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

Great. I think we're all here. So we are going to start. Welcome, everybody, to Ålesund. We have got a few presentations for you. But first, obviously, the forward-looking statements. Please read them at your leisure and there are more risks in the annual report. This is the agenda for the day. We'll have a couple of presentations, then a short coffee break, then we'll come back to hear more about Norway and finances for Mark before we go to Q&A. The Q&A is going to be at the end. So please save all your questions, especially the difficult ones for John and Mark at the end. These are your speakers today. You know, I think most people. They are going to introduce themselves as they go through their presentation, so I won't introduce them for them here. And we'll kick off with a short video, and then John is going to come up to do the first presentation. [Presentation]

Well, good morning, everybody, and thank you very much for joining us here in Ålesund. As Katherine gave you a brief taster here, the idea today is to walk you through Subsea 7 from where we are strategically and the global level, working our way down then to the Subsea and Conventional business, which Olivier Blaringhem, runs for us. Then we move on to Norway, and we share with you what we've been doing here in Norway. And we're also joined here today by Knut from Aker BP, who'll also talk to you from a client's viewpoint about the relationship with Subsea 7 over the years. And finally then, Phil Simons will share with you some information about the Vigra base and our technologies that we'll show you this afternoon for the people joining us for the visit. So let's start with something you saw in the video, which is this diagram called our world. I guess we're all very familiar with the fact that the world is trying to get its mind around the energy transition and how it fits together and how all the different components will come together. What energy sources will different countries need in the future and the timing of that transition. The one thing I can tell you about our world is that it's wrong, right? We certainly know that it's wrong. Each country will have its own version of what this diagram will look like. But Subsea 7 is very, very clear that a key part of this, the oil and gas business will be here for decades to come. The world will need oil and gas in whichever configuration this energy transition takes place. But we do know that over the last 15 years, we've built out a wind business at scale. And today, we're back at profit in that business, and we can see some good days ahead of us in that sector as well. You'll hear a little bit today about new energy sectors, such as hydrogen and carbon capture. The question is, what is the sizing of the different slices of this in each country that we work in? So that's the puzzle, but that's also the opportunity. The way to think about what does Subsea 7 do today? We put underwater the infrastructure the world needs to move molecules and electricity. That's what we're doing here today and that's what we'll do in 30 years' time. The molecules today are methane, oil and water. The molecules in the future will be hydrogen, CO2, oil, water and methane. So for us, we talk about our world and our strategy is to adapt and change as time moves on, but we're very, very much locked into the oil and gas business and we intend to be here for many decades to come in that sector. So let's look at what this means for us as a business. It doesn't seem to want to move on. Here we go. So in a nutshell, where are we as a company here today? So we're just over 15,000 people. We're operating in 30-plus countries as we speak. We've delivered over 1,000 projects worldwide over the last decade. And in doing so, we've built a huge network of supply chain partners. So we have over 8,000 partners around the globe that support us from building these huge jackets that you see for the offshore wind business to some of the components you'll see being welded on the pipelines here today at Vigra. To underpin that, as you well know, we have a very large fleet of exceptionally competent and capable assets. And again, we're very proud of that fleet because that fleet enables us to be able to offer to our clients what we need. And last, but not least, you'll see today some of the technologies and support bases we have around the world to deliver that for our clients. As you're very familiar, we run our business through two profit and loss lines. Subsea 7 is our subsea oil and gas business and we also do on carbon capture and in future hydrocarbon hydrogen-based work will be through that division. Seaway 7, stand-alone division in fixed wind today, but in the future, that will also do any floating wind that we'll take on board in due course. So let's have a look at the shape of this business and why we're doing it. So our vision is very simple. We make possible the global delivery of the offshore energy that the world needs today and the world needs tomorrow. And we kept it very simple over all the years. We've had a set of values going right the way back from when I joined this company 38 years ago as a graduate and these have always been our core values. We added sustainability in 2019 because the 1986 sustainability wasn't too much discussed. But those core values have kept this company on the straight and narrow for many, many years. We've been through good times and bad times by those values and we very much live the business day-to-day like that. So for us, coming back to our world, our strategy is the fact that in each country we're working, every one of our clients is trying to solve the puzzle. Are they going to go all into oil and gas? Are they going to move into solar? Are they going to move into hydrogen? And how do they do that? So for us, we're going to have two business lines that are very, very clear in expectation and capability. But the important thing to remember, the backbone of each of these is project management, engineering, supply chain and offshore execution. So for Subsea 7, that framework allows us to adapt and change, as we see the future and as the world either speeds up or slows down with this energy transition. So in Olivier's presentation, he will detail out a bit more our differentiators that we touched on in the video. We'll talk to you about the six elements that we think that make Subsea 7 unique for our clients and why we keep building this company up and why we keep being successful with our clients on a global basis. We will talk to you about the importance of early engagement and how working with clients in a different format really, really helps them and us. We'll talk about our offering in integrated services where we can bring elements of our delivery into bigger packages. If we think about it 25 years ago, we went from transport and install to EPCI, where we took on board more scope. And again, today, we're now going from SURF to SURF and SPS on an integrated basis. Digital is key these days. Our clients demand it. We have it available and that also speeds up our delivery. Collaboration and partnerships is something we spend a lot of time and years developing with our clients is how do our clients want us to partner with them and we are open to contract in many different ways, whichever way suits our client, we will work with them. Sustainable delivery. We know our biggest objective is to reduce the emissions from our fleet. That's the biggest source of our emissions for the company. And again, we have some clear plans as to how we're going to help deliver that over the next 15 or 20 years. But last, but not least, and what today is about is showing you these enabling products, this capability that we have to solve our clients' challenges and their opportunities as they develop their fields for the future. So let's look at the markets and where we're at. It's wonderful to put two graphs that look like this up because normally in this industry, we don't get the ability to put both graphs up side by side. So as everybody in this room is very, very familiar, the subsea spending is very much on the way up. We've had years of underinvestment in our sector. But today, we can see very, very clear paths for exceptionally strong growth in our market in subsea. The wind graph then on the right-hand side is, again, is about opportunities. The question in wind is can the politicians help us deliver it. This is the cumulative growth in wind. But if you look at the size and scale of what politicians around the globe have committed to, it is huge. And for us, even if the world delivers 1/3 of what the politicians have committed to, there is a huge market out there for companies like Subsea 7 and Seaway 7 in wind. So for us, the two markets that we're in, both exceptionally strong, both exceptionally busy. You'll hear today about the size of our tendering pipelines and how busy we are in terms of opportunities. So for us, it's then about which clients, which markets, which countries we want to work in to help us deliver this opportunity set that's ahead of us. Let's also then set that growth market in context of where we are against our peers and our competitors. I think in the subsea business, the good thing is that over the years, we've seen many young pretenders come and many young pretenders go in our business. I'm sure if we sat in this room 10 years ago, you'd have a list of 10 companies you'd ask me my opinion on SEACON, CEONA, Petrofac, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And what is interesting, the same three guys are still here that when I joined in 1986, these were the same three guys that we needed to think about Subsea 7 in its predecessor format, TechnipFMC in its predecessor format and Saipem. That's very important. All three players are acting rationally, all three players are acting very clearly here that we need to realize that long-term success is about acting rationally and working well with our respective clients around the globe. The wind business, for anybody that's followed Subsea 7's adventure in wind, has been far more adventurous in terms of challenges for the industry, but the industry is now really starting to coalesce around three major players in the dredging world, DEME, Van Oord and Jan De Nul, and Seaway 7 that deliver the big projects for the clients. So again, rationality, logic starting to come back into that sector as well. So for us, as a company, our opportunity set is the fact that we're in a market, which is a very high barrier to entry on both sides. We're very clear here that the technology and capability that we have is not easily replicated. And we're in a world where we do know the actors on the stage on the other side for every time we put a bid in or start discussing with a client about an opportunity. So a pretty stable market for us. And certainly in Subsea, no signs of the young pretenders coming back into the market or new young pretenders trying to give it another shot. I always used to remind everybody in this room that buying one ship did not make you Subsea 7. And the answer was it showed that if you did buy one ship, you could not become Subsea 7. So again, a good position in terms of competition and who's with us in the market today. So shareholder value. That's what it's all about. Ultimately, for us, we have always taken our responsibility to our shareholders very, very seriously. And you are very familiar with the three sides of the triangle we discussed in Subsea 7: about shareholder returns, looking after our balance sheet and maintaining investment grade on our balance sheet and disciplined reinvestment. So let's take each one of the sides of the triangle one by one. Over the last 10-plus years, we've returned over $2 billion to our shareholders through share buybacks and dividends. Last year, we made a very clear commitment to deliver a plus $1 billion back to our shareholders in the period of '24 to 2027. And as you will inevitably ask me today, but there may be some money left after that? And the answer is yes. And every year, management and the Board sit down and we have a look to see what we will do with excess cash and how we choose to return that to our shareholders. So again, the commitment to $1 billion, the wording in there is very important, it's at least $1 billion was the commitment we made. We felt it was very important for our shareholders to know that was our clear plan, and that's how we will deliver over the next few years. Balance sheet. People who have been at this industry know well enough that the only way you don't succeed in this business is you run out of cash. So for us, a strong balance sheet has always been something we've taken exceptional importance in maintaining and it's kept us through the good times and it's given us the opportunity set to grow and develop through the good times. So again, our balance sheet is very important for us, and we look after it, and we don't abuse it. And we have seen even the biggest players in our sector in the last two to three years wobble on their balance sheet. I unfortunately, don't have a government behind me to help me, so it's my job to make sure that I look after your balance sheet and our balance sheet. Last, but not least, disciplined reinvestment. You'll hear today about the size of our fleet and the importance of our fleet. Ultimately, you can bring project management, you can bring engineering, but you need the assets to deliver these projects. And how you get access to the assets is key. We've always had a clear model of owning the key enabling assets and chartering the other tonnage into the fleet. And Phil will spend time with you later on today going through in more detail about our logic there and why we still firmly believe that, that is the right way for us as a company in the future. But coming back to the our world model, we're very clear here that oil and gas and building pipeline systems and putting power cables underwater, the world will be doing that in 2030, 2040, 2050, and 2060. So at the right time, we will reinvest to make sure we're still there at the top of Tier 1, to make sure that we can deliver for our clients in the future. As I said, the molecules they may choose to move around underwater may differ, but ultimately, the energy transition is moving molecules and electricity. How they do that and how it all fits together, who knows? But certainly, the capacity of the fleet that we need will be important to us. Last, but not least, as you know, any reinvestment will need to be sure that we are very, very clear that it meets our requirements for return on capital employed. So for Subsea 7, these are the key areas that we are always looking at. These have not changed for many of you that have followed us for many, many years. And again, we will keep these three sides of the triangle very clear to us in the future. So as we go into more detail about Subsea 7 in the following presentations, let's just think about why we think we are very clearly differentiated with our clients and with the world that we work in. First of all, you'll see we have a very differentiated offering. We have a complete set of products that enable the clients to put together their fields whichever way they want, whichever way suits them. We have a set of technologies, we have a set of contracting models, and we have the fleet, which allows us to work in any configuration that we need. This industry is also about a track record of delivering. When our clients sanction multibillion-dollar CapEx projects, they need to know their NPV is protected and their fields will be ready on time. So again, that proven track record of delivery is vital. And in the last 8 years-or-so, you've also seen the integrated model that we have with SLB has also delivered a very strong track record there. You might have seen in the last few days that Sangomar has reached its first oil. So again, a big development there in West Africa for Woodside which, again, we have delivered there with SLB as a fully integrated SURF and SPS project. We aren't shy about the energy transition. So we're going to deliver in the energy transition, and we're going to deliver the energy transition because the world will need service providers that can put into place the infrastructure the world needs. So we're proactive that we're up for that discussion. We're not saying it will be oil and gas, and we hope to God, it will be okay at the end. We're very clear that there is an opportunity for us to make good returns for our shareholders in the energy transition. We've always had financial strength, and we continue to make sure that we remain strong because the strength has given us the ability to grow to the size of the business we are today, to work with the clients that we have today and to allow us to take the opportunities that we have ahead of us today. And last, but not least, shareholder returns. It all comes back to that. Throughout the good times and the bad times of this sector, we have always returned money to our shareholders. It varies at where we are in the cycle, but we are very, very clear here, we're here to service our clients, and we're here to service our shareholders. You do know we like the big red ships and the big yellow things that go underwater, but they're means to an end to make sure that we deliver to our shareholders. So with that, I'm going to leave it here. I will come back at the end and we can take about 40 minutes of Q&A at the end of the session. And I will now hand it over to Olivier that will give you a bit more detail on the Subsea and Conventional business. Thank you.

