Good morning and a warm welcome to today's earnings call of Deutsche Rohstoff AG, following their publication of the financial half-year figures of 2025. The CEO, Jan-Philipp Weitz, and the CFO, Henning Döring, will speak in a moment, guide us through the presentation and the results, and provide an outlook for the current year. After the presentation, we will move on to a Q&A session where you have the possibility to place your question directly to the management. Please note that there are no questions via chatbots, only via the audio line today. We are looking forward to the presentation, and with this, I hand over to you, Mr. Weitz.
Perfect. Thank you very much. Yes, a warm welcome from myself to everybody as well. Thank you for your participation in today's web call. The many of you that have decided to dial in despite the hopefully warm weather wherever you may be. 2025, already the first six months of the year from a financial standpoint lie behind us. We have continued to focus on our development, continued to focus on stability, and to continue to grow profitably. As you all know, the place where we are growing is the United States, our oil and gas production at 13,700 BOE in the first half of the year. Looking into the future, what is very important is roughly 60,000 - 70,000 acres of additional running room and the potential, way more than 100 additional oil wells that we can drill on the existing acreage alone.
That is obviously the basis for everything that we're doing. That's the basis for the development of the next few years, and that will help us to continue our strong financial performance in the coming years. Obviously, with the difficulties in the commodity market and in general in the capital markets here, following the Liberation Day and the tariff discussions, oil had dropped to quite low levels at some point in the second quarter. That is obviously something that we had to deal with as an oil company. Those are the waters that we have to navigate. We do feel that we have managed to do that in quite a calm way here. We have actually increased our liquidity position. We have a very significant undrawn credit line of over $65 million. We're expecting revenue of up to EUR 190 million this year and an EBITDA of up to 135 million.
Obviously not quite as high as last year, subject to these lower oil prices and a little bit lower production, also based on a very significantly reduced CapEx program, i.e., higher free cash flow. Overall, we're looking forward here to deliver another strong financial year 2025. What is very important operationally, and after Henning Döring will guide you through the numbers here in a little bit, I'm also going to focus on that in more detail, is our extreme focus on efficiency. We have really managed to, A, consolidate all of our acreage in Wyoming in one company. We have managed to significantly reduce the cost and the drilling time per well here over the last two years. Those wells that we have recently turned in line are the wells with, in parts, the highest production from any nine wells that we have developed here.
Overall, I think operationally we are very much on track. Financially also, in the first half of the year here with EUR 102 million of revenue, I think we're definitely in a very good position. Our EBITDA at EUR 70 million is already more than 50% of the guidance. The upper end of our guidance range is EUR 135 million. Obviously, everything that's north of EUR 67.5 million is more than 50%. We have already basically checked the box on that. Net profit EUR 15 million in the first half of the year. Looking back a few years, that's always a great number. Looking back the last couple of years, it's a little bit lower. That's, to some extent, due to the lower oil price, obviously. There have been some extraordinary effects around foreign exchange losses and some of the impacts of costs that we had in the second quarter here.
That's a roughly EUR 5 million effect that we are dealing with here in the second quarter. Production at 13,659 BOE. An important point to point out here is the higher oil share. Out of those 13,659 BOE, roughly 64% is oil, whereas in the last year, that was only 58%. As long as oil prices and gas prices are trading in kind of the ranges that we have seen over the last decade almost, and as long as gas prices are not extremely high, having a higher oil share means higher revenue, higher cash flow per barrel of oil equivalent. A higher oil share is positive as long as we don't see gas prices that are near the $8 - $10 kind of mark while oil is trading at $60. Last but not least, the tap of our bond, EUR 43 million. The initial tap volume was EUR 40 million.
There was a little bit of additional placement here of another EUR 3 million. We have an outstanding bond right now of EUR 143 million, a significant cash position, and obviously high operating cash flow plus the undrawn credit facilities. I think this puts us in a very good spot here to be able to look out for opportunities and have the necessary cushion to make calm and rational decisions even in times of lower oil prices or turbulent markets. Talking about turbulent markets, I guess April, May was a little bit of a turbulent time. Our share price also got hit quite significantly, which is very much in line with everybody else. Overall, though, I think we're a little bit above many other companies' performance here. As you can see, whether it's a six-year time span we're looking at or just the year 2025, our share price has developed quite positively.
