Good morning. This is the conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Saipem 1st quarter 2023 results presentation. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, they may signal an operator by pressing star and 0 on their telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Alessandro Puliti, CEO and General Manager. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, good morning, and welcome to Saipem 1st quarter 2023 results presentation. I'm here with Paolo Calcagnini, our CFO, and with the entire Saipem management team. Starting with the financials, I am pleased to report another quarter of strong delivery with a robust growth in revenues, +22% year-on-year, and even more in EBITDA at EUR 191 million or +66% year-on-year, driven by our offshore businesses with an attached EBITDA margin of 7.4%. Financial net debt, pre IFRS 16, was negative by EUR 45 million at the end of March, or in other words, we have had EUR 45 million of net cash before lease liabilities, and this is substantially flat versus year-end 2022.
Net debt post IFRS 16 amounted to EUR 285 million, very much in line with the year-end of 2022. Order intake in this first quarter of the year was also robust at EUR 2.7 billion, contributing to a book-to-bill of more than 1 times. In a few words, the first quarter of 2023 was another quarter of delivery, progress and strong yearly growth in terms of revenues and margins. Before handing over to Paolo for the in-depth review of financials, I would like to add more comments on the commercial, operational and financial achievements during this quarter. From a commercial standpoint, we keep winning orders with the right mix. 66% of the total order intake in the quarter is in the offshore activities, the segments that historically have recorded the highest margins.
On the total awards, around 20% is in the low or zero carbon activities, in line with our commitment to energy transition. We are receiving quality new orders from national and international oil companies in our core geographic areas and countries. As far as operational are concerned, we are progressing well on wind offshore projects. In particular, we recently completed the Seag reen project in Scotland, following the installation of the last of the 114 jackets with our flagship vessel, Saipem 7000. Also the other projects in the backlog review are progressing in line with our plan. This is very important because more progress on risky projects means less risk in the remaining backlog. Finally, the positive operating cash flow fully cover CapEx, notwithstanding the seasonality of the first quarter that has historically been absorbing cash.
Now I will hand over to Paolo for a review of the financial results.
Thank you, Alessandro. Thanks everyone for joining the call today. Before we go to the numbers, just a quick reminder. In the following slides, you will see for the first time the breakdown of the numbers according to the new reporting segments. To allow an understanding of the new segments, you will also find on the charts on the right-hand side, the businesses that go under each of the new business segments. Starting from the consolidated results, at page 7, the revenues were up 42% year-on-year, the margins were up 66% year-on-year, which leads to an EBITDA margin of 7.4% with an increase from the 6.3% of the first 3 months of 2022.
The net result was finally at breakeven, this is obviously good news, after being negative since the third quarter of 2019. There are a couple of messages to add to this, to this chart. The first one is that the revenue increase has been consistent across all businesses. We read it as a, as a sign of an healthy operational performance and an healthy delivery in terms of general environment. Second, is that the EBITDA goes with the label adjusted, but in fact in the first 3 months of 2023, we made no adjustments to the numbers because we didn't suffer any extraordinary costs related to COVID or other non-recurring items.
While in 2022, we had still, roughly EUR 13 million of one of non-recurring, extraordinary costs. The EUR 191 you see on for the EBITDA is also the accounting figure. While the EUR 115 we're comparing the number, the number two, included the EUR 13 million adjustment because of COVID related costs. Moving to the reporting segments at page eight of the presentation. Starting from the asset-based services which aggregates the offshore engineering construction and offshore wind activities.
You see revenues up almost 50% year-on-year to EUR 1.2 billion and a margin up 80%, more than 80% actually year-on-year, with an EBITDA margin getting close to 10%, and to be precise, 9.8%. Now, what you cannot see from the chart that I would like to share it with you, is that revenues and margins grew consistently across all regions. The margins come from a quite large number of projects, each accounting for a small number of the total, which is a strong sign of the quality of the offshore portfolio in terms of diversification and low concentration of margins and and revenues.
