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Barclays CEO Energy-Power Conference

Sep 7, 2023

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

All right, good morning, everybody, for the day three of the Barclays Energy Conference here. First up here is Dril-Quip. I'd like to introduce Mr. Jeff Bird. He's the President and CEO, leading designer and manufacturer of subsea surface and offshore rig equipment, well suited for the deepwater applications. Prior to becoming CEO early in January 2022, Mr. Bird held both COO and CFO roles since joining in March of 2017. He was also CFO of Frank's International, held a variety of operational and finance roles, serving as division CFO at Danaher. Jeff, thank you so much for joining us this morning.

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Thanks, David.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

So let's just start with the overall offshore outlook and kinda how you're seeing it. Where do you think we are today in the cycle, and how do you think this kinda compares to where we were in 2011, 2014?

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

I know you weren't in Dril-Quip back then.

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah, yeah.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

But kinda how would you characterize that?

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

We've certainly done the comparisons. Look, I think we're in the early innings of an offshore recovery. I think we've got a good 3-5-year run. Our products tend to be the latest in the cycle in that recovery. You know, we're more biased towards wellheads, more biased towards connectors and surface products. We do have a tree franchise, but it's a smaller piece of our overall business. So a lot of the orders that you see right now from a tree standpoint are gonna convert to wellhead orders, are gonna convert to connector and surface product orders over the next 1-3 years. Really, how it compares to how it compares to last time. Look, I think there's a lot more capital discipline now than there was in 2010-2014.

And I also think that customers are a lot more thoughtful about their supply chains now than they were before. If you go back in time from, you know, 2010 to 2014, there would've been large purchase orders placed, and candidly, that just doesn't happen as much with our products anyway. I think it happens with the longer lead items, but with the shorter lead items, you're seeing much more in terms of MSAs now, which is probably a more thoughtful way to approach the market on those shorter lead time items. So definitely a different environment from that regard.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

But can you talk about that a little bit, the differences between the MSA versus a purchase order agreement? Why, why is that different? How does that change kinda your business and, and your outlook?

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah. So in the past, I'll use Petrobras as a good example. In the past, we would've gotten a large purchase order from Petrobras. We would've put that in backlog. We would've immediately started ordering raw materials against that. They would've immediately started taking deliveries against that. And then, when things slow down, they're stuck with a lot of customer property. If they cancel that purchase order, we could be stuck with a lot of inventory as well.

So I think in order to avoid that, a lot of companies, and I'm using Petrobras as an example, I could use any number of companies as an example. So when things slowed down, they were stuck with a lot of inventory, so then you had this air gap in the system, if you will, that they had to run through their customer property. We would have to work through our inventory. That just doesn't exist anymore. Now it's a nice MSA, and then they call off against that.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

The MSA, how is it, How does the pricing work? How does the how, how the different components of that work? I mean, is it you can call that off, but what about the actual dollar figures that come off? Is that already has that been fixed? Has that been set? How does that work?

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah. So the way that it's set, and I'll stick with the Petrobras as example. We've got two MSAs with Petrobras, one for exploratory, one for development. That's 87 wellhead systems. There'll be a minimum, and it's generally about 30%-35% of that is the minimum call off. You know they're gonna do that, and they're required to do that. That'll go into backlog. The rest of it will sit there for them to call off against it

over whatever period of time. Depending on the period of time the call off is allowed, will depend a little bit on how we fix the pricing from a commodity standpoint, if there's price escalators or things like that in it.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

So, I mean, we go, what we've seen so far, we've saw some strong quarters, strong order quarter in second quarter, start to see a bit of a pick-up there, but still a bit of a muted outlook here. Can you talk about how you're seeing that, kinda develop over the next 12 to 24 months, and kind of the pace and the cadence that you kinda see out there?

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

From an order standpoint?

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah. So if we think about it from an order standpoint, first half of the year was kind of middle of fairway of where we said we do expect a tick-up in the back half of the year.

The tick-up is really a couple of things. One is, obviously, we've got Great North now, so that'll add to the bookings number. The other tick-up is we have a number of trees in the back half of the year, and the tree customers that we have tend to be more sensitive to interest rates, tend to be more sensitive to rig rates, rig time, and so a lot of those have pushed to the right. We see those in the back half of the year. We are pretty optimistic. In fact, we were just notified that we got the award on the most recent Petrobras tender, so that's a nice win. That'll be probably MSA, of course.

That'll be probably $25-$30 million, so pretty pleased about that, that RFQ win. The contract should be signed in the next 2-3 weeks. We'd expect a press release of that. They're already talking about the next RFQ, RFP, so they're calling off a lot faster than we would've expected. We're pretty optimistic just about that Brazilian market, what we see going on there. Not only them with wellheads, but also with liner hangers as well. Saudi's doing nicely for us as well. Broader LatAm, Mexico is doing nicely-

for us, Ecuador.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Brazil was a big part of your story back last cycle.

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

You had a big facility down in Macaé. I visited there-

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

about 10 years ago, I think it was.

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

It was interesting what you just said about kinda how they're ordering, which is a very, very different

You know, you started at the beginning talking about the MSAs.

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

But Petrobras might be the best example of how they've really changed

their business. So we've seen a large number of tenders on different rigs. So how does it work? Are they sort of signing MSAs for different chunks of work with Petrobras?

How does that

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

They are. They're signing, t hey'll sign it

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Specific parts of

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah, so that 87 wellhead systems, I think our best guess at the time was that that was probably gonna take them 2-3 years to work through that.

They've worked through it a lot quicker than we thought they had. And then this most recent award that's going out, that obviously they're working through quicker than we thought as well because they're already working on

the next RFQ. That'll probably come out Q1, Q4 or Q1 probably.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

So last cycle, you ended up, when the cycle sort of came to a screeching halt, you got a lot of equipment down there

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

We did.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

in Brazil. Whatever happened to that? Were you able to reuse that, or did Petrobras just have to sort of eat it or?

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

So Petrobras has worked through the vast majority of that.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Okay.

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

I mean, the unfortunate part, as you know, where our yard is, we could actually look down and see

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Yeah

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

the customer property they had in their yard. But they've worked through most, if not all, of that inventory, candidly, and they're now into just working real time as they call off from us, MSAs.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

So I'd like to talk a little bit about your supply chain and kinda how the process works. One of the things about Dril-Quip which was so unusual last cycle is it was the sense... You know, you were doing all your own forgings, and you had your own equipment. You've made a number of changes-

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Can you just talk about kind of supply chain today, kinda how different it is, and maybe some of the lead times and some of the things you're worried about, and kind of-

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

or what you have to order maybe earlier than others, or?

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah. So look, we really went through and rationalized what do, what do we deserve to make and what don't we deserve to make, and what should be outsourced and what shouldn't be outsourced. You and I had early conversations about the vertically integrated model. A model, by the way, that worked really well

in the upturn, but it's challenging when things turn down. So, we've really modified our footprint. We've gone from 218 acres on campus to just over 100 acres on campus. We've got much more of a Kanban model now. That Kanban model, that stocking model, if you will, applies specifically to the legacy liner hanger business. But also is starting to apply to our wellhead business. As we bring the new equipment in over the balance of this year, we'll have down to four wellhead systems. We'll have the lead time on wellheads, just for perspective, down to sub-20 weeks. So if you think about a tree lead time at 18-24 months-

and you wonder, "Well, why aren't the wellhead orders coming in?" Well, they don't need the wellheads

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Right

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

now till sub-20 weeks. So a significant change there in supply chain, and really the next portion of that is really about best cost country or low-cost region sourcing. So you know, that first outsource that we did, we were very protective about which vendors we used. I joke a little bit, we were within a 50-mile radius of Houston, Texas, in a lot of cases. So not necessarily the lowest cost, but maybe a better cost than we could make it internally. We're now in the process of going best cost country sourcing. We've got 8-10 qualified vendors in those regions. First purchase orders will probably go out Q1 next year. That'll really affect the well construction, that liner hanger business the most. But also there are pieces of subsea that you can go best cost country sourcing.

Well, not all, but pieces of it that you can go best cost country.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

So with your lead times down to 20 weeks, I guess, and while I guess that benefits you in some cases, the other side of that, though, is you guys should have less visibility, though, don't you? Because your customers know they can do it in 20 weeks.

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah, they do know they can do it in 20 weeks, but those MSAs have specific terms around lead time that they need to call off, or a lead time that they need to warn us, 'cause we do some stocking. But because there's four wellhead systems, if you get two or three large customers all pulling from that same-

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Yeah

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Kanban, you could get in trouble quickly, right? So they do. You kind of get a 6, 12, 18 months visibility onto what to call off. They might not actually call them off, but we'll be meeting with them, you know, month to month, just to make sure that we're aware of what we need in our Kanban.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Can you talk a little bit about how you've changed the manufacturing footprint and the changes that you're undergoing today? I know, when you first got there, I think you had reconfigured some of the manufacturing and kinda the how, the kinda the process-

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

I think, kinda the steps. But now you're looking to do something new. You have a new investment in the facility. Can you talk about kind of the changes you made and why you're making this investment for now?

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah, so we leaned out to the extent we could lean out, the facilities that we've got today. But at the end of the day, you know, that'll only take you so far. And as you look at the equipment that we have, we literally have probably 100-110 machines today

that service largely the wellhead franchise. The new equipment that's coming in, we're gonna be able to reduce that, to call it, 10-15 pieces of equipment.

It's gonna free up an awful lot of square footage on campus. Something we need to figure out to do with that. It's, it's maybe either the next consolidation on campus or, you know, maybe the next acquisition, like a Great North, that allows us to bring something onto campus. Great North doesn't make sense, obviously, given where they are, to bring on campus, but there's other acquisitions we're looking at that might help us fill that space.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

So, what are your, what are your goals from this? Do you think you can see gross margins?

Do you have, like, a target for kind of gross margin expansion, or

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

how are you sort of thinking about kind of what the

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

This year we're gonna do, the back half of this year, we'll do 14%-16% EBITDA margin.

Next year, that'll expand to 16%-18%, and when you get into 2025, it'll be 20%, plus EBITDA margin. So there's really three big buckets. One's the footprint rationalization, that's A, and a combo of footprint rationalization and also really the new business lines that we're in right now. That's about $5 million left in savings.

Some of that getting executed this quarter, actually. Another $10 million then on the manufacturing investment, and then the best cost region sourcing is another $10 million. So think about that as kind of a $25 million over the next couple of years of further cost out. The challenge is just working it through inventory. So I say first purchase order will be placed in January. That might not go in a piece of equipment until later in the year.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Got it.

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Same thing with the lines that we're putting in place.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

But also just operating leverage, just more throughput coming through.

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yes. Yes, that's absolutely right.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

That would be a benefit. You had said some kind of additional new product lines that you were just talking about, you just mentioned. Can you talk about what some of those, some of those new product lines are, that maybe people weren't aware of that-

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah, I'm not sure that it's new product lines-

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Okay

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

that we have to take today, to be honest.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Okay.

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

I mean, we made the Great North acquisition-

you know, just a month ago

now. You know, we're gonna have a very programmatic approach to this. We like that acquisition. You know, we think the wellhead technology they've got matches up very nicely with gaps that we might have had in our legacy wellhead offering

from a service standpoint. We like their service quality. They have a white glove service quality, we like that, as well. And we just think it matches up nicely, and we can take their products through our channel. It's kind of interesting, even in the early days of the acquisition, they get calls from all over the world, they just weren't able to service them before. So now we sit in those weekly meetings with them, and it's like: "Hey, we got a call from XYZ country. Do you guys have a base there?

