Aker Solutions ASA

OSE:AKSO

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q1

[Marianne Hagen, executive]

Hello, and a warm welcome to Aker Solutions on the presentation of the first quarter results for 2022. My name is Marianne Hagen, Head of Sustainability, HSSE & Communications. With me here today is our CEO, Kjetel Digre; and our CFO, Idar Eikrem. They will take you through the main developments of the quarter.

Our presentation today is a live audiocast, and you can download the slides from our web page. The audiocast will later today be made available for replay. After the presentation, we do have time for some questions. Those of you who are following the audiocast can submit your questions on the online platform. And with that, I leave the floor to you, Kjetel.

[Kjetel Digre, executive]

Thank you, Marianne, and welcome to everyone on the line. Let me take you through the highlights of the quarter. The overall message is that we delivered another quarter of solid performance, and we continue to deliver on our strategy. Firstly, our financial results demonstrate that we are on track with our targets. Our first quarter revenue was NOK 8.3 billion, and EBITDA was NOK 583 million, excluding special items, with a margin of 7%. We delivered NOK 7 billion of order intake or just below 1x book-to-bill. We continued to see high feed and tendering activity, and expect several large projects to be sanctioned towards the end of the year. Our backlog ended at NOK 48 billion, providing a solid foundation for our growth targets moving forward.

Secondly, we are progressing well with our transition journey. We have an ongoing recruitment campaign and have this quarter welcomed more than 500 skilled new colleagues. And we are on track with our target of hiring 2,000 new colleagues in 2022. During the quarter we also announced that we are further strengthening our renewables portfolio with the acquisition of Rainpower, a leading hydropower technology company. The company develops and produces hydropower turbines, control systems and associated equipment for customers worldwide. It delivers equipment for new hydropower plants and performs upgrades, oversee existing ones.

We see strong industrial synergies by integrating Rainpower into Aker Solutions to further develop the company into an innovative technology company to optimize hydropower developments and operations. The increasing needs for renewable electricity combined with aging hydropower infrastructure are projected to lead to increased investments in the hydropower industry moving forward. And this is being further amplified by the recently increased focus on energy security in Europe. We believe Rainpower is well-positioned to capture growth in this market.

As you know, Aker Solutions is the most experienced EPCI contractor in delivering offshore concrete structures. During the quarter, our participation in the European research project, EnDurCrete, was successfully completed after 4 years of research and innovation. Concrete is the most-used construction material in the world, hence the need to tackle emissions. And the target of EnDurCrete was to develop ecofriendly and durable concrete for different applications, including offshore.

As part of this international research project, we have developed and tested new innovative concretes at our storage yard in Norway, demonstrating promising results in the pursuit of sustainable low carbon concrete solutions for offshore applications. And in addition, by combining concrete production with carbon capture, like we are already doing at Northern in cooperation with several partners, we reduce emissions in significant ways.

Thirdly, in terms of recent developments, we continue to see increased market activity. As we look ahead to the rest of 2022, we see a favorable oil and gas price backdrop, but also a dynamic operating environment. On the macro level, the pandemic and the tragic Russian invasion of Ukraine have amplified several trends. This includes increased inflation, raw material prices and global supply chain constraints. We support the sanctions enacted by the European Union and the international community. And we have no backlog in Russia, and Aker Solutions will not start any new projects in Russia.

When it comes to supply chain constraints, we are not immune to these market dislocations. And we see some signs that locking in prices of certain raw materials in the market is currently somewhat more challenging than a few months ago. Despite the macro challenges, we are optimistic on the outlook in general. And we closely monitor the supply chain situations in order to be proactive. On the other hand, we also see that the energy landscape has evolved significantly over the last couple of months, and that geopolitical events have led to an increased focus on energy security. This is projected to lead to increased investment in both oil and gas and renewables.

In the near term, it is likely to result in increased demand for subsea tie back developments at existing infrastructure to enable maintained or increased production at existing fields. And our industry-leading subsea gas compression solutions are also well-positioned for this type of demand and activity.

Now, let's have a look at some of our recent operational highlights. Overall, I am pleased to see that our main projects are progressing well. Following years of extensive upgrades, we delivered the Njord A drilling and production platform to Equinor in March. Following the contract award in 2017, we have carried out significant upgrades and refurbishment of the platform to extend its lifetime for another 20 years of production.

A refurbishment project is never easy, especially at this size and complexity. Knowing that the project was carried out during the pandemic makes me even more proud that we reached this important milestone. The final part of our job is to assist the hookup offshore during the installation phase. And the platform is planned to start production in the fourth quarter of this year.

