Helmerich & Payne, Inc. (NYSE:HP) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

John Lindsay: Sure, Ati. Thanks for the question. We have a rig that’s mobilizing to Australia and that’s going to happen. I think that it will commence in March. We could have sent it sooner. However, it would have been probably stuck at the port due to weather at the time of its arrival. So we elected to just delay. It’s sending a little bit. It’s still expected to spud in the back half of our fiscal year. I think the final quarter. And then, in particular, I think the bigger focus as I mentioned in the prepared remarks on the Middle East hub, we have a rig that was just delayed there from the first quarter to the second quarter in the setting of sales so that’s when those mobilization expenses are incurred. And then as we have previously said, as we move through the end of our fiscal year we have those six walking rig conversions that will be happening essentially April through September, and those will be transited over to the Middle East is our expectation.

And again, we wouldn’t expect to see revenues from those until fiscal 2024. Having said all of that, our expectations for fiscal 2023 full year have not changed. It was just some timing from Q1 to Q2 and Q3 in terms of mobilization expenses.

Ati Modak: Got it. Appreciate that. And then, how do you view the appetite for M&A, whether it’s for technology in North America or for expanding your footprint with maybe incumbents in the international markets?

John Lindsay: Well, on the technology side, I mean, we’re always looking. We feel like we’ve got a really good portfolio. And there’s not anything that I feel like is necessarily a gap. From an M&A perspective in the U.S. we’ve said often that we didn’t feel like that made a lot of sense. There’s really — there’s just really not a lot of opportunities out there that we can see on — from our perspective.

Ati Modak: And then anything internationally, maybe?

John Lindsay: Inter — yeah.

Mark Smith: Just like John said, we’re monitoring technology. We’re monitoring international. And I think if we were going to have an accretive investment it’d probably be in international arena we haven’t seen it yet but we’re always monitoring especially with our focus on the Middle East. And then, what you’re not going to see us do is, as we’ve said many times in the past is you’re not going to see us consolidate the U.S. market further. It’s already consolidated and we think it would not be a good use of capital but idle hire behind our own idle iron and especially dilutive to our uniform fleet in the U.S.

Ati Modak: Got it. Thank you for the answer. I appreciate it. I turn it back.

Mark Smith: Thank you.

Operator: We’ll take our last question from Thomas Curran with Seaport Research Partners. Please go ahead.

Thomas Curran: Good morning guys. Last but hopefully not least.

John Lindsay: Yeah. Definitely.

Thomas Curran: I was curious for your performance-based contracts for the portion of the active fleet in the quarter that was working under performance-based agreements. Could you tell us what the average premium that fleet realized in the quarter was? And then, I know the premium has been trending around 1500. I think in some quarters it’s gotten as high as 2000 a day. How would you expect it to evolve from here? Just how much more upside could we see for the performance-based fleet when it comes to that average premium?