Okay, welcome back to Sidoti's Virtual Investor Conference for January. I'm Steve Ferazani, an analyst at Sidoti. So pleased to be joined by Forum Energy Technologies. The ticker is FET. And in just a moment, I'll hand it off to President and CEO Neal Lux and CFO Lyle Williams. Before we get started, I'd like to remind everyone that we should have some time for questions following the presentation. You just press that Q&A button at the bottom of your screen, type in the questions, and we'll get to as many as we can with time permitting. And with that, let me turn it over to Neal and Lyle.
Thanks, Steve. Maybe I'll begin with just a quick introduction of myself. I joined FET in 2017. I was through an acquisition prior to being adopted by this company. I was a founder of Global Tubing, which remains one of FET's key product lines. I've been in the energy equipment manufacturing industry for about 20 years, and in addition to the operating roles I've had in my career, product development and innovation have been a key part of my experience. As an example, I developed a patented product for Global Tubing that has generated a significant amount of revenue over the last 13 years and continues to do so. So innovation has been a key to my personal success and remains in my DNA and in FET's. Also with me today is Lyle Williams. I'll let Lyle introduce himself as well. Lyle?
Thanks, Neal. And good morning, everyone. I've been with FET for 18 years and in the energy equipment manufacturing space for 25 years. Most of my time at FET has been in a combination of operation and financial leadership roles. And I took over as Chief Financial Officer here at FET in 2020. Neal and I are pleased to be able to share our story with you today. Neal?
All right. So as we flip through, again, forward-looking statements. And let's begin with an introduction of FET at a glance. So at FET, we don't drill the holes, but we sell critical capital equipment to industry leaders that do. We don't stimulate the wells themselves, but we manufacture consumable products that enable the world's largest service companies to do so. And we don't produce hydrocarbons, but we do engineer and deliver specialized downhole tools for our blue chip customers that optimize oil and gas production. So we make it happen by manufacturing value-added products and solutions that increase the safety and efficiency of energy production. So we're a global manufacturer. Almost all of our revenue is derived from selling new products and solutions along with aftermarket parts and service. So we have a wide range of differentiated products in our portfolio.
Our deep base of industry knowledge allows us to develop new solutions for our customers and separate FET from our competition. Really moving to the middle of this slide, just looking at our company, we report through two primary segments: our artificial lift and downhole segment and drilling completions. Within our artificial lift and downhole segment, we have three product lines: downhole production equipment, valve solutions. With these product lines, our customers are generally global energy companies who own and process the hydrocarbons. Again, companies like ExxonMobil, Saudi Aramco, Canadian Natural Resources. The products here in this segment support production. They protect downhole pumps, increase wellbore efficiency, and these products remove impurities from production. That's our artificial lift and downhole. On the right is our drilling completion, which has four product lines: our drilling product line, subsea product line, stimulation intervention, and coiled tubing.
The products here are critical to new production, so this is where the drilling begins, such as pipe handling equipment for drilling rigs, subsea robotics for deep water tree installation, coiled tubing, wireline, and high-pressure pumps for well completion activities, so customers in this segment include the largest oil field service companies, companies such as SLB, Halliburton, and Baker Hughes. And as a truly global manufacturer, about 50% of our sales are realized outside of the United States, and finally, just shifting to the charts on the right, our financial performance over the past few years demonstrates steady improvement. Revenue has grown at a compound rate of 15% since 2021. EBITDA has grown much more quickly at over 75% annually. We have improved our EBITDA margins from under 4% to over 13% by reshaping our product portfolio, commercializing new value-added technologies, and completing in an accre tive acquisition.
Finally, FET, as a company today, is at its strongest financial position in many years. So this is who we are at FET. But I think for this audience, the more important question is why FET? So why is FET a great company and a better investment? First, the world needs energy. Energy is the fundamental building block of economic growth. This demand for energy will propel strong global investment in production. And our blue chip customers, which is the world's largest oil and gas and service companies, will look to FET to provide the tools to safely and efficiently produce more energy. This will drive revenue since our products are critical components and demand for them will grow. And as a manufacturer, our operating leverage will drive margin expansion. Over long periods of time, for every $100 increase in revenue, $30-$40 will drop to EBITDA.
