Aqualis ASA (ABL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for listening in as we give our Q4 2020 results and summary of 2020 trading. Apologies, again, that we are unable to give a live broadcast, meaning that we'll not be able to take live Q&A after the presentation. So if you have any queries, please do get in contact with us and we will revert. So my name is David Wells. I will, as usual, be giving these results with Dean Zuzic, our CFO, who will concentrate on the financial performance. On this occasion, I've also asked Will Cleverly, our Renewables Managing Director, to give some perspective on our renewables performance since this is becoming an increasingly robust part of our offering and of which we have a strong focus and high ambitions. Turning to the next slide. I would just like to remind you about our disclaimer because we have some forward-looking statements within this presentation. So turning to Slide 4. I think the title says it all. 2020 was a significant year for us. In spite of all the difficulties and unsettled trading conditions through the effects of COVID, we had a pretty good year. Though we did experience some headwinds in the more material businesses of oil and gas and shipping, our revenues were up, our adjusted EBIT was up, our cash flow from operating activities was up at USD 8.5 million, and we paid out significant dividends. In terms of the market, our renewables division performed very strongly with 59% year-on-year growth, which is in line with the previous years. Coupled with this, we also acquired one of our largest competitors at the latter end of December and effectively doubled the size of our company in terms of both revenues and headcount. We also increased our global footprint and portfolio of services, all at a very accretive value for our shareholders. This is the second time in the last 18 months that we have doubled the size of our company. So really a very transformative year. So where are we now? Pro forma 2020 revenues were at $139.5 million with an adjusted EBIT of USD 8.1 million. We believe this merger will result in significant cost and hopefully revenue synergies and will allow us to grow into a much more efficient and profitable company. Turning to Slide 5. Looking at Q4 2020 as a snapshot. We had a 4% increase in revenues over this time last year to USD 19.6 million, an adjusted EBIT of $1.0 million and on a combined basis, USD 1.4 million. We had a significantly increased cash balance after our merger and achieved an operating cash flow of USD 2.7 million. I'm pleased to say this allows us to propose a dividend of NOK 0.25 per share later in H1 of 2021 after our AGM. Dividends are very much part of our thinking as we aim to return cash to shareholders who continue to support us as we grow our company. Moving to Slide 6. For those of you who don't know our company too well, AqualisBraemar LOC, or ABL as we'll call ourselves going forward, provide high-end consultancy services to the global energy, shipping and insurance markets. We focus on engineering consultancy and general consultancy to the offshore industry, both oil and gas and renewables, and also focus on loss prevention and loss management services. Turning to Slide 7. We separate our business into 4 main business streams. The first is a dedicated renewables division, of which Will will talk about shortly. And then we focus on the more material markets for the offshore oil and gas, where we focus on engineering and consultancy; on shipping, where we provide a worldwide emergency incident response and general survey services; and on adjusting, where we focus on loss adjusting and dispute resolution to both the onshore and offshore energy markets mainly on behalf of underwriters. Moving to Slide 8. So prior to the merger, our strategic vision was quite simple and covered 3 main tenants. The first was to keep ahead of the curve and to continue our expansion into the renewables market as the world gradually migrates from fossil fuels into green energy. Our second area of focus is to maintain our market-leading position within the shipping and oil and gas industries and to improve our profitability. And thirdly, and importantly, to consistently consider our shareholders and return capital through dividends where we can. We stated a very strong ambition that by 2025 we wanted 50% of our revenues to be driven by the renewables sector. I'm pleased to say that after our merger with LOC, we do not intend to change the strategic vision and believe that we can maintain the high-end goals that we're looking to achieve. Moving to Slide 9. So after the merger, we have an increased global footprint, operating now from 67 offices around the world in 39 countries. This is hugely important for a consultancy and hugely important for us during these troubled times. I'm very pleased to say that during the last year, I'm only aware of 4 or 5 occasions where we have not been able to get to site to make an inspection or do a survey or to attend with one of our clients. This has been good for us because our smaller rivals are struggling to achieve that consistency and has also driven us to increase our network of people around the world. And at the moment, we probably have the capability to service our clients from some 300 locations, which is pretty significant. Moving to Slide 10. So looking at these, the left-hand pie chart is AqualisBraemar only. And you can see here that slightly under half our revenues come from oil and gas, a quarter come from shipping and 18% comes