Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Serica Energy plc Full Year Results Investor Presentation. Questions are encouraged. They can be submitted at any time via the Q&A tab that's just situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Please just simply type in your questions and press Send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and will publish our responses where it's appropriate to do so.
Before we begin, we would just like to submit the following poll, and if you could give that your kind attention, I'm sure the company would be most grateful. I'd now like to hand you over to the executive management team from Serica Energy plc. Chris, good morning, sir.
Good morning, and welcome to our 2025 full year results presentation. I'm joined, as usual, by Martin Copeland, CFO, and Andrew Benbow, our Head of Investor Relations. Thank you to everyone who has submitted questions ahead of the call, but please feel free to post any further questions you have during the presentation. Should we not get time this morning, then please contact Andrew directly. We will respond promptly to every question we receive. Martin and I will now run through a short presentation and then answer as many questions as we can in the time available.
This slide is a reminder of our strategy and our purpose. We're here to produce hydrocarbons safely and efficiently while creating value for shareholders and also helping to deliver energy security, jobs and invest ment for the country.
You may be aware that this has been our purpose unchanged for some time now, and I know that such statements can sometimes sound like typical corporate speak. As we speak today against the backdrop of the terrible events in the Middle East, the importance of our contribution to domestic energy security has never been more apparent. We are unapologetic about the role we play in providing much-needed energy products for society. We have a two-pronged strategy for creating value. Our DNA is taking on mid to late life assets and then extending their field life and optimizing production.
We've been delivering on that strategy recently with a number of M&A transactions, and we expect that to continue. We are well-positioned at present with a highly cash generative production portfolio with organic growth options fighting for capital allocation.
Our strong positioning is partly as a result of strategic delivery last year. We invested in our existing portfolio, carrying out significant work on resilience and asset life extensions, as well as completing our highly successful five-well drilling program around Triton. These wells will help retain robust production at the FPSO, and the success of that campaign gives us confidence to continue to exploit multiple organic investment opportunities elsewhere in our portfolio.
As we continue investing, we also continued our track record of shareholder distributions, with dividends amounting to GBP 0.16 per share. As announced today, these distributions are continuing in 2026 as we recommend a 10p final dividend in respect of last year, continuing to strive to offer investors a compelling mix of growth and returns. Of course, key to our strategic delivery in 2025 were multiple acquisitions.
We were one of the more active M&A players in the U.K. sector last year, announcing multiple acquisitions that increased and diversified our portfolio, enhanced cash flows, and added to our opportunity set. In total, we increased our reserves by 19%, adding some quality long life fields to our portfolio. The impact on production will also be material, adding over 20,000 barrels a day to our production capacity.
The deals were done at very attractive prices, with reserves added at a low cost of $3.30 per barrel. The acquisitions we have completed, being Prax Upstream and now TotalEnergies, which completed today, have resulted in the net receipt of cash by Serica amounting to $75 million in aggregate.
The ones still to be completed from ONE-Dyas and Spirit Energy will also result in net cash receipts or only limited cash paid out on completion. Hence, these acquisitions will be cash flow accretive this year, thereby supporting further portfolio investment and returns to our shareholders. Looking ahead, our strategy remains unchanged as we seek to acquire assets that may be non-core to others but can be enhanced by Serica through extending field life and delivering further value both corporately and through the subsurface.
We will continue to look for potential acquisitions in the U.K., although the amount of recent consolidation means there may be fewer opportunities in the near term. As a result, and as we previously signaled, we will continue to explore opportunities overseas, but only in areas where we are confident that we can deliver our clear value creation strategy.
As we grow, we are ensuring that the capabilities of our team grow with us. We are confident in our strategy and confident that we have the right team to deliver it. Since joining, I felt there were some areas in which Serica lacked the expertise required to excel as a North Sea producer. As our portfolio has grown, the need to strengthen our capability has grown with it. We've made a number of targeted senior appointments that have materially improved our decision-making, our talent management, and our ability to deliver for shareholders.
We have established a quality executive leadership team and are putting in place the wider organizational structure and processes to position us to deliver on our strategic and operational goals. We are not finished, but I believe we are close to achieving the goal of establishing the right team to lead a top-performing FTSE 250 company.
We need a team with depth and breadth as we are now building a broader and more complex business. Our portfolio is more diverse and robust, with assets that will encompass the entirety of the U.K. continental shelf from the West of Shetland to the southern North Sea. Our new assets will significantly enhance the predictability and quality of our overall production and cash flows, with less reliance on the two main hubs and the number of producing fields set to more than double.
By the end of the year, we will have equity in a total of 26 producing fields. We are growing our presence in the basin and keen to continue growing. We now operate around 10% of the U.K.'s natural gas production.
Today, having assumed control of the Shetland gas plant, we have the potential to play a key enabling role in the most prospective gas basin in the UKCS. The projected decline in North Sea production we often see reported is one enforced by policy and not geology.
