M. Kevin McEvoy
Analyst · Ian Macpherson
Good morning, and thanks for joining the call. I'm very pleased to be here with you today. Our record quarterly EPS of $0.91 was above our guidance range of $0.81 to $0.86 and was up 32% over the first quarter of this year and up 36% compared to the second quarter of 2012. Our above guidance performance was attributable to sales in subsea hardware, demand for asset integrity services offshore Norway and early completion of a theme park project. Year-over-year, and sequentially, quarterly EPS increased as all our business segments achieved higher operating income led by Subsea Products and Subsea Projects. We achieved record quarterly operating income from ROVs, Subsea Products, Asset Integrity and Advanced Technologies. Our outlook for the second half of this year remains very positive and, essentially, unchanged from last quarter. We continue to believe we will achieve record results for the year, and our new 2013 EPS guidance range is $3.20 to $3.35. Our previous guidance was $3.10 to $3.30. Compared to 2012, we continue to forecast income growth for all of our operating segments in 2013. Relative to the first half of 2013, we expect to generate higher operating income during the second half, led by ROV and Subsea Projects. ROV profits are expected to be up on an increase in days on hire as we place approximately 20 new vehicles into service and a slightly higher operating margin as we benefit from additional days worked and a favorable change in geographic mix to more work off Africa and in the Gulf of Mexico. For Subsea Projects, we are forecasting higher contributions from our Gulf of Mexico and Angolan operations. Due to project timing, we anticipate that Advanced Technologies will have considerably less results during the second half of 2013 relative to the first half. For 2013, we anticipate generating at least $710 million of EBITDA. Our balance sheet and projected cash flow could provide us ample resources to continue to invest in Oceaneering's growth, and we intend to do so. We are increasing our 2013 CapEx range estimate, excluding acquisitions, to $325 million to $350 million. Of this amount, approximately $200 million is anticipated to be spent on adding systems to our ROV fleet and vehicle upgrades. About $100 million is for enhancing our Subsea Products capabilities. Our focus in 2013 continues to be on earnings growth and investment opportunities, both organically and through acquisitions. I'd now like to review our second quarter segment results. Year-over-year, second quarter Subsea Products operating income improved nearly 70% on a 35% increase in revenue due to higher demand for all of our major product lines. Operating margin improved 5%, principally due to indirect support costs being spread over a larger revenue base and a slightly favorable change in product mix due to increased Subsea Hardware sales. Sequentially, operating income rose 45% on a 21% increase of revenue on the strength of higher demand for tooling and subsea hardware. Operating margin consequently increased 4%. For the second half of 2013, we continue to forecast Subsea Products operating margin will be lower than the 22% of the first half. This is due to an anticipated change in sales mix featuring a higher percentage of umbilical revenue. Our Subsea Products backlog at quarter end was a record $902 million compared to $621 million at the end of June 2012 and $776 million at the end of March of this year. Year-over-year, and sequentially, the backlog increases were predominantly attributable to umbilical awards. During the quarter, we announced 2 large umbilical contracts, 1 for offshore Egypt and 1 for the U.S. Gulf of Mexico. Now turning to Subsea Projects. Segment operating income was 50% higher year-over-year on an improvement in international operations, which included a subsea well stimulation service project completed in the second quarter offshore Ghana utilizing a customer-provided vessel and an escalation of work on our field support vessel services contract offshore Angola. The increase in work offshore Angola included provision of another chartered vessel, the Maersk Attender, for half the quarter, the supply of 2 crew boats, 2 tugs and a cargo barge to support the operations in the chartered vessels and a full quarter contribution of the Ocean Intervention III, which commenced work in the middle of April 2012. The charter term on the Maersk Attender runs through September of this year, followed by 2 45-day renewal options, subject to our customer's work program. The charters on the crew boats, tugs and cargo barge are also short-term and will continue to be supplied on an as-needed basis at the discretion of our customer. Sequentially, Subsea Projects operating income increased 35% due to a seasonal uptick in the Gulf of Mexico demand for deepwater intervention and the increase in work offshore Angola that I just described. During the quarter, we entered into a 3-year charter for use of a multi-service subsea support vessel, the Normand Flower. The charter term is now expected to commence in mid-December 2013, and the vessel is anticipated to go to work in the Gulf of Mexico in early 2014. This charter reflects our belief that the deepwater subsea intervention market has a promising and sustainable future. As for our remaining business operations in the second quarter, year-over-year, ROV operating income improved on higher demand to provide drill support and vessel-based services. Our ROV days on hire increased 9% to approximately 22,400 days. Sequentially, operating income improved on higher demand for drill support services and an increase in average revenue per day-on-hire. Our fleet utilization rate during the quarter was 83%, flat sequentially and up from 81% year-over-year. We still expect that our fleet utilization for the year 2013 will be at about the 83% level. Operating margin during the quarter was 29%, flat sequentially and down from 31% a year ago. The margin decline from a year ago was attributable to higher operating costs, including associated with establishing new foreign areas of operation. During the second half of this year, we should benefit from more new systems being placed into service with a favorable geographic mix to more work off Africa and in the Gulf of Mexico. As a result, we anticipate quarterly operating margins to return to 30% or perhaps slightly higher. During the quarter, we put 4 new ROVs into service and retired 2. At the end of June, we had 296 systems available for operation, up from 280 a year ago. 3 of the new ROVs went into drill support service, and 1 went to work on board a vessel. Our fleet mix during the quarter was 74% of drill support and 26% on vessel-based work, the same as last quarter. This compares to a 75%-25% mix in the second quarter of 2012. We expect to add about 30 vehicles to our fleet in 2013, approximately 20 during the remaining half of the year. Year-over-year, Asset Integrity operating income was about the same as last year. Sequentially, operating income increased on higher service sales in most of the geographic areas we