Good morning, and welcome to the Seascape Energy Asia PLC Interim Results Investor Presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged, and they can be submitted at any time using the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions and press Send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll, and I would now like to hand you over to Executive Chairman James Menzies. Good morning to you.
Thank you very much, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Seascape Energy Asia's interim results for the period ending 30th of June, 2024. And it's our first results under our new banner, and since we have relaunched as Seascape. You're gonna hear this morning from myself, but mainly you're gonna hear from Nick Ingrassia, who's here to my right, our CEO, and he's gonna take you through most of this presentation. I will chip in when we talk about some of the assets under discussion here. But one thing I'll draw your attention to on this slide around presenters and the board is the people we have now at the top of this company. Having gone through this pivot, we've shrunk both in terms of the number of staff, the cost base, also the board size.
Our previous company, Longboat, you know, had a seven-man board. We're down to four, which is myself, Nick. Graham Stewart is still with us on the board as a non-exec, and, you know, he was the chairman of Longboat. We brought in Geraldine Murphy to join the board, who's been a great addition, and really, really happy to have Geraldine with us, known her a long time, and, you know, she's a very good hand. Pierre Elias was working with me in Topaz, has come in to Seascape. You know, he runs our... He's not on the board, but he runs our Malaysian business and is really our figurehead out in Southeast Asia and leads the charge on a lot of the stuff we're doing, particularly around Malaysia.
I've introduced myself before on these calls, but as you may know, I was CEO of Salamander, where I was working with Nick in the latter part of that the existence of that company, but have spent a long time out in Asia, helping build businesses, trading assets, buying assets, developing fields, drilling wells, you name it, and I'm a geologist by background. I'll now hand over to Nick to introduce himself and take you through most of this presentation.
Thank you, James. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our interim results. First one, I guess, in my role as CEO, and sort of the first one, as James said, under our new banner of Seascape Energy. Quick sort of background on me. I have sort of a long history in and around the oil and gas space, both kind of as an advisor, early on in my career doing banking, but then mainly as a corporate development person, working at businesses such as Valiant, Varo, Longboat, and indeed, Salamander, where I worked closely with James towards the end of that journey. Very excited about the opportunity set ahead of us.
And I think probably where we'll start is just by doing a sort of a quick recap on what's gone on during the first half of the year, which has been, you know, extremely busy for us, as we really sort of tried to reposition the business to focus on this enormous opportunity set that we see out in Southeast Asia. So, you know, I think it really breaks down into three elements, which is first, we have, you know, the strategic pivot has now been completed. As James mentioned, we've got changes to the executive team and the board. The business itself is very nimble and really shrunken down to a very small board and also a kind of core team.
We have completed the sale of our Norwegian entity to our partners, JAPEX. That was done in absolute record time, and we were very pleased with the overall outcome there, which has then really allowed us to kind of rebrand and refocus the business on Asia, with our cornerstone asset on Block 2A. And I think that's really where the sort of rebuilding the portfolio comes in. So we have Block 2A held, and we'll come onto that, I think, in a little while, and James can take you through that. But we have a farm out underway on that. It's a world-class asset, incredibly exciting, very large exploration, and it's really sort of ticking all the boxes for people.
But we're also trying to build that portfolio, and really trying to put some underlying value, firm value underneath the share price. And so we've got the award of a new PSC in Sarawak, containing multiple gas fields in it. We will talk a little bit more about that to the extent that we can, but we're getting very close to the signing of that, and hopefully we'll be able to discuss it in a lot more detail very soon. And of course, we're pursuing other opportunities across Southeast Asia, both from a sort of production perspective, you know, development, exploration, the whole kind of gamut, and we're very actively working on opportunities.
I guess the last leg, something again, to just sort of drive home is that we've had sort of significant cost cut, really trying to right size the business, especially during the second quarter. We've reduced the G&A by around 40%. Unfortunately, the full effects won't be seen until 2025, but we really have a good handle on costs, and we're trying to really reduce down our running costs, which has now given us sufficient capital through the end of Q1 2025, and obviously, in the meantime, we've got lots of things going on, especially with the farm-out, looking to bring capital into the business. Just a quick touch on the financial summary. I really won't spend too long on this.
