Good morning, welcome to Liberty Energy's first quarter 2020 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note this event is being recorded. Some of our comments today may include forward-looking statements reflecting the company's view about future prospects, revenues, expenses, or profits. These matters involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements. These statements reflect the company's beliefs based on current conditions that are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that are detailed in the company's earnings release and other public filings. Our comments today also include non-GAAP financial and operational measures.
These non-GAAP measures, including EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA, and pre-tax return on capital employed, are not a substitute for GAAP measures and may not be comparable to similar measures of other companies. A reconciliation of net income to EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA and the calculation of pre-tax return on capital employed, as discussed in this call, are presented in the company's earnings release, which is available on its website. I would now like to turn the conference over to Liberty CEO, Chris Wright. Please go ahead.
Wow. Our industry has been hit with two large shocks since our last quarterly earnings call. A market share war that flooded the world with oil at the start of the second and larger shock, the COVID pandemic, which is driving by far the largest ever demand contraction for oil. This one-two punch led to crashing oil prices and now growing logistical challenges to even move oil at any price. The result is an abrupt reduction in rig count and an even more abrupt curtailment of frack activity than we have ever seen. Fortunately, Liberty was built to survive tough times. As in the last 2014 to 2016 downturn, we plan to emerge on the other side having deeper customer relationships with the industry's leading players, larger market share, and increased competitive advantages. Getting there, however, will involve serious challenges for our whole industry.
Let's begin with what's most important, the health and safety of our people and all those that they touch. Liberty was an early mover in this area. During February 2020, we formed a COVID-19 response team to design and implement safety procedures and contingency plans at our customers' locations and our offices and facilities that allowed continued delivery of safe frack services while protecting the health of both our customers and employees. We have had only one worker on a frack crew test positive for COVID, which he appeared to have contracted on his days off. Arriving for a new shift, he suspected that he may be infected and immediately quarantined himself and notified the crew. Texas authorities commended the actions of this individual and Liberty, and a full recovery from COVID soon followed. Liberty has continued to improve our processes to protect all folks involved.
We also have been very proactive in protecting our business during these unprecedented times. Our first step was to immediately reduce executive salaries by 20%. Subsequent reductions have reduced executive cash compensation by roughly two-thirds, which will fall further, cut in half, during our May through July furlough program, as we suspect that period will mark a very low trough in frack activity. Michael will provide more details on our headcount reductions, our first ever and deeply painful, as well as our CapEx cuts, dividend suspension, and operating cost reductions throughout our business. We designed Liberty with highly variable compensation structures to allow navigation through cycles, and we are confident in navigating through this cycle. The focal point of our actions is our customers. What does the collapse in oil prices and storage rapidly filling mean for their future frack demand?
How can we help all of them successfully navigate these challenging times? How can we help them with frack design changes to become more competitive? How can we work with them to improve throughput? We love all our customers that we worked for in 2019 and 2020, and we stand with them during these challenging times. In addition, all of our largest customers, meaning our multi-fleet customers, are top-tier players that we chose to align with because they have strong balance sheets, high-quality assets, and most importantly, are managed by great people. All of these customers are active in the Permian Basin. They will be survivors and likely consolidators as this downturn plays out. We love the profile of our top customers.
We have grown our market share, percent of their business, with all our top customers this year. Industry conditions had been declining for several quarters even before the COVID pandemic. During these challenging times, operators became even more demanding on service quality, efficiency, safety, and technology solutions. All of this plays to Liberty's favor, and those trends are accelerating now as the market stresses have dramatically increased. Our first quarter results reflect both the flight to quality providers and Liberty's efforts to concentrate more of our capacity with select top-tier players. Liberty's Q1 revenues grew sequentially 19% to $472 million, and net income was $2 million, or $0.02 per fully diluted share. Adjusted EBITDA was $54 million, equating to $9 million annualized EBITDA per average active frac fleet, which was all 24 of our frac fleets until mid-March.
This performance was driven by strong customer preference for Liberty and outstanding operational execution. Liberty's first quarter results smashed previous quarterly records for number of stages pumped and sand volume pumped, both by double-digit percentage increases. Over the last 12 months, which have been far from boom times in our industry, Liberty delivered a 6% pre-tax return on capital employed, generated significant free cash flow, and returned approximately $25 million to our stockholders. Obviously, industry conditions have dramatically deteriorated since mid-March. What had been a slow grind of shrinking E&P CapEx to raise returns, combined with an oversupply of frac industry capacity, has transitioned into an abrupt plunge in customer activity and demand for frac services. Today's oil prices below $20 and impending crunch for oil storage capacity have seen demand for frac services drop like a stone.
The rapid drop in frac activity is understandable, as many producers are forced to shut in existing production to better align supply with demand, as oil storage is rapidly approaching capacity. Oil demand normally rises and falls relatively slowly, as it is primarily tied to economic activity. Never before have we seen a forced, abrupt shutdown of such large parts of the global economy. The financial crisis, or Great Recession, saw a 2%-3% drop in demand for oil spread over several months. The COVID pandemic led to a 20%-30% drop in demand over only a few weeks. In the next few months, we expect very low frac activity in the oil basins. U.S. oil producers are now navigating forced production shut-ins due to storage constraints.
U.S. oil production will decline rapidly due to both wells being shut in and extremely low levels of new wells coming on production. Where things go next depends greatly on how quickly demand for oil rebounds as world economies reopen and oil begins to be drawn out of storage. The pace of oil storage draws and the pace of oil demand rebound from increased economic activity will strongly influence oil prices and therefore producer appetite for frac services. These factors may lead to an increase in frac activity later this year. Our highly flexible cost structure and strong Liberty culture allow us to adapt to whatever unfolds. We are strongly focused on preserving Liberty culture and our competitive advantages while always delivering superior service to our customers on-site and during periods of hiatus and frac operations.
