Helmerich & Payne, Inc. (NYSE:HP) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Helmerich & Payne, Inc. (NYSE:HP) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript April 27, 2023

Helmerich & Payne, Inc. beats earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $1.26, expectations were $1.05.

Operator: Good day, everyone, and welcome to today’s Helmerich & Payne Fiscal Second Quarter Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, you will have the opportunity to ask questions during the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Please note this call is being recorded and I’ll be standing by should you need any assistance. It is now my pleasure to turn today’s call over to Dave Wilson. Please go ahead.

Dave Wilson: Thank you, Ashley, and welcome everyone to Helmerich & Payne’s conference call and webcast for the second quarter of fiscal year 2023. With us today are John Lindsay, President and CEO; and Mark Smith, Senior Vice President and CFO. Both John and Mark will be sharing some comments with us, after which we’ll open the call for questions. Before we begin our prepared remarks, I’ll remind everyone that this call will include forward-looking statements as defined under securities laws. Such statements are based on current information and management’s expectations as of the state and are not guarantees of future performance. Forward-looking statements involve certain risks uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict.

As such our actual outcomes and results could differ materially. You can learn more about these risks in our Annual Report on Form 10-K, our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and our other SEC filings. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and we undertake no obligation to publicly update these forward-looking statements. We will also be making reference to certain non-GAAP financial measures such as segment operating income, direct margin and other operating statistics. You’ll find the GAAP reconciliation comments and calculations in yesterday’s press release. With that said, I’ll turn the call over to John Lindsay.

John Lindsay: Thank you, Dave. Good morning, everyone, and thank you again for joining us today. H&P delivered another outstanding quarter and executed on several strategic objectives. On our Q2 earnings call last year, we announced a goal to achieve direct margins of 50% in our North America Solutions segment, as the pathway to generating an annualized return of our cost of capital. I’m pleased to report we have achieved that margin goal with the second fiscal quarter results. Reaching this milestone enabled us to realize annualized mid-teens return on invested capital this fiscal year, which is the first time we have achieved a double-digit return since the 2014 upcycle. Our focus now turns to maintaining this progress in a challenging market environment.

Our super-spec FlexRig utilization remains high and we are committed to this level of financial return to maintain economically sustainable operations, which is in the best interest of all our stakeholders. Political and economic uncertainty has plagued the global crude oil market over the past few quarters and the U.S. natural gas market has been particularly weak due to excess supply following a relatively warm winter and offline LNG takeaway capacity, both of which should be short-term transitory issues. Still volatility in both commodity markets seems to have fostered an atmosphere of pessimism surrounding the industry, which we believe is a short-term challenge and could reverse itself over the second half of 2023. It is during times like these that it’s good to remind ourselves how critical abundant cost effective and secure energy is to sustaining security and the broader global economy.

We remain optimistic about the long-term energy fundamentals, which favor a growing global demand for natural gas as a more environmentally friendly energy source in the future and that will require more drilling to meet supply needs. Nonetheless, softness and natural gas pricing in the U.S. has had a dampening effect on current rig activity and is contributing to an increased level of contractual churn in the market, not only in terms of number of rigs but also the increased idle time between contracts. A portion of this softening activity can also be attributable to our customer’s fiscal prudence with regard to budgets and the return focus they are pursuing. These factors in combination with our focus on pricing in order to preserve a return profile that aligns with our cost of capital is partially responsible for the reduction in our active rig count exiting the March quarter and necessitates a lower reset of our forward rig count projections.

As we talk with some investors, they voice concerns about a pending downturn due to idle rig capacity and historical results related to pricing. My experience over the past two decades indicates that it isn’t unusual to see rig count volatility within an upcycle. I don’t ever recall an upcycle that was straight up into the right. Additionally, super-spec rig effective utilization is above 90%, which historically has created a favorable pricing environment for us. To add some color to our activity decline, a majority of it is stemming from the weakness in natural gas prices. And it’s important to remember that lowering our rates would not have kept those rigs working regardless. Now, there were a handful of rigs that were released overpricing, but those were in the minority and there were about the same number that were released in the normal churn as customers were done with the rig line mostly related to budgetary reasons.

We expect this low activity to be short-term and should correct itself over time. While much of the recent turbulence in rig activity has been related to natural gas, we also remain optimistic about the longer-term fundamentals for crude oil and believe it will be a persistent driver for rig demand. With nearly 80% of the U.S. land rigs directed towards crude oil drilling and with current prices above the $70 per barrel range, our expectation is there should be strength in the oil drilling market, but the current outlook from many of our customers, we expect an improving rig count in the second half of the calendar year and like the last three years, we expect a buying season in calendar Q4. In addition to rig activity and pricing, managing costs and achieving higher levels of drilling performance also impact our ultimate returns.

