Australis Oil & Gas Limited (ATS.AX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

I'd like to welcome shareholders and visitors to this Annual General Meeting of Australis Oil & Gas Limited. My name is Jon Stewart, I'm the Chair of the Board of Australis Oil & Gas Limited and Chair of this Annual General Meeting. Ian Lusted on my right; Graham Dowland on my left; and Alan Watson, also on my left, are Directors of Australis; and Ms. Julie Foster in front of me, Company Secretary, are present at this meeting. Steve Scudamore, a Director, will participate in the meeting via webcast. Mr. Phillip Murdoch and Mr. Mark Giuffre from the company's auditors, BDO Audit Pty Limited, are also present. There are no apologies. Before we start the formal part of the AGM, I wish to take a few minutes to say a few words. So once again, welcome to this meeting. Thank you to those in attendance today, whether in person or online. Last year, I referenced the time frame for delivery of the returns we seek for investors has been longer than expected. Unfortunately, I have to repeat that message, albeit not for want of effort from our team. Our CEO, Ian Lusted, will address activities and business development in more detail in his presentation, which will follow the procedural elements of the AGM. During the past year, we have sought to balance the maintenance of our ownership and control of our key asset with strict management of finances, while strategically remaining focused on securing third-party engagement. The level and nature of the third-party engagement during the past year has been broad and consistently encouraging yet ultimately frustrating. We continue to discuss cooperation scenarios with several third parties, and we'll report progress as and when appropriate. We are grateful for your patience in the realization of our objectives. We will continue to work hard to deliver the value we see in our asset base. On behalf of the board and shareholders, I'd like to thank our management and employees both here in Australia and in the U.S. during the past year have continued to demonstrate their commitment, professionalism and skill. Further, many within our team have been prepared to sacrifice remuneration with a view to ultimate corporate success. This is much appreciated. Our executive team and staff, even with reduced numbers, have continued to execute operations efficiently and safely. We remain optimistic that the coming year will we want to progress, and I can assure you that we will continue to work diligently towards our objectives on your behalf. Thank you. I'd now like to return to the formal part of the meeting. As at least 2 shareholders are present, I advise the meeting that a quorum is present, and the Annual General Meeting is properly constituted. In accordance with the corporate governance principles and recommendations and where applicable, the ASX listing rules, I declare all resolutions of this meeting will be put to a poll as follows. Resolutions 1 to 11 will be proposed and shareholders present at the meeting will be able to ask questions on each resolution. However, voting by poll will be conducted following the tabling of all 11 resolutions. Should any shareholder physically present at the meeting wish to ask a question on the resolution, please raise your hand. We will endeavor to answer as many questions as possible during the meeting. As advised in the notice of meeting, shareholders unable to physically attend the meeting were advised to send to the company in advance any questions they may have on any resolution. We have not received any general questions in advance of the meeting. Shareholders and shareholder representatives present at the meeting have been provided with a poll form. Upon declaring the poll open, I will ask these shareholders to complete their poll forms. Upon tabling the resolutions, I will disclose the combined valid proxies received in favor, against, abstaining and undirected. As Chair of the meeting, I intend to vote all available undirected proxies held in favor of resolutions 1 to 10 and against Resolution 11. The company's Notice of Annual General Meeting has been provided online for all shareholders to download and has been sent to all directors, the company's auditor, BDO Audit Pty Limited, and those shareholders who requested a copy of the notice. If there is no objection from the meeting, I will take the notice of the annual meeting as having been read. Thank you. For procedural efficiency, I request that any general questions be left until the formal part of this meeting has been concluded. Financial reports. I now table the financial report for the year ended 31st December 2023, together with the directors' report and the auditor's report. This is not a resolution. Does anyone have any comments or questions on these documents? As there are no questions in relation to the financial report, I'll now ask the meeting to consider Resolutions 1 to 11. I advise that a number of proxy votes exercised by all proxies validly appointed in respect to all resolutions are as indicated on the screen. Resolution 1 relates to the adoption of the remuneration report of the company for the year ended 31 December 2023 as set out in the company's 2023 annual report. Shareholders should note that the vote on this resolution is advisory only and does not bind the directors or the company. In addition, key management personnel and their closely related parties are not permitted to vote on this resolution unless they are voting on behalf of a proxy. The remuneration report is included in the annual report on Pages 49 to 67. The Corporation Act requires companies to put to shareholders a nonbinding vote to enable shareholders to voice their opinion on matters included in the report. I now invite discussion if any. Resolution 2 deals with the reelection of Mr. Graham Dowland as a Director. I now invite discussion if any. Resolution 3 deals with the reelection of Mr. Alan Watson as a Director. I now invite discussion, if any. Resolution 4 deals with the issue of performance rights to Mr. Ian Lusted or his nominee. I now invite discussion, if any. Resolution 5 deals with the issue of performance rights to Mr. Graham Dowland or his nominee. I now invite discussion, if any. I hand over to Ian.

