Executives
Scott McCurdy - Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Dick Miles - President and Chief Executive Officer
Analysts
Collin Gerry - Raymond James & Assoc.
Pierre Conner - Capital One Partners
Luisa Hermann - Dahlman Rose
Tim Chatard - Sterling Johnston
Geokinetics, Inc. (GOK) Q3 2008 Earnings Call November 6, 2008 11:00 AM ET
Operator
Good morning. My name is Claudia, and I will be your conference facilitator today. I would like to welcome everyone to Geokinetics Incorporated's third quarter 2008 earnings and operations conference call. (Operator Instructions) This conference is being recorded and will be available for replay approximately one hour after its completion on the company's website www.geokinetics.com.
I will now turn the call over to Scott McCurdy, the company's Vice President, and Chief Financial Officer.
Scott McCurdy
In accordance with the Safe Harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Geokinetics Inc., cautions that statements made today in this conference call which are forward-looking and which provide other-than-historical information involve risks and uncertainties that may materially affect the company's actual results of operations. All statements other than statements of historical facts made during this conference call that address activities, events or developments that Geokinetics expects, believes, or anticipates will or may occur in the future are forward-looking statements. These statements include but are not limited to two statements about the business outlook for the year, backlog, and bid activity discussed during this conference call, related financial performance and statements with respect to future benefits.
These statements are based on certain assumptions made by Geokinetics based on management's experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions, anticipated future development, and other factors believed to be appropriate. Such statements are subject to a number of assumptions, risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the control of Geokinetics, which may cause actual results to differ materially from those implied or expressed by the forward-looking statements. These include risks relating to financial performance and results, job delays or cancellations, the recent reductions in oil and gas prices, the continued disruption in worldwide financial markets, impact from severe weather conditions, and other important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or backlog not to be completed as described during this conference call or in the company's press releases or reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Backlog consists of written orders and estimates of Geokinetics services which it believes to be firm; however, in many instances, the contracts are cancelable by customers, that Geokinetics may never realize some or all of its backlog, which may lead to lower-than-expected financial performance.
A discussion of these and other factors, including risks and uncertainties, is set forth in the company's Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2007, and the company's Form 10-Q for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2008. Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which such statement is made and Geokinetics undertakes no obligation to correct or update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.
During this conference call, Geokinetics will make references to EBITDA, which is a non-GAAP financial measure. A definition and reconciliation of this non-GAAP measure to the applicable GAAP measure can be found in Geokinetics' current earning release, a copy of which is located on our website at www.geokinetics.com.
I would now like to turn the call over to Dick Miles, the company's President, and Chief Executive Officer.
Dick Miles
This morning, I will begin briefly by recapping our third quarter and then provide an outlook for the remainder of 2008. I will answer questions following our presentation of financial results and discussion of operating activities. I would also like to remind everyone at this time that we will not be giving guidance.
In our second-quarter call, I discussed how demand for our services was increasing and building on the momentum of the first quarter. In the third quarter, our momentum has continued to build, and looking forward, we are strategically well positioned for growth.
Highlights for the last quarter include total revenues increased to $123 million, a 37% increase over last year's third quarter. Total revenues for the nine months ended September 30, 2008 were $356.8 million, 31% higher than the same period last year.
In North America, adverse weather related to hurricanes Gustav and Ike negatively affected utilization, although strength in international activity helped reduce the negative impact. In Canada, only one crew worked for one month of the quarter, slightly less than anticipated but in line with seasonably low activity in this region.
In the United States, we operated eight crews in Central Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, North, and South Dakota, and the Texas/Louisiana Gulf Coast region. Adverse weather in August and September related to the hurricanes resulted in four of our US crews being down for a total of 49 crew days, or 7% of total US crew days for the quarter.
In Latin America, we operated between five to six crews each month in Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia, and Surinam, which commenced operations late in the third quarter. In the Eastern Hemisphere, we operated three to four crews each month in six different countries. We operated transition zone crews in Egypt, Australia, New Zealand, and Tanzania, and converted our land crew in Bangladesh into a transition crew which has now started work in Malaysia. Our ocean bottom cable crew in Australia worked for one month and was then mobilized to West Africa for a large project in Angola. Finally, we operated one land crew in Mozambique for the entire quarter.
In our second-quarter call, I mentioned that we plan to have five shallow water crews, four transition zones and one OBC crew operational in the fourth quarter of this year. We are on track to achieve this goal with three currently working and two mobilizing for new projects in new countries.
