Precision Drilling Corporation Q3 2025 Earnings Call - Strategic Rig Upgrades and Leadership Transition Position Company for Growth

Conference Operator: Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Precision Drilling Corporation twenty twenty five Third Quarter Results Conference Call and Webcast. I would now like to hand the conference over to Yvonne Jadonnik, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Yvonne Jadonnik, Vice President of Investor Relations, Precision Drilling Corporation: Good morning, and thank you for joining Precision Drilling’s third quarter conference call and webcast. Earlier this month, we announced the retirement of Kevin Nevew and the appointment of Carrie Ford to President and Chief Executive Officer Gene Stahl to Chief Operating Officer and Dustin Honing to Chief Financial Officer. Kevin retires after serving as President and CEO for one of the longest tenures of any oilfield service CEO. We would like to thank Kevin for his many contributions during his time with PD. Before I pass the call over to Carey and Dustin today, I would like to recap some of our Q3 highlights.

Precision drilling activity outperformed industry, and our U. S. Drilling activity continues to grow. Our operating margins are resilient and within guidance. We increased our 2025 capital budget by $20,000,000 to allow for five additional contracted rig upgrades as several of our Canadian and U.

S. Customers are taking a long term view of demand for energy. And finally, we are on track to meet our 2025 capital allocation plans, having already achieved our debt reduction targets. Please note that some comments today will refer to non IFRS financial measures and include forward looking statements, which are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. For more information on financial measures, forward looking statements and risk factors, please refer to our news release and other regulatory filings available on SEDAR and EDGAR.

With that, I will turn it over to Dustin Honing, our

Dustin Honing, Chief Financial Officer, Precision Drilling Corporation: new CFO. Thank you, Lavonne, and good morning or good afternoon, depending on where you’re calling today. Our Q3 results demonstrate Precision’s commitment to delivering on our strategic priorities in positioning the business for long term success. We recorded adjusted EBITDA of $118,000,000 which equates to 129,000,000 before share based compensation expense compared with prior year EBITDA of CAD142 million. In Canada, drilling activity averaged 63 active rigs, a decrease of nine rigs from Q3 twenty twenty four resulting from customer projects being deferred to the upcoming winter season.

Our reported Q3 daily operating margins were $13,007 a day compared to $12,877 a day in the 2024, well within our prior guidance range. In The U. S, we averaged 36 rigs, an increase of three rigs from the previous quarter, primarily due to Precision’s strength in gas weighted basins. In Q3, daily operating margins for the quarter were steady at US8700 dollars a day compared to US926 dollars per day in the second quarter, also within our prior guidance range. With favorable positioning in The U.

S. Natural gas market, we continue to add to our U. S. Rig count, which has increased from a low of 27 rigs in Q1 to a high of 40 rigs today, a reflection of strong field performance recognized by our customers and the efforts of our sales team. While contract churn continues to challenge activity levels, we are encouraged by the quantity and quality of conversations tied to future opportunities in all basins.

Internationally, Precision’s drilling activity averaged seven rigs, down from eight rigs in prior year Q3. International day rates averaged US53.811 dollars a day, an increase of 14% from prior year Q3 due to rigs recertification with non billable days recognized in 2024. In our C and P segment, adjusted EBITDA was CAD 19,300,000.0, which compares to CAD 19,700,000.0 from prior year Q3. Our strong presence in Canada’s heavy oil and unconventional natural gas markets combined with our favorable positioning in The U. S.

Has provided us the ability to capitalize on rig upgrade opportunities, underpinned by firm customer contract commitments. During the quarter, we increased our planned twenty twenty five capital expenditures from $240,000,000 to $260,000,000 comprised of $151,000,000 for sustaining and infrastructure and $109,000,000 for upgrade and expansion. The plan is inclusive of five additional contract backed upgrades added this quarter. Our added contracted backlog in the third quarter far exceeds the increase in our 2025 capital plan, ensuring strong financial returns as we strengthen both the marketability of our rig fleet and customer alignment in key regions. Even with this increase in capital, we remain firmly committed to our strategic priorities.

