Good morning, and welcome everyone to the TechnipFMC First Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. There will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask questions during this time, simply press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press the pound key. Now I would like to turn the call over to our first presenter for today, Mr. Matt Seinsheimer. You may begin the conference.
Good morning and good afternoon, and welcome to TechnipFMC's First Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. Our news release and financial statements issued yesterday can be found on our website. I would like to caution you with respect to any forward-looking statements made during this call. Although these forward-looking statements are based on our current expectations, beliefs, and assumptions regarding future developments and business conditions, they are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by these statements. Known material factors that could cause our actual results to differ from our projected results are described in our most recent 10-K, most recent 10-Q, and other periodic filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. We wish to caution you not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements which speak only as of the date hereof.
We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any of our forward-looking statements after the date they are made, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. I will now turn the call over to Doug Pferdehirt, TechnipFMC's Chair and Chief Executive Officer.
Thank you, Matt. Good afternoon. Thank you for participating in our first quarter earnings call. I would like to start off by addressing the war in Ukraine. What the world has witnessed has been truly heartbreaking. I am extremely proud of the compassion our teams worldwide are showing through their support for refugees. I want to personally recognize our employees in Poland, many of whom have been giving direct support to Ukrainian families by opening up their hearts and homes and providing much needed shelter and care. As a company, we continue to support their efforts through our global humanitarian fund, providing practical and financial help where it is needed most. The invasion has prompted energy security to become a global priority.
We remain committed to helping our clients address the essential needs for hydrocarbons today to ensure the continuity of affordable energy prices while also playing an essential role in the longer-term energy transition. Now turning to the quarterly results. Total company revenue in the period was $1.6 billion. Total company adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $154 million, with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 9.9%. Total company inbound orders in the quarter were $2.2 billion, driving sequential growth in backlog to $8.9 billion. Surface Technologies inbound orders were $291 million, with a book-to-bill above one, driven by strength in the U.S. market. North America sales and profitability grew sequentially, driven by increased drilling and completion activity and an improved pricing environment.
Outside of North America, we are investing in new manufacturing capacity to support the strong Middle East outlook. As previously highlighted, we are transitioning to a new facility in Saudi Arabia, which was expected to be a headwind to our financial results in the period. The qualification of the facility is extensive and the process has taken us more time than previously anticipated. We are now undergoing final production testing and expect final certification of the facility by the end of the second quarter, at which time we anticipate an acceleration of orders in country. We remain confident in meeting our full-year expectations as we have secured plans to accelerate recognition of these orders. Alf will cover the near-term financial impacts during his prepared remarks. Our results in the period also reflected our ability to effectively navigate the ongoing challenges facing the global supply chain.
Inflationary pricing and logistical bottlenecks have resulted from a number of factors. The energy transition, the global pandemic, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine have all played a role, disrupting access to key commodities and supply routes at a time when the global economy has quickly transitioned from a period of contraction to one of accelerating growth. While we are not immune to all of the market dislocations, we have taken many strategic actions over the last several years that have mitigated the near-term effects. We are utilizing lessons learned from previous growth cycles to drive simplification, standardization, and industrialization throughout the organization. We have increased supplier diversification to reduce dependencies on sole source supply, while adding supply chain capacity to ensure proper balance with internal manufacturing capacity. We are developing stronger relationships with our supply chain.
Much like the alliance partnerships and frame agreements we have developed over the years with our customers, we are working more closely with our supply chain partners to better integrate them into our planning processes. Strengthening these long-standing relationships will keep us well-positioned in times of market volatility. Our Subsea 2.0 product platform is our most prominent example of industrialization, allowing for the successful implementation of a configure to order or CTO model. CTO has enabled us to create a value stream that delivers a more competitive offering to the market when compared to an equivalent engineer to order product, resulting in a 25% reduction in cost and a 50% reduction in product delivery time, savings that are both real and sustainable. We have paved the way for other products to adopt a similar operating model, enabling an enterprise-wide approach.
