Good morning, all, and thank you for joining us on today's Ithaca Energy Q3 2025 results. My name is Rue, and I'll be the operator on the call today. After today's prepared remarks, we will have a Q&A session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star, followed by one on your telephone keypad, and to withdraw your question, it's star, followed by two. With that, it's my pleasure to hand over to Yaniv Friedman, Executive Chairman. Please go ahead when you're ready.
Thank you, and good morning, everyone, from a snowy Aberdeen and a very cold London. Welcome to our Q3 2025 results. My name is Yaniv Friedman, and I'm the Executive Chairman of Ithaca Energy. Today, with me on the call, my colleagues Luciano Vasquez, our Chief Executive Officer, and Iain Lewis, our Chief Financial Officer. If you'll move to slide three on today's agenda, we'll cover highlights of year to date in the Q3 2025 results. Luciano will speak to our strategic and operational highlights. Iain will give us a financial overview, and we'll finish with closing remarks. Of course, as always, open up for questions and answers. Q3 highlights, if you'd be kind to move to slide five. We had another very good quarter with strong strategic delivery supporting our vision for scale, stability, and strength.
Production with 150,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day, average production year to date. We have had a material, some would say, unprecedented summer shutdown, and Luciano will talk about this later. We are on track to deliver full-year production guidance supported by an upgraded Q4 exit rate of 145,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day from 140,000 a day. Adjusted EBITDAX of $1.5 billion for the nine months ending on September 30, enhanced financial performance, substantial cash generation that is supporting our cash allocation flexibility and attractive shareholders' returns. We are reaffirming our 2025 dividend target of $500 million and announcing this morning a payment of $133 million dividend that we have accelerated from April 2026 to December 2025. A strong balance sheet, $1.7 billion of available liquidity. We have had a very successful bond issuance a couple of months ago, EUR 450 million with a 5.5% coupon, and we have upsized our reserve-based lending facility.
This gives us material financial firepower for our next phase of growth, as we like to call it, with a low leverage of 0.5x of EBITDAX. If you'll move to slide six, we are really delivering on all pillars and on our improved 2025 outlook and continued strategic execution, reaffirming our upgraded management guidance that we issued in August, with production trending to the bottom range of the range, primarily due to our informed decision to extend the Captain shutdown period to allow us to do more unplanned investment that will further support longer-term environmental and operational performance. At the same time, we had a slight delay to a startup of three production wells, high production wells, that will come online very, very soon.
Cash tax, and I'm sure Iain will mention this as well, trending to the bottom of the range of the $230 million-$270 million that we gave in August. At the same time, and also due to this unprecedented tariff season, we're seeing increased installed total production capacity in Q4 and trending into 2026, with an uplift in Ithaca's exit production rates in Q4 from 140,000 barrels a day to 140,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day expected. We have announced this morning, this is on the strategy section, 50% farm-in into Shell's Tobermory gas fields, forming part of our wider West of Shetland strategy and really positioning Ithaca as the strategic partner in the region. If we move to slide seven, we thought it would be good a year into our business combination with Eni just to kind of show performance.
We're focused on delivering attractive shareholder returns while continuing to execute on our growth, both organic and inorganic. Strong cash flow generation that supports the accelerated dividend payment that we've announced today and our full-year dividend target of $500 million. If you look over the past three years, from 2023 till today, $1.2 billion of shareholder distribution, $1 billion just in 2024 and in 2025. If you look at total return since business combination dividend adjusted, about 150% return to both share price and dividends. I'll hand over to Luciano to talk about strategic and operational highlights. Luciano, please.
Okay. Good morning, everybody. If we can now switch to slide number nine. We're proud to continue our excellent safety and environmental performance. In particular, we consistently reported zero serious incidents, both in process, professional safety, as well as in the environmental space. That means that we had two full years with no significant demand. Our metrics, as you can see, continue on a positive trend with 1.6 incidents per million man-hours versus the 2.9 of Q3 of last year and emissions at 17.3 kilograms of CO2 per barrel equivalent, which is about 25% lower than the average in the basin. This is, of course, the result of the combination of asset quality, post-business combination, and also the steady operation.
