Eugene Isenberg
Analyst · Weeden & Company
Thanks, again. Again, welcome to our conference call for the second quarter. I want to thank everybody for participating. As usual, we have posted to the Nabors' website a series of slides that contain details about the performance of the various segments of the company. Please refer to these as we proceed. Also, I think, Denny and the business unit has put together a pretty comprehensive earnings release, and I suggest you refer to that too. Overall, operating income for the quarter was $125 million, which is in more or less in line with the consensus. Earnings per share of $0.19 was essentially in-line with the consensus, which $0.19 includes an approximate $0.04 add-back in items which we feel are appropriately excluded to get a more meaningful non-GAAP product, and I'll go into that a little bit later. If I had to summarize my overall feeling for this quarter, I feel that we were involved in what -- pretty close to a perfect storm for our business. A confluence of events that all had significant and negative impacts on our business. And I was frankly pleasantly surprised at the result in the quarter because it was better than I thought it would have been given the external factors. And I think the outlook for the year is better than I would have thought it was, again, given the external factors that constitute the kind of the perfect storm. Let me go through those very briefly. We had a pretty low-priced for natural gas and still it's a little higher, but still pretty low. And this affected our growing activities in Canada and the Lower 48 and even more so, the valuation of company since we're perceived to be a land gas-centric drilling company. And it obviously also affected of the perception of the value of our E&P holdings, which I'll also talk about a little later. Also, the overall worldwide economy is not as robust as it could be, and probably will be, and that influenced the overall demand for hydrocarbons, which didn't affect us, which didn't help us, which hurt us. Also, specifically to our business, which also affected others, there was a confusion in funding for PEMEX in Mexico, which net-net resulted in lack of funding for drilling which funding has to be -- it's internal to Mexico. It's between the government and PEMEX and that sort of thing. But that has to be resolved in the near future, and some say that it's sort of starting to be resolve. But that has had a major negative impact on our operating income obviously from international, and I'll get into that specific later. We also had a pretty meaningful drop-off in our oil-directed drilling in Saudi Arabia, which also had a, probably, almost an equal negative impact last year to this year on international's operations. And we don't see short-term growth in natural gas as they're still cutting back oil drilling and we won't see it increase until they do, and this isn't yet offset by natural gas drilling. And finally, the spill in the Gulf, which surprisingly since we're, "primarily a land drilling operation", has had a negative impact on our offshore operations, which will have a surprising negative impact on our Nabors Offshore operation, which I'll get into when we talk about it. Let me talk briefly, again, about the non-GAAP EPS and talk about the factors that we think are relevant in adjusting from GAAP to non-GAAP. Let me also emphasize that this is just our view and pretty obviously, each and every investor can adjust these numbers and not adjust them as they go across. The things that we included in the adjustment refers to a $5.1 million foreign exchange loss, which we don't think is continuing and not appropriate to our continuing operation reflection. The next item is a loss of $3.6 million. This is sort of hard to understand accounting phenomenon where basically we have debt that's due in 2008, 2011, and we buy the debt back at yields which are no lower than 2% to 2.5% against cash, which we're saving conservatively, holding conservatively at under 0.2% interest. So it's a deal we would do all day long since buying this is just as good as treasuries for us because we're certain we're going to pay it off. Nevertheless, the accounting thing has this value to something well below the 2.5% yield, in other words, we're carrying it on the books at a real low number, which doesn't reflect the market. And then when we buy it at a low-market rate with a higher-than-market yield, it's still below the carrying value and therefore, we have to book a loss, which is not terribly logical. Next, we incurred a $2.3 million loss in prior years, which were not appropriate to this period and we're adjusting for that tax adjustment, and that one's specifically tax. We shouldn't have that problem on an ongoing basis. We should get it right the first time. But it's a $2.3 million are not appropriate for this particular quarter. And finally, we have an elimination of $1.1 million in operating income, rig income derived from working for our oil and gas joint venture, specifically the [indiscernible]. And this number is going to be bigger for the whole year [indiscernible]. If we make $2 million [indiscernible] for NFR, let's say, where the accounting works half of that sale since we own 50% of the NFR is sales to ourselves and has to be eliminated from GAAP profit reporting, and we take it in a reduction and depreciation and depletion over a longer period of time. But for every single practical purpose, we get the income, we get everything except the accounting that we're adjusting for that in this thing. So that's the story there. Let me turn quickly to the business units. I think the NDUSA, write up in the quarterly, in the release that you already have, is pretty comprehensive. I think, just let me briefly summarize. The rig count today is 179. We figured the year we're looking to average around 174. We're projecting next year modest increase over that was 192. And in spite of the fact that we are projecting that we'll end this year with a rig count of around 190, so that's a modest increase this year, and even more modest increase for next year. But hopefully, time will tell, and we may be able to improve that. Overall, as I've said before, our