This resulted in three CTO principles that serve as the fundamental basis of how we operate in this environment. First, we are eliminating design engineering. Second, we have redefined our sourcing strategy by utilizing pre-approved suppliers and standard configurations. And third, we are transforming manufacturing flow by leveraging configurable assemblies. With CTO, the greater predictability of product manufacturing and high volumes of pre-engineered components has allowed us to completely redefine the supply chain, removing significant inventory from our balance sheet and cutting up to eight months of lead time. Ultimately, our success is determined by our execution, our client relationships, and our contractual arrangements. Project execution remains a core competency and oftentimes a point of competitive differentiation, but is also dependent upon the partnerships we establish with both our customers and our suppliers.
We are seeing strong support from our customers to ensure we can address their needs both today and throughout this evolving period of increased activity. An example of which is a new framework agreement with TotalEnergies that will utilize Subsea 2.0 to address their future technology needs. We are seeing improvements in contractual arrangements that more appropriately balance the terms and conditions needed to support this growth, be it through more favorable payment terms or supplier investment and risk sharing. In Subsea, we had a very strong start to the year with inbound orders of $1.9 billion and a book-to-bill of 1.5. This included two announced awards in the period, Petrobras' Búzios six greenfield development and Wintershall Dea's Maria revitalization iEPCI project. This is our first iEPCI with Wintershall Dea, an award built on our ability to leverage our iFEED model.
Through early engagement, we optimized the field layout to maximize the benefits of integrated project execution. Our involvement helped reduce the project's carbon footprint by modifying existing infrastructure, eliminating the need for an additional 4,000 meters of pipe. What stands out most in the quarter is the breadth of the inbound, nearly 40% of which came from smaller unannounced project awards, much of which was directly awarded to our company. This is a very diverse source of inbound. These smaller awards in the quarter included projects from more than 30 operators, sourced from all major basins across the globe. Beyond project activity, Subsea services remained resilient in the quarter despite the impact of weather-related seasonality. Activity trends remain favorable and consistent with our view that Subsea services revenue will grow to approximately $1.2 billion this year.
With energy security now a clear global priority, both operators and suppliers are working more collaboratively in the current environment. Our conversations with clients today are focused on balancing the need for new and different sources of supply with the challenges of more scarce resources, be it commodity inputs, skilled labor, supply chain logistics or physical capacity requirements. This increase in constructive dialogue supports our view that we are in the midst of a multiyear upcycle for oil and gas. Our Subsea opportunity list continues to highlight a very robust market outlook, representing an opportunity set of larger projects that totals more than $20 billion for the industry, led by Brazil, Guyana and West Africa.
Looking ahead, we expect increased activity in other regions of the world in order to meet the growing global demand for feed gas used in LNG facilities, the majority of which is supplied by subsea wells.
We expect these volumes to be supplied by increased activity in major basins from Africa to Asia Pacific. We have a strong track record with large gas developments and are well-positioned as an agnostic provider of integrated subsea projects. The expanding LNG market gives us an even greater confidence in the intermediate-term outlook. We continue to anticipate subsea inbound order growth of up to 30% in 2022, with iEPCI direct awards and subsea services together approaching 75% of our inbound orders. I will now turn the call over to Alf to discuss our financial results.
Thank you, Doug. Total company inbound orders were $2.2 billion in the quarter, driven by strong subsea inbound of $1.9 billion. Total company backlog grew sequentially to $8.9 billion at the end of the period. Revenue in the quarter was $1.6 billion. Adjusted EBITDA was $154 million, which included a foreign exchange gain of $28 million. First quarter reported loss from continuing operations was $0.09 per diluted share, which included after-tax charges and credits that netted to an expense of $29 million or $0.06 per share. These charges included the following. Expenses totaling $1 million related to impairment, restructuring, and other charges, and a loss of $29 million on our equity ownership in Technip Energies. When excluding the impact of charges and credits, our adjusted loss from continuing operations was $0.03 per share.
