Hello, and welcome to the Expro Q1 2023 Earnings Presentation. My name is Adi and I'll be coordinating your call today. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand over to Quinn Fanning, CFO. The floor is yours. Please go ahead.

Welcome to Expro's first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. I am joined today by Expro, CEO, Mike Jardon. First Mike and I will share our prepared remarks then we will open it up for questions. We have an accompanying presentation on our first quarter results that is posted on the Expro website, expro.com under the Investors section. In addition, supplemental financial information for the first quarter and prior periods is downloadable on the Expro website, likewise under the Investors section. I'd like to remind everyone that some of today's comments may refer to or contain forward-looking statements. Such remarks are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. Such statements speak only as of today's date and the company assumes no responsibility to update forward-looking statements as of any future date. The company has included in its SEC filings cautionary language identifying important factors that could cause actual results to be materially different from those set forth in any forward-looking statements. A more complete discussion of these risks is included in the company's SEC filings, which may be accessed on the SEC's website sec.gov or on our website at expro.com. Please note that any non-GAAP financial measures discussed during this call are defined and reconciled to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure in our first quarter 2023 earnings release, which can also be found on our website. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Mike.

Thank you, Quinn. Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. As noted in our press release, Q1 2023 revenue was up 21% year-over-year and consistent with prior guidance was down just modestly compared to a strong fourth quarter of 2022, recognizing that our first quarter is typically impacted by the winter season in the northern hemisphere and customer budget dynamics, I am pleased with our start to 2023 in terms of revenue performance. However, delivery challenges with several projects negatively impacted our adjusted EBITDA performance relative to expectations. More specifically, as was noted in our press release, we recognized approximately $11 million of unrecoverable mobilization start-up and commissioning costs on several projects in Asia Pacific that we did not anticipate when we provided Q1 guidance. Other positive and negative variances in the first quarter were generally small and largely offsetting. Excluding such mobilization start-up and commissioning costs, Q1 2023 adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin would have been $53 million and 16% respectively, which is directionally consistent with our expectations for the March quarter as of our last earnings conference call. Also excluding LWI related costs, Q1 2023 adjusted EBITDA would have been roughly 35% higher than the first quarter of 2022 in terms of adjusted EBITDA. In regards to our vessel deployed Light Well Intervention or what we call LWI system, we commenced commercial operations with one of the super majors in offshore Australia in late March. Operations have now been ongoing for about a month with two well de-suspensions completed to date. After several quarters of start-up and commissioning issues, this is an important milestone for our Light Well Intervention service. We have also secured additional work for the LWI system on a well decommissioning project in Asia Pacific. And over the next couple of quarters we'll be focused…

Thank you, Mike. To recap, first quarter revenue was $339 million, which was up by $59 million or 21% year-over-year. The increase in revenue was driven by higher activity, primarily in NLA and ESA. Sequentially, revenue was down by $12 million or approximately 3% relative to the fourth quarter of 2022, largely reflecting historic seasonal patterns. First quarter contribution margin, which is essentially cash basis, gross profit was 34%, with start-up delays on our riser light well intervention system resulting in unrecoverable and unanticipated costs. As Mike noted, the vessel deployed LWI system became operational late in the first quarter of 2023 and we expect that LWI related headwinds experienced in the first quarter will be non-recurring or at least not material to go forward consolidated results. Excluding mobilization, start-up and commissioning costs, contribution margin for the first quarter of 2023, fourth quarter of 2022 and first quarter of 2022 was 37%, 40% and 37% respectively, with a sequential trend, as adjusted, primarily reflecting activity mix. First quarter support costs at $76 million totaled 22% of group revenue. Support costs were up approximately $5 million, both sequentially and relative to the first quarter of 2022, primarily reflecting higher labor costs. Support costs as a percentage of revenue were up approximately 2 percentage points relative to the fourth quarter of 2022 and were down approximately 3 percentage points relative to the first quarter of 2022. At 22% of revenue, support costs are down approximately 9 percentage points relative to the combined support costs of Expro and Frank's in Q4 2020, which was the last full quarter prior to the announcement of the merger. Adjusted EBITDA for Q1 2023 was approximately $42 million, representing a $5 million or 14% increase year-over-year and a sequential decrease of approximately $28 million or 40% relative…

Thanks Quinn. I would like to reinforce a few points from this call and leave you with three key points: number one Expro continues to deliver double-digit revenue growth by capturing market share and entering new markets. This is a result of us being able to leverage our global operating footprint and breadth of capabilities. Number two, we continue to deliver world-class service and introduce new technologies. These technologies are the result of organic and inorganic investments which we believe will positively impact our results in 2023. Third, at the start-up and commissioning challenges associated with launching a new business Expro continues to deliver exceptional performance. We also continue to add attractive businesses to our order book, with a favorable outlook for offshore and international activity, increased scale and improving business mix we should be well positioned to expand margins, increase free cash flow and deliver value to all stakeholders. With that, I will transfer back to the operator for our Q&A session.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] First question today comes from Eddie Kim with Barclays. Your line is open.

