Strathcona Resources Ltd

TSX:SCR

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q1

[Operator]

Good morning. My name is Joanna, and I will be your conference operator today. I would like to welcome everyone to the Q1 2024 Conference Call of Strathcona Resources Limited.

[Operator Instructions]

I now introduce Rob Morgan, President and CEO of Strathcona to begin the conference.

[Robert Morgan, executive]

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us this morning. Welcome to the Q1 2024 Conference Call of Strathcona Resources. As the operator indicated, my name is Rob Morgan, President and CEO of Strathcona. And with me today is Connor Waterous, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; and our Treasurer, Angie Lau.

Yesterday, Strathcona released its first quarter 2024 results with the news release, financial statements and MD&A available on Strathcona's website as well as on SEDAR+. We encourage investors to read those documents in full. Results for the first quarter of 2024 were consistent with the fourth quarter of 2023, production of 185,000 BOE per day funds from operations of $456 million or $2.13 per share, capital expenditures of $286 million and free cash flow of $158 million or $0.74 per share.

Of note, over the previous 2 quarters, quarterly sales volumes of certain of Strathcona's Lloydminster Heavy Oil assets were in aggregate 4,400 barrels per day less than production as heavy oil volumes from Strathcona's owned rail terminal were held in inventory for the expansion of a unit train offloading facility in the U.S. Gulf Coast. This purpose-built facility is now fully operational, and the inventory will be sold at a premium to WCS Houston pricing over the subsequent 2 quarters.

Our full year 2024 guidance remains intact with Q2 production volumes to remain roughly flat to Q1 on a BOE basis due to a number of planned and unplanned third-party outages that will impact our Montney assets at Kakwe and Grande Prairie. We remain on track to reach our $2.5 billion debt target on or about June 30, 2024, and expect to provide further information on Strathcona's shareholder return strategy with our Q2 results.

Thank you for your time this morning, and we would be very pleased to take any questions you may have.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session.

[Operator Instructions]

First question comes from Greg Pardy at RBC Capital Markets.

[Greg Pardy, analyst]

Thanks, Rob, for the quick comments and obviously, there's lots of room for questions. I wanted to ask you maybe -- on the operations side, to begin with is what does the production profile look like at Lindbergh and Tucker. And I'm wondering if there's any chance of maybe getting a rough exit rate, just given the activity levels you've got going on there.

[Robert Morgan, executive]

Thanks, Greg. I think as we are drilling the remainder of our pads, continuing to optimize I think we will work our way towards exceed that 60,000 barrel a day number as we head towards the end of the year. We may not get quite to 65, just given timing of some of the new wells we're drilling at Tucker and some of the infills at Lindbergh. So when I look at -- in aggregate, all 3 assets, I think you would see us heading towards that 65. We may not get there at the end of this year. It might be early into next year.

[Greg Pardy, analyst]

Okay. Terrific. And then I'm going to maybe just rotate to shareholder returns, obviously, great news in terms of getting to your net debt figure. Initially, I'd probably jump to special dividends or thinking about it from that perspective, just given the limited float. But at the same time, is there a means by which you guys could actually enter into a buyback and then just sort of maintain proportional ownership, not unlike what Imperial and Exxon do?

[Connor Waterous, executive]

Yes. Thanks, Greg. So our plan on a base -- our base dividend is more or less the same as we've talked about in the past with the business and that we want something that is -- we are very confident to be funded down to a trough point in the oil and gas price cycle. On top of that, we certainly think there's going to be a lot of excess free cash flow that is going to be over and above that base dividend. And given that we don't really have a current focus to pay down debt beyond $2.5 billion, then that certainly means that there's hopefully going to be some more cash that will be left over for the shareholders of the business.

While we've had a base case that's likely going to be paid out in a series of variable dividends over time, I think our goal in the way that we talk about our shareholder at a return plan going forward will be to keep as much flexibility as we possibly can as a Board and a management team. So that if, for some reason, it makes sense to do some kind of a normal course bid in concert with what makes sense for some of the West, our shareholders, then that's something that may make sense at the time.

