AGM 2022

May 10, 2022

Okay. Well, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the annual meeting of shareholders of Freehold Royalties Limited. I would like to thank everyone here for attending our 2022 annual meeting. My name is Marvin Romanow. I am the Chairman of Freehold. This is our 25th annual meeting. We take pride in our history, and we are very excited about our future, and you are going to hear more about that today. I'd also like to advise everybody that this meeting is being webcast. Before I get into the standard procedures of the meeting, I would like to reflect on the significant changes we've made in the business over the past 2-3 years. First of all, when we promoted David Spyker to be our President and CEO. Later, he will make a presentation after the formal part of this meeting is over and talk about our near-term drivers and our strategic focus. He will also have an update for you on our associated Q1 2022 results, which were released this afternoon. For purposes of the meeting today, voting on all matters except for termination of the meeting will be conducted by ballot. Our business has evolved significantly since we started in 1996. From an initial IPO of CAD 10, we have paid out more than CAD 33 per share in dividends. In early 2020, we shifted our focus to a pure-play royalty company, completing the disposition of almost all of our working interest assets. This enhanced the sustainability of our return profile through improved netbacks and lower cash costs. In conjunction with this focus, our board also executed a change in leadership, as I've already commented. We promoted David Spyker to CEO in January of 2021. As a board, we remain extraordinarily focused on maximizing the value for our shareholders, and the promotion of Mr. Spyker was important to execute our strategy for the next phase of our growth at Freehold. Simultaneously, we restructured our organization and strengthened our leadership team to allow us to enhance the value of our existing royalty portfolio through collaboration with our royalty payers, as well as acquire additional assets and additional payers, all in the best oil and gas-producing basins across North America. We have not had an in-person general meeting since these leadership changes. I think our last AGM would be three calendar years ago that we did face-to-face. I would like to take this opportunity to introduce our executive team, and I'm going to ask each one of them to stand up as they're introduced. First of all, at the front here, David Spyker, President and CEO, David Hendry, Vice President of Finance and Chief Financial Officer, Lisa Farstad, Vice President, Corporate Services, Ian Hantke, Vice President, Diversified Royalties, Rob King, Vice President of Business Development, and Bob Lamond, Vice President of Asset Development. Thank you. This is your management team. In 2021, we completed $377 million of acquisitions, deploying our technical knowledge and our financial capacity. This established Freehold as the only North American public oil and gas royalty company with a strategic position in the premier United States oil-producing basins in Texas. We were able to acquire these assets during a period in which the commodity prices were much, much lower than we're seeing currently, and also our future outlook was lower than we see today as well. It's one of the reasons why we have had such a stellar performance. Now, this restructuring and acquisitions has been rewarded with our share price increasing more than 130% in 2021, making us one of the top-performing public oil and gas royalty companies in both 2020 and 2021. Continuing into 2022, our share price has increased 30% year to date, and we are returning an annualized dividend of CAD 0.96 a share to our shareholders. This is the highest level of dividend we've been paying out since 2015, and we also provide one of the highest dividend yields of companies in the TSX Composite Index, and we are a part of that index. Moving to the future, we are well-positioned with a dividend that is sustainable down to about $40 WTI. We have a strong balance sheet. We have an extremely capable management team, and we see significant opportunities ahead that will allow us to continue to grow our business through a combination of free drilling and disciplined acquisition work in both the United States and Canada. The expansion of Freehold's United States royalty portfolio improves the underlying growth profile of our assets. It enhances the option value created by ownership in basins with significant growth potential. Just this afternoon when we were reviewing some of our results, and I think you see it in the press release, our average initial well productivity in our United States wells is about 10 times what we're seeing in Canada, and we're doing very well in Canada as well. Historically, we have relied on acquisition work to offset the base decline of our annual royalty production volumes. Looking forward, our portfolio is forecast to provide organic production growth on an annual basis for the next number of years. Although we expect this growth to be choppy on a quarter-to-quarter basis, as it's difficult for us to predict exactly which quarter wells will be drilled, and operators make those decisions on an ongoing basis. All of this is a very significant step forward in the sustainability of our business. Our portfolio is positioned in North America with very low breakeven prices required to support drilling. What this means is that we expect this strong production performance, even if commodity prices weaken significantly from current levels. Our staff worked extraordinarily diligently over 2021, a lot of that in remote work environments because of the pandemic, to incorporate these new assets into our workflows and business process. I know we have a handful of employees here today, and perhaps a few on the phone. To all of you, your talent, your skills, your knowledge, and your hard work were crucial to our remarkable success. Thank you so much. The acquisition of high-quality assets will continue to be a core element of our growing business. However, looking beyond that, we are acutely aware that energy security and energy transition is top of mind for many people. To ensure that our business is positioned to be successful in the next 25 years, as successful as it has been in the previous 25 years, we have established a team led by Ian Hantke, who is here today, to evaluate opportunities to participate in energy-based royalties beyond traditional oil and gas. This