Valeura Energy Q1 & AGM 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Valeura said it delivered another strong year of growth, with market value rising to just over $1 billion from about $600 million a year earlier, alongside a cash balance of more than $250 million at the end of Q1.
  • Positive Sentiment: The company highlighted continued reserve growth, saying it achieved nearly 200% reserve replacement and now has about 58 million barrels of reserves, implying an almost eight-year reserve life.
  • Positive Sentiment: Valeura said its major Wassana redevelopment project is on schedule and on budget, and management now expects it could come in under budget and possibly even early.
  • Positive Sentiment: The company emphasized a strong operational outlook, with production and operating expenses tracking within guidance and higher oil prices boosting revenue and cash flow potential going into the rest of the year.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Management said the G1/G3 farm-in with PTTEP is awaiting government approval after delays tied to Thailand’s election, while Turkey testing is still being set up and has yet to generate new data.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Valeura Energy Q1 & AGM 2026
00:00 / 00:00

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Robin Martin
Robin Martin
SVP Communications and Investor Relations at Valeura Energy

Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining us for Valeura's 2026, I almost said 2025, 2026 AGM. My name is Robin Martin, SVP Communications and Investor Relations. Just a few housekeeping items before we get going. No fire drills scheduled for today, if we hear an alarm, it's the real deal. If we need to evacuate, that'll be through the back of the room, up the stairs, out the front door, we'll follow the instructions from the Petroleum Club thereafter. Today's event is being broadcast and recorded; we'll make that available online later today or tomorrow. Running order for the day. In a moment, I'm gonna hand over to Dr. Tim Marchant, our chairman, who will take us through the formal AGM. Thereafter, Tim will hand over to you, Dr. Sean Guest, our CEO, to do a business update.

Robin Martin
Robin Martin
SVP Communications and Investor Relations at Valeura Energy

At the end, we'll take a Q&A session. We can do that live with those of you in the room, and for those who are listening online, you can either type your questions through email or type them through the MS Team system. With that, over to you, Tim.

Tim Marchant
Tim Marchant
Chairman at Valeura Energy

4 o'clock on the dot. Hey. I appreciate the support. Good afternoon, everybody. It is 4 o'clock. I will ask that this meeting come to order. My name is Tim Marchant, and I'm the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Valeura Energy. I will act as the chair for today's meeting. On behalf of Valeura, I'd like to welcome you all to today's meeting, and I'd also like to welcome the shareholders and others listening on our live audio broadcast. Before we proceed with the formal business of the meeting, I'd like to introduce the directors and the management of Valeura who are present today, and I would ask that each stand momentarily if I remember to call their names. Our first, our directors. Tim Chapman. There. Round of applause. Anna Green. Anna. Russell Hiscock. Lina Lee.

Tim Marchant
Tim Marchant
Chairman at Valeura Energy

Sean Guest, also our CEO, as you well know. From the management team, we have Yacine Ben-Meriem, our CFO. We have Grzegorz Kulawski, our member this year, our COO. Kelvin Tang, our EVP Corporate General Counsel and Corporate Secretary. Robin James Martin, who's already introduced himself to you, and James Boyd, who's our Chief Information Officer. Get your names. Also, we're also joined today by our outgoing director, Jim McFarland, and our founding CEO, and our new director nominee, Joseph Tomkiewicz. You can get to know Joe after the formal proceedings.

Tim Marchant
Tim Marchant
Chairman at Valeura Energy

Before proceeding with the business of the meeting, I would like to inform the attendees of the meeting that the board decided to extend the cutoff for proxies in respect to this meeting by an additional 24 hours from the original deadline, and all proxies received prior to 4:00 P.M., May the 13th, or yesterday, have been accepted. For this meeting, Kelvin Tang will act as the secretary, and I appoint the representatives of Computershare Trust Company of Canada to act as the scrutineers. Thank you. The notice of this, calling this meeting, the form of proxy and the mailing request form to, were sent to all those that requested printed copies of the information circular. These were mailed to all registered shareholders on April 17th, 2026.