Thank you, Jon. Resolution 6. Resolution 6 deals with the issue of fee rights, a, to Mr. Jonathan Stewart or his nominee in lieu of nonexecutive director cash fees. I now invite any discussion, if any?

Resolution 7 deals with the issue of fee rights, a, to Mr. Steve Scudamore or his nominee in lieu of nonexecutive director cash fees. I now invite discussion, if any. Resolution 8 deals with the issue of fee rights aid to Mr. Alan Watson or his nominee in lieu of nonexecutive director cash fees. I now invite discussion, if any. Resolution 9 deals with issue of equity securities under the Australis Oil & Gas Limited employee equity incentive plan. I now invite discussion, if any. Resolution 10 deals with the appointment of BDO Audit Pty Limited as an auditor of the company. I now invite discussion, if any. Resolution 11 deals with the election of Mr. Kirk Barrell as a Director. I now invite discussion, if any.

Roy McGovern, shareholder. Just do we -- I read the notice of meeting. I saw the background to Mr. Barrell's nomination and seeking election. Is there anything else that you, as management, would like to talk about, I mean it's slightly unusual thing. And I think with respect to Mr. Barrell, is there anything we need to talk about as a company?

No, I think we've laid out, as we have done a couple of talks, specifically what our concerns are with the nomination. And there's nothing more than that Mr. Barrell is, whilst I don't know him well, he's an oil and gas professional. And this is not personal. We just do not consider that he is an appropriate candidate for our Board. And hence, that's our recommendation to shareholders. Of course, have been told to vote in the manner they see appropriate.

And he's U.S. based, right?

Correct. He's U.S. based, and he has presented his credentials, and they are, as he describes, widely in the area in which we operate and certainly historically competitive.

Okay. We haven't -- nothing more [indiscernible].

Sure. Calling a poll. As all resolutions have been tabled, Resolutions 1 to 11 will now be put to poll. Persons entitled to vote on this poll are all shareholders, representatives and attorneys of shareholders who are physically present at the meeting or have submitted a valid proxy. A poll form was provided to eligible shareholders, representatives and attorneys of shareholders at registration. If anyone in the room is entitled to vote but has not received a poll form, please raise your hand for assistance. I'll now go through the procedures for completing the poll form. Shareholders should mark the box beside each resolution on the poll form to indicate how and how many votes you wish to cast for each resolution. Proxy holders have been provided with a summary of voting instructions that details the votes to be cast on the resolutions for which you have been appointed as proxy. When proxy holders and appointed representatives of shareholders have been instructed to vote in a particular manner for a resolution, it will be then to have completed the poll form and according to that instruction. In respect of any open votes, the proxy holder and appointed representatives may be entitled to cast, you'll need to mark the box beside each resolution on the poll form to indicate how you wish to vote. Please ensure you complete the registered holder name where indicated. When you're finished filling in your voting paper, please lodge it in the ballot box to ensure your votes are counted. If you require any assistance, please raise your hand. Are there any questions? Ian Lusted will provide the meeting with his CEO address, whilst the poll forms are being completed and returned. I will deliver the results of the poll following Ian's presentation. Ian? I'll go out of the way.