This, these are the results have been achieved notwithstanding the fact that we had part of our fleet, on, going under scheduled maintenance activities, namely the Castorone and the FDS 2 that were mostly not active on during the first quarter, while we expect them to be back in full operation for the remaining part of the year. Moving to offshore drilling, you see a strong growth, both in terms of margins and revenues. The performance improvement, come from a general increase of the market rates that we've been experience since the beginning of the last year. It keeps growing.
Also because of the full operation of the Santorini drillship that accounted only for a few days in the first quarter of 2022. For the operations of the Perro Negro 8, that, as you may recall, was expected to work in Russia in 2022. As you know, we had to change the vessel schedule, and it's finally this year, fully operational, contributing to the increase in revenues and margins. For the remaining of the year, what we expect is that the daily rates will keep growing.
We also expect to have a few additions in our fleet, namely the Perro Negro 11, Perro Negro 12 and Perro Negro 13, and the DVD, which will join the fleet and be fully in operations by the second half of 2023. Moving to Energy carriers. Energy carriers groups the Onshore E&C, the sustainable infrastructures and the robotics and industrialized solutions business lines. You see mixed numbers here because in terms of revenue growth, we recorded a 40% increase year-on-year, while margins remain below 1%. It doesn't come by surprise. The reason being that the backlog projects account for a significant share of the revenues.
This is obviously putting pressure on the margins as long as backlog reviewed projects go with a 0% EBITDA margin. They create revenues but not margins. As I said, it's not, it doesn't come with surprise. The good news is that we are making progress on those projects. There is still some work to be completed before we will start seeing healthy margins. For the remaining of the year, we expect to keep progressing on the execution, while margins will remain where you see them today in terms of EBITDA margin over revenues. Moving forward to the P&L.
As I already mentioned, the first message of these numbers is that there are no special items that we accounted for when adjusting the quarter results. In other words, the reported figures are perfectly equal to the adjusted figures for the first 3 months, while this is, well, not the case in 2022, where we still had EUR 13 million of adjustments overall. That is a particularly positive sign of the fact that the machine is operating full steam without facing any special constraints related to the tail of the pandemic or other non-recurring problems. The only additional comment on these figures is what goes below the EBITDA.
We recorded financial expenses of EUR 52 million. It's an increase over the last year, but it's a significant decrease over the last quarter of 2022. In the first quarter, you may remember we signed two new credit facilities, which explain why the number is still higher than 2022. In terms of equity investments, the result was close to zero compared to a minus EUR 40 million one year ago. The number one year ago was also impacted by the Russia, the Russian crisis, which led us to make some write ups on the projects in that specific country.
Now moving to the net debt evolution and cash position at page 12. To make a long story short, what's the story behind these numbers? Well, first, the net debt, both pre and post, IFRS 16, is in line with TRN 2022. It's a very strong result in our view, because the first quarter is typically a negative quarter cash-wise. In fact, if you compare the cash generation for the past few years, it's been almost always consistently negative, because of working capital dynamics and the physical progress of our backlog, while this year, the number is positive. This is remarkable given the environment. Now focusing on the light blue shaded area.
Two comments on my side. First one is, if you sum up the first two buckets, the adjusted net results plus D&A and the delta working capital, you get a positive operating cash flow for more than EUR 100 million. This is also a result which is, let me say, new to the company, given the recent past performance, and we take it as a very strong sign of delivery when it comes to generating cash.
More important, it's the call-out that you see at page 12, because the delta working capital was positive for EUR 4 million, but we had more than EUR 120 million of cash outflows that are related to the execution of the backlog review projects. Which, as you may remember, were provisioned for, but the cash out is happening mostly this year. Without the backlog review, the delta working capital would have been positive for EUR 124 million. Notwithstanding the effects of the backlog review, the operating cash flow covers the CapEx that we made in the first 3 months, which is my last comment on this chart.
EUR 77 million is a very high number compared to the historical pace. In other words, we made big part of the investments anticipated in the first 3 quarters, while normally it happens later during the year. Despite this CapEx, the net debt remains the same level where it was in December 2022. Last chart, page 13, before hand over to our CO. Debt maturities and cash position. Well, two comments on my side. The first one is that the available cash and cash equivalents is EUR 1.44 billion. This is an increase of more than EUR 90 million compared to December 2022.
