RPC Inc (RES) 2016 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Good morning and thank you for joining us for our RPC, Inc. first-quarter 2016 financial earnings conference call. Today's call will be hosted by Rick Hubbell, President and CEO and Ben Palmer, Chief Financial Officer. Also present is Jim Landers, Vice President of Corporate Finance.

(Operator Instructions)

I would like to advise everyone that this conference call is being recorded. Jim will get us started by reading the forward looking disclaimer.

Thank you and good morning.

Before we begin our call today I want to remind you that in order to talk about our Company we are going to mention a few things that are not historical facts. Some of the statements that we made on this call can be forward-looking in nature and reflect the number of known and unknown risks. I would like to refer you to our press release issued today, along with our 2015 10-K and other public filings that outline those risk. All of which can be found on RPC's website at www.rpc.net.

I also need to tell you that in today's earnings release and in our conference call discussion we'll be referring to EBITDA, which is a non-GAAP measure of operating performance. RBC uses EBITDA as a measure of operating performance because it allows us to compare performance consistently over various periods without regard changes in our capital structure.

We are also required to use EBITDA to report compliance with financial covenants under our revolving credit facility. Our press release today and our website provide a reconciliation of EBITDA to net income, the nearest GAAP financial measure. Please review that disclosure, if you are interested in seeing how it is calculated.

If you've not received our press release for any reason, please visit our website again at www.rpc.net for a copy. I will now turn the call over to our President and CEO, Rick Hubble.

Thank you, Jim. This morning we issued our earnings press release for RPC's first quarter of 2016. During the first quarter, our customers unprecedented measures to remain in operation during a prolonged period of low commodity prices severely impacted our results. RBC and its peers are responding with deeply diligent efforts to remain in operation in anticipation of the eventual industry recovery.

Industry indicators continued to decline during the first quarter. The US domestic rig count fell to a record low, and the spot price of natural gas fell to the levels not recorded since the fourth quarter of 1998. Our financial results reflect these dismal industry conditions.

Our CFO Ben Palmer will now review our financial results in more detail, after which I will have review additional comments.

Thank you, Rick. For the first quarter, revenues decreased to $189.1 million compared to $406.3 million in the prior-year. EBITDA for the first quarter decreased to negative $14.1 million compared to $77.9 million for the same period last year. Operating loss for the quarter was $75.1 million compared to an operating profit of $6.4 million in the prior year.

Our loss per share was $0.15 compared to diluted earnings-per-share of $0.04 in the prior-year. The $0.15 loss per share reported during the current quarter includes the positive impact of a discrete income tax benefit totaling $15.7 million or $0.07 per share. I'll discuss this a bit more later in my comments about sequential results.

Cost of revenues decreased from $292.4 million in the first quarter of the prior year to $161.3 million in the current year. Due primarily to lower costs resulting from lower activity levels, reduced personal headcount and incentive compensation and price reductions from suppliers. Cost of revenues as a percentage of revenues increased from 72% in the prior year to 85.3% due to competitive pricing for our services, higher maintenance and repair expenses, and inefficiencies resulting from lower activity levels.

Selling, general and administrative expenses increased from $42.4 million in first quarter of the prior year to $43.5 million this year due to an increase in bad debt expense and contingent professional fees partially offset by lower total employment cost due to headcount reductions. I'll discuss the contingencies further in a moment. SG&A expense as a percentage of revenue increased from 10.4% last year to 23% this year, primarily due to the relatively fixed nature of some of these costs during the short term.

Depreciation and amortization was $60.6 million during the first quarter of 2016, a decrease of 8.1% compared to $66 million in the prior year. Appreciation amortization decreased due to lower capital expenditures. Our technical services segment revenues for the quarter decreased 53.6% compared to the first quarter of the prior year. Operating loss was $63.3 million compared to an operating profit of $5.9 million in the prior year. Revenues and operating results decreased, due to declines in activity and pricing.

Our sports services segment revenues for the quarter decreased 51.7% and operating profit decreased from $3.9 million in the first quarter of the prior year to a $6.6 million operating loss in the first quarter of the current year.

