Serica Energy (LSE:SQZ) — Trading and operations update

0:00 Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the SERICA ENERGY PLC Trading and Operations Update. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted at any time. Just using the Q and A tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen, please simply type in your questions and press Given the significant attendance on today's call, all your questions may not be answered. However, the company can review your questions submitted today and we'll publish those responses on the SME company platform. Before we begin, we'd like to submit the following poll, and I'm sure the company would be most grateful for your participation. I'd now like to hand over to CEO, Chris Cox. Good morning.

0:33 Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to our Trading and Operations update. I'm joined by Martin Copeland, our CFO and Andrew Benbow, our Group Investor Relations Manager. Thank you to those of you who have submitted questions ahead of the call. We already have quite a few, but do please continue posting any that you have during the presentation. Should we not get time this morning, then please contact Andrew directly. We are happy to respond to each and every question. Martin and I will now run through a short presentation and then answer as many questions as we can in the time available.

1:18 So who are we? We are SERICA ENERGY. So hopefully you're all on the right call. We're a significant producer in The UK North Sea producing roughly 5% of The UK's domestic gas production. And the criticality of that has been highlighted in recent weeks by how tight we are on gas supply in The UK. Of course, we're also an oil producer with roughly a fiftyfifty mix of oil and gas in our portfolio. And we think this is important as it means that we're not overly exposed to the price fluctuations of a single commodity. Our existing operations support material cash generation helped by the fact that we have historic tax losses which give us at least partial shelter from the inappropriately high tax rate.

2:10 This cash generation provides optionality in our capital spend, and we are currently investing to increase our production to offset natural decline in the portfolio. We are halfway through a very successful drilling campaign at Triton, but with the production and cash flow enhancement still to come as we faced operational challenges towards the end of twenty twenty four, which prevented us from seeing the true potential of these new wells. We have a fantastic subsurface team who are now turning their attention to the Bruce Hub following the success in the Triton area. It is already clear that Bruce, Keith and Rum have plenty of potential reservoir targets.

2:57 But there is more work to do to high grade these opportunities and understand which ones will achieve the required economic returns. I look forward to updating the market on this later in the year. In addition, we have some prospective developments in our portfolio, such as Buck And Horse redevelopment, Mansall and the Finn Bewley license, which we picked up through the recent acquisition of Parkmead E and P. Of course, we are always focused on running our operations safely and efficiently, and we have a particular need to improve the consistency and predictability of our production performance. More on that to come.

3:42 Alongside investment in new wells, our cash generation also supports material shareholder returns. We have returned over £200,000,000 to shareholders through dividends, and we carried out an opportunistic share buyback in 2024. In addition, our balance sheet strength helps support our continued focus on value additive M and A, where we continue to evaluate a range of opportunities across the North Sea and overseas.

4:18 But of course, there's no cash generation without production. And in this regard, there's no hiding from the fact that 2024 was a disappointing year. The first half of the year was reasonable apart from a couple of outages at Triton in January and May,

4:36 but the second half was a different story. While the reduced production in July and August was somewhat expected due to annual maintenance shutdowns, after that, we never recovered and got back to the strong production rates we had seen in the first half of the year. Triton suffered from multiple extended outages during the year, primarily caused by seal failures on the gas export compressor. The Triton annual maintenance shutdown also took three weeks longer to complete than planned. Bruce also disappointed in the fourth quarter with a number of issues late in the year caused by oil export pump failures and problems with the subsea systems at RUM.

5:26 We also have some well rate restrictions due to facilities constraints on Bruce, and we'll be looking to address these with our 2025 activity program. The good news is that the issues we experienced in 2024 on both key assets have largely been fixed, and we are confident that we understand the root causes of the failures. We still have more to do to optimize production, but we are confident 2025 will be a better year than 2024 because we have taken care of some of the key vulnerabilities. We also have some tremendous new production wells to come on stream. More on that later. And now I'll pass to Martin to talk about the financial performance.

6:13 Thanks, Chris. Unsurprisingly, the production shortfall in q four meant revenue was lower in the year than expected. Since our operating costs, which were in line with budget, are largely fixed, and we were investing extensively in the portfolio through the year, but this flowed through to what ends up being an essentially neutral free cash flow position. When we also factor in the 133,000,000 that we paid out in shareholder distributions as well as loan repayments during the year, our cash balance reduced by almost $200,000,000 through the year, and we finished the year with $71,000,000 net debt. This year end number includes about $12,000,000 of underlift, given we had no Triton liftings in November and December.

6:59 So that would have made an adjusted net debt of just under $60,000,000. Our year end net debt to EBITDAX ratio is expected to be around 0.2 times, which puts us at the absolute low end of all of our North Sea peers. And this is prior to any of the benefit of the cash flow from the new wells drilled in 2024, which has been deferred into 2025 as a result of our q four operational issues.

