Odfjell Drilling Aktie

Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the Odfjell Drilling Q1 2026 Results Presentation Webcast. My name is James Crothers, and I'm the Investor Relations Officer of the company. I am joined today by our Chief Executive Officer, Kjetil Gjersdal; and our Chief Financial Officer, Orjan Lunde.

Before we begin, your attention is brought to the important information slide of our presentation, which we'd encourage participants to read in full. Note that this presentation is only a summary of the quarter and the more comprehensive quarterly reports should be read separately. Both that report and today's presentations are available on our website, www.odfjelldrilling.com. Today's call will follow the traditional structure with Kjetil taking us through the key highlights before moving on to our operational review. Kjetil will then continue with an overview of the market as we see it today before handing over to Orjan, who will go through our financial review. Kjetil will then summarize the presentation before we open up our Q&A session for analysts and investors. [Operator Instructions]

With that, I will pass over to our CEO, Kjetil Gjersdal. Kjetil?

Thank you, James, and a very good afternoon, everybody. Today, we are reporting what are excellent financial results driven by a really strong operational performance across our fleet. Due to this performance, we generated a particularly strong bonus contribution, which contributed to a total EBITDA of $154 million from revenue of $284 million. In addition, we have further increased our dividend whilst continuing to deleverage our balance sheet. Q1's dividends will now be $0.25, increasing from $0.23 per share.

Now this is the sixth quarter in a row that we have increased our dividend, and this highlights the capability of our fleet to generate significant cash flow. Our leverage ratio is also further reduced to 1.6x net debt to EBITDA, whilst equity ratio has increased to 55%. Further to this, we remain very comfortable about our contract backlog with our total backlog now sitting at $2.3 billion, $2 billion of which is firm. As we look at new opportunities to add backlog, we believe that the harsh environment market remains very tight and in particular for high-spec semisubmersibles in Norway and increasingly also in other regions.

And finally, as many of you will know already, post period, we experienced an equipment handling incident on Deepsea Atlantic, which resulted in the BOP and riser being dropped to the sea floor and some damage to the rig. As announced, thankfully, the incident did not result in any injury to personnel or cause any impact on the environment. However, it has resulted on the Atlantic being taken off hire.

Now this is an unprecedented incident for our company. And if we move to Slide #7, I will dive into some more details. It is of no surprise to you that we are taking this extremely serious. As soon as the incident occurred and personnel, the rig and the local environment were confirmed to be safe, my senior management team and I made sure that we were taking all steps possible to bring the rig back to full strength. Our team is now completely focused on meeting this challenge head on. Within hours of the incident occurring, we have structured multiple teams to work in parallel on progressing different solutions to bring the back -- to bring the rig back on hire. Since the incident, we have made good progress in addressing and understanding the challenge ahead of us. We have located the BOP, and we have started to work on recovering it. Our primary focus is on the safe repair of the damaged equipment, compliance to regulatory authorities and cooperating closely with clients and vendors. Investigation as to the cause of the incidents are ongoing and together with our equipment manufacturers, we will be sure to implement measures and learnings that are developed as a result.

In addition to this, we are also progressing other work streams. That includes that we have pushed the button on getting our spare BOP that we have in stock ready as a plan B. This is in case we are not successful with the recovery or repairs with the primary BOP. Another alternative is a combination of these options. And given the possible scenarios we are considering, we believe it will take 3 to 4 months in total before Deepsea Atlantic is ready for operation again. And having the spare BOP ready as an alternative is included in that estimate and is part of derisking the total timeline. Now as we move ahead, there can be further findings that improves that estimate, and there can be findings that makes it worse. It remains too early to conclusively state the total financial impact of the incidents. However, with the information that we have in hand, the 3 to 4 months is an estimate that we believe in.

It is worth noting that the company has insurance in place, which covers replacement or the repair of the damaged equipment, including some operating cost covers during the process, which we are working closely with our insurers to progress. As was stated in my quote in our press release today, this incident really has been a reminder to us all that unforeseen events can happen in our industry. Despite that, I am very pleased with the response of my team, our clients and the wider industry to the situation. In addition, I want to give credit to my fantastic colleagues -- for those who follow Odfjell Drilling, you know that I'm blessed with a highly competent and motivated team who are working day and night on this subject now. And I have full confidence that we together will resolve this challenge in the best possible manner.

Then moving on to the rest of the operational review. And despite what's happened with the Deepsea Atlantic, it's worth noting that Q1 actually was a very strong operational quarter for our business. All of our units were active in Norway and achieved a financial utilization of 96%. In addition, during Q1, our units performed ahead of expectations and delivered very strong bonuses, further bolstering our EBITDA generation for the quarter. In addition to what we achieved in Q1, it's worth bearing in mind what we have ahead of us. Currently, we retain over $2 billion of firm backlog coverage with $300 million of priced options. This backlog means that all of our units have firm contract coverage until at least mid-2027, whereafter, our units are priced and unpriced options which extend into 2030 for some units.

Then we take a look at our market review. And last quarter, we noted that we believe that the market was becoming tighter, and we maintain this view. Globally, there has been no meaningful changes to supply. And from a Norwegian contracting perspective, most units, which could work in our core area are either fully contracted, overseas or in need of significant investments to allow them to operate in the NCS. And we see no reason that this should change in the near future with operational entry barriers into the NCS remaining very high. From a demand perspective, we have also seen continued messages from our client on their intent on arresting production declines by drilling more wells than current levels. Furthermore, we believe that demand will continue to be focused on securing Tier 1 sixth-generation harsh environment rigs.

In other regions, we see outstanding tenders for work in Namibia and in the U.K. and have seen a notable increase in interest among clients for deepwater drilling, which could further reduce competitive supply. There is further incremental short-term exploration work also available with longer-term developments likely to be maturing around '27, '28, in line with our own fleet availability. And in summary, I would say that we feel the market is very well balanced between supply and demand and positions our fleet very well for contracting for the future.

And with that, I will now hand it to you, Orjan, to go through our financial review.

Thank you, Kjetil. I will start with a summary of the income statement. Our revenues continues to benefit from higher day rates as well as including the first full quarter of earnings after the acquisition of Deepsea Bergen.

Operating revenue in Q1 '26 was $284 million compared to $204 million in Q1 '25. Operating revenue from our own fleet was $254 million, while the external fleet generated revenue of $30 million. The reduction in revenue from the external fleet compared to previous quarters is explained by the transition of Deepsea Bergen from the external fleet to the own fleet segment. Q1 EBITDA for the owned fleet segment was $150 million, representing a margin of 59%, which is partly supported by a solid achievement of performance incentives in the quarter. The EBITDA for the external fleet segment was $6 million, which is a margin of 20%. Less corporate overhead and other adjustments, the group EBITDA was $154 million. The company delivered a net profit of $73 million in Q1. Before I talk about our robust balance sheet on Page 13, I would like to mention that on 17th of April, we got a positive court ruling from Gulating Court of Appeal in the Odfjell offshore tax case.

The Norwegian tax authorities have the right to appeal within 1 month from the ruling. Then to the balance sheet development and status. Our net debt is decreasing. Following the increase in debt level in Q4 '25 related to the acquisition of Deepsea Bergen, during Q1 reduced our net debt by $25 million down to $883 million, which corresponds to a leverage ratio of 1.6. The equity ratio is marginally up to 55% out of total assets of approximately $2.6 billion. The available liquidity is $295 million, including undrawn RCF of $227 million.

Details of the cash flow for Q1 follows on the next slide. In Q1 2026, we generated $123 million in cash from operations, reflective of a negative change in working capital of $27 million during the quarter. The change in working capital is partly explained by the acquisition of Deepsea Bergen, higher day rates on the other units and mainly by changes in payment terms related to personnel taxes and social security implemented through changes in Norwegian law effective from 1st of January 2026. Net interest paid was $20 million, which reflects a longer first interest period on parts of our loans due to the refinancing in early December last year. Tax paid was $8 million. Cash flow from investing activities was minus $14 million, where our $4 million was related to periodic maintenance. The remaining $10 million was purchases of fixed assets, where $5 million were client-specific upgrades covered by lump sum payments from customers in this or adjacent quarters.

Net cash flow from financing activities was $61 million, including minor FX adjustments. We used our revolving credit facilities to actively manage our liquidity to reduce interest costs, which resulted in making net repayments of $52 million on the RCF during the quarter. In addition, we made $12 million in scheduled installments on our bank facilities and leases. Dividends paid in Q1 were $55 million and was related to Q4 results. Finally, on the back of the strong financial results in the first quarter of '26, a robust balance sheet and cash flow position, we are continuing our upward dividend trajectory by declaring a dividend for Q1 of $0.25 per share, which translates to a total dividend payment of $60 million for the quarter. This corresponds to an annualized yield of 9.5% based on yesterday's close. The shares will trade ex dividends on 27th of May and payment will be made on or around.

I will now pass back to Kjetil, who will summarize our presentation.

Thanks, Orjan. So in summary, Q1 saw Odfjell Drilling delivering excellent financial results following a fantastic operational performance during this quarter. Our market continues to be tight, positioning our fleet well for the years ahead when our fleet comes up contracts. Our cash flow generation is well secured due to our strong backlog.

And finally, given our market position, our backlog, our results and our strong balance sheet, we are very pleased to once again increase our dividend for the sixth time in a row. In our annual report for several years now, I have always said that our focus is operations, operations, operations. And as we move ahead, this focus will not change. This is an important period to get right. As a team, we are confident that we will get the Deepsea Atlantic back in operation in the best possible way. Thank you very much.

[Operator Instructions] Our operator today is Francois. Francois, can you please open the telephone lines and open the Q&A session.

[Operator Instructions] We've got a question from Fredrik Stene from Clarksons Securities.

First, congratulations on a very strong operational quarter. You always seem to outperformed by around 5%. Hope I'll catch up to that at some point. But my question today relates to the Deepsea Atlantic and the incident in April. First, I appreciate you guys giving some guidance and information and update today. I think that's helpful even though you're kind of in a state where you don't know everything just yet. It's important for everyone to get kind of a glimpse into the process and how you're working through this.

And Kjetil, I think you said -- or you said that the best estimate for now is somewhere between 3 and 4 months base or from the time of the incident. But you also said that it may happen sooner and it may happen later depending on how things develop. So I was wondering, are you able to share a bit of light on which events or long lead items or anything that is kind of key to getting this process done. So what needs to change in a way? Is it going to be faster? And what can potentially make it take longer than your initial estimates? So any color on that would be super helpful.

Yes. Obviously, this is a complicated challenge, Fredrik, with a lot of variable factors, both technical lead times, et cetera, regulatory authorities involved and so on. We have taken all of that into account and giving our estimate based on the information that we have, and it is what we see as a likely outcome and something that we believe in.

Obviously, we're very happy that we were able to line up the spare BOP as part of that time estimate, which, as I said, I think, derisk the case a lot. Obviously, there will be further findings we find on the primary BOP that might help improve the situation, but it's too early to conclude. I hope you understand, Fredrik, to go into a detailed discussion or explanation about what could go -- help us go better and what could help us take longer. That's all we can spend time on that here.

That's totally understandable. Just wanted to get like a high-level view. And then my second question as a follow-up. Are you able to give some color on how discussions have been with the client around this? I would assume that they are also keen on getting the rig back to work as soon as possible. There aren't any really replacement rigs out there. And I would expect that kind of disregarding this particular event that they've been happy with the performance of the Atlantic. So I would assume that they're keen to get it back and drilling again.

Yes, yes, absolutely. And I want to give credit to both [ Iberia ] and Equinor in this process. We have an excellent cooperation and have received fantastic support so far. And all parties are focusing on bringing the rig back in operation as soon as possible. And yes, that's so far that's been very, very good.

All right. And then just one quick one to Orjan. The ruling from Gulating, can you just remind us what that would mean in dollars in case you -- in case that ends up being the final ruling?

We have disclosed a Norwegian krona amount, NOK 307 million that is sitting on our balance sheet as a receivable right now. So if we move forward with a potential positive outcome of the case, those NOK 307 million would be paid to us in addition to some cost coverage and interest during the period.

There are no further questions from frontline. So handing over to you, James, to take questions from webcast.

Sure. Thank you very much, Francois. Thank you for your questions so far. So we have one question here in regards to marketing opportunities. Is there enough expected demand in Norway to keep your entire owned fleet busy in Norway without having to ship them overseas and go internationally with those units?

Yes, we think there is. When we sort of do a bottom-up calculations of the opportunities that lie ahead of us, we see a very strong market, and we see a market imbalance or even perhaps lacking a few rates. So yes, that is definitely a possibility that we can keep them all in Norway. But it's also interesting alternatives elsewhere, both in the U.K. and other places. So we are watching that one closely as well.

Great. A few questions on M&A as well. So any plans to make acquisitions of more of the rigs Odfjell Drilling of?

Yes. I have to admit, M&A is not on my top of my agenda is. I have other things to think about. But yes, I will stick to what we've said. We did what is now Deepsea Bergen. I think if you can find the right quality assets with the right price and with the right backlog, we're definitely interested in pursuing those opportunities.

Great. We've had a few questions as well in regards to how we plan to progress our dividends. Orjan, do you want to talk about how we see that?

Yes. As always, we don't provide guidance on our dividend strategy. So I would like to refer to our dividend criteria, which are outlined on Slide 16, but it ultimately remains discretionary from quarter to quarter.

Great. One question here in regards to supply of rigs in our sector. Kjetil, how do you sort of see there's some rigs in other yards which are maybe finishing building, I don't know, how do you sort of see supply for rigs in our sector developing?

Well, I think supply is definitely tightening up, and this -- it's easy to have a good overview of what sort of excess or additional supply that could be entering the market. But I think sort of the -- either they are far away from here or there is a lot of work that needs to be done with them. So there was one contract announcement with Transocean Barnes coming back working for Var Energy. And I think, of course, we have the Mira in Namibia, which is a candidate. Other candidates, we evaluate that will take a lot longer time to be sort of candidates for entering the market. So [indiscernible] it a market very much in balance, but also good demand and supply that tightens up.

We've received -- I can see we've received quite a lot of questions on, obviously, the Atlantic incidents. I think it's worth reiterating the comments, we would reiterate the comments we've made in our reports and presentations are there. In general, we will update the market as appropriate and any material developments as the progress at this point. Obviously, it's hard for us to be too specific as our reports and presentation suggests.

One question here, though, I think that is worth clarifying is does the spare BOP in Atlantic meet the operator's requirements? If I recall correctly, it was replaced due to request for the operator. I think it's just worth talking about the spare BOP in our system and how -- where that's from and what that is.

Yes. So the spare BOP is the BOP that we took off the Deepsea Aberdeen when it did its SPS. So on almost all terms, it meets the requirements that is very similar to the BOP that's actually on Atlantic. It will require some modifications, but we have a full overview of that, and we have sort of implemented those modifications into the plan, which sort of adds up to the 3 to 4 months that we say. So I would say it's almost fully identical, but we will need some modifications, particularly on the control system.

Great. Thank you. Again, a few more questions in regards to the cause of the incident, which we obviously can't go into at this point as we're still doing our investigations. Any learnings that we have from those investigations would obviously be implemented on to the rigs to prevent similar scenarios. I think we'll have one more question. Do we have -- we've had a question if we have any comments on legacy Awilco rigs coming into the market? We can't cover that already.

I don't have any comments to that. You should just talk to [ Rico ] about that.

Great. I think then in that case, we will close the call for now. And if there are any further questions, anyone does come, please do get in touch. As I said, we've had -- I can see a few questions that have come through on the conference call, and I'll endeavor to contact you directly in regards to those questions as well.

Again, really appreciate everyone's continued interest in the company, and we look forward to speaking again in our Q2 results in August. Thank you very much.

Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the Odfjell Drilling Q4 and Financial Year-End 2025 Results Presentation. My name is James Crothers, and I'm the Investor Relations Officer at the company, and I'm joined today by our Chief Executive Officer, Kjetil Gjersdal; and our Chief Financial Officer, Orjan Lunde.

Before we begin, your attention is brought to the important information slide of our presentation, which we encourage participants to read in full. Note that the presentation is only a summary of the quarter and a more comprehensive quarterly report should be read separately. Both that reports and today's presentations are available on our website, www.odfjelldrilling.com.

Today's call will follow the traditional structure with Kjetil taking us through the key highlights, of which there have been quite a few this quarter before taking us through the operational performance of the business. Kjetil will then continue with an overview of the market as we see today before handing over to Orjan, who will go through our financial review. Kjetil will then summarize the presentation before we open up our Q&A session for analysts and investors. As always, the Q&A session will be conducted over both telephone lines and webcast tools. We will always try and get through as many of these questions as possible. However, if we don't get a chance to go through your question because of time, I will try and follow up directly with you after the call.

We make an effort to answer all of the questions asked, so we do encourage you to use this feature as much as possible. So this has certainly been the busiest quarter for the business since I joined Odfjell Drilling. So without further ado, I will pass over to Kjetil to take us through the key highlights. Kjetil?

