(Alliance News) - RockRose Energy PLC on Tuesday declared a maiden interim dividend, with further returns to be expected in its current financial year.
RockRose will be paying 60 pence per share for the six months to June 30, and is planning to return a further 25p as a final dividend.
On July 1, just one day after the end of the half, RockRose completed the purchase of all of Marathon Oil Corp's UK oil assets. This added over 28 million barrels of oil equivalent to reserves and 11,000 barrels of daily production.
On a pro forma basis, assuming the acquired assets were part of the company during the six months to June, production was 22,318 barrels of oil equivalent per day. On a reported basis, production more than doubled to 11,105 barrels per day.
Revenue on a reported basis surged 40% to USD93.7 million, and pretax profit rose more than five-fold to USD27.8 million from USD5.1 million.
Executive Chair Andrew Austin said: "I am delighted to be able to report another good set of financial results. The Marathon acquisition completed on July 1, and I am pleased to announce the successful integration of the business into RockRose.
"We continue to expand our pipeline of development projects, including the drilling of additional wells at West Brae and Blake. The development of Arran and progress on Tain are on budget and on schedule. On behalf of our shareholders, we continue to build a first-class business in the North Sea. The board is pleased to announce our first regular dividend."
Looking ahead, production remains at between 22,000 barrels and 24,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day. However, due to planned maintenance work, production is expected around 20,000 barrels a day for 2019.
RockRose shares were 2.0% lower on Tuesday morning at a price of 1,876.76p each.
By George Collard; georgecollard@alliancenews.com
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