Q4 2023 Talos Energy Inc Earnings Call
Participants
Jordan Kaiser; Director of Corporate Finance; Talos Energy Inc
Tim Duncan; Founder, President, CEO; Talos Energy Inc
Sergio Maiworm; Senior VP & CFO; Talos Energy Inc
Nathaniel Pendleton; Analyst; Stifel
Michael Scialla; Analyst; Stephens
Jeff Robertson; Analyst; Water Tower Research LLC
Tim Rezvan; Analyst; KeyBanc Capital Market
Presentation
Operator
Good day, and welcome to the Talos Energy Fourth Quarter 2023 earnings call, all participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal the conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions to ask a question. You may press star, then one on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded.
I would now like to turn the conference over to Jordan Kaiser, Director of Corporate Finance. Please go ahead.
Jordan Kaiser
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings conference call. Joining me today to discuss our results are Tim Duncan, President and Chief Executive Officer, Sergio Myron, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and Robin Fielder, Executive Vice President, low-carbon strategy and Chief Sustainability Officer.
Before we start, I'd like to remind you that our remarks will include forward-looking statements actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by these forward-looking statements and factors that could cause these results to differ materially are set forth in yesterday's press release and on our Form 10 K for the period ending December 31st, 2023 filed yesterday with the SEC. Forward-looking statements are based on assumptions as of today, and we undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events.
During this call, we may present GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures is included in yesterday's press release filed with the SEC and available on our website.
And now I'd like to turn the call over to Tim.
Tim Duncan
Thanks, Jordan, and thanks to everyone for joining the call. As a reminder, we're going to use our earnings deck that you can pull from our website for a start that deck on Page 3, on the left side, here and talk about recent developments, and it's been a really busy three months to start with the solid financial and operating quarter that were talked about on the next slide, a lot of this was due to bringing on Venus and Lime Rock ahead of schedule and above our own rate expectations. We had three different drilling JVs restructured in the fourth quarter those are all outlined in the appendix. One of those was our activity in the lease sale. A second one was an acreage and prospects swap with BP, Chevron and Hess that there was a large drilling JV acreage area with Repsol. We announced our Q4 transaction that we're super excited about. We spent a lot of time talking about today. We exited the year with our leverage stood at one times and $788 million of liquidity. And then as you walk into January, we were able to do a refinancing of our high-yield notes and extending our maturities and lowering our borrowing cost. And then we're super proud of that effort. We're really gets interesting to me is on the right side of the page as we start to outline our 2024 objectives, but we're talking about a quarter north is owning those assets for nine months out of the year as we anticipate closing that transaction in March. But even with only owning those assets in nine months, we're talking about a 35% to 40% increase from a year over year basis. On production. But with that, an actual lowering of our capital expenditures, that's going to allow us to generate meaningful free cash flow.
And with that free cash flow, will we expect to pay down debt by approximately $400 million and then year end 2024, with the leverage that at one time, we're still going to invest in our upstream projects, and we've got a nice mix of risk and reward that we'll talk about on the drilling calendar. Those projects are outlined in the appendix, certainly still going to pursue accretive M&A. But what's not in this guidance is specific capital related to our TLCS. business. And we're proud of being a first mover there, and we're proud of the portfolio we've built I think we disclosed in earlier calls, we had a capital raise process. And what we find out is that through that process, it presented optionalities that we can really think about a full strategic alternatives process, and we're going to explore that as well. And I think this really comes through of us prioritizing capital allocation around free cash flow generation in the upstream business in 2024.
