Serica Energy (LSE:SQZ) — Investor Presentation

0:01 Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the SERICA ENERGY PLC investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged. They can be submitted at any time via the q and a tab that's just situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Please 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 can review all questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses where it's appropriate to do so on the investor meet company platform. And before we begin, I would just like

0:32 to submit the following poll. And if you'd give that your kind attention, I'm sure the company would be most grateful. And I would now like to hand you over to the executive management team from SERICA ENERGY. David, Martin, good afternoon. Good afternoon, everybody, and thank you very much, Jake. Good afternoon, everybody. Delighted to be here with Martin Copeland, and we're pleased to be able to present twenty twenty three's results for SERICA. And we'll endeavor to leave some time at the end to answer q and a after we've been through these slides. It'll probably take us about forty minutes to get through the slides. And before I start, I just want to say a sincere thank you to Mitch Flegg. I know many of you will be familiar with Mitch and maybe watched him do this for a few years now, and he's had a very significant impact on SERICA. He laid strong foundations for us over the six years as CEO, and I'm honored to take over for him in an interim period as the CEO whilst remaining the chair.

1:27 Mitch has been instrumental in building a strong company, and 2023 was another very strong year of financial performance for SERICA despite low commodity prices and a really challenging fiscal environment. I'm gonna just go through to our first slide. The performance is such that, as you probably know by now, we're making a decision to pay a final dividend of 14p a share, which means an increase in the total dividend for 2023 to 23p per share compared with the 22p in respect of 2,022. In addition, we are also launching a £15,000,000 buyback of share scheme. This is an indication of the board's confidence in 2024 cash flows and the longer term value of the assets that the company has.

2:20 And the first slide that's up there, our investment case at a glance, really, a lot of that information will be familiar to many of you that have followed SERICA for a while, but perhaps not everybody. So I'll just step through it, quickly. We're we're a UK focused independent oil and gas company. We produce from two hubs. It's very balanced between oil and gas, and we're an operator of most of what we do. And our production has increased over the years to over forty forty thousand barrels a day of oil equivalent. We say oil equivalent because that's a way of reporting gas and oil in the same units. Reserves, importantly, and these are the oil and gas pools that underpin the production, have more than doubled to a 140,000,000 barrels of oil equivalent since we started out in 2018 operating the Bruce Keith rum hub.

3:09 We have a very strong balance sheet which provides a platform for future growth. We've We've been been paying dividends since 2020. And when you take what we're now proposing, it'll be more than £200,000,000 of dividends going back to shareholders. And as I've said, we've got our inaugural share buyback, has initiated. In terms of the highlights for 2003, first of all, investment highlights. We we did a deal and bought Tailwind in March. That reduced risk in the portfolio by adding separate production hubs where we'd had one before and infrastructure, and it brought oil where we mainly had gas. Thank goodness for that because we've seen a a real change in the commodity prices since then. I'll come back to that. We also bought a portfolio of incremental investment opportunities, and this is the way that we can replace our production because oil and gas fields, as you produce them, they shrink. So you need to be adding more all the time.

4:08 The way we do that is in a number of ways. We had a very successful well intervention campaign on Bruce again last year. We're doing some more of that this year, and we drill new wells. So the intervention is working over existing wells, but we also drill new wells. We drilled one last year, but we're drilling more this year, and I'll be focusing on that later. We also acquired a low cost entry point into a fairly significant redevelopment project on Buchan. It's a 70,000,000 barrel prospect for redevelopment that could take final investment decision later in the year. In terms of growth, I've mentioned that we've increased our production significantly since 2022. I've also, would like to draw attention to the reserves additions, and I'll I'll be speaking about them a bit more. But we've more than replaced our reserves in 2023.

5:01 And this increased resource base that we have has allowed us to essentially take out a a a refinance facility. We had a facility that came with, Tailwind. We've refinanced it with some leading banks who have, given us a new debt facility, which really demonstrates their confidence in the company and how it's being run and our asset base. And then finally, in the growth area, we've grown our capability in terms of staff. We've got some great staff now both from SERICA ENERGY and, together, they are creating new opportunities for us to invest in the assets that we have. In terms of returns, we're we're gonna start using this, EBITDAC's, cash number because it's important to our lending banks, and Martin will talk a bit more about that later.

5:48 And it was a significant amount of cash despite halving of the gas price versus that in 2022. The oil prices were more stable. Also, we paid significant dividends last year, almost £90,000,000, and we've declared this new dividend, for the for for last year that will be, hopefully agreed at the AGM and our buyback program. A few operational metrics for you, and, I'm sorry some of the the the things here are a bit arcane. They're oil and gas industry, but I've talked I've talked about the production already increasing from '22 to 23. I I would say we could have done even better than 40,000 barrels a day. We had a longer than planned shutdown on Bruce and Triton last year.

6:37 These shutdowns are to perform maintenance. It's critical to the health of these old assets, but also they were performing some important life extension work, and we had some unplanned, work that had to be done. We took a decision to do it. It does, of course, mean that while we remained in the guidance for last year, we produced a bit less than we had the potential to produce. In terms of cost, we remain competitive in the basin, under $20 a barrel, which is our target. We saw significant inflationary pressures last year, and in general across the business. And these extended shutdowns, which I've already mentioned, resulted in more work, and so that came with more cost. But, nevertheless, we're managing our unit OpEx.

