Hello everybody. Good afternoon. This is Joaquín Pérez de Ayala. Welcome to this results presentation of the first half of 2022 that will be conducted by our Chairman, Juan Lladó, and our CEO, Eduardo San Miguel. It will take around 20 minutes, and you can pose your questions after the remarks.
Hello everyone. Welcome to Técnicas Reunidas first half of 2022 results presentation. Let me start by going through a quick summary of today's presentation. First, I will be making some initial remarks of the second quarter of the year, followed by an update of TR's pipeline opportunities and some recent energy transition awards. Eduardo will take you through the second quarter results, and he will provide you with an update of the operating environment for the sector and about, which is very important, guidance for the second half of the year. Finally, I will close this presentation with my final remarks.
Now, let me highlight the main messages that we want to leave with you with regards to this last semester's performance and how we see the upcoming future in terms of new opportunities. If I have to use a single word to summarize how our business operations stand right now, that word would be normalization. Let me underline that word, normalization. We have to manage TR during this semester through an extremely volatile period, but now we started to move to normalization throughout the company operations. What do I mean by normalization? Normalization in the execution of both our recent and other projects. As well, normalization in how that execution is being reflected in sales and is being reflected in our operating results. Even normalization in working capital and cash generation. As the dialogue with our clients is bringing faster agreements and better payment practice.
In general, normalization of the underlying business. You will have to understand why I'm particularly disappointed to see these improved trends being clouded at the bottom line by the effects of this one-off litigation provision. Nonetheless, Eduardo will discuss later the important message, which is that the positive trends are clearly here, and they will be fully appreciated in the second half of the year. We're also getting ready for a normalized medium-term future. In our traditional business, we have had a string of major awards in the first month of the year. We have already announced those awards. As you may remember, our four combined cycles in Mexico, very important, our second job for QatarEnergy and Natural Gas Processing project, and very important, extremely important, a world-scale ethylene plant for INEOS. The cumulative size of these awards is EUR 1.2 billion.
However, this might bring to confusion because this figure does not render justice to the quantity and importance of the awards. Just the INEOS project by itself implies managing a project between EUR 3 billion and EUR 4 billion. Managing a project obviously with lower risk on a cost plus basis in which INEOS and ourselves together here in Madrid, from Madrid, we're gonna have to manage the engineering, the procurement, and the construction of the largest ethylene plant or petrochemical project being done in Europe for the last 20 years, which is extremely important. You have to remember that our future now is in petrochemical. On top of traditional business, opportunities in energy transition keep coming up, and they're coming up more significantly, in more significant quantity and more significant size. Let me highlight 2 key project awards this last quarter.
First, the award of the basic design for Europe's largest integrated renewable hydrogen hub, made by HyDeal España as the JV companies such as ArcelorMittal and Enagás. Probably, this is one of the most strategic project within energy transition in Europe. Técnicas Reunidas will work along with Vinci and PowerChina to carry out the technical design, architecture, and supply chain of the highest performance and most cost-effective solar-to-hydrogen system to produce renewable hydrogen here in Spain. This is very important. Secondly, only some weeks ago, TR obtained an engineering contract for a power project, a combined cycle, with carbon capture and storage for SSE Thermal and Equinor.
That project will be located in Peterhead, Scotland, and we'll be collaborating here with Mitsubishi and Worley for the design of the plant, which is gonna be first of its kind in this country, and will allow us to capture 1.5 million tons of CO2 emissions per year, and then storing them in the wells of the North Sea. Those two very important and significant awards. Those awards, obviously it's an example of the business opportunities that are lying already in front of us, and they're gonna be translating into awards in the next couple of years. As you can see in the first and second graphs in front of you, oil and gas natural investments have not yet recovered to pre-pandemic levels. However, the energy demand is well, well above those pre-COVID levels.
This explains why energy availability is again a major concern worldwide, and why prices have skyrocketed. It also explains why a major investment wave is highly needed, and it has already been announced by most of our clients. We are already working with them and getting ready for this investment wave. We're talking and working with all our customers. As shown in the third graph of this slide, you can see that we have one of the strongest pipelines we ever had in terms of size and also quality. In fact, out of the total EUR 48 billion in the pipeline, more than 80% is in petrochemicals. We talked about petrochemicals just before. Natural gas, which has been awarded some important gas jobs. As well in the area of energy transition. We've already talked about that as well.
