Ovintiv Inc. (NYSE:OVV) Q4 2023 Results Conference Call February 28, 2024 10:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Jason Verhaest - Investor Relations
Brendan McCracken - President and CEO
Corey Code - EVP and CFO
Greg Givens - EVP and COO
Conference Call Participants
Neal Dingmann - Truist
Arun Jayaram - JPMorgan
Gabe Daoud - TD Cowen
Neil Mehta - Goldman Sachs
Scott Gruber - Citigroup
Greg Pardy - RBC
Jeoffrey Lambujon - TPH & Company
Roger Read - Wells Fargo
John Abbott - Bank of America
Operator
Good day, ladies and gentlemen and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Ovintiv's 2023 Fourth Quarter and Year End Results Conference Call. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that this conference call may not be recorded or rebroadcast without the expressed consent of Ovintiv.
I would now like to turn the conference call over to Jason Verhaest from Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Mr. Verhaest.
Jason Verhaest
Thank you, Joana, and welcome, everyone, to our fourth quarter and year end '23 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 EDGAR and SEDAR+. Following our prepared remarks, we will be available to take your questions. Please limit your time to one question and one follow-up.
I will now turn the call over to our President and CEO, Brendan McCracken.
Brendan McCracken
Good morning. Thank you for joining us.
2023 marked another year of execution against our durable return strategy. We beat and reset our targets twice over the course of the year, and this trend continued into the fourth quarter in every aspect of our business. We converted our operational success into bottom line financial results with full year net earnings of $2.1 billion and cash flow of $3.9 billion.
With capital investment totaling $2.7 billion, we generated free cash flow of approximately $1.2 billion, of which $733 million or 63% was returned directly to our shareholders. We continued to lead the industry by delivering efficiency gains in each of our assets. Completion design innovations, record setting, execution performance, leading well productivity per lateral foot and base decline management are a few of the areas contributing to our excellent return on invested capital.
In June, we more than doubled our premium drilling inventory in the Permian with a set of three highly accretive acquisitions. Our team has seamlessly integrated the new assets and we are very pleased to report out on the excellent results from our first end-to-end wells in the former end cap acreage.