While the liquidity, which is in JVs or constraints, decreased from EUR 1.3 billion to EUR 1.1 billion, which is a sign of the quality, increased quality of the liquidity we can rely on. In addition to the EUR 1.44 billion of liquidity, there are also the two new facilities that we signed in February 2023, that accounts for roughly EUR 860 million of additional available liquidity.
If you sum up all these numbers, you get an available cash which is close to EUR 2.1 billion, compared to the expected maturities of the debt for the next almost three years that are close to EUR 1.4 billion. We are sitting on a robust liquidity position and we have already covered the debt maturities for the next at least two years, possibly even longer. I will now hand over to Sandro for a few comments on the commercial activity and backlog breakdown.
Thank you, Paolo. Moving on to the business performances. The strong offshore market is generating the bulk of our order intake in this first quarter, further accelerating our strategic shift. 66% of the acquisition is in the offshore, among engineering and construction, and drilling, which have historically been generating the highest margins for Saipem. We are receiving quality new orders from national and international oil companies in our core geographic areas and countries. We have recently acquired a 2-year extension of the contract for the seventh-generation drillship Santorini with ENI. This contract is worth more than $280 million. As you may recall, we purchased the Santorini drillship at the end of last year. This award will be accounted in the second quarter order intake.
In addition, consistently with our strategic plan, we added a new work to the zero carbon order backlog, acquiring a new high-speed train contract in Italy, waiting for around 20% of the order intake in the quarter. Looking at the backlog, as you can see from the pie charts, it is still standing a remarkable EUR 24 billion. More importantly, as I already commented in the previous slides, the shift toward the high margin of short segment has a very clear trend, fully in line with our strategy. By the way, let me flag out that our backlog has increased despite the disposal of the drilling onshore business. Our backlog is well diversified across geographies, the share of the low or zero carbon activities accounts today for around 8% of the E&C backlog, excluding drilling.
This concludes our first quarter presentation, and now I will turn the floor to the operator to open the Q&A session.
Thank you. This is the Chorus Call Conference operator. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and 1 on their touchtone telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press star and 2. Please pick up the receiver when asking questions. Anyone who has a question may press star and 1 at this time. The first question is from Alessandro Pozzi with Mediobanca. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I think it's good to see another, a good quarter and a clean one at last. I have a few questions on the Onshore E&C. I think in your opening remarks, you mentioned that most of the revenues are zero margin, and this is likely to stay like this for the rest of the year. Can you remind us how much as a percentage are those zero margin revenues versus the total? Also, can you give us a sense of what could be the underlying performance of the Onshore E&C in terms of profitability once those zero margin revenues basically taper off into 2024?
Also, I think I've been noticing the order intake in Onshore E&C has been relatively limited in the recent quarters. In a way, this quarter, of course, there was a big infrastructure project, and I was wondering if you can give us an update on your commercial strategy when it comes to the Onshore E&C, whether you're focusing more on traditional projects. Also, on the working capital, I was wondering whether it was linked to any project in the Onshore E&C, the reason that the working capital would have been materially positive ex the backlog review. That's all for me. Thank you.
Okay. Paolo will provide you the answer on the Onshore E&C percentage of zero margin project contribution and on the working capital. At the end, I will comment on the strategy of the order intake from the onshore.
Sure. Thanks, Alessandro, for your questions. The zero margin projects accounted for close to 40% of the revenues for the E&C onshore business in the first 3 months. I guess that this figure explains a lot about the overall profitability of the business line. You may remember that the target we shared for the business plan is to get to a 2% EBITDA margin on overall in 2025, which means that basically executing the backlog we have, and in addition get new projects where the target is of profitability is one-still one digit, but let's say high end.
You see the 2% is a mix of the 0 on the remaining part of the backlog and the new acquisitions that are targeted to make a 1 digit high hand margin. Any other question on infrastructural projects, they accounted for a big part of the new acquisitions in the energy carriers segment in the first 3 months of the year, roughly half billion EUR. That's a business where we historically did well in terms of margins and cash profile of the portfolio.
we remain convinced that whenever we see opportunities on that segment, it's something that Saipem need to capture and because it contributes positively on the portfolio of the energy carriers segment. I leave Sandro answering on the Onshore E&C strategy.