In addition to increasing our global market share, we are focused on improving profits. In the United States, we have increased the amount of business under term contracts and shifted the responsibility for third-party surveying and drilling costs to clients, which although reduces revenue, increases job margins on a percentage basis.
Revenues from our Data Processing division continue to grow with third-quarter revenues 19% above last year and a 12% increase for the nine-month period. We attribute our growth in this division to quality of service coupled with timely results. We remain committed to being a leader in high-end data processing and interpretation services.
Demand from E&P companies for better subsurface images in frontier and harsh environments has remained strong as demonstrated by the growth in our order book. Our backlog at September 30, 2008, was $509 million, up approximately 34% from September 2007 and 23% higher than the $430 million level at June 30, 2008.
Approximately 75% of our current backlog is related to international business excluding Canada, up from approximately 66% of the total at the end of the second quarter. Business from national oil companies or partnerships including national oil companies represents about 79% of international backlog with most of that business targeting oil prospects.
We continue to upgrade and expand our data acquisition capability by investing nearly $19 million during the third quarter, primarily in international markets, to increase channel count, expand our shallow-water operations with the addition of vessels and other equipment, and investments in new surveying and drilling gear for our international operations.
As of September 30, 2008, we had a total channel count of 122,500. This is an increase of 14,500 channels, or 13% from year-end 2007. Increased channels improve job productivity, which increases both profitability and image quality.
I will go into greater details later on how we have positioned Geokinetics for improvements in market share revenues and profitability in the quarters ahead. First, however, I would like to turn the call over to Scott McCurdy, our CFO, who will recap financial results for our third quarter and first nine months of 2008.
Scott McCurdy
I will first address the third quarter and then cover the nine months ended September 30, 2008.
Today, we reported revenues of $123.1 million for the three months ended September 30, 2008, a 39% increase over the $89.6 million for the same quarter last year. Broken out by market, revenue consisted of approximately 29% from North American data acquisition, 68% from international data acquisition, and 3% from data processing.
Strong demand from international markets more than offset the negative impact of downtime associated with crews operating in the US where two major hurricanes made landfall during the quarter.
Although direct operating costs for the third quarter of 2008 increased by 36% to $94.3 million, costs increased less than revenues on a percentage basis. By market, direct costs consisted of $28.1 million from North American data acquisition, $64 million from international data acquisition, and $2.2 million from data processing. Gross margins by market were 21% from North American data acquisition, 24% for international data acquisition, and 31% for data processing. Total gross margin for the third quarter was 23%.
EBITDA for the third quarter of 2008 was $18.4 million, representing a 48% increase over the same quarter last year. EBITDA improved as a result of higher operating margins in our data processing and North American data acquisition segments, increased activity in international markets, and reduced general and administrative expenses.
In the third quarter ending September 30, 2008, we earned income applicable to common stockholders of $0.2 million or $0.02 per diluted share, compared to a loss applicable to common shareholders of $1.5 million or $0.15 per diluted share in the same quarter last year.
The 2007 quarter included one-time nonrecurring charges of $3.2 million associated with severance and reorganization costs. Operational improvements were offset by higher depreciation and amortization expense resulting from the company's extensive capital expenditure program as well as higher preferred stock dividends related to the sale of additional shares in July of 2008.
Moving on now to the nine months ended September 30, 2008, revenues increased to $356.8 million, or 31%, from $272.1 million in the same period last year. Broken out by market, revenue consisted of approximately 39% from North America data acquisition, 58% from international data acquisition, and 3% from data processing.
Revenues increased primarily from a stronger-than-average Canadian winter, crew upgrades in the United States, higher demand in international markets, and increased recording capacity overall.
Although direct operating costs increased 28% to $278.3 million in the first nine months, this rise was less than the growth of revenue on a percentage basis. By market, direct costs consisted of $109 million from North America data acquisition, $162.5 million from international data acquisition, and $6.8 million from data processing.
Gross margins by market were 23% for North America data acquisition, 21% for international data acquisition, and 26% for data processing. Overall, the total company gross margin was 22% for the nine-month period, up 2% from last year.
EBITDA for the first nine months of 2008 was $49.2 million, representing a 54% increase over the same period last year. EBITDA improved in data processing in North America, both in Canada as a result of the stronger winter season and in the US due to improved weather as a whole, improved contract terms, and the results of crew upgrades. EBITDA also improved internationally due to significantly increased activity levels.
