Independence Contract Drilling, Inc. (NYSE:ICD) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Anthony Gallegos: Look, if you look at the strip, you listen to what customers say there what price they need to stimulate activity. John, I can see a dozen rigs easy over there. And that’s really ignoring what’s happening in that extreme western part of the play, which I have described a second ago, but just looking at the Haynesville proper that we have all known, I see a dozen pretty easy.

John Daniel: Okay. And I mean, obviously, crap happens if we got cold winter, things change pretty fast. But the inquiries today don’t necessarily put us back to where we were in Q4 ‘22. That’s a fair statement knowing it’s still early?

Anthony Gallegos: Correct. But remember, your available supply is lower than it was, too. So, you probably see a bigger pricing response at a lower rig count in the Haynesville than you needed before.

John Daniel: Yes. Awesome. Thank you for very granular answers.

Anthony Gallegos: Yes. Thank you, John.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Dick Ryan with Colliers. Please go ahead.

Dick Ryan: Thank you. So, Anthony, on your strategic initiatives, the technology pathways, where are you in that rollout? Can you provide a little commentary what’s your ultimate goal? Will that help you be in a better position to take some share in the market? Can you just provide a lit8tle more commentary on that?

Anthony Gallegos: Yes. Great. And I appreciate you let me talk about that, Dick. We haven’t talked a whole lot about that. Look, like all other industries out there, I mean we have expected the technology and demand for technology and appreciation for what it’s going to do would make its way into oil and gas, and I think it is in a big way. We have chosen over the last couple of years to not get into the arms race of trying to develop this technology ourselves. Part of that’s just some of the limitations that we have. But we also felt that over time, this would – there would be a shakeout phase. So, our strategy – stated strategy is that we wanted to be a very fast second mover on this front. But in the mean time, make sure that we have the right platform in place to be able to deploy technology.

And we do with the AC rigs that we have, especially the control systems, over half of our rigs are precise controlled rigs. So, you think about your operating system on your iPhone, you have got to make sure that you have a platform in place to be able to deploy this technology. So, as we rolled into 2023, as we were thinking about the business and talking to customers, it was pretty apparent to us that going forward, the requirement to have a technological offering and be able to add to our customers’ efforts to be productive that those are going to increase over the coming years. So, we wanted to spend time in 2023 proving what I just described, which was to deploy third-parties technology on our rigs and demonstrate where we can create value, not just for our customers, but also for ICD and our stockholders.

So, I guess the point that I am trying to make is that that’s happening now. We have four of these systems deployed. We have been very lucky because our biggest customer in the Permian Basin has been very supportive of these efforts. So, we have a couple of systems that are being used on a trial basis. We have got some things around the edges where we are getting paid for this stuff, very positive results so far. We have a drill string oscillator. We have some stick-slip mitigation software back to bottom sequencing. What we are seeing is that all of those things are being mitigated. Trip times are being improved. Where do we think this can go, Philip and I sat around and thought about this. Look, we think they are somewhere between $500 and $1,500 a day of incremental margin that could come to us.