Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Trican Well Service Limited Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Brad Fedora, President and CEO of Trican Well Service Limited. Please go ahead, Mr. Fedora.
Thanks, everyone, for joining us. As usual, first, Scott, our CFO, will give an overview of the quarterly results, and then I'll provide some comments with respect to the quarter, the current operating conditions, and our outlook for the rest of this year and early next year. We will open the call for questions. Various members of the executive team are here in the room today and available to answer any questions that may come up. I'll now turn this back 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 Q3 of 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 Well Service Ltd. This document is available both on our website and on SEDAR. During this call, we will refer to several common industry terms and use certain non-GAAP measures, which are more fully described in our Q4 2024 MD&A.
Our quarterly results were released after close of market last night and are available both on SEDAR and our website. With that, a brief summary of our quarterly results. I'll draw some comparisons to the third quarter of last year and provide a bit of commentary about our activity levels and our expectations going forward. Trican's results for the quarter compared to last year's Q3 were generally stronger as overall operating activity came in a bit higher in spite of continued pressure on commodity pricing. Oil pricing, in particular, was hit hard as we moved through September, which led several customers to either delay or shelve projects in oilier plays. Combined with some timing shifts on natural gas-related activities, this took a bit of the wind out of our sales on what was shaping up to be a very strong quarter.
Brad will comment a little bit about our outlook on Q4 later. Our revenues for the quarter are at $300.6 million compared to the $221.6 million we generated in Q3 of 2024. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $59.5 million, or 20% of revenue, compared to adjusted EBITDA of $50.2 million, or 23% of revenues generated last year. Just a reminder that our results include the contributions from Iron Horse from the date of acquisition through September 30. I would also note that our results include $2.5 million of transaction costs related to the acquisition that were expensed in the quarter. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter came in at $66.9 million, or 22% of revenue, up from the $53.1 million, or 24% of revenue we generated in Q3 of last year.
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 mark-to-market impact of movements in our share prices between the reporting dates. You'll note that this number was larger this quarter at $7.4 million compared to an average of about $2.3 million over the last four quarters, again, due to the movement in our share prices versus June 30. This is a very good example of why we always focus on EBITDA when we have conversations versus adjusted EBITDA, as those numbers can vary pretty significantly period to period. On a consolidated basis, we generated positive earnings of $28.9 million in the quarter. That's about $0.15 per share, both on a basic and a fully diluted basis. Trican Well Service Ltd.
generated free cash flow of $35.4 million during the quarter. Our definition of free cash flow is essentially EBITDA, less non-discretionary cash expenditures, maintenance capital, interest, current taxes, and the cash-settled stock-based comp piece I talked about earlier. You can see more details on this in the non-GAAP measures section of our MD&A. I would note this figure is impacted both by the transaction costs that I talked about and stock-based comp I quoted earlier. CapEx for the quarter totaled $18.9 million, a split between maintenance capital of about $13.5 million and upgrade capital of $5.4 million. That upgrade capital was dedicated mainly to the electrification of our fourth set of ancillary frac support equipment and ongoing investments to maintain the productive capability of our active equipment. From a balance sheet perspective, we exited the quarter with positive non-cash working capital of about $209 million.
As of September 30, we had net debt of $130.6 million, comprised of loans and borrowings of $139.1 million, offset by cash of $8.5 million. Our debt at September 30 was primarily related to the acquisition of Iron Horse and some normal working capital investing activities during the quarter. A couple of points to note, that September 30 debt number translates into just over half a turn of leverage using our trailing 12-month EBITDA figure, which does not make us uncomfortable given our outlook for the rest of this year and into early 2026. A portion of this is already unwound, and we would expect our debt position to trend down as we move through the end of this year and certainly into next year.
With respect to return of capital, we repurchased and canceled about 100,000 shares during the quarter and closed out our 2024-2025 Normal Course Issuer Bid (NCIB) program. We completed that program October 4, and under the program in total, we repurchased 13.2 million common shares at a weighted average price of about $4.27 per share. On September 30, we announced the renewal of our NCIB program, which will allow us to purchase up to 18.4 million common shares, representing 10% of our public float as at the time of renewal. This program is scheduled to run from October 5, 2025, through October 4, 2026. As noted in our press release, the Board of Directors approved a dividend of $0.55 per share, reflecting approximately $11.7 million in aggregate payments to shareholders.
