Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and good afternoon. Welcome to this presentation of CGG's third quarter 2022 results. The call today is hosted from Paris, where Mrs. Sophie Zurquiyah, our Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Yuri Baidoukov, our Group CFO, will provide an overview of the quarter results, as well as provide comments on our outlook. Let me remind you that some of the information contains forward-looking statements subject to risk and uncertainties. Following the overview of the quarter, we will be pleased to take your questions, and now I will turn the call over to Sophie.
Thank you, Christophe, and good morning and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for participating in this Q3 2022 conference call. Let me start with a few comments on the macro environment. With the combination of continued under-investment in exploration and production, strengthening of global energy demand, and the heightened level of geopolitical uncertainty that has emphasized the importance of energy security, we are seeing positive market signals worldwide and are increasingly confident that our industry is entering a favorable multi-year upcycle. As always, when entering an upcycle, all markets do not react at the same speed, and today's unique macro environment has created an unusually high degree of volatility across our client base and across the regions where we operate. In 2022, the North American market was strong, while Latin America, Europe, and Asia lagged.
The Middle East began ramping up, but multiple seismic projects were delayed to 2023. We also saw similar variants across our client base. Independent and private companies reacted first with a progressive increase in their exploration activity, while NOCs maintained their activity levels. In contrast, IOCs continued to focus on shorter-term shareholder returns, energy transition, production levels, and infrastructure-led exploration. Overall, this shaped 2022 into a year of transition for CGG as we began to see the strengthening commercial activity around our core businesses and established our beyond the core technology and growth businesses with some key pilots and commercial successes. The underlying fundamentals are more and more clear, and I'm increasingly confident in our path forward. Energy transition will be a long process with demand for energy and the requirement for energy security both increasing.
With this, the responsible exploration, development, and production of oil and gas must play a key role going forward. We see this in action as governments globally move forward with further developing their resources, including U.K., North Sea, Norway, the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, and Brazil. Offshore activity is picking up again worldwide, Middle East onshore is growing, and Asia Pacific is starting to recover. The underlying industry fundamentals are favorable to CGG despite the business variability and volatility that we saw from our client in 2022, as they took different paths to address market conditions. Demand for our technologies, and especially our subsurface imaging, is becoming increasingly more important for energy companies to effectively optimize their investments, not only for traditional oil and gas prospects, but also for energy transition, including CCUS.
Our core basins of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, Brazil, U.K., Norway, and U.S. land remain the priority for a majority of E&P companies and will receive a big share of the budget increases. Acquisition contract prices, particularly marine, are going up, which should strengthen acquisition companies and allow them to renew their equipment. There is more visibility on long-term land contracts in North Africa, Middle East, and Asia, supported by NOCs that will require new land equipment. Order intake for geoscience was up 37% year-on-year, and SMO order intake was down 6%, but the level of commercial bids is at a historically high level going back to 2016.
Despite this high level of commercial interest and activity going forward, Q3 2022 was soft, mainly as our Earth Data and Sensing & Monitoring businesses saw several contracts and projects shift from Q3 to Q4 and to 2023. Our group 2022 top line is expected to remain flat year-on-year, with 18% growth in DDE offset by lower revenue in SMO. our 2022 EBITDA should increase pro forma year-on-year by around 15% with a higher margin, which is now expected to be around 42%. More importantly, 2022 free EBITDA is expected to be broadly in line with original guidance. As the market, industry, and CGG have progressed through this year of transition, I have become increasingly confident that we are entering a multi-year upcycle and that CGG will benefit from the increased activity as we move forward.
We'll move now on slide five. After this general overview, let's review the third quarter in more detail. In Q3, CGG saw volatility result in lower financial performance. Segment revenue was EUR 217 million. Segment EBITDA was EUR 77 million, a 35% margin. Q3 segment revenue was lower than anticipated as some EDA pre-funding revenue and SMO projects slipped to Q4 and into 2023. Q3 net cash flow before EUR 19 million M&A cash cost was -EUR 59 million, including EUR 14 million negative change in working capital. At the end of September, net cash flow was -EUR 65 million, including EUR 37 million M&A. In 2022, our CapEx was additional EUR 60 million. We have already invested 90% of our EDA CapEx at the end of September.
