Cactus Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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February 29, 2024

There are 8 speakers on the call.

Operator

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to Cactus, Inc. 4th Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. Session. As a reminder, today's program is being recorded. And now I'd like to introduce your host for today's program, Alan Boyd, Director of Corporate Development and Investor Relations.

Operator

Please go ahead,

Speaker 1

sir. Thank

Speaker 2

you, and good morning. We appreciate you joining us on today's call. Our speakers will be Scott Bender, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and Al Kiefer, our Interim Chief Financial Officer. Also joining us today are Joel Bender, President Stephen Bender, Chief Operating Officer Steve Tadlock,

Speaker 1

CEO of Flexsteel

Speaker 2

and Will Marsh, our General Counsel. Please note that any comments we make on today's call regarding projections or expectations for future events are forward looking statements covered by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Forward looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control. These risks and uncertainties can cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations. We advise listeners to review our earnings release and the risk factors discussed in our filings with the SEC.

Speaker 2

Any forward looking statements we make today are only as of today's date, and we undertake no obligation to publicly update or review any forward looking statements. In addition, during today's call, we will reference certain non GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of these non GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in our earnings release. With that, I'll turn the call over to Scott.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Alan, and good morning to everyone. We closed out the final quarter of 2023 with strong margin performance in both segments. Free cash flow was substantial and with the debt raised to finance the Flexsteel acquisition repaid in Q3, we increased our cash balance by over $70,000,000 in Q4. For the full year 2023, both businesses set records for revenue and adjusted EBITDA despite the decline in U. S.

Speaker 3

Land activity over the course of the year. Our company remains well positioned in the market as a provider of highly engineered differentiated products to premium customers and our strong financial performance reflects this. Some 4th quarter total company highlights include revenue of 275,000,000 dollars adjusted EBITDA of $100,000,000 adjusted EBITDA margin of 36.4%. We paid a quarterly dividend of $0.12 per share and we increased our cash balance to $134,000,000 I'll now turn the call over to Al Kiefer, our CFO, who will review our financial results. Following his remarks, I'll provide some thoughts on our outlook for the year and the near term rather before opening the lines for Q and A.

Speaker 3

So Al?

Speaker 4

Thank you. Before I begin, I would like to highlight the changes to our reporting structure. Beginning in Q4, we are now presenting our corporate and other expenses separately from our 2 operating segments. The cost within corporate and other consist of personnel whose activities support both operating segments as well as other public reporting and administrative overhead costs. All of these costs were previously reported within the pressure control segment.

Speaker 4

Prior periods have been recast in the earnings release to conform to this new presentation. To assist analysts and investors with understanding this reporting change, we have provided a historical reconciliation for 2021 through 2023 on the Investor Relations section of our website. I'll now begin the results review. As Scott mentioned earlier, total Q4 revenues were $275,000,000 For our Pressure Control segment, revenues of $180,000,000 were down 1.1% sequentially, driven primarily by decreased customer activity. Operating income increased $1,200,000 or 2.2 percent sequentially with operating margins increasing 100 basis points.

Speaker 4

Adjusted segment EBITDA increased 1,500,000 or 2.3% sequentially with margins increasing by 120 basis points. The margin improvement was due to lower rental equipment repair costs, partially associated with the recent modification of our frac valve design and efforts to limit our branch expenses in response to reduced activity levels. For our spoolable technology segment, revenues of 94,000,000 were down 10.4% sequentially due to lower customer activity levels. Operating income decreased $11,600,000 sequentially due largely to the quarter over quarter change in the expense resulting from the remeasurement of the Flexsteel earn out liability. Adjusted segment EBITDA decreased $4,500,000 or 10.2 percent sequentially, while margins increased by 10 basis points as reductions in operating leverage were offset by reduced input costs.

