Earnings Labs

Civeo Corporation (CVEO)

Q4 2017 Earnings Call· Fri, Feb 23, 2018

$31.10

-0.65%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

-1.34%

1 Week

+0.27%

1 Month

-1.87%

vs S&P

+3.26%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day and welcome to the Civeo Fourth Quarter Earnings Call. Today's conference is being recorded. And at this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Regan Nielsen, Manager, Corporate Development and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Regan Nielsen

Management

Thank you and welcome to Civeo's fourth quarter and full year 2017 earnings conference call. Today our call will be led by Bradley Dodson, Civeo's President and Chief Executive Officer and Frank Steininger, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, we would like to caution listeners regarding forward-looking statements. To the extent that our remarks today contain information other than historical information, please note that we're relying on the Safe Harbor protections afforded by federal law. Any such remarks should be read in the context of the many factors that affect our business, including risks disclosed in our Form 10-K, 10-Q our proxy related to the pending Noralta acquisition and other SEC filings. I will now turn the call over to Bradley.

Bradley Dodson

President

Thank you, Regan, and thank you all for joining us on the Civeo fourth quarter earnings call. I'll begin with an overview of the fourth quarter performance before turning to our regional market highlights. Frank will follow my remarks with a detailed financial review of each segment and provide an update on the pending Noralta Lodge acquisition. I'll close the call with first quarter guidance and a brief strategic overview, before we turn the call over for questions. During the fourth quarter, we reported revenues of $101.3 million, which is above our expectations and adjusted EBITDA of $13.3 million in line with our expectations. The company generated $11.3 million of operating cash flow and $8.4 million of free cash flow and made debt repayments of $29 million in the fourth quarter, allowing us to continuously improve our balance sheet. Overall, in the fourth quarter, we continue to execute operationally in a difficult macroeconomic environment, while pursuing our strategy. In late November, the company announced a definitive agreement to acquire Noralta Lodge, a premier accommodations provider in the Canadian oil sands region. This transaction will accelerate our strategic priorities to service customer-owned accommodation facilities while enhancing our quality and scope of our service offerings. It will also generate operating cash flow and strengthen our pro forma balance sheet and lastly, allow us to enhance our work force solutions portfolio to support our customers over the life of their projects in the Canadian oil sands. We're excited about this combination, which is expected to close in the second quarter of 2018. Frank will provide some additional color on the transaction and offer some updates on key milestones later in the call. Turning to our fourth quarter results, in our Canadian segment, revenues were essentially flat sequentially as pricing and occupancy remained stable.…

Frank Steininger

Management

Thank you, Bradley and good morning, everyone. I will start with a review of the fourth quarter results before moving to full-year 2017 financial performance. Today, we reported total revenues of $101.3 million with a net loss on a GAAP basis of $47.6 million or $0.36 per diluted share. During the fourth quarter of 2017, the company generated adjusted EBITDA of $13.3 million, operating cash flow of $11.3 million and free cash flow of $8.4 million. I will begin with a review of our Canadian segment performance on a quarter-over-quarter basis. Revenues from our Canadian segment were $63.6 million, down slightly from the $63.8 million in the third quarter of this year. Revenues for the quarter were impacted by modest decreases in average daily rates, partially offset by an increase in Lodge occupancy. Adjusted EBITDA in this segment was $11.4 million, down sequentially from $15.6 million driven by startup costs for a new mobile camp project and inventory write-down related to our held for sale Canadian manufacturing plant, the Sitka contract rolling off and seasonal occupancy decrease at our McClelland Lake Lodge. During the fourth quarter, average occupancy in the Canadian lodges was 79%, down 2% sequentially, but continue to benefit from ongoing construction projects and turnaround-related work in Canada. Our average daily rate for the Canadian segment in U.S. dollars was $90 versus $92 in the third quarter as continued short-term high rate room demand was offset primarily by lower rates at our Southern Oil Sands lodges. Turning to Australia, during the fourth quarter we recorded revenues of $28.1 million up slightly from $27.5 million in the third quarter. Adjusted EBITDA up $10.3 million increased sequentially from $9.7 million. We are encouraged by our performance in the Australian segment and have seen some positive macro tailwinds, this should help…