As of September 30, we’ve met our annual debt reduction target, reducing our debt by CAD101 million and are well on our way to allocating between 3545% of our free cash flow to share buybacks. We have repurchased 154 sorry, we have repurchased $54,000,000 worth of shares during the first nine months of the year. Moving on to forward guidance. I will begin with our expectations for the fourth quarter. While our outlook for the remainder of the year remains positive, it will continue to be commodity price dependent.

In Canada, we are expecting activity for this year’s winter drilling season to meet or slightly exceed last year’s winter activity. Q4 rig counts should be similar to Q4 twenty twenty four, which averaged 65 rigs. Keep in mind, this includes the seasonal slowdown for Christmas holidays. Our operating margins in Canada are expected to range between $14,000 and $15,000 per day. In The U.

S, we expect to sustain the momentum we have experienced in the last two quarters with an average active rig count in Q4 within the upper 30s. For the fourth quarter, we expect our margins to remain stable, ranging between US8000 dollars and US9000 dollars per day. Moving to guidance for the full year, we expect depreciation of approximately US300 million dollars and cash interest expense of approximately $65,000,000 remaining unchanged from prior guidance. Our effective tax rate will be approximately 45% to 50% due to increased deferred income tax expense related to the momentum of our U. S.

Operations. Cash taxes are expected to remain low in 2025. And looking to 2026, we expect to return to our traditional effective tax range within 25% to 30% with cash taxes again remaining low. For 2025, we expect SG and A of approximately 90,000,000 to $95,000,000 before share based compensation expense. We refined our share based compensation guidance for the year and now expect to range in between 5,000,000 and $30,000,000 assuming a share price of $60 to $100 Our long term target to achieve net debt to adjusted EBITDA of less than one times remains firmly in place, as does our plan to increase our free cash flow allocated directly to shareholders towards 50%.

Our net debt to trailing twelve month EBITDA ratio is approximately 1.3 times with an average cost of debt of 6.6% and we have over $400,000,000 in total liquidity today. With that, I will pass it over to Carey.

Carrie Ford, President and Chief Executive Officer, Precision Drilling Corporation: Thank you, Dustin, and good morning and good afternoon. First, I would also like to acknowledge Kevin for his accomplishments and contributions to Precision over his eighteen years as CEO. His commitment to high performance and ability to grow the business while navigating industry cycles have certainly left the mark on the company. We wish him well in retirement. Precision is today the leading land driller in Canada, a leader in drilling technology, a high performance driller in The Middle East, a leading driller in The U.

S. And the largest and highest performing well service provider in Canada. The company has a multiyear track record of generating sizable cash flows and now has a strong balance sheet approaching one times leverage. In short, Precision is well positioned for its next phase of growth. Precision is undoubtedly one of the truly exceptional companies in the energy industry.

What sets us apart is our culture, shared passion, commitment this morning in the field, enthusiasm for serving customers, and deep desire to be the best. Precision’s culture, core values and people will continue to be the foundation for our success. For our investors, the Precision team will remain excellent stewards of capital and will follow through with our commitments, which include our plans for long term debt reduction and increasing direct returns to shareholders. We will continue to be agile and run lean and will be prepared for whatever challenges the commodity market has in store for us. For our customers, we are committed to safety, consistency, reliability and technology that drives performance, reduces cost and delivers the highest quality wellbores.

For our employees, Precision will continue to be a fantastic place to work, develop your career, and call home. Case in point, Precision just completed a leadership transition in which the company filled three key positions, all with internal candidates, and our leadership team will not skip a beat. Jean, Shuja, Veronica, Tom, Darren and I have been working together on the leadership team for nearly a decade, and I look forward to the success this team will accomplish over the next stretch. I’m pleased to welcome Dustin to the executive leadership team as he steps into the Chief Financial Officer role. Some of the call will remember Dustin when he oversaw our investor relations and corporate development efforts over the twenty eighteen to twenty twenty period.

