Jack Daly

Hi. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today on Day 1 of the Natural Resources Conference. I'm Jack Daly from the E&P research team here at JPMorgan. Up next, we have SM Energy, an E&P focused on developing assets across 4 U.S. shale basins, the Permian, DJ, South Texas and Uinta. We're very excited to be hosting SM's President and CEO, Beth McDonald. Beth joined SM as Executive Vice President and COO in September 2024, was named President in September 2025 and appointed CEO in January 2026. Beth, thank you so much for joining us today.

Elizabeth McDonald
President, CEO & Director

Thank you so much for having me.

Jack Daly

Yes. So maybe to start off, for those in the room who don't know you, can you tell us a little bit about your background? You started as a field engineer. How does that shape the way you lead today and what drew you to SM?

Elizabeth McDonald
President, CEO & Director

Yes. Thank you for that, and thank you all for joining us today. I started as a field engineer with my love for geoscience and engineering and problem solving and started as an ops engineer, did time in drilling and completions and then I really found myself in reservoir really more on the strategic perspective.

I joined Pioneer in 2005, working exploration projects in deepwater at the time, Gulf of Mexico and Northern Africa, which is kind of crazy when you think about a company like Pioneer Natural Resources, you think Midland Basin. And so I like to say that I