Welcome to Seplat Energy Plc's Full 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 come at that time. I'd like to remind all participants that this call is being recorded. I will now hand over to Roger Brown, Chief Executive Officer, to open the presentation. Please go ahead.
Thanks, Justin. It's James here, Head of Investor Relations. I'll just kick us off here. Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to Seplat's full year results for 2025. On the call today, we have our CEO, Roger Brown, COO Samson Ezugworie, and our CFO, Eleanor Adaralegbe. We will follow the normal process of prepared remarks, followed by Q&A. Before we start, I encourage you to take note of the forward-looking statement on slide two. Now I'll pass you over to Roger for the introduction. Roger, over to you.
Thanks, James. Hello, everyone. Let's run through the full year 2025 highlights. If you can go on to the next slide. The next one. Okay, let's just start off with the investment case. This year, we're really seeing the full effect of the Mobil Producing acquisition, so we've got a full year of results, and you can see it's a transformational acquisition. Really, if you look at all the sort of metrics, we're seeing triple growth in most of those metrics. We have a giant resource base now, you'll see that, and Sam will run through the reserves. But really, we're sitting on 2.5 billion barrels of oil equivalent of 2P+2C , which in the JV perspective is 6 billion barrels.
That gives us a massive platform to grow production and cash flow and obviously enhance the shareholder returns. You know, I've said before, Nigeria really has a very good premier hydrocarbon base which allows us to capitalize. We set out in the Capital Markets Day our five year plan for 2030, and we're on track for that. We're going to see over 200,000 barrels into the JV. That's going to be over 500,000 barrels. And then the commitment to deliver at least $1 billion in dividends and aggregate dividends over the next five years is on track. Let's move over to the full year 2025 financial highlights, and Eleanor will cover most of this, but let me just give you a summary.
In terms of production, we're seeing 131,500 barrels of oil equivalent per day, and a lot of that, most of that's obviously oil. That's 148% year-on-year growth, onshore 14% and offshore 9% year-on-year. We had original guidance production of 120-140, and we tightened that in Q3 to 130-140, and we're sitting at 131.5, so that's within guidance. Group revenue, again, we're seeing very strong group revenue of $2.7 billion. 93% of that sits in liquids between oil and NGLs, 7% gas. We're really seeing the benefit of the offshore business. Adjusted EBITDA of $1.27 billion, very strong indeed.
We have cash flow from operations pre-tax of almost $1.7 billion, and also post-tax, it's $1.1 billion, so it's very strong there. Dividends, again, we are committing to our core dividend and our special dividend, and we were proposing here to the AGM a final dividend of $0.083 a share, which would give us $0.25 per share over the year. Again, Eleanor will cover that. The credit rating agencies of Moody's, Fitch, and S&P, we see S&P's raised us to Positive from Stable outlook, and we're seeing Fitch going up from B- to B. So this is showing that the credit metrics of the business has been recognized.
Going through into the next slide, we go into corporate highlights. We've separated this between the onshore and the offshore highlights. The big thing for the onshore business was a PIA conversion. We achieved that in Q4, you're going to start to see the real benefit of the lower tax and royalty rates coming through that onshore business. That was a lot of work we needed to get through with the regulator, but we've broken the back, and we've had that approved. Again, for the offshore business, we're now starting to have discussions on PIA conversion for the offshore. Our commitment to flaring out is starting to pay dividends in CO2 emission reductions. We're down 24% year-on-year on that, and we are completely flared out of end of routine flaring on the western assets.
We're about to do this in the east when ANOH comes up to full production, that is seeing a lot of savings for us. I think it's about $9 million in savings of, off flare penalty this year. Offshore highlights, the Idle Well Restoration Program, Sam will cover, has been very successful. We have added 49,000 barrels of oil from that program from 49 wells, but it's about 1,000 a well. We will continue to do this in 2026, targeting 51.
This is really low cost, what we call lo w-hanging fruit or stock activities. The last highlight there is the IGE replacement. This is in the eastern part of the offshore, and this new IGE unit is giving us a much bigger throughput through NGLs, which are getting monetized. It's been successfully executed. It's on stream, and we're starting to see big uplift. Again, Sam will deal with that in his section. Let me hand across to Sam to cover the operational performance.
Right. Thank you very much, Roger. Good, good afternoon, everyone and all. Roger started by highlighting the giant resource base that we are sitting on at the moment in our combined business. 2P reserves as at end of year stood at over 1 billion barrels of working interest numbers, down 4% from previous year, driven by 48 million barrels of production in the current year. The dimension in offshore, onshore, you can see it, 2P is around 50/50, and then you can also see our products, liquids, gas, and NGLs also, in dimension at the bottom.
