Canadian Natural Resources Limited (NYSE:CNQ) Q3 2023 Earnings Conference Call November 2, 2023 11:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Lance Casson – Manager-Investor Relations

Tim McKay – President

Mark Stainthorpe – Chief Financial Officer

Scott Stauth – Chief Operating Officer-Oil Sands

Conference Call Participants

Dennis Fong – CIBC World Markets

Neil Mehta – Goldman Sachs

Greg Pardy – RBC Capital Markets

Menno Hulshof – TD Securities

Patrick O'Rourke – ATB Capital Markets

John Royall – JPMorgan

Manav Gupta – UBS

Kalei Akamine – Bank of America

Operator

Good morning. We would like to welcome everyone to the Canadian Natural Resources 2023 Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. After the presentation, we will conduct the question-and-answer session. Instructions will be given at that time. Please note that this call is being recorded today, November 2nd, 2023 at 9:00 a.m. Mountain Time.

I would now like to turn the meeting over to your host for today's call, Lance Casson, Manager of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Lance Casson

Good morning everyone, and thank you for joining Canadian Natural's third quarter 2023 earnings conference call. As always, before we begin, I'd like to remind you of our forward-looking statements and it should be noted that in our reporting disclosures, everything is in Canadian dollars, unless otherwise stated, and we report our reserves and production before royalties. Additionally, I would suggest you review our comments on non-GAAP disclosures in our financial statements.

Speaking on today's call will be Tim McKay, our President; and Mark Stainthorpe, our Chief Financial Officer. Tim will first speak to how strong execution has resulted in record quarterly production, and he will provide additional specifics on our safe, reliable, and world-class operations. Mark will then summarize our strong financial results, including significant free cash flow generation and increasing shareholder returns. To close, Tim will summarize our call prior to opening up the line for questions.

With that, I'll turn it over to you, Tim.

Tim McKay

Thank you, Lance. Good morning everyone. In the third quarter, we achieved record quarterly production of approximately 1.39 million BOEs per day, which included both record liquid production at approximately 1,035,000 barrels a day, and natural gas production at approximately 2.15 Bcf a day as a result of effective and efficient operations across all our assets. This combined with our diverse product mix, we generated significant free cash flow, resulting in more shareholder returns through our sustainable, growing dividends, and significant share repurchases.