Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the HAES 2023 AGM conference call. I would now like to turn the meeting over to High Arctic's Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Mike Maguire. Please go ahead.
Mike is just plugging in his speaker right now. He'll be joining us momentarily. Simon, it's just you're hearing me in here. Mike's in. He's muted his microphone, sort of thing. I'm just trying to get it because Michael Binnion is up front just. They can go through the procedure. I'm just trying to get a message to him to unmute without going all the way to the front.
Okay. Not a problem.
It's, it's not you, I guess is what I'm saying because.
No, I kind of think... I see him as muted, so.
I sent a text message, and I tried to, I sent him an email trying to get him to unmute it because he's got his microphone muted, which is what Michael Binnion is speaking into right now.
I see.
Give me one second.
No worries.
That's a little better.
Thank you. Dave Wilcox, our IT manager. Yeah, just doing a good sound check, can people hear me at the back? I'm hoping people can hear me online too at the moment. Hello, thanks for joining us this afternoon. I'm Mike Maguire, chief executive here at High Arctic Energy Services, for the next 20 minutes or so, I'd like to talk with you about your company. I'll take you through what management focused on. Before we begin, I am advised to warn you that while putting together the following presentation, we've taken all care to be as complete and accurate as possible, or at least as complete and accurate as a dozen or so slides can be. The information presented is based on certain assumptions and estimates that we have made and include forward-looking statements.
Actual outcomes could materially differ due to a range of factors that are detailed on this slide. I'll of course be well read it. In our annual information form, as well as management's discussion and analysis, which you'll find on our website and on the SEDAR website. Let's begin. As we move through the presentation, I will do my best to convey a sense of who we are, what we do, and what we stand for. I'll outline our quality-centric approach, and I'll speak to a significant announcement that accompanies our first quarter results just recently released. I'll give some detailed insight into our business in Papua New Guinea, the key projects there and the role that we play in them.
As shareholders, I'm sure that you're well aware that in July last year, we divested a large part of our Canadian businesses, Concord Well Servicing and which we acquired in 2016, as well as our founding snubbing service line. I'll take you through our remaining Canadian business, including our investment in Team Snubbing services. I'll finish this with a run-through of our published 2023 strategic priorities and the first quarter financial results of the corporation. A quick snapshot of High Arctic by the numbers. We have a very large shareholder who's been with us for over a decade now. They're represented here today by Mr. Dan Bordessa, one of the directors. FBC have increased their stake in the capital raisings a couple of times along the High Arctic journey.
Despite a 50% public holding, we are thinly traded, which contributes to share price volatility. In the past few weeks, someone has decided to divest their holdings, which has pushed our share price down significantly. I hope that many of you have been able to take, who are not subject to trading blackout, have been able to take advantage of increasing your holding at attractive prices. With just under 49 million shares outstanding, a share price of $1.10 a little earlier today, we have a market cap of $53 million. We pay a regular monthly dividend that represents approximately 5% annualized yield.
At quarter close, we have positive net cash position of CAD 43 million, CAD 60 million of positive working capital, and have retained assets of value in Canada, including some real estate, a 42% holding in Team Snubbing, a nitrogen pumping operation, and pressure control rentals business. Our core PNG business is making, albeit modest, positive cash flow at a low point in the cycle there. It's my view that today's price undervalues the corporation. The proceeds of the well servicing sale last year provides for a return of capital that would be tax-free to most shareholders. We intend to soon call a special meet shareholder meeting to vote on a reorganization that we believe will unlock unrealized value in the recent trading price. Today, the corporation invests in Canada in real estate, rental business to the energy sector, and service businesses to the energy sector.
There is value in our tax loss pools of the Canadian parent entity. These pools could be realized using this entity as a tax-efficient investment vehicle, rolling in profitable businesses and providing tax shelter to their earnings. The profits from our PNG businesses are already taxed abroad. Is the parent company does not provide any specific tax cover for shareholders. We believe that we can unlock value against the current market by issuing out the shares of our international holding company to their holders.