Bradley Dodson

President

Thank you, Frank. I'll now outline our guidance for the first quarter of 2018 and our outlook for the business. I'd like to note that below guidance does not include the impact of the acquisition of Noralta. We are pleased to announce the extension of the Fort Hills, McClelland Lake Lodge contract through the end of 2018. As we begin the year, we expect comparable margins to the fourth quarter, resulting from lower rates on the extended contract at McClelland Lake and lower margin catering the mobile camp work. However, we expect the first quarter -- late first quarter to benefit from the turnaround work at it starts to ramp up for the second quarter and this relates to Canada. So, for the first half of 2018, looks to have to see some activity improvement. In fact, we expect our Canadian segment should see some quarterly sequential improvement for each quarter of 2018 seeing an improvement in mobile camp work in the second half of 2018. For the first quarter, we're assuming our Canadian dollar exchange rate of 0.8 and we anticipate segment revenue of $63 million to $65 million and adjusted EBITDA of $9.5 million to $10.5 million for the first quarter of 2018. These expectations are based on 8600 rentable rooms and we expect lodge occupancy to be between 72% and 74% with an average room rate of approximately in Canadian dollars $113 per night. Moving to Australia, the macroeconomic environment continues to provide justification for cautious optimism. Although met coal prices currently reside above $200 a ton, customer capital spending cautious to be cautious as they assess the global supply demand balance, the sustainability of the robust Chinese demand and a seasonal impact with steel production restrictions in China. As such, the outlook for incremental room demand…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator instructions] And we will take our first question from Blake Hancock from Howard Weil. Please go ahead.

Blake Hancock

Analyst · Howard Weil. Please go ahead

Thanks. Good morning, guys.

Bradley Dodson

President

Good morning, Blake.

Blake Hancock

Analyst · Howard Weil. Please go ahead

Bradley, can we start on the Canadian segment and maybe two parts here, A, kind of talk about the turnaround work and make sure I understood correctly the revenue progression throughout 2018 is up sequentially? Can you also maybe talk about so the turnaround work and how that feed into maybe in a margin improvement over the course of the year or how we should be thinking about that?

Bradley Dodson

President

Sure. Well as you know, like the turnaround work in Canada, which is maintenance work that's typically done annually by the oil sands operators, the critical time to do that is the summer months. We currently have what looks to be a very strong turnaround activity particularly in the second quarter and going into the third quarter. So, for right now as you think that the revenue progression for Canada will be strongest in the second quarter before we start to see it a even stronger fourth quarter and third quarter right now because it's a little unclear how much of the turnaround work will bleed into the third quarter. It's a little bit opaque, but overall, expect a positive progression of EBITDA and EBITDA margins for the Canadian segment throughout the year. As we noted on the call, I think the real question mark is on the mobile camp side of things and how that progresses in terms of right now looks like the second half is going to be relatively strong but is uncontracted. So, we're optimistic but we still need to get that work awarded.

Blake Hancock

Analyst · Howard Weil. Please go ahead

That's great. Thank you. And then hate to kind of jump ahead but Noralta is around the corner here closing, it's going to be beneficial on nearly doubling EBITDA here, but are we done with the M&A side, is there more you want to do, are there other aspects from the catering or something like that or you'd like to be bigger?

Bradley Dodson

President

There is and the Noralta transaction we believe is quite transformational in terms of what we can offer the customer. The combined portfolio of locations of Noralta and Civeo is such that now we can serve all of our customer's needs. It also fills the strategic direction of continuing to service more of the customer-owned rooms as Noralta does that. We also do it for one of our major customers, but really demonstrating to the oil sands customers that the accommodations piece of what they needed to do every day is something that is easily outsourced to people who -- frankly, it's our core competency, it's what we do. We take care of people. We make sure we're doing it safely, that the food is safe and the bed is clean and the people are well rested. So, if we continue to demonstrate that, we think that there's an organic way to build off of the Noralta transaction and serving our customers. Then outside of that, we are trying to expand our catering work, not only within our current verticals, but outside of our current verticals. As we've mentioned on previous calls organically we've had some success in serving some educational institutions in Canada. We're also catering as I mentioned a major oil sands operators location and we just won a contract to do it in Australia as well for a mining company. So, we're making progress there and we're looking for an acquisition or two to expand into that area. We know we can do the operations and think that we -- what an acquisition would provide us is the resume and the customer base that's already built and non-energy verticals to take care of things like educational facilities, hospitals, retirement homes, industrial facilities, nonenergy industrial facilities, but at the end of the day, it's the same thing that we do for our customers in our current market. So, we are pursuing that.

