Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Steve Ferazani, an Analyst at Sidoti. Welcome back to day two of Sidoti's Virtual Investor Conference. Before I turn it over to the next presenter, let me just remind everyone we expect to have a few minutes for questions following what I think is going to be a very informative presentation. If you have questions, you press that Q&A box at the bottom of your screen, type it in, and we'll get to absolutely as many as we can, time permitting. I don't want to take up any more time. Let me turn it over to Wayne Prejean, CEO of Drilling Tools International, the ticker is DTI. Wayne, it's all yours.
Thank you, Steve. Good morning, everyone. You ready for me to get started?
It's all yours, Wayne. Go ahead.
All right. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for your interest and attendance to this small-cap conference. Today I'm going to tell you about Drilling Tools International. My name is Wayne Prejean. I'm the CEO of Drilling Tools International. I've been with the company for almost 12 years. A little glance at what our first quarter results were. We did approximately $42.9 million in the first quarter at a 16% quarter-to-quarter increase. 89% of that activity was Western Hemisphere, and 11% was Eastern Hemisphere. We are expanding our global footprint. We're making progress in all of our growth and expansion initiatives. I'll talk a little bit more about our segment reporting later on in this presentation. I'll lead with, as a company, we have a fantastic customer base, blue chip across the globe and ever expanding into many other markets.
This is just an example of some of our core customers, not only in North America, but the Eastern Hemisphere as well. Every good company must have good management. I have a fantastic leadership team that supports our efforts every day. Most all of the folks on this page have been with us at least a decade, and some of them have joined us recently as a result of acquisitions. We have a good, cohesive, and aligned leadership team managing all the prospective product lines and geo-market areas that we operate in. We are a rental tool company primarily. We're primarily a rental tool company with some product sale items in various segments in the drilling, completion, and production segments of the oil and gas drilling space. Why do customers rent tools?
It's one of the most popular questions we get asked by investors and others that are interested in the company. It's been this way for decades, many, many years. Oil and gas companies focus their core competencies and capital allocation decisions on their production, equipment, and geology and geophysical aspects of what they're trying to accomplish in their overall production strategy. That means drilling and completing a well is part of the construction of a producing well, and they would rather outsource most of, if not all, of those expenses until the well is completed. Rental tools, downhole tools, drill pipe, BHA components, reamers, and directional drilling equipment, or all the things in a drill string are those components that most customers rent. We rent our equipment to oil and gas companies and service companies primarily. Rarely do we rent to drilling contractors.
Most drilling contractors supply the drilling rig with associated components that are included in their contract, but everything else the operator rents. Here's an example in the deck of why our customers rent tools in the industry and who we rent to. An illustration here on page eight is an example of some and most of the tools that we supply in the business. We supply tools in the drilling, completion, production, and in the plug and abandonment space. We have a suite of tools that enables most of our customers in the drilling, completion, and production space to extend or expand or enhance their horizontal drilling application. Most wells today are drilled directionally or horizontally. Most of our technology and tools, if not a majority of them, participate in that part of the industry.
As you can see here in the drilling, the one that's directly under the rig, the drill string component is where most of our business resides. We supply various things in the bottom hole assembly, such as stabilizers, bits, non-magnetic collars, Drill-N-Ream tool, RotoSteer, all sorts of subs and accessory items that go into these complex bottom hole assemblies, supporting operators and service companies throughout the globe. We also have a line of completion tools in our recent acquisition of Deep Casing Tools, which includes the MechLOK Swivel for installing long and extended reach completion strings, TurboCaser, which helps install casing in the ground and in the intermediate casing, and Turbo Runner for the final string of the casing or completion setup.
We also have a new and evolving product for slot recovery and plug and abandonment operations throughout the world, where more and more wells are required to be plugged and abandoned properly and safely. That product's called the Rubbilizer, which helps vibrate the casing from its cement bond and helps extract that casing after the plug and abandonment process is complete. A very clever and economical way to achieve that goal. Throughout our organization, we have plenty of capabilities in manufacturing and support for all of our products and services. We do manufacture most of our products in three main locations: our primary Broussard, Louisiana facility. We have a campus in Vernal, Utah, as a result of our acquisition of Superior Drilling Products with some sophisticated manufacturing and bit capabilities there. We also manufacture some of our tools in our Nisku, Canada operation.
