Clay C. Williams
Analyst · Dahlman Rose
Thanks, Pete. National Oilwell Varco posted strong earnings for its first quarter of 2012, generating earnings for $1.44 per fully diluted share, up 44% from a year ago and a 5% from last year including transaction and devaluation charges from all periods. Revenues were a record $4.3 billion, up 37% from the year-earlier quarter and up slightly from the fourth quarter of 2011. Operating profit x transaction charges was $881 million and consolidating operating margins were 20.5%, both up sequentially and year-over-year. Operating leverage or flow-through was 48% on a small sequential revenue gain and 22% on the 37% year-over-year revenue gain. Our consolidated results show a shift in margins between 2 segments. Solid sequential margins gains within Petroleum Services & Supplies offset sequential declines in Rig Technology. Distribution & Transmission margins were down just slightly from a very strong level in Q4. Our businesses performed well in the first quarter, benefiting from high levels of activity in North America and abroad, as well as a great starting backlog of orders. Like others, we are watching closely the impact of low North American gas prices on activity, and we are shifting our operations from gassy basins to liquids-rich plays but we remain cautiously optimistic that rising oil rig activity will continue to offset falling demand for gas rigs across North America. Elsewhere around the globe, we foresee continued interest in Shale Gas Technologies onshore, and blossoming deepwater activity offshore. We have made good progress in deploying capital to better position National Oilwell Varco to better serve our customers through investments in new plants in spare parts and repair inventory to support our installed base and in acquisitions. And this quarter's results reflect contributions from all 3. New facilities for downhole tools, drill pipe, Fiberglass Pipe, coil tubing units, pressure-pumping equipment, tubular inspection, encoding and pumps, plus capacity expansions for top drives, block preventers, coil tubing and aftermarket services are beginning to contribute. We've also been able to step up our acquisition space over the past 12 months, with Ameron and NKT Flexibles and several other smaller deals. We've announced the acquisition of Wilson Supply from Schlumberger, and we hope to close our acquisition of Interflow, a Canadian manufacturer of well stimulation equipment with over 600 employees within the next few days. All with a view to strengthen NOV's product and service offerings for the benefit of our customers and shareholders for decades to come as the oil and gas industry transitions to a world where energy needs are met by deepwater technology, by horizontal factory drilling and by hydraulic pressure stimulation, into which NOV is the leading technology provider. Turning to our segment operating results, the Rig Technology group generated revenues of $2,259,000,000 in the first quarter, down 2% sequentially, but up 40% compared to the first quarter of 2011. Operating profit was $551 million, yielding operating margins for the group of 24.4%, down 160 basis points from the prior quarter and down 180 basis points from the first quarter last year. Decremental leverage was 91% on the modest sequential sales decline and compared to the first quarter of 2011, incremental leverage or flow-through was 20% on a 40% sales increase, due to gradual mix shift toward lower margin projects that we've discussed before. Inquiries and orders had been very strong and offshore drilling customers euphoric. The stars of $100 crude, high and rising day rates, hungry shipyards and open capital markets seem to be aligned. We believe whole prices are down 1% to 2% from mid-2011 peaks. And shipyards are eager to replace dwindling backlogs of dry bulk shipping and other conventional vessels. While the outlook for jack-ups is strong too, we would characterize it as less buoyant than the demand for floaters, with more second- and third-tier contractors, NOC's and startup interests for jack ups than we see in the floater area. While drillship demand dominated our orders last year, recent interest in semi-submersibles mostly for the North Sea has picked up, as has had increase for subsea construction vessel equipment like active heave cranes. First quarter bookings totaled $1,911,000,000, up 15% sequentially and included 4 floating rig packages, 1 floating well intervention vessel package and 2 jack-up packages. We shipped $1,711,000,000 out of backlog, down 4% sequentially, leaving a quarter-end level of $10,363,000,000, an improvement of about 2% from the start of the quarter. At March 31, 2012, about 16% of the segment's backlog for capital equipment was for land, 84% for offshore and 14% was for domestic markets, 86% for international markets. Of orders in the backlog at quarter-end, we expect $5.2 billion to flow out as revenue through the remainder of the year, $2.9 billion to flow out in 2013 and the balance to convert to revenue thereafter. We delivered 5 floaters and 1 jack up during the first quarter, bringing our total to 132 offshore rigs supplied to the industry since 2005. First quarter bookings did not include any additional rigs for Brazil, although we are working on new drilling equipment package contracts for that market related to indigenous new newbuild programs by Petrobras and its rig financing arm Sete. Our previously announced contract with EAS for 7 drillships is being converted from an SHI [ph] design to an LNG design, and we look forward to starting to cut the first iron for this program soon. On our March 31 balance sheet, you'll see that inventory increased $498 million during the first quarter on a consolidated basis. About half of this increase was in the Rig Technology segment due to, one, the acceleration of the rig construction process as compared to the 2006, 2010 cycle, which requires NOV drilling equipment