Over the last four years, TechnipFMC has been far and away the best story in energy services. Trading at under $10, the stock is now up almost eight times since the period when upstream spending globally has been flat. They did it by establishing itself as the premier offshore equipment company, reshaping the subsea market and its integrated offering. An iEPCI approach has transformed the industry and structurally lowered costs for the deepwater development. The market has recognized the rarity of a capital equipment company having higher orders, revenue, and margins concurrently, and this window looks to be open for several more years. My pleasure to introduce Mr. Doug Pferdehirt, who has been CEO of TechnipFMC since 2016. Thank you, Doug.
Thank you, David.
Doug, a year ago, you sat here with your wind clearly at your back. The stock has now had quite a run since then. Expectations are sort of a different animal today. Can you think about managing that shift from being kind of a story that was sort of an interesting niche story to kind of really establishing yourself as a leader in there? How are you sort of approaching that now in terms of those expectations? Do you change anything here? Do you just continue the same way you have been going, or does it require a different approach?
Sure. I am not sure what you are feeling on your back right now, David, but I am feeling the same amount of wind or perhaps a bit more, just to play off of the first part of your question. Really, a year ago versus today, a whole lot of things have come together. I would say we feel more wind at our back today than we did a year ago. We have certainly proven more, both in terms of the market, the shift of capital flows to the offshore, our continued high level of execution, and now our ongoing development and extension of our offering through our industrialization journey. Honestly, it feels really, really good right now. We are obviously singularly focused on execution and making sure that we continue to execute at a very high level.
The team's done a tremendous job over the past year of delivering these projects, not on schedule, but ahead of schedule. Building further credibility, which leads to our customers putting more trust and confidence in us, and that's most reflected by the fact that 80% of our business is now direct awarded to our company. It never sees any sort of a competitive environment or a bidding environment. It's direct awarded, and that's hard to achieve, and it's certainly something we're focused on every single day to ensure that we continue to deliver to our clients' expectations. Yes, there's higher expectations from the market. There's higher expectations from our clients, and there should be. But rest assured, nobody puts more pressure on themselves or puts a higher expectation on themselves than the 22,000 women and men at TechnipFMC.
Over those last four years, your orders have been kind of around that $10 billion level, have been growing, yet FIDs have been going down over that same time. Can you just help us understand a little bit how that math works for FTI? Is it just this direct award approach? Is it iEPCI? Is it all of the above?
Yeah.
How can investors sort of understand that?
Yeah. No, I think to really appreciate kind of the composition of the inbound is you have to start with looking at the market position. We have over 50% of the world's installed base on the seafloor. We have massive amounts of equipment, but also very advanced equipment that is sitting anywhere from a few hundred meters to up to 2 mi deep in the ocean. This is where no person can go, so it's all very, very advanced materials. It's all controlled by advanced automation and control, some of the most advanced automation and control in the world today. We partner with NASA in terms of our control systems, and then it's all manipulated by either resident robotics or remote robotics. You've got this combination of things going on, managing not just a single piece of equipment.
You have to appreciate what we're putting down there. It would look like a gathering system. There's all sorts of different things on the seafloor that we put to ensure that the hydrocarbon can be developed both economically and safely over a 25 to a 30-year lifetime in a very harsh condition. You're obviously in a saline environment, controlling wellbore fluids versus a very cold ambient temperature on the seafloor. It's exciting. That gives us somewhat of an annuity, not only from our subsea services business, which is now a $2 billion business, OEM model. We service 100% of our equipment. We get these 20 to 30-year service contracts. But also as customers look to add incremental production or add incremental wells, because we have such a large presence, that is typically direct awarded directly to our company.
What you've seen is a very, very resilient amount of activity that hasn't been dependent upon large project FIDs. There have been some in that period of time, but to your point, not the same cadence as we had experienced previously or will experience over the coming years through the end of the decade.
Leading into that, I thought on your last call that probably the most important thing you had talked about was the outlook for next year and that we're now seeing large greenfield awards. What's changed in your view? That seemed to me kind of an important distinction.
Well, the big change, and the reason that I made that comment on the call, was the question was about what gives you the confidence to be able to call an inflection in your inbound through the end of the decade? Not a lot of companies are in a position to do that. We have visibility that is really unique in that we have these long-term partner relationships with our clients that are exclusive in nature and allow us to have access to information one year, two years in advance of it becoming public knowledge or knowledge in the public market. Because we're working with them. We start as an architect. We're the architect, we're the builder, and we're the service company. We're all of those now, post the merger.