As our chairman has said today, we urge the government to unblock the logjam in its approval of the development of new oil and gas fields, change its stance to the award of new licences, scrap the onerous and counterproductive EPL and replace it with the already announced OGPM as soon as possible, and to change its tone towards the sector. The opportunities in our portfolio alone show there is more to be delivered from the UKCS, much of which is short cycle in nature, and we're keen to play our part.
We are set to increase our production materially in 2026. As you can see from the chart on the right, our expectation for 65,000 barrels a day by the end of the year is not aspirational. It is in fact less than what we would be delivering today had all the asset transactions completed. That figure does include Lancaster, with production scheduled to cease in May as expected, when the FPSO moves on to its next project. Of course, we need to actually own these assets first. I'm pleased to say that completions remain on track with the previously stated timetables.
We targeted the end of the first quarter for the TotalEnergies acquisition, and that completed today slightly ahead of schedule. This transaction brings into the portfolio over 5,000 barrels a day of unhedged gas production.
We also remain on track for mid-year completion for the ONE-Dyas transaction, and later in the second half of the year for Spirit Energy. On our core portfolio, production has increased in 2026 year to date compared with Q4 last year, but is still not where we would want it to be. Production at the Bruce Hub has largely been robust, and we are regularly producing 20,000 barrels a day net from the hub, which is a real positive given the current gas prices.
Unfortunately, some further unscheduled maintenance at Triton needed to be carried out in February and early March that required a shutdown for just over three weeks. The operator, Dana, concluded that due to overdue maintenance on some production and power generation systems, they could not wait until the summer shutdown to complete work on those systems.
They therefore took the proactive step to fix the issues immediately rather than to continue to run the equipment that could potentially fail. This work was completed on March 9th, 2025, and Triton has been running continuously since that time. As indicated in our January trading statement, we also lost production from Orlando for much of the period due to wave damage caused to the Ninian host platform, but this is now also back online and producing at over 3,000 barrels a day.
Since production restart at Triton, we have seen a fortnight of stable production averaging over 50,000 barrels a day in that period. Over the last few days, we have also seen the first production from Belinda, the last field in the U.K. to receive development consent. It is too early to determine a stable rate for Belinda, but early indications are promising.
Triton is currently running with a single gas export compressor as the second compressor is offline awaiting a spare part. Maximum production in this operating mode is roughly 25,000 barrels a day net to Serica, and as we now have excess well capacity, we can anticipate being able to flow at that rate at least through the end of 2027.
Once the second compressor is available, we will need to decide with Dana whether it makes sense to keep the second compressor as a backup to give more stability at 25,000 barrels a day or to run the two compressors in parallel at a higher rate but with more vulnerability to downtime. Our production guidance of significantly over 40,000 barrels a day was based on very conservative uptime, effectively building in a weaker month of downtime at Triton.
As such, with a significant production uplift to come, we are comfortable in retaining our guidance as unchanged. Going forward, the predictability of our production will be enhanced by the new assets coming in with some, notably GLA and Cygnus, having historically very high uptime. For now, we continue to be focused on delivering improved performance from our existing assets where there's still plenty to do. We are working to embed a culture of operational excellence where we are not satisfied if we produce anything less than the maximum possible on any given day.
In the last few years, there have not been enough maximum production days, and we are re-energizing our entire workforce to pull together to deliver more. There is also work to be done this year to help deliver production well into the future.
At the Bruce Hub, there is exciting subsurface potential, and we are doing the necessary work this year to prepare for potential drilling in 2027. At Triton, we are working closely with Dana, and the focus is very much on delivering stability of operations. Dana have been taking many of the same actions that we have taken at Serica to improve performance, in particular with strengthening of their team with new offshore installation managers, maintenance team leaders and safety advisors, as well as bringing in-house some key technical specialist roles which were previously outsourced.
We are also, of course, working hard to integrate our new assets, and I am delighted to welcome our new colleagues from TotalEnergies into Serica and those transferring across to our operations and maintenance contractor, px Group.
Even without the addition of reserves from new assets, I'm pleased to say that our reserves replacement effectively achieved 100% in 2025. This was achieved through the excellent work of our subsurface team and largely by 10.2 million barrels being moved from resources into 2P reserves due to the maturation of the Kyle redevelopment, which has now been renamed Kyla. This effectively offset the 10.1 million barrels of production in the year. With the addition of the newly acquired assets, our 2P reserves rise 19% on a pro forma basis.
We will continue to be balanced between oil and gas, but on completion of the acquisitions, we will become slightly more gas-weighted as our acquisitions are mostly gas fields. I'm pleased to say we have also delivered a 16% increase in 2C resources, indicative of our attractive opportunity set.
This increase was driven by the extensive work on maturing the potential Bruce drilling program as additional infill well opportunities delivered an 18.2 million barrel increase in 2C resources. This outweighed the relinquishment of the Mansell license and transfer of Kyla to reserves. The addition of Wagtail, which we announced during the year, also provided an uplift of 8 million barrels of 2C resources. In total, we now have over 100 million barrels of 2C resources, constituting a diverse and attractive opportunity set.
