How much cash does Questerre 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.

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

Questerre's stated near term priority is restoring PX Energy's profitability rather than growing output, and it has published no production growth guidance, so the growth dial starts at 0 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$68M; take off the C$36M cost of cleaning up the wells if that switch is on; divide by 452.763M 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

• Quebec is legislatively stranded. Quebec's 2022 law banned oil and gas exploration and production in the province, so Questerre's large Utica gas discovery cannot be developed; the assets are carried at zero and the company is pursuing a damages claim. In January 2026 the economics of the Quebec assets were spun into separately listed Series 2 Preferred Shares (Euronext Growth Oslo: QGAS, 45.3 million outstanding), so the TSX common shares valued here no longer carry the Quebec claim at all.
• The company transformed in September 2025 when it bought PX Energy in Brazil and consolidated it. PX carries US$80 million face value of 10 per cent secured bonds (C$112.2 million carrying value at 30 June 2026) that are non recourse to Questerre itself, plus contingent consideration, pending share issuances and other acquisition liabilities of roughly $47 million that are not counted in net debt here.
• Net debt now is the PX bonds' carrying value less cash at 30 June 2026. Before 2025 net debt is the credit facilities carrying value on each year's audited balance sheet less cash and cash equivalents; most of those years were net cash. Restricted cash ($7.5 to $7.7 million over 2019 to 2021, $3.5 million in 2025) and the short term deposits of $15.2 million at mid 2026 are not netted against debt. The residual 2022 to 2024 facility balances of $33 to $49 thousand sat on an otherwise undrawn $16 million demand facility.
• Interest paid is the gross cash interest deducted inside operating activities in the audited statements. The 2017 report netted it against interest received ($0.62 million net); the restated comparative in the 2018 statements discloses the gross $0.77 million used here, and the 2019 statements put 2018 at $0.59 million paid with $0.54 million received. Interest paid was zero in 2023 and 2024 because Questerre had no debt and earned interest on its cash. The $0.34 million paid in 2025 covers only about three months of PX bond interest; the bonds accrue at 10 per cent on US$80 million, so future cash interest will be far higher than anything in this history.
• The 2024 column follows the restated comparative in the audited 2025 statements (operating cash flow of $13.669 million); the original 2024 report printed $13.673 million under its older presentation, a $4 thousand difference.
• The 2025 acquisitions figure is negative because PX Energy and Red Leaf arrived with more cash than was paid out in the period; the price was mostly bonds assumed, shares issued and contingent payments. The 2017 purchase of the Red Leaf equity stake ($10.3 million) is treated as an investment, not an acquisition.
• The 2025 net loss of $78.9 million is dominated by $49.8 million of impairments on the Kakwa and Antler properties in Alberta, not Quebec. Kakwa Central was then sold for $23.5 million in May 2026, after these statements.
• Production is as the company reports it: Canadian wells plus, from late 2025, PX Energy volumes that come from oil shale mining and refining rather than conventional wells. The jump to 3,711 boe a day in 2025 is the Brazil acquisition plus new Kakwa North wells, not organic growth.
• No consolidated reserve figure is available in the sources used, so the producing life defaults to 20 years rather than being computed from reserves.
• The 452.8 million share count is common shares issued at 30 June 2026. About 40 million stock options at a $0.27 average exercise price were also outstanding, and further shares are issuable for the PX acquisition.
• Lease payments are zero before 2019 because IFRS 16 took effect that year.

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.