Weatherford International plc (NASDAQ:WFRD) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Girishchandra Saligram: Ati, look, I think a couple of things, right? Normalized is a very broad word for — and it’s all relative to a certain extent. I think we have made some tremendous progress on working capital efficiencies but I don’t believe we are fully done yet. Look, the other thing for us is you have to recognize as you think about EBITDA to free cash flow conversion is we still have a sizable chunk of debt, right? So our debt and our interest payments, while they’re very manageable now, our blended cost of debt is approximately 8%, which in today’s market is very competitive. We think we can certainly manage that, but it does create a little bit of a bump, if you will, on that conversion ratio. So I think we’ve got to take a little bit more time.

And hopefully, by the second half of this year, we’ll be able to talk a little bit more about from your perspective, what that normalized sense means. But we still think we’ve got opportunities to improve our overall working capital side, especially on our payable side.

Atidrip Modak: Got it. And then, Arun, maybe one for you. Firstly, congratulations on the role, and we look forward to working with you. I’d like to get your view on what your key areas of focus are for the firm as you think about the role? And how do you think about the capital allocation priorities for the firm in terms of just the milestones you would like to achieve?

Arunava Mitra: Thank you, Ati. Yes, I’m very excited to be in the role, a lot of work to be done, but a tremendous amount of progress has already been made and the excitement is palpable. So I’m very excited to be here. But I think to — as Girish mentioned earlier, there is still work to be done on the working capital optimization. So I’d like to get to, on an unlevered basis, 40% to 50% conversion. In terms of capital allocation priorities, as Girish has mentioned several times in the past, our priority is to recalibrate our debt structure, work on our debt, keep paying down debt, so that we have the flexibility and the resilience on our balance sheet when the down cycle hits. So resilience of the balance sheet is a clear priority at this stage.

Operator: And our next question today comes from James Hubbard with Deutsche Bank.

James Hubbard: Congrats on great results, the others have said. My first question is, I’ve been listening to all week BP, Shell and Total and others. They claim that they’re saying mid — low single-digit inflation on all of their CapEx. And of course, we’ve heard that story before from those guys and then it all goes in a different direction. But I’m just wondering, can you help me reconcile that with the obvious margin expansion we’re seeing in the U.S. oilfield service sector yourselves included? I’m just wondering, do you not do much work for the majors? Is that the answer? And then secondly, more philosophically, traditionally very cyclical sector and 20%, 25% EBITDA margins maybe to look forward to in the next few years.