Var Energi Asa U/Adr

Hi, everyone, and welcome to Vore Energy's third quarter presentation of 2024. Today's call is being recorded. For the first part of this call, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, there'll be a question and answer session. To ask a question, please press five star on your telephone keypad. I would like to introduce Head of Investor Relations, Ida Marie Fjellheim. Ida, you may now begin.

Thank you and good morning everyone. A warm welcome to Voronashi's third quarter 2024 results. The presentation today will be given by our CEO Nick Walker and our CFO Stefano Piatti. Nick and Stefano will present the results and afterwards we will open up for Q&A. I will now give the word to Nick.

Thank you Ida and good morning to you all and a warm welcome to our third quarter 2024 results presentation. As we announced last week, Stefano Piatti is stepping down as CFO effective 1st of December to pursue a new opportunity within E&I. I would like to take this opportunity to recognize Stefano for his tremendous contribution to the growth of Vore Energy since its inception five years ago. He's played a leading role in steering the company through three defining acquisitions, delivering the third biggest ever IPO in Norway and building Vore Energy into the third largest Norwegian oil and gas company. But after five years in the role, it's quite natural for Stefano to move on to something new and bigger. On a personal note, he'll be missed and we wish him every success in the future. I'm also excited to welcome Carlos Santapadre as the new CFO and a member of 4 Energy's executive team. His extensive experience and proven track record will be invaluable as we continue to drive growth and value creation. And we'll be creating opportunities for Carlo to meet you all during the coming months. And so now onto our Q3 results. I'm really pleased to report another quarter of solid delivery with resilient operational and financial results in line with guidance. And the company is poised for significant production growth over the next three quarters. As a result, we continue to provide attractive and predictable dividend distributions. So now let us look at the highlights for the quarter. we delivered operational performance in line with expectations, with production of 281,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day in the first nine months, which is in line with expectations for the period. This is driven by continued strong operational performance on our operated assets. You'll see that production in the third quarter was impacted by a higher level of planned maintenance shutdowns. These have now successfully been completed and everything is now back producing normally. On the back of this continued solid operational performance, we continue to deliver strong financial results. You can see CFFO post tax in the quarter of $1.3 billion. Our gas sales strategy continues to realize above market prices. And we're showing strong cost discipline, lowering capital spend and production cost guidance for the year as we enter a more volatile price environment. Envol Energy is one of the fastest growing EMPs and we're on track to deliver on our 2025 growth targets and unlock future value. Over the next three quarters, we will add around 150,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day of new production. At Johan Casberg, the FPSO is now successfully anchored at the field location and the project is on track to start up towards the end of this year. And as we announced in August, the Boulder X project target startup is moved to Q2 2025. And we're on track to meet this revised schedule. And our exploration strategy continues to deliver results with two discoveries in the quarter, making us the most successful explorer in Norway so far this year. And lastly, we continue to deliver attractive and predictable shareholder distributions. We confirm a dividend for the third quarter of 11 US cents per share in line with guidance, which is to be distributed in November. And we're providing Q4 2024 dividend guidance of $270 million, the same as for Q3, and reconfirming our full year dividend distribution guidance of approximately 30% of CFFO after tax. Now stepping into some of the detail. We're one of the fastest growing EMPs, the third largest oil and gas producer in Norway, and the second largest exporter of gas from Norway to Europe. Our large diversified portfolio in all areas of the NCS, with interest in around 50% of all producing fields and associated infrastructure, provides lots of optionality and growth opportunities, which we're working to move forward at pace. We completed the NetTune Energy Norga transaction in January, Already, we fully integrated the business into Vore Energy. And we're making great progress on delivering on the targeted synergies from the transaction of approximately $500 million post-tax over time, with over 50% of this target already on track for delivery. And turning now to production. The first nine months of the year came in at 281,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, which is in line with expectations for the period. Production in the third quarter, as you can see, was 256,000 barrels per day and is down compared to the second quarter due to planned maintenance activities at Asgard, Njord and the Sleipnir areas and associated fields. These maintenance shutdowns are all now complete and everything is back online and producing as normal. We also saw strong production efficiency from our operated assets, as you can see, averaging 92% year to date. And looking forward to the fourth quarter, the planned shutdowns are all behind us and we expect Johan Casberg will start up towards the end of the year. And given where we're at, we have narrowed the guidance range for the full year 2024 to between 280 to 290,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, with the upside dependent upon the timing of the start-up of Johan Casberg. So we had a good performance year to date and we're poised for significant production growth starting with Johan Casberg before the end of the year. Looking now at our longer term growth outlook, we're set for significant production growth as you can see from today's level of around 300,000 barrels per day. Five projects in development with the main ones being Boulder X, Johan Casberg and Holton East. will add around 150,000 barrels per day of new production over the next three quarters. This means we'll grow to around 400,000 barrels a day by the end of 2025, which we're firmly on track to deliver. And with our quality portfolio that has significant upside, we can then organically sustain production at 350 to 400,000 barrels per day towards 2030. We will achieve this through firstly maximising recovery and infill drilling and high quality assets, adding around 45,000 barrels per day over the period. Secondly, by moving forward at pace our portfolio of over 20 early phase projects towards sanction and also drilling out our exciting near field and high impact exploration programme. This will deliver sustainable production towards 2030. Responsible operations are key to our license to operate, and our ambition is to be the safest operator. I think overall, we've good safety and environmental trend, which is generally getting better. However, we continue to have too many low level incidents, which is a strong focus in the organization. In the third quarter, we had a good out with zero material safety or environmental incidents. This performance straight strong focus every day. And our belief is that it's important to position the company for the energy transition to maintain relevance and investability long term. And we're doing just that and being recognized for it. We continue to make good progress on emissions reduction. And today we're in the top quartile of the industry performance. And we have a clear path to over 50% operational emissions reduction from our portfolio by 2030. with the main lever of this being further electrification of our assets, which we're making progress on. Already around 30% of our net production is produced with power from shore, and we're involved in five electrification projects. So by 2030, our aim is that around 70% of our production will be electrified. And it is my ambition to be net zero in operations by 2030, which we will achieve by direct investment in offset projects. which comes at relatively