Hello, everyone. My name is Sandra, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Africa Oil Fourth Quarter 2023 Results Management Presentation. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star one and one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. Please note that at any time, participants on the webcast can submit the questions using the Q&A box on the webcast interface. Please note that this event is being recorded. The recording will be available for playback on the company's website.
I would now like to pass the meeting on to Mr. Shahin Amini, Africa Oil's Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Mr. Amini.
Thank you, Sandra. On behalf of management, I thank you for joining us today for our fourth quarter and full year 2023 results presentation. We appreciate your interest and support. On the call today, we have President and CEO, Dr. Roger Tucker, and our CFO, Mr. Pascal Nicodeme. Roger will start with an introduction and the highlights of the results before Pascal presents the quarter's results in more detail. Roger will then cover Africa Oil's 2024 outlook and outline our strategic priorities before we go into the Q&A session. But first, as always, I would like to remind you that remarks made during this session are subject to forward-looking statements, which involve significant risk factors and assumptions and have been fully described in the company's continuous disclosure reports.
The information discussed is made as of today's date and time, and Africa Oil assumes no obligation to update or revise this information to reflect new events or circumstances, except as required by law. The company's complete financial statements and related MD&A are available on the company's website and on SEDAR. Roger, we are ready for you. Please go ahead.
Next slide, please. Thank you very much for joining us today. Before we get into the meat of the presentation, what I'd like to do is just reaffirm our strategic principles, and these are principles that have developed since we started to make presentations to the investment community back in September and remain the same. The first thing is that, starting on the top right, that we want to remain focused on what are effectively world-class assets, both in the production domain, in the exploration domain, and the development and appraisal domain. We are currently partnered uniquely with Tier 1 operators, notably Total and Chevron.
We wish to maintain equity exposure in the assets that we have at affordable levels, not challenging our balance sheet, and we wish to try to consolidate our ownership in the core assets, which we, as I say, consider to be world-class. As I've been saying to you since September, we will seek growth opportunities only within the existing core assets that we have that we have got, and of course, we are targeting near-term rewards for shareholders. Those are our strategic principles, which remain intact today. So next slide.
In terms of how we have progressed along that line, the 2023 highlights that I think are most important to us are, firstly, the renewal of OML 130 for a further 20 years, which has, of course, freed up the possibility of making incremental investments in that, in that area. In addition, we have received $175 million in dividends from our investment in Prime. And we have, as you will see, met our midpoint predictions for 2023, both in production and cash flow from operations. We have converted OML 130 and OML 127 to the new Nigerian tax terms, which have cut the headline tax rate from 50% to 30%.
In addition, the thing that perhaps you're most interested in, we have had in 2023, a very successful appraisal and testing program in Namibia, which supports our concept that this is going to be a significant development of a world-class discovery. Along the way, we have maintained a strong balance sheet. We've not overstretched our liquidity in any way. We have been returning dividends and have recommenced the share buyback program, and we've solely focused our investments on our underlying core assets. Next slide, please. Then to continue, I'll just reaffirm what we have already achieved in 2024, which I think is a very strong indication that our strategic direction is progressing well. We have completed the farm out to or farm down to Total in Impact in Namibia.
This is a transformational transaction which results in us being carried completely through all costs, both exploration and development, all the way through to first hydrocarbons in that block. We have initiated the production start-up of Akpo West as a tieback to the FPSO, which should add over the year up to 14,000 bbl a day of incremental production. In addition, you will have seen that there has been an announcement that we appear to have encountered additional hydrocarbons in a totally separate structure in Namibia, in the Mangetti-1X well, which has encountered hydrocarbons in at least three different zones, which further supports the decision that we made to continue within Namibia.
And we continued investing in Block 3B/4B, which is a block that we've increased our equity position into 26.25%. It's a block which is of strategic importance in the Orange, Orange Basin, and we're in very advanced discussions to farm down that block, over the next, the next coming months, which should allow us to proceed with, with activities in that area. And with that, what I will do is pass over now to Pascal to take you through the financial aspects of the 2023.
Thank you, Roger. So the first message of this annual results is the fact that we have successfully met our 2023 guidance in terms of production, slightly above midpoint in terms of entitlement production, and also in terms of cash flow from operation, slightly below $300 million versus guidance midpoint of $290 million. We can already see the impact of the in-field campaign that we are carrying out on Egina and Akpo. And note that the Q4 production was slightly down, mainly due to planned maintenance, so we expect this to recover in Q1 and Q2 2024. I think this is the evidence that we are sitting on world-class assets, which are very predictable and have a very robust performance.