By investing in the FlexRig fleet, technology, people and processes, we are able to consistently deliver the outcomes our customers’ desire. We continue to develop new commercial models that not only remunerate us for the value we create, but also expand collaborative efforts between H&P and its customers. This has not happened overnight as we began developing the new commercial model construct in 2019 and today 45% of our rigs are using some form of a performance based contract. H&P has spent the last 20 years investing in the FlexRig fleet to drive improving well cycle performance and reliability for customers. These investments over the last five years have focused on converting the fleet to super-spec capacity, which is now at 231 rigs in the U.S. In addition, we invested in multiple software technologies that are helping us to drive rig automation as well as more accurately placed in higher quality wellbores.

Let me provide some examples of the performance improvements in lateral length increases since 2014. The average well depth drilled by FlexRig has increased by 5,000 feet to over 20,000 feet with the average lateral doubling to over 10,000 feet. Simultaneously while drilling longer laterals working with our customers, we have also reduced well cycle times by roughly 25% from 22 days to an average of 16 days per well. These well cycle time improvements mean rigs are working more efficiently, but it also means rigs are working harder. And this translates into higher costs for expendables, maintenance, capital and labor. Mark will discuss costs in greater detail during his remarks, but let me point out that our rig cost per day has increased from $12,500 a day in 2014 to $18,000 a day today, and that is a driver for revenues needing to be in the mid-$30,000 a day range.

Maintaining a focus on our fiscal plan to ensure that we can achieve sustainable returns on invested capital is what will enable H&P to remain a viable partner to future success of our customers. Now shifting to the international front, H&P’s potential for longer-term growth prospects remains and focus. During the quarter, we moved our first super-spec FlexRig into our Middle East hub and we have sent another to Australia. While initially small in terms of rig count, these two projects are important to our international strategy and we believe they will open doors to more opportunities. Along those lines, we still plan to export additional super-spec rigs to the Middle East during the back half of the calendar year after undergoing conversions that fit the specific needs for operations in the region.

Operations in Argentina and Colombia have remained relatively steady and provided solid financial contributions. We have executed on our shareholder focused capital allocation strategy and since October of this fiscal year, we have returned approximately $250 million to date in capital via regular and supplemental dividends and share buybacks. Furthermore, we still have ample cash available to complete our announced dividend plans as well as conduct additional repurchases or take advantage of other investment opportunities. In closing, over the past few months, I have seen H&P working more collaboratively with customers at any time in my career. The outcomes we are jointly pursuing is economic value-added productivity using new commercial models rather than just a focus on the day rate.

That is due in large part to our customers realizing the near and long-term benefits of having H&P as their drilling solution partner. All of this is possible by H&P employees utilizing our rig assets and technologies to consistently deliver desired outcomes for our customers. And now, I’ll turn the call over to Mark.

Mark Smith: Thanks, John. Today, I will review our fiscal second quarter 2023 operating results, provide guidance for the third quarter, update full fiscal year 2023 guidance as appropriate and comment on our financial position. Let me start with highlights for the recently completed second quarter ended March 31, 2023. The company generated quarterly revenues of $769 million versus $720 million from the previous quarter. As expected, the quarterly increase in revenue was due primarily to focused efforts to move our North America fleet pricing higher. Total direct operating costs were $450 million for the second quarter versus $429 million for the previous quarter. The sequential increase is attributable to higher average active per rig costs in North America.

General and administrative expenses were approximately $53 million for the second quarter, slightly higher than expected due to miscellaneous information technology and professional services costs. During the second quarter, we recognized a gain of approximately $40 million, primarily related to the fair market value of our equity investments, which is reported as a part of gain on investment securities and our consolidated statement of operations. Our Q2 effective tax rate was approximately 24%, which is within our previously guided range. To summarize this quarter’s results, H&P earned a profit of $1.55 per diluted share versus $0.91 in the previous quarter. As highlighted in our press release, second quarter earnings per share were positively impacted by a net $0.29 cent gain per share, a select items consisting of the aforementioned gain on investment securities.

