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Vista Energy, S.A.B. de C.V. (VIST)

Q4 2020 Earnings Call· Fri, Feb 26, 2021

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to Vista's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2020 Results Conference Call. . It is now my pleasure to introduce Strategic Planning and Investor Relations Officer, Alejandro Cherñacov. Alejandro Cherñacov: Thanks. Good morning, everyone. We are happy to welcome you to Vista's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2020 Results Conference Call. I am here with Miguel Galuccio, Vista's Chairman and CEO; and with Pablo Vera Pinto, Vista's CFO. Before we begin, I would like to draw your attention to our cautionary statement on Slide 2. Please be advised that our remarks today, including the answers to your questions, may include forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to be materially different from expectations contemplated by these remarks. Our financial figures are stated in U.S. dollars and in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards, IFRS. However, during this call, we may discuss certain non-IFRS financial measures such as adjusted EBITDA. Reconciliations of these measures to the closest IFRS measure can be found in the earnings release that we issued yesterday. Please check our website for further information.

Miguel Galuccio

Management

Thanks, Alejandro. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining this earnings call. The year 2020 presented us multiple challenges. And I'm proud to say we are up to the task. The presentation I will share with you today shows how most of our key indicators reflect a V-shaped recovery on the back of a structurally lower development and operating cost. In short, I believe we have emerged stronger from the crisis. Our response to COVID pandemic has been firm. First and foremost, by protecting our staff and ensuring business continuity, we quickly established a health protocol for essential oilfield operations. More than 75% of our staff was working from home by the end of March 2020. In July, we adopted a new protocol to restart drilling, completion and pulling activities. This allow us to tie-in 2 four-well pads in Bajada del Palo Oeste, boosting our production that reached 35,000 BOE per day by year-end. Our continued focus on efficiency gave way to solid results. During 2020, we redesigned our type well based on increased productivity and cost reductions. This has led to unexpected development cost of approximately $8 per BOE. We also lowered our operating cost base by renegotiating more than 20 key oilfield services contracts. This led to a reduction in lifting costs to $8 per BOE in Q4. Therefore, we turned this time to a company that is even more resilient to low oil prices environment. By year-end 2020, our proved reserves increased to 128.1 million barrels of oil equivalent. This implied a reserve replace ratio of 371%, and an increase of 26% vis-à-vis year-end 2019. This result is a clear reflection of the resilience I was mentioning early. We increased reserve, even though for 2020, we used $42 per barrel of realized oil price compared with $56 per barrel in 2019 to run reserve economics. We also increased our well inventory by derisking the Lower Carbonate landing zone in Bajada del Palo Oeste, with 2 successful wells with 2,400 meter lateral. Solid well productivity proved the Lower Carbonate as an economic play, enabling us to add 150 wells to our drill inventory, which now totals an estimated of 550 wells.

Operator

Operator

. Our first question comes from the line of Andres Cardona with Citi.

Andres Cardona

Analyst

Alejandro, Pablo. We have three questions. The first one is, when we look at your 2021 guidance, there are four pads that you are targeting to drill. The question is, what is the strategy there? Are you targeting to derisk the new zones that you test with pad number five and number six? Or are you targeting to test new areas in the block? The second question has to do with oil prices. How do you expect to see the realization prices in 2021, and in particular in the first quarter? How should we think about that given the restrictions in the local market? And the second -- and the last question has to do with the lifting cost. It's an impressive reduction of 20% quarter-on-quarter and a very solid guidance for next year at similar levels. But what I would like to understand is, can you split it between unconventional production and conventional production. The lifting, how does it look for each of them?

Miguel Galuccio

Management

Andres, thank you for your question, good to talk to you. Look just starting with the first question relating to our strategy of development for 2021. Well, I mean, between end of 2020 and the campaign that we are going to tackle, we are tackling in 2021. We are not planning to derisk new zones vertically. It means where we have proven carbonate in pad 4 is -- I mean we are amazed with the result of the carbonate, but we don't have a plan to develop further wells on the carbonate in 2021. I don't want to say that, that is not going to change, but that is not the plan at the moment. Of course, that gives us optionality. And optionality that we did not have a few months ago. And again, we are following closely the production of those wells that should then continue performing quite about our type curve. Now some of the pads, yes, have been placed in a position where geographically, we can say that we are sort of derisking our area. Pad #6 went all the way to the east. Pad #5 was all the way to the north. And therefore, yes, that somehow is helping us to derisk the area. Now pad 6, 7, 8 and 9, that is what we have ahead in 2021, are all in the core acreage of Vaca Muerta. So we are drilling for production really. And 2021 is focus on that, focus on the guidance, focus on the financial results. So that is pretty much the strategy. So you will see those pads 6, 7, 8 and 9 are basically the core of the core of what we have in Bajada del Palo Oeste. In terms of pricing, you have seen, we are giving -- we…

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Alejandro Demichelis with Nau Securities.

