Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Schlumberger Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participant lines are in a listen-only mode. Later, there will be an opportunity for your questions. As a reminder, today's conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Vice President of Investor Relations, Nd Maduemezia. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Cynthia. Good morning, and welcome to the Schlumberger Limited Third Quarter 2020 earnings call. Today's call is being hosted from Houston following the Schlumberger Limited board meeting held earlier this week. Joining us on the call are Olivier Le Peuch, Chief Executive Officer, and Stéphane Biguet, Chief Financial Officer. For today's agenda, Olivier will start the call with his perspective on the quarter and our updated view of the industry macro, after which Stéphane will give more detail on our financial results. Then we will open for questions. Before we begin, I would like to remind all participants that some of the statements we'll be making today are forward-looking. These matters involve risks and uncertainties that could cause our results to differ materially from those projected in these statements. I therefore refer you to our latest 10-K filing and our other SEC filings.
Our comments today may also include non-GAAP financial measures. Additional details and reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures can be found in our third quarter press release. With that, I will turn the call over to Olivier.
Thank you, Nd. Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Thank you for joining us on the call today. In my opening remarks, I would like to focus my commentary on three parts. First, our third quarter operational and financial performance. Next, progress with the implementation of our strategy. Third, our updated view on the near-term business outlook. After this, Stéphane will provide greater details on our financial results. In the third quarter, we had an opportunity to demonstrate the significance of the measures we have taken over the last few months and set a marker of outperformance through top-line resilience, margin expansion, and by maintaining our strong cash generation track record. In an ongoing activity trough, our third quarter sequential performance was exceptionally strong. Yet again, we continued to maintain benchmarks of safety and service quality in our operations.
Sequential margins expansion rebounded by more than 300 basis points for both EBIT and EBITDA, and free cash flow was solidly positive. The strength for margin expansion and free cash flow performance is even more impactful in the context of a slight top-line decline and exceptional items during the quarter. I would like to thank the entire Schlumberger team for this remarkable performance and for an excellence in execution. These results represent a defining step in the reset of our earnings power at the trough of the cycle and set the stage for our long-term outperformance. Starting with operations. In the third quarter, we maintained benchmark integrity performance with year-over-year improvement at 30% in HSE incident frequency and 34% in reliability. Operational integrity remains an area of strength for Schlumberger and the foundation of our performance strategy.
Our consistent service delivery earned several letters of commendation from our customers and is the basis of multiple new contract awards recorded in the quarter. Financially, we posted higher sequential pre-tax operating margins, more than 20% EBITDA growth, and positive free cash flow despite the severance payment and reduced working capital release versus the prior quarter. These results clearly set us on the path to our intermediate goal of restoring 2019 EBITDA margins before the end of 2021. Now let me turn to our strategy. First, our restructuring program is progressing well, and we are on track to realize most of our permanent structural cost savings as we exit this year. We also began transition to our leaner customer alliance structure comprised of divisions and basins designed to support the basin-specific innovation that will solidify Schlumberger's position as the performance partner of choice.
Next, in North America, we achieved key milestones on our Scale to Fit strategy with two transactions that advanced the high-grading of our portfolio while lowering capital intensity and volatility, the Liberty transaction and the low-flow divestiture. The closing of this transaction will not only enhance our EBITDA margin at a global level, but will further support lower capital intensity and an accelerated path to our financial goals for North America. Looking ahead at the benefits of this strategy execution, we are set to significantly improve the company's future operating leverage, and as the market activity recovers from the current trough, we have the potential to restore EBITDA to the 2019 mark of $6.6 billion by recovering only half of the year-on-year revenue decline. Our performance strategy also focus on horizon of growth, which includes digital and production recovery.
The industry is rapidly embracing digital enablement and shifting capital investment towards maximizing production recovery from existing assets. Where these two industry shifts converge, in a sense where digital intersect with production and recovery, Schlumberger has a unique opportunity to deploy the full power of our industry digital platform and domain expertise spanning reservoir and production for the benefit of our customer. The best example of this was the application of our Agora Edge AI and IoT solutions in our APS project in Ecuador. By connecting field equipment to the cloud and running predictive AI at the edge, we boosted production 30% on Agora-connected wells, while significantly reducing field crew visits to these wells, and as such, cutting HSE exposure and environmental impact.
This created revenue and margin on an APS project where we capture the value directly and is just an example of what is possible at scale when we use the power of the industry digital platform to blend hardware and software to enable people, wherever they are located, to make performance impacts with digital. In addition, we continue to expand the reach of our digital platform, as demonstrated by the IBM Red Hat OpenShift agreement, further enabling adoption of our platform around the world, and particularly, with NOCs. In the quarter, we have also secured notable subsea and artificial lift contracts in the Gulf of Mexico and in the Middle East, which will result in a growth of our install base and greater exposure to production recovery CapEx and OpEx, a strong platform for the future.
Finally, we continue to develop our new energy portfolio, with progress in our hydrogen technology venture, Genvia, and the creation of a geothermal project development company, which complements our low heat geothermal venture, Celsius Energy. This exciting venture represents a mix of new unique opportunities for Schlumberger to create a differentiated market position through the energy transition. In parallel, we continue to develop avenues to contribute to the decarbonization of oil and gas operations, leveraging our technology, expertise, and execution platform to reduce our environmental impact while helping our customers reach their environmental goals. Let me take a few moments now to talk about the outlook. In the short to midterm horizon, the market uncertainties persist as the economic recovery remains fragile. The pace of demand recovery could possibly slow or pause as a result of a second wave of pandemic outbreaks or heightened pandemic control measures.
Similarly to the third quarter, we also face risk of lingering COVID-19 operational disruption internationally as we enter the winter season. In this context, we will continue to focus on what we can control and react promptly if necessary. Absent of a pause in demand recovery or higher COVID-19 disruption, the fourth quarter activity will likely extend the trends expense as we close the third quarter. With the continuation of a modest activity uptake in North America and the stabilization towards a steady activity internationally, albeit with visible seasonal variations. The combination of which resulting into an about flat outlook overall for the quarter. Looking out further, the prevailing uncertainties make it much too early to call. Directionally and absent of a slowdown in the pace of economic recovery, we anticipate overall activity to consolidate gradually during 2021.
In line with the most recent IEA projections, we see that the conditions still exist to rebalance demand and supply, with improving demand recovery supported by economic stimulus measures and continued supply discipline from the major producer, ultimately resulting into a visible activity rebound. North America land is expected to continue to subdued recovery in frac and drilling activity towards production maintenance levels. Internationally, as demand recovers, a pull on short cycle supply will result in an activity inflection. This being anticipated by most operators currently evaluating options to restore activity. Having shared our view on the outlook, let me now hand over to Stéphane, who will talk more about our financial results. Stéphane?
Thank you, Olivier, good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Third quarter earnings per share, excluding charges and credits, was $0.16. This represents an increase of $0.11 sequentially and a decrease of $0.27 when compared to the same quarter of last year. During the quarter, we recorded $350 million of pre-tax restructuring charges. These charges primarily relate to facility exit costs as we continue to rationalize our real estate footprint. As a result of these charges, our pre-tax operating income will increase by approximately $15 million per quarter going forward due to reduced lease and depreciation expenses. Overall, our third quarter revenue of $5.3 billion decreased 2% sequentially. Pre-tax segment operating margins increased 355 basis points to 10.9%. More importantly, company-wide adjusted EBITDA margins increased 371 basis points to 19.4%. As a reminder, our full year 2019 adjusted EBITDA margin was 20.2%.
In other words, we are well on our way to restoring our pre-crisis EBITDA margins of 2019, despite the severe revenue reduction we have experienced. This will be achieved through the combination of our restructuring actions and the high grading of our portfolio. As a reminder, our restructuring program will permanently remove $1.5 billion of fixed costs on an annual basis. We have achieved more than 80% of these cash savings as of the end of the third quarter.
We expect to complete most of the remaining actions as we exit the fourth quarter. As it relates to the high grading of our portfolio, we achieved two significant milestones this quarter with the signing of an agreement to divest our North American low-flow artificial lift business in a cash transaction, followed by an agreement to contribute our OneStim pressure pumping business to Liberty Oilfield Services in exchange for a 37% equity interest in Liberty. We received antitrust clearance for both transactions, and we anticipate each of the closings to occur before the end of the year. It is worth noting that both transactions will be accretive to our earnings in 2021. Let me now go through the fourth quarter results for each segment. Third quarter Reservoir Characterization revenue of $1 billion decreased 4% sequentially, while margins decreased 90 basis points to 16.7%.
These decreases were primarily due to lower sales of WesternGeco multi-client seismic licenses in North America offshore. Drilling revenue of $1.5 billion decreased 12% sequentially, while margins were essentially flat at 9.5%. The revenue decrease was driven by an activity decline in U.S. land, where the rig count dropped significantly, combined with COVID disruptions and customer budget adjustments in several international geo markets. Despite the revenue drop, margins were resilient as a result of cost reduction measures. Production revenue of $1.8 billion increased 12% sequentially, and margins increased 11 percentage points to 12.6%. These increases were largely the result of a resumption of activity in our APS projects in Ecuador following last quarter's production interruption caused by a major landslide. OneStim also increased on higher fleet utilization, while profitability improved across each of our completions, artificial lift, and well services product lines, due to cost reduction measures.
Cameron revenue of $1 billion decreased 5%, while margins decreased by 162 basis points to 6.3% on lower OneSubsea revenue in Asia and Europe, as well as lower surface system equipment sales in North America. Turning to our liquidity. I was again very pleased with our cash flow generation. During the quarter, we generated $479 million of cash flow from operations and $226 million of free cash flow, despite making $273 million of severance payments. This performance confirms that our cash flow generation capabilities remain intact. We will generate excess cash once our restructuring efforts are complete, and therefore, be in a position to deleverage the balance sheet. We ended the quarter with total cash and investment of $3.8 billion.
