Gaztransport & Technigaz SA (EPA:GTT)
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Earnings Call: Q2 2017

Jul 21, 2017

Philippe Berterottière
Chairman and CEO, Gaztransport & Technigaz

Well, I'm very pleased to receive you to present the first six months of 2017 results. Very quickly, well, just a slide to recap who we are. As you know, we are an engineering company developing proprietary technology for transporting or storing energy. We developed a membrane technology that we are keeping on improving and applying to new applications. Well, just immediately, we can see that when we compare from the first six months of 2016 and the first six months of 2017, the revenues from royalties have slightly decreased, while revenues from services have increased. The net margin, and we will see that in more details later on, has passed from 51.8%-55%. So that's basic figures of the company. Well, in these first six months, we delivered LNG Carriers We received 13 new orders.

Among these deliveries, we had, in particular, the delivery of the Prelude FLNG. I don't know whether you saw pictures of this FLNG, but it's totally huge, 500 meters long, 90 meters wide. It's the largest floating structure ever built. We delivered also formally the first ice-breaking LNG carrier, the Christophe de Margerie. I come back immediately to the first page, and you can see in this first page this ship performing its ice trials. So she is going backward as she cannot go directly frontward as she's facing stone ice. So she has the capability to go backward. So it's very impressive. It's very, very impressive. By the way, just on the side, you can see a board, a very tiny board we are currently building in the US.

It shows you the wide range of things we are capable of doing, from small floating structure to very large ones, very complicated, capable of breaking the ice. Well, this year we introduced a technology for LPG. We did not sell it yet, but we've marginally been in LPG. For example, on Prelude, there are 8 tanks and 4 tanks for LPG. But here, it's really optimized for containing LPG, and we are promoting it. We introduced also a GBS technology, gravity-based system. It's a kind of a concrete tank that you can install near shore. And we are also actively promoting that, especially for islands which would like to rely on gas, whether it's energy or LPG, and which can see that as a very easy way to install a storage on a place where space is scarce.

In this first part of the year, we signed a global agreement for providing services with Teekay. While I'm keeping on talking to you about the services we are keeping on offering, and that allows us to design this global offering really fitting the needs of shipowners with the various solutions we've provided over the recent years. LNG market, we see several positive signs on the LNG market. On the operational point, for about a year now, we said in past is operational. There are 4 trains now which are operational and beginning to deliver LNG from the US. So it's quite interesting, and in particular to see where this LNG is going to. On the demand side, we saw, for example, a 12% growth in the imports of LNG from the top 4 countries, the top 4 importing countries. So that is quite impressive.

We will come back to that, but it's largely coming from a switch from coal to LNG, which is very much favored by the low prices of LNG. When you look at the market, you always look at the black swans, but you have to look also at the pink flamingo. And the pink flamingo is the decision for LNG of Mozambique, the Coral one, which has been decided with 3.4 million tons. So let's say it's about 1% of what the market is going to be by 2019. And so 1%, you may say it's small. Still, we'll see people are keeping on saying that there is a lot of LNG, and some others are saying, "Well, this market is great. We've got to take decisions now in order to provide additional quantities as soon as possible," as this order for FLNG is highlighted.

We got 4 FSRUs ordered in these first 6 months. It shows that, well, people are looking for new gates for delivering energy. We'll see that a lot of energy has been energy facilities have been decided, and you've got to deliver that. You've got to find ways of delivering that. And for that, you need infrastructure facilities. And these floating ones, the FSRUs, are a very easy, flexible, quick, and economical manner of opening new ways of delivering energy. Among what we could call a certain wait-and-see attitude on the market, there is the fact that people say, "Well, a lot of things have been decided on facilities in the U.S., but are they really contracted? Are they really going to come?" And when we looked at the contractual situation, we see that the contracted quantities are very large. It's about 90%.