part of our business has the potential to grow over the next several years, as we look to further expand our energy-based royalty footprint. All of this bodes very well for us for 2022 and beyond. I would like to introduce our directors standing for re-election. As your name is called, I'd ask you to stand up. I'll begin with Gary Bugeaud, who is unable to be here today. Peter Harrison, Maureen Howe, Douglas Kay, Art Korpach, myself, Marvin Romanow, David Spyker, who is our President and CEO, and Aidan Walsh. Thank you. I would also like to introduce representatives from KPMG, our auditors, Brad Robertson and Lindsay Foan. You can stand up as well. Come on. People want to see who checks our books. Yes. I would like to recognize at this point, Susan MacKenzie, who is not standing for re-election and will retire from this board at this meeting. Sue was appointed to the board in 2014. She served on the Governance, Nominating and Compensation and Reserves Committee, and she was chair of the GNC committee from May of 2015 to May of 2021. She worked extraordinarily hard to move our compensation and our governance and our ESG systems forward, and we owe a lot to you, Sue, for bringing us forward in that regard. We will miss you dearly, and I want to thank you so much for all the hard work you brought, all the compassion you brought, all the intensity you brought. For those of you who haven't experienced that, she will stay later and let you know about that. It was all really, really helpful to continue our growth of our company and the successful functioning of our board. Thank you, Sue. We have indicated in our information circular, we have committed to achieve 30% gender diversity in our board composition by next year's annual meeting. Our board has been actively involved in a North American-wide recruitment process for new women director candidates, and we expect to be making an announcement on this, and we will achieve our 30% target within the next month or two. Listen carefully to this announcement. This recruitment effort took a while. We had hoped to have these names in the proxy circular, but the timing wasn't for that. This is a difficult and competitive environment, very competitive environment, to recruit talented directors and especially talented female directors. We have been highly successful in that regard. We just didn't get the process done in time for our mailing. We will meet our target well ahead of our 2023 target date. I would also like to recognize another long-standing employee, Karen Taylor, who's our Corporate Secretary. She will be retiring at the end of May, and that is a big grin on her face because this is a big job, and she doesn't have to worry about it anymore. Karen, I think, Marijke, we can arrange personal visits if you'd like. We're very accommodating to our shareholders. She started 25 years ago, and we had a little celebration dinner last night for her and Sue, and the consensus was that Karen started when she was about 15 years old here. She organized our first AGM in May of 1997. During her tenure, she's taken on lots of roles, including corporate communications, investor relations, and corporate secretary. Most importantly of all, she made sure that the chairman never gets embarrassed, the chairman doesn't lose his notes, and the chairman is where he should be at the right time and the right place with the right stuff. Appreciated very much, Karen. I will miss you. There are very few employees with the loyalty, attention to detail, and care for the organization that you have, and we wish you all the best in your retirement. If you need any lessons on that, there are a few of us around that can kind of give you a hand with that too. Thank you so much, Karen. That concludes my opening comments and strategy comments. Dave will do, as I mentioned earlier, an additional set of slides and discussion on a few elements of our business to give you some more details later on, but I want to move to the formal part of the meeting now. To make the best use of our time, we have pre-arranged with certain shareholders attending to move and second the resolutions, which we will consider in one motion today as we set out in the notice of the meeting. While all matters will be considered by a single motion, shareholders are still able and will be able to vote on each of the matters separately by ballot. If you have already sent in your proxy, your vote has already been counted, and you do not need to vote at this meeting. We ask that questions during the formal part of the meeting today only refer to the matter set out in the notice of meeting. Following the formal part of the meeting, David will be making the presentation, and both he and I will be happy to answer any additional questions you have at that time. The meeting will now come to order. I am the chairman of the corporation, and I will act as chairman of the meeting. Karen Taylor will act as secretary of the meeting, and representatives of Computershare Trust Company of Canada will act as scrutineers. I have received a declaration as to the mailing of notice of annual meeting of shareholders, information circular, instrument of proxy, and the annual report to shareholders. I direct that this declaration, together with copies of these documents that were mailed to shareholders, be kept by the secretary with the minutes of the meeting. A quorum for a meeting of shareholders of the corporation is 25% or more of the outstanding common shares present in person or by proxy. There is a quorum present at this meeting, and in fact, in excess of 55% of the shares have been voted by proxy. The interim scrutineers report, which I just examined a few minutes ago, indicates that between 79% and 99% of the shares voted have voted in favor of each of the matters to be considered at today's meeting. I now declare the meeting to be regularly called and properly constituted for the transaction of business. We will conduct each vote by way of ballot other than termination of the meeting. I understand that the scrutineers have collected all of the ballots. If you have a ballot, please provide it to the scrutineers now. They're sitting at the back of the room there. The annual financial report to shareholders, which includes the financial statements of the corporation for the fiscal year ended December 31st, 2021, and the auditor's report for the same period was mailed to those shareholders who requested it. There are extra copies of these reports available on the table directly adjacent to the cookies. They are also