Subsea 7 S.A. (SUBC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and welcome to the Deutsche Bank Depositary Receipts Virtual Investor Conference, dbVIC. My name is Zafar Aziz, part of the DR team at Deutsche Bank. I'm pleased to announce that our next presentation will be from Subsea 7 Norway. Before I introduce our speaker, a few points to note. Please submit your questions in the questions box below the slides. Once the Q&A session has ended, don't log out. You're allowed to ask each one at the Subsea 7 booth, where you can continue to ask questions via chat and access shareholder materials. On a final note, all today's presentations are recorded and can be accessed via the Deutsche Bank website, adr.db.com. At this point, I'm very pleased to welcome Katherine Tonks, Investor Relations Director in Subsea 7, which trades on the Oslo Stock Exchange under the symbol SUBC and in the U.S. on the OC market as SUBCY. Over to you, Katherine.

Good morning, everyone, and thanks to Deutsche Bank for giving me the opportunity to present to you today. The presentation today will take a quick look at what Subsea 7 does, our business units, but really, the focus will be on our strategy. And then I'll look at some financials before finishing with our outlook. Included in this discussion, I'll mention the company's current views that are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions, and these are outlined on Slide 2 here. So turning to Slide 3. Subsea 7 is a diversified energy services contractor. We're focused on 2 main industries, oil and gas and offshore wind. But essentially, we do the same thing for both of those industries. Our services cover the full life cycle of a development from the conceptual design, the detailed engineering through to the fabrication and installation of the field infrastructure and then including the maintenance of the asset over its life. On Slide 4 here, we've got our split of our business. We've got 2 business units: Subsea and Conventional. That trades under the name Subsea 7 and really includes all of our oil and gas activities. On the second, renewables, this trades under the brand Seaway 7, and that includes all of our offshore wind activity. On Slide 5 here, we've got just a quick breakdown to show you the significance of each of the business units. Although the wind is quite young compared to the oil and gas market, Subsea 7 has a really tangible well-established business. So we have over $600 million of revenue and a backlog of $1.8 billion. Still though, oil and gas represents about 70% of our backlog and wind about 30% at the moment. So moving on to the strategy, and this is the bulk of the presentation. Split into 2 focus areas. On the left here, we have the Subsea Field of the Future. That addresses our oil and gas business. It's about enhancing our competitive differentiation to ensure that we remain a partner of choice for our clients. And our strategy here is really based on 4 pillars. You've got early engagement, systems innovation, integrated systems and digitalization, and we'll look at each of these in turn in the slides. On the right, we've got our strategy for energy transition, which includes our offshore wind business, but also encompasses our lower carbon activities like carbon capture. So let's take each of these in turns to help you understand what we do and our growth plans. Early engagement on Slide 7, hopefully, it's showing. It's not on my screen. Early engagement has been a key part of our strategy for oil and gas for several years. Through a strong engineering function, we collaborate with our clients from the outset. So we're really drawing on our expertise in engineering, procurement and installation, to help our clients optimize their field design, makes it more cost-effective and more reliable and that really maximizes the value to the clients. We have made a few bolt-on acquisitions here. This is a good example of one that really helped us boost our early engagement. They're one of the leading consultants across all energy markets, including wind impact. So we built this business up organically to you. We've hired and trained engineers, and we've now got 400 people involved in early engagement work. It really fosters a kind of collaborative approach with our clients and has really helped us deepen the relationships we have with our oil and gas clients. Secondly, on this slide and the second of the four pillars: systems innovation. We're always trying to come up with innovative technologies that help improve the reliability and the cost effectiveness of our solutions. One of the key products that we installed for the first time in 2020 with the electrically heat traced flowline, and we call it the EHTF, and that is a heated pipeline that enables us to tie satellite reserves back to a host facility over much longer distances than we had in the past because the crude is heated, and it means it flows properly. This is just one way that we're helping our clients to come up with cost-effective solutions that help them exploit satellite pockets of reserves but also reduce their carbon footprint because it eliminates the need for a big development on the surface. So in the next slide, Slide 8, we have digitalization. Our digitalization efforts really run across the full life cycle of the field. So we try to incorporate them into our design, into the engineering to really improve the efficiency of our services across the board. And more and more, we're introducing digital elements that help the clients monitor and manage the assets through the entire space. We do this with gauges that collect large amounts of real-time data that help and analyze how the field is performing. What needs to be maintained, what needs to be repaired. Finally, we've got integrated systems. By this, we really mean the integration into one offering of the Subsea production systems, the FPS. And that really means all of the hardware that sits on the seafloor and the SURF, which is the part that Subsea 7 does, which