RPC, Inc.

Good morning and thank you for joining us for RPC, Inc.'s first quarter 2020 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. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. Instructions will be provided at that time for you to queue up for questions. 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're going to mention a few things that are not historical facts. Some of the statements that will be made on this call could be forward-looking in nature and reflect a number of known and unknown risks. I'd like to refer you to our press release issue today, along with our 2019 10K and other public filings that outline those risks, all of which can be found on RPC's website at www.rpc.net. In today's earnings release and conference call, we'll be referring to several non-GAAP measures of operating performance. These non-GAAP measures are adjusted net loss, adjusted loss per share, adjusted operating loss, EBITDA, and adjusted EBITDA. We're using these non-GAAP measures today because they allow us to compare performance consistently over various periods of time without regard to non-recurring items. In addition, RPC is required to use EBITDA to report compliance with financial covenants under our revolving credit facility. Our press release issued today and our website contain reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to operating loss, net loss, and loss per share which are the nearest GAAP financial measures. Please review these disclosures if you're interested in seeing how they are calculated. If you've not received our press release for any reason, please visit our website again at rpc.net for a copy. I will now turn the call over to our President and CEO, Rick Hubbell.

Jim, thank you. This morning we issued our earnings press release for RPC's first quarter of 2020. During the first quarter we generated improved financial results due to more streamlined operations including a smaller geographic footprint. We were particularly pleased with the progress in pressure pumping as this service line worked efficiently during the quarter for several high utilization customers. Activity improved during the first part of the quarter as we were awarded favorable incremental work and existing customers resumed operations after the fourth quarter seasonal slowdown. Unfortunately, the combined impacts of the OPEC disputes and the COVID-19 pandemic overshadow our first quarter improvements. In response to the pandemic, RPC instituted strict procedures to ensure the health and safety of our employees, customers, and vendors while in our facilities or on operational locations. As March progressed, our customers began to cancel current and scheduled drilling and completion activities, in some cases while the operation was underway. By the end of the quarter, the domestic rig count began to rapidly decline, and oil field operators announced significant capital expenditure reductions for the remainder of 2020. Our CFO, Ben Palmer, will discuss this and other financial results in more detail, after which I will have a few closing comments.

Thank you, Rick. At the end of the first quarter of 2020, RPC recorded impairment and other charges of $205.5 million. These charges, the vast majority of which were non-cash, were recorded in connection with the decline in the fair value of several of our service lines within RPC's technical services operating segment. For the first quarter of 2020, revenues decreased to $243.8 million compared to $334.7 million in the prior year. Revenues decreased due to lower activity levels and pricing and a smaller fleet of pressure pumping equipment compared to the first quarter of the prior year. Adjusted operating loss for the first quarter was $13.2 million compared to an operating loss of $2.2 million in the first quarter of the prior year. adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter was $25.8 million compared to EBITDA $40.8 million in the same period of the prior year. For the first quarter of 2020, RPC reported a $0.04 adjusted loss per share compared to no earnings per share in the prior year. Cost of revenues during the first quarter was $181.9 million or 74.6% of revenues compared to $252.4 million for 75.4% of revenues during the first quarter of 2019. Cost of revenues decreased primarily due to lower materials and supplies expenses and employment expenses consistent with lower activity levels. Cost of revenues as percentage of revenues decreased primarily due to higher utilization and efficiency on our operating plates. Selling general and administrative expenses decreased to $36.5 million in the first quarter of this year compared to $45.4 million in the first quarter of the prior year due to lower employment costs. Depreciation and amortization expense was $39.3 million during the first quarter of 2020, a decrease of 7.6% compared to $42.5 million in the prior year. Our technical services segment revenues for the quarter decreased 27.5% compared to the prior year. Operating results in the first quarter, excluding impairment and other charges, reflected a $12.2 million loss compared to a $4.5 million loss in the prior year. This was due to significantly lower pricing and activity primarily within pressure pumps. Our sports services segment revenues for the quarter decreased 21.9% compared to the prior year. operating profit in the first quarter of 2020 was $1.5 million compared to $3.1 million in the prior year. On a sequential basis, RPC's first quarter revenues increased 3.3% to $243.8 million from $236 million in the prior quarter as activity levels increased after the fourth quarter seasonal slowdown, which led to revenue increases in all of our largest service lines. Cost of revenues during the first quarter of 2020 increased by $5.1 million or 2.9% due to higher materials and supplies expense resulting from increased pressure pumping activity. As a percentage of revenues, cost of revenues decreased from 75% in the fourth quarter to 74.6% in the current quarter. This was due to increased utilization and improved operational efficiencies primarily within pressure pumping. Selling general and administrative expenses were essentially unchanged at 36.5 million during the first quarter compared to 36.8 million in the prior quarter. Our adjusted operating loss of 13.2 million during the first quarter of this year compares to an adjusted operating loss of 17.3 million in the prior quarter. Our adjusted EBITDA was 25.8 million in the first quarter compared to adjusted EBITDA of 23.2 million in the prior quarter. Our technical services segment revenues increased by 8.8 million or 4% to 227.7 million due to higher activity levels. RPC's technical services segment incurred 12.2 million operating loss in the current quarter compared to an operating loss of 17.2 million in the prior quarter. And the sports services segment revenues in the first quarter were 16.1 million compared to 17.1 million in the prior quarter. Whereas operating profit was $1.5 million compared to $1.2 million in the prior quarter. During the first quarter, RFC operated up to 10 pressure pumping fleets. And at the end of the first quarter of 2020, our pressure pumping fleet totaled approximately 728,000 hydraulic horsepower. First quarter 2020 CapEx was $25 million. and we currently estimate 2020 capital expenditures will be $50 million, which is approximately 40% lower than we had previously announced. Early in the second quarter, we reduced our salaries and wages by an annualized $60 million through layoffs, furloughs and across-the-board compensation adjustments. We are currently operating three horizontal frac fleets out of two locations, that being Odessa, Texas and Seminole, Oklahoma. We also expect to realize cost savings from vendor price reductions. And with that, I'll turn it back over to Rick for some closing.

