11/19/2025

speaker
Drew
Conference Operator

Good morning all and thank you for joining us on today's Ithaca Energy Q3 2025 results. My name is Drew and I'll be the operator on the call today. After today's prepared remarks, we will have a Q&A session. If you would like to ask a question, please press Start followed by 1 on your telephone keypad and to withdraw your question, it's Start followed by 2. With that, it's my pleasure to hand over to Eunice Friedman, Executive Chairman. Please go ahead when you're ready.

speaker
Yanni Friedman
Executive Chairman

Thank you and good morning everyone from a snowy Aberdeen and a very cold London. And welcome to our Q3 2025 results. My name is Yanni Friedman and I'm the executive chairman of Ithaca Energy. Today with me on the call, my colleagues Luciana Vasquez, our chief executive officer, and Ian Lewis, our chief financial officer. If you'll move to slide three on today's agenda, we'll cover highlights of our year to date in Q3 The channel will speak to our strategic and operational highlights. Ian will give us a financial overview, and we'll finish with closing remarks and, of course, as always, open up for questions and answers. Two or three highlights, if you'd be kind to move to slide five. So we had another very good quarter with strong strategic Delivery, supporting our vision for scale, stability, and strength. Production with 150,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day, average production year to date. We've had a material, some would say unprecedented summer shutdown, and Luciana will talk about this later, and we're on track to deliver full year production guidance supported by an upgraded Q4 exit rate, of 145,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day from 140,000 a day. Adjusted EBITDAX of 1.5 billion for the nine months ending on September 30th. Enhanced financial performance, substantial cash generation that's supporting our cash allocation flexibility and attractive shareholders' returns. We're reaffirming our 2025 dividend targets of $500 million and announcing this morning a payment of $133 million dividend that we accelerated from April 2026 through December of 2025. A strong balance sheet, $1.7 billion of available liquidity. We've had a very successful bond issuance a couple of months ago, 450 million euros with a 5.5 and we upsize our reserve-based lending facility. This gives us material financial firepower for our next phase of growth, as we like to call it, with a low leverage of 0.5x of EBITDAX. If you'll move to slide six, so we're really delivering on all pillars and on our improved 2025 outlook. and continued strategic execution, reaffirming our upgraded management guidance that we've issued in August, with production trending to the bottom range of the range, primarily due to our informed decision to extend the captain shutdown period to allow us to do more unplanned investment that will further support longer-term environmental operational performance. And at the same time, with a slightly production wells, high production wells that will come online very, very soon. Cash tax, and I'm sure Ian will mention this as well, trending to the bottom of the range of the $230 million to $270 million that we gave in August. At the same time, and also due to the unprecedented tar season, we're seeing increased installed total production capacity in Q4 and trending into 2026 with an uplift in Ithaca's exit production rates in Q4 from 140,000 barrels a day to 140,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day expected. And we've announced this morning, this is on the strategy section, 50% farm-in into shills, torpor mori, and gas fields, forming part of our wider West of Shetland strategy and really positioning Ithaca as the strategic partner in the region. If we'll move to slide seven, we thought it would be good a year into our business combination with E&I just to kind of show performance. So we're focused on delivering attractive shareholder returns while continuing to execute on our growth, both organic and inorganic. Strong cash flow generation that supports the accelerated dividend payment that we've announced today. and our full-year dividend target of $500 million. But if you look over the past three years, you know, from 2023 till today, $1.2 billion of shareholder distribution, a billion dollars just in 24 and in 25. And if you look at total return, since there's this combination, dividend adjusted, about 150% return to both share price and dividends. I'll hand over to Luciano to talk about strategic and operational highlights. Luciano, please.