Our net debt at the end of the quarter was $13.9 billion, an increase of $149 million compared to last quarter, but down almost half a billion when compared to the same time last year. During the quarter, we spent $200 million on CapEx and invested $28 million in APS projects. Our total capital spend for 2020, including APS and multi-client, is still expected to be approximately $1.5 billion. This represents a 45% decrease as compared to 2019, mostly coming from lower CapEx in North America and reduced investments in APS projects. We took further steps to strengthen the balance sheet during the quarter. We issued $500 million of 1.4% notes due 2025. The proceeds will be used to repay 2.2% notes that mature in November. We also issued $350 million of 2.65% notes due 2030. The proceeds were used to pay down commercial paper borrowings.
We ended the quarter with available liquidity of $10.8 billion. Before I conclude, and just as a reminder, due to our corporate reorganization, we will report our results on the basis of the four new divisions, starting in the fourth quarter. We are working to provide historical restated financial information based upon the new division structure and expect to publish this in November. I will now turn the conference call back to Olivier.
Thank you, Stéphane. Ladies and gentlemen, I think we are ready to open the call for the questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, you may press 1 and then 0 for your questions or comments. Our first question will come from the line of James West with Evercore ISI. Your line is open.
Hello, good morning, Olivier.
Morning, James.
First, just a statement from me. I really appreciate you clearly stating the goal of returns above your cost of capital or value creation as we see it, because most of the industry has lacked that progress in the last decade or so. Thank you for stating that as a clear goal of Schlumberger. The first question I have for you is, you've taken several defining steps towards the reinvention of Schlumberger so far, using this crisis to your somewhat advantage. Now, could you talk maybe about the steps taken and then what we should expect going forward?
Good. Great question, James. Thanks again. Indeed, we are set to continue to execute our strategy for improving our return above cost of capital. That's the foundation, okay?
Right.
We'll do that in several ways, cash flow, margins, and discipline on capital, obviously.
Right.
You have seen that we have not wasted a crisis, as we could say, taking the opportunity to restructure our organization to reset in a new, what we expect, in a new normal. I think we have done that in anticipating that the market will be structurally smaller, albeit it will be defined by new attributes. One of them is the basin attributes, where we believe regionalization become more critical, hence the creation of a basin structure to support our clients in their basin to outperform in every basin, and that's the fit-for-basin strategy, that is in light there. The second, obviously transition is digital. I think digital is happening everywhere.
Right
in the office, in operation, in all aspects of our workflows. We believe that this is a transformative step that we are ready to support. Last, I will say, very high level, I believe that production recovery will become more critical going forward as the return on mature assets will have to be improved. At the same time, energy transition from gas technology up to midstream, as well as transition to new energy, I think this will give us the digital, the production recovery, the energy transition starting with gas, will give us the element of growth that will then leverage our new operating platform with the division basin as we have seen restructured, to give us the opportunity to much expand our margins and reach and exceed our return above cost of capital.
Right.
That's what we are set for to achieving, James.
Exactly. That's very good, Olivier. On the margin expansion comment, you're sticking to the getting back to the 2019 EBITDA margins by the end of 2021. What needs to happen to derive that? Do we need market growth? Is it the cost outs you've already taken? What are the kind of key things we should be looking for to ensure that that happens?
I think there are three elements. I think the first and foremost, the one that had the most impact to date in our quarter results, is the restructuring we have done when we adjusted our permanent structure and variable cost to the new normal and to the new level of activity as we foresee. I think this has had a significant amplifying impact on our return margin expansion. The second factor is the continuation of our strategy execution in North America that aims at high-grading our portfolio and taking steps to make sure that we retain and continue to invest in a portfolio where we believe we can differentiate and create return above our threshold. Third is the leverage of our international footprint.
When you combine the core measure on structural adjustments that we have done to lift and reset our earnings power, the action we have taken to enhance significantly our margins in North America, our play in North America, and the international mixed leverage, all of this will combine to elevate and gradually build our EBITDA margin to the 20% or EBITDA of 2019. We don't need much growth to achieve this.
Perfect. Thanks, Olivier.
You're welcome.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Angie Sedita. Your line is open.
Angie.
Morning, guys.
Morning.
Hi.
Morning.
Nice quarters. A little bit to James' question around the 2019 EBITDA margins. Would you say, number one, that digital is further accretive to that 20% margin and the return to that 20% margin that you saw in 2019? Do you think of those margins as normalized for Schlumberger this cycle, or could it be better? Finally on that is, you said in your remarks $6.6 billion in EBITDA on half the revenue, that's certainly above consensus estimates for 2021 and 2022. Can you give us further color there and a timeline?
Okay. Comprehensive question, Angie. Thank you. First on digital, is it accretive? Absolutely. It's accretive today, it's accretive tomorrow. I think it will be accretive in the future at the step that is certainly pulling our margins up. I think what we are looking for to accelerate is our growth CAGR, so that it is accretive in the future at a larger scale. Digital is and will be accretive on the way forward, absolutely. The second question you ask is on the EBITDA of 2019, if I understand correctly what you asked for, Angie, to reiterate.
Yes.
Yes, I think we are clear on our ability to deliver this EBITDA margin improvement to 20% above in the short term. The mix we need, as I said and commented with James, is very clear. It's a combination of international, our restructuring, and international exposure that we have that are greatly accretive to this. Finally, you asked a question about when and how we will go beyond this. Our mid-cycle margin ambition is above that level. We are at the trough at operating already very close to this 2019, having operated a reset of our margins. Our expectation is to continue to grow and expand. Again, building our international franchise, building and accelerating our Digital and giving the pull-through from this, but also continue to execute on our capital discipline, capital stewardship that will upgrade our portfolio and will resolve some of the still outstanding underperforming business units.
You combine growth internationally, the power of digital, and our discipline on capital stewardship and addressing our underperforming contracts. You have the recipe to expand the margin beyond this 20%. You can make the math. I think we would expect indeed that with half the revenue coming back from 2019, we will expect to be in a position to reach or exceed this dollar EBITDA contribution. I think when is this happening? Sometime in the future, not 2021, clearly. 2022 will be the beginning of a cycle of international expansion. That's very likely. After that, there will be some time, but we believe this is in sight, and that's what we are working towards.
Okay. Wonderful. That was a very good answer. Thank you, Olivier. One more on Liberty. Maybe you could talk about the transaction in a little bit more detail, the magnitude of the accretion opportunity, the access to the customer and well site without having frac, and the determination of when you'll exit Liberty. Are you a medium-term owner or a long-term owner of those shares?
I'll let Stéphane answer some, and I will answer on the customer engagement. Please, Stéphane, on the transaction.
Yeah, sure. Angie, we are actually progressing quite well on our integration planning. The good news, we are identifying through this process additional synergies and opportunities for technology collaboration that makes this combination even more compelling than we initially contemplated. We are quite happy with partnering with Liberty. We believe there's quite a lot of upside potential in the combined company as the synergies are realized and the market starts to recover. We will benefit from the North American unconventional recovery as our equity stake will continue to appreciate, and we will also leverage our technology alliance with Liberty. It is premature in that context to talk about monetization, considering where we stand in the cycle, but that will, of course, remain an option over the longer term. We have not set a timeline for this. We have not set a target price.
It will always remain an option. In terms of accretion, we've stated it will be accretive from day one. Going into 2021, it will be positive for sure on our EPS, EBITDA, and margins overall.
Yeah, I can only reinforce that I think our value proposition, the value proposition of Liberty on the market with our existing customer, I think is undoubtedly very strong with this platform as a pure play, the largest pure play frac company. We are putting in place the contract and service level agreement across both companies to cross-license technology and to create pull-through so that we can extend the Liberty workflow and the value proposition well site, and we can pull them on some of the contract we have on well construction or contract where we participate across and around the frac operation. Clearly, for both, very beneficial on both.
Great. Thanks. I'll turn it over.
Thank you. Next, we will go to the line of David Anderson with Barclays, and your line is open.
Great. Thank you. Good morning, Olivier.
Good morning, Dave.
You've talked about digital being a core part of Schlumberger's growth strategy, and you've stated the goal is to double the revenue in the medium term. Curious kind of where acquisitions fit in that part as part of the goal. I ask because back in the '90s, of course, Petrel and Eclipse were crucial to your success that followed the 2000s, and still a big part of your offering. More recently, even now, as kind of partnerships and venture-backed companies you're involved in. I'd just like to understand a little bit more about your digital growth strategy as you build this business out.
Yeah, good question, Dave. Thank you. I think first and foremost, our strategy revolve around a digital platform. Establishing a digital platform for industry, both from the geoscience subsurface side, building on our desktop offering today and building up on our market strengths and establishing with what we did before with the open platform foundation, with data ecosystem shared with industry, and offering DELFI as the foundation for this. We believe that this transition to the cloud will cement our desktop leadership position we have today and expand and create growth opportunity with new transition similar to the Chevron, similar to the Suncor, similar to the Woodside transition that we are doing with the DELFI core expanding into the cloud. This alone is a growth avenue.
The second one is digital operation, as I will call it. I think it extends DELFI to the drilling or to the production space. Also, we have been extending and using the concept of digital platform to also introduce what we call Agora, a gateway and a platform that offers opportunity to plug AI or edge application on equipment. I think you have seen two example of which we described into the press release earlier today. I think this is an expansion. That's the second axis of expanding beyond the core, beyond geoscience and expanding into operation. The third, I think, is the domain of AI and offering services for our customer to extract more from their workflow across and using an element of our platform, not necessarily the application.
