Good morning, and welcome to the Liberty Energy fourth quarter 2022 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.
To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Anjali Voria, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Gary. Good morning, and welcome to the Liberty Energy fourth quarter and full year 2022 earnings conference call. Joining us on the call are Chris Wright, Chief Executive Officer, Ron Gusek, President, and Michael Stock, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind all participants that 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 our 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, adjusted pre-tax return on capital employed, and cash return on capital invested, 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 adjusted pre-tax return on capital employed and cash return on capital invested, as discussed on this call, are presented in the company's earnings release, which is available on the investor section of its website. I will turn the call over to Chris.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our fourth quarter and full year 2022 operational and financial results. Liberty achieved outstanding returns in 2022, with the highest earnings per share in company history. Full year adjusted pre-tax return on capital employed, ROCE, and cash return on capital invested, CROCI, were each at 31% and both accelerated as the year progressed.
These results demonstrate the enhanced earnings power of our diversified platform and technology portfolio, as well as our profitability potential over the longer duration cycle ahead. 2022 revenue grew to $4.1 billion, a 68% increase over the prior year. Net income was $400 million or $2.11 fully diluted earnings per share. Adjusted EBITDA increased to $860 million.
Fourth quarter revenue of $1.2 billion increased 3% sequentially. Adjusted EBITDA grew 7% sequentially to $295 million as continued momentum from strong execution in the third quarter and strengthening pricing more than offset weather and holiday seasonality. Michael will review our financial results in greater depth.
Suffice it to say we are pleased with the tremendous improvement we saw in each successive quarter throughout 2022. Our strong conviction in the outlook and growing free cash flow led us to launch and expand a sector-leading return of capital strategy in 2022. We paid our first quarterly cash dividend since the pandemic during the fourth quarter. Earlier this week we upsized our July 2022 share repurchase program from $250 million to $500 million.
In the second half of 2022, we returned a combined $134 million in share repurchases and dividend payments to shareholders. We retired 4.4% of our outstanding shares since last July. We now have $375 million remaining in our authorization.
We are focused on the opportunistic execution of our buyback strategy and the speed at which we execute on our buyback authorization will be driven by the relative dislocation in our stock price relative to what we believe the intrinsic value of the stock to be. Our 2022 financial performance illustrated the value created from our actions over the pandemic years, including transformative transactions, technology innovation, and investment in the extraordinary talent at Liberty for future success.
Together, the Liberty team achieved new records, whether measured by revenue, pump hours per fleet, frack stages, or tons of sand pumped, all of which were delivered while navigating tight supply and labor markets. We always strive to raise the bar of elite service quality and performance in the industry.
Today, dependability and efficiency are critical to our customers who contend with meeting development plans in a tight frack market and volatile commodity price environment. The frack market is currently tight in all shale basins. In any given year, the near term fundamental picture can ebb and flow, and today, natural gas markets are in focus.
An increase in natural gas storage levels from a rise in domestic production, moderate winter weather so far, and lower LNG export growth are weighing on gas prices. To date, there has not been any significant reduction in activity in the natural gas regions despite a significant drop in gas prices. We do expect to see some industry pullback in response to gas prices, and if necessary, Liberty would move any spare capacity to oiler, oilier areas where demand for our services significantly outstrips our current supply.
This issue is not a significant concern for Liberty. While markets are preparing for the most widely anticipated recession in nearly 50 years, tumult in global oil supply, coupled with today's rather low spare global production capacity, imply a strong need for North American barrels in the coming years.
Today's low spare production capacity is the inevitable result from years of under-investment in upstream oil and gas production. The gradual reopening of China and rising global travel are expected to drive incremental demand for oil, even if balanced against slowing economic activity. Oil supply, on the other hand, growth remains very challenged. As the release of U.S. strategic petroleum reserves subsides, the impact of the Russian oil products export embargo hits next month, and reduced investment across the Russian industry gradually impacts production.
The fundamental outlook for North American hydrocarbons is the healthiest Liberty has seen in our 12-year history. Against this strong backdrop, we expect many possible bumps in the road, like softening natural gas activity and elevated recession risk. The multi-year outlook for North American activity is robust. Currently, our customers and competitors are investing with discipline, keeping capacity flat to only very modest growth.
For years, E&P operators, oil and gas alike, have invested in expanding well inventory, understanding the geology and resource quality, optimizing drilling and completion designs, and assembling their teams to execute on development plans. Their hard work is now paying off with high rates of return, particularly in oil, even as break-even prices have increased from extreme pandemic lows. The majors are redirecting capital spending to the attractive risk-reward opportunities in North America.
Independents continue their robust shale programs at a minimum to offset natural production declines. As North American oil and gas production reaches new heights, there is a rising level of frac activity simply required to keep our customers' production flat. Two factors summarize today's frac market: full utilization of existing frac capacity and strong demand for gas-powered fleets that significantly reduce fuel costs. Natural gas is much cheaper than diesel while driving down frac fleet emissions.
This transition to natural gas-powered fleets is happening at a measured pace, roughly aligned with the attrition of the industry's older generation diesel frac capacity. There is also a wide variety of performance specs, quality of these next generation fleets, and we are investing to be the technical leader.
When the shale revolution expanded to include oil basins as well as gas basins, roughly 12 years ago, there was a building frenzy of new frac fleets. The overhang of these excess fleets took many years to overcome. Today, that overhang is gone and all the large players in frac are investing with discipline. Today, frac fleet demand sufficient to keep production roughly flat or drive only very modest growth requires all existing frac capacity.
Tighter labor markets and supply chains challenges are making it hard for the smaller players and lower quality players to keep their existing fleets running and deliver an acceptable quality of service. Aging frac pumps and limitations to maintenance supply chains promote the attrition of older equipment across the completion market.
