Hunting PLC (HTG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everybody. Thanks for being here today. I'd like to welcome everybody listening online. Thank you all for showing up today. I know it's a busy results today in London, but I just want to start off by saying, wow, what a difference a year makes. So looking at our evolution of our business over the last 12 months, it's been a dramatic change, bringing us to the results that we show today. But before I get into those results and -- Bruce and I share numbers and some guidance with you, I just want to make sure I say thanks to the staff and team at Hunting for all they did in this cycle that we've been in. It's been a couple of difficult years. And so now as we've moved from managing in a crisis, now we're managing success. And I'm very fortunate to have the team that I have in place to help get this job done and provide the benefit to our shareholders. So with that, I'll get through our presentation here. Highlights. Bruce will go through the numbers, but a nice improvement in revenue in general overall from literally every business unit out there. We saw Titan business up 41%. The group's business is up about 39% year-over-year. Strong bookings in the offshore segment. I think the best thing I could say is a nice improvement in our margin year-over-year, thanks to pricing increases, absorption of overhead through our manufacturing sites, those type of things, all led to a better gross margin for the company as well as a sign that the offshore market is coming back. We're big believers in the offshore market, and we like that because the margin profile of that business is much higher than typical onshore business, and we see that as a growth area going forward. Non-oil and gas sales continue to expand. The percentage was probably a little bit less than we thought overall, but that's because the oil and gas grew some much more. So we're looking at it more in actual numbers rather than percentage moves going forward because we think that the oil and gas business on our platform is going to accelerate dramatically. We formed an energy transition team late fourth quarter. Why did we do that? We looked at this. We've listened to people around the world, talk about the energy transition and what's going on. Prior to, let's say, late last year, we really couldn't see how to connect the dots in order to make money. And for Hunting, we're not going to go down the pathway unless we see that it's going to deliver results for our shareholders as far as earnings go. Well, now with the flood of capital going into these industries enhanced by the government funding, we want to make sure we're capturing our share of that pie that's out there, and we have products and services within our existing portfolio that we think can be even more focused on some of the energy transition. And then lastly, on this slide, I guess, next to left, we talked about our asset lending base, and I'm proud of the job that the company has done in the downturn to properly manage our balance sheet. So as you'll see as the results going forward. One of the changes that we have in our financial outlook is obviously increases in working capital. Fortunately, we view that as an asset and strength for us going into this upturn because we had the wherewithal to go do this, to capture the business to not worry about funding the inventory and the like so we could grow and deliver enhanced earnings in this cycle right now. And then lastly, probably had more questions about that than anything so far this morning. We're talking about the launch of the Hunting 2030 strategy. In short, this may sound kind of strange, but I don't want to be -- I don't want to have participation trophies, right? We want to earn our earnings in this company. We want to try to find a way to make the company always investable regardless of the cycles. So in oil and gas, there's always going to be cycles. If you're having a good day, someday down the road is going to be a bad one. For many of us in our organization, we're very weathered having seen a lot of ups and downs. But the key thing is we want to deliver 15% EBITDA as a target. We want to increase the investability of the organization and understand that we're going to do some things to take out the rough up and downs that we find in traditional oil and gas without abandoning or going away from our oil and gas service strength. So that's more of that will come in September. Market highlights. Right now, we're in a market that I would say the key word is conflicted. I think you can get a story anywhere with oil prices anywhere from $50 a barrel to $120 a barrel, just pick one. You can look at natural gas prices. 6 months ago, it was panic. We're not -- nobody is going to have natural gas. It's $8 an Mcf in the U.S. I think it was 10 days ago, we were down to $1.95 in the U.S. So worries about things like how fast is China opening, how much is the potential recession going to impact demand in the U.S. if there is one. All of these macro issues are really playing into the mind of what's going on in oil and gas right now. And so your guess on price is probably as good as mine. But what I do know is demand is continuing to rise for hydrocarbons. Oil demand is going to be up this year, economies from India to Southeast -- throughout Southeast Asia globally are expanding. I mean, if you look now the amount of flights, for example, from the U.S. to China, you're still only at about 25% of what that total was pre-COVID. And so we think demand is going to continue to be strong. There's going to be these temporary moves up and down, but we believe the outlook is extremely bullish going forward. And on top of that, the geothermal applications that are coming online right now, talking about our energy transition plays right into some of our existing strengths. But that gives you an idea. You all know the numbers. The spend is up. If you look at the bottom right-hand graph, while spending is up, you'll see we're still not back to 2019 levels. So we still got a ways to go on that, but I think we will continue to head in the right direction. As I say, lower left, upper right is the way I want to see the graphs go. And I'm going to hand it over to Bruce now.

