Mike Kearney
Analyst · Simmons
Thank you, Melissa. We appreciate everyone joining us for the call today. Turning to Slide 4. We delivered solid fourth quarter results with total revenue increasing 14% sequentially to just over $96 million. From an adjusted EBITDA standpoint, we were able to move the company back into positive territory, and what we believe to be the bottom with adjusted EBITDA increasing to $4.6 million. From an operational perspective, we experienced improved customer activity levels, primarily in our Tubular Running Services segment. We witnessed multiple rigs going back to work in several core operating areas, after previously being sidelined due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, we experienced an improving revenue backdrop in our US onshore business, which mirrored the average US land rig count increasing over 20% in the fourth quarter. In our Tubular segment, revenue decreased slightly in the fourth quarter, mostly due to large tubular deliveries in the prior quarter. With that said, we were able to make progress on our goal of international expansion in this segment. Our tubular product and drilling tool sales increased internationally, which partially offset the fourth quarter revenue decline in the US market. In our Cementing Equipment segment, revenue increased slightly in the fourth quarter, mostly due to the improvement in our US land business. More importantly, we made substantial progress on our goal of international expansion in this segment, and I'm proud to report that our team delivered 35% year-over-year increase in international revenue. The success of our international expansion partially offset year-over-year US market revenue declines, which have not recovered back to pre-COVID levels. Our international expansion improved fourth quarter profitability and helped drive margins back toward the prior peak levels. Before covering specific geography highlights, I would like to provide an update on the COVID-19 situation. We were encouraged that the COVID virus impact lessened during the fourth quarter. This was primarily due to the fact that lockdowns were lifted and borders in many countries were reopened. This allowed many of our customers to return to work, rigs to be redeployed and activity levels to increase. Areas where we witnessed the greatest improvement in the fourth quarter occurred in regions that were some of the hardest hit by the pandemic during the prior two quarters, such as Africa. Contrary to all of these positive signs, we continue to contend with many countries and operators instituting additional layers of travel protocols and restrictions, which have reduced efficiencies and make it more challenging to operate. As you know, our customer base spans the globe and each of the geographies in which we operate faced different degrees of COVID related disruptions. We continue to see a wide range of customer responses, even though many of our customers are on their way back to pre COVID levels of activity. Even though we experienced improved customer activity levels in the fourth quarter, we continue to be prepared to flex our operations up or down as the COVID situation warrants. At this point, our greatest concern revolves around infection rates from these highly contagious new strains of COVID. Clearly, it is not within our control if we see new country wide lockdowns and border closings. We remain in active communication with our customers and we are working closely with them as we plan our operations. We will continue to update the market on how COVID-19 is impacting our business. Now I would like to describe some of our Q4 highlights, as noted on Slide 5, particularly our rig activity level movements in each of our geographies and some initial thoughts about 2021 activity levels. In our Asia Pacific region, activity levels remained steady with core customers in Indonesia, Malaysia and China. While the average offshore rig count in this region decreased over 20% sequentially, this was mostly driven by reduced activity in India, more of a commoditized market in which we choose not to participate. We did experience an initial uptake in our cementing operations in this region with several jobs executed in multiple countries during the fourth quarter. In line with our strategy of expanding our cementing operations internationally, we will remain focused on building upon this momentum over the coming quarters. Looking to 2021, we see flattish activity levels during the first quarter with increases across our business lines beginning in the second quarter of the year. We remain focused on expanding our cementing and drilling tools work in this region, as well as gaining additional market share for our core TRS work. The Middle East was our most challenged region during the fourth quarter, primarily due to lower rig count. This market showed resilience through the first several months of the pandemic as we gained additional market share with our existing customer base. In the last quarter of the year, we saw those gains flatten out and were affected by 19% average sequential decline in rig count in the fourth quarter. We are expecting rig counts to improve later in the year, which should position us nicely for year-over-year meaningful growth. In our Europe and Africa region, activity levels bottomed in the third quarter and improved significantly as multiple rigs returned to work in the fourth quarter. Our Europe-Africa region was our most improved area in the fourth quarter, and we believe that we will be on track to achieve pre-COVID revenue levels in 2022, with additional rig work commencing in the second quarter of this year. In Q4, our North American offshore region benefited from improved activity levels in the US Gulf of Mexico with additional rig deployments in the Caribbean and offshore Mexico. These improvements were partially offset by continued weakness in the Eastern Canada offshore market. We continue to be well positioned in all core markets within our North American offshore region and are well prepared to service our customers. We do see some customer activity dropping slightly during the first quarter in this region, and then a strong recovery beginning in the second quarter and continuing throughout the year, especially in the Caribbean and offshore Mexico. The US onshore market rebounded nicely throughout the fourth quarter, with average US land rig count being up over 20% sequentially, and ended the year at just over 350 rigs. Interestingly, there was no end of year seasonal downturn in US land as the rig count continued to rise through December and into January, reaching over 380 rigs at the end of last month. As we've previously discussed, our