Good morning, and welcome to this audio cast presenting PGS first quarter 2022 results. My name is Bård Stenberg, Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications in PGS. With us from management today are Rune Olav Pedersen, President and CEO, and Gottfred Langseth, CFO. Before we start, I would like to give some practical information. Participants on this audio cast can submit their questions via the audio cast platform. I would also like to draw your attention to the cautionary statement showing on the screen, and in today's presentation, and the risk factors disclosed in our 2021 annual report and the Q1 2022 earnings release. The agenda for today is summarized on this slide. Rune Olav will start with the Q1 takeaways, a financial summary, and the order book. Then Gottfred will give you a review of Q1 financials and a refinancing status.
Towards the end, Rune will give you an operational update, market comments, and review of our 2022 guidance, followed by the Q&A session. With that, I give the word to you, Rune Olav.
Thank you, Bård, and good morning, everyone. We have put behind ourselves a, what should I say, a quarter with mixed results. We experienced low activity during the winter season, which obviously negatively impacted vessel utilization for PGS and the other players in the contract market. However, more positively, we have experienced a year-over-year increase in both contract revenues and multi-client late sales revenues. In particular, it is important to note that the contract revenues are significantly higher even with the low utilization versus a year ago. It is good to see pricing holding up through the winter, even if utilization and activity were low.
Further, in the first quarter, we have progressed quite substantially in our development of the New Energy business unit, which I will come back to this. We have been awarded 2 carbon capture and storage acquisition contracts. We have gained access to a market-leading P-Cable giving ultra-high-density seismic, and we have agreed an LOI and are in detailed contract negotiations with DeepC Store to co-develop a carbon storage project offshore Australia, which is very exciting. Finally, it is, of course, still the case that there is a risk that we may not be able to meet our maturities in September, and we are therefore working with our advisors to find the best possible solution to address our debt amortization challenge.
I am increasingly confident that we will find a workable solution for all our stakeholders to this problem. To financial summary, I will be fairly brief and leave this to Gottfred, but just point to the revenues and other income where you can see that the contract revenues are substantially higher in the first quarter versus the first quarter last year, and also that late sales are holding up quite strongly. Now, we have a mixed quarter, as I said, behind us. Looking forward, looks much stronger and better for us. We are seeing an encouraging market outlook, and there are several elements that leads into this optimism with respect to what is going to happen going forward.
First of all, we have a supportive macro environment with very high oil and gas prices, which we've had for some time. The news that has happened over the quarter, obviously, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, although tragic in every way, has led to a completely new view on energy security. The focus on energy security in Europe is completely changed, and it also impacting other places in the world. This again, obviously leads to renewed investment pressure on energy companies to go out and find the necessary resources to make sure that the Western world can have enough energy in the years to come. We have been talking about this for some time, and we believe this pressure would have come regardless. What has happened during the quarter will just increase that pressure. We are also seeing increased E&P activity.
There is a clear renewed interest from several large energy companies in frontier exploration datasets. We are receiving incoming calls from large clients requesting views of datasets which have not been viewed by anyone for several years. There is a significant shift here in the interest which we believe eventually will also play out in higher activity and more revenues to the seismic industry. Further, there is a significant number of corporate transactions in the E&P industry currently underway, I would say. We are counting at least six. This is from everything from global transactions to more regional large transaction to smaller transaction on particularly on the Norwegian continental shelf. All of which will lead to more late sales for PGS and for the industry in this quarter and in the third quarter.
Timing is a bit uncertain with respect to these things. It depends on when it closes and when you also finalize negotiations, but this could lead to or is likely to lead to revenues which will be more than 20% of our annual late sales revenue. I will be disappointed if it did not in this quarter. This forms a significant basis for our late sales outlook for the next quarters. Further, we're seeing contract market improvement. As I will shortly show you, all PGS vessels are now fully booked for the summer season, and we are now working on booking into the fourth quarter. Finally, backlog is increasing once again giving support to the outlook we are seeing.