Absent these select items, adjusted diluted earnings per share were $1.26 in the second fiscal quarter versus an adjusted $1.11 during the first fiscal quarter. Capital expenditures for the second quarter of fiscal 2023 were $85 million, which was $11 million less than the previous quarter CapEx. I will comment later on a revised fiscal 2023 capital expenditure guidance. H&P generated approximately $141 million in operating cash flow during the second quarter of 2023, which is inclusive of $114 million in the second quarter outflows for cash tax payments and in line with our expectations. I’ll address the company’s cash position later in my remarks. Turning to our three segments, beginning with the North America Solutions segment. We averaged 183 contracted rigs during the second quarter up from an average of 180 rigs in fiscal Q1.

We exited the second fiscal quarter with 179 contracted rigs, which was less than our guidance expectations. As mentioned earlier, revenues increased sequentially by $49 million due to higher average pricing. Segment direct margin was $296 million, which was at the higher end of our January guidance and sequentially higher than the previous quarter, which came in at $260 million. Performance contracts were up to about 43% of total contracted rigs in the second quarter. In addition, reactivation costs of $5.2 million were incurred during Q2 compared to $8.6 million in the prior quarter. This includes three walking rig conversions, which were committed prior to entering the second quarter and completes the six walking rig conversions we had planned for the U.S. market in fiscal 2023.

Total segment expenses excluding re-commissioning costs and excluding reimbursables increased to $18,000 per day in the second quarter from $16,800 per day in the first quarter. Looking back over the past two years, our increases in cost from $16,000 per day at the end of fiscal 2021 to $18,000 today are primarily due to a few factors. First, as discussed on previous calls, we increased field labor related rates in December 2021 and September 2022 for a total of about $1,300 per day. As a reminder, labor is approximately 70% to 75% of daily operating expenses and the forward outlook for labor rates is stable. Second, as John alluded to in his remarks, we are seeing an increase in consumption of materials and supplies inventory items, due to the increased operational intensity of our rigs.

Recent data shows we have gone from drilling 800 feet per day per rig in 2017 to 1,250 feet today, which is driving our rigs to work harder than ever before, thus consuming more materials and supplies. Finally, best performance contract and technology revenues increase, additional costs are incurred to achieve those added revenue streams. Looking ahead to the third quarter of fiscal 2023 for North America Solutions, although, we exited fiscal Q2 with 179 rigs working, we have since seen several April releases and as of today’s call we have 169 rigs contracted. 176 of which are super spec rigs, and we project that by the end of the third fiscal quarter, we will have between 155 and 160 contracted rigs. Last quarter we peaked at 185 working super-spec rigs and with 18 recently idled, we are at approximately 90% utilization of the recently active fleet.

As John mentioned, natural gas price declines this calendar year coupled with macroeconomic uncertainties have resulted in current moderated rig demand, different from previous cycles. H&P is maintaining focus on pricing and idling rigs instead of reducing pricing and growing market share. This is necessary to maintain our recently achieved double-digit annualized return on invested capital relative to our cost of capital of over 10%. Moreover, as rig costs typically are only approximately 15% or less of the total cost of the customers well, reducing pricing to keep a rig working will not likely guarantee that rig continues to work beyond the immediate term. Instead, individual price reductions would put downward pressure on pricing for the remainder of higher active fleet, which would be return destructive to the company, particularly given the historical long elapsed timeline to boost pricing back up again.

In summary, we are willing to sacrifice some near-term cash flow generation related to activity drops versus risking larger cash flow degradation related to pricing. Our current revenue backlog from our North America Solutions fleet is roughly $1.1 billion for rigs under term contract. As of today, approximately 60% of the U.S. active fleet is on a term contract. Our average spot revenue per day is currently in the high $30,000 level inclusive of performance bonus earned and technology utilization compared to the Q2 overall average revenue per day of approximately 36,300. In the North American Solutions segment, we expect direct margins in fiscal Q3 to range between $265 million to $285 million. Notwithstanding, 2022 inflation now included in our average cost inventory on the balance sheet, we believe our current materials and supplies unit costs will be relatively stable for the remainder fiscal 2023.

But as mentioned previously, we are experiencing higher inventory consumption rates, which we would expect will continue in Q3. We currently expect third quarter per day cost to remain flat at approximately $18,000 per day. However, as we auto more rigs in the third quarter, our overhead absorption rate will be spread over a smaller number of active rigs, which may push cost slightly higher for active rig through the second half of the fiscal 2023. As John mentioned, when we look beyond fiscal Q3, the calendar year end, we believe more rigs will be put back to work reversing some of the near-term effects of such overhead absorption on daily cost. Next to our International Solutions segment, International Solutions business activity ended the second fiscal quarter with 14 rigs drilling in the super spec rig mobilizing to Australia.

