National Energy Services Reunited - Earnings Call - Q4 2024

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Greetings and welcome to the NESR fourth quarter 2024 financial results call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Blake Gendron, Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Blake Gendron (VP of Investor Relations)

Thanks, Melissa. Hello and welcome to NESR's 4th Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. With me today are Sherif Foda, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of NESR, and Stephanie Angelee, Chief Financial Officer. On today's call, we will comment on our 4th Quarter results and overall performance. After our prepared remarks, we will open up the call to questions. Before we begin, I'd like to remind our participants that some of the statements we'll be making today are forward-looking. These matters involve risks and uncertainties that could cause our results to differ materially from those projected in these statements. I therefore refer you to our latest earnings release filed earlier today and other SEC filings. Our comments today may also include non-GAAP financial measures. Additional details on reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures can be found in our press release, which is on our website.

Finally, feel free to contact us after the call with any additional questions you may have. Our investor relations contact information is available on our website. Now, I'll hand the call over to Sherif.

Sherif Foda (CEO)

Thanks, Blake. Ladies and gentlemen, good morning and thank you for participating in this conference call. I'm extremely proud of another stellar year that the team delivered in 2024. In the fourth quarter, we once again reached new heights for revenue, EBITDA, and EPS. With robust cash flow generation, we've entered 2025 in a position of notable balance sheet strength, and we've never been better positioned to seize the many opportunities that remain in front of us. First, let me reflect briefly on what we were able to achieve over the past year. 2024 was an exceptional year for the company, marked by many key milestones, especially our NASDAQ relisting this past October. This was a fantastic event where we had our management team traveling to New York and celebrate with our investor at the impressive NASDAQ Center at Times Square.

Thank you to all our investors and analysts that attended the event. Operationally, 2024 was a continuation of our unique growth story, as we secured new contracts, enhanced our core business, and pushed into new technology frontiers with our Rouya directional drilling platform and NEDA decarbonization portfolio. We expanded and deepened our anchor country footprint on many fronts, with multiple growth drivers within each country contributing to our near doubling of the overall market growth in 2024. Today, our large core countries expand into Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, UAE, Iraq, Algeria, and Egypt. We have achieved record revenue and growth in each this year. We are positive about the prospects and opportunities into all of them for 2025, and we maintain optimism about adding more countries to that league in the near future. Best example is Libya with its recent development.

We continue to address all profitable growth opportunities in all the countries where we operate, and we are nimble and agile to act quickly when needed. I will go into more detail in the outlook, but let me first summarize some highlights of 2024 at the country level. In Saudi Arabia, which was our fastest-growing country by both percentage and in absolute dollar terms, NESR gained market share, outperformed in several product lines, and started some key investments for the future of our infrastructure. In Oman, where we have the highest market share as a percentage, we maintained our solid execution and gained several Service Quality and HSE Leadership Awards and began to introduce our Rouya directional drilling platform in our recently awarded contracts. We see a lot of runways in this country. Despite the stable outlook, we can still outpace the competition by adding new services and gaining share.

In Kuwait, I'm very proud of our achievement today. You recall we entered this from nothing six years ago, and today it's our third biggest country with the highest growth potential in %, with the obvious rate growth tailwinds. In UAE, Algeria, and Iraq, we maintained our steady performance and delivery on our contracts and closed the year near all-time high across both the oil and gas basin. The rest of our countries remained solid and saw good margin improvement through the year. Across our entire MENA footprint, we exited the year almost uniformly at record best revenue, strong margin, and cash flow generation. In addition to the natural seasonality of the region, our 4th Quarter result is a testament to both continuous improvement across the organization and also the deployment of new innovation that helps us unlock greater efficiency and revenue quality. Stephanie will discuss this in great detail.

Moving to the outlook, I want to comment on both the market outlook for the region and also for our company. Overall, we see sustained and broad activity growth in most of our core countries, combined with secular gas development projects that are moving ahead regardless of global commodity prices, and also frontier opportunities in decarbonization and water. While growth in the region is expected to moderate in 2025 compared to recent years, the fact that the rig count in our four largest countries, which comprise over 75% of NESR revenue, are at or near historical all-time highs.

The total rig count of the MENA region today is far higher than it has been at any time in history, higher for the first time than the rig count in North America, and this importantly is at a time when the oil field service industry is at its most disciplined with respect to CapEx and capacity expansion. With this in mind, let me take a moment to illustrate our outlook in some of our key countries, starting with our largest country and one that remains the most heavily debated by the market. In Saudi Arabia, the highly pragmatic decision about a year ago to rationalize oil capacity from prior plans was well documented in the industry. Activity on the oil side has largely stabilized now.