Using the platform as a basis for creating value to their own IP, to their own integration capability, and where we act as a system integrator and we act as a support for their workflow. These are the avenue of growth. We'll continue to make a partnership as a basis for building this platform stacks. We will, and when as appropriate, if we believe we have gaps into our offering in operation or in geoscience or in AI, we'll make bolt-on acquisition, as we call it, to supplement or to complement this so that we better respond to this and expand in new energy or expanding to the gas midstream, for example, using the same platform.
Olivier, I think one of the struggles for investors is taking digital from a conceptual idea into real-life practice. You mentioned Agora several times in the release today, and I was wondering if you could talk about two things. If you could talk about Agora and the IBM Red Hat agreement, kind of two separate things here. Agora being more edge computing driven, maybe you could just talk about what is the best application? Where do you see that fitting in terms of your business? What's the most obvious application of where you can really make a difference? Secondarily, on the IBM Red Hat, you've targeted NOCs as being the customer. What is that bringing to the NOC customer?
Okay. First, Agora. Simply said, Agora bring us the ability to bring on every piece of equipment on the platform, on the rig, an ability to connect this piece of equipment to the cloud and to our platform. Yet offering at this point, at this edge, an open platform where partners can provide and can plug their application, AI application, typically, that will add value to this data feed. The perfect example is what you have seen on the PETRONAS application, where we have not been developing this video parsing analysis tool. One of our partners have just deployed their video tool onto our platform and connected to the camera, and we serve as a gateway back to the cloud.
We just provide a platform that our customer licensing and are installing on their equipment, and then their own partners, our partners, are creating value with AI routines or AI application at the edge that connects to the cloud. That's what we provide in a secure way. Red Hat OpenShift, simply said, is an ability to provide multiplicity of option for cloud deployment for our customers that offer hybrid cloud deployments on-premise and public, and address the concern that some of our customers in some country were facing that they cannot export their data to the public clouds because it is a data residency issue, or they believe they need to control and have in-house premise cloud infrastructure.
For these two solution, we provide, through OpenShift, an ability to deploy DELFI on on-premise cloud infrastructure or on cloud that are not public cloud, hence addressing a market that we cannot address today. It's about 50% of the market today, 50% of the country that don't have or do not prefer to use public cloud for their hosting their data that we are unlocking to this. We are unlocking a significant part of market.
Fantastic. Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
Our next question comes from the line of Kurt Hallead with RBC. Your line is open.
Hey, good morning, Olivier. Good morning. How is everyone?
Kurt, good morning. Thank you.
Olivier, I just wanted to congratulate you and your team on a very fast pivot through an extremely difficult situation. I know you highlighted digital way back when you first joined in September and then reiterated in January, and it sounds like it is already paying dividends for you. Kudos on that quick pivot.
Thank you.
My question for you, Olivier, is we've seen a lot of recent commentary out of the major oil companies about their shift of budget from intensive fossil fuel dynamics to more green renewables and so on and so forth, with BP probably being the most radical in that process. I'm trying to connect the dots here, but it seems like with the clean energy business that you established back in the spring, it sets Schlumberger up to be very well-positioned in line with the potential future spending plans of some of your existing customers. I was just wondering if you could give us a little bit more insight on how you view potentially the clean energy business evolving over time.
No, great question, Kurt. I think obviously we see it's not only a trend that we want to capture with our existing customers. I think obviously some of our customer segments are transitioning into a different role as energy company and wants to add to their portfolio beyond oil and gas, including some technology and some renewables, in which we also have interest. I think at large, what we have realized is that we have a technology platform. We have an ability to deploy at scale technology. We have a subsurface knowledge. When you combine all of this, we believe that we have market position that we can take, develop into the new energy business, be it on renewable, be it on energy storage, or be it on hydrogen. I think this is where we are developing a venture today.
We are developing it in geothermal, both low heat and deep geothermal. That's very adjacent to our business because it exploits our subsurface knowledge, our drilling well construction, and our ability to manage heat flows from subsurface to surface and provide digital platform to control it. That's where we're heading. The hydrogen is very interesting for us because it's a huge opportunity, partly led by EU with their Green Deal. There are two avenues there. One avenue is green hydrogen or electrolyzer, where we believe we, with our new venture, Genvia, are in a position to create differentiated offering in the market, to provide the market with higher efficiency and a more versatile electrolyzer that can feed this 40 GW capacity that EU is planning for 2030. Finally, I think we will continue to also look into CCS, which is again, close to our core.
Not CCS application for oil and gas, but CCS application to decarbonize the hard-to-abate sector, ammonia or SMR for hydrogen production through gas. These are the sector that are outside of our oil and gas customer, that where we believe we can add value. When you combine all of this is a very exciting future with new energy, and we are taking position today for the long run.
That's great. Appreciate that insight. My follow-up question would be, Olivier, you mentioned the prospect for short cycle projects to accelerate, especially in the international markets when heading out into 2022. I know you don't want to get pinned down to any kind of specifics, but I'm just kind of curious how you would think about the magnitude of rebound. Again, you don't have to get too specific here, but just wondering how sharp of a rebound you would expect and maybe what geographic regions you would think would lead the way.