These are projects of various types and across our asset base, but are all tangible and deliverable opportunities. With prudent investment, there is plenty in the hopper to sustain our production at or above current levels into the next decade. We are continuing to high-grade the suite of opportunities and plan to share considerably more detail on these at a Capital Markets Day in early June.
We are focusing at present on those opportunities that have the potential for rapid payback, and there are a number of projects that fit that description. One that we have talked about before is Bruce. Bruce is a huge field, and there is plenty of remaining potential there, as can be seen by the increase in resources we have been able to share today. There has been no drilling on Bruce since 2012, and drilling on the field, which sits within our subsidiaries that do not have tax losses, would be highly tax efficient.
First hydrocarbons are possible within one year of drilling, and we see a first phase of wells that could add over 10,000 barrels a day to production. This is a significant opportunity to deliver greater production of critical gas supply to the U.K. in a relatively short-term timeframe.
This opportunity is the result of work done over more than a year now across the integrated disciplines within our exceptional subsurface team, which, as I may have mentioned before, is the best in the business. Market screening for a rig is currently underway to enable us to potentially take an investment decision later in the year, which could enable drilling to begin in 2027. There is still more work to be done, and there are other opportunities also battling for capital. Kyla also offers a material production uplift.
This was a previously producing field which ceased production due to the host infrastructure being decommissioned. Horizontal well drilled into the best part of the reservoir and producing into Triton could also therefore add 10,000 barrels a day to our portfolio. We have the opportunities just welcomed into or to be brought into our portfolio via acquisition.
Glendronach is a compelling opportunity, and there are others not even mentioned on this slide that we look forward to discussing at the Capital Markets Day. We are very excited by the overall potential west of Shetland. I realize this is quite a busy map, so let me give you a quick overview. We've acquired the acreage which is shown in blue, which includes the Laggan and Tormore, and other producing fields, as well as a number of exploration prospects, plus the associated pipelines in orange and the Shetland gas plant.
Further west and north of our acreage is an extensive area colored in gray. This acreage is owned by Adura and Ithaca, two of the largest U.K. producers, who are bullish about the drilling prospects in the area.
The industry consultant, Westwood Global Energy, recently published a report identifying that the West of Shetland Basin holds an estimated 5 trillion cubic feet of gas. Of course, that sounds like a big number, and it is. In fact, it's equivalent to supplying every household in the U.K. for five years. Yet some people continue to say that the amount of gas we can produce in the U.K. is not significant.
With 1.5 billion barrels of discovered and prospective resources situated within tieback distance of our existing infrastructure, this is an area of material potential for the industry and for Serica. The Shetland gas plant is an asset of strategic importance to the country.
While we are not primarily a third-party infrastructure company, as well as processing our own gas through the plant, we are currently processing gas for Adura from their Victory field, which only started producing last September. We hope soon to be doing the same for Ithaca and Adura Tornado field, which they are looking to move to final investment decision by the end of the year.
As well as exciting third-party opportunities, which all add value for Serica, there are also opportunities for the GLA joint venture to develop and add value from the assets on which we have completed today. These include the Glendronach tieback and a possible infill well at Tormore.
Now that these are in our portfolio, they will be assessed and ranked against the other development opportunities we have in the battle for capital allocation, about which, again, we will give more detail at our Capital Markets Day. With that, I will hand over to Martin to give you more on our finances and how we are seeing things in the near-term market situations.
Thanks, Chris. As we largely pre-announced with our January trading statement, the story of last year is mostly that despite a challenging year operationally, our relative financial strength and our confidence in the resolution of those issues enabled us to continue delivering on investment in the portfolio and on healthy shareholder returns, including maintaining the full-year dividend as 16p, inclusive of the 10p proposed final dividend we are announcing today.
When it comes to how we generated and used cash during the year, this waterfall chart shows the picture of what actually happened to gross cash from our year-end 2024 to our year-end 2025 position. The real story of the business potential lies in understanding what the deferred production cost us in foregone 2025 revenues from the unscheduled Triton interruptions.
Based simply on adjusting for what would have happened if Triton had delivered operating efficiency in line with our 2025 budget and factoring in the actual prices of oil and gas which prevailed, we estimate we missed out on some $250 million of revenues last year. Because those missed revenues were at Triton, where not only do we still have material tax losses, but we were also investing heavily, which is the key method of sheltering the EPL, and that our cost base is very largely fixed in nature, those foregone revenues would have flowed almost directly to additional free cash flow generation.
We were, however, helped last year by the receipt of $63 million tax rebate in respect of overpaid taxes from 2024, but also from a low cash tax bill during the year, given we were able to factor in the impact of group relief into the installment payments made during the year. These are the reasons why the tax bar is, in fact, a positive on this chart. We very much do not see 2025 as representative. Indeed, as we indicated in January, we are confident of material free cash flow generation this year, and that outlook has, of course, only improved in the current market conditions.
