Noble Corporation plc (NE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hi. My name is Dave Anderson. I cover U.S. oilfield services research at Barclays. Thank you for joining us today. Our next speaker is Mr. Robert Eifler. He's President and CEO of Noble Corporation, was recently named CEO. Of course, Noble just recently came out of Chapter 11. So we're looking forward to seeing Noble back into our coverage universe in short order and looking forward to hearing from Robert in terms of the outlook on Noble. So you have a presentation here to give us, and I have a few questions there at the end there once you're done.

Very good. Dave, thank you very much. Thank you for the introduction, and thanks to everyone online for joining us here this morning and hearing our story. I'm assuming my screen is sharing now, so I will move forward here. This is -- just a side note. Barclays, this is the first conference I've attended in my career or early in my career so it has a soft spot in my heart. I'm glad to be here today. I'm going to start with forward-looking statements. Just a reminder, among other things, I may make reference to the market outlook, financial performance, fleet, commercial financial strategy. And actual results may vary materially from those presented here. I would urge you to review our forward-looking statement in detail. So if you haven't been following our story, let me just give a quick overview of Noble today. As Dave mentioned starting out here, we've been through a lot here over the past year, including an emergence from Chapter 11. We are celebrating our 100th year of service this year. We enjoy a rich and storied history and with that comes a strong culture and a strong corporate identity. We're very proud at Noble, and I'm very proud to be leading this organization today. Much like our history, our current chapter is -- has been eventful, as we alluded to. And so let me just look forward to giving you a few highlights of where we sit today. Our current fleet is 20 units, 12 floaters and 8 jackups; average fleet age of 8 years. We are highly committed at Noble to customer satisfaction. This is a service business, and that has to be your approach to be successful in this business. And we're very proud of the many customer relationships that we hold and are very appreciative of the business that we've been entrusted with. Financially, just after our recent announcement of an asset sale, we are in a net cash position. We have total liquidity of over $900 million and a backlog of around $1.3 billion. I will speak in just a moment to the transaction that got us to that net cash position as well as another, but suffice to say that I'm very pleased with where we sit today financially. And I'll spend a lot of time today laying out an argument about why Noble going forward. So our value proposition today. As we emerged from Chapter 11, we have been laser-focused on resetting our cost structure and obviously fixing our balance sheet. Some of the early presentations we made coming out of Chapter 11, we spent a lot of time focusing on our breakeven dayrates and making the argument to the market that we have an industry-leading cost structure and that even in a lower dayrate environment, we can breakeven, we can preserve liquidity and we can preserve cash. Well, in the meantime, the UDW market in particular has moved meaningfully. I'll speak a little bit more to that later, and I'm sure that some of my colleagues have spoken to that or will speak to that as well in the conference. But it's really set up what we think is the key value proposition for Noble today, which is a yield plus growth story. We can free cash flow in the current market environment. We have -- we've said that in 2022, we will be free cash flow positive. And when you combine that with our liquidity, we positioned the company to establish a yield story now. Growth-wise, we see -- and I'll speak later to it, but we see a further improving market, particularly in the UDW segment. And later, I'll put some data behind that and also speak illustratively to some of the operational leverage in the business. So as a takeaway, we like to say that you can get paid in current market environment and still have a significant exposure to upside with the Noble story today. So let me just spend in a minute going through our 2 announced strategic transactions. I'll go in reverse chronological order, starting with the divestment of our jackups in Saudi Arabia announced in August this year. We have a price of $292 million for that transaction, where we will sell all 4 rigs contracted in Saudi. We anticipate cash proceeds of around $285 million net of fees, expenses and the settlement of working capital there. So what does that transaction do? It has put us in a position to be net cash positive in 2022. Obviously, it's significantly enhanced our liquidity position. But most importantly, it's put us in a position to prioritize debt repayment and returning cash to shareholders through share buybacks and dividends. One thing it was not, it was not a strategic move away from jackups. That is a transaction where the counterparty came to us. It was opportunistic. We feel that it was a win-win for both sides. And we're pleased to have to be planning to close that transaction out in October. So I spoke to yield in the last slide, but this transaction