Yeah, we've got a base there." "Okay, let's work through it, and..." so it's really exciting from that standpoint. But going beyond Great North, we see a very programmatic approach to M&A, right? So we're gonna be very thoughtful about it. We'll be as conservative as we've always been from a balance sheet standpoint. But if you think about that $100 million in revenue that Great North is, that's kind of a nice sweet spot for us as we look at-

further acquisitions, so.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

So can you just talk kind of strategically why Great North made sense to you? You've traditionally been an offshore wellhead company, and now this is an onshore, kind of, Canadian-based company.

Just kind of talk a little bit about the strategic rationale of why that makes sense now, kind of, and what that's kind of building out, you just kind of alluded to.

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah. I mean, look, first and foremost, you know, we like the revenue profile, we like the EBITDA margins. It's a very nice business. That Canadian market is down to really three or four players. So it's a fairly consolidated market, which means people act a lot more rationally in that market. It's the, d epending on how you wanna rate it, it's the third or fourth largest producing region in the world.

We like the engineering that they've got. We like how that matches up with our technology group. We like their service quality. And then really, we like the fact that we can take that technology through, through our chain. It's very much what we did with TIW. When we bought TIW, predates me, but when we bought TIW in 2017, it was really an opportunity to take that liner hanger business through our channel, and we've been pretty successful with that. Candidly, that's one of our highest EBITDA margin

businesses right now. And we see this as a very similar model, where, you know, we sold surface wellheads before. It was kind of quiet, it wasn't very commercially successful. So we think this is a commercially successful model that allows us to take that through our channel.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

So where are you, are you targeting the U.S. onshore market of this? Or is it gonna, a nd you mentioned international, kind of

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

where does this product line fit best?

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah, we'll be a little careful about saying where we're going-

just because, who knows who's listening, I suppose.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Right. Yeah.

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

But, you know, if you think about where we've got locations today, I think those are kind of the areas that you'd see. So, you know, obviously, we have footprint in Houston, Texas, obviously, we have footprint in Mexico, we have footprint

in Ecuador, we have footprint in Saudi. Some of those markets are easier than others. Saudi's probably the longest lead of all of them. Latin America is probably a little bit faster than that. Saudi, just the qualification time will probably be

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Sure

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

two years. But look, I was at Aramco nine months ago, and, you know, the constant conversation was: "When are you gonna get a qualified wellhead? When are you gonna get a qualified wellhead?" And we think we can fill that gap now with the Great North product.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

So what are you doing today in Saudi? What, what, Is it liner hangers? Is it what, what

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

It's primarily a liner hanger business.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Okay.

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

So today, we probably, with our liner hanger business, address 40% of the market. By the end of the year, with the qualifications that are in stream right now, we'll address about 70% of the liner hanger market. So we like that expansion that's going on there. We're right in the middle of looking at new facilities, of building out manufacturing capability there, of getting, I'm sure others talk about it, of getting our iktva score up

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Sure

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

so that we can make sure that we continue to be competitive there. It's a nice market for us, nice margins.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

There's a lot of activity going on in Saudi.

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Sure.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

You know, we have gas going on, we have oil expansion, there's offshore going on. Where, which part of the Saudi market are you gaining the, you see the most demand for your products?

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Primarily gas, right? Pardon me, primarily oil right now.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Okay.

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

But the qualification will expand to gas.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Will expand to gas.

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah, yeah.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

So with the, you know, Safaniya, they're talking about having, like, 100 jack-up rigs working in, like

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

three or four years out there. Is that gonna be a big opportunity? Is that-

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

It,

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Would, I assume, liner hangers would be going?

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Liner hangers will go with that. And then, the other piece that goes with it is, obviously, we do a lot of work in our Subsea product group, believe it or not-

for those jack-ups as well. So there's a lot of,

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Okay

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

as the jack-ups come in, there's a lot of refurb that happens, there's a lot of re-qualification that happens, and that'll go through our business as well.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

So now, the manufacturing for the Great North products, can you, can you manufacture those products through your Houston facilities and others, or does that have to be manufactured up there? How does that kind of work?