We innovated our way to success during the last downturn, and we are busy doing the same this time with inventive cost-saving frac and completion design changes to active parent-child well management efforts, novel equipment innovations, and software applications to optimize logistics. Michael will summarize the specific cost-cutting and liquidity-enhancing measures that we have undertaken. Before I turn the call over to Michael, I want to highlight several distinct advantages that position Liberty to weather this downturn and come out the other side with a stronger market position. One, top-tier customers who will survive and likely own larger asset portfolios on the other side. Two, strong relationships and communications with our customers. We are in this downturn together and we will get through it together. Three, a tight-knit Liberty culture of trust and partnership that brings out the best in crisis.
Four, differential performance that drives outsized demand for Liberty services. Five, strong balance sheet built to last. Six, loyal and committed suppliers and partners. I will now turn the call over to Michael to discuss our specific actions and financial results.
Good morning, everyone. As Chris discussed, entering into 2020, industry conditions were already challenged prior to the emergence of the COVID pandemic. We were very proud to deliver solid 2019 results and a favorable 2020 outlook on our February earnings call. With solid visibility for all 24 of our current fleets and our 25th fleet being fully utilized in 2020. The black swan event that crushed global oil demand and oil price has now crushed demand for frac services across the domestic landscape, and all oil and gas basins have been affected. Regrettably, we announced earlier this month that we reduced our staffed frac fleet count by 50%. For the first time in the company's history, we had to lay off Liberty team members.
The toll on separated and present Liberty employees has been dramatic, and we are truly humbled by the incredible professionalism and understanding that the Liberty family has shown through the implementation of these tough measures. With that in mind, let me start by celebrating the remarkable achievements of the first quarter, which owed everything to the hard work of the entire Liberty team. Our first quarter included a fully utilized schedule of 24 fleets that were active through mid-March. Our operations team pushed efficiencies to new heights. We pumped a company record amount of proppants and stages in the first quarter, a double-digit percentage increase from our previous best. For the first quarter of 2020, revenue increased 19% to $472 million, from $398 million in the fourth quarter of 2019.
Net income after tax increased to $2 million in the first quarter, compared to a net loss of $18 million in the fourth quarter. Fully diluted net income per share was $0.02 per share in the first quarter, compared to a fully diluted net loss per share of $0.15 in the fourth quarter of 2019. First quarter Adjusted EBITDA increased 77% to $54 million from $30 million in the fourth quarter. Annualized Adjusted EBITDA per fleet was $9 million in the first quarter, compared to $5 million in the fourth quarter. General and administrative expense totaled $29 million for the first quarter, or 6% of revenues, and included one-time software costs related to the ERP implementation of $1 million, non-cash stock-based compensation expense of $3 million, and $2.5 million of accounts receivable allowances.
Net interest expense and associated fees totaled $3.6 million. Income tax expense was $0.3 million for the first quarter. We ended the quarter with a strong liquidity position with a cash balance of $57 million, which was down from the fourth quarter of $113 million due to growth in revenue and therefore accounts receivable. At quarter end, we had no borrowings drawn on our ABL facility, and total liquidity, including $202 million available under the credit facility, was $259 million. In early March, due to the macroeconomic issues that Chris discussed, and after close discussions with our customers about the likelihood of a precipitous decline in frac activity industry-wide, we acted swiftly.
As we did in the last downturn, we began with a substantial cut to executive pay, but the incredibly fast deterioration in the industry conditions during March and the view that the conditions would be challenging for the most of 2020 led to the announcement we made earlier this month regarding reductions in our number of staffed frac fleets and the necessity to reduce our workforce. To successfully navigate this unprecedented economic challenge, we focused on protecting the business through cash compensation, liquidity management, and maintaining balance sheet strength. We wanted to make sure that Liberty could weather the wide range of possible challenges ahead of us and to emerge on the other side stronger and well-positioned to take advantage of opportunities in the future. First, we reduced our staffed frac fleets in early April and unfortunately had to reduce our workforce by nearly 50% during the second quarter.
We now have 12 staffed frac fleets. We anticipate this will remain at 12 for the balance of the year, with flexible furloughs cutting costs when activity drops below 12 fleets. As a result, we believe that we have structurally adjusted our cost base to align with anticipated 2020 activity outlook. We do not foresee further cuts to our staffed frac fleet count at the moment. We will manage the challenging near-term market by utilizing furloughs that will adjust our direct cost of operations very quickly in parallel with customer demand. We expect annualized cost savings of $170 million from reduction in force measures. Second, we suspended variable compensation and our 401(k) match from Q2 going forward and reduced base salaries for the executive team and other salaried employees, plus reduced cash compensation for our directors.
We expect an annualized cost savings of over $50 million from these measures. Third, we moved our capital expenditures to a maintenance-only mode after delivery of prior capital commitments. Earlier this month, we announced a reduction in our planned 2020 capital expenditures to a range of $70 million-$90 million, which is over 50% below the midpoint of our previous guidance of approximately $165 million. This includes approximately $33 million that was incurred in the first quarter of 2020. The majority of which was for technology and fleet enhancement, such as the delivery of Tier 4 dual-fuel engines and pumps that were previously expected to be used on our 25th fleet. The second quarter of 2020 will also include some costs associated with this fleet, while the second half of 2020 capital expenditures will primarily consist of maintenance costs.
