Halliburton Company (NYSE:HAL) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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Douglas Becker: Thanks. Jeff, would you expand a little bit more on the drivers behind the sequential margin expansion in D&E? And really, the question is just a function that the last several years D&E margins actually declined in 2Q from 1Q.

Jeffrey Miller: Look, I think that’s, again, I’m back to the foundation building that I described. So, we’ve got a better foundation, broader-based work, and so I expect to continue to see expansion, certainly year-over-year. And then, also as that foundation gets stronger, that gives us more ability to grow the business profitably, but from a sound base.

Eric Carre: I think Doug, it’s Eric here, that the typical drop in margin in Q2 happens with the reduction in our software business. The way we recognize revenue in our software business means that it’s essentially taken in Q4 and in Q1, so we see a bit of a drop there. You see that being more muted this year because, as Jeff mentioned, the D&E margins were softer than we were expecting in Q1, as we had much more significant weather issues in the North Sea in Norway, in Alaska, and then the flooding over in Indonesia. So, the combination of the muted effect and the more traditional software impact moving from Q1 to Q2 results in margins going up here.

Douglas Becker: That all makes sense. Maybe switching to North America, U.S. more specifically, last quarter you were talking about ZEUS e-fleets would represent about 40% by the end of the year, going to maybe 50% in 2025. Is there a reasonable or realistic or probable scenario where you would accelerate this deployment? The results certainly suggest the outperformance and there might be a case for that.

Jeffrey Miller: No. Look, this is a market push. The whole strategy behind e-fleet for us has been build the best technologies and clients demand it, and we’ve built to the demand that we see in hand, and therefore, they are not built on spec, they are built for customers that plan to use them. And we don’t plan to change that. And so, in some ways that adds central to maximizing value in North America. When we maximize value in North America, we are not going to build things, we don’t have home. And so, I expect to continue to see market demand for this equipment. 2024 is actually already in hand. It’s just delivering the units themselves. They already have homes. And in ’25, we actually have some deliveries. And I expect that we will see more as we go forward. But I think that important to remember that that our approach is to build to contract.

Douglas Becker: That makes sense. Thank you.

Jeffrey Miller: Thank you.

Eric Carre: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. And with that, we conclude our Q-and-A session for today. I will pass it back to management for final comments.

Jeffrey Miller: Okay. Thank you, Carmen. Let me close out the call with this, I am excited about the outlook for Halliburton and expect Halliburton to deliver strong free cash flow and shareholder returns. Look forward to speaking with you next quarter. Let’s close out the call.

Operator: Thank you everyone for participating. You may now disconnect.

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