Good day and welcome to everyone to today's Halliburton Company first quarter 2006 results conference call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time for opening remarks and introductions, I would like to turn the conference over to the Vice President of Investor Relations, Ms. Evelyn Angelle. Please go ahead. Evelyn Angelle: Thanks, good morning and welcome to Halliburton's first quarter 2006 earnings release conference call. Today's call is being webcast and a replay will be available on our website for seven days. A podcast download will also be available on our website within 24 hours after the call. Joining me today are Dave Lesar, our CEO; Chris Gaut, our CFO; and Andy Lane, our COO. The press release announcing our first quarter results is available on our website at www.halliburton.com. We have tentatively scheduled tour 2006 second quarter earnings conference call for Friday, July 21. In today's call, Dave will provide opening remarks, Chris will discuss our overall operating performance and financial position, followed by Andy who will review the regions and our business outlook for 2006 and beyond. We will welcome questions after we complete our prepared remarks. Before turning the call over to Dave, I would like to remind our audience that some of the today's comments may include forward-looking statements reflecting the Company's view about future events and their potential impact on our performance. These matters involve risks and uncertainties that could impact the Company's operations and financial results, and cause our actual results to differ from our forward-looking statements. These risks are discussed in Halliburton's Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2005 and recent current reports on Form 8-K. Now, I'll turn the call over to our CEO, Dave Lesar.

Thanks, Evelyn and good morning, everyone. Let me highlight a few things about the quarter before I ask both Chris and Andy to address our results in our outlook in a little bit more detail. You will hear the word record a lot on this call, which is an indication of the very strong worldwide market we continue to see for our ESG services. We had an excellent first quarter, and posted EPS of $0.91, of which $0.01 came from production services, which this quarter has been moved out of KBR and into discontinued operations. It is expected to be sold in the second quarter with a pre-tax gain of approximately $100 million. First, some highlights. We had record revenue in the Energy Services Group which reached $2.9 billion, up 35% from the first quarter a year ago. High activity in North America, the Middle East, the North Sea, and Russia were the big drivers for these gains. More than overcoming our anticipated decline from Landmark and direct sales, which on a combined basis were almost $77 million lower in revenue than they were in the fourth quarter. I'll say more about direct sales in a minute. Continuing on the momentum that we built in the quarter, the month of March was the first time in our history in which we reported revenues in excess of $1 billion for the Energy Services Group. Record operating income at ESG in the first quarter grew to $727 million, from $678 million in the fourth quarter and from $513 million in the first quarter 2005 which included a $110 million gain on Subsea 7. In the first quarter of 2006, we saw activity increases, and we realized good pricing improvements. Particularly in the strong U.S. market following our October 2005 price book increases.…

Thanks, Dave. Good morning. I will discuss our first quarter results compared sequentially to the fourth quarter of 2005. Halliburton Company revenue in the first quarter was $5.2 billion; that's down 7% from last quarter. ESG revenue was up $90 million or 3% sequentially with strong gains in the important North American and Middle Eastern markets, partially offset by the typical seasonal decline in the North Sea and Russia, as well as Landmark's international revenue. KBR revenue was down $452 million, or 17% sequentially, due primarily to declines in our Iraq work and the hurricane-related repair work we've been performing for the U.S. Navy along the U.S. Gulf Coast. International revenue was 55% of the total for ESG and 66% for Halliburton as a whole in the first quarter. Revenues outside of North America for ESG were down a bit from the fourth quarter but this decline is fully explained by the typical first quarter decline in Landmark, as well as the reduction in direct sales of export equipment as we deemphasize and take a more opportunistic approach to direct sales. Our underlying international growth was also offset by winter weather in the usual markets and substantial downtime on our international stimulation vessels. Halliburton achieved operating income of $755 million in the first quarter overall, ESG operating income increased to $727 million, reflecting a 90 basis point operating income margin improvement, led by pricing strength in North America. KBR operating income decreased 47 million in the first quarter to $62 million due primarily to charges and losses totaling $30 million related to KBR's investment in an Australian railroad, and a $15 million charge on Barracuda-Caratinga as we have now agreed upon final acceptance of that project with our customer. Let me highlight ESG segment results. Production optimization revenue increased $43…

