Good morning and welcome to Seplat Energy PLC's half-year results 2025. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session through the phone lines, and instructions will follow at that time. I would like to remind all participants that this call is being recorded. I will now hand over to James Thompson, Head of Investor Relations, to open the presentation. Please go ahead.
Thank you, John. Hello everybody. Welcome to Seplat Energy's financial results for the first half of 2025. On the call today from Seplat, we have our CEO, Roger Brown, CFO, Eleanor Adaralegbe, and our COO, Samson Ezugworie. We'll follow a normal process with Q&A following the prepared remarks. Before we start, I'd just draw your attention to the statement on forward-looking statements on slide two, and now I'll pass you over to Roger Brown for the introduction. Roger, over to you.
Thanks, James. Hello everyone. We start off with the six months' highlights here, financial and operational highlights. We start by saying this is a record-setting result for us as a business. We can see in our working interest production at 134.5 thousand barrels of oil equivalent per day. That's quite sizable, up, obviously, in prior periods. If I look at the mix between oil and gas, you can see there you have 77% oil and NGLs, and 23% gas. That's really upper end of our guidance, which is 120 - 140. In terms of reported revenue, we are in the half-year at $1.4 billion. If you look at the split of that, the proportion is about 93% oil and NGLs and 7% gas. It's changed. It's like a mix of our portfolio, and the equivalent period last year, it was 85:15 between oil and gas.
EBITDA numbers are very strong at $735 million. If we look at the cash flow from operations at pre-tax, it's an equivalent level at $766 million. We're generating a lot of cash and EBITDA, and we're quite sizably up from last year. Looking at our credit metrics as a business, we've received upgrades in the half from Moody’s and Fitch. I think the most important note around that is that we've now pierced the sovereign ceiling. We're one notch above the Nigerian sovereign, and we're at B2 and the sovereign's at B3. It's quite an accolade to show that our credit metrics are now piercing sovereign ceilings. If you turn into the next slide, now we look at Q2 in a bit more detail. In terms of just some of our sovereign integration, we've been very active in the integration workstream. We kicked it off, started Q2.
There's been a lot of work done. It's really dimensioning how we're going to put the two businesses together. Lots of workstreams, lots of work around synergies from combined businesses, and really looking at how we're going to grow the future of the entity. We're going to give you more information on that in September when we have our capital markets day. So far, so good. I think the cultures are working well together, and the direction of the combined business should be very exciting. In terms of dividends, we're declaring another dividend for Q2, and that's $0.046 a share. If you look at the cumulative dividends to date since our IPO, we've delivered $1.24 per share. Seplat now is getting into a really good position of delivering dividends. We'll look at that as we go forward.
In terms of production, looking at the offshore production, you're starting to see some of the well restoration work coming through. We have an 11% increase quarter on quarter. We expect that to continue for the rest of the year. Not just looking at idle well restoration, and Sam will get into this in his area, it's actually looking at the efficiency and, very importantly, the reliability of those production numbers. CO2 emissions, again, we are committed to reducing CO2 emissions, and you can see there that we've got a 25% reduction in the quarter. Let me hand across to Sam, who will go through the operational performance in some detail. Thanks.
Thank you, Roger, and very good morning, everybody. Our offshore performance in the first half of 2025 has been very, very strong across both onshore and offshore assets, reflecting the scale of our new business, almost 2.7 times. The strong performance is actually aided by a number of things. In the offshore area, the idle well restoration program, the commercial operations of the Sapele Integrated Gas Plant (SIGP) that we have brought on stream, improved production from oil and gas plant following the turnaround maintenance of quarter four last year, and continued good well performance following our hydrogen activities. The group production at the moment is 134.5. Again, as highlighted above the midpoint of our guidance, if you then just unpack it a little bit more, in the onshore assets, we are 13% higher than the equivalent period in 2024, up 7%. Liquids, up 24% in gas.
The offshore production is also very strong, nearly 80,000 barrels of oil equivalent, 86% of which is crude and condensate, 9% gas, and 5% NGLs. On the top right-hand side, you'll see the continuous improvement we're making with the idle well restoration program. We've delivered nearly 26,000 barrels of oil equivalent from 22 wells. This is in line with our expectations, and we continue to drive those improvements into the second half of the year. You can see the ramp-up program from January to the end of June. If you come to the bottom, you will see that our unit OPEX is flat and slightly below guidance, but we expect to pick up quite a lot of heavy activities in the second half of the year because we will then execute the inlet gas exchanger program at the EAP, among others.
