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Expro Group Holdings N.V. (XPRO)

Q3 2015 Earnings Call· Tue, Nov 3, 2015

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning and welcome to the Frank's International Third Quarter 2015 Earnings Call. My name is Brandon and I will be your operator for today. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Please note this conference is being recorded. And I will now turn it over to Blake Holcomb. You may begin, sir. Blake Holcomb - Director – Investor Relations, Frank's International NV: Thanks, Brandon. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Frank's International conference call to discuss third quarter 2015 earnings. I am Blake Holcomb, Director of Investor Relations. Joining me today on the call are Gary Luquette, President and Chief Executive Officer; Jeff Bird, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, John Walker, Executive Vice President of Operations and Keith Mosing, Executive Chairman. We have posted a presentation on our website that we will refer to throughout this call. If you would like to view this presentation, please go to the Investor's section of our website at franksinternational.com. Gary will begin today's comments with operational highlights and an overview of the quarter. Jeff will then provide a more detailed overview of our operations and financial results. Gary will conclude with his closing remarks. Everyone will be available for questions after prepared comments. In the interest of time, we ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up question during the Q&A session. Before we begin commenting on the third quarter results, there are a few legal items that we would like to cover beginning of Page 3. First, remarks and answers to questions by company representatives on today's call may refer to or contain forward-looking statements. Such remarks or answers are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. And from Credit Suisse, we have Jim Wicklund on line. Please go ahead. James Wicklund - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Good morning, guys. Gary P. Luquette - President, CEO & Member-Supervisory Board: Good morning. Jeffrey J. Bird - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Good morning. James Wicklund - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): You talked about the Middle East and Brazil as places you'd like to be, and I know that in the past, Brazil hasn't afforded you the pricing and margin opportunity you'd like, but just in general in addition to Exxon and Chevron, it seems that the most complex wells were part of the most complex and expensive projects and those are getting pushed to the right. Is this really the bottom line of what's hitting and are there opportunities really in the next couple of years in those two markets? Gary P. Luquette - President, CEO & Member-Supervisory Board: Jim, I think they are, and I'll tell you these big projects represent the largest accumulations, right. And you can slide those to the right and still preserve the projects, but at some point you're going to have to act and you've got to remember that many of these deepwater developments or pre-salt developments take many years in order to move from the exploration and evaluation phase all the way through development and then eventually first oil. So I think what's happening now is our customers are managing short-term cash flow needs, but at some point, you can't slide it to the right anymore without having lease expiration or some other consequence that would cause the project to move out of the inventory. So we're seeing this sliding to the right, but there is a limit at that. James Wicklund - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Okay. We know there are complex wells in Brazil, but is there enough complexity in the Middle East to warrant, or we should expect to see, any meaningful improvement in markets whether it's acquired or not? Gary P. Luquette - President, CEO & Member-Supervisory Board: Well, the Middle East the attraction there is the staying power of the national oil companies and some of the improved economics just because of the lack of geologic, geophysical risk, reservoir risk, as well as well complexity. So not all markets are the same obviously, some markets represent higher margin opportunities, others represent a more stable base and managing the overall portfolio is what we're trying to do to keep top-line revenues at or higher than what we're seeing now.

Operator

Operator

Okay. And from Barclays we have David Anderson. Please go ahead.

J. David Anderson - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

Thank you. You mentioned about a shift of mix in work internationally, you say not as high margin, not requiring much hiring of equipment. Is this just primarily related to exploration activities starting to go away? I was just wondering if you could just kind of help us – kind of understand kind of which region as most pronounced? It looks like West Africa is probably the most. But can you kind of give us a little bit of a walk through on how it's shifting in other regions as well? Gary P. Luquette - President, CEO & Member-Supervisory Board: So it is mostly West Africa in the short-term. Obviously these big projects that are slipping to the right also have some pretty substantial well complexity challenges with them that also represent opportunities for higher margins, but those are ones we think eventually will have to eventually be committed to and executed. But in particular (28:33) we mentioned in my opening remarks the lack of economic success that they've had in the sub-salt play in Angola has really caused a huge shift in well complexity. We're pursuing other opportunities in West Africa to offset some of the loss that we see in this sub-salt play, but those would come with less complex wells and obviously less complex wells typically translates into a lower margin operation.

