Sterling McDonald
Analyst · Joel Musante with C.K
Thanks, Bob. Good morning, everyone. Let me just walk you through a few key highlights. Actually it's hard not to be excited about our financial performance and trends that are developing. Financially, there are a lot of good things happening. In addition to Bob's terrific report on our reserves and PV metrics, we turned the corner on net income. As Bob mentioned, net income exceeded $500,000 in the last fiscal quarter, a sequential improvement from the net income of $170,000 in the prior fiscal quarter and $1 million positive swing from the year ago's greater than $400,000 net loss. Year-over-year, annual net losses improved 90% or $2.2 million from the $2.4 million loss in fiscal '10 to a $240,000 loss in fiscal '11. Similarly, cash flow from operations before changes in operating assets and liabilities increased 102% year-over-year from just under $900,000 in fiscal '10 to $1.8 million in adjusted cash flow in fiscal '11. So here's what's happening here. We have a unique operating leverage that's kicking in and that leverage is due to our growing royalty interest at Delhi that carries no operating expense. As an example, revenue in the fourth quarter was 57% sequentially higher than in the third fiscal quarter, while operating expense only increased 7% in that same period. This trend is expected to continue over the next couple of years as Delhi production ramps up prior to our payout without a concurrent increase in expenses there. Looking at the top line, despite a 7% decline in year-over-year sales volumes, our annual revenues increased 50% to $7.5 million in the current fiscal year compared to $5 million in the prior fiscal year, primarily due to a 95% increase in oil sales volumes and higher oil prices. Quarterly sales volumes also steadily improved during most of the current fiscal year with the last quarter averaging 483 barrels of oil equivalent a day, up 58% from the fiscal first quarter's 270 BOE a day. Here's an interesting milestone. We're just shy of our singularly highest production quarter ever of 474 BOE a day during the quarter ended 3/31/2009. On the expense side, we've held the line on G&A costs, both quarterly and year-over-year, excluding legal expenses to protect our property rights. Our depletion rate rose slightly in Q4 this year to $4.92 of BOE compared to $4.55 per BOE average for the entire fiscal year. Although that's still a very competitive rate, the increase is due to $12 million of additional capital expenditures Bob spoke about. They're associated with the development and the final phase of Delhi after our accelerated reversion date is expected to occur. In this case, that's a good thing. We picked up an additional 1.5 million barrels of proved oil reserves for an $8 per barrel investment. As Bob mentioned, we're fortunate that Delhi's LLS or Louisiana Light Sweet crude pricing has remained coupled to Brent pricing unlike WTI that's decoupled downward to Brent. LLS may remain advantaged to WTI as unlike in the U.S., world market demand is still strong against tight supplies. Concerning our strong financial position, at June 30, 2011, our working capital was $4.1 million compared to $4.9 million at June 30. We continue to be debt free. On July 1, after the current year's close, we sold 220,000 shares of our currently authorized 400,000 shares of 8.5% Series A preferred stock with a liquidation value of $25 per share. Gross proceeds from this tranche were $5.1 million before operating expenses. These shares are perpetual, non-convertible and redeemable only by the company at par after 3 years or earlier at a small premium in the event of a change in control. We have since been able to sell a portion of the remaining 180,000 authorized shares all at a premium to their $25 per share liquidation value. So as you can see, it's been our intent to build cash and financing resources for future opportunistic capital deployment in the form of investments in our projects, investments in other's projects who are overcommitted or investments in our common stock. Our financing quiver now includes, for starters, our June 30 working capital and July 1 sales of preferred stock and allows us to fund our base 2012 capital budget out of existing cash on hand right now, today, with liquidity to spare. Second, absent plunging oil prices or field upsets, our positive and growing cash flow from operations should easily cover an expansion from our base plan. Third, our preferred share platform is registered on the shelf, authorized and ready to go with further sales as necessary, markets and investment needs permitting. Fourth, we're also working to establish a small $5 million unsecured bank line only to be used as purchase financing as necessary. Fifth, we may divest certain of our non-core assets for capital redeployment. Six, their common stock is currency as