Arty Straehla
Analyst · Stephens. Your line is open
Thank you, Don and good morning everyone. The second quarter of 2018 marked our seventh quarter as a public company and the fourth consecutive record quarter on an adjusted EBITDA basis. We are able to generate $149 million in adjusted EBITDA on $534 million of revenue, which is up from the first quarter of 2018 by 14% and 8% respectively. It was a busy period as our team executed well within our core businesses and we have been able to further improve our balance sheet, while focusing on some growth initiatives. We spent roughly $72 million in CapEx, the majority of which was for the expansion of our infrastructure and transportation and the expansion of our sand facilities. We completed two accretive acquisitions for $14 million and still paid off 100% of the borrowings of $39 million on our credit facility during the period, leaving us debt free. 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 division performed exceptionally well in Puerto Rico. Similarly, our OFS teams excelled in spite the apparent concerns of softness in the market maintained full utilization during the period. From a portfolio perspective, our Q2 results again underscore our differentiation from many of the OFS companies we are compared to. As we look ahead, we envision a continued diversification towards industrial sectors to complement our existing OFS asset base. Consistent with our transition towards the less cyclical platform, our Board of Directors initiated a quarterly dividend, which was announced in July and will be paid starting in mid-August. This initial dividend reflects our balance shareholder focus on both growth and income. While the implied yield is modest at this time, we feel that it is a starting point and is signal to shareholders that we are conscious about the need for a balanced return. It also affords us the opportunity to incrementally increase the dividend amount in the coming years as our earnings grow. During the second quarter, we closed two acquisitions, one in the crude transportation business and the other expanding our cementing operations while acidizing in West Texas. Combined, we paid $14 million for these acquisitions, which is modest in scale and offers us further options to allocate capital to these businesses, which has already begun. We expect them to contribute immediately to our results both in terms of customer contact as well as cash flow. The quick transportation operation has historically focused on the Oklahoma market and since closing the transaction, we have expanded into the Texas market. We have doubled the fleet and anticipate further expansion through the end of the year. Current differentials remained favorable for crude transportation in both markets and this is a logical step out from our existing transportation businesses offering us another opportunity for expansion. The integration of crude transportation into our other logistics offerings allows us to be a more complete transportation company. We are currently looking at other facets of the transportation industry for possible expansion to further broaden our breadth of logistics offerings. We are currently evaluating approximately 25 transactions, some of which provide services that are in high demand due to bottlenecks in the current oilfield and infrastructure service space and are expected to have rapid paybacks. In addition, we are evaluating several opportunities that would represent a step-out from our current asset base and tied to our interest to further expand our industrial presence and could provide stable cash flows in the years to come. As our history has shown, we will remain disciplined in the deployment of capital, choosing only the transactions that are projected to meet or exceed our hurdle rates. Now, let me give you an update on our current operations starting with the infrastructure division. Our team has been in Puerto Rico for over 275 days or nearly 10 months as of today. We continue to work closely with PREPA and other governmental agencies to improve the resiliency of the energy infrastructure network and have begun the task of reconstructing parts of the electrical grid to both harden it and provide better protection from future storms. We remind you this process is really just getting underway from a reconstruction standpoint. While the bulk of power has been restored to the island, the fragility of the system remains. In the continental United States, we remain in discussions with several large investor owned utilities to expand our operating footprint and build our backlog in all of our operating areas. The infrastructure division’s total backlog was approximately $1.4 billion at the end of the second quarter as compared to $900 million at the end of the first quarter of 2018. 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 second quarter was a strong one. We pumped 1,815 stages during the second quarter of 2018 with our EBITDA margins for our pressure pumping division coming in at approximately 21%. All 6 of our frac fleets remained active for the full quarter, with 3 of our 4 fleets in the Northeast, 2 in the Mid-Continent and 1 in the Permian. While there has been significant speculation among investors as to the current demand for pressure pumping as of late, we can report that our fleets are committed to stable customers for the remainder of the year. Based on our current calendar, we anticipate stable utilization and positive cash flows throughout the balance of 2018. In early July, we finalized an amendment to our pressure pumping contract with Gulfport extending the expiration date to December 2021 providing for an additional 39 months. We value this working relationship with Gulfport and look forward to continuing to work on efficiencies with them over the coming years, which should benefit both companies. Our view of the pressure pumping market has not changed with regard to adding frac capacity and we anticipate remaining at 6 fleets for the foreseeable future. As of today, the cost of new equipment in current spot market pricing, do not justify further investment. Turning to sand, we are happy to announce that we have extended the contract in place with Gulfport Energy for 300,000 tons per annum until December 31, 2021. This extension coincides with the recent extension of the pressure pumping contract, with both having the same expiration date. We sold approximately 780,000 tons of sand during the second quarter of 2018, of which 19% was brokered. The average sales price for the sand sold during the second quarter of 2018 was $43.09 per ton. Our blended second quarter production costs came in at approximately $18 per ton in line with our projections, allowing us to support EBITDA per ton of just over $25. As our internal capacity increases throughout 2018, we anticipate a gradual decrease in our production cost towards the mid-teens by the end of 2018. The expansion of our Taylor facility is to 1.75 million tons per annum is now complete with both the dry and wet plants operating. The equipment needed to upgrade the dry plant at Piranha to 1.9 million tons per year has been delivered and is expected to be installed and commissioned in the third quarter. Approximately half of our processing capacity is expected to be consumed by customers utilizing our pressure pumping services and we currently have another 1.3 million tons under long-term take-or-pay contracts at an average sales price of $43 per ton across multiple grades. 2 of the 3 contracts in place are 3-year take-or-pay which run through the late 2020. The third contract with Gulfport Energy runs through 2021. Before passing the call to Mark, let me sum up management’s transition over the past 18 months in this way. Following our rapid expansion in 2017, we are in the midst of a steady transition of our asset base from a pure OFS company to more of a diversified industrial company. We are attracted to the reduced cyclicality, stable cash flows and contracting nature in which we feel we can deploy our cash flow into effectively. As we move away from the traditional OFS supply demand limitations, we believe the investments made across a wider platform should drive multiple appreciation frame longer term earnings sustainability in growth and ultimately push our market value higher. We anticipate a continued elevated level of free cash flow during the back half of 2018. We remain focused on reinvesting this cash on growth within our core operating areas and possibly entering into new areas. We will remain disciplined, patient and exclusively focused on opportunities that meet or exceed our targeted thresholds. Let me turn the call over to Mark to take you through the financial performance during the second quarter of 2018 after which we will take questions.