Earnings call transcript: Topaz Energy Q4 2024 highlights growth in royalty production

Topaz Energy Corp (TSX:TPZ). (TOPZ) reported its Q4 2024 earnings, showcasing significant growth in royalty production and strategic acquisitions. The company’s revenue for the quarter reached $82.9 million, with a robust cash flow of $73.9 million, marking an 87% free cash flow margin. Despite the absence of specific earnings per share (EPS) forecasts, the company demonstrated strong operational performance. The stock closed at $20.22, down 2.79%, though InvestingPro data shows an impressive 51.35% return over the past year, trading near its 52-week high of $22.30.

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Key Takeaways

• Topaz Energy completed $430.6 million in royalty and infrastructure acquisitions.
• Royalty production increased by 14% from the previous year.
• The company achieved a 23% increase in total proved plus probable reserves.

Company Performance

Topaz Energy’s performance in Q4 2024 was marked by strategic growth initiatives and operational efficiency. The acquisition of Logan Energy and the completion of other infrastructure acquisitions bolstered the company’s asset portfolio. The increase in royalty production and reserves highlights Topaz’s competitive positioning in the energy market, particularly in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin.

Financial Highlights

• Total (EPA:TTEF) Revenue: $82.9 million in Q4 2024
• Cash Flow: $73.9 million, representing an 87% free cash flow margin
• Free Cash Flow: $71.4 million
• Cash Flow per Diluted Share: $0.49, a 7% increase from Q3
• Full Year 2024 Dividends: $191.2 million, with a 68% payout ratio

Outlook & Guidance

For 2025, Topaz Energy projects royalty production between 21,000 and 23,000 barrels of oil equivalent (BOE) per day and processing revenue between $88 million and $92 million. The company plans to maintain a net debt to EBITDA ratio of 1.2x by year-end, with a projected payout ratio of 63%. Additionally, Topaz is budgeting $100 million to $300 million for future acquisitions, indicating continued growth ambitions.

Executive Commentary

CEO Marty Staples highlighted the company’s strategic focus, stating, "We do see M&A opportunities in the system right now," emphasizing potential growth through acquisitions. CFO Sherry Stevenson noted the benefits of the company’s diversified portfolio, saying, "The value of the diversification of the portfolio really shone through in ’24."

Risks and Challenges

• Market Volatility: Fluctuations in energy prices could impact revenue.
• Regulatory Changes: Potential shifts in environmental regulations could affect operations.
• Acquisition Integration: Successfully integrating new acquisitions remains a challenge.
• Economic Conditions: Broader economic downturns could affect demand for energy.

Topaz Energy’s Q4 2024 performance underscores its strategic growth through acquisitions and increased royalty production, setting a strong foundation for 2025. With a six-month price return of 18.66% and strong dividend history, the company demonstrates resilient market performance despite recent volatility. The combination of strategic acquisitions, robust financial health, and consistent dividend payments positions Topaz Energy well for future growth.

Full transcript - Tortoise PowerEnergy Infrast Closed (TPZ) Q4 2024:

Ina, Conference Operator: Good morning. My name is Ina, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Topaz Energy Corp. Fourth Quarter twenty twenty four Results Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise.

After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Thank you. Mr. Staples, you may begin your conference.

Marty Staples, President and CEO, Topaz Energy Corp.: Thank you, Ina, and welcome, everyone, to our discussion of Topaz Energy Corp. Results as at and for the period ended 12/31/2024. My name is Marty Staples, and I’m the President and CEO of Topaz with me today is Sherry Stevenson, CFO and VP Finance. Before we get started, I refer you to the advisories on forward looking statements contained in the news release as well as the advisories contained in the Topaz annual information form and within our MD and A available on SEDAR and our website. I also draw your attention to the material factors and assumptions in those advisories.

We will start this morning by speaking to some of the recent and fourth quarter twenty twenty four highlights. After these opening remarks, we will be open for questions. 2024 marked another year of transformational growth for Topaz. During the year, $430,600,000 of royalty and infrastructure acquisitions were completed, which contributed to a 38% increase in annualized processing revenue, an 11% increase to year end 2024 royalty production and a 52% increase to our year end royalty acreage. SofaZ’s fourth quarter royalty production averaged 20,300 BOE per day, eight percent higher than Q3 twenty twenty four.