Good morning, everyone. I am Olivier Blaringhem, Executive Vice President for Subsea and Conventional. I've been in the industry for 29 years, that includes 22 years with Subsea 7. I guess, I've been the stereotype expat oil man going from one country to the next, whether it was Nigeria, Aberdeen, Beijing, Kuala Lumpur, a little bit of time in Paris, very little time in Paris and then back to London in 2019 in this present role. This role is about leading 14,000 people together with Phil Simons to first win projects and then deliver these projects on time, safely and absolutely better than I thought, if possible, if we can achieve that, all right? We're also extremely focused on positioning the business for the future. So that, yes, we will continue to move molecules of water, of oil, of methane, but also molecules of CO2 and hydrogen in the future. So when you look at Subsea 7, Subsea and Conventional, you see a lot of red dots on the map. We are everywhere, you can find hydrocarbon in the world. We have positioned strategic resources, people, engineering, fabrication facility, production facilities onshore in order to be able to support our fleet, delivering our project offshore. So in 2023, we delivered $5 billion of revenue in Subsea and Conventional, which is about 80% of Subsea 7 at an EBITDA of 12%. I am very confident that we are on track to deliver as per our guidance for 2024. This morning, I would like to talk to you about our value proposition and the key differentiators, our six key differentiators. When they are at play, they are making us able to shape up the market, secure our market share, deliver in an optimized way, in a predictable way and then deliver returns to our shareholders. This is very special. All right. Okay, we're good. So our value proposition. We're here to provide solutions to our clients that do optimize the life cycle economics. So the life cycle for us starts with concept and design, early engagement, concept design. Then we move on to the execution phase. The execution phase for us, it is detailed design, procurement and fabrication of the projects and then installation of these projects. And then we move on to the life of field section of the cycle. Our objective here is to maintain production, extend production and decommission at the end of the life of the project. So this is our life cycle. We have these six key differentiators, and I'm going through to develop each of them. So let's start with early engagement and system innovation. Here, our objective is to bring to our clients a supplier-led solution as early as possible during the phase -- the early phase of development of the project. What we bring to our client is the latest state-of-the-art in terms of technology, in terms of innovation and this allows them to make the best decision in terms of architecture for the field. Then we work with the supply chain in order to secure fabrication slot, as an example, production slots in order to guarantee that the project will happen on time. We also secure our vessels, our assets early, very early. So overall, we have a very good understanding of the risk very early on in the project cycle together with our clients, and we are able to mitigate these risks. Another impact of that is that as we reduce the volume of steel on the seabed, we also reduce the carbon footprint, the carbon emission for our clients and for ourselves. So it's an extremely important development in the industry that has really gained momentum for almost 10 years now. It really helps our clients to reduce their CapEx, reduce their OpEx and make investment decision in order to meet, for example, a target of USD 40 per barrel or less. So this has been really a game-changer in the industry. How do we do that? We have developed a team of about 200 people. We call them the field development group. About 80 front-end engineers working with 120 people who have experience in different domains like procurement. So this is really how we make it happen in terms of early engagement. We have another ace in our game, which is Xodus. Xodus is an independent, fully owned company by Subsea 7, which provides consultation services to our clients, independently from Subsea 7. But as in Subsea 7, we use Xodus to provide us with the expertise that we don't necessarily have when we are involved very early with our clients, for example, in electrification, in environment and this help us to understand the decision-making process of our clients. And I can say here that Bacalhau, Sangomar would have not been secured without Xodus providing us some bits and pieces, for example, about process safety that we don't necessarily have in Subsea 7. So this is how we do early engagement and system innovation. Collaboration and partnership. A very successful story for us. We have Aker BP with Knut Sandvik here. We could talk about BP, we could talk about Equinor. I would like to focus this morning on Chevron and Shell. Chevron and Shell are very traditional in their approach to the market. Generally, they go to three bidders and they have one buy and they move ahead. The trend that is very interesting that we've seen for the last few quarters is that now they are coming to us directly on some particular projects, and they say, "Let's go together." It's not necessarily early engagement. It could be just the execution phase, but they say, "Let's go together, let's make this project happen together." So I'm very confident that in the coming quarters, we're going to be able to announce some success, direct negotiation with Chevron and Shell. OKEA is an interesting client as well. So a small independent in Norway, we have just secured our third project with OKEA in direct negotiation. It's a lot of early engagement as well. And that reminds me of the beginning of the story with Aker BP eight years ago, when we were working with a growing company, and we contributed together to a huge success. So this is the OKEA story potentially for us. Let's talk now about our enabling products. Phil will develop this part in much more detail that I'm going to do. But we have the flowlines, which are the pipelines on the seabed. We have the risers, which are the vertical floor lines, lifting the oil and the gas from the seabed to the surface. And we have the pipeline structures, which are connecting everything together. I would like to focus here on the flowlines and what you see on the screen actually is a bundle. The bundle is a technology that is absolutely unique to Subsea 7. We have one site in Scotland, which is prefabricating this bundle onshore. So in these bundles, you can see you have all the pipelines for production, for water injection, for gas injection. You have also I would say the umbilical that is generally a separate product. It is integrated into the pipeline. So we go directly to the supplier or the suppliers of the umbilical manufacturers and we purchase all the product directly from them, the power, the fiber optic, the hydraulic and we include that ourselves into the carrier pipe of the bundle. The major advantage of this technology, which does apply to short pipelines, all right, less than 30 kilometers, I would say. So the major advantage is that you fabricate onshore and you just need a towing vessel to pull the pipeline offshore and then go and install it. You don't need a global enabler. So you're much less dependent on the weather as an example. So we have had a lot of success in the North Sea with this technology. We have completed 89 of these projects, U.K. and Norway. And I think there is something really interesting today, which is that we are in discussion with a number of clients to bring this technology to the Caspian Sea. Caspian is a closed sea. You have very limited number of pipeline vessel in Caspian, it's a closed sea. And this technology could be a game changer for some of our clients to make their project to happen in Caspian, but also to reduce the cost and the carbon footprint of their project with this technology. So let's move on now. Digitalization. Everybody has been talking about digitalization, maybe a little bit less now, but we're extremely active in digitalization, starting with early engagement. What is OceanPlan? It's proprietary platform that we have built internally in Subsea 7 and that help our clients to make the best decisions because we have a catalog of products available and live online, we can pick these products based on the seabed conditions, based on the quality of the oil and the gas, and we can build live the architecture, and we built a number of scenarios for our clients to choose from. And in this scenario, the client can play with the cost of the -- the CapEx cost, the production cost, the operational cost, we're able to provide what will be the carbon footprint of each scenario. So we can provide a lot of information to the client and the client will choose the best combination for him to go with one scenario against any other. It's quite unique to Subsea 7. During the project delivery phase, it's all about how we want to handle the huge amount of data that we create and develop during the project in a digital manner. So we have a project life cycle management platform. And I can tell you that in the coming two years, we will progressively move all our projects to this digital platform. And at the end of the project, we will be able to therefore deliver a digital twin to our clients. It's happening already, but it will take us two years to move all the projects into that system. So this is really helping us to make better decisions at Subsea 7 in terms of optimizing our productivity. So it's another game-changer. And you can see that there is a loop back to the beginning. A very interesting thing has just happened here in Norway for us, together with Aker BP. Aker BP gave us the digital twin that they have on an existing field. We took it. It's a digital product and we use our OceanPlan, another digital product, to look at the scenario for a tieback to this field. So you can see our world is becoming now completely digitalized. We receive digitalized information from our clients, we use digitalized tool in order to create scenarios and to define the architecture of the next tieback to this project. This is where our industry is going. We're at the forefront of this change and it will bring a lot of upside for Subsea 7 in the future. It is already. Sustainable delivery. In a way, this is our license to operate. So we have this very clear six priorities. For each priority, we have very clear targets, and we do communicate once a year through our sustainability report. So you can have access to that and measure the progress we are making on each of these six priorities. It was released in April for the last one, for the fourth one. Integrated services. So this is our alliance between Subsea 7 and SLB OneSubsea, that is called Subsea Integration Alliance. That's a huge success. So you can see already the value that we have been able to deliver to so many clients, majors, IOCs, NOCs, independent. Since its inception in 2015, it's been $8 billion of award through SIA. So today, depending on the year, that it's more than 25% of the revenue of Subsea 7. So a huge success, a game-changer also for the market. I would like to talk in more details about Pore to Process integration, which is a trademark developed by SIA and SLB. Our project, Sakarya in Turkey is the first example of this approach. It's a very differentiated approach, unique to us and SLB. So the idea is to provide to one client under one contract the reservoir well completion, this is SLB scope. The SPS and the SURF, this is the SIA scope and then the onshore receiving terminal for the products, and this is SLB scope again. So one contract, we deal with as our, we provide the solutions for the wellhead for the transportation of the product, and we provide a solution for the receiving terminal before the oil or the gas goes into the network, okay, or goes offshore. Absolutely unique to us. We are involved in a number of discussions with various clients to provide in direct negotiation this full concept of Pore to Process. Even more interesting, when you look at carbon capture offshore, carbon capture and storage. The idea we are considering and promoting already pushing to clients is to do this Pore to Process in reverse. SLB and Aker Carbon Capture have just closed their joint venture, which is about how to capture carbon onshore. So if we deliver the Pore to Process, SLB, Aker Carbon Capture will build the receiving facility. They will capture the carbon from industries onshore, they will build a terminal onshore. As SIA, we will transport the CO2 offshore, and SLB will then store the CO2 in reservoirs offshore. So that's a new perspective that we are developing together with SLB right now, and I think there will be some impact in the future. So now I would like to go with a number of examples to illustrate that our strategy is successful. Our differentiators are delivering value to Subsea 7 and its shareholders. So I want to start with Brazil. In Brazil, we delivered the full life cycle, the early phase, the execution and the life of field. So let's start with Equinor and Bacalhau. We were selected at designs at pre-fit stage by Equinor to develop Bacalhau. We are now at the execution phase. It is integrated with SIA. There was early engagement. And of course, we're enabling products, risers and flowlines are involved in this project. So a confirmation of our approach, confirmation that it is successful. Petrobras has a very different approach. Mero 3, Mero 4, Buzios 8, Buzios 9, they don't come to us for the early phase. They go directly to us for the execution phase. And it's all about our enabling products, our flowlines and our risers. Shell Bijupirá Salema is an interesting one. It's about life of field. It's about decommissioning an FPSO that actually some of us in this room contributed to install 20 years ago, and now it's about removing the FPSO from the site. So we have very good progress there. It's about life of field. And the Fluminense FPSO has been decommissioned now and is on its way to Denmark for final decommissioning. Finally, our four PLSVs. This has been the bedrock of our business in Brazil since 1999, extremely successful business. We have just renegotiated the extension of some new contracts, actually, for our four PLSVs, improving the rates by about 50%. So a huge success for us in Brazil. In 2026, based on this success, we see Brazil at $2 billion in terms of revenue per year for Subsea 7 from 2026 onwards. Another example is about delivering long-term value through true partnerships. So here, it's mainly about concept and design and execution in the life cycle. Equinor has recently selected SIA, so Subsea 7 and OneSubsea to unlock Wisting in Norway and Bay du Nord in Canada. And this is under a strategic collaboration agreement that will be valid for eight years, plus two, plus two, where Equinor have made a choice to pick who they consider the best contractors in order to find the solution at concept stage, pretty-fit stage, fit stage in order to make these two developments, Wisting and Bay du Nord possible. If you remember, we've been bidding these two projects in 2022-2023 and Equinor and their partners gave up because the economics were not working. So now they have decided to go with SIA in order to give themselves the best chance to make it happen. So the idea is to have an FID in 2026 and then go into execution, which will take us into the next decade, okay, into the early 2030s. So here, Equinor is coming to us for early engagement for integrated services and for digital solutions. I will not give too much details about Aker BP, Monica and Knut will do that later. Then we have the BP exclusive alliance, which is for certain geographies. We announced this collaboration in October last year. It's not the first exclusive collaboration we've had with BP. We did that in the early '90s. But I would say as a preferred partner of BP for many, many years, and in the context of the market, which is very busy today, we've been able to work together with BP and conclude this alliance. So we have teams that work already in U.K. and in Trinidad and Tobago on some opportunities. And I'm very confident that in the coming quarters, we will be able to announce some projects here. So when I look at these three true partnerships, I think that if we're successful with Equinor, in particular, with Wisting and Bay du Nord, from 2027, through these three partnerships, we will have $1 billion of revenue every year secured with these clients. It's good backlog, long-term visibility, incentive mechanisms to benefit from good performance, and we're going to share the profit, if any, together with our partners. So having $1 billion of revenue secured already from 2027 that will continue into the early 2030s is extremely important for us and it's helping us to optimize our delivery. Let's talk about Sakarya, an industry record in greenfield. So it's a project in Turkey, the first Pore to Process development that we have delivered together with SLB. Very important project for Turkey energy independence. The industry record here is about delivering in April 2023 first gas, 30 months after the gas was discovered. Generally, it's more five years, 10 years, 30 months between discovery of the gas and first gas. It is integrated, onshore and offshore. SLB have delivered the well completion and the onshore receiving terminal. We've delivered as SIA the SPS and the SURF. And it's been a big success. We've been awarded now the subsequent phases of this development. And not only that, we are now developing a life of field solution for this client together with OneSubsea. So this is the first time we are looking at life of field together with OneSubsea on a real case that happened before. Finally, this is an example about new energy markets, Northern Lights in Norway, the carbon capture project. Here, we're simply transferring our knowledge and our existing projects from oil and gas to carbon capture project. We have a number of other clients already engaging with us at concept and design stage in order to prepare for the future and deliver this energy transition where carbon capture is going to play a critical role. So you see this slide at every quarterly results from Subsea 7. This is the market as we see it right now. $21 billion of tenders on the table right now, so $21 billion of opportunities for us to secure market share, to secure our revenue for the future. I'm not going to go into much detail. You can see the weight of South Africa, the weight of Brazil where we're extremely strong; Norway as well, extremely important for us; Africa picking up; and North and Central America also very important for us. But I don't want to go too much into the details here. What I want to say here is that with our key differentiators, with our strategy, we are going to get our share of this market. This market is increasingly more and more favorable to Subsea 7, to the contractors, but we will make a difference in order to secure our market share with our differentiators. We have the people, we have the experience, we have the assets and these differentiators are going to make a difference. So it is our strategy really paying, and I am extremely confident that the coming years are going to deliver optimized performance, superior performance from Subsea 7. That's what I wanted to share with you this morning. We're going to go for a break. We will be back at 11:10 with a special guest, Knut Sandvik from Aker BP and with Monica Bjorkmann, the Head of Norway. Thank you. [Break]

