Thank you, everybody, for joining our webinar today with Enterprise Group. The purpose of today's presentation is to give our audience a better understanding of the business through a presentation and then questions with management. The presentation is going to be led by Len Jaroszuk, CEO, who's also joined by Desmond O'Kell, President, Warren Cabral, Chief Financial Officer, and Doug Moak, VP of Finance. If you'd like to get a copy of today's presentation, simply email me at glenn@bristolcapital.com. I'll be happy to send you a copy. We'll break for questions at the end of the formal presentation. When we do break, we encourage questions. And as a reminder, we're only taking questions through the web portal. If you're listening over the telephone, please access the web link we sent earlier to ask that question.
Remember, you could submit a question using the question text box within the portal at any time. I'll ask the questions on the air for everyone that are here, and then Len, Des, Warren will answer the questions, or Doug. I'm not going to reference any names, but simply read the questions asked. As we have a very large audience today, if I can't get to your question online and it has not yet been addressed during the call-in Q&A, I'll come back to you by email.
I'm not going to read the forward-looking statements, but I do state that they apply, and I referenced them on this PowerPoint. With that said, once again, thank you for joining us. Remember, this is fairly informal, and we do encourage questions to help you better understand the business and its growth path. Now I'll turn the call over to Len to start his part of the discussion and presentation.
Thank you very much, Glen. Thank you all, your participants in the webinar. We really appreciate your interest, and we've got a short presentation here for you. For a lot of you, this might be new. Some of you have probably seen it already, but we'll be happy to go through it quickly and explain our business and the opportunities we have in front of us. We will be totally happy to answer all the questions at the end of the presentation. I'll turn it over to Des. He's got the slides up on the screen for you, and enjoy.
Thank you, Len. Okay, folks, thanks for joining us today. What I want to do here is go through this presentation on some just for time's sake. We'll try to keep it a little bit condensed. But here, starting off at Enterprise at a glance, we are a leader in site infrastructure to the Canadian resource sector. We are increasing revenues and cash flows and margins year to year now for the past three years. Important to note here that insider ownership is right around 35%, and we are interested in continuing to grow our positions going forward.
Some of the points we want to leave you with in this presentation are we are a leader in mobile site infrastructure to the Canadian energy sector, and we possess the current advantage of being the sole provider of low-emission site electrification systems, which we will talk about at some length here today. We're remarkably profitable with substantial margins and rapid expansion trajectory. We are the provider to the most reputable and sizable producer clients in our sector. There are favorable trends in the energy market with avenues to venture into some new markets, fostering considerable expansion organically and via acquisitions and mergers. We do have a healthy balance sheet and liquidity, and this will facilitate our strategy for continued growth. I mentioned our management insider ownership at right around 35%, so we do have a history of significant insider buying and share buybacks.
A few years back, we instituted an NCIB program. We bought back just over 11 million shares, which represented at the time about 20% of the company. Most of those shares, or all of them, were brought in and canceled at an average price of CAD 0.26. We are guided by a seasoned leadership team with a track record of effective strategic implementation, savvy downturn navigation, and we have a fervent dedication to enhancing value for investors as we are shareholders ourselves. This is the four business units that we are actively acting for, our clients in the field. We are going to spend a little bit of time on Evolution Power Projects, although our energy sector has been increasing their development CapEx in the field, and of course, we're supporting them in the field and their field activities.
Generally speaking, today we're going to talk about Evolution Power as we are getting a very, very excitable lift in demand for the specialty equipment that we have there, but generally speaking, all of our subsidiaries here are offering site infrastructure to the client, and it is probably a good time to talk about what is site infrastructure. Our clients, the producers, they have projects in very remote, sometimes frontier areas, and when they're in those projects, those projects work 24/7 for the length of the project. Length of the projects can be anywhere from several weeks to several months in length. What they need at their site, they need obviously mobile power systems. They are in very, very remote areas away from infrastructure, so reliable mobile power is a necessity.
Also, they need mobile structures for offices and command centers, medic buildings, even wash cars and bathrooms, and so forth. These project sites have anywhere from five to 12 mobile structures on site. So that is a key placement of site infrastructure. Also, lighting. These are five to 15-acre sites usually. So there's a lot of space to light up. And of course, lighting is on 24/7. Whether it's January or June, lighting is always on. So those are the three pillars of site infrastructure on a particular site. And of course, with the power systems and of course, Westar and Hart, those are two companies. One operates in BC, the other one in Alberta. And we cover the complete mix of site infrastructure for the client.
Our Artic Therm Heating Division, very, very IP, patent-rich company that deals in very, very unique flameless heating units that are, of course, at this time of year, we're just starting to get into our cold season. Heaters are moving out at a particularly good rate now. And of course, our larger heating units that deliver 3.3 million BTU of heat at 15,000 CFM. Of course, these are being mobile units as well. These have thousands of applications in the field. One of the things I'd like to address here, certainly with the clients, is our projects aren't contracted individually. We usually sign two- to three-year master service agreements. All the terms of our safety programs and supplying equipment and maintenance of equipment and so forth are all in that agreement. And like I said, they have a two- to three-year span on them.