Thank you, James, and a very good afternoon, everybody. As James said, it's been a very busy quarter for our company. Unsurprisingly, one of the most important achievements during the quarter was the successful completion of the Deepsea Bollsta and the accompanying refinancing of the company. This has had a significant impact on our business, and I am delighted to now call the Deepsea Bollsta one of our own units. I'll talk more about that on the next slide.

In addition to this, the company secured 3 new contracts during the quarter, which in addition to the Bollsta acquisition, added nearly $1 billion of firm order backlog. Our backlog now sits at $2.5 billion, including priced options, significantly increased from Q3. Once again, our operational performance has facilitated record-breaking financial results with an average financial utilization of 98%. We were able to deliver revenue of $245 million and an EBITDA of $124 million. We were also able to deliver net profit of $45 million, reduced by $18 million due to costs associated with our refinancing.

And last but not least, we have once again increased our dividends, moving from $0.20 in Q3 2025 to $0.23 in Q4, equaling a total dividend of $55 million. And given today's share price, this is equal to an annualized yield of around 8%. Before I begin with the operational review, I briefly wanted to touch on the acquisition of Bollsta. As many of you know, we've been looking to expand the size of our fleet for some time. We have to be cautious when doing this. Our see-through backlog we secured on our 4 owned units created a fantastic cash flow generation for our business and any deal we consider had to be accretive to that story. With the Bollsta acquisition, we believe we found that deal. For the total cost of $480 million, significantly below the implied value of our own rigs and way below new build cost, we have acquired one of the high spec units in our sector with a $355 million in firm backlog already secured.

The deal is anticipated to add $100 million in annual EBITDA with limited CapEx expected going forward and an SPS schedule, which is aligned with our own fleet. The beauty of adding a rig from our managed fleet has meant that the transition of owners has been seamless with the crew on board Bollsta barely noticing a change. And we are absolutely delighted to add this unit to our fleet. And as some of you may have noted across our social media, we have decided to rename the Deepsea Bollsta to Deepsea Aberdeen. The Deepsea Aberdeen was a unit that we retired in 2022, after it serviced clients faithfully over 37 years. The unit had a fantastic reputation and standing in the industry. And we hope that with this name change, we can continue to build upon that legacy.

So I will then move on to our operational review. Beginning with our new contract announcement. As many of you know, we agreed 3 new contracts on our rigs. Firstly, the Deepsea Bollsta secured a 5-month extension to its existing contract with Equinor, which will see a drilling on the Johan Sverdrup Phase III project. This has extended the Deepsea Bollsta's firm backlog to first quarter in 2028. The contract also includes five 1-year options following the firm period, which extends until 2032.

Also during the quarter, we secured over 2 years of firm contract for the use of Deepsea Aberdeen with Equinor, which extend the contract backlog for that unit until second quarter of 2029. The contract will see the drilling unit drilling [indiscernible] project for Equinor and will continue in direct continuation of the existing contract.

And finally, we also secured a 1-year contract extension with Aker BP for the use of Deepsea Nordkapp. And that extension takes the firm contract backlog until the end of 2027. And Aker BP retains further options, which extend until second quarter of '29. Overall, and with the acquisition of Bollsta, the company added nearly $1 billion of total order backlog to the group during Q4, with all of the new contracts being secured at industry-leading day rates. And with these new contracts in place, our contract backlog is strong -- is in a strongest position as ever with all of our own fleet fully booked until at least 2027. In total, we have $2.5 billion of contract backlog, out of which $2.3 billion is firm. And as you can see from the chart, our first contracting opportunity is now the Deepsea Atlantic, which has priced options in place which lasts the majority of '27 and unpriced options, which continues past 2030.

All 5 of our own units are operating in Norway for the length of the firm contracts, except Deepsea Atlantic, which will begin its operations in U.K. on the Rosebank project shortly. If we transition that forward revenue into annual revenue, you can see that our track record on a year-on-year revenue growth is set to continue in 2026, particularly after the acquisition of Deepsea Bollsta.

Now bear in mind, on top of the revenue figures that you see on this slide, we also received bonuses and fuel incentives on our contracts except for the Deepsea Bollsta contract, which does not have arrangements for that. Also worth noting on this chart, the green line indicates our average day rate for our rigs, which are secured in the mid- to high $400,000 range, while nearly straight black line is an illustration of how our OpEx is expected to develop. Due to our strong cost focus and escalation clauses in the contract, this line is nearly flat between now and 2030. And when you put all this together, our business has some highly attractive economics going forward for consistent and robust future EBITDA generation.

And I'm going to talk a little bit about the market. The way we see it, the market is getting tighter. In Norway, we already know that the market is good with the company securing 3 new contracts at leading day rates recently. As we look ahead, we think that this will continue. Clients have been vocal about their goals and interest in drilling exploration and production wells to arrest production declines. And based on Norwegian Petroleum Directorate's forecast, they will have to elevate from current levels of drilling to achieve those goals. We do believe that we will get our fair share of that work.

Further to this, we have seen an increased interest in securing Tier 1 sixth-generation units in Norway while supply remains tight for these types of vessels. Most units which could be brought into Norway are either sold out overseas or in need of significant CapEx to bring it back into supply. It was no surprise, therefore, to hear about the contract award for the -- to Noble for the Ocean GreatWhite with Aker BP. We see that award as evidence of clients' interest in securing capacity into the sector. We believe that there is going to be a lot of drilling going on [ of ] the NCS in the coming years.

Further to Norway, international demand has increased from prior quarters with tenders outstanding in both Namibia, Canada and U.K. This is in addition to short-term exploration work, which could also suit semisubmersibles quite well. Ultimately, as international projects mature into development, this could align with ongoing supply constraints issue in Norway, potentially leading to an even stronger market for our units to operate in.

And with that, I will now pass on to Orjan to go through our financial review.

Thank you, Kjetil. I will begin with a summary of the income statement, which continues to benefit from higher day rates, as you can see from the top left chart. Operating revenue in Q4 2025 was $245 million compared to $203 million in Q4 last year. Operating revenue from our own fleet was $201 million, while the external fleet generated a revenue of $43 million. Q4 EBITDA for the owned fleet segment was $118 million, which is a margin of 59%. The EBITDA for the external fleet segment was $9 million, which is a margin of 21%. Less corporate overhead and other adjustments, the group EBITDA was $124 million. The company delivered a net profit of $45 million in Q4, slightly reduced due to costs associated with the refinancing. Overall, our net profit is substantially higher for the year, finishing at $173 million in comparison to $65 million in 2024.

Turning to Page 15, and you will notice that we've included details on the refinancing in Q4 last year. The refinancing that we completed in tandem with the acquisition of the Deepsea Bollsta was a turning point for our business. Thanks to our banks and bondholders, we were able to secure a credit solution, which has reduced our financing costs, extended our debt maturities and given us substantial flexibility for free cash flow generation. We were particularly delighted to have secured $650 million by way of a listed bond with a [ coupon of ] 7.25%. The interest and feedback we received during the refinancing was fantastic and also very humbling. Our new debt repayment structure is shown on the top slide on Page 15 and is also available on our website.

Moving on to the balance sheet. As you can see, our net debt and leverage ratio are both increased from prior quarters due to the refinancing. At year-end, our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio was 1.7, whilst our net debt was $908 million. Similarly, our equity ratio has decreased from prior quarters to 54%, and our total assets increased to $2.7 billion, largely as a result of the acquisition of Deepsea Bollsta. Available liquidity was $283 million, including undrawn RCF of $103 million.

Details of the cash flow for Q4 follows on the next slide. In Q4 2025, we generated $140 million in cash from operations. Net interest paid was $22 million, while tax paid was $4 million. Net cash flow from financing activities was $442 million. Cash flow from investment activities was $501 million, which mainly comprised the Deepsea Bollsta acquisition. Also included in that figure was CapEx of $21 million, which mainly related to periodic maintenance and purchases of fixed assets, whereof $6 million were client-specific upgrades covered by lump sum payments from customers in this or adjacent quarters. Dividends paid in Q4 were $48 million and was related to Q3 results.

Finally, we are continuing our upward dividend trajectory by declaring a dividend for Q4 of $0.23 per share, which translates into a total dividend payment of $55 million. This corresponds to an annualized yield of approximately 8% based on yesterday's close. The shares will trade ex dividend 3rd of March 2026 and payment will be made 19th of March.

I will now pass back to Kjetil, who will summarize our presentation.