I'd like to say it's a strong indication of good performance, as we've just gone, as Yaniv said, to a material tariff season, which inherently is a challenging one, both in terms of safety and environmental space. We still maintain our excellent safety records thanks to our crews offshore and onshore. If we can move to slide number 10, and we move to production, we closed the Q3 with a year-to-date production of around 115,000 barrels a day, as we said, and had a Q3 contribution of 97,900 barrels per day, which, of course, reflected our tariff campaign in 2025, which saw an unprecedented level of summer shutdowns, with more than 500 days delivered and 15 assets involved, both operated and non-operated. Of these 15, 12 were delivered on time and budget, which is a remarkable achievement.
As I said, the tariff activity has been exceptional and somewhat unavoidable in 2025, with the timing of the business combination, which impacted our ability to optimize the activity sequence. This, in fact, has been possible now for 2026, which will see a 55% deferment risk reduction in our further planning. At Captain, as Yaniv mentioned, the decision was made to extend the shutdown to invest further into safeguarding our longer-term environmental and operational performance. This is a prudent decision because we want to support life extension activity for this asset. With the successful completion of the tariff season and three new high-producing wells, which are coming on stream in December, we are entering the new year with an increased installed total production capacity, as we said.
That is the basis of the uplift that Yaniv just talked about, 245,000 barrels expected as an exit rate. It has been merely a timing issue on new production delivery towards the end of the year. Moving on to slide 11. Again, just to say that on Captain, we progressed with the delivery of the 13th campaign. There are now four construction wells which have been completed, and there are two left to go. We have also matured the planning of the 14th campaign, which we intend to sanction in Q4 2025. On the maintenance campaign, I said already, but of course, this has required an extension of the tariff shutdown period. If we move now to slide 12, we go into Seagull.
At the end of October, we handed over to the operator the J4 well, which is the fourth and last well of the Seagull development. As you may remember, J4 has experienced technical issues in the first half of the year, which had required dedicated and rather technologically advanced operation to safely finalize the completion of the well. We're pleased to report that J4 has been completed and is currently being cleaned up, and flow rates are in line with the pre-drill expectations. This is one of the three wells that I mentioned earlier, which had its startup expected in December of this year. Now, if we can now move to the next slide, which is slide 13.
You may remember that at the end of our half-year results, we presented a similar slide highlighting the importance of West of Shetland in our long-term organic growth strategy, and of course, the one of the United Kingdom as a whole. We will share, of course, an update on Rosebank and Cambo in the next slides, but let me touch on two further fields in this area. This morning, as Yaniv said, we announced the signing of a farm-in agreement with Shell for 50% working interest in licenses P2629 and P2630, which are located in the West of Shetland basin, and that contain the Tobermory discovery. The discovery is estimated to be a gross 2C resources of around 60-65 million barrels, which add to the significant reserves and resources that we already hold in the West of Shetland.
Following completion of the farm-in, Shell UK will continue to hold a 50% stake in the Tobermory discovery and will be the operator of the licenses. The announcement of this farm-in, together with our 50/50 joint venture partnership with Shell in the Tornado discovery, strengthens, of course, further our position as a strategic partner in the area and provides the ability to unlock synergies between discoveries, which are infrastructure-led. The Tornado project, by the way, is progressing towards FID, of course, subject to fiscal and regulatory clarity, and tendering is ongoing, and we are advancing also the environmental statement and the regulatory steps. A little more on the West of Shetland, if we can move to the next slide, slide 13, you can see from the map why this is a strategic basin and it is important for our long-term growth plans.
Not only do we have, of course, the Rosebank field, which is the development ongoing, and we are continuing progression on the largest pre-FID discovery, Cambo, towards an investment decision, but also this area has the potential to unlock further exploration and further near-field tiebacks. This positions us as a key player in the northern gas hub with significant prospectivity in terms of resources that can, in fact, benefit from the infrastructures that can be shared and allow for relatively quick turnaround connection when new fields and new discoveries are available. We believe we can achieve significant synergy with the greater Tornado area, and our investment in the West of Shetland is critical for us, and it's also critical for U.K. energy security, also supporting skills, jobs, and our supply chain, which, as you know, is vital for the entire economy.
