Welcome to the first quarter earnings conference call for fiscal 2017. My name is John, and I'll be your operator for today's call. [Operator Instructions] Please note the conference is being recorded. And I will now turn the call over to Joe Bennett.

Thank you, John. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Tidewater's First Quarter Fiscal 2017 Earnings Results Conference Call for the period ended June 30 2016. I'm Joe Bennett, Tidewater's Executive Vice President and Chief Investor Relations Officer, and I want to thank you for your interest in Tidewater. With me this morning on the call are our President and CEO, Jeff Platt; Jeff Gorski, our Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer; Quinn Fanning, our Executive Vice President and CFO; and Bruce Lundstrom, our Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary. We will follow our usual conference call format. Following our opening formalities, I'll turn the call over to Jeff for his initial comments to be followed by Quinn's financial review. Jeff will then provide some final wrap-up comments and we will then open the call for questions. During today's conference call, we may make certain comments that are forward-looking and not statements of historical fact. I know that you understand that there are risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the company's actual future performance to be materially different from that stated or implied by any comments that we may make during today's conference call. Additional information concerning the factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those stated or implied by the forward-looking statements may be found in the Risk Factors section of Tidewater's most recent Form 10-K. With that, I'll turn the call over to Jeff.

Thank you, Joe, and good morning to everyone. Yesterday, after the markets closed, we reported a net loss for our first quarter of fiscal 2017 ended June 30, 2016, of $89.1 million or $1.89 per share, inclusive of a few items highlighted in our quarterly earnings press release. The current quarter includes an after-tax noncash asset impairment charge of $0.77 per share, along with after-tax foreign exchange losses per share of $0.06, due primarily to the devaluation of the Nigerian nairas and a $0.02 foreign exchange loss included in the company's equity and net losses of unconsolidated companies related to our Angolan joint venture Sonatide. Excluding these items, our per-share loss for the quarter would have been $1.04. Quinn will also provide you in a minute a few additional items that had an impact on the current quarter's numbers. First quarter's loss was greater than the loss we reported in our March quarter and a significant decline from the year-ago quarter, where we reported a small adjusted profit per share. Our results reported for this quarter compared to the year ago quarter is a reflection of the very different offshore vessel market in which we are currently operating. With this year, with this quarter's revenues of $168 million being 45% below those earned in the year ago quarter. Sequentially, this quarter's revenues were 9% lower than in the March quarter. We have noted that a number of oil field service executives seem to have called a market bottom in recent weeks. No doubt, there were positive and less positive data points that one could point to, but we generally remain cautious in regards to the likely pace of an offshore recovery. Rather than speculating about the future direction of commodity prices, we are focused on trying to better understand the…

Thank you, Jeff. Good morning, everyone. As you know, we issued our earnings press release and filed our quarterly report on Form 10-Q through the EDGAR filing service after the market closed yesterday. As Jeff noted, we reported an adjusted loss per diluted common share of $1.04 for the June quarter, which includes adjustments for noncash asset impairment charges and foreign exchange losses of $0.85 per share. Despite the pretax loss, the June quarter results also reflect tax expense of approximately $4 million, primarily due to revenue base taxes in a number of international jurisdictions in which we operate. Results for the June quarter also reflect professional services costs related to our ongoing debt negotiations of approximately $4.5 million. Vessel revenue for the June quarter at approximately $162 million was down approximately $18 million or approximately 10% quarter-over-quarter. Approximately $13 million or approximately 70% of the quarter-over-quarter change reflects our stacking of previously active vessels that we expect to be underutilized in the coming quarters. More broadly, the quarterly trend in vessel revenue reflects a soft and choppy global offshore market, with too many vessels chasing too few jobs. As Jeff noted, one can point to both positive and negative data points in the broader oil fields services market, vessel revenue for us in the June quarter was a similar story. On the one hand, we had 5 vessels that were delivered into the Tidewater fleet in the March and June quarters. Those new build vessels are working and contributed a couple million dollars of incremental vessel revenue in the June quarter. Likewise, loss revenue due to vessels and drydock was down a couple of million dollars quarter-over-quarter. Offsetting these 2 elements of June quarter's revenue story, we saw weaker vessel utilization, particularly for our operations on the West African…

Thanks, Quinn. The volatility in oil prices and the ultimate impact on our customer spending habits makes predicting the future for our industry very challenging. As noted, we're not in the business of calling more on tops or bottoms, but we are in the business of managing through whatever environment may confront of us. Right now the environment remains extremely challenging. As Quinn walked you through the quarter's financial performance, it probably became very evident that virtually every geographic market deteriorated this quarter, some more so than others. Some believe that the pace of deterioration is slowing, and we hope that proves to be the case. But for now, our customers continue to reduce their planned capital spending in response to weak and volatile oil prices. With decline in U.S. and non-OPEC oil production and ongoing production disruptions offsetting some of the increased output from OPEC members, the oil surplus appears to be contracting, helping to reduce global oil inventories. However, the pace of this shrinking in oversupply remains slow and the industry continues to confront an outlook of tepid global economic growth, which may dampen oil demand growth. Until oil prices establish a plateau sufficiently high and long enough for oil company managers to gain confidence in the recovery that improves their offshore project economics, our market will remain challenged. As we have learned from previous market downturns, recoveries do follow. This recovery, like most previous ones, will be driven by declining production due to a lack of capital spending, reservoir depletion and growing demand. These forces are all currently at work and we remain confident that they will ultimately lead to higher oil prices, which should then lead to increased spending by our customers. Despite lower oil prices, the offshore industry continues to find new, attractive oil and…

[Operator Instructions] And our first question is from Turner Holm from Clarksons Platou.

