Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the CES Energy Solutions Corp second quarter 2021 results conference call and webcast. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there'll be an opportunity to ask questions. To join the question queue, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, they may signal an operator by pressing star and zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to Tony Aulicino, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much, Caitlin, and good morning everyone, and thank you for attending today's call. I'd like to note that in our commentary today, there will be forward-looking financial information and that our actual results may differ materially from the expected results due to various risk factors and assumptions. These risk factors and assumptions are summarized in our second quarter MD&A and press release dated August 12th, 2021, and in our AIF, dated March 11th, 2021. In addition, certain financial measures that we will refer to today are not recognized under current generally accepted accounting principles, and for a description and definition of these, please see our fourth quarter MD&A. At this time, I'd like to turn it over to Tom Simons, our President and CEO.
Thanks, Tony. In the face of global supply chain pressure, Canadian breakup, certain customers' resistance to pricing increases, CES is very pleased with our Q2 results. They're only possible because of our loyal customers and even more dedicated employees. On today's call, we'll provide our customary operations update for Canada, U.S., and what I'm gonna start calling Oman Light. We'll speak plainly about capital allocation. We'll share our optimistic outlook for CES within this operate within cash flow energy patch. Tony will give a detailed financial update. We'll take Q&A, then we'll wrap up the call. I'm gonna start with Canada. Canadian mud turned in a positive EBITDA for CES through Q2. From when I began as a mud engineer in 1993 in Canada, that's a huge accomplishment in this competitive market. How do Ken Zinger and his team keep doing it in Canada?
Through Q2, did very well for the company financially and operationally. Today faces input cost pressure and supply chain pressure. Some CapEx is going to be spent in the second half of the year that will assist and relieve some of those problems and help us meet our customers' needs, particularly in the oil sands. We are getting nice contributions through the summer from Frac and Stim, but that business is variable. Low CapEx fits over our infrastructure, but it is variable. We remain completely committed strategically and scientifically to these product lines throughout CES in North America. Out in Vancouver, Sialco continues to both financially and strategically contribute to CES. Thanks, guys. Clear continues scratching to keep its nose above water. It has been a long time since Justin started stepping on this province's chest. These guys are keeping it up in a competitive market. We appreciate it.
I'll move on to the U.S. AES delivered, again, strong financial and market share, 20% market share and making money. We're not chasing market share. While we are strategic, we remain committed to margin, which translates to EBITDA. Today, we have 83 jobs in the U.S. I'll move on to what I'm gonna call Oman Light. With substantial one-year plus planning from intercompany people, AES has us on a project in Oman. It's a resource or tight oil play. It's deep, vast, and our history with the customer is strong and built on mutual trust. A note of caution, it's early days for this customer. For any of this to matter, oil needs to flow. We know how to do our part and possibly grow from this.
I've been a part of this myself, I've been there, and I believe I see business upside for CES business-wise beyond drilling fluids as well. I'll now move on to Jacam Catalyst in the U.S. There, as always, they clip along with their quiet and very solid contribution. Market strength is highest in the Permian, which includes Texas and New Mexico. This backstops the business. We have additional very strong contributions in the Rockies, which obviously includes the Bakken. We do business in California, Oklahoma, throughout Texas. We're working on other markets. Overall, Jacam Catalyst is a very key part of CES financially and strategically. I'm gonna try and save some of the nitty-gritty for Ace Bailey on these financial matters, Tony, which is capital allocation. Here are the headlines from me. CES will continue to set off equity-based comp grantsThe share buybacks.
In plain English, we are not going to dilute you to pay ourselves. I'll move on to the second bullet. Thus we're proud to reinstate our dividend. As a free cash flow generator within the sector, like the glory days, with double as multiple, we're now paying you cold, hard cash to own our equity. With this very modest % of free cash flow generation, we believe the dividend is sustainable through cycles. I'll move on to the second bullet. We will reduce our bond when we refinance it. With cash and liquidity we expect to create within the context of this market, and enjoy before we refinance it in an appropriate timeline. I'm now going to turn it over to the ace himself, Tony.
Tony, please let me share my outlook on the sector and our place in it before we go to Q&A.
