Good day, and welcome to the Aqualis Offshore Q1 Results Conference Call. For your information, today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to David Felt. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, operator. My name is David Wells. I'm the CEO of Qualys. I'm very pleased here to be giving you the Q1 results of 2019, and I'll be giving this discussion with Kim Bowman, our CFO and also Glenn Rodland, who is our Chairman, to take us through both the Q1 results and also our press announcement for today. So I'm pleased to announce that we had revenues of $8,200,000 during the course of the quarter with an operating loss of $200,000 at an adjusted EBIT of $100,000 The good news on the quarter is that we had a very strong positive cash flow of $1,800,000 and our backlog numbers have increased by 15% during the quarter.
I should give a little bit more detail, but Q1 traditionally is a little bit weaker than the other quarters, and this quarter has followed the same trend as we've had over previous years. We've had a solid HSE performance, no lost time incidents or accidents. Our cash balance remains very strong at $7,200,000,000 We've had an excellent quarter from the offshore renewables side. Growth continues to be very robust, particularly in Asia Pacific from our Taiwan office with the new office really performing well ahead of our expectations. And that market appears to be very strong going forward.
During the quarter, we also opened up an office in Boston, USA to target the renewables market there. We think there's great potential going forward, and it's been pleasing to open up that office and start moving into that market as well. So all in all, the quarter has been as expected, but the great announcement within that is that we have entered into agreement to acquire the three business service lines from Braemar Technical Services, covering the adjusting marine and offshore sectors. It's a great move as far as we're concerned. It will expand the company, expand the footprint, and we'll go into more detail shortly.
So today, I'm just giving a very abridged version of our Q1 results. The full release is available to you to look through. And I'm just going to concentrate on the highlights and move on into the outlook. So Q1 has been slightly weaker than expected, but on the same trends as we've had in previous years. Obviously, Q1 is affected by Chinese New Year and start of the year is always a bit slower.
We ended up last year with a few strong contracts, which came to an end, and we're just moving to the next stage now of additional work for this year. Our pipeline is very strong. Our backlog is very strong. So we don't see any reason to change our opinion on the outlook of market. We do think the market is still recovering.
It's still going forward. We expect twenty nineteen nineteen to gradually get stronger in 2020. We feel some sense of normality might come back to market. The offshore renewables sector, as I said just now, is very, very strong, and we are seeing lots of potential, lots of opportunities around the world. We do continue to gain market share across the group.
And we feel that things are remaining in as we previously indicated, we don't see any reason to change what we're saying. So we feel quite energetic and quite optimistic going forward. And I'd like to move on from here to talk about the acquisition that we announced this morning, which is a very exciting landmark for our company. And we will take some more detail into that one.
So with that in mind, I'd like to
pass across to my colleague, Glenn Rodland, who is our Chairman, who would like to make an introduction regarding the acquisition of Braemar Technical Services, and we will give a lot more clarity during the course of this call on this acquisition because I feel that's the important part that we should be concentrating on going forward.
Glenn, can I pass it over to you to Yes? Talk about the Thank you, David, for that introduction and going through the first quarter. There have been the strategy of the company to look consolidation opportunity. This market has been through a very rough downturn after oil price fall in 2014. And just to give an example, rates based charge off rates we are charging our clients have fallen between 2540% during the downturn.
And of course, volume has been down too. So it has been a tough ride for Aqualias and for all competitors. I think the timing of this transaction is close to perfect. We consolidate the market and become the biggest specialist within marine service and energy consulting in the world as we see it in our niche market. On the same time, as I see clear signs that the market is improving.
The downturn, I say, the downturn was taking the elevator down. It came very fast. It happened within a year or two. The market had a dramatic negative change. And now I see the market is on its way up, but it's going step by step.
And Aqualis have been able to grow both in 2017 within oil and gas and also in 2018. And we see that trend continue. But it's going step by step. So I think the timing of this transaction is very good. We are diversifying our revenue base right now.