really is a critical step in establishing that priority for us. So now back to what's kind of old news now, but let me just make a couple of points around the Pacific Drilling acquisition. First of all, obviously, it grew our high-specification UDW fleet. I'm a big believer in the UDW market. Noble had been largely sold out in drillships for some time when we went into that transaction, and so it allowed us to expand that fleet. And we're very pleased to already have won contracts and added backlog to the newly acquired Pacific fleet. I've got 3 contracts listed on the right-hand side of that page, all of which we're very pleased to have earned. And we've also expanded our customer base through that transaction. We realized $30 million of synergies. We strengthened our balance sheet. They came with a net cash position, and we've exercised capital discipline by scrapping both the Mistral and the Bora. For those rigs -- those are 2 of the older rigs that came with that fleet. And quite simply, we looked at the forward model, marketability of those rigs, likelihood of going back to work and made the decision to go ahead and scrap the rigs and announce that along with the transaction. Just really quickly, I'd like to speak to the rig renaming which we have just announced, where we've renamed 3 of the Pacific rigs as listed there. That is a very neat tradition at Noble, and I'm proud to be carrying it on with these deserving individuals. I've worked -- actually worked for one of them offshore, and they're all wonderful people with many decades of experience at Noble and as I mentioned, well deserving of this honor and very glad to continue this tradition. So for the rest of the presentation, let me take you through some of our key value drivers. We've been consistent about what we think is needed to be a successful offshore driller, and I'll just run through a few of these now. I've spoken already about our culture earlier. So let me start with a little bit about our fleet, which I think is positioned for continued high utilization. And utilization is really a key differentiator in generating cash flow in our business always but also today. So starting with the floaters, which now, after the jackup transaction, comprise 60% of our fleet. We have 12 floaters in total. Seven of those are seventh generation drillships. Four are sixth generation drillships. And we have one more semisubmersible, which is currently operating in Indonesia. Average age of around 8 years and 83% contracted. So that number is simple math, 10 divided by 12. The 2 rigs that are not contracted today are the cold-stacked rigs, the Meltem and the Scirocco that are cold stacked together and came with the Pacific transaction. We have said in the past and already in this presentation that we'll exercise capital discipline, and that's a priority in how we think about those rigs as well. On the jackup side, now 40% of our fleet, we have 8 total: 1 listed as ultra-high-spec, which really means Norway class; and then 7 high-spec. Bear with me for a moment while I use a little bit of industry jargon in describing the design of these rigs because in the world of jackups that does matter. Our ultrahigh-spec rig, the Noble Lloyd Noble, is a CJ-70 design. That's the -- essentially the largest jackup design that exists out in the world. It is currently preparing for a contract in Norway. It will be Norway capable. And we think that rig probably stays in Norway for a very long time. Most of you probably know this, but having a Norway-capable designation is an important step for any rig, floater or jackup. We have 1 remaining JU-2000 design rig, which is -- JU-2000 is a common North Sea -- common type of unit. It's a North Sea-capable unit. It's time tested. It's efficient. There are a number of those out there in the marketplace, some in the North Sea, many not in the North Sea that would require some level of upgrade to take to the North Sea, but really a high-spec workhorse jackup, a great unit. The remaining 6 units are JU3000N class rigs. The N is intended to signify Noble, and it really is an upgrade version of the JU-2000 that I just described earlier. I'm going through all of this detail with you because it's important to understand that this class of 6 rigs is capable of getting into deeper water depths and over a number of important platforms in the North Sea that other rig classes, including the JU-2000, would struggle to achieve. It's a very modern and efficient drilling package on these, and so they perform quite well. We're the only company that owns this class of rig, and we're very proud of them. And we think they've performed quite well and will continue to perform well for some of the most difficult drilling programs in the North Sea and elsewhere. Let me speak briefly to utilization. I mentioned earlier that utilization is key to cash flow, and cash flow is key to our story. Ramping up and ramping down rigs is an inefficient operation, whether it's floaters or jackups. Keeping rigs utilized is really critical to a cash flow story, and we think that it's one of the things that is very much in a contractor's control through a contractor's brand and customer satisfaction. We think that, that plays out through utilization as much as anything else. So we've got 4% of the global fleet. But we've won on average of almost double that at 7%, including