Very important to note that this client list here is, it's not a complete list, but it's many of the companies that are very recognizable to many on the call. But getting back to our power systems, Evolution Power, this is a company that we've been developing and retooling our power fleet for right around five years now. And what this power fleet is doing for the client is because we are utilizing natural gas systems, we are displacing diesel. So a traditional site will have multiple diesel units. At the bottom of every light tower, there would be a six- to 20-kilowatt diesel generator. You might have six to 12 light towers on site.
And then, of course, larger diesel generators to power the buildings, the structures, the offices, and so forth, and other ancillary power needs around the site and whatever the client needs. Well, what we've been doing, instead of having multiple diesel units on site, we bring in one natural gas-fired unit. And we've been building our fleet around a microturbine particular unit. And this is a diagram of that particular turbine. And I'll talk more about why that turbine is the gold standard in the industry. But we bring that unit out. And of course, the majority of our clients are natural gas producers and liquids producers. So there is an ability to utilize the client's own natural gas that they're producing on site or nearby. So that does a few things for the client.
It eliminates them paying for third-party diesel to come up the highway into these remote locations and deliver thousands of liters of diesel every day. By replacing that with the client's own natural gas, not only do we get rid of that expense for the diesel fuel, but there's other benefits, which is obviously the efficiencies, the uptimes, and I'll describe the difference in the microturbine technology for maintenance. But basically, the reduction in emissions. I've got some charting that we can address the reductions in emissions and so forth. But these basic advantages to bringing a singular power plant onto site with a distributed microgrid where all of the infrastructure on site plugs in seamlessly. So we get an efficiency of footprint. The noise on site drops dramatically when you remove 10 to 20 diesel units on site that run 24/7, replace it with one relatively quiet microturbine unit.
So the benefits to moving and displacing diesel regarding costs and safety issues and moving to this type of a power system is obviously very beneficial to the client, but very beneficial to ourselves because when we bring out a package of site infrastructure, power, office buildings, and so forth, and lighting, it's our obligation to keep that site maintained and running, and of course, in half the season when we've got very extreme temperatures, sometimes down to minus 30 and minus 40 degrees Celsius, reliability and maintenance is an issue, so if we're out there dealing with diesel units, and of course, diesel fuel starts to gel once you get past about minus 25, and that creates all sorts of maintenance fuel issues, mechanical problems, and so forth.
When we replace it with a natural gas microturbine that has a 99.5% uptime all the way down to minus 40, the maintenance issues and our cost to keep that site going drops dramatically. We'll talk a little bit about that when we get to the financial results. Important to note that this particular manufacturer of this turbine, we have a terrific relationship. We've been building our fleet around the Flex unit, this particular turbine. And a couple of months, maybe three months ago, we announced an exclusive arrangement with Flex Energy to be utilizing their IP and technology for these project-to-project type mobile applications in Western Canada. I'll flip through a couple of slides here for time. This gives you a little bit of a diagram, an abbreviated diagram of what, in this case, a drilling site would look like. You can see the natural gas generators.
You can see the cabling and distribution panel, which makes up the microgrid. You can see the long structures in the back. Those are the mobile structures that we bring along. This is abbreviated. Usually, there'd be five to a dozen of those buildings on site. You can see all the stadium light towers around the exterior, so this gives you an idea of what site infrastructure would look like specifically on this drilling site, so obviously, the benefits of this transition from diesel to natural gas. I've touched on a couple of these, but obviously, significant cost savings, and I'll show you what that looks like in a chart, and the reduced downtime. The performance of these microturbines are that in comparison to diesel or reciprocating engine type generators, just like your vehicle, you need to do fluid changes and oil changes and filter changes.
In this case, every 600 hours, you'd have to take down that, shut down that unit and do that kind of maintenance interval. With a microturbine, the maintenance intervals are in the thousands of hours, so one annually, about every 10,000 hours, so we would never shut down a microturbine on a site to do a maintenance interval. We would always wait until it comes back to our shop and yard to do something like that. On the lower emission profiles, I do have a chart that explains the difference between diesel and natural gas, and we'll get to that, but of course, when we're eliminating liquid fuels like diesel, of course, spill risk is completely eliminated, and of course, the fuel deliveries that are going up the highway are no longer required.
So there's an overall increased safety to that site when we move from liquid diesel fuels to natural gas. This is going to show you a bit of a fuel consumption cost comparison. Now, this indicates equal-sized generators, one a diesel generator, and of course, our gas turbine, and in this particular chart, we're utilizing actually compressed natural gas on site, which is, there are companies such as Ferus and Certarus that bring compressed natural gas in industrial quantities out to locations, so this would be actually paying for that natural gas.
