Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Saturn's Fourth Quarter 2025 Results Conference Call. As a reminder, all participants are in a listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. After management's remarks, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To join the question queue, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference, you may signal an operator by pressing star and then zero. I will now turn the meeting over to Miss Cindy Gray, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Cindy.
Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us to hear management's remarks about Saturn's Q4 and Year-End 2025 Results and Reserves. Please note that our financial statements, MD&A, annual and information form, and press release are all filed on SEDAR+ and available on our website. Some of the statements on today's call may contain forward-looking information, reference to non-IFRS and other financial measures. As such, listeners are encouraged to review the disclaimers outlined in our most recent MD&A.
Listeners are also cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements since a number of factors could cause the actual future results to differ materially from the targets and expectations expressed. The company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, unless expressly required by applicable securities law. For further information on our risk factors, please view the company's AIF filed on SEDAR+ and on our website. Also note all amounts discussed today are Canadian dollars unless otherwise stated. On the call today, we'll hear from John Jeffrey, Saturn's CEO, Justin Kaufmann, our Chief Development Officer, and Scott Sanborn, our CFO, followed by a Q&A. I'll now hand the call over to John.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for taking the time to join us today. I'm very proud to provide comments on Saturn's standout fourth quarter that capped off a year of strong performance despite the oil price headwinds that rocked the broader markets. While navigating volatility, these uncertain equity markets, we have consistently met or beat our guidance targets for several consecutive quarters. Throughout 2025, we continue to execute on our blueprint strategy, optimizing and developing our low-decline, light oil-weighted asset base while reducing our net debt, buying back shares, and returning value to our shareholders. By year-end 2025, this approach resulted in Saturn delivering an industry-leading 50% free cash flow yield, which speaks directly to the quality of our asset base and the discipline of our execution.
Once again, we exceeded analysts' expectations across all key metrics, including production, net debt reduction, adjusted funds flow, free funds flow, and operating costs per BOE, even with realized oil prices that averaged 13% lower than they did in 2004. I've always believed that a dollar put towards debt is a dollar returned to the shareholders. In 2025, we returned just under CAD 145 million to shareholders, CAD 33 million through a combination of our NCIB as well as our SIB, and an additional CAD 110 million repaid on our senior notes. If you include the share buybacks we've made to date throughout 2026, we've returned a total of almost CAD 155 million back to shareholders, equating to about a quarter of our current market cap.
This confirms net debt reduction remains at the forefront for Saturn. In addition to reducing the principal on our senior notes by CAD 110 million in 2025, which includes an extra quarterly amortization payment. This focus on debt reduction contributed to robust growth in our debt-adjusted per share metrics, including a 46% growth in our production per debt-adjusted share over 2024, and growth in reserves per debt-adjusted share of 31% on PDP and 1P and 32% on 2P. The nimble nature of our asset base and flexible capital budget allowed us to pivot quickly last fall in response to a broader market conditions when buying barrels was all of a sudden more attractive than drilling.
We were able to quickly reduce our capital spend by CAD 65 million or about 27% in September and redirect capital to do tuck-in acquisitions that meaningfully expanded our multilateral open hole position in Southeast Saskatchewan. The strategy of acquiring assets at attractive valuations, then optimizing and developing, has driven excellent returns to date. Each of the four major deals we've completed since 2021 have generated significant value and positioned Saturn with measurable upside that is yet to be unlocked. As an example, our CAD 82 million Oxbow acquisition has generated net value of over CAD 270 million, and that's after you take into account not only the purchase price but also the invested capital of CAD 160 million. On top of that, there's also an additional CAD 365 million of 1P reserves booked as of this year.
Out of those four major acquisitions combined, we've seen over CAD 1 billion of free cash flow generated at the asset level, with twice that amount remaining in booked 1P reserves alone. Further, these acquisitions, along with the tuck-ins we did in 2025, have set the stage to materially advance our multilateral open hole development. This is a relatively new technique that allows us to develop previously uneconomic areas, improve recoveries, and enhance the profitability of our assets, which Justin will expand later on in this call. The impact of our open hole multi-lat development is already being reflected in production, adjusted funds flow, and free cash flow, all of which set new records last year.
