Antelopus Selan Energy Ltd (ANTELOPUS) Q2FY27 Concall Transcript - Sep-2026 Qtr
Moderator (Equirus Securities Private Limited): Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Antelopus Selan Energy Limited 2Q FY27 earnings conference call hosted by Equirus Securities Private Limited. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during this conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star and then zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Khushbu Balani from Equirus Securities Private Limited. Thank you and over to you, ma'am.
Khushbu Balani (Equirus Securities Private Limited): Thank you, Sagar. Good evening, eve- everyone and thanks for joining in. Also, thanks to Antelopus management for giving the opportunity to Equirus for hosting the call. We have with us from Antelopus Selan, Mr. Suniti Bhatt, Sir, MD and CEO, Mr. Shivakumar, Director and COO, and Mr. Rajiv Tirupati, the CFO of the company. I would request Suniti, sir, to give his opening remarks on the quarterly performance and outlook for the industry. Thank you and over to you, sir.
Suniti Bhatt (Antelopus Selan Energy Ltd): So much, Khushbu, and thank you very much for joining our first investor call. It is one step in our outreach that we had been promising our investors for last
Suniti Bhatt (Antelopus Selan Energy Ltd): So, we have finally managed to have the investor call. And we promised to keep it a regular occurrence at the end of quarterly board meetings, pretty much most hopefully the same day. We will also be very happy to hear any feedback you have on these calls and our investor packs. The idea of these packs and these calls is always to get you up to speed about what we are thinking, what we have done, and how do we see this business as we go forward. So, it is to create more transparency around the information that we have have of our business to pretty much all our stakeholders as we go forward. So, with that said, I think I just want to take a step on how we look at the business, how we see us growing over the next three years, which we call a short-term, and then we will focus a little bit on this quarter's numbers and results that Rajiv can go through the numbers in detail. What I want to start out with I think there's You guys already must have had some looked at our pack that got uploaded on the stock exchange websites. We start with pretty good news. We had already started out with that we have finally signed the RSCs or Revenue Sharing Contracts with the government of India. Two large ones, one on east of India in onshore KG, one on the west coast which is our backyard, which is the Cambay Basin. These were substantially large contract areas compared to the contract areas that used to get offered in the previous bid rounds. So, finally those officially, I think we signed them on 22nd of 22nd of October we got those contracts with us. So, that that has really invigorated the team to to look for for the growth opportunities as we go in. If I take a step back and look at what has happened in the growth of Antelopus over the last few years, and I want to look at it with a lens of production growth, with a lens of putting capital into the business, with a lens of maintaining EBITDAs in spite of us having seen a downcycle as well as an upcycle into commodity price and how we see ourselves have what we did over the last few years and how we have learned from what we did in the last few years and carry forward that into next three years and probably create a company that's at least 5,000 barrels or so in production over the next two to three years. We In fiscal year '23, we did an average production of around 511 barrels. Then through consistent understanding of our resource and reserve base and trying to exploit it, and basically we doing capital deployment projects, we ramped it up to 740 in the year '24. 740 became around 1,200 in the year '25. Last year we were at around 1355. We are hoping that this year we will exit at around 2,500. That's the guidance. We are reasonably sure that we should be able to deliver on our promise to you of ramping up to 2,500 barrels of oil, gas equivalent production from from our portfolio. Look what Our thought process has been pretty simple that your resource is what is underground. So, we try and focus with what I call a world-class technical team on understanding the resource and unlocking it. And while we're doing it, we generate surplus cash and we have been consistently plowing back the surplus cash into the business, growing it further. And while we did it, we are also creating a portfolio of opportunities for all our stakeholders within the Antelopus portfolio portfolio of assets that will help us grow manifold over the next 5-10 years. While we did so, we have remained a debt-free company which is growth focused. And and also year-on-year is showing a growth and a potential of growth, and learns from things that work, and learns from things that don't work as well, and is nimble enough to keep on moving its strategic focus as the as the geopolitics has changes or will change in our industry. If I look at the exit rate that we did, I just talked about the average numbers. '24 fiscal year '24 we exited the year at around 982 barrels. The next year we exited around 1,200 barrels. That went up to 1758 barrels. We are hoping that will go to 2 and 1/2
Suniti Bhatt (Antelopus Selan Energy Ltd): barrels this year. Next year, that should be around 3,500 barrels. Thereafter, that should be 5,000 barrels. What will be what it is going to be beyond 29, we have some idea. We will share those numbers with you once we understand our KG onshore a lot better, so we should be able to give a lot better news as as we go forward. And while we did it, you see, we started out by spending around 51 crores of capital in year '23. Then we went 160. Again, we went to 87, then 220, hopefully 250 crores this year. The idea is we are also understanding and learning fiscal discipline as a group. And as we go through it, we are learning that okay, we are able to spend money, get it back within a year, year and a half, deploy it back while it generates a lot more cash, then deploy it and hopefully give you a return on equity, which is much, much better than the peer group that we have in this country. While we do it, we are also getting keeping a