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Helmerich & Payne, Inc. (HP)

Q2 2022 Earnings Call· Thu, Apr 28, 2022

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day everyone and welcome to the Helmerich & Payne Fiscal Second Quarter Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions]. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Dave Wilson, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Dave Wilson

Analyst

Thank you, Nikki and welcome everyone to Helmerich & Payne conference call and webcast for the second quarter of fiscal year 2022. With us today are John Lindsay, President and CEO; 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 includes forward looking statements as defined in the securities laws. Such statements are based upon current information and management's expectations as of this date, and are not guarantees of future performance. Forward looking statements involve certain risks and 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 10K, our quarterly reports on Form 10Q and our other SEC filings. You should not place undue reliance on forward looking statements. We undertake no obligation to publicly update these forward looking statements. We also be making reference to certain non GAAP financial measures such as segments, direct margin and other operating statistics. You'll find the GAAP reconciliation, comments and calculations in the yesterday's press release. With that said, I'll turn the call over to John Lindsay.

John Lindsay

Analyst

Thank you, Dave. Good morning, everyone. And thank you for joining us today. Since August of 2020, oil and gas industry has been undergoing a record recovery from the worst downturn in its history. Just when we thought the environment was beginning normalize another geopolitical event, Russia's invasion of Ukraine unleashed immediate and lasting ramifications. This has provided a sharp reminder to everyone how critical, abundant, cost effective and secure energy is to sustaining security and the broader global economy. Given the industry's negative experience in recent years, it should be no surprise to anyone that US producers have remained cautious, rational and discipline with regard to their capital expenditures, even in the face of spiking commodity prices. HP’s strategy is to also maintain CapEx budget discipline and holding that line is something we believe is crucial to creating a healthy and sustainable company over the longer term. The industry rig count increase in the March quarter continued to shrink the availability of super spec rigs that have worked at some point in the last two years. This has compounded the pre existing supply demand tension in the market. We were pleased with our progress and momentum during the quarter, which saw our active North American solutions rig count increase in line with expectations exiting the quarter at 171 rigs after re-commissioning 17 Flex rigs in the second quarter, and 27 in the first fiscal quarter. From here we expect to see our rig count growth moderate in the coming quarters as there is more rig churn developing in the market. We expect to maintain responsible CapEx spend given the budget we set for the year. You may recall in November, we set our 2022 CapEx budget range of 250 to $270 million. That budget was set at a point…

Mark Smith

Analyst

Thanks, John. Today, I will review our fiscal second quarter 2022 operating results provide guidance for the third quarter update full fiscal year 22 guidance as appropriate, and comment on our financial decision. Let me start with highlights for the recently completed second quarter ended March 31, 22. The company generated quarterly revenues of $468 million versus $410 million in the previous quarter. As expected, the quarterly increase in revenue was due in part to higher rig count activity in North America solutions as operators continued to commit to calendar 2022 drilling activity. Further, we've benefited from rapid execution by our sales and operations teams on unnecessary price increases that John mentioned on our previous quarter earnings call. Total direct operating costs incurred were $341 million for the second quarter versus $301 million for the previous quarter. The sequential increase is attributable to the aforementioned additional recount as well as the full quarter impact of the wage increase mentioned in our February 22 call. General and Administrative expenses totaled approximately $47 million for the second quarter higher than our previous quarter and our expectations due in part two noncash mark to market adjustments in deferred compensation that are correlated to our stock price, as well as increased ID infrastructure spending. That will come in on G&A guidance later in these remarks. During the second quarter, we realized additional gains of approximately $17 million related to the fair market value of our ADNOC drilling investment which is reported as a part of gain on investment securities on our consolidated statements of operations. To summarize this quarter's results, H&P incurred a loss of $0.05 per diluted share versus a loss of $0.48 in the previous quarter. The second quarter earnings per share were positively impacted by a net $0.12 per share of…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] I will take our first question from Taylor Zurcher with Tudor Pickering, please go ahead. Your line is open.