And over the past past five years, Dustin has been a key driver of our financial performance working hand in hand with the sales and operations teams in both our contract drilling and completion and production services segments. I’m excited about Justin’s performance driven mindset and his future contributions to Precision in his new role. I also wanna extend my congratulations to Gene Stahl on his new role as chief operating officer. This is a well deserved recognition of Gene’s excellent leadership of Precision in the field with customers and within the industry. I’m truly honored to have the opportunity to lead such an outstanding team.

As we dive into Precision’s third quarter performance, I want to make sure for the listener that I link together how our competitive strategy, execution and capital deployment not only support the financial results which we publish, but also position Precision Drilling for future success. Three pillars of our strategy that underpin our performance are leveraging our scale, utilizing technology to drive rig performance and customer focus. I’ll start with leveraging our scale. Precision is running 115 drilling rigs and 80 well service rigs today with rig support systems and over 5,000 employees serving customers across North America and The Middle East. Our scale enables us to seize opportunities and secure attractive returns for our investors.

For instance, during the quarter, we mobilized two Super Triple rigs from The U. S. To Canada and performed major upgrades to prepare the rigs for the winter drilling programs. One of the rigs is already drilling and the second rig should leave our Niski yard next week. These rig mobilizations were part of a larger multiyear customer contract where we repositioned and reactivated five rigs in total.

The creative contract structure, mobilization of assets and quality and speed of the upgrades could not have been possible without precision scale and vertically integrated support functions. We also demonstrated the benefits of scale and geographic positioning in The U. S. Market where our strength in gas basins positioned us to capitalize on attractive contracted upgrade opportunities for long reach drilling applications for customers. These rig upgrades added to our contract book, our customer list and rig capabilities.

During the quarter and because of recent rig upgrades and the quality of our crews, we drilled the longest well for a large customer in the Marcellus and the second longest well for a large customer in the Haynesville with both wells approaching 30,000 feet. We also set footage per day records for separate customers in both the Marcellus and Eagle Ford. Higher activity and scale in The U. S. Are supporting operating margins as well.

Those of you who have listened to previous calls have heard me discuss the strategic rationale for committing to our geographic breadth in The U. S. Market, understanding that we experience some margin pressure in the short term to cover higher fixed cost. In the past two quarters, we have capitalized on several opportunities across The U. S.

And are minimizing the fixed cost burden as our rig count has moved from the high 20s earlier this year to 40 rigs active today. As we communicated in our guide for the fourth quarter, our margins are now stabilized. My final point on leveraging our scale addresses the performance of our Completion and Production Services segment. The differentiated size and capabilities of our well service fleet, which we have scaled through consolidation over the past three years, combined with our Precision Rentals fleet, delivered a year over year revenue growth in a market that generally saw lower drilling and well service activity. Second pillar I’ll discuss is that technology continues to be a key driver of success, not only with our Alpha and Evergreen platforms, but also with real time monitoring technology further supporting rig performance.

We now have 90% of our active Super Triple rigs running Alpha technology and 93% of all active rigs with at least one Evergreen solution, reducing fuel consumption and emissions for our customers. Our automated robotics rig working for a major in the Montney continues to deliver faster tripping and drilling times for our customer, and interest in the robotics offering is broader broadening across our customer base. Our Clarity platform and digital twin initiatives deliver real time monitoring of of equipment and well performance resulting in lower downtime, longer equipment lives, faster drilling speeds, and more collaborative and enduring customer relationships. Technology applications are ubiquitous within Precision’s operations and are clearly driving results for all our customers. Finally, I cannot overstate how important customer focus is to our business.

The success we have had with the upgrade program in 2025 is a direct result of our customer focus. We work hand in hand with our customers to deliver rig equipment and technology packages that we mutually agree will deliver the optimal results. This year, we expect to complete 27 major upgrades, And these upgrades are backed by customer contracts upfront payments. Our strategic initiatives clearly supported our financial performance in the third quarter and will continue to drive results for Precision in the future. I’m personally excited about Precision’s trajectory as we near the 2025 with our demonstrated ability to deliver on our shareholder capital return commitments while gaining market share, completing significant investments across our drilling fleet, building our contract book and sustaining strong field margin.