Thanks, Jim. Good morning, everyone. I'm just going to take you through the key financial statements. We've got our adjusted group income statement here. Just showing here, as Jim was saying, good recovery, we've shown a 39% increase in our revenues from '21 to '22. A lot of that has been driven by our North American business and by Titan. In terms of the -- we've added another $70 million to our gross profit. Nice to see gross margins picking up 5 points from '21 on to '22. Again, as Jim was mentioning there, higher utilization rates, more pricing leverage offsetting any input costs coming through there. We're up at $52 million EBITDA from $3.1 million last year, giving us a 7% margin, operating profit, $14.6 million compared to a loss of $35.1 million last year, a nice improvement there. After the JV losses, [ we're actually ] a PBT of $10.2 million against $40.6 million loss last year. So that's our first PBT, posted PBT since 2019, which is always good to see. A little bit of tax coming down the lines, PAT of $8.9 million. We've got a total dividend of share declared of $0.09 giving us a small return on capital of 1%. So a good improvement over previous year. A little more detail in terms of the segments. This is now showing our subsea division we're going to break out in 2023. This is now -- subsea is included within our North American segment at the moment. We've also included an EBITDA per segment as well, just give visibility on our segmental numbers at the same time. So again, across all the segments here, showing good increases on our prior year. Titan again strong U.S. performance, up 41% on last year. Good international sales kind of been strong as well. So that's a good performance coming through there. And really, that $15.9 million of operating profit is the bulk of our operating profit for the group as well. North America, up again 37% on last year. That's good growth there. U.S. land, Gulf of Mexico, also, our completion business has been very good for the likes of Guyana, Suriname as well. So international sales coming through there with a decent subsea performance as well. EMEA, we're up about 23% on 2021. So still reporting an operating loss of $6 million, but closing that gap [ 5 ] better than last year. Starting to see some good international trading orders for Hollins and for Aberdeen business at the same time. So that's starting to see better utilization in our facilities in Europe. Also that reflects post the project cherries where we sold the North Sea Pipe division. So that's allowed us to get those cost base down as well. Asia Pac suffered quarter 1, still with the constraints of COVID. We saw quarter 1 really a difficult month. Shanghai was closed, we couldn't get exports out of the region into the Middle East. I think our sales for the first quarter were down at $14 million compared to up at $34 million for quarter 4. So a big improvement in momentum going the right way there. So in total, that's a breakdown of [ $75 million] against a $52 million EBITDA by segment. In terms of adjusting items, we have 2 adjusted items for the year, which is a lot less trying to clean up our income statements there. So 2 items. One, the goodwill you'll see on there, the $7 million relates to our Enpro division. And that's primarily due to an increase in our discount rates with interest rates going higher. The higher discount rates of 2% to 3% has driven that $7 million impairment on our goodwill for the Enpro acquisition. We've also got legal fees that we're adjusting of $5.6 million. This relates to our Dyna reclaim against us from DynaEnergetics in the States, patent infringements. So that was a legal cost for the year. Abnormal legal costs, we're actually successful in that case in January '23. So in total, we've got $12.6 million of adjusted items coming out of the income statement this year. A little bit of a deeper dive. This is by product group as opposed to segments. So looking across the 6 product lines. Again, if you look at this is by going from first half '21, second half '21, first half '22 and then second half '22. So just trying to show the momentum that's building over the various product lines. So steady growth here coming through our Perforating Systems, reflecting the steady growth in U.S. land. A really strong performance in H2 for OCTG a 37% higher H2 '22 compared to H1 '22. And again, that's driven by some good -- some sales coming through Asia Pac, strength in the U.S. land business with TEC-LOCK coming through and some good completion business coming into Guyana, et cetera. Steady growth across advanced manufacturing. Intervention Tools, we're seeing more CapEx coming through from the service companies, so that's good for our well intervention sales as well. So obviously, a little bit down H2 on H1. That's really just timing. Sometimes accounting, we're accounting for that over time these long-term contracts as opposed to on time. And then we've got others, which includes our [ 10K in-thru ] business and our well testing. In terms of our split between oil and gas and nonoil