Okay. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Subsea 7 in Norway, and welcome also specifically to Vigra that we'll be visiting later today. So if we look at this picture, we can see Virga with 2 of our pipe layers alongside Seven Vega and Seven Oceans. And I also heard that you got a little special bonus this morning coming from the airport that you had a little short trip down to the key sites and actually saw Seven Navica live as well. So great. So I had a long career in Subsea 7. I've actually been here 27 years. I've, all my life, been surrounded with boats and being close to the ocean, probably very much inspired by my father who was a captain. I'm also proud godmother of our newest pipe layer, Seven Vega. I'm Head of Subsea 7 in Norway. But I also have an industry role. So this is my fifth year as the Chair of the Board of Offshore NOGA, used to be the Norwegian Oil and Gas Association. And with that note, I'd particularly like to mention that during COVID and the low price in the -- or the low oil price, we went together with Offshore NOGA with Aker BP and with Equinor and actually lobbied towards most political parties in Norway to ensure that we got the temporary tax regime. The activity package, as we would like to call it, because it actually -- the whole purpose with the scheme was to ensure that we had activity through the downturn, making sure that there was continued oil and gas activity as well as that we didn't lose capacity or competence for the important energy transition that we saw in the future. And many of the projects that we have in our backlog today is actually due to the temporary tax regime because all the projects that were sanctioned end of '22 in Norway, and a lot of those are actually the ones that we are executing in Subsea 7. And it also showed that having such a close relationship with our clients in Norway through the activity that we have in Subsea 7, but also through the activity of Offshore NOGA, it gives us a very unique position being able to influence the politicians and the industry on items that really matter makes us very relevant today and very relevant into the future. So Subsea 7 has been in Norway as long as hydrocarbons have been here or as long as we've been developing hydrocarbons, and we have a very strong fundament in Norway and many of our early predecessors as a company also started in Norway. We've been very relevant from the first pioneering days of oil exploration and production in Norway, in the early '70s seen here with our Seaway Pelikan at the time. But also today, 50 years later, illustrated with Seven Oceans today, we are here still and will be here in the future. So -- and I think the point is that we're working closely with our clients, working with their teams so that we can develop the solutions that actually matters so that they can produce the oil and gas that actually can be delivered to U.K., to EU and to the world for the energy that the world needs. And an example of that is our project with Shell, the Ormen Lange Phase III, which is a gas compression project that actually enables the solution that comes from OneSubsea that we are installing with Seven Arctic to ensure that U.K. gets the gas from Ormen Lange with that compression system actually delivers 30% of the gas consumed in U.K. alone for that project. So it's an enormous value. Then if we look at the history we have as a company, how we have evolved and how we've innovated the company throughout this period. In the early phase, it was more about consolidation and the capacity that was needed to grow in the growing needs of the market. We delivered very much construction work with sat diving, safe procedures, obviously, high on the agenda, but also use of our vessels and the fleet management was sort of a lot of the things important. Then moving into the more middle phase. So how are we then more delivering the entire systems with EPCI projects, so it's about project management capability, it's about managing the supply chain, it's about managing the risks to deliver those EPCI projects. So during this period, Norway actually became a global leader in subsea technology. And then in the later phases, we more could see that it's contractor-led solution, it's more integrated between SPS and our partner, OneSubsea, as an example, SPS and SURF integrated. So it's about taking control of the architecture and seeking life cycle value, as also Olivier was describing. So it's adding more stronger capability into the early phases, but also then ensuring that you think about the whole life cycle of the project. But also on top of that, increasingly higher focus on sustainability. And then if we look at what have we delivered, what are the major projects that we've delivered, say, over the last 15 years in Norway. So most of the major projects that have been delivered in Norway actually have been delivered by Subsea 7. So starting with the original Skarv development that now is an Aker BP project, both legacy Subsea 7 and legacy ACD were actually part of delivering this project. And then after that, the largest project ever awarded at the time on the Norwegian continental shelf was the Aasta Hansteen project that Subsea 7 delivered. And that was in a 1,300-meter water depth, which is the deepest in Norway. And that included all the SURF scope, but also actually tow out and hookup of the top side. And then the next large project was the Martin Linge that was probably 2x or even more than that, the size of Aasta Hansteen. And the Martin Linge project was a really true EPCI project with all that matters with the design, with the construction, with the installation and the commissioning. And I think also worth mentioning the design and the fabrication and installation of a power cable to shore. Then the next one out was Knarr project, Knarr project for BG at the time was actually with the bundle solution that you also saw an example of in Olivier's presentation, and now delivering Yggdrasil project together with Aker BP. And Yggdrasil project probably being 3x the size as Aasta Hansteen which was a record 10 years ago now delivering. And Yggdrasil, formerly known as NOAKA, if you've heard of that, delivering both actually two bundles and normal pipe solutions. So it's fair to say, I think that Subsea 7 has been part of building at least half of Norway's subsea infrastructure. So -- and in the future, obviously, executing complex projects in subsea, working independently as well as with our SPS partner, OneSubsea. So looking at Norway, how big are we? So typically, working for Norway, we are about 600 people onshore, a 1/3 female, 2/3 male. We have our head office in Stavanger. We also have an office together with Seaway 7 in Oslo. It's their main global office in Oslo. But we have a base in Dusavik where we mobilize and demobilize all -- maintain our equipment, mobilize our vessels and obviously, the Vigra facility that we will see later today. We work with typically 1,000 different suppliers throughout the year. And also, I would say, approximately seven of our vessels would be in Norway throughout the year and we have, at the moment, 16 ongoing projects, actually for six different clients, Aker BP, Equinor, we work for Shell, ConocoPhillips, OKEA and also for Sval. So if we look at our backlog and the volume of work that we do in Norway, our backlog currently is about $2.3 billion, which is being executed from now on until 2028. And the current backlog actually consists of quite a few clients. And as you can see, the majority with Aker BP, which is quite sort of unique position just now. Normally, it's more balanced between Equinor and Aker BP. And I think as Aker BP is dominating, I think one of the comments that I've heard from Aker BP is that they will have not been able to push through so many projects in the tax regime if it hadn't been for the work and how they work with the alliances and how they work with suppliers, it wouldn't have been possible. And currently, Equinor with fewer projects, they didn't push through so many projects in the temporary tax regime. So resulting in less ongoing work. But through our Subsea Integration Alliance, we have also then worked for OKEA here. So then if we look at the future, how much future awards to the market and how much are we expecting? So those that have not been awarded and how much we see in the pipeline is approximately worth $5 billion of work and the Offshore Director of the Norway is saying approximately 80 projects, smaller projects probably are in the pipeline or coming. So Equinor, as you see, are maturing a large portfolio of projects. Those with an asterisk shows where we have a partnership with our clients, so Aker BP, Sval, OKEA. And then obviously, we have a different access to the projects that we work with in the alliances and in the partnerships than what we have with Equinor and with Wintershall and ConocoPhillips where we typically have to compete for the work. However, I think it was briefly mentioned by Olivier as well, but the subsea collaboration agreement that we just entered in with Equinor, so that agreement is a nonexclusive agreement, and for Equinor, they want to decide on a case-by-case basis when they're going to use it. But they did sign off two contracts at the same time with us for both Wisting and for Bay du Nord and those are exclusive. So once you go into a project on an early stage, they will be exclusive. So then we will work for the next 2.5 years to mature to find the best solutions to ensure that Equinor actually can sanction those projects by the end of '26. And for the Aker BP portfolio, we work together with OneSubsea in the subsea alliance. So maturing projects together from a very early concept stage through project execution until first gas and first oil for Aker BP. And the team that works together work -- are sitting physically together in our office in Stavanger. And it's seamless integration between the companies. We don't really know who is from which company, and that's the whole purpose. You're sitting integrated as a team. And the traditional role of a client and supplier is not really there. So today, we're really lucky to also have Knut Sandvik with us. He is Senior Vice President for Projects in Aker BP and he will talk more about the Aker BP and their strategy and how they work with the suppliers.

