Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Trican Well Service Fourth Quarter 2021 Earnings Results Conference Call and Webcast. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Mr. Brad Fedora, President and Chief Executive Officer of Trican Well Service. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning. Good morning, everyone. I'd like to thank you for attending the Trican Conference Call. With me today is Scott Matson, our CFO, Todd Thue, our Chief Operating Officer, Chika Onwuekwe, our VP Legal, and Daniel Lopushinsky, our VP Planning and Analysis. A brief outline of how we plan on conducting the call is, first, Scott will give an overview of the quarterly results. I will then address issues pertaining to the current operating conditions and near-term outlook, and then we'll take questions at the end. I'd now like to turn over the call to Scott to start things off.
All right. Thanks, Brad, and good morning, everyone. Before we begin, I'd just like to remind everyone that this conference call may contain forward-looking statements and other information based on current expectations or results for the company. Certain material factors or assumptions that were applied in drawing conclusions or making projections are reflected in the forward-looking information section of our 2021 annual MD&A. A number of business risks and uncertainties could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements and our financial outlook. Please refer to our 2021 annual information form and the business risks section of our MD&A for the year ended December 31, 2021 for a more complete description of business risks and uncertainties facing Trican. These documents are available both on our website and on SEDAR.
During the course of this call, we will refer to several common industry terms. We'll use certain non-GAAP measures, and those are more fully described in our annual MD&A as well. Our quarterly and annual results were released after close of market last night. Again, both are available on SEDAR and on our website. With that, I'll give a very brief overview of our results for the quarter. Most of my comments will draw comparisons to the fourth quarter of last year, but I'll also make some commentary with respect to our results on a sequential basis. The quarter started off reasonably strong, positive momentum continuing out of Q3. Revenue for the quarter was CAD 156.4 million, which is 52% higher than what we experienced in Q4 of 2020.
Activity levels across the board were generally higher year-over-year, following improved commodity pricing and significantly stronger general industry environment compared to this time last year. WTI was just over $71 a barrel during the quarter, up slightly from an average of $70.5 per barrel during Q3, and up significantly from an average of about $42.70 a barrel last year at this time. AECO Gas was about CAD 4.50 in Mcf for the quarter, which was also up sequentially from Q3, and again, quite a bit stronger than the CAD 2.52 for Mcf we saw in Q4 of last year.
Strong commodity prices resulted in an average Western Canadian rig count climbing and averaging approximately 176 rigs during the quarter, moving up slightly from Q3 2021 on an average basis, and again, quite a bit stronger than what we saw in Q4 2020. Those factors led to strong activity levels and, combined with continued improvement in the efficiency of our operations and sharp focus on profitability, significant improvements in all key financial categories as compared to Q4 of last year. Fracturing operations were down a bit sequentially from Q3 2021, but were significantly busier as compared to the same period of last year. Activity in the fourth quarter, slightly lower than third quarter as our customers exhausted some of their capital budgets, and we saw the usual Christmas slowdown in the second half of December.
We maintained six fracturing crews throughout the period, with utilization remaining steady at around 86%. Operations continue to be heavily focused on pad-based locations, which helps minimize both downtime and travel time between our jobs and helps improve our overall efficiencies. Fracturing margins remained reasonably healthy through the quarter and were a significant factor in the strong financial performance as we moved through Q4. Our cementing division remained busy during the quarter, with activity a bit more skewed towards smaller surface level work versus primary cementing work. Our coiled tubing activity was up a bit sequentially, driven by first call work for a number of our key and core customers. Inflationary pressures continue to be a major issue across the board.
Costs for our key inputs like fuel, cement, chemical, and sand have all seen multiple increases in the past few months, and the pressure doesn't show any signs of abating at this time. Our supply chain team remains and continues to do a great job in staying ahead of and managing these trends, and our focus remains on controlling costs and passing along increases as much as possible to help preserve our margins. Adjusted EBITDA came in at CAD 28 million for the quarter, a significant improvement over the CAD 16.1 million we saw in Q4 of 2020. Again, important to note that our adjusted EBITDA calculation does not add back cash-settled stock-based comp amounts, which were actually a gain of CAD 0.5 million in the quarter.
That item typically fluctuates along with movement in the company's share price, which dipped slightly at year-end compared to the close of Q3. It also includes expenditures related to fluid end replacements, which totaled CAD 1.3 million in the quarter, which were expensed during the period. The quarter also included approximately CAD 1.1 million from the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy and Canada Emergency Rent Subsidy programs, which we expect to be the final contributions that we'll see from these programs.