and gas, we're up at $47 million, which accounts for about 7% of our business as nonoil and gas at the moment. Little chart for EBITDA, showing the improvement. There's 2020, obviously, the impact of COVID coming through from quarter 2 onwards. EBITDA margin improving on $52 million, that's up to 7% for '22. We're looking at 10% for '23. That's what we're guiding on that. And we believe that will continue to improve as we see utilization of facilities improve, more pricing leverage coming through our product lines as well. Just on the balance sheet. As we mentioned, a strong balance sheet, really good platform for us here. Net assets of $846 million. PPE is $256 million. Again, CapEx has been light over the last 2, 3 years. So our CapEx is less than depreciation. That's why we seen that number drop a little bit there. Not much change in the right of use of assets. Goodwill is down slightly, that reflects the impairments on our Enpro division. Working capital, Jim touched on, that's the -- showing the significant uptake there as we're building for the up cycle. We've got an order book now with $473 million. So we're getting that ready for those commitments there at the same time, receivables are up as well. Other key areas, we're still despite that movement and outflow in working capital still sitting with $24 million of cash in the bank, take off your lease liabilities were down at net debt of $10 million. A bit more detail on working capital. You see a big increase here on our inventories about $68 million. A lot of that is coming through Titan, a few reasons for that. Long lead times on -- not surprisingly on items such as charges, explosives, shortages in the [ fassi crane ] as well. So building, making sure we can supply that to our key customers. We have a product build on H-3 before the launch, building that product up before we launched that through '23 as well. And again, very busy. That's reflecting the higher activities coming through. Little bit buildup on North America. Again, one of the areas there on the electronic chips has been real delays in terms of getting those chips from China and elsewhere. That's up to over 12 months. So we want to make sure we've got enough inventory on the shelves that we can supply our customers. So at $322 million, that gives a net inventory of $272 million. Receivables, up significantly from '21, and that's driven by increased activity we're seeing through the income statement there as well. We're looking -- if you look at the metrics, inventory days down from 163 to 159 and receivables down from 87 to 84. So despite the fact that absolute numbers are going up, at least the metrics and efficiency are going the right way. Move on to our cash flow. If we're looking next year, we got our $52 million EBITDA plus the noncash share-based awards to get to $62 million. We're flowing out our $86 million of working capital that we just talked about there. Some lease payments, some other items, a little bit of tax we're paying. We disposed of a couple of one property in Casper, another lease we got out of in Singapore. So that was a net gain there. Our legal fees were turnaround and adjusted items for Dyna is $5.6 million. So that was a net cash outflow of -- free cash outflow of $38 million. Our CapEx, intangible asset spend was $22 million. We've got dividends of $13.6 million. So with FX on top of that, we've got a net outflow of almost $90 million for the year compared to a net inflow of $12.5 million. Just finish on guidance. In terms of -- we're comfortable for our guidance is sitting with regards to what we put out there in the December trading statements. Our phasing of profits are likely to be in the second half of the year with some of the longer-term contracts being delivered invoiced in that period. We're targeting for '23 10% improvement from 7% this year up to 10%. Again, talking to the price increases, utilization coming through as well. We're guiding around CapEx of higher than what we've seen over the last 2, 3 years. So traditional it's been between USD 10 million and USD 15 million. We're now up between USD 30 million and USD 40 million. Most of that is with regard to replacement on machinery. We'll see more activity coming through. So therefore, we're replacing more items as the machines get a little bit older. These machines will be more efficient. We'll get the benefit of that when they come in as well. Dividends similar to '22, progressing, hopefully, up another 10% increase in '23 and continue that trend. And the last point is just in terms of cash flow. First half '23, we do expect to see a further working out -- working capital outflow of between USD 50 million and USD 75 million in the first half, primarily quarter 2, and that's been driven by the long-term CNOOC deliveries and contracts, a lot along with the subsea spring contracts. We will then see we'll return back through H2 as those receivables are received and generate cash over the H2 and return to positive cash position by the end of the year. Okay. And with that, I'll hand back to Jim.

