CGG said last month its liquidity (sum of the cash balance and the undrawn portion of the revolving credit facility) at the end of 2014 was "quite solid, standing above $650 million". The company said looking forward it would benefit from a very large debt maturity umbrella with no significant debt repayment obligations within the next four years.
The French firm will further cut its vessel fleet from 13 to 11 this year, down from 18 at the end of 2013, but will not need to increase its capital as it focuses on its three activities of selling seismic equipment, undertaking studies on specialised vessels and analysing data rather than consolidation, according to CEO Jean-Georges Malco.
"We have faced a difficult environment last year which deteriorated brutally with the drop of oil prices in the last quarter," he said.
"Our focus is to generate cash this year through lower capital expenditure and restructuring."
Its order backlog dropped to $1 billion as of January 1 from $1.1 billion three months earlier, and reported negative free cash flow of $137 million with net debt of $2.42 billion. CGG deploys equipment that drags behind ships to measure sound waves in search of underwater oil and gas deposits.
The company will cut capital expenditure by about 25% this year from $862 million in 2014.
"Even in the context of a strongly deteriorating market, CGG delivered good operational results in the fourth quarter of 2014, thanks to an excellent contribution by our Equipment and GGR divisions, with record sales from our multi-client surveys driven particularly by the success of our StagSeis program in the Gulf of Mexico," Malco said.
