Prosafe SE (OSL:PRS)
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Sep 11, 2026, 4:25 PM CET
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Earnings Call: Q1 2026

Jun 1, 2026

Summary

Q1 saw full fleet utilization, strong revenue and EBITDA growth, and successful SPS completions. The market remains tight, especially in Brazil, supporting high utilization and positive rate momentum. Focus is on recontracting key vessels and maintaining robust liquidity.

Reese McNeel
CEO, Prosafe

Hello, and welcome everyone to this Q1 presentation for Prosafe. I'm Reese McNeel, I'm the CEO. I have also here with me today Halvdan, our CFO, and welcome again to the presentation. We're going to run through the presentation. If there's questions, please send them to us by email, and we'll pick that up at a Q&A session at the end of this presentation. I'd like to start off the presentation for this quarter talking a little bit about what we've got done this quarter. I've been very impressed by how the team has delivered this quarter.

First, touching briefly on the operations, it was a quarter where we had all of the rigs operating. Caledonia, she extended through, got all of her options, and successfully demobilized. We also got Boreas fully on hire during the quarter, and we saw two units do the SPS.

I'll talk a little bit about all this later, but I think from an operations perspective, it was a very successful quarter for us. I think also financially, Halvdan will talk a bit more on that, but I think you see a very strong quarter, driven largely by the utilization, of course, of having all the rigs working. I think we'll touch a little bit on liquidity, but I think also very positive liquidity development. Inevitably, some due to working cap. If we look ahead, maybe what's exciting me most is really the market outlook. I'll spend most of my time today me talking a bit about that market. Some really positive developments there, I think we are reiterating in this call also our guidance for the year at $45 million-$55 million of EBITDA.

To talk a little bit about what was maybe one of the most strategically important activities that started in this Q1 and we finished up in April, was really the SPSs. We got the SPS done for Notos in 55 days, for Zephyrus in 42 days, and I think we actually delivered these SPSs in line with our estimates. Very important for us. There is a significant amount of spend. We are talking about $50 million combined between two vessels over a period, and I am very excited and very happy to see that the team delivered on this, both safely and also in line with the estimates that we communicated to the market.

So it is really a congratulations to everyone from the Prosafe side who was involved in these two very important projects. Looking a little bit at where we are as a company and our fleet.

This is sort of where we are in the fleet overview and where things are stacked up at the moment. We did secure contract for Caledonia in 2027. That LOI was announced late last year, but I think the conversion of that LOI was a very important step for us. Notos, we secured, obviously, the contract to 2030 last year. Boreas, she has now started her firm contract period of 15 months, so she has a firm contract now to July next year, early July next year, with options to take her to the end. So our real focus in the coming months is very much about Eurus and Zephyrus, and extending those two units or recontracting those two units in what is a much more improved environment.

I will mention, though, on Caledonia, I do think there's a positive market development touched on that. I think in the U.K., which is her core market, I do think we see some positive opportunities there. We are very focused on trying to get Cali work beyond 2027. I think she is available in 2026. I think it would have to be more of an exceptional opportunity in 2026. I think, particularly looking ahead at what we see 2028 to beyond, I think there's high probabilities there of filling something in in the next months. Looking at the market, again, just reiterating, summarizing to people, where are we in this cycle? Prosafe is very much maintenance cycle- driven, late during the cycle. We do some hookup work.

The work in Australia is hookup nature, but the majority of our work is driven from the maintenance of FPSOs and installed installations and FPSOs in particular. I think we are a little bit buffeted by the sort of short-term ups and downs of the oil market, with us focusing really on maintenance of long-term installations. What's happened in the market the last quarter, the last few months? The market, from our perspective, again we see the market as those units which we see competing against us in tenders at different points in time. I'll talk a little bit about the market in more detail in the next slides.

I think the message from this slide is the market's remained quite steady, and the Brazil market or the South American market, Brazil plus Guyana, remains by far the largest market, with 15 units or approximately half of this total global fleet. If you look at it, Brazil is really the base load for this entire, rather niche accommodation market. How do I look at the market? This is a question I often get from people. There's 31 rigs, they're not all the same. We have a chunk of high-end rigs. This is where Prosafe very much is. We have some of the best, most capable rigs in the market with the highest uptime, best safety performance. If you look in that 31, there is some lower-end or lower-spec rigs that are not DP3, maybe DP2.

Have capability to be accommodation rigs, but don't quite have the utilization and capabilities that our high-end rigs have. Looking across this, and I'll touch on that in the next slide in particular. If you look across that breakdown of all the rigs, there's very little inactivity. People have contracts, people are working. You see that the utilization across this broader fleet of 91 vessels remains still at 90% for the high-end units and still remains 80%+ for all the units across the spectrum.

The market remains very tight in this space. Brazil, as I mentioned, the largest driver to this market. Virtually half of all accommodation units available in the world are working in Brazil. What is driving, again, the need for accommodation in Brazil? it's a combination of FPSO installed base and the climate, and the conditions in Brazil.

You see a lot of corrosion. We see clients actively using accommodation vessels, UMSs, to support the repair and maintenance of these FPSOs. We see an increasing number of FPSOs in this market. One thing that has got me a little bit excited, again, the last few quarters or the last few months has been what we see as an increasing trend in Brazil, I would say, of using accommodation earlier than in the past. Historically, we saw people using accommodation, in particular Petrobras, two or three years after a unit was installed, kind of a maintenance campaign, six months here, six months there. We've now seen them increasingly using not only Petrobras, but also others, if you look at the Bacalhau project for Equinor, increasingly using some accommodation support even in the hookup phase of the project.

I think if that trend continues, I think we may even see more demand in Brazil than some of the projections that we put out here. We have also seen ANP, the regulator in Brazil, being more stringent upon the regulations, warning people about shutting down if they do not carry out all their corrective maintenances which is required. I think that has actually spurred some additional demand, particularly from some of the lower, maybe not the Petrobras of this world, but some of the more independent players. I am very positive about demand.

I think we'll continue to see increasing and strong demand from Brazil. Spend a bit more time on this slide because I think, as many of you know, and many of you who follow us and follow this space, there is a lot going on tendering at the moment.

There was a recent tender out from Brazil, quite public, that tender. Our take on that tender is that was a lower spec tender. That was a tender that was out. It was open to DP2 vessels. It was open to any kind of hull form or shape. Obviously, from my perspective, very positive to see Petrobras out with such a long-term good tender.

I think also very positive to see the rate development there. There's still a very strong rate for what we believe is sort of a lower spec unit, of course. In the next year, there's going to be, or up until the end of 2027, there's actually six units which need to be recontracted with Petrobras. Our belief is that they will recontract. If you take into account this latest tender, there's still five units that need to be recontracted by Petrobras alone.

In addition, we've seen one of the larger independent FPSO players out with a two-year tender. We also see some of the independents out with smaller requirements. I think this is playing out very much as we've been discussing, which is we're seeing Petrobras active in the market. We're seeing some of the independents active in the market as these contracts roll forward. We are very well-positioned here with the Eurus and the Zephyrus coming off in that same time period as these other five.

I think that's a really key focus area for us is recontracting those two with, of course, very much a focus on Brazil, where we're very present. I will say, we're open-minded to whatever other work comes out there at the right price, of course.

Our main focus is recontracting these into what we see as a very positive Brazilian market. I touched a little bit already on the U.K. and on Caledonia. I think that's a little bit special, but I do think there'll be opportunities there. We do see continued activity as well in other markets. There's recent work awarded in Turkey. There's been recent work awarded in Angola. I think there is more work coming as well in West Africa. From my perspective, I see the markets remaining very tight with a lot of tendering activity coming up in the coming, I would say, three to six months, and we are very well positioned with a couple of rigs here, I think, to capture that increased market potential. Jumping back a little bit to operations, I think, again, very positive quarter. Safe operations, that's super important to me.

No LTIs, no significant injuries or incidences to report in the quarter, despite a lot of activity operationally with the Caledonia coming off contract, going to warm lay-up in Scapa Flow in the U.K., and these two SPSs. Again, big kudos for the team for performing well in this past quarter. Looking a little bit at backlog, as I mentioned, very key focus for us in the next few months. I think backlog remains very high. Backlog remains.

We got to go back many years to see this backlog position for Prosafe. I think my key focus and the team's focus for the coming few months is very much focused on extending and building out this backlog even further. I think we got a very positive backdrop in the market. With that, I will hand it over briefly to Halvdan to talk a little bit about the financials.

Halvdan Kielland
CFO, Prosafe

Thank you, Reese, and good morning. Q1 2026, revenue up almost 50% year-over-year from Q1 2025. At the same time, EBITDA has tripled. This is largely due to a result of higher margin contracts related to the Safe Boreas and the options for Safe Caledonia. Of course, this is also negatively affected by some off-hire days for Safe Notos and Safe Zephyrus in relation to the SPS for March. We also expect to see the same thing in April, as these were both completed during that month. Moving on to the income statement, very little surprises here. Net loss of $1 million compared to net loss of $50 million year-over-year. Company is still on track to achieving the annual SG&A figure of $19 million. On the interest side, the company continues to elect to pay PIK interest on the senior facility.

The full figure here does not actually reflect the cash outflow, which we will get to on the next slide here. On the cash side, the main items to highlight here are, of course, the CapEx and the net working capital shifts. On the CapEx side, we have had two vessels undergoing SPS for March and April, so the costs have continued into the next month. For Q4 2025, we had a significant net working capital outflow, much of which was specifically related to the startup of Safe Boreas' contract in Australia. As we mentioned on the last call, we did expect most of this to flow back during Q1, which is a bit what you're seeing here. Of course, the positive figure is also helped by the timing of the accounts payable in relation to the CapEx outflow.

At the end of the quarter, the company had around $87 million on balance, very comfortable level above the $20 million debt covenant. As we begin to draw on this to pay down the SPSs, we expect to stay well above that covenant. Here, highlighting the strength of our balance sheet versus where we have been historically. NIB to EBITDA down to 4x. We do, of course, expect to see a little shift in the opposite direction as we pay down these SPSs. Deleveraging continues to be a priority from the company's perspective, along with getting to and maintaining a robust capital structure for the future. On the capital structure side, total debt at quarter end was at $305 million, including the $5 million exit fee, which is not interest-bearing.

We continue to amortize down the EUR seller's credit, while simultaneously the senior facility has increased on the quarter due to continuing to utilize the PIK option. Moving on to summary and outlook. The company continues to focus on recontracting opportunities to achieve the mark-to-market EBITDA shown here. As Reese mentioned, we have two vessels coming up for recontracting in 2027 in Brazil, which should enable us to close the gap from the 4.2 you're seeing here to closer to the 2.2 potential. To finish up, as we always do, we highlight that we are trading at a significant discount to current broker valuations and replacement costs. Our rigs are best-in-class high-spec units, which were expensive to build back in the day, even without factoring in inflation since then.

We do believe that there will continue to be strong demand for these units going forward, and as such, we expect to improve hopefully both our mark-to-market EBITDA potential and our trading values, compared to both broker values and replacement costs. Handing it back to Reese for closing statements on outlook and guidance.

Reese McNeel
CEO, Prosafe

Thank you very much, Halvdan. Yeah, as I mentioned at the beginning of the call, we're reiterating our guidance for the year at $45 million-$55 million EBITDA. Continue to see, I think, an improved EBITDA contribution from Safe Notos. She's going to go on to her new contract at a significantly higher day rate from September. I think that will give us a little bit of boost. Looking at the back half of the year and Safe Boreas, of course, on hire during the remaining full year of 2026. Reiterating again our guidance. I think balance sheet and liquidity, as Halvdan said, I think we're in a comfortable position, particularly if we look back where we have been from.

I think we have achieved quite a lot in the last couple of quarters, keeping these SPS in check. I think we've managed to improve the working capital situation significantly, and obviously, the recontracting of Caledonia has also been very positive for us to sort of secure that extra backlog. I think our strategic focus in the coming few months here is very much around capturing the current state of the market and rolling over the Eurus and the Zephyrus onto improved contracts going forward in the market.

With that said, there's a few questions that have come through to me, which we'll do our best here to answer. One of the questions related actually to the latest tender with Petrobras, and it was a rather direct question: did we participate in that tender? The answer is no, we did not. Neither ourselves nor Floatel participated in this tender.

I think my position is very much that this tender was very much guided towards the lower spec units that are available in Brazil, whether it's the, just to name a couple, the Venus or the Olympia or a few these other vessels. Our view was that this one was not necessarily for us, and that there will be more contracting opportunities to come. As I mentioned, with six units to be recontracted, this is number one.

Our view was that it was better for us to be a bit calm here and see how this market develops rather than taking what looked to be a lower spec contracting opportunity from the get-go. I think the next question was linked to the new builds. Briefly on the new builds, yep, they're still there. I think we're still very keen to do something with these two new builds.

I think we are still very much in the position that we believe that the market needs to continue to improve before we see a clear opportunity to deliver these vessels. First and foremost, we have very much a focus on recontracting what we currently have. If the market continues to develop like it is, I think there will be opportunities for these new builds in the future. Just check quickly a couple more questions that have come in here. There was a question regarding would we consider moving one of our vessels outside of the Petrobras fleet. I think my answer to that, I think as I mentioned before, the market continues to develop positively across the globe.

If there is an opportunity with someone either in Brazil, outside of Petrobras, or in fact outside of Brazil at the right price and at the right terms, of course, we would consider that. These vessels are Brazil- compliant. They've worked with Petrobras for a long period of time. That's all great. At the end of the day, in a tight market, we are very much focused on securing the rate and rate structure that makes the most sense for us and for the company. How do we see day rate momentum developing internationally outside of Petrobras and the North Sea? Again, I think we continue to see quite positive rates. I think we saw a $200,000 rate outside of Brazil, a $200,000 a day rate recently, albeit for a shorter-term contract, talking sort of six-month-plus contract.

I do think we see the day rates holding up, both internationally and in the North Sea. I think that again is just a backdrop of the fact that the supply is quite limited, and we have actually seen cases recently where clients have wanted a unit, but there simply hasn't been any units available. I think that is keeping the rate levels high. Current status of Nova, Vega, what is the timeline to take these units out of the yard? A bit similar. I think we're still very keen to do something with these two vessels and to get them working. How long that will take or what flexibility we have with COSCO, there's an ongoing dialogue with COSCO about that, and I think we're going to keep continuing this dialogue with them and see if we can find a way to unlock this.

I do think that they will come into the market eventually. Again, they are one of the last two custom-built accommodation units that are out there in the market. We do need to see rates improve or come to a good, a more favorable structure that allows these vessels to get out into the current market situation. Let's see if there's any other questions that have come in here. I think that was all the questions that I had received. With that, I would like to thank everyone for joining, and we will talk to you again the next quarter. Thank you very much.