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

The Board and management very much appreciate your attendance today. My name is John Rooney -- that's better. My name is John Rooney, I am Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Corporation, and I will chair this meeting this afternoon. I'm going to follow a script. So if I've got my eyes down, it's not because I don't want to be looking out at you, it's because I'm reading the script. In addition to the in-person shareholders' meeting, we are also broadcasting this meeting simultaneously via webcast. With us today is Ben Layton of Stikeman Elliott, who will act as secretary of the meeting. Ben, will you wave your hand? There you are, Ben. Thank you very much. I would like to introduce the other members of Tamarack's Board of Directors and executive team, who are with us today in person at the meeting and would ask if they stand when I call their name. You can hold your applause. Jeff Boyce, Marnie Smith, John Leach, Ian Currie, Robert Spitzer, Brian Schmidt, Steve Buytels, Kevin Screen, Scott Shimek, Christine Ezinga. Now you applaud. There are also many other Tamarack team members with us in the audience today, and I would like to thank them all for your great contributions to the success of this corporation. We welcome those of you who are not shareholders to this meeting, but I remind you that only registered shareholders may -- or duly appointed proxy holders may vote on matters that are brought before this meeting. Following the formal part of this business, which is my reading the script, Brian Schmidt will make a presentation, which I'm sure is going to be more interesting about what's actually going on in the corporation. If there are some really good questions, we might even hear from Steve Buytels. So think up hard questions, we'll see if we can make him do a little dance for us. After the presentation, there's going to be a question and answer. So feel free any questions that you wish to put forward, we'll do our best to answer them. We'll now proceed with the formal part of the meeting. At this time, we think it is necessary to set out the rules for orderly conduct of this meeting. Rules in a night fight I thought, but here we go. One, registered shareholders or duly appointed proxy holders who wish to address an item of business here today, who wish to ask a question may do so at any time during the meeting by raising their hand in person, by submitting a question along with your name and e-mail in the appropriate boxes located at the bottom right of the virtual interface. All other attendees who wish to present or ask a question may do so during the question-and-answer period at the end of the meeting by raising their hand or submitting a question on the bottom of the interface box. When submitting a question in person or on the virtual interface, please indicate which entity you represent, if any, and confirm if you are a registered shareholder or a duly appointed proxy holder. Questions from registered shareholders or duly appointed proxy holders regarding procedural matters or directly related to the motions before the meeting will be addressed during the formal business portion of the meeting. All other questions will be addressed during the question-and-answer period at the end of the meeting. Questions raised in person from registered shareholder or proxy holder will be presented by said shareholder or proxy holder as facilitated by the Chair of the meeting, me. Questions submitted by the virtual interface will be read by a company representative. Questions or comments containing inappropriate language, profanities or hostilities or that are otherwise disruptive to the orderly conduct of the meeting for all shareholders will not be allowed, published or answered. Questions that are already been answered or are redundant or repetitive will not be answered. There's a lot of rules. I will now call this meeting to order. Bart Wingerak of Odyssey Trust Company is attendance today. Bart, if you'd raise your hand at the back there, thank you. And I appoint Odyssey Trust Company and Bart, in particular, to act as scrutineer for the meeting. The purpose of this meeting is to receive the audited financial statements for the years ended December 31, '21 and 2020, to elect the directors of the corporation for the ensuing year, to appoint auditors of the corporation for the ensuing year and to authorize the directors to fix their remuneration and to transact such other businesses may be properly thought before this meeting or any adjournment or adjournments of this meeting. Everybody, good? The notice calling this meeting, the form of proxy and the management information circular dated March 22, 2022, in respect to this meeting were mailed to all registered shareholders, directors and the auditors of the corporation on April 11, 2022. I ask that the affidavit proving the do mailing of this material be placed in the corporation's minute books. The bylaws of the corporation provide that a quorum at the shareholders meeting is met if 2 or more persons are present, in person or represented by proxy and are entitled to vote in the aggregate, not less than 5% of the shares entitled to vote at the meeting. I have been provided the report from the scrutineer, which indicates there are 14 shareholders present or represented by proxy, representing approximately 51.74% of the issued and outstanding common shares. As such, I declare that a quorum is present. I direct that a copy of the scrutineers' report be kept by the secretary with the records of this meeting. Proper notice of this meeting having been given and a quorum being present, I declare this meeting to be duly constituted for the transaction of business. In order to have the meeting proceed efficiently, we have asked employees who are also shareholders or proxy holders of Tamarack to move and second motions to be put before this meeting. Voting at this meeting on all resolutions shall be by a show of hands, except for any matter in respect of which a ballot is required or is demanded by the shareholder or proxy holder entitled to vote at the meeting. Shareholders were asked to vote by proxy prior to the meeting in the event in-person voting was not possible. If you have already submitted a proxy and have not revoked it, your vote will be included on the ballot. Now on to the business of the meeting. The financial statements. The first item of business relates to the corporation's audited financial statements for its most recent completed financial year. Copies of the financial statements for the years ended December 31, 2021 and December 31, 2020, together with the report of the auditors thereon were mailed to the registered and requesting beneficial shareholders. Copies are also available on the company's website and are filed on SEDAR. It is not proposed to ask shareholders to approve the financial statements, which have been laid before the meeting. However, should any shareholders have any concerns or questions, I would be pleased to deal with such matters at the end of the meeting. And in fact, my dealing with them will be to appoint to Steve and ask him to deal with the questions, please think up a hard one. I request the Secretary to file a copy of the annual financial statements and the auditor's report with the minutes of this meeting. Election of directors. It is now in order to proceed with the election of directors of the corporation. In the management information circular, it was proposed that 7 individuals be nominated for election to the Board. May I have the nominations, please?

