Prospex Energy Plc (PXEN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Well, welcome, everybody. Thank you for coming along to this meeting and online webinar for shareholders and investors to get an update on developments at Prospex Energy. I'm Andrew Raca, I'm Head of Corporate Finance at VSA Capital, and I'm joined here with colleagues from VSA and also with the -- one of the sales guys at Hannam & Partners, who are also joint brokers to the company. So welcome. Prospex and its advisers are keen to maintain an open and transparent dialogue with shareholders and investors. To this end, we've arranged this event to enable Mark to connect directly with all those attending to answer questions and to share his vision and plans for the future. We've got about 25 people online, and we've got about 12 people in the room, which is great. And I suspect a few more people will be coming in during the meeting and online. Mark will give a short presentation, which will be followed by a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] And I'll try and ensure that Mark gets to answer all of those questions during the course of the session. For those of you who are here in the room, please continue to help yourselves to drinks. After the formal session, we've arranged for sandwiches and more refreshments, which are available next door. For those of you online, you'll have to make your own arrangements. Mark, when we planned this session a few weeks ago, we didn't anticipate that on this very morning, you will be making quite a disappointing announcement on Viura. And Viura has been going so well alongside all your other investments, which have been going so well. So given the latest developments, it's absolutely perfect timing that we've got this session today so that gives you an opportunity to outline fully the latest position, the latest news and to answer questions, which I'm sure people will have. So Mark, over to you.

Thank you very much, Andrew, and thank you for hosting the event today. So I've got the updated corporate presentation on the screen, and it's been uploaded to the website. It's been updated following today's news. So I'm not going to talk to every single page on the screen. I'm just going to use it as the structure of the meeting. In order to go through if there are any shareholders or investors who are not familiar with the company, I'll give a very brief update. So I'll rattle through -- and I think we'll probably take questions at the end. But if anyone wants to jump in and ask a question here in the room, then I'll be willing to field that.

Mark, there's been some requests online, if you could try and speak into the microphone as much as possible. I think people are probably hearing having some problems.

