Dear investor friend, good afternoon. Thank you for joining this briefing for the announcement of COSL's 2021 third quarter results. First of all, I would like to introduce you to the company's management here. Ms. Chong Xiaojie, Chief Financial Officer. Our results presentation will be conducted in English. Ms. Chong Xiaojie will walk you through the operational review for third quarter 2021. After that, we will open the floor for questions. Now, I will turn the call over to Ms. Chong. Ms. Chong, please.
Dear friends, good afternoon, everyone. I'm Chong Xiaojie, CFO of COSL. Welcome to the 2021 third quarterly results conference call of COSL. We have announced our third quarterly results for 2021. I will brief the company's operating performance first. As of the third quarter of 2021, despite the oil price rebounding, international oil company investment in oil exploration and development continued to remain prudent. Meanwhile, continually affected by COVID-19, the oilfield services market picked up slowly against the backdrop of steady growth of domestic economics and the continuous promotion of the 13th national energy security strategy. The company further optimized production and operations, and profoundly promoted cost reduction and efficiency increase to ensure smooth operations throughout the year.
In the first three quarters of 2021, the company's operating revenue amounted to CNY 17.88 billion, and the net profit amounted to CNY 1.46 billion. In the first three quarters, the profitability of the well services segment improved. The marine support services operation was stable, and the workload of ocean bottom cable and ocean bottom node were well full. For the geophysical acquisition and the surveying services segment, the overall operation volume of drilling services segment declined. The company continued to develop both domestic and overseas markets, went on to make breakthroughs in key and core technologies, took the important task of being the pioneer of technology development, and providing full technical support for promoting deep-sea oil and gas exploration and development.
In the future, the company will practice the five strategies of technology driven, cost leadership, integration, internationalization, and regional development. COSL will further modernize its governing system and capability, strive to build a world-class energy service company with Chinese characteristics in our own way, so as to continuously create higher value for shareholders, customers, employees, and partners. That's a brief introduction to our third quarter results for 2021. More information has been disclosed at the Shanghai Stock Exchange and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Now we are coming to the Q&A session. We welcome any questions. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Chong. Now we will open the floor for questions. Please note that we will provide consecutive interpretation during the Q&A session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one for assistance.
Operator, please connect the first investor online. Thank you.
Okay. The first question comes from Albert of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Thank you, management. This is Albert from Morgan Stanley. I have two questions. First, I would like to ask, given that oil price has rebounded to above, like the Brent of above $80 now, and during the third quarter, I think we have obtained some of these new contracts overseas. In terms of the pricing, do we see from the recovery trends or signs of recovery in the coming quarters? That's the first question on pricing of our drilling services. For the second question, I'd like to ask if you can share some of the indicators for the well services segment to let us know how the workloads for this segment have improved recently. That's the second question. Thank you.
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The second question will be answered by our Investor Relations department. I will first answer the first question. The oil price indeed as you said it is rebounded recently and reaching a high level and for the well services industry we definitely have benefited from this. Our customers have seen the rising price they have increased their investment exploration and development of this as well. This will also increase the price of the market. We also have harvested several overseas market which we have been very active with. For example in Norway we recently have got some contracts and in Middle East as well, several contracts have been won by us. I have to say that the whole industry is also happy about the price rise. We also have got several contracts as I said before. There is something that I have to express is actually for our industry it stays a little bit behind of the price. You can also see that for the drilling supply it's still quite abundant globally. Even if the price rises like that in a short period of time we wouldn't see a very significant boost of the price.
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Actually for the second question about the workload we have already disclosed it in this third quarter report. The detailed data you can refer to the disclosure of the numbers and we also have answered and disclosed such information in the semi-annual meeting as well. Because in the first quarter because of COVID-19 and the slow recovery of the market, so there is a delay of our industry's workload and so there's a technical part of that. Q2- Q3 the workload no matter is year-on-year growth or we compare with the previous quarter it definitely has seen a growth. In the few next quarters we will definitely focus on the prevention and control COVID-19 and increasing definitely R&D to guarantee this conversion of the technical results being converted. We have mentioned before like the staying behind feature of our industry and the workload in the next few quarters we definitely will try to catch up that will be guaranteed.
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OK, thank you.
Okay, here's your second question comes from Mure of JP Morgan.
Thank you, management. I'm Mure from JP Morgan. I have two questions. The first is regarding to your utilization, your drilling segment utilization will recover
We see a moderate run rate recovery for jackups, but better recovery for semi-subs in 3Q compared with 2Q. As the senior management just reiterated during the briefing that they're going to accelerate the settlement in second half, especially in 4Q of this year. Should we expect the similar recovery trend for the rest of this year in terms of our drilling utilization rate? Or should we expect accelerate for the better run rates in the rest of this year? This is my first question. The second question is regarding to our cost. We see the cost inflation of commodity and raw materials in many industries, but our cost management seems quite efficient. Should we expect a higher cost in 4Q, or should we expect the similar effective cost control in rest of this year?
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For the first question for the utilization rate of the drilling, as you said, because of the rise of the oil price, actually also arrangements of the oil companies. Both for jackup and the semi-submersible have seen a rising trend. Despite that indeed we have utilized the jackup one faster than the semi-submersible one, but basically they are all on the rise. It's just like slightly faster of the jackup compared with the semi-submersible.
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For the second question, as we just proposed the five strategies of our company and cost control is one of the five top strategies. We have utilized cost control in order to improve the quality and the profit of our company. In the previous three quarters, we definitely have done this with our cost control and efforts. We have done it with several efforts from the supplier relationships and the scale of our procurement, the sharing of resources with our partners, and the leasing cost has also been reduced, and these have all been done with the negotiation with the suppliers. Indeed, we have admitted that the current environment is with rising cost, we are heavy pressure of controlling the cost. But with the reinforcement of such mechanisms, we definitely hope to control the cost pursue the structure and the long term construction of the cost-to-control mechanism. And then we also hope to optimize the structure and the level of the cost control to futher guarantee our profit.
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Now next question comes from Si Ping of Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
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Thank you so much. I have two questions, and thank you for the management for allowing me this opportunity to ask the two questions. The first one is about the utilization of the overseas market. You can see that actually the workload of the three semi-sub now have seen a not very good performance, and the workload is not very well and it seems to have quite a big loss. We wonder that maybe in this year or until the first quarter next year, you wouldn't have very big workloads. How do you hope to mitigate such loss?
The second one is actually CNOOC in its recent release of performance has said that in the next five years, it expects to have 5%-10% of the CapEx to be spent in wind power or other clean energy. I want to know that how much COSL could have from this 5%-10% of the CapEx.
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I would like to answer this question. Thank you for your attention. Indeed, for the three semi-submersibles. Indeed, we haven't got very full workload and they are all in the condition of waiting for further instructions and jobs. We have done two measures to deal with that. The first one is tighten the control of cost regarding personnel management and the repairs, etc. We control the expenditure of other capital and repairs, and we also control the cost of fuel for that. For the exploration of new opportunities and new contracts, we also have done some efforts. We recommended a lot of business to the potential customers through expanding our network and by dealing with more possible sales.
We actually have done it in the North Sea and we through our efforts, we have done three new agreements for these drilling submersibles, and the earliest the contract will start to launch at early days of December this year. We expect actually for next year, the workload for the three semi-subs would be very full. You can see that thanks to the third quarter's efforts, we have seen great effects both regarding our cost control and expanding of new business. I believe since early days of December to 2022, we will have a full workload for those three different sub, semi-subs.
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I would like to answer the second question. As you mentioned, the CNOOC 5-10 years CapEx investment in wind power and other new energy. Indeed, we also have seen this and we would like to do that.
We have already done this in our well service, so we have invested and paid a lot of emphasis on the new energy development. For the five strategies proposed by COSL recently, including the integration, the internationalization, the cost control, etc. From the five strategies you can see we hope to construct ourselves from a internationally world-class well service company with Chinese characteristics with this global recognized first-class energy service company with Chinese characteristics. From this you can see our determination and confidence to do this transition, and we have entered and fully understand the goal of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality. From the top level of management, we have already established our own schedule and measures to do our own company's carbon peaking and neutrality plan. From the structure and management, we all have stressed a lot about the development of new energy business. We have done several actions like to establish my green equipment, green factory, my green business, etc. We also have given our presence in CCUS industry and new energy business etc., like wind power plants and multifunctional ocean and drills. You can also see that we have started our own business in hydrogen reservation, exploitation, etc. For CNOOC CapEx, we will definitely follow their investment and their development in the future, and we will also correspond to them as well according to their plan. I think this is definitely like a gradual change and development, and it's actually through the accumulation of enough efforts in big quantity, we will definitely have the development of the quality. Thank you.
Thanks for your questions. Here is the next question comes from Alex Xu of [Swiss Bank]. Please go ahead.
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My name is Alex Xu, and I just have one question regarding the gross profit margin for the well service segment. I'm just wondering for the current existing contract with CNOOC, whether there's any prospect in terms of hiking the current contract price subject to the current oil price? Also for the new contract, is there a time gap between when we see some of the revenue and the gross profit increases versus the new contract being signed? If so, what is the time lag in terms of months? Thank you.
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Thanks for your question. For technology part indeed we have expect some growth of this GM and we have done several actions. You can see that the profitability is increasing due to use of technological accumulation and we have proposed a strategy of technology driven the profitability and development. You can see the profitability accumulated by technology is quite high recently. You have to know for the well services industry, although the oil price now is quite high, however you have to consider the supply relationship globally and plus other factors influences. Currently our well services price is quite stable. The technology actions we have done are including this improvement of the development of R&D of our self innovative and self developed technologies and the conversion of the research results. We have invested a lot of capital in R&D. This is one of the four different segments with our highest capital investment, and we definitely have enough financial guarantee for this. With our investment in R&D and we hope to facilitate the conversion and application level of our technology. This is the first measure. The second one is actually we have reinforced the control of the cost. We have utilized a lot of domestically made devices and equipment. You also see that we have used the scale effect to use this big amount of procurement to trade for a lower price with the suppliers. Through doing this, we hope to increase our profitability. In the future, we have definitely seen the space of the development of GM, the growth margin in the well services industry. We except for the two actions we have mentioned, we also have done other different things like the lean management we have done the cost check and the audit of the single drills. We also hope actually we are very confident to see the growth of the growth margin in the future. Because of R&D and the rolling out of the different applications and conversion, we see the profitability of technology.
Okay, thanks for your questions. The next question comes from Zhao Naidi of Everbright Securities.
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I'm Zhao Naidi from Everbright Securities. There are several questions. The first one is actually for the fourth quarter for this asset impairment, how would we do in the fourth quarter? We have also seen the national emphasis on energy and how we deal with that in the fourth quarter as well.
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Thank you so much for this asset impairment. You can see actually we were definitely according to the regulation and the recognitions of this national energy security strategy and the risk of that. In the fourth quarter, we will do a full assessment and the test of that, and later we will disclose it. For the second question about the workload, it's actually not the correct time for me to disclose it now because it's not very clear until now. In the later strategic disclosure meeting, we will disclose that as well. We believe for the next year and the fourth quarter workload against the big backdrop of the energy security and energy development of China, the workload will definitely be full in the future.
Okay, thanks for the questions. The next question comes from Jiang Shimin from BOCI.
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Actually I'm Jiang Shimin from BOCI, and I only have one question for management team. I want to know the process of the projection of the fourth quarter for the company. Do you still expect a stable and similar performance compared to last year? How do you expect it for the fourth quarter?
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Thank you for the question. For the first quarter prediction, we still hope it to have a stable growth and grow at a stable manner. You can see actually for the different segmentations of the business, like the drilling and the marine support, we all expect growth. For this geophysical service, because of the seasonal influence, we are having some vessels being repaired and, we still think this business will remain stable. The growth will not be very obvious for this. We still expect this operation of the fourth quarter to be quite stable. This is our prediction.
Thank you all for joining us. Due to the time limitation, our meeting is coming to an end. We hope to see you again next time. Have a good one. Goodbye.