Helmerich & Payne, Inc. (NYSE:HP) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

And so I think as long as the rig choppiness if the rig releases are moderate and 20, 30, 40, 50 rigs I mean it’s a very small percentage of the overall working fleet even if you’re just looking at the super-spec fleet. I know at H&P our focus will be continuing to focus on pricing. And our teams, our sales force does a great job with rig churn and getting rigs put back to work sure doesn’t make a lot of sense to get into a bidding more. So, that would be our approach is to continue to focus on the value creation that we’re delivering for customers and getting paid a commensurate amount of money for that

David Smith: Really appreciate that color. Thank you.

John Lindsay: Thanks David.

Operator: And we will move next with Saurabh Pant with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Saurabh Pant: Hi. Thank you guys. John a quick follow-up if I may on the prior question, right? I’m not trying to put words into your mouth, right? But it seems to me what you are indicating is that some kind of a 20, 30, 40 rig decline is a relatively small number obviously, right? And in that kind of a scenario you would focus on pricing and you might be willing to lay down a few rigs. First, is that the right characterization? And did I put that correctly from an expectation standpoint? I know it’s all hypothetical at this point.

John Lindsay: Well, yes. And again, I think, I would encourage you and others to look back on previous cycles and just look at how choppy the rig count is. And I look back and the pricing from 2011 through 2014, there was a lot of volatility with rig count and we were able to continue to maintain pricing. Obviously, we were continuing to build new rigs. There was a replacement cycle going on as well. But yes, there’s no reason to adjust your pricing on 2%, or 3%, or 4% even 10% of the working fleet being idled, I mean, just historically, when you’ve got utilization levels above 80%, you’ve got pretty strong pricing power.

Mark Smith: I would just add Saurabh that we are not predicting a 20 to 40 rig decline. That’s not what we’re saying. What we’re simply saying is, as John said in his prepared comments, 520 super-spec working and David’s question was if you lost 5% or 10% of that, I mean, that’s 26 to 52 rigs, but that’s still 95% to 90% utilization of the super-spec fleet. And as John just mentioned, we’ve historically always had pricing power above an 80% utilization level.

John Lindsay: Yes, I was responding to your reference to if there were, but we’re sure not predicting that. We don’t.

Saurabh Pant: Yes, yes, no. Yes, yes, no, I get it. It’s all hypothetical at this stage, right? But again, that’s what investors are thinking about. So I wanted to make sure we understand how you’re thinking about things.

John Lindsay: Yes.

Saurabh Pant: Okay. Perfect. Perfect. And then last quarter Mark, I think, you had this in your prepared remarks that for the next couple of quarters, you expect about a $1,500 increase in average contracted revenue per day. Just if you can quickly refresh us on that, because obviously the number of rigs under contract has gone up. So if you can refresh us on that how should we think about that number moving up over the next couple of quarters?

Mark Smith: Sure, Saurabh. I think it’s as we said last quarter is going to be the same this quarter more or less. If you think about for us, our — if you look at our term fleet, I think, our average day rate around the term fleet today is around $32,000 per day.

Saurabh Pant: Okay.