speaker
Luciana Vasquez
Chief Executive Officer

Okay. Good morning, everybody. And if we can now switch to slide number nine. We're proud to continue our excellent safety and environmental performance, in particular We consistently reported zero incidents, serious incidents, both in process, personal safety, as well as in the environmental space. That means that we had two full years with no significant event. And so our metrics, as you can see, continue on a positive trend with 1.6 incident per million man hours versus the 2.9 of Q3 of last year, and emissions at 17.3 kilogram of CO2 per barrel equivalent. which is about 25% lower than the average in the basin. This is, of course, the result of the combination of asset quality, post-distance combination, and also the steady operation. And, like I said, it's a strong indication of good performance as we've just gone, as Janice said, through a material-tired season, which inherently is a challenging one, both in terms of safety and environmental space. And so we still maintain our excellent safety records thanks to our crews offshore and onshore. If we can move to slide number 10, and we move to production, we closed the Q3 with a year-to-date production of around 115,000 barrels a day, as we said, and had a Q3 contribution of 97.9 thousand barrels per day, which of course reflected our TAR campaign in 2025, which saw an unprecedented level of summer shutdowns. with more than 500 days delivered and 15 assets involved, both operated and non-operated. Of these, 15, 12 were delivered on time and budget, which is a remarkable achievement. As I said, the time activity has been exceptional and somewhat unavoidable in 2025 with the timing of the business combination, which impacted our ability to optimize the activity sequence. This, in fact, has been possible now for 2026, which will see a 55% deferment risk reduction in our further planning. And a captain, as Enid mentioned, the decision was made to extend the shutdown to invest further into safeguarding our longer-term environmental and operational performance. This is a prudent decision because we want to support life extension activity for this asset. And with the successful completion of the tar season and three new assets, high producing wells, which are coming on stream in December. So now we are entering the new year with an increase in total production capacity, as we said. So that is the basis of the uplift that Yannick just talked about, 245,000 barrels expected as an exit rate. So it's been nearly a timing issue on new production delivery towards the end of Moving on to slide 11. Again, just to say that on Captain, we progressed with the delivery of the 13th campaign. So there are now four construction wells which have been completed. There are two left to go. And we have also matured the planning of the 14th campaign, which we intend to sanction in Q4-25. Fundamentals campaign, I said already, but of course, this has required an extension of the TAR shutdown period. If we move now to slide 12, we go into Segal. At the end of October, we handed over to the operator the J4 well, which is the fourth and last well of the Segal development. As you may remember, J4 has experienced technical issues in the first half of the year. which had required dedicated and rather technologically advanced operation to safely finalize the completion of the well. We're pleased to report that J4 has been completed and is currently being cleaned up, and flow rates are in line with the pre-drill expectations. This is one of the three wells that I mentioned earlier, which had a start-up in December of this year. If we can now move to the next slide, which is slide 13. And you may remember that at the end of our results, we presented a similar slide highlighting the importance of waste of Shetland in our long-term organic growth strategy. And, of course, the one of the United Kingdom as a whole. in the next slides, but let me touch on two further fields in this area. This morning, as Yannis said, we announced the signing of a farming agreement with Shell for 50% working interest in licenses P2629 and P2630, which are located in the West of Shetland Basin and that contain the Tobermory Disclosure. estimated to be a gross 2C resources of around 60-65 million barrel, which adds to the significant reserves and resources that we already hold in the west of Shetland. And following completion of the farming, Shed