is Subsea umbilicals, risers and flow lines. And that's basically, you think of that as being the pipes. They hook up the equipment that's on the floor to the floating production vessel sitting on the surface of the sea. So we embraced this concept of combining the 2 elements a few years ago, and we have a really super vessel line with Schlumberger's OneSubsea division, where 1 of only 2 suppliers can offer this integrated solution. We've actually been really successful in winning greenfield projects. I think we've won over half of the projects that are being tendered to the industry since 2019. And working as an alliance really helps us to standardize and optimize the systems across the field development, and it ultimately offers greater value to the clients and reduces their project execution risk. So turning to energy transition. The biggest element of this, the Subsea 7 is obviously our offshore wind business, and it's been going for over 10 years now. We provide the clients with installation services for the wind turbine foundation. So the foundation of the turbine Triton and the inter-array cables that hook up each of the foundations and the turbines. We do this on a stand-alone, what we call a transport and installation basis, but we also can provide a lump-sum turnkey solution. And this really mirrors what we do in oil and gas that covers our engineering, procurement, construction and installation of the whole wind farm. The only element that really excludes is the turbine itself. And that's because it comes directly from the OEM, and they're in charge of installing it. The offshore growth, as you probably know, is a really high-growth market -- sorry, offshore wind is a high-growth market. It's one that is increasingly populated by our oil and gas client as well. So as well as becoming more global, it really plays to our strengths with our existing relationships with the IOCs. We think we can leverage our experience in oil and gas of managing large complex projects around the world to continue to build our presence in the wind market. By way of a few examples, we've installed over 700 foundations and over 800 kilometers of cables around the world, and you see a list here. We've worked for most of the big offshore wind developers, so Ørsted, SSE and Vattenfall. Having been in the business since the early days, we think we're one of the most experienced partners for our clients. We are really well positioned to take a fair share of this market as it accelerates really in the coming years. Then another part of energy transition is lower carbon developments. And by this, we mean lowering our own carbon emissions and helping our clients to lower their carbon emissions as well. So there's a few examples of how we're doing this on the next three slides. First, we've got the carbon estimator. This is a proprietary tool of Subsea 7, it allows us to estimate the carbon emissions associated with our projects. So from the procurement to construction of equipment, the installation using our vessels. Essentially, it allows our clients to make design choices to optimize their carbon footprint. It's now a component of all of our early engagement work, and it's really getting a lot of traction with clients as they look to ways to minimize their emissions. The second example of lower carbon we have is vessel hybridisation. So far, we converted one vessel, Seven Viking. It runs partly on batteries and has reduced our fuel usage by around 19%. And that corresponds to about 2,400 tonnes of CO2 that we saved. So we're looking at how we can convert the rest of the fleet. Hopefully, this is something that we can continue to talk about in the years to come. And finally, for lower carbon developments, we have remote ROVs. So we have onshore ROV centers, now 3 of them. They, essentially, by remote control, control the underwater robots that we use. So we don't need to have a separate vessel or have extra personnel on the vessel that's out there. It really saves on the logistics of getting people turned from vessels and really reduces all of the emissions associated for having lots of people offshore. So that's just another small way that we're trying to reduce our own carbon emissions. Finally, moving on to emerging energy. This is really about carbon capture for us at the moment. Carbon capture is a market that's really in its infancy. But we were pleased in the first quarter to secure our first contract. It's for Equinor's Northern Lights projects. We'll be laying 100 kilometers of pipeline that will take 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 a year from industrial sites onshore to an offshore sequestration site. It's a pretty small contract at the moment, but it gives us a very early presence in a market that we expect to see strong growth. And now I'll turn over to a few slides on financials. As you can see on the slide, even in 2020 with all the challenges of COVID and a really severe downturn in the oil industry, we generated over $100 million of free cash flow. We've got a very strong balance sheet, $74 million of net cash, we have liquidity of over $1 billion. So we have no near-term debt maturities, and our facilities are undrawn. We often get asked then with such a strong balance sheet, what are our priorities for the cash that we generate? And here, we have our 3 long-held uses of cash. Firstly, investing in the business in a very disciplined manner. Secondly, maintaining a prudent balance sheet, which has really been in our favor through the cycles. The cycles come when we least expect them. And then finally, returning capital to shareholders. I say lastly, but it's very important to the company, and we've returned over $2 billion in the last 10 years, 3 buybacks and the dividend. Before we close with a summary of our outlook, a quick word on sustainability. We introduced a new value of sustainability to our now 6 company values, and it's really worked into everything that we do. We have a sustainability Executive Committee and the Board discusses