Freehold Royalties Ltd.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Freehold Royalty Second Quarter Results Conference Call. I would like to turn the meeting over to Mr. David Spiker. Please, go ahead, sir.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. On the call from Freehold are Rob King, our COO, and Dave Henry, our CFO. We're really pleased with our quarter, with the production averaging 15,221 BUE a day, a 3% increase over the prior quarter, Oil production was driving this growth, averaging 7,899 barrels a day, which was a 7% increase over the prior quarter. Our U.S. assets grew 9% over the quarter to 5,599 BWE a day, a result of increased drilling activity on our Eagleford and Permium assets, as well as a recovery from the extreme weather impacts in Q1 2024. Funds from operations for the quarter totaled $60 million or $0.40 per share, an 11% increase over the prior quarter. This funded our $0.09 per month dividend resulting in a 68% payout ratio for the quarter. We exited Q2 with net debt to trailing funds from operations of 0.8 times. reducing our net debt by $12 million while closing three tuck-in acquisitions in both Canada and the U.S. for a combined $7.3 million. Natural gas benchmark pricing was weak through the quarter. However, we continue to see the benefits of our oil-weighted premium-priced North American portfolio with oil and NGLs representing over 95% of our revenue, leading to a top-tier realized price of $59.74 a BOE. We're quite excited about the drilling activity on our portfolio. Gross drilling activity was strong for the quarter, with a total of 274 wells drilled across North America. Approximately 75% of total gross wells drilled on freehold lands targeted oil prospects in Texas, with the balance in Canada focusing on oil prospects largely in southeast Saskatchewan, the Manuel stack, and Clearwater. On our U.S. portfolio, we're encouraged by the drilling and rig activity we have seen, with gross drilling up 24% over the previous quarter. And this represents the highest level of property drilling that freeholders had on its U.S. royalty lands. Digging a little deeper on the U.S. side, we are seeing continually evolving drilling and completion practices, unlocking value in the high-quality multiple reservoir bench Permian Basin. A recent royalty interest pad in Delaware was brought on at peak rates per well of 3,200 barrels a day of oil, with 90-day average oil rates of 2,200 barrels a day. We see other areas where current views on completion technology are being applied to older wells, with focus right now in Eagleford, where Chronicle Phillips is acquiring Marathon, and they reference over 1,000 refrag candidates on the Marathon asset base. and we see 500 plus of these where we have a royalty interest. These reef racks are targeting wells drilled pre-2016, where profit loading was less than half of what current best practices are, hence not effectively accessing all the reservoir potential. We are also seeing leasing activity with our U.S. mineral title lands, with some of the focus in Q2 being on the eastern side of the Midland Basin, with the target being the deeper Barnett Shale. This is moving Barnett oil prospectivity much further east than where wells have been successfully drilled to date and really opens up a deeper prospect opportunity on our U.S. land base. Activity on our U.S. assets continues to be driven by large, high-quality investment-grade payers in addition to growth-oriented privates. Our drilled uncompleted well and our permitted well inventory is robust, providing us confidence in the outlook for our U.S. portfolio for the remainder of 2024 and into next year. On the Canadian side, over the last five years, production has been rock solid at 9,600 BW a day with only modest capital investment of about $40 million in early-stage clearwater opportunities. What's different now? Leasing activity. Over the last 18 months, we've signed 157 leases. That compares to as many leases that we assigned in 2020, 21, and 2022 combined. This leasing strength is showing up in our licensing activity, where 2024 year-to-date licensing is at similar levels to full-year licensing in both 2022 and 2023. The most active areas for leasing has been southeast Saskatchewan, with about 50% of our leasing activity, and mostly to private and junior companies who are revitalizing this area with focused attention and multi-leg laterals, clear water style technology. Similarly, the Manival stack has gained about 25% of our leasing activity, again, to privates and juniors who are successfully developing with multi-leg laterals. The continued revitalization of these areas represents a significant opportunity for our portfolio. So overall, we're very excited about the quality of our business. It's really been a result of a multi-year transformation into a uniquely North American energy royalty company. Leading indicators such as leasing activity, licensing activity, and drilling activity are all very positive. We'll now take the time to answer any questions.

Thank you. We will now take questions from the telephone lines. If you have a question and you're using a speakerphone, please put your hands up before making your selection. Please press star 1 on your device's keypad at this time if you have a question. There will be a brief pause when participants register.

Thank you for your patience.

Once again, please press star 1 at this time if you have a question. And we do have a question from Aaron Bilkoski from TD Cowan. Please go ahead. Mr. Bilkoski, your line is open.

Sorry about that. So now that you guys have had these permian assets for a couple of years and you've got a sense of pace of drilling and pace of completions and tie-ins throughout the year, how do you guys think about the sort of cadence of production additions through 2025? And I guess an associated question would be, do you anticipate any other high rate, high productivity permian pads to come on in any particular quarter, given what you know about the spacing between drilling and completion and tie-in times?

Thanks, Aaron. It's Rob here. highlight a little bit of what the Q2 activity was like, both from a drilling perspective and also a permitting perspective. So in the quarter, we had about one net well that was drilled, which is actually our highest level of drilling activity that we've ever had on our US assets. As well in the quarter, we had about 1.7 or sorry, 1.4 net permits that were permitted on our U.S. lands, which also was sort of the highest level of permitting activity that we've had since we've owned our U.S. assets. And so it's one of the things that is different within the U.S. and in Canada is just the time between when a well is permitted to when it's completed to when it's turned in line. And that's where we're seeing anywhere between 6 to upwards of 12 months and beyond that we need to wait for the operator to get active on our lands. And that compares to candidates measured in weeks. So that really kind of highlights a little bit of how the 2025 is likely going to shape out because we have this strong inventory right now of ducts. We have 1.7 net ducts at the end of Q2. We have 1.9 net permits at the end of Q2. Just as a reminder, one doesn't sound like a lot, one net well, but that's over 1,200 BOEs a day of production, so it's pretty meaningful.

Thank you. Once again, please press star 1 at this time if you have a question.

There are no further questions registered at this time. I'd like to turn the meeting back over to you, Mr. Spiker.

Okay. Thanks, everyone, for participating today. And I'd say we're excited about everything that we've got on the go right now and looking forward to reconnecting with everyone on our Q3 results. Thank you.

Thank you. The conference has now ended. Please disconnect your lines at this time, and we thank you for your participation.