Equipment attrited in recent years has largely been scrapped or sold for industrial applications in international markets. We see these trends continuing for the foreseeable future as gas-powered technologies take hold. Hence, we view the risk of surging frac fleet capacity supply crashing service prices as relatively low. Of course, we closely monitor frac market conditions and would adjust our behavior if clouds appear on the horizon.
Today's tight frac market creates a sense of urgency among E&P operators to align with top-tier partners for both differential long-term technology and the outstanding service quality required to deliver on their production goals. Over the past few years, Liberty's team has rapidly innovated to develop the most technically advantaged frac fleet with DigiFrac, and 2022 marks the first commercial deployment of these game-changing pumps.
DigiFrac sets the bar for combining the lowest emissions fleets in the market with superior design, pump performance, reliability, and cost efficiency. We are currently undergoing a phased deployment of our first fleet as the modularity of both our pumps and high thermal efficiency power production allows us to commission the fleet on a pump-by-pump basis while maintaining continuity of operations for our customers.
digiFrac pumps are fully compatible with our existing conventional and dual-fuel pumps, as they all share our proprietary control software, allowing optimization of pump operations across the fleet. Gas-powered pumps are a focus of our innovation efforts as we look to develop technologies that are beyond the scope of what the industry offers today. Next week, we plan to unveil the world's first natural gas hybrid frac pump, part of our digi platform at the SPE Frac Conference in Houston.
This technology will have an even lower emissions profile than any electric frac fleet technology available today. Together with our existing fleet, our suite of pump and power technologies will enable fit-for-purpose customizable solutions. With the breadth of equipment, we will be able to pair digiFrac with dual-fuel technologies to optimize gas consumption under a variety of circumstances.
Customers will also be able to leverage a combination of available grid power and Liberty's generators to power a fleet and consume any type of gas, including field gas, CNG, or LNG. This suite of new technology developments will allow customers to have an optimized solution to match their needs.
All will include a fully electric backside, proprietary Quiet Fleet technology, and the lowest possible emissions footprint. We see a multi-year cycle favoring service companies that offer differential technologies, fortifying strong customer engagement and competitive advantages. We enter 2023 with strong competitive advantages that will enable further profitability expansion, including efficiency gain.
Pardon me. This is the conference operator. We appear to have trouble with the speaker's signal. We're gonna put you on hold and get back to the reconnect to the speaker as soon as possible. Thank you. Please stay on the line. Pardon me. This is the conference operator. We've rejoined the speaker location. Sir, please go ahead.
Apologize for the interruption and technical difficulties there. I'm gonna pick back up where I was. Our free cash flow potential and strong balance sheet allows us to not only prioritize accretive share repurchases, but also to invest in our future. The goal is simple: maximize the value of a Liberty share.
In 2023, we are targeting approximately 40%-50% growth in adjusted EBITDA, with no meaningful change to our fleet count from today's levels. As we laid out in our Investor Day in mid-2021, we viewed 2022 and 2023 as years of counter-cyclical investment at the start of a longer, strong earnings cycle ahead.
Our 2023 outlook includes potential capital expenditures of approximately 50% of EBITDA, a similar percentage of capital expenditures as 2022. We would also expect for that to reduce to the neighborhood of 30% of EBITDA in 2024. Our 2023 discretionary CapEx is driven by strong customer demand for next-generation low emission frac technology in the coming five years.
Our confidence in our long-term strategy and the strength of our operating model has never been higher, we expect our investments today will lead to strong returns over the coming years. Our 11-year annual average cash return on capital invested, CROCI, of 23% since our company founding was achieved during a relatively tough period for our industry, and before we had developed a suite of differential technologies and services that we are now rolling out.
Today, Liberty is creating opportunity through ingenuity and innovation, not just in frac fleet technologies, but also in wet sand handling, logistics software and systems to optimize supply chains, predictive software generating operational efficiencies, and so much more.
We enter 2023 with significant competitive advantages that enable strong relationships with the best producers and that drive demand for Liberty Services far beyond our capacity to supply. These factors are likely to deliver rising free cash flow and strong returns to our shareholders in the years ahead. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Michael Stock, our CFO, to discuss our financial results.
Good morning, everybody. Liberty ended the year with very strong execution. In the fourth quarter, adjusted EBITDA increased by 7% sequentially in a seasonally weaker quarter, and we reduced net debt by $55 million, while we invested $116 million in capital expenditures and returned $64 million to shareholders. Our terrific fourth quarter results rounded out a great year for Liberty.
Our team delivered 68% revenue growth, approximately $400 million in free cash flow generation, defined as adjusted EBITDA less capital expenditures, and nearly 50% free cash flow to adjusted EBITDA conversion ratio. We're pleased with our results in which we have now seen revenue growth in each of the last 10 quarters and profitability expansion through each quarter in 2022. At Liberty, our results would not have been possible without the hard work, dedication of our nearly 5,000 employees.
Supply chain and logistics challenges offer opportunities for some companies while showcase the vulnerability at others. The Liberty team came together to deliver industry-leading operational efficiency our customers have come to rely on. We have a unique combination of leading business and financial strength that reinforces sustainable long-term advantages.
Our 2022 adjusted pre-tax return on capital employed and cash return on cash, capital invested at 31% was the highest in three years, and we are on a path to surpass that in 2023. Our balance sheet strength allows us to focus on our priorities of investing and expanding our competitive advantages while returning a significant amount of capital to shareholders. Critically, we do not need fleet growth to significantly expand our margins.
We have the tools, the technology, and the people in place to expand our share of completion spend with our customers through a variety of technology investments we are making today. For the full year, revenue increased 68% to $4.1 billion from $2.5 billion in 2021. Net income totaled $400 million or $2.11 per fully diluted share.
