Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. And welcome to the Noble Corporation Plc First Quarter 2020 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Craig Muirhead, VP, Investor Relations and Treasurer. Please go ahead.

Thanks Denise. And welcome, everyone, to Noble Corporation’s first quarter 2020 earnings conference call. We appreciate your interest in the company. You can find a copy of Noble’s earnings report issued last evening, along with the supporting statements and schedules on our website at www.noblecorp.com. Before I turn the call over to Julie Robertson, I’d like to remind everyone that we may make statements about our operations, opportunities, plans, operational or financial performance, the drilling business or other matters that are not historical facts in our forward-looking statements that are subject to certain risks and uncertainties. Our filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which are posted on our website, discuss the risks and uncertainties in our business and industry, the various factors that could keep outcomes of any forward-looking statements from being realized including the price of oil and gas, customer demand, operational and other risks. Our actual results could differ materially from these forward-looking statements and Noble does not assume any obligation to update these statements. Also note, we are referencing non-GAAP financial measures in our call today. You will find the required supplemental disclosure for these measures, including the most directly comparable GAAP measure and an associated reconciliation on our website. And with that, I will now turn the call over to Julie Robertson, Chairman, President and Chief Executive of Noble.

Thank you, Craig, and good morning everyone. Welcome to a review of Noble Corporation’s first quarter 2020 results. I hope you're all healthy and safely managing through this extraordinary time. As always, we appreciate your participation on today's call. For those of you paying attention, you all heard Craig Muirhead introducing the call today. In addition to Craig's role as Vice President and Treasurer, he has now assumed the responsibility for the IR function. Craig, thank you for stepping up and taking on this additional role and we know you will do as great of a job in this role as you have as Treasurer. And we're also joined this morning by Richard Barker, who on March 30 began his new role as the company's Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer. I've had the privilege of working with Richard at various times while he served in an investment banking capacity, specializing in oilfield services and equipment industry. Besides his in-depth, familiarity with Noble, Richard brings to the CFO role, strong knowledge of our industry and the capital markets. We are delighted to have Richard on our team and I look forward to his valuable contributions. Our first quarter financial performance when adjusted for special guidance was highlighted by lower than expected contract drilling service cost and higher EBITDA. The favorable results were in spite of the challenges created by the rapid deterioration in the oil and gas market, and the COVID-19 pandemic. And while addressing the first quarter achievements, one we're all proud of is the manner in which our company has responded to the current environment. I want to recognize our COVID-19 response team, who recognized as early as January 5, the potential gravity of the Coronavirus situation and began working to lead our organization through a most complex…

Thank you, Julie. Good morning, and welcome to everyone. I want to echo Julie's thoughts and thank each of you for your participation on this morning's call. I'll open with some observations on offshore drilling industry and bring you up to-date on the Noble fleet. Richard will follow with a review of our first quarter financial results after which I'll provide some closing thoughts and address your questions. Yesterday, we announced in our press release that we retained Evercore for financial advice and are evaluating various options to address our balance sheet and liquidity. We will address these subjects during our prepared comments today, but ask that you please refrain from questions related to these topics during the Q&A portion of the call. We look forward to receiving questions on other matters of interest to you. We continue to assess the potential near and intermediate term impacts to our industry as a result of the global pandemic and concurrent collapse in oil prices. The simultaneous emergence of declining global oil demand and rising oil supplies is unparalleled for our industry, and establishes a highly uncertain future. It remains difficult to forecast the duration of time for which these unfavorable industry developments will impact our business. So I want to explain some immediate steps we have taken to adapt to this current state of circumstances. Julie has already mentioned the formation of our COVID-19 response team. This team recognized the threat very early and has displayed impressive focus and care to protect the wellbeing of our employees, while ensuring business continuity and customer responsiveness. The challenges have been numerous and include understanding and monitoring the public health threat, coordinating and implementing a program to allow quarantine personnel, and adapting to numerous global travel restrictions and border closures. Their work has paid…

Thank you, Robert. Good morning, everyone. I would also like to welcome each of you on today's call and thank you for joining us. As the newest member of the Noble management team, I am honored and excited at the opportunity to serve as the company's Chief Financial Officer and help identify and execute the best path forward for Noble. My discussion this morning will include some observations on our first quarter financial performance and our current financial position. However, given the uncertainty that currently exists in our industry, we will not be providing any updated guidance for full year 2020 or for the second quarter of 2020 with the exception of updating our expected capital expenditures range for the year. As we announced yesterday, Noble Corporation reported a net loss attributable to the company for the first quarter of 2020 of $1.1 billion or $4.25 per diluted share on total revenues of $281 million. The first quarter results were impacted by two items. The first item was an after-tax non-cash charge of $1.1 billion, primarily related to the impairment of the semi submersible rigs, Noble Jim Day and Noble Danny Adkins, and the drillship Noble Bully I and Noble Bully II. These impairments were driven by the impact of recent market events on our outlook for the demand for these rigs. The second item related to tax benefits totaling $47 million of this amount $43 million related to the application of the CARES Act provisions passed by the U.S. Congress. The CARES Act provisions are expected to result in a meaningful tax refund of approximately $150 million, with the majority related to the NOL carry-back provision. We expect to receive this tax refund by the end of the year. When excluding the effect of these items from reported results,…

In closing, I would like to leave you with the following thoughts on our company. Despite the challenges faced by our industry, we remain laser focused on operational excellence in serving our customers. From 2016 through 2019, we were able to maintain an average utilization of over 91% across our jackup fleet all the worldwide Jackup utilization averaged only 65% over the same period. And on the floating side, our customer in regional alignment positions us very well to continue working our rigs despite the relative dearth of opportunities elsewhere. Although the recent double Black Swan events have worsened the outlook for our industry, we believe that our fleet, people and brand will enable us to continue to outperform the market on utilization. While we continue to evaluate our options to address balance sheet concerns, we maintain a strong focus on operational efficiency and customer service, which have been hallmarks of Noble for the 15 years of my association with the company and many decades prior. Lastly, I'd like to say thanks once more to the entire Noble team for your extraordinary efforts as we address the COVID crisis. With that, I'll turn it back over to Craig to open the line for questions.

Thanks Robert. And we're ready to begin the question and answer segment of the call. I'll remind callers we're not able to give details about our capital structuring activities, other than what we said in our prepared remarks, but we are able to answer other questions. So Denise, please go ahead and open the line for question.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Sean Meakim with JPMorgan. Your line is open.

So Robert, maybe to start off just given the priority of the Croft as their rolls off contract later this year, can you maybe just talk about your confidence level with respect to follow-on work in Suriname versus other opportunities, which will be great to get some more detail on that specific rig?

Sure, so obviously, we're disappointed at the rate exchange there. Although I'm also - I think we've worked really well with our client there to make it happen in extraordinary circumstances lead to this. I would just note some of the drivers there were beyond oil price drivers in related to some political issues in Guyana. So our hope is that those political issues eventually get resolved. And that work continues and expands in Guyana. I also noted in the prepared remarks that in Suriname, there is a big follow-on to the recent oil discoveries there, that we're tracking. And we think that there's going to be some work in perhaps the first half of 2021. We know we're very confident in our presence in that basin and so we’ll of course be watching the opportunities for Suriname and Guyana very closely. Outside there, we're bidding the rig elsewhere. There is some work in the U.S. and elsewhere. So we'll bid the rig outside the region. But our hope is that we can continue our presence there in the region a little too early to tell unfortunately.

Got it. That's definitely fair. And Richard, recognizing the limitations around what you can discuss with respect to capital structure, I still think it'd be interesting to hear your thoughts as a longtime follower of the company, someone that's obviously been engaged the management team over the years in advising capacity. Can you maybe just give us some idea into the types of insights maybe that you're bringing with you with respect to the balance of yours from the CFO position?

Sure, and it's a good question and obviously my history is different. But I think candidly, it's very synergistic if you will with the team. I would just go back to what our priorities are. Obviously we are laser-focused on enhancing and protecting our liquidity position, reducing our total quantum of debt, and corresponding interest costs. And that's really our priorities. And obviously, my hope is that my history can be very helpful to that course.

And there are no further questions queued up at this time. I turn the call back over to the presenters. End of Q&A:

Thank you, Denise, and thanks everyone for your participation in our call today and your interest in Noble. Good day, everyone. Thank you.

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.