Yan0:00
Good morning everyone and welcome to our results presentation for the second quarter of 2025. Before we dive into the details and take you through the key highlights of what's been another busy quarter for the company, I'd like to briefly take a step back and reflect on how far we've come. Firstly, I think it's worth noting that everyone you'll hear from today has been with the company since the start of this journey in 2019. We've all been a part of shaping the business and importantly driving it forward. And if I look back now to when we adopted the simple clear theme of focused on delivery in 2021, I'm pleased to be able to say that is exactly what I think we've done. We've kept our base business robust with production declines averaging less than 4% per year. We've started up Tyra, witnessing production steadily increase as the ramp up progresses. We've been consistently profitable, underpinned by a disciplined hedging program. We've transformed our capital structure, raising over $1.7 billion of debt in the process. And perhaps most importantly for our equity investors, we've made tangible the theme of maximizing shareholder returns. Firstly, just by adopting our inaugural distribution policy and then by starting down the path of delivering back to shareholders exactly what we said we would. We've navigated some extraordinary times from record high gas prices to becoming experts in transformers for gas compressors. And while things haven't always progressed as quickly or as smoothly as we'd hoped, through it all, we've protected the balance sheet and focused on executing what has been within our control. And in that vein, the second quarter of 2025 is a period where much of what we've spent the last six years working towards came together. We successfully met the Tyra completion test, confirming the RBL technical bank's assessment that Tyra is no longer a project, but a fully operational production hub. We declared our first dividend and announced an upcoming share buyback, marking the beginning of our capital returns program. And finally, we refinanced the Bor5 convertible bond, removing a significant source of potential equity dilution. So, while we're proud of the progress we made, we know the job isn't done. There's still plenty left to unlock across our asset base that holds significant remaining potential. And with that theme in mind, let's turn to the first slide and take a closer look at what we've achieved this quarter and where we're heading next.
Starting with our base production, Dan, Halfdan, and Gorm delivered 21,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day during the quarter, which is in line with our guidance and continues to demonstrate the predictable low decline performance that we've seen from these assets since 2021. During Q2, we had planned shutdowns to allow for activities, and we expect higher production to come in the second half of the year as a result of this. As we highlighted last quarter, the above expectation performance of the Harold East Middle Jurassic well has reduced the immediate need for further infill drilling. Combined with our continued focus on capital discipline and the flexibility that we have around capex, we continue to expect 2025 expenditure to come in around $50 million below our forecast from the start of the year. And together with operating cost reductions that we're already seeing from higher Tyra volumes, we're well positioned to navigate any commodity price volatility.
If we turn now to Tyra, production averaged 16.8 thousand barrels of oil equivalent per day in Q2, up more than 90% compared to the first quarter. We reached peak production of around 28,000 barrels per day net to BlueNord in June, which is right in line with our guidance for steady-state operations. The reservoir continues to perform well and the operator's focus is now rightly on increasing uptime and delivering more stable operations. Looking ahead, we expect Tyra to be able to maintain plateau levels through the rest of 2025 and well into 2026. And this is underpinned by the continued strong performance from Hemj, which extends the period during which our production is constrained only by processing capacity by at least another 10 months. And when the existing Tyra well stock eventually does come off plateau, that's when we'll bring on additional volumes whether through near-term infill drilling or for more material projects like Tyra North and Voldemarbo South.
Financially, this was a strong quarter. Revenue rose by 52% compared to Q1, Q1, sorry. And EBITDA was up 66% over the same period. Operating cash flow came in at $70 million. And based on this, we're proposing a distribution of $49 million for Q2. That represents 70% of operating cash flow during the period and sits right at the top end of our stated policy range. With Tyra now driving meaningful increases in profitability and as production continues to grow, we fully expect cash flow to follow the same upward trajectory. We ended the quarter with $718 million of total liquidity, adjusting for the dividend paid in early July and the $50 million share buyback we plan to launch next week, both of which are distributions related to prior periods. We have pro-forma liquidity of $465 million. And if we also reflect for our proposed Q2 2025 distribution, our adjusted liquidity position stands at $416 million. On the capital structure side, this quarter we successfully refinanced BR15, our long-standing convertible bond, which we'll talk about more shortly. But in summary, we eliminated a significant source of potential equity dilution by refinancing this instrument with a new hybrid bond. So all in all, we're in a strong position to continue to deliver for all our stakeholders. Let's now turn to distributions, an area where our strategy is clear with execution now under way.