At the Johan Castberg project, a big milestone was reached when the hull of the FPSO arrived at our storage yard from Singapore in April. And 2 weeks ago, together with our customer, Equinor, I visited our yard to review the project. And we also boarded the large and impressive hull of this FPSO, which is measuring more than 300 meters long and with a deadweight of 66,000 tons, and that's before we now start to lift on board and install the 25,000 tons of modules that we have constructed over the past few years.

The turret, which consists of 3 large parts, as you can see in the picture on the slide, was manufactured in Dubai. It is currently being lifted in place and installed by the world's largest lifting vessel, Sleipnir, operated by Heerema. In our subsea segment, the work also continues to progress well. During the quarter, all the subsea templates for the Breidablikk project were installed successfully according to plan. We also reached another important milestone on the subsea part of Castberg when the second batch of 5 standardized subsidiaries were completed in manufacturing in Brazil and has now arrived in Norway. These are part of the portfolio of standardized subsidiaries that we are delivering to different customers across several field developments, contributing to healthy margins in our subsea segment.

In our renewables and energy transition portfolio, we also continued to make good progress during the quarter. For the carbon storage project, Northern Lights, the assembly of the first subsea tree for CO2 injection started in Brazil, and the construction of the subsea template is progressing well at our Egersund yard. This is a great example of how we can directly transfer existing competence and solutions from oil and gas over to renewables projects.

Our scope at the onshore receiving terminal on the west coast of Norway also started up in the quarter. The majority of the detailed design is now completed and the civil construction work is progressing according to plan. During the quarter, it was also encouraging to see that the EU approved the funding for expanding the capacity at this important CO2 storage project. This will accommodate additional demand and enable new industrial clusters across the EU to store its captured CO2 at Northern Lights, and it means that we are in good position for further call-offs on the Northern Lights project.

For the world's largest offshore floating wind project, Equinor's Hywind Tampen, we have now completed the concrete casting of all the 11 floating foundations. These floating concrete foundations are more than 100 meters tall. Again, it makes me proud that our team has carried out this complex and challenging work in the middle of a global pandemic.

During the quarter, we also delivered all the 19 section anchors for the project manufactured at our yard in Verdal. These structures are used to connect the mooring lines to the floating offshore wind turbines. And this is another example where we are using our strong oil and gas competence and transferring this directly to renewables projects. The floating foundations are now being towed to the Gulen assembly site further up the cost, where the towers and wind turbines will be installed, which is outside our scope. After this, they will be transported by tug boat out to the field in the North Sea where we will support the hookup and commissioning, and first power is expected this fall.

On the Sunrise Wind project, the first steel was cut on 14th of February. This took place at the Damen Mangalia yard in Romania, which is our subcontractor for the fabrication of the topside modules. This yard is one of the largest in Europe, and reflects our international delivery model where we complement our Norwegian yards. Once these topside modules are manufactured, they will be shipped to our store yard in Norway for final assembly. With the main jacket produced at our Verdal yard, the assembly process will be completed with our partner, Siemens Energy, before transporting to the U.S. When installed, this would be the first-ever offshore HVDC platform in U.S. waters.

Within decommissioning, our work is also progressing well. During the spring, Allseas will deliver several large structures from the Gyda, Valhall and Hod fields to our Stord yard, ready to be dismantled and recycled. In total, these weigh more than a massive 50,000 metric tons. And our target is to recycle 98% of the steel and materials, supporting the circular economy.

Let's now have a quick look at our main orders during the quarter. We continued to win important contracts and feeds. 2 of the largest contracts this quarter were in the EMM segment, where we won large multiyear extensions or frame agreements with Equinor and OKEA. Securing capacity through long-term extension commitments like this demonstrates the value we deliver to customers and the quality of our deliveries. During the quarter, we also secured a letter of intent from Saipem for delivery of the Umbilicals for the ENI's Baleine development offshore the Ivory Coast. In terms of our early phase work, we won 38 new front-end contracts in the first quarter. 30% of these are related to renewables and energy transition work, and several large projects related to the expected uptick in NCS activity are currently in feed phase.

We also won important feed contracts related to Equinor's Rosebank development, which is one of the largest undeveloped fields in the U.K. One of the feeds is related to the EPC of the FPSO, and the other is for the subsea production system and umbilicals part of this large field development. And as mentioned earlier, we expect higher order intake in the second half of 2022. And because of that, we continue to see a potential for record-high order intake this year and into next year.