You know, we see these as what I call a transitional set of accounts. Due to the Norwegian joint venture being sold, it makes for a relatively messy set of accounts, unfortunately. You know, we have a tiny little bit of income, which is really our recharge services from our to our Norwegian joint venture from PLC, which is bringing in a little bit of revenue, effectively defraying costs. Our admin expenses were up slightly. That was largely due to a write-off of some costs with a new venture, which unfortunately failed to transact earlier on in the year. Then we had the write-offs related to the Norwegian joint venture.
Cash at the period end was GBP 1.3 million, but there was also effectively a payable of GBP 1.9 million related to the joint venture asset, which we received post-period end, giving us a touch over GBP 3 million in cash really sort of after the end of the period. And this is what we're using to fund the business going forward. So what does that business look like? Today, you know, we have our Block 2A, which is, as you can see there, in the sort of deep water Sarawak out in eastern Malaysia. And then we have a PSC as well, that we are awaiting award, which is more in the shallow water, containing multiple gas fields.
These are all discovered resources, which will lead to a very quick, low-cost development, which we're very excited about. You know, for us, the way we see Seascape is as one of the sort of very few listed small-cap E&P businesses that are focused on Southeast Asia. You know, we pride ourselves on being, you know, very technically driven. We're well-positioned through a long-standing network in the region through Pierre and James and myself, having worked in Southeast Asia for a while. Now having been there for several years, you know, our name is very firmly on the map, and we've developed some and rekindled some very good relationships.
You know, there's a backdrop there of this positive Asian macro growth story, really as host governments try and encourage investment into the hydrocarbon... Well, actually, into the energy sector in general. I think they're a big beneficiary of a declining investment climate here in Northwest Europe. And, you know, against this backdrop, we see enormous amount of opportunities, host governments welcoming us in, trying to get us involved, you know, pushing things forward as quickly as possible, and a very limited peer set for us. And sort of the things that we are looking for and chasing out there. It's very exciting and lots to kinda get out there in the near term.
I will hand over back to James to sort of go through the assets a little bit, but you know, I think really we've got the kernel of a really good portfolio, and this is really the start. I think that's the sort of context to see what, you know, what we're doing here. Maybe back over to you, James, to go through 2A and our new PSCs.
Very good. Excellent. Thank you, Nick. You know, one of the things I'm quite pleased about is, although we haven't got a lot of assets to talk about as yet, but what we have got is a really strong competitive edge. When Nick mentioned we're one of very few peers, one of the reasons for that in Malaysia is that the barriers to entry are very high, and I think I've mentioned this before, but they just don't let many people in, to the opportunity set that's in front of us here in Malaysia. So, you know, there is a real dearth of small, credible, technically literate independent E&Ps playing out here, and this is one of the reasons why we're able to position Seascape to capture these kind of deals.
We're gonna talk about 2A, which is our, you know, our big sex and violence opportunity. It's lots of blue sky. It's a giant prospect. It's exciting. You know, it gets the blood going. But actually, what's also important when you have quite a thick portfolio is you have something underneath that, that is a more hard asset that can support that kind of activity. And this is why we like this new PSC award. And believe you me, we would love to be in a position to sit here today and tell you all about it.
It has taken longer to get this over the line than we believed, and partly that's driven by the fact that we've got to deal with not only with our own board, that's an easy one, but also we have an operating partner. We also have the federal state of Sarawak involved in this license, and we also have state company of Malaysia, and you know, prepare to be shocked, but you know, our timelines are not their timelines. They're not bothered when our results come out. It'll have to be done, you know, when they're in their own sweet time, when they're ready. And you know, that's fine. That's how it is in Asia, but we're confident it's happening. As Nick said, it's shallow water.