This strategy will enable us to provide best-in-class fleet technologies for our customers who are keenly focused on prioritizing returns on each dollar of capital spending. Customer demand for superior services have increased in the current climate and provides us with an opportunity to further solidify long-term relationships with strategic customers. Fourth. Our dividends. During the quarter of end of March 31st, 2020, the company paid quarterly cash dividends and distributions to stockholders and unit holders of approximately $5.6 million. On April 2nd, we announced the suspension of future quarterly dividends for Class A common stockholders and distributions for Liberty LLC unit holders until business conditions warrant a reinstatement. We believe this temporary measure to adjust our capital allocation strategy towards cash conservation is prudent to further protect our balance sheet against this uncertain backdrop.
Disciplined capital deployment is a core Liberty principle, and we look forward to resuming dividend payments when appropriate. Fifth, we are working with our supplier partners to reduce the costs of running our business. Liberty has always had a partnership mentality with our suppliers as we do with our customers. This downturn is stressful for the whole supply chain in the oil and gas industry, but this is an industry that has always thrived on working together. Our supply chain partners view Liberty as a company they can rely on to work through tough times with. As such, in times like these, we come together across the table and productively work on cost savings. This mentality is the same whether it's our sand partners or our legal and accounting service providers. We're expecting input cost reductions that will range from 10% to 30%, depending on the specific cost line.
Sixth, in the beginning, in late April, we implemented a temporary measure of employee furlough plans in the fields and corporate office. Corporate furloughs will reduce personnel cost portion of G&A by almost 50% from the current reduced levels during what we believe will be the worst of the downturn, the second quarter and the early third quarter timeframe. Operationally, we will have the flexibility to furlough fleets as the work schedule demands, and this will allow us to react quickly to adjust our cost structure down or up as the frac calendar demands. We believe these steps set up Liberty to weather the storms that are in front of us and to be successful preparing to take advantage of future opportunities.
We are managing the business, pursuing a free cash flow positive strategy for the remainder of 2020. We project to end the year with a greater cash balance than at the end of the first quarter. As Chris discussed, the imbalance in the oil supply and demand has created a challenging market for fracs. We are committed to our strategy of disciplined growth and returning capital to shareholders. This requires us to protect the business first in an unprecedented downturn. The depth and duration remain uncertain. We are confident that we have taken the necessary actions to manage through the downturn. Importantly, we are well-positioned to react quickly to a rebound in frac demand activity.
In these challenging times, we will take this opportunity to work diligently with our customers on providing the best-in-class service and engineering solutions and expect to emerge in a strong, more favorable position with higher market share and more entrenched relationships with our operators who are deeply focused on being the foundation of a strong domestic energy industry. With that, I will now turn the call back to Chris before we open for Q&A.
Thanks, Michael. My heartfelt thanks to the Liberty family for their actions during these extremely challenging times. It is with heavy hearts that Liberty had its first-ever layoffs. Our hearts go out to these Liberty family members who were integral parts of building our company. We look forward to the days when we can welcome them back to Liberty. Thanks to all Liberty team members, plus our customers and suppliers who have worked closely together to safeguard the health and safety of everyone during the pandemic. Nothing ever trumps the health and safety of our people. Your efforts have been tremendous, and we are proud of our record so far, but we can't take our eyes off this ball. Thanks also to the healthcare workers and first responders across our country as they lead from the front in battling the pandemic.
I want to end with a few broad thoughts on energy and data points from the recently released EIA report on U.S. energy supply and demand in 2019. First, 2019 was the first year since 1957 that the U.S. produced more total energy than we consume. This is a huge milestone. The two fastest-growing sources of energy supply in 2019 were oil and gas. In fact, oil and gas supplied just a hair below 70% of U.S. total energy consumption in 2019, an all-time high for market share. Our industry is critical in enabling today's world, particularly our modern healthcare system. We are also central to the world's COVID mitigation efforts, from supplying the raw materials for PPE, personal protection equipment, and other critical hospital supplies to literally fueling hospitals, transportation, and the rest of our economy. Hang tough, everyone. We are needed. We'll now open the line for questions.
We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question comes from Blake Gendron with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. The first is on working capital. In the prior downturn, you guys were growing fairly substantially, so it wasn't an appreciable source of cash. Embedded in your free cash flow positive outlook for the remaining three quarters of this year, just wondering how we should think about the key components of working capital, as contributors to cash flow.
Yeah, Blake, thanks very much. We will actually have a significant generation of cash from working capital. As you saw, we built receivables pretty significantly in Q1 as we fuel growth. I think you'll see that we'll be able to mine that as we go through the year. Obviously, we are targeting balancing cash flow before working capital as closely as possible to zero as well.
Okay. Makes sense. Sticking with the working capital theme here, appreciate your comments about aligning yourselves with top-tier customers. Would say, though, pushback from investors is that your position in the Rockies and the Bakken, you have some challenged customers up there, in the current commodity tape. I'm just wondering what you're doing to mitigate bad debt risk. Do you have AR insurance? If so, what percentage of your receivables are covered by insurance at this time? Thank you.
Yeah. No, we have a close relationship with all of our customers. We do not have AR insurance, so we have no coverage on that at this present point in time. Yeah, currently, as everybody did, we instituted the new guidance around looking at receivables in the first quarter, and as you saw, we took about a $2.5 million allowance. $1 million of that was related to a small customer that filed over a year ago. We're finalizing that debt. Really, when we took a look at our receivables, we put about a $1.5 million allowance on them. We feel pretty comfortable where we are at this present point in time. That said, the market is changing very, very quickly for some of the E&P operators.
Understood. Appreciate the comments. Thanks, guys.
Thanks, Blake.
Our next question will come from Chris Voie with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning. I'm wondering if you can give a little update on your view for the Lower 48. There's a wide range of estimates on how low activity's gonna go. I guess you guys are expecting to be able to maintain 12, but with some flexibility if it gets worse. Can you give any color on what you're expecting for the industry at this point, given the visibility that you have?
