Hello. Welcome to Odfjell Technology's Q1 presentation. My name is Gert Haugland. I'm the SVP for Finance and Investor Relations in Odfjell Technology. I'm joined by our CEO, Simen Lieungh, and our CFO, Jone Torstensen. You'll find the presentation on our website, and I ask you to take notice of the important message on page two of the presentation. Today, Simen will start by presenting the key highlights and talk about the market outlook, our recent acquisition, the backlog and contract status, and thereafter, Jone will cover the financial figures before we conclude with a Q&A session. You can submit your questions through the webcast portal or by using the dial-in numbers. I now hand it over to Simen for the first part.
Thank you, Gert. Thank you, everybody, for calling in, and welcome to this Q1 presentation. I would like to start with just highlights for the quarter. We have had a revenue of NOK 1.5 billion, EBITDA of NOK 212 million, which gives us a net profit of close to NOK 52 million. We have had, in the quarter, a good growth on the order backlog. We have kind of worked hard to bring that up, and today the order backlog has grown by approximately NOK 2 billion to NOK 14.2 billion. The cash and the liquidity availability is still strong. Now we reach NOK 867 million, and we have a very comfortable debt situation by the ratio, leverage ratio of 0.6. This, all these details will be more addressed when Jone has his presentation.
Talking about the market and so forth, we have for a while talked about doing growth via acquisitions and organic. We have now concluded the first, which is a company, McGarian, which we have bought the 100% of the shares. The McGarian is a known company serving special tools. Our interest in McGarian has primarily been to address and get a wider portfolio of products and solutions, and with patents for whipstocks, casing and packer milling tools, and fishing and remedial products.
We have, in a way, mapped our capabilities over time, and we have talked about the plug abandonment slot recovery market as a global market, especially now in the North Sea, especially in the U.K. sector, but the Norwegian sector will also follow closely. This is a good fit for us. We have worked hard to get it concluded. And this company will give us access to solutions where we can combine into a broader aspect of services for a variety of plug abandonment slot recovery projects. This is the first step on the road. We have announced that we also—we have said earlier that we're also going to do more. This is a small bolt-on acquisition.
And we have actually the price we have paid is an initial price of GBP 3 million British pounds, and we also have an earn-out over three years of GBP 2.5 million, capped to GBP 2.5 million pounds. This earn-out will be based on successful growth, and from McGarian being a small company today, we will bring the company and the solutions and the people into Odfjell Technology, and they will be participating in a much wider marketing network and much wider aspects of client access.
So this is a strategic development, and we see that when we do simulations of how we can grow this part of the products, they have developed and continue to develop, we see a significant potential here all over the world, really. I come a little back to that later. So this is a relatively small acquisition. It's very easy to integrate. It's a perfect fit for us, and the personnel we bring over are very welcome, and they are very competent. So I also like to address a little about what we do on energy transition.
I have been frequently asked in the market, because we have been known after the short two years we have existed as a separate company, to develop, of course, integrated services, integrated offerings, with, with based on the long history we have operating over the last 50 years. I also want to share with you how we think about energy transition, because I'm frequently asked about that. So just to start there, we are not there to kind of announce that we have put aside a lot of CapEx to do this. On this slide, you can see the four numbers. There is kind of a saying that our, in a way, experience, the heritage is opening for us to be a player in the future regarding energy transition. We have built up a company.
We are now 2,400 people, and when we announce, in a way, what, how we are thinking, we get actually quite, quite good feedback from the market, and people want to work with us because they see both the existing business and the, and the interest, the shift also into the, into the more renewables and emission reduction activities, which is a kind of an important element in the, in the global marketplace as we speak. So on this, so on this, this slide, I wanna share with you that the number three, that we have integrated global reach and services. We are in a position where we can combine things that others can't do.
We have a strong engineering capability of 350 people now, both very core into the oil and gas well services, semi-submersible upgrades, technology to reduce emissions, and so forth. So they are well qualified to kind of also develop the both sides. The thing we are doing, for the future development of renewables, we know our clients very well. We know the oil companies very well. We know many of them, good and bad, has announced significant investment into renewables. We talk about billions and billions of NOK. Our plan, because we have developed solutions that can bring and help clients to install technologies to reduce emissions, primarily.
