speaker
Marvin
Conference Operator

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Paytos fourth quarter 2025 financial results conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. Please decide that today's conference has been recorded. I'll now hand the conference over to your first speaker today, J.P. Lachance, President and CEO. Please go ahead.

speaker
J.P. Lachance
President and CEO

Thanks, Marvin. Good morning, folks, and thanks for joining Payto's fourth quarter and full year 2025 conference call. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everybody that all statements made by the company during this call are subject to the same forward-looking disclaimer and advisory set forth in the company's news release issued yesterday. Here in the room with me, I have Riley Frame, our Chief Operating Officer, Tavis Carlson, our CFO, Lee Kern, our VP of Drilling and Completions, Todd Burdick, our VP of Production, Mike Collins, our VP of Marketing, Derek Sember, our VP of Land and Business Development, Christy Rayfrost, our VP of Finance, and Mike Reese, our VP of Geoscience. Before we discuss the quarter, on behalf of the management group, as always, I'd like to thank the entire PAIDO team, both the folks in the field and in the office, for their contributions to yet another strong year. And to be clear, they're the people that make PAIDO what it is. If I could sum up what the team accomplished in 2025 in one sentence, I'd say the company responsibly invested shareholder capital in 2025, which grew the business while returning a healthy dividend to shareholders and paying down a significant chunk of debt. Getting into the specifics, the company spent $475 million, which grew annual production and PDP reserves by 7% or 4% per share, and PDP reserves value by 2% per share, and that's despite the lower price ticks that were used by the evaluators. We paid dividends of $265 million or $1.32 per share and reduced net debt by $171 million or 13%. That's a pretty big accomplishment considering ACO prices averaged $1.76 per GJ last year. So let's start with the fourth quarter. We kept five rigs running through the quarter and right up until the Christmas break. then shut down to give those folks some time off to be with family during the holidays and recharge. We drilled some great wells in late Q3 and throughout Q4, as our program focused more on the nautic human and the flares, which tend to be the most productive species in our portfolio. Naturally, production ramped up in December, which averaged 145,000 VOAs per day. It's timed nicely for the increase in gas prices at both AECO and our multiple downstream markets. We spent $142 million in the quarter, bringing our total up to $475 million for the year, which landed in the middle of our capital guidance range and matched well with our exit production of 145,000 BOEs per day. This equates to an exit to exit capital efficiency of $10,000 per BOE. So essentially, we delivered on what we said we were going to do at the beginning of the year. If we dive into operations a little more, we spent 81% of that $475,000 on drilling 82 gross or 78.4 net wells, while the rest of that capital was spent on facilities and strategic pipelines, including a big field compressor in our core Sundance property. The mixture of wells we drilled last year are essentially delivering the same average productive outcomes as 2024 at the same costs. Which doesn't sound like much, but if you go back a couple of years, that's a 25% improvement year over year and a function of our acquisition of the Repsol assets that we purchased in late 2023. Some of the new plays we drilled last year include follow-ups to the Blue Sky, Viking, and a prolific Flare channel we discovered a couple of years ago. And of course, we drilled a lot of great non-acquing wells too, but Importantly, we continue to expand our drilling inventory by finding and developing new ideas that were not previously on our reserve books. In fact, 34 of the 82 wells we drilled last year were not recognized, and that's simply because the deep basin is endowed with a great stack of opportunities that we continue to unlock in and around our 1.1 million net acres of land. On the production operations side, as always, our efforts continued on reducing costs and optimizing our vast 1.5 BCF a day of gas processing capacity and gathering infrastructure. In areas where we haven't been as active drilling, like Brazeau, I think we just had one rig running there most of last year, we've been looking to bring third-party production into the plant to increase throughput and improve field netbacks. For that, we built an important pipeline in Q1 of 2025 and are actively seeking more opportunities like that. Turning to Q4 financials. The end of year ramp up in corporate production resulted in a fourth quarter average of 140,800 BOEs per day. That's up 6% over the same period last year or 3% per share. That drove a bunch of operations up Q4 over Q4 by 23% to 245 million. To get there, we received all in revenues of $4.71 per MCFE and after subtracting cash costs of $1.23 per MCFE, resulted in a cash net back of $3.47 per MCFE before we include performance-based compensation and cash taxes. That's a 60% improvement over Q4 of 2024. We also generated one of the highest quarterly earnings in our history at just under $126 million or 61 cents per diluted share. Of course, both our hedging and marketing diversification played a big role as Eco Monthly Gas sold at $2.22 for the quarter. We're about 255 in MCF when you factor in our heat content. Our hedge gains added 