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Halliburton Company (HAL)

Q3 2014 Earnings Call· Mon, Oct 20, 2014

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. And welcome to the Halliburton’s Third Quarter 2014 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will follow at that time. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today’s conference, Kelly Youngblood, Halliburton’s Vice President of Investor Relations. Sir, you may begin.

Kelly Youngblood

Management

Good morning. And welcome to the Halliburton third quarter 2014 conference call. Today’s call is being webcast and a replay would be available on Halliburton's website for seven days. Joining me today are Dave Lesar, CEO; Mark McCollum, CFO; and Jeff Miller, President. Some of our comments today may include forward-looking statements reflecting Halliburton's views about future events. These matters involve risk and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to materially differ from our forward-looking statements. These risks are discussed in Halliburton’s Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2013, Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2014, recent current reports on Form 8-K and other Securities and Exchange Commission filings. We undertake no obligation to revise or update publicly any forward-looking statements for any reason. Our comments today include non-GAAP financial measures, reconciliations to the most direct comparable GAAP financial measures are included in our third quarter press release which can be found on our website. Unless otherwise noted, in our discussion today, we will be excluding the impact of restructuring charges taken in the third quarter of 2013 and an insurance recovery and a decrease to our reserve taken during the third quarter of 2014, both of which are related to the Macondo litigation. Now I’ll turn the call over to Dave. Dave.

Dave Lesar

Management

Thank you Kelly and good morning to everyone. I can tell you I am really pleased with our third quarter results. Even with all the noise out there this quarter and things such as Russian sanctions, disruptions in Libya and Iraq, the supply chain challenges we faced, and customer delays in the Gulf of Mexico, I believe we met these challenges head on, fought through them and we’re successful, and I am really proud of our employees who made it happen. Now here are the headlines: record company revenue of $8.7 billion. We also delivered industry leading revenue and operating income growth, both sequentially and year-over-year, once again outgrowing our peer group. New quarterly revenue records for both North America and the Eastern hemisphere with double-digit sequential revenue growing in Latin America, and one I know you are going to want to hear is that the exit rate for this quarter for North American margins was over the 20% margin mark, a major milestone in delivering our analyst day commitment to you, our shareholders. In addition, our job board in North America remained sold out and we are delivering new stimulation equipment that will allow us to add incremental work in the fourth quarter with no negative impact on our margins. We believe the Macondo case is an essentially over for Halliburton, based on our settlement in the judge’s ruling in the litigation. And lastly, we continue to focus on delivering higher shareholder returns to you. This quarter, we repurchased an additional $300 million in stock, and our Board of Directors has approved an additional 20% dividend increase, meaning we now have doubled our quarterly dividend over the past two years. Now let’s go through some of the geographies. Company operating income increased 21% sequentially. North America grew 15%, Europe,…

Mark McCollum

Management

Thanks Dave and good morning. Let me begin with an overview of our third quarter results, starting with North America. Revenues were up 9% sequentially. This strong all organic growth was relative to a 3% increase in the US land rig count. Operating income was up 15% over the same period, margins for the quarter averaged 19.2% with our September exit rate coming in slightly higher than the 20% mark. Stronger activity levels in US land and the rebound from the Canadian spring breakup drove the improvement for the quarter, more than offsetting increased logistics cost and the impact of loop currents in the Gulf of Mexico. Margins also benefited from modest pricing improvements on pressure pumping contract renewals, which were designed to cover inflation on specific cost categories such as transportation, fuel and labor. In the Eastern Hemisphere, revenue and operating income increased sequentially by 4% and 6% respectively. Growth was led by Europe Africa/CIS where revenue and operating income increased 6% and 16% respectively compared to the prior quarter. Seasonal increases in Russia and the Caspian, higher activity in Angola, along with increased well, construction activity in continental Europe, led the sequential improvement. Partially offsetting these increases were activity declines in Libya, Algeria and Norway. The seasonal recovery in Russia was negatively affected by the recent sanctions and growth in this market is expected to be a challenge for the foreseeable future, since we’ll be prohibited from tendering projects that fall under the sanctioned restrictions. We expect our Russia business will continue to face headwinds next year, including the possibility of additional sanctions, but we are hopeful that full-year 2015 could come in at similar levels to this year. Middle East /Asia region revenue increased by 3% sequentially and operating income was in line with the second quarter.…

Jeff Miller

Management

Thank you. Mark and good morning everyone. I’m excited about our results this quarter, the Halliburton team is dead focused on strategy execution, and the results are clearly evident in the quarter’s industry-leading growth, with both of our divisions setting revenue records as well as revenue records for 11 of 13 product lines. As a reminder, our strategy is built around three key growth markets unconventionals, deepwater and mature fields. Our unconventional strategy is designed to deliver the lowest cost per barrel of oil equivalent for our customers with surface efficiency, custom chemistry and subsurface insight. Our deepwater strategy is to increase reliability and reduce uncertainty. And finally our mature field’s strategy is to deliver additional hydrocarbons in declining fields by identifying new reserves and optimizing the recovery of existing reserves. Clearly these strategies are working. In North America unconventional market the topic on everyone’s mind this quarter was logistics, driven by big increases in both horizontal activity and completions intensity which is right in the sweet spot of surface efficiencies. Now compared to the prior year, US horizontal recount in the third quarter was up more than 20%. Over the same timeframe our stage count was up more than 30% and our average sand per well increased by more than 50%. While the rising recount was predominantly a Permian basin phenomena, our customers are experimenting with larger completion volumes in almost every basin. This is a fundamental change in well design that we believe is part of a continuing trend. As Dave said, earlier in the quarter, we experienced issues related to logistical disruptions, primarily around proppant. Cast in terms of surface efficiency increasing intensity presents a terrific opportunity for us. We’ve addressed these rising completion volumes by expanding our infrastructure and transport capability. This includes increasing our sand…

Dave Lesar

Management

Alright, thank you Jeff. Before we go to the questions let me summarize what you heard today. North American exit margins greater than 20%, our new equipment will be going to work at at least those exit margins. We are building our North American logistics to get ahead of the curve. We made good progress this quarter negotiating price increases with our customers and in Latin America headwinds are becoming tailwinds, and 2015 is shaping up to be a much stronger year. In the Eastern Hemisphere there are few troubled spots, but we still an opportunity for steady growth in the coming year and we continue to focus on delivering the highest shareholder returns as evidenced by our 20% dividend increase in addition of $300 million of stock repurchases during the quarter. Before I close I want to make one final comment on the current environment. The strategic initiatives we’ve been working on the last several years Battle Red, Frac of the Future and others make us what I believe is the most efficient and adaptable organization in the industry. We are able to execute equally well in either a boom market or one that’s more challenged. Across the board, we are focused on making better wells for our customers and better returns for you our shareholders. So no matter what market is handed to us, our strategies give us confidence that we will continue to outperform our peers. So with that let’s open it up for questions.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) our first question comes from James West of ISI. Your line is now open.

James West - ISI

Analyst

First of all, just congrats on the substantial year-over-year growth in Eastern Hemisphere well above your peers. I suspect Joe Rainey is pretty proud of what he’s been able accomplish. And then Dave as you mentioned, you’ve been around the block a couple of times here, and I wanted to know kind of what’s your gut telling you right now about the outlook for North America as we go into next year? I know it’s a tough question, but it’s on everybody’s mind, and given your history in the industry, I was curious about kind of your feel for what you think is going to happen next year.

Dave Lesar

Management

Let me let Jeff take the first crack at it and then I will come in at the end if I feel I need to add something.

Jeff Miller

Management

Our outlook today is very positive. We are in the heavy part of our renewal period now, and I would tell you that renewals are rolling up not down, and as of last week, I talked to a lot of customers and budgets are moving up, not down. So in terms of activity, everything I see looks like its increasing into 2015 and quite frankly our strategy that we have in place around delivering the lowest cost per BOE in the market is more valuable than ever.

Dave Lesar

Management

So I guess let me just add, I think if you want to summarize it, we are not feeling, hearing, seeing anything that says this momentum is going to change that we had coming out of Q3.

James West - ISI

Analyst

And then on the international side, I think you gave a good outline of most of the regions around the world, you know some obviously slowness from the IOCs, but the same type of commentary around the NOCs in the international markets, no commentary around them slowing down.

Jeff Miller

Management

Not seen any of that James. This is Jeff, the capital is going to work, it’s going to work in mature fields, it’s going to work in unconventionals, maybe more so than deepwater, but again where we are positioned and what we are seeing around integrated asset management opportunities as in just a traditional work, nothing leads us to believe that from an IOC perspective there is any change - NOC perspective.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Jud Bailey of Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.

Jud Bailey - Wells Fargo

Analyst

Question on the fourth quarter, you had indicated North American margins are -- you exited at 20%. I believe Mark indicated you thought only a slight increase in margins from 3Q to 4Q. Is that just allowing for seasonality or how should we think about the fourth quarter –a seasonally fourth quarter where your exit rate was above kind of what you had indicated, I guess?

Mark McCollum

Management

Hey Jud this is Mark. Yeah, that’s exactly right, you know we always try to consider that fourth quarter you have some holiday down time, you are going to have some seasonality particularly in the Rockies where we have a dominant market position that will impact operations as you close out the year. But what we are doing is we are looking at every thing on balance; first of all very strong exit rates, second of all very strong activity levels that month-over-month continues to increase. When we are working, our equipment is working very hard. We had already indicated earlier in the year that we’ve been building additional frac equipment, you know we’ll have new spreads that are already hitting the street today that will be active during the fourth quarter, that will be adding to our complement of equipment that will be generating revenues, and so when you take all that on balance, we are just saying that this fourth quarter uniquely looks like one that we could have a slightly better earnings and profits in this fourth quarter in North America than you might see in a traditional fourth quarter. Now that’s assuming a very sort of standard weather pattern, standard holiday downtime. But from our base outlook, it looks like its going to be a very good Q4.

Jud Bailey - Wells Fargo

Analyst

And then if I could may be stretch the margin outlook into 2015, understanding that customers aren’t really indicating a slowdown at this point, if we were to see some operators sort of scale back activity or just flatten out their budgets, can you help us think about -- Halliburton’s going to have a lot of moving parts, you are negotiating new contract at higher pricing, it sounds like now. If you see a softness in utilization and you are obviously recovering some of your recent cost increases as well; how should we think about your margins in 2015 if we were to see a slow down. Is it a situation where you think you could hold the line of margins, would they decline potentially or could they still go up because of the net pricing you are already starting to see in your contracts?

Jeff Miller

Management

Yeah Jud this is Jeff. Our entire strategy is built around delivering Frac of the Future or HALvantage. If we roll back to our analyst day, we’d always said that we would continue to put more efficient equipment in the market and more efficient work practices so that we would be able to improve margins on the back of the way that we are working. So as I look out into 2015, we are seeing those fundamental pieces of our business continuing to deliver which clearly means that we continue to see a positive impact on margins.

Dave Lesar

Management

Yeah I think, let me just one thing, if you go again, go back to analyst day, the impact of things like Battle Red, Frac of the Future and other things that you were doing at that point, we thought could add five points in margin without any price increases. And we are not backing off that view. A lot of the push up and margins right now are just those things been implemented and us been more efficient as an organization. So I think to answer the question specifically, if you did have a flattening out, I would expect that our margins would be at least where they are today.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Angie Sedita of UBS. Your line is now open.

Angie Sedita - UBS

Analyst

So there was intensity growth of 50% quarter-over-quarter or year-over-year was pretty amazing, and I know Jeff touched on it a little bit. But could you give us additional color there on what you are seeing on the oil service intensity side and I know you indicated it was [basin], but can you go in to that a little bit. And then thoughts on 2015, what kind of any insights at this point on the degree of service intensity growth that we could see this year and clearly its worth noting that even if the rig count is flat and the well count is flat you are still driving higher revenues in margins.

Jeff Miller

Management

The (inaudible) intensity continue to increase on the basis of the types of jobs that are being designed and so we’ve seen a consistent increase in the amount of proppant and the amount of stages. So I refer specifically to 30% increase in stage count, 50% increase in sand consumption. I would say that you see a bigger ramp in the more mature basins, because that’s where we are really getting in to what I’d call sort of hyper efficiency and increasing the production of existing wells as oppose to way before its’ a little bit more, I will use it with quotes around it “exploratory” in a few basins. But as I look in to 2015, I don’ see anything that changes the pace of increase necessarily across the piece simply because we are making better wells, and that’s what takes us back to the importance sand logistics and the ability to deliver. I will give you a one quick anecdote; for us that have seen trains load, we can unload an entire unit train in nine hours and we can load a truck in seven minutes. So that’s kind of where we are focusing our attention.

Angie Sedita - UBS

Analyst

Okay, that’s helpful. And then thinking about this oil service intensity growth and it’s reported out there, we are going to add 1.5 million to 2 million in horsepower next year. How much do you think of that is being added with standalone crews and they are actually full (inaudible) fleets and how much of that horsepower do you think is reinforcement for existing fleets; that there is much of the third or even more.

Jeff Miller

Management

No, I mean when we look at that our expectation that’s probably less than 10% coming in to the market, and the fact is the equipment is working harder than it has ever worked before given the size of the stages and the amount of the sand. So my expectation is most of that equipment will either be backup equipment, four big jobs now with our Q-10 pumps we are more effective with typically 20% less horsepower on location, and quite frankly less back up. I put very little backup equipment to work in the market. So that’s kind of the takeaway is not that concerned, really not concerned about additional horsepower.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Ole Slorer of Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

Ole Slorer - Morgan Stanley

Analyst

Sorry to [harpoon] on the sand this year, but some pretty staggering number of 50% up high and kind of what we have heard from other players. Do you think that’s something that deals with Halliburton’s customer base and the opposition in the market or do you think this is sort of an industry trend.

Jeff Miller

Management

Well I think it’s a little bit of both Ole, we are working with fairway players, we’ve always said that we make it a point to work with the most efficient operators in the market place so that we get the maximum utilization of the technology we are putting in the markets. So we are pumping more sand may be then competitors would not surprise me at all. But I do think longer term there will be a continued move towards better frac design thinking about our CYPHER technology how we design the best fracs to get the most production out of the wells. And I do believe that will lead us to a continuation of larger volumes.

Ole Slorer - Morgan Stanley

Analyst

So how are you scaling your infrastructure over the next say two years, and what are you planning for as far as your experience for 2015-’16 volume growth per well.

Jeff Miller

Management

Well let me think about it this way and in terms of what we are doing to address that. I think the volumes will continue to increase across the piece that may not stay at the same rate of increase. But from our standpoint, we’ll continue to invest in logistics and control the supply chain really from mine to the last well, from the mine to the last mile it gets us to two locations which looks like sand transloading and investment in rail cars. And these are things that overcome the logistics problems that seem to occur.

Mark McCollum

Management

Which we are certainly – Ole this is Mark just to add to that, from a contracting standpoint, we are working very hard to make sure that we’ve got all the sand dates that we are forecasting under contract. You know we’ll probably have 80% of our sand needs contracted this year it may go up to 90% next year. By contracting our sand, looking forward that allows us to shave off anywhere from 15% to 20% off of a spot of sand pricing. Doing the same on rail cars making sure that we’ve got plenty of capacity to run full unit trains, making sure that our transloading facilities each one are designed to offload complete unit trains. We are the only one so far I think to have managed to be able to really offload complete unit trains on sight on some of our location, and we are just going to look forward to where our customers are saying they are going to be running these volumes and make sure that the infrastructures onsite to be able to run as lean and efficient as we possibly can.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Bill Herbert of Simmons. Your line is now open. Bill Herbert – Simmons: Dave and Jeff to tackle the international question just a little bit differently. You guys have been consistent and you’ve been correct here with regard to just the pace of international expansion in general over the past several years, and when I look at your numbers for 2014 and juxtapose them against the preceding couple of years, you will likely end up somewhere kind of high-single digits year-over-year in ’14 versus kind of a low teens rate of expansion in ’13 and a 20% rate of expansion in ’12. So when we contemplate 2015 against the slate of opportunities and threats, at this juncture do you think you will do well to match your international rate of growth of this year or should we expect something less.

Jeff Miller

Management

So the answer to that was, we expect outgrow the market or outgrow our competitors in that space. There clearly are some headwinds when we look around the world right now. So the North Sea, Russia and Libya are clearly going to present headwinds, so quite encouraged around tailwinds in the Middle East and Asia Pacific. So when I think about growth, more specifically, it may be more of where capital gets put to work, may be than it has been in the past we talked a lot about deepwater, potential moderation as IOCs look at their capital budgets. But that said, the barrels come from somewhere and our expectation is that we may see more of that capital going in to development and mature field type of opportunities, and so for that reason I am still very encouraged about our ability to sustain growth in to 2015 that would be sort of similar to where we are now.

Bill Herbert - Simmons

Analyst

Okay, and the billion dollar project in Iraq, can you elaborate on that and also I guess to play devils’ advocate for a second, why would we even want that given the travails that the industry has witnessed over the past several years there.

Dave Lesar

Management

Let me answer that (inaudible) your first question was your [output] in reverse order. Why would we want that work? The fact is we are a lot smarter in that market than we’ve ever been. I think we were early in to that market and underestimated the risk around logistics and a few other things. We really like the contract the way this one looks in terms of terms and conditions. So feel good about that. The project itself I won’t name the project, but it’s a great project, its four rigs to drill, 120 wells over the next probably three years. We have invested heavily in putting our IPM team together and they are really executing it. So if I think how we execute on mature fields longer term, these are the kind of projects that we are going to do.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Brad Handler of Jefferies. Your line is now open.

Brad Handler - Jefferies

Analyst

May be just a quick one, your CapEx commentary I guess just a little bit lighter than second quarter commentary. What are you reflecting in that, is that a difficulty in spending some capital, and you will spend it in ’15 or are you actually shaving it relative to some of the commentary you’ve given us this morning.

Jeff Miller

Management

There’s not been any kind of a conservative effort to shave capital. I think its probably a little bit tighter forecast particularly as we look forward in some of the projects in the eastern hemisphere. It just takes some time off and times to get things approved and so it’s just timing. So you will see some of that coming in to probably the early part of 2015.

Brad Handler - Jefferies

Analyst

And then maybe an unrelated to follow-up and may be it’s a bit broader. If I look at your North America D&E revenues, over the nine months it’s sort of tracking the rig count, but I think it’s up 6% again nine months versus nine months and that’s relative to your horizontal rig count up 13% of US land any way or in the US. So I know there’ some other factors and may be you will fill that in to the answer. But how does – what the prognosis for how that is moving forward, are there some things that that might move in place that can accelerate D&E and they can align better with the horizontal rig count. Are there some factors that continue to suggest it will somewhat less than that?

Jeff Miller

Management

Yeah, and I think what you are seeing the current quarter is a bit of impact of the Gulf of Mexico. So we experienced loop currents like everybody else, and so we had a quite a bit slower activity in the Gulf of Mexico in the current quarter. But the well construction type activity is going to track generally speaking the rig count. But we are really encouraged as we look Q4 and beyond hit the loop currents behind us. We really like our share in the Gulf of Mexico right now, and it’s a growing share in the Gulf of Mexico.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Jim Wicklund of Credit Suisse. Your line is now open.

Jim Wicklund - Credit Suisse

Analyst

Eastern hemisphere production really hasn’t grown much in the last couple of years, and you guys are setting records in terms of operating income and revenues, and the US of course has been growing. Is the level of activity in the eastern hemisphere somewhat inelastic considering that we at least have to maintain production.

Jeff Miller

Management

Yes Jim, that’s the right answer. We are working harder and harder to produce arguably the same number of barrels, but those barrels are critical to number of economies around the world, and so when we look at sort of outlook; two things, one, the projects that are started have to continue. These are long duration type projects, they don’t turn on and off, and then secondly, there are a lot of mature field type activity that we know would lower exploration risk almost nil exploration risks. Those are projects that create terrific returns for our customers. So I think those two conspire to give you an inelastic sort of outlook.

Jim Wicklund - Credit Suisse

Analyst

And my follow-up, if I could, there’s so much the same for in North America. If the US unconventional production starts to decline on an unconventional hyperbolic, the amount of effort it takes to reverse that is huge. So how much activity in the US is needed to maintain not grow, but just maintain existing US production. You all have done that work?

Jeff Miller

Management

It’s quite a bit of the work that’s going on now, and I guess Jim the way I would answer that is, rather than give you a percentage, I would say that we know the decline rates on existing wells’ fairly dramatic. We know what it takes in order to continue to improve that. So I would expect that sustaining activity or sustaining production in North America takes a quite a big chunk of the work that’s going on now.

Dave Lesar

Management

Jim this is Dave, I would just add one thing and I think we refer to it as sort of the treadmill effect. What you want to do is get your customers in a basin where they’ve got sufficient amount of production that they have to get on the treadmill if you will to keep that production going, because that’s a great place for a service company to be, and a great place for the lowest cost most efficient service company to be, because helping the customers stay on that treadmill as it gets faster and the incline goes up is part of the whole hyper efficiency model that we try to offer up to our customers.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Kurt Hallead of RBC Capital Market. Your line is now open.

Kurt Hallead - RBC Capital Market

Analyst

I just had a follow-up question regarding the frac dynamics in US and you guys have discussed for many quarters now cost recovery process, it seems like that is now beginning to take hold. Just wondering what your perspective is terms of the incremental capacity that’s been added recently and whether or not some of that cost recovery can turn in to net pricing gains from an industry standpoint going forward.

Jeff Miller

Management

I can’t speak for the industry, but we’ll speak for Halliburton, and this is right in our wheel house. As you said recovering inflation has really been the order of the day, but as we go through the renewals and we sort of establish inflationary increases that keep us whole, very quickly we drop back in to our ability to manage cost and drive efficiency which should allow us of it does allow us to convert that inflation in to net pricing to the extent to which we compete at the market, and this precisely why we implement and have advantage and the logistics advantages we have Battle Red, Frac of the Future and that’s what conspires to deliver our exit rates in excess 20%.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Doug Becker of Bank of America/Merrill Lynch. Your line is now open. Doug Becker - Bank of America/Merrill Lynch: Mark you mentioned Europe, Africa/ CIS would be relatively flat in the fourth quarter, wanted to confirm that this is for revenues as well as margins. And then just get a little additional color on the growth, or just how that region grows revenues and margins next year given that North Sea revenues are likely down and it would be challenge just to keep Russian revenues flat.

Mark McCollum

Management

The answer is it does relate to both, yes revenues and margins. I mean typically you might see margins climb up a bit on the back of some level of direct sales, completion tool sales, things like that. But I think this quarter given where we are seeing some of the softness particularly the Norwegian sector, the North Sea in Q4 we are expecting it to be more flat to Q3 on both the revenue and the margin side. Doug Becker - Bank of America/Merrill Lynch: And for next year?

Mark McCollum

Management

It’s a little early to know for next year where it’s going to go. I mean obviously everything that we are trying to do across the board is to improve margins by cutting cost and things like that. As we look forward to next year, I think we do see some continued softness in the Norwegian sector and the North Sea. Russia as I said on the call will likely be, hopefully we are working to be flat year-over-year on an overall basis and we’ll have Libya’s down for the count right now, so it’s difficult to forecast when that will be. But when you look at other markets across Europe, Africa and CIS, you know the Caspian continues to do very well. When you look at sub-Saharan Africa itself, we had a very good year, we expect that will continue to grow on the back of mature field projects there. And Continental Europe for us is doing exceedingly well right now and we expect that that will go up as well. So as we go in to the year, while a still little bit early in the planning cycle, I would say we are still expecting it to be up and with that we are continuing to leverage incremental margins that are higher than current margins and so we are expecting margins to continue to decline in that area as well, even though it might be able, but less in the Middle East/Asia.

Operator

Operator

And our final question comes from Waqar Syed of Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.

Waqar Syed - Goldman Sachs

Analyst

Mark you’ve promised this 500 basis points kind of margin improvement through the course of the years from internal [miles] Frac of the Future and HALvantage. How much of that has already been realized and what is left for the coming years.

Mark McCollum

Management

I would tell you that our goal was to get a 200 basis point improvement in 2014. As of the day we have accomplished that objective. We had hoped that it would be for the entire year Q3, we didn’t quite get there, but we were very close. If it hadn’t been for some of logistics challenges that we had in the month of July, we would have indeed had hit that target. So as we look forward, we are comfortable with where we are at, but I can tell you that really on the face of Battle Red we still got a long way to go. All of our systems are in place, we’ve been working out a lot of the kinks in that process, but a lot of the upsights from that project are still in front of us. On the Frac to the Future side we are only still quarter deployed. We got a long way to go in terms of achieving that. So we are going to continue to work a very, very focused and determine lead to make sure that we capture all that upsight. So as we sit today, we feel very good about our progression and let us know from our standpoint no retreat from our objective of getting 500 basis points over the next couple of years.

Waqar Syed - Goldman Sachs

Analyst

And them I may have missed that before, but could you quantify the impact of Gulf of Mexico on the D&E margins and revenues for the quarter.

Mark McCollum

Management

I don’t know if we could quantify it overall for D&E, but I’d say that the Gulf of Mexico, the loop current issue probably caused us about a penny in the quarter.

Operator

Operator

At this time I would like to turn the call back to management for any closing comments.

Jeff Miller

Management

So thanks Sam. I want to thank everybody for your participation today and Sam you can go ahead and close the call.