SeaBird Exploration Plc (SBX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to SeaBird Exploration's Second Quarter 2024 Financial Presentation. We are today represented by Stale Rodahl, our Chairman; and CFO, Sveinung Alvestad; and myself, Finn Atle. Please note that there will be a Q&A session after our presentation [Operator Instructions]. In quarter half year 2024, this represents our seventh consecutive quarter with positive EBITDA. We've secured firm backlog for both vessels and see a continued strong market outlook. Our Board of Directors have today proposed a cash distribution of NOK 0.25 per share. SeaBird Exploration in brief, what do we do? We provide marine seismic acquisition by 2D streamer acquisition of E&P and multi-client companies and source vessel services to integrated seismic companies. We do not do data processing nor multi-client investments. We have a young fleet of purpose-built vessels. Next please. Briefly on our vessels. The Eagle Explorer is currently equipped to perform both 2D streamer acquisition and source services. Currently, the vessel is in production as a source vessel in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico. The Fulmar Explore is purpose equipped for seismic source services and currently engaged in project in the Gulf of Mexico. In addition, we have seismic equipment to replenish in a vessel, which again enables SeaBird to relatively quickly increase its fleet, of course, subject to vessel availability, with up to 2 additional vessels with a limited CapEx. Key events second quarter. High utilization of 89% for the quarter. Eagle Explorer completed mobilization from Singapore to Galveston. That's the vessel been on hire since arrival at Galveston and is currently in steady production in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico. Fulmar Explorer started her 2-year contract in Gulf of Mexico early September last year and continues with steady production. EBITDA for the quarter was USD 1.5 million. Our CFO will elaborate more on the financials during his part of the presentation. Utilization. Ongoing operations and our backlog for Fulmar and Eagle. Fulmar Explorer continues her 2-year contract that runs to the end of August 2024. We are very happy with the vessel utilization over the last 7 quarters. Save for scheduled maintenance and short idle periods between projects, utilization has been close to 100% for all practical purposes. Outlook delivering on our backlog, coupled with a positive market outlook. Backlog, a few words on our backlog. Fulmar continues her 2-year contract with strong performance. The vessels been working for the same client now since March 2022. Eagle commenced her 1-year contract with options to extend in late June this year. The market trends are similar to what we have previously announced. The ocean bottom node, OBN market, both our vessels are currently engaged in the OBN market. In this market, SeaBird Exploration provides source vessel services, and as such, plays a key role in the seismic acquisition. The OBN market continues to gain market share over the total seismic market. This trend started during the downturn in the oil and gas market and in particular, in the Western Hemisphere, U.S., Brazil and the North Sea. Now we see a strong development in other regions. The market is driven by infrastructure-led exploration ILX, i.e., seismic imaging of reservoirs in production to increase production and profitability of existing offshore infrastructure. Source fleet. The current overall source fleet remains more or less stable, so, vessel one, in and out has been sort the norm, but more or less stable over a long period of time now. Some of these vessels are also capable of doing 2D or 3D streamer work and as such is in a strong co-streamer market can return to towed streamer work. Volume of OBN project is increasing. As more base-line service are done, we strongly believe this market will remain strong. With that, I will hand it over to our CFO, Sveinung Alvestad.