In fact, as it says on this page, with the completion of the TotalEnergies deal today, we have more than halved our net debt as compared to the year-end level and are on track to be in a net cash position by the end of H1.
Turning to a little more detail to the income statement, while realized prices were generally not materially different than in 2024, being marginally lower in oil but higher in gas, our revenues of $601 million were down 20% from the prior year, essentially in line with the lower volumes. The truer comparison of the impact of Triton issues can be seen in a comparison with the 2023 pro forma levels. On this basis, production was down some 4.5 million barrels or approximately 30%.
Our hedge book was in the money at year-end and delivered unrealized hedging gains of $75 million and just under $8 million in realized gains as we benefited especially from protection against the lower prices seen in Q2 in the wake of the Liberation Day tariff announcements. Operating costs were roughly 10% higher than 2024, largely as a result of increased maintenance activity at the Bruce platform as we sought to reduce maintenance backlogs, but also because of a slight weakening of the dollar versus our largely pound-denominated costs.
G&A costs were up by just under $2 million as we made choices to add capabilities to set us up for future success, and we incurred transaction costs of $5.5 million associated with the extensive M&A activity. Despite the challenges in the year, we still delivered a profit before tax of $80 million, but at half the level of the prior year. Our current tax charge was only $2 million as we benefited from in-year group relief associated with losses made in the Triton subsidiaries.
However, in common with all our North Sea peers, and as we also reported in our H1 results last year, we had a material deferred tax charge of $130 million, including a $65 million charge relating to the enactment in Q1 of the extension of the EPL from 2028 to 2030. The result of these non-cash accounting impacts was that we reported a book tax charge of 165% and posted a loss after tax of $52 million for the year.
Turning now to the balance sheet and notable changes in the year which result mostly from acquisitions. Our exploration and evaluation balance doubled to $43 million, primarily as a result of the completion of the Parkmead acquisition as we became operator and brought into a greater share of the Skerryvore exploration prospect. We also consolidated the acquisition of Prax Upstream, which completed on December 11th, 2024 as a business combination. As pre-announced in January, we ended the year with net debt of $200 million being effectively 1x EBITDAX.
As already explained, we see this as something of an anomaly and would have been net cash pro forma for the deferred cash flow from the Triton issues. As already noted, we have more than halved our net debt since the balance sheet date.
Finally, inclusive of the impact of new drilling at Belinda and Evelyn, as well as bringing Lancaster into the portfolio from the Prax Upstream business, we ended the year with the exceptionally low level of decom provisions of less than $2 per 2P barrel of oil equivalent.
While we always update on our hedging with our results, given the dramatic events in commodity markets year to date, we felt that a slightly deeper dive is merited today. Before turning to how we are positioned and what we expect to be doing in the future, we wanted to give a bit of background on what's been happening in oil and U.K. wholesale gas markets year to date.
We came into the new year with all market fundamentals in terms of physical supply of oil and to a lesser extent gas, pointed to weak Brent prices during 2026 and medium-term weakness in gas prices. Bearish sentiment was evident in the market, and this was apparent in that despite unusually low European storage levels, U.K. gas prices averaging around GBP 0.84 per therm for January and February were roughly half the level of the equivalent midwinter period in 2025.
However, of course, things changed dramatically after the war in Iran commenced on February 28th, 2025. For the three weeks of March so far, NBP day-ahead pricing has averaged GBP 0.127 per therm, and Brent has averaged $103 per barrel.
As the charts on this page, which show the shape of the forward curve for Brent and for NBP at various dates since early January right up to a week ago on March 19th, 2025, things really elevated in reaction to the de facto closure of the Straits of Hormuz and the physical attack on the Ras Laffan LNG and Pearl GTL plants in Qatar.
Although near-term prices, the front end of the curve, have risen sharply, the prices further out in time have not risen nearly as much, and the forward curve for both oil and gas are in very steep, and in fact unprecedented, backwardation. These forward prices should not be seen as predictors of future prices, but they do represent the levels at which Serica would be able to hedge in the market through swaps.
With this backdrop in mind, we turn to where our hedge book stands today. We've been building our hedges materially during the first quarter, and the reason for that goes to the reasons why we hedge. Firstly, we have an ongoing requirement by our banks to hedge a certain amount on a rolling basis, being 50% of the current year and 30% of the following year. Beyond that, we are always striving, appreciating that we cannot predict events and prices, to find the Goldilocks solution, not too little and not too much.
On the one hand, we seek to ensure that we protect downside sufficiently to ensure that we can cover our cost base in tougher times, as well as to support our capital allocation priorities, including the dividend.
This also includes maximizing the liquidity available to us through the borrowing base under our RBL. On the other hand, we do not want to overhedge so that events, even if they are the kind of tail risk events we have seen this month which cause prices to spike, can benefit our shareholders. See, we were always looking to protect the downside, but leave as much as possible of the upside potential.
