Genel Energy (LSE:GENL) — Full-year results

0:00 Good morning, and welcome to the GENEL ENERGY PLC investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted at any time by the q and a tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Just simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company will review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. And I'd now like to hand you over to Paul CEO. Good morning to you, sir. Good morning. Good morning, everyone. My name is Paul Weir. I'm GENEL's CEO. Welcome to our twenty twenty two full year update presentation. I'm joined this morning by Luke Clements, our chief financial officer, and Mike Adams, our technical director.

0:49 Thanks to those of you who've already submitted questions online. Should any of you have questions as we work through this presentation, please submit them in the box which is on the right hand side of your screen. At the end of the presentation, there's going to be a q and a session facilitated by our head of investor relations, Andrew Bembo. As usual, before starting, I'll draw your attention to our disclaimer. Okay. Onto the first slide. In a few minutes, we're going to take a brief look back at our business in Kurdistan and how it has delivered material cash for GENEL and for Kurdistan. I'll also make mention of some of our important ESG work there. The following slides will then cover three aspects of our business that will provide you with a simple frame through which to think about our business.

1:37 Cash generation, which was delivered at record levels in 2022. We generated $235,000,000 of free cash in '22. We're going to talk about how that cash generation has transformed our balance sheet. Again, as you can see here, we have almost $500,000,000 in liquidity. We've been very clear, and we'll see it again today. We want to use that cash to add new production assets to our portfolio, being certain that this is the best way to deliver value for shareholders. Finally, and related to that balance sheet, we'll talk about what informs our capital allocation decisions. Since becoming CEO in October last year, we've sought to simplify our focus and our message. We've centered our business model around our dividend program.

2:22 This is a crucial component of investor returns, and Luke will be talking about our dividend and it's a very attractive 12% yield in a few minutes. So, GENEL ENERGY our cash generation continues to be supported by robust production from the Tawke license in KRI. We've been in Kurdistan for more than twenty years. And during that time, we've consistently demonstrated our commitment to being a responsible partner. And we've committed to a very extensive ESG program throughout that time. We have also aimed to be a responsible partner in the energy transition. We believe that those assets fit for the future are those that are low cost, low carbon, and those that can make a material difference to society, and our Turkey license does all of that.

3:08 The boxes on the right hand side of this slide give a good indication of our commitment to Kurdistan, what we've done in our time there. As mentioned, we've just celebrated twenty years in Kurdistan, and the highlight of those celebrations was the launch of our GENEL 20 scholars program in November last year. Under GENEL 20, we committed to fund 20 young, talented Kurdish students to be educated and supported at the outstanding American University at the Hook in Kurdistan. We've been delighted by the wholehearted support, encouragement, and commitment that the program has received, not just from the students, but from the MNR, the wider KRG and from the prime minister too. We're excited by what these scholars may one day achieve. In our twenty years in Kurdistan, our production assets have generated more than $20,000,000,000 of revenue for Kurdistan and almost $2,000,000,000 of free cash flow for our shareholders.

4:02 And our production assets continue to fund our dividend program. Luke's now gonna take you through the three business aspects I mentioned at the start, cash generation, balance sheet, and dividend. Over to you, Luke. Thank you, Paul. Good morning, everybody, and thank you for making time to listen to our update. 2022 was a year of record cash generation for us. The chart on the left shows this year's cash flow compared to previous years. It's nearly tripled the year before as high oil price, consistent production and recovery of old debts have combined for our production business to generate over $300,000,000 of free cash flow. After corporate costs and investment in appraisal and exploration, which was mainly at Sarta, this resulted in overall free cash flow of $235,000,000 Not all of the line items from 2022 repeat in 2023.

4:52 You can see on the right, I've highlighted the override and deferred receivables. We don't expect to receive any more in relation to these items. I've also highlighted preproduction CapEx, which we expect to reduce by about half in 2023 with our focus this year on Somaliland, whereas last year, the focus was on Sarta. In terms of pricing for sales, you'll have seen we're now being paid using a new KRG pricing formula effective from September 2022. We gave quite a lot of information about this when we announced it a few weeks ago, but it does vary. The the the impact does vary. So for September, the impact on our working interest production cash generation was about $2 a barrel, and the latest data that I have for February... For February shows that the impact has now reduced to just over $1 per barrel.

