Bw Offshore Adr

Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to BW Offshore's third quarter, 2024 update. My name is Marco Bene, CEO, and I'm here together with our CFO, Stola Andreasen, to give you the update. I will give you a general update and then Stola will cover the financials. Then first, please note our disclaimer. And then I'll move on to the highlights. First of all, we're pleased with the progress on Barossa and the Barossa FPSO, which we named BW Opal. That project is now 90% complete. Based on solid results, we continue to pay the third quarter cash dividend of 11 million, consistent with previous quarters. And also we have been able to raise our guidance of 2024 EBITDA, to the range of 315 to 320 million US dollar. Starting with BWO Pal for the Barossa project in Australia, first gas planned for second quarter next year, in line with our previous guidance. Our focus has been on maintaining the schedule and during the integration and commissioning phase, we faced a tense market in Singapore and that has put further pressure on the cost as well as settlements that we had to make with our key subcontractors, mainly the yards and also settlements that were still pending with the client. Therefore, we need to guide on a 100 to 150 million US dollar additional investment for the EPC phase of the project till the time it's completed next year. The project is now 90% complete with all construction finalized, integration 95% complete, and pre-commissioning and commissioning well underway. Important milestones in the commissioning scope have already been achieved. First of all, the gas turbine generators have all been fired up and work well. Galley and mess rooms have gone live and we have recently served the first meal for all our employees, subcontractors and clients in the project. And also most part of the leak testing program has now been completed. Then moving on to the next slide, fleet and safety performance. We're happy with the safety statistics trending down. We had one LTI recorded, somebody with a broken arm, a subcontractor in the yard, but we had zero high potential incidents recorded. And that is the, what we find the most important metric that we're tracking as that is a leading indicator. Commercial uptime is consistently high, and that is despite the planned shutdown that we had on our catchy unit this quarter. The good commercial uptime of the core assets deliver strong cash flows, and this is underpinned by the backlog of our core FPSO fleet. I mentioned BWL-PAL coming on stream in the first quarter of next year. But then we have the three units in Gabon, UK and Gulf of Mexico, respectively. BW Adolo will benefit from increased production tariffs, and that is $3 per barrel above the 20,000 barrel per day range. And that is linked to the increased production that BW Energy is achieving, heading to nameplate capacity. I mentioned the planned maintenance shutdown from Ketscher. That was a 21-day successful shut down, but that of course explains the lower production in the quarter. Catcher is on a 12-month running extension, meaning this project, this contract gets extended every day with a year. But our view on total duration of the contract is that it will continue at least till the end of 28. And we'll base that on our view on the old price and the decline of the production in the field. And then Pioneer, also these units continue to deliver stable operations while the field production is slowly declining. We have ongoing contract discussions with our client and they are converging, but neither party has so far obtained board approval for that contract yet. So that's still working in progress. Yeah, and then I'm handing over to Stola to give an update on finance.

Thank you for that, Marco. I will take you through the financial figures for Q3. And as said by Marco as well, we are pleased with the commercial performance in the third quarter, despite the planned shutdown on Catcher. EBTA came in at 83 million, boosted by an additional 10 million from the Zachariah project as we closed out the remaining work on that project opportunity. I want to say we do not expect further contributions from Sakuraya going forward. For 2024, we expect continued steady performance from the fleet for the remaining quarter, and we are now confident enough to revise our guidance upwards, targeting an EBITDA of $315 to $320 million. Moving to the income statement, you will see depreciations remain stable at 45.6 million in the quarter. Net interest expenses reduced to 4.3 million due to the fact that we have no draw on the corporate facility combined with good interest income from our cash balance. This quarter, we saw a negative mark-to-market adjustment on hedges. This is primarily due to lower US dollar interest rates impacting our financial instruments. A $4 million loss on other financial items reflected stronger Norwegian kronor against US dollar affecting Norwegian kronor denominated bond valuations. A 5.7 million loss from equity accounts investments resulted from what was a one-off and non-cash 7 million accounting adjustment we had to make due to the fact that we had to change how we account for interest rate swaps related to the BROSA project. So with that, we delivered a net profit for Q3 of $13 million. Cash flow from operation was steady at 86 million in the quarter three, excluding the prepayment from Santos. The underlying operational cash flow was also good at 61 million, showing a modest improvement quarter on quarter. Investment cash flow was in this quarter directed towards Barossa. We continued to fund the project. We called $26 million net from the Rossa joint venture partners, which is also a little bit of a reduction quarter on quarter. Net debt reduced by 15 million in the quarter, mainly linked to scheduled repayments on the catcher loan facility. And we also paid out 11 million in dividends during Q3, which means that our cash position remains steady since beginning of As the Barossa project is a joint venture and not consolidated, these slides provide the overview of the project funding progress on the project. In the third quarter, we drew another 50 million on the project debt facility, leaving 140 million available to draw towards completion of the project. We required only 4 million in new equity, while Santos contributed 25 million as per the contract and as illustrated on the previous slide. With that, the total funding towards the project stood at 2,184,000,000, and the project capex was a little bit lower, but increased to 2,161,000,000 by end of Q3. Our fleet continues to deliver steady cash flow, and that has allowed us to strengthen our consolidated net cash position even further. And it stood at 38 million at the end of Q3. The equity ratio remains almost steady. It stood at 29.6%, which is a slight dip from the 30.4% we had in Q2. Our balance sheet remains strong. We have an unused balance. corporate facility, which is ready to support future project opportunities and growth. So we ended the quarter with an available liquidity above $700 million, only slightly reduced from quarter two. The reduction quarter on quarter is primarily due to the fact that we have scheduled semi-annual reductions on the corporate facility, which reduces by 34 million every six months. In November, after the quarter, we repaid the remaining 157 million on the convertible bond that was issued in 2019, which means that the blue bar you're seeing there in 2024 on the right side of the slide will be gone at next quarter. We continue to pay a dividend of 6.25 cents per share amounting to 11.3 million, which will be distributed to shareholders in November. And this marks the 19th consecutive quarter of dividend payments since we reintroduced dividends in 2020. And I also want to remind everyone about our goal of distributing 50% of annual net profits as dividends. With the announced increase in net investment for BWPAL, as Marco mentioned, we do need to allocate additional funds to support the project's completion. ensuring we remain on track. However, we remain well positioned financially. We have a strong cash flow from our fleet. We have ample liquidity that allows us to comfortably meet our liabilities. This financial flexibility enables us to pursue growth opportunities, I would say both organic and strategic, while we maintain our commitment to paying an attractive dividend. Back to you, Marco.

