Darron Anderson
Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please go ahead
Thank you, operator. Good morning and welcome to Ranger Energy Services' fourth quarter 2019 earnings conference call. Joining me today is Brandon Blossman, our CFO, who will offer his comments in a moment.While today's call is focused on our Q4 results and sharing outlook for 2020, I would like to spend the beginning of this call highlighting some of our operational accomplishments and metrics for the full year of 2019.To set the backdrop for 2019, I would like to remind you a few strategies we communicated early this -- early last year. Our primary focus entering 2019 was cash flow generation and using that cash to further paydown the modest level of debt carried on our balance sheet. Operationally, we were seeking to drive efficiencies not only at the wellhead, but also within our back-office processes and systems. And finally, we wanted to broaden our customer base by increasing our exposure to existing and new top-tier customers.As you will know, strategy execution can often be met with headwinds. One particular headwind of 2019 was the softening market as compared to 2018. On a year-over-year basis, average oil and natural gas prices dropped 12% and 18%, respectively. The U.S. land drilling rig count dropped 10%, while completion activity finished 14% below 2018 levels. In spite of these market conditions, I'm very proud of the results produced by our team and our successful strategy execution.So, speaking of the strategies. First, the strategy to drive efficiencies. Defined year-over-year markets softness, Ranger’s combined business delivered an 11% growth in revenue and a 24% adjusted EBITDA growth.While we're pleased with these results, the real accomplishment was achieving this growth while operating more efficiently. Efficiency gains were delivered at the wellhead, bringing value not only to ourselves, but equally important to our customers. Additionally, we achieve improved performance through our back-office processes and systems.To highlight a few metrics. Our year-over-year average headcount was down 1%, but due to our revenue growth and more efficient use of our workforce, our revenue per employee increased 12%. Within our Mallard Completion business, the team delivered a 22% increase in stages per truck, a definite driver for our customers' performance.Outside the field, Brandon and his team did an excellent job driving efficiencies within our back-office processes, resulting in an 8% reduction in our already low G&A cost structure versus 2018. While I can point to several more achievements, these metrics are an indication of the efforts and results delivered both operationally and through our supporting staff.Our second strategy, increasing our exposure to existing and new top-tier customers. This strategy is one that you're probably most familiar with, as we've talked about it on the last couple of calls.Although, Ranger has maintained a high quality customer base, we were missing a few large and important integrated all companies. As we executed on our efficiency strategy across 2019 and combined it with our strong safety performance, high quality asset based and sound balance sheet, we began to pursue these missing IOCs and gain their market share.During the year, we spoke of two multiyear, multi rig contract wins. Deploying rigs for these types of contracts came with one-time upfront expenses that penalize our income statement during the back half of the year. But they also came with the opportunity to deploy high-end full rig asset packages, resulting in higher revenue per hour earnings and increase utilization.The most tangible result of this strategy is our team's ability to grow rig hours in the fourth quarter as compared to the third quarter of 2019. This achievement was accomplished during the traditional seasonal low fourth quarter activity period, which further -- which was further impacted by severe year-end budget exhaustion.In spite of these challenges, successful strategy execution led to fourth quarter rig hours increasing 3%. Our revenue per hour also increased 3%, driven by the deployment of high-end full rig packages.And third and finally, our focus on cash flow generation. The operational expectations previously discussed, combined with our team's disciplined approach to capital spending, definitely fuel our cash generation in 2019.While certain 2018 growth capital commitments spilled over in the first half of 2019, once completed, our second half 2019 CapEx spend totaled a mere $7 million, which included two means ofmaintenance capital.Our modest incremental growth CapEx was direct to smaller, high return, quick payback ancillary assets to support some of our new contract wins. Our high quality, young asset base continue to pay dividends with full year maintenance CapEx totaling $3.6 million.The stewardship of capital demonstrated in 2019 led to $27 million of free cash flow after growth CapEx, which implies a 25% cash flow year, and a corresponding net