Participants

Brent Arriaga; Vice President – Finance & Accounting and Chief Accounting Officer; Helix Energy Solutions Group Inc

Ken Neikirk; Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary; Helix Energy Solutions Group Inc

Scotty Sparks; Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer; Helix Energy Solutions Group Inc

Erik Staffeldt; Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President; Helix Energy Solutions Group Inc

Owen Kratz; President, Chief Executive Officer, Director; Helix Energy Solutions Group Inc

James Rollyson; Analyst; Raymond James

Gregory Lewis; Analyst; BTIG

Josh Jain; Analyst; Daniel Energy Partners

Presentation

Operator

Thank you for standing by. My name is Luella, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Helix Energy Solutions fourth quarter 2024 earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions). Thank you.
Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Brent Arriaga, Vice President - finance and accounting. Please go ahead, sir.

Brent Arriaga

Good morning, everyone and thanks for joining us today on our conference call where we will be reviewing our fourth quarter and full year 2024 earnings release. Participating on this call for Helix today are Owen Kratz, our CEO; Scotty Sparks, our COO; Erik Staffeldt, our CFO; Ken Neikirk, our general counsel; Daniel Stuart, our Vice President, commercial; and myself.
Hopefully you've had an opportunity to review our press release and the related slide presentation released last night. If you do not have a copy of these materials, both can be accessed to the investor relations page on our website at www.helixesg.com.
The press release and slides can be accessed under the news and events tab. Before we begin our prepared remarks, Ken Neikirk will make a statement regarding forward-looking information, Ken?

Ken Neikirk

During this conference call, we anticipate making certain projections and forward-looking statements based on our current expectations and assumptions as of today. Such forward-looking statements may include projections and estimates of future events, business or industry trends, or business or financial results. All statements in this conference call are in the associated presentation. Other than statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements and are made under the safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.
Our actual future results may differ materially from our projections and forward-looking statements due to a number and variety of risks, uncertainties, assumptions, and factors, including those set forth in slide 2 of our presentation in our most recently filed annual report on form 10-K, our quarterly reports on form 10-Q, and then our other filings with the SEC. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, and we do not undertake any duty to update any forward-looking statement. We disclaim any written or oral statements made by any third party regarding the subject matter of this conference call.
Also during this call, certain non-GAAP financial disclosures may be made in accordance with SEC rules. The final slides of our presentation provide reconciliations of certain non-GAAP measures to comparable GAAP financial measures. These reconciliations along with this presentation the earnings press release our annual report on form 10-K and a replay of this broadcast will be available under the for the Investor section of our website at www.helixesg.com.
Please remember that information on this conference call speaks only as of today February 25, 2025 and therefore you are advised that any time sensitive information may no longer be accurate as of any replay of this call, Scotty?

