Seascape Energy Asia plc (SEA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to the Seascape Energy Asia plc Post-AGM presentation. [Operator Instructions] I'd now like to hand you over to the Executive Chairman, James Menzies. Good morning to you, sir.

Thank you very much, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our post-AGM presentation. We're going to do a brief presentation this morning because I know we've just recently given you quite a fulsome presentation and Q&A on our recent Temaris signing. So what we thought we'd do today is really just hit the highlights of the portfolio and just be available for questions. So Nick, myself and Pierre are obviously on hand to answer any questions you have. But before that, I'll let Nick talk you through the portfolio, where we are at with it and what's going on.

Great. Thank you, James. Let me just turn the microphone, make sure everyone can hear me. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining. We think these are important to do on a regular basis. We've just had our AGM, where I'm pleased to say that all the resolutions were passed by a very wide margin. So that's fantastic. And we just thought we'd give everyone a chance to ask us a few more questions in the follow-up from our meeting last week and certainly just kind of a quick run through the portfolio as it stands today. So those of you who followed the story, the last year has been really transformational for the business. And during the past 28 months, we've been awarded 3 PSCs, all of which are in Malaysia, giving us a really material position there now. So the one we talked about last week was the Temaris Cluster, which has discovered resources with a significant exploration upside, around about 250 bcf, we believe, between 2 fields in Peninsula Malaysia, where we are the 100% owner and operator there and we will be progressing in the weeks and months to come. Our original block, Block 2A, which has the Kertang prospect on it, which is a super high-impact exploration block with a 9 TCF giant. We'll come on to that in a little while, but we believe it's one of the largest undrilled structures in Malaysia that we farmed out at the back end of last year to impacts for a full carry. And then the DEWA Cluster, which is a shallow water set of gas fields, which were discovered quite some time ago and are now subject to a development being led by EnQuest. So this gives us a great starting point from which to sort of relaunch the business with a significant amount of resources, both, I guess, firm value, which we will kind of come on and talk about as well as blue sky upside. Just a quick slide. We've done this slide in the past, but I'd love to sort of bring this up once a while, especially when I've gotten back from a long trip in Asia because it just helps kind of get across what an exciting place Asia is to be. You have a huge amount of energy demand forecast out into the 2030s, which is really being driven by quite a low -- a young population, aspirational. We've talked about this in the past, people wanting good services and growth. And indeed, that's reflected in the sort of per capita GDP, which is still just a tiny fraction of what we have here in Europe and indeed the U.S. And so helping fuel that growth is really something that we're focused in on. And the gas that we will be producing will be going directly into grids to fire power generation, both in Malaysia and abroad through LNG. So that's kind of really exciting to be part of that and that energy and that growth that we're seeing in Southeast Asia. Talking in terms of our sort of resources, we wanted to try and put into context what has happened over the past year, especially with gaining the Temaris PSC last week and in terms of just our sort of listed peer group in Southeast Asia. And you can see there, we're right in the middle with something close to 60 million barrels of oil equivalent of resources, which we will be having a CPR done for at the moment and hope to have the results of that at some point this summer. But just helps contextualize just how far we've come, what a significant player, Seascape is on the course to be in Southeast Asia. And indeed, we will be looking to move those 2C resources into 2P reserves as we go through the development cycle with our 2 development assets. And certainly, we don't have our prospective resources on there, not everybody announces those. But certainly, if you were to include those, and we'd be right at the top end there in terms of potential for this business. Yet the market cap remains a fraction of some of our peers. And so the hope is that as the market begins to recognize the value that we've created and the value we are going to be creating that, that will start to correct itself, and we will see the market cap going up quite significantly to reflect the resources that we've got. In terms of -- just a quick reminder on the asset base. Temaris, this was the PSC that we were awarded last week in KL with a fantastic ceremony as part of the wonderful Energy Asia conference attended by sort of CEOs of all the major companies. So it's a very exciting place to be, and PETRONAS is hosting a huge amount of thought and discussion around the energy