I'm Saurabh Pant. I'm the Oilfield Services Analyst at Bank of America, and very glad to have with me Doug Pferdehirt. He's the CEO and the Chair of TechnipFMC. Doug, you've been the CEO since the two companies came together in 2017, and you were the CEO of FMC Technologies before that. Why don't you maybe give a couple of minutes of opening remarks, and then we'll take it from there?
Okay, thank you very much. Thank you, and thanks to B of A for hosting this event. Certainly made the logistics a bit easier being here in Houston, so I'm very glad to be here. Thank all of you in the audience for participating, and those on the webcast who are dialing in.
I hope you find your time and experience insightful. I'll be real brief in the opening comments, just really focusing on a few numbers. We'll start with 90. 90% of TechnipFMC's business is international. So 10% of the business is in the U.S. and U.S. land and Canada, the rest is all international.
When you're thinking about TechnipFMC as an investment, we offer really a really kind of pure play way to play the international, with a primary focus and the primary contribution coming from the offshore, followed by the Middle East. We believe these are the two primary basins that are gonna drive the activity for quite some time.
The second number is 70%. Over 70% of our business and our core business, which is our offshore subsea business, over 70% is direct awarded to our company. Never goes out to competitive tender. Really proud of that. We've built something very special, very unique, and we have a very, very solid and deep, intimate relationships with our customers, that they entrust us to deliver for them, and indeed, we do.
Then finally, 50%, and 50% represents the portion of Subsea 2.0, which is the latest subsea architecture of equipment that is in our inbound orders over the last couple of years. Why is that important? This is a game changer for our company. It's a game changer for the industry as well, and it has really allowed us to change internally our operating model, giving our customers greater confidence in our ability to be to deliver projects to them, with, with certainty and assurance, that we'll deliver the projects to them, on time and on schedule. Just a few numbers to start off. I imagine you'll, you'll want to dive into some of those, or we can go into anywhere you'd like to go.
Yep, yep, yep. Doug, I guess I'll just start with the big picture offshore, because a lot of projects were sanctioned last year, a lot of projects were sanctioned this year. There are a lot of projects in the pipeline, right? And you get exclusive insight into that pipeline. But again, as we look at offshore, it was not that long ago that offshore was written off.
The projects were not economical, even at $90, $100 oil. But now we are talking about these projects, a lot of them break even at less than $50 a barrel. A lot of them actually break even at below $40 a barrel, right? So just talk to us how the industry has come from that level, $90, $100 dollar breakeven to $40, $50 dollar breakeven now. What has changed?
What has the industry changed, and what has TechnipFMC changed?
Well, there's a lot there. So, cut me off or redirect me any time you want. But in the most humble way, TechnipFMC didn't exist in the last cycle. So for those who are not familiar, in 2017, the two companies merged. The result of that merger was the ability to be able to change the commercial model and the operating model for offshore developments.
So we're now able to offer all, from the early architectural phase, all the way through the installation and commissioning of the entire offshore scope, from the water column to the sea floor. And we always talk about trees, but it is an absolute city of pipes and cabling and equipment that exists on the seabed. It's massive. And in the past, no one had that combination or the ability to offer that integrated offering.
That has fundamentally changed the offshore economics, and it's changed the offshore economics because we've been able to shorten the cycle time. So why was offshore? Why did offshore have a higher break even?
It wasn't because it was a lesser quality reservoir. I would argue for a long time as a reservoir engineer, that the offshore basins that are being developed last cycle or currently, are by far the best reservoirs, other than the Middle East, are by far the best reservoirs available to companies, to put capital to work. So the quality was always there. It was the duration of the projects.
Right.
And then on top of that, when we would get into these growth cycles, you would start to have delays in the delivery and the timing of the delivery of the project. So you already had a longer cycle business, and then if you started to deliver late on top of that, that really affected the economics. So we took that challenge on back in 2014, we took that challenge on.
We saw that, and we, I would agree, we realized that was not sustainable. So we said, "What can we do with the knowledge that we have?" We have this unique knowledge of existing on the seabed. I jokingly say we have webbed feet. You know, we don't think about anything that floats on top of the water column or...
We start from the bottom of the bottom of the ocean, and we think, "How do we build this infrastructure from the bottom up?" And we said, you know, knowing what we know, how can we apply it differently and more consistently to not only shorten the cycle time, but give our customers the confidence that as they invest and grow, we can maintain that or even improve that delivery time?
