Okay. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for being here today. I want to say, you know, hello, thanks for your time. I want to say a special thanks and hello to all those that will be listening online for tuning in. I'm very excited today to talk about our half-year results. Before I do that, though, I just wanna, as I always want to recognize, is the team that I work with at Hunting. They are the ones that delivered these results, work hard every day to keep our customers happy, work hard to keep everybody safe. We've had a good result, and a lot of it is, you know, it all goes back to them.
I'm showing on our first slide here, kind of the highlights of the first half, and I'm not. We're gonna go into detail on all of them, but I think what I really wanna highlight is the fact that if you look at the main highlights, whether it's Kuwait, whether it's India, whether it's the Organic Oil Recovery, you know, pick one. All of these projects that are now bearing fruit for us started a long time ago, and I say long. It plays into Hunting's tradition and our legacy and how we run our business, that we don't look for just a short term, what's gonna happen this quarter. We invest in the future, we invest in technology, we invest in our people, and they're the ones that bring these ideas up, and today, they're working.
I mean, if you look at India, Daniel Tan and his crew, that's been a four or five-year project, getting to where it is today. Bruce, who's the king of Organic Oil Recovery, that's here, can talk about that. Again, another five-year-plus journey. Even the Kuwait Oil Company business we talk about, from connection qualification testing in Houston to working with our supply chain people, took many years to get to that point. So I just wanna highlight that to show you how committed we are as a business to not just what happens today, but what happens in the future.
And as many of you were at our one hundred and fifty year celebration earlier this year, you know, we're trying to make sure that we take the look to be here for a long, long time and deliver proper gains and the like to our shareholders. One of the other things we'll highlight today is, I think that the results for the first half of this year really highlighted and exemplified the fact that our Hunting 2030 S trategy is intact, and we've taken the steps needed to advance that and continue to grow the company. On OCTG, just a tremendous year so far. The outlook remains bright. Again, KOC order, kind of the top of that cherry on that sundae.
But if you look even at our TEC-LOCK product line with our team in Houston, led by Travis Kelly, it has been one that has bucked the trend of the rig count and accelerated at a greater market share than what's happened with that marketplace. So great business there. Titan Perforating Systems, I don't have to tell you that story. It's been a very, very flat market. It is very, it's very challenged today, and those drivers, which we'll get into some more later, are really commodity prices, consolidation in the industry, pipeline issues, but there is light at the end of that tunnel, and I'm very optimistic about that business going into 2025. Subsea, a great growth area for us. Our revenue year-over-year, up something like 83%. Very profitable business, good margins in that business. TEC-LOCK
International in scope, whether it's Exxon in Guyana, whether it's Enpro, decommissioning work in the North Sea or Gulf of Mexico, subsea business, basically anywhere that there's a subsea tree. So we continue to love that portfolio. It's seeing exceptional growth, and we don't see any way that that's slowing down. Advanced manufacturing going in the right direction. We've seen business like at our Dearborn operation, up 10% year-over-year in the same period. We've seen inquiry levels increase. Backlog for that business, I think, Bruce, right now, is over $100 million, so that makes up a significant portion of our record backlog of $700 million. Again, with that backlog, it gives us more visibility into 2025, and Bruce and I will go into some more details on how that plays out.
Energy transition, we talked about a little investment we made in a company called CRA. Again, that's nothing that's gonna show fruit this year. That's an investment in the future, and it's focused on basically, probably more on carbon capture than anything else because of the challenges in alloys and the development that's gonna have to go in on these systems to do carbon capture. But geothermal business is progressing. In this period, we had orders in the Netherlands, we had orders in the Philippines. It's a growing market, but it's still slow, and it's still very small compared to traditional oil and gas. And then on the cost management side, you know, we always focus on the top line and what can we-- you know, what new areas can we do? What new products can we do? How do we get more engaged with our clients?
But we do stay focused on the cost side as well, knowing that we have to maintain our lean focus, lean in our manufacturing operations. We'll talk here in a little bit about some of the cost savings that we did at Titan in the period. KOC, highlighting that order, I've already talked a lot about it. Bruce can go into the financing issues on it and how we're doing managing the cash flow on that, but just a huge order for us. I mean, if I look at my career at Hunting, where a 15- or 20-million-dollar order was substantial, which I'm sorry, it still is substantial, I still love orders of that size. Today, the volumes that we're seeing coming out of our Asia Pac office, like KOC at $231 million, previously, the CNOOC order of almost $100 million...
The business with Cairn Vedanta in India, $100 million. So the whole scope of that business has expanded, and with our supply chain partners, the new things that we've done in places like India, I see continued upside for that. And the other thing that KOC does, it really verifies the greatness of our technology when it comes to premium connections. Organic oil recovery, something that we've worked on for a long time, it is very exciting to get these new purchase orders from two big independent players in the North Sea. I can't tell you their names because nobody wants to give away their secrets or their one-up on a client, but we've worked this very hard over the years. It's now coming to bear fruit for us.
Again, it's one of those things that's taken a number of years to get it done, but that's just the nature of the oilfield. And, I mean, one of the other parts about this business is nobody ever wants to be first. So you're always fighting that too, when you're out there with a client trying to introduce new things. But the results have proven themselves, and we're very happy that this is now playing into a substantial business for us, and we think, considering the nature of the U.K. North Sea business and the reining in you're gonna see on drilling activities, this is gonna be a big plus for us. Energy transition, as I mentioned earlier, I'm not gonna spend a lot of time more on that because I think I've pretty much highlighted, but we are still focused on it.
