Viridien S/Adr

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Viridian Q3 2024 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 and 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 and 1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Jean-Baptiste Roussy. Please go ahead.

Yes, thank you. I'm Jean-Baptiste Roussy, in charge of corporate finance and investor relations. As has just been said, we are in Paris today with Sophie Durkiga, our CEO, and Jérôme Serre, our CFO. They will provide an overview of the results, as well as a comment on our outlook. Following the overview of the quarter, we will be pleased to take your questions, obviously. And now, I leave you with Sophie.

Thank you, Jean-Baptiste. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining the presentation of Buridian's Q3 2024 financial results. The macro environment remains volatile, with oil prices fluctuating due to geopolitical tensions and oversupply. However, our clients have maintained a stable spending pattern within our sector, driven by long-term offshore investments. We're also seeing a gradual pickup in exploration efforts, particularly among European IUCs, which had previously reduced their spending during the COVID-19 pandemic. These clients continue to prioritize efficiency and cost disciplines. Our third quarter has seen another strong growth at Geoscience, which confirmed its strengths and ability to drive the group's performance. Earth data revenue was lower than expected, with some cut-off effects, with continued trends of hyperfunding and flat aftersales. Sensing and monitoring SMO, as anticipated, experienced a low level of activity and a shift in deliveries to Q4. Given our quarterly volatility, we believe that the year-to-date performance is a more accurate indicator of trends and overall performance. Our nine-month revenue was nearly flat at $778 million, with geoscience and Earth data showing strong growth, while sensing and monitoring declines. This is in line with our revenue guidance at the beginning of the year. A nine-month segment adjusted EBITDA increased by 7% year-over-year to $298 million, driven by DDE's growth, partially offset by SMO's decline. Net cash flow improved significantly to $34 million, a major improvement from last year. A focus on cost control and working capital management is starting to yield results. Our performance reflects our focus on high value activities and operational efficiency, despite $37 million penalty fee related to vessel commitments, which impacted our EBITDA. I would like to remind you that this contract will expire in early January, which we expect to have a significant positive impact on both EBITDA and cash flow generation. Now going on to slide six, let's review the performance of our segments and businesses. DDE segment revenue was solid at $187 million, quasi-stable year-on-year, with geoscience growth balancing Earth data decline. Despite the less favorable mix, adjusted EBITDA grew 5% thanks to strong geoscience performance. Going on to slide seven for geoscience. For Geoscience specifically, Q3 segment revenue increased 32% to $103 million in line with Q2 2024, which was the strongest quarter since Q4 2015. A backlog is continuing to strengthen, driven in part by an increase in average project size. This trend is consistent with the growing number of new offshore field developments that we see as the offshore cycle unfolds and demand for high-end imaging solutions increases. Meanwhile, our constant focus on efficiency has yielded further improvements in productivity. By leveraging AI and overall workflow output optimization, that includes the optimization of our highly specialized HPC infrastructure, algorithms, software and workloads, we have continued to strengthen production per head, demonstrating our commitment to delivering the highest quality results while maintaining an efficient operation. Looking now at slide 8, Purdue Science operational highlights. We are pleased to report a significant increase in order intake in Q3. driven in part by strong demand from the Middle East, where our cutting-edge