well, if and when markets allow fair value. And lastly, we continue to askew debt unless it's contained to an individual project or asset. So these are the kinds of options I'm privileged to have and stand behind as CFO of the company. Before we go to Bob's closing remarks and the Q&A, I'd like to address some questions we've received from our shareholders. This may be old hat to many of you, so I'll try to be brief. We chose the preferred platform for several reasons but mainly for principles we hold firmly to. That of maintaining control of our assets to ultimately achieve underlying fair value for our common shareholders. Unlike debt, the preferred acts like and is booked like equity because it doesn't have a due date, it can't be called by the holder, nor can our assets be foreclosed upon for non-payment of dividends. We also saw what it was available at somewhat reasonable price, about the same as the subordinated debt without tax benefits. Granted, our convertible feature would've lowered the dividend rate, but we intentionally did not delude our shareholders with additional or potential issuances of our common stock, nor did we believe that the reduced coupon is fair consideration for the additional shares we would have had to issue. By the way, this also benefits Bob and me as the largest and second largest inside beneficial owners of our stock. I think that's how that stock option grant thing is supposed to work and it's working on me. On the preferred stock sale, management was not subject to insider trading rules in their purchases preferred at its IPO. This is because shares were sold by the company, which is all-knowing as opposed to any disadvantaged unknowing public shareholder selling the shares to us. Personally, I was hopeful that management's participation would be viewed as a positive additional commitment to our shareholders, as if I need more concentration risk. I really don't. But I bought some of the shares and put them away, which leads me to insider sales of our common stock. We've been asked about insider sales and to my knowledge, no named executive officer has sold any common stock except to cover tax liabilities upon investing. In my case, I've sold none, thereby requiring me to write a quarterly check for taxes upon investing and a tax withholding check for each of the last 2 years' bonuses that were paid not in cash but in stock. That's an interesting concept. Bob and I came out of pocket from our salaries to pay for our bonus. On another financing note, oil and gas resolver -- revolvers don't go for 2% or 3% these days. It's true that very slim margins are routinely committed by banks against an almost 0% LIBOR rate. But most lines have a floor rate and currently, that would be about 5% for us. Regarding our royalty interest at Delhi, it doesn't back in. We own the royalty interest now and for the life of the project. Rather, our working interest backs in adding a 19.1% revenue interest through our current 7.4% royalty revenue interest, while also obligating us to begin varying 24% of the cost expanded after back in reversed. Regarding production or sales volumes. E&P companies quote net production or sales to their specific interest unless otherwise noted. This is the case with Denbury. They quote their net productions from Delhi, which is currently about 76% of total field production. So Evolution's current interest is not 7.4% of Denbury's net interest. Rather, it is 7.4% of Denbury's net interest divided by about 0.76. That also equates to 7.4% of total field production, which is currently what we own. In our reports to you, we tried to quote both field gross production and net production through our interest at Delhi. Lastly, our South Texas oil project in the Lopez Field is not planned for horizontal drilling development. In conclusion, I sleep well at night as your CFO and a major shareholder knowing we have a great set of assets and significant liquidity and capital resources at our disposal, even if capital or oil markets turn temporarily ugly again. On this latter point, our collective experience makes us not prone but that our survival on any specific financing, asset sale, 100% field utilization or for gosh sakes, stable oil and gas prices. Ignoring those risks is just not our style. Without naming names, there are number of public oil and gas startups that are no longer with us. Of remaining E&Ps in the small cap space, which we consider to be under $640 million, over half have given shareholders negative returns over the last 5 years compared to the highest upper quartile performance we provided to our shareholders of about 19-plus percent compound return over those 5 years. We've also supplied the highest quartile performance over the most recent 1 and 2 years. So speaking of our stock price, Bob, will you tell us more about the valuation parameters that underline our value?