Sean O'Shea leads that business for us, looking at lots of different opportunities. We're currently looking at projects in Brazil, in Asia Pac, primarily Indonesia, some in the U.S.. It's one of those things that I think, if I'm standing here three years from now, we'll have a whole lot more to talk about than three months from now. So it's just gonna be one of those evolving businesses, but we, we see it as part of our future. Strong financial performance, you have the numbers there. Revenue in OCTG was down. You think, well, that's kinda weird. It was down in the half over half, but that was really because of the execution on some of those big orders like CNOOC are over. So right now, we have the orders in process at KOC.
So when we look at year-over-year, that number is gonna be different. EBITDA margin is very, very healthy, nice increase there. Some of that also is driven by the completion work in South America that our U.S. manufacturing team does, working with some of the other major large service companies down there. Subsea, really a great story, revenue up 85%. That was one of our key strategic points was, you know, how do we broaden our scope in the, in the oilfield service business? We've made two acquisitions to grow that subsea business. We're hoping more to come with that, and the numbers speak for themselves. Advanced manufacturing, I talked a little bit about, backlog now over $100 million, earnings up, margins improving, not quite where we want them to be, but that's a work in process right now.
The outlook for our India joint venture, Bruce and I, we were just in India a couple of weeks ago for our board meeting over there. Our facility over there is basically booked till May of next year. We're already talking about a phase two and what makes sense there. We received our API license recently, which allows us to have a more detailed opportunity for certain tenders within India. Today, everything that we're doing is staying in India. Our partners, Jindal, are also expanding their seamless mill capacity, which is gonna add further opportunities for us. But the shop over there is world-class. The people are great. Jindal people are super partners. The effort over there, again, this is a five-year project, so it's just coming to bear fruit for us now.
And when we talked about the sales order book at $13 million, that's really not pipe, so that's just threading connections only. So I don't want anybody getting bogged down. "Well, that doesn't seem like a lot of pipe," but it is a good deal. We're very optimistic about the future of our business in India. A lot of it being driven by the Made in India policies that the government has in place. So right now, we are the premium connection supplier in India. New technologies, we continue to spend money on developing our product lines. Titan, for example, a new version of the H-4, adding a reusable tandem sub to that product. It's one that will provide some efficiencies for the wireline companies. That's being rolled out now.
A couple of other things that we're looking at there, but I think the key is that even in a flat market, we haven't stopped the investing in our engineers and people, whether it's ballistic development or other products in that business. OCTG, there's always variants. I mean, I think that one time we looked at how many different grades, wall sizes of steel, and ODs there are, and you can come up with a thousand variations easily in OCTG. And in many cases, each one of those has to be tested separately. So our premium connection testing facility in Houston is basically running around the clock. We're developing new products, continue to develop new products, continue to do tests for clients, and some of that testing is even getting a bigger slant now to energy transition because of the special needs for geothermal and the like, and carbon capture.
Subsea, there's a list there of some of the developments, the fine-tuning, the enhancing we're doing to make our titanium riser joints even more user-friendly to those people that are constructing the FPSOs. And the, I guess the whole point of that slide is we never stop, we never sleep when it comes to product development. Titan, I talked about earlier, it's been a really tough business this year. I don't think anybody expected gas prices in the Permian at the end of July to be minus $0.85 an Mcf, and that's what they were. And so you have a number of factors that have put a damper on the U.S. land business. First and foremost, I would say, is natural gas....
When I look at our portfolio, we were, I guess we still are because we're there, but the largest supplier of perforating kit in the natural gas basins, the Haynesville, Appalachia, with the Marcellus and the Utica, parts of the Eagle Ford. You look at that business year-over-year, we've seen a 50% decline in business in those areas because the rig count has collapsed. You have people like Chesapeake, EQT, and the like have actually shut in production. Again, there's pipeline issues related to that, but if you looked at our Permian business, we're actually up 7% year-over-year, showing that the products are performing. We're in the right markets. It's just a market condition right now that's keeping things flat.
And the whole U.S. market, you've got consolidation issues with a massive amount of merger activity in the past twelve months. All of those things have kind of factored in to slow things down. The natural gas prices, it's not just the gas drilling, that's also factored into some of the oil activity because of ESG rules and principles. Flaring is not acceptable anymore in places like the Permian, so until they get a place to park that gas, they're not gonna drill these wells, and that's what you've seen with the negative pricing in the Permian in July. So what we did, we looked at our business, we did some restructuring. We closed the manufacturing plant in Wichita Falls, consolidated those operations at Milford.
Hated to do that, but it was needed to say: How do we, you know, improve our profitability and performance? And we also closed two distribution centers, one in Canada, one in the U.S.. And so we'll continue to look at our portfolio for what makes sense. But on the same token, we have continued our automation push in Pampa to, again, be more efficient. So we love the Hunting Titan business, but everything has a cycle, and right now, the cycle is kind of flat for that part of our business. Natural gas slide, I pretty much talked about. We're still big believers that natural gas is gonna be a boom for North America. You've got three major pipelines coming online or have come online out of the Permian, one going to Mexico, two of them going to the Gulf Coast.
