Item 1. Business
Item 1. Business.
Weatherford International plc, an Irish public limited company, together with its subsidiaries (“Weatherford,” the “Company,” “we,” “us” and “our”), is a leading global energy services company providing equipment and services used in the drilling, evaluation, well construction, completion, production, intervention, and responsible abandonment of wells in the oil and natural gas exploration and production industry as well as new energy platforms.
We conduct business in approximately 75 countries, answering the challenges of the energy industry with 330 operating locations including manufacturing, research and development, service, and training facilities. Our operational performance is reviewed and managed across the life cycle of the well, and we report in three segments (1) Drilling and Evaluation, (2) Well Construction and Completions, and (3) Production and Intervention.
Our principal executive offices are located at 2000 St. James Place, Houston, Texas 77056, and our telephone number at that location is +1.713.836.4000. Our internet address is www.weatherford.com. General information about us, including our corporate governance policies, code of business conduct and charters for the committees of our Board of Directors, can be found on our website, and such information provided on our website, is not incorporated by reference into this Form 10-K. On our website we make available, free of charge, our annual reports on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K, proxy statements and amendments to those reports filed or furnished as soon as reasonably practicable after we electronically file or furnish them to the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”). The SEC maintains a website that contains our reports, proxy and information statements, and our other SEC filings. The address of that site is www.sec.gov.
Strategy
Our objective is to create value for our shareholders across industry cycles by ensuring sustainable profitability and cash flow generation. We aim to accomplish this goal with a comprehensive suite of products and services, differentiated technologies, strong customer focus, operational rigor, disciplined capital management, and a commitment to safety and operational efficiency.
Our customers’ objectives are continually evolving and are currently focused on disciplined capital and operational expenditures, generating investor and shareholder returns, reducing emissions, participating in the energy transition, and enhancing safety. Weatherford has aligned its technology development, capital spending and operations around these objectives and expanded its role as a market leading provider of solutions that assist our customers in addressing their key operational challenges, not just in conventional reservoirs but also in mature fields, unconventionals, offshore, and in digitalization and automation.
Our focus is on the deployment of our five strategic priorities of:
• Customer Experience enhancement by directly addressing customer needs of improved efficiency, value creation and safety;
• Creating the Future through continued investment in research and development and building our Digital & New
Energy portfolio and capabilities;
• Organizational Vitality to harness employee engagement, attract and retain talent, develop our people and
increase leadership effectiveness;
• Lean Operations to simplify and drive waste out of the business for increased productivity, quality and
improved service levels; and
• Financial Performance that drives value creation across economic cycles with sustainable profitability, cash flow generation and top-tier return on capital
Our strategic focus is enabled by a comprehensive capital allocation framework that includes:
• Improved through-cycle resilience from a strong balance sheet;
• Judicious business investments in technology and infrastructure upgrades to drive portfolio differentiation and
structural cost efficiencies leading to improved returns;
• Strategic and disciplined mergers and acquisitions that align with our portfolio strategy; and
• Shareholder returns program as introduced in 2024 with an expected annual dividend of $1 per share and a
$500 million share repurchase authorization over three years.
Weatherford International plc – 2024 Form 10-K | 2
Table of Contents Item 1 | Business
Markets
Demand for our industry’s products and services is driven by many factors, including commodity prices, the number of oil and gas rigs and wells drilled, depth and drilling conditions of wells, number of well completions, age of existing wells, reservoir depletion, regulatory environments and the level of workover activity worldwide.
Technology is critical to the energy services marketplace as a result of the maturity of the world’s oil and natural gas reservoirs, declining production rates and the nature of complex well designs, in both land and offshore markets. Customers continue to seek, test and use technologies that accelerate and optimize production at an increasing rate. We invest substantial resources into building our technology offerings, which enable our customers to evaluate, develop and produce from their oil and natural gas reservoirs more efficiently. Our products and services are designed to enable our customers to increase production rates while reducing their costs of drilling and production.