Under the scenario we have just outlined, we could probably have expected a stronger bidding in award market this last quarter. However, we also remember that the market volatility has flagged this quarter. That explained that final investment decisions have to be delayed and have been delayed for a few months. The projects have not been canceled, just postponed for a couple of quarters. In fact, I think that the risk for our clients now, and we're talking to them about that, is that the future bidding will get too concentrated, and then will put undue pressure in the engineering and execution resources of the whole sector. With this introduction and these remarks, let me pass the presentation now back to Eduardo.
Thank you. Thank you, Juan. Good afternoon, everyone. Let's move now to the first half figures. Juan has been talking about normalization, and the main driver of this normalization is to recover our ordinary level of revenues. In this first slide, as you can see, we have delivered EUR 1.6 billion in the first half of the year, which represents an increase of 16% compared with the same period of 2021. It is the fifth quarter in a row that shows growth. Finally, this is the quarter where we all agree that sales recovery is already here. Moreover, our financial projections for the second half show a return to revenues above the historic EUR 1 billion per quarter. This development is key for moving towards a fully normalized profitability.
Obviously, first half EBIT is not yet normalized, since it is impacted still by COVID and by a EUR 75 million provision accrued for litigation, which has mainly to do with the recent bond call execution in Algeria. Excluding this one-off impact, operations show a positive margin around 1.7% over sales. This underlying margin is quite in line with the guidance provided at the beginning of 2022, despite sales being slightly lower than initially expected. Regarding the litigation provision, you will allow me not to get into details, since we have started an arbitration process with our client, Neptune, because of what we understand an inadequate use of the performance bonds. We are still trying to reach an amicable solution, but if eventually we don't reach it, we expect an arbitrator's judgment in two years' time.
Let me now move to the net cash position of Técnicas Reunidas. In the slide, you can see that we have improved the cash figure in the second quarter by more than EUR 70 million, up to a level of EUR 134 million at the end of the semester. As you can see, half of this improvement is due to the recovery of cash unduly retained four years ago by our client in the Gorgon project in Australia after the favorable arbitrator's judgment issued this year. I am talking about the +EUR 38 million of non-current cash in the slide. On the other side, and to be transparent, EUR 80 million out of this 134 have gone to pay the bond execution of the Tuat project. The result is a net cash figure still standing at positive levels and very similar to the first quarter numbers.
We believe that cash tensions will continue progressively easing during the second half of the year, benefited from the gradual normalization of the payment practices of our clients. Let's now talk about the market environment and how we see our performance for the second half of the year. I have to be cautious with this slide. The consequences of the geopolitical turmoil are a bit unpredictable, but it is a fact we see how the big challenges regarding our cost base we faced months ago are not that big now. I have selected three major inputs of our industry: copper, nickel, and carbon steel. As you can appreciate, a major spike took place during the last semester, with a peak in the second quarter.
The good news is that this shocking prices is gradually fading and that we are in the right direction to return to more ordinary levels. Prices are still higher than one year ago, but we have implemented multiple policies to absorb them, at least partially, such as finding new providers in different geographies or rescheduling the timing of procurement, trying to find the cheapest windows. Regarding the construction manpower, during the first half, we saw new COVID confinements in China, and we actively worked in the search of alternatives to compensate this situation. As of now, these confinements are progressively easing, and Chinese contractors are willing to work outside their country. To summarize, we finally see a progressive normalization of our cost base. We have to be cautious, but we see this normalization already coming.
Finally, I want to elaborate about what we expect from the second half of the year. We estimate sales for the second semester will be in the range of EUR 2.1 billion-EUR 2.3 billion, implying an increase of at least 27% compared to first half figures. This guidance for the second half is solidly supported by some developments. First, the active older projects in our backlog are progressively speeding up and getting to its normalized execution pace. Second, projects awarded in 2021 are entering now in the procurement stage, which, as you well all know, always delivers higher sales. The EBIT margin is also expected to move to a higher range between 2.5% and 3%, mainly due to the recovery of the size of the sales we will deliver.