Okay. Thanks, Bruce. Let me see there. I'm going to go over some of the operational highlights. There's a list on Page 12 here, but I'm just going to go straight into that by product. OCTG business, very, very strong year. TEC-LOCK activity in North America exploded for us again this past year. I think it will continue to remain strong. Our mill partners are working well with us. We're seeing a lot more work with our Japanese trading company partners, and that's opened up opportunities for us in the Gulf of Mexico as well as onshore in North America. The Asia Pac business for OCTG has really reached an inflection point now. And I keep needed to bring this up because historically, the bulk of OCTG business that is tied to Asia Pac, actual destination is the Middle East. So recently, we've been very successful in places like Kurdistan, in Kuwait, in Egypt, and we're going to continue, hopefully, to see that business do well. The CNOOC order was a huge order for us. There's not a lot of those out there on a monthly basis, but we'll be in the mix of things when and if they come up to go forward. Canada, good operating performance in Canada. Again, as you all know, we changed our business model up there about 2 years ago. We got out of the pipe business as far as being a distributor. We're now at the same model as in the U.S. primarily working with trading houses and distributors, takes down our working capital, enhances our profitability. And then we're also focusing now on opportunities in the geothermal and carbon capture market. We have real inquiries coming in now for people like Exxon. We think that's going to be a growing part of our business going forward as far as the energy transition goes. And what we have found is we're 5 years ago or even 3 years ago, the quality of material being spec-ed in these applications was perceived to be pretty low, i.e., pretty generic with API grades, API connections on them. Now you're seeing temperature issues that are requiring -- temperature issues and chemistry issues that are requiring more nickel-based alloys, more 13 chrome, 15 chrome alloys like that, and you need premium connections on those materials. So we've got some good partners there, and we're excited about the opportunities we're seeing in that market. Titan business, perforating business did well last year. The H-3 product has been well received in the marketplace. That's our main product line out there replacing the H-1. It's a more cost-effective to produce product as well as better performance. It's the same thing with whether it's premium connections, well intervention, Titan products. When you start a new product line, you're always looking at how do we do continuous improvement and make it better. H-3 is a result of that. Increased volumes, the bulk of our sales in North America now are preloaded guns. So we're in that, providing our customers what they're asking for, which is less hands on the rig site touching things. Outlook for this business remains strong. We had our best year ever since I have known of Titan as far as international sales go. And when I say international, I mean non-North American, which we try to count Canada as part of the U.S., but a big uptick in business in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Argentina, very good dynamics on this business going forward. We think frac spread counts will stay relatively steady or increase a little, but we're also saying that we're going to see the lateral lengths get longer and provide probably more kit on a per well basis going through this year. Advanced manufacturing, we've had -- this has been the one business that has been impacted by supply chain issues. Mike Blehm and his team in our electronics business, they pulled it out of the hat at the end of the year, made their plan for the year, but we're still struggling with some electronic component issues. So all you have to do is talk to some people that had to order appliances or whatever in the U.S. in the past year, and it was horrible getting even the diodes, the chips and whatever. But the good news is none of our competitors could as well. So our backlog continued to grow. We do see some things easing in that, and we should have a better year in '23. Plus on the electronics side, we've picked up substantial military business. So we're starting to grow our non-oil and gas business there. Dearborn some of the same issues, supply chain issues regarding nickel-based alloys regarding third-party services. We had difficult times getting people signing off on things, and there was also some COVID impact especially in the first half of the year from just the workforce. So those things are all behind us. The good news is it's pretty positive going forward for this product line, and we're expecting substantial growth in '23. Subsea, one of our 2030 strategies is to more -- put more focus on the subsea business. You all have heard me talk about that many times. We want to play in that area because we like the technology that goes offshore, and we like the margin profile of the products that go offshore as well. So a great year for our Titan -- I'm sorry, for our -- what was our RTI business in spring as far as capturing -- successfully capturing new business with Exxon in Guyana, new business capture with Equinor in Brazil, some new business in the Gulf of Mexico. Inquiry level is starting to pick up there. So we're pretty positive on that business. The Stafford coupling business is steady, directly related, as I've always said to with subsea tree awards. The one disappointment has been the Enpro business. As I probably have told you all, we literally closed that deal a week before the COVID shutdown in the U.K. So it was hampered by that -- hampered by the whole downturn in the business, but we've been able to synergize the Enpro engineering staff with some of the U.S. staff from Stafford and the Spring facility. So we're going -- giving a total approach to clients. We still are big believers in the Enpro product line. We still think they're going to have a good year in '23. Well intervention tools, something again, you can see the graph, lower left, upper right, going in the right direction. More importantly, pricing is going in the right direction on that product line. It is purely a capital expenditure for the service companies. So during the downturn, you had very little capital expenditures going on in this. You had so many rigs laid down that could easily replace equipment with what was sitting there idle. We've seen that turn now, and we're seeing momentum in the well intervention tools. And then other revenues we talk about, our Trenchless business has had a better year-over-year. It needs to continue to grow. It's primarily related to the underground construction business, trenching business for fiber optics, water lines, things like that. Well testing business. The first slide on the presentation was a picture of one of our well testing desanding units that we make. I think because it's blue, it's probably one to Schlumberger, but that's one of those units there, plus it's our color too, but Schlumberger is a big customer of that product line. And so outlook looks good there. We're envisioning putting more of that work into the Middle East out of Dubai from our Dutch facility as the year goes on just for logistics reasons. And then again, as I talked earlier, energy transition is in focus. We have a fellow by the name is Sean O'Shea leading that for us right now. And one of the nice things about it is just the fact how the team has come together with the multiple product lines, looking at how do we synergize and capitalize on these opportunities. Segment review. You got the numbers there to the right. I've already talked about most of these items here, so I'm not going to go through them in detail. We -- again, a good year in international sales. We held -- we did well in North America, pretty much between ourselves and one of our competitors. It's kind of a 2-horse race in that market. We feel that our market share has stayed steady, if not growing with the advent of new products coming online, and we're looking forward