J. David Anderson - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

Understood. If I just shift my attention over to the Gulf of Mexico, the resiliency there was certainly a pleasant surprise this quarter. You had mentioned about in the release about customers are moving past operational delays, I was wondering if you could expand upon that comment a little bit and whether or not you think you've kind of hit this kind of stability level here in the Gulf. I know in the past couple of quarters you've talked about the same shift of business, kind of going away from kind of the drilling to other things. I was just wondering if you could kind of talk about those two elements. Gary P. Luquette - President, CEO & Member-Supervisory Board: Well, in our last quarter call we mentioned there were an abnormal amount of either infrastructure delays associated with installation problems. There were an abnormal high number of loop current impacts that set drilling back, as well as just some well drilling and completion problems. It was abnormal. We felt that, as we would move out of that quarter, we would start seeing some of that work pick up and we have. I'd love to tell you that our confidence that operational issues are going to go away and we're going to see a new normal that is reflected in what we saw this quarter, but it's really impossible to predict that. We'd like to think that our customers learn from some of their challenges and as they drill subsequent wells they build those learnings into their execution plan and avoid those, but it's just hard for us to predict that.

Operator

Operator

From Jefferies, we have Brad Handler online. Please go ahead.

Bradley Philip Handler - Jefferies LLC

Analyst

Thanks. Good morning, guys. I guess I found myself trying to keep track of a couple of things, so if I ask you to repeat a little, forgive me. But I'm trying to sort through in the international markets the aggregate effect of pricing, the aggregate effect maybe of rig count, just in terms of trying to understand the revenue mix and then maybe better the margin impacts. Jeffrey J. Bird - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Sure. So this is Jeff Bird. So if you look at Africa, we saw about $2 million impact in the quarter from a pricing standpoint on a Q-on-Q basis. The rig count decline was specific to the pre-salt falling off and we've seen a little bit of mix there as well that impacted as well. The pre-salts tend to be the higher margin segment of our business; and as we move out of that, we see the margins come down as well, but about $2 million from a pricing standpoint.

Bradley Philip Handler - Jefferies LLC

Analyst

Okay. And it sounds like you had a little in Latin America and Asia Pac as well. Was the aggregate impact of pricing just by eyeball regions, is it fairly flat in the quarter sequentially? Jeffrey J. Bird - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Sequentially fairly flat in the quarter on the International side.

Operator

Operator

From RBC, we have Kurt Hallead online. Please go ahead.

Kurt Hallead - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst

Hi, good morning. Gary P. Luquette - President, CEO & Member-Supervisory Board: Morning. Jeffrey J. Bird - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Morning.

Kurt Hallead - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst

I wanted to do get into maybe tubular services here a little bit. You had obviously a record quarter there, indicating that it'll come down in the fourth quarter. Maybe gauge how you're handicapping the magnitude of that change heading out into the fourth quarter and any initial prognostications on how you think the first quarter of 2016 might set up there? Jeffrey J. Bird - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. So this is Jeff Bird again. Specifically on the tubular segment, we talked earlier in the year we saw some subpar margins earlier in the year and we talked about those margins coming back to the 20% level. They exceeded that this quarter. They exceeded that this quarter primarily because, as we talked about, Tubular Sales can be pretty lumpy from quarter-to-quarter. So we wouldn't expect to see the level of sales that we had this quarter. It comes down to more of an average. If you really look at the average for the year, you're going to see that business come down to more of the average for the year. Things move sometimes from quarter-to-quarter and makes the numbers look odd there. But you can see the average revenue, if you average those first three quarters, that would be about the average in the fourth quarter with about a 20% margin. And then we're not really looking or commenting right now on 2016 outlook.

Kurt Hallead - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst

Got it. All right. That's good for me, thanks.

Operator

Operator

From Seaport Global Securities, we have Ken Sill online. Please go ahead.

Ken Sill - Seaport Global Securities LLC

Analyst

Yeah. Hey, guys. I was really going to ask some housekeeping questions. We didn't get the guidance here on, with the cost cutting, what might happen to SG&A, what's going on with DD&A with the CapEx coming down, and then get an idea of the magnitude of head count reductions you guys have done so far. Jeffrey J. Bird - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Sure. So if we look through the end of the third quarter, we've eliminated about 1,000 positions from the beginning of the year till now. As I said on the last call, we're not going to make a big bang announcement about those things anymore. You're just going to see them in the releases and you're going to see the benefit of those falling through to the bottom line. You see that in the deleveraging side that we showed earlier that that's starting to go to the bottom line there. As far as CapEx, we're calling a CapEx number of about $75 million for next year. Now, that's down substantially from the $120 million that we're now advertising for this year. We'll continue to evaluate that $75 million and we could go either way with it. We've got a very strong balance sheet. So if we saw opportunistic areas where we needed to invest, we can certainly do that. But right now, $75 million is the target.