7:26 Reserves replacement, I'm gonna talk about in a moment, so I won't say anything more here. In terms of safety, we obviously want everybody to go home as they arrived at work safe and sound, and we want to avoid all safety related incidents. I'm glad to say that we haven't had any significant incidents, and we work hard to identify and learn from any near misses, both our own and those of others. And to date, we've had a good track record. When it comes to carbon emissions, and these numbers are are for Bruce, which is our operated facility, When it comes to carbon emissions, we've had a significant reduction from 2022 to 2023. While it in part reflects the shutdown, I think there's something important to mention here, which is when we shut down the facilities, we still need to power them. And that power, this time, was provided with temporary generators, which produced much less by way of emissions.

8:21 They were much more efficient and saved a huge amount of carbon dioxide emissions. In terms of carbon intensity, we're at the lowest level ever. So this is the amount of carbon per barrel of oil equivalent we produce. It's the lowest level that we've been at since we took over the Bruce assets from BP in 2018, and it's well below the average in in the the basin. We're committed to continuously improving both of these metrics, in line with The UK emission reduction targets. I've mentioned reserves a few times. Let me just talk you through this, and this is, independently audited. So on the left hand side, we've got where we finished up at the end of twenty twenty two going into 2023 when you take account of the tailwind assets that we bought. And the sum there is a 130,000,000 barrels of oil equivalent reserves.

9:14 On the right hand side of the chart, you have the same number for the end of twenty twenty three, and it adds to a 140,000,000 barrels. So we've added 10. And the way you get there is we produced 14, which is the first flying brick, if you like, but we also added 24. So the net net result is we grew by 10. If you take that a 140,000,000 barrels and you just assume we carried on producing at the same rate, that tells you you've got ten years. If you'd done the same calculation back in 2018, the answer would have been six years. So this is something that many companies can do in an old basin like the North Sea, and it reflects all the hard work of our employees finding these opportunities to add more when we're producing.

10:02 What kinds of things are they adding? Well, the upward revisions in 2023 included identifying a new target for a well to drill on Bruce in the future. They identified a well intervention campaign that's underway at the moment, there'll and be another one probably next year. Then and and then importantly, a really big part of the revisions was recognizing that if we can drop the pressure on the on the facilities in Bruce, we can suck more gas out of rum. And that's quite a neat engineering solution to getting more reserves through our facilities. And then finally, the Belinda field development. Belinda's a tie back to Triton. I'll come and talk about that a bit more in a moment. Moving on to maintaining production.

10:47 Some of you will be familiar with this chart. We've shown it a few times in the past. The blues are the production from Bruce, Keith and Rum mainly, and and and the browns are what came with the SERICA with the acquisition of Tailwind,

11:01 so the Triton Hub production mainly. And what you can see here is the big shutdown that I've been mentioning in 2023. It's the hole in the middle of the chart. I think what you can also see is that since then, production's been pretty strong. There's the occasional up and down. This is to be expected, but it's remained pretty strong. And year to date, we're at 45 over 45,000 barrels a day of oil equivalent. So last year's average, I'll remind you, was just over 40. Year to date, we're at 45. Our guidance for the year is 41 to 46,000 barrels a day. It's been narrowed slightly because, as I'll show you in a moment, this year depends quite heavily on a drilling campaign that has started but started a bit later than we expected.

11:46 And it's also been impacted by the fact that Erskine, which is one of the smaller producing units for us, has not been producing through much of the year up until now, although it is back on stream. The outturn of this year, so is going to reflect the drilling campaign, which I'll talk to more in a moment, and then any any planned shutdowns we have on on Triton or Bruce. So we do have a a planned shutdown on Triton this year. It's built into the plans. We have a very small one on Bruce that's not related to Bruce. Actually, it's related to the export pipeline, Fortis pipeline system, which has to do an annual shutdown. So that's a week there, and, I think it's about forty days on Triton. One of the things we'd also like to say here is that in 2025, we would expect a broadly similar range of production to what we expect for this year. So, again, 41 to 46,000 barrels a day.

12:43 Moving on to the well program, which I've mentioned several times. This is a really busy slide, and that's because it's a very busy year. Let me help you get your eyes in. The blue bars are the beginning and ending of activity sets. The blue triangles are where you expect production to come associated with those activity sets. And before talking about them specifically, I want to make the point that the triangles are very close to the ends of the bars typically. Now this is not normal for oil and gas projects, but because these are all very near to near to infrastructure tiebacks and the tiebacks are short, we can get that production on stream very quickly after completing the drilling. Normally, you might expect quite a long time between finishing a drilling program and starting production. But for the kinds of things we're investing in, it's very short, and they're short payback times.

13:39 At the top, we've got Bruce and Keith well interventions. This is work to go into the existing wells, clean them up, add perforations, remove blockages, and get instantly a bit more production. They've been successful in This big new program of new wells starting at Bitten and then moving down through the others to Belinda are wells that all tie back to the Triton facility. We're spending almost a $195,195,000,000 pounds of cash this year on that entire program. That includes 25,000,000 for the Belinda project, which is the one at the bottom, where we've taken final investment decision, but it's not yet finally approved by the regulators. It's got all of the pre FID approvals, but we're waiting for final field development plan approval by the regulators.