In common with our peers, we do this both by imposing policy limits on our absolute amount of hedging and by the choice of instruments that we use for hedging. As shown on this table, Serica is currently hedged for about 60% of our forecast production in 2026 and about 50% in 2027, which is inside our policy limits.
When we combine the impact of the unhedged part with the use of zero cost collars, which retain an element of upside exposure, we retain about 40% upside exposure in 2026 and around 55% in 2027. The position in gas is actually more exposed to upside than in oil, with only around 50% of our gas volumes hedged this year and less than 40% for next year. While we have built the book since the beginning of the year, about 50% of the hedges we've built have been taken on since the start of hostilities from March 2nd, 2025, and we've been able to capture some very attractive opportunities.
For instance, although the tables show averages for the quarter, we have in fact recently placed some swaps for March at levels up to $111 per barrel for oil, which is especially pleasing given our most recent Triton lifting concluded only earlier this week. We appreciate that it can be confusing to understand the intricacies of hedging approaches, and although we hope the floor prices are quite clear on this table, it is tough to figure out what the forgone upside price implications are.
As a bit of a guide, we estimate that our current hedge book for 2026 with oil prices at a notional $100 a barrel, we realize roughly $80 a barrel. At GBP 0.150 per therm for gas, we realize roughly GBP 0.130 per therm.
Taking a look at this slide, you may think you've seen this before, and that is because you have. We're pleased to say that we are simply reiterating our guidance across production, OpEx, and CapEx at the levels we set forth with our trading statement in January. What we have though updated on this page is the carry forward tax loss balances that we've reported today as of December 31st, 2025.
As you can see from a combination of our own activities during the year, as well as M&A that we completed during 2025, we ended the year with essentially double the level of tax losses as we started with. We now have roughly $2 billion of corporation tax and SCT losses and roughly $500 million of EPL losses.
Using the simple math that we've applied before of corporation tax loss times 30%, SCT times 10%, and EPL times 38%, then the notional value of these losses is around $1 billion. Finally for me, I wanted to say a few words to add what Chris has already covered in relation to the M&A we announced in the year. In my previous career as a banker, we would tend to consider that the M&A was done when the deal was signed.
What I've since learned is that to ensure we deliver value, we need not only to be capable of efficiently delivering complex operated asset transactions through to completion, but also to ensure that the business, businesses are integrated efficiently into Serica and set up to realize their value potential.
Serica has therefore invested in human capital to ensure that we have the skills and processes that are needed to be successful in an M&A growth strategy. This includes being agile and opportunistic in the execution phase and ensuring that we always do what we say we will do. We sustain Serica's good reputation in the M&A market as a credible and trustworthy counterparty.
That also means having the people, processes, and systems that are set up to deliver in a repeatable way to coordinate and drive forward the multiple work streams needed to get to completion and day one in the fastest possible time, all while also ensuring safe and reliable continuous operation of high sensitivity assets and complex IT systems. The process we have just completed to see GLA and the Shetland gas plant come under our control today is a great example of this.
Finally, this also means doing the necessary work upfront to protect value from the transaction and to ensure that the people and systems can be integrated as smoothly as possible to ensure that the value can be realized in practice. One example of this is the approach we've taken with the Spirit Energy deal, which is not yet completed. Although we only assume completion from around end September, we know that future gas prices were key to value realization on this deal.
Based on a very constructive relationship with Spirit Energy and with their parent, Centrica, we have been able to put in place deal contingent hedging for roughly 50% of the production, but on a basis which protects the value of our deal, but still leaves ample upside potential for Serica to enjoy. This was made possible in part thanks to Centrica being a leading participant in gas markets and working through the complexities of a structure like this with us. With that, I will hand back to Chris for some concluding remarks.
Thank you, Martin. This is another slide that should look quite familiar, and that's because our focus areas remain unchanged. Safety is, of course, the number one priority, and delivering reliable production this year that will generate material free cash flow. We're integrating acquisitions, progressing organic growth projects, and still looking in the market to continue prudently adding to the portfolio to deliver for our shareholders.
In addition, we continue to plan to move from AIM to the main market of the London Stock Exchange during the year. We are very excited by the opportunities ahead, and look forward to updating you on progress throughout the year. With that, I will hand over to Andrew to run the M&A.
The M&A? I hope not.
The Q&A. I'm sorry.
I think we'll keep other people with the Q&A, with the M&A. Right. First question actually is about the last thing that you mentioned. When are you anticipating being admitted to the main market? What impact do you think this might have on the share price?
I'll take that one. Yes. I think we put in our detailed announcement today that we expect now that will be in Q3. It's the work's ongoing for it. There's a lot of process and I know, as Andrew often says, a surprising amount of process just to move from one part of the London Stock Exchange to another. Nonetheless, there is and we're working it hard.
We expect it will be during Q3 of this year, so very much on track to get there during the year. In terms of what it will do for the share price, I mean, it's very. Obviously our main reason for wanting to do that is to get a greater degree of exposure for Serica to investors generally.
