Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Our first question is coming from Rob MacKenzie - FBR.
Rob MacKenzie - FBR
I guess my first question is where the conference call left off. And that’s to do with the special dividend. I know historically you all have tended to pay out most of your excess cash in special dividends and didn’t this quarter. I presume, was that related somewhat to the unexpected tax payment and could we perhaps see those special dividends rise going forward?
Lawrence R. Dickerson
All I can do is we fall back on our statement, which is that the Board will, at each quarter, consider a special dividend. And then it lists all the factors that we will include in there, earnings and cash flow position in company and the tax payment would have been one of those issues that would have computed into that.
But we don’t give guidance as to how that future is going to look. I think, though I would just have everybody look at the pattern that we’ve exhibited in the past. I think there’s probably some good clues there as to our thought process.
Rob MacKenzie - FBR
And a follow up to that, is this distribution of the foreign earnings, is that all you have kind of stranded overseas?
Gary T. Krenek
At this point, yes. We brought all the foreign earnings back in. So, that’s it as of December 31.
Rob MacKenzie - FBR
And then on the deepwater rig market, it appears that at least one of your competitors has been rather undisciplined in signing some long term contracts and some new bills that’s of fairly low day rates or returns on capital that seem suboptimal. How do you see that affecting the market for existing rigs, particularly yours?
Lawrence R. Dickerson
Well, I’ll let John talk about the way things have been. But I mean we’ve seen that where the new build market is pretty much puts a cap on what you can get for your existing fleet. And it has been right around $500,000. It moves up and down a little bit from there. So, it’s no surprise to us. John?
John Gabriel
Really, the only comment I would add to that is we just see this deepwater market globally as continuing in a very robust manner and I think that the real driver to that is going to be the response to the tenders that Petrobras has out right now in particular for their deepwater requirements. So, we don’t see any negative impact on the market at all.
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