low cost, and we'll expand on how we're going to do this soon. And as you can see, our ESG ratings are listed here, which are industry leading. This is leveraging to how the company is perceived. And now on production costs, we beat guidance with $12.6 per barrel in the first nine months of 2024, compared to our full year guidance of $13.5 to $14.5 per barrel. We're currently running about one and a half dollars per barrel below the 2023 levels, where two factors are the main contributors. One is the lower cost of the Neptune assets, which is bringing the overall company cost down as expected. And the rest is the increase in production compared to 2023 levels. Also, our improvement initiatives are delivering results. So as a result, we're lowering our full year 2024 production cost guidance to below $13 per barrel. And looking forward, I think we have a good trend. Our target is to reduce unit OPEX to around $10 per barrel by the end of 2025. And with the main levers of this being, firstly, the new projects coming on stream, which have average OPEX around $4 a barrel. Secondly, high grading the portfolio, which we've taken some actions on. And thirdly, delivering cost synergies and improvements, which we're also making progress on. So now moving on to how we're going to deliver long-term growth and value creation. I continue to use this slide, which shows what an amazing portfolio Vore Energy has with lots of optionality and growth opportunities. Our two pre-reserves, as you can see, stand at 1.2 billion barrels. We have seven projects in development. This underpins our growth trajectory to around 400,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day by the end of 2025. But as a company, we're much more than that. Our contingent resources, as you can see, are 750 million barrels, where we've already identified over 20 early phase projects to turn approximately 60% of this into value. And you should expect to see up to eight new project sanctions coming by the end of 2025, with the first being the sanction of Boulder Phase 5, which we announced today. And during the next year, the more significant project sanctions being Framseur, a Yoa area development, and Boulder Phase 6. And there are others. We also have an exciting exploration portfolio of over 1 billion barrels of NEC risk resources, where we will drill around 60 wells over the next four years. And this program, as we'll see later, is already adding value. But doing all this together, we have over 3 billion barrels of resource potential in the portfolio. And it is that which will organically sustain our production long-term. It's just down to us to deliver what is in our hands. And so now looking at our quality project portfolio, which underpins our growth, we have seven remaining projects in execution, which unlock more than 400 million barrels of net reserves. We are well into execution with four of the seven projects, more than 80% complete. i would say the risks are mostly behind us this project portfolio as you can see creates significant value with break-evens of around 35 dollars a barrel and rates of return over 25 percent i'm turning now to our three largest projects which together add around 150 000 barrels per day of new production over the next three quarters firstly boulder x This project unlocks gross 2p reserves around 150 million barrels with peak production of 80,000 barrels per day. And as you can see, low operating costs of around $5 a barrel. As we communicated in August, the target production startup has been moved to the second quarter 2025. Revised plan has limited impact on the company's 2024 production and no material impact on guided capital costs. And the status of the project is all development wells have been drilled and completed and all subsea facilities are installed. And all that remains is to moor and connect up the Jotun FPSO. And the FPSO is nearing completion and the additional time will allow us to fully complete the vessel inshore before installing in the spring next year, which will enable a fast and efficient startup. For the first time, I see contingency in the schedule. The ozone FPSO is also a key enabler to unlock over 100 million barrels of additional contingent resources in the Boulder area. Today, we've announced the sanction of the Boulder Phase 5 project. This involves the drilling of up to six production wells to utilize the remaining subsea template well slots to capture 2P reserves, gross reserves of 33 million barrels. This is a highly valuable project with breakeven price of $30 per barrel and a rate of return of around 50%. Already, we're working on a Boulder Phase 5 project to add new subsea facilities and wells with sanction targeted in 2025. And we're advancing development studies on the Ringhorn North discovery we made earlier this year. So we see significant upsides in the Boulder area and many years of value creation ahead. And at Yowen Casberg, the project is progressing according to schedule and is on track for targeted startup towards the end of this year. The FPSO is now securely anchored at the field in the Barents Sea, as you can see in this photo. All subsidy installations are completed and are now being hooked up to the FPSO, followed by final commissioning before startup. And drilling activities are going to schedule with 14 wells already completed. which are enough to reach plateau production levels. There are a total of 30 development wells planned, with drilling activities continuing into 2026. And Johan Casberg is a key catalyst for Vore Energy's growth profile, with our net share of production being over 60,000 barrels per day when plateau production levels are reached, which is expected to take three to four months from startup. These are high-value barrels with OPEX around $4 per barrel, and with Brae, Keefe and Eff economics of around $35 per barrel. And we see further value upside from extending the plateau through infill drilling and area tiebacks. Eight infill wells and further phases of development are planned, being clusters one and cluster two, and we'll also drill a series of exploration wells over the next few years. And so we anticipate this will double the plateau period to four to five years and perhaps beyond. And so after years of investment, we see a bright future at Johan Casper with significant upsides and long-term value creation ahead. And to the Holton East project in the Norwegian Sea, which is now anticipated to come on stream earlier than planned in the first quarter of 2025. Holton East is the development of several smaller fields tied back to the Asgard facilities with five subsea templates. You can see initially the project is developing 100 million barrels of gross reserves and achieving gross peak production of 80,000 barrels per day, with significant additional unrisked upside in the area of 100 to 200 million barrels. For Energy's net share of the peak production level is just under 20,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. And I think Colton East is a great example of leveraging the value of existing infrastructure to provide high value barrels with low carbon emissions. And now focusing on our exciting exploration programme, we've had a great return for the nine exploration wells we've drilled so far this year, with the programme yielding four discoveries, so a 44% success rate to date. Adding, as you can see, net recoverable resources in the range of 29 to 57 million barrels of oil equivalent. And three of these discoveries, Ringhorn North, Syrisa and Lavrons, which you can see noted on the map there, are commercial to develop through existing infrastructure. And development and thinking is already being progressed. And the Hayden result in the Norwegian Sea is possibly the most significant, as it's a play opener where we see multiple additional prospects and the partnership are already assessing follow-on drilling plans. And we have six remaining wells to be drilled before the end of this year, covering some important prospects with four of these wells currently drilling. So I think it's going to be exciting to see these results come in. And looking forward, we're already well advanced on defining our exploration programme for 2025, which will be more ambitious than this year's programme, with about 20 wells being planned. So that rounds off my operational update, and I'll now hand over to Stefano to review the financials. Thank you.

