Transocean Ltd.
Q4 2017 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 21 Feb 2018

[Operator:]

Good day and welcome to the Q4 and year-end 2017 Transocean earnings call. Today's conference is being recorded. And at this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Brad Alexander, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

[Bradley Alexander:]

Thank you, David. Good morning and welcome to Transocean's fourth quarter and full-year 2017 earnings conference call. A copy of the press release covering our financial results along with supporting statements and schedules, including reconciliations and disclosures regarding non-GAAP financial measures, are posted on the company's website at deepwater.com. Joining me on this morning's call are Jeremy Thigpen, President and Chief Executive Officer, Mark Mey, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and Roddie Mackenzie, Vice President of Marketing and Contracts. During the course of this call, management may make certain forward-looking statements regarding various matters related to our business and company that are not historical facts. Such statements are based upon the current expectations and certain assumptions of management and are therefore subject to certain risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause actual results to differ materially. Please refer to our SEC filings for more information regarding our forward-looking statements, including the risks and uncertainties that could impact our future results. Also, please note that the company undertakes no duty to update or revise forward-looking statements. To give more participants during the question-and-answer session an opportunity to speak on this call, please limit your questions to one initial question and one follow-up question. Thank you very much. and I'll now turn the call over to Jeremy.

[Jeremy D. Thigpen:]

Thank you, Brad, and a warm welcome to our employees, customers, investors, and analysts participating in our fourth quarter and full-year 2017 earnings call. I would like to start today's call with a recap of 2017. As reported in yesterday's earnings release, for 2017 the company generated adjusted normalized EBITDA of $1.2 billion on $2.8 billion in adjusted normalized revenue, resulting in an adjusted normalized EBITDA margin of 44%. Over the past 2.5 years, Transocean has been acutely focused on

[Mey Lovell Mark-Anthony:]

Thank you, Jeremy and good day to all. During today's call, I will highlight certain items included in our fourth quarter results and provide an update to our 2018 guidance, which includes Songa Offshore for the first time. I will also update our liquidity forecast through 2019. As reported in our detailed press release, for the fourth quarter 2017 we reported a net loss attributable to controlling interests of $111 million or $0.28 per diluted share. Excluding net unfavorable items of $18 million, adjusted net loss was $93 million or $0.24 per diluted share. As anticipated, our fourth quarter operating and maintenance expense increased in line with our prior guidance by $66 million sequentially to $389 million. And, as previously indicated, this was primarily due the following items

[Bradley Alexander:]

Thanks, Mark. David, we're ready to take questions now. And as a reminder to the participants, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up.

[Operator:]

Thank you. And we'll take our first question from Blake Hancock with Howard Weil.

[K. Blake Hancock:]

Thanks, good morning, guys.

[Jeremy D. Thigpen:]

Morning, Blake.

[K. Blake Hancock:]

Jeremy, congrats on the wins that we saw on the fleet status report. And obviously, you sound a little bit more bullish than maybe we have in the past. Can you talk about maybe filling in the windows in 2018 and 2019 as rigs roll off and we get to the longer-term contracts that you're talking about commencing in 2019 and 2020? Are those there, or should we expect some downtime still? Just trying to think about how the commodity prices are helping the next two years before we get into the multiyear term contracts.

[Jeremy D. Thigpen:]

Thanks, Blake, for the question. I'll hand it over to Roddie, but thanks for the recognition. We were accused of being a little more bullish last quarter as well, and it was because we had visibility to quite a few potential tenders that were out there and felt good about our chances, and I think that materialized in Q4. I don't expect a repeat in Q1 of the awards that we secured in Q4, but there's a lot moving around out there, and it is very encouraging across the globe. And with that, I'll turn it over to Roddie.