On a sequential basis, RPC's first-quarter revenues decreased 29.5%, again to $189.1 million from $268.1 million in the prior quarter. The decrease in revenues was due primarily to lower activity levels and pricing for our services.

Cost of revenues decreased 25.8% from $217.4 million to $161.3 million due to lower materials and supplies expenses and employment costs. Cost of revenues as a percentage of revenues increased from 81.1% in the prior quarter to 85.3% due primarily to lower pricing for our services.

SG&A expenses increased by $7 million or 19% due to higher bad debt expense and the contingent professional fees that I referenced earlier. As a percentage of revenues, these expenses increased from the 13.7% in the prior quarter to 23% this quarter. RPC's consolidated operating loss increased from 21.4% of revenues in the prior quarter to 39.7% of revenues this quarter. Our sequential EBITDA decreased from $9 million to negative $14.1 million in the first quarter.

Our technical services segment generated revenues of $175.5 million, 29.8% lower than revenues of $250 million in prior quarter. Operating loss was $63.6 million compared to $45.4 million in the prior quarter.

Revenues in support services segment declined 24.5% due to decreased activity and pricing in rental tools. Our support services segment incurred an operating loss of $6.6 million in the first quarter compared to a loss of $3 million in the fourth quarter.

RPC's income tax benefit during the first quarter of 2016 included the impact of a resolution of an open state tax issue. This favorable resolution increased RPC's first-quarter tax benefit by $15.7 million. We recorded a contingency professional fee of $2 million as part of SG&A expenses in connection with this matter.

As of the end of the first quarter, RPC's pressure pumping fleet totaled 927,000 hydraulic horse power of which approximately 40% is unmanned but available to work. Capital expenditures during the first quarter were $9.6 million. Our full-year 2016 capital expenditures are currently projected to be approximately $50 million. As of March 31, RPC's total headcount was approximately 12% lower than at the end of 2015 and approximately 32% lower compared to one year ago.

I will now turn it back over to Rick for some closing remarks.

Thanks, Ben. RPC is in a relatively strong financial position compared to our peers. At the end the quarter RPC had approximately $108 million in cash and has been debt free for several months. This was accomplished through focused management of our working capital and cost structure coupled with prudent capital allocation.

We believe the operating losses and negative cash flows incurred by our peers, are preventing many of them for properly maintaining their equipment fleets. This coupled with lower activity levels obscures the rate of attrition and actual equipment availability. While our industry will eventually recover, oil field service companies such as RPC that can afford to take a long-term view will survive and benefit the most.

I'd like to thank you for joining us for RPC's conference call this morning. At this time we'll open up the lines, for your questions.

(Operator Instructions)

Rob MacKenzie, IBERIA Capital.

Thanks, good morning guys.

Good morning.

I wanted to ask you guys about -- it looks like you did pretty well on the margin front in this quarter in technical services. I wanted to figure out if you guys give up any of your call option or stack any of the equipment you had been staffing here given the depth of the downturn? If so, how your view of that shaped up throughout the quarter?

I will respond to the first part of question. You mentioned in my comments -- this is Ben -- about 40% of the fleet being unmanned. I guess, by quarter there was a little confusion when I said 70% was fast, so that indicates that there has been reduction in the amount of capacity that we have currently staffed. And that correlates too -- we talk about in our comments, about a 12% reduction in headcount also since the previous -- end of the previous quarter, so that's a little bit on the numbers. Jim you want to talk about the --?

Yes, Rob, you asked about the call option metaphor that we've been discussing. I don't think that we've given up too much of that call option. The equipment -- we want to emphasize the equipment that has been stacked, with the exception of things that have to be maintained in the normal course of business, are ready to go. Yes, we have fewer employees today than we had at the end of the year, so there's a little bit of a degradation there. But it is also a function of the market we are in, as well.

Okay, thanks. Is it your view -- or do you guys believe this is the last cut here for RPC?