Taylor Zurcher

Analyst

Hey, John, and Mark thanks for taking my question. Just wanted to start on some of the market share strategic thought process comments you made a minute they're really interesting to me because we don't really at least I don't really hear of a well capitalized market leaders talking about not chasing market share on the way up when pricings that are really strong level that you typically hear about it on the way down when pricings go into bare bones level. So just curious if you could give us a bit more color there. And that kind of flush out for us, our customers coming to you asking for incremental risk to be reactivated in the back half. And you're basically saying, not going to happen this year, but check again in fiscal 2023. And maybe if determined and economics align, we'll do it. Curious and all those topics.

John Lindsay

Analyst

Sure, Taylor, thanks for the question. I'll start and Mark and Dave can chip in, I can tell you to answer part of the question is, part of the reason why we're doing what we're doing is as lessons from the school of hard knocks, we've seen lots of up cycled, we've seen lots of down cycles, and the reality of it is we have a tendency as an industry to oversupply the market. At the same time, we also announced back in October, I guess we put our budget together in October, we announced in November, what our budget what our cap capital budget was going to be. And like our customers, we think that's a very wise strategy to spend within that budget. And, we've been very fortunate in that, we've been able to really front load our rig reactivations with 27 in Q1 and 17 in Q2, as we just announced. And so, when you think about, back in October, we were hoping to achieve 161 rigs working by the end of the fiscal year, and here we are talking about 176 rigs. So we really outperforming in many ways. And again, I'm going to repeat the front loading is really important because all those rigs that we've put to work those that aren't in the chart that aren't turned up that are spot, we're able to move that pricing, and we're going to continue to have rigs rolling off. So we just think it's very wise for us to do that. our expectation is that, if prices remain strong in terms of oil prices, gas prices, our customers will reset budgets again, like they did in 2001, and then again in 22. And we'll be in a position with our first fiscal quarter, fourth calendar quarter to be able to be able to add capacity if the demand is there. Mark, Dave anything else?

Mark Smith

Analyst

Sure. I just a couple of things. First, kind of an editorial comment. As John really said in his opening prepared remarks. It's a more purposeful growth of margins and profit versus market share growth for growth's sake, so to speak, our customers are disciplined, and they could grow a lot more than $100 oil, but they are, they're living within their budgets and maximizing their returns, we're doing the same thing. And there's a lot of churn in the market right now. So adding capacity in the face of that, as John said earlier just does not seem like the right capital discipline to us. Further as a little more technically, adding an incremental rig to the market is more than just about pricing and market share, you have to consider the full OpEx expense and the capital expenditures required to bring that rig to market together with the length of the commitment or contracts, are you going to be able to recoup the investment through the term of the contractor that together with foreseeable pure line of sight to future work. That's a little harder in this current environment where customers budget calendar year to calendar year, higher and higher activation costs, just have to drive higher pricing. Anyway, we're trying to get to a capital efficient rates here to reactivate rigs. And we also have to just consider the longer term view.

Taylor Zurcher

Analyst

Understood and on all those fronts, and thanks for the detailed response. Just a quick follow up on pricing. So obviously now, we're in a pretty constructive pricing backdrop. You’ve been campaigning the performance based model for a number of quarters now, years now. And I guess I'm curious in this sort of pricing backdrop, is it conducive to more adoption of performance based models or do customers start going away from performance base and back to more of the traditional pricing models in this in this day and age?