Ken Sill - Seaport Global Securities LLC

Analyst

And what's going to be the impact on SG&A and DD&A run rate given the head count reductions and lower CapEx? Jeffrey J. Bird - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: So I'll speak specifically around – I think what you're asking if I understand is you're asking specifically around what the cost benefit is of the positions eliminated. And our overall productivity projects, inclusive of that, are base closures and positions eliminated. The annualized benefit of that is around $55 million.

Operator

Operator

From Simmons, we have Ian Macpherson on line. Please go ahead. Ian Macpherson - Simmons & Company International: Thanks. I appreciate the slides. Those are very helpful. I had a question on the Gulf of Mexico market share. That's a big impressive step-up in this past Q3. Is that a blip or have you taken a significant structural gain there that's going to be sustainable over the coming quarters there towards two-thirds market share? Gary P. Luquette - President, CEO & Member-Supervisory Board: I would like to think that it's a structural shift. But again, many of these projects are individual wells, are competitively bid. Rigs move from region to region. So this has always been kind of our backyard. It's an area where we have great capability, especially when we think about lower tertiary trend wells that require the highest of technology and capacities to be able to execute. So I'd love to think that there is a structural shift there that could be sustained, but it's hard to really be able to say that with any confidence. Ian Macpherson - Simmons & Company International: Okay. Fair enough. Thanks, Gary. And then I had a question separately on your land margins below breakeven currently. Is there a target or any opportunity to bring those up to better than break-even just through cost improvements or do you really need the markets to turn up in order to get margins positive there? Jeffrey J. Bird - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Sure, let me comment on that. I think a couple of things there. One is we continue to look at the cost base there. So we've shut down – year-to-date, we've closed 10 bases and we're continuing to evaluate that as we go forward, but there's certainly a level you reach where we wouldn't want to go below because this is a strategic business for us. And we really look at it over the entire cycle and we recognize that right now we might continue to operate below breakeven. But if you look at it over the entire market cycle, it's a very good business for us, and it's a business we want to be in. So we'll do some cost actions, but candidly we are going to need some market recovery to really get back above breakeven.

Operator

Operator

And from Goldman Sachs, we have Waqar Syed on line. Please go ahead. Waqar Mustafa Syed - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Thank you for taking my call. On International business line, could you give us a breakdown of how the land versus offshore business kind of tracks on a year-over-year basis and sequentially? Jeffrey J. Bird - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: We really don't break out the International business between land and onshore, so wouldn't want to comment on that. Waqar Mustafa Syed - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Okay. But generally, they were kind of in the same ballpark in terms of changes? Jeffrey J. Bird - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah, I'd say they're in the same ballpark. Waqar Mustafa Syed - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Okay. And then on the M&A side, you mentioned complementary businesses, could you provide us with any color on what kind of business would you be interested in – maybe be interested in and secondly what's the appetite for debts on the balance sheet? Gary P. Luquette - President, CEO & Member-Supervisory Board: Okay. So when we talk about complementary product and service lines, it would be definitely limited to within the well construction space. There's still a lot of opportunities there. For instance, there's a lot of jewelry that is clamped on to casing and tubulars that we run. Obviously, that'd be an opportunity. We are looking at just about anything to increase our time on the rig floor. So when we talk about that sort of thing, we're looking at things that don't move too far out of our sweet spot, but things that would complement what we're good at and what our main business is today. Jeffrey J. Bird - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: And just building then on Gary's comment around debt on the balance sheet, we would up to 2 times trough EBITDA from a debt standpoint; we'd consider something in that range. Obviously, with having $0.5 billion on the balance sheet today, we've got a little bit of room to move before we have to worry about that.

Operator

Operator

From SunTrust, we have Chase Mulvehill on line. Please go ahead.

B. Chase Mulvehill - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst

Yeah, thank you. Good morning. Gary P. Luquette - President, CEO & Member-Supervisory Board: Good morning. Jeffrey J. Bird - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Good morning.