Of any kind? That's hard to say. We are about where we expected to be, I think, a few months ago. So we are adjusting the headcount as we see things change, but we are trying to maintain, where appropriate, strategically our infrastructure. So that when things do to eventually turn that we will have the ability to capture the upside. That's what we are planning for. But we are trying to remain prudent and trim where we need to, and we will respond to what happens in the coming weeks and months.

Rob, we certainly believe we have another bad quarter and maybe a little more than a bad quarter ahead of us and we will review infrastructure and staffing levels, kind of at that next decision point, which will be sometime in probably four or five months.

Rob, this is Rick. I think we hope that it is the last cut, but we are prepared to take whatever action we have to do in the future to survive.

Certainly, there's little visibility

Understood. We have heard some odd green shoots from some of the wells service and workerover players. Are you guys seeing any of that in your coil business?

Rob, this is Jim. A tiny bit, probably the closest thing to green shoots that we are seeing is anecdotal discussions by people saying they are going to add some rigs in a few months. But that visibility is very -- we have the least visibility right now that we've ever had. Our operations people are telling us that until they rig up on that day, they don't know that they are actually going to do the work because of cancellations and things that are happening. So there's a little bit of workover in activity and we are not in well servicing business. But a little bit workover activity at this time. Nothing new over the past few months. We've seen that over the past six months or so, but nothing -- no change in that trajectory.

Okay. Great. Thank you. I'll turn it back.

Jim Wicklund, Credit Suisse.

Hi, tab this Chaz on for Jim this morning. Just wondering if you could provide any more color on the bad debt expense, and also wondering what your level of concern is regarding customers moving forward?

On the bad debt front, just in round numbers for all the comparable periods, bad debt was up $4 million to $5 million, which for us is a lot. I would characterize that by saying though that about half of that is sort of a more recent credit problem, bankruptcy with a particular customer. And the other half, at least in the current quarter, related to some negative developments of some receivables that we've got out for a long time that are in litigation and that sort of thing.

Certainly it continues to be a concern. It continues to be a top priority for us to focus not only on new customers and making sure we are watching available information on how customers are doing and also vigorously pursuing collections on existing receivables.

Clearly, in the current environment we are not -- we would expect there will be some other exposure. But to speak to say whether we think that level is going to continue to go forward, we don't know. Again, there will be some exposure, but just want it to elaborate to say that the relatively higher amount was -- some of that was due to quite old receivables that we just adjusted the reserve on due to, like I said, some negative developments.

Okay. That's very helpful. Also kind of digging back in on technical services here, notice that the revenue was down a little bit more than the rig count. Can you guys comment on if that's more a function of the number of jobs or if that's more service intensity and pricing?

This is Jim Landers. The decline in technical services was mainly attributable to the declines in pressure pumping and it declined a little bit more than the rig count. That was a combination of lower job count and a slight decline in pricing. Service intensity did not increase in the first quarter, so that didn't help us as it has in the past. So it was mainly activity and a little bit of pricing.

Just one more quick one on the pricing, guys. Have you noticed any significant change at the start of Q2 in terms of pricing relative to Q1, or are we putting much of the bottom in terms of price?

No significant changes in Q2 versus Q1. We think we're at the bottom, but thought we thought that for a long time, so --

Fair enough.

One thing is the bids are clustering a little more closely together, so that's a sign of a bottom. But we've seen that before.

Okay. That's helpful.

Ken Sill, Seaport Global Securities.

Good morning, guys. On a housekeeping note, I was wondering if you could provide the breakdown in revenue in technical services amongst the major product lines?

Sure, Ken. This is Jim Landers. The percentages I'm about to give are as a percentage of consolidated RPC revenues for the first quarter. Pressure pumping was 49.8%. Through tubing solutions was 22.5%. Coil tubing was 7.1%. Our nitrogen service line was 3.7%. And rental tools, which is in support, was 3.1% of consolidated revenues.

Okay, thank you. And I was wondering if you could give us a time line in how things evolved over the quarter? Several of the other operators have said, February was just -- people put on the brakes, and that March was slightly better. April slightly better, May could be. I was just wondering how you would characterize how the quarter progressed and where we are now relative to Q1's run rate?