technologies are making a tangible impact. Our land data solutions have reached a new level of sophistication, enabling us to accurately image small features and extract reservoir properties that were previously deemed impossible. These breakthroughs not only save our clients millions of dollars in drilling costs and increase success rates, but also substantially reduce safety risks. We've had more than 30 years of presence in the region with our dedicated HPC on-prem imaging center in Oman and our open HPC cloud imaging center in Abu Dhabi. Recently, we have expanded our footprint into additional countries, further solidifying our position in the market. The Gulf of Mexico is also gaining attention again from a growing number of IOCs and independents. who are drawn to the region's vast opportunities for near-field exploration and new frontier play. We are well positioned to support these efforts with our advanced imaging solutions. In our new businesses, we have secured new contracts in the mining industry and for carbon storage, bringing our total number of ongoing projects to nine. High-quality imaging is essential for carbon storage We've already been able to clearly demonstrate the value of our solutions in this area. In one notable project, our imaging technology helped identify a previously undetected fault, which could have compromised the long-term storage of carbon. This highlights the critical role that our expertise plays in ensuring the viability, safety, and efficacy of carbon storage operations. Turning onto slide nine for Earth data. Earth data segment revenue of $83 million was down 22% compared to last year. However, looking at year-to-date numbers, revenue was up 8%, driven by higher pre-funding revenue. Our after-sales for the quarter came in at $26 million, impacted by a significant deal that was delayed to Q4, and has now been booked. On a year-over-year basis, after-sales trends have been relatively flat, reflected limited bid rounds, and our clients continued cautious and disciplined approach. Meanwhile, multi-client capex increased to $83 million, driven by the ramp-up of our Laconia project in the Gulf of Mexico, where we saw good progress on securing pre-funding during the quarter, ahead of our original plans. Turning to slide 10 for EDA operational highlights. A Laconia project is progressing well, with 40% of the acquisition already complete. In Brazil, our Viridian data covers all 14 blocks that are proposed for 2025 pre-salt speed round. With its improved terms and conditions, including the removal of drilling commitments and our coverage, we are positioned very well to capitalize on this opportunity. In Norway, we successfully completed the acquisition of our latest survey, further expanding our coverage in the region. This marks the 11th consecutive year we acquired data in the North Viking-Rabbon area, resulting in a comprehensive and high-quality dataset that has facilitated dozens of discoveries. Building on the success, we introduced node data to complement our streamer data, which when combined with our high-end imaging could provide greater detail in complex areas. We see strong industry support for these programs. Notably, our data coverage also includes blocks designated for carbon storage, positioning us well to drive new revenue growth in this emerging business area. We're actively pursuing opportunities in carbon storage, with two well-funded re-imaging projects underway in the North Sea, and screening studies completed in the Gulf of Mexico and Asia. Turning now to slide 11 on sensing and monitoring. Our Q3 SMO segment revenue was $59 million, a decline from the unusually strong Q3 2023 that saw high results for large surveys in North Africa and Mekong. As communicated earlier, we expect to see quarter-to-quarter volatility in SMOs, mainly based on large crew activity, and we're confident that Q4 will be strong, driven in part by orders that were delayed from Q3. We would be encouraged to see SMOs adjusted if they remain positive quarter-to-quarter, as this reflects the early benefits of adaptation plans and culture reduction efforts.