76 per MCF and our diversification to other markets added another 70 cents per MCF in value to our realized gas price. So clearly our marketing efforts played an important role in the quarter. Looking at the full year, we generated $860 million in funds from operations, an increase of 21% over 2024, which more than funded the capital program and dividend, as I mentioned at the beginning. Total cash costs, excluding cash taxes, averaged $1.29 per MCFE, and if you remove royalties of $0.16 to get what PATO controls, it equates to $1.13 per MCFE, and that's an $0.11 improvement over 2024. I think as you may recall that in the January 26th monthly report, we set ourselves a goal to reduce controllable costs further by another $0.10 in 2026. And as we reported, these low cash costs and strong revenues for the year generated a field-level net back of $3.61 in MCFE or an all-in cash net back of $2.93 per MCFE when you include cash taxes, G&A, and interest expense. Our reserve additions last year were one of the strongest in our 27-year history and essentially a repeat of 2024. If you haven't already, I encourage you to read the March monthly letter, which where we highlight some features from that reserves release that was issued on February 19th. But essentially strong well-performance and prudent capital spending by the entire Payot team drove PDP, FD&A costs down to $0.94 an MCFE. That's the lowest in the Canadian amount of the Canadian oil and gas producers. And when you combine our industry-leading low cash costs and high netbacks, it yields an after-tax cash netback recycled ratio of 3.1 times. meaning we turned essentially meaning we turned one dollar into three dollars and that's pretty good for a natural gas producer last year as we've always emphasized margins matter most and last year pedo put up an impressive 72 annual operating margin and a 31 annual profit margin of course these margins generate the profits to sustain dividends to return to shareholders grow the company and protect our balance sheet Turning to marketing, we continue to reap the benefits of our marketing diversification and hedging program. We've added a table in the press release to show what the two programs have achieved relative to ACO pricing over the last eight quarters. For the full year 2025, that premium to ACO on a volume average basis is about 88% or $1.80 per MCF over ACO prices. Looking forward at our hedge book, it secured a total of $880 million in revenues for 26 and another $350 $55 million for 2027 as it stands currently, you can expect us to continue our systematic hedging over the next six gas seasons and stay within the guardrails of our policy. And as we've always said, we hope our hedges are out of the money when we get there because that means that we're seeing better natural gas prices. In this case, it would be over $4 in MCF in 2026 or $3.50 in 2027. The gas that we have left floating for 2026 is pointed at US price markets, which allowed us to capture a premium on the daily market this past winter. It continues to trade above ACO even after you factor in the cost to get there. Okay, that was a lot of numbers and about the past, but to be clear, we think demonstrating the past execution is an indicator to future performance, so why don't we turn to the future? Looking forward to our plans for 2026. It's already been quite a volatile market for commodities, fueled by weather and, of course, world events. Our plan remains to spend $450 to $500 million drilling 70 to 80 net wells, the same as last year and the same as the year before. We expect to use four to five rigs to accomplish this. We'll slow down for breakup and then start up after the wet season. Current plan will be to run four rigs for most of the summer with an option to ramp back up to five later in the year, depending on prices. Remember, we are well protected through the summer with about 70% of our gas volumes fixed at prices just under $4 with very little exposure to a spot echo. The rest of our production is pointing to downstream markets, so we'll be watching them closely. We project a four-week program after breakup gets us pretty close to the midpoint of capital guidance, and we can adjust from there depending on where the business environment goes. We remain constructive on natural gas with the continued LNG build-out in Canada and the U.S. and increased demand from local markets like power for data centers. Clearly, recent world events remind us the need for energy, and we believe Canada can play an important role in providing a reliable, secure, and affordable supply. of oil and gas to these global markets. To that end, we continue to advocate for egress and local demand projects so that Canada, Canadian oil and gas can support the global demand for energy and our Canadian economy. In the meantime, we expect commodities will be volatile, but thanks to our prudent business strategy to keep the cost that we control as low as possible while protecting the revenues with our commodity marketing strategy, we expect to continue to deliver stable long-term returns to our shareholders and increase the value of the company. So I imagine there's a few questions. So maybe, Marvin, I'll open up the phone lines. If there's some questions in the queue, we can get to.

speaker
Marvin
Conference Operator

Thank you. At this time, we'll conduct a question and answer session. As a reminder to ask a question, you'll need to press star 1-1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. And our first question comes from the line of Travis Wood of NBCCM. Your line is now open.

