NewMed Energy - Limited Partnership (NWMD) Earnings Call Transcript

Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining us today for the NewMed Energy Financial Results for the Second Quarter of 2026 Webinar. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I am pleased to introduce Niv Sarne, CEO of NewMed Energy. You may begin.

Good afternoon, everybody. I'm happy to open the Q2 2026 NewMed Energy Conference Call. Next to me, I have Tzachi Habusha, Deputy CEO and CFO; and Guil Bashan. My name is Niv Sarne, CEO of NewMed Energy. I have joined the partnership about a few months ago as the Head and Chairman, and beginning of this month, started the role of CEO. Before we jump into the results and main activities of the month, I would like to take the opportunity and thank the previous CEO, Yossi Abu. Yossi has taken this role for more than 15 years and has led NewMed to high -- new peaks and new heights. You all know him because of his achievement, but we also know him on a personal basis, and he'll be missed to all of us. So from here from us, from everybody, we're wishing you all the best, and your legacy will stay with us forever. And now I'm happy to start with our financial results. And as you have seen in our -- yes, we'll bring up the presentation in a second. We had a very strong Q2 performance, started with high production of about 2.7 Bcm. High gas prices resulted from high oil prices, which leads to a bottom line of about $118 million net profit for the quarter. In addition, we have completed laying the third pipeline from the field to the platform, which has increased our production and also have completed -- or INGL, more correctly, have completed the looping between Ashdod-Ashkelon as well. We are progressing with the Leviathan expansion Phase 1b, as we call it, and have seen good progress and momentum on the Aphrodite field as well. We will also update on two seismic surveys that we are being -- going to conduct in the next few weeks. And of course, we'll wrap up with the dividend. So on the production level, we have produced 2.7 Bcm for this quarter compared to 2 Bcm on previous quarter 2025. What mostly important is to mention, increase in all of our 3 markets, Israel, Egypt and Jordan, with the highest increase of almost 0.5 Bcm to the Egyptian market. On the pricing side, the average price for the quarter was $6.5 compared to $5.6 on the Q2 2025. What is important to notice from this chart is the strong price, which is obviously on the export contracts linked to the Brent price. And as we're seeing high Brent price, we're going to see high gas prices. There is some lag between the gas and the Brent price as we are calculating the average of the previous 3 months. And therefore, we -- regardless of where the Brent will go in the next few months, we'll still see a high price of gas in the next few months. We have successfully completed the third pipeline from the field to the platform. And following the completion, we have been able to produce at a peak rate of 15.8 Bcm on an annual basis. Just to compare that to our initial program, which stood at around 14.5 Bcm, which means that we'll have an extra 1 Bcm of capacity to sell to our markets. And hopefully, with the completions of the midstream infrastructure, we'll be able to meet this high peak rate. Furthermore, we are continuing and progressing on the expansion of the Leviathan project. We are on track, on time, which is expected somewhere in the second half of 2029. And on the total cost of the project, which is around $2.4 billion, current project is at the level of 23%. And most importantly, the drilling rig is expected to reach our region in -- towards the end of the year and conduct 3 new production wells for us. After a long delay, I'm very happy to inform that INGL has completed the looping or the offshore pipe between Ashdod-Ashkelon, which opened a debottle of the midstream to the Egyptian market. This will increase our delivery capability of about 2 Bcm on an annual basis, but it's important to mention that all that 2 Bcm will be allocated to the Leviathan partners. This is not reflected in the Q2 results. This completion was done in the month of July, and we will see the results in the upcoming quarterly report. In addition, the two other projects, FAJR + compression and the Nitzana pipeline, are progressing as planned. We're expecting to complete the FAJR + compression project towards the end of the year and the Nitzana pipeline ahead of the Leviathan Phase 2 expansion. Aphrodite, as you have seen in the recent weeks, we have sent out several announcements. We are progressing with all the main contracts that are needed for us to reach a financial investment decision somewhere in the first half of 2027. There is a good momentum, and we're hoping to make progress over the next few months. In a related note, one of our partners, Shell, has announced last week their intention to sell their share in the field to MOL, the Hungarian energy company, for a value of $720 million, which, in a very simple calculation, gives a value of about $2 billion for the asset. Just kind of like in our books, we have a value of about $190 million. So there is, from our perspective, a hidden value in the value that's reported on our books. I'll leave it to Tzachi to take us through the financial results.