We achieved the highest annual and quarterly production volumes in our history, with Q4 nearing 43,700 bpd , exceeding our own guidance and the analyst expectations by over 1,000 bpd . This demonstrates Saturn's ongoing type curve outperformance, which averaged 23% ahead across our entire asset base last year. Operating cost reduction remains a key differential for us here at Saturn. Since 2021, Saturn has reduced OpEx per BOE by 32%, demonstrating our ability to drive efficiencies across every part of the business. We came in under the low end of our OpEx per BOE guidance, which not only contributed to adjusted funds flow and free cash flow, but also had a meaningfully positive impact on our year-end reserve bookings.
Our strong AFF and lower capital spending in 2025 enabled Saturn to allocate free cash flow to the combination of debt reduction, ongoing share buyback, and the accretive tuck-in acquisitions. As mentioned earlier, in August 2024, when we started buying back these shares through to date, Saturn has returned over CAD 54 million to shareholders by purchasing and canceling over 22 million shares. Now, at an average cost of CAD 2.45, that's significantly below our recent trading. Our strategy is always to acquire the highest quality barrel at the best price. With Saturn's current discounted valuation, that means buying back our own stock continues to offer an attractive return on our capital.
Based on the reserve evaluators 2026 price forecast of approximately $59 WTI, or about 19% lower than the prior year, our PDP net asset value was in line with last year at just under CAD 5.50 a share. This represents the blowdown value of our assets after taking into account debt and ARO. Even with today's higher oil price, our shares continue to trade at about 65%-70% of our PDP NAV. When we compare that to our peers, whose shares are trading at an average of 230% of their PDP NAV, if Saturn shares continue to trade at the same average as our peers, we'd be just over CAD 9 .00 a share.
We see significant opportunity to narrow this gap and continue to expand on Saturn's market cap and performance as we see such intrinsic value in the name, especially at this level. Alongside our operational focus, safety remains at the core of everything we do here. In 2025, we achieved our second consecutive year with zero lost time injuries, even though our total man-hours worked was increased by 18% over 2024, and that was 38% higher than 2023. This performance reflects Saturn's strong safety culture and proactive approach to identifying and mitigating risk. Again, we say this every time, making sure everyone gets home at night to their family is the number one priority here, and I'm really proud that we've achieved this two years in a row.
As you'd expect, we closely monitor developments in the Middle East and the resultant impact on oil prices. Given our high torque to oil, under Saturn's original sensitivities released in December, that was based on $60 WTI. For every $5 increase in oil, adjusted funds flow is impacted by about CAD 50 million. Now, that is not exactly linear, due to some hedging impacts. But for example, at $80 WTI, the increase to our annual funds flow would be more than CAD 180 million, while also creating opportunities to layer in additional hedges that can protect from future downside risk.
I'm just so incredibly proud of our performance and the momentum we've built through 2025. With the dedication and hard work we see from our employees, coupled with the support from our stakeholders, I truly believe Saturn is just getting started. With that, I'll turn it over to Justin to walk through our 2025 reserves and the capital program highlights. J.K., over to you.
Thanks, John, and good morning, everyone. I'll build on John's comments and walk through our capital execution, development program, and reserves performance last year. 2025 was a record-setting year for Saturn from an operational and tactical standpoint. We continued to outperform, demonstrated by a highly efficient capital program that delivered solid reserves growth across all categories. As John highlighted, a key feature of our capital program last year was flexibility. Saturn has been able to pivot quickly and scale activity up or down depending on commodity prices, which is a key differentiator for us. In September, we made the decision to reduce our capital expenditures and instead undertake tuck-in acquisitions that added production, future development upside, and land. These acquisitions enabled us to acquire production at less than CAD16,000 per flowing barrel.
In addition, we were able to expand our land position at incremental locations to our inventory of open hole multi-lat drills, which we view as one of the most exciting development opportunities within Saturn today. The open hole multi-lat wells offer some of the shortest payouts and highest returns in our inventory. What makes this program particularly compelling is that we're applying the open hole multi-lat technique to assets that have no book locations, reserves, or value ascribed to them at the time of acquisition. At year-end 2025, we've identified more than 380 gross open hole locations, with only about a quarter of those booked. With continued development and technical refinement, we see opportunity to further expand that inventory over time. As part of our ongoing development, we've been tweaking our open hole multilateral well design in the Bakken.