2C, we recorded 8% uplift in 2C following the field development plan for four key fields in the offshore fields that we have now in also technically matured and included in our field development program, leading to a combined 2P, 2C of nearly 2.5 billion barrels, as Roger highlighted earlier. Split into offshore, onshore. You start seeing the skew towards the offshore, and then the liquids is still leading with 47%, gas, 45%, and NGL, 8%. Diving now into safety and environment. Safety continues to be top priority for our business. In the course of the year, we achieved over 40 million man-hours of LTI-free operations.
We also concluded and completed our end of routine flaring program in the onshore business, as Roger highlighted earlier. We are seeing the benefits coming in already. It's also important for us to highlight that in the course of the year, we recorded 1 LTI in the onshore in quarter three at Oben, when one of our contractor staff hurt himself, had a cut in the finger while carrying out our operations. We had an LTI-free operations offshore. We also had the Yoho platform suffer a fire in quarter three, 2025. It's been out. We are on course to restoring the Yoho platform back to production by quarter two this year. I think those are the highlights.
The end of routine flaring projects that we have achieved in the onshore business, we have now also begun to dimension and define our own roadmap towards achieving similar results in the offshore. Diving into production, next slide. You will then begin to see the scale of our new business. Our production is nearly three times the production as of end of full year, 2024, given the scale of our new business. It's also important to reflect that the efficiencies we saw are on the two sides of our business. In the onshore, we continue to see improved performance on both liquid and gas.
The gas also being driven by the turnaround maintenance that we carried out in Oben Gas Plant, late 2024, and then commissioning of the SIGP, the Sapele Integrated Gas Plant, that are now beginning to deliver full results. On the offshore side, the production improvement was driven essentially by two big ticket items. Roger talked about the Idle Well Restoration Program and the inlet gas exchanger replacement at the ELPS. The Idle Well Restoration Program, you could see the bottom left chart, that started with, you know, a very slow ramp-up in Q1, delivering 11,000 barrels, and then leading to the full year delivery of 48.6-49,000 barrels of oil per day from the 49 wells that were restored last year, which has been very strong.
The IGE replacement project, I will give you a spotlight on it, but just the highlight, I will say upfront, is that the current performance of the IGE is taking us back to 2017 levels when Exxon was operating this plant fully. I think. Just I will leave this, save the spotlight into the future. Let me talk about our midstream business. The midstream business also grew up in scale following our integrated nature. Gas production went up 54% from our 2024 production levels, essentially driven by the two things I mentioned earlier.
On the onshore part, you will see we ended nearly to 130 million costs of gas per day year average, an uplift from 2024 levels because of Oben and Sapele plants working and then bringing on the offshore business and the Amenam-Kpono production. It's important to highlight here that our ANOH Gas plant, long in coming, we achieved our first gas in January this year, and we're currently supplying 50 to 70 million scf of gas per day to Indorama, and we are on course and on standby to ramp up production to NLNG. The next in coming is our Oso-BRT phase I project. This project would double our current production to NLNG from 120 to 240, and is on course for delivery and first gas by the third quarter of this year.
Next slide will then give us the spotlight to the inlet gas exchanger replacement at ELPS. Of importance to note is that at CiC, we were producing NGL at about 7 KBD. Following the successful change-out of this inlet gas exchanger, we are now producing about 33,000 barrels of KBD every day, which is. You can only date that back to the last time it happened in this facility was in 2017. So this is the moment that we have continuously demonstrate how well we can deliver on capital projects within a very short period of time.
I will end with giving you an outlook for the project, key project that we want to execute in the current year, in alignment with our laid out program for leading to 2030, that we presented at the CMD in September last year. If I start with gas, I just mentioned the Oso-BRT phase I project, the expansion project. This will double our production to NLNG from 120 to 240 million scf per day. We have the major pipeline project that is also coming behind that, the Oso-BRT phase II. This will further double our production from 240 to 480. This is not to be delivered in 2026, but 2027. We are already working on the engineering and getting ready for that project, doing all the front-end work.
The next phase is for us to stabilize production to Indorama and commence production to NLNG from ANOH Gas plant, while we continue to then ramp up at Sapele Integrated Gas Plant. We commence LPG production out of Sapele again in this quarter, mid this year. Going straight to drilling, we have an aggressive drilling campaign for 2026. We have about 17 wells to be delivered this year. We are going to commence drilling in the offshore business. While we start drilling offshore, we also focus on delivering additional 50 idle wells to be restored in the current year. Last but not the least, focusing on infrastructure, we would continue to work our asset maintenance in the offshore asset integrity and asset maintenance offshore.
This, for us, is very key because it is about our foundation, laying the right foundation to go faster and safer in all the offshore activities. We will restore Yoho in the second quarter of this year. We will continue to build resilience in the onshore business, making sure that we will manage third-party deferment through the installation of buffer tanks in such a way that if we have outage of any of our pipelines, we will have backup to continue producing while the pipelines are being restored. That will be end of my presentation. I will now hand over to Eleanor, who will take us through the financial aspects of the business. Thank you. Eleanor, over to you.
