Tenaris S.A. (NYSE:TS) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Paolo Rocca: Well, I think we need to adjust and redefine our strategy in North America. We need to strengthen our industrial system, debottleneck some of the value-added process and also increase our capacity of welded product of differentiated welded products. So we will direct our investment in this direction. There will be an increase overall, as I comment on the overall investment during 2023 compared worldwide to the level of 2022. And part of this investment will be focused on the debottlenecking and strengthening our production and logistic capability in the United States.

Marc Bianchi: Okay. Thank you for the answers. I’ll turn it back.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for next question. Our next question comes from the line of Alessandro Pozzi from Mediobanca.

Alessandro Pozzi: Hi, there. Thank you for taking my questions. I think in the outlook, you mentioned a further increase in revenues and EBITDA with stable margins. I was wondering, if you can maybe give us a bit of a view of where do you see sales going up maybe in Q1. And also, I think in your opening remarks, you mentioned a number of pipeline projects and I was wondering, if there is maybe some lumpiness in the volumes throughout the year, potentially big pipeline projects coming in, in any specific quarters. But also, I think in the Middle East, if you can give us a view of where sales might go in the Middle East throughout the year.

Paolo Rocca: Thank you, Alessandro. In fact, you’re saying, we expect in the first quarter of 2023, further increase in sales in the range of 10%, with still relatively stable margin. Then I mean for the rest of the year, this is — there are uncertainty on many issues. There is volatility in the world on many aspects. We will have also to see, if the assumption that I was mentioning before on the level of economic activity in the U.S. in recovery of China so are going and where the price of oil, if it remains stable or even higher or what it is. This will have an influence in the second part of the year. But for the first part of the year, this is what basically we can anticipate. Now, when we go to the pipelines, I would divide in two big different areas.

One is the development of infrastructure for the gas in South America, development of Vaca Muerta integration to some extent of the infrastructure network that is taking place now in Argentina for oil and gas. These are mainly welded product. Welded product will increase in its share on our sales overall. For the pipeline in the offshore and Middle East, I will ask Gabriel to give an outline of what we can expect in 2023.

Gabriel Podskubka: Sure. Thank you, Paolo. Good morning, Alessandro. Indeed, the business in Middle East, we expect to continue to grow. The drilling activity is growing steadily at the most relevant NOCs have announced expansion of capacity, and they are following through. And we are seeing them pursuing a multi-year investment cycles. And Tenaris is well positioned to capitalize on that. For example, in the UAE, last month, we achieved a record of delivering OCTG to 65 rigs of ADNOC following our rig direct model. This is a new level of activity that we are seeing in the Emirates after many months of ramping up the operation. We are also there moving full speed ahead with the construction of the state-of-the-art trading facility.