John Chisholm
Analyst · Johnston Rice. Please proceed with your question
Good morning, everyone, and thank you, Matt. We are pleased to have you on board as part of our leadership team to oversee our Corporate Development and Investor Relations. We also welcome Danielle Allen to Flotek, who will play a critical role in corporate communication and technology commercialization as Flotek's transformation becomes complete in the coming quarters. Thank you all for joining today's call through hosting from our Global Research and Innovative Center headquartered here in Houston. I'll begin by giving a summary of our quarterly results and sharing an update on the divestment of our Drilling Technologies and Production Technologies segments and other key strategic initiatives. Rich will then share our first quarter highlights and provide additional financial details; followed by Robert, who will talk about our work with cognitive computing and data and analytics. Finally, I'll end with closing remarks before taking your questions. Overall, Flotek's first quarter results were in line with our expectations outlined in February, however, above broader expectations. We can say to our shareholders and stakeholders that we are pleased where we have started the year. For continuing operations, which encompasses our Energy Chemistry Technologies or ECT, and Consumer and Industrial Chemistry Technologies or CICT segments, Flotek's first quarter revenue was $80 million, up 13% sequentially and up 25.3% year-over-year. Domestic revenues in ECT experienced growth of 14%, driven by success in our core CnF technology product offerings. Domestic CnF revenue -- excuse me, domestic CnF volumes rose 24.7% sequentially, while revenues were up 19.8% sequentially from the fourth quarter 2016. We continue to experience increasing overall demand for our core technology as operators of all sizes look to optimize the recoverability of their reservoirs, which, in turn, maximizes the value of their operations for their shareholders. We believe increasing information sharing amongst the industry as well a growing focus on chemistry will continue to provide a runway of opportunities in the U.S. land unconventional revolution. Our focus remains to help operators move from mechanical improvements to scientific evolutions, which may be the key to unlocking vast resources of hydrocarbons. Internationally, we saw success in expanding the uptake of our CnF technology, with growth in both CnF volumes and revenue, sequentially increasing by 12% and 4%, respectively. These numbers highlight the global adoption and diverse applicability of our products, along with the desire of the industry to improve the recoverability of the oil and gas reservoir. We believe the industry will continue to seek out opportunities to enhance the economics of recovering oil and gas around the globe, and our commitment to providing these solutions for customers will play a role. Even with this global growth, we still faced significant challenges during the quarter, which we overcame through acquisition and changes in asset owner [ph] operatorship, at least 400 basis points or 4% of potential CnF revenue growth may have been impacted domestically. We recognize that operators are all at different stages in their application and appreciation of chemistry and respect this fact. Our goal is to provide resources to these operators to help them make the best decisions for their shareholders by maximizing the reservoir performance through our deep understanding of chemistry in the fluid systems. As asset portfolios will likely continue to change hands, we remain steadfast in our commitment to our customers and to the science of our technology. We see expanding opportunity as this process occurs and believe it should ultimately lead to more research, which leads to Flotek. In addition, timing of certain large international orders for CnF impacted at least 200 basis points or 2% of growth. Due to the large order processes of international shipments, the lumpiness overseas will likely continue. We will do our best to help our shareholders anticipate these impacts. Finally, in our non-CnF Energy Chemistry Technologies offerings. Certain equipment mobilizations of key customers of ours, combined with the strong fourth quarter well-above completion trends, led to an underperformance of our more commodity chemistry offerings relative to the rig count, as measured sequentially, as we identified in our earnings release. We also continue to overcome challenges within our CICT segment associated with citrus oil price inflation, which is a raw material in our supply chain. Josh and his team have done an outstanding job in capitalizing on our leadership position in this business and have effectively managed through very challenging times in the citrus markets. Roughly a year ago, just after the oil price trough in Q1, we announced that we will explore strategic initiatives in both our Drilling Technologies and Production Technologies segments. This review has led us to a process to divest these businesses to streamline our capital allocation and corporate efforts. We listened to our shareholders and assessed the marketplace, and while timing may be later than some may have wished for, we believe that we've maximized the value and ability to execute these transactions for the benefit of the shareholders of our growing company. We're pleased to announce the sale of our Drilling Technologies segment for $17 million to National Oilwell Varco, which we expect to close in mid-May. Rich will have more to add on this later. We are committed to our efforts to deliver a high-return, asset-light, technology-focused business model as we redouble our efforts to reduce CapEx and G&A relative to our revenues and future cash flows, which we believe will redefine our path going forward. It is our goal to increase critical metrics like our returns on capital and returns on tangible assets. With our proprietary technologies like our patented CnF technologies and disruptive business model, we believe these metrics will improve over time and deliver cash flows to our shareholders. Before we move on. I'd like to thank the leadership and employees of Drilling Technologies for their contributions to the company. They've been a foundation of Flotek for well over a decade, and its resiliency through the cycles has been a testament to the proprietary technologies and high-impact employees within these businesses and, in particular, Steve Reeves, who has led this effort for that period of time. Additionally, we've made substantial progress to divest our Production Technologies segment which remains held for sale. We expect to have an update as we can offer a definitive resolution, which we believe we will have in the very near future. Last week, we announced a global agreement with IBM to begin the joint development of a cognitive reservoir performance system called Reservoir Cognitive Consultant, leveraging IBM Watson. Once developed, this solution will allow us to predict and apply custom chemistry and other approaches to enhance the performance of wells through their entire lifecycle. This announcement comes as there has been an increasing trend in the industry to leverage data and cognitive computing to move toward a more predictive decision making, which can reduce costs and improve well performance. As we've heard recently, industry leaders ranging from BP to EOG, Pioneer to Statoil, including Corelabs and Schlumberger, all are exploring the utilization of data to improve the industry as a whole. Consider that IDC, a leading provider of market intelligence, predicts that by 2020, just three years from now, 80% of large oil and gas companies will run their business with help from a cognitive or artificial intelligent agent that is capable of learning, reasoning and solving complex problems. We are seeing and awakening to the idea that critical operational decisions should not be made based on backward-looking information that's available. The complexity of the industry's operation simply requires using cognitive capabilities. We are pleased to be associated with companies with similar paths forward and look to play a leading role in redefining where we go next as an industry. I'll now turn it over to our CFO, Richard Walton, to deliver more details on the sale of our non-core Drilling Technologies business and our financial results. Rich?