7:26 To put the impact of the deferred production, and it is important to remember that it is deferred, not lost, into perspective. Absent the unplanned outages in q four alone, but with other assumptions in line with what actually happened, we calculate that we would have fully offset our year end $70,000,000 net debt position and instead would have been modestly net cash at year end. However, because we always retained the confidence in the underlying cash generative capacity of our assets, we did not alter our capital allocation priorities in 2024. We maintained our tax efficient investment in our assets, in particular, on the Triton drilling program, with the October 30 budget's retention of first year allowances helping to support the post tax returns of this investment activity, whilst at the same time continuing to reward shareholders with distributions totaling a $133,000,000 centered on a material dividend and supplemented in 2024 for the first time by a modest buyback.

8:27 So while we are temporarily in a net debt position, we expect that to reverse relatively quickly, and we retained a robust liquidity position of $442,000,000 at year end after factoring in our December redetermination of our RBL, where availability was again capped by the $525,000,000 facility size. Finally, a brief word on tax in 2024. While we'll only be in a position to give more details on this with our full year results on the April 1, our cash tax paid in 2024 of just over a $150,000,000 was less than half of the equivalent 2023 number. And we estimate our effective tax rate to have been around 40%.

9:13 This low effective tax rate and reduced level compared to 2023 despite having the same 75% EPL rate and 78% from the November 1 reflects a combination of the effects of lower production as well as benefiting from a full year of the Triton loss shelter and the capital investment allowances from our investment program.

9:36 And back to Chris. Thanks, Martin. As I mentioned earlier, we expect 2025 to be better than 2024. We're setting our guidance at around 40,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day average across the whole of the year. And of course, factoring in both known maintenance periods and what we believe to be a balanced assumptions on operating efficiency and uptime across our assets. The 2025 production guidance is almost 20% higher than we achieved in 2024 and is in line with what we achieved in 2023. Looking at the production graph on the right here, 2023 is a somewhat typical year for a North Sea producer with quarters one, two and four above the annual average.

10:31 And the third quarter is generally where planned maintenance work is carried out and average production is considerably lower. 2024 followed a similar pattern until we got to Q4 when we had substantial outages at both Triton and Bruce due to the reasons I mentioned earlier. As you will have seen, our portfolio is capable of producing at spot rates of over 50,000 barrels a day. But our guidance then factors in both the impact of natural decline in our portfolio as well as both planned maintenance periods and the inevitability of some unplanned interruptions. As a rough guide, our existing wells on average decline at about 15% per year.

11:22 So if we assume our total well capacity today is 50,000 barrels a day, we can expect to lose seven and a half thousand barrels a day over a year unless we add production from new wells. And new wells can be expected to decline at a much higher rate in their first year of production. We see our guidance as realistic, but there is the potential for upside. For instance, we have fairly conservative production estimates for our new Wells B 6 and GE 05 as well as EV 02, which is currently being drilled. In fact, we have seen that the first two of these wells have tested at rates higher than their pre drill estimates.

12:09 But we need to see a longer run of stable production as well as seeing how they perform when flowing alongside the other wells in the Triton system before we would be prepared to raise our forecast. The latest well, GE 05, has exceeded our highest expectations. As we have disclosed for the first time today, this well tested at 9,000 barrels of oil per day with no water and has been brought into stable production at a rate over 6,000 barrels a day. And it is worth remembering that SERICA owns 100% of this production. As a result of this well and B6, we start 2025 with the highest well capacity in our history.

13:00 Our guidance also factors in asset uptime of around 80% outside of our annual maintenance programs. 80% is well above what we actually achieved last year, but broadly in line with the historic average. This is a tough figure on which to guide as inevitably, there is an element of factoring in things that are not planned and may or may not happen. But we expect better performance this year than last. As I said upfront, ensuring that these unscheduled events are reduced to as few as possible is a key focus this year while, of course, ensuring the safety of our offshore workers at all times. We are investing in our Bruce platform on a range of projects designed to improve resilience, and we are on schedule to have the second compressor in place at Triton by March.

14:00 This will help as we add new wells into the system, as well as providing built in redundancy, which would have prevented a lot of the problems we experienced last year. So we view our guidance as balanced with the potential for upside both from improving uptime as well as from the sustained impact of new wells being brought on during the year. Martin. Thanks. And it's drilling and associated spend to bring on those new wells that forms the majority. In fact, roughly 70% of our guidance of 220 to $250,000,000 of pretax CapEx spend in 2025. As we've disclosed, the combined prowess of our subsurface and wells teams is delivering fantastic technical results, but the spend is also tax efficient.

14:52 Thanks to first year allowances being retained in the autumn budget and factoring in our latest post drill expectations of production profiles as well as the tax offset effects, we see b six and GE o five reaching payback by the middle of this year and delivering IRRs of well over a 100%.

15:14 Because of the budget was not as bad as we had feared, we have also taken the opportunity to bring forward a number of smaller projects amounting in aggregate to around $50,000,000 pretax, designed to enhance resilience at both Bruce and Triton. Finally, we are also implementing a flare gas recovery pros project on Bruce. This is a $10,000,000 project. But since it reduces the extent of our flaring and hence our c o two emissions, it qualifies for the decarbonization allowance, which means that we benefit from a 109% capital relief against our tax. We actually also benefit from selling a bit more gas as well as from reduced emissions. So this is an example of a genuine win win investment.

