Preet Dhindsa
Analyst · Cole Pereira with Stifel. Your line is now open
Thanks Marc and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to continue my work at Enerflex and help unlock the business' full potential for the benefit of our shareholders, customers, employees and other stakeholders. My efforts will be focused on supporting the execution of our global strategy, improving the profitability and resiliency of the business, generating sustainable free cash flow and strengthening our financial position. Turning to our financial results. Enerflex met or exceeded all of its full year 2023 financial guidance metrics as last provided with our third quarter results in November. During the fourth quarter, consolidated revenue of $782 million was largely consistent with third quarter levels and driven by continued strong performance from Enerflex's recurring businesses. Gross margin before depreciation and amortization or D&A, increased to $216 million or 28% of revenue compared to $201 million or 26% of revenue in Q3 2023. Energy Infrastructure and aftermarket services product lines generated 67% of consolidated gross margin before D&A during the fourth quarter of 2023, which is comparable with the third quarter. Energy Infrastructure gross margin before D&A of $104 million was relatively consistent with the previous quarters in the year. In Engineered Systems, our gross margin before D&A improved to 18% as we execute on higher-margin backlog. And our aftermarket services gross margin before G&A was 22% in the quarter, the highest level in over two years and reflective of increased activity levels, inflationary price adjustments and continued strong demand for spare parts. Enerflex' SG&A of $102 million declined $13 million from the third quarter, which was largely driven by lower compensation costs. Foreign exchange losses, which were previously included in SG&A are now presented as a separate line item on our income statement. Transaction, restructuring, integration costs were $25 million in Q4 compared to $6 million in Q3 as we incurred cost related to consolidating our operations and integrating systems. We expect to incur approximately $30 million of restructuring and integration costs during 2024. As Marc mentioned, we're in the home stretch of completing the integration with efforts focused on final systems integration. Our adjusted EBITDA was $126 million in the fourth quarter compared to $122 million in Q3. Adjusted EBITDA was reduced this quarter by $39 million, resulting from losses related to foreign exchange and associated instruments, principally in Argentina. We generated $4 million in offsetting interest income that is reported in net finance costs and excluded from adjusted EBITDA. Enerflex continues to manage foreign exchange volatility and is implementing measures to reduce exposure to the Argentine peso. Excluding the impact of foreign exchange, our business in Argentina continues to perform well and generate strong operating cash flow for the business. Cash provided by operating activities was $209 million, which included a working capital recovery of $144 million. In the third quarter, we generated $71 million of cash from operations, including $15 million from the recovery of working capital. We are pleased with our ongoing global efforts to more efficiently manage working capital and target further progress in 2024, although we do not expect that the magnitude of the recovery realized during Q4 will be repeated. We've also introduced free cash flow as a key performance measure for our company. Free cash flow helps readers assess the level of free cash available to fund other nonoperating activities such as growth capital expenditures, discretionary debt repayment, share repurchases and/or incremental dividends. During the fourth quarter, Enerflex generated $185 million of free cash flow compared to a use of cash of $46 million in the comparable quarter of 2022. Including free cash flow for the fourth quarter is a benefit of $52 million related to unrealized changes in foreign exchange and short-term investments. While we do not experience an outflow of cash associated with these unrealized losses, they impact cash available to fund other nonoperating activities. We invested $24 million in the business during the fourth quarter, including $6 million of growth investments and returned $3 million to shareholders through dividends. As Marc mentioned, our focus remains on strengthening the balance sheet and enhancing the company's financial flexibility. We reduced net debt by $151 million during the quarter, exiting the year at $1.1 billion and reduced our bank adjusted net debt to EBITDA ratio to 2.3 times from 2.7 times at the end of Q3 and 3.3 times at the end of 2022. Enerflex will continue to focus on debt reduction, global cash management and lowering net finance costs in 2024, which will improve our ability to provide shareholder returns over the medium and long term. We continue to evaluate our target long-term capital structure and capital allocation parameters and expect to provide more clarity in the coming months. Let me shift to our outlook for 2024. Operating results will be underpinned by the highly contracted energy infrastructure product line and the recurring nature of aftermarket services, which together are expected to account for 55% to 65% of gross margin before depreciation and amortization. Complementing Enerflex's recurring revenue businesses is the Engineered Systems product line, which carried a backlog of $1.5 billion as at December 31, 2023. The company expects the majority of its backlog to convert into revenue over the next 12 months. Enerflex is targeting a disciplined capital program in 2024 with total capital expenditures of $90 million to $110 million. This includes a total of approximately $70 million for maintenance and PP&E capital expenditures. Investing to expand our energy infrastructure business in 2024 is discretionary and will be allocated to customers supported opportunities that are expected to generate attractive returns and deliver value to Enerflex shareholders. Finally, Enerflex is committed to delivering a sustainable dividend to shareholders with our Board declaring a quarterly dividend of $0.025 per share. The dividend is payable on May 1, 2024, to shareholders of record March 13, 2024. I'll conclude by saying that with the support of Enerflex's strong global leadership team and talented employees we're improving the profitability and resiliency of our overall business with an objective to generate sustainable free cash flow. I'm pleased to continue my work at Enerflex and help unlock the business full potential for the benefit of our shareholders. customers, employees and other stakeholders. With that, over to you, Marc, for closing remarks.