Equinor ASA

Thank you for standing by. My name is Cass and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Equinor analyst call second quarter. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, Press star one again. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Bård Glad-Petersen, Senior Vice President and Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and thank you to all of you for calling in. I'm here today together with our CFO, Torgrym Reitan. as usual he will present our second quarter results before we open up for a q a session as usual we will keep this within one hour in total so with that i hand it to you to rim to take us through the numbers okay thank you board and good morning and thank you for joining us i hope you are enjoying your summer

Before we get to our result, let me draw your attention to the photo of Johan Casberg, a truly impressive field. Johan Casberg has ramped up to plateau production in less than three months to 220,000 barrels per day. The oil is of high quality, and we are now realizing a premium around $6 per barrel compared to Brent. Today, we report solid financial results driven by strong operational performance, new fields on stream, and strong production growth from US onshore. We report adjusted operating income of $6.5 billion before tax. Our IFRS net income of $1.3 billion was impacted by an impairment on our US offshore wind. I will come back to this. Year-to-date, our cash flow from operations after tax has been strong at 9.3 billion. Our adjusted earnings per share was 64 cents. Energy markets continue to be impacted by geopolitical unrest, conflicts and uncertainty around tariffs and trade wars. We have seen significant volatility in oil markets. The European gas market is impacted by lower storage levels. inventories are now almost 20 percentage points lower than last year, and also well below the average of the last five years. Warm weather in Europe has, over the past weeks, driven additional gas to power demand. At the same time, we see storage filling in Asia also driving demand, and less LNG is now coming to Europe. In these times of uncertainty, we continue to focus on what we are able to control, our operations, and how we maintain resilience. We are committed to cost and capital discipline, and we report a flat cost development in the quarter, which is our goal for the year. Our CAPEX guidance stays firm, and our balance sheet remains robust through a lower price environment. Across the portfolio, we are making strategic progress. Johan Cosberg reached plateau quickly, as I mentioned. We took the final investment decision on Juhasen Sverdrup phase three and from south in the Troll area. All of this supports longevity on the NCS, maintaining production levels all the way to 2035. Recently, we announced two large long-term agreements for the supply of gas to UK and Germany. This demonstrates that large commercial players in Europe see the need for Norwegian gas for power production and for industry for decades to come. Internationally, we continue to optimize the portfolio. This quarter, we increased our U.S. onshore gas production by 50% based on the transactions we did last year, and we captured almost 80% higher gas prices. In Brazil, we have announced the divestment of the Peregrino field for a value of $3.5 billion, and we now focus our attention on the development of Bacalao and Raya. We expect first oil at Bakalao this autumn, and Raja, a domestic gas field, is expected to start production in 2028. Within our renewables business, we have secured a project financing package of 6 billion euros for the Baltic two and three offshore wind farms in Poland. This is at favourable terms, supporting double-digit equity returns. On Empire Wind 1, the stop work order was lifted in May and the project is back in execution. This is positive and I'm very glad to report that. However, we are making an impairment of $955 million in the quarter. The main driver for this is the changes in regulations for future offshore wind projects in the US. Part of the impairment is related to the undeveloped phase two of Empire Wind. However, the largest portion is related to the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal. The development of the terminal assumed future projects would use it. This is now unlikely with the current framework conditions. And this new reality is reflected in the updated book value for Empire Wind 1 and the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal. The impairment also includes the effect of higher tariffs on steel and a more limited amount related to the stop work order. The development we have seen leads to lower lifecycle returns on Empire Wind, But the best way to protect value for our shareholders in the current situation was clearly to move forward with the project. And on a portfolio basis, our offshore wind projects in operations and execution still deliver double-digit equity returns. Then to capital distribution. For the quarter, the board approved an ordinary cash dividend of 37 cents per share and a third tranche of share buyback of up to 1.265 billion, including the state's share. In total, we expect to deliver around $9 billion in capital distribution for the year, in line with what we said at the CMU. So let's dive into our results. Safety remains our top priority. We again deliver our best safety results with a serious incident frequency of 0.27 and a personal injury rate of 2.2. We continue to learn from incidents and work hard towards improvements. In the second quarter, we produced 2,096,000 barrels per day, up more than 2% from last year. We are on track to deliver 4% production growth for the year. On the NCS, our liquids production is up 4%, driven by the ramp-up of Johan Casper and starting Halten East. And also high regularity on Johan Sverdrup and other fields had a significant impact. NCS production was impacted by planned maintenance and the shutdown of Hammerfest LNG. Our increased US onshore gas production is around double the production loss from divesting Nigeria and Azerbaijan, which impacted our international production. We produced 1.1 terawatt hours this quarter. Renewable production increased by 26%, mainly driven by the ramp-up of Dogebank A in the UK. Now over to our financial results. Liquids prices were lower than the same quarter last year, while gas prices were higher in Europe and the US. This has impacted our results across segments. Adjusted operating income in EMP Norway totaled $5.7 billion before tax and $1.2 billion after tax. Our EMP international business delivered higher production from Brazil and new wells in Argentina and Angola. Peregrino and assets under our UK IGV are classified as held for sale. This represents around $10 billion, and we do not report depreciation for these assets any longer. Our E&P US results were driven by high onshore gas production, Also, there was a one-off related to an increased cost estimate in the abandonment obligations for Titan. M&P delivered solid gas trading, but results were below the guided range impacted by the Hammerfest LNG maintenance and weaker crude trading. Our renewables results reflects higher project activity, but also significantly lower business development and early phase costs. This quarter, cash flow from operations was $9.2 billion. Total taxes paid was $7.2 billion, driven by two NCS tax installments totaling around $6.8 billion. For the second half of this year, the NCS tax payments are expected to be 100 billion kroner. These taxes will be paid across five equal instalments from August through December. This reflects a change from previously paying six tax instalments to now paying 10 annual tax instalments in Norway. This quarter, we distributed $1.3 billion to our shareholders. Organic capex was $3.4 billion, and our net cash flow was negative $2.6 billion. We have a solid financial position with around $24 billion in cash and cash equivalents. or net debt to capital employed ratio increased to 15.2% this quarter. This reflects the state's share of the buyback from last year, booked as finance debt, impacting the net debt ratio by around 8 percentage points, as we said last quarter. The cash flow impact of this will be next quarter. At current forward prices, we expect the net ratio to remain around current level, around current levels towards the end of the year. Finally, to our guidance. We maintain the guidance we communicated at our CMU in February. Our progress is in line with those ambitions, both in terms of production growth and investments, as well as capital distribution. So now back to you, Bård, and then I look forward to the Q&A session. So please, Bård.

