Greetings and welcome to the Atlas Energy Solutions Acquisition of Moser Energy Systems Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. The question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Kyle Turlington, Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.
Good morning and welcome to today's conference call to discuss the acquisition of Moser Energy Systems. With us today are John Turner, CEO, Blake McCarthy, CFO, and Bud Brigham, Executive Chair. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that this call will include forward-looking statements as defined under the U.S. securities laws. Such statements are based on current information and management's expectations as of this statement and are not guarantees of future performance. Forward-looking statements involve certain risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that are difficult to predict. As such, our actual outcomes and results could differ materially. You can learn more about these risks in the annual report on Form 10-K we filed with the SEC on February 27th, 2024, our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and other SEC filings.
We will also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures such as Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted Free Cash Flow, and other operating metrics and statistics. The presentation of this additional information should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for results prepared in accordance with GAAP. Reconciliations to comparable GAAP measures are available in the press release we issued this morning. With that said, I will turn the call over to our CEO, John Turner.
Thanks, Kyle, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. This is an exciting day for Atlas as we announce our acquisition of Moser Energy Systems for a purchase price of $220 million, consisting of $180 million of cash and $40 million of Atlas common stock. The equity consideration is subject to revisions for customary post-closing adjustments. Moser is a leading provider of mobile distributed power solutions providing power generation services to the oilfield and the commercial and industrial end markets. With a fleet of natural gas-powered assets that currently totals approximately 212 MW, Moser represents a great platform for Atlas as we begin our charge into the distributed power market.
The acquisition of Moser creates an integrated and diversified energy solutions provider with differentiated exposure to both the oil field completions value chain and the distributed power market through a portfolio of proppant logistics, including the Dune Express and distributed power solutions. Atlas's acquisition of a mobile power generation platform diversifies its operations into the production and distributed power end market, supported by strong macro tailwinds expected to reduce through-cycle volatility. In addition, Atlas is acquiring Moser's critical and differentiated in-house manufacturing and remanufacturing capabilities, which drives best-in-class quality and reliability while reducing through-cycle maintenance and equipment replacement costs. The transaction is expected to close before the end of the first quarter.
Assuming 10 months of contribution, we expect the acquired assets to generate between $40-$45 million of Adjusted EBITDA in 2025, which implies on a full run rate basis, assuming the midpoint of the range, a purchase price valuation of 4.3 times 2025 Adjusted EBITDA. I want to expand on our strategic rationale for the transaction a bit. As we announced earlier this month, Atlas has begun making commercial deliveries off the Dune Express, marking a huge milestone for our organization as we continue to revolutionize oilfield logistics in the Permian Basin. Atlas also announced last Friday that it has completed its first 100 deliveries of proppant utilizing autonomous driving technology. Atlas has always prided itself on leading with innovations that eliminate critical pain points for our customers.
The Dune Express and autonomous delivery, which both will dramatically improve the reliability of proppant supply in the Permian while reducing over-the-road trucking miles, are prime examples of this. As we look ahead to the next phase of growth for Atlas, the rapid acceleration of power demand in both the broader market and the oil field stands out to us as a key potential problem for our customers as power demand growth is currently dramatically outstripping incremental power supply and is expected to do so for quite some time. The accelerating U.S. electricity load growth tied to AI-driven data center demand, onshoring domestic manufacturing, and broader electrification trends is driving power constraints in major U.S. markets. U.S. electricity load demand has gone from being stagnant over the past 10 years to being forecast to grow at a rate of 2%-3% per annum for the next decade.
This trend is even more pronounced in Texas, which has experienced growth rates two times above the rest of the U.S. ERCOT has stated that over the next five years, it will need to add the equivalent of the current German power market in load capacity. According to third-party research, peak power usage in West Texas was around four gigawatts just four years ago. This summer, it was over seven gigawatts. In the Permian Basin, only about 50% of current operations are presently able to connect to the grid. According to our operations team, it's just as tight in New Mexico where the Dune Express concludes. Projects in New Mexico that require power loads greater than one megawatt are being quoted lead times of 24- 36 months for grid interconnection prior to construction.
