How much cash does Journey 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. Journey's year end 2025 report shows 49.5 million boe of proved reserves and 86.3 million boe of proved plus probable. The company states reserve life indices of 11.5 years proved and 18.0 years on a 2P basis using forecast volumes; against the 11,261 boe a day actually produced in 2025 the 2P figure works out to 21 years, which is what the model uses.

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, 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

Journey's updated 2026 guidance of 10,300 to 10,700 boe a day sits below 2025's 11,261 average as capital shifts to the Duvernay joint venture and the power plants, so the growth dial starts at 0 per cent; the power build out is the upside case, not the base case.

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$46M; divide by 67.48M 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

• Operating cash flow, cash interest paid, lease payments, capital spending and acquisitions for every year from 2021 to 2025 were hand-checked on 1 September 2026 against the audited annual financial statements on journeyenergy.ca; each year's statement of cash flows was cross-footed against its own subtotals, and the lease figures were confirmed against the lease obligation notes.
• The history is five fiscal years, fewer than the eight this model prefers, because aggregated coverage for Journey starts at 2021. Averages therefore use five years, and 2021 was a post COVID recovery year with almost no drilling, which flatters that year's spare cash.
• Capital spending is the audited cash additions to petroleum and natural gas properties, exploration assets and administrative assets from the investing sections; it runs below the company's stated exploration and development budgets in some years because accrued costs settle later. The acquisitions column is the audited cash spent on acquisitions net of disposition proceeds: 4.4 million in 2021, 65.3 million gross in 2022 (the year of the 112.5 million Enerplus asset purchase, partly funded by a 45 million vendor note and shares, so cash out was smaller than the headline), a slightly net buying 2023, and modest net selling in 2024 and 2025.
• The power generation side business is real but young: roughly 55 million dollars invested through 2025 (13.9 million in 2024 and 16.5 million in 2025 are inside the capital line), the Gilby plant made first power sales on 24 June 2026, Mazeppa is deferred to August 2027, and the small Countess facility was sold in June 2026. Almost none of the power cash flow is in this history yet.
• Interest is the cash interest paid from the audited supplementary cash flow notes.
• Lease payments are the audited financing-section payments on office, equipment and vehicle leases, between 0.3 and 0.8 million a year; lease liabilities are about 2 million dollars or less.
• Net debt is total debt less cash and includes lease liabilities. Journey's own measure also counts the working capital balance and values the convertible debentures differently: 57.0 million at year end 2021, 98.8 at 2022, 61.7 at 2023, 60.3 at 2024, 50.6 at 2025 and 57.8 million at 30 June 2026, versus the 49.7, 79.0, 44.7, 46.4, 49.6 and 45.6 million used here.
• No dividends or buybacks have been paid in these years.
• 2022 and 2021 net income include large non-cash items (deferred tax recoveries and impairment reversals), so reported earnings overstate cash in those years; the cash columns are the fairer read.
• The 67.48 million share count is basic shares; the company's own net asset value arithmetic uses 70.3 million fully diluted. The decommissioning liability on Journey's mature wells is not captured here; the company guides about 7.7 million a year of asset retirement spending.
• Analyst targets: average C$6.19 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.