16:01 Turning to our pre FID assets, we are only incurring limited spend for our proportion of the potential Buck and Horse development pre sanctioned costs. Moving this project forward, which could create over a thousand well paid jobs in The UK and would be very low emissions intensity barrels, will require a regulatory regime to be in place as well as confidence in the long term economics and stability of the tax regime for SERICA and our partners to commit to its development. There are three linked government consultations which have either kicked off or will do so imminently. We hope that these consultations will give the industry the clarity we need by the spring on the revised system for granting development approvals, the licensing regime, and the long term tax regime.

16:49 We firmly believe that since The UK will still need hydrocarbons for decades to come under all decarbonization scenarios, it is better for the economy, for communities, and indeed for the environment for those hydrocarbons to be produced as much as possible in The UK. Until we have the clarity on the regulatory and long term fiscal backdrop, we will not be making material investment in developing Buck and Horst nor in advancing our Kyle or Skarivore assets. In the meantime, we continue to invest in those areas that can deliver most value for investors, increasing our resilience and increasing production through infill drilling under existing licenses and consents.

17:32 This slide sets out the timeline of our continued investment program in 2025. We've just brought the GEO five well onto production, as already mentioned. The next well, Guillemot, has now also completed drilling with similarly promising data as we saw from the Bitten and Gannett wells that were drilled last year.

17:54 While we only have 10% interest in this well, it is further evidence that economic opportunities can still be found around these mature fields. The drilling rig has now moved to the Evelynn field and drilling of the EVO2 well began last week. Once the Evelyn well is concluded, we will move on to drilling on Belinda starting from Q2. As you can see, the expected time to tie back production from Belinda is longer than the other wells. This is because unlike the other wells in the program, Belinda is a new field development and requires substantial subsea infrastructure to be installed. Belinda is therefore forecast to begin production at the start of 2026.

18:44 Beyond the investments in our committed program, there are a number of other early stage opportunities that are being matured across the portfolio. These include establishing whether there is merit later in the year for a campaign of workovers on Bruce wells using a light well intervention vessel as well as potential value enhancing opportunities to accelerate production at both Bruce and Rum by re wheeling compressors to obtain better late life reservoir drainage.

19:17 In addition, as we have mentioned previously, our subsurface team are now looking at opportunities at Bruce, Keith And Rum. We look forward to sharing more on the range of opportunities later in the year. Finally, we have been advancing our subsurface understanding and development concepts for the Kyle Field redevelopment that we acquired in the thirty third license round last year.

19:42 While we were initially uncertain whether there was an economic development opportunity at Kyle, our early work is much more encouraging, and the team is excited about the prospect of Kyle becoming the next tieback opportunity for the Triton hub.

20:02 And picking up on the impact of the Triton well program, it's worth reminding investors that the barrels produced there benefit from the tax loss balances we have in the entities in which we hold these assets. This means that these Triton barrels are very valuable barrels to SERICA. In addition to the CT and SCT tax loss shelter, we also benefit from substantial EPL relief, thanks to our capital investment program.

20:29 We retain significant tax losses, estimated at still around $1,000,000,000 in total at year end, with more details to be included once we announce our results. We will also top up our tax losses with the approximately $250,000,000 of of losses that come with the acquisition of Park Meade E and P that we announced just before Christmas and expect to complete in a few months' time.

20:54 In addition to the tax attributes, the other reason why Triton barrels produced in 2025 are so valuable to us is that we have now finally rolled off the legacy hedges at Triton. These legacy hedges, which were economically equivalent to a swap and are in fact included under swaps in the slide on our hedge book that's in the appendix of of the presentation we're releasing today, were struck several years back and priced in the low sixties dollar per barrel.

21:23 They covered a fixed volume of Triton production. And if Triton had produced as expected, would have been fully exhausted during 2024, but were not as a result of the reduced q four production.

21:36 However, with our first Triton lifting, which took place last week, we have now fulfilled the contract. This means that not only do we expect to see increased production this year from Triton, but we will also benefit from better realized pricing for oil, including for the roughly 40% of our oil, which is hedged largely through collars with Brent ceiling prices averaging $96 a barrel in q one and the high and the high eighties for the remainder of the year.

22:06 We are, of course, also benefiting from the currently attractive gas prices with NBP averaging a 120p per therm in January so far, materially above both our budgeted level and the equivalent prices in q one twenty twenty four.

22:22 To give a feel for the relative exposure of our free cash flow to commodity prices, we estimate that relative to our budget price levels of $75 a barrel for oil and an annual average of 82.5p a therm for gas, Each $1 a barrel movement for oil delivers roughly $2,000,000 of additional free cash flow, and each 1p a therm movement in the gas price delivers around $1,000,000. Although, of course, $1 and 1p are different calibration metrics, because the baseline of our budget price decks are very similar nominal numbers for oil as for gas, the percentage increment to the market price for either $1 or 1p, respectively, is in fact broadly similar.

23:09 Therefore, the fact that the movement in free cash flow for oil is two times that for gas is largely reflective of the differential tax position of our gas producing assets, which pay full 78 percent tax as compared to our oil production, which benefits from a very low tax effective rate.

23:29 All in all, this translates to a material expected increase in revenues. And with OpEx flat year on year and slightly lower CapEx, it all adds up to what is expected to be year on year of significant free cash flow generation. This outlook, in turn, supports our intention to retain our track record of material shareholder returns, something on which we will give more clarity once we declare a final dividend alongside our full year results.

