Earnings Labs

Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Inc. (WH)

Q3 2008 Earnings Call· Fri, Nov 14, 2008

$85.35

+0.01%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the third quarter 2008 WSP Holdings Limited earnings conference call. My name is Delphi and I’ll be your operator for today. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. We will conduct a question-and- answer session before the end of the conference. (Operator Instructions) I would now like to turn the presentation over to your host for today’s call Mr. Crocker Coulson. You may proceed sir.

Crocker Coulson

Management

Thank you. Good morning ladies and gentlemen, good evening to those of you who are joining us from China and welcome to all of you to Gulf resources third quarter 2008 conference call. I’m Crocker Coulson from CCG the company’s Investor Relations firm. With us today on the call is Mr. Longhua Piao, the Chairman and CEO of WSP Holdings; Mr. Xizhong Xu, Director and Assistant General Manager; Dr. Henry Chang, Vice President of Startegy, Planning and General Counsel; and Mr. Yip Kok Thi, the company’s Chief Financial Officer. Before we get started, I’d like to remind our listeners that management’s prepared remarks in this call contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties and management may make additional forward-looking statements in response to your questions. Therefore, WSP Holdings claims the protection of the Safe Harbor for forward-looking statements that’s contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ from those discussed today, due to such risks but not limited to fluctuations in customer demand, management of rapid growth, intensity of competition from other providers of OCTG products and services, general economic conditions, geopolitical events and regulatory changes and other information detailed from time-to-time in the company’s filings and future filings with the SEC. Although, WSP Holdings believe that the expectations in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, there’s no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. In addition, any projections as to the company’s future performance represents management’s estimates as of today, November 14, 2008 and WSP Holdings assumes no obligation to update these projections in the future as market conditions change. With those formalities out of the way, it’s now my pleasure to turn this call over to Mr. Piao, the Chairman and CEO of WSP Holdings, for opening remarks…

Henry Chang

Management

Thank you, Mr. Piao and hello everybody. WSP’s operational performance can be exclusively reviewed in four sections: Section one, from international demand. While there are a lot of frustrations in the international Oil Country Tubular Goods market we remain confident that overall international demand is strong for OCTG’s products. We know that lower global oil and gas projects are leading a number of international oil and gas explorations and production companies to reduce production and try to lower their explorations and production costs; however, we expect our international customers to continue to purchase our products because we can offer them a wider range of high quality API certified and high grade non-API product at various product levels which are more than 20% to 30% less expensive than our competitors. In July, for example we received a significant order of 8,217 metric tonnes of API product from Chickasaw Distributors which is a U.S. distributor. We expect to complete delivering a vast order by December 2008. In August, in a sense we received a second significant order for our Chickasaw for an additional 5,368 metric tonnes of non-API high-collapse casing pipes and 1,599 metric tonnes of API tubing pipe with a total of approximately $15 million. We expect to complete delivery for these orders by the end of May 2009. Section two; strong domestic demand. As China works to ensure these energy securities, we continue to see strong domestic demand for our product. China’s proven oil and gas reserve have increased in the last couple of years, but energy production has not kept pace with rocket economic slowdown. Currently almost half of the oil consumed by China is imported from all over the world. China’s governmental policy is to develop as many projects of domestic energy as possible. The current five year…

Yip Kok Thi

Management

Thank you Dr. Chang. I would like to thank you all for joining this third quarter 2008 earnings conference call. Our third quarter 2008 results continue to reflect the growing importance of our non-API product sales compared to API product sales. Going forward, our acquisitions of Mengfeng steel will allow us to control the most important raw material that we use in our manufacturing processes, while we expand our productions, enter new markets and acquire new customers. Our net revenue in the third quarter of 2008 was $282.4 million, up 124.5% from $125.8 million in the third quarter of 2007. Increased sales revenue continued to result from greater non-API sales compared to API sales. Our average selling price in the third quarter of 2008 was 1,576 metric tonnes compared to 1,219 metric tonnes in the third quarter of 2007 and 1,437 metric tonnes in the second quarter of 2007. Total sales revenue was 179,175 metric tonnes of total productions for the third quarter of 2008, up 73.6% from 103,216 metric tonnes of production for the third quarter of 2007. Non-API products have higher selling prices than ever the API products and accounted for 34.9% of net revenue in the third quarter of 2008 compared to 33.6% in the third quarter of 2007. Sales of non-API products were $98.7 million in the third quarter of 2008, an increase of 135.4% from sales of $41.9 million in the same period of 2007. API product sales were $140.9 million, an 84.2% increase from sales of $76.5 million in the third quarter of 2007. Non-API product sales volume was 49,822 metric tonnes, an increase of 88.2% from 26,475 metric tonnes sold in the third quarter of 2007. API product sales volume was 94,935 metric tonnes, a 35.3% increase from the 70,148 metric tonnes sold…

