ProFrac - Earnings Call - Q1 2022
June 17, 2022
Transcript
Speaker 0
Greetings, and welcome to the Profaq Holding Corp. First Quarter twenty twenty two Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.
It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Rick Black. Thank you. You may begin.
Speaker 1
Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us for Profrac Holding Corp. Conference call and webcast to review first quarter twenty twenty two results. With me today is Lad Wilkes, Profrac's Chief Executive Officer Lance Turner, Chief Financial Officer and Matt Wilkes, Executive Chairman and Corey Randle, Chief Operating Officer. Following my remarks, management will provide a high level commentary on the company, the financial details of the quarter and outlook for 2022 before opening the call up for your questions.
There will be a replay of today's call that will be available by webcast on the company's website at pfholdingscorp.com. There will also be a telephonic and recording replay available until 06/24/2022. More information on how to access these replay features was included in yesterday's earnings press release. Please note information recorded on this call speaks only as of today, 06/17/2022, and therefore, you are advised that time sensitive information may no longer be accurate as of the time of any replay listening or transcript reading. Also, comments on this call may contain forward looking statements within the meaning of The United States federal securities laws, including management's expectation of future financial and business performance and current guidance about Q2 and 2022 annual results.
These forward looking statements reflect the current views of Profact management and are not guarantees of performance. Various risks and uncertainties and contingencies could cause actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those expressed in management's forward looking statements. The listener or reader is encouraged to read Profact's Prospectus, which can be found at sec.gov or on the company's Investor Relations section in the SEC Filings tab to understand certain of those risks, uncertainties and contingencies. The comments today also include certain non GAAP financial measures. Additional details and reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in the quarterly press release issued yesterday, which can be found on the company's website.
And now I would like to turn the call over to Profrac Holding Corp's CEO, Mr. Ladd Wilkes. Ladd? Hey, thanks Rick.
Speaker 2
I'd like to welcome everyone to our inaugural quarterly earnings call since the completion of our IPO on May 13. Our mission at ProFrac is to, one, be the best and safest company to work for in the pressure pumping industry. Two, to provide our customers with elite products and services utilizing the most cost effective and environmentally friendly solutions. And three, to achieve superior returns for our shareholders. Before we dive into our financial results and outlook for 2022, I'd like to provide a quick summary of our history in the pressure pumping industry since we might be new to a lot of you listening on the call today.
Back in the year February, the Wilkes family founded Frac Tech Services with a few million dollar investment and an extreme focus on the well site. We grew that business until 2006 when we brought on and partnered with outside investors to take the company to the next level. From there, we continued to grow until we sold Frac Tech for an enterprise value of 5,500,000,000.0. A few years later, we founded ProFrac with that same extreme focus on the wealth side while also implementing innovative technologies for the next generation of pumping needs. We view our recent IPO as similar to our strategy in 2,006, as a time to partner with outside investors and to take the company to the next level.
With this approach and our growth strategies that that Matt will highlight in his comments, we've been one of the fastest growing frac companies in America and are now one of the largest in the industry. So let me give you a high level overview of ProFrac and where we are today. Today, we have 34 total fleets and 31 that are currently active. Our fleets are made up of some of the youngest, most emission friendly, and most technologically advanced equipment in the industry. Our team is made up of some of the best in the industry, and they are never satisfied.
We are always striving to outdo ourselves every day. During our IPO roadshow, we had a lot of questions about how we get leading edge profitability. We believe in optimizing every aspect of the business. We believe we have the lowest cost structure due to our vertically integrated business model and our never ending search to become better. The following takeaways are what support our growth strategy and and help us outperform the industry.
Number one, we believe we have the highest performing fleets in the field. What consumes us is being laser focused on pumping more hours per day. And with our in house refurb facilities, we can turn equipment faster and get it back out into the field. We also benefit massively from our uniform equipment, parts, and standardized controls. Number two is our ability to bundle and offer a suite of services, which includes frac design, related services, frac sand, sand trucking, chemical supply, logistics coordination, and real time data reporting.
We strongly believe in bundling these services, which support our lower cost structure and supports increased efficiencies. Bottom line, these incremental margins add up fast. Number three, we have a diversified customer base. Only three of our customers have more than one fleet, and 50% of those customers are large independent operators, which we think is a good mix. We're also diversified across commodities, about fifty fifty in in oil and natural gas.