The wider the exposure we get, the better it is generally for support for our share price. In particular, certainly at anything around our current market capitalization, we would be very comfortably inside the FTSE 250, so one of the 350 biggest companies in the U.K. The benefit of that is once you get into the FTSE 250, there are a lot of tracker and index funds that have to follow stocks in that segment. That's one of the main reasons why we see a benefit in moving to the main board and we remain very much on track to make that move during the course of the year.
Moving on to Triton, we've had a few questions come in, unsurprisingly, so I'll try and amalgamate in a way that makes sense. There's kind of three questions really. One is why couldn't the maintenance have been done last year? Second is a similar one, which is will the work at Triton reduce the maintenance period later this year? And then the general question, which I think is the one that everyone wants to know, is how much should the reliability of Triton concern shareholders?
Thank you. I'll try and address all three of those. The work that had to be done in February and March was not something that we actually even knew about when the last shutdown took place. What happened was, in doing some inspections of key equipment, Dana discovered that they could not vouch for the status of some of their equipment. They could not prove that they'd been maintained properly or inspected properly, and they didn't have the records to be able to prove that.
There wasn't necessarily evidence that there was anything wrong with the equipment. They just couldn't show from their maintenance systems that it had been inspected when it should have been inspected and maintained properly.
What that meant was when they put all of that together, they felt that there was a risk that was intolerable and equipment could break before it got to the next shutdown. Rather than take that risk, they took the decision that they would shut down and fix it now. I think you asked, does that shorten the shutdown in the summer? It doesn't because some of the things they discovered that need maintenance, they haven't done now and they've deferred them to the summer shutdown.
However, I will say that in our planning for the year, we assumed that Triton would be off essentially for three months in the summer, whereas Dana is planning for a 65-day outage. We've built in a buffer there to some extent.
As I said during the presentation, we've also assumed a week's downtime on Triton as we go through the year outside of that summer shutdown window. We think we've made some fairly conservative estimates around Triton for the year. How much should shareholders be concerned about Triton? Look, it's still not as reliable as we want it to be. That's clear. We are working with Dana on a number of things to try and improve the reliability.
The key is, frankly, it's the power turbines and the compressors where we're reliant on one of each at the moment, and there are two of each on the vessel, and we need to get to a point where we've got two power turbines and two compressors available. That's, it's gonna take a few months before we're in that position. In the meantime, we're quite vulnerable to outages. As I've said, I think we've been quite prudent and put in place some fairly conservative assumptions this year, such that we're confident with the production guidance that we've given.
You know, we're gonna be part of Dana's just formed a compression improvement task force, which is targeting getting 90% efficiency with a single compressor and figuring out what else needs to be done in order to have two compressor operations. We're going to be involved in that work ourselves. I think as we move forward, things will get better, but for now, we still have that vulnerability. We can't shy away from it.
Just briefly to clarify, our guidance takes in effectively one week of downtime each month over the course of the year. Keeping on Triton for another one, would you be comfortable bringing Kyla into the FPSO?
Yeah, I'll take that one. Kyla, just to be clear, we've announced that we've moved the barrels from Kyla into reserves as of the end of last year. That doesn't mean we've taken a sanction decision on it yet. As I mentioned during the presentation, it's fighting for capital with a lot of opportunities in our portfolio.
We will make a decision on which ones we're going to pursue in which kind of timeframe as we go through the year and more detail at the Capital Markets Day. We haven't taken FID on Kyla yet, but it's mature enough. We know enough about it. We like it as a development. We were at a point where we could move it from resources into reserves.
Now, of course, we're not going to bring in another field into Triton until we're comfortable that we can produce it safely and efficiently. The fact is we've only just brought on Belinda in the last few days. We had anticipated that about the end of January, and it didn't happen because we had a shutdown. There's no way we're bringing another development into Triton until we get stable operations there. As I've said, I think Dana's doing a lot of the right things to achieve stable production and two compressor operations. I'm hopeful that we get to the point where, yeah, we can sanction Kyla and bring it into Triton.
Somebody on the side actually has just said that they're a bit bored of talking about Triton's compressors... [crosstalk]
Me too. I'm fed up with talking about it too, but it's what we get asked questions about and for good reason... [crosstalk]
Oh, no, they do have a question with it as well, which I think I'll take because I've had time to broadly think about it, which is what percentage of group production will come from Triton 2027? We obviously haven't guided for 2027 as yet, but if you look at analyst expectations, it's probably somewhere in between a quarter and a third of production will come from Triton next year. It clearly becomes of significantly less importance to the portfolio, albeit still being highly cash generative. Next question I think is one for Martin actually.
Why do companies you acquire assets from, e.g., TotalEnergies, sometimes pay Serica rather than Serica paying for the assets? I presume they're concerned about the decommissioning costs at the end of field life. What value is it that you can see that vendors can't?
Good question. Yeah, there's a bunch of things embedded in that obviously. One is companies like TotalEnergies makes a strategic decision that they basically want out of an asset like this. You can understand why, because while we think it's got amazing potential, we're buying it as it is, but they thought it was going to be a lot bigger than it actually is. It's been something that's been strategically on the decision to exit. Therefore price is not the most important thing.
