Forum Energy Technologies, Inc. (FET) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Forum Energy Technologies Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2024 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Gigi, and I'll be your coordinator for today's call. [Operator Instructions] This conference call is being recorded for replay purposes and will be available on the company's website. I will now turn the conference over to Rob Kukla, Director of Investor Relations. Please proceed, sir.

Thank you, Gigi. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to FET's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2024 Earnings Conference Call. With me today are Neal Lux, our President and Chief Executive Officer; and Lyle Williams, our Chief Financial Officer. Yesterday, we issued our earnings release, and it is available on our website. Please note that we are relying on the safe harbor protections afforded by federal law. Listeners are cautioned that our remarks today may contain information other than historical information. These remarks should be considered in the context of all factors that affect our business, including those disclosed in FET's Form 10-K and other SEC filings. Finally, management's statements may include non-GAAP financial measures. For a reconciliation of these measures, you may refer to our earnings release. During today's call, all statements related to EBITDA refer to adjusted EBITDA. And unless otherwise noted, all comparisons are fourth quarter 2024 to third quarter 2024. I will now turn the call over to Neal.

Thank you, Rob, and good morning, everyone. I would like to begin by congratulating Chris Gaut and Leslie Beyer, 2 of FET's Board members. Leslie was recently nominated to serve as Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management in the U.S. Department of Interior. Leslie's leadership and experience makes her an excellent choice to help our country navigate critical energy challenges. I would also like to congratulate Chris on his announced retirement. Chris has been involved with FET for almost 20 years, both as a dedicated Board member and previously as Chief Executive Officer. I would like to personally thank Chris for his mentorship, guidance and friendship. He has been invaluable throughout my time at FET and especially since my appointment as CEO in January 2022. With these announcements, I think it is appropriate to step back and reflect on the great progress we have made the last 3 years. Revenue is up 51% during this time. Market share as measured by revenue per rig is up 19%. EBITDA increased 5x and margins expanded 800 basis points. Net debt is down 30%, and we significantly improved our net leverage from 11 to just under 1.5x. These results clearly illustrate the progress we have made. Now let's talk about key achievements from the year, specifically our financial results, the completion of a transformational acquisition, the fortification of our balance sheet, authorization of a significant share repurchase program and solid execution of our Beat the Market strategy. Financially, we delivered meaningful growth with revenue and EBITDA up 10% and 49%, respectively. This resulted in a 42% incremental margin and over 300 basis point margin improvement. Impressively, we generated $105 million in free cash flow from strong EBITDA growth and efficient working capital management. Variperm contributed meaningfully to our financial results as promised when we announced this acquisition. Despite some market headwinds, Variperm delivered stronger-than-expected EBITDA margins and outperformed the full year free cash flow plan. We also executed a $100 million senior secured bond offering, which refinanced our long-term debt and maintained a strong liquidity position. Importantly, the refinancing provided flexibility for deployment of cash. In December, we announced a $75 million share repurchase program, delivering on our promise to shareholders. The size of this program relative to our market capitalization is significant. It also reflects our confidence in generating consistent free cash flow in 2025 and beyond. This year, we made great progress on our Beat the Market strategy by capturing profitable market share, leveraging our global footprint and developing differentiated technologies. For example, we gained market share as demonstrated by our 15% revenue per rig growth. Also, outside the U.S., we utilized our strategically located manufacturing facilities to grow international revenue by almost 42%. And FET is an industry innovator, delivering new products to the market. Here are a few examples. FR120-SC, the next-generation iron roughneck that combines best-in-class torque capacity with a reduced rig floor footprint. FASTConnect, a safer and more efficient zipper manifold system for multi-well pad frac operations. [ PowerTron ], an industry-leading heat transfer unit for mobile power generation. Pump Saver Plus, an incredible solution that increases oil production and reduces downtime in rod lift production systems. [ MagnaGuard ], a breakthrough product that enables widespread adoption of efficient permanent magnet motor ESPs. And my last example, Unity, a leading-edge technology that remotely controls ROVs to reduce personnel on vessels. Now turning to our outlook. We strongly believe long-term demand for energy will grow and continued investment will be required to supply this growth. However, we expect 2025 to be a transitional year for market activity, driven by geopolitical and macroeconomic uncertainties. Overall, we anticipate global drilling and completion activity in 2025 will decrease 2% to 5% from 2024 levels. In North America, both rig count and frac fleet count are forecasted to soften. Internationally, we anticipate activity to be generally flat. We expect that continued market share gains through our Beat the Market strategy will partially or fully offset the impact of declining market activity. Therefore, our full year 2025 adjusted EBITDA guidance range is $85 million to $105 million. There are a couple of variables, however, not in our 2025 forecast that we are tracking closely. The first is natural gas. In our guidance, we do not assume a rebound in natural gas drilling and completions activity. If demand triggers a meaningful commodity price increase, there may be some upside to activity later in the year. The second variable is tariffs. For most product families, we believe we are in a position to mitigate and pass through tariff impacts with increased pricing and supply chain optimization. This result may not be achieved immediately, and we may see short-term impacts in variability in our businesses. We are continuing to monitor this fluid situation and will adapt accordingly. Before turning the call over to Lyle, I would like to summarize our capital deployment framework. First, we are forecasting 2025 free cash flow between $40 million to $60 million. We expect to allocate 50% of this free cash flow to net debt reduction. The remaining 50% would go towards strategic investments, including share repurchases. We continually evaluate acquisition opportunities and compare relative value to FET. With our industry-leading free cash flow yield, we have yet to find a better investment than ourselves. Buying back FET shares provides the best current value to shareholders. All right. I'm now going to turn the call over to Lyle for more details on FET's fourth quarter results and other financial highlights.

