Independence Contract Drilling, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the Independence Contract Drilling Incorporated First Quarter 2021 Financial Results and Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. And to withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Philip Choice, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today to discuss ICD's first quarter of 2021 results. With me today is Anthony Gallegos, our President and Chief Executive Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind all participants that our comments today will include forward-looking statements which are subject to certain risks and uncertainties. A number of factors and uncertainties could cause actual results and future periods to differ materially from what we talk about today. For complete discussion of these risks, we encourage you to read the company's earnings release and our documents on file with the SEC. In addition, we refer to non-GAAP measures during the call. Please refer to the earnings release in our public filings for our full reconciliation of net loss to adjusted net loss, EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA, and for definitions of our non-GAAP measures. And with that, I'll turn it over to Anthony for opening remarks.

Hello, everyone. Phillip will go through the details of our financial results for the first quarter of 2021 in a couple of minutes. In my prepared remarks today, I want to focus on three things. A brief update on our recent quarter, the acceleration of utilization and day rate momentum we are experiencing, in particular within the last 45 days, and update you briefly on our progress regarding ESG. We reported an EBITDA loss even though we continue to add contracted rigs. Reactivation cost impacted our results by approximately 1.1 million during the quarter. The cold weather freeze that gripped Texas back in February impacted our results only slightly. It delayed the startup of one rig, and we had another rig go on a lower force majeure rate for a short period of time. our financial results continued to benefit from our cost rationalization and cost control efforts implemented last year and better absorption of fixed and support costs as a result of more rig activity. Looking forward, we are confident that the past two quarters represent the trough for us as our industry continues to recover from the impacts of the COVID pandemic. Phillip will go through guidance in a minute, but as we sit here today, we have a pretty good line of sight on recovery of positive EBITDA this year, with our goal still intact of exiting the year generating free cash flow. Overall, liquidity at quarter's end stood at $32.2 million. During the quarter, we did selectively access our equity line of credit and ATM programs, raising approximately $1.5 million in gross proceeds at an average price of $4.85 per share. Overall, liquidity consisted of $5.4 million of cash on hand 7.7 million of availability under our undrawn revolver, 15 million under our term loan accordion, and 4.1 million remaining available under our equity line of credit. Now onto the business. Contracting activity and day rate improvement during the first quarter are positive. Overall, we operated 12 rigs during the quarter, averaging 10.3 rigs during the quarter. Renewals included day rate increases across the board with some rigs receiving rate increases of 1,000 or more per day. More importantly, as I mentioned earlier, positive utilization and day rate momentum for ICD has continued to accelerate during the past 45 days. Currently, we plan to reactivate an additional four rigs during the second quarter at the highest day rates we have contracted since the onset of the pandemic. And in the process, we are increasing our exposure to larger multi-rig clients. One of these rigs will replace our 1,000 horsepower rig based upon changing customer requirements for a larger rig. The rig has performed exceptionally well, and we have some opportunities for recontracting this rig, but it is not included in our second quarter exit forecast of operating rigs. Of the four planned reactivations, we have two contracts in hand, and we are finalizing contracts for the remainder. Overall, we expect to exit the second quarter with 15 rigs operating. consistent with our 2021 business plan, and we believe there's upside to that. I would expect of these 15 rigs, seven will be working in the Permian, five in the Hainesville or East Texas, and three in South Texas and Eagleford. All of this is critically important for ICD's strategic focus on a go-forward basis, so I want to provide some more color on what we see as the drivers for the contract and day rate acceleration we are seeing at ICD. When the industry was coming off the historic bottom beginning in the third quarter of last year, contracting opportunities were few and far between, and we could not be very selective on which contract opportunities we secured. If you'll recall, rig count had bottomed at 244 rigs working in the lower 48 during August of last year, and currently sits at 439 rigs as of April 16th of 2021. As our industry has continued to heal from the pandemic, we've been able to be more selective, even turning down opportunities either because the day rate was too low, the contract opportunity didn't justify the capex, or the geographic or customer fit wasn't right. A specific goal we established for 2021 was to reestablish more multi-rig clients like we had pre-pandemic, put more rigs with customers who have larger and more extensive drilling programs. The contracts we have signed since quarters in are significant steps toward achieving that goal. In particular, during the first quarter, we put a second rig with a client in Midland Basin, and after the close of the quarter, we signed multiple contracts and received commitments from former customers that increases our number of multi-rig clients further from two to four, and we're working on expanding what will be our fifth multi-rig client here during the second quarter. At ICD, we love all of our customers, and the efficiencies that can be gained by working multiple rigs for the same customer are undeniable. With respect to the market, the overall rig count has ramped up nicely during the first quarter, exceeding most analysts' expectations, and we expect that to continue during the remainder of this year, but likely at a more moderated pace. In that type of environment, we believe there will be additional opportunities for rig reactivations for ICD later in the year, but I want to emphasize we will not pursue reactivations if the rates and terms and the customer do not justify the incremental capital