Mr. Chairman, my name is Bernard Bigornia, and I'm a shareholder. I nominate Brian Schmidt, John Rooney, Jeffrey Boyce, John Leach, Ian Currie, Robert Spitzer and Marnie Smith to be elected as directors of the corporation for the ensuing year.

My name is [ Gigi Lou ] and I'm a shareholder. I second the motion.

Thank you, Bernard and Gigi. Are there any further nominations? The nominations, which have been made are in order. And as there are no further nominations, I declare the nominations closed. We proceed with the voting on this matter. The vote on this resolution will be by way of ballot. Any shareholder who did not receive a ballot and who has not completed a proxy, please raise your hand or identify yourself on the virtual platform so that scrutineers can provide you with an appropriate ballot. Those registered shareholders who have yet to cast their vote, please vote on the ballot by marking X in the box opposite the word for or withhold as the case may be. Please sign and print your name on the lines provided. The scrutineers will then collect and count the ballots. Is anybody here going to do that? Thank you. Scrutineers' report on the ballot for the election of directors is now available. I am pleased to report that Brian Schmidt, Jeff Boyce, John Leach, Ian Currie, Robert Spitzer, Marnie Smith and I, John Rooney, have been elected as Directors of the corporation until the next Annual General Meeting of Shareholders or until successors are elected are appointed. Congratulations, you all. Appointment of auditors. The next item of business is the appointment of auditors for the current year and authorizing the directors to fix their remuneration. May I please have a motion in this regard.

Mr. Chair, my name is Dakota Willick, and I'm a shareholder. I move that KPMG LLP be appointed as the auditors of the corporation until the next Annual Meeting of Shareholders and the Corporation's Board be authorized to fix their remuneration.

My name is Francis Erasmus. I am a shareholder, and I second the motion.

Thank you, Dakota and Francis. The motion is now open to discussion. If there is no further discussion -- if there is no discussion, would all those in favor indicate as much by raising their right hand. Opposed, if any? I declare the motion carried. As Chair, I am happy with that. There was something else written here, but it didn't make sense. Okay. If there is no further business that any would like to bring before the formal part of this meeting, I may have a motion for the conclusion of the formal part of the meeting.

