PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Oil and gas producer Beach Energy has reported a 147% increase in sales revenue for the first half of 2019, and a 199% increase in underlying net profits after tax.
The ASX-listed company on Wednesday announced that sales revenue for the six months to December had reached A$955-million as production reached 15.2-million barrels of oil equivalent.
The increase in sales revenue, coupled with cost discipline, has seen Beach deliver an underlying net profit after tax of A$279-million.
“These results highlight what Beach is capable of delivering. I am extremely proud of what we have achieved in the first half of this year,” said Beach CEO Matt Kay.
“All our key financial metrics have improved, our net gearing was 13.5% at the end of December, and we are on track to be net cash by the end of the third quarter of 2019.”
Kay said that production of 15.2-million barrels of oil equivalent during the first half had exceeded expectation, and was driven by a combination of strong customer demand, improved facility reliability and positive field performance.
“We also continued our excellent track record on the drilling front, with 68 wells drilled in the first half of 2019, at a success rate of 79%. In particular, our Bauer appraisal campaign has been extremely successful and has enabled us to identify new well locations. While this campaign also saw us improve our horizontal drilling efficiencies, with spud-to-online times reduced to 23.5-days, a 24% improvement.”
Kay said that the first six months of the year had established excellent momentum for the year, with Beach looking to build on that, with up to 92 wells to be drilled in the second half.
“Despite this active development programme, cost discipline continues to be a strong focus for Beach. Our attention is now on reducing controllable operating costs.”
For the full 2019, Beach has improved its production guidance from the previous 25-million to 27-million barrels of oil equivalent, to between 28-million and 29-million barrels of oil equivalent, while the capital expenditure guidance has been estimated at between A$450-million and A$500-million.
For the full 2019, Beach is expecting earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization to reach between A$1.25-billion and A$1.35-billion, up A$200-million on the previous estimates.