Thank you, Finn Atle. Now turning to the financials. Q2 was an eventful quarter for SeaBird. The Fulmar continues her solid operation in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico and the Eagle Explorer was awarded a 12-month contract in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico and consequently started her mobilization. Seabird is now sold out of capacity until July 2025. And as such, we expect both revenues and EBITDA to significantly increase going forward, which will be discussed in detail in the following slides. The net profit for the first 6 months of the year stands at $2.1 million, which provides a robust foundation for the full year. The balance sheet remains strong with 53% equity ratio and the net debt continued to decline and is now at $12.9 million. Hence, at today's share price, this implies an evaluation of around $25 million per vessel, if not attributing any value to our equipment pool, which we believe is conservative. The revenue of the quarter was $4.9 million and is considerably lower sequentially and to the prior year quarter. This is due to marginal contribution from Eagle Explorer as she was mobilizing from Singapore to the U.S. Gulf of Mexico the lion's share of the quarter. The mobilization revenues and the mobilization costs are capitalized and thus will not have any impact on the Q2 figures. The operational performance on the Fulmar Explorer continues to be solid with just shy of 100% economical utilization. Revenue in the last 12 months remained strong at $30 million, but we see upside to this going forward as both vessels have firm contracts until July and September 2025, respectively. Similar to revenues, the EBITDA of $1.5 million is down sequentially and year-over-year. The contribution from Fulmar Explorer remains solid, while the Eagle Explorer's started to mobilize in the middle of April, and thus did not contribute to this quarter's EBITDA. SG&A for the quarter was $1.1 million, and we see the annual run rate to be around $4 million with quarterly fluctuations. Adjusted EBITDA for the last 12 months is just shy of $10 million. And based on the firm backlog we have secured over the past year, and that we are confident that we will see a significant increase in this level in the coming quarters. You can find the adjustments to the historical EBITDA in the appendix of this presentation. SeaBird entered -- sorry, SeaBird exited the half year period with a cash balance of $1.9 million. The net cash flow for the first 6 months of 2024 was negative $500,000, whereas operational cash flow of $4.6 million was negatively impacted by a $1.4 million bill in working capital. The working capital currently stands at $2.4 million, which is a level we are comfortable with. CapEx the first 6 months was $600,000, which is mainly due to ordinary and planned maintenance on our vessels. Debt service cost was $2.3 million, whereas $1.4 million is repayment of debt and $900,000 is interest. And finally, we completed the previously announced cash distribution of $1.9 million to our shareholders in June, and as mentioned by Finn Atle, the Board of Directors today proposes a second cash distribution of NOK 0.25 per share, which is expected to be paid out during Q4 2024. Lastly, net interest-bearing debt at the end of Q2 was $12.9 million, whereas the gross debt stands at $14.9 million. The debt comprises of $12 million in bank financing and $3 million in interest-bearing equipment financing. We have, since the start of 2022, reduced our net interest-bearing debt by $11 million or around 45%. The maturity of the bank facility is in the middle of 2026. And the loan has a quarterly installment of about $700,000. The company is in compliance with all our bank covenants. With this, I will leave the word to our Chairman, Stale.

Thank you, Sveinung. So we can go to the capital allocation slide. And as you've all seen, the main takeaway from our Q2 report is that other than fixing all our capacity on firm contracts for the next 12 months and a little bit beyond, we are proposing another NOK 0.25 per share dividend now in August. And with this, we are delivering on our aim to distribute all excess cash to shareholders on a quarterly basis without jeopardizing the sound financial position of the company. And when it comes to future dividends, I know that several of you are keen on seeing and understanding how to calculate this going forward. I think in this report, what we will do is compared to previously. So previously, we have provided detailed scenarios for the company's earnings and dividend capacity. With both vessels on contract, we will, for commercial reasons, not provide such granularity on the various line items in our numbers, as you will understand. What I can say is that the contracts we have entered into are close to the levels that we have indicated in our scenario building. So for those interested in looking that up, you can go to our previous quarterly presentation and get a good view on that. The second, I think, issue to take on board is that as early as November, we will report the first quarter with both vessels on OBN contracts, which will give you a good visibility, of course, on what to expect from the company. But as the dividend today shows, we internally at SeaBird have a high level of conviction as to our ability to convert these contracts into cash. And I think at this point, I'd like to commend our CEO, Finn Atle, and the entire SeaBird team for the strong operational performance over many contracts and many quarters now. And we indeed see no reason why this should not continue. So of course, we need to produce the cash before we can deliver it. But the stats that we have now over quite some time definitely support our ability to do so. So today, what we'll do is rather, to look at where the market has been, where it is currently and where we can expect it to go in the foreseeable future. What I think is important to take on board, is that, as Finn Atle said, the OBN source market is now sold out. On that basis, we expect the next contracts that we will sign to be higher than what you see in our current backlog. If we go back to the last peak, which was in 2013, rates then were above $80,000 per day. And if rates were to return to that level, and I should add, we really see no reason why; on the contrary, they should be higher, if anything, but if rates were to return to that level, it would add as much as $10 million in EBITDA per vessel versus current contracts. And that would correspond to an increased dividend capacity of NOK 2.5 per share per year for the current fleet. And this is NOK 2.5 on top of the dividend capacity that we are seeing now and that we are delivering to our shareholders. When it comes to the current level, which is marked as 2024, the range on rates, you can see there. And what I can say is that we have fixed our vessels close to where we have indicated in our scenario building. And we also see these rates as industry leading, which is particularly satisfactory, considering the length of our contracts. Now when it comes to pricing, of course, we don't take a view really on the price or the valuation of the share. That is up to you or the market to decide. But what we can just take a note on really, is that we are seeing the segment vessel transactions, relevant to our segment then, vessels without any contracts, without really any equipment, and without even being in warm condition, ready to produce, being transacted at around 4x prospective EBITDA. And we just note that the current value on SeaBird is about 2x to 2.5x the next 12 months backlog EBITDA. So it will be exciting to see, but we are certainly optimistic on -- and continue to be optimistic on the OBN market, and we believe rates need to go up further. So in terms of strategy, it's all down to [ built ] or based on our strong operational performance, which is really working very well for us. We are now sold out until July 2025. We have 2 6-month options after that. So it could be that 1/2 our capacity is taken until July 2026, if exercised, and the other vessel is then working until September 2025. So we have good visibility on operations. As I said, we really do see a strong market, and we do see that strong market for some time. The OBN market has grown with 20% per year for the last 8 years. It has grown even during the nasty downturn that we had a few years back. And we continue to see this market -- we continue to see increased adoption and this market growing further. Day rates are still considerably below last peak. And with the condition of the market and the fleet sold out, we believe we are ready for the next step in rates, and that ought to be upwards. The company is actively monitoring value-accretive opportunities. And I will just leave it with that. We'll get back to you whenever there is anything to report there. The industry, as previously, is fragmented. We believe all players are actually below the optimal size in this industry. And as such, we are strong advocates for further consolidation. Meanwhile, we have a strong focus on taking care of our own operations, with a strong focus on cash conversion and converting this then into free cash flow to equity to the benefit of our shareholders. And as you will now have noted, following 2 cash distributions so far this year, we have now indeed entered the capital distribution phase, and we expect that to continue going forward, and we will update you on a quarterly basis on that. So with this, we continue to believe we have created a sound platform for profitability as well as consolidation and look forward to continue this journey. And with that, I hand it over to you, Sveinung, for Q&A.