On a consolidated basis, we generated positive earnings of CAD 9.7 million in the quarter, or roughly CAD 0.04 per share, and we're very pleased to show positive earnings on a year-to-date basis as we move forward. We generated cash flows from operations of CAD 20.5 million for the quarter following strong operational performance, offset somewhat by a bit of an increase in our working capital as we moved through the end of the year. Capital expenditures for the quarter were CAD 26.2 million, split between our uncapitalized maintenance programs and our ongoing capital refurbishment program. This is our previously announced program to upgrade a portion of our conventionally powered diesel pumpers with Cat Tier 4 dynamic gas blending engines.
That brought our full year capital spend in at about CAD 54 million, with approximately CAD 22 million in maintenance and refurbishment capital and CAD 31 million related to our Tier 4 fleet upgrades. Of that CAD 31 million spent in 2021, about 20 of it related to our first Tier 4 fleet, which was completed and in service at the end of the year, and CAD 11 million of that related to our second Tier 4 fleet upgrade, which is expected to be completed and in service mid-2022. The remainder of that, 17 million related to that second spread is expected to flow through in the first half of 2022. With that, we exited the quarter with about CAD 30 million in cash and cash equivalents, positive working capital of CAD 74.2 million, and no drawn bank debt.
With respect to our Normal Course Issuer Bid program, we remained active in the market during the fourth quarter and repurchased and canceled approximately 2.2 million shares at an average price of about CAD 3 per share. We continue to view share repurchases as a good long-term investment opportunity for a portion of our capital in the context of returning capital to our shareholders. With that, I'll turn things back over to Brad, and he'll provide some more comments on our operating conditions and our outlook for the next year.
Okay, thanks, Scott. I'm gonna provide more general comments than Scott, and what you're gonna find in my comments over the next few minutes is there's gonna be sort of a mix of good and bad. But overall, you know, our long-term perspective on this industry and certainly in the next couple of years is overwhelmingly positive. We're very excited about what is coming our way in the second half of 2022 and in 2023. I'll just start by making some general comments. As Scott was saying, Q4 was characterized as front-end loaded with a busy October, November, and then we had a pretty significant slowdown in December.
Even though we were generally active with our core group of customers, you know, as we're fortunate to have long, long-term active customer base, you know, the quarter overall was a little choppy. W hat we hadn't planned for in Q4 was that as things slowed down in December, you know, we saw again this complete reversal of pricing and, you know, we just refused to go there. We had a lot of white space on our board in Q4, and we're totally comfortable with that. There's no way we were gonna reverse the pricing gains that we had made throughout the year in some desperate attempt to fill in, you know, a few days here and there that, you know, makes absolutely no sense.
We maintained a good market share in all of our divisions, and we continue to grow our market share in coil, which is really encouraging. O n the cement side, we maintain our sort of 35%-40% market share, and our areas of focus are the Montney and the Deep Basin. Until the rig, you know, it's tough to really grow our market share beyond that. As the rig count grows, so will our cement crews. We'll just stay focused on providing good service, and we're known as the technical leader in that space. That will just be a continued growth area for us as well.
We expect all three of our divisions to grow as the industry heats up. W e're not gonna say we're gonna capture incremental market share because we're only prepared to take on market share that's profitable. So, you know, we're not overly concerned with market share. We're mostly just concerned with rigs or returns. COVID did impact us and continues to impact us, but it's not overly significant. I t's more what it does to the industry broadly. You know, rigs get shut down. We lose the odd cement crew or coil crew or frac crew here and there. Our customers are not in the office like they should be. It just generally interrupts the business in the oil patch.
They're not significant, but they're sort of more annoying and nagging interruptions in our day-to-day operations. You know, we continue to see fracs develop. The number of stages per well continues to grow. The amount of sand continues to grow. So generally, the long-term trends for this industry are all positive. We're very focused on the B.C. Montney and Deep Basin. We are starting to see our operations expand in some of the lighter oil plays, which we were historically active in, but had sort of pulled back from. You know, our cementing especially is more active now in southeast Saskatchewan. We expect activity to improve in all areas. We've got, you know, CAD 4 gas, really high oil prices.