5:41 So based on that $1 to $2 per barrel range and our circa 10,000,000 barrels of working interest production, the impact on cash flow would be between $10,000,000 to $20,000,000 adverse. Finally, just thinking about payments for 2023, important to note that, 2022 cash generation included only ten months of payments, and we expect at least 12 in 2023. And we also hope to see progress on the two overdue payments, which at the start of the year totaled $64,000,000 in value. So if you put all that together, plenty of outlook cash flow generation for 2023 and beyond to cover our dividend for the next few years. So what's that cash flow done to our balance sheet? Well, as Paul said earlier, it's transformed it. Our liquidity has increased from just over $300,000,000 at the end of twenty one to just under $500,000,000 now.

6:33 Our net cash is now $220,000,000 with no debt maturity until October 2025. Maintaining appropriate balance sheet has been a focus of the business for the past few years, and we will continue to manage the balance sheet appropriately and commensurate to the risk that we see ahead. It's clear that at the moment, we carry too much cash, and we've been very clear that we intend to use that cash to acquire new assets. We are really looking to replace the 2022 cash generation line items that I referred to earlier as not repeating. So I'm now gonna talk a little bit about the lens that we use to assess our internal and external opportunities for investment, and that lens is the funding of our well established dividend program. We commenced that dividend program in 2019 and set out for it to have three key characteristics. It would be material, sustainable, and progressive.

7:24 What does that mean? Material means it's competitive on an ordinary dividend yield basis with other opportunities that are available to investors. Our ordinary dividend has been consistently competitive. Sustainable means it is repeatable and should not go down. The prior year dividend should set the minimum dividend expectation for the next year. And you can see in the chart, we maintained our dividend in 2020 despite a low oil price in COVID when others stopped theirs. So far, our program has paid out 177,000,000 in dividends, very material relative to our market capitalization. And the final aspect is progressive. This means that it should increase over time. So as the repeatable cash generation of the business grows, the dividend also increases behind it. And again, you can see from the chart that our dividend is now at 50,000,000 per annum, a 20% increase on where we started in 2019.

8:19 The dividend program is the lens we use for assessing capital activity and informing our investment decisions. And now Paul is going to talk about where that lens puts our focus for 2023. Thanks, Luke. From this side... Slide, I I hope you can see how the financial framework that Luke has outlined is going to support our principal areas of focus for '23, all aimed at building a better business. And there's three of those two. In in 2023, we shall firstly maximize free cash flow from our production business by continuing to be fully engaged with our operating partner and making smart investment decisions to support our excellent operation at Tarkin. Secondly, progress towards an exploration well in Somaliland. Our project team's in place and it's pursuing a well defined and properly resourced project execution plan.

9:10 And thirdly, and most importantly, investing our cash to add new assets to our production portfolio. Again, in our most recent updates and presentations, we've made mention of the formation of a highly skilled and dedicated team that continues to screen and evaluate suitable opportunities. So in the slides that follow, I'll give you a little color on these three key areas of focus in the year ahead. Our focus begins with our own production portfolio dominated by our 25% interest in the exceptional Tawke PSC, which holds the Tawke and Peshkabir fields and is operated by our friends at DNL. Tawke has delivered safe, consistent and predictable production with the past two years in particular benefiting from a very active drilling program. DNL has at times been running four rigs simultaneously in this license.

9:59 Production is now also benefiting from enhanced oil recovery by the injection of produced gas. That investment started a few years ago. The Tawke PSC was the first license in Kurdistan to have a gas management system in place. That system is now reducing emissions and enhancing our recovery. And you can see from this bar chart our performance over the last five years, even through the COVID downturn, has been consistent with a very low overall decline. The other point worth noting in this slide is the very low OpEx and low well costs, which are down towards world class levels. Put this together with the mechanics of PSC economics and you have a framework where the cost of activity will almost never deter activity itself. So the contractor group can continue to be very active in this asset in order to maximize and accelerate the production of reserves.