space, especially in Asia. So Temaris, you have the Tembakau and the Mengkuang fields. They were originally drilled by Lundin about a decade ago, and they were relinquished really because of the geographic priorities of IPC, who is now focused on heavy oil in Canada. As with DEWA beforehand, we have this great data set, which came for free with the award, which is really one of the differentiating factors we see in Malaysia, which is this access to data which allows us to do a significant amount of work when we're deciding whether or not to go into something and how hard to push. So we've got full 3D seismic. We've got drill stem test. We've got a huge amount of core. We've got DSTs up to 16 million scf per day. And the gas here is very, very dry, very low impurities, which will make it very easy to develop. And that's one thing we really like about Temaris is that this will be a great initial development for Seascape and the team that we're building out in KL. Shallow water, it's near infrastructure. So this should be a really low-cost development with minimal unmanned facilities and quite a significant production plateau of 100 million scf per day, which is equivalent to about 17,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day. So that's a huge amount of production that we'll be looking to put on stream in the next few years. And so we've got our heads down now. We're building out the team. Pierre is very hard at work putting together the development team there in KL, which is going to take this exciting development forward. It's not just the discovered resource that we're excited about in Temaris, when we first started talking about this several months ago internally. The thing we're really, really excited about was just how much exploration acreage -- how much exploration prospectivity there is on our acreage. So the difference between, I believe, when IPC held the acreage and now us is that we have a much larger PSC. So that entire box there, over 1,000 square kilometers is the PSC, which allows us to chase this additional gas upside, which we see on the block, which could make it quite a significant hub for gas production in Peninsula Malaysia. Peninsula Malaysia is now very short gas. They're importing LNG into Peninsula Malaysia. So that's LNG that they're not selling on the international markets. And there's a huge demand for this gas, and we're looking to help fill that. Pierre, hopefully, we will talk a little bit in some of the Q&A about a conference he was just at on the East Coast, Terengganu talking about the importance of this gas into Peninsula Malaysia. And so we're hoping that we'll be able to chase a lot of this exploration upside as part of the overall sort of development campaign. And we're hoping to put a little bit more depth around the size of that prospective resource, which we're going to include in the upcoming CPR, which will be published this summer. DEWA, this was our first gas cluster that we picked up. This is in Sarawak now. So we're now in Eastern Malaysia. This is a series of a dozen fields that were discovered in the sort of '80s and then in the 2000s. Really, the companies we were exploring at the time were looking for oil. So when they found gas, they sort of discarded and walked away. And their loss, our gain. You've got the Bintulu LNG plant that's just there onshore, one of the largest LNG facilities in the world. It is hungry for gas that gets exported mainly up to Japan. There's 6 fields that we've high graded initially, which we believe are going to have between 300 and 400 bcf recoverable. Again, a production plateau of around 100 million scf per day, possibly even higher. Shallow water, near infrastructure, kind of all of these ticks has been fantastic. EnQuest has been doing a great job with the subsurface models, moving that forward and now looking at where the preferred development route is. Like I said, there's quite a bit of infrastructure right nearby, and it's going to be a process of nailing that down and moving that into development. Block 2A. This was our initial PSC in Malaysia. So this is our -- where we initially planted our flag. We've got a 10% stake, which is fully carried on an uncapped basis through the whole exploration program, which is an exploration well plus a contingent appraisal well. This is a giant block, 12,000 square kilometers and by far, the largest prospect on it is Kertang. We've tried to give an idea of just how large it is. For those of you in the U.K., putting it over our map of London showing the big ring road around London, the M25. So this is a 220 square kilometer closure prospect, which we believe is the largest undrilled structure in Malaysia, could contain 9 TCF even more on an upside basis. And INPEX, who took over as operator a little bit earlier this year after the farm-in, has really done a great job moving this forward towards a firm well commitment over the next couple of months. INPEX themselves have become a real significant operator in Malaysia, especially in Sarawak over the past couple of years, entering at the same time that we did. And they've got a multi-well deepwater drilling campaign really looking for gas to fill up that Bintulu LNG for export. So we're really excited about