I'm not even sure what to call them now, but, you know, they're over 90 anyway. We've got condensate pricing at over CAD 115. You know, our customers' wells are paying out in a matter of months, so that's really encouraging. Of course, you know, what's most important for our industry is that our customers are making money, and that allows us to expand and return to profitability. The number of crews we're running really hasn't changed. In Q4, we ran six frac crews, 17 cement crews, and six coil crews, and that's inched up a little bit.
We sort of have 6-7 frac crews today, and we've added a few more coil units as CBM becomes more active again. Cementing kind of fluctuates day to day, but, you know, we're generally gonna stay fairly, resistant to adding crews unless, we get significant pricing improvements. We've done a lot of work in the company for the last few years on getting costs down. F ortunately, you know, we are starting to see operating leverage really kick in as revenues expand, and that'll continue to just get better as our revenue expands in the second half of this year and next year.
We had decent EBITDA and cash flow in Q4, and sure we, you know, it could have been better if we had been prepared to cut prices to fill in white space on our dispatch board. Again, you know, we don't think long term that's the answer, and you know, we're in a fortunate position where we don't have any debt, we have no balance sheet issues, and so, you know, we're not in a position where we have to take on work, and so we didn't. We had great free cash flow in 2021, and we expect it's gonna get even better this year. You know, overall, I'll now talk about pricing is probably why everybody's dialed in.
You know, overall, the pricing environment has been a little frustrating in the last three quarters of 2021 and even in Q1 of 2022. W e've been very vocal about the need for price increases throughout 2021, going back almost a year now, and, you know, we're not wavering on that. In fact, you know, given that inflation really hit us hard in Q4, you know, we were waiting for it throughout the year, and we almost got complacent because it really didn't show up with any significance until the fourth quarter.
It's even more urgent now that we get pricing because, you know, we actually did get reasonable price increases throughout 2021, and our customers were very receptive, you know, to giving us price increases as our costs increased. Most of our customers were more than willing to work with us. Inflation ate it all, and we really did not gain any net price increases at all. We still, even as recently as January, we're still getting stink bids from some of the competitors in the space, which is odd. Fortunately, that's really subsided, and we really haven't seen any crazy pricing behavior now for probably almost a month.
We're just gonna continue to work with our customers, inform them as our costs increase. You know, they're very inquisitive as to our management of the supply chain, which is helpful because, you know, we're able to communicate with them on a more day-to-day basis as to how our costs are increasing. T hey've actually been quite receptive to working with us on getting our prices up. Second half, I think we'll see significant price increases in the second half of the year. You know, part of the issue where we didn't. W e've had price increases in Q1.
They haven't been as high as I would have thought, and it was kind of an odd quarter in that there was lots of drilling activity in the first six weeks of the quarter, but not, you know, not the corresponding completions activities that we would have expected given the rig count for our customers at least anyway. Everything's been, you know, lots of drilling in the first half of the quarter and a lot of the completions activity has been pushed into the second half. You know, we're now going into March, which there's no way we can get all the work done, and a lot of that work will get pushed into Q2, which will make for a good Q2. It really alleviated the pricing pressure in the first half of the quarter.
What we're seeing is pricing is probably gonna remain stable now until June, and then we'll see significant price increases as breakup ends. I think, you know, Q3 will be the first quarter where we'll actually see margin expansion. Q3 historically now, or I shouldn't say historically. Historically, Q1 is the busiest quarter of the year. I think in the last few years, it's proven that Q3 is our busiest quarter. You know, as Q3 and Q4 budgets, I think, get expanded, we will finally capture some of the pricing increases that we've been waiting for. On the supply chain side, this is a never-ending grind. W e are very fortunate that our group has done a really good job of this.
Whether it's sand, logistics, chemicals, any input that's required on the cementing coil or fracturing side needs to be actively managed. Our group is actively working with our suppliers to ensure that we have the products needed, especially in a rising market here in 2022 and 2023. Again, as we expected, we experienced lots of inflation throughout our entire supply chain. In fact, you know, the price increases were less than we had expected for the first nine months of 2021, and then actually were more than we expected in the last quarter of the year. There are no exceptions. D iesel, which is linked to oil price, third-party trucking, which obviously relies heavily on diesel and labor, you know, those rates have gone up significantly.
You know, sand, by the time it gets delivered to Northwest Alberta, Northeast BC, 70% of the cost of sand is logistics and transportation. Of course, you know, diesel costs, labor costs impact that significantly. On the chemical side, you know, many of the components that go into our chemical products come from China and the U.S., and we need to expect delays and increased costs. W e're always looking for substitutions, and our suppliers are creative and proactive in making sure we get supply. We have to expect that there's gonna be cost pressures there.
