Hello, good morning from Calgary. Thank you everyone for joining the investor call for Saturn's Q1 2023 financial and operations update. My name is Kevin Smith, Vice President, Corporate Development, and your moderator for this call. We'll start this presentation with a quick introduction from management. We'll follow that to address any questions or comments you have. Please feel free to submit your questions and comments through the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen. Joining us today is John Jeffrey, Chief Executive Officer, Justin Kaufmann, Chief Development Officer, and Scott Sanborn, Chief Financial Officer. I'll now hand the conference call over to John Jeffrey.
Hey, thank you very much. This is John Jeffrey, Chief Executive Officer at Saturn Oil and Gas. I wanna thanks to all of our shareholders and supporters for joining us today to discuss the tremendous quarter for Saturn and the amazing start to 2023. First issue I wanna address is the wildfires that are ongoing in Central Alberta. My wholehearted gratitude goes out to those emergency responders for their important efforts in managing this situation, and I send my best wishes for safety and a speedy return to their homes and normal routines. All of Saturn's staff in the affected areas are safe and out of harm's way. We've had no reports of damage to our facilities or infrastructure.
Saturn has curtailed its production in the area until it is safe to resume operations, to which we'll know more in the coming days, as it looks like the fires are now starting to finally subside a little bit. For now, we remain patient. The key, a key achievement in Q1 was the closing of the Ridgeback acquisition on February 28th. The acquisition only contributed to one month of operations to our quarterly results, but the transaction itself was a true game changer for us. The acquisition increased Saturn's oil and gas production base by over 140%. A major win for Saturn shareholders. The long-term prize is the extensive portfolio of attractive development opportunities that came with the company, and the team of skilled professionals that best understand the compelling upside and long-term sustainability in its undeveloped resources.
In a moment, we'll pass it over to Justin to outline some of the immediate plans we have to develop these new assets and when we expect to get back to drilling, which is hopefully next month. We'll also touch on a very successful drilling program Saturn undertook in Q1 of this year. Finally, Scott will go through the financial summary of what was an extensively strong quarter for production, cash flow, and profitability. The key message for shareholders is we now have built a solid development platform in three core areas across Alberta and Saskatchewan, all focused on high margin light oil. The capital investment opportunity in these areas offer exceptionally strong return profiles, and with our inventory of over 1,000 development drilling locations, Saturn has the sustainability for multiple decades of development.
I'll now hand it off to Justin Kaufmann, our Chief Development Officer, for an overview of our Q1 drilling and our plans for the rest of the year. Over to you, Justin.
Thanks, John. I'm pleased to say that Q1 was the most successful quarter the company has ever had with regards to development drilling. Saturn drilled eight Viking wells and five Mississippian wells in the quarter. The company continues to delineate off prior successes, and this has led to production results that were 37% above guidance on an IP30 basis. The highlight of this drilling program was the 11-21 Weir Hill well that achieved 150 barrels per day of initial production. Out of approximately 200 wells drilled in the province, it ranked in the top five. We are currently waiting on break-up to pass, and then we expect to have two full-time rigs operating. One will be focused in Alberta, drilling Montney and Cardium wells, which we acquired in the Ridgeback acquisition, which John mentioned.
These wells have some of the highest rate of return in our inventory, and we are developing on previously built surface locations as well, which aids in reducing some of the upfront capital costs. The second rig will be focusing on drilling Bakken and Mississippian wells in Southeast Saskatchewan. The company is excited to delineate its conventional Bakken play, drilling multi-leg unstimulated horizontal wells. The development has been de-risked by offset producers and has the potential to open up a deep inventory of currently unbooked locations. The rig will split time between the Mississippian and the Bakken wells, with Saturn continuing to delineate off its prior successes within the Frobisher Formation. We are extremely happy with the development to date, and look forward to a busy drilling season in 2022-2023.
I will now hand it over to Scott for some of the financial details of a record-setting quarter we released yesterday.
Thanks, Justin. This is a big period for Saturn as we start into 2023. We're very excited to have this quarter out, which shows the impact of our successful 2022 and 2023 year-to-date drilling programs, as Justin mentioned, where we drilled 13 wells this quarter. Our active 2022 M&A achievements with our two Viking acquisitions in West Central Saskatchewan, in addition to the partial inclusion of our 2023 Ridgeback acquisition, which closed on February 28th for CAD 525 million, including CAD 475 million in cash and issuance of 19.4 million Saturn common shares. With the mid-quarter close, operational results for the acquisition are included on a prospective basis and as such, only include one month of both financial and operational results.
We recorded many company achievements this quarter, including record sales of approximately CAD 131 million, record Adjusted EBITDA of approximately CAD 70 million, record Adjusted funds flow of approximately CAD 55 million or CAD 0.63 per share, record free funds flow of CAD 30 million after drilling after spending CAD 24 million in capital expenditures, and of course, a 137% increase in production to reach record average of just under 18,000 barrels a day, with first quarter exit rate of approximately 30,000 BOE per day.
With the recent expansion, the company's production base is now diversified with three distinct core areas, being Southeast Saskatchewan with our expanded Oxbow asset, West Central Saskatchewan with our Viking asset, and Alberta, which represents Central Alberta with our Cardium asset, and primarily Kaybob and Deer Mountain areas in North Alberta. In order to execute on this quarter and the acquisition, in conjunction with CAD 30 million of free cash flow, the company expanded its senior term loan with its existing lender by CAD 375 million, concurrently making CAD 12 million in debt repayments, and successfully closed a bought deal equity financing for gross proceeds of CAD 125 million, bringing a net debt of CAD 556 million, representing approximately 1.8 x debt to pro forma annualized quarterly cash flow.
We were also successful in our efforts on the liquidity front without increasing our debt balance in the quarter by entering into a CAD 30 million unsecured demand letter of credit facility with a syndicate of Canadian banks, supported by a performance security guarantee from Export Development Canada. As confirmation, the LC facility has no impact to Saturn's debt balance and provides the company with additional flexibility to replace cash-collateralized letters of credit, which we expect to execute on in the coming weeks. On the human resources front, as this is a corporate acquisition, I'd like to thank both the talented employee base we were lucky enough to retain upon the Ridgeback acquisition for their hard work, and the dedication of the existing Saturn staff who have been with us and shown dedication through this tremendous period of growth over the last few years.
Integration is nearing completion, and without you, it would not be possible. With that, I'll turn it over to Kevin with any questions.
Great. Thanks, Scott. I remind everyone, you can submit your questions through the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen. Here comes the first question. Is the CAD 25 million per month of principal repayment under the senior term loan facilities affected by the lower production due to the Alberta wildfires?
I can take that. Since we don't know the total impact of when the wildfires are gonna subside, we do have business interruption insurance. This is our most gassy field, so it will have the lower netbacks associated compared to what you'd see in our Oxbow or West Central fields. It, you know, if we can get this wrapped up in the next couple weeks, I don't think there'll be any impact to our ability to meet our debt obligations for the balance of this year. You know, we're carrying a very strong cash balance right now. The only potential impact that's gonna be is it could be to our capital program nearing the end of the year, that's gonna fluctuate with the oil price anyways.
Thanks, John. Second question. Did Saturn take on any commitments along with the Ridgeback acquisition?
We did increase our hedge profile, as we do with every acquisition. Again, that is to ensure that in any pricing environment, that we are able to totally satisfy 100% of our debt obligations and retire all of our debt within three years. You've seen that strategy roll out in the Viking with the original Oxbow deal. You've seen it again now. We did layer on additional hedges with this. However, the entity itself did not come with any material commitments that we had to honor.
A question here. Some industry players have been reporting back on success in the Bakken with unstimulated conventional wells. Is this something that Saturn is considering?
Yeah. I think I'm gonna turn this one over to Justin, as he can get into a little more detail about the extensive land that we actually hold in this area.
Yeah. Thanks, John. Absolutely. We currently have three multi-legs on the drill program right now. These multi-legs have already been delineated from other offset producers. The offset producers results, which are public, have averaged approximately 250 barrels a day. To put that in perspective, our fracked stimulated Bakken, our IP30s are about half that. The frack Bakken and unfracked come at around the same capital costs. There is a major wedge gain on potential production on these multi-leg conventional Bakkens. Of the three we're drilling, it has the potential to open up approximately 100 on book locations.
These locations are on fee land, which also helps in the netbacks of the area. We are extremely excited as a company to start developing up there in the next couple of months.
Thanks, Justin. I have a question here. With a couple of months of Ridgeback operations now behind you, where do you expect operating costs to trend in the second half of this year?
I'll probably let Justin weigh back in on this. I know pro forma, we've seen significant operating cost reductions by combining these two entities. Justin might have more exact details on that.
We are gonna be seeing some synergies in Southeast Saskatchewan, especially because of how contiguous the land base with the Ridgeback acquisition is with ours. There will be some labor savings there and some potential savings related to buildings, et cetera, that our operators operate on. And even how we, how we blend and move our oil around. There is some optimization there. Pro forma, we are seeing some. As far as the Ridgeback acquisition goes, we are seeing operating costs essentially coming in about how we projected on that side. We will see a pro forma reduced op costs, with the most of the synergies coming in in Southeast Saskatchewan.
Another question on cost, this on CapEx. Can you comment on the capital cost of the Saskatchewan wells and give an expectation of what that is for the Alberta wells going forward?
It depends on the play. In the Viking, we're seeing CapEx around CAD 1.3 million-CAD 1.4 million. That's what we're seeing through Q1. Those are essentially with inflation. Those are within our projections. Southeast Saskatchewan, we're seeing close to CAD 1.1 million on the Mississippian, and we're projecting about CAD 1.6 million on the Bakken. We don't expect the capital costs to sway much from those estimates. In Alberta, we'll be drilling a mixture of Cardium and Montney wells. The Montney wells, we expect to come in close to CAD 3.5 million. The Cardium wells, we're drilling different lengths of well bores, anywhere from 1.5-2 miles.
The CapEx on those wells change anywhere from about CAD 3 million-CAD 4 million a piece.
I've got a question regarding commodity pricing. Can you speak to the margins that were taken in Q1 versus the prior quarters? As well as a question about natural gas liquids realized price increased while natural gas prices decreased. What visibility do we have for natural gas liquids pricing going forward?
Yeah.
Yeah, go ahead, Justin.
In the previous quarters, we did see liquid pricing around 55% of WTI. Recently, we have seen that drop to about 50% of WTI. That's what we're realizing right now. Not materially different, but a little bit lower. That's what kind of our marketers are expecting throughout the year. That's what I'll have to say about the NGL pricing. Was there a second part to that question, Kevin?
The second question is, you know, what do we expect going forward?
Oh.
Natural gas liquids pricing.
Yeah. Essentially, it should stay fairly flat around that 50% WTI for the remainder of the year.
I'll just add there, Justin, in relation to the question on the NGL pricing, the product mix on their NGLs changed slightly post Ridgeback acquisition. With the one month of production operations on NGL, the mix just changed very slightly.
Could someone comment to the existing debt facilities payback period and Saturn's confidence of meeting those obligations?
Sure. We have the existing loan is scheduled to be paid off in the next three years, with 50% of that being repaid in the next 12 months. About CAD 25 million a month going back towards repayment. Again, you know, given any fluctuation in commodity prices, that's what that hedge book allows for. If we see oil rise or fall, you know, in all those scenarios, you know, we are able to meet our debt obligations. What might be impacted, again, is just gonna be the capital available for deployment. What you're gonna see is I think we have it scheduled to exit this year at about CAD 350 million of net debt. Again, that's assuming an $80 flat price.
I think we are still hopeful that that's what we're gonna see average for the balance of the year.
Here's a question. Are there more acquisitions on the horizon?
We're not actively looking. We're not in the marketplace, you know, looking to grow. For us, we are trying to get to a certain size. You know, in order to be a relevant size, you kind of have to be north of 20,000 a day. You know, that allows you to get things like DBRS rating. It allows us to jump to the TSX Big Board. You know, we don't see a lot of value in increasing the size to 40,000 or 45,000. I don't see there being a material shift in how we view the market. You know, when we're floating between 27,000-30,000, I think that's a good relevant size with material amount of cash flow and investor interest.
Definitely not looking, but I can say, you know, the amazing deal we were able to get with that Ridgeback acquisition, if another one came up, I'd be lying if I said we wouldn't look at it, but we're not active in the market looking right now. For now, what we wanna see is we wanna see return and appreciation of our share price, for those that have invested in us so far.
Question on the drilling side. To what factors are contributing to the increase in initial production from the recent Q1 wells?
There's multiple reasons. One, we are delineating off of our previous successes. That, that is probably one of the major reasons. The second, being our technical team. We believe that we have one of the brightest technical teams in all of Calgary. The geology end of that being led by Chris Farlow, and the engineering side of it being led by Christian Georgi . Those are two exceptional individuals that will continue to bring essentially overachieve on those type of expectations. Yeah, essentially number one, delineation, and then strong technical team.
Got a question here. The shares look undervalued. Any plans to buy back shares?
right now, our current debt agreement doesn't allow for it. Our focus is gonna be debt repayment. It's our belief that a CAD 1 towards debt is a CAD 1 of value by towards a shareholder. For now, we're gonna focus on maintaining flat production and debt repayment. I think what you're gonna see a shift to, you know, probably early to mid next year, is more of a direct, you know, direct repayment to shareholders, or in the form of buyback or dividends. For now, it's gonna be indirectly through debt retirement.
Question here. Are there talks of moving to a larger exchange?
Yeah. I'm sorry, I may have gave that away earlier, but yes, we're looking to jump to the TSX main board. We're in the process of doing that now.
All right. Well, that is all the questions that have been posed. I want to thank everybody for joining us today. We look forward to updating our shareholders in the near term here as for the next quarter. Thank you for joining. Cheers.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.