Adjusted EBITDA was $860 million, highest in the company history, seven times 2021 results. Our full year results began to show the full potential of the earnings power of our platform that our team has carefully built over the years. In the fourth quarter of 2022, revenue increased 3% sequentially to $1.2 billion. We saw healthy customer demand and our execution excelled through winter weather challenges and disruptive supply chains.
A full quarter of contribution of third quarter fleet deployments aided our results. Fourth quarter net income after tax of $153 million increased from $147 million in the third quarter. Fully diluted net income per share was $0.82 compared to $0.78 in the third quarter. General and administrative expenses totaled $49 million in the fourth quarter, including a non-cash stock-based compensation of $5 million.
G&A declined $1 million sequentially, primary on variable compensation recorded in the quarter. Net interest expense and associated fees totaled $7 million in the quarter. Fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA increased 7% sequentially to $295 million from $277 million achieved in the prior quarter, despite the usual holiday and weather challenges for Q4.
Results included non-cash charges for the remeasurement of the Tax Receivable Agreement of $76 million for the full year of 2022 and $43 million in the fourth quarter. These non-cash charges are all in the noise related to the reversal of the valuation allowances recorded on our deferred tax assets in 2021.
In 2023, we no longer expect the TRA to affect our income statement. We expect 2023 effective tax rate to be approximately 23% and our combined cash taxes and TRA payments to be approximately 10% for the year. We ended the year with a cash balance of $44 million and net debt of $175 million.
Net debt decreased by $55 million from the end of the third quarter, even with the execution of $55 million of share buybacks and $9 million towards our recently reinstated quarterly cash dividend. Total liquidity at the end of the year, including availability under the credit facility, was $351 million. Earlier this week, we amended our ABL facility to provide a $100 million increase in our borrowing capacity to $525 million.
In conjunction with our ABL expansion, we retired a $105 million term loan, reducing our effective interest rate. Net capital expenditures were $116 million on a GAAP basis in the fourth quarter, which included costs related to digiFrac fleet construction, capitalized maintenance spending, and other projects.
In 2022, we demonstrated that capital investment and high rate of return opportunities and shareholder returns can both be achieved. We proactively installed a share repurchase program in July of 2022 to take advantage of the dislocated share prices. We seized the opportunity to do so with $125 million in shares repurchased in the second half of the year. We also reinstated our quarterly cash dividend in the fourth quarter, equating to another $9 million paid during 2022.
Our conviction in a strengthening outlook and our ability to grow free cash flow positioned us to double the size of our original share repurchase authorization to $500 million this week. In our 12-year history, we have always taken the approach of investing countercyclically in the early stages of the cycle, generating strong free cash flow, harvesting cash in the late stages.
Our cash return on capital invested has been over two times our cost of capital during our 12-year history. Looking forward, we are targeting approximately 40%-50% growth in adjusted EBITDA year-over-year in 2023, with no meaningful change in our fleet count from today's levels. In 2023, our investments are aimed at fully capturing a uniquely Liberty opportunity for differential returns. We have the premier design, the latest pump technology in the market.
We are investing in the development of these pumps. We plan to own the value chain with our own power generation, as a frac pump cannot function without this power. As we've proved with sand and logistics, controlling the full cycle of service provision maximizes long-term returns. This is a distinctly different approach compared to some frac providers who lease technology and contract power generation from other providers.
We are targeting capital expenditures of approximately 50% of EBITDA in 2023, similar to 2022, comprised of maintenance spending and discretionary growth CapEx in fleet technologies, power generation, ESG-friendly wet sand handling, and other high return opportunities. Included in this number is some potential accelerated early cycle investment spending that lays the foundation for earnings growth in 2024 and beyond.
As such, we anticipate capital expenditures as a percent of EBITDA will decline to in the neighborhood of 30% in 2024, following this infrastructure development. As we look forward, we are well-positioned to maximize free cash flow generation to support our capital allocation priorities of disciplined investment to expand earnings per share, balance sheet strength, and the return of capital to our shareholders. With that, I'll turn it back over to Chris.
I closed our last conference call speaking about Russia's attack on Ukraine's energy system as their calculated way to inflict maximum human misery. Regrettably, those attacks continue. Unfortunately, the politically driven attacks on our own energy system remain ongoing as well. During the holiday cold snap, New England generated over 20% of its electricity burning oil.
Why? Because by far, its largest source of electricity, natural gas plants, were unable to secure enough natural gas at peak demand times. New England and an increasing number of states, like California and New York, continue to impose both higher energy costs and lower electrical grid reliability on their citizens simply because the political and energy regulatory arenas no longer engage in honest, sober dialogue about energy, the environment, climate, and human wellbeing. The electricity grid is the most important network in the world.
We demonstrated earlier the problems that can arise when a less important network, our telephone network, can struggle as well. These attacks on our energy system must stop, or we will drive down American standards of living and de-industrialize our country just like Europe. That path is not looking too rosy right now. Not everyone is inclined to read our 100-page Bettering Human Lives report that covers these issues, I made two brief videos last week to illustrate these points.
One is called Zero Poverty 2050, and the other is called Let's Be Honest. The latter video garnered over 100,000 impressions on LinkedIn, but it was removed, censored by LinkedIn 3 times in 48 hours. A video that simply lays out big picture facts about our energy system and climate change is banned by a business network platform.
Either the LinkedIn censors are ignorant in this area, or they are politically or socially motivated to protect the alarmist climate narrative that increasingly permeates our society. Likely some combination of the two. I find this alarming that a Microsoft-owned business is actively working to protect a false and destructive meme about energy and climate.
The video is up now. Apparently, Torquemada approved it the fourth time. I'll conclude by saying that complacency is surely not a viable strategy going forward if we are to eventually reverse the damaging plague of energy ignorance in our country. Rent seeking interest groups will only grow in power as long as subsidies are counted in the tens and hundreds of billions of dollars. I will now turn it over to the operator for questions.