Yes, Chris. Look, the next few months will be extremely low frack activity in the oil basins. The gas basins clearly will hold up better, but oil basin frack activity, if you're shutting in wells to figure out where you're gonna put oil, you have to have special reasons to be fracking them. A number do, but there'll be very low frack activity in the next three months, and we absolutely will not be keeping 12 frack fleets busy during the next three months. The 12 frack fleets is sized to where we expect we'll probably be towards the end of this year. We don't know how this rebound unfolds, but I think it's likely that the bottom in frack activity is the next three months.
Okay. That's helpful. Thanks. Then on a follow-up, historically, you guys have had a stance on M&A where you would be open to buying assets but want to preserve the culture of the company and not acquire operating companies. This is a pretty extreme situation now. I'm curious if your view has shifted at all in terms of opportunistically acquiring anything or other product lines. Just maybe if we could get an update on M&A and if there's been any shift in how you see it right now.
I think certainly in the last call, I don't know, before that, as the market gets weaker and things get dislocated, that's a more likely time for Liberty to do something. Now it's still a high bar. It's got to work. It's got to be additive on a per-share value. We've got to be comfortable with the cultural risks involved. Look, yes, we are approached all the time on all sorts of things. It's not impossible, but a deal has really got to be compelling for shareholders of Liberty.
Okay, thanks. I'll turn it back.
Our next question will come from Chase Mulvehill with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, fellas.
Good morning, Chase.
I guess I just want to follow up on Chris's question here on the M&A side. Obviously it needs to be compelling, but when you think about the compellingness of a potential acquisition, how do you think about the consolidation versus adding incremental services, whether it's completion related services or other?
I don't know that we have any new color there. Frac is by far and away the largest, and I would say, central service of onshore unconventional production. That's our focus. Something enables that. It's got to have synergies and strength in growing and building our frac business, making it better. We're still focused, guys.
Okay. All right. Through this downturn, obviously last downturn, the strategy was to take market share, expand the customer base. Is there any change as we think about this downturn as to your strategy?
Probably no wild changes, but look, this downturn is different. The last downturn sort of ground lower and lower, right?
We had a certain amount of capacity, and it was outperforming others. As activity ground lower among our existing customers, we incrementally added customers to keep our capacity full. This has not ground lower. This drove off a cliff, because it was beyond our industry, right? Our economies got forcibly shut down. That creates a massive dislocation. With frac fleets are getting pushed out of the market super fast, prices collapsing. Simply impractical for us in any reasonable way. Could we have kept all our Maybe. That was not the strategy or goal at all we took here. Our goal here, number one, was to do everything possible we could to help all of our existing customers navigate a massive disruption. That's technical things, that's performance, that's all sorts of business partnership things, help on COVID plans and pandemic.
One of the things that has happened already is growing our market share among our existing customers. As things rebound, I think we'll see a lot of capacity and probably a number of competitors go out of the marketplace. When there's opportunities to add customers that we think will be good Liberty partners and positive for us, I suspect you'll see some of that. Our goal, as it always is to build the long-term value of every share of Liberty stock. We said in our comments, certainly we expect we will have a larger market share. That in itself is not the goal. The goal is to build our competitive advantages, deliver something differential, and when there's increased pull on that service quality and that differential product, that probably will lead to market share gains.
All right. Perfect. I appreciate the color. I'll turn it back over.
Thanks, Chase.
Our next question will come from Waqar Syed with AltaCorp Capital. Please go ahead.
Capital. Sorry.
Thank you. Good morning.
Morning, Waqar.
My question is, how many crews do you have working as of today?
We never give specific numbers on what's going on. In fact, today might be a different answer than a week ago or a week from now. I will say, activity has dropped dramatically, so it is a small number. It is certainly single digits. It may drop lower. It's probably gonna bounce around. There are a number of players, strong, great players, good balance sheets, gonna sell oil at the wellhead in low single-digit prices. Why do it?
Yeah.
There's low activity now. We're not out trying to twist anyone's arm to convince them to do stuff now. Yet there's lead times. If you've got a big pad and you got to drill it out, when you start fracking, that oil's not gonna come to market for two to four months. It's low activity right now, Waqar, but we've built the business and arranged our cost structure that however people decide to play these next three months, we're good with that. We just stay in constant communication, figuring out how we can plan and be supportive for whatever comes next.
Okay. In terms of your CapEx budget for $70 million-$90 million, what number of active fleets is embedded in that number? Any guidance there?
Yeah, Waqar, I think that number was embedded around the 12 fleets running sort of a slightly slower proportion of that to the balance of the year. I think there's definitely opportunity that we will reduce that CapEx number as we execute. Again, we want to make sure that everybody's got conservative estimates as to what we will execute on through the model.
Okay. Given what's going on with suppliers and everybody else, what's your maintenance CapEx per fleet, and how does that compare now versus what it was a year ago?
Yeah, really, Waqar, as you say, we came in with a budget of around $3 million a fleet for this year, at the beginning of this year, when we were gonna be fully active for 2024. That changes, right? Again, maintenance CapEx is basically the replacement of engines, transmissions, and power ends. Obviously, some of that is, as we're not running all of our fleets, is able to be deferred, right? If an engine blows up, we can put that pump on the bench, and we can use one of the ones that wasn't being utilized before. Of order, though, over the next two years, it's going to average around about $3 million per active frac fleet. Can we defer some of that over the next nine months into 2021? Yes. The great thing about the service industry, it's a very flexible business.
Okay. Just a final question. Chris, you have a pretty good handle on the Bakken DJ. You guys have done work on the Permian. Given what you're seeing in terms of completion activity, how do you see the decline rates in those basins, and any thoughts on where the production could go there in these basins?