outlay. This view is supported by our opportunity set today. It's worth highlighting that ICD has continued to reap the benefit of outsized market share gains. Since the bottom, our operating rig count has increased well over 300% compared to an 80% increase in the overall market. That is because some of our incremental reactivations are not the result of our customer adding a rig, but rather an ICD rig displacing a competitor's rig. During the second quarter, ICD will be replacing rigs from three of our very largest competitors. These placements were not secured based on price, meaning we didn't undercut our competition to knock them out of the saddle. In fact, these are the highest day rates in our fleet today, consistent with the higher end of the day rate range you hear drillers talk about today when describing spot market pricing. The customers' decisions in these cases were driven by relative performance and capabilities of the competing rigs, and the customer's preference for working for ICD. Yes, you have to be competitive on day rate, and we all know that, but the point I'm trying to make is we are building on the strong brand which we have, our operational performance, and our rig's capabilities to increase market share in intentionally penetrating more large public and private independent oil companies in the process. This is important for our outlook as these are the EMPs that will continue to add rigs as we work toward year-end 2021 and especially as CapEx budgets increase in 2022 and likely beyond in response to continued improved commodity price environments for oil and natural gas. I think also there's a bifurcation underway in the rig market today that is driving ICD's utilization outperformance compared to the market. Previous bifurcation in our industry was based on rig capabilities. Ten years ago, it was AC versus SCR mechanical. Then it evolved. to walking versus skidding, and more recently, three before mud and generator configurations, and of course, technology. Today, in a lower rig count environment, the current bifurcation is being driven by contractor quality, sophistication, and financial wherewithal. Customers can take for granted that your rig meets their specification, but many of today's EMPs have certain specific requirements in terms of systems, processes, technology, and overall competency of their service providers. The consolidation that is happening within our customers, the E&P community, appears to be accelerating this move to a smaller subset of the overall drilling contractor community being relevant, and we're glad at ICD to be part of this cadre, which will continue to drive the provision of super spec pad optimal rigs working in U.S. shale. You can see all this in the overall contractor rig counts with market share gains accreting primarily to the most sophisticated land drillers. This is important for ICD as we've been strategically positioning ourselves to participate in this evolving market dynamic. Except for 1,000 horsepower AC rig, all ICD rigs are equipped with four generators and three mud pumps, and all have the platforms that deploy technology when required. I'm particularly excited about the recent market penetration and contract wins for our 300 Series rigs. If you'll recall, these rigs came to us in the Sidewinder merger and are specifically designed for extended reach, long laterals, and where our customers want to use larger or high torque drill strings. Many of these rigs are capable of racking 29,000 feet of five inch drill pipe and 25,000 feet of five and a half inch drill pipe. They meet, in many cases, exceed our customers' requirements for their most complicated extended reach wells. Rigs with these specifications are few and far between within the U.S. land fleet. As you would expect, these rigs are in high demand and command the highest day rates. The reality is that until recently, this is the first time since the Sidewinder merger in late 2018, that we've had the opportunity to market these rigs across our customer base into an improving market where our customers were not in the process of reducing rig count. And I think that fact is supplemented by the company's strong operational performance marketed by a top-notch sales and marketing team. Since the trough last year, we've deployed three of these rigs, and with contracts in hand, we'll be deploying several more during the second quarter and expect there will be additional opportunities to deploy more during the second half of this year while continuing to fill and respond to strong demand for our 200 series rigs. In other words, right now ICD is seeing increasing demand for our 300 series rigs, and this is important for our company, our employees, and our shareholders. Whatever their preference, ICD has the right rigs for customers today, including those EMPs that demand plenty of hydraulic horsepower powered by generating capacity to run all three mud pumps simultaneously, and when necessary, deploy technology and utilize extreme drilling, racking, and setback capacity. We've accomplished this with minimal cash outlay, primarily through our strategic merger, and by employing unused equipment, thereby maximizing our returns in this challenging environment. Now on to day rates. In light of the continued increase in demand for drilling rigs and ICD's operational performance, day rates continue to improve. While we are nowhere near where we need to be to have a healthy drilling contractor industry, we have been able to make progress during the first quarter, and especially since quarter's end. We've been able to increase day rates up to $1,000 a day or more on contract renewals. And two of these contracts I just referenced are at day rates in the high teens before adders, which is a significant improvement over spot market pricing last year. For the most part, these contracts are short, pad-to-pad type work, which is fine given our outlook for rigged demand. We don't want to lock up at today's rate when the outlook is so strong. The only downside is the contracts won't show up in our contract backlog statistic as we only count contracts with durations longer than six months. As these rigs and repricing on renewals will get layered into the fleet over the second quarter, they won't positively impact our financial results fully until the third quarter. Also, something that probably gets overlooked are contract terms which are also improving in particular over the last 45 days. The incidental type charges that are typically the responsibility of our customer can find their way onto the contractor's side of the ledger in very soft markets. And this happened to us coming off the rig count bottom. In