Tim Marchant
Tim Marchant
Chairman at Valeura Energy

The declaration of mailing is available for inspection by any shareholder, and I would ask the secretary to file a copy with the minutes. I've been advised by the scrutineers that the quorum has been met for this meeting. The scrutineers report is available for inspection by any shareholder, and I would ask that the secretary file a copy of this also with the minutes. With that said, I declare the meeting is regularly called and properly constituted for the transaction of business. As Robin said earlier, for convenience, we've divided this meeting into two parts. The first part will deal with the formal business of the meeting and is the most exciting. The second part will consist of a presentation by Sean Guest, our President and CEO, on the operations of Valeura and will be followed, as Robin said, by questions from registered shareholders and proxy holders.

Tim Marchant
Tim Marchant
Chairman at Valeura Energy

To facilitate the timely completion of the formal business, arrangements have been made with certain shareholders to move and second the resolutions to be considered. Votes will be conducted by way of ballot. If you are a registered shareholder and have not received or submitted a form of proxy, or you're a proxy holder and you've not received a ballot, please identify yourself to the scrutineers and a ballot will be provided for you. Thank you. The first item of business is the presentation of the 2025 audited financial statements of Valeura and the auditors report therein. The financial statements are available on SEDAR+ and have been sent to those shareholders who have requested copies. The next item of business is the appointment of the auditors. May I please have a motion for such business?

Robin Martin
Robin Martin
SVP Communications and Investor Relations at Valeura Energy

Should have been.

Kelvin Tang
Kelvin Tang
EVP Corporate and General Counsel at Valeura Energy

Mr. Chair, I move that Deloitte & Touche LLP Singapore be appointed as auditor of Valeura Energy to hold office until the close of the next annual meeting or until their successor appointed at such remuneration as might be determined by the board.

Tim Marchant
Tim Marchant
Chairman at Valeura Energy

Is there a seconder?

Robin Martin
Robin Martin
SVP Communications and Investor Relations at Valeura Energy

Mr. Chair, I second the motion.

Tim Marchant
Tim Marchant
Chairman at Valeura Energy

Any discussion? As previously stated, the approval of the auditors of the corporation will be voted by way of ballot. If you have not received a ballot, please identify yourself to the scrutineers. I'm advised by the scrutineers that the motion has been carried by the necessary majority. Accordingly, I declare the motion carried. The next item of business is the election of the directors. Valeura has nominated eight directors for election and did not receive any nominations from shareholders in accordance with our bylaws. Accordingly, I will now receive the corporation's director nominations.

Robin Martin
Robin Martin
SVP Communications and Investor Relations at Valeura Energy

Mr. Chair, I nominate the following for election as directors of Valeura: William Sean Guest, Timothy R. Marchant, Russell J. Hiscock, Timothy N. Chapman, Lina Lee, Anna Green, Chalermchai Mahagitsiri, and Joseph A. Tomkiewicz.

Tim Marchant
Tim Marchant
Chairman at Valeura Energy

May I now have a motion, for this business?

Kelvin Tang
Kelvin Tang
EVP Corporate and General Counsel at Valeura Energy

Mr. Chair, I move that the corporation's directors nominee be elected as directors of Valeura to hold office until the close of the next annual meeting or until their successors are elected or appointed.

Tim Marchant
Tim Marchant
Chairman at Valeura Energy

Is there a seconder?

Stuart Jeffery
Shareholder at GEL Direct Trust

Mr. Chair, I second the motion.

Tim Marchant
Tim Marchant
Chairman at Valeura Energy

In accordance with Valeura's majority voting policy, the directors will be elected individually by way of ballot. For a nominee to be elected as a director, he or she must receive a majority of the votes cast in favor of his or her election. If you have not received a ballot, please identify yourself to the scrutineers. I am advised by the scrutineers that each director nominee has received greater than 50% of the votes cast in favor of his or her election, as required by our majority voting policy. Accordingly, I declare the motion carried and that each nominee has been elected a director. The next item of business is the approval of all unallocated options under the stock option plan of Valeura. May I please have a motion for such business?

Kelvin Tang
Kelvin Tang
EVP Corporate and General Counsel at Valeura Energy

Mr. Chair, I move that the resolution on page 13 of the annual information circular be approved.

Tim Marchant
Tim Marchant
Chairman at Valeura Energy

Is there a seconder?

