Civeo Corp (CVEO) 2024 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Greetings and welcome to the Civeo Corporation 4th quarter 2024, earnings call.

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Thank you and welcome to Civeo 4th quarter and full year 2024 earnings conference call.

Today our call will be led by Bradley J. Dodson, Civeo's President and Chief Executive Officer, and E. Collin Gerry, Civeo's 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 10K, 10Q, and other SEC filings.

Also, as noted in our earnings release, we have provided supplemental data disclosing revenue associated with our asset light business and those of our asset intensive businesses. This data can be found in the earnings release schedules.

I'll not turn the call over to Bradley.

Thank you, Regan, and thank you all for joining us today on our 4th quarter and full year 2024 earnings call.

I'll start the call today with the key takeaways, and then I'll provide a brief summary of our 4th quarter and full year 2024 performance. Then Colin will provide a financial and segment level review.

And I'll conclude our prepared comments with our initial 2025 guidance and the underlying regional assumptions.

Thereafter we'll open the call for questions.

I'll start with our key takeaways for the quarter and the full year.

Starting in Australia, we continue to execute on our growth strategy and are experiencing strong occupancy levels in the region.

Revenues in that segment increased 23% compared to the fourth quarter of 2023. This was driven by increased activity in our integrated services business from our recently announced $1.4 billion dollar contract.

We also recently announced an acquisition of 4 villages in the Australian Bowen Basin.

This acquisition is expected to be immediately accreted to cash flow and will expand our presence into a new area of that basin.

It also advances our goal to secure steady sources of revenues and earnings as it's backed with 2 and 3 year take or pay contracts with new and existing blue chip customers.

Moving to Canada, we experienced lower build rooms as a result of our customers' reduced capital spending in response to their investor pressure, as well as increasing.

Economic and political uncertainty which we expect to continue in 2025.

While some of the decline in Canada was expected and correlated with the wind down in LG-related activity, Canadian lodge build rooms did not recover as expected from the negative impact of the wildfires in the 3rd quarter of 2024.

Due to the aforementioned customer focus on cost reductions.

In response to these challenges and expectations for a continued lower level of customer spending in the region.

We've begun right sizing our Canadian business to address this new level of uncertainty and taking further strategic actions to expand our geographic and in market reach to reduce our dependency on oil sands activity.

We will incur one-time restructuring costs of approximately $3 million in the first quarter of 2025 as we could close existing lodges and reduce overhead headcount by approximately 25%, which we expect to strengthen our results in the medium term.

While we acknowledge and are addressing the near term reality of the unfavorable trough in Canadian oil and LNG related activity, we remain optimistic for the medium to long-term outlook for the business.

High bidding activity and diversified in markets, ramp up of additional Canadian LNG projects, a potential positive shift in the Canadian federal government policy and carbon capture initiatives, namely the pathways projects. These could be catalysts for growth moving forward.

So lastly, for the full year of 2024, we returned approximately $44 million of capital to shareholders through our quarterly dividends and share repurchase. This represented approximately 65% of 2024's free cash flow.

Since the initiation of our share repurchase program in 2021, we've repurchased approximately the equivalent of 20% of our common shares outstanding.

Let me take a moment to provide a bit of context on the evolution before I hand it over to Colin.

10 years ago, Civeo was a much more asset intensive company focusing on capital deployment, on internal manufacturing and installation of new lodges and villages. At the time of our spend, Civeo had $775 million in debt, and our revenue was approximately 70% tied to Canadian oil sands, most of which was supporting customers' construction activity and building the majority of the oil sands infrastructure that exists today.

Since then we have successfully deleveraged the company and diversified our revenue sources.

We first entered the integrated services market in Australia with the Action Industrial Catering acquisition in 2019 and have focused on growth, delivering a five-year topline organic keyer of 38% in that business.

This asset like business provides catering and facility management services to our clients at both our owned and our customer owned accommodation assets.

Our revenue mix today is more weighted to steel making commodities in Australia and we have a much lower debt profile.

To better illustrate the evolution of our business and our current asset mix, we have provided new supplemental disclosure that illustrates the revenues of our asset light business, which includes hospitality services at both our own assets and our customer owned assets.

And our asset intensive business, which is largely includes the accommodations revenue associated with our lodge and village assets as well as our Canadian mobile camp business.

We believe that investors continue to perceive CDO as a pure play accommodations or asset intensive business.

So we provide supplemental disclosure to highlight the key components of our business and show the significant growth we've achieved in integrated services or this asset light part of the business.

