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Valaris Limited (VAL)

Q2 2016 Earnings Call· Thu, Jul 28, 2016

$103.03

+1.04%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day and welcome to welcome to Ensco Plc’s Second Quarter 2016 Financial Results Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today’s presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to Mr. Sean O’Neill, Vice President of Investor Relations, who will moderate the call. Please go ahead, sir. Sean Patrick O’Neill: Welcome, everyone, to Ensco’s second quarter 2016 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. 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, risk factors and other events that could impact future results. Also please note that the company undertakes no duty to update forward-looking statements. During this call we will refer to GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures, so please see our earnings release on our website for added information. As a reminder, we issued our most recent fleet status report on July 18. An updated investor presentation is also available on our website. Now, I’ll turn the call over to Carl Trowell, CEO and President.

Carl Trowell

CEO

Thanks, Sean, and good morning, everyone. During the second quarter we took decisive steps to further enhance our financial position. We completed a successful tender the reduced debt by $861 million, at a 28% discount. We purchased another $79 million of senior notes on the open market at a 21% discount. And we raised net proceeds $586 million through a secondary equity offering. As a result we increased liquidity to more $4 billion at quarter end, composed of $1.8 billion of cash and short-term investments, and a fully available $2.25 billion revolving credit facility. Additionally, we improved our net debt to capital ratio to 28% from 40% at the end of the first quarter, better positioning Ensco to weather the current downturn and capitalize on opportunities in a market recovery. S&P’s global rating service recently acknowledged our positive capital management and cost saving actions in the face of challenging market conditions in the off-shore drilling sector. While we received a one notch downgrade, given their more negative industry outlook, we maintained our investment grade rating with S&P. As detailed in our press release, earnings from continuing operations with $2.04 per share, that included gains on debt repurchases $261 million and early termination contract settlements of $205 million. Excluding these settlements revenue was better than expected for the second quarter. Results benefited from another strong performance of our offshore crews, with record operational utilization of 99% and new year-to-date safety record. Disciplined expense management also supported our financial results, with contract drilling and general and administrative expenses in line with our outlook. As we remain on track to achieve our targeted run-rate, we continue to pursue further efficiencies and cost savings across our operations and support structure. While some customers have elected to early terminate contracts, we have agreed to blend…

Carey Lowe

Chief Operating Officer

Thanks, Carl. Our offshore crews continued to deliver high levels of operational and safety performance during the second quarter, as evidenced by a record 99% operational utilization for our fleet and a record year-to-date total recordable incident rate of 0.25. These achievements are a testament to the commitment of our crews to improve the efficiency of service for customers during the industry downturn. We have accomplished this through investments in key areas, including improvements in our management systems and processes, enhancements to our training and development programs, and initiatives aimed at increasing the reliability of our equipment. In terms of contracting, we reached an agreement in April to extend the contract for ENSCO 5004 by 18 months to midyear 2018. More recently, we extended ENSCO 5006 by 15 months, adding approximately $90 million of backlog, which will keep the rig on contract into third quarter 2019, when we then expect market conditions will be significantly better. The strong operational performance by our offshore crews was important in winning extensions for both rigs. We also completed renegotiations for our 6000 series rigs in Brazil, extending the ENSCO 6002 contract by nearly a year-and-a-half through late 2019, and keeping ENSCO 6001 on contract. As part of these negotiations we agreed to an early release of ENSCO 6003 and 6004, and we have subsequently sold both rigs for scrap. We signed short-term contracts or extensions for several rigs in the U.S. Gulf including ENSCO 8506, ENSCO 68, ENSCO 75 and into ENSCO 87. On the other side, we saw the contract for ENSCO 8505 early terminated for convenience. Although this was due in part to our rigs’ versatile capabilities that allowed our customer to complete its well abandonment campaign earlier than initially planned, which will be an important selling point as we market…

