Vermilion Energy - Earnings Call - Q4 2024

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good morning. My name is Konstantin, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Vermilion Energy Fourth Quarter 2024 conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press Star one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, please press star two. Thank you. I will now hand the call over to Mr. Dion Hatcher, President and CEO. You may now begin your conference.

Dion Hatcher (President and CEO)

Thank you, Konstantin.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us. I'm Dion Hatcher, President and CEO of Vermilion Energy. With me today are Lars Glemser, Vice President and CFO, Darcy Kerwin, Vice President International and HSE, Brandon McCue, Vice President North America, and Kyle Preston, Vice President and Investor Relations. We'll be referencing a PowerPoint presentation to discuss our 2024 full year and Q4 results. This presentation can be found on our website under "Invest with Us" in Events and Presentations. Please refer to our advisory and forward-looking statements at the end of the presentation. It describes the forward-looking information, non-GAAP measures, and oil and gas terms used today, and outlines the risk factors and assumptions relevant to this discussion. Vermilion delivered a strong operational and financial result in 2024.

Production averaged 84,543 BOE per day, which was above the midpoint of our original guidance and represents annual production per share growth of 4%. Our international production increased 12% year-over-year, reflecting strong operational runtimes in Australia and the mid-year startup of the gas plant on the SA-10 block in Croatia. Our North American production was down 5% year-over-year. This is reflecting the full-year impact from the 5,500 BOE per day investment in Southeast Saskatchewan that was completed in 2023, and that was partially offset by the growth from Montney and the asset following the startup of the new battery in Q2. We generated CAD 1.2 billion, or $7.63 per share of fund flow, and CAD 583 million, or $3.69 per share of free cash flow, both representing a 9% increase over 2023 on a per-share basis. We successfully executed a CAD 623 million E&D capital program within budget.

The capital program included significant investments in new growth projects in Germany, Croatia, and the BC Montney, which will all contribute strong free cash flow in future years. We returned CAD 216 million, or approximately 10% of our market cap, to our shareholders in 2024. That comprised CAD 75 million in dividends and CAD 141 million of share buybacks. In December, we announced an 8% increase to our quarterly dividend effective Q1 2025. This represents our fourth consecutive increase since reinstating the dividend. Net debt decreased by 10% in 2024 to CAD 967 million at the end of the year, representing a net debt to trailing fund flow ratio of 0.8 times, or the lowest ratio in over a decade. Included in our year-end release was an updated reserve estimate for 2024.

Total approved plus probable reserves increased by 1% from the prior year to 435 million BOEs, primarily due to extensions and improved recovery on the Mica Montney asset. We added 26 million BOEs of PDP reserves, 36 million BOEs of 2P reserves, at an average FD&A cost, including future development costs, of CAD 22.81 per PDP BOE and CAD 15.77 per 2P BOE. Now, this results in a recycle ratio of 1.6 times on a PDP basis and 2.3 times on a 2P basis. The 2024 FD&A figures include significant upfront capital costs associated with the early-stage growth projects, such as the Montney infrastructure, as well as Germany and Croatia exploration, from which limited reserves compared to our internal estimates have been recognized to date. Our PDP and 2P reserve life index as of December 31, 2024, was 5.4 and 14.1 years, respectively. Both of these are consistent with the long-term average.

The after-tax net present value of our PDP reserves, discounted at 10%, is CAD 2.8 billion. The after-tax net present value of our 2P reserves, discounted at 10%, is CAD 5.2 billion. That is over $27 per share after deducting year-end net debt. Production for the fourth quarter averaged 83,536 BOE per day, which includes the impact from planned third-party turnaround activity and partial shut-in of some Canadian gas in response to weak AECO prices. We generated CAD 263 million of fund flows, that's $1.70 per share, and CAD 62 million of free cash flow, of which CAD 36 million was returned to shareholders by the dividend and share buybacks. E&D capital increased in Q4 relative to Q3 as drilling activity picked up in Germany and Canada.

Germany activity included the completion and testing of the successful second well and the commencement of drilling on the third exploration well that was originally scheduled for 2025. Net debt increased slightly due to the stronger US dollar and the full repayment of the Montney battery lease. This provides immediate lease and interest savings, as well as increasing our excess free cash flow that's available for shareholder returns in 2025 and beyond. As I mentioned, drilling and lease activity picked up in Q4. In Europe, our primary focus was on the German deep gas exploration program, where we progressed facility construction and tie-in operations on the Osaida well and completed testing operations on the Whistlehorse well, including testing on a second zone subsequent to the border. We commenced drilling in the third deep gas exploration well in Germany, Weisenmohr, during Q4 and completed drilling in Q1.

