Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Trican Well Service's first quarter 2025 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 Ltd. Please go ahead, Mr. Fedora.
Good morning. Thanks, everyone, for joining the call. Scott, our CFO, will start by giving an overview of the quarterly results, and then I'll provide some comments with respect to the quarter and our current operating conditions and what the rest of the year looks like. Then we'll take some questions from listeners. As usual, several members of our team are here with us in the room today and are available to answer any questions. I'll now turn this call over to Scott.
Thanks, Brad. Before we begin, I'd 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 MD&A for Q1 2025. 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 2024 annual information form for the year ended December 31, 2024, for a more complete description of business risks and uncertainties facing Trican. This document is available both on our website and on CDAR. During this call, we will refer to several common industry terms and use certain non-GAAP measures which are more fully described in our Q1 2025 MD&A and in our Q4 2024 MD&A.
Our quarterly results were released after close of market last night and are available both on CDAR and our website. With that, a brief summary of the quarter. My comments will draw comparisons mostly to the first quarter of last year, and I'll provide some additional commentary about our quarterly activity and our expectations going forward. Trican's results for the quarter compared to last year's Q1 were not quite as strong, mainly due to a more competitive pricing environment combined with some inflationary cost pressures faced in the quarter. Our schedule is always subject to client readiness and weather conditions, which serve to defer certain customer programs into Q2 of 2025. On the cost side, we felt the effects of foreign exchange fluctuations and rail surcharges during the quarter. Revenue for the quarter was $ 259.1 million, with adjusted EBITDA of $ 61.3 million, or 24% of revenues.
Not quite as strong as the adjusted EBITDA of $ 72.8 million, or 27% of revenues we generated in Q1 2024, but still solid in this environment. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter came in at $ 62.3 million, or 24% of revenues. To arrive at EBITDA, we add back the effects of cash-settled share-based compensation recognized in the quarter to more clearly show the results of our operations and remove some of the financial noise associated with changes in our share price as we mark to market these items. On a consolidated basis, we generated positive earnings of $ 1.9 million in the quarter, which translates to $ 0.17 per share on both a basic and a fully diluted basis. Trican generated free cash flow of $ 43 million during the quarter.
Our definition of free cash flow is essentially EBITDA less non-discretionary cash expenditures, which include maintenance capital, interest, current taxes, and cash-settled stock-based comp. You can see the details of this in our non-GAAP measures section of our MD&A. CapEx for the quarter totaled $ 12.5 million, split between maintenance capital of about $ 8.8 million and upgrade capital of $ 3.7 million. Our upgrade capital was dedicated mainly to the electrification of our fourth set of electric ancillary frac support equipment and ongoing investments to maintain the productive capability of our active equipment. For 2025, we have an approved capital budget of $ 70.2 million, which will be focused on a mixture of ongoing maintenance capital and targeted growth initiatives, including that fourth set of electric ancillary frac support equipment, further investments in our logistics fleet, and our supporting infrastructure.
As we mentioned in our last call, Trican is undertaking a significant technology modernization initiative, starting with our base financial system and implementing an integrated ERP platform. We're modernizing our technology platform to enhance operational efficiency, streamline internal processes, and help position the company for future innovation and growth. The investment for 2025 is still anticipated to be approximately $ 10 million, which will be presented as a component of G&A expense in accordance with IFRS reporting standards. Balance sheet remains solid. We exited the quarter with positive working capital of approximately $ 159 million, including cash of $ 4.1 million. With respect to our return of capital strategy, we repurchased and canceled 2.5 million shares under our NCIB program for the first quarter.
Subsequent to Q1 2025, we've repurchased and canceled an additional $ 6.6 million shares, and we continue to be active with our buyback program when market prices are at levels that provide for a favorable investment opportunity. We've repurchased and canceled 11.7 million shares to date, representing approximately 61% of the 2024-2025 NCIB program. As noted in our press release, the Board of Directors approved a dividend of $ 0.05 per share. The distribution is scheduled to be made on June 30th, 2025, to shareholders of record as of the close of business on June 13th, 2025. I would note that the dividends are designated as eligible dividends for Canadian income tax purposes. With that, I'll turn things back to Brad.