These are strong incremental margins. And with our capital-light business model, we will convert a significant percentage of incremental EBITDA into free cash flow. And we will maintain a healthy balance sheet. Going forward, we expect to reduce net debt while buying back our shares. And with our current free cash flow yield, FET is an incredible investment for you and us. So we're going to spend the next few minutes diving into more detail on why FET.
The world needs more energy. The world needs a lot more energy, and there are several factors that drive energy demand growth or driving it. First, population growth. Frankly, the more people, the more energy required. Second is energy security. As we see today with conflicts going on in the Middle East and in Ukraine, energy security is and has become an even more important topic. Third, quality of life. On the planet today, there are six to seven billion people who consume a fraction of the energy that we do in the West. As the quality of life improves for these people, they will continue to consume more energy per capita, and a newer aspect of energy demand stems from growth in data centers and artificial intelligence. The amount of energy needed will be staggering.
Earlier this year, the CEO of ERCOT, the Texas Power Grid Management Organization, stated that one NVIDIA chip consumes as much energy as an average U.S. household. And NVIDIA is shipping hundreds of thousands of chips annually. Consistent with all these drivers, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the EIA, estimates global energy demand will increase by 30% over the next two decades. So where is all of this energy going to come from? Non-fossil fuel energy or renewable energy will have a place. But importantly, fossil fuels will remain a significant contributor to overall global energy supply. Politically, support for fossil fuels is at its strongest in many years. This source of energy is viewed as highly reliable and abundant, while alternative sources of energy have many years of technological development to overcome their inherent intermittency.
According to the EIA, energy supply from fossil fuels will contribute more than double the alternatives for many years to come. Interestingly, given the political support for fossil fuels, it is entirely possible that this chart underestimates future demand significantly. So how does all this future supply growth impact FET? While FET has a broad portfolio of products that we'll talk about briefly and solutions across the energy value chain, the primary driver of our revenue is industry activity. We measure industry activity using the number of active drilling rigs on a global basis. The chart on the left illustrates that our revenue correlates very well with global rig count. Therefore, as growing demand for energy drives investment in new oil and gas supply, the resulting activity will drive FET revenue. Moving to the right side, 80% of our sales are from activity-driven consumables.
Our consumable products represent a small share of our customers' operating expenses but are critical. Generally, our customers cannot complete an unconventional well without our products. For example, we are one of three global providers of cased hole wireline and one of three of quench and temper coiled tubing that's required to complete longer unconventional wells. The remaining 20% of our revenues are from longer-lived capital equipment. This revenue source provides an upside growth lever in the event of global demand increase. Our capital equipment includes equipment for land and offshore drilling rigs, deep water subsea robotics for traditional oil and gas, and for offshore wind development, and pumping equipment for well stimulation. Finally, as illustrated in the lower left side of this chart, FET's revenue per global rig has increased over the past few years. This growth highlights another driver of our results, and that is service intensity.
Service intensity reflects the fact that drilling rigs drill more feet per day and that wells are longer. These factors drive up the amount of wear and tear on equipment and drive FET's consumable revenue. Additionally, increasing revenue per rig is indicative of FET's growing market share. Let me transition back to Neal to discuss our market share growth strategies.
Yeah, as Lyle mentioned, we are strong believers in energy. We think there's a long tailwind and demand for our products. But ultimately, to deliver exceptional value to our shareholders, we need to beat the market. So our beat the market strategy is really organized around four key points. The first, we want to grow profitable market share through our competitive advantages. We want to continue to develop differentiated products and technologies for the markets we serve. We want to also utilize our global manufacturing and distribution footprint to service our customers anywhere in the world. And then finally, we will expand our participation in new energy. So I think our strategy is simple, but it is organized around these four key thoughts. And I'm going to spend a few more minutes talking about each one of these in the coming slides. So starting with growing profitable market share.
Over the past few years, we have shifted our portfolio strategically to ensure that we compete in markets with certain attractive characteristics. We focus on niche markets with limited competition. So about two-thirds of FET's total revenue comes from these markets. And our competitors here are generally smaller, privately held companies. This allows us to compete where we have a differentiated advantage. And then within these niche markets, we erect high barriers to entry with intellectual property, specialized manufacturing, and decades of continuous product innovation. Then we use our close customer relationships to facilitate innovation and ensure continued relevance of our solutions through market cycles. And with dedicated manufacturing sites, we can quickly ramp up production to meet demand and establish a leadership position. We believe we can capture market share over time and realize the compound revenue effects from these efforts.