[Roddie Mackenzie:]

Okay. Hey, Blake. To answer your questions specifically, yes, in 2016 and 2017 we saw some gaps between contracts. But now what we're beginning to see is, even in 2018 where we do have some gaps, those are rapidly being filled up. There's clearly a desire for hot assets in the market. And certainly on the harsh environments, say for example, we had a few gaps on the Arctic's contract. Those are being filled up very quickly, and we're cautiously optimistic that there won't be any gaps on that contract, as an example. And then on some of the other ones, almost every rig that we have reactivated through one of the contracts that we won in 2017 has multiple follow-on opportunities. And so we're feeling pretty good about that. And clearly, as you mentioned, we've seen quite a shift in the sentiment in the market to the positive, so we like that.

[K. Blake Hancock:]

That's great. Thank you, guys. And, Jeremy, I hate to harp on it. On the Leader, it seems very one-off-ish, but hoping maybe you could just talk about that a little bit. And how common is this in contracts? And any concerns we should have going forward?

[Jeremy D. Thigpen:]

Yeah. The Leader was somewhat unfortunate. We identified a crack in one of the guide rails in the derrick that needed to be fixed. We thought that we could do it on location during operations. Unfortunately, it was wintertime in the North Sea, which is not really conducive for work at height. And so there were numerous days over that 30-day window that we were given to get the work done, where we just weren't able to work. It was probably half the time that we just weren't able to work because of weather conditions. As a result, the customer had the contractual right to terminate the agreement early. And this was one of those contracts that was signed back in good times with nice dayrates, and so they took the opportunity. But as evidenced by the fact that they renegotiated the contract, they obviously like the rig. They like the crew performance and the overall performance that they've had with Transocean. With respect to other contracts, I'll defer to Roddie on that one.

[Roddie Mackenzie:]

Yeah. Blake, so this was actually the last of our high dayrate contracts on an older asset. So in terms of, could this happen again to some of our other high dayrate contracts? It's highly unlikely. We basically have all of the remaining high dayrate contracts that were signed at the height of the market are all in newbuild rigs that have essentially no-cut contracts. So the out for extended downtime is nothing like what you saw in the Leader. The Leader is actually a fairly typical 30-day clause in the industry. But newbuilds for us are no-cuts and include many, many months longer than that. So I think the risk of a recurrence is extremely low at this point.

[K. Blake Hancock:]

That's great. Thank you, guys.

[Operator:]

And next we'll go to Angie Sedita with UBS.

[Angie Sedita:]

Good morning, guys.

[Jeremy D. Thigpen:]

Hi, Angie Sedita.

[Angie Sedita:]

Hi, so congratulations on closing Songa, first off.

[Jeremy D. Thigpen:]

Thank you.

[Angie Sedita:]

And so when you think through M&A transactions with other companies and the opportunity set out in the market, and discuss a little bit about the key parameters for looking at any additional opportunities, whether it's contract coverage or neutral to positive to the balance sheet. And is it fair to think that a company is essentially off the table if they have quality rigs but no contract coverage?

[Jeremy D. Thigpen:]

Yes, great question, Angie. And going back to our market sentiment, we said that the harsh environment market was clearly in the early stages of recovery. We're seeing that in utilization and in dayrate improvement. And so as we look at acquisition candidates, we would certainly be more inclined to look in that particular piece of the market because we do see that recovery playing out. And so harsh environment assets would be more of interest at this point than ultra-deepwater assets, which we still haven't seen that point of inflection. But then besides that, asset quality is going to play into it, balance sheet is going to play into it, and contract coverage is certainly going to play into it. At this point in time, going out and making an acquisition of an individual asset or a complete company that's solely focused on ultra-deepwater doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to us. We think time is on our side in that area, so we're going to continue to monitor the environment. But at this point in time, I think you'd see more of a focus for us on harsh environment, solid balance sheet, and solid backlog.

[Angie Sedita:]

Okay, fair enough. And then you highlighted a little bit in your prepared remarks on the opportunity set in Brazil and Mexico and tendering opportunity in Brazil in 2018 and 2019 with work in 2020. But can you talk a little bit more about the Mexico market as well, when you could start to see some tendering activity out of that market, and then any estimates for both Brazil and Mexico on how many incremental rigs could come into this market?

[Jeremy D. Thigpen:]

That was a four-part question, Angie.

[Angie Sedita:]

Sorry.