John Lindsay

Analyst

Well, Taylor, we still have 40% of our rigs that are on performance base type contracts and we've had that now for several quarters, obviously, much improved from when we very first went on this journey two years ago, like you mentioned. So we continue to have customers that are really true partners that are working, we're both working very closely together to provide greater value, improve well cycle, improve wellbore quality, wellbore placement, enabling automation solutions, lots of things that we're working on together to deliver better outcomes, at the end of the day, for the customer. They're willing to share in that, I will say that it doesn't always work with every customer, with some customers, sometimes it's harder for whatever reason, to partner, and we go back to a more traditional contract structure, which is fine. As long as we're able to generate the types of margins that we've talked about, that are really needed for us to continue on this journey to become more and more investable as a company. So, as you can imagine, it's a pretty large, in terms of the types of customers. But what's great about it is both large, small super majors, we've got, a very wide range of customers that are participating with us and these new commercial models, and it's delivering a lot of value. So my expectation is that it's going to continue to grow and become more popular.

Operator

Operator

And we will move next with Douglas Becker with Benchmark Research. Please go ahead.

Douglas Becker

Analyst

Thanks. Hypothetical, if all your rigs were magically on the current leading edge economics, what's a realistic margin per day that could be achieved, given regional pricing differences, cost differences, rig specs, contract differences? and I'm just thinking about back in 2014, there were a few quarters where we did see $15,000 a day. And so I'm not trying to get too far over my skis, but just want to give a little context about what's kind of realistic, just with the economics we see today.

John Lindsay

Analyst

I think just high level, our answer would be, we would be in a position to generate 50% gross margins. again, if you look back at 2014, we were generating, on average, 50%, gross margins, the differences, the cost structure was $3000, $4,000, a day less than what it is today, for lots of reasons. I mean, in 2014, we might have had a handful of super spec rigs. Today, every rig with the exception of two that's running for us is super spec capacity, much more investment, the rigs are running much harder. the expendable, everything we're using, it's driving the cost, but at the end of the day, it's delivering greater value for customers. So that's, that's really the goal. So I think that would probably be the answer. Mark, you agree.

Douglas Becker

Analyst

That's helpful, and then fully appreciate that market share is not a target. It's not a goal. But as we think about next calendar year, would you conceptually or high level expect to kind of maintain the market share or is it really that's just a complete secondary consideration? It was much more about getting the right type of returns on what's currently deployed?

John Lindsay

Analyst

Well, Doug, you you've seen us coming off of the bottom, out of the downturn, we had lost some market share based on our customers, our primary customers were those that that kept their rig fleets the most. So we've caught back and we I think we actually have more market share today than we did. So it's not that in certain parts of the cycle market share isn't important. What we're saying is right now, what's most important is generating the margin that we need and living within the budget that we told our shareholders or investors that we were going to live with them. So that's most important. So we we've said this all along, we said it in 21. And we're still saying it that 22, we at least we expect is going to play out very similar to 21 where the fourth calendar quarter we've got a lot of rigs going back to work first calendar, quarter a lot of rigs going back to work, then it gets, a little flatter, you get choppy, a lot of churn. Mark had mentioned something about that. And, we've had, I don't know, six or seven rigs that would have been given back to us for various reasons. And we've been able to place those rigs with customers that have programs. So that's worked out really at much higher rates, and obviously, very, at much higher rates. So, as we think about 2023, which will be here, before we know it, we'll be resetting our budget in October, like we did the past years. And, and, our hope is, is that we'll be able to add additional rigs in 2023. In, in calendar, Q4, and Q1 again, we hope it plays out like that, obviously, we, we we've got a lot a lot of work ahead.

Mark Smith

Analyst

And I would just put knows that, Doug, by adding that, given our focus on value proposition to customers in our sheer scale with the most idle capacity super spec capacity in the United States, we absolutely expect to maintain or increase that market share cycle.

Operator

Operator

We’ll move next to Ian Macpherson with Piper Sandler, please go ahead, your line is open.

Ian Macpherson

Analyst

Thank you. Good morning, John and Mark. I'm picking up attention here that needs to be resolved. Every quarter, what we're witnessing is that your cycle is moving up more sharply faster with activity and so far and with pricing and margins. And at the same time, we know as recently as our conference last month that big MPs are loath to lock in current rates. They don't they don't want term contracts 30,000 hours a day. But we hear resolutely from you and your peers that no one's going to build rigs. And we know we're going to run out of high spec rigs, in a matter of quarters. So that that's a big gap that needs to be resolved. And it probably needs to be resolved with multiyear contracts that you're 50% margins are low to mid 30s day rates right now. When do you start to see some narrowing of that, that gap and in attitude towards locking up these rates on multi year term?

John Lindsay

Analyst

I'll address a couple of things. And I'll have Mark and Dave, kick in additional comments. First of all, I hear what you're saying about the available super spec fleet. But the reality of it is there's still a lot of capacity out there, I don't think that we're going to be in a situation where we're going to be building or needing to build new super spec rigs. You'd mentioned a couple of quarters, I think it's going to take, well over a year at the current type of activity gains. We don't know for sure how budgets are going to be reset for 2023 we have some view of the rest of 2022. So, for us today, our preference is to not lock in to more term or our preferences to continue to, move pricing up in the spot market. At some point in time, I think, we do have some customers that have locked into pricing above, high 20s above 30. And you can get insert using, our technology solutions to push pricing higher based on the value proposition that's delivered. But I would be surprised. But Mark, what would you add?

Mark Smith

Analyst

No, I think you hit it, John, I think it's a combination of we're just at the right spot in the cycle. We expect our customers to hold flat this next two quarters going into the fiscal first quarter of 23. For us final calendar quarter of this year and sort of resetting, they're in their new budgeting season just as they have that just as they recently did. And just as they did at the end of 20 going into 21. So while we're at this flat level, and we're seeing churn, still demand for rigs, we have to move the pricing up, as Jonathan said. And then I think at some point in the future once we started moving in that direction across more of our average fleet rate, at some stage then we'll have the right juxtaposition of the ability to set term based on that that higher pricing, but we're just not there yet.

Dave Wilson

Analyst

Yes. And one other thing to add, I don't think I said this, which is, as we start thinking about 2023 and calendar, Q4, we would be reactivating rigs that have been idle for over two years. So the recommissioning cost whatever CapEx, no, it's not new build. But it is additional cash that up to this point, in many cases, we've self funded that. And so we would be looking at that situation with higher prices and a term contract commitment in order to reactivate those rigs as well. I'm thinking about it right now.

Ian Macpherson

Analyst

Understood, thank you, gentlemen. And then as my follow up, Mark, you alluded to seeing some outside to your Gulf of Mexico operations, not too far out. And I think also, when you get to the end of this fiscal quarter with plus three more rigs in Latin America, that should probably have a better run rate than what you've guided for fiscal Q3, can you describe what those upsides might be in the following quarter or quarters as you get ramped up in those secondary markets?

Mark Smith

Analyst

Thanks for the question. And I think it's a little early, as we mentioned with international adding two rigs in Argentina and one in Colombia, we're going to have a lot of costs associated with those startups in Q3, but to your point, the absence of that will help going forward. We're still in negotiations for additional rig ads in both of those countries. So depending on how that shapes out, and we can have, again more abnormality, transitory costs over the next couple of quarters as we continue to, to add to that recount, but build us up well, for future cash flow generation, in the absence of those reactivation costs, just like we've had in the US. In offshore, I think the potential there that really goes to John's comment on his prepared remarks, and that is about how we need to work on pricing with our harvest offshore segment. Hopefully, that's helpful.

Ian Macpherson

Analyst

Yes, good for now and check in on that again, next quarter. Thanks, guys.

Operator

Operator

We'll move next with Waqar Syed with ATB Capital Markets, please go ahead.

Waqar Syed

Analyst

Question on new bill rigs. I know, we talked about that maybe you don't have a number. But what is your expectation that if you were to order a new bill rig, what would it cost a day based on the current requirements of a rig? And then what kind of margin is required to justify building a new rig?

John Lindsay

Analyst

And let me just jump in for a second? Thanks for the question. But I have to tell you, we haven't asked that question. We had 60 idle super specs, my man we like to put to work with a heck of a lot less investment in a new bill rig. And for all the right reasons that we've talked about with returns on capital, returns on the half backs, the right pricing margins to get us to return on capital employed as a consolidated corporate entity. So we have a lot of focus on that as we move through time here.

Waqar Syed

Analyst

But let me ask the question other way that like, when you get to this $30,000 type of revenue per day, that gives your competition or somebody else in the industry of private equity, anyone else, the financial incentive to bill the rig?

John Lindsay

Analyst

We've seen a couple of those. Those pop up over the last 10 years, if you look at the results of those companies that if done that not great, not great result. So I find it very hard to believe that that we're going to see somebody jump into this business or start to invest in new builds, when there's the number. I mean, there are 150 super spec rigs that are idle on the sideline today that have been idle for over two years. And so, let's face it, regardless, let's think back to the why behind the new builds that we started, back in 2004, 2005 timeframe. It was a replacement cycle. we had rigs that were old that were built in the 70s and 80s. We're not faced with that today, we're faced, we've got a rig fleet, an industry wide rig fleet that may have lots of different variations. But at the end of the day, they have, a lot of capacity. Now, we're going to have to reinvest and those rigs that are idle, because a lot of that equipment has been used to maintain, the working fleet, I think everybody is pretty well established that, that that's been going on. So I just find it very hard to even imagine that somebody would be able to get the backing to start a new company or to build or to build new rigs with the amount of excess capacity. It's on the ground right now.

Waqar Syed

Analyst

That's great. Thank you. And just my second question, you've been investing in R&D, to flip over around 25 to $30 million a year, for several years now. How do you internally my year’s returns on that R&D investment and what's your view of, like, how well that has served you those investments?

Mark Smith

Analyst

Thanks for the question. I'll take a stab at that, it's that technology, and then that digital software that we have focusing on down hole operations improvement for our customers, as we've long talked about straighter and better placed wellbores, which actually help with our customers overall, total cost of ownership of a well, we as a driller are about 20, to 25%, of an AFP for well, and we can affect a lot of the other 75% plus costs with the drilling in a better well, I think that's proved evident in our uptake in performance contracts. Because in those, as we've talked about, this last year or two, if you think about it just at its basic administrative from an administrative perspective, we used to have a read contract and several separate forms of contract for various software's. Today, we have with the performance contract, a single contract where we work with the customer to set KPIs together and pull through the technologies to achieve those KPIs and to reduce overall well costs. So I think the uptake from a couple of years ago not having performance contracts to the day having 40% of the fleet on those and it's those contracts that are driving the 30,000 plus revenue per day, really at the top end of our fleet of our fleet, and helping us to get to the margins that we've talked about, we need to get to John, if you have any.

John Lindsay

Analyst

I think this industry is going to continue to trend toward utilizing digital technology algorithms automation to do what have they've been relatively manually intensive. obviously, we focused a lot of attention on directional drilling technologies. But, we've made some great acquisitions, we're going to continue to have a strong R&D budget. And, hopefully we were able to maintain a strong market going forward, as you can imagine, through since we've been deploying these technology, we've had some pretty, pretty difficult markets, but we're starting to see even more traction. Right,

Operator

Operator

Next is Derek Podhaizer with Barclays, please go ahead.

Derek Podhaizer

Analyst

Hey, good morning, guys. Just wanted to continue line of questioning you showed considerable term contract backlog uplift. He talked about the date the dynamics and on the willingness of both you and the end the lockup breaks for longer in the coming more from your side of things or more from the EMP side and given the backlog that you see now do you have line of sight to reaching those 2% gross margin targets?