The adjusted loss also included the foreign exchange gain. Turning to segment results. In Subsea, revenue was $1.3 billion, up 4% from the fourth quarter. Adjusted EBITDA was $129 million, with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 10% in line with the fourth quarter. Revenue increased sequentially, primarily due to higher project activity in Australia, North America, and Asia, partially offset by reduced activity in Africa. Subsea services revenue was largely unchanged from the fourth quarter due to the seasonal impact of weather in both periods. The increase in adjusted EBITDA was broadly in line with the sequential increase in revenue. In Surface Technologies, revenue was $267 million, down 7% from the fourth quarter. Revenue decreased sequentially, primarily due to lower international activity resulting from our transition to the new manufacturing facility in Saudi Arabia.
The decline in segment revenue was partially offset by growth in North America, which benefited from the continued increase in drilling and completion activity. Adjusted EBITDA was $22 million, a 24% decrease sequentially. Results were negatively impacted by lower international revenue and the impacts of the manufacturing transition, partially offset by higher activity and an improving pricing environment in North America. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 8.2%. Turning to corporate and other items in the period. Corporate expense was $30 million, which included $3 million of restructuring and other charges. Net interest expense was $34 million and is expected to decline during the year as we achieve our stated objective to reduce gross debt. Tax expense was $26 million. Cash required by activities from continuing operations was $329 million. Capital expenditures were $27 million.
This resulted in free cash flow consumption of $357 million in the first quarter. The outflow, which we expected and highlighted in February, was largely due to a working capital consumption related to the timing of project milestones and the payment of annual incentive. As discussed when we provided full year guidance, we expect free cash flow to be weighted to the second half. Major milestone collections throughout the second generation. We ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $1.2 billion and net debt of $802 million. During the first quarter, we sold 17.8 million Technip Energies shares for total proceeds of $239 million. In April, we sold our remaining 4 million shares.
Following the partial spin-off in February of last year, we retained ownership of 49.9% of Technip Energies' outstanding shares. We have now fully exited our position for total proceeds of $1.2 billion. Continuing with our focus on debt reduction, last week we commenced a tender offer for $320 million of our outstanding 6.5% Senior notes due in February 2026. When combined with the retirement of additional debt maturing in June, we expect to reduce gross debt by up to $400 million in the second quarter. This would imply gross debt of approximately $1.6 billion at the end of the second quarter, and would represent nearly a billion-dollar reduction in gross debt since the spin-off in the first quarter of 2021. Lastly, let me provide some thoughts on the second quarter.
For Subsea, we expect the second quarter to benefit from the typical seasonal uplift, with sequential revenue growth of approximately 10% driving margin expansion of up to 200 basis points. For Surface Technologies, we expect revenue growth in the high single digits with incremental EBITDA margins of up to 30%. I would also note that our second quarter results continue to be negatively impacted by the transition to our new Saudi facility. I will now turn the call back over to Doug for his closing remarks.
Thank you, Alf. Before moving to Q&A, I would like to reiterate a few key points. First, we are in the midst of a multiyear upcycle for oil and gas investment. In Subsea, we are experiencing improvements in pricing and contractual arrangements that more appropriately balance the terms and conditions needed to support this growth. In Surface Technologies, we will continue to prioritize technology, integration, and cash generation over growth due to the structural changes in this evolving market. We are confident in a recovery in Surface international orders in the back half of the year. Second, the separation of Technip Energies is now fully complete with the final sale of our remaining ownership stake just 14 months from the date of the partial spin.
Lastly, our $1.2 billion cash position and our confidence in generating strong free cash flow in the second half of the year are allowing us to take aggressive steps to further reduce our gross debt, another important milestone on our path to shareholder distributions. Operator, you may now open the line for questions.
Thank you. At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask question, press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. We request to limit the question to one main and one follow-up in order to accommodate other questions. Your first question comes from Ian MacPherson of Piper Sandler. Your line is now open.
Thank you very much. Good morning.
Good morning, Ian.
Doug, you know, 40% or so of your $1.9 billion Subsea inbound coming from your smaller direct awards from 30 or so operators. That just seems certainly unprecedented in recent memory. Is that bucket of orders more reflective of the recent improvement in pricing that you're describing than, say, the larger orders are? Or is your language around price improvement more representative of the entire pipeline of new orders?
