Good morning. My name is Sergio, and I'll be your conference facilitator today. Welcome to Frontera Energy's Second quarter 2025 operating and financial results conference call. All lines are currently on mute to prevent any background noise. I would like to remind you that this conference call is being recorded today and is also available through an audio webcast on the company's website. Following the speaker's remarks, there will be a time for questions. Analysts and investors are reminded that any additional questions can be directed to Frontera following today's call at ir@fronteraenergy.ca. This call contains forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable Canadian security laws relating to activities, events, or developments the company believes or expects will or may occur in the future. Forward-looking information reflects the current expectations, assumptions, and beliefs of the company based on information currently available to it.
Although the company believes the assumptions are reasonable, forward-looking information is not a guarantee of future performance. Forward-looking information is subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that may cause the actual results of the company to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking information. The company's MD&A for the quarter ending June 2025, the company's annual information form dated March 10, 2025, and the documents it files from time to time with securities regulatory authorities describe the risks, uncertainties, material assumptions, and other factors that will influence actual results. Any forward-looking information speaks only as of the date on which it is made, and the company disclaims any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking information except as required by law. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Gabriel de Alba, Chairman of the Board of Frontera Energy. Mr. de Alba, please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Frontera 's Second Quarter 2025 Operating and Financial Results Conference Call. Joining me on today's call are Orlando Cabrales, Frontera 's CEO, and René Burgos Díaz, Frontera's CFO. Also available to answer questions at the end of the call, we have Víctor Vega , VP Field Development, Reservoir Management and Exploration; Alejandra Bonilla, General Counsel; Iván Arévalo , VP Operations; and Renata Campagnaro, VP Marketing, Logistics, and Business Sustainability. Thank you for joining us. Throughout the second quarter, despite ongoing volatility in the global economy and oil markets, Frontera remained focused on executing its strategic priorities. The company achieved strong operational results and completed important initiatives aimed at creating value for its shareholders and bondholders.
The company delivered $36.1 million in operating EBITDA, generated $27.1 million in adjusted infrastructure EBITDA, and ended the quarter with a strong cash balance of $197.5 million. Additionally, the company prioritized returning capital to all investors via a successful $80 million tender offer and consent solicitation of its senior loans due in 2028. Through the consent solicitation, the company strengthened its financial flexibility and reduced outstanding debt obligations, reducing its upstream net debt by 20%. The amendments to the indenture align Frontera 's indenture with industry standards and offer targeted operational flexibility, supporting the delivery of sustainable business and reserve growth, including growth from inorganic transactions. Subsequent to the quarter, Frontera c ompleted a CAD 91 million substantial issuer bid, the largest in the company's history. The SIB had a 92.6% participation, demonstrating that the capital distribution strategy has proven to be effective and well received by the shareholders.
The company also declared a quarterly dividend of $0.0625 per share, or approximately $3.5 million in aggregate, and initiated daily stock buybacks via a normal course issuer bid program. Over the last 12 months, Frontera returned over $144 million to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks, and also reduced its senior secured notes' principal by more than 20%, highlighting its commitment to returning capital to all investors. In Guyana, the 90-day consultation and negotiation period, which was established following the notice of intent sent to the government of Guyana, has ended. On July 23, the company received a letter reaffirming the government's vision that the current time license expired, but noted that it may consider a final meeting with the investors on a without-prejudice basis in October 2025, and the joint venture will be informed as to whether such a meeting will occur in September 2025.
Following the expiry of the 90-day consultation and negotiation period arising from the notice of intent, and in view of the uncertainty introduced by the government of Guyana, we have recognized an impairment of over $430 million related to our investment in the current time block in accordance with prudent accounting standards. The joint venture remains firmly of the view that its interest in and the license for the current time block remain in place and in good standing, and that the petroleum agreement has not been terminated. We remain committed to working with the government of Guyana to resolve these issues amicably while preparing to assert and protect our legal and contractual rights through all available legal remedies as necessary. Looking ahead, Frontera will continue to consider all options to realize the full value of its assets and enhance shareholder value.