With the second pillar of our strategy, innovation, we can supercharge these efforts. New product development and innovation are a critical component to beating the market. Operators, ultimately our customers, are demanding greater efficiencies, lower well costs, and increased safety. To remain relevant, service companies must upgrade their capabilities. By innovating and working together, we make them safer and more efficient. This is FET's opportunity to increase our total addressable market. Let me provide three examples of how we provide and develop and innovate through customer collaboration. The first on the right is our Enviro-Lite greaseless cable. This cable can run in and out of the well much faster than traditional cables. This eliminates wasted time and allows our customers to pump more hours per day. That's efficiency. The next example is DuraCoil coiled tubing.
To increase the performance and reliability in high-pressure operations, we developed and patented an inline quench and temper process for coiled tubing. This process significantly enhances the fatigue life or the wear of coiled tubing compared to conventional grades and allows us to get a premium price. Final example is with Variperm Energy Services sand and flow control solutions. So Variperm, for those who follow FET, was a fantastic acquisition we closed early last year. They have a differentiated product offering in the sand and flow control niche market in thermal oil sands. Their customers, who are, again, the world's largest operators, provide core samples from their targeted production reservoirs, and the Variperm engineering team customizes a solution specifically for their wells. So this customization, along with five decades of brand awareness, makes Variperm the market leader in Canada. These are just a few examples.
At FET, as I mentioned, we have technology in our name, and innovation is in my DNA and our DNA. Finally, we're going to use our global manufacturing and distribution footprint to deliver these innovations around the world. At FET, we have an extensive global reach. Again, as I introduced earlier, about half of our sales are outside the United States. We ship our products to virtually every oil and gas producing region. Again, as illustrated by this map, any color not gray is where our products go. To support these sales, we have 44 locations across nine countries staffed by a global team of about 1,800 employees. This includes key manufacturing locations in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Germany, and Saudi Arabia.
To meet growing global demand and to provide our products around the world, we do not need to expand our footprint or invest additional capital for growth. We have the footprint in place today to expand our revenue by 50% with very little growth CapEx. I think this is an important feature and a great feature of FET's business model. We are positioned for the energy needs of the world today, and we are in a great position to expand our participation in new energy. So at FET, again, we are supplying today's energy needs, but we do have an eye to the future. Even in the near term, as of today, we have products that are suitable for biogas and hydrogen. We have others that are used in geothermal applications, other product lines that can capture methane and carbon.
One area, though, where we've seen the most meaningful demand is offshore wind, typically in Asia and Europe. Our products, which are specialized remotely operated vehicles or subsea robotics, are dual use for traditional oil and gas and the development of offshore wind farms. The great part here is that we share the same clients for both industries. So we're going to continue to use our core competencies of manufacturing, engineering, and supply chain to address the energy needs of today and tomorrow. Supporting development of alternative energy supply also aligns with our core values and commitment to sustainability. We strive to be good stewards of the environment where we work and where we live. We also strive to be a good place to work where our employees thrive in their careers and progress along the way. And finally, for us, good governance is non-negotiable.
We've discussed how we can grow into the future. I think it's also important to take a look back at our financial results over the past few years.
As Neal mentioned at the start of our presentation, we have demonstrated strong revenue and EBITDA growth over the past few years. For 2024, our guided EBITDA implies growth of 50% year over year with the successful acquisition we closed in January. And our 2024 EBITDA margin of 13% is the highest margin for the company in nearly a decade. This significant margin improvement results from optimization of our product portfolio, our top-line strategy to beat the market, and the acquisition of Variperm Energy Services at the beginning of the year. And this year, we redirected our organization, our incentives for the organization toward free cash flow generation. As a manufacturer, our asset-light business model provides a platform for sustainable free cash flow generation. And our 2024 results reflect that.