John Lindsay

Analyst

Thanks for the question. We had some additions to term in this press release that was filed yesterday and a lot of that really took place in January frankly it's been a fast moving market in those contracts that that were in the in the in the queue and the press release were negotiated in really in the fourth calendar quarter heading into this calendar year. So that really took in January and since then it since the February call where John discussed our need to update pricing. We've really since then entered into spot contracts focus to get to rates up across the fleet further as terms rollover, we're not as likely based on the comments we've said this morning to date, we were not as likely to re up that term, we're focused more on getting appropriate pricing if left with the current spot.

Derek Podhaizer

Analyst

Okay, guy that's helpful. Caller that makes sense. I want to switch internationally, he talked about the Middle East today, he talked about the ultimate goal of that, maybe the regions and types of rigs you want to send over other technology pull through maybe what the required rate looks like in that region, would you need to upgrade some of your idols to respect for example, they just need just some more color and details around? I know, it's a long play. But what do you ultimately see as the Middle East hub looking like? Well, we,

Mark Smith

Analyst

If you think about something as like the, like the Permian, from the eastern Midland into the Western Delaware, it's a long geographic space, the Gulf Coast countries, we're thinking about approaching that from, from a yard or a hub perspective, not unlike we do with the Odessa operation that we have. And as we look to the long term, we've spoken about this on it. For a couple of quarters, I think the Middle East has had a really steady recount, through the compared to the volatility of the US shale play over the last 15 years, there's not really been a rig replacement cycle there, that you couple that with the what is a burgeoning gas play with several countries in the region, including for their own energy strategic gas independence reasons, as well as potential LNG export reasons. So that is a different kind of drilling, it's horizontal, and we believe that really fits our super spec Flex Rig quite well provides an opportunity to shift capacity. We, after the Add knock transaction last year, we were really sort of increased our presence from a marketing perspective and hiring boots on the ground sales, folks as well in the region. So if you think about it, as you said, international timing is hard to predict, we're still developing a lot of resources to move the ball forward, if you will. But we do plan to send over a rig during the second half of this fiscal year that John mentioned earlier, and there will be initial costs associated with that. We were quite comfortable with this, given the longer term opportunities, it's sort of setting up, if you will, a showroom floor to show up our show off our product. And we are actually today participating in several bids tenders with different players in the region, these things take a while to move through time to get settled. But if we're successful, even with just one of them, that could be a three, three to five to six rig addition for us. So stay tuned, we're being patient, but are really planning to look at that as a way to reduce the US concentration rather than we've had historically, as of recent time.

Derek Podhaizer

Analyst

That's all appreciate the comments. I'll turn it back.

Operator

Operator

We'll take our next question from Connor Lynagh with Morgan Stanley, please go ahead.

Connor Lynagh

Analyst · Morgan Stanley, please go ahead.

Yes, thanks. I've got a high level question that I frankly, know is borderline impossible to answer. But I'm going to just get your thoughts on it anyway. You've got all of the big red contractors reporting earnings over the last 24 hours here. And there's not a very significant activity increase contemplated in anyone's third quarter outlook. I'm curious. there's as I can see it three big reasons why activity wouldn't be growing given where oil prices are. One is the EMP sticking to their capital budgets. The other is the supply chain bottlenecks that we've seen out there? And the third is the service companies sticking to their capital budgets, like you guys are highlighting here raising pricing. So I'm curious of those three, how big do you think each is contributing to, to the lack of activity growth, we're seeing, given how robust oil prices are?

John Lindsay

Analyst · Morgan Stanley, please go ahead.

I think most of what contributes to the behaviors that you're saying all really go back to the EMPs and their capital discipline. again, if you look at how the budgets that were set, and 20 going into 21, and the type of activity that we had 22 is playing out very similarly. And it's, they're setting budgets and they're sticking to their to their budgets. And if you look at it, I've seen I think most DNPS public A&P set their budgets at a 55 to $60, oil price environment, obviously, much stronger pricing than that, but they've stuck to it. And, and what's great about that is that it does enable you to plan your business better. I know, at least for H&P, we haven't, our rig count growth isn't related to this supply chain challenges, even though there are supply chain challenges. It's not related to people, we've done a great job acquiring people. And our folks just continue to do a great job. It's really driven by the EMPs, our customers at the end of the day.

Connor Lynagh

Analyst · Morgan Stanley, please go ahead.

Got it. And I appreciate it's very early on this front. But, just in your conversations with customers, do you feel that there is a willingness or desire to grow within their stated frameworks, i.e. grow CapEx within their stated allocation frameworks? Or do you think they're more sort of thinking about the production growth that they've promised the street, which variable do you think they're solving more for?

John Lindsay

Analyst · Morgan Stanley, please go ahead.

I think they're, they're intending to live within their CapEx budget, in that CapEx budget that they announced they had a, depending on the customer they had anywhere from no growth to 5% growth. And that's their expectation. And I don't see any indication that there's any, any change at all, with the large public players, and quite frankly, even the private companies, they're, we keep hearing about this wildcard that the privates are just going to go ramp up production. And, we just really haven't seen evidence of that. I think there's a lot of discipline associated with those companies as well. And, again, I just think it sets us up for, a much better outlook as an industry. And we haven't done a good job in the past and doing that. But I really believe, like we've talked about that we're on a course to continue to go down this path.

Operator

Operator

We’ll move next with [Indiscernible] with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

So just in light of comments on capital discipline, from you all, I guess, in the prepared remarks, can you provide some color on how we should think about non maintenance CapEx beyond fiscal 2022? So would that non maintenance CapEx primarily include just the walking rate conversions going forward? Or are there going to be ongoing other CapEx commitments beyond that?

John Lindsay

Analyst

We're obviously not in budget season at this stage. And we really haven't made any decisions. And, we're just starting to get into, into looking at that. So, our preference would be to hold off and talk more about that. When we get into budget season. it's still really early in the game to do that right now, what I will say is just no more than what I said earlier, which is, everybody in the industry, their idle capacity has been idle for over two years, and much of that equipment has been used to maintain and upkeep other rigs that are running white, why invest new capital when you can use something you already have in the ground? So obviously, and as we've seen through the very beginning, coming off of the downturn, there early rigs that were reactivated cost, $50,000, $100,000, it wasn't much to do it, they were ready to go. But that that cost continues to get higher. So more to come on that.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Sounds good. Thank you. And then just one follow up on your customer makes that imagine I guess it's more weighted to the privates now than it's definitely before the pandemic, do you expect that that mixed in materially change going forward? Especially as we get into the budget, refresh these and into Calendar 2023? And is there sort of a, how is the difference in dinette, like, I guess, pricing and contract dynamics with your private customer base versus your public customer base historically, is there is there any sort of big change now that we should see as we think about this cycle?

John Lindsay

Analyst

Well, we actually have a larger percentage of our fleet working for public companies than we do private companies. I think we're probably the only or one of the few that that has that in our in our space, but we have grown our private company customer base significantly. We are the largest market share and rigs running for Super majors for large, public BMPs as well as for privates. But there's a, there's a dramatic range between where the private company is, much, much lower percentage, anything you want to,

Mark Smith

Analyst

The only thing to add is within the private group, customer base, there's different operating styles, some of them will do want to have visibility will want to determine long term is as far as different in contracting styles between private and public. So some of those contracts and styles for the private mirror, the public's and other ones, they just have, short term work. So that's kind of the main difference that I see from a contract perspective.

Operator

Operator

And this does conclude our Q&A session. I will turn the call over to John Lindsay for any closing remarks.

John Lindsay

Analyst

Thanks for the questions are very helpful. As you heard us say we're very optimistic about the future. We're very pleased with the momentum that we've garnered this past year. As you heard us say we are focused on margin growth, we're focused on returns, we're focused on continuing to provide an elevated performance proposition for our customers. And so we're very excited about that. We're happy to have the folks we have at H&P thanks for everybody's contribution and we'll talk to you next quarter. Thank you have a great day.

Operator

Operator

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