We are working through some of the final details. Subject to all applicable approvals, we aim to have a vote completed by the end of quarter three. We first entered Papua New Guinea in 2006 with a contract for hydraulic workover services, which, due to the strong and effective working relationship that quickly established, resulted in Papua New Guinea's Oil Search contracting High Arctic for multi-year drilling services as well. Drilling rig activity recommenced last year after two years of COVID-driven suspension. Oilfield rentals in PNG and Canada are positioned to benefit from higher drilling rig activity through the expected long-term energy upcycle that commenced in the last year. That shearing photo on the right is a shot of some of our Port Moresby staff adorned in the national colors on PNG Independence Day of 16th of September last year.
They're standing in front of the flags of Papua New Guinea and Canada while wearing some traditional headdress and carrying the iconic handcrafted bilum, a bag that incidentally can now fetch CAD several hundred dollars through Hudson's Bay. If you don't believe me, jump on the internet and have a look. In Tok Pisin, the hybridized colloquial language, the bilum word means womb. That place from which all life springs. In referencing the bilum bags, these are living artifacts of the country's multifaceted population. Handed down through the centuries and ubiquitous across tribes and regions. The craft of bilum weaving is at the heart of Papua New Guinea traditions. When a man swings a hand-woven bilum bag across his back, he carries with him not just the goods that fill the sack, but the history of the women in his family.
The bag he wears may well have been woven by his mother's hands using the knowledge that was passed down from his grandmother and her great-grandmother before her. Our two businesses share a common purpose and values. The vision that with the relentless focus on quality, we wish to be recognized as a trusted provider of energy services. That quality theme is something that we'll revisit through the presentation, because with all the challenges we face, being ready, being right, and being repeatable are essential. We're essential to firstly survive in a place like Papua New Guinea and then to build a business upon that. The reason we exist is to provide services to our customer base and the energy exploration and production companies that enables them to unlock sustainable, reliable, and affordable energy in places that are challenging in many more ways than just one.
I'm a values-based person. I was initially attracted to High Arctic's PNG business because of the values conveyed to me by the business leaders there. In 2013, when I joined, I was approached by the president of that part of the business. He said to me, "Mike, you have to understand, we're helping to build a nation, and we contribute to this by operating drilling rigs on the most challenging oil and gas wells in the world." The focus on quality has delivered outstanding safety performance in both Papua New Guinea and Canada, because if it's done right first time, it'll be done safely every time. High Arctic learned to meet the challenges presented in PNG by taking a modern entrepreneurial approach to two areas. Firstly, focusing on quality to achieve safety as an outcome and increase customer engagement.
Secondly, setting aspirational goals for the advancement of PNG citizen employees to align our mutual success. This attitude has delivered a world's best safety record with a workforce of over 80% PNG citizens, and we've become an industry contractor of choice in PNG as a result. That same philosophy was brought back to our Canadian businesses, which has built on a great performance through the recent period of significant change. Papua New Guinea population is somewhere between eight and 10 million people and represents less than 0.1% of the world's population. PNG is home to more than 11% of the world's spoken languages and dialects. It is not a large country, not compared with places like Canada and Australia, but it is bigger than the UK and about the same size as Sweden or California.
It is a tropical country located just below the equator to the north of Australia. It shares the mainland New Guinea island with the West Papuan province of Indonesia, and it includes the Melanesian islands of New Britain, New Ireland, Manus, and Bougainville. Less than 15% of the population live in urban centers, most live in customary communities. Living off the land with no access to reliable electricity, and there are very few roads outside the urban centers. This remote, underdeveloped country, there have been almost 100 years of oil and gas activity. The first exploration for oil and gas in PNG occurred in the post-World War I period, but it took another 80 years until first commercial oil and gas production in 1992.
Oil Search became the PNG specialist E&P company, and by 2002 had aggregated all the discovered oil fields and many of the gas discoveries too. We at High Arctic had a long relationship with Oil Search, now part of Santos from Australia. We have worked for every operating exploration and production company that has been active there in Papua New Guinea over the past decade, including the multinational operators who entered PNG to be the champions of LNG development. The large majority of the petroleum discoveries are in the highlands, a mountain belt running east to west through the middle of the country. It's a young and seismically active mountain range, and its high seismic activity is due in part to the location of PNG on the Pacific Ring of Fire, which brings with it high temperatures at shallow depths.