Despite the significant investment needed to support load growth demand in Texas, ERCOT has acknowledged that current power prices in Texas don't support investment in new dispatchable power generation. U.S. utilities are looking to ramp up investment to meet the growing electricity demand but face headwinds from an economic, implementation, and regulatory perspective. Across the United States, and especially in the Permian Basin, where 40% of Moser's assets are deployed, we see distributed power as a growth market for years to come. Long story short, enabling our customers to access affordable, reliable power when they need it at scale is solving yet another critical industry problem. Before we entered the power market, we wanted to make sure that we were doing so in a way where Atlas could enjoy a distinct competitive advantage, something we feel Moser brings to the table.
Founded in 1973, Moser has been at the forefront of advances in distributed power solutions. It was the first company to successfully run natural gas generators on wellhead gas, significantly reducing power costs and oilfield flaring. Moser's generators are designed for heavy-duty, harsh environment for mission-critical power needs and run on a range of fuel sources, including wellhead and pipeline natural gas as well as propane. Moser's 212 MW fleet is comprised of more than 900 generators that serve a wide range of customers primarily supporting the production and artificial lift end market. Additionally, current end markets include midstream facilities, commercial and industrial work sites, and microgrids. Importantly, Moser also brings with it a full-scale suite of in-house manufacturing capabilities, something we believe is a key competitive differentiator in a market where reliability is paramount. End users don't want to be in the power business. They want to flip a switch.
Moser's manufacturing, service, and remanufacturing capabilities drive its best-in-class quality and reliability with more than 99.9% uptime. Moser's experienced service teams provide 24/7 field and technical support throughout the U.S. In-house remanufacturing costs are about 50% of third-party, creating a distinct cost advantage in both fleet maintenance and expansion. By owning its own manufacturing capabilities, Moser is not solely reliant on third-party OEM providers for growth assets as the company is able to build and remanufacture more than 43 MW per year, with the ability to scale that capacity rather easily. Moser broadens Atlas's current geographic footprint into several key basins across the central U.S., including the DJ, Eagle Ford, Powder River, Uinta, and Williston basins, with opportunities for continued growth in Atlas's core geography, the Permian Basin.
Most importantly, Moser's strong EBITDA margin profile of 50+% and robust free cash flow generation is expected to enhance Atlas's pro forma free cash flow generation and shareholder return and is estimated to be immediately accretive across all financial metrics. In summation, we are buying a good cash-flowing business today that broadens our offering of solutions to our customer base while also diversifying our end market exposure to less volatile markets, both in the oil field and outside of it. Atlas's position as a proppant and logistics provider of choice to the most active operators in the Permian represents potential commercial synergies as we look to grow the Moser platform.
In turn, the acquisition of Moser provides Atlas with additional avenues of growth through the expanding distributed power market and greater degree of cash flow durability through service offerings tied to the production lifecycle phase of wells and outside the oil field. All of this, in turn, is expected to yield improved through-cycle cash flows and returns for Atlas, enabling continued growth of our return of capital to shareholders. With that, I will now turn the call over to our CFO, Blake McCarthy.
Thanks, John, and good morning, everyone. Let me begin by summarizing some of the details of the transaction. As John detailed, Atlas has agreed to acquire Moser for $220 million, consisting of $180 million of cash and $40 million of Atlas shares, subject to customary post-closing adjustments. Atlas's board of directors has unanimously approved the transaction, and we currently expect to close before the end of the first quarter, subject to HSR approval. Moser is expected to contribute approximately $40-$45 million of EBITDA to Atlas's 2025 financial results, assuming 10 months of contribution. On an annualized basis, this represents a purchase multiple of approximately 4.3 times. As John mentioned, the growth opportunities for Moser are significant in a rapidly expanding market.
In order to facilitate the growth of the platform, Atlas currently expects to invest approximately $27 million and $33 million of growth CapEx into the business in 2025 and 2026, respectively, growing the fleet to approximately 310 MW. By year-end 2026, we currently expect the business to be at an EBITDA run rate of approximately $80 million, absent a further acceleration of growth for our power platform. With 2025 representing an inflection point in the cash flow generation of our legacy business with the completion of the Dune Express, we intend to use a combination of free cash flow and debt financing to fund the CapEx. We plan to provide full-year 2025 CapEx guidance for the pro forma Atlas on our upcoming earnings call on February 25th.
With the maintenance CapEx light business model enabled by Moser's in-house manufacturing, we expect the acquisition to be highly accretive to all our key financial metrics in 2025 and beyond. Atlas has secured committed financing for the cash portion of the consideration through an amendment to upsize the capacity of our current delayed draw term loan facility with Stonebriar. We are currently evaluating multiple capital solutions ahead of the transaction close, including longer duration term debt. Included in our press release this morning were our updated expectations for the financial results of the fourth quarter 2024. We expect Q4 2024 revenues to be between $270-$272 million, resulting in adjusted Q4 EBITDA of $62-$64 million. We will give more details on our Q4 results and expectations for 2025 on our earnings call scheduled for February 25th.
The pro forma Atlas will provide a differentiated investment vehicle within both the oil field and distributed power space. Atlas's legacy business remains uniquely positioned with its low-cost mining operations and market-leading logistics business, enhanced by the Dune Express, to generate significant free cash flow and industry-leading returns on capital through cycle. Our new power platform, anchored by Moser, provides a significant avenue for continued growth while blunting the cash flow volatility of our exposure to the oil field completion space. All of this combines to provide incremental fuel to our pursuit of maximizing shareholder value through both share price appreciation and, importantly, growing returns of capital to shareholders. I'll now turn over the call to Bud Brigham, our Executive Chairman, for closing.
I will close with a few general comments. As stated in our original Who We Are Chairman's Letter at our IPO, our mission has been to improve human beings' access to the hydrocarbons that power our lives. It is by pursuing this mission that we fulfill our core responsibility to create value for our shareholders. We are proud of the role that we play in providing energy security throughout the economic cycles, in bettering human lives, while also delivering differentiated social and environmental progress. Our recent commitment of commercial deliveries off the Dune Express, which takes trucks off the commercial roads while driving efficiencies, our successful autonomous deliveries, and this exciting announcement to meet the challenge of rapidly growing demand for distributed power evidence our commitment to this mission. I could not be any prouder of this team, and I'm very excited about this new platform. Importantly, we're just beginning.
While Atlas has been and continues to be uniquely positioned to modernize proppant and production and logistics in the Permian Basin, we are now optimally positioned to constructively disrupt the power space with more to come. With that, I'm happy to turn the call over to questions.
Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press Star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press Star 2 to remove yourself from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the Star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for your questions. Our first questions come from the line of Jim Rollyson with Raymond James. Please proceed with your questions.
Hey, good morning, guys, and congrats on your deal. Blake, you kind of gave a little bit of breadcrumbs on the growth outlook, at least through this year and next, with the $27 million and $33 million of growth CapEx. Maybe as you look out through the decade, just because that's kind of the time frame everybody keeps talking about this growth lasting through at least, how you're thinking about that growth CapEx beyond the next couple of years. Is this kind of this low $30 million type of number? Is that the run rate? And I'm just kind of curious how you're thinking about that over time. And maybe to add to that, maybe you can frame up relative to the $40-$45 million of contribution of EBITDA this year, how much free cash flow does that generate?
I'm trying to think about how you fund this growth CapEx as well. Thanks.
Yeah. All right. So four questions in one, Jim. That's impressive. So that's a great question. I think starting with just the overall, our outlook for the distributed power market, we asked ourselves the same question when we started exploring entry into the space. And I think the answer can be broken down into two parts. First, just the projected demand growth and U.S. power demand is simply staggering when compared to what we've seen over the past few decades. I know that there's a lot of crazy forecasts out there about us needing to double the entire U.S. grid, if not more than that over the next 20 years and things like that. But I think at the core, we know that the electrification of the U.S. economy continues to gain momentum. And the pace of that demand growth seems set to outstretch supply additions for quite some time.
We look at Texas specifically. The issue is particularly acute. I mean, we feel it when a lot of us had a few years ago when the weather caused the power to go out on the entire thing. And I know that there's significant investments in stability. So even absent the accelerated growth forecast by the buildout of data centers and things like that, the combination of Texas as a growing manufacturing base and the forecasted growth in oil and gas power demand set to further weigh down an already overburdened grid. I think that I like to quote one of my favorite geopolitical analysts, Peter Zeihan, when he put it quite well when he said, "When you think about the global economy over the next 50 years, the U.S.
Is advantaged in every way, and Texas will lead the way if we can keep the lights on." So that's something that we're really looking to help on. It's difficult to triangulate the size of the distributed power market today and what it will be on a forward basis. However, we know it's up and to the right. But however, the scale of capital required to solve the problems associated with aging electrical infrastructure, demand load growth exceeding supply, and long-duration build cycles for utility generation. It will exceed the potential for the distributed power market to be overbuilt over the next 5-10 years. So I think the key question too, so thinking about the growth, I think John could probably expand on this, but we're really looking at this as a platform investment that we're going to build on.