Thank you, Monica, and thank you for inviting me here. I'm heading up the projects area in Aker BP, and it's quite a lot at the moment, to put it that way. We have a lot on our plate. I haven't been on the operator side for many years. I've started in Aker BP in 2019, so soon five years. But I've been in the industry for quite some time, started back in '87, actually started in building concrete platforms. But I would like to say that working in these alliances, I think it's -- at least for me, it's a great advantage to have been on the supplier side. So really -- I really understand the thinking, understand how we can become better together, which is a cornerstone in the way we work in Aker BP. So I would say a few words about Aker BP, the history, our ambition, our strategy, what we have with respect to projects in the portfolio just now and how we think about projects, how we go about delivering projects and also, of course, talk a little bit about the subsea alliance and the relationship to Subsea 7. So if you look at this slide, it's a fantastic growth story really Aker BP. If you sort of go back a decade or a bit more, then a few thousand barrels. And where we are today, we are producing around 450,000 barrels a day. So it's a fantastic journey. And I think we signed the alliance agreement in '16. So you've been part of a major sort of phase hereon in the growth of the company. So there are, of course, 3 sort of key steps in this. It is the Marathon acquisition and then the acquisition of the, say, the BP part in Norway and the last one was Lundin. But now we have a lot more on the organic side, and I will come back to that. I think we have a pretty clear strategy. We are stating clearly that we are a pure play oil and gas company. And we want to be best at that, best at what we are doing and we are focusing on low cost, low carbon. But of course, it's about sort of returning value to our shareholders. Four focus areas, operate safely and efficiently. Of course, safety is a prerequisite and a license to operate in our industry. So that always has to be there. And presently, we have a sort of lifting cost in the range of $6 to $7 per barrel, which is quite high up there. We are doing well compared to our competitors in the market. The second element is that we would like to decarbonize our industry. And we have a target of net zero in 2030. And of course, it is about deliver high-return projects, and I'll come back to that because that is really where there is a massive effort just now. And of course, it is also about sort of what is the next wave. How are we going to create growth going forward? So those are the key focus areas for us. So we are on NCS only, and I think that has been important for us. So this focus, I think, has been important for Aker BP, pure oil and gas and NCS only, that has been the sort of backbone of creating the growth. We operate five assets, Valhall, that came along with the BP deal. We have produced 1.2 billion barrels from the Valhall area. But we have a target to get to 2 billion. And we are also doing quite a big project there at the moment where we are tying back foundries to Valhall and building a new platform at Valhall. Then we have Edvard Grieg and Ivar Aasen that we are running as one now combined asset. Edvard Grieg came with the Lundin acquisition. And here, it's about sort of really making that a super efficient asset together, taking out synergies. Then we have Alvheim, which is a great success story, that came with the Marathon deal. And we have been doing sort of subsea tiebacks at least one a year and we also see that, that will continue some time into the future. Then we have Skarv gas hub, came from -- with the deal with BP. Quite a lot of prospects in that area. So I think that looks very interesting for the future. We need to unlock those opportunities together. Ula, slightly different, late life, going towards the end and the sort of decommissioning phase towards the end of this century. We are developing Yggdrasil as the sixth one. And as you said, it's -- that's really a big project, and we have a small video on it as well that we will show. It is the most complex, I think, field development ever on the Norwegian continental shelf, and it's actually the largest subsea development on the Norwegian continental shelf. And of course, we are partners in several assets with Johan Sverdrup as the main one, where we have close to 32% ownership. About 50-50 split between own operated production and nonoperated production. Heavy investment program, as I said, $20 billion investment program, more than the market cap of the company. I think it's the biggest -- by far, the biggest CapEx program in Norway actually ever. And it is also quite big in sort of European scale for a private company. So there is a lot on the plate. And as I said, low emissions is a key focus for us, where we have around 3 kilos per barrel, that's best in the industry. We are best in the industry on that. The global average is 18 to 20, I think. So this is something we are really, really proud of. Then we want to grow further. So we are -- that's why we are doing the projects, of course. And about half of the production in '28 now will come from the projects that we have -- that we are developing just now. So without doing this, we would quite -- you see the sort of decline that is there. That would be -- we would soon be at sort of 300, 250 barrels instead of 450 where we are today. And we have the ambition to go north of 500, 525. So that is, of course, why we are doing this and that's why we are doing project, it is to produce the oil and the gas. Low emission on all of them as they are mostly with sort of power from shore and also quite solid economics with a sort of breakeven in the range of $35 to $40, relatively short payback time. And this also illustrates the importance of the cooperation that we have with the alliance partners and Subsea 7. When it comes to project execution, we have some key principles that we believe strongly in. Front-loading, early planning, get suppliers involved early and of course, here, the alliances is a key element. But we also want to expand it further than that. We want to sort of enter contracts early with equipment suppliers so that we get everybody on board and can really do planning early. I think history shows in our industry that it is the lack of maturation and the lack of early phase planning, that's why projects go wrong. So that is a key element for us. Standardize where possible, that benefits the execution phase, which is also very important when we operate the assets. So we have a lot of attention on this at the moment. And maybe the most important and the backbone of Aker BP is partnership. One team approach, strong partnership, and that's why we have developed alliances. So we've gone into partnership with some -- with the best suppliers and get them on board. And we think that is important to drive performance; to improve, innovate, develop competence and really also enable growth. Driven by common goals and incentives where we aim to really create a win-win and that means that predictability and, of course, lower cost for us, but it also means higher margins for our alliance partners. Because if you don't make money, you will not innovate and that is what we need in this industry; we need innovation, new and better solutions. And behind all this is, of course, the trust -- the foundation for this is trust. And I must say, John and your team here, you have really sort of shown excellent leadership because it has to come from the top. Subsea alliance, you talked about it, maybe I could skip that one, of course. But I would like to add one thing, the unique thing about this alliance is that we are included in it. The operator is in. There are a lot of supplier alliances, but the unique thing with this is that we are part of it. So we really sort of try to get the client and suppliers fully integrated inside the alliance. Not going to go through this. This is showing just a sort of list of the projects that we have going at the moment. But I think, look at the ticks, that is where the subsea alliance is involved. So you are -- the subsea alliance is actually involved in the majority of the work that we have going at the moment. And we could not have done this without the alliance setup. Aker BP is a relatively small organization, and we need sort of close cooperation to really take these projects through. I think, Olivier, you had at least one of these on your slide. We have done 17 projects since 2016 and NOK 17 billion in sort of revenue in that work, all within -- all on time and all within budget. That's a very solid record and a good basis for where we are going now because now we are really doubling the volume that we're going to take through. What is in the portfolio now is twice the size in a much shorter period. So we have a mountain of activities that we are dealing with together. Massive effort. 700-plus kilometers of pipeline and umbilicals, I think, in this portfolio. 50-plus wells to be installed over the next three years. 2,000 vessel days or something like that. So we have a lot together to make sure we deliver well. Then I think I'll do a video on Yggdrasil. [Presentation]

So that's what we want to achieve. So where are we on this portfolio? We are on track. We have achieved all milestones to date. We are moving from a sort of heavy engineering phase into now fabrication and installation focus. CapEx estimates in line with what we actually sanctioned. . We have placed all major -- all contracts, secured all materials. We have started fabrication and manufacturing at all locations. We have -- of course, this was an activity package. So there's quite a lot of activity in Norway, but we also have quite a lot of activity, of course, abroad. Subsea is progressing according to plan. And we have started the offshore work. We have installed templates on Skarv and we are presently installing the production pipeline on -- between Valhall and Yggdrasil and there is more to come later this season. So what about the future? I think we have to realize that what we have ahead of us, it will be dominant -- first of all, subsea is in the core. It will be dominated by subsea tiebacks, but they are becoming more marginal, more difficult, more difficult reservoirs, longer step-outs and smaller. And that means that we need to be smarter, be innovative, come up with new solutions, both from a sort of technical, commercial perspective, business model, we need to look at the requirements that we put forward, we might even look at the requirements, of course, that the authorities put forward. So there has to be a lot of focus on this, but there is one thing I'm absolutely certain of, and that is that partnership and alliances is what will take us there. So that's why I'm a strong, strong, strong believer in this approach, and we see the results. So it's just a matter of taking it further. Thank you.

Yes. We will have a few -- sort of a little dialogue on stage here.

So we kind of will challenge ourselves on four different things. And we can start, Knut, with if you can say a bit about what do you think are the opportunities of working in an alliance-type relationship?

Yes. I think I've touched on quite a few of the elements. But I think this early involvement and really knowing who is going to do it, where are you going to do it, and what sort of technology you are going to use and what sort of assets you're going to use, very early to develop the best solutions, I think, is a key element. And I think also this predictability in the capacity. And of course, for us, it is a lot about speed. If you go about this in a sort of traditional way, you have different phases in these projects where you shall do studies, then do a tender for the feed and you do, do the feed and you do tender for the execution maybe and so on. And of course, we get rid of all these sort of different sort of tendering and evaluation phases. And that speeds it up and that, of course, makes a lot more value to us. And I think also we have demonstrated a lot, Monica, on the flexibility in the alliance that we have, of course, in the setup. When you are in an alliance, you have several projects going, you have flexibility, you can move vessels, you can do stuff. And I must say we do it in the right way. We don't have a lot of commercial debate. We do it in a one team spirit, trusting that it will be good for everybody.

Exactly. But are there some challenges as well, you think?

Yes. Of course, there are challenges. I think the one that we always have to look after is to make sure that we can demonstrate that we are competitive. We need to make sure that whatever we do is competitive. And I also think there is -- we have to be careful in sort of misunderstanding the sort of trust and relationship. And so we don't make it to sort of one happy family. We have to have the sort of ability to challenge each other because that's how we also improve. But it has to be done in the right way. It is about how you do it. Of course, we need to challenge each other, but it's the way, we have to do it, that is the key for me. So to maintain that is very, very important, at least the way I see. And of course, when we are getting bigger, we also get some issues around sort of the market share thing that is popping up a bit. But Monica, what about you? What do you see in this?

What's the value for Subsea 7? Yes.

What's the value for you?

I think some of the value for Subsea 7 is that it definitely enhances our market share in Norway, but I also think it gives us a good predictability on our margins. So I think there is -- the model is based on incentivizing good behavior, good solutions and the right solutions. So if we have smart solution that comes from our team, that actually reduces the cost for Aker BP. It means that part of that is actually coming back to us and OneSubsea. So there is a share here, we call it a pain gain share. So it means we have a common risk contingency port. So not each of the three parties sit on their each contingency port. And that means if we have used less than we had planned, then parts of that actually comes back and enhances our margin as well. So I think that's a big, big value. But I think also the good visibility in projects that we work early together, it means that we have visibility on what projects are coming so that we can sit together and actually discuss those. It doesn't mean that they all happen, but it means that we can see what is in the pipeline much earlier. And I think also that collaboration is one of the strong, strong values of Subsea 7. We feel that that's in our genes. And it really fits very well into how we work together. So I think that's a motivational factor. It's inspiring for people. So it's great to have people that are happy to go to work every day to sit in the alliance.

Very good.

Yes. And then I think one more thing is obviously the future. We're happy -- one big happy family, we worked together for 8 years, but the future is, as Knut was saying, it's more marginal tiebacks. It will be more difficult. It's not the huge greenfields being developed in Norway as expected, at least. So we need to find out how can we unlock that value of those future projects together. So that's the new challenge. And how can we solve that, Knut?

Yes, if we had the solution to that, then it would be -- we would have done it. No, I think, at least my sort of perspective on this is that the alliances have sort of prove themselves. Now it's sort of how do we take it further? I think there's something on maybe we have so far been focused on alliances around scope, maybe we need to think alliances or sort of sub scopes. We need to think around sort of is there something, say, a tieback alliance, for instance, where you have the drilling and wells, you have the subsea, you have the modification, so you really get the optimum in the totality. It's actually something we are thinking of in Aker BP as a next step on the collaboration and the alliance thinking is important for us. And I think also this -- maybe we should think also deeper in the value chain that we need to sort of bring on board some of the key equipment suppliers and so on further down. So that is along the lines that we are thinking at the moment. But as I mentioned, there is -- we need, of course, new solutions. We need maybe new business models. We need to challenge requirements and everything.

But I think an add-on to that is on digitalization. So I think by sharing data, by actually having access to the same data, by using that data in a great way, it can mean that we can be more efficient internally in the company, more efficient between us but also working with the authorities, for example, and the government, how the interaction is there. So I think digitization is also a key to how we can unlock future value here.

Speed it up, of course, is -- there should be a lot of that and efficient information flow partnership, I think, is the one key element in the end.

Yes. So then I'd like to thank you. And then -- yes, exactly. And then I have a few -- just one more slide to go in the end. Thank you, Knut.

Thank you.

So obviously, we've been talking a lot about -- we've been talking a lot about oil and gas here, but Subsea 7 is not just about oil and gas, it's also about the future and energy transition. And here, we see two pictures. One is from Hywind Tampen. So Subsea 7 was installing the cables for Hywind Tampen which was the first commercial floating wind project offshore in the world by Equinor. And we've also been part of carbon capture and storage. So Northern Lights Phase 1, as you probably have heard about, is the first commercial CCS project in the world and that also delivered in Norway by Equinor, and we have done the whole infrastructure of that. So this is actually a picture at Virga with our vessel last year, spooling the pipe and then installing the pipe this year and last year for Equinor on that one. So -- and I think it's also worth mentioning, for Norway, even though this is the first kind of commercial CO2 storage project, we have actually stored CO2 on the Norwegian Continental shelf since '96. So on Sleipner field, they take out the CO2 and actually directly inject that into the reservoir. So there's a long track record in Norway of doing that, and they do the same also on Snøhvit. So with that, I'd like to thank you for the interaction and that's what I plan to say.