Good morning, and thank you, Nick, for the kind words at the introduction. I'm excited to present my last quarter before stepping down as CFO from December 1st. Now, let's deep dive into the third quarter key financials. We generated solid revenues and operating cash flow after tax of $1.3 billion in Q3 on the back of strong operational performance, unit cost below guidance, and good realized prices. Our balance sheet remains solid with a leverage ratio at 0.7 times net debt to EBITDAX and $2.1 billion in available liquidity. We confirmed a third quarter dividend of $270 million and plan to pay another $270 million for the fourth quarter of 2024. During the capital markets update in March, we presented an upward revised target of about $500 million identified synergies from the Neptune deal. I'm pleased to say that at the end of third quarter, we are well on track to deliver above 50% of the identified synergies potential. Some concrete examples are realizing onshore tax benefits and a more competitive or energy insurance package, eliminating external centralized services by managing them in-house, Other examples are acceleration of discoveries and project developments and integrating the Neptune gas volumes in our gas sales strategy. This demonstrates the scale, diversity, and robustness the transaction adds, making us an even stronger pure play EMP. I will now go into more details of our third quarter financial performance. We generated more than $1.8 billion of revenues down from the previous quarter due to lower liftings and prices. We are up from Q3 2023 mainly due to higher volumes. We also continue to deliver good price realizations and in particular realize natural gas price where we had a price realization of around $76 per barrel, which represents a premium of $8 per barrel compared to spot. Realizing above spot pricing has given us an additional gas revenues of $322 million year to date. The realized price for oil in the quarter was $81 per barrel in line with Brent. Taking a closer look at the gas sales in Q3, around 50% of the sales were on day ahead basis at $66 per barrel. Around 32% was sold on a month ahead basis at $64 per barrel. The remaining 18% were delivered under contracts with fixed pricing, realizing an average of $135 per barrel. Going forward, we will maintain a robust sales portfolio with access to several markets, and we will have flexibility in the contract to adjust the split between month ahead, day ahead, quarter ahead, and fixed contracts. Gas has traded below oil parity during the year, With the recent fall in oil prices and increasing gas prices, the gas market is trading close to oil parity. VorEnergy realized gas prices has been less volatile as a result of having sold a significant share of its gas linked to gas year ahead indexation as well as fixed price transactions. We see strong fundamentals in the gas market and current spot price has increased by 20% since the end of June due to increased geopolitical risk and robust Asian LNG demand. The market has also started to reflect in the pricing. The increased likelihood that the Russian gas flow through Ukraine will stop from year-end. Looking in the longer term, we expect a tight but volatile price environment, with gas price trading at close to parity with oil until 2027, when new LNG capacity is expected to come to the market. Taking this into consideration, we have decided to reduce our fixed price exposure to around 5%, starting from the fourth quarter, increasing our exposure to the spot and month ahead pricing. By keeping our position open, we can, when time is right, use instruments like fixed price or quarter ahead to catch window of opportunities should they arise with target to keep maintaining robust pricing for our volumes also for 2025. I would also like to mention that our oil production is fully edged on a post-tax basis for Q4 2024, including the Neptune volumes with monthly put options at a strike price of $50 Brent. And we plan to continue the program going forward also in 2025, where actually we have already covered 100% of post-tax production until end of Q3 2025. On the back of strong realized prices, we have high cash flow generation in the quarter. Cash flow from operations in the quarter was $1.3 billion, an increase from the previous quarters, mainly due to lower tax payments. For the first nine months of the year, we generated more than $3 billion of cash flow from operations after tax. Our capex, including exploration for the quarter, was $718 million, where Balder X and Johan Casbeck remained the largest contributors of the total spend, and will be the main contributors to reach 400,000 barrels a day by end of 2025. Year-to-date capex spent, excluding exploration, is just below $2 billion, and we expect to end up at year-end at around $2.6 billion in total, lower than initial guidance due to weakening of the NOC and the sale of assets, Nornay in particular, which reduces the associated capex in the second half of the year. Our resilient and strong liquidity position improved in the quarter. Here we see the development in our cash position from Q2 to the end of the third quarter. We generated $1.5 billion before tax and working capital movements aligned with previous quarter. Working capital contributed positively with more than $160 million as a result of a decrease in trade receivables and increase in other current liabilities at the end of the quarter. Tax payments amounted to $325 million, down from almost $1 billion in the previous quarter. We further had a cash outflow of $699 million in investments in our high-value growth projects. We also distributed as planned $270 million in dividends to our shareholders. In summary, we are left with a strong cash balance at the end of the quarter of $790 million, leaving us with available liquidity of above $2 billion. The leverage ratio net interest being in debt on EBITDAX ended at 0.7 times at the end of the quarter. This is an improvement from previous quarter and continue to be well below our over the cycle target of 1.3. In the quarter, we have successfully extended the revolving credit facilities with one year from 2026 to 2027. Our debt portfolio is strong and diversified with a weighted average time to maturity of five years when excluding the 60 year hybrid. This is supporting the execution of our growth strategy towards end of 2025 and beyond. We are maintaining our BAA3 rating from Moody's and our BBB rating from S&P, both with a stable outlook, and we are committed to maintain our investment grade rating. The strong financial position lays a solid foundation for continued material shareholder distribution and growth, and this is a unique investment proposition that VorEnergy offers. Now let's look at the tax guidance for the 2024 estimated profits, where 50% will be paid this year and 50% next year. In the fourth quarter, we expect to pay around 8 billion NOC through two installments, This is down from the around 10 billion NOC that was presented in the second quarter due to lower price environment. We have included a tax sensitivity for the first half of 2025, which is giving the cash tax estimates at different price scenarios, where the middle case is giving around $1 billion in total payments, while the sensitivity is between 0.6, $1.4 billion, according to the indicated price ranges. Vorenergy has a strong track record of delivering attractive and predictable dividends. And since the IPO, we have returned around $3 billion in dividends and we have paid a stable dividend over the last 11 quarters. We confirmed $270 million in dividend for the third quarter, which is equal to 11 cents per share to be paid on November 5th. The dividend guidance for the fourth quarter is $270 million, showing the commitment and resilience of the company to attractive shareholder distribution. And we maintain our dividend policy in a range between 20% to 30% of the CFFO after tax going forward, but with 2024 being in the higher range at approximately 30% of the CFFO post-tax. Finally, let me summarize our key 2024 and long-term guidance. For 2024, we have narrowed our production guidance to 280,000 to 190,000 barrels a day, which will increase to 400,000 barrels a day by end of 2025. Further, we have a tangible plan to sustain 350,000 to 400,000 barrels a day until 2030. Production cost guidance has been reduced to below $13 per barrel due to earlier completion of Neptune, which has a lower cost per barrel compared to Vore standalone, NOC devaluation and cost reductions. And this brings us well on track toward our long-term target to bring it down towards $10 per barrel by end of 2025. We have also reduced our cap as guidance to around $2.6 billion, in 2024, and from 2025 onward, we expect the capex to reduce to around $1.5 and $2.5 billion. Exploration capex guidance is expected to come in around $350 million. We will continue to have high exploration activity in the years to come, and we can expect to be in the upper end of the guided range from 2025 onwards. But we will revert with more precise guiding at the next capital market update. We are expecting cash tax payments of approximately $800 million in the fourth quarter. We will pay dividends of $270 million relating to Q3, and we guide for $270 million also for Q4, bringing the total dividend of 2024 in line with the communicated guidance to pay out approximately 30% of CFFO after tax. With that, I hand it back to Nick for concluding remarks.