US land strategy focused on cost control and appropriately rightsizing the business to ensure we can flex our operations up further as the market continues to improve. The increased rig count and associated customer activity levels returned our US land business to positive adjusted EBITDA in the second half of the fourth quarter and leaves us well positioned for further improvement in 2021. Finally, our South America region, although small, exited the year showing declines in keeping with the international rig count movement. We are seeing notable improvement with anchor contracts in the region beginning in the first quarter and significant tendering activity, which Frank's is aggressively pursuing. Despite the challenges brought about in 2020, Frank's had several areas of notable achievement, the highlights of which are on Slide 6. As we moved into 2020, our organization set out to achieve several important goals that would positively reshape our organization and position us well for 2021 and beyond. Our goals included properly rightsizing our operational footprint in line with changing market conditions, aggressively reducing our overall cost structure, generating free cash flow and deploying value creating technologies that will increase efficiency, reliability and safety for our customers. Despite the challenges that the COVID pandemic created, I'm very proud to report that not only did we achieve our goals for 2020, in many cases, we exceeded them. As many of you know, our profit improvement program originally called for indirect and SG&A cost savings of $30 million in 2020 and another $15 million in 2021. I'm pleased to announce that we exceeded our cost reduction goals and achieved 27% year-over-year reduction in our overall cost structure, inclusive of operational cost savings and indirect operational and SG&A support cost. Melissa will elaborate more on the details of our cost reduction efforts later in the call, but I want to recognize and thank our organization for accomplishing this difficult but necessary achievement, especially during these challenging times created by the COVID pandemic. As I referred to earlier, we combined our Middle East and Asia Pac operating regions and streamlined other operations to allow us to quickly flex our field strength up or down in line with market conditions. This positions our organization well for accelerated margin expansion in 2021 and beyond as market conditions most likely continue to improve. Protecting our balance sheet was another major priority for our organization in 2020. Melissa will speak in more detail on our current liquidity position, but I'm very happy to report that despite a very challenging year, we exited 2020 in a position of financial strength matched by very, very few companies. The operational cost cuts we completed, along with our disciplined approach to capital spending, enabled us to generate positive free cash flow in the fourth quarter and for the full year. Our strong liquidity position and debt free balance sheet positions Frank's to take advantage of potential opportunities in the marketplace as energy demand continues to rebound. Finally, from a technology perspective, we stayed focused on our theme of innovation with a purpose and creating services and products that are responsive to our customers' needs. We began 2020 with a reorganization of our R&D and technology efforts with the renewed purpose of prioritizing projects with the greatest near term potential of commercialization and return on investment. We also became more focused on projects that incorporate digitalization to increase efficiency, reliability and safety. Our investment in equipment and software enabling remote operation keeps our employees and those our customers and other service firms out of the red zone. The next generation of our intelligent connection analyzed makeup system, or iCAM, is called iCAM Predictive. This technology provides automated evaluation of connection makeup data and seamlessly integrates with other Frank's TRS solutions. Additionally, our HI Tool, Data Logger, Harmonic Isolation Tool, enables more efficient data acquisition for effective downhole decision making. This product has been recognized by multiple customers for increased efficiency and meaningful cost savings. Finally, our CENTRI-FI, multi machine control system has now been deployed with several customers. This advanced technology has been recognized for reducing the headcount on a rig, which greatly increases safety and reduces our costs as well as those of our customers. And to top it off, as we mentioned last quarter, we were recognized as finalists, once again, at the World Oil Awards with three different technologies. Our organization is extremely proud of the fact that our SKYHOOK device took home the award for best health, safety, environment, sustainable development in the offshore category. This further demonstrates our focus on ESG efforts through technological innovation. In short, it was a big year for the commercialization of impactful technologies at Frank's. It's exciting to bring technologies to the market that reduce cost for Frank's as well as for our customers while increasing efficiency, operational reliability and improving safety. Lastly, I would like to call out our successful deployment of our Remote CAM viewer on multiple jobs in the US onshore market. Our Remote CAM viewer allows for the operation of the tong and the monitoring of the torque turn graphs to be performed remotely. This reduces cost by enhancing process efficiency and once again, improved safety by reducing personnel on location. The Remote CAM viewer enables one technician to communicate connection integrity on a real time basis, decreasing potential errors and reducing personnel on location by 50%. This technology is a positive needle mover for our customers. Another new technology focused on the US onshore market is our BIG EASY Composite Cement Retainer. We recently completed several successful jobs with this tool, which focuses on increasing drilling efficiency and enhancing wellbore integrity. Our isolation plug design has a large bore area that enables higher pump rates, reducing rig time, while at the same time, reducing the risk of erosion and the loss of seal integrity. Our isolation plug is easily drillable with any style of bit and has an improved slip retention design, enabling it to perform well even in the most difficult well conditions. In short, our isolation plug design has enabled several of our customers to experience quick, cost effective and efficient completion of remedial cementing operations. Now I'll turn the call over to Melissa Cougle, who will discuss our financial results.