Greetings, and welcome to the Enservco third quarter 2023 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode, and a question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note, this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Rich Murphy. Sir, you may begin.
Hello, and welcome to Enservco's 2023 third quarter conference call. Presenting on behalf of the company today are Rich Murphy, Executive Chairman, and Mark Patterson, Chief Financial Officer. As a reminder, matters discussed during this call may include forward-looking statements that are based on management's estimates, projections, and assumptions as of today's date and are subject to risks and uncertainties disclosed in the company's most recent 10-K, as well as other filings with the SEC. The company's business is subject to certain risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in its forward-looking statements. Enservco assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements that become untrue because of subsequent events. I'll also point out that management's ability to respond to questions during this call is limited by SEC Reg FD, which prohibits selective disclosure of material, non-public information.
A webcast replay of today's call will be available at enservco.com after the call. In addition, a telephone replay will be available beginning approximately two hours after the call. Instructions for accessing the webcast or replay are available in today's news release. With that, I'll turn the call over to Rich Murphy. Rich, please go ahead.
Thanks, Jay. Good morning, and welcome to our third quarter earnings call. Yesterday, we announced financial results for the third quarter and nine-month period, ending September 30th, 2023. You may recall that up until this quarter, Enservco had reported nine consecutive quarters of year-over-year revenue increases. This quarter, that trend ended, but for what we believe was in our best interest for the long term. Specifically, we shut down our North Dakota operations in a strategic move to reallocate assets to more productive operating areas that offer more potential for revenue and profit growth. Our former North Dakota operations generated $1.1 million of revenue for the first nine months of last year. As a result, third quarter revenue was down slightly on a year-over-year basis, and the streak was broken.
As we now move into our more active quarters, and with oil prices and customer demand where they are, we remain quite optimistic about our chances of starting and maintaining a new streak. Despite our quarter three revenue decline, we are still 3% ahead of last year's revenue pace for the nine-month period. As I mentioned, the North Dakota exit was a calculated move to focus our resources in more active areas. It is also expected to have the additional benefit of allowing us to convert underutilized assets to working capital to fund the heating season activities. We are in discussions with a third party to acquire North Dakota real estate and equipment that's expected to generate in the vicinity of $1.1 million in cash that will further strengthen our balance sheet.
In any case, we're excited to be moving into fall and winter, when cooler temperatures drive increased demand for our heating services. As you know, our fourth and first quarters are when we generate the bulk of our revenue and profitability, so we're looking forward to seeing what we can accomplish over the next six months or so. This quarter and going forward, we're also going to benefit from the addition of Rapid Hot operations, our eastern operating area, the Marcellus Shale. Rapid Hot provides frac water heating services to E&Ps in the Appalachian Basin, encompassing Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. We acquired the company late in the third quarter, so we didn't get much revenue impact in that period. But that's going to change in Q4, when we'll begin enjoying the full benefit of Rapid Hot operations.
We also believe we can continue to take market share across all our entire operating footprint. In addition to strengthening our existing position in the region and contributing incremental revenue, Rapid Hot had the added benefit of providing more depth to our management team. Specifically, Mike Lade, the former President and CFO of Rapid Hot, joined Enservco as Chief of Staff. Mike is a CPA who brings more than 30 years of executive experience with private and NYSE-listed companies, including extensive work in the energy sector, in operations, corporate development, M&A, and capital formation for emerging growth companies. Mike is also an accomplished turnaround specialist who understands how to drive profitable growth and pursue opportunistic M&A activity. We further strengthened our team with the addition of Rapid Hot managing member, Steve Weyel, to Enservco's Board of Directors.
Weyel is a 40-year energy executive, having served as an executive, board director, and chairman of private and public energy companies. He was the Founder, CEO, and Chairman of EnVen Energy Corp, a deepwater exploration company that earlier this year was merged in a transaction valued at nearly $1.3 billion. His energy leadership encompasses global oil services, commodities, deregulated power, and upstream oil and gas. He has successfully managed to close more than $20 billion in M&A transactions and financing. Steve is the second new director to join our board in the past seven months, and we are building a team capable of managing and directing a much larger enterprise, which is what we intend to do. We are steadily building momentum across our businesses. We are encouraged by improving margins and continued drilling activity in our operating basins.
