TechnipFMC plc (FTI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. We've got Doug Pferdehirt, CEO at TechnipFMC with us. Doug, thank you for taking the time. Doug, the first question I wanted to ask is, FTI has been the poster child of services for all of last year. Stock has done really well. The multiple has rerated. There were some order concerns halfway through the year. Those order concerns have largely gone away. As you think about '26, as you think about the messaging for investors, what is the strategic focus point for you? And what would you want to highlight?

Sure. So first of all, thank you for having us at the conference. Thank you to Goldman Sachs, and thanks to everybody here in the audience as well as thanks for those that are joining via the webcast. Look, very proud of the accomplishments in '25. I mean we're not publicly reporting yet, but clearly, '25 shaped up to be a very good year. Proud of the 22,000 women and men who delivered those results and continue to deliver those results. We've already gone out with guidance for 2026. We did that back in October, demonstrating in our subsea business, further growth in revenue as well as EBITDA margin and therefore, a compounding growth to EBITDA dollars. So a high level of confidence again in 2026, something that we remain very proud of and very confident in. Look, this is a company that had to redesign itself, had to reengineer itself in order to make the offshore segment interesting again to our clients. And it's just about grabbing part of that capital flows and making sure that, that those capital flows are going into the offshore market. The way that we do that is by showing the ability to have the relentless pursuit of reduction of cycle time, which shows up for our customers in terms of acceleration of time to first hydrocarbon, improving their project returns, whilst at the same time for us, allowing us to share a greater portion of the economic value that we create, and that shows up in our margins, and it also shows up through the internal efficiencies that we've gained as a company. To do this, this was a 10-year process. We actually started back in 2015, where we entered into a joint venture, which we call Forsys Subsea to really understand the value of integration in the offshore market. We consummated a relationship with Technip in 17th of January 2017, so many years ago in terms of creating this new entity, which would have the capacity, the capability to be able to deliver these integrated projects offshore, removing waste, removing interfaces, improving certainty of outcome. At the same time, we redesigned the subsea architecture called Subsea 2.0, which we went and we designed a configurable architecture where our customers still get the choice of what they want at the end, but it's based on a set of pre-engineered components at the subcomponent level. So what we did by doing that was we went from a bespoke environment or an engineer-to-order environment where we were doing everything for the first time. That would include 9 to 12 months of engineering before we could even cut the first shaving off the block to now going straight into assembly and test, much like the automotive industry does. So what we're seeing now is our customers have acknowledged and recognized both the Subsea 2.0 architecture as well as the integrated projects or iEPCI and the value that they're creating by reducing cycle time and increasing certainty. And it's that increasing certainty and improved economics that are giving them the confidence now to shift ever-increasing amounts of their capital flows to the offshore market, where we are the primary beneficiary of that. That trend is in its early stages. We expect that to continue. We have a long runway ahead of us in terms of cycle time reduction, and our customers are, therefore, going to benefit from continuous improvements in their subsea project economics, and we benefit as well internally. So we've created a real win-win dynamic, which is unique in the industry to be able to do that. So I think the setup is very strong for our company. There's a lot of runway ahead for us to achieve even better results with a proven model. So you have the certainty of a model that's been proven that's been accepted by the shareholder base. And now you have a company that has many opportunities to enhance and improve that going forward. The one number that I'll say now, and I'll probably repeat at the end, if I remember, is 80%. 80% of our business is direct awarded to our company, never goes out to a competitive tender. To me, that really speaks to the differentiation and the success that we've created.

Doug, this is something that we were talking about last night as well. I want to ask you on FTI, the stock has done so well, everyone, the most important or most topical inbound for us is stock has done really well. Offshore activity might be picking up in the second half of the year and into '27 really. So the rate of change in some of the higher beta offshore service names might be higher. But we were talking about this yesterday. Do you want to talk about that dynamic? What would be your pushback to them as you think about the relative positioning?