24:02 This final slide summarizes our overall approach to creating shareholder value. Our top priority is the safe and reliable operation of our assets while being best in class when it comes to ESG. To do this, we need to provide more consistent operational performance, and we have a number of initiatives underway to help achieve this.

24:25 As you have heard, we are high grading the investment opportunities in our existing portfolio, and the best of these, the ones which have the potential to add significant shareholder value, will ultimately end up in our business plan.

24:41 Beyond our existing assets, we will continue to look for value accretive M and A opportunities both in The UK and overseas. Clearly, we will only pursue opportunities which which we think add intrinsic value, but diversification of the portfolio also creates value through more predictable performance of a more diversified asset base.

25:06 We are currently heavily dependent on two production hubs, and the experience of 2024 demonstrates why this is not ideal. While the Parkmeat deal was not huge, it showed how we can add value through smart deal making, something you can expect to see more of.

25:27 So we continue to focus on robust performance of our base business, value growth through both organic and inorganic investments and solid returns to our shareholders. And we're excited about what we can achieve in the year ahead.

25:45 That concludes our presentation, and we're happy now to take questions. I will hand over to Andrew who will run through the m and a the q and a. Sorry. Thanks. I'm really in charge of m and a. I think that's a little bit more worried. I'll leave Martin to that. Well, we've had a lot of questions come in. And just to reiterate what Chris said at the beginning, we're very happy to answer any questions investors have at any time. So if we don't get on to your question today, then please just drop me a line. We can I'll reply via email, or or we can have a call. So so just

26:15 let me know. Right. Without further ado then, relating to Triton issues and their ongoing nature in 2024, how can we as investors trust your production guidance for 2025?

26:29 It's a very good point. We and we've we've tried to be really balanced in our assumptions for 2025 production. And we've we've shared more than we normally would. So you can see the assumptions that we've made around operational efficiency. We've been very clear on that. We've said how many days we expect for maintenance outages in the third quarter. So you you can unpick all of that and decide for yourself if you think those are reasonable assumptions. I think the the the the tone of

27:01 the question sounds like it's it's quite focused on the experience with Triton in 2024, and and I can understand that. We had a number of outages due to that gas compressor. A lot of them were very similar issues with these dry gas seals failing.

27:23 And normally and and these happen all the time, by the way. These compressors, it's a it's a common thing that that dry gas seals fail. Normally, happens is you strip the machine down, you change the seal, you start it up again, and it runs. And what we found during 2024 was repeated failures of a number of different seals on the same machine. And, you know, it it it was a poor year. We can't get away from that. But credit to Dana, they did I I and one of the reasons we were down so long in q four was they were doing a lot of diagnostic work to try and figure out what the root cause was of those failures, and and we think we've figured that out. And the without going into too much detail, these seals, they're called dry gas seals for a reason. They don't like any liquids.

28:18 And if any liquid comes into contact with them, the you know, these things are really, really susceptible to failure when liquid gets into the system. And we and we didn't know where the liquid was coming from, and they they did a a lot of work to figure that out. Finally, we've switched the operating modes so that the seals are using lower pressure gas to maintain the seal. We think the high pressure gas that was being used before was creating problems when you drop the pressure, liquid drops out, and and that was what was causing the problem. So we're operating in a different regime now. So far, good since they started up. I'm not gonna tell you that we've solved all of the issues, and I would anticipate we'll still have some outages in 2025.

29:11 But I think assuming 80% operating efficiency outside of the maintenance period is reasonable. It's what we did in 2023. It's it's probably about the North Sea average for assets like this.

29:29 So I I think it's a sensible set of assumptions. The other thing I'd say is, and I and I hinted at this in the in the presentation, we've got some fairly conservative assumptions for our new wells, and you've heard that they're producing really, really well at the moment. The the reason for being conservative is,

29:49 first of all, they could start producing water quite quickly, and and so we need to we need to make allowance for that. And the second thing is we haven't yet established how those new wells perform when we've got all the other wells in the in the in Triton flowing as well. So they'll they'll inevitably be some back out, and you won't get the full incremental of those wells added to the Triton production. So until we see that,

30:19 you know, we need we we probably it's probably prudent to be conservative. So we we've tried to be balanced and give a fair estimate of what we think is actually going to happen this year. I I completely understand the question, though, that 2024 was was poor, and and we need to do better. We think we've solved some of the vulnerabilities going forward, however.

30:45 Thank you very much, Chris. Moving on to tax. So, Martin, there been numerous questions on tax, so I'll try and summarize them and bring them Why don't you open? So the first one is, will the full current year corporation tax liability be paid this year, or are there any carryforward losses available to be offset? Yeah. So, look, I as I mentioned, we we'll we'll get the full details on tax once we've got our audited accounts out, and we intend to publish those on the April 1. But I put I gave in my in my talk a headline. We've still got about a billion dollars of CT losses available. So those effectively that was around the same number we disclosed at the time of the interim. So what's happened is we've we've used some, but we've also created some more because we've been continuing to spend during during the year. So we've ended up with about a billion dollars of losses at year end, and then we're also gonna get about an additional $250,000,000 when we complete the part median p deal.