package components to be manufactured at a faster pace; two, lower level of completed contracts revenues this quarter, down about $123 million sequentially; and three, our intentional investment in spare parts to support our customers. We've noted on past calls that the shipyards are shaped 10 months or more off the build schedules for drillships as our key-side resources have loosened. This requires accelerated component velocities to our plans to accommodate their new speedier schedules and our inventory levels reflect this. Demand for individuals subsea BOP stacks not associated with offshore newbuild rigs contributed to the strong Q1 order levels and we expect the same in Q2. As drilling contractors seek replacements for stacks unable to be certified, and for fleet spares. Forgings with these are long lead time items too, which further contributed to our inventory growth. Prompted by E&P operators, more and more newbuild floaters seem to be adding a second BOP stack. Consequently, we are adding a fifth and sixth rig-up pad to our plant in Houston to accommodate all this demand and presently training 170 students at 1 of our 5 technical colleges located around the globe. Orders for turret mooring system or FPSOs remained light in Q1, with a couple of major FPSO owner/operators struggling with cash flow issues but we believe we are nevertheless very close to signing up a couple of meaningful turret orders later this year and continue to remain busy remain busy with the quotations. We will also begin to see some contribution to our subsea production business in Q2, following the closing of our NKT Flexibles acquisition in early April, which brings National Oilwell Varco flexible piping solutions for subsea developments. Land drilling demand -- land rig -- land drilling rig demand grew slightly in the first quarter, which we view as temporary and perhaps budget-related after a strong fourth quarter. We see more tangible operator activism on pulling new technology into the marketplace, the AC-powered, electronically controlled, robotic pipe-handling 21st century rigs that we referred to on many previous calls. Although terms of appear to be shortening from 3 years, down to 1 or 2 years, term contracts at strong day rates being offered -- are being offered nonetheless to joint contractors to build new 21st century rigs even as old rigs sit idle offering pretty compelling evidence that operators prefer these new rigs. The land drilling industry also appears to be moving toward rig replacements and additions in larger quanta, bigger, more systematic build programs as opposed to onesies and twosies, which enables these operators to institutionalize crew training, operating procedures, equipment standardization. In short, bring industrially efficient methods to the systematic replacement of their increasing obsolete old rig fleets. Although less evolved in the North American market, we see a similar pool of 21st century rig technology into drilling markets in Latin America, the Far East, the Middle East and most recently, with our new CE ATEX-rated rig design, Eastern Europe. We expect this trend to accelerate as operators gain experience with these cool new rig toys. Perhaps contrary to conventional wisdom, orders for well intervention equipment and spares remain very strong in the first quarter, falling just slightly sequentially for pressure pumping equipment and coming in roughly even with high demand levels seen in the first quarter of last year. Coil tubing and pressure pumping equipment is largely sold out until early 2013. To the extent we see any incremental ordering weakness, we would characterize it as small independents and dry gas regions but nevertheless, we won orders from 2 more North Americans startup pressure pumpers just last week, and quoting activity still remains risque. Our window may not necessarily be representative since about 40% of well intervention equipment we sell goes overseas, with China and the Middle East particularly hungry for hydro rig coil tubing equipment and rolling on frac spreads these days. We also sell ASEP Elmar wire line units through this product line and have seen good demand and excellent margin performance for these in the first quarter. Sales of aftermarket spares and services improved 3% for the Rig Technology group sequentially, helped by strong demand for BOP and well interventions spares. Non-backlog capital sales declined sequentially. Looking forward into the second quarter of 2012, we expect a good quarter for orders for Rig Technology. Both offshore packages and complete land rig orders should be strong, but we see -- we may see pressure pumping equipment orders cooling. Second quarter revenues for the group are expected to be up in the mid-single-digit percentage range, but we expect operating margins to tick down slightly, owing to NKT flowing in at diluted margins, partly offset by rising margins in offshore drilling equipment. The Petroleum Services & Supplies segment posted a bang-up quarter, with revenues of $1,704,000,000, up 9% sequentially and up 35% year-over-year. Operating profit was $388 million and operating margins were a stout 22.8%, up 360 basis points sequentially. Compared to the fourth quarter of 2011, the $134 million revenue increase produced 65% operating leverage or flow-through, and year-over-year flow-through was 32%, both helped by higher volumes, improved pricing, cost reductions in some international areas and outstanding execution on integration of recent acquisitions within fiberglass systems and mission in particular. From a regional perspective, U.S. revenues grew 19% sequentially and totaled 54% of the segment's mix in the first quarter. Canada improved 16% and totaled 8% of the mix and International revenues declined 2% due mostly to weather issues in Europe and lower sales in the UAE, offset by gains in Brazil and Russia. Strong sequential performance was posted in several business