Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Viridien Q2 2025 financial results webcast and conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there'll be a question- and- answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to our first speaker today, Alexandre Leroy. Please go ahead.
Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for Viridien's Q2 2025 results presentation. I'm Alexandre Leroy, Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Finance. We are hosting today's call from Paris, and I'm pleased to be here with Sophie Zurquiyah, our Chair and CEO, and Jerome Serve, our CFO, who will walk you through our Q2 2025 results. Before we begin, a few housekeeping items. This call is being recorded and accessible via both phones and online platforms. An audio replay will be available shortly on our website, www.viridiangroup.com. The presentation slides are also available for download from the website. Please note that today's presentation includes forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied today.
Relevant risk factors are detailed in our 2024 universal registration document filed with the French Financial Market Authority, AMF. As usual, we'll conclude with the Q&A session. Finally, a quick reminder that Viridien comments primarily on segment figures, which reflect our internal management reporting. These differ from IFRS numbers also published today, due to IFRS 15 impacts on our EARL Data business accounting. With that, I'll now hand over to management, starting with Sophie, who will take you through the key business outline for the quarter.
Thank you, Alexandre, and good morning, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I'm on slide two. In Q2 2025, despite the challenging environment, with tariff uncertainty, geopolitical instability, oil price volatility, and foreign exchange fluctuations, we delivered another solid quarter marked by sustained business momentum and consistent financial execution. Segment revenue reached $274 million, up 6% year- on- year, reflecting strong demand for our unique expertise and differentiated product offering. Segment-adjusted EBITDA came in at $107 million, up 14% year- on- year, confirming our ability to translate top-line growth into profitability, while continuing to execute on our SMO restructuring plan and fully benefiting from the positive impact of the end-of-ETA vessel agreement. We concluded the quarter with $13 million in net cash flow, underscoring our enhanced ability to generate cash flow from operations, thanks to our differentiated technology and a significantly more flexible asset-light business model.
On the strategic front, we continue to build on the leadership of our three core businesses. In geoscience, our differentiation continues to grow, and our expertise is increasingly sought after across a broader range of geographies. Notably, we've secured more work from clients who maintain strong internal teams and technology development. It's an important endorsement of our capability and a strong driver for future growth. In Earth D ata, we launched new ocean bottom node projects, OBN projects, in our core bases, maintaining strict portfolio discipline, fully aligned with our cash-focused, balanced risk-return approach. In Sensing and Monitoring, we achieved another innovation breakthrough, reinforcing our technology leadership in the land business with the launch of our new Accel technology and the next generation, which is the next generation land nodal solution.
We also continue to execute on our restructuring initiative, which is progressing according to plan and delivering the expected margin improvement. We are reaffirming our 2025 guidance with the $100 million net cash flow target. Given our leading competitive positioning, strong backlog, active client discussions, and continued operational discipline, we are confident in our trajectory and in our ability to deliver on our cash generation objective. Before diving into our Q2 2025 results, let me take a quick step back to remind you where we are today, as 2025 is our first year as a truly asset-light company and is a key milestone for Viridien. I'm now on slide three. Our strategy is defined around three pillars. The first pillar is about continuously strengthening our core business. We strongly believe that oil and gas will be required for many years into the future to support a rational energy transition.
In most market scenarios, our clients will need to improve their portfolio performance and ensure their reserve replacement is increasing. We looked at our top 15 clients, and their reserve life has been consistently dropping over the last 10 years. Oil prices may continue to fluctuate in the short- term, but all fundamentals still point toward a relatively solid longer-term outlook for our core market. We intend to keep excelling there. The second pillar is about selectively developing new markets. The fact that oil and gas will remain critical for the long term doesn't mean we shouldn't prepare for a sustainable future and strengthen our transition. We're doing so with several initiatives that you're already familiar with, leveraging our unique competitive strengths.
Our exceptional technical teams, with their deep mathematical, scientific, high-performance computing and coding expertise, our rich Earth Data assets, and our ability to maximize the value we extract from them, and our industry-leading technologies in geoscience, imaging, and Sensing and Monitoring. These give us the ability to deliver unprecedented subsurface images and breakthrough products. The third pillar is about delivering operational excellence across everything we do. We fully recognize the importance of cash generation, so leveraging remains a top strategic priority. We are relentlessly focused on performance and discipline at every level of the company, from leveraging AI to ensuring the highest operational efficiency. Turning now onto slide four. For those of you who may be less familiar with Viridien and the seismic value chain, let me highlight an important point.
