Earnings Labs

Kosmos Energy Ltd. (KOS)

Q4 2025 Earnings Call· Mon, Mar 2, 2026

$2.97

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Thank you for standing by. My name is Colby, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Q4 2025 Kosmos Energy Ltd. Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise, and after the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, please press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star 1 again. Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jamie Buckland. You may begin.

Jamie Buckland

Management

Thank you, operator, and thanks everyone for joining us today. This morning, we issued our fourth quarter 2025 earnings release. This release and the slide presentation to accompany today’s call are available on the Investors page of our website. Joining me on the call today to go through the materials are Andrew G. Inglis, Chairman and CEO, and Neal D. Shah, CFO. During today’s presentation, we will make forward-looking statements that refer to our estimates, plans, and expectations. Actual results and outcomes could differ materially due to factors we note in this presentation and in our UK and SEC filings. Please refer to our annual report, stock exchange announcement, and SEC filings for more details. These documents are available on our website. I will now turn the call over to Andrew.

Andrew G. Inglis

Management

Thanks, Jamie, and good morning and good afternoon to everyone. Thank you for joining us today for our fourth quarter and full-year 2025 results call. I would like to start today’s call by reaffirming Kosmos Energy Ltd.’s key priorities, which have remained consistent over the last year, before reflecting on our progress in 2025, then talk about the operational momentum we have already built this year and the planned activity set for the remainder of the year. Neal will then take over to review our financial progress and priorities for 2026 before I wrap up with closing remarks. We will then open the call for Q&A. Starting on Slide 3, as we close out 2025 and enter 2026, our goals of building a sustainable lower-cost business have not changed. We are growing production from our core assets, we are laser-focused on cost reduction, and we are targeting a meaningful reduction in debt this year. We are doing all of this while high-grading our portfolio to drive down the overall breakeven of the company. Turning to Slide 4, which looks back on 2025, 2025 was a challenging transitional year for the company, creating the platform for a sustainable lower-cost business. We delivered safe operations with no lost-time or recordable injury during the year. We delivered strong 1P reserves replacement of around 90%, or 120% when excluding the assets we are selling in Equatorial Guinea. The Ghana licenses were extended to 2040, bringing additional reserves and reinforcing our commitment to invest in Ghana over the long term. We saw production growth every quarter in 2025 as we recommenced Jubilee drilling and ramped up GTA production. GTA was fully ramped up in the fourth quarter, with the floating LNG vessel producing at its 2.7 million tonnes per annum nameplate equivalent through the month…

Neal D. Shah

Management

Thanks, Andy. Turning now to Slide 11, which looks at the financials for the fourth quarter in detail, production was again higher sequentially due to the continued ramp up at GTA through the quarter, achieving well in excess of the nameplate capacity in late 2025, as Andy mentioned. As the third cargo slipped into early 2026, we ended up only lifting two cargoes from Jubilee in Q4. While this has minimal impact to value, it does materially change Q4 EBITDAX and leverage. Realized price was lower sequentially, reflecting lower commodity prices, although we would expect this to bounce back in Q1 2026 with the higher prices we have seen quarter-to-date. OpEx was higher than our expectations during the fourth quarter, largely due to higher costs in Equatorial Guinea. DD&A was lower quarter-on-quarter, but above our guided range due to lower sales volumes than forecast. Most other line items were in line with our forecast, with CapEx materially lower reflecting the lower-than-expected accrued CapEx in Ghana. Turning to Slide 12, as Andy said in his opening remarks, one of the key priorities for the company as our phase of significant investment in growth comes to an end is to reduce costs to ensure we continue to grow our margin. In 2025, we made a lot of progress, with CapEx of $290 million, a year-on-year reduction of almost 70%, the lowest since 2017. This can be seen on the chart in the top right of the slide. We expect 2026 CapEx to remain around these multiyear lows and in line with 2025 when excluding the TEN FPSO purchase in Ghana. Our focus in 2026 now turns to reducing operating costs. We are targeting a reduction of greater than $100 million net to Kosmos Energy Ltd. this year, which can be seen on…

Andrew G. Inglis

Management

Thanks, Neal. Turning now to Slide 15 to conclude today’s presentation, as I said in my opening remarks, we have three clear priorities in 2026: grow production, reduce costs, and reduce debt. This slide puts some targets against those priorities. On production, we want to deliver 15% production growth year-on-year, coming predominantly from our core Jubilee and GTA assets. Alongside that, we plan to deliver a 20% reduction in total operating costs. We expect the combination of higher production and lower costs to reduce OpEx per barrel by around 35%. That increasing margin, combined with our portfolio high-grading, should allow us to reduce net debt by at least 10%, with scope to do better. And at the same time, we are advancing our quality growth portfolio with minimal CapEx in 2026, and we will obtain a deep hopper of opportunities for the future. As Neal and I have highlighted in today’s presentation, the team is focused on delivery, and I am pleased with the strong start to the year. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to the operator to open the session for questions.