I will provide more detail on the successful German exploration program in the following slides. We were also very active in North America during the fourth quarter. In Canada, we drilled six Montney liquid-rich gas wells, including five wells on the new ADA4 pad in British Columbia and one land retention well in Alberta. The team continued to make progress towards achieving our CAD 9 million-CAD 9.5 million decent cost target. In the Deep Basin, we drilled, completed, and brought on production five liquid-rich gas wells. In Saskatchewan, we drilled and completed six wells and brought on production seven oil wells. In the U.S., we participated in the drilling completions of five gross, or 0.6 net, non-op oil wells. In addition to executing a very active program in Canada, our team spent the better part of Q4 evaluating the Westbrick acquisition, where we were successful on an announcement on December 23.

We are very, very excited about the results from our 2024 German deep gas exploration program. We have made significant gas discovery on our second gas well, Weisenmohr. Weisenmohr, which grew 64% working interest. We tested two zones within this well at a combined restricted rate of 41 million per day, with flowing wellhead pressures of 6,200 psi. We've got an estimated EOR of 68 bcf or 43 bcf net. As we announced in late December, this first zone tested at a restricted rate of 21 million a day of gas with a flowing wellhead pressure of 6,200 psi. Subsequent to year-end, we tested the second zone in this well, which flow tested at a restricted rate of 20 million a day with a similar pressure of 6,200 psi. Based on our assessment, we believe the Whistlehorse structure is large enough to support an additional four to six follow-up locations.

We expect to bring the first well on production in the first half of 2026 and are advancing options to de-bottleneck our takeaway capacity in the first half of 2027, given the very strong deliverability of this well. With successful development of these follow-up locations, as well as the additional prospects we have identified across our land base, we see the potential to double our current European 2P gas reserves. Subsequent to year-end, we also completed drilling operations on the Weisenmohr gas exploration well, which grew 100% working interest, and we discovered multiple hydrocarbon-bearing zones. This would mark our third discovery in Germany. The well is currently in the process of being tested.

The first well in our German program, Osaida, which is 100% working interest, was drilled in the first half of 2024 and tested at a restricted rate of 17 million a day of gas, with a flowing wellhead pressure of 4,600 psi. The wellsite gas facility is nearing completion, first gas expected in Q2. In aggregate, the Osaida and Whistlehorse wells tested at a combined rate of 56 million per day. This is equivalent to 50% of Vermilion's current European gas production. The success of our deep gas exploration program to date validates our technical models and our ability to achieve F&D costs of approximately $1-$1.50 per MVP2, with the potential to more than double our German production. It is early days in the development of this long-life, high-margin asset that is expected to add meaningful free cash flow in the years ahead.

Last week, we were very pleased to announce the closing of the Westbrick acquisition. This strategic acquisition represents a significant step forward in Vermilion's North American high-grading initiative to increase operational scale and enhance full-cycle margins in the Deep Basin. As a reminder, the acquisition adds 50,000 BOE a day of production and over 770,000 net acres of contiguous land, along with valuable infrastructure. We have identified over 700 net future drilling locations, providing a robust inventory to keep production flat for over 15 years while generating significant free cash flow. As shown on the map on this slide, the land and infrastructure is very complementary to Vermilion's legacy Deep Basin assets, which we expect will provide operational synergies and add further value over time.

Since our first Spirit River, Aldersley, and Kardian wells going back as far as 2009, Vermilion has drilled nearly 300 wells spanning the region, and we operate significant infrastructure in the Deep Basin, which we will leverage in developing these newly acquired locations. In addition, we were already a partner with Westbrick on approximately 140 of these locations, which speaks both to the operational synergies as well as our knowledge on the asset. These newly acquired locations are competitive with Vermilion's existing Deep Basin inventory, with half-cycle returns ranging from 40% to over 100%, based on third-party reserve engineering estimates. I would now like to hand it over to Lars to discuss our balance sheet and the leveraging plans, along with our revised 2025 notebook.

Lars Glemser (VP and CFO)

Thank you, Dion. Vermilion has taken a prudent approach in balancing debt reduction, high-grading our asset base, and returning capital to shareholders.