So as we turn to page 4 and before we turn our attention to 2024, let's talk about the quarter. We had in the fourth quarter of 2023. In the fourth quarter, we produced 67,700 barrels equivalent a day of production. That is 76% oil and 83% liquids. Total corporate adjusted EBITDA was $249 million. But I should note the upstream adjusted EBITDA was $260 million, leading to a net back EBITDA margin of approximately $42 of BOE. Capex was $174 million, which is actually a little lighter than we expected, allowing us to generate $27 million of adjusted free cash flow. As I mentioned earlier, we exited the year at one times levered now as we start to think about 2024 and because we were able to bring on Venus and Lime Rock a little earlier than expected, we exited the year on the tower side at about 75,000 barrels equivalent a day now as we pull in quarter north and think about what that business was doing, both those businesses combined in January, we were producing 106,000 barrels equivalent a day. And I want to anchor that, as I hand it over to Sergio later to talk about our production guide.
So moving to Page 5, let's talk about Venus and lime rock and why we think it's such an important reflection of our strategy. You've got an image of the facility on the left. And again, it's really one of the anchor facilities in that part of the Gulf of Mexico. But as you shift the story to the right and you look at the graph, what you see is kind of the strategy and action. First and foremost, the dash curve represents what we underwrote the transaction from there. The team was able to work on asset management projects. We were able to attract some third-party volumes into the facility. But more importantly, we were looking for drilling inventory and that drilling inventory effort manifested in our ability to pull in Venice in Lime Rock and the exciting part about that is what you see in the yellow on the far right side of the glass or of the graph. That is the impact of that finishing line rock production. And what we're noting and what we talked about in our release is this facility will now see the highest oil volumes and production through this facility than it's seen over the last 15 years.
Let's turn to page 6 and go through the quarter more transaction. This is a slide many of you've seen on the call. We did related to the transaction, and we'll start on the right side of the page. These assets should produce approximately 30,000 barrels equivalent a day in 2024 keeping in mind that we expect to close this deal in the month of March. And what we're guiding here is nine months of production. It's 75% oil weighted and over 95% operated to great fit operationally and strategically, and it's a highly accretive transaction. One of the reasons it's accretive, it's because we think it will lower our corporate base decline, and that's influenced by cap my success, we also think we can unlock $50 million of annual synergies. We think it's going to long term, be credit accretive and credit enhancing. And we think there's a good portfolio of prospects, again anchored by CATMI. and a lot of the assets they have in the Mississippi Canyon core area for us. If we move to page 7, we visually see how these assets layover. So our acreage is in blue in the quarter, Northridge quarter, North acreages in gold. You can see key facilities for both sides. And so what you see here is a combination, again of the strategy. We have a lot of key infrastructure. It's oil weighted. There's a lot of seismic and a lot of acreage. In fact, if you look to the right side of the page, when you put the companies together, it's over $216 million barrels of proved equivalent reserves for the total proved value of over $5 billion. In fact, just the PDP value alone at SEC prices is $4.2 billion. As we continue to aggregate acreage, we find ourselves now being the fifth largest operator in the Gulf of Mexico and the fourth largest by acreage. We think that puts us in a great position to execute the strategy that we believe in.
So let's go to Slide 8. And before I talk about the capital program for the year, I want to start remind reminded the earlier comments that was nine months of owning quarter, nor do we expect to increase year over year production by 35% to 40%. And if we think about that in a similar price environment, we think about a similar increase in our revenue generation as well. But yet our CapEx for 2024, we expect to go down if we isolated upstream CapEx alone, that would be lower than that guide. The midpoint of that guide would be lower than we were in 2023. If we look at P&A and decommissioning guidance that we expect to be materially lower than we were in 2023. And we hope that's aided by our recent joint venture with Helix that helps us have more cost efficiencies in our P&A capital program. If we think about that on a reinvestment rate, what we're talking about is 45% to 50%. If we're excluding P&A in the upstream business, 55% to 60%. If we're including P&A again, we'll spend more time talking about the drilling program. As always, we have a robust asset management program, and we're certainly going to lean in and think about new seismic expenditures with all the new acreage we're getting through the quarter our transaction.
So let's go to page 9 and dig into the capital program and look at our rig program. You've got a nice mix and range of risk and reward some development projects, including the lobster waterflood. We have some exploitation ideas, including what we're doing at home steep and what we're doing at Ewing Bank nine 53 on a non-operated basis. And then we have the nearest project, which has a high impact prospect that if successful has $100 million to $300 million barrel type of target rates.