serve. Advanced Technologies operating income improved year-over-year and sequentially on increased activity and operating margin on theme park projects. The operating margin improvement was attributable to incentive fees for meeting scheduled completion dates. In summary, our second quarter results were above our expectations and up appreciably both sequentially and year-over-year. We look forward to realizing another year of record EPS performance in 2013. Our focus on providing products and services for deepwater and subsea completions positions us to participate in a major secular growth trend in the oilfield service and products industry. We were pleased with our cash flow generation capability as demonstrated by $170 million of EBITDA during the quarter. Capital expenditures for the quarter totaled about $81 million, of which $56 million was invested in ROVs and $21 million was spent on Subsea Products. Moving on to our third quarter outlook. We are projecting EPS in the range of $0.90 to $0.95. Sequentially, we anticipate quarterly operating income improvements from ROVs due to increase in fleet days on hire and some margin improvement and Subsea Projects on a seasonal demand increase in the Gulf of Mexico for deepwater intervention and shallow water diving services and additional vessel activity offshore Angola. Due to project timing, we are anticipating that Subsea Products and Advanced Technologies will have lower results. Looking beyond 2013, we remain convinced that our strategy to focus on providing services and products that facilitate deepwater exploration and production remains sound. We believe the oil and gas industry will continue to invest in deepwater as it remains one of the best frontiers for adding large hydrocarbon reserves with high production flow rates at relatively low finding and development costs. In early 2013, an industry report by Douglas-Westwood forecast global capital expenditure spending on deepwater oil and gas projects will double over the next 5 years. We anticipate the demand for our deepwater services and products will continue to rise and believe our business prospects for the next several years remain promising. At the end of June 2013, there were a total of 99 new floating rigs on order. 70 of these rigs are not contracted to work for Petrobras in Brazil, and we expect all of them will go to work for other operators. On these 70 rigs, 20 ROV contracts have been let, and we have won 17 or 85% of them, leaving 50 non-Petrobras ROV contracting opportunities to be pursued. So the visibility of the secular growth outlook for this market remains very promising, and looking forward, we see no reason why we will not continue to be the dominant provider of ROV services on these rigs. At the end of June, 102 of the 145 existing high-spec drillships and fifth and sixth generation semis were contracted to operators other than Petrobras in Brazil. We had ROV contracts on 78 of these for a market share of 76%. If all 70 of the non-Petrobras rigs I mentioned are placed into service, this fleet of 102 will grow nearly 70% to 172 rigs, and our ROV fleets supporting the rig market should grow by 50 to 55 vehicles. As the use of floating rigs grow, we believe it is inevitable that discoveries will eventually drive orders for Subsea Hardware to levels not previously experienced, and demand for ROVs to support vessel-based activities should follow. The current trend indicates that there will be approximately 2 vessel-based ROVs for every floating rig in operation. So the 99 rigs under construction should represent incremental demand for approximately 200 ROVs on vessels. We estimate Oceaneering's market share of the vessel-based ROV fleet at 20% and see no reason we will not at least maintain a share in the future. This incremental demand should result in our ROV fleet supporting the vessel market growing by some 40 vehicles. In summary, by maintaining our current market share of the visible growing rig and vessel service requirements, we are forecasting we will add 90 to 95 incremental ROVs to our fleet. We anticipate the ROVs to support the rigs on order will be in service by 2017. The in-service timing for the vessel-based ROVs cannot be predicted at this time but will likely lag those required to support drilling. Quest Offshore's latest Subsea Hardware forecast for the period 2013 to '17 includes an increase in tree orders of about 60% over the previous 5 years. In 2013, tree orders are projected to rise over 2012 by more than 25% to 531, an all-time high, eclipsing the previous record of 426 trees in 2006. While we don't make trees, orders for subsea trees drive demand for a substantial amount of the ancillary subsea production hardware that we manufacture. For example, Quest is forecasting more than 35% increase in umbilical orders for the 5-year period 2013 to '17 compared to the previous 5 years. Umbilical orders in 2013 are forecasted to rise to about 1,635 kilometers, up over 40% from the 1,140-kilometer level of 2012. Based on our subsea tree order forecast, Quest Offshore is projecting average annual subsea tree installations over the 5-year period 2013 to '17 will increase by 140 or about 45% from the previous 5 years. The number of subsea completions in service compared to 2012 is projected to increase by 1/3 by the end of 2017. We believe that projected lines in tree installations and the growing level of subsea completions in service will act as catalyst for further growth in our Subsea Products and Subsea Projects operations and profits. Furthermore, industry and regulatory emphasis on safe and reliable deepwater operations is providing additional opportunities for us to demonstrate our capabilities. With our existing assets, we are well-positioned to supply a wide range of the services and products required to safely support the deepwater efforts of our customers. We believe Oceaneering's business prospects for the long term remain promising. Our commanding competitive position, technology leadership and strong balance sheet and cash flow enable us to continue to grow the company, and we intend to do so. In conclusion, our results continue to demonstrate our ability to generate excellent earnings and cash flow. We believe our business strategy is working well over both the short and long term. We like our position in the oilfield services market and our leverage to the growth of deepwater and subsea completion activity that is currently underway. The longer-term market outlook for our deepwater and subsea service and product offerings remains promising. Industry and regulatory emphasis on reliable equipment and redundant safety features of deepwater operations elevates the importance of the utility and reliability of our ROV services and related product line offerings and reinforces the benefit of our value sell. For 2013, we are anticipating that we will achieve another record year of EPS performance. We believe this distinguishes Oceaneering from many other oilfield service companies. We appreciate everyone's interest in Oceaneering, and I will now be happy to take any questions you may have.