Scotty Sparks

Thanks, Ken and good morning everyone. Thank you for joining our call today and we hope everybody's doing well. This morning, we will review our fourth quarter and full year 2024 results, financial performance and operations. We will provide our view of the current market and provide guidance for 2025.
Before starting our review, I would like to thank the Helix team for their efforts during 2024. The team's offshore and onshore outperformed again, producing another very well executed quarter, closing the year out very well. With our efforts in 2024, we established a solid foundation to deliver improved results in 2025 and beyond.
Moving on to the presentation slides 5, 6 and 7 provide a high-level summary of our results and key highlights for the fourth quarter and full year. Revenues for the quarter were $355 million with a gross profit of $59 million with resulting net income of $20 million. Adjusted EBITDA was $72 million for the quarter, and we had positive operating cash flows of $78 million, resulting in strong free cash flow of $65 million. A cash and liquidity remains strong with cash and cash equivalents of $368 million and liquidity of $430 million.
Highlights for the quarter include commencement of operations on the QS Q4000 in Nigeria, 6-month contract plus options, continued strong results in robotics with high trench and utilization. Completed operations with the Q7000 in North West Australia, and commenced paid transit and mobilization to Brazil for a 400-day contract plus options with Shell. The Siem Helix 1 transitioned to the Trident contract extension at higher rates, and the Helix Producer One contract was renewed to June of 2026.
Slide 7 provides detail of our full year 2024 results and highlights. Our full year revenues were $1.36 billion with a gross profit of $220 million, with resulting net income of $56 million. Adjusted EBITDA for the year was $303 million, a greater than 10% improvement over last year and we had positive operating cash flows of $186 million, resulting in positive free cash flow of $163 million. Excluding the Alliance earnout paid and included in our operating cash flows during the year our free cash flow would have exceeded $220 million. These key financial metrics are all improved over our 2023 results.
Recapping some of the key highlights for 2024, strong results and significant improvement in well intervention year over year. As we as we safely completed the transits and commenced operations on the Q4000 in Nigeria, concluded successful operations with the Q7000 in Australia, including the successful initial deployment of the ROAM.
Had a strong near full year utilization on the Q5000 in the US Gulf. Strong robotics results with increased trenching activity and significant improvements year over year.
On the sales front, we entered into a one-year contract extension for the SH1 with Trident that commenced in Q4 of 2024. We executed two new three-year contracts with Petrobras, one that commenced last month for the SH2, and the other to commenced in the second half of 2025 for the SH1. We also executed a contract for two years plus options in the US Gulf for the Q5000 with minimum commitment of 175 days each year.
Slide 9 provides a more detailed review of our segment results and segment utilization. In the fourth quarter we continue to operate globally minimal operational disruption with operations in Europe, Asia Pacific, Brazil, Africa, the US Gulf and the US East Coast. Our strong fourth quarter results were driven by our core well intervention markets globally and strong results from our robotics group.
Moving to slide 10 provides further detail of our one intervention segment. In Q4, we achieved strong utilization in Africa, the US Gulf, Brazil, and Australia, performing very well with solid uptime efficiency. As expected on North Sea vessels, that were enhancer and Sewell were impacted by the winter season slowdown, resulting in lower utilization and both vessels being warm stacked mid-quarter.
The Q7000 performed extremely well with 99% utilization working in Australia. The vessel then commenced paid transit to Brazil for the Shell 400 day plus options decommissioning campaign. We had solid utilization for both US based Q units with the Q4000 completing the paid transit to Nigeria and commencing operations for the SO minimum 6-month [hale] campaign. And the Q5000 worked the entire quarter for Shell in the US Gulf.
Again, we are very pleased with the recently announced long-term contracts for both the CM Helix vessels for Petrobras, the Q7000 for Shell in Brazil, and the Q5000 for Shell in the US Gulf Coast, as these provide us with strong contract coverage for multiple years.
Slide 11 provides further detail for our robotics business. Robotics had a very strong quarter. The business performed at high standards, operating 6 vessels during the quarter, working between trenching, ROV support and site survey work on renewables and oil and gas related projects globally.
five of the vessels worked on renewables related projects within the quarter. All vessels had strong utilization with three vessels working on trenching projects. The GC3 in the North Sea enabled a trenching in Europe, and the CM Topaz trenching in Taiwan prior to being demobilized in Singapore in December. The [Shi Bordallo] worked on various renewable related projects on the US east coast, and the GC2 had strong utilization working in oil and gas ROV support in Malaysia.
Our renewables and trenching outlook remains very robust with numerous contracted works in 2025, 2026, and 2027. The long-term outlook for the global renewables market is very strong. We recently announced one of our largest renewables trenching contracts to date for over 300 days trenching, commencing in late 2026 on the Hornsea free wind farm in the UK. Robotics is performing very well, had a very strong 2024, and we expect them to have a very strong year in 2025.
Slide 12 provides detail of our shallow water abandonment business. Q4 activity levels reflect the expected seasonal slowdown in utilization, and the overall market, the overall activity levels were reflective of a weak 2024 US Gulf Coast shelf market.
In summary, we had another very strong quarter and a very well executed 2024 with one of our best years regarding safety statistics, NPT year over year improved financial metrics, and numerous long-term improved contracts secured for a good portion of our assets. We're excited as we enter into 2025, as we're expecting further contract awards, high utilization for most of our assets, and once again further improved financial performance.
I would like to thank our employees for their efforts, securing a strong backlog and delivering us a high level of execution, and they'll turn the call over to Brent.