About in first quarter, 21% was from renewables and 79% from oil and gas. With this transaction, we will be about 50% from offshore and we will have adjusting in addition. Adjusting is also they service several industries, but right now they are mostly into oil and gas as well. And then marine is shipping, so we have we'll be exposed to the shipping cycle indirectly too. And then renewables is still windmills.
So it will be more diversified. What I also like about this transaction is that we buy this for USD 7,000,000 at the outset. That will give a 26% ownership to Braemar. And then there are warrants, we will talk more about the details. But if those warrants is based on earn outs, two sets of earn outs can bring their ownership up to 33%.
Put it like that, I hope very much they get some of the warrants issued or they left, so they increase their likelihood because and their ownership because that would be very positive for the company overall. So we are paying between 7,000,000 and $10,000,000 If you look on the balance sheet we are taking over, this company has a balance sheet of 21,500,000.0 of assets, fixed assets, but there's $20,000,000 of net working capital. It's not gross, it's net working capital. So of course, it's a big balance sheet. And the aim of this acquisition is to consolidate, take out synergies and hopefully we are hitting a sweet spot in the market, but we are also going to work very hard and focus on capital efficiency.
I'm quite sure there are possibilities of reducing days outstanding in the Weimar organization. Just to give an example, we are at about ninety days outstanding in Aqualis or ninety days of work that are on the balance sheet, while the companies we are buying are in the region of two hundred days. So I think there's a lot that can be over time being freed up from the balance sheet. We are proposing also in connection with this transaction issue of rights issue fully underwritten by some key shareholders of €6,000,000 That will take our net cash position in the company up to about 14,000,000 We do this for at least two reasons. One is that we would like to have firing power in this part of the cycle.
Transaction is important, but I think we need to do more consolidation going forward. To both have the possibility to use some cash and also print shares, I think we have a preference for printing shares, but in some instance, people would like to have some cash as well. Weymar wanted to have shares and enjoy the upside from this transaction, but there might be other opportunities where we might need some cash. We are also we paid a dividend last year. We had a lot of cash last year.
And we decided last summer to pay out NOK0.9 in dividend. We felt we were overcapitalized. At that time, we were looking at a couple of transactions, which didn't go through. And we actually paid out the cash because we thought we wouldn't have any use for it. But now just after that, about September, October, this process with Braemar started.
So actually, we were a bit early to do this. So we are indirectly asking the shareholders to put back both of what they got paid out last year because now we have got into we think that consolidation still is about to start. So having that as a starting point, if we look on Page five, if you have that in front of you. So the company, which will be called Aqualis Braemar, had a pro form a revenue last year of about $76,000,000 adjusted EBITDA of 2,900,000.0 And in total, we have four thirty employees. If you look on the next page, Akhtar List, this is our history.
Right now, we are 83% oil and gas and 17% renewables. That was last year for 2018. In first quarter, renewables grew to 21% of the revenue. So the light blue in this doughnut chart is growing quite fast. Renewables was actually first quarter up more than 100% as David alluded to mainly based on extremely strong growth in our Taiwan office, but also the rest of the business is doing well.
We as you can see from the graph to the left the lower left, we had six percent margin in 2017, managed to grow despite that the market was flat or down. And in 2018, we had a 7% margin after we lost quite a lot to 10% in 2016, especially when the market fell dramatically. If you look on Page seven, we see Bremer. Bremer is has several divisions. It's listed on the London Stock Exchange.
Bremer, they had their largest activities within ship booking, but they also have a logistic division and a finance division. So this technical division, which is largely competing with us and other similar companies or at least offshore is so very direct competition, but the other adjusting and marine are complementary, but within the same industry as we are working in. And you can see on the lower left, have the history of Braemar in the good old days when oil price was high and they peaked the revenue in fiscal year twenty fourteen-twenty fifteen of US55 million And with and you can see in twenty thirteen-twenty fourteen, they were all the way up to 17% margin and then 12, they have been struggling over the last few years. You see the downturn was not as big as for Aqualis because they're adjusting and marine is mainly working with accidents and accident response and working for the insurance industry to handle the claims and so on. We will get back more to that later on.