What's great about it is it's a portfolio of gas fields, so one license, but we get multiple assets. It comes at zero cost. This is being awarded to us as part of a bid round, and another reason why I think this might be taking longer than perhaps we would have expected is there's a new set of terms, these small field asset fiscal terms, which are much sweeter than we're used to seeing out here in Malaysia. So, you know, the contractors, i.e. us, get a bigger share of the profits. And that's because they wanna stimulate activity out here to get these smaller fields exploited. That's the objective of the Malaysian state. As I mentioned earlier, there's just a very, very, very few people who are in a position to do that, for whom this is something that's material.
But at the same time, you know, can actually do the work. So we're one of very few. And this isn't the only one, by the way. I mean, there are more of these that we can capture. So when we come to sit here before you next time, and talking through this asset in detail, remember that, you know, this is one step of many that we wanna be taking. And we have a march on competition. We know that other independent E&P companies are looking at this as well, particularly in light of what's going on in the North Sea.
In the U.K., for example, there's a great example of activity or a sort of province that's highlighting the attractions of Asia, because you just can't do this sort of thing over here in the U.K. Anyway, we've got a big opportunity set, gas fields, and data. That's the other great thing that, you know, isn't to be underestimated, is how much data you collect as part of this free of charge. So a wealth of well data, test data, seismic data, you name it, it comes with, you know, almost a deluge of information that you've got to work through. But economics look great. It suits us perfectly, so we're very, very, very excited about it. And, you know, we really wanna sit here and tell you more.
But suffice to say, I think this is, you know, this is a great solid asset to have under you, and is gonna lead to cash flow, you know, production growth, and further growth elsewhere in the region for us. Okay, above and beyond that, we have 2A. Again, I know I've talked to you about this. Really, our activity here has been on two things. First of all, where do we drill this prospect? And I think last time we did one of these, we were working that out. You know, we have a proposal. But what we've really been working on is bringing in an operating partner to come and drill this well. This well is gonna be in a thousand meters of water. It's a big, big well.
You know, we don't pretend we're in a position to drill it ourselves. We would like to have an operating partner, which basically means bringing in a bigger player. And as you can see on this map, everyone else in this basin is full of big players. In fact, there aren't any small players apart from us. We're the only ones sitting out here, dominated by Shell, PETRONAS, obviously, Conoco in there. The other new player is Total, who have come in on the big acquisition in the region, in this basin. And PTT have been very successful here. We also see the Japanese, obviously, driven by interest in the Bintulu LNG plant, which is, you know, a supplier of LNG to East Asia, you know, Korean buyers, Japanese buyers.
That's the sort of player who, you know, is chasing upstream opportunities out here. We have 52.5% of this block and operatorship. We have a chunk of equity. We're very happy to trade our operatorship. We're happy to trade. What we want to do is give our investors a free ride on drilling of a well on the Kertang giant prospect. You know, it's an exciting prospect in a province which has seen excellent strike rate. You know, we make note there that 25 wells, 88.3% success rate for PETRONAS, discovered more than 1 billion barrels of oil equivalent. More than half of those were made in Sarawak, in this basin that you're looking at on this map.
That's why we're seeing a lot of industry interest in that, and we want to make sure we crack the right deal. That's really taken up most of our time, pretty much on 2A. Short reminder of what it is, you know. Here's a line across Kertang, 1.7 billion barrels of oil equivalent, that's around 90 TCF. That's ERCE, the independent auditor's view of the resources in that structure. In multiple different levels, different cycles, as we call them, stratigraphically, across that structure, ranging from very shallow cycle five, seven, up high, where we see the amplitude brightening above the structure. We can see a gas chimney underneath that, feeding it from this structure itself.
And then we can see the reservoirs and the source rocks, actually, sitting in around the structure itself, on that seismic line that we show. Also like the fact that it looks like these other giant discoveries in the basin. So these ones, Kasawari, Lang Lebah, and Marjoram, are well-known big multi-TCF discoveries made by various operators. Of these, you know, Shell operate the Marjoram field, PTT have had success with the Lang Lebah, and PETRONAS have now got Kasawari on stream. So yeah, this is very much a lookalike. It's the same, it's the same play, it's the same idea. It's a comparable, if not bigger size.