In summary here, support the market outlook, we're seeing increased activity, and we're also seeing it play out into our markets. Order book development. The order book at quarter end was $315 million. As you can see, I mean, it's a downward trend, which is a bit different to what I've just said. The reason for that is we have secured more than $70 million of additional order book after quarter end. If you add that, you would see that the order book is significantly up versus what we've seen over the last two quarters, which, as I said, is quite positive.
This is both pre-funded multi-client projects and contract projects that we have in our order book and that we have secured after quarter end. As I said, we are fully booked for the summer season. 17 vessel months booked for Q2. The one vessel month is the fact that the Vanguard is starting its North Sea campaign now and therefore have been idle up in the first month. That's why it's not 18. The one month on in Q3 is on one or two vessels towards the very end of the third quarter. We have six vessel months booked for the fourth quarter already at this stage.
As I said, focus now in PGS is booking up the fourth quarter with decent contract and multi-client programs, and I can say that is progressing well. With that, I will give the word to Gottfred Langseth to go through our financials.
Thank you. On the key financial numbers, I will not comment on many of these. We had revenues of $136 million in the first quarter as pre-announced, EBITDA of $51.8 million. The revenue reduction compared to Q1 last year is driven by prefunding, which is reduced contract and late sales is up. The prefunding is lower in the quarter as there was a low volume of multi-client projects that were finalized and delivered to clients in the quarter. This will be significantly higher when we get into Q2. Operational highlights. Strong development of contract revenues $61.5 million in Q1, which is a 140% increase compared to Q1 last year.
We used 71% of our active time for contract acquisition in the quarter. If we move to multi-client, total revenues of $69.6 million. Most of that is late sales, eighty-five million compared to forty-nine million in Q1 last year. Prefunding was low in the first quarter, fifteen million and, as stated on the previous slide, we expect a significant increase in the volume of completed and delivered multi-client projects when we deliver Q2. Vessel utilization, a challenging quarter activity and utilization-wise, both for us and I would say the industry. Obviously, we're not pleased with the 55% utilization or 55% active time.
We are pleased that we were generally able to maintain in a way the pricing level that we got to in the second half of last year. All of our six active vessels are now booked from early second quarter, as Rune has explained, but we will not get to a full utilization in the second quarter. We should get there or at least we're well positioned to get there in the third quarter. For the second quarter, we will have, in a way, the seasonal relocation steaming of vessels and some standby before commencing surveys on a couple of the vessels. We move to cost. Gross cash cost in the first quarter $107 million.
We have increased our full year gross cash cost guidance to $475 million approximately compared to earlier $450. The most important reason for that is higher fuel prices. We also see higher activity level and plan to operate both Sanco Swift and PGS Apollo as source vessels on projects in the second and third quarter. One more comment on fuel prices. Obviously higher now than what we saw at the start of the year. Also higher volatility and we've also seen over the last couple of months for understandable reasons a dislocation between the product pricing, i.e.
The fuel that we use and the crude price, which isn't showing the same correlation as in a stable or a normal market. Fuel costs are, you know, going even higher than the oil price increase. Important to be aware in that respect that in most, I would say almost all of our contracts or agreements for contract work and even some pre-funding arrangements, there are fuel price adjustment clauses so that our compensation is adjusted for deviations in market-driven changes of fuel costs. Sorry, that was a bit long. Balance sheet.
We had cash and cash equivalents, $163.9 million, end of quarter net interest-bearing debt, including the capitalized lease liabilities of $1.05 billion, which is a $66 million reduction compared to one year back. Cash flow. A couple of comments here. Net cash flow from operating activities for the first quarter was on the low side. This is due to a couple of reasons. The first one is more reporting technical. There is a mixed change. With less multi-client activity, more contract, and as a result, we report more of the costs or cash costs as operating payments rather than being reported as investments in multi-client. That is a classification matter mostly.
In addition, we had receivables which were due, you know, expected and forecasted to be received in the first quarter that we only received just after quarter and to a tune of approximately $25 million. Cash flow before financing activities in the quarter $23.7 million. Moving to financing status, obviously one of the important topics today. As earlier explained, it is a risk that we may not generate sufficient cash flow to make the second half 2022 debt amortization payments, while at the same time keeping an adequate and sufficient liquidity reserve. We are working with advisors to find the best possible solution to this. The improvement in the business environment is clearly supportive in our work here.