Okay. As we anticipated in our in our conference call regarding previous conference call regarding our strategic plan, and the acquisition for for the anchor, for our Onshore E&C activity will be concentrated on quality projects, mainly related to LNG activities and gas treatment, gas treatment plants and gas valorization plants. Those are the activities where we see that we can have a better value proposition for our clients. Also, considering that we want to leverage on our patents, especially in the sector of urea and ammonia, in terms of gas valorization. Those are the area where we will be concentrating our order acquisition in the next in the next months.
Thank you. Just going back on the working capital, the reason why it would have been contributing positively to the cash flow, if it wasn't for the backlog review. Can you give us more color on that?
Well, it's been actually a consistent performance across the business units. We are, compared to the past, we are more focused on financial discipline, which means basically invoicing clients as soon as we can and getting paid as soon as we can. You're asking more color, which I should show you the full list of working capital project by project, which it would create more confusion than clarity. It's been a... You know that we have a portfolio of almost 100 projects. Let's say 70, 80 are the big ones.
Most of them enjoy the positive, let's say a reduction in working capital, regardless if it was already negative or positive. That applies to almost vast majority of the portfolio, but a couple of exemptions that where we contractually work with a positive working capital. It's something that we plan to manage as soon as possible. The other comment I can make is that the new acquisitions have a cash profile, which is such to guarantee not to have negative cash flows any time during the project lifetime. That's the guideline that we gave ourselves and that our colleagues from the business and from the commercial department are following since, I would say 2000...
mid 2022. The new acquisitions have a cash profile which is always positive during the life of the projects, also under stress scenarios. The results of this discipline is paying off. Because if you remember also in the last quarter of 2022, we had a positive trend in the working capital. In other words, the reduction in the working capital of the group. This is the second quarter in a row where the working capital shows a positive trend. Last comment is, it doesn't depend on advanced payments. While in fact, advanced payments remained unchanged or even slightly lower than they were 3 months back.
Okay. That's very helpful to know. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
The next question is from Mark Wilson with Jefferies. Please go ahead. Mr. Wilson, your line is open.
Thank you. Yes. Good morning. I'd like to ask regarding that you mentioned that the Castoro and FDS 2 were not working through Q1, or at least a portion of Q1, but they would for the rest of the year. Could I ask if there's any other vessels that require material maintenance in the rest of the year, either in drilling or E&C?
Yes, as you said rightly, Castor, Castorone, and FDS 2, they were subject to the 5 years statutory maintenance activity. FDS 2 is back to work, and Castorone will be back to work in the next week. The other vessel that has to enter into its 5-year recertification is the drilling semi-sub, Scarabeo 9.
Got it. Okay. A follow-up question on the, on the drilling is a very good contract for the Santorini. Commentary from some other offshore drillers has just been, I would say, a certain softening of day rate expectations. I was wondering if you could talk to that regarding the white space on the offshore drilling fleet, the new contracts for the future. How do you think the market is looking for that?
The market is looking robust. Clearly, I cannot speak about precise daily rate on each contract because this is a sensitive matter with our clients. What we see, we can confirm the increasing trend, and we can also confirm that we are expecting our drilling deepwater fleet fully booked for this year and the following years. Even the units that they don't have a firm contract, they are subject to LOIs from our clients that I'm pretty confident that they will turn soon into firm contracts. We received multiple requests there, and I repeat what I said in the previous, in the previous call.
If we were having an additional unit, certainly we would have the work for this additional unit.
Got it. Okay. Thank you very much. If I can ask one more, it is to just tell us where we stand regarding Mozambique. You were very clear last quarter, a return to some work in July. At the same time, there has been differing commentary, I would say, from contractor and yourselves regarding any contractual changes to that contract. Could you speak to where that stands at the moment? Thank you.
