TechnipFMC at Barclays Conference: Offshore Strategy Shines

On Tuesday, 02 September 2025, TechnipFMC (NYSE:FTI) took center stage at the Barclays 39th Annual CEO Energy-Power Conference 2025. CEO Douglas Pferdehirt highlighted the company’s strategic positioning in the offshore energy market, emphasizing TechnipFMC’s ability to capitalize on the resurgence of offshore investments. The company is poised for growth, driven by structural changes in the industry and its unique offerings like Subsea 2.0 and iEPCI™. While confidence in the company’s direction was evident, challenges such as maintaining competitive cycle times in a dynamic market were also acknowledged.

Key Takeaways

• TechnipFMC is strategically positioned to benefit from increased offshore investments.
• Subsea 2.0 and iEPCI™ are key to driving growth and efficiency.
• The company expects to book $30 billion in orders over the last three years and anticipates $10 billion more next year.
• Expansion in the Middle East, particularly in Saudi Arabia and UAE, is crucial for Surface Technologies.
• Focus remains on reducing cycle times to attract capital flows.

Financial Results

• Order Growth and Backlog:

- TechnipFMC is on track to book $30 billion in orders over the last three years, with another $10 billion expected next year.

• Revenue Growth:

- The growing backlog is projected to convert into substantial revenue.

• EBITDA Margin/Earnings Growth:

- The company is confident in its ability to continue growing its EBITDA margin and earnings, bolstered by increased throughput from Subsea 2.0.

Operational Updates

• Subsea 2.0:

- Comprises approximately 70% of the order book and 30-35% of current manufacturing output, indicating significant future revenue potential.

- Designed to penetrate 50% of the market, a target that has already been exceeded.

• Surface Technologies:

- North America accounts for 40% of revenue, with 60% coming from international markets, notably the Middle East.

• Manufacturing Capacity:

- Focus on increasing throughput and efficiency through standardization, simplification, and industrialization (SSI).

- Investments in technologies like robotics aim to reduce cycle time.

Future Outlook

• Order Mix:

- A blend of Greenfield, Brownfield, and renewable projects is expected to drive future orders.

• Surface Technologies:

- Anticipates international business growth in 2026.

• Technology Focus:

- Continued emphasis on reducing cycle time through technological innovation, including subsea CO2 separation and all-electric systems.

Q&A Highlights

• Subsea 2.0 Adoption:

- 80% of business is directly awarded due to the success of Subsea 2.0 and iEPCI™.

• Competition:

- The focus remains on reducing cycle time to attract capital flows.

• Manufacturing Expansion:

- Rather than expanding physical space, the company aims to boost efficiency through technology investments.

In conclusion, TechnipFMC’s strategic focus on offshore investments and technological advancements positions it well for future growth. For more detailed insights, readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - Barclays 39th Annual CEO Energy-Power Conference 2025:

Dave, Interviewer, Barclays: Over the last several years, TechnipFMC has firmly established itself as the premier offshore equipment company in the industry. Having reshaped the subsea market with its integrated offering and iEPCI™ approach, this has led to commanding market share in recent years. With its impressive backlog, TechnipFMC has tremendous visibility along with structurally higher margins through its Subsea 2.0 offering. My pleasure to introduce Mr. Douglas Pferdehirt, Chairman and CEO of TechnipFMC. He’s been CEO of FMC Technologies since 2016 and CEO of TechnipFMC since the merger of FMC Technologies and Technip in 2017. Thanks for joining us this morning, Doug.

Douglas Pferdehirt, Chairman and CEO, TechnipFMC: Thank you, Dave. Appreciate it.

Dave, Interviewer, Barclays: Doug, maybe we can start up here. Your business is really in the sweet spot. Over the years, when you see capital equipment companies, you either get orders or you get earnings growth. You very rarely get both. You’re now in this sort of interesting sweet spot here. I was wondering if you could sort of talk about how you’re seeing those different elements developing over the next several years, the interplay. Do you think you should see earnings growth and order growth over the next several years based upon what you’re seeing?