We have reduced net debt by over $1 billion from 2020, while also reducing the share count over this time period. This prudent balance of capital allocation provided us the opportunity to complete the opportunistic acquisition of Westbrick with the balance sheet and minimal share issuance. Over the past three years, we have completed over $2.1 billion of acquisitions while continuing to reduce the share count and now have a plan to reduce our debt and leverage. Subsequent to the announced acquisition of Westbrick, we issued $400 million of senior unsecured notes with a maturity date of April 2033 and an interest rate of 7.25%. This extends our weighted average maturity of our debt to over five years and results in over $1 billion of liquidity.

With the Westbrick acquisition now closed, Vermilion has net debt of approximately CAD 2.1 billion today and anticipates about CAD 200 million-CAD 300 million of organic deleveraging in 2025, based on our current forecast, assuming no divestments. This leaves us with ample liquidity of approximately CAD 1 billion. As part of the Westbrick acquisition, we also launched a process to divest non-core assets as another means to accelerate deleveraging while directing 60% of excess free cash flow to the balance sheet. As mentioned, our non-core asset disposition program has been formally launched for our Southeast Saskatchewan and Wyoming assets. The Saskatchewan assets include approximately 10,000 barrels a day of production, 85% liquids, with moderate declines and multilateral development upside. Our Wyoming assets include 5,000 barrels a day, 80% liquids of production with multi-zone development potential, including the Niobrara and the Parkman. The interest to date on these packages has been very strong.

These are high-quality assets with strong retention values that will be incorporated into the decision-making process on how to best maximize shareholder value. The potential sale of these assets would help accelerate Vermilion's deleveraging efforts as we remain committed to reducing our net debt to FFO ratio to a target range of one times or less. Going back to 2022, Vermilion has taken a concerted effort to build operational scale where we have a competitive advantage by increasing our ownership in the Irish Core project, adding a material position in the Mica Montney oil window, and making Vermilion one of the largest operators in the prolific Deep Basin. This has been complemented with organic investment into our onshore European gas portfolio, most recently in Germany and Croatia.

The result of these efforts is increased operational scale with 80% of our production and 70% of our capital investment into our global gas portfolio and a reweight of our portfolio towards gas, where we see strong demand dynamics across the coming decades. The benefit of this global exposure is stronger realized prices than any of our peers, even when factoring in various marketing and diversification strategies. We have access to LNG-driven prices without the cost and risk exposure of liquefying and transporting gas across oceans. With elevated prices in Europe and multiple successes from our recent exploration program in Germany, including follow-up development, we expect to maintain our pricing advantage over the coming years. We also expect strong tailwinds for demand and pricing in Western Canada, where we now have a much larger production and project inventory base to take advantage of this positive trend.

Within our Q4 2024 release, we provided updated 2025 capital budget and production guidance to incorporate the closing of the Westbrick acquisition on February 26, 2025. Annual production is expected to range between 125,000-130,000 BOEs a day, with E&D capital expenditures of CAD 730 million-CAD 760 million. The revised capital program includes an additional 13 gross, 12.3 net wells to be drilled on the Westbrick assets, bringing the total Deep Basin well count to 28 gross, 24.9 net wells for 2025. The forecasted 50% increase in 2025 production, coupled with efficient operations from an increased position in the Deep Basin, is seen in our 2025 financial guidance, which includes a substantial reduction in our unit operating and G&A costs. We continue to monitor the tariff situation between the U.S. and Canada, which includes a 10% tariff on Canadian energy exports.

Over half of Vermilion's revenue is derived from assets located outside of Canada, and the vast majority of our Canadian gas production is sold within Canada. As such, we do not expect the tariffs in place today to have a material impact. Based on forward commodity prices, we forecast 2025 FCF of CAD 400 million. The unhedged FFO per share is forecast to increase from CAD 5.61 in 2024 to approximately CAD 7.50 in 2025, an increase of over 30%. As you will note in our financial guidance table on the prior slide, our lease obligations are substantially lower in 2025 due to the fact we repaid the full Montney battery lease obligation in Q4 2024, which had an interest cost well in excess of our most recent debt issuance.