to a good year ahead. North America, I've covered most of those already. But on that slide, you can see the revenue numbers, results from operations. U.S. manufacturing business, a lot of that is all OCTG related, really has benefited and is benefiting from the plays in South America. So as you know, we do a lot of business with some of the major service companies who have the completion contracts in places like Guyana and Suriname in Brazil. And so we have seen that business accelerate dramatically. That is good accessory business. It's all high alloy, usually 13, 22 chrome type material, it's good business for us. And there's no sign of that changing because those areas are going to be growth areas for a long time to come. And again, the rest of the connection technology business onshore is doing well. We're seeing some life come back to the Gulf of Mexico and our people in Southeast Asia will be driving the rest of that in general for OCTG. The other businesses I've already discussed. Subsea, we've talked about, shows you what the order book is right now. The decline, I think, is over. When you look at the announcements put out recently by Noble, by Transocean, you're seeing rig contracts accelerate. Those are all good omens for us going into the new year, and we expect anything related to Subsea to have an improved performance year-over-year. EMEA, better but not good enough is where we stand in that. So we made the transition from being in the pipe business to out of the pipe business. I was kind of surprised our revenue numbers were as high as they were being that we weren't selling a lot of pipe at that time. But again, we've got a lot of work to do there. We do have some good backstops. The Dutch facility is very busy right now supporting the Tubacex business for Brazil. We're seeing an uptake in a well intervention business in the North Sea as well as we -- this should be the year where we have strong results for organic oil recovery. Asia Pac, one of the areas I'm most optimistic about for '23, very good sales network there, very good client relationships over the years. As the international market comes back, we'll be there as a player, right? There's some fundamental changes that have happened in the OCTG market. For example, you had Vallourec shut down their mills in Germany that make large diameter seamless pipe. Well, right now, other than Tenaris, there's really only Tenaris and some of our Chinese partners that can now be in that marketplace. So we're working to get things qualified. We've seen a pickup in business activity in places, as I mentioned, the Kuwait, the North Africa is in that. And so I'm very positive on the outlook going forward. Our Jindal JV, we're hoping to have the grand opening in July. And if you just read recently, ONGC announced 116 well project in India. We're going to be participating in that. We're selling product into India now. And we view it as a good market, not only for consumption, but for us, it's a good market to diversify our base of material supply from out of China to be able to add Indian content for other areas, for example, in the Middle East or North Africa. Other investments, the Rival investment, just kind of a reminder, that's where we took our drilling tools business and merged it in with a company called Rival. So there's our sales, 2 other partners in that business. It is now generating positive EBITDA. It's going in the right direction. The big thing about the reason why we got into that business was the amount of capital we took on our regular monthly basis to keep it going. And so we have not had to inject cash into that business this year, and they're seeing upside. They have new product lines coming out in the mud motor business. So the outlook looks bright for them. Well Data Labs, we made a small investment on a note there. We continue to work with the people Well Data Labs through Titan, looking at ways to take a look at things like machine learning and to try to analyze what actually happens with our guns and explosives downhole. Today, I can't show you any dollars that this is a benefit, but it has been a learning experience for the company. And then lastly, Cumberland. March will be their best month ever. They're going in the right direction. The business is still slight loss-making right now, but they've just opened up in the fourth quarter, their second facility in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They have great technology. They have great human skills as far as the people employed there from a metallurgical and operational point of view. And right now, 80% to 90% of that business is aerospace. So a lot of non-oil and gas exposure, but we have worked with Cumberland on synergizing some sales opportunities with some oil and gas clients in Houston. So we're very positive about that investment there. Market outlook, we think it's going to be strong. As I said, I think the market is conflicted right now because I read the same thing you do in Range Resources or Comstock or whatever comes out. So you are seeing people back off the natural gas market a little bit. However, you're seeing frac spreads from the natural gas plays in the U.S. head to the Permian, and you are seeing offshore recovery. So our whole thesis is we're going to see accelerated spending this year and in the future. Hunting 2030, you all have to be in attendance in September to find out more details on this. But again, we look at our business, we won a business where shareholders embrace their investment into Hunting for the long term. Like I mentioned, I don't want participation trophies, right? Here we are. We want to deliver results, be able to give returns to our investors through dividends primarily, and see the business more stable. And as I mentioned, we're never going to get out of the cycles of oil and gas, but there needs to be ways to smooth out the bumps and to focus on this target of 15% EBITDA return for the businesses. And so more of this will unfold in September. And with that, I think -- oh, sorry, we have one more slide or energy transition we talked about there. That's the sales group. I'm not going to go talk any more about that right now, but those are some projected activity levels that we're seeing and hearing from people like Rystad on what's going on in the geothermal market. Global presence, kind of a snapshot we put up there on some highlights of the company for the year. Most of these are numbers that we've already went over. But the one thing it shows you is, and I've always tried to tell you, we're not just a Permian Basin operator or we're not just a North Sea operator. We do have global reach. We do have products used everywhere. Everywhere, there's going to be oil and gas extraction, we're there. And if you look at our non-oil and gas product offering, they're sitting at Heathrow right now or JFK or one of the other airports because we work in spaces like that as well. So in summary, our share price is just way too low right now. So that's the bottom line to what I got to say. We're going to continue to march forward with focusing on our costs and our efficiencies. We're going to focus on taking care of the client. And I believe if you do your sales properly, focus on the clients, solve his problems, deliver value, you're going to be around a long time and you're going to prosper as a company. We have a great workforce. I probably don't talk enough about it, but our HS&E record is stellar. It takes a lot of work to maintain those standards. And so our team led by Greg Farmer, has done a marvelous job of doing that because it's part of that managing for success that -- managing success that I talked about earlier. We went through the downturn. Now we're back into the hiring mode of people. You've got to keep them safe. We got to make sure quality levels stay at absolutely perfect levels, and we're doing that. And we're going to continue to look for opportunities on the M&A side. We're going to continue to look for opportunities to invest and grow our business organically as well. So with that, I'm done. The rest is some ESG. Do you want to talk any more about those, Bruce?