While year end 2024 royalty production of 21,400 BOE per day increased 14% over 2023 annual production, driven by 13% higher liquids royalty production and 14% higher natural gas royalty production from our recent acquisitions. BOPAD’s fourth quarter royalty revenue of $60,200,000 represented 73 percent of total revenue and generated a 99% operating margin, while fourth quarter processing revenue and other income achieved a new company record of $21,900,000 which was 19% higher than Q4 twenty twenty three. Our infrastructure portfolio generated 100% utilization and a 93% operating margin in the quarter. Our full year 2024 profitability was driven by record liquids production, 18% higher processing revenue and $11,500,000 natural gas hedging gain or $0.4 in Mcf. In 2024, operators put a record six thirty gross wells, 23.2 net across our royalty acreage, which increased 9% from 2023 and represents 15% of the total rig releases across the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin during the year.

In 2024, operators spent approximately $2,500,000,000 of capital, a 4% increase from the prior year. This operator funded development was demonstrated through our annual reserve report, which evaluates Topaz proved developed producing and probable developed reserves before any future undeveloped locations. Topaz’s year end 2024 total proved plus probable reserves of 59,500,000.0 Boe increased 23% from year end 2023, which includes the impact of 2024 royalty production volume of 7,000,000 Boe. For our proved plus probable developed reserves, operators generated 10,500,000.0 Boe of drilling extensions and improved recovery. Relative to the 7,000,000 Boe produced in 2024, this represents a new company record production replacement of 1.5 times at no cost to Topaz.

During the fourth quarter, operators spud 175 gross wells in our acreage, which was diversified across our portfolio with 57 in the Clearwater, Thirty Three in Northeast BC Montney, 40 2 in Deep Basin, 60 in Peace River, Six across Central Alberta and 21 in Southeast Saskatchewan and Manitoba. In 2024, ’50 ’5 percent of the gross wells spud across Topaz’s royalty acreage were in the Clearwater and Northeast BC. Topaz’s high growth royalty areas, since the beginning of 2023, ’40 ’4 percent of all new wells drilled across the Clearwater area in Alberta and 26% of all new wells drilled across Northeast B. C. Monty area.

We’re on Topaz’s royalty acreage, where Topaz average royalty production has increased 3411% respectively. Based on our planned operator drilling activity, we expect the current 30 to 32 active rigs on our acreage will be maintained through the first quarter of twenty twenty five. Topaz generated Q4 total revenue and other income of $82,900,000 cash flow of $73,900,000 and an 87% free cash flow margin, providing $71,400,000 of free cash flow. Cash flow of $0.49 per diluted share and free cash flow of $0.47 per diluted share both increased 7% from Q3 twenty twenty four. Topaz distributed $50,600,000 quarterly dividends, $0.33 per share during Q4, representing a 4.8% trailing annualized dividend yield to the fourth quarter average share price and generated $20,800,000 of excess free cash flow that’s allocated to acquisition growth.

During the fall, the full year 2024, Topaz paid $191,200,000 in dividends, a 68% payout ratio, which included two dividend increases, growing the dividend 7% since year end 2023. We’ve announced our 2025 guidance ranges of 21,000 to 23,000 BOE per day average royalty production and 88,000,000 to 92,000,000 of processing revenue and other income. Topaz expects to exit 2025 with net debt to EBITDA of 1.2 times and generate a 63% payout ratio, which remains sustainable through the end of twenty twenty five at $0 AECO and $55 U. S. WTI.

Attributed to the fixed revenue provided by our infrastructure portfolio and our hedging contracts in place, which are available in our most recently filed MD and A. Additionally, through our recent acquisitions in 2024, the incremental $400,000,000 of tax pools of deferred Topaz cash horizon further enhancing our expected 2025 profitability. Thanks very much. And at this time, we’re pleased to answer any questions.

Ina, Conference Operator: Thank you. Your first question comes from the line of Patrick O’Rourke from EQE Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Patrick O’Rourke, Analyst, EQE Capital Markets: Hey guys, good morning and congratulations on another solid quarter here. Just wondering if you could touch on the reserve bookings there, strong growth. Is that when you think about the process of that booking, is there any discretion there? Is that simply a linear extrapolation of the bookings of your royalty payers? And just curious with respect to how aggressively the water flood results you’re seeing in the Clearwater have been booked?

