Dawson Geophysical Company (DWSN) Q4 2025 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Good day, and welcome to the Dawson Geophysical Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. Statements made by management during this call with respect to forecasts, estimates or other expectations regarding future events or which provide any information other than historical facts may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and include known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, many of which the company is unable to predict or control, that may cause the company's actual future results or performance to materially differ from any future results or performance expressed or implied by those statements. Wherever possible, we will try to identify those forward-looking statements by using words such as believe, expect, anticipate, pursue, forecast and similar expressions. These risks and uncertainties include the risk factors disclosed by the company from time to time in its filings with the SEC, including in the company's annual report on Form 10-K, expected to be filed with the SEC on March 31, 2026. Furthermore, as we start this call, please also refer to the statement regarding forward-looking statements incorporated in the company's press release issued yesterday, and please note that the content of the company's conference call this morning is covered by those statements. During this conference call, management will make references to adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow, which are non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found in the company's current earnings release, a copy of which is located on the company's website, www.dawson3d.com. The call is scheduled for 30 minutes, and the company will not provide any guidance. Shareholders who might have questions are encouraged to contact the company directly. I would now like to turn the call over to Tony Clark, President and CEO of Dawson Geophysical Company. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Olivia. Good morning and welcome to Dawson Geophysical's Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings and Operations Conference Call. As Olivia said, my name is Tony Clark, President and CEO of the company. Joining me on the call is Ian Shaw, Chief Financial Officer. Before I start the call, I have a few items to cover. If you would like to listen to a replay of today's call, it will be available via webcast by going to the Investor Relations section of the company's website at www.dawson3d.com. Information reported on this call speaks only of today, Tuesday, March 31, 2026. And therefore, you are advised that time-sensitive information may no longer be accurate at the time of any replay listening. Turning to a review of our current operations, outlook and fourth quarter year-end December 31, 2025 results. I am proud of the continued progress the Dawson team made during 2025, generating $14 million in cash from our operations and reinvesting a portion of that into new single-node channels to increase our capacity and strengthen our foundation for profitability and our future. We purchased $24.2 million of new equipment, primarily new single-node channels, and received our first delivery in August 2025. Due to demand from our customers, we accelerated our delivery time line throughout the fourth quarter and received the final delivery in January 2026. This equipment has been highly utilized in our U.S. and Canadian operations. These single-node channels weigh approximately 1 pound, compared to our legacy equipment which weighs approximately 10 pounds. We believe this lighter-weight equipment will provide us with improved efficiency in our operations. Currently, we have over 180,000 channels of legacy and new equipment available to service the industry. And we are increasing our efforts to secure passive seismic monitoring with positive activity. We believe that we have a significant competitive advantage for larger seismic jobs due to our higher channel count and our quality of operated energy source units. While we continue to grow our top line and invest in our future, we are continually monitoring our cost structure and reduced our general and administrative expenses 9% in 2025 compared to 2024. We believe that the Dawson team has shown continuous improvement over the past 2 years, which is evidenced by the continued improvement in our profitability metrics. We expect that improvement to continue into 2026. I will now turn the call over to Ian Shaw, who will review the financial results. Then I will return with some final remarks on our operations and outlook into the first quarter of 2026. Ian?

Thank you, Tony, and good morning. For the fourth quarter ended December 31, 2025, the company reported fee revenues of $22.9 million, an increase of 67% compared to $13.8 million for the fourth quarter of '24. The company reported net income of $0.6 million or $0.02 per common share, compared to a net loss of $0.8 million or $0.03 per common share for the quarter ended December 31, '24. The company reported adjusted EBITDA of $3.3 million, compared to $0.9 million quarter-over-quarter. Now I'll cover some results for the year ended December 2025. The company reported fee revenues of $16.9 million (sic) [ $61.9 million ], an increase of 16% compared to $53.5 million in 2024. In 2025, the company reported a net loss of $1.9 million or $0.06 per common share, compared to a net loss of $4.7 million or $0.13 per common share in 2024. The company reported adjusted EBITDA of $4.7 million for the year in 2025, compared to adjusted EBITDA of $2 million for the year in 2024, which was a 139% increase year-over-year. Regarding our capital budget and liquidity, in 2025, we generated $14 million in operating cash flow and increased our cash balance to $4.9 million as of the end of the year, compared to $1.4 million at the end of 2024. In October '25, we entered into a revolving credit facility with a maximum lender commitment of $5 million, and had a borrowing base of $4.9 million and no balance outstanding on our revolver as of December 31, 2025. The company's Board of Directors approved a capital budget of $3 million for 2026, which included the final payment under the equipment single-node channel purchase of $0.9 million, which was made in January of 2026. And with that, I'll turn the call back to Tony for some comments on our operations and outlook.

Thank you, Ian. As indicated in our earnings release issued yesterday, activity levels during the fourth quarter increased with 4 crews operating in the Lower 48 and 2 crews operating in Canada. The company was operating 1 large channel crew and 3 smaller channel crews operating in the United States and into the first quarter of 2026. High crude utilization in the fourth quarter resulted in healthy margins and profitability. And we are experiencing an increase in utilization and revenue in the first quarter of 2026. We resumed our Canadian operations in the fourth quarter of '25 with 2 crews and moved to the first quarter of 2026 with 3 large channel count crews. We anticipate our Canadian operations to have a successful first quarter. We've expanded our customer base to include more unconventional exploration, such as carbon capture, geothermal and critical rare earth minerals, as well as other uses of seismic acquisition capabilities. And we are seeing an increase in bid activity for these projects, as well as oil and gas exploration. I wish to thank all of our hardworking employees, valued clients and trusted shareholders. Now we will open up the lines for any questions.

[Operator Instructions] And we have a question coming from the line of John Daniel with Daniel Energy Partners.

I've been away from the seismic market for some time so my question might show some ignorance, and for that, I apologize. But how would you characterize sort of the quality of the service technology that you all provide today versus maybe what you would have had 5 to 10 years ago? In other words, just what are some of the key developments that you all have accomplished over the last several years?

Tony?

I'm sorry. What was the question again? I'm sorry. You said that what are some of the key developments that we have the last couple of years?

Well, I'll dumb it down for me. I haven't been super-close to this part of the space for a while. And so I'm just curious like how has the service, the technology, how has it evolved over the last, say, 5 to 10 years? Just a little bit of history would be hugely helpful.

Okay. Well, obviously, the big factor is going to these single nodes, which I quoted going from a 1-pound node to -- from a 10-pound node to a 1-pound node, it certainly helps in our acquisition characterizations of mob and de-mob, getting the equipment to the job site, from the job site, reduces our footprint in the field with less personnel, less equipment, decreases the HSE portion of our operations. And it's a higher technology. We went down from a 10-hertz phone to a 5-hertz phone. So that's the main movement of our operations.

Okay. And then an unrelated follow-up. I know you don't want to give guidance, and that's fine, but just in light of what's going on in the Middle East, have you seen any early signs or changes in demand for services as a result of the conflict?

Well, we saw an uptick for the last 3 quarters of increase in bid opportunities and utilization, as shown in our quarterly reviews. We're not sure that the -- there's been a major uptick coming around because of the war or the conflict. These budgets were set last year for exploration this year, with projects identified. So there may be some. But we anticipate if this conflict would resolve soon, that the activity level would remain at its present consistency.

[Operator Instructions] And I am showing no further questions in the queue at this time. I will turn the call back over to Mr. Tony Clark.

We want to thank everybody for attending and listening this morning. We wish you all well. That concludes our call.

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our conference call for today. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.