Now I will leave the floor to Juan Lladó for final remarks.
Thank you, Eduardo. I would like to finish this presentation. Although I don't want to bore you, but I think I like to finish again with the word normalization. Because this is already the underlying trend of our operations and will be more so now that the context and macro level is gradually calming down. In the second half of the year, reflecting our guidance, we expect to report sales and margin levels that will be gradually approaching our aspirational midterm target. That is again reflected in the right side of the slide. Midterm targets of EUR 5 billion awards, EUR 5 billion sales and a well-deserved 4% margin. We also expect that over 2023 and 2024, the big investment cycle is gonna finally burst. That's the pulse that we're getting from our customers.
When that happens, and it's gonna happen, I honestly believe TR will be well placed with the right strategy, well positioned to benefit with this very unique opportunity. Thank you very much now, and I would be very happy to answer any questions that you may want to address. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, the Q&A session starts now. If you wish to ask a question, please dial zero one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. The first question comes from Kevin Roger from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe I will take one by one. It's gonna be easier because very different topic. The first one is related to the commercial pipeline with the chart that you are presenting in the slide six. Clearly, you show that clients are delaying final investment decision while the environment is currently very supportive for that. I was wondering if you can give us a bit more explanation why they are postponing the FID, and if it change basically your expectation in terms of order for the full year, because you were expecting to get an order intake of something like EUR 4 billion this year to be able to at least replace your volume. Is it impacted by the delay of FID?
I mean, you have. I mean, you're in the market, and you've realized, you know, starting in February, March, obviously because of the, basically because of the war, how crazy the market conditions were. That is very difficult in war times and with the crazy market conditions you've seen in the graphs as well to make a final investment decision. What it is very clear, and that's the feedback that we get from our customers, and I'm sure you have gotten the same thing from our competitors because we all talk to the same customers or similar customers, is that they have to invest and that they will invest, but they would not get the approval in the middle of the turmoil. That's very logical.
There's going to be a delay and has been a delay which didn't happen, you know, until February, you know, for, you know, let's say a quarter or two quarters.
Does it change basically your expectation in terms of order intake? Because you were previously guiding for EUR 4 billion order intake this year, and you did not mention this target in the presentation, et cetera. You say now midterm EUR 5 billion, but has it changed for 2022?
I mean, we have a lot of things that may be happening on the fourth quarter of the year. I mean, we ended on July, so there we do expect there are a lot of awards or things happening or investments to take this towards the end of the year. It may happen at the end of the year or the beginning of next year, but it doesn't change the overall picture.
Okay. Understand. Related to the provision that you are taking, the EUR 75 million related to the request from the client, what's the likelihood that basically you will pay it? What do you see on your side? Because you clearly understand that you do not want to talk a lot around that. On your balance sheet, EUR 75 million will have quite an important impact. What would be the likelihood that you will have to face it?
Kevin, this is Eduardo. You know, I am the former CFO of the company, and I have to have the philosophy of being conservative. I mean, you know, provisions are just in case you face a potential problem in the future. Since most of these provisions have to do with bonds in Algeria, I have to feel positive about the future. I don't want to elaborate a bit about that because unfortunately, there is a real risk of having to move this situation to an arbitration process, and I don't want to give hints to my clients or to my client or to anyone. I mean, I have to provide the minimum information about that. As I told you from the beginning, I have to be conservative.
Okay. Understand. That's it for me. Thanks for the answer. Have a very good day.
Thank you. Thank you, Kevin.
Thank you. The next question comes from Robert Jackson from Banco Santander. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good afternoon, gentlemen. The first question is related to the Turkish project, the SASA Polyester project. Bearing in mind that the inflation in Turkey, and I know it's probably the project is in the last phases, but are there any risks there in terms of the next few months seeing any inflation there, cost inflation there or any impacts that we may have to be aware of? That'll be my first question.
