Schlumberger Limited (NYSE:SLB) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Olivier Le Peuch: Yeah. I think that’s what we are predicting as well. I think, as I have indicated, the deepwater, we see the highest activity uptick compared to shallow and land, because land is being impacted by the activity compression and decline in Russia internationally and hence this is what we anticipate as well and we don’t expect this to stop at the end of the quarter or next year. So this trend is set to continue indeed.

David Anderson: Okay. Thank you.

Olivier Le Peuch: Thank you.

Operator: Next we go to Chase Mulvehill with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Chase Mulvehill: Hey. Good morning, everyone. So

Olivier Le Peuch: Hi. Good morning, Chase.

Chase Mulvehill: Good morning. Obviously, you covered a lot of ground on kind of international, the outlook, the multiyear outlook, pricing momentum is starting to build and we touched a little bit on Dave’s question here on offshore. So I kind of want to dig on — dig into that a little bit more and talk specifically on subsea. We keep hearing a lot of anecdotes out there, some really strong margins that are starting to get booked in backlog. So could you speak to the subsea market, what kind of fundamentals you are seeing out there and I don’t know if you are willing to kind of talk to — if you think the industry, not necessarily Schlumberger, but if the industry can kind of get back to prior cycle peak margins on the subsea side?

Olivier Le Peuch: I cannot comment on that industry. I think I can comment on what I see as activity outlook and what we see in our backlog and type of activity for subsea. So the undercurrent, if I was to use that terminology for subsea are very strong, because on the outlook, the mid- and long-term outlook, because of this deepwater activity that includes exploration appraisal and future development. FID — offshore FID for 2023 is set to be the high since 2012, 2013, indicating that there is a pipeline of subsea activity in the horizon and we have seen some of it materializing in our work this year. We are seeing also some infill drilling, tieback activity, which benefited us in recent quarters and we are very reassured that the market is inflecting for further growth.

And indeed, the conditions are set for price to be accretive into the margin, into the backlog going forward to build up and to resume some extent previous subsea margin. But I cannot comment on the industry at large, but I believe this is an industry that is very critical to the success of offshore development and where we see a lot of collaboration, engagement, technology development and critical technologies like subsea processing, boosting and trends are positive as we see it. And we are — as you know, we made a strategic decision to align with — to form a JV with Aker Solutions and Subsea 7 to address that market opportunity, and that this announcement reflects our view on the market.

Chase Mulvehill: Yeah. Absolutely. All right. And just one follow-up unrelated, if we kind of look at 1Q and just kind of think about the moving pieces, you walked through some of this with international seasonality. I didn’t hear anything kind of explicitly on North America, but I don’t know if you can kind of just step us through 1Q moving pieces between North America and international and maybe some color around margins?

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