Civeo Corporation

Greetings and welcome to Civio Corporation fourth quarter 2021 earnings call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. The question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Reagan Nielsen, Senior Director, Corporate Development and Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, and welcome to CIVIO's fourth quarter 2021 earnings conference call. Today, our call will be led by Bradley Dodson, CIVIO's president and chief executive officer, and Carolyn Stone, CIVIO's senior vice president, chief financial officer, and treasurer. Before we begin, we would like to caution listeners regarding forward-looking statements. To the extent that our remarks today contain anything other than historical information, please note that we're relying on the safe harbor protections afforded by federal law. Any such remarks should be read in the context of the many factors that affect our business, including risks and uncertainties disclosed in our forms 10-K, 10-Q, and other SEC filings.

I'll now turn the call over to Bradley. Thank you, Reagan, and thank you all for joining us today on our fourth quarter variance call. I'll start with the key takeaways and then I'll provide a brief summary of our fourth quarter and full year 2021 performance. Carolyn will then provide a financial and segment level review. And I'll conclude our prepared comments with our initial full year 2022 guidance and the regional assumptions underlying that guidance as well as some directional commentary. And then we'll open up the call for questions. The key takeaways from our call today are the business continues to generate cash while supporting our ongoing debt reduction. For the full year 2021, Civio generated $87 million in free cash flow and reduced total debt by $76 million to end the year at $175 million of total debt. Our fourth quarter results were better than we were expecting. In the fourth quarter, Civio delivered $34.5 million of adjusted EBITDA and $26.1 million of free cash flow. We reduced our total debt by $20 million in the fourth quarter, bringing our net leverage ratio down to 1.49 times as of December 31, 2021. Delevering our balance sheet remains our top financial priority, and this quarter is the 11th straight quarter of leverage ratio reduction. Strategic investment and diversifying our revenue profile has paid dividends again in 2021 like it did in 2020. during the volatility experienced across all three of our segments. While Australia activity declined in 2021 due to the China-Australia trade dispute and the business experienced increased labor costs due to COVID, our Canadian business continued to recover from the trough of 2020 to offset the Australian decline. If you recall, the exact opposite happened in 2020 where Australia had significant growth while Canada struggled and the oil market struggled. This diversity in revenue drivers is a key component of serious free cash flow generation strategies, and we will continue to seek opportunities to expand our customer base and geographic footprint to reduce volatility in our free cash flow generation as we continue to reduce our debt. Despite high prices across the core commodities that we support, our customers continue to be focused on capital discipline, and returning capital to their shareholders at the expense of spending on increased maintenance or increasing production. This capital spending is ultimately what drives occupancy in our Canadian lodges and Australian villages. Cibio announced a share repurchase program in the third quarter of 2021, and we began executing on that program throughout the end of the year. with total 2020 purchases under the program of approximately 217,000 shares repurchased. Return of capital to our shareholders is currently the secondary focus of our capital allocation strategy, alongside our first priority of debt pay down. Our Australian business continues to be burdened with increased labor costs related to COVID travel and border restrictions, coupled with subdued activity from our customers related to the China-Australia trade dispute. which has led to lower build rooms in our villages. In total, our team put together a solid fourth quarter, despite the challenges of the pandemic, trade disputes, and limited capital deployment by our customers. Let me take a moment to provide a business update across our three segments. In Canada, our revenues and adjusted EBITDA increased sequentially and year-over-year, driven by our Canadian mobile camp activity. As expected, our lodges did experience lower billed rooms sequentially related to typical holiday downtime in the fourth quarter. Our Australian results were above expectations. Our Bowen Basin occupancy was better than expected, but did reflect some typical holiday downtime sequentially. Adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter was down year over year as a result of weaker customer activity in the Bowen Basin and increased labor costs in our Western Australian integrated services business. Turning briefly to the U.S., conditions for our U.S. business continue to be challenging in the fourth quarter, but increased year-over-year activity in our lodges and offshore business led to higher revenues in adjusted EBITDA versus the fourth quarter of 2020. Adjusted EBITDA was also positively impacted by a $3.8 million gain on sale of assets from the opportunistic fourth quarter 2021 sale of our West Permian Lodge. Turning to our balance sheet, Our net leverage ratio declined to 1.49 times at year end from 1.86 times at the end of the third quarter and 2.06 times at the end of 2020. Proactively dedicating free cash flow to reducing debt remains our primary financial priority. With that, I'll turn the call over to Carolyn.