This structure protects us from becoming vulnerable and with too much concentration. Our track record of consistently providing high quality, safe, and reliable service has enabled us to to develop long term partnerships with our customers, and we believe that our customers will continue to support our growth. And number four, our vertical integration reduces our overall cost of service and cost of maintenance to a level that that's unmatched in the industry. From designing and manufacturing fluid ends, power ends, high pressure iron, to our sand, chemicals, logistics, refurbishment, and new fleet construction, we see the impacts on margins, our cost structure, and CapEx savings. We think everyone in the industry should embrace this approach, which we believe not only provides economic benefits, but also improves the strategic positioning of our company and the industry as a whole.
These four approaches are how we outperformed through the down cycle. It's how we generated positive EBITDA through every quarter of 2020, and it's how we're going to continue to outperform through this up cycle that we're in today. At our company, we have always been focused on net income and generate generating material free cash flow, not just EBITDA. We seek to earn an attractive return on capital and return that capital to investors. I welcome our new partners with the IPO, and we'll continue to to redefine what investor what an investor should expect from a service company.
This starts with our industry leading profitability, unmatched cost structures through vertical integration, and our superior cash generation. We've seen operators shift their business model from one of growing production at all costs to one of operating within cash flow and returning capital to investors. We seek to join them in this responsible stewardship of capital and hope to explore changing our business model over time from one of growth and market share to one of returning capital to investors. In the past eight years, the oil and gas industry has been incredibly tempestuous with an onslaught of economic downturns and geopolitical headwinds. I believe the best people on the planet work in this industry, and I couldn't have more respect for what our peers and our customers do to create a thriving human experience.
As energy costs rise and they come to the forefront of the conversation today, I hope our industry will be celebrated and encouraged for doing everything in our power to produce more oil and gas and continue continuing to seek and find ways to lower the cost of energy for everyone. Now I'm going to hand the call over to Matt to talk a little bit more about our strategies and operations.
Speaker 3
Thank you, Vlad. We recognize the current environment is advantageous for our sector, and we wanna use this opportunity to improve our through cycle positioning. We don't want to be become complacent. Our view of the macro environment in Oilfield Services and how we are extremely well positioned for the current U. S.
Frac market is not complicated. The supply of pressure pumping horsepower is limited. Many of our competitors are completely sold out and have legacy footprints that need to be upgraded. This means that the strained supply chain in our industry is focused on maintaining and upgrading the existing fleet with little capacity left to build new capacity. In addition, capital is more expensive than it has ever been over the last decade and reluctance to deploy it into the OFS is still high.
These dynamics are one of the reasons that we believe there is a great deal of length left in this cycle and that we will continue to see margins improve. Most importantly, we believe that it will continue to run for quite some time. This is the best backdrop that we've seen since we've started in the shale industry. We have a high performing pressure pumping fleet that has consistently outperformed our peers. Our operating philosophy is underpinned by ESG focused initiatives that prioritize profitability.
And when you prioritize profitability, it means you don't waste what you don't need. That's not only great for our bottom line, but it's also great for the environment. We also plan to grow the company's footprint in the coming years and throughout the entire cycle. To enable this continued growth, we have a two pronged strategy, acquire, retire, replace, combined with scaling or vertical integration. The FTSI transaction is a perfect example of how acquire, retire, replace strategy can work.
We saw FTSI as a great company, but a company that could do better and benefit from our visionary leadership approach to take it to the next level. We acquired FTSI for approximately $400,000,000 and expect to earn that amount back in approximately twelve short months. Our track record demonstrates that we can operate equipment safer, cheaper, more efficiently, and longer. And we think we can create value along the way just like we did with FTSI. More importantly, we do this by replacing existing equipment in the market and not expanding the total horsepower in the market.
In addition to that, our vertical integration uniquely situates us to capitalize on this environment. It provides us with a cost advantage that is unmatched, but also gives us more control over the timing and amount of critical inputs into our business. Specifically in this environment, where supply chain interruption is a challenge for pretty much everyone, We're in a better position than our pressure pumping peers to capitalize because we have our own sand mines. We have our own steel, our own machine shops, and we we design, engineer, and assemble our own equipment from frac pumps to blenders to e fleets. One of the quickest value additions we have done is is the Flotek investment and partnership.
We have secured green downhole chemicals and logistics through our long term partnership with Flotek. This partnership concentrates our our significant chemical spend, gives us more control over our supply chain, and most importantly, creates a structure that we believe provides financial participation and the value we create. We're very excited about the partnership that we have with Flotek. In q two, we expanded that partnership to provide for a larger financial interest in exchange for chemicals that we plan on procuring for our customers. It also allows for us to an enhanced offering of green chemistries as well as a secure supply of chemistries that we think are going to be instrumental in the months and quarters ahead.