Jon Baksht

CFO

Thanks, Carey. Today I’ll cover our second quarter financial results, our outlook for the third quarter, and our recent capital management actions and resulting financial position. Starting with the second quarter results versus prior year, second quarter 2016 earnings per share from continuing operations were $2.04, compared to $1.15 a year ago. As detailed in our press release, several items influenced these comparisons, including a $261 million gain on the repurchase of senior notes at a discount and $205 million of early contract termination settlements for ENSCO DS-9 and ENSCO 8503 during second quarter 2016. Year ago results were impacted by a $7 million loss to retire debt. Total second quarter revenue was $910 million versus $1.06 billion last year. The early contract termination settlements I just mentioned, benefited second quarter revenue. However, excluding the settlements revenue is still above our initial expectations, due to record fleet line operational utilization. In the Floaters segment, excluding these settlements, revenue declined to $431 million, primarily due to a year-over-year decline in utilization to 57% from 76% last year. And the average day rate declined to $360,000 from $417,000 last year. Operational utilization for the floater segment, which adjusts for un-contracted days and planned downtime, was a record 99%, up from 92% a year ago. In the Jackup segment revenue was $251 million compared to $384 million last year, as reported utilization declined to 63% from 77% in 2015. And the average day rate declined to $112,000 from $140,000 a year ago. Operational utilization for the total jackup fleet was also 99%, up from 98% last year. Total contract drilling expenses declined of $350 million at the lower-end of the outlook we provided on our last conference call. Year over year, we reduced contract drilling expense by 30% from $503 million in second…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] our first question comes from Gregory Lewis of Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

Gregory Lewis

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please go ahead

Yes. Hi, thank you and good morning.

Carl Trowell

CEO

Good morning Greg.

Gregory Lewis

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please go ahead

Carl, I had a question about the new build Jackups. I guess, there was a release from [Lan for all the] [ph] shipyard that I guess, the rig is going to be delayed. And they went further to say that they’re going to be going back to the OEM provider potentially, looking to recoup some damages. Does that, is there anyway Ensco can pick any benefit from this rig maybe. I mean, it sounds like it’s only going to be delayed 30 days. Is there anything the company can do to sort of take advantage of the fact that the rig might be a little bit late?

Carl Trowell

CEO

Greg, so although they didn’t name rig in the press release, I think, regionally clear we have a rig there, which is slightly delayed in the shipyard. And since, it’s a live ongoing situation and discussion. I don’t want to get into exactly the details of our contractual relationship there, but other than that, at the moment we think that the delay is solvable. It has pushed the rig outside its contractual window and there will be potentially some contractual elements that we can claim back depending on exactly when the rig is delivered. Other than that, I don’t really want to go into and discuss the sensitivity, because there has been some ongoing contract negotiation.

Gregory Lewis

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please go ahead

Okay. Yes. Sure. Fair enough. And then just…

Carl Trowell

CEO

I think, the big thing there Greg is there is no big macro story around at the moment as we see it today, there may be some. There are the usual protections in the contract that you would do with the new builds including liquidate damages and things like that.

Gregory Lewis

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please go ahead

Okay. Sure. So maybe, a little bit on the margin. And then just, Carey, you went in, in great detail on the preservation stacking. So just should we kind of view that - the 5005, is that similar to an 8500 in terms of the costs and the idle expense? Just because, I mean, you kind of laid out all the rigs that are older rigs that probably aren’t going to be around next cycle. And I mean, is there something special about this rig, given the fact that it is 30 years old that it made sense to sort of preservation stack. Is this kind of broadly speaking, this is how you’re looking and thinking about this rig and say this will be our sort of mid water floater for the next cycle. Just trying to get a little more understanding, why that rig was decided to be preservation stack in the cost associated?