The distribution is scheduled to be made on December 31, 2025, to shareholders of record as of the close of business on December 12, 2025. The dividends are designated as eligible dividends for Canadian income tax purposes. I'll turn things back to Brad.
Okay, thank you. I'll just remind everybody that my comments will include Q3 2025 and forward-looking observations for Q4 and 2026. Please refer back to Scott's disclaimer. Overall, the quarter went well. We obviously had a great July and August, and then we had a bad September. It's actually one of the worst months of the year for us. All that's just a reflection of work got pushed out of the month into the next month. That's our business. We don't focus too heavily on the exact timing of the work. I know we live in a quarterly world, but from a business perspective, that doesn't get us too fussed. It just got moved. The work didn't go away. It wasn't a concern of ours at all. As I'll talk later, it's going to boost our Q4. We're very fortunate to have our customer list.
They continue to level low throughout the year. We don't expect that this year is going to be any different. I know there's a lot of talk about budget exhaustion into Q4. We typically don't experience that, and I don't think we're going to experience that this year either. There is a little bit of pricing pressure going on, just as some of our competitors don't have busy Q4s. There's a lot of jostling to fill the board, and that always reflects pricing down. Of course, the rate count is down slightly from last year. Again, those I think are temporary situations. We still expect to have a good 2025 and certainly a good Q4. We remain gas-focused. I'd say corporately, overall, about 75% of our work is based on sort of natural gas plays.
I know a lot of those plays are liquids-rich, but we're very excited about what we think is going to be a great year in 2026 for gas prices. That's one of the reasons why we continue to be so optimistic in the context of a lot of sort of moaning and complaining about the current environment. A lot of the cost inflation has slowed very significantly. We're actually seeing cost reductions on some of our inputs. A lot of the tariffs that were proposed didn't happen or have been reversed. We've seen fuel surcharges come off. That's helping sort of offset some of the pricing pressure we're getting. We're still able to maintain pretty reasonable margins, given a more negative price environment. We are experiencing lower Northeast BC work.
I don't think that's any secret to anybody that follows the rig count, but it's getting made up for work in the Duvernay, which is very fracturing intensive. It's very similar to what's happening in Northeast BC. All four divisions, when we think about market share and the customer list that we have, we've got the two frac divisions, the cement division, and the coil division. All four of them are running really well, and we're really happy with our business plan and how it's unfolding. One thing I did want to point out, because just reading some of the analyst notes, is we exited the quarter with about $135 million of debt, but we also had about $218 million of positive working capital. It's a timing issue. I don't want anybody to focus on this debt number because it's already come down substantially since month end.
This debt at this level does not concern us at all. We'll likely pay it down, but that'll depend, frankly, on what's available to us from an investment perspective. Certainly, debt in the $100 million range does not concern us one bit. In the Trican frac division, it's still going very well. We're viewed as a technical leader in the industry. Electric equipment, efficient operations, our engineering, our lab group are working towards, or we continue to evaluate, 100% natural gas solutions. We're evaluating all of the solutions, and I think we'll come up with the best one. We continue to add customers in the Montney to Duvernay in the quarter. If frac intensity continues to increase, making our logistics department, which is the largest in the industry, that much more valuable. We're focusing on technology improvements.
We will be testing all of the available 100% natural gas pump technologies, and I think we'll choose the one that we think provides the best service at the lowest cost. We continue to expand our last mile logistics. I would expect that we will add a 100% natural gas fleet in mid-2026. On the Iron Horse frac division, we're very happy with the acquisition that we made. We still view this as a combination of two best-in-class businesses. The transaction closed August 27, and we only had one month of Iron Horse in our Q3. As we talked about in our MD&A and our outlook section, obviously, the Q4 for Iron Horse is lower than we had hoped or expected or even modeled when we purchased the company. That's just oil price related. We think it's temporary.
