CGG SA

Good morning and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to this presentation of CDG's first quarter 2022 results. The call today is hosted from Paris, where Mrs. Sophie Giacchia, Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Yuri Baidukov, former Group CFO, will provide an overview of the quarter results, as well as provide comments on our outlook. Also with us today, Jérôme Servre, our new Group CFO, succeeding Yuri, who is leaving CDG for family reasons. Let me remind you that some of the information contains forward-looking statements subject to risk and uncertainties that may change at any time, and therefore the actual results may differ materially from those that were expected. Following the overview of the quarter, we will be pleased to take your questions, and now I will turn the call over to Sophie.

Thank you, Christophe. Good morning and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for participating in the Q4 2022 conference call. Before we start, I would like to thank Yuri for his time at CGG and for all his contributions. He provided outstanding support to CGG and to me through challenging times, and it's been a pleasure to work with him. Let me also welcome Jérôme Serre to the CFO role. Jérôme has a broad and international background in finance and in the energy sector, and most recently was the CFO of one of the large divisions of Forissia. We look forward to the experience and expertise it will bring to CGG. The overlap will take place during the month of March and I am confident it will be a smooth transition. Let me move on now to slide 2. I would like to start with you for and for your review today with a few comments on ESG to highlight our strong profile. Our company's high-end technology business, along with our low carbon intensity footprint, and our continued focus and excellence in ESG, have been consistently recognized by ESG rating agencies. CTG is very well rated, both by MSCI and by Sustainalytics, due to a broad range of ESG considerations, and in particular, our low carbon footprint. In 2022, we further reduced our scope 1 and 2 emissions respectively to 2 kilotons of CO2 and 39 kilotons of CO2 for the full year. But more importantly, our business brings a significant sustainability contribution to our clients, as our high-end technology and earth data in key bases around the world supports the optimization of their drilling and reservoir development plans, which in turn can substantially reduce their CO2 footprint. Now on slide 3. Looking at our Q4 and 4-year financial performance. While the macro environment remains favorable with high oil and gas prices, our clients have continued to maintain reduced E&P spending levels, prioritizing return to shareholders. During 2022, IECs, and especially European IECs, focused on the energy transition agenda, not growing E&P capex in line with the macro trends. while independents and NOCs were the first to increase ENP activity to meet worldwide demand and address the tight market. Energy security has risen as a key consideration, and it is becoming clearer that demand for hydrocarbons will remain high for the foreseeable future. These overall macro trends translated into increased off-field service activity, especially those tied to development and production, such as drilling and completion. Offshore and international activities also picked up significantly. However, products and services that were exposed to longer-term return on hydrocarbon investments, such as frontier explorations, have been lagging, mainly based on the lack of clarity at a 10-year horizon from a climate change and regulatory standpoint. For CDG, this resulted in a volatile yet improving overall market in 2022. Looking now at our Q4 and 4-year results, our solid Q4 financial performance provides a good illustration of the high quarterly volatility that our business has experienced in 2022. Our Q4 revenue came in stronger than expected at $319 million due mainly to higher than anticipated EDA and SMO sales. Adjusted EBITDA was $169 million, given the mix, and net cash flow was $62 million, including $63 million proceeds from the sale of the U.S. land 5-speed modified library. Thanks to our high Q4 results, we returned to a positive net income for 2022. Full-year revenue of $928 million was stable year-on-year despite the significant decrease of our SMO business, which also highlights current market volatility. Our adjusted EBITDA of $395 million landed in line with our full-year expectations and guidance, representing a 43% margin. Net cash flow for the year of minus $3 million was close to break-even. Overall, our 2022 financial performance was solid as we operated in a complex environment while implementing and investing in our portfolio of beyond the core business initiatives that are focused on developing new profitable revenue streams to CDG as we move forward. Moving on to slide four. I would qualify 2022 as a Europe transition for CDG as we address the volatility of our oil and gas businesses and investors in the future. The quarterly volatility that we experienced this year was probably the highest that we have ever seen with a significant lumpiness in sales in both EDA and FMO. Variations were greater than 50% between some of the quarters. It was a Europe transition. First, in our core markets, especially during the second half of the year, we started to see early signs of the projected multi-year all-in-one up cycle. In this environment, we continue to focus on the advance of our technology leadership positions in our core businesses, and we increase investments in our New Beyond the Core businesses, which in 2022 now