Sure. And I'll probably get in trouble for this. So let's just have a little bit of fun. And I'm not here to sell anybody else's equity, and I'm obviously biased. I believe in going with the winners. And I don't know how more directly to say it than that. And I think you're not betting on a portion of the cycle. This isn't a cyclical bet. You've got a company that has redefined, reshaped itself. The industry around us has reshaped itself. It is a very unique market that has a growth element that we just discussed, that has a very different market structure than it has in the past with a company that is getting 80% of its business direct awarded by the customers because the customers see the value that we're providing to them. There's a reason for that, and it's substantial. So to me, I don't want to get into picking one part of the cycle or not. By the way, happy everybody is excited about offshore again. So let's just start with that, right? There was a point not so long ago,where there was a lot of [ skepticism ] about the offshore market. So the fact it's -- if you want to play the offshore, go for it, I think you're doing the right thing. Obviously, I'm biased. And I think if you want to have the most successful -- be the most successful in that investment, I would go with the proven entity that's got the winning track record. And it's not -- I mean, there's a lot more to go. I think if you believe that we have achieved the level of full optimization or we can't improve upon where we are today, then I would understand an investors' sentiment and maybe looking at other opportunities. I think that would be a mistake because there's a lot more to go at FTI.

Doug, you've previously spoken about offshore economics improving quite a bit over the years. You've played an important role there in terms of the efficiencies that customers are getting. Are you a little surprised looking at how resilient U.S. production has been? Is there anything that you would want to highlight there, maybe your time line lag because that's what we're hearing from some investors or some companies as well? And how do you think that changes? Or does that impact the way you think about the economics, relative economics at all?

Yes. No, look, I'll let others talk about the North American market. We work in the North American market, but it's only 10% of our business. So I want to be fair, let others talk about the North American market, the resiliency element of it, whatever angle you want to take. We're just looking at it in terms of capital flows. And clearly, the reservoirs offshore are much more prolific. They have a much lower decline rate and therefore, the project returns are substantial. The reason why the offshore kind of took a step back was the emergence of the U.S. unconventional and some of the early economics of the U.S. unconventionals, but more importantly, because of the deterioration of the offshore project economics. That was our fault as an industry, and we were part of that, and we have to hold ourselves accountable. That's why we reinvented the company. Everything I talked about in the opening, that's why we did that because we observed that through our own performance and the performance of those around us, we were leading to a deterioration of offshore project returns. And clearly, the customers were going to look for other flows to other capital flows for those due to that deterioration of economics. It just so happened that the U.S. unconventional appeared at that point in time, and that became the transition. So look, we look at it very simple. We have to beat the economics of U.S. unconventionals, which we do today. Clearly, we do today. Our customers have -- it's demonstrated by our customers' order flows. And we're going to continue to work really, really hard to further improve those through greater efficiencies and shorter cycle time as we move forward.

You have a strong position in Guyana in Brazil. Do you want to talk about the region-specific outlook that you're seeing? Anything that you would like to highlight from a frontier region that could be new people are not talking about and just regional color in general?