projections for this year have been ratcheting up the internal ones anyway. We started at a pretty low number, maybe a $130 million projection of our operating income for this year. And every time we looked at it but frankly, it's gotten better, so we're now projecting $250 million operating income for this year and a higher number for next year. Where it's conceivable, we will get the number we had in 2009. I think the other important thing to note here is that we're getting new build operations. So I think last time we told you we had four new builds for the Bakken and, I think, since then, we did five new builds. PACE had new builds, we have three functional equivalent of new builds in terms of economics with probably even higher return on those really upgraded SCR rigs. And I'd be surprised if we don't have at least five incremental additional new builds to announce by next quarter. So the rigs are doing really well and the proof of the pudding is in customer acceptance. Obviously, we're really dominant in the shale plays, which is important. And we went from, I don't know, probably up 30%, 40% in our rigs working in the shales, the liquid from shales since last quarter. Let me switch to NDIL [Nabors Drilling International Ltd.]. We previously forecast our international operations rebounded from the drop we experienced last quarter. Operating income of $65 million represents a nice increase over the $52 million or $53 million operating income in the first quarter. Rig count has increased, margins essentially the same. Improving activity with multiple start ups in Colombian, Kazakhstan. To get to the net cutting here, the real drop in income was in Mexico as previously described the financial conditions. I think, operationally, in terms of quality of rigs, kind of rigs that are needed for PEMEX, we're still in good shape. And we're not disproportionately adversely impacted, except that it's an important market for us. So in plain simple terms, we went down probably $40 million, $45 million in operating income last year to this year because of the funding of [indiscernible]. They'll get cleared. To me, it isn't crystal-clear how quickly we'll go back to where we were even when it is funded. But we will definitely go up. Similarly, in Saudi, we almost had a comparable loss, which explains some excuses, but it clearly explains of the drop in international. We also did have probably $40 million or $50 million solid drop in operating income year-to-year. And we probably have 11 stacked rigs there now. We had hope, and are still hoping, that [indiscernible] and make up for it. But that's happened a little slow. So basically that explains why we're down and it's an industry thing. And it hits us, probably a little bit more important, because Saudi and Mexico were more important to us than the average industry. And I think we'll, over a longer period, get back there. But it's not going to be a big recovery. Nabors Well-Servicing, we're doing pretty well there. I think the most significant factor there is just the high crude price is finally manifesting itself in demand for workover services, which is also therefore manifesting itself in pricing. So I think that there have been a number of prices instituted by us and others, and that they're continuing to come into play. A lot of these things require a 30-day notices and a lot of price increases are tentative depending on what other guys are -- basically, there's a strong pricing trend underlying the activity that's attributable to the relatively high crude price. And in some cases, we're leading price increases, in some we're following, but that's the most positive sign. So basically, what that means is, that we're going to have probably a strong second half in 2010 but I think in 2011, the stage is set for even a more robust recovery and workover. Nabors Offshore, in a sense, we'll probably do something -- we did about $8 million this quarter. Even this quarter, however, was impacted $2 million to $3 million by the Gulf spill. And the Gulf spill manifests itself in two ways, really, one -- I mean, one we have the moratorium and the other we have a delay in getting permits to drill. And whether it's a moratorium or otherwise, or there are no permits to drill, they're not going to drill. And we have six rigs on platforms on SPAR's that are adversely impacted. And some of the jack-ups even aren't working as they might have with permits. So basically, if the worse-case scenario, I think, is down $25 million for the year compared to what it would have been without the spill and I think there are hopefully signs that this might be mitigated before the end of the year, but a good in spite the end of the year, we'll do close to $10 million instead of $35 million this year. And next year, I think, we'll do $35 million, plus we still have a bunch of things that we refer to before with one SPAR platform work that will manifest itself in late 2011. And I'll talk a little bit more about that later' Nabors Alaska, I guess, it's a declining field. We have not been successful in new builds there for BP. And BP is also -- BP right at the moment controls vast majority of the drilling. The operator are also drilling. And they're cutting back and Nabors was not super successful with BP. But we do have probably the best tool for the future on the Slope and that's a coil tubing unit. And this is something, in other words, this year is down from last year. Next year, probably will be down as well. Not probably, will be down as well. We still have decent returns on capital employed. But beyond that, I think some time next year, we get one or two of these coil tubing units, which are not only good for what they're doing now, but they're super good for the shallow high-viscosity drilling that's going to be going on forever on the Slope, while crude price stays even below where it's at now but at a good level when they figure out how to optimize the extraction of those. Anyway, I think the outlook is short-term, down, but long-term, I think, considering it's a defining field, we're in relatively good shape. Canada, again, this unit has lousy seasonal quarter, and we have a loss. But the loss was less than the obviously, less than the