So what is going to be sold on the spot market, really depending on the demand from buyers on a day-to-day basis for trading quantities, is only about 10%. So for the time being, we don't see any reasons these projects will not go through, and these quantities will not be available. Well, another way of looking at the market, when we look at the evolutions of the demand in Asia, we see a very strong increase, in fact, when we compare that from the first five months of 2017 compared to the first five months of 2016. Well, very strong increase. You can see, for example, in Japan, which is the largest energy importer, we see an increase by 12%. When we talk about China, we see an increase of 38%. Well, in fact, Japan is 7%. Sorry for that. China is 38%. South Korea, it's 15%.

It was before the announcement South Korea wanted to move away from coal and nuclear energy. In fact, the switch is really at work. The switch from coal to energy is really at work. And that, of course, we see that is very much facilitated by the low prices of energy. You can see that here. We can see the China energy prices. Well, the other Asian energy prices are about the same. We see the Europe natural gas prices, which are much more reasonable. I mean, they did not experience the bump the market experienced in Asia in winter. And we see coal and the coal prices. And we can see that all that is now very close. And of course, switching to energy, you have a much cleaner solution for providing an energy.

And you have a cleaner solution and a not high price at a very affordable price. And so energy can become a solution for base load power generation. Low energy prices are attracting new countries. What is fascinating is that year after year, we see new countries coming to energy. We can see that on this slide. Of course, it will have a limit at a certain point of time because energy cannot go everywhere, and the number of countries is limited. But we're expecting this year the Philippines and Ghana to begin their imports of energy. Well, of course, that is supporting the long-term demand for energy. So the trade of energy is very active. And over the next five years, we are planning to see a growth of 6.5%, which, of course, is very important.

We know that for us, we are in the shipping side of this activity, and that depends very much on where this energy is going to go to. The fact that it's going to go mainly to Asia, and we saw that on the slide before, the increase of energy imports in Asia is, of course, positive news for the shipping of energy. So that will have still to be confirmed in the next years as the contracts are much more open than what they used to be in terms of destination clauses. But we see that the thirst for energy in Asia is still here. Energy supply and demand could be balanced as soon as 2021, which is, in terms of building new facilities, very, very close.

Once more, the low LNG prices we are seeing currently are very much favoring the adoption of LNG as a source of energy. Still, we are keeping on talking with LNG players, and they have a lot of quantities. So they are looking at ways, innovative ways of selling these quantities. And that's why the demand for FSRUs is so important because it's a good way of providing a country with this source of energy, opening a new gate. So this balance could be as soon as 2021, could be a bit later. And when you count, let's say, five years to build a new greenfield LNG regasification facility, in fact, decisions should come for meeting the market requirements in the next decade. So for LNG shipping, we saw that we delivered many ships in this first part of this year.

That did not have a depressing effect on the market. In fact, the charter rates maintained at a certain level, which we expect to see higher in the second part of this year as new facilities are going to enter in production in the U.S. We saw a certain growth in trade in BCM miles for ships since January 2016. And that means that the shipping intensity is increasing. You can see from the left side part of the slide to the right side, there is a significant increase. Of course, it's linked to the first trains in the U.S. and the necessity to deliver this energy in places which are far away. So the distance is increasing. The needs for ships are increasing. So more this phenomenon is going to be confirmed, the more there is going to be a need for ships.

Then markets could get out of its wait-and-see attitude we are suffering from for a couple of years. On this slide, I'm bothering you in telling you that there are about 50-60 ships which are needed for the projects which have already been sanctioned. And so while we did not receive 50 or 60 orders in the first six months, so is this figure right? On this slide, we just listed all the projects and the quantities to be produced by these projects, the shipping requirements for these projects. So we arrived to a certain number of ships, 173, 77.3. It's very precise, very accurate. We look at the order book, the global order book, 115.3. It's not only our order book, but also the one from the competition.

