Earnings Labs

Tidewater Inc. (TDW)

Q1 2016 Earnings Call· Tue, Aug 11, 2015

$87.29

-4.17%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to the Fiscal 2016 First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. My name is Christine and I will be your operator for today's call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Joe Bennett. You may begin. Joseph M. Bennett - Chief Investor Relations Officer & Executive VP: Thank you, Christine. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Tidewater's first quarter fiscal 2016 earnings results conference call for the period ended June 30, 2015. I'm Joe Bennett, Tidewater's Executive Vice President and Chief Investor Relations Officer, and I want to thank you for your interest in Tidewater. With me this morning on the call are our President and CEO, Jeff Platt; Jeff Gorski, our Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer; Quinn Fanning, our Executive Vice President and CFO; and Bruce Lundstrom, our Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary. We will follow our usual conference call format. Following these formalities, I'll turn the call over to Jeff for his initial comments to be followed by Quinn's financial review. Jeff will then provide some final wrap-up comments and we will then open the call for your questions. During today's conference call, we may make certain comments that are forward-looking and not statements of historical fact. I know that you understand that there are risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the company's actual future performance to be materially different from that stated or implied by any comment that we may make during today's conference call. Additional information concerning the factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those stated or implied by the forward-looking statements may be found in the Risk Factors section…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our first question is from George O'Leary of TPH & Company. Please go ahead. George O’Leary - Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. Securities, Inc.: Good morning, guys. Jeffrey M. Platt - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning, George. George O’Leary - Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. Securities, Inc.: So far in this downturn, we haven't really seen anyone pushed to scrap the vessels. And historically, you guys have actually been a good behaver on that front and had been – proactively scrapped vessels as you've not seen an opportunity for them to continue to work. What do you think it takes to get some players with older assets to start scrapping and helping this market heal? Jeffrey M. Platt - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, George, a couple of things. First, we've kind of gone through that. And our fleet, for the most part, is all newer vessels. We have a handful of older vessels left, but – so that really doesn't apply much to us. Secondly, in the past – I've talked about this – in the total OSV space, there's probably 600, 700 older vessels that are greater than 25 years old. Quite frankly, I think a lot of those have already left. So I think additional scrapping, while it may occur, is not going to be really the answer to bring the supply-demand dynamics back in place. And people that are still operating older vessels, quite frankly, in this environment when they come up on regulatory dry-dockings, making that business case, I can just tell you that becomes increasingly difficult. So, that's about all I can say. George O’Leary - Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. Securities, Inc.: That's helpful color. And then you mentioned in your commentary that you are…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Matthias Detjen of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Matthias Detjen - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Thank you very much for taking my question. So I had a question on the stacked vessel sales. If you could give us a few more details there, whether it's some of the newer vessels or the older vessels. And maybe if you could like – so like tell us who the buyers might be for these kind of vessels. Quinn P. Fanning - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Well, I guess a number of things I'd clarify is we have stacked both older and newer previously active vessels. As Jeff mentioned, the range in age of vessels that we have stacked has been from less than a year, so essentially, brand-new equipment that's been delivered, to something over 30 years. We have not sold any vessels that are recent vintage, at least nothing that comes to mind from my perspective. But when we do sell vessels, back to the last question, there's been, I'd say, over the years 15% to 20%, maybe even 25% at times that we have scrapped vessels. The vast majority of everything else has been sold into non-class markets. Again, Nigerian security support, Caribbean cargo trade, fishing, shrimping, anything you can imagine, we have sold vessels into it. Jeffrey M. Platt - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: But it really doesn't come back to compete against us. Quinn P. Fanning - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah, and it's in the oil and gas market, that's at the very low end that we are really not competing for. I guess the only thing that if you go back to kind of our historical definition of new versus…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Turner Holm of Clarksons Platou. Please go ahead.

Turner Holm - Clarksons Platou Securities AS

Analyst

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my call. Just a quick follow-up on Brazil. One of your competitors mentioned in an SEC filing last week that they see Petrobras moving towards an all-Brazilian-flagged fleet on – do you agree with that statement or do you guys see it differently? Jeffrey M. Platt - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Turner, Brazil has been moving to an all-Brazil fleet for 20-some years. Again, I'm not going to take opposition with any public statements that are out there. I think at the end of the day, an all-Brazilian fleet doesn't necessarily meet the market's needs or Petrobras' needs.

Turner Holm - Clarksons Platou Securities AS

Analyst

Okay. I appreciate that. And then just on the new-build program, you talked about taking a closer look at some of those vessels, and just curious how you think about maybe which vessels that you go forward with and which vessels maybe you look at canceling if that seems appropriate? And any color you can provide in terms of your new-build vessels kind of maybe how many you might be able to cancel if you chose to do? Jeffrey M. Platt - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: No, Turner, I don't think we're going to go down that path. I mean, we are looking at all of our construction projects, and I've stated in the past that when we placed orders at yards, we liked that equipment, that's the reason we placed the orders that they have. We think functionality and they do have a place in our fleet on a go-forward basis. When other people don't live up to their side of the contract, certainly, in this environment we have to look at every contract, and we'll continue to do so.

Turner Holm - Clarksons Platou Securities AS

Analyst

Okay. Thank you, gentlemen. Appreciate it. Jeffrey M. Platt - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Greg Lewis of Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Gregory Lewis - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Yes. Thank you, and good morning. Jeffrey M. Platt - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning, Greg. Quinn P. Fanning - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Good morning, Greg. Gregory Lewis - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Hey, Jeff, in your prepared remarks you kind of mentioned things for things, and you kind of walked through some scenarios. I guess it's like a two-part question, are we starting to see trends – are we starting to see contracts and renegotiations where there are actually things for things happening? Or is it still sort of in the initial phases? And then just following up on that, you mentioned the potential of taking new equipment as well as part of a lower day rate price for the contract. Is that also something that's happening? Because I would think that would seem pretty encouraging. Jeffrey M. Platt - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Greg, I'll answer the first part. I think we are fairly well along in our opinion of reviewing contract positions with the majority of our clients, okay? That's been ongoing, gosh, since the first of the year. So, I think we're fairly well along with that. It's not to say that there won't be more coming down the path, but trading some things for things, we've – I think we've kind of worked our way through quite a bit of that. And I didn't quite understand the second part of your question. Could you reiterate that again, please? Gregory Lewis - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Sure. Yeah. I mean, there's obviously the things for things, part of that…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question is from Cole Sullivan of Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Coleman W. Sullivan - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Hi. Good morning. Jeffrey M. Platt - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning, Cole.

Coleman W. Sullivan - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Morning. The question I had was on the guidance for Quinn. On the revenue guidance, if I recalled correctly, I think it was $275 million average over the next three quarters. And it sounded like there were – it implied lower, obviously, from the June quarter. But how would that cadence kind of progress through the year? It sounded like you would kind of maybe start on the higher end and end on the lower end. Is that the right way to think about that? Quinn P. Fanning - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: I think what well, number one, I'd clarify is we do our forecast on a quarterly basis, and we update it regularly. The $275 million number that I referenced is what based on our current forecast for the remainder of the fiscal year – obviously, that would be a one plus three quarters, one quarter actual, three quarters projected – would imply, if our forecast proves to be right, an average of $275 million in vessel revenue per quarter. Obviously, we've just printed a quarter at $298 million. That would imply that the remaining three quarters would be something less than what we've already reported in order to get down to that $275 million current expectation when we look at the year in retrospect sometime in April or May of next year. I think trying to get into how we see the pattern developing is really the reason and how difficult that is today is the reason that we've tried to frame this as a multi-quarter expectation based on a current forecast. What vessels are ultimately going to be dry docked, when they're going to be dry-docked, and how the customer projects move forward, stall, don't move forward, and so on and so forth is really what we're trying to give you is that – we're giving you the best estimate we have. Others have chosen not to provide guidance. Ours may prove to be incorrect, but we're giving it the old college try.

Coleman W. Sullivan - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay. Quinn P. Fanning - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: The other thing that I would emphasize is that we have developed a degree of confidence internally that if revenue comes in slightly worse than expected, we will respond appropriately with reduction in costs. So, if I was to rank where I feel better about our guidance than worse, the specific number of vessel revenue, the timing of that vessel revenue is very difficult to get comfortable with today. However, I feel relatively good that if revenue comes in lower than expected, we will do the appropriate and necessary and that we'll be able to sustain that 36% to 40% gross margin number that I used. So, again, how do utilization and the stacking process plays out, really tough to call because of the job-by-job, quarter-by-quarter deal, but we are comfortable that we'll do the necessary if revenue comes up short. And again, if we beat these numbers at the end of the day because there's more work, fewer vessels go to stack, it's obviously going to come with additional operating costs because we're not going to be putting boats to work with our crews. So...

Coleman W. Sullivan - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Sure. Quinn P. Fanning - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Again, tough to forecast in the current environment. Others have chosen not to. We're pretty open kimono in our approach. And if we have an update, we'll provide it. But this is as we see it today.

Coleman W. Sullivan - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay. And thanks for clarifying. And just real quick on that. And did you say that that average included the first quarter? Quinn P. Fanning - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yes.

Coleman W. Sullivan - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay. And then secondly on the operating margin, you guys give 36% to 40%. Is that the annual average or is that sort of a quarterly expectation over the next three quarters? Quinn P. Fanning - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: It's a quarterly expectation, but the annual average would likewise fall in that range. I think we reported 39.9% in the quarter just completed.

Coleman W. Sullivan - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay. All right. I appreciate it, and I'll turn it back. Quinn P. Fanning - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Thank you. Jeffrey M. Platt - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Cole.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And we have no further questions at this time. Joseph M. Bennett - Chief Investor Relations Officer & Executive VP: Well, I think we'll wrap it up then, Christine. Thanks for hosting the call today for us. And I appreciate everyone's interest in Tidewater and have a great day.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today's conference. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.