I talked about just that growth capital over the next two years and kind of getting us that $80 million run rate. We don't plan on stopping there. And our hope is that we can continue to add opportunities to that set. From a free cash flow perspective, this is a really maintenance CapEx light model. So being on a normalized basis, being about 4% of revenue long term. So even with those CapEx numbers for the year, we expect this business to be free cash flow positive this year and then significantly more so next year as just we get that earnings run rate ginned up. So feeling good about really, really excited about the path forward. And as Bud said, this is just the beginning.
Super helpful. And just one follow-up is, if you kind of look at the customer mix of Moser's business today, it sounds like a lot of it's kind of E&P customers. And just kind of curious how you're thinking about where you deploy that CapEx going forward or where the opportunity is, at least in the near term that you have visibility on. Is it mostly E&P-related kind of customers, or do you get into some of the other opportunities that are laid out in your slides? And is this more Permian or kind of across that map that's in the slides as well?
Hi, Jim. So this is John. Obviously, we're oil and gas companies focused on the oil and gas business. I think there's a number of synergies from us from a revenue standpoint to continue to sell to our customers. Obviously, there's, like Blake said in the comment and in my comments, we were talking about the shortfall of supply in the Permian Basin. But this also gives us a foothold in other basins as well. I mean, I mentioned that as well. We're talking about Eagle Ford, DJ, Uinta, looking at the Bakken. And so obviously, there's going to be growth opportunities there.
And then as far as looking into other parts, other areas, and expanding outside the oil and gas business, I mean, I think we have plenty of run room on the oil and gas side, but there are opportunities for us in other parts of the business as well in other markets. So outside of oil and gas, we've already had some exposure on the commercial industrial side that Moser has. But most of that has been limited because of the capacity constraints. And like Blake said, as far as cash flow from this business, I mean, the returns on these investments is pretty phenomenal when you look at the overall portfolio and what we're investing in. So yeah, we're going to be focusing on the oil and gas space and then looking outside that as well. But there's plenty of opportunity in the oil and gas sector.
But obviously, going to look outside as well.
Yeah. And then just to hammer that out, Jim, like John said in his prepared remarks, we talked about this is really addressing a critical pain point for our customers that we've already heard from them that they'd like our help solving. And so when we look at the Moser customer base, there's a lot of key Atlas customers that they don't service right now. So we think that there's quite a bit of opportunity to access. If you just limited it to E&P operators, there's quite a bit of customer growth available. And that's even before you start expanding into other end markets.
Yep. That's kind of what I figured. Appreciate the color. Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question has come from the line of Derek Podhaizer with Piper Sandler. Please proceed with your questions.
Hey, good morning, guys, and congrats on the deal. Maybe just to keep going on that line of questioning, obviously, it's hard to ignore the turmoil going on in the markets today related to the AI power trade. So can you break down maybe the mix by percentage basis of what Moser's doing today? You talked about midstream commercial industrial work site and microgrids. You list on slide five expanded opportunities. You do have data centers in there, but maybe is this a traditional data center versus AI-powered data center? Obviously, there's just a lot of confusion in the markets right now. But just maybe help us a little bit more about the specific end markets that Moser's targeting today and then where you think you could expand it moving forward.
Right now, the company has zero data center exposure. I think probably 90+% is related to the production end of the oil and gas value chain, with that remaining 10% being a mix of other pieces of the oil and gas value chain and a small exposure to the C&I markets. We think that there's a lot of runway just on the production side of the oil and gas industry. This is something that even before all of this gasoline on the power fire that was caused by the AI boom, it was something that you looked out to the West Texas grid and the growth of just power demand out there, and just the real-world problems that we've experienced as a business where we put on our core mines and things like that, we're waiting months, if not years, to get connected to the grid.
So that's something that our customers deal with every day. And so significant earnings growth potential just in that end market.
One thing I would say though, Derek, is if you look at slide 10, you're looking at the Permian Basin power demand forecast, and there's significant growth in that. I mean, but then you look at all the basin, and then you can also have the Permian in there, but it has the power demand growth by all the basins, so obviously, there's a lot of runway on that side of the business.
It's just when you look at the remote locations with which these operations are in, it's something that it's a hard thing for utilities just to build, make the giant investments into utility-scale power in those remote locations when there's probably lower hanging fruit in metropolitan areas. So we think that there's just a ton of runway on the distributed power market in the oil and gas industry.