So when we looked also at the other capacity of vessels of less than 30 years, which in a certain way is quite a generous assumption because, in fact, we should not look at ships as a commodity. There are ships which are very performing with some trams, and some which are much less performing, which are consuming much more and which are much smaller. It means you need a lot of ships to transport or more ships to transport the same quantity. And so when you deduct this order book and the other capacity, you arrive to a figure of 51.7 for the orders for the ships needed to satisfy these transportation needs. So that's where this figure is coming from. Well, it depends, of course, on some assumptions and in particular where this energy is going to.

Here, we did not assess that all this energy will go to Asia. We had a more or less conservative approach there. But still, we see that, of course, we would like to see that more and more confirmed. But it's why we think that at a certain point of time, these orders will be badly needed on the market.

Julien Delahaye
Engineering Director, Gaztransport & Technigaz

Good morning, everyone. Continuing on this, I'll give you some hints about what have been the highlights of our activity during H1, during the first half. So as Philippe mentioned, the company had 13 orders, 8 for LNG carriers and 4 for FSRUs, which is a significant level. Here, we recall what are our order estimates on a 10-year horizon. Of course, what happens during six months cannot be compared like this on a 10-year horizon, but it's worth reminding what are the overall perspectives.

In terms of structure of turnover, it's worth noticing that FSRU and services and FLNG represent now 20% of the turnover of the company, which is an increase over the last year. FSRUs were only 10% last year, which was an increase over the year before. This demonstrates how, beyond LNG carriers, the market on the one hand and GTT on the other hand evolve. Just a focus on FSRUs. A high level of orders during H1 on that front, and that corresponds really to a structural evolution. Here, you see that FSRU capacity represented in 2016 10% of the global importing capacity of LNG, which is huge and growing, sharply growing. When we take into consideration the units that are to be commissioned in the next year, we think that this percentage will grow to 12% and probably higher in the years after.

As a matter of fact, what we see is that this corresponds really to a choice. It means that the FSRU or the solution of choice for new importing countries, new LNG importing countries. In 2015 and 2016, there have been 7 in total new LNG importing countries, and 6 of them have chosen to use floating units as storage capacity instead of onshore terminals. This, because of the flexibility, the economic advantages of floating units, floating storage units, FSRUs as well, this is now the solution of choice. And this, together with the growth of the LNG, translates in our order book and in our revenues. Coming to the order book, 13 orders during H1, 13 orders and 21 deliveries. The number of units in the order book has decreased.

But, and that's a very important point, the value of the order book now from was EUR 426 million for 2017 till 2021. It's EUR 426 as of the 1st of July without taking into account what has been invoiced during H1. So it means that we are rebuilding the order book, which is very important news. And we are rebuilding it. And further, it gives us an improved visibility on our activity for the years to come. And this is what you can see here on the chart on the bottom right of this slide. You see a comparison between our structure of our order book as of the 31st of December last year and as of June 30th this year. You see that for 2018, based on the order book now, the revenues for royalties would be EUR 208 million.

So up 48 from what it was at the end of last year and for 2019. And now it's €80 million, up €34 million from the beginning of the year. So rebuilding the order book significantly improved visibility for the years to come. A highlight hint about services. Now, we really enjoy a wide range of services aimed at offering the ship owners a lot of opportunities to improve the availability of their vessels, to reduce the time of their maintenance operations, to optimize their operations, to train their crew. And we continue to extend the range of these services. What we can see is, as this range is considered as such as a global offering by very important customers like TK.

And that's what, when we entered into a long-term agreement earlier this year for offering a panel of services, this really demonstrates their interest in the array of services that we offer. And we intend to continue that because, in fact, the more we work with owners, the closer we work with owners, the more we identify we are capable of addressing their pain points with new and innovative services. Just a last before I hand over the mic to Marc regarding LNG as a fuel. We are actively looking at this market as a major opportunity for LNG, for the shipping industry, and for GTT. So now what happened during the first half, a lot of activity there. So many owners are looking at LNG as a fuel. This has not translated into orders for GTT, but there are really a lot of discussions.