We posted $25 million of free cash flow in the third quarter and $48 million for the first nine months of 2024. On our earnings call in November, we raised our full-year free cash flow guidance from $60-$70 million. At the midpoint of this range, that translates to over 60% free cash flow conversion and nearly a 30% yield on yesterday's closing stock price. We have a proven track record of substantially strengthening the balance sheet. First, our net leverage ratio went from 4.7 times in 2019 to 1.9 times at the end of the third quarter of 2024. We've been able to accomplish this through a combination of paying down the debt, a debt-to-equity conversion of about 48% of our then outstanding convertible senior secured notes in early 2023, as well as the nice EBITDA growth that I walked you through on the previous slide.
Now, you'll notice that our debt level did rise in 2023. This was to fund the Variperm acquisition that we closed very early in 2024. The acquisition has been a strong contributor to our results in 2024 so far, and we're excited about the future for this business. Even with that additional debt load, we maintained a relatively conservative net leverage ratio of about 1.9 times below our target level of 2 times. Following the end of the third quarter, we completed several significant actions related to our balance sheet and net leverage. Let me walk you through a few of those. In November, we closed a $100 million senior secured bond issuance, which accomplished several things for us. First, net proceeds from the offering, together with cash on hand, were used to repay all of our long-term debt.
Debt maturities for us now extend out to 2028 and 2029. Blended interest rates are 130 basis points lower than they would have been prospectively. And finally, our liquidity position is significantly enhanced. Following that offering, we completed sale leaseback transactions for two properties, which netted $20 million in proceeds. The transactions lower our net leverage and free up capital that we can be better deployed elsewhere. And then finally, in December, we announced that our board of directors approved a $75 million share repurchase program, representing roughly one-third of our market cap. This buyback announcement highlights the confidence that FET's directors have in our ability to generate strong free cash flow into the future. The buyback approval, the bond issuance, and the sale leaseback work together to provide flexibility for deployment of our cash flow.
We are committed to maintaining conservative net leverage, and a meaningful portion of our free cash flow will be used for further debt reduction. In addition, we expect to have ample flexibility for strategic investments. This could be in the form of traditional M&A or investing in ourselves through share buybacks. And with a cash flow yield around 30%, it's going to be hard to find a better investment than FET. Financially, FET is in a great position. Let me turn the call back to Neal.
Yeah, thanks, Lyle. That's really, really exciting. We are really pleased with our financial results and our outlook going forward. So I think to conclude this part of the presentation, again, why FET? Really, really simple here. The world needs energy. This is going to drive our revenue as our products and solutions are critical, and that's going to grow for us. Our operating leverage is going to drive margin expansion. And with our capital-light business model, we're going to convert a significant percentage of incremental EBITDA into free cash flow. Finally, we're going to maintain a healthy balance sheet that will allow us to further reduce debt and provide shareholder returns. So the pieces are in place for a great run, and we are confident the employees of FET will deliver, and together, we will unlock unrealized shareholder value. I'm going to turn it back over to Steve.
Excellent. Thanks so much, Neal, Lyle. Thanks for that informative overview. We do have about five minutes remaining. We do have a pretty full queue already, but I'd like to remind everyone, if you do have a question, hit the Q&A button and type it in, and we'll get to as many as you can. Neal, Lyle, it's probably not going to surprise you, but we got three versions of the same question, and it's on the share buyback. It's a very sizable share buyback compared to your market cap. Can you talk at all about how you're thinking about using that? Because you did just raise your full-year cash flow guidance. You had the sale leaseback. You've extended maturities out to 2028, 2029. How will you think? I know this part of that's a board decision, but how should investors be thinking about that?
Yeah, maybe I'll start, and then I'll hand it to Lyle to kind of frame how we think about the go-forward cash. But maybe I think really kind of key pillars for us, we're going to continue to further reduce our debt, right? But while doing that, we have the opportunity to return a significant portion of free cash flow to shareholders. As you mentioned, our board approved a $75 million share buyback in December. We're going to execute this buyback over multiple years. And I think for investors, I think a reasonable guideline for the use of free cash flow is about half is going to be used to further reduce debt. A quarter is going to be used for at-the-market share buybacks, and the other quarter is going to be used for strategic investments such as acquisitions or further share buybacks.
I think, as Lyle said, even after a really nice move recently in our stock price, we're still at a 30% free cash flow yield. I think buying shares in FET appears to be the best strategic investment now. Maybe, Lyle, think about maybe kind of walk through how we think about kind of our fixed cash cost and what would be kind of a run rate going forward.