Roger already highlighted the improvement from our end-of-routine flaring projects in our emissions. The intensity is down by 25%, and this is essentially aided by the commissioning of SIGP, the supply gas project. If you go to the next slide, we then begin to see our midstream business also improving at a similar scale to what we saw in our upstream business, essentially aided by consolidation of our offshore and onshore businesses, and again, helped by what I mentioned earlier in the previous slide, the SIGP commercialization and improved gas production from oil. Gas production has gone up by 62%, onshore contributing 24%, and the balance from the offshore integration. Realized that price remains stable over the period despite the PGTO price changes. If I just come into some specifics, you will see at the top right-hand corner, we have made some significant progress with our ANOH Gas Processing Plant.
While NGIC continues to resolve the challenges with the OB3 pipeline, our focus continues to now be on monetization of the gas through two offtake gas in quarter four this year. The ANOH Gas Processing Plant has received third-party gas and commenced live hydrocarbon testing, and first gas is expected by quarter four this year. Additionally, remember that in quarter one, we reported to you that our first module in the Sapele Integrated Gas Plant was commissioned. We completed the reliability test and obtained license to operate of the first module. In this second half of the year, second quarter specifically, we also commenced the operationalization of the second module. These are all going to come together in this third quarter, and you will see additional improvement in our gas production into the domestic market of Nigeria.
If you then go to the next slide, I would like to focus you on what are going to be our key focus areas for the second half of this year. In our offshore asset in particular, we will complete the IG replacement, that is the inlet gas exchanger changeout at the Eastern Asset Project. This will increase our gas production from our offshore asset. We will continue with the idle well restoration program to continue to improve our efficiency and delivery on the production numbers. You remember that at the completion of the takeover of the asset, we had a seller's Competent Persons Report. We are now upgrading that CPR with our results auditors, Ryder Scott, and we are in the process of updating that number.
The update is underway, and we will come back to you again during the September Capital Markets Day with the final outcome of that. On the onshore side, our focus for the second half of the year will be to continue to maintain very strong production performance in both oil and gas. We will continue with our drilling activities and close out the end-of-routine flaring program, the balance of the activities there, including the LPG plant in Sapele. In the midstream gas business, we're looking forward to achieving first gas at ANOH, completing the 19-day reliability test on the second module at Sapele Gas Plant, and then bringing the LPG plant on stream. With that, I will hand over to Eleanor, who will then take us through the financial results. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Sam. Hello, everyone, and thank you for making time to join our call this afternoon. Again, a lot of excitement on our results for the first half of the year. I think it really demonstrates the impact of the offshore business that we acquired late in December. In just six months, we've demonstrated our ability to drive value for the business. What you can see on the slide are some of the key metrics and the growth in all of these areas. I think despite the volatility that we experienced with oil price, especially in the second quarter, we still delivered very strong results in this period. If you look at the slide, we've described our liftings have been more than four times year on year. We've maintained a really strong balance sheet.
We've kept a very close eye on being prudent, and our net debt is down 25%. We have a very strong cash flow from operations. As Roger highlighted, the enhanced credit rating is also a reflection of how much faith and trust there is from the capital markets on our business. The next slide provides a bit more detail on our financial results and is showing the comparatives with the six-month performance in 2024. In this same period last year, we just had the onshore business, and you can see there's a huge step change in the performance for the first six months across almost all the areas. I think what I'd like to highlight here is the impact of the growth not just in the offshore business, but also in the onshore. We've seen a step change in our gas business, and that's demonstrated on the slide.
Cost of sales is showing an elevated number. It's mostly driven by a focus for us maintaining the assets on the offshore business. We had some high numbers on DD&A, and I'll speak to that a little later in the presentation. There's also the impact of the fact that we've had higher production. Even though the costs are showing elevated numbers, they're very positive. Now, on G&A, the numbers you see there on G&A reflect the larger organization. We expect these to be the similar levels for the full year, and we're largely in line with our plan for the year. We did have some underlift in the periods, but underlift is just a function of timing. That would obviously adjust in the following periods.
On the financing costs, the impact, obviously, of the refinancing, as well as the additional debt that we use to support the acquisition of the offshore business, is the reflection there. I think that the slightly elevated number in the six months includes some of the commitment fees from our financing. That will start to normalize in the second half. I think the biggest number on this slide is the tax. I'd like to just mention that though we see a very high effective tax rate in this period, a lot of this is a reflection of the fact that the investments have been very minimal in the offshore business. We are going to start to see those investments coming through. Once we start to do that, we'll start to build capital allowances and then provide the shield. The high effective tax rate is really an effect of this investment.
The way the Nigerian fiscal regime is structured, it's supposed to really incentivize investments in this business. I'll give some more details on that in the coming slides. We've also highlighted on this slide the CapEx investments made to date. Our drilling is going to be quite heavy in the second half of the year. Though it's sort of slightly below, you know, it's sort of within the guidance if you think about the half year, we expect more drilling activity to happen in the second half alongside some of the repairs, the work that we're doing with the IGE replacement. Cash generated from operations is very strong. Obviously, you can see compared to the same period last year, it's more than doubled what we've previously reported. One of our strongest performances since. We've seen very stable working capital.