Speaker 4

Corporate and other expenses were $5,700,000 in Q4, down $1,300,000 sequentially due to lower transaction related expenses and stock based compensation. Adjusted corporate EBITDA was approximately flat in Q4 at $3,800,000 of expense. On a total company basis, 4th quarter adjusted EBITDA was $100,000,000 down 2.9% from $103,000,000 during the Q3. Adjusted EBITDA margin for the 4th quarter was 36 point 4% compared to 35.8 percent for the 3rd quarter. Adjustments to total company EBITDA during the Q4 2023 include non cash charges of $4,600,000 in stock based compensation and a $1,900,000 expense related to the Flexsteel earn out liability remeasurement.

Speaker 4

Depreciation and amortization expense for the Q4 was $15,000,000 which includes $4,000,000 of amortization expense related to intangible assets booked as part of purchase accounting. Total depreciation and amortization expense during the Q1 of 2024 is expected to be approximately $15,000,000 of which $7,000,000 is associated with our Pressure Control segment and $8,000,000 is associated with spoolable technologies. Income tax expense during the Q4 was approximately $17,000,000 During the Q4, the public or Class A ownership of the company was 82%. Following further changes in our public ownership percentage, we expect an effective tax rate of approximately 22% for Q1 2024. GAAP net income was $62,000,000 in the 4th quarter versus $68,000,000 during the 3rd quarter.

Speaker 4

The decrease was largely driven by the change in remeasurement of the earn out liability. Adjusted net income and earnings per share were $65,000,000 $0.81 per share respectively during the 4th quarter compared to $64,000,000 $0.80 per share in the 3rd quarter. Adjusted net income for both the Q4 and full year 20 23 were net of a 23% tax rate applied to our adjusted pre tax income generated during their respective periods. This rate was lower than anticipated due to the one time release in 2023 of valuation allowances associated with the Flex Steel acquisition. We estimate that the tax rate for adjusted net income and EPS will be 26% during the Q1 of 2024.

Speaker 4

During the Q4, we paid a quarterly dividend of 0.12 dollars per share, resulting in a cash outflow of approximately $10,000,000 including related distributions to members. The board has also approved a quarterly dividend of $0.12 per share to be paid in March 2024. We ended the quarter with a cash balance of $134,000,000 a sequential increase of approximately $70,000,000 Net CapEx was approximately $9,500,000 during the 4th quarter of 2023 $38,600,000 for the full year 2023. For the full year 2024, we expect net CapEx in the range of $45,000,000 to $55,000,000 The increase from 2023 is due to increased spending on efficiency improvements at Flexsteel's Baytown manufacturing facility and approximately $20,000,000 budgeted for international growth and supply chain diversification in 2024. That covers the financial review and I'll now turn the call back over to Scott.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Al. Well done. I'll now touch on our expectations for the Q1 of 2024 of our reported segment. Pardon me. During the Q1, we expect pressure control revenue to be down mid single digits versus the $180,000,000 reported in the 4th quarter of 2023 as strong production equipment sales in Q4 led to stronger revenues than the level of industry activity would imply.

Speaker 4

We expect the U.

Speaker 3

S. Land rig count to be approximately flat from today's levels in the remainder of the Q1, although recent weakness in natural gas prices suggest a cautionary outlook beyond this period. Anecdotally, the number of inbound inquiries for frac rental equipment have increased in the past 45 days, suggesting potential for the Q2 of 2024. Adjusted EBITDA margins in our Pressure Control segment are expected to be 33% to 35% for the Q1, exclusive of corporate and other expenses, which are now reported separately. This adjusted EBITDA guidance also excludes approximately $2,000,000 of stock based compensation expense within the segment.

Speaker 3

Margins are expected to be down sequentially as reduced product sales impact our operating leverage, partially offset by the supply chain initiatives previously announced. We expect our low cost manufacturing diversification to enhance product margins by the middle of 2025. As mentioned last quarter, new wellhead and valve product improvements are in the process of being introduced, and we expect the rollout of these to more significantly impact operating results late this year as we responsibly replace our current inventories. Our Mendix expansion plans are underway, testing continues and are still targeting customer acceptance first orders by late 2024. We continue to evaluate opportunities and while we don't have any further news at this time, we're pleased with the outlook and look forward to sharing a meaningful update on our efforts within the next 90 days.