Yeah. I think what we see is that clearly, I think the level of investment that currently going into international is not sustainable, I think for two reason. I think the demand supply will rebalance, and we create a pull on supply worldwide. I think this will be pulling on international as well as the U.S., North America. North America suffered from a setback that is creating a gap in the future supply. I think the condition are set. Can you hear me?
There's a lot of feedback.
Yes. I think the feedback is gone. Thank you.
That's better.
Okay. I think short cycle is set to come back first and then long cycle. The timing of this and the magnitude, I think, will depend, obviously, on the oil demand recovery pace. What we can say is that customers are already engaging and are asking us to be ready for mobilization, be it in short or midterm, to make sure that we're not getting in the wrong direction to cut capacity beyond what they will need in the short to midterm. I would expect the low cost producer country and on the core of OPEC Plus to be the first to react and to rebound when market will be there. That includes Middle East, that includes Russia, obviously. Beyond that, I think we will see short cycle everywhere.
China will continue to be executing on their energy strategy, so I don't expect this to be slowing down. We will see gradually, we'll see the shallow water coming back. There is a lot of FID ready to be approved that will then accelerate back to deep water. I think there will be a sequence in this, but short cycle will come back both onshore and offshore and will come back certainly sometime in 2021 and clearly in 2022.
That's great. Thanks, Olivier. I appreciate that color.
Thank you. Next, we will go to the line of Scott Gruber with Citigroup. Your line is open.
Scott, good morning.
Olivier, I want to come back to the renewables question. You highlight several interesting initiatives. Do you have an aspiration for renewables to be a certain percentage of revenues by, pick your year, 2025, 2030? Just given your scale, what does this mean for CapEx spend, R&D spend, and overall, how do you think about balancing a desire to see, what I believe would be your desire to see a measurable portion of your revenue stream becoming levered to renewables while also continuing to drive improved financial performance?
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's too early to quote the number. I think it's something that we are working and we are continuing to develop our strategy. I think I will not call it renewable. I think it's more than renewable, and it intersects renewable, but I think it's the technology approach we have. Don't expect us to buy wind farms. Go after capital projects. That's not our intent. Our intent is to continue to play and build on our strengths. Strengths being technology, being a technology partner for renewable company, being technology partner for some of our current existing customer, and being a technology partner for addressing a new economy, such as hydrogen economy. I think this is where we want to be. Obviously, I want this to be meaningful.
I want to be at scale in the next decade for sure, because I think at that time, we want to be in a position where we believe we will be diversifying our portfolio and building and leveraging the growth that is existing in these to make sure that we are adding a diversified portfolio, but still the technology portfolio and a service and technology offering with solution to this market. Again, it's a long-term ambition with short-term investments that are helping us to create market position that are unique and that will gradually being reinforced and will take a bigger position on the one we believe have the most potential in the coming years.
Got you. I just want to circle back on the 20% EBITDA margin target for next year. You did about 19% in Q3, and what I imagine is likely close to 20% ex the to-be-divested businesses. It just seems that 20% is easily achievable, if not beatable, next year. What am I missing? Is there still some concern around pricing as contracts roll into next year? Is there some concern that maybe customer spending abroad won't lift that much over the course of 2021? Why shouldn't we consider the 20% EBITDA margin a relatively low bar, just given your Q3 performance?
No. First, the way we define it is a full year target we are taking. It will happen before the end of 2021. I believe the trajectory of the year with a gradual recovery will give us the opportunity to create a full year target that will be set at this level or exceed. Do we anticipate and fear more pricing? No. I think the pricing pressure has been with us for the last six years. As I commented before, I think we have been giving away, and the industry at large have been under pressure for this. The industry now is realizing that there is so much we can give, and we are working more collaborative with our customers to find solution to eliminate waste.
Now, obviously, large integrated contracts are still competitively priced, but we see that through performance, through technology and through smart engagement and alignment for customers, we're able to offset those pricing and competitive pressure and realize margin resilience. Pricing is and will remain with us in these years to come. Possible headwinds, mostly on large integrated contracts. I believe that when activity will come back, we'll get opportunity to get back pricing in the right market.
Great. Appreciate the color. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Sean Meakim with JPMorgan. Your line is open.
Thank you. Good morning.
Good morning, Sean.
Olivier, I think the energy transition topic naturally kind of begs the question about the outlook for international E&P spending in the coming cycle. I appreciate the earlier comments on the cadence of how work will come back, say, next year, what's also going to be different in this cycle is that your customers have additional calls on their cash flow that are being prioritized before upstream spending right. IOCs are diverting more capital towards renewables. That's the plan. Independents have a first call on their cash to their balance sheets. I'm just curious how those factors influence your expectation around the international spending cycle and specifically offshore, as IOCs control most of the, specifically deepwater acreage globally.