Thank you, Monica and Knut. It was certainly impressive to hear about the benefits and value generated as well as the opportunities associated with the alliance model. My name is Mark Foley. I'm Subsea 7's CFO and have been since January 2022. I've had just over 25 years in the broader energy sector. So let me start today with the energy landscape, but viewing that over an ultra-long period. The world around has an almost insatiable appetite for energy and Subsea 7's conviction, strong conviction is that oil and gas, and in particular, deepwater oil and gas will play a prominent role in the energy mix for decades to come. That's a view that's shared by independent and credible forecasters and it's a view that also prevails under a range of plausible scenarios. So let's take one of those scenarios. This is from Rystad and it's present in June 2024. And we see oil and gas as a percent of the energy mix coming off somewhat in 2040 to around -- 2050 to around 40%. Now we understand that the energy transition is in progress, but none of us know the speed and the nature of that. However, it's something that's happening, but this data point here alone, I could have used other data points as well, underpins the continued relevance for decades to come of oil and gas but in particular, deepwater oil and gas. There's another favorable set of attributes associated with deepwater oil and gas. And that is that it sits favorably on the cost curve. And as Knut alluded to, it also has a favorable attribute around carbon intensity. So our clients at the moment use economics as the dominant decision-making criteria for their investments. But we see examples now of carbon intensity coming into play. And again, Knut mention that in his presentation. So as a result of the positioning on cost as well as carbon intensity, it also reinforces the relevance of deepwater oil and gas. Perhaps more importantly is the vast majority of the oil and gas shown out to 2040 and 2050 here and using 2050 as the example, 2/3 of that is as yet undeveloped and it will require the assets, the competencies, the key differentiators of Subsea 7 in order to bring our clients' projects alive. So moving from an ultra long time frame to one which is much more near term. I look at the favorable market conditions that we have benefited from over recent times. That has manifested itself in us having a record backlog of $12 billion. And as comparator points, if I look at the backlog at the second quarter of 2021, that was $6.4 billion; in 2022, $7.4 billion; and then last year, $10.3 billion. So there are a variety of factors that have led to the improvement in market conditions. I'll share three specific examples, which I consider relevant. One is that we have a much more moderated discussion around the energy transition, particularly in certain regions. There is an acknowledgment that energy security and energy affordability is important, that has led to a much more sophisticated and mature discussion compared to a somewhat polarized discourse that we had at COP26 in Glasgow in 2021. The second part is to do with the cost of oil and gas extraction. Subsea 7, as a leading energy solution provider together with its peers, has been the vanguard of promoting integration, early engagement, standardization in order to bring down the breakeven cost of development. And lastly, our clients have depleted resources. There had been a significant period of underinvestment in the latter part of the last decade as well as around the 2020 time frame. So all taken together, that has acted as a catalyst in order to present us in Subsea 7 with attractive market opportunities. The point I'd like to reinforce here is whilst we have a record backlog of $12 billion, it's quality backlog. And what I mean by quality backlog is that the embedded margins are superior. As our backlog has evolved sequentially, we have seen an accretion in the margin embedded. The second point is as the bargaining power has moved more in favor of Subsea 7, in part as a result of the capital discipline of Tier 1 contractors, we are able to have more beneficial terms and conditions. And then lastly, the cash flow profile of projects have improved as well, and that's something that naturally I'm very pleased about. So as we enter through this year, I would expect the backlog at the end of 2024 as we exit to have less than $500 million related to contracts that were won in 2021 and earlier and was by definition rather poor quality contracts as a result of the prevailing market conditions. So as a result of the high visibility, together with, as Olivier just showed, the pipeline prospects of $21 billion, that has allowed us last year in order to extend the time frame of our guidance. In November of last year, we extended that time frame out to include 2025 where we indicated that we expected adjusted EBITDA margin to be in the range of 15% to 20%. Earlier this year, as a result of the progress, the continued progress that we see in the organization, we tightened that range to 18% to 20% for 2025. And as we stand here today, we expect the adjusted EBITDA margin to cross the 20% threshold in 2026 and gradually increase there after. I'll just stop here for a moment and decompose some of the less obvious drivers of profitability within our portfolio. Understandably, pricing is the one that takes center stage, and of course, is incredibly important. And we have seen, as the quarters elapse, improved embedded pricing in the work that we have won. Furthermore, as activity levels increase, we have higher utilization within our assets and notably that being the vessels. So a certain tipping point around the number of days, we have recovered the cost of the asset for the year and any days thereafter is an increment -- a fall-through to profitability. And that's a very important secondary profit driver in an up-cycle. Moreover, as we have established robust regional portfolios in Norway and in Brazil, we also benefit from the economies of scale and scope. And then moving on to upside potential through our execution, that can come in a variety of forms. It can come from executing projects quicker than we expected, it could be that we were able to leverage our buying power with the supply chain or indeed, it means that costs that we had denoted or risks that we had denoted, costs again, which are termed contingencies, we have executed in a manner that has mitigated those risks and that cost then falls to the bottom line. So those are some of the less obvious drivers of profitability that gives us the confidence to reconfirm the expectation of 18% to 20% for 2025 as well as EBITDA margin breaching 20% in '26 and gradually increasing beyond. The other point to note here is that allied with the improvement in margins, we are also pushing through greater volumes and that is also increasing the amount of adjusted EBITDA that we expect to earn. So we've guided the margin this year of adjusted EBITDA to between $950 million and $1 billion. And to set that into context, last year, we delivered $714 million and the year before, 2022, around $560 million. So it's this profitability that acts as a foundation for the strong cash generation that we expect to generate in the coming years, which underpins our commitment to shareholder returns. And then lastly, with our continued capital discipline and improved profitability, it will lead to an improvement and a favorable evolution in our return on capital employed. And both of these points are a good entry level that's cash generation and disciplined approach to capital investment. To share the slide that John showed earlier today, it's no mistake, it's purposefully included because the message here is important, and it's one that we want to reinforce. In terms of shareholder returns, there was only one year in the period from 2012 to now that we have not returned anything to shareholders; that was 2016, despite the state of the market and the position that we had on the cycle. In 2022, we committed to a regular dividend payment of NOK 1 per share, and we've exceeded the payments from '23 where we paid the equivalent of NOK 4 per share. More importantly, this year, we have committed to returning at least $1 billion to shareholders. We have paid the first of the two equal dividend payment installments in May, that was for an amount of $85 million, and we are $35 million through the $80 million share repurchase program. So as the Board have demonstrated, as advised by management, we do have a very keen focus in ensuring that we return excess cash to shareholders. And I'm certain that management, John, myself, others in the ExCom, together with the Board, will apply that same diligence when excess cash is generated in the years to come. The balance sheet is important, too. Having a balance sheet with an investment-grade profile as well as having moderate leverage as well as access to ample committed liquidity is important to our clients. Not everyone can say that they have that. And it's that confidence that our clients have and our ability to be there to deliver their strategically and financially important projects that we will maintain our focus on this critical aspect of our capital allocation framework. And whilst we have a modern, a diverse and capable fleet, it will age and we will have to make reinvestments. I find it very encouraging that we have new hydrocarbon frontiers evolving, whether it's Guyana or Surinam, Trinidad and Tobago, Mozambique, Namibia and we will have to evaluate the capacity and the capability that we need in order to meet that market demand. So in summary, we have a very strong conviction around the continued relevance of deepwater oil and gas in the energy mix for decades to come. We have a unique set of assets, competencies and key differentiators that can provide our clients with the solutions that they need in order to unlock their development opportunities. We see a very improved market conditions compared to 2, 2.5 years ago. And as a result, we have the confidence to convey our margin expectations of we are on track to deliver 18% to 20% for 2025 and we expect adjusted EBITDA margin to cross 20% and gradually increase thereafter. And with that, I'll pass over to Phil Simons. Thank you.

Good afternoon, as it is now. My name is Phil Simons. I'm the EVP for Projects and Operations. I've been in the industry just over 30 years, I've been with Subsea 7 just under 20 years. Going back to what Olivier said earlier, we talk about the complex projects that we deliver for our clients. And with that, we need people experience, we need an enabling fleet and we need our enabling products as well. And what I want to do is just go through some of our products and then talk about our fleet. So here you see our rigid portfolio of rigid products. The first three you see over there are lined pipelines, really dedicated towards corrosive products that we put through -- our clients put through their pipelines. We then have electrically traced heat pipes, the next two pipes there. All of these are designed to meet the flow assurance requirements of the field developments that we're looking for these projects. We then have coated pipelines, different ones to maintain the temperature of the products as they go from the reservoir back to the host facility. And with all of these, we could use only one of these products within our pipeline bundles that Olivier talked about earlier. So our portfolio of rigid pipeline solutions is around providing the right solution for the flow assurance that our clients require. Coupled with that, as we talked about earlier, we have our risers. Our risers connect our subsea pipelines to our host facilities. The portfolio is one of the most leading portfolios in the market. It encompasses both rigid pipelines and flexible pipelines. And it's -- they're all designed to meet the most harshest environments and the deepest water depths that our clients operate their fields in today. And then we have our pipeline structures. They hold the controls and the valve networks to operate the fields. They are -- we are working with our clients now with configure-to-order. So we have modular systems now to make our structure designs more efficient, more cost-effective and to try and bring those project deliveries earlier in the life cycle, similar to what we did on Sakarya. And to enable those projects to be installed, we have one of the largest, most modern fleet of vessels. We have an average age of about 12 years of our own vessels. And as we've said, we strategically look at owning our key enablers, the ones that do the core of our work, and we supplement that with our chartered long-term and short-term chartered vessels to support those strategic vessels in delivery of the key projects. On the right-hand side, you see the renewables fleet. I'm not going to talk about that today. I'm going to talk about subsea and conventional fleet on the right-hand side. So we have at the top there, our rigid pipelay vessels and heavy lift vessels, key enablers to install the rigid pipeline portfolio that you saw earlier. We then have our subsea construction vessels. These vessels install a flexible pipeline, install a large subsea structures, as you saw earlier; install the subsea with the flexible risers that you saw in our portfolio of products. These also include the PLSVs that we have in Brazil at the moment. And those 2 assets are core to our delivery capability. We then have our diving vessels generally working in the North Sea, but sometimes out in Africa and down in the Middle East. And then we have along the bottom row there, our light construction support vessels and our inspection repair and maintenance vessels. These vessels are all chartered. We -- these vessels, we bring in and out to provide flexibility within our fleet dependent on market requirements. And we can upgrade these vessels to help install flexibles with our modular pipelay towers and our modular carousels. We want to control the technology. We want to control the knowledge and know-how to do that. So we can take those mobile pipelay assets and put them on chartered vessels where and when we need to upgrade those to support us in our activity levels. Whole purpose in all of this is to keep up utilization and to ensure that we fully utilize the key assets, laying what they need to lay and installing what they need to install. If I look at the rigid pipelay fleet, there are 3 ways that you can lay pipelay at subsea pipelines. You can either lay them in S-lay, reel-lay or J-lay. S-lay is about large diameter pipelines they can lay from very shallow water to very deep water, and they can lay from smaller diameter to very large diameter. Reel-lay, maximum of about 18- to 20-inch pipeline diameter, so they are constricted, but they can lay from shallow to very deep water as well. And they're probably one of the most used pipelay assets for Subsea 7 and used on most of our pipelay projects. Finally, we have J-lay, designed where S-lay can't meet the tension requirements. J-lay ensures that we can lay very deep water pipelines. So all of these vessels, the whole idea of -- the whole way that they're working is to ensure that they provide tension in the pipeline to make sure we don't buckle or damage the pipeline. S-lay and J-lay well the pipeline as they install it, offshore, reel-lay pipelay requires a pipeline small base, like we're going to see today in Vigra, and we have a number of those around the world. This is our rigid pipelay fleet. I'll go into it in a bit more detail. 5 assets spanning the full range of S-lay, reel-lay and J-lay. We have one of the only fleets at this moment that operates across all of the different pipelay modes. If you look at the Seven Vega, our most modern vessel, she is currently in Brazil, working on Equinor, Bacalhau, she will then go on to Petrobras Mero 3. Seven Oceans is currently in Australia, doing Santos Barosa. She will then come back to the North Sea to do Aker BP, Skarf. Seven Navica. She was the one that just completed the Northern Lights carbon capture for Equinor in Norway, and she's currently unfortunately just left Vigra the -- well, she's supposed to be leaving in 3/4 of an hour, I hope she's on time, but she's off to go and lay Aker BP Fendris. So a very active fleet at the moment, the reel-lay vessels fully active and fully utilized for the next few years. Seven Borealis and Seven Champion, our S-lay capability. The Seven Champion was introduced to the Middle East, the first dynamic vessel to ever be introduced in the Middle East. She has a 3,200-tonne crane as well. So for the jobs with Saudi Aramco, she can install the topsides and jackets fabricated by Larsen & Toubro, our partner in the Middle East, and she can install the pipelines. Seven Borealis, she's just finished the ExxonMobil EPC 521-kilometer 120-kilometer pipelay in Guyana and then she's going to go actually to the Middle East to work on Saudi Aramco Zuluf project. The Seven Borealis also has a J-lay capability. She laid the [indiscernible] risers in 2020, and where expectations are, we're looking for jobs for her in the J-lay mode in 2026. To support all those pipelay operations, we have over -- there, you see the Wick bundle in the Northeast of Scotland. We talked about our 7.5 kilometer site to install our bundles. We have the Glasgow Technology Center, where we develop the well procedures, where we do all our R&D and welding and where we developed some of the most technically advanced welding capability in the market. We then have Ingleside. She's just completing Beacon Shenandoah in the U.S. for the oceans as she goes there later on this year. In Ubu, we do all of the welding for the Petrobras jobs. We've just finished Bacalhau. We're just waiting to spool out on Mero-3, we will do Mero 4, Buzios 8 and Buzios 9. In Lobito in Angola, part of our overall larger fabrication site, we are just doing Claw 3 for Total Energies. In Bintan, we're just loading out the last trip on the oceans for the Santos Barosa pipeline. That's been instrumental in providing a low-cost solution for our clients in Australia where to install and fabricate in country is very expensive because of the local unionized workforce. And finally, we come to Vigra. Vigra based in North Sea supporting the North Sea, but also supporting globally because of the capabilities that have to do the especially complicated pipelines. Vigra, one of the largest pipeline small bases in the world, developed in 2008. She has the capacity, and she has the capability to deliver some of the most complex projects and to meet the demand, as you can see from Aker BP. You will see this afternoon that she has some of the most advanced pipeline handling systems, but also she can deliver some of the most complex pipeline technology as well. And I just wanted to end on some of our products, 4 key products. So if you look at the end Swageline pipelines, a lot of the problems our clients have is that for water injection, they want to inject water injection to keep the reservoir pressure up. Water, seawater is very corrosive from carbon steel. We've developed with Swagelining which we own, a polymer aligned pipeline so that we can protect the carbon steel from that corrosive nature. So we've designed a pipeline to meet our clients' problems. Electrically heat traced pipes. Clients quite often have a problem with -- if the products cool down, if they have a shutdown, whether it's planned or unplanned, that the products can start waxing and blocking the pipelines. Electrically trace heated pipes provide a very efficient solution for our clients to maintain the heat within the pipeline to stop the product waxing and to ensure that they can start production again as soon as they've come out of the shutdown. Mechanically line pipes. These are designed to protect against a corrosive sour service production that quite often feels we see now have. These rather than having a solid alloy pipeline are very expensive to purchase and to install. These put a 2- to 3-millimeter alloy liner inside the pipeline. We can then weld them together. We use very high-spec welding to ensure we continue the alloy protection of the carbon steel and we then protect the line pipe from the corrosive nature of the product. And finally, we have the heavy wall pipe. Some of the heavy wall pipes, especially in the Gulf of Mexico, these are up to 45 millimeters wall thickness. They're very thick, and you just can't imagine that we can bend these around a reel, but we can. But also we have to weld to very high spec. These are coping with 20,000 PSI wells, 20,000 PSI field developments. So we really have to have very high -- very fixed steel, but we also have to have very high-quality welding, almost 0 defects in that welding and that's where our technology and development in R&D in welding technology, I think, brings us to the front of the capabilities that we are seeing in the industry today to meet the demands of our clients. I hosted 4 different technologies that Subsea 7 has developed and worked with our supply chain as well to really meet the problems that our clients have and to find the flow assurance solutions for their field developments. So with that, I'll hand back to John to close out for this morning.