Thank you, Torgrim. I remind you all that if you want to sign up to ask a question, you can press star one on your phone. We have a good list already, and the first one on my list is Biraj Burkartaria from RBC. So please, Biraj, go ahead with your question.

Thank you for taking my questions. The first one is just on the Empire Wind project. impairment and the impairment testing. The 3% discount rate, I think, is probably the lowest I've seen and looks a bit odd relative to sort of 10 or 30-year treasuries. So could you just give me some rationale as to why you use that number? And then the second one is on working capital. We had another release this quarter. You talked about the lower volatility in trading. I'm trying to understand whether You know, is this a more structural level of working capital that we should be at relative to the last few years? Because I guess low volatility means less capital for trading. You know, what should we expect going forwards? Thank you.

Okay, thanks, Biraj. So first on Empire Wind. Yeah. So the 3% discount rate we use, just want to be clear on a couple of things. That is an unlevered discount rate, and it is a real discount rate after tax as such. So I think that's two very important parameters going into that. Oil and gas investments, the discount rate we use for them is 5.5 percentage points. So there's a difference here, 5.5 and 3% between those two projects. What justifies a lower discount rate within these projects is actually that the revenue profile is fixed and it's fixed for 25 years as such. So there is a lot of reasoning and analysis behind all the discount rates we are using. So these should be consistent and applied consistently across the portfolio that we use. Your second question, Biraj, was related to working capital movements. So working capital is now $5 billion and is a reduction of 550 million as far as I remember. It is actually not driven by the trading activities. It is driven by movements in the upstream segments as such. And on your question whether this is sort of a normal level, you know, it has been stable. The working capital within the trading environment has remained stable for the time being. But on your point on sort of the volatility, you know, There is a lot of volatility. The point is that the volatility is different than sort of the traditional volatility. The volatility is driven by political decisions, which makes it harder for traders to trade around. So there is less risk-taking in the trading environment currently, and this is going across the whole trading environment as such. And that's sort of the nature of what's happening in the world for the time being. So thanks, Biraj.