it at every meeting. We just published in March, our second sustainability report. And so it really continues, I think, our journey of improving the level of ESG disclosure and improving our ratings with Dow James and ISS. And if you would like a copy of that? Do let me know. It's also on our website. I won't linger on our first quarter results. So let's just turn to our 2021 guidance, which is probably more important. So here we are on Slide 19. Our 2021 guidance is essentially to show revenue and EBITDA growth year-on-year. We've maintained this guidance since we announced our 2020 results. We have a backlog for execution in the remainder of 2021 of $3.4 billion, which on top of the $1 billion of revenues that we announced in Q1 means we've got consensus revenue expectations fairly well covered. As we win more work this year, more orders come in the door, we'll look to build our backlog for 2022 and beyond. And so on that note, let's finish with our outlook slide. So this is a slide most people are interested in, where we're going to win our projects. And here, we've got the 3 key areas that have really advantaged economics. We've got Brazil. We've got Gulf of Mexico and Norway, where we have good presences in all of these. For Brazil, we've really seen an acceleration of bidding. The list that we have there under South America is or Brazil and it gets longer each quarter. Lots of projects for Petrobras, a couple for Equinor and new projects that have just come on to the radar this quarter for Shell and Total. Gulf of Mexico has been very active in the first quarter for us in executing smaller projects. And there are still a lot that we're tendering for. These are really like tie back projects that take advantage of existing infrastructure, so the low CapEx outlay for our clients. In fact, one of our electrically heat trace flowlines will be installed in the second quarter in the Gulf of Mexico. And then in Norway, as you might know, the government introduced the tax incentive to encourage activity. This has led to you a pretty high level of early engagement work, we're expecting this lead to contracts in 2022. And finally, last but not least, the green text that you can see here shows the projects that we're tendering for in offshore wind. There's a very long list of projects. There are some delays in those being awarded. They have to go through regulatory hurdles and there's a CFD round in the U.K. that the developers have to bid through. And so we're expecting these awards to start coming through at the end of the year onwards. So with that, thank you for listening. I hope you've got a sense of our strategy, our strong balance sheet and the positive outlook, both for the oil market, which we think is recovering and the high-growth wind market. So I'll have a look at the questions. But if you don't get to ask a question and you'd like to get in touch with me, I will just make sure that my contact details are showing here. So let's go to the questions.

What is your total backlog, including beyond 2021? So we have just under EUR 2 billion to be executed in 2022. Our revenues are, let's say, around about GBP 4 billion. So we've got some work to do to fill the backlog up for 2022, but the EUR 1.9 billion that we have really corresponds to almost exactly the same level as this time last year and this time of the year before. So there's work to be done, but we feel like we're pretty well positioned. The only thing to note is that contracts that we get in the door today will be in the early phase in 2022. The offshore phase that uses our vessels would come in '23 onwards. And so what I didn't mention is we have a cost reduction program, which is already well underway, and that's to make sure that our vessels match the work that we have. So we will stack vessels that are going to be utilized to make sure -- the aim of the game is to make sure that we are free cash flow positive in 2022. Second question, what are your dividend expectations for 2021? This is always a tricky question. Every year, I'm asked, we have -- I should say, we have a special dividend policy. We don't have a regular dividend. Every year I'm asked, do you think the Board will approve a dividend? And I usually guess wrong. So at the beginning of this year, I guess, they wouldn't have a dividend because of COVID and they did and the year before I guess they would and they didn't. So I think this is really a question for the Board. But what I can say is they do have a long track record of returning cash. We do have a buyback program as well. It is valid until April 2023. We've used $10 million of it, which we basically just activated it before COVID. So we suspended it in April 2020. There's $190 million of that still remaining. So no commitment to use it. Management have the discretion to turn it on when they feel like they can't -- they're in a position to do that. So next question, are you working globally in the wind market? What is the sales cycle and the level of competition in offshore wind? Well, this is a very good question. So yes, we are working globally. Part of our strategy is to take a business that really has strong foundations in Europe with utility companies and globalize it. And part of that globalization is the oil majors coming in, they're used to working around the world. They're also used to our style of contracting, which is lump sum turnkey. And we also think the utility companies, which, at the moment, are doing more stand-alone transport and installation contracting will move to more of a lump-sum turnkey as they see the oil majors lead the way, and they realize that this is a really good way of outsourcing the risk of really large complex projects in markets that they don't normally operate in. So yes, we are global. We are -- obviously, have a big base in Europe. We do projects at the moment in Taiwan, and we're bidding for work in the U.S. Sales cycle is, I'd say, long. So we help -- if we're doing a lump sum turnkey contract, which is obviously not all of