Carl Trowell

CEO

Greg, it’s Carl here. Let me just answer a little bit on the broad picture and then Carey can maybe be a bit more specific about the rig you ask. So I think, it’s important to understand when we’re talking about the preservation stacking where it fits in our overall fleet management. When we have a rig that is becoming idle through the cycle, we are looking at a very balanced positioning. And so, some of the rigs, some of the older less capable rigs that we don’t believe have got a place in our core fleet going forward. What we are doing with that is we’ve been very judicial about spending any further money on those. And in most cases, we are retiring them or selling them. So a good example here is the 6003 and the 6004 which came idle in Brazil. We have sold those scrap during the quarter. The rigs that we are preservation stacking, we are doing that, because we believe that will place in the market fleet going forward. And a lot of those are generally are much younger fleet structure and we have every intention of bringing them back. And we’re only removing them at the moment, because we believe market cannot sustain the global fleet and we want to reduce our market fleet to be able to manage cost and have the right structure fleet going forward over the next 12 months to 18 months or so. And then, there is a third group which is we will keep some rigs warms and hot stacked ready to go to pick up spot work and incremental work. So if we preserve stacked rig, you can automatically assume that we believe, it’s got a place in the fleet going forward.

Carey Lowe

Chief Operating Officer

And Greg, I’ll just add that. ENSCO 5005 is a rig that underwent a significant shipyard light enhancements just two years ago and then it’s in great shape. It’s got a new BOP refurbished quarters and - we feel it, it plays a role in the mid-water market, which will be they are going forward. When we talk to - when we gave you estimates for reactivation, they were more gear towards DP floaters. ENSCO 5005 being more, this is not have as much equipment and will be below that range that we gave you. A significantly below that range we gave you. When we talk about the range of costs we gave you to reactivate rigs, I just give you some color on that. If we take $25 million is a reactivation costs, some $10 million to $12 million of that is deferred maintenance step would have been incurred that the rig was warm stack. The remainder is incremental costs to remove preservation equipment, reactivate systems, testing and recertification. These estimates are good for five years and the idea the cost increases generally with time is not correct. For example on our DP floaters, we remove the thrusters and we included the cost of overhauling the thrusters in the reactivation estimate. The work scope to complete a thruster overhaul does not increase your time. In fact, some of the overhaul work will be less costly as the equipment is already removed and it’s an ideal location from the work scope. Our preservation stacked rigs were in good conditions prior to undergo in the preservation stacking process. And three had five year service, so there are no significant additional costs like catch-up repair or steel piping replacement, which you would expect with an older early generation rig.

Gregory Lewis

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please go ahead

Okay, guys. That was very helpful. Thank you very much.

Carey Lowe

Chief Operating Officer

I think the important thing is the cost estimate that we give here is an all-in cost and includes catch-up on deferred maintenance that we have to do anyway here.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Praveen Narra of Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Praveen Narra

Analyst · Raymond James. Please go ahead

Hey, good morning, guys.

Carl Trowell

CEO

Good morning.

Praveen Narra

Analyst · Raymond James. Please go ahead

Just a follow-up on that kind of line of thinking, guys, you want to make sure that - I’ve got this clarified. That specifically because you guys have been able to preserve - getting to a better preservation mode. If you had to take a guess, kind of industry reactivations, would it fall, would it be higher than that, do you have a kind of an estimate for where that might lie?

Carl Trowell

CEO

I don’t know whether we could be in a position to say what other people might do, because I think it’s very much driven by how much upfront work you do and what state the rig is in. We’ve come up with a quite detailed engineering plan of the preservation process, and then the re-mobilization process. I think what is may be a point to make is that, if you’re talking about all the rigs, and some of the older generation floaters. It would be considerably more expensive to bring back, I guess. You would not only have the - to basically bring out preservation, but you probably have quite significant amount of steel work, piping and bringing back in class to do. So I think, what is important with this is that it doesn’t change our view. Well, first of all, it doesn’t change our own decision process about still scrapping some of our older rigs. Same time, it doesn’t change our view, a significant number of the older floaters in the marketplace will be retired or scrap going forward, because the cost to stack and then bring back some of these older rigs, it’s going to be three, four, five times higher than the one we disclosed to you. And in many cases, even when they come back they’re going to be uncompetitive in the market.