Yes. There's quite a few. Maybe we'll just kind of go around the world a little bit. So look, let's start in Brazil. Many of you have heard about the equatorial margin. This is extremely exciting. It is a whole incremental leg of growth. I would call it -- it's a new frontier, not new -- it's not a new country, but a new geography within an existing -- obviously, within an existing offshore producing country. And Petrobras is extremely excited. We're extremely excited. All indications from the seismic are it could be very meaningful. Obviously, the exploration needs to be done. That's underway now, and we'll learn a lot more from that. But that's a region that we focus on and is a very important region to our business. You mentioned Guyana. I still think of Guyana is emerging. I think it's phenomenal what ExxonMobil has done because it's also now almost thought of as a mature basin. And if you look at the time line in which ExxonMobil has achieved what they've achieved in Guyana, it is just hugely successful and unprecedented. We are humbled and honored to be part of that. We do all of ExxonMobil's work in Guyana, and it's been very important to us, and we continue to demonstrate exemplary performance there and be rewarded by ExxonMobil in terms of continued direct awards in Guyana. Suriname. Suriname Block 58, now called GranMorgu with TotalEnergies. We're very proud to have been to receive that award, IPCI 2.0, first project in Suriname. We are anticipating additional projects in Suriname. There's other operators who are looking to potentially FID projects as well as Total looking at their portfolio now in Suriname. So that continues to be very interesting as well. If we shift across the ocean, West Africa will continue to surprise to the upside. It's been a bit quiet. I will acknowledge that, but I would be aware of the fact that there could be some substantial moves in West Africa in terms of incremental activity. The Eastern Med as an emerging entity continues to be quite strong, and that goes anywhere from Israel, Cyprus, Egypt, all continues to be quite meaningful in terms of offshore, and it's gas on top of that. If we go to the East Africa, Mozambique, I think at this conference last year, I said there's been one project. Don't be surprised if there's multiple projects. Well, there's now multiple projects going on, a second project for ENI and an initial project for Total, which we're participating in both and very honored to do so. And I think there will be further activity in Mozambique, also a gas region. The Norwegian sector of the North Sea remains very active, again, supplying gas to Continental Europe. And then when we look at Asia Pacific, it's really about Indonesia. Indonesia, again, gas, very interesting, multiple projects being tendered at this time, projects underway, but also multiple projects being tendered by multiple operators. And I think Indonesia will remain very active and very strong. And then back here in the Gulf, we have the Paleogene, which continues to be, I'll be candid, it's moved at a faster pace and a faster cadence than I anticipated. We've done multiple projects or are currently doing projects for multiple customers. We're producing 20,000 into Paleogene today. And just last night, we were awarded from BP, a direct award for the Tiber project, which follows the Kaskida project, which we had received earlier. So yes, several areas to be very excited about. There's a couple of other countries I haven't mentioned that are maybe even beyond that. Well, I'm sorry, I skipped over Namibia for China. Namibia, we're actively tendering in Namibia today. There will be all reasons to believe that there'll be multiple projects in Namibia. So yes, and then even beyond that, there are some other countries that will potentially come into the offshore mix. So where at one point, I think there was a perception that it was like limited in terms of the opportunity set, I would call the offshore opportunity rich as we sit here today.

Doug, on Brazil, in particular, we've been hearing some inbounds and concerns around maybe the longer-dated activity levels are under question, under review because of budget constraints. There were some news on platform support vessels being retendered. Is there anything that is that could potentially spill over? Are you hearing anything that would impact the way we think about Brazil today?

Brazil in specific?

Specifically, yes.

No, nothing in particular.

Nothing to highlight there?

No.

Cycle time reduction has been a very important focus area for you. You've talked about how that works with Subsea 2.0 as well. How far are we there? Like how much more do you think we can do in terms of the industry level? And how do you think about your role there?

Yes. Look, thank you for asking because I think it's an important takeaway from this discussion. Our order our orders for Subsea 2.0 -- Subsea 2.0 represent about over 50% of our orders today. It consumes about 1/3 to 40% of our manufacturing capacity today. So we're benefiting as it flows into orders and through execution. But those orders continue to grow beyond the 50%. But when we talk about that, the original Subsea 2.0 was all about the seabed architecture. We often talk about subsea trees, but there's a whole city on the seabed supporting those subsea trees. But Subsea 2.0 was really about the seabed. After the merger and the creation of TechnipFMC, we now have the opportunity to look at the water column, which is umbilical risers and flow lines as well as the vessels and the installation process, which neither of those have been addressed by Subsea 2.0 as of this date. So that is extremely exciting for us. So if you put that into rough terminology, I'm a hockey fan. So let's go with a hockey analogy. We're just finishing the first period. We're in the first period in our mission. So in other words, we're about 1/3 of the way there. There's about 2/3 of opportunity-rich data set within our own scope for us to now industrialize using the Subsea 2.0 model. It's why I remain convinced that we can continue to reduce cycle time in the offshore, which our customers benefit from improved project economics.

Doug, from that perspective alone, as you think about the other components, the order number that you've been talking about at $10 billion for '26, for instance, in the last few years, is there a way to think that, that that $10 billion number as a result of what you just said is very sustainable? Or is there a little bit more upside to that? How should we think about the order impact as you go beyond just the tree?

Yes, we just gave 2026 guidance. So I don't want to get too far ahead of myself. But look, we do believe it's sustainable, and I will say it, we do believe there's upside. So let's see how it plays out. I think the fact that it's been pretty steady around $10 billion, don't read -- it's a point in time kind of thing. I wouldn't read too much into that. We gave an objective -- or we gave guidance of $30 billion over 3 years. It happened to come pretty close to $10 billion, $10 billion, $10 billion, but it could have been $8 billion, $12 billion and $10 billion or any combination thereof. It just happened to be relatively stable. It's not a sign of the total market size. It's not a sign of any capacity constraints on our side or the supply chain side. It's just the way that it's actually materialized. But from everything we can see today, the conversations we're having, the visibility that we have because we're not just designing the equipment and installing the equipment, we're back at the architect or the FEED or pre-FEED phase. So we're doing those projects in conjunction with our customers sometimes 2 years before they FID the project. So we have a lot of visibility out beyond the end of the decade, out beyond the end of the decade today, which is why we can say -- which is why I can say with a degree -- with a high degree of confidence that we believe that, that's a sustainable rate or greater.

Okay. On the margin side, Doug, I think throughout the year, we've spoken about various components that could add to the margins, whether it is increasing revenue contribution from Subsea 2.0 or there's internal optimization. Do you want to talk about what those components are, how we should think about margin expansion in general?

Sure. So look, internally, we believe as a company that we have not achieved optimal performance. And I know that probably is surprising to hear somebody sit up here and say that, but it's true. And I think we will never achieve optimal performance. And if we take that mindset to work every single day, 22,000 women and men, we will find opportunities. It may be hours, it may be days or it may be weeks to do a certain task more efficiently. But if everybody is pulling on the same end of that rope and saving hours, weeks or hours, days, weeks, it's a meaningful impact to the company. So we benefit from this whole lean methodology that we've applied across the entire company. We don't look at it just as a manufacturing -- from the manufacturing processes, which is how most companies do. We've actually used it to change the culture of the company, and this is the success that Toyota has had with it in the past. We've been working really, really hard to take this and make this part of our culture, and we've achieved that. So we now have this element of looking for savings, meaning efficiency gains, which results in savings, which results in margin expansion across the organization every single day with every single person performing the task that they're doing. It also allows us to grow the company without having to do consolidation, without having to do large-scale capital investments. It does wonderful things to your returns in terms of -- it shows up, obviously, in the ROIC of the company to be able to grow while maintaining a very stable discipline around capital expenditures and not requiring M&A for growth. This is what we've created. We're seeing the benefits of that today, but there's a lot more to come.

Doug, would you add anything incremental on the Subsea 2.0 adoption rate? I know that it's been increasing, and you've talked about the mix in orders versus mix in revenue. But are you seeing further adoption to the point where you could get to 100? Where are we today?

It's a fair question. And I have this debate internally within the organization. So let's start with the first part, and then we'll talk about the 100%. To me, one of the most reassuring or complementary things about Subsea 2.0 is we've never had a customer that went with Subsea 2.0 that ever went back. That says a lot. That says a lot. So once they adopt, it's very sticky. It's very sticky, which means direct awards to our company because we're the only ones with the Subsea 2.0. So that's been very rewarding, and it demonstrates that they see real value in the Subsea 2.0 architecture. Where is there upside? Look, there's upside as we move these projects into the Life of Field services. There is a whole benefit of Subsea 2.0 to Life of Field. And when I say a benefit, I always think of my customer and ourselves. There's a benefit to the customer because the customer gets the leverage the same installation tolling assets and work over assets that they have to buy for their subsea equipment. If they have Subsea 2.0 in multiple geographies, they can share the installation tolling. It's a benefit to them. It's a benefit to us in terms of our ability to be able to be more efficient and generate a higher return from those assets. So as an example, we'll see that benefit in our Life of Field services. We have continued to see customers adopt Subsea 2.0 to where it's a very significant percentage now, approaching 100%. I don't know that we'll achieve 100%. And I don't know that, that's a bad thing because there will always be some nuances and some reasons to maintain some 1.0 capability or bespoke capability. But let me be clear, we will not allow that to disrupt the flow and the efficiency of Subsea 2.0. So if we retain 1.0 capability, it will be located to a specific line in a specific geographical plant. So we have Subsea 2.0 plants that we won't introduce 1.0 into because if we do that, it disrupts the flow and you lose all those efficiency gains or it disrupts temporarily those efficiency gains we talked about. So if we maintain 1.0, and I think we will for some period of time, it will be isolated and contained, and it won't disrupt or dilute the progress we've made in Subsea 2.0.

That's very helpful, Doug. As we think about the $10 billion orders for '26, is there anything you can talk about in terms of the mix? I want to get to the Life of Field services as well because the service aspect also has unique growth drivers there, but maybe we start with the mix, if there's anything you can provide.

Sure. So look, at a high level, I think we'll continue to be pleasantly surprised, and I'm speaking to the community at the level of greenfield awards in 2026, much like we had in 2025, representing -- continuing to represent a significant portion of the overall awards. I think you'll start to see some incremental brownfield awards, and you'll start to see those in geographies that will -- that are relatively new in terms of the emerging market status that are actually now starting to look at brownfield opportunities as well as continue to look at greenfield opportunities. So you get that compounding effect. I think you'll start to see that in 2026, which will surprise some people. And look, Life of Field services continues to be extremely important. It's an OEM model in our industry. We continue to grow our installed base because of the success that we've had, but also our installed base continues to age every day. And the more mature of the assets, the more inspection maintenance and repair that is required. And that is a very important element of our overall margin mix, meaning the subsea services business or the Life of Field services business. So continued growth there, and we would expect, as we are seeing on the rest of the subsea business, continued expansion in our profitability due to those internal efficiency gains.

Doug, on the services side alone, late, I know we were talking about this yesterday as well is that there's a lot of organic growth because of the installed base. Can you give us a sense of what that organic growth looks like over the next several years as you think about beyond the decade because you still have orders coming through? And is there a reason opportunity to do anything inorganic on that side of the services element alone?

So yes and yes. In terms of the first, what we have said is we expect services to grow in line with the overall segment growth, which, again, we've already put 2026 guidance out there, so that's public. There's reason to believe that there's potential upside to that, and that would be important to us. So that -- I think that's very -- we have a high degree of confidence there. That's kind of on the organic side. On the inorganic side, we will look at things that could either improve our cycle time efficiency or potentially where we could create some incremental value for our customers in looking at the inspection, monitoring, repair of their subsea assets. And an example of that would be historically -- and when I say historically, meaning including today, if you wanted to repair something subsea, there was only one way to do it. And that was to go out with a vessel or a rig, retrieve that asset, bring it back to the water -- to the surface of the water, put it on a supply vessel, send it back to the shore, bring it to the OEMs' site, wherever that may be in the world. It would be refurbished, repaired, whatever. It would be back on a vessel, it would go back. It would be lowered back by a rig or a vessel and reinstalled. That would lead to plus or minus 9 months of downtime. So 9 months of lost production, that well is shut in. At that point, you put a BOP on the well and it's shut in with 0 production. We are now demonstrating that things that used to be done with that model can now be done in situ on the seabed with advanced robotics, allowing us to repair things in days versus plus or minus 9 months. So days of lost production versus plus or minus 9 months of lost production, huge value proposition for our customers. So that's where we talk about innovation and doing things differently. And this is very deepwater. Remember, when we say subsea, we're talking 1 to 2 miles deep in the ocean. So this is all with advanced robotics, advanced automation and control. And this is an area that is an expertise of our company, and we're looking now to use that in our subsea services business.