Operator

Operator

At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question please press star then the number one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and enter the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question at any time, you can simply press star 1 again. Thank you. Your first question comes from the line of Charles Arthur Meade with Johnson Rice. Your line is open.

Charles Arthur Meade

Analyst

Yes. Good morning, Andy and Neal, and to the rest of the Kosmos Energy Ltd. team there. Andy, I appreciate all the detail that you have already given us on Jubilee, and in particular, I appreciate your comments as you went through that Slide 8, but in your prepared remarks, you talked a bit—I think you used the word cannibalization—of bringing new wells online, and I think your operator had talked about backing out volumes. So can you give us a sense for what your net adds will be as you bring new wells online? In other words, if you bring on a 10,000 barrel a day well, is it going to be an addition of net five, perhaps, after you back out lower-pressure wells?

Andrew G. Inglis

Management

Yes. Thanks, Charles. Look, it is not the same for every well. That is the most important thing to remember. For instance, when we brought the last well on, J-74, we were actually able to bring it into a new riser. So that actually relieved pressure on other wells, and I think the net back-out was close to zero. So it is not always the same. It depends also on the GOR of the well. So we have to be careful not to just do it by rule of thumb. But if you were to get into that conversation, and you understand what I am saying, it is not always the same. But a rule of thumb, if you are looking at a well that is coming on at 10,000 barrels a day, on average you might get around 2,500 barrels a day back-out. That is the way to think about it. For some, it could be slightly more; clearly for a well like J-74, essentially zero. And again, the final point to make is that all of that is included in our forecasting, so you can model exactly what the well is doing, the GOR it is going to come on, what impact it has on the infrastructure, which riser it is coming into, etc. So it is obviously part of the forecasting process.

Charles Arthur Meade

Analyst

I will let your engineers do all that modeling. Second question I have is on GTA and specifically the cargo guidance for the year. If we look at your Q1 guide, you have nine to ten, and I think you said you are already at six and a half. So you are maybe tracking towards the high end there. But if we look at your annual guide of 32 to 36, the low end of your quarterly guide tracks to the high end of your annual guide. So I am curious, is there a turnaround baked in somewhere in the annual guide, or is this just some of the seasonal effects?

Andrew G. Inglis

Management

It is seasonal, Charles. Your strongest quarters are going to be Q1 and Q4. So if you put those two bookends together, maybe you could look at 20 from those two quarters, and then the residual is warmer weather in the summer in Q2 and Q3, where you are going to get lower cargoes. So there is no planned turnaround; it is really the seasonal effect. And you cannot take the first quarter and multiply it by four. But the thing to add is that it is a strong start to the year, and I think that is the most important part. Year-to-date, we are at 2.9 million tonnes per annum from the facility, which is above its nameplate of 2.7. So the thing to take from it is the strong start to the year should give confidence in the overall outlook for the rest of the year.

Charles Arthur Meade

Analyst

Got it. Thanks, Andy.

Andrew G. Inglis

Management

Thanks, Charles. Appreciate it.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Alexa Petrick with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Alexa Petrick

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning team, and thank you for taking our question. If you could, could you talk more about the amended debt cover ratio that you announced this morning? How should we think about the next two periods coming up, where you stand, and how conversations have been going there?

Neal D. Shah

Management

Yes, Alexa. This is Neal. I will take that. We have had a constructive conversation with the banks so far in the year. The two next periods are March and September this year, which cover year-end 2025 and midyear 2026. The March covenant amendment essentially covers where we ended up at year-end 2025, and in midyear 2026 the leverage covenant was raised from 3.5x to 4.25x. That accommodates the historical underperformance in 2025 as well as lower oil prices. So again, we have created some cushion in there, and what we wanted to do—with both us and the banks—was to make sure that we do not have to revisit it, and it returns to normal by the end of the year. Based on our guidance and forecast, we should be back under leverage targets by the end of the year when you take that GTA ramp-up effect out of the LTM calculation. It was on people’s minds, so we wanted to get it addressed early, get the issue cleared out for the year, and now we have the runway to just deliver operationally, and then the results will naturally lead the deleveraging that we talked about.

Alexa Petrick

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Okay, that is helpful. And then as a follow-up, I think you have talked about cost per BOE at Tortue declining by more than 50%. Can you help walk us through the bridge there? How much of that is just top-line production growth versus nominal costs coming down? And how should we think about it?

Andrew G. Inglis

Management

Yes, Alexa, I will take that. It is both effects, as you say. Clearly, we produced 18.5 cargoes in Tortue last year. We are targeting a range of 32 to 36, so the volumetric effect is obviously significant. That, combined with around a 10% overall reduction in operating costs year-on-year—some of that coming from operations, some of it coming from the FPSO refinancing—the two combined give you a greater than 50% reduction on an MMBtu basis.

Jamie Buckland

Management

Thanks. We will turn it back.

Andrew G. Inglis

Management

Great. Thank you, Alexa.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of David Round with Stifel. Your line is open.

David Round

Analyst · Stifel. Your line is open.

Great. Thanks, guys. Thanks for the presentation. Can I start with Ghana, please? Because you have always talked about that being your best return on capital. But specifically, it has always been around whether the TEN FPSO purchase changes that thinking. If it does, when we could see a well, or whether you are in a position to even think about that at the moment. Second one, just on Jubilee. Andy, I think you mentioned 10,000 barrels a day for a typical well, and to be fair, you guys have always been pretty consistent around that, and I think that is pretty cannibalized. The J-74 is actually nicely above that level. So I am just wondering if there is anything exceptional about that well and any reason why we should not hope that the next wells could also deliver at that kind of rate?

Andrew G. Inglis

Management

Thanks, David. If I take TEN first, yes, clearly lowering the breakeven of the asset through the FPSO purchase does create a longer economic life for the field, which is important. But the thing that we are doing is we have shot the 4D OBN over TEN, so the focus has actually been Jubilee first: build a drilling program at Jubilee. As you look to 2027 and 2028, I think there is a potential for a well in TEN on the basis of being able to bring in the enhanced seismic imaging from the NATS and the OBN. That, in combination with the lower operating cost of the asset, will mean the economics will be competitive against Jubilee, and that is ultimately what we are trying to do. I would want to reinforce the comments we made in the script around the quality of the economics of the Jubilee wells. They are paying back—the last 12 wells paid back on average, with all the ups and downs, in around nine months. The last two wells, closer to six. So it is a very strong opportunity set that we see in Jubilee, and therefore I believe that there is a competitive well in TEN, but the work on the seismic will enable us to uncover it. In terms of the higher rates, the point to note is that we have gone back to the core of the field. So J-72, J-74, and then J-75, which is the next well that we are currently completing now that will be on before the end of the quarter, are in the main part of the field where we know we have good pressure support, we know we have had productive horizons, and these are fundamentally bypassed oil pockets. They are being illuminated by the seismic. We want to be appropriately measured about the forecast, but I think J-75—we had 40 meters of pay—will be a three-zone completion, similar to J-72. So I think we are going to see some of the characteristics of J-74, and we should see strong performance from that well. Are there more 10,000 barrel-a-day wells in the field? Absolutely. And I think that is the takeaway, and they come with good reserves and therefore very strong economics.

David Round

Analyst · Stifel. Your line is open.

Great. Thanks, Andy. Very quick one on GTA while I have got you. Can you just remind us how anything over 2.5 million tonnes is priced, please? Is it along the same...

Andrew G. Inglis

Management

Great, David. I am sorry, I did not mean to cut you off. Exactly. It is 2.45; that is what I was going to say. It is 2.45 per the contract with BP. So everything that is above that is sold under that contract. It is exactly the same pricing.

David Round

Analyst · Stifel. Your line is open.

Okay. Brilliant. Thank you.

Andrew G. Inglis

Management

Great. Thanks, David.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Christopher Bucke with Clarkson Securities. Your line is open.

Christopher Bucke

Analyst · Clarkson Securities. Your line is open.

Hi, guys. This is Christopher from Clarkson. Thank you for taking my questions. First of all, congrats on an eventful quarter and some strong recent months. I have a couple, so I will just take one at a time. First question is related to the RBL, which is currently secured against Ghana and the recently divested Equatorial Guinea stake. Could you give some color on how the license extension in Ghana affects the borrowing base? And will that extension alone replace Equatorial Guinea, so to say?

Neal D. Shah

Management

We have just started the RBL process. The RBL, like you said, is underpinned by the Ghana reserves and Equatorial Guinea. We would expect for March for both pieces still to be in there, and then as the transaction closes in Q2, the Equatorial Guinea portion will come out. There will be some impact in terms of the borrowing base from Equatorial Guinea—we had it roughly plus or minus $100 million of impact—but we were well over-collateralized from a Ghana perspective. You will not see much impact from Equatorial Guinea in Q1, but clearly, by the time we close the asset sale in midyear, there will be an impact to the RBL as a result of that transaction.

Christopher Bucke

Analyst · Clarkson Securities. Your line is open.

My second comes following the Equatorial Guinea divestment as well. How do you think about further divestments versus holding assets like Tiberias into FID? And is the portfolio now largely set for harvest phase in your view?

Andrew G. Inglis

Management

Maybe I will take that, Christopher. A key theme coming out of the prepared remarks and the slides is we are on a journey to create a lower-cost business. We have talked about the organic portfolio as it sits today: more than $100 million of costs coming out, and when you put Equatorial Guinea onto that on a pro forma basis, it could get you closer in aggregate to about $250 million. So we are really building that lower-cost portfolio and, clearly, on a per-BOE basis it is a significant reduction. Where next? It has to be things that are not core to the future—where we do not see growth and we see potentially higher costs—and we will continue to look at those assets. At the same time, we are redirecting the capital that we would have spent on the more mature, higher-cost assets to growth. Clearly, the growth in this year is targeting the very strong economics in Jubilee, and then as we look out beyond into 2027 and 2028, you are right, Tiberias is an important growth project for us in the Gulf. So the messages are really around very strong focus on cost to build that lower-cost sustainable business, very strong reserve base, and then associated with that is rigorous capital to the highest-return projects and with a very lean capital base in 2026 to enable us to do that. So yes, there will be, I think, on the margins, some continuing trimming of the portfolio. But we have got a very strong set of core assets, and those assets will continue to deliver growth.

Christopher Bucke

Analyst · Clarkson Securities. Your line is open.

My third and last question, if I may, is also related to GTA. You are guiding to more than 50% year-on-year unit cost reduction in 2026. Can you please help me understand what the steady-state cash OpEx per MMBtu looks like at, let us say, 2.7 to 2.9 MTPA? And how much of that reduction comes from the FPSO refi versus operational efficiencies?

Neal D. Shah

Management

When you look at the absolute cost reduction in 2026 versus 2025, about half of that is the FPSO refinancing and half of that is the start-up cost piece coming out. As Andy alluded, there is more to go on the operating costs from a peer perspective to pull out of the system, and while the changes are slightly larger than that, there is a slightly increased FLNG toll just because we are pushing more volume through Golar and they get paid on a per molecule basis. Net-net, those two are a little larger than 10%, but when you include the FLNG higher toll, it gets to around 10% on the total into 2026. Then you should see a further reduction into 2027.

Andrew G. Inglis

Management

And the actual numbers are shown there on Slide 9. What I would add is there is no required investment to deliver up to the 630 million standard cubic feet per day, which is the additional increment from the domestic gas. As that starts to come through on Phase 1 Plus, you see another step down in the net OpEx per MMBtu.

Christopher Bucke

Analyst · Clarkson Securities. Your line is open.

Fantastic, guys. Thank you very much.

Andrew G. Inglis

Management

Great. Thanks, Christopher.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Stella Cridge with Barclays. Your line is open.

Stella Cridge

Analyst · Barclays. Your line is open.

Hi there. Good afternoon, everyone. Many thanks for all the updates. There were two things, if I could ask, please. The first is on Tiberias. When you are talking about the farm down, is the idea that the new partner covers their pro rata share of CapEx, or could you talk us through how that transaction might work? And then secondly, I was just wondering how you were thinking about the amortizations on the Shell loan and what would be your base case for addressing those? That would be great. Thanks.

Neal D. Shah

Management

Hi, Stella. I will take those. In terms of Tiberias, when we and Oxy both look to farm down—we are both 50/50 partners today—the goal is to get a third partner in there, ideally a third/third/third. The idea is that they clearly pay their own capital cost, there are some back costs, and then potentially some additional consideration. That is the structure we are looking at post-FID to bring in that partner. In terms of the Gulf term loan perspective, we talked about getting net debt down by at least 10% in calendar year 2026. About half of that is through the Equatorial Guinea sale and the other half is through generation of free cash flow across the business in a mid-sixties type oil price. The Gulf term loan amortization is a little over $50 million this year. We would expect to pay that out of cash flow generated from the business.

Stella Cridge

Analyst · Barclays. Your line is open.

That is great. Thank you.

Andrew G. Inglis

Management

Thanks, Stella.

Operator

Operator

And your last question comes from Mark Wilson with Jefferies. Your line is open.

Mark Wilson

Analyst

Yes, thank you. I would like to ask a follow-up to that Tiberias question. Certainly, Gulf of America did seem the most material new information I felt from this, and so following on from that, the results talk to an FID and farm down in the first half. So are we pursuing those two situations in parallel? Should we consider an FID and a farm down as things that come together, one and the same? Thank you.

Neal D. Shah

Management

So, Mark, I think they are more sequential. As operator, we have moved the development-to-FID path pretty far, and we are close to getting that sanctioned. We have clearly talked to a number of people around the farm down. We will kick off a process here quite shortly. It should be a fairly attractive, clean project to bring in the third partner, and as you have seen generally in the Gulf of America, there has been a lot of interest around people participating in new developments in cost-competitive, large-resource projects. We think there will be a lot of interest as we conduct a relatively short process.

Mark Wilson

Analyst

Okay. Thank you. And then the other new information in the Gulf was this strategic alliance with Shell. You talked about being aligned across ten blocks now. Is there anything within that “strategic alliance” beyond involvement in licenses—any kind of carry or information share, etc.? Thank you.

Neal D. Shah

Management

We have had a long, good working relationship with Shell. A few years ago, we sold them our exploration assets across the portfolio in terms of the frontier licenses. We signed the term loan with them in the Gulf, and for a couple of years now, we have been having an ongoing conversation around how we can collaborate in the Gulf. Clearly, they are the largest producer in the area, and they have access to a bunch of infrastructure, which—as we push forward our strategy around ILX in the Gulf—having access to infrastructure is helpful. We have been discussing for some time how we can put together our capabilities to create a mutual benefit for both companies. So we agreed an alliance to start around the Norfolk trend. We had some prospects; they had some prospects in and around Appomattox that made sense to combine and then basically work to jointly develop that infrastructure and create a good partnership where we can use both companies’ capabilities—there is around drilling and production, ours on the accelerated development—to create value for both companies. There continues to be more that we can do together, and we are happy to formalize the first step and continue to move things forward.

Andrew G. Inglis

Management

And if I could add, Mark, it is not just about the license exchange. There is a commitment to drill Trailblazer, which is the high-ranker between us, in early 2027. Again, it is about a theme around ILX. This is Norfolk, but it is ILX around Appomattox where there is knowledge available on the host platform. I like the coming together. They have huge knowledge of Norphlet development, so being able to leverage their knowledge onto our prospects has been great. And clearly, for them, it is about finding how they high-grade and create a larger inventory to drill. Lots to do now, and we look forward to updating you on Trailblazer when we get started.

Mark Wilson

Analyst

And then one point, a bit of housekeeping here. On your group production guidance, the 70 to 78, can you let us know where Equatorial Guinea sits in that? Is there a number?

Neal D. Shah

Management

Yes, so it is dug in the footnotes, but it is about 6,000 barrels a day in the guidance on average that is contributed by Equatorial Guinea. It is in the full-year guidance. Given the uncertain closing time—whether it closes exactly in Q2 or Q3—we will reissue guidance, but we have broken out the components in the footnote so that you can make an assumption around that and therefore the impact to the full year depending on when it closes.

Andrew G. Inglis

Management

And equally true, all the costs from Equatorial Guinea are in the year as well. So when it is closed, some production will come out and also some costs will come out—these are a chunk of costs that come out of the business.

Mark Wilson

Analyst

Got it. Okay. Great. Thank you. I will hand it over.

Andrew G. Inglis

Management

Appreciate it. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. With no further questions in queue, that concludes our question-and-answer session. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.