Well, good morning, everybody. Glad to be back here in London. I wanna thank Buchanan's for putting this all together for us today. It's nice to see things returning again back to normal with COVID fading away and all this and that. One of the things I want to do, just a short story before we get started here today. I had the privilege a few weeks ago to visit our team in Singapore and our team in Batam Island in Indonesia. While I was there, as well as getting an update and a briefing on the business and meeting the team and looking at succession planning and all those type of things, I had the fortune to go to Batam and be involved in the celebration that marked 10 years without an accident at that facility.
I bring that up ahead of this presentation just to remind people that our organization is a very fine-tuned machine. We take a lot of effort in making sure we do things right. The team in Batam to go 10 years is an outstanding accomplishment, and it plays well and talks a lot about the people of our organization. Today, we're very optimistic. We're delivering what I think are some very good results, and more importantly, some very good comments about our outlook going forward. None of that would be possible without the team that I'm fortunate to work with every day. With that, I'm gonna go on and talk or start our presentation.
We start first on the macro side of the business, and I think the issue right now that continues to play in my mind is how in the last couple months, at least since post-Ukrainian invasion by the Russians, things like our energy security and energy use in general, the fact that we've taken all of that for granted for so long is really coming back to haunt us, and as far as people in the developing economies go. We have underinvested in the business. We've had bad government policies. We've had all these things come together to make what could potentially be a big train wreck here in the future. All of the fundamentals that we are seeing in front of us are showing that the world is still gonna need a lot of hydrocarbons going forward. Comfort matters.
People want their standard of living to be enhanced, not decreased. They want affordability in their energy. Long and short of it is you're gonna have to put holes in the ground and complete wells and go explore and drill. We are sitting right now in the early stages of a strong recovery that we feel will last for many, many years, and we feel we have the right products, the right mix. The changes that we've made to refine the business are paying off. I'm standing here in front of you today extremely bullish about our outlook going forward and thankful for the improvements that we've made to date. On the highlights slide number two, the financial performance continues to improve.
Literally, every segment of our business has shown improvement half-year, you know, year-over-year on the half-year results. Our sales order book is now over $400 million, and being as many years as I've been with the organization, I don't remember it ever being at those levels before. A lot of increased activity, increased quoting activity. We are dealing with inflationary issues, but I think we're dealing with them well. We continue to manage through those, and hopefully, as I mentioned earlier, we want to contribute to the inflation in the industry as well in our pricing. We need to see an improvement in pricing. As people get busier, there becomes less pressure on pricing from a discounting point of view. We're seeing again, typical supply and demand. Demand's picking up. Supply is limited.
There's not a big rush to expand capacity in any segment of our industry. I think you're gonna continue to see pricing move north as this recovery goes on. One of the things that I wanted to highlight, we do have the new asset-based lending facility in place, the $150 million. [Chris Baris], Bruce Ferguson did a great job on getting that put together, and the rest of the team enhances our liquidity. We did it at the right time. That with the cash we presently have on our balance sheet is leaving us sitting in a pretty good position. With that, I'm gonna turn it over to Bruce.
Thanks, Jim. The first slide we have there is the adjusted group income statement, and this really reflects the improving sentiment that Jim has been talking about. If you look at our revenue figures there for the first half 2022, we've seen a 38% increase from H1 2021, and again, showing the increased activity coming through the numbers. The gross profits were $75.8 million for H1 2022 against the $44.1 million in the first half of 2021, and that's a 23% gross margin. We're starting to see the improvement in sales prices. We're seeing the improvement in the utilization figures more than offsetting the inflation costs. That all comes together for an EBITDA of $20.6 million against a loss of $3.6 million back in H1 2021.
We've got a small loss for the share of associates in Rival and Cumberland of $1.3 million to give us a loss before tax of $0.5 million. We do have a tax charge on our U.K./Canada businesses, so that will give us a loss after tax of $3.7 million for the period, which is much smaller than the $27.2 million that we saw H1 2021. On the next slide, we have a deeper dive into our EBITDA, tracking how the EBITDA has performed since H1 2020, which is effectively pre-COVID. We see H2 2020 and H1 2021, which was the COVID years. We see that recovery coming through for H2 2021 for $6.7 million with the $20.6 million that we're reporting today. Our EBITDA margins are improving. They're up to 6%.
