Fugro N.V. (FUR.AS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning. Thank you for dialing in this morning. This is Mark Heine, CEO of Fugro. I'm together here with Barbara Geelen, our CFO. I would like to give you a short update before we open up for questions on the press release that we had to issue this morning. Unfortunately, Fugro has to withdraw its financial guidance for the full year 2025, and this is following significant changes in the market conditions, specifically focused on what has happened over the last recent weeks. We still expect a notable improvement in the second half of the year compared to the first half of the year, but the previously anticipated 20% revenue growth is no longer realistic. And this is all to do with projects that have been postponed and some also descoped and moved to 2026. We will provide a further update at our normal Q3 trading update on the 31st of October. And therefore, we'll try to answer as many questions as we can, but we'll probably keep it quite short and refer also to the normal update that will come out soon. The recent developments, obviously, are visible in offshore wind, and you have seen all the news. But moreover, we see the impact in the oil and gas market, where we still expect that activity levels are expected to increase and have increased for us, but the timing of projects is currently affected by intensified disciplined cash and cost management from our clients. So we have taken a number of actions, and you see that in the press release that we have issued, we'll do additional cost reduction measures on top of the program that we already have ongoing, EUR 80 million to EUR 100 million, but we're going to look at additional reduction of staff, FTEs, 300 on top of the 750 that we have mentioned before. We also look at optimizing our fleet, specifically looking at vessels that are not enough busy in the upcoming winter season. We'll probably put some vessels in warm stack mode and this applies to the geophysical fleet in particular. And then last but not least, we also have emphasized in the press release that we'll reduce our capital expenditure for 2026. We thought it was prudent to mention that already. With that, I would like to open up for questions. And if you have a question, please follow the instructions.

[Operator Instructions] We will now take our first question from Philip Ngotho of Kepler.

It's Philip Ngotho. I have two. First, starting, just want to understand a little bit better what has exactly deteriorated over the last weeks, also given that you only issued the updated guidance 7 weeks ago. And in particularly in the oil and gas market, if I look at in terms of the price movement, of course, it has been volatile. But looking over the last year, during the year, its levels as we have seen previously as well. So what has changed so strongly over the last weeks that actually that made the market so much weaker? And the other item that I want to understand a little bit more is on the warm stacking. How much can you actually save on that versus cold stacking or what are the cost savings that you could foresee on that?

Thank you, Philip, for the questions. Maybe first on the oil and gas market and what has happened over the last couple of weeks. So what you see with multiple clients in this market is that, I guess, since their own midyear financial reviews that they have done from the first half of the year have intensified real focus on retaining cash. And this has all to do with the low commodity prices and probably their cash returns in most of these companies. So you see that they focus on postponing a number of things to later. We still see that this market is increasing in activity, and we have communicated that before. We have a number of projects awarded to us and they will continue. But you see that clients are pushing those out, those mobilizations, or move a part of the work to next year. And we have seen that really in the last couple of weeks that close to maybe even 20 projects have been mentioned by our regions altogether seen in all of the world that clients are taking those steps from smaller to larger projects where they step in. So this is really since the last couple of weeks, and I guess this has all to do with their own financial reviews that they have done at midyear. If I talk about warm stacking of vessels, that can be relatively limited what you can achieve there because you want to keep your vessels ready to go, so you normally these things during the winter seasons. So you reduce some people onboard of these vessels, you put them alongside or even offshore ideally in a group. So if you have 2 or 3 to do, then you can save some more costs. You're talking about 10% to 20% of your normal operating cost. Obviously, you don't need project staff onboard as well if you warm stack these vessels. So this is the cost saving that you can achieve. If you go to cold stacking, then your vessel is very difficult to bring back to the market. Then you have to go through recertifications and so on. So this is where we want to refrain from because we do expect in the season next year that work will pick up again and that activity will be requiring those vessels to be operational.

We'll now take our next question from Thijs Berkelder of ABN AMRO.

