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

Unidentified Analyst: Girish, I wanted to approach the margin outlook a little differently. Last year, Weatherford Group EBITDA margin’s more than 300 basis points. Guidance for this year calls for at least 100 basis points of margin improvement and full disclosure, I’m trying to gauge the potential upside to that, but what assumptions around pricing benefits from the fulfillment initiatives are really needed just to reach that 100 basis point of margin expansion?

Girishchandra Saligram: Yes. Doug, look, I will start off with saying our mentality and our approach of really being credible in terms of the guidance that we give and making sure that we have a pathway and a line of sight and having full transparency on how we get there and what changes, has not changed at all. If you recollect, even last year, look, we started at, at least 50 basis points, and we worked our way up as we saw more, and we saw activity in . Look, as we have planned out this year, we have built in some assumptions on cost increases in terms of inflation. We have built in assumptions on wage increases. This is a high inflationary environment for all of our team members, so we are going to be doing a merit increase.

That’s something that’s very important. And we have, as Arun mentioned, some start-up costs on these new contracts, nothing untoward, nothing that is concerning, but it’s just a timing factor. These are long-range contracts, 3 years for the one in Saudi and 5 years for the one in Oman. So we will have a little bit of an impact this year. But look, we do believe that pricing is going to continue to be a factor that is a positive contributor, but probably not to the extent that it was last year. We were able to get some very significant benefits, especially in the fourth quarter as we worked with customers and were able to explain our value proposition as well as our cost base. So we think all of these — look, we haven’t broken it down in a quantitative fashion to give you the exact walk, but all of that feeds into, say, 100 basis points at least of margin expansion.

And as we come back each quarter like we have done in the past, we will provide you with a granular update of where we see things and how much progress we have made on the initiatives to drive that.

Unidentified Analyst: That all sounds very reasonable. Europe, SSA and Russia revenue grew 22% sequentially. Just can you highlight which countries were the primary drivers of this growth?

Girishchandra Saligram: So again, Doug, we don’t break it out by country. But look, we had multiple growth areas. And you have to also look at it on a quarterly sequential basis but also on a total year basis. If you look at it on a total year basis, it was only a 4% growth year-over-year. So we also highlight some of the challenges that we see as opposed to the other regions.

Unidentified Analyst: Fair. And then Arun, you touched base on this a little bit, but I just want to get a little more color on what attracted you to Weatherford and maybe get your initial assessment of the internal systems and maybe down the road, would you anticipate providing segment guidance, not just total company revenue guidance?