Stuart Brightman
Analyst · Raymond James. Please go ahead
Thank you, Emily. And welcome to the TETRA Technologies’ second quarter 2015 earnings conference call. Elijio Serrano, our Chief Financial Officer; and Joseph Elkhoury, our Chief Operating Officer are also in attendance this morning and will be available to address any of your questions. I will provide a brief overview of the second quarter results then turn it over to Elijio for some additional details, which in turn will be followed by your questions. I must first remind you that this conference call may contain statements that are or maybe deemed to be forward-looking statements. These statements are based on certain assumptions and analyses made by TETRA, and are based on a number of factors. These statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the control of the company. You are cautioned that such statements are not guarantees of future performance and that actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. In addition, in the course of the call, we may refer to net debt, free cash flow, revenues, gross profit, profit before tax or earnings per share, excluding the Maritech segment, adjusted EBITDA or other non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to this morning’s press release or to our public website for reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures to the nearest GAAP measures. These reconciliations are not a substitute for financial information prepared in accordance with GAAP and should be considered within the context of our complete financial results for the period. I would first like to start with an overview of the second quarter then give a brief outlook of our market assumptions, which will also cover some of the rational behind the third quarter guidance included in this morning’s press release. While it is very unusual to give guidance in this market, given our strong performance in the second quarter, we do want to provide with some clarity regarding our net near-term outlook. With that, our second quarter 2015 adjusted earnings, excluding Maritech and unusual items was $0.16 per share. Some of the key highlights of the quarter include, record quarterly revenues, adjusted EBITDA and operating income for the Fluids division. Continued strength in our free cash flow was $43 million in the quarter excluding the impact of Maritech. We believe we continue to have line of site to the cash flow objectives that we set out earlier this year. As a result of our strong free cash flow a $38 million reduction in TETRA net debt compared to the end of the first quarter, where TETRA’s debt leverage continuing to trend down for the third consecutive quarter to 2.38, the very successful introduction of a new completion fluid in the Gulf of Mexico. All divisions were profitable on the basis of operating income in the second quarter, excluding reserve for bad debts for our Production Testing business. A record DSO improvement of 13 days from previous 68 days at the end of the first quarter, all this is being driven by continued reduction in operating expenses and efficiencies across the company and expansion of our customer base. Obviously the record performance of our Fluids division is driven by multiple factors. First, we had several major projects taking place in the second quarter that generated significant revenue and profitability. A portion of this was accelerated from the third quarter and pulled into the second quarter. The introduction of our new completion fluid was a positive contributor to the second quarter, along with continued strength in our international Fluids business and continued strengthen our Chemicals business, including the normal favorable impact of the summer season in Europe for the second quarter. And finally, we have the beneficiary of $2.6 million credit associated with insurance settlement in the Fluids division. Overall, an extremely strong quarter for this division which we are obviously very pleased with. Our Production Testing division reported an adjusted pretax loss of $425,000, excluding the impact of the reserve for bad debt. The Production Testing segment generated a profit of $575,000, a sequential improvement over the first quarter of this year. We continued to be very aggressive in cost management and equally important we continue to expand our customer base. With about half of the divisions business in international areas, we continuously strengthen those markets and believe the combination of the cost actions taken domestically, the expansion of the customer base and international strength will allow us to breakeven in this division at the operating income level. EBITDA for CSI Compressco was essentially flat from the first quarter to second quarter and significantly higher in the second quarter of 2014 due to the CSI acquisition last August. This week we celebrated our one-year anniversary of the acquisition, several trends are notable in this market that we touched on yesterday during the CSI Compressco call. First, we have seen slight deterioration and utilization in our Compression Services business driven primarily by the impact of the some of the liquid-related applications. We are seeing modest pricing pressure as we see on other Onshore Service businesses but not nearly to that same extent. However, we continue to progress very tackily in this business and invest in the higher horsepower compression where our utilization continues to be in the mid-90s. During the second quarter our equipment and part sales revenue increased by $30.8 million over first quarter, as we were able to accelerate certain deliveries based on the existing backlog. Also during the quarter we increased our distribution to $0.50 per unit, which represents a 10.5% increase versus the second quarter of 2014. Overall, we see this business bottoming as we approach the end of the year and believe that they will continue to have investment opportunities in the larger horsepower in the short-term. Our Offshore Services segment achieved an adjusted pretax profit of $2 million for the second quarter of 2015. This sequential improvement was expected during the seasonal element of this business. But more importantly was driven by very aggressive cost actions that allowed us to generate profit in an environment or our second quarter revenue compared to 2014 went from $56 million to $36 million. Our ability to continue to be probable for the full year in this business will be driven by our focus in cost and our ability to keep our major assets utilized in a very challenging market. During the second quarter we spent $4 million on America's abandonment decommissioning. We expect to finish the work that was budgeted early this year during 2015 with the objective of completing the obligations in 2016. Free cash flow for the quarter was $43 million. This was due to a combination of our improved cash earnings, continued reductions in capital expenditures and the aggressive management of our working capital as reflected in our reduced DSO metrics. As a result of this free cash flow generation, our net debt was reduced to $349 million and our debt leverage ratio was reduced to 2.38. The singular focus of our entire management organization is to generate free cash flow during this challenging market. We are very pleased with earnings for the quarter driven by the strength of our Fluids division and we are very pleased with our cash flow driven by those earnings, as well as ongoing focus on cost and working capital. The actions we have taken in headcount, cost, customer diversification, all fall under the common umbrella of controlling those elements that we are able to control in a time when predicting future activity continues to be a challenge to all of us. Last theory I would like to comment on is the guidance outlined in our press release for the third quarter, while we did not give guidance earlier this year, I feel the need to give it strictly for the third quarter, given the very strong results we reported for the second quarter. If I noted there were several factors in our Fluids division that were exceptional and should not be viewed as the ongoing run rate. For example the $2.6 million insurance settlement clearly is the second quarter event only. The timing of major projects in the Gulf of Mexico included the acceleration of several projects. Also as a reminder, our calcium chloride business has its seasonal peak in the second quarter. However, we expect that our successful launch of our new product and other products into the Fluids division, we will continue to create opportunities as we go forward. Overall, we expect the Fluids division to be strong in the third quarter, but not at a level of what we achieved in the second. As noted earlier, we expect our full year results for Production Testing and Offshore Services at the operating income level to be at breakeven. We expect our Offshore Services business to experience the typical seasonal progression, which would anticipate the third quarter being stronger than the second quarter. We expect Production Testing’s third quarter to be similar to what we reported on an adjusted basis for the second quarter. For CSI Compressco, we expect to see utilization of our fleet to continue to move down modestly through the end of the year. And we expect that our existing backlog will continue to support stronger equipment sales through the end of these years. All of these items allow us to be confident in the third quarter guidance we provided this morning. At this stage, I'll hand it over to Elijio.