We are positioning the company for ongoing value creation over the next 10 years. In the short run, this means continuing diversification of our revenue streams as evidenced by our recent Australian acquisition announcement and redirecting our capital spend to the markets where conditions warrant change.

With that, we'll turn it over to Collin

Thank you, Bradley, and thank you all for joining us this morning.

Today we reported total revenues in the fourth quarter of $151 million with a net loss of $15.1 million or $1.10 per diluted share. During the fourth quarter we generated adjusted EBITDA of $11.4 million in operating cash flow of $9.5 million. The decrease in adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter of 2024 compared to 2023 was primarily due to decreased filled rooms at the Canadian lodges. This lower level of customer spending is expected to continue as producers in the region are keenly focused on reducing operating costs.

The decrease in cash flow relative to the year ago quarter was negatively impacted by net proceeds related to the sales in the McClelland lake lodge and holdback collections related to the wind down of Canadian mobile camp projects in the 4th quarter of 2023.

For the full year 2024, we reported revenues of $682 million and a net loss of $17.1 million or $1.19 per diluted share.

In 2024 we generated adjusted EBITDA $ 79.9 million.

A decrease from our 2023 adjusted EBITDA of $106.5 million.

The decrease in adjusted for the full year as compared to 2023 was largely driven by The McClelland lake lodge sale, which occurred in 2023, and the expected wind down of LNG related activity in Canada.

That impacted both some of our own lodges as well as our mobile camp activity, which was offset by increased build rooms in the Australian owned villages and increased Australian integrated services activity.

Now turn to the 4th quarter results for our 2 segments. I'll begin with a review of the Australian segment performance compared to its performance a year ago.

Fourth quarter revenues from our Australian segment were $110 million up 23% from $89.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2023.

Adjusted EBITDA was $22.2 million up 3% from $21.5 million last year.

The increase in revenues adjusted EBITDA was primarily due to increased integrated services activity related to our recent contract announcement.

Australian build rooms in the quarter were 637,000 rooms, relatively flat from the fourth quarter of 2023. Our daily room rate for our Australian owned villages in US dollars was $77.

Which increased from $74 in the fourth quarter of 2023 due to CPI escalations in the recent contracts.

Turning to Canada, we recorded revenues of $40.7 million.

As compared to $72.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2023.

adjusted EBITDA even Canada was $4.7 million, a decrease from $3.5 million.

In the 4th quarter of 2023, the year to year revenue and adjusted EBITDA decreases were again.

Driven by the wind down of LNG related activity, including the completion of pipeline activity over before our mobile camps, the sale of the McClelland lake lodge, and lower build rooms as a result of our customers' recent focus on cost and headcount reductions.

During the fourth quarter, build rooms in our Canadian lodges totalled 360,000, which was down from 617,000 in the fourth quarter of 2024 due to the reasons I just mentioned.

Our daily room rate for the Canadian segment in US dollars was $94 which decreased from $95 in the fourth quarter Of 2024 due to the mix of occupancy among the lodges.

Looking at our capital structure, our net debt on December 31, 2024 was $38.1 million a $5.9 million dollar increase since September 30, 2024. Our net leverage ratio for the quarter was 0.5 times as of December 31, 2024.

As of December 2031, 2024, we had total liquidity of approximately $202 million, giving us the strength and flexibility to opportunistically pursue growth opportunities such as our recently announced Australian acquisition while maintaining prudent leverage ratios.

Next, I will turn to capital allocation.

I'll start with Capex on a consolidated basis, capital expenditures for the full year 2024.

Down from $31.6 million during 2023.

Capital expenditures in both periods were predominantly related to maintenance spending on our lodges and villages.

Capex in 2024 included approximately $3 million related to customer funded infrastructure upgrades at our Australian villages which were reimbursed by Civeo's customer.

That compared to $10 million for the same spend in 2023.

In the fourth quarter of 2024, we repurchased approximately 208,000 shares through our share repurchase program for a total of approximately $5.6 million. For the full year 2024, we repurchased over $1.1 million shares for approximately $29.6 million compared to 564,000 shares for $11.6 million in 2023.

Bradley mentioned, this brings our total return of capital to shareholders in 2024, including quarterly dividends and share repurchases, to $44 million representing 65% of our 2024 free cash flow.

We will continue to op opportunistically repurchase shares moving forward.

Regarding the dividend earlier this month, the company announced that its board of directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.25 per common share payable on March 17, 2025 to shareholders of record at the close of business on February 24, 2025.

With that, I'll turn it over to Bradley to discuss our guidance for the full year 2025.