Obviously, we see that there is significant room and upside. Also, I think the very, very positive development of Almonty Industries and everything that the company has done, basically operationally and listing on the NASDAQ and thereby increasing the value of our shareholding, has also helped here. I also want to point out that the peer group that's probably most relevant to us, the oil and gas peer group here, the small cap companies have gone down 15% in the last seven and a half months. Also, the larger caps and the oil and gas indices or indexes have come down quite a bit. Overall, I think if we do look at our peer group, which is probably the right thing to do, we have performed very well. Nonetheless, we do hope that there is more upside and we can develop the value of the company continuously from here on.
With that, I'll hand it over to Henning Döring for the financials.
Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. I'm also delighted to welcome you here to our earnings call. We look now deeper into the financial figures. We start with the operating figures, which you'll find on page nine of yesterday's published half-year report. The volumes in terms of barrel oil equivalent decreased by 7.5% to a total volume of 2.47 million BOE. Unlike in prior years, our current drilling program will not contribute to the production in the current year before the start of the second half. We remember last year that was different, where the start of two new owned wells in February 2024 and another 10 wells in our Oxy Joint Venture in late March. Nonetheless, you can see the oil volume increased slightly by 1% to 1.58 million due to our good performance of our wells, in particular drilled last year.
You will see more details later on that. We jump in the middle bars and look into the realized prices. Realized means after hedging transaction, prices developed differently. Of course, the more important price is the oil price, which declined by 10% to $66.50 per barrel. Gas prices recovered strongly from the multi-year low in the last year and were on average above $3 per thousand cubic feet. On the right-hand side, the foreign exchange rate, Euro U.S. Dollar, on an average basis, this was more or less comparable. Nevertheless, on a closing price basis, we see a strong increase in the Euro from below $1.04 to higher than $1.17 at the end of quarter two. This, of course, had a stronger impact both on our balance sheet. We had a contraction of the conversion or driven by the conversion, and we see some losses from currency conversion.
Before we look in the numbers, we jump on the next slide and look on the share of revenue by product and volume by region. You see that the oil revenue decreased in line with the price development by roughly 10% to EUR 98 million. Gas and NGL sales increased slightly by around 3%, also driven by the price development. Wyoming is our most important production location. The share of the Wyoming revenues increased further by six percentage points and is now at 80%, and Colorado declined accordingly. The wells in Wyoming contain more oil, less gas. Those of you who know us, for those, this is nothing new, but that's the bridge to the chart on the very right-hand side. The revenue by product, you see that the oil share has grown further by six percentage points and is now at 64%. This is, of course, very favorable for us.
Despite the recent price development, oil is still by far the more valuable product. A barrel of oil is worth a multiple compared to barrel equivalent made out of gas. This helped us, of course, to buffer, to compensate the decline in oil prices, which was on a sales level a minus of roughly 9%. In other words, if the oil share would have remained on that level of prior year at this 58%, the decrease in sales would have been somewhere in the area of - 16% to - 17%. This brings us now into the financial figures on the next slide. Generally, we can say yesterday's numbers fully confirm our guidance. Revenue, as already pointed out, a 9% decline compared to prior year with EUR 102.3 million. This represents around 54% of the upper end of our guidance for this year.
EBITDA was down by 16% and accounted for EUR 70.5 million. This represents 52% of the upper end of the guidance for the full year. If we throw an eye in the cost items between revenue and EBITDA, we see, first of all, other operating income was a little bit lower by a good third, mainly driven by lower income from our stock portfolio, which we still have and which normally makes, I would say, roughly EUR1 million of income. Q2, of course, I think was in no stock portfolio the best performing quarter. Nevertheless, still we had hidden reserves in our portfolio of more than EUR 2 million end of June 30. Cost of material needs slightly decreased.