Our previous acquisition of EKU and IoTeX have been instrumental in building, improving, and optimizing our electric fleet that we plan to to deploy in the third quarter. While these were were not significant in terms of dollars, their contribution has been multiples of our invested capital. And these are exactly the things that we believe makes us stronger, better, more stable company throughout the cycle so that we can deliver on what this space has missed for quite some time. The ability to earn money the old fashioned way, net income, and even more importantly, material free cash flow generation. And we hope to turn that back to investors.
So as you look at our path forward and as we continue to execute on our acquire, retire, replace strategy as well as our vertical integration strategy, we look forward to being able to execute and further consolidate within the supply chain and amongst our peer class. I will now hand the call over to Lance to run through our financials and our outlook for 2022.
Speaker 4
Thank you, Matt. Good morning, everyone. We're pleased to announce our first quarter twenty twenty two results. These results include the full quarter for the ProFrac predecessor and one month of the FTSI results from the time of closing at the March. My comments today will primarily be focused on selected financial metrics, some context behind the trends we experienced and our outlook for the second quarter this year.
The pressure pumping industry has moved quickly over the last five months, so each month has different characteristics. We're in a much better position than where we thought we would be just a few months ago, largely due to the increased market demand, our successful acquisition of FTSI and our vertical integration, which is really showing its value in this environment. On a consolidated basis, revenue for the first quarter totaled $345,000,000 Net income was $24,100,000 and adjusted EBITDA was $91,500,000 Excluded from adjusted EBITDA are a few one time items related to the FTSI transaction and the Flotek market value adjustment. We incurred $8,300,000 of charges related to prepayment penalties and unamortized debt issuance costs when we refinanced our debt as part of the acquisition. In addition, we incurred $13,000,000 of transaction related expenses related to the FTSI acquisition.
Lastly, we recognized a gain of $8,000,000 related to the fair value adjustment on our $20,000,000 convertible debt investment in Flotek. We estimate that FTSI generated approximately 8,000,000 of adjusted EBITDA in January through February of the current year, which is the time before the acquisition date. Therefore, we estimate that our first quarter pro form a adjusted EBITDA, which is as if we had acquired it on 01/01/2022, would have been $99,400,000 We operated 21.7 average fleets in the first quarter. The fleet count was 31 fleets for the month of March after the FTSI acquisition, but 17 fleets in January and February prior to the acquisition. We saw considerable improvement to pricing and efficiency as the first quarter progressed.
This momentum continued into the second quarter and actually accelerated primarily due to the repricing of the 14 FTSI fleets that went into effect the April. When ProFrac set out to acquire FTSI, there was one thing that was apparent. The efficiencies of both fleets were top notch, yet the earnings power of the fleets had a variance. FTSI's fleets generally had lower pricing in what amounted to an estimated 6 and a half million dollars of adjusted EBITDA lower than that of ProFrac. When we closed the transaction, we expected to bring FTSI fleets up in profitability to the levels of the ProFrac fleets, and we thought it would take up to three to six months with our customers.
Given ProFrac's commercial approach combined with today's market, we were able to reach out to all of our customers and effectively complete that process in a matter of three weeks. By the time we started the month of April, which is about one month after the acquisition, we had both fleets earning similar levels of profitability. We estimate that this will add more than 84,000,000 of EBITDA uplift just from the FTSI fleets and that was at the time of announcing the acquisition. Since then, the market has moved in our favor and both fleets profitability have improved materially above and beyond that level. In our minds, this was the number one value proposition of the FTS acquisition.
We also have traditional cost synergies and CapEx synergies that we're obviously very proud of. Both companies were vertically integrated and they ran very lean teams. While we didn't expect synergies to be the biggest value driver, we are confident that we are on track to achieve a meaningful amount of cost reductions between CapEx and non labor operating expenses. Looking at the second quarter of this year, the company expects continued pricing improvements and increased market activity leading to incremental contributions from the FTSI acquisition as well as pre acquisition fleets. For the second quarter, we will be running 31 fleets for the entire quarter and expect that to remain unchanged until we activate our first electric fleet in the third quarter.
More importantly, we expect approximately 23,000,000 to $25,000,000 of annualized adjusted EBITDA per fleet during the second quarter. Turning to our business segments. The Stimulation Services segment generated revenues of $336,000,000 in the first quarter. The increase was driven by pricing improvement, increased activity levels and the addition of the 14 FTS fleets for a full month. FTSI represented a $48,600,000 increase in revenue during the quarter for one month of activity, which was prior to the price increases I discussed.