UK will continue to hold 50% stake in Tobermory Discovery and will be the operator of the licenses. The announcement of this farming together with partner in the area and provides the ability to unlock synergies between discoveries which are infrastructure-led. The tornado project, by the way, is progressing towards FID, of course, subject to fiscal and regulatory clarity, and tendering is ongoing, and we are advancing also the environmental statement on the regulatory step. move to the next slide, slide 13, you can see from the map why this is a strategic basin and it's important for our long-term growth plans. Not only we have, of course, the Rosebank field, which is the development ongoing, and we are continuing progression on the largest pre-EFT discovery, Campbell, towards an investment decision. But also this area has the potential to allow further exploration and further near-field connect tiebacks. And so positions as a key player in the northern gas hub with significant prospectivity in terms of resources that can, in fact, benefit from the infrastructures that can be shared and allow for relatively quick turnaround connections new fields and new disruptions are there. So we can achieve, we believe we can achieve significant synergy with the greater tornado area. And so our investment in the rest of Shetland is critical for us and is also critical for the UK energy security. Also supporting skills, job and our supply chain, which as you know is vital for the entire economy. Moving to the next slide, go and talk about the Rosbank and our slide 15, pleased to report that material progress has been achieved in respect to the refreshed consents. The operator, with our support, ACTIV, has submitted the updated environmental statement in Q3, which included, as you remember, the assessment of the scope three emissions associated with the project, came after the guidelines issued by the government in June 25 following last year's consultation. And after the submission offered advice that there were no objections to proceed with the public consultation process in relation to the amended submission and now this consultation process is in fact at the phase of concluding. And so we expect And if we move to the project side of things, to the next slide, slide 16, the 2025 Offshore Substance Installation Scope will deliver on time and budget an excellent HSE statistics. The drilling activities are scheduled to commence in Q126 as it was planned. The SPSO refurbishment activity are progressing at pace. A third dry dock has been completed and project progresses with a target to sail away early 2026, so to allow the mooring in the field during 2026. We are supporting the operator in its effort to maintain the FPSO sail away date, which is a critical milestone together with drilling and hookup and commissioning works to achieving the first production. On costs, the updates from operator indicate that based on the achievement of the schema as I mentioned, which include limited carryover activities post the FPSO sell-away, the total project at-home forecast don't need to be materially updated at this time and will be revisited after the FPSO sell-away. And if we can move to Campbell, that is slide 17, completing our resume into the west of Shetland. Our project is continuing its maturation towards the final investment decision and potential fund down, which will require fiscal and regulatory clarity, an outcome that we expect in the coming weeks. efforts into maturing the project in the quarter and throughout the year, actually. We have all main tenders for the key project packages. Of course, this is through the FPSO engineering, but also its procurement, construction, and commissioning, but also the tenders for the subsea, the umbilical risers, and flow lines. They are all commands, and they are intended to be completed by mid-2026. So we have a consolidated project cost and schedule, which will be at the basis of the risk final investment decision. We've also progressed speedily on the regulatory side, and we've also leveraged, of course, on the experience of Rossbank, and we're now pointing at a submission of an updated field development plan and environmental statement before the end of 2025, which will, of course, reflect all our optimizations of the last year in the project. So that concludes the strategic and operational highlights and hand over to for the financial overview.