Thank you. Thank you, Biraj. Next one on my list is Irene Himona from Bernstein. So please go ahead, Irene. Your line is open.

Thank you for taking my questions. My first one on the new tax system in Norway, just to clarify, I think you said that all of the 10 installments for 2025 are payable over the five months, August to December. Is that correct? And then how will it be spread into 2026? My second question on gearing at 15%. So you've now reached the low end of your through the cycle range of 15 to 30. I just wonder with brand at less than 70%, And this higher but unstructured volatility is perhaps 15% to 20%, preferable to 15% to 30% when the board sets investor distributions. Thank you.

Okay, thanks Irene. So first on the structure of the tax payments. So the tax payment will be evenly distributed over the years. So in the second half of this year there will be five installments and then there will be five installments in the first half next year. So there are tax payments in all months except from July and January. So it's just a way of distributing it even more evenly throughout the year than the six. So this is, you know, a minor adjustments to the payment schedule. And we'll see to that, we guide you for every quarter coming how many installments you should expect for the next quarter and all of that so so the reason why bring it up is sort of it it if you want to update your cash flow models you know please do and investor relation is happy to to provide even more details to this as as necessary Your second question around gearing 15%. So the increase of 8 percentage points from last quarter is driven by sort of the annual payments to the state regarding share buyback programs. So 15%, we expect that to be... around that level towards the end of the year. So it is very important for us to run with a conservative balance sheet and a robust financial position, and that is going to be the case going forward as well. We have no intention to sort of change the range, the range is not a target in itself it's something that is broadly seen as a consistent with or rating ambitions so there is no sort of mathematical link here as such when it comes to sort of the link to share buyback and i think you mentioned that i mean i mean share buyback is an important part of a capital distribution structure we have not linked or capital distribution to in cash flow from operations or free cash flow or what have you. But we are committed to remain competitive using those metrics when we compare ourselves to pairs going forward. Meaning that there will be times where the balance sheet will strengthen and there are times when the balance sheet will be weakened. So there's not sort of a mathematical relationship here, and these boundaries are not seen as absolute in any way. We want to run with a very strong balance sheet and a strong cash position, you know, as you know that we have.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Irene. Next on my list is Alejandro Vigil from Santander Bank. Alex, please, your mic is open.

Yes, thank you for taking my questions. The first one is about Brazil. Just trying to understand the timing of the Peregrino divestment and also the Bacalao project, the expectations of production next year. Trying to understand if the Peregrino divestment is going to be offset by Bacalao volumes next year. And the second question is about the... U.S. onshore gas business that has been a clear focus of your strategy recently. If you see more opportunities of growth there through acquisitions and also if you are planning some investments in the downstream, in the gas file project, for example, trying to leverage the AI boom in the U.S. Thank you.

Okay, thanks, Alejandro. So, yeah, so the divestment of Peregrino is, you know, it is signed. It is not closed yet, so we expect to close the deal towards the end of the year. We are, you know, very satisfied with the price that we achieved, and it's a value-creative research. So, and the reasoning behind... doing that now is to you know concentrate on the new developments bacalao and raya and quite a few people will be moved from the peregrine organization into a new organization too so this is from a portfolio high grading point of view and then peregrino has been through a long life already we have invested in to solidify it and make it high quality and it was a good time to to realize that value currently. Brazil remains a very, very important and key country for us going forward, and we will keep sort of investing. And that brings me over to Bacalao. So Bacalao is progressing well. Commissioning is ongoing on the remaining systems. We have two drilling rigs, drilling wells working, and we have two installation vessels working on subsea. So this is going according to plan, and we will have quite a handful of wells producing by year end on Bacalao. We assume production contribution in the second half from Bacalao. There will be a lot of drilling activities going forward on Bacalao and it will be a significant contributor to our international production. On US onshore gas, yes, so around a year ago or nine months ago, we made two acquisitions from EQT into the Marcellus Play, increasing our exposure quite a bit into that assets. that adds close to 100 000 barrels of day with gas production under the operatorship of expand since then gas prices has increased significantly and that is now contributing very well to to the cash flow and earnings of the company A little bit of color to why we do that. We do believe in natural gas in the long term. We see it as a very important part of energy transition and a significant part of the electrification of the world that is ongoing. And you're absolutely right. The location of Marcellus gas in the northeast fits well with sort of a big drive in the u.s to focus on data centers and build competitiveness related to ai and energy is seen as the big facilitator for competitiveness of the US economy over the next years. So we are well positioned with what we have. And on your question on whether we could be interested in sort of seeing more opportunities and into gas, fire, power plants, you know, it's... It is no concrete plans, but we do see that there is a stronger and stronger link between gas markets and power markets going forward. So we are watching that space naturally. All right. Thanks, Alejandro.