Thijs Berkelder, ABN AMRO ODDO BHF. Question on your margin guidance. You're withdrawing the EBIT margin guidance for this year, which was 8% to 11%. So implicitly, that means that you no longer expect to meet the low end of that range, so below the 8%. Is then 5% more or less or lower? Is that then logical to assume, and looking at your cost reduction announcements for '26, can you sort of confirm that you, in principle, are targeting to return to, let's say, around 10% in '26?

Thijs, thank you very much for the question. I think we specifically have not mentioned any numbers there, and that is for a reason. And we'll come back at the Q3 trading update to see if we can give more guidance there. We cannot confirm what you say there because we are obviously working on multiple programs and really are committed to optimize and safeguard our profitability and cash there. So I think your assumptions are not necessarily to be confirmed by us at all. And we basically see a top line reduction, and that obviously has an impact on the bottom line as well, as you also mentioned. But we're not specifically guiding for any direction at the moment other than that we are fully focused on still, safeguarding that profitability as best as we can with our programs that we have installed.

Okay. Then on the staff reductions announced, where are you at this moment, let's say, in the target reaching 750?

We're at the moment around 650 staff reductions.

Okay. And then on the EUR 100 million revenues missed in the second half, how much of this EUR 100 million is simply delayed and what part has been canceled?

Yes, the cancellations are very minimal. You're talking about a couple of percent of that amount. You see some descoping, which is you could X to the cancellation, then the number is a bit higher. But the majority is absolutely moving out to next year. So this is the majority where we see that work is still happening, but later. And I can mention a few examples. We have some project examples. We spoke about that also over the last couple of weeks where this popped up, for instance, on our work that we do in Cyprus for Eni, now the geotech work has moved to January. That is not happening this year anymore. But we also see some descoping, which is basically reducing the total scope. We have seen that a good example of that is with the work that we won in the Middle East for ADNOC. We see some descoping happening there, which means that the overall turnover that we will realize this year on these projects will be less.

And do you also have a specific example for offshore wind related?

Well, there are multiple smaller offshore wind-related projects that are pushed out, not major projects because we were not necessarily on major projects developing there. We have obviously the work for RWE starting in Germany. That has not been affected thus far. But in general, wind is in a more challenging environment, I would say, as we mentioned in the press release, especially after the announcements of Ørsted and Mitsubishi and so on. So obviously, these are major announcements in these industries. And this all happened also in August, end of July, August that they came through with these messages, which has an impact and everybody is going back to the drawing board to see what kind of impact that has on their projects.

And on U.S. gas related, is there also a slowdown or?

In general, I think those messages that we have given at midyear have not really changed too much. We see opportunities in the Americas region coming up also in oil and gas. And gas in itself is still important. Also, the LNG development will be there and back on the board. The question is more when are these things really happening and kicked off. I think some things in the U.S. are stabilizing to a certain extent on some of the industries. So we see opportunities coming back on the board and slowly materializing. So we are not necessarily negative around the Americas moving forward. But that doesn't really help for this year at the moment of what we have communicated this morning.

And we will now take our next question from Quirijn Mulder of ING.

I have two questions. My first question is, can you say something about the order intake at this moment for the -- especially as people start to order again in September? Is there anything to say about that? And about 2026, so the descoping will probably continue in this environment, preserving cash for these names, large IOCs. Can you give me an indication how that will offset, let me say, some of the postponements into next year? Have you any view on that?

The last question, Quirijn, is related to postponing from '25 to '26, you said because then I don't...

Exactly. Exactly. So you get postponement, but at the same time, you have descoping, which continues probably in 2026, with the oil price not recovering.

