Oil States International, Inc. (OIS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and thank you for standing by. My name is Jenny, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Oil States First Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Ellen Pennington. You may begin.

Good morning, and welcome to Oil States' first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. Our call today will be led by our President and CEO, Cindy Taylor; Lloyd Hajdik, Oil States' Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; and Scott Moses, our Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. Before we begin, we would like to caution listeners regarding forward-looking statements. To the extent that our remarks today contain information other than historical information, please note that we are relying on the safe harbor protections reported by federal law. No one should assume that any of these forward-looking statements remain valid later in the quarter or beyond. Any such remarks should be weighed in the context of the many factors that affect our business, including those risks disclosed in our 2024 Form 10-K, along with other recent SEC filings. This call is being webcast and can be accessed at Oil States' website. A replay of the conference call will be available 2 hours after the completion of this call and will continue to be available for 12 months. I will now turn the call over to Cindy.

Thank you, Ellen. Good morning, and thank you for joining our conference call today, where we will discuss our first quarter 2025 results and provide our thoughts on market trends in addition to discussing our company-specific outlook. In connection with our fourth quarter 2024 earnings conference call, we provided financial guidance ranges for the first quarter and full year 2025. We specifically guided the first quarter 2025 revenues of $160 million to $170 million, with EBITDA expected to range from $17.5 million to $18.5 million. I am pleased to report that both ranges were met or exceeded during the quarter due to strength in our international offerings, along with benefits of our 2024 U.S. land-based optimization efforts and a strong recovery in our Gulf of America operations. We witnessed ongoing demand in our international and offshore regions with very strong bookings that totaled $136 million, leading to our highest level of backlog since September 2015 and with a book-to-bill ratio of 1.5x for the quarter. We have historically reported negative cash flow from operations during the first quarter of the year due to seasonal working capital trends. However, we reversed that trend this quarter by generating $9 million of cash flow from operations. We also received proceeds of $9 million from the monetization of equipment and inventory. These cash flows were used during the quarter largely to fund CapEx and $5 million of share repurchases. Despite good operating results for the quarter, in April, Oil States stock price suffered material decline stemming from the announcement and imposition of broad-based tariffs by the United States on our global trading partners. These actions have created uncertainty in the market, both in terms of individual company impacts, along with the risk of broader economic consequences, including the heightened possibility of a recession. These concerns, along with planned increases in OPEC plus oil production levels negatively impacted global crude oil prices, which declined significantly in April. Given this backdrop, we believe it is prudent to provide more granular information on Oil States strategic sourcing of goods and materials to aid the market and assessing potential impacts of U.S. tariffs on our operations. As a reminder, Oil States benefits from significant global diversification with broad-based operations outside the United States and essentially every major offshore oil and gas basin. In addition, a significant portion of the capital equipment, which we manufacture in the United States is exported to other countries. We anticipate that a significant portion of the company's operations outside of the United States should remain relatively unaffected by the implementation of these tariffs. In our domestic operations, we have limited reliance on imported goods, which are primarily used in our Downhole Technologies segment. We have implemented a series of strategic actions to assess and mitigate where possible, negative tariff impacts, including the use of temporary import bonds for key imported materials, shifting to alternate sources of supply, optimizing our supply chain to secure the most favorable treatment of imports, leveraging existing domestic supply chains and when necessary, adjusting pricing to our customers. Oil States imports products from foreign sources, including key raw materials and component parts such as steel forgings and perforating gun steel, tubing and other components. The vast majority of our forgings come to the United States under temporary import bonds, which are free of tariffs given their reexport following U.S. manufacturing. Tariffs on imported steel tubing and other components used in the manufacture of perforating systems are expected to increase our completed gun cost. Our analysis has shown that other suppliers of perforating systems utilize similar supply chain sources and are likely to be subject to similar tariffs. As a result, we expect that these cost increases can be passed on to customers. We remain dedicated to growing our operations and strategically investing in our most profitable business areas supported by advanced technology. We will also continue to focus on the return of cash to our stockholders. Lloyd will now review our operating results along with our financial position in more detail.