Thank you, Sam, and hello, everybody. Thank you for joining our call. This will be the first full year where the scale of our business comes through in the numbers. I'm going to hit the highlights in the next slide, please. Starting off with revenues, further to the increase in production that we have just talked about earlier, our revenues are up 144% year-on-year, so revenues are at $2.7 billion. Again, that's what's demonstrating the scale of our business, and this is despite lower oil prices, you know, in 2024 compared to 2025. Again, oil prices dropped 12% year-on-year. Again, you can see that what we've delivered in 2025 is really about production volumes and operational efficiency.
Adjusted EBITDA is at $1.27 billion, again, demonstrating the value that we've created in the year. Again, about 47% margin there. We did have a net income of $159 million. Again, very positive, and I'll speak to the impact that has on also our dividend. The dividend went up year-on-year, $0.25 per share. Again, very positive. This is the first time that we'll be delivering dividend in a full year at this scale, so over 50% year-on-year. I think the most important bit for me is the operating cash flow at $1.17 billion. Again, that supported the repayment of our debt, so our net debt is now down.
is now down to $673 million. Again, there was an increase from Q3 to Q4 because we settled, there was some working capital impact of our business in Q4, and I'll speak to that in a little bit. I think another thing to really mention here is the strength of our balance sheet. Post-tax cash flow really is like times four where it is today. Again, back to you know, the fact that this reflects the combined business, which is a business at scale. We talked about the credit ratings earlier, so very positive. Fitch upgraded from B to, from B- to B, and we've continued the hedging of our business as we've done previously, which is protecting the downside.
Going to the next slide, this provides a bit more detail on our business. We usually would show this slide, and it's the profit statement. Again, this really maybe I'll just call out on the costs. We see that the cost did go up. The cost of sales are higher. That's reflecting the work in our offshore business, dealing with asset integrity, reliance on our infrastructure, and also we see that G&A has come down. Even though costs are up on cost of sales, it's reflecting the business that we've delivered. G&A is down year on year. Again, we are constantly focused on bringing our costs down, and in 2026, we'll see that coming down further. I think it's important to highlight here that operating profit has more than doubled.
Despite the impact of price, lower price year-on-year, we're seeing significant positive operating profit. Taxes is a good one to call out. We had previously reported effective tax rates at around 80%. With the benefit of PIA now, we're reporting effective tax rates at around 68%. Now, this is just from the impact on our onshore business. As we look forward to convert to PIA on our offshore business, we should see the numbers coming down further. Let's move to the next slide, please. The next slide really shows the cash generation, the strong cash generation in the year. We started the year with a $470 million of cash.
We've delivered $1.7 billion in cash flow from operations. After delivering the CapEx, again, we completed 11 development wells in our onshore business and also invested in the gas business offshore, in addition to planning for the drilling campaign offshore in 2026. We've also completed the payment to ExxonMobil in the fourth quarter, and that was a major working capital impact in the fourth quarter. Despite that, cash before the debt movements was almost $700 million, and that really reflects the impact of our business. Again, if we had not paid down our debt, we would have been carrying almost $700 million in cash, and so we did repay the RCF in 2025.
What that also did was helped us reduce our costs. We ended the year with $332 million in cash. I think if you look at the charts on the bottom right, you start to see year-over-year how our business, the scale of our business is demonstrated as the free cash flow after adjusting for working capital was almost $560 million. Let's move to the next slide, please. Again, the strength of our balance sheet really comes through here. We have a really healthy and well-disciplined managed balance sheets.
What's really supported this is the fact that we have flexibility with our finance structures, and we have a mix of lenders and different types of debts. I talked about net debt or net leverage being down at 0.5 times. Very positive. In addition to that, we do have additional flexibility with our liquidity, demonstrating again, the resilience in our financing structure. Up to over $700 million available liquidity, including the cash balances that we're holding. This then supports the future for us. We do have quite significant CapEx that we want to deliver in 2026, this then provides us the ability to do that. I think what's also important here is to look at our debt profile.
We don't have any debts that are maturing before 2027, and at the end of January of this year, we did refinance our revolving credit facility. We upsized it from $350 million to $400 million, and we also reduced the costs. We do have a $650 million Eurobond. We potentially could have an opportunity to refinance that next year. It's a five year bond, callable in two years, and we refinanced that in March of 2025. You can see over time how we've managed our debt, and we've been way below, of course, the 1.5 times net debt to EBITDA, and I just mentioned that we closed the year at 0.5 times.
Again, very positive, strong balance sheet, and this is how we've been running the business over the years. The next slide, a very important slide that sort of brings to bear how Seplat is running as a company and how we see the improvements in the sovereign. If you look at the chart to the left, from around February of 2022, you see that leverage has started to come down. This really shows the performance of our bond and also the Nigeria sovereign bond, and you can see there's been a trending downwards there.
