Archer Limited

Welcome to the Archer third quarter 2021 earnings release call. Throughout the call, all participants will be in listen-only mode, and afterwards, there'll be a question and answer session. Today, I am pleased to present Doug Skindler, CEO, and Espen Joranger, CFO. Please begin your meeting.

Thank you, Mark. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining this conference call for third quarter 2021. Archer's Chief Financial Officer Espen Johange is joining me on the call today. In today's call, I will touch upon the key highlights and summarize Archer's operation for the third quarter. Espen will thereafter walk us through the financial section. Towards the end of the call, we will open the line for questions. Moving to slide two, I would like to note that information provided in today's call includes forward-looking statements as well as non-GAAP financial measures. Next slide, please. Revenue for the quarter of $242.8 million is an increase of $14.8 million relative to the second quarter, corresponding to an increase of 6.5%. Compared to Q3 2020, revenue increased by $59.2 million or 32.3%. The increase in revenue is due to additional contribution from well services and land drilling, partly offset by reduction in platform drilling. On the back of increased activity and revenue, our adjusted EBITDA increased $1.2 million from second quarter. The increase was driven by increased contribution from well services and platform drilling. During the quarter, we incurred $3 million of exceptional charges, mainly related to COVID-19 and the idle personnel in Argentina, resulting in a reported everyday of $20.5 million. Compared to the end of second quarter 2021, we see a modest reduction in our net interest-bearing debt, ending at $517.5 million. When adjusting for the impact of the deeper acquisition, We report an interest in paying debt in line with our expectations. Lastly, we successfully completed a multi-year plugin abandonment campaign on EDA, which I will cover in greater detail later in the presentation. Slide four, please. OL services division delivered another quarter with record revenue of $61.6 million, a solid 31.9 increase compared to previous quarter. The increase is largely driven by a full quarter contribution from the new Equinor contract, as well as revenue from the default acquisition. On the back of increased revenue, we are pleased to report an additional $1.2 million of EBITDA from this segment compared to the second quarter. On the operations side, we highlight a very successful contract campaign on this. In addition to a sound EBITDA contribution, We estimate that the operator reduced the carbon footprint by close to 1,000 tons of CO2 by using our contract system compared to what would be the case with traditional byline. Slide five, please. Arches Oil II division started off with the development of first of a kind V0 certified gas-tight plug for the North Sea market in the early 2000s. The plug was developed for the highest quality and safety standard, typically for the Norwegian continental shelf. Over time, the product offering has been expanded to fill the requirements from our clients. From being a provider of primarily plug and plug solutions, Oiltus has expanded in the offering to include cementing solutions, well-cleaning solutions, and lately slot recovery and P&A solutions. This has been possible due to the extraordinary contribution from our employees and our commitment to invest in such developments. Currently, we have a dedicated team of 12 engineers working on our vision to provide value-adding technology to the highest standards within the well-integrity and well-intervention market. From being a provider of VCO products in the North Sea, we have grown to be an international player with presence and reach in more than 40 countries, including the major oil hubs like Houston, Abu Dhabi, and Perth, as well as frontier oil and gas development areas such as Mozambique and Guyana. International expansion has been capitalized by the wish from the oil majors to use our tools in their global operations. Our customer base are all the oil majors, including Exxon, Shell, BP, Chevron, and Equinor. Archer Oil Tools continues to be recognized as an industry leader for its smart and robust solutions. For markets where well integrity, reliability, and time saving are of utmost importance, and we are committed to further grow this business segment in the time ahead of us. Our product and geographical expansion has allowed oil to deliver close to 20% average growth from 2017. Moving to slide six, revenue from platform drilling, engineering, and our model rigs are fairly stable relative to previous quarter. The reduction in activity is a result of three rigs not being in our contract portfolio for the quarter. Despite the lower overall revenue, we are pleased with the 1.1 million additional EBITDA contributions. The increase in EBITDA is a result of bonuses achieved by our model rig during the quarter, following operational excellence resulting in an overall EBITDA margin close to 10%. The number of rigs under contract in active drilling mode was stable compared to second quarter, as we saw some higher activity in the UK offsetting some reduction in Norway as JIDA is coming off active mode during Q3. Moving to slide seven. I wanted to briefly touch upon the P&A campaign concluded on GIDA. ARCHA has been present on GIDA since 1992, and as production at GIDA is coming to an end, we were awarded a contract for the plug and abandonment of the 32 wells back in 2017. The contract scope included permanent plugging and abandonment of all the wells on the GIDA platform operated by Repsol. The plug and abandonment of the first well commenced in 2019. After 18 wells being plugged by March 2020, there was eight months COVID-19-related break before operation recommenced in October 2020. A total of 190,000 meters of casing and tubing were pulled during the operation, while the tripped drill pipe exceeded one million meters. A multitude of proprietary oil tools and wireline cylinders were used in the operations. Archer have developed an operating model which we call OneArcher. Key features of the One Archer operating model includes cross-trading of personnel, cross-selling of services from other Archer segments, partnering up with external complementary service providers, as well as insourcing greater control of the overall project at hand. The EW&A campaign was the largest One Archer project to date, and included services from platform drilling, wireline, engineering, and oil tools. The success of the EDA campaign was strategically important for Archer to build a one Archer track record and show that we can take on flood and development projects of this size and significance. We continue to regard the P&A work ahead of us as strategically important for Archer in the years to come. Slide eight, please. Our revenue for land drilling increased by $5.2 million compared to previous quarter. while adjusted EBITDA contribution was 0.7 million lower. We incurred a total of 2 million of exceptional charges in the quarter, resulting in a disappointing EBITDA of $1.6 million. Exceptional charges were related to severance payments, cost of ID personnel, and COVID-19 rated sick leave. The results in Argentina remained below expectation as the country continued to battle COVID-19 and financial distress. As you can see from the bottom right graph, active drilling units in third quarter was stable compared to previous quarter. We are dependent on increased activity within land drilling in order for us to deliver meaningful EBITDA contribution from this segment. As the COVID-19 pandemic prevails, combined with the financial distress in the country, we are muted on our expectations for rebound in activity short to medium term. With that, I hand the words over to Espen who would take us through the financials in greater detail.