Yeah, that's a correct assumption. I think we believe that what will happen is that the market will consolidate around basin's position. That each of the major and large independent will concentrate on their basin plays and are our strengths. I believe that we have to be smart about aligning with our customers in those key basins, be it around their core assets, such as Exxon in Guyana, such as some of our IOCs in Brazil or in East Africa. We will make sure that we align ourself with those so that we maximize the uptake of market position in those basins and continue to execute our fit-for-basin and engagement with customer to make sure we maximize those positions. That's the first thing we want to do.
Next, I will comment that the national company are part of the mix, and I think the deepwater is indeed more a domain where international company dominate, and I think we have there very strong position. From shallow to land, there is a lot of activity that is pulled both short and long cycle by national company. In Middle East, most of the offshore activity, if not all of the offshore activity, is led by national company and is going fairly well and has been more resilient than the land activity. We will hold on those position and make sure we continue, as you have seen, some contract have been awarded in this domain, continue to pursue this. We understand that the market will be structurally different than what we could have anticipated five years ago.
We believe that the position around key basins of strengths from our customers and aligning ourself with this will provide us the opportunity to capture most of this international growth coming back.
Got it. Understood. I appreciate that. I wanted to touch on reservoir characterization as well. That segment's experienced a lot of volatility in its margins the last couple of quarters, much more than we've seen historically. I'm just curious how you'd characterize the gravitational center for those margins once the business has cost reductions impacted, et cetera. How do you think that business looks like on a full year basis once we get it through these near-term challenges?
The comment I will offer on this is that this market is a market where the exploration market sits. The exploration market is set from discretionary spend. It includes the multi-client sales that historically have been a little bit of a swing that depends on the season and depends also on the exploration discretionary budget that is available for customers to invest in future exploration acreage. That has left a little bit of volatility. The volatility has been bigger in recent times because the proportionate scale of exploration has reduced, hence when exploration campaign comes back, which happens every other season, and when the discretionary spend on exploration through multi-client, this combined to create a very strong quarter. At the base, the related testing, wireline and digital are still performing very well.
Software was growing this quarter, one of the very few product line that did grow quarter on quarter, and did grow, as an example. Expect this to be the consequence of most of the exposure we have on discretionary exploration spend and the exploration campaign volatiliy that we see quarter on quarter. This is the most of the rationale for this more than any core issue we will have in any of the product line that are there. Now, commenting in the future, we will not comment anymore on Reservoir Characterization as we'll comment on the new divisions that we are setting in place. Part of it will be in Digital, part of it will be in Reservoir Performance division. You will get more detail on this in the coming months.
That's right. Fair enough. Thanks, Olivier.
Thank you, Sean.
Our next question comes from the line of Chris Voie with Wells Fargo, and your line is open.
Thanks. Good morning. First question, just a little bit of a clarification. Sorry if I missed this, but I believe your opening remarks on the outlook suggested flat quarter-over-quarter in the fourth quarter. Is it fair to assume that that applies at the EBITDA line, so just north of $1 billion?
That's a fair assumption. I think we have some favorable and unfavorable play that we believe will balance out and the ambition will be indeed to maintain roughly both the margins and the U.S. dollar on about flat.
Okay, thanks. That's helpful. Secondly, I wonder if you could just give a little more detail on the progression for the cost savings. I guess you were exiting about 80% in the third quarter, should be almost done in the fourth quarter, that's maybe $60-ish million incremental. Should we think there's much left in 2021 from that? Is that international or I imagine that's mostly international based, but is there any progress there in North America as well?
Stéphane?
Yeah, I'll take this, Chris. Yes, we were quite a bit above 80%, so there is a bit left. There will be still a bit left going into Q1. It is mostly on the international, the tail end of it, and North America is mostly complete. You will see a bit more push from this in Q4, but some remainder are going into the first half next year. Does this answer your question?
Just to finish up on that restructuring piece, the cost of those savings is pretty light compared to expectations in the third quarter, around $273. Do you think those costs would be higher in the fourth quarter? I think expectations are near $1 billion for the second half. Will the cost of savings be much higher in the fourth quarter?
Yeah, it's not an exact science there, to be honest. The cash outlays, they get spread out. It could be a little bit higher in the fourth quarter. However, the cash flow from operations traditionally in the fourth quarter also increases. I think we could very well end up with free cash flow, including severance, still quite positive and if everything goes well, could even be higher than in Q3, even though we have higher severance potential.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Chris.
Thank you. Our next question will come from the line of Bill Herbert with Simmons Energy, and your line is open.
Yeah. Good morning.
Morning, Bill.
Thank you. At this point, based upon the dialogue that you're having with your international customers, of course, international on a pro forma basis is going to be 80% of revenues once we consummate OneStim. You mentioned strong customer engagement with regard to the dialogue that you're having for international. At this point, do you think international revenues in 2021 are up year-over-year?