Hi. Good morning. Just wanted to touch on kind of the $11 million in unanticipated cost this quarter, was there something unique about this LWI project that resulted in the cost here? Just trying to understand how much of a risk this could be on similar type of projects that you might currently have in the pipeline?

Sure. No Eddie thanks for participating thanks for the question. Fundamentally, what it really amounts to is we had anticipated that we would go operational much earlier in the quarter. We really didn't go operational with the system until about the last week of March. The real positive thing is we've been fully operational since the last week of March. And we actually as of now just a few minutes ago have completed the third d-suspension well. So, the real challenge for us is it took longer on some of our third-party suppliers and some of our partners to be able to go out and go operational. We had some weather delays in the first quarter. It's cyclone season in that part of the world at times so that really was what it amounted to is it was we didn't go operational as soon as we had anticipated, but I think that the real key takeaway is we are now fully operational. We've completed a third well we still have additional wells that we'll continue to move on to. So that's how I would look at that. Quinn anything I missed?

No, I mean obviously we've had a couple of different a couple of quarters in a row now that we've had costs associated with the system. But the important thing that we accomplished in the first quarter is we're now on ticket with the customer and we're executing the work that we were contracted to do. There was obviously incremental costs are realized before being revenue generative and we're not going to fetch with other projects all of which ultimately tie back to what Mike was talking about which was the delay in the start-up.

Yeah. And I think one other point Eddie that I did mention I think it's worthwhile adding is is this was not a -- this was a new technology development for Expro. We kind of repurposed some of our Subsea expertise. The challenge here has not been related specifically to our technology development or the engineering developments, it really was around availability of the vessel timing of the vessel being fully operational weather windows supply vessels. It was those kind of obviously important to be able to go out and conduct an operation you have to have all those things lined up but it was not an engineering or a technology gap that we had in there.

Okay. Got it. Thank you for that color. My follow-up is on the DeltaTek acquisition. That company currently operates in the UK and Norway. You highlighted plans to globalize that business to other regions like the Gulf of Mexico and West Africa. Can you just talk about the expansion opportunity here? Is the plan to offer an integrated offering, where you'll also be doing the cementing work on all the wells that you'll be doing the TRS on or is DeltaTek more of a specialty cementing service that's applicable only in specific circumstances?

Yeah great question. So it really is -- it's applicable in -- particularly in deepwater and ultra-deepwater operations. We would anticipate that we will -- it will be an additive service to ourselves. We're already going to have folks on the rig handling TRS already doing some of the cementing operations. So this really is an incremental additional cementation service. It's -- we see great application to be able to move it outside of the new Canada and Norway. I was in South America recently in Guyana in particular we have tremendous interest from customers there to be able to apply the technology. But it's a really novel technology that becomes particularly important for operators. As you start to see rig rates that start to move to the $500,000 $600,000 a day rate. What this really allows you to do is it improves the efficiency of cementation operations, so you can save 12 to 24 hours of rig time not -- either not waiting on cement to set or more importantly not having to drill out a much longer case cement shoe that's what the technology really brings to. And that's why it's a great thing for us and we see rig rates increase because that means that there's going to be even more of an interest from operators in this technology because it reduces the amount of rig time.

Okay. Understood. Thank you. And just last one if I could squeeze one in here. Just on the 20-month TRS contract you secured in the UAE. Just curious if you can provide some more color on this one. Is this for offshore work or is it onshore work on the artificial islands there? We know the country's ambitious oil capacity expansion plans through 2027. Could this be just the first step in additional extensions to this contract?

Yeah. It really is. It's the first step in additional extensions to the contract gives us the ability for both offshore and land operations. And what we really were trying to highlight and I realize -- we have a lot of commentary and a lot of examples of contract awards and those kind of things. What I really want for everybody to take away from that is I think it's $350 million of -- contract awards in the quarter. What I hope everybody takes away from that is you see that in all of our geographies across our product lines and there's a lot of stickiness to that. So one of the concerns right now obviously is any volatility in any one given market. And what I hope you take away from our commentary is $350 million is very material. It's across our product lines, it's across services, it's across customers, it's across geographies so it gives us that. That's one of the things I think that's really positive about Expro is we've got a good global footprint offshore international and we have a kind of a broad offering.

