Cactus - Earnings Call - Q3 2020

Transcript

Speaker 0

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Captis Q3 twenty twenty Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer session. I would now like to welcome one of your speakers for today, Mr. John Fitzgerald.

Please go ahead, sir.

Speaker 1

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate your participation in today's call. The speakers on today's call will be Scott Bender, our Chief Executive Officer and Steve Tadlock, our Chief Financial Officer. Also joining us today are Joel Bender, Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Stephen Bender, Vice President of Operations and David Isaac, our General Counsel and Vice President of Administration. Yesterday, we issued our earnings release, which is available on our website.

Please note that any comments we make on today's call regarding projections or expectations for future events are forward looking statements covered by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Forward looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control. These risks and uncertainties can cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations. We advise listeners to review our earnings release and the risk factors discussed in our filings with the SEC. Any forward looking statements we make today are only as of today's date, and we undertake no obligation to publicly update or review any forward looking statements.

In addition, during today's call, we will reference certain non GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of these non GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in our earnings release. With that, I will turn the call over to Scott.

Speaker 2

Thanks, John. Good morning to everyone. I'm again pleased with our performance during the quarter despite the macro execution during these difficult times and our industry leading supply chain model. Reducing the overall cost of production has never been more important for our industry and Cactus' products and services are truly enabling our customers to increase efficiencies and savings. While our overall revenues were down during the third quarter as expected, we achieved strong margins across our business lines and increased market share in our product business to a record 38%.

In summary, third quarter revenues were approximately $60,000,000 Adjusted EBITDA approached $25,000,000 Adjusted EBITDA margins were 41%. Our cash balance increased to nearly $274,000,000 and we paid a quarterly dividend of $09 per share. I'll turn the call over to Steve Padlock, our CFO, who will review our financial results. Following his remarks, I'll provide some thoughts on our outlook for the near term before opening the lines for Q and A. Steve?

Thanks, Scott. In Q3, revenues of $60,000,000 were 10% lower than the prior quarter, but ahead of expectations. Product revenues at $36,000,000 were 12% lower sequentially, while

Speaker 3

The U. S. Onshore rig count fell by 37% quarter over quarter. Product gross margins increased to 45% of revenues, up eight ten basis points. Rental revenues were approximately $10,000,000 down 14% from the second quarter.

While revenue was higher than the latter months of the second quarter on average, it was significantly lower than the April run rate. Although gross margins declined on a sequential basis, we were able to maintain positive margins through the achievement of cost reductions in both direct and branch expenditures. Field service and other revenues in Q3 were $14,000,000 relatively flat versus the second quarter. This represented just under 31% of combined product and rental related revenues during the quarter, well ahead of expectations. We expect field service revenue to be slightly under 30% of product and rental revenue during the fourth quarter.

Gross margins increased almost 1,500 basis points sequentially, largely due to lower payroll and depreciation expenses and a continued rationalization of our field service vehicle fleet. SG and A was down $300,000 sequentially to $8,400,000 during the quarter. The decrease was primarily attributable to lower payroll related expenses. We expect SG and A to be approximately $9,000,000 in Q4 twenty twenty with stock based compensation expense flat at slightly over $2,000,000 Third quarter adjusted EBITDA was approximately $25,000,000 up from $22,000,000 during the second quarter. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter represented 41% of revenues.

Adjustments during the 2020 included $2,000,000 in stock based compensation. Depreciation expense was $9,800,000 during the period, down from $10,500,000 during the second quarter due largely to the reduction in our fleet of service trucks. Our public or Class A ownership was relatively stable in Q3 and was 63% at the end of the quarter. This should result in an effective tax rate of approximately 19% in Q4 twenty twenty, assuming no changes in our public ownership percentage. GAAP net income was $10,900,000 in Q3 twenty twenty.

This was inclusive of a $1,900,000 non cash expense related to the revaluation of the tax receivable agreement liability. Book income tax expense was negligible during the third quarter as the company recorded a $2,200,000 benefit associated with the revaluation of our deferred tax asset as a result of changes to our forecasted blended state tax rate. Internally, we prefer to look at adjusted net income and earnings per share, which were $9,500,000 and $0.13 respectively, compared to $7,400,000 and $0.10 per share in Q2 twenty twenty. We estimate that the tax rate for adjusted EPS will be 25.5%. During the third quarter, we paid out $6,800,000 resulting from our quarterly dividend of $09 per share.