strong focus on the EBITDA margin that we generate, because unless and until our costs are under control, we can actually go on a growth path and just keep on eroding our margins, that also doesn't help. You can see our EBITDA margins historically have stayed around 50% mark even in the low oil prices. Currently, they are much better. I think last year's EBITDA margin was around 58%. We are expecting this to be substantially better this year, largely due to commodity prices being good, but also because we have maintained the fiscal discipline. So hopefully, we will be Rajiv will say it, but I think it should be around 70% mark, if I'm not wrong, the EBITDA margins. So, while this is happening, from a strategic perspective, what we are also doing is, we're trying to define what Rather than focusing on everything that is in our kitty, that will dilute the outcomes, we start focusing on one or two frontier areas every year every year or every couple of years. Last few years have been a huge focus on the Cambay basin and the Bakrol, Karjisan assets we are, which are the backbone of that basin for us, as of now. Then we started understanding the Assam Arakan basin with our Duarmara drilling. That gave us some interesting results, interesting what we thought was gas, turns out to be probably oil, and we got a little bit of KG production going. As we will go get into the remaining part of this year or next two years, we think that given the portfolio that we have developed in KG basin, a lot of our strategic focus or thinking caps will get on to the KG onshore because we pretty much think that the Cambay basin core assets of Bakrol and all are are on what I call a factory mode. We understand them reasonably well. We are a lot more comfortable having a multi-year drilling program in our Bakrol, Karjisan field going. So, we think those fields will keep on providing us solid ground for us to stand on and will keep on churning a healthy profit and cash flow towards our further growth over the next few years. And will also basically provide the seed money that we'll need to leapfrog into unlocking substantially larger reserve basis at KG, and if everything goes well, at offshore as as well, over the next few years. At an operational level, we just finished the 10-well drilling campaign that we had done in Bakrol. The drilling is done. The fracing is finished. There was a little bit of delays, operational delays, in fracing primarily due to supply chain constraints with what is happening with the world, but that's all sorted. We have started to see actual full impact of the fracing and the 10 wells in Bakrol. Bakrol itself, it's at around the October average production was around 950 barrels of oil equivalent plus. So, that that is pretty good on the mark, as far as we thought Bakrol was. But more importantly, it is telling us that Bakrol is one of the fields where if you keep on drilling wells, it will keep on giving you production increase. Maybe one to two wells every year will go towards offsetting the decline, rest is going to add towards the incremental production. So, that is going to be a backbone, at least for next three, four years in terms of generating net revenues for growth. Karjisan, I think we the rig is currently drilling wells in Karjisan. It's already drilled two wells, which look very interesting on the log. Hopefully, we will perforate over the next week one of the first wells and
Suniti Bhatt (Antelopus Selan Energy Ltd): having some of the results. But by the looks of it, Karjisan again is opening up areas towards the western frontier, west north of the field, and we will keep on pushing these frontiers, so hopefully Karjisan we will be able to finish all the seven wells that we had planned to drill in Karjisan in this fiscal itself. And that should give us a reasonably substantial boost in our production as we go through the remaining part of the year and enter the next year. As we enter next year, hopefully by that time the rigs will be ready to start drilling Bakrol back and and some of the other fields in the Cambay Basin. Going to our third operating field which is Cambay itself, is an optionality field for us. We want to drill one to two wells this year and depends upon which way they lean in terms of oil or gas, we will take a view on what to do next year for these ones. It's a large field, that's why we like it from an option prospective, 160 square km. One or two successful wells, or both successful wells, could mean that it will become, if not equal to, but definitely if not larger, definitely equal to Bakrol in terms of its potential as we will go. We should have that with us towards the end of this fiscal year, the potential of Cambay field itself. And then we can take a call on whether or not to keep our guidance the same or increase our BR, whatever we want. The the the most interesting or the most exciting thing for us is that in DSF bid rounds that we got, we basically tried to increase our position in both KG Onshore and Cambay. In Cambay we managed to get the couple of fields which are next to Bakrol. I think Phasunia-1 and Phasunia-2 is next to Bakrol, we got it. We also got Ognaj back, which we had relinquished because it was a package, we got it back. We'll figure out what to do with it. It was our relinquished field, but we also got a field called Uba, which is close to our Cambay field, a small, little gas field. We think that that has shown a good potential and is something like Karjisan in terms of sand quality, but we need to see how much oil and gas is there, but we are excited about the Cambay piece because we have existing operations, so it should not take us a long to start production from these Cambay discoveries. In KG, we have gotten seven new discoveries added to our our kitty, so we have around nine new fields in KG. Only one of them is producing, which is Mukambala. But some of these fields in KG are substantially large fields like Bantumilli, and Bantumilli is there, Vadaparthi is there. I I still need to learn to pronounce the name, but all I know is that we are trying to understand, we must be definitely within the top three acreage holders in onshore KG as of today. And we think that over the year, next year or so, we will formulate an overall exploitation plan of KG. There will be a short-term exploitation plan which