Halliburton Company (NYSE:HAL) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Neil Mehta: And that was my follow-up around capital returns. So as you think about the buyback, how do you think about approaching it? Do you want to take a more ratable approach or do you want to be countercyclical in the way that you prosecute it? And when you talk about M&A, are we talking about bolt-on type of transactions that are — or do you see a scenario where we could be looking at larger scale things?

Eric Carre: So let me start with M&A maybe. So our philosophy there is extremely focused on adding technology. So it’s a bit of a build versus buy approach to complementing our technology budget. It is a bit opportunistic at time depending on what’s available and the opportunities that we have. Over the years, we’ve also invested in complements like smaller businesses that we can easily add to existing product lines. So that’s kind of the general view that we have on technology. From an overall strategy standpoint, and I’ll let Jeff jump in. But we are where we need to be in terms of the businesses we want to compete in at this stage. So going to the other part of your question, Neil, around buybacks. So I’m not going to go into a lot of details, but generally speaking, we look at buybacks as being level loaded through 2023, which will obviously top off in terms — in order to make sure that we meet our overall target of 50% or more.

So we’re thinking about buybacks really as a mechanism to return cash to shareholders. We’re not really trying to trade in our shares.

Jeff Miller: Let me just add to that as well. I mean I think the — no surprises from us, our outlook on M&A hasn’t changed, and it will stay that way. As we look at the capital allocation, we also want to continue, as Eric mentioned, opportunistically take out debt. We don’t want to be sloppy about it, but kind of in the current market that we see, we have the opportunities to do things that are — that make returns for the company, but we want to be crystal clear around what our minimum return was. It’s clearly — we’ll work through that. But I would expect that by setting that minimum, I think it gives clarity to the marketplace that we will only do things that we believe add meaningful returns to the company.

Operator: And our next question comes from Luke Lemoine with Piper Sandler.

Luke Lemoine: Jeff, your 4Q EBITDA margins firmly hopped in that kind of low 20% range here, basically at 14 levels, which was the target for ’23, totally get there are some year end sales there that skewed us higher in 4Q, but you’re on the cusp of hitting 14 margins on an annual basis in ’23. You and Lance kind of gave us a two year outlook almost two years ago. And I just wanted to see if maybe you could refresh this or expand upon it and how you see margins evolving over the next couple of years?

Jeff Miller: When we did that a couple of years ago, when we looked at published estimates, clearly, we thought they were too low. And so we’ve made some clear commentary and an effort to correct that. Now as we look at the published REIT estimates today, they seem about right. And so I don’t want to try to continue to do that over and over. And what I am is super excited about our outlook. Margins from here are up, revenue is up. I’m as confident in our outlook and our business as I have ever been. But I just want to be clear, in Q2 of ’21, we wanted to be clear that we were pointing out what we felt was missing in the future Street estimates. And today, as I said, I think published Street estimates today are about right for the years ahead, both top line and profitability.

Operator: Next question comes from Chase Mulvehill with Bank of America.