Oil States International, Inc. (NYSE:OIS) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Jim Rollyson : Perfect. And then on Downhole Technologies, obviously, margins there just kind of fell prey to a weaker U.S. completion activity. As activity bottoms kind of in this quarter and we start to see that recovering next year as we were talking about a minute ago, how do we think about the recovery in margins there? Is there a certain revenue level that you generally think of that you need to get EBITDA back to positive territory? Are there anything on the — from an internal standpoint, you can do the cost structure? Or were you guys carrying kind of higher cost because this is a somewhat temporary — viewed as a temporary dip? Just kind of trying to think about how that segment plays out over the next few quarters if we actually see that recovery we’re all looking for next year.

Cindy Taylor: Yes, Jim, I want to be clear. Are you talking about well site or geo?

Jim Rollyson : Yes. Downhole.

Cindy Taylor: Okay. I just want to make sure. So we are basically essentially breakeven at the Downhole Technologies, segment for Q3. What we see two major things need to happen. And just kind of to explain it, you see quite a dichotomy in other service companies this quarter, whether you are contracted long on some of your , i.e., the pressure pumpers, the people that had contracts in place versus the spot market performed very differently. This business, as I call out products businesses and a lot of our wireline customers or spot-based providers to the market. So several frac fleets go down, which means the demand for the downhole tools also goes down. And so it’s a combination. But the biggest thing in that particular business is top line, it’s revenue at this point in time.

Now that being said, we are making investments around newer technology. So we — yes, we have engineering costs and R&D costs that we did not cut. There’s no reason to cut that in a kind of a soft quarter. because we believe in that business for the long term. But the drivers that will improve that going forward, of course, we need to increase a recovery in activity, particularly spot-based activity and some of the improved technology that we’re going to bring to market in 2024 will help domestically. And of course, we are trying to expand our international penetration as well. Those are the major initiatives to bring enhanced profitability to that business. And as we talked about at our Board meeting yesterday, to your question, doesn’t take much, 2 to 4 frac fleets to follow will have a good top line impact.

And so we’re confident that we can turn that business to enhance profitability in 2024.

Operator: We’ll take our next question from Luke Lemoine with Piper Sandler.

Luke Lemoine : Cindy, you had very nice orders in 3Q in OMP, the Merlin order and the production facility order. And you talked about those being at least $50 million each, which leaves a lot of room for various other orders in 3Q. Can you maybe talk about kind of what comprises the rest of that mix? And then maybe what you see for more standard orders over the next 6 to 12 months outside of kind of large things like Merlin or production facility.

Cindy Taylor: Yes. I mean, we’ve always said we get a lot of broad-based almost recurring type orders, and those are on our high-end conductor casing connectors as an example of routine orders. We’ve got a very good fixed platform and crane business line that enjoys strong orders. We have military work, et cetera. So it’s kind of hard to isolate. We typically just call out larger orders, which are the two. But then there’s always going to be a lot of our diverter valves, our production valve order technologies that are recurring and to some degree, short-cycle orders as well. So it’s kind of hard for me to glom on to any one major driver. I’d say they’re broad-based, both product line and geography, quite frankly.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] We’ll take our next question from John Daniel with Daniel Energy Partners.

John Daniel : I got a question, Cindy, you referenced military customers. I’m just curious, any signs orders from that group are poised to rise just given current geopolitical given the climate?