Earnings Labs

Halliburton Company (HAL)

Q1 2015 Earnings Call· Mon, Apr 20, 2015

$40.65

+1.28%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

-1.67%

1 Week

+1.21%

1 Month

-6.02%

vs S&P

-7.46%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Halliburton First Quarter 2015 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 call is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today’s conference, Kelly Youngblood, Halliburton Vice President of Investor Relations. Sir you may begin.

Kelly Youngblood

Analyst

Good morning, and welcome to the Halliburton first quarter 2015 conference call. Today’s call is being webcast and a replay will be available on Halliburton's website for seven days. Joining me today are Jeff Miller, President; Christian Garcia, Acting CFO; and Mark McCollum, Chief Integration Officer. As mentioned on our last call, due to a longstanding business commitment, Dave Lesar, Halliburton's Chairman and CEO will not be present today but will return for our second quarter call. Today Jeff will be providing market commentary, followed by Christian who will discuss our quarterly financial results and finally, Mark will provide an update on our progress relating to the pending Baker Hughes acquisition. Some of our comments today may include forward-looking statements reflecting Halliburton's views about future events. These matters involve risks 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, 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. Unless otherwise noted, in our discussion today, we will be excluding the impact of these items. Additional details and reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are included in our first quarter press release which can be found on our website. Now I’ll turn the call over to Jeff.

Jeff Miller

Analyst

Thank you, Kelly, and good morning everyone. It was a challenging quarter for the service industry which translated into lower activity levels and widespread pricing pressure on a global basis as our customers responded to the impact of reduced commodity prices. For Halliburton, total company revenue of $7.1 billion was a 4% decline compared to the first quarter of 2014 relative to a 19% decline in the worldwide rig count, once again representing industry-leading revenue performance. Operating income declined 28% year-over-year to approximately $700 million, driven by North America and Europe/Africa/CIS. The industry experienced unprecedented decline in the North America drilling activity during the first quarter which significantly impacted our financial results. US rig count has dropped approximately 50% from the peak in late November and we’re still seeing activity fall off week to week although the pace of decline has slowed. Looking back over the last several major cycles, the speed of this downturn has been historically high. Because of the lack of available work driven by the rig count decline and the resulting overcapacity and available equipment chasing the work that remains, this is an extremely competitive market. We’re seeing substantial pricing pressure in all of our product lines and the significant amount of service capacity is looking for work. Service company behavior has fallen really into one of three buckets. First, those who are still running their businesses to make a profit and returns for their investors. Second, those who have decided that covering fixed cost is no longer important and therefore will take work to keep equipment busy and crews intact while operating at a loss. And third, those who are basically working at a price which covers only their cash costs. Ultimately neither model 2 or 3 is sustainable. And we believe capacity adjustments are…

Christian Garcia

Analyst

Thanks, Jeff and good morning everyone. I will begin with an overview of our first-quarter results. Total company revenue of $7.1 billion represented a 4% decline compared to the first quarter of 2014 while operating income declined 28% to approximately $700 million. As expected, we experienced typical first quarter sequential decline in revenue and margins due to the absence of high year-end software and product sales in the fourth quarter, as well as the normal first-quarter weather-related weakness in the North Sea, Russia and the Bakken. The decline this year was obviously exacerbated by the macro headwinds facing the industry. Now let me compare our geographic results to the first quarter of 2014. In the Eastern Hemisphere, first-quarter revenue was essentially flat and operating income increased 3% over prior year despite activity and pricing headwinds. We’ve consistently outperformed our competitors in terms of revenue growth over the last few years and we expect that this will be true for the first quarter once all of our peers have reported. In the Middle East, Asia region, revenue and operating income increased by 13% and 33% respectively. This excellent improvement was led by solid growth in integrated project activity in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and India that was partially offset by declines in Malaysia and Australia. Turning to Europe/Africa/ CIS, we saw first quarter revenue and operating income declined 16% and 41% respectively. Significant activity declines in Angola and the Norwegian sector of the North Sea along with currency and sanction related issues in Russia led to the lower results for the region. Latin America revenue and operating income increased by 10% and 22% respectively, primarily due to higher unconventional drilling in Argentina and increased activity in Venezuela. Moving to North America, revenue and operating income declined 9% and 54% respectively, relative to…

Mark McCollum

Analyst

Thanks, Christian and good morning. It’s good to be back on the call and I am excited to be able to provide you with an update on the significant progress we’re making towards closing the Baker Hughes acquisition. Let me begin with some of the more recent developments. On March 27, we announced that the transaction was approved by the shareholders of both Halliburton and Baker Hughes. We were pleased that nearly 99% of the shares voted at Halliburton Special Meeting voted in favor of the proposal and that more than 98% of the shares voted at Baker Hughes special meeting voted in favor of the transaction. These results were strong vote of confidence from our shareholders and we believe reflect their enthusiasm for the strategic and financial merits of the combination. When we announced the transaction last November, we discussed the likelihood of divestitures and our confidence that the combination would be achievable from a regulatory standpoint. On April 7, we announced that we will be marketing for sale our Fixed Cutter and Roller Cone Drill Bits, Directional Drilling, logging while drilling and measurement while drilling businesses. The 2014 revenue associated with these businesses was approximately $3.5 billion. We're very pleased with the strong interest that’s been expressed in these assets by potential buyers both within the energy industry as well as outside the industry, including a number of very capable financial sponsors. We will begin the marketing process in the coming weeks. The eventual sale of these businesses is subject to obtaining final approval of the pending Baker Hughes acquisition by the competition authorities reviewing the transaction. We expect there will likely be additional divestitures and we plan to provide updates at the appropriate time. However launching the sale of the drill bits and drilling businesses is a…

Jeff Miller

Analyst

Thanks, Mark. To sum it up, I want to thank the Halliburton team for avoiding distractions and maintaining their focus during the downturn. We’re excited about the pending Baker acquisition. We’re making great progress and believe we’re on track to close late in the second half of this year. It's a tough market out there and we’re not going to try to call a recovery. There are just not enough convincing data points out there at this time for me to make a conclusion. Instead we’re focused on the things we can control, things like rightsizing the business to current activity levels, preparing for the Baker integration by preserving our service delivery platform, collaborating with our customers to address their well costs, protecting market share with key customers, to turning down work when baseline economic thresholds don't make sense. Continuing to work with our supply chain to properly adjust costs to current market conditions, we made progress here but there's still more to get. And finally investing to preserve the long-term value of the franchise. So whatever scenario you think may happen, we have the people, technology and experience to outperform the market. We demonstrated this during previous cycles and have no reason to believe that this cycle will be any different. Now let’s open it up for questions.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from Jud Bailey from Wells Fargo.

Jud Bailey

Analyst

Good job on the quarter, impressive. A question on international, impressive performance in the margins better than what we were anticipating and as well as the second quarter guide. Could you give us a little insight, Jeff, as to what’s helping drive the margin performance there and help us think about going forward, are you seeing the impact of some of the pricing concessions in the 1 and 2Q margins internationally?

Jeff Miller

Analyst

Thanks, Jud. I am pleased as well with the results in the international market for us and I think it reflects a systematic buildout that we have been talking about in terms of strengthening that organization and it's really paying off. It also demonstrates execution of our mature field strategy which is really inherent in a lot of that activity. So I think it's consistent with our performance over the last couple of years and I expect to continue to outperform there. As we look at pricing, though, there is pricing pressures sort of throughout the marketplace and obviously the international markets are not immune to that.

Jud Bailey

Analyst

And then my follow-up is going to be on North America. You obviously comment on the second quarter for margins but can you help us think a little bit further maybe in the back half of the year? You noted in the release, you’re going to carry higher costs as you anticipate closing of the Baker transaction. Can you help us think about the impact on margins, maybe in the back half of the year as you carry higher cost than you would've anticipated against the market dynamics as price is going to be pretty tough in the back half of the year?

Christian Garcia

Analyst

Jud, this is Christian. Let me take that. So you have two questions, one is what happens to North America margins in the second half of the year. We’re not going to provide guidance as Jeff talked about in his prepared remarks, the healing process starts when activity stabilizes and then pricing stabilizes, and then we will see the benefits of the adjustments in cost structure that we have taken. So don't know what it is but really it’s a guess on when activity stabilizes. In terms of the service delivery platform, the costs that we are keeping in anticipation of the Baker acquisition, first of all, those costs that we are keeping are global in nature but it is certainly more impactful to North America. There are several examples of those buckets of costs. One is our footprint. We operate in about 20 districts in North America and with that type of downturn that we’re seeing – as severe as we are seeing, we would consider consolidating some of them. The other one is management of organizations. So we have a management layer between the districts and the areas. We would probably have considered collapsing them. And the third, as you know we've been building our logistics capability in the last few years, sand plants where we have transloading facilities in all of the basins, or rail car network, we would have probably dismantled portions of it as activity declined. However we are keeping all of those because we're expecting the increased volumes from Baker and in terms of the margin impact of this, I can say it would probably range between 200 to 300 basis points.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And your next question comes from Angie Sedita from UBS.

Angie Sedita

Analyst

Congrats on a good quarter. Mark, I thought it was impressive, your comments on the Baker deal as far as the $2 billion in synergies. I would have thought with the pressure on revenues that the $2 billion in synergies could have moved a bit but can you talk about that a little bit as well as the accretion timeline? Has that changed at all in your mind?

Mark McCollum

Analyst

So I will address the last question first, Angie. The accretion timeline hasn’t adjusted. Obviously everything is contingent on us getting the transaction closed. We can’t get after any of the integration actions until the closing happens. But I think to address your first question, there are couple things to note. First of all, we continue to target internally as synergy cases beyond the two, I mean in order to achieve it, you’ve got to reach high and so we're looking at every single thing that we could go after. That's why we remain confident. In the downturn itself, certainly there are actions that are being taken both by Halliburton and Baker Hughes that impact employee counts, facility closures and lot of other things, some of which you would say likely would be something that would be in the synergy case itself. But the differences is that most of these changes are being done in response to the market downturn, and the question ultimately comes to, okay, when the market comes back, what happens to those costs, in order for the synergy case to be ultimately captured, we’ve got to make process changes, procedural changes, changes in the way that we do business between the two companies that ultimately captures those synergies, so that when the business does come back, the cost associated with those activities does not. And so that’s why the plans that we are making on the integration continue to really drive after the fundamental process and procedural changes behind it to make sure that we secure those synergies, not just for the current period but forever.

Angie Sedita

Analyst

And then along with that as far as the follow up, the cash from the asset sales related to the merger, is the first priority still buying back stock or has that priority changed?

Christian Garcia

Analyst

Really nothing has changed, Angie. The magnitude of the buyback will always be dependent on how much cash we generate during this downturn, the proceeds from the divestitures and so forth. But our priority has not changed.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from Scott Gruber from Citi.

Scott Gruber

Analyst

There has been a lot of discussion recently on this refract potential in the US; you mentioned it, Schlumberger mentioned it. I am curious as to your take on the overall potential, is this really a marginal source of incremental demand where we’re just looking for a silver lining given the overall activity reductions or could this really be a material source of incremental frac demand here and is this trend primarily technology driven or is it being more driven by your customers responding to the cyclical downturn?

Jeff Miller

Analyst

Hi Scott, the refrac economics are attractive both for our clients and certainly for Halliburton. We’ve been refracking in essence for a couple of years and we actually see this as a natural extension with the maturing of unconventional wells over time. Our Halliburton technology was designed specifically to address better production which includes how to refrac, so our diversion technology around AccessFrac does that spectacularly as well as CYPHER was designed with refract in mind from the standpoint of not only at the well level but also identifying candidates at a field level. I would say what has changed in terms of giving it energy right now, more energy is the current market and access to capital. So I think those are going together. I do believe we will see growth there, and I think that growth will be great for Halliburton.

Scott Gruber

Analyst

And then an unrelated follow up, one of the primary debates amongst investors currently is recovery potential. You mentioned the responsiveness of shales to an improvement in commodity price. How do you think about the potential for your North American revenues to return toward a 2014 level? Is this an unreasonable assumption on a multiyear basis, how do you think about the potential for your international revenues to rebound to that same 2014 type level?

Jeff Miller

Analyst

Well, look, the North America market is again one of the most adaptable markets and we expect that, that kind of growth and improvement will be acting as the swing producer. And so I see the potential over time as we described the past recovery being sort of activity stabilizes, then pricing and then input costs catch up but overall the ability for North America to expand is certainly there and if we kind of look back it served us intensity in North America. If we go back to 2008, our rig counts arguably flat with 2014 today but our revenues over that same period of time have doubled. So I expect that the focus on making better wells which is right in our wheelhouse will continue to be important.

Operator

Operator

And your next question comes from James West from Evercore ISI Group.

James West

Analyst

Mark, quick question for you on the divestitures. Obviously you’re going to be marketing these assets very soon. Was curious, so one, how you think about achieving kind of maximum value given these are very high quality assets that are all for grabs now? And then two, how quickly do you think we or the market will hear about who the likely buyers are of these assets?

Mark McCollum

Analyst

Those are great questions, James. Obviously in this kind of a market, you’re always a little worried about the process but we've been really excited as I said in my prepared remarks about the level of interest that’s been shown in these assets. I mean these types of assets only come on the market once in a generation. And so we’ve just had a tremendous outpouring of response to very quality potential buyers both what you consider strategic buyers inside the industry, outside the industry, global-based as well as very capable financial sponsors have looked at it. We’re going to run a process for each business for the two – or for the ones that have been announced, we will run two separate processes. We will run a process over the top of them, in case there are buyers that are interested in all of the businesses in combination but we think by doing it in that way, that gives adequate and complete opportunity for anybody who is interested and participate and to come and to stake their claim. The process for themselves generally will stretch, I am going to guess about five months. So it’s going to be in the later part of the summer before that we will probably have identified buyers. Before we can really make any kind of analysis, we’re going to have to go back to have conversations with Department of Justice and other competition authorities who are looking at this to make sure that the buyers that have been identified will be acceptable to them. Remember that the process is not just divestiture for the sake of getting proceeds. The process here is to make sure that we’re maintaining competition in the marketplace and so they'll have an interest in making sure that the identified buyers are going to be able to make sure that those businesses will be sustainable in the marketplace, will be viable competitors once the process is completed.

James West

Analyst

And then just unrelated question from me, maybe Jeff or Christian, on the supplier side, your supplier side, you’re getting some benefit, it sounds like from your sand, maybe chemicals and truck and things like that, have you seen the full benefit yet and will that show up in the second quarter? And what’s the magnitude of kind of the reduction in the cost from your major suppliers?

Jeff Miller

Analyst

Thanks, James. I am not going to talk about the amount, lot of those discussions are ongoing but we are making progress. I would – discounts are still better the closer that they are to the wellhead and by that means they have better visibility of really what the full impact of the current downturn might look like. As we work with our suppliers, we’re clearly consolidating those suppliers and we’re doing more volume and we will continue to do more volume with the vendors that work with us to lower our costs.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And your next question comes from Bill Herbert from Simmons & Company.

Bill Herbert

Analyst

Mark, the divestiture process once again. Are you able to shed any light as to what the after-tax consequences will be associated with the sale of these businesses? Should there be a tax burden associated with the sale of these businesses or how do you think about that? I mean it’s contingent upon price of course but I'm curious as to what we could expect from an after-tax standpoint not on number specifically but conceptually?

Mark McCollum

Analyst

Conceptually, yes. There will be an after-tax impact of these as they are -- we do expect them to sell well above book value. And so there will be a tax consequence of that. We don't know what that's going to be at this point in time, even if I did, not sure I would tell you – I would have to kill you. That is just joking but I think that – but we do expect these businesses to go for a really good value. I mean I think anyone who is interested is going to have to bring their A game, considering how many people are interested in these projects and so they are going to be pretty traditional asset sales that will have an after-tax impact themselves. But I think at this point in time we still fundamentally believe in economics of the transaction as we outlined, if you know, at the time that we announced the overall deal. We believe that's intact and our view is that there will be adequate proceeds to be able to have cash at the closing to help Christian do what he needs to do.

Bill Herbert

Analyst

And then secondly, Jeff, with regard to the inventory of drilled but uncompleted wells, are you getting any visibility from customers with regard to telegraphing when they’re going to start monetizing these wells? Are there any discussions about them getting going in the second half of the year or what pricing thresholds they are contemplating that will result in the greenlight going off?

Jeff Miller

Analyst

I mean they lack the clarity in terms of the outlook as much as sort of anyone does in the market right now. So I don't think they’ve even concluded around the timing, though it would certainly be at a point in time that they see commodity prices rising as opposed to where they are. And I think around the dock inventory, of course a couple of comments. First, it represents we think about 4000 wells, that’s against the backdrop of 55,000 wells that were drilled last year. So that's one thought. And then the second is, it’s really a limited subset of customers that can even afford to talk about drilled but uncompleted wells at least as a practice. So from our standpoint, without precision around the timing it certainly looks like deferred revenue for Halliburton and arguably when it occurs it will accelerate sort of tightening and recovery.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And your next question comes from Brad Handler from Jefferies & Co.

Brad Handler

Analyst

Thanks guys. Maybe a couple of related questions, related to the North American market. But just first your guidance, want to make sure I heard that. I think you said mid-single-digit North American margins in 2Q that's despite not having a couple or more hundred basis points relative to cost savings and that's include – but you’re factoring in effective pricing is continuing to presumably be full quarter worth of pricing declines and the like. So first of all, I guess, is the mid single digit, did we hear that correctly?