Thank you, Dag. Looking at slide nine, we see that our total revenue for the third quarter amounts to $242.8 million, compared to $183.6 million last year, an increase of $59.2 million. When netting off the reimbursable revenue, we see that the operating revenue increased by $45.2 million, or 28%, compared to third quarter 2020. The activity in third quarter 2020 was, of course, severely impacted by the pandemic. For the quarter, EBITDA was $20.5 million, $4.9 million higher than third quarter 2020. The increase is primarily driven by improvements in our wealth services segment and land drilling division. Exceptional charges for the quarter amounts to $3 million as we incurred costs related to the impact from COVID-19 and idle personnel in Argentina. Ebit for the quarter came out at $7.4 million. In our other financial items, We adjusted our carrying value of our shares in KLX Energy by $4.4 million following the drop in share price over the quarter. In addition, we have non-cash foreign exchange impact on our intercompany financing arrangement following the weakening of NOK against USD and non-cash foreign exchange related to continued depreciation of the Argentine pesos over the quarter. Net income before tax for the quarter is negative $7.5 million, whereas net income after tax is negative $9.7 million. Slide 10, please. Total assets reduced by $24.5 million in the quarter, mainly explained by the foreign exchange adjustment of goodwill, assets, and other receivables. and reduction in restricted cash. Accounts receivable only increased by $1.4 million despite a 7% increase in revenue in the quarter. On the liability side, the biggest difference is the reduction in accounts payable of $6.9 million since the last quarter. Net interest-bearing debt came out at $517.5 million, which is a modest decrease compared to second quarter. The reduction in equity is a result of the negative net income for the quarter, as well as foreign exchange effect on Goodwill, and the book value of our equity is $102.9 million at the end of September. while we continue to preserve our liquidity and having access of $100 million in available liquidity, which includes undrawn and committed credit lines. Slide 11, please. To sum up, our third quarter was another solid operational quarter with improved financial metrics and increased adjusted , despite challenging situation in Argentina. Eastern Hemisphere performance continued to be strong, while the outlook in Argentina remained muted due to uncertainty. Compared to third quarter 2020, we saw an increase in revenue of 32%. Our wealth services division stands out as the segment that shows both the best performance as well as improvement, particularly due to the growth within Veiline. We report a negative net income in the quarter, which is negatively impacted by the market value adjustment of our shares in KLX Energy and foreign exchange effect on intercompany financing agreement, which does not have a cash impact. We also incurred $3 million in exceptional charges in the quarter. We reiterate that we see limited signs of improvement in our operation in the south of Argentina. As we see today, we now expect revenue to be 10 to 15% higher than our 2020 revenue, and we expect EBITDA for 2021 to be roughly 10% higher than last year. We will continue our investment discipline and estimate COPEX of 3% to 4% of revenue. With that, I will hand the call over to the operator for any questions. Thank you. Thank you. Please open the line for questions.

Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please dial 01 on your telephone keypad now to enter the queue. Once your name has been announced, you can ask your questions. If you find your questions answered before it's your turn to speak, you can dial 02 to cancel. So once again, that's 01 to ask a question or 02 if you need to cancel. There'll be a brief pause now whilst we register any questions. Okay, currently we don't have any questions coming through on the phone lines at this time. Once again, if you do wish to ask a question, please dial 01 on your telephone key as now. No, it seems there are no questions from the phones at this time.

Okay, and we'll end the call today. We appreciate everyone joining for this quarter's call, and we look forward to speaking to you next quarter. Thank you, and have a good day.