Will do, Tom. Thank you very much, and thank you for the new indelible nickname. CES's second quarter results demonstrated strong revenues, margins, market share, and surplus free cash flow generation, underpinned by a focus on strategic investments in working capital and preservation of strong balance sheet and liquidity metrics. In the second quarter, CES generated revenue of CAD 254 million and adjusted EBITDA of CAD 32 million, representing a 12.6% margin. Q2 represented another consecutive quarter of strong financial performance, with revenue, EBITDA, and margins steadily improving from the depths of 2020, while market share in the U.S. drilling fluids business has continued to march up nicely towards the 20% level from 13% a year ago. Over this past year, CES has continued to consistently generate positive funds from operations, reaching levels of CAD 23 million in Q2 and CAD 27 million in Q1.
While revenue in some divisions is actually approaching reaching distance of pre-COVID levels. CES remains confident in its ability to continue to generate material surplus free cash flow amid an improving outlook, and on August 12th, the company's board of directors approved the reinstatement of its dividend on a quarterly basis. Accordingly, CES will pay a cash dividend of CAD 0.016 per share on October 15th to shareholders of record at the close of business on September 30th, representing a dividend yield of over 4% on an annualized basis at yesterday's closing share price. CES's reinstated dividend returns additional value to shareholders, represents a conservative payout ratio, and preserves the strength of the company's balance sheet while maintaining ample liquidity to fund capital allocation options, including potential growth initiatives.
As industry activity levels continue to improve in the quarter, CES remained disciplined on capital expenditures while retaining substantial liquidity and balance sheet strength. We exited the quarter with a net cash balance of CAD 12 million compared to CAD 18 million at the end of 2020. The decrease in cash was driven primarily by investment in strategic inventory and by the repurchase of 6.8 million shares for CAD 10.3 million or CAD 1.50 per share under our NCIB program. Our current net draw on our senior facility is approximately CAD 3 million as a result of investments in working capital and the repurchase of approximately 700,000 shares since June 30th. CES's Q2 revenue of CAD 254 million represents an increase of CAD 94 million or 59% from Q2 2020, and in line with CAD 261 million in Q1.
Revenue generated in the U.S. was CAD 175 million, or just under 70% of total revenue for the company. CES continues to participate in the improved drilling environment in the U.S., as demonstrated by our market share of 20% for the quarter. Revenue generated in Canada was CAD 78 million in the quarter versus CAD 38 million a year ago, and CAD 93 million in Q1. This stronger than expected sequential revenue level in the seasonally softer second quarter was the result, as Tom mentioned, of high activity levels in both our Canadian drilling fluids and production chemicals divisions, and in CES in the same quarter achieved adjusted EBITDA of CAD 32 million, which represents a significant increase from the CAD 8 million a year ago and in line with CAD 34 million generated in Q1. Again, despite Q2 being a seasonally weaker quarter.
Included in these results is a CAD 3.1 million benefit recognized by CES from the Canadian federal government's CEWS program. Adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of revenue in the quarter was 12.6%, representing a significant improvement from the 5.1% recorded in Q2 2020, as the company benefited from stronger competitive positioning, increased drilling and production levels, higher market share, and the realization of efforts in 2020 to rightsize the business. CES has continued to maintain a prudent approach to capital spending through the quarter, with net spending of CAD 4.5 million, representing approximately 1.8% of revenue. We will continue to adjust plans, as Tom mentioned, as required to support growth throughout divisions as industry conditions continue to unfold during the year.
Right now, for 2021, we expect cash CapEx to be up to CAD 30 million, of which CAD 20 million is estimated as maintenance and CAD 10 million as growth. Our balance sheet continues to benefit from the attractive structuring and maturity schedules of our credit facility and senior notes. We ended Q2 with CAD 305 million in total debt net of cash, comprised primarily of CAD 288 million in senior notes, which mature in October of 2024. At June 30th, we had a net cash balance of CAD 12 million on our senior facility, with a maximum available draw of approximately CAD 235 million equivalent, providing us with significant availability. We remain cautiously optimistic on our outlook for the remainder of 2021 and beyond.
Throughout the 2020 downturn and into the recovery period of the last few quarters, CES has consistently demonstrated its CapEx-light and asset-light decentralized business model, enabling generation of significant surplus free cash flow. As our customers increasingly regulate their business models to maintain spending within cash flows, we believe that CES will be able to leverage its established infrastructure, business model, and nimble customer-oriented culture to deliver superior products and services to the industry. In its core business, CES will focus on profitable growth, optimizing working capital, developing or acquiring new technologies, and making strategic investments as required to position the business to capitalize on current and future opportunities. Operator, at this time, I'd like to pass it back to Tom for a summary of his views on our outlook.
