RPC, Inc. (NYSE:RES) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript April 25, 2024 9:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Mike Schmit - CFO
Ben Palmer - President and CEO

Conference Call Participants

Stephen Gengaro - Stifel
Don Crist - Johnson Rice
Sean Mitchell - Daniel Energy
Chuck Minervino - Susquehanna

Operator

Good morning and thank you for joining us for RPC, Inc.'s First Quarter 2024 Conference Call. Today's call will be hosted by Ben Palmer, President and CEO; and Mike Schmidt, Chief Financial Officer. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Instructions will be provided at that time for you to queue up for questions. I would like to advise everyone that this conference call is being recorded.

I will now turn the call over to Mr. Schmit.

Mike Schmit

Thank you, and good morning. Before we begin, I want to remind you that some of the statements that will be made on this call could be forward-looking in nature and reflect a number of known and unknown risks. Please refer to our press release issued today along with our 2023 10-K and other public filings that outline those risks, all of which can be found on RPC's website at www.rpc.net.

In today's earnings release and conference call, we'll be referring to several non-GAAP measures of operating performance and liquidity. We believe these non-GAAP measures allow us to compare performance consistently over various periods. Our press release issued today and our website contain reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures.

I'll now turn the call over to our president and CEO, Ben Palmer.

Ben Palmer

Thanks, Mike, and thank you for joining our call this morning. Before we get started, I'd like to take a moment to share some unfortunate and sad news. Our long-time Head of Investor Relations and Vice President of Corporate Services, Jim Landers, passed away a few weeks ago after a long and courageous battle with cancer. I worked closely with Jim here at RPC for more than 20 years, and he was a tremendous contributor to the company in so many ways. I'm sure those of you listening today were lucky enough to work with him over the years know he was also a great friend and colleague. He will truly be missed by all of us.

Shifting to the quarter, as you can see from our earnings release, the first quarter was a soft start to the year in what feels like a muted oil field services market. Though we did not give explicit financial guidance for the first quarter, we did expect more staple EBITDA. Our activity level and pressure pumping was down modestly on a sequential basis compared to the fourth quarter of 2023, contributing to our overall results finishing below our original expectations. Unlike some recent quarters where we have seen more volatility in pressure pumping compared to other service lines, revenue performance was generally consistent throughout the business. Our total revenues declined about 4% with pressure pumping down 5% and other service lines in aggregate down 3%.