By extending lateral lengths from one mile to two miles, we're seeing strong increases in production rates with slower declines compared to type curve. As a result, we plan to drill our Bakken open hole multilateral wells as two-milers going forward where the land position allows. In Southeast Saskatchewan, our fourth Spearfish open hole multilateral well was recently drilled. This six-leg well is directly west of our previous 16-5 Spearfish well, which exceeded type curve expectations by about three times and was outlined by independent reports as being a top 10 producer in Saskatchewan in its producing category. To give you a sense of the value we are creating from this program, that incremental open hole multilateral inventory value in the Bakken alone is more than over CAD 190 million, and that's assuming our 2026 guidance price deck at $60 WTI.
There's an additional CAD 240 million of development value across our full- open hole multilateral inventory. Combined, this represents almost CAD 500 million of value that was not previously recognized or factored into asset purchase prices. As WTI oil prices rise above $60, that value just continues to compound. Another good example of our blueprint strategy in action is what we're doing now at Roncott. This is an asset that was part of the Bakkens Hot Lake acquisition we closed in 2024, which had not seen any new drilling since 2021. When we acquired it, Roncott had two booked locations with an estimated value of CAD 5 million.
By applying enhanced drilling techniques, which included two open hole extended reach Bakken, and Saturn's first re-entry open hole multilateral Bakken, we now see an additional CAD 10 million of drilling value, plus about CAD 2 million incremental value through operating cost reductions and efficiency gains. That represents a base value increase of more than three times, even before considering the future waterflood potential across the field. This kind of win is just not in Roncott. This is exactly what we're doing all across our asset base. We find new ways to reduce costs, improve recoveries, and boost the profitability of our assets. Our operational success is clearly reflected in Saturn's year-end reserves. With positive technical performance, despite the reserve evaluators average 2026 oil price forecast coming in 19% lower than the prior year.
We reported growth between 9% and 10% across all reserve categories over 2024 and achieved the largest positive PDP technical revision in Saturn's history, totaling 11.4 MMb . This was driven by base well outperformance, year-over-year operating cost reductions, waterflood response, and PDP conversions, which more than offset the impact of pricing. Compared to 2024, our booked drilling locations increased 8% to over 1,200. This includes 90 locations from the recent tuck-in acquisitions, and we brought in 110 locations from our unbooked inventory to replace the wells drilled in 2025. We've internally identified incremental 1,400 unbooked locations, providing Saturn with the inventory that can support approximately 20 years of flat production at our current pace of drilling.
From a pure value perspective, even at the depressed WTI price forecast used in the reserve report, our net asset value per share remains robust at approximately CAD 5.50 per share on a PDP basis, CAD 7.75 a share on a 1P basis, and nearly CAD 13.00 A share on a 2P basis. If we applied last year's $71 WTI 3CA reserve price deck on this year's reserves, Saturn's PDP NAV per share would exceed CAD 8.00. This value further expands as oil prices climb above $70. Leading up to spring breakup, Saturn had four rigs running, three drilling open hole multi-lateral wells, two in the Bakken and one in the Midale on lands we acquired through our 2025 tuck-in acquisition, with a fourth rig drilling conventional Mississippian and Spearfish wells.
We anticipate drilling 20 wells in the first quarter of the year, investing CAD 40 million-CAD 50 million in capital to generate average production between 41,000 and 42,000 bbl quarterly. With roughly 70% of our capital budget moving to the second half of the year and given our flexible capital spending profile, we have the benefit of time to assess whether adjusting capital spending is prudent given commodity prices and broader market conditions. As always, we will continue to monitor pricing closely, and we'll update the market should Saturn choose to make any capital or guidance changes. With that, I'll hand things over to Scott for an overview of our financial results.
Thanks, Justin, and good morning, everyone. Operationally, we delivered a strong fourth quarter and annual results that builds on our track record of exceeding expectations and guidance. Production in Q4 approached 43,700 BOE per day, contributing to record annual production over 41,700 BOE /d . Q4 volumes are up 6% from both the previous quarter and the same period last year, with 2025 annual volumes increasing 22% year-over-year. Our strong operating performance translated into record financial results. For the full year, we generated adjusted funds flow of CAD 464 million or CAD 2.40 per share, with CAD 121 million or CAD 0.64 per share generated in the fourth quarter.