And so, you know, it's not the only giant out here, but we think at the moment, this is probably the biggest undrilled prospect, possibly in Malaysia, certainly that we've seen out here in the Luconia in Sarawak. Okay, let me hand back to Nick to talk a little bit about what's been going on around the region.
Thank you, James. I think one of the things we wanted to use this presentation to do is just sort of talk a little bit about how excited we are about the region and why we are so excited. You know, as we mentioned, what we're seeing here in Northwest Europe, I think just in general, is a real challenging investment environment, where our host governments here are really discouraging investment into hydrocarbons. But I think one of the main beneficiaries of that, that sort of downturn here is you're seeing an upturn out in Southeast Asia, where you still see a huge amount of the primary energy consumption being fired by coal.
You know, I think in terms of trying to reduce down overall emissions, if we're thinking on a sort of a global scale, you know, increasing gas-fired power generation, especially out in Southeast Asia, there's a huge opportunity there, which would be a huge net gain. I think the host governments have really realized this, and what they're trying to do is encourage that investment, and they're doing it in sort of multiple ways. We're seeing, as James was saying, you know, changes to some of the PSC terms, which are really advantageous for the likes of us, trying to get more investment into smaller discoveries and get them on stream quite quickly.
Licensing rounds are becoming more regular, and sort of a number of countries who haven't had licensing rounds in a while have been running them. The Philippines we saw running their first licensing round in almost 10 years. Upcoming licensing rounds we're anticipating in places like Thailand and Vietnam in the near term. What this is doing is allowing some major play-opening discoveries that we're seeing. We're seeing some of the largest discoveries globally made recently in the past couple of years. Eni made a giant discovery in Indonesia, in the Kutai, you know, six TCF.
We've seen Andaman Sea over there in the west by Harbour and BP and others who've really been chasing a really interesting gas play there. We've been seeing some of these big gas fields moving both into production. We've seen Jerun recently start producing in Malaysia. We've seen approvals for giant projects from Eni, and things moving forward, like Abadi LNG, which has been in stasis for a long time, but now finally being unlocked because of this demand. And what that's doing is it's drawing more majors back into the region, people making acquisitions and looking for opportunities.
I think we really have an early mover advantage before this next pulse of investment comes in, and so what we're really trying to do is position ourselves ahead of the curve now, trying to get a hold and build these resources and look to build a full-cycle business that is gonna be eventually attractive to someone as an acquisition target. You know, I make no bones about the fact I've been involved personally in three E&P businesses that have been built up and sold. I think E&P businesses have a life cycle. You know, we're still at... I guess, so we've reset, we've hit that reset button, we're still at the start of ours.
But, you know, we're looking to build and monetize a business, and we have a history of doing that, and that's really the sort of plan here. And so, you know, we're in the right place, it's the right time, and we've got the right team that is chasing that. So just to, I guess, summarize, we've got multiple near-term catalysts ahead. You know, we really are this rare commodity. There are not very many peers out there chasing the sort of stuff we are. The things we've got a hold of are really exciting. The pending PSC award in shallow water Sarawak gives us some firm value, which underpins the blue sky upside we see in 2A with the farm-out, you know, well underway.
You know, and a lot of interest in that. We've got a significant opportunity set coming up, and we're chasing that. We're very focused on chasing those opportunities to make sure that we are taking full advantage of being, you know, a kind of a first mover and using that uniqueness we've got. And we've got a fantastic team that is super focused on making this all happen. So I think that sort of ends the formal, the first bit of the presentation, and I think we are gonna then move to doing a little bit of Q&A.
That's great. Perfect, Nick, James, thank you very much indeed for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions using the Q&A tab situated on the top right corner of your screen. While the company take a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I would like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A, can be accessed via your investor dashboard. Nick, James, as you can see, we have received a number of questions throughout today's presentation, and if I may now hand back to you and kindly ask you to read out the questions, give responses where appropriate to do so, and I'll pick up from you both at the end.