Douglas Pferdehirt, Chairman and CEO, TechnipFMC: Thank you, Dave. First of all, thanks for having us here. Thanks to Barclays and thanks to everyone in attendance and those attending via the internet. Thank you very much for your interest in the company. The setup is quite unique, but it’s also not temporary. There are some structural changes that have occurred that are really driving what we’re experiencing today. The resurgence of offshore is real and is sustainable. We’re doing our part to try to ensure that sustainability. We can talk about that as we chat here this afternoon. In terms of the interplay, it sets up very nicely. We continue to see strength in the market. That’s leading to a growing backlog, which obviously will then convert to revenue, and revenue will convert ultimately to earnings.

There’s no reason, and we’ve said this publicly, we remain very confident in our ability to be able to continue to grow in all of those areas, which, as you point out, is not very usual. It’s not usual for any company in any industry. To be in that position, we’re very honored and very focused.

Dave, Interviewer, Barclays: You’re on track to book $30 billion in orders over the last three years, if you include this year. You recently said expect sort of another $10 billion next year. I’m curious how that order book has evolved. In other words, if we go back to 2023 versus, say, 2026, what’s different between, say, the customers or the type of projects or the size? Has anything sort of changed or evolved in that backlog over the last three years?

Douglas Pferdehirt, Chairman and CEO, TechnipFMC: The last three years in kind of our industry isn’t a long period of time. If you let me, maybe go a little, you know, last five years or so, what has definitely changed is we have more customers. I think this is really important and something that’s not fully appreciated is, you know, kind of the whole subsea offshore field development was limited to 10 to 12 customers for many, many, many years. It’s now grown. It’s grown because of the interest in investing in the offshore. It’s also grown because of the offering that we now have brought to the industry, which is the ability to be able to work with one company all the way from the field development or architectural phase through the manufacturing phase, the installation phase, and then the life of field services phase. Keep in mind, this is three decades we’re talking about.

This is typically three decades long. With that capability, you now have new operators who in the past maybe didn’t have the resources to be able to pursue a large offshore project like that, you know, the talents, if you will. They now can come and work with us, and we can take them through that entire three-decade process as a partner. I would say there’s an expansion, clearly an expanding customer base, clearly expanding geographical base. We went from working in three to four pockets around the world to now expanding that quite rapidly. That continues to grow very nicely. Finally, just in terms of the overall scope of work that we’re performing, it has continued to evolve and continue to grow over time as well.

Dave, Interviewer, Barclays: Some of those, curious how you see kind of orders from here changing. Is this going to be more about exploration converting into development? We heard some Rejay talking about that on their call. I think it was in Namibia they were talking about kind of moving into the development phase. Is it going to be more brownfield? I know you just announced a flexible order today. Yeah, talk to me about some of those components of kind of maybe what could change or what’s going to be additive to your orders in the coming years.

Douglas Pferdehirt, Chairman and CEO, TechnipFMC: First, let me touch on the announcement or the press release this morning. We just were awarded two large projects from Petrobras for flexible pipe, which is a unique technology that we have and is actually a very important part of our integrated offering. We were excited about that, one of them being very much a technology-driven differentiation that allowed us to secure one of those two awards. In terms of the overall mix, it’s a little bit of all of the above, Dave, to be perfectly candid. Greenfields has surprised us, right? The % of Greenfield, which was about 50% of our inbound in 2024. The Greenfields has surprised us a little bit. I think, again, what you’re seeing is you’re seeing the shift of capital flows going to where there’s access and the best economics. That’s offshore today. Not to offend anybody, but that’s offshore today.

We’ve demonstrated not only are the economics better, but we’ve now demonstrated the ability to be able to execute on a repeat basis at a very high level, which is giving our clients confidence again. If there’s one big change, it’s the level of confidence that our clients have to invest offshore because they know by working with TechnipFMC that they will indeed get the project delivered on time, on budget, if not ahead of schedule. When I say ahead of schedule, keep in mind, we’re shrinking the schedule at the same time. We’re accelerating the time to first oil. Brownfields continues to be a high level of investment. It’s got the best returns. You’ve already invested in the capital infrastructure. You’re really just adding wells to support that capital investment that you may have made 10, 20 years ago.