Ken, we've heard those anecdotes from peers and in the analyst community. We did not see big variances during the quarter, on a monthly basis. It was sort of a ratable stepdown, if you will. We've heard some discussions about some better customer activity in May or June. But back to the earlier comment, we don't know until we're rigged up on the job site if we have the work or not. April is about as you would expect, going with the rig count.

Then final question you took your staff capacity from 70% to 60%. How much additional work do you think you guys can pick up from where you are today without adding any more crews? Just wondering -- the other way to look at that is, how good is the utilization -- [upwards] utilization on your staff frac fleets right now?

On the staff frac fleets the utilization is pretty low. I would say less than 40% at this point. So with the well maintained equipment we have in place and with the crews who are not working as hard as they were back when things were a lot busier, we could generate a lot more revenue with the fleet that's in the field and the crews that are in the field and working then we are today than we did in the first quarter.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Ken.

John Watson, Simmons & Company.

Good morning, guys.

Hey, John.

I was wondering if you could provide an update on the status of your sand mine, and maybe just any more general thoughts on the brown sand versus white sand debate and where is that stands today?

On the sand mine -- clearly, along with everybody else, there's not a lot of activity there. The cost there are very reasonably minimal, and we are keeping those to a minimum at this point in time. Brown versus white sand: not much of a -- I've not heard much in terms of change there, since a few months ago. We don't see really any change in the trend of what our customers are using currently.

Just to refresh your memory, John, we use less than 5% of our sand usage is brown sand. For us -- and this is not a universal comment, but for us where brown sand is used happens to be in a place that doesn't have easy access to rail infrastructure. So you have to take it by truck rather than by rail for a substantial part of its trip. That, as we all know, negates a lot of the cost advantage of having cheap brown sand. So for us, we just are not using -- we're using very little brown sands, both this quarter and last quarter.

Okay. Great. So it sounds like there would not be any reason that you would leave the sand business considering you are still able to use your own white sand?

Right. We source and from a number of different suppliers, so internally is only a portion of what we use in total.

Okay. Great. That's it for me. Thanks, guys.

Mark Bianchi, Cowen and Company.

Good morning, this is John Hunter on for Mark.

Hey, John.

So could you guys give us any breakout of the bad debt expense in terms of where it was allocated into the segments? Like was it for a particular customer within technical service?

It was -- and this is off the top of my head, probably 80% of it went to technical services, 20% to support

Great. Okay. And then on technical service, what are seeing in terms of other opportunities to cut cost? Are most of those behind us? Then, how does that flow into how we are thinking about decrementals moving into the second quarter?

This is probably good time to talk a little bit about our balance sheet and where we are. From a cost-cut perspective, obviously, the quickest thing we can cut is headcount, and that's what we've continued to do.

We have -- we still -- from a location infrastructure standpoint, we believe that we're going to be much better off if this thing turns around in the -- as long as the turnaround is some time within the next few quarters, that we are going to be much better off, if we again, are strategically positioned when the time comes to be able to ramp back up.

So we, from a cost-cutting perspective, don't see any significant cost opportunities beyond headcount in the short term. That's just where that is. Certainly, the variable cost that we incur in performing work and things like that, there's those opportunities. But from a fixed cost standpoint, headcount is the one that's being watched more closely in the short term.

So you guys have done an impressive job with the decrementals, both in the fourth quarter and in the first quarter here. So assuming that most of the cost cuts are behind us, would you think there is potential for those decrementals to tick up a bit in the second quarter?

John, this is Jim. They certainly could, but walk through the logical a little bit. If we are at the bottom for pricing and activity -- if we are. Emphasis on, if, the decrementals won't be as much of an issue as they have been. If you we are not the bottom and we lose another 150 rigs in the next few months, as Ben just said we'll be cutting some more expenses. It is an over used word, but second quarter will be choppy from that point of view, as we try to find the bottom here and try to see what customer activities are going to be.

Okay, Great. Thanks, guys. I will turn it back.

Thanks, John.

Tom Curran, FBR Capital Markets.