Thank you, Colin.

I would like to now turn to a discussion of our initial 2025, guidance on a consolidated basis, including the underlying macro and regional assumptions.

We are initiating full year 2025 revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance.

Of revenues of $630 million to $660 million and adjusted EBITDA even of $80 million to $90 million.

Our initial full year 2025 capital expenditure guidance is $25 to $30 million.

This guidance takes into account the recent reduction in currency exchange rates experienced since late 2024.

And excludes any contribution from the recently announced Australian acquisition, which we expect to close during the 2nd quarter, subject to regulatory approvals and customary conditions.

And we'll provide updated 2025 guidance upon completion.

On last quarter's earnings conference call in October 2024, we provided a preliminary outlook for 2025.

Since then there have been some material shifts in global markets and within our business that have impacted our outlook.

I would note that that that those comments on the conference call were before the US election, before changes in Canadian political landscape.

The announcement of potential tariffs and the impact that all of those have had on US dollar versus Canadian dollar and Australian dollar exchange rates.

So first, the Australian and Canadian currency exchange rates have weakened meaningfully compared to 2024.

Driving an EBITDA headwind for our US denominated results.

Based on today's spot rate, the order of magnitude of this headwind is approximately $5 million in EBITDA.

Second, the political uncertainty in Canada is driving changes in customer behavior. New capital spending is certainly being delayed or pushed to the right, which impacts on mobile camp fleet deployment.

And our oil sands customers' quest to lower operating costs has accelerated, driving a sustained reduction in our Canadian occupancy.

Taken together, the combination of all these factors is driving reduced guidance as compared to the $90 million comment I made last quarter.

That said, the team is executing on what we can control.

In Canada, we are aggressively looking inward at our cost structure to right size the business. In Australia, we are deploying capital to facilitate continued growth as evidenced by our recently announced acquisition.

Based on these investments, we are confident that we will exit 2025 in a better position than when we are starting it.

In 2025 we expect cash tax payments of approximately $90 million in Australia, which includes approximately $10 million of payments related to the 2024 tax year.

I'm sorry, we expect cash tax payments of approximately $30 million which includes $10 million related to the 2024 tax year.

When we incorporate the 2025 cash tax payments of $30 million.

We anticipate 2025 free cash flow of $30 to $40 million.

I will now provide the regional outlooks and corresponding underlying assumptions by region.

In Australia, customer activity in our own villages remains incredibly strong, and we expect to continue at similar levels moving forward.

We're full at three of our Bowen Basin villages with strong occupancy at the rest of our own village portfolio in Australia. We expect that to continue throughout 2025.

As it relates to our integrated services business, we are continuing to experience increased demand from our recent contract award and expect to build on this in 2025 as we work towards our stated goal of $500 million Australian of integrated services revenues by 2027.

Our outlook also assumes in Australia most build room growth as well as expansion of our CIS business.

In Canada, as I mentioned earlier, our customers are focused on reducing capital spending and operating costs. Investments in the region have declined over the last 10 years as a result of increased economic and political uncertainty, leading to lower headcount in the Alberta oil sands region and therefore negatively affecting our occupancy.

In the first quarter of 2025, we will incur one-time restructuring costs of approximately $3 million to help right-size our Canadian cost structure.

This includes cold shutting certain lodges and reducing overhead by approximately 25% in terms of headcount.

The strategy in Canada is to weather the storm with as lean a cost structure as possible.

We're looking to reduce our dependency on the oil sands activity by potentially expanding our geographically and the in markets we serve in Canada.

As we stated before, we only pursue opportunities in line with our capital allocation framework.

Despite these near term headwinds, we remain optimistic about the medium and long term opportunities in North America, including, for example, possible ramp up of LNG activity in the next couple of years and the possibility of the pathways carbon capture project.

Before we head into the Q&A section of the call, I'd like to close by saying And our Canadian business 2025 will be a year of transition. While we work to mitigate these near term headwinds, we remain op op optimistic about the business and we'll see improvements in the medium to long term based on strategic actions we're taking today.

We will continue to grow our Australian integrated services business in line with our stated strategy and are pleased with the progress that we've made in the region thus far.

I am confident in our team's ability to execute on our growth strategy as we adhere to our capital allocation framework.

With that, I'll open the call to questions.

Thank you.

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Stephen Gengaro, Stifel

Thanks, Good morning, everybody.

Good morning.

I think a couple for me, the first is you, disclosed incremental details about the asset light versus the asset intensive businesses, and one of the things that jumped out to me was, I was kind of under the impression that the asset intensive side was a larger revenue base. So, in that breakup, does that include sort of catering and facility management that you're providing at owned assets?