Mr. Chairman, my name is [ Jenn McNicol ], and I'm a shareholder. I so move.

My name is Craig Stayura, and I'm a shareholder, and I second the motion.

Thank you, Jenn and Craig. Would all those in favor indicate as much by raising their right hand. Opposed, if any? Excellent. I would like to thank everyone for attending the formal part of the meeting. The better part of the meeting, I believe, is now when Brian will come up and tell you how good your investment in this company looks.

Welcome, everybody, and it's always a great pleasure to speak at the AGM and get in front of shareholders and people very meaningful to the company, including Board and most importantly, employees. So it's a great opportunity to tell us what our accomplishes have been in the past year. I also want to certainly acknowledge [indiscernible] is here, [indiscernible] is the founder with me. And I'm going to recollect stories of when we actually sat around the table and put checks in the middle of the table to start Tamarack Valley Energy. How humble that is and how much -- how long ago, I was told by -- I see the gentleman is not here, I was looking for him, but I was told by someone, "You're crazy to start with organic growth like that. You should maybe buy some production. It's a really hard way to do it." It has been a hard way to do that. It is very difficult to grow organically from the start, but we've weathered a lot of storms, a lot of difficulties. And so I'm going to tell you a little bit about some of the accomplishments and some of the things that we put together since then. I think notably, if I go back 2 years ago, pre-COVID, I want to give you some contrast here. We are about 21,000 barrels a day, about 63% liquids. We're now about 46,000 barrels a day, 75% liquids. We used to have about 5 years of drilling inventory, and now we have 10 of high-quality inventory. And our market cap at the time was $250 million, and we're now about $2 billion depending on the day. So the last 2 years have been -- through COVID have been very -- we've taken the opportunity to transform the company. So today, I'm going to talk a little bit about that transformation. And then when I get to the end and talk a little bit about the employees that made that happen. I'll read this quickly. Who ever thought that I have a presentation with 7 pages of presentation and another 3 of disclaimers. Okay. Just a little bit about the assets and what's changed. Market cap there, you see $2.1 billion. And the debt, we're about $0.5 billion in debt. Enterprise value of 2.7. On the production side, that 47,000 roughly is about 76% liquids, about 66% of that's oil and about 30% of that is heavy oil. Just to give you -- I think you need to think of Tamarack as 3 key pieces. We've got the Charlie Lake piece, the Clearwater piece, those have been added in the last 2 years. We've got our Waterflood, which I would include in several fields. I'm going to talk a little bit about that today. And then the -- and then those are the 3 kind of growth areas. And then we've got our Cardium play that's a cash flow generator. Just to give you an idea on net operating income minus the capital that we invest in each area. The Charlie Lake is sitting at around $200 million, I would call it, free cash flow asset level number. The Clearwater would be about $220 million. The Waterfloods would be somewhere around $145 million and the Cardium would be about $108 million. So it gives you an idea of a well-balanced company. I'll talk a little bit about the capital allocation and how that -- how we're going to invest going forward in those pieces. Our capital expenditure will be around $280 million to $300 million. And you can see the rest of the numbers there. This is on our corporate website. I'm not going to talk too much about Waterflood today, but I will say that the Eyehill asset that we acquired last February, we've taken injection from about 2,500 barrels a day up to 13,000 barrels per day injection, and we're starting to see some nice response there growing production. We think our Waterflood response is about taking the field from 1,900 up to 2,200 barrels a day. So we're seeing a nice Waterflood response and that will continue to grow. We've seen GORs come down on the oil. So we're real pleased at that acquisition. And that actually, interesting enough, was our highest profit to investment ratio investment last year, was that Eyehill property. A little bit on capital allocation. And on the capital allocation, I think one of the things that the staff are incented for in their LTI is 5-year debt adjusted free cash flow per share. So any decisions we make on acquisitions, on investment practices, all realigns to that how we grow that 5-year debt adjusted free cash flow per share. And that's quite different than the last 2 years when I was here, and we were talking about what our annual metrics are. So it's more long term, more sustainable and more fit for a dividend-paying company. So if you look at how we allocate capital, we're starting to look more down the road. So things like decline rates become more important. And to control decline rate, we need to invest in Waterfloods. And that's why the Eyehill investment. It doesn't give you the big bang on the production that you wanted last year, but it builds for over the next few years and helps your 5-year plan. About $0.25 on the dollar, we'll invest in Waterflood activities in Eyehill, Veteran, Penny and a few other smaller floods that we've got going on. We bought the Charlie Lake asset last year at somewhere around 8,000 barrels a day. When we took it over, we grew it to about 13, and that's about where we're going to keep the Charlie Lake asset. And so it's kind of drill to fill, if you would, on the infrastructure there. We're currently sitting somewhere around 14.5, 15 right now after our winter drilling program, but that will