The cost of materials ratio increased from 17.5% in 2023 to 18.8% in the first half of this year, which is mainly driven by higher operating costs for the last year expanded gas infrastructure and also for some work hours for older wells in the DJ Basin, which performed slightly lower in the first six months. Personnel expense increased by 7%. This is mainly due to cash settlements for our stock compensation program. We remember last year we changed from a stock settlement into a cash settlement to avoid dilution of shareholders from the existing stock compensation programs. The biggest increase you see on the level of other operating expenses, which increased by roughly 40% to up to EUR 9 million. Here we see major three items. The biggest of that was the losses from currency conversion of our foreign custom currency holdings compared to prior year.
This is - EUR 3.3 million. We see another EUR 1.7 million driven by upfront expenses for our drilling program on the western areas in the Powder River Basin. Example given, we invested in seismic studies. Invest doesn't mean we capitalize this. This is expense. To get seismic studies, we had prepayments for supply agreements for water. We had surface use agreement prepayments and also some expenses, of course, also for the tap of our bond in early Q2. After depreciation, interest, taxes, this led to a group result after minorities of EUR 15.5 million, representing earnings per share of EUR 3.20, which represents a decline to prior year of -36%. If we jump on the right-hand side, the balance sheet and cash flow items, balance sheet total declined by 6% from more than EUR 552 million to below EUR 519 million. This is only driven by the FX effects.
End of 2024, we converted $1 into an equivalent of EUR 0.96. Six months later, on June 30, this was no longer EUR 0.96, but EUR 0.85. A contraction of 11%. Of course, the vast majority of our balance sheet, of our assets, are subject to currency conversion. This had, of course, a contracting impact on more or less all items in the balance sheet. The biggest, of course, with the big numbers, PPE, Property, Plant and Equipment, which declined by 8%, and the equity, which declined by 12%. Equity ratio is still above 40% and thereby on a very comfortable level. Accounts payables, accruals declined slightly. Financial liabilities remained more or less stable, while cash and cash equivalents increased strongly by roughly 90% to close to EUR 37 million. If we jump to the next slide, we can look a little bit deeper into the development of equity, cash flow, and debt.
As already pointed out, equity decreased by 12%. You see here the major drivers on the one hand side. This is generated by a lower currency translation reserve, which decreased by roughly EUR 34 million. We had the payout of our record dividend of EUR 2 per share end of June. We have started another share buyback program where we have bought back roughly 53,000 shares at the end of June 30 already. This together led to another decrease of EUR 11.6 million in our equity. Operating cash flow was strong, 5% above prior year. This more than EUR 89 million was then more than sufficient to fully fund our investments of roughly EUR 65 million and to further increase our cash and cash equivalents. As you can see on the upper right-hand corner, the strong free cash flow of EUR 24.5 million was the driver behind that.
As you already have heard, we have tapped our bond by EUR 43 million. The vast majority of that amount has been used to repay loans in the U.S. In speaking numbers, we used EUR 36 million of the EUR 43 million to repay our credit lines in the U.S., which have a higher interest rate, and thereby we could lower the average interest rate. In Q2, you see this impact also not only driven by this, but also from the change or the slight decrease in interest expense from the first to the second quarter. Last but not least, the net debt on the lower right corner, you see this could be successfully reduced further by 11% to around EUR 140 million. Our leverage ratio, meaning the ratio of net debt divided by the rolling 12 months EBITDA, was at 0.9x and is thereby in an area where we feel quite comfortable.
So far, the look in the numbers, I would hand over back to Jan-Philipp Weitz, and we see ourselves in the Q&A session. Thank you.
Thank you very much. I will give you an overview now of the status of our operations and the continuous outlook for 2025. As most of you will know, we're obviously active in those two large oil basins here in the U.S., the DJ Basin, mainly spanning across Colorado, and the Powder River Basin in Wyoming, where we produce the majority of our oil and gas with roughly 11,000 bbl of oil equivalent and hold a position of circa 70,000 acres. What we are doing this year is effectively drilling 10 wells across our acreage position, four wells in the eastern part of the Powder River Basin from our Chinook pad, and another six wells in the western part from the Tuffy and Buster pad, where we are for the first time drilling three Mowry wells within one drilling and spacing unit here.