If I move to the next slide, there's a lot more detail on our cash flow. We started the year with just shy of half a billion dollars in cash. I think the most exciting bit for us is even despite the volatility in the macro, we still generated $766 million of cash from operations driven by, of course, the liftings that we've done. When you consider all the payments, expenditure, including the taxes, before the debt movements, we're just below $700 million. The strongest results we've seen, over 200% year-on-year increases in our cash flow from our commissions. You can see this slide here is very telling. Operating free cash flow of almost $400 million translates to almost $15 per barrel. Very positive.
We expect that in the second half of the year, I mean, if the oil prices again remain at similar levels as we're seeing, certainly getting into this second half, we expect these results to be very reflective of what the full year would look like. Now, just to mention here, again, working capital has been good. We are showing receivables better than where we were at the end of Q1. Just to highlight here that we have that in hand, there's a lot of good work going on there, and I'll speak to that a little later as well. If I move to the next slide, this slide sort of shows the strength of our balance sheet since the acquisition.
A lot of what we shared with you in the first quarter, this second quarter and this first half of the year is really, we're just really building on the information that we have shared with you previously. As a combined business, gross debt is just below $1.1 billion. Net debt, again, improved because we've delivered this period. It's obviously very reflective of the cash-generated nature of our business. We continue to maintain our leverage. We're quite conservative on our leverage, and we are 0.53 times this period. If you see the little chart below, it sort of shows you our net debt to EBITDA numbers through the cycle from the first quarter of 2022 to date. Our debt covenant says that we should be below three times, but within our policy, we will always be below two times. That's our policy.
I think that the most exciting bit about this slide is really the additional flexibility that's provided with the liquidity. Now with our RCF, we've just also now repaid the $100 million on our RCF. The $350 million RCF we have is fully undrawn as of today. If you combine that with the cash balances, you see that our total liquidity is inching up to $800 million. In addition, as part of the work that we've done with the refinancing, we've extended maturities on our debts. Additional flexibility, as you can see on the chart, the $650 million bond extends up to 2030. The advanced payment facility that was secured for the acquisition of our offshore assets is around 2027. Our final slide, I'll speak on what our focus is going to be for the second half of this year. A lot of this we've already started.
Maybe to speak a little bit about the taxes, I know there's quite a focus on it. I started off explaining that, you know, some of these, some of the investments that we are hoping to achieve on the offshore business is going to make a huge difference. It's to understand that, you know, even for 2025, we are actually planning a CapEx investment that's almost eight times the three-year average pre-CIC. If you think about what was previously invested in the offshore business before we acquired it, I mean, very low investment. Already in 2025, we're ramping that up very, very quickly. We're starting off doing that. That will start to build, that will start to build the capital allowances as we go through the year. In 2026, we expect this to continue to increase.
We are going to be spending quite a bit of time at the CMD sharing more details on this. I think in addition to this, and Sam, I mentioned this very briefly, we are working on a new Competent Persons Report. The new Competent Persons Report is expected to show improved reserves, and therefore, that should also impact our DD&A numbers. We expect in the third quarter, our DD&A rate to come down. If that comes down, then we expect the profit before tax from Q3 onwards to also come down. Thinking about the effective tax rate for the full year, we're anticipating that the 90% will drop to between 70% and 80% as we begin to meet some of these targets around investments and get the updates from the Competent Persons Report.
Specifically on the cash taxes itself, you see that we've paid the cash taxes of $214 million in this first half, and we expect that the cash taxes will broadly be in line. In the second half, it will largely be the same as what we've paid in the first half. Again, the way we've done our taxes, we've analyzed the plans so that, you know, based on what we were forecasting for the second half, we've sort of analyzed it. Hopefully, again, it's also still a reflection of oil price and, you know, obviously delivering on the CapEx program. The final thing to add here is that there's still additional benefits that will help us with the tax burden. This is to do with the PIA conversion, which we are now commencing conversations on with our offshore business.
While on our onshore business, we expect to sort of get the approvals this year. Again, it's dependent on the government, on NUPRC, but we are working very closely with them, and hopefully, we should get that sold in 2025 for the onshore business. For the offshore business, some of the conversations have commenced, and that will come in a little later. Next to sort of pick up on this slide is on the cost side of things. Again, there is quite a focus on cost optimization for us. In just the last couple of months, we've started to look at our supply chain and procurement space, and we're looking to secure better rates from the larger business. We have opportunities to rationalize our feeds and look at our inventory as well. In addition to that, there's an opportunity to remove duplications in some of the corporate functions.