We also have some partners throughout the Eastern Hemisphere that support us in various places in Asia and Europe and the Middle East so that we have the capabilities of making and supporting our tools wherever we need to operate. One of the key operational differences we have compared to other companies is we've developed a state-of-the-art asset management system. It is called Compass, and it is an acronym for Customer Order Management Portal and Support System. It is a state-of-the-art experience, whereas we internally or externally, our customers can actually go online, get the access credentials, which we require.
Once that's accomplished, and it's very simple, these customers can order tools online, reorder tools online, manage the orders that they have, know where all the tools they have in order are, their aspects, their dimensions, the specifications that are required, and electronically communicate with us to minimize ambiguity in order processing and errors and things of that nature. Also, the transparency of all of the specifications and repair and logistics that go into managing tens of thousands of tools on hundreds of rigs throughout the world. It's very state-of-the-art. It's a key aspect of why we're differentiated from our competitors and why we can provide transparency to our clients. We are executing on our objectives. In the last year or two, we've made four acquisitions in nine months, and we've improved our liquidity.
We've grown our portfolio not only geographically, but technically as well from 2 to 16 patented products that we operate. Our 2025 outlook exhibits some stable financial results despite the certain market volatility that we're experiencing since Liberation Day and tariffs and OPEC+ putting more oil in the market. We continue to maintain a healthy adjusted free cash flow margin, and we will demonstrate that to our investors throughout these cycles. We are allocators of capital, and we want to be efficient allocators of capital. Myself and our Chief Financial Officer, David Johnson, my colleague, we spend most of our time evaluating our Compass results and the asset management platform I spoke about earlier. We use data-centric and market-centric data to help us make good capital allocation decisions.
When it comes to respect to our shareholders, we want to make sure that we maintain our fleet, we manage our debt, we make acquisitions to consolidate and grow through M&A, as stated in our objectives to our interested investors, and also return capital to our shareholders. The way we can do that is we've authorized a $10 million share repurchase program this year. With the market in a less of more volatile state, our stock has dropped short-term as a result of the overall market activity. We saw it as an opportunity to increase value for our shareholders by making some stock purchases and buying back our own stock. We'll continue to do that throughout this cycle as we believe that's one of the better uses of cash and resources at this time. Moving forward to our organic growth drivers.
Our 2025 results will include a full year of contributions from our previously stated acquisitions. We now have a global footprint that we will leverage and start getting the full benefit of those integrations and those efficiencies. We have expanded our scope of tools and technology. We have some leading-edge things that are focused on a portfolio offering to our clients that helps them drill longer laterals, more efficient laterals, and helps them achieve their production objectives as well. We are going to continue to grow our customer base with these new technologies on a global scale. As I stated earlier, the trend in longer laterals and more complex wellbore profiles lends favorably to what technology we have acquired and the distribution network that currently exists.
Now that our international presence is established, those markets are starting to adopt some of these proven unconventional style technologies that have been utilized efficiently across the United States and Canada. We are well positioned to supply those markets. When we embarked on our public journey two years ago as an established company in the oil and gas space, we stated that we wanted to grow through M&A. There are significant consolidation upsides in the industry that still exist. There is a buffet of companies out there, quality companies that are probably nearing their exit timeline or founder base that would fit nicely into our network and distribution platform along with our management team. We are going to continue to do that. Slide 14 is an exhibit of how we look at the M&A framework and the landscape that exists and how we act upon it.
We view it as a large universe that we funnel down into possible viable targets, and then we get targets in the pipeline, and then we kind of narrow it down to what makes sense first, second, and third in priority. We are trying to unlock that business potential and profit with these acquired companies and grow the enterprise and grow our shareholder value. When we do these acquisitions, we create synergies and hopefully execute on the growth potential of each of those. We have seen a clear path to margin enhancement and optimizing our cash flow. This is an example of how our adjusted free cash flow has grown, and our margin outlook is balanced for what we see as some of the decline in North America is factored into the margin decline, but our total adjusted free cash flow is expected to grow from year to year.
