Valaris Limited (VAL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Next up, we have Valaris this afternoon. I'm very pleased to introduce Mr. Anton Dibowitz, President and CEO of Valaris since September 2021. Previously served as CEO of Seadrill from 2017 to 2020, following various roles since 2013 and has over 20 years of drilling industry experience. Anton has a few opening remarks and a few slides, after which we'll have some Q&A. Anton, thanks for joining us today.

Sure. I can do my opening remarks sitting here if that's okay.

Yes, absolutely.

You missed the first part of my career, So I actually started at Transocean, then I went to Seadrill, but I left the best for last to be at Valaris, where hopefully we'll end a long, maybe not illustrious career. So just a couple of comments about Valaris for those of you who don't know. So who is Valaris. Valaris is the largest offshore driller if we start on the left side of the slide, 48 rigs, 13 high-specification drillships, 2 semis in the fleet and 33 jackups. And what's really important about that fleet is that it is high specification. 12 of our 13 drillships are seventh-generation asset. That's the highest concentration of high-spec drillships in the industry. And fleet quality matters in this business. If you look at contracting over the last year or so, the dayrates and 7 gen drillships have been about 25% higher and the utilization has held in about 10 percentage points higher than the general market. Our customers prefer high-specification assets, high hook load capacity, dual BOPs, high thrust capacity, allow them to gain efficiencies on those programs, and those programs are amplified over the development programs, which is overwhelmingly what we're chasing right now in the business. But fleet quality only matters if you can deliver operations with it. And if you go in the middle part of that slide, very proud of the operational track record that we've delivered for our customers over the last few years. 96% revenue efficiency, that's actually realizing the value from the backlog that we book and a strong safety record. Delivering operational excellence not only allows us to realize the revenue on our contracts, it also gets us work because customers want to work with drilling contractors can deliver their programs. Our contracting philosophy over going into this year, and I'm sure we'll talk about white space has been to book in the white space that we faced as an industry. We had 4 ships with near-term availability this year, and we've made great progress on that initiative. We've secured back-end contracts to put 3 of those drillships back to work, and the dayrates on those contracts have all been over $400,000 a day. Between that contracting success in our drillship fleet, plus what we continue to contract in our jackup fleet, we've added more than $2 billion of contract backlog, one $2 billion worth of contracts this year. $1.3 billion of that on our drillships, putting our contract backlog at $4.7 billion, which is the highest it's been in a decade. Our operational performance, the quality of our fleet and our contracting success have all led to great financial performance in the first half of the year. Net operational performance led us to on our Q2 call, increased the midpoint of our guidance by $55 million to $585 million. Taking a step back for a second, what do we see in the market? We see a strong case for offshore drilling and particularly for deepwater. Our customers are increasingly turning to deepwater to meet their resource needs. We believe in a positive strong future for our assets, and we will continue to exercise what are our 3 priorities in this business, and that is deliver great operational excellence for our customers, contract successfully and be astute in our commercial strategy and be good stewards of our business. And by that, I mean, manage our fleet and manage our balance sheet. And with that, we think and we are confident that we can deliver long-term value for our shareholders.

That's it. Great. Awesome. Thank you for that overview. So yes, a year ago, the big theme at our conference here was white space. But now here we are. We're in the middle of it, but it's now well understood, well telegraphed by you and your peers. It feels like we've gone through a rough period of significant uncertainty around offshore demand, but now we've sort of come out of it. Is that kind of the sense you're getting from your customers? And can you just talk about overall tone from customer conversations and how that translates to your deepwater outlook over the next 12 to 18 months.