Adjusted EBITDA for Stimulation Services was 73,600,000.0 The Manufacturing segment generated revenues of $32,000,000 in the first quarter. As a reminder, this segment primarily fabricates fluid ends, power ends and big bore manifolds amongst other valuable activities. Approximately 84% of this segment was intercompany revenue for products and services provided to the Simulation Services segment. Adjusted EBITDA for Manufacturing was $10,000,000 in the first quarter. This segment experienced improved operating results, primarily driven by increased demand for our products due to the underlying activity increases in the Stimulation Services segment and improved operating lives of their fluid ends.
The profit production segment generated revenues of $12,400,000 in the first quarter. Approximately 69% of this segment was intercompany revenue for profit provided to the Stimulation Services segment. Adjusted EBITDA for the profit production segment was $7,900,000 The improved operating results were due to higher production levels with a higher average selling price, slightly offset by increased production costs. Moving on to capital expenditures. We expect full year 2022 CapEx to be between $240,000,000 and $290,000,000 The biggest piece of that is our maintenance CapEx.
We want to take care of our equipment. It's pumping more now than ever. It is the reason we can be the best pressure pumper on our customers' pad site, and we wanna make sure that continues. We estimate maintenance CapEx to be between 2.75 and 3,000,000 per fleet per year. We're also constructing three electric fleets.
We expect the cost of those to be between 65,000,000 and $70,000,000 for all three fleets, which excludes the cost of license fees paid in 2021. The first electric fleet should be operational in q three of this year. The other two e fleets are under construction and will be deployed in the fourth quarter. We like how this gives us access to all segments of the market. We're going to have scale of every type of equipment, tier two tier two dual fuel, tier four, tier four dual fuel, and now electric fleets.
As Matt mentioned, we're excited to be adding to our sand manufacturing capacity, which we estimate will take 25,000,000 to $30,000,000 of CapEx this year. We're currently sold out for sand internally and our new Westmonger mine will give us access to be within about 50 to 60 miles of almost all wells in the Midland Basin. We have very little competition there, so we're really excited to have additional volume of sand that we can place with our customers and really drive performance with our fleets with the additional production of sand, which is a commodity right now in West Texas. The last piece of CapEx is equipment upgrades and other growth initiatives. We were upgrading five to 10 engines per month, and this is where we take a tier two diesel engine and upgrade it to a tier four dual fuel engine.
We and our customers like the performance of the tier four dual fuel engine and we'll continue to upgrade that we so that we follow the market and our customer preferences. The expectation is that we wanna take care of our equipment and keep it in the best shape possible to to provide the best service for our customers. Moving to the benefits of our IPO on our balance sheet. After the SHU was exercised this month, we had approximately $3.00 $4,000,000 in IPO proceeds, net of actual and estimated expenses. We used approximately 225,000,000 in proceeds to reduce the principal amount of our debt.
After these proceeds and as of last week, we had less than 450,000,000 of gross debt outstanding. The Equify note, the closing date note, and the backstop note were all paid in full. We had 306,000,000 outstanding under the term loan. I highlight all this to point out the simplicity of the capital structure after the IPO and the fact that we expect our debt to EBITDA ratio to be less than three quarters of a turn. With that, I'll hand the call back to Matt for closing remarks.
Thanks, Lance. As you
Speaker 3
all can see, we could talk about our company for hours on end. We've been building exceptional companies in the oilfield services industry for over two decades. Our mission at ProFrac is to, one, be the best and safest company to work for in the pressure pumping industry, and two, to provide our customers with elite products and services utilizing the most cost effective and environmentally friendly solutions, And three, to achieve superior returns for our shareholders. We believe ProPrAc redefines what is possible in the oilfield services industry and redefines what is possible for our investors. I am extremely grateful to have this opportunity to partner with you as we look forward and we develop a larger moat around this business to generate real returns for our investors.
And with that, I will now turn the call to the operator to take your questions. Operator? Thank
Speaker 0
you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. Our first question comes from the line of Steven Gengaro with Stifel. Please proceed with your question.
Speaker 5
Thanks. Good morning, and congrats on good start out of the gate. I think two things for me. I I think the first is you you mentioned the the the e fleets, and the e fleet deliveries. Beyond, you know, addition of those fleets over the next, couple quarters, how do we think about other potential activations of of assets?
Speaker 6
Yes, sir. Steven, this is Corey Randall. Great question. As we see, you know, the market as we move forward, we have the ability of three additional activations. You know, we'll use those to see whether or not, you know, if the demand for our services increases.
Today, with the e fleets, the first couple of fleets that have gone out will be additions to what they are. So we expect our count to grow by one or two there. We also expect that maybe by the time we get to three fleet three this year or even next year that those might be what we would call part of the retire program. As whereas we bring those out, we would we retire an older legacy tier two fleet as we move forward.