Okay. Thanks, Scott. Just as a reminder, my comments will include Q1 2025 commentary and some forward-looking statements for the rest of the year. I remind you to go to our website and read our disclaimer. That is on page two of our PowerPoint presentation, our investor presentation. Overall, Q1 went pretty much as forecast. I would say there were no surprises really at all. We had similar activity levels to Q4. We are very fortunate that our customer list has really made great strides in the last few years with respect to level loading their work throughout the year. We are not experiencing nearly the same volatility from quarter to quarter that we grew to expect in the past. It is great from our perspective with respect to planning and staffing, etc.
As always, Q1 experienced the usual weather and breakup issues, but nothing that we had not already built into our forecast. Activity levels held, I would say, pretty well through all the news with respect to political instability and tariffs. We are really—and I will talk more about tariffs later on—but I really would say that that has not significantly impacted our business at all at this time. In general, there was—Scott mentioned there was a little bit of pricing pressure, which really, I think, is a result of sort of a Q4 hangover for some of our competitors that had really slowed down going into the end of the year. I would say that pretty much has stabilized for now. We always have to keep an eye on that. You never sort of know where your competitors are at from a pricing perspective.
I would say, in general, it seems to have stabilized. The same with costs. We've talked about this in the past. Costs have really pretty much stabilized. We're starting to see even some reductions with respect to fuel with the carbon tax and fuel surcharges. There are other items that do go up every year. I would say the rate of change on costs has basically returned to normal compared with sort of the post-COVID era where we were seeing big changes from quarter to quarter and year to year. I would say it's more what we're all used to with just tiny changes from year to year. On the fracturing side, no changes. We're still very disciplined. We operate seven frac crews. That means that we're running about 60% of our total horsepower compared to some of our competitors that are operating at capacity.
They've even added equipment to this basin, which is, again, unbelievable. We will continue to be disciplined and make sure that the equipment is making money. As we've talked about before, this equipment only has so many hours on it. They're approximately seven-year assets. You can't sort of carve two or three years out of those seven years to not make money and sort of hide behind high utilization. We'll pick our spots carefully and make sure that we provide a return to our shareholders every time we put a piece of equipment to work. Our operations are still very focused on the Montney, the Duvernay, and the Deep Basin. I don't anticipate, as everybody knows, LNG is months away.
I think we're going to continue to be focusing in Northwest Alberta and Northeast BC going forward, as we've been talking about before. On the cementing side, we're really, again, I think I'm repeating myself here, but we're very happy with the performance of this division. Clearly, the technical leader in Canada in cementing, a very wide, extensive customer list. Really, the only reason that companies aren't using us is we're either not present in those operating areas just due to a shortage of people and equipment. Really, it's probably a price issue. We don't make any apologies for that. We're viewed as a technical leader. Certainly, if you're in some of the trickier plays like the Duvernay, we have a 75% market share in that play thanks to our expertise.
We operated at a very high utilization throughout Q1 and continue to in Q2. I think we're about 10 rigs higher now than we were at this time last year. I would say, overall, we still sort of target to have about a 35% market share in the overall basin. That's just because some of the plays we're not active in or not yet anyway. We target to hold a 50% market share in the Montney and the Deep Basin and a higher in the Duvernay, as I discussed. We are starting to move back into some of the heavier oil plays that we had abandoned around COVID just due to lack of staffing. That'll take time. Again, those customers, they can view our expertise with respect to blends and equipment, and they see the value offering in that very easily.
Just a shout-out to our group. We recently cemented a 9,000-meter liner, which is the longest in Canadian history. This is an indication of these wells just get deeper and longer in the horizontal section. Your ability to deal in these operating conditions becomes more and more important. We're certainly seeing that in our market share. Great job to everybody in our cementing division. On the coil side, I can echo some similar comments. We're making great progress in the coil division. We've been focused on growing this now for a few years. We have intermittent starts and stops. I would say, generally, it's going quite well. We're still disciplined in this. We're operating sort of seven-eight coil crews. Lots of room for growth in this division. Q1 was our largest revenue quarter ever. We had utilization over 70%.
That was a big win. I think we cycled over 1 million meters of pipe, and yet, we only had a downtime of 1.6%. Great job from our coil division. We sort of have a joint venture with a company called ACOS, and they have a multi-directional tool for clients operating in some of the heavier oil, multi-leg areas of the province. We completed our first job. It was an overwhelming success. We are looking for some market share growth around that going forward as well. Again, we have great field margins in this business. We just do not have the scale that we are hoping for. As we continue to grow this business, the divisional earnings and return on invested capital in the coil division will get to a level that we are happy with. I think we are well on our way.
