okay so welcome everybody to ipc's 2026 first quarter results update presentation i'm william lundin the president and ceo and joined today by christoph nerdererian our cfo as well as rebecca gordon our svp of corporate planning and investor relations so i'll start with the highlights and give an operational update then christoph will touch on the financial highlights for the quarter following the presentation we'll take questions which can be submitted through conference call or via the web online jumping into the highlights we're very pleased to report another solid quarter of operational performance production for q1 was at the top end of the quarterly forecast at 43 000 barrels of oil equivalent per day and we're retaining our full year production guidance range of 44,000 to 47,000 BOEs per day. We had good cost discipline with Q1 operating expenditure coming in at sub USD $18 per barrel of oil equivalent and we are maintaining guidance for OPEX at USD $18 to $20 per barrel. Entering 2026, we set a lean work program and budget as we are assuming a base case price estimate of $65 per barrel Brent. And in response to the improved pricing environments, we're taking advantage of our operatorship and increasing our capital program from $122 million to $163 million USD, predominantly to accommodate short cycle investments across some of our producing assets. The Q1 capital spend was $71 million USD. Operating cash flow generation for Q1 was 68 million and we've revised our full year OCF guidance to 220 to 340 million USD assuming 70 to 90 dollars per barrel Brent for the remainder of 2026. Free cash flow was minus 17 million USD and we are entering a really an inflection point here for the company and there shouldn't be too many more quarters of negative free cash flow going forward with Blackrod First Oil expected in the near horizon. Full-year free cash flow is expected to be between $0 to $120 million, positive $1 million USD between $70 to $90, Brent, for the rest of 2026. Net debt stands at $513 million, and we expanded our Canadian credit facility during the quarter to $250 million USD. We also extended the maturity of that to 2028, so that gives us some increased headroom and overall flexibility our benchmark hedges for wti and brent for approximately 40 percent of our production exposure rolls off in june leaving us fully exposed to benchmark oil prices from july onwards we have some wti wcs differential hedges and transport quality related hedges tied to our canadian heavy oil exposure as well at attractive levels and some natural gas hedges in place that are currently in the money as well. No material incidents took place during the quarter. Very pleased to report on. So under the following slide as shown on the production graph on slide three here, IPC delivered flat production really at the high end of our guidance in the first quarter with overall strong performance across all the assets in the portfolio so i'll touch on more detail on each of the assets performance later on in the presentation moving on we're very strongly positioned deliver within our cmd production forecast range of 44 to 47 000 barrels of oil equivalent per day drawing your eyes to the bottom of the production chart on this slide 2026 is really a story of two tales here with forecast production volumes expected to rise materially at the back end of the year with black rod phase one oil production set to come online. In addition to some of the incremental capital adds fast payback projects we've also added in this will be contributing more so at the back end of this year for production rates. Our production mix is weighted to 60% towards Canadian crude which is tied to WCS pricing 10% to Brent linked production coming from Malaysia and France and the remaining balance of 30% being natural gas from southern Alberta and I'd also like to reiterate here that the 44 to 47 000 barrels of oil equivalent per day guidance is an annual average very much an annual average rather than a quarterly average as can be seen on the high and low guidance bands on that bottom left hand chart opex so we are maintaining that original capital market stay forecast as we set out in february of 18 to 20 a barrel first quarter operating cash flow was 68 million usd the differentials from brent to wti's can be seen in the brackets there was nine dollars and from wti to wcs was 14 a barrel so the brent to wti differential was notably high on the back end of the geopolitical conflict in the Middle East, which our Brent link production benefits from, of course. Our operating cash outflow full year forecast for 2026 is updated to $220 to $340 million USD based on $70 to $90 Brent. And that assumes a $5 differential between Brent and WTI and a $14 differential between WTI and WCS. So material improvement compared to our CMD forecast. and notably more than funding our incremental capital spend program this year with the revised updated operating cash flow generation outlook. Moving on to our CapEx program, inclusive of decommissioning, which now stands at a forecast of $163 million. That's roughly $40 million higher than the original CMD CapEx guidance. The increase is mainly due to accelerated fast payback drilling activity at our Southern Suffield assets in Alberta and in the Paris Basin in France, which I will expand on in the following asset specific slides. So we continue to see great progress at Blackrod and we've updated our 2026 budget outlook for the forecast spend at that asset. Big picture, the multi-year budget for Blackrod phase one growth capital to first oil is $850 million USD. There has been some minor cost pressure with total costs expected to be approximately $857 million USD, which is less than 1% overall of that original sanctioned CAPEX guidance for the growth capital to first oil. And we're still expecting the project to be delivered in terms of first oil