Moving to the next slide, we go and talk about Rosebank, and now we're in slide 15. Pleased to report that material progress has been achieved in respect to the refreshed consents. The operator, with our support active, has submitted the updated environmental statement in Q3, which included, as you remember, the assessment of the scope 3 emissions associated with the project came after the guidelines issued by the government in June 2025 following last year's consultation. After the submission, operators advised that there were no objections to proceed with the public consultation process in relation to the amended submission, and now this consultation process is, in fact, at the phase of concluding. We expect a revised consent to be issued in early 2026, which is much earlier than what's needed for the targeted first production.
If we move to the project side of things, to the next slide, slide 16, the 2025 offshore subsea installation scope will deliver on time and budget and excellent HSE statistics. The drilling activities are scheduled to commence in Q1 2026, as it was planned. The FPSO refurbishment activity is progressing at pace. A third dry dock has been completed, and project progresses with a target to sail away early 2026, so to allow the mooring in the field during 2026. We are supporting the operator in its effort to maintain the FPSO sail-away date, which is a critical milestone together with drilling and hookup and commissioning works to achieving the first production target at the end of 2026 or beginning of 2027.
On costs, the updates from operator indicate that based on the achievement of the schema funds, as I mentioned, which include limited carryover activities post the FPSO sail-away, the total project return forecasts do not need to be materially updated at this time and will be revisited after the FPSO sail-away. If we can move to Cambo, that is slide 17, completing our zoom into the West of Shetland, our project is continuing its maturation towards the final investment decision and potential fund down, which will require fiscal and regulatory clarity, an outcome that we expect in the coming weeks. We have put significant efforts into maturing the project in the quarter and throughout the year, actually, for all main tenders for the key project packages.
Of course, this through the FPSO engineering, but also its procurement, construction, and commissioning, but also the tenders for the subsea, the umbilicals, risers, and flow lines. They are all commenced, and they're intended to be completed by mid-2026. We have a consolidated project cost and schedule, which will be at the basis of the risk. Final investment decision. We've also progressed speedily on the regulatory side, and we've also leveraged, of course, on the experience of Rosebank, and we're now pointing at the submission of an updated field development plan and environmental statement before the end of 2025, which will, of course, reflect all our optimizations of the last year in the project. That concludes the strategic and operational highlights, and I'll hand over to Iain for the financial overview.
Thanks, Luciano, and good morning, everyone. Turn to slide 19, please, and we'll call out some of the key numbers for the year-to-date Q3. The top line, some of the operational numbers, 115,000 barrels a day, split 58% liquids and 42% gas. Obviously, from 1 October, with the completion of the deal to add Cygnus equity, our gas production will increase, and it will be more balanced towards 50/50 at the end of the year. That's come through with a $19.1 per barrel year-to-date Q3 OPEX, and again, driving below 19 is the aim for the year, and we can see that coming to pass in the numbers year-to-date Q3. In the middle of the slide, you see the outturn performance financially, $1.5 billion of EBITDAX and $1.3 billion of net cash from ops.
The main difference between those two, obviously, being the cash tax payments made in Q3, again, very strong performance, and a $98.5 million profit in Q3 standalone, helping to claw back against the net income charge for EPL extension that was booked in Q1. We are $119 million negative for the year-to-date Q3 in net income terms. In terms of debt and liquidity, you can see that we are $1.1 billion of net debt at the end of the quarter, 0.5 times leverage ratio, again, maintaining our low leverage position, but very significant liquidity. We end the quarter with, I think, a record liquidity position of $1.7 billion through our facilities. Moving to slide 20, a little bit more detail on EBITDAX, just to call out a couple of numbers here.
Clearly, a transformed business Q3 2025 compared with Q3 2024 year-to-date with 115,000 barrels a day compared to 53,000 barrels a day. One thing I would call out is continued hedge gains. You can see that $77 million of hedge gains in the year-to-date 2025, a consistent pattern now over three years of hedge gain positions. We have, at the end of the quarter, material hedge mark-to-market positive positions as well across both oil, gas, and FX hedges continuing to strengthen and protect the business. I would call out just in terms of the value from production line. Obviously, prices are a bit softer in 2025 than they were in 2024. You can see that the $83 a barrel year-to-date 2024 value from production has moved out to $68 following that market trend, so a $15 reduction.
Because of the operating cost shift that we've seen in the business and been able to drive from $29 a barrel last year to $19 this year, you can see that the EBITDAX per barrel has only dropped 5 from $53 a barrel to $48. Just showing the resilience of the business as transformed from the merger with the Eni assets and the sustaining EBITDAX per barrel at a very high level. Moving on to slide 21 and a bit of a summary of our refinancing that we did in the quarter. You can tell on the right-hand side in terms of bond performance, the US dollar bond that's been in the market for over a year now has been performing very well. Strong credit support in the market and appetite for the bonds.