This is our base case, so roughly EUR 100 million of capital that we're investing. Last year, our capital was more around EUR 170 million - EUR 180 million. A very significantly reduced CapEx program, but at the same time, we're doing a lot of important things with this program, and we are doing this as a continuous program since we have always mentioned and focused on increasing the continuity of our development here, obviously in line with oil prices. What is very important in the eastern part is that we are drilling four 9 bbl wells from a single pad here. We have placed those wells in line, so we have turned them in line into production at the end of June, and I'll speak to that in a second. From the Tuffy and Buster pad, four wells have already been fully completed.
Another two wells we're currently drilling, the third of the three Mowry wells is almost TD'ed, meaning it has reached its total depth, and we are basically getting ready to finish the last well and then start the completion of these wells probably at some point here in September. Another point always to highlight is the light blue sticks here on the map. As you can see, there's a lot of potential additional locations, and we are working our way through this inventory of drilling locations here in the coming years. What is very, very important and what really is kind of the foundation for a lot of the things that we're doing is the fact that we have operational success in terms of higher well productivity and also reduction of costs.
What you can see here in the black line is effectively the expected production that we, when we started drilling 9 bbl wells in the Powder River Basin here, that we were focusing on, expecting to drill roughly wells that produce 130,000 bbl of oil in the first 12 months. Our 2023 wells, the blue wells, they are already slightly above that. The wells, the 10 wells in the 9 bbl formation that we drilled in 2024, they are a little bit higher than that, especially with some wells here from our Cottonwood pad that we turned in line late last year. Excuse me, that are very strong performers. One of the wells has already produced 180,000 bbl of oil after nine months, so that's a very positive trend.
Now again, the Chinook pad that we have turned in line in late June is at least currently on trend to break a few more positive records. What we have definitely achieved here, it's the first pad where we have drilled all 9 bbl two-mile lateral wells below capital of $9 million. That is extremely significant. The first 9 bbl wells that we drilled here were probably more like $12.8 million. We have drastically reduced the CapEx, which is extremely important for us to have higher resilience and to operate at good economics while prices are a little bit lower. At the same time, those wells are not only the cheapest wells we have drilled into the 9 bbl formation, they are also on trend to be some of the best.
At least with the limited data that we have now for the first 50 - 60 days, roughly, you can see here in the green line that these wells are on trend to outperform at least a large number of the wells that we have online at this point. Doing more with less, less CapEx, more production, that's exactly what we said we want to do and we have done so far in this year. I'm very confident that we continue this development. Why is that so important? Because basically, it determines the economics that are shown here. Just to kind of repeat on this slide that some of you have seen before, a few key messages. At $75 oil and CapEx of $11 million, we were expecting a rate of return of roughly 30% for these oil wells that we're drilling.
If the oil price is $60 and not $75 and we want to generate a 30% rate of return, we roughly need to drill these wells at $9 million capital cost. That is exactly what we have done here. Obviously, that sets the scene for stable economics and lower price environments. It also sets the scene for very significantly improved economics if prices decide to increase again or are closer in the future to $75 per barrel. The next step now, after proving that we can drill cheaply at higher productivity, especially in the eastern Powder River Basin, is to focus on our position in the western area of the Powder River Basin, where we have a very significant inventory and where now we are drilling the first, call it multi-well pad development, really six wells into one drilling and spacing unit effectively.
They're being drilled from two pads, but into the area of what is effectively one pad, three Niobrara and three Mowry wells. Here, there is still some de-risking that we're doing because, as you can see, most of the sticks on the map are still light blue. We are still proving up the acreage here and are moving down the learning curve, especially on the Mowry formation. There's a few specialties that the acreage in the western part of the basin has. It is significantly deeper. The Mowry formation in itself, which is not present in our eastern part of the Powder River Basin position, is a more complex formation to drill. It has a few more challenges. We have seen that again on the first well that we drilled that took a little bit longer than we wanted. It took 40 days.
Already on the second well, we were able to drill that now within 20 days. The third well is very much on track right now to be a 15 - 16-day well. Basically, already a steep learning curve again here. Those Mowry wells are a little bit more expensive, but they are also expected to produce higher volumes of oil. The one data point that we have on our existing acreage, one Mowry well, has produced almost 200,000 bbl of oil in 12 months. If the other wells can do that, even at this higher drilling density, that would be a very significant step ahead and basically setting the scene for very, very attractive economics here on our acreage position in the Powder River Basin. The Niobrara formation is the same.