The future for Precision Drilling is promising. That concludes my prepared remarks, and I will now turn the call back to the operator.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Our first question comes from Derek Potheiser with Piper Sandler. Your line is open.

Carrie Ford, President and Chief Executive Officer, Precision Drilling Corporation: Hey, good morning, Carrie. Congratulations to

Derek Potheiser, Analyst, Piper Sandler: you and Kevin. Great to see you in the seat.

Carrie Ford, President and Chief Executive Officer, Precision Drilling Corporation: Yes. Thanks, Derek.

Derek Potheiser, Analyst, Piper Sandler: So just maybe question around some of the comments you made for 2026, the limited visibility in the first part of the year. Obviously, you have some contract terms, short term duration contracts. When can we start seeing those extend a little bit here and get some term back into your contracts? I’m just thinking about the interplay of a lot of the customer funded upgrades that you’ve talked about and how that can then lead into extending the terms as we move through 2026.

Tim Monticello, Analyst, ATB Capital Markets: I think if I was

Carrie Ford, President and Chief Executive Officer, Precision Drilling Corporation: gonna go around, North America on customer contracts, we are seeing a bit more commitment to longer term contracts in the Montney. I’d say that would that would be where our longest duration contracts are. We’re seeing some some longer term contracts in heavy oil, but not quite to the degree that we’re seeing in the Montney. In The US, we’re we’re certainly seeing longer term contracts in the Marcellus. We have a couple two year contracts that we’ve signed this year, a lot of one year contracts, and then some shorter term contracts.

I think the contract, duration is gonna be the shortest in the oil basins as there’s been a bit more volatility in that commodity. And, in the in the Haynesville, we’re seeing some short term and some slightly longer term, maybe one year one year to eighteen month contracts. Okay. Got it. Think yeah.

And I’ll I’ll just add. I think Justin made a comment here about, some of the conversations we’re having with customers. We don’t have, I think we have one contract in our book that starts, that we booked. It starts in 2026, But we are having a number of, constructive conversations with customers for both oil and gas targets in The U. S.

For work starting in 2026. But it’s, kind of yet to be seen how long those contract commitments are going to be.

Derek Potheiser, Analyst, Piper Sandler: Okay. That that that’s helpful color. And then just on the rig upgrades, obviously, you’ve done a lot here in 2025. I think the number is almost 30. We start thinking about 2026 and as you start thinking about your budget around for CapEx and what that means for free cash flow, How much more rig upgrades do you expect to do?

I guess what’s the population that you have of your rigs going that are available to be upgraded? Just want to start contextually thinking about what rig upgrades can look like for next year, what it means for CapEx?

Carrie Ford, President and Chief Executive Officer, Precision Drilling Corporation: Yes. Think we, I would just start with the capital commitments that we made to investors on, debt pay down and share repurchases. We will start with commitments, maybe similar levels next year. Hopefully, we raise the the commitment to deliver, returns directly to shareholders. So we’ll start with that.

And then we’ll have our regular maintenance, which has been trending kind of in the $150,000,000 a year range at this activity level. And then beyond that, frankly, I hope we have a lot of upgrades. This is an excellent opportunity to generate a significant financial return for our customers. It’s certainly the highest, return opportunity we have out of all of our options. We have a, an embedded advantage on completing the upgrades with, you know, a a 40 acre, tech center in this queue and a 20 acre tech center in in Houston that are that are fully staffed with, experts on completing these upgrades.

We have a cost advantage. And then also, it it usually comes with, or I would say, almost always comes with a contract that, that locks in the return. So I I hope we have more. I think, as we continue to see longer reach horizontals in The US, that will drive demand from our customers for upgrades. We expect to see more pad, pad configuration upgrades in heavy oil in Canada.