The context, one must have a look at the overall context. From the one hand, it's favorable because regulations are really putting pressure on the industry. On the other hand, in terms of pricing environment, you know that for the owners to decide to go for LNG, they must assess the economic advantage of this fuel over the alternative fuels. So what they are looking at is the spread in prices between the price of LNG here, it's the red line in Asia, and the price of, between brackets, clean fuels derived from oil. And this is the line here. So three years ago, this spread was much higher than it is today. Now it's about $4. So it means that it's more of a challenge for LNG propulsion systems to get introduced.

And that's the reason why most projects that have been implemented or decided in the last couple of years, or rather for smaller vessels, the ones in particular that sail predominantly in ECA zones, whereas for bigger vessels and so bigger tanks. And we know that our solutions are by nature well recognized for cost-based efficiency for bigger tanks. We understand that really there are still a need for a better pricing environment. It's very difficult to assess exactly what is the limit, but still the price risk is still considered as significant for owners to really jump into that. That's what we saw during the first half. Marc.

Marc Haestier
Chief Financial Officer, Gaztransport & Technigaz

Thank you, Julien. So I'll give you a quick tour of our first half results. Starting with the key indicators.

So as has been mentioned already, the revenues have decreased by almost 5% between the first semester last year and this year, affected by, of course, the lower level of orders we've had in 2016, which in fact ended with a decrease in revenues from royalties by 7%. That was, of course, partially compensated by the good performance we had from the revenues from services. Despite that decrease in turnover, as you can see on this slide, we've been able to increase all of the indicators on our P&L account from EBITDA down to net income. Easy for me, 1.2% increase on each of these indicators. This, of course, due to the efforts we've made on our cost base, and I'll come back to that in a second. Free cash flow has remained strong at EUR 64.5 million. And we've had a negative impact on changing working capital of EUR 8.8 million.

This is the change compared to the beginning of the year, to 31st of December 2016. Now, that EUR 8.8 million is mainly due to seasonal effects we have in the first semester. For example, we pay our profit sharing in the first semester. So that, of course, impacts the first semester changing working capital. If we exclude the seasonal effects, in fact, we see that the working capital linked to our normal operation is stable as we had anticipated. The CapEx remained fairly low, very low. And we have, of course, paid a dividend. Our cash position is still very strong at EUR 77.3 million, to which you can add cash investments at EUR 13 million. So we will be paying an interim dividend of €1.33 per share, as expected at the end of September, on the 29th to be specific.

Now, coming to the cost base, we had mentioned that we had a number of levers to optimize our cost base, either on the external cost side or on the staff cost side. You can see the results in the first semester. For example, one very strong lever is the subcontracted tests and studies, which have decreased by 18% compared to the first semester of last year. Efforts also on a number of other external costs. On the other side, salaries and personnel costs in general, we have a 3% increase in salaries and social charges, which is due to the reduction in headcount between first semester last year and this year. Strong cost control, and this is what has allowed us to generate an improvement in profit during the first semester. That's it for me.

Our guidance for 2017 is confirmed.

As far as our revenues are concerned, we are going to still be between EUR 225 million and EUR 240 million. Our net margin should be above, going to be above 50%. And dividend payments for 2017 is going to be at least equivalent of what it has been in 2016 and 2015. It means EUR 2.66. And for 2017, EUR 2.66, and for 2018 and 2019, at least 18% of the distributable result. So we are going to be very pleased to answer to your questions now.

Guillaume Delaby
Head of Energy Services, Societe Generale

So I'm going to start. Guillaume Delaby, Société Générale. Two small questions, if I may. First, regarding your firm agreement with TK, can we have some more colors? Is it going to be recurrent revenue? And if yes, what could we have an order of magnitude about this constant stream, assuming it is the case?

I would like also to catch up a little bit on your thought process regarding Cryovision. Can we have some elements regarding Cryovision's performance in H1, and also to know a little bit more when you plan to fully consolidate it? Thank you.

