Greetings and welcome to the Civeo Corporation First Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] And as a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce to you, Regan Nielsen, Vice President of Corporate Development and Investor Relations. Thank you, Regan. You may begin.

Thank you and welcome to Civeo's First Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. Today, our call will be led by Bradley Dodson, Civeo's President and Chief Executive Officer; and Carolyn Stone, Civeo's Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. Before we begin, we would like to caution listeners regarding forward-looking statements. To the extent that our remarks today contain anything 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 and uncertainties disclosed in our Forms 10-K, 10-Q and other SEC filings. I'll now turn the call over to Bradley.

Thank you, Regan and thank you all for joining us today for our first quarter earnings call. I'll start with the key takeaways for the first quarter and then give a brief summary of our first quarter 2023 deployments. After which, Carolyn will provide a financial and segment level review. I'll conclude with our updated full year 2023 guidance and reasonable assumptions underlying that guidance. And then, we will open the call for questions. The key takeaways from our call today are, the first quarter 2023 results were in line with our expectations and reflect the normal seasonality of our business. To remind everyone again in the second and third quarters are typically our strongest quarters with turnaround activity, or main activity, particularly in Canada. Today, we announced five additional contract awards across several of our Bowen Basin villages in Australia with expected revenues totaling AUD175 million, raising our revenue visibility and our own diligence business. In addition, we have increased our market share in integrated services in Australia with recent contract wins. To counter inflationary pressures in the Australian integrated services business, we have a mitigation plan in place and are expecting to see improvement in the second half of 2023. There are no material updates to our outlook for our Canadian mobile camps and expected demobilizations. Encouraged by counterparty interest received to-date, our team is focused on redeploying or selling McClelland Lake assets after the expiry of our current contract. Canadian turnaround activity is shaping up well for the second and third quarters of 2023. We continue to execute on the share repurchase program in the first quarter, and we'll continue to opportunistically buy back shares. Lastly, as we disclosed on previous calls, we have divested the majority of our US segment over the last 18 months and…

Thank you, Bradley and thank you all for joining us this morning. Today, we reported total revenues in the first quarter of $167.6 million with a GAAP net loss of $6.4 million or $0.42 per diluted share. During the first quarter, we generated adjusted EBITDA of $20.2 million, operating cash flow of $0.4 million, and negative free cash flow of $2.1 million. As Bradley just mentioned, the decline in adjusted EBITDA we experienced in the first quarter of 2023 as related to the same period in 2022 was largely due to the weakened Australian and Canadian dollars relative to the US dollar, the wind down of Canadian pipeline constructive activity and continued inflationary pressures. These decreases were partially offset by a $1.7 million gain on sale of assets related to the divestiture of certain US assets. The negative free cash flow in the quarter was primarily the result of a $15.6 million increase in working capital in the quarter, which was largely driven by typical seasonality of our cash flows. Let's now turn to the first quarter results for our two segments. I'll begin with a review of the Canadian segment performance compared to its performance a year ago in the first quarter of 2022. Revenues from our Canadian segment were $89.5 million as compared to revenues of $96 million in the first quarter of 2022. Adjusted EBITDA in Canada was $12 million, a decrease from $17.2 million in the first quarter of last year. Results from the first quarter of 2023 reflects the impact of a weakened Canadian dollar relative to the US dollar, which decreased revenues and adjusted EBITDA by $6 million and $0.8 million, respectively. On a constant currency basis, revenues remained relatively flat due to an increase in Canadian launch revenue, offset by a decline in…

Thank you, Carolyn. I would like to turn our discussion now to the updated full year 2023 guidance on a consolidated basis, including looking at the underlying assumptions for each of the two regions related to that guidance. We are maintaining our previously provided full year 2023 revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance ranges of $630 million to $650 million of revenues and $85 million to $95 million of adjusted EBITDA. However, we are increasing our full year 2023 capital expenditure guidance to a range of $45 million to $50 million. It's important to note this increase in capital expenditure guidance is entirely driven by a previously announced contract late in Australia, where the customer has requested specific upgrades to three of our Bowen Basin villages. These upgrades can be fully funded by the customer upfront. To reiterate, this increase in capital expenditure guidance, relative to our initial guidance, will not have a material impact on our 2023 free cash flow guidance. As a result, running through that guidance, based on this EBITDA guidance and CapEx guidance, expected interest expense of $12 million for the full year of 2023 and expecting working capital inflow of $20 million and minimal cash taxes, we are maintaining our expected 2023 free cash flow guidance of $43 million to $58 million. I'll now provide the regional outlooks by region. In Canada, we'll look at -- as we look at the remainder of 2023, we are expecting to experience solid well down oil and sands turnaround activity in the second and third quarters of the year with oil sands billed rooms increasing year-over-year. This will be partially offset by lower billed rooms in our Sitka Lodge, as well as lower mobile camp activity as the CGL and TMX construction pipeline, construction projects are near completion. As…

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from the line of Steve Ferazani with Sidoti & Company. Please proceed with your question.

