Stuart Brightman
Analyst · Raymond James. Please go ahead
Thank you, Cole. Welcome to the TETRA Technologies' first quarter 2018 earnings conference call. Elijio Serrano, our Chief Financial Officer and Brady Murphy, our President and Chief Operating Officer, are also in attendance this morning and will be available to address any of your questions. I will highlight few key items and then it over to Elijio for some additional details, which in turn then be followed by your questions. I must first remind you that this conference call may contain certain statements that are or may be 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 those 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, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted profit before tax or adjusted earnings per share, backlog or other non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to this morning's news 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. We've been very focused on the segments that will deliver higher and more consistent and predictable returns on capital the future as well as simplifying our business model. With that in the mind during the first quarter, we took a series of actions to further position us in that direction. I will talk briefly about five key steps we’ve taken, mention where we will invest in the future, touch on the first quarter highlights then turn it over to Elijio to provide for the color on the first quarter results. As we look back over the last three years of this challenging and prolonged downturn, many businesses within our space have been tested. During this period both TETRA and CSI Compressco remained EBITDA and free cash flow positive. We believe this is a significant accomplishment given the severity and the duration of the downturn, and we believe this accomplishment reflects the business model we have and some of the competitive advantages that we have. We’ve continued to evolve our organization to generate more consistent results with better returns on capital. With that in mind, last year we began working on several initiatives that came to fruition over the first several months. The first of these actions was to divest of our offshore decommissioning business in our Maritech obligations. While the decommissioning business was EBITDA positive through the cycle when most of the competition went through restructuring, we do not feel this was a segment that we delivered consistent and predictable returns on capital. Additionally, we felt the uncertainties around Maritech asset retirement obligations created an overhang on our stock and therefore we endeavored to divest of this business. As part of the transaction, we receive $3 million for the inventory, kept the balance of the working capital, receive the $7.5 million note payable at the end of 2019 and relieved ourselves of the 47 million of asset retirement obligations. In addition to protect against the AROs reverting back to TETRA, we received surety bonds equal to the ARO liabilities. Divesting of this business simplifies our business model and reduces the volatilities from the seasonality inherent in the business. Second, it is evidenced that the growth in the coming years will be in the U.S. shale plays, and it is also evident that the amount of water and fluids around the well site will continue to grow exponentially. The U.S. onshore rig count is now over a 1,000 we have a strong presence in all the U.S. shale plays and are providing flow back services, water transfer services and chemicals. It is our opinion that this growth will continue in the future and that we can capitalize on our strong and diverse customer base at infrastructure by adding incremental services. As a result, we targeted and completed the acquisition of SwiftWater during the quarter. With this acquisition, we believe we are one of the largest water management providers in the Permian Basin. When we announced the acquisition, we guided towards annualized EBITDA of 16 million to 20 million associated with this acquisition. March was the first month that this business was part of the TETRA organization and SwiftWater generated 821 million and 2.3 million of EBITDA already exceeding our original expectations. Equally important, the cross-selling opportunities between the lay-flat hose offerings of SwiftWater and our TETRA STEEL are significant. We are already seeing the cross-selling synergy. The capabilities to sell flow back services to the SwiftWater customers, is also significant and we're seeing those opportunities. We will be expanding our service offerings to our customers and begun to incorporate a most fulsome water and fluid solution around the well site, handling water for fracking, produced water in post flow back water. This integrated solution we believe will open further opportunities to sell to our existing customers. The payback on water transfer CapEx occurred in the 18 months and lower period and we continue to be focused in investing in this area. We are aggressively pushing pricing given the strong demands, price increases for our proprietary lay-flat hose TETRA STEEL or increasing double-digits and in some cases we are seeing acceleration. TETRA STEEL is ideally suited to move produced and treated water for our super major and large independent customers that are highly sensitive to save environmental practices. The third area of focus is creating a more flexible debt structure that allows us to invest growth capital into high return and quick payback projects. With that in mind, we launched a series of actions to refinance the maturing debt to CSI Compressco with the intention of removing maintenance covenants and creating liquidity to invest into our existing customer bases at prices approximating 15% above their rates previously in place. This was achieved with the 350 million seven years secured bond offering that put over a 100 million of cash on the balance sheet. Since the offering was complete, we have initiated plans to build and deploy to our fleet approximately 115,000 horsepower of large compression equipment targeted at the gathering systems in the Texas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma markets. All our orders for engines and compression compresses to fabricate equipment for our fleet are based on committed orders from existing customers. We are also in the process of adding a $50 million asset based revolver also with no maintenance covenants to provide access to incremental liquidity. The fourth area of focus is building depth in our management team as we go into a growth environment. In the fourth quarter, we added Owen Serjeant of President of CSI Compressco. In February, we hired Brady Murphy as President and Chief Operating Officer. We've added during the process of additional operations Vice President in North America, supply chain and manufacturing for CSI Compressco in Midland. Coming out of the downturn, we are leaned, executing in the growth market, maintaining our high service levels, safe practices and ensuring we deliver to support the higher prices we’re pushing across all service and product lines required solid management team. These additions in conjunction with the leadership from SwiftWater give us opportunity to grow and deliver on our commitments. Fifth, we’re now reporting our results in three segments to increase transparency into the performance of our business. We believe water management and flowback services are better aligned consistent with my earlier comments on managing fluids around the well site. This is standalone segment. Completion fluids and products revolve around our integrated business model that has fully built out and requires very little capital to handle increased volume. We are seeing some preliminary signs of a rebound in deepwater with some FIDs getting sanctioned and others firing about CS Neptune on a global basis. Compression remains as we previously reported as the segment onto itself. For the first quarter, I'll highlight the following items. CSI Compressco utilization continues to improve and prices are being increased by approximately 15%. Our future investments are targeted at a select group of existing customers in our core areas of strength. Aftermarket services one of our fastest growing business segments, as this segment grows with no capital expenditures required and has minimal level of working capital. For fabrication, we secured in January our largest order in the Company's history, pushing our fabrication backlog for third-party sales to over $100 million. We are leveraging our internal fabrication capacity in Midland, which we think is cost and cycle time advantages in supplementing that with outsourced vendors as we meet this growing commitment. Water management continues to increase driven by the high volumes of water supporting frac activity. Production testing in the U.S. also continues to increase. During the fourth quarter, we had an EPF and in the second quarter, we anticipate another one. This is a focus for us internationally. Adjusted EBITDA for water management and flowback testing was 18.9% very strong in the quarter compared to 16% in the fourth quarter and 10.2% in the first quarter of last year. We’re successfully pushing across price increases as well as increasing activity and focus on differentiating our product with those customers that recognized that differentiated. Commercial discussions are well advanced on several CS Neptune opportunities, we remain confident that one to two of these projects will materialize and have a significant impact on our results in the second half of these years. At this stage, they are moving forward but not to the point we can formally announce them. Equally important in my opinion is the sales pipeline for Neptune continues to increase measured by enquires, opportunities, mature discussions beyond these two projects I've referenced. As a result of the actions we've taken and the momentum we are seeing we are introducing total year guidance for 2018. Consolidated revenue is projected to be between 945 million to 985 million while adjusted EBITDA is projected to be between 168 million and 188 million. After the capital investments that we are targeting at the high return water management opportunities, we expect TETRA only free cash flow to be between 15 and 25 million also impacted by the working capital associated with the growth environment. We've included in our press release this morning's projections to 2018 by division and I encourage you to review that especially given the new segment reporting. At this stage, I'll turn it over to Elijio Serranoto for some financial details.