[indiscernible] Right. So Prospex Energy, we're unlisted at PXEN, as you -- many of you do know. The assets and concessions we have in Europe and 2 in Spain and 1 in Italy, the ones marked yellow are concessions within production. Obviously, Viura is temporarily ceased at the moment. We've got 11 wells to be drilled on the concessions at various stages of the permitting process. And we have increased our production from the company, in particular, with the acquisition of Viura, which is -- I'll come on to more details as we go through. I must stress that the company is debt-free, and we have no warrants outstanding. So that means that our investments, we can go -- we can cover our overheads and G&A comfortably from the production income. And that means that we can reinvest the cash, which is being generated from our production income into the assets, into the drilling of the wells and the 3D seismic plans, which I'll come on to later. That's the Board of Directors. We have a new hire, Richard Jameson. Since we acquired 100% of Tarba, I'm going to need some extra help to manage the asset, and he's going to be joining -- he has joined, but is away at the moment. So on to Viura. We expect production to resume in mid-June. It's disappointing that what has happened on the main well, which was drilled in December, disappointing that it has a production leak in the tubing. This requires, unfortunately, a rig intervention to repair the leak and get the well safely back on production again. I have every confidence in the operator, HEYCO Energy, who is the majority owner in the field and who is mobilizing the necessary equipment, not only the rig, but the equipment and the required spare parts in order to repair the tubing leak. What is also going to happen, the existing production well, which is called Viura-1 sidetrack 3 was producing in the past, drilled by the previous operator of the field. This well has been producing a lot of water. When it was completed, it was completed with what's called a slotted liner with no cement behind the pipe. And that means that any production coming from the reservoir can go into the well, whether it's water, gas or oil or whatever it is. And there's no oil here, but we've got water and gas coming in from Viura-1 sidetrack 3. And that is being a conduit of water up through to the top of the new well, Viura-1B. Now this is something that couldn't have been predicted. So as part of the workover plan in June, the operator will go and work over that well and basically plug off all of the slotted liners, which are providing a conduit from the water in the base of the reservoir coming up to the crest of the reservoir and probably migrating its way across through to the Viura-1B well. A schematic of the whole Viura field here. It's just a schematic, but it's showing that the -- the original well and the new 1B well are close together, but they are -- the 1B well was a deviated well drilled in December, January of last year, December of last year, completed in December of last year and has been on production for 3 or 4 months up until early April when this tubing leak was discovered. So they're close by. And this water that's coming through is meaning that the plant has to handle that water, and that water is being trucked away because the injection well, which is on the schematic here, was worked over and it was deemed that it was not a suitable well to inject water into. So there's been a few knocks that we've got to deal with. But what we have here is an asset which we acquired when we did the fundraise last August for some GBP 4.8 million when we bought our share of 7.5% of the company which owns the asset, which means we have 7.24% in the field. And what we acquired was an asset which has 90 Bcf of likely estimated gross recoverable reserves. And we own the processing plant that you can see on the picture there, and that's a picture with the rig drilling the Viura-1B well. And that processing plant can process up to 1 million standard cubic meters of gas per day. We were flowing some 300,000 from Viura-1B in December, and that rate declined as the water was coming through and the rate has declined slightly to be average in the last quarter of something like 220 million cubic feet per day -- sorry, cubic meters -- 20 -- sorry, get units right, 220,000 cubic meters per day, which is some 17 million, 18 million scfs a day. So that rate has been producing up until mid-April. Point is this is a sound asset, and it's an asset where we're going to be drilling development wells. This is development wells because they are going to be drilled into a structure, which has got proven gas in it. So under the PRMS guidelines with this SPE, it is a proven reserve. So we are going to be drilling development wells into that proven reserve. And crucially, that means that some banks will then do money against that because it's a development well on something which is an asset against which you can borrow money. The operator is working on that with a syndicate of 5 banks and -- but that requires a stable production rate to be demonstrated from the field, which is what the operator is doing for this workover, but we're going to have to wait till June for that to happen. So I hope that explains what's happened as of this morning. It's a little bit complex, and we're trying to -- me and the technical team in Prospex are on top of the situation, and we are planning meetings to get further information flow from the operator. But we are a nonoperator here with a minority stake. But that doesn't mean to say we don't care about it. We do deeply care about it because, as you know, it's the majority of our production. When it was in production, it was some 40% of our production in the company. So that was a rather long section on Viura. Other things in the asset portfolio are going according to plan. We've got production from 2 wells in the El Romeral asset, and they produce gas into the gas-to-power station, and we sell the electricity on the spot market into the grid operated by Red