We do expect also from the wells that we have online already that these wells could potentially outperform the eastern Niobrara wells, but we'll have to see that. Yeah, we are continuing to focus on the development. There are a lot of good things here and a lot of good signs that we are seeing. As long as oil prices, you know, move in our favor or behave, you know, somewhat positively, we're extremely optimistic for this acreage position. Also, I mean, talking about, you know, optimism in the second half of the year in our guidance here, I think, as I mentioned earlier on the call, we are already above 50% of our guidance in terms of revenue and EBITDA. We can already check the box on the first six months of the year. Nonetheless, there's a few positive things that are happening.
We are guiding based on a $60 oil price. Currently, we are at $67.14 for the first days or for the first couple of months in this third quarter. The gas price is also a little bit higher at $3.10, and this was the $3 that we're guiding at. What's a little bit worse is the Euro U.S. Dollar exchange rate. At the same time, we have already mentioned in our half-year financial that even at a [$1.20] Euro USD exchange rate, you know, we can hold our guidance stable. Again, you know, very resilient guidance and numbers here that we are looking at, and we are extremely confident that we can, yeah, finish the year within the guidance and therefore, you know, have another successful year 2025.
Before I come to the summary of our call and the Q&A, I also obviously want to touch on our, you know, tungsten producer Almonty Industries in our portfolio. We are, you know, roughly holding, you know, 10% of the company. We have been a significant shareholder since 2014, and it's obviously very impressive what the company has done here in the past year and a half, you know, to really become much more visible. They have successfully, you know, listed on NASDAQ, raised $90 million, and it really has turned into a big success story. The market capitalization of Almonty Industries as of today is at roughly, you know, four, sorry, roughly $1 billion. There is a lot of talk about tungsten, and alongside rare earth, it is one of the most critical materials.
For Deutsche Rohstoff , that means that our stake in the company is currently, you know, worth at capital market value roughly EUR 100 million. Very, very significant. As I mentioned earlier, definitely also an important contributor, I think, to our recently, you know, positively decoupled share price performance. On the other hand, I think there's probably a reason to believe that it's not fully priced into our share price. The current book value of the company on our books is roughly EUR 31 million, meaning that roughly 6% of our balance sheet is made out of the book value of Almonty shares. Not a very significant part of our EUR 500 million balance sheet. At last, the brief glimpse at the highlights here and some of the facts. Our market cap at EUR 186 million, roughly $210 million. We did pay another EUR 2 dividend here in June, so a very attractive yield.
I think as of December 31st, 2024, share prices, that's roughly a 6.2% dividend yield. Our price-to-book ratio, there's certainly upside to that. We're trading a little bit below our equity value here. The revenue or the turnover, meaning the trading volume, the daily trading volume in our stock has increased a little bit again in the first half of 2025. It's 9% higher than it was last year. That is positive because just for many institutional investors, some investment funds, also some U.S. investment funds, it's very important to have at least a certain trading volume. We are in the top four of all the scaled companies here with our trading volume, which is obviously a trading volume that could increase. It's maybe nowhere near the trading volumes that we see for some of the U.S. stocks, but it's on a very good path.
We're confident that we can, with continuous activity and development of the company and also PR work, increase the visibility of our company and our stock and thereby also increase the turnover in the share. Yes. With that and with roughly nine minutes left on the clock, I'll turn it over for questions. Thank you very much until this point here for your attention.
Yes, thank you very much for the highlights and the presentation. We now move on to the Q&A session for a dynamic conversation. Today, we kindly ask you to question only via the audio line. To do so, click on the Raise Your Hand button. If you're dialed in by phone, use the key combination star nine followed by star six. There is a participant, Mr. Scholes, you should be able to speak now.
Hello, can you hear me?
Yes.
