Carey Thomas Ford
Analyst · Aaron MacNeil with TD Cowen. Your line is open
Thank you, Dustin. My prepared remarks, I will cover 3 areas. First, the early results of our US market strategy. Second, the improving outlook for Precision in the Canadian market, and third, how our technology offering is critical to delivering for our customers. Before I get to those topics, I want to acknowledge our field crews and leadership in the Middle East who are working in a dynamic environment and keeping people safe. They are delivering for our customers in the region, and for the families of all Precision employees. Thank you. Moving on to the U.S. where Precision's strategic approach to strengthening the business is producing results. With an average of 43 active rigs during the quarter, compared to 35 active in Q2, our team has led field performance with well trained crews supported by our Alpha and Clarity platforms, delivering critical customer key performance indicators across the fleet. Precision's field performance and successful reactivations have solidified customer relationships resulting in steadier activity and an increasing number of customers with multiple precision rigs. In no basin is this more apparent than the Permian. Where we are currently running 16 rigs compared to 8 rigs 1 year ago. Our team has delivered this increase by building on a high performance track record onboarding new customers, upgrading rigs with customer contracts, and deepening customer relationships. I am thrilled with the reputation in business Precision is building in West Texas. Through the relentless efforts of our sales, operations, technology, and operations support teams, and I am excited for the future growth in this important region. As discussed last quarter, we have experienced some softness in the Northeast, but multiple rigs are firing up in that region over the next few months, which will drive activity growth. Expect our rig count to range for the U.S. in the low to mid forties for the remainder of the year and are experiencing an elevated number of requests for rig start ups early next year. Supporting an improved activity outlook for 2027. As we have projected on previous conference calls, rig reactivations have slowed, rig costs fixed cost absorption has improved, and we now expect Q4 margins to reach the highest level in the past 2 years. Providing a foundation for steadier and potentially growing profitability in The US. next year. Second, I would like to discuss the outlook in the Canadian market. The positive news flow from the Canadian energy industry has been head spinning. And despite continued wet conditions in the summer, and into late October, as well as higher crude differentials and weaker AECO gas prices. Precision activity remains at multiyear highs across both the drilling and completion and production service businesses. Our Montney activity can be characterized as steady year over year while our super single rigs servicing the heavy oil markets had Q3 utilization up 18% year over year. Reflecting the high performance of this RIT class and our customers' favorable economics. For those listeners who do not follow the Canadian market closely, I will recap several of the recent market developments. For years, the challenge for Canadian producers has been unlocking Landlocked Resources And Gaining Greater access to the global market. Today, that picture Is Changing. Following the completion Of The TMX Expansion, And LNG Canada Phase 1 projects, the Pacific Link pipeline project has been designated a project of national interest. Which means it will be reviewed and potentially approved by the federal government within 1 year. This pipeline could provide access to Tidewater for an additional 1 million barrels of oil per day. Additionally, Shell recently reached the final investment decision on LNG Canada Phase 2, and the recent election of the British Columbia-- a recent election in British Columbia has brought growing political support for LNG development. There are numerous other pipeline proposals with western, eastern, and southern routes as well as discussions on ports and additional infrastructure projects to support the growth of Canadian energy industry. And at the same time, there are emerging sources of domestic demand, including the proposed green light data center, in Alberta, combined with more supportive federal framework for advancing major projects. And a federal mega tax deduction for infrastructure investments creating a more constructive backdrop for Canadian energy investment. We believe these developments have the potential to unlock significant investment and support sustained drilling activity for both oil and gas across Western Canada. Another market trend is customer consolidation. Which continues in the Montney, Duvernay, and heavy oil regions. These larger consolidated entities often have longer term development programs, which come with increased expectations for efficiency, field support, and a greater desire to utilize technology. To meet these evolving customer needs, Precision continues to invest in our fleet, people, and technology. This alignment is evident in our growing Canadian contract book with 28 rigs under contract in the third quarter, up from 16 just 1 year ago. We are seeing and meeting the same evolving customer needs in our well service division where Precision's ability to deliver safe and consistent operations with well trained and well supported crews is an increasingly important differentiator and has resulted in improved financial performance year over year. The final area I would like to cover is technology. Which is core to supporting our crews in all our North American drilling operations. Our Alpha and Evergreen businesses are on track to have their highest revenue and contribution margin ever. This makes sense. Given our. That our customers continue to seek higher efficiency operations and solutions that reduce emissions and diesel consumption. Our clarity platform and digital twin offerings are adding another layer to what we can offer customers. On our Q2 call, I mentioned that we would be opening our Calgary remote ops center in August. Since then, we have had over 100 customer representatives from 12 different customers visit our center to observe our alpha technology capabilities and interact with our optimization team. We have had in-depth discussions with customers about our optimization team's work directly with our crews using real time data and AI driven insights to continuously improve operating practices, equipment performance, and safe drilling results. Are not just monitoring operations and providing data driven insights and solutions, but are actively working with our crews to optimize performance. Although we have certainly opened up some eyes as to what is possible with our technology platform, and that is exciting. I am more excited about the ongoing customer performance dialogue and Precision's enhanced ability to strengthen long term partnerships with our technology platform. These developments will continue to be an important part of the Precision story, and we will certainly have more to report in the future. In closing, I would like to thank our crews, field leadership, and all Precision employees for their commitment to safety, customer service, and operational excellence. Their work is the reason customers continue to choose Precision, and what drives the success of our company. With that, I will hand the call back to the operator for questions.