And, you know, I I think it’ll be more it’ll be much more than zero. I don’t know if we’ll hit the same level that we do this year, but, I don’t think that, these upgrade requests are gonna are gonna stop.

Derek Potheiser, Analyst, Piper Sandler: Okay, great. Thanks, Gary. Congrats again. I’ll turn it back.

Carrie Ford, President and Chief Executive Officer, Precision Drilling Corporation: Yes. Thank you, Derek.

Conference Operator: Our next question comes from Keith Mackey with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Keith Mackey, Analyst, RBC Capital Markets: Hi, thanks for taking my question. And certainly echo Derek’s comments on congrats to you, Kerry, Dustin and Jean. I think maybe Kerry, if we could just kind of start out with and you did discuss it in your prepared remarks, but I’m not at this point expecting wholesale strategy change from Precision, but certainly some tweaks from how you might see the business to how Kevin might have seen it. Can you just talk about some of those factors and sort of how your priorities will stand going forward as you take on the CEO role?

Carrie Ford, President and Chief Executive Officer, Precision Drilling Corporation: Yes, sure. I think that’s a fair question, Keith. And certainly early days, but I have been with the company for fifteen years. I would say that, the strategy that we’ve been working with over, my tenure as CFO for the past ten years, I was heavily involved in developing it, around cost control, capital allocation, returns to shareholders, and, you know, kind of hand in hand on how we look at operating the business and dealing with customers. Where, where I think the the initial focus will be on supporting field operations the best we can and proving to our field that we’re delivering the best support we can.

And then also with customers, doing, I I would say, a more thorough job of proving to customers that we are delivering the best performance in the industry. And we’ve got lots of new tools to do that and a commitment by our sales and operations and technology teams to to follow through on that. And and beyond that, I would just say that there’s a lot of things that are working for Precision right now. So, I’m not I’m not looking to change the things that are working. You look at, kind of the the laundry list that I closed my comments with about, our contract book and market share, and, you know, I think we had revenue decline of 3% year over year this quarter, which I think you would be hard pressed to find a service provider with a similar geographic footprint to us that had a similar resiliency and and revenue.

So so there are a lot of things that are working, but I think there’s few areas where we can we can sharpen our focus.

Keith Mackey, Analyst, RBC Capital Markets: Okay. Appreciate the comments. And just one on the margin per day guidance, specifically speaking to any mobilization or activation costs. Looks like in The U. S, you had about $5.00 $2 a day of impact in Q3.

Can you just talk about what that might look like in Canada and The U. S. For Q4, please?

Dustin Honing, Chief Financial Officer, Precision Drilling Corporation: So Keith, this is Dustin here. In Canada, we’ll have a little bit tied to the rigs we’ve mobilized, up, but I wouldn’t view this substantial as one of those rigs has already been delivered. And then when you look at in The US, we’ve we’ve kind of seen a little bit of a constant run rate with some of the reactivation following the momentum of staging all of these incremental rigs from q one into q three. So I think that’s a reasonable run rate you can expect kind of with the contract term that we’ve been absorbing so far in the short term.

Keith Mackey, Analyst, RBC Capital Markets: Okay. That’s it for me. Thanks a lot.

Carrie Ford, President and Chief Executive Officer, Precision Drilling Corporation: Thank you, Steve.

Conference Operator: Our next question comes from Aaron MacNeil with TD Cowen. Your line is open.

Aaron MacNeil, Analyst, TD Cowen: Hey, good morning all and congrats to everyone. Would certainly echo that and looking forward to seeing where you guys take things. Maybe I’ll build on Keith’s question, Kerry. I was just hoping you could comment on a few specific items like performance based contracts, your comfort with the operating regions or business lines and your approach to M and A and if those sort of factors differ from from your predecessor.

Carrie Ford, President and Chief Executive Officer, Precision Drilling Corporation: Okay. So I would say with, with regards to m and a, no change. I mean, I was, say, involved in every kind of m and a discussion we’ve had, probably over the last fifteen years. And I think, you know, there’s nothing strategic that we see, on the m and a front. I think there’s some some transactions we could complete if the price was right, but there’s not a transaction out there that we would we would use strategic that we would need to pay out for.

So so no change on that. I think the the other thing I would say on m and a would be we’re proving in this year in particular, that there are ways to grow our business organically without m and a. And we’re doing that through, high utilization of assets, improved pricing, rig upgrades, technology add ons, evergreen add ons. And so I think there’s, a bit more runway on on that growth avenue. With regard to performance based contracts, I I think, I might have a slightly different view on that, but it’s not much different.

I think there are good opportunities for, performance based contracts. The the industry is certainly it’s it’s more prevalent in the industry than it would have been two or three years ago, and we’re seeing, let’s say, more unique applications to insert performance clauses into our contracts in in both, the Canadian market and The US market. And so we’re not we’re not opposed to them. We, we have several performance based contracts, and and they’re working well on, delivering financial returns as well as driving performance for our rigs. So I I think that, you know, I I don’t think you’re gonna see a step change in in how we look at performance based contracts, but I would be surprised if we didn’t see more of them in the future.

Aaron MacNeil, Analyst, TD Cowen: Okay. And then just sorry. The last piece of the the first question was just, you know, presumably, you’re comfortable with the operating regions and business lines you’re currently in?

Carrie Ford, President and Chief Executive Officer, Precision Drilling Corporation: Correct. I think, we’re we’re not looking to add any service lines, on onto our current business lines. And when we look at, expanding internationally, we’ve said it before, and I I agree with it today that, you know, the the markets that we’re in, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, are very good markets in The Middle East. It has been difficult to grow outside of those markets because the return profile of deploying new capitals, has been unattractive. And if we can make that change or find opportunities where that does change, we we could grow in that region in The Middle East.

And and maybe there’s another region or two that we grow in the future, but nothing to report or telegraph at this point.

Aaron MacNeil, Analyst, TD Cowen: Okay. And then for the follow-up, I’m sure

Derek Potheiser, Analyst, Piper Sandler: you guys gave this a lot

Aaron MacNeil, Analyst, TD Cowen: of thought before moving additional rigs to Canada. But how did you sort of wrap your head around the downside mitigation in terms of adding supply to the market that’s generally been pretty good for the last couple of years? And you also mentioned a unique customer contract structure in the prepared remarks. Can you elaborate on what you mean by that?

Carrie Ford, President and Chief Executive Officer, Precision Drilling Corporation: Yeah. I I mean that, this was a five rig contract for a major customer in Canada where we moved two rigs from The US market to Canada, but also we’re able to get long term contracts on three other rigs in the Canadian market. It was so we were able to look at the contract package and the capital committed for that contract package and the contract term and return that the contract delivered for all those rigs. And together as a package, it was a very attractive, opportunity for us, and we were uniquely positioned to be able to capture it. So I think it was just a unique situation that allowed us to move two rigs to the Canadian market.

Now, your question about supplying more rigs to the market, and I just wanna be clear on, the comments that we delivered both in our press release, and I believe Dustin delivered on his on his press release. We we expect to be at a 100% utilization on super triples this winter drilling season. So we are, we are addressing higher demand for precision drilling super triples. And I don’t know what that means for the rest of the market of triples in Canada, but certainly for our rig class, we expect to be at 100% utilization.

Aaron MacNeil, Analyst, TD Cowen: Okay. Makes total sense. Thanks, everyone, and congrats again.

Carrie Ford, President and Chief Executive Officer, Precision Drilling Corporation: Yes. Thank you, Aaron. Thanks, Aaron.

Conference Operator: Our next question comes from John Daniel with Daniel Energy Partners. Your line is open.

John Daniel, Analyst, Daniel Energy Partners: Hey guys, thanks for having me. I guess, Kerry, congrats. Everyone, congrats, by the way. This question is for Gene. I know it’s too early to say how many rig upgrades you’re going to do next year, but I’m curious if you could just speak to the demand for more upgrades next year.

