Vista Energy, S.A.B. de C.V. (NYSE:VIST) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Miguel Galuccio: And I will start from the second question. As you know, today, in 2023, we have a plan that basically is same to fulfill the old capacity that we have. And that old capacity, we are going to fulfill it because we are going to be exiting 2023 with 60,000 BOEs, okay, that will allow us to use every single piece of capacity that we have in our facilities and also in the main pipeline that connects with export port in Bahia Blanca. Going forward, as I mentioned before, I mean what we see is that 40% of the capacity that Bahia is going to create, is going to be deliver in 2024 and the rest 60% of that additional capacity is going to be released in 2025. That will allow us to grow further. And to grow further, I mean, in 2024, what today we can think of, is to probably add 0.5-rig.

So to go to a 2-rig program that will take us from 30 wells primarily to 40 wells. But keeping in mind that we always have been in our program, the cash flow generation. This is something that we are always looking at. We basically are aiming to generate cash and to return part of that to our shareholders. And again, I mean when we don’t have additional capacity, the dynamics as we present in our Investor Day, it will be related to how much cash we generate, how much we want to pump into additional activity, and how much we want to return to our shareholders. And of course you see because you run the numbers, that cash generation is going to be so reached that we also have the freedom to continue looking an M&A transactions. So far, what we have done has been very focused on increasing acreage in Vaca Muerta, where we have done very well with the acquisition of Aguada Federal, not only from the economical point of view because we bought core acreage at a very good rate.

But also as the business development team execute this quarter and the transaction that helps us to be a pure player in Vaca Muerta with a very focused organization, reducing our lifting costs and increasing our margins, okay. So again, nothing that you should expect from the M&A point of view, but we always — we did so far looking to how we can improve our numbers and our returns in our margins.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Walter Chiarvesio from Santander.

Walter Chiarvesio: Congratulations for the results. I would like to ask you if you have a more specific breakdown on the CapEx, specifically, the $600 million CapEx, especially between what is facilities this year, what is the direct investment in production . That is my first question. And the second, to make clear is, you are investing in the OldelVal expansion and you’re awarded 31,500 barrels per day with this new expansion. But you mentioned in the presentation that you have a total capacity of 34,300 barrels per day. The difference between this 31,000 and the 34,000 is already something that you have secured? Or is it something that is down year-over-year? Those are my questions.

Miguel Galuccio: So let me give you first a breakdown of the CapEx and hopefully that became more clear to you. So just to give you the breakdown first of 2022 as a baseline to compare with ’22 and ’23. We basically, in 2022, we spent $360 million in Vaca Muerta wells, around $100 million in facilities, there was around USD60 million in others and USD5 million in Mexico. We spent around $540 million in total CapEx. This CapEx is increasing to $600 million in 2023, mainly due to facilities. So when you look at the CapEx in 2023, it’s going to be $380 million in Vaca Muerta wells, the 20 new wells that we put in our plan. Now facilities are from around $100 million to $140 million, that basically includes an upgrade of the 3 main facilities, gathering facilities,compression facilities.