Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Trican Well Service fourth quarter 2022 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 CEO of Trican Well Service Ltd. Please go ahead, Mr. Fedora.
Thank you very much, and good morning, everyone. I'd like to thank you for attending the Trican Well Service annual results conference call. Here's a brief outline on how we intend to conduct the call. First, Scott Matson, our Chief Financial Officer, will give an overview of the quarterly results. I will then provide some comments with respect to the quarter, the current operating conditions, and our outlook for 2023. We'll then open the call for questions. Several members of our team are in the room with us today, and they are Chika Onwuekwe, our Vice President, Legal and General Counsel, Todd Thue, our Chief Operating Officer, Daniel Lopushinsky, our VP, Planning and Analysis, and Brian Lane, our VP, Sales and Marketing. We should be able to answer any questions that may come up. 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 annual MD&A for 2022. 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 2022 Annual Information Form and the Business Risks section of our MD&A for the year ended December 31st, 2022 for a more complete description of business risks and uncertainties facing Trican. These documents are available 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 2022 annual MD&A. Our quarterly and annual results were released after close of market last night and are available both on SEDAR and our website. With that, we'll turn to our results for the quarter. Most of my comments will draw comparisons to the fourth quarter of last year, and I'll provide some commentary about our annual activities and our expectations going forward. Revenue for the quarter was CAD 236.5 million, an increase of just over 50% compared to Q4 of 2021. Our activity levels for the fourth quarter were generally higher across the board than the prior year comparative period as industry activity in the basin increased, driven primarily by stronger commodity pricing.
This led to a significant improvement in demand for pressure pumping services, and our services in general, which resulted in a more constructive pricing environment and an improvement in margins in Q4 of 2022 compared to the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA came in at CAD 59.4 million, again, a significant improvement over the CAD 28 million we posted in Q4 of 2021. I would also note that our adjusted EBITDA figure includes expenditures related to fluid end replacements, which totaled CAD 1.2 million in the quarter and were expensed in the period. Adjusted EBITDAS for the quarter came in at CAD 60.1 million or 25% of revenues, a significant improvement, again, compared to the CAD 27.6 million or 18% of revenue that we printed last year.
To arrive at EBITDAS, 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. We recognized about CAD 700,000 in expense related to cash settled stock-based comp in the quarter. On a consolidated basis, we generated positive earnings of CAD 26.2 million in the quarter, or about CAD 0.11 per share, and generated free cash flow of CAD 47.1 million during the quarter as compared to CAD 17.9 million in the same period last year. Our definition of free cash flow is essentially EBITDAS, less non-discretionary cash expenditures, including maintenance capital, interest, cash taxes, and cash settled stock-based comp.
Our CapEx for the quarter totaled about CAD 33.2 million, split between our maintenance capital of roughly CAD 11.3 million and upgrade capital of CAD 21.9 million. Our upgrade capital was dedicated mainly to our ongoing Tier 4 capital refurbishment program, which Brad will touch on later. The balance sheet remains in excellent shape. We exited the quarter with positive working capital of approximately CAD 169.4 million, including cash of CAD 58 million. Finally, with respect to our return of capital strategy, we were quite active with our NCIB program throughout the year and repurchased and canceled 19.7 million shares at an average price of CAD 3.50 a share, equating to approximately 8% of the company's issued and outstanding shares at the beginning of the year.
We've remained very active as we moved into 2023 and have repurchased an additional 7.7 million shares since January 1st. As you saw from our announcements last night, we've added an additional component to our return of capital strategy in the form of a quarterly dividend. The board of directors declared a dividend of CAD 0.04 per common share to be paid on March 31st, 2023 to shareholders of record as of close of business on March 15th, 2023. I would note the dividends are designated as eligible dividends for Canadian income tax purposes. With that, I'll turn things back to Brad for some comments on our operating conditions and our outlook going forward.
Thanks, Scott. Overall, the quarter went as expected. I mean, it sequentially was lower than Q3, which I think will generally happen every year. As you know, Christmas comes every year, and there's typically weather events as we transition from fall to the winter. Our quarter went almost exactly as forecast. We did continue to see some cost inflation and subsequent price increases to offset that inflation. You know, inflation really seems to be moderating, and it's still happening, but it's certainly happening at a much lower rate of change than certainly the first half of 2022. Overall, the market feels quite stable from a pricing and cost perspective with just little tweaks here and there.