Reportable Segments
We offer our services and technologies in relation to the well life cycle and have three reportable segments: (1) Drilling and Evaluation (2) Well Construction and Completions, and (3) Production and Intervention. All of our segments are enabled by a suite of digital monitoring, control and optimization solutions using advanced analytics to provide safe, reliable and efficient solutions throughout the well life cycle, including responsible abandonment at the end of the well’s productive life.
Products and Services
Drilling and Evaluation (“DRE”) offers a suite of services including managed pressure drilling, drilling services, wireline and drilling fluids. DRE offerings range from early well planning to reservoir management through innovative tools and expert engineering to optimize reservoir access evaluation and productivity.
Managed Pressure Drilling helps to manage wellbore pressures to optimize drilling performance. We incorporate various technologies, including rotating control devices and advanced automated control systems, as well as several drilling techniques, such as closed-loop drilling, air drilling, managed-pressure drilling and underbalanced drilling.
Drilling Services includes directional drilling, logging while drilling, measurement while drilling and rotary-steerable systems. We provide a full range of downhole equipment, including high-temperature and high-pressure sensors, drilling reamers and circulation subs.
Wireline includes open-hole and cased-hole logging services that measure the geophysical properties of subsurface formations to determine production potential, locate resources and detect cement and casing integrity issues. We also execute well intervention and remediation operations by conveying equipment via cable into existing wells.
Drilling Fluids provides fluids and chemicals essential to the drilling process.
Well Construction and Completions (“WCC”) offers products and services for well integrity assurance across the full life cycle of the well. The primary offerings are tubular running services, cementation products, completions, liner hangers and well services. WCC deploys conventional to advanced technologies, providing safe and efficient services in any environment during the well construction phase.
Tubular Running Services provides equipment, tubular handling, tubular management and tubular connection services for the drilling, completions, and workover of various types of wells. We include conventional rig services, automated rig systems, real-time torque-monitoring, and remote viewing of the makeup and breakout verification process, all underscored by our technology and procedural protocols to provide casing and tubular running operations with superior efficiency, and reduced health, safety, and environmental risks.
Cementation Products enable operators to centralize the casing throughout the wellbore and control the displacement of cement and other fluids for proper zonal isolation. Specialized equipment includes plugs, float and stage equipment and torque-and-drag reduction technology. Our cementation engineers analyze customer requirements and provide software enabled design input from pre-job planning to installation.
Completions offer customers a comprehensive line of completion tools, such as safety valves, production packers, downhole reservoir monitoring, flow control, isolation packers, multistage fracturing systems and sand-control
Weatherford International plc – 2024 Form 10-K | 3
Table of Contents Item 1 | Business
technologies that not only allow our customers to produce optimally from their reservoirs but also monitor and control the reservoirs throughout their productive life.
Liner Hangers suspend a casing string within a previous casing string thereby eliminating the need to run casing to the surface. We offer a comprehensive liner-hanger portfolio, along with engineering and execution experience, for a wide range of applications that include high-temperature and high-pressure wells.
Well Services provides through tubing products and services which ensure consistent delivery of well solutions that extend the economic life of our customer's assets.
Production and Intervention (“PRI”) offers production optimization technologies through our ability to design and deliver a complete production ecosystem ranging from boosting productivity to responsible well abandonment for our customers. The primary offerings are intervention services & drilling tools, artificial lift, digital solutions, sub-sea intervention and pressure pumping services in select markets. PRI utilizes a suite of reservoir stimulation designs, and engineering capabilities that isolate zones and unlock reserves in conventional and unconventional wells, deep water, and aging reservoirs.
Intervention Services & Drilling Tools provides re-entry, fishing and well abandonment services as well as patented downhole tools, tubular-handling equipment, pressure-control equipment and drill pipe and tubulars for various types of wells.