That’s an area that has grown and will absolutely continue to grow. We’ve only seen the beginning of that investment. There’s also investment in renewables offshore that we also benefit from. It’s a little bit of all of the above that’s really driving the inbound.

Dave, Interviewer, Barclays: Doug, last year when we visited your facility, you made an interesting comment, which really stuck to me. You said, "My competition is Shell." You talked about Shell really being your... Can you expand upon that a little bit for the audience? I thought it was a really fascinating concept.

Douglas Pferdehirt, Chairman and CEO, TechnipFMC: It always surprised me when you remind me of something I said last year because there’s a good chance I didn’t remember it. This one I do.

Dave, Interviewer, Barclays: That was a good one.

Douglas Pferdehirt, Chairman and CEO, TechnipFMC: No, it was actually somebody smarter than me asked me one day, "Who’s your competitor?" I started rattling off other public companies and what differentiates us versus... It was that individual told me, "That’s not how you need to be thinking about this. It’s just capital flow. You’re just competing for the capital dollars." It was one of you. It was one of the investors I’ve known for a long time. It really kind of resonated, and it actually helped shape the strategy of our company, which is not... This isn’t anti-U.S. Shell. You’re fighting for the same capital dollars. How are you going to be more attractive? You’ve got more attractive reservoirs. I mean, the reservoirs offshore are just phenomenal. They flow naturally. They don’t need fracking, etc., etc. They’re just phenomenal reservoirs in terms of traditional characteristics of Dawson’s law.

Flow through a permeable medium, looking at things like porosity and permeability. They’re by far... They’re good classic reservoirs. The problem, again, was the cost. It wasn’t so much the budgeted cost. It was the actual delivered cost of these developments. How do you attack that? You attack that through certainty, getting much better, much more predictable in what you do. You do it by shortening the cycle time. If you can shorten the cycle time, accelerate time, the first oil project economics improve dramatically. By just focusing on those two parameters, fix our own problems, fix our own delivery as an industry, if you will, and then focus on shortening the cycle time.

If you kind of think about the two big changes in our organization, which is Subsea 2.0, which is our configured order offering, that really focused on the do it, do the do it better, do it in a more consistent way, do it in a more predictable manner. Subsea 2.0 clearly does that. Why? This is an offering that we’re not building things for the first time. Traditionally, Subsea, project to project, first article, never built it before, intensive engineering would lead to potential quality escapes, which would lead to rework, which would lead to waste, etc., repeat, repeat, repeat. That’s how the industry operated for decades. Subsea 2.0 takes that out of the equation. On the other hand, iEPCI™ or the integrated offering is our ability to be able to shorten the cycle time.

When you look at those two and the interplay between those two, that’s what really drives our confidence and our ability to really do things differently. You know what I hear from our clients repeatedly is, you’ve brought certainty back into the industry, meaning not me personally, obviously. A lot of people, 22,000 women and men, a hell of a lot smarter than I am. As a company, you’ve brought certainty back into the industry, which gives them the confidence to invest in offshoring.

Dave, Interviewer, Barclays: I want to dig into some of the differences between last cycle and this cycle. That’s clearly one of the big ones. Subsea 2.0 has been a big one. I was wondering, can you talk about it a little bit? It’s about 70% of the order book today, but 30% of revenue. How do you see that kind of changing? How does the revenue component, like by 2026 or whatever, how are you sort of thinking about the overall?

Douglas Pferdehirt, Chairman and CEO, TechnipFMC: It’s a good question. It’s one we debate a lot internally. More Subsea 2.0 is good for all the reasons I just described: predictability, performance, etc. It’s also because of the flow of Subsea 2.0. Subsea 2.0, we build, if you will, or the manufacturing flow is two times that of Subsea 1.0 or what the rest of the industry is building today. You get more with less. You get twice the capacity through the same roof line, if you will. It’s important from that point of view. Subsea 2.0, when you think about it, the analogy that I like to use is the auto industry. When I buy a car, I still fundamentally want to believe that that automotive manufacturer is building a car just for me. You know, you feel good about it. You had some choices.