Based on customer feedback, we expect further demand growth for our services and believe we are well-positioned to meet that demand. So with that, I'm gonna hand the call over to Mark Patterson, our CFO, to take you through some of the numbers before I provide a few closing comments. Mark?
Thank you, Rich. Our third quarter revenue decreased 6% year-over-year to $2.9 million from $3.1 million in the prior year. On a segment basis, production services revenue was lower at $2.6 million compared to $2.8 million a year ago. Completion services revenue was basically flat at $0.3 million. As Rich noted, our exit from North Dakota played a big part in the overall revenue decline, along with lower hot oiling activity in our Colorado and Pennsylvania markets. Most of this was offset by nice increases in our hot oiling and acidizing activity in our Texas region. Q3 adjusted EBITDA was - $1.5 million, which compares to a - $1.3 million in the same quarter of last year.
That loss in the third quarter decreased slightly to $3 million or $0.13 per basic and diluted share, compared to a net loss of $3.1 million or $0.27 per basic and diluted share in the same quarter last year. Turning to the nine-month results, revenue through nine months increased 3% year-over-year to $15.6 million from $15.1 million. The increase was attributable to growth in the completion services segment, which increased 11% year-over-year to $7.2 million from $6.5 million, and more than offset a 3% decline in production services, which were $8.4 million versus $8.6 million year-over-year. As previously mentioned on this call, the former North Dakota operation generated $1.1 million of revenue during the first nine months of 2022.
The North Dakota exit also helped improve our adjusted EBITDA result by 42% through nine months to -$1.5 million from -$2.6 million in the same period of last year. The nine-month net loss was $6.6 million or $0.35 per basic and diluted share, versus a net loss of $3.9 million or $0.34 per basic and diluted share in the same period of last year. Recall that in the year ago, the net loss included $4.3 million of gain on debt extinguishment. So absent that, our net loss would have been much improved over the prior year. As we told you last quarter, we're very focused on right sizing our business and continue to look at ways to reduce costs.
This includes head, headcount, public company costs, legal, accounting, insurance, investor relations, and other areas. We've seen significant declines in our SG&A expenses over the past 18 months and are approaching our internal goal of an annual SG&A run rate of $3.6 million, excluding some one-time legal and non-cash compensation. One final highlight, we recently closed $1.6 million convertible debt financing that include participation from lead investors of Rapid Hot, as well as Enservco Board and our larger shareholder, Cross River Partners. I think it's important that our stockholders understand that our senior people, including our board, have a lot of skin in the game that reflects their optimism about the future prospects of the company. So with that, I'll turn the call back to Rich.
Thanks, Mark. I want to close with a few words about our ongoing successful efforts to transform our balance sheet. To recap, we closed the third quarter with just $4.2 million in term debt related to our equipment financing. That's a $1.1 million reduction from 2022 year end and an impressive $32 million reduction from our peak debt in 2019. This much improved balance sheet gives us greater financial flexibility as we explore opportunistic M&A transactions and look to add new revenue streams. So again, with improved balance sheet, solid customer demand, and the addition of quality depth to our leadership teams, we're looking forward to optimizing our opportunities in the current heating season and capitalizing on new growth opportunities over the long term.
With that, thank you again for joining our call today, and I'll be happy to take any questions. Operator?
Thank you. At this time, we'll be conducting our question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we pause for questions. Thank you. We have a question from Jeff Grampp with Alliance Global Partners. Your line is live.
Good morning, Rich. Good morning, Mark.
Good morning, Jeff.
Morning. Wanted to ask about Rapid Hot here. I know we're only, you know, not even, I think, a couple of months into closing this, but how much integration is there needing to be done there? And, just for context, can you kind of discuss the size of that fleet or maybe historical revenue, just to better understand how impactful that business can be in the upcoming heating season?
Yeah, I mean, the basin itself is. I mean, we had about, you know, 14-16 bobtails in that basin, and Rapid Hot had about the same. But the integration itself is pretty simple. We've basically combined our operations. We've moved all the equipment to the Rapid Hot operations yard, which we save some costs there. As far as the revenue opportunity, last year's probably a bad example and one of the reasons that the two of us were kind of forcing each other's hands. There, it was pretty warm last winter in the Marcellus, and we take a lot of weather risks.
We're trying to mitigate the weather risks as we go forward through better terms with our service providers, and they're open to it because, you know, listen, that basin will have no heating services if margins don't improve. So the margins tend to be better, but the season tends to be shorter. Last year was basically a year for all of us that didn't generate a lot of revenue. So, I, you know, we were around $2.5 million in revenue, $2 million-$2.5 million in revenue last year. Rapid Hot was probably a little less. I think the combined entity can do with better pricing, it won't be one plus one equals two.
And I think, Jeff, one of the things I'm seeing, this is my second season at the helm here, and there is a change, not from us, but from our customers, as far as willingness to work with us. Because last year we saw a lot of times we got call-out work, whether it's Colorado, and we didn't have equipment, and a lot of people have left this business, the heating business, so that and the E&P customers understand that, so they wanna make sure they lock up their equipment for the season and they're not left stranded or getting very expensive call-out work. So there's been a fundamental shift in kind of the mindset of our customers, which is good.
It's good for all of us because it was an unhealthy environment from 2020 to 2022 for service guys.
Understood. Thanks for that. That's helpful. And on the pricing side, I think the release referenced some stronger pricing action that you're seeing. Is there a way to quantify that, maybe relative to last year? And then, is that specific to frac water heating, or is that kind of across all your service lines?
Across all, we continue to see rates going up on the daily rate and the hourly rate for even for hot oiling. The heating business, we're seeing a combination of price. I don't want to give a percent because it kind of goes across the board, but it's, it's, you know, the low end with 10% and the high end, probably 25%. But that's both Colorado and PA. Well, primarily right now in the heating space is Colorado, Wyoming, and PA, with North Dakota being gone. The, y eah, so I think you're seeing that 10%-25%, but what we're seeing more is term, and term is critical. I mean, to get a 30-day term locked up with a healthy standby rate, so if it's not cold, we're still getting paid.
And that was always the thing that disappeared in 2020, and that's the thing that our industry, quite frankly, needs to be healthy. So, with a lot of the equipment being just leaving the industry, you're starting to get that type of 30-, 60-, 90-day term back in play. And that's, you know, if it's if it happens to be hot in February, we, you know, we still get paid a lesser rate, but, you know, it's still that's a very important feature.
Understood. Yeah, that's, that's definitely a big change relative to the last couple of years. And last one for me, just broadly on M&A, Rich. Any kind of updated commentary there in terms of what you're seeing, and would you consider yourselves kind of back in the market effectively? Or is there kind of a digestion period that you'd want to get through with Rapid Hot before, you know, kind of getting more seriously back into the M&A market?
No, we're, we're looking at stuff. We're definitely in the market, and, as you can see from our remarks with the board, we, we have a very good team right now to execute on some, some M&A, whether it be, you know, transformative or, or niche type of tuck-in stuff. We've with the balance sheet where it is, Jeff, we, we feel like we're, we can go. The Rapid Hot integration is pretty much complete, just to be, we're right now just ramping up for the season and, and trying to sign, you know, get all our contracts, signed and done. And Pennsylvania is the last basin to, because it gets coldest last, to lock in all your bid activity. So, yeah, we're, we're looking at, you know, nothing pending tomorrow, but we're looking at a variety of stuff.
Okay.
And the M&A activity is the options are. I won't say plentiful, but there's a lot of interesting businesses that would, you know, fit well with what we do.
Okay, great to hear. Thank you guys for the time.
Hey, thanks, Jeff.
Thank you. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, if you have any questions or comments, please press star one at this time. Okay, as we have no further questions in queue, I will hand it back to Mr. Murphy for any closing comments he may have.
I want to thank everyone on the call, and then particularly the employees of Enservco, who over the last, you know, three years have done yeoman's work to get us to where we are, with this balance sheet where we are. And, you know, our customers, I think we're in a good spot now as we enter the winter season, and I couldn't be more excited to get through this fall and winter and see the outcome come March. So I look forward to catching up with investors and everyone as we march through the winter. So thanks again for your time. Take care.
Thank you. This concludes today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. We thank you for your participation.