Randy Keys
Analyst · Euro Pacific Capital. Please go ahead
Thank you, David. We've got some very positive information to report today. We've had a great year, great quarter and have a very positive outlook going forward. Net income for the year was $24 million, $0.73 per share on EPS level. The quarter was $20.7 million of net income and $0.63 per share. Both these numbers include the financial settlement with Denbury regarding the Delhi litigation. We had 27.5 million in cash and other good consideration including an interest in the Mengel Sand within the Delhi Field and other clarification of our long term costs under the contract. Revenues for the year were $26 million and we saw an increasing trend very positive trend during the year with production which was up about 600 barrels a day over the course of the 12 month period. We began the year about 6,200 barrels an increase that to about 6,800 average. And in fact we're pushing 7,000 on a run rate basis right now. We also - if we roll back to the reversion we were actually in the 5,800 barrel a day range. So we’ve seen production come up easily a thousand barrels a day over the last year and a half. Now what a difference a quarter makes, last quarter we were talking about $30 oil as our average price, this quarter we're talking about $43 and we had an average for the year of about $40 a barrel. So we started the year a little higher 47, came down to $40 for the second fiscal quarter as you had a very, very decade low quarter in the first quarter versus the calendar quarter and then as I said finished better at 43. One thing we have noticed is that our differentials are shrinking. Our crude trades at a positive - it trades as Light Louisiana Sweet crude that trades at generally at a premium to WTI. But we have seen that premium shrink somewhat over this declining price environment. As we look at lifting costs, the trend is also very positive there. We started the first quarter with about $16.50 per barrel lifting cost and we ended the year at a little under $12 a barrel of lifting cost for the Delhi Field. Our purchased CO2 volumes trended down now the recycle volumes have remained fairly constant but Denbury has been able to use less new CO2 and then frankly has been able to increase production. So this is a very positive trend. It shows a greater efficiency in the way they are using CO2 in the field. As we mentioned in the press release, CO2 is priced based on crude oil. It's got a direct relationship. So it serves as a partial natural hedge against oil prices as oil prices decline our costs go down and if oil prices recover we will see our costs go up and our margins should expand at a greater rate than that. And then approximately half our costs are normal recurring things such as power chemicals and labor field labor and repairs and maintenance. Those have remained fairly steady at about 1.2 million per quarter. As we move to the G&A line, our G&A costs for the fourth quarter in the year were very high. The primary driver for that was litigation costs we were accelerating toward a trial date and our costs head to head increased dramatically. We also about two years ago shifted from our compensation approach from one based primarily on service to one that includes performance-based metrics including comparison of our stock to the total return of other peer companies and also because we are dividend paying company some of those are based on net income as well. So I think it's unfortunate that these costs spiked up because they obscure some very significant efforts that we've been taking to try to focus on operating costs on the G&A cost and try to bring them down. We’ve reduced our headcount significantly over the past two years. We took the difficult decision to restructure our artificial lift operations at the end of last calendar year. We felt that that technology still shows promise but we felt that we could no longer afford the overhead associated with it in this difficult period. So we’ve restructured that saves quite a bit on G&A. We also move the company to a smaller office and that's generating some significant savings as well. It was fortunate for us that our lease our old lease was up in the summer this year. So it gives us an opportunity to drive those costs down and we’ve taken a whole manner of other steps to try to reduce those costs. And I think we'll see the benefit of that going forward. We've set a $5 million budget for next year and that includes all non-cash costs, stock based compensation and everything in that number. One other point I want to make on the income statement is our tax line, we do show tax expense on the income statement it’s about $9.6 million for the year. However substantially all of that is non-cash. We have a somewhat unusual quirk in our accounting that requires us to treat the benefit of that cost savings and cash savings as a financing activity. So it shows up as a direct entry to our equity instead of reducing the amount that we pay on the income statement. So a large part of the settlement for litigation was sheltered from tax by both carryover NOLs and also percentage depletion. And even looking forward to next year, we should receive a substantial bonus depreciation for the plant the NGL plant when it's put in service. So that's going to also shelter a lot of our taxable income next year. We would not expect to pay significant cash taxes next year. But we are moving toward being a full tax paying entity as these tax benefits run off. We also had significant hedging gains for the year. In the past Evolution has not typically hedged but as we - as we finished the reversion we got the reversion in November of 2014 and we were faced with the $25 million expenditure on the NGL plant and the desire to maintain our dividend through that spending process we felt that it was important that we put some price protection in place. I think we were fundamentally a little bearish a little