And that was we recreated the company. I mean, quite frankly, we're not the company we were, you know, in the last cycle. We're a very different company today, very different capabilities. We're unique. No one else has the capabilities that we have. What we put together is very special. At the time, it wasn't obvious. I'm not going to say it was.
And it took time for us to be able to go out and show our customers initially through basically designing on paper or doing front-end engineering studies and then converting that into projects. And now this is the way we deliver a large portion of our total projects that we deliver today are through this integrated model, and that has fundamentally changed the overall economics.
Realize now, as a company, we represent up to 70% of the cost of an offshore development. 70%. So we're a big influencer, and look, this is where we live and die. We believe in subsea, we believe in deep water, but we believe in the offshore, and we're gonna make those economics as interesting for our customers as we can. They've got the quality reservoir. They have the barrels. These are phenomenal reservoirs.
They just needed to have a company that took a different approach, and instead of everything being piecemeal and everything having to be, you know, integrated after the fact, we come with a fully integrated approach from day one, and it's been hugely successful. We deliver these projects installed, commissioned on the seabed in 12-14 months earlier than the competition.
Right.
It's just, you know, you plug that into a project returns calculation, and it's a winning combination.
Right. Right, right. And Doug, you just said that you are up to 70% of the cost of a subsea project. I think that's a brownfield comment. That number would be a little lower on the green-
Correct. So on a brownfield where there's not that floating structure-
Right.
We're about 70%, 60%-70%, and on a Greenfield, it's kind of 1/3, 1/3 , 1/3 because you have to, you know, you have the capital associated with the floating structure as well.
Right. Right, right. So as we think about those greenfield projects, right, a third, a third, a third, we do hear about cost inflation, just rates going up on the rig side, for example, FPSO market has died. The vessel market, you'll know more about that, right? But how should we think about, in a greenfield project, the two-thirds that's not in your control? How should we think about that delaying projects, raising the breakeven, because that impacts the entire value chain?
I understand the anxiety, but then there's the reality. And I would just ask you to look at Guyana. And enough said. You know, the shortest cycle subsea project that's ever been developed, these are phase one, and subsequently, every project has been delivered on schedule, on time. We're blessed to have 100% market share in Guyana with ExxonMobil and Hess, and certainly appreciate that, but we have to earn that every single day, and that's what we've been able to do. So, it can be done that way.
Right.
Companies have to work closer with their partners and suppliers. There has to be more transparency and more commitment in terms of the scheduling and the timing. And again, we couldn't be more honored to be part of, you know, part of the Guyana success with ExxonMobil. You know, and, and that's the way they're doing business with us, and so, so it can be done.
Right.
I think we... There's a lot of anxiety because we keep thinking about the past.
Right.
That's how we started this conversation. The future is very different than the past.
Right.
Not suggesting it's easy, not suggesting there's not challenges, but it is a very different setup than it has been in the past.
Right. Right, right. Okay, and then just thinking about the portfolio that you have, right? The two companies merge, now you do a lot more. You're a big part of the project cost. How should we think about the portfolio that FTI has today? Because I would say Technip FMC today, a lot of people would think about trees, right? So talk about how broad your portfolio is. How does that impact your customers? Because you can do a lot more for your customers, and you can engage with them a lot earlier in the process of their project's life cycle.
Yeah, subsea, I guess, forever has been associated with subsea trees, and they're not bad. We love them very much. But, you know, on our projects, they typically represent about 10%-15% of the total cost of the project. Again, probably, you know, the most prized possession is that subsea engineering knowledge that we have.
Right.
So when customers come to us, they don't come to us and say, "Can you build 10 trees?" They simply don't do that. In the past, they did. But now they come to us and they say, "We've done some. We received a license to work in wherever. We've done some seismic surveys. Can you help us design the field architecture?" That's a very different position to be in.
So I call that the architect, right? So we are now the offshore architect, and we will spend, you know, 12, 18 months working with our clients, designing the architecture. And if any of you have bought property and built a house, you know the architect's pretty important, right?
It's one thing getting the land, it's a whole another thing, going from your functional requirements to something that's actually practical and can meet your move-in date and your budget. Very different, right? So, you know, you sit down, you say: I want this many bedrooms, this many bathrooms.