I think a lot has happened in the country with the executive orders, the PIA being enacted, and other support around security from the government is now improving our sovereign rates. The next slide is really an important slide to see how we, as a company, are managing our balance sheet again, you know, with governance and a focus on capital discipline. From 2022, and this is rates above, SOFR and LIBOR. This is without SOFR and LIBOR considered. From 2022, you see our interest costs were around 7%, and this has now dropped to, you know, under 5% in 2026.
Again, what we've just tried to do over the last year, especially, is really look at our various bank debts and the opportunity to refinance our debt so that we can bring the cost down. The next slide is, you know, really just reminding us again, what we shared. Our dividend policy, we had, you know, provided details on our dividend policy when we laid out our plans at the Capital Markets Day. You know, the focus for us was that, you know, our dividend will be linked to our free cash flow. We said through the cycle from 2026 to 2030, we will be paying 40%-50% of our free cash flow in dividend, or at least 40%.
It's estimated at around $1 billion over the cycle up to 2030. Quite significant. If you look at the chart below, you can see the trend of the dividend growth year on year, with, of course, this year, demonstrating over 50% year on year. The last dividend we paid in 2024 was $0.165 per share, and the full year dividend for 2025 is $0.25 per share. I think it's important to just remind us that, you know, this will be a minimum dividend. We have promised a minimum dividend of $0.20 per share, and already in 2025, we've delivered over that minimum. We are keeping an eye on the $1 billion promise to shareholders for dividend over the next five years.
I think what's also important to highlight here is cumulative, to date, since we listed back in 2014, we have paid over $800 billion in cash dividends. This excludes the Q4 dividends that we have declared this period. We also mentioned, when we delivered our five-year plan, that the $1 billion cash dividend estimate is secured at $50 per barrel of oil. Anything below that, you know, there'll be a discussion as to what we'll be doing with dividend. I mean, just stepping back, you know, thinking about 2025, it was really a step change for us from a financial position. The scale of our business is now really clear. Cash generation is very strong, we reduced leverage. Capital allocation remains disciplined. We're going to be doing a lot in 2026. Roger will take us through the outlook and the future operating opportunities. Thank you, Roger, over to you.
Okay, let's wrap up with a outlook and guidance. The next slide. We can see, you know, we announced some board updates. We've got two new board directors, Mr. Tony Emelue and Mr. Larry Eva, joined the board, and we had our first board meeting yesterday. Tony Emelue joined the board on the basis that there was a change of shareholding, which we announced at the end of last year, where Moelis & Company, who've been a long-term shareholder in the company for 15+ years, decided to exit, and Heirs Energies came in as a long-term investor into the business. We've seen the impact of that already, very fast, in terms of support. I think from a Nigerian perspective, it is good.
You know, we're starting to see, you know, shareholdings similar to what we had at listing. I think over 50% now of the shareholding of Seplat is owned by to Nigerian investors. It's important from a long-term growth perspective, and the interest in the country. We're seeing that, you know, obviously, we all lost some board members. I think that's it's sorry to see them go, but of course, they joined the NNPC board. I think what Seplat does is we have a quality of board members, and those board members are in demand. I think it's better overall for us in this industry. Let me just go on to the next slide and talk about the roadmap 2030.
We laid this out in the Capital Markets Day, but just for the aide memoir, where are we on that? We've broken it down into invest, grow, earn return. Invest, grow, earn return. Invest, you know, the next five years, we're looking to deploy quite significant amount of CapEx, so $3.5 billion-$3 billion, and for the joint venture, that means $6 billion-$7 billion. If you add in the OpEx, you know, for the joint venture, we're looking upwards of about $17 billion, and on Seplat's share, that would be around $7 billion. That's in the upper end of the guidance range. It's a significant investment, but the great news is that the reserves policy of the subsurface warrants it.
We're looking to then grow, you know, that five-year projection of production growth is, you know, from where we are today, 131.5 to over 200. Again, for the JV, that's going to be over 500,000 barrels of oil equivalent. A very sizable producer in country. That and the to earn, we will then look at significant post-tax operating cash flow. We're looking here around $5 billion-$6 billion in aggregate. That cash will allow us then to significant give better returns. Again, this is why we're confident. We set out a clip of cash dividend of at least $1 billion, could be better than that.
That is a commitment we have to you as investors, that we're looking to churn this cash flow and return it back to the owners of the business. We then move on to the 2026 guidance just for a checkup here. We put here in the table, 2025 actuals and the 2026 guidance. You can see there in terms of production, we're guiding 135,000-155,000 barrels of oil equivalent. That is a 10% uplift in the midpoint from the 2025 actuals. I think this year, you know, sounds put out there's going to be a lot of investment going in terms of new drills, et cetera, and we're going to start to see that come through in the production. CapEx, we had $267 million CapEx this year.