Yeah. They're down. Significantly downward. Waqar, as you know, the further away you are and the higher your transportation costs, right? Everyone's reading about the Bakken. Clearly, the Bakken is pinched first. Frac activity declined there first. Shut-ins are happening there first. As oil prices compress, those extra differentials from basins further away from the Gulf Coast. On a percentage-wise, those differentials become a bigger deal. Things compress. Certainly, in downturns, low oil prices, Rockies get hit first, and get hit worse. That's no different this time. It's not just a basin thing, though. Within certain basins, some customers have refineries and dedicated transportation and offtake agreements at their own refineries. They're in a different position to people with different offtake, different ways they market their crude and move their crude.
It's variable, but I think you will see a large contraction in oil production in virtually every basin, driven simply by economics. If I have a strong balance sheet, why would I take $4 at my wellhead if I can shut in that production and wait two or three months? I think you're going to see U.S. production artificially contract rapidly because as storage tanks get near full, we simply have to have today's supply equal to today's demand. Today's demand is artificially compressed. Although it's started to bounce back the last couple of weeks, but only at a slow pace. You'll see that. I think the next phase after that is you'll see people bring production back on, and at the same time, you'll probably see people start to frack. They'll be looking ahead two or three months.
Where do we believe oil prices and oil demand is going to go? It'll come back. Sorry for the long-winded answer, but yes, the Rockies are going to be hit earlier and hit a little harder than the other basins, but these same impacts will be across all the basins, and we will see multiple millions of barrels a day come out of U.S. oil production this year.
Thank you, sir. Thank you.
Thanks, Waqar.
Our next question will come from John Daniel with Simmons. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. No longer Simmons, but that's okay.
That's fine.
Chris, great quarter, by the way, in light of the market, congratulations there. Let's assume that you get back to the steady state of 12 fleets running, call it effectively all 12, and knowing that you're probably adverse to giving financial guidance in this market, but what's a reasonable range from an EBITDA per fleet in that scenario?
Yeah. Certainly way too early to say that, John.
Right.
Look, pricing dropped hard. It's probably bottomed, right? Just fleets have to get pushed out of the marketplace. Price and customer preference are the two mechanisms that do that decide which fleets get pushed out. When there's very little activity, it really comes down to customer preference. Pricing likely has bottomed.
Right.
As activity increases, that's the force that'll drive price back up. We're going to be in a challenged market this year, and it could be several quarters. I suspect it'll be several quarters. I don't have any crystal ball, I don't have any particular prognostication on what EBITDA per fleet will unfold over the next few quarters. It'll be low.
Right
Start to move up. We worry more about the right relationships, the right balance sheet, the right competitive advantages, the right customers. The times to reap cash from our assets, that's not 2020. That's building in 2020 to set that up.
Fair enough. In terms of working with the right customers, obviously, a lot of them are going to take the frack holidays in the next couple of months. Do you feel like you have firm visibility that those crews come back later this year? Is it just that's what they think they're going to do, but they don't really know what they're going to do?
Yeah, no one knows exactly what we're going to do.
Yeah
what they're going to do because there's so many, John, as you know as well as I do, there's so many just moving pieces, right?
Yeah.
The single biggest one is how does the economy rebound? How does oil demand come back? What happens with oil supply around the world? With this period of low price, what stress does that cause to push oil out? Really, activity will come back when oil prices and the ability to hedge future oil prices improves.
Right.
Right now, it's take away in short-term prices. No. Everyone's got plans or ideas. We're constantly talking, but everyone's really going to watch and follow what the data says.
Got it. Just last one, sort of theoretical big picture for me is you kind of have a clean slate right now. Are there any things that you want to do differently with Liberty going forward when the market eventually recovers?
Well, there's lots of things we talk about. There's lots of technology efforts we have going on, and only a few amount of them we talk with. To us, I would say, really, it's doubling down or deepening what we've already said. The way to get better in this industry is partnerships. Long-term partnerships with customers to be able to flex together. When the price of everything changes, the optimal design changes.
Right.
Desire for new technologies. Hey, if we can cut 20% out, and move oil production this way, that may make sense in a depressed price, but it may not make sense in a high price. For us, it's just to keep getting better, but not just internally in our doors, but in our partnership with our customers, with our major suppliers. I guess I got a nothing answer for you.
That's all right. Just thought I'd try. All right, guys, thanks a lot for putting me on.
Thanks, John.
Our next question will come from Ian Macpherson with Simmons. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning. Thanks for all the answers today. Chris, I mean this as more of a compliment, but Liberty has struck me as an experienced cold stacker of equipment, and now you're marketing half of your fleet for this year and for some quarters. What have you picked up with regard to the dos and don'ts from your competitors across the industry with parking equipment for a long time, and how do you envision your plans for your cold idle equipment through this downturn?
Ian, it's Ron. Yeah. Obviously, that's not something we've had to do in our past, but we have an incredible operations team. They knock it out of the park in the field each and every day. These are guys who have been in this industry a long time and know how to take great care of an asset. We have confidence in the plans they're putting in place to take those assets and cold stack them for the foreseeable future and ensure that those assets are ready to go when we're ready to put them back in the field.
They've laid out a comprehensive plan as to where those assets are going to live in our world, what's going to be done to them to ensure that they're ready to go, and we have the utmost confidence that when we need those assets, they'll be ready to perform like Liberty assets always have.
Okay. Thanks, Ron. Is it fair to assume that your marketed fleets now are more concentrated around your clean fleets and quiet fleets?
Yeah, look, I would say in this downturn, right? The more assets are going to be in the stronger players. Yes, interest in that stuff absolutely is growing. Yes, that's a higher %. Activity in general is going to migrate to Texas through this downturn. Our market share or % of our assets in the Permian will grow quite meaningfully during this downturn. We'll stand behind all of our customers. Yeah, I think a migration towards next generation fleets absolutely is in progress and the downturn's not changing that.
Thanks, Chris. It's been danced around a little bit during the conversation this morning, but how much do you think this most recent leg down has impacted, I won't ask you to talk about your price book, but just a more industry-wide observation. How much do you think this latest kick in the shins has impacted industry pricing from January to today?
Meaningfully. Think of our customers, that they're getting way less than half per barrel of oil today than they were getting four months ago. Their margins, their activity is compressed. Everything compresses. All input costs compress, margins compress. Yeah, it's meaningful.
Good enough. Thanks for all the answers. Appreciate it.
Thanks, Ian. Appreciate it.
Our next question will come from Sean Meakim with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning.
Good morning, Sean.
Hello.
Chris, I was hoping maybe to come back to, I don't want to say the M&A question, but the M&A topic from a different perspective. For a long time now, multiple cycles, pressure pumping has been the fastest growing product line in all of oil field services. It's also been the most fragmented with the weakest market structure. If you were to fast-forward a couple of years ahead, let's say even beyond the next 12- 18 months, that could be quite difficult. Do you see this as a timeframe in which it's realistic to suggest that frack could consolidate to a point where it has a healthier market structure? We recognize to the extent that Liberty may or may not be a participant in that consolidation over time, that you still have a willingness if the parameters and returns meet your thresholds.
I'm thinking more at an industry level. Is it realistic to think that in a world in which large cap diversified services, or formerly large cap, are not necessarily interested in being consolidators in this product line, can the relatively smaller mid-size players in this space consolidate to what's a healthy market structure? I'd love just to kind of hear your thoughts on what's realistic and what are kind of the probability distribution of outcomes for this market over the next 18 to 36 months.
Sean, my short answer is yes. I think we believe that that's exactly what will happen. No insight in how that will come about, but I believe that happens. I think you characterized our industry the past very well. Incredible growth. Shale Revolution's transformed the world. Frack has been the engine behind it, grown massively. As I use the analogy, like the dot-com revolution, awesome for the world, not awesome for the participants in the business in the last decade. We had some positive trends already. One is higher specs for equipment, next generation fleets. There's a huge interest in that. Just a higher bar around performance and safety. That was bleeding capacity out. That was causing the lower tier players to shrink and become under stress. Obviously, stresses are very significant right now. I very much subscribe to your premise.
I think we will have dramatically fewer players in the space two years from now. Dramatically increased concentration and fundamentally a better business. That will take time. That will be an ugly process. There'll be bankruptcies, there'll be mergers, there'll be just shutdowns of business lines. We've already seen that twice. At least two companies already just got out of business and parked their trucks. Yes, I think as painful as these downturns are, and this one's a unique one, it will lead to some very positive structural changes in our industry. I think the industry as a whole, while overall it might be smaller two years from now, I think the competitive marketplace and structure of the business will be meaningfully better.
I appreciate that. The other thing I would posit to you is that historically, this business has never been able to fix itself from a supply perspective, right? The supply tends to be pretty sticky. Meaning that where we've seen step changes in utilization, it's the demand. Either demand underwhelms the supply for a reason, or in some cases, there's been a step change in demand while stripping supply. It's been many years since that was the case, but we have seen it. As you think about that consolidation scenario, is there a threshold of demand that we need to see eventually?
Again, I'm thinking nothing about the near term, but on an intermediate to long-term basis, what types of thresholds of crude demand or something along those lines would you need to see in order to get the industry back to where it's functioning at a healthier level? Again, just more of a hypothetical, but I'd like to hear how you see that piece on an intermediate or long-term basis.
Yeah. We have talked about that a fair amount. Of course, the honest answer is we don't know. We simply don't know.
Of course.
If you look at world oil production, the way it's going from right now, there's not much growth, and there's a lot of countries that are meaningful oil producers that are in trouble. I think if you look forward, looking past the next two years, I don't know how fast oil demand's going to bounce back from COVID. No one knows, and we certainly do not. I think the call on U.S. oil is likely to be meaningful in the next 3- 10 years. I think our industry overall will be smaller, fewer players, maybe even gross CapEx dollars, I doubt ever get back to 2014 levels. I doubt that. Total industry frack fleets, it might only be 200 or 250 fleets three or four years from now. Remember, fleets are getting higher efficiency and bigger throughput, so that can still do a lot of work.
The new technology and the higher level of performance, there's just a lot of incumbent players that I don't think there'll be a spot for on the other side. You're right, our industry historically has been very bad at managing supply on this end. That's absolutely true, which is why the weaker conditions we had last year and the weaker conditions we expected to have this year, as you and I have talked, we view that as productive. The lower quality players literally were going cash flow negative, and capacity actually was leaving our industry. I thought this might have been our first year where demand might have been flattish without the, we would still would have had a fourth quarter falloff.
Demand might have been flattish, the market was going to incrementally get better because the lower quality players and older tier equipment was just getting pushed out. Yeah, to have meaningful discipline, we probably got to have a smaller number of players in a more consolidated sector. I do believe, we do believe in a couple of years, we should have something like that.
That's really helpful. I'll have to chew on there. Thank you, Chris.
Thanks, John.
Our next question will come from Connor Lynagh with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks. I was wondering if you guys could sort of help us put together all the moving pieces on your margin. It sounds like you've got a lot of flexibility built into your structure now. You're also expecting some input cost savings. If we were to look at second quarter and say, activity is 6 fleets or activity is 12 fleets, how different would your gross profit margin, and maybe I'll just focus there to keep it simpler. Put a different way, what would you expect your incremental margins to look like relatively?
