Murphy Oil Corporation (MUR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and thank you for joining this Murphy Oil Corporation Virtual Annual Meeting. Today's date is May 13, 2020. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, today's session is being recorded. And now to get us started with opening remarks, I am pleased to yield the floor to Vice President and Corporate Secretary, Mr. Ted Botner. Good afternoon, sir.

Thank you, Mr. Killian. During the meeting today, the company may make forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. As such, no assurances can be given that these events will occur or that the projections will be attained. A variety of factors exist that may cause actual results to differ. For a further discussion of Risk Factors, see Murphy's 2019 annual report on Form 10-K on file with the SEC. Murphy takes no duty to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. I will now turn the call over to our Chairman, Mr. Claiborne Deming.

Thank you, Mr. Botner. Good afternoon. I'm Claiborne Deming, Board Member and Chairman. I would like to welcome our stockholders and guests to this 63rd Annual Stockholders' Meeting of the company and our first virtual stockholders' meeting. It is now shortly after 2:00 p.m. Central Daylight Time on May 13, and this meeting is officially called to order. Let me start by acknowledging the obvious. How extraordinary and difficult this last several months has been. Not only did we experience some market share-driven oil price war, but it was done in the face of an unprecedented collapse in demand. I've seen a lot in my 40-plus years in this industry, but never this. In addition, Roger Jenkins, the company's President and CEO, contracted COVID-19 and took a medical leave of absence for 3 weeks. I'm happy to report that Roger is back in the seat and deeply engaged. We have previously outlined all the cost-saving steps we have taken including the painful ones of reducing our dividend by half, consolidating into one corporate location in Houston. More will follow as we prepare to live in a world of lower oil prices. It will be an extremely difficult year for this company. But I can assure you that we will emerge a much lower-cost company with a solid production base and with compelling international offshore exploration potential. It will be a company to own. In light of the virtual nature of this meeting and the fact that we released earnings, accompanied by an earnings call with a number of slides and Q&A only last week, Roger's presentation this year will be brief, focused on the future and audio only. Thank you for your patience and support during this period. In our call today, we have a number of attendees, including, importantly, all members of the Murphy Oil Corporation Board of Directors. They are Jay Collins, Steve Cossé, Larry Dickerson, Roger Jenkins, Elisabeth Keller, Jim Kelley, Val Mirosh, Madison Murphy, Jeff Nolan, Bobby Ryan, Jr., Neal Schmale and Laura Sugg. In addition, we are joined today by Michael Hufnagel, lead engagement partner; and Mike Terracina, partner of KPMG LLC, our independent auditor. At this time, I would like to introduce our Corporate Secretary again, Ted Botner. Mr. Botner will be reporting on the company's business items that are the subject of this meeting. Mr. Botner?

Before we begin the business of the meeting, I would like to review a few housekeeping items. On our virtual meeting portal, located on the right-hand side of the screen, you should see the meeting materials, including the agenda and rules of conduct. We will follow the agenda provided and ask that you please abide by the posted rules. Only validated stockholders may submit questions. And out of consideration for others, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question. Questions or concerns related to the proposals being voted on today may be entered into the box located on the lower left side of the screen. If you have general questions that do not relate to the business of the meeting today, we are happy to answer those at a later time. Please see the contact information for our Investor Relations group. As noted in the rules of conduct, this meeting is being recorded. The participants are not authorized to use any recording device. Further, we have available for inspection during the meeting a list of the stockholders of record as of the close of business on March 16, 2020. This list can be found in the lower right corner of the screen. Finally, our Board has appointed Thiago Cooper to act as judge of election for the meeting. Mr. Cooper is present today, and has taken an oath of office, which will be filed with the minutes of this meeting.

Mr. Botner, will you provide proof of Notice of the Meeting, that a quorum is present?

Yes, Mr. Chairman. The Notice of the Meeting and Internet availability of proxy materials were mailed by Broadridge, the company's tabulation agent, beginning on March 30, 2020, to all stockholders of record as of the close of business on March 16. The notice of a change to a virtual-only meeting was made available to stockholders on April 20, 2020. As such, the meeting is held pursuant to proper notice. An affidavit from Broadridge as to the mailing of the notice to all record-date stockholders of the company will be filed with the minutes today. The affidavit is available for inspection by any stockholder. Proxies representing over 89% of the votes entitled to be cast by the holders of the outstanding shares of Murphy's common stock are present at the meeting. As such, the judge of election and Broadridge have confirmed that a quorum is present.

Thank you, Mr. Botner. A quorum is present and the meeting is duly constituted. The minutes of the 2019 Annual Meeting of Stockholders are also available for your inspection during the meeting under the meeting materials link on the web portal. I now declare the polls open. We have 4 formal matters to be voted on today. First, to elect as directors the 13 nominees named in the proxy statement. Second, to hold an advisory vote on the compensation of named executive officers as determined by the Executive Compensation Committee of the Board. Third, the approval of the 2020 long-term incentive plan as presented in the proxy statement. And fourth, the ratification of the Audit Committee's appointment of KPMG LLP as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the year 2020. Under our bylaws, the deadline for submitting a nominee for director or any other stockholder proposal has passed, and no other nominations for director or stockholder proposals were submitted. Therefore, these 4 items are the only matters we will consider at this meeting. We will now address any questions specifically related to these 4 proposals. If you have a question related to these proposals, please submit your question now. Seeing no questions, we will now proceed with the voting. Stockholders who have already voted do not need to vote at this time, unless they want to change their vote. If you have not already voted and would like to vote now, please do so by checking on the voting button on the web portal and following the instructions there. [Voting]

While we await the results of voting, Roger will provide a brief company outlook. Roger?

