Bristow Group Inc. (NYSE:VTOL) Q2 2023 Earnings Conference Call August 3, 2023 10:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Red Tilahun - Investor Relations

Chris Bradshaw - President and Chief Executive Officer

Jennifer Whalen - Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Josh Sullivan - The Benchmark Company

Chris Lee - Evercore ISI

Steve Silver - Argus Research

Operator

Good day, everyone and welcome to today’s Bristow’s Second Quarter 2023 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note this call may be recorded. I’ll be standing by if you need any assistance. It’s now my pleasure to turn the conference over to Mr. Red Tilahun, Senior Manager of Investor Relations and Financial Reporting. Please go ahead, sir.

Red Tilahun

Thank you, James. Good morning and welcome to Bristow Group’s second quarter of 2023 earnings call. I am joined on the call today with our President and Chief Executive Officer, Chris Bradshaw; and Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Jennifer Whalen.

Before we begin, I’d like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that during the course of this call, management may make forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that are described in more detail on Slide 3 of our investor presentation. You may access our investor presentation on our website. We will also reference certain non-GAAP financial measures such as EBITDA and free cash flow. A reconciliation of such measures to GAAP is included in the earnings release of our investor presentation.

I will now turn the call over to our President and CEO. Chris?

Chris Bradshaw

Thank you, Red, and welcome to the call, everyone. As always, I will begin our prepared remarks with a note on safety, which is Bristow’s number one core value and our highest operational priority. The company has achieved our target of zero air accidents through the first 7 months of 2023. We also experienced a reduction in the total recordable incident rate as well as fewer incidents resulting in lost work time. I want to thank all of our global team members for their continued dedication to place safety first every day.

Turning to other operational highlights and outlook. The 35% sequential quarter improvement in adjusted EBITDA, excluding asset dispositions and foreign exchange losses, shows the building momentum for Bristow’s business in the latter half of 2023 and beyond. We continue to believe the offshore energy services market is in the early innings of a multiyear growth cycle. Offshore industry activity is increasing at a significant pace as evidenced by the wave of recent project FIDs, subsea awards and equipment contracting announcements. For Bristow, the increased market activity is resulting in higher fleet utilization and higher rates for our services. We expect the company’s financial performance to be significantly better in the second half of this year, setting up positively for even stronger financial results in 2024.