Lance Loeffler - Vice President, Investor Relations, Halliburton Co. David J. Lesar - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer Christian A. Garcia - Senior Vice President of Finance & Acting Chief Financial Officer Jeffrey Allen Miller - President & Director.

Judson E. Bailey - Wells Fargo Securities LLC James C. West - Evercore ISI Angie M. Sedita - UBS Securities LLC Sean C. Meakim - JPMorgan Securities LLC Daniel J. Boyd - BMO Capital Markets (United States) Michael LaMotte - Guggenheim Securities LLC James Wicklund - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker) Rob J.

MacKenzie - IBERIA Capital Partners LLC J. David Anderson - Barclays Capital, Inc. J. Marshall Adkins - Raymond James & Associates, Inc..

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Halliburton First Quarter 2016 Earnings Conference Call. At this time all participants are in a listen only mode. Later we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will follow at that time. As a reminder, this call may be recorded.

I would now like to introduce your host for today's conference, Lance Loeffler Halliburton's Vice President of Investor Relations. Sir, you may begin..

Good morning, and welcome to the Halliburton first quarter 2016 conference call. Today's call is being webcast and a replay will be available on Halliburton's website for seven days. Joining me today are Dave Lesar, CEO; Christian Garcia, Acting CFO; and Jeff Miller, President.

During our prepared remarks, Dave will provide commentary on the termination of the Baker Hughes transaction. Some of our comments today may include forward-looking statements, reflecting Halliburton's views about future events.

These matters involve risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to materially differ from our forward-looking statements. These risks are discussed in Halliburton's Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015, recent current reports on Form 8-K and other Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

We undertake no obligation to revise or update publicly any forward-looking statements for any reason. Our comments today include non-GAAP financial measures and unless otherwise noted, in our discussion today, we will be excluding the impact of impairment charges and other costs.

Additional details and reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are included in our first quarter press release which can be found on our website. Now I will turn the call over to Dave..

Thank you, Lance and good morning everyone. Our prepared remarks today will be brief, leaving more time for the question-and-answer period. We would like to start by providing some background on our mutual decision with Baker Hughes to terminate our merger agreement.

From the time we announced the deal in November 2014, we knew that putting together two companies with the global size and scale of Halliburton and Baker would be no small task. But we believed that we could close the deal and do so in a timely manner because it truly made sense.

We expected the deal would create compelling benefits for the stockholders, customers and other stakeholders of each company. The potential annual cost synergies were substantial and the transaction was expected to be accretive to cash flow and earnings within only a couple of years.

In addition, the transaction would have allowed us to further reduce our customers' cost per barrel of oil equivalent. This was truly a great deal. One that was unanimously approved by each company's Board of Directors, and overwhelmingly approved by each companies' shareholders.

Unfortunately, things have changed quite a bit since we signed the merger agreement. From a regulatory perspective, we completely understood that the transaction would draw regulatory scrutiny and that substantial divestitures would be required to obtain regulatory approval. However, obtaining the U.S.

anti-trust approval of large complex business combinations, regardless of the industry, has become increasingly time intensive and difficult, as evidenced by the termination and litigation of several other large proposed transactions over the last 16 months.

We continue to believe the proposed Baker Hughes transaction would have been pro-competitive, that our proposed divestitures were more than sufficient to address any regulatory concerns and that the position taken in the U.S. Department of Justice's lawsuit and the European Commission statement of objections, are incorrect.

We also continue to believe that the transaction would be good for the industry and customers, particularly now at a time when customers are focused on lowering costs per barrel of oil equivalent.

However, the DOJ's lawsuit and EC's statement of objections, combined with the elongated review process in all jurisdictions, created substantial hurdles with respect to timing and deal certainty.

We would also like to correct a misimpression about the proposed divestiture package that may have resulted from the statements made during the DOJ's April press conference regarding the lawsuit.

We proposed to the DOJ, a divestiture package worth billions of dollars that we believe would facilitate the entry of new competition in markets in which products and services are being divested. And we had buyers expressing a strong desire to acquire those businesses.

The proposed divestitures where, for most part, divestitures of complete worldwide product lines including employees, management teams, business development personnel, manufacturing, R&D facilities, intellectual property portfolios, and customer contracts. They addressed most of the markets alleged in the DOJ complaint.

We believe that the proposed divestiture package was sufficient to address the DOJ's specific competitive concerns. In addition to regulatory matters, the unprecedented deterioration of the oil and gas industry decimated the economics of the deal.

During the pendency of the deal, the WTI price of oil has gone from over $76 in November of 2014 to a low of just over $26 in February of this year, while the global rig count has gone to a 17 year low and you all know what's happened in North America, where each week we seem to hit new historical lows.