Speaker 5
Okay. Great. Thank thank you. And then just the the follow-up question was when when you're thinking about the pricing trends in the market right now, can you just kinda give us your take on on on what how pricing is developing and maybe also some commentary around the the relative price difference between older and some of the newer lower mission assets, if if that even exists right now as things are tight.
Speaker 3
Yeah. We we we've seen a real shift towards, utilization, and, I think that the rate of return that our customers are seeing on bringing production on is is pretty compelling. So I think it's it's it's provided a good backdrop for us to get in and align our interests and bring help them bring these wells on quicker. And so commercially, that's been really beneficial to us. As far as our performance relative relative to our peer class, I think it really from our perspective, we believe we're in line on many of the services that we provide, but we get the added benefit of the contribution margin from our supply chain and the additional services that we provide.
Speaker 5
Great. Thank you.
Speaker 0
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Arun Jayaram with JPMorgan. Please proceed with your question.
Speaker 7
Good morning, gentlemen.
Speaker 8
Good morning.
Speaker 7
I was wondering if you can give
Speaker 8
us some thoughts on on how you see the supply demand balance for frac today and and maybe thoughts on potential industry supply response, you know, given how margins have now moved into the, for industry in the upper teens to the low twenties. And perhaps you could just maybe comment on on on the state of the supply chain, which we understand is very tough today.
Speaker 3
That's that's really where we see the tightness coming from. We we believe that the market is virtually sold out. You know, however, I think that, you know, a lot of the things restricting supply of horsepower is is associated with, you know, exactly that, the supply chain, replacement parts, replacement engines. When you look at the, maintenance shops, they're, they're backed up. The availability of parts so that you can get your get your equipment repaired and put back out to the field has become a limiting factor for for the industry.
And that's that's one reason we're really excited about our business with the vertical integration. It gives us a quick response time. It provides us with the certainty of supply so that we can be responsive and provide an incredible service for our customers.
Speaker 8
Great. Great. Matt or or Lana, I I also wanna see if you could just talk about the the vertical integration. You know, historically, you know, in the frac space, you know, some operators who've done vertical integration have not been able to maximize profitability because you ended up maybe giving a service away for free as or for a low margin to sell your frac services. But talk about today, your strategy in terms of, you know, how you're trying to maximize, you know, the profitability for for all the different, you know, services that you're you're providing between, you know, profit, etcetera.
Speaker 9
Yeah. Arun, that's a that's a great question. The way we think about it is really just, you know, breaking down all the different components of a of a frac job. And and, you know, if it's if it's fluid ends or power ends, we're we're trying to extend the life of those and designing, you know, putting our engineers to work on designing better power ends and fluid ends. And if it's high pressure iron, you know, we're designing, things that are we're designing our high pressure iron in a way that it, works better with our with our pumps.
And, but really, when we think about just lowering the cost of all those different components of a frat job, that's how we think about that's how we think about it, you know, whether it's building a sand mine or or, you know, purchasing purchasing our chemical company that that we have now. You know, it's really just picking up the nickels, pennies, and dimes, and and it all adds up to to great margins on our for our fleet. And yeah. I think that's
Speaker 3
That that's exactly right. You know, having custody of the supply chain allows us to go in and and, and utilize our engineers to build better products, extend the life, and reduce the overall cost of ownership of each of these parts. And that's something that that brings value throughout the cycle. And we believe our our vertical integration makes us stronger stronger in downturns and, and extremely profitable in, in upturns. And so we we can't really speak to what others have done wrong with vertical integration in the past, but what we know for us that this is the right way.
It's always served us well. And a great example of that is why we were able to to generate positive EBITDA all the way through 2020. And and and I and and that's without take or pays. That's without, one time cash payments from, from anything. This is through operations, through execution, and from having the benefits that are provided by vertical integration.
Speaker 8
Okay. If I could sneak more more one more in, perhaps, with Lance. Lance, I just wanted to go over the two q guide. You guided to 31 active fleets and EBITDA per fleet of a range of 23 to 25. I assume that that is all in contribution, So that includes the anticipated contribution from manufacturing and profit.
Is that fair?
Speaker 4
That's correct. It's on consolidated basis. Okay.
Speaker 8
Great. Thanks a lot, gents.
Speaker 3
Yeah. Thank you.
Speaker 0
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ian Macpherson with Piper Sandler. Please proceed with your question.
Speaker 10
Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Congratulations.
Speaker 4
Good morning, Ian. Good morning.
Speaker 11
Good morning.
