Holli Ladhani
Analyst · Kurt Hallead with RBC Capital. Please proceed with your question
Thanks, Chris. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Overall, we continue to execute on our strategy to strengthen and differentiate our position is the market leader in Integrated Water and Chemical Solutions, while also delivering meaningful free cash flow. The core tenants of this strategy includes developing attractive organic growth opportunities, investing in technologies that differentiate our services, reduce our costs, and expand our market share potential, and finding strategic both on M&A opportunities that enhance our capabilities, broaden our service offerings, and strengthen our customer relationships. We plan to achieve this strategy all while fortifying our balance sheet through solid free cash flow generation and returning capital to shareholders when appropriate. More specifically, during the third quarter, we grew revenues in a challenging market to strong performance on our strategic water infrastructure assets, as well as continued market penetration to our proprietary friction reducer product lines. We delivered $67 million of operating cash flow, which we deployed across several initiatives. First, we acquired a specialized market leading business that expands our water treatment capabilities with a proven team that further bridges the complementary solutions of our water services and chemicals offering. Next, we continue to invest in automation technology that differentiates our services and reduces our costs. Third, we continued the development of our strategic Northern Delaware pipeline project, which is progressing on time and on budget. And finally, we executed a modest share repurchase, returning capital to shareholders. We accomplished all of this, while strengthening our debt free balance sheet, increasing our cash position even after these capital initiatives. While the third quarter wasn't without its macro challenges, operationally Select also performed well relative to the market. Looking at the industry more broadly, U.S. unconventional activity levels typically remain strong through the third and early fourth quarter. However, as operators refocus on cash flow and capital discipline, we're seeing budget exhaustion occurring or set to occur earlier this year for many of our customers. And looking at specific activity levels for the third quarter, early indications point to modestly decreasing completions activity relative to Q2 with a fairly steep downward trajectory in September. Our own internal frac fleet tracking data indicates an 8% reduction in the number of actively during the quarter, alongside of 7% decline in the Baker Hughes horizontal rig count. Given that macro backdrop, I'm very proud of the team's performance in the context of what was otherwise a tough market. After adjusting for the previously divested well sites services business that contributed guarantee to, we delivered overall sequential revenue growth of 4%, driven by strong performance in our water infrastructure and also chemical segments. These two segments also delivered increased gross margins and our recent cost improvement efforts mitigated detrimental in our water services segment. As I mentioned, we also continue to deliver strong free cash flow during the quarter, allowing us to execute on our investment priorities, generate returns to shareholders, and continue building cash on the balance sheet. Having a clean balance sheet positions us to think and act strategically. As we said in the past, we're always looking at good strategic bolt-on that strengthen our service offerings and prioritize unique technologies. We believe our recent acquisition of Baker Hughes is well chemical services business or WCS is will refer to it perfectly exemplifies this strategy is it's very complimentary to our existing water treatment capabilities. This business is an industry leading provider of advanced water treatment chemical solutions, spanning the full water life cycles and serves all major U.S. basin with its largest area of operations being the Permian Basin. We plan to report the financial results of the WCS business. Within our chemical segment going forward, this business will work closely with the operational leaders of each of our segments to provide comprehensive solutions to our customers. If the water sourcing supply chain continues to become more complex, and the opportunities for produced water reuse continues to grow the interplay of the relationship between water quality and the chemistry behind the frac fluid system continues to garner increased focus from our customers. We believe the comprehensive nature of our existing customer relationship, service capabilities and technical expertise to cross those water and chemicals allow us to more effectively grow this business, further differentiating our market leading position and advancing the strategy that began with the Rockwater merger a couple of years ago. I'd also like to add this acquisition establishes a strong strategic, sourcing and product development relationship with one of the preeminent chemical manufacturers in the entire industry, expanding our overall product offerings to our customers and broadening our supply chain. While we continue to evaluate further growth opportunities in the M&A market, we value our strong balance sheet and the flexibility it provides and will remain diligent and disciplined with our capital deployment. Looking forward, we anticipate Q4 to be a challenging quarter for the industry. We're planning for general completions activity to decline 15% to 20% from the third quarter levels, given the typical winter slowdown and early budget exhaustion, with many operators wrapping up their full-year capital programs well ahead of the typical holiday schedule. In response to the seasonal weakness, we're focused on taking proactive measures to protect our earnings and cash flow generation, requiring a critical focus on our cost structure and capital program. If market condition has continued to evolve and 2020 budgets remain uncertain, we reevaluated our CapEx needs for the year, leading up to lower our previous 2019 CapEx target of $120 million to $140 million, down to $100 million to $110 million, which includes just under $40 million related to the New Mexico pipeline. This decision will impact the pace, at which we upgrade or look to grow our water services asset based in light of current rate of return expectations, but doesn't require us to defer maintenance CapEx. We’re balancing the near-term need to actively manage our cost structure and to make prudent capital investments with being prepared to support our customers as activity picks back up in the first half of 2020. With that, I'll turn it over to Nick to walk to our third quarter financial performance in more detail.