Welcome to Liberty Energy Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. If 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 that this event is being recorded. I'd like to turn the conference over to Anjali Voria, Strategic Finance and Investor Relation Lead. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Nick. Good morning and welcome to the Liberty Energy First Quarter 2023 Earnings 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 subjects 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, and adjusted 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 re-reconciliation of net income to EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA and the calculation of adjusted pre-tax return on capital employed, as discussed on this call, are presented in our earnings release, which is available on the investor section of our website. I will turn the call over to Chris.
Thanks, Anj. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our First Quarter 2023 Operational and Financial Results. Liberty delivered an outstanding first quarter with adjusted EBITDA of $330 million and fully diluted earnings per share of $0.90, navigating volatile oil prices resulting from financial sector stresses that sent ripples across the energy sector. This was our fourth consecutive quarter of record profitability, which is reflected in our trailing twelve-month adjusted pre-tax return on capital employed of 43%. Revenue for the quarter was $1.3 billion, a 59% increase over the prior year. We have the unique opportunity today to grow our earnings per share meaningfully via both growing our total profit and reducing our share count. Our 10% sequential growth in earnings per share this quarter was nearly one-third from reduced average quarterly share count.
Michael will discuss our financial results in more detail later. We are proud of the Liberty team for executing at impressive levels. Liberty has an 11-year track record of delivering significantly higher average returns than the overall market. Our competitive advantage has never been larger, and our industry is in a stronger position with significant consolidation and the leading players focused on returns and investing with discipline. Supplying the world with oil and gas is mission critical, and spare production capacity today is quite modest, implying a positive outlook in the coming years for our industry and company. We began 2023 generating strong free cash flow, putting us in a position to invest in the business and return cash to shareholders.
Since the reinstatement of our return of capital program in July of 2022, we've now returned $218 million to shareholders through cash dividends and the retirement of 7.1% of outstanding shares, while continuing to invest in long-term growth and expanding our competitive advantage. We now have $300 million remaining in our authorization, we are focused on the opportunistic execution of our buyback strategy. The speed at which we execute on our buyback authorization will be driven by the dislocation in our stock price relative to what we believe the intrinsic value of the stock to be. Three years on from the onset of the global pandemic and severe crash in energy markets, discipline is now widespread in the energy sector. North American frac activity predominantly just supports the maintenance of today's oil and gas production levels.
The days of breakneck oil and gas production growth are over. The large majority of current frack activity is required to simply maintain today's record high oil and gas production levels in the U.S. and Canada. Service sector margins are now at healthy levels, more in line with our E&P customers that have been experiencing strong margins for many quarters. In this longer, perhaps steadier cycle ahead, there will be episodic challenges like we are seeing today in natural gas markets, and of course, recessionary risks. Today, we have excess demand for Liberty services as our customers want to align themselves with the top performers. This is part of a broader industry flight to quality trend. We will lead the way in maintaining pricing and profitability as we invest in our digiTechnologies offering and retire older equipment.
We believe these actions will support strong long-term returns for both Liberty and our customers. The oil field is undergoing a transformational change in how frac fleets are powered from diesel to natural gas, and Liberty is at the forefront of this change. We were an early driver of this industry shift, deploying our first dual fuel fleet 10 years ago. Today, our suite of digiTechnologies, including mobile power generation, state-of-the-art digiFrac electric fleets, the industry's first hybrid pump, digiPrime, and our electric wireline solution, digiWire, bring together the best of our innovation with the highest thermal efficiency and lowest emission solutions in the market. This suite of new technology developments allows us to deliver a customized fit for purpose solution. We can integrate digiTechnologies with either full or partial grid power.
We can fuel digiFleets with any type of gas, including field gas, CNG or LNG with Liberty Power Innovations we'll provide for our customers. During the first quarter, we deployed our first digiFleet comprising digiFrac electric pumps with no disruption to completion operations. We are pleased to announce that the crew quickly reached a milestone achievement of 1,291 minutes of pumping time in a day, or over 90% of the available time with Plug and Perf operations. As part of the new Digi suite, our digiWire unit will be deployed alongside that fleet next month. We are excited by the strong positive reaction from our customers. Our second digiFrac deployment will be underway this quarter, again, deployed in a modular fashion that will maintain completion schedule efficiency during the rollout.