Thank you, Bradley, and thank you all for joining us this morning. Today we reported total revenue in the fourth quarter of $159.8 million, with gap net income of $9.8 million, or 58 cents per deleted share. During the fourth quarter, we generated adjusted EBITDA of $34.5 million, operating cash flow of $25.3 million, and free cash flow of $26.1 million. The increased adjusted EBITDA we experienced in the fourth quarter of 21 as compared to the same period in 2020, was largely due to increased build rooms in our Canadian AllSams lodges and increased Canadian mobile camp activity, partially offset by lower Australian village build rooms and increased labor costs there due to COVID-19. For the full year 2021, we reported revenue of $594.5 million and a net loss of $0.6 million, or $0.04 per share. In 2021, we generated adjusted EBITDA of 109.1 million, a modest increase from our 2020 full-year adjusted EBITDA of 108.1 million. Results from the full year 2021 reflect the impact of a strengthened Australian and Canadian dollar relative to the U.S. dollar, which increased revenue in adjusted EBITDA by 40.6 million and 9.8 million, respectively. On a constant currency basis, decreased build rooms related to the China-Australia trade dispute, and increased labor costs across the Australian segment were offset by increased mobile camp activity and increased build rooms in our Canadian segment. Let's now turn to the fourth quarter results for our three segments. I'll begin with a review of the Canadian segment performance compared to its performance a year ago in the fourth quarter of 2020. Revenue from our Canadian segment was $92.2 million as compared to revenue of $65.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2020. Adjusted EBITDA in Canada was $23.1 million, an increase from $13.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2020. The increase in revenue and adjusted EBITDA was largely caused by a meaningful increase in build rooms in 2021 related to the recovery in oil prices and the reduced effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. especially in our oil sands lodges. This was coupled with increased mobile camp activity. Our U.S. dollar results further reflect the impact of a strengthened Canadian dollar relative to the U.S. dollar. During the fourth quarter, billed rooms in our Canadian lodges totaled $588,000, which was at 25% year-over-year from $469,000 in the fourth quarter of 2020 due to the factors we just discussed. Our daily room rate for the Canadian segment in U.S. dollars was 106, which represents an 8% year-over-year increase. Turning to Australia. During the fourth quarter, we recorded revenue of 62.3 million, down from 63.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2020. Adjusted EBITDA was 13.6 million, down from 17.2 million during the same period of 2020. These results, which represent a 2% period over period top line decrease on a constant currency basis, were driven by decreased activity in villages as well as increased labor costs, which were largely the result of COVID-related travel and border restrictions. Australian build rooms in the quarter were 465,000, down from 480,000 in the fourth quarter of 2020. to do again to the continued uncertainty related to the ongoing China-Australia trade dispute. The average daily rate for Australian villages in US dollars was $77 in the fourth quarter, which is consistent with the fourth quarter of 2020. Moving to the US, revenue for the fourth quarter was 5.3 million as compared to 4.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2020. The US segment adjusted EBITDA was 3.3 million in the fourth quarter, which was an increase from a negative adjusted EBITDA of $1.4 million during the same period last year. These year-over-year increases were related to increased activity in our lodges and our offshore business, as well as the gain on sale of our West Permian Lodge. On a consolidated basis, capital expenditures for the full year 2021 were $15.6 million, which was up from $10.1 million during 2020. This increase is primarily due to increased Canadian lodge maintenance, coupled with increased Canadian mobile camp capital expenditures related to the awarded pipeline contracts. Our total debt outstanding on December 31st, 21, was $175.1 million, which represents a $20.1 million decrease since September 30th and a $76 million decrease from year-end 2020. Our net leverage ratio for the quarter decreased to 1.49 times from 1.86 times as of September 30th. And as of December 31st, 2021, we had total liquidity of approximately 92.8 million, which consists of 86.5 million available under our revolving credit facilities, as well as 6.3 million of cash on hand. Bradley will now discuss our outlook for the full year 2022. Bradley? Thank you, Carolyn.

