VAALCO Energy, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to Valco Energy's second quarter 2025 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing star then zero on your telephone keypad. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. During the question and answer session, we ask you to limit your questions to one and a follow-up. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Chris DeLange, Investor Relations Coordinator. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Welcome to Valco Energy's second quarter 2025 conference call. After I cover the forward-looking statements, George Maxwell, our CEO, will review key highlights of the second quarter. Ron Bain, our CFO, will then provide a more in-depth financial review. George will then return for some closing comments before we take your questions. During our question and answer session, we ask you to limit your questions to one and a follow-up. You can always reenter the queue with additional questions. I would like to point out that we posted a supplemental investor deck on our website that has additional financial analysis, comparisons, and guidance that should be helpful. With that, let me proceed with our forward-looking statement comments. During the course of this conference call, the company will be making forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and those actual results or developments may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Valco disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Accordingly, you should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. These and other risks are described in our earnings release, the presentation posted on our website, and in the reports we file with the SEC, including our Form 10-K. Please note that this conference call is being recorded. Let me turn the call over to George.

Thank you, Chris. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our second quarter 2025 earnings conference call. For the past two years, we have met or exceeded our quarterly production guidance, consistently leading to strong operational and financial results, including net income, adjusted EBITDAX, and cash flow generation. In Q2 2025, we delivered net income of $8.4 million or 0.8 cents per share and adjusted EBITDAX of $49.9 million. This was driven by NRI production of 16,956 BOE per day, which was above the high end of guidance. Working interest production of 21,654 BOE per day was at the high end of our guidance and NRI sales of 19,393 BOE per day which was also above the high end of guidance. Maintaining operational excellence and consistent production across our portfolio is essential to continued strong adjusted EBITDAX generation. which will enable us to fund organic growth initiatives and position us as a larger player in the industry. We also entered into a new reserve-based revolving credit facility in the first quarter of 2025, which complements our internally generated cash flow and cash on hand from time to time as needed to fund our organic growth initiatives. The facility has an initial commitment of $190 million with the ability to grow to $300 million as we look to fund projects across our diverse portfolio. It is important to remember that 2025 is a transitional year and everything remains on track with our forecasts. Production came offline in Q1 at Côte d'Ivoire due to the FPSO project and we do not expect to start the grilling program in Gabon until late Q3. as we await the drilling rig's completion of its current commitments. This means that the meaningful production uplift we are projecting for these major projects won't begin until 2026 and into 2027. I would like to point out that in addition to all of our organic growth and capital projects, we remain committed to returning cash to shareholders through a regularly quarterly dividend and have returned over $100 million to our shareholders through dividends and share buybacks since 2022. I would now like to go through and provide a quick update on our diverse portfolio of high-quality assets beginning with Côte d'Ivoire. In line with the project timeline, the FPSO ceased hydrocarbon operations as scheduled on January 31, 2025, with the final lifting of crude oil from the vessel occurring in early February. The vessel departed from the field in late March and arrived in the shipyard in Dubai ahead of schedule in mid-May 2025. The FPSO refurbishment is now underway in the shipyard. We are making a very sizeable investment in this project, but given the licence extension and the 125% cost or recovery on the capital spent, this investment will provide a solid foundation for continuing economic growth into the future. Significant development drilling is expected to begin in 2026 after the FPSO returns to service with potential meaningful additions to production from the main Baobab field. The Council of Ministers recently approved a 10-year extension to the licence on CI40, extending it to 2038. In March 2025 we announced a farming agreement for the CI705 block offshore Côte d'Ivoire where we will operate with a 70% working interest and a 100% paying interest under a commercial carry arrangement through the seismic reprocessing and interpretation stages and potentially drilling up to two exploration wells. We invested $3 million to acquire our interest in the new block