In the architectural phase, just as you would if you were building a home, you start that years or more before you engage the contractor to actually build or construct what you want to construct. We are privileged to be, and honored to be in that position, where we're sitting there as they're looking at different assets, potentially where they're going to invest their money, and how they're going to invest their money, and with whom they're going to invest their money. Being at the table obviously gives us insight and a significant advantage. From that, we have visibility that quite frankly is unique, and we haven't always had that as a company. We've built that over time, and certainly we're in a very privileged position as we sit here today. In addition to that, what we offer to our customers is unique.
No one else offers to the market what we can offer to the market. As a result of that, they're seeing a benefit. The benefit that they see is a reduction of cycle time or acceleration of time to first oil. That's a big driver because offshore projects are longer cycle projects, and if you can accelerate the time to first oil, you can significantly improve the project returns. In addition to that, what they're looking for is certainty. Certainty in the outcome. If you're going to make a large capital investment, personally or through your company, you want to know the result. You want to know you're working with somebody who's going to deliver to the standard that you've agreed to. That's who TechnipFMC is, and we've proven that time and time again. This has actually changed our customers' behavior.
In the past, they would secure one project at a time because they kind of wanted to see how the company would perform on that project before they'd commit an additional project. Our customers are now moving towards a portfolio approach. They're actually coming to TechnipFMC and saying, "Here's my portfolio. Here's opportunities. How about looking at these next three jobs?" In calendar terms, we're looking at stuff well beyond 2030 today, and our customers are committing work to us well in advance of that project that we're currently working on. We're seeing this both in greenfield developments, as well as in brownfield developments.
Yeah, you talked about that portfolio approach in brownfield. I'll get to that in a second, but I was kind of curious, with more greenfield projects out there, does that change the competitive dynamics at all? Just because I would assume that more of these projects would be out for bid, whereas you've talked about direct awards being like 80% of your inbound or something.
Yeah, no.
How does that change, or does it?
No, it really doesn't because the relationships we have with our customers are not specific to greenfield or brownfield, new projects or extension of existing projects. They're relationships between two companies. Be it a greenfield or a brownfield, if we're in an exclusive direct award relationship, which we are with many of our clients, and there will be more of those going forward. We're obviously building those relationships every day. It's irrelevant if it's a greenfield or a brownfield environment. The exciting part about the greenfield FIDs coming now through the end of the decade is it's obviously a significant volume of work. On top of this very strong and stable activity that we've had around the brownfields, now you're layering on top of that the greenfield developments.
There's many reasons why that's happening, but one thing for sure is the intensity of the conversations and the cadence of them wanting to move projects forward is increasing significantly.
That cycle time, is that your big advantage, you think, in all these. Maybe you don't know, but I'm just curious. Are you promising to deliver a year ahead of your competition from what you can gather?
Yes, but it's not a promise. It's what we're doing.
Okay.
They're experiencing that. They look at it and they just say, "This is real.
Yeah.
And this is different." We are a different company than we were in the past. And they're looking at this and saying, "I can have first oil nine months earlier." When they talk to you, that's important, and it's obviously important to their company and also to the host countries in which they're working. It's something that's very real. It's something that's proven. The exciting part for us is we believe we can reduce cycle time further, and that's within the company. We talk about the relentless pursuit of reduction of cycle time. Why is that important? It is the only scenario I have been in in my entire career where you're in a win-win situation. Your customer wins and you win.
I don't know of any other situation, certainly I haven't been in many different activities in this industry, where you've been able to be in that scenario. We've proven that the customer doesn't have to lose for you to win or vice versa. You get out of the supply and demand, and you get out of the big swings of return on capital through cycle. We're eliminating all of that. We're a high-performing company with a high return on capital, and we're showing that that can be sustainable. Why? Because we've identified what's important to them, which is cycle time. That's important to us because that means we're getting a lot more throughput our existing infrastructure, so we're not having to spend more to grow.
On top of that, we're obviously able to benefit from a higher portion of the economic value we create as a result of that. So a true win-win situation. The key to that, David, is we have identified and are confident that we're only one third of the way there. So I'm a hockey guy, so it's just the first period intermission or baseball into the third inning. But that's where we are. We still have two-thirds left to go, which is going to drive further significant improvement in cycle time, and we will obviously be a beneficiary of that as well.
I would imagine you would say that first third probably has a lot to do with Subsea 2.0®. If I go back in the prior cycle, there were some instances we had some execution problems here and there. This seems to kind of solve a lot of those issues on the execution side. You're now talking about a new technology, kind of a new initiative, which you're sort of teasing to the audience, and maybe you could tease a little bit more, if you don't mind. I'd be really curious, is this that next part of it on that other two-thirds? How much is that playing into that next two-third? Is that what you're aiming for?