Of course, the majority of our clients are utilizing their own natural gas, so they would pay nobody for that, but looking at diesel against the gas turbine at full load, a 350 kilowatt diesel generator will consume about 2,400 liters a day at about CAD 1.60 a liter, almost CAD 4,000 a day to the client for fuel costs.
Over a three-month project, CAD 345,000. Our gas turbine utilizing about 75 Mcf per day at CAD 7 an Mcf for compressed natural gas to come to site, about a cost of CAD 523, or over the same three-month project, CAD 47,000, so even when the client is paying for a compressed natural gas service, there's still an 86% savings in fuel costs. Obviously, when we can use the client's own natural gas in the field, that is a full complete savings, so when we look at the same two generators with respect to the emission drops, the diesel generator, of course, these are the harmful air quality type and toxic pollutants such as particulate matter 2.5 and 10, SOx, NOx, volatile organic compounds, and carbon monoxide. You see the emission profile from the diesel generator to our gas turbine. These are not small reductions. They're massive.
They're anywhere from 85%-99% in the case of SOx, complete 100% reduction, and these reductions in emissions are very valuable, especially to our larger tier one clients. When we move from diesel to natural gas, of course, we get an over 30% reduction in CO2 as well, and here in Canada, our tier one clients, if they're producing over 10 kilotons of CO2 equivalent, they're caught in some legislation that came out in Canada about three years ago. It's the TIER legislation. It's nicknamed the Heavy Emitter Act, but if you're caught in this, you're bound to or obligated to not only track and report your emissions, you need to get your emissions under that particular threshold. If you're over, you have to buy carbon credits to flatten yourself out to the threshold. If you're under, there's carbon credits to be earned.
Of course, here in Canada, the federal government has priced carbon at CAD 80 a ton, and it's set to go in years ahead to CAD 170. So our tier one clients are best to do the best they can to reduce emissions, collect carbon credits at CAD 80, knowing they're going to be valued at CAD 170 and possibly higher in the future. So there's obviously an incentive for these clients to start reducing their emissions at all of their activity levels up and down the stream they act. Len, is there anything you want to add into how far we've got down the path here?
Yeah, I just wanted to sort of back up with the turbines. Just to let everyone know that these turbines aren't cheap. They run between CAD 800,000 and CAD 900,000 each. Each site that you saw there, we build the distribution panels and the cabling to power up that grid. That's another CAD 250,000 per site. It's important to know that with the rates that we're billing, the turbines pay for themselves in 16-18 months on simple terms. The cabling and distribution panels, which, like I said, CAD 250,000 per site, pays for itself in 90 days.
You can sort of see where the profitability of the operations are coming from going forward. Obviously, the more sites we have, the more profitability we're going to have. Des will tell you later that we've only penetrated 15%-18% of the marketplace that's in front of us. Now we have these new opportunities that have popped up here just recently with this last news release. Continue on there, Des. Yeah, you bet.
I'll take you forward as time is an issue. We'll take it to financial performance. I've got two slides here taking us, obviously, through the annual financial performance dating back to 2020. Of course, it's important to note, folks, that there was a seven-year low activity period or downturn in our Canadian energy economy. In fact, in some cases worldwide, from about late 2014 all the way up until about the middle part of 2021, the Canadian producers en masse have been increasing their development CapEx in the field. Of course, that lifts all our energy services boats. You can see here we've been increasing our revenues all the way through. It's important to note that we're expanding our margins along the way.
Like I mentioned earlier on one of the slides, because it's our cost to maintain the sites for the duration of the projects for the client, when we move from diesel to natural gas systems to site, our costs of maintaining that site drops dramatically. Of course, that's a helper. It's one of many variables that's been able for us to strengthen these margins going forward. We released our Q3 numbers. You can see this is the last four nine-month comparative results. You can see again intact those nine-month revenue increases. Again, of course, seeing the EBITDAs and the gross margins increasing along the way. One thing to note here going forward is we're in a pretty high demand for our specialty equipment, especially our mobile natural gas power systems.
We see that we're in a trajectory that we feel is very much intact. Many of our clients, producing clients, that some of them have already reported their guidance for CapEx spend for next year. The majority of them have increased again their CapEx going forward. Many of them report their guidance for 2025, usually first, second week of December. We'll get more detections. Many of our clients are telling us that they are again advancing their CapEx spend into next year.
We're looking at this demand for, like Len said, we had a news release yesterday on an absolutely new application for our unit, helping clients with excess and other flare gas opportunities where we can take, obviously, that excess or flare gas and turn it into significant power that can be used on site, whether it's for further field development, production enhancement, or infrastructure around the site and the entire field for that matter. It is something that we feel is going to be very important in the market going forward. We think it'll have a meaningful demand increase again on top of the existing business that we're doing. Len, anything to add there?
