Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Trican Well Service first quarter 2023 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 Limited. Please go ahead, Mr. Fedora.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for attending the Trican Q1 2023 quarterly results 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 general operating conditions and the outlook for the rest of this year. We'll turn the call over for questions. Several members of our team are in the room with me here today and will be available to answer any questions that may come up. I'll now turn the call 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 Q1 of 2023. 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, business risk section of our Q1 2023 MD&A, and 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, non-IFRS measures, which are more fully described in our Q1 2023 MD&A. Our quarterly results were released after close of market last night and are available both on Sedar and our website. With that, let's move on to our results for the quarter. Most of my comments will draw comparisons to the first quarter of last year, and I'll provide some general commentary about our quarterly activity and our expectations going forward. Trican's results for the quarter were significantly improved compared to Q1 2022. Industry conditions were quite strong, which led to solid activity levels across our business lines. Inflation has somewhat moderated, leading to a more sustainable margin profile, and that resulted in improvements across all major financial categories.
Revenue for the quarter was CAD 297 million, an increase of about 36% compared to the same period of last year. Adjusted EBITDA came in at CAD 81.6 million, a significant improvement over the CAD 38.9 million we generated in Q1 of 2022. I would note that our Adjusted EBITDA figure includes expenditures related to fluid end replacements, which totaled CAD 2.3 million in the quarter and were expensed in the period. Adjusted EBITDAS for the quarter came in at CAD 82.9 million or 28% of revenues, a significant improvement compared to the CAD 42.0 million and 19% we printed last year.
To arrive at EBITDAS, we add back the effects of our cash settled share-based compensation, to more clearly show the results of our operations and remove some of the financial noise associated with the changes in our share price as we mark to market these items. On a consolidated basis, we generated positive earnings of CAD 46 million in the quarter or about CAD 0.20 per share. Trican generated free cash flow of CAD 69.5 million during the quarter, as compared to CAD 30.4 million in Q1 of 2022. Our definition of free cash flow is essentially EBITDAS less non-discretionary cash expenditures, which include maintenance capital, interest, cash taxes paid, and cash settled stock-based comp. CapEx for the quarter was about CAD 19.5 million, split between our maintenance capital program of CAD 11.2 million and upgrade capital of CAD 8.3 million.
The upgrade capital mainly dedicated to our ongoing Tier 4 capital refurbishment program, which Brad will touch on later. Balance sheet remains in excellent shape. We exited the quarter with positive working capital of approximately CAD 181 million, including cash of CAD 25 million. Finally, with respect to our return of capital strategy, we were quite active with our NCIB program during the quarter. We repurchased and canceled about 9.8 million shares at an average price of CAD 3.31, equating to approximately 4% of the company's issued an outstanding shares based on the share count at the beginning of the year.
We've remained active as we've moved into Q2 and have repurchased another 1.7 million shares or so since April 1st. As we reported yesterday, the Board of Directors declared a dividend of CAD 0.04 per share to be paid on June 30th, 2023 to shareholders of record as of close of business on June 15th, 2023. I would note that these dividends are designated as eligible dividends for Canadian tax purposes. With that, I'll turn things back to Brad for some comments on our operating conditions and our outlook.
Thanks, Scott. With respect to Q1, the quarter, we're very happy with how it went. I mean, it basically went exactly how we had planned. You know, it seems like every year we have a slower start than we anticipate. I think that's basically a trend that we're gonna have to factor into our budgeting. We were lucky this year in that we didn't have any weather delays in March, and we were able to work right till the end of the month. Even though we did have a bit of a slow start, the quarter basically unfolded from an activity and financial perspective exactly how we had planned. You know, we're still, like Scott was saying, there's still inflation in the system and but the rate of change has slowed considerably.
You know, it's things like sand, chemicals. Third party trucking, et cetera, are our main source of third party purchases. We do have ongoing labor inflation within our company. All of that adds up. It's significant. You know, we haven't seen any now that commodity prices have come down a bit, of course, none of that was factored into our suppliers' pricing. You know, where they can, I think the whole value chain is trying to operate at a reasonable level from a return perspective. I don't anticipate the inflation or costs are gonna change anytime soon. Pricing has been very stable, basically, since last summer. You know, we're fortunate that our customers have allowed us to pass on inflation as it has been occurring.
You know, so basically, pricing has been flat. It's just changed. It just fluctuates with inflation, which has been actually somewhat modest in the recent time. On the fracturing side, the market's very much balanced. You know, there's about 32 staff fracking crews operating in Canada. With two to 225 drilling rigs running, basically those 32 crews are operating close to capacity. We're not in an undersupplied situation as of yet, and I don't expect that will change anytime soon. Trican is still operating seven frac crews, which we've been operating now, I think, for the last year and a bit. You know, we won't add crews into this market until activity levels rise. Certainly we have the equipment ready to go.
We still have about five parked crews, which represents a fairly large percentage of the idle capacity in Canada. We'll just play it by ear and if there's demand for an additional crew, we will put it in the field. If there isn't, we'll continue operating with our seven crews, four of which are the Tier 4 technology. We're very happy with the cementing division. You know, fracturing represents about 70% of our revenue, and cementing is about 20%, and coil is the remaining 10%. The cementing division's very significant to this business. I think we've done a lot to improve that.
Even though it was running very well, we've done a lot to improve that in Q1, and we actually went from about 17 crews to sort of 21, 22 crews in Q1, allowing us to better service our customers and maintain our market share in the deep, more technical areas of the basin. We still operate with about a 30%-40% overall market share in Canada, but we're about a 50% market share in the Montney in the deep basin, which is, you know, where we think we add the most value, and we can differentiate our product offering. We will. Again, the same with cementing as in fracturing. If activity lifts, you know, we'll try to bring on more units to make sure we minimize the lates that we experienced in late 2022.
As with any kind of labor in the oilfield services sector, it can be a challenge, you know, getting incremental workers. We'll stay focused on making sure we're operating efficiently in each of our divisions. Coil has been fairly steady. We operate seven coil units in Western Canada, and we don't expect that to change anytime soon. Just the outlook for the second half of this year, you know, I know everybody is nervous with where gas prices are and are sort of wondering if it has significantly impacted our forecast for the second half. Certainly we don't, you know. We're not naive. We keep a very close eye on natural gas prices, in particular condensate prices.
It's what drives the economics of plays like the Montney and the Duvernay, et cetera. we're not seeing a big pullback in activity at all, actually. I think there is a bit of a disconnect between the general market and what's happening here in the oil patch. Certainly it's something we're watching. We expect the second half of the year to be, you know, fairly busy. You know, we're now in a situation where, you know, our customers are spending less than 50% of cash flow, you know, very disciplined programs, very long-term thinking. You know, it all feels quite thoughtful and well planned out. When you're spending less than 50% of your cash flow on drilling and completions, you know, inherently there's a bit of a shock absorber there.
You know, I don't we obviously had a very warm winter, both in North America and in Europe, and that has a huge impact on gas prices. We expect that that'll level out as the year goes on, and, you know, it feels like we're gonna be reasonably busy for the next few years. You know, I've said this before, I probably never felt this good about the industry from a long-term predictability perspective. You know, the pressure pumping market is quite balanced. You know, any increase in activity that may occur, you know, late this year and next year would tighten up the supply and demand balance and may even require more crews coming into the market. You know, it sort of feels steady as she goes here for the next little while.
You know, we're obviously excited about the fact that some of the issues in Northeast BC with First Nations have been started to get worked out and more well licenses are being issued. Of course, that's all very, you know, LNG-focused drilling. There's big wells, multi-well pads, very fracturing intensive, very meaningful to our business. You know, I think I've been getting questions about, you know, if certain of your customers are focusing efforts in Northeast BC, are they pulling work away from other areas? You know, the answer is you never know and it changes from quarter to quarter. It feels like the increase in activity in Northeast BC will be incremental to the overall industry activity.
I don't think it comes at the cost of something else at this stage. Of course, it's a very tight labor, very tight labor environment. We're doing all we can to make sure that we have good crews for our customers and our people are operating in a safe and efficient manner. You know, we take great pride in our staff and the work that they do. We're focused on training, particularly safety training. You know, we're fortunate that our people are committed and are looking for more and more training all the time. We have an excellent safety record. Without the dedication of our people, we would not be able to operate as efficiently and safely as we have. You know, we've taken an incredible amount of costs out of our business in the last few years.
It's, you know, quite significant, and it's enabled us to, you know, to maintain decent or reasonable margins. There is some issues with the supply chain. Nothing really has changed there, and I don't expect that that's gonna go away. You know, the biggest one is sand supply. You know, every time we sort of go into quarters like Q1 or Q3, and there's a big ramp up in activity, it really stresses the logistics end of the sand. There's lots of sand available, but there isn't lots of rail and trucks available. We are expecting the summer to be pretty tricky, and then we're gonna be making sure that we manage that appropriately and, you know, are looking six weeks into the future at all times.
You know, we're very fortunate that our logistics group and our supply group here at Trican seem to, no matter what, seem to get that figured out in allowing us to provide service for our customers. You know, from a corporate strategy perspective, nothing really has changed. We're very bullish on the industry in Canada. You know, we believe that Canada will play a very important and growing role with respect to providing the world with clean, reliable, and sustainable energy, particularly natural gas. You know, China LNG demand will recover. We won't get warm winters in Europe forever. You know, I think more and more Canada is gonna be a key supplier to the world with respect to providing our clean, sustainable natural gas.
Certainly, you know, we've got now three LNG or four LNG projects coming on in the next few years, the first one being LNG Canada, which should be active in 2025. Plays like the Montney, whether it's Northeast BC, Alberta, the Deep Basin, will play well into or will be feeding that facility with natural gas, and that will make sure that there's an ongoing demand for our services. I would say frac intensity on a per well basis is still increasing. Larger sand volumes, more stages. We're starting to see a trend where some of the customers that were doing ball-drop systems are looking at going to a plug-and-perf style of completion, which is more fracturing intensive, more sand going into the wells. We will keep a close eye on that.
That's generally, I would say, beneficial to us as long as we can manage the logistics of sand supply. You know, our strategy is still to differentiate and modernize our business while maintaining a conservative balance sheet. We're focusing on state-of-the-art equipment, making sure the systems are keeping up, allowing us to make good decisions, predict, you know, use data to make predictions. We're very focused on ESG and indigenous partnerships, and it's all about building a sustainable business that will thrive in Canada for the years to come. You know, we base our business on a guiding principle of clean air, clean water. Our Tier 4 technology has replaced diesel with natural gas, much lower emissions, less particulates into the air, et cetera.
Our chemistries allow for more use of produced water and recycled water, so there's less need to take fresh water out of the lakes and rivers. You know, the oil and gas industry doesn't take much water or doesn't use much water, especially compared to other industries like the agricultural business. Still, you know, we're always looking for ways to reduce our footprint, reduce our impact on the environment, and I think we've got a great start to building a sustainable business. Our fourth Tier 4 fleet came into service late Q1. Now, we are out of the seven crews that we're operating, four of them are Tier 4. They're brand new fleets, you know, I know this industry is plagued with underinvestment, you know, just much like our customers.
You know, we really stand out with respect to having almost a brand new fleet operating today compared to two years ago. That allows, you know, much more efficient operations, less maintenance and repair costs. You know, the people are excited to work on the new latest, greatest equipment and technology. The customers are excited to use it to reduce their emissions, reduce their fuel costs. I think our strategy has played out well. You know, we've got a great, a great start to having the most technically advanced fleet in Canada. We don't foresee that changing anytime soon. You know, and just along that, since the beginning of 2021, we've displaced 28 million l of diesel with our Tier 4 technology. That's really meaningful, and we're using natural gas for the most part, right from the pad.
Our customers are happy with it. The public is happy. That means less fuel trucks on the road, less emissions. I think it's a win-win for everybody. You know, we do expect that this will be the standard technology going forward. You know, I think we've done a good job of staying one step ahead. As we've been building our Tier 4 technology, we've also just recently brought in what we call an electrified backside of our frac spread, and really what that means is we've electrified the blender, the chemical unit, sand storage and delivery equipment, and the data van. It used to be with our Tier 4 technology that we were displacing about 75%-80% of the diesel usage on location.
With this new electric equipment, we're now up to 85%-90% diesel displacement. Again, you know, less emissions, less fuel cost, and more importantly, it's all electronically controlled from the data van, so we have no people in the hot zone, or what we call the hot zone, which is the danger zone of a natural gas spread. It's all operated from the data van. We're very excited about this, something our customers are, you know, basically getting in line to use. We will continue to differentiate our product offering going forward, and we're completely agnostic with respect to technology.
You know, as long as it provides a benefit for our customers and provides a return for our shareholders, we will continue to evaluate all the technologies that are out there and put in place, you know, what we think is the best one for the Canadian operating environment. On the return of capital strategy, I think Scott has touched on this. You know, we have a diversified return of capital. You know, we believe in share buybacks, dividends, a modest sustainable dividend. We've purchased 11.5 million shares since year-end. We've purchased 38% of the outstanding shares since we began the buyback program back in 2017. Very happy with how that's going. We expect to maintain the dividend for the years to come, and I think we're gonna be probably more opportunistic on our NCIB going forward.
I think we will definitely fulfill our full 10% by the end of the program, which gets renewed in October. Certainly we'll look for down days to be more active on buying our stock back. Lastly, just before we go to questions, with respect to the forest fires that are burning in Alberta, we haven't had any effect on our operations immaterially as of yet. You know, its breakup is without a doubt our slowest month of the year. You know, we're not all that active. We've had to evacuate a few locations, abandon some equipment on location, but so far so good. Nobody's been harmed. None of our equipment's been burned.
We don't expect this to have any significant impact on our quarter, assuming, you know, we get control of these fires. Q2 is probably more impacted by rain than anything. As always with our quarter, it's very June back-end loaded, which happens to be the rainiest month of the year in Alberta. You know, we're actually more concerned about getting a bunch of rain at this stage than anything. I think in general, our Q2 should be very, very similar to last year's. I think I'll stop there, and we'll go to questions. I'll pass it back to you.
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. The first question comes from Cole Pereira of Stifel. Please go ahead.
Morning, all. It sounds like Q3 is looking pretty good. Obviously, there's always a couple different ways it can go, but can you talk about how you see that quarter playing out relative to Q1, and whether there could be an opportunity for margin expansion through either, A, better economies of scale or, B, higher net pricing?
Yeah. I think Q3 will be similar to probably be. When you look at last year's Q3 and Q1, take an average of those two, it's probably where it's gonna wash out. Again, it's early. This is an interesting time of year because our customers are reviewing budgets and plans for the second half of the year. Of course, natural gas prices are not cooperating. Yeah, the board is full for Q3. We expect that we're gonna have a decent quarter. We think pricing's gonna stay flat. We don't expect any sort of expansion or degradation of margins. I think we're sort of at a stage here where, the market's fairly balanced, and I think pricing will stay pretty similar, to what it was in Q1 in the second half of last year.
Got it. Thanks. This is kind of a difficult question to answer, but from your perspective, how much white space was there in Q1 across the basin? You know, how much do you think drilling activity needs to rise before you need another frac crew in the basin?
Generally, if you were to add a frac crew, you know, I don't think any of the companies in the pressure pumping business would do so without sort of at least a year of visibility. We would need an incremental growth of sort of five to seven drilling rigs on an annual basis to add additional frac crews. Like, there's lots of white space. That's normal. You know, there's travel days, set up, rig up days. There's, you know, scheduling conflicts.
White space is just part of the game, and it's never gonna go away. It's more making sure that if we have a drilling rig growth in Northwest Alberta, Northeast BC that looks like, you know, five to 10 rigs on an ongoing sustained basis, you might see another frac crew come in. You know, I'm not the one to be able to answer as to how much white space our competitors are dealing with. I would assume, you know, their schedules are fairly similar to ours. I don't think you're gonna see that this summer. The addition of a frac crew.
Got it. I mean, you've paid off your debt, been active with the buyback, paying a nice dividend now. The business should continue to grow in Canada just from LNG, Blueberry. How do you think about growth beyond that, via M&A, either in Canada or the U.S.?
We're always looking. I think probably the biggest hurdle to M&A at this stage is just the multiples that are being assigned to the industry as a whole. You know, the average fracturing multiple or the average pressure pumping multiple in Canada and the U.S. is less than three. You know, we're fortunate, we get a premium multiple, but the willingness to transact at those levels is low. You know, regardless whether it's cash or shares, You know, I know you can say it's really irrelevant as long as if you're doing a share deal. Just psychologically, it's tough to transact when you have a 2x EV to EBITDA multiple.
Got it. Okay, that's all for me. Thanks. I'll turn it back.
The next question comes from Waqar Syed of ATB Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Thank you for taking my question, and good morning. Scott, just a housekeeping question. The 1.7 million shares that you bought, quarter to date, what was the average price, purchase price?
Good question, Waqar. You got me on that one, but it'll be between CAD 3 and CAD 3.25.
Okay. Brad, you've got five crews you said that are parked right now. Would those be Tier 2 diesel or Tier 2 dual fuel or?
Diesel.
They're all diesel? Okay.
Yeah.
And the-
It depends on the day, but generally, they'd be older diesel equipment that would require fairly significant upgrades before we brought them into the field.
Brad, I noticed that the coiled tubing revenues have been, like, maybe, you know, for a little while, flat to down. What's the rationale for that? What's your outlook as well for that business?
Well, the rationale is that we're not doing a good enough job of our coil division. Something that is getting more focus and attention here. We have made some moves with people and brought people in to help us build that division up. I think it's a little early to make predictions on, you know, how fast that division grows at this stage. We're kind of doing a bottom-up sort of review of the business.
Okay. You know, we've seen a trend on the U.S. side in pumping that companies are offering integrated services, whether that's, you know, fracs and logistics or mining or even, you know, fuel at the well site. Or, or wireline, for example. Is that something that you would consider?
Yeah, I mean, the answer is yeah. We would consider everything. Particularly with respect to sand logistics, we're always looking at ways to make our operation, our logistics operations more efficient. You know, we do expect tightness in the market. Again, it's not because of the amount of sand out there. It's the industry's abilities to move it from A to B when you need it. It's quite a process, obviously, to bring sand from Wisconsin to Northeast BC.
We're always looking at the potential to make investments, you know, to better serve our customers. Again, you know, we don't, you know, spend money unless we can get a return on it. You know, sometimes that's difficult to do. You know, with respect to sort of integrated services, we tend to somewhat shy away from those situations, particularly, wireline, because, you know, eventually the customer just wants it for free. You know, we're not. You know, we can't have a sustainable company with, you know, giving away products and services.
Yeah. makes sense. Just one final question. You know, touched on B C and, you know, activity growth that could happen there with LNG Canada. Given the very stringent environmental regulations that are being implemented there, from a pumping perspective, and again, from a supply chain perspective there, what do you think is eventually going to be the best answer there? You know, is Tier 4 going to be the best answer at DGB, or is it going to be e-fleets? How are you thinking about that marketplace and the growth there?
Yeah. Like our market, our thinking about that market continues to evolve all the time. As new information becomes available, you know we factor that information and process it accordingly. It's a tough operating environment. You know, they're remote. There's no power lines, certainly not with the amount of electricity that would be required to run a frac spread. Our goal is 100% natural gas, you know. When we look at all the technologies out there, we wanna get to the stage where we are burning 100% natural gas as a fuel, you know, no diesel being consumed on location at all.
We're sort of 90% of the way there, give or take, with our Tier 4 engines and our electric equipment that runs off a natural gas generator. You know, we hope that we can adapt our existing equipment, but at this stage, given the cost of an electric fleet, there just isn't a willingness by the customers to pay more for their pumping services. You know, an e-fleet is, I don't know, CAD 70 million-CAD 75 million. You could never justify the economics of that type of investment. The other thing is, it would be a totally different way of doing things, right? You would need different mechanics, different operators, different procedures.
Which that's fine, but it's just something to consider when you think about totally changing your equipment designs and technologies. You know, the system is, frankly, isn't sort of set up for that at this stage. You know, it's the transition of our backside to run off electricity, given what I just said, was actually quite easy and has worked really well so far. You know, we think we'll be buying more of that. You know, it's like I said, lower maintenance, less people, less fuel costs. You know, we just gotta make sure that the equipment eventually pays out in a reasonable time.
Yeah. Yeah. Great. Well, thank you very much for your comments. Appreciate that.
Thank you.
Thanks.
The next question comes from Aaron MacNeil of TD Cowen. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. Brad, to sort of follow up on Cole's M&A question, you obviously mentioned prevailing valuations for Trican and your pressure pumping peers and sort of that unwillingness to transact. You know, aside from chipping away at the NCIB, which it sounds like you're gonna do, why not take a bigger swing with a, with an SIB?
Yeah, we think about that all the time. You know, I think it's certainly something that needs to be thought through carefully, because I would tend to agree with you. You know, you're basically using that as your M&A strategy by buying yourself back, which is great. Yeah, I tend to agree with your thinking.
What sort of leverage would you take on to do that?
Oh, we haven't worked our way through that yet. You know, we're As you know, we're debt adverse, We're not, you know, we're not afraid of debt, reasonable levels of debt. I, you know, I couldn't sort of get into specifics at this point, but we would be comfortable with a little bit of debt, for sure. You know, given our non-cash working capital surplus, which is fairly significant, as you saw, that obviously is a protection against leverage in a downturn. We're still pretty conservative, you know. It's just our nature around the table, and it's not gonna change anytime soon.
Makes total sense. You know, you sort of mentioned it in the prepared remarks, how should we be thinking about, you know, further or incremental investments in the Dynamic Gas Blending engines beyond what you've sort of articulated?
Well, we've got our fifth spread coming this year, and, you know, we're basically of the mentality that, you know, we wanna modernize the fleet in its entirety. At the same time, though, we don't wanna be over-committed to one type of technology unless we really feel that it's gonna provide a 100% natural gas solution down the road. We've been very happy with how the equipment's been running. It effectively operates at 100% utilization. It's very well received by the customers. You know, it's a significant part of our ESG plan. Like I said, we're agnostic to technology. If something better comes along tomorrow, you know, we would switch. You know, in general, we don't. We, as part of our annual capital budget, there would be sort of at least one fleet upgrade, I would say.
When do you have to start ordering stuff for the 2024 capital budget?
A very long lead time on equipment now. I mean, I'm looking at Todd, but it's over a year.
Yeah, 12 months.
Yeah.
Sure. All right. appreciate the time. Thanks, guys.
Thanks.
Once again, to join the question queue, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. You'll hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. If you have a question, please press star then one now. The next question comes from Keith Mackey of RBC. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. I'm hoping you can talk a little bit more about the trend in pad size in Western Canada that you're doing. How many wells per pad would you say your equipment is working on on average, and how has this trended over the last, you know, year to two?
The trend is definitely more wells per pad. I don't have the exact numbers handy, but probably our average pad would be four to six wells.
Yeah.
Just looking at the other people in the room here. You know, we do see 10-well pads, but they're not commonplace for us yet. You know, we think it's going there sooner than later. That's, you know, that's great because anytime you can sit on location for a month plus, you know, makes for, you know, a very effective use of the equipment. The people, you know, the staff love it, right? When you sort of rig in and you just sort of have your manufacturing facility that runs every day. I know I'm not really answering your question, but the number of wells per pad has definitely trended up, but it hasn't trended up as fast as I thought it would. I think once you get more sort of targeted LNG development, you will see additional wells on a pad.
Okay. Got it. No, that's, that's helpful. Maybe just to turn to the electric ancillary equipment. Can you just talk about, you know, what percentage of your sites or crews are working with that type of equipment now, and how high do you think that can go? Can you be fully electric on the back end on all of your fleets or, you know, will it be a, will it be a mix of some kind?
We just brought our first set, late Q1, so it's still very early days. So far so good. We do have another set on order, that will be operating in the second half of this year. We would imagine all of our equipment would get there. You know, certainly that equipment that sits on the pad. You know, it may not be, it may not be practical in a Cardium situation where you're, you know, you're on and off in a very short period of time, and you need room for the generator, et cetera. It's something we would assume all of our sort of Montney Deep Basin fleets would get eventually.
Yeah. What's roughly the cost to outfit a fleet with that type of equipment now?
CAD 5 million.
Yeah.
Canadian.
CAD 5 million?
Yeah. It's not insignificant, you know, and we can't spend money unless there's a return. We, you know, we think quite carefully about that situation.
Yeah. I guess on that, like, what is the business proposition for it? Is it charged out on a percentage of fuel savings, or is there a higher rate that you can charge for providing electric ancillary equipment?
It's based around the fuel savings for sure. I mean, it's different in every situation, but it's generally. Yeah, there's, you know, there's less emissions and a fairly significant fuel savings, so.
Personnel as well.
First, less people on location. Our costs, our people and our repairs and We expect that this equipment's gonna be quite reliable, especially with respect to the blender. You know, blenders can often be the source of the majority of the breakdowns on location. You know, part of our motivation for this equipment was not just the electrification, frankly, it was also finding a more reliable blender. We think we'll get our returns with a combination of all of those.
Got it. Okay. Thanks very much. I'll leave it there.
Thank you.
If there are no more questions on the phone lines, this concludes the question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Fedora for any closing remarks.
Thank you everyone for your time and your interest in our company. If there's any follow-up questions, the executive team will be available today and Monday to answer any questions you may have. Thanks again.
This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.