Hunting (LSE:HTG) — FY23 Results

0:00 Good morning, and welcome to the HUNTING PLC full year results investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted at any time by the q and a tab situated in the right hand corner of your screen. Just simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives in the meeting itself. However, the company can review all the questions submitted today and publish responses where it is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to Jim Johnson, CEO. Good morning to you, sir. Morning, everybody, and thanks for taking the time to join us today as we go over our full year 2023 results. And I'm fortunate and happy to say they were excellent results. So as I go and look at the highlights for the year, revenue up 28%, a nice move across the board for a number of our product lines, nearly doubling of our EBITDA, very strong back sales order book with backlogs that'll assure a large percentage that delivered in

1:02 2024 and into '25. We were able to generate a lot of cash in the second half of the year as we unwound business from earlier placed orders. Our non oil and gas sales continue to increase, up 59 year over year. And our EBITDA margins improved, and they actually were at 12% for the second half of the year. And I think one of the key points that you'll see and hopefully take note of throughout this presentation is diversification is really part of the story we wanted to get out to everybody. We're a lot more than a one basin play. We're not just depending on The US land recount. Even though we love The US land, there's a little so many other parts of the business, and we're we're really seeing the benefit of that go to our bottom line in the performance this year.

1:52 On the next slide, we talk about our hunting 2030 strategy, and there's key points that we'll touch on all of this. But, it's a diversification of what we have as a company and product lines that we offer. In OCTG, we were able to grow our supply chain as well as expand our business in a number of different areas. If you look at the tech log business, for example, we outgrew our sales outgrew the rig count decline that was in The US. Strong results in North America. Perforating systems, the Titan business, I think, performed well considering a 21% decline in The US rig count. The growth there really spurred by the international work. Subsea, one of the most exciting new growth areas for us. A lot of new markets opened up like the Turkish area, the Black Sea, and South America being very, very busy for us.

2:48 On the other product lines in advanced manufacturing, strong year growth there. A lot of the supply chain issues that hampered us in in COVID and just coming out of COVID have been, dissolved away. So we see further upside there in pricing in activity levels. Energy transition is area we have enhanced the focus on internally from a sales perspective as well as product development, but one that still is rather in a in a slow growth mode. And it's not because of anything in hunting. It's because of just limitations in government regulations and permitting and things like that. And throughout the year, while we grew the business, we also kept our eye on our cost basis.

3:33 We closed a facility in Oklahoma City, consolidated some facilities. One of the big accomplishments that I'm happy about was the disposal of our legacy E and P assets. Some of these oil and gas ass assets, which were all in The US, dated back to the nineteen forties and fifties. But what we really did by selling those off was we eliminated the potential for plug and abandonment cost that would impact us in the future. On ESG, a number of points up there to take note of, you can see our scope one and scope two emissions increased about 9%, but that was far less than our revenue increase year over year. So we were able to keep our intensity heading in the right direction, which is south. As you can see on the other line, it went from 30.9 to 25.9.

4:22 I always give a shout out to our HSE team led by Greg Farmer. Our recordable incident rate was extremely low, better than in '22, and that's quite an accomplishment giving the ramp up in new employees and the extra efforts in new training and things like that that we have to do throughout the group. On this next slide, getting into more detailed specifics on the products, OCTG had a very, very strong performance. I like to remind people that when, I first got to know this company or even beginning in the oilfield side, it was really OCTG focused. So it's like what's old is new again. We've continued to put a lot of focus on this side of our of our business where we have a lot of strategic advantages both in our supply of products in areas like South America as well as the new Indian joint venture, our Asia Pac business, our Teklon product line expansion, which fortunately, we rolled on it at the right time for The US onshore.

5:21 The perforating business, talked earlier about Titan. The new h four perforating system is gaining strength. We had a very good January with that product line. That is the product line, the the gun system that allows more accurate placement of the charges, aligning the charges downhole. We see that as a product line with continued growth opportunities. The h three product continued to to, increase Salesforce. I think that the business performed well, again, considering the 21% decline in US land. And and offshore I mean, I'm sorry, not offshore. And international remains a key focus for us to continue to to seek growth in this business. On the advanced manufacturing, the one area that has significant non oil and gas workforce driven by the the advanced manufacturing operation at Dearborn and Maine, which does a lot of aerospace and defense and rocket business.