will look at existing wells and getting some opportunistic early production out of KG discoveries, but the long-term plan would be just like we did in Bakrol. We will go with the rig, drill a couple of wells across the portfolio there, and then de-risk it. Just to put it in context, potentially KG onshore has more resource base than the offshore portfolio that we have today. So if it works, we are we have a large enough portfolio to unlock the production over the next 4 to 5 years for us. I think remaining is what you would see is that this quarter, compared to last quarter, has been flatish. If anything, the production is a little lesser than last quarter. Primarily that has been due to Karjisan, which we knew would start coming on decline, and Bakrol took a little bit longer to complete and frac. So Bakrol has increased, Karjisan has dropped, but that is a temporary blip that you see this quarter because the rig is back in Karjisan, and with seven wells that will come in there, we we should start seeing a large uptick in production. Actually the October production itself, we are at around 2,000 barrels oil equivalent is what this month's production across the portfolio has been. So with seven more wells to add to the kitty and if we get some good
Suniti Bhatt (Antelopus Selan Energy Ltd): in in the Cambay drilling this year. So, we we are pretty confident on the two and a half thousand barrels exit as we go through this one. Duarmara, we are still looking at we are basically looking at an integrated view. We are looking at old and new wells together. What I can add to this that twice so far we have reached gone into the well. We have recirculated back the well, the TS-1 zone. And every time we have gotten oil out of it out of the well. So, we's now trying to figure out what should be our next steps to look at potential oil development, fracking, not fracking. It's not straight to get fracking organised in Assam. So, we're putting a full plan together. We will then discuss with our joint venture partner and then hopefully figure out what is the next for Duarmara. Because as far as gas development in Duarmara is concerned, I think the the transportation issues and all will take its own time. We're going to focus if we can monetise oil quickly and start getting some returns from Duarmara itself. That sort of sums where we are. I will now hand over to Rajiv to tell us a little bit more around the numbers of this quarter compared to previous quarter. And then after that, we can open for questions. Thank you.
Rajiv Tirupati (Antelopus Selan Energy Ltd): Thank you, Suniti. Good evening, everyone, and thanks for joining our first investor call. Let me now take you through the numbers starting with the P&L. Our realized oil price averaged $88.2 per barrel in Q2 against $95.3 per barrel in Q1. It moved sharply within this quarter. About $76 is what we realized in July. $84 is what we realized in August. And around $100 plus is what we realized in September. Gas realizations, which move in line with the oil prices, also fell from $10.33, which was our average realization $10.33 per mmbtu, which was our average realization in Q1 to $8.84 per mmbtu, which was our average realization in Q2. The rupee was broadly stable at about 95 to the dollar. Volumes, on the other hand, as Suniti mentioned, remained flat. So, to sum it up, revenue from operations stood at around 121.7 crores. The total income including other income was 127.2 crores. EBITDA was 90 crores, almost three times to what we reported in Q2 last year, with the margin about at about 71%. In the interest of clarity, I would want to add that in this quarter, our other income includes one off 6.5 crores refund, which we had intimated you guys in the last quarter presentation as well. Now, that amount we have realized in cash. So, even if we exclude that, the EBITDA was about 83 crores with So, that takes the margin to about 69%. Costs stayed tight. Our opex and handling cost came down to 6.1 crores from 7.5 crores in Q1. Royalty and cess remained stable at around 16% of the revenue, which totals around 2 20.5 crores. Because they move along with the price, so they cushion our margins when the oil price falls. Depreciation rose to 13.2 crores as the new Bakrol wells came into production. So, to sum it up, the net profit for the quarter stood at 57.3 crores, which is nearly five times the 11.8 crores of Q2 last year. So, our first half sales averaged about 1700 boepd giving a revenue of around 254.8 crores with an EBITDA of around 180 crores and net profit at around 112 crores. So, moving on the balance sheet, as of 30th September, shareholder equity currently stands at around 780 crores. We have no borrowings. We hold roughly about 100 crores in cash and bank balances and liquid investments. So, the balance sheet remains debt free. So we continue to demonstrate strong cash generation. And which in its which enables us to fund our drilling program through our own cash flows. So, to sum it up, the three key takeaways are firstly, oil prices swung through the quarter, but our volumes and margins held. Second, our growth engine is continues to run. The Bakrol campaign is complete. Karjisan drilling is ahead of plan. And October production is already about 1950 boepd. The third one is what Suniti updated on DSF IV, it gives us a second growth hub
Rajiv Tirupati (Antelopus Selan Energy Ltd): in addition to the Cambay barrels which add to our cash flows. So, therefore, we remain confident and on track for a 2,500 barrels of oil equivalent exit this year. And we are building towards 5,000 barrels business hopefully by FY29. With fiscal discipline remaining our key focus area as well. Thank you for time. For any follow up, our Investor Relations team you can reach out at our investors' email ID. We are now happy to take your questions.
Moderator (Equirus Securities Private Limited): Thank you very much. We will now begin with the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and then one on the touchtone phone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. Again to register for a question, you may press star and one. Your first question comes from the line of Raman KV with Sequent Investments. Please go ahead.
Raman KV (Sequent Investments): Hello, sir, can you hear me?
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