Sorry, Robert. My first reaction to your question is it's a good time for buying equipment in Turkey. You know, it's we are trying to maximize it because it's not only a matter of inflation, it's a matter of depreciation of the lira. You know, for us, it's a good market to be buying today. But for the specific project of SASA, we are still in a moment that we are only rendering services to the client, so it has no major impact, the local inflation. I would say. I don't want to say that, but it's good news for us to see that situation, macro situation in Turkey.
Okay.
Let me add up. I mean, this is a cost plus and is well advanced. It's very much advanced in the general assembly. I put a picture of how we are in that project, and we procure almost everything. Construction is advanced. We have put together with the customer a scheme to run. If we are lucky, I think it's going to be the PTA job done in a faster pace ever. I mean, second to none. In a market that has been in terms of construction and procurement, as Eduardo said, quite good for both investor, obviously, SASA and ourselves.
Okay. The second question is related to, you mentioned that projects awarded in 2021, they're passing on to the procurement phase. I mean, is that the majority of the projects? I mean, any idea of, you know, what level of those projects are going to be passing on it over the next couple of quarters onto the procurement phase?
Robert, most of them. You can assume all of them.
Okay. Then the third question, final question, regarding the INEOS project, and bearing in mind it's in Belgium, and I know it's a cost plus, but your experience in Belgium hasn't been, or you have had some bad experience there. What can you tell us about the measures you're taking to reduce any risks or in that project? I know it's again early days, but bearing in mind it's so important. Again, you have had problems there. How can you comfort us that you're taking all the measures possible to reduce those risks? Thank you.
Okay. I mean, that project already has started. We already have here in TR, you know, close to 300 professionals on engineering, procurement, and even, you know, working in logistics, working with the customer. A very large number of professionals from INEOS is already coming and working with us here. We all realize how difficult can be to build such a, you know, and work in Belgium, and we're working on it. It is cost plus. We're working on it. It's going to be modelized. We're gonna be working in construct through models. We have to decide together from where. We're looking at different evaluating and identifying different locations. We're gonna together minimize the construction, the direct construction there. We're really working with whom and how.
We are, you know. I'm not gonna say taking our time, but we have to define and construct the job on a cost plus basis, yes, but with the responsibility of doing the best construction design, so it can be constructed, first of all, with models, and then finalize those models inside and install the equipment in the more constructible way. I do believe, I honestly believe that it's gonna be extremely successful job for both INEOS, obviously, who is investor, and ourselves. I'm not gonna say we're taking our time, but we're working very hard for that to happen.
Okay. Just lastly, regarding, you mentioned that there are a lot of clients delaying the final investment decisions a couple of quarters. I mean, is it a couple of quarters or just one quarter? I mean, any messages there regarding that, from what your conversations with the clients, that it could be just one quarter? Or, and maybe it also sounds a bit like you may be able to be more selective in terms of the projects that you will tender for.
Robert, we have good expectations for, you know, the fourth quarter of the year. You know, if you work with customers, we are ready presenting bids. You know, within the next couple of months, you know, August and September. You know, we're presenting bids. Bids that should have been presented in July, you know, have been delayed just a couple of months. But it could be some slippages. Slippages because not because of uncertainties, just because, you know, the big investment decisions or the awards take time. They take a lot of time. They're big investments. Big investments in petrochemicals, big investments in gas, and they take time. They take time from the time you prepare the bid, and we have it prepared. You send it to the market, and we're gonna be sending in weeks.
You know, they do the tabulation, and they do the awards. We have already experienced, you know, three or four weeks of delay, and that's why we say they can take, you know, one quarter and even some investments, two quarters for that to happen. You know, last quarter of, you know, towards the end of the year and beginning of the next one, we are optimistic that things may happen.
Okay, thank you very much.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, let me remind you again, if you have any comments or questions, please press zero one on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. Thank you. The next question comes from James Thompson from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Great. Thank you. Thank you very much for the presentation, gentlemen. Juan Lladó, I just wanted to ask a little bit around the kind of construction piece, particularly in some of core markets in the Middle East. I just wondered, I mean, obviously revenue started to pick up this quarter, and you're guiding to a pretty material pickup in the second half. I just wondered if you could talk about kind of mobilizing people to site. You know, clearly that's been a problem with COVID over the last couple of years. Obviously, if you are mobilizing people faster, you know, I guess project progress can pick up from here. You know, if that is the case, with that in mind, I mean, you know, obviously there's been a bit of discussion here also around kind of FID delays.
