Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Collin Gerry – Raymond James.
Collin Gerry – Raymond James
The last couple of quarters we've talked a little bit about the short-term utilization rates as really being the key from a short-term basis. Maybe just walk us through the trends you saw from last quarter or from – excuse me, the prior quarter to this quarter you just reported. And maybe how things are looking as we go into the end of the year, obviously there is some seasonality there. I don't expect things to get better. Maybe just give us a little color on what's going on in terms of short-term utilization.
Steve Jumper
In the latter part of the fourth quarter we experienced a little more weather downtime than we had in the prior quarter. So that probably had as much of a negative impact to the short-term utilization issues in the fourth quarter as anything else compared to let's say the second and third quarter, third quarter in particular. That is still an ongoing problem, Collin.
We say in the press release that we have an order book, or backlog as some refer to it, that gets us into calendar 2010. And we have felt like for a while that we have some visibility into 2010, whether that is through the end of the first quarter for nine crews, ten crews, it's kind of hard to tell just because of the timing of some of these projects. I think the biggest thing we've been battling now for the last six months is trying to find that balance. The same thing we've talked about in the upside is finding that balance between crew counts and, not just long-term visibility, but short-term utilization.
I think October certainly was a difficult month from a weather standpoint, September and October. November, once we settle down into the nine crew range, I think we've done a much better job in at least the early part of November of keeping those short-term utilization rates higher. We're just going to have to see how that works out. There are so many things in this utilization issue that can change our thinking day-to-day, permits, weather, hunting season, all those types of things.
I do think our people have done a nice job of securing some oil projects and projects of various sizes. We have some smaller projects that are in close proximity that should be able to get permitted easier and mitigate some of that short-term risk. But it's still going to be an issue going forward but I feel like right now that nine's the right number. I felt last quarter ten was the right number, so.
- To read the full transcript on Seeking Alpha, click here »