We do see that improvement continuing over the second half of the year and getting back to where we were pre-COVID levels. In terms of our segments, we have a further analysis of our segment results. All product lines have shown improvement, which is good to see. We see our Titan business, the first to come back, sitting at $127 million revenue, which is 42% higher than we saw in H1 2021, and that drove an operating profit of $4.3 million, which is really driving the return to profitability to $1.7 million. Good sales in U.S. onshore for Titan, but also good sales internationally in the likes of China, Canada, and also South America. In North America, again, we saw improvement. We're up at 42% improvement from H1 2021 to 2022.
We got the operating profit back to breakeven from a $10.4 million loss, and that's been driven by some good improvements in areas such as U.S. manufacturing, which saw a 60% increase in revenues, and also in areas like U.S. connection as well. EMEA, we saw an increase in revenues, and that's despite some significant restructures we've done last year, and we're seeing the reduction in that operating loss from $6.6 million to $2.2 million. Good growth in areas such as well intervention and well testing. Well testing sales are up 100% from the same period last year. Asia Pac suffered a little bit in quarter one through the remnants of COVID and also some logistics challenges with the closure of Shanghai and other ports, which did constrain the H1 numbers.
Again, we're seeing much stronger results coming through H2 and reported a large order that's gonna be delivered into next year as well. On our next slide, we're looking at bar charts of all our revenue by product, and they're all showing improvement from over the last two periods. Our Perforating Systems has come back 42% improvement, H1 2022 over H1 2021. We've got OCTG up 43%. Again, that shows good recovery, again, despite having Canada restructure and also North Sea as well. We see an increase in Advanced Manufacturing. It's not quite as high as what we've seen in both OCTG and Perforating Systems, and that's due to some supply chain constraints, the likes of chips for the electronics. And then we see continued improvement in subsea and intervention tools as well.
We always keep a focus on our oil and gas and non-oil and gas business. We've seen that perk up from $17.5 million this time last year up to $24.1 million, around about 7% of our business. The order book going forward is much stronger on the non-oil and gas business, so we see that percentage picking up going forward. Onto the balance sheet. Our balance sheet remains strong. We see our property reduced slightly, and that reflects the small amount of CapEx we've been putting in place over the last period, which is lower than our depreciation. Goodwill, $196 million, primarily in the Titan and Enpro business, reflect our associate and joint ventures for Jindal, Cumberland, and Rival.
Working capital has increased by $21 million, and that's due to it reflects the upcycle as we're adding to inventory and trade receivables. We'll do a little bit more detail on the next slide as well. That still leaves us with cash of $85.6 million, so good performance there. We take into account our $150 million facility, our ABL facility. That gives us good liquidity and a platform going forward. Our inventory days continue to go the right way. We're down 143 days from 163. Our receivables from 87 down to 80, so good efficiency in terms of our working capital there.
On our working capital, we've got analysis of our $299 million that we're reflecting on our balance sheet, showing our inventory as net inventory position going from $204 million up to $220 million. Again, just reflecting the upcycle. Then we see more invoices being booked on our receivables with some more payables offsetting that coming through as well. On our last slide, we have our cash flow. We're showing an EBITDA plus our non-cash awards, share awards of $4.8 million to give us $25.2 million. We do see the cash outflow that we're talking about in working capital there at $22.1 million. We have got some net tax paid as well. All that works through to a free cash flow of -$3.2 million. A relatively small historically amount of CapEx at $8.9 million.
Dividends of $6.4 million, and with the exchange, that gets us back to a $20.8 million reduction in our cash position that half year. With that, I'll hand back to Jim.
Okay, thanks, Bruce. Do this here. Talking about following up on the fundamentals for the business right now, I think the key points today are in the first upper left box. We talked about the E&P clients out there right now. Capital discipline is still reining in the business. I think that there's no doubt the return profile for E&P companies has changed dramatically in the last six or seven years. Back in those days, before the great, I call it the great bankruptcy rush that happened, production is all that mattered. Drilling was going regardless of some of the economics. Today, we just do have a much more disciplined client base. That along with ESG pressures from the investment community, you all see it. They're focused on returning cash back to shareholders and being disciplined for the long term.
On the demand side, we're still at 100 MMbpd ±, w e don't see any recessionary fears driving a big downturn in global demand. If anything, we think it's gonna increase because of the lockdown situations we've had with COVID. You still don't have air travel back to where it was. We still have had China under lockdowns off and on. We just think that that's gonna be still a bullish number going forward and don't see any big changes going away. The other key with that whole demand and supply issue is, I think people keep forgetting, again, part of the security issue. You know, in the U.S., we've been pumping out 1 MMbpd out of our strategic petroleum reserve. That's gonna end soon. I think it ends in October.