Robin Martin
Robin Martin
SVP Communications and Investor Relations at Valeura Energy

Mr. Chair, I second the motion.

Tim Marchant
Tim Marchant
Chairman at Valeura Energy

Any discussion? As stated previously, the approval of all unallocated options under the stock option plan of the corporation will be voted on by way of ballot. If you have not received a ballot, please identify yourself to the scrutineers. I am advised by the scrutineers that the motion has been carried by the necessary majority. Accordingly, I declare the motion carried. The next item of business is the approval of all unallocated performance share units and re-restricted share units under the performance and restricted share unit plan of Valeura. May I please have a motion?

Kelvin Tang
Kelvin Tang
EVP Corporate and General Counsel at Valeura Energy

Mr. Chair, I move that resolution on page 14 and 15 of the information circulars be approved.

Tim Marchant
Tim Marchant
Chairman at Valeura Energy

Is there a seconder?

Robin Martin
Robin Martin
SVP Communications and Investor Relations at Valeura Energy

Mr. Chair, I second the motion.

Tim Marchant
Tim Marchant
Chairman at Valeura Energy

Any discussion? As stated previously, the approval of all unallocated performance share units and restricted share units under the performance and restricted share unit plan of the corporation will be voted on by way of ballot. If you've not received a ballot, please identify yourself to the scrutineers. I'm advised by the scrutineers that the motion has been carried by the necessary majority. Accordingly, I declare the motion carried. That now concludes the formal business of the meeting. I declare the formal part of the meeting terminated and thank you all for attending. Now that the formalities have been completed, Sean Guest, our President and CEO, will give an update on Valeura's operations.

Tim Marchant
Tim Marchant
Chairman at Valeura Energy

If you have any questions at the end of the presentation, for those of you who are in the room, we ask that you raise your hand, wait to be acknowledged and be handed a microphone, and then begin your question by identifying yourself and indicating you, whether you're a registered shareholder or a proxy holder. For those of you listening online, you can submit typed questions through the Q&A feature on Teams or by email. Thank you. Sean, over to you.

Sean Guest
Sean Guest
President and CEO at Valeura Energy

Thank you very much, Timothy R. Marchant. Thank you all for coming here today and being with us. When I look back about a year ago, we were together here in this building and doing our AGM, and at that time, we had just gone through an oil price shock. We'd seen prices drop about over 15%. We were looking at oil in kind of the low 60s at that point in time. Here we are a year later, and actually we're dealing with an oil price shock again, but this way going the other direction. In many ways, it kind of supports our business model because we've designed this company to deliver really good returns at $65 and to also then give everyone really good exposure to the upside that exists. Robin James Martin, if you can jump forward two slides.

Sean Guest
Sean Guest
President and CEO at Valeura Energy

Looking at the last year, just glancing back over at some of the key points, is we're currently just over $1 billion. A year ago, we were just over $600. Part of that is due to the increase in oil price, but actually a lot of that increase we saw, the increase in share price, all occurred prior to the Iran war and the closing of the Strait of Hormuz. Another area we knew we had to focus on at company was reserves when we took over the assets in Mubadala. It was the challenge that shareholders saw. We had yet another year of, in this case, almost 200% reserve replacement, which has taken us up to about 58 million barrels of reserves, and that's approaching just under eight years reserve life index.

Sean Guest
Sean Guest
President and CEO at Valeura Energy

More than double what we had when we took over these assets. The other key point really being as well is that with that high reserve replacement ratio is that we've produced pretty well all of the oil that we bought a few years ago, yet we still have double the reserves. That's what you can get here in Thailand. It's just another year of success in that direction. It was exactly a year ago, we took FID on what was the biggest project the company had ever undertaken, the new central processing platform and redevelopment of the Wassana field. We're now here a year later. That project is on schedule and on budget. In fact, we do expect to come in under budget on that, and we're even seeing if we can deliver that early.

Sean Guest
Sean Guest
President and CEO at Valeura Energy

The project is going extremely well at this point in time. On new business, we farmed in to the G1, G3 blocks with the NOC, PTTEP. When we looked at the map one year ago on the right-hand side, we had tiny little yellow areas that were just our field. Now we're holding some of the biggest acreage positions in the Gulf of Thailand, next to some of the biggest producing assets as well as our assets. That's a very important deal that we've managed to get through, and I'll talk a bit more about that on the end. On the farm-out side, we actually have operations going on in Turkey now.