be an asset that gives us great cash flow, great -- easy to keep flat -- drilling a few wells. I'll talk a little bit about that. On the Nipisi and Jarvie, that's been a growth area. So we will be growing production somewhere around the 14,000 barrels a day this year, and that's phenomenal when you think of about 1.5 years ago, we're about 1,800 barrels a day. That will continue to grow, and we will be starting Waterflood operations. And I've got a slide here that talks a little bit about Waterflood. A few notes on the corporate, all you need to know on this slide is that if we did not pay an enhanced dividend and just kept our base dividend, we would be down to our bond level of $200 million by the end of the year. And if we choose to pay an enhanced dividend, which we've announced to the market, we will in the second half, then the -- then that, of course, pushes that out. If you did not pay an enhanced dividend, we would be debt free by mid-'23. So the name of the game right now for Tamarack is to get the debt down to where we're paying enhanced dividends and continue to strengthen the company here going forward. I'm going to talk a little bit about -- I just have one slide on ESG, but I want our shareholders to know how important this has become and how it's become a strategic advantage. I'm told that we are the only E&P company -- or the first E&P company in Canada to get sustainable lending. And we are the first E&P company in North America to get a sustainable bond. And if you look at the employees in here, there's a lot of work goes into getting that. And if you look at the targets that you see below, there are 3 main targets that we have to achieve. And the UN sustainable development goal fits in there, with a little flag there you see. One is reducing Scope 1 and 2 emissions intensity. The other is spending roughly 150% of the regulated ARO amount to abandon wells. And the other is our indigenous participation. And I think what's really set this company apart from our peers is a real strong commitment on indigenous employment. We had 0 in the office here a couple of years ago, and our goal is to get to 6% here -- about 6% by 2025, and we'll be having probably 6 employees will be the target here to get to. We're already sitting at 4. So it's very important. And we're starting to see just little things here and there all the time. Things like marked barrels because you're a sustainable company. Things like a little break on your insurance rates because you're a sustainable company. And of course, the break on lending as well. And Steve may comment here, but there's some -- there's quite a bit of demand for that sustainable bond right now. So it's been a real eye opener for us, and a number of employees here really worked hard to put this all together, and I want to recognize that. There's a ton of work goes into measuring tracking, setting goals and achieving them. A little bit on the return of capital framework. While our debt level is less than -- is greater than $400 million, we'll be paying the base dividend. And roughly, that's going to be the first half of the year. We may have a little bit of free cash flow this quarter to talk -- to issue in the third quarter. Once the debt level gets to that less than $350 million to $400 million, then we'll be paying an enhanced dividend and/or a share buyback. And I would say, given the good value of the share prices these days, we'd probably end up with a lot of it buying back shares. And just to give you some illustration on how that would work, you can see by this chart, if I go to the right-hand side, that's $70 oil. And if this was 2023, you'd see probably an enhanced dividend of $249 million, who would have ever thought that, that would be possible. It's just -- it's incredible. It'd be about 14% yield on strip prices and the base dividend would be $53 million. Now everyone says, well, listen 50%, why is that $53 million? Why is that so low? That's because that's calculated at $55. The enhanced, of course, would be cash flow -- at 50% cash flow with whatever the strip was at actual prices a quarter before. So it's pretty significant cash flow generation. Of course, some shareholders would like to see us grow that dividend, and some of our competitors have announced more free cash flow going to dividend and share buybacks. We'll take this a step at a time. We'll get our enhanced and then I'm sure the Board is going to be discussing what our next move might be. Why is this company performing so well? And strategically, 2 years ago, we put a concerted effort to get into the best place in North America. And this is a chart that ranks all the plays in North America. And you can see here that the Clearwater, both in Nipisi, Marten Hills are the best place. And so you're going to get the best returns. And then by the time you pour that into a 5-year debt adjusted free cash flow per share number, it's going to deliver you the best results. And you can see here that the Charlie Lake play is the next one over and sits -- actually, it's payout and yours is a little bit longer, but you can see it has the lowest breakeven of any play in North America. So as far as I'm concerned, we are in the 2 best place. It took a lot of work to get us there. And -- but we're very pleased with where we're at. And I'm going to talk about the Clearwater first. This is the Clearwater fairway that covers a number of operators. First of all, if I start from the bottom of the sheet there, you can see the Jarvie, Perryvale, we didn't have anything there. Go back probably a little over a year, we did have maybe a little bit of non-op land that we got with Highwood, but then we've accumulated a number of acquisitions there, the Crestwynd, Spur and the most recently, the Rolling Hills to give us a dominant position there. And really, I would say the consolidation piece is done there. There