How much cash does Bonterra really make, and what is a share of it worth?

The words on this page

Real cash (true cash)

What was left in the bank each year after every bill, every tax payment and every well drilled. Not profit, and not "cash flow" as companies usually quote it, which leaves the drilling out. The strictest number there is.

Required return

The yearly return you insist on for taking the risk. A dollar promised in ten years is worth less than a dollar today; this rate says how much less. 9% is a common professional figure for a large Canadian producer; the reserve engineers use 10%.

Well life (reserve life)

How long the wells keep producing. After the life you choose, nothing is counted. Sproule evaluated 87.8 million boe of proved reserves and 109.7 million boe of proved plus probable at 31 December 2025. The company states reserve life indices of 15.5 years proved and 19.4 years on a 2P basis, which match the arithmetic against 2025's average production of 15,513 boe a day.

What a share is worth

Every future year's cash, shrunk back to today's dollars at your required return, added up, less the debt, less the cost of cleaning up the wells, divided by the number of shares. Pay less than this and you earn more than your required return; pay more and you earn less.

Where the default growth comes from

Bonterra's 2026 guidance of 16,600 to 16,800 boe a day sits about 8 per cent above 2025's 15,513, helped by the December 2025 Bonanza tuck-in, and production has compounded near 5 per cent a year since 2021, so the growth dial starts at 5 per cent.

The arithmetic, step by step

1. Count the real cash each past year: cash generated by operations as reported, plus interest paid put back, minus rent on leases, minus every dollar spent on wells and plants. Buying and selling assets is shown separately.
2. Project it. The starting cash you choose (an average of the history, or the latest year) grows at your growth dial for ten years, then at the long-run rate for as long as the wells keep producing. Nothing is counted after the well life ends.
3. Bring it back to today. Each year's cash is shrunk by your required return, counted at mid-year because cash arrives through the year rather than on 31 December.
4. Turn it into a share value. Add up the shrunk cash; take off net debt of C$171M; take off the C$91M cost of cleaning up the wells if that switch is on; divide by 35.93M shares.
5. Work it backwards. "The growth today's price assumes" is the ten-year growth rate at which this start is worth exactly the share price.

Where the numbers come from

• Every history year has been hand-checked line by line against the audited financial statements in Bonterra's 2022, 2024 and 2025 annual reports (each also carries the prior year as comparative, so all five years are covered), and the point-in-time figures against the Q2 2026 interim report, all downloaded from bonterraenergy.com.
• The history is five fiscal years, fewer than the eight this model prefers, because aggregated coverage for Bonterra starts at 2021. Averages therefore use five years.
• Interest is the cash interest paid per the audited cash flow statements: 21.22, 14.28, 19.72, 17.82 and 10.93 million for 2021 through 2025. Interest expense was 23.27, 15.48, 19.72, 17.82 and 16.84 million; 2025's gap is about five months of coupon accrued on the 10.5 per cent second lien subordinated notes, which pay cash each January and July, so the December year end sits mid coupon. Total finance costs, adding accretion on the decommissioning liability and debt discounts, ran 21.6 to 28.4 million a year.
• The audited statements show no lease liabilities on any balance sheet and no lease payments in any financing section across the five years; under Bonterra's policy its short term, variable and oil and gas extraction leases are expensed, so the zeros are genuine rather than undisclosed.
• Net debt is total debt less cash, from the audited balance sheets; cash was nil at every year end, so it equals total carrying debt (bank debt plus the subordinated debt, debentures, term debt and notes). Bonterra also held small current investment portfolios at the 2021 to 2023 year ends (0.19, 2.03 and 1.63 million) that are not netted here. Bonterra's own measures count the working capital deficit too: net debt of 179.0 million and adjusted net debt of 179.9 million at year end 2025, and 195.1 and 192.5 million at 30 June 2026, versus the 176.44 and 170.75 used here. Mid 2026 debt was 34.5 million of bank debt and 136.2 million of subordinated notes.
• Capital spending is additions to property, plant and equipment plus exploration and evaluation spending per the audited investing sections: 101.08 and 69.93 million for 2024 and 2025, the same figures the company calls development capital. The acquisitions line is cash acquisitions net of property disposal proceeds: the 23.59 million Charlie Lake purchase of March 2024 and the 15.29 million Bonanza purchase of December 2025, less small proceeds each year including 2.04 million of 2025 non-core dispositions. An August 2026 tuck-in of 4.6 million falls outside these years.
• No dividends have been paid since the suspension in 2020. The 4.39 million of 2025 buybacks is per the audited financing section: 2.667 million repurchasing 749,900 shares for cancellation at an average of 3.56 dollars under the NCIB, plus 1.725 million of shares purchased into trust for compensation plans.
• Diluted weighted shares are the weighted average diluted counts from the audited earnings per share notes.
• The 35.93 million share count is basic shares outstanding at 30 June 2026 (35,925,193 per the Q2 2026 interim statements); weighted diluted shares were about 37.2 million in the second quarter of 2026.
• The audited 2025 balance sheet carries a decommissioning liability of 90.82 million (5.55 current, 85.27 long term), captured in the aro field so the model's clean-up toggle can subtract it; by 30 June 2026 it had risen to 97.76 million.
• Analyst targets: average C$8.81 across 4 analysts (stockanalysis.com analyst consensus (S&P Global), 28 August 2026).

For the technically minded

The method is the one used to evaluate capital projects, from Ted Lawrence, The Business Guide to Economic Evaluations: Projects, Leases, Tariffs and Acquisitions (2017). "Real cash" is the book's project cash flow (chapter 3) with depreciation, debt servicing and debt-like leases restructured out (chapters 4, 5 and 19); short operating leases stay in as a cost of producing, a chapter 19 judgment. The value per share follows the share-purchase evaluation of chapter 20: present value of the company's cash flows at the cost of capital (chapter 10), mid-year discounting (chapter 12), plus non-required assets, less net debt and the decommissioning liability. "What you gain or lose" is the bid-curve NPV of chapter 20; "when you get your money back" is the discounted payout of chapter 13; the bars follow the project profile of chapter 6. The reverse solve on growth is a plain reverse DCF.

Discount-rate anchors: 9% is a common cost-of-equity figure for a large Canadian producer and 10% is the reserve-report convention (PV10). The long-run rate defaults to 0% here: a depleting resource should not be assumed to grow forever, so anything above zero is a judgment you make with the dial.