31:42 So we have a reasonable amount of loss shelter, which is available to offset corporation tax and SCT in relation basically to our oil production, to our Triton oil production. So, yeah, we've got a we will expect to see this year to get a a reasonable degree of shelter from that. And, also, we're continuing to invest this year, as you'll have seen, roughly similar numbers to the numbers we invested last year. So as I indicated in my in my comments earlier, we recognize we we reckon we'll have about an effective tax rate for 2024 of around 40%. We are we've got the same amount of tax shelter. We're doing roughly the same amount of CapEx investment in 2025. So it would be perhaps reasonable to assume that it might not be dissimilar in 2025 as well. So we're we're we're making very efficient investments. And as I said, that also helps boost the returns, which means we get, you know, very, very fast payback.

32:38 So b six and g e o five will have achieved payback by the middle of the year, which is remarkably quick. And you mentioned the Partmean tax losses. Are those things that can be fully offset against earnings from Triton and Bruce? Yeah. So well, so first of all, the way that losses work is that they're they're are held within individual companies. And so if when we acquire Park Mead, they'll be in the entity Park Meade and P. And so for us to actually utilize those losses, we will need to do some corporate reorganization in order to benefit from those losses. But we will you know, under our projections, our Triton assets will use up the losses over the next several years. Of course, the production from will carry on well beyond the period of time when we have existing losses. So what the losses will do at the very least is give us the ability to continue to get benefit from lost shelter for a longer period of time. And that's the value creation that we see, the the simple way of of achieving value.

33:40 Obviously, we've also deepened our position in the license and taken on Finbuhle. And indeed, we might do further m and a, which could make us put us in a position to use those losses even more quickly. But that's kind of our base case is essentially that we would extend the the period of loss utilization for the Triton production, and that in itself would create a lot of value. Thanks very much. Moving on to m and a, and I'll read out the start of this question verbatim because I like it. SERICA excels in the North Sea in establishing value. Can you not just keep at what you're good at and buy unloved assets and develop them to maximize value? And I'll give you a bit of context. I've been on various other questions have come in. One of those mentioned Norway. Do we have serious intentions for an international presence, or will the main strategy be to buy up UK assets, leave the others to concentrate on friendlier jurisdictions?

34:30 And then the other question is, would you consider m and a in Asia? So effectively, and a discussed, I think, is the question. Shall shall I start? And and, Martin, feel free to to jump in. So I I mentioned that we're looking at a number of things both in The UK and internationally, and that that's no secret. We've said that before. When I arrived in the summer, I think it's fair to say there was there was quite a strong focus on Norway. And we looked at a number of things in Norway, and I I I think my conclusion from that is we we like the we like the regime in Norway. And and we think we understand Norway, and a number of us have worked Norwegian assets in the past. But Norwegian m and a is always very competitive, and you you pay full value for the assets.

35:28 And there hasn't there haven't been many deals done in Norway over the last year or so. And my assessment of that is sellers have unrealistic expectation, and buyers are making sensible bids, and deals are not getting done. So I I think it's fair to say that we've we've shifted our focus back to The UK somewhat, and and people might find that a a little bit odd given where we are with the tax regime and uncertainty over the future. My view is it can't get much worse in The UK, and so we might be at the bottom of a cycle.

36:18 I quite like being countercyclic. And I think there's there's lots of companies that either want to exit The UK or reduce their exposure to The UK, and we could be in a good position to to take advantage of that. Of of course, we know the basin well. We you know, between the management team here, we've worked on most of the assets in The UK at some point in our careers, so we we know the asset basis quite well. So we think we're in a good position. And and, of course, there would be synergies if we buy more UK assets. So so we're quite actively looking. People know that we're looking. People know that we've got a strong balance sheet. People know that we want to grow, and hence, anything that is on the market in The UK, we get to hear about it.

37:10 So I know people get frustrated, and they say, oh, this asset sold, and why didn't SERICA buy it, and why are you not buying this thing? Trust me. We look at absolutely everything. And if we've not bought something, it's because either we didn't like it because, technically, we looked at it and said it's not for us, Thought somebody paid too much for it. So so trust me. We are looking at absolutely everything that comes to the market in The UK, and we are very keen to grow, and we are still looking at a number of things right now. There was something about overseas as well. And and, yes, we are looking overseas. And, yes, Asia is one area that we'd we'd quite like to grow.

37:56 I think you should probably expect to see us grow a bit more in The UK before we go overseas. But, of course, we're if an opportunity comes along, we're not going to turn it down. Martin, anything to Yeah. No. No. That's right. I mean, obviously, completely aligned with that. But the the one thing I would just type of comment is we did do a pretty thorough kind of screening of where in the world would we like to go. And and we obviously wanted to try and find the kind of Goldilocks places, if I like, places where, you know, where it was either where there was the right balance, if you like, of of political risk. And it's a strange thing to say considering The UK has probably had the highest political risk of anywhere in the in the world in in in some places in some ways. But, you know, we wanted places where at least we know if we if we buy into it, we know that we actually have title. We have ownership of the assets. So we needed places that kind of fit the bill on that on that front.