No, that's it.

And I guess we can throw it open to questions. Everybody has got a question. Go ahead, Mark.

It's Mark Wilson, Jefferies. We love your slide on Slide 6 about revenue by product grouping. I was wondering if you could talk to the margins within those, if there's any that particularly stand out in terms of higher margin than the others. And the other thing I noticed from that slide is Subsea, you said it always ticks down in 1H, but your order book has gone through the roof in subsea. So can you just speak to the disconnect there between those revenues?

Yes. I'll take the latter part of that question. On the order book for Subsea, the titanium riser business, stress joint business, those are more than 1 year lead times. So backlogs that we've picked up, those will be billed in '23 and actually into '24. So most of that has been -- again, it's up year-over-year. It's going in the right direction, but it's a very long-cycle business. On the margins, Bruce, I'll let you go through.

Yes. I think on the margins, what excites us probably is on the subsea space as well as international, it's offshore. It's complex products, which lends itself to the higher gross margins that we'll see through there. So that's why part of our strategy is that build-out Mike on the subsea, the titanium risers along the traditional Stafford couplings as well. OCG, we tend to be slightly lower margins in terms of big sort of tubing case and material content in there. And Perforating Systems with the instrumentation as well can be a good margin business. So the perforating the subsea and even advanced manufacturing, we're into that complex manufacturer, what we're seeing, so gross margins there at the same time.

Sorry, if we fast forward 1 year then, the step change in sales, which we see growth in OCTG there that's come through already, but the step change if we fast forward 1 year or is it 2024 would be in the Subsea business?

It tends to be subsea, yes, that mirrors the order book. We've still got a large component of the order book, the $470 million is within OCG because we've got [ Sencore order ] is still in there as well. So that's a big chunk. But we do see the growth momentum, the order book coming through Subsea.

Yes, I think the 3 areas that are going to have the most growth revenue-wise year-over-year are going to be OCTG primarily because Asia Pac is kicking back in, and it's getting busier in the international markets. Advanced manufacturing because backlogs are there, supply chain issues are fading and our subsea business because we already have the orders on the books. It's now again, the lead time to go and get titanium, that you can't walk down the road and get it in 30 days. So it's long lead time products.

Richard Dawson from Berenberg. Just 2 questions. Firstly, what are you seeing for activity levels on the U.S. onshore. So particularly, I think particularly gas, the rig count started to tick a bit lower and just what that means for margins, sort of what you're seeing on that. And then I appreciate we've got 3 more coming in September. But on that long-term EBITDA guidance for 15%, so 7% '22, outlook is 10% sort of this year. How do you get to that 15%, are there particular segments and geographies you're looking at onshore -- sorry, offshore is strong. But then equally, just in the context of growing your non-oil and gas revenue and particularly that energy transition revenue, will that contribute to that 15%? Or are you sort of going to have to boost it elsewhere to get to that 15%.

Okay. So I'll answer the first question first. Onshore right now, everybody knows you want to know what's going on. You look at the baker use rig count every Friday at 12:02, I love on my computer to see what it is. And we are negative year-to-date, we're down since the peak around mid-November, same with frac spread accounts right now. And it's been publicly announced people like Comstock, like Chesapeake, they have pulled -- they have dropped rigs already in the Haynesville. That seems to be the most affected area in North America right now because it's deeper wells, it's higher cost, and they're backing away from some of those. On the same flip side to that, we've seen a movement from frac spreads from the Haynesville due to shutdown wells shut down drilling activity to the Permian. So today, we haven't seen an effect of Hunting for what's going on with about 20% of the rigs natural gas focused, it's -- we play in the natural gas market, obviously. We have a big presence in the Marcellus, where we do well out of our business areas up there, but it has an impact on us, it has -- had no impact on margins and pricing in the market right now. On the 15% EBITDA, that is going to be a gradual march for us. Part of it is focusing on areas where we see the higher margins, which is, for example, why the subsea build-out is important to us. A lot of it is on metrics and internally how we run the business better. So we're continuing to look at ways in which we do things quicker, faster, better as an organization. But it's all -- and I'll give you an example, even in the fourth quarter. We turned down some business has tightened in Q4 because we're trying to be disciplined in the pricing. And I noticed that our margins in Q4 were the highest they have been since the downturn at Titan where one of our major competitors dropped their margins. So we don't want to be in a pricing game out there. So we want to focus on things in which pricing can be strong and where we have great technology as far as leadership goes in that area. Subsea we do. We think we're unmatched in the 3 areas we play there. Our Premium Connection business, we improved our margins by getting out of the pipe business. So those already took a jump up from historically where we have been in the past. And then the other area is perforating systems, again, that -- let's focus on where you make the money, not so much on the traditional, for example, fracking stuff. Energy transition will play into that. We are assuming margins are as good as historic OCTG margins in the things we're looking at for energy transition.

