RE: Echo Energy Q&A “plenty of items in the pipeline that can really catapult the company forward” (LON:9 Dec 2020 09:26
A3: This was very important and a real positive milestone for the company and what we’ve done is we’ve very much strengthened our financial platform in a real and important way.
My experience, for 18 years as an investment banker has been very helpful in terms of bringing those skills to the company and its financial restructuring.
The key point of what we announced earlier this week is that we’ve successfully reached an agreement with our debt providers, our banking debt providers, that pushes back the maturity of that debt 3 years, it wasn’t due until 2022 and it’s now due, final maturity, in 2025. More than that, we’ve actually rolled up the interest, the coupon, to that maturity so there’s no cash outlay associated with that debt in the months and years ahead until maturity. That provides us with a great deal more flexibility, it preserves cash and allows us to reinvest that cash into growth opportunities.
In addition to that bank debt, we’ve also engaged very constructively with our bondholders, that’s ongoing and we hope to be in a position to announce a successful full restructuring in the weeks ahead.
Q4: Can you tell us about the benefits of having production assets at the moment? What does the cashflow allow you to do?
A4: So, I think there are 2 very important key positives, with our debt issues resolved in the near term, the cashflow allows us to invest for growth in the portfolio. As I have already said, our unique portfolio provides a great deal of running room with lower risk opportunities, we need capital to get after that. Now, pushing back the debt, preserving that capital, invest that capital to really drive production growth and that’s near term, straight to cash flow and it’s very positive.
Secondly, with our immediate production, this is not production that’ll be in the future, it’s stuff we’re getting out the ground now, we are immediately leveraged to the improving commodity cycle. So, if one is positive about commodity prices from the lows that we’re at at the moment, we are a great investment, we will see direct material impact on our cashflow from an improving commodity cycle.
Q5: I think you’ve already hinted at this but what are the big ticket operational and financial news items that investors should focus on going forward?
A5: We’re very fortunate actually that there are plenty of items in the pipeline that can really catapult Echo Energy forward so I’ll list them and go through them in a bit of detail.
The improving market outlook means that we can now switch on wells that we shut-in earlier in the year. We started this year with production of 2,500 boe per day and we hope to be there pretty quickly once we reactivate all of those wells and that’s something we’re doing and will be announcing in the days and weeks ahead.
In addition to that, we’ve got our workover programme. This is further boosting production as you go in and recommission wells that have previously been producing in th