Thanks, Ian. Interesting question. Let me start by agreeing with you that the breadth of clients, both geographically and just the sheer number, was a very strong indication of the offshore outlook, going forward. We still had contributions from all the big IOCs and from the NOCs, but what we saw was just an ever-expanding group of smaller or independent operators. They're attracted to the iEPCI model because it allows them to move projects forward in a very short order, improving the overall project economics significantly with a company that has a proven track record in delivering these iEPCI projects that we pioneered back in 2017.
In that response, you could, you know, gather that there's a real value recognition by those clients in the offering, and the uniqueness of our position within the marketplace. That being said, the pricing is not solely dependent on any one of those groups. It is more general across the board. We are really excited about this ever-emerging client base offshore, and our ability to capture that is actually quite remarkable.
Yeah, indeed. With the improved conditions with pricing in your Subsea business, does that impact your view on the 15% Subsea margins, you know, mid-cycle margins that you described at the Capital Markets Day in November? Does that look like it could materialize sooner than you thought, you know, four or five months ago because of the increased volume coming into the market now?
Yes.
Okay. All right, good. If I can ask one more. Alf, you mentioned that with surface, 30% incremental margins in Q2, but still with some headwinds from the new facility ramp. Would you care to quantify what that impact is so we can roll forward our thoughts on second half surface margins?
Sure. I'll give you some color to that. We clearly signal in the fourth quarter call that we expected an impact from this facility transition. I would say that we signaled at the time that it would be up to 200 basis points, I believe. It's in that range, the impact that we're seeing in the quarter. If you're kind of dialing ahead, you know, you think about Q2 performance, I think you need to look at it at the surface segment as a function of North American progress, where we are seeing the activity continuing to ramp up and continuing to be in, you know, favorable.
As well as we mentioned also that we do see pricing, and pricing is a focus, definite focus for us in the North American market as well. Admittedly, the Q2 will continue to be soft on the international side and the Saudi facility will still impact the second quarter. Really, you will not see the major, you know, margin ramp up in surface until the second half of 2022. You know, again, based on those dynamics of North America market continuing to do well, and we expect to fully, you know, we are taking actions today to be ready to handle all the Middle East orders that we are expecting that will come our way here towards, you know, during second quarter and onwards.
We are ready for that, and we're gonna be seeing significantly improving revenue and EBITDA performance in the second half of 2022.
That's perfect. Thanks very much.
Your next question comes from Arun Jayaram of JPMorgan Chase. Your line's now open.
Yeah. Good morning. Good afternoon, team. I wanted to Doug, to zero in on some of your comments around pricing improvement and improving terms and contracts. You know, you booked $1.9 billion of inbound awards in Subsea. I was wondering if that commentary was reflective of the order of your 1Q order book, or is this more on the come? And just thoughts on what the margin profile could look like relative to the 11%-12% guide you have for this year. Would you expect, you know, the newer orders to be kind of accretive to that outlook as you know, work on the path towards 15% margins, as Ian mentioned, in that 2025 timeframe?
Okay. Thank you, Arun. Let me take this opportunity to kind of break down the pricing environment for us between our businesses and globally, if you don't mind. In doing so, I'll be able to answer your question. Let's start, you know, two businesses, Surface and Subsea. Let's start with Surface. Two very different markets that we serve, the North America market and the international market. In the North America market, it's almost like a tennis match at this point. It's a constant volley. Pricing goes up, inflation goes up. Pricing must go up again to maintain net pricing. It's that active. When you go into the international market, there tends to be longer term contracts, frame agreements. In this scenario, we are actively looking...
Those contracts have pricing mechanism in them, but we are also looking to supplement that with incremental pricing given the current market conditions. Those are ongoing, and we would expect to see the impact of those more in the second half of the year. Moving to Subsea, there's really two different approaches that are unique to our company. Let me explain those as the 75 and the 25. The 75 is the percentage of our market that is direct awarded. This is through our unique iEPCI™ offering, our alliance partners, and our services. Here, our clients are truly looking for value creation and are very comfortable and acknowledge the value that we contribute, and they wanna make sure that we are economically rewarded.