So that's less cyclical than the investment market and the operational market because the number of accidents is not necessarily cyclical. It could actually be countercyclical, but of course, the value of the claims that the value of the cargo and the value could be partly cyclical. So we think this is a very good starting point to take out synergies and to improve the operation of Weymar. We have had very good success with the turnaround of our trials, and we are planning to transfer that knowledge and that experience into the new organization. At the same time, as we see the market is improving.
We see oil and gas is improving. Shipping looks okay. Bulk rates are okay. Tankers look and the order book is quite low. So we see a better market also for shipping going forward.
We don't see that as a lockdown site. We don't know when the upside is coming. And then, of course, renewable will still be a growth area for the combined company. So if we go to Page eight, just summing up, at wireless after this will have a much broader service offering to our clients. As you can see from a slide that is later on in the presentation slide 27, the main or the key denominator for this industry is that we work for the insurance industry.
And that's why London is so important and the headquarters is going to be in London and most of our competitors are also based in London. It's centered around the insurance marine and oil and gas insurance cluster in London. And we are working on two sides for our clients. We are working managing losses and helping them prevent losses and limit when an accident has happened to try to provide and secure values. And then the second thing we are working on is insurance approval.
So before a big marine operation is happening or before a rig is moved, we need to give the operation an assurance or so there is not much overlap except from so many offshore sites. We will get 60 offices together. This is so we are in most oil and gas centers, renewable centers and shipping centers, 60 offices worldwide. We think there is a significant synergies that can be taken out in the neighborhood of $2,000,000 And we think this is a company with a very strong balance sheet, no net debt. We have no debt at all.
We have $40,000,000 of cash and a growth ambition will be attractive for employees and for customers. And we get a new long term major shareholder, which know this industry very well. Weimar will own something as I alluded to earlier between 2633% of the shares in the company. So I stop there with the introduction, David, and I think you can take us through the business.
Good. Thanks, Ken. I appreciate that. I'm going to pass you across now to Kim Bowman, our CFO, who's going to take you through the transaction overview. So if you can turn to Slide 10 on the presentation, and I'll let Kim take over.
Thank you, David. This is Kim Baldwin, CFO of Innoc Qualys. We are as a management team, we are very excited about this transaction. It will be great for both our staff, clients and for our shareholders. This will create opportunities to expand and develop this company much more than we had planned for initially.
This will give us opportunity to expand into new service lines globally. I will go into the transaction details on Page number 10. Ascoli is set to acquire 100% of the shares in Braemar Technical Service Holdings, which is the holding company for Bremer Offshore, Marine and Adjusting business lines. We will issue new shares and warrants in the combined company to the seller. The maximum shareholding that Bremer can get is 33%.
They will get 26% initially. In addition, they will get warrants, up to seven percentage points. The number of warrants to be issued depends on the performance of the business over the next two years measured from the first of April twenty nineteen. The warrants are split into two different parts. One half is based on the performance of the combined entities' EBITDA.
That's tranche one. The second tranche is based on the gross profit of two of the segments within Braemar Technical Services, which is Marine and Digesting segments. These are two segments that Qualys have limited exposure to date. The closing of the transaction is expected in June 2019. It's subject to AGM approving the transaction as well as certain other
conditions.
We expect that the closing of the transaction will happen in June. In connection with this transaction, we will also expand our Board of Directors. The current CEO of Braemar will join our Board. And this will segment the relationship between Aqualis and Braemar going ahead. We will also change the name of the company to Aqualis Bremer after completion of the transaction.
Bremer will be our largest shareholder in the company. If we now move to Slide 11. In connection with the transaction, we will also carry out an equity issue to support the growth that we expect to realize after completing this transaction and also to facilitate the working capital requirements going ahead. There will be some transaction costs. There will be some integration costs also in this process, but the capital will be used to support the growth.
We see as mentioned, we see ample growth opportunities that the combined company will have access to after being integrated. The transaction is 6,000,000 thereof Bremar will have $2,000,000 and then there will be a rights issue of $4,000,000 towards Aqualis' existing shareholders. With the $2,000,000 to Bremer, Bremer will be able to maintain its ownership of 33% in the combined company, assuming that the warrants will rest after two years. The equity issues are fully underwritten. Bremer has entered into a pre commitment to subscribe for its share, and the rights issue has been underwritten by Grossman and AS and certain other shareholders.
The price in the product placement and the rights issue will be announced prior to the AGM in June. On the right side of Slide 11, you can see the time line for the transaction. And we aim to complete this as soon as possible so we can start the process of integrating the companies, realizing synergies and driving the growth going forward. With that, I leave the word to our CEO, David Welch.
Thank you, Kim. So if we go to Slide 13, I'd like to take you through some of the rationale for this merger. And I think that we have known all of us have known for quite a long time there's been a need for consolidation in the market. The market is quite tough out there, and there's many players who are servicing the sector we service. If I was going to choose another company that we should get together with, This merger is actually very, very good for us.
It's a combination of two highly complementary businesses, which makes it even more exciting. We're perceived in the market to be competitors, but in actual fact, when you dig down into the details, we both service quite separate parts of the market. For the most part, we have a small overlap on the offshore side. So if we look at this Slide 13, on the left hand side, you can see the areas of interest in which Aqualis services the market. And we can see here our focus is very much on offshore oil and gas with a broad service offering across the whole sector, not only on the insurance services, but also on first party work to many clients.
This is an area where we do compete a little bit with Braemar, who are quite strong in Asia Pacific region, whereas we are much stronger in The Middle East. The other sector where we service is the renewable market. We've become a market leader as time has gone past. We see lots of opportunities, lots of growth in that area, but it's an area which Braemar do not focus on at all. And so there's no competition whatsoever between the companies.
From the Braemar perspective, they are a market leader on the Marine side. And by Marine, we're talking here about Marine Insurance Services, claims for damages, technical due diligence, vessel inspections, vessel surveys, all related to shipping, mainly blue water shipping, an area where we don't service very much at all. They also focus on adjusting. They're one of the market leaders in adjusting, adjusting insurance claims that is. They are very strong in that area.
It's an area where Qualys has no presence whatsoever. So we can see immediately, we have three of the four segments where there's no competition between the companies, and this is what makes this transaction highly compelling because it means that the companies can carry on together, integrate and trade as we are at the moment. It's not the level of competition that you'd normally expect between two competitors joining forces in which we have to make efficiencies amongst our technical staff. So this is very, very, very exciting. If we move to Slide 14, we give a breakdown here of the revenues on the different sections.
So I'll leave Offshore for a moment. We'll come back to that in a second because that's the one where we have a little bit of overlap. On the Marine front, the revenues in 2018 for that particular division was around about $80,000,000 It's a very stable business in terms of claims. Number of ships are not going down. They're maintaining, in fact, growing every year.
And they focus more or less 80% of their business is focused on the claims side, on the marine claims, mitigates underwriters for various accidents and incidents and collisions, engine damages and those sort of things. They are very dominant in that market, very well respected and one of the leading players in that area. On the adjusting front, their focus here is not only on oil and gas and energy as a whole, but also they focus on upstream and downstream with an element on chemical plants, refineries, mining sector, oil sands, so quite a lot more than just the oil and gas market. Net revenues last year were 13 just over $13,000,000 And you can see here, the graph has been fairly stable over the years, but with growth last year, and we intend to try and grow that business even further into new areas. If we go to the bottom sector, the Offshore Renewables, we've spoken about that, not only in the Q1 results, but also it's been mentioned a few times during this presentation.
This is a very strong area at the moment. We've had CAGR growth over the last few years of around about 37% year on year, and Q1 has continued that trend, in fact, stronger than the previous years. So this is an area of growth for us. It's an area which is not covered by Braemar. We will continue our business, continue our expansion around the world.
And of course, we get an extra footprint of four offices, which we can expand into with facilities already in place. On the oil and gas front, you can see there that the combined total of both companies was $38,000,000,000 in 2018, a growth around about 9% from the previous year. That growth mainly came from the Apollo side. From the Braemar perspective, they're very much focused on the market in Asia Pacific. They're very strong in that market.
They have many offices and many people working over there, well over 100 people working in that particular market. An area we also service ourselves, but we are a little bit smaller, and we service a slightly different sector of the markets as well. So whilst we are competitors, we're not overlapping competitors all the way through. Our strength lies in the carload side, our strength lies in Middle East, where they have very little representation. And of course, we have representation elsewhere in the world, where their representation is quite low.
Good thing about this merger is that we will be using the Ocalis Bremer name going forward. And Braemar has a very, very strong name in the insurance industry, and we hope to be able to leverage on that name as we expand the offshore services around the world. There's actually a brilliant merger for the two companies, very little overlap. We should be able to move forward very quickly and continue our business without too much disruption on the technical side. If we move forward on to Slide 15, there's a summary there of of the revenues and the gross profits and the EBITDAs of both companies.
You can see in the bottom line that Aqualis ended Q1 with about 187 full time equivalent employees, and they had around about two forty five. So the combined company going forward will be four thirty people. We will be the largest marine and energy consultants independent marine energy consultants in the world going forward, which gives us much more leverage into the market. And you can see the combined totals of the two companies, dollars 76,000,000 of revenue, which makes us a fairly sizable company now in terms of the business that we do And the adjusted EBITDA for last year was $2,900,000,000 So it's a good diversified revenue base of the various sectors and gives us a very strong foundation on which to build. If you move to Slide 16, you can see the office footprint around the world.
Very, very strong in Asia Pacific, very strong in Europe, particularly strong in Middle East where most of those markets are covered in strength and we have excellent coverage in The Americas. Much more coverage, I think, globally than all our competitors, which is an excellent place for which further growth can be maintained. I think in total, 61 offices in 33 countries is the number altogether. Some of those offices are representative offices, but nevertheless, that is a very, very, very large footprint. It will be good for our customers and good for our market as a whole.
Moving to Slide 17, the makeup of the senior management of the new company, I will still retain the position of CEO. Kim Bowman, who we spoke earlier, will be the CFO. Ruben Siegel, who is our Group COO at Bowman, will maintain his position, but his focus will now change and be indirectly focused on the offshore side of the industry. And Grant Smith, who is currently the Managing Director of Braemar Technical Services, he will come across and also be a COO focusing on the insurance services. So I think we're still maintaining our strength of our management team by adding Grant into that.
And also, as was mentioned before, James Kidwell, the overall CEO of Braemar, will be joining our Board. Within the senior management below, one of the strengths of the Carlos was the strength of our management team that has been more or less maintained in terms of regional structure and we're integrating the Braemar senior management into that team focusing on the business lines. So I think we have a very good team going forward. And having recently met most of them, I'm very, very excited by the quality of personnel that we are getting. Moving to Slide 18, this gives a very quick summary of the benefits.
There's benefits here to all stakeholders. This is why it makes it very exciting. Customers will benefit. We have new capabilities, new business lines for both sides of the company. We'll have increased scale.
We'll have a wider footprint. And we're being a limited competition. It really allows us to grow take those benefits across to customers. Our global footprint in particular is exciting because it means we will be able to service our clients to more countries by having people on the ground already without the need to mobilize in from outside. From an employee point of view, I think this is a great transaction.
A bigger company naturally gives much more opportunity. It gives a much more diversified company. It gives many more career opportunities and, of course, access to a larger pipeline of work and more interesting projects, good for career enhancement. And from a shareholder point of view, I think this is key. This will provide a lot of extra growth to the company.
It provides a lot of upside. It makes the company stronger, more sustainable, more robust and being an all share stock transition allows all shareholders to participate in the upside in the combination. So I think all stakeholders will have benefits in this acquisition going forward. If we move to Slide 20, as with any merger transaction M and A, there's always benefits.
And we see here significant synergies potential for the company,
which will make us more efficient and more streamlined. The revenue synergies, we feel, could be quite substantial. As I mentioned before, we intend to roll out the offshore side of the market globally to expand right across the group using the benefits of the Paymar name and the Paymar name in the insurance market.
We believe there's around about
$2,000,000 of synergy, which will be realized over the next two years with a run rate of around about $500,000 a year. On the cost front, as you bring two companies together, there should be quite a lot of synergies that we can recognize. Bringing companies together to share offices, reducing the number of or making or streamlining our management, I think is the right expression I should use here. There's the economies of scale, There's a lot of benefits of bringing those companies together. Also from the Brainmark perspective, is some investment going on at the moment to enhance the synergies going forward and to improve the efficiencies.
So I think from both sides, there is significant potential for synergy and the synergy cost effects that will come out of this. If we move to Slide 21, Tim has taken you through some of this already. We start with a fairly strong financial position. We are going to raise some extra cash from the market to make sure that we can manage the company going forward. But more importantly, we intend to grow.
And that growth requires a capital requirement to help us get through the next sector. So we will hopefully also use that as a short term loan, if you like, and be able to return this money back to our shareholders in the not too distant future once the company is stabilized and we are moving forward as we expect. So just to summarize, Slide 23, I'll go through again. I think this is an excellent acquisition. I think it's excellent for Aqualis.
I think it's excellent for Braemar for many reasons. Companies are highly complementary. It will not be disruptive to staff. We should not be needing to streamline our revenue earners. We should get great synergy benefits from both companies.
We'll have a biggest service line offering, which will be good for clients with an increased scale as well in terms of number of people. I talked just now about the unlocking of significant synergies. I think this will add great value to the bottom line. And I think in terms of recruiting people, we'll become a much more attractive employer. Large companies always have benefits over smaller companies, and we should be able to use this to our advantage.
And the good thing about this transaction is that Braemar are not actually exiting from us. They will maintain themselves as our largest shareholder. They'll have presence on our board and so therefore have a lot of interest in making this merger or transaction a success. So I think at that point, I would like to conclude. And operator, I would like you to open the lines to questions if people have questions they'd like to put to us.
Thank We will now take our first From Tommy Johan Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning guys. Can I start off by giving some color on how you plan to unlock the significant net working capital position in Braemar? Maybe
I can give a go first. This is Glen Loigrant speaking. This is the good news is the bad news is that Braemar has a lot of working capital tied up in its business. The good news is that most of the working capital is tied up with the insurance industry, which are the main clients. So it's relatively strong and solid counterparties.
So the losses they are having on outstanding, call it, customer receivables are industry average as we see it. Looking, we have done a due diligence. So there's not that much loss. So that's the good news. The bad news is that the insurance industry is a world leader in, what should I say, managing their cash.
They get all the fees and all the premiums upfront, and they are quite good at paying out late both claims, I guess, and also to the service providers. So I think it's much about culture because they are paying much later than the terms and the conditions of the contracts they are. So what we are going to do is to gradually work with the organization, also make each manager more responsible for the capital side, not only the EBITDA. There have been EBITDA awareness, income minus the cost, but I haven't been, as far as we can see in the organization, that much balance sheet awareness. That was something that was handled by somebody else in the organization.
I think it's a lot about cost share, and we see a lot of potential to free up capital. And as I said, they are having more than two hundred days in some of the divisions, not on average, but in some of the divisions, they have more than two hundred days, while we are on average just below ninety days lately. And even that even ninety days, if you compare to Sveco and MultiConsult and The Nordics, the similar business, they have a much shorter much less tied up working capital. But of course, they are working in Northern Europe where there are different payment terms. When you get to The Middle East and to Asia, ninety days is what you'll say, eighty, ninety days is more normal.
So I think there's a lot of it but that's what I can say at this time. This is only a growth that will start after we have lots of two companies. But I think it's about incentive and focus.
To add to that this is Kim Bowman, CFO. To add to Glenn's comments, in addition
to what Glenn has commented on,
I would say that we will implement a new we will roll out our current ERP system and we'll also which will facilitate more it is a quicker and better information regarding the working capital situation. Also, we will look on the best practice for both companies and see what we can do to improve the processes and procedures. We are quite confident that we will be able to release working capital on the combined basis.
Okay. Thank you for that. My second question is in terms of the competitive landscape. How do you see the combined company positions in terms of site offering, etcetera, versus your main peers like LOC, Global Maritime and the other large players here?
Well, we're certainly bigger
than those companies. LOC at the moment, I believe, has around about 300, three fifty employees, whereas we are talking here around about four thirty. The next one down is probably Global Maritime, where I'm going guess, has around about 200 employees at this moment. So therefore, we will definitely be the largest independent of the main consultancy, taking out, of course, the large ones, which are dominated by the classification strategies. But the elements of those classification strategies, do mean consultancy, will still be larger than those.
Okay.
And on the cash position and your growth ambition, did I understand it correctly that you will halt dividend payments entirely now since you both paid a special and an ordinary dividend for 2018, will you hold dividend payments all over?
No. This industry, if you in normal situations, looking at consultancy, and as I said, I'll say, this OS, Corey, and and multi consultant similar civil engineering consultancy, pay dividends quite steadily. Their aim for Aqualis is to get into dividend position as soon as possible. And hopefully, the plan is to do it already from 2020 again. We announced the dividend Last year, we paid out an extraordinary dividend.
We had, at that time, 11,000,000, 12,000,000 on the balance sheet, if I'm not mistaken. I'll just note of 10,000,000 at least we had on the balance sheet. We thought we were overcapitalized. We didn't need to have that much cash just to run the business. We kept the cash for quite some time because we were in negotiations with some potential acquisitions that didn't come through.
And when that failed, we decided we overcapitalized, let's get out the cash. And then this process with Weimar took off or restarted, if I might call it that, two months after we paid out the dividend. So the reason why we're bringing the money back is that we see that we as two things, the market is clearly turning. And secondly, we would like to grow this business. I see a lot of opportunities.
So that's why we are taking back the money. Last year, we paid an extra dividend of $4300000.04400000.0 euros So we are claiming back €4,000,000 from all shareholders or asking them to put in that. But we will start paying dividend. And of course, with €14,000,000 when we get going, this free of capital on the balance sheet, I can see that we should have quite a lot of power about to pay dividends and at the same time as we can grow the business and maybe do some smaller acquisitions of the companies and or teams, good teams that we can plug into our business that are complementary to what we have.
And the final one for me. On the renewable side, you see strong growth there, but at the same time, renewable now is the smallest part in terms of revenues for the combined company. Is it fair to assume that renewables will be the next growth phase for you?
I think that's a fair assumption. Renewables is really, really strong in terms of investments and investment decision making at the moment. It's expanded now out of Europe into Asia Pacific. It's expanding also into it just started to expansion into Americas. Lot of countries are showing interest.
There's a lot of government targets, which have been set around the world in many countries. And I think this will give us a of opportunities going forward. Having this larger footprint will also facilitate for us much easier start ups to expand that renewable business in new countries as well, which is a key benefit to renewables renewables section of our company going forward.
If I might add to that. So on growth, renewable is just going with the market, making sure that we move well, our clients are moving. And we see more Europe is maturing a bit, even though it's still growing quite fast. But we see our clients are moving to other places in the world. So we are following them and also new clients like in America and Asia.
So we are following them to take the expertise we have gained in Europe over the last few years, especially in The U. K. And Germany, Denmark, which have been leading this trend. So that's to take that knowledge and spread it to other markets. So that's like a big growth trend.
But then within oil and gas and adjusting and marine, we see a cyclical offering, especially within oil and gas. And secondly, our aim is to continue to take market share. So that's the so oil and gas is not what's necessarily a big structural growth. It's more structural growth we are talking about and then taking market share. That's why we would like to have firing power so we can do everything on the same time.
So we don't have to, what shall I say, be focused on if you don't have that much firing power on cash, you might do more prioritization. And I don't think at the moment, we should try to write those waves we see ahead of us in your markets.
As there are no further questions in the queue at this time, I would like to turn the call back for any additional or closing remarks.
Well, thank you, everybody, for listening to us. It's been our pleasure to expand details of this transaction to you. I hope you'll be as positive as we are about the expectations that we can drive from this merger. And we're always available, myself and Kim, for any follow-up questions if you want to contact us directly. You very much.
Thank you. That will conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. Ladies and gentlemen, you may now disconnect.