In the fracturing division, which represents about 70% of our revenue, the market feels very much balanced and stable, and I think it's been like this now for a few quarters. There's approximately 31 staffed frac crews operating in Canada. At this rig count, you know, 250 rig counts, 250 rigs, give or take, it feels like we're fairly balanced. We are still operating seven frac crews. I think in the past, we had mentioned that we may go to eight in the quarter. I think given that we think the market's in balance, we made the decision not to add another crew, and I think we'll stay stable at seven crews for the remainder of the quarter.
On the cementing side, we're very happy with our cementing division. Cementing business in Canada is running at absolute capacity for the active and crude fleet that is out there. There's three main companies, including us, that provide cementing services immediately post a well being drilled. We added four cementing units to the field, which is about a 22% increase, and that allowed us to maintain our market share as the rig count went up. We're very much focused in the deep technical areas of the basin. Overall, we probably have a 50%-55% market share in the Montney and Deep Basin and a sort of a 35% market share in the basin as a whole, but very much focused in the Montney and the Deep Basin.
Our market share gains in this division are really only limited by our ability to add staff. We're always looking to add more qualified crews in the field. In this labor market, that certainly takes time. On the coil side, the coil market for us is more lumpy. The pricing and the demand for our coil units has been at levels that we're generally happy with. In that's a division that we hope to grow significantly through the remainder of 2023. Our outlook for the remainder of this year is, you know, so far, Q1's very busy. It's going as planned. There's always weather interruptions. As everybody knows, it's very cold in the West right now. It's basically going as planned.
We expect the remainder of February and March to be very busy, March in particular. We still expect 2023 to be, you know, modestly busier than 2022, despite the natural gas price volatility that we've all been experiencing. You know, I think we've messaged before that we're expecting growth in the single digits, you know, whether it's 5%-7% higher in overall activity levels. Importantly, our customers remain very disciplined with respect to their capital budgets, and they're still spending less than 50% of their free cash flow on drilling and completions. This, I think, will provide, you know, a fairly significant shock absorber to commodity price volatility.
As I think everybody knows, LNG facilities will be online in 2025, and the drilling to fill that production has started and will also provide some stability in the market, in particular in Northwest Alberta and Northeast BC. The recent announcements by First Nations in Northeast BC is also a big positive for our basin, and we think that will result in incremental activity, but not until the second half of this year. You know, licenses are just coming out now, so there's really not a whole lot of field activity that we're expecting between now and late summer, early fall. You know, we believe our fracturing technology is very well suited to these types of wells. You know, we provide high pressure, low emissions fracturing equipment with a small footprint.
As we know, you know, the small footprint or less access, less disturbance, seems to be a topic of conversation, and I think our services are fitting in very well to that type of future. People are still the bottleneck in this industry, and it will continue to be a bottleneck in all divisions. You know, we're expecting slow, sort of moderate growth going forward over the next few years. The market, I think, will stay very stable. You know, our ability to staff crews is very limited. It takes a long time. The training is more important now than ever. You know, we're at the big focus on safety, obviously, and it's growing. Our ability to add staff to the field has slowed.
You know, we'll continue to take our time, and we won't put crews in the field until we're absolutely ready, and they've been trained properly. You know, we think that'll be a limiter to the amount of services growth that can happen in a, in a rising market. The supply chain is still very much at or near capacity. We don't expect that to change anytime soon. We actually do expect sand shortages, you know, temporary in nature, but still shortages this year. You know, the well intensity continues to grow, and I'll talk a little bit about this. Sand volumes continue to grow, and anytime you have, you know, weather interruptions, that can have a big impact on rail.
We still are looking at ways of mitigating our exposure to those type of short-term interruptions, and we'll continue to work through that. Third-party trucking and logistics, very tight, very expensive. You know, I think we've seen a 50% increase in the price of third-party trucking this year and similar in sand. I think sand is up 40%-45%. You know, there's just a lot less drivers in the basin today. The job market for them is very strong. They can basically work anywhere, and that results in very tight logistics. Again, as we've mentioned, you know, we welcome those kinds of operating conditions. You know, we think our procurement group and our logistics group do a very good job.
You know, we almost welcome the, you know, tough operating conditions because we think we're able to shine in that situation. Just on the corporate strategy side, nothing really has changed. We're still very bullish on the long-term prospects of this industry. We believe Canada will play an increasingly important role in providing the world with clean, reliable, sustainable energy, you know, particularly natural gas. We view Western Canada as an attractive basin to focus our business on. We'll stay focused here for the time being. You know, we believe plays like the Montney, combined with oil and LNG exports, will provide a long-term base of activity for us to provide our services. You know, the Montney is very frac-intensive and getting more so.
With the recent announcements in Northeast BC, by the First Nations, you know, that access has become more certain, we think all of that drilling will be incremental to what we've seen in the last few years. Frac intensity is still increasing. You know, larger sand volumes and more stages. We just got off a 3-well pad where we had 80 stages per well and 100 tons per stage. That's, you know, eight. Like, that's a lot of sand. You can do the math there. Long-term, we're very focused on free cash flow and return on invested capital. You know, these drive all of our decisions. You know, we're investing for cash flow growth, and we're doing so in our equipment, in our services. We're trying to differentiate ourselves from our competitors.
Difficult to do in the fracturing space, I think we've been very successful at that over the last couple of years. We're very fortunate to have a clean balance sheet. We sort of have an unlimited ability to make investment decisions. As a result, we had a very good head start on bringing new technology into our company. Our strategy is differentiation and modernization, we wanna own the Montney. We're lucky. We have state-of-the-art equipment. You know, we're upgrading our systems. We're very focused on ESG. I think we're ahead of the game there. We're very focused on creating long-term indigenous partnerships. We think that will be, you know, very important to creating a sustainable service offering in Northwest Alberta, Northeast BC. We, we make investments with the guiding principle of clean air, clean water.
Certainly, we think that's gonna play very well into the development of the Deep Basin and the Montney over the next few years. As we've discussed before, we rolled out our first low-emissions frac fleet, over a year ago now, and been very happy with the results. That equipment has been operating at basically 100% utilization as soon as it comes out of the shop. We haven't stopped there. You know, we have the lowest emissions fleet in the basin with our Tier 4 pump conversion. From there, we've gone on to electrify the ancillary equipment in the fracturing fleet as well.
Things like the blender, the chemical add unit, even the data van and the sand belts, we've now converted to electric, which means they'll run off a natural gas-fired generator. This allows us to displace 85%-90% of the diesel on location. Certainly, when you look at Canada's abundance of natural gas, you know, our customers more and more are trying to use natural gas as a fuel source. I think we're very much ahead of the game in that regard. We now have four Tier 4 fleets, and we'll continue to add the electrical equipment to those fleets, which, you know, means that we are a leading provider of services in this basin. I'll just touch on return on capital before we go to questions.
You know, again, we generate significant free cash flow. We have a clean balance sheet. Our priorities are to build a resilient, sustainable and differentiated company. We invest in our equipment, we invest in our people and our service offerings, including our systems. We pursue strategic and accretive M&A transactions if they're available. Those are few and far between in our space. Lastly, and very important, is that we wanna provide a consistent return of capital to our shareholders. You know, to date, we've very much relied on the NCIB. We've been very active in the NCIB in the last six, eight months. We also wanna provide a, sort of a multilayered strategy. Because of that, we've added a dividend, to our company.
We expect that this dividend will be stable and very sustainable over the next few years. It's CAD 0.04 a share, CAD 0.16 cents a year, paid at the end of the quarter. Even given the dividend, we still intend to participate in the NCIB, but we'll do so on a more opportunistic basis. You know, we've, we heard from shareholders that they wanted a defined return of capital strategy, and I think we did that with the dividend. So that'll be our base return of capital to shareholders, and we'll rely on our NCIB on a more opportunistic basis going forward. I think I'll stop there, and I'll hand the call back to the operator, and we'll take 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're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. We'll pause for a moment as callers join the queue. The first question comes from Aaron MacNeil from TD Securities. Please go ahead.
Hey, morning all. Thanks for taking my questions. Brad, you mentioned that your shareholders were looking for a more defined return to capital strategy. I guess that leads to the question of if you have a target in mind and maybe one that you'd be willing to share in terms of, you know, the capital that you'd like to return to shareholders this year on an ongoing basis, either in terms of, you know, absolute dollars or percentage of free cash flow or some other metric?
We don't. It's because, you know, every day, every quarter, every year, we sit down and look at the opportunities that are in front of us, and we invest in the highest return opportunities. To date, you know, that has been easy decision. There's no better investment that you can make than taking, you know, old equipment that's not working and upgrading it to be the state-of-the-art equipment that's in the basin, and we've done that with the Tier 4s. You can only go so fast on that. Every year is different. From there, you know, we cascade down to the next opportunities, whether it's the buyback or M&A or the dividends. What we did here is our NCIB has been active but inconsistent, and that was fine, last year or even in 2021.
As, you know, as the investors get more comfortable with this basin and the opportunity in front of us, you know, they've been looking more for, okay, what exactly is the plan? That's very hard to do. I mean, you can't commit to an NCIB from a volume perspective because it's very price dependent. We've migrated over to the dividend. We've put in an amount that we think is attractive and very sustainable and defendable through various cycles. We really did not start with a percentage return perspective.
You know, we look at that as, you know, one of many different uses of cash and, you know, we sort of figured out an amount that would be left at the end of the year, you know, going forward over the next few years.
Yeah, makes sense. You mentioned or you reiterated that you continue to expect this year to be busier than last year. This question isn't, you know, meant to challenge that view at all. I guess hypothetically, if we were to see some weakness in completions and activity this year, do you think we see the producers rein it in during breakup, or are you essentially locked in there? Do you think it'd be a later in the year phenomenon? I guess, how do you think a weaker outlook scenario might play out in terms of how capital is allocated to the quarters by your customers?
Good question. It probably would be a second half impact. I think, you know, certainly Q1, probably Q2 is pretty much almost in the books at this stage. I mean, and, you know, obviously, you can always speed up or slow down. If, if we're still having low gas prices come the summer, you know, we get a cool summer, something like that, I think you probably would see the impact starting in the second half. You know, I'm not the right person to ask.
Sure. Okay, maybe I'll sneak one other quick one in. You mentioned the potential for sand shortages. I think you were speaking to field surcharges from the rail companies in last quarter's conference call. I guess my question is, are you getting any sort of deflationary relief in those rail surcharges now that pricing is moderated?
We may see some in Q2. There has been no relief, you know, to date in 2023.
Okay. Thanks, Brad. I'll turn it over.
Thanks.
The next question comes from Cole Pereira from Stifel. Please go ahead.
Morning all. Just wanted to go back for your outlook for Q3 to be busier. I think this would have been most outlook before the natural gas price declined. Can you just talk about what gives you confidence in this at this juncture? Are you seeing meaningful plans related to LNG and Blueberry and none of the publics pulling development plans thus far?
Yeah. I mean, we get the same information that you get. I think people have, for the most part, have looked through this gas price decline as temporary, given that we had a warm January, and we had the U.S. LNG facility that was offline for a lot longer than people expected. When that comes back on, you end up with an instant bump in demand or consumption, I guess. You know, assuming the weather normalizes going forward, you know, I think we'll get to a more balanced market, I guess. You know, we're not on the inside of capital decisions by our customers. Certainly what we hear from our core customers is that it's business as usual. They're looking at this from a long-term perspective. Obviously, liquids pricing is still very attractive.
You know, I think this gas price weakness would have to continue on for a lot longer than sort of a couple of months for it to impact programs. Again, you know, we are not an authority on our customers' CapEx plans that are, you know, six, 12 months out.
Got it. That makes sense. You activated another Tier 4 this quarter, and I believe you have plans for another, call it, mid 2023. Is it fair to say, based on your comments about that eighth fleet, that you'll be flexible in these additions and that you'll bring a Tier 4 into the field, but if there is an incremental demand, you'll just kind of put another diesel fleet back in the yard?
Yeah. That's exactly what we've done. You know what? This time last year, we would have expected that we would have had, you know, more than seven, eight crews even. I think last conference call, we expected to have eight crews in Q1. Don't get me wrong, we're having a very good quarter so far. Yeah, we are responsible. We don't bring equipment into in a market unless there's demand for it. We've been feathering our Tier 4 equipment into other frac spreads, and it doesn't always need to be a complete frac spread in the entirety of Tier 4 equipment. You know, a lot of people wanna try a couple of pumps here and there, and the demand for the equipment is very high.
Yeah, to your point, we've been sort of displacing older equipment with our new low emissions equipment, and we'll probably continue to do so.
Got it. Just coming back to the dividend. Based on your comments, it kind of seems like you're fine with the dividend sort of remaining at this level on a permanent basis, given its sustainability, and that any perhaps incremental free cash flow would just go to the buyback over the current to medium term.
Yeah. Cool. Scott, you know, our intention is that we put in, you know, a layer of very sustainable return to our shareholders to provide a bit, you know, a bit clearer of a window in terms of what we're gonna spend there. Yes, remain, you know, opportunistic in the buyback, but it's still a part of our core strategy. You'll still see us be, you know, wading in and out of the market from that perspective. You know, we'll look at this every quarter in terms of what we've got from an opportunity set in front of us and allocate cash accordingly.
Got it. Just one more quick one. How should we be thinking about the timeline for cash taxability over the next few quarters and years?
Yeah, I mean, you probably won't see cash tax leaving the system until early next year. Then it'll be more regular from there. We'll likely move into a taxable status at some point this year, but our first installments will likely go out the door next year.
Okay, got it. That's all for me. Thanks. I'll turn it back.
Thanks.
The next question comes from Waqar Syed from ATB Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Thank you, good morning. Brad, I saw in the MD&A that you've also ordered a fifth Tier 4 fleet. Could you maybe provide some color on the cost associated with it and what the size of the fleet?
The size of the fleet is consistent at 14 pumps, 3,000 hp per pump. The cost has grown significantly for a couple of reasons. You know, first, there's a lot of inflation by our suppliers. As we go deeper into our equipment fleet, the quality of the equipment that we're upgrading is, you know, lower. It's important, you know, we didn't talk about it this conference call, but, you know, the parked fleet in Canada is hardly ready to go. As we go deeper into the inventory, there's more things that need to be replaced versus rebuilt or refurbished, and that just ups the cost. The cost of these fleets now is in the CAD 35 million range to refurbish a fleet into a low emission standard.
Okay. Great. Then in terms of, you know, you mentioned that activity could be up like mid-single digits or so in Canada, in 2023. To convert that into revenues for Trican in 2023, you know, there's inflation as well. You know, how would you kind of, you know, how should we be thinking about the revenue range year-over-year growth, from a year-over-year growth perspective?
Well, on roughly 15%.
Okay. Yeah, and then.
Sorry, Waqar. I'd probably, I mean, guide you to, like, you've got a single-digit activity multiplier. You know what our pricing and kind of net margin movement has been over the last year, right? Year-over-year. I feel like you're probably better at the math than I am.
Okay, fair enough. Then how do you see Q2, and you touched on that Q2 this year versus Q2 of last year?
Look, it feels very similar. There's, you know, it's also very dependent on who your customers are, right? It's, I think the industry as a whole, Q2 will be very similar to last year, and we expect our Q2 to be similar to last year.
When you say similar, you again mean that activity would be relatively similar, but overall pricing, you know, inflation would be there from, you know, on both sides, revenue side and cost side.
Yeah.
Okay. Fair enough. Just one last question. In Q4, your fluid end costs, either on an absolute basis or on a percentage of revenue basis were, you know, tended a bit lower. Was it just like, you know, seasonality that impacted that? Or is there something going on with the Tier 4 new equipment that you're getting that those costs have started to trend lower?
Yeah, exactly right. As we upgrade our fleet with, you know, whether it's rebuilt or new equipment, there is a temporary decline in maintenance costs, and we're experiencing that.
Okay, great. Thank you very much. That's all I had.
Thanks.
Thanks, Waqar.
Once again, if you have a question, please press star then one. The next question comes from Andrew Bradford from Raymond James. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Thanks for taking my calls. Hey, Brad, you mentioned in your, in your preamble there, that you were looking at expanding the coiled tubing fleet, significantly expanding your coiled tubing capabilities through 2023. I wonder if you could expand on that statement for me.
Well, I should replace looking with want to. It's a division that really hasn't had a lot of focus at this company, and it's frankly opportunity lost. Both the coil and the cementing division are opportunities for growth. You know, we historically have been the number one cementer in Canada. I don't foresee that changing, but I think we've fallen behind on coil, and I think we could do a lot better job with our coil division. We should be able to achieve big percentage gains just because, frankly, it's only sort of 7%-10% of our revenue. It's, you know, the opportunity there is to grow it significantly from a percentage perspective, but, you know, it will still be a fairly small division compared to the other two, even if we experience good growth.
That is just gonna come from a, you know, from more of a focus on sales and marketing and providing, you know, value-added services to our customers. It's, you know, it's frankly, it's fallen behind as we've focused on other things over the last few years.
It's still the case that, there isn't necessarily a lot of marketing synergies between coil and fracturing. Is that correct?
No, there is, if you take advantage of them, and frankly, we haven't. There's lots of synergies there actually, that, you know, we need to do a better job of or we need to do a better job of exploiting.
I'm gonna ask you a basic question now. Are you running any non-dual fuel spreads right now?
Oh, yeah. There's always a place for a good old-fashioned diesel pump. You know, there may not be access to gas, or the well may only take a day, and it just isn't worth the setup time. You know, it's like. It's only sort of one or two spreads now.
Okay.
The rest of our fleet is low emissions.
When you bring in the fourth spread here, the fourth Tier 4 spread, is it displacing what kind of equipment or what kind of fuel system is it displacing?
Dual fuel. You know, the basin switched to Tier 2 diesel pumps with a dual fuel kit added to them, and that provided about 40%-50% substitution of diesel for natural gas. You know, that was the best product that we had available at the time. You know, what we found with doing studies is that it's great from a cost savings perspective because, you know, obviously natural gas is so much cheaper than diesel, but it was terrible from an emissions perspective. The amount of methane that was going into the engine. That wasn't being burned, was fairly significant. You know, if it wasn't combusted in the engine, it's emitted into the atmosphere. You know, as the industry evolves, you know, that's no longer acceptable.
We're typically displacing the old Tier 2 dual fuel equipment with our new gear.
Okay. No, that's perfect. I guess my next question would be oriented towards the customers. The customer mix that you have today, when we're thinking about, you know, from the outside, looking in at your natural gas orientation or the natural gas orientation of your customer base, for most of these customers, are you Like, you would be a portion of their fracture? You, you provide a portion, but not all of their fracturing services. Is that correct?
Yes.
Okay.
you know, some we would provide all, but it's a reasonable function-.
The larger ones would be less.
Yeah, exactly.
Okay. Okay. I just wanna flush this out fully here, but the idea then is as you come in with Tier 4 equipment, like full spreads of Tier 4 equipment, your idea is that puts you in a competitive advantage with these customers regardless of what they do with their capital programs. Is that correct?
Yeah, absolutely. You know, it, there's, as we discussed, there's a cost savings to the customer by using natural gas instead of diesel. You know, we try to capture a large majority of that cost savings, which allows us to get decent returns on our investment. The, you know, the emissions reduction is significant, especially compared to dual fuel equipment. You know, good old-fashioned diesel pumps actually are pretty good from an emissions perspective, but the dual fuel kits that we added to them, sort of they brought on a whole another level of emissions, so that we're trying to eliminate. Yeah, if under any circumstances, you know, the customers naturally, they want the most advanced equipment. You know, getting lower footprint is an issue now as well.
You know, the ground disturbance, especially with the First Nations is a serious topic. You know, we're providing higher horsepower, more efficient pumps, so that means a less equipment on location, less people on location. Certainly, when you're using gas right from the pad, you're taking a lot of trucks off the road. That's, you know, that's a big deal in a lot of these communities, right? They don't want fuel trucks rumbling up and down the roads in the middle of the day, especially when kids are out, you know, going to and from school. You know, we've really designed our product offering to be low emissions, smaller footprint, more efficient, and providing our customers with the ability to use their own natural gas at a lower cost.
Okay, I appreciate that. One last question from me would be, if you look at your... Well, maybe this is looking too far down the road, but we obviously all focus on the third quarter a lot. It's usually your busiest quarter. If you were to sort of characterize the job board, if you will, today versus what the job board might have looked like a year ago today, how do you... Does it look fairly similar, more full, less full? Give you pause, anything like that?
It would look similar. I would say there's more long-term activity discussions happening than a year ago. We are very, you know, we're still very optimistic about, you know, the Canadian story.
Follow-up then, is that when you say long-term, is that necessarily LNG oriented?
Yeah, I think not, maybe not... You know, it's not black and white, but of course it has to be. You know, LNG is a significant issue, right? It's 2 BCF a day going to 4 BCF a day. We've got, you know, Woodfibre LNG in Squamish being built as well. I mean, it's smaller, but it's, you know, all of that adds up, and it's, you know, it's the long... Those are 50-year assets. You know, the world, the world wants more Canadian energy, just like the T-shirt says. So we, you know, we're... There's always gonna be bumps in the road, right? Like we're experiencing now with gas prices. We don't, you know, we don't operate this business with a three-month forecast, right?
We build a sustainable and resilient business because we think the long-term environment is really attractive.
Okay. Thank you very much. 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. Thank you for your interest. Thank you for your time. We tried to wrap this call up quicker than normal because I know it's a reporting season, everybody's busy. Scott and I are available for questions throughout today and tomorrow if there's any follow-up questions. Thanks for dialing in.
This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.