Sean Guest
Sean Guest
President and CEO at Valeura Energy

Many of you here in this room even have been involved in the company since those days in Turkey, where we've held those assets, managed to protect them, and now we've had a farm and we have some operations ongoing. For us, that's blue sky upside, but if that works over there, that has huge potential. The last point is the oil price. As we said, we have no debt. We are unhedged. You won't see in our Q1 or our Q financials any hedging losses. We are fully exposed to that oil price. It's been an extremely good year. We're very pleased at the growth we've managed to deliver. Next slide, Robin James Martin. Just a couple other points actually on where we're at. The bottom right slide, there are a number of awards we had.

Sean Guest
Sean Guest
President and CEO at Valeura Energy

At the end of last year, we were actually awarded The Globe and Mail, the number one growing company in Canada. That's across all industries, that's based on three years increase in your revenue. The other point is with that increase in share price; we have built up the cash position. Right now, just at the end of Q1, we're just over a quarter billion USD cash in the bank. Okay, next slide. I just want to reiterate again to all shareholders in that what is the strategy of the company? Our strategy is based on growth. We're looking to really use the capital we have, use our assets, our relationships to build the company and return value to people through share price growth.

Sean Guest
Sean Guest
President and CEO at Valeura Energy

That's what we've been able to do in the past three years, and that's what we intend to do going forward. The key pillars of that are really looking at the asset base we have, is looking at that as a foundation of cash flow. We've been able to do that. We can see we're extending the life of these assets. We're getting good cash flow from them, especially in the current environment. Operational excellence. Greg's background, my background, Shell, Woodside, we bring that type of professional approach to the assets. It's very important to us that we run these things as top quality assets, and it's actually bought us a lot in relationships as well.

Sean Guest
Sean Guest
President and CEO at Valeura Energy

The respect that we've got in Thailand by making sometimes a hard decision to shut in a field if we're concerned about the asset, but to correct it and then bring it back online. That's worked very well. The inorganic growth. Of course, we did the G1, G3 deal last year, but we continue to look for more deals in that area. That's why we've actually have the cash position that we currently have, is to be able to do that deal with the cash and debt access and still do deals at very significant scale. Next slide. Just putting in a couple of slides on Q1 where we released the results this morning. Some of these were released earlier, but you can see the revenue for the first quarter was actually quite low.

Sean Guest
Sean Guest
President and CEO at Valeura Energy

What we had was as we sell packages of oil from our tankers, in March, the buyers were able to actually push that just out into April. We had no oil sales in March, which you'll know was of course, the time of high prices. Right now, a lot of that inventory was then sold in the first few days of April, and we've got back now to having very good sales looking in April. If you look at our revenue that we had of $92 million for the first quarter, we had almost the same revenue. We're just over $90 million for April alone. You can start to look at, well, what does that mean from a cash flow point of view? Well, you can quite simply work it out in your head.

Sean Guest
Sean Guest
President and CEO at Valeura Energy

The OpEx we had on April is one-third. The SG&A is approximately a third. The royalties in that stay the same. We have very low tax exposure because of those tax losses we have. You can see where that's gonna leave you on an adjusted free cash flow at the end. The cash flow from operations can be very strong for April. Let's see what's gonna happen in May. We're still getting strong sales. We're seeing strong prices. It's really bringing a boost of cash flow into the company. Next slide. Yeah. Just again, we commented that we have very good cash. Now we are down a bit from where we were at year-end last year. We expected that to be the case.

Sean Guest
Sean Guest
President and CEO at Valeura Energy

Not just that we had the lower revenues in this quarter, but also this was a quarter where we're investing heavily in building the Wassana platform, and in addition, we went out and bought one of the FSOs we had. We knew that this was an investing quarter. If you look at that inventory and the amount of inventory that was sold in the first few days after the end of April, that would add about an extra, I think, after royalties, about another $60 million in cash at end. Okay. Next slide. As we kind of then look forward to the year and how have things performed so far, what are we thinking about in guidance? Production, we are right on where we expect to be. Right. OpEx, we're still within our guidance on OpEx.

