ChampionX Corporation (NASDAQ:CHX) Q4 2023 Earnings Conference Call February 6, 2024 9:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Byron Pope - Vice President of ESG & Investor Relations
Soma Somasundaram - President & Chief Executive Officer
Ken Fisher - Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer
Conference Call Participants
Stephen Gengaro - Stifel
Marc Bianchi - TD Cowen
Saurabh Pant - Bank of America
Ati Modak - Goldman Sachs
Doug Becker - Capital One
Operator
Good morning. Welcome to ChampionX Corporation's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2023 Earnings Conference Call. Your host for this morning's call is Byron Pope. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Pope.
Byron Pope
With me today are Sivasankaran Somasundaram, President and CEO of ChampionX; and Ken Fisher, our Executive Vice President and CFO. During today's call, Soma will share some of our company's highlights. Ken will then discuss our fourth quarter results and first quarter outlook before turning the call back to Soma for some summary thoughts. We will then open the call for Q&A. During today's call, we will be referring to the slides posted on our website.
Let me remind all participants that some of the statements we will be making today are forward-looking. These matters involve risks and uncertainties that could cause a material difference in our results from those projected in these statements. Therefore, I refer you to our latest 10-K filing and other SEC filings for a discussion of some of the factors that could cause actual results to differ materially. Our comments today may also include non-GAAP financial measures. Additional details on reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures can be found in our fourth quarter press release which is available on our website.
I will now turn the call over to Soma.
Soma Somasundaram
Good morning, everyone. I would like to welcome our shareholders, employees and analysts to our fourth quarter 2023 earnings call. Thanks for joining us today.
For ChampionX, 2023 was a year of continued strong earnings momentum and best-in-class capital returns as we expanded our adjusted EBITDA margin by 430 basis points delivered adjusted EBITDA growth of 25%, converted 53% of that adjusted EBITDA to free cash flow and returned 83% of that free cash flow to our shareholders. In 2023, we achieved our highest level of performance in key financial metrics since our transformative merger in 2020. In addition, I'm excited about the foundation we have established in 2023 for continued revenue and earnings growth, margin expansion and strong free cash flow generation in 2024 and beyond. I'm grateful to all of our employees for their laser focus on delivering value to our customers' day in and day out as that is the heartbeat which drives our strong financial engine.