Okay. Certainly, as you can imagine, I cannot provide any precise date. Nevertheless, what we can say is that the security situation is improving. Mozambique LNG partners are working on the human rights. For what regards the cost, what we can say is that we are working with Mozambique LNG partners to define a mutually sustainable cost after the suspension period, and we are really actively working. That's the situation.
Very good. Thank you. I'll turn it over, and thank you for the commentary on working capital on the previous question. Very helpful. Thank you.
The next question is from Daniel Thomson with BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Yeah, I'd just like to check in on where we are in terms of pricing in SURF and conventional work, perhaps especially where we are versus prior spending up cycles, and particularly in your conversations with clients. I mean, how far do you think contractors can potentially raise pricing from here before project owners begin to delay or cancel projects? My second question, I know it might be a little bit difficult, but one project in the Onshore E&C portfolio, the Thai Clean Fuels Project. One of your consortium partners has recognized additional cost overruns on its own share of the project recently, which I think is of a similar size to your own scope.
I wondered why we're not necessarily seeing the impact of that in your accounts or if we are already, because it's included in what you provisioned in the backlog review, originally. Any color there would be helpful. Thank you.
Okay, Paolo will provide you.
I'll start with your second question. I guess you are requesting to the Thai Oil, referring to the Thai Oil project. Obviously cannot comment on other companies' accounting policies. As far as Saipem is concerned, we didn't incur any additional losses in Q1 for that specific project. As long as the deterioration was already accounted for in 2022, in accordance with our economic and financial review of the project. It's a big project, we know it very well. What was supposed to be provisioned for had been already provisioned in 2022, at the best of our knowledge, at the time.
Okay, thank you.
Your second question was on pricing and commercial perspective in general. What we can share is that new acquisitions are made at margins that are significantly higher than the previous 3-4 years. For sure it's double-digit on the offshore business. It's high-end 1-digit for the onshore business. Obviously the pace at which the benefits of the new backlog kicks in in terms of overall economics, depends on how fast we deliver on the backlog, the reviews portfolio, which brings down the profitability as long as they go with a 0% margin when we make revenues.
We didn't experience any cancellation, as far as I remember, in the last year or so. Back to your question on cancellation by clients, it's a phenomenon that we have no evidence of.
Yeah. Thank you. No, I was just referring to, you know, from here, and not related to you, but different projects, particularly in offshore, where, you know, we've seen costs creeping up. I was just wondering what the project owners' stance is around tolerating further increases in pricing from the contractors from here, particularly in offshore. Thank you.
Okay. What we see on the market is that, clearly there is a base cost increase that is due to the supply material. The strategy that we are adopting with our client is more and more an open book style, letting the client clearly understanding which are the basis of our cost structure. This is the key to work with them to achieve a mutually acceptable cost when you look at the side of the client, and price when you see it from the side of the contractor of the projects we are carrying out. That's the strategy we are adopting.
n achieve a mutually agreed position with the clients
Okay, that's helpful. Thank you.
The next question is from Guilherme Levy, with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning all. Thanks for taking my questions. I had three please. I was just wondering, the first one is, with full year results, you had laid out specific 2023 guidance for revenues, EBITDA, CapEx, free cash flow, and net debt. I was just wondering how you thought 1Q fared, related to that guidance, and if there was any material deviation in any of those items? The second was also related to the outlook. Again, in February, you noted near-term opportunities of around EUR 51 billion for the E&C market, noting growing project pipeline momentum that was weighted more towards the offshore.
I was just wondering if you saw any change in the opportunities that, or whether there's been any visible change in the momentum over the past few weeks? Finally, just a clarification on the financial expenses, which were high this quarter. I was just wondering if there was any one-off costs associated with the signing of the new RCF, that would be helpful. Thank you.
Well, I'll take the question on the guidance and on the financial costs. Well, we have no reasons for reviewing the guidance today. We think that the results we are achieving are consistent with the targets we shared, if I remember correctly, less than 2 months ago. We have no indication to change the targets for 2023. On the financial charges, yes, there are some one-off charges that are related to the commissions that you normally pay for structuring and commitments from the banks. As long as the Credit lines have been signed in February.
