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Valaris Limited (VAL)

Q4 2015 Earnings Call· Thu, Feb 25, 2016

$102.12

-0.06%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, everyone, and welcome to Ensco Plc's Fourth Quarter and Full-Year 2015 Financial Results Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note, this event is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Sean O'Neill, Vice President of Investor Relations, who will moderate the call. Please go ahead, sir. Sean Patrick O'Neill - Vice President-Investor Relations & Communications: Welcome, everyone to Ensco's fourth quarter 2015 conference call. With me today are Carl Trowell, CEO; Carey Lowe, our Chief Operating Officer; Jon Baksht, CFO; as well as other members of our executive management team. We issued our earnings release which is available on our website at enscoplc.com. During this call we will discuss GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures and a reconciliation between the two is included in our earnings release. Any comments we make about expectations are forward-looking statements and are subject to risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause actual results to differ materially. Please refer to our earnings release and SEC filings on our website that define forward-looking statements and list the risk factors and other events that could impact future results. Also, please note that the company undertakes no duty to update forward-looking statements. As a reminder, we issued our most recent Fleet Status Report on February 16, and we issued our Form 10-K yesterday. Now, let me turn the call over to Carl Trowell, CEO and President. Carl Trowell - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Sean, and good morning, everyone. We are facing extremely challenging market conditions. The recent incremental leg down in commodity prices and uncertainty regarding the timing and degree rebalancing in the oil markets has caused our customers to announce further reductions in capital…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Our first question comes from Ian Macpherson with Simmons. Ian Macpherson - Simmons & Company International: Thank you, everyone. The first question I had was regarding the Petrobras situation. You highlighted that Petrobras is taking the position that the ENSCO 6001 has exceeded allowable downtime and you might expect a termination notice for that rig. Is the ENSCO 6001 unique in that situation or is it plausible to assume that the ENSCO 6002, the ENSCO 6003 and the ENSCO 6004 could also be subject to similar friction as the quarter or as the year unfolds? Carl Trowell - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning, Ian. Yes. So, let me just backtrack a little bit on the whole ENSCO 6000s, then I'll come back to the ENSCO 6001. Ian Macpherson - Simmons & Company International: Okay. Carl Trowell - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: As of today and currently, all four of those rigs are still on contract, still earning revenue and we are current on all receivables. But as you maybe saw or if you referred to the – our latest Fleet Status Report – you'll have seen that the ENSCO 6001 did have downtime event during Q4 and zero pay days. And because we haven't received the termination notice for the rig, but because of the sensitivity around the Petrobras contracts, we have called that out and we identified it as a risk factor within our 10-K. So, the situation is that the rig has neared its contractual limit on downtime – allowable downtime – and we have a position where there is a difference in view about how time has been attributed to the rig between ourselves and the customer, which if it is deemed to…

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Jud Bailey with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Judson E. Bailey - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Thanks. Good morning. With oil prices dropping here to start the year, we've seen several contract cancellations across the industry and it sounds like discussions on blend and extend type opportunities have picked up quite a bit. I was wondering if you could comment on how that dialogue has progressed with some of your major customers in terms of coming back to you and their appetite to try to extend contracts at lower rates versus maybe an outright cancelation. Has that changed in the last couple of months or maybe just give us a little color on how those discussions may go? Carl Trowell - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Jud, you're right in the sense that there is quite a lot of active discussion around blend and extend in the marketplace at the moment. And with the downturn in the oil price, it's triggered a slightly different approach towards projects in 2016. So, I think we're going to see in general across the sector further discussions and further blend and extend contracts. We are – we've been on and off negotiations with various customers for several months now on a few contracts and we are willing to entertain blend and extend contracts where it can be of mutual advantage, where it helps the customer with near-term CapEx, but provides us with some additional backlog and some ability to manage risk as we go through the back years. So those, we have several ongoing negotiations ourselves. I imagine there are several others ongoing within the sector and it's often driven by whether the customer has additional term to be able to add and negotiate.

Judson E. Bailey - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay. So, I mean, am I correct in thinking that we could see perhaps a couple of those opportunities come to fruition for you guys, perhaps this year based on the way negotiations seem to be going or am I reading too much into that? Carl Trowell - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: It's possible. I think a lot of it will rotate around whether the customer has got something that they can offer that helps us as well.

Judson E. Bailey - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay. All right. That's fair. And then, I guess just a quick follow-up on the ENSCO 8506, I think you said during your prepared comments you were going to cold stack the ENSCO 8500 and I believe that still leaves the ENSCO 8506 as still being marketed or warm. Does that suggest you may have some work for that, some point during the year? Carl Trowell - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: We are going to keep ENSCO 8506 warm and we're keeping marketing it because as of today we do see some opportunities around in the Gulf of Mexico for the similar type of work that the ENSCO 8503 is doing and ENSCO 8505. So we will see how things pan out but we do believe that there's enough work as we go through this year and next year to continue marketing that rig.