Well, thank you, Stefano, and I have just one final slide to summarize the third quarter results. I think we're delivering on our strategy for growth and value creation, and we have delivered resilient operational and financial performance in the quarter in line with guidance. This is supported by strong cost discipline as we enter a more volatile price environment. As one of the world's fastest growing EMPs, we're poised for significant production increases. We bring in key development projects online. This adds around 150,000 barrels of oil equipment per day of new production over the next three quarters and setting us on our path to around 400,000 barrels per day by the end of 2025. We're doing all of this with industry-leading ESG performance, which we're getting recognised for, And lastly, we continue to provide attractive and predictable shareholder returns. These are our third quarter 2024 results and other reasons to be invested in Vore Energy. Thank you for your time. And we'd now like to open up the call for your questions.

If you do wish to ask a question, you will need to press five star on your telephone. To withdraw a question, press five star again. In the interest of time, we ask that you please limit yourself to max two questions each. If you have additional questions, you may rejoin the queue. Our first question comes from the line of Sasikan Chilukuru from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead, you now will be unmuted.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I had two, please. The first was on the FIDs. It's good to see the FID on Boulder Phase 5 unlocking 33 million BOE of resources. And you've highlighted this is one of the eight FIDs expected by the end of 2025. Just wondering, in aggregate, how much of resource would be put in play due to these FIDs? Also, if you could talk about the key ones that excite you. You've highlighted Boulder Phase 6 and Trams South, but I'm wondering if you could talk about any other ones as well that we should be looking for. The second one was on the production guidance, 280 to 290, 10,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day variance for full year implies a much wider range for 4Q. I was wondering if you could explain where this variance is coming from, assumptions between the bottom and the top end of that range, but anything else that is kind of playing into this guidance as well?