Even things like hotels, you know, with reduced staff count or reduced staff available. You know, the hotel costs and efficiencies of the costs have gone up and, you know, in many cases, the service availability has gone down because they just can't get the staff. Overall, we expect costs to go up in our industry, just like in all parts of the economy. You know, I think Western Canada is also additionally stressed by the fact that we, you know, we have a fairly finite labor force. You know, we're going to expect sort of cost increases and the supply chain limitations for the next 18 months.
Outlook for the remainder of the year, I think everybody obviously knows E&P cash flows are at all-time highs and their wells are paying off in extremely short periods of time. That's great news, right? We had a good 2021 and we expect that we're going to have a good 2022 and a good 2023. We are going to continue to have sort of COVID interruptions, but nothing too significant. We always have weather events in the winter and certainly so far in Q1 there's no exceptions. But you have to plan for those as they happen every year. You know, the basin remains very natural gas focused and natural gas prices in the strip is strong.
We expect again that the rig count will increase as the year unfolds. W e're currently at about 230 rigs and we expect that to go up in Q3. Based on conversations with our clients and equity analysts, you know, they're all telling us that budgets are going to slowly creep up as we go and as strong commodity prices invariably will eventually lead to increased activity and better and will drive or should drive better margins and earnings growth for Trican. You know, we do know that debt repayment and return to shareholders are a focus for our customers. Balance sheets have been largely repaired, especially with our customer base over the last 18 months.
We do expect that our clients will start to shift some of this free cash flow into the projects that have really good economics and quick paybacks. S ome of our clients and some of the people working in the drilling and completion groups have never seen, you know, returns this good in their, at any time in their career. W hen we talk to the drilling rig contractors, you know, they're backing all this up with their expectations that Q3 will be busier than Q1 on the rig count. T here's currently about 29 frac crews operating in Canada today. We estimate that we're going to need at least 35 in Q3. We're starting in March actually, and in Q3. Again, it's, you know, it's just math at the end of the day.
We will finally get the net price increases we've been waiting for. You know, because we're not going to get all of Q1's work done just because it was so back end loaded, it looks like we're going to have a really good Q2 again this year. L ast year was our best Q2 ever. I expect this year will be similar. You know, on the crew size, we get asked a lot, you know, are we going to act, are we going to continue to activate additional crews? As Scott was saying, we are adding our second Tier 4 spread and whether that's an incremental, crew add or replacement crew add, you know, we don't know yet.
We'll see what happens this summer, but generally we're not going to activate more equipment unless there's a return there. You know, would we activate it at today's pricing? Probably not. You know, given the difficulty of getting additional labor and in the amount of inflation that we've experienced, I'm not sure pricing today would justify an additional crew add, but you know, we will monitor that on a week to week basis. Based on the conversations with our customers, we'll make those decisions. You know, the good news on that is because labor is so tight, we will continue to see labor availability as a very significant bottleneck in crew additions, whether it's what's in the fracturing industry or the drilling industry.
I think the industry overall will be sort of operating at its max capacity from a people perspective. You know, whether there's discipline or not, it probably won't matter because people just won't be able to add equipment like they used to. You know, it just takes so much time now to get additional people. I think, you know, we've communicated this many times before, but we did add crew seven on our fracturing division. It took over six months to get the people to add that crew. We don't expect that's going to change going forward.
We do expect labor constraints to be alleviated a little bit as, you know, sort of COVID runs its course and people feel comfortable flying from the East to the West and they're confident that they're going to make it home for days off. Once that, once people get more comfort with that, you will see more people on the move from the East, which we have historically relied on fairly significantly. Once, you know, once those people come back to work, you know, we'll alleviate some of the labor issues we're dealing with. I n the long-term, we expect the labor constraints will be permanent and there'll be more challenging in the future.
We'll need to do better to refine our strategy on how we're going to attract labor to this industry. This is, you know, an issue for everybody. I just want to highlight before we wrap up that, you know, there's about 1.2 million horsepower operating in Canada out of a total fleet of about 1.8 million. That of course leaves sort of 600,000 of excess horsepower that's currently parked, which could eventually come to work, you know, with significant retrofits and people additions. It's important to note that, you know, we control about half of that. W e own about half of that park capacity, and we will make sure that it's brought back into the industry in a disciplined and responsible way.