available on our website or on cedar.com as well. As I noted earlier, to make the best use of our time, I will be asking for a motion to consider, if thought appropriate, to approve the remaining items of business set forth in Freehold's notice of annual meeting and management information circular. However, before I do so, I will speak to the first remaining item of business, the nomination and election of directors of Freehold. According to a governance agreement between Freehold and Rife Resources, a wholly owned CN entity, Rife has the right to nominate two individuals for election as directors. Rife has nominated Peter Harrison and David Spyker for election as directors of the corporation. In accordance with the governance agreement and the advance notice bylaw of Freehold, the only individuals entitled to be nominated as directors at this meeting are the persons named as nominees in the information circular. Therefore, as directed by the board and in accordance with the notice of meeting and information circular, Gary Bujold, Peter Harrison, Maureen Howe, Douglas Kay, Art Korpach, Marvin Romanow, David Spyker, and Aidan Walsh are hereby nominated as directors of Freehold Royalties. To hold office until the next election of directors or until their successors are elected or appointed. These are subject to the provisions of the Business Corporations Act of Alberta and the bylaws of Freehold Royalties Limited. Is there any discussion or question from any registered shareholder or proxy holder? Go ahead. Marijke, could you grab a mic and Maureen. Whoa. I think it's cause for a safety moment, and we'll need appropriate H&S shoes. Well. Dear woman, don't go killing yourself. In regard to directors, which is the topic at the moment, I would like to bring forth, as I normally do, and let me first say my name is Marijke Knipscheer. I do hold shares, and I've held them for 25 years. Also, I'm a proxy holder for my own company, which has also held them for 25 years. I'm very sad to see that our young Karen is leaving. Anyway, on to directorships. Ms. Howe, she holds two other directorships with three and/or two committees on each of those two directorships, which to me means she's very busy elsewhere. Therefore, she's got at least, as I say, five or six other areas that need attention besides Freehold. One of those companies is Pembina, and I also happen to own Pembina, so I think I'm in a very good position to stand here and speak about this. She's getting full pay for us here at Freehold, and she's also getting it elsewhere. I'm saying that she's spreading herself around a little bit too much and being a little bit too greedy with too many directorships for herself. Mr. Harrison. I realize we have the big CN, who seems to love you almightily and has stuck you here with us. Well, I've spoken about this before, and I'm dead serious about this. You have been with two other companies that filed for bankruptcy, Spyglass and Delphi. This indicates that you have been involved with bad decisions at these companies, and therefore, it is my humble opinion to say that we do not need your type of bad decisions or you sitting on our board. That's what I have to say about the directors. Thank you. I don't think there was a question embedded in that, but I will respond to that because I think it's important for me to respond to that. Your first observation was, what's an appropriate number for directors to be on boards? How much is too little, and how much is not enough? I'm not sure I know there's a perfect answer to that. There are standards that governance organizations provide. We meet that standard or even exceed it. But from a business perspective, I really value people who bring their knowledge and their background and their experience from their work careers, but also from their directorial careers. Sue, who's retiring, was on four boards, and I think she brought a great deal of depth to her observations, to her conversations, to her questions. I have already experienced Maureen in two meetings, and she's going to do precisely the same. I would say I value her ability to bring her knowledge from her other directorial roles in addition to her extensive career experience. Having that diversity of director experience, I believe, is an advantage, and we're fortunate to have Maureen on our board. Peter has been with us for 25 years, and for anyone who's ever drilled an exploration well or started an exploration company, there is no law of God that they're going to turn out to be a success. In fact, we have some explorationists in the room here, and when you're exploring, your chance of success are somewhere between 1 in 20 and 1 in 10. Once you move to development, your probabilities improve way beyond that. My experience with Peter goes back to the days when I was CEO of Nexen, and that's a distant memory for me. I used to call on Peter when he was a portfolio manager running an oil and gas portfolio for CN, the CN Pension Fund. What I can tell you, and I think out of about 2,500 to 3,000 investor meetings that I've had in my career, Peter is one of the top 1% or 2% portfolio managers that I've run into. He hasn't, despite his gray hair, which for me, it's lack of hair, he has not lost an ounce of sharpness in the whole time I have known him. Every time I would come back from a roadshow, I would say he asked some of the best questions, and he continues in that service today. Peter is going to be retiring from CN slowly, bit by bit, but we've asked him to stay on our board for a little bit longer because of the depth of his experience and the knowledge he brings. Thank you, Marijke, for your observations, and you have our sense of where our company is at on those particular observations that you've made. Are there any other questions or discussions on this matter before I move to the next one? They say you're supposed to wait eight seconds, and if you try the eight seconds, it sounds like it's forever. It feels like it's forever. Okay, I declare that those nominated are duly elected directors of Freehold. Particulars of the votes cast on the election of directors will be available via news release after the meeting. I now ask for a motion to approve each of the remaining items of business set forth in Freehold's notice of annual meeting and management information circular. Mr. Chairman, I move that the firm of KPMG LLP Chartered Accountants be appointed auditors of Freehold until the next annual meeting or until their successors are appointed, and that the resolution set forth in Freehold's