Okay, good questions. And just to follow up. So, you know, what we've highlighted is that key to sustaining production is that we have around 750 million barrels of contingent resources. And we've identified over 20 early phase projects that we're moving forward towards development. They account for around 400 million barrels of the 750 million barrels. So, of course, we're working to try and figure out how to develop the rest of it as well. And, you know, what we're working to do is to bring forward projects as quickly as we can and up the pace. And what I said is that we will expect to sanction up to eight projects between now and the end of next year. The first one being Boulder Phase 5, which is a great project with great economics. You know, I think if we just focus on a few of them in the Boulder area, for example, we have a Boulder Phase 6, which we're working on. And then we made a discovery ring on North in that area earlier this year. That's also something we're working on. And so there's some, there's a couple of important projects. I mean, as you know, the key thing is to feed the FPSO with volumes over time. In the Yoa area, We now made four discoveries there with Yoa North, Ophelia with another discovery, Kiri next to it, and then also earlier this year, Sirisa. And we're going to aim to move that whole, those four discoveries forward as one project tied into the Yoa facility. And that's another important project we're aiming to sanction towards the end of next year. On a non-operated basis, one of the bigger ones we've got is the Fram Sewer project, which is expected to, operated by Equinos, expected to sanction next year, and there are others. And, you know, so I say up to eight, there could be a little bit less, it could be up to eight. But I think in terms of volumes, we haven't guided, but the overall volumes we have guided, which is to try and bring 20 projects forward for 400 million barrels. And then onto your question about the production guidance. So we've narrowed it as to where we've got to. And I think the way to look at this is there's quite a bit of uncertainty about, well, still uncertainty about the timing of when we will start up Johan Casberg. And of course, the rate of pace of that ramp up. And that's really what reflects the upside range here. I think without Johan Casberg, we'd be in the middle of that range. So you can get a sense of the range of outcomes there. So hopefully that answers the question.

Thank you very much.

Our next question comes from the line of Matthew Smith from Bank of America. Please go ahead. You'll now be unmuted.

Hi there. Good morning, Nick. Morning, Stefano. Thanks for taking my questions. I've had a couple as well. I mean, the first one was on BoulderX, if I could. Noting your comments that perhaps you see contingency in that timeline for the first time, obviously encouraging to hear. I just wanted to sort of – I know the last thing you're going to do is change the first oil guidance once again or hint to that, but I just wanted to talk through the scenario analysis there given – the restriction of weather windows. What could be the implication if things are running ahead of schedule? Could that be a slightly earlier first oil date, or is this more about ramp-ups, or is it rather just sort of de-risking that timeline, but the weather windows might still hold you to the existing guidance? That would be the first one around BoulderX. And then the second one, if I could, was really a sort of a broader question around the dividend and the dividend policy. Noting the CFFO payout ratio that you have through the cycle, 20% to 30%, a decent-sized range, but you've been comfortable using the 30%. so far. And I guess I just wanted to touch on what's given you the confidence to go towards that 30%. And perhaps that can give us a bit of an indication on how you might use that policy into next year. And I guess in terms of thinking about Scenario analysis, once again, a lot of investors are at least thinking about the risk of lower oil prices into next year. I suppose my question really is whether you envisage using the range sort of pro-cyclically or whether you're structurally quite comfortable hugging the upper end, please. Thank you.

So, Matt, good questions, and I'll take the first one, and maybe Stefano can answer the second one maybe with some follow-up from me. So, in terms of BoulderX, I mean, where we're at, it's just the completion of the FPSO, which is the thing to get the project done. And, you know, we're in the commissioning phase, and, you know, we're expecting to get this thing fully complete inshore, so we carry no incomplete work offshore for that. that's going to mean a fast and efficient startup when we get there. And in fact, the scope of work for the offshore hookup is not very significant. So if we can get everything done on shore, which we expect to, and that's where I see the contingency, we should be done before we come to the installation period. So, uh, you know, I think we're in good shape for that. And, uh, In terms of installation, we get into a March period time before we get to a period where the weather starts to come down. Of course, it depends on when the weather period comes to us, and we'll be ready to go as soon as possible. We might get the opportunity to get it installed earlier if the weather's good in the early part of March, or it might take a bit later in March. I think we're pretty confident being able to get it in that timeframe. And then it's the speed at which we hook up and what we're saying we believe we can get first oil within Q2 next year. And as I say, I think there's a bit of contingency in that schedule, both in the timing to get it done, finished on shore, but also when we go offshore, we have a big flotel which has lots of beds, way more than we should need. And that gives us also contingency to try and speed things up. So we're feeling good about that. So with that, I'll hand to Stefano to cover the dividend question you had.

Yes, and thank you, Matthew, for your questions. I think on the dividend, we are confirming the policy, which was set since the IPO, which is actually to pay a dividend in the range you mentioned between 20% to 30% of the CFFO. I think this policy has served us well until now. where you saw that we, let's say, managing the upper range of the level this year, we somehow were able to maintain the dividend at 1.1 like the previous year, despite lower gas prices. And this, I should say, should give a strong signal of predictability and sustainability of the dividend in VOR energy. Said so, next year is going to be an important year for VOR because we are entering a cycle with high production and declining investments, which provides further additional headroom for CFFO growth. um and let me say um where we will land in terms of range i think is something that will be um we will be we will be communicating uh um when we will be doing the in february next year the capital market update But let me say the dividend level is assessed quarterly. This is based on commodity environment, company performance. So it's an holistic view. But I think February capital market update will be more precise on that.

Perfect. Well, thanks very much, both. Happy to pass it over.

The next question comes from Theodore Nielsen from SB1 Markets. Please go ahead. You'll now be unmuted.

Good morning, Nick and Stefano. Thanks for taking my questions. Two questions from me. First, on M&A, you have recently divested some assets in Norway. I just wonder if you could high-level discuss what you see on the M&A side and also how you compare the Danish continental shelf and UK continental shelf versus Denmark and whether you are looking into those at all. Second question there is on gas pricing. Stefano, you said that you are not doing any gas hedging at the current prices. I just wonder what do you need to see to actually start putting in place gas hedging again? Thank you.