Electrica in Carmona, which is east of Seville in Spain and Lucia. On this asset, we've got 5 wells waiting for permits. I've got a schedule -- an updated schedule on this presentation, which I'll talk to later in the meeting. Just to reiterate, the 2 wells in Viura have their permits approved, but they're not going to be drilled until next year now. So back to Romeral. This is the map of the 3 concessions. We've got 5 structures on which we've identified the optimum place to drill for new gas. We now own 100% of this asset. We're targeting some 18.2 Bcf of gas from these structures. The likely chance of success of drilling these structures is very high. The wells are between 500 and 900 meters deep. They will cost just over EUR 1 million each to drill, and they will take 2 to 3 weeks only. We're just waiting for the permits to land, which will be toward the end of this year. And hopefully, the other news that happened yesterday with the blackout in the Iberian Peninsula apparently was caused by an overreliance on renewables. One would hope that the powers would be would see that onshore indigenous gas in Spain will be a good baseload to prevent any such occurrences happening again. So maybe our permitting process could accelerate. It's been in the process for some 2.5, nearly 3 years. If we had -- if we drill gas here, if we drill the wells here, we only need 2 of the wells to come in and we have the power station. We've got 3 generators in the power plant, and we can only run one at a time because we have not enough gas behind pipe. Just 2 of these would mean we'd be 100%. Any further gas we could export to the Enagas pipeline, which actually traverses diagonally across the concession, 26-inch Enagas pipeline, which is a high-pressure grid pipeline, we could export our excess gas into that. So Tesorillo, just to say this is -- many people will know about this. It's a suspended exploration permit in the south of Spain. The upside here is it's an enormous prospective resource, 830 Bcf. We need to get the permit to drill that in the future. This is blue sky upside for the company. But we are now 100% of this having acquired 100% of Tarba. So this is Selva Malvezzi, the Podere Maiar-1 well has been producing at a very steady rate of 80,000 plus standard cubic meters per day, and this is generating cash for us in our subsidiary in Italy. And there are 4 wells on this concession being planned and in the permitting process. So the map there shows the Selva field, which is producing. And the -- we've got structures there, which are mapped on the 3D seismic, which are going to be refined. And so there's North and South Selva and Riccardina and East Selva are planned to be drilled, and I'll come back to those on the drilling time line later. I'll be coming on to that next. So before I come to that briefly on Poland, update this morning is that the ministry has our applications -- and we submitted them in January. They had some questions which were detailed. We had to resubmit the applications, which required, believe it or not, printing it out -- printing out a translation in paper copy and sending it to the ministry. That took some time. We are told -- I was told just this afternoon that the ministry has some further questions on both of the license blocks we've applied for and will require a resubmission, which will probably happen in mid-May. So I'm still hopeful that we'll get all of these blocks. So the next process is that the ministry says, yes, we approve your application. And if they do that, they then publicly gazette that we have applied to allow anyone else to counterbid a work program on the same blocks. We've been at this for some 18 months already. So I think I doubt anyone else has got the preparation that we have had to outbid us on these licenses. But we shall see. This is Poland. So this has not changed. This is the update of our different categories of reserves, resources and prospective resources. And this is the production from -- it's a bit blacked out here, but this is up to the end of Q1 2025, so the end of March. So that's actually unchanged, but Viura obviously, is not producing right now. So when we get back into production in June, I hope that we'll have -- we'll be at similar or higher levels than this. So this is an updated slide on the drilling schedule. So what I'm showing here now are the workovers happening in June on Viura and the development wells on Viura happening sometime in 2026. It's probably Q2 at the earliest. In El Romeral, the earliest expected time I can get -- I can see that the 5 wells are going to be permitted is going to be towards the end of 2025. Who knows? We hope that, that could accelerate with the news in Spain and Portugal from yesterday, drilling wells onshore in Spain would seem like a very good idea to me. And lastly, on Italy, the drilling time line there, we're looking at a 3D acquisition and processing happening at the end of the summer after the planting season in the Po Valley. And then the permits, which are in the process for South and North Selva of Riccardina and East Selva should be landed by the end of the year to allow mobilization of a suitable drilling rig in Q1 '26 through to Q3 '26 when the drilling will happen. We're waiting to hear on when those permits will land. But that's where we have 11 wells on our existing production concessions. So this is a very good organic growth story for Prospex. And it has been my mission to grow this company, and we're still growing it, and it will continue to do so, hopefully successful. So that was all I was going to talk to today. A bit of a long section on Viura. I was trying to answer any questions that might be coming. But if you have further questions on that, I'm happy to fill them as best I can. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mark. So Viura, perhaps that's any questions on Viura from the floor or indeed from people online. Maybe that's a good place to start. I am picking up 1 or 2 questions online here, but we'll deal with them in due course, but Viura...