Brent Arriaga

Thanks, Scotty. Moving to slide 14 it outlines our debt instruments and key balance sheet metrics as of December 31. At year end, we had cash of $368 million in availability under the ABL of $67 million with resulting liquidity of $430 million. Our funded debt was $324 million and we had negative net debt of $53 million at year end. Our balance sheet is strong and is expected to strengthen further as we anticipate generating significant free cash and have minimal debt obligations between now and 2029.
I'll now turn the call over to Eric for a discussion on our outlook for 2025.

Erik Staffeldt

Thanks, Brent. We entered 2025 with several macro headline challenges active geopolitical environment, softer rig market in '25 with white space, and uncertainty in the US wind farm market with announced moratorium. We are aware of these challenges and the uncertainties they create. Despite these challenges, our outlook remains very positive.
The offshore market remains constructive and active. Oil and gas spending remains healthy despite being at lower levels. The global renewables market is robust with increasing activity in Europe and Asia Pacific. The long-term outlook for both markets remains very positive. Our positive outlook is supported by the term contract signed in 2024 for several of our key well intervention assets.
The offshore market has improved significantly over the past three years and although lagging the market, we're now seeing the benefits as our legacy contracts have rolled off with an improved outlook for 25 based on the strength of our contracted work in the pipeline of bids and projects, we're providing guidance of certain key financial metrics for our 2025 forecast.
Revenue $1.36 billion to $1.5 billion, revenue increasing slightly over 2024 with expected improved margins. EBITDA in $320 million to $380 million increases driven by the term contracts at market rates. Free cash flow $175 to $225 million strong free cash flow generation with variability driven by ultimate working capital movements. Capital spend of $70 million to $90 million. This includes $30 million approved for 2024 that shifted to the right into 2025. Our 2025 spending plans are primarily a mix of regulatory maintenance on our vessels, Intervention system and fleet renewal of robotics ROVs.
These ranges include some key assumptions and estimates. Any significant variation from these key assumptions and estimates could cause our results to fall outside the ranges provided. Our quarterly results will continue to be impacted by seasonal weather in the North Sea and the US Gulf Shelf, primarily in the first quarter but to some extent the fourth quarter as well.
In addition, the timing of our vessel maintenance periods and project mobilizations will cause variances between quarters. Our quarterly financial performance in '25 is expected to follow the same cadence as our results in '23 and '24, with the second and third quarter being our most active quarters and the first and fourth quarters impacted by winter weather.
With seasonal quarterly impacts and capital spending expected to be front loaded, the timing of our free cash flow generation is likely skewed to the latter part of the year. Providing our key assumptions by segments and region starting on slide 17 first our well intervention segment, The US Gulf Coast continues to be a good market the Q5000 has contracted work in every quarter with limited white space to fill in the schedule.
Q4000 is contracted to work into Q2 in West Africa and then is expected to return to the US Gulf in the second half of 2025. We expect both vessels to have good utilization this year. The UK North Sea well intervention market is expected to be weaker in 2025 than last year. News releases last quarter, both from regulators and customers highlight various challenges in the UK sector.
The increased taxes announced late in the year and subsequent announcements by producers has delayed planning for '25 and created uncertainty in the market. We are therefore forecasting utilization in the North Sea this year to decrease compared to 2024. The well at [Handhurst Seawell] should have good utilization in the second and third quarter, but an overall slow start to 2025.