In recent years, there has been increasing interest in the potential for geothermal energy in PNG, too. The good news for High Arctic being that geothermal wells require the same drilling plant as oil and gas wells do. In 2009, commitment was made to construct an LNG plant. This has driven investment activity there ever since. The PNG LNG project produces gas from fields in the center of the country. The gas is conditioned to the plant near the producing fields and then transported by pipeline through the Highland Mountains, overland, then under the sea and down the coast to the main liquefaction plant just outside the capital city, Port Moresby. Santos, formerly Oil Search, have the operatorship of all producing oil fields and also supply gas from fields under their control to the PNG LNG project.
The majority of LNG gas is supplied from the Hides fields operated by ExxonMobil. All these fields are located in the mountain highlands, where High Arctic has extensive experience. Together, the Santos oil-producing fields and the ExxonMobil-led PNG LNG gas exports are the only producing discoveries. They've had massive impacts on the national economy, raising GDP and contributing billions to state revenue. These developments, along with significant gold, copper, and nickel mine developments, have essentially de-risked the country for major energy and natural resource development. PNG LNG continues to produce at nearly 20% above its design nameplate capacity, and has one of the lowest operating cost profiles per gigajoule in the world. Its location on the doorstep to Asia ideally positions it to supply energy to Japan, Korea, China, and the emerging economies of Asia.
One domestic gas-driven power plant has come online using gas from this project. More are in various stages of design and development as part of the PNG government's aim to increase access to reliable electricity from just 20% of the population to 70% by the year 2030. The key headline-grabbing project at the moment is the Papua LNG project, with French super major TotalEnergies as operator. They are currently in the front-end engineering and design stage and have advanced early works ahead of a final investment decision expected before the end of this year. The primary initial production will come from the Elk-Antelope fields located in a marshy area in the foothills of the eastern margin of the Papuan Basin.
Shown here on this map at the southeast end of the trend, at the head of the dotted line, demonstrating the projected pipeline back to the plant outside Port Moresby. The Antelope field was discovered by Canadian exploration company InterOil in 2006. The Antelope-2 well drilled in 2009 still holds the Guinness World Record for the highest ever gas flow rate tested well. High Arctic drilled two appraisal wells in the Antelope field for InterOil and later drilled another two wells after TotalEnergies took over as operator. In recent announcements, the Papua LNG joint venture has indicated that the LNG plant will comprise four electric-driven liquefaction trains and include carbon dioxide separation and reinjection at the source.
Based on our knowledge of the project, we expect there to be between 9 and 12 long life, large bore wells drilled from as many as 3 well pads, including both production and injection wells. Given the reservoir depths of around 2,250 meters, we expect the wells to be within the design capacity of High Arctic's in-country drilling rigs. That will be dependent upon the final well designs prepared by TotalEnergies. There has also been gas development agreement signed by the PNG LNG joint venture of the previous slide and the government for the development of the P'nyang gas field closer to the western border with Indonesia. The gas agreement requires an independent pipeline with third-party access rights, presenting 1 possible pathway to develop and monetize the discoveries, the small, many smaller discoveries in the lowlands of the western province.
High Arctic's can-do attitude saw us secure a contract to oversee the commissioning, delivery, and operation of new drilling rigs Rig 103 and Rig 104 in 2008. Unique at the time for their state-of-the-art AC electric drives, PLC controls, and offshore style cyber chair drilling. In 2014, we sourced more versatile rigs to meet a growing demand for remote drilling in PNG. The result was the procurement upgrade and delivery of rigs Rig 115 and Rig 116. Crucially, these shared the same AC electric drive and PLC cyber chair drilling technology that has been fundamental to drilling success in PNG. They have the flexibility to break down into lighter transport loads to utilize lower costs and more readily available helicopters as well as other transport methods.
Recognizing our obligations to create employment opportunities, particularly for the local communities where we work, all rigs retain a significant amount of meaningful crew work, with automation targeting reliability and efficiency improvement over worker displacement. Leapfrog designs have been fundamental to improving customer well cost reduction and They reduce the time between wells. The leapfrog concept includes a second center section of the rig comprising its structure and some of the power system, along with a subset of camp and ancillary buildings that can be assembled before the drilling crew has finished drilling on these current drilling well. More recently, this capability has been augmented further to include drilling of the upper well section before the main rig crew arrives. With the Santos contract renewal last year, only Rig 103 has been contracted for operation.