Yeah, let me try to be clear on this. The first third, as I'm talking about, was done before the merger. Before the merger, FMC Technologies, as we were at the time, focused on the seafloor, exclusively, equipment on the seafloor. We started working on that four years before the merger. As a result of the merger, and one of the reasons for the merger, other than being the only end-to-end solution with the integrated or iEPCI offering, was also the other products. Everything on the seabed needs to be connected to the surface of the water, and that's done through rigid pipe, flexible pipe, umbilicals, and risers. All that needs to be done, and all of those products is what came to us as a result of the merger with Technip.
What we've done now is we've taken the same proven playbook that we did on the seafloor, we've marketed it as Subsea 2.0®, and we're going to expand that across the rest of the offering. In addition to the water column, you have to get all of this stuff onto the seafloor connected and commissioned. Call that installation. That's the other third. There's the third of the water column, the third of the installation, meaning there's two-thirds left to work on, which was a result of the merger, and that's why I'm quite excited is we have learned a lot from the first third. Our level of confidence in delivering the second third is far greater than it was the first third, and the first third is working today.
You can see the impact that it's having on our customers first, again, improving their project economics, but also it's impacting us favorably. We will carry that through the next two-thirds, hence the relentless pursuit of reduction of cycle time. We believe there's significant runway left with those other two-thirds, and we will benefit as we have in the first third. Just think of it as it's proven, it's established, it's somewhat of an industry standard now. It's what leads to a lot of our direct awards because of how differentiated it is. But that's just the equipment we're putting on the seafloor. Do the same thing for the rest of the products and the installation services. I think we have a huge opportunity ahead of us, David.
What excites you the most about this? Is it the ability to reduce that cycle time and therefore get more orders? Is it more on the margin side of what you can do for your own margins? Is it both? Is that another win-win that you're-
This may sound strange, and I've never actually said this, but I'm going to say it. What gets me excited is eliminating waste. If you go through this lean journey, and I've been on it now for five years, it wasn't easy for me to change. I was not a lean guy going into this. You have to change who you are as a person, you have to change the way that you manage the company, and you have to change the culture of the company. We've done that. Then you get this absolute loss of patience for waste. Waiting for the elevator to go up and down drives me crazy because that's unproductive time. I'm not picking on the conference. I love the conference. Everything I see in life now is under this lens of waste. It drives my wife crazy. We can't enjoy dinner anymore.
Everything is around this lens of waste. You got 22,000 women and men who do it better than I do. They are more passionate than I am about it. When you unlock that magic, that's what gets us excited. When I look at the other two-thirds, you know what I see, David? I see waste. Now, the industry doesn't see it because it's the way we've always done it. It's okay. There'll be higher oil prices. It's not okay. Let's change the way we work. We've proven that with the subsea equipment. It's been hugely beneficial. We're going to do the rest for the other two-thirds, and I'll admit it openly on an open mic, there's a lot of waste in the way subsea projects are done today, and we're going to drive the waste out of it.
I want to go back to the brownfield opportunities. That was another thing that kind of really came out on your call you talked about is brownfield portfolio management. Not something I've ever really thought about much. How big is that opportunity? It sounds like that's a real durable part of the orders going forward. Do you expect that to be a durable growing part of the business?
I think it's durable, and I think it will act as an accelerant, if you will. Anybody who has offshore floating infrastructure today, on average, it's only producing at 60% of its nameplate capacity. It's not because they overbuilt or overspecified. It's because wells naturally decline over time. The good news is offshore wells decline at a very modest rate, 3%-4% per year. Unlike the shale that declines at 30%-60% over the first two years. So very different, but it still declines. So after 10 years of producing offshore, you're in the range of about 60%-70% of the nameplate capacity because your initial production is your highest level of production. So you have to design the facility for that highest level of production.
The best thing you can do is look for, in your portfolio of all the little additional reserves around your infrastructure, and look for ways to tie those back. That is typically called the brownfield side of the business. But it is hugely economically valuable because you do not have the high capital cost of the floating infrastructure. Honestly, somebody has got to drill the well, and we do the rest because we can do all of the infrastructure, tie it back, produce it in a very short period of time. This is a business that used to take 28 months on average, 28 months on average to tie a well back to the existing infrastructure.
Today, we are doing it at 14 months on a steady basis. As I said earlier, as we address the other two-thirds, which is not efficient today, there is no reason we cannot drive that to a far lower number. I am not going to commit to anything on the stage because we are still working on it. Then you start to say, "Well, this is pretty short cycle." We are talking months, not years, to tie back an offshore well is producing 20,000 up to 50,000 barrels a day, depending where you are in the world, and you are tying it back for very little capital cost. This whole portfolio approach is our customers opening up to us and saying, "Here is my host, here are my reservoirs around the host," and they call them stranded reservoirs.