Add to that, yes, why they're not, obviously they're a commercial and sensible company and we are too. Therefore, while we're receiving cash, that's because the effective date, the historic date at which the deal we economically owned it was January 1st, 2024.
The $57 million odd that we received today is basically the after tax cash flow from that asset for that period until today. That effectively we economically owned it and we receive it today because we've legally completed today. Then when you think about how that works, yes, we are taking on the decommissioning liability associated with that asset in the future. The thing about decommissioning liabilities are that they are obviously an obligation to decommission in the future, but the timing of that decommissioning and indeed the absolute amount of the cost of it are not certain.
Absolutely our objective, which is different than that of say TotalEnergies when they owned it, is to continue to invest in the portfolio through some of the things that Chris talked about, like maybe Glendronach, maybe a Tormore well, but also getting the benefit of third- party gas into the plant like Victory that's already there and Tornado that we hope to come in the not too distant future. All of those things would just push out the time at which decommissioning happens. All of that is very significant in terms of additional value for us.
For us, it's about delivering on those things, which TotalEnergies was not going to do because the capital investment associated with them just didn't screen for them relative to all the other global opportunities they have. It does screen for us and we therefore look forward to doing it.
It's a case of, again, as Chris indicated, it's right assets, right hands, and it's just the natural kind of food chain, I would say. One other little point is there's also a tax differential and TotalEnergies was being fully taxed under their ownership. Indeed the receipt of cash we've had today is after it's been taxed for that whole period at 78%.
When in our hands, we're buying it into some of the entities we acquired through Prax Upstream, and that means it will be sheltered from a large amount of the tax now as of from today when it comes into our ownership. There's a different valuation reference point for us as well. I hope that answers the question. That's just using GLA as an example, but you could play that across to other things as well.
Speaking of some of the other things that we're acquiring, given the context of very high commodity prices, could you talk about the expected payments on closing of the acquisitions of the ONE-Dyas and Spirit assets? Assuming oil and more particularly gas prices stay where they are, those payments could be very favorable to Serica.
Yeah. I mean, clearly they will. We do as we track them. They're gonna be up versus where our original planning for them was when we did the M&A because, you know, we weren't planning for prices where they are right now. Yes, the net impact of that is gonna be that we expect to get higher payments than we would've done, or in the case of Spirit Energy to essentially probably the net payment by us will probably be lower. The exact numbers of those is obviously something that needs to be worked through based on what actually happens to commodity prices between now and when we actually complete.
The only other cautionary note I'd say is that, again, just as I mentioned for TotalEnergies, in the case of both ONE-Dyas and Spirit Energy, under their ownership, they're being fully taxed with the full EPL rate. Whatever the increment is, it's gonna have a higher tax rate against it than it would under us. That does help to dampen the impact of higher prices a little bit.
A more general question on the M&A landscape in the North Sea. How is the current market and how has the M&A dynamics changed after Adura and NEO Energy?
Yeah, I mean, I think Chris alluded to that in his remarks that you know, we'd have to say that we think the opportunity set in the U.K. this year is going to be down on last year. I guess, you know, it's kind of easy to say that cause there was a hell of a lot of activity last year, right? The bar would be very high to be able to repeat this, the level of activity in the basin this year that we saw last year. That impact of the significant consolidation that we've seen is probably a reason why we think there'll be less M&A this year.
It doesn't mean to say there won't be any, and I do think in time as the likes of an Adura or a NEO Energy and some of the others, Ithaca, you know, as they look at their portfolios, they may well see that there are assets within there that in the normal course they look to divest, move on, and that's kind of normal course business that we would expect to carry on. But overall, we just think the activity in the U.K. is likely to be down.
The other cautionary note on M&A is that while we see these very high prices, high, not just high, but volatile prices that move all over the place are very difficult to transact M&A in, right? It just makes doing deals really hard when prices are moving really fast. That's not a comment specifically about the U.K., it's just a general comment about doing M&A in the upstream.
While we're on the discussion about U.K. M&A, then how about overseas? You mentioned it's something that you're looking at. What kind of areas could people expect an acquisition to be made in?
Do you want me to take that one? Look, we are starting to look overseas and get a bit more serious about that. There's really a couple of reasons for that. One is what Martin just mentioned. There are fewer and fewer opportunities in the U.K. We're still working on a few opportunities, but not as many as there were a year ago.
We want to have a sustainable business and at some point, you know, the U.K. is in decline and at some point you'll get to a point where, you know, there's not enough production left for us to maintain the kind of size of business that we are. Sooner or later we have to look overseas anyway if we want to have a sustainable business.
Look, we don't want to limit ourselves too much to where we might go. We do quite like Southeast Asia, why would that be of interest? Really it's an area where we can see playing out our strategy in a similar way to we do in the North Sea. Southeast Asia in general is a bit less mature than the North Sea, but it's, you know, most of the fields are kind of mid to late life now. You're getting to the point where a number of the majors are thinking about exiting fields there or just reducing their exposure in the area.