Yeah, thank you. So I'll continue with an update on the market. Our view on the market has not really changed. There is a strong demand with about 60 projects identified in the market between now and 2030. And this is supported by the expectations of a robust oil price for the remaining of the decade. But awards have been lagging, and that's mainly because cost levels of these projects went up due to complexity. inflation and also interest rates. And particularly the latter has made the lease and operate model less attractive. And we see a gradual shift towards EPCI and O&M. We're well positioned to continue or to follow that trend. We like lease and operate, but we're also very much comfortable with EPCI plus O&M contracts. So we're ramping up our tender efforts and we focus on six targets in this market of which we think we will land one or two in the next 12 to 36 months. And I think the project nearest to NFID could be the project for Repsol in the Gulf of Mexico. In that market where the pace of project awards have been falling behind in past years, and that actually makes the market only stronger as these projects don't go away, although some of them will, but generally this is more a delay than a cancellation. So we'll continue to face this strong market, but a selective market. And we are well positioned in that market. We're maintaining a disciplined approach though. As I said, the preference is long-term cash flows with O&M, but we're not limited to only the lease and operate market, but we will not take residual value risk in lease and operate contracts. We're looking for solid counterparts and we're working and co-investing with partners as the scale of the projects is significant. So in that market we have a favorable position. First of all, as we demonstrate to BWO-PAL for the Barossa project, we can deliver these Premier League PSO projects. We're demonstrating our competence in building gas PSOs, but also the rapid framework whole design then delivers an approach where We're less dependent on early lock-in of the dry dock slots. So that gives us flexibility where we can build in a tight supply chain market. We have demonstrated our ability to put together hybrid financing solutions, as we showed on Barossa with a true hybrid of almost 50% prepayments. But there are many alternatives to this as well. And again, the market allows a good risk reward balance for future projects. On to the floating wind market, our subsidiary BWDL is progressing well, both on their current project portfolio, but also on new business development initiatives. First of all, the Buchan offshore wind project, which is a one gigawatt project offshore Scotland project, is progressing towards consent application mid next year. And then final consent is expected in 26. Also the demonstrator or the pre-commercial project in south of France, the EOMAT, which is a three times 10 megawatt project is progressing. And the first two floaters for this project are now assembled. And also the, The blades and the turbines have arrived on site. In the same area, we're awaiting the outcome of the AO6 tender, where BWEDO tendered in consortium with EDF and Maple Power. And then we're progressing on the back of the positions that we have in these markets. We're progressing the development of fabrication line, one in Ardachie, which is in the UK, where we have exclusive access to the port there for floating wind. And also in this market where we built EOMAT and also where AO6 and AO9 would materialize to unlock the supply chain constraints that that currently exists for Floating Wind. Furthermore, we're also looking at other projects in Europe and Asia, and in particular, Japan and Taiwan. And we're continuing to have investor dialogues to join us as BWF Shore for this private company. Then we go into the final slide, which is the outlook. Again, the focus is, of course, on the Barossa project, starting at BW Opal in the second quarter of next year. We also continue to look at value that we take from contract extensions, catcher beyond 2028. And as I also explained, the discussion we have on Pioneer. And then focusing on new, what we call infrastructure-like FPSO projects like Barossa in a very strong FPSO market. And then BWDL, as I explained, we continue to support the development of that company as a private company now and look for further capitalization by new industrial shareholders and the strong cash flows from the FPSO fleet. support the continuation of our attractive shareholder return program. That concludes this Q3 trading update, but we're happy to take any questions if you would have.