A lot of their oil projects were canceled or kicked down the road until next year. We don't buy businesses for one quarter performance. We buy it for the next sort of 10 years. Very happy with that business. They're still seeing sort of more pinpoint completion designs in all of their plays. The annual frac, with fracking through coil or around coil, I should say, is still going to be the main completion technique. Even in the older plays, things like the Vikings, they're still seeing sand volumes and stages increasing. They have a very, very busy Q1. That division is going well. On cement, again, we're very happy with the performance of this division. They've always been viewed as a technical leader in the industry. We have the best equipment, the lab, the blends, the operators.
We've actually added rigs to our portfolio despite an overall year-over-year rig count decline. They continue to leverage operating efficiencies and initiatives to reduce downtime, which has enabled them to increase margins in what would be an overall slightly down market. We've developed blends to target the heavier oil basins. We're aligned with all the right EMPs, all the busy EMPs. Our market share in plays like the Duvernay is as high as 80%. In the Montney, it's over 50%. In the overall basin, our market share has grown year over year. Very, very excited about what's happening in that division. The coil division as well is really starting to show its potential. Really pleased with how that has gone.
I know we've talked about the coil division for the last several years about focusing on this and making sure that this division performs sort of in line with the rest of our company. I think that's finally starting to happen now. Q3 was one of the best quarters in the coil division, or it was the coil division's best quarter. It had lots of operational excellence delivered with less than 1% non-productive time, which is a real achievement to the people running that division. Our portfolio of customers consists of the top operators in the basin. We set horizontal and total depth records this year in Canada. That sort of extended reach operations has allowed us to add customers in the Montney and the Duvernay. We're very happy with what the next sort of 12- 18 months looks like.
They started to generate financial margins in line with the other divisions. We're very happy with how that's worked out. I'll just talk about Q4 and touch very lightly on next year. We still believe our premium service offering in all of our divisions continues to be valued by customers, and I think that shows in our financial results. We're, of course, watching oil and natural gas prices. There's always potential for projects to get delayed or canceled or changed into next year. We expect that our customers, like us, are taking a fairly defensive stance in their fall budget season, just based on the volatility we've had on oil prices especially. We still think 2026 will be better than 2025. Our customers are still talking to us about equipment availability in the next few years. That's a very good sign.
The LNG Canada facility has continued to ramp up its export volumes, and it's now exporting in the range of about 1 BCF a day. Natural gas prices have recovered significantly in the last month. We expect them to get better this winter and into next year. The Duvernay, as we've talked about, continues to be a busy play, very, very fracturing intensive. We were very thoughtful about the long-term development of this play and actually designed a tier four spread around the Duvernay that pumps at higher pressures, higher pump time, longer pump times. Our equipment is better able to withstand the abuse that play gives the average pumper. It's reduced our R&M costs, even though the pumping rates and pressures are so high. The Q4 to date has been great. We're still forecasting 2025 to be fairly level-loaded between the quarters.
Especially in a year like this, where we had so much work bumped out of September into October and November, we expect Q4 is going to be very good. When I read some of the analyst notes, I think this might be being a little underestimated about how busy we are in this quarter. It's likely to be better than Q3 and possibly could be one of our best quarters of the year. You know, we're not seeing a sharp decline in activity in Q4 like maybe some of our competitors have seen or had planned for. Nothing's changed from our focus. It's very much Montney, Duvernay. Obviously, the Iron Horse division focuses on the oilier plays. As oil prices stabilize and start to gain a little momentum, those plays will get very, very busy very quickly. I'll touch on a few other things, one being tariffs.
I know we've talked a lot about tariffs in the past, and actually, as it's turned out, tariffs were put on sand and coil. Both of them have been removed, and actually, the tariffs that were paid—sorry, I'm talking about the retaliatory tariffs put on by the Canadian government—in both cases, any tariffs that were paid, they're telling us they're going to refund them, refund the money. We're not really seeing retaliatory tariffs being a big issue in our life. A lot of the cement products are made locally, so that's not an issue. We're not seeing any tariff pressure on things like chemicals yet. It will affect overall steel prices, of course, from the tariffs that were put on by both the Canadian and the U.S. governments. That will affect the price of parts and pumps and things like that going forward.