Those costs, part of those costs, remain on the first quarter and you can refer to them as a one-off charges, as the tail of the financial package that we set up after the first quarter of 2022, and that were fully delivered beginning of this year. I think I kind of lost your second question on the opportunity. Okay.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Paolo. I will answer to the offshore market in the recent past weeks, and whether we see some changes on the trend. To be honest, we do not record any changes on the trend of the offshore. We are keeping receiving requests to participate tenders and we are also in the final stage of finalizing new acquisitions. If I understood correctly the question, whether we see any change of trend, the answer is negative. The trend continues, so it's a positive trend.
Yeah. That's very clear. Thank you very much.
The next question is from Jay Thompson with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Oh, hi. Morning. I'd actually like to come back just now to that question from Sashi there, actually, in terms of the 2023 guidance, if I can, send to Paolo. Just because obviously your target set that EBITDA number at EUR 850 million for 2023. I, you know, 21, clearly a strong start to the year versus, you know, my expectations and consensus, particularly given just underlying operational performance continues to be pretty good. I was wondering maybe could you sort of elaborate on your confidence perhaps in reaching that 850 number? You know, I ask it, you know, it'd be good to get some more color on the basis that, you know, consensus has been stubbornly below that figure.
You know, what I see is around EUR 800 million for the year, which, you know, may be a little bit of a hangover from some of the operational difficulties of prior years. You know, after a good performance, you know, maybe you could just speak to your confidence, shall we say, in meeting that guidance, you know, whether it be kind of margin expectations for the divisions for the remainder of the year or however it might be. It'd be good to just get a bit more color from you on that. That'd be great. Thank you very much.
Yeah. Let's see it segment by segment because it makes easier to understand why we are still convinced that the guidance we shared 2 months ago remains valid. Drilling offshore, let's start from the easy stuff. We feel that those margins, the margins you experienced in the 1st quarter may remain, may remain at that level for the rest of the year, while revenues will increase because we are increasing the size of the fleet with commercial contracts already signed by our clients. When it comes to drilling, you can take those numbers and then multiply by 4 and then possibly add something on top. Uh-huh.
That gives you a nice part of the total EBITDA for 2023. You have E&C offshore and, I use the old names, E&C offshore and E&C onshore. On E&C onshore, the target for the entire business plan is 2%. We made 0.6% in the first quarter. It's a reasonable assumption to say that the profitability will remain close to that level, maybe something more, maybe something less, but it doesn't change the big picture. On E&C offshore, we are sure the fact that the first quarter, even though it's a big increase compared to 2023, experienced some vessels idle for maintenance.
And, um, so the pace, uh, of the, of the revenues, uh, may increase, uh, in the next, uh, three quarters, while margins, uh, will remain close to the, to the double-digit, uh, figure. If you, if you crunch those numbers, you will get, uh, very close to the, to the figure that we shared as a, as a guidance for, for this year. And, um, and, uh, you know that in the E&C business, both offshore and onshore, the lifetime of the projects is, is very long. So it's, uh, you hardly see major changes, uh, major changes quarter by quarter. It tends to be relatively, relatively predictable, uh, if execution goes, uh, goes, uh, uh, smoothly as it is going, uh, today.
Okay. That's very helpful. I think we'll probably all be using the old original names for a little while yet. Secondly, a very, very minor point, but you know, you guided previously to a kind of step up in these costs. What quarter should we expect that to come in when we think about the net debt piece? Is it the second quarter when the Deep Value Driller comes in or?
can you please repeat? We lost the question, at least the last part.
Just that, you know, you guided to sort of EUR 500 million or so IFRS 16 leases, only EUR 330-340 this quarter. The step up comes which quarter this year?
Okay, I got it. I got it. we're gonna have a new vessel entering the fleet by the end, the last quarter of 2023. When the vessel will be delivered, and we'll start the leasing contract, you will see the leasing debt that accounts for the difference between EUR 300 and plus something end of this quarter and the projection for the four year end.
All right. That's brilliant. Thank you very much. Hand over.
You're welcome.