In doing so, it will continue to consider initiatives in 2025 and beyond, including additional dividends, distributions, share, or bond buybacks based on the overall results of the business, oil prices, and the company's cash flow generation. Additionally, the company will consider all options to enhance the value of its common shares in the short term, and in so doing, may consider other strategic initiatives or transactions. I'd like now to turn the call over to Orlando Cabrales, Frontera 's CEO, and René Burgos, Frontera` 's CFO, who will share their views on our first quarter results. Orlando?
Thank you, Gabriel. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for today's call. Frontera 's solid second quarter financial and operating results, achieved despite the ongoing market volatility, reflect the effective actions taken to deliver stakeholder value, maintain financial and operational flexibility, and reduce long-term leverage. We have increased our total production quarter over quarter to 41,055 bbl per day, driven by increased processing capacity at Sahara, investments in new flow lines in our heavy oil fields, a successful well intervention program within our lighter medium blocks, and new commercialized volumes of natural gas production from the VIM-1 block. During the quarter, we maintained our focus on operational improvements, reducing capital spending and cost and process efficiencies across our business, lowering our production costs by 10.3% to $9.1 per barrel quarter -over- quarter, driven by freeware well interventions and the implementation of new production technologies in the fields.
We also reduced our transportation costs by 5.7% to $11.62 per bbl quarter -over- quarter, driven by fiber domestic wellhead sales. During the second quarter, the company drilled 26 development wells, mainly at our Quifa and CPE-6 blocks in Colombia, and completed 22 well workovers in other areas. On the exploration front, our efforts now turn to the Guapo-1 w ell, where preparation and permits were secured, and drilling is expected in the second half of the year. Our standalone and growing Colombian infrastructure business, which includes the company's interest in ODL, generated an adjusted infrastructure EBITDA of $27.1 million. At Puerto Bahia, the Reficar connection was completed by the end of the quarter, and we are aiming for the first volumes to be transported during the third quarter of 2025.
The connection is a strategic asset for the Cartagena Bay, offering higher throughput of hydrocarbons and the lowest transportation costs and superior logistics for the refinery of Cartagena. Other strategic investments in the port, including the LPG JV with the present Gasco, are progressing on a schedule. The port is also pursuing additional investment opportunities that leverage its facilities and infrastructure for sustainable long-term growth. Following the end of the quarter, the company announced it had reached an agreement to divest its interest in the non-core Perico and Espejo fields in Ecuador. The transaction is consistent with our strategy of maximizing value over volumes and supports a stronger focus on our higher-impact Colombia upstream operations.
The divestment will provide the company a total cash consideration to Frontera of $7.8 million, plus additional contingent consideration of $750,000 upon Perico achieving cumulative production of 2 million bbl as from January 1st, 2025. The closing of the transaction, pending regulatory approvals, is expected for hire in the second quarter of 2026. As a result, we are adjusting our 2025 production guidance to account for the impact of the Ecuador sale to 39,500 to 41,000 BOE per day. In light of the current oil price environment, we are also adjusting our capital expenditure guidance, downward, by approximately $20 million, reducing development facilities CapEx to $45 million - $65 million, and exploration CapEx to $25 million- $35 million, reflecting our disciplined approach to capital spending and ability to identify ongoing operational efficiencies.
Additionally, we are providing operating EBITDA guidance at a $70 Brent price with a target of between $320 million - $360 million, and revising our adjusted infrastructure EBITDA guidance to between $110 million- $125 million. I would now like to turn the call over to René Burgos , Frontera's CFO.