Speaker 3
I was
Speaker 10
I was wondering if we could take a peek, forward with your your consolidation strategy. FTSI was clearly, an exquisite deal for you to do in every sense, and the timing was fortuitous. It seems like every week makes a difference now in terms of, you know, the fundamentals in the market. So asset values will be richer going forward than they have been in the past. And I imagine you have a lever to pull in elevating your own currency strength with dividends, etcetera, in the future.
But just wondering how you're thinking about the opportunity set and the strategy for expanding your consolidation strategy from here forward?
Speaker 3
Definitely. I think I think that this is an environment where, you know, this this is not an environment where you see a rising tide lifting all boats. There's, there's capital restraints that are put all across this industry. And some have access to to capital and some don't. We're really, really proud of the simplified capital structure that we have and the access to to working capital.
But many of our many of our smaller peers don't have access to the same types of working capital, and I think it provides a a a very interesting outlay as it's it's too challenging to their their outlook on working capital to bundle services and provide consumable consumables with their with their equipment. And so when you look at at, at opportunities that still exist in the market, I think that what you see is a is is a great opportunity to, you know, buy right. Seek out further exquisite deals, and and then take our bundled approach with our robust supply chain where we can get the additional contribution margin on those fleets as well. And and, of course, this is, this is core to our our growth strategy of not adding to the overall supply of the market, but using the acquire retire replace to grow our base and deploy newer, better, more efficient, and higher margin equipment to replace legacy fleets that are due for upgrades.
Speaker 10
That makes a lot of sense. Thanks, Matt. For my second question, not really asking for guidance beyond Q2, but could you talk just in generality about how much sensitivity your 31 fleets today have to spot price beyond Q2 into the summer? Have you already repriced substantially so there's going to be relatively less pricing up less sequentially from Q2 to Q3? Or would that be too conservative a statement?
Speaker 3
You know, when we look at the when we look at the path forward, we think that there's been, significant step ups. But the number one priority for our customers is to seek out the rates of return that they would see from from additional production. So important for for our customers to get these wells online and, on time. And one thing I would point out with the the industry having such a legacy and vintage fleet, there's a lot of flat radiators. And in the summer heat, they're overheated overheating issues that I think is quite rampant in the industry today that is impacting the utilization and the the scheduling of when when they're expecting to see these wells.
And that's why we've put such a high focus on having cube radiators, making sure that we're able to keep our equipment cool and operating in tip top condition. And so we see our our platform as being exactly what our customers are looking for and have have started seeing, tightness that that more tightness than you would have otherwise because of the temperatures and the over overheating issues associated with running vintage equipment.
Speaker 2
Yeah. And I would just I would
Speaker 9
just add to that. You know, the the our we're obviously pricing has moved up from from the lows of $20.20 for obvious reasons. But when you think about just our cost per pumping hour and and kinda where we are just as from a historic perspective, we're we are much lower today, well below what what we were charging just in 2017 and 02/2018. And so we believe that, yeah, we still have we still have room to to run. And and yeah.
And and and what we what we're excited about is we're we're seeing that, and we're able to do that for our customers while they're they're, you know, getting paid more than they've been able to than they've gotten paid for their for their barrels or their m c or an m c f of natural gas in, you know, the past fourteen years. So it's it's pretty exciting that, you know, by partnering with our customers and and giving them just efficient service that that we can lower their cost and and still make a great margin.
Speaker 10
Absolutely. Thank you, Lad. Thanks, Matt. Thank you.
Speaker 0
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Chase Mulvehill Please proceed with your question.
Speaker 11
Hi, Lan and Matt and Lance. So this is Saurabh on for Chase. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning.
Hi. So definitely a strong second quarter guidance. But as it thinks forward, I'm pretty sure customers are are are already coming to you for 2023 discussion. Right? So if you can maybe talk to that a little bit, what what are they asking for?
What are their expectations? And what kind of commitment are they willing to give you for 2023 at this stage? Or maybe it's too early. Right? If it's too early, you could tell me that.
And then related to that, just for the back half of the year, we used to see typical year end seasonality. This year activity is is running strong. Right? So any likelihood of any year end seasonality in the fourth quarter. But, again, oil price, gas price, both are very strong.
Right? So these guys are incentivized to to pull forward their 2023 budget. Right? So if you think that's what happens, then seasonality would not be that big of an issue this year.
Speaker 6
So this is Coy. I'll start off on the first question. Yes. We have seen a early cycle questions and request for '23, fleets. And as we see and normally, that's in the third quarter kind of activity that starts people start trying to look and secure fleets for '23.
