Cenovus Energy Inc. (NYSE:CVE) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Jonathan McKenzie: Dennis, I don’t think anything has really changed. As Alex mentioned, we’re kind of in a world right now where we look at our downstream exposure as well as our takeaway capacity from Alberta as keep — putting us in a relatively beneficial spot. So I don’t think that we would be of the view that we need to materially increase our takeaway capacity or materially increase our refining capacity. We’re quite happy with the balances that we’ve got. I think, I just kind of reiterate something that Alex was talking about is and I know people are thinking about growth. But what we are really focused, on over the coming months and particularly Q1 and Q2, is getting our net debt back to $4 billion and getting these 2 refineries online and producing positive free cash flow.

So I think the growth part of the agenda that seems to be coming up as a theme is something that we can probably talk about in future quarters. But right now, we are focused on getting our debt down and getting our 100% shareholder returns intact together with getting our downstream operating well.

Operator: We’ll take our next question from Neil Mehta with Goldman Sachs.

Neil Mehta: Yes. Congrats Alex and John. It’s awesome to have you in the role. I just wanted to start off on capital returns. Alex, you’ve been pretty clear that you want to take a countercyclical approach to buying back stock and didn’t want to buy back stocks at the local highs. Stock shares have pulled back here a little bit. So just your perspective on the preferred return of capital mechanism versus buying back versus a more variable component as the business inflects closer to that sub-$4 billion mark?

Alexander Pourbaix: Yes. I mean, look, we’ve said this many times. Our preferred method of returning cash to shareholders is through share buybacks. And I think, at the kind of valuations that we’re seeing right now, we’re obviously in that range where I think there’s compelling value to buy back shares. But at the end of the day, we’re committed to get those returns back to shareholders. And if we are trading at significantly above our NAV, we will always be thoughtful about whether we’re creating value by those share buybacks. And if we’re of the view that we’re not, then we’re still going to return that money through variable dividends. But the priority has been and remains share buybacks.

Neil Mehta: That’s helpful. And the follow-up is just on the macro. We’ve seen a lot of volatility in the WCS differential. I recognize that you guys are much more protected than you were when you first came in, Alex, into that spread, but curious on how you see that playing out and the moving pieces? And maybe you can also comment on TMX because that’s going to move the needle potentially a year out?

Alexander Pourbaix: Well, why don’t I pass it over to Keith because he can just repeat to you what he says to me every morning when I walk in his office.

Keith Chiasson: Neil, thanks. Obviously, we saw the differential widen out there for a period of time and tighten back up more recently. We kind of look at it as 2 parts. We look at it as the transportation or location spread between Alberta and the Gulf Coast, and then we look at the light heavy differential in the Gulf Coast. And the good news is, obviously, with the third-party pipelines back up and running, us heading into the summer turnaround seasons and heading into a lower condensate requirement, egress out of Canada is looking pretty good right now. So we’re seeing that component of the differential tighten. Down in the Gulf Coast, we’re also seeing the differential tighten with Chinese demand coming back, some of the SPR releases slowing down.