Yeah, I just want to jump in there, Des. We just returned from Denver, where our manufacturer of Flex Energy is based out of. We just purchased four more turbines last week. We saw two of them are built already. One's coming out of the ground, basically, and the other one is structurally built. They'll be delivered in December and early in January. These are on demand from clients. We also negotiated, because of supply issues, they're building 20 turbines for themselves, and we've ordered 10 more with them. So we placed an order for 10 for 2025 that will be coming over the quarters.
And also, any of their leased units that come back, we've asked to have all of those for us. Our clients are telling us that this is what we need. And this new opportunity that Des just brought up, the flare gas, we've already got other customers calling us now saying, "Can we give it a try?" And very exciting opportunities for us. Exciting. The Flex Energy new plant in Denver is phenomenal. It's first-class.
People are first-class. They love what we're doing, and they understand we've got the exclusive for Western Canada, but we've talked about expanding that across Canada so we can inherit some of this potential mining opportunities that are in front of us. As Des mentioned, Certarus's supplies compressed natural gas. Well, that's all it takes to put one of our systems to work in Northern Ontario or Northern Quebec, so we're pretty excited about our relationship. They're excited about what we're doing, and it looks like a nice move for both parties.
We'll just have a quick look at the financial snapshot here, folks. This was taken from yesterday's close, so 52-week range, CAD 0.68-CAD 2.52. We've got just short of 61 million shares out at the moment, fully diluted, almost 68 million. So market cap right around CAD 123 million. Enterprise value CAD 136 million. We still have a desirable cash position right around CAD 8 million. So total adjusted net equity, which is due to our twice-yearly equipment appraisal on orderly liquidation value. So you can see we're net adjusted equity per share right around CAD 1.24.
So in summary and in conclusion of the deck here, we've achieved a leadership position in our industry segment, boasting significant profitability with substantial margins resulting in robust cash flow. Our Canadian energy landscape is experiencing rapid expansion, especially with investments in LNG serving as a significant driver of growth. Very important to know that LNG and Canada's participation in LNG going forward, leading with the LNG Canada project headed by Shell Canada. This is an absolute needle mover for not only our gas-producing clients, but obviously folks like us here at Enterprise that are supporting their activities out in the field.
Not only that, there's three other LNG projects that are at various stages of either construction or permitting right behind that. So Canada's new participation starting in 2025 into the global LNG market is going to be absolutely beneficial to all the producers and the services, and of course, Canadians as well. So there is an escalating demand for equipment, skilled labor, and expertise, which has improved our pricing over the last few years. And of course, a robust balance sheet and healthy cash flow underpins our current expansion strategy. And of course, we're guided by a seasoned and deeply dedicated management team. Glen, I think this is probably a good point to take some Q&A. Unless, Len, there's something else you want to add to that?
Yeah, I forgot to mention that we've got inquiries for megawatt units now. And we discussed that with Flex Energy. They've got two-megawatt units. They've got six of them coming into the U.S. They're partnered up with Siemens for the construction of those. They're allocated, but we did put in a request for pricing and timing on supplying a two-megawatt unit and many more because if it goes the way we see it going, there'll be much more demand for it. Very, very, very important, so.
Yeah, I'll add to that. The two-megawatt unit is. It's important to note these are the very turbines that you saw on the deck, as well as the two-megawatt unit Len talks about. They're built on a very advanced platform. They can be stacked or parallel together. If the client needs larger power needs, we can actually parallel two or multiple units together to make up a larger power demand.
Of course, the two-megawatt units are the same. So if there is a six-megawatt application, three two-megawatt units can be stacked and paralleled together to act as one power plant. We've got projects happening at the moment that are taking sometimes three and four of our 333-kilowatt units to make up one or 1.2, 1.3 megawatt power plants in one location. So there are very, very flexible units in getting the client what they require in their power needs at a given site. Glen?
Very good. Yep. Perfect. That's good. Des, just, I don't know if you explained that these turbines, when I say that we buy them for CAD 800,000-CAD 900,000 and they return in 17 months, 18 months, they do have a 20- to 25-year lifespan. So in our eyes, it's a tremendous investment. It's a tremendous asset that will go on for a long time, so no, we're very impressed with the opportunities we have in front of us.
Hey, guys, we've got quite a few questions in the queue already, and I know that you would have addressed some of these points during formal remarks, but maybe just expand on it if I sort of ask a question around those topics, so first question is, which of your four subsidiaries provide the greatest benefits to earnings? And are the biggest revenue growth drivers? And what are the biggest revenue growth drivers for the foreseeable future?
Well, I'll take that. As Des mentioned, five years ago, we started to redirect our interest into Evolution Power. And when it caught on, it was 5% of our gross revenue. It's now pushing over 45% of our gross revenue for the whole company. Extremely high margin and obviously extremely profitable.
Okay. Thank you. What internal metrics or KPIs do you use to underwrite customer contracts? Is there a targeted ROA or ROE threshold? Or?
Yeah, I'll take that one. So for our agreements, as Des mentioned before, we run on master services agreements that are established with the clients. The customers use those on an individual equipment basis to determine pricing over their projects. We look to get a return for all of our invested equipment at the longest between two to three years. As Len mentioned earlier, there's several items that come anywhere from a 90-day turn or return on investment to far less than two years. Those are some of the metrics we put in. But overall, we don't have a defined percentage per item, but we need to make sure that it is returning to us within the two- to three-year cycle.
Thank you. There was some commentary in your third quarter 2024 disclosures about wildfires disrupting fieldwork. It seems wildfires are becoming more and more common. Would this suggest that there may be some seasonality impacting the third quarter?
Well, I'll take that. Really, what's happened in the last few years? Obviously, the season going from spring to summer in 2023, so last year, there was an inordinate amount of fires happening across Alberta and into northern BC. They were very much affecting oil and gas areas. So it put a little bit of a fright into the industry because, I mean, we even lost at a site in western central Alberta. We lost some equipment in a site.
Others in different regions had experienced the same. So going into the new season, which was 2024, the winter was very, very dry. So there was quite an apprehension coming into this season. And that caution did have and make some clients decide to defer some projects further into the year. And that's really the comment that we've experienced. We've looked around at some other peers in the energy sector and saw a little bit of the same decisions made by clients of theirs as well. So I'll tell you, we build, and of course, part of our infrastructure package is these fire suppression units that we have go out on daily billing as well. And we had to build another dozen of these for our fleet because they were very popular going into this season. Now, we did see fires.
They were in northern BC and, of course, complicating the oil sands areas. But fire season from now on is taken with some serious caution. And we saw some deferrals. There's no doubt about it.
Okay. Thank you. What are the length of contracts that are generally signed? Trying to get a sense of how recurring your revenue streams are.
Well, I'll take that. I think I described because these projects for many of our clients, if we're supplying site infrastructure to their drilling or their completions and fracking, they have a program, many of the larger clients. And that program might be a two, three-year program of drilling and completions and flowback. And you just move from one pad location to another to another to another. And we might be on a program for not only several months, but a couple, three years. But generally speaking, I think we answered the question that we sign these master service agreements. All of the terms are in that agreement, and we're called out to support their programs in the field. Some companies have programs that last longer than the others.
Okay. And I guess in the same topic, for longer-term contracts, more than one year, are there any organic growth built into these contracts?
Built into the contracts?
Yes.
No. I mean, if the customer's demands are higher because they're increasing their development plays, we go along with that growth and supply. But I wouldn't say, Warren, anything to add there? Am I missing something? They're not baked into the agreement.
Yeah. No, I'll just add so the MSAs, let's say if it's MSA for a period of 12 months, we'll have defined pricing of our equipment. When we renew the MSA, we will then build in what the current pricing should be for that year. So the MSAs will not run longer than 24-month cycles. And there is, even though it's a 24-month cycle on some of them, there is a constant evaluation with the customer as to what the current pricing should be based on demands. And as Len mentioned, we're getting new equipment on a regular basis. And when there is a new piece of equipment that is significantly different from older versions of it or something brand new that we've never had before, at that point in time, we will update our MSA with the current pricing.
Correct.
Okay. Thank you. Have you faced any challenges in convincing traditional energy producers to adopt your natural gas systems? If so, what kind, and how have you addressed these?
From a marketing and education side of things, we've made some moves here recently. I'll describe that in a moment. But usually, when we're speaking to the decision-makers or the engineering or C-suite, the adoption from displacing diesel to natural gas seems to go quicker. And decisions made just it's a much quicker adoption rate. Sometimes when we're dealing with the field, there can be, if the site superintendent is a third-party consultant, sometimes their desire to make any changes on site are a little less aggressive. So that's why we've got exposure in the field for sales and business development.
But we've also just hired a VP of business development to work right in downtown Calgary with a direction and instruction to get right into the C-suite to sell some of these, not only the power systems, but we have some very unique and exclusive technical equipment in our equipment mix that requires a competent technical representation, so this is something we've made moves on. It's developed some early successes, such as this new flare gas opportunity that we're in and building on at the moment.
Yeah. I just want to add that the last couple of years of growth for Evolution has been basically word of mouth. Our first salesperson, like Des mentioned, just hired him not even two months ago, and his job is to hit the C-suite because you've seen the numbers, and you've seen the ESG numbers. They sell themselves. I mean, who isn't into making money these days? So that's his job, knock on the C-suite doors. And whether the guy on the ground wants it or not, they'll make the change. And that's the organic growth that's right in front of us.