Blake Hancock

Analyst · Howard Weil. Please go ahead

That's great. And Frank, I am squeeze in one for you here if I missed it, I apologize, can you give us an idea of 2018 CapEx for you guys as a standalone and what sort of I guess maybe just for 1Q what we should be thinking for like an SG&A run rate?

Frank Steininger

Management

Well, I think from our standpoint, we've budgeted approximately between what have we put in the…

Bradley Dodson

President

$15 million to $20 million.

Frank Steininger

Management

Our budget is about between $15 million to $20 million on a standalone basis for 2018 without Noralta right, on a standalone basis. So, from our standpoint. I think that most of that again is probably maintenance CapEx related. So, we feel comfortable with that rate. We finished the year just over $11 million in CapEx for the year.

Bradley Dodson

President

I think that versus 2017, there are some tentative growth projects in our CapEx number. I do think the maintenance number in that kind of $10 million to $15 million number is a good number. That's not changing year-over-year, but we have put into the budget on a standalone basis some speculative growth projects that again as those of you who follow us for a long time know what will be contingent on getting customer commitment to support that investment.

Frank Steininger

Management

And then I think on your SG&A question about $50 million a quarter.

Blake Hancock

Analyst · Howard Weil. Please go ahead

Perfect. Thank you, guys.

Frank Steininger

Management

That's consolidated.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Stephen Gengaro from Loop Capital.

Stephen Gengaro

Analyst · Loop Capital

Thanks. Good morning, guys. Couple of things, but just to follow-up on just briefly, it sounds like you said EBITDA margin progression throughout the year in Canada with the second quarter revenue being higher than third before the fourth quarter rises from there as based on what you see now, is that what you said or am I reading into that?

Bradley Dodson

President

No, that's right, Stephen. I do think that margin should generally have an upper trend throughout the year. Right now, as we look at the third quarter and we're talking about specifically Canada, we don't have -- we have optimism, but not enough to really put it in the forecast yet for the third quarter. So, I think third quarter will be fine, but I do think second quarter will be a sequential improvement over the first and then right now I think the fourth quarter will be better than the second.

Stephen Gengaro

Analyst · Loop Capital

Okay. Okay. The margins that you guided to in the first quarter and Canada are on the low side of where would've expected. I know that there are some noise in the fourth quarter that maybe just contributing to that a bit. I think you said that, but then it seems like based on the turnaround work and the confidence in the second quarter, the second quarter should be a pretty big ramp, is that fair?

Bradley Dodson

President

I think the second quarter will ramp. I think right now quite frankly what we need to focus on and are focused on is making sure we can ramp up for the second quarter efficiently. So, I do think, the second quarter will be improved and now then the onus is on us to really make sure we do it efficiently. So, we can enjoy as much margin as possible.

Stephen Gengaro

Analyst · Loop Capital

Okay And then you mentioned the Fort Hills contract extension, Is that for all of the phone rooms today? And then there has been a lot of talk and I don't it's coming directly on what's going on with the customer, but there is a lot talk about delays and its start up on crude. Is that for -- close to the full occupancy that you had or is that a different extension?

Bradley Dodson

President

It will be for the full facility. It will continue to be dedicated to the Fort Hills project.

Stephen Gengaro

Analyst · Loop Capital

Thank you. And then just one final for me and I'll get back in line, is the U.S. profitability you talked a little bit about it on the prepared remarks, as we think about the U.S. EBITDA margin potential, could we see that number deal back to breakeven in the course of 2018?

