RPC, Inc.

Good morning and thank you for joining us for RPC, Inc.' 's first quarter 2022 financial earnings conference call. Today's call will be hosted by Rick Habel, President and CEO, and Ben Palmer, Chief Financial Officer. Also present is Jim Landris, Vice President of Corporate Services. At this time, all participants are in a 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, operator, and good morning, everyone. 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 2021 10-K 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 EBITDA, which is a non-GAAP measure of operating performance. RPC uses EBITDA as a measure of operating performance because it allows us to compare performance consistently over various periods without regard to changes in the capital structure. We're also required to use EBITDA to report compliance with financial covenants under our credit facility. Our press release today and our website provided reconciliation of EBITDA to net income, the nearest gap financial measure. Please review that disclosure if you're interested in seeing how it's calculated. If you do not receive our press release for any reason, please visit our website at rpc.net for a copy. I will now turn the call over to our President and CEO, Rick Hull. Thank you, Jim.

This quarter was marked by unexpected changes in RPC's business. We began the year in a moderately improving market as healthy commodity prices encouraged our customers to go back to work after the holidays. In response, the U.S. rig count and well completions improved moderately. During the quarter, we encountered operational challenges resulting from many years of oil field underinvestment and several years of COVID-related supply disruptions. However, our industry's outlook changed tremendously in February when Russia's invasion of Ukraine caused oil and natural gas prices to increase. and more importantly force the international community to immediately rethink the strategic importance of reliable hydrocarbon fuel sources during the past few months the price of oil increased to more than a hundred dollars a barrel for the first time since 2014. our customers responded by increasing their planned activities as it became clear higher commodity prices would endure and the appeal of the politically stable U.S. oil field group. We finished the first quarter in the beginning stages of the strongest oil field service environment we've experienced in many years. Now our CFO, Ben Palmer, will discuss our financial results in detail, after which I will provide some closing comments.