Sean Guest
Sean Guest
President and CEO at Valeura Energy

If oil prices stay really high for a lot of the year, well, we would see our OpEx creep up a bit because we use a lot of diesel, and obviously, that's costing more in this environment. Obviously, recognize if oil prices stay high, the revenue side of the equation is extremely high. We feel very well situated in those two areas going forward. Now, CapEx. All of the projects we've talked about, our drilling, the Wassana platform are all running on budget. We are increasing the CapEx because with the higher price net, we've been able to get a very good rig contract, and we're planning to bring that rig in and start it drilling earlier. We expect about two months earlier than planned.

Sean Guest
Sean Guest
President and CEO at Valeura Energy

You've got extra drilling, and as we've talked about as well, we're going to do an expansion on the Nong Yao A facility to allow us to put in four more well slots and then go and drill in those well slots. You can just increase the production from that platform going forward. All in all, guidance looking good for the year. Next slide. The two things I just wanted to talk about from an asset point of view is, one, the Wassana redevelopment, which is going extremely well. Now, as I said, we took this decision about 12 months ago when oil was at $65, and we were looking at this decision as well, how does this project look even running it down to $60 or even lower? The economics on the project are very good.

Sean Guest
Sean Guest
President and CEO at Valeura Energy

Obviously, now as we look at where oil price is and look forward a bit, the economics on this look even better. As I said, I expect we're gonna come in on or even under budget on this. We did announce recently that we just signed a three-year rig contract, which one of the first things it'll do is the drilling on Nong Yao and then on this project. Our timing on that was extremely good. We went out for tender at the end of last year when you were looking at that low oil price environment, the bids that we got coming in were really almost at a level that we saw back in COVID times, therefore, we've locked in the pricing for three years with our full three-year contract. We have the drilling portfolio.

Sean Guest
Sean Guest
President and CEO at Valeura Energy

We have the projects that can underpin that, and the price is low, that it really increases the economics of all our projects. Next slide. We announced last year, too, we did the farm-in with the NOC PTTEP pretty well at ground floor terms across their exploration blocks. We have 40%, they have 60% in the blocks. Now, this is just the one block we're most excited, and we'll come out with more details on this as we progress here. To give you an idea of scale as we sit here in Calgary, the size of this block on the right-hand side over there is pretty well the distance from Calgary to Edmonton, I think in size. What you see on the right-hand side or to the east are some of the biggest gas fields in Thailand.

Sean Guest
Sean Guest
President and CEO at Valeura Energy

The Bongkot field doing about 800 million a day, and we're right up against that. There are discoveries already there. In that central area in green, this has already been converted over to a production area, and we expect to come forward with an FID on two gas platforms this year. Kind of watch this space. That work is maturing and looking very good. The economics on the project are good. The other area for us that's very exciting here is up in the very north. That's our Nong Yao facility. The map in the left side down below shows our Nong Yao field and where the platform is. We already have a whole portfolio of drillable prospects from our platform in this block, and we've identified a suite of exploration opportunities that extend up towards the north.

Sean Guest
Sean Guest
President and CEO at Valeura Energy

We expect we've acquired a lot of new seismic here. It's coming to the workstation. I think in Q1 next year, the plan with PTTEP is we'll go in and drill a couple of oil wells here to allow that whole area to be converted to an oil production area that'll then form tiebacks into our own Nong Yao facility. This is, you know, a very exciting exploration block where exploration is gonna convert to cash flow extremely quickly. Thanks, Robin. In just looking at cash flow, what are we doing with our cash flow, our capital allocation policy? The first one is the reinvestment into our assets, and this we've talked about a lot. We intend to keep the assets we bought originally at about 20,000-25,000 barrels a day. We have the capital to do that.

Sean Guest
Sean Guest
President and CEO at Valeura Energy

You can see our cash flow is fully funding a whole new platform and redevelopment of Wassana. It's also sufficient to do the platforms that are coming from PTTEP. We have the cash flow from this to fully fund those. We are very focused on the M&A. You know, the deal last year was a farm-in. It was fairly small, we do see the big deals out there, and we are actively involved in some processes. I think I pointed out in our last call, oil price volatility is challenging. It'll likely make a few deals go slower, corporate deals, it doesn't slow down at all. Right? You still have that ability to move forward. That's where the growth is coming in. Finally, then returns.