speaker
Ian Lewis
Chief Financial Officer

Thanks Luciano and good morning everyone. So turn to slide 19 please and we'll call out some of the key numbers for the year to date Q3. So the top line some of the operational numbers, 115,000 barrels a day, split 58% liquids and 42% gas. Now obviously from 1 October with the completion of the deal to add sickness equity or gas production will increase, and it will be more balanced towards 50-50 at the end of the year. And that's come through with a $19.1 per barrel year-to-date Q3 OPEX. And again, driving below 19 is the aim for the year, and we can see that coming to pass in the numbers year-to-date Q3. In the middle of the slide, you see the The outturn performance financially, $1.5 billion of EBITDAX and $1.3 billion of net cash from ops. The main difference between those two, obviously, being the cash tax payments made in Q3. Again, very strong performance and a $98.5 million increase. Profit in Q3 standalone helping to claw back against the net income charge for EPL extension that was booked in Q1. So we're $119 million negative for the year to date Q3 in net income terms. In terms of debt and liquidity, you can see that we're $1.1 billion of net debt at the end of the quarter. 0.5 times leverage ratio, again, maintaining our low leverage position, but very significant liquidity. We end the quarter with, I think, a record liquidity position of $1.7 billion through our facilities. So moving to slide 20, a little bit more detail on EBITDAX. Just to call out a couple of numbers here, clearly a transformed business. Q3 2025 compared with Q3 2024 year to date with 115,000 barrels a day compared to 53,000 barrels a day. One thing I would call out is continued hedge gains. You can see that $77 million of hedge gains in The year-to-date 2025, a consistent pattern now over three years of hedge gain positions. And we have at the end of the quarter material hedge mark-to-market positive positions as well across both oil, gas and FX hedges continuing to strengthen and protect the business. I would call out just in terms of the value from production line. Obviously, prices are a bit softer in 2025 than they were in 2024. You can see that the $83 a barrel year-to-date 24 value from production has moved down to $68 following that market trend. It's a $15 reduction. But because of the operating cost shift that we've seen in the business and being able to drive from $29 a barrel last year to $19 this year, you can see that the EBITDAX per barrel has only dropped five from $53 a barrel to $48. So just showing the resilience of the business. as transformed from the merger with the E&I assets and the sustaining EBITDA extra barrel at a very high level. So moving on to slide 21 and a bit of a summary of our refinancing that we did in the quarter. You can tell on the right-hand side in terms of bond performance, the US dollar bond that's been in the market for over a year now has been performing very well. strong credit support in the market and appetite for the bonds. That together with favourable market conditions in the summer led us to the issuance of a €450 million bond. Again, accessing a new market with a lot of appetite for the issuance. Able to execute that 5.5% coupon with a effective translation into US dollars for hedge protection at 6.7%. Again, just reflecting for our credit rating, a very strong issuance and enabling us to look forward with confidence in terms of the various options that we have financially. We always want to stay with significant liquidity and capacity, and we leave the quarter in that position. Moving to slide 22 to see that in a bit more detail. Detail, you can see the adjusted net debt position of $106.4 billion at the end of the quarter, with significant cash on hand. And you can see that in the middle, the available liquidity has been augmented by not just the issuance of the notes, the euro notes, but also the extension of the reserve-based lending facility. So we add a $300 million, adding new institutions to our facility, which gives material upside to the liquidity position. We used the accordion and we still have remaining trance in the accordion in our RBL as well. Again, just making ourselves ready for opportunities. Our flexibility and agility in the market is underpinned by our financial capacity and flexibility And this continues to position us to be able to move when opportunity arises. And finally, on the right-hand side, you can see 0.5 times net debt to EBITDAX at the close of the corridor, maintaining our modest leverage position. On slide 23, and again, we're giving lots more detail on our hedge book. We have a very strong hedge position at the end of the corridor. with nearly 40 million barrels hedged through Q4 2025 and extending out into now 2027. You can see on the left-hand side that we have a strong oil book with swaps and collars put together to show significant hedging through 2026. The floors on those, you can tell on the table at the bottom, that the swaps are at about 67 for 2026. all the way through, so above market. And then you can see that the collar floors are in the low 60s with ceilings up to $70 a barrel. So a strong hedge position going into the year 26 on the oil front. And a continued very strong gas spook. You can see swaps at essentially 100 pence or just below for several quarters ahead and floor ceilings of 80 with a lot of headroom above. So continuing to deliver protection for the business, protection for EBITDAX, and yet leaving us with material upside in the price environment if we were to see some strengthening on the Brent and the NBP pricing. Okay, I'll hand back to Yaniv for outlook and closing remarks.

speaker
Yanni Friedman
Executive Chairman

Thank you, Ian. I'm on slide 25. And before closing remarks, it's also But back to the performance of the quarter. So strong performance. Again, a very good quarter, 150,000 barrels of woolen We've been very disciplined. You can see this from our hedging strategy. You can see this from our debt management strategy. This $1.7 billion of liquidity gives us a lot of flexibility to go and do things in 2026. We're focused on growth, organic and inorganic. The announcement this morning on Tobermory demonstrates our view and position in the west of Shepparton. term growth. And at the same time, since the closing of B&I, we've closed two additional acquisitions of JAPEX and Spirit with Cygnus that were completed in July and in October. We're doing all this keeping in mind that shareholders' returns are very important, so looking at this through that perspective as well. We've accelerated $133 million of dividend from April till December, reaffirming our $500 million dividend target for 2025. So overall, again, a very solid and very strong quarter. Before we move to Q&A, I would just say that, you know, this is the work of many. We have a great team in Aberdeen. So thank you, Ithaca team. And we will now open this up for questions.