Thanks, Chris. Good morning everyone. This morning, I will be discussing ESG's operational highlights from a regional perspective. as well as speaking to you in a little more depth about KBR. Before doing that, I'd like to spend just a few moments addressing a couple of matters that are on the minds of many investors, our outlook on ESG pricing for the rest of 2006 and resource constraints. With respect to pricing at ESG, we've continued to realize pricing gains in the U.S. since the beginning of this year, driven by our ESG price book increase effective October 15. We are continuing our focus on working down customer discounts and we expect this to improve our price realization. The future U.S. price book increases Dave mentioned that we are implementing in the second and third quarters will be reflected in our results in the second half of this year and early 2007. Pushing through price increases when our customers' contracts turn over, both in the U.S. and internationally, is a management priority. Demand for equipment continues to challenge all of us in the industry. We've ramped up our capital spending plan significantly for this year. We're focused on adding equipment to our strongest growth markets such as Saudi Arabia, North Africa, Southeast Asia, the North Sea, Russia, and of course North America. We continue to invest heavily to meet strong demand for our geopilot systems worldwide. In particular, we'll see more Sperry and pumping services capital come online late this year and early 2007. From a human resource perspective, we continue to recruit aggressively worldwide for degreed professionals and skilled labor. To help us retain our talented people in our high turnover area such as the Rockies and western Canada, we've established incentive programs and specific retention programs for our…

Thank you, Andy. To summarize what you've heard, we continued to experience excellent oilfield services growth in North America and other focus markets such as the Middle East, Libya, and Russia. With the activity increases our customers are creating, our attention to pricing, and our capacity additions in key markets, we should continue to experience strong growth throughout the rest of the year. In fact, we're looking forward to what we believe will be a great several years ahead of us. We're entering into an exciting new chapter at KBR. We've talked a long time about the separation of KBR and ESG. Filing the S1 last week was a big milestone. I want to assure the employees and customers of KBR that we're making sure that this first step in the separation will not disrupt our operations at KBR. It is business as usual there and we will continue to be focused on serving customers and executing contracts. Now, we'll turn it over for questions. Please limit it to one question and one follow-up.

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) Our first question will come from James Wicklund, Banc of America Securities.

Good morning, guys. Good quarter. On the energy services side, everything's rosy, everything's positive, everything's good. On a relative basis, where were you disappointed? What surprised you? Again, relative. I understand everything was great, but what would you have liked to have or expected to have seen or done better?

Jim, this is Dave. Let me answer that one. I think that on the KBR side we continue to be excited about the prospects. Obviously, getting Barracuda to final acceptance was a positive. It was a bit disappointing to have some final charges there, but we believe it is behind us at this point in time. I think the equity investment in the railroad having to be impaired is something that we wouldn't have liked, but again that's something akin, as Chris said, to the investment we made in Dulles toll road a number of years ago which did pay off for us in a big way last year, even though it didn't look good on the very front end. I think on the ESG side, it continues to be a battle out there for people and for capital. Certainly no lack of opportunities, but I think the turnover of people is disappointing. I think that that is one area that affecting everybody in the industry, and is something that we continue to be focused on. I think the bottom line for us is that we are very happy with the quarter, we're excited about the prospects we have, the demand for services is unprecedented out there, the amount of capital we have in the queue to come out in the next couple of quarters is very large, and we expect to be able to put it right to work.

In terms of turnover, are you losing people to competitors or directly to your customers? Or to some other industries?

I would say, Jim, you certainly have a base turnover as people come in, experienced in the oilfield business. The oilfield business in the field is a tough business. It's physical work, it's long hours in this market. We do lose people outside the industry. I would say that we do have a large amount of customer poaching going on of our people in the industry today, as they struggle with their own growth rates and their own demographic issues. Clearly, there is some churn between the service companies, but that's not really as major an issue as you think it would be.

Our next question will come from Daniel Henriques with Goldman Sachs. Mr. Henriques, your line is open, please go ahead.

My question is about seasonality in international markets. If you take a look at non-North American revenues in operating income this quarter, the percentage decline sequentially was almost the same as of the first quarter of '05. Is there any reason beyond normal seasonality? Anything in terms of growth outlook or cost of that growth to be a little bit more concerned on the margin with the quarter?

It was largely and almost fully impacted by just the seasonality that we spoke of, the $77 million revenue difference, when you look at Landmark and our direct sales deltas. We continue to invest in Russia, Libya, Saudi, and in West Africa as our key markets. We continue down the path we've been there. We had excellent results in a lot of areas that we want to highlight in Australia, in Malaysia, and Thailand, Saudi, and Oman in the Middle East/Asia were all great performers for us in the first quarter. Norway and the Caspian, Nigeria and Egypt were real strong also in the first quarter for us, and in Latin America, Brazil, and Argentina. The ones that were impacted most by the seasonality in both activity and Landmark was the UAE in China for direct sales, Russia with the weather, really the first two months of the quarter were impacted, but we're very encouraged by the new frac equipment going to work in March, they had the best month ever in Russia for us; that is a good sign for the rest of the year in Russia. Angola deepwater activity we mentioned is coming back strong and we're investing in Libya growth. So there's a lot of positives out there and nothing unusual that we didn't expect. The first quarter has always historically been our low quarter.

Our next question will come from Jim Crandell with Lehman Brothers.

Good morning. Could you comment on the magnitude of U.S. stimulation price increases versus recent quarters? In the quarter, do you think that customer wait times and job turndowns are increasing at this point?

First, customer turndowns and job times are about the same as the fourth quarter. Still a very, very high activity level. Now, I updated you on pricing last quarter, and we had approximately 40% of our customer base on our October 2005 price book. We now have approximately 60% to 65% of our customer base on our latest price book increase. Then Dave mentioned the increases that are coming in the second and third quarter, but we are not going to give out the percentage of that increase.

Jim, this is Dave. Let me just add to that a bit. I think what we have found since we have pricing leadership and a number of PSLs in North America, that our competitors have tended to sort of tuck in behind us on our price increases and draft off the work that we've done. So I think that we are now taking a more discrete approach to how we implement those price increases and we are not going to be as public as to where, when, and how much. There certainly was no loss of momentum in terms of pushing toward higher prices in Q1, and we do not believe that that will change as we go forward this year.

Okay, is it possible to comment whether your net pricing improvement during the quarter was greater than that of the last couple of quarters?

Yes, it was certainly no less than Q4, and it was accelerating during 2005, Jim.

Our next question will come from Ken Sill, Credit Suisse.

Good morning, guys. I'm going to try to ask a question about KBR that I hope you can answer. It relates to the capacity in terms of engineering. One of your competitors had said that engineering talent for both the oilfield was one of their big issues and we're starting to hear rumors of some of the E&C companies getting better terms and extending out business because they don't have capacity to do it. Is that a constraint in how quickly things can grow at the KBR backlog side over the next few years, or will it just stretch projects out?

Ken, on the KBR side, as you see LNG and GTL projects expand, there will be and there is already a very tight market for the key technical resources. But we're able to replace the resources and turnover we have had. It's going to be a issue for all companies in the E&C sector, but we feel very good about where we're placed and the resources we have for all the prospects we see coming in 2006. We continue to add 300 to 400 people a week for the GNI business, to support Iraq so that's still a very big effort for us. If you look at the ESG side where we added almost 10,000 people last year in 2005, we continue to be able to attract people to the industry and the big issue is getting them trained and developed and retaining them after that point. So there isn't a shortage of being able to attract people and the talent and skills we need from both the KBR and ESG perspective, but retention and development are key issues for everyone.

Then a follow-up, you were talking about pricing a lot of segments. I didn't really see any comments or hear anything about the drilling fluid business or Baroid. Are prices improving in the fluids business? Because it seems like most of that growth was attributable to volume and mix.

Pricing's improving slightly in the drilling fluids business for us. It remains extremely competitive with some large projects being bid in the eastern hemisphere and it's not as robust pricing-wise as the rest of the pumping services and some of our other product service lines.

A lot of that business is bid whereas maybe stimulation are cementing more on the price book.

Our next question comes from James Stone with UBS.

I just wanted to ask a couple of questions, the first is when you look at your CapEx budget, can you just give us a sense of how much of that spending is going towards the domestic market versus the international market for 2006? On the ESG side.

Right, we haven't broken that out. It's expanding significantly on both sides. The growth rate outside North America is higher than North America, for the reasons that Dave mentioned during the presentation. We are not backing off in any way in our capital spending estimates for the year. March was our highest rate of deliveries that we've had ever, and we expect that high rate of deliveries of new capital equipment to continue into Q2 and for the rest of the year, bringing us to the guided level that we said of $750 million to maybe close to $800 million of capital spending within ESG for the year.

Just related to KBR -- well, actually not so much KBR but with the IPO now on schedule and the potential proceeds from that with the cash balance -- do you see yourselves getting even more aggressive with the buyback program that you already have in place? I realize you were out of the market for a long period of time in the first quarter, but I'm just trying to get a sense as to how you map that out as you go through the year because you do have a lot of cash coming in the door on top of a mountain sitting on the balance sheet.

We are fortunate to have a good cash position. Of course our first priority with cash is organic growth in our capital program, acquisitions, and then returning cash to shareholders with our higher dividend and with the approved stock repurchase program. We are taking an opportunistic approach with the stock repurchase program and therefore, can't comment on what levels we'd be buying and what we wouldn't be buying. Certainly we'd be aggressive on any weakness in the stock, it goes without saying. We have the program in place, it started up and we're going to be opportunistic in looking to buy into any weakness here.

Our next question come from Dan Pickering with Pickering Energy.

Good morning, guys. When we look at the price increase that you're putting in place, I wanted to clarify -- is it North America or international as well? Also, what percentage of your customer base is exposed to that, here in the short term? In other words, how much business is now long term and will take a little while to roll over?