The LNG demand, I don't think is gonna slow down. The international market loves U.S. LNG. But again, once a lot of these pipeline issues get resolved, on top of the growing demand for electricity in North America for data centers and the like, we just really believe that natural gas is... Again, it's one of those things that's in a slump right now, but that's short term. If you had asked me in February, I thought we would be back to $3/Mcf by Q4. I don't think that's gonna happen, but I do think it'll happen in 2025 and beyond. I just think right now we've got some surpluses to work out in that business and pipeline issues to take care of. Offshore revenue, globally now overtaking onshore.
If you've followed. You know, we're telling you a story that we see the offshore business expanding, but all you have to do is also look at the announcements from people like Transocean, talking about day rates now back to $500,000 a day for drill ships. You see FMC's backlog growing for subsea trees. So there's other indicators out there validating what we're talking about, and we see continued growth for a long, long time in that offshore market. Financial. Now, I'm gonna turn it over to Bruce.
Thanks, Jim. Hi, everyone. I'm gonna take you through the key highlights of the year to date. Just one thing that's really important to us is this record order book, which doesn't include our Organic Oil Recovery, our wonderful new order that came through recently. So we're at $700 million at the half year. That is now actually higher as we stand today, because we've got $60 million of the OR contract coming through there. Revenue is up 3%. Again, that's led by, similar to what Jim was saying, the international, the offshore business coming through strongly, sheltering the downturn in the U.S. and the Titan business.
That's giving us a good EPS increase of 61%, from 9.6 up to 15.5, and we've got a small positive free cash flow of 2.8. That will improve over the second half of the year, and I'll tell you why that's gonna happen, but that compares to this time last year when we had a free cash outflow of $60 million, so much, much improved year on year. EBITDA margins are walking up to 12%. That's driven by that growth in that strength in international business, improved from 10% this time last year. Targets, as we talked about at the Capital Markets Day is getting that to 15%, so we're well on our way to march ourself up to that 15% mark.
Non-oil and gas is steady at $36 million, and we're looking to build on that through some of the energy transition and the non-oil and gas business as well. The real success story there has been the subsea, the 85% year on year, not just in terms of the top line, but also the EBITDA margins coming through at over 20%. So that's great to see. A lot of that just being the flow-through that's come through, the good pricing, and also just getting to know that product coming through. A lot of that's through the titanium riser joints, so that's really great to see there as well.
As Jim mentioned, we're always looking to drive out costs, and we're addressing some of the headwinds in the Titan business, some closures of the operating facilities and some headcount there as well. As I mentioned, EBITDA up 23%, despite the flat U.S. market, up at $60.3 million. Just to point out our, I guess, the efficiency employee, EBITDA per employee up at $49,000. So again, we're always looking to be more efficient, and that's coming through, translating to bottom line as well. We want to improve the dividend. As we declared the Capital Markets Day, that's up another 10% at $0.055. And that return on capital, we want to get that up towards the 50% mark. It's around 7.5%.
That will improve by the year end, but again, we want to get that up to above our weighted average cost of capital. So good set of numbers. Just diving into a little bit more of the revenue, per product group, and we're trying to explain this by product group just to give a better feel for the business going forward. I think one of the highlights there is the Subsea. In terms of that growth, you see through that 78.7 on the left-hand side, and also the OCTG. So those two product lines are really critical to our earnings going forward in that growth. You do see the perforating coming down 9%, so that reflects the fact we're now at 57 rigs less in the States than what we were this time last year.
There's less completion work, and that's a function of that. There is a little bit of shelter from the international business as we go into Argentina, Middle East as well, so it's not all bad, and, you know, we'll look to see that coming back in 2025. If you look at the EBITDA breakdown on the right-hand side, you see that really dominated by two product groups there, as one is the Subsea at 17 million and also OCTG as well. So you take those two together, we're over 80% in those two product lines alone. Again, this graph sort of touches on the same sentiments there as well, and, you know, a key mantra in our capital markets day was about, you know, we're not just all about Titan. We're not just all about being sensitive to the U.S. land rig count.
I think that shows that. Despite the decline in the rig count, we're still up in terms of revenue year on year, and this just really portrays that in terms of the right-hand columns that go through, showing the strengths in our OCTG business, the Subsea and Advanced Manufacturing. In terms of our P&L, this reflects. I think there's a couple of highlights here as in terms of the revenue growth, but also the gross profit. We also saw a tough year in Titan to date, but we're seeing a couple of points percentage increase on our gross margins. So despite that, the blended gross margin coming through a couple of points stronger, that has given us a stronger EBITDA margin of 12%, which reflects $60 million EBITDA. Profit after tax has increased as well.
I deleted EPS up there as well, and, you know, a strong set of income statement for the half year. In terms of the offshore business, that is the common theme. You know, that is what we're seeing across the board here, and that's, you know, that resilience and depth to, to the, the product line in the portfolio. The Titan business is off in terms of top line, and it's well down in terms of EBITDA as well. But despite that, you know, we're 23% up on our EBITDA figure. North America, again, good performance, you know, considering that, that's, that, that lower rig count we're talking around. That's very stable, good, solid numbers coming through. We've had some real success with the U.S. onshore drilling in terms of the TEC-LOCK product.
You know, Guyana, we're supplying a lot of completion products from our Houston bases into the likes of Guyana. I think Guyana, this time last year, was $80 million of sales. That's now up at $134 million. So really good strength in that international business as well. Subsea, we've talked around. Really great improvement in terms of revenue and also the EBITDA margins there. EMEA top line, you know, it has struggled with the European, the well-publicized issues we've got in the North Sea and also in Holland, so a lot of that is dependent on international business. But there has been highlights there with the likes of Subsea, Saudi. Saudi is up 80-odd% in terms of revenue. That's a really fast-growing market for us as well, and that comes through that segment.