We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Our first question is from Derek Podhaizer with Barclays. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, guys. Just wanted to expand on the gas market comments. What would relocating capacity look like? Would you expect to displace customer fleets in oilier basins, or would these be incremental fleets to the market? Just wanna know what this could mean for pricing. Is there any threat to the downside, or is there ability to price up as you move fleets over?
Derek, first of all, I'd say we view this as pretty unlikely. I think we'll see some modest contraction in industry activity. It doesn't likely impact Liberty's fleets in gas. You know, less than 20% of our capacity is working in gassy areas. In an extreme case, if it did displace a fleet, it would be quite easy for us to move that to another area.
That would more likely. We've got a lot of people constantly calling and trying to figure out what it would take to get a fleet. We would have no trouble placing that fleet. Yeah, ultimately, that would likely just slot into an existing program where a customer is using a lower quality player that they have no choice but to use.
I think that the gas market concerns I think are real, but I think they're overblown on their potential impact in the frack market. You know, total industry wide, this might be a few fleets. We have today probably 10 or 20 fleets demanded that are simply not there. That's not just Liberty, but just industry as a whole. There's activity not happening because people don't have a fleet. Yeah, it might be something, but not likely meaningful to the frack market.
Got it. Okay. No, that's helpful. Wanted to touch on your EBITDA guide for 2023, so the 40%-50% growth over 2022. I'm just curious, like, can you maybe unpack that a little bit? What's locked in today? What gives you the confidence to hit those numbers? Do you have pricing locked in for all 2023, or is it just capacity and pricing is more of a moving target? I'm just curious what would drive upside to that estimate. Maybe what would drive some downside to that estimate. Just if you could expand on that percentage forecast you put out.
I mean, that forecast comes from what we know today. We're never big on seeing wildly different things in a crystal ball. The market's strong today. That's sort of existing market conditions continuing on. We have relatively low risk of keeping our fleets busy. We have ongoing internal technology efforts that drive down our cost of operations. And we'll continue to push those forward. I think it's sort of an extrapolation of where we sit today. Michael, I don't know if you want to add anything to that.
Yeah. Derek, we have great visibility. You know, we have very low customer turnover, and we have, you know, kind of strong visibility into our customers' plans for the balance of the year. Barring any exogenous change in the world, you know, those plans will continue. We have, you know, we have a strong view. As Chris said, I think there's upside in self-help, cost reduction as we move more to sort of expand the shoulders of earnings of the business. You know, downside is, you know, sort of exactly the same was, you know, as you say, any exogenous events that, you know, that change the world markedly.
Got it. Great. Appreciate the color, guys. I'll turn it back.
Thanks.
The next question is from Stephen Gengaro with Stifel. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning, everybody. Two things for me. Just to start with, when we think about... I mean, obviously you gave some color on 2023. When we think about your positioning in the market and some of the things you've done on the vertical integration side, I mean, obviously you got frac sand from the SLB acquisition.
Are you seeing. How do you see. 'Cause we've been hearing about tightness in the frac sand market recently. Are you seeing that as sort of a competitive advantage? How is that kind of increasing or helping the efficiency at the well site? I'm talking of frac sand, but also the other things you've done. Any way to kind of give it a little more color on how those things kind of aid in your, in your execution at the well site?
You know, the primary benefit we have by owning sand capacity, and we've invested to expand it a little bit, the primary benefit of it is just surety of supply to our fleets. We saw the benefit of that in Q1 of last year, where there were troubles across the sand space. We were able to navigate those with less impact than others. Vertical integration for us, sure these are profitable businesses, but we do it predominantly to assure our core business of frack can run reliably and can keep that train on the tracks and run that train as fast and efficiently as possible.
Great. Thank you.
The markets are tight, I don't think it's slowing down fracking wells. We're not at a disruptive part in the sand market right now.
Great. Thank you. The other question, you've talked a little bit about this on prior calls and how you sort of approach the use of the buyback, but you're clearly you've doubled it and you've been utilizing it. How should we think about your, you know, your... The sort of the pace of buybacks over the next 12 months and, you know, your willingness to kind of exhaust this as we go forward here, depending on valuation, et cetera?
Yeah, as we said, it's just the pace at which we buy back the stock is proportional to the dislocation of the share value. Today, as we sit here, we're still in an extremely dislocated share price. We see it as an incredibly attractive investment opportunity right now to buy our stock back. You've seen us walk that walk the last five or six months, and with share prices in this neighborhood, I think you will continue to see aggressive buybacks.
Okay. Thank you, Chris.
Thank you.
The next question is from Scott Gruber with Citigroup. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning.
Morning, Scott.
Question here. You know, with this backdrop of an expanding gas diesel spread, I'm curious whether there's any mechanism, you know, within recent contracts for digiFrac or on dual-fuel fleets where you can capture, you know, some of the incremental fuel savings that your customers are benefiting from. Is there any, you know, direct way that you guys can benefit from the kit that's providing these savings?
Yeah, absolutely.
In a direct manner.
I mean, we're bringing the technology and the equipment that enables the realization of this arbitrage. Yeah, I think it's fair to assume that the majority of that arbitrage value will be captured by Liberty. Yes, you know, right now that arbitrage value is growing.
Is it, is it direct, Chris, though? Or is it just indirect through, you know, your ability to keep a healthy rate structure? Or is there a direct mechanism that links it somehow to the gas diesel spread?
We're pretty early on, you know, in rolling out these technologies. It's a smaller piece. Today I would say it's mostly indirect, but you'll probably see an evolution of that structure going forward.
Okay. Yeah, it'll be good to see. Michael, just real quick on the CapEx, just to make sure I got the numbers right. The 40%-50% EBITDA growth, it's about $1.25 billion, and we take about half of that, so around $600 million for CapEx for the year. Is the right way to think about it?
That's correct.
Reducing down as we go into 2024.