As a consequence, the aggregate quarterly revenues of Baker Hughes have decreased nearly 60% from $6.6 billion for fourth quarter of 2014 to $2.7 billion for first quarter of this year. Given the abrupt and deep downturn in the oil services market, we were unable to obtain adequate value for the businesses we proposed to divest.

This, coupled with the decline in each company's business, eroded the expected synergies and accretive aspects of the transaction, including the timeline to integrate the businesses to levels which we believe severely undermine the originally anticipated synergy benefits of the deal.

As a result, it became clear that continuing to pursue the transaction was no longer in the best interest of our stockholders, despite having to pay the termination fee to Baker Hughes.

Moving forward with the transaction did not make sense in light of the elongated regulatory scrutiny, the projected timelines for closing the transaction, the poor deal economics and the current market environment. Now, to be clear, we recommended this transaction to our board and to our shareholders for approval.

We believed trying to do this transaction was worth the risk because of our strong belief in our strategy, process, employees and management team, but it wasn't to be. There is no doubt we are disappointed and I want to thank both our employees, as well as the employees of Baker Hughes for their tireless efforts throughout the regulatory process.

But you know what? We are Halliburton. And we will continue to provide the same innovative services and products that we've delivered to our customers for more than 97 years. We have a world-class management team, who has industry knowledge and experience to drive value for our shareholders.

Prior to the potential transactions, we were in a strong number two position in the market with a proven successful strategy of gaining market share through outperforming against the rig count and having among the highest margins and returns in the industry.

We were successful in executing that strategy and knew our process was scalable to a larger company. That fact has not changed. If we had been successful, adding the Baker Hughes assets would have given us that scale quickly.

But our strategy has not changed, we still expect to outperform the rig count, we plan to scale up our product service line capability by addressing one product line building block at a time through internal growth, investment and selective acquisitions.

Going forward, we will strive to deliver the same predictable, reliable execution and industry-leading growth, margins and returns from our world-class employees and management team.

Over the past 18 months, despite our intensive efforts to close the Baker Hughes transaction, we have been executing on our key strategic areas and adapting to the new reality that we face in a very difficult market. Compared to where we were a year-and-a-half ago, we have outperformed our peers, both in North America and internationally.

In the first quarter, we addressed some of our access infrastructure costs that we were carrying pending the Baker Hughes transaction. We will now move aggressively to remove the remainder of those costs from our operations over the next couple of quarters.

I am very proud of the outstanding operational and customer focus our employees have kept during this entire process. Their dedication, resiliency and hard work are the foundation of our company's strength and why together we can and will weather any challenges that we face. Now let me turn the call to Christian to provide some financial details..

Thanks, Dave, and good morning everyone. Let me start with a summary of our first quarter results. Total company revenue came in at $4.2 billion, which represents a 17% sequential decline compared to worldwide rig count decline of 21%.

We experienced weakening activity levels and pricing concessions during the quarter along with seasonal weather disruptions in the North Sea and Russia. At this point, our overall decremental margins have been less than that of the previous cycle despite this downturn being deeper and longer.

We've provided financial comparisons of our first quarter results to the fourth quarter of 2015 in our April 22nd press release and we would like to refer you to our commentary in that release.

Due to our ongoing restructuring efforts, we've revised our financial reporting presentation to only furnish overall regional results and global division results and we will no longer provide divisional results by region.

For Completion and Production and Drilling and Evaluation segments, we will only provide total global results for each segment going forward. In the first quarter, we recognized a restructuring charge of $2.1 billion after tax to further adjust our cost structure to market conditions.

This charge consisted primarily of asset impairments, including most of our non-Q10 pressure pumping equipment, as well severance costs. As Dave mentioned, in the coming quarters we will continue to make further structural adjustments including the remaining escalated cost structure we've kept in North America.

Further, in accordance with accounting rules, we no longer classified our assets included in the proposed divestitures as assets held for sale at the end of the first quarter. As a result, in the first quarter, we incurred an after tax charge to recognize the depreciation related to these assets that had been suspended since April of 2015.

Beginning in the second quarter, our operational results will include the depreciation expense from these assets. Our corporate and other expense totaled $46 million for the first quarter excluding costs related to the Baker Hughes transaction.

We anticipate that our corporate expenses for the second quarter will be approximately $50 million to $55 million excluding acquisition-related costs we incurred in April and this will be the new quarterly run rate for the rest of 2016.

Our first quarter free cash flow was negative $355 million driven by about $250 million of restructuring payments and acquisition -related costs.

We continue to commit to living within our cash flows for the year and given the ongoing decline in activity levels, we've further reduced our capital expenditure plans for 2016 to approximately $850 million.

We've been disciplined in the deployment of capital equipment during this downturn and expect to reduce our CapEx spend by approximately 75% compared to 2014. Depreciation and amortization for the first quarter was $346 million.

