Fjord Defence Group ASA (DFENS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to Aquila Holdings Q3 2023 Presentation. My name is Nils Haugestad, and I'm the company's CFO and Interim CEO. With respect to the quarterly highlights, multi-client revenues was $2.1 million for the quarter. The fair value of the multi-client library is $32.7 million. The fair value of the investment portfolio this quarter is $6.6 million. Available liquid funds, which we always report on is $9.1 million, and cash earnings for this quarter is $0.4 million. The net asset value at the end of the quarter was NOK 2.00 per share. We have, as you recall, maintained our share repurchase program. And in Q3, we repurchased 2.1 million shares. So as of the 27th of October, the company holds 18.1 million shares, which represents approximately 7.6% of the share capital. A quick overview of the multi-client portfolio. This is the company's by far largest asset class. We have 2 surveys in this portfolio. We have in the Norwegian North Sea, the Utsira survey on a discounted cash flow basis that has a value in our books of $25.4 million. This is a survey that we invested approximately $82.3 million in originally. It's a state-of-the-art high-density ILX OBN survey that covers about 2,000 square kilometers in the highly prospective acreage. It was completed in Q3 of 2020. We have started an industry prefunded reprocessing project with CGG. This is a priority area that is being finished as we speak. And then the full survey is expected to be completed in midyear next year. The new data from this reprocessing project will be an upgrade product and will be available only to people that have underlying license to the underlying data. Also worth noting in June of this year, Vår Energi announced the acquisition of Neptune Energy in Norway. And that raises of course, the prospect of a change of control fee upon closing of that transaction, which is estimated in Q1 of next year. The second survey we have is in Egypt in the Gulf of Suez. Here, we have a discounted cash flow valuation of $7.3 million. This is also a state-of-the-art survey. It's a node and streamer survey and is particularly designed to understand the geology in the Gulf of Suez and the subsalt geology. Here, the processing was completed in Q3 of 2022. We have a revenue share agreement with Schlumberger here. It has a cap of $13.7 million. We've had one late sales so far of $1.6 million, which was in Q3 of 2022, which means that we have a cap of $20.1 million effectively left there. The book value, as I mentioned, was $7.3 million. Also here worth noting that Neptune Energy was acquired by Eni. And so when this transaction closes, which is estimated in Q1 of 2024, it's reasonable to expect that there may be change of control fees related to this survey also. With regards to financial assets, this represents the ocean bottom node operations that we sold to Magseis Fairfield in March of 2022. The system has industry-leading node deployment speed and is optimal for shallow water surveys. It is node agnostic, which, of course, means that it has significant flexibility. The sale is structured with an earnout of $12 million max over a 3-year period. There is a floor payment of USD 1.5 million, which is subject to certain milestones. The asset is in our books for $3 million. On the investment side, we have select investment in listed and unlisted securities. Our current focus has been on the energy and industrial sectors. We've said all along that we intend to take a cautious approach in this, and also that we will consider transformative transactions as well as passive investments. The fair value of investment portfolio at the end of the quarter was $6.6 million. The 2 primary assets is Capsol Technologies, which we have on the books at $4.6 million and Dolphin Drilling at $1.6 million. With respect to the net asset value, the multi-client library is by far the largest asset and is based on NPV calculations as discussed earlier, that gives us NOK 1.57 per share. Other seismic assets represents the node handling equipment that we discussed, and that is NOK 0.15 per share. The investments is significantly based on public market prices, and that gives us NOK 0.32 per share. And then we had current assets of NOK 0.22 and total liabilities of minus NOK 0.25 per share, which gets us to a total net asset value per share of NOK 2.00 at the end of the quarter. With respect to the income statement for the period, we had revenues of $2.1 million, which is related to the Utsira reprocessing project. And we have an increase of $0.6 million in change of fair value of the investments, which is a noncash increase. And we have cost of sales of $1.2 million, and this is primarily related to the Utsira reprocessing cost, we have SG&A of $0.5 million and included in that is approximately $150,000 related to legal services. Amortization multi-client is $1.6 million, which takes us to an operating profit or a loss of $0.6 million. And a net financial loss of $0.1 million, taking us to a profit or loss for the period of negative $0.7 million. Cash earnings for the period is $0.5 million positive. And this is just for simplicity's sake. It is the revenues minus cost of sales, minus SG&A. Just try to eliminate some of the other significant noncash movements that we see from period-to-period. On the balance sheet side, we have the multiclient library of $32.7 million. We have an investments at $6.6 million in financial assets, which is a node handling system of $3 million Trade receivable $0.9 million of the current assets of $1.2 million and then cash of $2.4 million, which takes us to a total assets of $46.8 million. It's worth noting that the seismic investments represent about 75% of the total assets. On equity liabilities side, we have $41.6 million of equity and therefore, an equity ratio of 88.9%. Trade payables of $0.6 million, taxes payable and other current liabilities, $2.3 million and $2.3 million, respectively. Recall again that a significant portion of this is related to a tax liability in Egypt that is still to be finalized. Available liquid funds of $9.1 million and net asset value of NOK 2.00 per share as discussed earlier. On the cash flow side, we have cash from operating activities of minus $0.4 million, and we have no investment activity in the period. Then we have financing activity, we have minus $0.2 million, which is the repurchase of our own shares, which leads us to a reduction in cash of $0.6 million and takes us to cash at the end of the period of $2.4 million. With regards to the outlook, we see solid industry fundamentals that support historically high oil prices that we're currently seeing and we believe this will also result in continued investment in the E&P sector. We think it's important to highlight that the timing of multi-client late sales is generally unpredictable and is driven by licensing rounds and also internal oil company scheduling. We should, therefore, expect that sales will be lumpy. But we also think it's important to note that this does not speak to the long-term underlying multi-client values and future sales potential. Going forward, we will evaluate new multi-client investment opportunities. We will also evaluate opportunities outside of the seismic sector. That's the end of our prepared remarks. We appreciate you taking the time to listen in. And if you have any questions or would like to discuss separately, please feel free to contact any one of us. Thank you so much.