You had some drop-down menus, and you know they probably never built this car before. It’s just for me. It’s mine. They’re never going to build it again. You drive down the street, you see a dozen just like yours because all they’re building, what they did is they took a very complex problem and they put it into configurable components. One or two engine sizes, a couple of transmissions, this or that. Those are the drop-down menus. We’ve done that with Subsea. Subsea 2.0 allows us, allows our customer to basically use an app. It’s a set of drop-down menus that might be 5,000, 10,000, 15,000, 20,000 PSI. It might have a couple of different temperature ranges, a choke, no choke, adjustable choke, a non-adjustable choke. All of those things they’re selecting have been pre-engineered. At the time of that order, we have zero engineering hours.

We go straight into assembling a test, shortening the delivery time, increasing the certainty. A couple of characteristics of Subsea 2.0. Now, where does it fit in the overall equation? It was introduced into the market in 2017. We had an expectation that we could penetrate about 50% of the market. We’ve exceeded that. We’ve said it’s over 50% today of our orders that we’re inbounding. Through the manufacturing plants, it’s only about 33%, 35%. Hence you have that uplift of more of that backlog as it flows through the plant. The plant’s going to go from making 30%, 35%, 40%, up to 50%, the level of the inbound orders. At the same time, the level of the inbound orders or the percent of the inbound from Subsea 2.0 continues to grow. This is one of the key drivers in our earnings going forward.

It is one of the reasons why we can say with confidence that we have the ability to continue to grow not only revenue because you see that because of the inbound level and the backlog, but we’re also going to be able to grow our EBITDA margin or our earnings because we have that additional throughput of the Subsea 2.0 going through the plant as an example.

Dave, Interviewer, Barclays: Why would somebody not use Subsea 2.0?

Douglas Pferdehirt, Chairman and CEO, TechnipFMC: Wow. On a live mic, Dave? There’s not a reason not to. There might be a preference to the past. There might be a preference to competitive tendering. Okay, you can’t competitive tender Subsea 2.0. There’s only one Subsea 2.0 out there, and I’m proud to say it’s TechnipFMC. If you don’t want to, if you want to tender, then you have to go through a Subsea 1.0 type scenario, which means your project’s going to take longer to be delivered. There’s higher risk of project overruns, both in terms of schedule and cost. In your mind, you’re saving a little bit because you did two bids and a buy. I wouldn’t recommend it. I would say fewer and fewer customers are even considering it. How do you see that as investors? 80%, eight, zero, 80% of our business is direct awarded to our company.

It never goes out to competitive tender because they want the Subsea 2.0. They want the integrated offering, iEPCI™, and they see that these are really differentiated and give them better project returns. It’s a debate internally, and it’s also obviously a good question you’re asking. I think there’ll always be some 1.0. The question is, do we want to be part of that or do we just leave that to the competitor and really just focus on the 2.0 market? What I am proud to say is we’ve never had a client who went 2.0 ever go back. We’ve never had one who went 2.0 ever go back to 1.0. It’s also just getting them over that initial kind of threshold. It’s a big, you know, like I said, it’s well over 50% of our inbound today.

It’s a big portion of our business already, and we’ll continue to grow.

Dave, Interviewer, Barclays: The Subsea 1.0 was in the prior cycle back when you and I both had a little bit less gray.

Douglas Pferdehirt, Chairman and CEO, TechnipFMC: You’re looking good. I had a lot of gray.

Dave, Interviewer, Barclays: I’m fascinated by kind of looking back at kind of 2006 to kind of 2014 and kind of how, or kind of 2009 to 2014 and how different that market was for the subsea market versus today. I want to explore a couple of things with you on that. I recall back in kind of the peak of the market in 2014, I think it was Total called out $85 a barrel as the incremental dollar on offshore. That’s now what? $40, $45?

Douglas Pferdehirt, Chairman and CEO, TechnipFMC: Yeah, half. Yeah.

Dave, Interviewer, Barclays: It’s like cut in, you cut in half. As you were saying, it’s the most economic barrel. How did it get there? How did we cut that down in half? Was it how much did it have to do with subsea? How much had to do with other things? Can you sort of just explain that a little bit?

