Cal Dive's CEO Discusses Q2 2012 Results - Earnings Call Transcript

Cal Dive International Inc. (DVR)

Q2 2012 Results Earnings Call

August 2, 2012 10:00 AM ET

Executives

Quinn Hébert – President and CEO

Brent Smith – Chief Financial Officer

Lisa Buchanan – General Counsel

John Abadie – Chief Operating Officer

Analysts

Jim Rollyson – Raymond James

Martin Malloy – Johnson Rice

Joe Gibney – Capital One

Presentation

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. And welcome to your Q2 2012 Cal Dive International Earnings Conference Call. My name is [Bela], and I will be your operator today. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. We will conduct a question-and-answer session towards the end of this conference. (Operator Instructions)

As a reminder, this call is being recorded for replay purposes. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Quinn Hébert, President and CEO. Please proceed, sir.

Quinn Hébert

Okay. Let’s get started. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Cal Dive’s second quarter 2012 earnings call. With me this morning is Brent Smith, our Chief Financial Officer; Lisa Buchanan, our General Counsel; and John Abadie, our Chief Operating Officer. To follow along this morning in our presentation, the presentation can be found on our website at www.caldive.com, and it’s under the Investor Relations hot button.

Right now I’ll turn to slide two. Our General Counsel has a forward-looking statements message.

Lisa Buchanan

Thanks, Quinn. This conference call includes forward-looking statements, particularly with respect to any statements that we make regarding our earnings expectations. The forward-looking statements made during this call are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor Provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

Our actual future results may differ materially due to a variety of factors. For information concerning factors that could cause our actual results to differ, we refer to you to the Risk Factors described in our Form 10-K on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

This call also includes certain non-GAAP financial measures. For a reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures, we refer you to our earnings press release and a presentation slides for this call.

Quinn Hébert

Okay. On slide three is our agenda for this morning. I’ll say some remarks and then Brent will review our financials in detail and then we’ll open up the phone lines to Q&A.

Turning to slide four, we experienced higher utilization during the second quarter 2012, compared to the same period of 2011 as demand for our service in the Gulf of Mexico continues to slowly recover.

Unfortunately, we had a tropical storm interruption, our second quarter operating results were negatively impacted by Tropical Storm Debby that moved to the Gulf during the latter half of June and order most of our equipment offshore during that timeframe.

Although, our utilization strengthened, we’re still operating in a pretty competitive market as dayrates for our vessels remained under pressure. For the projects we did perform however, we did have a safe and solid project execution.

On the balance sheet front, we paid down $18.2 million of our term loan in the second quarter. Additionally, we issued $86.3 million inconvertible debt in July. We used the net proceeds from this transaction to repay a portion of the term loan, with the remaining term loan balance outstanding at $49 million.

We viewed this transaction -- this convertible debt transaction swapping secured debt with covenants with unsecured debt with no financial covenants at roughly the same coupon rate. This transaction provides us with long-term financial flexibility and improved liquidity which is important to us.

We acknowledge this convertible debt instrument is potentially diluted to our existing shareholders. But convertible debt instruments such as the one we issued rarely convert before maturity and even then, we have the option to sales in cash like traditional debt. Brent will provide more details on this transaction in his remarks.

Internationally, we remain very busy, in Mexico, we have a nice pipeline project to complete and we have about five projects on our radar screen to bid, about half of which could commence this year.

In Australia, we are excited about the prospects for our newly announced alliance with Fugro in our joint venture the Toisa Paladin. Fugro is an impressive company, in a large, diversified, geotechnical survey and subsea provider with a major presence in Australia.

The Toisa Paladin is a world class asset. She was built in 2007. She is a 100 meter class DSV, diving support vessel with an 18 man saturation diving system. She’s a state-of-the-art ship, capable of working just about anywhere in the world.

We already have booked work for the ship in Malaysia and then in Trinidad that will bring it to the end of the year. Under the alliance we intend to split profits equally between the two partners.

We believe this alliance with such a high spec asset will help us grow our presence in Australia and certain other areas, and we’re very excited about the prospects going forward for the Paladin. Also we started our first project in West Africa and continue to bid for more work in that region.

If you turn to slide five, our backlog stands at about $238 million, which is significantly ahead of last year’s second quarter backlog of $176 million. While the backlog is down sequentially, it’s common for us to build a backlog in the first half of the year so we’re encouraged with backlog level at this point.

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