Thanks, Orjan. Fourth quarter was a very important and busy quarter for everybody in Odfjell Drilling. We completed the acquisition of Deepsea Bollsta. We refinanced the business, giving us a long runway for free cash flow generation. We secured nearly NOK 1 billion of new firm order backlog during the quarter. And operationally, our units and teams delivered fantastically, resulting in a 98% financial utilization and record quarterly and year-end financial results. So this is the best quarter the company has ever delivered and it's also the best full year that the company has ever delivered.

And finally, we once again have increased our dividend this time to $0.23 per share, continuing our trend of increasing our dividends. And on the dividend subject, I would say that we are building stone by stone. That is our philosophy, and we have very good capacity to follow this trend going forward. Looking ahead to 2026, it is my pleasure as CEO to state that Odfjell Drilling has entered the year in a strong position -- stronger position as ever, and we are very excited for what comes next. Thank you.

Thank you Kjetil. So as a reminder, if you like to ask a question, you can do [indiscernible] by the telephone line controls or via the webcast tools. So I will now hand over to Laura, our operator on the telephone lines to begin that.

[Operator Instructions] We'll now take our first question from Fredrik Stene of Clarksons Securities.

Kjetil, Orjan, James; I hope you are all well. And once again, congratulations on both the post acquisition and the refinancing. I think the market has appreciated that very much. I wanted to talk a bit about the market today and both in your written report and the prepared remarks, you seem to be very positive towards the NCS and the opportunities for high-spec units in particular. And it seems to me like you saw a change with operators through 2025 on being more willing to address the decline, et cetera. And I also got the impression that you expect there to be incremental rigs to meet -- or there's a need for incremental rigs to meet this demand. So I was hoping that maybe you could elaborate a bit on how you can capitalize on that.

And I think there are 2 facets to that question. One, rates repricing of your own fleet, but also if there are more and similar opportunities as the Bollsta acquisition that could potentially have you grow market share as well and what seems to be a growing market?

Okay. So to start with how we view the market. I think this is -- we establish our position and view on the market based on what we see our clients say and what their ambitions are and also, of course, with talks that we have with them. So what we see is that we see a client base that are setting themselves up for a busy next 5 years. As you all know, they have been very vocal about their ambitions for the coming period. And they're also been clear that there are less elephant finds out there. So we will be looking at more subsea tiebacks, more marginal field developments, more tight reservoirs, et cetera, all of which means that there's going to be drilled more than we've seen before.

On top of that comes exploration. Norwegian continental shelf is mature for sure, but there are still significant resources out there. And in order to meet the decline that we know will happen, we need to find more. So we're also pleased to see that clients' ambitions on explorations are -- have been raised. In terms of additional supply, I -- from our side, one of the big workhorses for Equinor, for instance, the Deepsea Atlantic is actually now leaving the Norwegian sector to work in the U.K. for a couple of years. So that takes -- this is a rig that easily delivers 10 to 12 wells per year. That will make an impact. And you combine that with the rest of the requirements that are out there for clients, which I think it's quite encouraging.

We also see other regions coming in. There's going to be work in Canada next year. We think there's going to be more work in Canada as we move along. We also have received tenders now interesting tenders, West of Shetland, deepwater work West of Shetland, work starting in '28, which is very interesting. And we do believe that the other regions such as South Africa and Namibia also will come along as we go along. All of this summed up, Fredrik, gives us quite a confident picture in sort of being able to add more valuable backlog to our fleet as we move along.

And as you all know, there's very limited site capacity. And if we can call this an up cycle, I guess we can or at least we can sort of expect that we can come into a period that we could call an up cycle. I want to remind everybody, this is the first time that we have an up cycle in an industry that is not followed by new builds. There are absolutely no new builds in the pipeline. And I think that calls for some interesting thoughts around that picture. Further, I think to your last question, Fredrik, are we looking to do more -- add more capacity? I think Bollsta obviously was a big deal for us. We now have a super fleet. I won't rule anything out. But again, it needs to be the right asset quality. It needs to come with the contract and the price needs to be right, and it sort of needs to fit into all of those parameters.

So we're very happy with how we look today. It could be that we could do something, but we definitely don't have to. So we're sort of open to what comes out. So we follow everything very closely. Was that okay, Fredrik?

Yes. No, that was super helpful. A lot of color. I have one more follow-up that also relates to the market. And maybe it's a bit premature to ask that question, but I noticed this morning on upstream that the headline there, continues to be the headline is that the U.K. government is actively discussing an early end to the windfall tax. If they phase that out much quicker than the 2030 that has kind of been in place for some time. Do you have any kind of initial thinking back on how you think that could impact the rig market because if the U.K. starts to accelerate again, obviously, could be positive spillover effect for Norway too. So any commentary if you have.

Yes. I saw that article too. And of course, this is kind of what we've been waiting for and sort of also picked up through unofficial channels. I guess the comment is obvious, should we move in that direction. I think to keep in mind, you're at an all-time low with active rig level now in U.K. I think it's 2 or 3 semis working over there at the moment, quite horrible actually. So if we are to get a shift on that, and we all know U.K. is a harsh environment, that could lead to some very interesting scenarios.

All right. Let's cross our fingers.

[Operator Instructions] We have no further questions coming on the line. I'll now hand over to James for webcast questions.

Great. Thank you very much, Laura. And yes, I absolutely echo the sentiments on the U.K. government. I really hope that does change as the British person in the room. We've had a few questions come through in the Q&A system. So really appreciate that. First question, do you have projections for 2026 free cash flow and dividend distribution metrics. I suppose the question more hints that, do we have any sort of guidance that we can give and I suppose our strategy around how we intend to guide?

No. We don't guide not on results and not on dividends either. I think my only comment is look at the history on dividends, look at what we've done. And you all know we have great capacity going forward. So I think that is my response to that.

Yes. And again, unfortunately, we have to be relatively tight on time today. So I won't be able to answer too many questions, but any -- that do come through, I will certainly answer today. I think we have time for maybe 1 or 2 more, but do you consider a risk for the future that Odfjell Drilling operates primarily in the Norwegian continental shelf if regional regulations tighten?

If I see that as a risk, okay. I'm not sure I follow that because, I mean, all our rigs are Norway compatible and are working in Norway. What I would like to say is also all of our own units has deepwater capacity, meaning that we could go other places to work if we find that more attractive. And we have also done that in the past. We worked in South Africa. We have worked in Namibia. We worked in West Africa. We worked in Canada. So I think that's really the beauty of our fleet is the flexibility that we can move around to the most attractive contracts out there.

And I suppose it's not something we can necessarily answer this question. There have been a few recent fixtures in the sector recently in Norway recently. I suppose the hint is Ocean GreatWhite and Transocean Norway. How do your rigs compare to that, what day rates do you think your rigs could achieve in comparison to that? That's obviously a hard question to answer.

And of course, I might be the best. But we noticed those pictures. I think they all come with a story and background behind it. That being said, we do view our rigs as the best ones out there. And when we look at the product and the performance that we are able to deliver to our clients, we are in a position to claim a premium on top of market day rates.

Great. I think we can have one more question. Do you employ artificial intelligence technologies in your day-to-day operations? And/or do you expect to do so in 2026?

I would say -- we -- in the company as general, we -- I think we've sort of adopted general AI technology along our work processes. However, we do not drill our wells using AI, I can say that. We work in a highly operational and with the highest demand on security. So offshore, when we do our day-to-day work there, we do not use AI in any form. However, there is AI used by our clients, I know for planning, et cetera. But operationally, we are taking a cautious approach to that.

And we really are quite fast on time today. So I think we'll hold -- we'll stop the call from there. But just to finish up by just saying to thank you all again for joining and for your questions and interest in the company. Our next conference call will be in regards to our Q1 results, and that will be on the 12th of May. As always, if you'd like any more color on today's results or have any other questions, please do just get in touch. There's a few Q&As on the webcast, which I haven't answered, but I'll get back to today. In the meantime, thank you, Laura, and BRR Media for hosting the call. You can close the webcast.

Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the Odfjell Drilling Q3 2025 Results Presentation. My name is James Crothers, and I am the Investor Relations Officer of the company. I'm joined today by our Chief Executive Officer, Kjetil Gjersdal; and our Chief Financial Officer, Orjan Lunde.

Before we begin, your attention is has brought to an important information slide of our presentation, which we'd encourage participants to read in full. Note that this presentation is only a summary of the quarter and a more comprehensive quarterly report should be read separately. Both that report and today's presentation are available on our website, www.odfjelldrilling.com.