at a couple of times -- multiple times our market share in certain years. Let me speak now just to -- more specifically to our contract backlog, starting with our floater fleet status and starting with the 2 Globetrotter rigs that are currently with Shell. Those rigs are working off 10-year contracts with Shell. Recently, anyone who's followed Noble has seen our announcements around the Globetrotter II. We are glad to report that everyone is safe with those rigs. The rig is now in port, undergoing repairs and further inspection. We put out -- we have guidance later in this slide which is our latest estimate on financial impact there. We have 4 rigs currently operating for ExxonMobil. Those were all newbuild drillships built out of the Hyundai shipyard, sometimes I refer to them as the HHI vessels, more jargon. They operate under a broad and flexible agreement that we negotiated with Exxon that we called commercial enabling agreement, CEA in short. That agreement allows both Exxon and Noble a number of benefits. We're very proud of the agreement and very appreciative of Exxon trusting us down in Guyana. So you see the backlog there. The CEA agreement is an agreement that resets to a market price twice a year, on March 1 and September 1. That market rate governs all 4 of those rates. So it resets on each of those dates to a new rate. The next reset will occur on March 1, and that rate is intended to be a rate that a prudent drilling contractor would contract to, given the job in Guyana with seventh-generation rigs. So that's kind of a broad outline. Exxon is given a lot of flexibility. We offer a discount off of that market rate that varies depending on the number of rigs in operation and the total backlog at the time the rate is in effect. And Exxon is also able to move turnaround among the different -- of the 4 rigs. And so that gives them the flexibility they need to adapt to changes in their drilling schedule, including moving rigs between exploration drilling and production drilling, development drilling. And we're very pleased with the outcome there. We do think that the 4 rigs are well positioned to continue working in Guyana. I don't have any updates beyond what's shown on the screen here today. I talked about a few of the contracts earlier that are listed down lower on the screen, some of which we've contracted through the Pacific rigs. I won't go into more detail there. And I mentioned earlier the Meltem and the Scirocco, which are currently cold stacked, made the promise that we'll be disciplined in how we think about contracting those rigs. Generally speaking, we think about needing a full return on our investment if we're going to bring those back into the market. I have also said that for certain customers, we may be willing to come off of that because we think that in certain situations, the likelihood of follow-on work, our continued work program would justify getting a rig back in the market. At present, we have -- we don't have any programs that we see for the Meltem in the near term. We have one bid out that's public that would be a bareboat charter for the Scirocco. But generally, we think about those rigs as being more likely candidates for a slightly improved market. Moving to jackups here. I think the fleet status essentially speaks for itself. One thing I'll say around our fleet in the North Sea is normally when you're contracting, you try not to have your rigs roll at the same time. Unfortunately, in 2020, we had a little bit of a perfect storm that you try to avoid but was unavoidable. The way that options ended up being exercised, the contracts ended up rolling, we had essentially all of our rigs in the North Sea roll almost at the same time in early 2020. And of course, COVID hit right about that time. So I spoke earlier about our utilization. It is something we're proud of. I think right now is -- in the North Sea is a slight counter example to that. I would argue it's driven mainly by the timing of those contract rolls in relation to COVID. We see the jackup market is largely flattish going forward, including in the North Sea. We do have conversations behind every one of these rigs right now, and we'll get them back to work. We're working on it. We don't have any news for you today. Lloyd Noble, I mentioned earlier, is preparing for work in Norway with Equinor. The last update we had, had that rig going back September 15. We're updating guidance then that will include a slight delay to getting that rig under contract, probably something closer to late a September event today. Again, that's in our guidance. We'll get to it later. I mentioned earlier we're very pleased with the Lloyd Noble's position in Norway and very hopeful that, that rig continues to work in that country where we see strong demand for quite some time to come. Let me speak to the UDW market supply and demand for just a minute and make a couple of points. I mentioned at the very beginning, this is a market that we buy. And I think this slide produced by Rystad is probably a pretty good demonstration of why. We think UDW is one of the most, probably is the most important driver of growth in offshore. 