In the nine months ending September 30, 2008, income applicable to common stockholders of approximately $1 million or $0.09 per diluted share, compared to a loss applicable to common stockholders of $11.8 million or loss of $1.50 per diluted share last year. The turnaround from a loss to income in 2008 was a result of several factors, including strong revenue growth, improved productivity and margins, as well as 2007 including one-time charges for the early redemption of our floating-rate notes and costs related to severance and reorganization.
We invested $18.9 million in new equipment and capacity during the quarter, bringing total year-to-date capital investments to $69.6 million. The majority of third-quarter capital expenditures were made in fast-growing international markets.
At the end of the third quarter, our total debt was approximately $94 million or 29.1% of total book capital, which was lower than 29.4% at the end of 2007 and lower than 34.5% at June 30, 2008.
I’ll now return the call to Dick.
Dick Miles
Global activity remains at a high level. We operated 8 crews in the US, 1 crew in Canada, and as many as 12 crews internationally during the quarter. In North America, compared to the second quarter, we have seen greater price competition in Canada and a decline in utilization resulting primarily from adverse weather related to hurricanes Gustav and Ike.
Like most of you, we have read and heard recent announcements of capital spending reductions by North American E&P companies. From our perspective, it appears the cutback in US capital budgets is a function of credit availability and lower expectations for natural gas prices.
Despite these announcements, our backlog in North America is still strong. In our view, even in a down market, operators need quality seismic information for high-grading their prospects and making sure they are drilling in the most economic opportunities in their portfolios. Based on a forecast of 15 different industry analysts, the expected median natural gas price forecast for Henry Hub is $8 per Mcf, which is a price at which most buys should be economical. Although demand for seismic in some areas may decline, our equipment is situated in what we believe are the most attractive drilling areas and is highly mobile.
All of our equipment in Canada and three crews worth of equipment in the US could be moved overseas if necessary. However, we believe most of our customers in North America have a long-term outlook and are requiring seismic on projects they plan to drill sometime over the next 12 to 24 months.
The international market for seismic continues to be robust. Almost the entire increase in our backlog has been released to international opportunities targeting oil prospects in hard-to-operate areas. Most international projects are funded totally or in part by state-owned national oil companies and large international E&P companies, which tend to have longer-term time horizons and fewer budgetary constraints. At this time, we have yet to hear any of our international customers announce significant reductions in capital spending.
We continue to be focused on profit improvement and are beginning to see benefits of our efforts. Earlier this year, we were more aggressive on redeploying equipment from Canada to South America as winter came to a close, significantly reducing idle time there. Adding additional channels to our US crews helped increase their productivity, and we've been successful in gaining more business under term contracts and shifting third-party costs directly to the client. The restructuring we made to the organization in the second half of last year reduced our ongoing overhead costs and made our data processing division consistently profitable. We will continue our efforts to reduce unnecessary costs and increase productivity while improving the quality of our service.
During the third quarter, we contracted for jobs using the new ION Fire-Fly system, which is one of the next-generation full-wave imaging wireless systems. After some initial training, our crew became very comfortable with the system and productivity increased as the job progressed. This survey was one of our more challenging projects, given the rugged terrain, wildlife, numerous ranches, and public land access restrictions. We completed the project on time and proved that a cable-less system like Fire-Fly can enhance our productivity.
Our data processing business continues to improve, demonstrating consistent profitability this year, and has proven to be an important differentiator. We are building on relationships with both existing and new clients, and are committed to growing and strengthening this critical part of our business.
We continue to invest in new equipment and increase our channel count, although the pace of new capacity additions slowed in the third quarter. During the first nine months of 2008, we increased our channel count to 122,500, up 13% from year-end 2007. These new investments have not only increased our revenue-generating capacity but have increased operational productivity in the field, which is beginning to improve margins.
In addition, we have enhanced our equipment base in many areas outside seismic channels, including new shallow-water vessels and drilling and survey gear for our international operations.
Through the third quarter, we invested 87% of our planned $80 million in capital budget for 2008. Most of our investments in the third quarter were made in international markets for strengthening our competitive advantage in the high-value niche of transition zone and shallow water data acquisition. Also, our balance sheet is strong with debt at a relatively conservative 29.1% of book capitalization. Proceeds from the sale of additional preferred stock helped shore up our capital position and we believe we have the cash flow, cash on-hand, and borrowing capacity to fund our capital plans for the foreseeable future.