Thanks, Cindy. Good morning, everyone. During the first quarter, we generated revenues of $160 million and adjusted consolidated EBITDA of $19 million. Our adjusted net income totaled $4 million or $0.06 per share after excluding facility exit charges of $1 million. Our Offshore/Manufactured Products segment generated revenues of $93 million and adjusted segment EBITDA of $18 million in the first quarter. Adjusted segment EBITDA margin was 19% in the first quarter compared to 23% in the fourth quarter. In our Completion and Production Services segment, we generated revenues of $35 million and adjusted segment EBITDA of $9 million in the first quarter. Adjusted segment EBITDA excluded facility exit charges totaling $1 million. Adjusted segment EBITDA margin was 25% in the first quarter compared to 12% in the fourth quarter reflective of significantly higher activity in the Gulf of America and a continued focus on cost reduction. In our Downhole Technologies segment, we generated revenues of $33 million and $2 million of adjusted segment EBITDA in the first quarter. As Cindy mentioned earlier, we generated $9 million of cash flow from operations and received $9 million of proceeds from asset sales. Our cash flows were used to fund $9 million of CapEx and $5 million of share repurchases. Of the quarterly CapEx spending, $3 million was associated with our new Batam, Indonesia facility. Our cash flows from operations is expected to range between $65 million and $75 million for the full year and planned CapEx is expected to total $25 million. Given the expected strong free cash flow generation, we plan to be very opportunistic regarding share repurchases given our currently low stock price. Now Cindy will offer some market outlook and concluding comments.

Despite recent economic volatility and the prospect of higher tariffs, we continue to see strong demand for our offshore and international products and services, which has led to our highest level of backlog in a decade. Given that the majority of our offshore manufactured products backlog consists of projects outside the United States, we anticipate that the import of key raw materials will largely be unaffected by potential new tariffs. Although domestic market conditions and activity levels could come under pressure during 2025 due to weaker crude oil prices, we expect our results and profitability to hold up reasonably well given a solid offshore and international outlook combined with margin improvement across our U.S. land-driven businesses given the actions undertaken in 2024. During our fourth quarter 2024 earnings conference call, we provided revenue guidance for the full year 2025 of $700 million to $735 million and full year EBITDA guidance in a range between $88 million and $93 million. Based upon our strong bookings in the first quarter, improved completion and production services margins and information we know about market conditions today, we are not changing our annual guidance. Our guidance for the upcoming quarter suggest revenue will be generated in a range of $170 million to $180 million with EBITDA ranging from $20 million to $22 million. Our low net debt levels and robust free cash flow provides investors with an attractive opportunity for stock ownership in a company with peer-leading free cash flow yield. Our capital allocation priorities are well defined. We plan to invest in organic growth opportunities to fund research and development to sustain competitive advantages, to pay off our remaining debt and to fund share repurchases. We aim to drive exceptional value for our customers and generate strong returns for our stockholders in the process.

That completes our prepared remarks. Jenny, would you open up the call for questions and answers at this time?

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Jim Rollyson with Raymond James.

Congrats on a nice quarter given everything going on.

Thanks, Jim.

In the -- first of all, great bookings quarter, obviously, leading to backlog being at the kind of cycle high, which is great. So congrats on that. As we've gone through earnings season so far, there's obviously a lot of uncertainty about how the rest of the year might play out. But 1 theme I've kind of heard recurring is longer cycle projects internationally and especially offshore seem to be perceiving, and just curious, I mean, you're just coming off a great bookings quarter, but in conversations with your customers at this stage, curious what you all are seeing from a willingness to proceed with plans that were already in progress given kind of what's happening on the macro, just maybe about bookings over the course of the rest of the year.

It's a great question, and you've been doing this a long time as I have, and typically develop the drilling programs that are multiyear in nature. Don't depend on short-term movements up and down in the commodity price. And so I think it is a continuation of that thing, quite frankly, and again, these are more development drilling programs that are decades long. It's not a new exploratory program. And again, it's always the short cycle weighted to U.S. shale that tends to be the quickest to plus up in a recovery and down in a [ softening. ] And so I think we're seeing that play out significantly as we go forward. Now if I comment about our strong bookings, first of all, we're obviously thrilled to see that come early in the year, particularly in the first quarter. A lot of this really exemplifies what I'm talking about, which is a major subsea equipment -- production equipment that we offer the market, led by Brazil. They are the deepwater leader globally, and that really benefited us in the quarter and will continue to benefit us throughout, not only this year, but future years. And I'd say we are also beginning to see early benefits of the strategic investment we made in our new Batam facility on our connector products. Again, that is a trend we expect to continue. And then other than that, we are expanding and broadening our service and refurb and repair business around a larger installed base that really is supporting our global operations. And so I think that gives you the color of not only this [ stuff, ] [indiscernible], but we got confidence around that. We got into a book-to-bill north of 1 in connection with our last quarter call. And always say it when you have a strong quarter like this. Now guidance gets a lot more comfortable as we progress, and that would be on the back of higher revenues, which obviously implies later year-over-year bookings.

Absolutely. I appreciate the color there. And maybe since you brought up the short-cycle stuff, your CPS business had a pretty remarkable sequential improvement. And I think you noted part of it was from the cost efforts you guys have been doing for a while now and then Gulf of America benefits. Maybe if you could parse out kind of how the sequential impact was just between the cost side and the Gulf. And as we think about this going forward over the rest of the year, how sustainable our margins in that realm were better? And how are you seeing the Gulf unfold at this point?

Well, I'll give some lead-off comments, and I ask Lloyd or Scott to pitch in with supplemental-type feedback. But we came out of the hurricane season in the third quarter with lower Gulf revenues, and that's potentiated throughout the fourth quarter as well. So we were pleased to see some recovery in our cost operations. This is more differentiated [indiscernible] high-end technology that's out in the marketplace, and it tends to support higher margins as a result. And so I'll also tell you that part of our updated guidance will be dependent on upgoing activity in the Gulf, which we are seeing continuing today. So that's on a positive note. We have done, I think, a good job throughout 2024 making decisions around the product and service lines that we wanted to remain in and importantly allocate capital to, which you have to do in that business, CP&S. And -- so a lot of that was behind us, but there were still some fixed cost things to get out of by leases and buildings and then you've got to relocate equipment from 1 basin to new basins and so this has been ongoing. But I will tell you that throughout the first quarter, we're beginning to be on the downside of those types of efforts. I will say that our -- I think, our CP&S margins for the quarter, if I remember correctly, Moses correct me if not, we are in the 25% range. And so they really did recover strongly. I won't guarantee that level, but our goals were obviously 20-plus percent as we enter the year. So I'm really pleased to see that improvement, not only in CP&S, we saw some also in Downhole Technologies. But I think if I look forward, it's very important to get all this transitional stuff behind us. Is -- do either of the 2 want to add anything to that?

Cindy, just confirming your comments about the gulfing, that major driver of the improvement quarter-over-quarter, Q1 over Q4, certainly, with a recovery -- strong recovery we saw in the Gulf operations. And looking kind of across the rest of the year, we would expect that to continue. And to your point, yes, the EBITDA margin was about 25% in the first quarter, and we're targeting 20% or slightly above that for the full year for the segment.

Got you. And if I could sneak 1 last quick one in, is just your balance sheet is obviously in fantastic shape and Lloyd, correct me if I'm wrong, but you're kind of targeting free cash flow conversion rates of 40-plus percent. As you generate free cash over the balance of the year, which is normally your better periods of time, how do you think about kind of the buckets of repurchasing shares that are even more depressed now than when you started the program versus maybe attacking a little bit more of the convert that's been below par and matures in April of next year versus just parking cash for maybe slightly more uncertain environment.

So, yes. I'll go ahead and take that first. So from -- in terms of our -- where the stock price is today, I would expect us to be opportunistic and fairly aggressive in share repurchases and with our free cash flow. I think the same question was asked on the February call. I don't think our investors want us sitting on cash at this juncture with such a low stock price. To your point, also with the convert trading below 3% to 4% below par at 96 or 97, there is some opportunity there to try to buy some of those back in ahead of the April 1, 2026, maturity date. But I would say from a capital allocation priority, it's share repurchases and debt reduction leading into next year's maturity.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of Sean Mitchell with Daniel Energy Partners.

Lloyd, maybe -- I know you mentioned -- you guys talked a little bit about the tariffs, maybe the potential impact. It sounds like it's minimal at this point from what you know today. Is there any way to handicap? Is that a 5% lower, or is it 5% higher, 10% higher on cost. Have you done any kind of back on the envelope there?

Well, we're working on that, I'd say, in that range. I'm looking at Scott, and he's nodding his head, yes. And again, we mentioned on the conference call, it's really -- the impacts are really around -- in the Downhole Technology segment specifically to the perforating business with the importation of the guns deal components, and flights, subs, et cetera, that our other competitors in this space are importing essentially from the same sources. So us and our competitors will be looking at similar price increases or cost increases that all things being equal would adjust in our selling prices to our customers.

Got it. And then maybe -- just ahead.

No. So I just wanted to add [indiscernible], remember that [ Permian ] side of our business is a smaller piece of the business in totality. And a lot of what we need to do is just focus on the big picture for the total company, not an individual segment. And we're not going to say, we're affected by these, but we are not seeing some of the material impacts at someone that is solely reliant on imports for equipment vested for US use, right?

That concludes our Q&A session for today. I will now turn it back over to Cindy Taylor for closing remarks.

Thanks to all of you for your ongoing interest in the Oil States and the work that you do to understand the drivers of our business, especially in volatile industry carriers. We look forward to future discussions as we execute our strategy. Take care, and I hope you have a good earnings season for the remainder.

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.