It certainly isn't working out to be as big an issue as we had feared at one time. There are various industry groups that have done a really good job lobbying the Canadian government to make sure they're not putting unfair retaliatory tariffs on our business in places where we don't have a Canadian alternative. I'm sort of happy. I would say we're very happy with how that's worked out. On the sand logistics side, we focus on this every call, and we're going to continue to focus on this because this is certainly becoming more and more of an issue every year. There's about 8.5 million tons of sand pumped in Canada this year. Some analysts are estimating that this could get as high as 12-1 5 million tons by 2030.
When you think about all the sand that needs to move around the basin, whether it's on rail or on truck, this certainly has turned into a logistics challenge, which, of course, we see as an opportunity for profitability. We hope these predictions are correct, and we're making moves in our last mile logistics to make sure that we're positioned as the premier provider of sand from the transload facility to the well site. There's a lot that goes into it. You think about some of these locations, they're pumping 50-1 00 rail cars of sand over a period of 48- 72 hours. That means you're having a 40-ton B-train truck show up every 10 minutes on location. If you can schedule that correctly, you can run that efficiently.
That's an efficiency that our customers certainly value, and we expect to provide to them in the future as the sand volumes grow. We view this as a real area of focus and maybe a focus of our M&A opportunities in the next few years as well. On the technology side, I would say things are progressing as we had expected. We're reviewing, the cornerstone of our technology strategy is 100% natural gas-fueled operations in all of our divisions eventually, but right now we're mostly focusing on frac. We're evaluating all of the technologies available to us from a 100% natural gas pump perspective, which will allow us to pick what we think is the best, the most practical technology, so that we can provide our customers with a 100% natural gas solution. Like I had said earlier, I expect we'll be providing this by mid-next year.
Back to the long-term outlook, certainly nothing's changed from our view. Even though you go through little bumps like we're going through now with commodity prices, it doesn't change the long-term outlook of the industry in Canada. We still think it's a great place to be. We're going to continue to invest in it. We view the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin as a very attractive place to develop and grow our business. The Montney is increasingly becoming recognized as the premier play in North America. LNG Canada is going well. We fully expect that will go from 1 BCF- 2 BCF, eventually to 4 BCF a day in the next few years. There are other facilities as well that are coming in behind it. We think the LNG export off the west coast of Canada is great for the business.
All of the plays that will fill that capacity are extremely pressure pumping intensive. We think it's a great place to grow our business. On the, you know, what's our return of capital strategy, I think, again, nothing's changed there. We continue to generate, you know, what we think is industry-leading free cash flow, and we maintain a conservative balance sheet. I would say our views on debt have changed, just given how stable this business has become compared to prior cycles. We're not afraid to have a little bit of debt on the balance sheet. We do subscribe to a diversified return of capital strategy, which is a combination of a sustainable and hopefully growing dividend with a combination of the NCIB.
Since we put the NCIB in in 2017, we're over 51% of the shares purchased, which is amazing to think about that in the context of the industry. We flex the NCIB up and down in the context of other investment opportunities, and we'll continue to do that. We'll very likely have a very low base level of NCIB, but we're not afraid to really hit the gas or maybe even pull back for a while, depending on what else we're seeing and what's happening in the market. We're not afraid to use our bank lines if we find attractive investment opportunities, just like we did with the Iron Horse deal. They wanted all shares. We wanted to pay them all cash. We sort of sought it off somewhere in the middle, but hopefully, we can use our bank lines in the future.
Our corporate priorities remain unchanged: build a resilient, sustainable, and differentiated company, invest in high-quality growth opportunities. Hopefully, they're organic. Focus on the logistics side of the business, provide a consistent return of capital for our shareholders through the dividend and the NCIB. I think, operator, I think we'll stop there, and we'll go to 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 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. We will now pause for a moment as callers join the queue. Your first question today will come from Aaron MacNeil with TD Cowen. Please go ahead.