I want this, you know, two-car garage, whatever it may be, and then the architect has to go and has to design, based upon that footprint that you have, the land that you purchased, something that's gonna work for you and your spouse's budget, and that's exactly what we do. So we're at the table way earlier than we've ever been. We do that on a proprietary basis. We're not in it just to be the architect.
So if you ask us to come in and be your architect, then we ask for a commitment that you'll direct award us the project, and that's where we are. And then we work towards the project economics. So we understand with them, if they want this to work at $30 oil or $40 oil or $50 oil, we work with them to find a solution that will work.
Right.
Most everything we're doing today is working in that price band. It's, it's a very different environment and a very different way to approach the market that's, that's ever been done before.
Right.
Then, once we go from being the architect, then yes, we go into the design of the equipment, the manufacturing of the equipment, the installation of the equipment, you know, to where we have everything from the initial architectural phase all the way through the installation and commissioning, all within the capabilities of our company, which makes us quite unique.
So if I'm your customer, Doug, let's say, right, I'm an upstream company, I come to you for a project. Your backlog has grown a lot. Your order book is really strong, right? I mean, how do I rest assured that you would be able to deliver my project on time? Because, like you said, that's one of the biggest value add that you bring to the table.
Look, there's clearly a level... You know, we're a relationship-based company. I guess there's fewer and fewer of them, fewer and fewer of them out there, but this is still a relationship-based industry. And our willingness or our focus on remaining a pure play matters to our customers. This is what we do. You know, quite frankly, I'm involved in every project that's ongoing.
I'm not managing a big conglomerate of, you know, a big oil field services conglomerate. We're a very, very focused company, and because of that, they know. I was with most of our clients this weekend, or a large portion of our clients this weekend, and, you know, they know. We can talk about the project. You know, we can talk about exactly where we are.
You know, last week I was at our manufacturing facility in Brazil, you know, and I'm, you know, tracking projects and talking to our clients. So I, I think it's a, you know, it's intimacy, relationship, whatever term you're more comfortable with, but, but it's very different than, than doing kind of a hands-off...
You know, when, when you're managing a lot of things, and I respect those who do, but it's very, it's just impossible to be that intimate with the project. And, I've had a client, a very important client, text me this morning, and, you know, it was about the project, and, and we could have a quick text conversation and, you know, he could go into his board meeting and discuss what he needed to with his board.
So yeah, I think, I think, you know, that's a big difference of who we are. That being said, look, we have to continue to deliver. If we don't deliver, that relationship, that trust will be broken.
Right.
We've got very, very long track records of delivering, and as long as we continue to deliver, I see no reason why our customer will have less confidence. As a matter of fact, every time you deliver a successful project, we are typically direct awarded the next project because their level of confidence has gone up.
Right.
You know, so, you know, there's more to it, and I hope we can get into Subsea 2.0 and configure-to-order, 'cause that'll help you understand there's a change in the operating model. But at the highest level, I mean, the conversation starts with, "Doug, we wanna work with TechnipFMC. We wanna do this project," you know, "and now we're talking about projects to the end of the decade, and we just wanna know that you're going to have the ability and the resources to be able to deliver this project." The last thing we want is a bad project, 'cause it's not only bad for that customer, but it's bad for the offshore industry.
You haven't been reading about bad projects, and if you have, they've been from the past, and I can tell you, we weren't associated with them. But you have not had any of that with the changes that have occurred over the last six years. So maybe I'll stop there.
Right.
But we can dive into 2.0 CT and all the operating models.
Yeah.
That's why our customers are confident in us, but then the question is, why, why are we confident in ourselves? So if you don't mind, I'll just-
Right.
I'll just take-
Right. No, no, no, for sure. I mean, that's what leads me to the next question, right? Subsea 2.0. Where can that ultimately grow? I mean, you're at 50%, I think right now, that Subsea 2.0, right? Where can that number eventually go? Could all of the market be Subsea 2.0? Because that enables CTO, that improves your efficiencies, raises the confidence in the mind of the customer that you can deliver. It's all related.
Okay, so let me break it down for the audience a little bit. So Subsea 2.0, next generation of subsea architecture, not just a tree, the entire architecture. So that's Subsea 2.0. Obviously, sounds easy, you know, sure, and not a fancy name. We don't spend anything on marketing. But, you know, it was about 4 years of very extensive engineering effort to be able to design this architecture .