Our call today will begin with Kjetil taking us through the key highlights from the quarter before moving on to discuss our operational performance. Kjetil will then hand over to Orjan, who will go through our financial review before Kjetil summarizes the presentation and closes the call. We will then hold a Q&A session and invite all participants to submit either the telephone or electronic the webcast tools. We, as ever, we'll try and get through as many of those questions as possible. However, if we don't get a chance to answer your question live, I'll have a record of the question, and I'll follow up with you directly after the call.

Q3 has been an excellent quarter for our business. So I'm delighted to now hand you over to our Chief Executive Officer, Kjetel.

Thank you, James, and good afternoon, everybody. I am very pleased to report another period of record financial and operational results. Because of an excellent performance across our business, we have delivered a revenue of $234 million and EBITDA of $119 million, resulting in net profit of $55 million. Financial utilization was at an outstanding 99%, adding to the company's long history of excellent financial utilization, which now stands at an impressive average of 97% over the last -- over the past 10 years. As a result, we have once again declared an increase in dividend to $0.20 per share, up from $0.18, resulting in total dividend of $48 million being issued to shareholders. Whilst increasing our dividend, we have continued to reduce our leverage, ending the quarter at 1.2x net-debt to EBITDA and an equity ratio of 66%.

And finally, our fleet remains sold out until the end of '26, and we remain positive about the market appetite to secure our fantastic Tier 1 units. Our total order backlog is at $1.5 billion at the moment, and we are in advanced discussions with several clients with a view to adding backlog in near future.

And then we move on to our operation. As for previous quarters, the company's own fleet has been active on the Norwegian continental shelf, working for Aker BP and Equinor. The Atlantic and the Aberdeen continued to operate for Equinor with the Atlantic engaged in exploration drilling, which included a high-pressure, high-temperature campaign. The unit achieved a financial utilization of 99% and set several drilling performance records during the quarter. The Aberdeen continued to drill at the Breidablikk field development and achieved a financial utilization of 98%. And meanwhile, the Nordkapp worked for Aker BP, drilling the Bøyla and Symra production wells, which will support the Edvard Grieg field. The Nordkapp achieved a financial utilization of 99.7%. And then finally, the Stavanger, while also on contract with Aker BP, completed the Omega Alpha project, which we -- you might have picked up in the media. This was an outstanding achievement, which showed Deepsea Stavanger drilling through 40,000 meters of reservoir, setting a world record for the longest exploration well at a total length of 45,000 meters of drilling. The units have achieved a financial utilization of 99.8% during Q3.

In our external fleet, the Deepsea Yantai and Deepsea Bollsta were working in Norway for ConocoPhillips and Equinor, respectively, during Q3. The Mira began operations for Rhino Resources, supporting the discovery of the Volans-1X condensate discovery before it began work for BW Energy. And finally, Hercules was warm-stacked in yard in Norway for the entire quarter.

In summary, our own fleet performed really, really well this quarter and with an overall financial utilization of 99%. The operations teams at Odfjell Drilling can be really proud of what they have achieved this quarter.

And then before I move on from operations, we wanted to highlight that in line with our ambitions to be at the forefront of efficiency, all units in our own fleet have now achieved DNV's ABATE Power+ class notation. This is a notation awarded to units which implement technologies and systems that improve energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power generation as well as implement comprehensive energy and emission management systems. I would say achieving this notation for our entire fleet speaks volumes about the capability of our own units and places Odfjell Drilling to our knowledge as the only rig owner whose entire fleet has this notation.

And here at Odfjell, we pride ourselves of being at the forefront of technological innovation and drilling capability. And I think achieving this notation is a strong reflection of this. I am very pleased to have this in place.

Then we move on to our backlog. And as noted earlier, our backlog now sits at [ $1.5 Billion ]. Our forward schedule is largely unchanged from previous quarter with our units having nearly 9 years of work secured with the Deepsea Stavanger as you see, booked out until 2030.

As also can be seen, the first contracting opportunity is with the Deepsea Aberdeen and Deepsea Nordkapp. And for both these units, we are in advanced discussions for adding new valuable backlog. We do experience broad interest in both rigs and are confident about securing further valuable backlog, and we expect to conclude on these opportunities in the near future. Transitioning this backlog into yearly revenue, we continue to maintain year-on-year revenue growth based on firmly secured contracts alone. Our average day rate per rig continues to increase quarter-on-quarter, and our average OpEx per rig is anticipated to only marginally increase. And as a reminder, on top of these day rates, comes a historic average of around $25,000 to $30,000 per day per rig in bonuses and add-on sales.

And just a reminder, going forward, we will not have the CapEx that we have experienced in '24 and '25 associated with the SPS projects.

And finally, before I hand over to Orjan, let's talk a bit about the market. We do maintain our view that the market that we operate in remains well balanced. As mentioned, our fleet is largely booked until '27 and we see good opportunities to secure more work for our rigs. We are in constant dialogue with existing and new clients for our rigs and are involved in ongoing tenders in the basin. Ultimately, we see the Norwegian market is likely to continue to need more supply of Tier 1 harsh environment units, particularly as our clients try to maintain Norwegian production levels from smaller, more complicated exploration targets and infield developments. And also, as you might have noticed, our clients are united in their messaging around this, and we expect that this focus on maintaining production will require a lot of drilling, more wells for ultimately less barrels of production, which is likely favorable to our business. And to meet our client messaging, there must be a high volume of drilling activity on the Norwegian continental shelf in the coming years, and we do have the tools that they need to meet that demand.

Day rates for work in '27 have remained in line with previous contracts with the recent award on Deepsea Bollsta emphasizing this. Internationally, we have seen a more cautiously but optimistic view. Contracting remains by short-term exploration -- is dominated by short-term exploration, but recent success in Namibia has been positive for that basin. And Namibia remains a very exciting opportunity for our sector, particularly as it will enter into a development phase. And we also maintain our view that additional demand can come from areas such as Canada, South Africa, Australia and the U.K.

Our view of supply remains unchanged. We expect supply likely to reduce with some retirements of vessel. And as you all know, no new build is likely at all. There are a few stranded or incomplete vessels in our sector also, which we do not believe is likely to create meaningful competition in the near to medium term. And for additional capacity to enter our sector, it will require both significant time and significant capital. That could, of course, happen, but we view this as not likely in the near to medium term. Ultimately, we see very good interest from clients seeking to secure Tier 1 assets in this period, and we reiterate that we are confident of securing additional backlog for our units for work in '27 and onwards.

And with that, I will now pass on to Orjan to go through our financial review.

Thank you, Kjetil. I'm pleased to begin with a summary of the income statement, which continues to go from strength to strength.

Operating revenue in Q3 was $234 million compared to $186 million in Q3 last year. Operating revenue from our own fleet was $189 million, while the external fleet generated a revenue of $44 million. The positive development of higher day rates continues to impact us with Q3 EBITDA for the owned fleet segment of $119 million, which is a margin of 59%. The EBITDA for the external fleet segment was $9 million, which is a margin of 20%. Less corporate overhead and other adjustments, the group EBITDA was $119 million. The company delivered a net profit of $55 million in Q3, another significant improvement compared to previous quarters. This takes our last 12 months EBITDA to $420 million.

Let's move on to the balance sheet on Page 14. Net debt has marginally increased from previous quarters, partly due to higher accrued unpaid interest compared to Q2. Despite this, our leverage ratio continues to reduce, now standing at 1.2x net-debt to EBITDA. Equity ratio is 65% out of a total asset base of approximately $2.2 billion. The available liquidity is $209 million, including undrawn RCF of $112 million.

Details of the cash flow for Q3 follows on the next slide. In Q3, we generated $95 million in cash from operations, which was somewhat influenced by changes in working capital due to timing and increase in day rates. Net interest paid was $5 million, while tax paid was under $1 million. CapEx for the quarter was $37 million, which mainly relates to purchases of fixed assets, whereof $10 million were client-specific upgrades covered by lump sum payments from customers in this or adjacent quarters.

Net cash flow from financing activities was $37 million, of which $17 million was repaid on the RCF and $12 million were for installments on other facilities and leases.

Dividends paid in Q3 were $43 million and related to Q2 results. We are continuing our upward dividend trajectory by declaring a dividend for Q3 of $0.20 per share, which translates into a total dividend payment of $48 million. This corresponds to an annualized yield of approximately 10% based on yesterday's close. The shares will trade ex dividends 12th of November and payments will be made on 26th of November.

With that, I'll pass back to Kjetil, who will summarize our presentation.

All right. So then Q3 summary. And I suspect for many of you, our Q3 numbers are not a massive surprise. We have done what we said we would do, and that has resulted in yet more record results for our business. Despite this, I would like to emphasize that this quarter has seen our units operating in a really strong level, 99% financial utilization is very hard to beat. But I think it says a lot about the intelligence and capability of our team who enable these great financial results.

So to summarize it all, we have achieved record financial results. We have increased our dividend while reducing our leverage ratio. And I just want to make this clear. Our financial strength gives us great capacity and allows for further increased distributions to our shareholders going forward.

Our fleet remains fully sold out until the end of '26, and we are in advanced discussions with several clients to add backlog in the near future. And I'm -- to say, I'm delighted with the performance of our business during Q3. And I would like to thank you all for tuning in and listening into our presentation. I will leave it to you, James, to take over now from here.

Thank you very much, Kjetil and Orjan. So as a reminder, if you like to ask a question, you can do so by the telephone line controls or via the webcast tool. Our operator is Laura. Laura, can you open the Q&A session on the telephone lines?

[Operator Instructions] We'll now take our first question from Fredrik Stene of Clarksons Securities.

I have 2 questions for you today. And the first one relates to the Aberdeen and Nordkapp, which I think is key events going forward now that your SPSs are behind you. You seem to be quite confident that these rigs will get contracts. But I think maybe it was the second quarter call, you said that typically the options that you have with Equinor, Aker BP would be kind of negotiated around 15 months ahead of the end of the firm contract and now we're past that date in a way. So I was wondering, should we read anything particular into that specifically? There is a good chunk of rigs on the NCS that rolls off in '26, beyond your 2 owned units. Is this like a [ dance ] to press day rates down? Or do you think kind of in line with the commentary that you'll get both utilization and rate on these 2? Any color you could give would be very helpful.

Yes. No, I can just fill out a bit more. I could probably start with the easiest one, with Nordkapp, which is, as you all know, in the semi alliance with Aker BP. And the way that we've operated that cooperation is by adding a year-on-year basis. And the way that this is, they have until the end of the year to declare this option and the most likely scenario is that Nordkapp is extended into the Aker BP semi alliance. But they do have formally until the end of the year to do this. I'm not saying it could not happen sooner, but formally, they have that. So that is the case with Nordkapp. With the Aberdeen, yes, we are in the middle of the negotiations as you talk. But I think I will sort of out of respect of the processes ongoing, just say that we are very confident about securing new backlog for Aberdeen. This is probably the best harsh environment rig out there, and we experienced great interest from -- on the rig, both from the existing client and also other clients. So we are confident that we will add new backlog to the Aberdeen as well.

And just a side question, just remind us the price option on the Atlantic, when is that due to the potential exercise? What's the late stage that Equinor can take that one?

The price options on Atlantic, right?

[indiscernible] Price option on Atlantic.

I don't have those details. I don't remember it. But we will -- I'll get James to revert back with those details to you. I don't have that. Was that okay, Fredrik?

Yes. No, super helpful. And then the second question, and I did speak briefly spoke to James about this earlier today. But in your second quarter report, you said that you were well placed to continue to increase shareholder distributions with the fleet moving to continually higher day rates. And you are no longer saying that in the third quarter report. So in my model, there's definitely room to increase dividends by maybe 25% more or something. But just wanted to kind of hear your comments around that. Does this mean that we're approaching, call it a ceiling or that we should expect maybe a slower pace of increase when you go forward?

No, no. Just -- it might not be in the report, but I think I was very clear when I commented the presentation about this. We absolutely see great capacity and to continue with dividends. But I think one key here is that we want to see -- to add valuable backlog. That's what it's all about, market outlook and add valuable backlog. And as long as we continue to do that, which I think I've been very clear that we have great faith in, we definitely intend to continue with our plan to increase the dividends going forward.

We now take our next question from Mathias Carlson of DNB.

Just a quick question following up on the question just asked on the Aberdeen. You're clearly sending a strong message that you're confident in getting new work for the rig. At the same time, it's more available rigs on the Norwegian continental shelf also looking for probably some of the same jobs. Could you help us how we should think about the different scenarios for the rig and whether or not it's most likely to get back to back work or whether or not there is risk for gaps, both small, shorter and longer between the current contract and any new contract?

Yes. No, you're right. And you -- it's well known that Equinor is out there with a tender, which is still not be concluded. But what I can say about gaps is that all the scenarios that we are working on does not include any white space or gaps at all. That is very important for us to secure back-to-back operations and all the scenarios that we are discussing with all our potential clients is in a back-to-back scenario. Was that [indiscernible].

That was clear. Another question on pricing and day rates. I think it's becoming more obvious that there is a relatively large spread in the technical capabilities and performance of the rigs in Norway and also for some of the rigs outside Norway looking to get in. Could you say something about how clients value performance and how you think about, call it, bifurcation in day rates in Norway ahead on high-performing units like your own and some of the lower spec units?

Yes. No, I think in negotiations, all parties use the best cards they have on their hand. I think clients are asked us to look internationally and see how day rates are playing out on the 7G market -- deepwater market and so on. However, it is a totally different situation in the harsh environment market where, where it's pretty much a balanced market. We do see that clients are willing to pay a premium day rate for highly efficient units. We do see that. And we have a fantastic track record. These are well factories as we like to call them, and they -- when they sign a contract with a rig like Deepsea Aberdeen, they know they're going to get great value for money. So we still see that there's a strong willingness to pay extra for a highly efficient unit. And I think you probably see some spread around various units depending on capabilities and so on. I think that is as specific as I can get at this stage, Mathias.

And then last question, expanding on the dividend question just asked by Fredrik. A natural follow-up would be in terms of doing a refinancing and reduce the debt amortization burden that you're currently having. Could you talk a little bit to timing of potential refinancing and what type of sources of capital you have looked into?

Well, I guess that question is for me, Martin. Thank you. We're conscious that our bond is now callable, first call by end of November this year. And to your question, we are continuously evaluating ways to reduce costs, flattening the amortization and potentially increasing cash flow available for our equity holders. If we decide to refinance and when we decide to refinance, it will be as a consequence of trying to achieve an overall benefit of all of these objectives, even taking into account specific cost elements, which comes from calling bonds at an early stage.

We have no further questions in queue. I will now hand it over to James for webcast questions.

Thank you very much, Laura. Again, thank you, everyone, who has submitted questions. We will try and get through these as fast as possible. As always, I'll answer the questions in separate e-mails if we don't have enough time to get through them all.

So first question, how do you approach contracting on your open rigs? Are you looking to push the fleet day rate north of 470,000? Or would you be willing to set up for these levels in exchange for terms that keep your rigs working like Stavanger?

So I suppose it's a question how we consider length of contract versus day rate?

Well, I don't want to sort of be public about the negotiation strategy. But as a general rule, I can say that longer-term work normally comes with a discount. and shorter-term work requires a higher day rate. That goes for -- that is the way we think.

Brilliant. When do you expect to mobilize Deepsea Atlantic to the U.K.? And are you able to reduce daily OpEx whilst operating in the U.K.?

So as for now, the Atlantic is likely to start up in U.K. in the first half -- first quarter in '26, as for now. That may change, but that is what we're working towards now. As for OpEx, we -- as the duration of the work in -- is not that long, we have decided to bring our Norwegian crews with us and have arranged with certain arrangements around that, if I can say that. So we expect a pretty same OpEx in the U.K. as we have here in Norway for the Atlantic. It's very important for us that we -- when we go to Rosebank that we perform at the same high performing level that our client is used to and to start sort of with a fresh crew and so on is not an option for us.

With the recent upgrade by Moody's to a B1 rating and your leverage decreased, does Odfjell Drilling now view M&A as a viable strategic lever for growth? And if so, what type of targets would you consider if you consider any at all? Would you look at fleet acquisitions, geographic expansion or complementary services?

Well, I think I've commented on M&A on all our Q&As that I participated in. For us, it's all about fleet rig quality, it's about backlog and of course, it's about price. We have -- we are extremely pleased with the situation that Odfjell Drilling is in now. We -- if we are to do something, it sort of needs to fit into that story. It needs to be accretive, as I've mentioned many times before. So we still keep our same view there. No news. And yes, it might come as a surprise, but we're not going to announce any M&A during the Q&A for a quarterly presentation. So I'm going to be a bit boring here.

A question more generally here. Can you elaborate on the tendering situation in Norway and your expectation around the requirements for additional rigs? I suppose this question is more framed in the context of some commentary of how much more rigs we anticipate for Norway in '27 and onwards, how we see that developing perhaps?