them, that are big contracts. So for instance, the $1.4 billion contract we have with SSE Seagreen, we were involved in the really early stages in engineering, and that took about a year. So we do a lot of work behind the scenes before were actually awarded the full lump-sum turnkey contract. And then that takes 2 years to execute. So in total, we might have 3 years' work, but we're probably talking to the clients in advance of the -- even the engineering phase. I expect that as the market starts to mature, that the long protracted phase of getting engineering done and getting projects through the regulator will speed up as the regulators kind of get used to already formulate how they're going to work things. At the moment, there are some bottlenecks, especially in the U.S. as they try to work out what it is that they want from their contractors. And level of competition, so I'd really characterize offshore wind by saying that -- I mean, it's a game of 2 halves, as we like to say, the U.K., we have very high competition to install turbine foundations. So if you're just doing a pure installation of foundations, the margins are going to be less compelling. If we're installing cables, there's a lot less competition. We have a really super efficient vessel. So our margins are really good in cable A. What we hope to do really his combined foundation and cable lay together in an integrated contract in that way we can have options overall. But then also move up a level and do these lump-sum turnkey contractors, where we're doing the whole engineering, procurement, installation and commissioning for the whole project. And that might use our vessels, we might subcontract some of the installation work even, say, for Seagreen, for instance, our $1.4 billion contract in the U.K. The installation part of it is subcontracted, and that's because the vessels are a bit more standardized for foundation installation and subcontracting is quite common. So we hope actually that this will allow us to be a bit more capital-light in the offshore wind market, and we can make better -- or good returns, I should say. In the oil and gas market, we make -- we have historically made very high margins, but with a very asset-heavy model in the wind market, we hope to be a bit more asset-light and have good returns. Who is behind the offshore wind projects? Have the traditional oil and gas exploration firms pivoted to renewables? Or is it new entrants? So yes, both really. A lot of our projects at the moment are still with the utilities. So the oil companies have been buying into their projects, but we're yet to see them take the lead on a project. That's underway now. So Equinor is bidding for some work in the U.S. but total, BP, they're all in offshore wind, learning the ropes via stakes in existing projects, and I'm sure that we'll see them take the lead in the future. So I really think we've got very good relationships with the utility companies. But increasingly, I think we're going to find that our relationships with the oil and gas companies pays off. The oil and gas companies are setting up there or have set up their renewables branches and they view that using staff in the oil and gas business. So we are finding that a lot of the management that we know in oil and gas are being transferred into renewables. So those relationships really are transferable. In fact, in the early days, we were giving teachings to some of the oil and gas management that have been transferred across. Can you speak to your growth in renewables in the coming year? Do we expect Q1 -- a similar Q1 year-over-year growth rate? So the renewables market is still in a phase where it's quite lumpy. So we get -- you'll get a round of CFD in the U.K., in instance, and then a whole bunch of projects be contracted. So at the moment, it's coming in bits and waves. So we won last year the Seagreen project. I don't think we'll win something that big this year. Hopefully, the U.S. projects will be awarded towards the end of the year. And then in 2022, I think we'll see more big projects awarded. So at the moment it's a bit lumpy. It's quite hard to forecast a growth rate kind of sustainable growth rate. If we look at it on a quarterly basis, I mean, we don't normally give quarter-by-quarter guidance. But we did have a good pickup in revenue in renewables in Q1 compared to Q1 last year, and I think that will be sustained. Seagreen is the big driver of that. And that has been executed throughout '21 and '22. And we also have some projects called Kaskasi and HKZ, which we're executing this year, next year as well. So I think Q2 on it should be decent quarters for renewables, judging by our backlog. Let's see. I think -- one last question, I think. What initiatives are you most excited about for Subsea? I actually -- I think the digitalization is one of the most exciting elements. It's not that it represents in itself a big revenue stream, but it's interesting to see how digital systems can be worked into oilfield, into the engineering that allows clients to really optimize the whole maintenance of the field as well. And what's exciting about it is that as well as giving the clients the data for their field, at the same time, we're really building up basically a big data set of how fields work, how the fatigue life on pipelines and all kinds of things that go into the maintenance equation, which ultimately drive the engineering. And so as we start to install these digital systems, we should basically go on a massive intel-gathering exercise that really helps improve our own engineering. So I don't think you'll see it as a separate revenue stream, but it's the thing I'm most excited about. And I think that might be it. I've asked all the questions. We've got 5 minutes left. But hopefully, you can see the slide with my details. If you have any other questions later or if you want to chat through things in more detail offline, then do give me a call or an e-mail, and we can continue the discussion. I will hand back to Deutsche.