What makes the architecture unique? In the past, offshore subsea has always been a bespoke business. The customer designed the equipment, we manufactured the equipment, and we never manufactured the same thing twice, even for the same client. So the client would say, "Here's what I want," and then at that point, we would take that, and we would have to do 9 months of detailed engineering to take their-...
You know, drawings, if you will, put them into our system, make sure that everything's actually going to work before we could start, you know, cutting the first steel, before we could place the first purchase order internally or externally.
Subsea 2.0 is built on a Configure-to-Order model versus an Engineer-to-Order model. So we went from bespoke to standardized, but customized, and that was the big difference. It's not standardized, and everybody buys the exact same thing, just like you all wouldn't want to buy the exact same car. But when you do buy a car, you go on, and you have your drop-down menus, and when you receive that car, you feel that that auto manufacturer built that car for you. They didn't build it for you. They built that configuration 1,000x , but it feels like they built it for you.
So we took the same strategy. We designed. We have what's called Subsea Studio. Our customers go in, there's a drop-down menu, there's a series of menu, but all of those pieces that you can select have been pre-engineered. So we went from nine months of detailed engineering to zero months.
Now you can see why we can deliver 12-14 months early. Sounds simple. I get it. It sounds simple, but it was a massive engineering undertaking, and that was the strategy we took for our company at a time when, again, it wasn't certain that this was going to, you know, necessarily be as embraced, as strongly as it's being embraced by the industry today. We first introduced it into the marketplace in November 2017. We went commercial with it in 2018.
It now represents around 50% of the inbound orders for the Subsea 2.0 equipment, and we would expect that to continue to grow. Could it grow, you know, to more than 50%? Obviously, clearly. Could it grow to 100%? There are some existing infrastructure that, you know, it might benefit from making an old-style tree to match that infrastructure, even though Subsea 2.0 is backwards compatible.
So, you know, I'm not gonna say it's gonna go to 100%, but, right now, at the 50% of the orders, that means only about half of that is flowing through the facilities, 'cause there's, you know, there's the time of the... There's the delivery time of the equipment that factors into that.
You know, we're already seeing and having a lot of confidence in our ability to continue to improve our operating performance. You know, we measure it internally many different ways. You measure it externally by, you know, our margins, and you can see that continuing to progress. We've given a lot of confidence in our outlook for the growth, really predicated upon more of that 2.0 Configure-to-Order going through the plant.
So we're growing the company without necessarily adding a significant amount of people, because all that nine months of detailed engineering, more of those people are now working as the architect early in the project and securing those direct awards. And then the cadence of the equipment through our manufacturing facilities is 2x .
So in theory, you've doubled the theoretical capacity of your throughput without any capital investment in infrastructure. That's—There it is. That's all, that's all the ingredients that made us so successful. Our customers see that. Some of our investors have actually come and seen that, and when you see how that works within our facilities, it just gives them a great level, a much higher level of confidence that this is not, this is not pricing related, this is not, you know, all ships rise with the tide. Oh, my gosh, I got to worry about when pricing is gonna drop.
That's the old school, and, granted, most companies are still, you know, in that old school, but, but we are building a company that will have sustainable through-cycle returns by changing the way that we operate, and Subsea 2.0 Configure-to-Order is a-
Right.
big, big contributor.
Right. Right. And Doug, as part of that, right, the integration, the customer intimacy, you are taking that to your partnerships, to your vessel ecosystem is the best example, I think, right? You're partnering with Allseas, with Saipem.
You don't have to build your own boat, reduces the CapEx intensity of the entire business. Right, talk to us about how that vessel ecosystem came about. How early do you engage with your partners in the ecosystem when you start delivering and planning on these integrated projects?
Oh, very good question. So we just talked a lot about the manufacturing side, but then there is the installation side that does require vessels to be able to do the installation, and these are very sophisticated vessels.
They're basically offshore manufacturing plants. So don't think of them as, you know, ships with a crane. They are ships, they do have a crane, but they have a very sophisticated, automated pipe handling and laying system that includes offshore welding, offshore inspection, X-ray inspection. It's very, very sophisticated. I was just on one of our vessels in Brazil last Friday.
Mm-hmm.
So, you know, very, very, very sophisticated, but to be honest, very expensive. And, you know, we are growing the company without growing the capital, and we're growing our position in the marketplace without adding big fixed assets to our, to our company. That was a challenge I took on when I became CEO.