Gene Stahl, Chief Operating Officer, Precision Drilling Corporation: John. Thanks. So working closely with all of our customers here in The U. S. And trying to understand what they need for rig requirements, what their drilling programs look like.

And then we’ve got three classes of super triples. So our regular 1,500 our 1,500 EER and our ST 2,000. And so depending on what their drilling program looks like, they’ve got a steady program, and, we’ve got a rig that we can upgrade for them at a reasonable price, and we can come to contract terms, then we’ll go ahead and, see if we can move forward with the upgrade.

John Daniel, Analyst, Daniel Energy Partners: Okay. But, like, the one when I look at the the five rigs that you’re doing for Canada, like can you just speak to like how that evolved the opportunity that how long were the discussions? And like could you be surprised next year all of sudden that you have five to 10 more upgrades? So I’m just trying to get a feel for what the opportunity could be.

Gene Stahl, Chief Operating Officer, Precision Drilling Corporation: Yeah. So it’s a blend of heavy oil rigs and a blend of triples. Obviously, Carrie just spoke to the triples. You find in heavy oil with super single rigs. We have 48 of them.

You know, as the Clearwater starts to evolve and they, expand their, well design, they’re looking for, year round operations. Typically, that can mean a hundred more days of utilization for us as a drilling contractor. And so converting those single loan rigs to pad rigs is something that’s of interest to our customers and to ourselves, and that’s where

Carrie Ford, President and Chief Executive Officer, Precision Drilling Corporation: the growth would come from.

John Daniel, Analyst, Daniel Energy Partners: Got it. All right. Apologies for what’s going to be a drilling 101 question here. But you did the 27 rig upgrades this year or you’ll do them. Like can you remind me what the what a potential rig upgrade cycle could be?

Like when did you have to bring those 27 back in?

Carrie Ford, President and Chief Executive Officer, Precision Drilling Corporation: Oh, you mean the time it takes to complete an upgrade?

John Daniel, Analyst, Daniel Energy Partners: Yeah. Just yeah. I’m I’m sorry for such a basic question, but I’m I’m slow today.

Carrie Ford, President and Chief Executive Officer, Precision Drilling Corporation: You know, it’s a for for what we’re for for what we’re doing, some of the rig upgrades might be an in basin upgrade where in a rig move, we’re, we’re installing a a new piece of equipment, you know, a wrench or a high torque top drive. A longer term upgrade might be, doing a pack configuration for a super single, and that would be three to four months. Yep. The the rigs that we moved up, the super triples, those were both those were probably two to three month upgrades to get those rigs ready. So we’re not looking at any kind of nine six to nine month upgrade.

Most of them are gonna be, you know, pretty quick inside a week to three or four months.

Gene Stahl, Chief Operating Officer, Precision Drilling Corporation: Yeah. And it it speaks to our rig design and our capability to, use our inventories and and upgrade to our specs. So I think a differentiator for Precision, certainly.

John Daniel, Analyst, Daniel Energy Partners: All right. Fair enough. Thanks for indulging these questions.

Carrie Ford, President and Chief Executive Officer, Precision Drilling Corporation: No problem, John.

John Daniel, Analyst, Daniel Energy Partners: Luck, Our

Conference Operator: next question comes from Tim Monticello with ATB Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Tim Monticello, Analyst, ATB Capital Markets: Hey, everybody. Long time listener, first time caller in a while. Congrats congrats, Carrie, Dustin and Jean for much deserved promotions and Kevin for a great career. First question is around Canada. Interesting to see a couple of rigs being moved out of The U.

S. Into Canada, super triple market. And with your comment that you’re fully utilized for expecting to be fully utilized for the winter drilling season, do you think there’s more opportunity to move rigs out of The US and Canada?

Carrie Ford, President and Chief Executive Officer, Precision Drilling Corporation: I think for this winter drilling season, no. And, we don’t currently have, you know, deep discussions with customers about moving more rigs. But, over time, over the next couple of years, I mean, LNG Canada phase two, other LNG LNG opportunities, there could be more demand for Super Triple rigs. And certainly, rigs that we have in Canada are delivering good performance for our customers. So there may be opportunities in the future, but I would say it would be for next winter drilling season.