Good morning, guys.

Hey, Tom.

Jim, to what extent -- even if it is just an inclination you've gotten as opposed to firm confirmation, has the work you had been doing involved the execution of DUCs as we've had the continued rally in oil prices? And to the extent you think or know you've done some of those, where have they been?

Tom, great question. According to our operations people, we have not been doing any work on drilled but uncompleted wells, in the sense that we are all talking about them. We have not yet seen any uptick in that drill but uncompleted well completion work. In fact, whatever the ratio of drilled to uncompleted wells was six months ago, it's increased. In other words, fewer wells that are being drilled are being completed. That's actually hurt results of completion services business like pressure pumping.

You can model it based on a rig count decline, but then you have to realize that fewer wells are being completed for a given well drilled. So that's our answer right now. It's an awfully elusive thing to figure out, but we do not believe we can do any completion work on DUCs.

Interesting. Then turning to the M&A pipeline. When it comes to the flow of prospects and pitches you guys have been evaluating, pushing everything pressure pumping related in terms of actual other pressure pumpers or their assets off to the side, how has the rest of the prospect pipeline evolved?

We continue to see a lot of things, but they tend to be smaller. For what that's worth.

I would comment. In terms of the pipeline?

Yes.

I would say that we heard lots and lots of lots of things coming on the market three, four months ago. Not as much here recently, which I think is interesting. I think the attrition is probably accelerating with many of our peers, especially the smaller ones which is only good for us. As we talked about, the harder and the faster this thing comes down, the better it is going to be for the survivors. So I take that as being good news that we're not seeing a lot of additional opportunities.

I think people are certainly very, very distracted by their financial situation, and that's all they are focused on. We have the luxury, if you will, of we are still trying to improve our company. We're still we still try to focus on making things better. We are working on improving processes, trying to look at new ways to run more efficiently when things turn, looking at our maintenance programs and things like that.

Because we know it is going to turn and that's another example where we're perhaps holding a little bit of that of that infrastructure and spending money that we think will benefit us in the future as opposed to crawling up in a ball and trying to cut everything absolutely to the minimum. And we are trying to be prudent, trying to maintain the strategic locations where we want to be when this thing turns around. Again, that's just the benefit we have the balance sheet.

It hurts right now. Business is bad. It is difficult. It is tough But it so bad, it is got to get -- the longer this goes, the sooner it's going to turn around. With this significant under investment by our customers and lack of ability of our competitors to maintain their equipment and maintain their systems and processes, we just feel like we're going to be well positioned when it turns.

Okay, thank you for that color. Last one for me. What's the latest indication you've gotten from your operators on the dry gas side of the natural gas price level or range at which they might be interested going back to work and where would you most likely see that first?

Good question. It is a tough one. Natural gas rig count is abysmal. We've had some tick ups. Call it $3 -ish and that's just a very crazy estimate. I don't know, Tom. The Marcellus is where it makes the most sense, but there's no takeaway capacity. We don't see any place where dry gas activity is going to tick up until the next cold winter and we just don't know where that might be.

Fair enough. (multiple speakers) (laughter). Wasn't expecting that. Thanks.

Thanks.

Matthew Johnston, Nomura.

Good morning, gentlemen.

Hey, Matt.

Just wanted to go back to this discussion around decremental margins the rest of this year. And it seems like outside of additional headcount reductions there aren't too many levers to pull. Just wanted to ask if activity levels stay where they are or maybe even decline from here, what would prevent you from getting some pricing reductions from your own suppliers to kind of alleviate what you are seeing on the top line in terms of pressure?

Matt, this is Jim. One thing that would prevent us from getting price concessions from our suppliers, or further price concessions, is that we think they are done with it.

You probably follow the public sand guys a lot more closely than we do, but we've got the sand mine. We can tell you that people are shutting down mines and laying people off, so they are not willing to work at sand prices that are this price, let alone lower. So we feel like throughout the system we've probably gotten all of the variable cost cuts that we can get, back to Ben's comments.

