All right. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for this oil services panel on the outlook of activity and pricing in U.S. land services. We've got John Lindsay, CEO of Helmerich & Payne, Chris Wright, CEO at Liberty, Robert Drummond, CEO at NexTier Oilfield Solutions, and Andy Hendricks, CEO at Patterson-UTI. Thank you for taking the time to talk to us. John, I'd like to start with you. H&P is up 80% in 2022 or the last 12 months. Really everyone, NexTier is up 118%. Liberty is up 40%. Patterson, 72%. 2022 has been a rate of change story. How do you think about 2023? First of all, how's 4Q looking in [India]?
I know you had a press release, so would love for you to talk about it. What should investors expect from 2023, and what are you most focused on? John, maybe start with you.
Well, again, thank you for having us. Yeah, 2022 was a great year, particularly when you contrast with what we've been through the last couple of years. 2023 looks really positive. Our fiscal year end is September 30, so we just finished our first quarter. You know, things looked really well. In terms of our focus, you know, we're gonna continue to spend a lot of time focusing on our customers. We're in the, you know, customer service business, focusing on customers, delivering better outcomes, utilizing, you know, the best technologies possible. We're gonna focus there. Obviously, spend a lot of time focusing on growing margins.
You know, we talked back in February that, you know, since 2014, we hadn't seen 50% gross margins since that time period. Our focus is getting back to that 50% gross margin. We're really looking at other ways to return capital to shareholders. We announced our supplemental dividend back in October. That's another focus for us, is figuring out how to get, you know, more back to shareholders. Finally, just international growth. We see that as a great opportunity. We think it's gonna continue to be more unconventional drilling internationally, and we think we're gonna be in a position to take advantage of that.
Andy?
Listen, I'm really excited about the macro for 2023. You know, when you look back at what has happened since we've come out of this downturn over 2020, you know, activity's ramped up, pricing has ramped up even at a much faster pace than activity has. This cycle is different. I know everybody talks about it, but it really is different than the cycles we've seen over the last decade. Our customers are growing activity, but not at the same pace they did in the past. They're not likely to overproduce, you know, the global needs for oil and gas that they have in the past. This cycle has the potential to have much longer legs than any previous cycle we've had.
That difference is allowing us to continue to increase our average pricing throughout 2023, and that's why I'm really upbeat about this year. You know, even if we don't put out another rig, which we are, or even if leading-edge day rates for services don't go up, which I think they still do, you know, our average rates are still gonna continue to move up quarter on quarter as we reprice contracts and agreements that we signed in 2022. I'm still upbeat for 2023 and the overall macro. I still think it's an exciting time, whether you're a you know, drilling contractor or you're in services, this is still a really good year.
Robert.
For next year, we really are coming off a really exciting 2022, but we do also believe in a really strong macro. We've been focusing a lot on returning on invested capital, and it's showing up in our numbers as we, as we execute three. We are in a position to expect profitability improve substantially in 2023 without very much investment in growth CapEx. We did a bit of countercyclical investing to move our fleet more and more towards natural gas as a power source for many reasons, including the fuel arbitrage between diesel fuel and natural gas, and we're gonna continue along that path as we go through 2023. As Andy points out, the discipline that's been established by our customer base is rolling into the plans, I think, of our whole sector.
Our whole sector, and I'm talking about frac mostly, is really improving in ROIC in general. I think our messaging to the investors need to be a little bit more focused on that, maybe, and less on EBITDA growth that we've kind of measured ourselves with in the past, kind of symbolic to the E&Ps being measured for production growth. We're in a great position going into 2023 and very excited about the opportunities.
Atif may be familiar, but we're in a great setting for the macro right now. Business conditions are very strong in our industry. We've got relatively tight global oil supply and demand markets. Maybe some issues with the ability to move natural gas, but they'll be solved in the next year or two. Business conditions outlook is very... Multi-year technology investments that are coming to fruition right now, maybe most publicly with our DigiFrac solution, which I think is gonna be game-changing. We've got some great new software coming out on logistics, handling wet sand, some innovative ideas that are being strongly embraced by customers. We've had a tougher, tighter market where operational quality, I think, has become huge for customers. There are people that are struggling, and there are people that are killing it and delivering well.