Tim Monticello, Analyst, ATB Capital Markets: Okay. That makes sense. And then for The US, obviously, the oil basins, the outlook is a little bit certain perspectives, I would think. And the gas basins, you’ve seen almost 20%, rig activity growth in gas in The U. S.

Year to date. And you have a unique footprint in the gas basins with a pretty fragmented customer base. So I expect you have a decent view from a lot of customers on what their expectations are going forward for activity. Could you talk a little bit about your expectations for U. S.

Gas drilling activity over the next, I don’t know, six to twelve months? Yeah. I think

Carrie Ford, President and Chief Executive Officer, Precision Drilling Corporation: we have a we have a decent viewpoint on where, where activity might be going on on gas. I think the the Marcellus is, I would say, steady to low growth. There might be some what we’ve seen is there’s been a bit of high grading within the basin. So as we’ve added more rigs to the basin, there’s been a few instances where a rig has gone down. So they haven’t our additions there haven’t necessarily resulted in basin growth.

In the Haynesville, I think most people look at the Haynesville as a as a swing producer for LNG exports and the natural gas production in general. So, we could see higher activity in in the Haynesville over the next year if, gas prices are supported. But I wouldn’t say that we have a as as we stated in our in our press release, we don’t have much of a view on that, that demand beyond early twenty twenty six.

Tim Monticello, Analyst, ATB Capital Markets: What’s what’s the motivating factor behind, I guess, higher activity levels this year considering gas prices have been fairly uneconomic in The U. S? Is it just LNG export and building supply? Is that what you’re seeing?

Carrie Ford, President and Chief Executive Officer, Precision Drilling Corporation: Yeah. I think there’s there’s a I think most people are seeing a wave of demand on on both natural gas fired generation for data centers and electrification of the economy and then, LNG exports. And so I think some customers are looking through any short term volatility in gas prices and looking at the longer term demand outlook.

Tim Monticello, Analyst, ATB Capital Markets: Okay. That’s helpful. And then could you just provide a quick overview of what the geographies the 27 upgrades are going to?

Dustin Honing, Chief Financial Officer, Precision Drilling Corporation: So it’s it’s really a mix, Tim. But think of it, we obviously commented on the two Montney rigs that we’re gonna bring up from The US into Canada. Heavy oil is really a key area we’ve invested a lot. So this would be our Clearwater Basin and then more into the unconventional plays in SAGD. One comment on that.

We’ve seen a lot of enthusiasm with our customers on these upgrades where we have recognized a lot of upfront payments throughout the year to help support these upgrades as well. And then when you look down to The US, it’s it’s primarily weighted to the Haynesville and the Marcellus, but we have had some upgrade opportunities with high torque, equipment in the Rockies and even in the Permian.

Carrie Ford, President and Chief Executive Officer, Precision Drilling Corporation: Yep. And I would just add to that, Tim. I believe we said this in in the press release, but the vast majority of the upgrades are going to areas in North America where we expect to have year over year increases in activity. So it’s a little bit out of step with kind of the the broader market, but, in the Haynesville, in the Marcellus heavy oil, and in in the Montney, we expect that higher year over year activity, and that’s what’s what’s driving these upgrades.

Tim Monticello, Analyst, ATB Capital Markets: Okay. That’s, very helpful. I’ll turn it back. Thanks.

Carrie Ford, President and Chief Executive Officer, Precision Drilling Corporation: Yeah. Thank you, Tim.

Conference Operator: And I’m not showing any further questions at this time. I’d like to turn the call back over to Lavonne for any further remarks.

Yvonne Jadonnik, Vice President of Investor Relations, Precision Drilling Corporation: Thank you for taking the time to learn more about Precision Drilling today. And with that, we will sign off. Everyone, enjoy your day. Thank you.

Conference Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today’s presentation. You may now disconnect, and have a wonderful day.