Alejandro Demichelis

Analyst · Nau Securities.

Yes. A couple of questions, please. Could you give us some kind of guidance how you see the drilling and completion costs evolving on your unconventional, probably now that you're going to be focusing on the core? That's the first question. And then the second question is, Miguel, I understand what you're saying in terms of pricing dynamics in Argentina. But if prices remain high, can we see CapEx going up much more than what you're guiding now?

Miguel Galuccio

Management

Thank you, Alejandro, for your question. So drilling and competition costs and development costs overall have come up -- come down a bit since -- with their operation, more than a bit, probably a lot. And that has been based basically in performance. When I mean performance, it's drilling a split completion strategy and also basically the renegotiation and the rebasing that we did with all the contracts during pandemic, but also before pandemic. And I don't know if you recall that the way that we contracted our main service companies, mainly drilling rigs and services is based on something that we are very proud of that is the scheme that we call One Team, where we not only pay for services, we also pay for performance. And the performance is measured as a common performance of us and the service company. So even we reward people at the rig side with the similar -- with the same scheme for service companies and our people in order to create that main team spirit. Drilling cost per well, as you see in Slide 4, has come down from our first pad 1 from $17.4 million to $9.9 million. And we believe we have room to continue reducing as we said, probably, I would say, another 1 million for sure. Main source of cost reduction could be, for example, sand. Sand is something that we continue developing. We are thinking in developing our own source. We are investing CapEx in doing that this year. And also we are looking another modification and the process, a few things that have been tested somewhere else that we believe could also bring further cost reduction in terms of logistic, how we mobilize the sand. So the short answer for you is, yes, we believe we…

Alejandro Demichelis

Analyst · Nau Securities.

Okay. And just to follow-up, when you talked about the increase in activity, can we see a second rig coming into the book?

Miguel Galuccio

Management

I will -- for your model, we consider 1 more pad in Q4, an additional pad, pad #10.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Marcelo Gumiero with Crédit Suisse.

Marcelo Gumiero

Analyst

Congratulations on the results. I have two questions for today. First one, could you provide us kind of a CapEx breakdown. I mean how much is unconventional, how much is conventional? And if Plan Gas 4 is probably impacting? And how much does it impact? And still on the CapEx side, is there any, I mean, restriction regarding the capital restriction from the Central Bank? And maybe a second topic. I mean, in some more general way, where should we expect, I mean, Vista productions going to in the next few years, I would say?

Miguel Galuccio

Management

Thank you, Marcelo, a very good question. So for the CapEx breakdown, so we are reporting in the guidance, $275 million, from which the majority is for Vaca Muerta unconventional drilling, the 16 well drilled and the 16 completions. So you have there probably around $220 million of unconventional Capex. Then you have a small portion for conventional, around $25 million. You have $40 million in Mexico. You have less than $10 million on a sand initiative related to the previous question of Andres -- Alejandro, and that's it. You have others to complete the $275 million, but that is mainly the breakdown. So most of the investment is related to Vaca Muerta development, Bajada del Palo, to be more precise. And there, you have also -- you have a split between drilling and completion. You have investment in facilities, and you have investment in other studies. So that is the bulk of our investment. Your next question was related to?

Marcelo Gumiero

Analyst

Maybe just a follow-up, a quick follow-up on the previous questions. I mean is there any impact of Plan Gas 4 on the CapEx? I mean, how much would be the CapEx if there was not Plan Gas 4?