And again, I think this guidance is the evidence that the fields are behaving as predicted. Next slide, please. Next slide is the financial highlights for Africa Oil. We are posting this year $87 million net income, which is a significant improvement compared to last year, but still, this year has been impacted by a few exceptional items, non-cash still, but exceptional items. The latest one in Q4 was an impairment at Prime level of $132 million. So without that impairment, we would have posted basically a $43 million result for the quarter.
And this impairment is simply due to an increased discount rate at Prime level due to the now lower tax rate that is applicable in Nigeria. This is a bit counterintuitive, but when you compute your weighted average cost of capital, if you decrease your tax rate, you basically lose the tax shield on the debt, and therefore, the cost of debt is increasing. So it's a bit of a mechanical effect that we saw in Q4, and we actually saw the benefit of this decreased tax rate in the previous quarters in Q2 and Q3.
When we converted to the PIA, OML 130 and OML 127, we had, at that time, the opposite effect, where we basically posted about $200 million of credit due to the release of deferred tax liabilities. So, Q4 has been impacted negatively this time, but Q2 and Q3 have been impacted positively, again, because of this change in tax rate. Otherwise, I would say that the performance has been consistent over the year. We still have a little bit of impact from Kenya. We posted in Q2 final impairment, the write-off of $60 million, but due to our final exit from Kenya. Otherwise, there have been no other exceptional item this year. Next slide, please.
So, I mean, this slide really shows how we have managed our cash this year. We've received $175 million from Prime as dividends. And what this chart shows is basically that we have lived within our means, and we have only spent what we could spend. We spent $29 million in shareholder returns, both with dividend, about $23 million, and share buyback on top of it. We restarted the share buyback program. We'll come back on that end of last year. We spent also in investment activities, in exploration in Egypt and South Africa for $15 million.
We stood our corner in Impact to make sure that we keep our equity stable or even increase during this exciting appraisal and exploration campaign in Namibia. So we've done that for $44 million. We spent $20 million on G&A, and we had a few remaining costs, I would say, in relation to our exit from Kenya. We spent $16 million on tax settlement with the KRA, the Kenyan tax authorities. We've also spent $10 million on settling some historical cost disputes with our partners in Kenya, which are only one-offs. So all in it means that our cash balance has actually increased by share capital of $2 million.
We really behaved in a way to maintain that strong balance sheet while continuing to return part of the cash to our shareholders. Next slide, please. So just a snapshot on the prices we've achieved this year and last year at Prime level. So we, as you know, we've put in place a new oil marketing strategy mid-2022, which continues to achieve excellent sale price compared to average Brent. You might remember a few years ago, when we were selling our cargoes forward, we were always exposed to potential increase in the oil price, which is not the case anymore.
Now, we are following closely dated Brent, and the reason is that thanks to that dated marketing strategy, we are selling most of our cargo spot. We sold actually all our cargo spot in Q4. We sold most of the cargo spot in 2023, and we've achieved an average sale price of about $84 per barrel, compared to $83 average dated Brent last year. At the same time, we are still trying to protect our downside, and for instance, we bought one million barrels of production at a strike price of about $80 per barrel. That is going to protect us from March to May this year.
So we're still very conscious of potential downside in the oil price, but actually at the same time, at least the Brent market. Next slide is a snapshot of Prime's financials, which shows how stable the performance and robust the performance has been in terms of EBITDAX and the cash flow from operation. As I said, almost $300 million of cash flow from operation last year for Prime and to Africa, almost $500 million of EBITDAX, while maintaining a very strong balance sheet. The RBL is holding at $750 million gross at the moment. Prime still stand on more than $50 million of cash.
So very, very stable business and conservative way of managing our production in Nigeria. Next slide. Just to come back on our shareholder return program. Since we put in place that program, we've returned about $100 million since 2022. The board have decided to continue the existing dividends, so we are going to distribute $0.025 a share in March again, as semi-annual dividend. And as you all know, we have restarted our share buyback back in December 2023. So there have been a few questions regarding why we stopped the buyback last year.
