Parex Resources Inc.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to PARICS Resources' first quarter 2022 conference call and webcast. Please note that at any time, participants on the webcast can submit their questions under the Ask a Question tab at the top of the webcast interface, and participants on the phone can press star 1. I would now like to turn the call over to Mike Cacton, Senior Vice President of Capital Markets and Corporate Planning of PARICS at PARICS. Please go ahead, Mike. Thank you.

Thank you, Operator, and good morning, everyone. On the call with me today are Matt Molson, Parks President and Chief Executive Officer, Ken Pinsky, Chief Financial Officer, Eric Ferland, Chief Operating Officer, and Ryan Fowler, Senior Vice President of Exploration. I would like to remind you that this conference call includes forward-looking statements and non-GAAP and other financial measures with the associated risk outlined in our news release and MD&A, which can be found on our website or at cedar.com. All amounts discussed today are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise stated. Traditionally, in lieu of a quarterly conference call, PARECs invited shareholders to participate in our annual general meeting. However, given the virtual nature of that event and our exciting and material increases to both production guidance and return of capital, PARECs wanted to hold a call to review our record quarter and provide some context how we are growing PARECs in 2022, 2023, and the long term. Please go ahead, Ahmad.

Thank you, Mike, and good morning, everyone. We believe that Perixx is positioned to take advantage of the opportunity that lies ahead. We have set the company up to quickly deploy capital to meaningfully grow production and therefore funds flow in an environment where oil supply is constrained. The unique proposition that Perixx has is that we can do this while we increase our return of capital, including building on our track record of industry-leading share buybacks and increasing our quarterly dividend by 100% over the past year. The dividends have been stress tested and robust even in low commodity price environments. Ken will discuss our first quarter results as well as our return of capital track record and framework. Before I make some remarks on our guidance and outlook as we focus on the execution of our plan, to target record production by year end 2022. Please go ahead, Kevin.

Thanks, Ahmad. Our first quarter results were very strong. We generated record funds flow from operations of U.S. $205 million, which is up 64% quarter over quarter, and 22% from the prior quarter. Quarterly net income was U.S. $153 million, while production averaged approximately 51,700 BOE per day, which is up 10% quarter over quarter, or 4% from the prior quarter. We continue to have a strong balance sheet with no debt and working capital of US$287 million, which we did re-reduce during the quarter through the acceleration of our planned 2022 share buyback, which is nearly 5% complete already, and the procurement of long lead inventory items as we look to ramp up production this year and into 2023. Our focus is building our track record of returning capital to shareholders and improving the long-term strength of our business. For the 2022 share buyback, we plan to repurchase the full 10% of our normal course issuer bid, or NCIB, which is expected to reduce our fully diluted shares to around 110 million at the end of the year, which compares to approximately 165 million fully diluted shares in 2017. This represents an over 30% reduction of our total shares outstanding over the past five years, while still growing our annual production from 35,000 barrels a day in 2017 to 55,000 barrel a day targeted for 2022. On top of the share buybacks, we are now ratcheting up the quarterly dividend as we look to fulfill our long-term capital allocation framework, which is to return at least one-third of our total fund flow from operations to shareholders, which represents approximately 100% of free funds flow. We define free funds flow as funds flow from operations less our capital expenditures. Yesterday we announced a substantial, nearly 80% increase to our regular dividend to 25 cents Canadian per share per quarter. We believe this makes us competitive among dividend-paying companies and extremely competitive when you look at both the NCIB plus the dividend. Now I'd like to turn things back to Imad for some final remarks.

Thank you, Ken. On our last conference call, I said that I was excited for what was to come for BEX in 2022, as well as its long-term prospects. I think with yesterday's release, we are demonstrating that BEX is living on what we promised. My excitement and optimism for the company has never been higher as we've built for the future. We are updating our full-year capital expenditure guidance to $550 million midpoint. which is expected to generate an exit production rate of over 60,000 barrels a day. This sets us up to a fantastic 2023 year. Given our prior decisions to secure rigs under long-term fixed-rate contracts, increased to our staff capability and numbers, and acquiring long-lead items like steel casing, turbines, and compressors, Sparx is extremely well positioned to execute on our ambitious plan. Our capital guidance is increasing concentrated in the Llanos Basin, primarily on our own operated activities. $40 million to acquire long-lead inventory items we ordered earlier, which will enable us the efficient execution of our multi-year program that we proactively work to minimize the impacts of inflation and supply chain constraints facing the industry. Second, we have $30 million to increase short-cycle activity on low-risk projects, accelerating the production of our reserves in an environment where we think we can pay out well in less than 90 days at current operating netbacks. Third, we're adding $55 million net to optimize drilling sequence, with the main emphasis on water-flood acceleration in Cabastero and Block 34. As we promised, we are following through with our capital allocation framework. For 2022, we have anchored our spending around the return of at least one-third of our free flow from operations to shareholders, as Ken indicated, which leaves two-thirds to be reinvested into the business, and thus two primary things. Reinvestment is required for cash flow growth and for us to replenish and high-grade our development inventory for the long term as a conventional producer. That reimbursement also supports the future return of capital activity, something that is in Paris's DNA. In summary, in 2022, we think we can deliver 17% absolute production growth, combined with a share buyback of 10% of our float, resulting in nearly 30% production growth on a per share basis. To underline our faith in our long-term business and deliver cash returns to shareholders, We have now doubled the dividend to a dollar per share yearly. I do like round numbers. This delivers a yield of over 4%. We think the story for PARECS is quite compelling for our investors, being energy-specific investors or generalists. With that, I'd like to thank everyone for their combined support of PARECS and remind shareholders that our annual general meeting is being held after this call beginning at 9.30 a.m. Mountain Time. I would like to also thank our employees listening in for their continuous hard work and execution as a team effort. This concludes our formal remarks. I would now like to turn the call back to the operator to start the Q&A session for the investment community. Thank you all.

Thank you. Please press star 1 at this time if you have a question. There will be brief pause while the participants register for questions. Thank you for your patience. Our first question is from Adam Gill with Paradigm Capital. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, gentlemen. Two questions for me. First off, as you've increased your capital, how do you plan to approach and start drilling on some of the lands that were won in the 2021 bid round? And the second question was, As you think about additional returns to shareholders going forward, what's the preference between increasing the base dividend or doing another special dividend? Thank you.

This is Ryan, Senior VP Exploration. To answer your question about how we're going to explore the new blocks we acquired in 2021, the process of exploration in Columbia starts with access to the land and acquisition of the environmental licenses required to drill. And typically that takes a year and sometimes more. We have a few of the blocks of the 18 that we think we might have access by the end of this year. And so we're hopeful that we'll be drilling our first wells into that program in the Yano space in 2022. But for the most part, that program in terms of drilling will start in 2023.

Thanks, Ryan. It's Ken. With respect to the return of capital, we've got the regular dividend at $0.25 per quarter, Adam. We'll keep that in place for 2022. We don't expect any changes to that. And we'll do the full 10% share buyback as the expectation. To manage working capital, we would look to special dividends at the end of the year if that's what we need to do.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you. Once again, please press star 1 at this time if you have a question. Our next question is from Oriana Covo with Ballad. Please go ahead.

Hi, thanks for taking my question. This is Oriana with Ballad. Congratulations on the good quarter results. I had a couple of questions. So maybe if we could go first. Are there any thoughts you can share about the Vasconia differentials? We were under the impression they should have been wider during the quarter, and I kind of saw in your press release that this wasn't the case. So if you could share any insights, that would be very helpful.

Thank you. It's Mike Crofton speaking. As for Vesconia, like many of the differentials or basin markers, they can vary quite widely throughout a time period. We have seen them go from about $3 to $4 up to about $6 throughout the quarter, but it seems to settle back down into that $4 mark recently, which is fairly consistent where we were really over the last 12 months.

Thank you, and maybe just following up on quality and commercial discounts, what explains this, perhaps I missed it, but what explains this quality premium you received during the quarter? I saw it in some of the pages in the earnings release.

Well, you know, we typically get, Asconia trades around WTI, And our crude typically has about a dollar discount of that. It also depends upon the refinery's demand for that quality of crude since it's low sulfur. So really, you know, we don't look at it as a premium that we can measure. We're a price taker, and sometimes it's a premium, sometimes it's a discount. But it's around that kind of, you know, Vesconia will trade around WTI. And then we have our transportation costs. against that. So, you know, we typically look at a rent minus $13 to $14 at the wellhead, and we give that information to our MD&A, and that's including transportation.

Perfect. Thanks. That's very clear. One last one. You mentioned in the MD&A the sustainability solar farm project. So just if you could share some more information about this. Is that embedded in your budget for 2022? How much will it cost? Estimates of savings that it could generate? That would be helpful too. Thank you.

Sure. We're very happy to have the solar project commissioned this year. What it does for us is reduce our greenhouse gas intensity as it helps displace some of the heavier fuels such as diesel that we were using previously to power our facility. So we'll be generating the power and it'll go straight to our operating energy that we require for the facility. As for cost, it's really a flow-through agreement where we pay the power cost to the provider.

Perfect. Thanks. That was all from my side. Thank you, and again, congratulations on a good quarter.

Thank you. There are no further questions registered at this time. I would like to turn the meeting back over to you, Mr. Crofton.

Thank you, Operator. On behalf of PARACS, thank you for joining us this morning. Have a good day.

Thank you, everyone. The conference has now ended. These are skin and lines of this time, and we thank you for your participation. Thank you.