speaker
Travis Wood
Analyst, National Bank Capital Markets

Yeah, good morning. JP, I think earlier in the year you mentioned some ability to tie in and built a small pipeline to tie in some third-party gas. I think that was into the browser plan. You reiterated that with year-end. In the same breath, you kind of flag ample spare capacity, close to 40% of spare capacity across the kind of corporate processing plants. So do you think there's an opportunity to continue to expand to run third party processing across other parts of the portfolio? Or how are you thinking about that from a kind of another revenue stream?

speaker
J.P. Lachance
President and CEO

Maybe I'll get Todd to elaborate further on that, but generally speaking, of course, we have a lot of space in our plants. Getting utilization up is a key to reducing overall costs or increasing income in this case if we were to add third parties to it. In the areas that we operate, we're pretty much the dominant operator in a lot of the places where we own facilities. just bringing in third parties. They either have their own facilities or we're just not active in the areas that we operate. But to the extent that we have opportunities like that, and a good example was the Brazzo area where we've added some volumes there last year and we'll continue to search for more. I think in total, Todd, if I'm not wrong, we have about 20 million or so of third party gas going through some of our facilities. And then there's some gas that comes in naturally with partner gas as well to our facilities.

speaker
Todd Burdick
VP of Production

But do you want to elaborate further on our plans to We'll get new opportunities there. Yeah, sure. So our JV group has been very active, you know, really over the last couple of years working on some of these deals. So they obviously got the one into Brazzo, and they're looking to get some more in there. You know, there's – when you ask about – getting gas into plants that have capacity. We have a pretty robust drilling program this year, development program, so that's going to likely fill up or keep full some of our gas plants in the Sundance area. We've got some pipeline projects that will allow us to effectively protect our base, but move gas into the Old Man, Old Man North area, Nose Hill, move gas, free gas up in the Swanson area for new development. So things will, as the year goes on, get a little tight in some of the areas in Sundance, but obviously, you know, the Edson plant, the JV group is working to get some gas into there. Brazzo, as I mentioned. So They're always mindful in talking to us as far as where we're going to have capacity on where they should be focusing their efforts, and I think they'll continue to do that as this year unfolds. Okay, thanks, Todd.

speaker
Travis Wood
Analyst, National Bank Capital Markets

Okay. Thanks for that, Keller. And then, last question, just in terms of the reserve report, you had flagged 34 locations. In terms of percentage, I don't think that's too different in terms of what wasn't captured in this year's reserve report versus past years. But could you talk about the formations or fields within those 34 locations that were pushed into possibly next year's numbers?

speaker
J.P. Lachance
President and CEO

Yeah, so to be clear, what we're highlighting there is the fact that we don't just drill the wells that are on our reserve books, that we have other opportunities that we can drill and will drill throughout any given year. And I think historically that's been around 32% of the well count has been, at least over the last 10 years, has been on new lands. And that was my point earlier in my opening remarks is that we continue to chase things. Maybe I'll get Mike to elaborate a little bit more, Mike Reese to elaborate a little bit more around why is that or what are we seeing and maybe a little more color on that if you'd like. So Mike, maybe you can.

speaker
Mike Reese
VP of Geoscience

Yeah, you bet, Jimmy. A broader question, Mike, unbooked inventory come from. I would say, you know, one of Pato's guiding principles here is to constantly high grade our drilling inventory and our drill schedule to maximize returns. Ultimately, we're driven by economics. So, unbooked locations present the opportunity to optimize species mix. and allow us to be nimble in reacting to things like changing market conditions. But to drill down a little bit more on where these on-book loads come from, I guess the first point I'd make is we can't book all of our potential locations nor any other oil and gas entity. We have to follow strict rules with the reserves evaluators around what locations can be classified as booked. And typically those that are not getting booked would be viewed as perhaps a little bit more risky, may not have nearby analogs for that particular plate, for instance. But we do continue to refine our geological mapping as new data becomes available uh which can lead to identifying previously unknown trends and i would point to what jp's already mentioned a little bit earlier back in 2024 we drilled uh tested a new channel trend in the flair in right in the heart of sundance where we drilled many wells before And that initial test was quite successful and we've been very aggressive in following that up since. Another point is that we continue to add every year to our land position through land sales and deals with other companies. And those lands obviously we believe are prospective, they have locations on them, otherwise we wouldn't have done those deals or picked those lands up. that wouldn't have been reflected on prior years books. You know, we also watch closely what our competitors are doing in and near our core areas. Perhaps they may unlock a new zone that we can then capitalize on our own lands. But again, that's something that wouldn't be reflected on our prior years So yeah, I mean, we're willing to test these zones when and where it makes sense. I guess the final point, but an important point that I would make is that, you know, the evolution of drilling and completion technology, coupled with TAO's leading cost structure can make previously marginal zones more competitive for capital within TATO and ultimately make some of those zones in some of the areas quite economic. So I'd like to be in his team. So I guess all of this taken together really demonstrates that we don't rest on our laurels and we're always driving to maximize shareholder value. regardless of whether the locations are social or unbooked.