In gas, the ambitious publicly expressed target of reaching 50% gas power generation and 50% renewable by 2030 continues to fuel what was always understood to be a fantastic growth story for domestic gas consumption in the kingdom. NESR remains heavily focused on unconventional gas development in close collaboration with our esteemed customer, and the fruits of this partnership span many aspects of the value chain, including efficient completion delivery, innovation around consumables, and even circular water technologies. In February, NESR announced the groundbreaking of a new operational facility in King Salman Energy Park, which deepens NESR's commitment to continuous improvement in the kingdom, specifically around its operation in unconventional gas, building the latest Frac Operation Reliability and Failure Prediction Center in the middle of the Jafura Field.

UAE is also asserting strong leadership on unconventional gas development as announced, and they continue with their program to ensure oil capacity of 5 million barrels. There will be potential add to their gas program by the international partner in the future, and we are currently engaged at multiple levels in addition to our core business in the country. Stepping back for a moment, the MENA Natural Gas team extends beyond the leadership of Saudi and UAE. We believe that the region is in the early stage of a broader gas expansion journey, for which different countries are approaching this theme from different angles and at varying degrees of urgency and speed.

It has become consensus that the global artificial intelligence arms race is materializing, for which vast increases in power supply will be needed to keep up with demand, above and beyond the general energy demand growth that is expected, and that gas will fill much of this incremental demand. What is perhaps underappreciated is that the MENA region can play a central role in the advent of AI, data centers, and high-performance computing, underpinned by high-quality natural gas and the cheapest renewable resource globally. We believe that this natural gas theme only adds to the stability and visibility of continuous activity growth in MENA for the foreseeable future. Kuwait is arguably the brightest spot in the region when it comes to rapid growth, and the recent success of the country in adding rigs is a testament to the vision and commitment of its leadership.

The desire to reach 4 million barrel per day capacity and the latest discovery of offshore deposit translate to growth projections for several years to come. This month, we signed an MOU with the visionary leadership of KOC to form the first Ahmadi Innovation Valley, AIV, that will feature very few selected service companies to address specific operator challenges in a jointly researched and technology excellence, and in future would add others to the value chain in one park. Elsewhere, Oman and Iraq remain largely stable in terms of activity, and for NESR will be areas of focus for new technology deployment, including Rouya, where we have our newly awarded directional drilling contracts in Oman. North Africa is another notable bright spot teeming with ambition, and especially Libya is exhibiting a remarkable step change in activity and innovation.

Over the recent weeks and months, we've spent a lot of time in the country meeting with customers and industry leaders as the country has resumed activity and is calling upon the service sector to partner in many exciting projects. Libya has already added more than 40 rigs on plan to advance oil production from 1.4 million barrels currently to 1.6 million barrels over the medium term, with aspiration of 2 million barrels per day in the future. Our strategies of maintaining a calibrated presence in Libya since the start of the company is playing out, and NESR stands ready to drive growth in the country across a diverse portfolio. Moving to the technology highlights in the fourth quarter, beginning with a key pilot milestone for our Rouya directional drilling platform.

As previously announced, we successfully executed a flagship single-run wellbore delivery in Kuwait with our Rouya steer, rotary steerable, and Rouya stream measuring while drilling tool, hitting all of our internal performance benchmarks. Combined with earlier success with our Rouya Seek logging while drilling tool, we are confident in the commercialization path of Rouya this year. Our plan is to continue with the deliberate extensive testing in different formation and drilling environments while executing on our contracts in the three countries. Turning to NEDA, we are very encouraged by the innovation and prospect before us and believe that 2025 will be a pivotal year for NEDA expansion and growth. In the fourth quarter, we successfully delivered over 2,000 metric tons of CO2 for a CCS reservoir injection pilot in Indonesia.

The country remains highly active across traditional oil and gas, geothermal, and also carbon capture and sequestration, and we are excited for the future there. We also continue to develop our holistic circular mineral and water process in the GCC, for which we uniquely have access to potentially valuable brine and are among the few companies actually generating positive results in the field, not just the lab. The water solution that we've adapted from outside of the oil and gas industry represents the portfolio approach that we are taking to produce water, and our fourth quarter investment in SaltTech formalized our strategy around zero liquid discharge to reuse as much of our industry water as possible. However, this produce water evolution doesn't stop just at liquid.

Increasingly, the industry is discussing the potential of mineral extraction from the produced water, and the recently announced transition mineral joint venture between our largest customer and the largest metal and mining company in the MENA region is evidence of this massive potential. Given our piloting work in mineral extraction over the past several years, NESR is strategically positioned to contribute to cross-sector collaboration, and we anticipate updating the market throughout the year on our work in this area. Just as we take an open technology platform approach to our core service business, we see our NEDA portfolio and access to brine in the field as a platform to plug in additional mineral recovery solutions, including the area of direct lithium extraction. I'm thrilled with the potential and opportunities in front of us in 2025 and beyond, following another remarkable year in 2024.