information circular regarding Freehold's approach to executive compensation be approved and adopted. Mr. Chairman, I second the motion. Is there any discussion or question from any registered shareholder or proxy holder? I have been advised by the scrutineers that each of the matters considered today have been approved by the requisite majorities. I direct that the scrutineers' report be annexed to the minutes of this meeting as a schedule. As mentioned earlier, the details of the votes will be made available in a news release to be issued by Freehold and in a report of the voting results to be posted on SEDAR. Unless there are any questions from the floor, I would entertain a motion for the meeting to be terminated. Go ahead, Marika. I know I'm a senior citizen now. Me too. I'm getting a little bit slow at times. Did we miss out the say on pay? I think I voted on that. I'm pretty sure I did, but I didn't hear anything about it in the formal part of the meeting. Yeah, you can ask a question or make a comment on say-on-pay if you want now, but we had the number of votes to pass that. Go ahead- Okay If you want to make a comment on that. Yes. Thank you, because I was waiting for that. My comment would be that it's my recollection, anyways, that Freehold is in the business of collecting and/or disseminating royalties, that we're not an oil and gas exploration company. I think when I look on page 57 of the management circular, where we're comparing pay for certain companies and Freehold, the companies I see on page 57 are exploration companies, most of them. I find it, I don't know what the word is, but it's not really a very good comparison for Freehold to be compared against those companies. I'm thinking that our CEO, however lovely a man he is, being paid at least in the circular, it says CAD 624,445, I'm saying that's way too much for someone who is heading up a company that collects and disseminates royalties. Likewise, for the CAD 412,200 the circular says for Mr. Hendry. I say therefore, the raises mentioned, which it does mention in the circular, are 11% or more, are also not quite warranted because there's a lot of people still who don't get any raises here in Calgary. I'm reading these things in a circular, and I'm thinking we need to be a little less generous. Thank you. I don't think there was a question in there as well, but I will respond to that as well. As I mentioned in my prepared comments, we were the top-performing royalty oil and gas company in North America two years running, in 2020 and 2021. I don't know, Dave, do we have that slide in the deck here? Are you going to cover it? No, there it is. I have to challenge your assumption that all we do is collect royalty checks, and we cut them up into smaller checks and distribute them to unit holders. That is not our business. To get that kind of performance, we have to identify appropriate plays. We have to identify appropriate basins. We have to screen a lot of acquisitions. I don't know if you have that screening slide with how many acquisitions we have to screen, but it's probably a 90-to-1 or 100-to-1 ratio for things that come in the front door to what you can bid on and what you can execute. This company, and I have direct experience from operating a multinational business at Nexen, this company has the same amount of technical intensity and complexity that any other oil and gas company does. In fact, we have some additional ones because we tend to do more acquisitions than most E&P players do. We have a lot of benefits being a royalty player, no exposure to capital, no exposure to operating costs, and relatively little financial leverage. We are moving also in a spirit of just a little over two years from when oil prices were negative to where oil prices are $100, and might even surge higher. We've moved from an era where talent was readily available to talent is going to be extremely competitive. It's talent at all levels, talent at the director level, talent at the executive level, and talent at the employee level. We just reviewed statistics today for essentially how we're doing on talent. Fortunately, because I believe we create a very good work environment, we've been successful, as you see here, that our retention rates are very high and our turnover is very low. We are going to be competitive because it's the only way we can maintain that level of performance. My forecast is from seeing, I can't count how many cycles I've seen in this industry, but every time prices surge, G&A surges, costs surge, drilling costs surge, and I used to characterize, we give away some of the prices, but it's just the reality of our business. We will continue to try to attract the best talent, because it's that talent that allowed us to evaluate good basins in the United States, an area where we had not had direct operating experience. We not only made a stellar oil and gas acquisition, we had the good fortune of stellar timing on it as well. I recall these meetings, there was a little bit of hand-wringing, and when you got to write a big check when commodity prices have just come out of negative territory. I hope that gives you and the shareholders a little bit of color about how we think about all of these issues and how we think about managing them. Are there any other comments or any other questions before I move on? Go ahead. You mentioned diversity in your opening remarks, and I'd like to comment on diversity. I believe I'm almost uniquely qualified to comment on diversity because in 1975, I was the first female in Canada to run the Western oil and gas retail section of Gulf Oil, and I was told, "You better not get pregnant or get married." Which of course, we can't say that these days anymore. Well, I think you just did. I think nothing wrong with that. I say what I like, as you know. At any rate, in regard to diversity, therefore, I'm all for diversity, except I'm sure all of you, if you were to have a heart attack, you would want to have the very best surgeon working on you, and not someone who got into being a surgeon because they were diverse with some sort of religion or color or creed or God knows what else the flavor of the day is. Yes, diversity is wonderful, but I think we should still continue to keep looking for the best people, and not just because they happen to fit into the diverse flavor of the day diversity portion. I think that's a fair comment, and this is one of those areas where I believe we can have our cake and eat it too. We've got both of those things going for us. It's one of the reasons why it's