Charles Young
Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is now open
Thanks Phil. I'm pleased to report that Smart Sand has posted another strong quarter of financial performance for our investors. Just as important, we continue to make substantial progress in executing our long-term vision that is to become an integrated full-service provider of frac sand and logistic support to deliver mine to well site proppant solutions for our customers. Here are some highlights of the quarter, we generated our highest quarterly sales volume ever 839,000 tons. We reported $19.3 million of adjusted EBITDA, that’s a 229% increase over first quarter results, we completed our capacity expansion increasing our annual nameplate capacity to 5.5 million tons, Our Van Hook terminal became operational in April and through the acquisition of Quickthree solutions, we expanded our logistics capabilities into the last mile segment. With the capacity expansion at Oakdale now complete, we’re actively pursuing new contracts and we’re continuing to expand our spot sale market opportunities. We continue to see an appetite for these long-term contracts from both new and existing customers and as of June 30th, 58% of our annual nameplate capacity is contracted under long-term take-or-pay contracts. These are contracts that have a weighted-average life of just over two years. We’re currently in active discussions with multiple customers for new contract service operations in the Permian, the Marcellus, and the Bakken basins. As we prove during the most recent downturn our contracts, our fully enforceable and to provide as with the positive downside protection specifically around pricing exposure, further as we increased our focus on logistics will have the opportunity to increase our pricing and margins as we deliver more sands into the basins. Our first priority is to maximize the utilization of our Oakdale facility. As we've said on previous calls our goal is to be at least 75% contracted at our Oakdale mine, we believe we have good current opportunities to reach this goal over the next few quarters. We're going to continue to focus on making this facility, a low cost producer they can compete in any market environment. We will also keep incremental investments logistics assets to turn our growing mine to wellhead logistics capabilities into increase sales volume from Oakdale. Now, I want to highlight a couple of trends we're seeing in the current marketplace, trends that we are well positioned to take advantage of. First, there is renewed focus by some E&P on the quality of sand and we’re seeing this quality focus away from players in the Permian basin. For example, we've recently had customers request conductivity testing for our 100 mesh sand that's something we've never been asked for before. These requests are coming from Permian producers who are not satisfied with their current well results using regional sand. As a result of this renewed interest in sand quality, we're having active contract discussion with several Permian producers. This gives us increased confidence that there will continue to be demand for premium Northern White sand in the Permian even if new regional supplier ramps up to expected levels of the next 12 to 24 months. Second, customers are continuing to seek sand providers that can provide solutions to deliver sand, both cost effectively and efficiently into the operating basin. With that in mind, we took substantial steps during the quarter toward our long-term goal of becoming a fully integrated mind to well site proppant solution provider. Here are two examples. Our Van Hook terminal which serves the Bakken formation became operational in April. This facility is unit trend capable we've already begun servicing customers through this location. In June, we completed the acquisition of Quickthree Solutions, a highly regarded manufacturer of portable vertical frac sand storage solutions at the well site. We're very excited about expanding the portfolio of sand products and logistic services that we offer to our customers. Now, let's talk more about Quickthree. This acquisition is important to Smart Sand because we can now provide fully integrated frac sand service from mine to well site. We now have the technology, production capacity and management team to compete in the last mile market. We see many opportunities for us to develop this line of business. Quickthree has developed, patented and deployed a sand storage system at the well site. This technology is both unique and innovative at it is addressing the short-comings of other well site storage solutions down in the market. Here are some of these advantages we see in the Quickthree product offering versus existing well site solutions. First is the ability to load sand into silos from a belly dump trailer by using our quick low portable bucket elevator. It dramatically reduces the time in cost to unload trailers at the well site. We believe that our proprietary quick load system can unload a trailer at the well site five times faster than it’s unloading dramatically. Our technology is also capable of loading each silo individually by nomadic trailer, if that is the preferred or available trucking solution for a particular well location. We have proprietary and unique trailer for our silos and quick loads. With it, we can deliver the equipment to the well site and then detach. As a result, operators will only need one or two trailers to support a fleet in the field. This lowers the cost of each fleet and it also reduces the space required for our fleet at the well site. Our storage silos contain multiple ports. This allows each silo to store a variety of mesh sizes of frac sand. And a final point, our store silos have compact footprints compared to the rest of the proppant storage industry. We’re changing Quickthree business model. We’re going from a build-to-suit and sale model to manufacturing systems for our own fleet to provide a service for our customers through the well site. This transition will take some time. We are just now ramping up the production of storage systems for our fleet. Currently, we budgeted $7 million to $10 million in capital for fleet development for the remainder of 2018. We expect to have our first fleet available for at least in the market in the third quarter and we anticipate having 5 to 7 fleets completed by year-end. We’re excited about this technology. We believe the Quickthree product line will compete very effectively in the market. We’re currently an active dialogue with several potential customers for our last mile solution. I’d now like to spend some time discussing future growth initiatives. Part of our plan is to have more direct exposure and sales opportunities in the operating basis as this demonstrated by our two recent acquisitions. So, we continue to pursue investments primarily in two growth areas, transload facilities in the operating basins and developing mine locations outside of Oakdale. Why should we invest in transloads in the operating basins? There are three major long-term benefits. First, it’s the chance to attract new contracted customers. Our own terminals will be able to market directly to companies looking to source their sand needs locally. Second, we'll have more opportunity for spot sales. We can forward deploy sand, so we can meet unanticipated customer needs fast. And third, we can catch our incremental margin on the scale of our sand farther down the supply chain. With our only in-basin terminal capacity, we can directly manage the cost of rail and terminal operations and we can sell our sand at an in-basin price. We’re currently looking at acquiring or developing transload opportunities in both the Marcellus and the Permian basins. We’ll probably add at least one more terminal location this year. In regard to developing mine sites directly in the basins, we previously disclosed that we have two locations unreleased in the Permian. For one of these locations, we started the permitting an initial design process to make this site shovel-ready. We continue to monitor the markets appetite for new regional sand in the Permian. We can move quickly to develop this location, if and when we see sufficient initial contract support to warrant the investment in a new mine location. In addition, we have our location in Hixton that has direct access to the Canadian National rail line that delivers directly into the major Canadian operating basins. We continue to evaluate opportunities in Canada and like our Permian locations we can move quickly to develop this location, if and when we get sufficient initial contract support to justify the investment. Because our initial investment costs are low in all these potential new mine locations, we can afford to be patient. We can look to develop these locations when we believe we can capture strong returns on our investment. So, in summary, it was another strong quarter and it was one in which we made some great moves to create long-term value for our shareholders. While the current market environment has slowed down a bit from the first half of the year’s strong pace, I continue to see positive trends for the industry. They include increasing long-term demand for frac sand, renewed focus on sand quality and continued interest in the integrated sand logistic exclusions from mines to the well site. Smart Sand is ready and well-positioned to take advantage of these opportunities. I'll now turn the call over to our CFO, Lee Beckelman for a closer look at the Company's second quarter results.