Rig 103 remains under High Arctic contracted management and marketing without cost risk to High Arctic. Our success in PNG is not really about drilling technology alone. In 2009, we imported the first high-density polyethylene rugged worksite mats to Papua New Guinea. They were an instant success, eliminating lost time due to bogged vehicles, material handling plants, and stuck people. I have photos of people buried up to their armpits on well sites that didn't know what else to do. Kathryn will verify that claim. The oil and gas industry adopted uptake in PNG to the point where we had over 10,000 mats under rental on the peak of activity. The mats are a great and a simple example of the solutions-focused attitude that has seen us succeed in a place where everyone else has failed.
We have assembled a large array of rental equipment, modified or designed to deploy efficiently under helicopter or via other limited transport methods. This year, we have added the provision of recognized safety training, competency verification, and equipment licensing services. We have long provided these training and competency solutions in-house. In the COVID shutdown, we found these services in demand from our customers and their other contractors. Too, we found demand for the skills and capability of our people away from our core service offerings. PIMS, PNG Industry Manpower Solutions, provides manpower, skilled and semi-skilled labor, trades qualified personnel, and professionals in PNG.
We are excited to be playing a significant role in preparing PNG citizens to be job ready for the major increase in site-based workers that are going to be needed for LNG plants, mine site development, pipelines, and electrical distribution infrastructure construction over the rest of this decade and beyond. Moving over to Canada. Our downsized Canadian business is now centered around oil field rentals, where we specialize in BOPs and well site pressure control equipment, augmented by an array of other ancillary plant and equipment. I'd just like to highlight Trevor Barker, who's sitting with us here this afternoon, and he is the general manager of our rentals business. We also retain a small but profitable mobile nitrogen supply and pumping business. Both are headquartered out of Whitecourt in Alberta, but they service a wide area including the Montney, Cardium, and Duvernay.
With some plant located west of Edmonton and some plant operated out of Grande Prairie. Our Canadian business model is moving away from high operating costs and people-intensive operations. We intend to pursue aggregation of like businesses as we grow here in Canada. We've also retained involvement in Canadian Energy Services through our partnership with Team Snubbing, where we have a 42% equity stake in Canada's largest snubbing provider. Team Snubbing is headed up by a young and dynamic management team with lifelong commitment to snubbing. They are passionate about the business and primed for growth. Post-closing, Team doubled their active Canadian snubbing sites. Their dominant position, coupled with great customer relations, has delivered both further market share growth as well as increased pricing in the period since. Team has a 50% interest in an international partnership marketed under Team Snubbing International.
This partnership commenced their first services this week. Under contract to a large U.S. independent in Alaska, where two snubbing units have now been domiciled. This, for us, this investment represents a means for consolidation and an approach to maintain exposure in non-core markets. Earlier this year, we set and published these strategic objectives. They build on the key decision taking in 2022 to divest our Canadian pro-production services segment and focus on our PNG business. To date, we continue to build on our safety incident-free operations in both PNG and Canada. In PNG, we've deployed a core indigenous workforce and continue to invest in developing a highly skilled workforce for the future. Rig 103 returned to full drilling operations in March, and we have steadily increased deployment of rental assets in PNG on a month-by-month basis as well.
While the deferral of other projects pushed re-redeployment of our Rig 115 out from this year, there is a growing catalog of projects under discussion for potential rig deployment in 2024 and beyond. In Canada, we have explored various consolidation discussions with several competitors. We are looking at nitrogen and oil field pressure control-focused rentals. We have also initiated discussions with key PNG customers on the export of our successful quality-centered service partner approach to import into their operations in other regional countries. We have today announced the intention of a $38.2 million tax efficient return of surplus cash to shareholders.
The past few years have been challenging, and I acknowledge the patience of our shareholders as we first navigated the COVID-19 induced activity reduction, assessed and then proceeded with two significant divestments in Canada, and continue to see a slow return of services in Papua New Guinea. The first quarter results reflect an improvement. We believe that the reorganization and the resulting right-size general and administrative infrastructure will enable the businesses both in Canada and PNG to optimize financial performance. That brings us to the end of today's presentation. I'm happy to use remaining time to take questions from the floor. I also invite you to enjoy the refreshments that have been made available and to stick around, meet with the High Arctic management and directors, who I'm sure will be happy to talk about the High Arctic story. Thank you.
Dave.
Thank you, Michael. The boring bit is over.
Thank you for participants on the phone. The call has now ended. Please disconnect your lines at this time and thank you for your participation.