Our free funds flow in Q4 totaled CAD 56 million, supporting record 2025 free funds flow of CAD 223 million or CAD 1.15 per share, driving a year-end free funds flow yield of 50%. As John spoke about earlier, we continue to fulfill Saturn's goal of debt reduction through 2025, directing CAD 110 million towards the repayment of our senior notes. We exited 2025 with net debt of CAD 761.5 million, resulting in a net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio of 1.35 x. These results reflect our disciplined approach to debt reduction, which included taking advantage of opportunities to retire debt at a discounted rate when market conditions allowed in the second quarter.
At year-end, our CAD 150 million credit facility, which has an uncommitted accordion feature that can be expanded to CAD 250 million, had a modest CAD 34.5 million draw, reflecting our active drilling program. As we head into spring breakup and generate a higher free funds flow, this draw is expected to be repaid. Alongside debt repayment, Saturn continued to prioritize the return of capital to shareholders. In total, during 2025, we returned over CAD 33 million with a repurchase and cancellation of 14.4 million shares under our NCIB and SIB programs. Subsequent to year-end, we have returned an additional CAD 10 million through open market purchase of 3.2 million shares under NCIB.
The active management of our hedge book continued through the fourth quarter, with Saturn recording net realized gains over CAD 24 million between both commodity and foreign exchange derivatives, while capitalizing on market disruptions to the shareholders' benefit. As the recent turmoil in the Middle East has caused oil prices to spike, Saturn successfully layered on additional swaps and collars at attractive ranges through 2026 and 2027, as outlined in our financial statements, remaining very well positioned to navigate future volatility. Finally, our strong torque to oil prices remain a key differentiator for Saturn. As U.S. WTI prices have increased by more than $20 per barrel over our $60 guidance assumption, we anticipate this benefiting our cash flow and supporting greater free cash flow generation.
The company will continue to prioritize the allocation of capital towards the reduction of net debt, share buybacks, tuck-in acquisitions, or other initiatives that support long-term value creation. That concludes our formal remarks. I'll thank everyone for joining us and hand the call back to the operator for Q&A.
Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To join the question queue, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To withdraw your question, please press star and then two. We will pause for a moment as callers join the queue. The first question will come from Amir Arif with ATB Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys. Congrats on a great quarter. A couple of questions. Just first, just in terms of the excess cash flow in 2026 that you will realize, just given we're outpacing your budget. I'm just curious if you can just lay out your key priorities in terms of, you know, debt reduction, buybacks, and if some capital does come back to the growth side, what, I understand it's very backwardated, but at what oil price do you sort of need to stabilize at before some capital does come back to the drill bit?
Yeah, Amir, thank you so much for the question. As always, we're gonna prioritize debt, net debt reduction. Again, you know, things like monitoring the bond market. If we see an attractive price to jump in and buy and retire some bonds, we're gonna look to do that. There's also an option in our bond agreement that we can effectively double our more payments. That's available to us as well. If we do continue to see oil prices remain closer to that $70 mark or beyond, I think you're likely to see us expand some of our areas. Again, that's why we like fields like the Viking so much, because that's a field we can step in, license, get production, get it online and flowing within three weeks.
We're not subject to these long lead time fields that we have to plan for, and it takes six or nine months to get these large pads online. There are things we can do in the short term, so we can lock in some favorable hedges, turn around, get some quick oil flowing out of a few of our fields. That, I think, is what you're gonna see us focus on. Again, priority number one, debt reduction. Priority number two is definitely looking at expanding and growing our production, and we have the right asset base to do it.
Okay. I appreciate that color. Just a second question on the first quarter outlook, just the production level, relative to the Q4 production level. It's a little lighter. I understand you are cutting back some capital in Q1 relative to what you spent in Q4. I'm just curious, is there anything else that's impacting that guidance outlook for Q1 on the production side other than the capital?
No, we did defer a little bit of capital from Q1 into Q3, but no, we should be well in line of all of our goals. The recent wells that we have had come online. Again, we are seeing a fairly consistent track record of success in terms of beating our type curve. No, I think Q1 is gonna be another very strong quarter for us.
Yeah. Just to add to that, based on our weekly production, we are kind of ahead of forecast where we thought we were right now, and I think you'll see that when you see the Q1s.