A lot of this is going to drive our costs downwards. Speaking to working capital, again, strong relationship with our Nigerian National Petroleum Company JV partners. We've had a really good working relationship with them. That has continued from even before the acquisition. We've secured approvals for some of the late costs in 2024 and also the 2025 budgets. That approval has allowed some of the cash cut payments to start to come through. We did show that receivables, we had higher receivables, but again, we have that in hand. A lot of it has already been approved, and now we're going to be chasing the actual cash recoveries, which we've received assurances that we will start to see coming through this quarter and into next quarter. The way we've planned our liquidity, again, with our RCF is undrawn.
Our existing business is still robust enough to settle the deferred consideration. We have some final payments to make to ExxonMobil related to the acquisition. Even despite that, our liquidity is strong to ensure that we complete those payments. Finally, as we start to think longer term and grow production and increase value, the JV financing is going to be one area where we're going to be working with the Nigerian National Petroleum Company to support the growth plans we have for the offshore assets. Finally, to just reiterate the way we're looking at our debt, we refinanced the bond in April. That supported, the timing was really good. In addition, we provided additional flexibility around dividends. For the second half, we are looking at a number of options around the reserve-based lending we have with Elcrest because that matures soon.
We are looking at bringing up the cost of the debt then, potentially extending maturity of the financing. Also, on the RCF as well, we are looking to see how we can create additional flexibility beyond the times that we have now. Thank you for listening. I'll now hand over to Roger.
Okay. Let me summarize then in the final slide. Just in the six-month summary, I think the takeaway here is strong operational performance. We're really seeing the impact of the additional production, good gas performance, both onshore and working towards the offshore production increases, etc. Cash generation is good. It's EBITDA on this. Again, we are deleveraging the business, which is prudent management, and obviously maintaining the dividend. If I then look at our outlook, let's do the right-hand side first, which is the guidance slide. We're sitting at the upper end of the guidance. We maintain that guidance of 120 - 140. There's a lot of activities in Q3 in CapEx. Again, we are slightly behind guidance in terms of the first half, but we fully expect to catch that up and be within the guidance range.
Operating costs, I think you'll certainly see operating costs below the guidance range there. It's likely that we will see how Q3 goes and then look to potentially tighten that in Q3. In terms of the integration, which is a big part of what we're trying to achieve this year, putting the two businesses together, we're on track. The cultures are aligning, and we're going to work through the second half of this year, really putting it together. When we go into next year, it's going to be a fully combined business. In terms of operational events coming up, we talked about the Competent Persons Report, which we will obviously communicate in probably six weeks' time at CMD. First gas at ANOH has been a lot of effort to get to where we are today, but we are really in the final stages of monetizing the gas at ANOH.
The gas is there now, so we're just waiting to be supplied enough tickers. In terms of routine flaring, again, we've committed to routine flaring the onshore, making sure that we're comfortable in delivering this in 2025. Finally, let me just have a Capital Markets Day. We're 26 weeks away. We will be really looking at the next medium terms, probably next five years for the company. We'll be doing a deep dive in the onshore business and the offshore business, really looking at how we're going to spend capital over those five years for growth, integrity, maintenance, etc. Then looking at a really probably an enhanced or a new capital allocation policy, which will then dovetail into dividend policy. We want to see how we're going to return capital to shareholders going forward.
That's going to be an interesting time on the 18th of September, and we really look forward to talking to you all then. I'll just hand it back now for Q&A. Thank you.
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Participants can submit questions in written format via the webcast page by clicking the Ask a Question button. If you are dialed into the call and would like to ask a question, please press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. We will pause for a moment to assemble the queue. We'll take our first question from James Carmichael with Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Hi. Afternoon, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. I appreciate we're going to get more at the Capital Markets Day later in the year. When I sort of look at the balance sheet, obviously, you know, leverage is 0.5 times. That looks pretty healthy. Cash flow is strong. I think as you sort of mentioned in there, you've got flexibility to do more. Just wondering, at the high level, how you think about priorities, credit rating, investment, and shareholder returns. I'm also interested in the idle well opportunity, actually. I think you mentioned 50 workovers this year, including 29 restarts, if I've read that right. That's given you a pretty good bump in production so far. What's the overall inventory there? Is that program going to be maintained into 2026 and beyond? I'm just interested to get any color. That would be great.
Thank you. I think probably Eleanor, you're probably the best to handle the first question, and Sam, the second.
All right. Thank you very much. I think just like you said, right now, we're very focused on our work program for 2025, which we've provided the guidance on. The macro side has been fairly positive, and we've obviously delivered strong cash and strong results because there's quite a bit of efficiency there. Getting into the capital markets day, we're going to be providing a lot more around sort of medium term, with a huge focus on the offshore side. We talked a little bit about the fact that the Competent Persons Report is being updated. At the capital markets day, we will provide more information on our capital allocation policy, potentially our dividend policy as well. At that point, we'll be able to share more. Again, there is a focus, of course, on shareholder returns, but we would give more details when we meet in September. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you. On the idle well restoration program as well, the inventory is there. We're working with numbers. If you saw my super first slide, you probably would have noticed the ramp-up in the idle well restoration program. We started slow in January, then began to ramp up. By June, you could have then seen how the program is already ramped up. We had an initial plan of delivering 50 for this year. We've done 29 already, irrespective of this slow start. There is a likelihood that we probably will go above the 50. The inventory is there. We're maturing them and we're getting them ready for execution. We had two jack-up barges at the moment, scaling up to three. Again, in terms of liquidating the program, we are actually slightly ahead of the program in terms of counts.