Hey, morning all. Thanks for taking my questions. Brad, you mentioned you expect 2026 to be better than 2025. I know you also referenced this in your prepared remarks, but we've started to see CapEx cuts this quarter, most notably with WhiteCap. We're just kicking off earnings, so presumably more producers could follow. I guess I'm wondering at a high level what your assumptions are for year-over-year changes in Montney and Duvernay activity and how you think pricing will evolve over the next year.
Yeah, I think we're going out on a limb. I mean, we've just had 24 months of the worst gas prices this basin has ever seen on an inflation-adjusted basis. Now we've got LNG. Line maintenance is done. We're talking about sort of a much more balanced or even a negatively balanced gas market in North America as more LNG comes online in the U.S. Our customers have very sophisticated marketing programs. They're not just sitting around relying on ACORE Station 2 gas. Now that sort of all of the pieces are in place, I just don't see how we don't have higher gas prices next year. This is a gas basin, as everybody knows. Higher gas prices mean better economics. When our customers have sort of three to nine months payback on wells, how do they not drill those?
Of course, everybody takes a defensive stance in their budgeting, just like we do. We take a very defensive stance at this point. I think there's upside, and I think it'll come next year. That's from an activity perspective. Who knows what's going to happen in the pricing environment? We all know what I think about how undisciplined this space is and how irrational this space is. When we talk to our competitors, they're blunt for Q1. So are we. I don't see how prices go anywhere but up from here. Even if they don't, we'll figure out how to make a little bit more money with efficiencies. I'm not expecting big year-over-year changes that we would see 15, 20 years ago. That's not what I'm saying. Sort of 3% to 5% increases in activity, we can work with that.
I just don't see how that doesn't happen given that we've come out of the worst 24 months imaginable from a gas price perspective. We're going into a much more constructive gas market, North American-wide. I think that will just reflect in more activity going forward.
Yeah, I wasn't trying to challenge your outlook. I was just more curious if you'd had any specific conversations with customers that would indicate that activity was going up year over year.
Yeah, we do. Like Aaron, I'm just sort of challenging myself on my assumptions because I seem to be the only one that seems to think like this right now, which is either a really good sign or a really bad sign. Yeah, we do have conversations with customers that I would say are more bullish than maybe what gets put in print.
Gotcha. Okay. Just as a follow-up, I wanted to sort of better understand the new natural gas-fueled frac fleet. It sounds like it's going ahead, but is there any scenario that you would maybe pump the brakes? What sort of contract structure and duration should we expect? Maybe as another follow-on, how should we think about capital spending next year, assuming that investment goes ahead?
Yeah, I would think our capital spending will be in line with the past. We're very careful not to overcapitalize the space. Even though we have, by far, the largest market share in Canada, we don't operate in a bubble. We're not just going to flood the market with equipment, even if it is from a technology perspective, the best. We've been a leader in new technology development since COVID, say, and I don't expect that's going to change. We've had incredible success with our electric backside or all of the ancillary equipment. Our customers continue to demand our electric blenders. Very well designed, great performance, great from an R&M perspective. The last piece of that puzzle was the evaluation of all of the available 100% natural gas pumps. It's all of the manufacturers. It's natural gas, conventional natural gas engines, turbines. It's electric.
We took, I would say, maybe a frustratingly long time to evaluate everything. I think we have a pretty good sort of understanding of what's available and the pros and cons of the various technologies. I think we're in a really good position to sort of pick a horse at this point. We're always working on R&D projects in the background. One of the challenges with natural gas pumps or engines is they want to run at constant speed, which, of course, is not great when you're trying to increase rates and pressures and stuff like that. In conjunction with a partner, we've developed a variable speed transmission that we want to try. That would go really well with natural gas engines, and it would allow us to pump more efficiently and actually spin off energy into our electric backside.