Obviously, last year was a sort of transition year when we had to focus on selling our ownership in Impact and making sure we could continue to fund our appraisal and exploration campaign in Nigeria. It was key for us to have a conservative management of our cash balance. Now that we have signed the final agreement with Total and Impact, we are in a much more predictable situation, and you know, we've restarted our share buyback, and we are going to focus on managing the share buyback going forward. Next slide, and, Roger, I'm going to hand back to you.
Thank you very much, Pascal. What I think we ought to do is just quickly go through once again and reaffirm the assets that we consider to be core. And those are Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, Namibia, and the west coast of South Africa. These are, as I have been saying since September, places that we are going to focus all of our money and intellectual horsepower while trying to clean up the rest of the portfolio. And I've always said that there is enough running room existing in these assets to create significant value. So the next slide, please. The first one, of course, is the production-based asset that you obviously know very well.
The thing that we now obviously say, we've been saying to you, this is often forgotten, the sheer scale of these assets that we're invested in, that are currently doing over 300,000 bbl a day at the gross level. Hence, they are mature. They're at the peak of their production levels, and they're very, very reliable and stable and predictable, as has been pointed out by Pascal. We now, via the OML 130 extension, have the ability, because of the extension in the contract life, to consider now bringing on and indeed doing tiebacks to it, and the first one will be Preowei, which hopefully is going to be FID by the end of 2024.
So again, world-class assets, very stable, very secure, and are the foundation of our financial structure of the company. Next slide. So how did we perform in terms of reserves, and how did these assets perform? And we have published our reserves report, which you will have seen, and we are very happy with what has happened in here. The first thing to point out, you know, it's the third point, is that even though the assets are relatively mature now. We had a reserve replacement ratio of just over 50% in these assets.
So that means that we actually, net to us, produced 7.2 million bbl of oil from these assets, but we have replaced by work 3.6 million bbl of the reserves. In terms of our 2P working interest reserves, you can see that we are at 52.2 million bbl now. And then, of course, the staggering number is the number on the far right, which is our 2P NPV10 , net to us of $1.2 billion bbl. The guidance is shown below, and we are very confident that we will come in on that production guidance. So world-class assets, stable, and we're still able to do a 50% reserves replacement ratio. The next slide, please, Pascal.
What we drop down to is what we consider as an incredibly exciting basin that we're in. What I've been saying since September to everyone is that we are here in the midst of what is going to be an emerging new petroleum province, not just a single discovery. You can see up in the north, our blocks are highlighted in Namibia and down in the south, 3B/4B. But across on the right, you can see the evolution of the development of this new province. That Shell discovered the Graff field back in February 2022. Venus then came and was discovered in February 2022 as well. A new, very interesting discovery by Galp, Mopane, in January 2024.
And then we've now got Mangetti in February 2024. And so this is the way that these provinces develop, and it's early to say, but this appears to be a supercharged petroleum province. Then down in the south, and we'll come on to in a little bit more detail, you'll see as an extension of the basin, but still in the same basin, our Block 3B/ 4B, which we consider to have very significant prospectivity and is on trend with the discoveries that are being made at the moment in Namibia. And we are, and as I said before, actively in discussions with several parties in respect to making a farm into that area.
So if we go up now to the next slide and have a look at our acreage in in Namibia. The block is getting bigger and bigger, so we've got it correctly colored now. So you can see the Venus, the Venus field. There have now been three successful wells on the Venus structure. And to our view, this has de-risked this as a world-class light oil discovery. The operator has high confidence in the development of of Venus by the statements that they have that they have made. And we've always said that there is very significant, t he reason we wanted to stay in this block is that there is very significant follow-on exploration prospectivity around Venus, which is already being developed by first indications of success at Mangetti-1X.
3D seismic, because the southern part of the block is not covered at the moment by 3D seismic, is underway over the southern parts of the block, and we should get access to that data, which will allow us to delineate further prospectivity towards the end of this year. Now, the fantastic thing about the deal that we have done with Total on the farm out is that there is no further call on our balance sheet for this asset, this world-class asset, until first production is established, whenever that is. And the next slide, please, is just a little update on EG. This is a very different situation, and we call this infrastructure-led exploration in Equatorial Guinea, because the principal asset is located right around an LNG facility, which has got significant coverage.