Great. Thank you very much. So thank you all for your questions. I will kinda go through... I'll try and summarize a little bit, to and maybe I'll sort of try and ask some of the questions that James introduced as a sort of a Q&A style. So I think that there's a question here around just the overall strategic shift to Southeast Asia, and what are we seeing that makes it more attractive than Norway for a smaller business, and whether or not we're gonna expand beyond Malaysia?
I think, Nick, you're very well positioned to talk about the differences between Southeast Asia and Norway, as Nick was intimately involved with both. But I can certainly talk about the expansion beyond Malaysia, but
Yeah, okay. So I mean, if we're being entirely honest, we spent a long time and many, many hours chasing many transactions in Norway, and I think what we ultimately found was that small businesses were really struggling to make value accretive acquisitions due to the fact that firstly, there weren't very many assets on the market changing hands. The ones that were were ultra-mature, which in and of themselves bring some problems. When assets get very much to the end of their lives, you start having sort of failure risks regards to the infrastructure, which is something we don't really wanna expose ourselves to.
You know, the cost of capital, I guess the prices being paid for assets just didn't reflect the cost of capital that a small E&P business had. Even when we had had our joint venture with JAPEX, we were just struggling. You know, I think James probably put it best one time when we were talking about the strategy, which was that, you know, it's very hard for a, you know, a new small business in Norway to chase things, and you probably wouldn't start up a new small E&P there to go and chase anything, just because the opportunity set that used to be around when Fair was around, and indeed what we saw at the beginning of Longboat, was much different than what we saw at the end.
And if you contrast that with Southeast Asia, where you're welcoming small businesses in, the assets are in shallower water with shorter lead times, and this kind of open and welcoming attitude towards smaller businesses, and we believe the returns are more aligned with the sort of cost of capital that we have. It's really, I think, what drove that strategic pivot. I guess, in terms of whether or not we're going to expand past Malaysia?
Yeah. I mean, I think, Malaysia comes across as the number one destination for us, for a variety of very good reasons. But outside of that, I've always quite liked Thailand. I quite like Vietnam. Indonesia has had some improvements recently. I used to be a little bit cold on it, but it looks like they've recognized some of their challenges and are doing something about it. Just the opportunity set isn't so great in Vietnam and Thailand. It's a much more limited, you know, in terms of the running room for someone, even of our size, to be honest with you.
Indonesia's always got lots of opportunity, but it's just somewhere you have to be very careful of the steps you take, and it's easy to make a mistake in Indonesia, and having lived and worked there for many years, I'm painfully aware of it, but sometimes, you know, the rocks are good. It's some of these basins are great places to go, you have to be careful with your partners, but so, I think as long as you're, you know, you're alert and you know what you're doing, there's definitely opportunities beyond Malaysia for us. Farm-out, people are asking. I think we've just... I think we probably have to stay shtum on that for the moment.
Yeah. Look, we've said all along, we're working very hard on it. It has an enormous amount of focus for us. It's a huge value driver for the business. We've said previously, there's been intense industry interest. The way I like to describe 2A is that it's the right block, and the right place at the right time. You know, this is a really truly spectacular block with a huge prospect on it, that we were able to get hold of, largely because of, you know, a lack of investment in a sort of post-COVID environment and before Southeast Asia started, you know, heating up. And that is sort of, therein lies the right time, which is that, you know, the appetite for exploration globally has increased enormously.
We've seen a lot of that in Namibia. We've got sort of peer London-listed peers who are active in South America that have been sort of benefiting from that. So actually exploration has really come back to the fore. Sarawak, we think, is the right place. Again, we've seen a lot of acquisitions. We've seen a lot of development and just a lot of excitement with people coming back in, so the plan has always been to try and execute a transaction during the second half of this year, and we're very very focused on making that happen.