Praveen Narra

Analyst · Raymond James. Please go ahead

Right. I think, that makes a lot of sense. So I guess, moving to the European jackups, we got a lot of availability come due in kind of August 2016. Could you give us a sense kind of what kind of a customer discussions and what your thought are as we move into that period?

Carey Lowe

Chief Operating Officer

This is Carey. In the North Sea, we’re in discussions with customers about possible additional works. Some of which are extensions, some of it is actually new jobs. And this includes discussions surrounding our 120 series. Our 120 series rigs had performed very well and our customers are very happy with their performance. And this helps quite a bit in re-contracting and extending contracts. And good performance we had overall is also evident in the North Sea, and that also helps us re-contracting the rigs.

Carl Trowell

CEO

So the North Sea is challenged at current oil prices, but it isn’t dead by any means. What we are seeing is quite a bit of activity around plug and abandonment intervention work and some short-term work. So I think in the near-term the North Sea, Europe area is going to characterized by some spot and short-term contracts and extensions to exist in one.

Praveen Narra

Analyst · Raymond James. Please go ahead

Okay. That’s helpful. And then, I guess just one more follow-up if I could. In terms of the normal terms and conditions, I know before as we kind of softened in the market, we started to see offering less punitive cancellation provisions. Have you seen any other changes in terms of changes to the terms and conditions in contracting, that either operators are asking for or the contractors are offering, inside Ensco or is it an industry question?

Carl Trowell

CEO

Generally, I mean, the terms and conditions have certainly moved in the favor of the clients at this point, particularly around often contract term and the cancellation clauses. What we haven’t seen certainly where we’ve drawn the line is on things which transfer excessive liabilities over to us and then we still have - hold some redlines in that area. But there’s been nothing I think materially changed. We have seen some customers want to discuss taking deferred payment against sometimes production or late payment terms. And we view those on a case-by-case basis. But up until now we haven’t taken any unusual T&Cs.

Praveen Narra

Analyst · Raymond James. Please go ahead

Okay, that’s great color. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from of Haithum Nokta of Clarksons Platou Securities. Please go ahead.

Haithum Nokta

Analyst · Clarksons Platou Securities. Please go ahead

Hi, good morning, guys.

Carl Trowell

CEO

Good morning.

Haithum Nokta

Analyst · Clarksons Platou Securities. Please go ahead

Yes, just a follow-up on the reactivation cost that you mentioned. Does that include survey related costs or how should we think about that in relation to the straight reactivation of a preservation stacked rig?

Carl Trowell

CEO

Yes, that includes all of the survey cost required to reactivate a rig and to keep it in class.

Haithum Nokta

Analyst · Clarksons Platou Securities. Please go ahead

Keep it in class, okay. Then my second question, I’m curious, you guys have a handful of rigs on long-term contracts that are probably considered older, for instance like the 5004 or the 5006 or the 6001 and 6002 in Brazil. I’m curious if you guys had any discussions in the past about substituting in one of the DS-3, 4 or 5 in for those rigs, that way you could keep a newer rig contracted and working and hot for a longer period of time. I’m curious if you had those discussions and/or why not or what the operators might think of that type of arrangement.

Carl Trowell

CEO

So in a broad answer, we’re quite open to the swapping out of rigs. But actually the examples you gave then, if you look at the class and type of those rigs they can’t be swapped in for, say, a drill ship. So, 5000 and 5006 and MOD rigs working in very different environment that a DP floater could not work in. And 6001 and 6002 are quite unique rigs working on infill work and step out work on the existing deals, and then not easily or efficiently swapped out for a drill ship for example. So the - whereas logically you might say that the actual specifics of those rigs and the environment they’re working in don’t them particularly swap out candidates.

Haithum Nokta

Analyst · Clarksons Platou Securities. Please go ahead

Okay. I appreciate the color. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And this concludes the question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Sean O’Neill for any closing remarks. Sean Patrick O’Neill: Thank you, operator. And since there are no more question, just want to thank everybody for their participation on our call today. Have a great day.

Operator

Operator

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect your lines. Have a great day.