speaker
Travis Wood
Analyst, National Bank Capital Markets

Thanks, Mike. And one follow-up just to that question. Of those 34 locations, and for competitive reasons, this can just be a yes or no, unless you want to provide more color, but Any new formations that weren't part of the active 2025 program within those 34, in terms of maybe not new zones within the stack, but new formations more broadly?

speaker
J.P. Lachance
President and CEO

I think the short answer to that is these 34 wells that we drilled last year were across all the formations that we typically have. So, you know, we see value as well as new plays within zones. So, yeah, we won't elaborate on details because there might be follow-ups in Programmer 26.

speaker
Travis Wood
Analyst, National Bank Capital Markets

Nope, fair enough. Okay, I'll turn it back. Really appreciate the cover, guys. You're welcome. Thank you.

speaker
Marvin
Conference Operator

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Chris Thompson of Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. Your line is now open.

speaker
Chris Thompson
Analyst, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce

Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I'm going to start with your capital plans, JP. You talked about the option to ramp later in the year to a fifth rate depending on pricing. Could you elaborate on sort of what price signal you'd be looking for to do that?

speaker
J.P. Lachance
President and CEO

Yeah, I mean, that's a loaded question in a way because we're looking at the futures too, not just, you know, one price. I think, you know, for us it's going to be where do we see prices, but also, you know, where's the business environment in general as far as costs too. For example, if, you know, if oil prices were to stay high, for example, and gas prices were to continue to fall away, now you've got maybe potentially increasing your supply costs or your costs for services, right, because the activity wraps up just the same. So it's a combination of of several things. That's why I mentioned we're a business environment, not necessarily just price. But for us, price, we'd like to see prices at least where they are. I think a slight improvement, of course, to go to the high end of our guidance, I think we'd want to see prices increase from here. And if prices were to fall further, then we'd likely guide towards the lower end of our guidance, as simple as that.

speaker
Chris Thompson
Analyst, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce

Okay, got it. And then I guess, yeah, on the low end side of the discussion, you know, I mean, some of your GAS peers have indicated a bit of caution around growth and capital spending given the forward strip. And, you know, I recognize you guys are well hedged for 2026, but there's still, you know, I guess there's still other considerations you might take. So how are you thinking about you know, activity levels and, and, and a downside type of, um, type of growth rate?

speaker
J.P. Lachance
President and CEO

Well, activity levels would obviously drop. We would, we would, uh, moderate the four rigs that we have that we would continue to run it to, to, to go to the low end of our, of our guidance. I think that of our capital guidance, I don't see us spending less than that based on the fact that we, so that means four 50, but less than that based on the fact that we have a strong position, not only for 26, but also even as a 27. And so, uh, I don't see us changing the plan that much. We'll cautiously watch it. We'll react to prices this summer. If to the extent that we have anything exposed to AECO and we don't like the price, then we will moderate production, we'll regulate production accordingly. But I think our capital plans will remain in that range 450 to 500.

speaker
Chris Thompson
Analyst, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce

Okay, sure. And then maybe just a question for Mike Collins on the gas markets here. We've seen LNG prices move a lot higher given the conflict in the Middle East, but North American markets have really yet to respond. So just wondering if we can get your views on how these markets might evolve through the summer, especially if the conflict is protracted.

speaker
J.P. Lachance
President and CEO

Sorry, Chris, to clarify, you're talking about gas or oil prices?

speaker
Chris Thompson
Analyst, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce

On the gas side.

speaker
J.P. Lachance
President and CEO

Yeah, I don't. we can provide a view of that. I mean, to us, we're sort of agnostic around price because we have 70% of our prices that are hedged for the summer. But maybe, Mike, if you want to provide some color around how you see things going forward here.