We're guiding $360-$440 in the range, and through the years, we'll naturally tighten this guidance as we get through the year. Operating costs, we have units now focused on cost reduction, cost control, and we are committing to a long-term reduction in the operating cost. Our target's towards $10, we're $15.7 at the minute. Next year, we're guiding. This year we're guiding $13.5-$14.5 per barrel or BOE. DD&A, again, we were looking to drive that down in $4.5-$5. Cash taxes, 2025 was $423.
We're in that sort of similar range in cash taxes, even though the production is up. Therefore, that's the benefit of the PIA conversion and the efficiency of our business. In terms of the outlook, you know, big focus on strategic maintenance and integrity activities. This, it's not about getting production up, it's about getting the average of production up, so every day we produce. That's really important, particularly in the offshore business. In terms of the drilling new wells, 17, 15 onshore to offshore, in Q3, our jack-up rig will come on to site also. We will start drilling two wells there. That's very exciting, we have a big campaign, which will follow thereafter. In terms of the Idle Well Restoration, we talked about that.
That's 50, that's very easy, low cost production coming in stream. On the gas side of the business, gas is really going to be a big growth area for us. We're delighted to say that ANOH got the first gas in January. We have a team at the minute, really looking to now flow into Nigeria LNG, imminent, we'll be able to then ramp up the gas plant to capacity. Then also BRT phase I. This is where we increase or double the output from the BRT, which goes into Nigeria LNG. That's going to go from 120 to 240 P3. In terms of our corporate and sustainability, PIA conversion, you know, working towards for the offshore and operated assets.
You know, we said this before at the CMD, we're still in discussions with NNPC on this 10% sell down. Those discussions are still ongoing, and we'll update you as appropriate. Let's just sum up here. I think overall, we're very happy with the performance. We're, and you can see that in a very so, strong set of results. I think the market is now starting to see the benefit of the acquisition we made, and you're going to start to see the value, starting to come through into the Seplat share price.
We're well placed, we're on track for the 2030 target set out at CMD. I'd like to personally thank, you know, all the team at Seplat, you know, our large team that we've now integrated with, the Mobil Producing team. It's now obviously fully fledged Seplat staff. That integration's going very well. We're all co-locating at the minute. I think that the sort of power of the collective will then drive us and deliver on all our promises. We'll have good success in 2026. That's it. Thank you. Let's go back to the operator for a Q&A.
Justin, we can open the lines up for.
Thank you.
For questions.
Thank you. Participants can submit questions in a written format via the webcast page by clicking the Ask a Question button. Again, you may submit questions in written format via the webcast page by clicking the Ask a Question button. If you're dialed into the call and would like to ask a question, please press star and the number one on your telephone keypad to join the queue. We will pause for just a moment to assemble the queue w e will take our first question from Sam Wahab from Peel Hunt. Please go ahead.
Thanks, everyone. Firstly, congratulations on a very robust set of results today. Just two questions from me. The first is around the Idle Well Program. Obviously, you got a lot of success in FY 2025 with that, working out around 1,000 barrels per well. Actually, were you sort of surprised with that, with how strong that was? How should we be thinking about it going into this year with 50 wells slated to be drilled? Should we be thinking it could be a similar sort of number? On the second question, at Yoho, what steps are there currently that you see to get this restarted in the second quarter, so that we can get productions up to where you think it should be? Also, what sort of risks would you foresee during that period?
Thanks for that question. Let me bring Sam into this question. Sam?
Yeah. No, thank you. Thank you for the question. The Idle Well Restoration Program that we the success we've had in 2025 is I think is fully in line with our forecast. We had always said in this course that we expect about 1,000 barrels per day recovery per well, and essentially, it came out as we forecasted. Going into 2025, we expect somewhat similar outcome as well as we had with 2024. Sorry, 2025. Yeah, we already have executed quite a couple this year, and we are actually seeing an also very strong result from the one that we have restored this year. In terms of outlook, I would say stay on course, similar to what we have achieved last year.
We will be somewhere there. I think we'll just update you as we go ahead in the course of the quarter, because, again, you know, to put all the cats in the room, we started with the most juicy and easy to fix wells. There might be one or two that may not turn out the way we have envisaged, but we'll report that as we come along in the course of the year. On Yoho, very good question. We are on course in restoring Yoho. Yoho restoration, we've taken on as a major project.
We have a project plan, level three project schedule for it, and we have also brought in an expert globally, who we actually took off from where he was busy, somewhere in China, to help us in making sure that all the activities that we have lined up for Yoho restoration is on course. In terms of risk, the biggest risk we've seen with it is with cables. We have the cables that got burnt that we need to manufacture, and we need to get to the original manufacturers. What we have done is to go and be engaging through with the manufacturers in person.
