Weatherford International plc (NASDAQ:WFRD) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Girish Saligram: Not really, James. Look, I think I’ll expand a little bit on what we’ve talked about. We really for a while, M&A has been something we’ve not considered just given some of the historical issues that we’ve had [Technical Difficulty]. We’ve been a lot more comfortable and confident. But for us, integration is still the primary thing. We want to make sure that anything that we do regardless of size or scale, we have the bandwidth and the capacity to integrate because sometimes, look, whether it is a $30 million company or a $3 billion company, a lot of this stuff is similar. But for us, it’s not about scale. We really look at it from a perspective of strategic fit, margin accretion, cash generation, the deleveraging component and where can we really add value to that business to scale it and grow it.

So we are very open on what the size is, but you’re not actively pursuing a specific size of set and say that’s what we’ve got to get after. We look at it and say what actually makes sense for the business, and we’ll look at things that come along from that standpoint.

James West: Okay. Makes sense. And then from a capital allocation or shareholder return strategies and as you’ve gotten the balance sheet in great shape here. How are you thinking about potentially returning capital to shareholders?

Arun Mitra: James, good morning. James, as we’ve mentioned before, our priorities were to get access from more liquidity, get access to liquidity, which is cheaper than eliminate restrictions associated with liquidity and potential capital allocation framework, which is what we’ve done. And now the next step, as Girish mentioned in his remarks, is to announce a comprehensive framework, which will include shareholder returns, but amongst other things, will include continued debt reduction as well. So you can expect us to talk more about that in the second half – second half year.

James West: Thanks, Arun. Thanks, Girish.

Girish Saligram: Thank you, James.

Arun Mitra: Thanks, James.

Operator: And our next question today comes from Jim Rollyson with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Jim Rollyson: Hey, good morning, guys. I would echo the same things that Luke said about the progress. It’s been phenomenal to watch. Arun, question for you on cash. You guys are still sitting on quite a bit of cash, recently upgraded the size of the credit facility about to pay off the notes and you just mentioned further debt reduction. But kind of curious as you look forward as your credit facility has increased in size here over the last few quarters, like how much cash do you guys think about needing to sit on? Or what drives that?

Arun Mitra: Look, I mean we always want to be able to sit on cash, which takes care of the risk, right? And I’m not going to say that we have enough cash now or we have more cash than we need now. But what I can tell you is once we shed more light on the capital allocation framework, which will include the shareholder return policy and our debt targets, you will get a sense of how much liquidity we will sit on going forward. So yes, we feel good about the access to liquidity that we have compared to before. And that translates to our confidence that we communicated about us being able to come up with a comprehensive framework in the second half of the year. So you can expect to hear more about this in more detail in the second half.

Girish Saligram: And if I could just add to that, Jim. Look, I think if you look back in the history, right, what we have done, there’s a pretty clear match between the cash on the balance sheet, the free cash flow we’ve generated and the debt reduction, right? Even take yesterday or last night’s announcement, for example, we announced the increase in liquidity, simultaneously the redemption. So yes, there is cash on the balance sheet, but we are going to take that and pay off the secured notes. So we are doing this very methodically to make sure we’ve got the right liquidity, as Arun said, and we always want to make sure that we’ve got enough protection against any sort of interest for the company.

Jim Rollyson: Yes. It makes perfect sense. And then just as a follow-up. Obviously, some recent consolidation ongoing in one of your main markets in artificial lift market. Curious if you have any views on how you think that might impact the market? And does that create benefits for you potentially? Or just kind of how you see that?

Girish Saligram: Well, look, we always look at these things with the duality, right? On the one hand, it is a very formidable combination. And so they’ve got tremendous respect for both organizations and that combination will likely create more opportunities for them. At the same time, we also look at it as an opportunity for ourselves. And so we will focus on driving innovation and serving our customers. I do think it’s important, though, to point out that on the artificial lift space, again, we don’t play in the ESP space. We really play in all other forms of lift. So it’s a little bit more insulated for us, if you will.

Jim Rollyson: Got it. Thank you, guys. Have a great day.

Girish Saligram: Thank you.

Operator: And our next question today comes from Doug Becker with Capital One. Please go ahead.

Doug Becker: Thank you. Girish, I was hoping you could expand on the prospects for the OpEx versus the drilling and completion spending cycle just as it relates to the company, in particular, you’re thinking about the longer-term growth prospects for PRI.

Girish Saligram: Yes. Look, I think longer-term, we continue to be very excited. OpEx spend, we believe, will continue to increase. And it depends upon the geography, you look at in terms of the rate of growth, right? As I pointed out in my prepared remarks, right now, we really see DRE leading a little bit but PRI eventually will follow. So I think that rate of growth will modulate. But look, even as you look at this year, Q1 was a little bit different. It’s got some dynamics around seasonality that typically happens as well as what we have talked about some of the complexity in Russia, etcetera. But over the course of the year, we see PRI growing very decently over the course of the year. And especially, look, for our interventions business, as we look at more production optimization, our Digital Solutions business, a greater amount of focus on plug-in abandonment, slot recoveries, those kinds of things.