Our return to capital framework has continued to evolve, and we believe it provides the appropriate flexibility to effectively manage our business while providing shareholders with meaningful returns. As Dion mentioned, we announced our fourth consecutive dividend increase effective for Q1 2025. At CAD 0.13 per share per quarter, our annual dividend obligations amount to approximately CAD 80 million or 7% of our forecast FFO, providing capacity to manage the dividend through various commodity cycles. For 2025, we will continue to target shareholder returns at 40% of EFCF, inclusive of the quarterly base dividend, with 60% of EFCF going towards debt reduction. The variable component of shareholder returns will continue to be allocated towards share buybacks.

Since initiating the share buyback program in July 2022, Vermilion has repurchased and retired 17.8 million shares and reduced our outstanding share count to approximately 154 million shares, inclusive of the 1.1 million share issuance associated with the closing of the Westbrick acquisition. With that, I will now pass it back to Dion.

Dion Hatcher (President and CEO)

Thanks, Lars. These are exciting times at Vermilion. In North America, we are focused on the integration of Westbrick and operational scale in the Deep Basin and the continued development of our Montney asset. We're very pleased to be positioned with a long-life, liquids-rich North American gas portfolio. In addition, the potential US and SAS events will accelerate our debt reduction, also improving our full-cycle margins.

In Europe, we will bring on production of the first of our German deep gas exploration wells by planning for future activity, including the development of the large Whistlehorse structure that we successfully discovered. That is our largest discovery in over a decade. These investments, along with our share buybacks, are expected to add meaningful free cash flow per share in the upcoming years. That concludes our prepared remarks. With that, we'd like to open it up for questions.

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press * followed by the number one on your touchstone phone. You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press star followed by the number two.

If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure to lift your handset before pressing any keys. Your first question comes from the line of Gregory Pardy from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Hi, it's Justin Hewell for Greg. Thanks for taking my question. Just the first one for me on the German gas. It's a pretty sizable discovery there on the exploration program, so congratulations on that. As we look ahead, we're wondering if you can remind us what types of unrestricted flow rates we can expect and any timing that you could give around that.

Dion Hatcher (President and CEO)

Thanks for that. Just to clarify, timing of the on-production dates. I'll pass it over to Darcy Kerwin. He can walk you through that.

Darcy Kerwin (VP International and HSE)

Thanks. Darcy here.

On the first discovery we made at Osaida, we are currently progressing construction of the on-site gas plant there and the tie-in to the pipeline system. We do expect first production to be on in Q2 2025. We will be initially rate-restricted there, kind of in the area of 3-5 million cubic feet, just due to some downstream capacity constraints, some seasonality constraints. We do expect that kind of throughout 2025 and into 2026, we'll start to see more and more capacity in that area as other production drops off. For the second well at Whistlehorse where we tested two zones together in excess of 40 million standard cubic feet a day, our initial tie-in point is kind of the closest tie-in point to that well. We would expect to have that tied in in early 2026.

Again, we'll be rate-limited at that initial tie-in point to that 3-5 million cubic feet a day. We have a number of debottlenecking options that we are pursuing here in parallel that will take us in a first stage up to about 17.5 million cubic feet per day and in a second stage up to 35. We would expect that those debottlenecking activities would incur early 2027. Thanks, Darcy. Yeah, I mean, we're excited. The size of the EORs that we've talked about here, the opportunity to increase these rates over time, you can start to visualize the free cash flow stream that's associated with these wells, given that the capital is largely invested as we finished up the year here. Thanks for the question. We're excited about the impact this is going to have on the business.

As we mentioned on the call too, the structure itself, we talked about the well. We're trying to also talk about the size of the structure where we see multiple drilling locations, upwards of six locations to follow up just on this second prospect alone. With that, back to you.

No, that's great. Thanks for all the detail there. If I can quickly shift gears here on the sales process for the Saskatchewan and Wyoming assets, could you just update us on where you're at on that process? Thanks.

You bet. Lars touched on it on the script there. I can add a little more color, but the formal process for SAS and US is well advanced. We're in the formal process where teasers went out weeks ago and management presentations are ongoing. As you heard on the call, these are good quality assets.

Their assets are high liquids, high netbacks, reasonable declines, drilling opportunities. We have a strong retention value for these assets, and we are excited to see how our potential bidders are going to try to step up to meet those. It is too early to pin a date on it, but we are well advanced in those processes as of today.

Thank you very much. I will turn it back.

Great. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Your next question is from the line of Amir Arif from ATB Capital. Please go ahead.

Amir Arif (Managing Director and E&P Research)

Thanks. Good morning, guys. Just to follow up on the Germany exploration success over there, can you give us a sense of your next exploration wells that you are planning to drill?