It is an ongoing discussion in a very, you know, comfortable and collaborative environment in which for us to continue to ensure that we are capturing an economic value that is appropriate in what we create, as well as in the environment in which we exist. The 25% is the open competitive market. Three bids and a buy, if you will. Here, the returns are improving, but still not adequate. We are addressing this with, I would say, an aggressive pricing position, as well as the terms and conditions that I've alluded to throughout my prepared remarks.
When we think about, you know, what does that mean for us, knowing that we have the 75% allows us to be very selective in the 25% and allows us to help the industry in general, but certainly ourselves by driving the appropriate terms and conditions given the current market environment. That can be, you know, an enhancement of the traditional indexes that exist in the contracts today. It also has to now be able to address supply scarcity. You know, in some cases, there's supply rationing going on. We need to make sure that we're protected by that in our contracts or what I would call extraordinary inflation when you have disruptions of the supply chain, like for instance, what happened to nickel in this last quarter.
We're enhancing those features within the terms and conditions of our contracts. It also allows us to simply no bid contracts. You know, we have been no bidding billions of dollars of contracts and still recording a $1.9 billion inbound of high quality inbound. Just one last comment on the $1.9 billion of high quality inbound, that is absolutely accretive to the margins in backlog, but it isn't just the beginning. We started and the inflection actually occurred four quarters ago. I called that at the time that our margin and backlogs had inflected, and they did inflect over the past year. What we saw this quarter was a greater amplitude of that inflection in a positive direction.
Great. Thank you for that, for that answer. My follow-up is I wanted to explore a bit more in detail this path to shareholder distributions. Your net debt is at just over $800 million. You plan to pay down about $400 million of gross debt in 2Q. I was wondering if you could frame, you know, how long the path would get, you know, maybe give us some sense of minimum cash requirements to run the business and perhaps the timing and how you think about distributing, you know, excess free cash flow to shareholders.
Oh, absolutely. First let me kind of reiterate what we said at our Analyst Day. We clearly said that we are committed to shareholder distributions. We said at the time that we are looking for a timing of the second half of 2023, but we said it was dependent upon reaching a certain target capital structure. That target capital structure consists of gross debt of $1.3 billion and cash of $800 million. In that statement, kind of we think at this moment in time, we need about $800 million to run the business. Now longer term, you know, we can get into whether we can optimize that number further, but at this moment in time, that's the target capital structure.
Again, that's the half a billion dollars of net debt, you know, being described here. If you look further out into this year, obviously, we had a fairly weak free cash flow generation this quarter. You know, we remain confident in our full year guidance, and that implies that we're gonna generate more than $500 million of free cash flow over the remainder of the year. When you take all that, including or considering the debt reduction, we're gonna get fairly close to reaching that target capital structure by the end of the year.
Now, the exact timing for whether we can accelerate any shareholder distributions from that point on, I'm not gonna comment on specific timing now, but clearly we are pleased with the progress that we have made with the debt reductions that were needed to get there and the plans we have right now with the debt tender we just launched here last week, going after $400 million in reduction, as you said, for this quarter. We think the path to get towards the target capital structure is to be there, try to be there by year-end is kind of where we're targeting.
Great. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Guillaume Delaby of Société Générale. Your line is now open.
Yes, good afternoon because I guess you are in the U.K. this afternoon. Two questions slash clarification, if I may. First, Doug, regarding your comments regarding the breadth of client behavior, could you maybe give a few color regarding IOCs? Have you experienced, have you seen over the last few weeks slash few months a change of behavior from IOCs? Then, another question would be for Alf maybe after that.
