PrairieSky Royalty (TSX:PSK) released first-quarter financial results and hosted an earnings call on Tuesday. Read the complete transcript below.

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Summary

PrairieSky Royalty reported Q1 2026 funds from operations of $94.9 million, reflecting an 11% increase from the previous year due to higher production and stronger bonus consideration.

Total production grew by 4% year-over-year, with oil production increasing by 2% and record highs in condensate and pentane production as part of the NGL stream.

The company entered into 48 new leasing arrangements, which contributed to elevated bonus consideration, and anticipates reducing debt levels significantly by the end of 2026.

The Duvernay and Clearwater plays continue to drive production growth, with Duvernay expected to be the fastest growing play in 2026.

PrairieSky Royalty declared Q1 dividends of $61.6 million, corresponding to a 65% payout ratio, and announced a second quarter dividend of 26.5 cents per share.

Full Transcript

OPERATOR

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the PrairieSky Royalty First Quarter 2026 Financial Results Conference Call At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised to withdraw your question. Please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Andrew Phillips, President and CEO. Please go ahead.

Andrew Phillips (President and CEO)

Thank you. Daniel Good morning and thank you for dialing into the PSK Q1 2026 conference call. On the call from PSK are Pam Cazale, Dan Bertram, Mike Murphy and myself Andrew Phillips. Before we begin, there is certain forward looking information and statements in our commentary today, so I'd 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. Funds from operations totaled 94.9 million, an 11% increase from Q1 2025 resulting from higher production and stronger bonus consideration. Total production grew 4% from Q1 of 2025 with oil production showing 2% growth year over year. Condensate and pentane production reported as part of the NGL stream remains at record highs for PrairieSky at approximately 35% of the NGL stream. Elevated bonus consideration was the result of 48 new leasing arrangements with 37 distinct oil and gas companies. Given the lower rig count year over year, we are pleased with the 201 Spuds on PrairieSky lands versus the 200 in prior year. With the increased pricing for oil and a continued weak Canadian dollar, we are observing early indications of higher planned activity levels post breakup. Based on strip pricing, we're anticipating a material reduction in debt levels by the end of 2026. A number of our recent leasing arrangements are for exploration rather than pure development, which is a positive trend. Rising capital cycles can help unlock the vast optionality inherent in an 18.6 million acre land base. In addition to this, more operators in the Clearwater are exploring for oil up and down hole where they already have an existing producing horizon. We expect this will unlock numerous new developments over the next 10 years. With the current development inventory on land, we can replace the approximate 9.5 million barrels of royalty production on our lands for 61 years. New discoveries have the potential to unlock more inventory. I will now turn the call to Mike to further discuss activity on our lands.

Mike Murphy

Thanks Andrew The first quarter saw a record number of Duvernay wells spud at 26, including 20 in the West Shale Basin. First West Shale completions from this program are currently underway with new wells expected to be on production starting in mid May and driving light oil growth through the back half of the year. Similar to 2025, we expect the Duvernay to be our fastest growing play in 2026 based on budgeted activity levels. Multilateral activity continues to grow on PrairieSky lands with 66 spuds in Q1 26 relative to 41 in The first quarter of last year. In the Clearwater, expanding waterflood development continues to promote a highly sustainable production base and positively impacting corporate decline rates. With depth and quality of inventory in the play, we anticipate outsized Clearwater growth to continue for years to come. In the Mannville stack, oil production was estimated at greater than 1,000 barrels a day in Q1 given the strong winter drilling activity. Finally, our thermal volumes are positioned for near term growth with a new eight well pair pad at Lindbergh currently steaming with oil volumes expected to ramp to a peak rate of approximately 260 barrels a day at the PrairieSky. I'll now turn it over to Pam to discuss the financials.

Pam Cazale

Thank you Mike Good morning everyone. PrairieSky's first quarter production increased by 4% compared to Q1 2025, reflecting 2% growth in oil royalty volumes and 6% growth in NGL production. Oil growth was led by the Clearwater play where Production rose approximately 20% year over year, and the Duvernay, where oil royalty volumes increased by approximately 75% from Q1 2025. NGL growth was driven primarily by activity in the Duvernay and Montney plays. Higher production combined with strong benchmark pricing resulted in royalty revenue of $118.5 million for the quarter. Other revenues totaled 15.3 million, supported by another strong quarter of leasing activity. Lease Bonus consideration reached 12.3 million, more than double the level it recorded in Q1 last year, with the majority of activity concentrated in the duvernay play and the Mannville heavy oil play. We continue to view leasing activity as a leading indicator of future development and anticipate that operators will be active across these plays throughout 2026 and beyond. Funds from operations were 94.9 million or $0.41 per share, representing a strong start to the year. PrairieSky declared dividends of 61.6 million during the quarter, corresponding to a payout ratio of 65%. Excess cash flow was allocated to acquisitions totaling 4.2 million share repurchases under our NCIB of 8.3 million, which canceled 269,000 shares and debt reduction of $6 million. We ended the quarter with net debt of $257.7 million. PrairieSky also declared its second quarter dividend of 26.5 cents per common share for shareholders of record on June 30, 2026. With that, I'll turn it back to the moderator to begin the Q and A.