Douglas Pferdehirt, Chairman and CEO, TechnipFMC: I think one must accept responsibility. Let’s start with back at that point, and I was part of it, right? You know, as a subsea industry, we did not have the level that we were performing. Even the expectation that the clients held us to was far less than it is today. You could deliver a project one year late and say, "I’ll try better next time." Gosh, could you really? It was accepted. It was an accepted behavior. It was not a good behavior, but it was an accepted behavior because nobody in the industry had differentiated. Remember, this was Subsea 1.0. Everybody was doing first article on every job. There were all these quality mistakes, errors. There were all these delays, all this rework. All these things were happening because you’re building things for the first time.

Even the same client would not order the same kit from project A to project B, even in the same geography. You were constantly being put in this learning loop. When you’re learning, you’re not efficient. When you’re learning, you’re making mistakes. The whole industry was in that setup. What has changed is the Subsea 2.0 configured order has given our customers still the opportunity, like me, when I’m buying my car, to still get what I want, but it’s taken out all of that risk, rework, quality escapes, and engineering out of the system because I’m not building things for the first time in the Subsea 2.0 world. First and foremost, I think as an industry, we have to acknowledge we weren’t doing a good job back then. We might have had good numbers.

If you go back and you look at our numbers back then, they weren’t bad, but that doesn’t mean we were doing a good job. It showed up in our customers’ project returns because their project returns during that period were our margins were going up, their project returns were going down. That’s not a sustainable business. Guess what? It ended. For 10 years, the offshore was still there, but there was no real growth coming out of the offshore. What we’ve now put in place and given our customers, again, that confidence in is we can increase our earnings and they can increase their returns. That’s the win-win with predictability. With predictability. Remember, we talked about it earlier. The reservoirs are there. It’s not about going out and finding them. Now, in that same period of time, there were some prolific discoveries, obviously Guyana being on the forefront.

There were some absolute, positive external factors as well. I think we have to start with the fact that the industry’s behavior, you know, the accepted behavior of the industry was not good enough. We are held to a much higher standard today. I’m proud to be held to that standard, and we are confident we can deliver to that standard. That, coupled with some very prolific discoveries, is really creating the market opportunities that we see going forward.

Dave, Interviewer, Barclays: We’ve had a lot of standardization. You’ve talked about Subsea 2.0. It seems to me like maybe technological differentiation is less important than it’s really about execution and delivery to market. Is that kind of how you?

Douglas Pferdehirt, Chairman and CEO, TechnipFMC: This is where you try to get my blood pressure up. No, I was trying to.

Dave, Interviewer, Barclays: You know.

Douglas Pferdehirt, Chairman and CEO, TechnipFMC: I say that half jokingly, but quite serious. They go in parallel. Subsea 2.0 is a technology. Subsea 2.0, we’ve talked a lot about, but there are many other things that we are doing today as well. Look, to drive improved economics offshore, we will have to continue to invest in technology. We’ll have to continue to innovate. It is really the two in tandem. Everything that we’re talking about so far and other things that we’re doing as a company are all focused on those two things. There is one common denominator between those, which is shortening cycle time. When we are looking at investments internally within our company, if you can’t prove to us that it’s going to reduce cycle time of an offshore project, we’re not interested. We’re not interested. It’s all about the relentless pursuit of the reduction of cycle time.

Going back to this, who’s your competitor? Your competitor is capital flows. How do I compete against a short cycle business? Become a short cycle business. Don’t say it can’t be done. We’ve taken a year off of subsea project deliveries, and we’re only starting. If we can continue to drive that cycle time down, the reservoirs are more prolific, the reserves are there, and the economics will continue to be best, the best in class. Technology plays a big part in it as well. I don’t know how much time we have to get into it, but we could get into some of the very novel technologies that we’re developing right now. One of them is the ability to be able to separate CO2 out of the well stream on the seabed instead of bringing it to the FPSO, complicating the size and the function of the FPSO.

If we can do it on the seabed, there’s a benefit. Things like all-electric allow us to extend a further distance from the host facility. We’re now using all-electric to actually retrofit hydraulic controls on the seafloor in situ without recovering the equipment. Things that have never been done before in the industry.

Dave, Interviewer, Barclays: I’m the last person who’s been downplaying your technology. Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to get you in that direction. On the Subsea 2.0, can you talk a little bit just about your roof line, your manufacturing capacity? Do you need to expand more? Just give us an update, kind of where are you there? Are you kind of set up for the next two, three, four years? How are you thinking about that?