10:51 Taktak and Sarta are relatively minor contributors these days. And on these fields, we're only going to invest more if we are confident of a return. Our production is expected to be in the range of 27,000 to 29,000 barrels a day on average in 2023, with the resulting cash generation covering our dividend. Next slide, please. Our second area of focus is progressing our effort towards drilling a Somaliland exploration well in 2024. Now we've been on this license for more than ten years. We've always liked the potential. This is a very underexplored basin, and this opportunity offers remarkable potential and scale. But we recognize the uncertainty associated with frontier exploration. You can see from this picture that the well site is a little off the beaten track.

11:39 And because of that, we've been patient and waited to build the appropriate partnership to take the work forward. For Somaliland, this meant farming out first, reducing our equity and our exposure to cost and to secure funding for the well. We are now in a position to drill the well at a cost that we believe is appropriate for the uncertainty and potential scale of this opportunity. And work continues with proprietary civil engineering started and tendering for equipment and services well underway. We've also recently launched a farm out process for Morocco as we seek to progress derisking that opportunity too. The offshore Lagzira license is another exciting opportunity where oil has been seen when drilling on the license in the past. There's no explanation commitment there, but again, we aim to build the right partnership to take this exciting opportunity forward.

12:31 And on to our final and arguably our most important priority, adding new assets to the portfolio. As Luke and I have both mentioned, we use the lens of supporting our dividend program to assess new asset opportunities. So I'll give you an indication of what that means. Our first consideration is to extend line of sight and resilience of our established dividend. Luke used the terms you see here, material, sustainable and progressive. To do this, we're looking for assets that are producing or close to producing and will continue to contribute in the longer term. Then in addition to improving returns, we want to strengthen the business and manage risk by diversification. This means we're looking for new low cost assets with relatively low breakeven, which are likely onshore or conventional shallow water offshore and are suitably derisked and cash generative.

13:25 It's not hard to understand how investing some of our cash to acquire cash generating production of this type can transform our business. The cash we have to hand gives us a great opportunity to do just that. We have a very competent and dedicated team and a strict and thoughtful process, and we are confident that we will deliver the right outcome for GENEL shareholders. In summary then, here's a reminder of where we are and what lies ahead. Maximizing cash generation from our existing business, a strong balance sheet and significant cash balance, a committed dividend program funded by existing production, an aim to invest our cash in new assets with the investment choice driven by the beneficial effect on our dividend program. And of course, exciting exploration in Somaliland with Morocco a bit further down the line.

14:16 So we look forward to updating you on our progress and what promises to be a very exciting year for GENEL. I'll stop now and hand over for any questions that you may have. Thank you all very much. Andrew, over to you. Thank you very much, Paul. Thank you, Luke. First question that we've received, had a few come in as you'd expect. First question, as is always often the case, is about politics in Kurdistan. That question being that they've seen reports of the recent budget agreement between Baghdad and Erbil. What impacts do you expect that to have on GENEL? I think as a general rule... Sorry. I'll take this one. Yes. So as as a general rule, if relationships between the federal government and the regional government, business is good, and if those relationships deteriorate, then that's bad for business.

15:04 And and those of you that follow Iraqi politics will know that there is always a high degree of uncertainty and and unpredictability. But we study we study this dynamic very closely. We talk routinely with people who are close to the action, consular staff, other advisory people who are helping to mediate and facilitate an agreement between these two groups. And we're of the view that there is a genuine effort to bridge the gap for a rapprochement between the federal government and the regional government. And, you know, agreeing the budget and establishing and establishing a what seems to be a fairly firm agreement between Kurds and the rest of Iraq around oil for money is a positive sign and could only be good for us.

