Okay, I think we're ready. All right, good morning, everyone. My name is Jay Glick. I'm the Deputy Chair of the Board of Directors of Hunting plc, and I declare the meeting open for the AGM, for the 2023 AGM. Let me begin by introducing my fellow directors, and I'm going to start seated to my far right, not necessarily his political alignment. Is Keith Lough. Keith is our Senior Independent Director. Beside Keith is Anell Bay. Annell is a Non-Executive Director and Chairs our RemCo. Next to Annell is Bruce Ferguson. Bruce is our Financial Director or Finance Director. And beside Bruce is Jim Johnson, who everyone knows, our Chief Executive. Then seated to my far left is Carol Chesney. Carol is a Non-Executive Director and heads our Audit Committee. Next to Carol is Stuart Brightman.
Stu is a Non-Executive Director and newly for his first meeting. Next to Stu is Paula Harris. Paula is also a Non-Executive Director. Finally, seated to my immediate left is Ben Wileman. Ben is our Company Secretary. Okay, in advance of the meeting, shareholders were invited to submit questions in writing. Answers to those questions have been published on our company's website and will be addressed after Jim Johnson's presentation. At the start, we didn't have any questions, so I think that'll be a short segment. We will continue to take questions from the floor, however, from shareholders during the AGM. These can be submitted to an email address, and this email address is... I'm going to spell it because it's not a word, l-o-n.agm@hunting-intl.com. That's shown at the bottom of most of the slides.
If you've missed it, you can pick it up there. The slide on the screen provides an agenda for today's meeting. In a few moments, I'll cover the Q1 performance for Hunting, which was released in a trading statement at 7:00 A.M. this morning to the market. Following this, Jim Johnson will cover the brief presentation on 2022 and the annual report. After Jim's presentation, there'll be an opportunity for questions from the floor, and Jim and I will try and respond to those. Following the question and answer series, we will then move to the main business of the AGM, which will include a poll. The poll will close 10 minutes after the conclusion of the meeting.
Following that, the directors will all be available for questions and answers from all of you who are here. At that point, refreshments will be served if you haven't already gotten coffee or something. Turning now to the company's Q1 trading statement that was released this morning. The group has recorded an EBITDA of $22.6 million during the first quarter, which was well ahead of what management's anticipation. For the period, this was driven largely by a more active oil and gas market. Fundamentals of supply and demand are continuing to be very strong. Our North American segment reported a also strong performance in March, domestic and international orders were completed. It was good, again, a good strong market.
Management previously guided to investors and shareholders that Hunting has continued to invest in working capital during the first quarter, and that working capital build is largely related to inventory and receivables on firm orders for large projects being completed across the group. This has led to reporting a net debt position at 31 March 2023. Management continues to target an unwinding of this position, during the second half of the year, we will see that unwind, we expect a positive net cash position by the end of the year. The North American operations segment has started the year strongly, while Titan and Asia-Pacific have traded in line with expectations. Across Europe, Middle East, and Africa, losses continued to narrow as key orders continued to be completed.
Overall, trading is ahead of our expectation, which is always good. From the first of January 2023, we have split out the Subsea Technologies, and that business is now reported as a standalone operating segment. The board expects strong growth in this segment in the coming year. During the quarter, the Subsea group traded ahead of expectations. In summary, the board is pleased with the company's performance to date and with the market guidance for the 2023 full outturn remaining unchanged. I think we're still looking forward to a very strong year. We're off to a good start in the first quarter. With that, let me turn to Jim Johnson and for his presentation.
Thanks, Jay. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for attending today, being here to listen to this, to be at the meeting. Before I get started, I just wanted to say thanks to a few groups and people. First of all, my board for their continued support and guidance over the years, as we went through extremely difficult times coming into where we're at today. I want to also thank all of our advisors that are here, our business partners, clients, and shareholders. Thanks for your continued support. As I go into this presentation, I look at 2022 as really being what I call our year of redemption after a lot of issues with the COVID downturn, with the effect it had on our business.
I'm happy to report that in 2022 we saw a great turnaround in our business, which I think has prepared us well for this year based on the comments that Jay just talked about on our first quarter guidance and our first quarter numbers. We're very optimistic on the year going forward. 2022 was a good year as well, considering where we came from. Our order book continued to expand throughout the year. Our book-to-bill ratio continues to be strong with a backlog right now still of about $500 million. Subsea business had a very strong year coming from a relative standstill position with some of the businesses that we made through acquisition, like the RTI Energy Systems business, picking up strategic customer orders in places like Guyana and in Brazil.