represents more than 8% of our revenue. As part of our BTC strategy, we acquired Geocom to establish a stronger infrastructure monitoring market position in North America. and acquired the Ion Software business to strengthen both the differentiation of our core SMO business by accelerating our value-add cloud-based services and to further advance our BTC initiative by extending our expertise and giving us a position in the software as a services market, as an example, port management. We also updated our gym plan organization to move our most mature BGC initiatives into the geography to focus on commercial expansion and created a new HPC and cloud solutions organization to strengthen our strategy in a digital area. It was a year of investment looking ahead of the cycle as we're preparing for improving market conditions in oil and gas and accelerating our BGC businesses. We invested in technology with the construction of the new HPC Centre in the UK, which will be operational later this year and significantly increase our compute capacity. We invested in significant multi-client projects in key basins where we are well positioned for the future. And we continue to advance our market positions and technology leadership in our geoscience and SMO core businesses, while developing a robust portfolio of beyond the core growth opportunities. Now on slide five. Our BDC business initiatives are focused around three main markets, digital, energy transition, and infrastructure monitoring. We made concrete progress in 2022 in all areas. In digital, the creation of our HBCN cloud solutions business line was a major step in strengthening our processes and organization as we invested and prepared for growth in this specialized area. In our data hub business, which focuses on data transformation, delivery, and visualization, we successfully completed several pilot projects and secured and are currently doing a full-scale project for BP. In energy transition, We increased our participation in CCUS and minerals and mining, and generated around $20 million of EDA sales, mainly focused on CCUS in Australia, Norway, and the US. We successfully demonstrated our structural health monitoring solutions in various settings within this rapidly growing market, resulting in our first sales in the US, where we are leveraging our position of Lyft Geocom. The new technology profile of CBD is developing in line with our expectations of our BTC businesses reaching the target of 20% of company revenue by 2025. Now on slide 6. A year ago, we were anticipating 18% revenue growth in our DVD segment. We delivered 21% revenue growth in 2022, consistent with offshore E&P spending increases. Our activity particularly strengthened in North America, but we also saw improvements in the North Sea, while Asia remained relatively flat. Overall, the profitability of the DBE segment significantly improved in 2022, with adjusted EBITDA increasing by 23% to $406,460, a high 62% margin. This was driven by efficiency gains, better utilization of resources, a strengthening pricing environment, and a much higher level of multi-client after-sales. Now going into each of the business lines on slide seven, geoscience. While the market was solid in North America in 2022, it was still slow in the rest of the world, though we see now clear signs of increased activity looking forward. Geoscience revenue was sequentially stable this quarter due to delayed start of key projects, which in general continue to be driven by strong demand for high-end technology. The revenue reduction compared to 2021 was in relation to a large one-off software sale that we realized in Q4 of 2021. 2022 ended with a moderate 1% growth pro forma in the geoscience production, which includes external plus internal revenue, and a 6% pro forma growth in external revenue, as we utilized less of our services for multi-client. With a 16% backlog increase year-on-year, we ended 2022 in a better position to start the new year. Profitability of the Geoscience business continued to improve year-on-year, as we did our production per head ratio. Now for operational highlights on slide 8. At the end of 2022, Geoscience commercial activity was increasing worldwide, and we saw a high level of bridge submissions, up 18% year-on-year, driven by a 58% increase in OBN processing bids. This business continues to be driven by a strong demand for high-end technology, and Geoscience should continue to benefit from the accelerated use of advanced acquisition technologies such as ocean bottom nodes or hybrid surveys that require more advanced imaging algorithms. At the end of 2022, order intake in Geoscience was up 26% year-on-year. And as mentioned earlier, we started 2023 with a backlog of $231 million, up 16% year-on-year. In 2022, our computing power was further extended by more than 20% as we added 61 petaflops. We continue to make significant upgrades to our data center infrastructure to support our increasingly advanced algorithms and further expand our differentiation and support the development of our new HPC and cloud solutions business. We increased our beyond the core revenue in 2022 in geoscience by almost 50% and we expect continued strong growth in general and in digital specifically as industries are looking to gain efficiency and extract more insights from the data. Now on slide nine. The success of CDD is built on technology differentiation. A unique elastic four-way foam inversion, which was developed by our scientists for complex geology and challenging reservoir development, is the most recent example of this differentiation and the commercial success it drives. CDG's full waveform inversion