15:56 I will finish with the point I made at the beginning, which is there's always a degree of uncertainty and unpredictability, But we are confident that there is a... There has been a determined and very positive step forward by both sides of that particular dynamic towards each other. Thank you, Paul. The next question is one about payments. You... With GENEL ENERGY payments for September as well, like clarification as to whether others have now been received. Luke, do you wanna take that one? Yes. Sure. Yes. They've all been received. They were received a week or so ago. The... I think we feel okay about payments. The KRG is consistently committed that they're gonna pay us consistently, and they're gonna deal with the backlog.

16:43 So we're up to date with the last round, and we hope to get the next round pretty soon. Thank you very much. The next question is around the dividend. When we say it's covered for the medium term, we also say that it's covered for this year in free cash flow. What oil price do you think the dividend is covered at? That... That's another one for you, Luke. So we've been very clear since since Paul and I got to the executive positions about this dividend program and how we feel about it, and we've used the word established and committed pretty consistently. It probably gets a little repetitive, but it's important for investors to understand we are committed to that dividend. The the the the reason I refer to free cash flow covering it for the medium term is so that investors are clear that it's covered on free cash flow.

17:35 Mid... Medium term for me is about three years at forward strip is what covers it, and then you see a bit of natural decline, meaning it doesn't quite cover it. That that doesn't mean you'd stop. What it means is we wanna invest our cash to extend line of sight on funding of that dividend program, and we have significant cash with which to do that. So, you know, the commitment to investors is it's a committed dividend program, and it's... It it stays committed. So it's not it's not saying there's downside pressure on the dividend if oil price is lower than forward strip. It's literally shaping what our free cash flow looks like versus the dividend. Thank you, Luke. Next question on SATA. There have been a couple on SATA, so I'll try and I'll try and sum them up in one question. The the first is what do you mean by profitability at SATA and what will that take? And then the others are just, can we add any more color to the analysis of where SATA currently sits?

18:30 Oh, yeah. So that gives us an opportunity to introduce Mike Adams into the conversation. Mike, do you wanna take that? Sure. Sure. Let me do that. Thanks. Yeah. It's a great question, whoever whoever came up with that. So in terms of the profitability question, think, you know, the short answer is probably probably a bit of a combination of factors, which arguably makes it a longer answer. But I think some of them are in our control, and some of them are out of our control. In our control is is very much attempting to reduce the cost of our future operating model to as low as practically and and safely possible, so commensurate with with a marginal field. So effectively, the same journey we went on and continue to go on at at at TACTEC to ensure that our modest production remains profitable at lower oil prices and, of course, boosted by higher oil prices. So, you know, we have an we have an experienced team who are dedicated to addressing this particular problem statement around around cost.

19:31 I'd say less in our control, at least without further capital investment in drilling, is how production holds up. So this is really the mother nature part, notably given the limited production well stock at Sarta. And then out of our control is really is really the oil price and KBT pricing, those elements of that profitability equation. So at at higher oil prices, life is a bit easier, clearly. But as always, our eyes are really firmly fixed on protection from downside outcomes in in both price and and performance. So in short, it's it's it's very challenging, but we're we're we're doing the work. I think on the second part of the part of the question, which is more...

20:18 Which I think is more around where are we post the pilot and appraise program on SATA. So if I was to try to wrap that up, the SARTA five and SARTA six appraisal wells, as many of you, will be aware, they were designed to test the the lateral and the vertical extent of the accumulation. They did exactly that. Now clearly not with the results we would have liked, but nonetheless, they did their job as did the pilot production project. So the p and the a of our of our PADI answered that question as to the size and shape of any any future development. In short, smaller than we'd hoped, but not assumed. And and I I emphasize that because we only ever carried a modest two p to Sarta, so 10,000,000 barrels net, which as you've seen in our reserves announcements, being reduced to 3,000,000 barrels against, of course, which we've we've produced 4,000,000 barrels gross from the field to date.