We are now completely out of the seismic data acquisition services business, having refocused on asset-lighter, technically differentiated, higher value-added segments. Providing seismic acquisition services is about the management of assets and crews with the collection of subsurface data using source and receiver technology. Whether offshore or onshore, this means deploying at vessels or land crews with various tools to capture seismic signals. This is a high fixed cost, asset-intensive business, but the key challenge and value generated is mainly around reducing costs and maximizing asset utilization. We exited this commodity business, which is the data acquisition business, to focus on our three differentiated technology businesses. With our sensing and monitoring systems and solutions, success depends on offering leading technology, industrial efficiency, and operational reliability.
Our Sensing and Monitoring business is recognized for the quality and the robustness of its equipment solutions, and we have made significant progress in lowering our fixed costs. Second, in multi-client data licensing, which is our Earth Data business, success hinges on having the right data in the right place at the right time. This requires flexibility, being close to our clients, making smart basin selections, structuring deals intelligently, and providing excellence in the final product. These together are what ensure strong pre-funding, lower risk, and higher commercial potential on each survey. Thirdly, in subsurface imaging driven by our Geoscience division or business line, it's all about top-tier expertise, advanced technology and algorithms, optimized computing power, and delivering value to clients, which earns us recognition and repeat business. This strategic positioning allows us to focus on expertise-driven, cash-generating activities with higher competitive barriers and better margins.
Let me take you to slide five to say a few words about what makes us the global leader in Sensing and Monitoring. The key words are innovation, quality, optimization, and reliability, which together require technological leadership. In this business, we don't just sell leading equipment and systems. We deliver fully integrated solutions, combining products, the software that powers and optimizes their deployment, and a full suite of support services. This together ensures operational excellence from crew efficiency to final data quality. To stay ahead, we must be continuously improving our value proposition as well as our industrial structure and processes to optimally deliver our products and services. We help our clients solve their challenges, address their pain points, and ultimately optimize the operational performance while delivering the highest quality of data.
This is how we differentiate ourselves and build lasting partnerships with our clients, a key driver of both our global leadership and the depth of our install base. Turning now to slide six for a quick focus on our approach to multi-client surveys. Multi-client is, by nature, the most cyclical and volatile part of our business, particularly when it comes to late sales. Now that we've exited the seismic acquisition vessel business entirely, we have the flexibility to adopt a disciplined, risk-managed approach to multi-client investment. We've chosen a balanced strategy that combines low risk, low investment reimaging of legacy data, leveraging our geoscience expertise, and adds significant value to existing data. This is the first pillar. The second, strategic core basin enrichment and expansion, where demand visibility is strong and where we can leverage our footprint. This is the second pillar.
The third one is a selective, opportunistic exposure to higher risk, potentially higher return frontier projects. Our key rule is simple. We are disciplined in selecting projects with strong economics, measured in pre-funding, and solid commercial potential. Our seismic multi-client strategy is not about volume, but focused on maximizing value creation and cash generation. Moving on to slide seven on seismic image subsurface imaging. Geoscience is the global leader in seismic imaging because, over the decades, we have been relentlessly building with focus competitive advantages that truly matter in this market. First, our people. Our team is second to none, with over 300 PhDs in mathematics, physics, engineering, and geosciences recruited globally. Out of 100 applicants, only 1% make it through our selection process. This talent base is the foundation of our success. Second, our technology.
Though the industry calls them by the same brand name, like elastic for waveform inversion, we develop unique, highly advanced proprietary algorithms that are suited to a large variety of subsurface challenges, now even further enhanced by AI-driven models. Our subsurface imaging technologies are second to none, being consistently rated number one in the external Kimberlite survey. We also operate around 600 petaflops of computing power in highly optimized and specialized data centers, all fine-tuned specifically for high throughput challenges like seismic imaging. Three, our corporate culture, which is deeply rooted in service quality and a commitment to problem solving, openness, and excellence. This unique combination of talent, technology, and relentless drive for excellence is what makes Viridien the global reference in seismic imaging. Finally, moving to slide eight, let me recall the philosophy behind our selective diversification strategy. We apply three key principles when evaluating new opportunities.
