Odfjell Technology Ltd. (OTL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello. Welcome to Odfjell Technology's Q3 presentation. My name is Gert Haugland. I'm the SVP for Finance and Investor Relations at Odfjell Technology. I'm joined by our CEO, Simen Lieungh; and our CFO, Jone Torstensen. You'll find the presentation on our website, and I ask you to take notice of the disclaimer on Page 2. Simen will take us through the first part of the presentation, while Jone will cover the financial figures before we conclude with a Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] I'll now hand it over to Simen for the first part.

Thank you, Gert. Thank you, and good morning to everybody. Thanks for calling in. I'll give you the highlights on the financials. I'm going to go through the market situation and some other updates on our activities as we have now presented in this quarter. The current situation with Q3, we have a strong order backlog and a healthy balance sheet. We have revenue of NOK 1.33 billion. We have an EBITDA of NOK 201 million. We have a very strong order backlog for NOK 30.7 billion and with an availability -- available liquidity situation of a little more than NOK 1 billion. We have also, this quarter, increased our dividend from NOK 45 million to NOK 60 million with an increase from -- on the shares per NOK 1.14 to NOK 1.52, which gives a good yield. The debt leverage ratio is 0.7, which is according to a level we actually are quite comfortable with. To share a little more about the market situation which needs to get some attention, we are, of course, very close to our largest clients being major oil companies and are main service providers all over the world actually where we operate. And the trend has, actually, over the last 6 months, shown that investments and activity level pickup are somewhat shifted to the right. The why to that question or issue is a mixed picture, but volatility of oil price and global unrest and uncertainty are clearly common denominators with respect to reasons. Also, now, with the conclusion of the election in the U.S., regardless of what people think, that also will probably be one of the elements that has been raised as an issue for uncertainty over the last period. Now, that's concluded. So we see the same, that activity levels are somewhat slowed down. And within the different markets, we see that our operators are postponing investments. At the same time, our activities in tenders are actually increasing. But the commitment or the commencement of those tenders has been shifted to -- from -- coming from -- in '25 is more -- or '24 is more shifted into the last part of '25. So our situation is that we have to comply with that, and I will tell you later how we will comply with that. But within the different markets, we actually see that there are a mixed picture. We have a stable market situation in Norway and U.K. In the U.K., it's actually a growth within plug and abandonment activities and slot recovery activities. Slot recovery is also a downhole operation where clients has -- is still in the production phase. So slot recovery is an operation that actually creates more revenue for the clients, which means that, that's also prioritized, whilst permanent plug and abandonment activity is more like cleaning up what's been done earlier. And the activity level in the U.K. has increased significantly, and we are part of actually many tenders today that will probably be awarded in the first part of '25 and onwards. In the Middle East, we have seen a very variable market up and down. Saudi has clearly been terminating several onshore drilling rigs, terminating jack-ups, of course, creating an uncertainty in the region. Whilst so far, we have not been very much impacted by the termination of the last round they did on fixed onshore drilling activities where we do well services activities. Only a minor part of the operations we have there has been shut down, but we have moved all the type of equipment over to other parts of Middle East like Kuwait. So it's not that hard impacted. We see a very high tender activity level down in South America. As we have told earlier, we have established an office now in Houston, U.S.A., for actually doing more tender activities, sales activities, marketing activities in South America, but we also actually are looking at operations elsewhere in the Americas. We also see that the deepwater operations in West Africa and South America are somewhat postponed or delayed to the right, meaning that the ramp-up of deepwater activities has not been as the market expected close to half a year ago and more. So still, there are activity, but the ramp-up seem to be put a little more to the right, which is also confirmed by contractors operating on that market segment. We see quite a lot of opportunities in the plug/abandonment and the slot recovery market. We are actually positioning ourselves quite significant for -- to participate in that growth. This plug/abandonment activity is a part of the green shift. And we see now that, in North Europe, like Norway, U.K., South America, Gulf of Mexico and also in the Asia Pacific are ramping up plug/abandonment activities because of the fact that governments and rules and regulations are now pushing harder to actually execute on those wells. Around the world, there are thousands and 10,000 and 100,000 of wells that actually are not properly plugged and still are leaking. And some of the -- one of the names that is kind of linked to leaking wells is called zombie wells. And of course, this has impact both on climate but also health on people. So we expect now and we have got that confirmed from our clients, and we also see our competitors are positioning stronger for plug/abandonment activity. That market has been talked about for many decades, but now I think, finally, it's going to -- something is going to happen. Regarding the order backlog, NOK 13.7 billion. As I said, we maintain a high order backlog. We show now that, of course, most of the backlog in this -- in that NOK 13.7 billion is within operations were very stable backlog, but NOK 3.1 billion is within Well Services and NOK 0.6 billion Projects & Engineering. But then regarding the Well Services backlog, we are taking a quite conservative level of the contract won into that backlog. So just -- it's a conservative estimate that we put in here, not the kind of -- the potential in the backlog, but it's a very relevant and very conservative estimate. We have, of course, had some great wins with major clients so far this year. And currently, in this year up to now, we have won more than 100 contracts. And the good thing, even though I kind of have indicated a market which might be and has some slower over the next period, we have never -- it's long ago we have seen so much tender activities, but the commencement of those contracts are hitting late '25, which we had indicated earlier that the flat '24 will probably go further into '25. That has been indicated from us at least for the last period, last half year. Regarding capital allocation, I can say that we have a strong balance sheet. We have a good cash position. We have done refinancing. Our long-term estimates on cash generation are strong, and our leverage ratio are quite below 1.0. As I indicated, today, 0.7, which I come back to this -- also some elements for distributing cash or covenants for distributing cash to shareholders. Regarding capital investments, we have -- our tool is about NOK 4.3 billion as value. We have estimated around NOK 280 million to NOK 320 million CapEx in '24. Quite a lot of that CapEx estimate has been to replace old equipment and to -- which actually some of that equipment are more than 20 years old, needed to be replaced, and also that we have won quite many tender and TRS activities, meaning casing/running activities, which also need to have quite a lot of estimates. We foresee less estimates next year, which might be commented upon somewhat later. We also do some CapEx for equipment. We know it's going to be used. We are quite disciplined. We never do, I would say, speculative investments. We normally invest against contracts. And of course, if you have to maintain all the equipment, that's necessary, but we quite seldom do speculative investments. But when we see equipment, we actually know it's used quite frequently, and we lack that equipment with a longer -- I would say, long lead item times, which has been increased since the COVID regarding ability to produce those kind of equipment. We actually had done some speculative investments because, on equipment, we know it's going to be used and not necessarily against the contract when we did it, but we need -- we know that we need it and we need to have it in the pool. M&A investments, mergers and acquisitions. We have done one M&A in '24. That's according to plan and even better. And we are quite also focusing at other now bolt-on acquisitions that will fit into our portfolio of building up technologies and solutions, especially within plug/abandonment and slot recovery activities. Regarding dividend, we come back to that, we have a good trend to pay more dividend. We have a 140% growth versus the same quarter last year in dividend. And our long-term strategy is to provide a stable and attractive dividend for shareholders. Having said that, we have stated that we will focus the Odfjell -- or Odfjell Technology will focus on profitable growth, both organic and via M&As, to provide attractive shareholder returns through dividends. And that figure here shows today that, in Q3, we have 12% implied annual yield. And I think that, with the situation we see ahead of us, a strong annual cash generation, we have substantial available liquidity. We have a leverage ratio well below 1.5 in current threshold. So we are optimistic that, that dividend will be one part of the things we will do and attract interest for the company. As I said earlier, we indicated and as I said, we saw the trend of a moderate slowdown in the market activity level already 6 months ago. So what we did back then, saying that, okay, this happens now, we need to be prepared. So we started the process to establish a performance and improvement program for the coming period, from '24, late -- the last part of '24 into '26. This is in line with our good tradition. We have done that many times before. We have seen the market fluctuations, and we have always acted before it got too difficult. And that's why we have, in Odfjell, also survived the most critical period in the history. So the idea here now is to be prepared and to build robustness to tackle variable market conditions. These type of programs need to be carefully addressed into the organization to get the right buy-in and to get the right, I would say, focus and attention to make a difference and to deliver on the targets. The cost efficiency, these are split -- the program is split in 2 elements. I will not give any quantification on what we will achieve here, but I can say that we have already seen substantial potential, cost efficiency and commercial targets. We will look at supply chain. We will look at bundling of frame agreements. We have a large number of suppliers where we do procurements. We will look at the process and efficiencies within the systems, meaning that less manual work, more digital solutions. This has been worked with for quite a while now already, and we do have very clear ideas of where and how we're going to reduce time and free up more activity and resources to improve on the costs related to these kind of operations within cost. We -- of course, this will also result that we will reduce the direct resource base based on the improvements we achieve when we get them. And as always, indirect cost overhead will always be addressed. And this is ever -- never -- or will always be there to focus, to handle and to analyze our resource base to make it as optimal as possible. It's always typical, in good times, it's more difficult to do this than in times where the crises are a fact. But we need to do both, and we have a tradition to do both. Regarding commercial targets, we will improve revenue in operations and projects, and we see potential for that. We will, of course, prioritize high-margin products. That is easier said than done, but there are different -- in our portfolio of services, there are, of course, high-margin products and products and services that are giving lower margins. Of course, it's easy to do, to say the focus will be on the high margin, but we will also focus on to improve the products where we have lower margins. We will scale up contribution from mergers and acquisitions. And we actually, as we speak, have focused on several companies and technologies that we would like to get into our ownership and to put in and to complete our product portfolios on certain services. And of course, this is not done without the people doing the right things. So having an organization now with several thousand people in place, we need to have -- to improve our commercial discipline and commercial awareness. The expected outcome here is to drive profitable revenue and growth. We have put up quantified targets, which is both high level or high case, medium case, low case. So we have a range of outcomes of this program. And of course, with the right efforts and the right attitude, quite a lot of this will be achieved. So this is within all business areas within the top organization, the overheads and our global business services, which serves both all the business areas with type of IT, with human resource, the supply chain, everything. And also, we have a quite strong organization, big organization, down in Manila to have high-value services to our operations. Everything is addressed. There's no holy cows in the company. So I think that, for us, this is a way to always be on top, that we have an organization fit for purpose with as less fat as possible. So with that, I can't give you any quantified targets, but hopefully, that will be reflected in our results going forward. So with that, I leave the word to you, Jone.

Thank you, Simen. I will give you an update on the key financials, starting with the group financials. Revenue in Q3 '24 has a growth of 5% compared to Q3 '23. EBITDA in Q3 '24 is NOK 201 million compared to NOK 212 million in Q3 '23, which is a reduction of 5%. Net profit of NOK 39 million compared to NOK 85 million in Q3 '23. Q3 '24 figures affected by one-off due to refinancing in September. Cash generated from operation is NOK 186 million in Q3 compared to NOK 45 million in Q3 '23. And the cash position is NOK 514 million in Q3 compared to NOK 500 million in Q3 '23. The RCF of NOK 50 million, in addition, is unused. Free cash flow of NOK 27 million in Q3 compared to minus NOK 54 million in Q3 '23. And for year-to-date, the figure is NOK 493 million. Let's have a look on the business area and starting with Well Services. The revenue of NOK 462 million in Q3 compared to NOK 466 million in Q3, which means a reduction of 1% compared to Q3 '23. EBITDA of NOK 143 million in Q3 compared to NOK 165 million in Q3, which means a reduction of 13% compared to Q3 '23. The EBITDA in Q3 '24 is affected by change in product mix globally, rig moves and interruption caused by maintenance stops, establishment costs in new region to support growth and, as Simen said, delays in start-up and mobilization in activity in some regions. Well Service is now well-positioned to increase the market share globally with existing and new service offering. The next business area is Operation. The revenue is NOK 644 million in Q3 '24 compared to NOK 605 million in Q3 '23, an increase of 6%. EBITDA is NOK 49 million compared to NOK 44 million in Q3 '23, an increase of 10%. The contract portfolio in Operation is strengthened during this last year, and we expect further improvement in financial performance from 2025 after closing less-profitable contracts in 2024. The next business area is Projects & Engineering. Revenue is NOK 161 million compared to NOK 140 million in Q3 '23, an increase of 15%. EBITDA is NOK 13 million in Q3 compared to NOK 16 million in Q3, a reduction of 20%. EBITDA in Q3 '24 is affected by one-off costs of approximately NOK 3 million in the quarter related to organizational changes. We have built a strong foundation that's established with management capability, strengthened project execution model and to drive future energy transition business opportunities. In addition, P&E are well-positioned to secure additional projects with major oil companies. So to the cash, Odfjell has a strong balance sheet, which means high financial flexibility. The new financing will reduce the financial cost yearly with approximately NOK 40 million per year. Available liquidity is about NOK 1 billion. The year-to-date cash flow is affected by one-offs on financial items related to the refinancing in September of approximately NOK 49 million. And the main elements here are core fee and fees to DNB and Danske. We expect, as Simen said, a reduction in the CapEx level in 2025 compared to 2024 forecast, and we will also expect a solid improvement in working capital in Q4. LTM figures, we are pleased to report that -- the company performance so far, driven by our team's commitment to deliver excellence and innovation. Revenue and EBITDA are demonstrating consistent growth trends in revenue and EBITDA with the exception of a small drop in EBITDA in LTM in Q3 '24. We are now well-positioned to capitalize on the global offshore and onshore business opportunity going forward. So to close the session, we will maintain a clear plan to expand the growth. The balance sheet is strong and will support our growth and returns to the shareholders. Solid order backlog remains robust into Q3 '24; ongoing focus on bolt-on and technology M&A opportunities that are aligned with our strategy; focus on expanding margin; and finally, dividend program delivers high direct yield.

Okay. I think that concludes the presentation, and we're ready for a Q&A session. And we'll start with call-in questions.

[Operator Instructions] There currently appears no questions over the conference call.

Okay. I'll read some of the questions that we have received. And we'll start with questions regarding the CapEx. The question is if we can quantify the CapEx estimate for '25 and how the long-term CapEx compares to '24.

I can give some update there. We expect the CapEx level in 2025 to be approximately around NOK 250 million, and also the same level going forward. If something happens with huge and good business opportunities, that could be changed. But the current plans and strategy is in the area of NOK 250 million.

And there is one question, I think you can address, Simen, which is, shouldn't the whole theme around some of the wells be very positive for Well Service in the coming quarters? Or is this something you cannot see yet, but rather anticipate will happen during the coming year? Some clarification would be appreciated.

Yes, I can comment upon that. As I indicated, we are already in quite many dialogues with clients to address these things. Some of the wells are typical wells left behind many years ago and are quite a lot leaking. In the U.S., this is a big issue for the time being because it's not only about climate, which is not necessarily on top of that, but it's also dangerous for the people's health. And when you hit that part, you actually get attention. So yes, I can say that we are in dialogue. I can't say more -- in dialogue with clients to show our capabilities to handle and to plug -- permanently plug/abandon those kind of wells, in a way all kind of wells. But in the Gulf of Mexico, for example, it's a lot of them. We are present there now. We have not any specific contracts or any tenders along there, but the activities are -- when you speak to the clients there, they are putting aside quite a lot of capital to handle that kind of uncertainty and threat. And that, I think, will -- according to the people knowing more about that than me regarding rules and regulations, this is not any link to any president over there. It's something that has to be done regardless of government, really. So we see a ramp-up there. We also see quite a lot of activity on plug/abandonment in the North Sea, especially the U.K. sector, where we are engaged now in 6 or 7 tenders where it's going to be awarded in during -- expected during '25. So that is something we can come back to. So the thing now is that, with the acquisition we did with the last -- with this small company, McGarian, where we do whipstocks and we have other tools in there, we are putting up a portfolio of tools and equipment where we can complete the value chain of doing plug/abandonment activities. So the M&A stuff we are talking about in this presentation is almost only linked to a type of plug/abandonment, slot recovery, downhole activities with Well Services. There are some other stuff there, but the priority is to complete the technology portfolio of products, to complete the total value chain on -- within permanent plug/abandonment and slot recovery. I don't know if that gives any illumination on the question. But yes, this is a high-focus market we are looking at.

Okay. How do we view the Projects & Engineering segment going forward with less SPS modification for Odfjell and Odfjell-managed rigs?

Well, I can answer that. I think it's about -- historically, it's about 40%, Jone, or take 40-plus percent of the operations within P&E has been within Odfjell and the rig associated. So that's true. But at the same time, we are also looking at other type of activities within P&E. So if I look forward, there are a lot of modifications on existing platforms. There are a lot of green activities, which we actually have done over the period where, during the crisis, with all respect with Equinor and Aker BP in Norway, they kept high-level activity during the period from '15-'16 onwards through the COVID to actually develop and install emission-reduction technologies on the semisubmersibles we actually operated during that period. In the deepwater market with the big majors running up -- ramping up activities down in Brazil and West Africa, typical, and also Gulf of Mexico, the requirement to reduce emissions. I mean, just look at Total's Q3 presentation, how they also address what they need to do to complete and fulfill the requirement for reduced emissions. All these kind of technologies, we have installed our own rigs are very relevant to do our own type of deepwater drillships and other assets like jack-ups and drillships. There are quite a lot of activities possible to get access to within P&E here. So I think -- as I said, I think actually, we -- during '25, it's probably going to be, again, a relatively flat year compared to what we have seen so far. But onwards, there will be more activities, especially also within the green shift, and modifications on existing installations. So I think we're going to keep a quite steady level within P&E.

Okay. And we have one question on working capital, and if we expect an improvement in Q4 and into '25. Jone?

Yes. As you remember, last year, we had a quite good improvement in the working capital in Q4, which is normal. We expect the same this year in Q4, and we're working very hard to continue that improvement also into '25.

Yes. But there are seasonal variances quite clearly.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

And I think, to end the Q&A, I think we'll finish with questions. We have quite a few questions on the margin level and expectations into next year on the different segments. Could you talk a little, Simen, about our expectations by segment maybe on -- for the margin level?

Yes. I think, I believe that the most interest here is how -- what about Well Services? Yes, Well Services has now a lower margin. I believe Jone quite good commented upon. There are also fluctuations within what we have invested and what we have won on contracts. So within the portfolio of services within Well Services, there are high-margin products, and they are products with lower margins. Typical, in some areas, I can't go specifically. For example, TRS casing/running services is a very vital part of the services we provide. TRS has a lower margin than the high-margin products, but we need to do it, and we have to do it and we want to do it. So the investment, as I said, for TRS has been higher than normal during the last period. But as I said many times that if we said we're not going to do the -- well, it's not bad margins, but they are lower than the really high margins without going into details. But as I use as -- maybe a little stupid metaphor, saying that if you run the supermarket, then you say, I won't sell milk, then you have a problem, or bread. You have to sell your portfolio to serve the client what they want from us. So sometimes there are more TRS activity than other activities. That's why the margin has gone down partly, and also because things have slowed down, rig moves. I won't repeat what Jone said. But we expect the Well Services margin to be as we used to have it, in the mid of the 30s plus. That's what we expect. Within P&E, I'll say the same. These are hit by certain activities. So I guess that P&E will be 15%-ish and up and down, around there. As I said, within operations, never been -- never going to be a high-margin business, but -- at least what we would call high margin, but we expect -- we are satisfied with the operations around high-single-digit into the low double-digit area. That's what we expect, and that's what we aim for, if we can say that much. So that's not the guidance necessarily, but just facts. All right?

Okay. I think we'll conclude the Q&A session right now. If you have additional questions, please reach out to me and contact me by e-mail or make a call, and we'll try to answer as well as we can. Thank you, everyone, for joining today's call. Thanks.