Good morning, Theodore. I'll take the first one and Stefano can cover the second. In terms of M&A, we said we would dispose of some non-core, non-strategic assets. We've done some of that. We disposed of a couple of assets through the year. What we saw is that we saw a lot of interest, actually. in the assets. Uh, and so we got multiple, uh, offers and, uh, and we were able to sell for attractive prices in our view. So I think, uh, there's a, uh, for the right, for, there is a market for, for, for assets and a decent assets. Um, uh, you know, from our perspective in terms of strategic things for us, uh, you know, we have clearly the capacity to do things. Uh, we, uh, We've grown the company by doing multiple big transactions, and if we can find things that are strategic and we can do it to price, we can create value, then we've clearly got the capacity and capability to do them. The key is to find things that we can and want to do, and we have to be opportunistic about that. Quite frankly, I haven't studied what the opportunities are in Denmark. We have... We're a pure play Norwegian company. I think there's enough running room for us here. And that's what we're focused on. So hopefully that answers your question there. I think, you know, on gas prices, maybe Stefano can take this question.

Yes, sure. And hi, Theodore. I think, as we mentioned in the presentation, if you see, we go down to 5% of, let's say, fixed pricing element. And I think that is an advantage because locking prices that are not particularly interesting is not something we want to do. Now, what we have and what we retain is going forward the flexibility to use a fixed pricing or quarter ahead indexations to lock in gas prices when, if and when window of opportunities will come. Now, the question you make is, what are the levels that you find interesting to lock in? And this is a difficult answer because there is a lot of volatility. Gas prices, there are a lot of also uncertainties related to geopolitical risks. There is a winter that is coming. This winter will be a cold one or a mild one, who knows. but that is exactly what we will need to be doing, to monitor as we go the volatility and the gas price dynamics, and then decide at that point in time, whether the window of opportunity is there and to which extent to start building positions.

And if I might add, Theodore, we're trying to be cautious here. What we want to do is to achieve the opportunity to achieve above spot prices, but not put ourselves in a place where we put the risk of being below spot because we've locked in at a price that's not very attractive. So I think we have, under Stefano, a fantastic team driving this. I mean, they do a good job and have a good understanding. And I think we have a good sense of the market, given the scale of our business in gas and So in the last six quarters, we've been able to achieve significantly above spot pricing. And, you know, I think they were cautious and we made the decision not to lock in very much for this quarter or this year ahead. But I think we have mechanisms to do that. And I think we've been proved right on that. But it's about taking a cautious approach and trying to achieve some upside rather than put ourselves in a risk of downside.

Thank you. That is clear. So just to be sure I understood the answer correctly, at the current forward gas price of $12 to $13 per MMB2 over the next couple of years, or at least the next year, you don't see any very good risk for water locking in those prices. Is that correct?

I would rather prefer to say that we will be waiting, going a bit more towards the winter to assess how the forward curve will move.

Understood.

Thank you.

Next up is Kate Somerville from JP Morgan. Your line will all be unmuted.

Hi, good morning. Thank you very much for taking the questions. I have two, please. The first one is a bit high level. At your investor day, you outlined the long-term CapEx outlook. And I think beyond 2025, you have a lot of flexibility because it remains uncommitted. Since then, we've obviously had a lot of geopolitical macro volatility that you've talked about. I'm just wondering what is your internal process for making that uncommitted CapEx committed? Should we be looking at where spot prices are? What are your different considerations there? for the long term. And the second question is just on your OPEX guidance. I understand a lot of it's due to Neptune and your new assets, but I believe that was probably known before. Just wondering what was different versus your expectations earlier in the year.

Thanks. Yeah, no, Kate, good questions. In terms of as we look forward, in terms of committed, uncommitted CapEx, I mean, the key thing here is that the uncommitted capex that we had were opportunities and project opportunities that we have not solidified and moved forward and sanctioned. And so, you know, the key thing for us now in terms of sustaining production is to start moving these 20 early phase projects forward, to start moving our exploration program forward and infill drilling programs forward. That's what's going to sustain our production long term. And as these projects up to eight projects that we want to sanction over the next year and a bit. Those are going to start turning. Once we sanction a project, it's going to turn that sort of uncommitted capital into committed. And, you know, we wanted to convert a lot of that into committed capital because it means we've got good projects that make, you know, $30 breakeven prices and 25% rates of return, which creates a lot of value long term. Of course, we're going to be sensible about this. There's a lot of variables that drive when we can sanction a project. We need to do the work. We need to get to a place where we're ready to go. We need to put in place all of the contracts to do it. We need to bring our partners with us. All of that takes time, but also we have to look at the macro environment out there. Of course, if the prices are high, then we might move quicker, and if prices are lower, then we have the opportunities to slow down and take a slower pace. So I think all of those factors will bear on how quickly we move projects forward and how we start to solidify that capital. But I think the way to look at this, though, is, you know, the big infrastructure-led projects that we've done, you know, Casper and Boulder, they're almost behind us. And going forward, the type of projects we're doing are much shorter cycle time, much more predictable. They're all tieback type developments. And the capital efficiency of those is higher. So I think you should expect we can live within the capital frame that we provided at the capital markets day. And then on OPEX guidance within this year, this is driven. We've been doing well, basically, on production. We've been doing well on overall spend and, of course, the weak Norwegian krona with much of our operating cost in Norwegian krona. All those three factors drive to us seeing reduced operating costs this year. And I think we'll see the benefit of that as we move forward. So hopefully that answers your question.

And maybe just to add a point, building on Nick, you're right. Yes, the Neptune was known, but we were able to close earlier the deal. So, you know, we were announcing Q1, and then we were able to complete by end of January. So earlier inclusion provided an additional benefit because Neptune is... is bringing overall an improvement of $1 per barrel versus the standalone basis of four. So that also is an element.

Awesome. That's really clear. Thank you so much.

The next question comes from Mark Kuba from Barclays. Your line will be unmuted.