B. Chase Mulvehill - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst

So, I guess, the first question, I want to come back to Handler's question around pricing. I think prior comments around pricing was that you had given 5% to 10% price discounts. So where do we sit in regards to pricing average kind of across your business right now offshore? Jeffrey J. Bird - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: On the offshore side?

B. Chase Mulvehill - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst

Yeah. Jeffrey J. Bird - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: The offshore side is probably still in that 5% to 10% range and we talked earlier that – so if we talk about the three markets, U.S. Land's obviously been hit the hardest from a pricing standpoint. Second is Gulf of Mexico. In International, we've seen a little bit of movement, but we've not seen much movement at all on the International side. But overall, offshore is probably in that 5% to 10% range. If you start adding in the U.S. Land, that becomes a larger number.

B. Chase Mulvehill - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst

Right, right, okay. And on the International side, how much did you say that 5% to 10%, is that more International or Gulf of Mexico? Jeffrey J. Bird - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: More weighed towards Gulf of Mexico right now.

B. Chase Mulvehill - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. All right. And the reason that you haven't seen it in International is just because that's more of a contracted business or how should we think about that? Jeffrey J. Bird - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: More contracted complex wells where, quite frankly, we've got the right technology and we can continue to maintain those margins. Gary P. Luquette - President, CEO & Member-Supervisory Board: And our national oil company customers and the IOCs that work for them have just not moved as quickly in the price space as we've seen in the U.S.

Operator

Operator

And from Credit Suisse, we have Jim Wicklund back online. Please go ahead. James Wicklund - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Me again, guys. Gary P. Luquette - President, CEO & Member-Supervisory Board: Hey, Jim. James Wicklund - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Over the last couple of years, you guys have won some significant contracts that boosted your regional market share. Are there any material contracts floating around right now in the industry that would give someone a player to gain share in a particular market? Gary P. Luquette - President, CEO & Member-Supervisory Board: Jim, I don't think I would feel comfortable in answering that question just because obviously there's some competitive forces at place at work here, so I think we'll let that one just lie. James Wicklund - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): That's okay, but the way you answered it still helped, so I appreciate that. Gary P. Luquette - President, CEO & Member-Supervisory Board: Yes. James Wicklund - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): And the last question U.S. onshore, you say, bounces back more quickly and sharply and I take it on a relative basis that at the expense of deepwater. So thinking that things move into balance next year, how much is the delay if U.S. onshore bounces back quickly and sharply, how much is there a delay before deepwater starts to respond? Gary P. Luquette - President, CEO & Member-Supervisory Board: Well, I think the deepwater response, Jim, is going to be more a function of lease obligations, lease schedules, and major capital project schedule than they're going to be pricing related. Obviously, if there is options to defer, because your risk profile is a little more difficult, a little more challenged in the deepwater, I would expect those to be slid to the right as far as the operator can, because those represent the more capital intense projects and if it's exploration or delineation drilling represents your highest risk profile wells. But as I mentioned earlier in response to a question, the fungibility of that program is limited and, at some point, you have to decide whether you're going to let that discovery go and allow it to go back into the till for others to bid on later or whether you're going to go ahead and commit to a project on the premise that you'll see price recovery longer term and that will intersect with the first oil schedule.

Operator

Operator

From SunTrust, we have Chase Mulvehill. Please go ahead.

B. Chase Mulvehill - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst

Hey, thanks for letting me back in. So if we can kind of just hash out the 4Q outlook, I mean, if we kind of walk through each of them, the Tubular Sales is obviously going to be down, you talked about 20% margins, Gulf of Mexico sounds flattish. Obviously, whatever we think is going to happen here on U.S. onshore we can make our own assumptions there. So that just leaves International, if you can kind of just give us a little bit of color around revenue expectations and maybe margin expectations? Jeffrey J. Bird - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Sure. I think that Q3 to Q4 International is going to be flattish as well. From a margin standpoint, we talked about the cost actions we're taking. You won't see a meaningful impact on those. In the fourth quarter, you will likely see that benefit more in the first quarter next year as we work through those, but I think you'd see it flattish from Q3 to Q4.

B. Chase Mulvehill - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. Awesome. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And we have no further questions at this time. We will now turn it back to Blake Holcomb for final remarks. Blake Holcomb - Director – Investor Relations, Frank's International NV: Thank you, everybody, for joining the call today. If you have any follow-up questions, feel free to reach out to me in my contact information. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect.