Weatherford International plc

Outlook

Growth and spending in the energy services industry is highly dependent on many external factors. These include but are not limited to; the impact from geopolitical conflicts; global response to any ongoing pandemics; our customers’ capital expenditures; environmental, social and governance and other sustainability initiatives; world economic, political and weather conditions; the price of oil and natural gas; and, member-country quota compliance within the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and the expanded alliance. Imbalance across geographies driven by geopolitical conflicts, investment variances and supply disruptions are driving a greater focus on energy security, which in turn is creating a shift towards national oil companies. We expect continued improvements in our customer activity levels and generally positive macroeconomic conditions, all of which are expected to continue to provide a pathway to a multi-year energy demand expansion. We continue to closely monitor macroeconomic conditions, potential supply chain disruptions, inflationary factors, and other labor and logistical constraints that could impact our operations and results.

Our customers continue to face challenges in balancing the cost of extraction activities with securing desired rates of production while achieving acceptable rates of return on investment. These challenges increase our customers’ requirements for technologies that improve productivity and efficiency and pressure us to deliver our products and services at competitive rates. Over the long-term, we expect demand for oil and natural gas exploration and production industry as well as new energy platforms to continue to require more advanced technology from the energy service industry. Weatherford delivers innovative energy services that integrate proven technologies with advanced digitalization to create sustainable offerings for maximized value and return on investment. There was substantial negative impact on the global economy and demand leftover in 2021 from the COVID-19 pandemic, which carried at a lesser extent into 2022 which also included inflationary pressures, logistical delays and service and supply shortages. We managed to face these challenges by evolving our offerings, increasing the breadth of our digital portfolio and enhancing our applications to offer more fully integrated digital energy services solutions. We also increased our offerings of automated well construction and remote monitoring and predictive analytics related to our product offerings. Our resiliency continued to show in our performance through 2023, allowing us to also make improvements on our capital structure through debt reduction. We believe we are well positioned to satisfy our customers’ needs, but the level of improvement in our businesses in the future will continue to depend heavily on pricing, volume of work, our ability to offer cost efficient, innovative and effective technology solutions, and our success in gaining market share in new and existing markets.

Our company performance, industry conditions and related perception, could make it more difficult to obtain our targeted cost reduction benefits and to recruit, motivate and retain employees, including key personnel. The implementation of new or escalation of existing sanctions imposed against countries in which we operate, including any further escalation of sanctions and other events around the Russia Ukraine Conflict, including increased exposure to cyberattacks, increasing investor and government focus on sustainability initiatives, supply chain challenges and disruptions, and the cyclicality of the energy industry may negatively impact demand for our products and services. The Russia Ukraine Conflict, or other future geopolitical conflicts, could also have the effect of heightening many other risks disclosed in our public filings, any of which could materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations. Such risks include, but are not limited to, adverse effects on global macroeconomic conditions; increased volatility in the price and demand of oil and natural gas, increased exposure to cyberattacks; limitations in our ability to implement and execute our business strategy; risks to employees and contractors that we have in the region; disruptions in global supply chains; exposure to foreign currency fluctuations; potential nationalizations and assets seizures in Russia or elsewhere; constraints or disruption in the capital markets and our sources of liquidity; our potential inability to service our remaining performance obligations and potential contractual breaches and litigation.

We continue to follow our long-term strategy, aimed at achieving sustainable profitability and cash flow generation in our businesses, servicing our customers and creating value for our shareholders. Our long-term success will be determined by our ability to effectively manage the cyclicality of our industry, including growth during up-cycles and potential prolonged industry downturns, our ability to respond to industry changes and demands, while managing through risks we may be exposed to, and ultimately our ability to generate consistent positive cash flow and positive returns on invested capital.