Tamarack Valley Energy Ltd. (TVE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome, everyone, to the Tamarack Valley Energy Limited webcast discussing the Q4 2021 results. I would like to introduce today's speakers, Mr. Brian Schmidt, President and CEO; and Mr. Steve Buytels, Vice President, Finance and CFO. [Operator Instructions] Mr. Schmidt, you may begin your conference.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. I'm joined here today with Steve Buytels, VP Finance and CFO. 2021 was a transformational year for Tamarack, with the successful execution and integration of approximately $700 million of strategic acquisitions in 2 very high-quality plays, the Charlie Lake and the Clearwater. These acquisitions reposition the company into these 2 top plays and enhances sustainable free funds and return of capital potential to the company that consists both of a base dividend and the potential for enhanced return through special dividends or buybacks. Additionally, operationally, I'm very proud of our team and what it accomplished in 2021, not only delivering and exceeding our production, cost and cash flow targets, but also the successful integration of acquisitions through the year, which drove significant reserve growth and NAV accretion. I'll pass it over to Steve Buytels to provide some additional highlights.

Thanks, Brian. As Brian mentioned, Q4 was another strong quarter with the company posting production and cash flow estimates that exceeded guidance. Tamarack exited 2021, having delivered a strong oil-weighted production profile averaging 40,384 BOE a day during the fourth quarter, representing 83% year-over-year growth, which drove funds flow of greater than $124 million or $0.31 per share in Q4 and $340 million or $0.96 per share for the year. Free funds flow of $82.4 million during the quarter further drove debt reduction, ending the year at 0.9x net debt to Q4 annualized funds flow. We transitioned our $600 million revolving credit facility to a sustainably linked loan, which links our ESG performance to our lending costs and the potential to reduce our borrowing rate if we execute on the targets we have set forth. Our 2022 full year production guidance remains unchanged, despite the cold weather outages earlier in the year, as we target volumes of 45,000 to 46,000 BOE a day and capital expenditures of $250 million to $270 million for the year. Given the strength in commodity prices, we forecast to generate over $480 million of free funds flow before tax and are on target to hit our long-term debt target of $325 million to $375 million by midyear. This will enable us to augment the return of capital to shareholders over and above our base dividend through special dividends and/or buybacks. I'll pass it over to Brian to walk through some of the operational highlights.

Thank you, Steve. Operationally, we continue to see momentum from 2021 into the first quarter. In the Clearwater, we successfully drilled our West Marten Hills Exploration well, which averaged an IP15 rate of 170 barrels of oil per day. This follows on other significant competitor activity in the area, derisking a significant portion of our Marten Hills acreage. At West Nipisi, we continue to see strong results from our first 2 wells in our Waterflood program, achieving an IP30 rate of 320 barrels of oil per day of 19-degree API oil. We're currently drilling injectors and plan to follow up with an additional 12 wells in the Clearwater Waterflood in 2022. In the Southern Clearwater, we're currently running 4 rigs and 8 wells expected to be on stream by the end of the first quarter. We're extremely pleased to announce a strategic partnership with the Peavine Metis Settlement in High Prairie area that covers 29.5 sections of highly prospective Clearwater acreage. We plan to begin our appraisal program in the third quarter. Moving over to Charlie Lake. We continue to delineate the lands in the Pipestone area, with the 13 to 12 well exhibiting some of the strongest rates we have seen in the play to date with an initial rate of 1,400 barrels of oil per day. We're currently drilling our first Upper Charlie Lake well in the play, which, if successful, can prove up significant additional inventory. I'd like to take the time to thank our Board, the employees, shareholders and stakeholders for all of your support in 2021. Thank you.

We have some questions. Our first question is about the Peavine sale. Any color on what its potential looks like? When do we plan on drilling our first well? And how close are we to some of the big Baytex wells in the area?

Yes. So in the Peavine area, we do have some Baytex wells offsetting our land block and that certainly gave us an encouragement to go forward with the deal. I would probably call this development acreage, and we'll be drilling our first well in the third quarter.

With free cash flow of $410 million after tax projected for 2022 at strip, what price of WTI is fueling that number?

Yes. So that would be the current strip price of about $88.75 a barrel WTI that would drive that. As you recall, obviously, since we put the budget out in early January, prices have moved up significantly and that's going to allow us, as I mentioned in the conference call there to drive that enhanced return on capital hopefully here into the midyear '22.

Can you provide some color on the infrastructure availability in the Peavine area? And if appraisal wells are successful this year, how active would you be in the area in 2023?

Yes. It's -- so the -- there are some roads into that area. We're not starting off in greenfield type stuff. There's a number of well penetrations there already. So we have a good idea on the mapping and how that goes. So I would say it's quite similar to what we got in, in Nipisi when we started in there.

How many acres does Tamarack have now in the Clearwater area?

Yes. So including the Peavine deal that we just announced here, we would have about 480 net sections in the Clearwater and that would consist of Peavine, Nipisi, West Marten Hills and what we call the South Clearwater, which is Jarvie, Perryvale and Meanook. So that 480 sections would be well over 300,000 net acres.

At this time, we'll turn it back to the moderator to close off the call.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude your webcast for today. We do thank you for attending and, at this time, ask that you please disconnect. Have yourselves a good day.