from renewables. If we move to the right-hand side, this is the combined new company chart of ABL. You can see here that the distribution is more or less the same, approximately half offshore oil and gas; approximately a quarter, shipping; and fundamentally important, 18% is still renewables. This is what gives us confidence that we can still achieve our high goals, high aims and high ambitions of 50% of our revenues to be driven by renewables by 2025. Moving to Slide 11. Post-merger, our backlog has significantly increased to USD 76 million and continues the trend that we've had over the last few quarters. AB in blue is largely represented by the renewables market since the majority of our work in AqualisBraemar was driven by call-out contracts, which gives us a fairly short-term horizon. I think this chart here really demonstrates the complementary nature of LOC joining our portfolio since they concentrate very much on projects and the provision of marine warranty services in the various oil and gas and renewable sectors. So through this, it will give us more stability and give us a slightly longer time horizon of work that we know we have. Moving to Slide 12. In terms of staff, our numbers have more or less doubled now following the merger with LOC, and we stand at well over 800 full-time equivalents. We have a slight drop in contractor mix, which is primarily related to the seasonal variance for the winter conditions in the Northern Hemisphere, but also LOC have a slightly lower subcontractor mix. Staff numbers are now such that we can probably be regarded as a small mid-tier company, which puts us into the next category in the growth of our company. Moving to Slide 13. These are interesting slides on which we concentrate quite a lot to give us an indication of which way the market is heading. On the left-hand side is focused on E&P spending. When I reported in Q3, we were expecting a 15% drop in E&P growth. Now in Q4, analysts have upgraded those expectations, and we're expecting more like a 0 growth, with a significant uptick in 2022. This gives us quite a lot of confidence that the market is slightly changing. On the right-hand side, we also focus a lot on rigs. This is one of our main business lines, and these also are giving us some confidence. If we look at the dark blue line, the floaters under contract appear to have stabilized at the cyclical low. And look at the green line above, which is on jackups, we can see a slight uptick continues. So I think our expectations are that as we get into the second half of 2021 and certainly, when we get into 2022, we'll see a stronger offshore on our gas market. Already we see slightly stronger conditions in the rig market in Brazil and West Africa, and in the Middle East quite a few rigs, which were taken off contract, are now returning to those contracts post layoff. Moving to the next slide. Just taking you through very quickly what we've done during the course of the year. So we're now talking about, on this slide, AqualisBraemar only. We performed over 500 rig moves around the world, attended in excess of 300 marine warranty projects, working for in excess of 1,400 different clients. That's a pretty heavy portfolio of clients and services that we've completed. On the left-hand side, taking example projects from Australia, which had a very good shady year for us in an office that we started about 2 years ago. This project was a Project Cargo marine warranty attendance, and just an example of some of the work that we've done. Moving to Slide 15. This is a huge project, which was undertaken by LOC. It was started in 2015 and has just been completed post-merger in 2021 in February. It's one of the biggest FIDs in recent history with a final spend in excess of USD 45 billion. It was an enormous project and achieved with the marine warranty surveyors. They completed over 138,000 man hours without any lost time incidents, reviewed over 14,000 documents and more importantly, achieved a revenue of some USD 29 million from a single project. It is an example of the type of work which LOC have been involved with and is one of the attractions that we had of coming together with them. Moving to Slide 16. This covers our shipping section. So in 2020, as AB alone, we received over 1,700 instructions from 450 unique clients, covering a total repair bill of around about USD 750 million. That's a fairly significant section of the market, much of which comes from Lloyd's, but also from many local providers around the world. Within that division, we have a dedicated super yacht department that focuses entirely on super yachts, some of these are more like ships. Here is an example of an unfortunate loss, which occurred in the Middle East of vessel which sank, unfortunately became a constructive total loss. We were involved in both the initial inspections and salvage and finding the wreck removal. Moving to Slide 17. In our adjusting division, we received in excess of 160 instructions globally last year at a time where the market is quite weak. In spite of this, we still managed to expand our services into 3 new countries of Mexico, Malaysia and Russia. The sample project on the left-hand side was undertaken by our Calgary office in Canada. It covers a midstream construction loss to the LNG facility in Canada, showing that not only do we cover upstream but also midstream and increasingly downstream. Moving to Slide 18. I would like, at this point, to pass across to Will Cleverly, who will give a little bit of discussion on renewables.

