Todays announcement of the final results from Petro Matad (LON:MATD) for the year to end December 2022 contained no surprises by the Mongolian oil company.
The group’s net loss after tax was $2.95m (loss $2.1m).
Operationally, the company is drilling ahead at Velociraptor-1, and making steady progress on securing the consents in order to begin its development programme on Heron.
Petro Matad holds 100% working interest and the operatorship of two Production Sharing Contracts with the government of Mongolia – Block XX which has an area of 218 sq km in the far eastern part of the country, and Block V which has an area of 7,937 sq km in the central part of the country.
The big focus is upon the Velociraptor-1 exploration well in the Taats Basin of Block V which was spudded on 13 June, targeting an inversion anticline prospect estimated to have 200m barrels of resource potential.
Encouraging results in the Velociraptor prospect would significantly de-risk two adjacent prospects on the Raptor Trend which together have Mean Prospective Recoverable Resource potential of an additional 375 MMbo.
Analyst Opinion – values range 14.5p to 17p a share
Analyst Craig Howie at Shore Capital, the group’s NOMAD and Joint Broker, states that he continues to see a very exciting time ahead for Petro Matad in news flow terms.
The Block XX arduous process to resolve the land access issue continues, with Howie looking forward to further updates regarding its resolution.
He is now expecting an initial result from Velociraptor-1 next month, believing that it could be one of the most important exploration wells to be drilled in the AIM-listed exploration and production sector this year.
Shore Capital sees considerable running room for the shares, maintaining its Risked NAV estimate of 14.5p for the shares.
Analyst Daniel Slater over at Zeus Capital, Joint Broker to the company, considers that Velociraptor is a potentially very significant catalyst for Petro Matad, with steep upside on success, and expects this to be the focus for the stock over the coming weeks.