We have already started those conversations early now. Most of those have been kind of around the e fleet and the dual fuel dual fuel side of the our business and everything else. But, yes, we have seen an increase in the at very early activity level about, you know, what we're trying to do to to secure for '23. The second part of your question about the the seasonality, you know, the we always know the Northeast has some kind of seasonality either with it being weather or to your point running out of CapEx money early in the cycle. I think this year, I think you'll see more folks try to, continue through the end of the year.
I think, you know, if our activity levels stay the way they are, if demand for our services continue to stay where they are, I think we'll see probably a holiday dip, as more folks today seem to be wanting to go home for the holidays, but I don't know that we'll see a lot of drop in activity just due to because, people don't have any money anymore. And and, just along those lines,
Speaker 3
there's, there's always weather seasonality, and and and we always plan for that. And, we we start that plan early to make sure that we have everything we need to, to address any anything associated with freezing conditions, freezing lines. And, we we like to, you know, we we like to plan ahead. And, and and, you know, we've seen things break, and and we've gotten really, really focused on how to how to respond quickly and and address those issues those issues. So we're we're looking at, you know, there's there's most likely gonna be weather just like there is every year.
But, you know, one thing I'd point out is that, the customers looking at their twenty twenty three programs, they have put a very high priority on the dual fuel and the e fleets. A conventional fleet will use anywhere from seven to 10,000,000 gallons of diesel per year. And with that diesel rates where where they are, these platforms provide, incredible value proposition for for these customers. And, and and they get they get credit for being good stewards of the environment, at the same time. So we we like these platforms, and, we we believe that they're in very high demand.
And as you look across the peer class, I think that you'll, you'll see a very, very common theme associated with, with performance across across companies with top tier fleets.
Speaker 11
Right. Right. No. That makes a lot of sense. And just on the dual fuel fleet front, right, when we think about the value addition those bring just in terms of the fuel cost savings, right, there's always been a debate about how much of that is being captured by the service company or all of that is being given away to the E and Ps.
Right? So as the market tightens, you would think more of that should come to the service company. Right? And I know 40% of your fleet even after the FTS acquisition is dual fuel. Right?
So how should we think about how much of that fuel cost saving do you get to keep, and how do you think that is trending? Are you getting to keep more of that now that the market is tighter and then a bigger premium on on on natural gas capabilities?
Speaker 3
You know, that's that's why I touched on it. I was hoping you'd ask me.
Speaker 11
Yeah. So
Speaker 3
the way that we look at it is is, you know, we go in and we try to get as much of of, of that benefit as possible. And, you know, as as as you get more penetration into the market with these platforms, you end up with a benchmarking effect. So if as an industry, if we're not able to, capture the, the majority of those benefits from from the operator, you end up with with so much of the overall fleet in the industry being represented by mission friendly fleets that it becomes a benchmark. And so if you get a 50% substitution with a dual fuel fleet and a conventional fleet for the same work would consume 40,000,000 gallons or $40,000,000 worth of diesel, you're eliminating 20,000,000 from it. And so if you're not able to capture all of that, then when you compare a dual fuel fleet to a conventional non dual fuel fleet, you have to adjust for the diesel.
And it has this incredible benchmarking effect that that puts pressure and on on your peers that don't have the right setup or the right capability, and it pushes their profitability down. This benchmarking is something that happens naturally in the market, and we try to get everything we can. But as this segment and this category continues to grow, and and it will. And you're seeing that with the upgrades from our peers that they most of them have announced that this will be a a a, continuing story and a growing impact on whether the whether my peers or whether we're able to get those savings, they will show up in the market one way or the other. And that's the beauty of capitalism.
That's the beauty of free enterprise. That benchmarking effect will show up in the market.
Speaker 11
Right. Right. Right. No. That makes a ton of sense.
And just one last quick one. On the three electric sheets that you're deploying earlier this year, can you update us on where you stand on contracting on that front? And just conceptually, how are you approaching contracting from a returns payback? And, obviously, the market is tight. Right?
So you need to think about all of that. How are you approaching contracted on the Inslee side at at this stage?
Speaker 3
In our experience, there's there's certain situations where we'll enter contracts. Typically, we don't like to, just because we feel that in most situations, they create a ceiling. They don't provide the floor that you would expect. And, and so what we end up with is is we we don't necessarily call them contracts. We we call them pricing arrangements, because it it doesn't have the same type of of, teeth that you would normally see in a in a contract.
But in our experience, the teeth that you think is protecting you in a contract is, ends up being toothless compared to the commercial leverage that, that one side or the other has throughout the cycle. So our preference is to move into these into these relationships with our customers, in a in a with mutual motivation in maintaining a partnership focused on on the quality of service.