in Q3 of 2026, which is ahead of the original timeline given at the time of sanction back in 2023. because of this continued acceleration and positive progress there are some sustaining completion costs as well being forward being pulled forward which is a positive outcome overall the free cash flow outlook we're projecting to generate between nil to 120 million dollars of positive free cash flow between 70 and 90 dollars brent for the remainder of 2026 very exciting to be returning into a positive free cash flow generating position this year with a major boost in free cash flow levels anticipated in 2027 and beyond as BlackRock Phase 1 ramps up and comes on stream. Moving to the share repurchases slide, IPC of course is a very strong track record of share repurchases in our brief history as a company. So 77 million shares have been bought back at an average price of 79 sec or canadian dollars 11 dollars per share respectively and that represents around 1.4 billion dollars of value created from the share repurchases when comparing the average share price that those shares were bought back at to our current share price notably on the anti-dilution waterfall the only time shares were issued in a transaction was for the black pearl acquisition back in 2018 all of those shares have been bought back and our current shares outstanding is just shy of 113 million shares which is less than the original starting amounts of 113.5 million shares and we've transformed the company to where we are today compared to at inception in 2017 but now we see a 4.5 times increase in production levels 18 times increase on our 2p reserves in excess of 20 years added to our 2p reserve life index in excess of a billion barrels of contingent resources added in an overall four times increase to our nav compared to that of when the company was formed at the beginning of 2017 so black rod this is a 20 year journey in the making to bring this vision into reality by unlocking a phase one commercial development i had the privilege of being at site at the end of april this is a world-class sag d plant with the best-in-class operational staff it's a compact site with a small footprint for the cpf and nearby well nearby well pad facility tie-ins this asset is going to protect propel the company to new levels and it's been a fantastic journey going from saying sanction through to development and on to startup now with rotating equipment well in service at this point in time original guidance for this project again back in 2023 when it was sanctioned called for first oil in late 2026 and growth capitaled up until that point of 850 million usd we achieved first steam ahead of our original forecast result in the schedule improvement which was announced at the beginning of this year with first oil expected in q3 2026. so operations continue to progress well and we're strongly positioned to deliver within this accelerated timeline cumulative spend as at the end of q1 from the beginning of 2023 on the growth capital is 842 million usd with some minor works remaining on the final boiler tie-in as well as well pad facilities as we expect to deliver this project overall in line with the original growth capital guidance to First Oil. I really couldn't be more proud of our multidisciplinary IPC teams as well as the vendors utilized in this major undertaking and we're especially pleased that there has been no material safety incidents under IPC supervision as prime contractor of the site. Excellent delivery overall and stewardship of this project to date. so black rod valuation again is a true game-changing asset for ipc we have regulatory approval up to 80 000 barrels of oil per day with over 1.45 billion barrels of recoverable resource phase one targets 30 000 barrels per day and 311 million barrels of 2p reserves and the economics as at the beginning of this year based on our conservative reserve auditor price deck is 1.4 billion USD of net present value using a 10% discount rate and approximately a $47 WTI break-even. As you can see on the figure on the right-hand side of the slide, this is a massive uniform sandstone reservoir. It's contiguous and homogeneous, lending to a very much predictable and scalable production potential as validated through the 15 years that it's been under pilot operation testing in the lower graph here the dark wedge on the bar chart reflects what is booked in 2p reserves and carried within our valuation the light blue component of that bar chart is the contingent resources and represents upside to our business moving on to our producing assets current flagship oil producing asset at onion lake thermal delivered stable production through q1 we also did some 40 seismic work at the beginning of the year and reviewing that data to hone in on some additional potential infill targets on existing producing drainage patterns and also to note on that schematic on the right h pad is the next main drainage pattern to be developed in the sequence moving on to the suffield area assets so very much predictable and low decline production the Suffield area assets which delivered around 23 000 barrels of oil equivalent per day through Q1. We're very excited to be redeploying some capital and into these assets where we've sanctioned a four well production drilling campaign within the Basel Ports area just west of the Suffield block. Production from France and Malaysia for Q1 was in excess of 5,000 barrels of oil per day we had some incremental activity that's also been sanctioned now in France we look to drill three sidetracks in the FAB field and one sidetracked in the Ville-Purdue field it's very exciting to be drilling again in France and in Malaysia we also plan to do an operational activity of work over using a hydraulic work over a unit later this year on our A13 well. So with that, I will hand it over to Christophe to go through the financial highlights.