So to dive into more details and related to guidance, I'm going to hand it over to Sergio.
Sergio Maiworm
Thanks, Tim. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our call this morning. Turning to page 10 of the presentation, we are very pleased with the financing transactions that we executed earlier in this year, we refinanced our old bonds and raised additional capital to close on the quarter North acquisition at very attractive rates. We've moved our maturities out of 2026 and move them all over to 2029 and 2031. That was a significant process that we went through, and we're very pleased with the results on the bottom right of the page, I just wanted to highlight one thing. We're very pleased with attracting and ultimately seeing a large fundamental investor grow their position into the company. That's an investor that truly believes in the strategy of the Company, the strong fundamentals that we have and the management team's ability to execute on that strategy. So we're pretty happy with that.
Overall, we feel like we have a very clean capital structure with very long-dated maturities and an attractive coupon associated with that capital structure. But that's going to serve us well going into the future.
Turning over to page 11, I want to talk a little bit about how we thought about our production guidance for 2024. There are a few moving pieces. So we decided to kind of take a more detailed approach to how we guide production this year. As you can see here on the far left side, on a pro forma basis, the combined business can consistently produce well above 100,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. And on the right side, we show that January was actually in that range. And February looks like it's going to be in that range as well. But because there's some partial year contribution of quarter north and a few planned maintenance projects in 2024 we felt was important to actually walk you through how we arrived at the ultimate guided range that we were estimating for this year. So quickly looking at or walking through that waterfall chart. So we think the business can consistently run between 105,000 and 110,000 barrels a day, and you deduct some of that production for the for the part of the year that we will not have a contribution for quarter north, you deduct a certain portion of what we know we're not going to be producing because we have some maintenance projects ongoing. And we're also accounting for some weather related issues and some potential third party downtimes that we don't have visibility as of now, but it may happen in there. So that leads us to an 87,000 to 93,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day in the in 2024.
On page 12, we're going to discuss our operational and financial guidance for 2024 in a little bit more detail. As Tim alluded to earlier on the call, our production in 24 represents a 35% to 40% growth compared to last year, where our capital expenditures represents a reduction compared to 2023. Those are key metrics that will allow us to generate a significant amount of free cash flow in 2024 and ultimately allowed us to pay down debt of approximately $400 million throughout this year.
So going into a little bit of more of the detail, let's start with production. As we saw on the last slide, we expect production to be between 87,000 and 93,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, which is roughly 70% to 72% oil and 80% liquids. That is a very attractive commodity mix for towers.
On the cash operating expenses of $505 million to $525 million. That includes approximately $15 million of HP. one onetime expenses related to the dry dock that starts now in March the workovers that we have highlighted here, those are activities that will increase production throughout the year. So we think that this is actually a very good investments that's allocated making that up that only represents $45 million to $55 million. And although these are production enhancing activities, they're not capitalized are going to be that they're going to be expense this year. That's why we're breaking it down this way.
On the G&A side, it's $100 million to $110 million. That includes a realization of all of the synergies that we expected from the Advent transaction and a partial realization of the synergies that we expect from the quarter. North transaction remain reminding and provided that the full realization of the synergies related to quarter north is we only expect that to occur at the end of the year. As I said before, our upstream capital expenditures of $565 million to $595 million represents a significant reduction to what we actually spend in 2023 even on a pro forma basis in 2024.
Our P&A and decommissioning costs of 990,000 to $90 million to $100 million in 2024 is a reduction to what we spent in 23. And as you can remember, in 23, there were a lot of non-operated activity that we were not expecting that caught us by surprise this year. We expect to have much more control over that spending So feel good about this estimate this year.
Interest expense of $175 million to $185 million already assumes the material debt paydown throughout the year, as we talked about earlier.
Moving over to page 13, I'll turn that back over to Tim, so he can walk you through all of the capital allocation priorities for this year.