One, they should preferably enable us to grow outside the oil and gas sector. Second, they should build credibly on our existing expertise, capabilities, and technology with minimal dedicated costs or CapEx. They must offer strong growth potential. We are determined to prepare our future in the smartest, most disciplined possible way. Now, I'd like to move on to slide 10 to cover the quarterly performance review, starting with geoscience. Q2 2025 was a solid quarter for geoscience, with external segment revenue up 10% year- on- year to $115 million. This strong performance was primarily driven by work performed in Latin America and the Middle East. Over the past few years, Viridien has experienced a steady increase in global demand for its high-quality, high-technology subsurface imaging solutions. Our advanced elastic full waveform imaging technology represents a significant leap forward in imaging quality, setting a new benchmark in the market.
This strong demand has translated into healthy order intake, supporting a robust backlog that underpins our growth, margin expansion, and cash generation for the remainder of the year. Moreover, our strategic focus on complex projects, a pivotal role in development and infrastructure-led exploration, and our strong relationships with less oil price-sensitive clients, such as key international oil companies and national oil companies, provide a solid foundation of growth and resilience for our geoscience business. On slide 11, we highlight a compelling example of how we have expanded our service offering by leveraging the high-fidelity subsurface images we produce. Traditionally, these tasks were handled by our clients using laborious and time-consuming techniques. By turning to Viridien, they now benefit from our advanced AI suite and high-performance computing capabilities, enabling faster, more efficient, and more effective results.
In early 2023, Viridien completed the full processing of the largest ever OBN, ocean bottom node acquisition program in the UAE. Covering 26,000 sq KM , the project deployed more than 2 million sensors and generated around 700 billion seismic traces, amounting to several dozens of petabytes of data. This was a monumental technological challenge, successfully met thanks to our deep expertise and proprietary technology. Today, we are empowering our clients with extensive interpretation insights derived from the resulting seismic images using our advanced AI suite. The scale and complexity of this data demand exceptional computing capabilities, software, middleware, power, and storage, all optimized for the immense data and high throughput HPC requirements, something only Viridien can deliver effectively. Off-the-shelf commercial platforms and cloud solutions simply cannot handle seismic images with the efficiency, precision, and scale that we provide.
Ultimately, our seismic imaging expertise, powered by bespoke high-performance computing, remains a key competitive advantage. We continue to build on these strengths to further expand our market presence and deliver unmatched value to our clients. Now turning onto slide 12 for the Earth Data performance review. Q2 2025 revenue declined 8% year- on- year, following a strong Q1 2025. Overall, as expected, multi-client performance for H1 2025 is relatively flat with H1 2024. In Q2, we started two surveys involving OBN acquisitions, one in Norway and another in the U.S. Gulf, with good pre-funding. We remain confident in the outlook for our multi-client business, supported by the strength of our modern, strategically focused data library and the relevance of our new projects, both in terms of industry alignment and commercial potential.
As of the end of June 2025, our library's net book value stood at $508 million, primarily composed of recent, technologically advanced data sets. These are concentrated in our core basins, the three most active offshore regions for our clients: offshore Norway, offshore Brazil, and the U.S. Gulf. I'm now on slide 13. Earlier, I mentioned our disciplined approach to multi-client project investment. The Brazilian equatorial margin is a prime example of our prudent and strategic entry into emerging basins. Located offshore in the north and northeast Brazil, this region is highly prospective, with a petroleum system analogous to the prolific Guyana Surinam Basin, one of the most active exploration hotspots in recent years. Viridien is among the few players with existing data coverage in this area, and we currently hold the largest footprint.
The region is drawing strong interest, particularly from Petrobras, which has designated it as a priority in its five-year exploration plan. Recent Brazilian licensing rounds also confirm growing interest for both international and national oil companies. In short, this is a commercially attractive basin. As it remains in the early stages of exploration, we are proactively securing partnerships to support our upcoming multi-client projects. This collaborative approach allows us to share risk and optimize capital expenditure while positioning ourselves for long-term success. Now moving on to slide 14, covering Sensing and Monitoring performance. In Q2 2025, SMO revenue grew by 14% year- on- year, reaching $93 million. This growth was primarily driven by strong land activity, supported by sustained commercial momentum. Notably, we delivered significant volumes of our WiNG nodal systems in South America and 508 cabled systems in the MENA region.
Among our SMO new businesses, infrastructure monitoring recorded double-digit growth, while our Marlin offshore logistics solution achieved encouraging early commercial traction, including a contract signed with ONGC, as announced earlier in the quarter. We remain confident in the outlook for SMO, underpinned by our large install base and the globally recognized quality and reliability of our products and solutions. Our restructuring plan is progressing well, with implementation completed in France during Q2. The positive impact of these efforts is already reflected in SMO's financial performance. On slide 15, I'd like to highlight a major milestone achieved by our SEC. At the EAG conference in Toulouse this June, which is an important industry conference, we officially launched Accel, the world's first drop-only land node. This breakthrough innovation is the result of years of close collaboration with clients, extensive field experience, and focused R&D.