OPERATOR

As a reminder to ask a question, please press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q and A roster. Our first question comes from Jamie Kubik with cibc. Your line is open.

Jamie Kubik (Equity Analyst)

Yeah, good morning and thanks for taking my question. Just a quick question on oil volumes for the quarter. Obviously good volumes out of the key plays for Prairie sky, but can you talk about some of the plays that perhaps didn't perform as well in the quarter that led to the slight volume decline quarter over quarter? Thanks.

Andrew Phillips (President and CEO)

Yeah, you bet. Jamie. The big one when you look from Q1 of last year to Q1 of this year was the 200 barrel net decline net to us from the Lindbergh Thermal project. And that's more of a transitory item. So if you added that back, you'd kind of be in line with all of our quarters for the last 16 quarters. And in addition, you had a little slower Q4 just on more conventional assets and saw modest declines there. But we're still expecting the kind of mid single digit number on average throughout the year on the oil side.

Jamie Kubik (Equity Analyst)

Thanks. And then last one from me, can you just talk a little bit more on the bonus consideration that you saw in the quarter? Is that repeatable and should we think about activity on that side of things with respect to what was leased?

Andrew Phillips (President and CEO)

Thanks. Yeah, the bonus consideration is definitely a bright spot. I don't think there was one larger bonus there with respect to a smaller duvernay lease. Just given the pricing that's come up so substantially in that area, we were able to command a higher price for that. But I think overall the entire portfolio of assets saw pretty strong leasing right from Southeast Saskatchewan where there's really short cycle times and we're expecting a bit of an uptick in activity all the way through to Western Alberta. So it's definitely a positive sign to see more activity from producers and people increasing their inventory there. But, but to answer your question on the repeatability, probably that would be a higher one. I think that was the highest one we've had in 15 quarters or something like that. So that was great. We're very pleased with that. And activity on the leasing side does remain robust, but that was higher than anticipated. Number for the following quarters for the balance of the year.

Jamie Kubik (Equity Analyst)

Okay, that's all for me, I'll turn it back.

Andrew Phillips (President and CEO)

Thanks for your questions, Jamie.

OPERATOR

Thank you. As a reminder to ask a question, please press Star 11 on your telephone again, that is Star 11 to ask a question. Our next question comes from Aaron Bilkowski with TD Callan. Your line is open.

Aaron Bilkowski (Equity Analyst)

Thanks. So I have another question about your lease issuance bonuses, but more on the structure of them. If I remember some point in the past you started offering some flexibility counterparties, you offered lower upfront bonuses in exchange for multi year reoccurring cash payments. I think the idea was to leave more cash with the producers to spend so you could generate royalty revenue from that faster. So I guess my question is, are you still using this type of structure on the lease issuance bonuses?

Andrew Phillips (President and CEO)

Yeah, it's a good question Aaron. And I think for the right play like for typically for the longer term leases we'll enter into agreements like that. We've done that with some of the small scale seg delineating institutions whereby they get up to a 7 to 9 year lease depending on where it is and they have to have minimum amount of activity and then pay a recurring bonus after three years and then another three years. We've also done some agreements like that in the duvernay. So we are expecting meaningful duvernay payment in the back half of the year. But again for most conventional leasing, a lot of the leases that we entered into in the previous quarter were shorter term leases, people with near term drilling activity land and just one time bonus payments. But the great thing about the very short term ones is if they don't get to it in the one year time, we'll typically be able to re lease those lands right away to either that operator or competing operator in the area.

Aaron Bilkowski (Equity Analyst)

Thanks, Andrew. On those shorter term leases, are there capital or activity commitments associated with that or you just put a short term lease on it and if they don't drill you get it back?

Andrew Phillips (President and CEO)

Exactly the latter. And I think you know there's a bit of a balance like if you, if you're going to hold our lands for a longer period of time, we'd like to see some activity committed and/or back end bonus payments if you want to retain the lands. But with these shorter term leases, it's effectively a drilling commitment. If you have a one year lease, you've almost by the time you survey the well, get the well licensed, get it drilled, get it on production, you almost need that year just to do that. So typically, we view a one year lease and in some areas a two year lease as a drilling commitment to a certain extent, but we typically do not ask for drilling commitments on those shorter term leases.

Aaron Bilkowski (Equity Analyst)

Perfect. Thank you.

Andrew Phillips (President and CEO)

Thanks. Have a good day, Aaron.

OPERATOR

Thank you. I'm showing no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn it back to Andrew Phillips for closing remarks.

Andrew Phillips (President and CEO)

Thank you to all our shareholders very much for your support, and I hope everyone has a great rest of your week.

Disclaimer: This transcript is provided for informational purposes only. While we strive for accuracy, there may be errors or omissions in this automated transcription. For official company statements and financial information, please refer to the company's SEC filings and official press releases. Corporate participants' and analysts' statements reflect their views as of the date of this call and are subject to change without notice.