more bearish than the industry when we put a lot of those in place last year. And so we saw a pretty significant benefit in hedge gains from that. At the moment I would say we have less of a need financially and we're probably more neutral overall on the direction of oil prices. So we do not currently have significant hedge volumes at this point. Balance sheet is very simple. We had 28.6 million of working capital. We received our settlement payment on the litigation right before the end of the quarter. So we had $34 million in cash part of that is offset by payables in process related to the NGL plant. And of course we finished the year with no debt. Looking at the dividend, we model our net income at - if we model our net income at $45 oil we generate sufficient net income to pay the dividend of $6.6 million a year and that also gives us about an extra $10 million of cash flow. And that assumes that we see the NGL plant coming on at midyear. If we were to see a return of a very low price environment, we have sufficient cash from operations to cover the dividend down to oil price well below $30 somewhere in the mid to high 30 - mid to high $20 oil range. So we've got sufficient cash flow to continue paying the dividend and of course we have substantial balance sheet resources as well. But I think we're focused also on sustainability of that dividend. So looking at the reserve report we updated our reserves with DeGolyer McNaughton at the end of the year. We had three PUD projects three proved undeveloped projects in the reserve report last year. We had the NGL plant and then we had two expansion projects for the Eastern part of the Delhi Field. We have Test Site 5 and Test Site 6, 5 is the one that is adjacent to the existing flood,6 is the furthest east and it's actually on the other side of the town the Delhi. So as we went through the reserve report this year, we lost one PUD project that was Test Site 6 and it had about $6 million - sorry - 1 million barrels of oil. We also of course had about $650,000 of production. So our proved reserves did go down but I think it masks an underlying positive in the reserve report in that we are seeing significant outperformance of the Delhi Field. Our production is higher than expected and all - our costs are lower and all of our trends are frankly very positive in the Delhi Field. Some of this is reflected in an increase in expected recoveries in the reserve report. On the proved side, we’ve gone from 13% expected recovery to 13.8%. On the probable side we’ve gone from 17% to 18%. These are incremental recoveries of the original oil in place that are attributable to the CO2 flood. So frankly we've seen that the old max and the big fields get bigger is definitely proving true in the Delhi Field. It is a very good long term field and it is outperforming. Some of the trends were interrupted by the spill, the incident that occurred in 2013 but we’re now getting sufficient history to show that the field is definitely outperforming the trend lines that were set up. We included in this press release some sensitivities for other price points because we were forced to do our reserve report at a very low price, it was based on $43 NYMEX crude. The overall cost on the lifting cost for the life of the field are about 16.50. The average revenues when we blend down the NGL revenues with the oil is about 35.50. So the field still has a very healthy margin, still has a 25-year life but it has a significantly lower present value under this scenario than it would under higher prices. So we’ve included a sensitivity at $50 and $60 to show the effect of purely price on our reserves. And this isn’t largely an apples-to-apples comparison but the mix of properties remains in the same in those cases so it is mostly just things that are price dependent, it does imply a slightly longer economic life because higher revenues will allow the field to produce longer with a given cost situation. As we turn to the NGL plant, we’re nearing the end of a long journey. We started this process actually three or four years ago when we started planning for this but it was authorized as an AFE in February of 2015 and we are now to the point where we can see the end, we’ve spent about 90% of the capital. They are telling us the plan is largely complete and should be online November 1. There will be a period of testing and ramp up after that point and we expect to see full production by the end of the year. This largely completes our CapEx program so we really don’t see a lot of capital expenditures requirements needed and we do have Test Site 5which is a very good project. The operator has mentioned it is one of the projects they would potentially add spending on as they had capital dollar available but we don’t know yet whether that project will make into their budget next year perhaps the year after. So that would be the next big one and it’s got about an $11.5 million CapEx associated with it. So if we did get into that project next year it would consume some of our financial resources we would still be fine and we would have more than adequate resources to do that but we don’t know yet the status of that. So as we look forward we’ve got a great asset, we’ve got solid cash flow, very economic production which is both – it's good on the upside and it’s also good on the downside. The fact that we’ve got $12 or $13 lifting cost gives us a lot of comfort, a lot of protection on the downside. We’re in what believe is a recovering price environment. It may take some time but we do see positive outlook there and as I said most of the capital expenditures are behind us so we have very healthy balance sheet, probably the best balance sheet we’ve had in maybe ever and we’re sitting here with large working capital and the ability to continue our dividend program and we have other - we have funds for other options. So with that I am going to conclude the call and open it up for questions.