Yes, on Viura. So obviously, you've got a very good partner at HEYCO. And within your RNS this morning, you talk about their ability to get access to state-of-the-art technologies. So one it sounds like you've got a great partner in that. But could you give a flavor or an example of the types of technologies they can bring in country and the benefit to the field?

Yes. It must be said that there are very -- there's no drilling operations happening or very few drilling operations happening currently onshore in Spain. That rig I showed in the picture on the Viura field that was drilling the 1B well last year. It was a Polish rig that came in. And myself and the team have all visited the Viura site in March and also in December. So we've been around the plant and looked at it. The -- to mobilize equipment into Spain, it has to come from other European nations or in extreme it comes from the U.S.A. Now I don't actually know what the effect of the recent tariff turmoil is going to have on that. And I think that HEYCO is waiting to find out as well. So I'm afraid I can't update anyone on that issue. But the technical team in HEYCO is populated by a team from Egdon Resources in the U.K. They have a team -- a local team in Madrid, and they have the HEYCO Energy team in Dallas, Texas. Now technologies -- specific technologies I referred to in Dallas, Texas, they're using a lot of equipment to do fracking gas fracking. But that is not allowed in Europe. So although there are some other concessions elsewhere, which would benefit from that, but that's another story, and we're not going down that route. All of the gas that we are partners in is conventional gas, not require hydraulic stimulation or fracking. So the -- as an example of the type of equipment that needs to come through, in Q1 2026, there was a plan to test the Utrillas-B reservoir which was discovered by the Viura-1B well in December, which is beneath the Utrillas-A main reservoir. So you've got the main reservoir producing from, which has got the 90 Bcf of gas. And beneath that, you have the Utrillas-B, here's a 2 undrilled prior to last December, which has discovered reservoir quality gas-bearing sandstones, which was not able to be tested because the drill went down and we deepened the well in a 6-inch hole, which meant it had to be cased off with a 4-inch liner. So in order to test that, you have to bring perforation guns, which are slim hole perforation guns. And they would have to be mobilized from America. And it's equipment like that because that's not available in Spain. That is the type of equipment to which [indiscernible].

In terms of the rationale why the drilling has been delayed, is it the inability for Prospex to fund their share of the next phase of drilling? Or is it HEYCO why we're waiting for the syndicated bank debt financing? Because from previous RNS I understood that there was potential to be cash funded from the production revenues. And just a follow on in terms of the additional OpEx or the incremental CapEx that's going to be needed, [indiscernible] can you quantify how much that's going to be? And in terms of the next phase of drilling, are there any expected costs everyone and hence, why the [indiscernible] that today? I just don't understand quite the delay.

Okay. I'm not sure if the online people can hear the questions. But I think the first question was, is the delay down to Prospex not being able to fund it? And the answer is no. The delay on the workovers is down to mobilizing sufficient equipment in order to perform the work. We -- the cash call coming in from Viura have been covered, which is -- which we have covered the Phase 1 of the drilling campaign and the workovers will be cash called in the next few months. We don't have the precise numbers there, but it's looking like they're not as high as before. I don't have the exact numbers there. But we have production income from other assets as well, and we have an accrued income from the gas that's been produced from Viura-1B since December. And that income is -- will offset any cash that we will be required to fund for the next phase. I don't have the numbers, but we'll be working on making sure that we can cover what we need to on our share of the field. Now there's a third question, which I think I didn't get.

Yes. And just to go back to the first question because you mentioned that you needed certain production consistency to be able to raise the debt financing. So you say that is not the reason why HEYCO is reliable debt financing to fund their share of the next phase of drilling costs. So I'm not quite sure if the debt financing is the reason the time lines for whether it's sold due to kind of resourcing because a month ago, it was May the time lines [indiscernible].

Yes. There's a couple of factors here. So is the reason for the delay purely the debt financing? The answer is no. There are several reasons that the delay has happened. And it was a bit disappointing that the drilling has been pushed back quite so far into '26. But there's a couple of factors there. The operator is reprocessing the existing 3D seismic on the field. And they're about to embark upon a 6-week program to do some specialist reprocessing on that data. And the plan would be to optimize the subsurface locations of the future wells. Now that will take some time to do, something you can't rush. So the operator will take some extra time to process the 3D seismic for the subsurface optimization. The second thing is the debt facility. Yes, in order to borrow money against an asset, you have to have an asset which is producing. And the banks will not lend you money on an asset unless they can see the production and they will force you to hedge a proportion of that. This is all debt finance, which is being run by the operator, not by Prospex. Prospex will share in the debt finance that will be available to the company, HEYCO Energy Iberia, which is the company in which we own 7.5%. So the debt financing is linked to that. And then the third thing, which has made the delay happen is the procurement of the necessary equipment to drill those wells and in particular, to do the workovers now. So that means a lot of changes. And if there's any effect of the tariffs which are happening, I don't know if that's a yes or no. So there are some factors which I don't know about, but most of the factors are outside our control in Prospex. But what I do know is that HEYCO Energy is on top of it because they are the majority owner of this field, and they want this to happen more than anyone else. So I hope that addresses the questions you have.

Mark, if I could ask you a question just to add to that, VSA Capital, we've known HEYCO Energy for over 10 years. It's a really very professional outfit. How are you finding HEYCO as a partner to work with as operator of this field?

They are highly competent people. We -- on the 3 site visits I've been to in Viura, I'm very confident that the team in Madrid know what they're doing. And we have communications with the HEYCO Energy top management in Dallas, Texas on a regular basis. So yes, it couldn't have been a better introduction by VSA Capital to partner up with HEYCO Energy on this asset. It's been an excellent addition to our portfolio.

I had a question from Daniel here.

Yes. I cannot help but say thank you and your team and the directors for the tremendous work you've done today. I know how this company started from almost nothing less. I know where we are. And again, thank you for the communication effectiveness. It gives people like me hope. Despite the fact that sometime, I even believe that the stock exchange doesn't give credit to the communications. Many times you see the share price low, but still hopeful. Having said that, I just have 3 questions to include in this. One is the fact that we recently done well [indiscernible]. Having said that, is there any pause in the contract so that the contractor will simply go and repair what wasn't effective or is prospering to be charged for that? That's one. The other one is if the company is going to be charged for that, [indiscernible] that the company is buoyant enough to take care of its operation at the moment. Can we still go through that? Effectively? Then the third one is whatever happens, there will always be landing points. I came from Shell, and we don't regard anything as -- there must always be landing points. So this thing that happen will give opportunity for the company as a whole to have some line for all the other assets that we have so that it doesn't shut down and then production is not done for some time.

It's quite difficult to do 3 questions at once. But the first question was, is the contractor liable for the failure of the downhole equipment, is that what you were saying? So the answer is no. The contracting strategy in the oil and gas industry, as soon as you become the operator, as soon as anything passes the rotary table on the drill floor, it becomes the property of the operator, not the contractor. And if you lose it, you have to pay for it. If it breaks, you have to fix it. If it fails, you have to get a new one or buy a new one. That's the way the contracting strategy works in the oil and gas industry. It's stacked against the operator and the contractors will charge you money. The completion string that's gone down the Viura-1B well is quite a complex thing. It's got packers and it's got sliding sleeves because the operator is going to be sliding the sleeves up and down to open and close different sections of the reservoir. Now in all likelihood, that is a fairly complicated completion string. And something has gone wrong, and I'm not sure exactly where. We've got some scheduled meetings coming up with HEYCO to determine what the failure is and how. And your third question, I'll come back to the second question. Third question was, are the learnings to be had? The answer is absolutely yes. And this is where Prospex actually being a partner with HEYCO, having a technical team within our group. This is something that we can all share and gain learnings from. Now the second question, I can't recall.

The second question is, since we -- the contract is not liable, can we still be profitable financially [indiscernible] because right now, you say we have enough money to do our operations. But with this repair, are we able to do it in-house? Are we going to get some money somewhere in...

I would hope that we should be able to fund this, yes, from existing production income, especially the income that's accrued already from Viura and the income which will then be reestablished from June. I hope that, that accrual will allow us to fund it. And we do have production income from Italy and elsewhere. So the answer is we hope so, yes. But until I know the exact numbers, I will have to let people know where we stand. My intention and my desire is not to have to go to the market to raise money. A, it's very difficult; and b, it dilutes shareholders, which is not a popular thing. And we're trying to grow the company by organically. If we can do that without having to go to the market, then that is better for all concern. And the debt facility is -- which it is true that is one reason for the delay. We've got to get the work over done. The debt facility will mean funding can happen without further requirement to go to the capital markets. But I need to get the numbers, and I don't have the numbers yet. Any more questions online?