Sean Guest
Sean Guest
President and CEO at Valeura Energy

We have had a share buyback policy in place, but what we have emphasized to people is we're not looking to really reduce the share count, we're looking to manage it. We're buying out dilutive instruments. We're doing some share buybacks, but just really to keep the share count at where we've had it or a little bit below. We will need to look at as well this year, with this boost in cash flow that we're currently getting and having over a quarter of a million dollars in the bank already, we've said that's sufficient to look at significant deal size. If we get through the latter half of the year and those deals are not there, we'll likely have to sit down with the board and look at what we're going to do with that excess cash as to how we might return it.

Sean Guest
Sean Guest
President and CEO at Valeura Energy

Next slide. Finally, just touching on some of the ESG aspects. I think the one thing we're very proud of is taking over these assets. In the first two years of production, we were able to reduce the emissions intensity by 30%. In other words, to point out to people, the same oil is being produced, but with 30% less emissions. Key to us as well is the projects that we took on reduce OpEx on that, and a lot of it is about using less diesel. All right, with doing that, you're reducing emissions, but you're reducing your OpEx as well. That's gone extremely well. Very well HSE stats too. We have not had a lost time incident for coming up now on three years. Things are going very well there. No spills. We're all offshore.

Sean Guest
Sean Guest
President and CEO at Valeura Energy

The team runs the shop very professionally, and we work under a lot of ISO regulations. I do like to continually emphasize to people when I look at Thailand and our operations there, we have 200 staff in the office and offshore about 500 full-time, and then two shifts, and we have about five expats in country. You have quality team of Thai people over there who are running these assets extremely well. Last slide. Really, things have gone extremely well for us since we've moved into Thailand. When I look at what we've done in Thailand, it's really, you couldn't draw out a better country entry. We've built up the asset there and the asset base that it can go forward. It's sustainable. It's running itself. It's a strong business unit delivering that cash flow. We still have more growth.

Sean Guest
Sean Guest
President and CEO at Valeura Energy

There are other assets we're looking for there in Thailand, but the country entry into Thailand has gone very well. Where we as an executive have been focused now much more and are going forward is where are we going to repeat this now? What's the next country that we're going to move in to do this? It's going to be another exciting year as I see coming up. Good cash flow, looking for growth. Thank you very much.

Robin Martin
Robin Martin
SVP Communications and Investor Relations at Valeura Energy

Thanks, Sean. Okay, we'll move into a Q&A session now. We're, as I mentioned, able to take questions from the room. If you'd like to ask a question, raise your hand. Thomas will bring you a microphone.

Stuart Jeffery
Shareholder at GEL Direct Trust

Hi, I'm Stuart Jeffery of Unregistered Shares. Do you have any more details on the testing in Turkey? When might expect results from that?

Sean Guest
Sean Guest
President and CEO at Valeura Energy

Yeah, Jeffrey. It's a good question. We're a little disappointed at the time it's going to take to really set this up. In our discussions, you know, with TransAtlantic, who are operating that testing out there, they're really looking at getting this testing set up that it can be low cost. What they're trying to achieve is a test that we're not going to test the well for a week or a month or two months. They wanna see the ability to have this test set up and run for a long time. They have got all the equipment out there, but they've just had some issues on power that I understand they're solving at this point in time. Hopefully we'll get back to testing.

Sean Guest
Sean Guest
President and CEO at Valeura Energy

Disappointingly, since we talked about this a few months ago, we actually have no new data I can talk about on that. Where we're really looking at now in those assets, it's about setting it up for the next two-year phase for the blocks. You know, fulfilling the commitments, getting the testing ongoing, protecting the rights we have there to allow this work to then progress forward.

Stuart Jeffery
Shareholder at GEL Direct Trust

Will they be testing a vertical well, or have they drilled a horizontal one?