That, together with favorable market conditions in the summer, led us to the issuance of a EUR 450 million bond, again, accessing a new market with a lot of appetite for the issuance, able to execute that at 5.5% coupon with an effective translation into US dollars for hedge protection at 6.7%. Again, just reflecting for our credit rating, a very strong issuance and enabling us to look forward with confidence in terms of the various options that we have financially. We always want to stay with significant liquidity and capacity, and we leave the quarter in that position. Moving to slide 22 to see that in a bit more detail, you can see the adjusted net debt position of $1.064 billion at the end of the quarter with significant cash on hand.
You can see that in the middle, the available liquidity has been augmented by not just the issuance of the notes, the euro notes, but also the extension of the reserve-based lending facility. We added $300 million, adding new institutions to our facility, which gives material upside to the liquidity position. We used the accordion, and we still have a remaining tranche in the accordion in our RBL as well. Again, just making ourselves ready for opportunities. Our flexibility and agility in the market is underpinned by our financial capacity and flexibility, and this continues to position us to be able to move when opportunity arises. Finally, on the right-hand side, you can see 0.5 times net debt to EBITDAX at the close of the quarter, maintaining our modest leverage position. On slide 23, again, we're giving lots more detail on our hedge book.
We have a very strong hedge position at the end of the quarter with nearly 40 million barrels hedged through Q4 2025 and extending out into now 2027. You can see on the left-hand side that we have a strong oil book with swaps and collars put together to show significant hedging through 2026. The floors on those, you can tell on the table at the bottom that the swaps are at about $67 for 2026 all the way through, so above market. You can see that the collar floors are in the low $60s with ceilings up to $70 a barrel. A strong hedge position going into the year 2026 on the oil front. A continued very strong gas book. You can see swaps at essentially $110s or just below for several quarters ahead and floor ceilings of $80 with a lot of headroom above.
Continuing to deliver protection for the business, protection for EBITDAX, and yet leaving us with material upside in the price environment if we were to see some strengthening on the Brent and the NBP pricing. Okay, I'll hand back to Yaniv for outlook and closing remarks.
Thank you, Iain. I'm on slide 25. Before closing remarks, it's also snowing in London, apparently, so not just in Aberdeen. Quite heavily. Back to the performance of the quarter. Strong performance, again, a very good quarter, 150,000 barrels of oil equivalent production, strong cash generation, EBITDAX of $1.5 billion, and we're increasing our production capacity in Q4 with an upgraded exit rate expected of 145,000 barrels per day of production. It's brought at length about our balance sheet, and I would just say we've been very disciplined. You can see this from our hedging strategy. You can see this from our debt management strategy. This $1.7 billion of liquidity gives us a lot of flexibility to go and do things in 2026. We're focused on growth, organic and inorganic.
The announcement this morning on Tobermory demonstrates our view and position in the West of Shetland and supporting our long-term growth. At the same time, since the closing of the Eni business, we have closed in two additional acquisitions of JAPEX and Spirit with Cygnus that were completed in July and in October. We are doing all this keeping in mind that shareholders' returns are very important. Looking at this through that perspective as well, we have accelerated $133 million of dividend from April till December, reaffirming our $500 million dividend target for 2025. Overall, again, a very solid and very strong quarter. Before we move to Q&A, I would just say that this is a work of many. We have a great team in Aberdeen. Thank you, Ithaca team, and we will now open this up for questions.
Thank you. We will now start today's Q&A session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad, and to withdraw your question, hit star followed by two. Our first question comes from Chris Wheaton from Stifel. Your line is now open. Please go ahead with your question.
Brilliant. Thank you very much. Thank you very much indeed for the call this morning, guys. Well done on great operational performance. Your team's done extraordinarily well, I think. A couple of questions, two, maybe three questions from me. Firstly, on the dividend, obviously, oil prices are down substantially versus when the company IPO'd and also since last year. I'm interested in how much that drop in commodity prices is factoring into your thinking about where dividend goes for 2026 onwards, given you've delivered a good operational, great operational performance so far. My second question would be on tax, if I may. What do you need to see from the budget next week to start progressing Cambo, Tornado, Tobermory forward with more certainty? If you can talk about anything you need to see from the budget next week, that would be, I think, very interesting.
