Civeo Corporation (NYSE:CVEO) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Bradley Dodson: Going into 2024, we’ll have the benefit of a full-year of the contracts we signed this year that we mentioned on prior calls, there are going to be some opportunities, modest opportunities to add additional rooms or bring mothballed rooms online in Australia, both of those, whether they’re new build rooms or bringing on mothballed rooms. Those will only move forward if we have customer commitments that support them. We expect that — so that’s on the own village side on the integrated services side, we’ll have the full-year benefit of the contract wins that we’ve had this year, and we see a portfolio of opportunities to continue to win additional work and grow that business. It will also benefit from the full-year benefits of the inflation and mitigation plan that we put in place.

So as the first past margins out of the integrated services business were not where we wanted them. We got — we had some benefit in the second quarter. We had some benefit from the mitigation plan in the third quarter really didn’t see the full benefit of it on a clean basis until September. So fourth quarter will be one where we’re expecting to see how the true benefit and confirming that our efforts played out as we anticipated them.

Steve Ferazani: Perfect. If I could just get one last one in. Given the very healthy dividend you’ve introduced, and I know given the liquidity of the stock, the buybacks can be challenging. Does the dividend to some degree, replace the buyback? Or could you still be aggressive with the buyback, given that you’re — with the cash coming in from McClelland Lake, your net leverage is probably going to bump against the low range of your target already.

Bradley Dodson: That’s correct. And there in terms of timing of reemploying it for growth opportunities. It may bump down lower in the fourth quarter as well. But I expect that we’ll have some opportunities to put capital work in 2024 that we will fund with cash flow and leverage.

Steve Ferazani: Thanks.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Alec Scheibelhoffer with Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Alec Scheibelhoffer: Hi, good afternoon everyone and thanks for taking my question here. If you can hear me, just to kick us off here. I know you gave a lot of color just in the last Q&A session during the call. But just at a high level, if there’s any additional color you could give us just understand the puts and takes when we’re thinking about 2024 and maybe some of the avenues of growth you’re pursuing a cost out, maybe a little bit more granular.

Bradley Dodson: Well, let’s start with Australia in terms of year-over-year, we’ll have, as I mentioned, we’ll see — we expect at this point still finalizing our budgets that build rooms and the undiligence will be up year-over-year. We’ll have the full-year benefit of being quite frankly, fully occupied at Coppabella and Moranbah villages, which were nicely occupied in the first half of 2023. But certainly, our full rafters in the second half and expect that to continue into 2024. The other piece, major piece is going to be just top-line growth in integrated services coupled with better margins as we’ve adjusted pricing for the inflationary environment that we’ve experienced. So those are the main drivers there. If we can get to customer commitments, we’ll certainly expand the own villages if we can make the economics work.

So that’s Australia. In Canada, we’ve got — we had effectively a full-year of McClelland occupancy. The first half was at [indiscernible], the second half was at Beaver Athabasca. So their Canadian build rooms will be down year-over-year, we’re still finalizing what that looks like. And then we’ll have mobile camp both top-line and EBITDA will be down year-over-year. So what we’re looking at is trying to redeploy assets. One of the things that really, you look for the silver lining in difficult situations and the McClelland Lake Lodge was a difficult situation. But in marketing those assets, it gave us a very good insight into the value of modular and mobile camp assets in the broader industrial complex, both in Canada and down here in the U.S. and see an opportunity to leverage underutilized asset — existing underutilized assets in Canada to leverage our way into new opportunities, both across Canada and into the U.S., we expect over the next 12 months, we’ll have — be able to put some more meat on that book.