Great. Thank you for all that color. I’ll turn it back.

Great. Thanks, Eddie.

Our next question comes from Luke Lemoine from Piper Sandler. Your line is open.

Hello.

Hey, Good morning, Mike, good morning, Quinn.

Good morning, sir.

Your 2023 EBITDA guide is unchanged. Hey, morning. 2023 guidance unchanged for EBITDA and I guess with 1Q and 2Q guide some pleasant even healthier second half than the Street is expecting and Quinn you alluded to your internal forecast being more bullish than when you provided the EBITDA guide on the 4Q call for 2023. Can you talk about the visibility that you have for second half? What's improving more than you expected? And then maybe what it takes to get to the midpoint or above the annual EBITDA guide and kind of your confidence and visibility surrounding this?

Yeah. I guess where I would start is as the year plays out, as we see it first and foremost we'll be regressing to a mean in terms of regional performance. We had the seasonal issues in most predominantly in ESA. Quite frankly the ESA performance was better sequentially than you would have seen historically setting aside pandemic years. That's largely as a result of higher margin services activity in the UK and Norway being replaced by African activity which as I mentioned in my prepared remarks was at lower margin. So first off, we see ESA and MENA really over the second and third quarter kind of moving back to historical margin performance. Obviously with the North Sea picking up in the warmer weather. Asia is largely a story of non-repeat of unusual costs that we've talked a lot about over the last couple of quarters. And NLA had a seasonally weaker quarter, but not dramatically so. And I think what you'll see in the certainly in the second half of the year and to a lesser extent in the second quarter is NLA margins moving back up to what we saw in the second half of last year. So I guess I would guide as we our slides highlighted an expectation for the second quarter consistent year-over-year performance to the first quarter which is plus 20% revenue growth which would imply sequentially 10% up. We gave a guide of 16% to 18% EBITDA margin in the second quarter for the -- or I should say in the slides. And, obviously, if you do the math that would imply in the last three quarters of the year to get to the midpoint of our guidance, you're comfortably over $380 million of revenue per quarter. And if you bake in the 10% sequential growth in the second quarter that implies the year over $390 million of revenue per quarter in the second half of the year. The margin expansion as Mike highlighted is a combination of non-repeat of losses related to LWI. Number two is improving business mix and three years in improvement in operating leverage as you move up in revenue and at least historic fall-through margins. So it's a lot of different things that should be moving in the right direction. And again it's our room napkin math. But to get to 20% EBITDA margin based on the guidance we have in the quarter that we reported, you should be comfortably over 22% EBITDA margins in the second half of the year and that's our expectation.

Yeah. Okay. Thanks for the walkthrough there. I guess, on your comment just being more bullish than you where in your 4Q call, any kind of geographies or product lines that we look to stick out there?

I mean, I guess, I'd start with the TRS and subsea, traditional subsea or subsea completions business. We are seeing a step-up in bidding activity. We've had awards that had more attractive pricing than what we've executed work at over the last number of quarters. That's going to take some time to work its way into the financial statements, but it is good to see that we're getting awards at higher pricing. And it's really just a question of when the work starts up to see it flow through the financial statements. But well construction has been on a very strong run. We expect strength to strength in that business line and L.A. probably most significantly impacted by that. In subsea as the year progresses, you should start to see incremental activity and margin improvement particularly with the LWI issues hopefully behind us at this point.

Yeah. I guess, look the one thing I would add is we highlighted several of the E&A type projects. We continue to see a pickup in resurgence and E&A type projects from our customers. And why is that important? A, it's important because historically in legacy Expro almost 20% of our revenue was derived from E&A type activity. Today, we're down in the single digits 6% 7%. And that's not because we lost market share. That's fundamentally because customers were not moving forward with exploration activity. Now we're starting to see a pickup in that. That gives me more of a sense of what the next steps are for operators, because you need to have those projects that you've been able to explore on to be able to move them into more of a development phase. And then secondarily it's really the positivity we continue to see around West Africa. Just from a customer engagement, technical inquiries, market pricing checks those kind of things we continue to see some more and more interest in West Africa. And I think that bodes well for us for this to be more of a longer term recovery in West Africa in particular.

Okay, great. And then just one more real quick. Mike you've both highlighted the $350 million in awards bookings this quarter. Can you talk about how significant that is? I think this is the first quarter you guys have given a number like that. Just wondering how this roughly compares to historical standards or how significant this is for you?

