggie, Brooke and John for their commitment to this dialogue process in the face of enormous challenges this spring. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Brennan. We value all our stockholder opinions. I'd like to invite Dave now to respond to your comments, then give his presentation of the business of the company.

Thank you for your comments, Mr. Brennan. I want to assure you and members of the initiative that Devon's Board and management have been regularly briefed on the dialogue that has occurred with Climate Action 100+. Devon frequently considers the topics that you have raised. Reviewing Devon's strategy is critical to ensuring the future success of our company. With respect to the Paris Agreement, we believe there is a need for consensus-building within the U.S. so that we can have a more consistent approach internationally. We are committed to doing our part to support public policies and support our industry's innovative efforts to meaningfully reduce GHGs across multiple sectors of our economy. Over the past decade, American energy workers have played a significant role in those efforts. The U.S. has reduced CO2 emissions, while the rest of the world increased total CO2 emissions. As the scope 3 emissions, we are committed to reducing emissions at the point of production, where we can influence and affect emissions. We're also committed to making and strengthening climate-related disclosures, which has occurred over the past few years. Finally, as to targets, Devon has set ambitious 5-year methane emission reductions target. We continue to proactively to reduce our emissions by driving innovation, operational excellence, energy efficiency and conservation. And with that, I'd like to proceed ahead and give my presentation at this annual meeting. I appreciate the opportunity to give you an update on the activities that are going on here at Devon over the past year. And as Duane said at the beginning, this is obviously a very unusual time with the COVID-19 pandemic that has taken place in our country and throughout the world. And first off, what are our priorities given this pandemic? Well, the highest priority first, obviously, is to protect the health and safety of our employees while, at the same time, maintaining business continuity. And we feel very fortunate to say that we have had minimal impact of COVID-19 directly on our employees. In fact, I only know of one case that our employees has had throughout the entire company. And so obviously, we feel very fortunate to that. But at the same time, our hearts and sympathies are with those throughout the United States and elsewhere that are suffering from this terrible pandemic. And as far as the business side of it, we're in very good shape. We actually were able to transition very easily to remote work. We had built up our technology. So much of our data was available over the cloud. And so to allow our employees to work from home versus the office environment was essentially a seamless transition, and I'd like to thank all of our employees for their dedication and how they have kept the business running smoothly during this challenging time. Our field employees, obviously, have been very focused on maintaining the production throughout the company. And we've been very successful with continuing business continuity in all areas of operations. We've been focused as a leadership team to give as many real-time updates as we can to our employees. Communication, we think, is incredibly vital in these challenging times so that everyone understands their situation and what we're doing to adjust to the situation. And we're now focused on our return to office, where we anticipate here in Oklahoma City that the majority of our employees will be returning to office, actually next Monday, June 8, of course, making appropriate accommodations and exceptions for those that have circumstances that make that not possible to do at this point. We have also done our parts in the community, not only in -- here in Oklahoma City, but throughout our operating areas with contributing to the needs of existing communities through STEM activities in our field locations. We actually partnered with a local NBA basketball team here, the Oklahoma City Thunder, to take some -- or to create masks out of some unused playoff t-shirts, I think they were. And so we're going to get back in the playoffs again. So we may not be able to donate that many masks in the future. But right now, we didn't have playoffs this year, and so we put them to a very critical use. And so we're trying to do everything that we can to contribute during this time, to understand these challenging times. While, obviously, our business is itself is -- it has been challenged with the environment. A little more detail also about ESG. And I think at the most fundamental level, we think that along with having strong assets, the ability to execute and operate those assets very efficiently, maintaining a strong financial position, a strong balance sheet that ESG performance is another important pillar for an E&P company in the future. And we take our obligations quite seriously around that. We are very proud that we have delivered on many areas so far. I highlighted some of those briefly in my statement. And I think the most important thing that I can say is, we are going to continue to focus on this. And you will see -- just as you see in other areas of our business, you're going to see continued advancement on the ESG front out of Devon in the future. I can't tell you exactly what all we will do in the future because that evolves. But I can tell you there's a great deal of focus internally within the company. We have an ESG committee at the senior level that focus strategically on what are the most important things to do, and we also have discussions at the management level and with our Board on a regular basis regarding that. Highlighted on the slide, if you're following along on the slide deck are some of the accomplishments that we've done. We're very proud that we have independently established a methane intensity reduction target down to 0.28 or possibly even lower by 2025. We've dramatically increased our water recycling, and our total methane emissions have reduced significantly as well. We've always taken the social safety responsibilities, the governance responsibilities very safely. That's part of the core of who we are as a company as part of our culture, and you can see some of the outstanding statistics there. And it's certainly been recognized by many of the ESG rating firms that are out there. And you can see on the slide there how we rank consistently in the top half and, at many times, the top quarter or top 10% amongst our peer group and our performance on ESG. Now this, no doubt, has been a very challenging environment for all of corporate America, certainly, the exploration production business in Devon as well. I am proud to say that I think that we entered this downturn and the COVID-19-related crisis that has dramatically impacted oil and gas prices from a position of relative strength, and that's serving us well during this downturn. As far as our priorities, we have already high-graded our asset base significantly. So we're focused on 4 of the best basins in the onshore U.S. And not only are in 4 of the best basins, we have some of the best acreage