Accel is purpose-built to enhance operational performance in desert environments and high productivity surveys, enabling clients to reduce operating costs up to 30%. Its drop-only deployment method is the fastest ever introduced, significantly improving the efficiency of seismic campaigns, which are amongst the most logistically and resource-intensive operations in the industry. We are already seeing a strong client interest in this two-step change in onshore acquisition, which is setting a new benchmark for the sector and reinforcing Viridien's leadership in seismic technology innovation. With this, I hand over to Jerome, who will take you through the financial performance review.
Thank you, Sophie. Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. I'm now on slide 17. As Sophie has already provided a detailed overview of the activity this quarter, I won't go into too much detail here. Overall, in H1 2025, we generated total segment revenue of $575 million, up 8% year- on- year. In digital data and energy transition, our DD segments, which include geoscience and Earth Data businesses, segment revenue reached about $400 million, up 9% compared to H1 2024. Meanwhile, Sensing and Monitoring delivered $180 million of revenues over the H1 period, representing a 6% increase year- on -year. Turning to slide 18, a few words on profitability. Group segment-adjusted EBITDA reached $250 million in H1 2025, up 25% year- on -year, or $50 million more than H1 2024. This solid performance was mostly driven by our DD segment, where margin exceeded 60%, up 500 basis points.
DD delivered $40 million of incremental EBITDA, thanks to a higher geoscience activity with strong margin conversion, and secondly, reduced penalties in EBITDA down to $12 million from $25 million last year, following the end of our vessel contractual agreement in January. Regarding our Sensing and Monitoring division, they contributed to the remaining $10 million EBITDA increase. Margin approached 15%, up 5 points versus last year, and at EBIT level, we are not far from reaching 10%. This reflects both higher revenue and the positive impact of the transformation plan launched 18 months ago, which generated about $8 million in extra EBITDA in H1 2025. Finally, corporate costs slightly decreased, showing continuous cost discipline across all the groups. Moving to slide 19. Here, we do report the IFRS figures for the period.
As you can see, the IFRS 15 adjustment is significant this year, minus $83 million on revenues and EBITDA in H1 2025 versus plus $34 million in H1 2024. This adjustment mainly relates in H1 2025 to our ongoing surveys in the U.S. Gulf and Norway. As a reminder, IFRS 15 requires EARL Data revenues to be recognized only upon delivery of processed data, deferring pre-funding revenue and margin of ongoing surveys. This is different from our segment reporting, where we continue using the percentage of completion methodology, which better reflects our business activity and cash generation of the division. Also worth noting on this slide, the cost of debt remains pretty stable post-refinancing in March 2025.
Despite higher coupons due to the increased risk-free rates, this was partly offset by lower spreads thanks to our improved credit rating and a reduced bond nominal consistent with the deleverage path we started two years ago. In other financial income, the minus $34 million mainly reflects the non-call premium from the March 2025 refinancing, along with unfavorable FX impacts. Moving on to slide 20 and how all this translates into cash flow. As you can see, we generated $10 million of cumulated net cash flow in H1 2025, including $30 million in Q2 alone. Just as a reminder, as defined in our annual report, net cash flow includes financial charges that exclude one-off costs related to the March 2025 refinancing operation.
Now, if we look at the bridge between H1 2024, where we generated net cash of $24 million, and H1 2025 at $10 million, there are two key elements that more than offset the $55 million gain in EBITDA. The first one, H1 2024 benefited from a one-off of $38 million cash inflow coming from the settlement of a 10-year-old litigation with ONGC, the Indian National Oil Company. While this was partly offset by the fixed part of our vessel commitment incurred last year, it still leaves a net gap of $31 million when comparing both periods. The second effect is a significant negative change in working capital in H1 2025, mainly due to the overdue receivables from Pemex, the Mexican National Oil Company, totaling around $50 million at the end of June.
Note that we are actively pursuing options to monetize part of this exposure, and as a base case, we expect to recover at least half by further. A quick word on our debt, which is on slide 21. As you know, we successfully refinanced our bond at the end of March 2025, with good timing considering the volatility that followed. We issued two senior secured notes, one in USD and one in Euro, replacing the existing one. The USD note is now $450 million versus $500 million previously, and the Euro note is $475 million versus $585 million previously, reducing the total nominal value as mentioned earlier.