Other Western countries did the same thing. We personally believe the demand-supply imbalance or balance is a lot tighter than what people are talking about. The industry upcycle, for me, the exciting thing about that is seeing offshore come back to life. Titan's done great. As Bruce and I talked about, first business to go down, first one to recover based on strong fundamentals in North America. When you look at those barrels that are being drilled there, those are the most ESG-friendly barrels in the world outside of probably the North Sea. Good business there, but what we really need for the service industry is a strong recovery in the offshore market.
While rig counts in places like the Gulf of Mexico aren't setting the world on fire, or the North Sea, you are seeing tremendous upside and tick up in activity in places like Brazil, Suriname, Guyana, some Africa work on the west coast of Africa, all of which we're benefiting from, and that even ties in today with the announcement we made about our offshore business in China. We're bullish on the outlook for that because I'll go back to a presentation I made a couple years ago where Hess made a comment that, and I might be off by a number or two, but it was something the equivalent of seven wells in Guyana equaled 1,400 wells in the Bakken as far as production goes.
When you look at the long life of those offshore assets, it's an investment decision that I think is gonna be becoming more pronounced going forward, and those are bright signals for us as a company. Other graph, E&P CapEx, we're still significantly down. Part of the energy security issues I talked about earlier. We've really been in a state of extreme underinvestment since 2015. When you look at those numbers, which are not adjusted for inflation, it really makes it even worse. Early stages of an upcycle, I'm feeling good about where we're at right now. Market overview, you guys are all up on this. Again, the [Spears] results are there. Same thing that I like to see, lower left, upper right, all going in the right direction.
DUC count in the U.S. is declining because they have drilled. They have taken advantage of those DUCs during the downturn when they didn't wanna spend money on extra holes in the ground. That's becoming, to me, more of an irrelevant number because the rig efficiency itself, and if you listen to what Patterson's saying or the people at Nabors, I mean, they're just drilling these wells a lot faster though, too. You got better efficiencies in drilling. The DUC numbers are again, they've declined, but that was more of a CapEx decision on what the operator was gonna do. One of the things that is not talked about enough, I think from a service point of view, is our outlook on natural gas.
When I look at whether it's our Titan business, our premium connection business, some of our OCTG business that's going into the Middle East, a lot of it is natural gas focused. I get questions from some of our investors, "Well, what about oil? What about natural gas?" For us, we don't care. It's the same operation, same procedure, same equipment, so we're totally agnostic, whether it's oil or natural gas. You can even probably throw in geothermal and some other things like that as well that we still can supply kit to. You all know what the prices are. I read the FT every day that I'm here. Natural gas prices are going crazy. The U.S. price is about $9 an Mcf, hugely profitable number.
Keep in mind, that $9 figure, when I look at the hedging situations in place by our customers in North America, most of them are still not getting that price. So they've hedged at a $3, hedged at a $2, some of them with a $2. So the cash flow from these E&P operators with natural gas exposure should only accelerate more dramatically as this year goes on and in the next year, which again, they gotta replace it. You gotta drill more wells. Demand is there for North American natural gas, so I'm very bullish on that segment of our business. I talked briefly earlier about the offshore activity. That talks about the FIDs going on, the development work going on, forecast awards going through.
I watch closely the commentary from FMC and of course, the Transocean and the Valaris of the world. Day rates are picking up. Utilization rates are now over 80% for a lot of the 5th generation deepwater rigs out there. FMC is talking about tree awards continuing to expand, all drivers that drive some of our business. You know, the numbers are there. I'm very, I'm very optimistic about a rebirth in the offshore business. Our performance and key performance themes. Hunting Titan, the group there, has done a great job through the downturn, managing the downturn and in the recovery. Our revenue was up mid-forties percent year-over-year. Nice increase in international orders, even though it's a smaller part of what we do. Canada was very strong.
From a business perspective, 25% roughly of our business in Hunting Titan is West Texas Permian. The good news is the other 75% is very well spread across all the other basins throughout the country. Good job there, good technology development, good control on costs and managing the inflationary issues through the cycle. Our North American businesses, one of them that has done a great recovery and has impacted the positive results of our OCTG has been our U.S. manufacturing operation. Big turnaround there, driven by improved outlook for well intervention equipment. Completion work in the Gulf of Mexico for deepwater, as well as export for some subsea equipment and for places like Guyana and Suriname. Good results there. Premium connection business doing extremely well.