Philippe Berterottière
Chairman and CEO, Gaztransport & Technigaz

Well, on TK, it's a global contract, as we said, and it's going to bring us recurring revenues over the next years. We are never very specific on the contract amounts for various reasons. So we are not going to deviate from this corporate policy on this particular contract. But what we can say is that it's going to bring significant it's going to bring recurring revenues. It's going to be quite helpful for our service offering and to this kind of contract to reach a certain degree of adoption.

And as such, it will help us to pass break-even points whenever we set up services which need a certain number of subscribers to be profitable. So yes, of course, it will have a very positive effect on our figures. And quite importantly, also, it's something where we are providing something, services directly to the ship owner rather than in the usual contractual relationship where we are working with shipyards. On your second question on Cryovision, well, we did not present the results on Cryovision, but what I can tell you is that the activity is progressing well as the rest of our activities on services. And we do intend to consolidate the Cryovision in 2017 accounts as we are going to, of course, consolidate the other subsidiary activities. So you will see the full impact of Cryovision in the 2017 results in six months.

Kevin Roger
Head of Energy Services, Kepler Cheuvreux

Good morning, Kevin Roger, Kepler Cheuvreux.

A few questions on my side, please. First one is on the value of the order book. You say that it remains stable compared to last year when the number of units decreased to 88. Can you explain to us the reason for that? Is it because the value of the orders is increasing, or is it because of the FSRU's contract? Maybe also, if you could give us some information on your expectations for the second part of the year. Revenues from services are quite very volatile. So should we assume a stable H2 compared to H1 after the strong performance in the H1? And on your net margin, H1 was largely above expectation. Should we assume an H2 margin rather stable with H1? And maybe, can you have an update on the antitrust case in South Korea?

Philippe Berterottière
Chairman and CEO, Gaztransport & Technigaz

On the?

Kevin Roger
Head of Energy Services, Kepler Cheuvreux

South Korea.

Philippe Berterottière
Chairman and CEO, Gaztransport & Technigaz

The case?

Kevin Roger
Head of Energy Services, Kepler Cheuvreux

Yeah. Thank you.

Philippe Berterottière
Chairman and CEO, Gaztransport & Technigaz

Okay.

Well, on the order book, well, as you saw immediately, the simple math shows that the value per order has increased. So that is coming from two points. First, as you know, there is a decrease in the level of royalties according to the number of ships you design. And so the earlier you are in the sale and the more you get revenues. So here we get, I would say, fresh designs. That's the first point. And the second point is that we got also some large order with, for example, the FLNG for Coral, which is a big floating structure, so generating significant revenues. The second point about services, I would agree with you in saying that it's volatile. We saw in 2015 an increase by 40% of our turnover in services. We saw a decrease by 20% in 2016. We see now an increase by 36%.

So it's volatile. We're still talking of small figures. So the volatility, as you very well know, is quite important when the market is still small. But I think that what we should keep in mind is that the long-term trend is an increase. And whether it's going to be confirmed in the second part of this year or not, I don't know. It remains to be seen. But this long-term trend is going to increase. We are keeping on devising new services. We are keeping on imagining new ways of packaging that into global offers. And we do think that in the medium term, the turnover from services will increase. What is quite exciting is that already we have a base of different services which are really attracting the interest of people.

I mean, Chevron is one of the major super major in the world, attracting their interest for this global services approach. Well, your last question is about the KFTC inquiry on GTT. You know it's an inquiry. We did not consider that we did anything wrong in Korea. We did not pass any provision related to that. And basically, we did not have recent news on that. So I have nothing to tell you except that this case has been opened or this inquiry has been opened 18 months ago. And I don't know when it's going to how it's going to progress. But if we have news, we will come back to you. We will keep you informed. Question from Louen.

Operator

So, ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question at this time, please press star one on your telephone keypad.