Thanks, Ben. We share the general industry view that oil field activity will continue to decline at a historically high rate. Unique among recent downturns, the oil field is currently being impacted by both an increase in oil production and a severe decrease in demand. The near-term impact to our operating levels is already more severe and abrupt than the last downturn. Capital discipline has always been at the core of RPC's culture. For more than 20 years, RPC has operated its businesses to optimize return on invested capital while limiting financial risk. Incentive compensation for managers throughout the organization has always been directly tied to ROIC targets above our cost of capital. Despite the challenging environment, we have maintained a debt-free balance sheet and ended the quarter with $82.6 million in cash. We will continue to take whatever steps are necessary to endure this downturn and emerge as one of the survivors in our industry. I'd like to thank you for joining us for RPC's conference call this morning, and at this time we will open up the lines for your questions.

If you would like to ask a question, please press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. Again, that's star one to ask a question. We'll pause for a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from Cameron Lockridge with Stevens, Inc. Good morning.

Thanks for taking my questions.

Sure, Cameron.

I was hoping we could start maybe on a high-level question. I imagine as we progress through this downturn, as companies get leaner and take out costs, we could potentially see another wave of efficiency gains much in the same way we did in the prior downturn. I was just wondering... in your in your guys's mind, how much more efficient can the industry get? And I know that's kind of an open ended question, but, you know, I mean, is there much more to gain before we start to plateau?

Cameron, this is Jim. Interesting question. I think our view is probably that there's not a lot more efficiency to get because efficiency comes from good processes and good equipment that encounter high utilization. And we can have great equipment, great processes, and all kinds of good things going on, but then if there's not high utilization, it will not be efficient. So that's, I mean, efficiency gains won't happen.

So that's a quick take on it. And I might add, Cameron, this has been, I think what Jim's saying is right. And I think from a macro level, I think what businesses will search for, what we're searching for is some eventual clarity in terms of the industry, the direction, the size, and the ability. I think clearly people will create Efficiencies by reducing their administrative costs and support. But at this point, hard to say where all that will shake out. We're going to be driven by, as we indicated in our call here, we'll be driven by trying to achieve outstanding returns on invested capital. And so that's what's going to drive our decision making over time. You can't overcome industry difficulties. Demands or competition as it relates to pricing and what you can demand in the market. But we're hoping that, you know, through this process, there will continue to be improved discipline and we'll be, again, driving for those sufficient returns over a period of time and we will have our cost structure set accordingly.

That's helpful. Thank you, guys. And then just turning to the balance sheet and cash flow, I was wondering if you could maybe talk about working capital in OneQ, what you guys saw there, and then how you might see that progressing through the year going forward.

Well, during the first quarter, overall, our working capital and looking at our balance sheet, there was little contribution from working capital, but that does include a large tax refund that we're going to get because of the CARES Act. We'll now be able to carry back our 2019 NOL, which we didn't expect that we would be able to as of the end of 2019, but with the CARES Act passing, that now has been increased because we'll be able to carry that back at a higher tax rate, number one. And number two, it will now be a current receivable rather than a long-term receivable. So if you take that out of the equation, our working capital contributed about $30 million during the quarter, which corresponds with the fact that our cash went up as well with our and, you know, EBITDA from – adjusted EBITDA from operations, less our capex. That reconciles pretty closely to the change in cash. So throughout the rest of the year, obviously it's going to depend on – obviously we're expecting declines in revenue. We're expecting to collect from customers. We have no – currently no particular concerns about any receivables. We think we're adequately reserved at this point in time. So clearly that will be a contributor going forward, but it will depend on a lot of a lot of factors, but we're working hard to manage our working capital just like we always do, so I think it will contribute more to cash as we progress through the year. All righty. Thank you, guys. I'll turn it back.

All right. Thanks, Cameron.

Your next question comes from George O'Leary with TPH and Company.

Good morning, guys. Hey, George.

Good morning.

I appreciate all the colors so far. I was just curious if you guys could provide a little incremental color on that just remind us what the average active crew count was in the first quarter from a ballpark perspective or how many crews you had staffed and then where you guys sit today and just based on discussions with customers, how you think that trends through the remainder of the quarter.

George, this is Jim. Ben said, you know, 10 fleets were active during the quarter. There were up to 10. So I would say eight average. And these averages are hard to come up with, but I'd say eight. And then he talked about how many we have or we have now going in the second quarter. It's just a difficult environment to see, you know, what sort of customer indications we're getting. We're continuing to work for some people. But this is a historically – High rate of decline, and I don't think our customers know too far into the future, so unfortunately, neither do we.

And I'll add, George, we worked real hard coming out of 2019 to try to develop some higher volume, higher utilization, customer relationships, and we had success with that. I think that's reflected in our financial results, so we were obviously disappointed that to have happen what did happen to us. We felt like we were on a decent foundation and created a decent foundation and had some decent trajectory going forward. A couple of those customers are still working now, so we're working with them to determine the duration of that work, and they say at this point they're going to continue, but we're going to watch that very, very closely and make sure that we're working at pricing and utilization that's positively contributing to our results. So that's something we'll be watching closely and making that decision together with our customers over the coming months. All right.

That's helpful, Culler. And then you guys were one of the first to really kind of jump aboard the attrition train late last year. and start thinking about letting some equipment expire. Team DNPs were throttling back on CapEx. Just broadly across your portfolio, not just rack but including coil, how do you think about attrition today and what to keep, what not to keep, and might we see incremental attrition as the year progresses on the equipment front?

Well, as it relates to us, I would say that we went through a very and Michael Schmit. We're still pleased with the portfolio. That doesn't mean things won't change as we move forward from here, but at the present time, in our impairment, there was nothing for retiring any and many more. will continue to make adjustments as we need to upwards or downwards as the business tells us.

Got it. And I'll sneak in one more if I could. Could you provide the revenue breakdown by business that you guys typically provide that would be super helpful?

George, yes, absolutely. This is Jim. So the percentages I'm about to give are service lines, percentage of service revenue that service lines comprised for RPC consolidated. So our largest service line was pressure pumping, which comprised 39.7% of revenues. Our second largest service line was through tubing solutions, our downhole tools, motors, and services business, which comprised 34.5% of revenues. The third largest service line was coiled tubing. at 6.7% of revenues. Going down from there, rental tools, which is in our support segment, was 4.3% of revenues. Nitrogen was 4.1% of revenues. Thanks for the question.

Your next question comes from Connor Lenock with Morgan Stanley.

Thank you. Good morning. Hey, Connor. I was wondering if you could discuss, obviously there's not a lot of visibility out there, but could you discuss your costs and effectively what I'm driving at here is how able are you to manage to EBITDA break even or somewhere thereabouts as things settle out even with these low activity levels? Can you help us think through variable costs, fixed costs, etc.? ?

I'll let Jim take a whack.

We can tell you a lot more about cost than we can revenue, so let's give that a shot. We think that with the actions we have very recently taken, so already taken, our quarterly SG&A will be close to $30 million, which is down from mid to upper 30s, $36.5 million I think it was. so we've got that SG&A cut going for us. Some of the other direct costs, regrettably personnel that we reduced, those are kind of hard to grab anyway because they're a bit of a variable cost and when people aren't working you don't necessarily pay them but there will be some cost reductions in the cost of revenues line. It's just kind of hard to see. I guess the best way to say it is that other things equal margins will be a little bit better with this declining revenue because of the actions we've taken. So unfortunately, it's just hard to come up with. This doesn't relate to EBITDA, but with the impairment charges we took, depreciation will be about $14.5 million lower per quarter than it has been. But that doesn't answer an EBITDA question. I just thought I'd throw that in. So that's kind of our best look at it right now.

I would say, Connor, I mean, kind of going back to my previous question, you know, if we knew what revenue was going to be, you know, we'd have more color on that. I think we're just going to, again, have to watch and listen to the business and develop some view of the future. And based on that, we'll have to continue to make adjustments, whether upward, hopefully. and many more.

Can you give any color on the magnitude to the extent there have been, as opposed to just activity declines, but the magnitude of price concessions that you've been forced to give versus you were talking about some input costs, deflation? I mean, net-net, if we sort of think through your variable costs, are you about similar sequentially, but activity is lower? Are you lower by a few hundred basis points? Can you maybe frame that portion of the business for us?

Well, Connor, we have taken a few pricing concessions, but that's not what this downturn is about. This isn't the 2015-2016 downturn where people took pricing concessions hoping for a better day to come soon. So we haven't taken pricing concessions. As a percentage of revenues, we got a little bit of leverage in the first quarter here.

You know, mostly it was labor, maybe a little bit of, you know, maintenance and repair and a few things, but there's not, you know, there's not a whole lot to... Yeah, I would say, I would add that, you know, obviously, clearly the fourth quarter of last year was a difficult quarter, you know, a lot of noise, noise or no noise. Not much going on in the fourth quarter, but we came out early in the first quarter of this year, and as the numbers indicate, there was some progression, some nice improvement. So at this point, this is all about pulling back, focusing inwardly on what we need to do to restructure the business and look at our costs. And I would say, in terms of color, our pricing, we did have slight changes We worked with some of our customers where there was appropriate utilization and activity levels, a little bit of pricing, but we've been down at low, low levels. We're not going down significantly. We need to make sure that we're generating sufficient cash. We don't want to work just to work, especially in this environment. So we'll be looking at that very closely, being highly disciplined about and Michael Schmit. and others. We've arrived in a matter of weeks at something that clearly everything could go to absolutely zero, but we have gotten to a very low level of activity. We've already reduced our costs. Our costs have been reduced further. So we're down at a and Michael Schmit. and we will survive. I talked about the tax refund. We'll be able to, to the extent we have operating losses in 2020, we'll be able to carry that back. We have plenty of room from a federal carryback perspective to carry back any losses we generate this year back and get 35 cents on the dollar. So we've got, with working capital, 19 tax refund, 2020 tax refund, we have a lot of liquidity on the horizon. So we're not concerned about that in the short term. This is all going to be about, again, the direction of business and how far it goes down. And again, we'll continue to make adjustments as we need to based on what the business is telling us, our activity levels and what we see in the future. Got it. Appreciate the color. Sure.

Your next question comes from Dylan Glosser with Simmons Synergy.

Hey, good morning guys.

Hey, good morning.

And so last quarter you guys mentioned that you had just under 10 fleets staffed and you guys just mentioned that you had three horizontal fleets working today. As you guys have right-sized your business, how many fleets do you guys have actually staffed today as you think about where Q3 and Q4 might land in regards to activity?

Well, through layoffs and furloughs, we are only staffed for the fleets that are working today. So we don't have extra fleets sitting around waiting to work in the third or fourth quarter. So we are limiting those costs. So we are only staffing for the fleets that are working today.

Okay, thank you. And just as you think about where margins might go in Q2 and Q3, could you talk about what decrementals you might be expecting in your technical services segment?

This is Jim. We're probably going to punt on that question because we You know, we have some idea of the magnitude of the sequential revenue decline. I'm sure you do and everybody else on this call does as well. You know, it's kind of hard to talk about where EBITDA will fall out and therefore what decrementals might be.

Okay, worth a shot. I guess the last thing I'll ask then, as far as the $50 million CapEx guide, if you guys are within the range of maybe three to five fleets through the remainder of 2020, is to kind of think about your pressure pumping maintenance expense. Maybe that falls within the $10 million range for the year. Can you just kind of break out what the remainder of that budget is? And do you expect that this $50 million number is maybe a conservative number, kind of like which you guys had mentioned on the last call around the $80 million. Do you think that this number has any chance of going lower as we go through Q2 and Q3? Just your thoughts around that would be great.