In deliveries to the fourth quarter.

We did see several deliveries during the quarter, including wing land nodes to Europe and the U.S., both for our traditional market and fragile thermal application, the 508 cross-tech systems and nomad vibrators to South Asia, and the ongoing deployment of our TPS low-frequency broadband source in the Gulf of Mexico. The SMO adaptation plan remains on track to achieve expected cost reductions and operational flexibility. We have completed the right-sizing of our industrial facilities in Houston and Singapore, and we've initiated a restructuring plan in France. We're also making good progress on optimizing our working capital. Our new businesses in SMO continue to grow and show promise, accounting for 17% of SMO revenue year to date, up from 11% in 2023. We made several deliveries of our S-CAN geotechnical monitoring solutions with application in mines in Africa and railways in Midlands. Additionally, our mining solution for ports logistics management was successfully deployed in Latin America. Going forward, SMO should be well positioned both for growth and improve profitability through the cycle. Let me now hand the floor out to Jerome for comments on our financials.

Thank you, Sophie. Good morning and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. As Sophie talks in detail about Q3 for each segment, I will focus on the nine-month performance. Let's start with the P&L on slide 14. Although our nine-month revenues are 3% down versus last year at $778 million, the EBITDA is up 7%, reaching close to $300 million. This is driven by a quite different business mix versus last year. SMO revenues are indeed down 31% over the first nine months, impacted by the absence of mega-crews like we had in 2023. On the opposite, DDE revenues were up 16%, mainly coming from a very strong performance of our geoscience. Two points worth highlighting at this stage. First, on the SMO side, given the order intake we see today, we expect Q4 revenues higher than those in the first three quarters. Also, and despite a very low Q3 at 60 million revenues, the business did remain a BDA breakeven, showing the first benefits of our transportation plan. Second point on EDA, where the business was still negatively impacted by 36 million of penalty fees from our vessel commitments with Shearwater. This figure will grow again during Q4 to reach a higher level than last year. But fortunately, January 2025 will mark the end of this contract. Moving on to the P&L, our adjusted segment operating income for the nine months was $84 million, down 32%. Although EBDA was up 7%, this is mainly explained by the fact that in Q2 last year, we did record a positive $37 million net book value adjustment following the completion of three multi-client surveys. And we did not have such a one-off this year. Finally, our group net income ended up at $32 million for the nine months. Moving on to the group cash flow on slide 15. Our net cash flow for the nine months reached 34 million, while it was negative 15 million last year over the same period. This is driven by a higher EBITDA, as well as positive variation in working capital management, mainly coming from SMO. Indeed, in 2023, we had the buildup of receivables linked to the Saudi mega crew, while in 2024, further inventory tightening initiated as part of the transformation plan. Regarding the increase in capex, as indicated during our Q2 results, this is due to the Laconia project in the Gulf of Mexico, but is balanced by the settlement we struck with ONGC earlier this year. Before I go to the balance sheet on slide 16, I would like to update you on the 30 million bond buyback program that we announced back in March. The good news is that we are now almost completed, with $25 million repurchased as of today. out of which only 11 million are showing by end of Q3. Also, it's worth noting that the bond prices have drastically improved over the last 12 months, coming from below 90 to close to par these days, demonstrating the confidence of the credit market in our business and our ability to refinance close to current conditions. Regarding our liquidity, As of September 24, it stood at $442 million, and our gross debt after IFRS 16 was at $1,345,000. The resulting net debt after IFRS 16 was still close to $1 billion. On the financial roadmap slide 17, I'm pleased to report that we continue to tick the boxes one after the others. with the tightening of our working capital resulting in a minimum cash required to run the business of less than $100 million, an improved credit rating outside the triple C zone, a successful extension of our FCF with a better balance between commercial and investment banks, and the $30 million bond buyback I was referring to earlier on. The next milestone is then the $100 million net cash flow generation target for next year, which we see no reason to adjust considering this year's achievements and current outlook. In this context, we remain confident in our objective to refinance our debt most likely in 2025, but in any case, before March 26. As previously mentioned, we'll take the opportunity of this refi to use our cash and start deleveraging the group by raising a new growth debt below $1 billion. I'm now on the back of the floor to Sophie.

Thank you, Gérôme. As a summary, I can say that this quarter highlights the progress that we have made along a strategic roadmap, which is focused on technology leadership, new businesses growth, and cash flow generation. I am particularly pleased with Geoscience's performance, which is leveraging its clear differentiation with best-in-class imaging technology and specialized HPC computing power to achieve a record high order book. In Earthdata, our projects are attracting good pre-funding, and we're well positioned to benefit from upcoming lease rounds and carbon storage market development. We expect SMO will continue to experience market volatility, mainly based on the timing and activity of very large seismic crews. Our adaptation plan is progressing well, which will ensure profitability through the cycles, and volatility will be further attenuated by the growth of our new businesses outside oil and gas. Going forward, we expect to see progressively strengthening performance in SMO. Overall, 2024 is tracking our expectations and we're in good position to meet our 2024 financial objectives. Our technology leadership, new business expansion, and financial discipline bring us confidence for 2025 and beyond. Thank you, and I now look forward to taking your questions.