In February, we also unveiled our revolutionary hybrid pump, digiPrime, at the SPE Frac conference in Houston. digiPrime is an extremely efficient 100% natural gas engine that we will use as the primary source of horsepower on location. Base power if you will, complemented by one or two digiFrac electric pumps to manage transient load and precision rate control. This configuration minimizes gas consumption, emissions and fleet capital. digiPrime hybrid technology also generates and stores electricity to run a fully electric backside, powering sand handling, chemical additions, hydration units, the data fan and digiWire. As we undergo this technology transition to gas driven equipment, a priority for Liberty is to secure the supply chain that fuels these fleets.
Having control over the technology, power generation and fuel services ensure that we put the best technology in the field to drive even further improvement in our industry leading operational performance. We launched Liberty Power Innovations to expand our vertical integration alongside our sand, logistics, manufacturing and design capabilities. These business lines must check two boxes, strong returns on capital within their own realm and drive operational efficiency and performance in our core frac business. LPI's initial focus will be on CNG and field gas processing services that support the secular demand shift towards natural gas as the primary fuel of choice. We will provide uninterrupted delivery of fuel for frac fleets and other customer needs. Today, we are already fueling both drilling and completions in the Permian and Haynesville through both acquired operations and our own organic efforts.
To accelerate LPI's expansion, earlier this month, we announced the acquisition of Siren Energy, a Permian focused integrated natural gas compression and CNG delivery business. Siren brings its installed and expandable gas compression facilities at two Permian sites, together with transportation, logistics and well site pressure reduction services. Our early plans include a strategic expansion to power our digiFleets and dual fuel fleets and other growing needs from our customers for reliable CNG. We have equipment on order to increase our compression capacity in the Permian and expansion into other basins, grow our fleet of CNG trailers and expand our field gas processing and treating capabilities. Dependable access to fuel is critical to maintaining highly efficient frac operations that drive Liberty's industry leading performance and returns. The demands for energy and power generation for industries beyond the oil field are also on the rise.
We expect to find compelling high return opportunities to leverage our expertise in industry leading thermal efficiency mobile power generation technology together with our integrated fueling and logistics services. We will be highly selective in deploying capital only into compelling opportunities that may arise with micro or mini grids, data centers, utilities, emergency power, et cetera. Our logistics platform is also designed to deliver RNG and hydrogen as well as CNG. The synergies between these critical components position us to capture greater value with our assets. Today, our supply chain and logistics team continues to deliver outstanding cost-effective performance, enabling the efficiencies of our fleets to produce day in and day out. We think critically about what components of the supply chain are necessary to provide a base load of support for our fleets versus what areas are sufficiently and reliably supplied in the market.
We will continue to invest in areas that promote the highest efficiencies with high return opportunities. By doing so, we will build strong customer relationships based on dependability and elite service quality. Tight frac markets persist in North America. Domestic natural gas markets are now beginning to show signs of a widely anticipated slowdown. The softness is likely transitory ahead of a wave of LNG and Mexico pipeline export growth. The vast majority of frac services are weighted toward oilier basins and are working to simply maintain today's production levels, implying a demand floor for frac services. Today, our calendar remains strong, with some expected movement from gas to oilier basins during this transient period. The fundamental outlook for North American hydrocarbons is strong as constrained global oil supply is confronted by rising demand in emerging markets and a gradual recovery in China.
North American E&P companies have demonstrated strength and discipline amidst economic turbulence. Development programs are largely unchanged as production has been roughly aligned with oil demand in the years since the pandemic. E&P companies are financially healthier today relative to prior cycles. In early spring, financial sector stresses and the heightened perceived recessionary risk on global oil demand resulted in an abrupt fall in oil prices. Concerns have since eased as markets digested the news and economic data showed resiliency. A surprise collective and proactive output cut from OPEC+ members, coupled with falling Russian supply, drove oil prices back to pre-bank stress levels. The ebbs and flows are always expected in a cyclical industry. We see a multiyear upcycle ahead that will favor companies who offer unique, dependable, reliable solutions. Liberty's focus on innovation puts us in an elite class, offering differential technologies and superior reliability.
We are building unique technological, operational, and cultural advantages that will enable us to continue broadening the markets and service offerings of Liberty Energy. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Michael Stock, our CFO, to discuss our financial results.
Thanks, Chris. Good morning, everyone. We're off to a strong start in 2023, building on the momentum of the last several quarters with an improved trailing 12 months return on capital employed of 43%. I'm pleased to share that we've achieved our fourth consecutive quarter of record profitability in company history, a testament to the hard work of our team to deliver high efficiencies. We delivered on our strategic priorities, balancing our industry-leading return of capital program with continued investment that keeps us ahead of the curve. The strategic expansion of our digiFrac technology offering, coupled with our new LPI group, uniquely positions us to offer win-win solutions that drive productivity and profitability for both us and our customers. In the first quarter of 2023, revenue increased 3% sequentially to $1.3 billion.
We delivered on our expectations and built on the solid foundation of the prior year financial results. Pricing moved rapidly last year, post-COVID induced pricing declines, are now back in stable territory where service companies are able to make a reasonable return while reinvesting in their businesses. First quarter net income after tax of $163 million increased from $153 million in the fourth quarter. Fully diluted net income per share was $0.90 compared to $0.82 in the fourth quarter. General and administrative expenses totaled $53 million in the first quarter, included non-cash stock-based compensation of $6 million. G&A increased $4 million sequentially, primarily on non-cash stock-based compensation expense associated with annual grants in the first quarter, IT, and legal expenses. Net interest expense and associated fees totaled $8 million for the quarter.
This included approximately $2 million related to the extension of our ABL facility and the retirement of our term loan facility. Tax expense for the quarter was $54 million, approximately 25% of pre-tax income. We expect tax expense rate for the full year to be approximately 23%-24% of pre-tax income. First quarter adjusted EBITDA increased 12% sequentially to $330 million from $295 million achieved in the prior quarter as our teams executed at high levels through normal seasonality. We ended the year with a cash balance of $21 million and net debt of $189 million. Net debt increased $14 million from the end of the fourth quarter, even with the execution of $75 million in share buybacks and $9 million towards our quarterly cash dividend.
Total liquidity at the end of the quarter, including availability under the credit facility was $308 million. In January, 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 our $105 million term loan, reducing our effective interest rate. Net capital expenditures were $133 million on a GAAP basis in the first quarter, which included costs related to digiFleet construction, capitalized maintenance spending and other projects. There were approximately $3 million of proceeds from asset sales in the quarter. Net cash from operations was $204 million for the quarter. Returns to shareholders was $83 million in the quarter.
In July 2022, we installed a share repurchase program to take advantage of the dislocated share prices in a vastly improved market. During the first quarter, we upsized our authorization to a total of $500 million, reflecting our conviction and our ability to generate strong free cash flows. We also reinstated our quarterly cash dividend of $0.05 per share in the fourth quarter of last year. In the first quarter, we returned $83 million to shareholders, including a share repurchase of 5.2 million shares, which represents 2.9% of the shares outstanding at the beginning of the quarter for a total of $75 million, and the balance was returned in dividends. We have now returned to shareholders a cumulative $218 million in the last nine months.
We continue to differentiate ourselves with an industry-leading return of capital program while reinvesting in high return opportunities and growing our free cash flow. Looking ahead, we're expecting modest sequential growth in the second quarter, expanding on the solid results we achieved in the first quarter and reflecting stable pricing, normal seasonality, and a solid base of customer demand. We're not seeing softness in the gas markets significantly impacting our second quarter results. Early visibility into the second half of the year suggests we will likely shift a few fleets into larger oily basins, where demand for Liberty exceeds our supply as gas basin customers slow their activity in response to near-term gas market conditions. Our general outlook for the year remains positive and in line with our first quarter commentary.
As we navigate the upcoming years, 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 shareholders. I will now turn it back to Chris for a few remarks ahead of Q&A.
Thanks, Michael. If a foreign power offered the U.S. $1 trillion to destabilize our electricity grids while also raising electricity prices, surely we would scoff at such an offer, imposing lower quality service and higher prices on a network that is the lifeblood of a modern economy. Heck, no. Unfortunately, this is the road we are heading down. With the passage of the IRA bill last fall, we will spend, not receive, hundreds of billions of dollars in uncapped subsidies that will likely draw trillions of investment dollars to build low energy density, unreliable electricity generation sources. The same political forces, absent thoughtful evaluation, is also forcing the retirement of reliable, dispatchable electric generation capacity that keeps our lights on, factories running, and life-saving incubators supporting the miracle of life.