I think just like with the service companies, I think the suppliers are just about there. And it can't go much lower or certainly not for very long.

Okay, got it. Thanks for that. Just a quick follow-up, any thoughts on working capital outside of the receivable front the rest of this year? Any opportunities to use inventory perhaps as a source of cash?

There's probably some opportunity there, but I think if we breached the bottom on activity levels, I don't see that being a tremendous generator of cash. With the resolution of this tax matter, we generated a little bit of cash there subsequent to quarter end. So beyond that I'm not looking or expecting there to be tremendous contribution going forward.

We hope what's going to happen is that working capital is going to increase tremendously when business turns around. That's what we are hoping the next major move is going to be.

Great. Thanks, guys. That's it for me.

George O'Leary, Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Company.

Morning, guys. Most of my questions have been asked, so just one for me. Just curious of the percentage of your fleet that is still active today. We've heard some mixed things from some of your peers or competitors, however you want to couch it, in terms of the mix of work that they are doing that's 24 hours versus just daylight. So curious as to the 60% of your fleet that's still out there and marketed and maybe 40% utilized, how much 24-hour work are you doing currently? Do your customers actually prefer it because it provides some efficiency benefits, or have you migrated more to just daylight-hour work at this point?

George, this is Jim Landers. Good questions. A general comment is that we are moving more towards daylight-hour work rather than 24/7. We have a few fleets -- and let's just say 15% of our fleets, roughly, are configured for 24-hour work, meaning that they have the right crew configuration, maybe a little more equipment so they can run at lower speeds. So that's the answer now. With activity levels so low, any statistics like this are not that meaningful because things are just so small. But that is the answer.

Thanks, guys.

(Operator Instructions)

John Watson, Simmons & Company.

Thanks for letting me back in. Two housekeeping ones for me. First, what is the expectation for depreciation for the balance of year? Do you think it will continue to fall like we saw it fall in Q1?

John, in general that's right. We think we will show you sequential declines in depreciation and amortization, roughly equivalent to the Q4 to Q1 declines.

Okay. Wonderful. Then what do you expect for the tax rate for the balance of this year?

On a quarterly basis, probably 34% for each of the next three quarters.

Okay. Great. That's it for me. Thanks.

Michael Sabella, Citi.

Good morning, guys.

Morning.

Just a quick question, I guess, on your own M&A aspirations and where they may go from here and then a follow-up. As your EBITDA heads towards zero on a LTM basis, would you expect to have to go back to your revolver lenders, get approval on an M&A, or would you to remain net-debt zero after any M&A?

Net-net zero meaning the debt after M&A.

Your covenant restricted to 2.5 times, correct?

Right.

With zero EBITDA --? (Multiple speakers) we're company with strict access?

Right. We're in -- I wouldn't say constant, but we're talking to our lenders frequently. They are not concerned. We don't see any problem that -- whether we had to renegotiate or ask for some sort of waver or amendment, I think we could accomplish that. And obviously, where we ended up would depend on the size of any sort of deal that we do.

Reasonable question, but with things the way they are right now, certainly we are in discussions talking about the possibility of something like that happening but it is not anything that's taking up too much of our time right out.

That's a good way to put it. It is a great question, but we don't have that problem with having to look at having to borrow a lot of money and all that sort of thing.

But we feel like we could have access -- we are not going to do -- said another way, we're not going to do a deal unless we are quite comfortable with the economics and that we would end up with some visibility going forward as to our business. And I think we would be able to -- we can't get our bankers comfortable -- we would need to be comfortable. We'd have to get our bankers comfortable that what future prospects look like. We're not going to go out on a limb and take any big risk and try to do any large transaction without some kind of visibility to future results.

Great. Thanks.

(Operator Instructions)

We have no further questions and I would now like to turn the conference back over to Jim Landers for any additional or closing remarks.

Thank you. We like to appreciate -- we'd like to thank everybody who called in today to listen. We appreciate the questions, enjoyed the dialogue. We will see you all again soon. Thanks.

This concludes today's conference. As a reminder again, this call will be replayed on www.rpc.net within two hours following the completion. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.