My last question would be also on just finally on Rosebank, what would make that late 2026 startup rather than, say, early 2027 in terms of what has to get done to be able to get a sort of late 2026 startup? That's it for me. Thank you.
Okay. Yeah. Hi, Chris. I'll take the first one. In terms of our dividend policy, it's clearly linked with cash from operations, which is where we've always pinned ourselves since IPO. Part of our hedge protection is indeed to make sure that we're able to deliver material results. I think as we went through there, you can see that our hedge book is well ahead of market. Although prices have softened a little, we believe, first of all, there'll be volatility because there has been in recent years materially. We will take advantage of that in the hedge market we already have done. Therefore, we expect some strong EBITDAX performance with strong production delivery. That means we will expect a strong dividend and more to come on that when we give our update at the year-end in early 2026.
In terms of the second, I'll pass maybe to Yaniv on that.
No. Thanks, Chris, for your comments. Look, on budget and EPL, we continue to engage with the government. I would say it's a constructive engagement about the future of oil and gas and fiscal policy. I could say that Ithaca has been an active participant in these discussions. I think more generically, what the industry needs and what we need is certainty, right? We need to understand that there is a path forward, that there is certainty, that there is stability in the fiscal regime, that we can plan ahead and do our capital allocation properly. Without getting into details of what we expect or what we need, obviously, we think that the current environment is far from being windfall in any way, shape, or form and needs to be revisited and reshaped.
I think the most important thing for the industry is certainty. Luciano?
Yeah. On Rosebank, the key indicators, if you want, for that are, in fact, the sail away date, the amount of work that might eventually be carried over at the sail away because the scope is, the objective is to minimize any carryover work, and then the efficiency of the hookup campaign during summer next year and of the commissioning. As you know, in these projects, the last steps are usually the pretty intense one, intensive one too. If everything goes and we will have a better view of it in Q1 next year, how efficiently these last months in the docks have been and have been executed, and how quickly can all the commissioning be carried out in the campaign, to be able to tell us whether we are going to hit the end of 2026 or into 2027.
Although, I mean, the impact on the overall result is limited because there is still a ramp up, which is pretty smooth in terms of bringing in new wells.
Great. Thank you. Let's all keep our fingers crossed for some sanity and a breaking out for the budget next Wednesday. Thank you.
Thanks, Chris.
Our next question comes from James Carmichael from Berenberg. Your line is now open. Please go ahead with your question.
Hi. Morning, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. Just a couple, please. I guess another one linked to the budget. You've obviously got your, or you talk about your consolidation strategy on the UKCS. You've obviously got quite a bit of financial firepower on the balance sheet now. From what you're seeing, I guess the U.K. has been fairly active on the M&A front over the last 12 months or so. From what you're seeing, assuming some sort of sense of outcome in the budget, do you see sort of lots of M&A there that's waiting to go, I guess, if we get the right result next week? I guess we could include Cambo in that maybe as a follow-up. Just on Captain, I was wondering if you could provide a bit of color on the increased scope of work that extended that shutdown.
Also, sort of specifically what you're talking about when you say safeguarding the environmental operational performance, were there some sort of issues that you uncovered as you were going through that work? Just some color on that would be great. Thanks.
Thanks, James. I'll take the first one. Look, again, as I said earlier, we're not going to say much further on EPL. I think we'll all wait and see. As Chris said, we'll expect some sanity and sensibility coming out of this process. Again, as mentioned, there is engagement, so we're hopeful that this will land in a sensible place. If this has a direct effect on M&A, I'm looking at the past 12 months or 15 months, and you've seen it's been quite an active M&A scene in the UKCS, right? From Ithaca and Eni and Shell and Equinor with Adora and NEO and Repsol on NeoNext and our acquisitions and Killeen acquisitions. It's been active. I'm not sure there is a direct effect on an M&A.