Thank you, Stale. [Operator Instructions] So first question, I think I will start that to you, Finn Atle. There's quite a lot of question about Flex capacity and increasing our fleet. Can you give some [ aberration ] around vessel availability and how you see we're growing our fleet to more vessels?

Yes, absolutely. We are, of course, monitoring this part of the market very, very closely and -- sorry. As I think we alluded to during the previous quarter presentation, the availability and vessels suitable for Flex capacity is now very limited. There are some of the available vessels that have age restrictions and are engaged in -- and has been engaged in various other types of work over a long period of time. So readily available is probably not the right word to use. But as I said, we are continuously monitoring this and we spend a considerable amount of time in sort of finding suitable candidates and trying to match it up with clients and markets and opportunities. So I think I'll leave it with that.

Thank you. And also, can you give a bit more flavor around the source market and the source rates? Stale already talked quite a bit about where we see the market is moving going forward. But what's your perspective? And do you have any flavor to add there, Finn Atle?

Well, I share the view of Stale. It's as we presented. The available source vessels are sold out. And to convert vessels and bring in new capacity is -- it is, as I said, alluded to in terms of what we said on flexible capacity and available vessels. So I mean, in a strong market, OBN players are continuously producing more nodes and bidding on more work. More work is coming out of Asia and other parts related to the OBNs' market. I think the demand for source vessels is definitely going to increase. And naturally, we expect the rates to follow.

Thank you. And then there is a couple of questions on a relocation from Cypress to Norway. And I guess, I can start taking that one. So the process is in motion. We had -- on the Annual General Meeting just before the summer break, we was giving our -- or the AGM approved a step in the movement and the formalities around that is then being worked in Cyprus. So the process is continuing. We are working on it. There is no fixed deadline on it, but we will, of course, inform the market as this process is moving forward. Okay. It seems that the presentation today is quite clear. There isn't too many more questions. Is there any last questions? Please enter them into the Q&A. And if we'll not see any more questions, we'll just give it a couple of seconds, and then if not, I will round off this call. Yes. And then there came one question about the tax loss carried forward. So the reallocation itself will not affect the tax loss carried forward. I think the way the company is structured, we are structured in a way that we will have a low tax burden on our profit going forward. And that's obviously because we are taxed under the tonnage law in Cyprus and if we move to Norway, it would be there the best [ governings ] legislation, which will be compliant for us. So I think our relocation and our structure of the company will, of course, be optimized in a tax optimal structure. So that's really all of the questions today. So then I will give you the word, Stale, if you want to have some closing last remarks.

Thank you, Sveinung. Now, I think what we have presented here today is we're pleased with our performance. Of course, the numbers are affected by the fact that 1/2 our capacity was mobilizing from Asia to the Gulf of Mexico. But with both vessels now on contract for the entire third quarter, yes, we're quite optimistic on our ability to continue to deliver cash to our shareholders, pending continued strong performance for both vessels. So with that, we look forward to returning to you in November to update you on this, and we'll see you back then. Thank you.