Expectation may be low for our industry and sector, but we still see NESR as extremely well positioned within this macro framework and believe that the MENA market could surprise to the upside. More exciting announcements to come, but for now, I'll conclude and hand over the call to Stephanie to discuss our financials in great detail.

Stefan Angeli (CFO)

Thank you, Sherif. Good morning to our audience in the U.S., and good afternoon, good evening to our audience in the Middle East, North Africa, Asia, and/or Europe. I'm very pleased to give an update on our strong financial performance for the fourth quarter of 2024 and for the full year 2024. In summary, despite the ongoing macro volatility worldwide and geopolitical uncertainty in the Middle East, NESR has achieved stellar results for the fourth quarter of 2024 and for the full year of 2024. First, let's cover revenue.

Our overall fourth quarter revenue was a record $343.7 million, which was up 2.2% sequentially and up 11.8% year over year, outpacing the broader market. Revenue for the full year 2024 was $1.3 billion exactly, up 13.6% year over year with exceptionally strong activity in the Gulf countries. Now, turning to adjusted EBITDA. Adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter of 2024 was also a record $87.2 million, with near-record margins of 25.4%, up 157 basis points on a sequential quarter basis. Full year adjusted EBITDA was $310.1 million, up 18.2% year over year, with full year margins up 93 basis points to 23.8%. Interest expense for Q4 2024 was $9.9 million, and full year interest was $39.9 million. Full year 2024 effective tax rate was 20.1%, which included a tax release of $3.8 million. Normalizing for this adjustment implies a full year 2024 ETR of around 24.1%.

Turning to EPS, earnings per share as adjusted for charges and credits was $0.30 for the fourth quarter of 2024 and $1.04 for the full year 2024, which was up 96% year over year. The charges and credits impacting adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS were made up primarily of two items in Q4 2024 as follows: cost of remediation of control material weaknesses, which should moderate dramatically after the conclusion of the 2024 audit this month, and an impairment of a small investment. Now, turning to our cash flows and liquidity, which I'm very proud to discuss as a point of significant emphasis over the past several years. Our cash flow from operations during the fourth quarter of 2024 was very strong as we generated $46.3 million. For the full year 2024 period, we generated $229.3 million.

We had significant customer collections in Q4 2024, which drove our DSO at year-end to a company best. Free cash flow for the full year 2024 was $124 million, a conversion rate on adjusted EBITDA of 40.1%, which was underpinned by strong working capital execution in 2024, on top of strong execution in 2023, despite the significant top-line growth in both years. The free cash flow was principally used to pay down bank debt. As a result of strong operating results and good cash flow conversion, our net debt to adjusted EBITDA remains below our goal of one times for a second consecutive quarter, and we ended the year at a ratio of 0.89 times. For comparison purposes, we were at 2.8 times at the end of 2022 and 1.5 times at the end of 2023.

Our gross debt at year-end 2024 was $383 million, which represents a reduction of $153 million over the last two years, and our net debt was $275 million. Working capital levels remained relatively flat throughout the year despite significant top-line growth. Working capital efficiency has greatly improved due to the process and system enhancements, resulting in a DSO decrease of 22 days over the last 24 months and a decline in inventory levels of 12% over the same period. CapEx for the full year 2024 was $105 million, which was slightly below budget due to delivery timing on certain pieces of equipment, which will now come in H1 2025. All of the above contributed to a significant improvement in the financial return profile of the company during 2024.

On a trailing 12-month basis, our return on capital employed, or ROCI, reached 11.6% in Q4 2024, accompanying best and concurrent with our robust growth investment strategy. Now, on to housekeeping topics. We've spent the better part of the last two-plus years reshaping our back office and the company overall with new and updated processes, procedures, and controls, as well as implementing the latest software upgrades to our ERP system. We are very confident that we have demonstrated significant progress on the remediation of our internal control material weaknesses during 2024 and will give a detailed update in our 2024 20-F when it's filed at the end of March. In summary, operational execution across our key countries remained strong during the 4th Quarter of 2024, while our updated processes and procedures and controls have transformed the back office and contributed greatly to our working capital efficiency.

These drivers combined to generate record results for the full year 2024 period with strong revenue growth, strong adjusted EBITDA, and healthy cash flow conversion, the latter of which has been used to pay down debt and strengthen the balance sheet overall. Looking ahead on capital allocation, there are several discrete growth opportunities not currently included in our budget that could require an investment decision around mid-year. It is also worth noting that our expanding base of activity and pushing to larger tender opportunities does require additional liquidity in the form of bid bonds and performance guarantees, which we view as a favorable competitive barrier in the MENA region. However, the strength of our balance sheet gives us flexibility on our growth plans, and should market conditions change drastically from our current outlook, we certainly could evaluate other capital allocation alternatives, including returns.