Also, when you look at the returns on the wells, it's actually in line with our expectations as well. Yes, thank you very much for that question that we're dealing with it.
I think it's paying the wells. It's getting the infrastructure in place, the jack-of-barges to be able to access that and to do it in a very coordinated fashion. There is a plan around it. We'll stick to plan, and when we can improve on it, we certainly will.
Thanks very much.
The next question comes from the line of Nikolas Stefanou with REDD. Please go ahead.
I've got some good afternoon and congratulations on the strong set of results. I want to ask you about this idle well restoration program as well. I want to get a better idea of how the production profile of such a well would look like. Because, you know, presumably, ExxonMobil shut them down because they were not that productive. Are we now seeing kind of like maybe some flash oil production coming out because the wells have been shut for so many years? We should expect maybe, you know, a very high water coming in in the next coming weeks or months? Do you think that this kind of like production we're seeing now would be a bit more sustainable? That's the first question. The second one is about the Competent Persons Report you guys are working on. The most recent one had been, it's less than a year old.
I'm just wondering, what's the basis of kind of like, you know, trying to work on a new one? Do you have like more, is it incorporating some of the idle well data? I just want to kind of like get an idea, obviously, without trying to ruin the September sort of like takeaways. What kind of like stuff are we expecting from, you know, the new Competent Persons Report? The final one is for Eleanor, I guess. How do you see the capital structure going forward? You have mentioned, you know, refinancing the RCF. I'm just wondering about the PXF with ExxonMobil. Is that a facility you would prefer to look to maybe refinance? Would you go for an RPL or maybe, you know, a bond? I'm asking because I've seen some of your peers recently saying that they actually prefer facilities with treasurers as opposed to RPLs.
I'm just wondering what kind of like from what I've looked in the market, which other options do you think, you know, are the best for Seplat Energy at the moment? Thank you.
No, thank you very much for that question. First one, the idle well restoration and expectation from the production. I kind of understand where you're coming from in terms of flash production. Indeed, what do we expect? Because we know pretty well that because the wells don't shut down for a number of wells, you possibly will expect that the initial production rate might be flash production. What we have done in terms of planning, and then what you see today, is that we employ a very technical well and reservoir management program to ensure that we don't take the flash production into account because that is not sustainable. What you're seeing today in terms of well production rate is what we are trying to do well to sustainably produce going forward.
If we pull too hard at the initial time, what will happen is that you will then pull in water, and that will not be good for your liquid handling at QIT. There are quite a few technicalities around making sure that the wells and the reservoirs are managed and produced in a very sustainable manner. The rates you see today is a sustainable rate going forward. Thank you.
Let me just answer the CPR one. If you recall, we did, when the acquisition was a reverse takeover, which meant a full prospectus. We had a third-party CPR done by ERCE. It's very limited in scope. The nature of it is, of the reverse takeover, you can't assume that Seplat's running it. You have to assume that ExxonMobil is continuing to run it. It's a very different setup. There's limited information. What we committed to do post-acquisition is actually to then work through the detail. Ryder Scott is a company that does our CPR for onshore, and we're using them for the offshore business. We also have the benefit of the team that came across, obviously, a number of being there for 25, 30 years. They understand the subsurface. We are at advanced stages of this.
We will bring it to the Capital Markets Day for this, and we'll present it as a complete position of the business going forward.
Thanks, Nick. I think the way to think about it, our focus is really just to maintain a low balance sheet leverage. Depending on, obviously, oil price and everything else, we are looking to invest quite a bit in the offshore business and grow that. We'll just continue to present what opportunities are available to us. I think having flexibility is quite important, which is why we're working on extending these maturities. Most importantly, it's making sure that we're also optimizing the cost of that. Thank you.
Thank you. Just a quick follow-up on the comment about the receivables. For the latest receivables specifically, can you give me a bit more detail about the progress there? Do you have a high level of confidence that you'd be able to maintain those receivables so that you make the deferred payment to ExxonMobil? If not, would you be able to defer the deferred payment to ExxonMobil maybe into 2026? Any comments there?
Yeah. I mean, I guess the answer is yes on two sides. First of all, Nigerian National Petroleum Company is very focused on growing value on these assets as well. We're getting quite a lot of support from them. The legacy receivables have just gone through a timing process. It's mostly timing because there's a process to go through. We've already secured approval for most of the legacy stuff, and we're going to chase the cash recoveries in this quarter and the next. We're not concerned per se about this because, again, like I said, we're getting a lot of support. In fact, if one of our assets, I mean, we're fully caught up on cash cut payments. It's not an issue for us. We'll just continue to work it and continue to bring the numbers down. Thank you.