14:31 Let me move one last thing on that, actually, because it's important, and Martin will talk about it, tax. So we we spend all of that money, but that's not actually what we'll end up spending after tax because the current tax regime gives us a good allowance on investment capital, and we'll get a lot of that back. So the net after tax will be very, very much smaller. Moving to the Triton well campaign, which was on the last slide, and this pretty picture, which is a drilling rig overbitten, I think, what I'd really like to focus on here is the fact that the the well campaign delivers tremendous rates of return. So it pays back quickly. The average over those five wells is within two years. The IRR over that five well package is more than a 100.

15:23 And because we're plugging them into existing facilities, which are running already, we're not adding to the carbon emissions associated with those facilities. We're just providing more production through them. So, actually, our carbon intensity comes down. So there are great things to do. Belinda, as I've I've already said, was sanctioned. We'd expect first oil for that in 2026. Those numbers, by the way, which I've given you, are based on the forward oil and gas price curves at the moment, and they're based on the current tax assumptions. We will talk about tax later as I've already indicated. Martin, over to you for the financials. Thanks, Dave, and it's very good to be speaking with you all today. Since this is my first time doing this, I wanted to start off by formally acknowledging the very strong legacy of careful financial management that has that has been led by Andy Bell as our CFO who I am succeeding.

16:20 And I also wanted to pay thanks to Andy for the very strong support he's given me in the two months I've been in the job. We have a very smooth transition from from a CFO perspective. This slide gives a snapshot of key figures, and I'll go into some of those in a bit more detail, particularly the takeaways on some of the next pages. As Dave said, we are putting in we are today highlighting a couple of cash metrics that we will focus on going forward, one of which is EBITDAX, and the other is cash flow from operations after tax. Those are relevant, and I'll get a little bit more into a little bit more detail on the cash flow from operations on subsequent slides. Moving to the income statement. We put out our full set of results today. So what this is designed to do is help to orientate people and help them to understand those numbers.

17:11 When we look at our production, the 40,000 barrels a day of pro form a production delivered around 14,600,000 barrels of oil equivalent, as Dave was saying. On a that's that's at the wellhead. On a on a sales basis, it was around 14,200,000 barrels. And on an as reported basis, recognizing that our results for '23 only included nine months of tailwind, the sales volumes was around 12,300,000 barrels. That means that the 633,000,000 pounds of revenues was equivalent to around $64 a barrel of oil equivalent in terms of realized prices after hedging. And that compares to around a $104 a barrel of oil equivalent in 2022. So it shows you the impact of lower commodity prices in '23 as compared to 2022.

18:00 That was the key driver of that, in particular, that the benchmark gas price we focus on, the so called NBP price, moved from an average of a 198p a therm to 99p a therm from '20 2022 to '23. And our realized gas price after taking into account our hedges was around 93p a therm. The impact of the reduced gas prices was partially mitigated by the contribution of the tailwind oil weighted assets because oil prices held up considerably, averaging $83 a barrel in 2023 as compared to a 101 in 2022. Our realized oil price was around $70.5 a barrel, again, because of hedging that we'd taken out to protect the downside.

18:49 On operating costs, on OpEx per barrel, on a statutory basis, as in if you take the £219,000,000 that we show on this page as our direct operating costs, it it equated to around $21 a barrel of oil equivalent. But on a pro form a basis, I. Assuming the basis as if we'd own tailwind for the full twelve months, it would have worked out as around $19 a barrel, which is the number that that is below our $20 a barrel target. Administration costs, g and a, increased basically in line with the activities in the business, but there's also circa two to 3,000,000 pounds of nonrecurring costs that we identify within that number. So we'd expect to be able to extract some savings from that on a go forward basis.

19:39 We there's a couple of accounting metrics that are in the that are in the numbers that are potentially worth highlighting. One is the impact of acquisition accounting on the Tailwind acquisition. We show here a 58,000,000 number in respect to that. That's actually reduced from the number shown at the interims, but not because anything has changed. The fair value was exactly the same. But in the closeout of the audit, a different treatment of deferred tax was applied to it, has reduced that number as compared to the number shown at the time of the interims. The tax charge we show here of 203,000,000 in total, that includes deferred tax. So 183,000,000 was the current tax, and that's the metric that we think is the appropriate one to focus on.

20:25 On a current tax to EBITDAX basis, that means we had an effective tax rate of 48% last year. And I'll turn to that a little bit more detail on subsequent slides.

20:37 Moving to the balance sheet. The most important event from a balance sheet perspective, and Dave's already touched on it, was the conclusion of our reserve base is our reserve based loan facility, which we closed out in January of this year. Completing that financing, which is one of the largest all new money, reserve based loans in the past few years, is no mean feat in the current environment, and a testament to the quality of SERICA's business as well as a huge amount of hard work by SERICA team and our banks. And we clearly see our banks as important strategic partners as we grow our business in the future. We've also included on this page the drawn balances and the net cash position as of the April 22 as we'd also disclosed as regards to the year end in our in our results.

21:27 Turning to one other component of our balance sheet, which is actually one of the smaller numbers on the balance sheet, which is our decommissioning provisions. This chart, which we've used a different version of in in in in earlier presentations, shows that we are advantaged as it comes to looking at decommissioning provisions. We have, on a relative basis, expressed as dollars per two p barrel, we have one of the lowest amounts of decommissioning provisions on our the North Sea peers at less than $2 a barrel as compared to an average for our for the peer group that we focus on of nearly $8. That, in addition to the fact that we actually spend quite a lot a little amount of cash on decommissioning, means that we're in a in an advantaged position. And the fact that we spend less money on decommissioning is especially advantageous today because the windfall tax, the EPL, does not allow you to deduct decommissioning costs when you're against your tax bill.