Yes. Got it. Okay. I appreciate the color. Thank you.
Thanks, Scott.
The next question is from Marc Bianchi with Cowen. Please go ahead.
Thank you. I'd like to follow up on that last point there about 2024. I know this could get a little tricky, right? 'Cause you probably don't wanna give a financial forecast for 2024. I'm just curious, at an absolute dollar level, do you see the CapEx going lower or going meaningfully lower, kind of regardless of what the EBITDA does? How should we think about the absolute amount of CapEx as we go from 2023 to 2024?
Our investment in CapEx, Marc, is never ever dislocated from the amount of money we earn or the EBITDA or the cash flow we earn. Right? You know, there is sometimes some time shift where we see the market strengthening, we invest early in the cycle.
When, you know, prices and EBITDA grow, EBITDA is at its highest, you know, we'll do low CapEx because obviously if we see sort of, you know, a cycle beginning to cap out, so there's some time shift there. It's always related to the amount of cash flow that we are earning, right? Just to sort of point that out, right?
No, in relative terms, you know, in the baseline business at the size and who it is at the moment, yes, on a normalized, on a per dollar basis, it would be lower in 2024 than. We just expect it to be lower in 2024 than it would be in 2023.
Do you think that level. If, you know, let's just hypothetically say EBITDA is exactly the same in 2024, do you think that level of CapEx is a sustaining level where you can continually pursue these digiFrac deployments and sort of handle attrition that occurs, you know, every year in the fleet at that level?
Yes.
Okay. Okay, super. The other one I had was on, just the digiFrac deployment. Maybe you could talk a little bit about expectations, for, you know, a timeline to have a full digiFrac fleet, because it seems like we've just got a few pumps sort of mingled in with conventional pumps in a fleet right now.
As we said in the transcript, we're continuing operations with that first customer for it at full speed right now, frack operations, which gives us the luxury to roll things in slowly and carefully, test everything, figure out how to optimize everything. It's a gradual roll in, I think you'll see around the end of the third quarter, maybe early in the second quarter, we should see 3 digiFrac fleets out there running in full.
End of the first quarter, he means. Not third quarter.
Sorry about that. End of the first quarter, beginning of the second quarter. I misspoke, not for the first time today.
Good, good clarification there. Thanks, Chris. I'll turn it back.
Thanks.
The next question is from Ati Modak with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, team. just to understand the thought process, in case we do see a strong drawdown in the number of active fleets and pricing does come under pressure, at what level would you say it is better to stack a fleet than accept lower pricing? What would you think, that the industry on the whole would be willing to do in terms of pricing concessions?
Adi, that's a great question. Hard to give much of an answer to that. You know, we don't see any signs of weakening right now. The market is strong. Of course, someday the market will weaken. Don't know when that is or how it'll fall. Our relationships are 1-on-1 with particular customers. You know, look, and you see a softer market.
There's also efficiencies, there's other ways to drive well costs down than lowering our net price if the market as a whole to supply, we get other materials and run operations. You know, as I mentioned our, in our intro, we've gone through sort of eight tough years in frack with a giant frack fleet overhang.
Even when activity bounced back strongly in 2017 and 2018, there was just dozens of surplus equipment parked all around. That was just a different dynamic then than we are today. We were a younger company, establishing relationships, proving ourselves very early on in developing and rolling out our new technologies. We're just simply in a much different place today, you know, I can't predict future swings up or down in pricing, but I don't think you'll see anything dramatic in the foreseeable future there.
Yeah, I'll just add on the, you know, from a general perspective, if you talk to other players. You know, as Chris said, the market has completely changed, right? There's not this excess sort of equipment that was available to be reactivated at any given time. You know, so any swing down would be a smaller percentage of the total fleet available. You've got a much more consolidated market across the board for frack and, you know, we're, as an industry, one hell of a lot more disciplined, right?
Yeah, I think you're gonna see a lot more disciplined effect, you know, with net pricing kind of not moving nowhere near in any way the shape that you've seen over the last, you know, five, seven, eight years in these small cycles with those that were well oversupplied, you know, comparative to what is gonna happen in the next five years. That's just my personal view.
Thank you. Appreciate that, the answer there. Then Michael, maybe can you talk about the free cash flow and working capital changes this quarter, and how should we think about that in 23?
I mean, we had a small build in working capital this year. You know, that was mostly driven by sort of year-end prepayments and inventory. Next year, obviously, working capital will be a slight build, as it follows revenue. I think you kind of really just you can model it with revenue.
I think that's a relatively, you know, reasonable number. I've given you the cash tax number for next year. It's sort of around 10% of pre-tax net income. Other than that, really, CapEx is the main sort of next main deduction. You know, it's got very low debts, obviously very low interest.
Michael, can you repeat some of that with the years? By next year, do you mean 2023 or 2024?
Next year, I mean 23. Sorry. Yeah, sorry. 23. For 2023, cash taxes are around 10% of pre-tax net income. Obviously, we see CapEx around about 50% of EBITDA. You know, interest is relatively de minimis because we've got, you know, it's relatively small amount of debt, and we're gonna have a slight build in working capital as revenue is going to increase from Q4 levels, you know, through the end of the year, that will be relatively small.
Thanks, guys. I'll turn it over.
Thanks, Bobby.
The next question is from Arun Jayaram with J.P. Morgan Chase. Please go ahead.
Hey, Chris. I had some questions on kind of the rollout of DigiFrac. You're taking kind of a modular approach, which makes sense. I was just wondering if you could comment on how, you know, performance has been in the field and what you're seeing in terms of that technology. Just perhaps to clarify, you'll be adding three fleets, did you say at the end of the 1Q? Your overall guide is for relatively flat fleet activity. Are you taking some diesel fleets out of the, you know, out of the working fleet?
Yes. Our plans for digiFrac rollout this year will dominantly be replacement fleets.