Now let's move to the tender pipeline and market outlook. The overall comment is that our tendering activity remains high across all segments and the outlook is positive. Our tender value remains stable at NOK 80 billion, and close to 20% of this is related to energy transition business. These are tenders that could be awarded in the market over the next 12 to 18 months. Looking ahead, we have increased confidence in our view of robust multiyear market growth with increased activity across areas where we are highly relevant. On the macro level, there is a tight supply and demand balance driven in part by underinvestment in recent years and now further amplified by the situation in Europe. This is projected to lead to a substantial step-up in capital spending moving forward.

In addition, significant growth is expected on the NCS related to the deadline for our customers to submit plans for new field developments and projects at the end of this year. The energy markets and our customers' budgets also continue to evolve over time. As a result, we remain committed to our strategy and transition journey. And this all supports our target to grow our revenue by 10% annually on average towards 2025 with an increasing share from renewables and energy transition work.

Now to sum up. We delivered another solid quarter. I'm pleased with our performance. And looking ahead, Aker Solutions is well-positioned. We continue to see high oil and gas prices and a dynamic operating environment. We expect global oil and gas supply to remain constrained in the coming years. And securing sufficient supply of affordable energy to people and society will remain an important priority. We expect this to lead to continued high commodity prices as well as multiple years of spending growth from our customers across areas where we can contribute with our solutions and expertise. We will also continue to monitor the supply chain situation proactively as we move forward.

Overall, Aker Solutions will play an important part in both the ongoing near-term recovery and for the longer-term structural changes in the energy markets. We expect increased project sanctioning moving forward in regions and segments where we have a strong position, supporting our long-term growth targets. The energy transition is a massive undertaking that will require working across industries and working in partnerships to succeed. We need to provide affordable, stable energy, people and society need today, and we need to work together to build new energy systems. At Aker Solutions, we have the people, the competence and the drive to take a leading role. We will continue to work closely with our customers and partners to deliver solutions that will help solve global energy challenges for future generations.

And with that, I will hand it over to Idar, who will take you through the numbers in more detail.

[Idar Eikrem;Executive VP & CFO of Kværner ASA, executive]

Thank you, Kjetel. I will now take you through the key financial highlights of the first quarter, our segment performance and run through our financial guidance. As always, all numbers mentioned are in Norwegian kroner. So let me start with the income statement.

The first quarter revenue was NOK 8.3 billion, up from NOK 6.5 billion a year ago. This was driven by the subsea and EMM segments as we continued to progress on our project portfolio. The underlying EBITDA was NOK 583 million, up from NOK 427 million a year ago, and the margin increased to 7%. This was supported by continued good performance and strong margins in Subsea. The underlying EBIT was NOK 316 million, up from NOK 168 million a year ago. We ended the quarter with a net income excluding special items of NOK 200 million and earnings per share of NOK 0.39.

Now moving to our balance sheet and cash flow. We ended the quarter with a positive working capital development. It improved by NOK 1 billion during the quarter. The main driver for the improvement was the continued increased progress on some of our larger subsea projects, triggering milestones and prepayments from customers. Cash flow from operation was NOK 1.6 billion in the quarter. In addition to EBITDA, this was positively impacted by the improvement in working capital. Our cash flow from investing activities was minus NOK 147 million in the quarter. In addition to normal CapEx, this included the acquisition of Unitech Power Systems that we announced earlier this year. And it also included a small acquisition related to our existing decom yard on the West Coast of Norway.

During the quarter, we bought back NOK 460 million of the bond maturing in 2022 and NOK 20 million of the bond maturing in 2024, and we ended the quarter with a strong financial position. The net cash position was NOK 3.3 billion, with a leverage ratio of minus 2.3x. And our total liquidity buffer was NOK 10.2 billion, where NOK 5.2 billion was cash.

Now over to the segments. For renewables and field development, the first quarter revenue was NOK 2.8 billion, similar to the same period last year. The underlying EBITDA was NOK 102 million, with a margin of 3.6%, as several projects are in an early phase of execution. As a reminder, the margin in the comparable quarter last year had a positive one-off effect from an arbitration ruling. The order intake was NOK 1.5 billion or 0.6x book-to-bill. We continue to expect order intake in this segment to be lumpy and likely more weighted towards second half of this year and into 2023.

The revenue in the segment is expected to increase in 2022 as we gradually increase the progress on recent awards. The tendering activity is high, both related to the NCS and related to renewable projects internationally.

For the EMM segment, the first quarter revenue was NOK 2.5 billion. This was up from NOK 1.9 billion a year ago, driven by continued good progress on ongoing work. The underlying EBITDA was NOK 140 million with a margin of 5.6%, up from 4.1% a year earlier. The order intake was NOK 4.5 billion or 1.8x book-to-bill. This was mainly driven by large multiyear extension of long-term frame agreements. And the backlog remains strong at NOK 19.3 billion. The revenue in this segment is expected to increase slightly in 2022 and in line with current activity levels.