Got it. No, that's very helpful. Maybe some color on the equipment mix by size. Obviously, these are all sub-1 megawatt units, and you talked about growing to 310, and maybe the future just depends on the demand outlook, but will you stay in the sub-1 megawatt per unit market? Do you see yourselves going maybe to something bigger like the 5.7s or the 16.5s or even up to the 35s? Just some any color around the breakdown of the units that represents that 900 right now and then what it could look like going forward?
Yeah. So you're right in that the current equipment fleet is all primarily sub-1 megawatt units. I think that we're investigating opportunities in more power-dense equipment right now, probably not to the higher end of that range. But I think that as you look to the growth of the microgrid infrastructure that people are trying to build out there, or just the concentration of a lot of these ESP fields, that a slightly larger equipment is probably attractive longer term. So it's something that we'll certainly be evaluating. And that's why, again, don't mean to be too redundant, but as Bud said, this is just the beginning. We're going to be evaluating a ton of opportunities out here over the next few months.
Got it. Very helpful. Thanks, guys. I'll turn it back.
Thank you. Our next questions come from the line of Ati Modak with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your questions.
Hi, good morning, team. On the customer mix, where is the strongest opportunity within the oilfield right now? Is it rigs, fleets, or artificial lift systems, as you can see over the next few years? Any color you can provide around that? And any color on the profitability across these end applications?
Hold on just one second. Second question is the profitability by end application.
Yeah. I mean, I think the biggest opportunity for us is, I mean, primarily on the production side, the artificial lift. And that's where Moser's primarily focused right now is where their units are deployed. As far as profitability mix, yeah, I mean, these are accretive margins to Atlas's current run rate. So the unit economic returns on these are very, very strong. So.
I mean, if you look, there's a slide in the deck, Ati, on page 13. It kind of shows where the EBITDA margins are for this business for Moser. So obviously, outsized compared to the rest of the industry, obviously very profitable.
Yeah. I was just wondering.
Yeah. One thing we liked about this business too is just to rehash a little bit is that our base business is so tied to the completion into the value chain that Moser brings with it much more exposure to the production side of things, which we think that blunts some of the volatility in our core cash flow stream. We really like that exposure long term.
Got it. That's super helpful. And then you mentioned a CapEx number for maintenance requirements, but any color you can provide in terms of how that in-house manufacturing helps bring that cost down, or in other words, what it could have been without that capability? And what is the typical life on these assets?
You know that it's significant in the in-house manufacturing. I'm just at what?
On page nine, if you look at slide page nine there on the bottom, it says that in-house manufacturing costs are 50% of third-party costs. So obviously, a pretty significant advantage there. As far as what was the second question?
Life of the assets.
The life of the assets, I mean, you're typically remanufacturing a fleet every 48,000 hours, which would have placed about five years. About every five years, it kind of goes through a full rebuild, but you certainly accrue that over the timeframe that it's operating. So again, that's captured under that 4% of revenue assumption. These are effectively engines, and so you give them some TLC, and they can last quite a long time. So there's not a ton of attrition, but we certainly, that was one thing that was really core to this deal, was that we were really focused on, "Hey, how can we drive some type of competitive differentiation?" And the in-house manufacturing capabilities really stood out to us.
We looked at a lot of different targets in the space, and what made us really zero in on Moser were those capabilities, resulting in significantly better uptime in the field and that cost advantage in keeping the fleet up and running and on top of that, adding incremental capacity. It's a core advantage relative vis-à-vis the competition.
That's super helpful. Thank you, guys.
Thank you. Our next questions come from the line of Keith Mackey with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your questions.
Hey, good morning, and thanks for taking my question. Maybe a similar one to the lifetime of the units, but maybe asked slightly differently is, how long does a unit typically sit on a site when it is contracted there? Presumably, you're talking about it being an artificial lift type operation, which I would think would give you some longer duration type cash flows. So can you maybe just talk a little bit more about that and how long these assets are typically contracted for when they go into the field on, say, the same site?
Yeah. That's a great question. I'm glad you asked it because it gives me an opportunity to expand on something we're excited about. Historically, these assets, they've been contracted on relatively short-term contracts. That's just been the nature of the business as power historically hasn't been much of an issue in the field. Now, with the current tightness that it's expected to only intensify, it appears more and more customers are willing to explore, if not actively seeking, opportunities to term out generation capacity for longer durations. That's always a balancing act as you don't want to limit your opportunities to drive pricing in a tight market. But one of the things that attracted us to the distributed power market is, like I said, the ability to blunt some of that volatility that exists in our legacy prop and logistics business.