Okay.
Again, market conditions pending, that's the plan right now, dominantly replacement capacity. Basically an upgrade, which is an upgrade both in the performance of the fleet. It's an upgrade in reducing our cost of operating that fleet. Of course, it's an upgrade in that the pricing for it is better. We bring something better for our customers, with a lower all-in cost to us. I'll turn it over to Ron to make any more technical comments about that.
Look, as far as performance, going well. You know, we always expect when we put new technology in the field, we got a bit of a learning curve with that. Things are going well. We're actually in between pads right now with the operator. We had wrapped up pumping consistently on the last 45 or 50 stages on that with all the pumps that were on location at that point in time. We'll rig in with a slightly bigger fleet on the next pad and excited about getting the rest of that fleet out likely by the middle of February. Then we'll have the other ones follow on quickly after that.
Great. Thanks a lot, Ron. Another question for Chris is, you know, given the retrenchment in natural gas prices, including Waha, do you expect this perhaps to accelerate the attrition of diesel fleets, just given the cost competitive benefits of running dual-fuel plus the emissions benefits?
Yeah, that very low Waha prices and outlook, they may stay there for a year or two. Certainly, that grows the arbitrage between the two. You know, the arbitrage was large already. It's a lot of capital and investment to bring out a new fleet and swap them over. You know, it makes it incrementally more positive, but I don't think it's a big enough move to speed investment contracting decisions any meaningful amount.
Great. Thank you.
Yeah, thanks. Good question, Arun.
The next question is from Waqar Syed with ATB Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Thank you. A great quarter. My question is with respect to Canada versus U.S. margins, how do you know, in Q4, what were the margins like between Canada and U.S.? Were they far or one was higher than the other?
Generally, as you know, we don't discuss different basins, really. Most all of our basins, you know, and, you know, I love Canada as a country. It's, you know, my favorite sport in the world, hockey. It's, you know, it's the same size as some of our US basins. In reality, I'd say, you know, the only real difference between the two markets is the Canadian market is probably not quite as tight yet as the US market on frac supply.
That's the only real change, you know, the only difference between the two different markets, right? Other than that, other than that, everything else sort of remains. You know, it's fairly similar across the North American onshore unconvention.
Okay. Have you added any new capacity into the Canadian market? How many, maybe three or four fleets do you have in Canada?
Okay, Waqar, yeah, we don't wanna give the details on that, you know, certainly there's optimism in Canada with new pipelines, at least on the horizon of coming in of activity levels there. We're always in dialogue with customers. We never do it on a, we're gonna add to this basin or take away from that basin. It's always just a customer specific, you know, decision we make.
Okay.
Thanks, Waqar.
Another question, if I may? What was the impact of weather on the quarter? Could you maybe quantify that a little bit in terms of revenues or number of jobs or anything?
Yeah, pretty normal. You know, you know, I think you guys have all heard me say that, you know, kind of like Q4 and Q1 are generally, you know, somewhere between 4%-8% depending on the year lower than, you know, the summer quarters. Q4 was a pretty normal year as far as that in the mid-range there. You know, we're expecting Q1 to be about the same. You know, probably, you know, activity wise, the two winter quarters will be relatively flat with a bit of a pickup in summer.
Okay. Thank you, sir.
Thanks.
Thank you very much.
The next question is from Keith MacKay with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. Maybe if we could just start out on pricing. It looks like the guide, you know, implies EBITDA per quarter, roughly what you saw in Q4. If fleet count remains flat, sort of implies that you're not building in much more pricing. Maybe if you could just talk a little bit about how you're seeing the pricing environment unfold, both on the leading edge and in moving your average fleets up to that level, that'd be helpful.
I mean, as we said, pricing is strong right now. The market is good. Yeah, there's still some, you know, most all of our pricing's already adjusted. There's a little more adjustments we're getting in Q4 from, you know, older, I mean, in Q1. My gosh, I gotta get my calendar straight.
Again, there's still a little bit of positive action happening there. You know, market is strong, markets are tight, we're just not making much of a guess on where things go from here. You know, it looks like things will stay strong. You know, are there forces that can push them up further? Sure.
Perfect. Thanks for that. Not to try to steal too much of your thunder from the event next week, can you maybe just give us a little bit more comment on the, on the hybrid frac pump? What, you know, will it be involved in these next digiFrac fleets that you're putting out, or what's the timing on that and what's really the, I guess, the business case for the hybrid pumps now?
Keith, this is Ron. Yeah, I'd give you a little bit of color on that. Really the third leg in the stool on our, in our, in our digiFrac platform, and probably the quickest and easiest analogy I could give you would be something like the power grid. Chris talked a little bit about that earlier today. Think of this new pump as baseload power for us, sort of like a nuclear power plant on the grid.
This is basically a little brother to the same power plant we're using on the generator. A 100% natural gas engine, extremely efficient, 44.5% thermally efficient, very, very good at the use of gas. Chose this engine for the same reason we chose that engine for generating power.
Much, much better than a turbine on location, either in a direct drive application or in a power generation application. In this case, we're connecting it to a transmission and a pump, but we're also taking some of that power to run a smaller generator on location. We're using the primary power to drive the pump and provide horsepower.
We're using a small amount of that power to generate power, electricity enabling a fully electric backside. The unique thing about this engine is it's a single speed engine, so it doesn't have throttle control to it. It's made to run at one speed and one speed only. It's not made to deal with transients, which is how it pairs so nicely with our digiFrac electric pump.
Together, the combination of those things works just like a nuclear power plant with a gas peaker plant on top of that. We have this combination that delivers flat baseload capacity, strong and steady, incredibly efficient. Then on top of that to deal with the regular transient load we have in the frac space, we've got digiFrac.