And then Asia Pac, slightly down the top line, but great in terms of EBITDA. That's in terms of, don't have the CNOOC order that we had last year, but again, KOC will kick in for the second half of the year. This slide here is quite busy, but it looks to give you the details on both our operating segments and also on our product lines. So that's giving you the details across the board in a matrix form. If you look at the product lines on the left-hand side, you've got OCTG in terms of the sales by segment. If you look at EBITDA margin, up at 70%. Great EBITDA margins. So, you know, that reflects the good business in the Asia Pacific.
It also shows the strength of the TEC-LOCK business in North America and also our Connection division as well. Perforating systems has been down, reflecting the headwinds we've seen in North America. Advanced Manufacturing is improving. I think there's more to come there. It's really sort of high, highly engineered, critical parts. We think there's more to come in terms of that EBITDA margins. As I said, we want to get that blended EBITDA margin up to 15% by the end of 2025, so that will step up, and then Subsea delivering at 23% there as well. If you do highlight a couple of areas coming down, the vertical, EMEA, is struggling in terms of EBITDA margins, and that's something we are going to... One less facility in Holland.
We are looking to build out the Saudi business as well, and we're looking to, you know, always looking at cost reductions as well in terms of how can we make that a more efficient business going forward. In terms of balance sheet, we have a very strong balance sheet. We have seen a little increase in terms of working capital. That is there to support the order book of $700 million. $50 million of that is related to the KOC order, so that's more stock coming through. We'll talk about the working capital profile in the next slide. It's currently sitting around the 46% mark of revenue. We wanna get that to 40%. We believe we'll do that by the end of the year.
A very small amount of borrowings, only at $9 million, and we're confident we can get that to a positive position by the end of the year as that working capital starts to wind as well. There is a prior year tax provision that's increased, and that relates to an importation discrepancy in one of our European operations. It's really a paperwork issue discovered in July. So we have increased, we've taken the worst case scenario, increased that provision. It's prior period relating to 2022, primarily 2022 and 2023, and that's what that increased provision relates to there. A little bit more detail on the working capital and our cash flow. So we can see our strong EBITDA coming through there.
There has been a working capital burn of $40 million, which is significantly less than last year, and we believe that will reverse through the second half. Gives us a small free cash flow. That's after our CapEx has come through, and obviously, significantly better than where we were sitting at this time last year as well. So there's a small net cash outflow there to give us a boring figure of $9 million. In terms of working capital, there's a couple of areas we're confident we're gonna get this working capital down. One is the self-help, if you like, in terms of the inventory reductions we're seeing through our businesses, specifically in Titan. We reckon we can get that down towards $105 million. So we're working that down.
We've seen $11 million reduction over the last two months in Titan business, so we're doing a lot of good work there. North America, a little bit heavy on our electronics inventory. A lot of supply chain issues there as well, longer lead times. We've been building up inventory there, but that will come down between now and the end of the year, so that will assist us there. And also, with the KOC order, it's gonna dominate really the second half of the year in terms of working capital. We've been working with our banks in terms of getting banker's acceptance notes, so that means we don't have to pay out deposits to the steel mills. That's really gonna help us there in terms of the banks will pay these acceptance bonds for us.
We've also got payment by KOC is by letter of credit. So we can actually, instead of waiting a hundred and twenty days from presenting the documents, we can actually discount that quicker as well. It's actually cheaper for us to do that and discount it because we're working off the bank. It's a confirmed letter of credit, so it's very cost-effective in terms of interest rates, which are lower than our ABL rates as well. So that's really gonna help us pull in that cash quicker. In terms of efficiencies, we're making improvement in terms of inventory days and receivable days, so we're going the right way, but you know, we are confident with that self-help, with the way we're gonna work our working capital on our KOC order, that we can get that down to 40% working capital to sales.
In terms of that record order book of $700 million, as I said, that's slightly higher now. Once you add in the OOR contract of $60 million, we're actually gonna be higher than $700 million as we stand here today. Majority of that relates to, not surprisingly, our KOC order, so that's coming under our OCTG product line. That 231 is in that 411 there as well. In terms of profile, when that's gonna be recognized, out of the, you know, the seven hundred, we've probably got $400 million of that order book is gonna relate to revenue recognized in 2024, 250, approximately, is gonna relates to 2025 and 50 into 2026.
So it's given us a really good visibility in terms of our line of sight visibility on the earnings coming through into the income statement over the next couple of years. And then with that order book, that comfort, and there's also a tender pipeline, which is still consistently around that billion-dollar mark. That gives us the comfort to confirm our guidance, which is in line with what we talked around in July. So no great surprises here. EBITDA, showing a nice growth up to between $134 million and $138 million. EBITDA margin between 12% and 13%, getting up towards that 15% we keep talking around by the end of 2025. Effective tax rate of 25%-28%. We're getting some shelter from the deferred tax assets we recognized in the States last year.
CapEx, we think, will be a little bit less than we maybe telegraphed before, around about that $30-$35 million mark. There's a little bit of CapEx coming through Dubai facility towards the second half of the year. Free cash conversion will be at 50% by the end of the year. We're confident on that, and that will give us a nice, positive cash balance of between $30 and $40 million by the end of the year. With that, Jim, I'll hand back to you.