Just for the rest of 2025, I'll make some comments. We were happy with Q1. We're happy with Q2 to date. There's been some movement, of course, given commodity prices and just some of the political issues in the news, but nothing too significant. We're forecasting 2025 to be quite level loaded. We're closely watching oil and gas prices. We're on the lookout for potential delays or reductions in our customers' programs, especially on the oil side. There have been delays, but nothing significant. There are always delays. Every year, there are pads moving, pads getting canceled, pads getting added. If you're not building that kind of volatility into your forecast, you're missing something. I think we have a very realistic view of this industry. We build in lots of room for movement both in and out of the program.
We're expecting 2025 to be very similar to 2024 from an activity level. There is some pricing pressure and just some uncertainty around commodity prices. That always means there's a little bit of panic in the system. That pricing pressure will lead to slightly lower margins like we saw in Q1. Still, we're operating at levels that we're really happy with. Our goal is to hit return on invested capital of 20% every year. We're at those levels today. In general, I would say, even if this is a bit of a sidestep for the rest of 2025, we're still happy with the financial returns. We believe we provide a premium service offering. We pursue the clients that value that. They look for operating efficiencies. They look for something other than just price.
We try to align ourselves with those customers. Today, we've been really successful. Our top 10 customers have probably been with us for 10 years or more. It's because it works out for their wells and incremental production, etc. They do what's best for them. So far, it's worked out really well for us. Strip, especially on the gas side, strip pricing is very economic levels. We're fairly optimistic on gas activity for the rest of the year. All of our customers are in great shape from a balance sheet perspective. They'll spend their money wisely and methodically. We're expecting that there's sort of a slow continuation of what they've been doing year to date and past year. We think this year looks sort of very level loaded compared to last year. It's similar levels.
The Duvernay is working out, continues to build momentum. It's very service intensive, especially on the frac side. Very long reaches on cementing and coil. It's great for our business. It's a great opportunity to sort of showcase our technical expertise. We're getting great response from our customers in that play. On the tariff side, there was lots of news, lots of fears about what would happen. Clearly, the 10% tariffs on oil and natural gas going into the U.S. did not get implemented. However, the Canadian government did put in some retaliatory tariffs around the auto and steel, which is affecting our business. The main issue there is on sand. There are tariffs that are sort of ranging in the $ 10 per ton range. I would say it's a little lower than that, but so far, we're sort of modeling in $ 10 per ton.
That came into effect in early March. There are industry groups that are lobbying to have that removed. The idea is that there is no sort of plan B. We cannot access that sand from Canada. There just is not enough capacity. We think it is an unfair tariff at this stage. We are hoping to get that reversed and see how that goes. The tariffs have had minimal effect on cement and chemical products. Most of that is locally sourced. We purchase about $ 70 million-$ 80 million of cement and chemical products every year. Probably less than 10% of those are affected by reciprocal Canadian tariffs. The one thing we are keeping an eye on is coil. We do buy coil out of the U.S., and there is talk about tariffs increasing the cost of that coil by as much as 25%. We will see.
We don't have to buy any more coil until late in the year. We'll just keep an eye on that going forward. On the sand logistics side, that's still an area of focus for us. We think it's a great opportunity for us, given our fleet and our logistics expertise. We think it's going to become a larger and larger part of the overall efficiency of our customers' programs. The profitability of the services that we provide is going to be more tightly linked to logistics. Last-mile logistics is essential to extracting profitability from the increasing sand volumes. I've used these analogies before, but we have 50-100 rail cars of sand being pumped into a single well these days. You can imagine from a trucking perspective what that means, especially given some of the distances that we're dealing with.
We have been steadily building our logistics department, like our trucking department, with experienced professional drivers. We have been building what we think is sort of the best from a trailer equipment perspective. I think it is paying off. We have the largest logistics department in Canada. I think a lot of our customers really see the value in that. What I mean by that is when you have a B train of sand showing up on location every 10-12 minutes and being dumped into the on-site storage and then pumped down the well, any interruptions in that schedule can mean big delays. You have hundreds of truckloads of sand showing up in a very sort of 24-36 hour period.
