Prairiesky Royalty Ltd

TSX:PSK

Earnings Call Analysis

PrairieSky Q2 2024 Financial Highlights and Outlook

PrairieSky reported a 6% increase in oil royalty volumes, reaching 13,312 barrels per day, driven by advances in drilling technology. This led to royalty production revenues of $125.5 million. The realized oil price rose by $14 to $91.75 per barrel, bolstered by the Trans Mountain pipeline's impact. Expenses were well-managed at $6.8 million for the quarter. Cash flow improved, helping reduce net debt by 21% to $174.6 million. The company plans to be debt-free by mid to late 2024 while continuing to capitalize on high-growth plays in Clearwater and Mannville.

Introduction and Key Players

Andrew Phillips, President and CEO of PrairieSky Royalty, introduced the second quarter 2024 financial results. Key executives, including CFO Pam Kazeil, and VP of Capital Markets Michael Murphy, provided insights on the company’s performance and strategic initiatives. This coordinated effort highlighted the company's strong leadership.

Operational Efficiency and Oil Recovery Enhancements

PrairieSky's oil royalty volumes reached 13,312 barrels per day, showcasing increased drilling efficiencies. Innovations in fluid systems drilling and geo-steering have significantly boosted initial production rates and oil recoveries. Notably, around one-third of the wells drilled this year were unstimulated, offering lower decline rates. Enhanced recovery techniques, such as water and polymer flooding, are forecasted to double oil recovery in some cases, reducing annual decline rates and enhancing overall production.

Continued Growth in Multilateral Drilling

Michael Murphy reported that despite a seasonal dip in drilling activity, with 115 wells spud in Q2 2024, a rise in multilateral drilling significantly improved well productivity. Multilateral wells made up approximately 43% of drilling activity, increasing from 30% in Q2 2023 and 17% in Q2 2022. Enhanced activity in Clearwater and Mannville plays is expected to drive robust oil royalty production volumes for the remainder of the year.

Financial Performance and Revenue Drivers

PrairieSky’s total production averaged 25,320 barrels of oil equivalent (BOE) per day in Q2, with oil royalties representing 13,312 barrels per day, marking a 6% increase from Q2 2023. An increase in realized oil prices to $91.75 per barrel, driven by stronger WTI pricing and a tighter WCS heavy oil differential after the Trans Mountain pipeline started operation, boosted oil revenue. The tighter differential alone added approximately $3.5 million to oil revenues. Royalty production revenue for the quarter was $125.5 million, with other revenues adding $10.1 million.

Efficiency in Administration and Strategic Financial Moves

Administrative expenses were well-managed at $6.8 million, including $700,000 for deferred share unit payments. The company forecasts 2024 cash administrative expenses to be between $35 million and $40 million. PrairieSky has $1.4 billion in tax pools to offset future taxable income, rendering the first $140 million of pretax cash flow for 2024 tax-free. Funds from operations totaled $106.1 million or $0.44 per share, marking a 16% increase over Q2 2023. The company announced a quarterly dividend of $0.25 per share, maintaining a payout ratio of 56%. Net debt decreased by 21% from year-end, totaling $174.6 million as of June 30.

Impact of the Trans Mountain Pipeline

Significant benefits are anticipated from the Trans Mountain pipeline, which adds 590,000 barrels of capacity to the West Coast, thereby tightening differentials. This development significantly enhances the economics for heavy oil producers, which in turn benefits PrairieSky. This pipeline, combined with the Line 3 replacement, results in substantial excess pipeline capacity for the first time in a decade, bolstering oil resource economics.

Government Relations and Policy Impact

Andrew Phillips discussed how PrairieSky cooperates with various government policies across its extensive operational history. Despite challenges with federal policies in recent years, the company has found support at provincial levels, particularly in Alberta and Saskatchewan. The Trans Mountain pipeline project by the federal government underscores the recognition of the oil and gas sector's importance to the Canadian economy.

Future Expectations and Strategic Focus

With notable advancements in multilateral drilling and new play concepts, PrairieSky remains optimistic about future developments. Continued success in leasing shows a robust interest in the company's extensive land base. Phillips highlighted the priority of maintaining a strong balance sheet, aiming to be debt-free by mid to late 2025, thus providing flexibility for capital allocation, including strategic acquisitions and stock buybacks.