Morning everyone. Appreciate all the detail on the call. Brad, can you provide any detail -- or do you have any further information in terms of the cadence of the mobile camp line down to sort of help us think about this?

So, at this point, we had four camps running, three for the Coastal GasLink, and one for the Trans Mountain expansion. Right now, we expect that two out of the four will demobilize this year, and the other two will demobilize next year. So, we're expecting the largest portion of demobilization to be in the fourth quarter of this year with -- again, and I mispronounced -- I missed it earlier, it's $10 million of demobilization costs in the 2023 guidance. And for 2024, we'll have $6 million of demobilization costs. But the grid or activity on all of the assets are expected to conclude in 2023 as of what we know right now.

Okay, okay, that's fair. When I look at your Canadian build rooms and obviously, the mobile camp wind downs affecting Sitka. Having said that, your build rooms were up sequentially in year-over-year. Moderately -- you could argue more than moderately if you add in the decline in Sitka. All signs point to a much higher CapEx in Canada this year, with Trans Mountain coming. I'm trying to get a sense of why you still sound somewhat cautious -- your sense on how much better things could get in terms of accommodations in that market with all signs pointing to higher CapEx?

Fair point. There's certainly conflicting -- I would say we continue to be optimistic on Canada. Last year, we did 2.76 million room nights in total for the year 2022 and guidance assumes 2.78 million. So, a modest increase. But I would say that we're more optimistic on turnaround activity in Canada, which would be -- which would feed in your comment around CapEx. But there are a lot of conflicting signs, because we've had several -- two specifically, major oil sands players made public comments that are looking to reduce headcount in the oil sands treated. Should that occur, that if they play that out, that would be a risk. But right now, we're not assuming that because none of the current occupancy indicates, that's the case. So, I would say, while the mix is unfavorable because Sitka is down, I would say right now, the oil sands activity is up modestly year-over-year in your guidance, to the tune of, let's say, 10% of room nights being up, but we're getting offset by Sitka. So, I -- we obviously follow it very closely in terms of what the CapEx announcements are, but there's certainly some conflicting signs. Right now, I'd say I'm more optimistic than some of the data points that are out there.

Okay, that's fair. Thanks. And then turning to Australia, obviously, revenue up very nicely. There's a mix of larger service contracts, which I know are lower margin. But generally speaking, and I know labor costs are the biggest piece to this, how much better can that get? We would have thought it would have been better at this point, right, as COVID restrictions came out. What's holding that back in terms of labor availability? And you addressed this on your remarks, how quickly you can address that? Because I mean the revenue -- the growth is there and you announced new contracts again this morning.

Yes. So, on the -- I think the key to focus in on Australia is the vast majority of the EBITDA generation is out of their own villages. And so there, quite frankly, with the renewals and the additional short-term contracts that we announced today in the owned villages, we're running pretty strong occupancy. Coppabella is effectively going to be full by the end of the second quarter, so [Indiscernible] two of our major locations. That's almost 50% of the total number of owned rooms that we have. Dysart is doing quite well. And the two [indiscernible] basins are starting to pick up with the announcement of Whitehaven's Bakery [ph] project. We expect that to start to pick up -- start to pick up in the second half, which grew the upside to the guidance. So, that's where -- that's the key for Australia's owned villages. Now, the growth, as you mentioned, is likely going to come from the integrated services business. And the team has done a great job of building that business over the last three years. Unfortunately, because of COVID largely, the inflationary pressures in Western Australia where the majority of our Integrated Services businesses are fairly significant. So, we're starting to see the influx of foreign brokers into Australia, but it's been very, very slow, because a lot of the federal policies to help facilitate that have been in place, for the better part, of two years now, almost two years now. And -- but the bureaucracy has kept things -- made it difficult. But we're starting we're starting to get -- we've gotten 10 foreign cooks in the last three months, we've got a number coming in that are in process. That chefs are a big sticking point. The other piece on the labor side is that it's very difficult to hire full-time employees on housekeeping and the hospitality side other than the chefs. So, the team is making progress. We expect it to improve in the second quarter. It improved throughout the first quarter, month-to-month. But we only had one extra month the last time we spoke. So, should that trend continue, that will support our guidance and the second -- second quarter and the balance of the year. We see a material improvement in the second half of the year to meet the upper end of our guidance.

Okay. Thanks Bradley. Appreciate the detail.