The Board has also approved a dividend of $09 per share to be paid in December. Early in the third quarter, we also made our annual TRA payment and associated distribution of approximately $23,000,000 The recent payment was especially large due to our strong 2019 results and the associated tax savings arising from our corporate structure. We expect the next payment and the associated distribution to be substantially lower in 2021 as such disbursements vary directly with imputed tax liability. Net of the aforementioned TRA and dividend related outflows, our cash position increased by $3,000,000 during the quarter to almost $274,000,000 at September 30, highlighting the continued free cash flow generation of the company. For the quarter, operating cash flow was $19,000,000 and our net CapEx was negligible.

As disclosed in our release, Cactus recognized $6,000,000 in refunds during the quarter associated with tariff exclusions granted in March. The refunds reduced cost of revenue with $5,400,000 being allocated to our product business. As previously disclosed, we were notified in August that the tariff exclusions granted in March on certain imported goods were not extended by the USTR. At this point, we do not expect any further meaningful tariff refunds to be received due to prior exclusions. The capital requirements for the business remain modest as evidenced by a reduction to our net CapEx guidance for 2020 to be between 17,500,000.0 and $22,500,000 That covers the financial review, and I'll now turn you back to Scott.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Steve. We often note that Cactus has performed well historically during market downturns, and this was the case during the third quarter. As most E and Ps understand, there's little room for further price service pricing concessions, their attention turns to efficiency gains to lower well costs. This aligns well with our offerings, which provide disproportionately high time savings and productivity gains. In our product business, market share grew to nearly 38% during the third quarter.

This was driven by new customer additions including privates and increased market share with recently acquired customers. One particular area of strength was the Haynesville where our rigs followed increased during the quarter despite the region's overall decline in activity. Recall that our customers typically utilize us to source all their wellhead and production tree equipment. Additionally, given that our equipment is tailored to pad patch drilling programs, the larger and relatively well capitalized operators tend to appreciate our value proposition. Since there are still large operators who have yet to realize the efficiency gains offered by our equipment and services, our conviction as to further market share gains remain strong.

Based on our customers' most recently disclosed plans, we believe that The U. S. Rig count bottomed out in August and expect further rig additions through the year end. For this reason, we expect Cactus' rigs followed to increase by approximately 20% during the fourth quarter. Product revenues are expected to witness a similar increase.

Our general expectation is for a general increase in rig activity through the fourth quarter, but recent oil price weakness now provides some reason for caution for the remainder of the year. Our product EBITDA margins were expected to be in the low 30% during the fourth quarter, flat or slightly higher than our product EBITDA margins during the third quarter, excluding the impact of the $5,400,000 arising from tariff refunds. On the rental side of the business, revenue was in line with our prior guidance for a low double digit percentage decline. While our third quarter activity was improved from levels seen in May and June, our second quarter benefited from a relatively strong April, thus hindering our ability to record sequential growth. That said, we believe that a further focus on DUC reductions early next year should provide opportunities for expansion of our rental business, although we have the same concerns mentioned earlier regarding the impact of oil price weakness.

We continue to maintain discipline at evaluating business opportunities for our rental equipment, recognizing the value of our goods and services bring to customers. This discipline was key to our ability to maintain EBITDA margins above 70% during the third quarter. Looking to Q4, we expect flattish revenue on a sequential basis, assuming there's not a significant slowdown tied to recent oil price weakness or the holidays. We'll continue to exercise pricing discipline and currently expect EBITDA margins in the mid-sixty percentage for the fourth quarter. Revenue from our innovations was meaningfully depressed during the early part of the third quarter, but improved sequentially each month.

As an update on R and D in our rental business, we've made substantial progress during this year on the development of additional products, which will further eliminate iron from location and allow users greater remote capabilities. These remote capabilities provide our technicians, other contractors and our clients with safer real time digital monitoring and automation of frac activities. Importantly, these additional offerings require minimal capital expenditures. Nonetheless, we expect to be paid for such enhancements, and we anticipate a more constructive environment next year. Regarding field service, revenues in this segment continued to be driven by both our product and rental activity.