Thank you.

Thank you. Next one is from Redburn, Peter Lowe. Peter, please, your line is open.

Hi, thanks. The first was just on unit OPEX costs in Norway. It looks like they've increased by around 10% year over year. I think part of that is just FX, but I'm not sure that explains all of it. I was just wondering what else was going on there. Does it relate to the cost profile of some of the projects that are ramping up? The second question was just is there any noticeable maintenance or turnarounds expected in the third quarter that you're able to flag? Thanks.

Okay, thanks, Peter. So, when it comes to unit cost for NCS, unit production cost, we see that as a stable quarter on quarter. A broader topic is, and that's a level of $6.7 per barrel. You know, but it's sort of a good opportunity to broaden the discussion on cost. We said earlier this year that we aim this year to keep costs flat and fighting inflation and neutralizing the impact on inflation across the portfolio. So that is, we really start to seeing the impact of that and there's a lot of initiatives and actions and momentum across the portfolio within operating and maintenance, strong push on efficiency. we have significantly reduced early phase and business development costs, and also staff costs are coming down, and we hardly do external recruitments any longer as such. So this is, and you see it in the number, you see that on a quarter to quarter basis, we have been able to keep that flat, even if we are growing production. This will also be reflected in the unit production cost. When it comes to turnaround, maybe one thing to mention is Hammerfest LNG, which has been in a turnaround situation in the second quarter. That is still in maintenance, but we actually expect it to come back by the end of july and then being back in production in in august and and september um so other than that um when it comes to to to the coming quarters uh we see um let's see here is it 45 around 45 000 battles per day in in in in turnaround impact in the third quarter and a lower in the fourth quarter, maybe 14 to 15,000 barrels per day as such. So the third quarter in total is on par with the second quarter as such. Yeah. Thanks, Peter.

Thank you. Thank you, Peter. We are then turning to Henri Patricot from UBS. So, Henri, please ask your question.

Yes, thank you, everyone. Two questions, please. The first one, coming back to the Perugino disposal and the proceeds of close to $3 billion. How should we think about these? Is it mostly about strengthening the balance sheet or potentially opens up the potential for some acquisitions, maybe to replace Perugino volumes in international E&P or elsewhere? And then secondly, on the two deals that you mentioned, Aubrey, in the UK and Germany on natural gas sales, could you go through the benefits for Equinor of signing these long-term contracts and maybe also the rationale for sticking to spot prices rather than maybe find another pricing mechanism that could reduce your exposure to spot prices in a few years when we could see potentially low prices as the market is diversified.