Has well-placed us for the future in what we see as an expanding opportunity, which will be more international and more offshore-focused. The non-oil and gas business continued to progress for us. We picked up a number of new military and defense customers in the year, and while the revenue percentage hasn't been that significant as far as growth goes, it has grown in real terms dollar-wise, but it's been still overshadowed by the growth that we saw in oil and gas, especially last year. Other things that we did, we formed our Energy Transition Team late last year because now we're finally seeing opportunities which we feel will generate returns for the company and position us for what is an inevitable change in the energy landscape going forward.
We feel we have some great products, which I'll talk about a little bit later, that'll position us well for that. Two other things. The ABL was put in place last year to give us firepower and the financial resources we need to effectively run the business. We also are in the launch of our Hunting 2030 strategy. I'll briefly go over the numbers here. The big thing year-over-year was really the 39% increase in revenue year-over-year, showing a marked improvement in business across the board in every geographic area. EBITDA went from minuscule $3 million- $52 million, showing the feed-through in our organization with better absorption rates, more utilization taking up with the increase in activity and able to drop more to the bottom line.
We still continued to focus on returning some cash to shareholders with our dividend. We actually have that, and the next one scheduled here soon, as we feel it's important in this industry of ours, as cyclical as it is, to continue to show returns back to our shareholders. On the group balance sheet, again, those numbers up there. The key is we ended up the year a total bank and cash of positive 24.5. We have been building inventory to take advantage of the cycle that we're in right now. We expect while we're in a net debt position now, we will be back in the positive cash by the end of 2023.
Kind of where we're at now, a lot of this build, as Jay had mentioned, is things like our SEAL-LOCK order in China continued, some new product launches within Titan, just the overall increase in completion business in South America, which takes a lot of high nickel-based alloy-type material into our system. Our eyes are on it and focused, and we want to make sure we get the returns we need for the investments in place. Cash flow. Again, it shows that negative. Shows again, as we talked about, the buildup in and working capital due to inventory positions and just the increase in business and the receivable, the timing on receivables and the like. I'm not going to really spend a lot of time on that. This is one of my favorite slides. Like I said, I love a graph.
When you're talking about business, it goes from the lower left to the upper right. You can see here dramatically we show that, especially in the Perforating Systems and in the OCTG business. In general, all of these are a good snapshot of where we see the business and the expansion that we've had over the past year, and we're anticipating that will continue strongly into 2023. On some product lines. On OCTG, had a great year. Very much benefiting from our product lines that we developed internally for the shale business, which is primarily in North America on land. We also saw a turn of events with improvements in our Asia- Pac business, which when we talk Asia- Pac, a lot of that business in OCTG actually ends up in the Middle East as well as in Southeast Asia.
The accessory business that falls under completion equipment with Premium Connections has really accelerated, especially in the international markets such as Guyana and Suriname and Brazil. A lot of that is working with our partners such as Halliburton and Schlumberger, that we are a key vendor to. Canada had an excellent year. We restructured that business a few years ago. As you all may remember, we closed our manufacturing plant. We got out of the OCTG distribution business. Went to the same model that we use in the U.S., where it's other people's pipe, other people's exposure on the inventory. We sell the technology with our IP, and that has been readily accepted by a lot of key customers, like Cenovus, for example, and has driven very positive results there. Product line. With our perforating business, a good year.
A big increase in revenue and profitability year-over-year. We rolled out some new products. The H3 gun has been rapidly accepted into the marketplace, basically replacing the H1 gun that was the legacy integrated gun system that we had. One of the key benefits on the H3 is actually the cost reductions that we know in the manufacturing process. It's like any other first or second. When you go from first generation product to a second or third generation, you learn more things along the way. You put lean initiatives into it and you fine-tune your product lines as well. We're doing more and more preloaded gun selling these days, where they're actually leaving our shops in places like Odessa, in Oklahoma City, in DuBois, Pennsylvania. They're leaving the shops ready to go to the clients.
It reduces, again, cycle time at the rig site. It's a service that the clients are asking for. In the second quarter of this year, we will be doing gun loading at our facilities in Canada for the client base there as well. We continue to focus on R&D and our development of new products. We just expect to have more products rolled out this year. We continue to look at some organic expansion. For example, our second det cord line will be coming online soon. It was a CapEx we approved last year to increase our capacity for det cord. Overall, U.S. onshore market looks stable today. Pricing is better. We're continuing to be more cautious. Cautious is the wrong word.
Being more choosy on pricing because just with the dynamics in place, the market, people don't need to be given things away. We are seeing that with the U.S. market where it is, we are seeing an increase internationally with Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, and China actually being key growth markets for the Titan business. advanced manufacturing, one of the key areas which is non-oil and gas for us. It had improvements year-over-year, but it was one of the businesses also that suffered the most from supply chain issues. While those have gotten better, they haven't been totally eliminated. On the Dearborn side, it was supply chain issues with materials, primarily high nickel-based alloys.
That has gotten better, but we also had hold ups with actual vendor issues as far as approvals in the cycle because a lot of it was defense and military purchasing. There was just a general slowdown in the business that is getting better now. Electronics, we still are having some component issues with supply of electronics. Chips have gotten better. Areas like diodes, capacitors are still some areas where there's weakness and some stress on the supply chain. Overall, the business is improving and backlogs are growing in those businesses. Subsea, one of our exciting newer growth areas, thanks to the purchase of the RTI Energy Systems. As we've talked about before, a lot of success now in Guyana and Brazil.
We're anticipating future orders to continue to add to our market share or place in the market with those products this year, primarily with a pickup in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as continued work in South America. The year-end order book was at 105 million. Should continue to expand. The Stafford business, we're seeing good growth in the actual coupling business down there, and that business has a direct correlation to the subsea tree market. If you want an indicator of that business, follow FMC Technologies subsea tree awards, and that'll be a good show of where our direction of travel will be. Enpro had a difficult year. We're anticipating by the second half of this year, it should be much improved. Again, it's kind of the momentum of customer spending.
We need to get the FIDs approved, especially for some of the brownfield sites. That's happening, we're still very positive on the technology, the product line, and the people. We just think it's a timing issue with the growth of that business due to the fact that it allows operators to have a lot of cost savings in their development. Intervention Tools, it's improving, not back to really where it was pre-COVID. Keep in mind, this is a piece of equipment that when the rig count collapsed, there was excess inventory all over the place in operators' hands, and it's a capital equipment purchase for our clients. As capital equipment purchases ramp up, as rigs continue to burn up tools, you'll see more and more, and better improvement in this business as far as the Intervention Tools.
Other revenue we talked about, the key part of that is really our trenchless business, which provides, it's basically miniature drill pipe and the tools for onshore trenchless operations under highways and bridges and things lik e that. It's seen a growth year-over-year. What we're also excited about is our well testing business, which is actually manufactured in Holland. We've seen an uptick in business there with customers like Schlumberger. Hunting 2030. We're going to lay out more of this at our Capital Markets Day that we're going to present in September. Really to sum this whole thing up is we're looking at our business.
We're trying to take some of the cyclicality out of the business, look at performing using KPIs and our metrics to run our business better, and to look at ways to kind of alleviate the pain and the ups and downs in the cycle. A lot of that has to do with some diversification, and again, focus on doing the things we do best, which is in high-end engineering, focusing on our IP and the like, and of course, our people. Energy transition, quickly on that. As I mentioned earlier, we've put a full court press now on that side of the business. People may say, "Why didn't you do it earlier?" It's because we couldn't figure out how to make money earlier. Now that market has firmed up.
The technology demands of this industry are becoming more and more difficult, which plays into what Hunting does best. This business will actually fall as a subset probably of our OCTG business because we're focusing on carbon capture and on geothermal. If you look at both of those areas we have experience in now, our experience in geothermal goes back more than 30 years. It actually ties in with the titanium business that we worked with RTI decades ago. We're in a good position there. We're going to spend some money in 2023 doing testing for connections for carbon capture, primarily related around cryogenic type testing for the temperature changes due to the injection of the CO2 into the formations. ESG, I'm very proud of the fact that we continue to have very, very low reject rates, great customer reputation with our clients.
On the safety side, our recordable incident rate continues to be industry-leaing, well below what OSHA considers acceptable, which their number is 4.0. We had a tick up in incident rates in 2022. Part of that is due to the refreshing of the labor force with more people coming on board. As your company, we're doing all that we can to make sure that we have the proper training in place, that we avoid accidents and keep our people safe. I'm happy to report that in the first quarter of 2023, that number's down to about 0.7. Improvements are being made on the safety side. Again, comments there just showing the senior management and workforce diversity, and we'll continue to work on improving those metrics. Carbon emissions we talked about.
If you look at Hunting, I like to compare it when I talk to some of our investors, it's like walking into a Tesla factory, right? You don't see smokestacks belching air or pollution within our organization. We work very hard to make sure that we keep a very safe environment, but also a very environmentally friendly operating environment. We deliver products that reduce the need to probably drill more wells that allow for efficiency of our clients in our operation. Hence, at the end of the day, reducing CO2 levels. If you look at our intensity versus revenue number, it's all going in the right direction, and we intend to continue to improve on that. Kind of a snapshot just to kind of get close to winding this up.
Talks about some of the areas, some snapshots and some segments where we wanted to highlight. One that I haven't talked about yet was our new facility in India, which will come online supposedly with a grand opening in September of this year. We view India as a very significant market. Its population is now greater than China's. It has a huge demand for oil and gas. The government in India is mandating a lot of made in India type of needs and rules for the industry over there. Our partners with Jindal SAW, I think, couldn't be better, and so we're excited about that happening. The rest of it, we've talked about the record orders with CNOOC showing our strength and the way we can diversify and bring our technology to clients.
Order books, the accessory business, three times what it was last year. This just shows a good overall bullet point type deal there. In summary, I can't think of a better oilfield service company to put your money in right now or a company in general. It's time to buy shares. The price is cheap. It's on sale right now. Good numbers today. We're very excited about the future going forward. I'm fortunate. I want to thank all of the team at Hunting because they make this happen, and we're very fortunate with the skill sets that we have, the product offerings we have, and the geographic reach. I think 2023 is going to be a great year. With that, Jay, I'm back to you.
Okay. Thanks, Jim. We'll take questions from the floor now on either the trading statement released this morning or anything that Jim covered in his presentation. Are there any questions from the group here? Yes.
Yeah. David. Thanks. David. Yeah. I just have maybe one or two questions. One on, in the U.S., the U.S. market, there's a bit of a consolidation or at least the expectation that maybe Exxon or Chevron buy some of the smaller players there. Does it generally benefit you if the larger, you know, producers gain more market share there or, you know, that would be interesting to know?
I'm going to take it.
Yeah. You take it, and I'll cover if there's something I think...
Okay. In general, there's no up or down for us. I mean, there'll probably be more consolidation in North America. I mean, I'm reading the same thing as you are on the Pioneer deal. At the end of the day, they still need our kit and our technology and our products regardless of the operator, and many times it's through another service company. In those cases, I don't see any impact one way or the other.
Yeah. I think that's a fair comment. I mean, unless the consolidation results in us losing a key account customer and we have to win back a new acquiring company, I think Jim's absolutely right. It shouldn't have a huge effect.
Okay, great. Just a related question. I think like in the previous trading update, you mentioned that, one competitor is kind of lowering prices on the Perforating Systems. I don't know whether maybe it was Oil States?
Mm-hmm.
DynaEnergetics. I'm just wondering, you know, given there's perhaps some consolidation happening on the producer side, do you think like a merger for instance, say, with Oil States or something, you know, would that be perhaps in the cards or is that not a thing at all?
I think it'd be difficult to do with HSR. With Hart-Scott-Rodino, I think it would be viewed as too concentrated, and I think it would be with Oil States, I think would potentially be very hard to pull off.
Okay. Great. Maybe one last one just on the India facility. Is there, I think, some in terms of revenue expectations and kind of profit expectations, how much do you think you can get out of this, and what's kind of the timeframe?
A lot. Actually, revenue numbers.
Small number 2023. It's looking at completion-
Yeah.
for September 2023. You know, the market is there. It's a good addressable market, good access to mills, good products. We're optimistic.
Okay.Great.
I think the thing with India is always to have the right partner, and so I think Jindal SAW is a really good partner.
Yeah. Great. Sorry, just one more.
No, go ahead. Go ahead.
Just on the share buyback program, because given the share price is quite low now, is that something you've looked into? I mean, with the working capital, maybe it's not great.
We've done some of that. I... It's really a capital allocation question. You know, are you better allocating your capital to buyback? Are you better looking at acquisition opportunities or organic growth? Or... We try and strike a balance. At the point that we think that's the best capital allocation, we'll explore that. To do that right now, I think in the growth cycle we're in, would not be a wise move in terms of deployment of capital.
Okay.
Be my answer. Yeah, I agree.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you.
Any other questions from the floor? Contrary to what I said earlier, we did get one question coming in over the website. Ben, We're all hearing this for the first time, so-.
Yeah.
Ben's going to read it out.
It's a fairly straightforward question. Jay and Jim, one shareholder has asked: How do you predict spending for the next year to 18 months for the industry? Do you expect it to double?
Do you want to go first?
Yeah.
I always hate.
I thought double's a big number. I think that right now we're expecting spending in the industry will grow this year. There's various commentary out there, depending on what natural gas prices are, what happens in North America. In general, it will be up. A lot of it will be inflation induced. I think the real area for growth this year is going to be international and offshore, where you're seeing a big uptick in markets, and rig counts, especially in areas like the Middle East.
Yeah. I think Jim's right. I think doubling is maybe a pretty aggressive target to have. I think there are a couple things. I think the situation with energy security kind of globally will support much more investment in areas that are viewed as secure areas for investment for new production. I think Jim's comment on offshore being one of those and international the other are both accurate. I think the U.S. is going to be probably relatively flat. The downside to all that would be if somehow economic activity begins to weaken because of, you know, interest rate rises by central banks and that sort of thing to curb inflation. That would be the sort of downside risk. I think those are fairly unlikely.
I think there will be more activity. Again, most of the people who do this for a living say that 2024 will be the bigger than 2023, and I think that's where we're putting our bets, too. Okay. Anything else from the floor? Any other questions that come in? Okay, that's the one. Okay. Thanks very much for that, Jim. Let me move now to the main parts of the meeting. The notice for the meeting was made available to all members, I'll take that as read that everyone realizes we've got the meeting. We'll commence the formal business of the Annual General Meeting. I can confirm we have a quorum present.
As stated in the notice of meeting, voting on all resolutions will be on a poll rather than a poll rather than a show of hands. On a poll, each shareholder has one vote for every share held. Voting on a poll ensures that the votes of all shareholders are counted, including the majority of our institutional shareholders who cannot attend the meeting in person but have submitted a form of proxy. Before describing the procedures that will be adopted taking the poll, I would first like to appoint Equiniti, our registrar, as the poll's scrutineer. Equiniti will collate all the votes received during the meeting. Those of you entitled to vote will have been given a poll card at registration.
If you do not have a poll card or if you need additional poll cards, please raise your hand now and someone will assist you. Do we have anybody that needs a poll card? I don't think I've ever seen anybody raise their hand at this point in the meeting. Okay. If you've already voted by proxy and you do not wish to change your vote, then you don't have to do anything. You don't have to complete a poll card. Your vote will be taken into account automatically. If you voted by proxy and wish to change your vote, you can now complete the poll card and your new voting instructions will be taken into account. Please complete the poll card by inserting your full name, address, and signature.
If you're a proxy or a corporate representative, please insert your full name and the full name and address of the shareholder you're representing. Please ensure that your poll card is signed and handed to our registrar as you exit and leave the room. I now propose formally that each of the resolutions set out in the notice of meeting and also numbered on the poll card are put to the meeting resolution one to 14 are ordinary resolutions and require a simple majority of votes cast to be in favor in order to be passed. Resolutions 15- 18 require 75% of the votes cast to be in favor in order to pass. I now declare the poll formally open. The poll will close 10 minutes after the end of the meeting.
If you have any questions about filling in the poll card or if you require any assistance, please speak to the registrar. The registrar will calculate the results of the poll. Sorry. The registrar will calculate the results at the close of the poll. These will be announced to the stock exchange later today and will also be published on the company's website. That concludes the formal business of the Annual General Meeting. On behalf of the board, I would like to thank you for attending and for your confidence and support in the company. I now declare the meeting closed. Please can I remind you to hand your poll cards to the Equiniti representative as you exit the room. Thanks very much.