Okay. I noticed some questions, I think, about DRO, signing and, slippage and timetable. Which I think, you know, is a fair question. You know, we were expecting it, and I think the other DROs were announced sort of mid-summer-ish or late summer-ish. So why haven't we signed yet? You know, that much. We're as frustrated as the next guy, I can tell you. But I think the reason is actually, really the big reason is that we're dealing with an additional, state, if you like, within our group. So normally when we negotiate a PSC in Malaysia, we would be dealing with PETRONAS, the regulator, and your own partnership group, are normally quite reasonable.
You know, within the industry, we know how this works, and we all get on fine with it. But here we have not only the state company, but also the federal state of Sarawak, who is having a direct interest, or an interest within the project itself. How that interest is held and materializes is something which is relatively new. So we not only have the interaction between ourselves and those two bodies, but also between the two state bodies themselves. Sometimes we're the go-between, sometimes, you know, we step aside and let them carry on. It's just an additional complication which has taken longer. I think we also have to recognize we've got the working group, which is, you know, us and our partners.
There are executive committees of both of these state entities, and then you have boards, and everything has to go up and down for approval at every step, and so it has, you know, been a bit difficult, but I think when you layer on that these new terms, where understandably, I think they feel they're giving the contractor, i.e., the investing companies like ourselves, sweeter deal. You know, that these guys are getting a sweet deal in their mind, so, you know, everything's getting scrutinized probably harder than it would've done historically, but I think in Asia, you've got to go with it, you know? I think if we get the feeling it's not happening, believe you me, we wouldn't be sitting here. We'd be having a very different conversation. It's happening, it's just with Asia, you've gotta go with it.
And so, you know, when people ask, "Well, when?" And, you know, timetables, and, "Is it gonna be tomorrow? Is it gonna be next week? Is it next month?" In Asia, so it's hard, it's a hard one to answer. Malaysia is one of the better countries in terms of following a timetable and a schedule, but I think we're in slightly uncharted territory. But anyway, please bear with. It's happening. And we will... Yeah, we're confident we're gonna deliver it.
Yeah, there's a huge desire by all the parties to get it over the line, so there's not one party that's dragging their feet or not. It's just a timing issue. So, you know, patience is key. We understand that, having been active there for many years. And so, you know, there's no concern, there's nothing untoward going on. It's just taking a little bit of time. So I think that's probably the answer there. I think there's been some questions about how we're gonna fund this. And, I think, you know, that's... Once we get this awarded, that's gonna be the next area of focus for us, not only sort of putting together, or the operator putting together the development plan, but then looking into how we fund this.
I would say, I think there's a lot of funding options at the moment, and what we're seeing, especially in Southeast Asia, is, again, this desire to get molecules and barrels onto the market. It gives us lots of options, both from sort of a banking perspective. Traders are very, very active with regards to trying to finance things. And with the dataset that we have here, we think that that is eminently doable, especially around the liquids. And we'll have a decent equity stake in this new pending PSC. And so we also retain an option to, you know, to farm down, if we should have so thought that that would be a better way of trying to sort of do some financing there.
We'll have everything will be open to us, but we're very confident, given the high quality there, that a financing solution should be relatively straightforward to find.
Comment on costs for the PSC negotiations and farm-out. I mean, we've largely kept this in-house, so we're not ones to go out hiring expensive advisors. Particularly having gone through the pain of cost reductions ourselves and during the pivot, but Nick, you wanna-
Yeah, no, look, I'm a big believer of taking as many things in-house as possible, to the extent that we can handle and manage those. It really is a cost thing, but it's also partially the fact that we, you know, we have a lot of the expertise in-house. You know, I once upon a time, you know, spent time as a banker. You know, Geraldine, who we've welcomed onto the board recently, is a long-term banker and great at helping us navigate some of this stuff. So it's really been around, you know, trying to own the whole process, keep it internal, and manage our costs as well as possible.
Someone's asking about majors being in the area in terms of the farm-out. Should we assume? Yeah, I mean, we're really. We need a big partner. We need a big operating partner, and as I showed and talked about, I think most of the players. In fact, pretty much all the players out there are big operators, so that should be your assumption. It wouldn't serve us to farm-out to another small company. That wouldn't work. Yeah, we need a carry. We need an operator, and they're the guys. Yeah, it is competitive, so you know, I think another questions are being asked around, you know, if you're gonna run out of money, you know, is it back against the wall, blah, blah, blah.