We're at that point now where probably we were in the North Sea 10 or 15 years ago, frankly, where opportunities are coming available for companies like us to go in and, as we say, push out the decommissioning, extend the life of fields, drill more wells, find more reserves.
We just see that it's a ripe area for that kind of an opportunity. Yeah, and I don't really want to comment too much on other areas because as soon as we say we're ruling something out and then an opportunity comes up, you know, we who knows where we could go. Never say never, but I think Southeast Asia is probably first on our list of places that we like for the reasons I've just mentioned.
I'm aware we're running out of time. We've got quite a lot of questions still to go through, so I'll try and group them together. Dividends. Quite a lot of people have asked about dividends, so a question for Martin. Do we see a return to dividend growth? The dividend looks quite small considering the free cash flow to come.
It's a really good question and, look, the way we think about the whole capital allocation piece is we've got to balance the dividends to shareholders with investment in the portfolio and with M&A growth. It's, you know, we're not alone in that. That's kind of the conundrum for all of us and our peers that are involved in this. It's probably gonna sound a bit like a stuck record in saying wait for the CMD, but we are definitely planning to give a great deal more detail about how we balance all of those things. At the Capital Markets Day.
You know, I guess it was a sign of confidence we felt to show that we were able to continue the dividend at the same level as before, you know, despite the fact we had a challenging year last year. But we expect to give a lot more clarity, and we've got to, you know, show that the really interesting and exciting returns can come from the investment in our portfolio, but always while ensuring that we also pay a sensible amount of dividends. I know that's not gonna directly answer the question, but that's probably what we can give for now.
Another quick one for you, Martin, about tax losses. How long do you think they'll last for, and which of your assets do they cover?
Really good question. You probably noticed that we've sort of stopped giving guidance on how long we think they're gonna last for, and that's because we used to give it, and then we found that they lasted for a lot longer. You know, as it happens, last year, we created a lot more losses through our own activity cause, you know, the silver lining on current performance was that, as I probably indicated, we actually added to the loss pool there rather than reducing it during the year.
Of course, we also did some transactions that brought some losses with them. Of course, how quickly you use it is also a function of what happens to the commodity price, which is incredibly difficult to predict.
It sounds like a bit of a cop-out. We've got a lot of losses now. They basically are reasonably balanced across our portfolio with the exception of Bruce, Keith and Rum, which is in the entities that basically don't have any losses.
But that, as Chris indicated, is one of the key areas we're looking to make investment into, and investment is not only needed to bring short cycle gas to the U.K., which it desperately needs, but is also efficient when it comes to the use of tax because if we can invest, we get still strong capital allowances against the 78% tax rate that applies there. We have a strategy which is kind of fit for all seasons in that respect.
Speaking of tax rates, I think we should finish with politics, and apologies to people whose questions we haven't got round to, but please do email them over to me directly if you'd like a response. Are you talking face-to-face with Ed Miliband or Rachel Reeves? With so much pressure from so many sources, do you feel the logic of the message is getting through? Are there any milestones going forward, and do you feel more positive in the stance of Whitehall?
We're speaking with everybody that will listen, both individually and as part of industry bodies. I was personally in the meeting with Rachel Reeves at Number 11, whenever that was, just around the spring statement time. The message is definitely getting through about the need to stimulate the North Sea, before it's too late.
We have a tax regime that's been designed by this government in consultation with the industry and yet, as we sit here today, that won't come into force until 2030, and our argument is just bring that in now. Treasury absolutely get that. I guess all I'll say is there are other parts of the government that are not necessarily sold on that idea. I'm not gonna try and predict where we'll end up on that because at the moment I don't think anybody in government really knows where we're gonna end up on that.
Martin, anything you want to add?
No. I think Chris has covered it very well. I mean, look, everyone in this call will know we've seen the volume of really quite broad-based sentiment now to recognize the importance of security of supply, and that's an argument that we've clearly been supporting for a long time. You know, we just hope that a sense of pragmatism, the recognition of the importance of security of supply from a sort of defense and just national security perspective, will begin to carry more weight than it perhaps has done in recent times.
With that, Chris, would you like to give any closing remarks?
Well, just that we've got another exciting year ahead of us. We are integrating new assets into our portfolio. We're seeking to do more M&A still on top of that. We will be growing production as we go through this year, both on our existing portfolio, and the new assets. We will be moving to the main market this year. We've got lots of exciting investment opportunities in our portfolio, about which we will speak at the Capital Markets Day, which is the next time we will see you.
Thank you very much.
Perfect, guys... [crosstalk]
Thank you.
Perfect, guys. If I may just jump back in there. Thank you very much indeed for updating investors, this morning. Could I please ask investors not to close this session, as you will now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback. On behalf of the management team of Serica Energy plc, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session, so good morning to you all.