21:18 Our contingent resources have taken a larger haircut given that they were they were largely contingent on those appraisal well results, and the remainder is now more dominated by the heavier oils within that discovered resource that we've talked about historically. So I think in short, on the pilot side of the equation, water came sooner and pressure declined quicker than than expected or or hoped. Whilst from the appraised side, the oil water contacts came at the low end of the range and the lateral extent of the reservoir quality proved to be challenging, proved to be a bit of an issue. Hopefully, that wraps it up. Thank you, Mike. A bit of a follow on question. Have the disappointing results at SATA impacted GENEL's relationship with the Kurdistan regional government at all?

22:04 And is there a risk of that relationship will deteriorate depending on the outcome of the arbitration next year? I'll I'll take that one. We... We've seen absolutely no signs whatsoever of a deteriorating relationship at the working level between the KRG, between MNR and and GENEL ENERGY. And in actual fact, when the when the legal action was begun and the arbitration was begun, there was a a a conscious and deliberate undertaking by both parties to try and maintain business as usual, and we've seen no detrimental effects since then. So we are we are confident that neither the disappointment of Saturn nor the arbitration so far has has changed the nature of our relationship with with MNR and KRG. And on the arbitration point, someone's asked a question saying that regarding arbitration, does that mean the Murren Field? I think I'll answer that one that's relating to the Murren and Benabawi fields that that were held by by GENEL.

23:00 Similarly, there's another question I'll briefly answer, which is regarding receipts from the KRG, given that GENEL is in partnership with other IOCs in these blocks. If DNO gets paid, then does GENEL automatically get paid? Yes. That's that's the way it works in relation to the blocks. The the operator gets the payment, and then the payment is automatically transferred to others. So if DNO get paid for Turkey, then then GENEL does accordingly. And as we've previously, then the KRG pays operators in no fixed order. It's not the one license comes first, but generally, you'll see the payments get received within about a two week period. Another question, which is about the transporting costs. Will the discount for transporting hydrocarbons decrease if the Kurdistan regional government and the government in Iraq agree on their differences? Luke, do you wanna go with that?

23:49 Sure. So there's so there's a there's a transportation cost incurred, which is, including the name, transporting the oil from Kurdistan to the port at Cheyhan. How those costs of access and transportation through the pipe change, I wouldn't wanna predict. I think maybe what the question is about is the Kurdistan blend discount. So I'll I'll I'll answer that question. If it's the wrong if it's the wrong answer to the wrong question, then please ask the question again. So Kurdistan blend is currently trading about $10 adverse to what you might expect similar crudes to to to to to to trade at. We're not entirely sure what what causes that, but there is a perception that buyers price political risk into that into that value they are prepared to pay for Kurdistan oil.

24:45 And so in theory, if you see an improvement in that relationship, particularly something that's formalized, then that discount should reduce. But I'm certainly not gonna try and predict how that might evolve. Thank you, Luke. And moving on to the exploration part of the portfolio. Actually, there's one sort of linking question, I think, which is, are you only focused on buying existing production assets? Or are you also looking at higher risk return exploration and development assets? That's kind of the first part of the question, which I think will then lead into the next one. But unsurprising, quite a few people have been asking about Somaliland and Morocco. Largely, are actually any time frames for production from both. So I think those are two relatively open ended questions, and I'll pass them over to be answered now. Well well, I'll take the first part very briefly and then ask ask Mike to comment on on the timelines for his exploration project.

25:34 We are we are we aim to buy production on new production assets, and and I would hope that would be clear from presentation that we've given. We are not actively seeking further exploration opportunities. We're confident that what we've got in the portfolio currently is sufficient in that regard. As far as the timeline for both Somaliland and Morocco, I'll I'll invite Mike to make some comments on that. Yeah. I mean... And let me let me let me maybe start with me start with Somaliland. So clearly, I think, you know, we've spoken this morning about our immediate time line towards drilling a well. So that's looking like the first half of first half of next year.

26:22 We're making great progress towards that. In terms of physical boots on the ground activity, that has involved things like the geotechnical survey in support of future... The the future civil works. That has also included our environmental and social impact assessment. So we've completed the field work around that piece. And and we're currently actually undertaking a survey, which is which is looking to identify the the depth of of water aquifers. So this is effectively saline waters and not not drinkable water, water that we can use in support of the in support of the drilling operation. So those are the kind of boots on the ground We're also in the in the process of tendering across across the full spectrum of of contracts and procurement space.

27:15 So all of that that's required for an exploration well, that's that's ongoing right now. If we were successful to kinda move to the other bookend of the question, if we were successful, then, of course, you know, that well is only just the start. Oil production doesn't doesn't start immediately, more so more so pity. It requires a lot of further work, further capital investment, and and and infrastructure. But I guess as the old saying as the old saying goes, Rome Rome wasn't built in a day, so the well is in in shot at the start of the start of something there. And then in Morocco, just to kind of move on to Morocco then. So the, like, zero block in Morocco, some of some of you perhaps be more familiar with that under its previous name, City Musa, highly prospective again... But again, like Somali land demands, we get that that balance right in terms of in terms of our expenditure on a on a risk and reward basis. So so what we're what we're looking to do here is replicate that Somali land format success, which I think itself is is testament to the quality of our of our exploration acreage through an ongoing farm out campaign in Morocco.

28:31 So that... That's that's ongoing that's ongoing right now. Thank you, Mike. While while we're on Smile land in Morocco, somebody else has asked questions about surface seepages, which have been found across Smile land, asking if any have been found in the Odawain license as well. Yes. They... Yeah. They haven't. I think that's probably a question which is referenced to some to some some news flow around the end of around the end of last year. So there was some there was some video footage around in the public domain of a of a of a water well, which had some traces of oil in it. So let me kind of... Let me speak a little to the kind of the reality of that video footage if you like. So the reality is that was a flow to surface of of muddy water, which based on further further detailed geochemical analysis that we undertook, there were some traces of traces of oil.

29:27 This in itself isn't really new news. So surface seeps have previously been identified on both Odewany and and their cell 10 b 13, in fact. It's it's a it's a piece of encouragement, a piece of the puzzle, but it certainly doesn't mean an oil accumulation underlies that location. Hydrocarbons can migrate large distances through very tortuous subsurface pathways prior to seeing daylight at surface. You know, that said, you know, this latest occurrence is it's sufficient for us to focus our Oduwane 2023 work program on an attempt attempt to resample that fluid either at or or or near to the original location given the original water well was a Somali government water well.

30:18 Thank you, Mike. Changing tack again and moving back towards cash and our finances. How is risk managed on a 500,000,000 cash pile? Is it held in deposits and where is it? And not really related to us by the same person. And at what price levels would you consider share buybacks? No. That... Treasuries and buybacks is certainly your territory, Luke. Sure. So where does that money sit? It it sits conservatively. In... Most of it's in a in a triple a liquidity fund, which only invests in low risk low low risk instruments. Some of it is in term deposit with couple of very big banks with good credit ratings, so conservatively.

31:10 And we keep we keep that under watch, we're very careful about where we pull our cash. Second question was on buybacks. We've we've had this question before. So in in my view... What we're trying to do is we're trying to change the investment outlook... The investment case for this business. We're trying to improve the returns, and the and the dividend is a big part of that for the long term so investors can see a consistent appropriate return for the risk that they see in our business. So the way we have set out to do that is by adding new assets that support that dividend program and deliver material cash generation in a transformational kind of way, which if it diversifies our risk appropriately, will rerate the valuation of our Kurdistan business and and benefit all of our shareholders.

31:58 Buying back shares, in my view, can transform the investment case of a business if you do it in a very material way. And when I say very material, I think the number I've given before is kind of 25 or 30% of your market cap because it reduces the size of your business and the returns stay the same. So you've got the same returns on a lower cost of investment in in very in very simple terms. What doesn't doesn't, in my view, change the investment case for your business is low level buyback of shares because mathematically, it turns... It it it kind of creates some increase on share price. It doesn't change the investment case. So as we sit here today, we've been very clear the focus of our cash is on adding new assets. It hasn't been buy... Bond buybacks, and it hasn't been share buybacks.

32:45 We bought back some bonds at a pretty, pretty, good price, but in the low levels, about 6,000,000, last year. We we felt holding onto our cash was the smart thing to do. And if you look what interest rates have done in capital availability in the last six, seven months, that looks quite sensible. Our our net interest cost on our on our position is low now, around around 10 per annum if you take the cash and the bonds, so it's not burning it's not burning cash on a monthly basis. So we will... We'll keep our cash, and we'll and we'll try and use it to add new assets and deliver the kind of business that we're trying to build. Thank you, Luke. And another question on what type of business we are trying to build. Just it's quite a specific one in terms of where we're looking.

33:33 Would you have any interest in participating in the six license round which Iraq intends to pursue, should the relationship between Kurdistan and Iraq improve? I'll take that. I think that's unlikely actually. I mean, I think we're, you know, I come back to the point that we're looking to secure producing assets and assets that are very close to production. We do have a natural inclination towards the Middle East Region for reasons that you will already understand. Right? I mean, it's it's in close proximity to our existing operation. Our people know that geography and that geology well. From a business administration point of view, it's close to our operational back office in Istanbul. So there are a number of reasons why we're inclined towards that geography.

34:18 We're not limiting ourselves to that geography, though. We are casting the net as wide as we possibly can and have looked at other opportunities and are looking at other opportunities on other continents. But whatever we do going forward, it's gotta be something that contributes to revenue in the short term and which gives us clear line of sight and extension of dividend payout. And we don't think the license round in Iraq would would satisfy that need. Thank you, Paul. Maybe I can just add a little bit to that, which will probably end up repeating what Paul said, but I think it's, you know... Just to add to that, you know, what the opportunities that we're currently looking at have in common, it's that ability to underpin our our key business focus. It's that the cash generation in support of a progressive long term dividend. So so very much existing production centric.

35:10 And beyond that, we're really quite open minded. So, you know, operated or non operated, you know, we have the capability clearly, but no strong preference. So again, it's... You know, cash generation is king or or queen, you know, and we're relatively agnostic to to geography, and that's a link into what Paul's saying there. You know, good projects are good projects wherever they may be within reason. So so why limit ourselves? But but clearly, as a starting point, MENA would be an easily understandable step out from from the KRI. Luke, do you have anything to add on that? We're moving towards the last question now. So if anyone who's on the call has any questions, please ask now or forever or drop me a line afterwards. Luke, anything to add on the new assets that we're looking for? No, I think that's welcome.

35:57 So the next question that we've had is about write offs, saying that the write offs are disappointing, but the risk of exploration. Do we foresee any other write offs of oil and gas assets in the pipeline? Go ahead, Luke. So the main oil and gas asset left on our balance sheet is Tawke. And Paul talked about Talcay pretty clearly earlier. It's a it's a high quality resilient asset with predictable production. The the other item on the balance sheet is some ilor, which is, you know, exploration exploration risk, but let... But let's see how we go on that. I mean, we're we're we're excited about it. Otherwise, we wouldn't be risking capital on it. So we see the risk and reward has been the right the right ratio.

36:44 Right. And with that, there are no further questions. So before I hand over to Paul for some closing remarks, I'd just like to say once again thank you, everyone, for joining this call. With something that we're going to do at least quarterly around trading updates, you can expect myself and Luke to do calls. Hopefully, we'll have some other other times during the year. We might do more impromptu ones as well because we wanna keep investors as up to date as possible. Should you always have any questions, however, please don't feel you need to wait for this forum. We're very responsive. We'll always answer any questions that shareholders may have. However, small or large those questions may be, please do drop us a line. And with that said, over to Paul for some closing remarks. Thanks, Andrew. I mean, I... I've got very little to add other than to add my own board of thanks to all of you for attending this morning and for your ongoing support.

37:31 2023 is shaping up to be a very exciting year for GENEL. We're excited by it. We hope you are too. And and we look forward to talking to you more later in the year. Thank you very much. Paul, Luke, Mike, Andrew, thank you very much for updating investors today. Can I please ask investors not to close the session as you now be automatically redirect to prod your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations? This will only take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of GENEL ENERGY PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good morning to you all.