Sure, Guillaume. Indeed, it's good afternoon sitting here in our manufacturing facility where we make umbilicals. It's actually quite a beautiful day here in Newcastle, so thank you for that. In terms of the IOC's behavior, you know, I don't really wanna comment on, you know, on their behavior, Guillaume, other than to say, we've seen, you know, we have maintained activity, both in terms of front-end studies, both in terms of ongoing projects, both in terms of looking at greenfield opportunities and, you know, brownfield, you know, tiebacks to their existing infrastructure, most of which is producing below nameplate capacity and therefore can be, the economics are very attractive to be able to do tie-ins and tiebacks.
They're very excited about our all-electric offering and the attributes that it brings and our iEPCI offering because of the ability to be able to deliver 9-12 months prior or earlier than you would if you split the packages and approach it in a more traditional or more conventional business contract. It's not necessarily a reaction over the last couple of weeks, just an ongoing, very constructive dialogue and very attractive outlook with our IOC clients who we cherish very much.
Thank you very much, Doug. My second question is for Alf. I would like to try to reconcile, and sorry about that, the timing in terms of cash flow between Q2, where you want to reduce gross debt by $400 million and H2, where do you expect strong positive free cash flow. Given your comments regarding Subsea and to a lesser extent Surface Technologies in Q2, should we assume that in Q2, you might already generate some net free cash flow?
Thank you very much for the question. Maybe first to start off with, we are sitting at this point in time with about $1.2 billion of cash. Clearly some of the existing available cash will be the primary source for the debt reduction for the second quarter. In terms of free cash flow generation for this upcoming quarter versus the rest of the year. It's always, even sitting at today, a little bit unpredictable to say exactly how much we will get in the second quarter versus the rest of the year. I would say that we're at least gonna be neutral or trending towards neutral in the second quarter.
It remains, as I said in the prepared remarks, that the majority of the free cash flow generation is gonna come in the second half of the year, and to be frank, mostly also in the fourth quarter. So overall, I mean, the main source is gonna be our existing cash in terms of the debt reduction that we're doing.
Thank you very much. Q2 is an inflection point. I turn it over.
Thank you. Again, I would like to remind everyone in order to ask a question, press star, then the number one in your telephone keypad. We also request to limit the questions to one main and one follow-up in order to accommodate other questions. Your next question comes from Chase Mulvehill. Your line's now open.
Hey, good afternoon, everyone over there. How's everybody doing? I guess first question, you know, Doug, is when we think about inflation, we get a lot of questions from investors around your ability to kind of preserve margin in your current backlog, just given, you know, raw material inflation. I mean, it sounds like that you're trying to step up the terms and conditions, you know, on the projects that you're booking today. Maybe could you talk to, you know, your backlog, what kind of terms and conditions you have to be able to preserve margin, because obviously inflation, you know, on the raw materials is increasing quite a bit.
Sure, Chase, and good morning to you, and welcome to the call. We're very excited to have you on the call, appreciate your interest in dialing in. In terms of the existing, let me back up. What I was explaining in response to the earlier question, which is given this new world order in terms of the supply chain and some of the very unique situations that have occurred recently. You know, what are some of the extraordinary actions that we're taking to ensure that those contracts sufficiently address those scenarios if they should reoccur? That's what my answer was focused on.
In terms of the existing contracts, I just wanna be very clear, you know, we have had a very disciplined approach in our contractual arrangements, where we first and foremost, at the time that we actually inbound the order, we typically have 80%-90%+ of the cost committed. We have back to back with our suppliers to ensure that those costs are locked in, if you will. We also, with our clients, have escalation clauses typically tied to indices that protect us in terms of an inflationary environment. Those exist today. I think you can see in the performance that we've had over the last 2.5 years now, which is hard to believe, that, you know, the period that we've been through have been very resilient.
I think it has been widely accepted that our ability to be able to manage the inflationary environment has been, you know, I think, I'm proud of the team, and I think actually quite remarkable. Let me talk about a couple of things that are unique to our company, because what I've described there, I believe would apply to the majority of the industry. Maybe why the last couple of years have worked out better for us is this path that we started on many years ago, which was to develop a product platform that would allow us to change and fundamentally change the way that we operate the company. That's Subsea 2.0, which led to this configure-to-order operating model. Chase, in the past, every product was unique, every project was bespoke.