Sherry Stevenson, CFO and VP Finance, Topaz Energy Corp.: Yes, I can take that for sure. Patrick, it’s Sherry. So it really is a delineation of our operators’ reserves. And it is just obviously the proved reserves proved developed reserves, there is a probable wedge, but there is obviously no future undeveloped locations. We want to always make that clear.

But within the changes for this year, there were technical revisions of 1,400,000 barrels, and that’s inclusive of that overall 10,500,000 barrels relative to the 7,000,000 of BOE per day of or sorry, BOE of production. But of that 1,400,000 BOEs of technical revisions, there is about 1.1 attributed to the enhanced recovery within the water flood. So our view is there’s incremental value attributed to that improved recovery, but not the full value. And it is an extension or extrapolation of the primary operators reserves for sure.

Patrick O’Rourke, Analyst, EQE Capital Markets: Okay. Thanks. And maybe just a higher level strategic question, thinking about where the balance sheet is now, the payout ratio sort of being at the lower end here. How do you think about the priorities in terms of capital allocation today? Is it paying down debt?

Is it potential dividend growth glide path? Or are you still seeing a significant opportunity set on the acquisition side?

Marty Staples, President and CEO, Topaz Energy Corp.: Yes. Good question, Patrick. So we’ve been pretty, I think, focused on letting this last acquisition we did in Q3 of twenty twenty four, which was the big add that we have with Tourmaline. We wanted to soak for a quarter or two before we thought about the dividend and just kind of see exactly operationally what that asset was going to do. And so, we do see M and A opportunities in the system right now.

And so, we want to go out and just raise our dividend immediately. I think you can expect at least one dividend raise this year and we’ll kind of manage that alongside with commodity and alongside with growth we’re seeing inside our complex.

Gerry MacKray, Analyst, EMO Capital Markets: Okay. Thank you very much.

Ina, Conference Operator: Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Gerry MacKray from EMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Marty Staples, President and CEO, Topaz Energy Corp.: Hey, good morning. You just mentioned there acquisitions. Could you maybe give a little bit more detail? Are you seeing the M and A landscape more interesting right now? Is there more opportunities?

What kind of rates and competitiveness are some of these deals and some of these operators looking for? And maybe part one of the question and then just part two, if we’re a year from now, what’s going to be like the surprise thing that we’re going to be talking about on this conference call here a year from now just in terms of what was the surprise development that wasn’t really being expected by a lot of the by investors in that? Yes. So from an M and A standpoint, obviously, we just announced the deal a month ago. So you can see we’ve been active into the early part of twenty twenty five and that was with Logan Energy.

We did a hybrid infrastructure royalty deal in the Montney Alberta Montney. I think there’s more setup like that where it seems like it’s competitive either on the royalty side or the infrastructure side, but nobody can really marry those two together. And so that’s where I think we’re completely unique in the M and A space is where we can do both sides of that equation. Yes, I mean, what we’re feeling right now in industry is there’s a tremendous amount of uncertainty. And I think when you hear noise like tariff and it changes every week, it creates opportunity we’ve been working on or unlocks opportunity we haven’t thought about yet.

So, I do believe that there’s going to be opportunity this year. In 2024, similar to 2023, we saw about $2,000,000,000 of acquisition opportunity in both years. In ’twenty three, we did $60,000,000 in acquisitions. Last year, we did $430,000,000 So, it was one of our busiest years we’ve had since inception of the company. We do see more opportunity kind of coming down the pipe right now, but I would say that there’s a slight pause by everyone just kind of waiting to react to exactly what the new world or the new order is going to look like.

From our standpoint, we think we’ll be transactional. We budget anywhere from $100,000,000 to $300,000,000 in acquisition dollars this year. We’ll generate just over $100,000,000 of excess free cash flow. And so, goal number one is to deploy that excess free cash flow into M and A. If we cannot, we’ll replenish the balance sheet as you kind of suggested.

We’ll just pay down some debt and that’s a good spot for us to be as well. Big surprises in the year, I think part of the biggest surprises we see every year and that’s technological changes. And I think we saw that with the response and Tamarack put their press release out this morning, look at what they’ve been able to achieve through a water flood. And these are still early innings. I think we’re eighteen months to twenty four months into kind of real water flood development.

And we’re seeing very sustainable oil production start coming out of a number of our areas. Lots of running room from a reserve standpoint, I think, on uplift there. That’s probably number one. Number two, I think we’ve seen Tourmaline start moving to a completion design that you’re that’s very popular with you. This is going from open hole to cased wells.