speaker
Drew
Conference Operator

Thank you. We will now start today's Q&A session. If you would like to ask a question, please press Start followed by 1 on your telephone keypad. And to withdraw your question, it's Start followed by 2. Our first question comes from Chris Wheaton from Stifle. Your line is now open. Please go ahead with your question.

speaker
Chris Wheaton
Analyst, Stifel

Brilliant. Thank you very much. And thank you very much indeed for the call this morning, guys. And well done on great operational performance. Your team's done extraordinarily well, I think. A couple of questions, two, maybe three questions from me. Firstly, on the dividend, obviously, oil prices are down substantially versus when the company IPO'd and also since last year. I'm interested in how much that dropping commodity prices is factoring into your thinking about where dividend goes for 2026 onwards, given you've delivered a great operational performance so far. My second question would be on tax, if I may. What do you need to see from the budget next week to start progressing Tambo, Tornado, Tobermory forward with more certainty? If you can talk about anything you need to see from the budget next week, that would be, I think, very interesting. My last question would be also just finally on Rosebank. What would make that happen? late 26 startup rather than, say, early 27 in terms of what has to get done to be able to get a sort of late 26 startup. That's it for me. Thank you.

speaker
Ian Lewis
Chief Financial Officer

Okay. Yeah. Hi, Chris. I'll take the first one. In terms of a dividend policy, it's clearly linked with cash for operations, which is where we've always put ourselves as IPO. And part of our hedge protection is indeed to to make sure that we're able to deliver material results. I think as we went through there, you can see that our hedge book is well ahead of market. So although prices have softened a little, we believe, first of all, there'll be volatility because there has been in recent years. Materially, we will take advantage of that in the hedge market. We already have done. And therefore, we expect some strong EBITDAX performance with strong production delivery. That means we will expect strong dividend returns. And more to come on that when we give our update at the year end in early 2026. In terms of the second, I'll pass maybe to Genevieve on that.

speaker
Yanni Friedman
Executive Chairman

No, and thanks, Chris, for your comments. Look, on budget and EPL, we continue to engage with the government, I would say, I think more generically, I think what the industry needs and what we need is certainty. So we need to understand that there is a path forward, that there is certainty, that there is stability in the fiscal regime, that we can plan ahead and do our capital allocation properly. So, without getting into details of what we expect or what do we need, you know, obviously, we think that the current environment is suffering being windfall in any way, shape, or form and needs to be revisited and reshaped. I think the most important thing for the industry is certainty. Luciano? Yeah.

speaker
Luciana Vasquez
Chief Executive Officer

Well, on Bronze Bank... The key indicators, if you want, for that are, in fact, the sell-away date, the amount of work that might eventually be carried over at the sell-away, because the objective is to minimize any carryover work, and then the efficiency of the hookup campaign during summer next year and of the commissioning. As you know, in these projects, the last steps are usually the pretty intense one, intensive one. So if everything goes and we'll have a better view of it in Q1 next year, how efficiently these last months in the docs have been and have been executed and so on, how quickly can all the commissioning be carried campaign, so to tell us whether we're going to hit the end of 2026 or into 2027. Although, I mean, the impact on the overall result is limited because there is still a ramp-up, which is pretty small in terms of bringing in new wealth.

speaker
Chris Wheaton
Analyst, Stifel

Great, thank you. Let's all keep our fingers crossed for some sanity and a breaking out for the budget next Wednesday. Thank you.

speaker
Yanni Friedman
Executive Chairman

Thanks, Chris.

speaker
Drew
Conference Operator

Our next question comes from James Carmichael from Birnberg. Your line is now open. Please go ahead with your question.