Thank you. Thank you very much, Will. Good morning, everyone. So indeed, a good quarter with production at the high end of our Q1 guidance at 43,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. And of course, during During this first quarter, when the situation happened between Iran, the U.S. and Israel, the oil prices increased massively from the beginning of March. And so you really have a relatively high average oil price, dated Brent oil price for the whole quarter in excess of $81 per barrel. But that was really a two side of the story with lower oil prices in January and February and much higher in march so overall that really helped generate um on that basis strong operating cash flows and ebitda for the quarter at 68 and 64 million us dollar as uh as we guided before and as most of uh our investors know the capital expenditure in 2026 was always expected to be much front-loaded and so you can see a disproportionate portion of the capex spent during this quarter translating into a free cash flow of negative 17 million US dollars and depends where oil prices will be on average for Q2 but it's fair to assume that the free cash flow may be negative again in Q2. But from that point onwards, we're expecting to turn the corner and to be again back into free cash flow territory for the second half, depending on where first oil kicks in at BlackRock. So 13 million US dollars of net profit for this quarter. The net debt increased during this first quarter by 30 million us dollars again it's fair to assume that this net debt would increase again in the second quarter and from that point on progressively depending on where oil prices stand we should see some some deleverage from q3 or from q4 but certainly this year we will we should start to see some deleveraging and accelerated deleveraging as the black road production ramps up over time. Realized prices, so I mentioned, were strong. And I think it's interesting, a bit sad at the same time, but interesting to see that the physical market is quite dislocated. And has been trading at between five up to $30 premium on top of the future of the financial brand, if you wish. And when we lifted our cargo in Malaysia, the last one in March, we had a good premium. And for the future June cargo, which we're going to lift in Malaysia, we can see that the physical market is very tight because the premium we can realize there are very, very high. So you can see we sold in March a cargo in Malaysia at 110 US dollars per barrel, while on average for the quarter dated Brent was 81. The Brent WTI differential widened a bit at $9 and the WTI WCS differential stood at 14, negative $14 for the quarter. We're continuing continuing in Canada to sell all heavy oil on parity or very close to the WCS. Gas prices were actually okay during this first quarter, but overall, the market again is quite disconnected between the US and the Canadian market. It's been a new reality for the Canadian gas prices over the last 18 months now for the lack of infrastructure and communicating infrastructure between the between the Canadian net gas pipeline pipeline network and the US market. So you can see that we realized that 2.5 Canadian dollar per MCF during this first quarter, but the forecast is showing for the summer months, lower gas prices, which is still a negative to IPC, given that we're producing more gas than we're consuming at Onion Lake or that we will consume in the following quarters at Blackrod. Now, the positive in the long run is that because we are consuming gas At Blackrod, it will be a relatively cheap feedstock gas going forward. In terms of financial results, it's interesting to compare 25 and 26. We had similar during this first quarter, 26. We had similar production and overall revenues between the first quarter, 26 and 25. Some of the difference between the two quarters in 26 and 25 was coming from the fact that we lost $10 million of hedge losses in this first quarter because we had hedged around 40% of our WTI and Brent exposure at between $62 and $68 per barrel. And of course, we've been losing in the months of March mainly. And given that we are still hedged until the end of June at those around 40% level at current prices, we can expect to make a hedging loss of around 30 million during the US $30 million during the second quarter. But I think it's important to flag as well that beyond the end of June, we no longer have any benchmark hedged. So we are totally exposed to the Brent and WTI prices going forward into the second half of 2026. Looking at the operating costs, so we were below during this first quarter as a result of strong production level and relatively low electricity and gas prices. We can expect higher operating costs per barrel going into the second quarter. with a bit of a slightly lower production in the second quarter. In the third quarter, when we're going to move progressively into commercial production at Blackrod, we're going to register some OPEX, which will be a bit higher in the first months of operation. But you can see that as soon as the Blackrod production ramps up in the fourth quarter, the OPEX per barrel will progressively reduce and we would expect that trend to continue into 2027. You can see the netback on the following graph with a gross margin of close to $18 per barrel and operating cash flow at 17 and a half and EBITDA at 16 and a half dollar per barrel of oil equivalent of netback. Looking at the evolution of our net debt, so we increased our net debt this quarter by 30 million US dollar, given the reasonably high capex of 71 million we spent during the year. So we spent more capex than the level of operating cash flow. This is going to reverse in Q2 and even more so in the second half of this year. In terms of financial items, it's sort of a steady state now in the second half last year when we refinanced our bonds. We had some exceptional and one-off fees that we paid as part of that bond refinancing from now on. It's going to be much more stable. And just to mention that the foreign exchange loss you can see here of six and a half million during this quarter is a non-cash item. Otherwise, the GNA remain reasonably stable and flat at around four million US dollars per quarter. So looking at the financial results, we generated net revenues of 173 million netting a cash margin of 68 million dollars and gross profit of 37 million U.S. dollars, which net of the financial items tax and tax elements yielded net profit of 13 million U.S. dollars for the quarter. The balance sheet has continued to evolve since we sanctioned the BlackRock project. As you would expect, our level of cash has reduced and our level of net debt increased over the last three years but again we are almost touching distance from reversing this trend certainly going into 2027 and but as well going into the second half of this year and i will i will let will conclude this presentation Thank you very much Christoph.