Okay, great. I've just got three questions. In the first half, as you've reported, I mean, volume's down about 7.5%, but you've got these new wells coming on in the second half. I was just wondering if you could give us any feeling about where volume might end year on year by the end of December. You've had some very positive development on OpEx per barrel. I think it looks as if you were down at roughly $8 in the second quarter. The figure last year, for the whole of last year, was $9. I was just wondering where that metric might go in the second half. My last question on depletion, I think you've talked about more generous depreciation rates as a result of recent U.S. legislation. I was just wondering where depletion per barrel might go in the second half?
Perfect. No, thank you very much, Simon, for your questions. I'll maybe take the question on production volumes and hand it over to Henning for the LOE per BOE and depletion and tax depreciation side of things here. On the production side, we're obviously guiding 13,500 BOE - 14,500 BOE per day of production for this year. The first half of the year with 13,700 BOE is in line with that. I think we are very, very confident that we will stay in line with the guidance here. What's not as simple to answer is probably the kind of the year-end production rate. The reason for that is that there are two main factors, I would say, that drive that. One is obviously, does the performance of the Chinook pad right now continue as strongly? What does that do to our production?
The other, probably more important question is, at what point in time will we bring the last six wells into production? Assuming we would only bring them in production in December or so, we wouldn't have a very significant contribution. If we already brought them in production in October, the contribution would be quite significant. I think it's probably fair to say that we will end the year in that guidance range too. Where it is at, I think it's really a little bit hard to be super specific because it's just timing driven a little bit by the completion timing here. Unfortunately, I think that's as specific as we can guide that right now.
Thank you very much. I think all the other two questions, first of all, the OpEx or the LOE material by BOE, that's right. We have been in the first half here a little bit below average prior year. If you compare first half to first half, we have been a little bit higher, as I pointed out, with the material expense ratio, which increased from 17.5% - 18.8%, driven by two factors. On the one hand side, a little bit higher operating costs due to the expansion of our gas infrastructure at the end of last year. On the other hand side, we had some workover costs for our older wells in the DJ Basin. I would expect we follow this path like prior year and a little bit parallel, I would say.
We also see some more workovers in the second half of the year, which might be also again a little bit higher than last year. Focus on the DJ and wells. Here on workover topics, depletion per barrel, this is also a question I've seen here in the chat function. Also, we said you can ask only verbally, but I try to catch this up as well. Now, depletion, I would expect that's always hard because it depends on reserve values. Normally you do these reserve surveys really with external support at the end of the year. I would expect, and this is now really an expectation by myself, we would remain on this 17.17+ per BOE level. How far this is fluctuating, of course, that depends on really how good the new wells are coming online.
The question in the chat was, why was depletion per barrel a little bit above prior year? This is also due to the DJ Basin, as I mentioned and pointed out, our wells were performing a little bit weaker. Therefore, we had a little bit higher depletion per barrel in the older wells in the DJ Basin. I hope this answers now all these questions and the one from the chat.
Just one supplement, if I may.
Of course.
In the H1 report, you've talked about changing legislation. I mean, doesn't that imply accelerating depreciation, which means that you ought to be able to, or doesn't that imply that depletion ought to rise in the second half?
No, let's separate. These are GAAP figures. Now we have talked about GAAP figures. Of course, we have seen a high dynamic in tax law and so on.
Oh, I see. Yeah, okay.
Under the famous name of the OECD, one big and so on, you know what I mean? This helps us in terms of saving tax.
Yes, understood.
That's only liquidity. Yeah.
Yes, you've got a parallel account, basically.
Exactly. This has no impact on the P&L numbers. This is a liquidity impact because we can now depreciate in the first year the full 100% of our CapEx. In the past, or let's say before the OBBB came online, this was maybe 80% - 85%. This is this impact, which does only have, let's say, a liquidity impact, but nothing on the P&L structure and the ratios, as you can see them there.
Okay, thanks very much. That's very helpful.
Yes, thank you for your question. We have one participant on the audio line for one last question, I guess. Mr. Rotashedder, you should be able to speak now and place your question.
Yeah, hello. Thanks for taking my question. It's actually two. One, in the half-year report, we could read that you gave away like 5% of Bright Rock. I just wonder if you could tell us the reason behind and probably also to whom it went. The second question is just a usual one. Would we think about extending the share buyback once the $4 million are done in the light of the idea that we don't drill anymore this year and in the light of the idea that the oil price is staying that low and also knowing the extended value of Almonty already?