This segment typically witnesses lower margins during the fourth quarter due to seasonal elements. And accordingly, we expect to see EBITDA margins slightly below 30% for the fourth quarter, still higher than we've achieved in recent years. We attribute most of this improvement to cost efficiencies and a focus on labor and fleet utilization. I'd like to close by highlighting a few items before opening the line to questions. Internationally, while travel restrictions have impeded our momentum in most markets, we are currently prepping equipment for our first shipment into The Middle East.

This should begin to benefit revenue in 2021, and we expect to provide additional details next quarter. Regarding M and A, we continue to believe that consolidation within our industry makes the most sense where there is scope for significant tangible synergies. As I remind you regularly, management or long term investors in this business are highly aligned with our shareholders. As activity rebounds, our team will continue to evaluate capital deployment with returns and free cash flow as our main priorities. In summary, we're optimistic about the opportunities that the upcoming activity recovery will present.

Structurally, Cactus is now better positioned than it was only a year ago. As activity and revenue begin to recover, we expect Cactus' results to benefit disproportionately. With that, I'll turn it back over to the operator, and we can begin Q and A. Operator?

Speaker 0

Thank you very much. Your first question comes from the line of George O'Leary from Tudor, Pickering, Holt. Your line is open.

Speaker 4

Good guys. Good morning, George. How are you? I'm doing well. I'm doing well.

You all hanging in there?

Speaker 2

Yes, we're doing great. Thanks.

Speaker 4

Good. Good. Well, good quarter. And just on rental side, we're some activity ramp through Q3 and has continued to increase at least in October. So is the flattish revenue commentary there more just you're not going to give away high quality products for a price that's unacceptable to you guys?

Or is that just some conservatism around seasonality in the fourth quarter? Just trying to understand the guidance thought process there.

Speaker 2

Yes. George, it's primarily price related. Pricing, when you say it's not exactly where we want it to be, it's not even close to where we want it to be.

Speaker 4

Okay. Fair enough. The 38% with kind of the commentary that you guys think you can grab incremental market share. Is that more of a longer term prospect? Or are you seeing continued market share gains as we progress through the fourth quarter?

And where you see those opportunities? Is that driven by some of the E and P consolidation? Or is it

Speaker 2

Okay. I mean, obviously, market share is always an interesting topic for our group of investors. So let me say first that if we look at our market share gains to date, they've been, disproportionately leveraged towards majors and privates. So our core customer base, which are the large publicly traded E and Ps, while we've experienced increases, it's fair to say they've lagged. So as we look forward to this quarter and the first quarter of next year, we now have a little bit better much better visibility into that group.

And I would look to that group to account for the additional market share gain. So the large E and Ps, at least in our customer base, have lagged behind those other two groups, and they provide us with optimism that we have not reached the ceiling.

Speaker 5

Thanks very much for the color, Scott.

Speaker 2

Okay. Thanks, George.

Speaker 0

Your next question comes from the line of Chris Mulvehill from Bank of America. Your line is open.

Speaker 5

Hey, good morning, everybody.

Speaker 2

Good morning. How are you?

Speaker 5

Good. Good. So Scott, you kind of mentioned capital allocation and M and A. So you kind of opened Pandora's box here. So I'm going to try to see if I can dig a little deeper.

On the capital allocation side, obviously, you've got about $280,000,000 of cash on the balance sheet. You've got a dividend. So how do you think about allocation between raising the dividend, buying back shares or kind of saving some cash for M and A?

Speaker 2

What a surprising question. Let me first tell you that if we've just come off the trough in terms of activity, so having cash is not a bad thing. That's point number one. The second point is we clearly have enough money and we continue to generate free cash flow that sustainability of the dividend or even an increase would not be problematic. Share buybacks, I've never been a fan of.

I think maybe I was for one quarter since we went public, but that may have been when the price was $8. But I'm I'm just not a fan of that. I think that I think the timing rarely works out. When it comes to m and a opportunities, which, you know, I really can't comment very much except to say that there are an increasing number of opportunities out there. And we haven't moved on any, as you know.