There are little things like that that we're always working on that we may not always be able to talk about. We want to provide our customers with a 100% natural gas solution, but we want to make sure that it's a sustainable solution for us as well from a returns perspective. I think all too often people jump headfirst into the latest, greatest equipment design without thinking thoughtfully about, hey, how do you provide your shareholders with a return at the same time as you're providing your customers with a valued service?
Just to not needle you too much on this, on the contract duration, do you think you get?
Oh, sorry. Yeah. We don't talk in too much detail about contracts with our customers. You know, we have various discussions with various customers. You would expect that we're very fortunate to have long-term customers that have been with us for years. They will, of course, get first dibs on any technological developments we make.
Okay. Fair enough. Thanks. I'll turn it back.
Your next question today will come from Keith Mackey with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Hey, thanks, and good morning. I'd just like to start out with Q4 if we could. Can you maybe just work out some of the pieces here of how you think Q4 will unfold? You know, certainly, you did kind of high $50 million for adjusted EBITDA in Q4 of 2024. Relative to that, how do you see Q4 of this year playing out, recognizing that there's been some work moved from Q3 to Q4, but then also some of the Iron Horse or oil-related work has gone away? How do you see kind of all those pieces playing together? Obviously, there's always a holiday season that makes things less busy as well.
Yeah, like we, you know, anything can happen. We didn't see September coming. Frankly, we had a whole bunch of stuff on the board, and then, you know, boom, you wake up one day and it's been moved. That's our business. You have to be prepared to roll with the punches like that. We actually didn't realize a month like September was going to turn out like it did until sort of mid-September. I'm a little hesitant to talk in absolutes here. If we don't beat last year's Q4, that would be very, very surprising. I would think we would beat it by a fairly reasonable amount. Like I said in my prior comments, this could be one of the best quarters. This could be the best quarter of the year for us.
Again, I think we've gotten a little too focused on what happened in September as an indication of what's happening in the business. That isn't the case for us. Things get moved around, water availability issues, budget issues, yada, yada. We're built to absorb those changes. What we gave up in Q3, we think we're going to gain in Q4. I'm not going to give you any more color than this, but we expect Q4 to be good.
Okay. I appreciate the comments. Maybe we could just talk a little bit more about the sand, the sand logistics commentary. Certainly, you know, more sand per well and more wells over time means you need a lot more sand in total. Can you just talk about kind of where the sand is coming from these days? Are we seeing more local sand versus imported sand? I know there was a trial on damp sand and, you know, a little while ago with one of your competitors. Can you just talk about some of these trends and where you think the market ultimately goes and where the opportunity is for Trican?
Yeah, those are all good questions. Out of the 8.5 million, about 8.5 million tons of sand that gets pumped in Canada, about 5 of it comes from the U.S., so Northern White Tier 1 sand. The other 3 million, say, comes from the Canadian mines. It's hard to predict how this works out because, I mean, the issue with sand is everybody wants to pump more of it, but of course, it's expensive. Everybody's always looking for the lowest price alternative from a sand perspective, and then you have to measure that against the crush strength of the sand that you're putting into your wells. That has brought up this wet sand issue. The idea behind wet sand is you have lower quality, less sorted, less clean sand. As a result, it hasn't been sorted, it hasn't been washed, it hasn't been dried.
You can have it for less money, you can truck less of it due to the water content, of course. The idea was that hopefully the reduction in sand quality is made up for in the reduction of price. From what we understand, and we are not experts in what happened at either one of these two trials, but as we understand, they didn't go that well. I think people will continue to experiment with it. It's obviously a lot harder to deploy wet sand in Canada versus Texas when we have six months of winter. You can't move wet sand around if it's frozen, and there are operational issues on location as well with wet sand in the winter. It's probably not ever going to be a massive substitute for what's happening today.
I think people are going to continue to experiment with lower cost alternatives, and we hope to be there with our customers as they do that. One thing that is certain is sand has to get moved from A to B. We're really good at moving sand from A to B, and we have the largest trucking fleet. We will continue to grow that. We'll continue to make investments in storage and transloads if we think they're strategic. At the end of the day, moving sand from A to B can be a good business if you do it well, and we think we do it well. That's something that we're going to continue to focus on.