The next question is from Kevin Roger with Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yes, thanks for taking the question. Good morning. The first one is just coming back on the offshore drilling segment. Just to be sure that I understood what you said. Clearly you have new vessel that will join the fleet in the coming quarters, so the top line will increase. Should we assume the margin to remain relatively stable for the coming quarters, so increasing top line plus margin stable? Just to be sure that I well understood the guidance for the offshore drilling. The second one is coming back on the onshore business and not only the commercial opportunities and your new positioning with not only the objective to get LNG project. There are currently a lot of noise around the LNG opportunities.
I was wondering if you can give us some colors on which are the key projects that you are currently targeting for award in 2023, basically which one would be the most likely on your side, you think, please?
Okay. I'll take the question on the offshore drilling and leave the onshore question to Alessandro. On the offshore drilling, yes, you can expect the margins to remain where they are today, and the top line will increase because of new vessels entering the fleet, but the margins will remain where they are today. In fact, it's a bit more complicated than that because I mean, some of the new vessels will be jackups, and the jackups are typically a bit less profitable in terms of EBITDA margin. So they tend to decrease the average margin of the portfolio, but at the same time, rates keep increasing.
The combination of these two effects make us projecting a margin which is which will be close to the 40% where we are today.
Sorry to follow up on that one directly, but, because your vessels are currently engaged on long term contract, if you take, for example, the Saipem 12000, this is a contract that is lasting to 2025. Does it mean that you have a kind of escalation clauses that allows you to revise the rates, let's say, each quarter or something like that?
Yes. Some of our contracts have escalation clauses in the agreement. Even if the commitment is medium to long term, there are price, pricing review mechanism that will make room for possible further increases in market rates.
Okay.
Okay. Regarding opportunities in the commercial opportunities in the E&C onshore activities, where really we are directing our attention is where there are clients requesting the this kind of activities. I would say that we are concentrating our attention in one peculiar geography that is the Middle East, where many of those projects are arising from the various, to say, national oil companies. That's what we are, we are targeting.
No, I mean, if we just focus on LNG, there are a number of opportunities mentioned in the.
Yeah. The specifically on LNG. If you see what are the expectations, for example, in the United Arab Emirates, there are more than one opportunities that we can target for LNG acquisition that they will come in the next months.
Okay.
Those are projects already announced by the companies. We will participate to those tenders.
Okay. Okay, thanks. Thanks a lot.
The next question is from Massimo Bonisoli with Equita. Please go ahead.
Good morning. three questions, very quick. The first, I really appreciate the absence of no recurring costs in Q1. Is it reasonable to assume that there will be not meaningful cost adjustments on the data for the remaining parts of the year? The second question is on the balance sheet. Do you believe it could be reasonable to issue new bonds in 2023 following the maturity of existing ones, or do you prefer to wait?
For better rates going forward. The third question, if you can remember, ask the remaining backlog review affecting 2023?
Well, we don't expect major cost adjustments as far as we know today. If you remember what happened with the pandemic, and it's not easy to foresee the future, especially if external events may materialize. But as far as we know today, no, there's not gonna be adjustments, apart possibly for some minor adjustments on extraordinary extraction costs, but we're talking about possibly very small amounts. Yeah. Nothing to mention today. On issuing new bonds, we are not in a pressure to issue debt, especially if that would cost 6.5 or wherever rates are today to the company.
We remain very tactical and opportunistic if markets will create opportunities, and if we will see opportunities to do a very early refinancing of the future future maturities, we will take and push those those opportunities. As I said, we can easily leave for the remaining of this year and possibly part of the next year without asking any funds to the market. Your third question was just.
On the-
Review, yes.
Backlog review, yes.
As I said, we made 120 million use of the backlog review funds. We expect the numbers to be at least 3 times by year-end. We were planning to execute, well, to cover extra costs for the backlog review, for roughly EUR 300 million this year. The pace at which we are delivering on this project is consistent with the targets.
Very clear. Thank you.
Mr. Puliti, there are no more questions registered at this time.
Okay, thank you. I believe we can close the conference.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over, and you may disconnect your telephones.