Our global presence enables us to redeploy cash flow generated from our stronger US land acquisition operations into faster-growing international opportunities. Our strategy appears to be working as our order book sits at a new record. At quarter end, our backlog totaled $509 million, 34% higher than the previous year, and about 75% of our backlog is related to international business.
The long-term business fundamentals for our seismic data acquisition and processing services remain robust as exploration and production companies continue to look to replace their production with meaningful finds. As oil and gas companies increasingly take their search for large oil and gas reserves into increasingly difficult-to-operate environments, our expertise operating in frontier and environmentally sensitive areas, transition zones, and shallow water gives us a competitive advantage. Our international experience and customer acceptance working in countries outside of North America exposes us to significant growth opportunities unavailable to other companies.
Our strong base of business in the United States land seismic market provides good cash flows for reinvesting into fast-growing transition zone and ocean-bottom cable opportunities outside of North America. Today, we have the people, the equipment, and the financial capacity to fulfill our rising order book.
Operator, that's the end of our prepared remarks, so I will turn the call back over to you for any questions.
Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
We will now be conducting the question and answer session. (Operator Instructions) Our first question is coming from Collin Gerry with Raymond James.
Collin Gerry - Raymond James & Assoc.
I just wanted to hone in a little bit more on the US market. By all measures we are hearing that not hearing so much cancellation or so much fear as it relates to seismic activity based on what you're saying and what we heard yesterday. Can you kind of walk us through, maybe over the last month, have your conversations changed? Has the demand looking forward changed at all? I just need a little bit detail of what you're seeing in North America, and if what you're prepared to do if we do see demand slow down? Is that moving crews internationally and so on and so forth?
Dick Miles
Yes, like everybody else, we heard all of the announcements about cutbacks. We have not really seen very much. We have had a couple of jobs cancelled, one of which caused us to scramble and get permits in order and move to another location. So, we did have one instance of that, but our backlog is sitting about where it has. We are getting as many new jobs as we are working through. If you look at the number of bids coming in, I think they are off maybe 2% from last quarter, but that changes a little bit, but the actual dollar volume has increased, and we are winning our percentage share that we always do. So we have sort of got prepared for a slowdown in the US, and we really haven't seen any.
To address your second part, we've always had a strategy where we felt that at some point in time the US would slow down while the international market was still strengthening. So we do have the ability to move at least three crews worth of equipment out of the US overseas if we wanted to. If you look at our international market, just about all of our equipment is fully utilized, is committed through the first six months of the year, it's not all fully utilized; some of it is moving from one country to the next, but we have no availability of equipment without either buying more or renting some additional equipment. So we certainly have opportunities to move that equipment overseas. That's not just sort of a nice thought; it's a fact that we could do that quite easily, but the reality is the US market is still strong. If you listened to Dawson yesterday or Tidelands last week, we are all saying the same thing that there's still a lot of work to be done in the US.
Collin Gerry - Raymond James & Assoc.
Yes, that's interesting. Moving to the international side, really across all measures, this was a great quarter. And, as you look going forward with the utilization levels being what they were, are there any extraneous mobilizations that might hurt that going into the next quarter? I mean, do you think the revenue and maybe the margin performance of this quarter is somewhat repeatable next quarter?
Dick Miles
The fourth quarter, we've got four large jobs starting up, which is putting some strain on our margins in the fourth quarter, but all of those jobs that we're getting ready to start are really big jobs that set us up extremely well for 2009. Internationally, that's the exciting thing; these jobs are a minimum six months. Some of the jobs we are starting we expect to go pretty much for all of next year. So, we are expecting to see continued improvement in the margins, but the fourth quarter is going to be a bit of a challenge for us.
Operator
Our next question is coming from Pierre Conner with Capital One.
Pierre Conner - Capital One Partners
In North America, I appreciate the color on the impact of the storms on the downtime revenue-wise. So were those jobs turnkey jobs? I guess what I'm looking for of course is what was the margin impact as a result? Was it strictly just right off the top line, no expense savings as a result of the slowdowns, or what was the impact there?
Dick Miles
Like everybody else, that's hard to answer because it's not just a function of dollars off the top. We moved the crew to other places and got them back working, so there was some working but not as efficiently as it could have been had the hurricane not come in. We had some equipment damage because we couldn't pick up all our equipment before we left. So there are a lot of different factors. We tried to give you the flavor by saying this is the number of days that we were down and the impact was more than mitigated by improved international operations.