That’s correct. And so, it includes the third party integrated services that we provide at customer owned locations and combines that with. The hospitality services we perform at our own locations.

Okay, and then, we think about that going forward, I imagine that the integrated services side sort of the area of of growth.

That's right.

Okay.

The two other ones that I had, one is, From a from a seasonal perspective, I know your guidance is still early stage, but is there any reason not to expect kind of a normal seasonal distribution in in 25? Is there anything sort of specific we should be thinking about from that perspective?

I assume you're referring historically 60 to 65% of the full year is generated in the 2nd and 3rd quarters, and that is expected to be the case in 2025 as well.

Excluding the impact and the timing of the Australian acquisition.

Okay, great. And then the other question, it has to do with Canada and When we think about What's sort of highly visible in Canada and what is more, for lack of a better word, kind of spot-oriented work. Is there any way to think about sort of the percentage of the Canadian revenue stream even using 2024 it's kind of a benchmark that like how much of that is sort of highly visible at this point and how much of that is sort of more discretionary.

I'll frame the answer in this way is that historically we have The in Canada we have the number of guests we have kind of through daily operations and then the second component is turnaround activity, which is the primary driver of the seasonality we just spoke about.

Canadian turnaround activity typically occurs in 2nd and 3rd quarters because of the climate and the increase in productivity when it's not subfreezing temperatures.

As a result, historically turnaround activity in terms of our total number of room nights in Canada on a full year basis is about 25 to 30% of total room nights.

That's expected to continue.

Great, good, no, that's good. I'll get back in line, but that's very helpful. Thanks.

Thank you, Steve.

Steve Verrazzani with Sidoti.

Morning, Bradley, Colin. I appreciate all the detail on the call.

Bradley, I wanted to ask about the response to what some might view as short term uncertainty. You seem to now expect, and I'm sure this is coming from customer feedback, that this reaction is ultimately going to be long term. This is going to be a longer-term impact, right? The political uncertainty is what it is. The wildfires maybe you didn't recover as fast. I'm curious if this is sort of The needle that broke the camel's back or Are you seeing the reaction from customers to be, right, we're cutting and that, right, you see where I'm going with this, a 25% workforce reduction is pretty dramatic given some of this, some might view this as short term.

No, that's a good point and a very good question.

We are viewing this as a shift in customer behavior and preparing that it will be a long-term shift in customer behavior as it relates to occupancy levels in the Canadian oil sands region.

And so we're making adjustments to cost structure to reflect that.

It was a market dynamic that we Really started to feel in the 4th quarter of last year.

And in staying close with our customers we see that that level that intent to reduce head count on site to continue.

And so we're adjusting our cost structure accordingly now. What can change that picture? Well, effectively our Canadian oil sands rooms are serving operations and maintenance. If there are any sort of project work or expansionary work over the medium term, that would be positive to occupancy. Pathways would be positive to occupancy. Another LNG project would be positive to occupancy in SICA.

But with the Canadian government effectively shut down until they resolve the Prime Minister's situation, 2025 is kind of a question mark, so we don't see that, yeah, I think the positive, the glass half full perspective is customers aren't reacting to the headlines day to day that are coming out, but they're also not really excited about putting additional capital to work.

And so I expect Canada will be, I think we've painted it appropriately with the term uncertainty.

And in fairness, you could have made cuts earlier right along the way because coming out of COVID, I mean you've had excess capacity in the system all along, right?

I would say that we're always conscious of our cost structure. This was a material change in the outlook, and we responded accordingly.

Okay, fair enough.

Turning to Australia, which has been obviously fantastic results consistently there, given the China economic weakness and the pressure it's having on certain metal prices that are important to your customers, are you concerned about cap back in that market and how it might impact results 18 months from now, 2 years from now, and how much do the long-term agreements protect you?

Great question. I would say that what we've seen there is that, particularly on the met coal side, prices have softened below $200 a ton.

But what is kind of bullying our outlook is the current customer conversations. Customers are still looking for rooms. You referred to in your question. We have a strong backlog in terms of take or pay contracts at our Bowen Basin locations, and customers are still looking for long term contracts there. So more succinctly, it hasn't changed. The near-term pricing hasn't changed customer behavior at this time, so. As we look longer term, it's too early to tell, but right now customers are much more in Australia are talking about ex their expansionary projects, their need for additional rooms, and we're responding accordingly. So, the outlook for the own villages in Australia looks good at this point.