Thank you, Claiborne, and good afternoon, everyone. I want to start by thanking everyone for your thoughts and prayers and endless messages of support while I was recovering from COVID-19 and to the team at Murphy for steering the company through the crisis. To date, our internal performance managing COVID has been outstanding, especially in work-from-home measures. Our exceptional crisis management team implemented a screening program for our field workers in the early days of the pandemic, helping us to keep our employees and contractors safe and minimize all impacts on our global operations. When we operate under normal pricing for crude oil as seen in 2017 through 2019, our new concentrated North American portfolio provides the company's significant free cash flow. During these times, we have optionality around returning the cash flow to investors, reinvesting in the business or strengthening our balance sheet. However, today, we see a totally different world as oil prices are significantly below normal for the balance of this year and into next. With the recovery still on the horizon, we've been forced to make the gut-wrenching decisions to close offices, even after significantly reducing our capital expenditures and lowering cash costs, including executive and director compensation and the dividend, in order to maintain the current -- to manage the current oil price collapse. These changes allow us to weather the storm until oil prices improve to normal levels. Oil prices will ultimately improve as the recovery of post-COVID-19 takes place and the outcome of drastic capital reductions across our industry impacts production levels later this year. These cost-saving initiatives are meaningful as we anticipate considerable reductions in our general and administrative costs for the remainder of 2020 and all of 2021. By making the hard decision to close offices, we have shown that all things are on the table concerning costs, and we will continue to place emphasis on lowering operating costs in the near term. I see exceptional efficiencies ahead once we get through our transition this summer to a single office in Houston. Fortunately, we entered this downturn with a strong liquidity level of $1.8 billion as of March 31, including just over $400 million of cash and cash equivalents. Further, our first debt maturity isn't until June of 2022, providing us the flexibility to manage the company through this commodity price cycle. We've spent the last couple of years strategically positioning our portfolio through the divestiture of our 20-year business in Malaysia and acquiring a new complementary set of assets in the Gulf of Mexico. Today, our production is concentrated in 3 North American areas. We're the fifth largest producer in the Gulf of Mexico. We have a significant production base in the Eagle Ford Shale in Texas, and we have meaningful low-cost natural gas resources in Canada. Our 2 oil-weighted assets in the Eagle Ford Shale and the Gulf of Mexico provide most of our revenue and our near refinery -- our refinery customer base on the Gulf Coast, thereby, achieving a price advantage. In addition, Murphy has revitalized a big-ticket exploration program that's focused in the Gulf of Mexico, offshore Mexico and offshore Brazil. All these regions have encouraging seismic data and offsetting exploration success, leading us to have the best inventory prospects we have seen in many years. We anticipate drilling up to 4 wells within the next year in Mexico and Brazil. Mexico is showing much promise of late with many successful wells drilled near our block. Deepwater finding and development costs are also at an all-time low, adding further upside to the company as an offshore explorer. When we combine our concentrated price-advantaged oil assets and company-changing potential in our exploration program with low overhead and low-cost structure, we will be a truly unique independent oil and gas company with enormous upside. We're also reviewing our plans with the goal of delevering in order to better able to manage oil price volatility in the future. While our immediate focus is on liquidity and cost reductions, ESG remains a focus for Murphy. Overall, following our strategic portfolio changes, we will be a lower carbon-emitting company. We saw our carbon intensity improved by 30% year-over-year, and I believe we can further improve that mark going forward through employing new technologies and challenging our current practices. In closing, I want to express my appreciation for our directors and employees and thank our shareholders for their continued support. That concludes my remarks today, and thank you.

Thank you, Roger. Well said. The polls are now closed to voting. Mr. Botner, do you have election results?

Yes, Mr. Chairman, I do. I am pleased to report that all nominees for director have been elected with greater than 96% of the vote. The stockholders have approved, on an advisory basis, the compensation of the company's named executive officers with approximately 84% of the vote. The stockholders have approved the 2020 long-term incentive plan with approximately 98% of the vote, and the appointment of KPMG LLP has been approved with approximately 98% of the vote. Our judge of election will prepare a final report on the vote that will be included as part of the record of this meeting. We will also report the final results on a Form 8-K to be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission within 4 business days of this meeting. Mr. Chairman, that concludes all agenda items. You may adjourn this meeting at your pleasure.

Thank you, Mr. Botner, for those election results, and this meeting is officially adjourned. Thank you very much.

And thank you to each member of our leadership team for your remarks today. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. This does conclude today's meeting. You may now disconnect your lines, and we hope that you enjoy the rest of your day.