Anyway, we'll update further on this topic as the year progresses. The outlook for the Middle East and North Africa region remains favorable. Upstream spending remains durable, and NESR continues to be focused on its stated goals of delivering profitable revenue growth, execution efficiency, technology expansion, debt reduction, and working capital efficiency to drive future financial performance. On behalf of management, I'd like to thank our entire workforce for their outstanding efforts in delivering these results, together with our directors, shareholders, and banking consortium for their continued support. The future for NESR continues to look good. Now, I turn the call back to Sherif.

Sherif Foda (CEO)

Thanks, Stephanie. Let me conclude by reiterating the key takeaways from the fourth quarter and outlook. First, while the market came into the year with extremely low expectations for the sector and while the commodity backdrop remained uncertain, we believe that MENA upstream activity will remain a relative bright spot for growth. The gap development theme is central to this view. Although competitive, contracts in our business bring multi-year visibility to the company, and overall profitability remains healthy as the sector remains disciplined. We expect 2025 to follow the same seasonal pattern as it did in 2024, with the first quarter's slowest impacted by fewer operating days and the full month of Ramadan in March, followed by a sequential activity build through the year. Overall, our 2025 growth outlook for NESR relative to the market remains unchanged.

Second, within the solid MENA backdrop, NESR is extremely well positioned to outperform due to, one, favorable project exposure, particularly related to the broad-based gas development theme; two, our strategic positioning in areas such as Kuwait and Libya, which are expected to lead the growth on a percentage basis; third, our frontier technology growth leg remains on track, with pilot success in Rouya now duplicated in several countries; and our unique NEDA positioning and investment in produced water, mirroring the announcement and commitment recently made by our largest customer and cross-industry partners. Whereas Rouya is expected to be a more linear driver of growth from here, NEDA and our water business represent massive potential that is being defined in real time, but nevertheless remains a long-term strategy with expected catalysts this year.

I would like to close by thanking all of our employees, their families, for an extremely strong close of 2024, and thank our partners and dear customers for their continued support and belief in NESR. With that, I pass over the call to the operator for your question. Melissa?

Operator (participant)

Thank you. If you'd like to ask a question, please press Star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press Star 2 if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the Star keys. Our first question comes from the line of David with Barclays. Please proceed with your question.

J. David Anderson (Senior Analyst)

Great. Thank you. Good morning, Sherif. How are you? Good morning, sir.I want to ask you about your outlook in a couple of different ways. Maybe first, can we just start with kind of an overview as you see it of the region, kind of spending patterns over the region, kind of how you see that playing out during the year? It appears maybe with one exception, kind of most of the GCC continues to ramp up, almost sort of aside from the oil price. Meanwhile, OPEC bringing back barrels to the market. Could there be a further reduction in Saudi if oil prices languish? How are you sort of thinking about those missing pieces during the year? Overall, would you expect growth, overall spending growth in the Middle East, like mid-single digits? Is that kind of where your head is?

Sherif Foda (CEO)

Yeah, I agree. Just to answer your question, yeah, the Middle East, I would say moderate growth in 2025 compared to 2024. I would say a single-digit growth. Obviously, it depends if you break it into the countries. Saudi will be a drop in the non-unconventional and increase in unconventional. Kuwait, no difference in growth. It will be double-digit growth year over year. You have Oman, Iraq, kind of stable. UAE will grow again in unconventional. I think the announcement was very clear by ADNOC on the unconventional, which is the 144 wells and the spend of $1.7 billion. This is going ahead. Obviously, their capacity, so they will continue to grow as well. If you turn to North Africa, obviously you have the massive Libya growth, which is, again, it's not in double digits, it's in exponential, right?

It depends. All will be questioned on the budget and how the budget is released and the funding is transferred from central bank to the operator companies for them to be able to execute. However, already, as I said, the rig count is already added by 40 rigs, which is basically more than triple the rig count, right? If I look overall, then you look at the region overall, then you're talking about, as you said, low single digits, right? That's why we always say, at least we're going to double that as we've been doing, and we're going to do the same thing in 2025. My next part of my question was kind of just focusing on NETS and your positioning, particularly in Saudi. I was wondering if you could talk about how the mix has changed.