operating profit in the first quarter, but less -- a smaller loss than we expected. So things are doing better than we expected. We'll do better this year. This is the unit that had made as much as $180 million operating income. And I think we have a shot at that, but we won't have a shot at that until gas prices are six-ish or better. Horn River still remains a super bright spot for us in Canada. Oil and Gas, I think the major interest in Oil and Gas is what our plans are to monetize i.e. convert these assets, which haven't been doing us much good on a stock-price basis in cash. And I guess, to brief [ph], the situation is, we're three months closer than we were last quarter to number one, going public with NFR. I'll repeat that story briefly. NFR is joint venture, 50-50 with us and First Reserve. We have roughly the lower half $500,000 [indiscernible] invested in it. We expect to go public in less than three quarters, some time in the first quarter next year or second quarter next year. Although if the situation permits, we're prepared to pull the trigger on it. We think right now, we have three or four competent investment banks showing us that unless the world goes to hell in a hand basket, we'll have the equity knot of $2 billion, which means $1 billion for us. And I said, we invested about $500 million. The GAAP, SEC dictated fixed impairments to make our holdings around $115 million, $120 million. So that's essentially where it was before, but things are looking a bit -- our well results are really good there, which is going to help the IPO. The second area, which is largely the first area to actually generate cash is Colombia, where we have our own stuff, the kind of Nabors around [ph] on stuff. Now we have E&P, we have 50-50 joint venture with First Reserve. That stuff together is, we're going to market it together, that's about 7,000 barrels a day of oil and a lot pizzazz. There's universal interest in that. And I still expect to sell it before the end of the year. But we now have completed our drilling, which we had completed the dry season drilling last quarter. And we know what we got and what we can sell. In other words, we've increased the reserves, we cut the actual more producibility of our production to sell, and we have more sizzle on discoveries. I think the final area is Canada where essentially, which happened since last time as we interviewed, reviewed a number of bankers and we're close to finalizing a deal with the bank and we obviously want a bank who knows the area really well and has real good connections with, we think, the logical buyer, which is the Far East buyer with the liquefied natural gas interests and connections. I think the other point on this is we are considering now, this is purely accounting, but it would help maybe present it, interpret it as the some of our data, some of our E&P operations can be at this point legitimately considered discontinued operations and therefore, separate it. And the one that is going to be continuing 100%, which is NFR, they're doing really well. It's hidden and secured by our investments in the other one's, which we have -- they're really investments, like seismic is really an investment. We [indiscernible] to write it off. Our other segments are doing really well and I'd say, Canrig, in particular, is doing well with its technology and that's manifesting itself in not only profit for Canrig and sales of top drives in the market and stuff like that, but also in enhancing the overall saleability of Nabors' rigs. In summary, let me talk briefly about -- our financing is in pretty good shape. We have essentially $900 million in cash and equivalent. All of that is not available. Some of it -- a lot of it's tied up. We expect to get some more. But basically, we have enough in the way of cash and earnings over and above relative to CapEx, that we are in pretty decent shape to -- we really wanted to squeeze CapEx. We did come close to paying up the whole $1.4 million remaining in our debt due in May of 2011. Basically, we've taken that debt down from $2.75 million, which it was to $1.4 million. And I think net-net over the last year and a half, we borrowed the $1.25 million in January of '09 to make sure we didn't have a jam. And we paid out net $1.125, plus another approximately $500 million of debt. Let me say, I'm bullish, even -- I was always reasonably bullish long term, but now I'm bullish intermediate term and maybe even shorter. Let me go through just a few of the points that lead me to that. I think we have the best infrastructure internationally than anybody has. I mean if you look at it in terms of leading driller in Saudi and biggest private position in Algeria, biggest driller in Yemen, et cetera. And when we get together where we want to get by introducing and integrating, say our line existing operations into that logging and if we are ultimately successful in broadening our scope, I think, intermediate term, that will be a big plus. USA-based rigs are doing really well. I have two things I look out as one proof of the pudding in the orders and we're doing super well on new build orders. And the rest of it is, what the most discriminating buyers are doing. I mean 100% of Shell, BP, in the last three, four years, we've had essentially 100% of the incremental work and overall, we have probably 80% of their work. We did, on Exxon, we did probably the most sensitive well drilled in the last year, so which is Point Thomson and that -- in Alaska, and that was a monster, I'd say, success. And we're doing the Papua New Guinea, both of them, which they seem really happy about even though we haven't delivered the rig yet or spudded anything, but I think that's important. I think that will manifest itself with a increased utilization in the states where it hadn't been. We, frankly, broke H&P's monopoly on platforms and SPAR rigs with a major consumer, which is, I think, we've talked about the Fil Mosby [ph] where we clearly had the best technology. And I hope not the very best price and we'd have the best technology. So in general I think, if I look at what is fundamental, the important for long term, I'd have a basis for optimism and that covers what I have prepared to say. Thank you.