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Well

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Do you have to reconfigure some things there?

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah. I mean, their supply chain is very much like a lot of other wellhead providers in North America as a whole. They've got a very healthy Chinese supply chain.

And then they bring that in, do final test and assembly, and all the final work, in Edmonton.

We probably wouldn't change that. Candidly, it's a pretty streamlined model right now. I think the only time we'd change that is if we were going to a region of the world where it made more sense to drop ship that Chinese, pro-incoming product to one of our other facilities.

But Houston likely wouldn't be, wouldn't make sense, so we'd probably use Edmonton as the North America hub for that.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

So one thing I think, I think investors might be a little confused about, is sort of how wellheads are kind of packaged with subsea trees. You see all these subsea tree orders coming in from, say, from FTI or others.

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Where do you, y ou know, I think they manufacture their own wellheads. How do you fit in this? It seems like, A, it is kind of a bundled model, and they're sort of discrete orders. Is that how, how the market works? How so, we see something like, you know, $300 billion in FIDs have just been announced over the last, you know, 12-18 months. Like, how does that work typically in, in terms of your business? Or how do you fit in with some of those other competitors out there?

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah, look, so customers are different, how they go to market for the wellhead.

Large customers, Petrobras separately tenders the wellhead. BP separately tenders a wellhead. Chevron separately tenders a wellhead. So there's some very large customers that separately tender that wellhead and always will, and then there are some bundled packages as well. We're agnostic as to the tree, so there are times when we'll go jointly to market, with tree providers.

Typically not FMC

typically not Baker, but think about that as a OneSubsea offer. We'll go to market, jointly with them where they have an EPCI offering or bundled offering, and they need a wellhead. They'll often come to us and use our wellhead.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

So can you talk about that agreement you have? I believe you have a, there's a JV in place with OneSubsea and that kind of, that OneSubsea alliance. Can you talk about kind of where you fit in that, and how that's working, how you see that evolving?

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah. We've got a collaboration agreement, actually.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Collaboration.

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah. And if you think about it, we work closely with both Aker and OneSubsea, right? They're great partners. We like working with them. Sometimes we work with them, sometimes we compete with them-

On the tree side. But we see that as working just fine because candidly, you know, it's not uncommon when there's a tendering process for us to be tendering with OneSubsea and us to be tendering with Aker at the same time, right? So kind of two bites at the apple. You know, now with the combined company, obviously, they'll be even more competitive than they were before.

But we see us as still providing their wellhead.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

So, kind of as OneSubsea starts to build up, you should see you're gonna kind of follow in that, and that part of the business should start to flow.

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah, that's what we'd hope. It's early days on the JV-

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Sure, sure.

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Obviously, so we'll see what comes out of it. But right now, we're pretty encouraged. The more competitive they are-

The more competitive we are from a wellhead standpoint.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

What about your tools that are required that, you know, to install and kind of a lot of the liner hangers and a lot of the equipment that you're putting in there? Is that something you have to build out at all? Do you have plenty of capacity? How do you think about kind of your CapEx here in terms of the spend?

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah, so if you think about the legacy business, we would've been kind of a $15-$20 million, if you will, CapEx. CapEx is a little elevated this year because of the manufacturing investment-

-but that 15-20 kind of covers the build-out of new tools and things like that as well. So a good example is the growth in Brazil right now. We're building out tools for that, for that growth in Brazil-

Right now and need to make that investment. Same thing on the liner hanger side. As that liner hanger business grows, we'll need to build out tools for that. You know, we're always looking at how do you cut down the lead time or the time between refurbs and things like that on tools.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Sure.