The rest of the subsea, the other segments in there, every business unit that we have and every product line is showing positive momentum. There's none that I, like, have anything negative to say about. Europe, Middle East, Africa, big swing in improvement in results year-over-year. One of the things I like to highlight is the increase we had in our revenue year-over-year, the 38% that Bruce talked about. Keep in mind, that's with us being basically out of the pipe business for six months in the North Sea. That gain, to me, when you factor that in, that's, shows even more about how well that we've done as a group. Stuart and the team in Aberdeen have done a very good job of refocusing that business.
Things like the, Organic Oil Recovery are starting to gain a lot more traction now with purchase orders coming in. Well intervention business has improved. Our Holland facility, which we talked about, booked well into next year for export business out of Europe. We got some exciting things there. Asia Pac, last one to decline, last one to come out of the downturn. I talked to you about the safety record and the people, but the performance there is improving dramatically with orders in Kuwait, some other Middle East destinations. We're benefiting already from business in India with working with the Jindal people. As today, we announced the big order in China, and we just think that whole offshore region is gonna benefit more for us.
One of the upsides that we can't quantify today but we're seeing an increase in activity on is the opportunities for geothermal in places like Indonesia and the Philippines. With local content issues that you have to be in Indonesia, it's one of those things that it could be a much, much brighter picture even on the geothermal side for our company and those markets going forward. Bruce has already talked about inventory and working capital and issues like that. Again, getting back to Titan, I've pretty much talked about it. You all know what the frac spread count has. We're at a point right now where kinda with the rig count in the U.S. as well as the frac spread count, not a lot of growth happening. A lot of that's being held back because of labor issues.
I mean, the people issues throughout our industry are like every other industry really. It's difficult people-wise. Those 289 crews are much more efficient today than what they were a year ago, so they are doing more frac stages quicker. Again, it'll keep the dollars flowing into people like ourselves, but I don't know how much higher than 289 we're gonna see that count go this year. I talked about the DUC count already, and the constraints on the operation, but there's just a few other graphs there to talk about well completions and what's going on on the Titan side. I wanna say also, natural gas, I think, has a lot of upside to add to this going forward. The international business we talked about briefly. Argentina has actually been a very good market for us.
The team in Houston has done a very good job of growing the Latin American business. We see that as being an increasing place of opportunity for us going forward based on what's happening with the policies in Argentina. It's a slow and steady move forward. Again, I'll remind everybody on the international front, a lot of that Titan type of kit is handled by the majors, the Halliburtons and the Schlumbergers themselves. That's really who you're competing with. You're competing with license issues that sometimes are controlled by militaries in all these countries. It's just a different world, but it's one that we are seeing growth in and hope to continue to see growth next year. I talk about a movement to the H3 perforating gun system.
It's a, performance-wise, it performs as well or better than H1. The real thing is once you start developing a product line, you look at how to lean, get in with lean operations, make it more efficient, and that's really what H3 evolved into. Det-Cord operation has been a home run for us. We made that investment. We're looking at expanding that Det-Cord capacity in 2023. It's not a huge investment. Perforating systems, Pampa is busy. We've put some more automation in there. During the bottom of the downturn, and I'll just remind everybody, you know, at one month, we went down to, like, $6.7 million in revenue, so it was a massive collapse that we saw in that business. We had shut down and idled Oklahoma City. We also closed Canada, where we manufactured perforating guns as well.
Now with the rebound in activity, we've reactivated Oklahoma City. People up there are making guns for us now, and we're doing an expansion in our facility in Monterrey, Mexico, to help the Latin American market and also in areas such as South Texas. New product development. ControlFire Perf is something I'll probably have more to say about next year, but it's really an efficiency gain for the operators as they're controlling the perforation operations down hole. KnockOut 360 is basically a refined charge system for plug and abandonment. It's always an offshore opportunity. With offshore coming back, with liability these people have, now that they'll have cash flow to start doing more P&A, there should be upside with that. Det-Cord I've talked about.
The bottom right one, the [Rib-Sea] Adapter, is really a way to use two of our tools for casing wear and, I forget the other one now. But anyhow, it utilizes two tools, reduces time over the hole, and allows for a more efficient operation. North American overview, I talked a lot about that before. It's all written up there. Strong demand coming into all of our businesses. U.S.M has been a real bright spot, our U.S. manufacturing for that turn that we've seen there. We'll talk a little bit more about connections and subsea. The big deal with subsea to us has been the turnaround in business from RTI, the RTI acquisition. It's been a home run for us. We continue to work with our partners at Well Data Labs and work with our investment at Cumberland.
They're moving ahead, moving forward at a good rate. Cumberland right now has had delays in the facility in Pittsburgh because of supply chain issues. Apparently, there's a huge delay in getting transformers and equipment like that. That facility in Pittsburgh, which will be their second one, the one in Austin, will be fired up in October. A slide on the connection technology shows you the number of joints threaded. The TEC-LOCK product line continues to do really well, pretty evenly balanced with oil and well, it's more oil, but a lot of natural gas exposure with that product line. Done well. Great job by the team that Mike Mock leads in Houston with that. Nice to see the growth. Also, the Canadian operation has done really, really well.
As we changed that business model, again, got out of the pipe business, let somebody else handle that, focus on the technology, the results have been incredibly better in the time period. Advanced Manufacturing, we're seeing a big part of our backlog has been in Advanced Manufacturing. It's also one of these areas that does have some supply chain issues that is getting better. When we talk about diversification, the Dearborn backlog right now is about $80 million, and it starts with an eight, depending on what day of the week it is. You're in $80 million-$82 million, and 60% of the... I'm sorry, 80% of that $80 million is non-oil and gas. Big exposure to the aerospace business, people like SpaceX, Pratt & Whitney, Sikorsky Helicopter, a lot of other people in that area.
We love that business, though there's a big lag time on procuring and getting delivery on what I'll call the super alloy materials in that those products use. If you follow, whether it's an Alcoa, Carpenter Technology, they've all had labor issues, they've all had supply chain issues. That has filtered down, not really in a negative way, but it has extended the time of delivery for some of these exotic parts. We're expecting a much more improved performance out of Dearborn and the electronics business going into 2023. On the electronics business, again, it's chips. Whether you're making in the States if you're making them Ford F-150s or refrigerators or perforating guns or MWD equipment, you got a chip issue.
We have taken some measures to look at diversifying our suppliers, but it's just been a very, very difficult environment on the chip side. Those issues are going away. We're expecting a really strong fourth quarter. Backlog in that business continues to accelerate. Our backlog with Schlumberger has never been bigger at our electronics business as a sign of what's going on out there. I'm excited about more of the 2023 story for those businesses than what we're at today. Again, all going in the right direction. Stafford, I talked about a little bit before on the subsea side. This business is joined at the hip with whatever happens in the subsea tree business. Again, as I mentioned, follow what FMC is stating. We have the largest market share in these products in the industry. Great products, great technology, high quality levels.
Outlook should continue to expand and get better going forward. Subsea spring, a big deal for us. I think the key number is that $85.5 million worth of business booked in two years from a product line that was basically in hibernation. We have some very prestigious awards that we've received in Guyana, in Brazil, in the Gulf of Mexico. We think that that's gonna continue to be a big growth area for us. We're just seeing a change in mentality on this product line. Now that you have people actually doing the technical work from our side with the clients, like Exxon, I just think there's a big upside for this business going forward. The FPSO market is really what it's focused on.
One of the advantages of using the titanium is the ability to get oil to market quicker, believe it or not, with that product versus others that are used, as well as some safety issues, hurricane prevention issues as far as on and off location goes. The FPSO market, it should continue to grow because they're getting further and further away from shore. They're getting to areas that they don't have the brownfield sites to tie back into. We're optimistic about that. Enpro, one of those businesses that we actually bought at. I made the story, I felt like the guy on the helicopter leaving Saigon in 1973 or whatever. I literally bought that when COVID hit, and you couldn't travel or do anything anymore. The team there has great technology.
Backlog is improving, opportunities are improving, but again, it's more at the back end of the subsea work. We need to get the rigs working, get the holes in the ground, the development going. That's where Enpro will fit in in those development projects following the trends of the FMC's. Some of our other businesses, I touched earlier about our OCTG business in Canada. Great results over there. Continues to improve. Technology speaks for itself. Low capital focused business. Trenchless, one of our non-oil and gas businesses, seeing a marked improvement in opportunities in business there as utility and infrastructure spend becomes more important, and I think that'll be more growth into 2023. Our U.S. M business I talked about. Specialty, which supplies kit to MWD actually to directional drillers to repair and service MWD kit.
It's part of the CapEx cycle. It's been slow to recover, but it is recovering at a steady pace. As these operators work these rigs hard, work this equipment hard, the demand is gonna be there for more of that equipment, and we'll benefit from that. EMEA we talked about already. Restructuring's done. Organic Oil Recovery, Bruce is out. I was actually gonna say he's the expert on that. We're getting firm purchase orders for people like CNOOC in the North Sea, people like MOL in Hungary, some other places in the Middle East, Petrogas in Qatar, some others. It's gone from the development and testing now into actual commercialization, where there'll be more dollars coming into the company. Well testing has been a strong area for us.
There's some offshore focus with that. U.K. and Netherlands I wanted to talk about. We did the restructuring. Our Dutch facility right now is very busy. We've been hiring people. I believe we're gonna go to a 24-hour-a-day schedule here within the next month or two. A lot of that based on the work with Tubacex for Petrobras in Brazil, where we're doing a lot of OCTG threading and accessory manufacturing. It's all on some high alloy materials going to the Brazilian market. Holland's always been very strategic from a European mill supply point of view of working to export, and that's the case that this business takes us well into 2023. Asia Pac, we've talked a little bit about. Very optimistic about 2023.
One of the reasons why we put that release out today is super effort from the team in China and Singapore in putting together the order for CNOOC. I'm just very optimistic that we're in early stages there. We are seeing more work in the Middle East, more operations happening there. We are seeing a pickup in completion activity in the Asia Pac region with people like Halliburton and Schlumberger and Baker, who we are a supplier to and we're working with. It'll be better results when I talk to you the next time on that as well. In summary, I think we are in early stages of a long-term recovery. I'm pleased on what we've performed at in the last six months, but we're not content. We're gonna continue to work hard to fine-tune our efficiencies.
We've never backed away from our lean initiatives within the organization. The fortunate thing is we have the people and the talent and the product lines to really capitalize on what I think is a long-term recovery in the industry. With that, I think I've talked enough. Question time.
Anyone like to ask questions?
Hi there. Erwin from RBC. Congratulations first on very constructive set of results.
Thanks.
Two questions. First on frac crew, U.S. onshore and frac crews, and the second one on the offshore outlook. On the frac crew situation in the U.S., very near term, on one hand, like, there's reasons to still remain a little bit cautious and bearish very near term. On the other hand, you're quite excited about the nat- gas p rospect. Can you just clarify the overarching picture, for the people situation, U.S. onshore ?
Well, it's not only the people situation. If you listen to what NexTier has said or Liberty has said, I mean, they're not rushing out to reactivate frac spreads right now. The suppliers need, like everybody else, we need to get pricing back to everything, back to a more healthier level. I believe some of these frac spreads, I mean, they need $15 million-$20 million to reactivate one of these units. There's a big push obviously to go to natural gas fire and g etting rid of diesel, so the more efficient ones out there, but the new replacements of those are costly. I think right now what you're seeing from the main frac companies is we're just gonna hold a limit. It's not just people. We're not gonna invest a bunch of money and go crazy building out capacity.
You don't see any major difference across, like, private and public, large public companies that could be potentially meaningful for Hunting?
Well, we're doing business with a lot of private companies. I'm fortunate when we have our weekly meetings, but I see every week, for example, on our premium connection business. Literally, there's companies we're doing business with that I never heard of two years ago. Same with some operators on the Titan side. There is a private group out there, and they are very busy and very active. Most of them are owned by private equity guys sitting in New York or Boston and places like that, and they're not crazy about, you know, spending, going out of control. I think even those operators, capital discipline is better than what it was in the past, where management is being rewarded on profitability, not on production.
Understood. The second question is on offshore. There's a lot, seems to be a lot to be excited about on the offshore outlook. Besides South America and Guyana particularly, where are you most bullish for, like, say, the next, like, nine to 12 months?
I think you're gonna see a rebound in the Gulf of Mexico. Shell has announced they're doing, like, 25 wells, or they wanna do 25, exploration wells over the next two years. There's a lot of life left in the Gulf of Mexico. Part of the problem in the Gulf of Mexico I think has been political uncertainty. You've got these changes now with the new Inflation Reduction Act or whatever we're calling it now. Where they're looking at opening up more of the offshore licensing. Getting clarity on that outlook, I think is important. I'm still bullish on the Gulf of Mexico. South America, obviously Brazil, Suriname. Apache just had a nice, you know, announced a final Block 53, I think it is, on Suriname. There's a lot of positive things going on there.
We're seeing some positive things on the northwest coast of Africa that are exciting for us with some clients there. That's primarily rolled into the Enpro business. I think all of Southeast Asia, the offshore market's gonna be strong. I'll also mention, even in places like Kuwait, who everybody thinks it's onshore, I mean, they just signed a deal with Halliburton, and they're gonna actually drill a deepwater well off Kuwait and do some also some jackup work. Again, the reserves are there, the potential is there. There's a number of places where it's gonna be positive.
Understood. Well, thank you. Very helpful.
James Thompson from JPMorgan. A couple of questions, if I may.
Okay.
First of all, in terms of the U.S. onshore, you kinda laid out a picture of, you know, frac spreads not necessarily growing that much anymore, the rig count's kind of flattening off at this point in time. The DUC drawdown has been pretty significant. In terms of kind of growth in that business, are you kinda giving us a picture of a little bit of a slowdown in growth, kind of 2H into the first half of next year? Where is maybe the growth opportunity? Within that question, maybe you could talk a little bit about recompletions, yeah? We've sort of heard about refrac and whether there's a big revenue opportunity in actually recompleting old wells in the U.S.
I actually did wanna bring that up. On the growth area, I mean, I'm not saying anything that isn't already public, right? I'm going by what I'm hearing from our clients like at Liberty and NexTier as far as availability of frac crews, and the fact that they're not rushing out to put a bunch of them to work today. I follow what Halliburton says with their deal that, again, they're not going crazy adding to capacity because we need to get pricing up. I think pricing will get up, like we're seeing in our businesses. Once you reach that pricing point, then everybody does have to look at growth. I really believe one of the strong drivers going into 2023 is going to be natural gas.
I think when you look at the rig count in natural gas, it's pitiful compared to what it was four or five years ago. Part of that is they're a lot more efficient today. The draw on LNG out of the States, not to mention the fact even our U.S. numbers were well below the five-year average in storage. I think they're gonna get very, very eager to pick up the natural gas side of the business, which again, for us, oil, gas, we don't care. That's a good story for us. What was your other part?
On the refrac side.
On the refrac side. We actually discussed this, among ourselves. We are seeing a pickup in refrac activity, primarily in Texas and Oklahoma. I would say today, the number that we came up with for the Titan business in general was just a couple million dollars for the first half of the year. We are hearing more conversation about that, where operators can go spend $75,000 , go into an old Barnett Shale well, do a refrac job, you know, run some more guns in there on places that they missed or didn't know about, and get a really quick return. I think that's gonna be a growing part of the business over the years. Is it a $5 million a year opportunity or a $25 million? I don't know yet, but it is being talked about more.
Thanks. Second question. On the competitive side of things, h ow are you feeling in terms of some of the competitive dynamics now? Obviously, business is improving. You're talking about pricing discipline. Some of your customers continue to be obviously very disciplined about their capital plans. Maybe give us a little bit more dynamic about the competitive environment as you see it today.
Yeah. I think the competitive environment is more disciplined going forward today because people aren't as desperate. There's always that balance. When you're a manufacturing company, you balance. I've got X amount of overhead. I've got to look at where I'm at and the absorption of that business coming in versus the pricing in the marketplace out there. That, when you're in a depression, pricing is a big challenge. I do see a little bit more discipline or more discipline from our customers, and I'm basically talking about when I look at direct competitors in things like some of the OCTG segments in Titan. I think that's a positive. I know for us, we're planning on raising prices again in late this quarter on the Titan side and doing another round.
Again, part of that is we need to get a better price, we need to stay ahead of inflation and all that type of stuff right there. It's better now than it was definitely six months ago from every segment of the business, whether it's well intervention, pick one. Steel input costs, all of those things are driving that as well. Like, nobody wants to be stupid.
Okay. That's very clear. Final one from me. Obviously you've talked about a kind of bullish outlook for pretty much all of the businesses at this point in time. Could you maybe translate that into a little bit more color from the sort of outlook for the second half of 2022? You know, where are you kinda comfortable at in terms of guidance, I suppose, for 2022?
Well, that's the big guidance question that we always get. I think that we've talked about today we're very comfortable with guidance out there and where the direction of where we're at right now. I'm very optimistic that we're gonna continue to improve, as we have said. Many of you we've talked to already and given some thoughts on that, but it is gonna get better. The issues that we have is we don't know what's gonna happen for the traditional slowdown period holiday season-wise. We don't know if budgets are gonna be exhausted at Thanksgiving, and we see a big downturn in December. I don't know. I don't think that's gonna be the case, a lot of that because of the high level of private operators in the market there right now.
We're gonna stay bullish, and that's about all I'm gonna say on that right now.
Thanks, Jim.
Good morning. It's Thomas Rance from Investec. I've got four quick questions.
Okay.
Hopefully I'll fire through them individually.
Go ahead.
First one, just on the back of James' question around Titan's kind of growth outlook. You touched on the international opportunity and some of the challenges there, but can you give us an idea of roughly how much as a percent of Titan's business is international currently, and ideally where you'd kind of like to see it in five years' time?
I'd like to see it more. Currently, the first half of the year, Titan international business was $16 million-$17 million, up from about $13 million the prior half year period. That's not. When we count international, that's not Canada. We consider Canada North America, so this is non-North America business.
Great. Thank you. Second question, just on you talked about reactivating some of, some sites. Can you give us, maybe a question more for Bruce, kind of a capacity utilization kind of number at the moment, across the whole group, if you can, or even into individual divisions.
Yeah. It really depending on what facilities they are, Tom. We are seeing, t he measure that we use, the lights on measure, was this time last year down at 32%-33%. That's based on a 24/7. We're now up over 40%. We're seeing that figure pick up. A lot of different companies will use different measures. We are seeing. We're putting on, for example, as Jim said, three shifts into Holland, another shift into Aberdeen and across the States as well. Trying to get machinists is difficult, but with the demand we have, yeah, we are seeing that utilization pick up month-on-month.
Great. Thank you. Just on that, where was that in the past? Has it ever been close to 100%, or is that?
No, it would never get there because you're really looking at 24/7.
You'll never be at 100%, so we always do a 24/7 because you've always got maintenance. You're just never gonna run it into the ground like that.
The previous peak number would have been 70%s, 80%s maybe?
Probably not as high as that.
No.
No.
Okay. Just trying to gauge.
50%, 60% is w here we are versus where we could get back to. Even 40%, yeah.
Thank you. Third one. You mentioned Organic Oil Recovery orders. I saw a highlight recently, or a headline recently about a $2 million Hunting investment in OOR. Can you just give us some, a bit more detail on what you're seeing and remind us where you are with the IP provider of that and the momentum that you're seeing.
Well, here's the expert in it. I'm gonna let him. I was letting Bruce do that because he's the-
Well, take that. I'll take that one. We have a really good relationship with our Titan partners, and it's Titan that actually own the IP. Not the Titan that we've been talking about perforating, but Titan is the company that owns the IP. We have secured a longer-term agreement with the Titan team, with Ken and the team, that will take us through the license agreement. We licensed the IP. That's through to now 2030. We've now extended territories as well into a number of key locations, which is great. Yeah. There has been good news on that front. You know, getting technology adopted in the industry is always difficult. We're really pleased to see that after five years we've now got North Sea, offshore North Sea, with CNOOC.
It's a key win for us there, and that's where the, you know, the actual purchase orders have been received. Then there's some fantastic, exciting trials that are going on all across the Middle East into Africa as well with some major national operators at the same time. As the year develops, we will, you know, there's some good initial results coming through there, and we hope that will continue, and that that will lead to further purchase orders in those areas as well. Really difficult to quantify in terms of, you know, pounds and pence at this stage, and hopefully give you a better update in October.
Great. Thank you. Finally, the acquisitions you've done in the past seem to be coming through great guns at the moment. What is the M&A pipeline looking like at the moment? What valuation expectations from sellers? Obviously, you've got nice net cash balance sheet. How are you thinking about deploying your capital or where to put your capital at the moment?
Okay. We have looked at a number of acquisitions over the last couple of years. It's really a story that I'll do it the same with my Hunting shares that I'm not giving away at GBP 2.50. Everybody went through the downturn, and everybody had impacted earnings in that period. When you're trying to put a value on a business, it's pretty hard to do that with the history that we've had. We have looked at a number, for example, of non-oil and gas-focused acquisitions. I say a number. There's been a couple of them. We've had dialogue with them, and their comment was, "Let's talk again in six months. Let's talk again in nine months because I know I'm gonna not get my full value out of this if we do a deal today." There isn't.
I wanna say is, it's probably the weakest market that I've seen. Some other deals that we've looked at have not closed. I mean, there's just a big gap there with expectations on what you could stand in front of a room full of you guys and say, "This is what I paid for these guys." Right? That clarity will come back as earnings come back, as the whole world comes back to normal. It's just been extremely difficult, and we don't wanna be in a commodity business, right? I don't wanna add. I don't wanna acquire. I've had these come by my desk. "Here's X company. We do X commodity product. And by the way, we're only based in the Permian Basin." It doesn't fit our portfolio. It's not what we wanna do going forward. We're being very picky. We're being selective.
As you mentioned, the last two that we did have been, to me, home runs 'cause it's been technology, very unique. It's not a three bid and a buy business, and we're looking for more things like that.
Great. Thank you very much.
Okay.