Backed by the strong and stable capital structure that we've built, one that provides resilience and flexibility, our near-term priority is clear: to return meaningful capital to shareholders. As Tyra production ramps up, our cash flow will increase in step and our focus is on firmly ensuring that this value is passed through to our investors. The start of our distribution program has always been tied to one key milestone: meeting the Tyra completion test under our RBL facility. We achieved that in Q2 and with it unlocked the ability to begin significant capital returns. Up until the end of Q1, we had proposed in total $253 million of shareholder distributions covering cash flows generated through 2024 and the first quarter of 2025. During the second quarter, we formally declared a $23 million cash dividend and announced plans to initiate a share buyback of up to $50 million. That buyback is expected to launch early next week. And today, we're pleased to be proposing a further cash dividend of $49 million for the second quarter. That again represents 70% of our operating cash flow for the period and is at the top end of our stated distribution policy. And as with the prior cash dividend, this payment will be treated as a return of paid-in capital for Norwegian tax purposes. And we intend to declare it formally once the buyback is completed. What all this means is that we're delivering clearly and consistently on our strategy of material returns to shareholders. Every proposed distribution to date covering 2024 and the first half of 2025 has been at the top end of our 50 to 70% policy range. That's not just a reflection of past performance. It's also a strong signal of intent as we look ahead. Now, if we turn to the next slide, I'd like to talk a little bit about what we did during the quarter to eliminate a key risk of equity dilution.
If we walk through the refinancing of Bor15, this was an important transaction that we announced during the second quarter. To start with the basics, we agreed on a price to repurchase the outstanding Bor15 convertible bond. And to finance that buyback, we issued a new hybrid instrument. This was a transaction that achieved multiple objectives at once: cleaning up our capital structure, eliminating potential equity dilution, and maximizing our near-term ability to return capital to shareholders. For background, Bor15 was originally issued in 2019 to help finance the acquisition of our assets from Shell. It was intentionally structured to have both debt and equity-like features. That design was necessary to meet two conditions at the same time. One, it had to be treated as equity by our RBL banks for financing purposes. And two, it needed to offer fixed income-like characteristics to meet the investment mandate of the institutions funding the acquisition. In short, it was a bespoke solution for a specific transaction. And while it served its purpose at the time, it's not necessarily the kind of instrument you'd choose if you were designing your capital structure from scratch. We took the decision to refinance now because BR15 has features that would become significantly less attractive if we allowed the instrument to run to maturity. Chief among them, the risk of mandatory conversion into equity at the end of the year and significant dilution for our existing shareholders. Given that the bond was significantly in the money relative to its conversion price, the risk of dilution was very real. We chose to issue a new hybrid instrument to finance the repurchase of BR15 because it's as close as we could find to a like-for-like replacement but importantly without equity dilution. It's an instrument with both equity and debt-like characteristics and it doesn't increase our senior secured leverage levels. The hybrid also supports our long-term capital return strategy where we have a business with a long runway ahead of it. We expect to still be producing more than 50,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day by the end of this decade. So, we're confident in our ability to deliver our business over a long time horizon. We chose a hybrid compared to alternatives for several reasons. A senior unsecured bond would have increased our senior leverage levels, which we did not want to do. We want to keep this part of the capital structure in line with the approach that we've taken so far, thereby avoiding any negative impact on distribution capacity. And while we could also have considered a subordinated bond that may have come with features like amortizations that would have made it less attractive from a liquidity perspective. Ultimately the hybrid was the best fit. It allowed us to remove the dilution risk from BR15, maintain our financial flexibility and preserve our distribution potential. From our perspective, we achieved the outcome that we were aiming for. Now, if we move on to my final slide, I'd like to finish with an overview of the factors that we believe position BlueNord so well in today's environment.
At the heart of our strategy is a very clear focus. We aim to maximize the cash flow from our producing asset base and then return a significant portion of that cash to our shareholders through our capital returns program. We deliver this by working with the operator to deliver the best operational outcomes possible, maintaining and optimizing a conservative capital structure, and actively managing risk in a volatile commodity environment. And while the first half of 2025 has seen its fair share of volatility, this hasn't dented our ability to deliver value for all our stakeholders. First, we benefit from a stable base of low decline production from Dan, Halfdan, and Gorm, now complemented by strong growth from Tyra. Importantly, both elements of our portfolio are now generating material cash flow and require no additional growth investment to sustain current levels. Second, with Tyra approaching steady-state operations, we're becoming a low-cost producer. We expect lifting costs to fall below $13 per barrel of oil equivalent and we've already taken steps earlier this year to scale back discretionary capex. That gives us flexibility to adapt to the market while continuing to generate strong returns. And third, we take a proactive approach to risk management. We hedge selectively, locking in attractive prices when the market gives us the opportunity to do so, so that we can continue to protect and enhance our cash flow outlook. Looking further ahead, the long term remains robust. We're building from a strong base, but there's still plenty of value to unlock. We see a clear path to sustaining production levels above 50,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2030, supported by a stable regulatory environment and a portfolio of high-quality accretive investment opportunities. Finally, on our capital structure, while this has certainly evolved over time, we have prior to Q2 at least always been subject to certain constraints, particularly those linked to the Tyra completion test under our RBL facility. And with this milestone now behind us, we've taken what we see as the final step to reshape our capital structure with the convertible bond refinancing and hybrid issue. The result is simpler and provides us with a platform that fully supports our strategy of maximizing shareholder value. All of this gives us the stability and the visibility to maintain a consistent equity story, one that is grounded in returning 50 to 70% of net operating cash flow to shareholders through the end of 2026.
And with that, I'll now hand over to Miriam who will take you through a more detailed update on operations. Thank you.