I think, what I would say is the legacy Frank's and legacy Expro organizations had a slightly different approach to budgeting. We've got the obviously entirety organization on the same budget process at this point. So when we track order backlog internally on a combined company basis we're at the highest levels, we've been at and that reflects the -- it's kind of a book-to-build dynamic, which is we're adding more work than what we're executing in the quarter. So you're right we haven't provided order backlog or word work in the past, but it is moving in a positive trend.

Great. Thanks Luke.

Great. Appreciate it.

Our next question comes from Abhi Mehta [ph] from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Hi, good morning. On the LWI cost for the quarter, our mobilization costs typically not recoverable or possible to the customer? And can you remind us on the duration of this particular engagement? How should we think about that piece going forward?

Yeah. So I mean good question. This is -- this particular contract is it's more of a number of wells to be completed, a number of de-suspensions to be completed. So it depends on the average amount of time for that. This is a contract that will last us certainly over the next quarter plus probably more like two quarters. They do have the ability to add in some incremental services around ROV type activities and well diagnostics and those kind of things. So typically you would have -- once you're operational with the LWI system then the costs are going to be recoverable. We were in a pre-commissioning phase. Hence, the reason why the system was not operational. So that kind of milestone for us to go operational at the end of March was pretty very important for us to be able to have the system on ticket so to speak.

Got it. And so the readthrough basically is that if you do have mobilization from one region to another now from here on you should be able to recover that mobilization cost?

Correct. We would be in a mode demo-type costing scenario. Absolutely.

Which could be built to some or a day rate.

Got it. Understood. That's helpful. And then how should we think about the levers for free cash flow the range you provided between mid to high digit margins I think for the full year? Any thoughts you can provide around that and capital allocation priorities?

Yes, I think the short version of it is we expect working capital which we had a relatively significant build throughout 2022. It started to reverse in the fourth quarter. We're essentially a push on working capital in the first quarter of 2023. So, it's really higher revenue fall-through and as a result EBITDA is where you start and basically going from EBITDA to free cash flow you've got three things; working capital, cash taxes, and CapEx and I think we have relatively good visibility on CapEx and taxes, working capital at times is a bit of unknown. But at least where we sit today our expectation is that working capital will moderate and a decent percentage of EBITDA will fall through to free cash flow of course dependent upon cost and capital discipline. And I think we've got a reasonable track record there.

Got it. And anything on the capital allocation. I think you said about 8% of revenue would be CapEx. Just remind us of what that process is. And you did a buyback this year this quarter. What's the cadence that we should expect?

Yes, we have a $50 million authorization on the buyback. We've utilized now about half of it. So, we'll continue to dialogue with our Board regarding the return of capital plan and what form it takes. But we've previously put targets out there that about a third of our free cash flow we expect to return to shareholders in the form of dividends buybacks or some combination thereof. That's our current expectation. Obviously, it's easier to think about returning capital when you can demonstrate cash generation. And our hope and expectation is that you'll see cash generation in the second half of the year in particular. And I think that's when you'd more likely see us moving forward with return of capital plans. But it's always going to be a combination organic and inorganic investments.

Great. Thanks.

Our next question comes from Steve Ferazani from Sidoti. Your line is open.

Hi Steve.

Morning Mike, morning Quinn. Appreciate all the detail on the call. I did want to ask I think you highlighted labor cost pressure and how it's impacting support costs. I'm just trying to think about the strong margin guidance you're providing for the second half what we can back into any concerns about labor cost pressures and labor availability given that not just you but plenty of others are seeing increased work second half and into next year?

Yes, I think it's -- well, first of all, we have gone a couple of years as an industry without real compensation adjustments. So, I think that's what you're starting to see across the board as the labor market has tightened up and activity is proved. We did put through colar type adjustments across the board at the beginning of 2023 particularly in the US you have kind of a social security dynamic that front-end loads labor costs to some extent. But more than anything going from 20% to 22% of revenue and support cost is a reflection of the seasonal drop in revenue. And as that reverses to see support costs we believe moderate and ultimately kind of fall within that 20% range that I gave in my prepared remarks.

Yes, I guess Steve the other thing I would add is that's one of the advantages that technology brings to us. One of the things I highlighted was the Centri-fi rollout in Brazil. Centri-fi really allows us to have less personnel on the rig. You rely more on the technology than you do on manpower. So, it allows us to expand our operations without adding additional people which is tremendously advantaged advantageous to us. And the other aspect is new technology rollouts like DeltaTek. We roll that out in a country like Guyana. We already have guys we already have personnel on the rig. We're in the process of cross-training the existing personnel to be able to go out and execute more operations with the DeltaTek type services. So, we can get more revenue throughput so to speak without incremental people.

