Arty Straehla
Analyst · Johnson Rice
Thank you, Don, and good morning, everyone. The first quarter of 2018 marked our sixth quarter as a public company and the third consecutive record quarter on an EBITDAR basis. The first quarter, while difficult due to several factors, showed the strenght for our integrated and diversified model. The quarter was driven by a successful execution within our infrastructure segment, while our integrated completion business avoided many of the standard logistic issues than many of our competitors faced. The customers that utilized are combined patient pumping sand and logistics capabilities experienced an uninterrupted completion of their wells in a timely manner. While Mark will elaborate further on our financial performance in his comments, I wanted to point out a few key highlights I am particularly proud of. Our Infrastructure segment approximately 65% of our overall revenue during the first quarter, disregard differentiation. Expansion into infrastructure activities was targeted specifically, to lessen the impacts of the volatility seen over recent years in the commodity markets and stabilizing our earnings potential. During the first quarter, we spent approximately $36 million on capital expenditures and we were able to reduce our debt by approximately $61 million. As of March 31, 2018, we had $39 million in debt, down from $100 million at year-end and $10 million in cash. Looking forward to the remainder of the year, we anticipate free cash flows to allow for increased financial flexibility, which we intend to use to grow both organically and through acquisitions. We remain aquisitive and targeted acquisitions opportunistically focusing on such technological shifts, geopolitical disruptions or bottom next in current operations. The events occurring over the past 12 in the Permian Basin are a prime example of this. As many of you have heard, the rapid production growth in the Permian has caused a shortage of oil pipeline capacity and the shift in invasion sand has caused the trucking bottleneck. We were proactive in expanding our Sand hauling operations into the area in late 2017 to take advantage of one of these bottlenecks. We are currently evaluating approximately 35 transactions, some of which are in areas that would help solve bottlenecks in the current oilfields service system and are have rapid paybacks. As our history has shown, we will remain disciplined in our deployment of capital, choosing only the transactions that are projected to meet or exceed our return thresholds. Now let me give you an update on our current operations, starting with our infrastructure division. Our team has been in Puerto Rico for 191 days or just over 6 months, as of today, with nearly 1,000 people and more than 600 pieces of equipment on the island. We continue to work closely with PREPA and other governmental agencies to restore to all citizens as quickly as possible. Through the deployment of the mutual aid network in Puerto Rico and in the Northeast during recent winter storms, several large IOUs were able to see our workforce and action, which has translated into increased interest for our services. We remain in discussions with several IOUs to expand our operating footprint and build our backlog in all of our operating areas. The Infrastructures divisions total backlog was approximately $900 million at the end of the first quarter, as compared to $1 billion and the end of 2017. We continue to work across the Northeast, Southwest and Midwest portions of the U.S. and in Puerto Rico for private, public investor-owned and cooperative utilities. From an oilfield perspective, the first quarter is always the most challenging. Our teams performed very well. Starting with our frac business, the first quarter was operationally challenging. Our teams did an outstanding job of moving sands to the jobs where we were supplying sands and while our job site sands supply times, our crews did not see downtime due to lack of sand. The same cannot be said for some of our customers that supplied their own sand or last mile trucking. Due to the sand logistics challenges, we experienced some idle time on a portion of our fleets, which impacted our financial performance during the quarter. The vertical integration of Mammoth remains a distinguishing factor for our customers. Inquiries from potential customers regarding the use of our suite of completion offerings has increased over the past few months as a result of the recent events. As of today, all of our fleets are operating with 3 fleets in the Northeast, 2 in the midcontinent area and 1 in the Permian. Based on export pricing today, we do not change your view with regard to adding track capacity. We feel the need to see pricing increase by approximately 10% to 15% before ordering any additional fleets. We remain in close contact with equipment manufacturers with the times remaining in the 6 to 7 month timeframe. As you will recall, the previous expansion of our pressure pumping fleet during the 2017 was done at approximately have the current new build cost, providing attractive returns. At this point, given leading-edge pricing, combined with all retail prices for new equipment, we believe the payback is simply not there to meet our return thresholds. We pump 1,672 stages during the first quarter of 2018 with our EBITDA margins coming in at 17%. While our margins were slightly lower than the fourth quarter, this was a direct result of lower utilization caused by the self sourcing of sand by some of our customers. We anticipate a sequential recovery to stable utilization throughout the balance of 2018. Turning to sand. When was the realistic issues made for a very challenging quarter. I can't say enough about our team, which, despite logistical challenges, was able to facilitate the movement of sand, both via rail and barge to keep our pressure pumping cruise supplied. Again, our vertically integrated model work as design. The rail issues that first arose in mid-February have eased some but sand transportation is still not back to normal. Our teams continue to work through these issues to deliver sand to both our crews and our customers. While we don't have a timetable as to when the rail condition will be fully alleviated, we anticipate the issue should be resolved by year-end. The expansion of tailor a facility to 1.75 million tonnes per annum is now complete with both the dry and wet plants operating. The equipment needed to upgrade the dry transplant at Prona is on order and expected to be delivered, installed and commissioned by mid-2018. Once the expansion at prom is completed, Mammoth's total processing capability is expected to increase to approximately 4.4 million tons per annum. Approximately half of our processing capability or 2.1 million tons is expected to be consumed by customers utilizing the pressure pumping services and we're currently have another 1 million tons under long-term take-or-pay contracts. The 2 contracts in place are 3-year take-or-pay agreements, which run through late 2020. We sold approximately 735,000 tons of sand during the first quarter of 2018, of which 19% was brokered. The average sales price for the sand sold during the first quarter of 2018 was $44.42 per ton. Sand demand and pricing remain strong, with most of our current available processing capabilities sold out for the next 60 days. Our current pricing for 40/70 approximately $57.50 per ton, with some sport markets trading in the mid $60s per 10. Our blended first quarter production cost came in at approximately $19 per 10, in line with our projections. As our internal capacity increases through -- throughout 2018, we anticipate a gradual decrease in our production cost towards the mid-teens by mid-2018. Before passing the call to Mark, let me take a moment to stress one point; Following the rapid increase in our asset base in 2017, we felt that Mammoth has the necessary management teams in place to allow for expansion in all of the operating areas. We remain acquisitive and intent to be a consolidated in the years to come through acquisitions, organic growth and vertical integration to enhance our efficiencies and take advantage of for managements lean manufacturing background. Given the significant free cash flow's we expect in 2018 and beyond, we anticipate building a cash position throughout the year. We remain focused on reinvesting the cash to grow in our core operating areas and possibly into new areas. We will remain disciplined and intend to target opportunities that are projected to meet or exceed our targeted thresholds. We have no interest in growing just for the sake of growing. If our cash flows continue as we expect, and we are more identified organic or strategic growth opportunities that meet our standards, we will evaluate other alternatives to improve stockholder value. Let me turn the call over to Mark to take you through the financial performance during the first quarter of 2018, after which we will take questions.