We've assigned the acreage Block EG-31, which has got significant prospectivity. It's previously only ever been explored really for oil, and so we are trying to target gas prospectivity in that block in order to immediately tie back to the LNG facility, which has got significant coverage in it. Farm out discussions in that block are ongoing, and we have an objective of achieving and completing a deal by the end of 2024, but as early as possible. Next slide, please. So to go back then to what we're going to try to achieve in 2024, and we've made a good start. We're going to consolidate and streamline and financially de-risk the portfolio. That can take a series of routes.
We want to maintain our financial flexibility in order to accelerate growth. We want to maintain our shareholder capital returns, and we want to maintain the balance sheets in order to keep maximum flexibility. In terms of what we've achieved, we've got the farmouts in full carry in Namibia. We have acquired additional interest, and that's now gone through in 3B/ 4B. We have launched the share buyback program again, and you'll see that we initiated that program again, and pressed the button on it directly after the day that we announced the Total transaction in Impact. We will maintain the base dividend policy, and we will achieve farm outs or farm downs in 3B/ 4B, and EG-31.
We will pursue, if we can, further consolidation of our core assets. Those are our strategic priorities in a very tight and clearly defined portfolio of core assets, which, as I keep repeating, are of world-class. Thank you very much. And that's.
Yeah.
The end of our presentation.
Before I go back to the operator, Sandra, and she can remind everyone on the instructions of how to submit questions. I would like to set some boundaries, so I do apologize, but this has got to happen. Management will not comment on the ongoing farm down processes for Blocks 3B/ 4B, and EG-31 and EG-18, other than what's already been said. I trust you can appreciate these are commercially sensitive matters, and it would be inappropriate to comment at this time. We will update you on this in due course, when there is material update to be shared. We also note media reports regarding third-party legal and commercial disagreements related to Block EG-31. The company will not comment on such third-party matters. So with those points, now, I would like to go back to Sandra, who will remind everyone on the Q&A process.
Sandra, please go ahead.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. Please stand by. We will compile the Q&A roster. We will now take the first question from the line of Alex Smith from Investec. Please go ahead.
Oh, good afternoon, guys. Thanks for the call. A couple of quick questions from me. I think first, just a step up in CapEx at Prime. Is this driven primarily from the underspend in 2023, or is it more activity from infill drilling? And maybe just a picture on kind of what steady state capital investment looks like. And then, second of all, just given the balance sheet strength and the goal to kind of increase shareholder returns and starting the buyback program, is there a preference for more dividends or more buybacks in the medium term? It'd be good to kind of get some clarity on that as well, please. Thank you.
So let me start with the CapEx, especially, the actual CapEx compared to guidance in 2023. Well, I mean, you're perfectly correct that the drilling campaign started late, and so we didn't spend the full budget in 2023. We expect to catch up in 2024 on this infill campaign. So this explained the relatively lower CapEx spend in 2023. In terms of dividend versus buyback, we, I mean, we decided to instate a dividend some years ago, which we want to keep in place to show a commitment in the long term to shareholder returns.
The share buyback is really the adjustment that we want to dial up or down when the conditions are ideal. Obviously, at this stage, with what we believe to be a very depressed share price, there is an incentive for us to increase the share buyback, and we've been in discussion with our board to do so. So please bear with us on that.
Yep, understood. Very clear. Thank you.
Thank you. We will now take the next question. One moment, please. From the line of Matt Cooper, from Peel Hunt. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Thank you very much for the presentation. I don't know if you're able to give any color on the scheduling options being considered for the rigs currently operating on Venus?
We can't give you a huge amount of information on that, because it's obviously in the operator's domain. However, I think that it is interesting, because I'm sure you've seen that the fact that Total acquired 75% of the Tungsten Explorer from Vantage Drilling, which is now a 10-year contract. Is that, I'm not speaking to Total, but it's a very clever deal, which will give you an indication of the scale of the drilling program that is anticipated for the Orange Basin. We anticipate that there will be both rigs active on the Namibia block for the foreseeable future, but then one of them may go off and head into different areas.
But that's basically all I can say, and just point you to an interesting development from our wonderful operator, which sort of points to the scale of activity in the block. Does that help in any way?
Yeah. No, no, I understand you're limited on, on what you can say, but that, that's helpful. Thank you. I also wanted to ask on the $132 million Prime impairment. You mentioned that was partially due to a change in technical assumptions at OML 130. I don't know if you're able to give any more details on that.
I mean, there are two other changes on top of, I mean, the main change, as I said, the one that has the largest impact is the change in this contract.
Price assumptions.
Yeah, and they have also changed the price assumptions, so that's one. The change in technical assumption is mainly rescheduling of production profiles, which actually has lowered the NPV, but nothing, no change in results, actually.
Okay. So that's, that's just a minor effect, and it's primarily work scope as opposed to.
Yes. The largest, y eah, the largest impact is by far the change in this contract, which is now 13.5%. Yeah, well, it used to be around 10%.
Okay. Yeah, it's helpful. And then I just wanted to ask on the five new wells drilled in OML 130, so far, I just wondered if are the well rates, and also the time taken to drill those wells, are those kind of tracking pre-drill expectations?
We are satisfied with them, yes.
Okay. Fair enough. I'll throw another one in there with a quick answer then. So if you could give maybe an update on your M&A strategy, and how attractive you know you see the M&A environment in West Africa at the moment?
I don't think we can give you any specifics on that, as we are talking about the 2023 results. But we are constantly reviewing opportunities in and around our assets. But as I said at the start, don't expect us to leap into, you know, Gabon or anywhere else. I mean, we're only focused on the countries and around the assets that we already own.
Okay. Looking for production assets that are a reasonable scale?
Yeah.
Yeah. Okay, that's great. Thank you very much.
Thank you. There are no further questions on the audio at this time. Please continue with the web questions.
Yes. Well, we've got plenty of questions from the webcast, but before I go to those, I'd like to apologize because we have received a few comments that the quality of audio isn't good enough. I do apologize. We did test the system, but clearly, the gremlins have got in the way today. So I apologize for that. We'll do our best to improve the quality as we make progress. Hopefully, it has got better. So, going to the webcast, Roger, Pascal, a large number of questions about shareholder capital returns. Most of those are about buybacks. So I'm not gonna go through each one because some are repeating, repetition, but really, the gist of the inquiries is: What is the policy on the share buybacks? Why did we reduce the share buybacks during the month of February by 75%?
Could we potentially consider doing a Substantial Issuer Bid on top of the Normal Course Issuer Bid? If I may, I'm gonna put this to Pascal first, and then, Roger, you can chime in.
Yeah. So I mean, you need to keep in mind that the share buyback is always subject to the forecast that the company is making and the optimization of our cash position. I mean, last year we've been in a blackout for a very long period of time due to the drilling campaign in Namibia. Again, recently, we have been in blackout because we were drilling on Mangetti. So you need to know that during this blackout period, we are unable to change the instructions we are giving to our brokers. So we need to be extremely conservative when we enter a blackout period, which was the case in February when we decided to slow down a little bit. Now, we are out of blackout because of Mangetti.
We are going to be out of blackout tomorrow, due to the financial statements release and publication. Therefore, we will be able to change our instruction to our brokers again. So, please bear with us on that.
Um, Roger?
I think the, w hat I would say is a general question. We hear everyone on the share buybacks, but the interesting thing about this company is it is very active. And as Pascal said, we think it is prudent to be conservative with the share buybacks as we go into blackouts. The problem with that is that if the company is so active, we spend an awful lot of time in blackout, and I know that that frustrates everyone. But as Pascal has stated, once you're in blackout, you cannot modify the terms of your buyback program. And so I'm afraid that we will continue to reduce as we go into blackout.
And so on the positive side, you've got a company that is actively doing stuff and has got stuff to announce. On the negative side, we do have to reduce, to maintain prudence as we go into these blackouts. And it's a function of the fact that we are participating in so many potential transactions and drilling. Pascal, do you wanna add anything to that?
No, I just want to mention that we know that our share price is particularly depressed at the moment, so there is definitely a logic to continue the share buyback and certainly to maybe to increase it in the near future.
I think that's actually a good opening for the next question, Roger. Something that you said, and I think we need to tackle this. There was a question about the G&A costs and the fact that they've gone up, and the question is: Well, can you justify this? Could you achieve the same with fewer people? So, over to you.
Well, the G&A has gone up. And the reason it's gone up, actually on the other side of the equation, the advisors' costs, and, you know, external lawyers, et cetera, has gone down. And back in last September, the board approved the strategy that we are now pursuing, and that required us to beef up the team. And so we have had a couple of extra people come on board, namely Oliver Quinn, who is our Chief Commercial Officer, and Joanna Kay, who is our General Counsel [audio distortion] farm, which was generated by Africa Oil totally internally. Likewise, the management of the farm down process in 3B/4B and EG is now entirely managed.
Execution of the strategy is being done using an ad hoc mix of advice by the [audio distortion]. It's a few extra people. Could we do it with less people? You could, if you didn't want to try to grow the company. And the board has committed to trying to grow the company, hence the transactions that we're doing at the moment.
Thank you, Roger. One for Pascal. Hopefully, this will be an easy one. There's a question on our short-term deposit yields. Could you just give a ballpark figure for what we're getting for those?
Yeah. So, at the moment, we sit on roughly $200 million of cash. We have $64 million deposited with Canadian banks in higher savings accounts. We also have about $120 million of time deposits on one month or three months or whatever, only with investment-grade banks. So, a quite conservative way of managing the treasury, but we are still managing to get between 5.2% and 5.4% at the moment, which I think is quite competitive by taking a relatively small risk in managing treasury. So, and of course, one parameter is that we want this cash balance to remain available.
We don't want to invest into exotic products or commit into a long investment timeline.
Thank you, Pascal. One on prime production. The observation is that the 2024 guidance is down, and there's increasing gas production. Are we concerned about the production is about to collapse? Well, I'm not, but then it's not a question to me. So, Roger, what do you think?
No, we're not concerned the production is going to collapse. I mean, there are two reserve reports that have been written by external consultants, all of whom support the production profiles that we've put together. So as I said right at the start, the one attraction, I think, of Africa Oil and these assets is that they will not fall over because they are so large.
Very good. I suppose I would add to that, we've actually got a good track record with our guidance. We keep hitting the midpoint, so I think that goes to the predictability of these assets. Let's face it, in the last four years, we've got so much money out of this, all the reserves, and we still have material reserves, so they've been absolutely fantastic assets. I'm gonna go to a number of questions from one of our longstanding private investors in Sweden, [ Mikhail]. So there is one on buybacks, and I think we've tackled that, [Mikhail]. I hope you accept the answer we've given you to that. There's one on communication strategy. Obviously, there's a degree of frustration over what has been disclosed so far on our high-impact catalyst offshore Namibia.
And the question is: Well, when can we expect to hear more? When are you in a position to provide those critical technical data?
Well, I'll take that one. We are, as I've said at the start, associated with Tier 1 operators, and Total is an incredible operator both for us in Nigeria and in Namibia. Chevron, likewise. However, we are restricted under the terms of our agreement in going out and you know, issuing more information than the operator is actually currently issuing into the public markets. Now, obviously, we have access to the raw data, and we have our own opinions, and we make our own decisions on the basis of that data.
But currently, we are restricted in exactly what we can say to the market, and we must, I can say importantly, we must follow what the operator says. But as drilling goes on, we start to see that there is gonna be a test on Mangetti and all the rest of it. There will ultimately be time for a significant announcement on just what the potential of these assets are. When that is, and when we can start putting pressure on that, is something that obviously we're working on at the moment. But we are determined to be a good partner with Total, and we don't want any leaks, if you like.
There is an awful lot of data that you can get, which comes from NAMCOR, and I think at some point, NAMCOR will start to, w hich is the state's oil company in Namibia. NAMCOR will start to put pressure on the operators. By the way, it's exactly the same in the Shell block. Shell aren't releasing an awful lot of information on their block as well, and this is sort of normal, if you like, for the majors. They hold things until they're absolutely ready to reveal the entire story. So we hear you, and we are doing our best to work our way through this.
I think this final one we'll take from Mikhail is: Can you provide more color or elaborate on your valuation thinking when you did the Impact farm out deal? Is there anything you can provide? I can have a first stab at it, Roger, if you.
Very good.
All right, let me start, and then you can correct my mistakes. So, we do have very detailed discounted cash flow models. We look at a whole range of scenarios, technical scenarios, but as you can imagine, this is a very fast-moving story, which really reflects the great opportunity we have here, and it is fast-moving. So obviously, we had that detailed analysis when we sort of, as a shareholder in Impact, made a decision in relation to that strategic farm out. But again, to Roger's earlier point, the fact that we had this Mangetti success post the farm out, just goes to show what a good decision it was. There's a lot of running room on this block, and I think that is very important. And it's all paid for, well, will be paid for on the completion of the deal.
Well, they're currently picking up the tabs already, so there is no upfront cost, and so yeah, it's, w e're very, very pleased with that. Roger?
Yeah, it is. We obviously know what we think the value of it is today. I've also said, and I said at the Pareto Conference in London, that should the opportunity arise, we may be buyers of additional equity in this asset. And should that occur, should it occur, we may well see what our minimum internal value of this asset is. There's nothing in discussions at the moment, but we have a very, very clear idea of what the value of the NPV of this asset is. Both the existing Venus discovery, potentially Mangetti, and the exploration potential on the block.
Thank you. Next question, again, on valuation, but one step, one level higher. Any views on valuation of Africa Oil? With all due respect, gentlemen, I'll tackle this one as well. Obviously, as a Canadian issuer, we can't tell you what the value is. That would be a red line that we will never cross. What I point you to is our statement of reserves and our year-end numbers. So you can take the statement of reserves. You know what the independent valuation of the Prime assets are, and then you need to look at our combined net debt with Prime. So that will obviously take you. I think the bottom line is that we are probably trading at a ridiculously low value now, where there's hardly, well, I would say zero value for Venus.
Anyhow, that would be your starting point. I don't know, Roger, Pascal, if you wanna add anything to that? Yeah. I will point you to the statement of reserves as the starting point for valuing the company. Couple of strategic ones that I have here for you, Roger. One is: In the past, Africa Oil had guided to have the aspiration to buy producing asset. Is that still part of the plan, or have we stopped that business development endeavor.
By additional production, I think I answered the question earlier on. We are not going to be entering whilst we've got so much potential in the existing core assets, another producing asset in, and I'm just saying it off the top of my head, no specific reason, in Gabon or somewhere similar like that. We will look at opportunities around the existing assets, and once we've stabilized and maximized the value of the existing core assets, we will then take a strategic decision of what we do with the company in the next phase of growth.
But what we're trying to do at the moment is tick off all of the consolidation opportunities that we have, get ourselves into a position that we have a strong foundation to look at other opportunities. And we'll be having that debate in the next four or five months in the company.
There is a question on Agbami. It is obviously well-known, well-reported in the media that Equinor and Chappal had agreed a deal. Do you have any comments on the status of this?
We can state that Prime has decided not to execute its preemption right in respect to the Chappal- Equinor transaction. And we will stand on the sidelines, just watching, as that deal progresses through to completion.
There's a question on the Preowei development. Can you elaborate on the parameters that would be used for a final investment decision for this project? Is there anything that holding it back?
No, there's nothing holding it back at all. It's passed all its internal, if you like, economic approvals, and it is now gonna progress through to FID.
Okay. Actually, I think we still continue to have a bit of issue with this audio. So what I'm gonna do is actually, hopefully, this might help. Bring this forward to you. Yeah, as I said, I think we have an issue with that speaker.
This one?
Yeah, possibly. So, maybe have that one as well. So hopefully that helps. If you could just come closer to this. Thank you, Roger. Sorry about this. Someone has made the observation that Maggy Shino , the Petroleum Commissioner in Namibia, had said, recently that, the Namibian government and NAMCOR expect to have appraisal reports on all these discoveries offshore Namibia, so on the Shell block, Galp, and obviously the Total operated 2913B. And basically, people are now speculating whether we are getting very close to having more information on Venus, and could there be an FID in 2024?
I think hopefully this is now the audio is now better, and I apologize, as I don't know whether any of you are aware, but today is the day that we are moving offices, and we're in a sort of borrowed office, which hasn't really worked terribly well. So I apologize for the poor audio. Yeah, in a previous question, I when asked about when can you expect more information on Namibia, I did point towards there are other sources of information, namely at NAMCOR. And I think that this question has pointed right to it.
I do think that, NAMCOR are gonna start to push for more, fulsome, if you like, information to be, to be submitted, because after all, there's some fairly significant strategic decisions that the government of, of Namibia needs to, to make. In terms of FID, on, on Venus, in 2024, personally, and I'm not speaking for Total, I would doubt it, but because I think there is some more, some more work to be done. And as, as the CEO of Total said, what we need to do is identify the sweet spots in this huge, geography, in order to place the first FPSO in the correct, correct place.
That is a quite a complex thing to do at these water depths, which requires both seismic and integration of well data. It's not impossible they go for FID in 2024, but personally, as a original geoscientist, I would doubt it.
Thank you, Roger. We've just got a few minutes left. I just wanna give one final opportunity if there's anyone out there that want to submit a question over the conference call line and speak to us. So Sandra, would you be able to just have a look, see if there are anyone that wants to raise their hand?
As a reminder, it's star one and one if you wish to ask a question.
Let me check it. Anybody in?
No questions at this time. Please continue.
Okay, a strategic one, that Roger could tackle. Is the company considering broadening its investment area outside of Africa?
Right at the moment, we, we've got, as I said, we've got a very, very nice set of core assets, which have got plenty of running room, in them. To maintain this, the strategy, and as I said, we are going to have to make a strategic decision on what we do next in the next four or five months or so. I, we will consider all options, but at the moment, we are going to be focused purely on the assets that we have, that we have got.
Very good. George has just confirmed we have better audio, so great. That's good. There was one, s omeone just texted me. It's great, isn't it? Getting questions, texts, everything, WhatsApp. But the text question is that, apparently, the point was missed on the substantial issue a bit. You kind of tackled it, Pascal, but it keeps coming, coming, and coming. Would you be able to just wrap things on around the share buybacks but specifically tackle the SIB?
Yeah. So yeah, at the moment, so we have this NCIB in place, where we are capped at 10% of our free float. So we are targeting buying a significant portion of that 10% free float. We still want to be conservative and keep our cash position to prepare for potential other deals. Roger has discussed definitely the potential consolidation of our investments into various companies. So that's something we are considering at the moment, which means that we need to stick to part of the $230 million that we have on the balance sheet as of today.
So I think the immediate answer would be not for the moment, until we have clarity on this consolidation. And I think Roger hinted at a few ideas in terms of impact on Prime potentially. So that's something we keep in mind, but at the same time, we have ample flexibility with the current NCIB to increase the speed of the NCIB, which we are definitely considering at the moment. And so that's a decision that is going, of course, to be revisited, at least by the board, on a quarterly basis. So we had a board meeting yesterday. We will have another one in a quarter's time to make sure that the level of the NCIB is set at the right level.
Okay. Two questions on the strategic farm down deal between Impact and Total. One is, is Impact, and by extension, Africa Oil, carried on all the activities now? Are we covered on Mangetti?
Yes. Yeah, so the carry covers exploration and appraisal expenditures on both blocks until production starts.
That's from the beginning of this year?
That's from now, basically.
Yeah.
It's backdated to the 1st of January.
Backdated to the 1st of January, but the first cash call to be received by Total for this year is basically today or tomorrow.
Okay.
This is the first time that Total is going to pay a cash call on our behalf, and they are going to pay all the cash calls going forward. But I think that's a key point to make, is that we will not have to stand on corner in equity raises for Impact going forward.
Okay.
Which is a key point for us as you know, we spent $44 million last year on standing our corner, and this year could have been much larger.
Yeah, and there's no interest on the carry.
There is no interest on the carry.
Yeah. So that, just to reaffirm that, that we talk about the two blocks. We do have two pieces of acreage, but the carry covers activity, including, say, Mangetti, including the next exploration well, which is gonna be somewhere else in the block, and it accumulates over the work on both of these blocks until first hydrocarbons. So it includes development as well.
Everything. Yeah. We're running it. Well, we have run out of time. I'm gonna go off script here and share some of my own personal experience, if I may. I've had the privilege of being involved with the Africa Oil story for 13 years now. Some of you know, I used to cover it as a Sell-Side Analyst, and I joined the company four years ago, well, four and a half years ago. The company is in absolutely great shape, and hopefully, you can see that in our year-end results. I'm very happy, and I have to say that the recent changes that Roger has implemented are very good, and we are in an excellent shape, and we have a great platform to take the next steps.
And we will see this, volatility in the markets, and we will get through this, as we always have. That is my view, and that's my position. I feel very strongly about it. On that, Roger, over to you for any concluding remarks.
Yeah, and all I will say is, I do apologize for this audio. It wasn't anticipated to be like this. And the next one, we will be in our new offices, and you've probably seen me on screen here. We're absolutely freezing cold in here because not only is the audio bad, but the heating in the room isn't working. So we do need to get off fairly.
Yeah.
Fairly soon. But thank you very much for participating in this, and we'll see you next time.
Sandra, are we all set to disconnect now?
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.