That's not to say we'll take advantage of them because, you know, we we do believe that that there have to be tangible synergies, not just an expansion of product offerings. And you know we only wanna do we only wanna engage in an expansion that that is end user oriented and takes advantage of our supply chain. So I guess the playing field is rather limited. But having said that, I mean, this industry is under stress. And with stress, I think, comes opportunities.

So we want to keep the money for the near term and see what develops. If nothing develops as we come out of this downturn, then we're going to have to address return of some of this capital to our shareholders. Remember, we're the biggest shareholders. So having the $275,000,000 or $280,000,000 on our balance sheet is the prospect of harvesting that is pretty attractive to the main shareholders of this business.

Speaker 5

Yes. That makes sense. And so I won't dig deeper into M and A. I'll kind of leave it there. But if I could come come back to tariffs, obviously, talked about it a little bit.

We'll see kind of what shakes out with the President here and what it means for tariffs. But the fourth quarter guide on the products margin side, I actually missed it, but I'll listen to the replay for it. But on the guide that you gave for 4Q product margins, how much tariff headwind do you have in there that could potentially unwind at some point next year?

Speaker 3

So the guide was low 30s for Q4. And as far as tariff headwinds, I mean, quarter we said on an absolute worst case scenario, if it didn't get extended, it would be 3% impact and we noted 1% to 2% is more likely on an absolute basis. I think we still believe that 1% to 2% is the more likely scenario and preferably probably more close to the 1% with Joel working the supply chain a lot and his team in China. So I think that's kind of what we're anticipating, but a lot of moving parts there.

Speaker 5

Okay. All right. Perfect. I'll turn it back over.

Speaker 0

Your next question comes from the line of Tommy Moll from Stephens Inc. Your line is open.

Speaker 6

Good morning and thanks for taking my questions.

Speaker 2

Good morning, Todd. How are you?

Speaker 6

Just fine. Thank you. Scott, I wanted to start on the market share topic. You indicated that a lot of the gains have come from larger E and Ps and privates versus your more traditional customer base.

Speaker 2

No. Most of the gains have come from majors and privates.

Speaker 6

From majors and privates. Okay. Would you say that a lot of the gains result from interactions and conversations that predate the downturn in March and that it's just coincidental that the gains have occurred during this downturn? Or do you think that something in the industry and the customer set has shifted since the price of oil collapsed and it's allowed you to take advantage of that shift?

Speaker 7

Yes, the latter.

Speaker 6

And and any color you could offer there?

Speaker 2

You know you know, Tommy, it's it's the same every time we see a downturn About people that previously were reluctant to speak to you because they were okay with their suppliers are now forced to look wherever they can look. And I think that most, most customers realize there's not much blood left in the turnip. So pricing concessions from service companies are have have clearly peaked. And so where do you look next? You look that's the easiest place to look.

Right? So they look there first. And ours look at their peers, and they see, they see their peers using Cactus. There's they're obviously, curious as to why. And so, I think that market share sort of begets market share.

And and then as as as those engineers as well move to other companies, they take they tend to take us with them. So I would have to say most of this is is the impetus for most of this has been a renewed focus on efficiency and productivity.

Speaker 6

Got it. Thank you. That's very helpful. Shifting now to consolidation among E and Ps. There's been a lot of it lately potential for more certainly in the coming months.

From a big picture strategic standpoint about your market opportunity in North America shale, How do you see that shifting as we speak here as the wallet consolidates on the customer side?

Speaker 2

Yes. Well, let me speak about specifically what consolidation we've seen to date, and then I'll speak to how I see the future in terms of consolidation. So to date, with the exception of Chevron, we've been on both sides. So we've had exposure to both sides of the transaction. We've found historically that it's not going to surprise you that if we do business with the acquirer, we continue to do business.

But we've also seen that when we do business with the target, it opens the door for a trial. So whether or not they entertained a trial before, they sort of have to entertain a trial now. And we've been our success rate with trials is quite high, as you know. The downside to consolidation, I think both to date and going forward, is that we expect there to be some rationalization of the combined CapEx of the two entities. So I'd hope for the best if you have a customer that had 10 rigs buying a customer with five rigs.

At least in the near term, you have to expect that it's not going to equal 15. They're going to step back. They're going to try to evaluate the best prospects. They're going to pause a bit. On the other hand, long term, I think it bodes well for the industry because, as I hope you'll agree, it means that those that survive are gonna be financially stronger, which means that maybe a year or a year and a half post merger activity will pick up.