might be a few sections here or there. There's lots of sections left to derisk in that play. And so we're very excited about that piece. Moving farther north, you've got the Marten Hills, Nipisi. West Marten Hills, you can see 162 sections and 38 sections in West Marten Hills, a real nice area. And the West Marten Hills is, there was a lot of exploration, which I'll just go over with you in another slide. The newest area we've added is Peavine. And just to update your numbers, we picked up another 7.5 sections there. So we're up to 77 sections, very nice area. What I like about that area is it's got a number of different sands that are stacked. So when you see a section of land, it's not just 1, there'll be 3 different -- up to 3 different layers that we'll be going through and exploiting there. So all up, we have now over 600 sections of land with that last little deal there, we had to get over the number there. So real happy with that where that's at. Just talk a little bit about Nipisi, West Marten Hills. There's a number of operators did a lot of derisking around there. I put up all their rates that you see around there. West Marten Hills, Headwater, Spur and ourselves derisked a number of wells in different zones and ours is about 150 barrels a day. So we consider that area by industry to be derisked. And then we've got our Waterflood pilot that you see there. I'll talk a little bit about that. Our IPs on our primary wells in that area of 280 to 290 barrels of oil a day, very pleased at our acquisition that we made last year that's put in some of the best areas -- best wells in the area down there. So -- and just there's about 207 net sections, 41 booked locations, 310 locations that are unbooked. And so it's a great area. We're going to be working at for a long time. In the Jarvie area, you can see a number of the rates that we've got in that area. It's worked out really well for us. 268 sections, 190 net booked -- unbooked wells, 112 booked wells. So lots of runway on that. And I would say there's lots of acreage left there to extend out that we still have yet to test. So very excited about about what's happening there. Now let me talk a little bit about the Waterflood and Nipisi. This diagram, just a little bit hard to read here, and I don't have a pointer, but think of 2 producers that are fairly close, and then they're offset by injectors that are down lower and then another 2 producers. And so that particular design, we think will optimize the net present value of the area. You can see there's a Nipisi offset producer that's getting a very nice response there. You see in the upper center, primary in the dash line and where the well is actually producing up in the solid. We think that we're going to take recovery from about 4.5% on primary, up to about 10% to 11% ultimate. So very excited about what that can bring us and that boosts up the profit substantially on an NPV10. You can see that. So I think more good things to come there. Charlie Lake, this is a very exciting area. We did a really good job last year of not only doing the acquisition, but doing a follow-up drilling land expiries where we didn't have inventory at doing small tuck-ins. We added about 50 locations in inventory just in those little tuck-ins and everything. So -- and I think it would be very expensive to get that kind of acreage if you were to try and get it today. So I think this has turned out really well. You can see the test results there over the year, very nice test results. The one well that 13 to 12 wells, you can see there, it's got an IP 15 of 1,400 barrels of oil a day, it worked out to about 1,400 BOEs per day on an IP 30 rate. I'm told by the engineers that's the best well that we've ever drilled. Perhaps the best well ever drilled in the area. And most importantly, that opens up a lot of land around that area to the west. And so -- and that well has a 3-mile horizontal. So we have been -- we bought this asset assuming about 1.5 miles average wells and extending those to 3. It has given us a huge economic advantage. Payback in these is about 2.5 months in today's price maybe 2 months. So very successful here in Charlie Lake. And you can see there the 326 sections, 96 booked locations, 150 net. So investment summary, I'm not going to go through this whole slide. But I think these are important aspects of what defines Tamarack, good stable production base and good free cash flow, economic oil-weighted inventory and lots of it and the Charlie Lake, Clearwater and the 2 best plays in North America. Optionality. If we want a slow decline, we can put more money in Waterflood. If we want to increase production, we can go to Charlie Lake and put a few wells in there. Balance sheet strength and risk, I mean to talk to be -- to get -- to move the debt that far that fast is really amazing. And -- so we're going to have -- be in a very good position. And then I think importantly, the leading ESG practices. I know the guys tell me a number of -- a few firms in town take our ESG and ours looks quite similar. And I think that speaks to the originality and effort that the employees put through to create a good report, but I think, more importantly, deliver on results. Last thing I want to say is talk a bit about the employees. As you can imagine, that kind of change that I described to you in going from 22,000 to 40,000, $1 billion worth of acquisitions, lots of change, people moving offices, deadlines and the Board just love the meetings. So that -- it's just been -- I want to acknowledge what everyone has gone through in the last year to put that together. Everybody feels so good about it and where we're at. And I feel very good about the business plan. But these guys deserve a lot of credit. This was a workout and it got us to a really good place. So I want to acknowledge all of them today. With that, I'll just open it up to questions.

