Forum Energy Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:FET) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Neal Lux: Yes, I believe there would be. I think every operator has different standards. But I think what’s helpful and what value that we could provide is we’ve gone through those evaluations with our other product lines and have the contacts, have the long-term stability. Again, we’ve been – we’ve had a company in Saudi Arabia for many years now, a footprint there, similar in Abu Dhabi. So I think having that long-term footprint relationship and knowing the landscape that we operate in could ease or speed up the adoption or qualification if we approach that.

Jeff Robertson: A question on the margin improvement that you show on slide four of the deck, is there – when you combine these products – product lines, excuse me and think about 2024, 2025. Do you see the opportunity for further margin improvement beyond what you’re showing on the slide?

Lyle Williams: Yes. Hey, Jeff. It’s Lyle. Why don’t I take that, So the slide, just so we reference back to what we’re looking at is just a combined TTM of the two companies from September 30. And so we haven’t included any synergies we’ve talked about that, but we haven’t stuck any synergies in those numbers. I think what’s unique about FET as a manufacturing products company, and it fits with Variperm as well, is the concept of operating leverage. Each business has relatively low fixed costs, but the costs that we do have can be leveraged across more volume. So as revenues increase, then we do tend to see improved margins from operating leverage. And I think another thing that’s similar about both businesses is the capability of introducing and growing the revenue from higher margin, more differentiated products.

We’ve been doing that at FET for a number of years and driven up our margin effectively that way and expect we see the same opportunity for Variperm. So, yes, I do think we have the opportunity for some margin expansion there. And those are two of the key drivers.

Jeff Robertson: Thanks. And if I can one last one, just on the financing, Lyle, you talked about retiring the 9% bonds next year. With bigger – with a larger balance sheet scale, would you expect to retire those through free cash flow or would you expect to maybe combine some sort of financing to extend the maturities out?

Lyle Williams: Good question there. And just to be clear, what our comment was related to is with the financing structure that we’ve already talked about and free cash flow generation that we expect for next year, we’d be in position to organically without any other kind of debt retire those notes. I think anything else we do would be opportunistic as we look at the market.

Jeff Robertson: Thank you. Thanks for clarifying that.

Lyle Williams: Thank you, Jeff.

Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Eric Carlson [ph].

Neal Lux: Hey, Eric, Good morning.

Unidentified Analyst: Congrats on the announcement. When we’ve talked about acquisitions in the past, it’s almost seemed – like, it’d be a hard thing to accomplish to buy something that could actually make you cheaper on a go forward basis. I was just kind of running our numbers now and FET is at about 4.5 times trailing 12-month EBITDA. So kind of combined with the purchase, it looks like at the end of the year, assuming the stock price stays kind of where it is about four times. So that seems – as we’ve reiterated many times, very cheap. And then I think a lot of people kind of focused on the accretion. But when you look at cash flow and the ability that gives you to be very flexible, whether it’s retire the notes with cash, if you can do a larger, broader financing and free that up to create even more value.