All this seems like extremely good news to me. We know from the shareholders conference call on 9th April 2021 that the company always planned to do three workovers on Ezzaouia in order to increase the production there by 500 bopd – resulting in a net production to Zenith of 450bopd in total and increase of 240bopd from current production rates.
We also know from the same call that the budget for the three workover drills is $1.2 million which is well within the costings of the E2.1 million that has been borrowed – leaving $1.3 million still available for acquisitions.
The other really interesting thing about this RNS was the announcement that the company intends to make the capital repayments to the loan from the oil production rather that the use of the shares (which have of course had to be issued as a back-up). This makes total sense. The total value of the loan in $ is $2.5 million plus $125,000 in the arrangement fees – total $2,625,000 which means that the monthly repayments would be $437,500 per month.
Given that the company has also just raised 5.4 million NOK ($650,000) via the warrants announced on April 30th and also 6million NOK ($720,000) via the recent institutional investment we know that the company has plenty of money to cover the first three months of any repayments.
In addition to this we should not forget that Ezzaouia is also generating oil for Zenith as we speak at a rate of 210bopd. At an average oil price of $65 this is a gross revenue of $410,000 per month. If we assume that operating costs are approx. $30 per barrel (which is an estimate) then this should generate a revenue of $220,500 per month – which is enough to pay half of the repayments from existing production. It is worth noting that these calculations do not include the 80bopde of condensate that are currently generated at El Bibane and which could potentially contribute another $84,000 per month of net cash flow.
Since we know we are doing three workovers in Ezzaouia and targeting production of another 240bopd from these we can estimate that each workover should deliver approximately 80bopd assuming they are successful. If we make the conservative assumption that each workover will take two months to do (and that the cost for production is also $30 per barrel) then we can assume that each workover will deliver $84,000 in free cashflow each month. Including the El Bibane 80bopde then after 4 months Zenith would be generating enough money from Tunisia alone to service this debt. After 6 months then the company would be generating enough to do this from Ezzaouia alone.
In conclusion – assuming the worse case scenario that every workover takes a full two months to complete and the company does not want to spend cash but would rather pay for the loan in shares then Zenith would be able to pay $300,000 from oil revenues in months 1 and 2 (Ezzaouia and El Bibane producing 290bopd between them). This would mean that:
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In month 1 the company would have to issue $140,000 worth of shares.
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In month 2 the company would also have to issue $140,000 worth of shares.
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By month 3 the next 80bopd should be online (total 370bopd) and have generated a full month worth of revenue so the company would only have to issue $60,000 worth of shares.
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In month 4 the company would also have to issue $60,000 worth of shares.
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By month 5 the second 80bopd should be online (total 450bopd) and have generated a full month worth of revenue so the company would be able to pay back the loan in full just from oil revenues
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Month 6 the payment would also be made in full.
By these calculations the maximum that the company would have to issue in shares would be $400,000 (3.3million NOK) and this is only if they did not want to spend any of the company cash reserves.