Tim Duncan
I think Sergio and I think by now, it's pretty clear what our priorities are. I mean, our first and foremost priority is to generate a significant amount of free cash flow. And our belief is the increased scale that we achieved through the quarter and our transaction, which also increases our oil weighted portfolio that we believe have high net back margins with coupled with reduced capital program, is going to achieve that goal of generating significant free cash flow.
Now what's interesting about that is we believe that most of the debt we actually utilized in the transaction gets paid back in the first nine months of owning the assets should also generate a very competitive free cash flow yield across the E&P space. We're still investing in the assets, though, and we believe we've got the right mix of development and exploration in our portfolio to generate good organic value. And we're not going to change our ambition and keep our eye on the ball with respect to finding more accretive M&A deals.
So with that, I'll hand it over for questions.
Question and Answer Session
Operator
We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then two. Our first question comes from Nate Pendleton with Stifel. Please go ahead.
Nathaniel Pendleton
Good morning and congrats on the strong quarter and understanding that are somewhat limited in what you can say about the process for TLCS. and can you provide some context around what drove you to change the nature of that capital raise and with some potential outcomes would be.
Tim Duncan
Yes, sure, Nate, and happy to answer that. And thanks for thanks for the question. I think it was a conversion of a convergence of a couple of events. I mean, I think was we mentioned on the remarks as we started the capital raise process. And we've mentioned this, I think on previous calls that interest level was certainly there for private capital, but really there on the strategic side and it really opened up kind of the optionality of what this process could look like. And so put that over on one side and then in the middle of this, we wrapped up this quarter more transaction. And I would tell you we think we have a very accretive free cash flow and generative transaction, and we talked about it on the call the very last statement I made is one that I'm honing in on where really we have an opportunity. If you think about that transaction is a 50 50 debt and equity, some ability to pay back the majority of that debt in the first nine months of owning that asset. So as that TLCS. business grows, the capital requirements are going to grow and we have to really think about how do we prioritize capital allocation. And I think we want to prioritize that on free cash flow generation within the upstream business. We have a process that expanded its optionality and we should probably take advantage of what that looks like. And so I think it's just, again, two different events on two different sides of the house, if you will, between the businesses. We're super excited about the portfolio we've built. We're proud of being a first mover. We also think there's a significant amount of interest on companies to have a little lower cost of capital to withstand some of the capital requirements. So capital allocation, priority decision.
And I think it's the right one, and we'll see where the process leads.
Nathaniel Pendleton
that I think and with the activity outlined on slide 9 and the workovers you have planned, how should we think about the projection trajectory during the year? And the 2024 exit rate?
Tim Duncan
Well, you know, I think, yes, once we saw a couple of things on that, I mean, I saw in one of the notes, the idea of the cash cost going up a little bit. And certainly when you include these workovers, it looks like it's $1.50 kind of on a BOE basis.
Cash costs. I would say, as Sergio said in his remarks, these are PV additive type of projects. They happen to be encompassed in the same proved reserves, which is why they land on the expense side and not the capital side, but that's good. It's a good investment and I think it's something that we wanted to line up, but we're using some of the Helix vessels to do that, you're going to have?
I think what we tried to do in our guidance is really lay out where we end up with respect to, you know, kind of some downtime that we're going to do related to some planned maintenance and repairs, some weather risking. Certainly, as we exit the year, we could exit as we bring these assets in and we could actually probably be relatively flat to where we are today. We have some new wells that are coming online in the first half of next year. So when you get into next year. That's where you start to think about cap my enhancements as we start to think about Sun Spear coming in. So I think this is a year and keep in mind, we've got pretty low reinvestment rate here. And so you're talking about non P&A reinvestment between 45%, 50%. So if we can run these assets relatively flat to where they are today, see some increase in the first half of next year with some of these new projects coming online with that level of reinvestment rate, that level of free cash flow generation, I think we're in a pretty good spot.