We have a question from the online platform. Can you tell us more about Tamarack's approach towards controlling and reducing GHG emissions? And how do you believe Tamarack ranks compared to other energy players?

Yes. So good question. So I put the -- I didn't -- we do have a slide in our slide deck online on that, that shows where we're going to be. Our target this year is -- I think it's 28.5, isn't it Jim, kilograms per -- yes, 27 kilograms of CO2 per BOE. And that ranks probably in the top third, if not the top 25th percentile. How are we getting there? And it actually is quite a trip because lots of times, when we buy assets, they don't have that kind of good intensity. And so you bring those in, but you also have to put in the capital to collect gas, stop venting. If they're venting pure gas, you got to flare for a while, but then you eventually got to get that gas collected up and put in. Now in Charlie Lake's case, all that was -- all connected in the -- at the first place. So we're about 18 kilograms per barrel BOE in Charlie Lake. But other areas where there's venting, you're maybe around that 40, 45 and then you got to clean it up to get yourself back down. And it's typically through constructing gas gathering systems and taken it to a plant. Now we have been successful in getting funding from the government to reduce GHG emissions. And we'll continue -- we did that last year, and we're going to continue to do that this year. Any other questions? Okay. With that, thank you all for coming. Really appreciate it. And if you get a chance to meet a little bit and talk to some of the staff, then that would be awesome.