I'm going to say what Ace Bailey said a lot less elegantly. We like the new financial sustainable energy patch. The sector does not need to rely on outside money anymore. I personally believe it insulates industry from the political hatred that is building. Over here at CES, we don't kid ourselves. That's how it is now. I believe we can make it, because this place is built and run by a group of ex-private owners who don't kid themselves. We built this company from 15 years ago that started with a chicken coop that staged mud chemicals to now having CAD 300 million of infrastructure assets, rolling stocks of trucks, inventory that we turn fast enough to turn into free cash flow.
Most importantly, real customers that pay, and maybe the most important, great, trained, motivated employees that we know to treat properly and keep through crashes, and I think a fabulous future. With that, we're going to turn it over to Q&A, and then after that, we'll wrap it up.
Thank you. We'll now begin the question-and-answer session. Our first question is from Michael Robertson with National Bank Financial. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, Tom and Tony. Congrats on the strong quarter, and thanks for taking my question.
Morning.
Looks like another strong quarter for U.S. drilling fluids market share. I assume some of those recent gains have been driven by customer mix and who's more active out there right now. Just wondering what you're seeing and hopeful for from a market share standpoint over the coming quarters, assuming activity levels continually to gradually pick up.
It's interesting. Well, a couple nuances I want to share with people. We do not want CAD 100 oil because the customer will not pay for the input cost increases to any of the chemical companies, no matter what any of the people with my job put out for public letters telling their salespeople to get. That's not how the oilfield works. They'll eat those letters. Salespeople will have to quit because they'll look like monkeys. We don't want CAD 100 oil because it'll screw the services. The nuance is natural gas is making money for all the customers. We don't think the rig count in the U.S. is going to 800 because the customers are running businesses now, not trying to flood the market and sell their companies because there's no one to sell them to.
They're going to try and generate, I think, as an observer, cash flow, do what we just did, give the money back to people and hope to catch a bid. We're going to benefit from the privates running rigs. We're going to benefit from the slow creep of the publics maybe inching the rig count. Based on the results we just printed, I don't think we need anything to change. We're not looking to crank the dividend every quarter. We want to be a reliable payer of cash, a reliable supplier to the customer, a reliable employer to people. We want to slowly expand this business in a reliable way. I like not owing the bank money, because if there's another crash in a commodity in the world, we're going to collect CAD 100 million and be thoughtful with it, because we don't owe anybody any money.
That's how we're looking at it as a business. We're not trying to go to 30% market share in the U.S. and not make money off the 10%. It's not the 10% that you won't make money on, it's the 20% you have that you'll destroy. We know that from being private owners. That's the wisdom we get from building this company. I'll just say, instead of the centralized businesses that hire people in suits to take over from things they bought, that they chased off the owner. That's our competitive advantage. That's our business. It's why we're no longer telling our competitors why we have the work that they don't on our operations call, and we're never going to resume. That's why the call was short. We have the work.
We need to keep it so we can make money and give it to the people on this call.
Got it. That's helpful color. Do you think you'll be able to keep most of the gains that you've sort of picked up in recent quarters?
It's up to the customer. If they won't let us make money, we might go to 18%. I don't think they can add days to their rigs. I don't think the competitors can keep losing money. I don't think the integrators will enable them. We're not taking the work and losing money. We went down from 22%- 20% because there's some customers that won't pay, and we're not paying our people. They won't work if they don't get paid. There's differences in the U.S. and Canada. For six years, it was risky to work in the oil patch in Canada, and there was just no work. There's a nuance there that's different. People with my job are calling out some of the customers in the DOB. I don't know, Michael. We're going to do the best we can. We're going to try and make money.
We're going to try and meet the customer's needs. There's a reason we pushed in Oman, because Biden's trying to push the oil field out of the U.S. while he's demanding more oil. He's obviously talking out of both sides of his mouth. We can all see that, but we can't change it. They want it both ways. Natural gas is kind of a nice hedge for everyone on this call. We have South Texas revenue now that we didn't have a year ago because of that, and that's built into our results. We're not going to tell everyone where it is because our competitors are going to go chase it and try and offer a product for CAD 0.10 a line item less because they're terrible on the rig, and that's how they get the work.
We're going to keep our cards close to the vest, try and give everyone better results, keep the work, and we're not changing.