The Seawell completed its regulatory docking during Q1. As in 2024, we anticipate a seasonal utilization in the fourth quarter winter months in the North Sea. The Q7000 is currently in Brazil, completing its regulatory docking and project immobilization for Shell. The vessel is expected to commence the firm 400 day project in late March.
The CM2 commenced its new contract with Petrobras in early January. This is a 3-year contract at market rates. The CM Helix one is contracted performing well abandonment for Trident, with work extending into the second half of '25, followed by a three year contract with Petrobras. The vessel is expected to have an approximate 30 day off hire period between contracts.
Moving to our robotic segment, the market continues to be very positive. We recently announced a significant trenching contract in the North Sea. Bidding activity has been and continues to be extremely active. We are benefiting from the high levels of activity in both oil and gas market and the renewables market. In the APAC region, the Grand Canyon two completed its dry dock in Q1 and has multiple contracts and high utilization expected for the balance of '25.
With the completion of its project in the fourth quarter, the CM Topaz was demobilized and returned. The T1401 trencher is expected to work on client-provided vessel and remain in Taiwan through 25. The North Sea the Grand Canyon three is expected to have an active trenching season with overall strong utilization. The Horizon enabler has contracted trenching projects in Q3 and Q4.
The Glomar wave is forecasted to have good utilization performing site clearance operations. The trim flight clearance vessel is expected to begin operations in March and have good utilization through Q3, and the T1402 trencher is forecasted for its first work in the Mediterranean. In the US, the Shalia is completing a dry dock in Q1, after which she is expected to have good utilization with a combination of work in the US Gulf Coast and US East Coast.
Moving to production facilities, the HP1 is on contract for the balance of '25 recently extended to June 2026 with no currently expected change. We have expected variability with production as Droski field continues to deplete and Thunder Hawk Field is still shut in.
Continuing to Shallow Water Abandonment. Our shallow water Abandonment segment will have seasonal variability with greater impacts during Q1 and Q4. We are reducing our cost structure commensurate with the current market but are retaining the ability to scale up if the market improves. We expect the market to be marginally better absent any regulatory developments.
We expect the marine offshore business to maintain good utilization on five to seven lift boats with some variable seasonality on the OSPs and crew boats. The energy service should have good utilization for six to nine P&A spreads and one to two cold tubing units. There is seasonality in the diving and heavy lift where the [epihedrin] is currently idle with limited winter opportunities. We do expect an active season during Q2 and Q3.
Moving to slide 18, our CapEx forecast for '25 is heavily impacted by dry docks and maintenance periods on our vessels and systems. The SeaWorld completed its dry dock in Q1. The [Q7000] is currently undergoing a 30 day to 45 day docking period followed by the project immobilization, the Q5000 has a 30 plus day docking scheduled in the second quarter. Our CapEx range currently is $70 million to $90 million, which includes amounts of approximately $30 million originally forecasted in 2024 that were moved into 2025.
Once again, the majority of our CapEX continues to be maintenance and project related, which primarily falls into our operating cash flow. Reviewing our balance sheet, our funded debt of $324 million is expected to decrease by $9 million in 2025 with scheduled principal payments on our merit debt. We expect to continue our share repurchase program with the target repurchases of at least 25% of free cash flow.
At this time I'll turn the call back to Owen for a discussion on our capital allocation framework, our outlook for 2025 and beyond, and for closing comments, Owen?