Thank you. Speaking, I guess, of which, how far in advance do you book your customers, and what's your strength of visibility into 2025 and moving forward? Well, we're in an industry that is historically you don't get a ton of lengthy visibility. We can usually see six and nine months into what the client is commenting on the programs going forward. It's rare that a client comes to us and talks about a solid two or three-year program. Warren, you want to add to that?
The clients, they do try to give us some, I guess, heads-up or warnings as to what they're going to need. A lot of that is during the time where we're putting the MSAs together or renewing those. Or as we mentioned before, they have multiple-year plans in place, and we don't get the full transparency into those plans, but they will give us a heads-up as to what they feel they're going to do in a calendar cycle or over a season so that we have the equipment ready to go. And you'll see that we have been building some internal infrastructure in our company and as well as equipment, all planning for growth. And you've heard us say many times it's based on customer demand. We are aligning that with the demands of our customers and what they're telling us.
Okay. Thank you. M&A has played a role in growing the business in the past. Is this something you're currently targeting? And what typical enterprise value to EBITDA multiple do you target for acquisitions?
Yeah, I'll take that. We're always looking at M&A opportunities. There's opportunities out there that we like. We've always said that one plus one equals three. Otherwise, it makes no sense. We're stick by that opportunity. In the past, we've never paid more than 3.1 times EBITDA. There are opportunities where you got to sort of take the asset value going forward. We might have to pay a little bit more. We've got an eye on a couple. Right now, organic growth is a key. CapEx makes us the money. Let's reinvest into the CapEx and keep our eyes open.
Thank you. What percentage of customers are using CNG versus field gas? For those using field gas, how much treatment is required before use?
Yeah, I'll take that. I would say 85% of the natural gas sites that we're on would be the client's gas on-site. That could be field gas. It could be gas coming from their local gathering system. So it's had one-time refinement through their gathering system. We didn't really or I didn't touch on this as much on this particular presentation. But one of the reasons why the Flex unit is so valuable in our particular marketplace and I talked about the uptime of the unit all the way down to those extreme temperatures of minus 40 degrees Celsius.
But the other main benefit of the unit is its fuel tolerance. It can deal with a lot of imperfections in the fuel, up to 6,500 parts per million of H2S. It can take some wet gas and so forth and still operate with maximum uptime. So that's one of the attractions of this unit and its ability to handle different types of gas in the field. So your question, how much, I would say 15% compressed natural gas, 85% currently would be utilizing the client's natural gas.
It's important to know also that with that exclusive agreement that we have with Flex, nobody else can get into our industry with that unit. And we've tried other turbines that don't work. Minus 18, minus 20, they don't work. If the fuel isn't perfect, they don't work. We've got six of them. I mean, they worked during the summertime, but we're trying to winterize them the best we can. But this exclusive agreement is really the important asset that we acquired there.
Yeah. The Flex unit is the gold standard, and that's what we're building our fleet around. That's what we have the exclusive arrangement with. And like Len says, that's the one that operates at near 100% uptime. So it's our unit, and there's a moat now fortified around the supply of that unit only through us.
Great. You just answered three or four questions. Next question. What type of clients are you seeing the most growth from? Are these tier one clients? And further, how has your year-over-year revenue growth been primarily driven? Has it been organic in existing contracts or signing new customers?
Well, I'll take the first part. Warren, you can take that second part. But the first part is size of client. Did I remember that correctly, Glen?
Yeah. I guess growing within existing clients or signing new clients?
I think it's a mix of both without being I mean, we're bringing on new names fairly regularly, but we do have some large tier one clients that we've been supplying for multiple years, sometimes over a decade. So we've moved many of our tier one clients that have been existing for many, many years and had them move from diesel to natural gas in the power systems. So I'd have to say it's a mix of both. Warren, add to that if you can.
Yeah. As far as where the revenue growth has been, it is a true combination of existing, so internal growth or growth from existing customers and new customers. And the size also varies. I think we're finding that a larger amount of the tier one customers are more easily able to adapt into the natural gas-fired power and using the turbine systems and things of that nature versus the smaller customers. Sometimes it's metrics, sometimes it's locations, or sometimes it's even the duration of the project, and the customers are going to be on-site a little bit longer. It's easier for them to go to natural gas solution that we have versus diesel, but the growth, I think, has been pretty much split between new and existing customers as far as revenue goes.
Yeah. A lot of existing customers, they've got the rig fired up. Now they're taking a second turbine to move frac sand at carrier belts, or they're pumping water. So I mean, we've had sites where we've had three turbines doing three different jobs. So the organic growth within existing tier one players is there. And of course, now we have the sales guy that's going to bring on more of the mid-tier companies that are also going to face the ESG complications that are in front of them.
Certainly.