Yeah, great question. Great. Happy to do that, and this is a great question, Steve. As we look at our history of free cash flow, one of the questions that we often get is how repeatable is what you're doing. So you've got $60-$70 million of free cash flow this year. What's next year going to look like? On our last earnings call, we gave an illustrative example. In the event that the market stays roughly flat, which is what a lot of analysts say, revenue stays flat, EBITDA stays flat, what does that mean for free cash flow? So here's some numbers that we shared then. Interest expense next year should be around $20 million of cash. Income tax, about $15 million.
CapEx, if we use $10 million, which is a guidance number we've given for this year, puts all those things together in the 45-ish range. Keeping EBITDA roughly flat with this year's guidance, adjusting for those items gives us another $60 million of cash flow. Another 30% cash flow yield. We believe this is repeatable. As I mentioned in the call, we have aligned our organization's incentives around continuing that path and feel very strongly with it. The buyback from the board is their confidence that we can continue this trend. At, again, 30% yield, what better investment can we find?
Do you think the market is starting to understand? Typically, OFS names get very low multiples because they're not significant cash flow generators. If you're a drilling rig operator or you're a frac fleet operator, you're the exception that you're a manufacturer. And even in a softer market, can generate a ton of cash flow. Do you think investors are starting to get that message because the stock has obviously performed better?
I think they are. In fact, even at this conference, Steve, we've already had one meeting where we had an investor really make that key note that our customers who are, let's call them pressure pumpers, their capital has to be reinvested every year in their equipment and the yard, where over the last few years, we've grown our revenue with very low amounts of CapEx. So our primary capital need is with working capital as we grow. But as Lyle mentioned, we've really changed the focus of our company to remain cash flow centric. So our incentives have been changed across all the leadership teams, all the way down and throughout the organization. We are really focused on generating free cash flow and ultimately free cash flow per share over time.
How do we think about you noted only $10 million a year in CapEx, but I'm assuming R&D remains critical. You got to remain in a market leadership position in the product lines that you have those leadership positions. How important does R&D have to play into that?
Yeah. Innovation, R&D is really critical. We're a decentralized company. So we have product families that address a number of unique niche markets, and in those markets, though, and in those product families, we employ individuals that are specialized experts. We want to have experts in wireline, coil tubing experts, and drilling equipment and all those areas that we play. So this knowledge that we have allows us to innovate and develop cutting-edge products. Again, in many cases, our teams, our employees know how our products are used in the field better than our customers do, and so that allows us to develop those new products and innovations, so while we don't have a centralized R&D department and budget, we have a lot of employees getting close to the hundreds who are focused on finding solutions and innovating for our customers.
We saw a couple of quarters of Variperm so far. It looks like a very successful acquisition. Is there much out there? You're still looking around?
For other acquisitions?
Yeah.
Yes. Well, absolutely. That's been part of our company's DNA. Lyle and his team do a great job of identifying potential targets. If we could find another Variperm, that would be a home run. And we'll continue to do that. So it's all balanced on what's the best investment today? Is it FET buyback? Is it reducing our debt? Or is it an acquisition? So we put all of those together in our evaluation process.
Excellent. I know we're running a little bit long, but I do want to give you a chance for any final thoughts for investors who are here today.
Yeah. I think depending on the markets going forward, I can envision seeing a much better tailwind for energy given the change in political policy here recently. I think if we do, over time, have a long tailwind, our strategy of gaining market share, of expanding our market, we organically have a great opportunity to grow, potentially over time, double our revenue and significantly increase our EBITDA and free cash flow. So even though I think we represent a great value today, we still have a good outlook for growth ahead.
Excellent. Neal Lux and Lyle Williams from Forum Energy Technologies, FET, thanks so much for the half hour. Hope everybody found it as informative as I did. If we didn't get to your question, I think we got to most of them. Please email Rob Kukla at FET, or you can email us here, and we certainly will pass along your questions and interest. I know they're happy to answer any incoming investor questions. Thanks so much, Neal, Lyle, Rob, for joining us. And thanks everyone for watching today. Have a great remainder of the conference.
Thank you.