22:27 Turning to the cash generation. This chart shows a a cash waterfall, a cash bridge from our gross cash position at the end of twenty twenty two of four hundred and thirty three million pounds through to the £291,000,000 at the end of twenty twenty three. What we've done here is we've positioned this around a central point of the cash flow from operations less tax. The reason for that is that the items to the left of that are essentially the the what the business itself generates and, of course, the tax that we have to pay. But what we've done with tax is we've split it between the current year, which is effectively the amount attributable to 2023. And although on a cash basis, paid 279,000,000, we've put the remaining 96 just to the right of the 628,000,000 bar. So on a cash flow from operations after current tax basis, we generated £200,000,000 worth of cash flow from operations after tax.

23:27 We then focused from our capital allocation decisions on the bars to the right of that, in particular, the turquoise colored bars on this. So we spent that money on CapEx associated with the investment program during 2023, on the cash component of the tailwind acquisition, on some pay down of our debt, and on dividends. And those are the choices that we as a management team and a board have to make and and and on which we'll communicate, obviously, on a go forward basis. We've also included a slide here around our hedging. This sets out a couple of things. First of all, it shows you that the legacy hedges that we had associated with the the previous tailwind RBL are rolling off. Those are the the bars that you see in q one and q two twenty four on the oil side.

24:23 Those were hedges in the kind of 60 to $68 a barrel range. Those are rolling off, and we have replaced the hedging with a program that you see set out on this page in both oil and gas at rates that are considerably more attractive. And we've designed our hedging to be a combination of swaps and collars, which allows us to protect the downside but keep exposure to the upside. And you can see on this page on the oil, it's been in the order of a $70 a barrel floor price, but with upside all the way to a $100,110 dollars a barrel. And on gas, protecting the downside at around high seventies to 80p a therm with exposure up to the 120p a therm type range. Moving to dividends, obviously, very important in terms of the returns that we're gonna that we pay to our to our investors.

25:18 As as Dave's already indicated, we're proposing today a 14p a a share final dividend for 2023. And this chart just shows that over the course of the the period since we've been paying dividends in 2020, we have paid over £200,000,000 worth of dividends. And if you put that into context, that is equivalent to roughly 25% of our market capitalization today. So it's a very considerable amount of shareholder return over that time period. We haven't shown on this chart the the buyback. The buyback is that we initiated today is actually a component of 2024 returns, so hence why it's not shown on this chart. Moving to tax. I've mentioned it already in terms of the effective tax rate, but I think this is a helpful way of think of looking at that. So what we've shown is what our tax rate our effective tax rate was for 2021, '22, and '23, all using the same methodology, which is current tax as a proportion of EBITDAX.

26:21 But we've shown it on in the that in the dark blue bars, but in the light blue line, we've shown what the effective marginal tax rate was for the oil and gas industry in that year. So in 2021,

26:33 when we were in the old regime pre windfall tax, 40% was the rate. Then during 2022, that is actually a blended number because the EPL windfall tax came in partway through the year on the May 26. And then this year, we're in the 75% regime. But what's important is to see the gap between the effective tax rate and that marginal rate. And the explanation for that gap is a combination of the tailwind tax losses combined with the capital reliefs that we get on our investment programme, and that's what explains the difference between our effective tax and the marginal tax rate. I know there's been good disclosure in the past about the tax losses that we acquired with Tailwind, and we've put disclosure as to what the balances of those losses were at the end of twenty twenty three.

27:23 But to put those into value terms, they we have we we've retained value for £395,000,000 as of the year end 2023 in relation to the the carry forward tax loss position,

27:36 and that's equivalent to the $470,000,000 that was disclosed at the time of the Tailwind acquisition. So we've used some, but we've got plenty more to go as regards to those tax losses. And for 2024, we'll have the full contribution of Tailwind for a full twelve months as well as higher oil prices, so expect to see more benefit from those losses coming through.

27:58 Finally, I just wanted to say a few words about our overall framework for capital allocation. This is something that we're obviously very focused on in terms of how do we allocate your money, our shareholders' money. This starts from the foundation of the the safe and reliable operations of the production of hydrocarbons because without that, we don't have the cash flow against which to make capital allocation decisions. So that's the foundational component, and it's obviously the fundamental aspect of what the company does. Then we have choices to make, and what we wanted to give to communicate here is the kind of philosophy and priorities that that we as a board will be thinking about. First of all, that is to meet what we're required to meet in terms of finance costs for any of our any debt that we might have at the moment. Obviously, that's very modest because we're in a net cash position.