We are not going through third party, and we are scaling up, supporting them, and ensuring that we should be able to get the cables in time. We've gotten the best experts in the world to help us, and we are also working directly with the equipment manufacturers to ensure that we hold to the promise. The only big risk that we see there is the manufacturing of the cable, the right time for us to execute. At the moment, we have absolute good line of sight to delivering of the cables in time for us to restore Yoho by the second quarter this year.
Yeah, just let me summarize there. We're confident Q2. Some context here, it's 50 km of cable, it's quite a sizable task to do this, but we're confident we can deliver next quarter.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ntebogang Gasegwe from Investec Bank Limited. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Afternoon, everyone. I've got, like, three questions. My first question is mainly around tax. I mean, if you look at your FY 2025 effective and cash tax rates, they were materially below what you previously guided. With 2026 cash tax being guided between $400 million and $450 million, how should we then think about the sustainable effective and cash tax rates over the next three years? On production, just looking at Yoho, could you clarify what the restart timing in Q2 2026 and also ramp up profile are assumed in the midpoint of the 2026 production guidance? My last question is just around cost. I mean, given that volumes are expected to rise in 2026, could you also help me understand the cost architecture underpinning that broadly stable operating cost assumption that is driving that lower unit operating cost that is expected this year? Thank you.
Thank you. Let me just go to Sam quickly on the fourth or the your second question.
Yeah.
You can answer, and then over to Eleanor for tax and the costs.
Good. Thank you. Thank you. Yoho restoration, we said quarter two, the production impact and uplift is 20,000 barrels per day. Eleanor?
Yeah. Thank you. For the cash taxes, the impact of the fourth quarter in 2025 reduced the cash taxes that we anticipated. We've guided now for 2026, our expectation is that $400 million to $450 million would be the estimated cash taxes for the group, assuming the $65 per barrel. What we've also shared at the Capital Markets Day is that, you know, we are aiming to bring the effective tax rate down to around 40% over the next five years. On the costs, yes, there's a constant drive to reduce costs, and you can see that from 2025 into 2026. The biggest part of that is really the focus on driving the volumes up alongside, looking at synergies and opportunities of securing contracts over a longer term. Thank you.
Give me answers to your questions, next one on, OpEx. You know, the OpEx, BOE for 2026.
Okay.
Implies, you know, flat cash costs.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah. We've estimated or we're guiding that OpEx per BOE in 2026 would be between $13.5-$14.5 per BOE. Yes, like, you know, like we've also shared in the notes, cash costs we expect to be around the same. We will be driving the volumes up. Again, you know, remembering that we are incurring costs on asset integrity and constantly ensuring that we're investing in the reliability of our infrastructure, and some of those costs are coming through the operating expenditures.
Any more questions, at the moment?
Thank you.
Okay.
Again
You can move to the next one.
If you've delved into the call and would like to ask a question, sorry, please press star and the number one on your telephone keypad. For now, I will hand over to James Thompson, Head of Investor Relations, to read out the written questions.
Okay. We've got loads coming in. Thank you very much for that. Maybe I'll just run through them in order. Just in terms of the offshore drilling, can you give us a flavor of how long we expect the offshore wells to take to drill? You know, how many of them will be bringing into production in 2026?
The onshore drilling campaign is supposed to take about days per well. We have planned 65 offshore. Days per well, we've planned about 65-70 days per well, and we plan to bring on two of those wells into production this year. I can also compliment that we expect to get a production uplift of somewhere between 4,000-6,000 barrels of oil per day from these wells. Represent.
Great. Can we provide any update on the midstream spin-out?
Well, Mike can talk.
I don't mind. I can, it's an easy ride.
Okay. Sorry, I just jumped. Go ahead.
We've done all the structural work on the midstream. We talk about midstream spin-out. What we mean is our gas business. What we're doing now is running the gas as a division of the company. We in line with the PIA, the gas plants are midstream, and there's advantages in terms of tax and everything else around doing that. All our gas plants are midstream businesses. We have structurally separated them from the upstream, although it's, to be clear, it's not 100% owned by Seplat group, except for the ANOH gas plant. Of course, we're in a 50-50 IJV with the government, NNPC, the NGC as a shareholder.
That we have done all the work on. We are now building out that gas division with bringing in LPG. When we talk about NGLs offshore, by the way, that's a subset. LPG is a subset of the NGLs as well. Also we're going to do CNG with the at Sapele Gas Plant, putting a unit there. It's done now. We'll keep it as part of the group. Longer term, we'll have to then look to see how we want to build out that gas division and what it means for us long term.
Just carrying on, can we give some more details about the advanced payment facility with Exxon and why we consider it as debt?
All right, thank you. Yes, the advanced payment facility is a $300 million advance that we obtained from ExxonMobil and was part of what we used to complete the transaction back in 2024. Obviously, we are carrying that on our balance sheet as debt. It remains a debt that is payable over the next two years, and so, you know, we potentially have an opportunity to pay that down. You will see it on our balance sheet and included in our gross debt, which is around $1.1 billion.