debt reduction of $27 million. All figures we're quite proud of.Now, I would like to turn our focus to the fourth quarter specifically, starting with a few highlights. Our Wireline continues to gain market share. Stage count saw a slight increase against an industry-wide completion activity drop of more than 20%. However, continued pricing pressure more than offset the stage count increase netting to an 8% drop in revenue. The impact to margins was once again this quarter offset by disciplined focus on labor and input costs and our ongoing highly efficient operations.Next highlight. High-grading our High Spec Rig customer base continued. During the quarter, we deployed six additional rigs to satisfy contract wins and other new rig demand. These rig additions and associated rig hours more than offset the normal seasonal decline, resulting in our highest quarterly rig hours of the year.Within our Other Services, last quarter we saw some under-performance in a specific line of business within our Other Services segment. During the third quarter, we completed a full restructuring of this service offering to better align our cost structure with the near-term expected revenue stream. As a result, our restructuring efforts had a positive impact to the segment's fourth quarter results.And finally, Processing Solutions. While this segment has historically seen limited performance volatility, this quarter was an exception. MRU’s coming off contract during the quarter were not quickly rolled over or redeployed. For Q4, revenue was down 32% sequentially. While this under-performance is likely to impact Q1 as well, we are expecting this trend to reverse itself and look forward to a return to historic performance levels later in the first half of 2020.Now to give you a little more details on the quarter. Specifically for the quarter, revenue was down a modest 5% to $80 million from Q3 $84 million. Growth within our High Spec Rig segment was more than offset by declines in Other Services and Processing Solutions. Specifically, within our High Spec Rig, we experienced a revenue increase of 7%. This revenue growth was driven by increases of 3% in both rig hours and hourly rates.In regards to hourly rates, we did not achieve accurate price increases during quarter. But the deployment of ancillary support equipment with the additional rigs placed to the service resulted in a higher revenue per hour mix. As stated earlier, the modest amount of capital spend in the second half of the year was largely directed to these types of assets, which we immediately deploy at full utilization.Moving onto our Completion and Other Services segment. Our Mallard-branded Wireline completion business saw a modest 8% decrease in revenue driven by ongoing pricing pressure, and as expected fourth quarter seasonality. This overall revenue decline was tempered by record stage count during the fourth quarter which just eclipsed our previous peak. Quite an accomplishment given the backdrop of a significant decline in market conditions, with sources to calculate to be down somewhat to levels 20% for completion activity.This result was achieved through a step up in efficiencies, delivering more stages per truck day rather than more units in the field. It also implies some material market share gains during the quarter. As in previous quarters, we are seeing pricing pressure in this business. However, we continue to have success offsetting that pressure with per unit cost reductions.Revenues from our remaining services captured within this reporting segment were down for the quarter, with several service lines showing decline for the quarter in line with holiday impact expectations. However, the structural changes undertaken in our well-testing line of business to better align costs and revenue, as we discussed last quarter, paid dividends in the fourth quarter supporting flat segment margins in a declining revenue environment.And finally, as I mentioned earlier, our Processing Solutions segment stumbled with several contract terms ending during the Q4 course for and built units not being immediately rolled into new terms, we view this as a temporary issue, but nonetheless, we are disappointed in the Processing Solutions results this quarter.Here, overall segment revenue was down 32% on a decrease in MRU utilization. An uptick in MRU rate and an increasing gas cooler count provided a modest offset to the MRU utilization decline. We are in various stages of several contract opportunities to deploy idle MRUs back into our current space or for other potential new applications and hope to share improvements on this front on our first quarter call.Moving onto consolidated earnings. Adjusted EBITDA decreased 7% to $11.4 million from $12.2 million in Q3, while margins were modestly decreased from 14.5% to 14.2%. Brandon will provide further detail now, but as you can see, overall, it was a very solid quarter, and a good demonstration of the resiliency of our business in a very tough market.Brandon, I will now turn the call over you.