Our plan is to reach a solution by end of the second quarter, early third quarter, for implementation then obviously before the September amortization payment on the term loan B. The work is progressing as planned, and we are confident in achieving a solution. At this stage or as of now, we cannot give more information on or details on alternatives or status. Apologies for that, but that is the nature of the process. That said, I have one more slide on financing status, which, given the importance, I wanted to repeat and to some extent expand on some of the facts relating to our financing, starting first with the amortization and maturity profile, which is shown in the graph to the left with numbers for the two main facilities.
In the near term and for this fall, we have two significant amortization events or payments. We have the $135 million amortization on the term loan in September, and then we have $28 million amortization on the export credit financing in December. In a way, security-wise, substantially all of our assets and shares in material subsidiaries are pledged in favor of lenders. Financial covenants, we have two important ones. We need to maintain a minimum liquidity of $75 million. We need to comply with a leverage ratio, total net leverage ratio, which cannot be above 3.25 to 1 through the end of this year and 2.75 to 1 thereafter.
We are in compliance at end Q1 and clearly expect to comply for the second quarter as well. Loan agreements are complex. Our agreements have significant restrictions on incurring additional debt and other restrictions in other areas, but there are also some exceptions and baskets. We can raise up to $50 million of debt that will rank senior to the term loan B. We are allowed to raise unsecured debt inside a basket of $30 million. We can enter into lease agreement that would have qualified as operational leases prior to IFRS 16. There are several other customer exceptions and baskets. It's necessary to say that all these exceptions are subject to procedure and other requirements that are set out in the agreement.
Obviously, our ongoing work in this area has addressed all such opportunities in the loan agreements as they could play a part of solution. I will stop there. This was my last slide. I will give the word back to you, Rune Olav.
Thank you, Gottfred. We will start with the fleet activity as we normally do. I will start from the west. The Ramform Titan currently in Bahamas or may have started to steam to Canada already for a full season of work there. Further south, you see the Ramform Tethys now steaming to Brazil for a large 4D job, which will start as soon as she arrives in Brazil and keep her busy for the rest of the year. Ramform Atlas is steaming to Norway, where she will join the Ramform Hyperion in the UK and Ramform Vanguard in Norway, for the three vessels will do a full season of 4D work, of multi-client work, and of exploration contract work.
Ramform Sovereign currently in Malaysia, demobilizing for latest work, and she will go to a short yard stay and thereon after, on to the next job. Now, the bids and leads curve. You should be all familiar with this, but I repeat that the dark blue line is the dollar value of the active tenders we have in-house. While the light blue line is the dark blue line, plus a risk-weighted dollar value of all the leads that we have in-house at present. There is a few things that is important to note with respect to these two curves. Firstly, they are sitting at fairly high levels and levels above or at par with pre-pandemic the situation pre-pandemic.
You can also see that the leads are continuing upwards, even if the tenders are going down. The tenders are going down because obviously we are winning work and then it moves out of the tender line into the backlog. As I said, we have won quite a bit of work lately, while the leads keep on creeping up because we are filling up with new leads. When you see a large deviation between leads and tenders, that gives normally an indication that several of these leads will come into the tender line over the next months. There is one, what is it? A cautionary statement or whatever, with respect to the tender line, which includes a large 4D survey in Brazil, at only half value.
The reason for that is this is the survey where it was reported in the news that we had the best offer. It is a survey to start. It was intended to start in 2023 and go on for quite some time thereafter. The situation regarding that tender now is, to us, quite uncertain. Our tender, although the best offer were quite significantly above Petrobras's budget, and it is currently unclear whether this will go forward in its current process, whether it will be re-tendered, reduced, or pulled altogether. That is currently uncertain to us, and therefore we've taken a little bit of a cautionary position here.
We do expect, and we are seeing, it's not an expectation anymore, a material increase in 4D activity this year, and you will have seen our notification to the market yesterday, I believe, where we notified quite a few 4D surveys for the summer season in the North Sea. So leads curve also supporting the positive outlook we are currently seeing. On the supply side, it is still obviously at historical low levels, even if picking up a little bit into the summer season this year as we plan to operate six vessels and we plan to continue to operate those vessels throughout the year.
We're also seeing our main competitor reactivating some vessels into the summer season in line with the increased demand we are seeing in the industry. As you will have seen from Gottfred's slides, we also in fact intend to operate two of our 3D vessels as source vessel in support of two other projects, you know, activating quite a bit of the PGS fleet through the summer. Now on New Energy. I touched upon this in my introduction, and I wanted to say a few words on how we are developing our New Energy business. I must say I'm very satisfied with what we've been able to do so far.
You have to remember that we established this business unit only a year ago in April last year. We have now large minority ownership in a company called Ocean Floor Geophysics, and we are expanding that relationship in the first quarter when we have facilitated the purchase of another company, NCS SubSea, which held the market-leading P-Cable technology and merged that into OFG, leading OFG in a position where it can offer ultra-high-density seismic, both by AUVs and P-Cable. Together with PGS, that expands our offering of seismics into the ultra-high-density area. Why is that important? First of all, that is quite important for offshore wind projects, which require more ultra-high-density seismic than what we can offer from our large vessels, and also a more nimble operation.
Further, there are also CCS projects which require this kind of technology rather than the traditional technology. Not so many, I must say, but still. There are also oil and gas, some oil and gas projects that require this ultra-high-density seismic to be able to do for these. This is expanding our call it technical capabilities in collaboration with OFG. We're very excited by that. Also, as I said, we had entered into a letter of intent with DeepC Store, which has developed a full commercial carbon capture and storage project offshore Australia, meaning they have agreement for offtake of CO2, both from Australia and from Japan. They have signed up transportation of CO2 agreements.
They have signed up and have technology to insert CO2 into the subsurface, and we will help them with the subsurface evaluations in this project. For our job, we will receive both shares and cash is the intention. We are now in the final stages of signing a full-fledged agreement, and Deep C Store has applied for license to be able to insert CO2 into the offshore Australia. Very excited also by that project. It's one of the few full-fledged carbon capture and storage projects in the world at present.
As we have earlier communicated, we have an MOU with CGG to combine our multi-client projects and technical capabilities in the CCS industry, and we're currently working on the scale of that and what type of products we would like to offer to the industry. We did make several data sales in 2021 to carbon capture and storage players only. We expect to make more of those in 2022. More importantly, we are upping our game when it comes to acquisition over carbon storage reservoirs. We have done several monitors, and we currently have the imaging contract on Sleipner for CCS.
We have been awarded by the operator bp the acquisition project over the Northern Endurance Reservoir in the UK part, the UK Continental Shelf, and that project has already started with Ramform Hyperion. We're about to start on the acquisition, which we were awarded by the operator Equinor over the Northern Lights Reservoir, with Ramform Vanguard, which is about to start. We have a goal of developing the New Energy into a significant business unit for PGS longer term. What does that mean in terms of dollars? Well, last year in 2021, we had revenues mainly from the data sales in the area of $5-$10 million. This year, we expect to have revenues between $20 million and $30 million.
We may also actually go beyond $30 million because there is one other CCS job where we are in contention, which we may or may not win later in the year. Quite a rapid growth in this area. We see this growth going forward, and we're quite excited internally in PGS about what this could mean both for the seismic industry and for PGS as a company. On to guidance. The 2022 guidance group cash cost, as already communicated, approximately $475 million for 2022. Multi-client cash investment approximately $125 million.
We will use approximately 65% of our active 3D vessel time for contract work, and CapEx guidance remains still at $60 million for the year. In summary, a mixed quarter we have behind us, but with solid contract revenues and multi-client late sales revenues, even on very low activity in the industry during this winter season we have behind us. We are quite encouraged with the outlook, and as I tried to explain during this presentation, it goes all the way from obviously the macro picture and all the way down to what we are seeing in our business, giving me comfort on an improving 2022 market for us and onwards.
We are also, as I have just explained, progressing very well with the development of our PGS' New Energy business area. With that, I will give the word back to you, Bård, for the Q&A session.
Yeah. Thank you, Rune Olav. We have some questions from the audience already. The two first ones are related to refinancing, and Gottfred touched upon the responses in his part of the presentation. For the sake of good order, I can just read the question and Gottfred, you can respond. The first one is from a private investor. He wonders whether it's correct to understand that the lenders will consider the situation towards the Q2 earnings release before it's decided on what kind of solution is preferred.
If the question was on the in a way await the Q2 earnings release before they decide, that is not given in a way. As explained, we work on a timeline where we want to in a way establish the solution or agreements necessary by end Q2, early Q3, so that we can get things in place before the amortization payment in September.
Next question. You have had your advisors in place for a few weeks now. Where do you think your likely solution will be, in a debt rescheduling or a debt for equity swap?
As said, unfortunately, as said during the presentation, in a way, as of today, it is. We cannot, in a way, explain or share what alternative solutions we're working with or any details, or any likelihoods relating to any of these. Bear with us. We will share information to the market at the appropriate time when there is information to share.
We have a next question from Trygve Bruland in Cosimo. Your order book has fallen each quarter the last four quarters and is now about 25% lower than the same time one year ago. How does that indicate that the market you operate in are improving?
I can take just one more technical part before you take the more market part.
Right.
It's important to be aware that in a way the order book is now stated on the basis that we now disclose the numbers on IFRS basis. A part of the reduction is that in a way the IFRS order book includes the value of in a way the future revenues on multi-client projects where we already have done parts of the production. What has happened over the last 12 months is in a way that we have delivered more of those projects than we have produced. That, in a way, work in process, the pending revenues pending delivery, has gone down.
That is not market, in a way, market related. That has to do with the speed of processing and similar things.
Yeah
Rune, with that.
No, yes, there is a technical reason for it. I think the more important part is that if you add the $70 million we have won over the last less than a month, you will find that the order book is quite a bit up. If you take into account the technical changes, you will find that it is quite significantly up, and that's what's supporting the positive market outlook for us.
Next question comes from Jørgen Lanøe in Danske Bank. Related to your comment on late sales and potential for 20% increase to annual late sales this year. Just to be precise, is the estimate based on reported 2021 late sales?
First of all, I didn't indicate a 20% increase in late sales this year. What I indicated was that the M&A transactions that we are currently seeing should represent you know more than 20% of our annual late sales this year. That doesn't mean that you can kind of add that on top of what we have already assumed. The 20% is a very, very approximate number and you can use the 2021 numbers if you want to.
My comment was related to our internal forecast on late sales and what we see, but it will give you an indication of the order of magnitude of late sales that can be expected from these sales. It's not meant to give you an exact number, but it's meant to give you an order of magnitude number so that you understand how important all of these transactions may be. There is large variability on negotiations, et cetera, in every one of them. There is significant potential there.
We have a couple of questions from John Olaisen in ABG. He starts off with a standard question. How much do you expect contract rates to improve in 2022?
Yeah, I'll give the standard answer, which is that I can't comment on that. We expect contract rates to improve. That's clear. It goes in, goes to all the comments here. I cannot in this kind of market, which is quite condensed, with few players give an indication.
His next question relates to the question from Jørgen Lanøe. You mentioned that you expect transfer fees related to 6 announced E&P deals. I did not get what you said about the expected proceeds. You mentioned something like you expected transfer fees to be 20% of something.
Yep. As I said, it's in the order of magnitude of, let's say, if you take our expected multi-client late sales for the year and 20% of that was kind of what I was indicating to give you an indication of where the order of magnitude of revenues that could come from these things. I think I would be disappointed if it's less than 20% of our estimated full-year multi-client late sales revenues.
We have a question from a private investor. Can you please give some color on what multi-client vintages you are seeing increased inquiries on and what regions these relate to? Has TotalEnergies's discovery in Namibia changed interest for data in that region?
Yes, I'll try to answer that. I don't think so much on vintages, but you touch on a very important part. Where we're seeing most of the interest for, call it, I would say exploration data sets is along the Atlantic margin, meaning along the West Africa coast and on the other side all the way from the Caribbean and all the way down is where we're seeing that interest. It is in my opinion also related to the significant discoveries made by Shell and TotalEnergies in Namibia. We are seeing increased interest for Namibia and for Angola, South Africa, that entire region following those discoveries, but also for the equivalent part on the other side of the Atlantic.