All right. Thanks, Bruce.
Okay.
Again, just kind of highlighting the outlook in it for the Americas. I've touched a lot upon this already, but U.S. right now, we are seeing a bit of a recovery in the Gulf of Mexico. We have seen some operators pick up activity levels there. One of the things I'd like to highlight was, many of you probably saw the Anchor Project that Chevron touted, their 20,000 PSI project in the Gulf of Mexico. We had premium connections in those wells, so good job by our team. Great project, but again, a lot of technology going into all that. On Canada, I'm really bullish on Canada right now. My team up there, Randy Walliser and his team, have done a great job. It is now benefiting from extra pipeline capacity. The rig count in Canada is actually up year-over-year.
TEC-LOCK product remains very, very strong up there and growing. We have some real key customers in that marketplace up there, and it's both heavy oil, conventional, and unconventional gas. So pretty bullish on that. It's a good market for the Titan business up there, and I just think it's gonna have a strong end-of-the-year finish. As many of you know, in Canada, you really only have a nine-month season up there. So you lose three months during breakup period. The winter drilling season is usually when things are busy, and so we're pretty optimistic. Guyana and Brazil plays into our deep water operations and product offerings in our subsea business, both from the OCTG completion side as well as our subsea product lines.
In the past year, we've opened up an office in Rio in an attempt to again get closer to the client base up there. We're actually doing some qualification work right now on some of the titanium work for Petrobras in Brazil, so I think that's a process that's a 2025, 2026 type award or opportunity coming up. In EMEA as Bruce talked about, difficult market in the U.K. I mean, you guys' government just doesn't want to support oil and gas anymore. So, I mean, that's a big problem. It's a problem for us. We have taken steps to reduce our costs. We have used a lot of our operations in the U.K. and the Netherlands as a platform for export for other service company work in places like Norway and the Middle East, and for projects actually going into Brazil.
So we'll continue to monitor that. UAE and Saudi, optimistic there that that will continue to grow. We have a slight expansion, small expansion going on in Saudi right now. It's basically machine shop services there, where we're working for the Halliburtons, the NOVs, the Schlumbergers of the world. Profitable business, needs to get more scale, and we're working to make that happen. On Asia Pac, a great business. I've talked about India, super opportunity for us. We just see that growing by leaps and bounds. The Singapore operation, which really is tied at the hips with our facility in Batam, in Indonesia, continued good work there on the completion accessory side, as well as the various OCTG orders. And our facility in Wuxi continues to perform well.
We've upgraded some equipment up there to handle the huge volumes of work coming through as the scale of these orders has increased. So very optimistic for that whole region there. We're pursuing opportunities right now in Thailand. We think Indonesia is gonna be a key place for growth in our geothermal work. We've supplied geothermal products in there for the last twenty years, and the government is really pushing to accelerate that, and I think we'll be part of it. Key market indicators. You know, rig counts, you know, I like tell everybody, every Friday afternoon at 12:05 P.M., I'm on the Baker Hughes rig count or Baker Hughes site. What's that rig count? And it's been very, very disappointing from a U.S. point of view. Again, stuck in this 580 range.
Even if you look at that rig count today, their international rig count, year-over-year, is actually down about three or four%. So pretty flat. I think on the offshore side, we're gonna see continued growth, but it's not gonna be, it's not booming, right? It's gonna be measured. It's going in the right direction. And, you know, whether you're talking a project in India or Brazil or Gulf of Mexico, they all take time, and that's one of the things that's hard to predict on how they solidify their plans and get these projects going forward. I mean, if you look at things like that Anchor Project from Chevron, was it nine years after discovery or something? I mean, it just takes a long time. But there's some indicators there, many of those you've probably already seen before.
On the ESG front, we continue to work hard to make sure we are a good corporate citizen. We do the right things. Total, our recordables are up a little bit, but well below the industry average. We continue to find ways, how do we keep our people safe all the time? Turnover rate has been low. Hunting is a good employer. We treat people fair. We run a good shop, and I think that's an exceptional number for the industry we're in. Training hours are up, making a good effort to keep our people engaged in training, whether it's safety, whether it's productivity measures and the like. Again, we're proud we do things right the first time, so we have a minuscule reject rate.
So in summary, I think the first half of the year validated our story on not being a one-trick pony, as I used to say, or one play out there. I think it's validated the path that we have chosen to get to Hunting twenty thirty. You've seen margins improved. You've seen backlog grow to record levels. You've seen a good performance, even in light of one of our key areas, like Titan, not having a great first half of the year. We are maintaining our guidance, with, as Bruce had talked about earlier. Free cash flow will be up, and we're keeping our eye on future growth, right? So that's why we're still working on things like energy transition, investing with some partners in those businesses, for opportunities that we think might be three years down the road or whatever. So again, I think we're well-balanced.
I'm very, very pleased to be here right now. I'm thankful for the team that I work for. Again, I want to thank all the people that I work with on a daily basis, that do a great job of making Hunting what it is today and keeping our culture alive. And I think with that, I am done and ready to take questions, and Victoria had her hand up first, so go ahead. I'm gonna stand here.
Thanks. Good morning, Victoria McCullough from RBC. Could you give some color? How does the Titan and the gas price recovery expectations today impact the medium-term EBITDA guidance of 15%, and do you expect this to take longer to reach? And secondly, in the U.S., OCTG seems to have been somewhat disconnected with good performance-
Mm-hmm.