Thinking about the lift market in particular, you've seen quite an evolution in just the use of ESPs over the last decade where it was before, a lot of times people would rent a used ESP, and they'd use it for a few months and then start to have some issues on it, and they'd pull it and throw it on a different type of lift mechanism. Now you're seeing people more owning their own, buying their own ESPs, running those initial production longer on the ESPs, and sometimes even pulling ESPs and putting them back and putting another one downhole if they have any issues. So what might have been historically three to six months on ESPs, we're now hearing up as long as 36 months on ESPs.
And so obviously, spread that out over multiple wells in a field, it creates a power demand that's much more stable than what you've had in the past. You're not moving the fleets around as much. So I think that the tailwinds behind longer duration for contract term is continuing to gain momentum.
Yeah. I mean, with the increase in fluids or having to move out there, that's why they're having to move these bigger ESPs for longer term, so.
Yeah. Got it.
Just to follow up on the new capacity you're building, call it 100 MW over the next couple of years. Certainly sounds like there's a lot of demand out there for that. Can you just talk to us about how much of that is actually contracted as of now and maybe what gating factors you'll think about as you adjust that plan as you go forward? Maybe there's better demand, maybe there's lower demand. Just maybe talk to us through some of those factors about how you think about deploying that capital.
Yeah. And so one benefit of the internal manufacturing capacity is that you're effectively just placing orders into our supply chain, and it's relatively short lead times on some of those core things. So your ability to turn it on and off is pretty easy. But finding homes for the new build assets isn't something we're really worried about in the current market. It's more the common refrain from the sales staff when we're doing it through diligence, when we ask them about what their biggest roadblock was. They simply didn't have enough capacity to meet customer demands.
That's not just saying like, "Oh, we've got so many jobs coming in," but a lot of times the jobs coming in were bigger to where they'd have to be daisy-chaining these units together, and they didn't have enough units available to be able to meet those power demands, so they'd have to go somewhere else. So the market is extremely tight. And like I said, we're currently the key provider of sand logistics to many key operators that Moser doesn't currently service at all. So I never put much stock in revenue synergies when I hear about a deal, but we do think that there's significant runway to expand Moser's customer base.
While we don't have, like I said, the nature of this business thus far has been more short-term contracts and a lot of will-call orders, as this evolves, we're going to look to add a bit more sophistication to the sales process and get that out there up in front of placing these fleets.
Hey, Keith, this is Kyle. I was going to mention one other thing too about the growth visibility here. Not only are we seeing tailwinds from obviously the distributed power growth, but in the production side, there's a lot of diesel generators still out there. And so there's ability to displace some of those diesel generators with these gas-fired generators. So that gives us some more confidence that we can put these new assets to work. So I just wanted to mention that.
Yeah. There's a lot of wellhead gas that provides a significant fuel cost advantage out there. And the more of these we can put out there, the more that the operators can benefit from those savings.
All right. Appreciate all the color. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. Our next questions come from the line of Doug Becker with Capital One. Please proceed with your questions.
Thank you. The presentation mentions the flexibility to actually increase capacity beyond 120-150 units per year. Just want to get a context. How many shifts are being run today, and how much capacity could that add if you see the demand out there?
One right now. We're currently wanting, so good question. Obviously, there's a lot of that. That's something that we evaluated. There's one shift that's running right now on the manufacturing side. That's obviously we could add to that shift, add shifts to that going through the same facility. Obviously, we could increase our production capacity on that side. We do see that part. We do see that if the demand is out there. We do see that as an upside for this business is that we do have that additional production capacity to grow even beyond what we talked about earlier.
But no quantification at this point.
We could effectively double it.
We could effectively, yeah, I mean, we could effectively double it, but we have not. We don't have plans to do that right now.
Yeah. No. Understood. And then just digging into the artificial lift in a little more detail, there's been some talk about high-pressure gas lift taking some share from ESP. Just wanted to get your thoughts. Is this a trend that we need to be cognizant of for the Moser business?
I do think that there are some certain plays where the high-pressure gas lift is very economic and works very well. But then a lot of that requires power as well. We mentioned compression and power and compression, and also on top of that, gas treatment opportunities. So all of this requires power. And so I think it's not an either/or where we can make money on both sides.