We know where this leads, as we have seen it already unfold in California, Germany, the United Kingdom, et cetera. See the recent book, The Unpopular Truth, by Schernikau and Smith, for a detailed dissection of today's electrical grid policy follies. We are passionately and vocally opposed to this impoverishing industry and jobs outsourcing, opportunity-squelching trajectory. Sadly, it is the current course that we are on. We will never stop advocating for a radical course correction. With that being said, Liberty Power Innovations will likely see many highly attractive business opportunities to supply reliable, dependable power solutions to those who simply cannot operate without it. Our business and advocacy are centered around our mission, bettering human lives via more energy and better energy. We will now open the lineup for your questions.
Thank you. I'll begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touch-tone phone. If you're 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'll pause momentarily to assemble the roster. First question will be from Derek Podhaizer. Barclays, please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, guys. figured we address the gas markets right up front. You talked about next quarter, maybe moving some fleets from the gas basins into the oil basins. You talked about your early visibility comments. Maybe just if we can expand on this a little bit. The bear case right now is fleets and profitability collapse in the back half of the year as an expected 30-40 rigs come out. Maybe just walk us through the year if you see these rig count decline materialize, what it could mean for Liberty's profitability and your activity levels. Just wanna try to get a better handle on what the potential magnitude could be for you guys as we move through the through the year to the end of the year.
You bet, Derek. Look, the movement is meaningful. We'll see it. We went from a marketing that was a market, frac market and rig market that was ever tightening to a small pullback, but the magnitude of the pullback is relatively modest. You know, less than 20% of our activity is in gas markets. Maybe 20% of total industry activity is in gas markets. You know, even if that pulled back by a third, you know, that's a 6% or 7% decline industry-wide in demand for frac fleets. We already had in oil markets, probably more activity that people wanted to pursue that they were unable to pursue for lack of capacity. So for Liberty, this'll manifest a couple ways.
One is in the one big gas market we're in, the demand for Liberty even there outstrips the number of fleets we have. We're gonna see a little bit of growth in market share from existing customers that would like to see more of Liberty. As Michael alluded, we might move one, probably at tops two fleets, to other people that have been pounding the table to get a Liberty fleet. Otherwise, we'll move a fleet to another basin. I would say the impact on us, probably not that meaningful, but since we do have a meaningful oversupply in natural gas, the prices have collapsed dramatically. It's macro. This is significant.
It's not insignificant in the frac and drilling world, but I would say not a large impact on Liberty's business and our financial results.
Great. That's good color. I mean, maybe moving over to the Permian. I mean, we've heard some comments from your peers around this dislocation of the Permian market. I think specifically the spot market. Maybe could you talk to that a little bit? Are you starting to see that in your Permian fleets? Given your bifurcation, dedicated agreements with customers, you see some level of insulation, just maybe more around the Permian Basin?
Yeah, they're probably more the latter. We're, you know, there's others that are seeing that much more than us. We're just not meaningful players in the spot market. All our fleets are dedicated either full-time to one customer. We do work for smaller players where we layer a few different customers in to fill up the activity on a fleet. Yeah, we have not seen anything meaningfully different in the Permian than we saw four or five months ago.
Great. Appreciate the comments, Chris. I'll turn it over.
Thanks.
Thank you. Next question will be from Neil Mehta of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Good, good morning, team. Just wanna talk a little bit about the CapEx profile. How are you thinking about the cadence of digiFrac builds this year and next, especially if commodity prices stay here? Any guidance you can provide around capital spending numbers over the next couple of years?
You know, as we said, we reiterated that guidance from Q1. Obviously, we were going to be doing approximately, you know, 40%-50% of EBITDA this year, reducing down to about 30% of EBITDA next year, Neil. I think that holds true.
Yeah. The demand for the digiFleets is strong, but we've just got to balance what are the best opportunities for them that fit in our profile of how we wanna allocate capital. As Michael just said, you know, a chunk of that is CapEx, a chunk of that is to return to capital shareholders and to maintain a balance sheet that we're just bulletproof for whatever the world might throw at us next.