Douglas Pferdehirt, Chairman and CEO, TechnipFMC: The short answer is yes, but only if we continue to do everything we can to lean, and we call it SSI, standardization, simplification, industrialization. We just have to keep saving time and being more efficient and increasing the cadence through the plant. I can tell you we don’t talk about extending roof line. I’m not looking at any AFE requests to extend roof line because, again, remember what I said. If you can’t prove to me that it reduces cycle time, we’re not going to invest in it. I’m not going to invest in fixed assets just to have more of something. What I will invest in is technology. That’s robotics. Let’s just look at robotics. You know, we use a lot of robotics in our manufacturing today.

If I can incorporate robotics to be able to accelerate the flow of Subsea 2.0 through the plant, I’ll invest in that. The short answer is we have the demonstrated capacity today of the throughput capacity that is double in the same roof line, double the capacity. We’ve actually reduced roof line while we’ve grown the company, which plays well in terms of returns and free cash flow generation.

Dave, Interviewer, Barclays: Maybe Subsea 2.5, if you’re throwing the robotics in that, maybe.

Douglas Pferdehirt, Chairman and CEO, TechnipFMC: There you go.

Dave, Interviewer, Barclays: Maybe the last few minutes we have here, I’d like to talk a little bit about your Surface business. Can you talk internationally? Can you tell us, so you remind us a little bit about kind of where your key countries are in terms of driving that business internationally?

Douglas Pferdehirt, Chairman and CEO, TechnipFMC: Sure. Now we’re going to talk about the Surface Technologies business. It’s a smaller of the two businesses. We have a business in North America, which represents about 40% of the revenue of that business, 60% being international. Total company, our exposure to the U.S. is less than 10%. It’s insignificant. This is now just a surface business. The surface business internationally for us is very much driven by the Middle East, very much driven by two countries in the Middle East that we’re very proud of and are very, very technically challenging markets, but ones that play to our strength as a technology company. That’s obviously the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. ADNOC and Saudi Aramco are very important clients and really drive that international. We also have activity in the North Sea.

When I say the North Sea for surface, that may sound strange, but if our equipment is on top of a platform and it never goes in the water, that’s dry. We call it part of our surface business. Africa, as well as Asia. It’s really the Middle East that drives the majority of that business.

Dave, Interviewer, Barclays: Now, you recently built a new facility in Saudi Arabia. Is that facility in Saudi Arabia also going to serve UAE?

Douglas Pferdehirt, Chairman and CEO, TechnipFMC: It’s a really interesting question. We also built a facility in the UAE. We are actually exporting now from the UAE facility. We will potentially be exporting from the Saudi facility and not necessarily just to the GCC area. We may go beyond that. These are world-class facilities that, obviously, we benefit because we meet local content requirements. By the way, our customers and those customers mentioned do support your investment, which is important because some just say build it, but then they don’t support it. They support it. They make it absolutely worth your effort to do. They’re very high performing. Both are very high performing units for us as well.

Dave, Interviewer, Barclays: On balance, would you expect your international business to see growth in 2026?

Douglas Pferdehirt, Chairman and CEO, TechnipFMC: The international business on a standalone basis?

Dave, Interviewer, Barclays: Yeah.

Douglas Pferdehirt, Chairman and CEO, TechnipFMC: It’s shaping up quite nice.

Dave, Interviewer, Barclays: It’s a very different business and more project-based in Saudi. Has that been versus transactional?

Douglas Pferdehirt, Chairman and CEO, TechnipFMC: Very different. Yeah, very different. A much higher standard, much longer term. You know, you build a backlog. We have a backlog in our Surface Technologies segment in the Middle East, unlike you do in North America. A much higher standard, a much higher barrier to entry, and you know, a very technically competent client that has a very high expectation.

Dave, Interviewer, Barclays: Great. Doug, thank you very much.

Douglas Pferdehirt, Chairman and CEO, TechnipFMC: Thank you, Dave.

Dave, Interviewer, Barclays: Always fascinating. Great talking to us.

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