Pierre Conner - Capital One Partners
Sure. Now, just looking towards where the margins could go in North America, some of that is impacted by Canada; just to help me understand and make sure I am interpreting correctly, really got about a few months worth of work in 3Q, but you had two crews working, I'm not sure I understand that. Do you expect about a half a quarter's worth of crew time in Canada for the fourth quarter?
Dick Miles
Yes, I would say we've got one crew working and we're trying to get another one working. We haven't got any firm work beyond one. What I don't think we've said is we actually have a ninth crew working in the US, but it's with Canadian equipment.
Pierre Conner - Capital One Partners
If I could stretch it even into the heart of the winter season for Q1 calendar, what's the outlook there, Dick? Is it still one crew or…
Dick Miles
We've got the same issue in Canada that there is in the US with just how much work an E&P company is going to do in this environment that we are in. We've got a lot of work already lined up and we are anticipating to be able to repeat what we did in the first quarter of this year.
Pierre Conner - Capital One Partners
I got it. On your US backlog, you had pointed out to Collin you were able to keep it level replacing what you've earned, and you'd mentioned continuing to shift the risk. Is there any more renegotiations of the existing backlog or were you pointing out that for future contracting you are letting the contracts be customer direct pay on some of those third-party costs?
Dick Miles
We encourage our customers to take care of the third-party costs so that we don't have that pass through little or very low margin, but there's no degradation that we're seeing in the pricing or everything is as it should be.
Pierre Conner - Capital One Partners
Okay, specifically, I guess last quarter you mentioned that you went into the backlog and adjusted some of those costs out, but are you done with that process at this point on the existing backlog?
Dick Miles
Yes, we are done with that process, but that is always a negotiating point on the contract and as we go forward.
Pierre Conner - Capital One Partners
I understand, okay. You mentioned pricing; we talked about that. Just with the international crews, I thought you've got a transition zone in Australia that's moving, but I thought there was a separate New Zealand transition zone, so correct me where I may be misinterpreting.
Dick Miles
Yes, the one that was in New Zealand is now in India.
Pierre Conner - Capital One Partners
I got it. Okay, so overall if you were to sum up that paragraph on activity internationally, you mentioned that your revenue should be up although hurt by the four major crew startups, how much more crew days are we looking at in the fourth quarter over the third quarter? I understand margins will be, you know, there are startup costs on some of that, but are we 10% higher?
Dick Miles
No, I think we are flat to up a little bit, but some of those, it really depends just when they get started. Interestingly enough, we've just moved our transition zone crew from Tanzania to Cameroon, which took a day, which was very exciting, because you load all these vessels into one of those big Antonov planes and its there. If you had to do that by sea, you are looking at going all the way around Africa.
Pierre Conner - Capital One Partners
I was just trying to get some color on, expecting activity levels to be increased relative to third quarter, and so it's nominal increases at this point?
Dick Miles
Yes, I mean it's increased in as much as all of our equipment is occupied. Unfortunately, it's not all occupied earning revenue.
Pierre Conner - Capital One Partners
Gentlemen, I will see you at the SEG. I will turn it back to you if there's anybody else in the queue.
Operator
Our next question is coming from Luisa Hermann with Dahlman Rose.
Luisa Hermann - Dahlman Rose
I know you said you weren't going to provide an outlook for 2009, but just to me, it doesn't sound like you are very concerned with the economic outlook for next year. It just kind of sounds like you are pretty confident that a lot of your clients aren't going to be canceling jobs in '09, at least in the international markets. I was just wondering if you could just provide a little bit more color on what you guys are doing now, just from a management standpoint, your strategy to kind of navigate next year.
Dick Miles
We are just going to carry on doing what we're doing, which is chasing those tougher jobs that we can apply a better margin to. As we stated during the early part of the call, a lot of these are with national oil companies that are set in the things that they're doing next year. A lot of the Latin American countries, the work we've got there, is driven as much by the need for the country to be net exporters of oil. We've invested a lot more money this year in equipment, so naturally our revenue should increase quite a lot next year as all of that equipment gets into service. So, we are very positive about next year. We are positive about the opportunities in the US as well, so it's really a strange environment that we find ourselves in. There appears to be a recession, but it's certainly not affecting, I don’t think, any of the geophysical companies at this point and certainly not the oil companies, the national oil companies we are dealing with.
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Our next question is coming from Tim Chatard with Sterling Johnston.
Tim Chatard - Sterling Johnston
Have you given any more thought to disclosing a chart of your crews, your locations, their utilization, their disposition quarter in and quarter out, like we talked about when you were here?
Dick Miles
Yes. I apologize. I meant to get back to you on that sooner. I had got one sort of drawn up, and then we got sidetracked with all of this financial crisis going on. So, I need to run that by legal counsel, but if we are all agreed on that, then we can probably put something out that helps you a little bit more.
Operator
We have a follow-up question coming from Pierre Conner with Capital One.
Pierre Conner - Capital One Partners
I know asking you to project a little bit, you've finished up your CapEx for this year, you should have it I suppose all done by year-end. Is there anything that you know of requiring what that kind of CapEx level might be in '09?
Dick Miles
We haven't set our '09 budget yet. That still needs to go to board approval, but our expectation is that we will continue, and if there are opportunities that are just overwhelming, then we will pursue those. Most of our capital that we need early in the year would be for long-term improvements to our transition zone and ocean bottom cable areas. Our plan is to push as much of our capital spend next year into the third and fourth quarter and see what happens in the first six months of the year, and if it goes according to our plan, then we will have plenty of cash on hand, and if the opportunities are still there, continue to address them. So we've got a little bit of a wait-and-see, but at this point in time everything looks very positive.
Pierre Conner - Capital One Partners
You know, with your current, once you get everything in place for the year end with those crews that are running existing equipment, what's that maintenance CapEx number?
Dick Miles
Since Scott is falling asleep over here, I will let him answer that one.
Pierre Conner - Capital One Partners
I should have asked him specifically.
Scott McCurdy
Pierre, I think we've typically said it's about 3% to 4% of revenues. That's probably still in line. I would say we are probably in the neighborhood of $15 million to $20 million. I think that 3% to 4% may start becoming higher than our maintenance expenses actually are because most of what we have out there now is pretty new and doesn't require quite as much maintenance.
Pierre Conner - Capital One Partners
So your maintenance CapEx requirements, 3% to 4% of revenues, expected to maybe grow?
Scott McCurdy
No, I would expect our maintenance CapEx as a percentage of revenues to come down going forward.
Operator
There are no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the floor back over to management for closing comments.
Dick Miles
Thank you all again for joining us today and your interest in Geokinetics. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank our employees for their continued commitment to safety, quality, and support of our growth plans, our customers for their continued faith in our abilities, and our shareholders for their continued support. More information can be found on our website. If you have any additional questions or comments, please feel free to contact either Scott or myself. We look forward to speaking with you again in the New Year when we announce our full-year 2008 results in March of 2009. Thank you for joining us today.
Operator
This does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. We thank you for your participation.
Copyright policy: All transcripts on this site are the copyright of Seeking Alpha. However, we view them as an important resource for bloggers and journalists, and are excited to contribute to the democratization of financial information on the Internet. (Until now investors have had to pay thousands of dollars in subscription fees for transcripts.) So our reproduction policy is as follows: You may quote up to 400 words of any transcript on the condition that you attribute the transcript to Seeking Alpha and either link to the original transcript or to www.SeekingAlpha.com. All other use is prohibited.
THE INFORMATION CONTAINED HERE IS A TEXTUAL REPRESENTATION OF THE APPLICABLE COMPANY'S CONFERENCE CALL, CONFERENCE PRESENTATION OR OTHER AUDIO PRESENTATION, AND WHILE EFFORTS ARE MADE TO PROVIDE AN ACCURATE TRANSCRIPTION, THERE MAY BE MATERIAL ERRORS, OMISSIONS, OR INACCURACIES IN THE REPORTING OF THE SUBSTANCE OF THE AUDIO PRESENTATIONS. IN NO WAY DOES SEEKING ALPHA ASSUME ANY RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY INVESTMENT OR OTHER DECISIONS MADE BASED UPON THE INFORMATION PROVIDED ON THIS WEB SITE OR IN ANY TRANSCRIPT. USERS ARE ADVISED TO REVIEW THE APPLICABLE COMPANY'S AUDIO PRESENTATION ITSELF AND THE APPLICABLE COMPANY'S SEC FILINGS BEFORE MAKING ANY INVESTMENT OR OTHER DECISIONS.
If you have any additional questions about our online transcripts, please contact us at: transcripts@seekingalpha.com. Thank you!