Thank you, Neal. Good morning. I am pleased to provide details on our strong free cash flow performance and why we believe generating free cash flow in the future is sustainable. For the full year 2024, we generated $105 million of free cash flow. This is the highest annual amount since 2015 and $35 million higher than the top end of our latest guidance. These results benefited from the real estate sale-leaseback transaction we announced in mid-December and for meaningful net working capital reductions. Inventories dropped by $34 million as key initiatives paid meaningful dividends. Also, our days sales outstanding decreased, generating $8 million of cash. Monetizing these assets allows us to redeploy capital for a better return. We remain confident in the foundation we have built to sustainably generate free cash flow. Our 2025 guidance of $40 million to $60 million is consistent with our 2024 result, excluding the large release of working capital and the sale-leaseback transaction. Included in our guidance are interest and cash tax payments of about $35 million and capital expenditures of around $10 million. This guidance reflects another year of strong free cash flow, allowing us to further reduce net debt while simultaneously returning cash to shareholders. It is important to note that we are committed to maintaining conservative net leverage. And as Neal mentioned, 50% of our free cash flow would further reduce our net debt. Our remaining free cash flow would be used for strategic investments that increase shareholder value. As we have said before, we believe our stock is undervalued, and it is hard to find a better investment than in FET. And shareholder returns have already begun. In January, we repurchased approximately 105,000 shares of our stock for an aggregate amount of $2 million. At the time, we met the 2 conditions of our bonds that address repurchases. First, we can repurchase up to 50% of the previous fiscal year's free cash flow, excluding the sale-leaseback proceeds. So for 2025, we have over $42 million of share repurchase capacity. Second, our net leverage ratio must be below 1.5x pro forma for any repurchases. Going forward, this incurrence test will be the limiting factor for when and how large our repurchases can be. Based on the seasonality of our free cash flow, we expect our repurchases to be weighted to the second half of this year. We fortified our balance sheet this year. With strong free cash flow, we retired $100 million of debt incurred in connection with the Variperm acquisition. To put that in perspective, within a year of the closing, we retired 2/3 of the debt added for this transformational acquisition. And with the bond refinancing completed in November, we have no debt maturities until 2028. We ended this year with $45 million of cash on hand and $61 million available under our revolving credit facility with total liquidity of $106 million. Our net debt was $149 million, down $50 million from last quarter for a year-ending net leverage ratio of 1.49x. On the income statement, our consolidated fourth quarter revenue of $201 million and EBITDA of $22 million were within our guidance ranges. The slowdown in U.S. completions activity led to a sequential decrease in our revenue, and our EBITDA margin was negatively impacted by lower sales of quick turn, high-profit products. In the fourth quarter, we recorded 2 unusual noncash items that impact net income but not EBITDA. First, we recorded a charge of $119 million to impair the intangible assets of our coiled tubing product line. Based on market conditions, we performed an impairment test and determined the carrying value of these assets should be fully written down. Going forward, this will reduce our annual amortization expense by $15 million. Coiled tubing remains a valuable contributor to FET with strong profitability and differentiated technology. We also recorded an $11 million noncash benefit to income tax expense by releasing the valuation allowance reserves that we held for Germany and Saudi Arabia. As our operation in each country have become more profitable, it is appropriate to release these reserves. Turning to our segment results. The Drilling and Completions segment revenue decreased by 10% with lower U.S. completions-related activity, sales volumes for wireline cable, coiled tubing and stimulation capital equipment were lower. Segment EBITDA decreased 34% due to lower sales volumes and unfavorable product mix. Orders were $103 million, down 20% relative to the third quarter, which included large orders of drilling equipment, including iron roughnecks and catwalks. The Artificial Lift and Downhole segment revenue was up 7%, primarily related to increased sales of our refinery desalting technology and artificial lift products. Sales increases in these higher-margin products led EBITDA growth of 11% and orders in the quarter were up 14% with increased demand across our production equipment and downhole product lines. I will conclude my comments by providing modeling details and our forecast for the first quarter 2025. For the full year 2025, we estimate corporate costs of $30 million, depreciation and amortization expense of $35 million and tax expense of $13 million. We are expecting around $17 million of interest expense, which assumes a reduction in our ABL's balance through the year. We assume first quarter values to be roughly 1/4 of these full year amounts. From a guidance perspective, many of our customers have publicly indicated a slower first quarter with progressive improvements throughout the year. Therefore, we expect first quarter 2025 revenue to be in the range of $185 million to $205 million and EBITDA in the range of $20 million to $24 million. Included in our quarterly and annual guidance are additional lease expenses from the sale-leaseback transaction of $1.7 million per year. Our first quarter free cash flow will be impacted by annual management incentive payments and property taxes. While we do not guide specific free cash flow on a quarterly basis, we do anticipate generating positive free cash flow in the first quarter. Let me turn the call back to Neal for closing remarks. Neal?