Miguel Galuccio

Management

Okay. So in Plan Gas, I mean, we are not drilling for gas. So all the gas that we get is associated regard to our oil development. The Plan Gas have -- give us an additional pricing that is around $1 per million of BTU. So that is all what we get from Plan Gas. We participate in the Plan Gas because we saw that upside. But we have not changed at all our development plan or our strategy in development due to that. Because our main margins, our main business and the nature of our resources is oil focused. I mean your next question, I think is a very good question. It's related to how we see Vista going forward in terms of development and pricing. So if you take what we have go through in 2020 and probably late 2019, I think the main achievement of Vista teams has been the restructure of our cost base based in 2 main elements, I think, operation -- operational efficiencies and also reservoir performance. The fact that today, we have a total development cost where it is and the lifting cost where it is, put us, as I mentioned in the presentation, in a position to have a better margin than we had a year ago with $5 less in price, $40. A margin of 45% -- margins of the EBITDA. So that has been the main achievement. In 2021, on the back of that restructuring and also higher prices and stronger demand, we -- what we are doing is returning to profitable growth. And we are returning to profitable growth with a minimum operational unit of 1 rig and 1 frac fleet. In a moment that everybody is fighting for rigs and fighting for frac fleet in Argentina, we have…

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of .

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Thank you for the materials and congratulations on the recent performance of the new wells. I have 3 questions. I would like to go one by one, if you don't mind. The first one is related to what we have seen in the media or in the press, talks about certain industry players in conversations, refineries and crude producers in conversations regarding an internal crude price. Would you comment, please, if this is something that it's really moving forward? Or maybe we should expect to see higher crude prices before this really becomes something?

Miguel Galuccio

Management

Yes. Thank you for the question. Look, I think, as I mentioned before during the presentation, I think you start with, as we said, today, refineries are paying above $50 per barrel. So that is above $50 per barrel. This is where we are today. As I mentioned before, we have an inertia in Argentina, and I have been through this cycle before. And that inertia means that what we see in international crude prices, when they're in increase, we don't capture that immediately in the local market. The difference between what I have lived before and today is that we have additional volumes that can be export. So our realized prices now is a bucket of local crude prices and a portion of pricing that comes from our export. Back to the local prices, we have seen in the past that in order to manage that inertia, they are -- and I've been through 2 periods where the industry basically get together and agree how to transition that pricing. We have never seen the industry not to fight for export parity or even to fight for something that is between export parity and import parity. So how we get to export parity, it will be basically the dynamic of the market or an agreement between producers, operators and refineries in order to get there. So I'm not surprised that there are rumors on the press and of people getting together. We have not yet participated of any of this conversation. But in the past, more than conversations, I think they've been a dynamic to get into this export parity that, again, it does not in Argentina come to the pump and to the refinery prices immediately when we see an increase on international crude oil prices.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

That's great. And my second question is related to facilities. Hopefully, this year, you're going to be getting close to 40,000 barrels -- equivalent barrels per day in production. Hopefully, we will see more growth in 2022-2023. So where is your limit now in terms of treatment capacity? And where do you think you will need to go?

Miguel Galuccio

Management

Yes. Look, it's a good question. As I mentioned before, I think 2022, 2023, we'll have a company that will be generating cash and we will be in a situation where we can decide what we do with that. And of course, one option will be continue growing, adding more rigs and continue growing. Since we have the reserve base to do that, we mentioned that with the addition of the carbonate, we have probably north of 500 locations to be drilled. So the question will be what is the pace. In our plan, in terms of facilities, this scenario that we have today, that is what we call drill to fill, it's a scenario that we can go on, generating cash without adding much more CapEx in additional facilities. That means our facilities, we handle around 50,000 barrel oil per day with no issues, with just very small incremental CapEx. If we really want to go to 2 rigs, 3 rigs and accelerate that development, we will have to plan for additional CapEx in terms of facilities, mainly batteries and stations and some probably refinery treatment plants.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Great. And finally, are you looking into M&A or not really right now?

Miguel Galuccio

Management

We always look to M&A. It's, for us, a continuous exercise that we do, just to -- just probably to keep agile and to keep looking and even to compare with what we have. The reality is it's very difficult to find an opportunity that match the quality of the resources that we have and the quality of the economics that we have. And also, we are very pragmatic. We know that we are very good at what we do. And one element of that is the focus that we have. So saying that, yes, we're always looking. We have looked at it. It proved that never get even close to what we have in hand. So just to give you a short answer. Today, the focus is where we are in Bajada del Palo Oeste, in Vaca Muerta. And this is where we're going to be concentrated in the next 2 years. We also see value in being a pure play, a very focused player, doing what we do.

Operator

Operator

And I'm showing no further questions. So with that, I'll turn the call back over to management for any closing remarks.

Miguel Galuccio

Management

Well, guys, thank you very much for participating. We are truly happy of being here and having taken the pandemic as an opportunity, revising our costs and really very excited of tackling 2021 with a growth plan. So thank you for your support. Thank you for your participation, and have a good day.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference. This does conclude the program, and you may now disconnect.