I'd like to discuss our full year 2022 guidance on a consolidated basis, including the underlying outlook for each of the regions, as well as the underlying assumptions related to our guidance. We are initiating full year 2022 guidance of revenues between 600 and 615 million, EBITDA between 90 and 95 million. Our full year 2022 capital expenditures Forecast is a range of $20 to $25 million. Capital expenditures are expected to be higher year over year in 2022 as we normalize our maintenance capital spending for our Canadian lodges and Australian villages after several years of prioritizing free cash flow. That being said, our primary financial objective continues to be maximizing free cash flow generation. Based on the EBITDA and CapEx guidance just outlined, an expected interest expense of $10 million for 2022, and minimal expected cash taxes and working capital investment, we expect 2022 free cash flow to range between $55 million and $65 million. To bridge our 2022 guidance from the 2021 actuals, our 2021 adjusted EBITDA included approximately $13 million of non-operating items comprised of $3.5 million of Canadian emergency wage subsidy proceeds, $6.2 million in gains on sale of those assets, and $3.4 million from other miscellaneous items such as insurance proceeds and contract settlement. Excluding those items from the 2021 results, our 2021 adjusted EBITDA would have been approximately $95 million in line with our 2022 EBITDA guidance of $90 to $95 million. We've not included any non-operating items in our 2022 guidance figures and are not aware of any such items at this time. The single largest uncertainty in our 2022 guidance is the time and duration of the pipeline projects in British Columbia that we are currently supporting with our mobile camp assets. Should these projects extend further into 2022 or even into 2023, we could see adjusted EBITDA in 2022 improve by up to approximately $7 to $10 million. I will now provide the regional outlooks and corresponding underlying assumptions by region. In Canada, as we look into 2022, we are encouraged by the recent uplift in oil prices. We know that our customers are currently prioritizing the return of capital to shareholders and need to be convinced of the longer-term stability across commodity prices and the broader economy. as well as improving COVID-19 dynamics before materially increasing capital investment in Canada. While activity in our lodges should remain steady, 2022 mobile camp activity will be negatively impacted by the completion of pipeline construction projects throughout the year, including the occurrence of the related demobilization costs. We currently expect relatively consistent year-over-year turnaround activity in the second and third quarters of 2022. But as discussed in prior years, we won't get a more accurate view on this until at least March when customers look to secure turnaround rooms. Canadian mobile camp activity related to the Coastal Gosling Pipeline will remain relatively strong throughout the first nine months of the year, after which the three mobile camps are currently expected to wind down by the end of 2022. However, our mobile camps supporting the TMX pipeline expansion is expected to continue into 2023. When these pipeline-related mobile camps projects roll off, we incur the cost associated with the demobilization of these assets. We have currently included all three demobilizations in our current 2022 guidance with costs of approximately $7 to $10 million in total or approximately $2 to $4 million of demobilization costs per camp. If one of the fourth quarter demobilization slips into 2023, we expect the demobilization costs for approximately $2 to $4 million to also slip into 2023. Our Canadian guidance primarily depends on the following three assumptions. Decreasing COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations from current levels and that they do not impact industrial activity. Customers are currently prioritizing return of capital to shareholders versus deploying capital into their operations, and this is reflected in our guidance. That being said, customer 2022 CapEx budgets are marginally higher than 2021, and with WTI Oil trading over $90 a barrel, we're cautiously optimistic that customers could increase capital expenditures further later in 2022. Lastly, Availability of skilled labor continues to be an issue, limiting our customers' ability to increase staffing levels, particularly for turnarounds or construction projects, as well as impacting our ability to increase our headcount. Turning to Australia, we are encouraged by the significant increase in metallurgical coal prices in the back half of 2021 and into early 2022. However, customers are still focusing on capital discipline due to volatility in met coal prices, La Nina weather, and the lingering China-Australia trade dispute. Our current guidance reflects continued capital discipline rather than the current price for met coal. Iron ore prices remain at extremely healthy levels, and customer activity in Western Australia remains strong. But COVID-related travel and border restrictions continue to significantly increase the labor costs for our integrated services business. We are beginning to see signs of restriction relief throughout Australia, but we believe labor shortages will remain throughout the year 2022. For our U.S. business, the oil and gas price environment has improved significantly in recent months, but similar to our Canadian and Australian customers, there has been an emphasis on living within cash flow versus growth. We expect our well-signed offshore businesses to improve throughout the year, but this is offset by lower contributions from our U.S. lodges due to the sale of the West Permian Lodge in October 2021. I will conclude our prepared comments by underscoring the key elements of our strategy as we navigate this extraordinary market climate. Our mandate is as follows. We will prioritize the safety and well-being of our guests, employees, and the communities we work in We will manage our cost structure in accordance with the occupancy outlook across our three regions. We will continue to enhance our best-in-class hospitality offerings. We will allocate capital prudently to maximize free cash flow generation while we continue to reduce debt and begin to return capital to shareholders through our share repurchase program. As we continue to reduce debt, we will seek opportunities to further diversify our revenue and free cash flow generation through organic opportunities. With that, we're happy to take any questions.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time we will be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, you may press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star key. Our first question comes from the line of Stephen Gengaro with Stiefel. Please proceed with your question.

