Southwestern Energy Company (NYSE:SWN) Q4 2022 Earnings Conference Call February 24, 2023 11:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Brittany Raiford - Director, Investor Relations

Bill Way - Chief Executive Officer

Clay Carrell - Chief Operating Officer

Carl Giesler - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Charles Meade - Johnson Rice

Umang Choudhary - Goldman Sachs

Doug Leggate - Bank of America

Arun Jayaram - JPMorgan

Neal Dingmann - Truist Securities

Jeoffrey Lambujon - Tudor, Pickering, Holt

Paul Diamond - Citi

Noel Parks - Tuohy Brothers

Gregg Brody - Bank of America

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Southwestern Energy’s Fourth Quarter 2022 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] The call is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Brittany Raiford, Southwestern Energy’s Director of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Brittany Raiford

Thank you. Good morning and welcome to Southwestern Energy’s fourth quarter 2022 earnings call. Joining me today are Bill Way, Chief Executive Officer; Clay Carrell, Chief Operating Officer; and Carl Giesler, Chief Financial Officer.

Before we get started, I’d like to point out that many of the comments we make during this call are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties affecting outcomes. Many of these are beyond our control and are discussed in more detail in the risk factors and the forward-looking statements sections of our annual report and quarterly reports and is filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Although we believe the expectations expressed are based on reasonable assumptions, they are not guarantees of future performance. Actual results or developments may differ materially and we are under no obligation to update them. We may also refer to some non-GAAP financial measures, which help facilitate comparisons across periods and with peers. Earning non-GAAP measures we use, a reconciliation to the nearest corresponding GAAP measure can be found in our earnings release available on our website.

I will now turn the call over to Bill Way.

Bill Way

Thank you, Brittany and good morning everyone. Thanks for joining us this morning. 2022 was a defining year for Southwestern Energy as we continued executing on our strategy and delivering strong results, both financially and operationally. We prioritized debt repayment, reducing debt by over $1 billion and lowering leverage to 1.3x. We complemented debt reduction with $125 million of share repurchases during the year. We successfully integrated the transformative acquisitions we completed in the second half of 2021, which expanded our asset base into Haynesville to complement our high-quality Appalachia position. We expect that our large-scale integration and development expertise will enable us to drive further operational efficiencies just as we continue to do in Appalachia. We believe that these acquisitions extend the longevity and improve the resilience of our business with deepened high-quality inventory, scale cost economics and expanded optionality.