For the second quarter, we expect depreciation and amortization to be about $400 billion as a result of recommencing the depreciation for the assets that were previously classified as held for sale, the impact of our multi-year reduction of capital expenditures and the impairments we have taken.

In conjunction with the termination of the Baker Hughes transaction, $2.5 billion of debt that we issued in late 2015 will be mandatorily redeemed.

At the end of the first quarter, we had $9.6 billion of cash and equivalents available taking into account the debt redemption plus the $3.5 billion termination fee, we would still have had approximately $3.6 billion in cash and cash equivalents.

We also have $3 billion available under our revolving credit facility which with our cash balance provides us with ample liquidity of $6.6 billion to address the challenges and opportunities of the current market.

For modeling purposes starting in the second quarter we will begin reflecting the incremental interest expense on the debt taking into account the redemption of $2.5 million.

As such, our estimated net interest expense for the second quarter will be approximately $165 million and the quarterly run rate interest expense for the second half of 2016 will be approximately $155 million. Our effective tax rate for the first quarter was 23%.

Our income tax expense for the second quarter will be impacted by several factors including recognition of the incremental interest and higher depreciation, the statutory rates for the various geographies where we expect to generate income or losses, and any discrete tax items.

These factors will lead to a high degree of variability on our effective tax rate. Based upon our current forecast and expected earnings mix we anticipate that we will recognize approximately $10 million to $15 million of tax expense in the second quarter.

Turning to our operational outlook, the market dynamics continued to make forecasting a challenge, but let me provide you with our current thoughts on how we see the second quarter shaping up. The following regional guidance comments reflect the higher depreciation expense.

In the Eastern Hemisphere, we anticipate second quarter revenues to come in at similar levels as the first quarter, but with margins lower by 300 basis points to 400 basis points due to the impact of ongoing and expected pricing concessions and additional depreciation.

In Latin America, we expect an upper single digit decline in revenues with margins declining by approximately 200 basis points to 300 basis points from the first quarter levels. In North America, the U.S. land rig count is already down 23% compared to the first quarter average and has continued to deteriorate week after week.

As is typical, we expect our sequential revenue decline to outperform the rig count by several hundred basis points and anticipate that our decremental margins will be approximately 25% in the second quarter. Now I'll turn the call to Jeff for the operational update.

Jeff?.

Thank you Christian and good morning everyone. Before anything else, I'd like to thank each of our employees for their focus on execution in spite of the distractions presented by both the marketplace and current events. We are the execution company. As we've announced, we're sizing our cost structure to the market conditions we're experiencing.

I remain confident that when the market activity stabilizes margins can start on the road to recovery. We've had a dedicated team focused on the Baker transaction which freed the rest of us from distraction and gave us the ability to aggressively pursue our corporate strategy.

We've prepared the franchise to deliver industry-leading growth and returns when we exit this down cycle. Halliburton is the execution company and led our peer group in returns throughout this most recent cycle. Our strategy remains focused on what our customers value most highly. Maximizing production at the lowest cost per BOE.

Clearly, this is a dynamic formula depending on where we are in the cycle. Today, there's no doubt that the numerator, meaning cost, has most of our customers' attention. Cost is something we can control and we do it well at Halliburton and I'm pleased with our progress. We've consistently delivered the strategy for two components.

First, converting customer insight into cost effective solutions and second, by providing reliable service quality.

Our capabilities and our execution culture are built around systematically collecting insight from our customers on their operational challenges and collaborating with them and within Halliburton to design the programs and technology to solve their economic and technical challenges.

For example, during the first quarter we delivered production maximizing gravel pack chemistry for a major deepwater customer. However, instead of executing from a costly stimulation vessel, we were able to deliver the job from a substantially lower cost supply vessel by employing modular pumping equipment.

The second component, executing reliably on our solutions is something Halliburton does well and our customers appreciate. Our concentration on executing key processes has realized a multiyear double-digit service quality improvement, a demonstration of our clear focus on the lowest cost per BOE in action.

And finally, closing the loop on our performance is where I focus my attention every day. This is execution meaning getting things done.

Are we delivering what we promised to our customers? And how do we tighten our unique fit around collaboration, technology and service quality while systematically reducing our cost and capital requirements to deliver the growth and returns we expect.

This is an ongoing effort and recent example of this is our North American restructuring where we removed a layer of management. Now, this has changed our cost profile certainly but also simplified and improved our internal collaboration and execution.

Commodity prices in markets will move up and down, but the one thing about which I am certain, one thing that won't change over time is that the lowest cost per BOE wins.

We believe our collaborative approach to converting client insight into cost-effective solutions and our focus on reliable execution will consistently deliver the lowest cost per BOE and allow our customers to make better wells and be more successful over time.

