Canacol Posts $25MM Loss on Deferred Tax Payment

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Canacol Posts $25MM Loss on Deferred Tax Payment

Canacol Energy Ltd. has reported $25.4 million, or $0.75 per share, in net loss for the fourth quarter (Q4), compared to a net profit of $29.9 million for the same three-month period in 2023. The natural gas exploration and production company, based in Canada but operating in Colombia, attributed the gap to a deferred income […]

Canacol Energy Ltd. has reported $25.4 million, or $0.75 per share, in net loss for the fourth quarter (Q4), compared to a net profit of $29.9 million for the same three-month period in 2023.

The natural gas exploration and production company, based in Canada but operating in Colombia, attributed the gap to a deferred income tax expense of $28.9 million for Q4 2024 and a deferred income tax recovery of $31.7 million for Q4 2023.

However, Canacol’s adjusted earnings before interest, depreciation, amortization and exploration for Q4 2024 rose 43 percent year-on-year to $76.1 million, according to results published online by the company. That is thanks to a higher operating netback, offset by lower realized contractual volumes.

Operating netback grew 39 percent year-over-year to $6.12 per thousand cubic feet in Q4 2024. “The increase is due to an increase in average sales prices, net of transportation expenses, offset by an increase in royalties”, Canacol said.

Revenues, net of royalties and transport expenses, increased 23 percent to $98.3 million. Canacol attributed the increase to higher sales prices, offset by lower sales volumes.

Realized contractual gas sales volumes fell 4 percent year-on-year to 158 million cubic feet a day.

Net capital expenditures dropped to $28.6 million, from $72.2 million for Q4 2023. “The decrease is due to reduced spending on land and seismic, workovers, and drilling and completion”, Canacol said.

It ended the year with $79.2 million in cash and cash equivalents and $45.5 million in working capital surplus.

“The Corporation expects that commodity pricing will remain strong for the remainder of 2025, and for this reason, in 2025, the Corporation lowered its take-or-pay volumes to maximize exposure to the spot sales market”, Canacol said.

“In line with maintaining and growing Canacol’s reserves and production in its core assets in the LMV [Lower Magdalena Valley), the Corporation plans to optimize its production and increase reserves by drilling up to 11 exploration and three development wells, installing new compression and processing facilities as required, and completing workovers of producing wells in its key gas fields”.

Canacol had 105.1 million barrels of oil equivalent (MMboe) in proven and probable reserves at the end of 2024. Proven developed producing reserves stood at 11.9 MMboe. Proven developed but not producing reserves totaled 26.4 MMboe. Proven undeveloped reserves were 6.3 MMboe, according to a separate report by Canacol.

“During the year ended December 31, 2024, the Corporation recorded increases in certain reserve categories due to both new gas discoveries and positive technical revisions of existing producing gas fields”, Canacol said.

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PEAK:AIO adds power, density to AI storage server

There is also the fact that many people working with AI are not IT professionals, such as professors, biochemists, scientists, doctors, clinicians, and they don’t have a traditional enterprise department or a data center. “It’s run by people that wouldn’t really know, nor want to know, what storage is,” he said. While the new AI Data Server is a Dell design, PEAK:AIO has worked with Lenovo, Supermicro, and HPE as well as Dell over the past four years, offering to convert their off the shelf storage servers into hyper fast, very AI-specific, cheap, specific storage servers that work with all the protocols at Nvidia, like NVLink, along with NFS and NVMe over Fabric. It also greatly increased storage capacity by going with 61TB drives from Solidigm. SSDs from the major server vendors typically maxed out at 15TB, according to the vendor. PEAK:AIO competes with VAST, WekaIO, NetApp, Pure Storage and many others in the growing AI workload storage arena. PEAK:AIO’s AI Data Server is available now.

SoftBank to buy Ampere for $6.5B, fueling Arm-based server market competition

SoftBank’s announcement suggests Ampere will collaborate with other SBG companies, potentially creating a powerful ecosystem of Arm-based computing solutions. This collaboration could extend to SoftBank’s numerous portfolio companies, including Korean/Japanese web giant LY Corp, ByteDance (TikTok’s parent company), and various AI startups. If SoftBank successfully steers its portfolio companies toward Ampere processors, it could accelerate the shift away from x86 architecture in data centers worldwide. Questions remain about Arm’s server strategy The acquisition, however, raises questions about how SoftBank will balance its investments in both Arm and Ampere, given their potentially competing server CPU strategies. Arm’s recent move to design and sell its own server processors to Meta signaled a major strategic shift that already put it in direct competition with its own customers, including Qualcomm and Nvidia. “In technology licensing where an entity is both provider and competitor, boundaries are typically well-defined without special preferences beyond potential first-mover advantages,” Kawoosa explained. “Arm will likely continue making independent licensing decisions that serve its broader interests rather than favoring Ampere, as the company can’t risk alienating its established high-volume customers.” Industry analysts speculate that SoftBank might position Arm to focus on custom designs for hyperscale customers while allowing Ampere to dominate the market for more standardized server processors. Alternatively, the two companies could be merged or realigned to present a unified strategy against incumbents Intel and AMD. “While Arm currently dominates processor architecture, particularly for energy-efficient designs, the landscape isn’t static,” Kawoosa added. “The semiconductor industry is approaching a potential inflection point, and we may witness fundamental disruptions in the next 3-5 years — similar to how OpenAI transformed the AI landscape. SoftBank appears to be maximizing its Arm investments while preparing for this coming paradigm shift in processor architecture.”

Nvidia, xAI and two energy giants join genAI infrastructure initiative

The new AIP members will “further strengthen the partnership’s technology leadership as the platform seeks to invest in new and expanded AI infrastructure. Nvidia will also continue in its role as a technical advisor to AIP, leveraging its expertise in accelerated computing and AI factories to inform the deployment of next-generation AI data center infrastructure,” the group’s statement said. “Additionally, GE Vernova and NextEra Energy have agreed to collaborate with AIP to accelerate the scaling of critical and diverse energy solutions for AI data centers. GE Vernova will also work with AIP and its partners on supply chain planning and in delivering innovative and high efficiency energy solutions.” The group claimed, without offering any specifics, that it “has attracted significant capital and partner interest since its inception in September 2024, highlighting the growing demand for AI-ready data centers and power solutions.” The statement said the group will try to raise “$30 billion in capital from investors, asset owners, and corporations, which in turn will mobilize up to $100 billion in total investment potential when including debt financing.” Forrester’s Nguyen also noted that the influence of two of the new members — xAI, owned by Elon Musk, along with Nvidia — could easily help with fundraising. Musk “with his connections, he does not make small quiet moves,” Nguyen said. “As for Nvidia, they are the face of AI. Everything they do attracts attention.” Info-Tech’s Bickley said that the astronomical dollars involved in genAI investments is mind-boggling. And yet even more investment is needed — a lot more.

Microsoft will invest $80B in AI data centers in fiscal 2025

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