Good morning, and thank you very much for the presentation. You mentioned that more than 50% of the 500 million Neptune synergies are on track to be delivered. I wondered if you could explain what you mean by that in terms of timing and also where you are with the other 50%. And then second question on exploration, which are kind of the most significant of the six remaining wells this year? And you said that you're planning 20 wells next year. Can you comment on the total size of resource that's being targeted, and maybe on the size of the largest product specs being targeted next year. Thank you.

Stefano, do you want to get the first one?

Yes, sure. Yes, we are on track to realize those, and some examples are, as we mentioned already earlier, is the fact of having done some, let's say, some savings on insurance, some tax synergies, and we have eliminated some external costs where, for example, Neptune had a big head office providing services overall to the group and to Norway, and we were able to have those in-house. So in terms of timing, it's clear that these that I just mentioned were We were able to capture them already this year. So just to give you a rule of thumb, more or less, in terms of cash flow impact, more or less 10% of these 500 was already realized in terms of cash flow this year. uh of course the rest is then coming also in the in the coming years the value we're giving is an mpv and this is mainly then related to the discoveries the exploration discoveries we did and also related to actions that will be connected with the the synergy related to the to the field to the operations synergies related to contracts. For example, we have established a combined continuous rig line. So we have reduced start and stop costs, improving operational efficiency. So this will be coming a bit beyond 2025. Another important piece, I think, is the gas sales commercialization, because those we were able to include the gas from Neptune from, let's say, from October this year. So that will also be using our flexibility, our flexible contracts and our gas sales strategy. We envisage also to get some synergies in that area as well.

Good. Thanks, Stefano. And then just on your exploration question, we've got six exploration wells left to drill this year. Actually, four are currently ongoing. You know, we've got four of those wells are in the North Sea area. These are all tieback type opportunities into existing infrastructure and And then we've got a couple of wells we're drilling in the Barents Sea. Some of the sort of more notable ones here, we're drilling an appraiser well on Countash. If you recall, this is a discovery we made near to Goliath. And actually, we've committed to drill four wells on that trend over the next six to nine months. And this is the first of them. So that's going to be very important as we start to look at volumes, future volumes coming into Goliath. Up in the Barents, we're also drilling a high-impact well called Elgol. We have a strategy there to drill out the gas prospectivity jointly with our partners up there. And Elgol is a big prospect, and we're going to drill that towards the end of this year. So those are the types of things we're doing. In terms of next year, I want to give you a sense that we have a big program. In fact, we've got a lot of activity. And so we said, including this year, we drilled 60 wells over a four-year period. This year is going to be, I think, 15. And next year, I think a little bit over 20. It's a bit early for us to say which ones we're going to do next year. But we'll outline that in detail when we have our capital markets update in mid-February, once we've got everything and all the approvals in place. But I'm quite confident that we're going to have a programme that sits over 20 wells next year. And there's some... Clearly, it's a mixture of things. It's, you know, our strategy is to have around 15% of our wealth stock as higher reward, higher risk opportunities. And then with the rest of the program being tie-ins to existing infrastructure. And I think that's how you'll see it when it comes forward. So hopefully that answers your question.

Yeah, that's very helpful, Carla. Thank you very much.

Next up is Anas Rosenlund from SEB.

Lan, I'll be unmuted.

Thank you. Thank you for taking my question.

I had the impression after the CMD that you intended to sanction quite a handful of projects within year-end 2024. And from the announcement today and the comments you made previously in this call, It seems to me that the sanctioning will be done during 2025. And I appreciate that these processes may take longer time than initially envisioned, but I was just curious if you could share some color on if my interpretation is right. What's the reason for these processes taking longer? Yeah, I think...

I think we didn't give any timeframe, actually, to capital markets update. What we said is we're working to move these forward as quickly as possible. That's what we're doing. I think we have over 20 projects. We're moving these forward at pace. I think we're going to find there's going to be quite a few more than 20 projects. The timeframe that we're looking at sanctioning next year is in line with broadly how we saw it capital markets update so I apologize if there's any confusion but that's how we see it and if I may so we shouldn't expect any additional sanctioning within year and this is mostly a 2025 event yeah and beyond I mean it's you know we'll see some in 25 and then we'll see more coming in future as well

Okay, thank you.

Our next question comes from Victoria McCulloch from RBC.

Your line will be unmuted.

Hi there. Thanks very much for your time this morning. Firstly, on tax, could you give us some help as to what assumptions you have in the first half 25 tax guidance in terms of production in order to work out based on our own assumptions, what the proxy could be for the second half of the year. Obviously, with production increasing materially, it would suggest that tax payments will also increase materially. But some guidance on where the assumptions sit in your guidance would be helpful if that's possible. And secondly, can you talk about maybe big picture once again, similar to some of the other questions on the call today, big picture gas versus oil preference in terms of the development projects you're sanctioning from your resource base. Is there a ranking system on gas versus oil, particularly given comments about gas heading into 2027 and beyond with LNG coming in more materially? Thanks very much.

Victoria, maybe Stefano, you'll take the tax question and I'll cover off the gas sort of oil mix.

Yes, sure. Thanks, Victoria, for your question. Actually, the tax guidance or sensitivities that we have provided in the presentation, which are related to first half of 2025, are related to the 50% taxes that will be paid on the 2024 estimated profits. Because the 2024 profits in terms of taxes, what we will be doing is paying roughly 50% by let's say in the second half of this year and the remaining 50% in the first half of next year. So the production assumptions related to 2025 are not really relevant for this. Then 2025 taxes will be paid, let's say, half in the second half of 2025 and then the remaining part in the first half of 2026. So there is a bit of a shift in the mechanism, how you pay taxes. I would say overall, if I can give you a guidance, an overall guidance in terms of tax, I would suggest to use the 78% tax rate guidance that we have in Norway to assess the taxes overall for the year.