And those customers have typically been attracted to our value proposition. So it's my long winded way of saying, so far so good, but we have to be a little bit cautious about CapEx.

Speaker 6

Understood and appreciated. And I'll turn it back.

Speaker 0

And we have a question from Stephen Gengaro from Stifel. Your line is open.

Speaker 8

Thanks and good morning gentlemen. Two for me. You've covered a lot. The first being, you mentioned potential or likely shipments to The Middle East next year. As you think about earnings expectations in the model and etcetera, when do you think you start to see a material contribution from the international side?

Speaker 2

Yes, we're going to talk about that the next call.

Speaker 8

Do want to give us a free view? I guess not. The It's other early. It's early. No, I understand that.

I understand that. The other part is on the rental side. Any impact you see from consolidation at that level? And how does it impact it on the rental side versus the product side?

Speaker 2

We're talking about E and P consolidation, right?

Speaker 8

Yes. I guess that plus what you're seeing on the service side as well.

Speaker 2

I haven't seen any consolidation yet on the service side of the business, although think it's fair to say that the weaker players are getting weaker. They're probably at the very early stages of needing working capital to continue, and I think they're going to struggle to come up with working capital, both to finance receivables and then money to affect repairs. But to be fair, to date, I haven't seen much. We haven't seen much. In terms of E and Ps, in general, the larger the company, the more attractive our rental offerings become.

So consolidation among E and Ps is, I think, will be a long term benefit to our rental value proposition.

Speaker 0

And your next question comes from the line of Scott Gruber. Your line is open.

Speaker 5

Yes. Good morning.

Speaker 2

Good morning, Mr. Gruber. How are you?

Speaker 5

I'm doing well. Circling back on a couple previous questions. First, on the the tariff impact, when would we see the the full impact, you know, the of the tariffs given the inventory cycle, assuming no change in policy, obviously?

Speaker 3

Yes. I mean, typically, would be about six months or so. So you'd be looking at Q1 into Q2. So full impact probably in Q2.

Speaker 5

Got you. Got you. And then also coming back to the capital return question, obviously, free cash generation prospects are very strong in recovery, but this inflow, will you just start to get less comfortable? Like, how high would you you take it just given the the volatility of the business?

Speaker 1

I I would I would just say that, you know, we we clearly set it at a level where we felt comfortable that we would be able to increase it steadily over time. I don't think we want to get into on the call specific payout ratios that went into the analysis of kind of how we set the level. But certainly, we'd like to be in a position where we can pay the dividend and continue to grow the cash balance.

Speaker 5

Got you. Appreciate the insight. Thank you.

Speaker 0

Your next question comes from the line of Jacob Wunderbord from Credit Suisse. Please ask your question.

Speaker 9

Hey, good morning guys. Thanks for taking the question. I guess to Good start, just wanted to dig in good morning. To start, just wanted to dig in to product margins a little bit. So maybe a little bit of pressure is still coming over the next couple of quarters from the tariffs kind of rolling back in.

But maybe a bit of color on some of the levers you have there to drive those margins back towards kind of 2019 or even 2020 levels?

Speaker 7

Is it just volume? Or is there

Speaker 9

anything else you can do to get there a little faster if the market is looking flattish? And maybe any thoughts around kind of time to achieve that?

Speaker 2

Well, the easiest way to achieve it is to raise our prices, right? I don't see an opportunity to raise prices until you know, I don't want I we never talk about prices on purpose, but, you know, there is no appetite for a price for price increases right now. You know, in terms of, you know, I mean, I'm I'm looking at Joel. That's the greatest determining fact. That's the gating issue is I I don't think anyone in this industry I'm confident having having been involved with two two current competitors previously, Joel and I, no one has a lower product cost basis than Cactus.

No one. And I think that it's fair to say that we've, each year, we've reduced our costs for like items. We're the big player, so we get the best pricing. We have the most leverage with suppliers. We probably have the deepest relationships.

We're also very loyal to our suppliers, and I think they reward us. So there's a lot of cost reductions that are flowing through our system right now. And that's the reason that Steve says the tariff headwind, although worst case scenario looks like 3%, it's more like 1%. The reason for that is not because we're raising our prices to our customers. It's because we've been successful lowering our product costs.

