Seplat Energy Plc

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to CEPLAT Energy PLC Half Year Results 2024. The presentation will commence shortly. After the presentation, we will conduct a Q&A session. If you wish to ask a question, you will be able to ask a question either through the Zoom webinar link provided separately or by submitting written questions using the Ask a Question button on the Spark Live webcast page. If you have joined us via Zoom webinar, please note this call is being live streamed to a webcast for a wider audience and will be recorded. By participating in the Zoom webinar, you are agreeing that recordings made during this event may be shared by Ceplat Energy PLC. I would now like to hand over to James Thompson, Head of Investor Relations, to open the presentation.

Thank you very much, Victoria. Hello, everybody. Good afternoon. Welcome to Ceplat Energy's financial results for the first half of 2024. On the call today, we have our CEO, Roger Brown, CFO, Eleanor Adara Legbe, and our COO, Samson Ezeori. We'll first present our business and financial highlights, followed by the outlook. And after this, we'll move to Q&A. Before we start, I'd encourage you to take note of the forward-looking statement on slide two. And I'll now pass you over to Roger on slide four to start with the overview. Roger, over to you. Thank you.

Good afternoon or good morning, depending where you are. Perhaps good evening. Welcome everyone to the 2024 first half results. So we go on page four, slide four, we set out a couple of metrics. Obviously our first half production is strong at 48,000 barrels of oil equivalent. And that is right in the middle of our guidance, slightly down in the last year at 50. We've been maintaining the Q2 2024 core dividends. So this is, we've committed to 12 cents a year, and therefore we're paying three cents a share, which we paid next month. We are looking at adjusted revenue of $477 million in line with the six months of last year. That's consistent from our operations. And the final one on that slide is, looking at just the EBITDA. So our EBITDA is 267 million ahead of the equivalent period of 2023, that's up 13%. And this is obviously on the back of a strong cost performance. So the underlying business is robust, is strong, and this is what we've demonstrated in the first half results. If I move now into the next slide, slide five, And we highlight some of the strategic growth ambitions that we have. We have some slides at the end to deal with this, but we look at the Anand Gas project. So it was a very much a monumental period in the quarter or the first half when we actually had President Tanubu inaugurate our gas plant in May 2024. The Anugas project is making progress. We have the spur line, which is the one that connects it into the OB3, and it's reached mechanical completion. And the new OB3, I'll deal with this a little bit later and give you a lot more detail around it, but it is progressing well. Looking at mobile producing, the acquisition, we obviously extended the SBA in May. Quite a big milestone, obviously, was the important junction between NMPC and Exxon. That was in June. And obviously we're looking back to other approvals. And again, I'll get into this in one of the later slides and give you a lot more detail. Under the core business growth, we're seeing really good progress on our Elcrest assets with Sibiri, which was exploration we did years ago. We're now into production there. around 3,000 barrels of oil per day. Bruce and Sam will pick up on some of that. Abiala, which is a martial fuel we farmed into. The first well is now drilled and we're on the second. And in terms of the TMP pipeline, which is our eastern pipeline, that's now operational again. So we're now starting to put some eastern assets production through there. In terms of governance, we announced the another board director joining us on the 1st of April, Mr. Babs of Makua. And then delighted of the Eleanor. This is her first conference call with us as CFO. She took over on the 21st of May. Final one there is just in terms of just, you know, separate leading the way in terms of Nigeria and corporates. We are the early adopters of after S1 and S2, and that really is leading the market within Nigeria. So I will hand over to Sam and I, who will pick up the operational performance.