-versus Titan. Is there any color you can share on that one? And if I can have a third, can you give us some color on, and maybe this is directly for Bruce, on OOR, what kind of margin profile should we think about for the contract opportunities that you've secured there? Thanks.
So I'll take the second question first, and that is on the connection side. We have definitely bucked the trend of the rig count with our North American OCTG business, and I put that totally down to the technology that we have that's superior to our competitors out there. Well, I say totally. That's a huge factor. The other factor is, as I've touted in the past, we really have that virtual mill concept. So as I've told many of you, we don't own any pipe in the U.S., so I'm not out there worrying about the fact that OCTG prices in the U.S. have been down 22 months in a row. It's not... That's a distributor's problem. So all of those have helped to. A, it gives the client lots of options, right?
He can take, you know, many times our connections go onto believe it or not, Tenaris material, Vallourec material, U.S. Steel material, whomever, and it also gives us optionality with things like welded pipe and the like. So I just think it's a very, very good business model on that. On the Titan side, we are expecting margins to improve going forward. I think, I'm not expecting much this quarter, but I think, again, throughout the end of the year, they'll be going in the right direction. The cost savings measures that we took recently this year will be playing out, and hopefully, absorption picks up with capacity increases like demand out of Canada and international.
But our overall margin trend is really being supported by what I think is excellent OCTG margins overall coming out of Asia Pac, as well as subsea and improved margin profile coming from our advanced manufacturing business, and Bruce's Organic Oil Recovery. So I'll let him answer the last question.
Yeah, I think the way to look at the OR margin, you know, it's a really value-adding product. So the customer gets, it's not just accelerated oil recovery, it's enhanced oil recovery. It's oil that would be trapped in the ground otherwise without the, without the treatment. So we do have a profit share arrangement with our partner, and it's a great partner in Titan Oil Recovery in the States. So, but even with that profit share, we'd be looking at... the way to look at it is it's the higher end of our margins. So that's the profile going forward. It is the higher end, even with that profit share, the net margin.
Thank you.
Good morning. Richard Dawson from Berenberg. Just following up on the Organic Oil Recovery. So you mentioned at the CMD, you're targeting about $50 million by 2025 in revenue. So you're essentially there, and then targeting $30 million onwards. So could you just talk about the future opportunities in OOR and sort of which regions beyond maybe the U.K.?
There are opportunities in every oilfield, whether that's onshore, offshore, carbonate, sandstone. You know, we've talked to customers from, you know, the U.K. to the Middle East. We're in Baku, Pakistan, the Far East as well. I think there's about seven out of the ten largest producers in the world that have either got pilots or are looking at commercial applications for it. There is a huge addressable market. It does take time. You're dealing with people's reservoirs, so they want to get comfort that the technology works, and as Jim said, it's almost a rush to be second. It will take time to mature. We've got to build up that supply chain in terms of the labs as well. But yeah, the scalability is good.
It's just trying to, you know, it will just take time to get to those levels that we believe we can get to.
Sure. Thank you. And then I say, just moving on to Titan, so the perforating business. Is there any change to the competitive landscape, just sort of on your market share or pricing, just given the softness?
Same old, same old. It has, it hasn't changed. Same competitors. I listen to my competitors. I'm sure some of them are listening to me today. Really, nothing has changed. Pricing is flat, same people are there, same market share positions as six months ago.
Okay, thank you.
Hello. Yeah, Mark Wilson, Jefferies. Speaking straight to that, why is that? We're seeing consolidation in the producers.
Yeah.
You mentioned it yourself. Why will we not see that in the service space? Is there any reason for you to do anything there?
That's a great question, and I don't have an answer because it's an individual case by case by business. I know that, in the past year, you've seen some consolidation happen in the oilfield service business, right? You had, Patterson take on Ulterra, they bought NexTier. Their share price has done nothing. You had Schlumberger buy ChampionX, they got hammered for it. So in the area that I think there has been pluses has been like the consolidation, Noble with Diamond Offshore, where really you're down now to three deepwater drilling contractors, where you had six a year ago or two years ago. So should there be consolidation? I'm sure that that's a good topic, and even if I could say something, I wouldn't say it.
But it's not. There's nothing happening today, and it is a business where there's just not enough demand out there, Mark. I mean, it's no different than, you know. And it's really not different than other cycles we've always seen, and there's just too much supply chasing too little demand. And the good indicator to that, while it's not the same business, you can look at, like, OCTG prices in the U.S., where you've had twenty-two months of decline. And that's not because people want a lower pricing, it's because the demand just hasn't been there based on the rig count we have today.
So, on with that backdrop, and let's talk to the twenty thirty-
Mm.
Hunting 2030, which you reiterated today. Just remind us what that looks like and where the growth drivers come from in that 2030 target?
In terms of, you know, we through the 20-30 plan, we put that bridge in terms of revenue from where we were, you know, the $1 billion up to the $2 billion. A lot of that, you know, some of that will come from M&A. We had $480 million of M&A in there as well. So that's something we are focusing on in terms of, you know, probably more in the subsea and completion areas. The Titan is lower than we anticipated. You know, we modeled back in September last year, that rig count, we didn't anticipate that rig count being as low, but we do believe that will. You know, the medium to long term for Titan is good based on the gas prices, based on that onshore activity in the U.S., so that will come back.