Many thanks, David. I'd now like to give you an update on the renewables business in AqualisBraemar LOC, which has had another successful quarter of growth with more to come. Next slide, please. The backdrop for offshore wind is excellent. In 2020, despite the pandemic, over $50 billion was invested in offshore wind, up 56% year-on-year and the highest on record. More offshore wind and a more diverse group of offshore wind developers is, of course, good for a consultancy like ours as it increases our number of clients. Interestingly for us, a large proportion of the offshore wind clients in 2020 are oil majors. As AqualisBraemar and LOC, we've worked with these companies for many years, and so it's good news for us to see our trusted partners enter the offshore wind world. Next slide, please. The latest acquisition into the company is East Point Geo, closed last week. East Point Geo complete our geoscience offering to the renewables market and is an example of our appetite to acquire the right companies to grow into new segments of renewables. We're delighted that our long-term alliance partner has joined us as the market for our combined competence is huge. Every offshore wind farm meets the geophysical site investigation conducted. Next slide, please. So on the topic of acquisitions. This, of course, brings us to the fantastic new renewables service offering we can have with LOC onboard. And the next few slides look to the future to show how much more the renewables revenue can grow with this combined unit. Next slide, please. Firstly, it gives us a much greater geographical reach. We already had renewables hubs in the U.K., Germany, Taiwan, U.S. and Brazil, and grew organically in 2020 to add Korea, Japan and Poland to that list. With LOC onboard, we now have, in addition, a strong presence in France through our high-tech LOC brand; in Singapore with our Longitude Engineering House; and have significant MWS presence across the major renewables countries of Vietnam and China. Next slide, please. We can also offer a broader range of technologies. OWC are already leading the way as a consultancy in fixed and floating offshore wind. But we can now add wave and tidal, OTEC and floating solar to the list of technologies provided. Next slide, please. We can also offer a broader range of services across the lifetime of any of these renewable technologies. OWC were already one of the market leaders as owners engineers, consultants and providers of due diligence in the offshore wind space. With LOC onboard, we now have the undisputed market leader in offshore wind MWS; with Innosea, a real focus on research and development; and with Longitude, a strong engineering and design house, giving us the full spectrum of services needed across the renewable space. Next slide, please. So I think this is quite a powerful slide. It shows that with the LOC acquisition, it now gives us 5 routes to market. That's 5x as much revenue for every gigawatt of offshore wind developed. At OWC, we support the developers; Innosea, support the technology providers; Longitude, the EPCIs; and LOC lead the way with MWS and offshore transmission owners. I'll just let that sync in. In 2021, we now have 5x as many routes to market as we did in 2020 in an industry that's growing rapidly year-on-year. Growth in AqualisBraemar LOC renewables revenues is very much anticipated. Next slide, please. Looking back at 2020, we've had a very strong year across all continents and sectors. Here, we show some examples of work that we're particularly proud of in the U.S., the U.K. and China. And we also made significant progress in Asia with work coming in from each of our offices in Taiwan, Japan and Korea. In total, as just OWC, we worked on 37 gigawatts of offshore wind, 9 gigawatts of which within the floating wind sector and these we're carving for ourselves. Our flagship project is the Erebus floating wind -- offshore wind farm in Wales, owned by Total and Simply Blue Energy, where we're the owners' engineer and principal designer. It's worth noting at this stage that these figures do not include LOC's renewables numbers, which are equally impressive. Next slide, please. A couple of example projects to finish. This first one is very pleasing as it's in one of our new offices. We're supporting PKN Orlen in the development of their landmark offshore wind project in Poland, a huge growth market for us. Next slide, please. LOC had another impressive year of MWS winds. I'll just pick out 2 examples from many. Here we are the MWS on the world's largest fixed offshore wind farm, Hornsea One. And if you go to the next slide, here, we are the MWS of what was the world's largest floating wind turbine when installed. And final slide, please. At AqualisBraemar LOC, we are keen to add value to the offshore wind industry, we call home. And the best way to do that is through research and development. We're proud to be members of a Carbon Trust-led Floating Wind JIP looking at optimizing floating offshore wind farms of the future. And with that, I'll hand over to Dean for the financial review. Next slide.