I think the way we look at it, Bill, is to look at the current level of activity. We use more or less the second half of this year as a baseline, because I think the reset for international oil company has happened in the second quarter. For independent, has happened in the second and the third. For national company, has happened in the third. The reset of activity has happened in the last six months. Now we believe that we have stabilized, and we have seen it in the last few weeks, and we don't believe that aside from seasonal impact, we don't believe that there will be a structural adjustment in the short term. That's our baseline. From that baseline, we will anticipate this to get an upside, okay? From that baseline, and to gradually recover from that baseline upward.
To compare year-over-year, including the first quarter of this year up to the mixed international second quarter, including the significant effort in Middle East to increase supply early Q2, I don't think it's realistic. We have to take a baseline of the second half of this year and project forward, and from that base, build back a recovery.
Fair. The COVID-related disruptions that you witnessed in Q3, I would assume, hopefully, are not going to be as acute in 2021. Moving on, with regard to your high grading of your portfolio, we have announced OneStim, and low flow. I'm just curious in terms of what are the most tangible high-grading opportunities remaining in your portfolio?
I think we will continue to focus on each and every business line we have operating in North America. We have already made effort to rationalize and to make sure that we operate in the basin of North America, where we believe we can sustain a differentiation and participate fully, going forward. We have made a choice to accelerate some technology access and fit-for-basin in some part of our portfolio to high-grade the performance. I would say that all of our portfolio, the entire business line, I would say, has opportunity to improve their returns by tuning. I think what we have done on structural reset is lifting. The business line have improved this quarter beyond OneStim. The performance of North America business line this quarter have improved.
We have a way to go to further improve this and to target our recovery of margin in North America. I would say that we do that on both the growth for the market where we have strong alignment, the well construction, the production recovery, the digital. We do that on the bottom line, where we continue to use technology access or restructuring to make sure that we execute with the return we desire in this North America. We'll continue to gradually improve the performance. That's our goal.
What I meant by high grading, though, was additional disposition opportunities in your portfolio.
I will not comment on that. I think we continue to look at every portfolio, and we look at it from the light of, does it bring us the growth and accretive return opportunity in the long run? Do we have a better way to monetize and to be occasionally opportunistic about this portfolio? This is true for those portfolio there and as well as in other market. We'll continue to look at it, and we will be disciplined to making the right decision for the shareholder here.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
We have time for one final question, and that will be from the line of Connor Lynagh with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Thanks for squeezing me in, and good morning.
Morning, Connor.
I was wondering, maybe a higher level one to close it out here. We're about to get a look at your new reporting structure, and I know that Digital & Integration is probably the one that you have the most excitement about growing and improving earnings from. If we remove that from the equation, when we take a look at what you guys are doing in, say, the third quarter in the Reservoir Performance, Well Construction, Production Systems, et cetera, where would you sort of point us to in the near term? By near term, I mean over the next 12 to 18 months here. Where would you see the greatest opportunities for improvement in earnings? Would you say that that is more driven by costs or more driven by select growth opportunities in those portfolios?
No. Setting aside D&I, which have both a margin expansion opportunity and a growth on the back of digital, indeed. I think we can look at it from well construction, where we believe that our market position will benefit from the return of meter drilled worldwide, efficiency of our platform, efficiency of our integration capability that we have formed by putting this well construction. This has an opportunity to solidify our market leadership position and expand and get the benefit of scale. The reservoir performance is where we combine our subsurface and our unique service that exploit both in exploration, in development, and in production intervention, the power of our service connected to the reservoir and to the unique domain knowledge.
I think here we have unique technology differentiation and unique domain knowledge that when the market will need to extract and be more efficient on existing assets to find the next tieback opportunity or to exploit an existing asset to the next life extension, we have fantastic reservoir performance technology. Last is production system. I think here, this is a story of growth. This is a story of expanding horizon beyond what we have today, which is from and beyond and into the midstream. This is a story of addressing the gas market opportunity and connecting the well to the subsea to the surface and creating unique integrated production system with digital as a unique element. Recovery through production system and reservoir performance is what we want to propose to the market.
All right. That's helpful. I'll leave it there. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Connor. Thank you everyone for having attended this call. Before we end this call, I would like to leave you with four key takeaways. Third quarter was another quarter of operational and financial outperformance, made possible by discipline and execution. We made significant progress on the execution of our strategy with key milestones in restructuring North America strategy and expanding the reach of our digital platform. The reset of our earnings power is progressing very well. We anticipate significantly improved operational leverage when we put the trough behind us and activity rebounds, providing us with a platform to materially expand our EBITDA margins and earnings. The quarter was another strong free cash flow performance in the cycle trough, a meaningful step closer to our double-digit free cash flow ambition that will support our priority on deleveraging our balance sheet.
Lastly, the deployment of our new customer-focused organization and our fit-for-basin approach provide us with a great platform to capitalize on a market recovery and deliver on this path. In conclusion, we are executing our performance strategy and are determined to continue taking bold actions to secure resilience and reposition ourselves as clear leaders, both in performance measured by our customers and returns measured by our shareholders. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our call. Operator, you may now disconnect.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. That does conclude your conference call for today. Thank you for your participation and for using AT&T Executive Teleconference Service. You may now disconnect.