technology and expertise provides the most advanced solution in the market today to assist our clients in reducing geologic uncertainty and accelerating interpretation of the subsurface as we continuously extract more and more information and insights with our unique geoscience and data science technology. In this example, you can see clearly how our SWI technology provides an enhanced understanding of the compact metallization and illumination of the reservoir. Moving on to Earth data on slide 10. In 2022, EDA revenues were up 36% sustained by a significant increase of aftersales, which were up 90% year-on-year on the back of strong transfer fees in Q2 and strong sales in Q4. Pre-funding caught up in Q4 to land at 66% for the year. 2022 was still driven mainly by demand for near-field exploration. Exploration is active, but focused on new oil and gas that is low cost, low risk, and low carbon. So near-field infrastructure-led exploration is a natural choice, but towards the end of the year, we have seen clients gaining interest in more frontier basins. In 2022, aligned with our strategy, CDG multi-plant projects were mainly in our core regions and basins where government policies are stable and pituring systems are proven. Beyond the core, the CCUS industry is in its early stages, and we have seen growing commercial interest for our EDA data, mainly to support both the finding and assessing of the appropriate subsurface container storing carbon. We continue to gain experience by participating in various projects and have seen good opportunities to repurpose public and partner data in shallow water and land together with our geologic data to CCUSD. With this, our current focus remains on building our expertise, licensing our existing data, packaging new data sets for screening and getting closer to our clients and potential clients in this rapidly growing business. On slide 11 now. In November of 2022, we completed the entire acquisition of Shore View Hills. Processing of this data is ongoing. In Q4 2022, we also commenced preparation for a new multi-client program in the portfolio margin, including transferring a vessel in mid-December. The acquisition is expected to take around 200 days, and processing should be complete in Q3 2024. In Q4, we divested our non-core US land multi-client data library for a total amount of $63 million. Looking forward, two new sales have been confirmed in 2023 in the Gulf of Mexico, one at the end of March and another in September. Both should drive increasing activity. On slide 12. I mentioned during our Q2 conference call that we continue to expand our data offering to address energy transition, especially for CCUS and mining. This Arizona project is the first multi-client project in the company for the mining industry, and we already have one client commitment. The project has started as we compile information, and airborne acquisition is planned for the March-April timeframe. Acquisition is expected to take approximately 12 months. The purple outline shows the full project area which will be covered by multidisciplinary data including multi-physics, satellite imagery, multi-spectral, well and geological data. The blue outline highlights where we will acquire airborne multi-physics data. This is a new business model for the minerals and mining industry and it will allow operators to access larger integrated datasets to better identify and characterize deposits. Now on slide 13 with sensing and monitoring. In 2022, our sensing and monitoring segment saw a significant reduction in sales, down 24% year-on-year. This was linked to commercial restrictions in Russia and to the lumpiness of its business. Multiple large projects in the Middle East, in particular, were delayed from 2022 to 2023. At $269 million of sales for the year, the SMO segment generated 16 million EBITDA, a 6% margin. In 2022, the SMO business acquired Geocom and Concept, the IAM software business. The top-line contribution of these two businesses was around $18 million. We are very pleased with these acquisitions. They're already a critique to SMO, and the level of business synergy is more than we anticipated. Now on slide 14. Q4 SMO sales came in at $104 million, up 10% and above expectations, with sales materializing in the last days of December. Land equipment sales represented 60% of total sales. Overall activity has been picking up this quarter, mainly in North Africa, and with our wind land nodal technology, sales are also gaining momentum. Marine equipment sales represented 22% of total Q4 sales. OBN market for shallow water application remains absent, especially in the mid-east. Marine market for streamers is still mostly limited to equipment upgrades and spread stream section deliveries. Sales from beyond the core businesses were $14 million in Q4, significantly up year-on-year, supported mainly by an active defense sector. Our new infrastructure monitoring business is progressing well. We continue to pilot excellent technology and solutions on several bridges, including a bridge in the New York area, and we secured an order to perform baseline analysis on two bridges in Georgia. We won a Deck and Tables measurement job in Texas as well. And we performed several demonstrations of our Earthworks monitoring solution, S-CAN, in both Massachusetts and New York, and won a short-term monitoring job in the Paris suburbs. Overall, the BTC areas we focused around SMO benefited in 2022 from increased interest from the defense sector and the addition of GEOCOM structural health monitoring business, especially in the second half of the year. I will now give the floor to Yuri for more financial highlights.