Thank you. Thank you for your interest and the questions.

And our next question comes from the line of Stephen Gengaro with Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Thanks. Good morning everybody. First, Bradley, can you talk a little bit about -- I know we've talked a little bit in the past about this. But the source gas in Canada for LNG Canada, I know you haven't played there historically. Is there an opportunity there that you're looking into?

Yes, we're -- so we don't plan right now on any locations in the Montney. We have -- really looking for an interim to win in there. It could be an opportunity to redeploy multi-tier assets as they come off the pipeline construction projects. That's really been the major focus. It is looking for opportunities for the mobile camps to work.

Thanks. And when we think about -- I guess, two things. One is the balance sheet, right? You have for years generated a lot of free cash flow, you de-lever. Where do you stand on your thoughts on allocating capital more towards buybacks versus debt reduction? Is there a point at which you get more aggressive there? How do you weigh those two options, particularly as your leverage ratio continues to come down?

So, the leverage ratio is in a good spot at 1.2. I would like to keep it in that range. Certainly for certain capital allocation opportunities, we would look -- we can look to increase the leverage ratio, but I wouldn't want to increase it significantly. As we think about the returns on capital deployment, certainly -- unfortunately, where the stock price has trended. The returns on buybacks were attractive, very attractive. And so -- we have not come out with a formal capital allocation policy. It's something that we're working on. And hopefully, by the end of the year, we'll have a formal capital allocation policy out. It's a little difficult to -- very impressive for us in the first half just because of the seasonality of our cash flow. To remind everyone, the first half of every year for the last four years has been not as strong in the second half. That's a combination of coming out of the fourth quarter, which is a softer quarter for us, ramping up into the first quarter, ramping up into the second and third quarters for turnaround activity. So, you have an increase in receivables typically. And also the first half is slated in several annual cash flow -- outflows, mainly property taxes and insurance premiums. So, as you see receivables go up, we're seeing our cash flows going out. And then that half the year, cash flows tend to be much stronger. So, we're going to be conservative, but certainly it roughly exists there to be buying back stock.

Great. And just one final one. The CapEx increase that you mentioned that I believe the customer is basically paying the entire increase ahead of a contract. How does that show up on the income statement?

So, the customer is paying for approximately $20 million of capital improvements at three locations: Coppabella, Dysart and Moranbah. They've already prepaid a portion of that. And then when we start to work, we should be in the second quarter, we'll make a second payment, which make us prepaid the entire amount. The revenues from that will be amortized over the length of the five-year contract. So, there was some recognition in the first quarter. And then we'll be amortizing it for the balance of the five-year contract.

Great. That’s all from me. Thank you.

Thank you, Stephen.

And the next question comes from the line of Dave Storms with Stonegate. Please proceed with your question.

Thank you and good morning. A quick question from the US divestitures standpoint, I saw you had the $1.7 million increase. Was that from some of Killdeer and the Canadian acres? Or is that on one of them? Any color you could give there would be helpful.

Sure. We sold the housing units off of the Canadian acres. We still have the land in Canadian acres that we are planning to sell and we still have Killdeer, both of which are in held for sale.

Killdeer is not.

Killdeer is not held for sale, sorry.

Understood. Perfect. And then also great to see you announced a couple of wins, a couple of new contracts this quarter. Any further information you can give us on the current bidding environment would be helpful as well, please.

I'm sorry, can you repeat that?

Yes. Sorry. Just any color you could give us on the current bidding environment, especially after seeing you announced new wins in Australia?

Well, as I mentioned in the prepared comments, we've got two locations that are effectively going to be fall through the second half of the year and that's Moranbah and Coppabella. There's clearly a shift. We're trying to emphasize this. The customers have moved to being concerned about surety of supply of rooms. And so three of the announced wins are really drive that home, in that they are securing supply for their turnaround activity. So, these are three, six, nine-month contracts, that's in AUD35 million of the total that are really making sure that they have the rooms available for their turnaround staff. With the announcement of the Whitehaven Vickery project, we expect the Canada Basin also to start picking up in activity. That's more of back half of 2023 opportunity and a 2024 and beyond opportunity as they build that project. So, I would say that in Australia, it's very upbeat. In Canada, turnaround actually is a big question mark. It looks like it's going to be a good year. I would say that I'm optimistic that there's upside there. but 2024 could be even better.

That’s very helpful. Thank you.

Thank you.

There are no further questions at this time. And now I would like to turn the floor back over to Bradley Dodson for any closing comments.

Thank you, John. Thank you, everyone, for joining the call today. We truly appreciate your interest in Civeo and look forward to speaking to you on our second quarter earnings call at the end of July.

And that concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation, and have a great day.