Yeah. That's, that's the follow-up. Can you just talk about you guys were aggressive in buying back stock in the fourth quarter. You know, shares have underperformed relative to energy and relative to your earnings power over the course of this year. Talk about how you'll continue to use buybacks as a lever, and balancing that against, you know, a lot of uncertainty in the economic macro.
Yeah, look, the motivation for buybacks, our ultimate motivation for the management team here and everyone that works at Liberty, is to grow the value of every Liberty share, right? That's our job. That's what we do. There's many ways to do that, building a competitive advantage, strong customer relationships, delivering the above average return on capital that we've delivered since we founded the company 12 years ago. That's a core part of that message. When we get other opportunities at very attractive prices to buy back, to increase the ownership amount of each share of Liberty stock by retiring shares at attractive prices, heck, we're gonna do that. We're in sort of a special scenario right now where we've got a very strong business.
We're 12 years into the business, we're past sort of the growth mode, established Liberty mode. Our needs for CapEx as a percentage of our business size have shrunk, and we're presented with a compelling opportunity to shrink our share base. Heck, we're gonna be all over that as long as that opportunity is there.
Thanks, Michael.
Thank you. Next question will be from Marc Bianchi, TD Cowen. Please go ahead.
Hey, thank you. I wanna go back to the supply-demand balance a bit. I guess I hear you on the demand side. There have been some projections that I've seen for, I don't know, 30 fleets coming into the market, and there's a lot of debate about how many of those are gonna be incremental or replacement. I'm just kind of curious what your view is on the supply side, and maybe how long will it take for investors to sort of know whether those are disrupting the market or not?
That is a good question. You know, we're sort of math and numbers guys, but so we do our own projection and extrapolation. For the marketplace, yeah, obviously it's gonna take some time to just see the financial results flow through. We do our own bottom-up frac fleet count. You know, we have, yeah, sales and representatives in every basin. We have our own, how many fleets are running today? How many are gonna be running next month? How many is gonna be running in Q3? How many is gonna be running in Q4? What those fleets are, where they're coming from. I think there's about 30 frac fleets that are planned or under construction.
It looks like from our math and our customer dialogues, half, probably a little less than half of those will actually hit the ground this year. The other half or a little more than half will hit the ground next year. If you think 14 fleets hit the ground this year, there's north of 250 frac fleets running right now. Even if you say, "Hey, the market's good," people are gonna hang on with band-aids instead of the average 25 fleets that or 25 fleets worth of equipment. It's incremental, not fleets. 25 fleets worth of equipment would fall out of the marketplace this year. Economics are strong. Maybe people with band-aids hold onto half of that. 12, 13, 14 fleets of equipment exit and 13, 14 fleets of new equipment arrive.
That's pretty much a flat supply this year. If we continued at that rate, it would actually be a declining supply. The band-aids only last so long. You know, wishes and hopes don't really work. Equipment will attrit out of the marketplace. You know, the macro outlook right now remains pretty good.
Yeah, no, that's really helpful context, Chris Wright. I wanted to ask another follow-up to a prior question. On the CapEx side, Michael Stock, you said down to 30% of EBITDA in 2024, I guess, or beyond 2023. I think you guys put a slide deck out since the last quarter where you were talking about $450 million-$500 million of CapEx over sort of five to seven years, which would seem to be above that level that you talked about in 2024 and beyond. Maybe just talk about, you know, what that was meant to show, and then how does the LPI sort of play into whatever those sort of sustainable CapEx numbers ought to be.
Yeah. That was really to show sort of like a replacement cycle with digi technology, sort of as we slowly sort of like move in or replace the Tier II. No, I sort of disagree. I mean, really that's where we came up with that 30% number. You know, again, obviously that will depend on sort of like the strength of the market, but from where we see the market, the supply-demand balance staying very sort of, as we say, the majority of the demand is coming from replacing the oil that is currently being brought to market. It's not really major growth in oil production.
