SM Energy Company (NYSE:SM) Q4 2022 Results Conference Call February 23, 2023 10:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Jennifer Samuels - VP of IR and ESG Stewardship

Wade Pursell - Executive VP and CFO

Herb Vogel - President, CEO and Director

Conference Call Participants

Zach Parham - JPMorgan

Operator

Good morning. My name is Rob, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the SM Energy Fourth Quarter 2022 Results and 2023 Planned Q&A Discussion. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers brief remarks there will be a question and answer session. [Operator Instructions] Thank you.

Jennifer Samuels, Vice President, Investor Relations and ESG Stewardship, you may begin your conference.

Jennifer Samuels

Thanks, Rob. Good morning, everyone. We come to you this morning from a chilly Denver, it just warmed up to minus 2 degrees. Thank you for joining us today to answer your questions. We have our President and CEO, Herb Vogel, and CFO, Wade Pursell.

As usual, before we get started, I will remind you that our discussion today may include forward-looking statements and discussion of non-GAAP measures. I direct you to Slide 2 of the accompanying slide deck, Page 8 of the accompanying earnings release and Risk Factors section of our most recently filed 10-K, which describe risks associated with forward-looking statements that could cause actual results to differ. We may also refer to non-GAAP measures, please see the slide deck appendix and earnings release for definitions and reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures and discussion of forward-looking non-GAAP measures. As a reminder, we have posted to our website an investor presentation and the transcript to our prerecorded call that we may reference today and also look for our 2022 annual report filed on Form 10-K this morning.

With that, I will turn it back to Rob to open it up for questions. Rob?

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And we have our first question from the line of Zach Parham from JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Zach Parham

I guess, first off, you started buying back stock a couple of quarters ago. You ended -- you've met your balance sheet goals and exited the year with almost $450 million in cash on the balance sheet. Can you just talk a little bit about your plans for cash return going forward and what your plans are for allocating that cash balance?