Many thought it couldn't be done. I wasn't sure it could be done. It just seemed like the right thing to do, 'cause how else are you gonna get sustainable through cycle returns if you keep jacking up capital and keep jacking up fixed assets every time there's a growth cycle? So we decided to try to do it differently. So we took that same customer experience and worked with our competitors.
Now, I'll be honest, when we first started talking to them, they didn't, they said some really not nice things to me. I mean, like, really not nice things. But it was okay, you know, like, you know, my dad raised me to kind of turn the other cheek, and I just say, "Well, you know, you might not be interested in now, but if you're ever interested, you know, we can talk."
And, we now have this partnership, which we call a vessel ecosystem, where we bring our competitors' vessels onto our projects, when we need them. We have our own, but this is when we need their capability. Instead of building a sister ship to what is already exists in the industry and just adding capacity to the industry, we decided to do it differently.
Really difficult to do when you're competitive, when you compete, right? But we gave it a shot, and it's working really, really well. So we have two companies that are partners with us in the vessel ecosystem today. We think that will expand. I'm going on a trip here, quite soon after this, to talk to another couple who want to join the vessel ecosystem.
So they keep the assets, they keep them on their balance sheet, it's their capital. They have the utilization risk. So what are we offering to them? Access to those integrated projects, access to that 70% direct award that they simply don't have access to.
So it's a win-win, and so far, it's worked out really well for us, and this will be a way for us to continue to grow the company without having to spend money on, you know, very large fixed assets.
Mm-hmm.
Just a different way of thinking.
Right. Right. Doug, let's pivot a little bit. Let's talk about orders a little bit. Your orders have been really strong. You gave $11 billion order guidance for the next 5 quarters, which implies 2023, 2024 should be roughly around that $9.5 billion a year order guidance.
You pulled your 3-year guidance. I know an update is coming on the next quarter call, but how should people worry about peak orders for the industry? Because, again, to be fair to them, it's always been that way, right? We all go up in an upcycle, and then things go down, and people look at orders. That's the first indicator of how the cycle is playing out, right? So how should those people think about that? Talk to about the visibility that you have right now beyond 2025.
What are you seeing out there in the market that gives you the confidence?
Okay, so a couple of numbers. We gave $25 billion of inbound orders over three years. We're now closing out year two of those three years, and we started at $8 billion for this year, then we raised it to $9 billion, then we said it would exceed $9 billion for this year. And then we gave $11 billion for the next five quarters, not to be cute or difficult or whatever, but you know, we're talking orders that range, you know, from hundreds of millions of dollars to, you know, $1 billion, $1.5 billion.
And if they hit in the end of December or beginning of January, it's hard to predict the exact timing. So that's why we did the $11 billion in five quarters. Look, you know, why should you have confidence?
You know, I don't wanna say trust me, we've never not delivered on our inbounds. But okay, the past doesn't necessarily dictate the future. I understand that, you all have a difficult job as investors, but we do have a heck of a track record, and on top of that, I can assure you that in the $25 billion, in the over $9 billion, and in the $11 billion, none of that is like...
There's no gap, there's no like to be found. There's no, no, you know, wishful thinking, which is, I think what happens when you get forecasts from a lot of people is there's a, they won't tell you this, but there's a pretty large bucket of hope in there. This, there's no bucket of hope here. These are named projects that we...
Most will be direct awarded to our company, most we're already doing that architectural phase, or the ones that are being tendered, we have the high confidence that we'll be able to win those awards. But the 25, the over 9, and the 11 all have named projects against them. I'll spend 3 weeks at the end of the year circling the world, talking to each of our clients about each of those projects, not only to give us confidence in those numbers, but confidence in the numbers beyond that. So everything we do is by project by project, you know, client by client. We're not just throwing out a number out there and, you know, with a bucket of hope associated with it.
Right. Right. And this does not include any projects or any orders for the, the basins in the frontier regions, right? Namibia, East Africa.
Well-
It does not include any?
Well, it's a good point. You know, when the numbers that we just talked about are all in existing basins, and all with, you know, with a very high probability of moving forward. I sometimes get the question, "Well, how long can it go, the durability? What's out there towards the end of the decade?" Well, all the numbers we talk about, we talk about them kind of in three categories.
There's the... You know, we've published a subsea opportunity list that you can go look at, $25 billion or $24 billion of projects right now. We give you our inbound forecast, but, you know, that's all in the kind of the near term.