We won't do so without making sure that there's a return there. O n the technology and ESG side, technology's always been a big driver of efficiencies in the oil patch. I don't think that's, you know, gonna change anytime soon. We continue to stay really well informed on all the technological advances that are happening, whether it's engines or pumps or transmissions or software packages, you know, maintenance programs, et cetera. We're not married to any. We're completely agnostic. We're not married to any technology. A s an example, even though we've adopted the Tier 4 engines, which we're really happy with, you know, we will continue to look at all the different options available and, we wouldn't hesitate to adopt new technologies.
We're fortunate to have the balance sheet to be able to make those moves. We won't do so unless they provide us with a return. I think there's too much discussion in our industry about technology without a corresponding discussion about, is it economically viable to implement those technologies? H ope is not a strategy, as we know. You know, the cost of some of the new, especially on the electric side, the cost of some of this great technology is just, there's just no way to ever get a return on the investment. W e'll make sure that whatever technologies we adopt, we're able to get a financial return on them as well. Of course, that's what our customers want.
They want us to be healthy and in this game for the long term. I think in the fall, we released our inaugural 2020 sustainability report. It can be found on our website, and our next report should come out this late in Q2 of this year. ESG will continue to be a focus for Trican and as it is a focus for our customers. You know, we're using lots of technology-based initiatives on the E side of it to provide solutions. But we're also focusing significantly on the S and the G side of ESG as well.
We've done a great job, especially on the governance side, and, you know, we continue to pursue initiatives to make sure that we're a good corporate citizen in the communities in which we operate. We're gonna continue to build out on the S side as the year unfolds. I'm just gonna wrap up with the Tier 4 upgrades. I think Scott mentioned it, but you know, generally, we've only been running those now for about two months. They arrived in late Q4. We get our second Tier 4 spread this summer. Again, I wanna stress that the equipment will only go to work for premium pricing as it provides cost and operating efficiencies for our customers. We're extremely pleased with how this equipment has performed in the field.
We still have some bugs to work out in the extreme cold, but overall, the equipment's performing as well or better than expected. You know, the natural gas substitution's been high. This is a trend that we think is gonna continue, and this technology will become a standard in Canada, I think in the next few years. On the growth and acquisitions, you know, our primary focus remains on just getting our existing equipment to work, getting our equipment off the fence eventually, if we can make it profitable. You know, we have a clean balance sheet.
We have a cash balance that provides us with the financial flexibility to look at any type of transaction that, you know, looks attractive, whether it's, you know, organic growth or M&A growth. We're always looking for the right deal. R Ight now, we think our best investment is on the NCIB, the share buybacks. You know, we've been active in the NCIB in the last few years, and I think we plan on being more active in the NCIB in the next few months. You know, we view that as one of our best investment opportunities when you just look at the price that we're buying our own horsepower at versus what we would have to pay in the market.
You look at the EBITDA multiples of, you know, other oilfield services companies that may be available for us to purchase. You know, it's really hard to deviate from this NCIB at this point. It's just such a good investment for us. I think I'll stop there. Thank you everyone for your interest and your time. Why don't I turn this call back to the operator for questions?
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To join the question queue you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. You'll hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you're using speaker phone please pick up your hands up before pressing any keys. To rejoin your question please press star then two. To join the question que please press start then one now. Our first question comes from Cole Pereira of Stifel. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, everyone. So it sounds like activity for Q1 is a little bit more back-end loaded. I mean, I'm just curious, you touched on it a little bit, but is it, you know, Trican-specific customer programs? Do you think it's low DUC inventories across the basin as well? You know, it sounds like your seventh fleet maybe had some white space. Just curious if you got the sense there was much idle capacity in the market, outside of that from your competitors.
No, I don't think there's any idle capacity. And don't get me wrong, sequentially, you know, our Q1 is better than our Q4, and it's better than last year's Q1. That's not an issue. I just, you know, given the rig count, I would have expected higher prices.
Yeah, you know, there's always white space. There always is. You know, do we have full-time work for our seventh crew? No, we don't, not until March. There's always white space, but I think we were a little surprised that we didn't get more pricing pressure. I think it's just because. You know, a lot of the work, you know, not just with our customers, but with other customers, I think a lot of the work, a lot of drilling in the first month and a lot of the completions work got pushed to the second half. You know, anytime breakup is looming, there's a hesitation to increase prices. It's really the only time of year where there's any significant cuts in Canada after Q1.