This is interesting, obviously, to see how this is developing. There's a very mixed message in this oil and gas market at the moment because on the one hand, we see very clearly that the oil and gas companies or the energy companies are active and have, in a way, the feeling that they can continue with their programs from the past, developing very specifically in focused areas to expand on their productions and also exploration. So in that sense, not negative around this market development in general. In the short term, we really see a disciplined cost and cash focus, which now has an impact on the second half of the year. How that further will develop in the next year is difficult to say. Signals are that this market is probably increasing in activity or shifting, maybe better to say, shifting from maybe development towards exploration or from brownfield to greenfield, so you could say many things. If you look at the CapEx development and OpEx development is quite stagnant or maybe even going down a little bit, 1% or 2% or 3% depending on what reports you look at, but that's very generic. And as you know, Fugro is very much in the forefront. So we now feel it immediately in our site characterization work in the short term if they postpone things or if they say, hey, we delay this survey, the start of this project. At the same time, it will also work the other way around. If they get going again, this is the first that will get kicked off. So that is what I can say about it. We'll have to follow this very closely. Mixed messages, I think we have all seen some messages, for instance, ConocoPhillips cutting down on people by 25% and some others and also service companies stepping in quite severely to reduce cost. And some of it is related to merging companies as well. But this has an impact on this industry in the short term. In the long term, not negative as such around this market. On the order intake, I would like to ask you to wait until the end of the first quarter. We'll give more guidance on the backlog and order intake over the last couple of months.

And we'll now move on to our next question from Jeremy Kincaid of Van Kempen.

I just have one additional question. Obviously, Mark, you gave the color on what has changed in the oil and gas market. So I was just wondering if you could provide a little bit more color on what has changed in the offshore wind market and you say Europe is particularly weak. So is that all just related to Ørsted? Or is there other moving parts in there, too?

Well, there's obviously multiple things that happened over the last period of time. So Ørsted is a big thing, as we all know, and everybody following that very closely, how their rights issue will go. At the same time, we saw Mitsubishi pulling out of the 3 projects kicked off in Japan, which is also quite a shock there in the market. Not a major surprise because these projects were also, I think, taken on a couple of years ago, way too cheap. So in that sense, not a big surprise, I would say. But what it does to the industry is that everybody is obviously really looking much more carefully around what kind of projects they want to start and what they don't want to start. You see governments that need to get their regulations in order. And you see now a movement specifically in Europe, where people are talking about different contract forms, contract for difference. You see that here in the Netherlands that the government just announced this and allocated some money to subsidizing some of the work. Is that enough? Is that good enough to get the operators moving again? We will have to see. Obviously, in the U.K., there's just a license round where multiple parties have committed to some of these licenses on a contract for difference type of setup. So this is positive in a way that there are movements now. But in general, I would say this market is really going through a maturing phase where people obviously really carefully look in this current environment with high interest cost, high supply chain costs and a relatively low grid solution, so to say, in most of these countries, how they can get the energy prices that they need to develop these fields profitably in a win-win situation for them as well. So this is what is happening. And I think that, that will continue for a bit longer. So this was on the board already, independent, I think, from what has happened under the new administration in the Americas. Obviously, that doesn't help. Some of the companies, Ørsted was very affected by that as well. And even in the Americas, recently, there were some additional steps taken, obviously, towards Ørsted and field that was for 2/3 already installed and then canceled after 45 monopiles being installed. So this is all not very good for the market. And therefore, I think things will take a bit longer to recover there. And that is what we see currently in the wind market.

And we will now take our next question from Luuk Van Beek of Degroof Petercam.

I have one question left. With the H1 results, you announced that you would shift capacity from North America to South America. Can you comment in general on if you are happy with the global distribution of capacity now or that you expect any further shifts?

Thank you, Luuk. Good question. Yes, we have shifted some assets already earlier in the year, and we will continue to look at that. So I do expect some more movements in the upcoming period. So we might shift some activity or some capacity from Europe to other regions. And as we said, we will look at the winter months because this is now -- always where in Fugro, we have seen Q4, Q1 being the winter season, especially in the Americas and Europe being affected by a more difficult season to work with the high activity in offshore wind, that was for 1 or 2 years, significantly less so that seasonality. That seasonality will be back on the board as we have seen in the past as well. So in that sense, we'll have to be clever on moving our assets to the right regions and also make use of what we have. We see a bit more surplus in the market on the geophysical side as we have communicated on before as well.

And we'll now take our next question from Thomas Martin of BNP.