Yes, just to add that, Nick, we don't see paying ExxonMobil an issue, right? We'll pay them on time. We don't look to push it later.
Thank you. I'll go back to the queue.
Your next question comes from the line of Nick Gilbert with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
To this audience, looking for more details in the current oil price environment, how are you thinking about your next offshore drilling campaign? Are you considering pushing it further out? On the deferred payments as well, you touched upon this, but do you mind giving us an update on where that stands right now? How much has been spent and how much remains to be spent in the second half? Thank you.
Yeah. Just on the, maybe Eleanor, you can do the second one there. Just on the oil price environment, it's something we've been watching very carefully. We obviously naturally hedge through using puts and options. If you look at the offshore business, a lot of our focus has been on idle well restoration, and there's plenty of well stock in doing that. That's going to keep us very busy. For the drilling campaign, we're obviously now thinking about that and really working that through. A couple of bits to it: one is ensuring that we get rig availability, and we secure those rigs, and that's being worked through. The other one is subsurface. When we bought these assets from ExxonMobil, there had been a lot of work done on the subsurface. All those subsurface plans, models, etc., are being updated as we speak.
We actually know when we start the drilling campaign where to put the drill bit. That's underway. We'll communicate again, and we don't push everything to six weeks from now, but we'll communicate in six weeks what our plans are. We'll deal with that, and we'll deal with the oil price environment. We don't really see that holding us back necessarily from a drilling campaign.
The deferred payments, we're planning to settle $257 million in December. That's within our liquidity plan. The way we've structured our reforecast for the second half of the year, the business generates enough cash to support that payment. There are also some final reconciliations we're doing in line with the SPA to make sure that we've closed out any of the sort of pre-CIC payments that may arise. All of that, we would be communicating the final position in our third quarter results. Thank you.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Ntebogang Segone with Investec Bank. Please go ahead.
Afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to ask the questions. I think my questions are mainly around the onshore business, particularly looking at the western asset and oil mill parties. Could you kindly just provide more color in terms of quantifying what the lower end and upper end of the guidance for 2025 for production for those three assets looks like? Also, just moving long-term or outside of 2025, could you, given the fact that with the western assets, production has been supported by drilling activities, and now also with OML 40, with Subiri, and also Abiyala, expected to then be able to support production volumes, just outside of 2025, could you kindly also provide me with more guidance around how you see production volumes for those two assets looking like over the next three to five years? Thank you.
Okay. Thank you. That question is very good. You know, if you look at the western asset or onshore business, at the global level, the guidance we provided to the market is 48 - 56. What we have done is that if you look at that production performance to date, we are somewhere actually at the top end of that production guidance. We are at 54.8 by the end of the first half of this year. When you look at the journey to the end of the year, we see ourselves actually keeping the guidance that we have given for these assets. We would relook at the longer term again as we come into the Capital Markets Day in the next six weeks. That way, we would give you a layout of the entire western asset and the combined business as well going into the future.
Overall, if you look at the first half of the year performance of these assets, they've been very strong. We continue with our drilling program as well to sustain the risk decline, first of all, and then begin to grow the asset. If you really look back as well, this equivalent period in 2024, you can see the strong operational performance of these assets onshore. Like I said, we're at 15% above the equivalent period in last year, which underscores the drilling activities, the restoration activities that are going on in the assets, making sure that we continue to sustain strong performance within the asset. Overall, the outlook for the rest of the year is very strong for these assets. We will bring you the longer-term view in the next six weeks.
Your next question comes from the line of Dmitry Ivanov with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Hello. Thank you very much for the presentation. I have two quick questions, if I may. The first one, like one of the previous questions around your legacy offshore receivables. Could you remind us about the amount of these legacy receivables outstanding? Given working capital position, given working capital outflows in the first half of the year, it was slightly negative. How should we look at the working capital outflows in the second half of the year, given you expect some reversal of this legacy offshore receivables? Any kind of guidance on the working capital for the second half of the year would be much appreciated. The second quick question on the CapEx, I appreciate that you will provide more details on your kind of longer-term, medium-term drilling campaign in September. Directionally, how do you see capital expenditures in 2026 versus 2025, in terms of direction, higher, lower, same amount?
How do you budget it at the moment? That would be, of course, much appreciated. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you very much. At the end of 2024, we had around $300 million of receivables that we've inherited from the offshore business. Most of that was carried forward because we were sort of waiting to secure approvals. In this period, we have secured approvals for quite a bit of it, almost 70% of it. We will start to see some of the payments coming through in this quarter and in the next quarter. The working capital will continue to normalize. Like I said, there's also a focus from our JV partners to pay cash flows on time. The current status of the receivables, not all of it is sort of overdue. Taking like two-thirds of our receivables, those are really sort of what is overdue and what we're seeking to get payments for in the rest of this year.
Just to restate or reiterate that we're not really considering this as an issue for us. The current receivables or the current cash flows are being paid promptly. Within 30 - 60 days, we're getting those settled. It's just now to start to drive this $300 million plus that we inherited from last year to start to bring that down. We expect to see that reduced drastically by the end of the year. We do have some that we are still in discussions with our JV partner, and we expect to close that out this year and start to see the payments of that last bit into 2026.
Thank you very much. Should you expect some positive working capital release in the second half of the year, basically, like on a consolidated basis?
We see similar levels as we see now. We do have a huge payment to make in December to complete the acquisition cost. That will obviously eat into that. Outside of that, oil price supporting the businesses remains strong. As we grow the volumes, we'll start to see the cash generation build. Working capital is really around getting the cash calls paid by the partners. That happens, and then all we'll be doing will really be settling these final payments to ExxonMobil in December.
We'll see some higher CapEx numbers concerns on the second half.
Okay, thank you.
Any kind of on CapEx direction, basically?
Yeah. I mean, look, we're guiding $260 million - $320 million. If you look, we're about $100.5 million here. You would expect, you know, kind of mid $160 million to, whatever, $220 million to maintain that guidance.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you. Thanks, Dmitry.
There are no further questions in the conference. Yes, there are no further questions in the conference line. I will now hand over to James Thompson, Head of Investor Relations, to read out the written questions.
Great. Thank you, Rashon. Thanks very much for all your questions on the call. We do have quite a lot, actually, on here to get through. We might not be able to get through them all, but I'll just start here from an investor, assuming no changes to the oil price. Can we give any expectations for free cash flow for full year 2025? Where will management allocate this cash flow in the next six months? Allocated to dividends or debt repayment? Anything we can say to 2025 view on cash?
Okay. We've just now paid down the rest of our RCF. It's now fully undrawn. Some of our cash has gone to that. We do have CapEx investments to make in the second half of the year. We've already sort of spoken to that. There will be a focus to ensure that we deliver the CapEx. We will share more around what happens with our capital allocation policy and dividend when we come to the Capital Markets Day. Thank you.
Okay. Next one, maybe a few. Sam, Seplat appears to have had about a 75% success rate in restoring production from its idle wells year to date. Should we assume this to be the trend for the rest of the inventory that we have, or have we tackled tougher older ones first?
Thank you very much for that question. Indeed, it's good when you look at the number of wells. We restored 29, and then 22 of them are production. The seven odd wells that are not on production are actually not on production for a few reasons. Some of them actually are kind of producing gas. Again, when you look at short-term oil and gas restoration activities, you actually don't expect a 100% success rate. That, again, is part of the headline message that we will pass on again. Indeed, 75% is a bit, call it on the ballpark, of what we see. If you then piggyback on the volumes that we restore, we have planned for an average of 1,000 bbl per well. If you do 26,000 of 22, again, that gives you an indication of what we see in terms of restoration volume success.
I would say that, yes, the overall success rate at the moment is in alignment with what we expect, given the age of these wells and the production history that we've seen.
Great. Thanks very much, Sam. Question on ANOH. Can you provide any further details on progress on the OB3 pipeline? Part one. Part two is, can we give any update on expectations for gas price realizations to Nigerian LNG versus what we're planning through the OB3 pipeline?
The OB3 pipeline is obviously a project that's been done by NGIC, which is our partner in ATPC in ANOH. Our update is obviously coming directly from them. What I would say is that the river crossing is complex, and there's quite a lot of expertise from around the world that's been brought into Nigeria to resolve it. New contractors coming on have been brought on board to add to the existing contractors. There's the AKK pipeline, which has had success from river crossing, which again is another project that Nigerian National Petroleum Company is doing. We're building, I think what they've done is pause that. They're bringing all the learnings and expertise from the AKK. This quarter, they're really looking at revisiting everything before they start again with the final steps in river crossing in Q4.
What we've now done is we've obviously switched our focus, along with a partner, to actually look at monetizing gas in this site, not needing the OB3. We've got two off-takers, and we're looking to get first gas around that. We watch the project, but it's a complex project, the OB3. In terms of gas prices, again, you know, the nature of the gas supply, particularly to Nigerian LNG from ATPC, is more of a short-term than a longer-term plan. The longer-term plan is to put that gas in the OB3. The pricing will reflect that. I don't think you can correlate the two. We've already inherited existing prices to Nigerian LNG from the offshore. What we are looking at options to increase that production, and of course, we will then revisit the commercials around that. I don't think they're correlated the two.