38:51 Ideally, we wanted to look at places, and we would always want to look at places where we're not getting out of the frying pan into the fire when it comes to the attitude of people locally to hydrocarbons. Right? So we know, obviously, in The UK, we've had some challenges on that, although there may be changes. You know, that there may be some signs that that's beginning to shift a little bit in terms of sentiment in The UK. But, obviously, we we are aware that that is not just peculiar to The UK. There are certain other jurisdictions where that's also the case, so we'd probably want to try and avoid those. And then finally, we wanna find places where we can sort of repeat the model that SERICA has been good at. So buying assets from majors when they're in their mid to late life and ideally being an operator and and squeezing more value out of them and finding in particular, like, we've been proving very successfully here that we can unlock subsurface potential in them. So, you know, it's a it it when we try and find all those things together, it it does narrow the world down quite a lot. Right? So that's kind of how we're thinking.

39:51 I I think the inevitable next place to go when talking about m and a in the North Sea is questions on the UK government. So on the previous presentation, you said you were lobbying the government on a daily basis. With the budget out of the way, do you still have the same level of lobbying going on? I understand there's a review on the industry going forward for spring this year. Do you have any input into that? Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Of course. I'll I'll let Martin comment because he's he's quite heavily involved and very vocal about such things. But I I think it's fair to say that our our dialogue across the board did not stop with the budget. We continue to talk to government. We talk to opposition as well. We talk to unions. We talk to industry bodies.

40:37 And and what we're you know, our aim is a sensible regime to replace EPL. And and so that that's it it was really important prior to the budget to make sure that we retained the capital allowances. And I thought that, you know, that that worked very well with the industry, spoke with one voice, and, obviously, we were part of that. Now we need to look at the longer term future of the North Sea and what replaces EPL, and and we're equally involved there. Martin? Yeah. I mean, people people may realize that I'm I'm quite keen to help the government achieve a course correction, which I think is, you know, warranted and and, in fact, required. And and, you know, I'm I'm hopeful that that some of that will will begin to to occur.

41:31 The one thing I would say is that there are three consultations going on right now. One of them is on the long term tax regime, and the other two are can seem a bit sort of esoteric. One of them is on how exactly do we complete environmental impact assessments for new developments, and then there's one on licensing. But those latter two are equally as important, and it it's something that therefore, we think that it's as important that we continue to interface at all different levels with government and with other politicians and more generally because decisions that could get taken will get taken this year are just as important as what happened last year to the future of the North Sea.

42:16 And in particular, in some ways, if we if we don't get the right regime for allowing the new developments to occur, then the decision that the government took in in in the budget, and I think took very sensibly to retain first year allowances, that decision will be in vain because if they don't give us the ability, you know, from a regulatory perspective to actually take decisions on new developments, then there's no point in having the first year allowances in in in in in in the first place. So, you know, we are we're spending our time making it very, very clear that there's a wrong interplay between that regulatory piece and the fiscal piece. So those those involve different different departments within government, obviously, but they're very joined up. And and, clearly, the issues are very joined up. So we're we're very keen to continue to help encourage the government to come up with a sensible set of policies, and we hope that that will happen during the course of the year.

43:13 And I think these things are probably inevitably interlinked, but we've also had questions on and whether or not we expect to reach FID on that this year. Is the tax environment in The UK North Sea stable enough now to allow such a decision? So sorry. You broke up there. Was that Bakken? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we're we're not ready to take a decision on Bakken yet. We we really need clarity on the fiscal regime, what what's gonna happen long term. I mean, all very well saying we know what's gonna what the regime is now out till 2030. But if we were to develop Bakken, most of the production would be after that. So we need to know what that regime is. We need to know the environment in terms of getting getting license approvals for a development like that.

44:05 And then there's the the whole issue of the Finch ruling and what do we do about scope for emissions and and how's that going to be handled. So as Martin said, there's there's three consultations going on more or less in parallel. We need all of those to be concluded before we take a decision on something the scale of Bucken. You know, it's it's all very well. You know, Martin mentioned a couple of times that our the the wells that we drill on our existing assets, they they pay out in a number of months. And and so those those kind of opportunities make perfect sense today, and we'll carry on looking at those. Longer term things where you're making huge spend over multiple years and then most of the production is beyond 2030 is is a different a different thing altogether.

45:01 And is the same, therefore, true of Kyle? And how material could that be in terms of production addition? Well, again, Kyle might be a a quicker return than something like Bucket. It's somewhere in between because Kyle would be a tieback to Triton. So it it would look a bit more like Belinda, which we're doing this year. So it it it kinda comes in between those two. So I'm not I'm not gonna rule out taking a decision on on Kyle in the short term. So, yeah, it's it's it's it's slightly different. And and as I mentioned in the presentation, we're quite excited about it. It's it's it's maybe 10,000,000 barrels.

45:46 It might just be a single well redevelopment. Kyle was producing from a single well over 4,000 barrels a day at the time it was abandoned, and it got abandoned because the infrastructure went away. So it's it's actually quite an easy development to plan. You might go back in and drill another well that looks like the well that was there already, maybe a more efficient completion, and and you know you're gonna get a decent producer out of it. So we just gotta go through the the economics of that and what sort sort of facilities we need to tie it in. So that's that's something that might well happen before a a decision. And it's worth saying, though, that it would still need a a field development plan. Right?