Yeah. Got it. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next questions come from the line of Scott Gruber with Citigroup. Please proceed with your questions.
Yes. Good morning and congrats on the acquisition.
Thanks, guys.
Thanks, Scott.
I appreciate all the color this morning. Obviously, the distributed power market's super tight today, and the margins are super impressive. Moving towards those longer-term contracts makes a lot of sense. Just kind of thinking through kind of how we should think about the business over the medium term, how are you guys thinking about the economics on those longer-term contracts? Do you think you'd need to trade some margin for term, or do you think the market's tight enough to keep those margins and get term today?
I think the market's tight enough right now where people are just, "Hey, I need power." In certain cases, it's, "What do I need to pay for it?" So there's opportunities that if you're just pricing at market prices to term stuff out. Now, it eliminates your ability to push pricing further and juice the returns more. But the returns I just said market pricing right now are pretty fantastic. And so I think that you're certainly willing to explore term contracts and lock up utilization quite a while where there's appetite.
I mean, it's very similar to what we do in sand contracts.
Yes. Absolutely.
I mean, it's the - we're going to use - we'll be opportunistic with the contracting, but also if there's strategic reasons for to enter into a contract, we'll have to evaluate this at that time, so.
Yeah. And I think it's also not, again, we're being a bit repetitive, but the vertical integration and internal manufacturing capabilities of this business really give it a significant advantage when it comes to through cycle returns. So even if you're taking in, if you were to take slightly lower pricing just to lock in term, your through cycle free cash flow just based on those lower maintenance is far superior to the competition. And so it's something that while we think that the bull market industry power has some real legs to it, this is a business that generates advantage margins in good times and in bad, very similar to our core business.
That sounds great. And then, Blake, how should we think about cash return to investors in light of the transaction, particularly in 2025? I know the capacity will improve longer term, but just kind of 2025 into 2026, how should we think about the cash return strategy?
We'll probably give them, I'm going to punt on that until our February 25th call. We'll give more detail at that time.
Okay. Appreciate the color. I'll turn it back.
Thank you. Our next questions come from the line of Eddie Kim with Barclays. Please proceed with your questions.
Hi. Good morning. Just wanted to ask about the competitive landscape. We've seen some announcements recently by oil service companies getting into this distributed power business. But just curious who Moser will consider to be its primary competitors today?
Yeah. So obviously, we've been cognizant of those announcements. Most of those announcements have been into the more power-dense applications, whether it's into frac power or the more power-dense applications around data centers. This business isn't necessarily competing directly with those, just different applications. There is one large private competitor that's a good business as well. Right now, I think both businesses are doing quite well across the oil field. But we're not necessarily, a lot of those people that have made those public announcements on power, those are core customers of ours and people that we're happy to continue to help and probably plan on selling them some power services.
Got it. Got it. That makes sense. And my follow-up is just on the lead time for your generator equipment to be built and set up for the customer today. If a customer came to Moser and said, "We need one megawatt of power as soon as you're able to provide it," how quickly would Moser be able to deliver that megawatt of power?
Depending on if we have availability of equipment, it could be pretty quick, a matter of days. That's one of the, that is one of the reasons that we want to deploy this growth capital into it over the next two years, is that right now, it's just so tight that there is a significant, there's more of a lead time than there should be, and that creates pretty critical problems for our customers in the field just as they complete a well and then all of a sudden they're lacking power for the production side of it. I think that E&P procurement offices are becoming much more focused on this problem, so they're getting out in front of it well in advance now. It's becoming a core piece of the well design where it hadn't been before, right? Historically, it just hadn't been something people thought about.
And like we said, customers don't want to think about being in the power business. They just want to flip a switch and it's on. And so they are having to think about that well more in advance. And so people are being proactive about it. And so it's, and like I said, with the kind of commercial synergies about this, we're already having those conversations on well plans and their CapEx budgets for the year. And we expect to generate to integrate a lot of these power discussions into those discussions as well.
Got it. Great. Thanks for that color, Blake. I'll turn it back.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'd like to hand the call back over to John Turner for any closing remarks.
All right. Thanks, everybody, for joining today on the call. Obviously, very excited about this acquisition and what it means for our investors, for our future returns, and the overall growth of our business. We look forward to speaking to you guys here on our earnings call on February 25th.
25th.
Thanks.
Thank you. This does conclude today's teleconference. We appreciate your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Enjoy the rest of your day.