Patterson-UTI Energy, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Today's conference is scheduled to begin momentarily. Until that time, your lines will remain on music hold. Thank you for your patience. THE END Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Patterson UTI Energy first quarter 2021 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any assistance, please press star 0 for the operator. Thank you. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to your host, Mr. Mike Krikmer. Sir, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Sylvia. Good morning. Good morning. And on behalf of Patterson UTI Energy, I'd like to welcome you to today's conference call to discuss the results for the first quarter of 2021. Participating in today's call will be Andy Hendricks, Chief Executive Officer, and Andy Smith, Chief Financial Officer. A quick reminder, as statements made in this conference call that state the company's or management's plans, intentions, beliefs, expectations, or predictions for the future are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. the Securities Act of 1933, and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties as disclosed in the company's annual report on Form 10-K and other filings with the SEC. These risks and uncertainties could cause the company's actual results to differ materially from those suggested in such forward-looking statements or what the company expects. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. The company's SEC filings may be obtained by contacting the company or the SEC and are available through the company's website and through the SEC's EDGAR system. Statements made in this conference call include non-GAAP financial measures. The required reconciliations to GAAP financial measures are included on our website, www.patenergy.com, and in the company's press release issued prior to this conference call. And now, it's my pleasure to turn the call over to Andy Hendricks for some opening remarks. Andy?

Thanks, Mike. Good morning and welcome to Patterson UTI's first quarter conference call. We are pleased that you can join us today. For the first quarter, revenues and adjusted EBITDA increased sequentially and exceeded our expectations despite challenges from the extreme winter storm in the southwest. Both contract drilling and directional drilling posted better than expected results while pressure pumping was impacted by downtime associated with the storm. Excluding the impact from the winter storm, pressure pumping results would have been consistent with our expectations. Crude oil prices trading in a tight band around $60 have been supportive of increasing activity and, looking forward, based on conversations with customers, we now have greater confidence in further improvement in drilling and completion activity. We expect our rig count will reach approximately 80 rigs over the next three months, with most of that growth coming late in the second quarter and early in the third quarter. Additionally, the pricing on most of our currently active rigs has been reset since the beginning of the downturn, and as such, we believe the second quarter margin per day will be the low for this cycle in drilling. In pressure pumping, we are encouraged by signs of pricing improvement. We have been successful in pushing through to our customers' higher input costs for things such as sand and trucking. And additionally, and where I would like to congratulate our leadership team in this business, we are starting to achieve better pricing for our high level of service quality. Our focus in pressure pumping remains squarely on improving pricing and margins. As demand continues to improve, we now expect to activate an eighth spread late in the second quarter. Within our directional drilling segment, there are a lot of exciting things happening. I have spoken for several quarters now of the market share we have captured in directional drilling due to the reliability and performance of our mercury measurement wall drilling system and our impact directional drilling motors. This reliability and performance combined with strong alignment with our contract drilling business has allowed us to broaden our customer base. Additionally, in directional, we have worked with customers on a number of different performance-based contracts. We continue to innovate to meet our customer's demand to drill higher quality wells. During the first quarter, we successfully field tested a new five-inch drilling motor design and completed the design of a new six and five-eighths inch motor for higher performance. Additionally, we successfully field tested our new MWD data compression algorithms that allow for higher quality wellbore placement in the reservoir for more productive wells. With that, I will now turn the call over to Andy Smith, who will review the financial results for the first quarter.