Artificial Lift provides pressure enabling methods to produce reservoir fluids from wells lacking sufficient reservoir pressure for natural flow. We provide most forms of lift, including reciprocating rod lift systems, progressing cavity pumping, gas-lift systems, hydraulic-lift systems, plunger-lift systems and hybrid lift systems for special applications. We also offer related automation and control systems.
Digital Solutions provides software, automation, and flow measurement solutions. For our customers’ drilling operations, the solutions deliver data aggregation, engineering, and optimization including performance analytics in real-time. For our customers’ production operations, we provide flow measurement, surveillance, and control to deliver production optimization by integrating workflows and data for the well, surface facilities and the reservoir.
Sub-Sea Intervention provides electrical and hydraulic power transmission to subsea equipment in order to facilitate workovers and abandonment in deep and ultra-deep-water operations in select markets.
Pressure Pumping Services offers advanced chemistry-based solutions and associated pumping services for safe and effective production enhancement. In select international markets, we provide pressure pumping and reservoir stimulation services, including acidizing, fracturing, cementing, and coiled-tubing intervention.
Competition
We provide our products and services worldwide and compete with a number of global and regional competitors. Our principal competitors include SLB, Halliburton, Baker Hughes and Expro Group Holdings. We also compete with various other suppliers who provide products and services within a smaller cross section of our product line portfolio either locally, regionally, or globally. Competition is based on a number of factors, including performance, safety, quality, reliability, service, price, response time and, in some cases, depth and breadth of products. The energy services business is highly competitive, which may adversely affect our ability to succeed. Additionally, the consolidations of and acquisitions by our competitors are difficult to predict and may impact our business as a result.
Raw Materials
We purchase a wide variety of raw materials, as well as parts and components. We integrate products and components produced by other parties into the products and systems we offer for sale or service. We continually evaluate and invest in our integrated supply chain in order to reduce materials constraints and impacts from inflationary pressures, while improving lead times and supporting our sustainability efforts.
Customers
Substantially all of our customers are engaged in the energy industry and include national oil companies, international and independent oil and natural gas companies as well as new energy companies.
Weatherford International plc – 2024 Form 10-K | 4
Table of Contents Item 1 | Business
Research, Development and Patents
In addition to maintaining world-class technology and training centers throughout the world, we have research, development, and engineering teams focused on developing new technologies and improving existing products and services to meet customer demands for improved drilling performance, well integrity, and enhanced reservoir productivity, with emphasis on efficiency, reliability, safety and the environment. We also develop technologies for new energy markets, in addition to the existing oil and gas markets in which we traditionally operate. Weatherford has significant expertise, trade secrets, intellectual property and know-how with respect to the design, manufacturing, and use of our equipment and the provision of our services. As many areas of our business rely on proprietary technology, we seek to protect and defend our intellectual property through trade secrets and patent protection both inside and outside the U.S. for products and methods that we believe have commercial significance. Although in the aggregate our patents are important to the manufacturing and marketing of many of our products and services, we do not believe that the expiration of any one of our patents would have a materially adverse effect on our business.
Seasonality
Weather and natural phenomena can temporarily affect the level of demand for our products and services; however, the widespread geographical locations of our operations serve to mitigate the overall impact on our business in any particular geographic region. Spring months in Canada, summer in the Southern hemisphere, and winter months in the North Sea and Russia typically have lower demand, driving a negative impact on operations. Additionally, heavy rains, hurricanes, unusual wildfires, extreme freezes or other unpredictable or unusually harsh natural phenomena could lengthen the periods of reduced activity and have a detrimental impact on our operations. In addition, customer spending patterns for our products and services may result in higher activity in the fourth quarter of each calendar year as our customers seek to fully utilize their annual budgets.
Russia Ukraine Conflict
On February 24, 2022, the military conflict between Russia and Ukraine (“Russia Ukraine Conflict”) began and in response we evaluated, and continue to evaluate, our operations, with the priority being centered on the safety and well-being of our employees in the impacted regions, as well as operating in full compliance with applicable international laws and sanctions.
Revenues in Russia were approximately 5% of our total revenue for the year ended December 31, 2024, and were approximately 6% of our total revenues for the year ended December 31, 2023 and 7% for the year ended December 31, 2022. As of December 31, 2024, our Russia operations included $82 million in cash, $95 million in other current assets, $56 million in property, plant and equipment and other non-current assets, and $45 million in liabilities. As of December 31, 2023, our Russia operations included $62 million in cash, $94 million in other current assets, $76 million in property, plant and equipment and other non-current assets, and $62 million in liabilities.
We continue to closely monitor and evaluate the developments in Russia as well as any changes in international laws and sanctions. We believe that operational complexity will increase over time and therefore continually evaluate these potential impacts on our business. As such, we continue to actively evaluate various options, strategies and contingencies with respect to our business in Russia, including, but not limited to:
• continuing the business in compliance with applicable laws and sanctions;
• evaluating the continued use or change in products, equipment and service offerings we currently provide in
Russia;
• curtailing or winding down our activities over time;
• potentially divesting some or all of our assets or businesses in Russia, which could include the option of re-entering the country if and when sanctions or applicable laws would allow for the same; and
• potential nationalization of the business.
Federal Regulation and Environmental Matters
Our operations are subject to federal, state and local laws and regulations in the U.S. and globally relating to the energy industry in general and the environment in particular. Our 2024 expenditures to comply with environmental laws and regulations were not material, and we currently do not expect the cost of compliance with environmental laws and regulations for 2025 to be material. We continuously monitor and strive to maintain compliance with changes in laws and regulations that impact our business.
Weatherford International plc – 2024 Form 10-K | 5
Table of Contents Item 1 | Business
We have obligations and expect to incur capital, operating and maintenance, and remediation expenditures, as a result of compliance with environmental laws and regulations. Among those obligations, are the current requirements imposed by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (“TCEQ”) at a former facility in Midland, Texas where we are performing a TCEQ-approved Remedial Action Plan (“RAP”) to address contaminated ground water. The performance of the RAP and related expenses are scheduled to be performed over a twenty to thirty-year period and, may cost as much as $11 million, recorded as an undiscounted obligation and have remained unchanged on the Consolidated Balance Sheets since December 31, 2022.
Human Capital Management
Focus on People and Culture
At Weatherford, our global team is driven to further our mission – producing energy for today and tomorrow. Pivotal to our culture and ensuring we fulfill our mission and vision is our “One Weatherford” spirit – individually, we are impressive, and together, we are unstoppable. Our One Weatherford spirit motivates our global teams to collaborate for shared success and to seek out unique perspectives, fostering a culture where everyone can grow and contribute.
Our global team comprises experts in various disciplines, including engineering, oilfield services support, and multiple corporate functions. In addition to our commitment to operating sustainably with safety, quality, and integrity, we are also focused on recruiting, developing, and promoting an employee culture that revolves around the following Core Values:
• Passion: We are energized by our work and inspired to make a positive impact in our industry, for our customers, across our Company, and in our communities;
• Accountability: We operate with integrity, enable our people and teams to be successful, and aim to be true to our word;
• Innovation: We are driven to deliver advancements that propel our Company, industry, and customers forward; and
• Value Creation: We aspire to achieving long-term value for all our stakeholders by providing compelling and unique benefits through technology differentiation and operational excellence.
We believe that ensuring we have the right talent in place is essential to delivering positive results for the business. We remain focused on developing our talent through training, competency, and mentoring, as well as attracting diverse and qualified individuals who will bring fresh perspectives and skill sets to the team. Through role-specific competency-based training and leadership development programs, we seek to expand our employees’ skill sets and regularly reinforce important topics that align with our Core Values and strategic priorities.