Frank Steininger

Management

We do. The team I think has done a very good job of managing the costs and what we saw and we didn't hit where we wanted to be last year, but that was quite frankly strategic and that we did move a fair amount of units down from the Bakken to Rockies into the MidCon, and what we call our wellsite units into the MidCon and the Permian and those moving costs run through as expense to the P&L. But we're starting to see good utilization of the wellsite units improving utilization of the wellsite units sequentially and we're seeing good occupancy levels both at the Pecos open camp as well as Killdeer open camp. Our offshore business had a good backlog build in terms of fabrication work and that we're cautiously optimistic as relates to improved rental work offshore. So that a long-awaited way that I actually I've just said, we do expect to be positive EBITDA for the year in the U.S. Stephen, but that's the color around it.

Stephen Gengaro

Analyst · Loop Capital

All right. Great, and just very quick and I forgot to ask Frank, the DNA dropped in the quarter, is that $29 million-$30 million good rate for 1Q?

Frank Steininger

Management

Let me just see, yes, yes.

Stephen Gengaro

Analyst · Loop Capital

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from Benjamin Owens with RBC.

Benjamin Owens

Analyst · RBC

Hey. Good morning, guys.

Bradley Dodson

President

Good morning, Ben.

Benjamin Owens

Analyst · RBC

So, I know you haven't given specific revenue or EBITDA guidance for full year 2018, but based on the dictation that EBITDA is going to be flat to up for the full year, I was curious if you could provide how much of the revenue that drives that flat to up expectation, is currently under contract?

Bradley Dodson

President

Well Frank is getting the specifics, I would say that right now if we look at it, that a good contract position in Canada between the Imperial Kearl contract, the Fort Hills contract at McClelland, the second quarter we feel good in terms of contracted revenues. First, I think, contracted revenues at Beaver River/Athabasca, the contracted levels in Australia I would say are in good place and as we talked about in the prepared comments, what we are seeing in Australia is a fair amount of turnaround work, maintenance work, things that quite frankly had been deferred during the downturn and we're starting to see a pickup shorter-term work. So, I do expect and I think this is a fairly consistent theme from prior calls, we are getting a good base level of contracted work, but generally speaking particularly in Australia, our customers are actually having their occupancy well above the base level of contracted work. So, they're exceeding their minimums, more succinctly said and so we expect that to continue. What we're optimistic about particularly later in the year as we start to see some major we call them enhancement projects or more capital expenditures starting to move forward in Australia where we could see something meaningful in terms of occupancy increases as we go into 2019. And then lastly, something that we haven't talked about, we continue to focus in on the British Columbia LNG opportunity. We have our Sitka location. It's well positioned to serve the LNG Canada project and we continue to pursue and look forward hopefully to a positive FID on that.

Frank Steininger

Management

One second, I'll give you some percentage, sorry Ben.

Benjamin Owens

Analyst · RBC

Yeah sure thing. And just follow-up to that, oh go ahead Frank.

Frank Steininger

Management

So, from a Canadian standpoint talking about 57% between 55% to 60% of our revenue is contracted. And then in Australia you're about between about 40% to 45%, which is consistent year-on-year basically.

Bradley Dodson

President

And I might actually take the opportunity to comment a little bit on that, again as we look to expand our catering-only work, I wouldn't consider -- we will consider that to be contracted, we will have a contract in place with operators for instance we're caring a 400-room location and managing the facility. In the oil Sands region, we do expect that to generate about $5 million to $7 million of revenues a year and it is contracted, but I wouldn't fall into that contracted fees. In addition, catering-only is a very profitable business, however at lower margins. No capital is deployed, but typically those are going to be 5% to 8% margins that's going to impact the overall margin profile of the company and as we grow that business, we'll certainly highlight that, so that people can recognize here is the capital intensive piece, the lodges in villages, U.S. business, it has a certain margin profile and then certainly, the catering-only work will have a different profile, but again very different capital profile as well. Frank anything you want to…

Benjamin Owens

Analyst · RBC

Okay. That's great. That's really helpful. That answers my question. Just last one for me, just to follow-up on Stephen's question on the U.S. you have talked about move cost impacting profitability in the fourth quarter I think the third quarter too. Could you guys give us the actual cost for new cost and low cost in the fourth quarter?