Obviously, I think that if EPL comes in a sensible place, what you'll see is companies planning in the future and having hopefully CapEx programs to keep investing and growing in the UKCS. We are, as you know, active. The way we're looking at this is always through our value lens and our investment criteria, which are very clear to us. So we keep looking at opportunities and try and high-grade our portfolio, which is, as your portfolio is a higher quality, it's obviously getting more difficult to high-grade, but we're always looking at the best. Cambo, I think it's the same thing, right? Once we get certainty and we know what the future holds, it would enable us to plan accordingly. Again, it's a project that we would like to do under the right circumstances. Odin, maybe you'd like to take—sorry.
Yeah, I was going to say, on the Captain points, we've been joined by Odin Esten, our Chief Operating Officer for the Q&A just now. I will pass over to Odin.
Yeah. Hello, everybody. Of course, Captain is a super important asset for us. This was a tower which was big from the beginning. When you do a tower like this, you are gathering key information, and you have done lots of inspections. We have learned things on the way, which we then took a decision on in order to set Captain up to be the kind of big, reliable machine for the future for us. We saw that it was necessary to invest a little bit further, particularly into optimizing our environmental performance and also the operational performance going forward. That is why we decided to invest further and take the time now setting up Captain for reliable, high performance in the years to come.
Okay. Thanks.
Our next question comes from Cian Evans-Cowie from Bank of America. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for taking my questions. Just two, please. The first one, a bit of a clarification question. You've obviously upgraded the exit rate guidance for the year. Just wondering how we should think about this, and if you could clarify, please. Maybe it's the flow rate you're expecting at the very end of December, or is it more of a Q4 run rate, or is it a steady rate that you should be able to hold comfortably by the end of the year? Or perhaps it's more of a peak production rate that you'll hit for maybe a day, but not much longer. Just a bit of clarifying on that, please. Then you've said in Q3 you experienced unprecedented levels of summer shutdowns. I wonder, going into next year and beyond, how should we think about this?
Is this now the run rate we should expect for the third quarter going forward? Thank you.
Yeah. Maybe as you know, I'll take the first one on exit rate. Look, it's not a—it's a number that our installed capacity allows us to do. We have three new wells that are to come in in December. Measuring this on how many number of days is difficult, but we expect this to be our exit rate and trending into 2026. It just shows and demonstrates the quality and efficiency of our assets. As Odin said earlier, with the additional work that we've done in safeguarding operational and environmental in Captain, which is a critical asset for us, that also adds to this, right? With the additional three wells coming in, we're seeing this peak production.
Obviously, we're not at the point right now of guiding to 2026, but I guess you can understand that from this, we'll go into 2026 strong and we'll come up with guidance in early 2026.
Yeah. I think, Odin, for the second question on the towers for next year in Q3.
Yeah. Yeah. On the turnarounds, as a consequence of the October combination last year, we came into this turnaround season with basically no opportunity to optimize the sequence of turnarounds. That then resulted in us having turnarounds on all over 15 non-operated and operated assets this summer. Going forward, we are able to optimize that. Just as an indication, if you look at the total deferred volumes, we are bringing that down from 3.5 million this year to 1.5 million next year. It is a reduction of 55% on deferment volumes and also thereby a 55% reduction in risk for overruns at the same time achieved. We are setting ourselves completely up differently going forward.
Okay. Thank you very much. That's very, very helpful. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Mashke from Barclays. Your line is now open. Please proceed.
Hey, good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. Perhaps two, please. The first one is just a follow-up on the Q4 2025 exit production rate, please. I wonder if you can just explain a little bit more on the impact for 2026 production level. Will this change any of your outlook into 2026? My second question is on 2026 capital framework. I understand you have a lot of firing power for your balance sheet, but gearing has gone up a little bit. I wonder, how do you balance balance sheet together with dividend, together with potential more M&A? Thank you so much.
Nasha, good to hear from you. Thank you for your questions. I think we've answered the exit rate question. I don't want to repeat myself, but as I said, it gives a sense of what our capabilities are and will guide appropriately in early 2026. Iain, do you want to take the capital allocation question?
Sure. Yes. I mean, one of the key things for us is being transparent and consistent in our allocation of capital and our delivery. The capital allocation framework we've used since IPO has delivered just that. In terms of what we'll do, gearing, of course, will move depending on timing of cash payments, of dividend payments, etc. Policy remains exactly the same. We'll protect the balance sheet. We've said one and a half times is our kind of ceiling, but we don't really expect to be above one times net debt EBITDAX. We think that's an appropriate place to be. We're clearly well below that just now at 0.5 times at the end of the quarter. Dividend will continue to be linked with cash from operations. That's our policy, and that's the delivery.
