Rowan Companies' CEO Discusses Q1 2012 Results - Earnings Call Transcript

Joining me on this call this morning are Matt Ralls, President and Chief Executive Officer; Tom Burke, Chief Operating Officer; Mark Keller, Executive Vice President, Business Development; and Bill Wells, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, who will have prepared comments. Also in the room to respond to questions is Kevin Bartol, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development.

Before Matt begins his remarks, I'd like to remind you that during the course of this conference call, forward-looking statements may be made within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including, without limitation, statements about the change in corporate structure, as well as statements as to the expectations, beliefs and future expected financial performance of the company that are based on current expectations and are subject to certain risks, trends and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected by the company. Other relevant factors have been and will be disclosed in the company's filings with the SEC.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Matt.

W. Matt Ralls

Thanks, Suzanne, and good morning, everyone. I'll be brief this morning. We're pleased with our results for the first quarter and believe that these results reflect an upward trend for the company. While over the past few years, we've often rolled from high day rate contracts signed during the last peak to new lower day rates, we're now in a position where virtually all rigs moving to new contracts will be getting higher day rates.

We continue to have a few rigs in transition as we reposition our fleet into the markets where we believe they have the best longer-term opportunities, but we expect the pace of those relocations to reduce over the balance of this year. These moves have helped us add substantial contract backlog, bringing our total backlog to $3.5 billion, and we're hopeful and pretty confident that we'll be adding significant deepwater contract backlog over the coming months.

« First ‹ Previous 1 2 3 Next › Last »