I think, Connor, a little bit too much detail, the reality is, I think the way we've set up our flexibility, other than fixed district overhead, gross profit margins will stay relatively flat. If you take the fixed district cost out, they will be relatively flat, whether we're running 3 fleets or 9 fleets. No, we're not going to be running 12 fleets in Q2. I think that's the case. Obviously, you've got a significant difference in your G&A absorption and your fixed district overhead is the key thing there. I think that's generally how. Again, the furlough policy is going to be when we're working, we'll have crews working. If I've got 9 fleets working, we're going to have of order 800 people out there in the field working.
If we've got four fleets working, we're gonna have of order 350. I think that's gonna be a key thing. Trying to keep it flexible.
Yeah, that makes sense. Could I ask, when you combine the impact of the price degradation for yourselves, but also the input cost degradation, how much would that have affected gross profit margin absent these sort of overhead absorption effects?
Sure. There's far too many variables in there, Connor, for us to talk about, to comment on.
Okay. Fair enough. Worth a try. Last one from me. Could you quantify, and I apologize if I missed this, but just how significant the drop in G&A we should expect in the second quarter is from the actions you've taken there?
Yeah, fairly significant. We will be of order, there's some one-time costs in the first one, but of order 30%.
All right, perfect. Thanks, guys.
Thanks, Connor.
Our next question will come from Marc Bianchi with Cowen. Please go ahead.
Thanks.
Hi, Marc.
Hey guys. I recognize we don't know where things are going to go from here, but I was curious if you could just talk about April, and maybe, what the fleet count and profitability kind of looked like, and then maybe we can make our own assumptions about what happens in the next couple of months.
Yeah, Marc. Again, we won't give any details, but you can imagine things, I said go off a cliff, but it's not a completely vertical cliff. It's more like a 5.7 climb than a 5.10. There's some time period as it runs down that cliff. If we went into the start of April, we'd have much higher fleet count. Certainly the fleet count is going to be meaningfully higher in April than it's going to be in May and June.
Right. Okay. Reasonable to think that the profitability per fleet would also be following that trend.
Oh, yeah. You've got fixed cost absorption that obviously changes massively when you get down to very low fleets running.
Yep. Okay. In terms of the sort of geographic distribution of the fleets, you guys have been focused on the oily basins and been pushing towards Permian over the past couple of years. There is a bright spot right now, it seems like, in the gas basins, where you historically haven't had exposure. How do you think about the opportunity there or interest in repositioning some fleets as a result of some of those dynamics?
We've been approached by gas players for the last few years and maybe even more recently. We've watched those basins. Obviously, they're awesome, changed the world natural gas supply. The reason we didn't go into the gas basins to begin with was it's just simply easier to produce gas than oil. The U.S. was just so gas rich, and we still are, and the ramp up in productivities of wells was just simply awesome. It meant really a falling market for at least five years that's been shrinking frack market in the gas basins, still sizable, but shrinking. Yeah, have those markets maybe bottomed as demand for frack in them? There's a good chance they have. Yeah, the macro there is definitely more attractive to us now than it's been in the past. The caveat to that is we tend to move slowly.
We're about customers and relationships and partnerships. It's possible. It's not imminent. It's very possible that nothing happens, we don't move into a new basin for another year or two. Probably we eventually will. Our focus right now, for sure, top focus by far, is our existing customers. How do we grow our market share with them and help them not just survive but thrive on the other side of this downturn? We're getting a lot of inbound calls from customers that have providers that have sketchier futures. We are starting dialogues with different players. That's a plus. Yeah, that's about all I can say. I agree very much, Marc, with your comment that the relative performance of the gas basins through this downturn is definitely going to be better. Yeah, those basins don't look the way they did years ago.
Okay, great. Thanks, Chris. That's helpful perspective. I'll turn it back.
Thanks. Thanks, Marc.
Our next question comes from George O'Leary with Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. Please go ahead.
Just going to try to get at something I think some others were trying to get at earlier, but from a higher level perspective. It sounded like the lion's share of the free cash flow for this year is going to come from kind of a working capital unwind as revenue is expected to decline. Then I thought I heard a comment earlier in the prepared remarks that was along the lines of trying to run the rest of the business at or above cash flow breakeven. One, did I hear that correctly, and should I think of that cash flow breakeven at which you're trying to keep the business at or above as an Adjusted EBITDA less maintenance CapEx level, or how should we think about that?
Yeah. George, that's exactly right. The target obviously is to make sure that you're earning enough off your fleets, you're absorbing your G&A. Are you covering your maintenance capital? There is no guarantee that is going to be possible this year. Again, we don't know where the market is going for the next few months. How quickly the rebound is going to happen. When do the restrictions get lifted and when does oil demand get back? Obviously, that's the way you want to, in these sorts of days and ages, that's the way you want to manage your business for this, what I would consider almost like a standstill where you're building the foundations for what you're going to take advantage of into 2021 into the rebound.
Got it. That's super helpful. Then sticking with the geographic line of questioning from the last few questioners. How do you think your geographic distribution of fleets will look versus what it's historically more or less looked like, over the next six, 12 months? Then to the point on fixed district overhead, is there any opportunity to reduce that, whether it's via eliminating consolidating facilities, lowering your lease rates or real estate fees? Is there a way you can reduce costs structurally on that front?
George, I'll let Michael take the cost side of that. On the geographic basin, yeah, there's no doubt the geographic distribution of us was changing already, right? We weren't shrinking in the Rockies, but we were growing in the Permian. In Q1, Permian is the biggest basin we have. Certainly, it will become not just our biggest basin, but by far our biggest basin through this downturn. Yeah, just more assets in Texas. A larger % of our activity will be in Texas than the Rockies, this year and next year than before. I could've said that in 2019 and 2018 as well. An accelerated geographic transformation is happening. Not leaving any of the Rockies basins. They are huge and important long-term partnerships. We're here for the count. We got great relationships there and fantastic operations.