Speaker 11
Okay. Okay. No. That makes that makes sense. Okay, guys.
Thanks a lot. I'll turn it back. Thank
Speaker 0
you. Our next question comes from the line of Dan Kutz with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.
Speaker 7
Hey. Thanks. Good morning.
Speaker 11
Good morning, Dan. Good morning, Dan.
Speaker 7
So I just wanted to ask on shareholder returns. So you guys had kind of flagged that you hope to explore options here in the press release. I was wondering if there's anything you can do to help us think through what you would need to see to get comfortable with instituting a shareholder returns program. Is it a leverage target? I I think, Lance, you'd already flagged that, in the near term here, you're expected to be less than, I think, three quarters of a turn in times debt to EBITDA.
So, you know, is there a certain level of leverage? Is there a level of free cash flow generation or cash on the balance sheet? Is there anything that you could do to help us think through what you guys would need to see to get the to institute a program here? Thanks.
Speaker 3
Dan, I'll I'll I'll take this one. Really, the way that we look at it is is this is a great opportunity for, you know, for us to have aligned interests with with, you know, with all of our stakeholders. Our priority is on returning capital to stakeholders. We prior we prioritize profitability over growth. And that's the exciting thing about that is that we think that all of our competitors should prioritize profitability over growth.
Because when you do that, shareholders hold you accountable to it. And we want to be held accountable. We want to be held to that. And we want our competitors to be as well. You can't you can't offer a return return of capital program if you're not profitable, and we look forward to this industry returning to that.
And and it's our hope and belief that, that we'll be able to do that in the near future and that that we'll we'll have the opportunity to set the pace and and really lead off. But there's I don't believe that there's necessarily specific financial metrics that are driving that as much as incorporating it into our operational philosophy of of of pushing for stable and profitable industry, setting that example for our for for everyone and, making sure that this is the top priority and that we look for it, you know, look for returns to stakeholders at a at a much higher priority than we put growth.
Speaker 7
Thanks a lot. That's that's really helpful. And I just wanted to ask, on the CapEx side and just in terms of what you're envisioning, in terms of equipment priorities. So is there anything you you can share on kind of the pace of upgrades to tier four dual fuel that you guys are targeting or expecting? And then from a new build perspective, is it still the three e frac fleets that are under construction going out in the back half this year?
Is is that all that's been ordered so far, or has there been any incremental orders that are that have been put in? And I guess, you know, it would you, at any point, contemplate any new build capacity that was not electric frac fleets? Thanks.
Speaker 6
Yes, So this is Corey again. I'll start off with the the three e fleets. Those are well on their way. Parts have been ordered. All that stuff is all in the queue.
So as of this point, we have started looking at, you know, what fleet four might look like, what we might do different, but no parts, no CapEx spent yet whatsoever on it. Our current pace of the dual fuel upgrades, we're doing, you know, approximately around a 10 of those a month right now. That number can move up a little bit depending on how the supply chain comes in for rebuild engines and parts so that we could upgrade from tier two to tier four. So we'll continue on that through the rest of this year, trying to get closer to higher level of dual fuel pumps that are on location. Outside of that, as far as operations, of course, we have our maintenance CapEx that, you know, we spend each and every month to just maintain the current active fleet counts to where we're at.
And then we've got Munger Ranch, which is again in our CapEx budget, which is our additional sand mine that we'll hopefully have online here in the third quarter also.
Speaker 4
Yes. The one thing I would clarify is that the e fleets and the Westmonger Ranch are gonna be kind of concentrated to the you know, middle q three part of the year since they're both going, to be largely completed by by q four. So just a quick note on the timing.
Speaker 7
Got it. That's helpful. And and Lance, I guess real quick, is the 240,000,000 to 290,000,000 full year '22 CapEx guidance, does that not that's not like a full year pro form a number. Right? That that does not include the FTSI CapEx in January and February?
Speaker 4
That that is correct. It does not include it, and it that was, call it, somewhere 8 or 9,000,000. Okay. Awesome.
Speaker 7
Alright. Thanks a lot, guys. Appreciate the color. I'll turn it back.
Speaker 3
Thank you.
Speaker 0
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our question and answer session. I'll turn the floor back to management for any final comments.
Speaker 3
We want to thank everybody for joining the call. We especially want to thank our shareholders for joining us and becoming a part of our story. We're very excited about the days ahead, the years ahead, and we we see this as a privilege to be able to work for you and to create value and to set the tone for what you should expect from an oilfield services company. Thank you.
Speaker 9
Thanks, everyone.
Speaker 0
Thank you. This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.