So in summary, very exciting to be ramping up activity really across all regions of operations. Q1 Capital came in at $71 million USD and the full year outlook is $163 million now really leveraging our operator ship and increasing our production exposure to the high commodity pricing environment that we're seeing. We're well positioned to deliver within our production guidance and our operating costs remain under control operating cash flow generation was robust for q1 at 68 million usd and the outlook for the full year is 220 to 340 million dollars we have an excess of 150 million usd of undrawn liquidity headroom there are no material environmental or safety incidents that took place in the first quarter with that i'm happy to pass it over to the operator to begin questions and you can also submit your questions online by the web thank you thank you ladies and gentlemen if you would
Operator
like to ask a question please press star one on your telephone keypad it is star one on your telephone keypad to ask a question we'll pause for a brief moment thank you we'll now take our First question from Theodore Nielsen of SB1 Markets. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Will and Christoph. Thanks for taking my questions. First question is around the small Catholics increase you announced. I just wanted to know what increases and what is written by your activity related to the activity increase. but by how much should we assume that your exit rate production this year increases as a result of the accelerated investments? So that's discussed. But you haven't been doing any repurchase, not any material repurchase. For that, do you think the share price have reduced the buybacks?
Thanks very much, Theodore, for the questions. I'll head those off. First one being the small capex increase. So we had an adjustment of $122 million to $163 million for capital expenditure for 2026. So that $40 million-some-odd increase, the lion's share of that is for capital activity in France and Canada. So we're going to be doing a four sidetracks drilling program in France for approximately $15 million. dollars and also in southern Alberta at our Suffield area assets more in the more recently acquired in 2023 core four property we're also going to be drilling four wells there so the total combined amount is around 23 million dollars when you add the France plus the Brooks related activity that we're undertaking I also touched on the the slight cost increase at Blackrod there as well which was expanded on throughout the presentation but really the vast majority of the cost increases or deliberate cost increases here to increase the activity for production contributing projects and so that production increase for those two projects that i had noted which will be more back and weighted this year in terms of the production contribution you know We'll expect to see in excess of 1,000 barrels per day on average delivered for 2027 from those two programs. So very attractive cost per flowing barrel metrics to undertake those capital activities and really a part of our whole strategy as well over the past couple of years while we've been accommodating the growth capital for Blackrod as well as buying back our shares at very cheap levels. uh some of the capital activity that's been ripe and ready to go across our existing producing assets we've elected to wait until more constructive oil prices present themselves and here we are now uh and that that is the reason for you know why we've kind of prioritized the incremental uh capital going towards production contributing activity right now as opposed to share buybacks we do have the flexibility to restart share buybacks where we have the NCIB activated up until December of this year. We are steadfast on focusing on getting Blackrod onto production here, continue to monitor market conditions and overall liquidity headroom. Safe to say we are very strongly positioned and it's something that we're going to continue to monitor as the year progresses here in terms of restarting shareholder returns.
Operator
Thank you. Once again, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your Telephone keypad. Thank you. We will now move on to our next question from Mark Wilson of Jefferies. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Thanks a lot. Excellent progress as ever and good luck with the final steps in Blackrod. obviously interesting UTI just remind us where that stands for the gas that is looking weaker in terms of infrastructure any yeah thank you Mark and very good question so I skipped the
the table and hedging as we will touch on it already in the opening slide but you're absolutely right it was very interesting to see Shell going after Ark which is a which is a large gas producer and so that paves the way probably this is just speculation at this stage but probably paves the way or at least increases the chances and the odds that Shell would go and try to expand the LNG facility on the west coast of Canada, north of Vancouver. And that's a fairly obvious move when you look at the massive arbitrage you can see between local domestic gas prices and international gas prices. So I think the projection in the very short term is to probably still have a reasonably low gas prices onshore Western Canada. But the prospects of having more demand from that LNG Canada plant going forward has probably increased over the last few weeks. In terms of hedging, we have 50,000 GJ a day of gas hedged at 2.7 CAD per GJ or 2.8 CAD per MCF. So, unfortunately, that's probably going to be in the money. And so, you know us, we remain very opportunistic. If we see any gas prices hike in the forward curve, you should fairly expect us to seize that kind of opportunities. And so that was your main question around gas prices. Now, you're absolutely right that in terms of WTI or Brent exposure, the hedges are rolling off at the end of this quarter, at the end of June. And so we'll be fully exposed going forward to what looks to be reasonably constructive oil prices going forward.