If things are easing, do you see kind of more urgency around, you know, particularly your core customers around taking some of these larger investment decisions, in the second half? It looks like the pipeline's pretty good for the first half. Yeah, a couple of questions there just in terms of, you know, actual kind of boots on the ground, what's the environment like, and, you know, what does that mean for kind of customer urgency to get things done? Thanks.
I think, James, I think when Eduardo was saying that things were getting normal, and also he put an example, for instance, that construction workers from China they are already willing, bidding, you know, responding to us and moving to the site, which is obviously a big change. Construction workers from, you know, local companies, we have to bring workers from India and Pakistan. They're bidding, they're competitive again, and they're willing and moving workers to the site, to the Middle East. That was an issue. That was a big issue. The question is very well addressed. That was a big issue a few months ago because COVID, because many things. Now, what we're experiencing is that we're getting offers again. Our subcontractors are willing to mobilize.
Our team is willing to mobilize, and we're already mobilizing. Our customers and ourselves, both together, we're in good conversations because they need to rush now. They didn't want it to rush in 2020- 2021, and now they need to rush. They need to. You know, there is an opportunity for them if they rush. It's an opportunity for us if we rush. I think there is an opportunity for both. It was not the same on 2020- 2021. I mean, we wanted to do it, we wanted to rush, and it was impossible. That's the big change. It's not, and that's what we call normalization, which is good. That's what we call that we have a very positive dialogue with our customer, which are old-time customers and sometimes new customers, within this environment to work faster and better.
I think we can, and it's been translated into higher revenue and better results just now.
Okay, thank you. Thanks for that. Just secondly, I mean, sort of following on from you know, your very large pipeline and things stabilizing, can you talk a little bit about your ambitions on pricing? I mean, clearly, you know, you've got an ambition to return to that medium-term EBIT margin, but I'm sure you'd like to do better than that ultimately. You know, maybe you could talk a little bit about how kind of ambitious you're being at the moment in terms of pricing on the jobs that you're bidding for 2023 in particular. Thanks.
I mean, I think in this market and in these market conditions, that's how we have been pricing over the last year, and we had acceptable number of awards. I mean, we do not by any means dump price anything, and there is no need to dump price. There is need, and customers, what they want are fair prices and good execution strategy and capacity. I mean, customers are looking for engineering capacity, for logistic capacity, and for construction management capacity. That's gonna give ourselves and our customers an opportunity to bid competitively because there is competition, but within acceptable margins.
Okay. All right. Thanks, Juan. I appreciate your answers. I'll hand it over there.
Thank you. Thank you very much, James.
Thank you. The next question comes from Álvaro Lenze from Alantra Equities. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to know regarding the Tuat gas project, of course you've already recognized the provision for the payment of the warranty. I wanted to know whether there are any pending accounts receivable in your balance sheet that could be at risk due to the negotiations and the potential arbitration regarding change orders and claims. Also if do we have any news flow on the other contract with Sonatrach for Hassi Messaoud?
Alvaro, with the accrued provision, any account receivable in the Tuat gas project is covered. I mean, there is nothing left. So we are properly covered. There is no risk. Regarding to Hassi, there are very few account receivables in our balance sheet. I would say almost nothing. Almost nothing.
Okay. Thanks. Any update on the projects for Gazprom? What could we expect from this going forward?
Projects are terminated. We have collected the money from the client. I think bonds are coming back. We have not received them yet, but I'm not concerned about that because the termination has been in full agreement with the client, and there are no problems at all.
Perfect. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, let me remind you again, if you have any questions, please press zero-one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. There are no further questions, so I give back the floor to the speakers. Thank you.
Thank you, Alvaro, as you were the last one to ask some questions, and thank you to all of you for listening to this presentation. We are finished. If some of you are taking some holidays now in August, enjoy your holidays. I'm gonna try to, you know, I'm gonna try to skip as soon as I finish. Thank you very much for listening again, and we'll talk again in the next presentation. I think it will be November sixteenth. I have it written here. Thank you very much to all of you.