Yes. First, sure, Amesha, thanks for having us here again. Good to see you again. It was reflecting this morning a little bit of where we were a year ago. And whitespace was the topic of the day. I think at the time, what we talked about and people ask, why do you believe or what leads you to believe that these rigs, although these programs are being pushed back that they will actually translate into to this work being delivered what we expected then was for start-ups in '26 and into '27. And what we saw at the time was while programs were being pushed back for a number of reasons, none of those programs were being taken off the table. It was really a timing issue. So white space was going to be transitory as we expected it. But obviously, there's the show me, don't tell me phenomenon. So what we were looking for was to see that the pace of contracting would pick up in the first half of this year, and we've certainly seen that happen. And the reason for that is if you're going to start a program up in the middle of '26, ultimately, operators need to be contracting that rig 12-plus months in advance. I mean you get away with 9 months, but generally, it's about 12 months in advance. So with start-ups in '26, we expect to see contracting in '25. So we've taken that, as I said, the commercial opportunity to secure 3 out of the 4 of our ships that had near-term availability. We see a good pace of contracting across the industry. A year ago, we were talking about 30 opportunities that we were tracking for term programs starting in the next couple of years. And we continue to see the number in the pipeline about that. And that's important because we have seen a pickup in contracting, yet the pipeline continues to fill up with additional opportunities. So the discussions we're having with our customers right now, we expect that, that pipeline of opportunities to continue to get filled up on the back end, but also contracting to continue as we head through the reminder part of this year.

Great. Just in terms of deepwater utilization, last month, you said the overall drillship utilization might trough sometime in the first half of '26, but that the seventh-gen drillship market is going to lead the recovery and exit '26 with utilization levels above 90%. So typically, that level of utilization would imply pricing increase. We're currently here in the low 400s, which is where spot pricing has been. Would you expect contract announcements in the second half of next year to kind of move up into that mid- to high 400 level where we've been over the past 2 years?

So let's talk about the development in rates. I mean what we said heading into a white space period was not that we expected to see a major moderation or change in pricing, but to see a broader range of rates. As utilization drops, there is some pricing pressure generally and people are going to follow different strategies, and you may see a broader range of rates as you go into that period. I mean, as far as our commercial execution, I'm proud that of the 3 term contracts that we signed in our ships, those rates have all been above $400,000. And I think that speaks to customers who select you based on your operational performance who appreciate and are going to utilize the specifications of your rigs are still willing to pay for that capacity in the market. As far as the utilization piece goes, we see the pipeline of programs. Seventh-gens have led sixth-gens by about 10 percentage points through the cycle. So we still expect utilization to continue to drop on an absolute basis as we go through the remainder of the year because there are rigs that end contracts quarter-over-quarter and the start-ups of these term programs are really kind of midpoint in '26 and beyond. So we still expect utilization to drop through the end of the year into the beginning part of '26 to recover through '26. And because seventh-gens are advantaged over sixth-gens, we fully expect that seventh-gens will lead the recovery. And yes, based on the timing of start-ups of programs, we expect to be exiting '26 with utilization of 90% or better. To your question about pricing, in some ways, it's economics 101. Pricing follows supply-demand dynamics so as the market continues to tighten through '26 and into '27, we fully expect there to be positive pricing momentum in the market. I don't want to say exactly when or exactly where, but the pricing follows the utilization and as the market tightens, especially for seventh-generation assets, we expect that to pull through into the market.

Great. As you mentioned, you've secured contracts for 3 of our 4 drillships with near-term availability. The only one that's left is the DS-12, it's warm stacked and currently without a future contract. Can you talk about some of the opportunities you're looking for this rig? And at this point, would you contract this rig for anything less than maybe a 1-year job?