Fair enough. That's helpful color. Thanks. Switching gears to the international opportunities, was wondering if you could provide a bit more color there, particularly in Oman. I appreciate it's early days, but was interested in sort of what that operation will look like to better understand how it may serve as a platform for future opportunities in the Middle East.
I think you should track down the customer and ask them. If they can make oil, we hope to stick around and build off of it. There's a big backstory to it. It's premature to say it, because it might not happen. We don't give guidance. If anyone's known me for the last 16 years in the market, we try not to sell too much hope. I've been over there. I've been over there before. Other people have been over there. We've been poking at things. We need a sponsor, as we call it in the oil field, that will let us go over there and not start CAD 20 million in the hole and build the field of dreams and hope they come, because they don't. They know you're sunk, and they have you where they want you. This isn't that beginning.
At the end of the day, if the oil company can't make the oil flow, we can't change that, and there won't be a platform. It's too early to say. I'm not speaking on behalf of the customer. They can speak for themselves.
Okay. Fair enough. Well, listen, I appreciate the color, and thanks for taking my questions. I'll turn it back.
Thanks, Michael.
The next question is from Josef Schachter with Schachter Energy Research. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Tom and Tony, and congratulations on the quarter and also reinstating the dividend. Two questions from me. When you're talking to customers in Canada and the States for business and heading into Q4 and then Q1, are you getting much increase volumes that you see coming, more jobs? How is the pricing discussions going in terms of starting to see some recovery of the cost increases and maybe expanding margins?
It's different in each country, Josef. The customers, I'd say. You know as much as we do about this because you cover both sides, E&P and service. 60%, 70% of their money will go back in the ground. The rest, this is a generalization. Pay down debt, pay a dividend, pay a variable. They've got cash flow from gas, not just oil. Hedges are falling off, cash flow is going up. These places are swimming in money. Some of the big guys are pretending they're not energy producers now. They're usually from Europe. They're talking, let's say they're playing it both ways. I want to be respectful. We work for them. We need to work for them. We're solving their problems. We're better than the big guys that are centralized and can't figure it out on the rig.
Their ops people have figured that out finally. Visibility, let's say 60% of cash flow goes in the ground. Canada is not in a position to go to 250 drilling rigs until some of the operators allow supply chain to let us pay people to take the risk to come back into this. This is not the case in the U.S. In Canada, the rig crews are so green that we need 24-hour mud engineers on rigs that used to be able to go there for four hours to keep the rig out of trouble, mix the product, and not get them three days later stuck in the hole. It's changed. We have to babysit the mixing, the inventory, keep them out of trouble. We're literally carrying sacks that we didn't used to.
We have to pay the people more to take the risk to come back into the sector. We have certain operators that expect us to show up with a sharp pencil despite knowing shipping companies are turning the screw on the whole globe. We can't change that. That's why we don't want CAD 100 oil, because they won't even let us pay people CAD 300 a day more to come back into a sector that has burned them and burned them, not through the sector's fault, but through, you know, whose fault. We're trying to bridge that divide. A lot of customers are working with the vendors. That's why we had a good quarter. I want to be clear, we're very grateful to those customers. I know people with my job feel the same way at other services.
We need some of the bigger places to let the supply chain guys help them win so we can put a better person on that rig to keep the rig crew out of trouble, or the sector's not going to 250 rigs despite the cash to put them to work, because they're going to get stuck in the hole, and they won't even crew the rig. There's some nuances here, Josef. If we just keep putting this quarter up, I'll be really happy.
Okay. Going to the international side, are you sending people to Nigeria and Oman, but not building a base because you don't want to put, as you mentioned, CAD 20 million of capital that the customers got you over the barrel? Are you just sending people over with the product, or how much is, and where would the people be staged? Would you at some point then need a base?
Specifically, Nigeria's production chemicals. It's half emulsion breakers and then half the other stuff, so it protects production. No people. It's sea cans out of Houston. It's to a company that does the work on the ground. They're competing against big integrateds. They're competing against manufacturers. They need a manufacturer to give them technical advice. Shout out to our Chief Technology Officer. He went from scientist to BD. It took, in his words, it looks fast to you guys. This took forever in the background. Way to go to Dave Horton. We would have more product in the ground except because of the shipping issues. There's a couple sea cans tied up in Houston. Zero people at risk, zero capital at risk, Josef, zero product at risk. It's elbow grease. We're all about working 24/7, so we're cool with that.