speaker
James Carmichael
Analyst, Birnberg

Hi. Morning, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. Just a couple, please. I guess another one linked to the budget. You've obviously got Europe. or you talk about your consolidation strategy on the UKCS you've obviously got quite a bit of financial firepower on the balance sheet now and from what you're seeing I guess the UK's been fairly active on the M&A front over the last 12 months or so but from what you're seeing assuming some sort of sense of outcome in the budget do you see sort of lots of M&A there that's waiting to go I guess if we get the right result next week and And then I guess we could include CAMBO in that maybe as a follow-up. And then just on CAPTAIN, I was wondering if you could provide a bit of colour on the increased scope of work that extended that shutdown. And also sort of specifically what you're talking about when you say safeguarding the environmental operational performance. Were there some sort of issues that you uncovered as you were going through that work? Just some colour on that would be great. Thanks.

speaker
Yanni Friedman
Executive Chairman

Thanks, James. I'll take the first one. Look, again, as I said earlier, you know, we're not going to say much further on EPL. You know, I think we'll all wait and see. And, you know, as Chris said, we'll expect some sanity and sensibility coming out of this process. But, again, as mentioned, you know, there is engagement, so, you know, If this has a direct effect on M&A, I'm looking at, you know, I'm looking at the past 12 months or 15 months, and you've seen it's been quite an active M&A scene in the KCS, right? So from, you know, Ithaca and ENI and Shell and Equinor with the DORA, and NEO and RevSolo and NEO Next and, you know, our acquisitions and Kalane Acquisitions. So it's been active. I'm not sure there is a direct effect on, you know, in M&A. Obviously, I think that if, you know, EPL comes in a sensible place, what you'll see is companies planning in the future and hopefully CapEx programs to keep investing and growing in the UKCS. We are... As you know, active, we're looking – the way we're looking at this is always through our value lens and our investment criteria, which are very clear to us. So, you know, we keep looking at opportunities and try and high-grade our portfolio, which is – Campbell, I think it's the same thing, right? You know, once we get certainty and we know what the future holds, would enable us to plan accordingly. Again, it's a project that we would like to do under the right circumstances. Odin, maybe you'd like to take? Sorry.

speaker
Ian Lewis
Chief Financial Officer

As I was going to say, on the Kaplan points, we've been joined by Odin Esten, our Chief Operating Officer for the Q&A just now. So I'll pass over to Odin.

speaker
Odin Esten
Chief Operating Officer

Yeah, hello everybody. So of course, Kaplan is a super important asset for us. This was a tower which was big from the beginning. And when you do an ATAR like this, you are gathering key information. And we have done lots of inspections. So we have learned things on the way, which we then took a decision on in order to set Captain Up to be the kind of big, reliable machine for the future for us. We saw that it was necessary to invest a little bit further into particularly into optimizing our environmental performance and also the operational performance going forward. And that's why we decided to invest further and take the time now setting up a captain for reliable high performance in the years to come.

speaker
Kian Evans-Cowie
Analyst, Bank of America

Okay, thanks.

speaker
Drew
Conference Operator

Our next question comes from Kian Evans-Cowie from Bank of America. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

speaker
Kian Evans-Cowie
Analyst, Bank of America

Hi, good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for taking my questions. Just two, please. So the first one, a bit of a clarification question. You've obviously upgraded the exit rate guidance for the year. So just wondering how we should think about this, and if you could clarify, please. Is this maybe it's the flow rate you're expecting at the very end of December or is it more of a 4Q run rate or is it a steady rate that you should be able to hold comfortably by the end of the year or perhaps it's more of a peak production rate that you'll hit for maybe a day but not much longer. So just a bit of clarifying on that please. And then you've said in 3Q you experienced unprecedented levels of summer shutdowns. Now I wonder, going into next year and beyond, how should we think about this? Is this now the run rate we should expect for third quarter going forward? Thank you.