I wish I could give you a better answer, but

Speaker 3

Yes. Obviously, is key, right, because we include our indirect expenses in our margins that we report. So the more the top line grows, the more leverage we get on that figure.

Speaker 9

All right. That makes sense. That's all for me. Appreciate the color, guys. Thanks.

Speaker 0

And we have a question from Curt Hallead from RBC Capital. Your line is open.

Speaker 5

Hey. Good morning. Good. How are you doing?

Speaker 2

We're doing great.

Speaker 5

Good to hear from you guys. Good update too. Appreciate that. Scott, I you know, my my angle, I guess, is on the on the rental side of the business, and and I know you've made a very concerted effort to, you know, develop a new technology and kinda referenced it on the call again today. Just wondering if you can give us an update as to what percent of your rental business came from new technology deployments in the quarter.

And then you talked about how you pretty much E and Ps have squeezed the, the lemon as much as they can on pricing, and now the focus is on efficiency, which I would think, would bode really well for your technology, you know, acceptance as you get into into next year. So just wondering if you can comment on that as well.

Speaker 3

I'll take the first part. The innovations were high single digits as a percent of rental. But I think Scott noted in the script that that started from a very low base at the beginning of the quarter, so trending up the right direction by the end of the quarter.

Speaker 2

So your question about efficiencies. The problem we have right now, Curtis, is this the rental business has been hit in a similar fashion as the pressure pumping business in terms of expectations for lower prices. And to be quite frank, we have competitors who are willing to provide, including some of their higher tech offerings, which makes it very problematic. Now while I continue to believe and this whole group believes that what we I can't promise you that these customers are gonna pay for it. They just seem, to be less willing to pay for those, on the frac side than they are on the drilling side in our experience.

And And because frac related innovations historically have consumed a disproportionately high share of capital, we're just not going to invest until we feel very comfortable that customers are going to pay for that. As I mentioned in the script, the good news is a high percentage of our new enhancements require very little capital, at least in comparison to frac valves. But nonetheless, we expect to be paid for it. And, what I've learned in forty three years in this business, once you begin to give that away, it's very hard to get it back.

Speaker 5

That's for sure. And and that's really good color. I appreciate that. That's it.

Speaker 2

This industry at Cactus, and and it's more of an art than a science. And And so we're not driven just by volumes. Never traded market share for margins, and we're not going to start.

Speaker 5

Okay, great. That's great. Thanks, Scott. Appreciate it.

Speaker 0

And we have a question from Sean Keane from JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Speaker 2

Thanks. Hey, good morning. Sean, how are you?

Speaker 4

Great. Thank you. So to come back to the market share topic in products, you all really scaled this business in the last downturn. So it's not a surprise that you're doing it again, but I think the magnitude is what's maybe surprising people today. So can we just unpack a little more of the progress with the majors specifically in that business?

It seems like that's always been a pretty big prize that we've been looking to see how that develops. So if we just dial into maybe how much of a factor those customers have been in the recent share gains and maybe what inning we are in terms of penetration with the majors?

Speaker 2

I think on a percentage I'm only gonna talk to you on a percentage basis. Sean, on a percentage basis, I think the majors accounted for the highest percentage, as I say, of growth. But they were closely followed by privates. And so it was a large percentage. So it's progressing very well, but I'm not going to postulate as to where that's going to end up.

I just want to emphasize to you that if I look at our market share gains, I've been very surprised that they have not resulted from the large publicly traded E and Ps. And having said that, that group, which is the core of our business, has indicated to us that they have plans to increase their rig count during late fourth quarter and into the first quarter. So that's why I'm optimistic about market share gains. We have a very aggressive sales staff, and they've done very well in penetrating really all segments of the customer base right now.

Speaker 4

Well, appreciate that, Scott. And actually that's the other topic I wanted to maybe dig into a little more. So you've got some shifting competitive landscapes for products and rentals. As you noticed, your sales force is really trying to dial in and get each side. Customers are focused on efficiency.

They have a little more time on their hands maybe at the moment. Is there any more commentary you can give us on the efficacy of cross pollination between those two? Again, we've always talked about the rentals being kind of your first lead in. Let's just say the majors is one type of customer. Can we maybe share a little more commentary on how those two have been able to cross pollinate in the last quarter or two?

