Seadrill Limited (NYSE:SDRL) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript - Page 4 of 5 - InvestingChannel

Seadrill Limited (NYSE:SDRL) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Grant Creed: Sure. So I think that’s been our consistent view for a while. We are seeing some long-dated contracts. I don’t want to say that there’s none of them. As you pointed out, there’s been a few and I think my peers speak about one that a lot of us have spoken about. But overall I think we’re still seeing sub-1 year, sub-18 months. Brazil is obviously the exception where you’re seeing 3-year contracts come up. But everything seems to still be sub-18 months and I’m using an arbitrary number of 18 months plus or minus. But overall, you’re not seeing the 3-, 4-, 5-year contract that you saw in the previous cycle across the board I guess is the right way to describe it. We’re starting — clients are starting to come back to those. But our view has been pretty consistent for the last 6 months that they’re still relatively short.

Eddie Kim: Got it. Understood. Just my follow-up is on the not so newbuilds that you mentioned that there’s a couple of them in the shipyards that are unspoken for on the floater side? Do you have an estimate for how much it would cost to acquire one of those not so newbuilds and bring it to market? And how would you prioritize potentially acquiring 1 of those assets versus reactivating 1 of your stacked assets?

Simon Johnson: Eddie, let me start and then Samir can fill in the gaps. As you said, there’s only a few of those drillships left now without a natural owner. So we’ve been sort of watching developments as they’ve unfolded. You’re right, there is a significant amount of CapEx that’s still required to deliver those units. Even though they’re mechanically complete, there’s still a lot of work that is required to be done to commission their systems, prepare them for work and then mobilize them. So we’re very conscious of that. When you think about the value of that, if it’s a unit that has special opportunities or special capabilities, that might be attractive stand-alone. But we’re also triangulating that against the opportunity to acquire assets on a stand-alone basis or the implied value of assets and balance sheets that we may be able to acquire as well.

So we’re mindful of the all-in CapEx is often a much bigger number than the sticker price for a nominal acquisition. And I think as we go further into the cycle, we have increasingly the concerns about cost inflation and project risk and that compared to other cycles that I’ve certainly experienced in my time in the business, one of the features of where we’re at right now is the risk of those capital projects very much lies with the contractor not with the clients. So we’re conscious of that risk and we balance that as we compare those opportunities against other ones that we might transact against. But Samir, let me pass to you for any additional comments.

Samir Ali: Yes. I’d say definitely we do know what those rigs cost and what it costs to kind of crew them up and spare them. I like analogies so I’d say buying a rig from a yard is like buying a house, you still have to go furnish it and furnishing can be pretty expensive sometimes. So when we look at it, we’re looking at that total cost and it’s still a reasonable amount of money to go spend right. Is it instrumentable? No, but we’d have to find the right opportunity with the right client to kind of justify that type of investment.

Operator: Our last question today comes from Hamed Khorsand from BWS Financial.

Hamed Khorsand: So the first question I had was just given that you only have 2 rigs coming up for renewal, how are you going about the marketing aspect of this process given the market dynamics?

Samir Ali: This is Samir. We are in constant dialog with the clients that we think would pick up those assets. So we are pushing it in different markets for one of them and for one of them, we are turning over every stone we can and trying to find different applications for that asset as well. So there are some unique capabilities of 1 of those assets so for us, it’s how do you market those unique capabilities and fit a niche for a client.

Hamed Khorsand: Okay. My other question was about the SPS, you said there’s going to be more next year. How does that affect the next year’s idle time and potential revenue?

Grant Creed: I mean that’s a good question and yes, the anniversaries of our rigs mean that we do have more SPSs landing next year and so that is of course going to impact CapEx, but also our revenue because while you undertake the SPS out of service days where you’re generally on 0 rates and that’s when leave can chime in, but as a rule of thumb what like 20, but could be more days. It’s really on a case-by-case basis, it could be up to 20 days. We do seek to minimize those out of service days and it’s something we are very focused on here at Seadrill to reduce the impact on the revenue line, but there is an impact. But Leif, do you have anything else to add?

Leif Nelson: I’d agree. We try and minimize the impact based on spare capital equipment. But depending on the scope, it’s somewhere to 2 to 3 weeks if we have to change thrusters or exchange a BOP. We try and minimize the impact using capital equipment we have on the drill.

Hamed Khorsand: Okay. Would it depend on if it’s the anniversary or if it’s the contract rolling over that you would do the SPS?

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