You'll see those two going out into the field in partnership with one another. The exact ratio of those two pumps is really gonna be a function of what the customer situation is like, what the frac needs are like, what our access to maybe some grid power looks like. All of those things will play into the exact ratio of how we deploy those.
Perfect. Good deal. Thanks very much.
The next question is from Tom Curran with Seaport Research Partners. Please go ahead.
Good morning.
Good morning, Tom.
I was hoping you could assist us with just some market capacity framing. What % of the industry's active fleet is diesel models regardless of the tier? When it comes to that pure diesel horsepower, what are your expectations for upgrades to DGB vis-a-vis new build re-replacement? In other words, to the extent we see a portion of that industry diesel horsepower convert over the course of 2023, what would you expect the mix to be between new build replacement versus upgrade and maybe an idea of just how much you are expecting?
Look, there's still a large amount of diesel capacity out there. It's still the dominant-
Mm-hmm.
Source of powering frac fleets today. There's older Tier 2 fleets that people are putting, you know, sort of these aftermarket kits to make them natural gas burning. That's not a huge cost, although there's supply chain struggles there. You know, there's a good amount of that going on.
The longer term thing I think as you were hitting at, is going to be what happens to those Tier 2 diesel engines, basically, which are all, you know, five, six years old, and the average age of them is probably a decade old. Those are falling out. As you said, you can either take that same pump and buy a new Tier 4 more likely Tier 4 DGB dual-fuel engine and put that on the deck, or you can build, you know, a brand new natural gas powered fleet technology.
Most of what's gonna happen, I suspect in the industry, for those that are investing for the next thing, is gonna be taking those Tier 2 engines and making them Tier 4 engines. The bigger players have electric options. You know, for us, we're trying to develop, and I believe we have developed technologies that for us will be both cheaper and better. That's why we spent years doing it.
You know, the history of electric frac fleets has actually been more expensive and worse. Now, there's more fleets that are maybe a little better, but they're more expensive. We're trying to solve for both of those, cheaper and better with our next generation technologies. A lot of investment in getting here, but we like where we sit.
Understood. Let me give Ron some more airtime. Two part question for you, Ron. First, for the 3 digiFrac spread you expect to have deployed by 2Q, which we expect those to be powered by? Will they be on the Rolls-Royce MTU gas gen sets? Then, you know, maybe I'll push for a bit more of a sneak preview on your upcoming event. Under Operation 1440, could you give us updates on two technology initiatives, preemptive maintenance and then automation?
Yeah. To your first question, absolutely, you're 100% right. Those fleets are all going to be powered by the 20V 4000 Rolls-Royce natural gas recip engine. We've we like that power plant. It's the most efficient power plant in the space. It'll be paired with every one of the digiFrac pumps that we put out in the field for fleets one, two, and three. Then that same power plant, just a slightly smaller version, the 16 cylinder going on digiPrime. Then if you, as you think about the other piece of that puzzle, we made tremendous strides last year in both of those areas.
As you think about the preventative maintenance side of things, we launched a team in January last year with a strong focus on moving forward in that preventative maintenance side of the world. I would say we made huge strides, and we saw that in our cost of maintenance last year. Our ability to run our equipment at, well, at really flattened maintenance costs in the face of very, very strong inflationary pressures.
That's a credit to that team and the work they've done from a predictive maintenance standpoint. The amount of intelligence we have or insight we have on our equipment today, probably, orders of magnitude beyond where we had been in, you know, maybe three or four years ago. Huge strides there.
Artificial intelligence, of course, we're moving rapidly towards full deployment of our next generation fleet operating software. Really a piece of software that effectively enabled us to tell the fleet what rate we want to achieve and the maximum pressure that we can pump at. The software is making all the decisions about how to run those pumps optimized for gas substitution or whatever we might ask of it. Those decisions are all driven by a computer going forward.
Great. I appreciate all the detail. Thanks, guys.
The next question is from Saurabh Pant with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, guys. I want to just quickly go back on the 2023 guide, adjusted EBIT up 40%-50%. I think you said you're pretty much extrapolating current market conditions, but I think I heard you say pricing is stepping up a little bit in the first quarter, which is again expected, right?
Again, if you can quickly walk through 2023, how should we expect activity and even more so pricings moving from the first quarter to the fourth quarter? It sounds like you're assuming things pretty flat. I wanna make sure we understand the assumptions, especially on pricing through 2023 in that guide.
Right. Yeah. Yeah, pricing relatively, you know, in those numbers, pricing is relatively flat through 2023. Activity, obviously your winter quarters are in that 4-8% lower activity-wise than your summer quarters, which is the standard. You should all be modeling, you know, just for winter weather and holidays. Yeah, it's really not a huge amount of, you know, kind of fleet number changes. That's what's baked into those numbers.
Okay, like flattish fleet count and flattish pricing after first quarter, right? That's what you're baking in.
That's what it gives you. Yep.
Okay, perfect. Then a little bit of a clarification on CapEx. Obviously, the implied number is in that $600-$650 range. It's stepping down in 2024. That makes sense. Can you quickly walk through the different components in that 2023 CapEx number between maintenance, new digiFrac fleets, any upgrades that you're doing to the traditional fleets, and then anything on the vertical integration front, just so that we can look at the individual components and better understand what part is falling off in 2024?
Yeah, I mean, I'd say, you know, kind of, maintenance is in that realm of probably, you know, $170-$190. You know, the standard, right? The twenty three and a half-
Yeah.
-fleets plus $25 each million for the other ancillary business lines, et cetera. Really, we haven't given the breakdown on the other side of it, Saurabh. The majority of that obviously goes to margin expansion projects. You know, obviously the big dog on that one is the electric fleet, the Digi equipment that we're rolling out. As I sort of alluded to, you know, some of that with supply chain is in a little bit of an accelerated build for things that will come online early in 2024, you know, as margin expansion for 2024, where the CapEx will appear in 2023.