Nathaniel Pendleton
Absolutely.
Thanks taking the question.
Operator
The next question comes from Michael Scialla with Stephens.
Michael Scialla
Please go ahead and where you guys stand on that table. You have on page 9 BOE to four deepwater rigs in the second half of this year versus none in the first half realized couple of those are non-op.
And Tim, you talked last quarter about the rig market being pretty tight. Are you anticipating it better availability and better pricing in the second half? And just trying to get a sense of could the timing of some of these prospects move around depending on how the rig market develops?
Tim Duncan
Yes. I love the question, Michael. I think I said yes, I expect it to go down and had three CEOs, call me say, Hell, no, I'm not saying that U.S. and.
Yes, but look, I so let's just look at that slide just for a second. If you look at cap, my West Helms, deep engineers, that's one rig line, just so you understand which one that is. So that's one rig line and so the Ewing Bank is a separate non-operated opportunity, and we have an opportunity to potentially take on another rig as we think about the completions have kept my West and the completion for Sun spear. So there's a little bit of where is the market. There's some optionality we have. We potentially could push that to the right and utilize a different rig line.
So just to make sure we're on the same page, we're not taking on four rigs, certainly operate it. We have a platform rig. We have one deepwater rig commitment another deepwater rig options. So I think we're in a good spot there. And look, I think the rigs are at a pretty high price relative to where we are from a commodity perspective, I think that relationship when the rig inflation was happening and we had commodity markets being fairly constructive and are still fairly constructive, but are they constructive enough to where rig rates are one of the reasons we haven't entered into any long-term contracts, and we're still committed to not doing that for a company our size,
I mean, we've talked about that, Michael in detail and what I think it's important for companies in the Gulf of Mexico that are our size, even as we aspire to be a bigger company, making sure we understand how we think about obligations. And so a big to your rig obligation doesn't make sense for us. So we're playing in different types of windows. But we I think I'm happy with the Windows we've created to execute the program this year.
Michael Scialla
but sounds good of you talked about some sparing. I kept my meal contributing to production next year is there any other of these prospects that could contribute to realize dinners? And it looks like comes deeper probably fairly long-dated, not sure about United States or any of those yet potentially going to contribute next year.
Tim Duncan
So Xylem's DB. Ewing Bank or those classic, you know, think about those like Venus Lime Rock and Sun Spirit, good exploitation similar to field pays in the area broadly, and it's going to require new subsea infrastructure. So those won't contribute next year, this lobster waterfloods and interesting one. So that's born out of the dump floods success that we had in the Phoenix area as we own the lobster assets now for a year and the team really examined every pay zone. There is a big producer in the field that's got a large wet sand right in the column that we think we can utilize to do another one of these quote dump flood type of waterflood projects. You don't get response from that in the first kind of two, three months. You start to get response from that. As you get into the nine month, 12 month, 15 month mark, of I think we could see increased production from the lobster field in 2024, give me five as well because of the project we're initiating this year.
Michael Scialla
Great. I appreciate that, but got it.
Operator
Next question comes from Jeff Robertson with Water Tower Research. Please go ahead.
Jeff Robertson
Thanks. Good morning. Tim, with the types of acreage trades that if that Talos was able to accomplish in 2023. Does that tell you anything about the investment environment in the Gulf of Mexico as you look at 2024 and potentially even 2025 with the type of free cash flow you anticipate?
Tim Duncan
Well, I make sure I understand the question. I'll tried to answer answer. I think I heard Jeff and I didn't make sure you ask it again. But I think what you see in some of these trades is a is a better job, I think, of the operator group in the Gulf of Mexico trying to make sure they're maximizing the value of your acreage. And there's no doubt the pace of lease sales has slowed down. There's a lease sale in the fourth quarter, we were an active participant in that as they slowed down and as we all tried to develop inventory for the outer years, you have to think more broadly about how do we do more business development to make sure we're all pulling our best inventory forward. And so there's still capital that wants to work in the Gulf of Mexico, and there's even new capital that's come into the Gulf of Mexico.