that, a huge, huge upside, absolutely no cost to us. So it's one that we're watching very closely. We're hoping to have more clarity in terms of the timing on drilling as we get towards the back end of the summer and into the sort of later part of this year as INPEX looks to put together that whole drilling campaign across Sarawak. I want to do a quick update on the slide. I believe we showed around the time of the farm-out, which is really trying to get into people's heads just how much value we created at such a minimal cost so far post-pivot to Southeast Asia and really Malaysia in particular. So we've got our cash balances, the value of the carry so that see-through value that we did previously. But you can see with DEWA and Temaris now, which are firm value, these are discovered resources, which we'll have a CPR for shortly, are being attributed almost no value in the share price or indeed heavily risked. And so actually from a firm basis, on an unrisked basis, we've got sort of over GBP 3 of value, we believe, if you use a recent precedent transaction in Sarawak, where Total bought a business called SapuraOMV for about $4 a barrel of oil equivalent. This is a very analogous business to what we have that was sort of a little bit of production, but mainly gas development. And then if you start adding in the Kertang upside, you can get to numbers 20x our current share price. So there is a long way to go with this one. And we're pleased to see our brokers, Stifel and Cavendish pushing up their target prices on the back of the Temaris Award. And we're really excited of all the sort of things to come. So we sort of described this, I think, a little bit as a sort of asymmetric risk here where you've got quite a bit of firm value back in the share price and a huge amount of upside. In terms of our near-term catalysts, I know that's what everyone is focused in on as are we. As mentioned, the Block 2A well commitment should be coming in the third quarter. After which, INPEX will be going to secure a rig. So hopefully, that will -- that news will start to come out during the second half of the year. The thing we're most focused in on the moment is the independent CPR, which we've commissioned Sproule-ERCE to put together to help put some definition for the market at large as to the size of Temaris and DEWA and indeed, some of the upside we see associated with those. So the hope is that, that will be out in the next month or so, which we'll publish and perhaps do a short Investor Meet Company before things start to sort of wind down a little bit for the summer here in the London markets. So it's something to keep your eye out for. Stuff we don't have on here, we've got the seismic reprocessing that's been kicked off already, which is going to help define that upside on Temaris. And indeed, we've been now hiring significantly in KL, putting on some of those key positions to move the Temaris PSC forward through to the development phase. We're really looking to get after that quickly. It's a huge resource. It's very valuable, and we really want to move that down up the development curve quite quickly. So just in summary before we go to Q&A, we think very strongly, we have this proven ability to deliver. We've shown that we can amass a material high-quality portfolio. I think the high-quality bit is something we're incredibly proud of. These are really high-quality assets, and we put them together with very, very little capital, which is something that has taken a huge amount of hard work from a small group of individuals who've really been pushing this business. And now we're in this position where we've got production potential over 20,000 barrels of oil equivalent net to us within the next 3 years. That's not far off what we see Valeura producing today. And that business is probably 10x our size. So that's something really exciting we've got coming up. And we've also taken this next crucial step to become a development operator. I think that, that's really important for us as we move forward because it allows us, I think, to open up more opportunities across Southeast Asia, both in Malaysia and elsewhere. We're offering investors a sort of asymmetric risk reward profile, so that hard value with the developments as well as the sort of step-out exploration, which gives us incremental upside and then a huge amount of blue sky upside with Kertang for all 0 cost. So that's absolutely fantastic. And in terms of sort of our positioning versus peers, I really do believe that you've got a rare opportunity with Seascape. Our position in Southeast Asia is sort of second to none. We are really competitively advantaged in Malaysia as we prove time and time again, leveraging our network and our technical expertise, which I'm incredibly proud of. People come to us and bring us opportunities and ideas because we've really been able to carve out this excellent niche for ourselves in Southeast Asia, in Malaysia, in particular, and it's down to really our colleagues out there who are working tirelessly to help build this business. So with that, I think I'll sort of finish up, probably gone on a little bit too long as was. And I'll hand back to James, who I think is going to run us through a little bit of Q&A.