We do have a question from Chin Lim from Apollo. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Chee Lin
Principal, Apollo

Hi, thanks. Just three questions, please. The first question is, is there now less incentive to reduce boil-off rates further given that the propulsion technology with the X-DF and ME-GI technology has plateaued? The second question is if we can get an update on the Korean KC-1 technology and an overview of GTT's key patents and the expiry dates. And the third question was, is the driver of the drop in employee count? I see it's now 344 versus 358 at the end of the year. And if there's been any change in the core R&D team? Thank you.

Philippe Berterottière
Chairman and CEO, Gaztransport & Technigaz

Repeat again your last sentence. Any change

Chee Lin
Principal, Apollo

in the core R&D team, research and development team.

Philippe Berterottière
Chairman and CEO, Gaztransport & Technigaz

Okay.

Well, on boil-off, as you saw, effectively, there are new engines which have been introduced. I think, I mean, the progress on propulsion is not going to stop. The improvements have been amazing because basically, the consumptions of the engines have been divided by two in a matter of 10 years. And the boil-off of our systems has been divided by two in the same time. So we are following that. I think that the engine manufacturers are going to keep on looking at ways of improving the consumption of the engines. And we will have to accompany that in providing consistent systems which are providing boil-off just commensurate with the needs of the propulsion. But there is another factor for reducing or looking at ways of reducing the boil-off. It's the operational patterns.

With the absence of destination clause, in fact, it's an opening for ship owners or energy players to develop swaps, trading activities, and to get more and more away from the traditional pendulum pattern where a ship is going from a certain liquefaction plant to a given regasification facility. And there, you may see the ship at very low speed or idle speed for a while. And there, the energy companies are dreaming of an almost zero boil-off ship. So, well, I don't think that a zero boil-off ship is making a lot of sense. But we have to keep on looking at ways of designing containment systems fitted for these new operational patterns. And going to give me the opportunity to answer right away to your last point. The R&D efforts or the innovation efforts from GTT is not going to stop.

We did not reduce our staff in R&D. We are going to keep on imagining solutions for having ships really fitting the expectations from the market. Just to answer to your point about the reduction of the staff, you saw that for a couple of years, we received less ships. Well, just in what we could call production in our engineering activities, we adjusted our staff to cope with that. On KC1, well, we are not designing the KC1. I don't have particular information to provide you on that. As you know, it should be delivered by the end of this year or at the end of the third quarter. We should know very soon how it goes. Well, patents, we are keeping on registering new patents. We are keeping on developing new systems.

So each time we develop a new system, we register new patents. So whether it's key or less key, I don't know so much. We have quite strong patent activity. And I would say that patent activity is something that, I mean, the reputation of the company and the fact that we provide around the patented technological solution engineering services, engineering variables which are very much needed by the shipyards to build the ship first, and also services for helping the ship owners to operate the ships is very helpful and very for defending the business model of the company.

Operator

Thank you.

Pierre Schang
Analyst, Amilton Accet Management

Hello, Pierre Chant speaking from Amilton Asset Management. Just one question about you have done quite a good job on the subcontract workforce for the first half. So my question is, do you still have some room to work on this side for the second half?

For example, if the orders were not at the level where you expect, maybe you can work more again in this subcontractor. So thank you.

Philippe Berterottière
Chairman and CEO, Gaztransport & Technigaz

Yes, but as you very widely pointed out, yes, we can work more and we have some flexibility. In fact, the entire production engineering business model has very much been designed according to that to be able to adjust our capacities in case of very severe downturn. But what has to be said is that we received quite a lot of orders or a certain number of orders in the first part of this year. We have to provide the deliverables. Well, I do expect, I do hope that the market is going to turn into norm and that we will need to rely on a larger number of people.

But still, if your point is, do you still have the capacity in case the market is bad to adjust your production capacities, if you wish? The answer is yes.

Operator

Another question from the call? Yes, we do have another question from Rafael Verter from Extran. Please go ahead. The line is open.