Yeah, okay. Thanks, Henry. So first on Peregrino, so the headline value of the deal is at $3.5 billion. The effective date was 1st of January 2024, which is important to note. So since then, there will be a pro and contra settlement, you know, in sort of ultimately when we close this deal towards the end of the year. So the proceeds that we will receive is less than three and a half, depending on the prices is a little bit, but it is actually quite a bit of cash that sort of... has been generated over the last two years that will need to be taken away from the headline number. On your question whether this opens up for other acquisitions, well, we do acquisitions and we do divestments more driven by the strategic reasoning and the value creation opportunities behind it. And over the last years, we have done quite a few, maybe worth mentioning a few. We have divested out of Nigeria and Azerbaijan, bringing in value. We have made acquisitions into US onshore. We have the Pellegrino divestments. And then we are combining our portfolios in the UK with Shell and creating the largest operator in the UK as such. So it has been quite an active couple of years within M&A. And you can rest assured that we will have a focus on a strong balance sheet no matter what we do on the M&A front. Then on gas contracts, I think it's important for me to leave you with a – well, first of all, I mean, those contracts really demonstrate the attractiveness of Norwegian gas to EU. This is clearly driven by security of supply for long-term use. So we have signed three long-term contracts over the last one and a half years. That is actually 20% of our natural gas position on the NCS. And it actually covers 6% of the EU imports. And then your question is, so how does this work? Well, they are priced based on spot prices in general. They also have... free sourcing associated with it so we don't need to source them with our own gas we can buy gas in the market if we find that that suitable so it sort of it maintains full we have full flexibility in in in in our gas production system Also, it doesn't limit us in any way as such. It's just a contract that adds value. It is important for me that you, as investors, have exposure to the European gas market when you buy the Equinor share. and we will continue to swap everything to an exposure equal to 70% day ahead and 30% month ahead in the portfolio, meaning that when you see volatility in the gas markets in Europe, you can rest assured that we will be able to capitalize on it, and it will find its way to our earnings. Thanks, Henri.

Thank you. The next one on my list is Theodor Sve Nilsen from Sparbank and Markets. Theodor, please, the line is open.

Good afternoon, and thanks for taking my questions. First question that is on Visting. Could you please provide an update on Visting, and also maybe how Visting's role will be in your ambition of keeping NCS production flat from 2020 to 2035? Second question, just want to go back to the 3% discount rate used for impairment testing for Empire. I definitely understand there's a difference between the rate you use for impairment testing and the rate you use for investment decisions. Still, I just wanted to explain the relation between the 3% you use for impairment testing and the 4% to 8% real return that you indicate as ambition for renewal projects.

Okay, thanks, Theodor. So, visiting is, you know, a promising discovery in the very north, in the Barents Sea, as some of you would know. And we are actively working that to bring it forward to an investment decision. And the investment decision might come next year, might come later, so we'll see. We do believe that the project absolutely have the characteristics to become a good development for Equinor in the future. When it will ultimately be sanctioned and put in production, we will have to come back to of course when we know more about that. When it comes to the 2035 ambition and keeping NCS flat, The main driver behind that is projects that we have concrete and specific plans for. We have more than 200 IOR projects that are currently being matured to deliver into that, and also we have more than 200 prospects that we are maturing to get into that portfolio. This is sort of a risk portfolio, so it's very hard to say whether this thing is in or out, but it's a natural part that we take that into the portfolio from a risk perspective towards 2035. When I'm touching that point, I am an old man and I remember in the IPO in 2001, that concern with investors was, you know, but NCS is declining, you know, why is this attractive? And here we are after 25 years producing more than in 2001. and actually looking at the production in 2035 on the same level. It's a remarkable story of a basin that has kept giving. I used the opportunity for sales pitch here, Theodor, but anyway, it is an important part of the portfolio. on the 3% discount rate versus what we do for investment decisions. So the discount rate that we use for these purposes is meant to mirror our cost of capital, a relevant cost of capital for these investments. For investment decisions, we clearly are not satisfied with cost of capital. We need a significant premium to that. And for renewables projects, we want to see double-digit returns on the money that we invest, the equity that we invest. So these are not consistent. The 428, we have abandoned. We don't use that anymore, Theodore. So we use more than 10% of the money that we invest.

Thank you, Theodor. Next one is Paul Redman from BNP Paribas Exxon. Paul, your line is open.

Yeah, thank you very much for your time. I guess my first question is just, I think you said in the prelim remarks that the view is that debt would remain flat at current levels or the gearing would remain flat at current levels. I just wanted to ask what's included in that assumption? Price? Is there a view on working capital included? How much Peregrino inflows do you expect? So kind of just some of the steps that are taken to get to that assumption. And then a second question on CapEx. I think for your $13 billion guidance for the year, you're using an $11 NOP USD rate. What's the impact if that goes down to 10, that FX rate impact? Thank you.