Okay. Okay, perfect. Just a quick clarification before I turn it over. Should we assume digiFrac build cadence to remain the same in 2024 as in 2023? Should we assume it can change depending on the market conditions?
It will change depending on market conditions, obviously. Yeah.
Okay.
Everything depends on market conditions, you know, whether it's the earnings that we're gonna end up with EBITDA, the amount we will spend on CapEx, you know, and the speed at which we roll out digiFrac.
Okay. Okay. Okay, perfect, Mike. Thanks for the answer. I'll turn it back.
The next question is from Dan Kutz with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hey, thanks. Good morning.
Morning, Dan.
I just wanted to ask any appetite for dividend increases or is the idea to use the buybacks as the flywheel for shareholder returns? What would you kind of contemplate a dividend increase, or what would you need to see to do that? You know, again, is the buyback the kind of the flywheel?
Buyback is definitely the flywheel. You know, we just look at the different investment opportunities we have today and some of these technologies we've talked about, the outlook for them is simply tremendous, and buybacks are just simply tremendous opportunity today. That's the big dog of where capital will go.
We are believers in dividend. We paid a dividend before the COVID downturn as well. You know, we're in a cyclical business. It's always gonna be cyclical. We wanna have a base dividend that barring a global pandemic, that stays and gradually grows with time. I do think you'll see growth in our dividend, but it's not a major swing based on, you know, market conditions are better or this and that. It's a steady as she goes. Well, you know, certainly the outlook we have today, it likely continues to grow.
Great. Thanks, Chris. Then, maybe just kind of a high level one. You know, some fundamentals for the industry definitely still appear very strong. I guess I just wanted to ask, what would you view as kind of the biggest near-term risks to your outlook? You mentioned that, you know, you think nat gas activity declines is a relatively minor risk.
Like, you know, would a deeper-than-anticipated recession be a demand concern or, you know, a faster supply side response? What kind of metrics would you suggest investors pay attention to, you know, and, you know, assuming they play out as expected, that that would mean that your outlook remains intact?
Yeah. We hear a lot about the faster supply side response. As we hit, we view that as a relatively low risk. It's hard to grow frac fleet capacity. It's gonna grow a little bit, but it isn't gonna grow a lot. The thing that can change the market faster, you know, as we've seen in the last downturns, is a collapse in commodity prices.
The risk, you know, the risk to our business is a collapse in oil prices. You know, think of the financial crisis, right? We had a very large scale, a very rapidly unfolding collapse with the financial crisis, and it took a tight oil market with oil prices over $100, and it crashed them to $30.
It actually made two or three not great quarters for the industry, things came right back because going into that recession, supply and demand was tight. Supply and demand is probably at least as tight, probably a little bit tighter today than it was then. I think a huge rapid economic contraction would certainly soften the industry, but even then, probably not for too long. It's really oil demand. Watch oil prices. If oil prices go to $40, activity is gonna drop.
Great. Thanks a lot, Chris and team. I'll turn it back.
Dan, thank you.
The next question is from Sean Mitchell with Daniel Energy Partners. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Thanks for working me in here. I know we're getting long in the morning, but just really quick, one of the questions earlier was around diesel versus electric frac. Maybe I'm gonna frame the question a little different. What's the optimal mix of digiFrac in the Liberty portfolio? I guess number one, and then number two , remind us what the average expected life of a digiFrac unit is versus a traditional unit.
I think the general working life of these diesel pumps is 10 years. You know, that's rebuild. There's a lot of maintenance goes on after that. Pumps that are more than 10 years old, the technology's obsolete. The cost to maintain them and run them is there. They're generally falling away.
You may see a 12-year-old pump out there. There's some, you know, there's some stuff barely hanging on. With digiFrac, we definitely expect meaningfully longer lives than for a diesel engine. It's just simply, you know, the engine life on our things, Ron, is maybe 2x?
Time between rebuilds, probably 3x, Sean. We're going from maybe somewhere in the 20,000-25,000 hour range to a time between overhauls of maybe 84,000 hours is the nameplate number for that Rolls-Royce engine.
The thing you should think about there, it's more a reduction in capitalized maintenance than a long-term extension of the life of the equipment. The life of the equipment might be longer, that's correct. Really what it does, it affects the annualized capital maintenance and brings it down.
That's the key thing. If you wanna deliver a better quality pump, a better quality fleet at lower long-term costs.
Got it. The optimal mix of digiFrac in the Liberty portfolio?
That's, you know, that's gonna evolve with time. I believe we're there or we'll certainly be there at having a solution that's ultimately cheaper and better. If you're gonna build, you're probably gonna build what's cheaper and better. Our build pace is gonna be, as Michael said, dictated by the marketplace, but it's gonna be slow and gradual. It's gotta make sense.
Got it.
You gotta have compelling economics. You've gotta have a willing to allocate X amount of capital there. Our fleet probably slowly migrates to all whatever's cheapest and best.
Thank you. Maybe one more. Just I think earlier in the call this was mentioned, but I don't know that we got clarification. Just sand facilities and any efforts to expand capacity there or of your existing facilities and/or your desire to build new ones in the current market.
Look, sand is a key ingredient for frac. That's our focus on sand. We've got to keep our fleets and our customers' wells on time, you know, and without interruptions to operations. Yes, we've invested a little bit in debottlenecking, increasing our throughput in there. We'll make investments to what it takes to as-secure that Liberty's operational performance and delivery to our customers is the best in the industry. That's what drives our decision-making there.
Okay. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.
Thanks. Appreciate that.
This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Chris Wright for any closing remarks.
Thanks everyone for your time today and interest in this business, Liberty and/or industry. As we demonstrated, networks matter. Sorry about the problem with the phone network. We'll prevent that from happening in the future. Everyone have a good day. We look forward to talking to you at the next call.
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