There was no consistency, and therefore, we were going out to the supply chain on each and every project and asking for something that was just a little bit different than the project before. Imagine the lack of ability or the strain that it put on the supply chain. Let me put it that way. With this new Subsea 2.0 product platform and our configure-to-order model, we have a standard configurable design. We can take those configurable subcomponents, and we can align with what we now call our CTO supply chain partners, where they have volume assurance. Not only do they have the ability to be able to properly plan their business, but we then ask them to ensure that we have a consistency of supply. If you will, they stock the raw material or those configurable subcomponents on consignment.
We are able to draw from that, as we bring in these iEPCI 2.0 awards. That's something that is really unique to our company. You know, it was, one, the technology development, but it was two, you also have to have the volume and the scale. You can't do it if you don't have, you know, a significant market position, which we have secured, again, through the iEPCI, our alliance partners, which lead to these direct awards, give us this early view and early engagement, and like this quarter, allows us to book $1.9 billion of inbound, where we only had two announced awards.
I just wanna clarify. I wanna make sure that we clarify, you know, the Yellowtail project in Guyana with ExxonMobil that we are very excited to have been awarded was not booked in Q1. It is in the final preparation for us to inbound, and we will be inbounding that imminently, most likely, in this quarter, in the Q2, not in Q1. You know, it all has to work together, Chase. I don't know how else to describe it, but it would be really, really difficult, and I think it is very, very difficult for others who haven't made this transformation, this internal transformation, which then also applies to the supply chain.
Okay, that's very helpful. Appreciate all that color. The real quick follow-up is maybe for Alf. You know, if we kind of obviously, you know, free cash flow was a big burn in the first quarter, driven by, you know, a big build in working capital. You know, it's been a few years since I covered the stock, but I think historically what's happened is when you've gotten, you know, large orders, you've gotten a lot of prepayments. Now, I guess a lot of the orders were maybe smaller, you know, orders as opposed to these large, you know, orders that you get, historically in the past.
I guess maybe when you talked about terms and conditions changing, you know, is this, you know, more better, more prepayments on some of the smaller orders, or, you know, what's changing on the prepayment side, if anything, as we go forward?
Yes. No, thanks for the question. Maybe first just clarify to be really sure when we go backwards in time that obviously there's a big difference between when we had Technip Energies as part of our business versus now. The size of these advances and prepayments on an individual order basis is gonna be, you know, be smaller in general. They are still a significant part of what we do, and it's correct that when we target new awards, we are always targeting to have what we call a working capital neutral or better position throughout the life of the project.
Now, as you said, this is an area where it has been maybe, you know, going in the wrong direction for us during these tougher times and certainly part of what Doug described as tightening up the commercial terms and conditions, looking at the payment structure of our contracts is certainly part of that. When you just then look at the advanced payments or prepayments, as you call them, themselves, I would kind of say they are not necessarily always awarded to coincide with the signing of the contract. For some of them, they could be dependent on an early activity, some sort of early mobilization, early engineering, early procurement.
You may sometimes see a lag between when the awards are coming and when you actually see some of the impact to the working capital and to the advances. Hopefully that helps you a little bit. It's true that this is a focus for us. We look for prepayments, and we look for them to be, you know, early in the contract, but you know, again, dependent on some milestones.
Okay. All righty. Makes sense. I'll turn it back over. Thanks, everybody.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Bertrand Hodée of Kepler Cheuvreux. Your line is now open.
Yes. Hello, and thank you for taking my question. A question on the CTO model. You rightly explain
At the capital market day last year that volumes is critical, you know, to reach and delivers a full benefit of the CTO model. Given your outlook for Subsea order intake, and when do you think you will be in a position to deliver the full benefits from the CTO model in, you know, in the coming quarters? Or when do you think you will be able, you know, to really fully deliver the benefits?