Yes, please submit your questions. The Q&A is looking a bit thin at the moment, but we do have one. We do have one, and it's about your comments on valuation, Nick. We're showing GBP 3.24 per share of firm unrisked value. And we're sitting at 50p per share right now. So obviously, there's a gap to be bridged. And how do we see that gap being bridged? And what are the main catalysts? I guess project definition is the first one. So CPR, as Nick has been alluding to, we'll go a long way to validating what we're talking about and coming up with firm numbers from an independent source and then financing.

Yes. And then financing, the question that always comes up with these things really is around, okay, so that's great. You've got all this resource, but how are you going to finance it? I think we talked a little bit about that last week when we had Temaris. With a 100%, we have got a lot of flexibility in terms of how we move that project forward, in particular and how that gets financed. I think we've already seen a lot of interest in it. This is a hotly contested block. It's a well-known asset, quite a coveted one. And we've been pleasantly surprised by the number of inbound calls we had saying, "oh, you've got 100%, are you going to keep it? What are you going to do with it?" So that gives me confidence that we will be able to do something with it, either partial farm-out, we can partner with someone. Maybe we'll just keep it 100% ourselves. I think that the banking market is reopening. I think that there are opportunities to partner with sort of nontraditional finance parties who are looking at doing interesting things, especially out in Southeast Asia. And I think the great news is that we don't have to make any of those decisions right now. I think the key focus is get the CPR done, get that project definition bedded down. And then once we have more detail that we can share with the world at large, I think that we're going to have -- I think we quite well be spoiled for choice.

Very good. Do we expect to make any other asset additions in 2025? I mean, yes. We're certainly chasing quite a number of things. I think there's obviously a round -- bid round going on in Malaysia right now as we speak. There are bid rounds going on elsewhere in Southeast Asia, which we've talked about before. And whilst we haven't got the resources or the bandwidth to chase everything, we like to be quite selective, but put a lot of effort into the things that we high grade that we believe in. And I think it's fair to say there are a couple of those out there right now. So I don't think we're going to announce another tomorrow morning, but we are -- yes, I mean, there's a lot more to do. I think I was just speaking to some of the shareholders here at our AGM and saying a lot of the mistakes small companies make at this point is to stop and kind of hold an asset and prod it and fiddle around with it. And actually, we've got some things. We've acquired some things and picked them up. We've got the team to work on them. That's fantastic, but we need to keep moving, and we don't stop. So that's our thought process.

I'm going to have a brief vacation, but...

Maybe ask Pierre, I know, Pierre, you had a great conference this week. I've lost track of time now.

Yes. It was on Monday. And last Monday and Tuesday, Nick. And I think it's actually worth commenting on that because -- so it was up in Kuala Terengganu, which is in Terengganu state, which is in Northeast Peninsula Malaysia. And it's where the gas -- or the gas lands into a town called Kerteh just south of where I was and all the gas fields from Peninsula Malaysia, and where the Temaris gas would land. And I think -- I guess the message I got from the conference, and it was very well attended, was really we're part of the energy ecosystem in Malaysia, and we got an awful lot of attention. Everybody was seeing us as the new kid on the block, operating this very important PSC, delivering new gas to Peninsula Malaysia, where there is a huge need for new energy supply. And all the comments from all the panelists was really need for new energy, more gas, more gas from the Eastern gas fields, but also to feed the growing energy demand and the growth in the data centers that are planned for Malaysia. And that will also be counterbalanced with coal that's also been burned in Malaysia and imported LNG. So it was kind of -- it was a narrative of and, and, and in terms of energy, which I thought was very interesting. But certainly, very positive energy and the need for more gas from the Eastern fields, which obviously fits perfectly with what we're doing and the whole Temaris story.

Excellent. Question here on the CPR. Is it feasible that it can be published in a month?

I hope so. Yes. I mean, look, it's -- we've been working with Sproule-ERCE for quite some time now. In fact, they've worked with us since really the inception of the business. They have a good handle on our assets, and we've been working with them quite -- for a few weeks now, I should say, in terms of ensuring they're up to speed with our assets and what have you. So I'm hoping that, that will be the case. I asked the same question of the staff earlier on this week, and I was given a positive indication. So I hope -- I really am hoping we'll get something out before things quite down in the summer.

Yes. Yes, as you say, I mean, these are not new assets to the auditor. So yes, it should be possible. We're confident. I think a couple of questions on production. And rough time scales to become a producing company, which I guess is ex any kind of M&A would be through the DEWA, we would look as at the moment as being the first producing asset for us. Time scales to production?