Owen Kratz

Thanks Eric. Good morning. 2024 was a strong year for Helix delivering the results that were expected. We feel very good about where we are and confident as we look forward. There's a lot of wind at our back. We're also aware of our market headline challenges, and we believe we can address them to mitigate the impact and potentially generate upside.
The broader industry is starting to recognize the coming value of the late-life market niches for oil and gas and Helix's prominent position. Starting with subsea intervention, which entails maximizing remaining reserves and abandonment, intervention will be key to extending the life of fields, and there will be more and more abandonment as the fields mature.
Intervention is also the lowest cost way to produce incremental barrels. We do expect a slower year for the UK section of the North Sea, but we also recognize the extent of opportunity both in extending the life of the fields. And we expect abandonment to increase.
There are approximately 2,250 wells in the North Sea, and the industry average for P&A of wells is plus or minus 50 per year. We expect this work to increase for 2026 and beyond. In the rest of the world, we do, we don't have the capacity to meet all the demand we're seeing, and there are up and coming regions of the world we've not yet grown into.
We currently do not have plans to add capacity and well intervention and instead plan to take advantage of a tight market to achieve higher margins. We're well positioned for any potential softening of the market as the majority of our major assets are on multi-year contracts and have strong current demand and global flexibility to penetrate new regions for our services.
Turning to robotics, we see demand continuing to grow. Visibility for growing trenching demand has us tendering for work as far out as 2029. We expect that we'll need an additional trencher and are currently assessing our options for the most effective way to add capacity. We've been very successful at establishing our credibility in site clearance work for the wind farms both in Boulder clearance and USO work.
We have plans to add an additional site clearance spread for 2025 and are looking to add other adjacent services going forward. Part of our maintenance CapEx spending is on refurbishment of our world-class ROV fleet of vehicles. We have two more years to complete the upgrade of the entire fleet which should extend the life of the fleet for years to come.
Our robotic segment overall is forecasted to be relatively flat in 2025 with meaningful growth expected thereafter. Shallow water abandonment in the Gulf is expected to experience a soft market again in 2025 as the recipients of Boomerang properties from bankruptcies continue to analyze and plan for their abandonment work. We erroneously maintain the cost basis for a for a larger market that did not materialize in 2024.
With our cost structure now right size for the current market, we expect to see meaningful improvement in profitability for 2025 while maintaining operational leverage for further growth beyond. Our production facility segment is pretty much status quo. The HP one contract continues, the Drowsy field continues to produce beyond its expected life. The Thunder Hawk field remains shut in until we can schedule an intervention.
With our current contract commitments, we don't have the availability until later this year at the earliest. We've not included anything for production out of Thunder Hawk for 2025, but it remains as upside for 2026. Turning to our capital allocation framework, the markets have been robust the past few years with capital discipline shown by the industry players. This has resulted in asset valuations that are currently high.
While we expect to generate strong free cash flow and increase our war chests of cash, we've kept our powder dry. We will be watching the markets for attractive opportunities to deploy capital. Until we see that opportunity, we plan to restrict capital allocations for assets to our current niches where we can see full cycle accretion and bolstering of our market positions.
In line with this strategy, we intend to become more active with our approved share repurchase plan. We still have more than $150 million of approval under the plan. Starting this year, it's our intention to allocate a minimum of 25% of free cash flow to repurchase of our shares. We're confident in the future and at the current share price we see a great opportunity to return value to our shareholders.
If M&A materializes, then they expect 25% of free cash flow, and if not, then more than 25%. We're confident in the future for Helix with inherent growth and operating leverage as well as opportunity and the capacity to service them going forward. Erik?

Erik Staffeldt

Thanks Owen operator at this time will take any questions.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions)
James Rollyson, Raymond James

James Rollyson

Hey, good morning, everyone. Owen, you kind of covered this a little bit, but kind of back to the free cash flow simple math is if you spend the $50 million at the midpoint of on repurchases, you're still going to probably end the year with kind of $0.5 billion or so of cash. When you think about M&A, you mentioned inflated asset prices, at least in the oil field side, maybe just a little color around, what are you thinking? Type of assets would be in your target and is it just today just a valuation issue relative evaluation issue that keeps you from being active, I guess.

Owen Kratz

Well, Jim, I think there's a high probability that you will see us be active in M&A this year. The areas of opportunity that I see are geographically oriented and also the wind market has seen some major pullback of valuations, and I think longer term it's a substantial long term growth market, so that would be another area.
Further out in the future, I mean right now vessel prices are way too high. I don't think that we need more floating tonnage or large capital assets like that, but we do charter quite a few vessels and in the wind market and robotics, we always work a core number of vessels.
Right now the vessel prices, as I've said, are way too high, but there are in just recent months there's a lot of new orders going in for new builds, which means that the existing tonnage will probably rationalize in value. I don't see that as an immediate allocation of capital, but I think it's something to watch for the future.

James Rollyson

Got it. Appreciate that. And then you talked a bit about it seems like every several earnings calls this earnings season well intervention has come up and you mentioned the market being kind of structurally short assets there which is obviously beneficial from the pricing perspective.
At the moment, you guys are pretty well booked up from your contracting last year at higher rates. How do you think about how is pricing trending more recently to the extent you've even been contract trying to book any work on the spot side of things, and how do you take advantage of that over the next, three or four years given your fleet is somewhat locked up in the short run.

Scotty Sparks

I'll take that, Jim. So firstly, a good portion of the assets are on long-term contracts, but they're taken off the legacy contracts and put on to good market rates. So we're going to see an improvement there. On the spot side, we are still increasing rates, not as rapidly as we have done in the last two years, but there's still a slight increase in rates.
And as the market continues to tighten, we'll assess that and adjust as we go forward. So we're still bidding at slightly higher than we did last year, but it's not as advanced and as rapid as it was, through the last two years where we've almost doubled rates in certain geographical regions. On the robotics side, ROV vessels and trenching rates are certainly increasing, and we're seeing activity out to 29, 30, and certainly pumping up the rates on the trenching side and the ROV side.