Okay, thanks, Paul. So when it comes to net debt towards the year end, so around current levels, I mean, we all know that prices can fluctuate. So in that statement, it's sort of based on where the prices are currently, forward prices as such. And working capital assumptions in that is sort of fairly stable working capital assumptions. And Peregrino is, the closing of Peregrino is, there are two separate transactions there. and, you know, we assume at least one of them to be in this side of new year, and the other one is a little bit more uncertain. So that's why we say around, because, I mean, it's... There are so many moving parts here, but I just want to give you some sort of guidance on that. The step-up during this year is happening in the second quarter, and after the second quarter, it is a stable development. um then on sort of your capex um yeah so 13 billion dollar we we we maintain that guidance and we have used the currency assumption of 11 as you say so so there is a certain part of investments that is in norwegian kroner So, you know, hard to give an exact number, but around 30-ish percentage points, I would say, is exposed to Norwegian kroner. So, with a stronger Norwegian kroner, you know, It has sort of a pressure into the number, but we work very hard to manage all of this, and with all the efforts going on currently in the portfolio, we have decided to maintain the guidance.

Thank you, Paul. Let's move on to Michele Della Vigna from Goldman Sachs. Michele, please, we are ready for your question.

Thank you very much. Thank you for your time, Thorgrim. Two questions, if I may. I wanted to refer back to your comment on maintaining a competitive cash return to shareholders and whether perhaps you could elaborate a bit more on what metrics you are mostly looking at. If I look at your peers, most of them are using an operating cash flow payout. So, I wonder if that would be something that you're referring to. And then secondly, thinking about some of the opportunities opening up globally, there is a very public process led by GALP on Namibia, which is one of the interesting new bases that are opening up. I was wondering if you're actively participating in that one. Thank you.

Okay, thanks, Michele. So, capital distribution to be competitive. So, of course, we know very well what our peers are using and all of that. So, we want to remain competitive in that setting. I can give you maybe a couple of data points. You know, the cash dividend is currently at 37 cents per share. We have grown that by 2 cents per year. We want to keep growing that cash dividend also in the future. You should see that part of capital distribution as bankable. This will be something that we are extremely committed to keep on delivering through the cycles. Then we will use on top of that share buyback to see to that the total package is competitive. And we will also use share buyback to sort of, you know, we had an extreme situation in 2022 with very, very high prices, and we use share buyback to sort of distribute that part of the earnings in a way. We want to use share buyback as that tool. We don't have a formula, and I don't intend to introduce a formula. uh we know what the others are doing and and and we want to put forward a share buyback program that keeps us competitive versus peers when you measure us against you know those type of metrics i'm not talking about yield i'm talking about those type of metrics others are using When that is said, from time to time, we are willing to use the balance sheet if we find that appropriate, and all this time, we find it appropriate to strengthen the balance sheet as such. Thanks, Michele. Then you had a second one that was on Namibia. Clearly, we know what's going on. And I won't comment on, you know, specifics on Namibia, but what I would like to say is that, you know, what we have done over the last few years is focusing your upstream EMP portfolio internationally, and that has served us well. And clearly deepening into areas where we are is something that, you know, typically has priority.

Thank you. Next one on my list is Morgan Stanley, Martin Ratz. Martin, please go ahead.

Yeah, a lot of good questions have already been asked, but the answer, I just wanted to sort of follow up on what you just replied to Michele. As in this point about being competitive compared to us, it's really sort of quite crucial and important. As you can imagine, we're all very interested in what the buyback will be in 2026. But if the buyback is going to be competitive, then it sort of implies that the CapEx also has to be competitive in the sense that in an overall financial framework, you can only be sort of competitive in one area if you do something similar in another area too. And relative to CFFO, Equinor's CapEx is quite high. The sort of CapEx percentage of CFFO is much higher than many of the other European peers. I understand that you're saying, well, the distribution should also be competitive, but how can the distributions be competitive if the capex is at a much higher percentage of CFFO? How are we ending up in a competitive space then? And secondly, the other point I wanted to ask about the about the buyback is somewhat of a mechanical point. But would you envision to continue to simply communicate to the market what the buyback is for the following year at the full year results? Or could you also move to more of a sort of quarterly sort of come as it go type guidance? I can imagine that looking into 2026, it might be quite hard to make up your mind on how the entire year is going to pan out already, like right at the start. I'm hoping you could say a few things about these two things.

Okay, thanks, Martin. So, on the first one, actually, a very good question, and I'm very glad you asked it, because there's something to comment around that, because the Norwegian tax system creates a disturbance when you compare us to others. CAPEX is a pre-tax number. Cash-out from operation is an after-tax number. And when you look at our CAPEX profile, a significant part of that is sort of in the Norwegian continental shelf, with 78% tax deduction as we spend. So as you would understand, after tax cash flow to CAPEX, is significantly lower. And if you compare that number to our peers, you probably will get to another conclusion as such. And then that number needs to be prepared on an equal basis, you know, with the cash on operations post-tech. There's a lot of details, you know, in this. And I'm clearly more than happy to follow up with you afterwards, Martin, through investor relations and all of that. But I'm very glad you asked that because it's such an important driver. Why? behind why we might look different than the others, while we are actually more similar than you should believe. Okay. Then on your second question, on buyback, you know, that is not a topic for discussion today. If there will be any changes to this, I mean, we will typically do that on a capital markets day or something like that. But, you know, it's something that we, you know, has nothing to say about currently, and then if there is something new to it, it will have to come at such an event. Thanks, Martin.

Thank you. Next one is Jon Olaysen from ABG Sundal Collier. Jon, please go ahead.

Good morning, everybody. I'm actually a gruff loon right now, but a couple of questions very quickly. What is your latest view of the timing of when the US federal will come off plateau? And secondly, you talked about cost inflation and the fighting cost inflation. Do you still see the same cost inflation? Or has cost inflation come down? Is cost inflation about coming down a little bit? And maybe are there differences between Norway and outside of Norway when it comes to cost inflation? I will assume that you see maybe some deflation onshore in the US. So if you could comment a little bit on these things, it would be great.

Perfect, perfect, John. So first on Johan Sverdrup. This quarter, we had a very high regularity on Johannesburg of actually 99%. There's a great job done by the organization to keep it that way. Production this year in 2025, we say that that's pretty close to the production levels we saw in in 2023, 2024, maybe around 720,000 barrels per day. So there are a couple of things I really would like to underline here that is going very well. One is sort of the work related to water management. And as you would understand, as you produce these wells, there will be sort of water produced, and our ability to manage water as sort of that increases is extremely important. And, you know, this is a core... capability that we have done for 40 years. That is going well. We are also now drilling or retrofitting multilaterals into wells we have drilled earlier. Multilaterals, several wells out of one well bore. that is also producing well. And then lastly, we made a final investment decision on Johan's further phase three earlier this year. And all of these, All of these elements have enabled us to increase our assumptions when it comes to recovery rates from 65% to 75%. It's going well with Johan Sverdrup. The phase two of Johan Sverdrup was designed to bring forward volumes at a very much higher level, but of course coming off plateau earlier as such. So the field will come off plateau and I don't have a number for you, but I just want to leave with you that this has a high attention and we have our very best people working on these topics and we will give you an update later on that. When it comes to cost inflation, we see that we continue to be able to take out efficiency in the organization and in the portfolio. It comes from scale in our operations. We can put on new developments without increasing the organization and with limited cost. We are prioritizing very hard. We have a lot of opportunities, but prioritizing very hard and taking out sort of efficiency across the more administrative or structural part of the company. So that sort of internal thing is going well. You know, looking outside and inflation, you know, there is still a tight market within the oil and gas sector. Still a heated market, but maybe a couple of points. We see that, you know, within drilling and well, high-end floater market has softened a bit. We also see that within engineering and construction, it is tight in Norway currently due to the tax package, and you know that very well, Jon, but that will drop off. So we actually see that sort of the pressure there will come off in the next maybe 12 months. And also a little bit coming off in sort of the high-end floater market in Norway. When it comes to the yards and Asian yards, we see that is busy. We do think that will continue. There's a lot of FPSOs being built. And that leads me to subsea and marine, which sort of we do think will remain tight because FPSO going forward, they always have a large subsea scope as such. So, you know, to summarize, I think in Norway, there might be a little bit of easing when sort of all this activity related to the tax package is coming off. Apart from that, it's a fairly tight market. So thank you very much.