Alex Smith from Investec. You mentioned growth through inorganic and organic measures. But just for the strategy, could you comment on areas of interest you think you could bolt on or areas you feel that you need to invest in medium term?

Yes. I mean we've looked at a couple of things. I can't give any names right now. It's been areas -- if we had to find the perfect opportunity for a bolt-on acquisition right now, it would be a company that has some proprietary technology in areas like defense, aviation, medical and perhaps had a tangential touch to oil and gas. So there's people out there that unlike us that may be 8% non-oil and gas and 92% oil and gas, there's those out there that are 20% oil and gas bigger. So we're looking for something that fits in with that those parameters. We haven't found them yet. We identified and talked to a couple of companies. When COVID hit, it really destroyed not just in the oilfield service business, but for a lot of people, destroyed their profitability. And so in discussions we've had with customers or customers potential acquisition targets, most of them, unless they had a gun to their head, said, I'm not, I just not sell it. I know there will be a multiple assigned to this. You're public, you've got to show a multiple to a buy, and I'm going to wait until my earnings normalize. So I think in '23, there'll be more opportunities ahead. So that's kind of the story on that.

And then second one, just organic oil recoveries picking up some headlines with some positive results. Any kind of comments you could add to that?

The guy that's the king of organic oil recovery sitting to my left. I'm going to let him talk. He's staying closer to it.

Yes, again, it's been a slow burn as adopting new technologies always is in oil and gas. We've had a couple of really good commercial treatments in the North Sea, what we're excited about. That's the first discussions there. We're back in 2017. So our second commercial treatment is going in as we speak just now, and that's a deepwater North Sea asset. And again, there's been a number of good pilot projects, successful pilot projects, very exciting results going back around the globe, when that's West Africa, Middle East, especially and also hungry and other sectors and geographies as well. So again, it's just keeping gating results that helps us sell commercially, and we're very excited with this commercial treatment as well because that's it's commercial. That will help our numbers, but also we can use that to help push the sales of the product down the track as well.

Victoria McCulloch, RBC. Could you just give us an insight, I guess, across these divisions given it's up on the screen that where utilization is at, at the moment? I'll start with that one.

I mean I'm not running out of capacity in any place, how's that as an answer. When I look at the perforating operation, for example, we've just expanded some capacity in Mexico, our facility in Monterrey. My point is I can't give you a firm hard number. I can tell you that in '22, we produced about 70% of the gun volume, 75% that we produced pre-COVID and the same as far as charges go. And we took -- we didn't take really capacity out. We revamped Oklahoma City in the past year, so we have capacity there. So we've got plenty of capacity. It's not an issue. I would say we're probably 50%, 60% utilized there. OCTG is different everywhere in the world. So if you're looking at our Houma facility for OCTG, they're basically running a 1.5 shift basis down there. But if you look at our Ameriport facility in Houston, where we're doing the threading at, it's running around the clock right now, taking care of TEC-LOCK. Advanced manufacturing, we're running about a 1.5 shift at our electronics facility and about 2 shifts at our facility in Dearborn, but we've had struggles up there as far as labor goes and the like, but that's kind of where we're at there. Intervention tools, that falls most of that manufacturing is in Aberdeen or in our facility in Houma, Louisiana where plenty capacity there. The Subsea in Spring right now, it's running full out. We just last year put in a CapEx request where we're doubling the capacity on our large bed work that we have there. But in none of our businesses or we turned away work and none of our businesses are we constrain by capital -- by capacity right now.

And maybe since you touched on it, where is the increased CapEx for 2023 being allocated across the business?

So a lot of it is going to replacement equipment in U.S. manufacturing, which would be OCTG, some of it is replacement equipment is perforating in places like Pampa, where we need to spend some money there. Some of it is new projects like our Jindal joint venture. There's CapEx going into that. We do -- we've got some subsea, the big lay that we're doing at the Spring facility. So it's really all over the place. This is not a one-shot deal.

And since I've got the microphone, I can ask another one. The H fund that you mentioned in one of your slides, what does that add to the market? And does it replace one of the other guns?

The H-3 is sitting in front of you replaces the H-1 gun.

Sorry, the H-4.

I'm sorry, the H-4 is for directional control. So it's for orienting the gun downhole. What we have found in things like carbon capture, for example, one of the major clients out there actually had to do some geothermal work and they blasted their control lines because they didn't orient their guns properly. So it's really going to be for a proper orientation of your gun downhole. It will depend on operator. It's not a product that everybody is going to use. It's just another tool in our [ textbook ].

Dan Slater from Zeus. I just wanted to ask about 2023 EBITDA margins. And I think the statement mentioned that sort of increase is going to come from 3 areas: pricing, greater utilization and some cost efficiencies, particularly on pricing. Can you talk a little bit more about that and how you're going to be able to put up your prices without sort of inflation following you and therefore, sort of keeping your margin where it is or squeezing it. If you could talk a little bit about that, that would be really kind.