Thank you, Lyle. I want to note one more achievement from 2024. Safety is our #1 core value. And over the years, we have done an outstanding job, keeping our employees safe. While we were pleased with our past results, we are not satisfied. Last year, we challenged ourselves to radically improve our safety performance and culture. I am ecstatic to announce we exceeded our expectations. The teams embraced our initiatives and significantly improved our key metrics to world-class levels. This is a fantastic achievement, and I want to thank the employees of FET for their hard work and dedication. Job well done. Gigi, please take the first question.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of John Daniel from Daniel Energy Partners.

Neal, I was trying to take copious notes as you're going through your prepared remarks. I think you mentioned something about a new product tied to mobile power. Did I hear that correctly? And if so, can you elaborate on what it is, what it will do and the opportunity set?

Yes. So the -- good call. So we -- in the power gen segment, we have a product called our [ PowerTron ]. This is our heat exchanger that we supply into that market. So it's paired with a gas recip engine. It builds off our kind of leading market share in the frac industry. And so we've adopted this product to really to fit the power gen side. So we've had a kind of a good start to the year on the quotation side. It's been pretty robust, and we're looking forward to closing some orders there.

Okay. Those would all be domestic...

Yes, it would be domestic. And I think for us as well, as we think about increasing power demand, I think our -- another product that does apply there is our coiled line pipe in bringing in the gas to the data centers as well.

Okay. Got it. And then just one on sort of the traditional sort of coil wireline completion stuff. As orders have moderated a tad, I mean, are you seeing a setup where you're going to 3 to 4 to 5 quarters from now, see a spike in those orders? Do you get the sense they're working through their inventory? Just any thoughts there?

Yes. So I think on a consumable basis, which the wireline cables, coiled tubing, those are getting consumed and turning well for U.S. land. Our more capital type products, whether it's power heads or radiators, things like that, I think those are the items that are looking for a spike, as you say, maybe a few quarters out, right, whether it's later this year or into next year as that equipment ages.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Dave Storms from Stonegate.