Not on Viura -- so firstly, I'd just like to reiterate some of the points we just made there, great deal that we did. That's exactly as a shareholder, what I want to see. So even given today's news, I'm still delighted that we partner [indiscernible] it's a great part of it. So my first question is really relating to the water. Since before HEYCO got involved before you guys got involved, water has been an issue on this field. And handling the water, knowing where the water is coming from has always been a big uncertainty. So what comfort do you have on understanding where this is really coming from? You've described it coming from one ST3 well into the new well, but really that certain of that? It seems like water come anywhere and just getting a grip on that to be a big issue [indiscernible] Viura. And the second point to your point on the debt financing potential on Viura. I assume you're going to need a reserve report. Will that be undertaken by the Prospex or the operator will be made available to shareholders?

Yes. So I'll answer the second question first. Is there going to be a reserve report on Viura because that will be required for the debt facility. The answer is absolutely yes. That will be commissioned by the operator and paid for by the HEI investors. and we will make that available as soon as we have it. However, that CPR could come to the personal report, and will be using the latest and updated reprocessed 3D seismic, which, as I say, is going -- is just embarking now on a 6-week program to do some specialist reprocessing. There will then be a period of interpretation of that data, and they want to map the reservoir. And we are hoping because the Viura-1B well discovered gas in Utrillas-A at a deeper depth than it was discovered before. I expect that 90 Bcf proven resource to increase. By how much, we can't tell until we've remapped the field, and we've got the gas water contact. We know where that -- we got the gas down to actually. We know where that is in the well. So yes, the CPR will upgrade the resources, and that will be made available on the website. Now as to your first question, where is the water coming from. We start to get into technical details with you, James, know far more than I do on this. I have a dangerous amount of knowledge on geology because I'm an engineer. But what we have is a reservoir, which is a conglomerate sandstone and it has fractures. It's a fairly tight reservoir, but it does produce gas. And some of that gas is coming through the fractures and some of it is coming through the primary process. Now we've got one well, which has gone adjacent to the main producing well. One well went down, drilled by the previous operator. And as I said, a slotted liner with no cement behind it. So that means from top to bottom, any reservoir fluid, be it water or gas can come into that well, and it can migrate up to the top of the reservoir. And the thinking is from HEYCO, thinking is that, that water can actually then travel across the crest of the reservoir and start water coming through into the new well. We're told that the new well 1B was producing completely dry gas from the top zone when they tested it, no water at all. the lower zones, there was some water production seen. So the plan for the workover, I understand, and we're going to learn more about it, is to recomplete the Viura-1B well and produce -- recomplete and complete -- producing the top zone only. And on the original well, which is producing the water with the slotted in, that's going to be plugged with calcium carbonate in order to completely block it off so that it can't actually produce any water or gas. And they'll use calcium carbonate because that can be -- that blockage can be reversed with acid. So it's actually quite clever. This is another example of technology coming from Dallas. Using calcium carbonate to plug things off rather than cement means it can be reversed if ever you want to. But this is a level of detail, which I can't put in an RNS and which it's interesting for people who understand the subsurface aspects, but it's not something which is generally easily shareable on an RNS with the market.

Great. Well, if I could take some questions from online. Thanks to everyone who's been submitting questions online. I'm going to go -- well, actually, one of the questions, it's a quick question. Just with regard to the mothballed turbine that you mentioned. Any plans with regards to renewing or replacing it?

Yes, we've had a quote to sell the mothballed turbine and replace it with a new one. And that quote has been put on hold whilst Warrego was selling the turbine -- sorry, whilst Warrego was selling its share in Tarba. Now there's little point in refurbishing that or selling that turbine until we've got permits to drill the wells. So when we get closer to drilling the wells on Romeral, we'll look at replacing that turbine.