Your ability to sort of perfectly time and plan that out can avoid a lot of downtime for your customers, which is very expensive. I think they see the value in what we do. It has been paying off. We are still looking at various technologies. The ultimate goal is 100% natural gas-fueled operations in the field. I do not think I am going to go through this in detail. I have talked about this before. We are going to be trialing our first 100% natural gas engine this summer. It should be ready in the second half of this year. We are combining it with some proprietary transmission technology that will allow us to pump at variable rates. The big challenges with 100% natural gas engines is they run at a constant rate, which is not applicable for what we do for a living.
We need to build to sort of rev up and down and change pumping pressures, change pumping rates. We have spent a lot of time and money on a proprietary transmission technology to help us deal with the constant rate of the engine, but with variable transmission speeds. We will trial it out in the second half of this year and hope for the best. If it is successful, when you combine those 100% natural gas engines with our electric ancillary equipment, we will be operating in essentially 100% natural gas on location, which is a big win for our customers from an emissions and fuel cost perspective. I am really looking forward to seeing how that works out. In the meantime, we will continue to deploy our Tier 4 DGB technology and our electric ancillary equipment until we get to 100%.
The ultimate goal is to operate with 100% natural gas-fueled operations in the field. We're still obviously very excited about LNG Canada coming online. That should be in this summer. Once at full capacity, we'll be exporting over 10% of the natural gas production in Canada, which clearly will have a positive impact on pricing. I think a lot of our customers are looking forward to that. The Montney continues to stand out as one of the best plays, if not the best play in North America on a relative basis compared to the upside of that play from a drilling and reserves perspective. We think we're only in sort of the second, third inning at the most.
When you compare it to the U.S. plays that are on the downslope of their life cycle, the Canadian plays like the Montney and Duvernay just look better and better every year in comparison. I think our customers are looking forward to being positioned as well as they are. When you combine that with LNG exports, not just LNG Canada, but Woodfibre and other facilities that are close to being online, we think the next 5-10 years in Canada look fantastic. We're not changing our strategy. We're not changing our focus. We're going to continue to develop technology and stand out as a differentiated service provider. We're very, very happy to be in this basin, especially with the customer base that we have. We're still focused on generating free cash flow, maintaining a conservative balance sheet.
I think, as Scott had mentioned, we still subscribe to a differentiated return on capital strategy through the dividend and the buyback. We do view the buyback as sort of internal M&A. We will scale it up and down accordingly to what the opportunities are out there on the corporate side and where we are from a share price perspective. I think we will just continue to pull on those levers as efficiently as possible. We are not afraid to use our bank lines if we find something really attractive. As always, we operate effectively at little to no debt. We have lots of main capacity if we find something interesting. We will just continue to evaluate M&A opportunities against our NCIB and our dividend going forward. We expect to continue our differentiated strategy with hopefully growing dividends and lots of buybacks.
Our corporate priorities have not changed. We want to build a resilient, sustainable, and differentiated company that everybody's proud to work at. We want to invest in high-quality growth and equipment. We want to upgrade wherever we see the opportunity to set ourselves apart from our competitors and provide a consistent return of capital to our shareholders through the dividend and the NCIB when appropriate. We are going to continue to maintain a clean balance sheet, lots of financial discipline, and just execute our plan over the next few years. I think I'll stop there, operator, and we'll go to questions.
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 will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. First question comes from Keith Mackey with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Brad, since you mentioned return on invested capital, I figured I would start there in this Q&A. Target of 20% looks like the last couple of years from your presentations has really just moved from the low 20s to the high teens. Just curious, what does the path back to 20% look like to you? Does the market need to improve, or are there internal levers you can pull to get back to 20% return on invested capital?
Yeah, both. I mean, pricing, as you can imagine, can move that number from the high teens to the low 20s really quickly. The other thing that we've been doing a really good job of is just getting rid of all of the redundant and spare assets that exist, sorry, assets and real estate that exist in this company. You know how the calculation works. If you reduce the asset base, your denominator shrinks and makes the returns higher. We have a lot of redundant real estate, old equipment in every division that we actively try to dispose of whenever we get the opportunity. We'll just continue to make this company operate as efficiently as possible.
I mean, I think one of the few companies that understands our cost of capital, and it certainly is not 10% or 12% like a lot of service companies think it is. It is much higher than that. I think we can see that with the trading multiples quite easily. It is a tough hurdle when you are targeting 20% returns on all your projects, whether internal or external. You have to sort through a lot of opportunities to find those. The only way to get there is just to grind, grind, grind, grind and pick your spots carefully.