We continue to believe that the longer it takes for the recovery to occur, the sharper the recovery will be. And that North America represents the greatest upside and that Halliburton is positioned to outperform. Now, I will turn the call over to Dave for closing comments.

Dave?.

Thanks, Jeff. Let me sum things up. We are disappointed in the outcome of the Baker Hughes transaction, but we are not going to do a deal that is not economic for our shareholders and we are confident that our focused strategy will allow us to continue to outperform.

Given our market outlook, we made significant changes to the fundamental cost structure of the business which, we believe, will help protect margins in the near term and drive outsize incrementals going forward.

This market has generated a sense of urgency in many of our customers and we are having better conversations with them around improving their cost per barrel economics.

And ultimately, we believe that when this market recovers, it will be North America that responds the fastest, offering the greatest upside and that Halliburton will be positioned to outperform. Now, let's open it up for questions..

Thank you. One moment for questions. Our first question comes from Jud Bailey with Wells Fargo. You may begin..

Thank you, good morning..

Good morning..

A question, maybe for Jeff, maybe circle back a little bit, you touched on it in the opening comments, but the elevated cost structure you were carrying waiting for the Baker acquisition to close, could you maybe talk a little bit more and quantify that the cost cutting opportunities you see, the timing it could take to whittle that down? And I guess also, is some of that included in Christian's guidance for the second quarter margins?.

Sure, Jud, thanks. Let me provide you with some color on where we are regarding cost savings. In North America, we've been carrying around 300 basis points of added costs, which we started to dismantle in Q1. Now that process is going to continue through the end of the year and we expect to eliminate 100 basis points per quarter.

Now that's just in North America. So we're also looking at doing the same in the Eastern Hemisphere and Latin America as well as in all of our product service lines and corporate structures. So we're scrutinizing every cost, from manufacturing, to supply logistics, to field operations and we're doing this on a global basis.

So, overall, we'll be reducing our structural costs by about 25% or maybe said another way, we'll lower our annual run rate on costs by around $1 billion by the end of the year, but with little of that happening in Q1. So these structural reductions are on top of volume-related cuts as we continue to adjust our operations for the market.

Now, the structural changes, by definition, are stickier. And all this doesn't come without a cost. But looking ahead – we are thoughtfully looking at how we work, what makes us more effective in the way that we go to market as we make these reductions.

And in many ways, we're more effective now than we were before, or at least certainly in terms of safety and service quality. So for those reasons, the changes we're making, in my view, do not impact our ability to scale in a recovery. And at the same time, positioning Halliburton to outperform through the cycle..

And, Jud, this is Christian, it is included in my guidance..

Okay. Thank you for that, I appreciate it.

And my follow up is, maybe for Dave, you mentioned it, again, in your comments, you're having discussions with customers on lowering costs, but I'm curious, with commodity prices poking their head up this quarter, are you having any more dialog from your customers on potentially going back to work in the third or fourth quarter? Or are they still taking a more cautious tone towards the back half of the year at this point?.

No, I think that clearly they're marginally more optimistic about things. I don't think we've seen that optimism translated into any set plans to actively increase the rigs in the back half of the year, certainly those discussions are taking place.

I think if you look at our release we put out last week, we thought the rig count would bottom in Q2, I think we still believe that's the fact. But certainly, with the oil prices a little higher, people are more optimistic and we do think that potentially we'll see an upswing in the rig count in the back half of the year..

Great, thank you..

Thank you. Our next question is from James West with Evercore ISI. You may begin..

Hey, good morning, guys..

Hi, James..

Hey, Dave and Jeff, maybe for you guys, so Baker is done and not going to happen and it is what it is, and you guys have seen my written comments about the DOJ overstepping their bounds here, but you still have some, I guess portfolio gaps, if you will, in production chemistry, artificial lift, how do you think about – where does Halliburton go now? What's the Halliburton of a year from now, two years from now look like?.

Okay, let me handle that, James. I guess before we talk about what we're going to look like going forward, I think it's really important that we really review where we are today.

First and foremost, we're an integrated global oil services company, and I think in order to make that claim, you have to have a broad portfolio, offer every service to every customer in every market.

And if you are an integrated company, you essentially can't pick and choose where you provide, who you provide it to, where you operate and what customers you work for. If you look at our individual product lines, our current portfolio is actually pretty good. We're in a number one market position in fracturing, in cementing and completions.

Our drill bits is number one in North America. Sperry, Wireline, Baroid and Landmark are all in strong number two positions. And you referenced the ones that we need some help in and certainly the Baker Hughes transaction would have helped in artificial lift and production chemicals.

In those areas clearly we're not in any sort of a market-leading position, and I said that in my prepared remarks. But we have an ability to grow product lines.

I think a great example of that is our testing business, where just over the last several years, we've gone from essentially a startup to almost a number two in the market position and with the contracts that we've won, we believe we'll very soon get into a number two position there.