So thank you, Niv, and thank you all for joining us today. First, I would like to thank Yossi Abu. Personally, it has been a great pleasure working with Yossi. I learned a lot from him from his leadership, his vision and the way Yossi sees the bigger picture. I wish him all the best. On behalf of NewMed and myself, I wish him a good life. And all the best, of course. And to you, Niv, welcome to the NewMed family. In the second quarter of 2026, we had revenues of about $293 million, production of about 2.7 Bcm and net profit of about $117 million. This compares with Q2 2025, when revenues were $191 million, net profit was $81 million and production was around 2 Bcm. The increase in the net profit in Q2 was mainly driven by the following factors. Please go ahead with the presentation. Thank you. Net revenues increased by $86 million compared with the same quarter last year. $59 million of that came from higher natural gas production, another $25 million came from a higher average gas price per MMBtu and $2.1 million came from an increase in condensate sales. This was partially offset by higher costs and expenses of $21 million, mainly due to a higher operation cost and depreciation. We also had an increase in net finance expenses of $26 million, mostly due to the reevaluation of Karish and Tanin royalties. We also recorded $6.8 million in other revenues as a result of a settlement related to our economic rights in Iran license. The final factor was income from the discontinued operation of $7.7 million related to NewMed's former holdings in Tamar project. Tamar was sold in 2021. This income mainly reflects an adjustment to the sale consideration following Tamar levy expenses regarding the [ net ] financial debt. Moving and regarding the liquidity of NewMed. Following the repayment of Leviathan bond series June '25 and ahead of the repayment of the next series in June '27, the total net debt is approximately $1.4 billion. We have $550 million available credit facilities from Israeli banks as of today. In this context, maybe it's important to mention and to remind that the partnership has a buyback program. Under that buyback program, which covers the 2027 and the 2030 bonds, to date, we have bought back about $95 million. I think, Niv, that concludes the main points of the Q2 financial statement. So thank you for listening.

Thank you, Tzachi. And as we demonstrated in previous quarters, we are happily announcing that we will also pay this quarter, a dividend of an amount of $60 million based on our strong performance and high net income. Before we wrap up and go to questions, I do have one last update on two seismic surveys that we will be conducting over the next several months, which will commence in the upcoming weeks. The first one is Zone I. It is conducted in a new area on the northern part of the economic waters of Israel. What is interesting in our perspective, we have brought two new international energy players, SOCAR and BP, into this license. And we see that as a good indication and a positive as the potential that could be in this zone. And also very importantly, we will be conducting a unique and first-time survey, OBN, ocean bottom nodes, for the Leviathan. We will be placing about 5,000 nodes of the yellow one that you see in this picture on the bottom of the ocean and to conduct a 3D survey of both the gas field, the Leviathan. Since we have started producing, 2019, we have not yet conducted a seismic survey, and that will allow us better to analyze the field and see how it is performing and also continue our exploration of deeper oil prospect beneath the gas field. With that, we will open it for questions.

Okay. So just a couple of questions. The first one with regards to Aphrodite. What are the milestones that are missing in order to achieve an FID in the Aphrodite?

So good question. In order for us to reach an FID on the Aphrodite field, I think there is -- on one part is all the commercial agreements that we need to put in place, the GSPA, the hosting government agreements and the midstream infrastructure pipes. We have signed a letter of intent on the GSPAs and are working on to conclude this as a full agreement, and I think those will happen in the next few months. In parallel, Chevron is the operator, it's continuing its work on the front-end engineering design. And hopefully, that will be completed as well. So at that point, we'll be able to take a final investment decision.

The second question with regards to Leviathan, if we can give some color on the progress of the expansion and if the situation in the area affects the timetable of the expansion?