Sorry, I was just meaning what production from Casper is included for the end of 2024 in year 2025 tax assumptions. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

Yeah, no, in the end, it's not really flipping the coin. We have an assumption that Casper is starting in Q4, but I can tell you it's not really material given the numbers. But yes, he's included.

Okay, thanks.

Good. And Victoria, the second question about gas-oil mix. I think as a company, just strategically, we're about 30%, 35% gas mix and the rest oil. I think that's a benefit to us in terms of a mix of commodity prices when we look at risk and volatility longer term. I think in terms of where we look out uh you know do we target gas do we target oil actually uh i don't think we have that luxury um you know we find what we find and uh and we develop what we've got and so you know of course we've got a lot of discoveries on our hands and we're trying to move these forward at pace and uh you know i don't think we don't really have the luxury to choose which ones to do we're just trying to do everything as we can as quickly as we can and uh to feed the profile long term. But if I look at this, I think it's good to maintain the mix, actually, at roughly this level. I think it's good long term. Our view on gas prices long term are perhaps not as negative as others. I think we see quite strong supply-demand balance at tightness over the next few years and then the view is that you know the market view is that we're going to see a lot of LNG hit the market in 27 onwards I have a feeling that some of those projects might be late I also believe that the world needs a lot of gas and I think those volumes will be absorbed very quickly and I think gas is an important transition fuel for the long term so you know I think we would like to be able to maintain a good portion of gas in our production mix long term and Uh, but, but the reality is we, uh, we can only develop what we find and, uh, and you know, we, we, uh, we'll, we'll see what that mix is going to be over time.

It's down to Joel.

The next question comes from the line of Mark Wilson from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Your line will be unmuted.

Thank you. A few questions. The first for Nick, a bigger picture. It's interesting to see you asked on Danish assets and you said you haven't studied those and that VAR should be considered a pure play Norwegian business. You're clearly delivering benefits on the Neptune deal and have a longer term plan for production and exploration in Norway. But I do get M&A, international M&A questions from the market occasionally, including VAR. Should we shut down such questions? That's my first point. Second one, Stefano, we did notice a cost basis increase, a 200 million increase on Jeroen Casberg. We knew about the Boulder X one. We're just checking if the Casberg one is new and if that's already through the P&L. Thank you.

Good morning, Mark. In terms of, I think strategically, we're positioned as a company that's pure play Norway. I think we get a lot of benefits from that. I've been quite vocal about this externally. I think Norway is one of the best places in the world to invest in oil and gas. It's got stable framework conditions, which means that Norway is open for business and supports investment into this industry. Despite being an offshore region, It's low cost because there's been a long-term vision focused on the industry and as a consequence, it's a low cost per barrel industry. It's low carbon. In fact, it leads the world in that. Also, there's still a lot of resource left to find. The numbers indicate that whilst we're 50 years in, we're only 50% of the way through the resource base and still a lot left to find. And that's what we see. So we think there's still a lot of running room here. And I think in terms of an investment proposition, it's very simple. We're pure play Norway. I think people see that. And I don't think people want to wake up and find that tomorrow we bought something in some other part of the world that has a different risk profile. And I think that's what

the way to look at this.

And then, Stefano, you pick up the second question. Yes.

Yes. Yes, hi Mark. No, Johan Casper cost increase, as you said, is 600 million NOC since last year and this is net to VOR. The cost increase is due to a longer stay at the yard in store and also general cost increase. The CAPEX increase does not change the 2024 forecast, mainly due to re-phasing. For drilling costs, we have a sublease of a rig to snow it. But this will increase, let's say the increase will affect mainly 2025 and 2026 budgets.

Okay, does that cover the questions, Mark?

It was actually more to that. You're saying that's additional cost. It was more that you did pass something through on Boulder X coming into this quarter. I'm just wondering whether the cash flow will be treated the same way.

Sorry, I couldn't hear well. Can you repeat, Mark? Sorry.

Yeah. We'll take it offline. It's fine. I'll hand it over. Thank you.

All right. As no one else has lined up for questions in this call, I'll now hand it to Ida for any written questions.

Thank you. We only have two questions here from Jonna Dyson at ABG. Could you please remind us of the plateau level of Boulder X? Also, could you elaborate a bit on when we should expect it going off plateau? Secondly, on Boulder Phase 6, when should we expect the BDO to be handed in? What is the 2p reserve estimate and the production contribution of this? Thank you.

Good, good. Two good questions. In terms of BoulderX, it's going to come online in Q2 next year, and I would anticipate three to four months to get to peak production. And to remind, the capacity of the FPSO is 80,000 barrels a day, and we have 90% of that. So we just have a bit over 70,000 barrels a day net to us. The reality of the reservoir is that it's quite a peaky profile, and that's why we need to continue to invest into it. And that's why we're doing Boulder phase five. And so you'll start to see some of those wells come in before the end of next year with the six wells to come. So we have 14 wells in the current phase. We're going to drill six more in phase five. And these are multilateral, so they're very efficient. good recoveries and productivity from them. And so they will feed into the profile starting in later in next year and into 2026. And then we would expect to bring more phases forward over time. And so phase six, we haven't fully defined it yet. So it's too early for me to say exactly what it is. There's quite a wide range of different designs for that project from a smaller expansion to a broader expansion and in fact looking bigger bigger picture. So you know, as I say, we have over 100 million barrels of opportunity to develop and we're working forward to move that in the most efficient way forward. I think you'll see the way to look at this is a series of phases of development into the into the facilities and.

And that's what you'll see looking forward.

Thank you very much. that conclude the Q3 2024 results presentation. Thank you all very much for dialling in. We wish you a good rest of your day.