And from our standpoint, that is having some good response. And so, I think that’s something that we’re going to see some big surprise to the upside. And think back to 2023, Tourmaline did 19 exploration projects. We were able to book seven fifty locations based on the capital that they spent. And so, those are always tremendous surprises for us when we can add seven fifty locations to our portfolio at zero cost to Topaz.

Those are big surprises we like to talk about. Tree, would you add anything to that?

Ina, Conference Operator: I would just add that we don’t actually book those locations.

Sherry Stevenson, CFO and VP Finance, Topaz Energy Corp.: We’re only booked for a month. No, we just I just think the value of the diversification of the portfolio really shone through in ’twenty four and we see that continuing into 2025.

Marty Staples, President and CEO, Topaz Energy Corp.: Okay. All right, guys. Thank you. Thanks, Jeremy.

Ina, Conference Operator: Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Jamie Cubic (NYSE:CUB) from CIBC (TSX:CM). Please go ahead.

Gerry MacKray, Analyst, EMO Capital Markets: Yes. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Can you maybe just talk a little bit about the guidance range you gave on industry spending on Topaz Lands for 2025? You indicate scenario of potentially $2,200,000,000 versus upward range of $2,800,000,000 Industry did do $2,500,000,000 in 2024.

Can you just talk about what sort of scenario you might see 2.2% spent versus 2.8% spent and the impact that might have on guidance?

Sherry Stevenson, CFO and VP Finance, Topaz Energy Corp.: For sure. Hey, Jamie. So with the overall production guide of that 21% to 23%, really when we think about guidance, we think about the midpoint up to the higher end. And so we are very optimistic that midpoint is or higher up to that $23,000,000,000 is more reality. And so within that, we would think about $2,500,000,000 to $2,800,000,000 of operator spending.

Really, the lower end is more difficult to quantify. It just it comes down to different royalty rates in which land is developed, etcetera. So it’s not as precise as it would be if we were an operator. And the lower end of the guide is just there as a sort of catch all given the macro uncertainty. But we definitely see good line of sight to that midpoint or high.

And $2,500,000,000 to even $3,000,000,000 of capital, if all goes well within the WCSB as far as egress and gas market goes. So I think you can think about it as a similar year over year in that $2,500,000,000 of operator capital, but two different moving parts obviously within the royalty rates, etcetera.

Gerry MacKray, Analyst, EMO Capital Markets: Okay. That’s fair. And maybe just shifting to the M and A side of things, and you’ve talked about this a little bit already, but can you just speak a little bit more to the recent Montney deal that you executed on earlier this month, the growth potential you see in that asset, how it compares to previous transactions and some of the key events from that deal that we should look for in 2025?

Marty Staples, President and CEO, Topaz Energy Corp.: Yes, for sure. And so, Logan was a company that we were quite interested in. They had two kind of main core areas, one in Simonette, One in the Pouce Coupe area. We were pretty encouraged by the Montney development that was going on early stages in Pouce Coupe. We put a goal around 100,000 acres inside that with a $50,000,000 capital commitment.

So, currently sitting on average about 2,500 BOE per day, we see that asset doubling within year one and probably another double on top of that by kind of end of year three. So lots of activity that’s going to take place inside that portfolio, good running room from an inventory standpoint. And then to complement that, they’re building a facility to mainly use the purpose facility. We took a 35% ownership inside that facility under a fifteen year long term take or pay contract. We do believe that that fifteen years will be more than enough for them to satisfy the commitment they have with inventory there and potentially recontract that after for some volumes.

So it’s set well up really well for kind of the recipe that we’re looking for. Number one, quality of the asset number two, quality of the owner and then it translate accretively back to Topaz. And I guess on a whole, we would have paid about a 7.5 times multiple between the facility and the royalty. But it does with the capital commitment compress very quickly. And as I mentioned before, that’s a $50,000,000 capital commitment.

Ina, Conference Operator: Thank you. And there are no further questions at this time. I’ll now hand the call back to Mr. Staples for any closing remarks.

Marty Staples, President and CEO, Topaz Energy Corp.: Yes. Thanks very much, everyone, and appreciate the support through 2024 and hope 2025 is another great year. Talk next quarter.

Ina, Conference Operator: This concludes today’s call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

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