Sean Guest
Sean Guest
President and CEO at Valeura Energy

No, this is going back into the original wells that we drilled several years ago. It was a new frack stimulation and test in the one well. That's actually what they're working on now. It's a different zone than we tested before. It is all vertical. There's no expectation of getting a really high flow rate. What you're looking for is sustainability, then getting the cost low that you can show you can keep this thing on, then model it up to a horizontal.

Stuart Jeffery
Shareholder at GEL Direct Trust

Great. Thank you.

Robin Martin
Robin Martin
SVP Communications and Investor Relations at Valeura Energy

Okay, we'll take another question from the room. Just a reminder to the online audience that you can use the Q&A feature in Teams if there's anything you'd like to ask or email us with that address you see on the screen.

Keith McDonald
Keith McDonald
Shareholder at Valeura Energy

Keith McDonald, a shareholder. Sean Guest, any more visibility on the actual approval or government approval of the farm-in and the signing?

Sean Guest
Sean Guest
President and CEO at Valeura Energy

Yeah. Just what you're pointing to there is G1 and G3. Those were done, submitted to the government, you had a new election within Thailand, everything is actually slowed down, right? While they went through an election, they now have had the election. The cabinet's been appointed. You have an energy minister. It's our understanding that that now has moved forward to his desk, you know, there's a few other things going on in energy right now I can say that the cabinet's quite focused on. Whether it's next week, next month, next quarter, we're not sure, we have ways to move forward with PTTEP, we are working with them every week. Our team is working with them on working these projects together.

Robin Martin
Robin Martin
SVP Communications and Investor Relations at Valeura Energy

We've had a couple of online questions as well, Sean. First one, with your additional drilling in Q4 that wasn't originally planned, as well as more well slots at Nong Yao, when do you expect we'll see production increases?

Sean Guest
Sean Guest
President and CEO at Valeura Energy

Yeah. We're drilling through to the end of August, we're going to stop for probably a few months, come back and start drilling. You will see the production fall off during that time period. Once we get the drilling back on, you're going to get those new wells come on. We haven't really, you know, said we're going to be at the upper end of production, because if you're drilling development wells right at the end of Q4, you don't get a lot of contribution for that year. Where we see we're going to get the production coming on is actually in 2027, that's a focus just to increase it then.

Robin Martin
Robin Martin
SVP Communications and Investor Relations at Valeura Energy

Okay. Thanks for that. One more here. Your April realized price was $110, which looks like a small premium to Dubai. With all the talk out there about the difference between physical and paper prices in oil, why wasn't the premium higher, and what should we expect going forward?

Sean Guest
Sean Guest
President and CEO at Valeura Energy

Yeah. A lot of this has to do with actually how we tender for our oil. We'll decide we're gonna do spot cargoes. We would go now for maybe tenders in June, that sort of time period. June or July even, right? You're a few months late. The bidding that was done in February was likely for April pricing, right? The premiums that we were getting in the bidding were related to the low oil price. What we're seeing now is the premiums we're getting on a number of the fields are much higher. In fact, if prices were to fall tomorrow to $80, we would still be getting that higher premium.

Sean Guest
Sean Guest
President and CEO at Valeura Energy

It's that fact there's a two month delay that comes in there from when we actually go out to tender the oil to when it's actually sold and you get the revenue.

Robin Martin
Robin Martin
SVP Communications and Investor Relations at Valeura Energy

Thanks for that. We have no further questions online. Anything else from the room? With that, over to you to wrap up, Sean.

Sean Guest
Sean Guest
President and CEO at Valeura Energy

Again, thank you very much for coming. We've been on a very good run, delivering value to shareholders, and we see ways to continue this as we move forward over the next year or two. A thank you to our team, the executive here in the room, to the Board, to our whole team in Thailand who have been working extremely hard, and to all of you as shareholders. We look forward to continuing to work together. Thank you.

Executives
    • Keith McDonald
      Keith McDonald
      Shareholder
    • Kelvin Tang
      Kelvin Tang
      EVP Corporate and General Counsel
    • Robin Martin
      Robin Martin
      SVP Communications and Investor Relations
    • Sean Guest
      Sean Guest
      President and CEO
    • Tim Marchant
      Tim Marchant
      Chairman
Analysts
    • Stuart Jeffery
      Shareholder at GEL Direct Trust