For the right commercial opportunity, sure, we would. But I think we've been pretty clear on what our commercial strategy is, having continuous work and long-term work makes for a good business. So our commercial focus has clearly been on speaking out and waiting for the right opportunity to book in the white space and put our highly -- our high-specification fleet back to work. We've done that on term programs on the first 3 of those assets, and that's fully our intention to find a similar program for the 12. And the 12 is a great rig. It's drilled the exploration well in Egypt that BP is now tendering for a development opportunity. So it has a great reputation there. It's drilled up and down West Africa and has a fantastic track record with -- in a number of basins. And there's some really, really interesting opportunities in Africa, which is the let's say, the driver of growth of incremental demand as we see it in the market right now. I mean we're tracking about 30 opportunities for startups in the next couple of years, roughly half of those in Africa. So given Valaris' long and excellent track record in Africa, the 12 is obviously well placed for a number of those programs. There are some programs further afield kind of more internationally, but I think between those programs, we feel good about continued contracting and tender closings from operators and feel good about finding a good solid home for the 12. Never say never at the right economics, would we take something shorter. But our focus has clearly been on and we have executed on book-ending that white space, finding that next term contract for our rig to underscore and underpin our earnings visibility going forward. And then if there are shorter-term opportunities to seek that as a secondary to having that earnings underpinned. I think one of the developments we have seen, which is also encouraging in the last 6 months or so is some shorter-term programs emerging in the market where there was almost no short-term work being talked about by operators. So across the Golden Triangle, we're actually having conversations with customers about potential short-term work. There are a lot of factors that need to come into play for it to make sense for us. You don't, as a drilling contractor, want to be ramping up activity on a rig, drilling a short-term program, having to ramp down with the cost and then ramp back up again. So our focus will be finding that long-term contract and then seeing if we can find gap fill that sits right before that contract, and there are some incremental of those opportunities. And of course, we'll see if we can find some of that to secure some -- to fill in some of that some of that idle time on the 12, when we contracted as well as our other rigs that we've already contracted. I mean, generally, I think we've covered where we see Africa, half of the opportunities, as I said, Brazil is an interesting place. Petrobras, yes, they're redoing their 5-year plan. But generally, the expectation is that they're going to continue to enroll the contracts that they have there, either through current tenders or new tenders that are ongoing. I think what's interesting in Brazil because Petrobras was the first leg up in incremental demand in the market. Petrobras being stable, a very important part of the deepwater business is the advent of the IOCs coming back to Brazil in a big way. So we're drilling there for Equinor right now. They have 2 developments going on, but they're seeking a third rig to add to their portfolio. Shell is tendering for the Gato do Mato development, which is going to need a rig and then maybe not in the near term, but our DS-15 drilled the exploration well for BP on the Bumerangue field which BP, I think, publicly stated was their largest discovery in 25 years. So maybe a little bit further down the road, but fully expect that, that will be. So the increment of IOCs in Brazil is a good leg up for the market. Gulf of Mexico, pretty stable as we see it right now, very pleased to have extended the DS-16 along with the DSA-18, expanding our relationship with Oxy there. A couple of opportunities further afield. Australia, Malaysia, some work in India for ships. These are not massive numbers, but pulling 2, 3, 4, 5 rigs out of the Golden Triangle to meet demand in those areas, which are where operators are increasingly looking for higher spec will help the supply/demand balance. So I mean, long story short, I'm kind of doing the weave, yes, not to quote somebody else. But we feel good about the prospects for the 12. I think there's a lot of opportunity in the market for it.

Got it. Great to hear. Moving beyond the 12, you do have 3 cold stacked rigs in the DS-11, DS-13, DS-14. Obviously, the priority is contracting the DS-12, of course. But what's your best estimate at this point as to when maybe one of those start working again. We're seeing -- we're hearing about the recovery in the second half of '26 and into 2027. Is 2028 a reasonable assumption for one of those to start working or?

