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Valaris Limited (VAL)

Q2 2015 Earnings Call· Thu, Jul 30, 2015

$103.03

+1.04%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, everyone, and welcome to Ensco plc's Second Quarter 2015 Financial Results Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please also note today's event is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Sean O'Neill, Vice President of Investor Relations, who will moderate the call. Please go ahead, sir. Sean Patrick O'Neill - Vice President-Investor Relations & Communications: Welcome, everyone, to Ensco's second quarter 2015 conference call. With me today are Carl Trowell, CEO; Mark Burns, our Chief Operating Officer; Carey Lowe, EVP; Jay Swent, CFO; David Hensel, our Senior Vice President of Marketing; as well as other members of our executive management team. We issued our earnings release which is available on our website at enscoplc.com. Any comments we make about expectations are forward-looking statements and are subject to risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause actual results to differ materially. Please refer to our earnings release and SEC filings on our website that define forward-looking statements and list risk factors and other events that could impact future results. Also, please note that the company undertakes no duty to update forward-looking statements. Now, let me turn the call over to Carl Trowell, CEO and President. Carl Trowell - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Sean, and good morning, everyone. Second quarter results were highlighted by good operational, safety and financial performance. As noted in our press release, we had 98% operational utilization for jackups, strong safety performance, and earnings that were driven by disciplined expense management and our efficiency initiatives. Earnings from continuing operations, excluding cost to refinance debt, were $1.18 per share for the second quarter. Our offshore crews capital project teams and onshore personnel are to be recognized for…

David Hensel - Senior Vice President-Marketing

Management

Thanks, Carl. In terms of customer demand, while we are clearly experiencing a very difficult market environment, we have seen an increase in a number of customer discussions for potential opportunities since our last conference call. While this increase is off a low number of tenders and inquiries seen during the first quarter and many of these opportunities are shorter term in nature, we are seeing pockets of customer demand even in a lower oil price environment. For example, as Carl mentioned, we recently contracted two of our premium jackups, ENSCO 110 and ENSCO 104, with a repeat customer, NDC, in the Middle East. Both rigs were awarded three-year contracts. ENSCO 110, our most recent newbuild jackup delivery, commenced its initial contract in May and has had an excellent start for NDC. ENSCO 104 is scheduled to begin its contract in August. The Middle East has been the strongest market in terms of customer demand. And we have 10 jackups contracted in the region. Moving to the North Sea, we were able to extend ENSCO 101 to mid-year 2016 with its current customer. Earlier this month, we signed letters of intent for ENSCO 71 and ENSCO 72, both for three-year terms in Denmark. ENSCO 71 is already on site and ENSCO 72 is expected to continue working once it completes its current contract in September. As a result, both rigs are scheduled to work into 2018. And once these agreements are finalized, our number of contracted jackups will increase to nine in the North Sea, a market where ENSCO has a strong reputation among customers. Moving to our floater fleet, we were able to extend the term for our ultra-deepwater drillship, ENSCO DS-7, for an additional year as part of a blend and extend agreement that will keep the rig…

Operator

Operator

Yes, sir. Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Our first question comes from Praveen Narra of Raymond James. Please go ahead. Praveen Narra - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Hey. Good morning, guys. You guys have done a good job controlling costs so far. Can you give us a sense if you found most of what you want to do in the future or are you continuing to turn over rocks and finding more costs removed from the system? Carl Trowell - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: So, we've not finished yet. We think there is more we can do. As we've announced, we've just in the process of planning the reorganization of our five geographic business units into three. And that will bring some additional cost savings. We'll announce the exact figures when we get to Q3, because we're enacting the plans now. That will have some effect into Q4 and it will certainly have full effect as from Q1 next year. There are some other actions, which are a little bit longer term that we're working on, which will start to affect costs in 2016 as well. So, we're not done. And I think there's more we can do for refining the business and, more importantly, bringing in efficiencies and new structures and new ways of working, which will actually be sustainable once, we come out of the other side of the downturn as well. Praveen Narra - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Okay. That's helpful. And then, I guess, in terms of the jackups you have under construction, do you have any desire to potentially delay those as well as you did with DS-10 or do you see enough opportunity potential on those rigs? Carl Trowell - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director:…

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from Gregory Lewis of Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Gregory Lewis - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Yes. Thank you and good morning. Carl Trowell - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning, Greg. Gregory Lewis - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Carl, as we think about the idle or available fleet, I mean, clearly it sounds like not only Ensco, but other people in the market think or believe that we need to see maybe another, let's just call it for argument's sake, 50 rigs being removed from the fleet. Whether that's stacked or scrapped it doesn't really matter. But just as we look at the idle floater fleet for Ensco, it looks like everything is kind of positioned where – in a down market, you probably want an idle or available rig in the Gulf of Mexico. You probably want one or two of those in the Asia region. So, just as we think about that – and I know you can't talk to other companies, but as you think about if that impacts Ensco, does it make sense to have that available, ready-to-go, hot stacked floater spread out geographically for those one-off jobs that potentially can show up? Carl Trowell - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. So let me take first the big macro picture. If there is any good news at the moment and with the recent further downturn in the commodity price, I think, it's going to lead to the realization that we are in an extended period of downturn and will force more stacking at a more accelerated rate. I think if things had started to pick up a little bit as we went into the second half of the year or people felt…

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Andrew Carmichael of Simmons & Company. Please go ahead. Ian Macpherson - Simmons & Company International: Hey. Good morning. It's Ian Macpherson here. First, Jay, congratulations on retirement. It's been a pleasure. Jay W. Swent III - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Thanks very much. Ian Macpherson - Simmons & Company International: Yeah. Carl, you mentioned that you expect an uptick in jackup fixtures in the second half. And it just seems a little counterintuitive given the recent downward volatility with crude. But I'm curious if you have more color on that. Where are you seeing that? Where it might emerge? And if really shallow water is looking as – there could be some normalization of demand. Even with $50 crude if jackup rates are cut in half, if you think there's some viability of normalized demand at these levels going forward or if this is just kind of fits and starts of backlog? Carl Trowell - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Okay. So let me take the jackup question and maybe I'll expand it a little bit into a broader discussion of the market outlook. Ian Macpherson - Simmons & Company International: Okay. Carl Trowell - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: So the first thing to remember is that a lot of the jackup shallow water basins and environments are still economic at the current oil prices. And, accordingly, we are seeing still ongoing activity and we are seeing some new tendering opportunities. Now, clearly, it's not the same level it was a year or two years ago, but we are seeing ongoing activity. Now the Asia Pacific region and the Gulf of Mexico are extremely challenged. I mean they are very difficult markets, because of a falloff in activity.…

Operator

Operator

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Mr. O'Neill for any closing remarks. Sean Patrick O'Neill - Vice President-Investor Relations & Communications: I just want to thank everyone for your interest in Ensco and have a great day.