Can we provide some more guidance about the route to 200 KBD, so how we're going to be adding production over the next few years?
Yeah, I mean, I think we said that, like, quite clearly on the Capital Markets Day. If you look online, you'll see that there's actually an online video as well, and you can see how we've set it out. We've dimensioned the business from the into the onshore and the offshore business. It's pretty clear in the onshore, you'll see that ANOH is a big part of that building block, and we're bringing on production. Now, you're not seeing the full benefit that yet from ANOH, but we're starting to supply gas into Nigeria LNG, and so we're gonna see the gas volumes uplift, and also we're gonna see the condensate, which again, under wells, get monetized as well. That's for the onshore.
In the offshore business, again, as Sam said, like, yeah, we're gonna start the drilling campaign, Q3 this year. That is a multi-rig, multi-well campaign over the next sort of five years. As we start to drill the offshore, we'll continue to obviously, bring on board the shut-in wells. That largely will arrest the decline that you'll see in the offshore business. Actually, what you'll then see is that it's some growth through the drilling. What Sam did talk a lot about was the integrity and maintenance, because one of the big things here is the interdependency of the offshore business.
you know, it's an interdependency between oil pipelines, facilities, and gas pipelines and facilities, and we're doing a predictive maintenance using a lot more technology coming in here, looking at how we increase, and what we call, deferment, some planned deferments, reducing those, and we're gonna get more throughput from that, which is particularly important when you're bringing on new wells. One of the big things that we are doing, and we're excited about, is that at Exxon, what, you know, was more focused, I think, on the oil and gas, so the oil side of the business. The gas business, we obviously inherited 120 minute scf a day, which is going to Nigeria LNG today.
We have set out the Capital Markets Day, our growth plans for the gas business. That's really gonna be quite significant for the offshore. We've got around 10 Tcf of gas there. We have a number of hubs in the offshore. We're looking on a mixture of gas pipelines to supply that gas onshore to the likes of Nigeria LNG. We'll be doing gas projects in Akwa Ibom State. Then we're also looking at, you know, floating LNG options, particularly for EUR. In aggregate, when you build that all through the five-year plan, you can then track it up to the 200,000 barrels of oil, which is our target.
Okay, thank you. Operator, do we have any more questions on the line, or I will continue with the written ones?
No, sir, there are no more questions on the line.
No problem. Just carrying on. A couple of questions on ANOH here. Can we provide an update on the timing of gas to Nigeria LNG from ANOH? Then, the second part to that is, you know, when it's up and running, could you talk a little bit about the interplay between offtake between Indorama and Nigeria LNG? The final one on ANOH there is actually how much of ANOH is in our 2026 items.
Okay, let me deal with that. We've had gas behind pipe, ready to go to Nigeria LNG now for quite a few months. We've been working with all the partners, whether it be the pipeline partners or the shareholders of Nigeria LNG, to get the contracts in place, to supply that. There's been a few technical issues, there's been other issues. We have broken the back of that. The contracts are now all signed. We've got a team ready, on site for opening up and starting to pack. What we do, we call it pack the line. We need to flow gas into the pipeline, which will go through the Rwanda pipeline system into Niger LNG. That's a 90 km pipe. It'll take time to sort of pipe pack it.
That's commenced now. What I just urge is that that will take a little bit of time to ramp up, but we're delighted that's happening at the minute. Again, we're also at the same time, we're evacuating condensate, which we have in storage at the gas plant, which is also a critical bit in monetizing that through the TNP into Bonny. That's in place at the minute. We're going to see the ramp up. In terms of that, we've been quite conservative in the numbers in that ramp up, both in the gas side of things and also the condensate side. That's in place today. In terms of the volumes and interplay between Indorama and Nigeria LNG, Indorama, we are supplying somewhere between 50 to 60 million scf as we speak.
Then they are upgrading, and they've asked up to 100, and so we're looking to supply that, and the remaining balance obviously will go to Nigeria LNG. The government, through NGC, which is a shareholder in AGPC, is obviously doing the OB3 pipeline. That's had technical issues, right? We hear from our partner that they've made very good progress in fixing that. At some point, probably later this year, we'll see the OB3 up and running, and that's quite critical because we'll see then that gas will then flow to through the OB3 pipeline and connect into Oben, and then will ultimately get monetized there. In the future, it will go to the AKK pipeline when it's complete.
We also, at the same time, obviously, are ramping up our offshore supply to Nigeria LNG. We'll go fairly from 120 later this year to 40. We'll be supplying initially from AGPC, and ultimately, we'll be supplying Nigeria LNG from the offshore. I think we've made some very good progress there. It's one of the critical, seven critical gas projects. The first one to be completed, and well, we're delighted that we've done it in the same 50/50 with NNPC.