Frank Steininger

Management

Fourth quarter is about $1 million. About a $1 million in the fourth quarter.

Benjamin Owens

Analyst · RBC

Okay. Great. All right, thanks guys. I'll turn it back.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Mike Malouf from Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Please go ahead.

Eric Stine

Analyst · Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Please go ahead

Hi guys, this is Eric on for Mike. Thanks for taking my questions. So, I understand that there's some opaqueness in Australia, but given the rebound in U.S. EBITDA that you mentioned and some of the sequential improvement in Canada, can you talk to how much of your flat-to-slightly up EBITDA guidance, how much Australia impacts there?

Frank Steininger

Management

I think Australia will be -- I think we would like to get just the first quarter is called for just specific full year guidance. In terms of Australia, it should be up 10% to 15% year-over-year.

Eric Stine

Analyst · Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Please go ahead

Okay. Awesome. And then could you also just talk some about how you are looking at debt throughout 2018 and maybe some of your plans there regarding any refinancing?

Bradley Dodson

President

Yeah sure. Just to be clear, as we kind of get through the Noralta transaction, under our current credit agreement, we can fund the cash portion of the consideration related to the Noralta acquisition, just under our current credit agreement, but what we've decided, what we've been working on is basically as you know our credit agreement expires in May of 2019. So, we've been working with our bank group to basically get work through an extension of that current termination or expiration date for about from anywhere from 12 to 18 months. So that's the current plan. That's the current discussions we're having with our banking group. So that would give us some time, some runway to basically then look at other opportunities to term out some of our longer -- some of our debt in let's say maybe some high-yield bond type offering or some other type of transaction. So, I think right now as you can see and as we will continue to do in 2018, we will generate free cash flow and continue to pay down our debt balances, but I think the first step that we're working through right now is to get the extension and then from there, we'll look at other opportunities to term out a portion of our debt balance.

Eric Stine

Analyst · Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Please go ahead

Okay. Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take a follow-up from Stephen Gengaro from Loop Capital.

Stephen Gengaro

Analyst · Loop Capital

Thanks. Just quickly, when we think about the activity you're seeing in Australia, I know you mentioned on the call and obviously the macro is positive, have you seen customers react yet as far as the potential for expansions of existing production etcetera or is it all still sort of turnaround maintenance related and hopefully this expectation based on fundamentals and strong cash flow they may be ramp work a bit, have you seen any or positive signs or is it still sort of on the come?

Bradley Dodson

President

It's been positive for sure and in case that it has been positive, it is positive, but again to your question, it's more on the maintenance side of things where we'll get some turnaround work, some maintenance work in Australia that might last 30, 60, 90 days, which is very helpful in terms of obviously generating revenues and positive EBITDA there. But they haven't yet cut loose with anything major in terms of either reopening a previously mothballed mine or looking for material expansion projects. We saw one last year, which we, I can't remember which earnings call it was on, I think first or second quarter, when we saw one of our major customers do a modest expansion of one of their locations that did help Moranbah and Dysart last year, but that wasn't a multibillion-dollar extension I believe, that order of magnitude was this couple $100 million if I remember correctly. So, there are projects on the horizon. Where we stand today I think the likely, I think the desired outcome would be we hear something positive in terms of the green light to move forward but likely it won't have a material impact on occupancy until late in this year, going into next year.

Stephen Gengaro

Analyst · Loop Capital

Okay. Great. Thank you, guys.

Bradley Dodson

President

Thank you, Stephen.

Operator

Operator

And with no further questions, I would like to turn the call back to Bradley for closing comments.

Bradley Dodson

President

Well, thank you all. I appreciate you joining us on the call today. Finishing off the year in line with what 2017, in line with what we're expecting and look forward to an improving environment in 2018 and we are incredibly excited about the opportunity to close the Noralta transaction and what that means for both in terms of our Canadian operations as well as financially for our shareholders and then as one of questions mentioned, move forward to not stop there, but look at both organic and inorganic ways to continue to grow the business. Thank you, all.

Operator

Operator

And this concludes today's conference. Thank you for your participation and you may now disconnect.