speaker
Yanni Friedman
Executive Chairman

It's a number that our installed capacity allows us to produce. We have three new wells that are to come in in December. So measuring this on how many number of days is difficult, but we expect this to be our exit rate and trending into 2026. It just shows and demonstrates with the additional work that we've done in safeguarding, you know, operational and environmental in Captain, which is, you know, a critical asset for us, that also adds to this, right? So with, you know, with additional three wells coming in, we're seeing this peak production, and obviously we're not at the point right now of guiding to 2026, but I guess you can understand that from this, you know, we'll go into 2026 stronger. We'll come up with guidance in early 2026.

speaker
Ian Lewis
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, and I'm going for the second question on the TARS for next year in Q3.

speaker
Odin Esten
Chief Operating Officer

Yeah, so on the TARS, so as a consequence of the October combination last year, we came into this TARS season with basically no opportunity to optimize the sequence of TARS, and that resulted in actually us having TARS on all over 15 non-operated and operated assets this summer. Going forward, we are able to optimize that. And just as an indication, if you look on the total deferred volumes, we are bringing that down from 3.5 million this year to 1.5 million next year. So it's a reduction in 55% on deferment volumes. and also thereby a 55% reduction in risk for overruns at the same time achieved. So we are setting ourselves completely up differently going forward.

speaker
Kian Evans-Cowie
Analyst, Bank of America

Okay, thank you very much. That's very, very helpful. Thank you.

speaker
Drew
Conference Operator

Our next question comes from Nash Koo from Barclays. Your lines now open. Please proceed.

speaker
Nash Koo
Analyst, Barclays

Hey, good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. Perhaps two, please. The first one is just a follow-up on the Q425 exit production rate, please. So I wonder if you can just explain a little bit more on the impact for 2026 production level. Will this change any of your outlook into 2026? Then my second question is on 2026 capital framework. So I understand you have a lot of firing power from your balance sheet, but Garen has gone up a little bit, and I wonder how do you balance balance sheet together with dividend, together with potential more M&A? Thank you so much.

speaker
Yanni Friedman
Executive Chairman

And I should, too, hear from you. Thank you for your questions. I think we've answered the exit rate question, you know, and, you know, I don't want to repeat myself, but as I said, you know, it gives a sense of what our capabilities are and will guide appropriately in early 2026. Ian, do you want to take the capital allocation question?

speaker
Ian Lewis
Chief Financial Officer

Sure. Yes, I mean, one of the key things for us is being transparent and consistent in our allocation of capital and our delivery. And the capital allocation framework we've used since IPO has delivered just that. So in terms of what we'll do, gearing, of course, will move depending on timing of cash payments, of dividend payments, et cetera. Policy remains exactly the same. We'll protect the balance sheet. We've said one and a half times is our priority. kind of ceiling, but we don't really expect to be above one times net debt, but we think that's an appropriate place to be. We're clearly well below that, just now 0.5 times at the end of the quarter. And dividend will continue to be linked with cash from operations. That's our policy and that's the delivery. And it's enabled us this year, as well as in prior years, to deliver good returns to shareholders whilst protecting the balance sheet. So I think the M&A that we've done this year is a good example. It is in the fourth category in the capital allocation framework. It's the additional deployment of capital. We deployed additional returns to shareholders last year with a special dividend. This year we've done two bolt-on growth deals. And we'll continue to use that framework, which we think is prudent, but value-delivering across our stakeholders.

speaker
Nash Koo
Analyst, Barclays

Perfect. Thank you very much.

speaker
Drew
Conference Operator

As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question on today's call, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to withdraw your question, it's staff followed by two. Our next question comes from the line of Mark Wilson from Jefferies. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Mark, your line is now open. Please go ahead with your question.

