Cindy Taylor
Analyst · Raymond James
Thanks, Lloyd. Leading off with our Well Site Services segment, we generated $126 million of revenues, while EBITDA totaled $19 million in the fourth quarter. Activity declines led to a 7% quarter-over-quarter decrease in the number of completion services jobs performed, partially offset by a 4% increase in revenue per completion services job as a result of improved job mix. The revenue decline was concentrated in the Permian Basin and was likely driven by the significant decline in crude oil prices in the fourth quarter along with holiday downtime, partially offset by increased revenues from US Gulf of Mexico projects. Segment EBITDA margins averaged 15% in the fourth quarter compared to 12% reported in the third quarter of 2018. Excluding a prior year charge for FLSA claim settlements in the third quarter, segment EBITDA increased 5% quarter-over-quarter. Utilization in the land drilling business was flat sequentially, averaging 30% in the fourth quarter, while day rates and cash margins improved 10% and 17% sequentially, respectively. In our Downhole Technology segment, we generated revenues of $52 million and EBITDA of $6 million, resulting in an EBITDA margin of 12% reported in the fourth quarter. Segment results were negatively impacted during the quarter by reduced demand for perforating and downhole composite products, increased manufacturing facility cost under absorption due to the lower levels of throughput experienced late in the quarter and the incurrence of $2.4 million of patent defense cost. These legal actions were settled during the fourth quarter and we do not expect these patent defense costs to recur in 2019. We attribute weaker sales in our engineered perforating solutions business to competitors introducing their integrated gun systems to the market ahead of us as we discussed on our third quarter call along with holiday downtime and customer budget uncertainty. We expect to recover sales in our engineered perforating solutions business once our proprietary Integrated gun system gains broader market penetration, which continues to be estimated for the second quarter. Results in the fourth quarter were partially offset by improved demand for our completion tool. We recently implemented a technical solutions group, which will provide tailored support to our wireline and operator customers, delivering our product offerings from our manufacturing location to the well site. This group is an investment in our future and affords us the opportunity to deploy both personnel and integrated product solutions directly to the well site to ensure product quality and performance is maintained. It's great that's currently working and supported field trials for our newer technology, which led to about $1 million of unabsorbed cost during the fourth quarter of 2018 related to this effort. Ultimately as trialed products are brought to market, the Group will generate revenue sufficient to offset their cost. In our Offshore Manufactured Product segment, we generated revenues $96 million, segment EBITDA of $13 million and segment EBITDA margins of 13% during the fourth quarter. This equates to a 7% sequential increase in segment revenues driven by our service revenues and military product sales, a portion of which pulled forward from the first quarter 2019, partially offset by 5% sequential decrease in sales of our shorter cycle products, which are primarily levered to U.S. land customers. Orders booked totaled $104 million during the quarter resulting in a book to bill ratio of 1.1 times for both fourth quarter and full year 2018. During the fourth quarter, we booked one major award at over $10 million for connector products orders destined for Africa. Our customer conversations and visibility regarding select project sanctions for 2019 remain constructive. Additional project FID and order bookings growth will be needed before we see a noticeable recovery in sales of our products used in offshore production infrastructure and accordingly our major project revenues. I would now like to share our thoughts on the outlook for the first quarter. Similar to our peers in the industry, we have experienced a slower start in the first quarter as lower crude oil prices have negatively impacted our customers' 2019 budget, both in terms of timing and planned spending. As a result, we expect activity levels in the first half of 2019 for our onshore domestic businesses to see some softness due to deterioration in North American market condition. Although our first quarter 2019 results are projected lower due to customer spending uncertainty, we believe that our full year results for 2019 should approximate current consensus estimates as the markets in which we operate should improve as the year progresses. Accordingly, our consolidated first quarter results are expected to decline sequentially driven largely by expectations for lower levels of completions related activity in the US. This reduction in activity by our customers is perceived to be temporary with a resumption of higher activity levels in the second half of 2019. WTI crude prices have already recovered 16% from year-end to a price of about $52.43 per barrel. We are estimating that first quarter revenues for our Well Site Services segment should range between $104 million and $109 million with segment EBITDA margin expected to average 12%. These estimates include lower levels of Permian Basin activity for our land drilling business which has come under pressure and is expected to contribute little to no EBITDA during the first quarter. As stated, we believe that activity in the US shelf plays in which we operate, should improve in the second half of 2019 with higher crude oil prices expected, leading to better full-year results for this segment. For our Downhole Technology segment, we currently estimate that our revenues will range between $48 million and $52 million as customer budgets are resetting flat to lower year-over-year. With the expectation of continued unabsorbed manufacturing cost, coupled with the cost of our technical solutions group, we believe that our segment EBITDA margins will average 14% to 16% in the first quarter. In our Offshore Manufactured Product segment, we are forecasting that first quarter military product sales and services revenues will reset to a more normalized level resulting in forecasted revenues for the segment ranging between $82 million and $90 million while segment EBITDA margins are expected to average 10% to 13% depending on product and service mix. To conclude, we continue to believe the opportunity set for a major deepwater project sanctions is trending more positively in 2019 which will benefit our Offshore Manufactured Product segment. Further we are committed to developing technology advancements focused on helping our customers make better wells, while carefully controlling our costs and generating positive free cash flow. Free cash flow generation, which we defined as cash flow from operations less CapEx is not new to us. We generated free cash flow in each of the past five years and plan to do so again in 2019. That completes our prepared comments. Vanessa, would you open up the call for questions and answers at this time?