Great. Thank you, Will. Let me just run you through the figures. If we start on the next slide, please. Our revenue for the year -- or for the fourth quarter shows an increase of 4% seasonally compared to the fourth quarter of last year. So we ended the quarter with $19.6 million in revenue. If we add the LOC revenue on top of that, we have almost doubled our total, I mean, size, and Q4 pro forma adjusted with the LOC figures brings us in at $35.7 million, which is a substantial increase and shows the substantial increase of the size of the company. Our adjusted EBIT, and we are adjusting for transaction costs related to the LOC acquisition, came in at $1 million for the legacy AqualisBraemar business. This is an increase from $0.4 million in the same period of last year. If we add LOC on top, $1.4 million was our total adjusted EBIT in quarter 4. Next, please. The segment revenues show a mixed picture. Will just took us through the renewables business. And if we look at both revenues and EBIT, we do see the significant growth that we have -- that we're able to show in our renewables segment. We have an increase of 47% compared to the Q4 of 2019, somewhat down from Q3, but this is just a normal seasonal pattern in the renewables business. EBIT also shows a significant increase. Revenues in the other segments are largely in line with what had in Q4 '19. And this despite the negative impact of the COVID restrictions. Somewhat better in some regions, like the Asia Pacific, the Middle East and lagging development in Europe and in Americas. But as I said, that is largely influenced by the COVID-19 situation. Next slide, please. If we look at our income statement, I mean, P&L, we have gone through the top line numbers. We have shown the revenues up, as I mentioned earlier, by 4% compared to Q4 of 2019, $19.6 million this year compared to $18.8 million of last year. I should mention here before I continue with the numbers is that we are just showing the P&L numbers for the AqualisBraemar Group. LOC was consolidated into the group at the end of the year and will be part of our P&L going forward into 2021, but they are not shown here. Revenues in segments, I mentioned, were largely in line with what we had in Q4 2019. This despite COVID. Adjusted EBIT, $1 million, up from $0.4 million, $0.5 million of, I mean, last year. We are adjusting with $1.3 million in transaction costs in connection with the LOC acquisition. Worth mentioning, the tax costs seem -- are a bit higher this year than what they were last year, but this, again, is a technical result of the transaction costs, which we do not receive any tax deductions for, but we do need to account for them as costs in the P&L according to the EFRS (sic) [ IFRS ] standard. There haven't been any significant changes in our tax percent in the underlying business. And we have announced earlier that we have an approximate tax percent of around 15%. This, of course, depends of where and which jurisdictions the revenues are generated in. But on average, 15% is a tax rate on our underlining business and that has not changed. Next page, please. Our financial position is strong. We ended the year with $30.6 million in cash, adjusted for $15 million in net interest-bearing debt, gives us a positive net interest-bearing debt of $15.1 million. In this number, we also have capitalized leases that need to be taken into account. But all in all, there is significant cash in the system, and our financial position is strong, as I mentioned. We have had focus on reducing working capital and ended the year with a net working capital of $25.8 million or 107%. Word of caution here, there were some extraordinary items in Q4 that pressed the working capital percentage lower than what the underlying business would suggest. If we adjust for these, we had a working capital of around $115 million, which is also a significant decline. And by looking at the, I mean, chart, it is easy to see the effect of the efforts that we have put in place to bring down our working capital. So we are pretty satisfied with that. The introduction of LOC will push this further down as their Q4 '20 working capital percentage was 73%. We will, of course, continue to focus on this, and we are working very, very heavily on reducing the capital tied up in the business. So this is an important KPI for us. Next page, please. Regarding the prospectus, we did announce