One thing we're working fast, and we're rapidly adopting some of these new acquisitions and integrating them into our standard ERP systems and our Compass system. We feel like it's better to do those integrations sooner than later while still preserving the value and talent that we acquire and technology that we acquire in these acquisitions. We do have a sustainable growth plan as demonstrated in previous years. Our revenues have been steady throughout 2023 to 2025, and we are seeing an adjusted EBITDA trend line that's still viable and sustainable, adjusted for some market volatility that's occurred in North America. We've lowered and managed our capital expenditures, and our adjusted free cash flow is a reflection of those cycles. We are sustainable and can grow through the cycle.
I think that's one of the things we'll demonstrate to our shareholders that are interested in how we perform throughout this current cycle. We illustrate our components of adjusted EBITDA in three buckets: our maintenance CapEx, our growth CapEx, and our adjusted free cash flow. As illustrated here from 2023 to 2025, those are levers that we can use to optimize how we address the market as far as the market size or the market trends. What we do is we invest in things that make sense. Our maintenance CapEx, when compared to many other peers in the industry, is a little unique from most capital-intensive type companies where they buy capital items and rent them over time, then have refurbishment and replacement costs that go into and out of the normal revenue that is obtained from the rental item that they charge our customer.
Ours, on the other hand, our maintenance CapEx is a function of a recovery component. Our business functions on rental revenue, repair revenue, and recovery revenue. This recovery revenue is when if the customer loses the product in the hole, they have to pay us a recovery amount because that product was lost while it was in their care and custody. If they damage it beyond repair and it ends its useful life before it was intended, they still have to pay us a recovery component. That recovery revenue we use to keep our fleet sustainable and maintain a healthy balance in how our fleet evolves and sustains without eating our own flesh. In a rental model, you must remain relevant and sustainable in your fleet management, and we do that utilizing our maintenance CapEx.
Now, our growth CapEx, we consider something new, innovative, or over and above our existing fleet status. That is why we measure it separately and measure this adjusted free cash flow in the manner that which we do. We fare favorably to our peers in our free cash flow margin. Here are some examples of 2024 and 2025 estimates of how our adjusted free cash flow margin works compared to our peers. We feel we are undervalued compared to some of our peers. Here is an example of how we compare an EV to EBITDA multiple in a range of other public comps that may not compare exactly to us, but they are the most reasonable comps we can find as far as valuation and what products and services are provided.
I want to point out that we've pivoted to a geographic reporting segment, Western and Eastern Hemisphere, for the purpose of reporting our results in a manner to show and demonstrate how we're going to expand into the Eastern Hemisphere. That also helps investors look at how we're performing in those two respective areas and how those acquisitions provide and end up providing value. Here are some highlights. We expect to have 89% of revenue contribution going forward. Here are the product lines and services deployed. It's mostly rental tools. We have a big distribution network across the Western Hemisphere, and we layer technology on that. We're very good, efficient deployers of technology with our infrastructure.
As far as with respect to the Eastern Hemisphere, we have a little different approach where we lead more with technology in those specific areas, and we're able to bring in more of our common rental tool items and leverage those over the technology deployment. Two different strategies, both working very well across those markets with respect to the requirements for all the customers' needs in those areas. As you can see here, we had a 1% Eastern Hemisphere footprint in 2023, 8% in 2024, and we expect it to be around 16% in 2025 and hopefully growing and being a larger percentage of our overall business. Here's our financial outlook for 2025. We're guiding revenue from $145 million-$165 million, and we expect our adjusted free cash flow to be between $14 million and $19 million.
We expect to deliver solid results throughout this cycle, and we're going to continue to invest in the business because we believe this cycle is temporary, as they always are. What goes up must come down, and what goes down usually goes back up. In the oil and gas business, it is always a cyclical industry, and we have to make sure that we're always sustainable through those cycles. Kind of wrapping up to the end here, what differentiates us in our growth strategy? We lead the market in various downhole tool categories. We have a great customer base. We have a solid strategic model that delivers through the cycles that we discussed earlier.
We have proven our ability to grow over time with organic M&A and with organic products and M&A in a fragmented industry that is fragmented in some segments and not so much in others. We have a solid balance sheet with low leverage, and we have solid free cash flow metrics. We have a fantastic leadership team and management team, and we have sustainable financial growth outlook. With that said, Steve, I'll ask if there's any questions.
Quite a few already, Wayne, but let me remind everyone. We have about 10 minutes remaining. If you have a question, press the Q&A box at the bottom of your screen, type it in, and we'll get to as many as we can. Like I said, we have several already.
I do want to kick this off, Wayne, and I know you covered this in the presentation, but I know as we talk to investors at Sidoti, the surprise we hear from many investors is the fact that clearly this is a weaker market this year. Your guidance and everyone else's came down after Q1. Having said that, the midpoint of your adjusted free cash flow guidance is almost flat from last year. Can you sort of, and this is part of your model that you've covered in the presentation, can you just walk people through how you can do this, how you can generate reasonable cash flow even in a very difficult market?
It's interesting. In an upwardly mobile market with an aggressive rate count increase, our customers require us to supply more and more equipment.
We have to purchase more and more equipment in that upcycle. When it's flat in a steady state, we can easily maintain our fleet status and our relevance. In a rapidly upcycled market, the cash flow is probably a little lower because we're investing, but we have to invest in the right things. In a flat, steady state market, our cash flow is really solid. In a down market, we generate mostly cash because there's not a requirement for more and more CapEx. The good news is, even in a down market, we are recovering any lost tools or damaged tools. We're recovering those through event-triggered revenue items.
Therefore, there's not this feast or famine volatility of needing the rental activity to service capital equipment that you have to go rent that kind of dies a slow death if it's on the shelf and it needs serious refurbishment investment. It's a different model. The rental tool space works rather well in that regard. It enables us to maintain reasonably competitive free cash flow margins and dollars throughout those cycles.
Good. It's about a month since you reported Q1. We were still digesting Liberation Day and its potential impacts. Can you sort of give a reset to everyone on how you think the global market sort of plays out into the second half of the year, knowing we don't know what tariffs are coming next? What's your thoughts now a month later since reporting?
From my experience and my vantage point and the information I can extract from the news and our intelligence gathering sources throughout all of our districts and locations, it's quite a situation with the triple whammy between tariffs, policy change, and now OPEC+ adding more and more oil onto the market. What's interesting is, your demand component on the demand side has softened a little bit due to the tariffs and the economic uncertainty. You add to that the OPEC+ addition oil on the market. It's created this environment of uncertainty with how people spend capital. Now our industry is all in the capital discipline mode, every one of them, between international oil companies and national oil companies. There are very few that are borrowing huge sums of money for long-term aspirational projects.
These are all managed through capital discipline for all of the reasons I'm sure everyone on this call can understand. I think it's a self-correcting situation based on demand and supply, which always is self-correcting. The hard part is none of us really know exactly how long it takes or when it cycles up or down. Some of the smartest and most best researchers in the world have tried this for the 50 years I've been in the industry. It's hard to get it right. The true answer is be prepared to run a solid business through the cycles and be patient and persistent. I think the right answer is next year, we should see an upcycle, an uptick in activity. We believe that it's going to take 6-12 to maybe 18 months for this cycle to work itself out.
Fair enough.
Let me take some of the questions we have coming in from investors. A question regarding this one specifically about the ongoing integration and benefits of Deep Casing. Let me broaden that to the four acquisitions and just have you, are there more synergies to realize from these four acquisitions? Would we see them as early as the second half of 2025?
Sure. As we're integrating these companies and we're going to this one DTI strategy, that's what we call it internally. It's not necessarily an external tenet, but we call it for the cultural integration is one DTI. We have to get everyone on board and integrate into common ERP systems, get everyone on common platforms of engineering and customer-centric focus, making sure we're efficient. That takes time.
The first part is the financial integration, and the next part is the product rationalization integration and so on. The hard part is all the sales and customer integrations. Getting them to buy in, getting them aligned with the new brands, and making sure that you continue with the momentum that the acquired companies previously had and not diminish that momentum. Certain things are near-term, mid-term, and a little longer term. We're going to see a lot of those benefits take shape second half this year and next year.