Doug, can you talk about the opportunities, both on the electric subsea infrastructure that we've spoken about before? I'm sure there's companies that are still adopting, still trying to figure out what that opportunity set could look like. So would love to hear there. And then you've previously spoken about brownfield opportunities, the tiebacks that could basically increase the size of the footprint, the area, hugely cost efficient and breakevens for offshore gets impacted by that. Can you talk about what you're seeing on those 2 fronts?

Sure. So the -- most of the equipment today on the sea floor is controlled by hydraulics. So somewhere on top of the water on some vessel or platform, there's a hydraulic pump. You kick it on, you pump hydraulic fluid down to activate something that will turn something, i.e., an actuator to close a valve. It works. It's always worked. It's fairly reliable. The challenge you have is friction pressure because you're pumping that fluid through a very small, very high pressure, mostly [ in canal ] tube and I just said 1 to 2 miles down, that's a lot of friction pressure. So you're limited by how far of a distance you can go before the hydraulic pressure is offset or consumed by the friction pressure. So you're constantly fighting that battle. What we know about electricity is it has very limited friction loss, and it can go a very long distance. So it just makes sense to use electric actuation versus hydraulic actuation where it's applicable. So the industry has looked at this for a while. Where we're seeing the fastest adoption rate today is actually in greenhouse gas or CO2 or CCS applications. Where we were -- we received from BP, it's called the Northern Endurance partnership in the U.K., where they're taking CO2 that's captured onshore and taking it 145 kilometers offshore and injecting it for permanent storage and saline aquifers offshore. The challenge was you can't push hydraulics 145 kilometers. So either you were going to have to come up to all these floating production platforms that were just going to be hydraulic pumps or booster pumps or you thought differently. So we attacked it from an all-electric application. We have tremendous amount of experience using electric actuation. So we applied that on this project, and this has enabled that project to remain everything on the sea floor, and we're just using electric actuation. So it's a full -- first full field all subsea electric actuation, and that's for a CCS project in the North Sea. In terms of the brownfield, it's exciting because remember, I said you're limited by the distance you can go on the seabed by the distance you have to go through the water column. So again, move to electric actuation, you can move much further laterally, if you will, away from the landing point and go further and be able to tie back more assets to that host facility that already exists in a brownfield, the host facility exists. And you're just trying to tie back more wells to that to improve the level of production that's flowing through that asset and improve the return on that asset. All electric will enable that, which hydraulic has been limited in the past.

Doug, do you want to talk about your capital allocation priorities? How should we think about free cash flow, the use of CapEx, the use of cash? You're obviously building cash on the balance sheet, M&A outlook.

Sure. And I know we're going to run out of time. So thanks for giving me the opportunity. Look, we're really proud of the balance sheet that we have -- that has resulted from all of the actions that we've taken. We're investment grade by all 3 of the facilities, a pristine balance sheet. We're a net cash company, and we are in a position right now of material cash flow generation. We made a commitment and we distributed -- again, we got to get through the full year, but the commitment is 70% of that free cash flow will be distributed to our shareholders, principally in share buybacks as well as our dividend, and that's something we're very proud of, and we expect and we will continue to do. In terms of the overall free cash flow generation, it's been robust, continues to be. No big M&A. Our strategy isn't evolved around M&A is not a necessity. So we would only do M&A if it was something that significantly reduced cycle time, further improving project economics and growing the market, which most of that we will do internally just within our own R&D budget. So no big M&A necessarily required. And in terms of CapEx, we've been very disciplined of -- we said we'd spend between 3.5% and 4% -- 3.5% and 4.5%. We've been spending below the 3.5% and growing the company. The way you can do that is you have to do more with the same. It's this relentless pursuit of the reduction of cycle time. That also benefits your asset base. You can do more with the same amount of assets. I know it sounds simple, but this is not the way the industry has worked or much of the industry continues to work today, and it's something we continue to benefit from. So our commitment remains the same. We also reduced debt this year. So again, gross debt is now at a very low level. There's nothing due for multiple years. So you should expect next year another strong free cash flow generation and another strong shareholder distribution as well next year.

Great. Doug, thank you so much for taking the time. Very helpful information.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.