So I like where we are, we certainly have the ability, as I said in my remarks, we are going to invest in those product lines where we're a little bit weak and we'll look at selective acquisitions to round them out.

I think as far as then what comes next, from a shareholder standpoint, I want to reiterate, we are continuing to be dead focused on our growth, margin and returns and leading the industry in those areas, get the billion dollars out of the business that Jeff just referenced and then take advantage of the North America rebound when it comes.

So yes, we are disappointed, but we've got a good portfolio, we're going to continue to execute our strategy and we're going to be fine..

Okay, got it thanks, Dave. And then on the North American market, it looks to us at least, and we're fairly bullish on oil prices, that cash flows for your customers will be up next year versus this year and certainly that will go back into the ground in drilling wells and could be a pretty significant recovery.

As I understand, there's no translation on the current oil prices to pick up actively now, but are you starting to have conversations, Dave at your level or Jeff at your level, with your clients about their 2017 outlook? And they're going to have, in my view, they're going to have to get back after it or their production is going to go down, but are they starting to have those conversations about a pickup in activity?.

Yeah, certainly as I said earlier, they're more optimistic because of where prices have gone back to. There's clearly been a re-basing, a re-setting of breakeven points through a combination of, obviously, service costs coming down, and I would argue, coming down to certainly an unsustainable level..

Right..

There's going to be an element of balance sheet repair that has to go forward, but clearly, that is going to be offset by what should be some pretty significant production declines that these guys are going to see.

And I think given the nature of these companies and they are independents, they're very confident in their own skill set, they're confident in the acreage they have and I think that when they believe that the time is right to start drilling, they will do it.

And generally, I think what we've seen is they'll be able to get the money to do that either through commodity prices, or through going back into the equity markets or the debt markets. So, yeah, they are feeling better and I think they're trying to survive to 2017 and then get on with things..

Got it, thanks, Dave..

Thank you. Our next question is from Angie Sedita with UBS. You may begin..

Thanks. Good morning, guys..

Good morning..

Clearly, I'll start off by saying, clearly a year-and-a-half ago no one would've expected conditions to deteriorate so severely, so it's very good to see the market react as well as it did and see that the best move for Halliburton was actually pulling away from the deal given the current market conditions.

The question I would have for you, Dave, is we'll go to the bread and butter of the U.S., on the frac side, there's a lot of discussion on the attrition side.

And so therefore, I wanted to hear your thoughts, or Jeff, on how much attrition do you think is merely replacing capital goods versus true attrition of equipment that could not come back? And how old you think equipment needs to be before you see it as no longer committed, or the customers see it as no longer actually competitive? And how much of equipment out there is that?.

Yeah. Sure, Angie. And certainly Jeff and Jim Brown live this every day, so I'll let Jeff handle this one..

Angie, our thoughts are that about half of that equipment is idle today and that idled equipment is not being maintained. We hear companies talking publicly even about cannibalizing equipment that is stacked, and that's equipment that really doesn't go back to work. It gets rained on, it sits there, it's more and more difficult to bring back.

So I think that is continuing all of the time. From our perspective – actually interestingly enough though, the volumes pump which probably has more impact on equipment continued to increase, so we saw 17% increase in sand volume on a per well basis which says that the equipment has to work harder than it ever has.

And so for that reason, we are really happy with our Frac of the Future configuration in the Q10 pumps just because they handle it so well. So, again, I think the equipment is out of the market, much of that equipment is probably out to stay..

And then do you have any thoughts on the range of horsepower that that would be?.

That's probably, we estimate in the 30% range..

Okay. Okay. And then as a follow up of our discussion here on the DUC thesis, on it potentially or maybe not tightening up the frac market.

So any thoughts there on what oil prices you think we would need to see for those to start to be completed? And the timeframe and horsepower needed to complete these extra DUCs in the market?.

I think the DUCs right now are we estimate around 4,800 to 5,000, some of those are seasonal. We don't see volume continuing to build and in fact it's kind of being worked off in the stream of work that's out there today. So I don't see them as impactful, all at one time. We continue to describe them as deferred revenue for us as they get done.

As far as price, I think it's more a sentiment than it is a price per se. It needs to be confidence around a price is probably as important as whatever a price may be..

So then you don't see the completing of these DUCs as a tightening of horsepower? It's not enough to actually make a difference on or a meaningful difference on demand versus supply?.

No I don't think so..

Okay. Okay. Thanks. I'll turn it over..

Thank you. Our next question is from Sean Meakim with JPMorgan. You may begin..

Hey. Good morning..

Good morning..

So just to continue on that line of thinking a little bit, when we get to a recovery scenario, is there one in which....

Sean, can you turn – it sounds like you've got your speaker on in the background, so we're getting a double.....

Sorry about that..