Thank you. As a reminder to ask a question, You will need to press star 1 and 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 and 1 again. We will take our first question and the first question comes from the line of Kevin Roger from Kepler Chevrolet. Please go ahead, your line is open.

Yes, good evening. Thanks for taking the question. I have three, if I may. The first one is on Laconia. You mentioned during the remarks that the pre-funding on the project has relatively well progressed this quarter and maybe a bit ahead of the expectation. So can you give us some color of where we stand now in terms of the percentage for the pre-funding of the survey for this one, please? The second one, if we focus on the late sales, late sales remained quite very low this quarter and year to date we are still below 100 million. I was wondering if you can provide a bit of color on what you expect for Q4, what you see in terms of commercial opportunities, et cetera, because maybe this is where the risks are related to the full year guidance to get a very strong Q4 late sales. And the last one, maybe just a technical one. On CERCEL, previous quarter, you mentioned the restructuring charges between the EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA. Did we saw anything this quarter in terms of restructuring charges at CERCEL, please?

Yeah, good evening, Kevin, and thanks for your question. On Laconia, typically we do not disclose the wrap-up of pre-funding project by project, but knowing that Laconia is a big chunk of our Q3 spend, you kind of get an idea. But in general, why we're saying that we're ahead of the game in the pre-funding of Laconia is that we plan for when clients come in. There was a client that we were planning for next year that's come in earlier, which is going to bring cash forward, but we're still tracking to our cash sort of break-even point by the end of next year, which is actually quite an achievement compared to the historical way we ramp up the project. And this one, we played it particularly safe because it's such a large project. But you do see, you know, if you look at the numbers, the impact of Laconia on the Q3 number, and you'll see them on the Q4 number, but we're tracking really well. So that's for Laconia. On the late sales, it's a fair point. It's better to look at the year-to-date numbers. It gives you a better view and it's kind of flattish. But directionally, when we planned for the year, we thought, okay, this is kind of going to be more or less flat from last year with some transfer fees that we didn't have last year. So we do feel reasonably comfortable with our Q4 numbers. Now, of course, as you know, it's never done until the last days of December. But we did mention in the Q3 numbers, there was a deal already that kind of shifted into Q4, which is kind of de-risking a little bit those after sales of Q4. So compared to perhaps a year ago, we have better identified deals to go after. It doesn't mean that we'll close all these deals. but we'll feel like we have more visibility than we would normally, we've had in the last few years. If that helps you. And the third question is, I'll leave it to Jérôme.

Yeah, so in terms of restructuring provision for CERCEL, the one we show in our books only relates to Singapore and the Houston non-sizing and is quite limited at this stage. You don't see it in the adjusted. I mean, you see the adjusted very close to the normal EBITDA because you have some one-off, positive one-off, which offset this provision. Regarding the restructuring plan in France, given its It's not a PSO, but a voluntary redundancy plan. We have a view on who will go. But to be able to provision, we need to have the exact name. And then I suspect by end of Q4, we should be able to provision. In terms of amount, we should be in the range that I already provided in Q2, below 15 million, I would say.

Okay, very clear. Thanks a lot.

Thank you.

Thank you. We will take our next question. And the question comes from the line of Mick Pickup from Barkers. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Good evening. I don't want you to give guidance for next year, but I think there's been a bit of panic around this quarter with oil prices coming back and some commentators worried that we've seen the end of the cycle. And not so much for you, but for some of your peers. I think there's numbers appearing in consensus where investments down next year are really down quite sharply on the multi-client side. So can you just say what's been happening with your clients, what they're saying about, you're still talking about a gradual pickup in expiration. Just wondering what you're still seeing and whether you think there's any big step change in what you're likely to invest next year.