As far as Oman, I personally was there. AES people were there. Canadian supply chain and U.S. supply chain are actively doing this. Just so people understand our business, we bring product from all over the world. We finish it in North America and sell it to North American operators. A North American operator is in Oman. We are working for them. We have an Oman family that has infrastructure there that we can work off of. We can buy certain commodities at market. It is kind of a protected market. If market pricing is one, they have kept everyone out by pricing them at 1.2. It took forever to get us to market. We are at market. We are on the work. I am not talking about the play. That is the customer's play, not our play.
I can only talk about our part and warn everyone, if they can't make the play work, it's nothing. We are actively selling work. We have one single person there who's already Omani. I spent a bunch of time there earlier this year. So did two other AES people. We believe in the play because we believe in the ability of the customer to find oil before it's out of the ground based on their incredible success. We're just going where they go because that serves CES forever, and we bet on the horses that win. That's the story.
Good. One more for me. M&A activity with some of the weaker competitors, having financial difficulties and you having a strong balance sheet, do you see potential of any smaller or medium-sized tuck-unders across your platform?
Well, they want to ascribe a bunch of value to making no money, and we're not giving our value away, so not really.
Okay. That does it for me. Thanks very much, and again, congratulations, and nice to see the dividend again.
Thanks for sticking with the sector and the thoughtful questions.
Thank you.
The next question is from Matthew Weekes from iA Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I was just wondering, first of all, if you could provide a little bit of color on sort of the strength in Canada during the quarter. Rig counts were solid. It was quite a good quarter there. Was it a material impact from the exports to Nigeria or on the revenue side, where there's some kind of input cost pass-throughs to customers that ended up being really margin neutral in the end, or what was sort of the cause there?
International was immaterial financial. It's more directional that we want to share. It didn't move the needle one little bit. In fact, my airfare and hotel probably made us lose money. Not that I stayed in the Taj Mahal, but we didn't make any money, just so everyone knows. We haven't made any money yet. We haven't lost a bunch, but it didn't change anything.
Okay, thank you. Were there any inflation pass-throughs at all?
Well, we're trying to get them, but it's Whac-A-Mole. Whatever the government's saying, there's massive inflation everywhere. You can read the news. There's ships tied up outside of Los Angeles. Ocean freight is seven or eight times to tie up a sea container than it was 15, 18 months ago. Every single supplier to every single sector is not exempt from this. Because we're a manufacturer in North America, we are working hard to get around that. The storm in Houston affected the oil field. It affected the ability to make certain products to treat certain chemistries. I'm not telling anyone what they are here. We're keeping up. We're winning new business because our supply chain people and ops people are doing an incredible job of balancing that and winning new work where our competitors are falling down. That's all I'm saying. Matthew, it's tight.
It's very tough. It's part of how we had a good quarter. There's no outliers, I don't think, that are one-offs. In some businesses, there's always outliers. We're big enough to have them all the time, and we'll probably have one in Q3 that's up, one that's down, and they'll kind of wash out. I've done this a long time. That's how it's always going to go. We're going to have one drilling job that takes lost circulation or a kick in a quarter. We don't know which one it'll be. That's why we carry inventory. It'll get mixed sooner or later. Don't break it before it gets mixed.
Okay, understood. Thank you for the commentary on that. Just one more for me. It's just a confirmation. I just wanted to confirm the drilling numbers that were mentioned earlier in the prepared remarks. Was it 58 jobs today in Canada and 83 in the U.S.? Is that correct?
Correct.
Okay. Thank you very much. That is it for me. I will turn the call back.
The next question is from Tim Monachello from ATB Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, guys. Most of the commentary on the call so far has sort of spoken to the resistance from customers to accept pricing increases and understanding that, I guess, the inflationary aspects of this upcycle are unprecedented. You also have a tightening market from a supply-demand perspective for services, and I would assume that most of your competitors, given their outward stance around maintaining margin profiles, would have a sort of similar view to pricing increases as yourselves. Do you think, or is there any reason that you think that through the cycle as activity improves, that your leverage over customers won't also improve?
Well, I've done this since 1993, and if you ever hear me say I have leverage over the customer, put a bullet in me or my customer will. It does not work like that, ever. If we ever have that arrogance in here, management should be fired by the board in one second. We do not have leverage. We work at their pleasure. We scratch and claw to make this money. That is our culture. It will never change.
Okay. In past calls, you said you don't really need pricing increases and you do.
No.
Keep pricing.
No.
No? Okay.
No. Our stuff's going up in cost. We're scratching and clawing to get it paid for. That's why, I don't mean to sound edgy, we do not want CAD 100 oil because it will eat everyone's lunch because people will barely let us pay someone that hasn't worked in six years in Canada. How do they convince their family to come back into this racket knowing Trudeau wants people to drive electric cars places they can't even get to on a tank of gas to get elected? How do they convince their family to go work on a drilling rig as a mud engineer? At a rate that they got six years ago or less, and take that risk for their family. The ask here that the DOB in print is, please let us pay the person what it takes to take the risk. We're not ripping you off. It's real.
We need the price increase. We're not immune. Just because we make the molecule doesn't mean we can make the input, if oil's CAD 100, somehow on paper be CAD 70.
Okay, understood.
Yes.
My point around price increases, I guess, on the net basis, but what I was really trying to get at was when you look at that, let's say, pricing doesn't increase and you're able to get similar pricing to what you're getting today on a net basis, do you think margins improve based on operating leverage? Do you still see solid operating leverage in the business?
Well, I hope I was very respectfully careful that we're not chasing market share. We hope we have customers that pay for results, not line item, that they care about their cased hole costs. We think we do because we held 20%, which is pretty close to 22%. We just turned the dividend back on, we believe it. We're voting with our feet.
Okay, got it. I appreciate that.
That's the answer. You mean operating leverage? We're not chasing the Haynesville to not make money and add 30 rigs and figure out somehow that's going to help. Go look at the people that have the work and look at their results. They keep printing a huge loss. How are they flipping that with more work that loses money? The group of us running this place ran private businesses. Your tax return sucks when that happens.
Okay, understood. Thanks, guys.
Once again, if you have a question, please press star then one. Our next question is from Keith Mackey with RBC. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, and thanks for taking my question. Just curious, you mentioned, Tom, that you may spend a bit more capital in the back half of the year on some things that will strategically or just improve the business. Just curious if you can give us a bit more color on what that might be and how you're thinking about the decision to proceed or not.
It's been contemplated all year, Keith. It's inside the brackets we've guided, and we're not going to disclose the products for competitive reasons, but you won't get sticker shock later on the number.
Got it. Makes sense. Just on maintenance capital, kind of around that CAD 20 million number. Just curious if you see that changing throughout this year or next, given the lower demand or lower requirement for treater trucks and things like that, just given the mix of wells that you're treating these days.
No, I'm not a production expert. I'm a drilling expert that's kind of out of the game. I think over time it gradually shifts. We got a lot of stuff now, so we got to keep it up to date. We got a lot of pickups, so maybe the number slides. I don't know, Tony, what do you think? Two to five?
Yeah.
We're a growing business, Keith, so this is kind of on the spot. Maybe 10% of growth slides to 15% because we can make more money spending CAD 5 in the business than trying to buy stock over time. I'll let you answer, Tony.
No, just the way, and actually, that's a thoughtful question. I think the underpinning consideration is the fact that revenue's at about a CAD 1 billion run rate. We did CAD 1.3 billion. The guys did a really good job of maintaining all of our stuff, plants, equipment, et cetera. You're right, because of those secular trends, like the transition to a higher percentage of wells being represented by multi well pad drilling and sites and improved logistics, things like treater truck demand as a percentage of overall work will come down. We don't want to hang our hats on it, I think you're onto something that we're frankly watching very closely, because we would like for it to stay at 20% and maybe come down a bit.
The other thing, just like other cost inflation areas that we're not immune to, is the very tight trucking market that North America and the world has experienced over the last year. It'll be interesting, and we're all watching, and the guys are making all the right decisions real time in their divisions, doing the best and using partners on the vehicle spends. Until some of that inflation is off, I think we're not going to know for sure. If I had to guess, I would guess we stay at 20% or maybe come down a bit.
Got it. Okay. That's it for me. Thanks very much.
This concludes the question-and-answer session. I'll hand the call back over to Tom Simons for any closing remarks.
Well, I'm going to wrap up the call by saying thanks to our customers and employees for helping us produce a great quarter. We're really pleased to be returning cash to shareholders coming out of COVID. Like everyone in the sector, we're really happy oil storage didn't fill and receivables converted to cash for all the vendors. We look forward to the next call to give an update, and we'll wrap up the call with that.
This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your line. Thank you for participating and have a pleasant day.