Well, Jon, thank you very much for that, and thank you for the introduction. Welcome to the AGM, those of you in the meeting, and welcome to those that are joined either online or at a later stage as part of the webinar. As part of the presentation, as always, I'll need to just draw your attention to the disclaimers associated with this. And because this is our 2024 AGM, the first thing I'd like to do is just spend a few minutes talking about our results from last year, what we're able to achieve, both fiscally, safety and from an environmental perspective. We'll focus on that environmental perspective first on the safety side of things. I actually had the opportunity to spend a couple of weeks in the field -- a couple of days in the field a few weeks ago. And I got to witness for the first hand, the care and attention that our field staff actually deploy when they're out there, when they're working. I think as shareholders, we can take some comfort knowing the way in which they operate, the way in which safety is a key part of their philosophy, in everything they do, both themselves and working with the contractors. And I think that shows in terms of the numbers. 2023, we only recorded 1 near miss from an employee's perspective. It was a very minor incident, but we did record it as such. And we did have 1 contract or restricted work case. But there was very little to report from an environment -- from a safety perspective, which, again, despite the fact we had over nearly 4,200 workdays. From an environmental perspective, we only reported -- have 1 reportable spill. That's more than 1 barrel. It was on a location. It was a valve that actually leaked. Everything was contained. It was cleared up within 24 hours. And nothing left the site, so we have no actual invasion from -- into the environment itself. Last year, we actually managed to reduce our non-reportable spills, minor spills down to just 4. And we're able to repeat that performance in 2023 as well. So that certainly was another important result for us. As Australis, we've reported in our sustainability report under the TCFD regulations now for the last 3 years, and in our sustainability report from February, you can see that the Scope 1 emissions were down on previous years, and the intensity was pretty much about the same. Again, excellent results. The only thing that really leads to any Scope 1 emissions for Australis, the majority of them is associated with flaring. These are very, very small amounts. They occur across 20 different locations. None of them are reportable as individual site locations. But collectively, it does generate the scope 1 emissions. Under a development scenario, we'd have options in terms of export and sale of that gas, and we wouldn't see that ramp-up associated with additional production. On a fiscal sense, it was a solid year. We obviously had to cope with the decline in production without any development activity in the field, but we're able to generate sufficient net working capital that allowed us to pay all of our overheads, allowed us to pay down debt, and we exited the year with $8 million of total debt still outstanding to Macquarie, and a net debt position of just a little bit over $4 million. In March of this year, we actually exercised an option to take out an additional second tranche of debt from Macquarie. It was done for liquidity reasons. It gives us additional working capital in terms of managing our business. And as part of that process, we also realigned the repayment schedule to benefit our revenue projections over the course of the next few years. As part of that, as a requirement to that, we actually have to put in place about 100,000 barrels of swap hedges. The way that tranche is constructed, these hedges repay in full the -- on a monthly basis, that particular tranche. And so from a corporate perspective, it's relatively low risk. Operating costs. These have been a focus for us, obviously, as a company now for the last 3 or 4 years. The chart shows you the makeup of fixed variable and workover costs. You can see they're pretty flat over the course of the last 3 years, and that was following a significant reduction from 2020 through to 2021. We've got an aging infrastructure. It's a challenge for the guys out in the field, but they've done an excellent job. The blue, the fixed component, actually reduced by nearly 20% during the last year to this. The workover costs have actually gone up by a similar amount to balance it out. That's primarily as a result of steel being more expensive than achieving associated with workovers, and it's costing a little bit more. Workovers are a real focus for us. We've shown charts like this before, but the trend has continued. On the left-hand side there, you're looking at the number of workovers carried out in the field each year. And then shown over the top of that is actually the workover frequency. We've reduced the well workover count by 80% over the course of the last 7 or 8 years, and we've reduced the workover frequency by 65%. It's really important that reduces both our operating costs, but it also has knock-on effects from a reserve perspective. That lower operating costs allow us to book greater reserves and obviously helps us on a going basis and also helps underdeveloping scenarios when they're evaluated by our independent reserve engineers. It might look as if 2022 to 2023, there's not been much improvement. We actually did 10 workovers last year and 10 workovers the year before. But with an inventory of over 30 wells, we've actually got to keep getting better to keep the number of workovers the same, and we try and show that just in terms of the run time. In 2023, we averaged 885 days between workovers on their operations that actually took place. So that's now nearly 3 years before a well typically requires workover. When we took over the asset, that was not running at about 1 year. These workovers, they cost $120,000 to $160,000 each. So the difference is obviously marked and makes a big difference to the bottom line. So that's a very quick summary in terms of our results for 2023. In terms of the asset itself, for those that are familiar with the asset, you probably heard me talk about it before, so I won't spend too long on this, but it is worth just touching on a few points. The TMS is our focused asset. We entered this play in about 2016, and we've built the position that we've got through to 2019. And then within our cash flow restrictions, we've tried to maintain it as best as we can. The reasons and the basis for entering the play back in 2016 are equally valid today as they were back then when we took that original decision. Australis didn't want to get involved in exploration, and this is not exploration. Today, there's been about 90 wells drilled in the play. They've delineated out a relatively small part where we get consistent reservoir quality, and that's allowed the predecessors actually to Australis to start the process of engineering a design -- a well design and a completion design that allows us to effectively develop the rock. They had already built in and started to accelerate the design of that engineering solution. And we were able, in 2019, with our own operations, to build on that still further. In fact, from a cost perspective, we were on par with some of the much more developed plays we use the Delaware Basin as a good analog. By 2019, we're on a similar dollar per foot basis as they were drilling wells in Delaware Basin by that stage. They had tens of thousands of wells in that particular play and had over 100 rigs running at that particular point in time. So we were able to take advantage of all of that. And for us, additionally, this play activity stopped in 2014 and '15 when the oil price dropped. And so there was no competition. It was a low-cost entry. There was no competition so we could build the position that we enjoyed. And we had delineated quality rock. And the TMS really is quite unique. If we look at it today and we look at some of the drivers for our interest, it is a delineated, quality, undeveloped oil play, and that's pretty scarce in the U.S. and increasingly so. The attributes that I've listed here are probably some of the key drivers from our perspective, which is why and the key points we make to potential partners as we're talking to them. We've got wells that have been on production now for 10 years. We know exactly how they're going to behave, and we can project the decline profiles with a high degree of confidence. And to reiterate, these wells are as good as world being drilled in the much more prolific and developed in mature basins that you hear about being talked about in the U.S. This is good rock, and I'll provide some examples of that as we go through the rest of the presentation. We're close to infrastructure. We're close to markets, which gives us advantage in terms of pricing of access. And we have a relatively low royalty rate, which means that the well economics obviously benefit from that in terms of the leases that we hold. Where the local regulatory environment allows us to build a large contiguous position, it is advantageous. And certainly, it helps in terms of a development scenario for the play. We've got compelling well economics today. We're at the start of the learning curve that all of these players go through. And as of today, we're already generating IRRs on a projected basis that we feel are commensurate with the more established place. And obviously, because we're just starting that journey, we've got multiple upsides still to be had on [ one of them ]. Independent reserve engineers are allocating 89 million barrels recoverable from the existing position. So it's a big position as we hold already, but it's also scalable. We've got first-mover advantage. We can add significant acreage to our existing position as and when we find a partner and have capital to do so. So what do we hold today? What does it look like? During 2023, we leased about 4,000, 4,500 acres ourselves. So our overall net position did reduced, but we still hold today a little under 60,000 net takers. That's 200 net locations. Of that, around about 2/3 is held by production and 1/3 is term lease. And as you can see from the pie chart there, that term lease has an expiry profile over the next 3 years. 