Yes. So I think -- well, as I mentioned, it's well known that Equinor is in the market for the -- from [indiscernible] development program. That has not been concluded yet. But we also experienced quite a lot of direct negotiations, both for shorter-term work and for longer term. And also, there are some tender activities around shorter-term work with smaller clients as well. So it is very much a mix. of public tendering, direct negotiations that's going on. And for additional rigs, so when we sort of look into the crystal ball and align that with what our clients say and what we see about the market, we see that it's likely that we are looking at an increase of maybe 1 to 2 rigs from '27 and onwards.

Great. Thank you very much. We don't have any more questions actually today on the webcast, which -- so I guess at that point, we'll close the call.

Thank you very much for listening into the conference call. We are -- I think our next quarterly results will be in the new year. So if you'd like any more color on today's results or have any further questions, in the meantime, please do just get in contact with me directly. My e-mail address is on the back of the presentation and on the website as well. Thank you to all the operators and to BRR Media for sitting on the call. I think we can close the call now. Thank you.

Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the Odfjell Drilling Q2 2025 Results Presentation. My name is James Crothers, and I'm the Investor Relations Officer at the company, and I'm joined today by our Chief Executive Officer, Kjetil Gjersdal; and our Chief Financial Officer, Orjan Lunde.

Before we begin, your attention is brought to the important information slide of our presentation, which we would encourage participants to read in full. Notes that this presentation is only a summary of the quarter and the more comprehensive quarterly report should be read separately. Both that report and today's presentations are available on our website, www.odfjelldrilling.com.

Our call today, we will begin with a brief summary of the quarter with Kjetil taking us through some of the key highlights. We'll then move on to discussing our operations during Q2 before moving onto our financial review with Orjan. We'll then summarize the presentation and close the call.

As always, following the presentation, we'll open the Q&A session and invite participants to submit questions either by the telephone line or electronically via the webcast tools which are available.

Q2 has been a busy quarter for our business, and I'm delighted to hand you over to our CEO, Kjetil, who can take us through some of the key highlights.

Thank you, James, and a very good afternoon, everybody. Q2 was an extremely busy period for our company. Completing 3 yards stays in short succession in addition to focusing on delivering for our clients. This was an important period for us to get right. And I can happily say today that we are very much achieved our objectives in Q2 and we do enter Q3 with a fully upgraded fleet, no major CapEx builds ahead of us and increasing day rates secured.

Despite how busy this quarter was from an operational standpoint, we were able to once again set new quarterly financial records. As can be seen, we achieved a record EBITDA of $109 million from a revenue of $219 million, and we were able to achieve a net profit of $42 million. Financial utilization was 92%. This is somewhat reduced for our normal levels, but it is reflecting the off-hire due to the SPS on the Deepsea Aberdeen.

Shareholders will be pleased to see that we once again increased the dividend to $0.18 per share from $0.16 per share, and we remain well placed to continue to increase shareholder distributions from here.

As discussed, all of our SPS programs are now completed, all of them on time and on budget. And our next SPS will be for the Deepsea Nordkapp in late 2028. And finally, our financial position goes from strong to stronger with the company reducing its leverage ratio again to 1.3x net debt-to-EBITDA, while our equity ratio remains at 64%.

Moving on to our operations. During the quarter, the company's own fleet was active on the Norwegian continental shelves working for Aker BP and Equinor. Three of the company's units had yard stays during the quarter with the Deepsea Aberdeen SPS being the most impactful. However, the company was still able to achieve 92% financial utilization for the entire fleet.

And going through our units specifically, we're not in the yard for the SPS, the Aberdeen was working for Equinor on the Breidablikk field. The Atlantic was also working for Equinor throughout the period, that worked on various exploration wells.

Q2, so Deepsea Stavanger working for Aker BP on exploration wells as part of its wider campaign on the industrial development. The Nordkapp was also working for Aker BP during the period, having completed a short yard-stay towards the end of Q1 and going into the start of Q2. And when it returned to operations, Nordkapp was still under contract with Aker BP, worked with Harbour Energy on a carbon capture well.

In our external fleet, the Yantai and Bollsta were working in Norway for ConocoPhillips and OMV, respectively, throughout the Q2. The Bollsta is now likely to begin the operations with Equinor in September, meaning next month. The Mira was demobilizing follow its contract with TotalEnergies before preparing for a new contract with Rhino Resources in Namibia. And finally, the Hercules was in yard in Norway for the entire quarter.

And then moving on to what will be our final SPS update for some time. Thank God for that. As many will be aware, we have now successfully completed all 4 owned rigs SPS, having completed the Aberdeen SPS in Q2.

We have been preparing for this critical period since early '22 and to see it now finally completed is fantastic. It's taken a huge amount of careful planning, creativity and execution to ensure that it went smoothly and with all rigs completed on time and on budget, the crew and staff, they both can be extremely proud of how they have performed.

Ultimately, with all projects now completed, our rigs are in prime condition and installed with the latest technologies, and this provides a solid foundation to deliver further value and excellent performance. And I think the subtitle on the slides says as well, our fleet is very much ready for what's next.

Now turning on to the backlog. And what's next? It was noted earlier, our backlog now sits at $1.7 billion. Our forward schedule is largely unchanged from our previous quarter with all 4 units having firm contract coverage until nearly the end of '26, and with the Stavanger booked until 2030.

And as can be seen, our first contract opportunity is with the Aberdeen and the Nordkapp and we are working on opportunities for both these units currently. Regardless, our units are well secured with contract coverage at increasing day rates.

And as per previous quarter, we thought it was important to demonstrate what this backlog translates into in terms of revenue generation. And as you see, we maintain year-on-year revenue growth based on firmly secured contracts alone. Our average day rate per rig continues to increase quarter-on-quarter, and our average OpEx per rig is anticipated to only marginally increase.

It is also worth reminding stakeholders that on top of these day rates comes an historic average of at least $25,000 to $30,000 per day per rig in bonuses and add-on sales. And going forward, we will not have the CapEx that we have experienced in '24 and '25 associated with the SPS projects. So our net term growth is very well secured and our Q2 record today, we hope won't last very long.

And then before I hand over to Orjan, I would like to talk a little bit about how we view the market and the market outlook. And as the title suggests, we see a market that is well balanced. The Norwegian market is positive for work in '27 and beyond. And with several clients expressing direct interest in contracting our units. Speaking with our clients, we expect that in response to the intention to maintain Norwegian production levels, we will see more wells being drilled on smaller infill development and on exploration wells. We expect that these developments will require more wells for less barrels of production, which could be favorable for our business. Former tenders remain outstanding in Norway. And we maintain our view that demand for rigs will increase in the coming years, particularly from 2027.

If you look internationally, we see demand as being more mixed. Contracting is largely dominated by short-term exploration work with no -- with longer-term contracts expecting to mature in coming years. And we expect demand to come from places such as Namibia, Canada, South Africa, Australia and the U.K., with projects expecting to be matured from '27 and onwards.

On the supply side, our view remains unchanged. We expect the supply to likely reduce with some retirement of vessels in our sector expected and no newbuilds likely to happen. There are a few stranded and/or incomplete vessels in our sector also, but we do not believe it's likely to create any meaningful competition in the near to medium term.

Ultimately, we do see good interest from clients seeking to secure Tier 1 assets in this period and are confident of securing additional backlog for our units for work in '27.

And with that, I will now pass on to Orjan to go through the financial review.

Thank you, Kjetil. I'm pleased to say that we are reporting strong financial results for second quarter, and I will begin with a summary of the income statement.

Operating revenue in Q2 was $219 million compared to $190 million in Q2 last year. Operating revenue from our own fleet was $171 million, while the external fleet generated revenue of $47 million. As reported earlier, the positive impact of higher day rates is continuing also in Q2 with an EBITDA for the own fleet segments of $101 million which is a margin of 59%. The EBITDA for the external fleet segment was $9 million, which is a margin of 19%. Less corporate overhead and other adjustments, the group EBITDA was $108 million. The company delivered a net profit of $42 million in Q2, which is a significant improvement compared to previous quarters. The total net profit for the first half is $73 million.

Let's move on to the balance sheet page, Page 14. Our net debt is decreasing. During the quarter, we have reduced it by another $17 million down to $458 million. which corresponds to a leverage ratio of 1.3x. I refer you to the last page of the report for details regarding the leverage ratio calculation.

Equity ratio was 64% out of total assets of approximately $2.2 billion. The available liquidity is $217 million, including undrawn RCF of $113 million. As anticipated, the available liquidity is down from last quarter, mainly due to CapEx payments related to SPS and half yearly amortization on the bond. In addition to increased dividends and upgrade projects. Further details of the cash flow for Q2 follows on the next slide.