I think the other thing that distinguishes us and other companies in the sector. I'm sorry Steve just something else.

Absolutely. I also want to ask about synergies. I know you go ahead, sorry--

I was just going to say Expro like a couple of other companies in the sector, I won't name names, but our E&A's [ph] operation is largely staffed with E&A's people same in Algeria, same in lots of other places that we operate. So we are not exposed to a single labor market which does have some mitigating influence on our labor inflation trends.

That makes sense. I just want to follow-up on synergies. I know you're basically at your three-year target at the end of the year. When you're thinking about that margin second half are you thinking you're going to squeeze any more synergies out?

Yeah. I think, it's -- we weren't at our three-year target in the first year we were through our first year target. And I think directionally we're at 115%, 120% of the original $55 million target that we put out there. So there is a bit more to do. And if nothing else, I think incremental synergies capture which is largely business process driven and technology, including IT projects that are still progressing. I think that will serve to mitigate labor and other cost inflation. But the 20% support cost guidance includes our expectations in terms of remaining synergies captured.

Perfect. Great. Thanks Mike. And thank Quinn.

Thank you.

Thanks Steve.

Our final question comes from Andrew Peters with T. Rowe Price. Your line is open.

Hey. Thanks. Sorry for hopping on the call. Thanks for taking my question. Just -- I was just curious, if you could just talk about how the LWI Technology is performing? And is the customer generally pretty happy with kind of the performance. And I mean, I guess I was just of the view that this was kind of a longer-term opportunity in Australia, but it kind of sounds like you guys are already moving it out to do plug and abandonment work. So maybe you can just kind of address the performance of the technology.

Sure. So the -- we have a number of projects opportunities in Asia Pacific, overall. Australia in particular, will be one in which, I think, I've made the comment to maybe you in the past that I suspect this particular LWI system may not ever leave Australia just because of the demand and the opportunities there. We do provide other -- we do provide other intervention services with our In-Riser-type system, that's more rig based. So that may be where there's a little bit of confusion. What I will tell you is that, the efficiency of the system is -- we've completed the third well now. I think it took us about six days to complete the, de-suspension. The original project plan had us to take about seven days. So even on the third well, we're gaining some efficiency here. Customer feedback has been very, very positive about our ability to go out and now that we've gone operational. And as I said earlier, we've been 40-plus days to be operational. So, technology-wise the system is performing exceptionally well. It really frankly was the teething pains of making sure that the vessel was available, making sure the vessel was ready to go. It's not been the Subsea or the intervention kit that's been -- that we've had teething pains on so to speak. But I think more importantly, it's really around the opportunity for Light Well Intervention services to be able to go out and do intervention that's not rig based. It's much more efficient, it's fewer days to rig up. It's fewer days over well center just more efficient operations and that's why customers are so particularly keen to see this become successful. And frankly, why this particular operator has been -- has shown a tremendous amount of patients because they know what the benefit of it is when we can go out and do vessel-based interventions. So, it's a real positive for us to have gotten those first three wells done. And we'll have -- we've got additional projects a number of additional projects lined up right behind this one.

So is the -- and I'm not looking for like exact numbers, but just is the system overall expected to be EBITDA positive here going forward, or did you kind of give the sort of initial customer kind of a sweetheart deal to kind of prove out the technology? Like, is it -- should it be profitable kind of in the back half of the year?

Well, certainly you'll see improved margin as a result of a non-repeat of extraordinary costs. But I think, it's fair to say that the initial jobs are essentially resume, building in nature. And as Mike said in his prepared comments, over time we will demonstrate the breadth of capabilities of the system and our services and ultimately receive better value for what we provide. But that's going to take a couple of quarters to happen.

And it's -- I mean, Andy you ask a really good perceptive question. Part of this is when we originally engaged with the customer on this project, rig rates were in the $300,000 to $400,000 range and not that there's a direct linkage between rig rates and vessel rates on intervention there's certainly a pretty good proxy. As we move forward with incremental projects after we have an established track record of operations. And you've seen rig rates start to move from the $300,000 to $500,000 range. We're going to have the ability to start to move pricing on the vessel as well. So having that initial track record was doing the shake down crews getting these things done so to speak and be able to show the operational excellence that we're known for that just gives us -- it puts us in a much better position to be able to move prices down the road.

Great. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Thank you, Andrew.

Thanks, Andrew.

We have no further questions. So this concludes our Q&A and today's conference call. We'd like to thank you for your participation.