Yeah, pretty happy where I am right now, and happy New Year to the crowd.
Great. John, you mentioned about 40-50 rigs being added throughout 2023, and Andy, you've spoken about 100. Maybe can you talk about the thought processes there? How do you get to those numbers? In terms of the customer conversations, what are the privates saying? What are the, like, the majors saying, and how do you think about the mix between the players?
Yeah, that, you know, that 40 to 50 number now is dated a little bit. You know, again, we're excited about the opportunity. Things are looking good. I think, when I'm looking at it now, it seems like that would be on the higher end of the spectrum, which again, I think is really a good thing. Can I cut in? I think that would really be a good thing, is for the industry to focus less on adding additional units and more on focusing, you know, in our case, growing margins.
As I think about the data points, when you're trying to figure out what the supply-demand curve is, a lot of what we try to look at is demand points coming from customers that are at least a year, rather than looking at it on a shorter-term basis. We've been able to satisfy most of our customer demand return from our own rigs that are being released for various reasons. That seems to work out, really, you know, really well for us. It's really hard to predict what the number is, but I think the total adds for 2023 are gonna be on the lower end of the spectrum, which again, I think is healthy. It's been mentioned.
It's, it's having capital discipline, much like our customers are, just like the E&Ps are.
What about the conversations between the privates and the majors?
There's no doubt that, you know, the privates carried a lot of the increases in 2021 and through 2022. We've had most of, you know, a lot of rigs have been going to work for the larger public players, including majors. I think it's gonna continue to be that way. We have seen a little bit of softness on the privates, but typically what happens is a private releases a rig, and it gets picked up by another private company. There's a lot of interest in bought rigs. You know, a customer would much rather have a, you know, a rig that's been active than pulling a rig out of stack.
Got it. Andy?
We were surveying customers back in September, and of course, WTI was above $80 a barrel back then. The number we came up with for 2023 was an industry rig count of a increase of around 50 rigs. With oil trading ±$75, I think that moderates a bit, same as what John is explaining. I think that does come down, but I don't think that affects any of us either. A lot of talk about what's happening within the rig count, but there's different classes of rigs in the overall rig count. You've got mechanicals and SCRs, which make up over 100 of those rigs in the rig count, and then you've got, you know, AC and super-spec rigs.
You know, certainly over the last few months, a lot of discussion about privates dropping rigs, and we've seen rig count with privates, but they were mechanical rigs. They don't affect. The market for the AC super-spec rigs still remains tight, and that's still a very tight, disciplined market, and it will be throughout 2023.
Andy, you mentioned, leading as day rates and, you know, the trajectory of the overall margins for your business. How do you think about the cost trajectory, as you think about contracts rolling over, where do you think you will land for 2023 on average? Where do you exit? Is there an incentivization for longer term duration contracts now in the market, or are you still looking for shorter term durations where you can benefit from the churn later on?
What we said at the last earnings call, and I believe it still holds true today, is that, you know, leading edge day rates with everything all in for, you know, a super-spec rig with your drill pipe, with extra people, you know, any kind of rental equipment that we provide, is running around $40,000 per day. Interestingly enough, our costs have gone up too. Our margins are still not back to peak margins either. We still think there's upside on the margins because of that. Today, you know, even though that's leading edge, that's not our average. We're working rigs today that we signed contracts on a year ago that were around that $20,000 a day range. That's what's gonna happen and reprice in 2023.
You know, as these contracts roll in 2023, all of a sudden it's a step up, you know, for some of these rigs at that $20,000 level all the way up to leading edge. That's what you're gonna see in our financials through 2023. That's, that's what we're excited and upbeat about. It's, it's the fact that we're gonna have a longer duration upcycle that gives us more time to mark the market and raise our pricing up towards leading edge.
John?
Yeah, I agree with that. You know, on the term contract, we had 60 rigs over the last couple of quarters that rolled off or were rolling off. Half of those rolled off in our fiscal Q1, and we'll have another half roll off. Some of those are going into term. Some are gonna go into the spot, but they're all going up, you know, dramatically more towards leading-edge pricing. We would expect that. I think in general, you know, it's been over time, we've had about 50% to 60% of our fleet that's under term contract. I think that's, you know, good management, you know, on those term contracts. I think there's a lot of upside ahead.
Again, I think just the capital discipline that everyone is showing is really important, you know, to this longer cycle that we're discussing.
It, I'll turn to you, Chris and Robert, on, in terms of the profitability per fleet and what the trajectory looks like for 2023, how are you thinking about it? How should investors underwrite, maybe the entry and the exit rate for 2023? On the back of that, do you see any appetite for net additions in the market? I know you've mentioned your own company's plans, but as you look at your competitors in the market, the private players, is there any appetite that you have a net addition at the end of 2023?
Well, thank you for the question. Just a quick reflect back on the rig count projections. That's I would say not surprised that it's coming down just a bit simply because the fact that we believe that the bottleneck for U.S. land growth and production is the frac fleet is fully sold out. The supply chain for us to be able to expand that capability on it in 2023 is very good, which sets up. We see 2023 profitability to significantly improve over 2022, and one of the big factors there is contract terms as it relates to pricing, as well as other terms associated with how do you manage downtime, how do you manage minimum hours for a frac fleet, things that are very important to keeping that frac factory working, you know, day in and day out.
To your questions about where we see that going, you know, we're more and more focused on pricing and measuring the returns on a per pump basis or per horsepower basis. The number of fleets might vary quarter to quarter depending on how you configure them and what geographical region that you place them in. When you look at it on an average, we would expect to see that number in a, you know, low thirties in 2023. There's some companies already demonstrating that in most recent quarters in our sector. I think that more and more looking at EBITDA per fleet as a measure may not be the best way to do it, simply because there's so much variation in size of fleets geographically and in what is included in each of our company's strategies.
More and more, I think the messaging from us is gonna be around focusing on return on capital and driving that through in how we manage our cash and our investments and our profitability. You know, as it relates to M&A and the need for more of it, I mean, there's been a significant amount that have occurred, you know, from all of us in the public side of that sector pretty well. I think we all benefit from each one of those moves. There's a transition occurring in the fleet today, moving away from diesel towards natural gas, a much cleaner fuel, but also benefits from the arbitrage between diesel prices and natural gas prices that are even getting better in 2023 versus 2022.
There's a significant return on investment from making those investments without adding additional capacity to the overall fleet. I think when you look at us, for managing our market share in a range of flat between, you know, 12% and 14%, we would have an eye to looking for M&A opportunities. We don't really see a lot of those that move the strategy of moving from diesel to natural gas very quickly. We do see numerous opportunities for M&A around our fleet that is part of our well site integration strategy, things that help us control our own destiny, like last mile logistics or other fueling options that build around our Power Solutions business.
The opportunities for 2023 in general, I believe the macro is set up just as good as it was in 2022 versus 2021.
Yeah, I'll tell you that as he said, the market conditions are strong. Really only one thing we look at or care about, that is our return on capital invested, cash return on cash invested. I've been a private company guy most of my career, now a public company. We're 11 years old. We've had 23% cash return on cash invested from the day we founded the company to today. That's what we look at, that's at about 50% higher than the S&P 500, of course, far higher than our industry. That's not been fat years for the industry, right? Those have been 10 tougher years. Now we're going into better macro conditions. We would expect returns to elevate. That's how we look at it.
If we're gonna acquire an acquisition or an investment in technology or deployment, it's all about that return on capital employed. We are in a position right now. We have an internal frac fleet count. We know of every active frac fleet in the country, and we talk to everyone who's running an active frac fleet to hear their plans. People's plans sort of factor in another 15 or 20 fleets from where we are now to sort of mid to the maybe the second third of this year. That's tough. That's tough as far as where those fleets will come from. We grew capacity a bit last year. You know, for us, it's all. We look at it on a micro level. It's customer relationships, a particular opportunity.
How do we evaluate that? How, what we're gonna do? We look at sort of a you know, obviously, we're generating meaningful re-free cash flow right now. You know, if things roll as they are, obviously that'll be a lot larger.
Right.
It's what to do with that. You know, we reinitiated our share buyback program in Q3. We bought 2.5% of our total shares outstanding in our first quarter of the buyback program. We've bought our dividend back. Pretty compelling opportunity in buying our own stock at-
Yeah
... at sort of nutty valuations right now. That's a negative at one level, but it's an opportunity at another.
I'll come back to that in just a minute. Andy, did you wanna jump into the pressure pumping comment?
Sure. We operate 12 frac spreads. Seven of those are primarily natural gas fueled through dual fuel systems. Our team's doing a great job. Really proud of the progress that they've made over the last few years, and, the returns that we're getting out of that business. One thing that's changed for us over the last four months is that we're seeing an increase in demand of horsepower per spread. We've got customers that wanna pump higher rates and higher pressures. While we had been talking about potentially putting out and hadn't made a final decision, that decision could be delayed just because of the fact that we've been consuming horsepower on the existing jobs that we're at. I think that's part of what you're seeing in this overall tightness in the market.
You know, there may be some new equipment coming out there, but across the industry, it may not just be specific to us, it may be, you know, others as well that are increasing the horsepower per spread, and that's what's keeping this market tight on top of everything else.
Chris, I'll come to you. You were talking about the capital return strategy, and Chris and Robert, you have slightly different approaches to the whole thing. Can you talk about the philosophies behind that? Why do you prefer one strategy for your company whereas, you know, investors might be asking for a more defined program? How do you think about that narrative?
Well, just the opportunities are more variable. Yeah, we've never been a fan of the total formulaic X% will go here or go there. Key for us, the long-term goal, maximize the value of a share, right? You do that by having high returns on cash invested and then some combination of reinvesting to grow your competitive addition, grow your ability to increase profitability per share, and then direct returns to shareholders through dividends and repurchases. Repurchases for us is very much a factor of what's the gap between some conservative estimate of intrinsic value and the value at which you can buy a share. These are not precise numbers by any. When that gap is enormous, the appeal of buying back shares is tremendous.
In today's world, and from the platform we sit on, we also have tremendous investment opportunities in our own business. Not necessarily adding new fleets, but a higher spec fleet that customers really want, or other enabling technologies that make our fleet more efficient or grab a larger percentage of the spend in the whole, in the whole frac completion world. Yeah, for us, it's how do we maximize the value of a share?
Right.
Obviously, returns to shareholders will be a large piece of that, but it's not formulaic for us.
You know, slightly different maybe for us only in the sense that we feel like we're, our sector in general, pretty extremely undervalued considering the earnings potential Chris pointed out, and I pointed out a little bit. Trying to tell the investor base how we're going to behave, we believe putting a little structure around our capital allocation in general might help accelerate people coming back to our sector. It seems to have worked in some cases for the E&Ps. To Atif's point, we did in our last earnings call, come out with a little guidance about what we would do, you know, with the earnings and the free cash flow that we're generating, which has been really substantial. It does have flexibility built in it, but it is structured as well.
You know, we've said that we would get to net debt zero in 2023. We said that we were going to invest in our fleet to keep the fleet as strong as it was at the end of the year as it began the year, while simultaneously slowly transitioning it from diesel to more and more natural gas, as well as kind of managing our market share flat with whatever the market conditions do. I think the third thing that we allocated to was committing to 50% of our free cash flow to be returned to our shareholders.
The fourth being, and we can fund all four of these buckets, if you will, would be on flexibility around building some cash balance on the balance sheet to help us with M&A opportunities, as I mentioned, most likely around our integrated strategy. If we don't find anything attractive, it could also be put in the capital return process. Yes, it's a bit structured, but it's driven to try to make our investors see that how we're gonna behave in the future, and that we're going to take care of this earnings potential situation that we're in today.
Staying on that theme, I think one of the common questions we get from investors is, how do I own this for a return of capital strategy, whereas the stocks have tended to behave on a quarter-to-quarter basis because everyone's been buying the stocks for an estimate revision cycle. That requires a shift in mentality to a certain extent. For pressure pumping in particular, how do you think that that occurs? Do you think that's a duration game? Is there more visibility into pressure pumping profitability or free cash flow over a multi-year period? How do you think that plays out?
Look, our industry beat up 'cause it's cyclical. Therefore, we don't like it as much. I absolutely disagree with that. Call me strange. When an industry is cyclical, any industry where you build an asset that lasts a long time is cyclical. Yeah, commercial real estate, you know, our industry. To us, cyclicality brings another lever that makes the business difficult, and therefore, a better opportunity to grow competitive advantage, a wider range of outcomes of the competitors in the business. I think it was Warren Buffett who said, he would take a lumpy 12% return over a smooth 10% return any day. We agree entirely. We're in this business because of the opportunity for high returns in capital.
Again, Buffett taking a 12% lumpy return, we've been at 23% return in a rough 10 or 11 years for our industry. If you have strong returns on the cash you invest, your optionality to accrete shareholder value through growth, through dividends, through buybacks, they're simply tremendous. For us, we hope a broader investor base recognizes the superiority of a business with strong returns on capital throughout the cycle. Of course, we've all been harmed by sort of a naive, politically driven view that, you know, soon we're not gonna be running on oil and gas. You know, nothing in the math, nothing in the numbers supports that.
In fact, if you look at oil demand growth, 1.1% compound annual growth rate in the 1990s, 1.1% in the 2000-2010, 1.2% in the last decade pre-COVID. Look, our industry is the dominant source of powering the world. It was when I was born, and it will be when I die.
Right.
Now, if there's a lack of appreciation that today among investors, which there is, that'll change.
I'll build on it just a little bit too by saying it really is a bit different this time, simply because in the past, when we were considered to be overbuilding in a cycle and our customers were growing, and now they're not. They're being very disciplined. The fleet in which we were doing the work with was more consistent. It was all burning natural oil. It was using diesel as a fuel. There's a big return on investment for us to make a conversion in whatever sort it may be, moving from diesel to electric or diesel to dual fuel that uses natural gas. The electric fleets are using natural gas for the generators that power them. That investment is gonna be a smooth, a smoother transition.
I don't think any of the five public companies that are in frac that control maybe 70% of the capacity are really going out and trying to out-market share the other simply because it would be at the expense of another, and it would be damaging to the macro that we've discussed. I believe that's transition of making a, you know. Like for us, we've committed ourselves to 8%-9% of revenue for CapEx. That's constrained to the opportunities that we have that are abundant all around.
If we stay constrained in that manner, it gives us the ability to guide that we can return, you know, cash to our, to our shareholders consistently, and that we have flexibility in that CapEx plan that when we're shrinking the fleet during any kind of downturn where you can simply quit spending in that arena. I think it's a different game than it was before for a number of reasons, and that cost curve in the fleet itself being one of them, and the fact that the customer base is fixing the growth to be very, very slow.
John, you've always had a very strong dividend program. You have a special dividend announced for this year. How do you think about the thought process behind that, and what is, you know, is this a, you know, a trailer for 2024, 2025 onwards, or how do you think about the longevity of that kind of special dividend?
Well, you know, we have paid a dividend for 60 years. We had an increasing dividend year over year for 47 years until recently, till 2020. It's important. It's important, you know, our dollar a share. You know, that's kind of sacred that we're gonna keep that. The idea behind the supplemental, and again, I would say it's actually different than the way you normally think about a special dividend in that it's not one time. This supplemental dividend is designed to supplement the base dividend. For 2023, it's 50% of free cash flow after CapEx, after the base dividend. opportunity for upside in that base dividend.
It essentially doubles the base dividend, you know, a little over $2 a share. I think it's important to recognize that, you know, the way we see this in this longer cycle is we'll have a new supplemental for 2024. This is our fiscal 2023. It gives us that opportunity to kind of reset based on the outlook for the industry. It also enables us to increase that supplemental if we chose to during the year, if the year turned out better, or opportunistic share buybacks. Last year, we about $74 million in share buybacks at $24 a share. We're gonna continue to be opportunistic as it relates to share buybacks.
I think the supplemental gives us some optionality as we go through these cycles, and you don't find yourself in a situation where you've increased your base dividend over a longer period of a upcycle and then have to turn around and cut it. You've got this supplemental, which it is. It's formulaic, but it's very simple.
Right. Andy, you leaned on the repurchases a little bit. Do you wanna talk about that?
I'll start by saying, you know, over the last decade, Patterson-UTI has given back about $1 billion to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks, and nobody seemed to care, and nobody seemed to remember. We decided we better get a little bit formulaic about what our plans are because in the past, we'd just say, "Look, you know, it's gonna be a combination of dividends and buybacks.
What we've come out and said is that, you know, we intend to return about 50% is our target, return 50% of our free cash flow back to shareholders in the form of dividends and buybacks. You know, we put out a press release yesterday, and you saw that we were buying back shares in the fourth quarter, and our dividend continues. That's our target. I wouldn't think of it on a quarterly basis because our working cash flow will move and our free cash flow will move on a quarter-to-quarter basis as we do maintenance and activate equipment. But if you think of it on an annualized basis, that's our target. We've recently got a new authorization for the buybacks from the board at $300 million.
You know, we will be doing buybacks at times during the market when we're not blacked out, when it makes sense, and we'll continue to pay the dividend. Our target on an annual basis is gonna be returning 50% of that cash flow back. We also bought some debt back in the fourth quarter. We have public debt. It's 2028 and 2029. It's trading at a discount. That's another use of our cash outside of the cash that we're giving back to shareholders. We think it's good practice to pay some of that debt down where we can, especially if we're buying it at a discount.
How do you think about your gas basin exposure, especially with, you know, exposure to Henry Hub prices? This is really for everyone. Do you see any risk of activity slowing down in the near term? Maybe start with you, Robert.
I think that's a good question, Atif. Of course, I think that the takeaway capacity for gas in U.S. land is pretty well known that it's gonna be very tight in 2023 and begin to loosen a little bit better in 2024, but probably not fully solved until 2025. We have a pretty long run in history in the Marcellus Utica and a real good customer base there. That market's been kinda constrained and steady for a while, and we see that continuing at about the same rate as it's been. We would think that the Haynesville is gonna experience some challenge, I think, for takeaway.
As such, as we've repositioned our fleet leaving 2022 into 2023, we've moved a little bit more of our fleet capacity towards oil versus natural gas, and mostly at the expense of the Haynesville. But Marcellus Utica, we see pretty well flat.
Chris?
We've always been oil-focused since we started the company. Moving into gas was only more recently. We started in oil basins believing that the macro in oil was so strong because you could easily move to become an oil exporter. When we started, we weren't an oil exporter, but we knew that's not too hard to do. Gas is harder and slower to build infrastructure. As Robert said, Marcellus, the Utica's a fantastic basin, entirely constrained by infrastructure. Still a lot of activity to keep that production flat, but it's very constrained. Haynesville is the marginal supplier of gas. I think the next 10 years for the Haynesville are simply tremendous as the LNG export infrastructure gets built out. A little tougher fracking environment too, both from a design and high pressure and rate thing plays into our strengths.
Could it plateau or pull back a little bit in the next year or two? Sure.
Is there a way to quantify the margin uplift that you might get from lower gas prices versus diesel prices for pressure pumping when you think about electric fleets in particular? Or is that incremental dollar entirely go accrue to the customer?
Look, I think the way to look at that is that as the arbitrage spread grows, the value creation moves with it, and it gives the frac company the ability to create more value and capture more of that value. It is a scenario where that value accretes to both us and the E&P operator.
Got it.
Yes, I think it is very supportive to the general pricing and contractual terms of fracking for the portion of the fleet that can utilize natural gas. I would point out that that's less than half of the fleet in the U.S., and that transition that now most every company is on a path towards moving in that direction is going to take a long time. The cost curve for making those investments have gone up with the supply chain challenges that exist in inflationary measures. This is a long time transition, not a couple of years, before you get to the whole fleet being driven by that.
Tremendous economic opportunity, though. Tremendous. The fuel cost differential between diesel and natural gas, another infrastructure problem. We don't have enough refining capacity for diesel, so diesel prices are dislocated, and natural gas prices, particularly locally in some basins, are very low. Huge opportunity for value for our customers, for Liberty, and you'll see more stuff from us on how to best take advantage of that.
Got it. John, do you wanna touch on the gas exposure and the activity expectations?
Yes. At this stage, we haven't seen any softness. In fact, we've had a few rigs getting put back to work in the Haynesville. you know, from a driller perspective, even if there is softness in the gas, in a gas basin, it's really easy to mobilize a rig out of a gas basin into an oil basin. So it's a pretty low cost opportunity. If there were a softening market, what would happen, I think, with a lot of those gas rigs is they would go into oil basins, and they would replace lower performing, lower tier rigs. you know, there would be a great opportunity there. Overall, I haven't heard from any customers.
I haven't seen any concerns.
Got it. Andy, would you like to add?
Yeah, we have a strong presence in the Northeast in drilling rigs and pressure pumping. That's you know, as we've all discussed, that's a steady market up there. That will continue as it is. It's, you know, the gas market up there is relatively trapped for that geographical region. We have about 10% of our rigs that work in East Texas, Louisiana, and the Haynesville. I actually think that the Haynesville has gone through some of its worst times already in the fall. There was a number of operators that had to shut in production because storage was filling up and, you know, weather was warmer than it had been forecast. You had the LNG plant at Freeport shut down. You actually had, you know, differentials in the sales on production for some of our customers.
They were upside down, and they actually shut in wells. They started to reopen wells in December again. I actually think, you know, November was probably one of the worst case scenarios for the Haynesville, and I don't think that, you know, in 2023, unless we see something else, but, you know, I think it'll actually get either improve or stay relatively steady. Freeport's already announced that they're gonna open up that LNG train towards the end of January as well. That's gonna allow some takeaway out of that market.
We've only got a couple of minutes left. Let's quickly touch on the U.S. spending expectations for 2023. John, maybe if you can touch on the three buckets: activity increase, inflation, cost pass through net pricing.
Yeah. About 25% of our CapEx budget will be directed towards recommission and conversion. You know, most of the inflation that we see is gonna be related to, you know, rigs that we've cannibalized equipment over, you know, over the period of time. You know, it's more expensive to overhaul a top drive today. You know, why overhaul a top drive two years ago when you have one sitting there that's ready to go to work? It's just, it's gonna be on that. Let's face it, in our business, 75% of our costs are tied up with labor. Contractually, our labor, if we have an increase in labor, which we did at the end of the fiscal year, that's a direct cost pass-through.
You know, We don't have challenges with that.
Got it. Andy?
We said that our CapEx for 2023 is likely to come in around ±$500 million. Majority of that's gonna be maintenance across all of our business lines. There's gonna be some reactivations of drilling rigs, and so that may fluctuate depending on how the market plays out in total through 2023. As we do reactivate drilling rigs, we protect it under a term contract. You know, we've got about a $4 million cost just for the reactivation, then there's some upgrades on top of that. It could put that number, you know, in the $9 million-$11 million range if you have the upgrades. We'll protect that with a term contract if we do that.
I know we're a bit tight on time. I would just say that we've seen inflation maybe moderating a little bit over 2022, which was a big number in 2022. I would say the macro setup for us is still be in a position to gain net pricing, double-digit percent over year-over-year over any inflation aspects that are in the market.
Yeah. Inflation's a wild card. Definitely moderating, but still a real factor right now. Yeah, we've been able to deal with that, and we're in constant dialogue with our customers about how best to handle those impacts.
Great. With that, we're out of time. Thank you everyone for joining. Hopefully everyone has a great conference.
All right.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks a lot.
Thanks, Atif.