220 net locations broadly conforms to the 89 million barrels that I mentioned before. And again, I'll just reiterate it, we've got the ability to scale this position. We have held in the past as much as 120,000 acres. The ability to go and release that and build the position back out. It is a complicated leasing environment, and we have first-mover advantage. So we certainly see that as being a benefit. So I've talked a little about performance '23. I've talked a little bit just in terms of describing what the asset is, why we like it and why we still hold it. Before we talk about business development, which obviously is perhaps the most important subject, I want to give some context in terms of where the industry is because it is pertinent to our story. In 2019, the public markets went through a significant restructuring in terms of their business model. They went from one that was purely focused on production driven. We were looking for incremental more production. The more the value, it didn't matter how it was done, and we coined the phrase drill baby drill, and certainly, the meteoric rise in U.S. production is as a result of the implementation of that strategy. In 2019 or so, it switched and it became one that very much focused on shareholder return. It was driven by shareholders, and it's been incredibly effective. It really came about with 3 different steps. The first is, is that there was a realignment. Companies -- public companies were looking to -- no longer looking to grow production, they were looking to maintain production levels. The second thing they did is they started to focus on their own portfolios. Essentially in the U.S., that means 3 main oil players, and you'll hear me talk about them: the Eagle Ford, the Bakken and the Permian. Today, those 3 players account for more than 90% of all of the unconventional production has made -- that's generated in the U.S. These are significant contributors. As well as focusing on their existing assets, they did saw in every aspect. They look to optimize. And by that time, they high-graded their acreage position, they look to drill longer laterals, they look to drill out DUC locations which are drilled uncompleted wells. These are relatively cheap on a go-forward basis in terms of adding incremental production. They look to maximize the application of technology and best practice in terms of minimizing what we refer to as the recycle ratio. In other words, out of free cash flow, how much money has to be put back into the ground in order to maintain production levels. And obviously, the balance can then be used either for shareholder returns or for balance sheets. And again, this has been incredibly successful. I think today, the U.S. oil and gas sector is probably the highest yielding part of the U.S. markets. And certainly, from a balance sheet perspective, companies are in much better shape than they've ever been. Even in 2022 and '23 when the oil price went up, that discipline was maintained. The companies didn't accelerate the drilling program. They carried on maintaining production levels and just increase their returns to shareholders. Now that's the public companies. The private companies will behave quite differently. The private companies, who own part of these development assets, have seen the opportunity to put capital to work and to make money. So it's ended up with a bit of a role reversal. What we see today is that the private companies are actually responsible for most of the growth that we've been seeing and being reported in the U.S. in the unconventional space, not the public companies. And also, they're now responsible for most of the contracted routes. That is very much a reversal of historically how those sorts of attributes are being allocated. So for Australis, what's that meant is that we've always seen the public companies as the ultimate owners of this asset. But they've not been interested in new and emerging plays because they've been very focused on their existing core assets for the reasons I just outlined. For the private companies, where they PE backed or family offices, who maybe we would have thought of would be the natural partners for us to move this play from where it is now through to full field development and to make it attractive, they're very focused on their existing positions and developing [ pipeline ]. Now of course, this isn't sustainable. Ultimately, all these players are finite. And if you're high-grading and you're focused and you're not adding new inventory, then inventory becomes an issue. The public companies have largely doubled this through M&A. They've either gone and acquired smaller public companies, looked for operational synergies assuming they're in the same area, and then taking the additional inventory as extra inventory and drilling program and runway for their own companies, or they've gone and purchased those public companies that are now much bigger producers. Typically, they buy them out on a production basis. They've reduced the well count because they're not looking to grow production anymore. Suddenly you had very cash flow accretive deal metrics that look very attractive. And then they would