So guys, I have a question on the language in the 10-Q about the discussions with lenders. There's a mention in there of equity or equity linked compensation, among other things, as part of the potential cure for the covenant issue. Could you provide some more color there, I mean, what exactly do you mean by that?

I guess, tough to get into a lot of details, since we really don't have the upclimbs arranged at this point. But I guess the teams and our discussions with the various credit constituencies has really been more key elements, one is whether or not we secure up the facility, and if so, what is the appropriate security package? Two is, whether there is a reduction exposure for some or all of the lenders, which obviously is the other side of the coin from the way the company looks at it, which is what available liquidity do we have to us on a go forward basis. The third bucket is really covenants on a go forward basis, which is an important part of the company's thinking as at the end of the day we are trying to make sure we have adequate runway that takes us through what may still be a multiyear downturn. And the final bucket is broadly defined as compensation, whether it's in consideration for the amendment, more flexibility or a change in risk profile as a result of the way the market has developed over the last couple of years and compensation is what we're talking about, and whether that comes in the form of additional interest rates, fees, equity directly linked to compensation. Some sense it's all part of the same bucket, another sense obviously, to what extent we're trying to warehouse or preserve liquidity, we want to just make sure we're thinking through all of the available terms to go through us and to the creditor constituencies, as we sort through the final terms and agreement, if we can do so. So I guess what we're trying to do with our disclosure is necessarily telegraph a deal that is about to be inked, is to telegraph a menu that we are all working off of in hopes again, of reaching a deal that is both acceptable to the company and the creditor constituencies that we're at the table with at and at the end of the day, our shareholders and all other stakeholders. So I did see yours and other write-ups regarding reference to equity or equity compensation, I don't want you to read too much or too little into it, we view it as one of the tools in the tool kit that is available to us and the lenders to reach some deal that is possible to reach.

Yes, I appreciate the color and I appreciate that it's complex negotiation and that nothing's necessarily done yet, which I guess leads me to my next question, then. I hope you understand, I'm not trying to be flippant, but do you, Jeff and Quinn, do you think that this is solvable outside of court? If so, what gives you that confidence? I mean, do you feel like you've made a very significant amount of the progress in last few months and basically can you get it done in the next month or so?

I guess I'd answer it this way. We think it is in ours and the various creditors constituencies best interest to reach a consensual deal. The fact of the matter is, is we're presently sitting on $650 plus million cash that is adequate liquidity in the company's view to get us through the next couple of years. Particularly, when we recognize the totality of our capital expenditures that remain are about $41 million that we're got on a net basis. Likewise, as I mentioned, we are generally living within our means operationally, meaning that we have done the need for in regards to cost-reduction in light of the lower revenue reality that we live with. So the company is not burning cash from an operating perspective and perhaps modest CapEx and our need for liquidity is essentially for intra-quarter or intra-year balance sheet movements, contingency planning and also to have access to liquidity to address scheduled attributes [ph], which really don't kick in until the end of '17. Today the company's capital structure is unsecured, we have plenty of liquidity, the company is desirous of reaching consensual deal, but at the end of the day it takes two to tango, in our cases, I think it's 4 or 5. So it's been a complex negotiation, there is a challenge at times of harmonizing the disparate interest of the various creditor constituencies, but to be very clear, the company is trying to get a deal done. Rational minds should prevail in terms of reaching a consensual deal with -- as a public company, we can't make assurances that a deal will be reached or when it will be reached. We and you would prefer that this was in the rearview mirror, but as Jeff highlighted our interest is much more in striking a good deal than striking a fast deal.

[Operator Instructions] And we have a question from Douglas Dethy from D.C. Capital.

Just as you look at, I guess, your negotiations. If the company did enter into a bankruptcy proceeding, would all the lenders then be lumped together? They are all unsecured, as I understand now, except maybe for a small piece of it?

I think that's a reasonable assumption.

So the negotiation -- go ahead.

Back up on that, yes, our current capital structures are entirely unsecured, we do have the vast majority of our borrowings reside at the public parent company. There is a subset of the debt outstanding, in particular debt related to our Middle East operations, what is to the subsidiary and in some sense that is a different kettle of fish, but the parent company that is all unsecured at present.

So the groups, I understand they are different groups you're dealing with now, but if they were in a court proceeding, they'd all be in the same bucket and that probably would not be most advantageous from their standpoint, I would think, but I'll leave it there.

And I show no further questions at this time.

If there are no further questions, we'll wrap this up. Again, we appreciate everyone's time and interest in our company and wish you a good rest of the day. Thank you very much.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today's conference. Thank you for participating and you may now disconnect.