Okay. Turning to Poland, if I could. A couple of questions from attendees online. In Poland, the process, how long do third parties have to make a counterbid? That's the first question. And just secondly, where are we on Poland in terms of a little bit more meat, I think, would be helpful if you can give it.

Yes. We hope to hear by mid-May what questions the ministry are fielding. We then resubmit our applications answering those questions. The ministry then will either say yes or no to our application and then it gets publicly gazetted. That process is going to be -- it's probably now June, July before the ministry decides. There is then a 90-day process, which can be up to 180 days on the gazetting before anyone counter bids. Now, I think that's about the right number, yes. So you've got -- so you've got 90 days up to 180 days. So we're looking towards the end of -- looking like the autumn before we're going to get to here. I'm afraid that's the process that we have to go through with the ministry.

Okay. Thank you. Can I turn now to a finance question, a general finance question. The question is -- and this is probably quite a tricky one to answer for various regulatory constraints. But the question is, can you tell us how much cash the company has been generating prior to the Viura blip? And if all of these plans come off, assuming the current gas falling pricing, how much free cash will the company be generating?

Yes. Well, that is quite a difficult question to answer. I mean I've answered before, referring to this slide here. You actually can't read the numbers on this, the -- hidden by the top line. So we're generating now at -- sorry, we're producing some 78,600 standard cubic meters per day. I think there's a number that hasn't been updated on this. 78,000 standard cubic meters a day. And the gas price at the moment is EUR 34 per megawatt hour, which translates to about EUR 0.36. Yes, EUR 78,600 -- so that's EUR 0.36 per standard cubic meter. You multiply those 2 together, you get a gross revenue of EUR 850,000 per month. Now that is revenue, not income. So from that is deducted the operators' OpEx, the taxes, the royalties, the VAT, our overheads. And these numbers vary by month. And to get those numbers absolutely sacrosanct, they have to be audited. And we're going through that process now with our audited accounts, which are going to be published before the end of June. The AGM is going to be in mid-June. So [indiscernible] accounts will be published actually next month in May. So we're going through that process now. But Prospex Energy is an investing company, and we're investing in assets in our subsidiaries, and that cash stays in the subsidiaries, and we do not consolidate it up to the top company. So I'm not going to give you a direct answer to that question. I don't have the numbers. I do know how much cash we have by day, and that's something I watch very closely. But that's not something that I'm going to publish. I don't think any public company publishes exactly what cash it has day by day.

Indeed. And I thought that, that would be a difficult question to answer, but thank you for just outlining the complexities of that particular question. Any other questions from the online? If you've got any, please submit them through alternatively, if there are any further questions from the floor.

I've got one for VSA actually -- why do you VSA only assign 1p per share to [indiscernible] about wells and drilling with production and electricity generation, 1p a share just seems [indiscernible].

Well. The question is for those online who didn't hear it, about the VSA Capital research that's out there in the public domain available on the company's website. It just so happens that we have our Head of Research, Oli O'Donnell in the room, and I'm going to ask Oli. Oli, put you on the spot. Would you like to just comment on that as loudly as possible so that other people in the room -- online could hear.

So obviously that was updated for the [indiscernible] 1p per share on the near-term production [indiscernible].

I think the answer was we have to wait on the permits for the 5 wells to land before we get an increase in the valuation on the long rail.

And hopefully, it's a very conservative approach that we're taking. A very tricky one though. Thanks, Oli, for that. Any further questions online? This is the last call for questions online and anyone else on the floor before we wrap this up, and Mark can just give an overview of summary. Any further questions?

You've got other kind of wells planned, but I don't think there's been any information shared around what incremental CapEx cost for Prospex to be on sulfur, for example, as well. So I don't know if you have a schedule of costings over the next, say, 18 months and just more visibility because a lot of the [indiscernible] potentially from existing production be funded. At the same time, we don't really have visibility on what cost we're talking about for the other fields that are being planned.