Rafael Converter
Analyst, Extran

Good morning. I have one question on revenue recognition. We saw the recent orders you have in hand have a much shorter construction and delivery timeframe, I mean, typically two years. So can we assume that at least for the next couple of years, and given the availability of shipyards, the revenue recognition of GTT for future orders will be much shorter than usual? And could you give us some guidance on how to model it? Thank you very much.

Philippe Berterottière
Chairman and CEO, Gaztransport & Technigaz

You rightly very accurately saw that.

It's true that shipyards are getting a bit empty, not particularly due to the energy LNGCs , but to some other activities, the other activities. They are competing on different things, on prices, but also on delivery dates. Well, that is very much a function of the number of energy LNGCs they will have to accommodate. So maybe there is a bit of volatility in this lead time between order and delivery. But I would say that here we are very much in the production competencies of the shipyards. And I'm sorry, Rafael, but I don't have particular tools to provide you to assess that. Still, what we can say is that they are going to keep on delivering things. On other shipping segments, things are not really improving so much so far.

So we can assess that there will be a certain aggressivity on the lead times for producing LNGCs . Okay. Thank you. Baptiste de Leudeville, Natixis. I have two questions. First one regarding the LNGC for Yamal that you have just announced a couple of days ago. These contracts will be executed by a Chinese yard. In the past, did you operate with this yard or not? And second question regarding the onshore tanks business. You signed an agreement with Matrix Service Company one year ago. And at this stage, we don't see any announcements of new contracts or projects. Can you give us an update regarding maybe timing for contracts or where are you exactly right now with Matrix regarding this business? Thank you. Well, on the energy cash we announced recently, they are going to be built by Hudong-Zhonghua, who is our favored partner in China.

That's the yard which has built all the LNG carriers built in China. And we are working with them for many, many years. All of them have been designed by us. So it's a long-term partner. And we are very pleased to continue this cooperation with them. On the agreement we passed with Matrix, well, we are pleased to have an American engineering company adopting or signing with us for providing the GTT onshore tank technologies. In fact, for LNG in the US, they are going to be able to propose the membrane solution. A point which should not be forgotten is that there are very few onshore tanks which are currently built as the export facilities are generally relying on brownfield installations where the tanks are already existing. They are built on regasification facilities built in the past decade, and the tanks were built at that time.

So the market is not that large. As you know, we have limited success on this market for both because we are not the solution of reference and also because the market is very narrow. Another question on the call?

Operator

Yes. So we do have a follow-up question from Chin Lim from Apollo. Please go ahead. The line is open.

Chee Lin
Principal, Apollo

Hi. Thanks again. A follow-up on the patents. So to be more specific, for the NO96 and MK3 patents, have they expired? And when would the patents for something like an NO96 GW and the MK3 Flex patent expire? And the second question would be then, how has pricing trends evolved across the cycle, i.e., over the past 10 years? Have you been giving more discounts over the past few years given the market environment? Thank you.

Philippe Berterottière
Chairman and CEO, Gaztransport & Technigaz

Well, we have different patents on NO96 and on MK3.

Some of them have been registered recently. So the life expectancy of these patents is still quite long. We are keeping on improving our systems on a constant basis thanks to the return of experience, both in construction and in operations. And it's why also, it's a reason why also we are appreciated by the industry. I mean, some of these patents are covering improvements in production which are helping, for example, the shipyards to build the systems for a smaller cost. So we have quite strong visibility on patents, including those on NO96 and MK3. And whether for NO96 Glass Wool or MK3 Flex, which are evolutions of these two systems, it is the same. On discounts, well, we don't comment on the contract amount nor on the discounts.

I suggest you just look at the net margin of the company, and you draw conclusions on that, on the commercial behavior of the company. The company is very much concentrating on bringing values to innovation with a model where shipyards are subscribing to us, and we are keeping on bringing values through constant innovations, as the earlier question on the patents was highlighting. Any other questions?

Operator

No, we do not have any further questions from the call, sir. Thank you.

Philippe Berterottière
Chairman and CEO, Gaztransport & Technigaz

Okay. Thank you very much. Have a good day.

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