I'm glad you made a prediction. You're not asking me to do it. Those of you who know me, I'm not much of a prognosticator as you can be proven quite wrong in this business. Look, I think '28 is a reasonable assumption if I can be so bold. If -- our focus, as you said, is clearly on keeping our active fleet highly utilized. We've done that with 3 out of 4 with near-term availability. We've rolled the 16, which was only rolling off middle of next year. Beyond that, we have the DS-7 and the DS-9. Yes, their contracts are only ending in the second half of next year. But absolutely, our focus will then turn to making sure that our active fleet is highly utilized. The 11, 13 and 14 are great assets for us. These are the highest spec sidelined rigs sitting on the sidelines, dual BOP, seventh-generation assets. We fully are confident, believe and expect there will be a time to bring these rigs to market. But we will not bring them to market until the market is ready to take them. We're certainly not going to cannibalize our own fleet or add additional capacity to the market before the market is ready for it. Look, we've reactivated 6 drillships in the cycle, the most of any drilling contract. And we did not add a single one of those rigs to the market that wasn't against incremental demand. We were not trying to displace existing contractors in the market. And we were successful in finding contracts that were cash accretive on the start-up costs under their initial contract and we will follow the same philosophy very clearly with the 11, 12 -- 11, 13 and 14. We expect those contracts will be there with a tightening market. And yes, I'm not going to make a prediction, but I'd say '28 is a reasonable assumption the way we see the market developing.

Great. And then a related question, just we haven't talked about reactivation expenses in quite some time. What's your latest estimate as to kind of the all-in cost of reactivation. I think when we were talking about it 1.5 years ago, not just with you but industry-wide, anywhere from $125 million all in, maybe $150 million. Is that still the estimate?

I think -- I don't think there's been a large change in reactivation costs. I mean there has been a little bit of oilfield inflation. We've done it 6x. We have a good track record of doing it. So we have a good idea and a great project team we've delivered those rigs very successfully. So I think we have a pretty good idea of it is. I think we've always been on the lower end of the broad range that you hear in the market of doing that based on the technical and engineering prowess and the fact that we stacked those rigs. These were our rigs. We've had them stack the whole time. We fully understand what it takes to bring them back. So I think that $120 million, $125 million range on average would still hold for our assets. And I think that the timing would still be about a year in order to do that project.

Got it. Just shifting gears to the jackup market. Could you just provide your latest thoughts on your outlook, maybe split between kind of benign jackups and your jackups in the North Sea. On the benign side, you obviously have a big presence with the ARO Drilling JV with Saudi Arabia. Some investors see that as a risk because of all the suspensions we've been hearing about, but they don't realize that you just signed up 5 of them, I believe, on 5-year extensions. So if you could just talk about both your benign market jackups and your North Sea jackups.

Yes. We've had number of one-on-ones this morning. I think people don't talk about jackups enough. I mean jackups are -- and our jackup fleet is an important part of what Valaris is and the Valaris story. Other people have shied away from it, but it's a really good productive business for us, and we like it as part of the portfolio. It adds to our scale, it gives us customer relationships, and it generates earnings. Our positions in jack-ups is, as you said, one piece of it is the ARO JV, the 50-50 JV with Aramco. We leased 7 rigs into the ARO JV, and you're absolutely right. We extended 5 of those this year at significantly increased rates from where they were before and extended those rigs through 2030. So of the 7 rigs we have leased into the ARO JV, 6 of them are contracted through 2030 and the other one is contracted through 2027. Beyond that, we've got a solid position, we choose where we want to compete on the jackup market, on the high-spec and certain kind of customer market. So we're operating on a long-term contract in Qatar. We have a great position in Trinidad where folks need high-spec assets, and you can get advantage dayrates in that market. We're in Australia with the 107. So we feel good about our benign environment jackup. Look, despite what happened with Saudi and Saudi releasing rigs and those rigs needing to make a transition into the international market, utilization of the jackup market has held at 90% or above. So this is a good market. It's a good cash-generating market. On the harsh environment side, we have a leading presence in the North Sea. We have great customer relationships there. We do expect there to be some competition. A couple of operators decided to prioritize other basins over the North Sea but we have great contract coverage on our fleet. We see a pipeline of 20 or so opportunities between the U.K., Netherlands and the Danish sector in there. I mean, overall, our jackup fleet is 70% contract covered for 2026 and about 60% for 2027. But overall, this is a good cash generating -- EBITDA generating part of our business. Year-over-year in '25, we see growth both in average dayrates and also operating days. So we like our jackup position. It's a great part of the story.