[Jeremy D. Thigpen:]

I'll start it off with Roddie. Maybe hit Brazil first, and then get into Mexico a little bit.

[Roddie Mackenzie:]

All right, sure. Okay, so Brazil, as you know, they had the rounds last year. And the new block tender rounds are coming up this year at the end of March and also in June before the election, and this is being dubbed as the mega-tender. So what we expect to see is huge participation by the IOCs, which is really positive for Brazil overall in terms of foreign investment, but also the fact that there's less reliance on one company, Petrobras. It's now spread across many more. So we are very optimistic about the IOCs bringing more and more rigs to Brazil. We think ultimately because of the specifications that they like to see in those rigs that eventually dayrates there will start to pick up and look a little bit healthier. On the Mexico thing, so Mexico is extremely interesting. So we saw the first rounds with lots of participation. And then Round 2.1 and then Round 2.4 with 10 awards and 19 awards respectively, we're actually now seeing the resurgence of the majors. So in the first rounds, they were a real mixed bag, but now companies like Shell are coming to the fore and they're betting big on deepwater, and they're doing it in Mexico. Essentially, you've got a lot of the same players that have explored in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, so that's right in our wheelhouse in terms of capability of rigs and our expertise in drilling those fields. So again, we feel very optimistic about that. And one of our customers who has a rig in the Gulf of Mexico is expected to take one of those rigs from the U.S. to Mexico later this year. So that's a great segue for us to enter that market.

[Angie Sedita:]

Thanks, I'll turn it over.

[Jeremy D. Thigpen:]

Thanks, Angie.

[Operator:]

And next we'll go to Gregory Lewis with Credit Suisse. Gregory Lewis - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC Yes, thank you and good morning.

[Jeremy D. Thigpen:]

Good morning, Greg. Gregory Lewis - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC Jeremy, you tempered expectations in the near term around contracting following the flurry towards the back end of the year. As we think about the seasonality of tendering and contract awards, could you gauge how we should be thinking about the next few quarters in terms of – as operators and start to look out into 2019, when we should start to see contracts actually being signed in the marketplace?

[Jeremy D. Thigpen:]

Greg, I'll let Roddie answer that one as well.

[Roddie Mackenzie:]

Okay, sure, so just a little background. So since 2016, for seven consecutive quarters, we've seen an increase in tendering. In fact, it's a fourfold increase across that period of time. And what was interesting in that was, it was primarily driven by the independents and the NOCs, and conspicuously absent were the super-majors. So what we're beginning to see now in terms of the awards is all the stuff that was booked in 2017 was the independents and the NOCs. Now we're beginning to see the majors return with a bang. So certainly, the seasonality would dictate that a lot of people try to get the deals done towards the second half of last year, but that was primarily driven by the stability in the oil price, and also got them in the position where they're really trying to get ready for executing their programs starting in 2018. So the follow-on that we're going to see we expect is 2018 is going to have increased tendering activity and a lot more awards as well, perhaps not right at the beginning as everyone is digesting what they've just signed up for. But certainly when budget season comes around in 2018, looking into 2019 and 2020, we're seeing activity pick up in every single market sector, so that's very positive for us. Gregory Lewis - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC Okay, great. And then just I guess in your prepared remarks, you talked about customers starting to look at multiyear contracts. Could you provide a little bit of color? Are there any specific regions where we should be thinking about that? And you mentioned the various types of customers. What types of customers are thinking about taking those multiyear contracts? Thank you.

[Roddie Mackenzie:]

Okay, I think I'll take that one as well. So what we're beginning to see now is the focus on the Golden Triangle, so it's been a long time since we've discussed that. But for example, in Angola we've got several tenders out right now for multiyear awards and thereby the majors. So that's very interesting. In Brazil, we just covered that. There's lots of interest, especially from the majors, in Brazil. And then Gulf of Mexico U.S. side is really beginning to pick up, and we're seeing some of the biggest players are now looking towards their new developments and what new equipment they need to bring to the market to make that a reality. So in certainly in the Golden Triangle, we're seeing all that stuff there. But then we're also seeing things like – there are the several multiyear tenders for the Australia and Asia region, which is again very encouraging. And you will have seen in the fixtures that the harsh environment market is already contracting multiyear high dayrate tenders, so again, encouraging across the board there.

[Operator:]

Next we'll go to Ian Macpherson with Simmons.

[Ian Macpherson:]

Hi, thanks and congratulations for backing up your optimism with some good action on the fleet status report.

[Jeremy D. Thigpen:]

Thanks, Ian.

[Ian Macpherson:]

Great. Demand is clicking. The one thing that concerns me a little bit is we have seen quite a few reactivations. You've done a few, but most of your competitors have also done some as well. Apart from the Spitsbergen, it seems like they're being done at uneconomic price levels right now with hopes of better economics to justify that capital. And I just wonder how you assess that supply threat. How many more uneconomic reactivations can the market absorb or tolerate without getting the cart in front of the horse with regard to a pricing recovery?

[Jeremy D. Thigpen:]

It's a fair question, Ian. So to date, all of our reactivations have been backed by contracts. Do those contracts support the capital investment for the reactivation? Usually not at this point in time, but we see follow-on work for those various reactivations, and so that's encouraging for us, as Roddie mentioned earlier. I think we're at a point in time now, especially as you're looking at the harsh environment sector, we think that the market is tightening to the point where we don't see the need for reactivation without a contract that supports that reactivation. And so that's our position there. And on the ultra-deepwater side, I can't see us in the near term reactivating any rigs that aren't tied to a contract, where we've got some pretty good visibility.

[Ian Macpherson:]

Okay. Another thing that interested me with your fleet report was on the Songa backlog, there's a backwardation there to the rate structure. I assume that you inherited that, that you haven't renegotiated those contract terms in any way. But that's a little bit unusual I guess, and I wonder if you could speak to that and speak to any other nuances or variability with regard to those dayrates that we should be aware of in modeling that long-term backlog.

[Mey Lovell Mark-Anthony:]

Good morning, Ian. This is Mark. So you may recall back a few years, when Songa ordered these rigs, they were against contracts from Statoil, and the Songa organization was not as financially stable as they could have been. There were significant cost overruns with those construction contracts. As a result, they renegotiated the dayrates with Statoil. So the starting dayrates were increased by an average of about $40,000 per day per contract. In return for that, Songa gave Statoil certain concessions with regard to the backwardation of the dayrates and a concession with regard to any options that are exercised once the initial 8-year contracts are completed. So you will see that as well, and that's purely the commercial arrangement that was agreed to, I would say, about three years ago.

[Ian Macpherson:]

Okay. And there are no other mechanics in those derricks with regard to performance, bonus, or any of that type of stuff?

[Mey Lovell Mark-Anthony:]

No. there's not.

[Ian Macpherson:]

Okay, good. Thanks for those clarifications.

[Mey Lovell Mark-Anthony:]

Ian, you're welcome.

[Operator:]

And next we'll go to Haithum Nokta with Clarksons Platou Securities.

[Haithum Nokta:]

Hey, good morning.

[Jeremy D. Thigpen:]

Good morning, Haithum.

[Haithum Nokta:]

I wanted to ask on ultra-deepwater OpEx. Can you give an update on where we are today for that? It seems like it's continued to march lower across the industry. And you highlighted some aspects that's driving yours, I think, uniquely lower. And then second to that as well, is there less regional variability in OpEx compared to the peak?

[Mey Lovell Mark-Anthony:]

Yes, good morning, Haithum. This is Mark. So you are right. We are seeing costs reduce over the last 2 – 2.5 years. However, I would say that we probably reached a level right now where we don't expect to see significantly more cost reductions in 2018. As you know, we do not break out OpEx by rig, by type of rig, or by region, so I'm not going to go ahead with that part of the question at this stage. But I'd certainly say that the effect that you've seen a reduction in local content requirements in certain jurisdictions would also lead you to believe that the variability has been reduced somewhat over the last couple years.

[Haithum Nokta:]

Okay, thanks, and then a similar question. Obviously, industry-wide, there's a lot fewer in disclosed dayrates, and for various reasons, I think. And I'm wondering in Transocean's assessment, how rampant has it been, if at all, that you've seen rates that are below cash operating costs for the driller? And do you think that's something that continues for a meaningful period time in 2018, or what's your view on that?

[Mey Lovell Mark-Anthony:]

So let me take a stab at this, and then Jeremy or Roddie can jump in. So we have an internal policy where we only announce the backlog of a contract if it exceeds $100 million. So in those cases, obviously longer-term contracts, you will see the dayrate being published. Otherwise, we don't disclose the dayrates associated with that. And if I reflect back over the last year or so, I don't think we've signed any contracts where we are losing cash at the drill bit, so every contract is cash flow positive. Roddie?

[Roddie Mackenzie:]

Yeah. And I would add that there are maybe some folks out there that have done that for other reasons, but they're certainly not for profitability reasons. But I think what we're seeing just now is on a go-forward basis, there's just a building sentiment that when we're looking at the operators announcing maintaining and increasing dividends, there's less of a desire for us to operate at that cash breakeven level. And I think as you see the activity returning, which of course drives utilization, which drives dayrates, we're going to see things lifting off of that kind of level across the board. And I would think we're able to secure better, more attractive contracts that run for a bit longer term.

[Jeremy D. Thigpen:]

And just a final piece of that, I think you used the term rampant. It's certainly not rampant. We've seen one-offs here and there where we suspect or have been informed that some of our competitors have gone below cash breakeven. But it's not – it's certainly not rampant.

[Haithum Nokta:]

Okay, fair enough. Appreciate that.

[Operator:]

And next we'll go to Waqar Syed with Goldman Sachs.

[Waqar Syed:]

Thank you for taking my question. As we look forward in the next three to five years' timeframe and assume some of your stacked rigs are being reactivated, you have rigs that were stacked back in 2015, and in 2016, 2017, 2018. Should we look in reverse order and see the ones that have been recently stacked, that they will be the first ones to come back in? And those that were stacked in 2015 may be the last ones to be reactivated or maybe even retired?

[Jeremy D. Thigpen:]

I would say not necessarily, but go ahead, Roddie.

[Roddie Mackenzie:]

Yeah, I'd probably say, so that's not a bad analogy. I would say the technical reason behind that is that the way that it typically happened was that the more capable assets were the last ones to be stacked. So the more capable assets will typically be the ones that are most in demand in the beginning, so they will probably go back first. So because of that reason, you might see that. But it's certainly not a given. In fact, when you look at the unique technical capabilities of rigs, there are several rigs that would probably come back after a longer period of stack, just because they have attributes to certain markets that are very attractive in terms of operations.

[Waqar Syed:]

What's the value proposition that you think that your fifth-generation deepwater rigs have that were stacked in 2015? Is there any unique things that they offer that the newer sixth-, seventh-generation rigs don't have?

[Roddie Mackenzie:]

Well, if you look at some of the fifth-gens, there's fifth-gens and then there's fifth-gens. So the ones that we're looking at eventually bringing back were the dual-activity ships that essentially had very large derricks, full dual activity. That there's room to upgrade those rigs. They're good hulls, they're very good ship systems, and the top-side packages can get upgrades when the environment supports that. And what we think happens in the long term here is the activity gets driven such that all of the high-spec units that are currently available will get booked in the next year or two. And then from that point forward, you're then looking at bringing back some of the older ones. So the reason we still have those rigs in our fleets is because they start on a very good basis of being large displacement ships with full dual activity. And by that time, we believe we'll be able to support any upgrades and reactivations through the contracts that are going to be won.

[Mey Lovell Mark-Anthony:]

And, Waqar, this is Mark. Just note that if you recall back, we spent about $7 million to $8 million per rig in cold-stacking these units. So we've taken great care in preserving all the key equipment with the full intention of reactivating these rigs quickly and cheaply on the back end. So if you look at a pure economical analysis, and we're looking at adding five rigs in 2018 or 2019 or 2020, it's a lot cheaper for us to reactivate these rigs, upgrade these rigs, as compared to buying rigs either from the shipyards or buying companies and paying the price that you would pay for those rigs. So for us, this is a very cheap way for us to scale up as the market recovers.

[Waqar Syed:]

Sure. And then for any of your semi-submersibles, are you thinking of – or are they capable of being conventional mode as well and making some upgrades to make them capable for that configuration as well?

[Roddie Mackenzie:]

Yes, so all of our – what we call our modern semi-subs actually have DP and mooring (49

[Waqar Syed:]

Okay, great. Thank you very much.

[Operator:]

And next we'll go to Taylor Zurcher with Tudor, Pickering, and Holt.

[Bradley Alexander:]

Taylor? Going once? All right.

[Operator:]

Actually that line disconnected. We'll move on to Colin Davies with Bernstein.

[Colin Davies:]

Good morning. It's very encouraging to see some more talk about some longer-term tenders coming in. I wonder if you'd give some color, though, around the structure we might start to see evolve around those longer-term opportunities. When might we start to see some decent inflators coming into the contracts or in the realm of some of the option structures? Is that a 2019 event, or is it beyond that to get to the most structural upward pressure on longer-term rates?

[Roddie Mackenzie:]

So I'll take that one, Colin. So we can use harsh environment as a little bit of a parallel here. So the space in which we went from dayrates that were cash breakeven or there around to dayrates that are now well in the $300,000s was really a six-month period. Now that's fairly acute because it's a smaller market. But you asked about the structure of the thing. So you're looking at the stuff like, let's say the dayrate might be around about $300,000 for one of those rigs at the moment, but the bonus scheme will push it well into the mid-$300,000s. And I think you're probably about to see a couple things getting announced where the base rate is in the mid-$300,000s and the bonus structure will push it even higher. In terms of the structure for ultra-deepwater, the one thing I'll draw your attention to is, over the past decade, there was a five-year period there that reserve replacement ratios were above 100%, and then they just plummeted all the way down to a 36% reserve replacement ratio in 2016 and a 32% ratio in 2017. So clearly, there is a tremendous amount of work that needs to be done to bring reserves back up to where they should be offshore. And just to give you a size of the prize, of the 100 million barrels per day production that we're currently seeing, 25% of it is offshore, only 7% shale. So we just think there's tremendous movement there. So I think what happens in terms of structure of the contracts is, as these higher spec units start to get booked, you're going to see more and more incentive-based contracts because that helps to align our goals of higher dayrates with the customers' goals of very economic development. And then as supply tightens, then I think we'll start to see a push on base rates as well. So I think at first, you're going to see more incentive-based contracts, and then general dayrates will simply push up. And I think the incentive stuff is here to stay because it's a structural improvement to the industry to align efficiency with reward.

[Colin Davies:]

Do you think that's 2019-plus in the ultra-deepwater markets, or is it beyond that?

[Jeremy D. Thigpen:]

I think what you'll see, and this is purely a guess, but we did see it in the harsh environment sector, especially for the high-specification assets. Our customers in the ultra-deepwater market, because of the current conditions, have had a taste. They've been able to demand any rig that they wanted. So they've gone with the higher-spec assets, and they've now had a taste of the efficiency. So I think what you could see is a fairly quick inflection point in pricing – in dayrate, much like we saw in harsh environment for the higher specification assets. And so is it realistic to think that could occur later this year? Maybe, but probably not, it's probably more of a 2019 event.

[Colin Davies:]

Okay, that's what I was getting at. And then just with the sentiment getting a little bit stronger, how should we think about ongoing scrapping decisions? You mentioned earlier, for example, that some of the older cold-stacked rigs may stay there in certain situations. Would you generally start to see the scrap rate or scrap pace come down across the industry?

[Jeremy D. Thigpen:]

It's a good question. I think it's going to be different for every offshore driller. For us, we've been very aggressive, 39 floaters to date over the course the last three years. We continue to evaluate our fleet on a very regular basis. And primarily for us, it's a function of looking at the market and where we think the market is going. And we constantly assess what we think it's going to cost to reactivate these assets. And so as the reactivation cost increases and starts to look a little uneconomic and we may have some questions about the market, we may make the decision down the road to retire more assets. At this point in time, we're comfortable with where we are. I'm not sure about the rest of our peers. We agree that there are more assets that need to come out of the market, but we don't get to make those decisions.

[Colin Davies:]

That's great. I'll turn it back. Thank you.

[Jeremy D. Thigpen:]

Thanks.

[Operator:]

And we just have time for one more question today. Next we'll go to Sean Meakim with JPMorgan.

[Sean C. Meakim:]

Thank you. Jeremy, just to follow up on Brazil a little bit maybe with the recent IOC investments, I'm just curious how you think the competitive dynamics could change there in that market relative to the prior cycle. Now they have new customers coming in, but also maybe some are competing for rigs in that market, and just maybe ships and preference of certain types of specs or assets. I'm just thinking how that market can evolve during the change this year.

[Jeremy D. Thigpen:]

I think in Brazil, Petrobras has a very specific technical specification that they've adhered to over the years, and something that they've liked. But now that you're inviting other players in that market, they're going to bring their own tastes and preferences. And so what we've traditionally seen with most of the IOCs is they want the highest specification asset. So we think there could be more demand for the dual activity high and ultra-deepwater assets. And, Roddie, I don't know if you want to add anything.

[Roddie Mackenzie:]

Absolutely, I think that's exactly where this goes. And I think what's interesting about that is efficiency is driving the day at the moment. And in terms of dual activity, you may or may not, Transocean has a patent in Brazil that we are the only ones that can drill dual activity there without someone having to pay a royalty. So we feel positive about our chances there, not only because of the patent but because we've got a tremendous operating history there and we've been there for a long time, so it's right in our wheelhouse, as they would say.

[Sean C. Meakim:]

And can the cost structure change given a somewhat challenging labor market over the years. How could that change as the markets are more opened up to new customers?

[Roddie Mackenzie:]

I think – go ahead, Mark.

[Mey Lovell Mark-Anthony:]

We're a very long way away from seeing cost inflation in ultra-deepwater drilling at this stage, given where we are utilization-wise. We've got I'd say at least a two-year runway before we start discussing increases in costs.

[Sean C. Meakim:]

I guess I was just thinking about relative to the prior cycle just how the labor market dynamics could be different or how anything else on the cost side could be different relative to when it was a one-customer market?

[Jeremy D. Thigpen:]

They've definitely taken steps down there to improve the ease of doing business, if you will, with these costs with changes in tax reform and some of the ways that they're conducting business down there. And then bringing in other players who will take an entirely different approach to what Petrobras did, you have the potential there to have perhaps a more efficient operation, but that remains to be seen at this point of time.

[Sean C. Meakim:]

That's all very clear, and just one last quick one, if I could. You mentioned in your prepared comments about Gulf of Mexico independents, some opportunity there. Can you maybe give us a few more parameters around perhaps the programs or tender opportunities that you're seeing in the market?

[Roddie Mackenzie:]

I wouldn't disclose all the tenders that we're bidding on, for obvious reasons. But certainly, the ones that we've announced, going to work for Murphy, we already worked for BHP, and there are several others that are in the market at the moment. But typically how this works is that those guys are looking to explore and prove things up and then pave the way for the majors to commit. But I think actually, the growth you're going to see in the Gulf of Mexico going forward is going to be the majors returning. You saw that Total has bought up several properties and is a partner in several things in there. So I think we see a shift now. I think the independents helped fill the gap during the difficult times, and now we see the majors returning as they have to address this reserve replacement issue.

[Sean C. Meakim:]

Fair enough, thanks a lot.

[Operator:]

And that does conclude today's question-and-answer session. I'd now like to turn the call back over to Brad Alexander for any additional comments or closing remarks.

[Bradley Alexander:]

Thank you, David, and thank you to everyone for your participation on today's call. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact me. We will look forward to speaking with all of you again when we report our first quarter 2018 results. Have a good day.

[Operator:]

And that does conclude today's conference. We thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.