Yes, Dan, good morning. There's a succinct difference with the eastern hemisphere and the western hemisphere. The eastern hemisphere, much longer term contracts, much harder, takes longer to roll over new pricing, and see the results of that. We're very positive on the steps we're taking in the eastern hemisphere but that market you won't see as quick a impact to our pricing efforts and the management priority we're putting on that. The western hemisphere you have a lot more transactional business, you see a quicker return from that. So we're still, as Dave said, very bullish on the market and there's very tight supply and demand. So we will see pricing improvements for the first quarter on this year.

So the new price book is both domestic and international?

We have one price book, a global price book. The bigger impact will be a focused on the U.S. market.

The domestic market tends to be more oriented towards the price book, the international tends to not be, it tends to be a bid market.

Thank you. Chris, I'm not sure if you quantified in aggregate the export sales decline quarter-to-quarter? I heard the number in Asia which was about $30 million. Was that the total decline?

Just looking at China and India and DFE, which is by far the bulk of the change, that's about $31 million reduction in Q4 to Q1.

Then there's another $4 million, $35 million total.

Our next question comes from Scott Gill, Simmons & Company. Scott Gill - Simmons & Company: Good morning, gentlemen. Dave, I want to go back to your comments, your change in strategy with respect to using your capacity to build for your own account as opposed to direct sales. Can you give us some sort of indication on a trailing 12-month basis how much revenue is attributable to direct sales? If you could contrast the profitability between direct sales and traditional revenue?

Scott, on profitability, in general, the margins on the direct sales are not that different from our overall profitability, if not a little bit less. It has helped us from time to time on the overall efficiency of our manufacturing and fabrication business, but as we've said, with the higher utilization internally. The opportunity to earn better margins over time on a sustained basis, and not wanting as we move into these markets of China and India, for instance, that Dave mentioned, not wanting to compete against our own equipment, it just doesn't make as much sense overall. So we will be opportunistic there with a general de-emphasis of it. Scott Gill - Simmons & Company: How big is that, Chris, as far as annual revenue goes?

It's varied from year to year, Scott. We're not wanting to quantify what it is in a particular year. Although it will be de-emphasized here going forward, as we've said. Scott Gill - Simmons & Company: Chris if I could follow-up with that. Is the strategy here to get completely out of direct sales or is it just to start reducing the amount of direct sales?

Reduction on emphasis and taking a more opportunistic approach.

(Operator Instructions) We'll take our next question from Roger Read with Natexis Bleichroeder.

Good morning. Just as a follow-up on direct sales, what is it about the markets in China and India that have most changed that lead you to want to go in from a more aggressive service as opposed to a direct sales component?

Roger, this is Dave. I think traditionally those markets have not demanded a high level of traditional western service company activities, in many cases it was please sell us your equipment and we'll supply the service labor. Those markets have matured, in our view, to the point where we believe that we can run a profitable service business in those places. Therefore, it's in our best interest, as Chris said, not to compete against our own equipment in the long run. Therefore, we have engendered this change in strategy that we have.

As a follow-up to that, how long do you think it will take to make those markets meaningful to your overall results? Or at least, let's say, maybe equal to or exceeding the direct sales that you've been making historically?

It certainly will take several years.

Our next question will come from Geoff Kieburtz with Citigroup.

We'll make this the last question, if we could.

Good, hopefully I won't get cut off. Actually two questions, if I could, one a near-term question. In North America, ESG you brought $105 million of additional EBIT from $160 million of additional revenue. Is that kind of incremental sustainable?

That's an awfully high hurdle. I think that's reflective of very good pricing improvements that we had during the quarter. So to answer your question, Geoff, no, I don't think that percentage is sustainable, but very good percentages are sustainable.

Was there anything kind of unusual that resulted in that?

Kind of a utilization.

Geoff, you're seeing the big improvement in the Gulf of Mexico from fourth quarter where we were really down; to the first quarter, back to normal activity.

Covering the fixed costs in Canada and the Gulf Coast, those are going back, plus pricing.

The longer term question is, if we were to do a hypothetical here and just assume the demand was there, what kind of top line growth do you think ESG could sustain on a three to five-year horizon? Given all that you've said about tightness and availability of equipment, people, so on.

We don't want to get boxed on a guidance there, but we see a very positive fundamental outlook for our business. We see, in the North America market, quite a few rigs being added. Good growth in non-rig activity. Eastern hemisphere rapid increase in demand for services. So over the three to five-year horizon, we're very constructive on the outlook and we see no signs of any slowing at this point in time.

That would conclude today's question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back to our speakers for any additional or closing comments. Evelyn Angelle: This is Evelyn Angelle, I'd like to thank everyone for joining us today. If some did not get in on questions I'll be available all day for questions here at the office. With that, I'll conclude the call, everyone have a nice day.

Thank you for your participation on today's conference, you may disconnect at this time.