Thank you, Phil. We're coming to the close of the prepared slide session, and then we'll go into Q&A very quickly. So should we just close out with 1 single slide. So just to build out on the topics that we've tried to cover here this morning. It was interesting that we finish off on our products and our technologies because we have a differentiated offering. There is a way of solving the opportunities and problems our clients have with the technology that Subsea 7 can deploy. It is fascinating that we took control of our welding and our materials about 15 years ago. And if I look back in all my years in Subsea 7, one of the best things we ever did was to set up a technology capability, a delivery capability and to control. When you talk to your clients, that is a difference between production and no production for them. So it's very, very interesting, the materials technology and that suite of portfolio of capability that we've got. So we're very comfortable in offering our clients whatever is the right solution. One thing we've always done in Subsea 7, we never tried to dictate an answer. We're not trying to sell one thing or another. We're trying to find a way of getting a field to be developed and whether it uses any of the technologies on those slides or all the technologies on those slides, we're happy to work with the clients. Phil has talked to you about the importance of that fleet, how we utilize it, how we maximize the returns out of it. And that will be a key in the future to be able to deliver what the opportunities that we have ahead of us. And last but not least, we entered into a relationship with SLB, then known as Schlumberger in 2015. It's been a fantastic relationship with us. As Olivier talked about, we put over $8 billion worth of work through our books through that relationship, and we continue to have a world-class delivery. What is also very interesting, the big greenfield developments over the last 5 years, the SIA pretty much there on all of them. What does that ultimately mean though? You've got to deliver. And in this industry, it's about delivery. I'm very thankful for Knut for joining us today, but you heard from our clients, what it's like to work with us the other way. And Knut would only give us that work on the basis that we have it because we deliver. He told you about the expectations he and his shareholders have about delivery and who does the trust to do it? It's Subsea 7. So again, that robustness of delivery, that ability to deliver projects on time and on schedule matters to our clients. And also, we've talked all the way through today about if we can be involved earlier with our clients, it helps them and it helps us. As I said earlier, we are very clear that there is an energy transition happening. We're not scared of it, we want to be part of it, and we're going to be very much involved in it. We can see the ability to read across the capabilities we have today to the capabilities the world will need to move hydrogen and CO2 as well as oil and gas in the future. And our Renewables business is stable, it's profitable and it's growing. It's been through a very difficult process, but so has the whole industry, but there's a very clear path out now to allow further growth in that sector. Mark has talked to you about our financial strength and the importance of that strength. But our strength starts with good project delivery, good risk management and our ability to deliver the profit and then how we choose to protect our profit and how we choose to give it back to our shareholders is the choice that we as a management have. But it all starts and ends with the contracts we enter into, how we deliver them, and the profits that come out of them. I said earlier, balance sheet is the most important thing. I've been a shade under 40 years in this industry, and I've seen everybody come and everybody go. And it's your balance sheet, that lets you down at the end. So again, one of our obligations is to make sure we keep strengthening that balance sheet and not doing anything that we'll regret or our shareholders will regret. Last, but not least, we're very, very clear. There are some great years ahead of us, for us as a company and for our shareholders. We know that there will be a lot of cash thrown off this business, and we're very clear that we will return it to our shareholders, but we'll also keep a very careful eye on the need to reinvest because again, in 2030, 2040 and 2050, it will be companies like Subsea 7 that will deliver. Lastly, and I touched on in one of my earlier slides, the competition is very, very small these days. We are a very tight group of 3 players in the subsea business. And the good thing is there's a very rational logic with everybody in there. A little bit like the drillers, everybody has been through interesting times. But for us, it's about rationality in our business. So again, we can see a very strong ability to generate cash over the next few years. And so for Subsea 7 we long, it may remain is my motto. So with that, we're very happy to take questions. Mark and I will sit up here and then we'll ask some of the other speakers to join us as we need. So with that, this clock tells me we've got 34 minutes and 52 seconds for lunch. So off we go.

So let's start in the room. Should we -- we'll start at the front and work backwards. Mark, please can you state your name and your company before you start asking the question, that's for the webcast.

Okay. It's Mark Wilson, Jefferies. Thanks for the presentation. Fascinating and clearly very much a long-term vision of a sustained industry demand here. Could you talk therefore, given your long history in the industry, John, what is different to the last time other than the terms and conditions, but in terms of what Subsea 7 is doing? Are there any metrics you have that talk about either your ships or the amount of pipe you're putting down that show there is a clear difference between what has gone before in previous high demand cycles.

Yes. Great question. I think one benefit I had in my career in one of the predecessors Subsea 7 was to work on one of the big BP alliances, Mick will remember BP ETAP back in the early '90s. Best experience I ever had in my life was working on an alliance where I spent 3 years fully ingrained like Aker BP we're talking about there. It's the return of alliances and partnerships that really gives me a lot of strength, right? Because once you're in the door, you can offer all your toolkit, all your technologies, everything is on the table, and it's in a safe, constructive environment. So for me, the key metric that I'm interested in is the number of relationships that we are entering into with clients. You can't do that with everybody, by the way. It's the quality of those relationships, the quality of those discussions. And I think it's very, very important for us as a company because those relationships allow you to see all the way through to the end of this decade and beyond. If we take the relationship with Equinor, Equinor are one of the smartest buyers in this industry to say the least, everybody in this room knows how exceptionally confident they are, but it was very interesting in the discussions they had with us was about the fact that they couldn't get Wisting to work and they couldn't get [indiscernible] to work in the configuration they had and the model they had, had. But they were interested. And so they did a beauty contest between TechnipFMC and the Subsea Integration Alliance. And we were exceptionally pleased that we won both. We thought maybe it'd be a 50-50, one would go one way, one would go the other. But in the debrief and in the discussions with the senior management there, 2 pieces of feedback. We never would have laid out Bacalhau field in Brazil, the way you guys laid out Bacalhau. So this is the one we're laying now. But 5 years ago, we went to Equinor and said, "Have you thought about doing it this way?" And interestingly, on these fields that are ahead of us at the moment, there are ways of developing maybe 2/3 of the development for half the CapEx initially. So again, getting into those discussions is very, very important. So that's the metric I take more pipelay days. There's a finite number of pipelay days you can sell. Phil's job is to optimize those ships. So anything they don't need to do, structures, riser connections, put them on another ship, send them down. We know that in tough times, we trade the assets down. They can do everything. So the big ships can do absolutely everything in the field. But today, those ships move around from job to job, just doing exactly what they're there to do so we can maximize the 350-odd days a year we have for each of the vessels. So for me, it's about relationships and partnerships and importantly, it's safety, right? Our -- we don't talk too much about it, but it's in our key values. We're in a hydrocarbon-based industry, and so keeping a very close eye on safety, growth and safety. We're doing okay. We're doing fine on it, but safety is something we have to be exceptionally careful of every day.

It's Mickey from Barclays. I'm going to ask two questions, if I may. Firstly, Mark, you mentioned volume as well as margin. You talked about your fleet being efficient and doing what it can, it's quite busy at the moment. So how would you increase volumes when things are already optimized? And the second question, if I may, just on partnerships as a follow-up. You mentioned Chevron and Shell coming in for partnerships, but at the bidding phase. Clearly, that suggest to me they were worried about capacity going forward, and you want relationships. So how do you ensure those projects onto [indiscernible].

Good question. So let's take the different parts of it. We worked with Shell and we worked with Chevron for many decades, Mick. So we know how they are. I would certainly take my hat off to Chevron. Chevron has been one of the most transformative oil companies in the last 3 to 4 years to get clear in their mind that the old model maybe isn't the right model. And so Chevron have been very, very interested in working with us. Phil talked about the 20,000 PSI fields. Anchor is one of the first 20,000 fields in the world and going in, in the U.S. Chevron understood that getting the welding right on the pipelines was to make or break on that one. So we negotiated Anchor with them. To me, it's all about how the client behaves towards us and how we work with them. How we get into the discussion doesn't bother me that much, to be honest with you whether I have to bid it, whether I negotiate it, whether I start through a technology project. I think for us, we do see people like Chevron and Shell realizing that there has to be a different way of working, 3 bids and a buy, you worked fine 10 years ago, when there's plenty of young pretenders and you can give a job to a Sea Owner or Sea Con or something, but they wouldn't get the job done for you. Today, I think we're in a place where certain clients. But equally, we're very clear with clients. We can't give you what Aker BP gets. We can't do 40 of those or 30 of those type of relationships. In terms of assets and capacity, I guess, the other thing that's very important here is the Navica, the one -- the vessel you saw this morning. She is built in 1999, 25 years old. We spent a lot of money every year, keeping here in great order. She's still as good as the day she was built. But again, it's about, again, maximizing how we do it. We bring bundles into the mix, as we've discussed. We are doing a lot of work on Ingleside, 4 big bundles on Ingleside, again, takes pipelay capacity out. And then we also flick to flexibles again. So again, it's the balancing between type of product, type of assets to create opportunities.