go and pocket the remaining inventory that these companies have. So that process has been going on for the last few years. But ultimately, what we're doing is we're moving inventory from one hand to the other. It doesn't actually changed the ultimate problem and the ultimate challenge, and that is that we need new inventory. What's the solution there? You have to start to look out at those existing players. And we're starting to see it. A year ago, I told you it must be coming. In the last 18 months, we've seen reports of companies starting to look on the fringes of their existing position, looking to try and expand them out and look to add inventory. We also started to see reports of companies starting to return and revisit plays that have been looked at and appraised in the past and revisit them on the basis of new technologies, et cetera. So that's the holistic sense. And I'm just going to spend 2 or 3 minutes actually picking out some of the points I just made in providing perhaps a little bit of backup to that. So a couple of charts here. On the top left-hand side in the bar chart, we're actually looking at reinvestment rate. So this is what percentage of free cash flow is being used and applied to development activities. This is industry-wide. And then the line that you can see there is actually the oil price. So on the far left-hand side, you can see 2014 and '15 is the end of the old phases of unconventional development. Companies were spending more money than they were making. They were borrowing money to drill faster to grow production. The oil price drop that I mentioned earlier on in 2014 and '15, you can see that on the yellow line there. Now that lead to a pull back. A lot of companies went through debt restructuring. And whilst they were still trying to grow production, they were having to do it in a slightly more measured manner. And certainly, you can see that in terms of the production growth during that period. Then come 2020 and obviously, COVID interrupts this a little. But you can see post that point, there is a significant change. Companies are no longer looking to reinvest all the money they're making. They're looking to minimize the amount they need to reinvest to manage production to the public companies. And obviously, the balance of that gets returned to shareholders. The bottom right-hand side actually is a similar chart with actually different metrics. We're looking at find and development costs. How much does it cost to get a barrel of oil to find it and get it out of the ground? And then the line you can see there is actually what sort of replacement rate does that generate in terms of inventory. It's not -- this is organic. This isn't around M&A activity. And again, left-hand side, you can see the companies were out looking for new stuff, looking for new places to drill, so F&D costs were high. As that oil price hit in 2020 when things dropped down and they started to focus on their existing plays, but still looking to grow quickly, that worked really well from a replacement ratio to start off with. But you can see in 2021, '22 and '23, we've seen a sharp increase. That's partly as a result of costs being higher, but it's also a product of these existing plays now starting to be exhausted. They're having to drill secondary and tertiary locations, spend more money to get another barrel of oil out of the ground. And importantly, you can see that line now is at decade type lows. We're now replacing far less inventory. And although it doesn't show it on here, certainly, we would be proponent of the fact that the replacement isn't like-for-like. They're drilling the good stuff and the additional inventory they're adding is of lower and lower quality, and that's more a sustainable long-term prospect. I've done this a few times now and given these sort of presentations, and in the past, we've talked about the maturity of these assets and how they are -- they do have an inflection point. We've shown, in the past, the Eagle Ford and the Bakken as being more mature and having that breakover point to occur in 2018 and '19 and now seeing decline. What we're measuring here is what's the productivity of a new well. A new well being drilled in 2018 versus 2020 or 2022. The Permian has always been the beast in the system if you like. It's always been the grandfather of the unconventional space. And we've been able to show it flattening. But this year, with the additional years' worth of data, you can now start to see it actually following exactly the same trends as those other plays. It is starting to get mature. This is a Novi Labs study. The chart that you can see there are 2 counties from the Delaware side of the basin and 2 counties from the Midland Basin, they are the 2 most prolific areas. And you're looking there as sequentially and chronologically each year what's the productivity of a new well in that area. This is the best part and the busiest part of those plays. And you can see that Lea County, for instance, the best part of the Delaware Basin, has actually seen a 20% decline over the course of the last 2 years. So these plays are getting more matured. The good stuff is being