Morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Advantage Energy Limited Q2 2025 Results Conference Call. At this time, all lines are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on Thursday, August 7, 2025. I would now like to turn the conference over to Brian Bagnell, Director of Commodities and Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Thanks, Andrew, and welcome everybody to Advantage' s Conference Call to discuss our Second Quarter 2025 Results. Before we get started, I'd like to refer you again to our advisories on forward-looking statements contained in the news release, as well as advisories contained in Advantage Energy Ltd.'s MD&A and annual information form, both of which are available on SEDAR and on our website. We've also posted an updated corporate presentation. I'm here today with Mike Belenkie, President and CEO of Advantage Energy Ltd., and Craig Blackwood, our CFO, as well as other members of our executive team. We'll start speaking to some of our financial and operational highlights. Once Mike has finished speaking, we'll pass it back to the operator for questions. If you have any detailed modeling questions, we'd ask that you follow up with us individually after the call.
With that, I'll turn it over to Mike Belenkie. Mike, please go ahead.
Thanks, Brian. Thanks to everyone for joining us today. Q2 was another solid quarter for Advantage . Despite challenging market conditions, we delivered strong results across the board. Adjusted funds flow came in at $88.9 million or $0.53 per share, and we reduced net debt by $33 million to about $570 million. Production in the second quarter averaged 78,108 boe/d , up 18% year -over -year, while liquids production rose 66% despite significant impacts from third-party facility delays and outages. We are on track to achieve our annual production guidance of 80,000 boe/d- 83,000 boe/d . We also continued our strategy of shutting in dry gas wells at times of low AECO prices as we prioritize value over volumes.
Operating costs were $4.90 per boe, continuing to beat our expectations thanks to successful integration of our June 2024 asset acquisition and a lot of hard work from our team. These successes have allowed us to reduce full-year operating cost guidance to between $4.95 and $5.30 per boe. Our new guidance midpoint represents a reduction of 8% from original guidance. Our Chartered Lake program continues to outperform our expectations. We now have a full 12 months of actual results since the June 2024 asset acquisition, and the results have validated the potential we saw a year ago. We have significantly improved well productivity versus historical and cost structure. These help deliver an AFF per share, a cash flow per share that was 38% higher corporately than it would have been standalone without the assets. A huge increase in value for the company.
Average crew production from our first seven operated wells in the Chartered Lake has averaged 38% above our budget type curve over their first 30 days. Operating costs on the acquired assets have been reduced by over 25% over the last year, which has helped drive a 50% increase in our operating netback. There is lots more to do and optimize by the team that will benefit Advantage for many years to come. Turning to the natural gas markets, it is no secret that NGTL reliability has been exceptionally poor since June, although the word exceptionally is probably becoming obsolete now. That looks likely to continue through August. Of course, this has led to some terrible AECO cash pricing.
By shutting in dry gas production, we eliminate variable operating costs, conserve our premium resource, reduce our depletion expense, and defer capital that would otherwise be required to replace that depletion. To be clear, we still collect our hedging gains regardless of shutting. From time to time, we've actually bought gas back from the market when prices were negative at a profit tip. We plan to shut in up to one-third of our corporate gas production at times when it makes financial sense to do so. We use a sophisticated algorithm to figure out how much to shut in on a day-to-day basis. That will change rapidly as prices change rapidly. We remain baffled to see so many of our peers dumping their resources into AECO at Station 2 at a loss on a regular basis.
Despite perennial NGTL issues, we do see near-term fundamentals as encouraging, with oversupplied conditions easing as LNG Canada export capacity ramps up. This rebalancing increases the likelihood that AECO bases tighten and result in better prices than what we currently see in the forward market, even though the forward market is healthy. We are not just sitting around and hoping that the AECO market improves. We have a balanced program, and even on the credit strip, we expect to generate more than $500 million of free cash flow over our three-year program. Staying on the marketing front, we've hedged 44% of our natural gas and 41% of our oil and condensate for the remainder of this year. We also added another 25 million a day of physical transportation to Dawn, starting in April 2027, further diversifying our market exposure.
Looking ahead, our strategy remains focused on maximizing cash flow per share while maintaining balance sheet strength. As we approach our $450 million net debt target around the end of this year, we intend to establish a new conservative range and resume aggressive share buybacks. I would like to thank our employees and our board and our shareholders for your continued support, and I'll pass it back to Brian for questions.
Thanks, Mike. Andrew, I think we'll pass it to you to see if there are any questions in the queue.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll now begin the question-and-answer session. Should you have a question, please press the star followed by the number one on your touch-tone phone. You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press the star followed by the number two. If you are using a speaker phone, please lift a handset before pressing any keys. One moment, please, for your first question. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, should you have any questions, please press the star key followed by the number one. There are no questions at this time. Please proceed with closing remarks.
We do have questions on the webcast. We'll get started here. The first one is, "We see that operating costs have continued to be lower than expected. Can you provide some more color on the sustainability of those operating costs?"
Sure. Yeah. Thanks, Brian. Yeah, so operating costs, as we saw with the reduction to our guidance, operating costs have continued to go in the right direction. We're very pleased with the work that's been done. I want to just offer a quick shout out to the entire operations team, both in Calgary and on the field, for having achieved these outcomes. What's been most refreshing about the accomplishments from reducing operating costs is that these operating cost reductions have been sustainable. At first, we were concerned that we'd be able to get quick wins that would be temporary after the asset acquisition. What we're finding now, though, is these are structural changes allowing us to keep a lower, you know, less vehicle travel time, fewer unnecessary facilities, reduce rentals, and so on.
We've also had some success in reducing exposure to third-party fees or contracts that we inherited from companies. The outlook is strong. That's what allowed us to move our entire range downwards. I appreciate the question and our sort of ability to think on a flat level going forward is gaining. Things will change over time, especially as we see, you know, different service come on and expire. Stability of that $4.95- $5.30 range is looking pretty positive.
Thanks, Mike. Another question on the webcast, this time from Jamie Kubik. "Can you discuss the potential for dispositions in the current environment?"
Yeah, thanks, Jamie, for the question. In terms of dispositions, we have always thought about our non-core disposition program as being useful in ensuring that we keep our balance sheet where we want it to be. The good news is right now that our balance sheet is exactly where we want it to be. There's probably a couple of little things that we would expect to do in the coming, call it six months, that might just be rounding errors, sort of double-digit millions at a time, which just prop us up a little bit, slightly increase our ability to buy back more shares. The things that we look to sell, broadly speaking, aren't price-sensitive. I think, Jamie, hopefully that answers the question. We probably will proceed with a few small things.
One follow-up question from Jamie. "Can you provide any further color on the ramp-up of the CSV Albright facility and the expected timing?"
That's an interesting question. We have limited exposure to CSV Albright. We do have long-term plans to be, you know, not even long-term. We expect to see our 4 of 21 gas plant, which is in the same vicinity as the Albright plant. That 4 of 21 gas plant comes on stream in the second quarter of next year. While there may be some limited ability for us to, you know, in the near term, reroute excess production to avoid exposure to CSV Albright, by the second quarter of next year, this is something that actually we have once again excess gas processing capacity in the area. We haven't really focused on ramp-up of CSV Albright. We've successfully mitigated pretty much all the volumes that we were, you know, that we were looking forward to using for some of our upcoming drilling.
Any information we have really is the same kind of information the whole street would have to other companies that are more exposed to that issue.
Okay. One more question from the webcast, this time from Chris at Déjà Dé. "Can you remind us of your price trigger to return curtailed dry gas volumes?"
Yeah, sure. Once they trigger, we do have an algorithm which is multivariate. Of course, there's certain gas that has a higher cost structure, certain gas that has a lower cost structure. As prices go lower, we increase the amount of shut-ins. We start to think seriously about shut-ins. We start to see meaningful volumes get shut in when we're below $1. At $0.80, it grows. At $0.30, we're pretty much maxing out that one-third. At lower prices, like negative prices, we'll buy back gas and use that to fill our volumes. I think it's probably not a very simple answer, Chris, in being a single number, but we watch very carefully and we make sure that each well is treated like a separate revenue source as opposed to a deterministic single number, which might be a bit more heavy-handed.
This is a nuanced game and we want to make sure we win it.
might add to that that in our investor day, we did add a slide that kind of highlighted our behavior during periods of price weakness around this time last year. That might be helpful. Andrew, we'll turn it back to you to the phone lines to check one last time for any questions. Otherwise, we can end the call.
Sure. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, should you have any questions, please press the star key followed by the number one. We'll pause a moment for questions. There are no further questions at this time. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines.