Morning. Welcome everyone to the Tamarack Valley Energy Ltd Conference Call and Webcast on Thursday, July 31, 2025, discussing the recent Q2 2025 results press release. I would like to introduce today's speakers, Mr. Brian Schmidt, Founder and CEO, and Mr. Steve Buytels, President and CFO. If you would like to ask a question, please press star then the number one on your telephone keypad to join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star followed by the two. Thank you. Mr. Schmidt, you may begin your conference.
Thank you, and good morning. Welcome everyone to our call to discuss the second quarter operating and financial results. My name is Brian Schmidt, and I'm the Founder and CEO of Tamarack Valley Energy Ltd. Today I'm joined by Steve Buytels, who has just been appointed President in addition to being our CFO. This morning, Tamarack announced its Q2 results, positive updates to 2025 guidance, and a strategic Clearwater tuck-in. Some key highlights of the quarter include: First, a new corporate production record. In our second quarter, we averaged 70,260 BOE/d, surpassing all other prior quarters. Tamarack achieved its highest monthly result in April, where we averaged just over 74,300 BOE/d. Secondly, a compounding impact of our buybacks and organic growth. This has resulted in the Q2 debt-adjusted production per share being up 24% on a year-on-year basis. Point three, demonstrated waterflood success.
We continue to see strong production response from patterns which are well ahead of their primary baseline volumes. Fourthly, operational efficiency gains and cost improvements. These are driving improved outlook for 2025 as we revised our production guidance up by 3% and our capital spending down by 7%, which is fostering continued free funds flow strength. Fifth, our debt reduction. Tamarack is advancing its objective to ladder the structure. Our recent bond offering supports this and was well received in the market. Overall, our net debt of $711 million is 19% lower year on year. Next, the strategic Clearwater consolidation. Consistent with our prior messaging, we have continued to monitor the basin for strategic opportunities, and yesterday we closed a small accretive $51.5 million tuck-in of one of our partners in North Clearwater. Operationally, the waterflood is driving growth, while Charlie Lake continues to offer solid production performances.
The Clearwater grew again in Q2 2025 and was up 16% year- over- year. This continues to underscore the success of our primary development and strong response for the ongoing expansion of Tamarack's waterflood program. Our water injection rates in the Clearwater have increased, and we are currently at 20,000 barrels per day injection of water and on track to achieve our exit target rate of over 30,000 barrels per day of water injection. Tamarack is demonstrating long-term value creation and resource capture capability of deploying waterflood as part of our multilateral development strategy in conventional heavy oil reservoirs. To illustrate this, we can look at two waterflood patterns, 15-2 and 16-2 in Marten Hills. After six and a half years on stream, these two wells ranked as the top two Clearwater multilateral producers for the month of June.
On a combined basis, these wells have produced over 1 million barrels of oil and are currently producing at 725 and 750 barrels per day, respectively, more than their primary production rate. Success is driving our forward outlook with the drilling of an additional 45 primary wells and nine injectors, as well as 10 injector conversions in the second half of 2025. While we continue to advance our development, we are benefiting from regional peer activity, including stepping out and testing new formations, which has continued to de-risk our assets at no cost to Tamarack. Recent results from a peer well operated at Marten Hills Grand Rapids exploration well, adjacent to our lands held by Tamarack, which also include Grand Rapids, delivered an IP60 of 345 barrels per day. Tamarack plans to test the Grand Rapids on our lands in 2026, adjacent to this well.
Now let's move to Charlie Lake. Our Charlie Lake asset continues to deliver solid results with production in the first half ahead of plan, reflecting strong performance from the 11 net wells brought on stream so far in 2025. At 18,900 barrels of oil equivalent per day, the Charlie Lake surpassed its prior production record. We continue to await startup of the CSV plant and are prepared to continue to commence the delivery of gas as the facility is currently in the final stages of commissioning. While the addition of this plant increases Tamarack's regional processing capacity, we have alternate arrangements in place to support ongoing development. With an additional eight wells planned to be drilled in the second half of 2025, the full-year outlook for Charlie Lake remains intact.
I will turn it over to Steve to expand on the financial results, update the guidance, and summary of the recent Clearwater tuck-in acquisition.
Thank you, Brian. First off, I wanted to thank Brian and the Board of Directors for both the opportunity here at Tamarack and the confidence they have in me taking on this new role. As we look at our Q2 2025, this will mark two years of consecutive quarterly outperformance by Tamarack based on funds flow and production per share relative to consensus. In the second quarter, we generated adjusted funds flow of $197 million or $0.39 per share. Free funds flow of $133 million or $0.26 per share. For the first half of 2025, free funds flow of $0.44 per share is up 29% versus the first half of 2024. The year-over-year increase reflects the compounding effects of strong production, lower costs, and our continued share buybacks. It is important to note that this accretion was delivered against an 8% drop in WTI oil prices over the same timeframe.
In the second quarter, Tamarack bought back an additional 10.1 million shares, pushing cumulative totals since initiation of the program at the start of 2024 to over 10% of our float. Year to date in 2025, share repurchases were repurchased at an average price of approximately $4.33 per share. With our Q2 results, we are revising our guidance upwards with respect to production. This positive result is driven exclusively by the organic success of our Clearwater and Charlie Lake programs. Overall production guidance has increased by 3% at the midpoint, with a range now at 67,000 to 69,000 BOE/d for the year, up from 65,000 to 67,000 originally budgeted. This includes planned Q3 turnarounds in the Clearwater and Charlie Lake, reflecting an impact of approximately 1,500 to 2,000 BOE/d in the quarter that was previously communicated.
This will see production for Q3 trend towards the lower end of the guidance range; however, that is forecasted to increase to the higher end of the range back through Q4. While production is increasing, we are seeing lower costs and capital coming through the business, and that is being reflected in our updated capital and corporate cost guidance. We are reducing our capital, as Brian mentioned, at the midpoint by 7% or $30 million, with the new guidance range now at $400 to $420 million for 2025. We are reducing production expense by 5%, reflecting field infrastructure investments, waterflood reinjection, higher production, and the disposition of higher-cost non-core assets. Transportation is revised down by 3% on a cost basis for the year and 6% on interest expense. The lower capital, coupled with the better margins in the business, is leading to higher free funds flow.
This, in turn, results in additional funds being allocated to buybacks for 2025 over and above our budgeted amount, as well as accelerated debt repayment. Yesterday, Tamarack closed the $51.5 million tuck-in acquisition of a privately held Clearwater producer in the Nipisi area. This transaction will add approximately 1,100 barrels a day of heavy oil production to the balance of the year and increases our Clearwater land holdings by 17%. This was a strategic move to consolidate joint interest holdings, which establish 100% working interest ownership across our Nipisi lands. This transaction is accretive to Tamarack 's five-year plan on a debt-adjusted per share basis and affords stacked Clearwater development and waterflood upside, where Tamarack can leverage our owned and operated infrastructure, market access, and capital scale.
The combined effect of the previously announced Penny disposition and our Clearwater tuck-in acquisition serve to offset each other on a production basis. However, the Clearwater assets offer a significantly stronger netback owing to lower operating costs, providing accretion to our funds flow outlook moving forward. The Penny disposition proceeds, combined with the reduction in corporate capital guidance, has Tamarack on track to continue to meet its debt target as highlighted in our June Investor Day in 2027. Subsequent to the end of the quarter, Tamarack closed a $325 million, six and seven-eighths notes offering. This represented one of only two sub-7% coupons for single B-rated oil and gas issuers in Canada in approximately seven years.
A portion of the proceeds was utilized to repay $100 million of our 2027 seven and a quarter notes, and the balance was applied to our existing covenant-based facility as we continue to advance our laddering of the credit portfolio. Including the recent acquisition, Tamarack Valley Energy Ltd. retains significant financial flexibility and balance sheet strength, with approximately $600 million of undrawn credit capacity and a trailing 12-month net debt to EBITDA multiple of 0.7 times. While oil prices have remained volatile, Tamarack retains a strong outlook for funds flow in 2025, which is underscored by our updated guidance. Our sub-US $40 per barrel WTI corporate break-even, strong balance sheet, and operational performance are key to ensuring our business remains resilient to commodity price and market volatility.
We continue to execute on a hedging program to support price risk management, having established coverage on approximately 50% of our oil through the balance of 2025 and the first half of 2026. I'll now turn it back to Brian for additional commentary on our field operations and capital program before we open the call to questions.
Tamarack continues to be differentiated by the best-in-class nature of our assets in terms of superior economic return and vast inventory. Through our recent acquisitions, we continue to build on those factors, and the results are reflected through higher production outlook, demonstrated lower costs, increased free funds flow, and the generation of solid returns for our shareholders. Lastly, I'd like to close out today by congratulating Steve Buytels in his transition to President and CFO of Tamarack. Steve joined our team in 2020, and he's been an integral part in achieving the company's successful transition to a focused Clearwater and Charlie Lake conventional producer. I will continue my role as CEO, and as Founder, I could not be more proud of what Tamarack has achieved. I'm even more excited for what lies ahead for us. Thank you, and I'll now turn it back to the moderator for questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the Q&A session. Should you have a question, please press star followed by the one on your telephone keypad. You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised, and should you wish to cancel your request, please press star followed by the two. If you're using a speaker phone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. One moment, please, for your first question. Your first question comes from the line of Patrick O'Rourke from ATB Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys. First of all, congratulations, Steve, on the new role. First question here, what really stuck out to me in the quarter was the reduction in CapEx and what that means to capital efficiencies for the business. If you guys were to pin down what was driving your ability to do that, is that tight curve-out performance on the primary side, cost control, waterflood results, what's the real driver here? Is this a permanent capital efficiency improvement that we should be carrying forward into 2026?
Yeah, so there's probably three major things. I'll start with one that is a little bit smaller in nature on a per well basis, but overall, our PDP on primary, we're seeing less declines than what we had on there. The second thing, probably more significant, is the waterflood response that we're getting on almost all of our patterns. It has been better than what we had forecast. The two wells, Patrick, that I talked about there, you know, they don't show up on anyone's radar because these things are six years old, but they would have made the top 10 list in June on the Clearwater production in the basin. It's pretty interesting how you can take these older wells and get them up over their initial peak production rate with waterflood. That was something that we hadn't contemplated that you would actually see exceed that.
That's just one, you know, a couple of examples in Marten Hills, but almost all the waterflood patterns are outperforming. We know the most important thing is to get water injection in, and that's why we've emphasized that in this call. Now, the other aspect is cost reduction, and we've had some really good success in planning and coordinating these wells on pads and doing them in a very cost-efficient manner. The number of wells per pad that we're drilling is going up, which drives costs down. The layout and planning, we have a KPI on our dollars per meter, and you know, I think we reported last year we saved $10 million on capital just through increased drilling speeds and dollars per meter. That's, again, a KPI that we're tracking this year, and we're continuing to improve that as well. That's dropping the cost as well.
Now, when you get a little bit more, I'd say the capital cost improvement has actually been even better than what we've reflected in the numbers here, but we've just redirected some of that capital over to water injection, and that's going to help us in future years in terms of decreased decline. We're expecting some big things in the future by redirecting that capital and going from 20,000 barrels a day up to over 30,000 barrels a day injection. I would advise any of the people on this line, that's the thing to watch for is how much water is being injected and how much, and because that's going to be coming at you in future years in terms of longer-term oil production.
Okay, thanks. You spoke to testing the Grand Rapids in 2026. Obviously, we can see the land that's adjacent to the Headwater, success that they've had there that you have. Throughout the play where the Grand Rapids exists, you've been drilling through it. Do you have oil shows in other areas where it might be prospective?
Yeah, we've got some, you know, there's the anomaly that we're talking about drilling, but there are other anomalies on there too. You're right, we've been picking that up through some of the wells that we've got. You just have got to stay from water and you got to stay away from the gas. It looks like there's a good runway of opportunity there to pursue.
If I could add something, Patrick, the way we look at all of this is when you're sitting on these big pads that Brian was alluding to, which is resulting in the better efficiencies, drilling the multiple stacked Clearwater sands, and then you have the waterflood development that coincides with the stacked sand development in the Clearwater. This Grand Rapids is going to represent quarter cycle type economics because it's just another thing you're going to add from those pads as we go in and drill all of that. When you think of efficiencies and margins in the business, this whole stacked potential just continues to provide some positive operational momentum, capital efficiency momentum moving forward. Obviously, when you think of things, the more you can add there on a half-cycle basis or better, it's just going to help there.
We're pretty excited about it and see, to Brian's point, some of those similar prospectivity across our land base. We'll look to start drilling some of that next year.
Okay, thank you very much.
Thank you once again. Should you have a question, please press star followed by the one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Jeremy McCrea from BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi guys. My question is actually on inventory here and a second follow-up question to that. With the acquisition that you guys picked up, how much additional land did this come with, and how does that compare to the existing stuff? When you look at the existing assets here, what do you guys need to see to accelerate spending on this? The economics look incredible here. Is there the ability to go faster to develop a lot of the locations that you have here to bring forward some of this?
Yeah, thanks Jeremy. It's Steve here. On the acquisition, we're bringing in 114.5 net sections of land and the majority of that is all Clearwater lands with some Manville rights as well. We don't really comment on the specific inventory numbers because of well design. We still are walking through that, whether some of that's going to get developed through these fan type primary designs or how much of that's going to be on our sort of standard pitchfork design with the waterflood development congruent. What I'd say is we're adding 17% incremental Clearwater land through this acquisition. The core majority of that is in West Nipisi, where we had a bunch of joint interests that we're consolidating here. The key around all of that is for us to have control of that development.
We can leverage our infrastructure that is in our Nipisi core and bring that over to this West Nipisi area. It's just going to help with synergies and full cycle development efficiencies around waterflood and costs, capital programs, et cetera. I think that's a big thing. I think the other thing with this acquisition that we like from a synergistic perspective is we control the pace of development, we control the well design, and there's definitely a cost if you're not doing that in a certain manner and within a certain design right from the start. You got to be careful there. You don't want to overcapitalize things or develop things in a way that you would have rather changed later. The element of control was important for us here.
I think what you're seeing in the Clearwater in general is there are these multiple stacked targets that we continue to see across all our lands. Brian talked to the redirection of through the reduction in capital. We've also redirected and changed the scope of the program with a lower decline coming through and better efficiencies. We've been afforded the opportunity to actually redirect more capital into the waterflood. There's more conversions, more injectors than we would have had previously planned. As Brian alluded to, we're going to be over 30,000 barrels a day of water injection by year end. The correlation to water injection and the uplift to waterflood very obviously correlates very tightly to that response. We're excited with what's going on. There's no doubt that the more money you can put in, sooner the better when it comes to these floods and the development of this play.
We're learning a lot as we go. We're excited. We see an arb, essentially, in how we get reserves booked to these lands relative to what's going on in the positive revisions coming through the waterflood and even just on the primary type curve basis. We continue to drive as much as we can in, and the focus is on right now putting as much and more capital into the waterflood within that guidance that we're outlining today.
Okay. Just on that guidance, as we look into 2026, 2027, what would be, like, I can appreciate that, you know, just trying to, you know, show, you know, it's a good stronger cash flow, but what are some factors that would make you want to accelerate the growth rates that you're seeing from some of these areas here, such as higher oil prices or more confidence in what you're seeing from the waterflood? What would be some of the factors that would make you want to go faster?
Yeah, there's a lot of economic incentive even at these prices to want us the Clearwater. You could grow the Clearwater a lot quicker. For us, it comes back to that disciplined and consistent approach to capital allocation around the growth that we offer from a total return basis, the debt reduction, and the buybacks. We see a lot of, obviously, upside still in our stock here with what's going on with this asset. We're trying to balance all of that. Again, we review our capital allocation and cash flow allocation weekly to make sure that we're maximizing that total return to shareholders. As we continue to pay down debt, we will continue to have that optionality to ramp more growth and more waterflood dollars in terms of investment. I think we're just trying to balance and maintain consistency and discipline around that approach on capital allocation.
Okay. Perfect. Thanks, Steve.
Yeah.
Thank you. There are no further questions, so the Tamarack team will now read pre-submitted questions. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Our first question on the online Q&A chat is for Mr. Steve Buytels. Could we please get some additional clarification on why the Clearwater tuck-in was more accretive to per share value than additional share repurchases?
Yeah, you bet. Again, we've talked a little bit about it on the call here, and we see very similar upside in the stacked nature of the reservoir on both the primary and waterflood perspective that we just don't see being properly valued in the Clearwater today. We see an arb, and we want to act on that. At the same time, we look at both buybacks and A&D on a very similar footing in terms of overall return on a full cycle basis for our shareholders and felt that this acquisition competed in terms of the upside that it brings in the portfolio, but also the synergies of leveraging our own infrastructure and operations that can drive additional accretion on a corporate basis.
I think the thing I talked to too a little bit was on the element of control of the program and of the design of the program to make sure that we are maximizing the dollars that we're investing into that property moving forward, and then again, leveraging our scale there. All of those factors drove accretion in our five-year plan on both a debt-adjusted production per share, but also a debt-adjusted free funds flow per share basis with respect to that acquisition. It is a fine balance for sure. The other thing I would reiterate is when you take into account the reduction in capital guidance coupled with the Penny disposition proceeds that closed in the quarter, it's effectively neutral on our debt forecast in terms of achieving our debt target of $500 million. It's unchanged into 2027 that we would have talked about at our investor day.
We felt this offered additional accretion to the plan while maintaining that debt target horizon and also offering further upside in terms of inventory and resource capture at very reasonable levels. Brian, I don't know, did you want to add anything to that?
No, I think that captured it.
Thank you. Our next question is for Mr. Steve Buytels again. Can you quantify the impact of higher volumes and dispositions on your lower cost guidance versus efficiency of gains?
Yeah, and I think Brian did a really good job walking through all of that in terms of the efficiency gains and the costs and what the waterflood's doing to decline from that standpoint. There's no doubt the Penny disposition was a higher cost asset for us on the OpEx side. I think if we look at it on an annualized basis, what that would have done for guidance was probably to the tune of $0.10 to $0.15 a BOE. What I really want to reiterate here is organically what the team has done around efficiencies on the cost side, the transportation, the marketing side of the business to enhance margins. These are things that are a key focus here day in and day out. We set some pretty tough targets internally to meet.
The team, both in the Charlie Lake, our East assets, and the Clearwater have all done a great job in executing. That's been the result of their hard work and labor. That's why we've been able to drive that down. The disposition was a smaller piece of that overall guidance reduction.
Thank you.
Let me add a point there just on when I talked about the pad because nature's given us a real advantage here as well. The fact that we have three stacked Clearwater sands, all of them are going to take producers, all those sands are going to be waterflooded. Actually, some of the Grand Rapids is in there too. You could have four, maybe even up to five different zones. When you think about building out infrastructure, roads, batteries, that sort of thing, to go to five different fields, that's a whole different cost structure than having these things stacked. The one well already, I think we've got 46 wells planned on one pad. You can imagine the cost efficiencies that you get by that, consolidating all your operations, no big gathering lines, everything kind of right on the leash there.
It is a real advantage to have these things stacked.
Thank you. Our next question is for Mr. Steve Buytels. Capital investment in assets was low this quarter at $63 million. How should we think of capital phasing going forward?
It did come in lower than forecast, and part of that is reflected in the revised guidance on the capital side in terms of that 7% reduction. The team's done a great job, as Brian talked about, in generating better efficiencies and lower costs there with the big pad development. As we look forward here, we would see capital, a range for capital in Q3 of somewhere around a midpoint of around $110 to $115 million, and then right around $100 to $105 million for Q4. That's going to get you to the midpoint of that revised $400 to $420 million capital guidance for the year.
Thank you. We have no more questions online for the online Q&A, so I'll pass it back to Mr. Brian Schmidt for final comments.
Thank you everybody that dialed in today. We're obviously very proud of what's going on. This is by far the best asset that I've managed in my career. I think we're just starting to see, just touching what this can deliver here in the long term. It just seems like every quarter we go through, we get pieces of good news here that just make this play so attractive. I just want to leave that with you, and Steve and I remain here for questions if you want to come in through the system or give either one of us a call. Thank you.
Thank you. This concludes today's call. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.