Judson E. Bailey - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay, great. Thank you. I'll turn it back.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Waqar Syed with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Waqar Syed - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Thank you for taking my question. Two questions first. Have you looked into the BOP rental market as some of your competitors are looking into, would that fit in with your outlook? P. Carey Lowe - Chief Operating Officer & Executive Vice President: Waqar, this is Carey. Good morning. Yeah. We've considered this with some of the OEMs and this deal, the deal that you're referring to is not necessarily unique. So we'll continue to evaluate it but it's important that we weigh any incremental improvements against expected costs. One of the stated reasons for doing this has been to improve uptime on the BOPs and we've been working on improving our BOP uptime for some time and as I mentioned in my remarks, we've made some significant strides over the past couple of years to improve subsea equipment downtime. So, yes, it's something that we're considering and looking at. But it has to make sense financially. Waqar Syed - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Okay. Great. And secondly, as we look into 2016 and beyond maybe 2017, like you mentioned for the ENSCO 8500 Series rigs, they're going to be intermittent downtime between contracts and rigs are going to be warm stacked and then working. What's the operating cost difference, even if you can't give specific numbers, but just like in general, between when rigs are going to warm stacked and when they're going to be operating? Carl Trowell - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Waqar, it's Carl again. The – without giving the exact incremental, but we can warm stack an ENSCO 8500 for round about $30,000 to $32,000 a day and have it available to go back to work again quite quickly after that. Does that help you? Waqar Syed - Goldman Sachs & Co.: No, no, absolutely. But is that a number that you can keep it stacked for like six months at that rate and then pick it up without incremental kind of cost or no, that is probably more a number in a one month to two month timeframe where you can keep it that way? Carl Trowell - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: A little bit depends on a rig-by-rig basis, but yes, you could do it for an extended period like six months. What matters is if it then falls out of any particular class or survey there or any particular time base maintenance it needs in that meantime. But assuming that you were keeping up the regular rhythm of classifications and certifications, then yes. Waqar Syed - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Okay, great. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Robin Shoemaker with KeyBanc. Please go ahead.

Robin E. Shoemaker - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst · KeyBanc. Please go ahead.

Yes. Thank you. So, I wanted to ask you just going back to the liquidity issue again. You've got the undrawn revolver, which you negotiated in 2014 and goes to 2019 now. It was obviously negotiated at a very favorable time and I just wonder what restrictions if any apply to the drawdown of that revolver in terms of a covenant or something that might restrict the ability to tap into that? Jonathan Baksht - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Hey, good morning, Robin, this is Jon. We really don't have any restrictions in terms of drawing down, the only real covenant we have on that revolver is a 60% debt-to-capitalization test, which we are well under.

Robin E. Shoemaker - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst · KeyBanc. Please go ahead.

Right. So with the CapEx program you have in place and your projections, would you believe that this – there is no need to draw on the revolver through this period of remaining fleet construction or expansion? Jonathan Baksht - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Robin, I can't really comment on cash flow projections through 2019, what I can point out is that we do have $3.5 billion of liquidity today, including $1.3 billion of cash and short-term investments, the newbuild commitments, as I mentioned in my remarks, if you aggregate all the newbuild profile it's only $850 million and it's spread out over the next three years and then we have no debt maturities through 2019. So, we do have a very strong financial position and a very strong liquidity position.

Robin E. Shoemaker - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst · KeyBanc. Please go ahead.

Right. Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from David Smith with Heikkinen Energy Advisors. Please go ahead.

David C. Smith - Heikkinen Energy Advisors

Analyst · Heikkinen Energy Advisors. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. Thank you. I just wanted to ask if there is anything that precludes you from aggressively repurchasing your bonds in the open market, particularly the 2019 through 2021 maturities, which look like they're priced for low 20% yields? Carl Trowell - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Hi, David. The simple answer is no. We have cash and we have liquidity, so we could do it, if we wanted to. We haven't done it thus far.

David C. Smith - Heikkinen Energy Advisors

Analyst · Heikkinen Energy Advisors. Please go ahead.

I noticed. I was just wondering if there was anything that precluded you. So I appreciate that. Carl Trowell - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. No, there is nothing that precludes us.

David C. Smith - Heikkinen Energy Advisors

Analyst · Heikkinen Energy Advisors. Please go ahead.

The second follow-up was just regarding the cost savings initiatives, I wanted to ask if the labor cost savings include any reductions to base wages, and if not, whether you've seen any indications that competitors have instituted base wage reductions for drilling crews? Carl Trowell - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: So, we haven't reduced our base salaries thus far, we – the cost structure and the – our wage structure offshore was deliberately structured with quite a lot of discretionary elements to it, and we have removed those discretionary elements. And so we haven't taken that step, I'm not aware at this point of any of the competition or peer group attacking base salaries yet. And I think, the thing that we will always bear in mind is that we still want to maintain a well-motivated work force, because as you've seen, as we've gone through the last year or so the value of uptime and operational performance can outweigh any savings on some of the compensation, so one extra percent of uptime brings a lot to the bottom line for us. So we will do – we're very careful about balancing what we do on offshore labor versus the operational performance and the motivation and retention of our key workforce.

David C. Smith - Heikkinen Energy Advisors

Analyst · Heikkinen Energy Advisors. Please go ahead.

Makes sense. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Sean Meakim with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Sean C. Meakim - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning. Carl Trowell - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning, Sean.

Sean C. Meakim - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

So just wanted to track back on the ENCO 8500 Series. I know you highlighted some leads maybe for the ENSCO 8506 in the Gulf of Mexico. For a rig like that, at some point would you ever consider an unsponsored relocation to another market like Southeast Asia? Is that something that could ever be in the cards? Carl Trowell - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Simplistically yes. I think if we saw the right opportunities and either the right contract or the right circumstances building. For example, the evolution of several potential market contracts that would fit the rig series, then I think we would. And I've said this before that we have probably too many of the ENSCO 8500 Series within the Gulf of Mexico and over time, we would like to redistribute some of those. So, the answer is yes.

Sean C. Meakim - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. And so on your drillship fleet, as you're managing the fleet across a fairly limited number of opportunities, does the ENSCO DS-5's early release change your plans in any way and just kind of thinking about the potential for any impact on the ENSCO DS-10 in terms of delays? Carl Trowell - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: No material change in the plans as a consequence of that. What it would do maybe is just govern which rigs we would bid into which contracts. But as of yet, no change on the ENSCO DS-10, and I think we wouldn't look to take an early decision on that. We would wait to see as we got nearer the time.

Sean C. Meakim - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Got it. That's fair. Thanks a lot.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Mark Brown with Seaport Global Securities. Please go ahead.

Mark Brown - Seaport Global Securities LLC

Analyst · Seaport Global Securities. Please go ahead.

Hello. I was wondering on the ENSCO 123 if you had to pay any penalty to delay that and whether that was on schedule before that decision was made and if you can give any commentary? Jonathan Baksht - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Yeah, hi, Mark. Yes, we did pay a fee to extend it for 19 months; it was $15 million.

Mark Brown - Seaport Global Securities LLC

Analyst · Seaport Global Securities. Please go ahead.

Okay. Good, good. Thank you. Carl Trowell - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: And the rig was on schedule for delivery as per plan from the shipyard.

Mark Brown - Seaport Global Securities LLC

Analyst · Seaport Global Securities. Please go ahead.

Okay, got it. And I was wondering you might have mentioned this in your prepared remarks, but if you had any commentary on Saudi Aramco situation with those renegotiations? And related to that, some of those are fairly old rigs, old jackups, and was curious if there's any consideration to potentially swap in some of your newer rigs, although I do know that Saudi Aramco requires certain capabilities that might have been upgraded in those older jackups a while back. Carl Trowell - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, Mark, there's not too much I can go into here on the call because as you've seen from the Fleet Status Report, we are in the process of actually discussions with Saudi Aramco around what the day rates and fees will be going forward. Yes, several of those rigs are old rigs, but they are all equipped to Schedule G which is the specialist Saudi Aramco specifications. They've been invested in over a long time and they are very fit for the purposes that they're being used for. That being said, the ENSCO 140 and ENSCO 141, which we will take delivery of later this year, have been built to the same Schedule G and Saudi Aramco specification. So they can slot into Saudi Arabia if circumstances were right and the client requested them or wanted them. And we are in a more broad sense, not just for Saudi Arabia but across the whole Middle East, we are looking at maybe opportunities to switch those rigs with some of the older ones if the right circumstances come about. But just to be clear, we wouldn't have to do any further investigation – any further upgrades or investment in the ENSCO 140 or ENSCO 141 to put them into Saudi Arabia.

Mark Brown - Seaport Global Securities LLC

Analyst · Seaport Global Securities. Please go ahead.

Okay. And then just if I could, one more quick question on the comments around scrapping in the industry, you think – you said you identified 90 floaters that were candidates for scrapping – and you believe that the pace of that scraping is likely to accelerate. Do you think all 90 of those would be scrapped this year or what kind of timeframe were you thinking of? Carl Trowell - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, I think what will happen is you'll basically have silent attrition which is a lot of these rigs will be put on the dock and cold stacked and if not immediately announced that they have been scrapped, I think the chances of a lot of them, the majority of them not coming back out in the market is very high. And that's the way I think you should look at it, which is why I think you should look at scrapping and effective permanent retirement of some rigs of this type.

Mark Brown - Seaport Global Securities LLC

Analyst · Seaport Global Securities. Please go ahead.

Okay, great. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Darren Gacicia with KLR Group. Please go ahead.

Darren Gacicia - KLR Group LLC

Analyst · KLR Group. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks for taking my question. When you think about kind of further cost cutting from here, and you think about sort of the contract drilling cost line, can you give a sense of what part of those costs are sort of rig-by-rig operating costs in terms of people and direct running the rig versus sort of support and where might you kind of see more cost coming out or not or are we kind of much further along that now where there is less to sort of strain out of the system? Carl Trowell - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Hi, Darren. Good morning. So as you saw, we've taken a lot of support structure cost out of the system as we went through 2015 with a big reorganization of how we run our business units and our support structure. As we go forward, there's still the ability to optimize that and we are still looking at some additional ways to be able to be more efficient on the support structure. But the big levers, we can pull now is actually on the rig-by-rig basis and probably the biggest cost savings are related to some of the announcements we've already made today about scrapping or retiring some additional rigs and that allows us to bring down the cost very rapidly associated with those. And as we go forward, if we see that to the extent that we cannot re-contract some of the other rigs, we will move to cold stack a number of them because that allows us to be able to reduce cost quite significantly. So, I would summarize it this way, as we've outlined, our CD&E cost is still coming down on the back of actions that we've already taken. We will be taking a further cost reduction as a consequence of the rigs that we are stacking. And we have the ability to flex and react to the market conditions if we see that in the second half of the year, when we have a lot of contract renewals, that we have idle rigs.

Darren Gacicia - KLR Group LLC

Analyst · KLR Group. Please go ahead.

Got you. On a different note and approaching a question that's kind of been asked in one way, that I want to ask in a slightly different way, with regard to repurchasing discounted debt, what you may or may not have done so far is one thing, what I'm more curious about is when you're talking to debtors, you're talking to the banks, you're talking to us frankly and investors. Do you feel like you'll get – you can get credit for buying debt, do the debt holders like that concept for reducing leverage? So do you get kind of value at it beyond just kind of the dollar pay down advantage you have when it's trading at a discount? Do the banks like that concept? I'm just trying to get a little bit more of a kind of philosophical/like what the conversations with the capital markets are right now around that type of a concept? Carl Trowell - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: I think it's a bit of a hypothetical question. So I don't really want to get into it and maybe I'll hand to Jon, if he's got anything more to add. Jonathan Baksht - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: No. I think, like Carl said, it's a bit speculative. I mean what I can say is that buying debt when it is trading at a discount does improve your credit metrics and from that standpoint what the read through is and how people interpret that, I think that's open to interpretation.

Darren Gacicia - KLR Group LLC

Analyst · KLR Group. Please go ahead.

Got you. One last if I could. If you think about distressed assets potentially being on the market at some point, is that something where if you have interest, is that something you'd use cash for, use debt for, use equity for or are all things open? Carl Trowell - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, I think all things are open, but I think what I would add to that is that we already, we're coming off the back of a major capital build out, so we have several new rigs, got some that are already in the ship – are in the shipyard yet to be delivered, so we would be looking very carefully at buying certainly one or two distressed assets. We would have to see that that was a sensible return on investment even at the discount purchase price. And the other thing is that, what we would want to make sure is that, it was the most valid use of our liquidity. So it would be a very carefully considered investment on our side and I – what we also want to be looking at is does it move the needle for us in the current market conditions versus where else we could put our cash.

Darren Gacicia - KLR Group LLC

Analyst · KLR Group. Please go ahead.

Great. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is a follow-up from David Smith with Heikkinen Energy Advisors. Please go ahead.

David C. Smith - Heikkinen Energy Advisors

Analyst

Hey, thanks for letting me back in. I just wanted to ask if you could give any color on the comment in the 10-K about the one year tolling agreement with the DOJ, their request. I haven't had time to figure it out myself yet, but I was wondering if you could help us explain if there is any significance or implications on that? Carl Trowell - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: David, no. It's a pretty standard process. It just means that the DOJ or SEC don't hit a backstop on term limits on some of the events and we've kept the DOJ and the SEC completely informed of the process during our internal and external investigation. They requested just as a matter of course a tolling agreement, which basically allows another 12 month stay on any term limit, and we've – we just agreed to that, we saw no harm in that at all.

David C. Smith - Heikkinen Energy Advisors

Analyst

Okay. So that doesn't imply that they've opened an investigation? Carl Trowell - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: No.

David C. Smith - Heikkinen Energy Advisors

Analyst

Okay. Great. Thank you very much. Sean Patrick O'Neill - Vice President-Investor Relations & Communications: Okay. Operator, if there are no more questions, we just want to thank everyone for participating on our call today. Thanks, everyone again and have a great day.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.