in those best basins. So we start off with strong assets and our ability to execute on those assets, we're showing very much. I'll give you a little more detail on that in a minute. But during this downturn, obviously, the first thing we need to do is protect our financial strengths, and we have done that. We are funding the dividend. We just today declared another quarterly dividend. That's another priority for us. At the same time, we recognize with the lower revenues and cash flow that we have, we need to reduce capital and operating costs. And we have already announced a capital reduction of around $800 million from our original $1.8 billion budget. And we've reduced our cost structure by $250 million this year over our original plans. So we are doing what we need to maintain our financial strength, and I'll give you more details on the next slide. And then finally, we are preserving our operational continuity. We are keeping rigs running, particularly in the highest return areas in the Delaware Basin. So that as we merge, and it looks like we're starting at the beginning of emerging from this very difficult period, that we'll have the operational continuity and strength to continue as a strong company. Now we recognize we have been challenged from a stock price standpoint. But you can see -- we think that we've done what we can, and we're merging with as much strength as possible. On the next slide, you can see just how much financial strength that we have. We have overall low levels of debt. We have no debt maturities until near the end of 2025. And at the end of the first quarter, we had $1.7 billion of cash available as well as an undrawn $3 billion credit facility. So availability of $4.7 billion of liquidity. And you can see on the right side of that slide, that as far as the amount of debt that's due in the next few years, 2020 through 2023, we're in the best position in our peer group. So we do have financial strength. We have low debt levels. And most importantly, we're living within cash flow at this point, too. And I'll show you the slide on that as well in a minute. So we are positioned, even though it's very challenging times to emerge from this downturn as a strong company and to then grow from that position when prices do respond. One of the key areas that we are active in is the Delaware Basin. We are active in Southeast New Mexico and Lea and Eddy County. The acreage that we have there is located in really the best part of the basin as overpressured section has high well rates that come out of that. And we have a truly premier position there with stack pay possibilities, different formations that could be productive. We'll become -- our capital efficiency as far as how we're drilling the wells and the rates we're getting are outstanding. We're shifting our focus more to the Wolfcamp from the [ shower ] of Bone Spring and Leonard formation where we have a deep inventory of drillable opportunities. Shown on the slide are some of the results that we've had recently, which are just purely leading amongst the peer group. And then looking into the next slide, a few more details of just about how well we are performing in this, our most important basin. You can see that we have driven down drilling and completion costs over the past year plus by 42% to what we believe is probably a peer-leading $705 per foot. We're very proud of our people and their ability to deliver that -- drill those wells and deliver those results. And not only are we drilling the wells very capital efficiently, but we're drilling outstanding wells. And on the right side of the slide, you can just see how much those wells are producing relative to our -- the other top producers in the Delaware Basin with the average well results is in terms of 6 months of oil production per foot, 50% above or more -- 50% or more above the peer group. So we're drilling in very low cost, and we're also delivering outstanding well results. I mentioned before that we are living within cash flow. And so this next slide shows some details around that, that our operating plan actually in 2020, even with these incredibly challenged prices that we have that we are delivering free cash flow. And so you can see on the waterfall chart there, starting on the left side, the total cash inflows and after subtracting off our capital operating costs, other -- the dividend that we pay out, we're actually going to have net cash inflows. Now a little bit of that is a benefit from the divestment proceeds that we anticipate receiving later in the year from the closure of our Barnett sale. But even without that, we're essentially living within cash flow this year, which, again, has to do with how efficiently we're executing as a company and our financial discipline that we're showing during this downturn. Looking more at the long-term for the company, we think that the model for E&P companies are changing. And it's no longer acceptable to spend all of your cash flow when we get back to a more normalized commodity price environment. It's no longer acceptable to spend all your cash flow, grow at a high rate and expect OPEC through curtailment to stabilize prices in order to be successful. We -- and just count on increasing shareholder value through the increase of the value of the assets, but not returning cash to shareholders along the way. We think that's an old model and it's an out-of-date model. And then we have been transitioning over the past few years to a differentiated model that we think is what the shareholders are looking for. First, we have a significant, as I mentioned before, a very strong asset portfolio. You need to also have financial strength, and we'll be looking as we get to a more normalized environment to continue to even improve further over our peer-leading financial strengths. You have to be able to operate your results very well, and you have to generate free cash flow, moderate your growth and return cash to shareholders along the way. That's the expectation of investors as more of a cash return model along the way. It's not maximum growth. It's about moderate growth, probably for us on the order of 5% production growth on the oil side and to return cash along the way. The good news is Devon has been delivering on that model over the past couple of years. Obviously, with the low prices we're encountering right now, it's more challenged to do that. But overall, as we get back to more normalized prices, Devon is poised and has the mindset of continuing to deliver that. So that really concludes my remarks that I had on the presentation. And at this point, I'd be glad to answer any questions.

Thank you, Dave. Any questions that we didn't answer during the meeting, we'll attempt to follow up after the meeting. At this time, let me check whether there are any questions in our queue. Welcome to submit questions at this time. At this time we don't have any in our queue to answer. We'll pause here for a minute and see if there are any final questions. And if not, we'll go ahead and sign off and conclude our meeting. All right. Thanks, stockholders and any other stakeholders who have joined us today on this call. We appreciate it. Have a good day. Thank you. This concludes the meeting.

Ladies and gentlemen, with that, we'll conclude today's presentation. We do thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.