Yes. Thank you. Hi, Mick. The short answer is we're not seeing any inflection in the client's behavior in our space. Arguably, our space has been sort of the latest to pick up. And this is a reason why it's because it's kind of longer term views. And everybody agrees that the longer-term view is that there needs to be activity in preparing for increasing production down the road, right? Because the decline needs to be compensated by new reserves, and those reserves have to be found. And to find those new reserves, you need what we do. And so the short answer is we're not seeing much of a difference. The oil price is still at a very comfortable level. Let's call it above $70. We know our client's break-even point is around that $30 barrel, and they can comfortably, at that level of all price, pay dividends and invest in capital investment. And if you look at the difference between onshore, offshore, you see that there's a long-term offshore cycle unfolding. And I think it will continue. The momentum is there. It will continue unfolding. Now, at the margin, clients can always shift a little bit instead of, let's say, increasing by five, maybe they go four or six, you might see some of that happening. But I do think that certainly all our clients that we're talking to, they're gearing up for increasing their exploration efforts. And when I ask them why is it not translating yet necessarily more sales from our side in multi-client data, which would be a good indicator, But usually the response is that it just takes time to reshape the team, to get the machine back in motion.

Perfect. And then just, I think you may have answered it, I think in your commentary there was a slippage in late sales from 3Q to 4Q and a slippage in SMO as well. What's just causing these slippages? Is this just general inertia in the system still?

In multi-client, I think it's just the deal.

Honestly, on the late sales, it's really a cut-off issue. The deal was signed the 3rd of October, so it couldn't be booked in Q3. We're talking a $15 million plus deal. It would have changed the picture on our after sales. For SMO, it's more... It's not a cut-off, it's more the delivery which will happen during the course of Q4. With Q4, at least we see much stronger than what we've seen in Q3, reaching 100 million plus. On par with the expectation we have for SMO for the full year. And about big unexpected event, we were pretty comfortable with the delivery of this queue for SMO.

Perfect. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. We will take our next question. And the question comes from the line of Guillaume Delaby from Bernstein. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Yes. Good afternoon, Sophie and Jerome. Three quick questions, if I may. The first one. I'm going to come back to Mick's question on lead cells in Q4. In addition, what is, I would say, your feeling as of today regarding Q4 cells, lead cells in Q4? Second question, you mentioned, Sophie, that your library is very well suited for, I think you mentioned, five these rounds in Brazil. Could you maybe try to quantify this potential opportunity? And the third question is very different. I think your chairman of the board, Philippe Salle, has been appointed CEO of Atos. So is it reasonable to assume that a change of chairman in the coming weeks or coming months? Thank you.

Okay, thank you, Guillaume. Good evening and thanks for the great questions. In terms of after sales, the... I did mention, right, we have at this point in time, we have a bit more visibility than we normally have. Of course, it's hard to predict the client's behavior at the end of the year. The one thing that has not helped the after sales has been the lack of bid rounds and visible bid rounds. Now, we have the Brazil one I mentioned, which is planned for 2025, and usually clients would want to buy the data ahead of the bid rounds. So that would maybe, you know, could be driving some sales in Q4. But in general, I would say we feel equal or better than last year. And if you remember last year, there wasn't really such a spike for Q4. So I do feel like we have more visibility on the Q4 deal. In terms of the library in Brazil, there is a bid run, a non-bid run in the pre-salt area. And the pre-salt area is where we have the majority of our Brazil data library. And there's a number of large blocks that are going to be available and they're pretty large. So selling data. So it depends really in terms of the size of the price. Each one client buying data on one block could be quite significant. So it depends on how many clients are going to go after it, really. It's hard to say, but it could be quite significant if there is increasing interest and more clients interested. And in terms of the third point, of course, this is something that's being reviewed by our board. It's a bit early to give you an answer, but it's certainly something we're considering the different options and what we're privileging in the options is the duty. So you'll be hearing more in December. Okay.

Thank you very much, Ophi, very clear.

Thank you. We will take our next question. Your next question comes from the line of Lucas Dell from Arctic Securities. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Thank you. Good evening. You mentioned that there were not really any meaningful transfer fees hitting your numbers this quarter, but there are a couple of pending transactions among the oil companies that are expected to be closed over the next several quarters. So I was just wondering, is any of those involving transfer fees that would be meaningful to your late sales?