Just wanted to start with maybe some of the puts and takes on guidance. You mentioned that the Beat the Market strategy should help maintain the top line despite maybe some overall market weakness, but it still looks like your EBITDA midpoint guidance is about a 5% decrease year-over-year. Just hoping you could speak to maybe some of the margin assumptions or price mix volume decisions that would drive that.

Yes. I think as we look out to 2025, we said the market could be down 2% to 5%. So really, the EBITDA guidance range we put in there is really how successful we are to either partially or fully offset that market decline. So I think at the midpoint, you could see the market down a lot and down, let's call it, 5%, but where we gain a little more share or at the low end of the market, let's say, the down 2%, maybe we don't gain as much share. So we wanted to give kind of that range. Ideally, if the market stays flat and we add revenue, we'd be closer to the top end of that range.

Understood. That's very helpful. And just kind of on that, with the general market expected to decline to 2% to 5%, are you seeing any pockets of strength? I know international has been a bright spot. It could be a little choppy for you guys. Just curious as to if there's any green shoots that you are seeing out there.

I think it really is more on the types of product side. I think our consumables, we've seen a nice start to the year. I think capital is still a little slower to start as our customers get their budgets together. I think overall, international is probably going to be for the year going to be a bright spot for us, whether -- I think it's a good start in Canada to the year. We'll see if that can hold. And then outside North America, again, whether it's Saudi, maybe a little lighter, but Kuwait, Oman, Abu Dhabi, I think all are going to be pretty good for us this year.

Our next question comes from the line of Jeff Robertson from Water Tower Research.

Neal, you talked about gaining market share in 2024 and over the last 3 years. As you look at the market conditions in 2025, are there areas where you think you still have room to grow market share? And are those -- if so, are those product lines in ones that would have a favorable impact on margins versus maybe lower sales in other lines?

Yes. No, that's a great question. Our focus is we want to grow profitable market share. So we are putting the time to those key product lines that do have the higher margins where we've incentivized our teams to gain that share. So I think the areas our Artificial Lift and Downhole, that segment, high margin. It's one that we've added a lot of new products over the year. I mentioned the [ MagnaGuard ] as well as our Pump Saver Plus. We continue to build out that product portfolio. So I think that's an obvious area of growth. I mentioned coiled line pipe earlier on the power gen. We also are seeing international projects that are offshore that could be a nice boost there as well. So I don't think our gain share is done. I think we have a good runway on that. And I think over time, we are absolutely focused on beating market and executing that strategy.

On the products you mentioned, the Unity remote control system for ROVs, has that been field tested to the point where you're getting more interest in it from a broader group of customers?

Yes. We're utilizing it today. We're actually in the middle of testing those systems right now. We're going to have them delivered here in Q1. We had a little delay just in Q4 with one customer, so we pushed it into Q1 here. But yes, I think it's still early, but it is an area where it's taking personnel off vessels, that's a huge savings for our customers. So us executing that, I think, is really, really a good deal. I think what's exciting, too, is we could upgrade our existing installed ROVs, and that's a great opportunity for us.

In the past, with respect to returning cash to shareholders, you all have, I guess, broadly talked about the possibility of a dividend. Does the share repurchase plan, do you think, just give you the most flexibility as you look at the options on the value of FET versus the valuations that you're seeing in the acquisition market?

Yes, Jeff, I'll take that one. At this point, we don't have any specific dividend plans and do really feel like given the relative valuation of FET stock versus other things that we could invest capital in, it's such a screaming buy that's where we ought to be. So that's our focus for now for that 50% of our cash flow. I think the other 50% will continue to go to our net debt reduction. We feel like just kind of if you use the midpoint of our guidance on cash of just $50 million, take half of that is $25 million, that would be about 10% of our market cap. So if we achieve that in this year, that's a very big amount. And at the same time, we can pull our net leverage down to 1.25, 1.3x, something like that over the same period of time.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Steve Ferazani from Sidoti.