Operator

Greg Lewis, BTIG

Gregory Lewis

Hey, thank you and thanks and good morning and thanks for taking my questions. Hope everybody's doing well I was hoping to get a little bit more color around the guidance around the revenue you mentioned throughout the call on the well intervention side about the strong backlog.
I guess first on that, the well intervention side that $40 million [delta] between the low and the high end is that largely associated just with open days on the Q5 or is it also include maybe some. Some startup time, some of the assets and then on the robotics and the SWA, I don't think the SWA I think well I'll let you say, like how should we be thinking about of the robotics and SWA how much of that is already like contracted on a maybe on a percentage basis.

Erik Staffeldt

Okay Greg, I'll start off with the well intervention and pass it off to Scotty to wrap up the robotics and shallow water but on the well intervention side, once again I think it's a good balance in in our guidance range between risk and reward opportunities. I think when you look at the opportunities that we have there, it's really on sort of project execution we have good solid contracts there. And to the extent that we're able to execute at a high level, I think that'll be more of a margin driver than a top line driver.
I think that, you talked about our contract transitions. We have three major transitions this year. One of them is completed already with the SH2 in early January, transitioning to its new contract. We have the Q7000,which we're right now it's estimated to start its contract towards the end of March in Brazil, and then the SH1 which in the second half of the year will transition between Trident to Petrobras contract
And right now we're assuming about a 30 day and so I think once again there's a combination there of risk and opportunity in those assessments and then, the one area. Intervention that that is a little bit softer is that North Sea market. I think we're seeing right now we're expecting lower utilization in that market, once again I think as some of the information is digested from what happened there in the fourth quarter over there there's a potential for more activity, so it would be really driven by utilization there in that North Sea region. And then I'll pass on to Scotty for the robotics and shallow water.

Scotty Sparks

So a good portion of the robotics vessels is already booked as backlog we've got good contract activity in Asia Pacific over here for the sheet of water along and then for the trenching markets in the North Sea. We also have the T1401 going on a client provided vessel and T1402 going on a client providing vessel from June in the Mediterranean.
And the [iPlayer] was contracted to go on a job in the Baltic Sea. So it's pretty much a flat year for robotics, but that's primarily because the sea and Topaz came off contract. So there's quite a reduction there, so that's replaced by the other trenches going to work. But you have to remember that 2024 is the second highest EBITDA of the year for robotics since 2000. So, keeping a relatively flat with an upside bias for trenching, and robotics as we go forward is a good state of play for us already. And we are seeing high visibility in the trenching and ROV markets.
Shallow water, we expect that to be quite a soft market this year. It should be an improvement over 2024. It is definitely a spot market, clients call up. There's a lot of clients in flux at the moment with the boomerang project properties being handed back, these clients that have taken back those properties.
Don't have departments set up for shallow water P&A so they're starting to get their heads around what they've got going on. So, we should see an increase of work. I don't think it's going to go back to 2023, but it should be better than 2024, but definitely still a softer spot market.

Gregory Lewis

Okay, that was super helpful thank you. And then I just had a question, when I think in your prepared remarks you mentioned around the opportunity around trenching maybe we potentially add a new unit, I guess, for as we think about, well intervention, it's kind of easy for us to kind of not easy but. You can kind of work through margins and what pricing is going to be, just, I mean, is it, Scotty, I guess you're talking about robotics strengthening, how clearly last year was pretty tight and it seems like that's going to continue just as we think about the ability maybe to push, maybe we'll think about it on a margin progression.
As we think about the ability to kind of push margin and add and add another unit. What what's kind of like a fair way to think about, margins trending, I don't know whether you want to talk about the next one or two years or any kind of any kind of way we should be thinking about that and then I did kind of and following up with wrapping I guess a bow on this, you know what's it cost and how long does it take to add a trenching unit?

Scotty Sparks

Okay, so that's quite a loaded question, but, good shot.

Gregory Lewis

I'm sorry.