Maturity was extended till October 2030, i.e., about five and a half years from now. The refinancing was well received, with three times oversubscription and strong demand from a broad-based international investor. As of June 30, 2025, our net debt stood at $997 million, carrying about $80 million of negative FX impact versus December 2024. We also maintained strong liquidity, with $162 million in cash in hand, as well as $100 million of undrawn RCF at the end of the semester and the $25 million ancillary facility, which is half drawn. With that, I will hand it back over to Sophie.
Thank you, Jerome. I am now on slide 23 to share some perspective. The oil price environment has been volatile in recent months, but the commodity remains above $60 a barrel, which we consider a general equilibrium point for the industry. In this context, oil and gas companies have largely maintained the exploration and production and development path, especially in our core segment, offshore market, and business with major industry players. Assuming no major disruption to the current environment, we approach H2 2025 with confidence, given our active client discussions and continued operational discipline. We are supported in particular by a solid backlog in geoscience, upcoming licensing rounds that should sustain our multi-client activity, and continued broad-based demand in Sensing and Monitoring, especially for land submission. We reaffirm our target of generating around $100 million in net cash flow for the full year of 2025.
To conclude, slide 24 recaps the key elements of the Viridien investment case. Viridien continues to perform reliably, supported by the strength of our team, our technology leadership, our asset-light approach, and focus on operational efficiency. These competitive advantages support our ability to grow profitably and generate consistent cash flow from operations. We remain firmly on track on our overall deliveraging journey, while responsibly preparing for the future to ensure the group's long-term sustainability. Thank you all for attending the Q2 2025 call and for your attention today. We will now open the floor for questions, and the operator, please start the questions over the phone.
Thank you. To ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. We will now go to your first question. One moment, please. Your first question today comes from the line of Guillaume Delaby from AnglaisPrépa . Please go ahead.
Yes, good afternoon, Sophie and Jerome. Three questions for Jerome regarding the cash flow statement. First, on slide 20, can you remind us why the cost of debt in Q2 2025 is only negative $1 million? This is my first question. On slide 20, cost of debt for Q2 2025 is...
Yes, because as part of the refinancing, we paid our interest cost in Q1, and that's basically the...
Okay. Second question, the increase in debt comes from, I would say, mainly from the negative foreign exchanging impact on your bond. I think this is correct.
Correct, yes. At the net debt level, there is about $80 million of forex impact between December 2024 and June 2025. December 2024, $1.04 on the euro to dollar exchange rate, June 2025, $1.17. That's a massive depreciation of the dollar as well.
Okay. Third point, in your $100 million free cash flow guidance, you expect to cash back half of the Pemex receivable. I think Pemex is currently being refinanced through a $12 billion program. Qualitatively or quantitatively speaking, do you feel today slightly more confident in your $100 million free cash flow guidance, or I will turn over?
I mean, we reaffirmed our cash flow target. Yes, we are confident in reaching this $100 million. As we said, we are proactively pursuing different options for the collection of this Pemex overdue, the first one being chasing Pemex itself, and the other alternative is for reverse factoring and factoring scheme that we are discussing actively with.
Very clear. That's it, Jerome. I'll turn it over.
Thank you, Guillaume.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Jean-Luc Romain from CIC Market Solutions. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Two questions on SMO. First, on your potential of Accel, do you see this as a new 408 or 428 acquisition system in terms of potential revenue? Second, on the marine revenue, it's striking that over the last few years, the marine revenue has never quite recovered. Do you see any inflection point, or do you see the marine market at definitely, I wouldn't say lost, but difficult?
Okay. Thank you, Jean-Luc, and good evening. Two questions on Accel potential. I think it has a huge potential. It will certainly, with time, start replacing the revenue from the cable system. Right now, we have a large install base, mostly of the cable system, and we do continue to sell those, complement and replace some of the existing install base. For the future, the market is moving towards node systems because they're more flexible and probably cheaper to operate. We believe we have a very strong value proposition with the system. What I could tell you is that the system will preserve our margins, right? We've worked it out that on the cost side, we can deliver the same amount of or more margins that we've been delivering with the cable systems.
It does have very strong potential because that install base, which is the case of marine, by the way, is aging. Eventually, clients will be switching. Those who want switching are buying replacement parts, but eventually, there will be a gradual shift too. I do expect a ramp-up abundant with this Accel system. On the marine side, what drove the revenue the last few years was the equipment with acquisition company equipping themselves with OBN, ocean bottom node, in shallow water, very, very much driven by the large campaign in the Middle East. In a way, we have saturated the market with those shallow water OBN. I think the acquisition company has what they need for their projected activity in the next few years or so.