I think that's why we've seen the last few years, you know, Q2 seems to be getting almost to be a normal quarter. You know, the problem with this time of year is, you know, Q1 work gets spread out over six months. T hey're still drilling in Q2, but it's greatly reduced. That sort of let the steam out of the kettle on the pricing side. I hope that's what you're asking, Cole.
Oh, yeah. That's perfect. I guess you kinda touched on it a little bit earlier, but can you talk about Q1 net pricing relative to Q4? I mean, is it slightly better? Is it about the same, or is it worse?
No. Sorry. Are you asking me? Pricing did go up in all of our divisions on January 1. On a net basis, nothing really changed.
Yeah.
You know, like, the inflation just kept on going.
Okay. No, that's fair. As you touched on, I mean, you have to make investments in your fleet, working capital. You got CAD 30 million of cash on hand. You touched on the share buyback a little bit, but, you know, some of your peers and a lot of the E&Ps have committed to a set percentage of free cash flow that they're returning to shareholders. I mean, do you think that's something we could see from Trican here over the next couple of months?
It's more informal than that. I mean, we definitely have a percentage in mind, but it's, you know, given we're in the service industry and our cash flows are a little more unpredictable and volatile from quarter to quarter, you know, we don't disclose sort of what that percentage is and certainly would never be prepared to stick to it. But yeah, generally, you know, we sort of have a dollar amount in mind on a monthly basis going forward. You know, that number will go up and down as our views on the future change.
Okay, perfect. That's all for me. Thanks. I'll turn it back.
Thanks.
Our next question comes from Keith Mackey of RBC. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. You mentioned that customers are keen to secure equipment for the second half of the year. Can we just maybe think about how that has impacted or not the amount of contracting you've been able to do for your forecast second Tier 4 DGB fleet that you expect to come in in the summer?
There's not really much I can say about that. All I can really tell you is that the equipment will go to work for premium prices.
Got it. Fair enough. On the two fleets you've got, you know, in flight and in progress, it looks like you've kind of been able to upgrade those at about $570 a horsepower. How close would subsequent fleets be to that same efficiency, given some of the equipment you've got on the fence? Maybe, can you-
Yeah.
Sort of talk about your appetite to do that?
The pricing goes up every time you dig deeper into the inventory, just because the, you know, the equipment's not in great shape, or you might need a pump replacement or a transmission replacement versus an upgrade. You know, it's probably more segmented than that. It's more like we need a complete power end replacement versus an upgrade or. Yeah, your instincts are absolutely correct. The deeper you go into the inventory, the higher the prices go. You know, at this stage, you know the percentage change if we were to do the next set, you know, probably 10%. 10% more.
Got it. Okay. As far as that sort of next generation type equipment, we saw one announcement from a competitor on that. Have you had any other, I would say, competition for this type of equipment in tenders or as you've been negotiating your contracts?
I think you're asking, what's the interest level? The interest level is very high for the Tier 4 equipment.
Right. Is there any, I guess, outside competition for Tier 4 equipment that you've been, say, bidding against, or is it really just?
Oh.
Are you deciding how much to release this equipment for?
Sure. Yeah. There's you know, talk of you know, one of the U.S. firms bringing a Tier 4 spread to Canada and you know, lots of empty promises, I think, get made and along those lines, but there's no actual competing equipment on the street at this point. You know, one of our competitors does have a Tier 4. A single Tier 4 pumper, but not a fleet. Really our main competition at this stage would be us competing against sort of the Tier 2 dual fuel fleets that we all have.
What we're finding is with the Tier 4 equipment the substitution is of course higher, which reduces costs and the, you know, the pumps and the transmissions have been upgraded, and so it's a more powerful and efficient pump. But what we're seeing is, you know, the engines are much more efficient at burning natural gas, and so there's almost no methane slip. With Tier 2 dual fuels there is methane slip. From an emissions perspective, the Tier 4s are significantly better than the Tier 2s.
Got it. Okay, I'll leave it there. Thanks very much for the call.
Thanks.
Our next question comes from Josef Schachter of Schachter Energy Research. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys, and thanks for taking my calls. Three quick ones for me. First, are you seeing companies wanting to tie down equipment for longer periods of time with pricing adjusting based on market conditions?