speaker
Mike Collins
VP of Marketing

Sure. Thanks for the question, Chris. When we look at opportunities, to add to the diversification or even to the hedge book for that matter. You can appreciate that there's a lot of discipline that goes into that decision making and tenor that would be required to put that position on. So when we're evaluating opportunities, whether it's LNG or other diversification opportunities, it's got a long time horizon and it has to be accretive to not only our position but also to alternative markets can get us. So does the LNG market look attractive today to have those deals on? Sure. But most deals that we're evaluating in that space have a start date of 27 or 28 or even later if they're project related. So, you know, we have a much longer time horizon in how we evaluate decisions for the business. I hope that answers your question. You know, there's always opportunities that come, even as far as the cold shot in the wintertime that we've experienced. You would have asked the question three months ago. Would you like to have some of that on right now? Sure, but we're constantly evaluating opportunities. What does that risk profile look like five, 10, maybe even 15 years down the road?

speaker
Chris Thompson
Analyst, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce

Got it. Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. I mean, you know, like where, where the payroll model really shines is, is being able to layer in some of these crisis locations that, that happened when they happened. And, and so, you know, I was probing at sort of, are you starting to see some of those opportunities just given, you know, the move we've seen in global benchmarks, like from what I could tell the Ford strip hasn't really improved for NYMEX and that much. And, and so, you know, The question is, when do those opportunities start really showing up on Payto's hedge book, if at all?

speaker
Mike Collins
VP of Marketing

Sure. Like I said, there's a lot of discipline that goes into decision-making to make sure that we're adding good deals that prop the book up higher than where we're currently at. There's a lot of unknowns in the LNG space as well. Sure, there's a lot of excitement around... the short-term price bump, obviously what's happening in global events, but if you consider that the price of oil might well spur more drilling in liquids-rich areas like Permian, then you can appreciate that maybe the curve in NYMEX might not have a lot of upside to it as it relates to that LNG spike in the price of crude in the short term. Like I said, we're constantly exploring the opportunities. We're constantly looking for prudent risk that would benefit the book and not just in the next 12 months, but how do we layer these on 5, 10, 15 years. There's a lot of work that goes into it and I'm sure you can appreciate how we built the book up to this point. It's taken quite a bit of time and we're starting to bear the fruits from that past five years. So, yeah, sure, it might provide some excitement in the short term, but we have to really see it play out in the long term to have it make sense and put it on.

speaker
Chris Thompson
Analyst, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce

Yeah, fair enough. And then I'll just – one more follow-up for me just on domestic markets, like specifically the eco market. You know, what do you guys see from a supply-demand picture kind of going forward here, like specifically data centers have been obviously very topical. Do you think that's a real opportunity that's going to help us see some strength in the eco-market? Because LNG hasn't really done that just yet, and hopefully it will, but what other demand catalysts could be beneficial for the Alberta market?

speaker
J.P. Lachance
President and CEO

Well, clearly, I think, Chris, we see the power demand being a a catalyst in the future. You know, the timing of that is just some projects that are already underway and there are other projects that will come later. And, you know, we feel like we're in the right place for that. So I don't, in the longer term, again, this is, like Mike said, we're looking past, you know, the longer term, we think we're in the right space here, that there will be some, certainly some incremental demand that comes from power generation requirements for data centers or whatever, what have you, you know, oil prices go up, there's increased demand for gas, you know, for oil sands. There's lots of places where we can see potential for gas prices to go up as LNG projects get approved and we get reconnected with the market. So we're still very positive on the eco-market. It's just, you know, we have to manage these short-term prices, and we think we do that very well. Thanks for turning it back.

speaker
Marvin
Conference Operator

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Again, as a reminder to ask a question, you'll need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. Our next question comes from the line of Michael Harvey of RBC. Your line is now open.

speaker
Michael Harvey
Analyst, RBC Capital Markets

Yeah, sure. Good morning, everybody. I just had a question as it relates to your views on M&A. You've obviously had some uh, very good results from the Repsol deal. Um, there's probably going to be more assets available in the deep basin. So I guess just a couple of things, um, maybe you just walk us through just quickly your process on evaluating the strategic fit of things you might add, just kind of basic stuff in terms of how Pato thinks about it. And then, um, you know, the Repsol deal was pretty much hand in glove in terms of the map sheet, but, um, Just wondering how you would think about adding other assets in addition to the hand-in-glove stuff that kind of might be non-core, or is it basically just kind of looking for interlocking fit on everything? Just any broad thoughts. Appreciate it. Thanks.