Okay. We have a question regarding, obviously, you've made four acquisitions. The balance sheet remains remarkably healthy still. Part of that's what we already discussed with your ability to generate cash flow in any environment. This investor's asking about your capital allocation priorities. Given where the balance sheet is, will you still pay down debt?
How does that compare to buybacks or M&A?
I mean, I think our first priority would be to balance debt reduction and buybacks as far as, and that allocation decision would depend on the price of the stock and how fast our outlook on the market. As far as M&A would be a close second and third right there in the same lane. The way we look at it is if there is a compelling opportunity that helps us become more accretive, then we would balance those decisions with growth and scale versus debt reduction and share buybacks. However, we are not interested in getting levered or over-levered outside of the scope of what we believe is reasonable, which is in the one range, one-ish. It has got to have a one handle on it, one handle of EBITDA.
Based on how we see the industry's trajectory changing would determine what level of comfort we would have with taking on more debt, giving away a certain value of stock to get more scale and grow the company and give us that position to grow when the activity increases. Being positioned before that happens is really important because you have to kind of analyze what the risk factor is of getting positioned before the opportunity is there because it takes time to create that position.
We have a question. You somewhat answered this in terms of the size of acquisitions you're willing to make. A lot of these, certainly the last two, were smaller. Is that more of the type size we should think about, or is size not the determining factor when you're looking at something that could be really good?
Without unpacking the details in an open forum that I'll be mindful of, I would state that we have on our radar screen some deals in small, medium, and large. I would say that they're in the range of what we've already done, $20 million, $30 million, $40 million to maybe larger. That doesn't mean we have things incubating, meaning we have dialogue going. We're always having dialogue and evaluation discussions with different targets. We're just trying to get a fish on the hook and get it to the boat. Some of them are big fish, and some of them are small fish. They're all in the same lane of technology, accretion, geographic expansion, not just bolt-ons, but there are some bolt-ons that we're looking at that really are quality businesses that would fit well into our existing infrastructure.
We have another question in terms of, and I know we do not have a lot of time. Can you just give a basic overview of the competitive landscape of the rental tools segment and how you fit into it? Is that more challenging right now? Could it use consolidation? Do you look at that in periods like this?
Sure. Sure. We have three or four different product categories that we operate in, and our competitive landscape is a little different in each one. In our downhole tool category, there are four or five viable suppliers, and there are really two of them, us and one other company, that are of substantial size. The others are smaller suppliers. It is not like there are 20 or 30 suppliers in that market.
There may be some small mom-and-pops out there that run a few tools in there, but they're not as of any scale. In the pipe business, there's probably 10 suppliers, I believe, in the market. We're probably in the middle of the pack somewhere. Internationally, a similar metric where there's four or five key suppliers in the international market. In the pipe business, there's 8 or 10 key suppliers. We do not really do much pipe rentals in the U.S.-based operation. Most of ours is in the U.S.-based operation. In the reamer category, same thing, the four or five key suppliers. We lead the pack in that category in the Western Hemisphere and are making steady progress, becoming more and more impactful in the Eastern Hemisphere. That's kind of how it looks without giving away too much detail.
I know we are just a little bit past the end time, but I'll give you a little bit of time here if you want to do any closing comments to wrap it up after covering, I think, a lot of ground over this half hour.
Over the last two years, we've made a lot of progress in establishing our improving, expanding our brand, and establishing a footprint in new markets and bolting on technologies and strengthening the enterprise with the downturn kind of slowed down that progress, but it hasn't changed our trajectory as far as our continuous improvement and how the enterprise operates and how we compete. There is no blood in the water. It's just a gut punch. We are resilient and have a talented team and a great product line, a solid customer base.
We're going to continue to grow through all of the initiatives I previously described. Thanks for your interest and keep some eyeballs on our stock and what we're doing. We appreciate your support.
Great. Wayne Prejean, CEO of Drilling Tools International. Wayne, thanks so much. I hope everyone found this as informative as I did. I hope everyone enjoys the remainder of the facility conference. Thanks, Wayne.
Thank you.