drilled out, and companies are being forced to look into secondary and tertiary, or they have to look to start to spread their wings. I'm going to do something here that I don't apologize for. We keep telling you that the TMS is a good play. This is just a very quick overlay of where the TMS was in 2014. So this is exactly the same metrics, exactly the same calculation. That's where wells are being drilled in the TMS back in 2014. Over the next 10 years, the Permian became the engine room of the U.S. In 2014, the wells in the TMS were actually better than the wells being drilled in this part of the play. This is good rock, and I'll do this a few times over the course of the next few slides. So I said that the answer was actually M&A. These companies have been going through acquisitions in order to address that inventory issue. To be fair, it's not just inventory, but inventory is a big driver. Some of the others are materiality. For public companies these days, there is a materiality threshold from a market perspective, being bigger actually has some value to them. And so they've been pursuing that. And certainly, obviously, where we see operational efficiencies where acquisitions are taking place in the same areas, then that's obviously an advantage that companies can take up. I'll just pick out one of those. This was announced at the beginning of this year, and this was actually the acquisition of Diamondback of a public company called Endeavor Resources. All of this is in the Permian. On the left-hand side there, this again just happens to be some analysis done by Novi Labs, but you can see that Diamondback was actually holding around about 2 to 3 years' worth of Tier 1 inventory, first quartile inventory within the books, according to the Novi Labs analysis. Endeavor, through the acquisition, added about another 2 years to that. So from the Diamondback perspective, they've almost doubled their inventory as a result of this acquisition of high-quality rock and high-quality future drilling locations. Perhaps uniquely in this particular case, on the right-hand side, it's a different measure, but effectively, this is productivity, again, of all the companies in the same area. And you can see there that the Diamondback productivity was actually less historically than the Endeavor Energy wells productivity. So not only did Diamondback get an uptick in terms of quantity, they probably got a bit of an uptick in terms of quality of the inventory that they picked up. And to be blunt, that's why they were prepared to pay $26 billion for it. Out of interest, and again, I'll just keep doing it. That data there is collected in the Permian Basin, again, with tens of thousands of wells having been drilled over a period of 2020 to 2024. In 2014, perhaps what a well in the TMS was producing on exactly the same metrics. And for full disclosure, I had to change the scale so that didn't go off the end of the slide here. So the scale is actually different. Again, the TMS is good quality rock. And it's a point that bears repeating. So I said what's the answer? And the answer is starting to happen. We've been expecting this. We've been talking about that it might be happening. But over the course of the last 18 months, we've now started to see a number of companies reporting an expansion to their focus. We're still trying to count it as being in the same place. But often what they're looking to do is to look at the periphery of an existing position or an existing defined delineated area and looking to explore. So there are a number of companies, for instance, at the moment that are moving north within the Midland Basin. To be fair, the results are fairly mixed. There's a couple of good wells in there, but there are probably some 4 wells as well, but they are looking to add additional inventory. Continental announcement, they're actually drilling wells on the southern end now of the Delaware Basin. They're getting some pretty good results. They're pretty deep, they're pretty extensive, and pretty hot. And again, they're not as good as the TMS. But certainly, they are now starting to expand their footprint. The Permian certainly benefited over the years because it's multiple layers, and we're now finding companies drilling down deeper Woodford targets, et cetera, are underlying all of the existing developments, they're looking for additional inventory. Perhaps more pertinent to Australis, these are companies like EOG. They've been out there looking to revisit some areas. And the best example is perhaps in the Utica. This is up on the Northeast of the U.S. The original appraisal that took place in that play, number of wells drilled, the incumbent operators became very focused on the gas leg. About 3 years ago or so, EOG drilled a couple of wells on the oil leg, and [ little behold ], 2 years later, they now hold 400,000 acres. And I think the program this year is 26, 28 wells as they move from appraisal to full-field development. And they see this as another new play within their inventories. So that's a revisit of an existing asset that's been appraised in the past, the application of new technology or new thinking and looking for