Then in that medium term, you know, we're now looking at not only those opportunities that the rest of the world is looking at, but a very significant set of proprietary opportunities that aren't in the public domain. Because these are projects that we are working on exclusively in that architectural phase, that will be direct awarded to our company.
So we don't go out and publish those, so the competition knows what we're working on. Those are unique to us, and they can make up a meaningful portion of our inbound. So a lot of times our inbound will exceed, you know, expectations from the sell side and others, because, honestly, there's no access to that proprietary data set. Then there's that third horizon. Well, that third horizon is the frontier, you know, the frontier.
So things like Namibia, South Africa, Colombia, Suriname, Mozambique, Tanzania, the Eastern Med. The number of basins that have expanded recently offshore, let alone those that will come, are significant.
Right.
Are significant. So indeed, the numbers we talked about don't include that. That's all really 2028 and beyond. 2028 and beyond. And okay, not all of those are gonna hit. I mean, they've all proven to be, from an exploration point of view, they've all proven to be successful.
I'm not suggesting that each and every one of those is going to be fully developed or developed to its fullest potential, but I'm certain several of those will. And again, that's gonna drive activity, you know, 2028 and beyond, and into 2029-2030.
Right. Right. Right. And maybe let's talk about subsea margins a little bit. That's a hot topic that comes up in investor discussions. So you started with 15%, you raised that to 18% earlier this year. The question is, when does the next upgrade come?
When does that number go from 18% to whatever? How should we think about that, plus the background, right? We know you are not baking in any help from the market. You are not baking in a meaningful mix improvement, and we know 11% of the revenue in 2025 is coming from-
Yeah.
-legacy backlog, right? So how should we think about the upside-
Sure.
-on that 18% number?
Sure. So, and I, I'm smiling because I think you're giving us a little more credit than we deserve. You said we started at 15%. We started at 11.5%. So if you go back to the Analyst Day of 2017, when we formed the company, we were at 11.5% margins. And we said, "That's just not right for the value that, you know, we create."
But, you know, 2017 was, you know, a different, you know, market outlook than what we have today. And we wanted to demonstrate that we were confident that we could improve the margin from 11.5% to 15%, by, 2025, based upon going from bespoke to the CTO approach, you know, the 2.0.
Obviously, the iEPCI, the integrated offering, which didn't exist before 2017 when we formed the company. So we were just trying to show basically the value of why we did the merger, and how it was gonna allow us in a relatively, you know, benign kind of market environment, how it was gonna allow us to improve our margin.
And so that's where we were to get to the 15%. I just want to remember where we started. Then we, you know, then in February of this year, you know, we realized that the 15% was gonna happen before 2025. So what we did is we gave an updated outlook, and we took the 15%- 18%. So if you will, 650 basis points improvement from 11.5% over that period of time.
We have repeatedly said two things. One, that the majority of that is through our own internal initiatives. Again, we're not relying on hope. There's no hope here. We're not relying on hopes and prayers and pixie dust to get us there, meaning the market and, you know, the pricing and all those type of things. 70% of our business is direct awarded.
Obviously, it's a better environment. It's a very good environment that we're in today, but this is about things we can do by building off of that, relationships and off of the direct awards and all that to continue to grow. So we said we're not reliant upon future market improvement.
Right.
Another way of saying pricing, right? Because I also think it's disingenuous when people say our margin's gonna go up, but what they're really saying is pricing is gonna go up. They haven't changed their business. It's only going up because the market's going up, and we all know the market doesn't always go up.
Right.
As an investor, we're trying to say, "No, this is the things we're going to do to develop sustainable improvement in our margins," because, again, we're changing the whole way we operate the company.
Right.
So we said it's not reliant upon future pricing, back in February when we updated to the 18%. The other thing we said that was really critical was we ended that, the very last line in that discussion was, while it's a major milestone, it's a major milestone on a more ambitious journey. So clearly, we believe that we'll continue to see growth beyond the 18%.
Right. Right, right. I wanna go to free cash flow, but before that, let's spend a little time on surface, because that's a very unique business. It doesn't get a lot of airtime, but it's very different within surface North America and international, right?
International being majority Middle East, and a lot of that is actually offshore, even though it sits in surface, right, dry tree versus wet tree. Talk to us about that a little bit, the prospects for that business in the Middle East, and what are you seeing, in that market?