Thank you, Orlando, and thank you, Gabriel. Good morning, everybody, and thank you as always for your support and interest for our company. I'll try to go through these very quickly as I'd like to just take a moment to highlight a few key financial aspects of our quarterly results. For the second quarter, the company reported a net loss of $455.2 million or $5.89 per share. Our net loss in the quarter resulted primarily from non-cash impairment charges, totaling $477 million related to the company's interest in the content license in our Ecuadorian asset divestment. Including these impairment charges, the company's net income for this quarter would have been approximately $48 million. Our operating EBITDA for the quarter was approximately $76.1 million compared to $83.5 million in the first quarter, a 49% reduction.
This was primarily due to lower work prices, which were 11% lower on the quarter-over-quarter basis, primarily offset by the lower production and transportation costs, which highlights our operational discipline. Moving on to our key operational performance indicators, in the quarter, we saw average Brent sale prices at $66.71. We continue to see strong demand for the company's heavy crudes, which in turn has resulted in a lower average documented differential on export sale of $1.69. This compares to the prior quarter of $4.38 and over $2 per bbl improvement. Our current excluded net margin associated with our dilution and transportation deployment was $3.53, lower than the $3.81 for the prior quarter. This is a resultant improvement in our diluent purchasing strategy. Reviewing our operating costs, our production, energy, and transportation per barrel for the quarter totaled $25.34.
This compares to $27.74 for the prior quarter, and over $2 reduction resulting primarily from improvement across all our cost categories. The increase in quarter-over-quarter production costs was primarily a result of lower volume resource activities, as Orlando highlighted, and the adoption of new field technologies focused on reducing water production at the wellhead. Energy costs also decreased during the quarter, mainly related to lower market prices and also lower consumption per barrel. Transportation costs also decreased as a result of reduced transported volumes resulting from higher domestic wellhead sales prices. In our infrastructure business, our adjusted infrastructure EBITDA for the quarter was $20.1 million, which compared to $28.6 million in the first quarter. In the prior quarter, the quarter-over-quarter decrease was primarily due to higher operations in Sahara.
This happens as we continue to rev market operations with water purchasing volumes in Sahara up to over 50% on a quarter-over-quarter basis, which was offset by costs that result in the earlier assessment. As of June 30th, 2025, the company reported a total cash position of $197.5 million, including $184.9 million of unrestricted cash to cash flows. Compared to the quarter, the company did complete a vendor deal and the payment of approximately $56 million to shareholders, which we will see reflected in the next quarter. We will not have this quarter shortlisted. Turning now to risk management, our current risk management strategy supports our operations and planning. From there, I'm using derivative instruments to manage exposure to oil prices that can cause noise.
On the oil side, the company has entered into hedging with penalties issuing up to 40% hedging ratio until December 2025, at prices between $65 and $70 Brent, protecting against a trough in oil prices. Year to date, we have realized approximately $6 million in gain from hedging activities, excluding previous costs, enhancing financial stability and enhancing non-marketing fluctuations. Frontera has also covered 14% of the company's expected export exposure onto the first quarter and 20% of its exposure to the quarter quarter, with floors at over the 4,200 capital level. This provides the company with capital stability and helps mitigate impacts on future fluctuations while allowing the business to deliver on its 2025 targets. Finally, I'd like to provide an update on our investor value initiatives. In the second quarter, the company repurchased $80 million on its 2028 senior secured notes through our cash and revenue business localization.
Frontera Energy has paid approximately $10.5 million in dividends year to date, and the dividend in the second quarter result, the board indicated a quarterly dividend of 6.25% per share Canadian to shareholders on record as of October 2nd, 2025, and to be paid on or around October 16th. Regarding the company's substantial issuer bid, SIB, Frontera repurchased CAD 91 million or $66 million of its common shares through its SIB that is due in July, which is in addition to the company's CAD 42 million or $30 million of common shares repurchased through the SIB that closed in January of this year. The company is also currently repurchasing shares daily through its automatic repurchase program, the NCIB, that we recently launched in July. With that, I would like now to turn the call back to Orlando Cabrales.
Thank you, René. Before I conclude today's call, I would like to highlight that the company continues to advance toward its 2028 sustainability goals, as well as on the 2025 plan, with progress made on almost every goal during the second quarter. On the sustainability front, in Frontera, we are committed to following and promoting human rights within our operations, and we have launched the business network for responsible business conduct to promote and share best practices in human rights, diligence, and training. In the second quarter of 2025, local suppliers accounted for over 11% of total purchases, reflecting the ongoing commitment to support local economic development. Additionally, we maintain a strong performance in health and safety indicators, achieving a total recordable incident rate of 0.71 and also attaining a water reuse rate of 37.6% within our operational activities.
With that, I would like to conclude by saying thank you to Gabriel and René for their comments, and thank you to everyone for attending our call. I will now turn the call back to our operator, who will open it up for questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press the star followed by the 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 two. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift the headset before pressing any keys. One moment, please, for your first question. Your first question comes from Sara K onstantine from SMC. Please go ahead.
All right. Good morning. I have two questions. The first question is on Ecuador. I want to find out regarding the purchase price. That seemed a little bit low. It worked out to be $8,000 per flowing bbl. Could you maybe discuss how you achieved that price? I guess the second question on the NCIB, it appears we purchased back around 80,000 shares. I was curious why the NCIB has not been hit more aggressively, given the stock is around $6. I was expecting to see double that. You know, we did a buyback at $12 a share, and I was hoping we'd be buying back the maximum we could to increase the value for all shareholders. Thank you.
All right. Good morning, Sara. I apologize. We disconnected briefly. Can you repeat your first question? I can tackle the second question quickly because here's basically your first question.
Yeah. This first question was, in terms of the Ecuador sale, I was a little bit surprised by the price because it worked out to be $8,000 per flowing bbl. I was curious why it was sold for $8 million. Is there some additional reasoning for that, or is that the going rate for Ecuadorian assets? Because that seems kind of low if you compare it to U.S. market comp.
Got it. I'll tackle the first question, and then let me turn and tackle the second question. On the first question on the NCIB, there are two rules associated with the NCIB as to how much we can buy. One is the one limited by a flow, and the second one is limited by our daily volume. Our daily volume historically has been close, I think, it's at 100,000, 150,000 shares, and we're limited to buying up to 20% of that volume on a daily basis. We've instructed our BMO, our advisor, into the SIB process to buy shares on a daily basis if I hit that limit. In essence, we're somewhat limited as to how many shares we can buy by the nature of the NCIB program itself.
That's why we also do see the thing that we do for the benefit of all our shareholders is we do these significant SIBs where we're not limiting our own size, but rather we just provide an offer for every shareholder to participate in a matter that is, you know, equivalent. On the Ecuador sale, what I would say, I think it's helpful to focus on our core operations, our higher-impact operations, which is Colombia. Our goal and dream of Ecuador was to make it a material operation. The reality is that despite the best efforts in our reach materiality, I mean, we were aiming to get this to be an operation of 5,000 bbl+ , but we were struggling to keep it over two. As a result of that, we made the decision to move on and really focus on the assets that are delivering our portfolio.
I would like to highlight that if you include our Ecuadorian operations over the last six months compared to last year, our production is actually up in Colombia around, you know, 4% or 5%, excluding the Ecuador. Right? We continue to kind of drive home the economic value of our assets in Colombia, trying to get a lot more cost savings to really kind of drive that value.
To be consistent with our mantra of value over volumes, I think that is, I mean, that disposal is consistent with that, and as René said , concentrated on the Colombian assets.
Okay, thank you for taking my questions.
Absolutely.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Peter Bowley from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for the presentation and taking my question. In the MD&A, you mentioned the company may be considering other strategic initiatives or transactions to enhance value. In the context after divesting Ecuador, could you share a bit more color on what kinds of initiatives or transactions you might be considering? Is this like acquisitions, divestments, JVs? Would geographic focus continue to be mainly on Colombia, or would you be considering other geographies?
Right. Thank you for the question. I would start by saying that our current portfolio provides some very, very important opportunities. Just to take the Quifa block, we have been working on the Sahara project, which is going to increase the water handling of the field, which is currently being implemented. That provides some additional opportunities for growth in the Quifa block, as well as with the CPE-6 block, where we have been increasing also the water handling capacity of the field up to 380,000 bbl of water per day. That will allow us to increase further production in that block. Not to mention the Sabanero field, which is also a heavy oil field in a similar, I mean, location, the close location to Quifa. Our production there has been higher than what we have expected. Those are good opportunities in our heavy oil fields, which provides opportunities for growth.
The other one is, as we mentioned, the Guapo well in the VIM-1 block. That is a very good opportunity. As we said, during the quarter, we start again selling gas sales to the markets and taking advantage of the window of opportunity we have in the gas market in Colombia, where prices are going up in a very significant way. We are working with our partner, Parex, to further development in that area. That is another one which I think provides some opportunity. As you said, regarding any other potential acquisitions or M&A opportunities, we are always looking for those opportunities to enhance value for all our stakeholders and would consider any opportunities that make sense to our shareholders and stakeholders.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you have a question, please press star one. Your next question comes from Sergey Bolshakov from Stifel. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Thanks very much for the presentation. I have a couple of questions here. It looks like we've seen a build-up in receivables over the quarter, which have negatively impacted the working capital. If you can elaborate on this a little bit, I think we would also appreciate it if you can disclose the cash taxes for the first and the second quarter. Given quite a large cash balance, what are your intentions in terms of keeping this cash balance, potentially buying back some bonds? If you can tell us a little bit more about how you think about the outstanding bond, given that it's trading at pretty low levels in terms of cash prices, the refinancing of this bond seems highly unlikely today, at least. Thank you very much.
All right. I think I have a couple of questions there. On the receivables, I think we have a VAT receivable of about $20 million that we were expecting to receive this quarter without our staff. We do have other income taxes receivables that's related to our deferred tax asset values that we expect to receive later this year. That's why you see the working capital moving positive. I think the checkbooks are only $50 million on a quarter -over- quarter basis. I think those two assets on their own somewhat reflect that. As to your question on our cash position, we have about $197 million of cash, of which $184 million is unrestricted. You're going to remember, on the $184 million, you've tracked roughly $66 million because we just closed the SIB in July. Those numbers do not reflect that SIB program.
As to the bond and plans for the bond, we've had really great conversations over the last, I'll say, three, four months with our bondholders. We've communicated our strategy. I think we're going to decide that it's some of the opportunities that are available, not to include other opportunities that, of course, could emerge because of the current market environment. Right now, our focus is on delivering on the business. We still have another three years left of our bond maturities. We will continue to be operational updates regarding bond purchases, but at this time, our focus is on delivering on the promise of the business, which is to maximize value for our stakeholders.
I would add to that that, of course, we will consider that. Any decision would be made based on the overall results of the business, the oil prices, the cash flow generation of the business. Absolutely, as René said, we have been, as we have demonstrated and we have delivered on it, we will be very open to consider additional initiatives like that one.
That's great. Thank you very much. In terms of cash taxes for the first and the second quarter this year?
You can take a look at our, we have one particular line. There are two ways that we pay taxes, Sergey. The one, we kind of sell opportunity in the year, and then you have monthly, we have the withholding taxes. I think that the best way to explain it is we roughly pay 5.6% of our gross sales. If you add up the year, and I think our release is approximately $400 million, $500 million, you can multiply that times that 5%, 6%, and that's how you get to that number. It's within our cash flow statement. I think anywhere from $39 million or something like that we pay. That's gross before the returns.
Thank you. Thanks.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll turn it over to management for closing remarks.
Thank you, everybody, for attending the call and have a good day. Thank you, everybody.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.