RPC, Inc.

RPC Incorporated's fourth quarter 2023 conference call. Today's call will be hosted by Ben Palmer, President and CEO, and Mike Schmidt, Chief Financial Officer. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentations, 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. I'll now turn the call over to Mr. Schmidt.

Thank you and good morning. Before we begin, I want to remind you that 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. Please refer to our press release issued today along with our 2022 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 several non-GAAP measures of operating performance and liquidity. We believe these non-GAAP measures allow us to compare performance consistently over various periods. Our press release issued today and our website contain reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures. I'll now turn the call over to our president and CEO, Ben Palmer.

Thank you, Mike, and thank you for joining our call this morning. We closed out the year with strong sequential fourth quarter revenues and EBITDA increases, as expected following a soft third quarter. And for the year, we delivered adjusted EBITDA of $374 million and free cash flow of $214 million. We also completed the acquisition of Spinnaker to strengthen and diversify our business, and we are still able to end the year debt-free. We have a solid balance sheet that can support both investments in our business and consistent returns of capital to shareholders. To elaborate further on the fourth quarter, we started off strong but felt the impact of falling oil prices later in the quarter. During our third quarter call, we noted that with oil above 80, we and our customers should have a favorable environment for activity and utilization. At that time, we had indications from our customers that there would be a limited holiday slowdown. Obviously, oil fell below 80 in early November and dipped below 70 in early December. This decline caused completion postponements and more holiday downtime than originally anticipated. While the fourth quarter financial results did show a substantial improvement, from a very soft third quarter, the December lull prevented us from delivering even higher growth. Our pressure pumping activities increased sharply from the third quarter, but still below our expectations. Regarding pricing discipline, as expected, we were able to secure work at more attractive pricing in the fourth quarter than certain opportunities we opted to forego during the third quarter. As for our workforce, our 10 horizontal fleets plus our two vertical fleets remain staffed, but we are monitoring conditions closely and will implement contingent cost actions as appropriate. Spinnaker acquisition was an important strategic decision for RPC, growing our cementing business, increasing our scale, and expanding our customer relationships. Performance remained solid despite a softer environment. Integration on all fronts has gone well, and we are excited about its future. Mike will now discuss the quarter's financial results.