Henry Chang

Management

Thank you, Mr. Thi. In summary WSP Holdings is implementing its capacity for becoming an increasing vertically integrated lot of companies. The upstream pressure of Mengfeng Steel will begin to have a positive impact on our product costs in the fourth quarter of the year of 2008. We expanded production and of course capacity in Northern China where it will be available soon. We are actively marketing our product to new domestic and international customers. We are expanding our manufacturing facilities to meet domestic and international demand for our product, while we are taking greater control of our cost of production. Prices for oil and gas have recently fallen from high level. Instead of being given by high quality, the oil and gas industry is now concentrating on energy facility. With that, we would like to open this conference call to your questions. Mr. Piao, Mr. Xu, Mr. Yip and myself. Operator.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Ian Zaffino - Oppenheimer & Company.

Brian Werdesheim

Analyst

This is Brian Werdesheim for Ian. I have a couple of questions. One would be, as far as demand for the non-API products. I mean your customers use those in the harsh and further offshore drilling environment and I assume that they have a higher marginal cost per barrel to operate there. Do you have any idea, what the marginal costs available for your customers to produce in those harsh environments are?

Yip Kok Thi

Management

Brian, could you repeat the question, please?

Brian Werdesheim

Analyst

My question, I guess more simply put would be demand for your non-API products, I know that your customers use non-API products in really the higher cost areas to produce and I was wondering if you knew the marginal cost per barrel for your customers to produce in the harsher environment areas where they use your non-API product? Longhua Piao [Interpreted]: Normally, for exploration and production in China, the economic threshold will be around $40 or maybe less that $40 per barrel. In the northern part of China, it’ll be much lower and for our non-API products, we would assume the cost would be higher in Northern American areas and less expensive in Asia, in China. So it will be much lower in Asia as well as in Russia. Regarding, the cost I would assume it to be around $20 to $30 per barrel in China whereas the price for API product maybe nearly half of that price.

Brian Werdesheim

Analyst

Also as far as volumes in the quarter, can you tell me what percentage was domestic and what percentage was export?

Yip Kok Thi

Management

For the third quarter of 2008, the share of export market is still higher than the domestic market, but moving forward in the fourth quarter we expect to sell more to the domestic market and for 2009 we are actually looking at the more present market share for both the export and domestic market.

Brian Werdesheim

Analyst

I have understanding of what’s driving domestic demand, but what is it that’s driving your international demand or that you expect to drive your international demand with oil prices at where they are? Where is that demand coming from internationally?

Henry Chang

Management

For the international market currently our major focus is in North America, especially the United States.

Brian Werdesheim

Analyst

And are you still seeing strong demand there?

Henry Chang

Management

The demand is for OCTG product has been strong in North America.

Brian Werdesheim

Analyst

And as far as your backlog, is there any possibility of customers coming and renegotiating or have you seen any delays in projects and therefore delays in your backlog or any cancellations?

Henry Chang

Management

We don’t have any problem with steel buyers, but on small distributors, we have some delays or renegotiations on the product.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Darwin Young - Harvard Management.

Darwin Young

Analyst

Brian asked one or two questions about the breakeven point, but I don’t think that question is answered, so I’m going to ask the question again in Chinese?

Crocker Coulson

Management

So, Dr. Chang can you just summarize, what Mr. Piao before we go forward. Longhua Piao [interpreted]: In terms of economic slowdown for exploration, he just mention that the number for domestic market in China, the economic threshold will be a wrong time to purchase U.S. dollars per barrel, while in Northern America it could be around and above $0.5 per barrel, while in Russia it could be lesser that $20, while in the Middle East it can be around $5 to $10. In relating to backlog we just mentioned it has some small distributors who delayed or relocated the orders business, but as you might notice in our report we have a lot of the specifics. In addition in terms of the sale for example because we are dealing with some six oil and exporting companies, so we wouldn’t the worry about our order. 60% of our sales through the phase are non-API product. In terms of distribution in the United States, we have numerous distributors. We normally sell our product to distributors in the States. Normally the order take place according to the variety of our products such as API and non-API and as well as a plan of the exploration and production companies. As far as the inventory is concerned it changes from time-to-time in this States. Last of Mr. Piao remarks is, to the best of my knowledge in September in the USA there were $1.8 million metric tonnes of OCTG product in September, this can be our guideline.

Operator

Operator

You have no further questions at this time. I’d like to turn it back to management for closing remarks.

Crocker Coulson

Management

Thank you, operator. On behalf of the entire WSP Holdings management team I want to thank all of you for your interest in WSP Holdings. If you have any interest in contacting or visiting the company, please let us know. Contact information is available on the company’s website www.wsphl.com. Again, thank you for joining us on this call. This concludes WSP Holdings third quarter 2008 earnings conference call. Thank you gentlemen.

Operator

Operator

Thank you for attending in today’s conference. This concludes the presentation. You may now disconnect. Good day.