There's lots of desire for long-term partnerships from an access to equipment perspective. Historically, we haven't had very much success tying pricing to current operating conditions like, or commodity prices. That's, it's not really an avenue we pursue. M ore what we've been doing is just explaining to our customers, you know, they've got their own problems, you know, they don't sit around worrying about us. W e're doing a better job at just explaining to them just the significance of the inflation and the need for there to be a return on invested capital.
Given the age of the fleet, given that there's, you know, given the reliance on fracturing as part of an overall, you know, well construction and the complete lack of investment by our industry in the last seven years, just because the, you know, the money just wasn't there. T he sophisticated customers, they get it, right? They understand if they want a healthy fracturing industry, prices have to go higher. Luckily, they have the cash flows to absorb those. I mean, you know, our price increases are insignificant in the overall scheme of things. It's more informal than that, you know.
I'd like to say there's, you know, long-term contracts with pricing escalators, but that has never been the case and it likely won't be the case anytime soon, you know, other than the odd exception here and there.
Okay. For example, diesel costs, how often is there like a monthly adjustment in terms of pricing for some of the big escalation in near-term costs, or is this something that happens over more of a quarterly basis? Just to get an idea of, you know, I know you mentioned the inflation pressure and versus the pricing pressure, given the last few weeks, I think, you know, diesel costs have gone up a lot. How quickly do you have to wait before you can pass those through, regarding, you know, the pressure on your margins again?
Well, like the diesel, like you said, Josef, the diesel prices do change weekly if not daily. With our pass-through approach, we've been able to pass it through not immediately, but say within a 30-day period, 15- to 30-day period, and to our customers, but just to recapture the cost of the fuel inflation.
Yep. Okay. Lastly, you mentioned M&A and growth opportunities. Are you looking just in the business lines you're in today, or are you looking at complementary lines? I know you can't go into specifics, but how far, you know, in terms of just general commentary of what business lines might fit or geographic expansion of what you're doing right now?
Yeah, I mean, again, I'd keep our comments fairly high level. I mean, Brad mentioned we're looking at everything. Our primary focus is, you know, does it make sense? Could we change the business and extract additional return out of it? I mean, we're not gonna be looking too far afield other than our core business or something that's fairly easily tangential to it. Yeah, I probably wouldn't go much deeper than that.
Okay, super. Thank you very much for answering my question. Much appreciated.
Yeah. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Waqar Syed of ATB Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Thank you for taking my question. Scott, I've got a couple of just simple modeling questions. Could you provide some guidance on DD&A, G&A, and tax rate for 2022?
Sure. From a tax perspective, I mean, we've got a significant portion of Canadian pool. I wouldn't expect kind of anything meaningful from that perspective. From a depreciation perspective.
Maybe, you know, on an annual basis, probably slightly downwards, right? Just as we grind through some of our older equipment. You know, we are replacing and upgrading our fleet as we go along, so it'll be down marginally, but I wouldn't expect it to drop significantly from there. Then G&A, I think, you know, Q4 was probably a bit light, right? Just with the amount of accruals, stuff that flowed through there, et cetera. If you kind of looked at Q3 and Q4, you know, that's probably a decent run rate going forward. I wouldn't expect a significant change certainly to the upside on that.
Okay. Brad, you did mention that you expected Q1 revenues to be higher. Although net pricing did not improve, but overall pricing net pricing relatively flat. Just because of higher revenues, you expect margins to improve, EBITDA margins Q1 versus Q4?
Are you talking percentages or absolute?
Absolute in both. Yeah.
Percentages to remain very similar. You know, the dollar amounts will go up, of course, just because it was a busier quarter. Percentage margins won't change much.
Okay. You expect Q2 to be relatively similar to Q2 of last year?
Yeah. R ight now, that's certainly our view. I probably should stress that, you know, March, April, May, June, it's very, very weather dependent. You know, over that four-month span, the gross amount of work doesn't or the aggregate amount of work probably doesn't change, but the month in which it may get done certainly can change. You know, as everybody hopefully knows, we're coming into breakup. The, you know, as the winter thaws, you know, the roads become, you know, susceptible to damage with heavy equipment, and so it really slows things down. A ny kind of predictions that are on the board, even though, and booked and scheduled, can all change with weather, so.
Okay. That's already helpful. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Andrew Bradford of Raymond James. Please go ahead.
Morning, guys. Thanks for taking my call here. Or my questions rather. Outside the new engines, are you running any purely diesel spreads today? And-
Are we?
Do you think that your competitors would have sort of the same sort of profile as yourselves, the ones that we can't maybe see quite as easily?