46:35 So it still needs the consents in in place. And, you know, sometimes governments and sometimes the media kind of always thinks about these big mega projects. But there's actually a lot of things like Kyle out there. Right? Or and Belinda is is a good example. It was that. And in fact, it's a a, you know, a kind of maybe a dubious honor, but we have the honor of actually having the last field development actually to have got a consent from government because Belinda was that. It was approved by the last under the last administration just before the general election, and nothing has been approved since. So we certainly hope that that honor of being the last one to have been approved, we will lose that crown, we hope, this year. But at the moment, we're the last FTP to have been approved at all. Moving focus a bit onto shareholder returns.

47:23 You you speak of supporting a track record of material dividend and share buybacks. Should we expect the dividend level to be the minimum in 2025? We also have the exact opposite question of should we expect it to should we expect it to be a max Why not increase share buybacks and reduce dividend payments? So I think, Matt, it'd be good to get your thoughts on shareholder returns and the best we can do. Well, look. I mean, we we said in the in the in the, you know, in the prepared remarks and we and then indeed in our r and s that, you know, we're we're confident that we're gonna generate a good amount of cash flow this year, and that should help us retain our our our our policies and approach towards shareholder distributions. But what what I can't do sitting here on the January 21 is say exactly what the levels of that is gonna be. I mean, we we haven't clearly closed our our books properly, haven't audited them yet, haven't had the board meetings. And so, you know, we we we don't do that. We we do that in conjunction with our results, and we'll follow the same approach this year. So in terms of the the split between dividends and buybacks, I think we feel like dividends will always be the kind of core mainstay of our distribution policy.

48:33 Buybacks will always be a question that it always comes up. Right? And it and it particularly comes up when, you know, particularly last year where we had some very, very tough periods where the the stock was coming under quite a lot of pressure. And we'll always want to look at buybacks in the context of where we think we are relative to fundamental value. The time at which it will make sense for us to do buybacks is when we think we're substantially below our our fundamental value. And and, you know, companies always think they're substantially below their fundamental value, but we'll always be judging that, I guess, and thinking about how we put buybacks into the mix and also recognizing that we want to have a culture where we think about share count. Right? We think that we don't just wanna allow the share count to keep creeping up. Right? So we always wanna recognize that we keep the share count at a level that that is sensible. So I'm not ruling out buybacks. I'm not ruling them in, but I think you you know, we've delivered some messages hopefully today about our confidence in continuing the same track records that we've shown in in in previous years.

49:37 Another question coming in. Is listing on the main markets done the to achieve list for 2025? Yeah. And we we put that in the r and s as well that we are continuing the work on that. And in fact, we've we did quite a lot during q four in terms of all of the prep work needed to to put ourselves in the position to do that. The reality of the is that you can't actually move to the main board until yeah. It has to be within nine months of your last audited account. So, clearly, you know, that means that we need to get our accounts for 2024 audited, clearly, which is going on and and which we will release to the market on the April 1. So, therefore, the earliest time we could actually move to the main market is gonna be sometime in q two or q three, anyway between anywhere up to the end of September.

50:27 So it's very much on the to do list for 2025, but we'll give further clarity about and precision around that just a little bit later in the year. Thank you, Martin. We've had a couple of questions on hedging, which I think instead of answering on this call, I urge people slightly hitting at the end of the presentation. But on the website, we've actually detailed our hedges for the next couple of years. I think that answers it better than than we would always. Maybe, Andrew, I just I mean, I did say it in my prepared remarks, but I do wanna just reemphasize the point about the the legacy hedges having rolled off. Right? The the hedges on Triton, which were in the low sixties now finished. That's quite meaningful. Right? And it's particularly meaningful given, you know, our oil production from Triton is essentially near enough tax free. So when you have tax free and you're getting a higher realized price, that makes quite a big difference.

51:18 Moving back on, I think we'll have one last question on the government, and then we'll have a may maybe one more before we run out of time. You have mentioned a desire for a sensible regime to replace the EPL. From your perspective, is there any realistic chance of a revision of the EPL before its currently scheduled end date in 2030? Well, I I think there is a there is a chance of that, and we've said this to government as well. What we'd like to do is negotiate a tax regime to replace EPL. And if we have something sensible, which is progressive, which, in other words, is a sensible base rate but goes to a higher rate if we have high commodity prices, if we can agree something like that, our argument would be, well, why would you wait until 2030 to implement that?

52:10 It wouldn't make any sense to to hold off. So we're we're quietly hopeful that we might end up with a different tax regime earlier than 2030. But, Martin, do you wanna add anything? Absolutely. But the only thing I would add is one of the other pieces that we're trying to we will certainly be responding to and and and and saying in the consultation is that we do think that they should separate the way they think about gas from oil because, you know, clearly, we produce both. Right? But the but the dynamics that drive the price are clearly very different between the two commodities. So, you know, at the moment, we do have still it's worth worth worth being aware, and this is one of the reasons actually why government wants to get on with the consultation.

