SLB (SLB) — Q1 2021 Earnings Call Transcript

Thank you, Lea. Good morning, and welcome to the Schlumberger Limited First Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. Today’s call is being hosted from Houston, following the Schlumberger Limited Board meeting held earlier this week. Joining us on the call are Olivier Le Peuch, Chief Executive Officer, and Stephane Biguet, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind all participants that some of the statements we will be making today are forward-looking. These matters involve risks and uncertainties that could cause our results to differ materially from those projected in these statements. I therefore refer you to our latest 10-K filing and our other SEC filings. Our comments today may also include non-GAAP financial measures. Additional details and reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures can be found in our first-quarter press release, which is on our website. With that, I will turn the call over to Olivier.

Thank you, ND, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us on the call. In my prepared remarks today, I will cover three topics: our first-quarter results, our progress on our performance strategy, and finally, our outlook for the second quarter and second half of the year. Stephane will then give more detail on our financial results, and we will open the floor for questions. The first quarter of 2021 was a strong step forward. The quarter unfolded as we anticipated, with acceleration in North America activity and momentum continuing to build in the international markets, aside from the usual seasonal effects. We executed very well within that context. We expanded our global operating margins for the third consecutive quarter, and free cash flow was once again solidly positive. Here are some highlights in support of this performance: Well Construction sustained growth sequentially, and in North America outpaced U.S. land rig counts, demonstrating enhanced market participation in the recovery. Reservoir Performance grew, when adjusted for the OneStim divestiture. Digital & Integration delivered another strong quarter with resilient margins, on track for our full-year targets. In North America, execution of our returns-focused strategy drove strong margin expansion fully aligned with our double-digit margin targets. And in international markets, despite severe seasonality and relative exposure in Russia and China, we continued growth across geographies. In this environment, and as the industry prepares for an upcycle, performance matters. Decisions on contract awards and capacity allocation are increasingly driven by technology and execution. We were very pleased with the outcome of several international multiyear contract awards, specifically in the Middle East and in offshore, building a pipeline that will support growth in 2022 and beyond. We are determined to drive performance differentiation, leveraging our fit-for-basin technology and digital capabilities. This combination benefited our integration performance, with our largest LSTK operations achieving a 6% improvement in drilling efficiency during the quarter. This strong start to the year, characterized by resilient revenue, sequential margin expansion, and positive free cash flow, positions us very well to meet our full-year financial ambitions and to deleverage our balance sheet. I want to congratulate the entire Schlumberger team, who delivered strong execution for our customers, having positioned us for the growth that is now underway. Next, I would like to comment on three elements of our performance strategy that present further opportunities for growth in this upcoming cycle and beyond: digital, sustainability, and Schlumberger New Energy. Starting with Digital—18 months ago, we stated our ambition to lead the digital transformation in our industry and to significantly grow new digital revenue streams. I want today to update you with our progress. Our digital strategy is a platform strategy, leveraging unique and open platforms: DELFI, OSDU, and Agora. Since launching our core DELFI platform, we have significantly expanded its market reach, from Google Cloud to Microsoft Azure, and more recently, using IBM Red Hat technology to enable hybrid cloud and offer fit-for-basin cloud solutions, as highlighted this morning in our collaboration with Yandex. We'll continue to execute on this platform journey, to expand the choice for our customers and to support our three digital business streams; workflow, data, and operations. First, we offer our customers the opportunity to transition their technical workflows from the desktop to the cloud, to realize productivity gains from DELFI workflow integration, collaboration, and access to scalable cloud computing. Our market leadership on the desktop positions us very well to capture this market. In the last 18 months, our customers have increasingly transitioned to the cloud, resulting in 50% growth in our contract backlog, and a tenfold increase in full-time DELFI users. As we expand our cloud-native application and enable additional workflows within DELFI, we expect increased adoption across our customer base, resulting in steady growth of our digital workflow revenue. Second, recognizing that data is the key to unlock the industry's digital transformation, we worked with the industry OSDU Forum to open source and contribute the underlying DELFI data ecosystem, helping to establish OSDU as the industry standard, an essential step to liberate data at scale for AI applications and to enable multi-vendor interoperable workflows. In this context, we recently partnered with Microsoft to offer Azure customers access to our OSDU Enterprise Data Management Solution. We will augment this offering with additional AI capabilities, and we will also expand our geographical reach. The market potential for this data business stream is very significant as it underpins every customer digital transformation, as exemplified by our recent announcement with Equinor. Third, our customers’ operations represent a unique opportunity to realize the promise of asset and field digital solutions. We designed an open IoT platform, Agora, to enable edge applications, complementing our DELFI platform operational workflows, and integrating with our partner, Sensia. Using Agora and DELFI, we are deploying digital operation solutions for drilling and production, both with our customers and as part of our integrated projects. This digital offering can significantly impact our operations, as was demonstrated this quarter in the Ecuador project and in our main LSTK operations, and also greatly benefit our customers. Our ambition is to establish critical market share in this white space and accelerate collaboration with industry partners to further its adoption. These three digital business streams—workflow, data, and operation, built on open platforms are supporting our digital growth ambition. We are very pleased with the progress on our platform foundation with the adoption by a broad set of customers, and are confident in the success of each business stream as we execute our roadmaps. Moving now to sustainability, we are strengthening our commitment to action, particularly as the industry faces the decarbonization mandate, and world leaders have reaffirmed commitments or advanced stronger goals in recent days. As it relates to climate action, this goes beyond reducing our own greenhouse gas emissions as we believe there is a significant opportunity for our technology and operating practice to decisively impact and accelerate the industry's decarbonization efforts as well as contribute towards emission reduction goals around the world. Our technology portfolio includes solutions that help our customers eliminate flaring, reduce fugitive methane emissions, and leverage automation and digital surveillance to reduce environmental impact. This technology focus on low carbon impact will be an increasing element of differentiation for Schlumberger in the future. An example that resonates with our customer is the complete electrification of offshore pollution systems, as outlined in our earnings release with the BP project for subsea electrification. This is the next offshore frontier and it will also pave the way to full digital enablement. Beyond our industry, our CCS partnership with LafargeHolcim and the bioenergy CCS project in Mendota, California are examples of cross-sector initiatives aligned with climate actions. Specifically, in Schlumberger New Energy, we reached milestones in the sectors where we are participating across the energy transition: hydrogen, lithium, CCS, geothermal, and geo energy. During the quarter, we established and accelerated new ventures, formed strategic partnerships, and gained market exposure, and are progressing in de-risking technology for upscaling. We will continue to build out the New Energy portfolio throughout the year. And, we will keep you updated on our progress. We are extremely proud of the tangible results we have realized in only a short time, as it clearly outlines the power of the Schlumberger brand and the potential of this new chapter for the future of the company. Turning to the outlook, upward revisions in the global economic forecast—growth forecast by the IMF and positive demand forecast adjustment by both IEA and OPEC reinforce the transition into a demand-led recovery, which will strengthen through the second half of 2021, absent new setbacks on vaccination rollouts or easing of lockdowns. Against this backdrop, we are increasingly confident in our full-year activity outlook. In North America, in the second quarter, we see sustained activity growth in U.S. lands and a seasonal rebound in North America offshore being partially offset by the Canada breakup. As our first quarter results have shown, particularly in Well Construction, our new mix and sizeable exposure in the North America market will increasingly contribute to our results. Moving to international markets, activity growth will broaden in the second quarter with the seasonal recovery in Russia and China augmenting the continued growth in Africa and the Middle East while Latin America should remain resilient. In addition, the offshore recovery will continue in the second quarter, including the gradual return of exploration and appraisal in key international markets. The depth and divestiture for international franchise give us great exposure to these market expansions, especially in well construction and reservoir performance which will lead in the second quarter. More broadly, we anticipate all divisions to grow sequentially at different paces, and margin expansion to be led again by reservoir performance and well construction. In light of this, directionally, we expect total second quarter revenue to grow in mid-single digits and our operating margins to further expand by 50 to 100 basis points. Looking further into the second half of 2021, in North America, the pace of growth is expected to moderate on budget exhaustion and seasonal effects, but could surprise to the upside, resulting in full-year growth when excluding the impact of divestitures. In the international markets, our confidence in the second-half outlook has been strengthening based on the latest international rig count trends, CapEx signals, and customer engagements. International activity will broaden and accelerate in the second half, impacting short to long cycle both on land and offshore, including deepwater in the most advantaged offshore basins. The magnitude of these leading indicators combined with upward revision to global economic growth and demand recovery present the potential for an even stronger inflection than initially anticipated for the second half of the year. Therefore, we have greater confidence in the previous guidance of a double-digit increase in international revenue in the second half when compared to the same period last year. And absent a setback in the post-pandemic recovery, we foresee an upside for full-year growth internationally, resulting in a stronger footing as we enter 2022. In the context of this top-line growth and the steps we took to reset the earnings power, we're confident that we'll fully realize our operating leverage to deliver our full-year ambition of 250 to 300 basis points margin expansion year-over-year. We expect to continue expanding margins during the recovery to support increasing cash flow throughout the year, which will provide subsequent deleveraging opportunity.

Thank you, Olivier, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. First quarter earnings per share was $0.21; there were no charges or credits recorded during the first quarter of 2021. Excluding the charges and credits recorded in the previous periods, this represents a decrease of $0.01 sequentially and $0.04 when compared to the first quarter of last year. Overall, our first quarter revenue of $5.2 billion decreased approximately 6% sequentially. However, if we adjust for the OneStim and artificial lift, low-flow divestitures which were completed during the fourth quarter of last year, revenue was essentially flat sequentially despite the first quarter seasonality. Excluding the impact of divestitures, North America revenue increased 10% sequentially, reflecting significant activity increase on land, partially offset by lower product sales offshore. International revenue declined only 3% sequentially despite the effects of the extended winter period we experienced in Russia and the usual seasonality in the Far East. Pretax operating margins were 12.7% and have now increased for three quarters in a row. In addition, pretax operating margins were 230 basis points higher compared to the same quarter of last year. This represents the highest margin since the third quarter of 2019. This strong margin performance reflects the significant operating leverage we have created through the combination of the high grading of our portfolio and our cost-out program which is now essentially complete. Company-wide adjusted EBITDA margins of 20.1% for the first quarter were flat sequentially as the positive impact of the OneStim divestiture was offset by the seasonal effects we typically experience in the first quarter. EBITDA margins were 203 basis points higher compared to the same quarter of last year. Let me now go through the first quarter results for each Division. First quarter Digital & Integration revenue of $773 million decreased 7% sequentially driven by seasonally lower sales of digital solutions and multi-client licenses. Margins only decreased by 37 basis points to 32% as the effects of the digital solutions and multi-client revenue declines were largely offset by improved profitability from APS projects. Reservoir Performance revenue of $1 billion decreased 20% sequentially. However, excluding the impact of the divested OneStim business, revenue increased 3% despite seasonally lower revenue in Russia and China. The revenue growth was driven primarily by higher activity in Latin America and the Middle East. Margins increased 261 basis points to 10.2%, largely due to the divestiture of the OneStim business that was dilutive to the division's fourth quarter margins. Well Construction revenue of $1.9 billion increased 4% sequentially, and margins increased 103 basis points to 10.8% due to increased activity in North America land and Latin America. This growth was partially offset by the seasonal slowdown in drilling activity in Russia and China. Production Systems revenue of $1.6 billion decreased 4% sequentially. International revenue declined 4% while North America was down 3%. Despite the revenue decline, margins only decreased 71 basis points to 8.7% as a result of cost measures, as well as improved profitability in Midstream production systems due to higher activity. Now, turning to our liquidity, during the quarter, we generated $429 million of cash flow from operations and positive free cash flow of $159 million, despite severance payments of $112 million and the increase in working capital requirements we always experience in the first quarter due to the annual payout of employee incentives. Our cash flow will improve throughout the rest of the year, consistent with our historical quarterly trends. Our net debt at the end of the first quarter was $13.7 billion, a decrease of $207 million when compared to the end of the previous quarter. During the quarter, we made capital investments of $270 million. This amount includes CapEx, investment in APS projects, and multi-client. For full-year 2021, we are still expecting to spend between $1.5 billion to $1.7 billion on capital investments. On that note, let me take the opportunity to provide you with a quick update on our capital stewardship program. Optimizing the allocation of our capital investments will be critical to maximize the benefits of the ongoing activity recovery, which is poised to accelerate in the next few quarters. As part of the company's reorganization, we implemented a new capital allocation framework that governs all types of investments. The underlying principle behind the framework is that investment opportunities are prioritized based on returns and cash flow before any other metric. At the corporate level, this framework allows us to critically assess our technology portfolio and rationalize our offering to reduce capital intensity and maximize returns. At the Division level, we have strengthened our processes to ensure that new assets, as well as existing assets, are deployed where they will generate the highest returns. We are also leveraging this capital discipline to drive commercial behaviors and improve the quality of our revenue. With this in place, we remain confident in our ability to achieve double-digit cash flow margin—free cash flow margin—for the full year of 2021 and beyond. This will allow us to deleverage the balance sheet, which remains a top priority for us. It is worth noting that during the quarter, the two major credit rating agencies confirmed our long-term credit ratings of A2 and A, respectively. Both cited our expected strong cash flow profile and our commitment to deleveraging. I will now turn the conference call back to Olivier.

Thank you, Stephane. So, I believe that we are ready to open the floor for the Q&A session.

Hey, good morning, Olivier and Stephane.

Good morning, James.

So, Olivier, great to hear your increased conviction about international top line growth in the second half of this year. I'd love to hear or understand how you're thinking about the slope or shape of that recovery, and then really, as it relates more so to '22 and '23, which I think will be very important years.

No, thank you, James. I think, first, it's clear that we are about to enter a demand-led recovery. The macro factors, both economic growth and what we are seeing, indicate that the oil demand recovery will reach 2019 levels by or before the end of 2022. In this context, I believe that we are ready and starting in the second half of this year, facing the beginning of a demand-led recovery that will trigger a multiyear recovery cycle and industry upcycle. If you look at the recent period of underinvestment, combined with structural constraints in North America due to capital discipline, this will create the condition for a significant pull on international supply. So, this will support international supply activity buildup, not only at the end of this year but well into '22 and '23. In addition, I believe the offshore, being a unique market, is a privileged market for IOCs, some NOCs, and focused independents, will also see a gradual but very strong recovery over the long term. The offshore advantaged basins represent an extremely good oil production plateau for some basins with a low carbon footprint. So, this will support the long-term international recovery. We believe that we are very well-positioned to outperform in this macro because we believe that this macro outlook, which would include a growing international mix, including offshore, will play very well to our strengths. We have accelerated our strategy transformation, both the organizational transformation and key strategic elements that will position us well for efficiency performance focus, from our capital stewardship to our fit-for-basin technology, which is resonating very well for our customer, and finally, for our digital and decarbonization strategic focus we have put in. So, I believe that we are seeing the beginning of this multiyear growth. We are also seeing that our performance strategy is resonating very well for our customers, and we have been awarded several multiyear contracts that are creating the backlog we need to support this growth going forward. So yes, I'm optimistic, not only on the second half of this year but on an accelerated path in 2022, and a long-cycle strength, including offshore, in '22, '23, and beyond.

No, that was very clear, Olivier. Thanks for that. Maybe the second, the follow-up for me is on the margins. You've had good margin progression in the last two or three quarters. How do you think about sustainable margin progression and expansion as the recovery takes hold?

I think going forward, James, as we enter this industry upcycle, I believe three elements will favorably impact our margin expansion. The very favorable macro outlook combined with the pace of international growth, the offshore elements, and also, as we are starting to see this quarter, the return of exploration and appraisal activity that is still needed to replenish the reserve. These factors are very favorable. Secondly, I believe we have created quality revenue initiatives as part of our initiative; fit-for-basin technology is creating the premium that differentiates us in some critical basin, in some critical assets, and gives us the premium for revenue quality improvement. Similarly, our technology access, as we have seen in North America, has played a great role in helping us to expand the market and command premium with our technology partner. Finally, the success of Digital will be accretive over the period. The third element is the step change we expect to materialize into our integration contracts, from a performance efficiency using Digital, as we have already demonstrated using fit technology, and using practices that are becoming best-in-class. We believe that these three elements, the backdrop, the key element of our strategy for revenue quality, and the enhanced margin on our integrated contract will all combine to create a condition for further margin expansion and acceleration of our margin expansion going forward.

Yes, Hello.

Good morning, Scott.

Good morning. So the D&I margin at 32%, super impressive. How should we think about incrementals for that segment over the course of the year? By definition, they obviously need to be healthy given the starting point, but what's a reasonable range? Relatedly, as you get deeper into these digital management contracts with customers, obviously profitability improves over time. Would that be a material driver during the rest of the year, or is that incremental margin bets that's more in 2022 and beyond?

First, I think we provided guidance for full-year margin at 30%. I think you have seen that the way we started the year is putting us on an excellent footing to realize that margin outlook. This margin comes from two major factors: one is the performance of our integration contracts, and secondly, the strength and margin of our digital business. Going forward and rolling into the later part of the year, obviously, digital will gradually start to improve its size and will generate the fall through that we believe will support this 30% ambition and could, as we exit 2021, clearly outperform and put us in a better opportunity for margin expansion into 2022. Long-term, the digital will indeed grow, and we share that ambition there, and we will clearly help continue to support these impressive margins and possibly expand them further in the long term.

Our immediate priority is indeed to deleverage the balance sheet. At the same time, we want to make sure that we can sustain growth in our core business. Even though our capex intensity has reduced compared to the past, we also need to leave enough capacity to execute our strategy, particularly as it relates to new horizons of growth. In any case, whether it relates to our core business or white spaces, any new investment will be looked at under the strict lens of our return-based capital allocation framework. Beyond that, once we have filtered through this project, we will return any excess cash to our shareholders for either dividends or stock repurchases. We do not have a prescribed split between the two; it will depend on the conditions at that time.

Thank you, Stephane. So, I believe that we are ready to open the floor for the Q&A session.

Hi, good morning, Olivier. I want to follow up on the discussion about the Middle East. You mentioned strong growth in Saudi Arabia and Qatar this quarter, which seems to be the first real signs of international expansion. Could you provide some insights into that performance during the quarter and clarify whether these were new contracts or existing ones that have resumed? More importantly, could you discuss the types of tenders currently being considered in the Middle East? Do you see projects aimed at increasing capacity in the region? Additionally, do you think there will be a greater focus on project management work? You mentioned that LSTK has improved this quarter; do you envision this becoming a more significant part of your operations in the future?

I think, first, to comment on our growth in the Middle East. Indeed, we had sequential growth in the Middle East during the quarter. This was led primarily by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. These were due to two factors: Qatar is our market position combined with the activity growth has resulted in increased activity. In Saudi, it's more related to performance and activity share awards that resulted from our performance in execution this quarter. We see these factors of a strong market position and performance differentiation helping us going forward. Additionally, we announced some critical awards that are securing or expanding this market position in the Middle East. There is a lot of LSTK; some of our peers have talked about large and very large contract tenders underway, so I cannot and will not comment on this as those tenders are underway. What I can say is that the activity is rebounding, the outlook for both land and offshore activity in the Middle East will strengthen. Our customers are indeed securing capacity and looking for the best performers, enhancing their ambitions to augment their capacity and production going forward. First, the Production System is not only subsea system; it has both short and long cycle as exposure in short cycle in North America to the ESP which is coming back strongly and the Cameron surface equipment also servicing the frac and our partner Liberty, and also internationally is indeed a mix of short for ESP and completion equipment and long cycle for midstream as well as subsea and surface equipment. It’s a mix of long and short with very tangible exposure in North America benefiting short-term and long-term international long cycle projects. The subsea market is very alive, and I think last year the number of subsea projects were short of 200 compared to higher than 50 in 2019. The prediction this year is to be above 200, 220—these are our predictions and align with the market prediction, and this will be increasing gradually going forward to be between 250 to 300 over the mid-term period to support these offshore projects.

Okay, thank you very much. To conclude, I'd like to offer three takeaways: First, the macroeconomic and activity outlook are increasingly supporting an attractive industry upcycle, characterized with an inflection in international activity, a consolidation of short-cycle activity, and the return advantage offshore plays, all playing to our core strength. We are increasingly optimistic about the international growth trajectory during the second half of the year, which absent of a setback in pandemic recovery will result in full-year international growth. Consequently, we have reinforced our confidence in our 2021 financial targets on margin expansion and free cash flow generation. Second, we're convinced that our performance strategy is aligned with a new industry landscape and is increasingly resonating with our customers, as performance matters critically in this environment. This is translating into market wins, particularly in the Middle East and offshore basins, and will support our ambition to outperform through this cycle. Moreover, the steady progress in our digital strategy will translate over time into expanding new revenue streams and accretive margins. Third, the margin expansion realized this quarter, both sequentially and year-on-year is reflecting the impact of both our capital stewardship strategy and restructuring program, which will translate into substantial operating leverage as the year progresses and activities strengthen in all basins. We anticipate the upcoming quarters to further this margin expansion with broad contributions from our basins and divisions. Finally, our commitment towards both sustainability and New Energy is materializing in a growing portfolio of technology and ventures that will contribute to global climate actions and the future of the company. Ladies and gentlemen, this year represents a unique opportunity for the new Schlumberger to execute on its new performance journey and outperform the market within an increasingly attractive outlook. Thank you very much.