But I think we're really excited around that OCTG and that Subsea, Advanced Manufacturing groups. We're still comfortable. In the short term, we're lower in Titan, higher in the international offshore. Titan will come back, and I still think there was opportunities in OCTG in terms of the tender pipeline we're seeing. You know, it's still over $1 billion. We've seen that big success in KOC. There'll be other players we can go after there. In that subsea business, in terms of organic and also the M&A work as well, we can keep getting there.
... Good morning, Toby Thorrington from Equity Development. A couple of OCTG questions, please. So, pipeline in that product group has been about $1 billion, round numbers, for a couple of years, I think. With the KOC business, you've been at pains to point out that's sort of five- to six-year development.
Mm-hmm.
I wonder if you could kind of give us a bit more color on the shape of the pipeline in terms of, for example, is 30% of it, for example, you know, four years progressed or just something like that?
I think the pipeline Bruce is talking about is all products combined, so that's deepwater titanium, that's OCTG, that's kind of like that $10 billion what we see out there.
Right.
For OCTG, I mean, it's one of those things that's gonna be hard to predict. We work with clients, but once we're qualified, I'm not in there maybe doing, like, more testing for KOC. I mean, one of the things that'll be coming up, it's generally public knowledge, there will be a KOC 2 bid coming out. So that'll happen sometime later this year. When that's awarded, who knows? Maybe it's in early twenty twenty-five. There's opportunities for other players in the Middle East. There's opportunities in Brazil that we're looking at for CRA material. So it's kind of a hodgepodge, and it's hard to predict exactly when they'll pull the trigger on these drilling programs and when the demand will be for tubulars.
Okay. Unexpected supplementary then. Broadly, how does the billion pipeline split across the product groups?
Majority would be, you know, reflecting that KOC too would be majority sitting in the OCTG product line.
Okay. Okay, and, same product group, different region, the Jindal India-
... JV business. Could you just clarify the addressable market of 300-400 million? Is that connections only?
No, that's pipe. That's everything right now for the premium segment of the pipe business.
Right. Okay. And broadly-
Yeah
... what would the connections proportion of that be, would you say?
Oh, gosh. 20% of that.
Yeah.
Right.
You know, 60 to 80.
Okay. Annual. And what's a sort of aspirational market share for that, for that business? I'm wondering what the capacity is now and what you-
A hundred. I mean, I'm being sarcastic here, but no, we're the only ones in country right now. We're looking at doing some things to expand OD sizes on what we can offer, but we're really tied at the hip with what the mill, what Jindal can make. So the real sweet spot is gonna be, like, four and a half inch through nine and five eighths casing. And a bulk of what we're doing, seven inch, nine and five eighths, those type of sizes. And keep in mind, when you talk about that, the OCTG market globally, it has increased over the years, but the majority of OCTG sold has API connections on. It's probably 60% of that, which is nothing proprietary. So, you know, we're in a subsegment of a subsegment-
Mm-hmm
... when you look at premium connections.
Sure. Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Thanks. It's Alex Brooks, Canaccord. So two questions. Keep going on the OCTG. Do you have any sensitivity to pipe prices at all? Is there any left in the business?
No, I'm not being funny because when we look at our, let's say, our Asia Pac business to Kuwait, right? We're not a stocking distributor in that business. So there's small amounts of inventory that we have, but in general, if we don't have an order, we don't have the pipe. And so we go out and tender. You know, we see a tender come in, we get a solid price from our suppliers, we put on our connection pricing and whatever else, transportation or the like, and that's the tender. And so we're locked in at those prices regardless of whatever fluctuation goes. In the U.S. and Canada, we've gone to the distributor model. So fortunately, we have some great distributors that we work with, primarily owned by Japanese trading houses, and they take the risk on the pipe.
So whether it's whatever the price is, that's really not my issue.
and then secondly, can I press Bruce slightly on the working capital development? Because obviously, 6% of working capital is, of annualized revenue, quite a big number-
Mm
... in a relatively short space of time.
Mm.
Can you break that down into kind of what's seasonal and what's effort or sort of how will that play through over the next-
Yeah. Well, it's really that continued trajectory on, for example, the Titan inventory working down. You know, that was up towards under forty million. That will—in May, that will come down to hundred and five. Electronics will unwind as well. So a bit of that self-help, if you like, on that inventory side. And the comfort we have with the working capital instruments, if you like, the banker's acceptance bonds and the discounted letters of credit, are very quite prescriptive in terms of timings and dates. So it's not like open terms reliant on the customer paying on the twenty-eighth of December. We know when we're shipping, we know when we get the bills of lading, and we know when we can get that cash in from the confirmed letter of credit. So that gives us that comfort on the timings of the cash flows.
So it's a combination of the self-help plus the working capital instruments that allows us to know, right, that's unwind the working capital. That's how that's all gonna be predictable cash flows, and that's where we're gonna get to that 40%.
Mm-hmm.
And then lastly, no, no one's asked about Subsea, so I'll try something. Clearly, it's had a spectacular growth trajectory-
Mm
... in the last two years, and you've kind of dropped a hint about another TSJ upgrade coming.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, and as far as I can tell, all of those divisions are now kind of firing on
Doing well
... most cylinders at least.
Right.
You know, is there a lot more to come? I mean, what's the opportunity set there?