Yeah, we do work. There, you know, there is a place for a pure diesel spread. I t's costly because diesel is a lot more expensive than natural gas. From an emissions perspective, you know, Tier 2 diesel engines perform pretty well. So there's always a place for those spreads. You know, on a percentage of total equipment basis, we would have the highest of the or the lowest, I guess, of the diesel, pure diesel spreads. You know, only two of our spreads today are diesel. I would think our peers, it's probably a higher percentage than that just because they have.
Is that a function of where you tend to work?
Good question. It'd be a function of, yeah, where we're working and our ability and also our financial ability to invest in the Tier 4 technology and the Tier 2 dual fuels over the last few years.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah. Well-
It's a long-winded way of saying I'm not sure.
Yeah. Okay, that's fair. Maybe just on, because, you know, you say you're half of the parked equipment, the serviceable parked equipment in the basin. Would the percentage of dual fuel versus diesel in that parked capacity be different than what we're seeing running today? I would expect so.
The parked capacity would be there'd be no dual fuel in the parked capacity today.
Okay. That kind of brings me to the next question, which is, when we talk about bringing capacity off the fence, so to speak, I assume then that the producers are probably, from a cost perspective, going to want dual fuel. Isn't that a fair assumption?
Yeah. I mean, the deep operators are gonna want Tier 4.
Right.
Because of the emissions.
The cost to convert or the cost to actually bring the type of spread that the industry is probably gonna want. Because I'm, you know, I'm coming back to your comment that there are 29 today and industry might have need for 35. We're now looking for 6 spreads of equipment that might be mismatched with the type of fuel they burn vis-à-vis what the customer base wants. Am I right in thinking this way?
Absolutely. Unless we ended up with a really active shallow gas market or something like that.
Okay.
Which would use-
And-
Which would use diesel, but.
Again, okay, my last question then would be, as we start to see some of these spreads come off the fence then, is it your expectation that they're going to be converted to dual fuel and will it be some kind of a Tier 2 type of conversion? Or how would we think about that?
We would never. Well, never is maybe too strong. At this stage, knowing what we know today, we would not bring a fleet off the fence without a Tier 4 DGB upgrade. A pump upgrade for that matter, right? I mean, we've been talking about this now for a year, and I hope the Street is starting to understand that the state of this parked equipment is not good, right? You know, like, the question before you was, you know, are the upgrades getting more expensive as you go deeper into the inventory? The answer is yes.
It's, you know, we're spending CAD 20+ million on a Tier 4 DGB upgrade, which includes, you know, transmission and pumping upgrades as well, or retrofits or, you know, significant parts replacements. When these spreads hit the street, I mean, they are the state-of-the-art, 3,000 horsepower, heavy duty, you know, continuous duty equipment. The parked gear that you're starting with is not that. You know, this is, I mean, what you're getting, of course, is, this is not an exercise and, oh, we'll just sort of spend sort of CAD 5 million or CAD 6 million and then here we got a spread that can go to work in the Montney. Okay, maybe, but, you know, not the kind of spread we would wanna operate.
Okay. Maybe this will be my last question then. That being the case, what do you think would be the cost, the least cost? Like, say perhaps one of your competitors perhaps didn't have access to a Tier 4 dynamic gas blending engine and wanted to do something that was relatively cost-effective, but also accomplish the goal of getting spread into the market. What do you think that investment would be on that spread? Do you have a guess on that?
Yeah. I'll give you broad numbers just 'cause, you know, obviously I don't know what's out there other than our own equipment. If you just wanted to get it up and running in its current form, whether it's a Tier 2 diesel or whatever, and, you know, you're happy with a 2,500 horsepower pump, you know, CAD 5-CAD 8. Then, you know, if you're well, okay, we need pump replacements and we need this and we need that, and it's CAD 10-CAD 12. Then if you want a Tier 4 DGB set up, then it's CAD 20+. Again, you know, if you're talking an 8-pump spread versus a 12-pump spread, the numbers change. You know, when we think about pulling a spread off the fence, we think in terms of sort of 12-14 pumps.
Okay. Thanks for taking my questions.
Thanks.
This concludes the question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Fedora for any closing remarks.
Okay. Thank you, everyone. We appreciate your time. We tried to keep it under an hour. We are available. The management team here at Trican is available for questions if anybody would like to follow up with us on a one-to-one basis. If not, looking forward to our call in a few months. Thank you.
This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating and have a pleasant day.