The next opportunity to ramp up with OBN will be with deepwater OBN, which is eventually going to be becoming more active because the basin, the deep ocean in the world, offshore, are very much deep water. The acquisition company will be needing eventually more deepwater OBN to respond to the needs. There are Chinese companies, acquisition companies that want to enter that market. That's another additional opportunity to sell deepwater OBN. We're targeting that market for the marine. As always, we think there will be some, and there is already, and we sell some streamers as a replacement. Not a high volume because, as you know, the number of vessels has been down. We do sell some streamer replacements. The big numbers and changes you've seen over the last few years have been driven by that OBN.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of John Olaisen from ABG Sundal Collier. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good evening and thanks for taking my question. Maybe my first question goes to Sophie. Some other oil service companies like SLB, Halliburton, and Baker Hughes have expressed weakness in the outlook for the second half, in particular for short cycle markets, which arguably your industry is. Your outlook comments seem to be more optimistic than some of your peers have expressed. Is that correctly interpreted?
Hi, good evening, John. To a certain extent, it is because if you start digging into where the softness was, a lot of it was North America. A lot of it was Mexico and Saudi Arabia. Those are markets where we don't see similar softness. We're not as exposed as they are to those markets. In general, we are in markets offshore, deepwater, where our clients, which is you're talking here at national oil companies that have a long-term view or large IOCs, are definitely taking a longer-term perspective to exploration and development. In general, we see more stability. Arguably, if you look at the history of BNP Capex, our subsector, our sector has been the one most affected by previous cuts. What we're seeing right now is the cuts are going more into other bits of the value chain and the drilling, certainly less land, the drilling, and driven by some of the clients, some of the NOCs, and particularly in Mexico, Saudi Arabia.
How do you see the general market then for the second half? Is it flattish or is it even improving? What's your general?
I think I would call it flattish, and that's my comment is saying that as clients are starting to arbitrate. First of all, we're 2025. Most clients have been asking whether they're going to deal with their E&P CapEx this year. Pretty much the answer has been we're keeping course. Some of them are saying we're going, we're shooting to the low end brackets that they have given. Generally, they are staying the course. We're seeing that stability in 2025, with here and there some delayed decisions. There are the positive side, and we have some lease runs, and there are some external factors that are sustaining our activity. Now, going into 2026 could be a bit of a different story. It depends on the outlook of oil price for next year.
As you've seen, the Q2 results from our clients have been softer because the oil price for Q2 was lower. It really depends on what assumptions they're going to be making for 2026. If the oil price is $60, I expect a bit of softness. If it remains at $65, $70, right now it's $72, it should be really a continuation and even go up in the scenario where the oil price is staying at above $70. It depends. They're working through it, and their budgets are starting now. We'll have a better view in Q3, Q4.
If I look at the mix in the Q2 numbers, multi-client or Earth Data sales were down year- on- year, while the imaging business was very strong. Is that something you continue to expect to see in the second half?
John, you know this industry quite well. You cannot read into a quarter. It is a very, there's a lot of cut-off effect. First of all, I would advocate you to look at the multi-client over H1. If you look at H1, actually, our after-sales, which is literally the ninth indicator, is actually up year on year. It might be down. There's been a very strong Q1. It's a bit of phasing here. I wouldn't read too much Q2 to project into the second half, given especially there are some important licensing rounds that should help drive our business. I did not mention that maybe in addition to that, there's a couple of transfer fees that should be helpful too.
The transfer fee, I guess the biggest potential is from Chevron's acquisition of Hess. Is it possible to give to me an indication of what timing of the transfer fees and kind of like the size of it, what potential, how big could it potentially be for you?
I would say the timing would definitely be this year. Actually, I'd like it to be earlier in Q2. It should be because they closed the deal and they want to be able to move on. We don't disclose the size. There's a second deal that is happening right now, which is a new repo in the Northeast. Between those two, we do expect a sort of an average or a reasonable average level of transfer fees.
Say again, please.
It's NEO, Repsol. If you remember, Repsol is going to move U.K. assets into NEO.
Did you say something about this potential size of the transfer?
Yeah, it is. This is happening as we speak. The size of the magnitude of the transfer is being evaluated, and there are discussions with clients. It depends really on how much they decide to take on in terms of data, how much overlap there might be between the two companies. There are a lot of factors coming into it, and we haven't landed the numbers.