Okay. Brilliant. Thank you very much, Roger. Just going to the next one, dealing with these in order. Can you confirm the new Competent Persons Report will be finalized in the current quarter? How do any assumptions differ from that used by ERCE? Perhaps we've asked a little bit about that. Do you want to address that as we move on?
Just quickly, yeah. We will bring it to a Capital Markets Day. We are, you know, really at the final stages of it now.
Okay. Perhaps tied into earlier questions here, given the $250 million payment that we've got coming in the fourth quarter and high CapEx, do we have any expectations for either cash or net debt at year-end 2025, or any sort of directional guidance we can provide?
Yeah. I mean, net debt is, as you see it, for the first half as we report it again. I've already explained that our liquidity will be impacted by some of these payments. You would see a bit of a working capital debt in the second half as we sort of finalize the payments to ExxonMobil. We start to build up again into 2026.
Okay. Maybe just following on from that, the deferred consideration of $57 million, are there any offsets such as tax deductibles? We've already confirmed this would be an outfall in 4Q. How will this impact in terms of funding CapEx in the second half?
Yes, those deferred payments are, as we had shared before, cost in line with the business. The JV partners will pay their share. It's also going to be tax deductible, and that's why the business is already generating the cash flow to support the payment.
Okay. Thank you. Question here in terms of PIA conversion. Given experience completing the technical work for the onshore PIA conversion on operated assets, how is that informing our expectations for offshore? Do we at this point in time have any kind of outline in terms of what the process might look like in terms of timeline and, importantly, kind of retention within the asset?
I'd answer that the onshore PIA conversion is really advanced. I mean, we're in the final stages of it. Things are speeding up with the regulator because as people convert, a lot of the questions have been answered around that. That will go and help with the offshore business. The process for application is now very clear. It's a very visible process with the regulator, and we are working through that application. One part of it is delineation, what equity you give up, and all the other pieces of application you need to complete. We're doing that now, and you know, we're confident that we will not see the same timeline for the offshore as we've seen in the onshore. The conversations with the regulator so far have been pretty supportive for a conversion.
Okay. Thank you. Question on production guidance. Obviously, done well in the first half of the year. Are we able to provide any kind of expectations or direction in terms of where we will be at the year-end and the kind of split between oil and gas?
Thank you. The guidance, I would say, at the moment, you've seen very strong performance in the first half of the year. What we plan to do is to work this through the third quarter. When we come into the third quarter result, we will be in a position to tighten the guidance a little bit more. The question of the split, at the moment, with the integrated assets onshore offshore, you'll see a liquid of 80% and a gas of 20%. That is where we are at the moment.
Okay. Brilliant. Thank you very much. Just in terms of the integration process, do we have any kind of further thoughts in terms of the cost optimization and potentially around G&A in the business and OpEx?
Maybe answer that one. Yeah. I mean, look, the integration workstreams are looking at that. We are working our way through it. How do you put it together? There are other synergies we can get in terms of combinations. Yeah, it's quite a detailed analysis that's been done. We're looking at, you know, we've got comparables, other West African comparable companies. We're looking at global comparables. We're looking at what I think the consultants call gap to potential and look to see where we can get to logistics savings on that through efficiency and also combinations. Yes, it's being worked on. It's too early to give you details on that, but we will certainly, I think, in Q3 be able to give you a lot more on what that means going forward.
Okay. Great. Just one here in terms of hedging for 2025. Oil price has been pretty volatile year to date. Could you just update in terms of where we're at in terms of our hedge for 2025 and 2026?
Thank you. We have completed our hedging program for the rest of 2025, on average around $53 per barrel, about two-thirds of our volumes. We've also now just secured about a third of our Q1 2026 hedging, and we'll continue to update that as we go on. We're ensuring that we continue to protect the downside. Thank you.
Okay. Maybe here we can wrap up. This is the last one just in terms of time. Just on the tax piece, is it possible to give more color potentially on the affected tax rate throughout the investment cycle for Seplat given the investments we're now making are expected to provide a shield for the tax piece? There was a separate question, but a kind of.
Just in terms of the moving parts to get from the effective tax rate in one age versus the full year 7% to 8% that we have given in the update.
Yeah, the biggest one is on CapEx. We start to increase the investment in the second half of the year. That's one. Second, we will start to see improvements on our DD&A numbers. Our profit before tax, we're expecting to increase a little bit. That's where the drive of that profit ETR is really coming from, a combination of our DD&A and additional investments for the profit of business. Thank you.
Brilliant. All right, we've got no more time there, so we'll have to wrap it up. Thank you very much, everybody, for all the questions on the call. Perhaps I can just pass over to Roger to close this for the day.
Yeah, thanks everyone. Lots of good questions there. 18th of September is TMD. We've talked a lot about that. We look forward to a deep dive in the business. Obviously, beyond that will be our next get-together, which will be the Q3 results towards the end of October. Thank you everyone.