In the Subsea segment, the first quarter revenue was NOK 3 billion. This was up from NOK 1.9 billion a year ago, driven by increased progress on recent awards. The underlying EBITDA was strong at NOK 429 million with a margin of 14.4%. This was driven by solid performance on ongoing projects where we see positive effects from our portfolio approach in the execution with a strong focus on standardization. We continue to see margins in the 12% to 15% range moving forward.

The order intake was NOK 1.1 billion or 0.4x book-to-bill, and we continue to expect order intake in this segment to be lumpy and likely more weighted towards second half of 2022 and into 2023. And the backlog remains strong at NOK 16.1 billion. The revenue in Subsea is expected to increase in 2022 as we continue to progress on recent awarded work, and we -- the coming 3 quarters will likely have higher activity levels than in the first quarter.

The Subsea segment continues to experience high demand and high tendering activity, in particular on the Norwegian Continental Shelf in Brazil and with a focused approach in other active regions globally.

Now over to order intake and backlog. In the first quarter we delivered an order intake of NOK 7 billion or 0.9x book-to-bill. Our backlog is currently NOK 48 billion and provides a solid foundation moving forward. The share of our order book from work related to renewables and energy transition is now at 33%, up from 18% last year and 7% the year before that. This demonstrates that our transition journey is on track.

Now to sum up. In the first quarter, we continued to deliver a solid financial and operational performance, and we continue on track with our targets for revenue growth and cash generation. Based on our secured backlog and the expected market activity, we continue to see our full year revenue up by more than 20% in 2022. At this stage, we continue to expect our EBITDA margins to gradually improve and be up in 2022 compared to the 2021 level. The outlook for project sanctioning is very positive and Aker Solution is in a good position to take advantage of the opportunities ahead.

Thank you for listening. That was the end of our presentation. And we will now open up for questions.

[Marianne Hagen, executive]

Thank you, Idar, and thank you, Kjetel. And we have received one question at the outset of this meeting from Nikhil Gupta, and he says, "Congratulations on good set of results." And we say thank you. "The higher backlog coverage, especially for 2022 seems high versus historical level. So no change in the '22 revenue guidance looks to be conservative. Would you agree? Or do you see the awards in 2022 to be simply for execution in later years?"

[Kjetel Digre, executive]

I would also like to say thank you, and I'll bring it into the rest of the organization. So but the first question there, I guess you, Idar can...

[Idar Eikrem;Executive VP & CFO of Kværner ASA, executive]

Yes, I can do that. This is a reason why we are very confident when we are saying that our activity level and revenue will be more than 20% increased from the 2021 level and the recent sort of development have continued that we are even more confident about that today than when we announced this in the beginning of the year.

[Marianne Hagen, executive]

Thank you. And before I go to the second part of the question, I'll remind all of you that you can submit your questions on our online platform. But the second part of the question from Nikhil is, "On the supply chain given to the volatility in commodity prices, are you seeing any delays in awards due to this, especially in the oil and gas projects and offshore wind projects. How are you managing these risks in your tendering pipeline?"

[Kjetel Digre, executive]

Yes. No, first of all, I would say that we don't see any specific trend that these causes any delays. It's a key topic in relation to all our clients and customers. It's also a key topic when we are working with our long-term partners on the subcontracting side, but no trend of delays, and I would rather say that the energy security issue that has come high up on the agenda, actually, I would say, cement plans and rather accelerate some of them within particularly oil and gas. And then to the way we are handling it, that's a huge topic. We had said in the beginning here that this is something that we are working constantly with, monitoring it together with clients and our partners and then taking proactive action.

I would acknowledge the organizations work in close collaboration with very constructive clients. That's the way of handling such changes and challenges. And then to more specific ways of handling it, we are making sure that we are taking it as a topic in the bid processes to try to lock in committed prices for vendors and also have the right kind of escalation clauses in the contracts. And we are also then looking at both locking and hedging as much as possible before we enter into the actual contracts. As I said here, the clients see the picture moving and they are really sort of constructive across the board. I would also like to highlight that our, particularly our standardized deliveries within Subsea is creating opportunities to be even more proactive and then stocking opportunities is there because of the way these are standardized delivers across several projects. Anything to add, Idar?