Hi, Lik, and thank you for your question. I don't think I said there were no transfer fees, because there have been some transfer fees, but not all of it. So as you mentioned, there are more transactions that are pending, and actually I'm thinking about two. One that's going to happen this year, and another that is quite probably going to be moving into next year, and those can be significant for us. One we know is happening, and the other one we'll see if it does happen. And as always, there might be more surprises on the way.

And I think what we said in Q2, which is last year close to zero transfer fee, and in 2022 with a big wood-side BHP transfer fee of 55, I mean, this year we'll be somewhere in the middle. And that's our expectation.

Okay. Okay. Thank you. And then obviously I mentioned Brazil, and there are some potential opportunities there with regard to the licensing rounds. But if you go around the other basins, can you sort of pinpoint where you expect there would be increased interest over the next six to 12 months? Because this year has been relatively quiet.

Well, actually, we have three core basins. So we have Brazil, we have Norway and we have Gulf of Mexico. Norway is always, as you know, been very active even through the downturn and COVID times. And we continue to see Norway as remaining very active. It really sustained us this year and will continue moving forward. The Gulf of Mexico remains an important area with clients. Actually, I was mentioning that more and more clients, a broader range of clients being interested in the Gulf of Mexico. If you remember, there was a stage in which a number of them exited because they thought it was risky. It required high capex and now we're seeing actually a number of clients come back to the Gulf of Mexico, which offers generally good conditions of investment. So I think we'll continue to see good interest in the Gulf of Mexico. And of course, we mentioned that Laconia will continue to attract funding. Now we are looking at positioning in other regions of the world which are of interest for our clients. So we've invested in the past in Suriname, so we hope to see continued activity in Suriname. We're trying to position in Guyana. Guyana, there's an upcoming potential opportunity. We're looking at Uruguay. Uruguay is the conjugate of Namibia on the on the other side of the Atlantic margin and so that is attracting interest. We have discussion on the other side in Africa. We have discussion right now in Malaysia. So there's a number of select baselines in which our clients are interested and we are looking at making investments, partnering maybe with some of our partners to look at. So it should be continued we should continue to see activities and as you see the pre-funding and then the new project is relatively dynamic and I think that trend will continue because clients are looking for new data.

Okay and then just finally with the vessel capacity agreement with share water expiring in early next year What are your thoughts on how you're going to source vessel capacity going forward?

It's a good question. First of all we're very pleased that this is ending and as we've highlighted the numbers it would be a good way to come out of our financial We have considered different options moving forward. Right now, we think there is still overcapacity on the market and we don't believe it will be very difficult to procure a vessel on sort of the open market. But we've considered a different maybe model under which we would partner. But by no means we would want to enter an onerous contract in a similar way that we had in the past. So we'll enjoy, I think, some freedom from vessels. We do see the market shifting from vessel streamer into nodes. So we want to have the freedom to invest our capex into more of the node science. If you look at the basins, Gulf of Mexico is pretty much a node market. Brazil still has streamer opportunity in the new frontier basins of Brazil, but pre-salt eventually is going to move into nodes. Norway is not far from going into nodes. So you'll still have, of course, the more frontier area, perhaps like I was mentioning, Malaysia, Suriname, Arguably, Guyana might be moving to nose as well as it's becoming more mature. So I don't know if it's a good thing to try and lock ourselves into a vessel streamer commitment.

So your sort of big picture view is the OBN market growing faster than the streamer market over the next 12 months?