Interesting from a drilling program perspective, how can that capital go to work and how can we make sure we're all being efficient. So I think these three announcements we made in the fourth quarter and I think into the first quarter are reflective of operators trying to do a better job really making sure they've got depth in inventory as they think about 25 through 30, if you will. And these trades will all help build that depth. And so just a straight prospect swapping acreage swap is pretty interesting with BP and Chevron and Hess, they're all different. The Repsol one is really focused on new seismic and new reprocessing around our Neptune facility and then the lease sales that normal activity. And I think we had a map in that press release and a lot of those leases are right by a couple of our facilities and reflective of our strategy of utilizing our infrastructure. So I think it's really about inventory enhancement and inventory development in a situation where you don't have the pace of lease sales that we used to do. We've got a huge acreage position and we've got to figure out how to monetize that the best way possible.
Jeff Robertson
How does the maybe the promote cost or the cost of doing these types of trades or the cost of getting in to prospects? Has that changed much in the last year with the absence of lease sales?
Tim Duncan
No, it hasn't. I wouldn't you know, typically it's gone down. I mean, for us, the big just because of the level of competition has gone down the cost of entry on a lot of these leases has gone down. So I think it's not I think it's not reflective of cost. I don't think these trades are really about kind of swapping opportunities and making sure everyone's got a depth of opportunities and there's some urgency around that. But there's not as large of a promote market as there was when there were simply more activity and more participants more competition for these ideas. I think we've narrowed the basin down to a group of players that are here for the long haul that are focused on inventory development are figuring out how to benefit from each other's inventory more than they are trying to figure out how to benefit other trade specifically.
Jeff Robertson
Thanks. And just a question on the guidance, Sergio, the planned downtime with HP. one is that I presume that's going to be mostly a second quarter of 24 impact?
Sergio Maiworm
That's right, Jeff. It starts in March so there's going to be an impact in the first quarter as well, but it's mostly going to impact second quarter sales.
Tim Duncan
You, Jeff, if you're ever moves you away down to Galveston in the second quarter and you're driving down Broadway anyway, the beach just looked left that protection.
Jeff Robertson
Thank you.
Operator
Next question comes from Tim resin with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Tim Rezvan
Good morning, folks. Thanks for taking my questions. Tim, the $400 million debt reduction is a big number, really sort of validates this acquisition. I was a little surprised there was no commentary on repurchases with a portion of that free cash flow. So I was curious if you could maybe kind of reflect sort of the Board's thoughts on repurchases.
I know you've been willing to do it in the past was shares where they are today. I thought we might see some allocation there. So just any comments would be helpful.
Tim Duncan
Yes, look, I'll provide some comments and Sergio can provide some comments. You know, we did those under 10b-18 and they're optimistic at the time. I think, you know, doing something more prescriptive in that when you're really trying to prioritize free cash flow generation and debt repayment isn't probably the right move. As we thought about that, both Matt and as a management and Board level, I think can we always continue to do some opportunistic things. We had $100 million program out there use [$52], but I don't want to guide to that that's priority. I think our absolute priority is making sure we when you do a transaction like this, making sure you spend those first nine to 12 months getting that balance sheet right back to where you had it. And I think that's just as probably we can have right now. And then look, we are happy with our program, although the reinvestment rate is lower. We like reinvesting in the business, but we reserve the right to always be opportunistic. I think just from a pure prioritization standpoint, debt repayment, is it okay?
Tim Rezvan
Yes, that makes sense. Thanks. And then as my follow-up, I noticed in the release and in the presentation, not a lot of commentary on Zama. We've heard from Pemex recently that they are pushing development since the end of 2024 or 2025. Just curious if you could give us any update on what your understanding of that time line is today.
Tim Duncan
Yes. Look, I think it's a project that I'm always hesitant to have guided because that's just had so many delays. But I mean, I know it's frustrating for us, people following the Company and I can promise you it's frustrating for me, but I would say the projects in a better spot, you know, this is a project that we were operating then obviously, Pemex is operating and we were trying to make sure we had a spot of influence within that structure. And it's not a secret that we were working hard on how to create that influence. Now we have Grupo Carso in there helping as well, and they bring a certain level of expertise that's an enormous industrial player up into Mexico sector. So I think this has to do with really getting the right plan in place and looking at the optionality within that plan. Some of the engineering design work is taking a little longer, but it's at a place of effort to get it right. And I'm okay with that. And I'm okay with and I certainly am thrilled with the partner that we brought in and tell us, Mexico is a co-owner of that business is that subsidiary and Grupo Carso. So it's delayed, but I think it's delayed for the right reasons. I think it's delayed for the benefit of the project. I don't love it, and I think we've actually got a couple of other options that we're looking at, but I think it will yield the best result. And so again, and not look at it easier, honestly, Rob, trying to generate as much free cash flow as I can and show the market that these Gulf of Mexico companies can be significant free cash flow yield players putting taking a little more time to get it right, is probably okay as well.
Tim Rezvan
Okay. So no CapEx this year towards on that for some
Tim Duncan
CapEx will grow some real work happening there, some real engineering design work. There's still an outside chance. This could move in a little bit into 24. But I don't think we have to guide a material amount of CapEx, and I think that's what you saw in the breakdown of our guidance.
Okay.
Tim Rezvan
Appreciate the color that you got next question.
Operator
comes from Jeff Robertson with Water Tower Research. Please go ahead.
Jeff Robertson
Thanks, Tim, just a question on TLCS. Are there any regulatory hurdles that might be cleared in the next six to nine months that would impact the type of valuation that the strategic alternative process could generate. I don't I don't think there are
Tim Duncan
just a couple general regulatory discussions related to any potential M&A, but I don't think we have that here. But Robin, can you think of any?
Yes. Just the main updates we provided last quarter was that we Scott submitted permits over at our harvest been project in Eastern Louisiana for three wells in our white Castle projects that were deemed administratively complete by the EPA late last year.
And since then, the state of Louisiana has received primacy.
And so they now have jurisdiction over that those permits. And so they're now sitting with the state regulatory body, the Louisiana Department of Energy and Natural Resources who is now looking at it. They've got all the applications out on their website. And so we're pleased with that process and look forward to moving into technical review discussions with them. And so that's all been positive.
And then operationally, as you know, we're drilling a couple of wells there with our BiTE you've been partners in that project.
Tim Duncan
Yes. I mean, I think for operationally, the business is moving really at its fastest pace ever. I would tell you, you know it both from a volume perspective and the well that we're drilling there. One of the first offshore dedicated injection wells right up because Jefferson County chevrons teeing up to drill some wells onshore. We have the permits progressing in Louisiana. We have promising Louisiana. So there's a lot of positive movement, which of course, I think led to that optionality as well. So I don't want to dismiss the fact that that business is moving at a full pace. But I had to answer your question, I can't think off the top my head but orders.
Jeff Robertson
Thank you.
Operator
This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Tim DUNCAN for any closing remarks.
Tim Duncan
Yes, thanks. Look, the teams worked really hard over the last three months, and I would applaud them for their efforts and thank them for their efforts. I think hooking up two wells with a full subsea development from discovery to first oil and 13 months is a really big effort, and I'm proud of them, and I'm proud of that execution did it safely without incident. At the same time, our business development teams, putting together JVs that are going to impact how we think about our inventory and 25 through 28, 29. And then obviously, we're super happy with what we did in the quarter nor transaction and how accretive that will be for our shareholders. So a lot of effort in the last 90 days, we might have ruined a couple of holidays, but I appreciate how hard this team works, and I will take a moment to acknowledge them. We hope that this is going to be a year. We see a lot of impact on what these announcements have for the business, and we look forward to chatting with those with you all on future calls.
So thanks for joining
Operator
conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.