Actually, it is. This is an intensely competitive process, so that's great. Very pleased about that.
Yeah, no, absolutely. I'm not going to answer any more questions. I see a lot of stuff around the DROs, and trust me, we are going to, as soon as we can, upon award, we will go into a lot more detail. We'll have another one of these sessions. I think they're hopefully very useful, hopefully you find them very useful for staying in contact with us as the executive team, and to bring you along with the whole journey. So I won't answer any more questions about the timelines and what have you, because I would prefer to do that with all the detail in front of us.
Suffice to say, these are kind of near-term developments, and you're very incentivized under the SFA PSC terms to really get after it very quickly. One thing I can tell you is that the partnership that we've put together is very aligned on that. I think there's sort of a few kind of questions around acquisitions and looking at production assets and what have you. You know, we are continuing to look at opportunities across the spectrum, across the life cycle, perhaps I should say. You know, the funding of those will really be the key. There is financing out there. There's financing that is available for these assets, but it's about finding the right one at the right place, right time.
It's about trying to sort of dovetail all of those things together, so very hard to comment on how we would finance a production acquisition, but one thing I can say is that we're only going to undertake an acquisition of any description if we see it as being value accretive. You know, we're very focused on creating value for all of our shareholders, so you know, we will not be doing anything that we don't see as being, you know, very value accretive to the business. I can't comment on sort of failed venture. Apologies on that. Suffice to say, you know, a major disappointment all around.
But again, this is one of these things where it keeps us very focused on minimizing our costs until we feel that something is very, very likely to happen. And just in general, trying to keep as much stuff in-house as possible, retaining ownership over it, which I think is very, very crucial. Who are the largest shareholders today? I would recommend... Sorry, I'm probably mumbling a little bit. We have a question here, which is: who are the largest shareholders today? I advise you to go to our website. We have, as an AIM listed company, we are obliged to keep our shareholders up to date on the website, in our sort of major shareholders section.
Yeah, just last one. Someone's asking if we would have aspirations to be an operator. I think it's a good question. I believe actually it probably would be good for us to do that. And, you know, given the scarcity of smaller and mid-cap operators in Asia, I think there is a huge opportunity set for somebody who can bite this off themselves and carry out these operations. So, the answer to that is yes. I think we just have to be... And I don't, I think we can do it faster than five years, by the way. But you know, you have to kick off on the right project. You want one...
You really want a project that is very doable and, and one that isn't, you know, doesn't have the challenges, is reasonably straightforward, and the beauty of that is most of the Southeast Asian small field discoveries are quite straightforward. You're not breaking new ground, you're not reliant on new technology. There's tried and trusted ways of doing this that, you know, that have been done over and over again. So, yeah, absolutely. I think we should be an operator, and, you know, I'd fully expect to see us do that sooner rather than later, actually.
Perfect. That's great, Nick, James. Thank you for addressing those questions from investors today. And of course, the company can review all questions submitted today, and we will publish those responses on the investment company platform. But before redirecting investors to provide you with their feedback, which is particularly important to the company, Nick, could I please ask you for a few closing comments?
Great. Thank you very much. Well, thank you all for joining today. We really do appreciate it. You know, we strive to sort of have best-in-class investor relations. This is one of the key platforms that we will be doing it on. We've also updated our X account and our LinkedIn. You know, our website hopefully has a bunch of information on it. You know, this is the start or the restart of a really exciting journey. We're all very excited about it. We've got, you know, a nascent but growing portfolio. We've got a lot of things that are gonna be going on, and we look forward to creating a lot of shareholder value, in the months and years to come.
So thank you very much, and we look forward to keeping you updated with all the exciting things to come.
Fantastic, Nick, James, thank you once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors now to close this session, as you will now be automatically redirected to provide feedback in order that the board can better understand your views and expectations? This will only take a few moments to complete, and I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Seascape Energy Asia PLC, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good morning to you all.