I did want to follow up a couple of the earlier questions. In terms of your breakdown on seeing 2% to 5% decline in drilling and completions, I'm just trying to think about some of your individual markets. Variperm has been really successful at high margin. In December, we saw a pretty healthy guidance from the bigger oil sands producers, but that was pre-tariff talk. You said that Canada started up healthy for you. Are you seeing any kind of impact at this point? Are you expecting any kind of impact?

Yes. I think the -- in Canada, it was a good fourth quarter. I think rig count has been good here as well as the start of the first quarter. I haven't seen an impact yet from tariffs. It's something that, boy, we do a lot of analysis. I think we could see a slowdown if we did have that 10% oil tariff come through on Canadian crude. That would be something that we'd have to adjust to for sure.

Okay. And then the other side of the border, and I don't know how much exposure country to country, but Mexico, obviously very soft. Could that hit you in the first half?

Yes. Our exposure to Mexico is fairly limited. It's a really small part of our business. So not as concerned there. I think North America for us is primarily Canada and the U.S.

And Steve, maybe I'll -- let me jump in on the tariff comment just to give a little more color there on how we're thinking about it. As Neal mentioned, we don't have any tariff impact included in the guidance that we provided. It's just too early to really understand. But we do have experience with what happened in prior tariff regimes and what that looked like. And our view is we have probably a similar outcome, and that is that, first, our -- given our market position with a lot of our product offerings, we have the ability to pass on tariff increases to our customers, and that would be our expectation. However, the uncertainty and volatility that can come from that until the markets settle out, definitely could be a near-term, let's call it, choppiness or bumpiness in results. So we don't have anything in there, but definitely something that we're watching and our teams are monitoring really daily to make sure we take the appropriate actions.

Excellent. If I get one more in, obviously, your balance sheet, extremely strong. You noted that the outperformance of Variperm. If we end up in this sort of soft environment, flat to slightly down year, new opportunities might emerge given the balance sheet, and I understand the better returns from share buybacks. Are you open and ready to jump if the next Variperm comes up and not to say it would?

Yes. I think if we can -- again, I think in our comments, we talked about looking at the relative value, right, of our shares versus opportunities out there. So I think if we saw the relative value in an acquisition, I think we would absolutely -- as you mentioned, Variperm, fantastic acquisition, great team. We'd love to add another one.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of [ Eric Carlson ].

I was wondering just maybe talk through a little bit of -- I mean, clearly, with the kind of the large impairment charge in Q4, the kind of the headline income and EPS numbers probably grab a lot of attention. But you have to forget my quick math, but I mean, I think it was just over $100 million loss for the year, but a lot of that kind of attributed to the impairment charge and then FX and then a higher interest expense. So maybe just on a go-forward basis, if you just look at kind of the income statement, it feels like it's set up to be a little bit more normalized instead of all these one-offs from transaction expenses and so on and so forth. So maybe just a few thoughts there would be interesting.

Sure, Eric. And definitely a lot of noise in there. So just draw your attention to the earnings release and our table in the back that would show kind of full year adjusted net income numbers. And if you look at those, I want to spend a minute on those, if you look at those on a year-over-year basis, our adjusted net income is actually down from like negative 1.5% to negative 10%. What is that? That's really driven by interest expense that we added for the Variperm acquisition of about $12 million. But with our net debt now coming down and with our guidance, we expect a really meaningful improvement on a year-over-year basis. So 2025 should be better. The other place that there was a year-over-year increase was on tax expense. Again, an increase due to Variperm and a little bit tied to this Pillar 2 global minimum tax that's out there. So through this year, we've already restructured some of that, and we'll be able to have a lower go-forward tax guidance that we have. So between those items, lower interest forward, lower taxes forward, lower amortization expense going forward, we're set up for a much improved net income and EPS result in 2025 versus 2024.