Firstly, can I just ask or clarify, what are the mechanics of what happens now? So I think you stated that there are projects that you've been working on and the client says you want to postpone. What contractual protection do you have in the near term? Are you simply exposed? You have to stop work, you're not getting paid? What's going on there? Second question, just on the cost savings. Your prior target, I think, was a sort of 700 reduction in FTEs and you're adding the incremental 300 today. And I think you're targeting EUR 80 million to EUR 100 million of overall cost, which wasn't just personnel. How much of the EUR 80 million to EUR 100 million is not personnel? Can you help me think about how we can prorate the prior savings with the number of FTEs that you're going to now incrementally add to the program? Just a third one maybe on the geography, you just spoke about vessel movements. You didn't mention that you might look to move vessels out of the Middle East or reduce capacity in the Middle East. The oil price is one of the impacts that we're talking about today. Could you maybe expand on that a little bit? Why do you think you won't be needing to reduce capacity in the Middle East? Is it because of near-term contract visibility that you have there?

Yes. Well, let me start with the last question, Thomas. In actual fact, we're looking at maybe moving additional assets to the Middle East because we need capacity there at the end of this year to execute the work that we have secured there. So we'll ramp up in activity there towards the end of the year on firm work, and we're looking at opportunities to see what is possible there. Now with the Red Sea still being closed, that is not so easy. So this is obviously hindering us. So that's good to realize. Coming back on your first question, what does this mean when clients postpone or descope and what kind of compensation or contractual terms we have. This is not necessarily straightforward in our industry because there has been certain standard over the years developed, and we're obviously pushing back very hard during any contract negotiations. But what you see is that clients have cutoff dates where they can say, okay, mobilize on this date. And if they are moving the mobilization date to later, they are allowed to do that to a certain extent. So yes, in some ways, we get compensation, but often if it's not fully off the cards and the project is still happening, they are allowed to postpone the mobilization date of the vessel. So this is what we face, and this is quite standard in the industry with all our competitors as well, they face the same thing. Having said that, we are obviously always negotiating and talking about these things with our clients. Descoping is, in a way, also possible because they -- to a certain extent, so they contract at a certain contract value, but very often, they have all sorts of options. But then in these kind of situations, they move back to the base load. And then you have a contract for the base load and you are counting on the options as well because they have given you the indication that they wanted to do the options over the last period of time, but now they scale back to the base case. So this is the difficulty that you face with postponement and descoping. Cancellations, then very often, there is a compensation possible, but also they are not on all the contracts depending on what the cutoff date is for the customer. And on the last question, I will hand over to Barbara.

So on the cost savings, the FTE, the additional FTE that we've communicated this morning is not included in the EUR 80 million to EUR 100 million that is already on the board, and we will be communicating at 31st of October more on that. In terms of how much the current reduction is, this is around half, but as I mentioned -- of the current program. But as I mentioned before, the P&L impact will be limited given we're also following local labor law and regulations in terms of reducing these FTEs. But as Mark mentioned, we are well underway in progressing that.

That's great. Sorry, can I just clarify one thing related to the backlog and options just to be absolutely clear. The backlog figures include all of the options on contracts or some of the options on contracts? How do you treat those?

No, we normally put in the backlog what we expect the project to deliver. If there are options that they might call off on that are not specifically discussed at the start of the project or during the negotiations, then we will not include those. Only the ones that are really clear that we are going to do a certain amount of work, but that could be that the client says, okay, we're going to kick off this project and we do, I don't know, 25 boreholes, and we want you to go to these specific areas. And then on hindsight, they come back once the project is maybe kicked off and they say, well, no, we actually want to cancel, I don't know, a certain area and you only do 15 boreholes. But if they have an option and they say, well, we kick off the program and we can always expand with another 50 boreholes, I don't know. We're not including that in the backlog. So it's only what we know that will happen in the project. But obviously, there is still some flexibility there. And as I said before, maybe it's good to emphasize that is the majority of the work that we're talking about here is now moving as we have seen before as well, which I think some of you have flagged in the past as well, what will happen now? Is this going to continue that we see all the time projects moving out. That is not necessarily what we say. And I haven't seen this before in the way we have seen this now over the last couple of weeks.

At this moment, there are no further questions. [Operator Instructions]

Okay. Then we close this call. Thank you very much. If there's any additional questions, obviously, you can reach out to our Investor Relations team with Buttingha Wichers. Thank you very much.