[Idar Eikrem;Executive VP & CFO of Kværner ASA, executive]

Yes, just add to that there are 2 elements, of course, when it comes to project under execution, we don't see any sort of hiccups when it comes to that. It's more sort of when we are into bidding for new projects and in dialogue with the client as we said, we are often in the sort of feed phase before we are getting into the EPCI phase. And in close dialogue with the client, we will do our best in order to secure prices going forward, but also with an update in prices after the feed phase have been concluded. So this is a constructive dialogue that we have with our customers, but it's on top of our agenda due to the situation in the supply chain market.

[Marianne Hagen, executive]

Thank you. And then the next question is from Kim André Uggedal, and he says, "How do you see working capital development through the year? What should be a normalized working capital level in the context of increased activity level for the coming years?"

[Kjetel Digre, executive]

Yes. Working capital, as some of you will have noticed already, we have updated our guidance, and we have said that there should be expected to fluctuate between minus NOK 2.5 billion and minus NOK 1 billion. So it's a healthy level for working capital for us. We have been able to improve it gradually over the last few quarters. And going forward, that type of range is what we believe in, in the next, let's say, 1 to 2 years from now. And then short term, we should be a bit closer to the upper range, meaning the minus 2.5% then the lower range of minus 1%.

[Marianne Hagen, executive]

Thank you. And then the next question is from James Winchester, and he says, "Hi, could you provide some color on margin progression throughout the year and for each division? Which projects are going to help drive this, especially, is there anything one-off in Subsea division that helps this quarter? If not, with strong revenue growth and fixed cost observation, why should you not maintain margins at the top end of the range?"

[Idar Eikrem;Executive VP & CFO of Kværner ASA, executive]

Yes. What we have guided on the Subsea part is maintaining our guidance that we provided in the third quarter of last year as well when we had our presentation at that time with -- in the range of 12% to 15%. And this quarter, it was 14.4%. So this could fluctuate from one quarter to another depending on the project portfolio and progress on the various projects. So the overall margin for the company, we have said that we will deliver somewhat higher margin this year in totality than what we did last year. And that you can also read out of the first quarter report where we delivered 7% EBITDA margin.

[Marianne Hagen, executive]

The second part of the question is, "Can you discuss how you expect the project pipeline to materialize into FIDs throughout the rest of the year and into 2023? Looking at the [ Arista chart ], it seems you expect the majority of the FIDs to happen in 2023."

[Kjetel Digre, executive]

Yes, I think generally the tenders that we are involved in is happening throughout the whole year. But then we have a very special case in Norway with the temporary tax relief package, which has a milestone by the end of this year to file -- take the FIDs and file the PDOs. We are working with our key clients in Norway on projects that are really solid. So my expectation is that these FIDs will come as planned, and we are maturing the feeds as we speak. And then, I guess, it's a matter of how these projects will ramp up when it comes to both activity and revenue starting off by the FID and then moving ahead into the first half of 2023. And there we will see some variations on the pace of picking up activity.

[Idar Eikrem;Executive VP & CFO of Kværner ASA, executive]

Yes, I agree to that. And due to the sort of special case with this activity package in Norway and with the plan for development to be submitted by end of this year, we expect that first half '23 will also be a good year order intake-wise for us.

[Marianne Hagen, executive]

And the next question is related, is from Haakon Amundsen. And he says, "Given that it's more difficult to fix prices for new projects due to the supply chain issues, what is the risk of slow decision-making by clients. Is it fair to assume that the Norwegian tax system will lead these contracts to be rewarded regardless?"

[Kjetel Digre, executive]

Yes, as I said, we don't see a trend yet. I think that the reference to the Norwegian activity as has been done by Haakon is relevant. That creates some security and predictability. The way that we explain how we work with clients now with an open dialogue proactively taking measures to control this both in relation to the client, but also in relation to our long-term partners and subcontractors also adds to that security and predictability. So but going forward, it's obvious that this could develop differently, but just now, we -- I think we see that it's fairly stable.

[Marianne Hagen, executive]

Then the next question is from Jonas Shum, and he said you have been buying back bonds and your net debt position has moved down to almost negligible levels. Can you provide some comments on how you foresee your capital structure will develop going forward?

[Idar Eikrem;Executive VP & CFO of Kværner ASA, executive]

Yes. One of our key priorities when we announced the merger between Kvaerner and Aker Solution was of course to build financial robustness. And I think what we have done since then is demonstrated that, that is what we are doing. And our job is, of course, to continue to deliver good performance on our project and healthy cash flow. And by there also gradually improve our financial position. And as you all know, we just recently now in April, paid out also the dividend for 2021 to our shareholders.

[Marianne Hagen, executive]

And that was the last answer to the last question of today's session. So this concludes our first quarter's presentation. So thank you all for joining us today, and stay safe.