If we think about kind of what's all the news has come out over the last 12 months out of the kingdom, we've seen a reduction in offshore, we've seen some reduction in the kind of conventional spending, but G4, a different story altogether. Can you talk about how within NESR, how that sort of changed your mix and kind of what's going on there and how G4 is progressing and kind of your exposure and how you're thinking about that the next couple of years? Yeah, sure. If you look at the offshore, I think the offshore, as I keep saying, it was very well documented going from the 13 million capacity to the 12 million capacity. They released the additional rig that they got.

Saudi was at all-time high on their jackups, almost 90 or 91, and now they are back to the 58-59 jackups, right? That is basically the stability of that from here. The oil, they released as well land rigs based on not needing the additional barrels, and now it is stable already, right? Between both, I think from the oil side is stability. Now, on the gas, the normal gas, there was not decline. Obviously, the unconventional program is increasing because they are going from 10,000 stages all the way to their goal of almost 25,000 stages a year, right? That growth is going to continue, and the plan is on the same path. Our exposure, as we are obviously involved from the beginning of the G4 and the unconventional, we continue to be part of that. There is huge potential.

Obviously, this is going to be tendered, right, as the usual Saudi Aramco. They already did that on the directional drilling and was awarded for all the rigs that they have. Now they are going to do the same thing for the completion. There will always be multi-awards. That will be known sometimes in the second half of the year or maybe the end of the first half. Definitely, our position will depend on the results of that. So far, we look quite positive about it. Now, if you look overall at Saudi and the OPEC, again, I mean, I think the OPEC, the way people always understand it or misunderstand it, is the announcement is basically saying, "I am going to be able, and I have the agility and the ability to add oil if, when, and when needed," right?

There is no constraint. They start from, as they mentioned, in April, but it's not like they are going to go, "Let's go and flood the market and get an oil price of $50." It's not going to happen, right? I mean, all these countries need oil price a minimum above $60. They are not going, in my personal opinion, to allow the oil price to go below that, which means that they just want to give themselves the opportunity. If geopolitics or a country is out of production, they will be able to make up that difference, which means that they prevent the oil price basically from going back to $100-$120, meaning that they have that capacity. Everybody knows the country that holds that is Saudi Arabia, really, right?

They have that 3 million barrel, and they will be able to replace any oil that gets out of the market. I think that's where the strength of Saudi compared to everybody else. In addition to that, and that's what people, again, in North America sometimes they underappreciate, this is conventional, not unconventional, right? Today, let's say they need to produce 12 billion barrels consistently, they can. They have that agility and ability to add rigs in case oil price goes, let's say, to $90, $100, and they need to sustain that for a long time, that they can add those land rigs at a very fast time. Obviously, this will be, again, very positive to us, right? It's activity, which means an increase in activity. We are not obviously betting on that at all.

What we are just saying is that Saudi has that ability to go up and down. They have the capacity. The announcement of OPEC, in my opinion, is not to flood the market and lower the oil price on the country. It is just to say, "We are ready to replace any oil that gets out of the market."

J. David Anderson (Senior Analyst)

Very helpful, Cherie. Thank you. If I could just squeeze one more in here. I just wanted to—you can talk about your capital allocation program here a little bit from a bigger picture. It sounded like there is potentially still some M&A out there. Are you more likely to spend capital internally on building out technologies or product lines, or are you thinking more about your footprint? How are you thinking about NETS over the next few years in terms of strategically where you want to go?

Sherif Foda (CEO)

Yeah.As Stephan explained, obviously, we need to spend our capital, our CapEx, obviously, for the growth. As a company, we continue to grow, so we spend our maintenance CapEx plus our growth CapEx, which could be quite significant, which is good because that means that we're going to grow even faster. We continue to look at our platform of technology. We are not looking at a big M&A in geographical because we are now in all the countries. We're very pleased and happy to be solid in our core two countries and outside. We surely want to enhance our drilling platform, Rouya, and our NEDA decarbonization. From that technology aspect, we maintain that agility, and we're obviously looking at some very, very unique and innovative solution, especially our advanced piloting of mineral recovery and direct lithium extraction.

Today, if one of these projects becomes really economical and successful, it's massive, right? We need to have that ability to acquire some of the technology partners that we are teaming with or just add to some of these projects in a bigger way. I think that's where we are going to see over the next couple of months how we are progressing with that. At the same time, on the directional drilling, we're obviously spending on extensive testing, and we want to add as well some very key features that some of it is very unique to some of what we call like a VC type of investment. Some of those are very innovative. We might add them to our portfolio.

Now, if I look at that and how we produce our cash flow, we are going to, obviously, in the second half of the year, relook at the entire cash flow that we produce, the M&A portfolio, the platform, and then we determine should we start to do a program like share buyback or dividend or something like that. We will definitely look at that towards the second half of this year.

J. David Anderson (Senior Analyst)

Thank you very much for taking on my question, Cherie.