Great. Just turning to M&A. The last big corporate M&A transaction with Noble acquiring Diamond Offshore. People have said that there might be room for one other big corporate M&A in the industry. Where do you see Valaris just in terms of positioning and your strategy in terms of corporate M&A?

I mean, absolutely. I mean, Valaris has a lot of drillers in this market, it is a product of consolidation. So we were fully subscribed to consolidation. I think investors would like to see some more consolidation. And in fact, I think our customers would it leads to kind of more solid counterparties that they can contract with the ability to operate at scale to deploy technology. So I think it will be helpful both for the investor and for the customer side of the business. I don't -- we don't look at M&A as either/or or look at it as and both strategy. I think we already have the scale that we need in this business. You need to have scale in this business to have synergies to be able to share overheads to be able to deploy technology. We already have the scale that we need in our business. I think you've seen some M&A because folks have needed to build growth capacity or get growth capacity or upgrade their fleet profile. Now set up here before, 12 out of 13 of our ships are seventh generation. So we already have the fleet quality. We already have the scale. Our growth story is baked in with the 11, 13 and 14. So we don't need to do M&A, but will we? Absolutely. I mean, the lens is easy. Is it based on synergies and the fleet quality that you would be pairing with? Do you not degrade your fleet quality? And is it value creating and accretive to shareholders, then absolutely, we will engage in it but we don't need to. So it's a great position for us to be and to have organic growth built into the structure, but also have the opportunity to do M&A if it makes sense for our shareholders.

Got it. I have one last question, but I think we might have time for one or two questions from the audience, if we can get the mics going around. My final question is on shareholder returns. Valaris currently doesn't have a dividend. And while you did repurchase shares last year, you haven't repurchased any this year at all. You have a strong balance sheet and also receiving $100 million of sale proceeds from the VALARIS 247 soon. So should we expect shareholder returns maybe in the second half of this year? Or is that more of a 2026 event in your mind?

So let's take a step back, overall capital return philosophy. I mean our philosophy has always been clear that once we have sustained cash generation in the business, that our goal was to return that all to shareholders unless we clearly had a more value accretive use for it. Your first question was about white space. So we're going into this year with quite a bit of uncertainty. And again, we wanted to see that white space and book ending that white space would be an important part of us talking about capital returns. The other piece of it was making sure that we contracted our rigs. So we book operational performance is important. First half of the year, we've generated significant EBITDA and cash flow and we've a little bit balanced in the second half of the year. And as you mentioned, the sale of the 247 for north of $100 million. All of these things add to our flexibility to engage in capital returns. I think we've always been clear that it's not necessarily going to be linear and it's necessarily going to be tied one-on-one with when we're generating the cash. But I think it's all significantly positive markets that help us think about give us additional flexibility in order to return capital to shareholders.

Great. Any questions from the audience? We might have time for 1 or 2. We got one up here in front.

So just following up on your comment on the cyclicality of '26, the dip and then followed by the 90% towards year-end. What, if any, oil price assumptions are behind that cycle comment?

So what do we see right now? I mean what we're seeing actually in the market is our customers rotating from short-cycle onshore developments where some of them are challenged at current oil prices to offshore large-scale developments based on, one, their need for production, needing to replace production heading towards the end of the decade. But because the programs that they're looking in these long-cycle developments are highly economic at current prices and well below. I think there's some data from [ Restart ] talking about of the projects we expect to be sanctioned in the next 3 years, 75% of those programs are economic below $50 a barrel, right? So offshore gives our customers the scale that they need. They have compelling economics, and it actually has lower emissions intensity, which is still a factor for a number of them. So we -- it's quite resilient to prices and a forward strip, that's north of [ $65 million ]. And we certainly see that from the discussions we're having with customers where we are right now about them doing that rotation, the expectation is an increase in exploration activity and greenfield development offshore in the next few years. So I feel good about it.

Great. That's about all the time we have. So Anton, thank you very much for joining us.

Yes. Thanks, as always. Appreciate it.

Thank you.