That’s great.

Just a modeling question. I know you're not including those four villages, but when you announced it, you did put out an annualized number.

Any reason to think that number is not still fair? And is your reason for not including it more to do with the timing being unclear.

I mean, I think we. The conditions to close the transaction are not entirely within our control, so not wanting to put a timeline on that other than to say the current expectation is it closes in the 2nd quarter, so it's not in my opinion, very delayed closing, but there's no reason for us to change at this point the guidance on what we think on a full year basis, the acquired business, the acquired villages could generate.

Okay, any risk To closing

No, not at this point. Okay.

Thanks so much.

Dave Storms, Stonegate.

Morning. I appreciate you taking my questions.

I actually wanted to stick with that acquisition about 3.9 times, but it feels like a good deal, especially considering the bit of margin should be pretty much immediately accretive. Is this indicative of the overall market that you're seeing in the Bowen Basin or is this something specific to that region or that seller that drove this price?

I would say that you've highlighted the things that impacted it. I think we we're a buyer that could pay all cash. The seller wanted, I think a fairly easy straightforward transaction to execute, and it is a good price. I would say we're going to get all the assets in the market priced at that level?

Understood. That's very helpful.

Thank you. And then with that property, are there integrated services already on site or is there an opportunity to, further add to view integrated services?

This would be in addition to the To integrated services, so currently the owner outsources that and we will obviously insource it.

That's great, thank you. And then one more for me, great again they added the asset like first assets disclosure on your report. It looked like year over year in Canada the asset light portion held up fairly well despite the noted drop in the occupancy. Is there anything specific that's driving the resilience there?

Year over year, the Delta and Canadian revenues was impacted by mobile camp activity, which would be in the asset side of things in 2023 that was not present in 2024. That'd be the biggest driver.

Understood, thank you for taking my questions and good luck in 2025.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Josh Jain, Daniel Energy Partners.

Thanks. Good morning. First question, just when we think about free cash flow, you highlighted 65% of your free cash flow last year was returned to shareholders. How are you thinking about this going forward, I guess in the context of the acquisition that you just did, and maybe you could just frame it over the medium to long term how how you guys are thinking about maybe a percentage of free cash flow that ultimately return to shareholders.

Well, I think our free cash flow framework is based off of a fundamental dividend and then opportunistic buybacks where our leverage has been historically we were below our target, which is a plus or minus 1 times leverage with the ability to lever up to 2 times leverage for the right growth opportunity, and none of that has changed. And so that's how we'll continue to approach it. Post acquisition will be roughly 1 times levered.

On a pro forma basis, so still able to deploy capital under the same framework.

Okay, thanks, and maybe just one follow up on the Canadian business you talked about the right sizing that you're doing this year, but also the medium to long term optimism.

Could you just talk about how you're thinking about managing that over the course of this year, if things don't progress, are there are costs that further need to be taken out of the business or just how you're trying to balance, what should maybe be a softer uncertain year in 25 against, long term strength in the business.

I think the business for the reality that we see right now, and as I mentioned in our comments, the uncertainty in the market we'll have to see how it develops.

We consistently look at our cost structure and match that to our outlook.

Okay, thanks.

Stephen Gengaro, Stifel

Thanks.

Most of what I was going to ask was asked on the cash flow side, but just a quick one, the acquisition in Australia, can you talk about sort of the types of deals you're looking for and if you think that incremental deals would be more likely in Australia than other markets at this point?

Well, I think we've been fairly consistent in what we're looking for. So if there are opportunities to buy.

Additive locations that fit into our portfolio again largely in Australia just given the macro dynamics, we'll continue to look at that and there are opportunities there.

More broadly speaking, there's a bigger opportunity in integrated services in Canada and Australia. It's a larger market and so our pivot has been to that.

We continue to expect growth in our Australian integrated services business.

And we're well on our way to our $500 million target.

In Canada we need to diversify geographically and buy end market. There's considerable activity developing east of our legacy markets of Alberta and British Columbia that is mining and infrastructure related. That can be asset that could be asset only, that could be integrated, meaning both asset and services, or it could be just integrated services, and that sales effort is ongoing and it's too early to tell, but the activity is strong in terms of bidding.

That's helpful. I think I'm all set. Thanks for the call.

Thank you Stephen. We appreciate it.

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'd like to hand the floor back over to management for any closing remarks.

Thank you, Paul.

And thank you everyone for joining the call today. We appreciate your interest in video, and we look forward to speaking with you on the first quarter earnings call expected in April.

This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time.

Thank you for your participation.