Thanks, and good morning, everybody. Good morning, Stephen. I think the first question is just kind of use of cash. I mean, you have the share repurchase program in place. You know, when I look at... What you've done, you've done a great job paying down debt. You're going to generate, apparently, we think, pretty good free cash flow next year. What will it take, and why not just get ultra-aggressive on the buyback?

Well, as we've talked about in the past, we put the program in place in September. It didn't give us a very large open window before third quarter blackout period. But if you look at the disclosure in the 10K, which we'll file later today or early tomorrow, you'll see that the pace of us buying back stock throughout the last four months of the year picked up each month. And so as we stand here today with about four months underneath our belt, we're about a third, 30%, a third complete under the authorization of 700 plus thousand shares. And so I think we've made a good good pace and we'll certainly look to be opportunistic around buying back stock here as we move forward into 2022.

Okay, thanks. Has there been any thought to doing a, I think you'd have to do a more complete filing in Canada to expand it to a larger buyback. Has there been any thought to that?

We're continuing to evaluate that. Certainly, So we've made some progress, but we'll need to continue to evaluate that, and should it become an option that we want to take advantage of, we can certainly look at that.

Great. Thanks. Two other things. One is on the Canadian front, just listening to your commentary, and you brought a lot of color. The mobile campsite, you talked about the demogs, and I think that that kind of leads to a pretty sharp drop-off in 4QE Bata in Canada just because of the demo cost. Can you give us any sense for the revenue of the two major pipeline projects? I mean, is it half the mobile camp revenue in Canada, or how should we think about that?

Well, in terms of the camps we have supporting coastal gas like in TMX, That is the totality of our mobile camp revenue. 95% to 100% of it is related to those two projects.

Okay. Okay. That makes sense. And then just the final one, can you give us – so the U.S. market has been interesting. When you think about activity growth, you know, you sold the West Permian facility. How much – revenue does that, I know it's not a huge piece, but is that, how should we think about the revenue contribution that that facility had? And then when we think about EBITDA, will that business kind of run EBITDA break even give or take for most of 22? Is that how we should be thinking about it?

So the revenue from the West Permian Lodge, as you may recall, We leased out the facility in totality, I believe it was in April of 2021, to a third party who then operated that asset. We did a little less than $2 million in revenues from the West Permian Lodge in 2021 before we sold the asset. And in total for 2022... If you'll allow me a range, I would expect we'll be breakeven to maybe a $2 million EBITDA loss in the U.S.

Okay. Great. Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Steve Ferrazani with Sedoti. Please proceed with your question.

Good morning, everyone. Thanks for all the detail on the call. When you think about... if not expanding on the share buyback and your net leverage is probably to a point that you're comfortable with, or maybe you've changed the sort of target there, how are you thinking about capital allocation? Because your CapEx isn't going up huge.

So we have about $30 million, $32 million worth of amortization annually on the term loan. So that'll be the use of... of the free cash flow, and then would look to continue to reduce leverage on the revolver as well. And then we'll opportunistically look to buy back stock as a secondary priority.

And then in terms of the West Permian sale, which you mentioned was opportunistic, and I know you had that relationship there beforehand, but are there any other assets you might consider divesting as you sort of

reshape the portfolio yeah across all three regions if we have assets that we can monetize at at valuations that effectively bring forward the cash flow generating capability of that asset to the to the current date we'll certainly continue to look at that absolutely

What will bring down Australian labor costs, and how are you thinking about that when you provided the guidance?

They need to open the international borders, which they have. We need to see the WA border open internally, the state border open, and consistently be open. It has been open from time to time over the last 12 or 15 months, but then it will close again with very short notice, which makes it very difficult to source labor from Eastern Australia into WA. I think businesses across the world are dealing with limited availability of labor as well as higher labor costs. For us, it's a double whammy. If we can't get full-time hires, then we get temporary hires that are both more expensive on an hourly basis and then less efficient. So our team has been working diligently to uh to recruit folks to bring in foreign uh workers as well uh so but i do think that that process to kind of unwind what's already happened will likely take the balance the full balance of 2022. so our guidance effectively looks at looked at is based off of the cost structure that was present in the second half of 2021 uh so it assumes that it doesn't get better but it assumes it doesn't get worse as well.

Okay. Fair enough. Thanks. And just last one for me is what would get you more positive on, um, expectations for Canadian turnaround activity? Uh, it doesn't sound like you're super optimistic on a, on a huge jump this year, even though we've seen the, you know, the CapEx budgets, the initial ones at least be higher. Um, and we can see oil prices. What's your thoughts there and what would get you more optimistic?