Here we go. Okay..

Sorry about that. Thanks.

Just on that line of thinking, in a recovery, is there a scenario in which some of your pre-Q10 horsepower goes back to work? Or do we think next cycle effectively your fleet is going to be fully Q10 irrespective of the slope of the recovery?.

Our target was to be fully Q10, and I think what we continue to believe that that performance out of the Q10 is differential and so that would be a target. That said, the equipment that we have, our older equipment is still better than what's available in the marketplace.

So I'm always comfortable bringing that equipment back to the extent it fills the gap. So I feel like we're very well positioned in terms of responding to the market from an equipment standpoint..

Got it. Think you. And then just on the balance sheet side, Christian, you noted the plan to continue to spend within cash flow.

Following the breakup fee payment, may be an update on how you're prioritizing cash uses considering the more levered balance sheet that you are going to have?.

Right. So we estimate that we need somewhere around $1 billion to run the company, so we're carrying more than enough cash, as I pointed out in my prepared remarks. Our use of cash is prioritized, first, with ensuring that we have the resources to take advantage of organic opportunities as they come.

Second, the bolt-on acquisitions as well as any sort of ventures that we need to make to execute the strategy, cost per BOE strategy that Jeff laid out. And third would be any excess cash after that will be delivered back to the shareholders through buybacks..

Okay, Fair enough. Thanks for your time..

Thank you. Our next question comes from Dan Boyd with BMO Capital Markets. You may begin..

Hi. Thanks, guys..

Hey, Dan..

Dave, you have a very strong track record of outperforming the rig count in the U.S. in down markets and in up markets, and as we look forward here, the one thing I'd like to get an update on is, your utilization sounds very high on your frac equipment, especially the Q10 pumps, just given what you are experiencing in your completion revenue in U.S.

versus what peers are reporting.

So in order for you to continue to outperform as the rig count increases, is that going to need to come from price increases? Or do you expect to get further market share gains and on the further market share gains, is that going to require potentially unstacking some of the equipment that you recently impaired?.

I think. Dan, it's actually a good question, it's one we talk about a lot internally. I think you have to go back to the basic strategy that we follow in North America and that is to be in every basin, to be with the right customers in those basins and have the right relationships with those customers.

So there's a number of ways to outperform the rig count when it comes back. And obviously, I won't give a detailed roadmap as to how you do that but, certainly, by being and having the right customers as your bread and butter from a revenue stream, they generally are the ones that are more financially secure.

They have the better acreage, and they are the best positioned. They are likely the ones to put the earliest rigs up. And therefore, it's a natural extension of your market share by you take a customer that we have a great relationship, might be running five rigs today when they go to eight rigs, you automatically get that work. So that's one way.

Second is the efficiency of our equipment. When things bounce back and it will, lowest cost per BOE and efficiency is still going to be very, very important.

And having the Q10, having our Frac of the Future, having our footprint, having our logistical system and all of those things in place because we have not and will not dismantle any of that, as part of the exercise Jeff talked about, will still allow us to be the low-cost provider in a market that's expanding.

I think another reason that we have worked hard to keep our utilization up is, it is I don't care what people say, it is going to be harder to crew frac spreads, it's going to be harder to crew cementing equipment and those sorts of things when this thing turns back.

And so by keeping and preserving as much of our workforce and as much of our equipment being active, we can basically leverage that workforce more quickly across an expanding rig count. So I like where we are, it hasn't come without, obviously, a cost. We've worked hard with our customers to make sure that they in a position to keep rigs in the air.

That's not, as I said, come without a cost on our margins, but I think it's a good trade-off because when this thing snaps back it's going to snap back hard and I really like the position we're going to be in at that point in time..

Okay. And somewhat related, when I look at your CapEx, it's coming down quite a bit this year and it's really running about mid-single-digits at least of my revenue estimate and that's down from low-double-digits in the past.

As the cycle snaps back, as you say and we start to get in that recovery mode, will CapEx get back to that level of near double-digit or are we at a structurally lower level?.

No, I think at least in the near term we're probably at a structurally lower level. If you look at our release that we put out a week ago, clearly the whole industry is overcapitalized at this point in time, and it's overcapitalized with some really good equipment.

So I think that as it flexes back and the rig count comes up, customer start to spend more money, the need to spend on capital, if in fact you are maintaining your equipment, maintaining your tools, which is what we are doing.

We're not cold stacking stuff and letting it deteriorate, it's really just going to be an issue of getting the people to man that equipment as it comes back. So I don't really see us getting back to that level unless the market got really frothy like it did last time.

Hey, that would be a great position to be in, I just don't see it at this point though..

Yeah. Absolutely. Thanks for the time..

Thank you. Our next question is from Michael LaMotte with Guggenheim. You may begin..

Hey, Mike..

Thanks, guys. A lot of questions on the operation side have been answered. I wanted to just ask a quick one on capital structure.

You talked about, Christian, the priorities of use of cash, but how do you think about the mix of debt versus equity right now and into the next couple, three years?.

So one of the metrics that we use, Mike, is the way we look at our leverage is through – is the ratio of net debt to net cap, and we expect that ratio which is about 30% to go into the mid-40%s, so it is still very manageable. But you're right, we have to look at ways to delever the balance sheet and we're putting on plans to do that.

Now having said that, Mike, and you know this, we are an investment-grade company and even though much like the rest of the industry, we are being reviewed by the credit rating agencies, we fully expect that after the smoke clears that we will remain an investment-grade company.

So we will have ample liquidity and the financial flexibility to do whatever we need to do to make sure that we continue to add value to our stakeholders..

Yeah. I think, Mike, this is Dave, we'll have an obvious quick decision or quick opportunity to assess things. We have a $600 million debt repayment due in the fall and whether we just pay that off with the excess liquidity we have or look at the total capital structure, that's something that we'll be doing over the summer and into the fall.

As Christian said in the call, even after the dust settles, we're going to have over $3.5 billion of cash sitting on the balance sheet. That is actually too much given where we are in the cycle and the fact that it costs us about $1 billion to sort of run the company.

So we actually have that problem sitting in front of us right now, great problem to have. And we'll spend the balance of the second quarter here watching the market. There could be additional acquisition opportunities come up. As Christian said, we would consider buybacks, and any of the whole range of options.

So we're in a good position to just sit back right now, make that decision, but clearly capital structure is on the top of our priority list right now.

Great. Thanks so much guys..

Okay..

Thank you. Our next question is from James Wicklund with Credit Suisse. You may begin..

Good morning, guys..

Hey, James..

By everybody's agreement, North America is going to come back first.

In the international sector, I'm just kind of curious how you guys see how long it takes for international to come back, and which markets to come back first?.

Thanks, Jim. The international cycles are just longer, and so they are longer on the way down because structurally the contracts are longer, they're also slower on the uptick as well. So, I don't expect to see improvement internationally until we see some improvement in North America.

That timeframe has usually been six months to a year in terms of the lag between North America and the rest of the world. I think if we look around the world though, the....

Hang on, hang on – hey, Jim, just like a couple guys ago, you've got your speaker on in the background, so we're getting an echo I suspect everybody is too..

Okay. I will try and fix that. Thank you..

Okay..

Internationally, it does not have the same overcapitalization that we saw in the U.S., so I think that that will help it react more quickly.

As far as markets returning, I think the mature fields part of the business is the first to tighten back up, would start with the better markets like Middle East would be – it's most resilient but it tightens first. Probably we'd think Asia would be next as we looked around..

Okay. I appreciate that. And my follow-up if I could, Jeff, you talked a lot about the cost per BOE, and then, Christian, you talked about bolt on acquisitions and possible costs related to Jeff's cost per BOE strategy.

What are the capital requirements for the implementation or continuation, Jeff, of your cost per BOE strategy and what products was the capital actually spent on?.

Well, capital is spent on the things that drive a lower cost per BOE, and by that I don't mean to be trite, but there are technologies, there are pieces of the business that, in my view, contribute to that. How we work and how we integrate internally is a big part of how we put those things to work.

So there will be gaps here and there that say, hey, if we can put that to work in our system to drive a differentially lower cost per BOE, those are the things we want to spend money on. From an equipment perspective, Q10 is a great example of that. Because it differentially drives a lower cost for us and a lower cost per BOE for the market.

So I think you'll see us consistently evaluate things through that lens..

Okay. Thank you, gentlemen. I appreciate it..

Thank you. Our next question is from Rob MacKenzie with IBERIA Capital. You may begin..

Thank you, guys. I had a question, followed up on Baker's call and tying it into what you guys said about this morning, Dave, about weakness, obviously, in artificial lift and production chemicals.

Can you foresee a return to Baker perhaps selling those product lines through Halliburton in an integrated type offering?.

I'm not going to speculate on that..

Okay. Well, that was my question, thank you. I will turn it back..

Believe me, I've got lawyers shaking their heads at me like crazy right now..

Okay.

Well, then – I guess, my follow-up then would be, how do you see based on Baker's, if you can comment, based on Baker's strategy change, how do you see the competitive dynamic changing in a lot of particularly international markets but also in the U.S., say, pressure pumping market where they seem to be pulling back largely from that business?.

Yeah. I think let me just stipulate, I did not listen to Baker's call this morning, so I really don't know what they said. So I can just sort of respond to what we see in the marketplace. I think that pressure pumping, in my view, to be successful at it in the U.S. you have to have the U.S.

wide business because so much of the advantage you get in that business is through scope and scale. It's being the biggest procurer of sand, it's having the infrastructure, it's having the rail cars, it's having the transload centers, it's having the ability to spend on technology, on chemistry, on footprint, on downhole capabilities.

And I think pulling back into a limited number of basins just doesn't allow you to have that scope and scale. So our strategy has always been one that you have to be, if you're committed to being an integrated services company, you have to take the benefit and the downside of that.

And in a market like this, there is some downside because you are operating in some markets, you are operating in some product lines that maybe are not giving you the kinds of returns that you want.

But at the end of the day when it does bounce back and you're making hay from a margin standpoint, it's way better to be essentially in every basin with every product line, so that's our strategy.

As I said, I don't know what was said this morning, but our strategy is to be a full-service company, integrated across our product lines in every place that our customers want us to work..

Great. Thank you very much..

Thank you. Our next question is from David Anderson with Barclays. You may begin..

Hey, Dave..

Thanks. Just following on the same line of thinking, bundling of services was a big subject of last few years before the downturn, I'm wondering if anything has changed in your philosophy in North America. Obviously the low-cost operator you talked about, the vertical integration; nobody is going to be more efficient than you guys.

Is that still the thought that we're going to lead with the pressure pumping, that efficiency is pulling the rest of this technology and that's where margins come from in North America? Has anything changed with this downturn in that line of thinking?.

No. In fact, I think bundling and the ability to bundle, will be even more important as we come out of this for one simple reason.

This thing finally got so bad that our customers had to lay people off, and by basically reducing their G&G capabilities, their engineering capabilities, their exploration capabilities, their drilling departments, they don't have those people internally that maybe were basically not as interested in bundling as they may have been in the last go around.

So as this thing turns back up, they are going to be also more stressed from a people standpoint, and the conversations we're having with them today is about the advantages of bundling, from not only an efficiency standpoint, but from a cost standpoint..

So if we just think about your Q10 pumps, obviously you're talking about kind of hydrating your all equipment with all the Q10s. Can you help us understand a little bit on that fleet? I'm not sure how you measure the bundling. I think in the past you've talked about maybe two or three product lines that are pulling through.

Can you give us sort of, I don't know, a measurement of where we stand right now on that?.

Look, the Q10 is a key component of how we go to market, it drives our cost down most certainly. So we see just more things bundled around the wellhead. There is not as clear a measure around that.

I think, it's more we bundle to the degree it drives lower cost for BOE for our clients, and those things become clearer as the activities around the completion start to pile up. And that's clearly an advantage for us because the equipment works together, or people work together and ultimately it does deliver a lower cost per BOE..

Great. Thanks guys..

Thank you. Our next question is from Marshall Adkins with Raymond James. You may begin..

Good morning, guys. A quick question on the asset impairments.

How many pressure pumping horsepower was that that was impaired?.

We're not going to provide that level of detail, Marshall, but just to give you a flavor of the restructuring. Of that, C&P was two-thirds of that amount and one-third is D&E. That's probably what the level of detail that we're going to provide..

Right. It helps.

And what happens to that horsepower once it's written down? Is it just scrapped or what do you see happen there?.

Well, the way we've impaired the assets, there's really two buckets. One that is actually written off and therefore we're going to get rid of it. And then there's a portion of the assets that actually are idled, cold-stacked and we did an impairment analysis on that amount.

Those are the larger components of our restructuring charge around fixed asset impairments..

Okay. One last just quick one on labor. You all mentioned labor issues, and recrewing these crews. Could you give us a little more color on that because I've been hearing the same thing from different industry sectors.

And where do you see the limitations on labor as we ramp back up over the next couple of years?.

This is Jeff, I think we're differentially advantaged there, just because as Dave mentioned, we stay in the market and we keep experienced people, and know how to hire those kinds of people. If we look back just to 2014, we hired 21,000 people at Halliburton during that year, absolute adds.

So we do know how to add people to the payroll when we need to. So those people are out there, it's not easy to recruit them, but we certainly know how to recruit them and I think we've demonstrated our ability to do that..

Thank you. At this time, I would like to turn the call back to management for closing remarks..

Okay. Thanks, Shannon. So I'd like to wrap the call up with just a couple of comments. So first, while we are disappointed about the outcome of the Baker Hughes transaction, we are excited about the future and our differentiated strategy to maximize production at the lowest cost per BOE for our clients.

We are having productive conversation with clients around how we do this in the current marketplace. Second, we are systematically removing structural costs to address the current market outlook while retaining our ability to rebound quickly when activity turns up.

We remain dead focused on revenue growth margins and returns, and clearly believe that Halliburton will be best positioned to outperform when the market recovers. So thank you, I look forward to speaking with you next quarter. Shannon, you can end the call..

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference. This does conclude today's program. You may all disconnect. Everyone have a great day..