taken us as long as it has because we undertook a fairly extensive and direct search effort, and we had a number of our directors involved in that. Trust me, not any gender-qualified candidate would make it through the screen. They have to have legitimate experience, and they have to have capability, and they have to fit in and want to fit in with the kind of business that we have and what we do. I would encourage you to look at the CVs of the individuals, including Maureen, who's on our board, and it's simply stellar, bar none gender, period. Very capable. The two additional directors that we'll be appointing shortly will be in the same category. I think your observation is a fair one, and we can sometimes have our cake and eat it too, and this is one of those occasions where I believe we've been able to do that. I don't know. Does that saying, having your cake and eating it too, does that date me, or we still say those kind of things? We've only got cookies. We don't have cake. Next year. We're upgrading next year. It's slow progress from getting from remote work to cookies and sandwiches and maybe more next year. Take note, David, because Karen's not going to be here to keep us honest. Any other questions or discussion? Thank you, Marijke, for bringing all of those things up. You've been at our meetings for a long period of time, and to be honest, I missed you because you make me sharper every time. So thank you for that. Can I have a motion for the meeting to be terminated? Mr. Chairman, I move this meeting be terminated. All in favor, please raise your hands. Any contrary? I declare the formal part of this meeting terminated. David Spyker will now provide an update on Freehold's activities. Before I turn the meeting over to him, does anyone have any additional questions that don't have anything to do with the formal motions that we have just dealt with? David, the podium is yours. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon, and thank you for attending our 2022 annual meeting of shareholders. I'm pleased to review with you the results of our first quarter of 2022. The impact of the tremendous work that the Freehold team has achieved over the past 24 months, and our confidence in the business going forward. In the first quarter of 2022, we once again achieved a record level of funds from operations at CAD 71.9 million. This equates to CAD 0.46 per share. Our production in Q1 was 13,676 BOE a day, 2% lower than the previous quarter, as cold temperatures in Canada and timing delays in bringing new U.S. wells on production contributed to the slight decline in volumes, despite very strong well permitting and drilling activity. The work that's been completed over the past 24 months to position our portfolio in the best-producing basins across North America has resulted in 25% production growth over the past 12 months. This focused and disciplined acquisition work, in conjunction with an 85% increase in commodity prices, has driven these record levels of funds flow. In Q1, we paid a monthly dividend of CAD 0.06 per share, representing a 38% payout ratio. We've increased this monthly dividend to CAD 0.08 per share, commencing with the April dividend payment. This would represent a 55% payout ratio if we use that dividend payment in Q1, just to give you a sense of what that would look like. When we set our dividend, we base it on a longer-term planning model of $75 WTI pricing. That allows us to set a level that we think is sustainable for the longer term, and we don't have to reduce it if prices check back in the future. We retain the strongest balance sheet amongst our royalty peers, exiting the first quarter with net debt to trailing funds from operations of 0.3 times. What that means is that we would be net debt-free by late summer, early fall. This provides us tremendous flexibility with the strategic acquisition work that we are pursuing, and we can do a lot of that work without having to issue equity again. We look at our 2021 Q1 drilling results. You can see that drilling on our land continues to be strong in both Canada and the U.S. We had 144 wells drilled in Canada in Q1, following up very similar numbers last quarter. In the U.S., we had 100 wells drilled. Last quarter, it was 101 wells drilled. Again, very strong drilling in the key basins. When we really focus on a lot of our drilling is in Southeast Saskatchewan in the Bakken. We have quite an active program in the Viking area, driven by Tamarack. In Clearwater, we've got an active program, and that's driven by Tamarack Valley and Rubellite. In Spirit River and Deep Basin areas, that's driven primarily by Peyto and Tourmaline. If we go on the U.S. side, you have significant drilling in the Permian. Primary drilling in there would be Pioneer. In the Eagle Ford, it would be led by Marathon. In the Haynesville, there's a couple of smaller operators. The biggest growth areas for us in the U.S. would be the Permian and the Eagle Ford. With the ramp-up. Just go back there, Matt, maybe. The Canadian drilling activity. Oh, one more. Really, there's a big difference between what happens in Canada and the U.S. In Canada, we've seen the drilling activity. What we see is that from a well gets licensed in Canada to when it's brought on stream, takes about 3 months. The drilling activity that we've seen in Canada, we're already showing that production in our quarterly results. In the U.S., it's a little bit different. The time from when a well is permitted to when it's brought on stream is about 3 times that. It's typically 9-12 months. The reason for that is the pad drilling in the U.S. You'll get a drilling operation, we'll set up on a pad, we'll drill multiple wells there. When the drilling rig moves away, you get the completion crews will move in, and they'll spend another couple of months completing those wells, and then they're brought on production. It's a little bit different than our much more simplistic Canadian model, where we see well drilled, well completed, tied in right away. What we're seeing is that a lot of the drilling activity that's happening in the U.S., that's really going to start to show up in our production numbers in Q2 and the latter half of the year. Okay. Really, the royalty business at a high level is very simple. There's a lot of hard work that goes on behind the scenes, but it's a very simple business model. We do our modeling at about $75 a barrel WTI. Based on that, we would generate just about a quarter million CAD or a quarter billion CAD in funds from operations. We have three