Yes. I'd like to say, rising waters, all boats flowed up higher, and we've had -- we're at a point right now where there's not as much desperation in the market from a service county point of view. The downturn in the last -- the COVID downturn, you had people doing a lot of stupid things on pricing, right? Some of it was just survival that they had to do that. Right now, we're not seeing any crazy pricing in any of the products that we sell out there right now. So our focus is how do we push that up? How do we get a justifiable return. But I'm not going to say it's an easy thing, if it was easy and just you could wish it, I'd wish our margins would double. So there's still going to be work there. I think we've done a good job of staying ahead of inflation. When I look at our margins, how they've grown over the years. And for the company overall, it's going to be a fact that we should be seeing more premium product going out of the company than what we did a year or 2 ago because the offshore market has just higher margins than onshore. I mean I can tell you whether it's premium connections, accessories, anything to do with our subsea business unit, the margins are much better.

Just a follow-up here. So you've talked about the rig count, the perforating systems. You talked about the backlog for Subsea and you've talked about M&A in advanced manufacturing. So just maybe honing on OCTG, which has seen the highest revenue growth, and we saw this very large CNOOC order, which you said there's not many of those around. But could you just take us through the background of that order? Is it specifically project-based, for instance, for CNOOC? Or is it just they generally want to get a lot of stock on their book for [ land ]?

The CNOOC order was basis. It's an offshore China project. It's a very critical deepwater well that deepwater application is more than one well they're doing on this setup. It is a product -- you saw the couplings at a copper coating looking on that. That's because it's a -- the pipe is a chrome material, right? So it's higher alloy material. And while the Chinese, even the CNOOC, while they were keen to take the steel mills product, they weren't keen to take the premium connections on the end of that product. And so basically, it was ourselves competing against Tenaris or Sumitomo for that business. And we went out. The technology was there. We had tested those connections. I say it's a one-off. There are more projects that come on that. We've never landed an order that large in the company's history. Typically, our order size when we look at the Middle East is probably between USD 5 million and USD 15 million. So this is a huge order. It's a development platform. They had because it's 13 high chrome alloy. It's 9 and 5, 8 chrome, which makes it even more difficult. They had to order -- get the lead times down ahead of time. And so that's why it's a big bunch of dollars.

And in terms of the bidding process for that, I mean, is that -- was that like a 6-month thing? I mean would you bid -- you say there's not many orders like that. I mean, is it the case, there's no visibility on such specific projects for your sales team at the moment?

Yes. I'd say -- well, there's some that we know -- I'll give you an example, when ADNOC comes out for a $200 million order in the Emirates, right, that's probably not going to be a place where Hunting is going to play in the OCTG business because I'm not a mill. We can throw things. We can compete with them, but that's probably going to go to one of the mills when you get to those frame contracts, servicing the rig returns and all that kind of stuff. So our sweet spot is really that $5 million to $15 million, $20 million order that we go in and do. And it's not that it's unplanned, but it really has to do with exploration, what's the drilling program. And because this Asia Pac, a lot of that's just all over the globe. I mean we -- as recently as last week, landed about a $15 million order in West Africa, which I'm not going to say that the client yet. But again, a great home run for us. It's going to be going through our facility in Louisi. It is material coming out of China. And that's a -- those are home runs for us.

Final point. You talked about some pretty high spec metals, chromian, titanium. We see rig counts coming off in oil and gas. What are you seeing on the supply side of some of these high-end metals and materials. Any concerns that...

If I had no limits to my money to buy things, I want to go buy a nickel based -- a nickel-producing steel company right now because in areas like that, when we looked at our energy transition, the lay of the land right there, the nickel-based alloys that they're talking about consuming, there's no way the world has enough capacity because you don't -- not only have oil and gas now drawing on it. That's -- that dominates everything in aerospace, right? So those high in the titanium and all, it's going to be a demand issue going forward -- a supply issue going forward. It hasn't yet. Our titanium supplier has been fine, but I'm just saying there's no way those prices are going down, and it's just -- it's a very buoyant market. We have seen prices somewhat rollover for OCTG in North America, the bread and butter OCTG. And I think that, that's just again a temporary thing right now. But they're still some of the highest levels I've seen in my whole career.

You can pass on those prices.

Well, the good thing is I don't have to worry about those prices because we thread other pipe for you should thus by the distributors. So I'm just saying that I'm sharing what the trend is rather than the effect on us.

There's no more questions in the room. We haven't actually received any questions via the website, the webcast. So I'll hand back to you, Jim, to say some final comments to close the meeting.

Great. No, thank you all for being here. So we're -- it's amazing what difference a year makes. I'm very excited about our outlook going forward. I think we've got the right people, the right tools in place to really have a very successful 2023. And look forward to talking to you all later. So, thanks.