6:21 The electronics business added some defense work this year to add more diversification. They also participate in the medical business. And and, again, these are mission critical components. Very few people in the world can do the electronic work we do or the machining technology work that we do. And so there's some good margin protection, and there's a there's a good safety net around those businesses as far as stickiness to the clients because of the fact that you're in these programs. But you see the big increase in revenue and a substantial improvement in the EBITDA year over year with that product line. Subsea, one of the ones that we've put our last two acquisition dollars in place to with the purchase of EnPro and the RTI titanium stress joint business.

7:10 Both of those are are performing well along with our, historic business with where we've made subsea couplings in Stafford, Texas. The real growth was in the titanium stress joint market though, driven by Exxon in Guyana as well as new markets such as in the Black Sea area of Turkey with a company called TPAO. We see a lot of growth there as FPSOs become more abundant in the deepwater offshore play. And we've we've after buying Enpro right at as COVID was hitting, we now have the biggest order book at Enpro that we've ever had and see a real bright upside for that business going forward. On other manufacturing, it's some well testing business, well intervention.

7:56 They are driven by capital expenditures primarily from the bigger oilfield service companies like Schlumberger. That has improved, but one of the big keys there was the selling and the disposal of our E and P assets, which were just not core. And we got that legacy business disposed of and got got rid of the plug in abandonment exposure. Energy transition, I briefly talked about. Small part of our business right now. We focus a team on this. The key is we've secured supply chain channels, which allow us now to participate in the market. We just need the market opportunities to come to us and as we go and explore them. The area that I'm most optimistic on is in geothermal, primarily because of a lot of international demand in places like Indonesia and The Philippines that we think are gonna drive business. A matter of fact, we landed a small order in January already in The Philippines on geothermal.

8:56 On carbon capture, it's gonna be one of those ones where we'll have the products and the materials in place, but it's really hampered, I would say, by issues related to government policies on permits and pipelines and and issues like that. And now I'll turn it over to Bruce. Thanks, Jim. Good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to take everyone through our strong set of financial numbers. If we start off just to go through the main highlights of the 2023 period, We have our revenue up by 28%. That's primarily driven by the strength in the offshore international and subsea business. That's a big part of our business now, and that's really driving that growth. It's also supported by a really strong sales order book of $565,000,000, and that gives us pretty good visibility for '24 year '24.

9:47 That doesn't include our Titan business. So actually, when we take 80% of that five sixty five will be delivered in '24 plus the Titan, that gives us really good confidence we can deliver another strong year in 2024. All that is shaped up to give us a really strong EPS increase up to 20.3¢ and a doubling of our EBITDA from last year to $103 And when you consider we had a softening market in The U. S, that's a really strong performance. Our non oil and gas has increased by 59%, and that's effectively doubled from where we were two years ago. That's now almost $76,000,000 EBITDA margins are strengthening along with our top line, and that as the second half of the year progressed go up to 12%. Our target, as we outlined in the Capital Markets Day, is to get that figure to 15% by 2025, and we're well on the way to achieve that. We've seen a lot of improvement through our operating efficiencies due to the restructuring we did over the last couple of years.

10:43 We disposed of some legacy commoditized businesses as well, saved some costs. We're in much better shape as a business and more efficient, and that's drawn out by our EBITDA per employee being $44,000 compared to $25,000 last year. We're really keen to continue to pay a progressive dividend, and that's increased by 11%, and that's now up to declare dividend of $0.10 A technical point, we have recognized $83,000,000 of deferred tax assets. The real thing to draw from that is there's no confidence in our and the strength of our forecast financial performance, and that allows us to recognize those $83,000,000 of assets on our balance sheet. Return on capital is a key metric for us. We're seeing that improve from 1% to 6%. I'd like to increase that over the next couple of years as well.