Thank you, Sophia. Good afternoon and good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I will comment on the Q4 2022 financial results. Slide 15, Q4 2022 P&L. Let me comment on the overall Q4 activity. Q4 segment revenue was $319 million, up 6% and up 7% per former year-on-year. The respective contributions from the groups of businesses were 22% from geoscience, 46% from earth data, with 67% for the DGE segment, and 33% from sensing and monitoring. Segmented debt was $193 million, up 25% year-on-year, a 60% margin. And adjusted segmented debt, excluding $34 million gain on the sale of the U.S. land multi-client library, was $159 million, a high 50% margin. DDE segmented bid value was $180 million, an 84% margin, and adjusted segmented bid value was $147 million, a high 60% margin. SMO segmented bid value was $20 million, a 19% margin, and adjusted segmented bid value was also $20 million, a 20% margin. Segment operating income was $94 million at 29% margin, and adjusted segment operating income was $66 million at 21% margin. IFRS 15 adjustment at operating income level was negative $10 million, and IFRS operating income after IFRS 15 adjustment was $84 million. Cost of financial debt was $24 million. The total amount of interest paid during the quarter was $45 million. Taxes were at plus 9 million, and net income from continuing operations was 49 million. Group net income this quarter was 47 million, significantly up from a net loss of 28 million in Q4 2021. After minority interests, Q4 2022 group net income attributable to CDG shareholders was 46 million dollars and 46 million euro. Overall, in 2022, CEG has significantly improved its financial performance. CEG's segment revenue of $928 million was down 1% and up 3% performance compared to 2021. Adjusted segment to bid dollars 395 million, up 17% year-on-year with 43% margin. In 2022, CEG returned to profitability with group net income of 43 million, which was a significant improvement from a net loss of 118 million in 2021. Moving to slide 16 and looking at the simplified cash flow, Q4 2022 segment operating cash flow was $103 million, including $61 million negative change in working capital and provisions, mainly related to the SMO business. Total capex was $50 million, including industrial capex of $18 million, research and development capitalized costs at $6 million, and our data cash capex at $25 million. Segment-free cash flow was $115 million, including $63 million proceeds from the sale of the U.S. Lens Technic library. After 2 million Netflix repayments, 45 million cash costs of debt, 3 million of CEG 2021 planned cash costs, and 2 million free cash flow from discontinued operations, Q4 net cash flow was positive 62 million. Overall, in 2022, CEG group net cash flow was negative 3 million. Moving to slide 19 and looking at group balance sheet and capital structure. Group liquidity amounted to 398 million at the end of December 2022 and included cash liquidity of 298 million and 100 million of ungrown RCF. Group growth debt before FY16 was $1.16 billion and net debt was $859 million. And group net debt after FY16 was $1.25 billion and net debt was $951 million. Our debt structure included 1.12 billion of high-earned bonds due in 2027, 93 million lease liabilities, 20 million accrued interest, and 12 million bank loans. Segment leverage ratio of net debt to adjusted segmented debt was 2.4 times at the end of December 2022, down from 2.9 times at the end of 2021. Capital employed was $2 billion, slightly up from the end of December 2021. Networking capital after FRS 15 was at $225 million, stable year-on-year. Goodwill was also stable at $1.1 billion, corresponding to 54% of total capital employed. Multi-client library net book value after FRS-15 was up at $419 million. Non-current assets were at $340 million, with $167 million of property, plant, and equipment down from year-end 2021, mainly due to the Galileo sale and Weisbach transaction, and $84 million of capitalized development costs. Non-card liabilities were at 31 million, slightly down from year-end 2021. Shareholders' equity was up at 1.06 billion, including 39 million of minority interests, mainly related to income GV. Before I hand the floor back to Sophie for conclusion, I would like to thank her for the kind assessment of my work at CEG. It was a privilege to contribute to CEG's transformation and work with CEG's team and all of you, our analysts, shareholders, investors, and all the stakeholders over the last four and a half years. Thank you all for your support.