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q2

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to PrairieSky Royalty Second Quarter 2024 Financial Results. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would like now to turn the conference over to Andrew Phillips, President and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

[Andrew Phillips, executive]

Thank you, Michelle, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for dialing into the PrairieSky Q2 2024 Earnings Call. On the call from PrairieSky are Pam Kazeil, CFO; Dan Bertram, CEO; and Michael Murphy, VP, Capital Markets as well as myself. Before we begin, there are certain forward-looking information in my commentary today, so I'd ask investors to review the forward-looking statements qualifier in our press release and MD&A.

Oil royalty volumes of 13,312 barrels per day are the result of strong operator drilling efficiencies across our vast land base. Continued improvements in Fluid Systems drilling orientations and geo steering have resulted in better 90-day IPs and anticipated oil recoveries. Given we're still in the very early innings of development, further efficiencies will be recognized. PrairieSky has decades of economic inventory for heavy oil. Approximately 1/3 of the wells drilled on our land this year will be unstimulated. These wells have lower decline rates than stimulated wellbores.

Water and polymer flood implementation across our lands will have the benefit of both lowering our annual decline rate and significantly enhancing the ultimate recovery of oil volumes. In some cases, operators will recover more than double the oil that can be achieved with primary drilling. Selecting the right partners who share a long-term vision is important. Leasing remains at record levels with 55 new leasing arrangements with 46 distinct oil companies.

We have a lean staff at PrairieSky, who are able to efficiently handle these large volumes of contracts and continue to execute. All of our employees are shareholders and get the benefit of their great execution. Our data room continues to be busy and our technical group has developed some new play concepts that we believe have great economics. I will now turn the call over to Mike.

[Michael Murphy, executive]

Thanks, Andrew. In terms of activity, well spuds were down quarter-over-quarter due to the seasonality of spring breakup with a total of 115 wells spud on PrairieSky acreage in Q2 2024. Although spuds were down relative to the same period in 2023, this was offset by a higher average royalty rate of 6.6% and improved well productivity driven by an increase in contribution from multilateral drilling.

In the quarter, multilateral wells accounted for approximately 43% of drilling activity on PrairieSky lands, which is up from 30% in the second quarter of 2023 and 17% in the second quarter of 2022. We saw a significant increase in Clearwater spuds quarter-over-quarter, and we anticipate robust activity to continue through the remainder of the year in this play as well as the Mannville stack, driving strong oil royalty production volumes. And I'll now pass it over to Pam to discuss the financials.

[Pamela Kazeil, executive]

Thank you, Mike. Good morning, everyone. PrairieSky's total production volumes averaged 25,320 BOE per day in the quarter. Oil royalty volumes reached a record 13,312 barrels per day, up 6% over Q2 2023. Year-to-date, oil royalty volumes are up 7% with growth generated primarily in the Clearwater and Mannville Stack plays. This quarter, oil generated 89% of our royalty revenue due to the combination of increased production and strong pricing. Our realized oil price of $91.75 per barrel increased approximately $14 over Q1 2024 with stronger WTI pricing and a tighter WCS heavy oil differential as a result of the Trans Mountain pipeline coming online.

As noted in our year-end conference call, a USD 1 change in the heavy oil differential adds approximately $2.5 million to annualized cash flow after tax so the improved differential post Trans Mountain has a meaningful impact to PrairieSky's oil revenues. This quarter, the differential tightened by just under $6 per barrel from Q1, increasing our oil revenues by approximately $3.5 million. Royalty production revenue totaled $125.5 million in Q2 and other revenues generated an incremental $10.1 million, including $6.7 million of bonus consideration.

Year-to-date, our leasing is on pace with 2022 and 2023, our most active leasing years. We issued leases across our land base with the Duvernay and Mannville being our most active place. Cash administrative expenses in the quarter totaled $6.8 million or $2.95 per BOE and included $700,000 of deferred share unit payments related to a direct to retirement.

We continue to forecast 2024 cash administrative expense to be in the range of $35 million to $40 million. Current income tax expense totaled $19 million in Q2 entering the year, PrairieSky has $1.4 billion of tax pools to offset future taxable income, mostly deductible at 10% per year. For 2024, that means the first $140 million of pretax cash flow is tax-free with incremental cash flow tax at 23.6%.

Funds from operations totaled $106.1 million or $0.44 per share in the quarter. This was 16% or approximately $50 million ahead of Q2 2023. PrairieSky declared a dividend of $59.7 million or $0.25 per share in the quarter with the resulting payout ratio of 56%. PrairieSky net debt at June 30 totaled $174.6 million, a decrease of 21% from year-end. We will now turn it over to the moderator to proceed with the Q&A.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Adam Schwartz with Black Bayer partners.