11:32 Just a little bit more detail in terms of our product groups is how we define our business in terms of the main product groups. As Jim mentioned earlier, the strength in OCG, that's increased 53% year on year. We have seen perforating systems hold the line, and that's despite their key market dropping 20%. So that's a good performance, a real growth in their international business by 34% year on year. And then we see advanced manufacturing subsea all north of 40% in terms of their growth. So all pointing to a strong revenue performance. We're showing here on the next slide the income statements and all those components we just talked about are on there. In terms of our revenue, 9.9 for the year. Our gross profit is has increased one point year on year, and that's now 25%, delivering two twenty seven gross profit.

12:21 We're seeing the doubling of the EBITDA there at 103. That flows through to a profit after tax of 36,000,000 a diluted earnings per share of 20¢, and a total dividend declared of 10¢, which is an 11% increase.

12:36 A really important metric for us is our order book. That is now sitting at five six five. That compares to a pre pre COVID order book, which was down at two two five, two fifty. So a real improvement in terms of our order book visibility. We also break that down by what's oil and gas and what's not oil and gas, and we're seeing that increase in non oil and gas exposure up to 16%. So that gives us real strength in terms of 24. We've also got a tender pipeline to keep an eye on, and that is north of $1,000,000,000 So that is orders we've already tended for, and they will mainly play out in 'twenty five and beyond. So that's a real confidence in our earnings, not just this year, but the next two years as well. The next slide is quite a busy slide, but that breaks down all our product lines and also breaks down our operating segments.

13:24 So within that, along the rows, we've got all the the main product lines, and that's broken down by sales, by revenue, and by EBITDA and EBITDA margins. So it's really pointing to the fact we are no longer just one one product line in Titan relying on The US market. We've got diverse portfolio that covers offshore subsea and The US land. And all the product lines are doing very well. All the segments have improved year on year, and I think that details that very well. Next slide, we're looking at our balance sheets. We've got a very the key aspect to take from that is a very strong balance sheet. We've got $957,000,000 worth of assets. That compares to a market cap of $6.66.

14:09 So that's a very strong balance sheet. We've generated $68,000,000 worth of cash over quarter four. It was a great performance. So that has got back to a cash neutral position. And that will list out all our main asset groups there. So a really strong platform for us to grow the company. In terms of working capital, that's something we keep a close eye on. We wanna try and be as efficient as we can and optimize our working capital so we can generate as much cash. Obviously, levels have increased, so correspondingly, working capital has increased as well. A couple of areas that did did increase was on our inventory, and that's due to the the lead times on areas such in the Titan business where we had to have long lead times from our supply chain for the likes of explosive charges, also electronic chips. Now it's more a timing issue, and that will unwind over the course of 2024, and that cash will return back to the balance sheet.

15:01 The working capital metrics we use is to analyze working capital against revenue. But again, we believe that will improve going to next year. Again, that will make us more efficient. We're using a variety of sources to optimize that working capital, whether that's advanced payments or in terms of payments for for purchases going forward. So all that will help our working capital performance going to '24. In terms of our cash flow, just picking up a couple of the main items there. We have doubled our earnings in terms of EBITDA, and then we add back our share based payments. There's two main outflows there above our free cash flow, which is a a CapEx, which is 35, and also the working capital gains of 55. That gives a a a fairly neutral free cash flow position. We then remove our dividend payments and the payments for shares for our hunting share scheme, and that gives a net outflow of 25,000,000 So we take that with the $24,000,000 we start the year with, that gives effect a net a neutral cash position.

16:00 And I'll finish the slide by just looking ahead a bit more into our guidance for 2024. So very strong year for 2023. We believe that will continue going into 2024 with a significant uptake in terms of our EBITDA, and we're guiding towards 2025 to 135. Margins are continuing to improve towards the 12% to 13% rate. With the deferred tax asset on the balance sheet, we've got a range of 25% to 28% of effective tax. Our CapEx plus intangible assets is slightly higher, but still at fairly around the depletion levels of 35 to 45. And we believe we're going to throw off a lot of cash going forward. We're confident in that figure of 50% of free cash flow conversion. And with that, I'll hand back to Jim. Okay. Thanks, Bruce. So we're gonna talk about the market a little bit. And one of the things that

16:49 I always say is the markets in this business, they never go straight up. They never go straight down. And so right now, in some of our areas like offshore and international, they are moving substantially higher in activity levels, and we see that. We we believe everything we read, that's gonna continue to grow as areas like West Africa, Guyana, Middle East all become strong. Even Gulf Of Mexico, there's some more positive trends happening there for future developments, whether it be brownfield or greenfield. On the onshore side of the business, we

17:21 see that being pretty flat in North America year over year. We're anticipating the end of the year being better as natural gas prices come out of the huge slump that they're in right now. But, again, those are those are our best guess. We think the depletion and the fact that some operators have already announced cutbacks in in scaling back on production for gas, that that'll end up ultimately strengthening the market with more LNG exports. On The US and Canada, we think our Tek Lok product line will continue to grow. It's an interesting chart at the bottom left because, again, we it's it's a business where we showed growth in the business even though the market the actual market in The US was down 21%. And so Canada Canadian operation, our people in Calgary did a great job last year. They continue to see strong momentum going forward.

18:14 On the perforating gun side, there's this chart that shows you h three. We think there's gonna be further increases in market share in business with the h four

18:22 product rolling out. I've seen what the January results have been for that, and they're pretty strong, and I think that'll continue to increase. In Brazil and Guyana, key areas for us for our subsea business and our US completion business, which comes under OCTG, where we do the accessories for the tubing strings in these wells. If you look at the completion package numbers, it doesn't seem like a lot, but these are many, many tens of millions of dollars. The actual completion packages for an Exxon is are well in excess of $100,000,000 a well for materials, product, and time. For us, it's supplying each one of those as many millions of dollars because of the extreme criticality of the material going into those wells, which, again, adds to the the the price of the whole package.

19:11 And the titanium stress joint business for us continues to expand Brazil and Guyana, both two key marketplaces.

19:19 Europe, Middle East, Africa, one of the areas where we have struggled over the years, I think as Bruce mentioned, we went from a loss of nine down to six down to two. The business is generating positive EBITDA right now. We're still working on that to do some things to fine tune it, such as the closure of one of our facilities in The Netherlands moving into Dubai. That should also strengthen the sales for our well

19:43 well testing business because we'll be closer to the clients. But we do see some geothermal optionality coming into the business as far as opportunities in Germany and Holland, which will benefit our Dutch location and things like the organic oil recovery and an increase in well intervention should help our operations in The UK. India, one of the exciting areas that we are really talking a lot about and really excited about, Daniel Tan, who runs our Asian business, has done a great job on getting this across the finish line. Bruce and I were there in September to do the grand opening. I think we've got a backlog of something

20:21 like 70,000 joints pipe to thread right now with our our seal lock product line. And so we're excited to be in India. We have a great partner with the Jindal people and who manufactures a great tubular product to marry with our premium connections. So we're excited about the opportunity for that in going forward. Excuse me.

20:44 Again, Asia Pac, we're seeing increased activities in places like The Philippines. We think Indonesia's gonna be very busy, especially in the second half of the year. Areas like Thailand are picking up, so we're pretty bullish on that market as well. A lot of the Asia Pac business, again, it shows that the sales into The Middle East because it's sourced in Asia Pac primarily in China for OCTG. We manufacture and do the premium connections at our facility in China or facility in Indonesia. We do accessories in Singapore to provide a total package and then ship them out, you know, throughout The Middle East, Southeast Asia, even into West Africa.

21:25 In summary, we are really pleased with the results that we delivered this year. We're never I won't say we're ever content because we always wanna do better. We wanna improve margins. We wanna improve return on capital. We are very sensitive to the fact that we wanna increase returns to shareholders while the dividend is a very important part of our whole business plan and what we are trying to do, and we plan to grow that. We continue to look at ESG metrics, not just in carbon, but also as it relates to our employees, diversity, things like that, and strive to continue to improve that. But right now, we think we have a good marketplace driven by international and offshore. I think HUNTING is a great company. We have fantastic people that make this company a success.

22:12 And with our balance sheet strengths, with our product IP strengths, we're just, I think, well positioned to take advantage of a growing marketplace.

22:21 And with that, that's my final comments on this. I believe we'll open it up for questions. Perfect. Yeah. Jim, Bruce, thank you very much for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the q and a tab, which is situated on the top right hand corner of your screen. Just for the company to take a few moments to review these questions that have been submitted today, I'd like to remind you that recording of this presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published q and a can be accessed via your investor dashboard. As you can see, we have received a number questions throughout today's presentation. And, Ben, at this point, if I could hand over to you to chair the q and a, that'd be great, and I'll pick up from you at the end. You. We've got a few questions from David, which is can you give us a revenue of profit breakdown of The US shale region only for huntingtight in North America, given quite a lot of sales go internationally?

23:14 Yes. That's primarily just our Titan division, which sales were circa $250,000,000 at, say, EBITDA margin of 14%. So that is a main division that's linked to the shale plays in The U. S. Thank you, Bruce. Second question, with further M and A consolidation on the producing side in The U. S. Shale Region, can you already say whether this is a net positive for HUNTING? I would say that it's not a net positive or a negative. I mean, there's consolidation happening right now, there's been a large wave of that in the last six months announced. But in my whole career, which, you know, goes a long ways back now, there's always been consolidation.

24:03 And every consolidation has led to new spin offs and new companies starting up, and it's kinda like a never ending cycle. So if people can remember where there was a Texaco and a Unical and an Amoco, those were all absorbed, parts were spun off. You'll see the same thing happen again with this cycle that we're in today. Are inventory levels at a comfortable level now or would you need further buildup of inventory in '24? I'll start on that. I don't think we need at current levels right now, we actually need to reduce inventory some. It tightened. We were a little oversupplied, but part of that was due to hedging our debts on activity levels in Swiss supply chain chow supply chain challenges.

24:49 Those have gone away right now, and so there's just been a build there, a new product introduction and the like. Obviously, if business accelerates dramatically higher, that's gonna take in more inventory. Ruch, you wanna add any Just a follow-up for that, Jim. Yeah. Your venture level's at three two eight, certainly not looking to build. That's gonna be dependent, as Jim mentioned, about the demand that's gonna come up come our way. But there are a couple of items in the specifically in Titan and also electronics. We've we believe we're gonna unwind those venture levels, so they're 40,000,000 to $50,000,000 lower on a like for like basis next year. Great. What's the guidance on CapEx for 'twenty four? We're guiding between $35,000,000 and $45,000,000 That includes CapEx and tangible assets. Intangible assets would be things like our our new ERP system. So the majority of that would be the big items. We've got a 5,000,000 expense expansion into into Dubai, and the other 30,000,000 of CapEx it really is new machinery, automated machinery for the likes of Dearborn, our advanced manufacturing group, and also into US manufacturing that supplies the completion packages to the likes of Guyana.

25:59 And a lot of these new machineries are much more efficient, cost effective as well. What are your thoughts around a share buyback program? Not going to do it. I think that if we're going to do shareholder returns through increased dividends and continue to invest in our business. We did a small buyback years ago. It doesn't buy you anything. It buys short term for short term investors, but we really would rather put cash in people's pocket. Okay. Amidst all the regional restructuring hunting is done, can you provide any guidance on the impact on operating costs for the year? Cost savings? Yeah. I'll take that in the sense that what we've done over the last couple of years, we talked around this at Capital Markets Day that we have reduced through a number of things. We've exited businesses such as in the North Sea, with DG business, Canada, base consolidations, employee reductions. This is fixed costs of around $45,000,000 per annum.

26:55 So that that is baked into our numbers now. We've actually continued to look at self help and drive out costs. What we've done this year is another 3 to $5,000,000 as well. So that's closing facilities in Oklahoma for the consolidation of Aberdeen E and P. And the E and P assets, which we dispose of as well. So you're looking around about $50,000,000 per annum. Okay, great. Okay, I've got a question from Ildar here. You've already touched on capital allocation with regards to buybacks, but he says, Can you please share your thoughts on the priorities of capital allocation, choosing between investing in growth, M and A, dividends, buybacks on a three to five year horizon? Do you plan to increase cash returns to shareholders in the medium term? First of all, we plan to increase our returns to shareholders. We laid that out in our hunting 2030 strategy that we wanna increase dividends as time goes on. I think that what makes it exciting to be at hunting is we come in every day wanting to grow this business. So sometimes that's gonna take capital.

27:56 Sometimes it's gonna be new product lines. I'll go back to, like, three years ago when we got into the debt court business at Titan, an area that we weren't in before. It added synergies to our perforating gun businesses. We are constantly looking at m and a and and and want to be able to grow the business through m and a. Part of our plans in 2030 isn't doing it all organically. So we'll be looking at non oil and gas opportunities, preferably something tangential to what we do now in defense or aviation, as well as looking at things we can bolt on to areas like subsea or Titan. Great. Question from Marcus here. With EBITDA margin improving to 11%, what measures are in place to maintain or enhance this going forwards? Well, the plan is we we signaled in the Capital Markets Day was to get that to 15% by 2025.

28:47 H 02/23, we're already at 12%, so we're well on our way there as well. So it's a combination. There's no silver bullet. It's looking to increase sales prices where we can and maximize our our revenue margin that way. It's to continue looking at our cost base to be more efficient. It's our product mix will influence that as well. So, really, it's a a combination. And utilization is important for us as well as we see that utilization figure improve 10% year on year. That helps us absorb costs, that does flow through to the bottom line, and that'll help us get to 15%. And further on beyond that and improve on that 15% in the years years ahead. Great. Got two from Ben here. Are the strategies and trends that you see power the non oil and gas revenue growth to $75,000,000 set to continue, and what visibility do you have on this space?

29:33 So the same focus that brought us the great increase this year is in place now to bring it next year. At the end of the day, it becomes getting close to your customers, being efficient in what you do, and adding, in the case of advanced manufacturing, new product lines or, for example, in aerospace, new part numbers. I mean, I look at the business that, you know, four years ago, our rocket business didn't exist. So now Blue Horizon, Elon Musk business, SpaceX are now clients of ours. So we're continuing to pursue those opportunities where we can, and that's why we're pretty, optimistic that there's not not a lot of people in the world that can bring the backing of the technology that we do to make these parts. And I think that'll be big plus for us on our chances to grow the business.

30:18 Okay. This is the last question of what's been a really, really great set of questions. If you could pin down the key drivers of the order book growth, are they set to continue? And how are you managing cost inflation in your pricing to stay competitive? Well, I'll let you take the inflation one. But on the order book, I mean, we are because of the nature of our business right now with the subsea business, those are long lead time orders. You you can't just call up and get a titanium stress joint in sixty days. So that takes time long lead times. The AMG business has long lead times. Some of our OCTG business is scattered where you saw orders like our our Chinese order. There's many, many shipments over a long period of time to make up that $8,090,000,000 dollar quantum there. So we have pretty good guidance going forward because of the backlog today, and I don't see a trend changing any of those fundamentals for those type of orders.

31:17 I would say I'd say the good news on the input costs are are normalizing, becoming decreasing to what they were two years ago. You know, things like labor costs, energy costs, and your steel costs in many ways we can pass on to customers. So that's not one that's, I'd say, any concern around that area. It's less than what it was over the last eighteen, twenty four months. Right. Well, that's all the questions, so I'll hand back to Alessandra. Perfect. Jim, Bruce, thank you very much for answering those questions from investors. And, of course, the company will review all the questions submitted today, and we'll publish the responses on the investor meet company platform. But just before redirecting investors to provide you with their feedback, which is particularly important to the company, Jim, could I just ask you for a few closing comments? Yeah. I would tell people to buy now while it's cheap. So that's, I guess, my key message. Right? I mean, I think that the company is extremely undervalued when you look at the yield and the return that we're doing right now. When you look at the fact if if you're a UK or European shareholder or investor, there's really not a lot of options in those markets to be in what is an exciting marketplace in the oil and gas industry.

32:22 And with a company that also has part of its business diversified to kind of balance out the, the ups and downs. So like I said, we think we're very undervalued. It's a good return when you invest in this company. We've got a strong leadership team and a strong, ethics and, I would say, a culture in this company that has made us a success. And just to remind everybody, this year we're a 150 years old, and you don't last a 150 years old without doing some things right and being able to adapt along the along the road. So that's my closing remarks. Perfect. Thank you once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close the session as you now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations? This loan take a few moments to complete, so I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of HUNTING PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good morning to you all.