Okay. Appreciate the color. Thanks, guys.
Hey, thank you.
Again, if you have a question, please press star and then one. The next question will come from Adam Gill with Ventum Financial. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning. A quick question on kind of M&A strategy. The stock's been up 70%+ year- to- date, clearly outperforming peers. You're getting a better cost to capital. Do you think, with a better cost to capital, you'll be more active on the M&A front, or is it more related to the opportunities that present themselves and still wanna focus on tuck-in acquisitions?
Yeah, I think we've never focused on acquisitions for acquisition's sake. We're always looking, again, for the cheapest, highest quality barrel. I would say tuck-in acquisitions is kinda what we focused on last year. We only wanna acquire things where we can add true incremental value to it. If it's in our core area, if we can utilize our infrastructure, our drilling techniques, and that, then we will look to do acquisitions at the right price. Cost of capital coming down is great. The share performance is fantastic. You know, from my standpoint, if our share price doubled next week, I would still tell you it's undervalued. And compared to our peers, it really is. However, we don't wanna go out and start issuing shares just because we have that cost of capital.
We are looking for things where we can add value and long-term value to the shareholder. Again, always kind of out there, always looking to see if we can add incremental value to our shareholders. It has to be accretive. To your point, as our share price moves in the right direction and we pay down debt, it does open up some more possibilities. I wouldn't say we're gonna focus any more or any less moving forward. Just gonna keep our ear to the ground and try and be as opportunistic as possible.
Okay, sounds good. That was it for me. Congrats on a solid quarter.
Thank you very much.
The next question will come from Jamie Somerville with Roth Canada. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Can you hear me okay?
Yes, sir.
Perfect. I have a few questions on your multilateral locations and drilling. I think the booked location inventory counts you've provided are for 2P reserves. Just wondering if the number is significantly different or similar for 1P reserves. You've provided some value estimates at $60 WTI for these locations on an aggregate basis. Can you maybe indicate you know EURs, NPVs or IRRs on a per well basis, half- cycle or full- cycle basis? Lastly, I'm curious how you know IRRs or payout. Well, IRRs rates of return in particular might be changing as you're moving to drill longer laterals, or is that just a small incremental optimization process that we should probably just wait to see more results from? Yeah. Thank you.
Yeah, I think that's those are great questions. I'm gonna pass it over to J.K., and he can really get into the detail. Again, I think, Justin, you can chime in. I think the reason we kinda give one is just because it does vary a little bit throughout areas, but I'll let you, if you've got those questions to dive into there.
Yeah, good questions. I'll back that up on the first location add. In 2024, we had about 28 net locations, essentially split between the 1P and 2P factors. In 2025 year-end, we actually increased that by about 300%. We're at about 85 net locations. Again, a similar split between the 1P and the 2P. As far as on a per location basis, at $60 WTI, our guidance stack, we're seeing about CAD 1.35 million NPV10 value per location. Now again, at $70, that almost doubles to about CAD 2.3 million NPV10 value per location.
The IRRs do change fairly dramatically between the 1 mi and the 2 mi. We are seeing close to twice the rate of return on the 2 mi, and we're actually seeing a lower decline than we would actually initially forecasted in the 2 mi. That's why you see our capital program shifting towards us only drilling those types of locations where our land allows.
Thank you. That's very good. Thank you. If I may, with regards to tax, I think you pushed out the tax horizon a bit by buying some tax pools with your tuck-in acquisitions last year. Can you confirm that's what is happening? How much tax deferral have you gained from those acquisitions? Maybe, you know, what happens at higher oil prices? Is it possible that you're paying taxes in 2026, based on, you know, something around current futures?
Yeah, great question. I wanna specify that we've done some great acquisitions this year that happen to come with tax pools. I will pass that over to Scott to kinda touch on what our tax horizon looks like.
Yeah, thanks for the call or the question, Jamie. We have a very healthy tax base. We're sitting on about CAD 1.6 billion in tax pools just due to our nature historically. Currently right now at these prices, we don't expect to pay cash tax until about 2028-2029. At $60 oil, that would be even further, about 2030. A very healthy base currently and go forward.
Perfect. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much for the question.
Since there are no more questions, this concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.