Okay. Thank you. We've got a series of questions here regarding CapEx. So I'm just going to try to combine everything into one. How should investors think about your current cash position to fund future growth? How much CapEx do you need for or do you plan on spending in 2025 and then, say, over the next five years? And maybe your capital needs as it relates to more equity or debt?
Yeah. We can't project out five years, just to be honest with that. Like I mentioned, our CapEx for just EPP is 10 turbines. It's CAD 10 million. We've always gone overboard on our CapEx. In 2023, our CapEx was CAD 6 million. We spent CAD 15 million. 2024 was 10. Now we spent CAD 15 million. It's supply and demand by the customer. And we put the equipment out there for them. Cash is good. Cash flow is very strong. I mean, we're going into our three best quarters now going forward, feeling really good about it. We've got a relationship with a tier one bank that will allow us to do any kind of expansion going forward. We're working on that. That's fairly new to us. So if there's an acquisition or excess CapEx, that'll all be handled by a debt. And we're not big debt people, but that's in front of us.
Okay. Thank you. Do you have any plans to expand into the U.S., for example, Permian Basin or anywhere else?
No.
Yeah. Folks, it's really important to know that we've got massive opportunities in front of us here in Canada. We know Canada. We're known in Canada. We've got a multi-decade reputational value here in Canada. We'd be mistaken to say that the U.S. marketplace is similar to Canada. It isn't. There's tremendous opportunities for us here in Canada, and right now, we're keeping ourselves focused, and we won't distract ourselves with the American market.
I think that you'll see American players coming our way here within the next year or two, and they're going to need to come to see us to get the best asset.
Okay. This question is related to your bigger microturbines. How is the development of larger turbines dedicated to fracking or other applications require more energy going?
Well, I think we met our first go ahead, Des.
Oh, I was just going to say, I think we touched on that. The larger unit that Flex builds on their platform is a two-megawatt unit. And I think we addressed that. It's a natural extension of what we're already doing to get into some larger power units. I think we indicated earlier in the conversation that we've got some ideas from them on the costs and lead time. And we're now speaking with a few of our clients who are asking us to start developing some plans around larger power needs. So we're into that. I think we addressed that question.
Okay. Thank you. Regarding the attraction of clients from other industries such as mining, can you just give sort of a broader update on that than your formal remarks?
Well, that's very preliminary. In our travels into Toronto and Montreal, the question always came up, "Can you do this in the mining industry? Can you do this?" And we can. Instead of having a natural gas well, you use the compressed natural gas to power up the system. It's very preliminary. We've had discussions with Certarus to supply the compressed natural gas. And we've talked to a couple of mining companies. And that's something that we're going to work on going forward. We've also had inquiries on some of these small data centers where they want to create their own power setup. And that's also available to us. So I mean, the expansion of our business outside of just natural gas is right there in front of us. But right now, we're just picking the low-hanging fruit that's in our backyard. We're right in that fairway.
We're in the Duvernay and the Montney and Fort St. John. The LNG Canada pipeline is filling itself up. Those are all our clients that are trying to drill for gas and complete it, so. But no, those are all in front of us. We're excited about those opportunities. I mean, the data center thing is awesome. The mining thing is another opportunity.
Okay. Thank you. When your contracts come up for renewal, what's the retention rate? If you lose a renewal, what's the reason? Is the renewal usually at a higher or lower or similar rate? What's the typical gross margin on a renewal? Approximately what percentage of the biz renews each year?
Go ahead, Warren, if you want to.
Yeah. I just need that.
That's okay. That's okay.
I feel like we don't like to give out, but that's okay.
No, no. As we mentioned, as opposed to looking at it as contracts renewing for work, we do sign the master services agreement with the majority of our customers. And those are usually annual master services agreements, sometimes one or two years. So when those come up, as far as retention, I mean, all of our customers, we continue on with their master services agreement. If there were serious problems with us being a provider, that would happen at that point in time where problems existed. In the past, we've always gained work from our customers as a result of problems that other companies have had in supplying high-quality products and high-quality service. So no issues on retention at all of those.
As I mentioned before, when we look at our pricing, we always want to make sure that we get a return on our equipment in the range of anywhere from one to three years. And we adjust prices accordingly when we can during those cycles.
Yeah. You got to remember, we're the only ones that are doing this. So I mean, the retention is pretty much 100%.
Yeah. Okay. And
I guess I could expand as to kind of some more color behind retention. I mean, our customers look at everything about Enterprise, what our safety records are, what our ratings are, how we are handling all of our components regarding ESG, and etc., etc., etc. All of that goes into whether or not we are accepted to sign a master services agreement with them. So it's quite a process. It's a very serious process.
There's a lot of components as opposed to just saying, "Here's our list of equipment, and here's our prices." So we have to make sure, as I mentioned, our safety is top-notch. That's all the way through. We have systems that track that on a daily basis that our customers have access to. It is quite a process. So the customers themselves want to continue on with their trusted suppliers like Enterprise. And we're very proud of that.