Well, this is Jim. Your estimate of – you said maintenance expense, but I think you meant maintenance capital expenditures for the pressure pumping fleets that are working. It's probably – that's in the zip code. You may be new to our story, but we have a history of maintaining our equipment and being present when times get better. So we are going to maintain equipment, whether it's coiled tubing pleats or something with our snubbing equipment. So is $50 million a conservative number? Could it be lower? Yes, absolutely. And we don't have a list to disclose to you right now, but that's probably a pretty decent number for our CapEx this year.

Your next question comes from Blake Gendron with Wolf Research.

Hey, good morning. So it sounds like the order of operations from the EMPs is to shut in production. We've heard upwards of 20% of Permian production now shut in. So frac activity is going to go essentially to zero in the second quarter. And it will take some time to come back, obviously. But when The EMPs start to put the shut-in production back on. I'm just looking at your portfolio, maybe not so much in frac, but coil tubing, wireline, snubbing, maybe in some parts of your downhole tools business. Any play there, any opportunity as these shut-in wells come back on? Could you speak, I guess, to the shape of a potential recovery with respect to your non-frac businesses versus your frac businesses moving forward? Thanks.

Blake, this is Jim. Thanks for the question. That is something we're thinking about on the other side of this. I'd add nitrogen to the list of services that you just ticked down. Certainly, I'm not an expert on this, I won't pretend to be, but if a well shut in and you have trouble pressuring it up again or getting the production up to where it was, there are a lot of services you use and our portfolio of of services outside of pressure pumping does play into that. So we've talked about that with the operations folks recently. And that might be the leading edge of a recovery for RPC before pressure pumping, before completions are happening again. So I wish we had more color for it. I think it will probably be good news when it happens. We just don't have a great idea of the shape of the recovery or exactly what you would use of what we do and when that might happen.

No, that's totally fair. I think everybody's keeping things qualitative for now. When we think about your 720,000 horsepower, I would imagine that the customers that you are working for are asking for redundancy on location. Is that true? Are the active spreads working now materially larger than they were, say, six months ago? and then if you could provide just a breakdown of your 720 with respect to tier 4 versus legacy tier 2 and then if applicable, dual fuel, that would be helpful for us. Thanks. Awesome.

Yeah.

Two of our fleets are tier 4. Honestly, don't know about customers requesting more redundant equipment on site. on the one hand I would say we certainly have it and we aim to please so we could bring it. On the other hand, we've got new equipment in good shape. I don't know how much that's required and clearly there's an additional cost for having more redundant equipment on site because you have to, there's fuel expense and then there's personnel expense. So we're just going to say unchanged fleet size right now.

Got it. And then one more, if I could squeeze it in here. You've been pretty conservative, stewards of capital over your history. I'm just wondering, though, any potential M&A opportunities, or is this something you're not even thinking about at this point?

Well, as it relates to M&A, it's something we always have in the back of our mind. There's been some, obviously, some recent announcements of transactions. I would say at this point, you have a lot of We're in an inward focus right now on what's going on and trying to restructure our business. We always have one or two things that are in the hopper that we're thinking about or talking about, but at this point we don't view it as a necessary occurrence to survive. So we're mostly focused on right now on taking care of ourselves and our existing business and taking care of our employees and trying to determine when things might turn and a transaction certainly could be a possibility. And as you said, it's not something that we've done a lot of in recent years. I got you. That's totally fair. Appreciate the time and the commentary. I'll turn it back. All right. Thanks, Blake.

Your next question comes from Steven Gingaro with Stifel.

Thanks. Good morning, gentlemen. I hope everybody is well. So two things. One, you may have commented on this. I apologize. What does DNA look like in the second quarter after the charges in the first quarter? Can you give us some color there?

Yes, Steven, we did mention that, but happy to bring it up again. Other things equal, DNA will decline by about $14.5 million per quarter. And that's an estimate at this point in time.

Sorry, I apologize for missing that. And granted, the second quarter is obviously an extremely difficult scenario to make predictions in. But beyond the second quarter, as you think about the cost-cutting that's gone on, Do you think your sort of incremental and decremental margins will revert to a kind of normal historical level as you kind of get past the second quarter?

That's a fair estimate. I think that's right. I guess as it comes to decremental margins, I mean, we're not giving more on pricing, so it kind of comes down to – it's going to come down to – Thank you, gentlemen.

Again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star, then the number one at this time. We'll pause for a moment to compile the Q&A roster. If there are no further questions at this time, I would now like to turn the call back over to Jim Landers.

Thank you, Ursula. Thank you to everybody who called in and asked some questions. We appreciate the dialogue. We know it's a busy week for earnings, so we recognize that. We appreciate everybody calling in. Have a good day. We'll talk to you soon.