Lawrence Bruno
Analyst · Daniel Energy Partners
Thanks, Gwen. First, I'd like to thank our global team of employees for providing innovative solutions, integrity and superior service to our clients. The team's collective dedication to servicing our clients is the foundation of Core Lab's success. Looking at the macro, as Gwen mentioned, even after assessing current and near-term economic headwinds, the IEA, EIA and OPEC projections continue to point to growth in global crude oil demand in 2025 and beyond. The various estimates show growth in demand of between 0.7 million barrels per day and 1.3 million barrels per day for 2025 with similar additional demand growth projected for 2026. In addition to the forecasted growth in demand, new production will need to be brought online to offset the natural decline from existing producing fields. Combined, these trends will require continued investment in the development of onshore and offshore crude oil fields. U.S. tight oil production has been by far the largest component of non-OPEC oil production growth since 2010. Continued growth in global oil demand, combined with constrained incremental U.S. oil production growth supports the thesis that the balance of future supply growth must increasingly rely on discoveries and field developments outside the U.S. In summary, the current forecast suggests a multiyear cycle in which U.S. onshore production growth slows and future growth in global supply will be driven by capital investment in international conventional offshore fields and unconventional opportunities in the Middle East. These trends support increased demand for Core Lab services across the globe, particularly for Reservoir Description. The most recent EIA short-term energy outlook for U.S. oil production is 13.5 million barrels per day in 2025, and the agency currently projects production to remain essentially flat in 2026 with only nominal growth in U.S. production over this time frame. Of particular note, during the third quarter, the IEA pivoted from earlier projections on the need for investment in new oil and gas production, stating that in addition to continued investment in existing fields, more than 45 million barrels of oil production from new conventional oil fields must be added by 2050 just to maintain current production levels. Any growth in demand would add to that number. The IEA now states that significant annual investment in oil and gas resource development will be required for many years to come as the natural decline in existing producing fields is accelerating globally. The new IEA analysis published in September, the agency's global field-by-field data show that steeper natural declines now dominate supply risk. The IEA quantified this risk, stating that oil output would fall approximately 8% per year from natural decline. Nearly 90% of upstream CapEx since 2019 has gone just to offset declines, not to meet continuing demand growth. Additionally, the IEA sees 20-year average project lead times, and they conclude that delayed or inefficient development of new production will further compound the supply risk. Directionally, these IEA revisions and the need for increased investment in oil and gas projects align with Core Lab's long-standing view that the decline curve never sleeps and always wins. Along with new exploration, appraisal and development programs, disciplined data-driven optimization of existing reservoirs is the fastest, lowest risk path to supply reliability and operator returns, a scenario that Core Lab is uniquely positioned to deliver through its Reservoir Description and Production Enhancement Technologies. With Core Lab's expanding opportunities across international markets, such as with unconventional plays in the Middle East and emerging onshore and offshore deepwater conventional plays in a number of regions, including along the South Atlantic margin, the company continues to enhance its portfolio of innovative offerings for our growing global client base. Now let's review the third quarter performance of our 2 business segments, turning first to Reservoir Description. For the third quarter of 2025, revenue came in at $88.2 million, up over 2% compared to Q2. For Q3, operating income for Reservoir Description ex items was $11.6 million, up from $10.8 million in Q2, yielding operating margins of 13% with incremental margins of 41%. While demand for Reservoir Description lab services remained strong in several regions across our global network, ongoing international geopolitical conflicts, along with sanctions, continue to produce headwinds that impact the demand for laboratory services tied to the trade and transportation of crude oil and derived products. The demand for these services did rebound some in the third quarter as trading patterns continue to realign. Now for some operational highlights from Reservoir Description. In the third quarter of 2025, Core Lab completed phase 1 of a major reservoir fluid study in the Middle East. This analytical program addressed the critical challenge of crude oil stability by determining how natural pressure depletion impacts asphaltene behavior. As pressure drops across producing reservoirs, asphaltene can precipitate from some crude oils. These solid particles can then plug pore-throats, impair permeability and even obstruct production tubulars. Consequently, asphaltene precipitation has significant implications for both production efficiency and infrastructure integrity. As reservoirs mature, a decline in pressure will destabilize the delicate balance of pressure, volume and temperature, or PVT, that governs the thermodynamic behavior of the crude oil. This disruption can cause costly formation damage in the subsurface, leading to reduced production rates and other operational issues. The operator engaged Core Lab to deploy its proprietary full visualization PVT laboratory technologies alongside Core's advanced near infrared and high-pressure microscopy detection techniques. Combined, these technologies enabled precise measurement of asphaltene onset pressures and depositional behaviors under a range of reservoir and production conditions. Concurrently, Core Lab designed and executed advanced laboratory Core flood experiments to quantify permeability impairment as the laboratory system pressure was reduced to below critical asphaltene precipitation thresholds. These laboratory results form the essential hard data inputs into dynamic reservoir models that will allow the client to mitigate risk as they develop pressure maintenance strategies for the field. This project is now progressing into phase 2, which will assess the feasibility of pressure maintenance and solvent injection programs aimed at permeability restoration and reducing formation damage. Throughout the life cycle of oilfields, Core Laboratories measurements and interpretations help our clients maximize hydrocarbon production from their assets. Moving now to Production Enhancement, where Core Lab's technologies continue to help our clients maximize their well completions and improve production. Revenue for Production Enhancement for Q3 came in at $46.3 million, up 6% compared to Q2. Third quarter operating income for Production Enhancement, ex items was $4.9 million, yielding operating margins of 11%, up from 9% in Q2. In the U.S., Diagnostic services benefited from increasing demand as complex U.S. land completion designs like trimulfrac and extended lateral length horizontal wells become more and more common. Core's expansive portfolio of completion products also saw increased demand in international markets. Now for some operational highlights from Production Enhancement. In the third quarter of 2025, a national oil company engaged Core Lab's production enhancement team after experiencing nearly 2 months of costly downtime due to a stuck, heavyweight drill pipe in a well from offshore West Africa. The operator deployed Core's proprietary dual-end severing tool, which is engineered for high-efficiency pipe recovery operations, particularly in scenarios where conventional drill pipe and casing cutters are not up to the task. Core Lab provided the operator with extensive assembly and field application procedures and training and real-time guidance to determine the optimal deployment position within the wellbore for maximum effectiveness. Core's proprietary tool works by using precisely timed energetic events that are sequenced to generate two equal and opposing shock fronts. This technology focuses the energy outward towards the drill string and severs the drill collar. As a result of Core Lab's proprietary technologies and unmatched client service, the drill pipe was successfully recovered and well operations were restored. Also in the third quarter, one of Canada's most active heavy oil operators needed to identify which bore holes in the multilateral wells were contributing the most oil to overall production. This is a key challenge in optimizing completions in low-temperature heavy oil reservoirs. Having successfully used Core Lab's SPECTRACHEM Water Tracers in previous multistage fracturing operations, the operator again turned to Core's engineering team for a solution using chemical tracers to assess oil production from these challenging complex wells. The operator deployed Core's unique FLOWPROFILER Engineered Delivery System, or EDS. These oil tracers were placed into each lateral leg, allowing the operator to monitor produced oil concentrations and generate a precise production contribution profile. The operator found the diagnostic results to be of high value and is now including Core's FLOWPROFILER EDS oil tracers as a standard evaluation technology for future projects. That concludes our operational review. We appreciate your participation, and Danielle will now open the call for questions.