PrairieSky Royalty Ltd. (PSK) Earnings Call Transcript
July 14, 2026
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the PrairieSky Royalty Ltd. announces their Second Quarter 2026 Financial Results. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would like now to turn your conference over to Andrew Phillips, President and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much, operator, and good morning, and thank you for dialing into the PrairieSky Q2 2026 Conference Call. On the call from PrairieSky are Dan Bertram, Pam Kazeil, Mike Murphy and myself, Andrew Phillips. Before we begin, there are certain forward-looking information and statements in our commentary today, so I would ask listeners and investors to review the forward-looking statements qualifier in our press release and MD&A, which can be found on our website. Oil production increased 7% from Q1 this year. Stronger activity levels across the basin drove the increase. Strong spud activity on our lands throughout the quarter is encouraging for the balance of the year. With the $0.71 and over USD 70 WTI crude, we are close to $100 per barrel for Canadian light oil. In 2019, pre-COVID, we had 234 million shares fully diluted outstanding with average annual royalty production of 8,633 barrels per day of oil and 46 million barrels of reserves. Today, we have 232.4 million shares outstanding with average oil production of 14,740 barrels per day and 64 million barrels of reserves. We will be net cash by this time next year. Numerous newly formed oil companies have been founded over the past year. This quarter, we entered into 57 leases with 46 distinct operators. We continue to pursue leasing agreements with qualified well-capitalized companies. PrairieSky expects another busy summer of both leasing and drilling activity with 215 rigs active in the field today, up from 170 a year ago. Wet field conditions have hindered operations in Eastern Alberta heavy oil region, delaying some completion and drilling activity. I will turn the call over to Mike to discuss activity on our lands.
Thanks, Andrew. Duvernay activity remained strong in Q2 with 51 spuds year-to-date compared to 55 in all of 2025. The first West Shale Basin Duvernay wells from this year's programs were brought on production late in Q2, which should positively impact Q3 royalty oil production. Expanded third-party capital programs in the Duvernay and continued completion activities over the summer should position PrairieSky for meaningful light oil growth through the remainder of the year. Multilateral activity continues to expand on PrairieSky lands with 137 spuds year-to-date relative to 100 over the same period last year. Beyond the Clearwater and Mannville stack, we also saw multilateral spuds in the Charlie Lake, Ellerslie, Bakken and Southeast PSK Mississippian in Q2. In the Clearwater, we now estimate 60% of our royalty oil volumes are under waterflood support with declines in the mid-teens, contributing to our highly sustainable production base. Finally, thermal volumes from a new pad at Lindbergh began ramping up in Q2, which should support growth in our second half royalty oil production. A new South pad is currently drilling at Lindbergh, setting the asset up for incremental growth in 2027 and beyond. I'll now turn it over to Pam to discuss the financials.
Thank you, Mike. Good morning, everyone. PrairieSky delivered strong second quarter results in cash flow production and leasing activity. Total production reached a record 27,479 BOE per day, an increase of 4% as compared to Q2 2025, driven by liquids growth with oil volumes up 3% and NGL volumes up 15%. The Clearwater provided our largest increase, up 27% over Q2 2025, and the Mannville stack was up 19%. NGL royalty production growth of 15% over Q2 2025 was driven by the Montney and the West Shale Basin Duvernay. With U.S. dollar WTI averaging $92.80 in the quarter, our realized price rose to an average of $109.87 per barrel and NGL pricing averaged $55.30 per barrel. Liquids production generated 93% of our total production revenue, which totaled $167.1 million in the quarter. In aggregate, other revenues added $10.9 million to cash flow, including $6.4 million in bonus consideration. Year-to-date bonus consideration of $18.7 million is 39% ahead of year-to-date 2025. Once again, this quarter, leasing was most active in the Duvernay light oil and Mannville heavy oil plays. We view leasing as a leading indicator of future development and anticipate operators will be active across these plays throughout 2026 and beyond. Funds from operations were $133.1 million or $0.57 per share, up 38% from Q2 2025. PrairieSky declared dividends of $61.6 million during the quarter with a corresponding payout ratio of 46%. Excess cash flow was allocated to minor acquisitions totaling $1.8 million and debt reduction of $71.1 million in the quarter. At June 30, net debt totaled $186.6 million. PrairieSky also declared its third quarter dividend of $0.265 per common share for shareholders of record on September 29, 2026. With that, I'll turn it back to the moderator to begin the Q&A.
[Operator Instructions] and the first question is going to come from Jeremy McCrea with BMO Capital Markets.
I can't help but notice there's a lot more activity in this quarter versus Q2 of last year. And obviously, the commodity price is probably driving some of that. But I'm trying to get a sense of if you were to exclude the higher commodity price, would this activity still have been as robust? I'm just trying to get a sense of what we could expect going forward. Is it the higher activity driven more by the commodity price or just more driven by the opportunity of some of the land base that you have here?
I think it's a combination of things, Jeremy. Thanks for the question. When you think about just multilateral drilling and just kind of sequential improvements in technology, but also in Canada, with the weak Canadian FX, you're still 1000 for light. So I think it's a combination of those things. So we do expect that to continue just given it is still quite a robust commodity environment. But there's even things like the Viking that had a bit of a resurgence. And when you simply think about it, a Viking well is $1.1 million and the most recent wells are getting about 55,000 barrels of light oil and a Duvernay well is $11 million, and it's 550,000 barrels of condensate. So it's 10x price for 10x the volumes. And so the Viking competes quite well with even really good plays like the Duvernay. So I think you're starting to see operators with better balance sheets and more capital available to drill a little bit more of some of their inventory that sits within their cover.
And a bit of a follow-up question here, too. So when you look at your Viking activity, how much of that came up and I would say it surprised us. Is there any other plays that could surprise us here for the back half of the year heading into 2027 that maybe we're not thinking enough about?
Yes, it's a good question. I think the one thing we have seen is just very focused drilling over the last 10 years. So the Viking had a massive push in 2016, '17, '18. And then you see the Duvernay today, a lot of the Eastern Alberta heavy oil plays. But what's starting to happen today is just with the robust economics, everything from Southeast Saskatchewan to some conventional oil in Western Saskatchewan, all throughout the province in Eastern Alberta. People are testing these multilaterals in different ways. And even there's some intermediate-sized companies in Eastern Alberta working on sparky water floods, et cetera, that have shown really good response. So I think just kind of higher basin-wide activity. So you have the plays that we're expecting, which are kind of the 3 core growth plays for us, the Clearwater, the Mannville stack and the Duvernay. But then all of a sudden, you have kind of a resurgence in drilling across the basin on the more conventional plays, I guess, I'd say.
[Operator Instructions] At this time, I'm showing no further questions. I will now turn the call back to Andrew for closing remarks.
Thanks, everyone, who dialed in early, and I hope everyone has a great summer. Thank you.
This does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect.
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