Earnings Labs

Vermilion Energy Inc. (VET)

Q2 2016 Earnings Call· Mon, Aug 8, 2016

$13.12

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. My name is Mike, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Vermilion Energy Inc. Q2 Earnings Announcement Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there'll be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] I would now turn the call over to Anthony Marino, President and CEO. You may begin your conference.

Anthony Marino

Analyst

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us. I'm Tony Marino, President and CEO of Vermilion. With me today are Mike Kaluza, Executive Vice President and COO; Curtis Hicks, Executive Vice President and CFO; and Kyle Preston, our Director of Investor Relations. I would like to refer to the advisory regarding forward-looking statements contained in today's news release. These advisories describe the forward-looking information, non-GAAP measures, and oil and gas terms referred to today and outline the risk factors and assumptions relevant to this discussion. On today's call, I'm going to provide you with a brief summary of our Q2 2016 financial and operating results and then discuss some of the more notable items from the quarter as well as the preliminary budget targets we've outlined for 2017 and 2018. We achieved average production of 64,285 boe/d during the quarter. As we anticipated, this was a modest reduction from Q1. However, this production level is still well above our guidance range of 62,500 boe/d to 63,500 boe/d for 2016. The strong performance of Corrib, our Canadian assets, and our Netherlands assets made this possible. Because of these encouraging production results, we expect our average production level for 2016 to be around the top end of our guidance range. We achieved this Q2 production result despite voluntarily restricting our Canadian gas volumes by an average of approximately 1,000 boe/d during the second quarter. As of right now, we have restricted about 12 million cubic feet a day or 2,000 boe/d of Canadian gas. While the vast majority of the shut-in gas would provide positive cash flow at today's prices, we think it is likely that we can make substantially greater margins if we save it for a later time period. Our current plan is to bring back about a…

Operator

Operator

The first question is from Patrick O'Rourke from AltaCorp. Patrick O’Rourke: Good morning, guys. Excellent quarter. Just a few quick questions here. You did talk about the P DRIP, prorating it down and eventually eliminating it depending on what happens with the commodity. Is there any commodity scenario where you would accelerate that phase-out of the P DRIP here?

Anthony Marino

Analyst

Yes. That's a good question, Pat. We based this plan for getting rid of it over the next year beginning Q4 2016, ending Q3 2017 on the current commodity strip. And we didn't announce a specific schedule for how we would taper it down or what the proration percentages would be by quarter just to provide some flexibility regarding the commodity price. It is – I think it is possible, with no commitments on our part, that if the commodity environment turned out to be stronger than we would take it down faster and then potentially end up turning it off entirely earlier than that end of Q3 2017 target that we've established. Patrick O’Rourke: Okay. Thanks. And then just a couple of quick questions on Germany. On slide 21 on your new deck, you do a great job laying out the inventory across all the business units, but Germany is not in there. Are you guys able to give maybe a preliminary view of what you think the inventory could look like in Germany?

Anthony Marino

Analyst

Yes. Another good question. The data that we have in the corporate PowerPoint that is on the website is all based on the GLJ reserve and resource reports that we have. It's kind of a long process over a period of several years to present these projects to GLJ, have them evaluate them and get them committed to the report. And in Germany, in the current land base that we have prior to the Engie acquisition, there's really two sources of potential inventory. One is the development and kind of semi-development drilling that occurs on our producing asset, operated by ExxonMobil in which we have a 25% asset known as the [indiscernible] that we acquired in early 2014. So that's one source. And there is some inventory, not a huge number of wells, but a moderate amount of inventory in those development and extension projects on that asset. There's a much larger potential inventory in the farm-in that we signed at the beginning of this year, which covers approximately half of the exploratory lands held by ExxonMobil in the North German Basin. That inventory, first of all, didn't really qualify to be in the report because the deal was actually signed at the beginning of 2016, so it's not really available for the inventory counts that are listed there. And furthermore, it takes some time to fully get these kinds of prospects committed to the resource reports. And we would hope over the next year, the year-end 2016 report, and certainly by the year-end 2017 report, that we could have that inventory described and available for inclusion in the drilling list that we show in the PowerPoint. But for those reasons, it's not really in there. There will be a third adder, and that would be the Engie acquisition that we hope to have closed by the end of this year. We think there are drilling opportunities on those properties although in the initial reserve report that we mentioned when we announced the acquisition, there weren't any – none of those drilling opportunities were yet included. There's a possibility that that could be a moderate adder by Q end – by year-end 2016 and if not, hopefully by year-end 2017. So gradually, I think what you'll see is a build-up of that German inventory and to have it at a meaningful enough level to be included in that list of drilling projects that we have. Patrick O’Rourke: Okay. Thanks a lot, guys. [Operator Instructions]

Operator

Operator

The next question is from Ray Kwan from BMO Capital Markets.

Ray Kwan

Analyst

Hey, guys. Just a quick one on your guidance for 2017 and 2018. I know you mentioned that you're going to fund the capital program and dividend all within cash flow. But just wondering if you can put out like what your – is there going to be any free cash flow post kind of dividend and spending based on your forecast? Is it – and I don't know if you can even say what the total payout that you're thinking about based on the current strip prices are.

Anthony Marino

Analyst

Yeah. Under the strip, there is some cash left after paying the cash dividends and the funding the E&D CapEx investment. A moderate amount at the strip that we had last week, it varies quite a bit day by day with the volatility that we've had in prices. But the answer is yes. Under the current strip, there's a modest amount of free cash flow generated. I think under the strip we had last week was kind of at the most recent drop in prices, we had – we were something like 95% used roughly, I think, during that period for cash dividends and E&D CapEx. And it's a – that's a number that varies everyday as the strip goes up and down.

Ray Kwan

Analyst

No, that's good information, thank you. And just a second just on acquisitions, I know in your prepared remarks, you mentioned about focusing on Germany in terms of potential acquisitions there, but are you looking – is it strictly Germany or just around Europe that you guys are so focused on within the next kind of six months to 12 months here?

Anthony Marino

Analyst

No, it's not just Germany. One of the advantages we have is that you know we're in these three regions and in several different jurisdictions and a couple of those regions that gives us a lot more sites for potential M&A. We're quite selective with it. We stick to a very disciplined set of criteria, and if those aren't met, we won't make a deal. We're not really very pressed to make a deal because we've got a really strong organic inventory. But we do look at really in each of these jurisdictions including in North America. We probably don't have quite as great advantages in North America as we have in the European market and that's why more of the deals over the past few years have tended to be in Europe. We can just make them higher rates of return than what North America typically provides. But the fact is that we're in the market all the time evaluating, screening, evaluating potential additions in all three regions even though the larger percentage of the completed transactions has tended to be Europe. And even with that, we don't really make a huge number of deals. Our M&A, I think, is pretty disciplined, and we're – again, we can be that because we have quite a strong organic inventory to provide the base growth.

Ray Kwan

Analyst

Perfect. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. I will turn the call back over to the presenters.

Anthony Marino

Analyst

Okay. Thank you again for your participation in our conference call. We look forward to speaking with you again in our Q3 2016 release.