We added a rig in Bahrain as expected, which brings our working rig count to two of the three in that country, international results were in line with previous guidance. As we look towards the third quarter of fiscal 2023 for international, we anticipate idling one rig in Argentina that completed its term contract and one in Columbia as that customer assesses the recently drilled well and determines the next steps. Our sales team is working on opportunities to put both of these idle rigs back to work in the near to mid-term. Expenses associated with setting up our Middle East hub and preparing rigs to mobilize abroad, effective results in Q2 and are expected to continue in Q3. In the third quarter, we expect to earn $4 million to $7 million in direct margin aside from any foreign exchange impact.

Finally, to our offshore Gulf of Mexico segment, we had four of our seven offshore platform rigs contracted, and we have active management contracts on three customer-owned rigs, two of which are on active rate. The offshore segment generated a direct margin of $9.3 million during the quarter, which was in line with our estimate in flat sequentially. As we look toward the third quarter of fiscal 2023 for the offshore Gulf of Mexico segment, one of our platform rigs is beginning demobilization as the customer has reached the end of its multi-year drilling program. This rig will be on some form of demobilization rate [indiscernible] rise at the shipyard, which is anticipated to be in mid-August. We expect offshore will generate between $5.5 million to $7.5 million of direct margin.

Now let me look forward to update full fiscal year 2023 guidance as appropriate. Capital expenditures for the full fiscal 2023 year are now expected to range between $400 million to $450 million, decreasing the midpoint $25 million from prior guidance. Although, we expect the timing of our CapEx spend to vary from quarter-to-quarter, supply chain delays have continued to push some maintenance CapEx out in our planning horizon. Our expectations for general and administrative expenses for the full fiscal year increased to $205 million. The additional costs are primarily due to increased professional services fees and information technology expenditures. We are still estimating our annual effective tax rate to be in the range of 23% to 28% with the variances above U.S. statutory rate of 21% attributed to permanent both the tax differences and state and foreign income taxes.

In Q2, we paid cash tax of approximately $114 million, which is up to $4 million in Q1. For the full fiscal year, we’re now anticipating a cash tax range of $175 million to $225 million. The midpoint of this revised range is $15 million lower than our – than the prior quarter guidance midpoint due to the previously mentioned the lower rig activity expectations. Now looking at our financial position, Helmer Campaign, had cash and short-term investments of approximately $245 million in March 31 versus an equivalent $348 million at December 31, 2022. The sequential decrease cash balance is largely attributable to our fiscal Q2 share repurchases. Regarding cash balances and taking into account, the recent developments discussed today and the implications those have had on forecasted activity, cash taxes and CapEx, we have updated our estimates for our fiscal 2023 year-end cash balance.

At the beginning of this fiscal year, we’ve provided a range of $430 million to $490 million. Our revised cash range is at fiscal year-end is now $340 million to $380 million, which largely reflects the overall impact of the share repurchases to date. Including availability under our revolving credit facility, our liquidity remains relatively flat at approximately $1 billion. Approximately 2.5 million shares were repurchased in fiscal Q2 for approximately $107 million, fiscal 2023 repurchases have totaled about 3.4 million shares thus far for approximately $146 million. These share repurchases augments our longstanding base dividend and fiscal 2023 supplemental dividend. Each of these items, stock repurchases and the base and supplemental dividends encompassed the new capital allocation and shareholder return model that we announced in October at the beginning of this fiscal year.

Pricing focus in North America combined with our capital allocation execution underscores our focus to not only increase the financial returns of the company, but also the cash returns provided to shareholders. That concludes our prepared comments for the second fiscal quarter and let me now turn the call over to Ashley for questions.

Q&A Session

Operator: Certainly. [Operator Instructions] And we will take our first question from David Smith with Pickering Energy. Please go ahead.

Operator: We will take our next question from Derek Podhaizer with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Operator: We’ll take our next question from Saurabh Pant with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Operator:

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Operator: We will take our next question from Keith Mackey with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Operator: And this concludes our Q&A section. I’ll turn the call back over to John Lindsay for closing remarks.

John Lindsay: Thank you, Ashley. And listen, thanks again for joining us today. I know there’s a lot of calls and it’s a really busy day. So thanks for joining us. We remain optimistic about the future. Really pleased with the momentum that we have as an organization. We recognize the headwinds and the challenges, but I don’t think anybody’s better positioned than H&P to perform through this cycle. As we’ve said multiple times today, we’re focused on our returns, creating returns over market share. We think we’re really well-positioned with great technology and people and solutions to really provide great outcomes for our customers. So thanks again for your time and have a great day.

Operator: Thank you. This does conclude today’s program. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at any time.