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

But we are making some investment this year. I wanna say $5 million-$8 million in investment this year from a tooling standpoint.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

What about on the labor side, just in general? You're manufacturing, I think you're... I mean, this is somewhat labor intensive. I think you've had to, you've obviously had to make some tough decisions-

-over the last few years. Where, what's your status today? How are you... Where maybe, how many kind of shifts are you running today? Can you kinda give us a sense and kinda how, how does that change, and how tight is the labor market now in these different, different places? Although, I guess you're trying to do more manufacturing in different countries, so maybe that, maybe that'll leave-

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

It really depends on where you are, right?

So, I mean, we've ramped up from almost nothing in Brazil to a pretty healthy workforce-

Now in Brazil. To be honest, we haven't had a lot of difficulty attracting talent there. Houston's pretty steady, steady state, some adjustments here and there.

You know, the real adjustment or the real change will happen as we move to the new manufacturing equipment. We'll need more programmers and things like that for that equipment, versus what we would've needed in the past. But we really haven't seen a problem, and it just depends on where you are in the world on how many shifts you're running-

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Right

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

at any point in time.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Right. I was with you a couple. I guess it was maybe a couple of years ago.

where you had a kind of a form of kind of new energy, and we were talking, maybe we were talking to Talos about some of the-

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

things that they're doing offshore.

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Are you involved in that, where kind of maybe kind of give us an update as kind of where, where is that project kind of moving ahead?

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

On the CCUS?

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Yeah, yeah-

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

and all that. And kind of where do you fit in that and kind of?

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah, so I mean, the largest project that we're working on right now is really Northern Endurance Project. We were working with Aker on that. Aker decided that that wasn't the right opportunity for them.

We're now working with OneSubsea on the same project. So that's the largest project we're working on. We are seeing, we are getting a fair amount of quoting activity, but it's pretty small right now, pretty early days right now. One of the nice things we like about Great North, candidly, is that we see most of the CCUS market in the beginning as onshore. So at least 50% of that CCUS market is gonna be onshore. We believe a fair amount of it's gonna be Lower 48. We believe a fair amount of it's also gonna be in Canada. So we're pretty excited about that from that standpoint as well. But very early days and Northern Endurance project's probably the largest one, and it's probably still a year out or so, I'd say. From-

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

So the wellhead, the technical specifications on a wellhead for CCUS versus oil and gas, how, how are they different?

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Tougher metallurgy for CCUS.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

CCUS?

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Okay.

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Tougher, tougher metallurgy for CCUS. And then if you think about it from a tree standpoint, which is the other thing, like a shallow water tree, that we would provide, I don't wanna call it dumbed down, but a much simpler-

tree than you'd have on the oil and gas side of the house. So it's really making it fit for making sure the CCUS is fit for purpose. I think if that gets over-engineered, it's a problem, right?

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Right.

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Because at the end of the day, CCUS is a waste disposal business, right?

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

It's cost.

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Cost.

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Exactly right. So-

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

There's no benefit to anybody.

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Exactly right. So every time we talk to a customer, the message is always: "Hey, we can't bring the same oil and gas mindset-

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Right

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

to this project. If we do that, it's never gonna work.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

The idea is kind of design one, build many?

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Just-

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah. It'll probably be over-engineered in the beginning-

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Yeah

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

A little bit.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

We are seeing a little bit of that. But we do think that over time, it'll be a lot more fit for purpose, both from a tree and a wellhead standpoint.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

You had talked a little bit about kind of M&A and being kind of careful and looking at different things. So what, what, what does M&A look like to you? Like, what is sort of the thing... Obviously, you're not gonna tell me what-

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

but kind of just generally speaking, what are you looking at? If I'm looking at the Dril-Quip portfolio, where are you... Is it regional? Is it tools? Is it the technology?

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah, so-

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

What are you looking for?

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah, so, you know, a couple of things, right? We do think there's some opportunity to build out some things regionally-

that, you know, are complementary to what we already do or look a lot like what we already do. So you take Great North as an example. You know, 75% of that business is a surface wellhead. Well, we know the surface wellhead. We bring the right engineering. That's not a big leap, right? Yes, it's onshore. Yes, it's Canada, but it's not a big leap to suspect that we could understand that. So if you think about the liner hanger we've got today, there's things to the right and left of that liner hanger when that's getting run. Makes a lot of sense for us to be thinking about those things. Same thing on the surface wellhead. And then there's regions of the world where we like that region of the world.