Yeah, sorry, just to add to that in terms of just being a great signal in terms of Shell increasing its exposure in Canada, just for the upstream overall Canadian landscape there. And now with that acquisition, Shell's secured roughly three quarters of its feed gas requirements for both phase one and phase two of LNG Canada. So certainly bodes well and signaling for an FID of phase two, but we're still yet to see that for that LNG project on the west coast of BC there got it okay and and is it worth mentioning is on the broader Canada side of things and any implications yeah that was Mark Carney and he said a sovereign wealth fund the extent of the details are yet to be understood in terms of where the funding is going to come from to be able to do that but that is the headline that that Mark Carney announced was a sovereign
And then just one last point, I might have missed in Theodore's question, but the short cycle in...
Very good. Thank you very much.
Operator
Thank you. We have no further questions in the queue. I'll now hand it over to the company for online questions.
Okay. Thanks, Operator. So, we've got a couple of questions here. Maybe we can just start with a bit of information on the short cycle. will. Just a couple of questions on Ferguson and whether we have opportunity there to put some rigs in or maybe look at additional drilling there.
Yeah for sure so Ferguson there's some quite a few opportunities in terms of drilling as well as recompletion refracking related activity as well that we are looking into. Some of the activity is likely to be an operating expenditure related item so that is something that we do plan to do in terms of the few wells and re-completions on a few well bores there so look to see some some some minor production boosts coming from the asset towards the tail end of the year okay very good um and then another question here i mean obviously there's a lot of interest on phase two um is there any intention to bring that forward now or how are we feeling about the timing given the oil price yeah you I think the liquidity position, as we've stated for quite some time now, is going to change quite rapidly as Black Rod Phase 1 sets to come on stream in the back half of this year. and we look to generate significant free cash flow in the year of 2027 even at you know more modest oil prices and if these pricing levels are to hold through 2027 it's going to put us in a very very good place to look to continue pursuing our key capital allocation strategic pillars in terms of organic growth shareholder returns also staying opportunistic towards M&A but for phase 2 specifically or future expansion potential at Blackrod behind the scenes is definitely something that's being worked up but of course we remain very very much focused on successfully completing and bringing phase 1 online from the oil producing standpoint.
Great, thanks. And then just a quick question on capital structure, Christophe, could you explain the increase in the RCF, why you went for that?
Yeah, well, if you look back at what IPC has been doing as a corporate, we try to raise and improve liquidity when we don't need it. There's been a constant discussion with our banking partners and banking friends. We enjoy very good support from Canadian banks these days. There was the opportunity to increase the Canadian revolving trade facility from 250 million CAD to 250 million US dollars which we just did and extended the maturity up to May 2028 as we do every year. So it's all positive for no other specific purpose than having ample liquidity.
Fantastic. Thanks. Well, just a question on regulatory frameworks. So in Canada, the US and other operating jurisdictions, have we seen any changes post the Iran war in those sort of regulatory frameworks or anticipate anything to come no there hasn't been any changes regulatory wise in the in the stable jurisdictions where we operate to have production operations taking place so and specifically in Canada also they have a sliding framework based on oil prices for their royalties so no no change is expected there or elsewhere within the portfolio at this time okay fantastic and then maybe one final question here what would be your priority post black rod complete in terms of organic growth or shareholder returns or buybacks yeah the infamous
question i think you know the punch line here is that we have the ability to do it all and we look to to strike the the right cadence in terms of pulling forward organic growth and continuing to screen opportunities in M&A landscape and balancing shareholder returns as well and so I think we're going to be really strongly positioned to deliver on on all three of those fronts and and the the main lens of course will be to maximize shareholder value in our pursuit of that capital allocation strategy okay fantastic that's uh what we have time for today uh that's all our questions so leave it to you to close well excellent thanks very much Rebecca and thanks everyone for tuning into our first quarter results update presentation we're very very strongly positioned it's a super exciting time for the company with the next major catalyst being black rod first oil so i will come in and do course very very soon here so thanks everyone and take care