Christian Garcia

Analyst

That is correct. So Brad, as I pointed out in my prepared remarks, activity continues to decline, price continues to be under pressure and therefore margins go flock down to the mid-single-digits. So it’s an all-in including the elevated cost structure that we have.

Brad Handler

Analyst

Can you maybe just comment a little bit on, in Q1 maybe order of magnitude activity versus price realization combined for that minus 25% sequential performance, can you split it up for us a little bit?

Christian Garcia

Analyst

So just in terms of activity versus price, if you just look at the progression of our results in the first quarter, January held up actually better than the March as you can expect, the exit rate was much weaker than where we started. Overall in terms of our activity that our frac stage count is actually down just in the mid-single digits. That would imply that this tremendous amount of pricing that we were impacted by. So we think it as we go into Q2, the activity will continue to come down. Don't know what it might be, as I pointed out, right now rig count is down about 30% and the decline continues. But we will continue to have pricing pressure.

Jeff Miller

Analyst

Maybe just a follow-up as well, so clients are really myopic on price right now and as data points are continuing to deteriorate, we obviously also talk about the falling rig count, service capacity sorting itself out. But at this point in time as I said in my prepared remarks, simply don't believe that this is sustainable in terms of pricing. And so it's a point as service capacity sorts itself out we clearly expect clients to return to making better wells which is right in our wheelhouse.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And your next question comes from David Anderson from Barclays.

David Anderson

Analyst

Jeff, you talked about two of the three camps of service companies out there based on unsustainable models. And as we think about kind of the new equilibrium performance for the rig count, we know there’s going to be a lot of excess capacity. I was wondering if you could talk a bit about how you think about attrition levels in the pressure pumping market? I mean how long can these guys continue working – do you think they are weighing on capital infusions there and I guess I am also just kind of secondarily wondering how you think about normalized margins in North America going forward? Do you think that it could be lower than the past just to keep those guys on the sideline? Just kind of curious how you are thinking about this as it develops?

Jeff Miller

Analyst

Let me reframe that a little bit and think in terms of sort of capacity in general. If we look back before we look ahead, capacity comes out pretty quickly and actually when it comes out it doesn't generally get back to work. And that is – and so if we look at the activity today and how hard the equipment is working to the extent that equipment is getting burned up at prices that don't make sense and new capital is not spent to replace it. Then it’s not necessarily a linear attrition of equipment. What happens is it sits on the sidelines until it's needed and then it's not there, and we really saw that happen last year when capacity was taken up very quickly. And so I don't expect it to be any different going forward, which is really underpins our investment in the Q-10 and our ability to operate more sustainably at a lower cost.

David Anderson

Analyst

And then are you thinking about kind of normalized margins yet, is it too early to be talking about that? We used to talk about kind of mid-to high 20% margin. But just wondering if you’re thinking that sort of have to be a little bit lower to keep that capital from coming back in the market, we’ve been in this just to kind of avoid this cycle we seem to be constantly in?

Jeff Miller

Analyst

I don't think so. I mean the path to the 20s and beyond – I mean all of that still works, because that’s in our sort of design of service and execution model, but because things are so myopic today on price, this isn’t really the time to have – we can’t act on that meaningfully. But as Christian mentioned, as activity stabilizes then healing begins and at that point certainly pricing and input costs catch-up and we’re back on the path. But we have to get to some stabilized level of activity and that's where the efficiency model that we execute really shines it on.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And your next question comes from Jim Crandell from Cowen.

Jim Crandell

Analyst

Thank you. Mark, is there a scenario where in order to close the Baker Hughes deal that you also need to divest wireline, fluids, the chunk of completions, offshore cementing, maybe some stimulation vessels?

Jeff Miller

Analyst

Jim, as I said in my prepared remarks, we know that there will be some additional divestitures to do. We don't exactly know what those are going to be. That’s going to be something that will be found out as we have discussions with the competition authorities both Department of Justice as well as elsewhere in the world and I just can't even speculate at this point in time what those other divestitures might be.

Jim Crandell

Analyst

Mark, if it’s all of the ones that I said, is there a level where you questioned doing the deal?

Jeff Miller

Analyst

There is not a level that we question doing the deal. We still fundamentally believe in everything that we see that the level of divestitures will be substantially below the $7.5 billion threshold that was laid out in the merger agreement. So we’re still operating well within that level and no, there is not a level at this point that we would walk away from the deal.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And your next question comes from Kurt Hallead from RBC Capital Markets.