And maybe another point to add there around volume. Constructing regional portfolios is important. Now as you're aware, we have a critical mass of EPCI jobs now in Brazil. Phil mentioned that the Seven Vega have worked successfully on backlog and then seamlessly transit to perform work on Mero-3. That's a great example of configuring our assets in Amara, particularly vessels, which eliminate intercontinental transits, which consume time and are often not paid for by the clients. So again, that's a factor that's taken into consideration when we bid other than margin being the primary consideration. There are other ways of driving value through optimizing portfolios and the other attributes at our disposal.

Yes, Guillaume Delaby from Bernstein. Thank you very much for the new data points on revenue, on margin. I guess, this probably strongly suggests that current consensus for 2026 and 2027 are possibly conservative. If we think not about 2025 or 2026 and put ourselves maybe in 2027, I think a key characteristic of this cycle versus the previous one is that there is little new builds. So is it reasonable to assume that in 2027, 2028 in theory, I don't want, your average margin in theory could or should be higher than at the top of the previous cycle? And could you update us a little bit about 2 other competitors that you do not mention, which are [indiscernible] and Allseas. And what those guys could be thinking about in terms of new builds? It's a long question, sorry.

I was going to say no leading questions there. Let's take your questions one by one. I've been very clear in the answers I've given many, many times I've been asked this. What allowed us to get to exceptionally high EBITDAs in '14, '15 and '16 will not be repeated. We were in a place where we secured a huge amount of work and the supply chain dropped away completely. Today, the supply chain is with us every step of the way because you don't want to be left with a non -- the supply chain has also reduced in size and scale through the downturn. So again, today, the ability to get the big flexing out of the supply chain, I am doubtful that we would get there again on that. As Mark says, we expect our margins to gradually improve above 20% from '26 onwards, and that will happen. That will certainly happen. I think the big inflection point we got there, I would suggest people don't model that because I can't see the same foundational elements in there. In terms of competitors, Allseas are transport and in-store. They're very clear. If you speak to Pieter Heerema and Edward Heerema, they're very clear, they transform exceptionally good at what they do, but they do not want to do early engagement. They don't want to do engineering. They don't want to do procurement. Again, we will be working with them on some bids we're putting together towards the end of this year. So again, for us, we value them in the sector. We know they're exceptionally good. And Heerema are in renewables only. Heerema out of the oil and gas pipelay business and don't want to go back in there. So again, for us, we have a couple of other players in the market, as you said, but they have their place, and we work and respect them for what they deliver.

Lukas Daul, Arctic. Obviously, you opened up on one of your slides what most of the investors have been fearing and that's -- that you will reinvest in your fleet at some point in time. But just to sort of understand how you look at it in terms of what capabilities you need, the time frame of it? And what the potential size of that ticket would be?

Well, I'm not going to answer any of those questions, but I'll give you a general answer. I think the important thing is that we need to reinvest, right? This is an industry that if we believe here that there's going to be market in 30, market in 40. And there's no new pretenders, there's no new capacity, there's no new capability coming into the sector. So I'd like to be the last man standing in this business. And with SLB, which I suspect, will be the last man standing in oil and gas. So we're going to be here, and we're going to be absolutely here. When do we do it? I don't know. But ultimately, for us, you can't run these machines for 50 years, right? The Navica, you saw 25 years old. She's done a great job for us, spitting out cash flows every day, She's 25 years old. And again, we've always been very clear, enabling technologies, enabling equipment we own, other technologies we rent and bring in. So for us, we are very clear that we're just aren't here just to make a buck for the next 3 years and just shut the doors and stop. So for us, you need to remember the 3 sides the triangle have always been with us, and we will always have it. So for us, it's about looking long term in terms of where we need to be. And I think we're very clear that our near-term focus is on shareholder returns, right? But the triangle has always moved. We moved between different parts of that triangle through different parts of the cycle. We invested heavily at one point. Now we're in the returns to shareholder stage. And we've also protected our balance sheets at different times. So again, we will not do anything daft. But equally, we intend to be here in a decade or 2 decades ahead because I think somebody is going to build all that. And I suspect it should be us.

Okay. And then just follow-up on the discussion or you're sort of talking a lot about the alliances and how sort of beneficial that is to both parties. So if you were to quantify that a little bit in terms of, let's talk a margin on a project. What's the margin on the sort of competitive bid project? What would be the range? And what would be the range on an alliance type of project in terms of the moving parts?

Yes. I think the important thing to answer that question is a competitive bid is what it says on the tin, 3 bid and a buy and off we go and see where we go. As Monica and Knut talked about, we have different opportunities in the collaboration type models we have. We have risk and reward mechanisms with the clients where we pool all our contingency pots. So a client normally keeps a contingency pot on projects, right, which we don't get to see on a traditional 3 bids and a buy. So again, what we see on, for example, the Aker BP, the pot for the Subsea hardware, the contingency pot for the SURF and the contingency pot for the client are all combined. So we then get opportunities to do it. Generally, our margins on alliance contracts and partnership contracts are set at the market rate. We agree them every year. And if the market is high, the client pays high rates. The market is low, the rates go up and down. So we vary our rate to suit the market. But as the opportunity to, for example, on Yggdrasil we introduced the bundle concept. Puts 4 big pipeline systems that doesn't need a pipelay. So that pipelay goes off somewhere else to earn as money in Brazil or something. So again, it's a wider picture, I think, to think about. So the margins are the same as the starting point because we have to work to the market. Knut is very clear. We have to be competitive. This isn't a right to check and off we go. But it's about how you access the reward mechanisms through good work and good optimization for the clients, which gives us the kickup on the alliance type projects.

Bob Robotti, Robotti & Company. You do talk about the competitive landscape and how that's different today. It seems to me it's a broader issue than that. One, you say you're working potentially different with Chevron and Shell. And of course, there used to be -- Wood Group used to be in the business of doing pre-FEED and FEED studies on offshore. It seems as if the capabilities of your customers are different today, and therefore, the value add you deliver is different. At the same time, the supplier group is totally different today, right? And in your procurement, I would imagine that's a critical element in terms of profit realization because I think it was in Brazil, you lost a lot of money, and that had to do with supply chains and issues with it. Today, it would seem as if that's a lot lower risk that you're better managing. So therefore, there are other aspects to the industry, which fill out the picture, which changed the profitability and the execution capability that you have. Is that an accurate assessment?

Yes, Bob, I think you're right. Well, there's two elements in that. The supply chain is vital for us, right? EPCI contracting means we need to work with a lot of suppliers to make sure the right pieces are engineered correctly and turn up at the right time. What I would say the supply chain has been through quite a torturous period through the downturn. So what we now have the people who survived through that and have thrived through that. And equally, we talk about our relationship with Aker BP. We have similar mirrored relationships further down the supply chain, by the way, where we share with them what we're doing, what our plans are, what our clients are trying to do with their capacity, what would we need to do to make sure we secure their capacity. So again, we do a lot of work with the supply chain to answer your question, a lot of work with the supply chain. And for example, Monica had a conversation with Knut that we were concerned about two elements of our supply chain before they got their approvals for these jobs. But we went ahead and secured factory capacity from 2 suppliers before they sanctioned the project underwritten by Aker BP because again, we had an open dialogue with them to say, be careful you don't get squeezed here. So the wider conversation is a great one, right, because you can bring lots of things into the discussion, right? If you're doing 3 bids and a buy until the 3 bids and a buy process is finished, we can't do much on that. The second one, I think, that has changed, you touched on people like Wood Group and Wally. Olivier said it, we have 200 people in the field development group. But also, we have doubled the size of Xodus since we bought it from Chiyoda in 2018. So we bought Xodus at 215 people. We're now 450 in Xodus. So Xodus works as an external unbiased front-end pre-FEED contractor for clients. We leave it alone because we're also interested in that because there has to be a world where clients get their information from. But as Olivier touched on, these guys are doing carbon pricing exercises for different cities in the U.K. and in ports in Holland and in Germany. So again, we get fantastic insights into hydrogen market, CO2 market as well as they make a bit of money for us as an engineering house. But what has happened is your traditional engineers have lost their world, right? They used to be. Knut talked about it. The problem with that is it takes time. So Knut has an idea about developing a field. He then gets Wood or something in to do the work for them at 6 months. They then have to assess that work, they then go out to bid. That takes 9 months. I remember Kelly at the very start in that graph you saw from Knut. Monica and I were in the room. The day we signed over Det norske was called at the time, but that was the day they bought Marathon. That was the very start of that curve. Yes, BP merger that's why came together. And I remember that time Kelly said to me, he said, "Look, John, I know that I'll go out to bid. And at the end of the 9 months I will decide we are Subsea 7 or TechnipFMC, so why don't I just cut the 9 months out and get you guys in earlier, and you can work with me in a collaborative way." So he did a beauty contest, way, way back. They did a beauty contest, just like Equinor did with us just recently. They did their beauty contest who they wanted. So time is the other thing by working in an integrated way. So as Knut and Monica talked about, we get visibility to what they're drilling today, what their future plans. Each of those 6 hubs he talked about, we know exactly what the future plans for those hubs are. And we contribute to a lot of projects that don't go ahead, by the way, in this model as well, right? But at least we understand why they went ahead, why they don't want to go ahead, what the criteria, what modifies. So to answer your question, Bob, I think our value has certainly increased from being a bunch of guys with a bunch of red ships for certain. When I meet all the senior oil and gas clients and renewables clients, I think we're more relevant today than we've ever been in our lives, by the way, because a lot of our clients are also trying to work out this energy transition. They see Subsea 7 went into wind seriously and have given the capacity there as well. So they're also trying to work out how they get into this as well. Our biggest wind project is Seagreen for SSE, but the partner in there is Total. By the way, the other guy on that. The nonoperator on SSE is Total. So for us, it's interesting that our clients want that capability to talk with their teams about what they're trying to achieve. So again, if you just join the dots together longer term, 3 big guys in this sector, each of them with different capabilities, each of them with a group of clients they tend to work with, I think it's going to be exceptionally good for us as a business going ahead.

Erik Aspen Fossa from Carnegie. You talked about higher margins. I'm just wondering like how much can you keep on pushing it upwards before it starts to hurt too much for own companies? Are we like close to that limit? Or do you still think just there's some distance before that becomes an issue?

Well, if you go back to history and the question, could we repeat the margins of '14 and '15? That gives you another number, you can work back from there.

If you go before that, like 2010 to '13.

I think that, yes, there's ability for us to push the margins up. It's a supply and demand market out there. There's no new supply coming into the business. The needs are there. But our clients are highly sophisticated buyers. Knut said it, you've got to remain competitive, right? You've got to remain competitive. So ultimately, for us, at the moment, what is interesting, people like Petrobras, the machine keeps working. You saw on that list. Now there's new fields in Brazil that weren't on that list at our last quarterly call. So I think Olivier at the moment, there's 5 bids -- 5 big SURF bids due to come out of Brazil.

[indiscernible]

Yes. So got out from Shell on the table. Buzios 9 -- Buzios 10, Buzios 11 and 2 others from Petrobras. So the machine keeps generating. Saudi Aramco keeps bringing different packages out to the market. Clients like Aker BP and Equinor give us their portfolios of what they're trying to do. Olivier talked about the BP relationship. BP want to work with this region. Certain regions will be integration alliance. All these give us opportunity, but it's a supply and demand business. But what you can see from all our curves is that we're pretty sure that we're in a strong place in terms of where we go. Every negotiation, every bid, there's a price discovery exercise for us. And that's what Olivier and the team do. We're trying to understand where we go, but also we're at this long term. We don't want to break this, right, in the sense of if we can keep this running and building it up, I think it will be a very, very good place. The real opportunity set is the world thinks that some of those other technologies that we talked about earlier in our world is really going to put the energy into the world in 2030, 2040, 2050. We know today, to be very honest, the world is finding that a very difficult exercise to achieve. It's politically difficult. It's commercially very difficult to do. And ultimately, consumers find it very hard to pay more. So quite where the oil and gas business will be and how that fits together is the opportunity set that we have. And we will always try to price our projects where we think we want to go. So for me, that's exactly what we do. Every price is thought about, every margin is reviewed. So we have a very clear way of looking at technical risk, contract commercial risk, and then lastly -- and supply chain risk, and lastly then, what's the opportunity set on margin. That's how each gate -- 3 gates on these big projects that Olivier and the team go through. And for us, that's the opportunity and that's why we price some higher and some lower.