28:51 Then to investment in our own assets, and Dave's gone through what we're doing this year, which obviously is a very busy period of investment. Then we will move to thinking about disciplined m and a, and I stress the word disciplined. We'll be very focused on making sure that whatever we do delivers value to shareholders and to the continuing payment of dividends. And then to the extent we have excess capital, we'll also look at buybacks. And today, we initiated an a a buyback, an inaugural buyback to start

29:23 some of that that component of shareholder distributions. And if we had taken on debt, for instance, for an acquisition, which so far, you know, we have not, also look to delever to get back to and make sure that we at all times maintain prudent credit metrics. So with that, I'm gonna hand back to Dave for some final remarks, and then, obviously, we'll be happy to take questions later. Thank you very much, Martin. Just some final comments regarding the external environment and our response to it going forwards. And I think these pictures are striking. If you can get your eyes in, on the left, we have Brent oil prices going back to $20.10, and on the right, we have gas prices going back to $20.10.

30:12 What you can see is that the big dips in Brent the last big dip in Brent was the pandemic, 2020, 2021. In gas, there was a dip in the same time period during the pandemic. During those low low oil prices and low gas prices, SERICA actually had the courage to continue to invest. Thank goodness, because, actually, that was what allowed us to produce in better times. Unfortunately, times got too good for a while, particularly in gas, and that's what this windfall noise is all about. But I think you'll agree the windfall has absolutely been and gone. You can see the blue zones show the sort of historic norms, you like, and we're well inside the blue in both oil and in gas. So this windfall's been and gone. And in fact, those prices aren't inflated. So, you know, if you'd actually taken inflation into account, you'd argue we're even further out of any windfall regime.

31:07 So we should conclude that oil and gas are really at historic norms, and yet the tax burden in The UK has increased three times in the last two years, and there's yet another increase proposed by Labour should they come into power along with a threat to take away a substantial portion of capital allowances. This tax burden, together with the fiscal uncertainty and the instability in The UK, means it's increasingly difficult for us to make investment decisions in the longer term. We've still got some attractive short cycle investments in our portfolio. We've been we're doing a lot right now, and they will benefit from the current tax allowances. I know there's some questions on that.

31:51 And there are probably still some valuable acquisitions to be made in The UK when the time is right, but that time isn't now. I think what we need to do right now is wait and see what happens a bit and look to grow our business outside of The UK. And so that's what we've been doing, and it takes time. We've been, looking at the broader North Sea for quite some time. We've been actively screening opportunities across the whole region. The work continues. We've probably got the deepest, strongest, most capable team,

32:26 management team, and at the board level too when it comes to m and a. However, that doesn't mean that we're gonna rush about doing things. We're always gonna be disciplined. We're mindful of creating value for you, our shareholders, and we make no apologies that these things take time. It takes time to find the right transaction. It may well be that the right transaction comes out of The UK, we have to wait for the right moment and weather some storms in the meantime. However, we're looking hard at Norway and other parts of the the wider region. But I want to focus a bit on Norway because it stands out. If you look at the light blue bars on the left, you can see Norway final investment decisions doing a bit of a hockey stick up. There have been more and more of them recently. The UK in dark blue does the opposite.

33:14 This reflects the difference in the support that the government and society give towards oil and gas in those countries. Norway is a high tax area, but it's often confused, in in in minds because it's not just about high tax. What we have there is a government that's very supportive of the industry. So the reason that the, final investment decisions go up in Norway towards the end of that period is during the pandemic, the Norwegian government recognized that the supply chain in the industry was fragile and needed support. And what they did was they accelerated investment allowances, and they, made them happen faster, and that encouraged final investment decisions. It also also encourages exploration drilling, and that and the area is sort of ten years younger, really, than The UK North Sea and has been managed in a much more staged and piece piecemeal kind of way.

34:10 So whilst Labour talk about a Norwegian tax regime for The UK, it's certainly nothing like what they have been talking about. You know, the Norwegian tax regime is a framework that recognizes that to have a vibrant industry that is investing, if you have high taxes, you need to offer attractive investment allowances and capital relief to allow for the growth that's necessary. I'm talking a lot about Norway. Don't take it as a a a conclusion that we will do a deal there. These things take time. We are learning about Norway, and we are looking at lots of things in Norway. And it's an exciting place to look, but we will continue to look at The UK because, as I say, now is not the time to panic. Now is the time to recognize we're a really strong company, and we can take our time, and and we can look for the right opportunities as they arise.

35:09 My final slide really talks to about our our company and our purpose, and we're unashamedly a a producer of hydrocarbons. And I say unashamedly because we believe that the world still needs them, and they can be produced safely and efficiently and as cleanly as possible, but they're hydrocarbons. We're good at it. We're a safe and experienced operator. We've grown our production and our reserves in a very unusual way for an old basin like the North Sea. We keep replacing

35:39 them. Most people only replace about 4%. We're over a 100% every year, year on year. We've got a strong balance sheet with plenty of firepower for m and a. Got a good track record of m and a. Erskine was a great deal. Bruce Keith Rum was a great deal. I think many of you, I hope, are starting to realize that the Tailwind deal was a good deal in many,

35:59 many ways. And with all of that, we can continue to provide significant returns to our shareholders, and that's what we we intend to do. I think with that, we're gonna look at your questions, and there have been plenty coming in. We will endeavor to answer as many of these as we can. And perhaps just to take there were one or two that came in before the call today. One was about at the Capital Markets Day, we were told the company was looking to expand its horizons, but the chief chief investment officer has left. So, you know, what progress have you made? And and perhaps just to say that, yep, Steve Edwards did a great job for us. He helped us focus.

36:45 He helped us get things moving. He's helped us shape a team. We've brought some more people in since then, but these things take time. We've screened a lot of deals. We continue to look at everything pretty much. So we're making progress. We're understanding it all, but we're not gonna move too fast.

37:03 Another question that came in is one that comes up quite a lot, actually, and it's of some people own Kistos and SERICA ENERGY would like to see us together. I would say that, you know, we look at all all possibilities in The UK and outside. Clearly, Kistos approached us about a possible deal back in 2022 when the gas prices were very high.

37:31 It was a deal that involved a lot of debt and taking the cash out of SERICA and would have made us a gas company. We're quite glad that we're not a gas company in terms of only gas today. We've seen the gas prices fall from 6p a firm to 60 something pence a firm, and we've seen the market capitalization of both companies come down a bit since then. And, actually, that combination doesn't look as good as perhaps it would have looked at at that moment in time even if we had liked the debt, which we didn't. I think today, a combination of those companies you know, Kistos is a much smaller company than us now, and perhaps we want to look for something that will move the dial a bit more. But, nevertheless, I would never rule anything out.

38:17 We're looking at everything. I'm gonna get Martin in to answer a question.

38:23 Perhaps, Martin, why don't we pick up a question about share buybacks and dividends costing us quite a lot considering we have debts of over 200,000,000?

38:35 Do you think that paying such a generous dividend is wise? Thank you. I mean, yeah, that's a look. It's a very good question, and it's obviously one of the things that we as a board will always focus on. But I think one of the strengths of SERICA is that, actually, relative to any of our peers, although we have although we have, you know, gross debt of around 200, we are net cash of around £80,000,000. So we don't you know, effectively, we don't have any debt, and that is a that is a significant strength relative to our peers. And what it means is that we're able to withstand different, environments

39:09 more robustly than some of our peers. And we believe that continuing to pay a healthy return to our shareholders is sensible and wise. We have, though, given you a bit of a framework as to how we're gonna think about capital allocation on a go forward basis. We haven't, in any way, said that we're changing our dividend policy, but we have started a buyback today as you will have seen. And we will communicate further on how we think about capital allocation in the in the near term. As you'll know, there's quite a lot of changes going on in terms of personnel and also a lot of activity in terms of considering m and a, etcetera. So we will come back to you and and and and give further communication as to how we think about that in more detail later in the year.

39:54 Thanks, Martin. And a couple of more couple more questions. Maybe I'll have a go at these. I how are you factoring in the labor stance on energy profits, Levy? We think about it a lot. We thought very, very hard about taking a final investment decision on Belinda. It was a difficult decision. We'd committed to that rig into the third quarter last year, and we felt it was the right decision as part of the package. The reason we worry about it a bit is in that five well program, it's the activity that hangs out more in labor space, if I call it like that. We think hard. And looking further ahead, we will think very hard about investments in The UK if labor do what they're threatening to do.

40:40 And I think on the back of answering that two two other ones, is is spending on Buchan contemplated in the guidance for the year? No. Not really. Nothing significant. There's a little bit, I think, but nothing of significance. When would you expect to write the first check? Isn't the FPSO expected to be purchased soon? It's not being purchased by us, and the first check won't come really until after final investment decision, first check of any significance, and that isn't expected until the back end of the year or certainly later this year. And we we and the JV will have to take stock of the environment at that point in time to decide what to do. Can we make it clear which part of 2024 projected CapEx is deductible on the 91% capital allowance of the EPL? I think pretty much everything we showed you is.

41:30 Martin, would you like to just Yes. I mean, the the well, I mean, mean, that's the sort of simple answer. The the the the complex answer as as regards to taxes, it's always complicated because there are some things that are and some things that aren't eligible. But, essentially, we are confident that the spend that we will implement during 2024 will be eligible for capital allowances. And, clearly, that's one of the reason why a company like ours that was capable of coming up with, you know, projects in a relatively short cycle projects and relatively quickly has been able to take advantage of the capital release that are available to us. And I think there was a separate question about, you know, how do we how do we think about that in the context of what labor party might do. I think that's one of the beauties of this company, which is we're able to and have proven our ability to be able to make decisions, in a smart way and to pivot, as appropriate.

42:26 So, you know, our board is absolutely acutely conscious of that. But what we can say is that and and and as Dave said, the investments that we're making in the, in in the four well program, but also the Belinda field, are very strong returns, and we we showed numbers on that in the investor slide. And, Martin, while you're while you're on the speaker, previous communications stated a progressive dividend. Is this still the plan? I mean, I think maybe to talk to your capital allocation framework. And I think I think I again, I'll sort of refer back to what I said before. We'll communicate more on that. I I but but, essentially, what we think is, and we will always focus on, is the affordability of of shareholder distributions relative to our cash flow from operations after tax, and hence, that's the reason why we focused on that measure. But in terms of more specificity on that, we'll communicate more on that later in the year.

43:14 There've been a couple of questions, that came through on the Tailwind deal itself. Why did the company double down on the UKCS with the Tailwind acquisition in full knowledge of the EPL and tax regime? Why not consider more favorable fiscal regimes? And I think the answer to that is we actually we did the Tailwind acquisition in full knowledge of the EPL and the tax regime, and we factored it into the valuation and the economics. And Tailwind actually mitigated commodity price risk, single asset pipeline risk. It brought new things to do and some relatively taxed advantaged barrels with it. So that's our answer. And someone asked me to score it on one to 10. I won't do that, but I I would say that I I I think it's a good deal. I'm glad we did it.

44:04 It's made us a stronger company. No doubt about that, and I think we've been far weaker if we hadn't done it. I think, then to another question, where do you see SERICA in three to five years' time? I imagine that we will be a a bigger and stronger company continuing to provide good returns to shareholders. We will probably have diversified to one or two more hubs and or countries, and we'll be doing, I hope, more of the same. What we're good at is squeezing value out of assets that are in their sort of mid to late life, and we've shown that. It's highly unusual to replace reserves year on year from older assets. That's what we do. That's what the team does really well in SERICA.

44:51 What we wanna continue to do. And if you think about places like Norway and beyond, you know, we would be looking for, in the longer term, those sorts of opportunities in those places too to apply what we're good at in those places. There's a question about whether we'd go further afield than the wider North Sea region. We're staying focused on looking in close to home right now because we like to be focused, but we always keep a BDI open to see what's out there, so we'll keep an eye open. And one of the benefits of Mercuria, and I will mention them because they often come up in questions too, is that they have a global footprint, and they bring us ideas. And that's okay. It's okay for shareholders to bring us ideas, and they will continue to do so because they've got a good finger on the pulse in lots of places where we don't, and we'll think about those things when they come.

45:43 Martin, do you wanna add anything on those or pick up another question? I was gonna I was I was actually just scouting through some of the other things that are out here. So, I mean, there's there's a there's obviously a very good range of of questions here. One of them says, are you concerned that the Iran Israel conflict may lead to sanctions on rum? I think the short answer is that is no. As you as you know, the the arrangements that we have in place were were done because sanctions were imposed on on on Iran. And so we we don't think that that's an issue because, in fact, the the the arrangements that we have in place were put in place precisely to deal with that. Yeah. I was I'm there was I'm just looking through now. It says, can the can the can the EPL be legally challenged as the oil and gas prices have Unfortunately, we'd like to think that that was the case, but I think not because governments are sovereign and can pass taxation legislation, and they have done. So, no, I think is the short answer to that. Here's one. Mitch Mitch is an excellent CEO, and he'll be sorely missed. What was the reason for his departure?

46:46 Told you we wouldn't duck anything. Mitch has been a fantastic and well trusted CEO and colleague. He's leaving simply because he and the board unanimously agreed that it's time to freshen up the team, that, you know, we're moving to the next stage. We think we may be moving to something that's bigger, moving to something that's got its foot in more than one country, and it's time to start that stage of the journey, SERICA three point o, if you like. SERICA one point o was a an exploration company in places like Indonesia and Namibia. Maybe we wish we'd stayed in Namibia. Someone asked me that earlier today. SERICA two point o has been a company that moved back to the North Sea and focused on production and has done really well doing that. And SERICA three point o is going to be bigger, more diversified, and probably beyond The UK, ultimately.

47:35 And that's what we need to start building now. Yeah. There's a question here about the buyback in terms of when will it start. Well, the the the the answer to that is as per the announcement today, it, in fact, started today. So we have we have done that. And as is normal practice, we will be disclosing as and when we have bought back shares. We will make we will make disclosures. So those of you that follow the RNSS, you'll you'll you'll see quite a lot of them. In terms of the pace at which we will we will exercise that, we're not gonna put the specifics of that out there as you can appreciate. Obviously, we don't want to be being absolutely specific about exactly how we'll do that, but we're gonna do it in a way that's consistent with the regulations, in particular, the MAR regulations, which which obviously impose what we can and can't do in that respect. But we will communicate after shares have been purchased as is the requirements.

48:26 There's Martin, there's a question. Can you give more information about what oil and gas prices you require in order to maintain the current dividend? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a good question. And, of course, it's a you know, it's fundamental to the whole issue of capital allocation. I think, you know, the reality is that, you know, this company started paying dividends after coming off the back of really quite low oil prices back in 2020. Right? But But I think it slightly goes to the point about our perspective on shareholder distributions as a whole is going to be linked to the cash flow from operations after tax measure, and that itself will be impacted by commodity prices. So I'm gonna slightly duck the question. It's gonna be part of the mix. And clearly so I can't give you an absolute hard answer in terms of at what price, you know, there clearly clearly is theoretically, there is a price at which we would would that would be a challenge, but we're very far away from that today.

49:21 I've got another one of those tough questions. How many credible candidates are there on the potential CEO list, and are you one of them? So I I would say I was always a backstop, and we've had quite a few credible candidates. We're quite advanced in the search, and we hope that we will be able to get to a place where we can announce what where we're going with all of that by the time we get to the AGM at the end of July at the end of June, twenty seventh of June. So we should know before then where we are in the CEO succession process. I've got one here on on, on m and a. Could you give more detail regarding sorry. Sorry. Wrong one. When is it likely the North Sea acquisition will be announced? Would it be surprising if nothing had happened in 2024? And I think on that one, you know, Dave sort of already mentioned it, but I'll reiterate the point that, actually, we're we're gonna be unashamedly, you know, we we understand, and we've we've signaled for a long while that we're focusing on m and a, and and we are.

50:19 There's a lot of work going on. We're looking at a lot of different things. But, actually, part of our job is to recognize when to say no and to make sure that when we do announce something, it's the right deal. So I can't put a I can't put a deadline on that because it we don't want to have a deadline. We don't want to have a gun to our head in that respect. Right? We're gonna make sure that we do the right deal for shareholders, for the company, for all stakeholders involved in this company. So I'm afraid we're we're gonna stay disciplined in that respect. And, you know, hopefully, when we when we do have something that we that we think is the right thing, we'll obviously put it out to and announce it and put it out to shareholders. Another another question about succession. Having recognized the contribution that Mitch made to the growth of the company and the successes that he brought, why did the board let him go when there was no identified successor?

51:09 And this was a this is a difficult one. I've been asked this quite a lot. But but the reality is that when you go out to find a CEO, you have to do so very publicly, and it can take a while. Right? Some people are on nine months or more of garden leave before they can come and work for you. Right? So you may be looking at a period of six to twelve months from even beginning that whole search, and you can't do it secretly, right, because it's a small pond and everybody knows what's going on. So you have to be public. We didn't think it was right or fair on anybody to have a long period of uncertainty and not be moving forward. And I think we had an experience, we've had experience where, you know, things can fall through in in a search for an and and then you have to start again.

51:59 So the mitigation against that long period of time and uncertainty was that I was gonna be part of the team regardless and so would step in and help Martin through this period, and then we will get a new CEO, somebody else or myself, by the end of it. I hope that answers the question. Do you wanna pick up another one, Martin? Well, there's another one here, which maybe is for you, Dave. It says, is the board concerned that Mercuria now control 25 to 28 of the enlarged equity? Well, Mercuria still control around 25%. Mercuria, a very supportive shareholder. We have two terrific directors on the board. Right? And they they know when to wear this the Mercuria hat and say, actually, actually, we need to tell you what we think the shareholder would think about x, y, or zed. Right? And shareholders are allowed to tell us what they think. So, occasionally, they'll do that when we ask them.

52:56 But they're actually very good contributors to the board in their own right. Rob Lawson was the head of m and a in BP. He's got tremendous contacts around the world, of m and a and brings a lot of, astute business thinking when it comes to deals. Guillaume has been, from the very beginning, the CFO at Mercuria. He sits as an observer on the audit committee. He asks really good questions. He brings very good insights, and he's quite entrepreneurial, as you would imagine, for somebody that's helped build a company nothing to many, many billions, which is what it is today. So those two directors know that they're directors of SERICA ENERGY are really good, but they're, of of course, connected to to Mercuria. Mercuria, strategically, is a good partner. Right? That, as I said earlier, they're all over the world so they can see what's going on. They've got a tremendously strong balance sheet, which could provide us with support in certain situations.

53:51 Obviously, it would be related party transaction if we did a transaction with them, whether it was a hedging transaction, whether it was a sort of junior debt transaction, but they're very, very supportive. And and even having them known to be supportive of a deal, for example, if we were gonna go and do one as a shareholder, I think, would give a lot of confidence to a seller. So all of those reasons are why I think it's good to have them involved. And, yes, they've got significant influence as they should have as a 25 shareholder, certainly no more than the other 75% who have their 75% of influence. What else? Confidence of maintaining dividends, if we answered that, I I I I I think think we we probably have.

54:40 Can you say anything that we need to pick up, Martin? I'm scanning here now. Yeah. I mean, I don't There's are there any other companies in Europe or The US that are directly comparable to SERICA? If there is direct comp, what kind of multiple does it trade at? It's a challenging one. I mean, obviously, you know, the comp search mean, obviously, the ones we tend to focus on are The UK are are our UKCS peers, which is really Ithaca, Enquest, Harbour, etcetera. But, of course, some of those are changing now quite quite quite significantly. Right? With the transaction I think has just announced today, the one that Harbor announced around Christmas time. So, I mean, that's kind of what we tend to to focus on. And, of course, in terms of multiples, the main metric that people tend to focus on is is is NAV. And and and so I'm not sure there's a a straightforward and easy multiple that one can refer to.

55:32 But I think I think we're probably getting towards the end of the I think we're running out of time. And what we will endeavor to do, as Mitch always did do, was do his best to answer all the questions. We'll provide answers to them. We've got through most, but probably not absolutely all. It's a it's a big list, and some of them are duplicative, so it's quite hard to weed out the ones that are different sometimes. But I hope you don't feel too shortchanged. And with that, I'm gonna hand back to, to Jake. David, Martin here. Time, everyone. David, Martin, that's great. And thank you very much for your presentation and for answering all of those questions that you can from investors. And, of course, given the significant attendance on today's call, we will give you back all of the questions that were submitted today just for you to review to then add any additional responses, of course, where it's appropriate to do so. And we'll publish all those responses out on the platform. But, David, perhaps before really just looking to redirect those on the call to provide you with their feedback, which I know is particularly important to yourself and the company, I could please just ask you for a few closing comments to wrap up with, that'd be great.

56:35 I think the the closing comments are that we're about the kind of company we are. Right? We want to build on the successes of the past. We don't wanna panic, and we wanna continue to provide a return for our shareholders. That's what we're gonna do. And I hope if you're not a shareholder, you'll join us. And if you are one, you'll stay with us. It's gonna be a good journey. David, that's great. And thank you once again for updating investors this afternoon. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order that the management team can really better understand your views and expectations? This will only take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of SERICA ENERGY PLC, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation.

57:21 That now concludes today's session. So good afternoon to you all.