All right. My final question is back to the question about the net cash flow. Of course, your report, the net interest-bearing debt increased by $76 million in the first half, which is roughly the same as the currency impact of $80 million. I guess on top of this, as Jerome commented on, you had the cost related to the refinancing. Is it possible to say how much those costs were.
For the refinancing?
Yeah.
Yes. We had about $20 million of non-call costs for calling the bond earlier than their maturity. On top, we had another $20 million, a bit above $20 million for advisor fees, including the banks which are issuing the two bonds. All in all, about $40 million.
According to your definition, in this first half, you generated a net cash flow of about $40 million. Is that a correct interpretation? The second half should be about $60 million to get to the $100 million for the year. Is that the correct interpretation?
The net cash flow, by definition, excludes the cost of the refinancing. The $10 million excludes those costs. To get to the $100 million target, we need to generate $90 million in H2. How do we go from $10 million in H1 to $90 million in H2? As Sophie just explained to you, we expect a stable environment that supports the activity level. That being said, the cash will benefit from four elements between H1 and H2. First, the traditional seasonality that we have between the two semesters. Just to give you an example, we pay our bonuses in Q1. It's a significant number. We're talking $20+ million that we pay to our employees in Q1.
The second effect is the penalty that was incurred in January, which was the end of the contract for $12 million, and in H2, we'll have zero. As I mentioned, H1 was impacted by the working capital buildup linked to the overuse of Pemex. We said we are confident to a partial reduction of this working capital and a partial magnification of this overdue. The final element is CapEx for our library, which we anticipate to be slightly lower than H1. All those four elements give us confidence that we can generate a much more sizable net cash flow in H2 rather than H1.
Just so I got it right, you expect about $90 million in net cash flow in the second half. That should mean that the net interest-bearing debt should be about $900 million at the year-end 2025. Correct? Are there other costs?
No, that's correct.
At constant FX, yes.
Yeah, it should be about $900 million.
You have the accrued interest, I think, on top, but I mean.
Yes.
What do I have on top? I'm sorry.
The accrued interest at the end of December, because we pay our debt as per the bond documentation in March and end of October.
All right. Will that have any, I don't see how that can negatively affect your.
More or less half of your Q1 interest costs for us on the 12th of 2025.
Okay. Thanks a lot for taking my questions. Have a great rest of the summer. Thank you.
Thank you. Bye.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Kévin Roger from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi. Good evening. Thanks for taking the question. I would have two, please. The first one is maybe on your strategy regarding CapEx on new multi-client survey and nodes, referring to the fact, for example, that during their conference call and earnings presentation, one of your peer and partner, TGS, mentioned that their partner was participating with less CapEx to the new survey. From what I understand, La Cogna in the Gulf of Mexico is probably one of the key examples where it seems that your participation to the project is now close to 30%. I was wondering, in terms of strategic investment and the tech that you're going to take in new multi-client survey, how should we think about your positioning inside the industry with those, in a way, examples that we had from TGS a few weeks ago?
The second one is on geoscience that continues to be one of the very strong performance units for you. You still continue to increase the number of petaflops. You are now close to 600. It has been a massive increase over the past year. At the end, can you again give us a bit of color on how much petaflop you need for external revenue, but also for internal research and development, etc., and where you want to go for the petaflop capacity at the group of Viridien, please?
Thank you, and good evening, Kevin. First, your question on the multi-client CapEx. As I was explaining, we have a portfolio approach, right? We have the three buckets. The repro is one where we look at data where we can add value. We look at the core basins and how we extend that footprint. We look at strategically positioning and potentially frontier basins in the future, like we did the NEO work, for example. I was giving the example of Northeast Brazil. The other dimension to that is the partnership. More and more, and I did comment on that in the past, we're looking for partnership because it helps manage the risk of the portfolio. We do this opportunistically. In that case, there was an opportunity to do and willingness to do that.
We need to do two or three to be able to do that, and where each of the parties sees the benefit for doing it. I'd say you will continue to see us managing our portfolio, investing in the different types of investments. Some are more risky, some are less risky, and continuing to look for partnership on an opportunistic basis to manage the portfolio risk. There is not one strategy. It's a bit of a case-by-case basis and on our appreciation of the project and the appetite for other partners to join forces. The second one of geoscience, there's not an exact science to it. When I joined the company 12 years ago, we had 30 petaflops, and I thought 30 was an extremely high number. Now we're 600. The petaflop follows the need for more computing as we advance technology.
It goes hand in hand with advancing technology, providing value to the client because that's the bit you need to be checking, making sure you can charge for it, and then you can deliver value to the client. We gradually increase it hand in hand. If we test the market and see that the technology advances bring value to the clients, and the clients are willing to use that technology, we'll continue incrementing that petaflop. Keep in mind that our computing is highly optimized. Perhaps to do what we do, if you took someone that didn't optimize their computing power, maybe they'd need two, three, or four, or five times more power. It's a big number. The number in absolute terms doesn't mean completely everything, all of it, because it is, again, highly specialized and highly optimized for what we do. Where is it going?
My suspect is as technologies continue to advance, as we're being more and more precise in what we could deliver using more advanced algorithms, more advanced definition and precision, we'll equal across the thousand petaflops in the next few years, is my guess. We do have a multi-year plan that eventually takes us there. I can't tell you today when because there's a cost associated to it. We need to make sure, as we do that, that we can deliver the value and charge for it in the market.
Okay. Thanks for all those, color.
Sure. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Baptiste Lebacq from Oddo BHF. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good evening, everybody. Just two very quick questions, I guess, from my side. The first one is a technical one regarding Accel and your, let's say, industrial footprint. Do you need to increase your, let's say, capacity? In other words, do you need to put some additional CapEx if there is a strong acceleration of demands? Still, on the technical side, is it a solution with no cables between the different nodes? The second question, Sophie, you mentioned, let's say, the resilience of national oil companies. Could you give us a split of your, let's say, I don't know, cells in DDA, for example, between NOC, IOCs, and independent? Thank you.
Okay. Thank you and good evening, Baptiste. In Accel, what makes it different is it's a node, and a node meaning it's independent, it's by itself. What that allows you to do, first of all, it's super small. You can put it in a backpack and you can drop it. That makes a huge difference from the past. The nodes in the past had to be planted in the ground, and that increased the operation. It was heavier operations. This one is smaller. It can be put in a backpack. A person can be walking and just dropping the node. That's what makes it different. As I was saying, the market is generally shifting from cable system, when the sensors were connected between each other through cables, to just independent nodes that are sitting on the floor. That's the technical side of Accel.
There's really an impressive value proposition, and the clients are reacting very well to that. The NOCs, they've always been in our mix, and sometimes they go up and they go down. In general, I would say they represent somewhere, if I look at DDE, somewhere around 20%- 30% of our revenue, and it could vary. SMO is we don't sell to E&P companies. We sell to acquisition companies. I'd say in SMO, our exposure to NOC is even higher because eventually, we're selling to acquisition companies that are very much operated in countries that are NOC-driven, like the Middle East, the Stan, India, South America. In the DDE side, it's much more balanced between the different client profiles. Probably to make it simple, probably a third IOCs, a third or 20%- 30% in large independents, and then national oil companies. We work with everyone.
I think that is your question on the manufacturing footprint and the impact of Accel. There is no impact. The way we manufacture this product, like any other product for Accel, is a mix of in-house manufacturing and outsourcing to our suppliers. In-house is usually the electronics, and we have the capacity to do another product like Accel in-house.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one and one on your telephone. That is star one and one if you would like to ask a question. We will now go to your next question, which is a follow-up question from the line of Jean-Luc Romain from CIC Market Solutions. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you. Just to follow up, Accel, you know in the U.S., that was the digital law administration, he calls it. Do you see a renewed or do you estimate there could be renewed interest in carbon capture and any seismic for carbon capture projects as the credits have been extended or something?
Yes, Jean-Luc, I'll take that one. It's actually, if anything, right now, we're seeing a slowdown in the CCUS space. A lot of those projects were driven by the traditional oil and gas clients. They just are arbitrating more toward oil and gas. If you remember throughout the downturn and the energy transition or the COVID era, where energy transition became more important, they cut more of their E&P CapEx and created money, carved out money for the low carbon and other initiatives. Right now, what we're seeing is a little bit the opposite, where oil and gas is being preserved more than the carbon sequestration project. If anything, we're seeing, in general, a slowdown in that space. Things are being delayed.
Thank you.
Sure.
Thank you. There are currently no further phone questions. I will hand the call back to Sophie.
Thank you very much. I appreciate you taking the time in the really, really busy time of the year and for the good questions, and wish everyone a good break, summer break, and we'll see you in September.
Thank you, everybody. Have a good night.
Bye.
Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.