speaker
J.P. Lachance
President and CEO

Yeah, thanks for the question, Mike. You know, when we approach M&A, we've always approached it the same way, whether they be big or small opportunities. Repsol was a bigger one, obviously. But we're always looking for own and control. If we look at the attributes of any kind of deal that we're gonna consider one, it's gonna have the right attributes for us. And those attributes include things like owning and controlling the infrastructure or having the ability to move it into our own. So it may not necessarily be its own infrastructure. As long as it has its own infrastructure in some way or we can operate that way. We wanna see some synergies with respect to an ability to reduce ideally reduce the cost structure of the assets so that we can add value that way, so they may not be priced into the value of those assets. I'm talking about reducing operating costs and things like that, not just synergies like G&A reductions. I'm talking about real synergies with respect to costs on the operating side of the business. It has to have a quantity of upside that's suitable to the production if we're buying production that it has. So quality and quantity are important and that quality and quantity should be able to compete with what we have today, right? The other element is important is having egress capabilities, right? And that ability to be able to get whatever we might want to grow into the market. So obviously to sell it and to be able to grow it from there. So like we're not looking at opportunities to Just for the sake of opportunities to get bigger, we don't want to pollute the business. We've been fairly consistent on this. Obviously, Repsol was a really good fit. To the extent that there are other opportunities like that out there, and they don't have to necessarily be just in and around us. They can be beyond that, too. We'll continue to look for plays that have the attributes that we prefer. We've had a really good success with Repsol. If we're going to do another one like that, and Pato's not known to be an acquirer per se, so it's got to have the same sort of value upside in the way we're going to look at it. So we'll be careful, and we'll be picky, and we'll find the right opportunity. We have a team dedicated to this. Derek's team is dedicated to looking for new opportunities, and so we'll continue to do that.

speaker
Michael Harvey
Analyst, RBC Capital Markets

Got it. And on the staffing front, how big do you think Pato could get – in terms of adding production volume, acreage, et cetera, and still maintain the kind of industry-leading cost structure? Is there a size you think about, or do you just think you could kind of scale up effectively under any production scenario?

speaker
J.P. Lachance
President and CEO

That's a good question. Did you read the monthly report that came out last year? We talked a bit about that, right? And I think we actually put a plot out that sort of projected where we think we could get to still maintain sort of under a magic number that was put out there um you know it's important uh culture and the size of the organization is really important to us so that is a factor when we think about you know growing and it's something on all of our minds people around this table understand that and i think it was peter drucker that said you know culture eats strategy for breakfast right and and i think that's on our minds as far as getting bigger for the sake of getting bigger and other good reasons so just because it might make sense, you know, there may be some value in being a bigger organization for cost of capital or for, you know, that low, you know, being investment grade to allow us to get a lower cost for our debt, although right now it's pretty low already. It's almost in the industry, especially for our size. So size, you know, I don't know, like there was magical numbers out there, but maintaining a flat, flat sort of structure and having people that are accountable and empowered to do their job is really important that's what we talked about if you want to thumb back through some of the monthly reports it's suggested i think that you know if you if you think the magic number is 150 people well we're a long way from that right now at just under 100 folks in the office here to include the consulting staff so so that that's you know there's lots of room for us to grow but we have to remain disciplined in that and this human here understands that that we need to continue to maintain the culture that we have where we're focused on costs and managing our business without doing anything extra that we don't need to do. So we've got lots of room to grow. We're only 100 people here at the high end.

speaker
Michael Harvey
Analyst, RBC Capital Markets

Got it. Appreciate those thoughtful answers. Thanks, JP.

speaker
Marvin
Conference Operator

Thank you. I'm showing no further questions at this time. I'll now turn it back to JP for closing remarks.

speaker
J.P. Lachance
President and CEO

Okay, thanks very much, Marvin. I just want to remind folks that our AGM is coming up, and that AGM is scheduled for, I think it's May 21st. It's going to be in our office or in our building here, plus 15 level in Calgary. It's an in-person meeting. Also, I want to remind folks, I referenced the monthly report a few times there in this call and discussion point. If you We write this report to give folks a sense of relevance. We write about some topics that's relevant to our business, and it provides an update of our monthly production and our capital spending based on the field estimates. These monthly updates on operations not only demonstrates our transparency, but it also provides some confidence that we have real-time accuracy of our numbers, and so there should be no surprises when we get to the quarter end. If you want to subscribe to that, you can go under our website. It's under the Investors tab, and I encourage you to do that. Okay, well, thanks, folks, for tuning in. See you next quarter.

speaker
Marvin
Conference Operator

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This is the end of the program. You may now disconnect.

Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

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