Thank you. If the industry converted 100% to your gas platform, how big a business can that be? And can you fund your future growth from internally generated funds without the need of raising capital?
Well, I like to describe basically our natural gas power systems are displacing diesel. Diesel is still and has been for decades the number one fuel for mobile or remote power. The number of sites where we can displace diesel, they're in the hundreds. We haven't yet been able to, with any kind of surgical accuracy, figure out how many sites there are, but there's hundreds, and at the moment, I think we've talked internally and with some of the analysts that are covering us. We feel we're in the 15%-18% in the energy sector segment that we're servicing at the moment.
We feel we're at the thin edge of a thick wedge with growth. As Len mentioned, these natural gas to microgrid electrification, we're the only company in the energy sector that are offering this kind of a comprehensive mobile power system with this type of a method, so I guess very tough to pinpoint exactly that size. But I think if you take us from a 15%-18% and extrapolate that out, that'll give you certainly some kind of a measurement. Warren, anything you want to add to that?
It's a good way to look at it on a larger scale. Now, I think you can see from the cash that we are generating from operations that we've basically been able to cover all, if not a majority of our CapEx from operational cash flows. That's also something to look at. If we're expanding on a regular basis, then we can continue to rely on cash flows. And as Len mentioned, we have ample amounts of availability with our bankers to use debt when it's right for us. So we have no concerns about growing organically from what we have and do not need to raise the capital externally to do that.
Thank you. Do you gain any carbon credits for any of your work?
No.
No, that is because the client is the operator. Obviously, the expense for fuel is the client. So that is a client obligation and responsibility. And if there's carbon credits to be earned, they're earned by the client.
Okay. Thank you. Further to the forest fire question asked earlier, what do you see as the main operational risk going forward that could affect potential quarterly earnings? And do you see the next two quarters being more robust versus Q3, given that the forest fire season is behind us?
Well, I'll take the front of that. And Warren, you might be able to finish it off. But I mean, seasonally, let's face it, we're working in very remote areas. Many of those areas that are wet in the off-season, they're moving heavy equipment around, obviously very tough or impossible. It's inherent that our energy sector does have more robust activity. When the ground is frozen, heavy equipment can be moved around because of ground competency. That is inherent. Anybody that knows anything about the Canadian energy sector knows that those are the two optimum quarters or the two frozen quarters. Going forward on the financial side of it, Warren, a comment there?
No, we are in the seasonal business. You can look at that from our historical financial statements. We always have trended that quarter one is usually the highest quarter of the year for the factors that Des mentioned. We don't see that being any different going forward in 2025. Activity is increasing at the moment. We see that continuing on.
Okay. Thank you. We've got a few minutes left, and I think we'll be able to get through most of these questions. What's your internal return on capital? For every CAD 1 million that you get, how much EBIT can you produce?
That's not something we're prepared to share our plan, so. Yeah.
Okay. Given you're buying more than 50% of the product from Flex, why not just combine with them?
Well, let's just take one step at a time.
Okay. And last question I'll ask on Flex. Can you speak to their capacity and how fast they could ramp demand if you wanted more units?
Well, we were just down there, and we discussed all of that with them. And like I said earlier, they're bringing over six of these two-megawatt units for their clients. They're building 20 more of the 333s that we have for themselves. And we placed another 10 with them. Together, we are planning on getting all the assets because these parts come from all over the world. So it was important to discuss that so that they could start building these units for 2025. So their capacity is strong. They've got a great operation. I think if we wanted 30, they could build them for us. But they got to find the parts. Some of these parts are specialized, and they come from Poland, and some come from the Netherlands. And so it's kind of a jigsaw being put together.
Okay. And how many of these units do you expect to have as you exit 2025?
I think we're going to have, what, 24, 25?
Well, complete natural gas systems, we're in the 30 range at the moment. Going into ending 2025, adding what we've just talked about, we're going to be in the 45 natural gas systems.
Yeah. I was talking about the Flex units. That's right. Yeah. Sorry.
Okay. Guys, I think we've addressed all the questions. I'm doing a time check. We're at the top of the hour. I'm sure lots of people need to drop off. So I'm just going to give you the opportunity for any closing remarks, and then we'll end the presentation. And if your question hasn't been answered, please email me, and I'll make sure to give you an answer.
Yeah. No, I just want to thank everybody for joining us for an update. I know we probably talked to a lot of you, but for all the new investors out there, thank you for your time and hearing our story. And we welcome you to contact our office anytime. Our emails are on the presentation. We'll definitely fulfill any questions that are required.
Perfect. Gentlemen, thank you very much for the presentation to our audience. Thank you. And this concludes this webinar.
Thank you, Glen.
Cheers. Thank.