Sherif Foda (CEO)

Thank you, sir.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Arun Jayaram with JP Morgan. Please proceed with your question.

Arun Jayaram (Research Analyst)

Yeah. Good morning, gentlemen. I wanted to see if you could elaborate a little bit on the margin performance in the fourth quarter and thoughts on potential margin progression in 2025, understanding there's typically some seasonal factors in one Q, which you cited, just wanted to see if you could address kind of your confidence that these types of margins could be sustainable as you think about the 2025.

Stefan Angeli (CFO)

It's Stefan. We had very good margin performance in Q4. Our service quality and operational execution was very, very good, right? When you have very good execution and service quality, it improves the margins, right? In 2025, we expect that the margins will track 24, right, and be very similar to 24. As Sherif said, we think we'll have high single-digit growth, right, in 25, right? There'll be more competition in 25. We expect the margins to track 2024 quite consistently.

Arun Jayaram (Research Analyst)

That's helpful. Just maybe my follow-up, Sherif, because I was wondering if you could elaborate on commercially what's going on for NESR in Kuwait. You highlighted how you've been selected amongst a small number of operators. I just wondered if you could highlight some of the work you're doing for KOC, and perhaps you highlighted an offshore discovery, which kind of wanted to see if you could maybe elaborate on their plans to develop that.

Sherif Foda (CEO)

Sure. Kuwait, as I said, is the very bright spot. Obviously, you started kind of later than the growth that happened in the other countries. Now you see Kuwait, it's above its 200 rigs. People do not even know that, right? Very, very, very strong activity. Rigs are drilling. They formulated their vision, which is 4 million barrel capacity from the current 2.5, 2.6, which means there is a lot of add, right? People, again, that know Kuwait, Borgan, which was the second largest field in the world, is obviously maturing, but is producing a lot.

Now they have a lot of other projects around. They have achieved an offshore discovery, which is very, very strong. I mean, Kuwait has always been, since 1938, a land business. Now they just found two—the first two wells, I would say, from an explorationist, that means it's a huge success. It's a 100% success. They drilled two wells. The two wells are discovery. One is estimated to be around $3 billion of deposit. The second one is $1 billion of deposit. One is shallower or closer to the land than the other.

They are on well number three. The plan is six wells. This was always how the program has been. Six wells. They are going to go to, depending on, obviously, the delineation and how they are going to see how this development would be. For people, again, to appreciate, in the Middle East or the NOC, they look at this as a very long-term view. They do not look at this as short-term. The plan would be, can I produce 100,000 barrels, 200,000 barrels consistently from that? How many jackups do I need? What is the platform? It is going to be a big tender at that time. They are going to formulate, is it—I mean, today, that contract is run as kind of an integrated contract.

I think it's going to definitely move to a rig contractor alone and service company as they do in most of the offshore. Because it was new, KOC wanted to have that in a concentrated basis. For us as NESR, as I said, we started this—I mean, in Kuwait, when we did this, we formed the company and we refused them. They have no presence in Kuwait. Today, as I said, it's our third largest country. We have a lot of contracts now. We make sure that it is what I call the anchor country, which means that I want to have at least 10-12 product lines. We are heavily tendering in 2025. I think almost all the contracts will be tendered. We secured already a couple, and we need to add more.

Our plan is to add more contracts to that and make it, I think, will have the path to be the second largest country in our portfolio. I think it's going to be bigger than Oman. That is where we want to make sure that we have a very good setup and a good infrastructure. Part of that, as we do in all the countries, we develop technology with our customer, and then we are part of that ecosystem as part of the plan of KOC, of KPC, of the vision, of the quantization, adding people, etc. KOC chose five companies to form this, what they call the AIP or Ahmadi Innovation Valley, similar to the Harran Techno Valley in Saudi. They assigned a big space in Ahmadi and 250,000 needed. Then they're going to put companies.

We were one of the five chosen from all the companies in the industry. We are going to build what we call an innovation center. We will have technology partners. We'll have some research projects jointly done with them. We will look at the challenges that they have. That's how we will select it. They showed us the challenges they have for the future. We told them what are the answer product, and they liked what we have. We are part of that. What will this bring you, obviously? Some people say, "Okay, what does it mean?" It means some of it will be direct awarded contracts. Some of it will be, obviously, again, joint research with the client, which makes you part of that ecosystem embedded in the country DNA. I think that's how you grow in that business, right?

We're very excited. We have a fantastic relationship with their leadership, and we're looking forward to really make that a huge country for us.

Arun Jayaram (Research Analyst)

Great. Thanks, gents.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jeff Robertson with Water Tower Research. Please proceed with your question.

Jeff Robertson (Managing Director)

Thank you. Good morning. Sherif, as the emphasis on unconventional resources grows, will that have any material impact on the product mix and the margins for NESR?

Sherif Foda (CEO)

I mean, today we have the unconventional in our mix, obviously, and this will continue. It's basically like the United States. It's a big fracking business. The difference will be as the activity grows and the efficiency improves, you continue to kind of try to maintain, what I call try to maintain the margins while the cost is increasing, but the efficiency tries to offset that increases.

In the future, that's what we are planning to do. Same way, more efficiency, more technology. Today, Saudi Arabia, Jafura is state of the art. A lot of people as well question, "Would Saudi be able to have efficiency of the permanent?" Yes, they do, right? Saudi Arabia is at that level, pumping at 22-23 hours a day, multi-stage, dual frag, etc. All the latest is there. Obviously, the efficiency keeps improving. Today, in some cases, we do 18 stages a day, 19 stages a day. Some other technology we are bringing. We have partners with the US. That's basically how you maintain that improvement in efficiency and trying to get the reduction in cost to be able to maintain economical for that cost curve, right?

In addition to that, in the same field, we are trying some new stuff along with our customer on the water, right? Which I think I'm still such a big believer that the industry should do a better job in reusing its resources. That's how you recycle the water, try to get the minerals out. If you get some product out of that as well, you sell it so that improves your margin and as well contribute to the climate. I think if we do that, we will be able to maintain and even improve the margins in the future because we are adding new business to that platform.

Jeff Robertson (Managing Director)

Secondly, on the Rouya platform, what's the pathway to continue to test that and ultimately be able to use that technology in new contracts?

Sherif Foda (CEO)

The Rouya steerable business is a very, I would say, extensive testing if you do it in a very reliable way. Today, our Rouya platform, which is the RSS, Rotary Steerable, MWD, LWD, is what I call a success technological. The technology works. We proved it. We proved it in the U.S., 70,000 feet drilled. Now, what you're doing is you go through a very deliberate, extensive testing that is very rigid. Every time you pass a stage, you go and you test everything. For example, our RSS today, after the wells and after the drilling that we did, we bring back those tools and we test. We do it like destructive testing, check everything, make sure that we believe and we know how the tool is ruggedized, how it will be able to drill in different formations.

We send it and do another test or another job. All these jobs, obviously, once we know it's drilling exactly like the competition or like the market, we charge for it already, right? As I said, we have this good outcome that we have contracts already. We are delivering on those contracts. I would say by H2, by the second half of this year, we'll be able to determine now everything is commercial and they are reliable. We'll obviously always have some teething issue, but the tool is reliable enough to be a market standard to call it a commercial tool.

Jeff Robertson (Managing Director)

Thank you for taking my questions.

Sherif Foda (CEO)

Thank you, sir. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from the line of Arvin Sengar with Geosphere Capital. Please proceed with your question.

Arvind Sanger (Managing Partner)

Thank you. Good morning, Sherif. Question on the valuation gap between where NESR is valued and similarly positioned, serving the same markets in the Middle East and a little bit of North Africa that are listed in the Middle East are valued. I mean, it's a valuation gap that you can drive a truck through. Any thoughts on how you might be able to close that gap?

Sherif Foda (CEO)

Very good question, Arvin. I mean, I wish I understand the market. Our growth story is obviously very unique, and we continue to do the same. I think maybe it's a bit underappreciated. If I call on the Middle East, obviously, if that's your question, on the companies that are listed in the Middle East, obviously, they are well-positioned like ADNOC Drilling, ADC, ADDIS. These are the three, I would say, the companies listed there. Definitely, it's something we're looking at extensively.

We looked at it in the past. There is, for people to, again, appreciate, there is no fungibility between any exchange, actually, in the Middle East and any exchange in the US or in Europe. What you have to do is you have to do EDRs, or if you do a listing, or at a certain point of time, if you can say, as you said or as you are asking, the disallocation totally, definitely, you look at new ideas, right? Should you list there? Should you do something different? So far, we are on the course to see. I think people, I think maybe you need to appreciate us more on the Nasdaq or in the US. It's something that we're going to monitor while we are keeping the dialogue with our friends and folks in the Middle East listing agencies.

Arvind Sanger (Managing Partner)

Understood. One last question. The warrants, I did not see anything in the press release. Are those expiring this summer?

Sherif Foda (CEO)

No, we extended the warrants until June 2026. It is not in the press release, but it will be on the 20th. It is public that we extended them to June 2026.

Arvind Sanger (Managing Partner)

Okay. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, it is Star One to join the question queue. Our next question comes from the line of John AJ with Ockham Crest Management. Please proceed with your question.

John Ajay (Senior Analyst)

Yes, hi. I would like to see if you can quantify a base case for overall weighted average market growth for 2025 and a base case for NETS growth. More importantly, I would like to understand your level of visibility and confidence in delivering that level of base case NETS growth. What are some of the key assumptions that could swing it one way or the other on oil prices or geopolitical developments? As far as oil prices go, my understanding is, and I'd like to see if this is correct, is that 80% of your business is not oil price sensitive.

I'd like to understand what would be an adverse oil price scenario that might cause overall market growth or your growth to be a little lower and how much, what is that sensitivity? I'd like to understand kind of the, you talked about there being some exciting growth opportunities, and you want to see how some things play out on deploying capital in those organic opportunities. I'd like to understand, on top of this base case, how significant could some of these opportunities be in terms of layering significant revenue on top of this base case?

Sherif Foda (CEO)

Thanks, Andrea. Obviously, a lot of assumption here. Let me try to answer all your questions. The MENA region growth, 25 over 24, would be anywhere depending on who you talk to, depending on the assumption that you have, rigs are coming on time, some of the project gets delayed, etc. We are talking about 3-4%. I would say minimum we're going to do is 8-10%, right? That's the growth profile we see ourselves versus the other. Why? Because we have that luxury of being small.

If you are small and you have contracts that you have the visibility of those contracts, you add new contracts to it, and then you make the math, you're going to make it, right? If you are 10% of the market being growing, it's not that hard versus if you are 50% of the market, it's going to be very difficult because you'll have to follow the market. The best example of that, as I keep saying, is our position in Oman. In Oman, we are very big in terms of percentage. We are, I would say, the third largest service company, and we grow with the market. We don't outpace the market. When we outpace the market, we outpace the market if we win a new service line that we don't have, which is today we are tendering a couple of contracts that we don't have.

If we win them, we will outgrow the market even in Oman, right? Now, on your assumption of the oil price, I would say that's my personal view that the oil price will maintain in that range, $60-$70, which means that this is basically all the assumption and all the budget of all our customers and all the countries where we operate, right? Remember, the country's main source of revenue in the Middle East is oil and gas. They plan their budget based on that. I don't think that they will let the oil price go to, as people think, below $50 or whatever, right? Let's say it does happen, right? I think that's your second question. If that happens, yes, definitely they are going to curtail production.

They are going to shut down some business, some added project that they do not need now because they can produce. If it goes below $50, that means that there is massive surplus in the market and demand is not coming back and China is not recovering, which means that oil price will up. They will ask for price reduction and they will curtail some of the business. It means that will affect, for sure, it will affect our business and it will affect everybody, right? Again, if you look at MENA overall, that is the whole theory of the business. It never has that kind of downturn that you have in North America, which is like a meltdown. It does not have that, right? You are going to get a reduction will be flat instead of growing. Our margin drops 200-300 basis points, right?

Now, on the sensitivity on the gas, we have obviously the Middle East now is our revenue, I would say, almost 50/50. The gas program is going to continue regardless of the oil price because that's an internal consumption. It is not for LNG. It's not for export. It is for internal consumption. All of them have that kind of objective of having their internal consumption made out of gas and renewable, and they want to stop burning liquid, especially in the summer months where the air conditioning is really heavily used and they use a lot of it. I tried to mention as well that they are going very, very heavy on data centers and AI. I was just in CERAWeek, met with the leadership of UAE and Saudi, and they put this in their presentation. Massive, massive growth in gas.

They're talking about 70% more, which means that's a lot of projects and a lot of gas to be burned, obviously, to make that leadership that they want to have on AI. I think I answered all your questions. Oh, you had one on the capital. I mean, there are so many opportunities that we are working on. I would say we will know sometimes by the second half how much of all these projects turning out. Obviously, we finish our tendering process as well. We know how much CapEx, how many new contracts we get. I mean, we just tendered several contracts in several countries. I think we're going to get a positive indication on a couple of them, which is new to us. Definitely, we are going to deploy, which is something good for the growth.

Now, as I said, the second half, once we evaluate all these projects and we look at our cash flow, definitely Stephanie is going to look into details as well with the refinance and everything. We will see should we start to do a capital return program as share buyback or dividend or whatever. We are definitely going to announce and seek, obviously, board approval and all these things and announce at some time in the second half.

John Ajay (Senior Analyst)

Great. Thanks for the update. Really appreciate it.

Sherif Foda (CEO)

Thank you, sir.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. That concludes our question and answer session. I'll turn the floor back to Mr. Foda for any final comments.

Sherif Foda (CEO)

Thank you very much. We really appreciate your time, appreciate your belief. Again, I'd like to thank you all for your support and belief in the journey. Thank you very much. Very excited for 2025. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.