Speaker 2

Yes. I don't see any cross pollinization. It really is too independent pardon me, by and large, it's like dealing with two independent customers. The completion group, completely separate from the drilling group.

Speaker 4

All right. Fair enough. Thanks a lot.

Speaker 2

Thank you.

Speaker 0

Okay. Your next question comes from the line of Blake Chenwong from Wolfe Research. Your line is open.

Speaker 7

Yes, thanks. I'm going to follow Sean's line of question there just on procurement and some of the shifting dynamics that you've seen. And really the question boils down to market share lumpiness one way or the other. I would imagine with the large customers it's fairly bureaucratic and you're selling maybe into a handful of rigs whereas with the privates you might have a company man who only uses Cactus and won't go any other way. So I guess my question, are you seeing with consolidation maybe market share becoming a bit more lumpy where your wins will be bigger chunks of share and your losses similarly?

Or is procurement still very much at the rig level and you expect to see kind of smooth undulations as you ultimately to increase your share moving forward?

Speaker 2

Yes. Procurement for our product business is not at the field level. So it's at the headquarter level. And depending upon the customer, the very large independents, it's led by procurement. I would say the medium size E and Ps publicly traded.

The smaller ones, it's driven by mostly by engineering folks. But it's very hard. Procurement loves to get involved. It's very hard for procurement to push back on efficiency gains. And so, it's it's not like an international tender where they take six bids and then a buy.

Our efficiency and productivity contributions play a large part. In terms of the consolidation of the industry, the truth of the matter is for all but the one I mentioned, we've been on both sides. So when I look at market share gains, as I said, I think the risk is that they rationalize their CapEx as they try to high grade their prospects. So short term, I think we'll probably see a reduction in their combined rig counts. Long term, I think we'll see an increase in their combined rig counts.

Speaker 3

I would also just add, I think the trend continues that if you have one customer you get all of their rigs. That's been our experience. But it's not that you don't flip a switch and then all of a sudden have all their rigs. You know, that's the intent when win you that customer, but it takes, you know, a period of time to to get on to all those rigs as the other company moves off. So you you ask, can do you see more lumpy ads?

Yes, they're lumpy if you look start of one quarter to end of another quarter, but it's more gradual in our eyes because we're seeing adds through the month as we work up to 100% of the rigs.

Speaker 7

Got it. That makes sense. And then one more if I could. Just on the new innovations, could you help us maybe frame what the contribution there is? It seems like last quarter it was all about price and optimizing costs for the operator.

Wondering if you expect a reacceleration of the new product innovations. And then pretty interesting commentary around the remote capabilities. We've heard a lot about it from the diversified service providers, not necessarily on the product side. So on that, any sort of cost implication for you guys where you can maybe move structural margins higher because you're doing things more remotely?

Speaker 2

Yes. Well, I think that when we first engaged in some of the more innovative products for our frac rental program, it was to build a moat around and protect our legacy frac products. I think that's still the case. So it remains to be seen what the industry is willing to pay. There's a lot of remote activity going on right now.

As you know, it's accelerating. We honestly believe, and I've never misled this group, that we have a much better mousetrap. We'll just have to see how much the industry our customers are willing to pay for that. I still feel like it's pretty much expected that we're going to move forward in that regard. And I look at it as probably the greatest contribution is going to come from increased utilization of our current assets.

In other words, I'm not seeing customers pay a whole lot more for the innovations that have been commercialized over the last six or nine months.

Speaker 7

Got it. Understood. So you see it more as a revenue implication, building the moat, maybe getting some more market share on the rental side as opposed to we can streamline our costs, we can maybe rationalize the folks that are monitoring operations remotely, that sort of thing. It's more revenue as opposed to a cost driver for you guys.

Speaker 2

That's exactly right.

Speaker 3

Yes. But obviously we have very healthy EBITDA margins on the rental side. So any revenue implications have good results on the bottom line.

Speaker 7

Very fair. Appreciate the time guys. Thanks.

Speaker 0

There are no further questions at this time. Presenters, please continue.

Speaker 2

All right. Thanks, everybody. Stay safe, and I appreciate your support of the company.

Speaker 0

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect.