Operator

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Precision Drilling Corporation 2026 First Quarter Results Conference Call and Webcast. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised today's conference is being recorded.

I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Lavonne Zdunich, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Lavonne Zdunich
Vice President of Investor Relations

Welcome, and thank you, everyone, for joining Precision Drilling's First Quarter Conference Call and Webcast. Today, I'm joined by Carey Ford, our President and CEO; and Dustin Honing, our CFO.

Please note that some comments today will refer to non-IFRS financial measures and include forward-looking statements, which are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. For more information on financial measures, forward-looking statements and risk factors, please refer to our news release, MD&A and financial statements, which are now available on SEDAR and EDGAR.

Before I pass the call over, I would like to highlight a couple of points from our news release. First, utilization improved meaningful in the quarter compared to Q1 of 2025. It increased 7% in Canada and 24% in the U.S., even as industry rig counts declined 7% in both markets. This performance underscores the value customers continue to see in our high-performance, high-value strategy.

Second, we delivered strong