that we will be conducting a subsequent offering. We have reported our Q figures now, which means that we can finalize the prospectus. We expect that to be approved late March, early April, and the plan is to do the subsequent offering immediately after the publication of the prospectus. To just repeat for those of us who were not with us last time when we did announce the subsequent offering, the last day of trading, including rights of subsequent offering, will be the 20th of November 2020. The maximum number of shares will be issued will be 5,163,934, and the subscription price will be NOK 6.1 per share, which is the exact same price that we did the offering last year in relation with the LOC acquisition. So April is our best estimate of timing for the subsequent offering. Next page, please. We are proposing a semiannual dividend of NOK 0.25 per share, which is up from NOK 0.2 of last year. Our dividend policy stays intact, where our goal basically is to distribute back to shareholders all of the cash flow that we do not need in operations. We are, as I said, increasing. We paid out USD 0.4 in 2020 corresponding to approximately $3 million. The proposal for the first half is NOK 0.25, which amounts to around $2.7 million. This, of course, needs to be approved by the Annual General Meeting in June and will be paid out immediately after the Annual General Meeting when it gets approved. The dividend will be done as the distributions, which for tax purposes will be considered the repayment of paid in capital. So should not have any tax effects on the shareholders receiving dividend. And that was the last of my pages. So I will send it back to David Wells, who can run us through the outlook for the remainder of the year. David?

Good. Many thanks, Dean. It's a good summary. And so I'd just like to conclude now with our next slide, which is the summary page. So I think there's no doubt that we -- 2020 was a challenging year for us. We went into a very strong Q1 and then the effects of COVID came out shortly after that. But in spite of that, I think we've traded very well. We have maintained and grown our revenues and produced strong cash flow during the course of the year. And we ended up with a very accretive acquisition at the end of the year to enhance the size of our company and enhance the portfolio of our services. In addition, as was mentioned by Will, we post end of the year, we made a small acquisition of East Point Geo to strengthen our geoscience department. And as another example here of us in aiming to improve and bolster our capability in various departments. I think in 2021, we are having expectation that with the introduction of vaccines, we will feel perhaps less travel restrictions than are currently being placed upon us. And with the current oil price, which seems to be maintaining a fairly good strength. Yesterday, I see was at $67 per barrel. We do feel that the second half of this year should gradually become stronger, and 2022, we should have some sentiments of normality come back to us. Of course, this is on the back of our expectation for increased strength in our renewables division, which is performing very, very strongly at the moment. We will, of course, maintain our focus on capital efficiency and returning cash to shareholders. That's a prime tenet of our strategy, and there will be strong focus on that. And I do expect during the course of this coming year that we will start realizing a number of cost synergies related to the transaction with LOC, and this will make us a much more efficient and a much more profitable company, all going well. Finally, I think that I would just like to conclude that we will continue to be active in the -- in consolidation of our market if we see opportunities. But we do think that we have quite a lot in our hands at the moment. We do think we're in a good place to move forward. We are expecting a stronger market. And I think 2021 is going to be an interesting year for us. So with that, I would like to conclude. I would just like to remind you that, unfortunately, again, we can't take Q&A after this presentation. So if you have queries or anything that you'd like to ask, please do reach out to Dean or myself, and we'll endeavor to get back to you. But in the meantime, many thanks for listening, and we look forward to giving our Q1 results, hopefully, in-person later in the year. Thank you very much.