opportunities. And for us, that is a great template for what we think should be happening within TMS. So that's a reasonable segue then into business development. Understandably, this is obviously what people and shareholders want to talk about whenever we have meetings. And now I look at because I have the concessions regularly within. It's understandable. It's exactly what people want to know and what are you doing and how is it going and so forth. The reality is that in most cases, we have to sign confidentiality agreements when we do this and we do that to protect ourselves on compete, et cetera, and they're often 2-way. So the bottom line is, is that we can't divulge. We can't talk about the specifics of the conversations that we have. We just simply model out to because of the agreements that we have to sign. I think it is worth saying that 2023 has probably been our busiest year-to-date in terms of business development. We've spoken to everything from the very largest public E&Ps through to public smaller companies, through to product companies, be they PE firms or family offices, through to more financially orientated potential investment partners. The conversations typically will start the same as an introduction and an explanation of the asset. It's an explanation as to why we're excited about it. And typically, the counterparty does as well. We signed multiple confidentiality agreements, and we've been through a whole series of diligence, deep diligence exercises. I think I counted them up yesterday before this meeting. And I think we probably had 16 meaningful engagements last year. And by that, I don't just mean a cup of coffee or a couple of conversations, but most of them have gone to some level of diligence and some level of the confidentiality agreements. But still we haven't been reported a deal. As Jon said in his introduction, it's obviously frustrating it is for you and it certainly is for us. The explanations we've always had back are very rarely being technical. They've often talked about potential and uncertainty around a risk-reward profile. Our view is that a lot of that is around risk perception as opposed to real operational risk. But more often than not, the explanation that comes back is that it's a portfolio issue or it's a corporate issue. And we can read all sorts of things into that. Last year, we went through a detailed diligence process for 2 public companies. And when I say detailed, I mean 6, 7 months' worth of diligence, multiple working sessions with specialist, workshops, management presentations, the whole works. In fact, it would be fair to say that companies of that ilk, probably have far greater resources than Australis does both in terms of personnel, expertise and software. And there are probably elements of the play they now know more about than we do because we simply can't afford to apply that level of analysis and that level of technology. In each of those 2 instances, the diligence teams made recommendations to proceed. The decision not to was made at a corporate level. Now it doesn't make it any less real. The reality is we didn't get a deal done. And obviously, that leads me here having the same conversation as it did last year, as Jon did in his introduction, and that is frustrating. Having said that, we do take some comfort having gone through that level of scrutiny from a technical basis and an endorsement in terms of who and what we're trying to do here, but except the fact that, that corporate story is one that we still have to overcome. We do believe that the green shoots there, we're seeing companies do more of this sort of activity. But obviously, at this point in time, we're not there yet. So in summary, we had a pretty good year, all things considered in 2023. From an operational perspective and a fiscal perspective, it was good. And from a safety and environmental perspective, it was excellent. We still hold a substantial asset. And the level of scrutiny that it withstood gives us confidence that our base story is correct and that we have something that's really valuable here. It's frustrating that we haven't been able to bring it to full fruition, but we remain committed to doing so. And as we stand today, we have numerous life engagements still ongoing and under discussion, and we remain hopeful that we'll be able to report back to shareholders at some point in the not-too-distant future some good news. I'll stop there, other than maybe just briefly just on my behalf to thank shareholders for their support. I appreciate it's been a long patient game, and it is appreciated. So thank you. If there are any questions, I'd be very happy to answer them. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Ian. The votes have been counted on Resolutions 1 through 11, and I now declare that Resolutions 1 to 10 have been passed by the requisite majorities, and Resolution 11 has not been passed. The results will be released to the ASX immediately following this meeting. As there are no other matters that can be properly considered in the formal part of this Annual General Meeting, I now declare the Annual General Meeting closed. Thank you for your attendance.