Yes. I mean, look, the debate is whether or not we can move even faster Temaris. I think they're going to be competing, to be honest with you. They're not competing in the sense that there are actually 2 different markets that they go into. But I think that '27, we've talked about that as being a really sort of seminal year for the business. It probably won't be the front end of '27, but could indeed be the back end of '27 in terms of sort of production for us from an organic sense. From DEWA, especially because DEWA could be indeed stage. There are sort of 3 main fairways there that we're going to be looking at. So it may be that sort of some initial production, it kind of gets done in a bit of a phased way. And certainly, Temaris, we are working incredibly quickly. We will have a field development plan submitted by the back end of next year. And to the extent we can accelerate the development, I mean we're being told by PETRONAS. Pierre, I think it's fair to say that PETRONAS, MPM are telling us to move as quickly as we possibly can.

They're encouraging us at every level to go as fast as we can and accelerate production of Temaris. Yes. It's just good to show how much gas is needed in Peninsula Malaysia.

And they've been doing great stuff to sort of help enable us and encourage us. And we're looking at ways to really do things differently. I don't think any of us have an interest in just doing the same old same old here at Seascape. We've been looking at all sorts of interesting things such as like reusing platforms. So I think this is something we've mentioned a few times that PETRONAS gave us a sort of a menu of things that we might be able to use and reuse. And that has a huge advantage of accelerating things enormously. I mean, obviously, you need to check that they're appropriate and what have you, but especially for something like Temaris, which is a very straightforward, the gas is -- it's very clean. There's nothing -- there's no nasties in it. It's very dry. So indeed, that could be a really interesting way of monetizing that asset incredibly quickly.

Okay. Question on DEWA -- EnQuest's capacity to develop DEWA, is it competing with Temaris? I think EnQuest are the operator of DEWA. We're the operator of Temaris. So it doesn't compete for resources. We, of course, are following what EnQuest is doing. And so we meet with them regularly and get updates and progress reports, et cetera. But we're not actually doing the work, they are doing the work. So we don't have that as a concern. In fact, one of the attractions, I think, for PETRONAS, the regulator in Seascape was that this would be our only operated project. And so we would devote all our time to focusing on that. 2A timing for drilling, INPEX, it's in the hands of INPEX. What would we say?

So look, there are still lots of moving pieces on this. And so we're hoping to get some more clarity towards alongside the well commitment. It is still our keen hope that it's going to get drilled during '26, but it could certainly sneak into '27, depending on where it gets slotted in. So what they'll do is they'll bring in a rig and it's got -- INPEX actually has sort of 3 PSCs and it has wells that needs drilling on all of them. One of those PSCs, of course, is 2A. And so it just ends up being the sort of timing and logistics issue for them, but it's all part of the same campaign, which is great, which also means that we'll have a hot rig, a hot crew and that should make for sort of safe and quick operations.

Excellent. We've got a couple of minutes left. There's a couple of questions have appeared about takeovers.

Which way?

Are we concerned about a takeover approach given the current modest market cap?

Are we concerned about a -- the reality is, of course, corporate takeovers are just a fact of life. They happen. I've been involved in quite a few myself. The reality is that we know what we've got here. This is an incredibly interesting and dare I say, special business. And certainly, if anyone wanted to benefit from what we've created, they would need to pay a huge premium to do that. So we know what the value is here. So to my mind, there is no chance of this getting taken out at anything that would not be quite a substantial premium. And if that's the case, then that's the case, and shareholders will get to sort of vote on that. But I don't think that there's anything near term that I would be that worried about. Certainly, we're just kind of sticking to our knitting, let's build a great business here.

Sounds good. very good. All right. Well, thank you all for your questions. Thank you, Nick, for the presentation. And I think that concludes the Q&A.

Thank you all. Just a quick plug in terms of -- we're going to be reaching out and doing sort of quite a bit of shareholder stuff coming up. I'd be keen to hear from our shareholders how you would like to hear from us, trying to figure out which socials you use, which mediums you'd like to hear from us on. So if you've got stuff there, please sign up on those different things, shoot us an e-mail at our IR and let us know how you would like to hear from us, the formats and the mediums so that we can ensure that we're reaching the widest audience with relevant information.

And TikTok dances very much in the [indiscernible]. Thank you very much.

Great. Thank you, everyone.

Perfect. Well, thanks very much for updating attendees today. On behalf of the Board of Seascape Energy Asia plc, we'd like to thank you for attending today's meeting, and good afternoon to you all.