You know that in Norway only, the target is to reduce emissions by 2030 with 50% from some few years ago. Significant ambitions, tough to reach, but it's possible. So our plan is to really tap into their investment capacity and participate with project solutions and offer solutions and get kind of a financing via their investment capabilities. So we're not gonna set aside quite a lot in a way, a package of money and say, "We're gonna spend this on renewables." No. We are there to use and follow our clients globally, and they are big, and we have mapped their ambitions, and we're gonna follow their CapEx capacity.
Plug abandonment is something we will prioritize going forward. The number four, market attractiveness. Plug abandonment, we have said, spent enough time there now. It's important for us to be a player. McGarian gives us a wider portfolio of products. We look at other companies, too, and I can say that in the future we expect more to come regarding this, but this will be acquisitions for profitable growth. We're not buying it for just to have volume. We're buying it to fill in the gaps we have in our own portfolio, and it's there to do profitable growth. I'd like also just to say a couple of words about floating offshore wind.
Floating offshore wind has now been very good capitalized by having two new investors from MOL in Japan, third biggest shipping company all over, and Kansai, which is the second biggest utility company in Japan. They have invested in the company, and we are now in a position now to develop two projects where we have on the target. The one is GoliatVind up in the north, where we have a... It's our project. It's 75 MW. Our plan is to develop that. We have been granted from Enova NOK 2 billion. That's $200 million to support our further technology development, which shows that we in competition has proven that we have the best solutions so far.
And we also are looking for solutions and in a way pace that we can develop those two projects. Utsira is somewhat postponed. GoliatVind is different. It's smaller. It's a pilot. For us, it's very, very important, and it's supported by our clients. So these are the things we are doing. And just to have a quick note at the end of the offshore wind, actually, offshore wind has already profits at the bottom line. So a little more at the market. This map shows that we have said before, we have opened now the office in the U.S. It's light blue. We are looking at that to be a marketing office primarily. That office will serve clients that operates South America primarily, and also clients that operate West Africa.
We talk about deepwater markets, and we talk about the big majors out there, like Exxon, like Chevron, like Total, Shell, Eni, and so forth. All the big drillers are based in Europe, except for very few, but the big American drillers are all based in Houston, and we serve them by well services, so that's also a very good fit. We have a very interesting bid now in Brazil with well services for a major client. We are optimistic. We hope we can announce something not too far into the future, maybe a couple of 2-3 months or something. We see a significant more activity also in Namibia, where we have the two rigs today and more to come.
And we see that the ramp-up of Namibia will be good. We see also more activity on the general West African coast with deepwater activities. We see now that drillers are getting more longer contracts, better day rates, and we are there to serve them. We also see now that all over the place, especially within well services, because this map is really well services, and we see rig counts coming up. Even though there was a slight setback in Saudi, our view on that picture is that those rigs, those jackups that was laid off or terminated, they will be active elsewhere.
The market is big, and we see a ramp-up of activity, and we see more tenders to come in all these green dots all over the place. And we have said quite many times, I think you heard me before, 2023 and 2024 is two years where we see a little flat development. So I have not expected too much ramp-up in 2024, which has shown to be a fact. However, we see 2025, 2026, and 2027, and onwards as much more promising. This is also reflected by others reflecting about, you know, drilling activities. We follow drilling activities on shore, shallow water, deep water, harsh environment, all over the place. So we are perfectly positioned to harvest where we see profitable growth in this area.
So some of, sum up from the market, we're optimistic. We see a stronger market in the future, and we will tap into that market with as most we can. The order backlog is now NOK 14.2 billion. It's good to see that we are able to bring more in. I'm very pleased that we also see growth within both operations and well services. Engineering, and projects, it's a kind of a different, type of business, but as I said many times, again, that part of the company is key to develop further solutions and to bring also the energy transition in place. P&E serves all the upgrades, SPSs, modifications, entering of new technologies, reduce emissions on existing installations, supporting clients.
It's a key to be present and to be a part of a client portfolio and client relationship. Delivering here creates more activity down the road. On the backlog on the next slide, the backlog there is, of course, the Visund and Grane project for Equinor has been important to us. We have increased with Equinor one more platform to operate. We did not, we were not able to keep Heidrun platform, but we want Visund and Grane. We know both of those platforms from earlier. We know them very well, and we will make sure that those two operations will be better.
It's also good to see that Well Services has also won significant more projects in the North Sea and in the Middle East. We have increased the backlog with NOK 0.7 billion on Well Services, and you will see later that the margins in that backlog is in our performance, is good. Even though we have addressed, and will address further, some problems with Operations in Norway. Operations in Norway has a lower margin today, first quarter, than we actually like to see. There's a recovery plan in place where Jone will share with you some of the actions there. First of October, we will start a new portfolio with Equinor. We will...
If you look at where we see the challenge in the operation, is a low margin on operation Norway. However, we see already significant step-up improvements, so we're quite optimistic that we will build a better performance. I'm saying that our targets, our long-term targets with operations, is high single-digit margin into double-digit area in the future. And that's possible. It's possible, but it needs some good performance, reach incentive schemes, improve terms and conditions, and then, which is always a challenge, but we have done it before, we'll do it again, and then kind of a roll into a better situation. Operation today operates 19 installations, 18 plus 1 jackup.
And we also see that out in the world, not here in Norway or in the U.K., we see that we are able to address different combinations of services led by operations, which has some sort of a way, where we can combine solutions and technologies into new packages. We talk about Asia-Pacific. We talk about also partly Middle East, where we are able to see a better utilization of what we have and better margins. So some of tomorrow, we are optimistic about that, too. And by that, I'll hand over the financial updates to you, Jone. Thank you.
Thank you, Simen. Starting on page 12. Q1 is a good quarter for OTL, taking into consideration that Q1 is usually the quarter with highest seasonal well financial impact for a company like Odfjell Technology. Revenue in Q1 has a growth of 12% compared to Q1 2023. EBITDA in Q1 2024 is NOK 212 million, compared to NOK 193 million in Q1, which means a growth of 10%. Cash generated from operation is NOK 75 million in Q1, compared to NOK 86 million in Q1 2023. Available cash was NOK 867 million in Q1, compared to NOK 598 million in Q1 2023. Net profit of NOK 52 million, compared to NOK 43 million in Q1 2023, and the equity ratio increased from 25% in Q1 2023 to 32% in Q1 2024.
Finally, on this page, CapEx level in line with plans and the growth strategies. Let's have a look on the business area, starting with Well Services. It's another good quarter for Well Services, with growth in revenue and EBITDA compared to Q1 2023. It's a revenue growth of 19% and an EBITDA growth of 28%, and that's mainly driven by good operation globally, high activity in Kuwait, Europe, Malaysia, Namibia, and improved and very good performance in Saudi, and very high utilization globally. EBITDA level is now of 37% in Q1, compared to 35% in Q1 2023. We see a strong market for Well Services is coming up, with expected high demands for all products lines globally and Well Services now well-positioned for further development in existing and new region, with focus on capital discipline and high-margin business opportunities. The next one is operation.
As Simen said, a challenging start for the year for Operations, with a margin level of 2% for Q1 2024, due to low bonus earnings, high cost related to crew transportation delays, and high sick leave offshore. The revenue increased with 7% in Q1 2024, compared to revenue in Q1 2023. As Simen said, we have established a commercial recovery plan for Operations Norway, and I expect that this approach, in addition to expected positive commercial impact from new awarded contracts in the portfolio, will improve the financial performance going forward. And we're talking about a lot of cost initiatives. We're looking into contract terms. We will have a lot of initiatives to achieve more bonuses, et cetera. There is a high tender activity ongoing Operations now, which is an important operation, since increased scale will also improve the financial performance.
The next business area is Projects & Engineering. P&E delivered a strong quarter with a normalized and good margin level of approximately 15%, due to very high activity and high utilization in all segments. Revenue increased with 16% compared to Q1 2023. I think we have to say that we have a strong foundation established, management capability and project execution model strengthened, which means that Projects & Engineering are well-positioned to further develop the service offering in existing segment and positioning OTL for future energy transition business opportunities. Going to the next page, cash flow. As Simen said, OTL has a strong balance sheet, and the cash position is as it is as expected in Q1 2024. The cash balance affected by typical working capital fluctuations, resulting in a NOK 61 million cash balance decline compared to Q4 2023.
We had an increase in working capital with NOK 116 million in Q1 due to increase in trade receivable. Remember that the last four days in March were public holidays, and a reduction in trade payables in Q1 compared to Q4 2023. Available cash was NOK 867 million in Q1, compared to NOK 598 million in Q1, which is an increase of NOK 269 million. We are currently planning the refinancing process, and we will execute at the most optimal time for the company. The LTM figures, the last twelve months development for OTL, still good trends for revenue and EBITDA, and demonstrate consistent growth trends. We are now working with our yearly strategy process update, including the strategy direction, objectives, and action, and this plan will be based, is based on expected upcoming market outlook.
So to conclude, good performance, strong order backlog and order intake, positive market outlook, well prepared for growth, organic and more M&A in the coming years. Good balance sheet and significant available liquidity, low debt. Recovery plan for operation established at Operation Norway. And finally, dividend increased from NOK 25 million-NOK 35 million.
Yes, that concludes the presentation, and we're now ready for the Q&A session. And I think we'll start with call-in questions, if there are any.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask an audio question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Please also just ensure your mute function is not activated in order to allow your signal through to your equipment. So that is star one if you would wish to ask a question. Our very first question today is coming from Lukas Daul, calling from Arctic. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Thank you. Good morning, gentlemen. Just a quick question on the dividend announcement. Obviously, you have increased it from the previous quarter's level, but you are still below what you are allowed to pay out in terms of the covenant that you have on your debt. Can you just sort of provide some color on what you are thinking going forward?
Yes, this is Jone. The Board of Directors decided yesterday to increase the dividend payment from NOK 25 million to NOK 35 million. As you know, the capacity is higher, it's actually NOK 172 million per year, and NOK 43 million in the quarter. The dividend program will be revisit in the next, for next quarter, after we have finalized and discussed with the Board the strategic, direction and the five-years financial review. So we'll come back to that in next quarter. And just to remind that the dividend payments in 2023 was NOK 100 million.
Okay. And then on Siemens' comment about your sort of offshore wind initiatives, obviously you have multiple activities in that space. But I was just wondering, as they progress, where do you sort of see yourself in that overall offering? And I mean, what kind of... Do you wanna be an operator? Do you wanna be a technology provider? And what kind of capacity or CapEx commitment would those potential paths encompass?
Well, because it's, we currently we have, we have financed Odfjell Oceanwind with quite a lot external investors. As I mentioned, the Japanese companies has big trust in what we have done. Odfjell Oceanwind is a company where we will both develop technology, but we have also said to be profitable and to have cash flow until the market is kind of established. We have also said we are a developer. So our plan is to participate in development of projects. I mentioned GoliatVind , which is exclusive us. A small one, but an important one to prove that we have technology and solutions for harsh environment, 50 MW turbines offshore.
And Utsira, we also are on the business list there, and probably are well qualified for the one-third that is available for us. Our plan is never to be into execution. We are developing the project. We are farming down at FID, Final Investment Decision, to principal zero. So we are there to establish projects, develop it, and farm down, and roll the earnings to the next project, develop it, and farm down. This strategy has shown to be successful so far because we actually have a black bottom line in Oceanwind. Odfjell Technology will not be sitting and pouring CapEx into Oceanwind more than we have done. So the plan is not to be a leading shareholder or anything.
We are there to support what we have done so far, develop the company, and participate when it's suitable. We have no plans to pour in more equity. Technology has people supporting the development, both executional projects, engineering, so forth. And that's what we invoice into the Odfjell Oceanwind and get paid for. So for us, it's a very good synergy between the two companies. It's born out of Odfjell 50 years experience of maritime business, and it's gonna harvest over the next future. Odfjell Oceanwind's ambition is to be a leading provider of technology globally, and we talk about hundreds and hundreds of installations globally.
That's why we also get access to, for example, the Asia Pacific market around Japan is the first step.... I hope that answers it.
Okay. And then just finally, when I look at your platform drilling portfolio, there is quite a few contracts coming up for renewal early next year. So the question is, when there will be a decision whether those options are taken or not, and what are your sort of base case expectations?
Well, we have, you know, within platform drilling, there are quite often that the options are executed, different from floating or semi-submersibles, you know, drilling campaigns. But we have a quite good view on where we are in our portfolio. We, for example, has a quite soon and renewal of the marine installation in the U.K. It's not announced yet, but we are quite optimistic about it. We see that the portfolio we have won in Norway now with the new projects with Equinor has a different setup, and we hope that could contribute to a better performance.
But also, we are looking at markets within jackup management, which is different from just running a platform, where normally the margins has been quite, quite low. We look at more jackup management in the region around us, and we also look at several solutions now, especially in the Middle East, where there are need for that kind of services, and they are better paid off. So when we look at kind of the growth within operations, it's also more into a combined type operation, not just a regular platform drilling operations as we have seen historically. We'll come back to more about that when we are able to announce something, but, but we are looking at piggybacking, for example, well services presence globally for that kind of solution.
So combining well services and operations globally in certain regions are quite interesting, which is really unique about the setup with Odfjell Technology, where we have said that we have integrated, so-called integrated services. These are exact examples to do that, to combine things into a better solution, what we can do. Okay?
Okay, thank you.
Thank you very much, Lukas. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you have any questions, press star one on your telephone keypad at this time. We do not appear to have any other audio questions. I'd like to turn the call over to Gert for any questions that were submitted by webcast. Thank you.
Yes, we've received quite a few questions, and we'll pick out a few and answer those. I think a question to you, Simen, is more on the operations, weak first quarter. The question goes against the timeline, when we can see—when will we see improvements, and maybe how will these new contracts affect it? Could you talk a little bit about that?
Yeah, I can do. As I said in the presentation, we have identified the challenges with the operations in Norway. Quite disappointing, of course. We're not happy to see those low numbers, but we have identified the reasons for them, and when you know the reasons, you can fix it. And Jone described the recovery plan, and we see already improvements in the performance. Which, because this is, of course, we didn't invent that recovery plan yesterday. It's been. We have seen it for a while, and we are now implementing those kind of actions. So already we see improvements, but the point is to see it's gonna be sustainable. And that's too early to say, but we're optimistic about it. We have recovered things before, and we'll do it again.
and the team within ops are also very, very competent and know exactly how they can do it, but we don't have all the answers yet. The new contracts with Equinor will start first in 1st of October this year. So those are has a different terms and conditions and commercial framework. So that they will help, but on that road, until then, we need to do the recovery, and that's what we talk about here. Plus, that we have a lot of other tenders internationally on things that is more in as I said recently to Lukas, there are combinations between services and drilling operations that can be quite interesting, and we are bidding several of them internationally.
If we pick it up, that goes both within plug and abandonment work, goes within workover activities and slot recovery activities, and that combines well services and operations in a good fit. So, so I think that, it's gonna be fixed.
Okay, thank you. We also have received a question regarding guidance on CapEx for 2024. Jone?
Yes, I can see that, say something about that. I think that, it of course, it depends on activity level, and as Simen said, we're going into new regions, and also delivery time on equipment. But we have our estimate now is between NOK 250 million and up to NOK 275 million CapEx for 2024.
Yeah. Let's see if we have any other we haven't covered. A lot of the questions are similar. There is, I think we covered it, but there is a question about calling the bond early. And, you know, if the focus will be covenants and what our thoughts are.
Yeah, as I said, we are well prepared for the re-refinancing process, and the first call of date for the bond is August 22, 2024. The bond market is very strong now. And, and as I said, we will execute the refinancing at the most optimal time. Our target there is, of course, to reduce the finance cost and improve cash flow. It's to secure a long-term financing for five years, improve terms and dividend capacity, and of course, improve our financial flexibility. So we, we are well, prepared. We have a lot of company helping us, and we just now look to find the right timing for it.
Yeah. I think we'll end with one last question. And we're asked to comment on inflation and inflation adjustment clauses, if these have a lag effect or we get the wage inflation adjustment in real time. I think what we can say on that is, these large contracts with a lot of personnel costs are... we're very well protected. Any salary increases that are then covered by the client and backdated to the date of the salary increase. And you often see that we invoice, you know, additional revenue in the fall to cover for maybe salary increases that came in June, July. I think we've had a 40-minute webcast, and I think we would like to conclude for today. I'd like to thank everyone for joining us.
If you have additional questions, please, send them to me or give me a call, and I will, gladly, answer. Thank you, everyone, and have a good afternoon.