Dion Hatcher (President and CEO)

I can get it kicked off here, and then Darcy, feel free to add any color. First of all, thanks for the question.

We've messaged not only two wells per year. If you think about last year, we actually drilled three wells as we brought the third well forward, and we finished drilling that in Q1. We've got another follow-up gas well planned for this year. Our work right now is twofold. The exciting thing is that with this Whistlehorse structure being so large, we see basically development locations there that we're advancing. In parallel, we've also got the other six-plus prospects that the team's identified to mature. Quick answer would be two wells a year. With that, I think we'll be, as a management team, reviewing annually, do we allocate more capital to Germany given the success that we've had?

Amir Arif (Managing Director and E&P Research)

Got it. Just a question on that second successful well.

Can you just remind us what was the total capital on that well and just what development wells will cost?

Darcy Kerwin (VP International and HSE)

Yeah. Amir, Darcy here, the total capital on that Whistlehorse well, the second well we drilled, if I include kind of all the drilling completion costs as well as the tie-in and the well site gas plant that will be required, we are kind of at CAD 40 million gross for that. We are 64% working interest in that particular well. That excludes. Sorry, say that again, Amir. Sorry, I was just going to say, I am assuming the development wells will be significantly less than that in terms of the follow-up wells you need? Yeah, we might be able to optimize gathering kind of concepts there as well as the location gas plant and drive those costs downwards. You are right.

Dion Hatcher (President and CEO)

Okay. Yeah.

These are our expensive wells, but you think about it on an F&D basis, given the cost structure and the size of the gas that we're discovering. As referenced on the note, that buck to buck 50, we would have beat that significantly on the Whistlehorse well, but over the program, it's confirming our ability to deliver on that.

Amir Arif (Managing Director and E&P Research)

Yeah. Sounds good. Just a question on the Westbrick acquisition. Pleasantly surprised in terms of your operating cost guidance on the corporate basis. Just relative to your own Deep Basin cost structure, how would you compare the Westbrick assets? Are you planning on doing anything different in terms of going forward on those assets?

Dion Hatcher (President and CEO)

I'll get it kicked off, and I can pass it over to Darcy if you want to add more color, Darcy.

We did a lot of work on that, of course, as you would imagine. The good news is we've been in that area for almost three decades, and we operate a lot of the same infrastructure and well types. As noted, the Westbrick assets would have been in that 650 BOE range. Our assets are in that 750 BOE range on unit OpEx. In saying that, our assets are a little more oilier. We had the curtains development and some other more oily development in our Deep Basin. Net-net, when you look at the assets, you're in that 650-750 range.

What we're excited about, as you can see on the map and the infrastructure map as well, as we start to combine these businesses and look for opportunities to drill longer wells, to look for synergies across infrastructure, we think there's some upside there as we start to work through that. High level, those are kind of the unit costs that we've seen to date. Darcy, anything to add to that?

No, like I said, I think with the large portion of the infrastructure now being interconnected, we'll work towards optimized production, our marketing, and ultimately reduce our area operating costs. Thanks, Darcy.

Amir Arif (Managing Director and E&P Research)

Sounds great. Thanks.

Dion Hatcher (President and CEO)

Thanks, Amir.

Your last question comes from the line of Travis Wood from National Bank Financial. Please go ahead. Yeah. Thanks, guys. I have a couple of questions.

Travis Wood (Managing Director of Equity Research)

On the Germany, just to round that out, has the risk profile, as you think about budgeting future exploration wells, have you changed that at all given the recent success in terms of percentage of success? However you guys want to think about that.

Dion Hatcher (President and CEO)

Yeah. Thanks, Travis. I'm going to pass it back to Darcy again.

Darcy Kerwin (VP International and HSE)

Yeah. Thanks, Travis. Yeah, certainly the success on these first wells has increased our confidence about this entire exploration program. However, we do risk each prospect independently, and we'll continue to do that. We'll calculate independent chances of success for each of those prospects. I think what's really changed is we've now gone from a pure exploration program to a program that has a combination of exploration and now development wells. That in itself will reduce the risk of the entire program.

Travis Wood (Managing Director of Equity Research)

Okay. That's good color.

Then for the Westbrick assets at closing, where would volumes have been kind of on the closing date or at least close to in terms of current BOE production?

Dion Hatcher (President and CEO)

Oh, thanks, Travis. I'll pass it back to Darcy for that one.