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Rotashedder, and thanks for your question. On the Bright Rock side, yeah, we own 95% of Bright Rock. I think previously we owned, you know, 98% or so of Bright Rock. Basically, we have the company that was empty. We have restarted it as a clean company. The other 5% of shareholders are the participants of the U.S. management, so essentially the two key people on the U.S. side. We have not given that away. They have to invest pro rata and according with us to hold their % ownership. As we've always done it, we are incentivizing our U.S. team with two things. A, with the ability to become an ordinary shareholder, which you can see here. Obviously, as Bright Rock grows, eventually they will not be able to probably hold the 5% ownership.
Assuming we would invest $100 million into Bright Rock, then they would have to invest $5 million in order to have a 5% ownership. That's an important way, nonetheless, for us to have U.S. management participate in this. Effectively, that's what's behind that. With regards to share buyback, yes, obviously, currently we are finishing off or we are in the second half of our existing share buyback program. You've mentioned that it's always a good question and it's always one that we would like to furiously answer with yes. We want to buy back as many shares as we can because we think there is upside. At the same time, as you have pointed out, there are other factors that we need to consider. It's how much capital are we spending, where are oil prices at, do we have the necessary liquidity to acquire more shares.
I think the fair answer is it's definitely something that is on our minds. I think as we round off this existing share buyback program, we will reassess the situation and kind of look at all of these factors, right? What is production doing, where are oil prices, what are our capital opportunities, and what is maybe the market and the global outlook here. Therefore, we'll do what is necessary and what we can do. On the other hand, as you know, we have always tried to be a little bit maybe more conservative than some of the large U.S. companies that are doing things like borrowing money to buy back shares. Obviously, that is something that we are a little bit cautious about as a smaller German oil and gas and listed company. It's definitely on our mind.
Great, thanks.
Great, thanks. Okay, thank you very much. We have one participant with a short question. Hopefully, Mr. Mekbah, you should be able to speak now.
Thank you, Steve.
Excuse me, do you hear me now?
Mr. Mekbah, yes, we know.
Perfect. Thank you very much. Hello everyone. I have a very quick question, actually, regarding the strategic investment in Almonty in this case. Firstly, my understanding is correct that this is, as it is a strategic investment, that it continues to be a long-term investment. There is no intention to divest below these 10%. The second part of the question is, in that regard, how high do you see the risk of this 10% position to be further diluted by potential additional capital raises or other capital measures that are taken by Almonty? Thank you.
Thank you very much. You're absolutely right. Almonty has been a very long-term investment of ours here for the last 11 years and is a core strategic position. I think, some years ago, people were asking, you know, why do you hold 10% in a tungsten mining company?
I think as of today, people can see how high the strategic value that has now, in part been unlocked, actually is. It's a long-term strategic position that we are holding here. With regards to further dilution, the company is very well capitalized now and is on track to bring the mine into production in the second half of the year. I think we are not expecting any further dilution here in the near term. Nonetheless, obviously, that's in the hands of Almonty. We are, as a shareholder, also holding a significant amount of convertible debentures. Our existing position could even be increased. On a fully diluted basis, just for our shares, we would even have a higher share. I think we feel we're roughly at this percentage level for the time being.
Thank you. Is that an intention to increase then the position potentially?
No, I think our position, we are currently holding the existing position and whether we increase that in the future or not, we don't know at this point.
Thank you.
Thank you. Due to the time, we therefore come to the end of today's earnings call. Thank you for joining. Should further questions arise at a later time, please feel free to contact Mr. Rostock from Investor Relations. A big thank you to Mr. Weitz and Mr. Döring for your presentation and the time you took to answer the question. I wish you all a lovely remaining day and hand over to you, Mr. Weitz, for some final remarks.
Thank you very much. Thank you for moderating this conference call also. I will thank everybody else as well for their attention and for participating in this call. I hope you enjoy the rest of our summer and your summer. We will see you soon again at some of the conferences here. We'll be at the Hamburg Investment Talk next week, one of the largest small-cap investment conferences. Looking forward to seeing some of you there.
Thank you. Bye-bye.