52:55 We do have the so called ESIM, which is actually, in theory, a floor price that would allow the EPL to fall away if oil prices and gas prices fall below benchmark levels. But the problem with that is that the way they've designed it is it has to be both oil and gas that fall below the threshold levels for it to be achieved, and it has to be an average over six months. So in practical terms, it's probably unlikely to occur. But what we would hope is that they would design the kind of mirror arrangement, which would be in a new successor tax regime in a better way, which doesn't require that joint achievement of oil and gas for it to occur, you know, and and separates the the way in which those are treated. Thank you, Arthur. Alright. Just to reiterate, we've had plenty of great questions come in. We're not gonna get a chance to get on to all of them today. Hopefully, myself and Martin might see some people at the shares investor event this evening. If not, we're on the road plenty of times this year. We're happy to meet any institutions who are out there. Also, any investors wanna get in touch with us, then please just email me directly.

54:00 You'll find my details on the website. I'm very happy to arrange a call. So we'll take this as the last question, which is a question for Chris, which is, Chris, with you now firmly settled into your role as CEO, having gotten to know the company much better, has your view on the company changed in any way? Where do you see SERICA going in the next year or so? What's your personal ambition for the company? Possibly a forty two fifty listing as a target. There's there's a lot in there. I'm just trying to write all those things down. So so first of all, a part of it was, has my has my view changed since I came in? I think the the the only change is my view of the subsurface. So I as an outsider looking in, it's difficult to know whether you have investment opportunities in the existing portfolio and what the quality of those are.

54:54 And I have to say, I've been really pleasantly surprised by the opportunities we have. And and you've seen some of that with the wells that we've drilled already around Triton. And and I have to say, I'm very excited about Evelyn and Belinda because having looked at the subsurface for those wells, I think they're gonna be as as good as the ones we've already drilled. So that's that's fantastic. We've we've spoken a bit about Kyle, which might be the next thing down the road after Belinda around the Triton area. So that's fantastic. The the other bit that surprised me is Bruce, Keith, and Rum. Those assets I mean, they've been producing for a long, long time. No wells have been drilled for a long, long time there. And you you might imagine that they're done, and you just produce the wells that you have. Well, you know, our subsurface team has been looking at that for several months now and find lots of subsurface opportunity around those fields. And we're not quite ready to share the detail of that yet, but it's really exciting. There's there's lots of potential for really good wells around those fields. So that's that if the that's that's the bit that surprised me is it's so much life left in these mature assets.

56:16 There was something in there about ambition and a FTSE two fifty listing. I I mean, frankly, I don't think that's ambitious enough. Yes. We ought to be on the main board. And if we were there today, we would be in the in the two fifty with the market cap we have today. My My ambition's a bit bigger than that. I I think we we ought to be looking at being the biggest producer in The UK, and and there's no reason why we shouldn't do that. You know, there's there's lots of companies that are looking to exit, and I'd like to help them do that. And so so I think, you know, we we should be a lot more ambitious.

57:04 Yes. We've got growth potential in our existing assets, and that's the sexy stuff, and I really enjoy that. And I and I think we've got lots of that to come. Getting our hands on somebody else's assets and doing the same with those, I think, is also really interesting. Of course, we we have to earn the right to do that, and we haven't done it yet, frankly. And so we need to fix what we have first, which is you know, I I said when the last time we we had one of these sessions that going from poor operational performance to good performance is, in my experience, it's kind of a two year journey. I I mean, I've I've I've had this experience a few times in my life. You don't fix these things overnight.

57:51 I have said 2025 is gonna be better than 2024. We've already fixed a few things. We're still not great, and and we need to get to be great. And I and I think that's a that's our our first priority. It's not sexy. It's not exciting, but delivering reliable, predictable production safely from our existing assets is job Adding production to those existing assets through the drill bit is number two, and then you earn the right to go out and do m and a and grow the business. But, yeah, I I I'd like to see us in a few years' time being North Sea giant rather than So, Chris, I can't resist it on on the day just after the inauguration.

58:46 You know, I think that's a strategy to say make SERICA great again. Right? I'm gonna get some some baseball caps made. Yeah. It's very good. Well, I'm gonna move on quickly from that. And just so Chris, if that's the end of the q and a, so if you just have any final comments, then you can hand back to the operator. No. I'd look. I I think I I said it in answer to that final question. Our performance in 2024 wasn't good enough, but I I think we know why. And I think we fixed some of those issues, particularly around the compressor on Triton and oil export pumps on Bruce. They caused us lots of problems, and we've made some changes. That's not to say that it's that it's gone, and it's gonna be perfect straight away. But this is an incremental thing. You kinda fix the things that you find, and then and then you move on to the next issue. So so look. I'm I'm I'm confident 2025 is going to be a better year.

59:45 And we we have this, you know, the upside from these new wells, which, again, I'll I'll reiterate. We've got some fairly conservative assumptions for those in our production outlook for the year, and and we still got to come. So, hopefully, exciting times ahead. Great. Chris, Martin, Andrew, thank you very much indeed for updating investors this morning. Company is asking investors not to close this session as we'll now automatically redirect you so you can provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This may take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure it be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of SERICA ENERGY PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation. I wish you all a very good rest of your day.

1:00:32 Thank you.