Yeah, if you look at growth, it certainly will continue to grow much faster as nodes are starting to be utilized in exploration. In the past, nodes were contained only for production purposes on small areas. Now, for example, with the example of Guapamexico, the sparse nodes are being used for exploration purposes with excellent results. And as that continues to deliver value, you'll see more and more shifting towards nodes. Of course, the streamer offers a very cost-effective and efficient way to acquire lots of data in new areas. So I think it will continue to have its space. And today, if you look at the amount of square kilometers acquired with streamers versus nodes, it's probably just simply talking about 10 times more. So there's still a lot more streamer data acquired than node data, but one is going down, the streamer data, and the other one is going up fast.

Okay, that's interesting. In general, if you were to compare an exploration project where you deploy nodes as opposed to streamers, I know it would vary a lot, but what would you say in general would be the typical cost difference between those two approaches?

So in order to be able to look at the price difference, you have to look at the node density, which is what affects the node cost. So the Gulf of Mexico, for example, which is a sparse node, so let's say maybe a few kilometers apart, then you'd be talking about similar cost to a wide azimuth. Wide azimuth is when you have two vessels, two streamer vessels, so that would be sort of equivalent, just to give you a range. But actually it is, becoming cost-effective in those complex subsurface areas which have productive reservoirs.

Okay, interesting. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 and 1 on your telephone. We will take our next question. Your next question comes from the line of Baptiste Le Bac.

from other VHS please go ahead your line is open yes good evening everybody thanks for your time three questions from my side the first one is related to the new UK tax regime what could be the impact for you if there is a second one is dedicated to SMO and the fact that new businesses is increasing will you need one time in the future to put let's say specific capex for this type of products versus let's say standard products for oil and gas and the third one is the depletion rate speaking with our clients do you see some change regarding the depletion rate thanks a lot okay i'll let i'll take thank you baptiste and good evening i'll take a question two and three while um

giving time to Jérôme to look at question one. But in terms of new businesses for SMO, they're growing, and they're continuing to grow every year. Now, what makes them as a percentage of the total higher is actually the core parts of SMOs were lower this quarter, so that's why we ended up with this 31%. But the new businesses that we're looking for in sensing and monitoring were more in the service side, So we don't expect that there will be very capital intensive. But if your question is, do you need new products and technology? Definitely we do. And we've already made that investment. So we'll continue to carve out parts of our R&D budget, but I would expect it's going to be a small portion of it. specifically to continue adapting our solutions to those markets. For example, we have some of our equipment, direct applications. For example, the sensors that we use for oil and gas, you can use them for geothermal. They're the same. You can use them for carbon sequestration. Some of them is exactly the same equipment, if you want, or the same system. Others are going to be different. We packaged already solutions for the infrastructure monitoring, so that's kind of done. Of course, we'll continue evolving the solution, but that will be low investment. Then we have some defense solution, which are, again, very close to our core technology. I would expect very little investment. So in general, I don't think you should expect a large investment, particularly visible or large investment on the SMO side to continue growing that market. The effort will be more on the business development side, trying to land partnerships.

Thank you. Back to your first question on the UK tax regime. First, the UK is not the biggest region for us. I mean, looking at either late sales or geoscience or SMO. And it's true that all the recent tax policies in the UK have been quite unfriendly for Langas, so not favouring very much in comparison with Norway, for example. But I think the budget from yesterday, from what I read, was less worse than what people were thinking. and there is still this allowance for CAPET which everybody was fearing that they will be removed and it's not so but I mean that's really a peculiarity but overall for the region UK is impact the UK and overall the impact on the UK change regime is very minimal.

I agree with that and the third question on depletion rate we're not Hearing anything different the similar depletion rate single-digit depend on companies Five seven percent of course the depletion rates in unconventional North America is going to be much higher but III think we're still on there and actually if anything the the clients are are looking to you know bringing technologies to combat that and But natural, I would say similar, 5% to 7% overall on average. Thanks very much.

Thank you very much.

There seems to be no further questions at this time. I will hand back for closing remarks.

Well, great.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate the questions. And I look forward to engaging with you in the upcoming weeks. on one-to-ones and with investors. So thank you very much for your attention.

Thank you indeed. Bye.

This concludes today's conference call.

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