Keelan I. Adamson
Analyst · Barclays
Thanks, Alison, and welcome, everyone, to our second quarter conference call. As always, we greatly appreciate your interest in Transocean. I want to open today's call by sharing a few of Transocean's key priorities. We are intently focused on several interrelated objectives with outcomes that are entirely within our control, and we are addressing them with urgency and agility. First, and foundational for everything we do is delivering best-in-class services for our customers. Transocean is the partner of choice for operators, requiring expertise in the most technically challenging ultra-deepwater and harsh environment regions of the world, and we are committed to providing the safest, most reliable and efficient operations everywhere all the time. Next, we will continue to manage our portfolio of high-spec rigs in a disciplined and selective manner, endeavoring to extract the greatest value possible from our unique fleet. And lastly, but also of paramount importance, we will continue to improve our overall financial flexibility. To do this, we will achieve and maintain the most efficient cost structure possible. We will reduce total debt as rapidly as we can, minimize interest expense and ultimately simplify our balance sheet. Transocean is differentiated from the competition by both its people and its assets, and our customers trust us to deliver in the world's most technically demanding environments. Operators select Transocean because of the exceptional synergies created by our people and our assets, leveraging our technology and innovations to drive consistently high performance. This powerful combination is our value proposition, differentiating our product for both customers and investors. We take exceptional pride in being the preferred offshore drilling provider and being recognized for delivering the highest quality and most efficient solutions. Just last week, Beacon Offshore Energy announced it commenced production from the Shenandoah field, which was drilled by one of our 2 eighth-generation 20,000 psi drillships, the Deepwater Atlas. This is the second 20,000 psi reservoir to come online using Transocean's ships. We are excited to be part of this achievement and thank Beacon for placing its trust in Transocean to accomplish this important milestone. Our high-specification ultra-deepwater and harsh environment fleet is unmatched, attracting an industry-leading backlog of approximately $7 billion. Under all market conditions, our fleet has maintained higher average utilization and premium day rates. We believe that we have a very effective and successful commercial strategy. We are continually evaluating market dynamics from a supply and demand perspective, carefully assessing individual opportunities to ensure we are deploying each asset into the right project at the right time. You should expect us to continue to be disciplined and strategic in applying this portfolio approach to the management of our fleet to maximize EBITDA and cash flow. Regarding our efforts to improve our financial flexibility, recall that last quarter, we announced a plan to sustainably reduce our cash costs by about $100 million in each of 2025 and 2026. This reduction is primarily from our fleet operating and maintenance expense, and we are on track to deliver these savings. As should be the case, we strive for continuous improvement. And accordingly, we have taken additional steps to improve the efficiency of our shore-based organization and expect to reduce these costs by approximately $50 million on an annual basis beginning in 2026. Importantly, these actions will not, in any way, compromise safety, customer service or the reliability of our rigs. We understand the importance of financial resilience to effectively weather the inevitable cycles in this business and generate appropriate returns for our shareholders. We have a clear path to delever significantly over the next few years, addressing our debt obligations by efficiently converting our industry-leading backlog to revenue and maximizing cash flow to equity. We remain on track to reduce debt by more than $700 million this year. We will continue to take a disciplined approach to managing our balance sheet, carefully assessing how each action fits into our long-term financial strategy. Moving now to our outlook for the global market. With an active fleet mostly contracted through the middle of next year, we are actively working on opportunities for the second half of 2026. While the pace of contracting activity has been measured since the middle of last year, all projections suggest we are nearing the end of this temporary slowdown. Indeed, we are engaged in multiple conversations with customers on attractive opportunities for work well into the future and have a line of sight to a number of forthcoming tenders, which I will discuss after a brief recap of our recent fixtures. In June, we issued a press release disclosing that a 2-well option was exercised on the Transocean Spitsbergen. The option, which was struck at a rate of $395,000 per day, ensures the rig has continuous work through August 2027. Next, in Brazil, the Deepwater Mykonos was awarded a 60-day contract extension. The agreement also includes multiple options, which, if exercised, would keep the rig working into next year. And finally, in the Ivory Coast, Murphy awarded the Deepwater Skyros, a 3-well contract. The program is expected to commence late this year and includes a 1-well option that, if exercised, would keep the rig working into the second quarter next year. We continue to expect the market to tighten by late 2026 and into early 2027, at which point we expect the global active ultra-deepwater fleet will once again approach utilization exceeding 90%. This should result in upward pressure on day rates. Third-party analyst data supports our view. Wood Mackenzie's latest analysis shows deepwater and ultra-deepwater development CapEx rising from $64 billion in 2025 to $79 billion in 2027, a 23% increase. And in their latest commentary, both Fearnley Offshore and Westwood Global Energy Group noted that commencement dates for pent-up demand have firmed up and for the most part, stopped sliding to the right. For the ultra-deepwater drillship market, the primary source of incremental demand is still expected to come from Africa, the Mediterranean Sea and Asia. If known programs materialize as currently projected, there could be an incremental 4 drillships working in Africa in 2027 and an additional 2 in the Mediterranean. We are optimistic that commencement windows for these programs will continue to remain generally stable as many of them are progressing through the tender process. For example, of the 3 multiyear opportunities set to commence in Mozambique in 2027, has been released, one is in the RFI stage and one is pending release, which is expected by the end of September. Moving east to the Asia Pacific region, current tenders indicate up to 4 incremental drillships will be required in the next 2 years, including the Chevron Gorgon prospect in Australia, which is expected to commence in the first quarter of 2027. This will be the first time in 7 years a drillship has operated in country. Demand in India also points to additional drillship as ONGC, Reliance and Cairn each have programs in this time frame. And finally, tenders for the remainder of Asia will likely require the rig count to move up from 3 active drillships today to 5 in 2027. Activity levels in the U.S. Gulf, Latin America and Brazil are expected to remain relatively stable. Since our first quarter 2025 earnings calls, bids were submitted for Petrobras' Buzios program and Petrobras released the tender for its Merrill project, which is a firm duration of nearly 4 years, expected to commence in the first half of 2027 for at least 1 rig. With respect to the previously mentioned Buzios tender, it is possible that 4 rigs could now be awarded rather than up to the 3 originally anticipated. Additionally, Shell is currently evaluating bids for the Gato do Mato development and Equinor released an RFI for a 1-year program with commencement likely in the first half of 2026. Furthermore, just this week, BP announced their biggest discovery in 25 years at the Bumerangue block in the Santos Basin and indicated its intention to perform additional appraisal activities. The projected demand for harsh environment semisubmersibles remains strong in Norway and elsewhere internationally. As a reminder, our 4 rigs in Norway, the Transocean Spitsbergen, Transocean Norge, Transocean Encourage and Transocean Enabler are fully committed into 2027. In the U.K., on top of BP West of Shetlands, Ithaca is also looking for 1 rig for its Campbell development, a 900-day program that starts in the same time frame. In the Orange Basin, meaning Namibia and South Africa, operators will soon begin the development phases of their discoveries, which will require at least one additional harsh environment semisubmersible. We expect a tighter global market to develop in the next 2 years. However, at this time, we do not see a compelling case for reactivations of cold stacked units. Hence, our decision in the second quarter to remove 4 lower specification rigs from our fleet. We continuously assess the option value of our cold stacked rigs to ensure we maintain the best and most competitive fleet to meet our customers' requirements. All else being equal, supply rationalization structurally improves industry dynamics. Including 4 of our own, a total of 11 rigs have been retired from the global fleet this year, and we believe it is reasonable to expect additional attrition in the near term. Industry consolidation could help facilitate further reduction in rig supply, which would contribute to a more balanced industry. With that, I will now hand it over to Thad to discuss our results and guidance. Thad?