Well, I was talking to one of my industry colleagues here in the audience, and we was just in the Middle East, and told him I'll meet up with him here again in a month or so. But, look, the Middle East is very important to our surface business. Why surface and not offshore when you hear about Middle East people?
You know, it's just because most of it is fixed structures, production platforms, where the trees are on top, so they're dry trees, which is still technically important, but not nearly as technical as a subsea tree. When we talk about a subsea tree, we're putting these 1-2 miles on the bottom of the ocean. People don't realize that. I mean, this isn't like drop a fishing line and...
I mean, this is, you know, 9,000-10,000 feet on the bottom of the ocean. The conditions down there are harsh. Obviously, no one's gonna go down there and do any maintenance or go down there and do any inspections, so everything's with advanced automation, robotics, and controls, and it's all designed for a 25-35-year life.
So the electronics, 25-35 years, sitting on the bottom of the ocean. Think, if you own a boat, you're starting to understand how do they do this? You know, it's hard to keep your boat running from season to season, and only, you know, the bottom of the hull is actually exposed to the saltwater and the outboard. But that's really what we do. It's advanced metallurgy, it's advanced automation and control, robotics, et cetera.
Now, when you're in the Middle East, it's mainly the platforms, so they're dry trees. They're still sophisticated, but they're not as sophisticated. Because they're dry, that's part of our surface business.
Got it.
It's a different manufacturing cadence, it's a different supply chain, and therefore, we operate that differently. But the Middle East, international is about 60% of our surface business, and the majority of that is the Middle East, and the Middle East remains critically important to us. And I believe that the Middle East will continue to be an absolute confidence that it's going to be, you know, the other big driver in this cycle.
Got it.
It's gonna be the Middle East and the offshore, and again, 90% of our business exposed to those two areas. The rest of our surface business, the other 40%, is in North America. That market is highly commoditized, whereas in the Middle East, there's one. In most countries, there's only us and one other company. In some of the countries, there's us and two other companies, but that's it.
In North America, there's 21 companies who do what we do, 21 companies who do what we do, and everything's been outsourced to China for everybody. So there. It's just not, that's not who we are. We're a technology company. That being said, the North American market remains very interesting to us because there's a big opportunity to decarbonize.
We have put offerings into the market. Think about what I said from subsea, advanced automation and control, robotics, et cetera. That's what we're now doing in the North America market to help our customers decarbonize their producing assets in North America. That's a big market, and that's all growth opportunity for the North America business.
Right. Right, right. Let's quickly, Doug, we don't have a lot of time, but let's quickly spend a little time on free cash flow. So historically, legacy TechnipFMC being one company. Before the spin-off, free cash flow was always a knock on the company. You don't generate sustainable free cash flow. That reflects the real cash flow power of the business.
Now, you're a cleaner company, you're capital light, you're taking, for example, the vessel ecosystem, right? You made the company capital light. So how should we think about the free cash flow-generating power of the company right now, on a through cycle basis? I know you've given guidance for 25, but what should be the through cycle free cash flow power of the company?
No, look, I think you've already laid out the answer in your question, which we appreciate. It's a different company. It's a different earnings profile. You know, obviously, we've given... We've already given 2024 a guidance-
Right.
which I think can show the confidence that we have and the benefit of having the robust backlog that we have. You know, a 35% improvement in EBITDA in 2024.
Right.
We've already, we've already put that out there. We've talked about keeping our capital expenditure between 3.5% and 4.5% of revenue.
Right.
We don't really think of ourselves as an OFS company, but when you think about OFS companies, you know, you know what, you know how it goes. It goes, you know, about 4%-8%. You know, we don't have to do that because of everything you just described.
So we'll be in the 3.5%-4.5%. We're very comfortable there. Right now, we're below the 3.5%. You know, we are committed to returning the excess cash to our shareholders. We've done our big strategic transactions. Doesn't mean there won't be more in the future, don't get me wrong, but what we created with TechnipFMC is truly unique, and we did that back in 2016, 2017. We did the merger and the integration and all that.
That took three years, and, you know, that was a tough three years, especially, it was also during a global pandemic. But we stuck with it. We stayed focused on it. So today, we're sitting here as a company that's got all that in the past. We're purely focused on our clients, purely focused on project execution, and I think the future is quite bright.
Right. So the heavy lifting has been done. It's time to reap the benefits.
Yes, sir.
Okay, Doug, I think we'll stop there.
Thank you.
We're out of time, but thank you. Thanks a lot for the time.