Thank you. A very intriguing question. So let me start by saying, you know, you have to develop the technology, go through the transformation to be able to have the ability to be able to realize the benefit. Then it really becomes a factor of two things. One is gross volume, and two is, let's call it net volume or the volume associated with the most levered industrialized product platform that we have, which today is Subsea 2.0. We started with trees, and we moved to controls, and we're moving to umbilicals. It'll eventually grow across the whole platform.
It's an ever-evolving opportunity set for us, you know, and I think that's important that we expect Subsea 2.0 to represent 50% of our inbound over the next couple of years. That's important. Well, let me back up. Let's start with the gross inbound. We've obviously seen the growth in the gross inbound since 2019. We obviously, you know, delivered a strong inbound last year of $5 billion. We indicated $6.5 billion this year. We booked $1.9 billion in the first quarter. We had a book-to-bill of 1.5, something we haven't experienced since Q1, Q2 of 2019, so for the past three years. The gross is stacking up very nicely.
There's the net or there's the portion of that that really benefits mostly from the CTO model. We're saying 50% of Subsea 2.0 over the next two years. Beyond that, we will continue to expand the Subsea 2.0 product platform across our entire product offering. You'll continue to build upon that. That is this never-ending drive towards industrialization. We have a very specific focus on this in the company in everything that we do, and we're seeing some real benefits today, but we'll see a cumulative and compounding benefit as we continue to move forward.
Yeah. Thank you very much, Doug. A follow-up question on the framework agreement with TotalEnergies. TotalEnergies, especially in Angola, in Block XVII, has many buyback opportunities. But they are not yet convinced by the iEPCI™ or am I misunderstood? It's a framework agreement Subsea 2.0, but they are not going yet through the iEPCI™ concept.
I don't necessarily agree with you, but I don't think it's appropriate for me to comment. I think I'll leave that up to the customer and when we announce our awards.
Okay. I was just speculating. I have no view on Total's choice. I was just you know an iEPCI™ approach. I think you answered my question telling me I was wrong. Thanks.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Marc Bianchi of Cowen. Your line's now open.
Hey, thanks. Just a quick clarification first. I think it's straightforward, but I just wanna be sure. The guidance for the second quarter or the outlook for the second quarter was just at the segment level. If there's any FX up or down in the second quarter, that wouldn't be reflected in the segment. Essentially, the guidance you've provided excludes any changes in FX. Is that correct?
That is correct.
Okay. Thanks for that. On the orders, so 40% from these smaller customers, and then, you know, in the second quarter, you should get some benefit from a higher services inbound, and recognition, potentially Yellowtail being recorded in that quarter. It would seem that, you know, there's a chance you're maybe flat sequentially on the order outlook or at least above what would be needed to kind of be on track for that 30%. I'm wondering if that, if that's the right way to think about it or if there were some other unusually positive benefits in the first quarter that would cause the second quarter to be dramatically lower.
At this point from what we can, you know, our view of the second quarter will absolutely support the 30% improvement in our inbound orders. Again, you know, Q1 clearly does, you know, Q1 times four. I'm not suggesting anything by saying that. I'm just saying it clearly supports that. We expect Q2 to be above a 1.0 book-to-bill again. And when we look at the second half, we look at the second half in total to be above a 1.0 book-to-bill. We remain very confident in our inbound outlook.
Yep. Super. Thanks so much, Doug. I'll turn it back.
Thank you. Your last question comes from Jean-Luc Romain of CIC Market Solutions. Your line is now open.
Good afternoon. I was wondering how much of your inbound in the first quarter comes from carbon capture project Evarisum? Or when do you expect your various collaborations, for instance, with Talos, to bring about contracts for you?
Good afternoon, Jean-Luc. Thank you for the question. In the Q1 inbound, there was no carbon capture inbound recognized in that number that we provided. That was a pure subsea number. The projects with Talos are advancing well. The opportunity set is actually expanding, and we are well into the FEED study on several projects. The level of collaboration and market impact that our relationship with Talos is having, we're just really glad to be partnered with Talos and are looking forward to announcing awards in the future.
Thank you.
No more questions. Speakers, please continue.
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