Helmerich & Payne, Inc. (NYSE:HP) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Mark Smith: No, I agree, John. As you mentioned, unconventional, and I would just add maybe a footnote, Arun, as we look at these various tenders were participating in and a bonafide participation in them. And with many of these analyses, and boots on the ground, sales folks in the region there that we’ve invested in the last couple of years. We’re looking at some of these tenders with scale. So not one or two rigs, but 4, 5, 6 rigs, and that’s each and that’s why you see our investment this year is setting us up for margin generation accompanied to the company in 2024 and beyond.

Arun Jayaram: Right. And maybe just a quick follow-up here is just on the frame agreement with the ADNOC Drilling, how does that work relative to the €“ your companies €“ your H&P specific opportunities, how that work in Abu Dhabi?

John Lindsay: Well, we’ve delivered the 8 rigs that we talked about €“ we’ve sold. We have an agreement where we’re working with them on conventional projects. So that continues to trend. Well, we really don’t have a whole lot to more to add to that right now. But there’ll be more to come as we go through the next several quarters.

Arun Jayaram: Great. Thanks a lot, John.

John Lindsay: Thank you.

Operator: And we’ll take our next question from Waqar Syed with ATB Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Waqar Syed: Thank you. Good morning. John, the rig needed for unconventional drilling in the Middle East. Is it the similar type of super-spec rig is 1,500 horsepower enough for that type of drilling? Or do you need to have a bigger rig? Could you maybe elaborate what type of rig that would be needed?

John Lindsay: Yeah, good morning, Waqar. Now that’s exactly right. Really our Flex 3, both Flex 3 skid and Flex 3 walking rigs are both very well suited for the wells that we’ve looked at this point. And those rigs have performed very, very well in Abu Dhabi in the past, when we were drilling previously. I don’t think they were doing any horizontal. They were doing a lot of really long directional type wells. But now they’re very well suited for that work and, I think the national companies we’re talking to and we’re very excited about the opportunity.

Waqar Syed: Great. And then, Mark, your EBITDA margins in international business for about 1% or so, in the past, in a couple of years ago, they were as high as low 20%. Where do you think these EBITDA margins could go through this fiscal year?

Mark Smith: Well, if you look at the fiscal year starting off with a higher rig count to begin with, I think, you’ll certainly see the year-over-year margin expansion. But I’ll just caveat that even that margin expansion is even with a bit of a drag on some of the expenses we’re incurring and setting up the Middle East and Australia, more focus on the Middle East hub. But even with that, you’re going to see margin expansion this year.

Waqar Syed: Could you quantify those expenses in the Middle East and Australia?

Mark Smith: No. No. It’s really early days in Australia. There’s a lot of planning work that’s happening for setting up operations on the ground in the summer of 2023. I will tell you, as I mentioned earlier, that rig that’s targeted to be shipped in January, much of the work was already incurred on that in fiscal 2022. But as it relates to the Middle East hub quite a bit of work is happening. And you’ll just see that to continue be a little bit of drag on. As I said, the margin expansion for the segment is up, simply because of the number of units working and getting better and better pricing on those units. It’s just a scale thing. And we think that’ll do nothing but the grocery time. Yeah, we’ll