I think that for the titanium stress joint business, we call it our Subsea operation. I think there's a lot more to come. I think that it'll be project by project. I mean, we have. We just saw some nice pictures of Yellowtail products going out for there. You all see the ExxonMobil. I mean, every hole they put in the ground, they find something. So it's gonna be huge. It's gonna last for many, many years. We're now talking to clients more internationally, 'cause keep in mind, that was a business that pretty much was in hibernation if you just go back four years ago. So now when you go into a customer and say, "Hey, by the way, ExxonMobil's using this in Guyana," you get a lot more doors opened up and people willing to listen to what you can present to them technically.
We landed. We're in the process right now. We have in-process work going on for the TPAO order. That's for the deep water Black Sea. But we're talking to people like Total, we're talking, you know, Namibia, Suriname. We're doing some test projects for Petrobras in Brazil. So again, it's anywhere that FPSO market's at. Enpro has been a nice story. After two years in hibernation because of mainly COVID, we now have a backlog of over $17 million in that business, which doesn't seem to be that large, but it really is going in the right direction, and it's one of our businesses that can also provide opportunities in decommissioning. So unfortunately, that might be the go-forward plan for the U.K. sector, decommissioning and enhanced oil recovery.
But anyhow, it's a play there, and that business is seeing opportunities in the Gulf of Mexico. We've had our first business with Exxon in Guyana with some Enpro kit. So, you know, what's the upside for that? I don't know, except it's a lot bigger than what it is today. And then the Spring business, which makes the subsea connectors that go on the trees, as well as some chemical injection equipment, that's pretty much tied to that subsea tree count. And the best indicator of that is to go to the FMC website, and you can see a predictor of future tree awards, which, again, is all going in the right direction, which will benefit us.
Jim, we've had some questions submitted through the webcast, firstly from Thomas Rands of Davy. Can you remind us of the Hunting investment in this product to date, regarding OOR and the exclusive technology agreement timeframe?
The investment to date would be sub $5 million over the last seven, eight years. In terms of the agreement, it's a distribution agreement, and it's quite long-term on that agreement as well. I don't wanna go into too many details with on our partners. There's a profit share element as well attached to that, but we have that exclusive rights for outside of North America to distribute, market the product, and deploy the product.
Great. We've got some broader questions on OOR. What role do you see the technology playing in the broader context of the energy transition and decarbonization efforts in the oil and gas industry?
I think it's got a strong, really strong story there because the emissions on the product, you're not drilling a new well. It's the infrastructure's already there. The tubing, the casing is already there. You're not drilling new holes. You're just basically getting the oil out the ground in a very efficient way. So it's a really good, elegant environmental story attached to it as well. And you're maximizing the resources before you get to the decommissioning. You know, a lot of the basins, mature basins like North Sea, are wanting to use it to extract as much as they can before they get to that decommission. So, but we're also seeing it in more newer fields in other basins as well.
I mean, I think if you look at fields globally, there's some pretty stark statistics that the actual amount of recoverable oil is only like, it can be as low as 10 to maybe only 30% of what that reservoir has with the conventional means that go on. So I think there is a big upside for enhanced oil recovery, which, again, enhanced oil recovery is not new. It's been. There's been steam injection, there's been lots of things over the years. But this is one that, you know, the proof's been in the pudding, as they say, with the results coming out of the tests, and it works.
That's great. No more questions through the webcast. Any more questions in the room?
Uh, Mark.
The first one is, we love your, the pitch. So just remind us, what is the space stuff you sell?
So we make components for Blue Origin as well as for Elon Musk's company, and it's various different components, from parts of the fuel systems to the parts of the landing gear, and that is done at our facility in Fryeburg, Maine.
And then the second part, when you talk about... It just struck me now. When you talk about the organic recovery, a lot of this is efficiencies in recovery that keep coming through the industry-
Mm-hmm
... that offsets, to some extent, the drilling side of things, the front-end loaded, let's do more of the traditional-
Mm-hmm
-type recovery. In that regard, then, you got products both sides, but it really speaks to M&A-
Mm-hmm
It suggests to me, to be able to really push through on that, that growth. So if we can just maybe ask more, if there's a geographical area that you would be looking at. It seems like Asia-Pac, EMEA definitely seems focused as well as the subsea.
So our M&A strategy is really, there, it's not—we're not defined to any one place. We see opportunities monthly to come across Bruce's desk and mine. Sid Harper, a guy in Houston, works a lot on our M&A evaluation of things. We don't want to buy a product that their only place of business is Permian Basin, U.S.A, right? So we're looking for IP, we're looking for international scope, as well as, you know, we want North American and basically global scope. So there is no geographic area. We haven't found too many opportunities outside of North America, just for the fact that most oilfield service companies are based in... They're in Norway, they're in Aberdeen, they're in Houston. That's where the locations are at when we've talked to people. Subsea is number one on our list.
We wanna build that portfolio if we can find it. Number two would be something to enhance our completion business with Titan. And really, the third is non-oil and gas. So we'd like to take some further steps to grow our Dearborn and electronics business, looking for, again, proprietary, good technology companies that can be bolted into that. But it's like I tell everybody, it's not like you can go down to Walmart and say, you know, "Give me two subseas and an electronics to go." I mean, it's just, it's been a difficult marketplace out there to try to find something that makes sense.
Anything else? We're gonna beat the fire alarm, which is gonna go off here in two minutes. So listen, I thank you all for being here today. I thank everybody for listening, and again, the team at Hunting for the hard work -
Oh! Almost.
that they do every day. So again, thanks. Let us know if you have any questions further, and we'll follow it up.