But the governing strategy that we're going to have on any kind of dividend or a buyback will be trying to mean as much capital flexibility as we can, and make sure that we are very confident that we are adding value per share as part of any kind of buyback.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Next question comes from Dennis Fong at CIBC World Markets.

[Dennis Fong, analyst]

My first one is just focusing on Meota. Appreciate a little bit of an update you provided in the press release, but I was actually hoping to dig into a little bit more of what the upside potentially happens to be when you think about: a, the development of the new thermal well pairs as well as the expansion of the steam capacity in Meota West and the general development of both the GP reservoir and the various formations that exist within that region?

[Robert Morgan, executive]

Thanks, Dennis. So when we think about our Meota area, that's the one thing that we've characterized over the last year or so is spending or actually drilling a lot of stratigraphic test to really confirm what we have there from a resource perspective. And of course, we have those stacked Mannville channels, some of which are partially developed, some of which have yet to be developed, and the GP is one that you've highlighted. So when we think about this year, sanctioning the addition of the 16 generator to one of our Meota assets and the additional capacity that's going to, add and the growth we're going to see along with the new well pairs at our Meota project, moving us up from notionally our thermal assets in Saskatchewan 30,000 barrels a day, starting to head towards that 35,000 barrel a day area, and then also seeing the opportunity as we -- that's sort of 2025, moving into 2026 as part of our growth plan.

And then we also see the potential for a larger stand-alone processing facility in our Meota Central area to pursue the Waseca formation there, which has largely been untapped and likely that could be a 2026 -- late '25, '26, maybe even to '27, providing a bit of a growth profile there. So we're actually quite excited about the opportunity that we see in our thermal assets in Saskatchewan and the growth potential, starting with that sort of first phase of putting that 6 steam generator in at Meota as a starting point.

[Dennis Fong, analyst]

Great. I appreciate that context. Secondly, I wanted to kind of touch base on the crude-by-rail capacity. Obviously, there's some potential timing with respect to building of inventory and the timing of loadings and so forth as we think about proceeding through the remainder of this year. Can you talk about the potential for like, we'll call it, rough cash flow impact as we think about the remainder of the year?

And then how long you think that capacity could last you, especially given the incremental egress that we're seeing out of Western Canada and the potential availability of capacity on the main line.

[Connor Waterous, executive]

Sure. Thanks, Dennis. So as Rob said in his opening comments, we've built about 4,400 barrels a day of heavy crude over the last couple of quarters, and we're confident that we should be able to draw down most, f not all of that over the course of Q2 and into the start of Q3. And if you think about the cash flow impact of that, the current selling price at the Gulf Coast is in the $90-plus per -- $90-plus per barrel a barrel range CAD, and that should start to flow through over the course of Q2 and Q3.

When we -- I think about the size of the crude by rail opportunity for us. As Rob said, we're making about 30,000 barrels a day of thermal volumes in our Lloydminster business, all of which are currently sent down to the Gulf Coast via rail. And we are now termed up with very strong, long-term, term buyers of our crude on the Gulf Coast. In terms of the capacity of the crude by rail terminal that we have up in Sask, our thinking is we can probably push about 50,000 barrels per day of crude through that. And then when we think about downstream capacity of the terminal on the Gulf Coast and the appetite of the buyers on the Gulf Coast for our crude. Our thinking is that, that is also north of, call it, 50,000 barrels per day.

So that's a long, long way of saying that we certainly have a lot of confidence to the next 20,000 plus barrels a day of thermal growth on the Sask side of the border for us, all being shipped by rail down to the Gulf Coast and all at prices that we think we will be very, very happy with.

[Operator]

We have no further questions. I will turn the call back over to Rob Morgan for closing comments.

[Robert Morgan, executive]

Thank you very much for your time this morning, and we look forward to speaking with you in August with our Q2 results. Have a great day.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference for today. We thank you for participating, and we ask that you please disconnect your lines.