speaker
Mark Wilson
Analyst, Jefferies

Thank you very much. I've got one question, if I may. After the Tobermory farm in here and assuming... that we get clarity and everything goes together with EPL. Could you give a vision of what your suite of West of Shetland assets, Rosebank, Tambo, Tobermory, Tornado, on a post-2030 basis, what could be the production from those developments if they all go ahead? It looks like there's about 300 million reserves and resources net to Ithaca, maybe 200 even if you farm down Cambo. So a vision of what that could be would be really interesting. Thank you.

speaker
Yanni Friedman
Executive Chairman

Yeah, thanks, Mark. So you're taking away my next conference call, the Capital Markets Day slide, so I'm not going to answer that now. We'll give the vision later. And I think we'll be more certain once we get clarity on the budget and be able to analyze this. But just very briefly, you know, we're seeing ourselves as longer-term players in the UKCS. We've said this all along. We've consolidated everything in Aberdeen. We're, I think, proving ourselves to be a very efficient and an app operator. So our goal is to keep investing in the UKCS, albeit with the right, you know, fiscal framework to allow this and other regulatory frameworks to support this. I think, you know, with Robert Morey and Tornado and Campbell and obviously Rose Bank, you know, we're a significant player in kind of the future of the West Deschampelins. And I'll take you up on that and we'll speak more about this in our next full year results and guidance call.

speaker
Mark Wilson
Analyst, Jefferies

Excellent. Look forward to it.

speaker
Yanni Friedman
Executive Chairman

Thank you very much. Catherine, write it down so we'll not forget.

speaker
Ian Lewis
Chief Financial Officer

I guess the numbers we went through on the slides, if you show you, Mark, our net share of Rosebank Resources is about 66 million barrels. Our net share of Tobermory and Tornado together is about the same. And Campbell pre-farm now is 143. So clearly those three assets are going to be large assets. material positions in the West Shetland. But, yeah, as Yaniv said, the story on this and the plotting of it will give you more details in due course.

speaker
Yanni Friedman
Executive Chairman

And I guess, you know, it's also something we're mentioning to the government every time we get a chance, is this really plays into the UK energy security and UK energy future. And, you know, when you look at this, it's a significant contributor to the UK economy going forward.

speaker
Drew
Conference Operator

I'll now hand back over to Catherine Reid.

speaker
Catherine Reid
Investor Relations Moderator

Thank you. We have a question from Werner Riding at Peel Hunt, who's unfortunately been kicked out of the call. His question is, with OPEX per barrel at $19.1, how much more structural cost reduction is achievable, and what is the risk of cost inflation as the portfolio matures, especially in the west of Shetland? And I'll hand that to Ian.

speaker
Ian Lewis
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, sure. Thanks, Catherine. In terms of structural cost reduction, I think we have been prudent and we have been measured and we've been consistent in our approach to cost. So we've not taken knee-jerk reactions to changes in the business or the environment. We believe in long-term value-driven supply chain relationships. We see ourselves as a fair market. uh counterparty but we we clearly understand where costs should be in the value position and we protected the value particularly in the us dollar position with our fx hedges as well so um in oil and gas we believe that the value is driven by day in day out small decisions managing headcount positions and making sure we've got the right resource in the right places managing our supply chain well, ensuring that we've got the right balance in-house and outsourcing. So no silver bullet on this. I'm afraid I think we're in a good place and we continue to try and drive the cost per barrel down. But you can easily lose value by over-reducing costs. We've invested a lot in maintenance costs, in improvements to our infrastructure, and we'll continue to do so. So, yeah, long-term measured and consistent is the approach, not step-changing costs in any way. And we're quite happy where we are, but always with a value lens.

speaker
Drew
Conference Operator

Thank you. That concludes the Q&A portion of today's call. I'll now hand back over to Yaniv for some closing remarks.

speaker
Yanni Friedman
Executive Chairman

Thank you. Thank you, everyone, as always, for joining our call and for your questions. We will speak soon and wishing you all a very happy holiday season and a happy new year. Thank you.

speaker
Drew
Conference Operator

Thank you all for joining. That concludes today's call and you may now disconnect your lines.

Disclaimer

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