Okay. That's helpful. I guess -- and then just looking at kind of the cash flow numbers. So obviously, finished very strong, but for the full year, about 45% of current market cap in cash generated and a good majority of that just from operations. So maybe I'm thinking of the context of -- I know some people have brought up ways to return capital and kind of the relative value. I mean I did kind of quick math, but it looks like kind of the median EV to EBITDA on kind of the peer group, at least stated in kind of the proxy statement for incentives is maybe [ 6.5 ], and that's excluding a few I couldn't find information on. But you guys kind of trade at [ under 4, 3.75 ], so almost 50% discount to that. I mean when you think about deploying capital, obviously, a buyback makes a ton of sense. There's a lot of kind of surety to what you're getting there? And maybe just when you think about the relative value, like if I know I can buy 10% of my shares, that increases my free cash flow by share -- per share by 10%, I can kind of put that on a flywheel and repeat it versus what is the relative value needed by a strategic acquisition on the outside. So maybe just thinking about the hurdle rate of different ways to do that because obviously, buying your stock seems like a no-brainer. But like if I can buy -- if you can buy your stock at under 4x EBITDA, what's the hurdle rate? Like what do you need to be able to buy a Variperm again? Does it need to be 3x? Or does it need to be -- just maybe provide some context to that because I think that would be really helpful.

Yes. I think we'd go back to what's our acquisition guideline strategy, right? We want to get companies that have differentiated products in niche markets. We want to have an accretion to key multiples and cash flow per share, I think, would be one of those. And we don't want to put ourselves in a tight balance sheet by adding a lot of debt. So as far as a specific hurdle rate, I think we would just really stick with our guidance there. I think we'd look at it on a case-by-case basis. I think accretion would be a big point to that. And so I think it would be -- we got to find the right -- it has to be the right deal at the right price and really the right discount to where we sit to get it done.

Okay. That's helpful. And then maybe in deploying kind of buyback, I know the comment already was probably weighted a little bit more heavily to have. Can you just provide some -- I mean, what are kind of your limitations in terms of daily volume and then in terms of maybe opportunity to source some larger blocks of shares, just kind of looking at the filings. I mean there's still at least one really large bondholder still holding, I mean, 900,000 shares. So I mean, when you think about how you deploy that most effectively, maybe just provide some context.

Sure. Eric, I talked about in our prepared remarks, really the limiting factor is going to be our 1.5x net leverage ratio pro forma for the buyback. So we ended fourth quarter just under that, opening the door for us to be able to get some things done. Obviously, as we buy back shares, that kind of increases that pro forma number. So we'll generate free cash flow through the year, probably lighter in Q1. Well, I say guided lighter in Q1 and then stronger in the later part of the year, which opens up opportunity for us. I think the other thing we would do is we look at open market purchases, we want to make sure we sit within the appropriate safe harbors. So we're limited in terms of average daily trading volumes and what that would be for us. So that would be kind of an open market kind of an opportunity. So I think we look at those. There's plenty of volume out there. And in January, when we did buy, we were able to get that done in a short amount of days. So I think when we are in the market, we could do that relatively quickly and be able to buy up some of those shares. But we'll be focused on that 1.5x measure as we get under that, that provides more opportunity for us.

Okay. And then you said -- so the -- based on the math, it's $42 million would be kind of available. But obviously, with kind of cash flow projections, it would come in under that.

That's right.

And then maybe the last -- my last question would be, you have been able to do some things to take advantage of kind of generating one-off cash flow like the sale leaseback at the end of this year, you did it in previous years as well. Just wondering if there's any other low-hanging fruit out there to kind of generate kind of cash above and beyond operations?

Yes. So if you look at our guidance and what we guided, the $40 million to $60 million really, that doesn't include any incremental cash from an asset monetization like the sale leaseback. It also doesn't include any working capital benefit or increase, right? So kind of assuming flat numbers. And both of those were big contributors in 2024. So we'll continue to look at ways to do that, both on the working capital side. Our teams are very focused on inventory reduction. Given the kind of market condition here and what's going on with potential tariffs, we're being prudent around not getting too short on inventories these days. So I think that will be something we'll have to balance through the course of the year. And then clearly, as we look at our portfolio, both what new product additions we want to make and where we might want to trim back on our portfolio, it's all about returns and how do we improve the returns -- cash returns that those portfolios can give. So we'll be looking at those as well, but nothing specific included in our guidance at this point.

I would now like to turn the conference back over to Neal Lux for closing remarks.

Okay. Well, thank you for your support and participation in today's call. We look forward to our next meeting in May to discuss our first quarter 2025 results.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.