2021 was better than expected, and I would say this has been, certainly rate-wise, an excellent year for drilling contractors. And that's largely driven by better-than-anticipated demand, as shown at the 65 rigs there as well as contracting looking forward to 2022, where we see a sizable uptick in UDW demand for next year. I'll note the numbers in green at the bottom, which is an improvement -- an increase from the demand forecast in June of this year. And if you were to look back previous to that, you'd see kind of a series of continued improving forecasts. At one point, we thought 2021 was going to be the trough year. And then as we moved out of COVID relatively quickly offshore, it turns out 2020 will have been the trough year, and we're hopeful that we see improvement going forward, as shown here. One note, this is displayed in rig years, not rigs working. And so it takes more rigs to fulfill this number of rig years than just the numbers shown in the blue bar. So as an example, simple math, 91 divided by 96 shows kind of 85-ish percent total utilization. And so out of that, 20-or-so rigs will have 100% utilization. And then the rest, there are probably a few that have lower-than-normal utilization. But on average, you can anticipate kind of 85-type percent utilization there, which is important because over marketed supply, that's -- we've already seen dayrate improvement. And I think, typically, you see that when you hit that 80%, 85% range. And the last few months have been no exception to what we've seen play out in previous cycles. The difference between the yellow and the gray lines there, that's marketed utilization versus total supply. And I think it's important here because the investment requirements to move from the gray line into the yellow line are meaningful. And in the UDW world, the range is extremely wide about invested capital that it would require to take a cold-stacked rig or a rig stranded in a yard and bring it into the marketed supply. But suffice to say, we think industry dynamics today are set up such that rigs coming out of cold stack in shipyards face a relatively high hurdle -- capital hurdle. And importantly, we think that rates can continue to move and that those rigs will come -- not all of them but some of them will come into the market. We've seen some of that play out here 2021, but we think it will sprinkle into the market where they will bid depending on individual company's objectives and strategy. They'll be bidding into the more longer-term contracts. And that short-term contracting will actually drive some of the rate growth. You've seen in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico so far this year kind of a little bit higher growth than elsewhere in the world, and I think short-term contracting is part of that. Recognize here that I'm running a little bit low on time so I won't spend any time on this slide. I'll just say that I think I've hit capital discipline, the cost structure and cash flow generation head on already, but we're very well positioned today with a strong financial foundation. And we are very much looking forward to the next phase in the cycle, which we anticipate to be free cash flow generation and very importantly, returning capital to investors. A quick order on financial guidance. 2022 remains unchanged. We've updated 2021 today based off of some upward and downward revisions outside of our fleet. But what's really driving the change here is updated based off the Globetrotter II situation I described earlier. The low end of that range is essentially assuming that, that rig comes -- gets back to work towards the end of this year, and then the high end of those ranges assumes that it comes back to work towards late October. So don't read too much into this slide. This is a highly illustrative attempt to show some of the operational leverage in our business. It's not tied to our guidance or outlook or anything like that. Just in case anyone's new to the story and doesn't have a current model on anything in offshore, I think it's worthy of noting just how sensitive the business can be to improving dayrates and utilization. So it's -- there's -- we think there's a lot of upside in the industry and particularly in Noble. So in closing, why Noble? We think the outlook for offshore is strong, particularly in the UDW. We think offshore exploration and production will remain a critical component of the global oil supply going forward. And as the market evolves, Noble is very well set up not just to survive but to thrive as well. Our platform is focused on and positioned to maximize free cash flow generation through our industry-leading cost structure and capital structure, our commitment to capital discipline, our operational excellence and long-term entrusted customer relationships. Making the right economic decisions and returning cash flow to investors is the right model for offshore drillers today, and we intend to be leaders in that regard. Dave, thank you very much. And if my thought is right, I think I've eaten up a lot of the time.

Of course, you have, Robert. Unfortunately, we're not going to have any time for any questions. But great to see those projections in terms of the EBITDA doubling next year. You obviously have a great contract with Exxon in Guyana. And I know we'll certainly pay attention to that. But of course, we don't have any time for questions. But very nice to see you, Robert, and thank you for joining us today.

Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Dave, and we look forward to catching up with everyone.

Bye-bye.