the more recent contracts we've signed, we've been successful in pushing these types of incidentals back to our customers, the cost of which add up and are meaningful for drilling contractor margins, especially at low day rates. Another positive data point we are seeing is more competition from customers for the same rig. This is also part of the dynamic which we saw accelerate after the first quarter closed. This is an important fact because as we think about the lower 48 rig supply today, we are very confident that most of the easy, cheap, low hanging, easy rig reactivations in the U.S. land rig fleet have occurred. We believe industry ride reactivation costs are higher for rigs stacked over nine to 12 months, thereby requiring higher day rates to generate economic returns as rigs return to active duty. In addition, there's a clear preference by customers to take a hot rig over one that's been stacked for nine months plus. In other words, it is an economic necessity that day rates must be higher due to more demand for fewer hot rigs and in order to justify the spend that any drilling contractor must make in order to bring rigs out that have been stacked for almost a year now. If the rigs have to be upgraded, then the contract value that should be required is yet even more. I also think the supply of the highest specification equipment is near the inflection point where pricing power accretes to the drilling contractor. If you think about a true pad optimal super spec rig, I'm talking about AC, four engines, three pumps, 1,500 horsepower, with 20,000 feet or more of racking capacity, and importantly, walks, that is what our customers want. There are only about 450 or so available in the U.S. land rig fleet today, unless very significant CapEx dollars are spent. And the supply of 300-series spec-type rigs is even lower than that, and we believe we're getting close to full utilization of that supply. Our best estimate is that utilization of this super spec fleet today is in the neighborhood of 65%, and with 300-series type utilization, it's meaningfully higher than that. So we believe the signs are very positive for meaningful day rate progression during the back half of this year, especially given the small relative percentage of spin which the rig now represents in our customer's overall AFE well cost. I'd like to close by addressing ICD's efforts on the ESG front. At ICD, we're focused on doing our part toward the industry's effort. Regarding the E and ESG, all of our rigs are dual fuel capable, many of them employing this carbon reducing technology today by using natural gas in combination with diesel as feedstock for our generators. Today we have rigs powered by electricity from the utility grid and of course many of our rigs are burning some form of clean burning natural gas. Outfitting our rigs and running them in this manner not only results in cost savings for our customers but also significantly minimizes and in some cases completely eliminates 100% of the pollution at the pad site compared to running four generators on a drilling location, which is how rigs typically receive their electrical power. Of course, we're always looking for other customers that are willing to undertake this same strategy. While I believe our industry has done a lot of good work on this front over the years, we are excited about our prospects as an industry to continue addressing these challenges. I would be remiss if I did not point out that many of our executives' MBO objectives are tied to environmental and sustainability objectives. On the social front, We're making arrangements to continue to give back to the communities where we work during the summer and fall and planning other initiatives involving further charitable efforts here in Houston where our corporate headquarters is based. I would like to point out that we have a very robust social media presence and I invite everyone to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to hear about the good things ICD is doing out in the field and in our community. Regarding the G and ESG, we've been very forward leaning on the governance front historically, tying a substantial portion of executive comp to quantifiable measures, which are closely aligned with our shareholders' interests. At the end of February, ICD's board established compensation metrics for 2021, and this year 100% of our executive team's long-term incentive compensation is performance-based, and therefore 100% of risk. I think this is another fact that makes ICD very unique in all field services. Still another measure we've taken to further align management's interest 100% with that of our shareholders is tying TSR metrics not only to a driller or an oilfield service peer group, but also to a broader market index across all industries. I point all this out because in a returns-based world, our shareholders should know that ICD is pulling all the levers available to drive returns and align ourselves with them. And over time, I expect to see these results manifest themselves in better financial returns and free cash flow generation. We just need a couple more quarters to properly assemble the chess pieces. So summing all this up, there are a lot of good things happening at ICD today. We continue to punch above our weight as we recover from last year's unprecedented downturn. We're on a pathway to free cash flow and driving returns for all of our shareholders. Our financial flexibility has improved since the 2020 downturn, and our management team remains incentivized accordingly to focus on cash flow generation and financial returns over the long term with our management team winning only if our shareholders do. Our rigs are in demand, and our systems and processes which support our operations are best in class. Our rig fleet is young, flexible, and engineered to maximize manufacturing efficiencies for our customers. We're breaking records, winning accolades for service and professionalism, and working hard to exceed our customers' expectations every day across our fleet and their offices. Our rigs are drilling optimization capable and participating alongside our customers in pursuit of ESG initiatives. We're firmly implanted with a strong brand and reputation in our target market for providing the safest and most efficient contract drilling services in North America's most prolific oil and gas producing regions, which reside in Texas and the contiguous states. We continue to gain market share and are excited about our prospects over the next several quarters. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Phillip so he can walk us through the first quarter 2021 financial results for the company.