Yeah, got it. Just to follow up on the asset rationalization, older equipment, what inning would you say that your Trican is in there?
From an asset rationalization perspective, seven.
Yeah, seven.
Every time you get slowdowns in the U.S., we don't sell the equipment locally to our competitors, obviously. We try to sell spare equipment into the U.S. or overseas. It sort of comes in waves. You might go through six months where there's no action at all. All of a sudden, you get an opportunity to sell a bunch of pumps or a coil unit or something like that. You just got to keep your eyes peeled at all times. We're almost at the stage now where, from an equipment perspective, we're getting to, I wouldn't say where we want to be, but we're not that far away either. On the real estate side, we're really close. We've really cleaned up a lot of the redundant real estate in the last few years. What have we got?
I'm looking at Todd and Scott here. We got a couple of locations left to sell.
Yeah, two.
Two, yeah.
Small one.
Yeah, but we've made very strong progress on both sides on the asset rationalization piece and then specifically on the real estate over the last few years as we've chipped away at it. Yeah, I think seventh inning is probably a good metaphor, Keith.
Got it. I feel like I ask this every quarter, but can you just talk about the potential ramp in LNG Canada-related fracturing activity? Have you seen anything notable yet? What is the RFP process looking like? Any comments around that topic would be helpful.
It's been quiet. I mean, I think we were all hoping for the sort of step change in activity sort of the six months before LNG became fully operational. That hasn't been that way. It's been sort of a slow grind. I think some of the participants are expecting to buy gas on the market as opposed to having drilled it and produced it like we were hoping. You are seeing and hearing about more long-term sort of robust programs out of the participants there. There's a lot of gas behind pipe for certain of the LNG Canada participants, but some of them are still short of gas. It's a bit of a mixture, but it hasn't been this sort of overnight step change in activity that I think a lot of people maybe have been modeling.
Yeah, got it. Okay. I think I'll leave it there. Thanks very much.
Thanks, Keith.
Once again, if you have a question, please press star then one. The next question comes from John Gibson with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Morning, guys. Thanks for taking my question. First one, we saw a big merger, a Canadian producer merger in the Montney and Duvernay close today, I guess. I was wondering if that has impacted your activity level schedule or client base as we move forward, or is it still a little bit too early?
No, I mean, generally, I would say it's positive for us. We worked for both companies. On the cementing side, the combined co won't run as many rigs as the two individuals were in aggregate. We'll lose some rigs on the cementing side, but probably pick up more frac work. You have to expect these things. I think we've done a really good job of being closely aligned with the companies that are likely to buy versus sell. This is a perfect example of that. We had worked more for Whitecap than we did for Baytex from a revenue perspective just because the fracking is so much bigger than the cementing. Yeah, I don't know. It is what it is. You have to expect something like that happening a couple of times a year. We're not worried about it at all.
I got it. You've previously spoken for an app for M&A, and you pointed to cementing as needing more scale. Is this a line you could focus on in terms of acquisitions or even grow fleet organically?
Yeah, we have spare—sorry, John, you said cementing, right?
Yeah.
Yeah. We have spare equipment capacity. We do not have the staffing capacity. We are going to continue to try to grow it in the eastern areas that we had previously been active in. We will just have to sort of slowly but surely staff up. Maybe we will have to open up a base or a couple of field locations or something like that to provide support. Yeah, I am not terribly optimistic on the M&A side in cementing. There are only a few key players in Canada. I do not get the sense that any of them are for sale. We have active files on sort of every one of our competitors and every one of our divisions. We are always looking at everything.
Anything's possible, but it's not something I think we can sort of rely on as part of a business plan is to complete M&A in any division, frankly.
Okay, got it. Just a quick one to end here. Is $10 million a good rate over the next few years to think about for technology investments, or should we see that sort of step down in years two and three?
It's better.
Yeah, you didn't see the glance I got there, but I mean, this project is going to be a multi-year project as we go forward. There will be some spend next year as we work our way through it. I mean, I would use that as a run rate for now, and then we can adjust it as we go.
Okay, great. Thanks, guys. I'll turn it back.
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, for your time. If you have any more questions, please call. We are available for today and the rest of the week if any other questions come up. Thank you again.
This brings to a close today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating and have a pleasant day.