Darcy Kerwin (VP International and HSE)

Yeah, thanks, Travis. I think volumes were coming in right around that 50,000 barrels a day, which is where we expected it to be. When we bring on some of the development that we had spoke about in the script earlier, we expect our annualized volumes to remain at that 50,000 barrels a day. We had aligned with where we had our evaluation and expectations.

Travis Wood (Managing Director of Equity Research)

Okay. Perfect. The couple—I mean, it's only a couple of weeks in terms of the delay to closing.

Was that just kind of crossing T's and dotting I's, or was there anything kind of last minute on the negotiating table that kind of delayed it a couple of weeks?

Darcy Kerwin (VP International and HSE)

Yeah. Yeah. Our initial estimate was mid-February. I would say just with signing the deal immediately prior to the holiday period, just the execution and receipt of required approvals adjusted the date by two weeks. Nothing too concerning. Okay. Perfect. That makes great sense. Lastly, probably for Lars here, you kind of walked through the return of capital mandate and kind of the 40/60 split. We can make an assumption on some proceeds for the asset sales. Do you have a debt number in mind on when you could see that 40% on the return of capital start to shift higher and the debt allocation compress?

Yeah. No. Thanks, Travis.

Before sort of diving into that, I think the other thing that we tried to point out in the script too is very minimal share issuance with the acquisition of Westbrick. That is where we got comfortable taking the 50/50 allocation to 40% in terms of return to shareholders, just in terms of we think we've made really good progress reducing the share count here over the last three years. I think at this point, we'd like to see how the dispositions shake out. As we've mentioned in the script, we are going to have retention values on these assets as well. It is not a fire sale. Let's see how the process unfolds. Let's continue to direct 60% of that EFCF to the balance sheet. Then you're most likely reassessing in the second half of this year in terms of how those things shake out.

At this point, the dividend is very well covered at that 40% level. We're actively buying back shares still within that 40%. We think that we can make adequate returns. Shareholders here as we work through some of the de-leveraging events that we have here.

Travis Wood (Managing Director of Equity Research)

Okay. Sorry, I might have missed it. Do you think for that 40% to head higher, you're kind of budgeting around CAD 1.8 billion at the end of the year just through organic free cash? If that number is—what's the debt target that you have kind of longer term with your organic cash flow and some of your fun with numbers on proceeds on some of the asset sales where that could kind of do a 180 in terms of 60/40 on return of capital and debt reduction?

Lars Glemser (VP and CFO)

Yeah. I think, Travis, if you look—yeah.

If you look at where we were pre the Westbrick acquisition, we were sort of around one times, a little bit sub one times leverage. We were comfortable with the 50/50 while at that leverage level. I do not think that is a bad data point or benchmark to think about in terms of where we would look to increase from that 40%. Okay. Yeah. That is perfect.

Travis Wood (Managing Director of Equity Research)

Thanks, Lars. That is all for me.

Lars Glemser (VP and CFO)

Thanks, Travis.

There are no further questions over the phone lines at this time. We will now move over to Mr. Kyle Preston with additional questions.

Kyle Preston (VP and Investor Relations)

Yes. Thank you, operator. We had a number of questions come through our investor relations inbox here. I will sort of try to categorize them into a few. First one here is, can you please provide some insight into the longer-term development potential and timeline of your Germany deep gas program?

Dion Hatcher (President and CEO)

I can get this one kicked off, and then ask Darcy to add more color. We've talked before about the number of prospects, that's called the number of structures that we see, and that's nine that the team's identified so far. The exciting thing about these structures we drill, they're often multi-well structures. We see that with Whistlehorse where we drilled a well, and albeit a well that can do net to us over 40 BCF recoverable, we see another six locations on that. As we make our way down the exploration program, we're, to Darcy's point, adding development locations as we go. Long-winded way of saying, with success, there's upwards of 30 locations, and that would provide a very, very, very long runway for drilling.

Where we are today, we're excited after two wells that we've been able to add meaningful recovery. I mean, we've added 36 BCF for the first two wells on average. That is well within our BOE and MVP2 type target. What all that means is we can, I think, comfortably more than double Germany's production. I made a comment on the script there that we think we can double our 2P reserves that we've got booked in Europe. As you start to add up the numbers associated with these wells, I think it becomes very meaningful as we drill two to three wells per year. If we can double our production and we can double our reserves in Europe, we're going to be pretty happy with that.