Okay. Then we'll move to Q&A. We have a couple of questions coming in via the web. I'll start this off. The first question is, One, can you provide any color on the financial impact to BW Offshore from the additional 100 to 150 million investment in BW Power? Is the whole figure to be covered by BW Offshore directly or indirectly?

Yeah, this is the impact to BWO.

So this is the amount that's the exposure to BWO.

And then. The second question here is, is the extra cost already identified as an identified cost, or does it include a buffer to ensure that there is no more cost increase before the vessel is sent to Australia, or I assume until the vessel is delivered on the field?

Yeah, this is the result of a holistic approach. And as I said just now in the update that we're We have been working quite hard on settlements with our subcontractors in Singapore and also with our clients. It was difficult to settle them in a way we wanted, given the tense labour market in Singapore. That's basically the basis for the guidance, but also the outstanding results of the discussions we have with our client, Santos, We included that in this number, but we haven't given up on these discussions. They will continue until the project is complete. We're still working on recovering some of this.

Maybe just going to add in terms of the fact that we have given a range here. It is clearly a buffer. We can see costs towards the midpoint of our guidance. But anything beyond here is, as we see it, a pure, pure buffer that's going to take us towards completion. So we do have some room in the estimates we have given now. We want to be transparent in the way where we don't want to guide on cost of runs on a regular basis. And we want to be cautious when we do that. We really thought it through to avoid coming with these kind of updates to the market more than we absolutely have to. The next question is related to Midler Pioneer. And the question is whether we can quantify the likelihood of the vessel being employed, I guess, on contract from second quarter 2025 or 2025 as a whole. And I guess, as most people know, this contract, at least the formal five-year contract, comes to an end in March 2025. Yes.

Sorry. Unfortunately, we can't be fully conclusive yet, but as I said in previous quarters, this is an ongoing dialogue and typically these discussions take longer. They will always get concluded before the current contract really expires. I'm very certain that the operation continues beyond that date in 2025. And I think we're very close to an agreement, but none of the companies have been able to obtain board approval yet. So it's too early to communicate. And we have also been discussing various contract models and actually still do. So I think the, you know, aligned on the objective, but there's different ways to get there. But everything is done in kind of a view. of another five years in operations in the field. And that's the common goal of both companies.

Okay.

And then we have a slightly different question. Are you considering strategic inorganic initiatives? If yes, can you give a bit of color? Because that's for a few months.

Well, we always... We always look at, you know, consolidation efforts. I think that's what this is referred to. There are not that many FPSO players and not that many companies that would make a lot of, you know, where a combination would make strategic sense. But there are some who have the financial means. So, yes, we're looking at these things. But, again, it needs to make sense strategically. And also, you know, it needs to make sense price-wise. So...

There's not that many opportunities out there, but we are looking at them.

Okay, and then we have another question, which is directed towards Barossa again, or BWPAL. How will the allocation of the additional 150 million capex be for BWPAL in terms of Q4 2024 versus first half of 2025? And what is the estimated total remaining capex for the unit net to BW offshore? Well, the fact of the way that we have added 150 million, this is cost that we will see is coming in the backend of the project. So this is cash outlay we expect to have to fund throughout first half of 2025. towards completion of the unit. We would allocate that in our cash flow plan for 2025. Then in terms of what is the remaining capex, there's two sources there. You have a capex that's funded by RJV. I was just trying to roughly get that number, so that should be remaining a little bit more than 200. on the unit, and then this new guided number would come on top of this. But the CAPEX funded by the JV is only 51% carried by BW Offshore, while the remaining 100, 250 that we have guided on is 100% for our account. Hopefully that is clear. next question i understand that bw is one of the two companies selected by equinor to participate in a feed consensus for the beta north project of offshore newfoundland could you confirm and shed some color on the contracting process well it's a bit of a

I would say a bit premature, but what I can confirm is that we have been, we're working already for more than 12 months constructively together with Equinor on this Bay-Dunor FPSO project. And it is a project we like and where I think we have a lot of value to add based on, you know, experience that we have in Haar's environment, operating FPSOs in Haar's environment. and the whole solutions and mooring solutions we have for that. Um, so yeah, we are a company that is being considered by Equinox for the next phase, but it's, um, we, we don't have a confirmation of that, uh, yet that we will actually participate in the feed.

Okay. That seems to less as anything else.

no no that seems a bit then that is the last last question so i guess nothing else is coming in then yeah it's for you to wrap it up okay yeah if no further questions then thanks for participating in this call and and your interest in bw offshore and i do want to wish everyone a good rest of the day thank you very much