We might be underrepresented in that region of the world, and there might be opportunity for us.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

And you feel like you need the local content in those other markets to... Or you just need a kind of a toehold that gives you a toehold on those-

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

It could give you a toehold in those markets, yeah.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Yeah, makes sense.

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

That makes sense. The MSAs, going back to the MSAs, I think you said you were, like, 70 open up MSAs today?

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

How would we compare that to before? You actually didn't really have-

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

We didn't really track it as closely before.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Right. Right.

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Just to clarify, I mean, those MSAs, you could have three MSAs with the same customer, you know? So, use Petrobras as an example. They've got an MSA for exploratory wellheads.

They've got an MSA for development wellheads. They've got an MSA for liner hangers, right?

So, it wouldn't be uncommon for a customer. It's almost product by product on the MSAs, as opposed to one customer has an MSA for multiple products.

It's one customer has three or four MSAs for different products.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

So looking kind of regionally, Namibia is coming up quite a bit-

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

It is

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

in conversations. I've heard that mentioned many times. So is that something that you guys are gonna be involved in, would you expect? Are you already kind of-

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

We're already involved there, specifically from the liner hanger side. We see it as a wellhead opportunity as well. In fact, we had some of our team over there a month ago-

scouting out bases and where it'd be in the right location. We're already starting to put people on the ground there. But even in advance of that, we've already got some early revenue there, specifically on the liner hanger business. But what we see expanding to wellheads also.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

So, if I think it may be the core driver for Dril-Quip, is probably offshore wells drilled.

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yes.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Can you give me a sense as to kinda what you'd think that percentage goes up to, in, say, in 2024 and 2025? Are you kinda thinking about that growth of kind of the offshore wellheads? What are you thinking?

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah, it's really, it's really a combination of two things, to be honest. I mean, there, there's some slight growth in, in wells drilled over the next few years, although I think most of the forecasts that are out there now are probably a little conservative, maybe, for where we are. So you could look at Rystad or any number of, of folks. So there's some small growth there. I think the other thing that we're seeing is just, you know, we talked about that customer property and people working through that. Petrobras has worked through theirs, some other customers are working through theirs as well. So while wells drilled is a nice proxy-

there, there's some inventory issues some folks are still working through. So we'll start to see some reorder on some of that, probably starting next year from some of our other customers that we know have some inventory. We're not entirely clear how much, but we know they've still got some inventory they've got to work through. It was easier at Petrobras, where we could look down and count the number of wellheads-

they had in the yard.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

So I think one of the interesting things is, so offshore, we sort of have this sort of phasing.

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

You know, the initial, you know, you see the FIDs-

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

then the FTIs get the awards, and then the rigs get ordered, and then the services start to add, and then, then you're kind of a little bit more just in time-

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Right

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

kind of, close to there.

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Feels like sort of this inflection is kind of a 2024 event?

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah, look, I mean-

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Yeah

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

back half of this year will be up. You know, so from the first half of the year, we did, call it $185 million in revenue. Back half, we'll do $240 million-$250 million.

So there's an inflection already, first half to back half. And then, you know, we're targeting. We haven't done budgets yet, but we'd probably see maybe another 20% increase next year. So nice increase, first half to back half. Nice increase year-over-year.

Another step up next year.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Another 20%?

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah, another 20%.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Twenty percent.

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

That's what we're targeting, yeah.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

That's your target. Great.

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Yeah.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Jeff, thank you so much for your time.

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Hey, thank you.

David Anderson
Senior Equity Analyst, Barclays

Appreciate it. Thank you.

Jeffrey Bird
President and Chief Executive Officer, Dril-Quip

Thanks.

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