Thank you, Jon. Time is moving and I still have a few on the list, so I ask that you limit yourself to one question and we'll try to cover as many as possible. Next is Kim Fustier from HSBC. Kim, please go ahead.

Hi, thank you for taking my question, singular I guess. I wanted to ask about operations and just that ramp up on your CASCO was remarkably fast. I mean, was that ramp up in line with your plan and your expectations or was it in fact better than expectations? And what did you do in terms of preparation or anything that made maybe this ramp up faster than others we've seen before? Thank you.

Okay, thanks, Kim. Yeah, thank you for the question. Yeah, you know, it is, Johan Casberg is, you know, a mega greenfield development, and the fact that we were able to bring it on plateau in less than three months is just remarkable. We had assumed in our plans that we should be able to go quickly, but we actually ended up doing it even quicker than we had planned to. So Johan Katzberg is at 220,000 barrels per day at Plateau production. and it's going to be a significant contribution to the production growth this year and have a full impact in the second half of this year into the 4% production growth that we have put forward. So a good installation of the ship and assets on the field.

Thank you. Moving on to Nash Kuai in Barclays. Nash, please go ahead.

Hey, good morning and good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. Just a follow-up on the cost inflation side. I think one of your Norwegian peers mentioned about cap-ass cost inflation. And it's interesting, Topram, earlier you mentioned about 30% of your 25 cap-ass is exposed to Norwegian crown. just wonder how should you think about 2026 impact and you mentioned that you still want to keep the capex guidance do you have to give up any opportunities thank you

Thanks, Nash. Managing currency exposure is a natural part of what we do. We define ourselves as a dollar company. Revenues are in dollars, accounts are in dollars, investments largely in dollars, costs also in dollars. And you should think about us as a dollar company as such. And then we'll have to manage fluctuations in other currencies like Norwegian kroner. and particularly Norwegian kroner and so on. Clearly, we have the intention to be able to tighten up the portfolio further so we can actually stay within our current guiding, even if there will be a little bit Norwegian kroner exposure in there. That's the plan.

Thank you. Then it's Matt Lofting from JP Morgan. Matt, please go ahead.

Yeah, thanks for taking the question. Most of mine have been asked, but I'll just ask you, Torgrim, on MMP. I think you made some comments earlier around the challenges in the recent environment around the trading businesses less apt to take risk in the second quarter. How do you see the environment going forward from here, thinking about the second half of the year? Do you expect or sort of see, as we see today, any changes around that and or is the business in a position where if it doesn't change that the setup and the exposures can be better adapted to work around it? Thank you.

Okay, no thanks, Matt. Yeah, it's... That is a good question. There is still a lot of value to be had in the trading environment, even if the risk is different. I can give you a couple of examples. With gas trading, we see geographical arbitrage opportunities that is not linked to political risk in any way. For instance, with Russian gas now getting out of the market, we see higher prices in the East than in the West, and we have access to all these markets through our pipeline systems and contracts and all of that so currently we are actually selling more gas towards the east than the west and taking out arbitrage opportunities and that and you'll see that in mmp results you saw that in the second quarter Also, you know, based on your portfolio of oil qualities and shipping fleets and contracts enables you to take out value of trading. So this is sort of a little bit back to basic when it comes to trading and sort of asset-backed trading and physical trading and all of that. That will still continue. However, within sort of the more... trades that are exposed to geopolitical changes and all of that traders are struggling for the time being and and and there's a little bit of risk off on that part of the portfolio something that we see across the whole trading community as such still still quite a bit of value to be had but but but but The volatility is different than it used to be, and it's harder for traders to create value out of it.

Thank you, Torgrim. There was a lot of questions today, but we have now passed the hour, and I want to be respectful for everybody's time. We didn't manage to get fully through the list, but of course, the investor relations team remain available for calls during today and later in the week to follow up. So then we can conclude the call, and I thank you all for calling in and for asking your questions. Have a good rest of the day.