It has enabled us this year, as well as in prior years, to deliver good returns to shareholders whilst protecting the balance sheet. I think the M&A that we've done this year is a good example. It is in the fourth category in the capital allocation framework. It is the additional deployment of capital. We deployed additional returns to shareholders last year with a special dividend. This year, we've done two bolt-on growth deals. We will continue to use that framework, which we think is prudent but value-delivering across our stakeholders.
Perfect. Thank you very much.
As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question on today's call, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to withdraw your question, it's star followed by two. Our next question comes from the line of Mark Wilson from Jefferies. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Mark, your line is now open. Please go ahead with your question.
Thank you very much. I got one question, if I may. After the Tobermory farm-in here and assuming that we get clarity and everything goes together with EPL, could you give a vision of what your suite of West of Shetland assets, Rosebank, Cambo, Tobermory, Tornado, on a post-2030 basis, what could be the production from those developments if they all go ahead? It looks like there's about 300 million resources net to reserves and resources net to Ithaca, maybe 200 even if you farm down Cambo. Just a vision of what that could be would be really interesting. Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks, Mark. You're taking away my next conference call or Capital Markets Day slide, so I'm not going to answer that now. We'll give the vision, and I think it will be a, I think we'll be more certain once we get clarity on the budget and be able to analyze this. Just very briefly, we're seeing ourselves as longer-term players in the UKCS. We've said this all along. We've consolidated everything in Aberdeen. We're, I think, proving ourselves to be a very efficient and renowned operator. Our goal is to keep investing in the UKCS, albeit with the right fiscal framework to allow this and other regulatory frameworks to support this. I think with Tobermory and Tornado and Cambo and obviously Rosebank, we're a significant player in kind of the future of the West of Shetland.
I'll take you up on that, and we'll speak more about this in our next full-year results and guidance call.
Excellent. Look forward to it. Thank you very much.
Kathryn, write it down so we'll not forget.
It's maybe worth—I mean, I guess the numbers we went through on the slide do show you, Mark, that our net share of Rosebank resources is about 66 million barrels. Our net share of Tobermory and Tornado together is about the same, and Cambo pre-farm now is 143. Clearly, those three assets are going to be large material positions in the West of Shetland. Yeah, as Iain said, the story on this and the plotting of it will give you more details in due course.
I guess it's always also something we're mentioning to the government every time we get a chance. This really plays into the U.K. energy security and U.K. energy future. When you look at this, it's a significant contributor to the U.K. economy going forward.
I'll now hand back over to Kathryn Reid.
Thank you. We have a question from Werner Riding at Peel Hunt who has unfortunately been kicked out of the call. His question is, "With OPEX per barrel at $19.1, how much more structural cost reduction is achievable, and what is the risk of cost inflation as the portfolio matures, especially in the West of Shetland?" I will hand that to Iain.
Yeah. Sure. Thanks, Kathryn. In terms of structural cost reduction, I mean, I think we have been prudent, and we have been measured, and we've been consistent in our approach to cost. We have not taken knee-jerk reactions to changes in the business or in the environment. We believe in long-term value-driven supply chain relationships. We see ourselves as a fair counterparty, but we clearly understand where cost should be in the value position. We have protected the value, particularly in the US dollar position with our FX hedges as well. In oil and gas, we believe that the value is driven by day-in and day-out small decisions, managing headcount positions and making sure we have got the right resource in the right places, managing our supply chain well, ensuring that we have got the right balance in-house and outsourcing. There is no silver bullet on this.
I'm afraid I think we're in a good place, and we continue to try and drive the cost per barrel down. You could easily lose value by over-reducing costs. We've invested a lot in maintenance costs, in improvements to our infrastructure, and we'll continue to do so. Yeah, long-term, measured, and consistent is the approach, not step-changing costs in any way. We're quite happy where we are, but always with a value lens.
Thank you. That concludes the Q&A portion of today's call. I'll now hand back over to Yaniv for some closing remarks.
Thank you. Thank you, everyone, as always, for joining our call and for your questions. We will speak soon, and wishing you all a very happy holiday season and a happy new year. Thank you.
Thank you all for joining. That concludes today's call, and you may now disconnect your line.