[Unknown Analyst]

Two questions kind of interrelated. Could you comment on maybe short, medium-, long-term views of what the impact of the Trans Mountain pipelines going to have on your operators and on the overall market, like how you think -- I know it's looking for a firm prediction, but just generally speaking, how you think it's going to impact your operators and then by extension, your business?

And then secondly, there's some talk about the government being at times friendly and at times hostile to the industry. And I guess how do you think when you look out 5 or 10 years, how do you think that that's going to translate to the industry and to your business more opinion than obviously prediction?

[Andrew Phillips, executive]

No problem. Yes. So on the first question, Adam, short, medium and long term. The Trans Mountain pipeline adds 590,000 barrels of capacity to West Coast and what we believe will be the result in both the short, medium and long term is just compressed differentials, and Canada is unique. We have the largest heavy oil resource in the world which is well known, it's well delineated.

And with some of the new technologies like multilateral drilling, it's really unlocked a huge amount of resources, billions of barrels that are recoverable and now all of a sudden, you can get them to market and receive only in some cases, $12 to $13 differential off WTI. So it really, I think, structurally changes the economics for the producer of heavy oil, which, therefore, changes the economics for us and we see a lot more activity and far superior economics on that heavy oil resource.

So I think it's important and when you look at some of the first shipments that have come from Trans Mountain, some of them gone to Asia, but a lot of them have actually gone to the West Coast refineries, which we didn't have access to before. So you're just kind of forcing the refining complexes in the Southern United States to bid for our crude. So definitely, it's a huge positive and that was a very important pipeline.

And then Line 3 replacement, actually, which is now a couple of years old, I think line fill is in 2021. That added another just under 400,000 barrels of capacity. So again, it's been the first time in about a decade where we've had excess pipeline capacity out of the base.

And then that, in general, is a huge positive for the conventional oil resources in general. And then your second question on the government. Yes. I mean, PrairieSky is unique business. This business goes back to 1886 CP Rail owner for 100 years. So it goes decades and decades. So we're going to have to work with all sorts of governments. So we work with whatever government is in place at the time and don't get too fast. There's good policy and bad policy.

And again, I think we've probably had some weaker policy over the last 8, 9 years, federally, but there's definitely some pushback on that, and that seems to be starting to change. So maybe there's some positive tailwinds there. But again, we work with whoever is in place. I know the local governments, both in Saskatchewan and Alberta have been very, very supportive of energy. So you have provincially a supportive government and then federally less support of the government.

So hopefully, that answers your questions. I don't know if I didn't get them all there.

[Unknown Analyst]

So you got them. I mean, do you find that the government, like especially at the more national level, is it more -- I don't want to use the term window dressing, but is it more speeches in public statements to appease those who want to make sure they're tuned in. Do they appreciate -- I mean it seems like they appreciate the economics of the pipeline.

So it's important for the country's financial well-being. So do they understand and appreciate that? Or is it, I think you know what I'm getting at. I'm not coming up with a final question, but.

[Andrew Phillips, executive]

Yes. And I think -- and look, I think it's very clear to the federal government that the oil and gas industry and the materials business is a massive part of the economy here. We're only a $2.3 trillion year economy in Canada, and it's a very, very significant portion. So I think there is -- they clearly understand the importance of it from a tax revenue standpoint.

I think that is clear when you see the Trans Mountain pipeline being built by the federal government, they understand the importance of it. So I think the -- everyone understands the importance of this business in Canada, and I think it's easier in other jurisdictions like in Britain to be hard on it because oil production there has gone from 2.2 million barrels a day to 1.1 million.

It's not even that significant of a business anymore as a function of their GDP. So in Canada, it is a very important industry, and I think they recognize that.

[Unknown Analyst]

Okay. Can I sneak one last one in?

[Andrew Phillips, executive]

No problem.

[Unknown Analyst]

You've continued to pay down debt with your free cash flow. And you've heard me harp on it before. But is the plan -- does the plan remain to get that debt down to 0 or close to 0? And if rates -- and I'm not a predictor of interest rates, but if interest rates were to decline and you found it more favorable rates to borrow at, would you consider keeping some debt outstanding and buying in the stock given it just seems very cheap relative to the margins and the growth and kind of what I would call conservative assumptions to arrive at those numbers?