In Q2, we generated $127 million in cash from operations. Net interest paid was $21 million, including half yearly interest payments on the bond. Tax paid was $4 million. CapEx for the quarter was $52 million, of which $25 million were client induced upgrades, that are covered by lump sum payments from customers in this or adjacent quarters. Net cash flow from financing activity was minus $11 million, of which $28 million in scheduled amortization on loans and $3.5 million in repayment of lease liabilities, offset by drawing on $20 million on the RCF during the period. Dividends paid in Q2 were $38.4 million and related to Q1 results.

We are continuing our upward dividend trajectory by declaring a dividend for Q2 of $0.18 per share, which will be a total dividend payment of $43.2 million. This corresponds to an annualized yield of approximately 10% based on yesterday's close. The shares will trade ex-dividend from 3rd of September and payments will be made around 17th of September. We see a strong potential for continuing the increase in quarterly shareholder distributions going forward. Given our solid financial position and our increasing free cash flow generation as a result of higher locked in day rates reduced CapEx payments and reduced debt payments.

With that, I will pass back to Kjetil, who will summarize our presentation.

Thank you. So then a summary of the Q2, it has been a record-breaking quarter for Odfjell Drilling delivered by strong operational performance of the Odfjell Drilling team. We have achieved record financial results. Our SPS performance has been exceptional, and all of our 4 units are now upgraded and ready for what's next. We have increased our dividend once again and have strong potential for further increases. And finally, our financial position is further strengthened.

To summarize, Q2 was another great quarter for our company, and we are very excited about what comes next. Thank you very much for listening in.

Thank you, Gjersdal. [Operator Instructions] We'll try and get through as many questions as we possibly can, but we may be limited on time. So, our Operator, Sergey, would you be able to please open the Q&A session on the telephone line?

Absolutely. This is Sam. We have a first question from Fredrik Stene from Clarksons Securities.

I want to talk a bit about dividends today. So you have increased your dividend to $0.18 per share for the quarter. And as you said now in your prepared remarks, in the back end here, that you feel very comfortable that you can continue to increase that going forward. And while I'm sure you cannot say exactly how much you're going to increase them, too. I wanted to touch upon a couple of elements that gives you that confidence.

First, if you look at your fleet, you have the Aberdeen and Nordkapp going off contract late next year, which is 1 year and something until that happens. But to continue to increase your dividends, I guess the underlying thoughts from your end at least would have to be that you're very confident in securing more work and continuous work on those units. So while you said that you were in discussions, if I understood correctly, I was hoping to get some more color about contract length, day rate levels, if you can share or maybe more so when should we expect any update on more work firming up for these 2 particular units?

Yes. Maybe I can say a little bit about that, Fredrik, and thanks for the questions. So I want to start with the Nordkapp because that's sort of the easiest one. That is, as you know, in the semi alliance with Aker BP. And we have a model there that we add 1 year to the backlog, approximately 15 months ahead of the firm period being completed. So that being completed in the end of '26, early '27. So that should mean roughly around November or something like that. So we've already started those discussions.

And those -- the day rates for that contract is to be set by 2 independent brokers. It's a model that we used for some time now, and we use the average of those 2 brokers, and it's a model that has worked fine for both of us and the client. I do not know what that number will be now. But if I were to guess, I would believe it is somewhere between $450,000 and $500,000.

And then for the Aberdeen, we have various outcomes. As you can see in our contract backlog, the Equinor has options for use of the rig, which is to be declared, I would say, roughly around 15, 16 months ahead. That is an unpriced options. So that could be an opportunity. But there are also other -- they are in the market with some other tenders. So which, of course, is something that we look at as well. So there are several opportunities there. It could be shorter time or it could be a longer time if we are succeeding in agreeing with Equinor.

So does that answer, Fredrik?

Yes. No, that's very good color. Just one follow-up. Revenues that's one thing. But now that you've complete your SPS, and you're also talking about a material lower CapEx numbers going forward. Are you able to give some color on what the run rate CapEx number would be for a year without any SPS work?

Well, firstly, I would say that we have some remaining CapEx from the SPSs and we're looking at a range of $35 million to $40 million still remaining unpaid, which will influence our Q3 cash flow. And in addition to that, there's always, as you can believe, there's always influence on CapEx levels. But we usually say that per rig, approximately $5 million of CapEx run rates year-by-year for periods outside the SPSs.

All right. That's super helpful. Congratulations on a very strong operational performance this quarter.

It appears there are currently no further questions in the phone queue. So I'd like to hand the call back over to James for any webcast questions.

Thank you. I can see that we've had quite a number of questions specifically on that point, namely how much CapEx is remaining? And what sort of we can advise on that? And as said, Orjan, given his view on that already.

Perhaps we can sort of answer this question, which has come through a few times to management comment on the contract length in discussions for 2027 contracts. Do customers want to continue short-term length contract or medium length contracts with further options? Is there an appetite for longer-term contracts?

Yes. I would say that remains to be seen. I think all sort of outcomes are being discussed. So it could be shorter, it could be longer. So I won't be sort of conclusive on that one, but I think I can say that all aspects are being discussed, both shorter-term contracts and with shorter, I mean, typically a year, but also longer programs are on the table.

Great. Thank you very much. We've also had a question about our financial utilization this quarter, why it was slightly down from our typical, which is about 97% over 9-year period. A quick answer on why your financial utilization...

Yes, I think that was the answer in the presentation as well, but it is due to the fact that we've included the off-hire for Deepsea Aberdeen, when it was doing its SPS.

Again, that's a similar question on new contracting opportunities and how confident are you announcing new contracts in 2025 for at least one of the rigs coming off contract in late '26? And which rig do you expect to be contracted first?

I can say that we are confident that we will be able to announce something before year-end, which will come first. That's a 50-50 outcome, I would say.

Good. Any changes in how management thinks about its capital allocation? You risk falling below 1x net debt-to-EBITDA without any substantial dividend increases? Maybe a brief summary of how we see our capital allocation and then talk about the net debt-to-EBITDA position.

Well, our target is to maintain a leverage ratio that -- well, derisks our company towards any challenges in the future. And currently, we are returning as much capital as we believe is right for our business in the current stage. And we have obviously been vocal about the outlook to possibly increase this going forward.

Great. A little bit of color on how we see our dividends program and how we potentially intend to step that up and/or define our future dividend programs. Is there anything that we want to sort of talk about on our dividends that we get across to our investors, I suppose?

You will be able to find our dividend policy on our website. The Board prefers to maintain flexibility regarding dividend levels. And not to be bound by specific metrics the way it is currently. If you look at the history of how we communicated our dividend, we have started the dividend earlier than expected and have now increased more than expected. So I would say that this could potentially be beginning of also further increase. But again, as I mentioned initially, the Board proposed to maintain flexibility regarding dividend levels.

Great. And as we always do get a question on M&A, is there any update on our additional M&A and how we see that and how we see pricing discussions between buyer and seller?

Yes, M&A, no breaking news, but I can say that we still believe that there's room for consolidation in this industry, I think would make very much sense on a lot of metrics. And we do want to be part of an active participant in those processes. What I can say is that we have looked at a lot. We have looked at various and we have also bidding quite into detailed discussions. But I would say so far, and from our side, we think that the price expectations from potential sellers have been too high, to be honest.

But we will not give up. As I said before, it's all about finding that right combo, the right asset quality with the right price and with a contract backlog to sort of match it. And that we will continue to see what we can do there. But we will be disciplined in that process, but remaining active, I would say.

Great. Thank you very much. I'll maybe take one or two more questions that come through, we are running out a little bit on time. What are your thoughts on refinancing your bond and doing anything in that regards?

Well, firstly, I would say that we appreciate the interest in the bond, and we recognize that there's quite a bit of interest while bondholders look to be sitting on the position as is. And with our first opportunity coming up this autumn in Q4. We are obviously looking at this, but we will look at this in the way that we look at any opportunity. It needs to improve the position that we're in, also on a longer term. So I guess that's something that we will come back to at a later stage.

Okay. We have one very quick question. Do you have any more downtime planned for your fleet? And I think even I can answer that. The answer is no.

We cannot.

Yes, not this year. I think we'll close the call in that case, and we'll sort of close the webcast as well. Thank you all again for joining and for your interest in the company. Our next conference call will be on the 6th of November. However, as always, if you like any more color on today's results, please do get in touch. I'll try and answer all the questions that have come through to the Q&A post this call closing. Thank you very much.