Well, it's one of those times or topics where some of the public statements made by our customers don't exactly line up with what they're telling us on the detailed level on a side-by-side basis. So right now, I would say underlying your question, we're probably fairly conservative on our overall occupancy in Canada for 2022, but it's based on the best information we have from our clients. should their actual activity line up more with what they've said about their CapEx, then we could have some upside for sure. Great.

Thanks so much, everyone.

Thank you.

We have a follow-up question from the line of Stephen Gingara with Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Thanks. So, brother, I was curious, when you talked about uses of cash, has there been... any thought of additional M&A, whether it's like the action deal you were successful with down in Australia or other potential deals? And then maybe beyond that, has there been any thought to other end markets as it pertains to M&A? Sure.

Sure. Well, the action transaction we did in July of 2019 gave us our foothold in Western Australia, gave us critical mass in that region, expanded our service-only business model significantly, and we were very pleased to do that. It also gave us exposure to iron ore, which we did not have a significant exposure to that commodity prior to that transaction. In terms of Priority, M&A would be last. So in our view of capital allocation, debt pay down one, buyback two, look for organic expansionary opportunities, and then M&A would be last. When we think about the value that our stock is trading at right now, we believe that the buyback program presents better returns then typically you can receive, at least at this point, an M&A. Ideally, longer term, we would like to expand the business by kind of expanding within our fairway, but looking for ways that give us greater customer, enlarge our customer base or expand our geographies, but keeping to our knitting in terms of the services that we're providing. And so we have looked at other geographies and and other regions, but typically closer to home than really going out and to a completely different geography in the world.

Thank you. And just one final, when you, I think traditionally, I have to go back and look at the exact numbers, but I think about 60% of your full year EBITDA falls in second and third quarters, and I guess outside of the seasonality that you mentioned for the mobile camps in Canada this year, is there anything else that we should be thinking about which would alter that normal seasonal pattern?

No, I think that you've hit it, but just to be abundantly clear, yes, in Canada, the second quarter and third quarter with the turnaround activity are the two quarters with the highest regional EBITDA In terms of Australia, we should see sequential improvement quarter to quarter, Q1 to Q2, Q2 to Q3, and then either flat to slightly down in Q4 in Australia, and that will be dependent on holiday seasonal downtime. U.S. should be fairly flat. I'm cautiously optimistic on the U.S. business from a macro perspective, but it's not material to the overall situation. CBO financials. And then lastly, in total, yeah, about two-thirds of our EBITDA will come, or is expected to come, in the second and third quarters of the year.

Great. Thank you for the call.

Oh, and one last thing, Stephen. It was a And then, of course, we currently have the vast majority of the demobilization costs in the fourth quarter in Canada, which is also impacting the kind of quarterly flow, if you will.

Our next question comes from the line of Sean Mitchell with Daniel Energy Partners. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, Bradley. Thanks for taking the question. I got on the call a little bit late, and you may have talked about it in your opening commentary, but Looking at your capital spend from 20, I think you guys spent about 10 million bucks in 21, it went up closer to 15. This year going 20 to 25, what is kind of the maintenance cap if you think about a maintenance capital level within the organization? Is it closer to that 10 million bucks?

I would say it's plus or minus 20. In 2020, Our Canadian team, given all the dynamics, we don't need to belabor. But with what was happening in the second and third quarters related to COVID, we carved it way back, and they did a great job of managing to a lower CapEx number. This year was some of the same. I mean, quite frankly, the spending in 2021 would have been higher except for supply chain disruptions. when we couldn't get vehicles or computers, et cetera, that we ordinarily would want to purchase. So our little less than $16 million of CapEx in 2021 ideally would be closer to 20 if all the supply chain disruptions hadn't happened. And so we have a higher expected maintenance CapEx number in 2022. But if you'll also recall, guidance for 2021 started off at 20 to 25. And so we're expecting kind of the same starting point for this year. And we'll do our best to be prudent in it. And we've always tried to spend capital where we need to, but then not be smart about where we're spending it. So I expect we'll do the same this year. Got it. Thank you. Thank you. It's good to talk to you.

There are no further questions in the queue. I'd like to hand the call back over to Bradley Dotson for closing remarks.

Thank you, Doug, and thank you, everyone, for joining the call today. We appreciate your interest in CIVIA, and we'll look forward to speaking to you on the first quarter earnings call in a few months.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's teleconference. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and have a wonderful day.