The reason for this, obviously geologically, in the really, really old days, these continents were together. You see, you look for similarities on the other side when you find a large discovery on one side. Data in Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina would receive increased interest from these discoveries.
Next question comes from Mick Pickup from in Barclays. Can I just confirm that there is a significant disconnect between the order book chart and vessel booking months because of last week's orders?
Yes. That is correct. There is a significant discount there.
He also has a question on, can you give an idea of the order of magnitude of your Petrobras bid in the budget of the clients? Compares to the budget of the-
Yeah.
They were-
I mean, we were.
Clearly higher.
Clearly higher, you know, 30%-40% higher, something like that, than their budget.
Next question comes from Baptiste Lebac in Oddo BHF. Is your financial situation penalizing your bidding process? Is it seen as a risk from your clients?
No. I don't think I've heard that once. From time to time, there are clients who wants to understand the situation, but rather rarely and has never negatively impacted us.
Next question comes from Kim André Uggedahl in SEB. How do you expect working capital to develop for the next two quarters?
In a way, this is a bit into the technical again, in a way. In a way, we will see. We expect that generally our working, say, our underlying working capital performance, we expect to be fairly stable from here. Just if we take away the fact that we had some $25 million that came in a bit too late for this quarter. I call it our DSO performance and so on, expect it to be similar, in a way, through the end of the year. It will vary then with our revenue level, except that when, in a way, revenues fluctuate, for example, increase.
For prefunding revenues in the second quarter that will not drive any working capital build-up. Since our billing of those have been done throughout the project. It is a bit complicated to give a clear answer. We expect our performance, adjusted for a bit too high working capital at end Q1 to be as a proportion to our revenues, stable.
We have a couple of questions from Christopher Møller-Lekven in SpareBank 1 Markets. If transfer fees in 2020 could represent 20% of 2022 late sales revenues, could you indicate what transfer fees represented of 2021 late sales?
I would say no, because I just don't know the answer. It was just to clarify, it was related to the actual transfers we are now seeing and not necessarily all transfers in transfer fees.
Primarily for Q2, Q3.
We're primarily for Q2, Q3, not all transfer fees in the year. We always have transfer fees. The reason I mention it is that we're now seeing an increase, an abnormal amount of E&P activity in a short period of time that will lead to, let's say, abnormal amount of transfer fees in those two quarters, we expect.
Yeah.
I don't have an answer to your question. I'm sorry.
His next question has been responded to already I would argue, but for sake of good order, I could just read it out. You mentioned you experienced increased interest for frontier regions, which countries would you highlight?
Yeah.
Unless you have any additional comments, Rune.
No, I think.
The previous question.
When it comes to frontier exploration, I would kind of repeat Atlantic margin, west part of Africa, and the entire South America, all the way from the Caribbean and downwards.
We have another question from John Olaisen in ABG. You write that you expect multi-client late sales to increase in 2022 compared to 2021. Is that including transfer fees or will transfer fees come on top of this?
It's obviously including transfer fees. It will increase, that is our expectation, that we will have higher late sales in 2022 than in 2021, and it includes transfer fees.
Okay. We have another question from Baptiste Lebacq in Oddo BHF. Regarding your new business, can you say that it is accretive in terms of margins and reduce your exposure to the cyclical seismic industry?
On the margins, it's similar to what we're seeing in 4D activity in general. I mean, the way we treat it now is that it has to compete with other 4D activity. There is no difference, I mean, you know, overall, no difference in margin. Currently it's not, it's in a way the same market for us. Will it over time lead to less cyclicality? I believe so. I believe this is a growth market.
I believe it will grow for, you know, 10, 20 years and the world's need to store CO2 will not have the same cyclicality and not swing in the same cycles as the oil and gas business or I believe so yes, I think it should reduce cyclicality.
Thank you, Rune Olav. That brings us to the end of the question list. Unless there's any last minute questions from anybody, that concludes our Q1 2022 presentation. Thank you all for participating and goodbye.