A greater % of activity is going to be in Texas, and so are we.
George, when I talk about the cost side of it, obviously we don't have huge numbers of legacy inactive basins that a lot of the historical players have. Again, we've been very focused, the areas that we have set up shop in and we work in, we can continue to work in. That said, we are working on bringing down our fixed costs for the balance of the year. Pretty soon, working with basically real estate providers and a number of other fixed cost providers, whether it's insurance and other providers, to try and bring down those fixed G&A costs. We have no sort of clarity onto that. Again, these are costs that are generally not as flexible, but the part of it being a worldwide pandemic and a worldwide economic collapse, it is actually much easier to have those conversations with those providers.
I think they look at this present point in time like they could be fruitful, but we have no details.
Thanks very much, guys.
Thanks, George.
Our next question will come from Frank Reppenhagen with Concentric. Please go ahead.
Hi, Frank.
Chris, Michael, Ron, just a quick thank you to you and the entire leadership team for really walking the walk. We all know that furlough is the last resort, and just respect you guys for cutting your own comp and really leading on culture. Thank you. Chris, if you wouldn't mind commenting, there's obviously been a rapid push for ESG and conversion to renewable energy over the last couple of years. How do you see this pandemic impacting the pace of that or fundamentally changing any of those variables?
Frank, I'm not sure that it fundamentally changes anything. Certainly, in the short term. When unemployment's low and things are good, focuses tend to grow on issues not as immediate. Certainly right now, what are people worried about most? A job. Their income is shrinking, low-cost energy, reliability. Maybe there's a little bit of slowing of that. There's a shrinkage in total capital to be invested. I don't know that it fundamentally changes the outlook there. As I said, the past trends are just different. I made that point. Oil and gas as a % of total energy supply to the U.S. was a higher % last year ever, not than the last five years or 10, ever. The energy transitions are very slow. In fact, another way to look at it, the world's never had an energy transition.
The amount of energy we get from just biomass, it has not gone down. The world consumption, trees and sticks and wood that powered the world, that has not shrunk actually. We added another layer on top of it. All the additional energy sources to date have always been additive with actually no displacement at all. That is changing a little bit right now. Coal looks like its total usage right now has sort of plateaued. It may actually shrink a bit. It looks like it will shrink. We'll see a little bit of displacement from it's still the dominant source of worldwide electricity, coal, dominant. Gas is taking market share in the largest % of any other source there. Wind is also taking electricity market share. Again, those, when I say coal dominant for electricity is 19% of world energy.
81% of the energy humans consume has nothing to do with the electricity grid or electricity. In any case, I think it changes people's focus in the short run, but is it a long-term trend changer? I would guess not.
Thank you. I'll turn it back.
Thanks, Frank.
Thanks.
Our last question will come from Tom Curran with the Riley FBR. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys. Thanks for squeezing me in so late.
Hey, Tom.
I'm curious, when we get to the other side of this chasm and oil consumption and customer behavior and spending starts to normalize, what is the one technology, if possible, that you would have wanted to either add or that you already have but would ideally have significantly augmented?
Look, I would say there's two sides of that. One, you've heard us talk about it, and these efforts progress, is how to fundamentally change wear and tear on pumps. That's something we've worked on for years. That work is moving forward. Yeah, by the other side of this, might we have a fundamentally different way, or at least fundamentally change the cost structure of maintaining and operating pumps? That's very possible. That's the single biggest operating cost. Yes. Might we have a fundamental change in that by the other side? I think there's a very reasonable chance of that. The other, there's lots, but the other has been the massive stuff we've done in big data and analysis. As the industry has thinned out and leaned up, a lot of the technology in research and effort on frack has disappeared.
People love to say, "Hey, we're a manufacturing company now." There's a lot of manufacturing-like things about what we do in the oil and gas business, but the rocks underground were not built in a factory. There's enormous heterogeneity and variability in the rocks, the fluids, the stresses, the faults, the cracks. These are very complex systems that are two miles through the Earth. The smart engineering, big data analysis optimization is huge. I think Liberty's made big strides in that in the last nine years, and I think we'll make huge strides in the next nine years. Again, it's fundamentally a harder problem than big data for Amazon customer behaviors. They get a certain number of SKUs and a certain number of transactions. We don't know everything about the rock.
The rock changes as you take fluids out of it, and you put sand into it. It's a very complicated problem that requires empirical data, and empirical data that has to be normalized through these heterogeneities. Any case, that's a big problem, but I do think you will see, a few years from now on the other side of this, meaningful advancements there as well. Those are probably the two I would highlight.
Just as a quick follow-up there, Ron, if you have thoughts of your own on it, I'd be interested in hearing them. When it comes to M&A, would you be open to a bolt-on mainly or purely driven by technology? If we were to see that, would it most likely be in that second category, Chris, big data, maybe industrial Internet of Things related?
Yeah. Ron, I'll take that one.
Yeah, absolutely. I think both of those areas would be of interest to us. I think we've always said that where opportunity arises that fits with the ability to make our core business better, which is frack, without detracting too much attention from being focused on frack, we would be interested in that. Whether that was a technology provider that did something to improve the asset we put out in the field or the ability of those assets to operate at a lower cost base, we would be interested in that. Absolutely on the data side of things. We continue to find ways to innovate there, and if we could find a unique partner that was a great fit for Liberty, we would absolutely consider that.
That's good to hear. Good luck. Thanks for taking my questions.
Yeah, great question, Tom. That sounds like you've been in a few of our internal meetings. Take care.
This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Chris Wright for any closing remarks.
Great. Thank you. We went long today. Obviously, these are very different times. We appreciate everyone's interest in the dialogue and that. We wish everyone's family to be safe and get through this and get our lives back moving forward again. Thank you all for your time today.
The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.