decisions to make with that. We can return it to our shareholders in the form of dividends, and that takes up about 50% of that funds flow. We could reinvest it in the portfolio, and that was the CAD 377 million in acquisition work that we did last year. We see continued opportunity set predominantly in the U.S. right now to continue to make high-quality acquisitions. That's really what our business development team is focused on, having that ability to continue to grow the business like we have over the past 24 months. The third option is to manage our balance sheet. Like I said, we've got the cleanest balance sheet in the royalty business right now. We think that having that just gives us the flexibility to do that acquisition work, like I mentioned before, without having to issue equity. We were able to complete or get a deal signed in May. It's a CAD 19 million deal, and that's in the Permian Basin. That's a little bit of a tuck-in acquisition to some of the work that we did in October last year that Pioneer is drilling. We expect that deal to close in the latter part of Q2. Next slide, Matt. Really, to put it into perspective, we've really moved the company along over the last 10 years. At 7,600 barrels a day, we've almost doubled our royalty production to over 14,000 BOE a day. That is both from a combination of the acquisition work that we've been doing as well as the organic drilling that's occurring on our lands. This is the first time, I think, that we can say this over the life of the company, that we can actually, without having to do another deal, we see organic growth on the portfolio for the next number of years. Again, what that allows us to do is be very patient and very opportunistic in the acquisition work that we're doing, so we can add the top-tier assets in the top basins with the top operators into our portfolio. With that, we've done a lot of work in getting our cash costs down. 10 years ago, we were over CAD 5 a BOE. Today, we're less than CAD 4. A lot of that work is with getting rid of the working interest assets that we've had in our portfolio and allows us to be a top-tier royalty co and not get diverted with working interest assets. Our goal is to be the best-in-class royalty company. One of the unique things about the U.S. portfolio is the pricing that we get. Being in Texas, much nearer to the Gulf Coast, we really get the direct benefit of pricing. If we compare that, the 2021 price to Q1 2022 price, that's just 85% increase in commodity overall that we talked about. If you look in the U.S. in Q1, we received CAD 119 a barrel for our production. The average WTI price over that time was $97. When you convert that to Canadian dollars, CAD 119. We get what you see. In Canada, because of the transportation costs and the quality of crude differences, it's about CAD 15 less. That's why we generally say that about 35% of our production comes from the U.S., but it represents about 40% of our revenue. A much more significant revenue contributor. We talked about this at the start, with the funds from operations into that CAD 250 million range for this year. When you look at historically, that's about twice of where we were at before. Then, again, when you consider that we're paying half of that back to shareholders in the form of dividends, what's left over now, CAD 120 million, we have a lot more horsepower to run our business, to grow our business than when we had CAD 50 million-CAD 60 million in the prior years. That gives us the ability to compete in these top basins around North America. We'll just touch briefly on this, but Marvin had mentioned that already. When we look at our dividend, we say at the current CAD 0.08 a share, we're sustainable down to a $40 WTI price range. That, again, is different than where we've been before. Just the size and the places that we're operating allows us to have sustainability that we hadn't had historically. Why own Freehold? Really, we've got really high margins. We've got greater than 97% operating margins. It allows us to pay this dividend across all commodity price cycles. We're a much more diverse company than we were historically. You've got the ability to participate in the top oil and gas plays across North America under the top operators, and without having to know specific plays or specific operators. But if you believe in oil and gas, then you can participate in that. We're very sustainable. We've increased our dividend six consecutive quarters. We did not increase our dividend this quarter at the CAD 0.08 a share that we increased it to last year. We think that that number is the right number in our long-term pricing environment and still provides the flexibility to grow our business. Strong balance sheet, we've talked about that. Best in the business. Gives us a lot of flexibility. Quality long-duration assets. When you look at plays like the Eagle Ford, Permian, Clearwater, Viking, Vulcan, those are the areas that have really been contributing to the production growth in North America, and we expect that to continue. These plays, and Marvin had alluded to it, they make economic sense at $50, at $40. Even if there is pullback in pricing, we've still got a portfolio that we think can continue to grow and can continue to deliver value to our shareholders. We're excited. We're bigger. We're better. We've got record cash flow. Our volumes are at all-time high, and this isn't for just this year, it's for 2022 and beyond. We've got just a top-notch business development team that just tears apart opportunities. We were in Houston a couple of weeks ago and just understanding the deal flow, and there's a lot of really good high-quality assets that are coming to market right now that we think that we can be participating in that transaction work. We have to be patient. We have to be opportunistic. We want to make sure it fits our portfolio. Because we don't have to do a deal to backfill and stabilize the company, we can do those things. We're low risk. We always have been. We've always had a good balance sheet management. We've always been in the basins that can continue to grow. We've just got better at that. We think that there are still remaining multiple near-term catalysts. We review our dividend quarterly, and so as we review what happened the past quarter, we look to see, does this still make the right sense for the business model? We've been working to inch that toward up the 60% payout ratio that is our target. We think that there's lots of opportunity to grow the portfolio with acquisitions. We think our