units. National Oilwell Varco's Downhole Tools business had a tremendous quarter, benefiting from steady adoption of horizontal drilling and a high interest in drilling optimization. Capacity from our new Houston plant and lean manufacturing initiatives at existing plants enabled us to respond quickly to high demand and helped improve the utilization of our rental fleet. Latin America posted record results and margins in Europe moved up substantially. Demand for agitators and for our new thermal abrasion-resistant Helios spin technology also contributed to the strong results. Several new downhole technologies are in various stages of field trials, so our outlook is bright. Downhole tools, together with our IntelliServ joint venture with Schlumberger, achieved an important milestone this quarter. We transmitted high-speed, real-time downhole drilling mechanics measurements to control the surface machinery on the rig to optimize the drilling process. This is very, very exciting given that this is the first time to our knowledge that anyone in the industry has ever done this on a real well in the field, and the immediate impact on the drilling speed was remarkable. Fiberglass had a great quarter too. First quarter results included a full quarter of the composite pipe sales from Ameron, which we closed in October of last year. Solid demand and decisive execution of the integration plan lifted combined margins for the business nearly 500 basis points sequentially on strong volume gains, particularly for composite piping systems for FPSOs. The outlook is good as well as the group proceeds with product rationalization and operational improvements between the 2 heritage organization and as we hit our stride on a newly opened plant in Oman. Drill pipe volumes and margins improved sharply in the first quarter. After spiking last year, purchases of more expensive third-party green tubes subsided a bit this quarter, lifting margins considerably. Mix was essentially unchanged from Q4, with about 2/3 of our sales consisting of premium pipe. Orders exceeded shipments, as offshore newbuild orders began to flow in, about 20 in the first quarter, lifting our average price per foot in our backlog and pushing backlog up nearly 60% above year ago levels. We continue to pursue drill pipe orders for more than 60 newbuild offshore rigs. Land drillers have moved towards using paper strings to limit demand for premium 4-inch XD pipe, a proprietary NOV offering, and maximize use of 5-inch API pipe, which they already have in abundance. So pricing leverage for drill pipe appears to be flattening. Our Mission pump and flow iron products also enjoyed great demand in the first quarter. Pumps for new build land rigs, 2 small acquisitions, and sharp sequential demand growth for reciprocating pumps contributed to double-digit sales growth increases, along with higher-pressure vessel sales and price increases pushed through last year. The group is developing some flow process products that will further augment NOV's product package for FPSOs, produce water, de-sanders and de-oilers, separators and transfer pumps, as well as innovating new flow iron products, for land based hydraulic frac jobs. The high domestic rig count, coupled with high drilling productivity has increased the velocity of casing and tubing through the system. As rigs move faster and steadily trend drilling days from wells, tubular consumption rises in the aggregate. Pipe mills add capacity and runs and our tubular scope, tubular inspection and coding operations are, as a result, full of pipe and busy. Our Houston Sheldon Road pipe yard complex, for example, unloaded nearly 19,000 truckloads of pipe during the first quarter. That's a load every 7 minutes, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, during the quarter. Our Houston tubular coating operation is largely booked through the year and our crew is operating inline QAQC services at external pipe mills and pipe processors across the country, inspected 90,000 more pieces in Q1 than the preceding quarter. Offshore operators are assembling the casing, tubing and conductor pipe they need along the Gulf Coast as the Gulf of Mexico returns to a more normal level of activity, which has led the rising backlogs for NOV's conductor pipe connections provided by XL Systems. This group will open a new plant in Q4 to help meet rising offshore demand. NOV's well site services saw strong demand for solids [ph] control equipment and generator rentals across North America during the first quarter, benefiting as well from improvements from the Gulf of Mexico. Despite transition costs arising for the migration of operations from gas basins like the Haynesville and Barnett into the oil regions of the Eagle Ford and Permian and Bakken, margins were very solid through the quarter. Party sales were down after a strong Q4 and project delays in Q1, but Mexico improved due in part to recent acquisition and Brazil remained strong. Our new coil tubing mill contributed to a nice quarter at Quality Tubing, which saw demand for coil tubing continue to climb as NOV steadily adds to the worldwide coil tubing unit fleet. We are constructing yet another new mill, which will be online in early 2013 and see continued strong demand for the next several years. Looking into the second quarter of 2012, we expect Petroleum Services & Supplies segment sales to be roughly flat with the first quarter but at lower margins. While we expect sequential growth in demand for certain products and services the segment offers, these will be partly offset by seasonal declines in Canada due to break up when authorities enact road bans on large loads during the spring fall to prevent damage. Canadian break up began a little early this year but we're hopeful it will be shorter than is typical. But it nevertheless hits our financial statements with very high operating leverage. We're also watching cost closely as freight and resin, and certain grades of steel are starting to rise perhaps following the price of oil. Turning to our Distribution & Transmission segment, first quarter sales were $564 million, up 1% from the fourth quarter of 2011 and up 38% from the first quarter of 2011. Operating profit was $43 million and operating margins were a solid 7.6% of sales. Year-over-year, incremental flow-through or operating leverage was 10%. Mix for the group's first quarter was 72% North America, and 28% international. Distribution services is benefiting from the capacity additions in pressure pumping, which appears to be accelerating the completion of wells previously drilled. The hook-up of a liquids well, with its tank batteries and plumbing at $50,000 to $70,000, can easily be 10x out of a dry gas well hook-up for us. As horsepower tightness has eased in oil regions, completions appear to be accelerating, helping the unit achieve high single-digit sequential growth in North America. While top line growth was good, we saw margins drift lower due to reduced supplier discounts and rebates tied to annual purchase volumes in the first quarter as compared to the fourth quarter, as we restarted our purchase volume meters at the beginning of the year. The Distribution Services group rolled out a new consigned inventory business model for land rigs last month, which we are pretty excited about. The first container full of MRO drilling supplies went into service for a major land drilling contractor and, while we are working out the procedures around physical inventory counts and resupply, I'd say so far, so good and IOC has contracted for 5 of these units and we are excited about pioneering a new business model with their support. We are opening 6 DSCs in North American through the first half of 2012, shifting our base of support to better conform with the migration of rigs into liquids areas, and we're opening 2 DSCs internationally in Columbia and Sumatra. Industrial demand for Mono pumps was surprisingly strong in the U.S., China and Latin America for the group through the first quarter. We faced some supply chain issues out of Asia and Argentina, and we are beginning to see costs rise for some of the specialty steels we purchased, have taken steps to address these with our supply chain. Rig count-driven demand for power sections for drilling motors and our official lift products is very high, although a couple of large artificial lift products sales were delayed out of the first quarter. I mentioned earlier our agreement with Schlumberger to acquire their Wilson Supply business, and we are working to try to close that transaction sometime this summer. Wilson is an outstanding franchise that, like us, dates back to the early days in the oil field. It will bring new channels into new midstream and downstream markets to our considerable portfolio of NOV product and we are excited about the many new opportunities that lay ahead for our combined businesses and eager to welcome Wilson's 2,500 employees to NOV. Looking into the second quarter of 2012, we expect Distribution & Transmission group revenues and margins to decline slightly, primarily due to seasonal declines in Canada due to break up, partly offset by higher sequential sales from transmission and mono group efforts. Turning to National Oilwell Varco's consolidated first quarter income statement, SG&A decreased $37 million due to lower incentive compensation accruals and overhead reductions quarter-to-quarter associated with Ameron acquisition last year. SG&A as a percent of sales was 9.1% in the first quarter, down from 10% last quarter and down from 11.6% last year. Equity income at our Voest-Alpine joint venture was $17 million, up $5 million sequentially on much higher casing shipments into North America. We expect equity income to decline in the second quarter. Other expense was unchanged from the fourth quarter. The tax rate from the first quarter was lower than expected at 30.8%, which benefited from discrete FX movements in our European operations. We expect next quarter, our tax rate will return to the range of 33%. Unallocated expenses and eliminations on our supplemental segment schedule was $101 million in the first quarter, up $12 million sequentially due to higher intersegment sales eliminations, partly offset by sequentially improved or lower incentive compensation in other items. Depreciation and amortization was $148 million, up $6 million from the fourth quarter on acquisitions and high 2011 CapEx. EBITDA, excluding transaction charges, was a record $1,038,000,000, up $31 million sequentially to 24.1% of sales. National Oilwell Varco's March 31, 2012, balance sheet employed working capital excluding cash and debt of $4.4 billion or 25.3% of annualized sales, up $842 million from the fourth quarter due to several factors: Inventory accounted for about 60% of our working capital growth due in part to backlog requirements and Rig Technology that I discussed earlier and in part to new plants that we've been opening and new acquisitions that we've made across our other segments. Additionally, customer financing of our backlog to the net of prepayments and billings in excess of cost, less cost in excess of billings, declined $175 million sequentially and the payout of annual incentive compensation during the first quarter also increased working capital by reducing accrued liabilities. Cash flow used by operations was $64 million for the first quarter due primarily to the working capital items I just mentioned. CapEx declined sharply, down $53 million sequentially to $113 million, but we expect CapEx to pick back up in the second quarter and for the full year 2012 to be in the range of $650 million, as we continue to pursue a number of expansion opportunities. NOV's cash balance was $3.4 billion at March 31, 2012, and is presently about $2.7 billion following the NKT acquisition, with about 88% of it located overseas. Now I will turn it back to Pete.