And just one quickly before I leave it to the next one. On the Renewables side, since that's been a drag and you didn't have that the last cycle. What's the potential there? Or what is there like if we go beyond 20%, what do you think -- what kind of does that imply for the Renewables business in terms of what you think the margin can be there?

Yes. I think the important thing with our Renewables business compared to oil and gas, oil and gas is capitalism at its best and capitalism at its worst, if you know what I mean, right? If the price of oil is high, everybody is green, if price of oil is low, the industry struggles. I still think today the renewables has a number of political linkages in it in every country that we work in and trying to get these balances right of what the contract for difference prices, what the size of the pots are, what the reserve prices are. There's a lot of complexity in getting those, right? But ultimately, today, you have an energy source where your input fuel is 0 once you build it. And it's -- we think that there's a long way to go in terms of that business in terms of what it can do. The issue I always see in each countries will the politics come together. Different leadership in the U.K., different leadership in the U.S., what does that mean for the politics of wind. So to me, it's not a technical issue. It's not a contractual issue. I'd speak to enough clients who would like to do these things. The question is, can the stars align in what is a more complex set of interactions than what's the price of oil today. Does it meet my criteria? Shall I build for or shall I not for people like Aker BP?

Victoria McCulloch from RBC. Could you talk a bit about the drivers that you've seen in Q1? Have resulted in you changing the size of some of the opportunities in your tender pipeline? And maybe somewhat along the similar lines. In Slide 12, you show a decline in deepwater oil and gas or it's just an industry chart I appreciate, a decline in deepwater oil and gas spending. As you seek to grow your work in 2025 and meet those margins, how is that impacting you as a business?

Do you want to take that one, Mark?

Yes, indeed. So the deepwater oil and gas as Olivier and Monica and Knut have demonstrated despite a tail off in the spend, it's the ability for Subsea 7 to bring solutions to its -- with its partners that will ensure that we maintain an appropriate market share, despite the temporary slump in spending. And I think we were treated to a showcase from Knut and Monica in terms of the benefits that have been tangibly derived from that particular alliance. So I don't have any particular concerns that this is a potent to any structural decline at the end of the decade for deepwater oil and gas. As indicated, it sits very favorably on the cost curve. It's well positioned on the carbon intensity curve. And that is increasingly important for the decisions that our clients make whilst acknowledging that the dominant decision criteria remains the economics associated with the project.

And just to add to what Mark says. If you'd have asked me 10 years ago, Guyana, Senegal, revived Trinidad. Trinidad is going to be huge again because they've got all the facilities, but they need gas. They need huge volumes of gas in there. Mozambique, Namibia, all these places, there's a lot more work to come out of each of these. So again, it's -- we can take a slice on a particular year and say, does that look okay? Look through -- look to see what's out there. So this industry is blowing and going in terms of new opportunities and new areas. Places like Mozambique, complex. Yes, it's going to take time. But will those results sit there and never come out? I don't think so. And so again, for us, it's about the fact that opportunities are coming at a pace in these different areas. Whilst Gulf of Mexico, we've always done roughly 50% of Gulf of Mexico. And Gulf of Mexico continues to deliver okay for us. Brazil, as Olivier discussed, is growing -- still growing at a pace. And again, political changes in country, political leadership changes, the machine keeps moving. The machine keeps moving on. Africa, as Olivier discussed, we've been pleasantly surprised by Africa waking up country by country with opportunities. We have a certain size and a certain scale, Middle East exposure, which we're comfortable to keep with. And again, there's opportunities there for us. I guess the only 2 markets that have challenges are the U.K. and Australia, mainly Australia is to do with the environmental permitting. We saw as we took our big pipelays down there, how tight it was to get the permits in time. That's a client problem rather than our problem. But equally, if the clients can't get their permits, they're going to be cautious about sinking in. And the U.K. is just trying to get its head around what it wants to do. So again, for us, we see all our key markets there being strong. Quite how the curve fit year-on-year, but we're pretty clear with our backlog. We're okay for '25.

And tied to your first question, the quantification of the prospects in the pipeline, you asked the driver for that changing between what we shared in Q1 and what we currently have today, that's merely a function of time elapsing. I know it's having a better understanding of the project scope and the associated cost of delivering. So again, there's nothing unnatural in terms of our evolution.

Kevin Roger from Kepler Cheuvreux. Two questions, if I may. You just mentioned Brazil. Can you comment a bit the situation in the country because you just mentioned 4 bid tenders on the table, but you have recently been very successful with one very large project in the PLSV. Competitive landscape, 1 guy cannot bid for the next 2 years and the other 1 does not have a lot of vessel. So can you comment a bit the situation in Brazil, please? And the second one, there has been a lot of discussion around the partnership and the new way of working in the industry and not to say that, for example, they are considering bringing new guys into the partnership with the Total, et cetera. On your side, where do you see the big potential synergy of having someone else into the alliances, please?

Yes. Great question on Brazil. Brazil is a market where the Petrobras machine keeps moving. Irrespective of what's going on above it, the machine keeps moving onwards. They have committed FPSOs for Buzios 9, Buzios 10, Buzios 11. They're trying to commit FPSOs now for these other projects that we're bidding. So we just see a market there that continues to be strong. We had some very, very good discussions with Petrobras over the years. We stopped bidding for Petrobras after [indiscernible] for many years because the risk profiles weren't right, and they've adjusted the risk profiles in those contracts. They adjusted some of the payment terms because at one point, they had some very difficult payment terms. We told them, look, we can take a certain amount of this, but we can't do much. So to be fair, Petrobras is a listener as a client, they do listen. So for us at the moment, we will take a share of the work on our global portfolio in Brazil. We've been successful on 9, as we announced a couple of weeks ago, Buzios 9, which fits in nicely with Buzios 8 going into Buzios 9. Again, we'll continue to talk to Petrobras, continue to work with them, continue to bid for them. But the key thing is they need to make sure that the payment terms are okay, the contract terms are okay, which they listen to. So for us, it's about -- there's an opportunity there, but we will not dedicate absolutely every piece of tonnage we got to Brazil, it's almost not the way we've ever been. We run through a very strong regional business. Monica has talked to you about the strength of building up a regional business. If you go to the U.S. and Craig Broussard runs the Gulf of Mexico has a very strong regional business there. So for us, it's about getting a balance between where we're at, but we're certainly not averse to putting bids in for this type of work. And just quite how it sequences the question we're all trying to work out, how exactly does all the sequence for everybody. So for us, we remain positive and optimistic. We took -- all of us took the Board down to Brazil, the Subsea 7 Board. We had our May Board meeting this year in Brazil, and we spent time with our Brazilian team, just looking at the opportunity set. As Olivier said, 4 PLSVs and 4 major EPIC contracts from Petrobras along with Bacalhau. That's quite an ask for us. So again, for us, we're very comfortable. We've got a very good setup down, a very strong setup down there. And so again, we will take the opportunities as they come. So for us, it's about keeping balance in Brazil.

We've got 5 minutes left, so we'll try and get to everyone questions in the room as well. And John can answer them very quickly.

I will do. I got this thing telling me.

Haakon Amundsen from ABG. Just a follow-up on the potential fleet reinvestments that we discussed. Trying to understand your -- I mean, the first investment decision you potentially make. Will that be driven by the fact that you need maybe some new capacities in Namibia? Will it be you need generally more capacity in a constrained market? Or is it simply just extending the life of the fleet gradually because you want to be in business in 2050? What's going to be the driver there?

Well, I think the drivers are reasonably straightforward for us. We charter tonnage for 3 years, for example. We do a charter commitment to bring tonnage in for 3 years. Some distressed assets in this industry today. Not distressed because the assets are in a bad condition, just the owners aren't in a good place. You can buy that asset for an equivalent of a 4-year charter, right? So we'll just do straight economics on some stuff, right, because we'll certainly use that asset for 15 years beyond that, right? So again, we're also equally aware of what we're paying out in the market. So chartering is fine, but it's not cheap today, to be very clear. For us, I think longer term, it's just about pipelay, rigid pipelay, as Phil discussed, right? That's the main enabler that our industry has. Ultimately, when the chips are down, everybody goes to rigid steel, if you know, I mean. If you look at the pre-salt in Brazil with all the problems of the failed Technip flexibles, they went back to rigid, right? So rigid steel is the key to our industry. We have 5 rigid steel assets. So longer term, we will keep an eye on rigid steel. That's the enabler. If you see the logic of what we talk about today, everything starts with a rigid pipe layer and then the entire fleet builds out from there. So for us, it's economics, just straight economics, what you're paying for charter versus where you're at. I've discussed this a number of times in quarterly call. We keep Phil and the team keep a very careful eye on every asset in the world. You discussed people like Allseas, people like Heerema, Pemex in Mexico. We've got a bunch of tonnage. There's a lot of equipment around the world. So again, we just got to be careful here that we use what's out there as well. That's the other thing to do as an industry. So for us, our logic is case by case being very, very careful about where we're at. But I think the message from Mark is you can't have assets with a 25-, 30-year life with an average age of 12 years and still be using them in 2050 without spending something on CapEx, just that's the long story short for us. But again, it's also about the fact there's a lot of good tonnage out there, and we've just got to find it in different places, which is what we've done. We found assets from different suppliers. If you look at who we're chartering tonnage from, we're chartering tonnage from just about everybody at the moment. So again, what's also interesting is that the challenge, the big ship owners here in Norway been through is they haven't built tonnage either by the way. So as an industry, it's a very interesting place to be.

Just one simple question. It's Christopher from Sparebank. You've clearly excited about the Subsea market outlook. But to turn things around, what's on top of your worry list?

Top of my worry list, great question. I'll just worry about execution -- supply chain execution. That's the key thing. These projects work as they go one after each other. So all the right bids need to turn up at the right time for -- you see the Navica left this morning for Fenris, she comes back and there's another project for it to do. So again, it's just keeping all this together, I think, is key. And secondly, for me, it's about how do we work with that supply chain. We've got to be doing the relationship that Knut has with us with our supply chain further down. We worked on a number of these suppliers for decades, and we'll continue to work with them for decades. So again, for me, one of the things that really troubled me is I took a phone call on the 23rd of December from Nexen's to tell us they would announce on the 2nd of January, they were exiting the umbilical market, which they did 2 years ago. So client -- or supply that we bought 40% of our umbilicals exited the business through a strategic decision to go green. That's quite important for us, if you know what I mean. So again, for us, it's that type of things that are in the back of my mind, I'm thinking to myself, we just need to think long term with our suppliers and just work with them and support them as well as they make their changes because each of the suppliers need to find their place in the energy transition. So for me, it's about execution and supply chain.

We will take the last one.

Okay, because I've got 56 seconds before lunch.

Richard Dawson from Berenberg. Maybe just a quick question. I mean we talk a lot about vessels as sort of capacity looking forwards. But the other assets on the side of this basis and your bundled facilities. Do you have enough capacity currently for those? Or do you look -- are there locations globally where you think you might need to put more in? And maybe sort of give us a sense of just how much one of these places would cost?

Mark, you can comment on that.

Yes. No, indeed, as new hydrocarbon jurisdictions open themselves up, whether it's Trinidad and Tobago Suriname, Namibia the equatorial margin in Brazil, and we want to make sure that we can deliver these projects as economically as possible. A spill base, well, it depends, but a range of something in the region of $50 million to $80 million probably would suffice the entire cost of the land, building the facility and putting the equipment in it. But you need to balance that against the improved productivity and utilization that you get from the vessels and the ability to service projects that will be very attractive opportunities for us in these new jurisdictions.

And with that, I think we're 20 seconds over. So we'll end the questions there. For the people in the room, we are going to come back for a short briefing ahead of the tour. But John, do you want to just wrap up the webcast quickly?

Well, thank you very much, everybody, who's joined us this morning. Thank you for listening to Subsea 7 and our story. We've got a very interesting story, and I look forward to talking to you again soon. So thank you.