valuation remains compelling. We've done a lot of work over the last 18 months talking to people about the new look Freehold. It's changed a lot over the last five years with the business focus, with the talent that we brought into the organization and with the opportunities that we see ahead of us. I think it's exciting times. We've come off of a very exciting year, and we continue to look forward to the future. Thank you very much. If anyone has any questions, and Marvin or I will... I'd like to find out what your forecast is, if our lovely drama teacher of a prime minister starts getting even worse with his hate towards oil and gas. If the oil and gas industry has to go through more downturns because of our drama teacher and the price goes down, what happens to our dividends? What's your forecast on all of that? Marijke, I think we recognize that the commodity pricing, where it's at right now, it could be at a high. There's also lots of views that with the supply and demand fundamentals, that it could go higher. However, when we do our modeling, we're basing on a long-term $75 WTI pricing. If you look back over the last 10 years or so, that seems to be a price level that makes economic sense to continue to develop oil and gas. We do recognize that as a commodity price, there's a lot of volatility in it, driven by external factors that we don't have a lot of control over. What we can control is where we invest, where we buy assets, such that if there is that volatility, we can deliver that sustainable dividend, down to that $40 price that we talked about. We don't see the oil price settling into a $40 range, but I don't think a $70-$75 price longer term is unreasonable. Marijke, I think you were also getting at maybe what happens if the federal government chooses to implement a windfall profits tax or something like that. Did I hear that in your question as well? I'm sorry. I'm hard of hearing. I think I heard you in your question saying, what if we attract additional taxes or additional obligations in this very high price environment, perhaps from the federal government, because there's been some speculation that that actually might be a possibility. I think you were getting at that as well. Having lived through a number of these cycles and operated in basins where precisely that does happen from time to time, what I can say is there is virtually nothing we can do to protect ourselves from that, because once your assets are there, you're captive to that government, you're captive to that regulatory environment, and you're captive to that tax environment. However, I think offsetting that today, we see a new and renewed emphasis on energy security, given the unfortunate events in Russia and the Ukraine. We always wanted cheap, clean and secure energy, but now we also want energy that comes from desirable places. Once you start taxing an industry that you need to still propel economies forward until we find alternatives to hydrocarbons, I think governments do that with some caution. My anticipation, and who knows, everyone can have their own anticipation, is that we might face a small, tiny windfall profits tax. I think they will be very careful to make sure they don't damage the investment cycle, because we need oil and natural gas from clean, secure places like Canada. Canada is the fifth largest energy producer in the world. That is almost an unknown fact to many people who reside in this country, and it is such an important industry, and energy is ubiquitous to everything we do. In my work with government, sometimes I would hear slightly different responses from what I call inside voices versus outside voices. The outside voices are clamoring that we have to get rid of oil and gas. Yes, we have to make a transition off of that, but it's going to take a long, long time. In the interim, isn't it much better to get our hydrocarbons from places we know and trust and can manage their environmental footprint than places that use it for unscrupulous, unethical. We actually do our best through CAPP and other industry associations to make our voices heard, and that kind of goes in ebbs and tides. I think we should keep our eye on what happens to desirable oil as the situation on energy unfolds. As you've all read, Europe sends $1 billion a day to Russia for purchasing oil and gas, and that's maybe not the best place to be sending $1 billion a day these days. Keep your eye, because I think these transitions are going to be important, and I believe they're going to position our company to do very well. Yeah. Here you are. You are hedge-free, and is that something you look at on an ongoing basis, or any thoughts there where that might go? Just for everybody's information, hedging is a commonly referred term to selling your oil forward at a fixed price for an extended period of time versus taking the spot price. We work in a very unusual industry, where the last barrel sold prices the first 100 million barrels that's produced. You kind of think, "Well, that's an unusual way to run such a big industry," but that's what happens. We have thought about this issue a number of times. We've debated it a few times. One of our reluctance to enter into it, and especially in an environment like today, the oil price curve is severely backwardated. That means if we wanted to sell forward, to go out maybe a year, we'd have to give up $10, $15, $20 a barrel. Earlier in my career, I used to do these studies of, well, what if you just got up every morning and hedged and sold forward to provide some certainty in your revenue stream? By and large, there's better ways to protect yourself from volatility, and we have one of the best ways to protect that at Freehold. We have no capital costs. We have no operating costs. We have low levels of leverage. We are literally the last company standing if prices go into free fall. For the first time in my career, we saw negative oil prices, if you can believe that, 2 and a bit years ago. Generally, we don't have a good strategic reason for hedging. I think to try to pick a strong environment and say, "I'm going to pick up this high price. I'm going to pick up this high price, and I'm going to be secure." I can guarantee you for certain that's a mug's game that you'll never win. We've found it generally best to stay floating. Our shareholders understand that. A lot of oil companies are enjoying strong returns these days. Take a look at their mark-to-market losses on the hedges that they put in place in the last two, three, four years. Some of these numbers are reaching into the billion-dollar mark-to-market territories. We'll discuss that more at board meetings in the future. My expectation is we'll continue to stay on a floating basis for price, and it's worked out enormously to our advantage. Can we get the mic over here? Thanks, Lisa, for helping us out. A couple questions, if I may. In terms of the U.S. producer, are they still as constrained with their activity as they assert? Do you think that could change? Could you also comment on your corporate decline rates? I think there was an inference that you may look at royalty acquisition outside of energy. Could you expand on that, please? Yes. With respect to the constraint on the oil and gas side in the U.S., we do see definitely labor side and supply side shortages. We're not seeing that really constrain the development of the asset. We are seeing maybe a little bit longer times to get wells on stream. We're certainly seeing cost inflation, like Marvin had mentioned, that we do not have that pressuring our business, so they take that charge themselves. As far as the growth in the U.S., in the Permian Basin, where our biggest production is, 70,000 barrels a day of production was added just last month in the Permian. It's been setting production records exceeding the pre-COVID levels for the last three months in a row. You're certainly seeing the ability to grow those basins. As far as decline goes, in the U.S., well productivity is significantly higher. Initial production is about 10 times higher. First-year decline is also quite a bit higher than what we're seeing in Canada. The base decline in the U.S. asset base would be about 39%. If we had, in the absence of drilling, the asset would decline in the first year by about 39%. In Canada, it's much shallower. It's in that 17%-19% range. the acquisition Oh, sorry about that. Yeah. Really, that's just early days on that, and we're exploring many opportunities. Right now, we do get royalty revenue from potash production out of Saskatchewan. We are leasing lands with respect to some of the lithium and helium projects that are going on. Beyond that, we're looking at opportunities to collect royalties off some of the biofuel projects that are being built. We're looking at some of the solar, some of the wind projects. These are early days. When we look at the U.S. entry, we put the team together about four years in advance of when we really kind of stepped out, put our toe in the water, and then in the year or so following, advanced with the bigger U.S. transaction. I would expect a similar pace on the Diversified Royalties, really just coming up the learning curve in the near term. You had mentioned that we were getting rid of some of the working interest royalties. I'm glad we are, because I've got some of them personally in my portfolio that came through our family, and they're a pain in the A-S-S. I'd like to find out what percentage do we still have of our portfolio that are working interest. That's the first question. The second is actually just a comment. I'm glad to see, I've said it to a couple of you, that we're having these regular meetings again, because the virtual ones, you can't really ask a lot of decent questions, and a lot of the questions are ignored. Not only that, I'm going to say this without prejudice, that I find that Computershare is just not really up to snuff, because there are times when I have not received the link, even though I did register with Computershare early, and they were remiss and did not send me a link, so therefore I couldn't get in, and I couldn't even ask any questions. I've also spoken with other people in this meeting, particularly a gentleman next to me. He also being a senior, has found it too difficult to even get into the virtual meetings, let alone get a link to even do anything. I'm glad we're having real meetings where we can have real discussions and get some meaningful feedback. Thank you. Thank you. I'll answer the first question. With respect to the working interest, it's about 100 BOE a day of production on our roughly 14,000 BOE a day of total production. It's really, really small. It's a little bit of dry gas in the Central Alberta region, so very diminutive part of our portfolio. With respect to the AGM, I think it's very important that we get back to the in-person meetings to give people an opportunity to voice their thoughts and their concerns. It was good to get back to this meeting today and have actually a really good turnout. Thank you for showing up. We did have a bit of a discussion, and we do see a lot of companies going to hybrid or online meetings. I think we have to remember that not all shareholders are large institutions, that there are some smaller retail shareholders, and they don't get the kind of access to managements as easily as when the institutions see Dave going on road shows. I and the board is very committed that if the pandemic will allow us to continue to have these in-person annual general meetings, we'll continue to do that. I think that they're a bit of a Canadian or even North American institution, and they have some good history, and there's some good reasons in my mind for keeping them. We're trying to be contemporary, so we webcast this meeting today so that if people don't want to come or are unable to come and want to listen in, they're welcome to do that. Barring significant health restrictions or other ones, I expect us to continue this format. I know it's not quite the same for all companies. I'm not sure I can really comment on your comment on Computershare, but their representatives are here, and I think I'd encourage you to. Yeah, they're back there, and I'd encourage you to chat to them to make your observations known to them directly. Thank you for your comments. Well, I think that Dave will conclude us for the afternoon here. Did you want to make any closing comments? I'll make the closing comments. Very good. Chairman has to have some duties, can't turn everything over to the boss. I want to thank everybody, first of all, for coming out. I want to thank you for your support as shareholders and owning our stock through the years. I am thrilled that we've been able to provide the kind of returns we have. We will work our darndest and hardest to continue that moving forward. I look forward to seeing all of you and more of you next year. To the employees that are here, thank you again for really the incredible delivery you have given to the company in the last year, and we hope to see you out here again next year. Thank you very much, everybody.