Thanks, Roger. Just combining a couple of questions here, thinking about 2026, a question about whether we see adjusted EBITDA at $2 billion in 2026. Perhaps more broadly, you know, can we give some guidance around the outlook from that perspective and also on in terms of free cash flow for the year, given some of the moving parts around CapEx and the impact of the PIA on things like royalties? Perhaps maybe get some color on 2026 directionally.
Well, thank you very much for the questions. I think it's important to note that for us in 2026, there's going to be significant capital commitments, and a lot of the cash flow generation that you see in 2025, we are deploying to deliver the work program in drilling and the gas projects. EBITDA, we haven't guided. I mean, we've been quite conservative in our planning on oil price, so it's obviously going to be a function of that. I think what I will say is that we will be maintaining our commitment to shareholders on dividend, and during the half year, we would give an indication of whatever top-up there will be on dividend.
We'll maintain the $0.05 per share for Q1, then at half year, we would, you know, give an indication of what happens for the rest of the year. On PIA, we would expect to see similar effective tax rates as we've seen in 2025, bearing in mind that CapEx is going to go up, that will also have a positive impact there. The PIA conversion on onshore, again, is positive, we expect to see some value come through in 2026. As we also strive to convert our offshore business to PIA, we'll start to see the taxes coming down as well. You're right on royalties, again, the direct impact of converting is a lower royalty, cash flow will improve. We'll also see some of that impact on the actual taxes. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Just a question on oil price assumptions. What is the oil price embedded in our, in our kind of cash tax guidance? I guess we can just cover that off. We, we forecast $65 this year. Can we give a price where cash tax would be 0 for 2026?
We're paying taxes, so expect to see that, and that's where we've guided for $100 million to $450 million, again, based on the estimates that we've projected for 2026.
Okay. Could we provide any update on Zabiri? That was a success story last year. We haven't talked about it today.
Yeah. Zabiri continues to be a success. We continue to produce out of Zabiri. Production is up in Zabiri to 3,000-4,000 barrels of oil per day export out of Zabiri. Zabiri continues to, you know, provide us with good result in 2025 and 2026. Thank you.
Thanks, Sam. Given the Naira share price, are we considering a stock split?
We consider lots of things in the board, but we have not made a decision on the stock split as we speak.
Could we give a bit more color about the relatively light EBITDA in the fourth quarter? What were the drivers of that versus consensus?
Thank you. We had some headwinds in the fourth quarter with the downtime on Yoho, so our production dropped there. We also had some scheduled maintenance planned in the fourth quarter so that we could commission the inlet gas exchanger. I think the positive there is that the impact of that scheduled maintenance, we'll start to see that value come through in 2026.
Thank you. Can we give any indication of the exit rate we are targeting for 2026 on the production?
Exit rate, we are targeting wait, let me, this is also something that we need to just tighten up with the guidance. If we stay with the guidance at the moment, I think in the course of the year, we will come back and refresh you with our exact exit rate that we forecast for this full year. I think we are pretty confident with the guidance that we've, you know, published as of today.
In the 2C resource update today, we had a big jump in gas, particularly at Edop. Could we maybe talk about the development of that in the 2030 plan? What are we saying about the gas upgrade in 2C?
Yeah, the gas upgrade in 2C is, you know, is actually about four fields. Yeah, you know, Idoho, Oso, and Usari. Those four fields contributed to about 2 Tcf, you know, gross, in terms of 2C uplift that resulted in the 8% that you saw. It's the technical maturity of those four fields, and then field development plan that underpinned the Tcf development that was just matured since we took over these assets, that resulted in the uplift that we are reporting.
Well, look, what I'd say on that is that you're gonna see a lot of 2C convert as we bring more and more of the offshore gas on stream. You know, obviously, we're working on a second pipeline to Nigeria LNG as we speak. As we start to take FIDs on these projects, we're looking at a pipeline opportunity into Akwa Ibom State to QIT from ELPS in the east. If you start to bring on these projects, floating LNG, et cetera, well, then a lot of those opportunities are sitting in contingent, and we will start to convert those to 2P. I would expect us to have a contingent into P2P upgrade over the course of probably this year and then future years coming.
Very good, very good. Maybe one final one here. There's been some news about NNPC potentially selling down some of their equity. Is that something Seplat can comment on at all?
We can't comment. It's not our process. You know, we're always interested in growth business, but it's not. We don't have any comment on it.
Very good. We've got through quite a few questions there. Just a final check, Justin, have we got any more on the line there?
No, sir, we do not.
Okay, perfect. That's great. Just past the hour, maybe I can hand over to Roger to close up.
Yeah. Well, thanks, everyone, for listening. I think we are, we've presented some very strong results here today. We're obviously now not just clapping on these good results, we're actually working very hard to deliver on the 2026. The next results coming out will be our Q1s, which will come out towards the end of April. Thanks, everyone, for listening, and have a good day. Thank you.