Okay, I appreciate the comments. Thanks a lot.
Your next question today will come from Joseph Schefter with SER. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Brad and Scott. A few questions for me. The first on the ERP platform and using AI. How do you see that integrating? Is it a multi-year thing? You're talking about spending $10 million this year, putting it through under the G&A. Is it going to affect manpower? Is it going to affect the software side, the upgrades? How does this affect and benefit you? How does it affect and benefit the customers?
Yeah, interesting question, Joseph. I mean, fundamentally, we need to modernize all of our systems and get ourselves kind of into the next level. That will then help us facilitate more aggressively moving into things like AI integration and machine learning, analyzing pump data, preventative maintenance schemes, all those kind of things, which is a great benefit to us as we move forward. You're correct that that should translate into efficiencies from an operations perspective, potentially cost side as well. It's a long-term process, as you would know. There are lots of conversations about utilizing AI integration and use cases, but you've got to first have good, solid quality, clean data for a period of time to be able to run any of those use cases.
Before we start talking about AI integration efficiencies and improvements going forward, we've got to get the base-level data cleaned, scrubbed, and into a reliable form. That's really what our platform is driving us towards. Yes, this is a bit of a multi-year exercise. As we move forward, there'll be internal efficiencies that we would hope to gain, and that in turn should benefit our customers as well.
This will be an ongoing conversation issue.
I'm sorry, I missed that.
This will probably be an ongoing conversation issue as you make headway there.
Yeah, it'll be something that we'll continue to talk about and keep forward in our discussion, so that you get a kind of a clear picture of where we're going.
You know, Joseph, it's Brad. The potential of AI, you know, is limitless, right? Even in a business like ours, who knows what this could do for us? We collect millions and millions of data points on the pumps and the engines every day. What can AI do with that data? We certainly hope it will help reduce our R&M costs. Does AI, you know, one day, do we have better programming to help our sand logistics get more efficient? Does that help us run the frac? We're currently not running it manually, but we have people controlling the computer systems that run the frac. Maybe AI or the software will run it a little bit more efficiently than we're running it. We're always looking for opportunities to get better with technology.
We just got to pick our spots and be aware of the fact that we're not that big of a company, right? We're big enough that we need to invest in this, but at the same time, we got to be careful that we don't waste money on it as well. I can assure you, we will be very thoughtful if we deploy capital on technology. We'll be looking to get an immediate return for the investment.
Okay. Another area to pursue, you mentioned on the last call that when you bought into Iron Horse, that you had equipment in the legacy business that might fit, because it's not up to the current standards needed for the big jobs. Are you moving equipment there? Are they using it or upgrading it so that they'll be busy with it in Q1? You mentioned that you expect them to have a very busy quarter in Q1.
Yeah, exactly. We've got equipment going back and forth from them to us and us to them as we speak.
Okay.
One of the big advantages of a transaction like this is you get to spread the equipment around to where it's going to be most impactful and most efficient.
Do you have much in the yard still from the legacy equipment, or is more and more of it going to Iron Horse?
There's always stuff kicking around the yard, Joseph. Don't get me started here. Yeah, there's still stuff there.
Yeah.
That's fine. We've actually done, you know, the, and prior to COVID, the prior team had also done a really good job of cleaning up really old equipment, and we've continued on with that. I think we've done a really good job of making sure we don't turn our operating bases into these old boneyards of equipment that'll never see the light of day. I think we've done a pretty good job of getting rid of a lot of the stuff that will never go back to work. Anything that we have parked on fences today is something that we think could go to work at any time. We work very hard. If we don't believe that the equipment can go to work, we work very hard to get it sold.
Thank you very much for that. I'll look forward to the good news as upcoming quarters happen.
Thank you.
If you have a question, please press star and then one. Your next question today will come from Tim Monacello with ATB Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning. Most of my questions have been answered, but I have a few follow-ups just around the NAT gas fleet that you're contemplating for 2026. What's the lead time on that, and when do you think that might be entering the fleet?
I didn't quite catch all that. Tim, what is the?
Sorry, the lead time.