Kurt Hallead

Analyst

So just wanted to get general sense, I mean guys, again over time done really well obviously on the revenue front. Just trying to get a sense on the dynamics internationally from pricing and on the margin dynamic, the decrementals from here and when you might start to see some stabilization in the international markets?

Jeff Miller

Analyst

Thanks, Kurt. The international markets are very competitive and at this point all our clients are asking for discounts. The reality is there’s just not a lot to give. If we go back to 2008 that international markets really never recovered certainly entirely from that. But the short answer is yes we are seeing pricing pressure. Clients are asking for discounts. Though what I would say a better leading edge discussion is around efficiency and contracting which is how to better work with Halliburton to take system costs out of drilling. And so I would say we’re not having – at the beginning of those discussions were truly internationally, that's a key component of the path forward to for our customers.

Christian Garcia

Analyst

And Kurt, let me comment on international decrementals. We’re still targeting that our decrementals international to be better than in 2009. And one of the reasons why we feel that way is because of how our margins behaved in Q1. As you know, internationally our decrementals usually are the harshest in the first quarter. Historically it’s 45% plus but if you look at our Q1 decrementals it was half that historic rate. Plus we have strong incrementals on a year-on- year basis, growth in both revenue and operating income international. So every quarter is going to be a battle but we’re starting -- where we stand right now in terms of achieving the objective of having lower decrementals than in 2009.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And your next question comes from Ole Slorer from Morgan Stanley.

Ole Slorer

Analyst

Christian, just give a little bit more – shed a little bit more light on the $1.2 billion charges. You mentioned [indiscernible] and how much was the working capital?

Christian Garcia

Analyst

Ole, we couldn’t hear you but I think you are looking for the savings from the charge. Okay, so let me just take a stab at that. We are taking multiple actions, including right-sizing our infrastructure, we reduced our headcount and lowering our supplier costs and obviously this has been a global effort. Right now our estimate for the savings from these actions is about $1 billion annually but as Jeff pointed out that and as I pointed out in the prepared remarks, we’re not done. We will continue to take a hard look at our operations in the second quarter and we will continue to make adjustments.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And your next question comes from Dan Boyd from BMO Capital Markets.

Dan Boyd

Analyst

Hi, thanks. Just wanted to really clarify something because there's a lot of talk of the backlog of wells building up that you mentioned. But then at the same time you mentioned that your frac stages were only down -- what was that -- mid single digits sequentially but the rig count was down 27% sequentially. So can you help me understand what's going on there? Are you just gaining that much market share or is the backlog of wells not all that abnormally high?

Jeff Miller

Analyst

Well, there's always some level of uncompleted wells in any market because of pad drilling. So if you kind of look at the numbers of pads, generally speaking, the rigs will drive uncompleted wells sort of systematically into the marketplace. So but we typically see a flight to quality in a market like this and so as we've said we are defending our customer base. We focus on the fairway players and particularly those players that value our efficiency model. As I've said we won't work at silly prices but our strategy to be the sustainable lowest-cost per barrel of oil operator holds true. And I think we're seeing it play out.

Dan Boyd

Analyst

Yes, impressive market share gains. And then you've touched on this a number of times in the call, and just talking about industry attrition and pressure pumping equipment and yet it happens typically through cannibalization of the fleets I think as you touched on. But can you just maybe give us a guess as to how much attrition we might expect if we stayed at current market levels?

Jeff Miller

Analyst

It's really too early in the cycle for me to give you a number, but let's think about it this way. While the total market volumes of pumping are down year on year or certainly sequentially are down, the volume per well is up 12% sequentially, which means that the equipment that's out there is working harder than it's ever worked. There may be less of it working but working harder, which says that stacked equipment does get cannibalized unless people are making capital investments in equipment. So I think we're going to see a similar attrition sort of behavior that we saw through the last cycle. End of Q&A

Operator

Operator

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

Jeff Miller

Analyst

Thank you Danielle. I guess I'd like to wrap up the call with just a couple of comments. As we've said while we work through the current market, we'll continue to control costs to protect our margins while playing offense to protect our market position with key clients. As we look through the cycle we'll continue to invest in those capabilities to deliver our long-term strategies in unconventionals, deepwater and mature fields. I'm confident that our people, technology and experience will outperform the market and emerge as we have in the past a stronger company in the recovery. So look forward to speaking with you next quarter.