and in Q2 we received the seismic data for the block. We are conducting a detailed integrated geological analysis to assess and mature our understanding of the block's overall prospectivity as well as the basin's overall potential. We believe the block is favourably located in a proven hydrocarbon system and is approximately 70 kilometres to the west of our CI40 block. We have demonstrated our ability to acquire, develop and enhance value through accretive acquisitions and we are excited about the prospects in Côte d'Ivoire. Moving to Gabon, given that we haven't drilled a well in Gabon in over two years, we are very pleased with the positive overall production results, including strong production uptime and improved decline curves on the wells. We secured a drilling rig in December 2024 for our 2025-2026 drilling programme, which is planned to begin in late Q3 2025, but the timing of when we start the drilling programme is dependent on when the rig becomes available from its current commitments. The contract that we signed for the rig is a firm commitment of five wells with an option for five additional wells. As we discussed in the Capital Markets Day, we have some very strong drilling opportunities and the additional data gathered during the upcoming drilling programme will help us high-grade and de-risk additional well locations that we already have identified. We plan to begin the drilling programme on the Itami Field Platform and we are currently planning on moving to the Ebori Wells later in the programme. because of the current robust production profile of these wells. In particular, we remain very pleased with the extended flow test on Iburi 4H, which is continuing to surpass our initial expectations. We originally wanted to gather information on the H2S concentrations at this location to aid in equipment design and to evaluate our chemical crude sweetening process. The 4H well has now flowed for all of 2025 at a gross average of about 1,000 barrels of oil per day, with the H2S concentration within our modelling expectations, demonstrating our ability to chemically treat the oil. The well's production has helped Gabon exceed its production guidance in 2025, while adding some additional production costs for chemicals. Regarding our exploration blocks in Gabon, the Nyosi Marine and the Gduma Marine, We are working in conjunction with our partners and the operator BW Energy on plans for the two blocks moving forward. A seismic ceremony to fulfil a work commitment on Iosi is being planned for acquisition in late 2025 or early 2026. Given the proximity of these blocks to prolific producing fields of Itami and Disafu, we are excited about the future possibility for these blocks. Turning to Egypt. In the fourth quarter of 2024, we contracted a ring and drilled two wells starting a drilling campaign that has carried into the first half of 2025. We have drilled and completed multiple wells in the first half of 2025 and are continuing to drill in Q3, including a South Gazlack Commitment well. We are very pleased with the operational performance and efficiency of the drilling program, which is helping to minimize costs through increased proficiency. We also continue to work over and re-complete wells in Egypt. Both the drilling programme and the workover programme in Egypt add solid production and are economic even in lower commodity price environments. I'm also very proud of our continued performance from a safety standpoint in Egypt. We did not have a lost time incident in 2024 and thus far in 2025 we have not had a lost time incident, which means that we have gone over 5 million man hours without an incident, which is a testament to our ongoing commitment to safety. In March 2024 we announced the finalisation of documents in Equatorial Guinea related to the Venus Block P plan of development. This summer we began a front-end engineering or feed study. The feed is complete and we are awaiting the publication of the final report. We have further engineering studies to complete in 2025 leading to an Economic Final Investment Decision or FID which will enable the development of Venus. We are very excited to proceed with our plans to develop, operate and begin producing from the discovery in Block P offshore Equatorial Guinea over the next few years. Turning to Canada, we successfully drilled and completed four wells in 2024. We also completed a well in the southern acreage in late 2024 that could help us better understand the acreage and upside in that area. While we remain optimistic about the drillable inventory in Canada, we decided to postpone our Canadian drilling program in 2025 due to the current commodity price environment. We will continue to monitor the performance of our wells and plan for future drilling opportunities. We continue to develop on or exceed our guidance operationally and our solid financial results continue to outpace analyst expectations. We remain focused on growing production reserves and value for our shareholders. I'd like to thank our hardworking team who continue to operate and execute our plans. We are well positioned to execute the projects in our enhanced portfolio and given our track record of success these past few years should instil confidence for our future. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Ron to share our financial results.