Focus on Safety
Weatherford is committed to the health, safety, and well-being of our employees, customers, and the communities in which we operate. We strive to be a company that is incident free, fulfills our commitments, and leaves the environment and communities we engage with in a better state than we found them. Our company values are built on the foundation of safety, and we recognize that a safe operation is also an efficient operation. To ensure we maintain this commitment, we have adopted the International Association of Oil & Gas Producers’ (“IOGP”) Life-Saving Rules and Start Work Checks, which guide our proactive approach to safety. These industry-standard rules are designed to improve human performance and raise awareness of the high risk activities most likely to result in injury or fatality.
Our dedication to safety and service quality is embedded at every level of our organization. The Operational Excellence and Performance System (OEPS) is our integrated quality, health, safety, security, and environmental management system. OEPS not only meets international management system standards, such as ISO 45001, but also supports our employees in the field so that we deliver on customer commitments without compromising on quality, health, safety, security, or environmental performance. Additionally, we have safety programs aimed at educating employees on best practices, and our Stop Work Authority program empowers them to intervene if they observe or anticipate unsafe behaviors or conditions.
Compensation
We believe in aligning our employees’ compensation with the positive performance of our Company and returns realized for our shareholders. The goal of our compensation programs is to provide competitive compensation opportunities to each of our employees that are well-balanced between our current and long-term strategic priorities, that discourage excessive or unnecessary risk taking, and that reward our employees appropriately for their efforts. We are committed to maintaining and fostering a culture grounded in the principles inherent in pay-for-performance over the short and long-term for our employees eligible to receive a bonus. Through this culture, we strive to attract, motivate, retain, and reward our employees for their work that contributes to
Weatherford International plc – 2024 Form 10-K | 6
Table of Contents Item 1 | Business
building our brand and to sustaining our success in the marketplace. We believe our culture of aligning our compensation programs with our strategic priorities supports a cohesive drive towards value creation for all our stakeholders.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
We understand the importance of operating collaboratively and inclusively across all levels of our organization, embracing the full spectrum of diversity among our employees, and recognizing the strength and competitive advantages our differences afford us as a Company. Our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (“DE&I”) Program is a core element of our One Weatherford culture. Our DE&I efforts aim to provide learning, engagement, and philanthropic opportunities to help our people and communities flourish. The executive team and frontline employees champion our commitment to embedding our DE&I Program into our organization.
In 2024, we continued to advance our program and awareness throughout the organization, including conducting celebrations across the Company that foster collaboration and meaningful conversations regarding DE&I. We trained our employees on unconscious bias and continued our focus on NextGen, our field engineering graduate program designed to accelerate the development of defined competencies and skillsets to prepare participants for future leadership positions, as well as our localization programs for select customers to develop local talent. In addition, we continued to expand participation in the Women of Weatherford (“WOW”), an employee resource group that seeks to engage, support, empower, and inspire women to foster professional growth and advancement across our regions and employee levels, while also promoting volunteerism and giving back to our local communities.
Community Impact and Volunteering
In addition to investing in our employees, we are committed to making a positive impact in the communities in which we live and work. Across the globe, our employees give back to organizations who need support in terms of donated items, volunteered time, and financial giving. For example, our team in Canada participates in an annual radiothon to support a local hospital and provides meals to over 900 unhoused and food insecure individuals. Our teams across the Latin America and Europe and Africa regions participate in activities to raise support for breast cancer awareness. Our teams across Asia, the Middle East and North Africa regions donate time and resources to support children in need. In the United States, we continue to raise funds and awareness to find a cure for Multiple Sclerosis (“MS”) through the MS Society and through our annual Weatherford Walks event, we raised approximately $500,000 benefiting a number of local not-for-profit organizations.
Employee Statistics
As of December 31, 2024, Weatherford had approximately 19,000 employees globally. Some of our operations are subject to union contracts and these contracts cover approximately 17% of our employees.
Executive Officers of Weatherford
The following table sets forth, as of February 6, 2025, the names and ages of the executive officers of Weatherford, including all offices and positions held by each for at least the past five years. There are no family relationships between the executive officers of the Company or between any director and any executive officer of the Company.