Scotty Sparks

That's okay. No, but rates are definitely improving trenching back in 2023, our baseline rate was about 120,000 a day. We're now bidding sort of 20%, 30% higher than that, and securing work and securing some sizable chunks of work. We're securing work for all of the trenches, which is very pleasing.
We purchased the C1401, C1402, and the I Plow for approximately $13 million, $14 million, and we've already had the return back on that and we're seeing good utilization for those assets as we go forward. I will say we're bidding work in the renewables market out to 29 and 30, and every year there's a step increase for those works. And like I say, we've already secured work into 2027. I expect to secure more work shortly as well, so.
To obtain a new trencher, there's two routes. There's one or two trenches on the market like what we did with the 1401 and 1402 that we're going to start negotiations and see if we can pick up one or two assets. If not, we'd have to go down the route of building another asset, which would be approximately $25 million of CapEx outlay and 18 months to secure building a trencher. But we're seeing an increased market. I'll give you an idea for our bidding activity from 2025 to 2030.
And our high potential awards, clients that come to us that we have good relationships with, we can already see $650 million of revenue based on trenching work alone and site clearance work alone out to 2030. So very healthy position for us.

Gregory Lewis

Wow, super helpful. Thanks for the time, guys.

Scotty Sparks

You're welcome. Thank you.

Operator

(Operator Instructions)
Josh Jain, Daniel Energy Partners

Josh Jain

Thanks, good morning. First one I wanted to just follow up on was when we think about the outlook for the Q4 and the Q5, into the end of 2025, they're both contracted to the end of this year, but could you speak to the opportunities to contract them further out? Are there significant term opportunities out there to contract those vessels sort of well into '26 and '27 or is it too early to think about that?

Scotty Sparks

So, the Q5000 is signed up with Shell for two years with an option of a third-year minimum contract days is 175 days each year. And we're also in discussions with another major that will take up the rest of the days on the Q5000. So the Q 5,000 for the next two to three years is in a very tight position.
Q4,000 is currently planned to be in Nigeria until Q2 of this year and then come back to service the rest of the Gulf market. We have work already lined up for it with two or three of large sized operators. It's a bit in flux because we've got operators in Nigeria that are asking if we could hang around and complete some work.
So, there's discussions ongoing with two other majors outside of the options that Exxon have. So, we're trying to work out a path of how much work that we take on in Nigeria compared to starting to lose some work over here by not having availability. So, the market, the Q-based US market is very tight, the Q5000 secured, and then the other operators will have access to the Q4000. And we're in discussions with at least two other operators to have multi-year contracts as well.

Josh Jain

Okay, so it does sound that like that when the Q4 eventually comes back to the Gulf, there are potential opportunities to term the vessel out.

Scotty Sparks

Yes, for sure. Yeah, we already have has contracted that would take place in the latter half of the year, and we're in discussions with majors for multi-year contracts and some spot whale work as well.

Josh Jain

Okay, thanks. And then I did just want to follow up one more time, about the $50 million or the targeted 25% of free cash flow. It does seem to be a bit of a departure from how you guys have thought about capital allocation. I know you've had a repurchase program in the past, but it does seem a bit more. Like concrete and aggressive, is that more just a function of, where you see the equity price today, or do you think that the opportunity for Helix going forward is to sort of do both things, both return capital to shareholders and execute on M&A. I'm just curious because it just it did seem like a little bit of a step change with respect to how you're thinking about capital allocation.

Owen Kratz

Well, I'll start and let Eric and the step change for us is just the strength of our balance sheet right now and the current equity price. So, I think it is time we have the financial capacity and a price that's working for us so that we plan to be more aggressive on the share repurchase.
We've stated it as a minimum of 25%. Because as I said earlier, I think there's a high probability that there are M&A opportunities for us to the extent that we need the cash for the M&A, that that will be where we deploy it. Alternatively, if the M&A doesn't materialize or we don't require that amount of cash, then we'll increase the aggressiveness on share repurchase at these current equity prices.

Operator

Seeing as we do not have any more questions at this time, I will now turn the call back over to the management for closing remarks.

Erik Staffeldt

Thanks for joining us today. We very much appreciate your interest and participation and look forward to having you on our first quarter 2025 call in April. Thank you.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.