Oh, lead time.
For builds, yeah, when it comes up.
All of this equipment has a 6 to 12-month lead time on it. It doesn't matter what you order these days. You know, companies like whether it's Cat, Cummins, NLB, etc., it's all long lead time. We don't expect that this fleet would hit the field until next summer, probably at the earliest.
Okay. That capital investment decision's already been made, like you're going forward with it?
Not necessarily, no.
Okay, that's helpful. I assume that would have to come with some customer commitment behind it, or would you do that on spec?
It will likely come with a customer commitment. We typically test our investment thesis on, you know, if the customer commitment went away, would you still want to own it? The answer to that is sort of yes to both. It will likely have a customer commitment, but we wouldn't bring it on if we didn't think we could sell it if, you know, if the customers get sold or change their mind or whatever.
Okay. That's helpful. I'll follow up on Keith's question around prop and the market dynamics. Have you seen any changes in terms of customer insourcing behavior or willingness or desire to insource the logistics side of sand in Canada? If so, how do you move around that, and what does it mean for margins and stuff?
Yeah, definitely, we've seen the trend to more self-source sand from our customer base. That's why we're focusing on making sure that we can make some of that back on the logistics side. It's one of the reasons I was saying it's going to be a focal point for the business. There's nothing we can do about the trend, other than try to make sure that we're included along the value chain somewhere. There's corkage fees and things like that, but.
As you mentioned earlier, that logistical piece of moving, you know, X number of tons from A to B is no small task, right? That's something that Trican's got expertise in and has developed over time, and we continue to push forward on. Keeping engaged on the transportation side of things is a bit of a hedge against that, yeah, that motion.
Yeah.
Has that come to pass in any of your customers' programs currently, or is that something that's more contemplated for the coming quarters?
It's going to continually happen as we move forward. There's a mixture today of customers that self-source various items, including whether it's sand or chemical or others. It's just a continued trend as we move forward.
Have you had any pushback on corkage fees or trying to capture margin in logistics rather than?
We get pushback on everything.
Makes sense. Are you able to push it through ultimately?
Sometimes.
Okay.
Most of our customers, it's, you know, everyone's different. We're very fortunate that our customer base wants us to be sustainable. I would say they have a very good understanding of our company economics and what is required to make sure that we're going to be able to provide new technologies and top-tier service. We're very fortunate to have the customer, and we've had them for 10, 20 years in some cases. The relationship is very good and lots of the elements of the business are well understood by them. We'll get through this and we'll continue to make money.
Okay. That's helpful. Just looking at the acquisition allocations, it looked like Iron Horse didn't come over with much working capital, but the working capital investment in the quarter, I assume, being fairly elevated, included funding working capital of Iron Horse. I'm just curious, with that one-time impact, if you could help quantify what the working capital investment related to Iron Horse was in the quarter.
Yeah, I probably won't get into that much detail, to be honest, Tim. You know, working Iron Horse did come with a chunk of working capital in it. I would say that funding requirement was not massive, and most of the working capital build was really a result of a strong July and August, right, that then translates into an elevated balance as you come through September. I'm not giving you as much detail as you'd like, but you know, a portion of it, sure, but the majority of it would be activity-based.
Excellent. Maybe I missed this in Joseph's question, but how long do you expect this ERP integration to last, and what do you think the 2026 investment in that is going to be?
Yeah, we would have an ongoing spend as we move through 2026, and we'll be able to give you a bit more guidance on cadence as we get into the year. We're scheduled to kind of flip the switch midway through the year and then get to sustainable factors at the end of that year. We have to make another decision as to whether we continue forward on different parts of it. There will be a chunk of spend in 2026 as well.
Okay. Got it. That's all for me. Thanks so much.
Thanks.
That concludes the question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Fedora for any closing remarks.
Thanks, everyone. Thanks for your interest and taking time to join the call. The management team at Trican will be around for the rest of the day. If there's any follow-up questions, don't hesitate to reach out, and we should be able to take your call very quickly. Thanks.
This brings to a close today's conference call. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating and have a pleasant day.