Ovintiv Inc. (NYSE:OVV) Q3 2022 Results Conference Call November 9, 2022 10:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Brendan McCracken - Chief Executive Officer

Greg Givens - Executive Vice President, Chief Operating Officer

Corey Code - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer

Jason Verhaest - Investor Relations

Conference Call Participants

Doug Leggate - Bank of America

Jeanine Wai - Barclays

Neal Dingmann - Truist

Greg Pardy - RBC Capital Markets

Menno Hulshof - TD Securities

Umang Choudhary - Goldman Sachs

Philip Johnston - Capital One

Nicholas Pope - Seaport Research

Noel Parks - Tuohy Brothers

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Ovintiv's 2022 Third Quarter Results Conference Call. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]

For members of the media attending in a listen-only mode today, you may quote statements made by any of the Ovintiv representatives. However, members of the media who wish to quote others who are speaking on this call today, we advise you to contact those individuals directly to obtain their consent. Please be advised that this conference call may not be recorded or rebroadcast without the express consent of Ovintiv.

I'd now like to turn the conference call over to Jason Verhest from Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Mr. Verhaest.

Jason Verhaest

Thanks, Michelle, and welcome, everyone, to our third quarter '22 conference call. This call is being webcast, and the slides are available on our website at ovintiv.com. Please take note of the advisory regarding forward-looking statements at the beginning of our slides and in our disclosure documents filed on SEDAR and EDGAR. Following prepared remarks, we will be available to take your questions. Please limit your time to one question and 1 follow-up.

I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Brendan McCracken.

Brendan McCracken

Good morning. Thank you for joining us. Our third quarter results demonstrate that our strategy to deliver superior, durable returns and substantial free cash flow is working. This strong financial performance is directly translating to increased cash returns to our shareholders. In the quarter, we doubled shareholder returns to 50% of post-dividend free cash flow. As a result, we bought back 2.5% of our shares outstanding in the quarter. We delivered these additional buybacks ahead of our original plan due to our significant debt reduction and strong business performance.

We remain on track to deliver about $1 billion to our shareholders this year through the combination of share buybacks and base dividend. And this amount is set to grow significantly in 2023 as our new hedging policy comes into effect. To put it in perspective, under our new hedging program, our third quarter free cash flow would have totaled approximately $1.3 billion or about $5 billion on an annualized basis. This has us very excited about unleashing the free cash flow generating potential that we have built into our business.