Yes. Well, this is the conundrum that I face because we've got wells which are being permitted and that permitting process is -- the schedule for that is unclear because of the regulators. It's different in Italy, it's different in Spain. In Viura, the wells are permitted, the time lines that I shared earlier. The cost for those are not -- they're not cast in stone. We've got some cost estimates. We will know what the costs are when we get closer to drilling when the rigs are procured and we know what the rig rate is. We've got some numbers and the trouble is sharing the estimated numbers and then it's turning out to be a different time and a different schedule is also a misleading activity. So we're managing it as best we can. Obviously, the longer we are in production without having to drill the more cash we have to put towards that. But if all 11 wells all came all at once, then yes, we'd have to raise money to do that. However, I have already had an offer for people to come and farm into the Romeral concession. We're now 100% there. So people are making a way -- making a path to our door to say, can we join in? And if -- what that means is what we would offer when the permits land, I could go and say, well, we've got the permits of wells here, which are going to produce, come in and fund our wells and you can earn a share in the field. So we can not raise money to drill those wells by what's calling farming down in the asset. So putting together a schedule of what the costs are, it could itself be misleading. But what I'm trying to do and what I am achieving is to grow this company and make it bigger. If we can grow it from indigenous production, then all well and good. If we can grow it by having to farm down some of it, that's less good, but that's also better than issuing more shares for cash. But we've got to look at all options because what I do not want to do is to diminish our share in assets, having worked so hard to acquire them. And it has to be said, the acquisitions, we -- I've said in the RNS before, we look at so many deals and we get offered deals in far-flung places. And we turn down more deals than we actually evaluate. And when we evaluate them, we're very rigorous. We start -- I'd say to my technical team is that lots produce the hydrocarbons. Then we'll look at the commercial deal. If they don't, then don't. And the technical team has to be said, when they evaluated Viura, said, this is a proven gas field. The issue is going to be if water comes in and how they have water. So they actually got it spot on. And as Jameson and Smith was saying, the Viura acquisition was a very good acquisition for the company to grow it. Now I've gone off on the tangent slightly on your answer, but I'm not going to give a schedule of exactly when the drilling and the costs are going to be. It's too unknown.

Okay. Right. Mark, one question just popped up based on what you've just said. And I'm glad my friend from Hannam is here today, [indiscernible]. The question is, I understand that Mark is not able to share some figures today. However, can Mark assure us that Hannam Partners will be given current best estimate company assumptions by Mark to form a full view on future cash flow for their broker note under construction. I think I know what the answer to that is, of course. But do you want to comment on that question?

Well, we have been -- the whole team has been busy furnishing the analysts with models and information and full disclosure. So the answer, I would hope is an absolute yes.

Indeed, as it has been since we've known you, Mark, because, of course, VSA has been having the same information. And I can assure everyone listening on this call that both Hannam Partners and VSA have a very, very good close relationship with the company and have all the information we have ever asked for. And it's been a very helpful and open and collaborative approach to actually ensuring that forecasts are out there. I'm sure Hannam would respond in like manner. Okay. Before I ask Mark just to wrap up, can I ask my colleagues, Brian and Dylan, just to set up the refreshments in the side room. Thanks to everyone attending online. I'm going to ask Mark just to wrap up now, and thanks for everyone attending here. Mark, do you want to just have some closing remarks?

Yes. Thank you, everyone, for attending today, coming in person or attending online. My desire is to communicate with shareholders and to make sure that we keep everyone happy. And I will answer as many questions as best I can, as fulsome as I can. My intention is to grow this company further, and I want to do it in a fair and cost-effective manner. I think we're achieving some good success on that basis. It takes time. I have done it before. I've grown several companies before and made them much larger than they were when they started. I'm hoping Prospex is going to be another one. So what's the space? I ain't finished yet.

Thank you very much, Mark. Thank you, everyone, for attending.