Name Age Current Position and Five-Year Business Experience
Girishchandra K. Saligram 53 President and Chief Executive Officer of Weatherford International plc, since October 2020
Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Exterran Corporation from August 2018 to September 2020
Arunava Mitra 52 Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Weatherford International plc, since January 2023
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Mitsubishi Power Americas Inc. from October 2021 to December 2022
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems of Americas Inc. from October 2014 to October 2021
Scott C. Weatherholt (a)
47 Executive Vice President, General Counsel, and Chief Compliance Officer of Weatherford International plc, since July 2020
Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Arena Energy, L.P., from September 2019 to July 2020
Weatherford International plc – 2024 Form 10-K | 7
Table of Contents Item 1 | Business
Executive Vice President, General Counsel, and Corporate Secretary at Midstates Petroleum Company, Inc., from February 2015 to August 2019
Richard D. Ward
56 Executive Vice President, Global Field Operations of Weatherford International plc, since January 2024
Senior Vice President, Subsea Production Systems of Baker Hughes Co, from May 2021 to December 2022
Senior Vice President, Strategic Planning & Solutions of Baker Hughes Co, from October 2019 to May 2021
Vice President, Marketing, Strategy & Solutions of Baker Hughes Co, from August 2017 to October 2019
David J. Reed
51 Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer of Weatherford International plc, since January 2024
Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer of Weatherford International plc, from August 2021 to December 2023
Vice President of Sales, Tenaris, from July 2015 to January 2021
Depinder Sandhu
49 Executive Vice President, Global Product Lines of Weatherford International plc, since January 2024
Senior Vice President, Global Product Lines of Weatherford International plc, from December 2021 to December 2023
Senior Director, Corporate Strategy of Weatherford International plc, from April 2021 to November 2021
Vice President, Business Development & Strategy of Weatherford International plc, from July 2020 to March 2021
Director, Service Delivery of Weatherford International plc, from November 2017 to May 2020
Kristin Ruzicka
42 Executive Vice President, Chief Human Resources Officer & Sustainability at Weatherford since January 2025
Senior Vice President, Chief Human Resources Officer & Sustainability at Weatherford from December 2023 to January 2025
Senior Vice President, Human Resources Operations and Sustainability at Weatherford from April 2023 to December 2023
Senior Vice President, Quality, Service Excellence and Sustainability at Weatherford from September 2021 to April 2023
Senior Vice President, Quality and Service Excellence at Weatherford from June 2021 to September 2021
Vice President and General Manager Reliability Services at Allied Reliability from October 2018 to June 2021
Todd Glance
52 Executive Vice President, Customer Delivery of Weatherford International plc since August 2024
Independent business advisor from April 2023 to July 2024
Executive Vice President of Operations, Otis Worldwide Corporation, from April 2020 to March 2023
Senior Vice President of Operations, United Technology Corporation, from June 2019 to April 2020
Desmond J. Mills 52 Senior Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer of Weatherford International plc, since November 2021 (Interim Chief Financial Officer August 2022 to January 2023)
Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer of Weatherford International plc, from March 2021 to November 2021
Segment Compliance Manager, Construction Industries Segment, Caterpillar Inc., from July 2020 to March 2021
Division Chief Financial Officer, Integrated Components and Solutions Division, Caterpillar Inc., from September 2018 to July 2020
Weatherford International plc – 2024 Form 10-K | 8
Table of Contents Item 1 | Business
(a) Prior to joining Weatherford, Mr. Weatherholt was the General Counsel at Midstates Petroleum Company, Inc. when the company filed for bankruptcy protection on May 1, 2016 in the Federal Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas (Houston Division) and served the company before, during and after its bankruptcy. In addition, he was the Senior Vice President & General Counsel of Arena Energy, LP, which filed for bankruptcy protection on August 20, 2020, in the Federal Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas (Houston Division) approximately 4 weeks after his departure from the company.