[Andrew Phillips, executive]

Yes. And for sure, that's the biggest thing that we work with is how to allocate capital properly over the different cycles. And I know we were fortunate in the last 2 big downturns to go in with $1 billion of liquidity in both times, the first time we were able to buy CNRL second time, we were able to buy back a bunch of stock in COVID and then proceed to buy Ontario Teachers' pension plans, big asset as well as a number of other assets kind of discounting $50 to $60 crude.

I think going forward, we'll be debt-free sometime in middle of next year to third quarter of next year. And that will give us a lot of flexibility. And I do think when you really step back and say, okay, over the next 10 years, how much cash is this business going to generate, it's somewhere in the range of $4.5 billion after tax after G&A. Right now with the dividend at $1 per share per year, that's $240 million annually.

So there's a lot of excess free cash. And I think any acquisition we do, it has to have a better IRR than the existing business and have the same optionality. So that's getting more and more difficult to do. So buybacks will certainly be a significant part of the returns over the next 3-, 5- and 10-year period. You just don't know the exact timing of it as of yet. But even building some cash, it's not a lazy part of your capital structure right now. You can earn pretty good income on your cash in the bank and for the next downturn.

[Unknown Analyst]

Yes. You don't need to -- programmatic buybacks are not something I'd ever encouraged that you guys are thinking about it the right way and running the business great. So appreciate taking the question.

[Andrew Phillips, executive]

Thanks for the questions. Have a good day.

[Operator]

And our next question comes from Jamie Kubik with CIBC.

[James Kubik, analyst]

I have a couple here. I guess, I'm just curious if you can talk about some of the dynamics in the Viking this quarter that saw activity moderate in that particular play in Q2?

[Andrew Phillips, executive]

Yes. So we definitely saw lower spuds in Q2 in the Viking. We do expect, as per usual, the seasonality of the Viking where you've got kind of late Q3, early Q4 drilling where they don't have to run a boiler and the single rigs aren't up in the oil sands. So I think we do expect a busy quarter for the Viking coming up. But again, the spuds were down, for sure, they're more than replaced clearly if you look at the production volumes. And that's also with an outage at Nipisi. They were replaced by very, very efficient drilling in the Mannville Stack and the Clearwater so we're definitely insulated by that.

But again, the nice thing for us is on any given individual play of the 30 plays we have in our portfolio, we never get too fussed by spuds quarter-over-quarter. We know per the playbook that we have over 8,000 drilling locations in the Viking that are development locations. And pace at which they get thrilled we can never control. But the economics are very, very good and probably the best operator from IP and EUR standpoint, bought a significant asset in Saskatchewan.

And we expect White Cap to get active on that asset, given some of the really good results in their last program. So again, I think they do have in flow for sure, but the economics are quite good now. That's light oil and receiving $112 a barrel. So they're getting pretty quick payouts on those wells.

[James Kubik, analyst]

Great. And then I'm also just curious on a point that you made in your remarks, Andrew, you did mention that your team is busy leasing land and did have some new play concepts. Can you just talk a little bit about maybe new plays that you might have -- you might be able to share some details on?

[Andrew Phillips, executive]

Yes, for sure. So I think the one interesting thing when you just look at the basin in general, these multilateral plays are still in the early innings even around Cold Lake, where there's over 10 rigs running right now. People are continuously tweaking the fluid systems and the drilling orientations and in each of the individual zones and finding different successes with each zone.

And then if you further expand that, when you own 18.3 million acres across the entire Western Canadian Basin, there's a lot of different zones across the basin that look like they have similar reservoir characteristics, maybe slightly tighter rock, but lighter oil where we think these multilateral plays could be implemented.

And then further to that, where Tourmaline bought out [indiscernible] in the Deep Basin, the overpressure block play that exists around kind of old Garrington, we're seeing some extensions to that we think that we've mapped up that we think are very economic and have very strong IPs and so we've worked out some of those multi-stage frac plays as well. So we're always kind of working on plays on our acreage and have a huge amount of seismic to augment the technical work.

So yes, I think we should have some success leasing those. And that's one of the nice things about an environment where there's new capital formation and quite a bit of cash flow and good balance sheets amongst some producers, there's a lot of people looking for drilling inventory. So we've had some success recently leasing out plays. And I think hopefully, we can continue that.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] I show no further questions. At this time, I would now like to turn the call back to Andrew for closing remarks.

[Andrew Phillips, executive]

Thank you, Michelle. And thank you, everyone, for joining our call today. And if you have any further questions, please feel free to reach out to one of the 4 of us. Have a great day.

[Operator]

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.