We also significantly increased the inventory of SMO product, consuming an additional EUR 17 million cash since the beginning of the year to be ready for the large upcoming tenders for land and OBM equipment that are expected to be delivered in 2023. Moving on to slide 7. Q3 DDE segment revenue was lower this quarter at EUR 131 million, down 16% pro forma year-on-year, with growth in Geoscience offset by a decrease in Earth Data due to lower pre-funding. At the end of September, our core businesses continued to gradually recover as markets strengthened. Year-to-date DDE revenue climbed 30% pro forma year-on-year. As a result, DDE profitability for the first nine months is up significantly with a solid 58% EBITDA margin and a 29% operating income margin, driven mainly by strong recovery in multi-client after-sales. Slide eight, with Geoscience.
Geoscience external revenue was EUR 69 million in Q3, up 8% pro forma, and year-to-date revenue was EUR 214 million, up 19% pro forma compared to last year. We continue to anticipate high single-digit growth for geoscience in 2022 and in line with our expectations. Overall, the geoscience KPIs are progressing as expected in the increasingly solid market worldwide with high demand for our technologies. We also see the full effect of efficiency gains in our revenue per head metric. Slide nine. Commercial activity is increasing worldwide. Total geoscience dollar order intake was up 37% pro forma year-on-year during the period of January to September 2022. While activity initially picked up in North America in the second half of last year, we now see increasing commercial activity in Europe, Middle East, and Asia.
In addition, Europe demand is also driven by our beyond the core businesses, including our Data Hub technology and Earth Data for CCUS projects. The picture on this slide is a horizontal depth slice through the subsurface. It shows ancient buried river systems with greater precision than the industry has ever seen before. CGG's advanced Full Waveform Inversion technology can resolve not only the larger river channels, but also the much smaller tributaries and streams that fed these rivers. Of course, these old rivers and streams are now filled with rock, which can sometimes be a hazard for drilling or an excellent target for hydrocarbons. Being able to see them this clearly brings significant benefit to our clients. Now on slide ten. The success of CGG is built on technology differentiation.
Our unique elastic full waveform inversion, which was developed by our scientists for complex geology and challenging reservoir development, is the most recent example of this differentiation and the commercial success it drives. Full waveform inversion imaging not only gives improved resolution of shallow heterogeneities, but it also increases certainty with respect to their true locations in the subsurface. These finer details enable our clients to de-risk drilling and optimally position their wells. On this picture, it is important to note that the results between the left and the right side are coming from the exact same dataset recorded years ago. Initially developed to solve critical Gulf of Mexico challenges, elastic full waveform inversion is now applied outside North America. As an example, this picture is from offshore Brazil, where, as you know, pre-salt geology is complex and the application of the most advanced technology can bring significant value.
Looking forward, with recent advancement in elastic full waveform inversion, it may be possible soon to quantitatively provide further rock property information directly to our clients, reducing time frames and increasing the accuracy of interpretations. Moving on to slide 11. Our highly specialized and therefore highly cost performance HPC capacity has been a key enabler for the continuous release of our new technologies. Often, this technology advance and differentiation requires orders of magnitude more compute power and hence a unique and specialized solution. Today, we operate three main data centers in Houston, London, and Singapore that are interconnected and form our CGG cloud. We continue upgrading HPC capabilities to mainly serve our geoscience activities, but also to ensure our CGG cloud can be leveraged by our clients as we continue to build our beyond the core businesses. Currently, we're constructing a new HPC hub in Southeast England.
It is progressing as planned and expected to be operational in the third quarter of 2023. The building of this new data center in the UK also gives us the opportunity to use 100% green renewable energy, improving our electricity power usage efficiency ratio and contributing to our greenhouse gas emissions reduction. Our company's high-end technology business profile, along with our low carbon intensity footprint and our continuous reduction, have been recognized by agencies. Only two oilfield service companies, including CGG, have achieved a double A rating with MSCI. With an index of 17.9, CGG is also ranked number two by Sustainalytics among 113 energy service companies. Finally, Gaïa Rating recently further improved the rating of CGG from 54 last year to 65 in 2022. We're proud of our ESG leadership and achievements to date and are committed to reaching our goals.
We'll move now to slide 11 with Earth Data. In Q3, as in Q2, we had a total of 3 vessels acquiring data on our programs. Two vessels were working in the Norwegian North Sea, and one vessel was working offshore Brazil. Pre-funding revenue was low at EUR 19 million, as some pre-funding of our North Sea multi-client program shifted to Q4. For the full year, we expect the pre-funding level to be in the range of 60%-70%, lower than usual, but we're confident that we will catch up in 2023. Earth Data after sales were EUR 43 million this quarter, up 32% year-on-year, sustained by sales in South America, U.S. Gulf of Mexico, and the North Sea. This is consistent with the overall trend during the year, with our year-to-date after sales increasing by 2.3x versus 2021.
Historically, after sales have been a good trend indicator for the business. Moving on to slide 13. Most of our CapEx goes towards our core basins. In 2022, 90% of our annual CapEx was already spent at the end of September, compared to 78% last year. The acquisition phase of our Antares project offshore Brazil will be completed by the end of November. The acquisition of our 2022 North Viking Graben East-West + nodes program offshore Norway is also completed. In addition, we made a modest investment in Suriname through a consortium to position in an emerging basin. The image on this slide shows the large footprint of our North Viking Graben programs and the perimeter of our hybrid streamer node acquisition program. By adding nodes to streamer acquisition, we're able to build a much better velocity model in a much more cost-effective way.
Interest remains high in the upper rounds, which supports our investment in Norway. The U.S. government has restarted lease sales in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, which is very positive news for our industry. Now on slide 14. I mentioned during our Q2 conference call that we continue to expand our data offering to address energy transition, especially for CCUS and mining. On this slide, you can see a map of our CCUS Gulf of Mexico program, which has industry funding. The study includes natural CO2 sources, well locations, and well logs. All data are from the public domain. The Viridien team of experts have applied machine learning and deep domain expertise to clean, process, interpret, and integrate the various data types to help our clients accelerate their understanding of the CO2 storage potential in this area. Moving on to slide 15 now with Sensing and Monitoring.
Our Sensing & Monitoring segment revenue was EUR 86 million, down 15% year-on-year. Thanks to a favorable product mix, EBITDA was at EUR 15 million with a 17% margin, the same margin as Q3 2021, despite lower revenue. We anticipate Q4 2022 sales to be similar to Q3, as several orders and client projects, either in backlog or in negotiation, have flipped to 2023, including the Saudi mega-crew. During 2022, SMO manufacturing activity has been quite high, building a large inventory of land and OBM equipment in advance of the large land and OBM tenders planned for delivery in 2023 in the Middle East and North Africa. In 2023, SMO activity is anticipated to increase significantly on the back of orders in backlog, contribution from recently acquired companies, and large upcoming Middle East projects. Now on slide 16.
During the quarter, land equipment sales represented 58% of total sales. We delivered land WiNG nodes and over 100,000 508XT channels. Marine equipment sales represented 28% of total sales, driven by deliveries of GPR300 OBM nodes. Sales from beyond the core businesses in SMO were EUR 6 million, sustained mainly by the defense sector. Also, during the quarter, we finalized the acquisition of the software division of ION Geophysical for a total price of EUR 19 million. After the acquisition of Geocomp at the beginning of June, which is a beachhead to our diversification into the high-growth U.S. market for infrastructure monitoring, the acquisition of ION software also brings diversification opportunities, thanks notably to the Marlin Simultaneous Marine Operations Management software. Now on slide 17. Infrastructure monitoring is the largest opportunity for the beyond the core diversification strategy of SMO.
It is a EUR 2 billion market which is expected to be growing at a CAGR of 14% for the next five years. The aim is to leverage SMO's high-definition wireless sensors and data aggregation and processing expertise to deliver full solutions for the monitoring of large infrastructures. Recently, SMO performed a very successful test of a cable-stayed bridge in the U.S. that was instrumented with S-lynks sensors and a system. As a result, the Sercel's S-lynks system was technically validated by the client, which will open doors for future sales. I will now give the floor to Yuri for more financial highlights.
Thank you, Sophie. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and good morning. I will comment the Q3 2022 financial results. Slide 19, Q3 2022 income statement. Let me comment the overall Q3 activity. Segment revenue was EUR 217 million, down 20% and down 16% pro forma year-on-year. The respective contributions from the groups of businesses were 32% from Geoscience, 28% from Earth Data, 60% for the DDE segment, and 40% from Sensing and Monitoring. Segment EBITDA was EUR 77 million, down 35% year-on-year at 35% margin due to unfavorable business mix. Adjusted segment EBITDA was EUR 75 million. Data, Digital & Energy Transition segment EBITDA was EUR 64 million at 49% margin, and adjusted segment EBITDA was EUR 66 million at high 50% margin.
SMO segment EBITDA was EUR 18 million at 21% margin, and adjusted segment EBITDA was EUR 15 million at 17% margin. Segment operating income was EUR 25 million at 12% margin, and adjusted segment operating income was EUR 24 million. IFRS 15 adjustment at operating income level was EUR 2 million and IFRS operating income after IFRS 15 adjustment was EUR 28 million. Cost of financial debt was EUR 24 million. Taxes were EUR 4 million. Net loss from continuing operations was EUR 1 million. Group net loss this quarter was EUR 2 million compared with a net loss of EUR 16 million a year ago. After minority interest, group net income attributable to CGG shareholders was $2 million, EUR 1 million. Simplified cash flow on slide 20.
Segment operating cash flow was EUR 77 million before EUR 40 million negative change in working capital and provisions mainly related to the SMO business. Total CapEx was EUR 82 million, with industrial CapEx at EUR 6 million, research and development CapEx at EUR 4 million, and Earth Data cash CapEx at $72 million. Segment free cash flow was -EUR 45 million before EUR 19 million of acquisition cash costs mainly related to the acquisition of ION's software business. After EUR 16 million of M&A costs, EUR 11 million of lease repayments, +EUR 1 million free cash flow from discontinued operations, and -EUR 7 million negative cash flow related to CGG 2021 plan cash costs. The net cash flow was -EUR 78 million this quarter. Excluding M&A cash costs and change in working capital, it was -EUR 22 million. Slide 21, group balance sheet and capital structure.
Group's liquidity amounted to EUR 325 million at the end of September 2022, and included cash liquidity of EUR 225 million and EUR 100 million of undrawn RCF. Group gross debt before IFRS 15 was EUR 1.11 billion, and net debt was EUR 889 million. Group gross debt after IFRS 16 was EUR 1.2 billion, and net debt was EUR 976 million. Our debt structure had EUR 1.07 billion of high-yield bonds due in 2027, EUR 87 million of lease liabilities, EUR 41 million accrued interest, and EUR 3 million bank loans. Segment leverage ratio of net debt to adjusted segment EBITDA was 2.5x at the end of September 2022. Capital employed was EUR 2 billion, slightly up from the end of December 2021.
Net working capital after IFRS 15 was EUR 212 million, down from EUR 229 million at the end of September 2021. Primarily driven by significant reduction in net accounts receivable, lower deferred revenue liability from IFRS 15, the increase in accounts payable, and reduction in personnel liabilities, partially offset by a significant decrease in inventories in SMO. Goodwill was stable at EUR 1.1 billion, corresponding to 55% of total capital employed. Multi-client library net book value after IFRS 15 was up at EUR 449 million, including EUR 421 million of marine and EUR 28 million of land net book value. Non-current assets were EUR 321 million, with property, plants, and equipment at EUR 149 million. Down EUR 65 million from year-end 2021, mainly due to Galileo sale and leaseback.
Capitalized development costs were at EUR 87 million. Non-current liabilities were at EUR 19 million, down EUR 14 million from year-end 2021. Shareholders equity was up at EUR 1.03 billion, including EUR 37 million of minority interest mainly related to [YunTianLi]. Now I hand the floor back to Sophie for conclusions.
Thank you, Yuri. Now we're on slide 23. The shift of client projects into 2023 materialized quite recently and had a heavy impact on 2022 SMO goals, resulting in our CGG 2022 segment revenue now expected to be stable pro forma year- on- year. With the general market progressively strengthening, SMO was not able to compensate for the revenue loss in Russia as expected, as several Q4 projects slipped into 2023. The impact on EBITDA and cash for 2022 are minimal. Our 2022 segment EBITDA is anticipated to be around EUR 380 million, with a higher 42% margin. More importantly, our free EBITDA is expected to be very close to our March guidance, thanks to lower CapEx.
Overall, in 2022, we anticipate the DDE segment to be in line with our expectations with the continued growth performance of Geoscience and EDA's higher after-sales offsetting lower pre-funding. The SMO segment will deliver below expectations due to multiple project shifts and now expect significant growth in 2023. Moving on to slide 24. This graph shows the expected E&P CapEx and oil price evolution between 2022 and 2025 based on surveys from different brokers. All brokers are pointing towards a continued high oil price during the next three years and a double-digit increase in E&P spending. Increased investment in exploration is needed to address the shortfall in supply following years of underinvestment intensified by geopolitical uncertainty and increased focus on energy security.
Current activity is increasing, but is still heavily driven by short cycle exploration and production with IOCs, who remain very disciplined in their investment, while independents and NOCs are making more aggressive plans to grow production. Energy transition continues to progress and will be a long process during which all sources of energy will be required. Short cycle projects and unconventionals are not sufficient to meet demand, and new resources will progressively need to be discovered. With this consideration and the practicality that it will take time to bring meaningful new oil and gas supply to the market, we anticipate entering into a favorable multi-year upcycle as we move forward. In conclusion, on slide 25, today after years of underinvestment and lack of supply of oil and gas, we believe that exploration, particularly offshore exploration, will be required to fill the gap.
2022 has been a year of transition for our market and a year of investment for CGG. In 2022, CGG continued to invest in people, data and technology, both in our core domains and in our new businesses. We also maintained a high level of R&D efforts and made significant progress in achieving our ESG objectives. Importantly, we achieved this with minimal impact on EBITDA and cash and expect a higher EBITDA margin in 2022 than 2021. We also accelerated the development of our new beyond the core businesses, including a new organization to address the HPC and cloud solutions market. In 2022, we bought, for a total of $37 million, two new technology companies, Geocomp and ION Software, which enhance our diversification portfolio and will accelerate access to new and growing markets.
Looking forward, we're entering a favorable multi-year upcycle with a leading and diverse technology position that will support growth in our core and beyond the core businesses, with key objectives to grow and deleverage our balance sheet. Thank you for your interest, and we're now ready to take your questions.
Thank you. Dear participants, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. This will take a few moments. Now we're going to take our first question. Please stand by. The first question comes from the line of Jean-Luc Romain from CIC. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Good evening. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two. First, you mentioned some delays and projects pushed to 2023 in Brazil, I guess due to the presidential election. How big the projects were or could you confirm more or less the slip from 2022 to 2024? That's my first question. Second is on OCS. Would it be fair to imagine that companies such as Talos Energy or Oxy are among the companies interested in your data in the Gulf of Mexico?
Thank you, Jean-Luc Romain, and good evening, and thanks for the question. The delays are actually in multiple areas. Some of them are actually in the pre-funding of our multi-client projects, and that's where Brazil comes into play. Then the others are in the SMO, and these are projects that were positioned into year-end that have moved into next year. Those are more the mega-crews, more North Africa equipment sales. Each mega-crew, you're talking $50 million-$70 million of equipment each, right? If you have a few moving into next year, this is significant amount of equipment. That's why we're quite confident that we'll see significant growth in SMO next year. Now, when it comes to Brazil, it's hard to give numbers, but it's mostly affecting.
I mean, there's been slippage we mentioned in Norway from Q2 to Q4, so this one will get this year. In Brazil, it's been more into next year, and the orders of magnitude will be, say, $30 million-$50 million.
Thank you. CCUS.
Oh, sorry, CCUS. Yes, absolutely. I mean, we're working with all of our clients, and as you know, Oxy is definitely in a leading position on CCUS, but is more than just Oxy and Talos. It's pretty much our usual client base is interested in CCUS opportunities. The area that shallow waters or onshore Gulf of Mexico area is a hotspot. We do have some old data there, and that's where we did our project.
Thank you.
Thank you. Dear participants, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one and one on your telephone keypad. We're having the next question come through. Please stand by. The next question comes to line of Daniel Thomson from Exane BNP Paribas. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Good afternoon, Sophie. I was wondering if you could just talk to us a little bit about Q4 sales this year and what to expect. Whether you expect the sort of typical kind of budget flush that we've seen in previous years. Then maybe a second one, just if you can talk a bit about the implications of the lease sale going ahead in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, and sort of the timing of when you expect to see the benefit for CCG. Is it, you know, is some of it coming into Q4, or is it mostly 2023 and onward? Thank you.
Okay. Yeah, thank you, Daniel, and good evening. I think it's fair to say that Q4 commercial discussions are quite active, and we should see an uptick in Q4. The question is, you know, how much of an uptick it will be and how much discipline the IOC will exert to their budgets. Obviously you've all looked at their financial performance, and they do have cash to spend. We're still seeing a lot of discipline, but we're starting to see new names that haven't bought a lot of data in the last few years come in and starting to say they wanna reload their data.
It makes us hopeful that, you know, we will indeed see a, I don't know if I could call it flush, but there will be an uptick that we'll see in our revenue for Q4. On the lease sale in the Gulf, it's been great news, but I think it's not materializing quite now into data sales. I think it will come into next year. I think they need to. Maybe they're waiting a little bit for the elections results and restoring a little bit of confidence into the terms and conditions. It's not just the lease rounds or resumption that our clients are looking at, but also the ability to get the permits. Because there's been roadblocks to get seismic permits, to get drilling permits, so we need the whole machine to be resuming as well. I think it'll take a little bit of time for that confidence to go up. I would say next year, if I was gonna say something, not this Q4.
Sure. Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. Just give us a moment. The next question comes from the line of Kevin Roger from Kepler Cheuvreux . Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Yes, good evening. Thanks for taking the time. I have two questions. The first one is related to the equipment, Sophie. Can you give us a bit of detail, if I missed it, the reason why the sales have been postponed? Because I was thinking that in the current environment that you mentioned, everyone working kind of rush to get the equipment, things like that. Is it related to pricing, to bottleneck, whatever? What are the reason beyond this delay, equipment sale? The second question, sorry, on the imaging business, you are running at EUR 17 million per quarter. Is this basically the maximum you can achieve because you are using your people at full capacity, or is there anything to expect in terms of earnings improvement in the coming quarters?
Okay. Thank you, Kevin , and good evening. On the equipment, it's actually coming from a number of directions. It's mostly on the land side and mostly related to North Africa and Middle East, but also a little bit in Asia. What happened is when we came into the year and we realized, you know, the EUR 50 million drop, and initially it was EUR 40 million because we were hoping for a link to Russia. We were hoping to ship EUR 10 million pre-sanctions, but we weren't able to do that. Russia, in the end, was a EUR 50 million hit. It was early in Q1, and we were seeing the Saudi mega crew positioning at year-end because the bids were supposed to come out, like, in April.
We thought, "Okay, you know, we won't do the Russia, so we'll be able to compensate with, you know, mega crews and activity that was starting to show in North Africa and Middle East." What happened as we went through the year, we started to see those bids slip, and they only came out in September. Now the bids are due. This is the client putting the bids for service companies to respond, and now the response has been delayed to early November. Now they have a month then to award the work, and then they have six months to mobilize. Now you start putting all this together. The equipment delivery will be sometime in Q1, Q2 next year, so in the first half of the year. These are the really two, and I was mentioning those mega crews.
We're talking $50 million-$70 million each, right? There's two of them. Now, in addition to that, there's the OBN, the ocean bottom node, so three crews. So that's quite a lot of equipment. These ones also delayed, so that's another big chunk of equipment. In addition to that, you have, for example, places like Libya, where, you know, we were in discussion and things got delayed, you know, in Asia. Those are the smaller amounts, but that just got delayed basically because of geopolitical reasons, budgets or clients. The big chunk is the Saudi bids, but there were other bits and pieces here and there, and all related to land and NOCs. That's the equipment side. On the imaging, this is true.
We're kind of running on that EUR 17 million. We did a big step up from H1 last year. If you look at the history of imaging, we were quite low in H1. We got a lot of order intake. We move a step up in the second half of last year, and we're kind of running at that level now. There was a catch-up effect from our clients, and that's where we are. Now, again, the commercial activity is quite strong. I think we could do more. I mean, I was mentioning by region, where I would say North America, we're quite full. But we probably can do more work in Europe and Asia.
This is where we're starting to see a little bit of improvements in the conversations and the awards. Can we do more and grow the revenue? I think we can. Keep in mind that geoscience doesn't have the volatility as you see as the others and the big swings, right? It goes down less, but goes up, you know, a bit less as well. On a year-to-date basis, we are, I think, somewhere around 19%, year-over-year, because of that H1 that was really low last year. Full year, we're planning to be in the high single-digit, meaning the sort of the rate of growth is tapering off, but that's linked to the catch-up effect from delayed project that we started to see in the second half of last year. Moving forward, I would expect something similar like this high single digit growth, both from activity and pricing.
Okay, understood. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. The next question comes from the line of Guillaume Delaby from Société Générale. Your line is open, please ask your question.
Good evening to everybody. Maybe one question or maybe one confirmation. We all understand that basically there are many causes or many delays. Just to be sure to understand your thought process accurately, could we say or could you say that if there was, I would say, one big surprise for you, Sophie Zurquiyah, is the fact that IOCs has been, I would say, more disciplined than what you would have expected them to be at this time or at this time of the cycle. Am I correct? Is it for you, I would say, the main surprise? Thank you. I have to admit, I think I would say this is the biggest surprise because, yes, IOCs are very disciplined.
If you remember in Q1 call, I was asked the question repeatedly if the situation in Ukraine would change the behavior of our clients. I remember saying, "I don't believe it would be the case," because it was too far into the year, the budgets were set. Strategies were set, so I didn't think really things would change. I would say the bigger surprise. I would certainly think that by Q4 there would be opening up a little bit more to exploration, but maybe that will be next year. The biggest surprise, I think, was the SMO. I wasn't expecting such a volatility in that business. Of course, we lost EUR 50 million because of the events, and so that was difficult to catch up.
Given the dynamics, the exposure of SMO to NOCs that are really continuing the course, I would have expected less volatility on that side. To me, the biggest negative surprise was on SMO.
Maybe a follow-up on that. Sorry about that, but let's forget the SMO. Globally, if we just try to look at what has happened over the last few quarters, when we listen to what you are saying, Sophie, what your peers are saying, that basically there was some kind of consensus of common wisdom that basically IOCs were about to come back. It was clear, for example, in the Q2 and Q3 calls from Schlumberger. Maybe I'm going to repeat or to elaborate my first question, to what extent can we imagine that this basically this more disciplined than expected pattern from IOCs could be basically extended maybe a little bit more than what could have been previously expected? Thank you.
Thank you, Guillaume. I think it's fair to say that the shape of the cycle and the behavior of our clients during this cycle is quite different from previous cycles, because historically, in an upcycle, you'd see the exploration start first, which isn't the case. The large OFS that you were mentioning are seeing the uptick and are very optimistic because they're exposed to other parts of the value chain that are starting first. If you look at drilling, you know, drilling wells, you know, anything that's close to the oil is starting first. Then actually it is starting to propagate into, you know, these other activities.
We started with ILX, infrastructure-led exploration, and little by little, it will have to go back into more. I don't want to call it frontier, but maybe new emerging basins beyond, you know, the mature basins. Yes, it is a different cycle and a different behavior, and we're observing it. You know, the jury's out as to how long it will take for IOCs to come back. We have also the NOCs that are moving internationally. That, you know, that sort of blank or that space that's left by the IOCs will be filled by other types of players. You're gonna have the independents, you're gonna have NOCs starting to play internationally as well. I do expect that if IOCs don't come back, which I think they will come back, in a disciplined fashion, but they will increase their exploration budget eventually, that we'll start seeing other types of players come in.
Okay. Merci, Sophie.
Merci.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. Please stand by. The next question comes from the line of Baptiste Lebacq from Oddo BHF. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Yes. Hi, good evening, everybody. Thanks for taking my questions. One question dedicated to CapEx and the new industrial CapEx that you disclosed at $60 billion. Could it be seen as a normalized CapEx in the future for the industrial path? Second question dedicated to computing power, maybe linked also to the question regarding CapEx. You give some figures regarding computing powers for 2022. What figures do you have in mind over the next three or four years regarding computing power? Thanks a lot.
I'll let Yuri take the first question, and then I'll comment on the computing power.
Yes. Good evening, Baptiste. Regarding this, the level of CapEx, we're in the process of budgeting now, obviously 2023, right? But I would say fundamentally or directionally, yes, this range of, say, EUR 55 million-EUR 60 million will be roughly the level of industrial CapEx and capitalized development costs, because obviously it's two elements in there. That is directionally how it.
Yeah.
Will be shaping up, yes.
Yes. Before Baptiste,
Yeah, sorry, just to add one more element. That when it comes to the cash element of that, we did mention that we're in the process of building this new data center in the U.K. We actually did secure refinancing, you know, for that. In other words, again, the cash outlay will be actually lower than
Yeah, Baptiste I was gonna make a comment then. Definitely when it comes to computing power, this is an area where we can secure long-term leases basically of equipment. The computing power, I think, we're about 300 petaflops, which is a significant amount of compute power. We haven't made completely our plans for 2023, but we'll be probably adding somewhere around, I would say, 30-50 petaflops. I don't have the numbers for the next three years, but if you look at 10 years ago, we were probably, I want to say 50 petaflops, and we multiplied from 50 to 300. I wouldn't be surprised that in the next 10 years, we, again, you know, grow significantly, maybe not multiply by 10, but multiply by 6, 7, that computing power.
I'm not sure what road we will take to get there, but if more and more compute power is required, then we'll just follow the business basically, whether we can, you know, we need it, and then the clients are willing to pay for that compute power as well through our services. In the short term p robably adding 50%, 10%, 15%.
Thank you. That's clear.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. The next question comes from the line of Neyla Velimoukhametova from BlackRock. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Yes. Hi, good evening. Thank you very much for taking my question. I just had one. It's a follow-up on CapEx. So you talked about the industrial CapEx, and I wanted to get your thoughts on the cash spend on the multi-client part of the business for next year. Obviously, this year we have a lower pre-funding rate, but you're sticking to the EUR 200 million spend, funding it yourself, I guess, basically. How should we think about 2023 with regards to the moved revenues or moved CapEx from 2022 and in addition to the CapEx that you do exp...
Well, not CapEx, but growth that you expect in 2023, as per your comments of entering the multi-year upcycle stage. Thank you.
Yes. Thank you for the question. So with the information I have today, I mean, like I mentioned earlier, we've invested a significant amount of CapEx this year. I think it was an increase from last year. I would expect directionally to be flat to lower. And the reason for that is that we're looking at a number of projects more in collaboration. We're looking at minimizing risk and risk sharing a little bit like our clients are doing in exploration. They don't do exploration just by themselves. They just do together with other competitors. This is something that I think is coming our way that in the model we look at more and more collaboration. And probably, yeah, lowering, I would say flat to down, it would be directionally what I'm looking for.
That's the base case. Now, of course, if there's a great project with higher funding that comes our way, we would look at it on a case-by-case basis a little bit as well, like our clients are budgeting. They have their base budget, and then they look at opportunities as they come. Directionally, I would say flat to down. Higher pre-funding because then you would have the catch up from this year.
Right. Exactly. I was gonna ask on the pre-funding. Is that fair to assume it'll be closer to 100% or is it a little too punchy to assume that?
I think it's too much to assume that. We never, by the way, I've always said that 90, 100 is not necessarily a good level. There are levels to shoot for because you know, you want to have future sales, right? A long tail of sales. That's why we always said 70% is a sort of a good number. 70%-80% is a good number, which is where we always budget. We always budget around that number, and we try to get more. 100% is never sort of the base case.
Of course. Understood. Okay, great. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Dear participants, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone keypad.
Maybe I'll add a quick comment to the last question is on the pre-funding ratio. We tend to look for those surveys that we call really truly multi-client that have a potential of after sales, and those typically carry a lower pre-funding. Some of our competitors in the industry are looking for maybe different, you know, like we call hybrid, that have a higher pre-funding initially, but less potential for after sale. It's a bit of a difference in philosophy that you'll find in the market. Our philosophy is to really look for those multi-client with multiple clients, you know, a potential for farm-in, open acreage, and therefore they have a bit of a lower pre-funding.
I thank you for your questions, really good questions, and I look forward to talking to some of you in the future, soon and shortly. Thank you again.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You now all disconnect. Have a nice day.
Bye.