It's early days, but the first couple of wells are pointing to a pretty promising outlook. Sir, Darcy, anything I missed there on the overview?

Darcy Kerwin (VP International and HSE)

Yeah. I don't think so. You talked about the number of prospects we have initially and then what that translates into in a success case of over 30 locations that we could drill at a pace that we might adapt as we look forward and maybe remind everyone we got into these prospects by farming into land in Germany. There is other prospective land in Germany. We'll continue to look at that and look for additional opportunities to add to our deep gas portfolio there.

Dion Hatcher (President and CEO)

Yeah. That's a good point. We've got 700,000 net acres of undeveloped land, and we're currently focused on that portion of that. Thanks. All right.

Kyle Preston (VP and Investor Relations)

Thanks, Dion. Darcy. Second question here.

What is the potential impact from the U.S. tariffs on Canadian energy? And does your current hedge book protect you from that?

Lars Glemser (VP and CFO)

Yeah. No. Thanks for the question. Certainly topical. I'll maybe just zoom out a little bit before addressing the tariff specifically. I think our industry is defined by cycles, some of them driven by commodity prices, some of them driven by political events. I think over the 31 years that we've been operating, we've placed a lot of value on diversification and operational scale. From a diversification perspective, over half of our revenues for 2025 are coming from outside North America or outside Canada. That becomes an insulating factor. Operational scale, I think you're starting to see a shift there. We've got a very material position onshore Europe that provides the majority of that international revenue stream that I referenced.

You are starting to see an increase in the scale here in Western Canada. You see that in our outlook for 2025 in terms of the reduction in our unit costs. As an example, our lifting and transportation costs in our liquids-rich gas business is about CAD 1.75 in MCF and generates a lot of liquids in addition to the gas. We are focused on those items first and foremost in terms of de-risking the business. What that means when you sort of look at it through the lens of tariffs is we are just not talking about a material impact to the cash flows of Vermilion. We are pretty confident around that in terms of the way that the tariffs are framed right now.

In terms of hedging, I think once you de-risk the business from an operational perspective through diversification, operational scale, financial hedging does play a role as well. We're just under 40% hedged for 2025. We think at fairly strong prices here as we go through a de-leveraging process here in the next couple of quarters. We're in around 20% hedged for 2026. Expect us to be in that 25-50% range. That does help absorb some of the noise out there that's been driven by tariffs and other events as well.

Kyle Preston (VP and Investor Relations)

Thank you, Lars. Next question we have here is, your presentation says you are now a global gas company. Why does your stock seem to trade or be so impacted by oil price movements? Why do you not have a gas company multiple?

Dion Hatcher (President and CEO)

I can take that one.

First of all, it's hard to explain the day-to-day movements in the stock, so I'll move on from that. Yeah, if you look at—I think it's really a timing issue. We just closed the Westbrick acquisition here a couple of weeks ago. We're talking on the call today about the success in Germany, about our first well coming on here very quickly, that our ability to bottleneck those volumes. Mica, again, we're over half invested on our infrastructure, and we're getting to a point where we're going to build up to that target rate, and that asset's going to be generating a ton of free cash flow. I think it's timing. This shift to a gas-weighted company is really hot off the press.

If you look at the runway ahead of us with Westbrick, the depth and quality of inventory there for 15-plus years to keep that, the Mica asset that, again, we're comfortable in increasingly optimizing that asset to get at 28,000. Germany, again, we've talked a lot about it, but we see a long runway. Finally, the nuance about our business is we have direct exposure, and Lars talked about this on the call, but we have direct exposure to these premium prices without the need to have the risk associated with these long-term contracts that span decades and large volumes. We have short-cycle exposure to a commodity in Europe that's extremely valuable, and we're able to benefit from that today with gas prices in Europe about 10 times higher.

We think the combination of the top realized gas price with our structural low declines with flexibility capital allocation. The new part, as we have hydrated the portfolio, is the long runway that we have got ahead of us with Westbrick, the basin with Montney, and with Germany. We think it is a good setup, and we think with time, hopefully that will be recognized in the valuation of the company.

All right. Thank you, Dion.

We have no more questions here. With that, I will pass it back to Dion for your closing remarks.

Thanks, Kyle. I would just like to thank everyone again for participating in our Q4 results conference call. Enjoy the rest of your day.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you very much for your participation. You may now disconnect.