They are not physically stranded, they just do not quantify the capital investment of their own host because of the size of the reservoir, but they are still meaningful. It might be four wells, it might be eight wells, but they are still meaningful and can be tied back to that host facility.
Is that the U.S. Gulf, Norway? Is that the largest part of it?
Well, by definition, it would be where the most offshore infrastructure exists today. But it's the U.S., it's the North Sea. I mean, the U.K. can or cannot participate, but they have lots of infrastructure. Certainly, Norway is today, but it's also West Africa. And you'll see some of our clients who are thinking differently today and really looking at recovery rates. They'll actually be accelerating. We'll still be doing greenfield developments for them in certain areas, and they'll start to do brownfield tiebacks, if you will, or brownfield activity at the same time. So it's definitely a focus.
I think we have a few questions here for the audience. We're going to use your little polling devices there. A few quick questions just to get some perspective. So which region do you expect to see the most growth in 2027? This isn't necessarily an offshore specific name. So Middle East, offshore, deepwater.
I can only choose two.
Latin, U.S., Shale.
I fully acknowledge I'm biased. Look, I think, the Middle East, we'll see the rate of recovery in the Middle East. Latin America, a lot of Latin America is offshore, so I actually, and I know it's not exclusively offshore.
The audience agreeing with you.
Yeah. A lot of the Latin America activity is actually in the offshore domain as well.
I shouldn't. Okay. Sorry. Next question.
Sorry, you had me on a roll there.
No, you were doing good, though. All right. Deepwater FIDs, this is something we talked about earlier today. We see a total of about $70 billion in 2025, 2026 on track for 100. Where do you see 2026 FIDs going? Kind of down a little bit, flat, up? I'll get your answer later. Oh, there you go. All right. Do we have one more, I think, on there? No, that's it. Just had those two questions. Your margins have moved up meaningfully over the last couple of years. I attribute a lot, obviously, to Subsea 2.0® has really helped out. I think you've talked about further room to run here. Can you talk about what are some of the drivers? Is it more throughput? Is it the new technology?
What do you think are going to be the primary drivers for margin expansion over the next, say, two to three years?
Yeah. Just look at the response to the questions. Clearly, the confidence in the market is going to drive overall activity. We talked about these greenfields coming back. We haven't even had the time to talk about emerging markets. There's a bunch of emerging new basins that are likely to FID over the coming years, that's going to also contribute. But we like to focus, again, lean. We like to focus on what we can do ourselves, what we control, right? Love the market growing. It's a good thing. I think we are a positive influence on that by, again, reducing cycle time, improving project returns while giving our customers certainty and confidence in sanctioning their projects, but really focusing on what we can do. That's that remaining two-thirds. It's just that elimination of waste.
It truly is a compelling opportunity, and we know how to do it, and we will do it.
I know Matt's just dying to give us our 2027 margin guide, but we'll have to hold off on that. I want to ask you one last question. I'm curious about what we've been seeing with Southeast Asia over the last It seems like over the last quarter or two, there's been a lot of talk about offshore, not just from you, but from other service companies have talked about Southeast Asia as being kind of a market that's inflicting in offshore. At the same time, if you look at what's going on with the Strait of Hormuz, there's no other region more impacted by this. Is this just a coincidence or are we already starting to see that sort of transition, that shift into more offshore and the diversification of supply and that whole thinking on energy security? How are you thinking about that?
I think, David, it's undeniable to say that everyone's not going back and looking at their portfolios. Certainly consuming countries that were heavily dependent upon any particular region around the world, and maybe deciding that it'd be better to be a bit more diversified. The first place to look is at home. What potential do you have? I don't know if I can't recall everything I talked about, but in Indonesia, we see a burst of activity in Indonesia and obviously supplying gas for domestic consumption, but also for LNG. Clearly there's been an accelerated pace in Indonesia. I would expect to see Malaysia under PETRONAS start to really look at their own opportunities. They've mainly been producing from shallow water today, but they do have deep water reservoirs, and I think that would be a great sign in terms of people's focus and confidence. Australia, et cetera.
I do think, or we are experiencing a higher level of interest and commercial activity in Asia Pacific than we would have forecasted or expected. You can decide yourselves what's driving that, but it's undeniable the level of commercial activity that we have going on in Asia Pacific now is far greater than I would have anticipated.
Fair to say, when you look out to 2027, a larger portion of that would be Southeast Asia than you probably would have expected 12 months ago?
Yep, I would agree.
All right. Doug Pferdehirt, TechnipFMC. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Thank you all.