Speaker 3

Switching over to spoolables technology segment. We expect 1st quarter revenue to be up low single digits relative to the 4th quarter, which would represent a record setting Q1 for Flexsteel, largely on stronger demand from the majors. We're also seeing increased interest from international and midstream customers who recognize the value proposition of the Flexsteel product. We expected adjusted EBITDA margins in this segment to be approximately 37% to 39% for Q1, moderating from Q4 levels on increased input costs that will begin to work through our inventory late in Q1. Note this margin guidance excludes approximately 1,000,000 dollars of stock based compensation in the segment.

Speaker 3

Adjusted corporate EBITDA is expected to be an approximately $4,000,000 loss in Q1, flat from the Q4, which excludes approximately $1,000,000 of corporate and stock based compensation. Consolidation of our customers continues in the sector, improving our industry's efficiency. At this time, we cannot predict the near term impact on our business other than to reiterate that our business model favors larger operators. That said, we expect a reduction in the U. S.

Speaker 3

Land rig count by year end following consolidations as the combined entities high grade drilling prospects and increased drilling efficiencies. Further risk to the rig count remains as operators respond to low natural gas prices. Our company's focus on safety execution and servicing our customers allowed us to close out a milestone 2023 for Cactus. Although 2024 U. S.

Speaker 3

Drilling and completion activity expectations are modest at this time, Cactus remains well positioned with 2 segments that generate high margins and attractive returns while operating differentiated value to customers. We expect to generate substantial free cash flow in 2024 that will provide us with optionality to increase shareholder returns over time or pursue organic and inorganic growth opportunities in the disciplined manner that our shareholders expect. With that, I'll turn it back over to the operator, and we can begin Q and A. Operator?

Operator

Certainly, one moment for our first question. And our first question comes from the line of Luc Luyend from Piper Sandler. Your question please.

Speaker 3

How are you? How are

Speaker 1

you doing well and yourself? Good. Thank you. Scott, you talked about spools being up some in 1Q due to the majors. Have you been adding some program accounts here?

Speaker 1

Or is this just kind of general increase in activity from the majors?

Speaker 3

I'm going to add Steve Tadlock who now runs that. Thanks, Luke.

Speaker 5

Yes, we've just been seeing increased activity from the majors in particular. And then as we alluded to earlier in the script, also international orders from Latin America and Middle East. And one other positive is on the midstream side, significant interest from a large midstream company with which we hadn't done much business and inquiries from other midstream. So overall, we're feeling very good about the outlook for the next year.

Speaker 1

Okay. Got it. And then also my second question, Steve. Just kind of on the product mix, I mean, you mentioned the midstream customer. So it sounds like there's some uptake on kind of the gathering and distribution side.

Speaker 1

I mean, if you could just speak to that maybe a little more kind of what you're seeing this year?

Speaker 5

Yes. I think it's with midstream, you have more regulatory hurdles or a different mindset to get through and the team has been working on that for years and I think they're starting to see the fruits of that effort. So I think that's really the driver of it.

Speaker 1

Okay, perfect. Thanks a bunch.

Speaker 3

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. One moment for our next question. And our next question comes from the line of Arun Jayaram from JPMorgan. Your question please.

Speaker 6

Yes, good morning. I was wondering if you could maybe provide more details on some of the new product introduction? Sounds like the new frac valve was a tailwind to margins in the quarter. But give us a sense of the rollout of that new frac valve as well as your new wellhead offering?

Speaker 3

Okay. The frac valve is being rolled out right now. And it's I think it's important to recognize that this is a modification of our existing frac valve, which doesn't lead to any obsolescence. However, this modification pretty significantly reduces the amount of repairs required. As you may know from previous conversations, unlike a lot of our peers, we tear down valves completely after every job, which gives rise to a large repair cost in terms of replacement parts.

Speaker 3

And we've seen a pretty significant reduction in the damage to our internals with the sufracked valve design. So as soon as we can cycle these valves through their normal repair, we'll be replacing the internals with this new design. The wall head design, we're looking to roll that out in Q3 to Q4, which I think is one of the more exciting iterations. I don't know how many iterations, Joel, we're on now. 10, 9?

Speaker 3

Yes, so all the different changes. Yes. And this one offers the advantage of increased features, which for the sake of my competitors, I'm not going to detail, but also pretty significant value engineering went into this particular project. So think about 3rd Q4 for that.

Speaker 6

Great. And just my follow-up, obviously Saudi Aramco has been in the news over the last several weeks, been a focal point for investors. So wondering if you could give us your perspective on what you see going on from a CapEx perspective and how does this influence your thoughts of potentially committing capital to a new facility there?

Speaker 3

Yes. I don't think it changes my thought on the potential business in Saudi. Although, to be honest, we talked about this before, the fact that Saudi's are thinking about selling 1% of Aramco is a little concerning. On the one hand, I know they need the money for 2,030. On the other hand, it's one could interpret this as taking some chips off the table.

Speaker 3

But in terms of the messaging that Aramco is sending out, no, this doesn't change my opinion at all.

Operator

Great. Thanks a lot. Thank you. One moment for our next question. And our next question comes from the line of Kurt Hallead from Benchmark.

Operator

Your question please.

Speaker 3

Hey, good morning everybody.

Speaker 7

How are you? Good. Thanks, Scott. Yes, so Scott, you got some new product coming out now and as you said, a very exciting stuff, especially on the wellhead front. You guys have always done a very good job at growing faster than the market and the product has proven its value by gaining share.

Speaker 7

So kudos on all those fronts. I guess where I'm going with this is, your message seems to be that you're setting up really, really well for some accelerating revenue growth in the second half. I know you tend to be conservative and you want to outperform expectations, but just wanted to see if you could give us some additional color on that ramp. And do you agree with that in the second half? Or do you think it will be much more of a 2025 impact?

Speaker 3

Yes, it's probably more of a I think you'll start to see it in the latter part of this year. But I'm probably less optimistic about the U. S. Rig count in 2024 because I'm not sure that people fully understand the overall reduction in rig count that's going to occur once these consolidations are completed as customers high grade their prospects. Now this may not impact it certainly won't impact well count to the same degree, and we're very well count driven.

Speaker 3

These natural gas prices cause me some concern. So our focus you're right, our focus this year is upgrading our supply chain. And by upgrading, I only mean one thing, and that is lowering our costs. So what we're doing by this diversification from our existing Suzhou facility is both de risking us politically and also meaningfully we expect decreasing our cost. I'm not going to tell you where we're locating the facility, but it's not going to be in a Section 301 country.

Speaker 3

Don't ask me anything else, please.

Speaker 7

That's fair. That's fair. So just one more follow-up then on the international front, right? This has been a strategic play in the making for some time now. And you're now at the cusp, it looks like, of making some meaningful market penetration.

Speaker 7

I don't know, can you give us some general sense with the spoolable business right now? Just give us an update on what percentage of revenue is coming from outside North America right now?

Speaker 1

And what kind of where

Speaker 7

do you think that might go over the next couple of years?

Speaker 1

Stacey, do you have? Yes.

Speaker 5

I would say it's ranged sort of from 5% to 10%, but there's no reason it shouldn't be materially higher than that over time. There's a lot of interest, like I said on that both in Latin America and the Middle East for our products.

Speaker 3

To be fair, forgive me for interrupting you. The previous management at Flexsteel sort of retracted from their push internationally because they were so busy domestically, not unlike the way we were. But we've noticed with a refocus and by the way, we've combined our sales efforts between pressure control and spoolables. There's an incredible amount of interest internationally for these Flexsteel products.

Speaker 7

That's great. Appreciate that color. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. One moment for our next question. And our next question comes from the line of Stephen Gengaro from Stifel. Your question please.

Speaker 1

Thanks. Good morning everybody.

Speaker 3

Good morning to you.

Speaker 1

Thanks. So 2 for me. The first and obviously there's a lot of moving pieces with activity and consolidation. But when we think about the legacy Cactus business and the wellhead side, do you think in the environment you see right now in the U. S.

Speaker 1

That, that business can grow in 2024?

Speaker 3

You're talking about from a market share standpoint or from an absolute standpoint?

Speaker 1

Well, you won't tell me the market share anymore, but I imagine it's pretty high. But I think from a maybe address both, but I assume yes on the market share side, but on the absolute side, do you think that's enough? Or do you think it's how should we think about that? I know the back half of the year is going to have an impact.

Speaker 3

Yes. As I mentioned earlier, I'm not I'm probably more pessimistic about the overall rig count than some of you are and maybe some of my peers having been through this so many times. Gas prices at this level, consolidations, one customer has 22 rigs, one has 20. We never end up with 42 rigs and we won't end up with 42 rigs. So I'm optimistic market share.

Speaker 3

And by the way, the fact that we have stopped disclosing market share should give to any concern. And our market share is very, very healthy. We'd be very pleased. I'm not quite sure that it can overcome a rig count that drops down into the $5.50 to $5.70 range $5.75 range.

Speaker 1

Okay. No, I'm actually I would actually think that on the market share side, I'm not concerned at all. I would actually think it's the opposite. That's good color. And then when we and you mentioned this a little bit, but when we think about the international markets for the wellhead, particularly for the wellhead, I know there's some areas that you've been looking into.

Speaker 1

You've had, I think, some early success. What are the 2 or 3 key markets? And kind of where do you think that how do you get evolves in 2024 and 2025?

Speaker 3

Believe it or not, there's parts of Europe where I think that we're going to penetrate the Mideast and possibly some Latin American business.

Speaker 1

Okay, great. Thank you for the color.

Operator

Thank you. One moment for our next question. And our next question comes from the line of Scott Gruber from Citigroup. Your question please.

Speaker 1

Hey, Scott. Yes. Good

Speaker 7

morning. Good morning. Scott, previously you discussed getting pressure control margins back into the mid-30s, looking at the cost reallocation that looks to boost margins by a couple of 100 basis points right around 200. So just to calibrate, is the upside potential now something on the order of 37%, maybe 38?

Speaker 3

Got it. I don't know, Alan, if we projected that far. We're still working on 2024. But I think that I just would hate to

Speaker 4

say that

Speaker 1

I mean,

Speaker 3

although I can tell you that our investments this year will be to bolster our low cost manufacturing. So we are in a cost reduction mode right now. And I think that both in terms of product redesign and in terms of manufacturing. But yes, we are quantifying that internally, but I'm not prepared to talk about that right now.

Speaker 7

Okay. And just to make

Speaker 3

sure But

Speaker 7

I'll feel that.

Speaker 1

Let me just say that I'm very upset about.

Speaker 7

Okay. And the drivers were again, right, you have some low cost inventory come through now, which should help in the near term and then you're waiting for the near term. Yes,

Speaker 3

because we have to one of the things that we pride ourselves on or Joel does is that as we introduce innovations to our product, we do it in a very, very responsible measured fashion so as not to obsolete anything we have in stock. So as we replace our current inventory, this stuff is already on order and being manufactured. When it reflects when it becomes reflective in our results end of the year, but certainly next year. And the new low cost manufacturing facility will be partially operational by the end of this year, fully operational in 2025.

Speaker 7

Okay. Great. I was looking for that color. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Speaker 1

Thanks, guys.

Operator

Thank you. Today's program. I'd like to hand the program back to Scott Bender for any further remarks.

Speaker 3

All right, friends, I just want to thank you all for attending the call. Hang in there. We'll have some information for you on the international front, I hope, within the next 90 days. Have a good week. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Good day.

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