We see a reasonably strong, steadier market over the next few years and a slow sort of replacement of Tier II pumps with digiTechnologies, which obviously has got, you know, its own drivers as far as increasing profitability. That's where those numbers came from. No, that's why we came up with those general numbers. Those two numbers jive together and one drove the other, so to speak. LPI, this year, the CapEx for LPI was in the budget that we announced in the beginning part of this year. Obviously, we've sped that up. It hasn't changed the CapEx number, but we did the Siren deal, which we closed at the beginning of this quarter, which was going to speed the revenue generation and earnings generation of that power.
We'll look at LPI as all we do, all of our businesses. You know, it has to compete for capital and it has to have very, very strong returns and has to augment the efficiency of our base business. Chris, do you want to add anything to that?
No, I think it's well said, Michael.
Can I just clarify, Michael? I think it's $78 million for LPI, the acquisition. That's outside of the CapEx number that you had guided to for this year. That would make sense.
Correct.
I just want to confirm. Yep. Okay.
That is correct.
Super. Thanks so much.
Thanks, Mike.
Thank you. Our next question will be from Stephen Gengaro of Stifel. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning, everybody.
Morning, Steve.
Two, two things from me. I think the first, when we think about second half of this year and next year, how do you, when you look at fleet utilization, I mean, obviously it seems like you think the market's reasonably tight. How are the conversations evolving with customers when you think about pricing and the demand for Liberty's assets versus peers, and how do you sort of balance that, and how should we think about Liberty's, you know, willingness to give up a little price to keep business and/or walk away if prices are lower than you think? How should we think about how you evaluate that with your customers?
Yeah. Look, we're in constant dialogue with our customers. Remember, most of our customers have been our customers for years, so we're in a partnership here. You'd be surprised, of course, the vast majority of the dialogue with our customers is how do we make operations better, more efficient? How do we get safer? How do we plan better for, you know, things that might have change in drilling programs about where assets are gonna be? You know, there's an undertone, of course, in every market. Customers would like price higher and lower, and we would like price higher. I mean, that's just, that's just human nature. It, at Liberty, it's always moved a little bit slower for us, right?
We have all, not just Liberty, but the whole industry suffered from sort of this hangover of this crazy overbuilding that was done in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014. Those excess fleets only really have gotten burnt out in the last year or two. We've had a bunch of years of excess hangover. Now which we have a certain amount of equipment. There's CapEx to build new equipment. There's returns on that. And there's returns for our customers. The biggest needle mover for our customers right now to lower their well costs, to improve their drilling economics, like the low-hanging fruit is burn more gas and burn less diesel to power a frac fleet. You switch to wet sand where you can to save on drying costs and have transportation shorter. A lot of gas substitution, sometimes it's unreliable.
You don't have it, or you only get a two-thirds of the pumps get gas and the other third have to burn diesel. We're just knocking over these barriers to reducing costs. That's why we went into LPI. We have to have reliable gas every day, all day for all of our pumps. That is a huge cost saving opportunity for our customers and return enhancing opportunity for us. Those are the dominant discussions. Price is sort of a, a frequent but sort of a smaller dialogue. Today, the pricing is pretty much stable. We said this, you know, back in probably our Q3, certainly in our Q1 earnings call at the end of last year. We weren't fighting for that last pound of flesh. We heard others say, 15% more prices coming.
You know, if we'd held a gun to people's heads, could we have, you know, gotten a little bit more at the end? Maybe. We played that longer game. We're a partnership. Returns for us are good, returns for our customers are good right now. Pricing for us is flat right now, and I don't see any immediate horizon for that to change.
Great. Thank you for the color, Chris. My second question, when we think about LPI, your vertical, your integration strategy, and when we sort of look out, if we look out, you know, 12 months, but also longer term, two, three years, what do you think Liberty looks like? Are all fleets completely integrated? Are there additional services at the well site you're offering? How should we think about like, sort of the medium-term strategic initiatives at Liberty?
You know what I mean? I would say the best input I can give there is to look at the last few years. You know, we get pitched every deal out there. We haven't been a large acquisition company. In two downturns, when there's compelling opportunities, we'll do those. Most of what we do is organic. LPI was an organic idea launched over a year ago to fix a problem of unreliable gas supply in time and across whole fleets. We brought in midstream expertise. We're developing technologies and a plan there. Are there other things we're looking at that might either improve our current offerings or expand the shoulders a little bit? Yes, surely. Surely. There's always way more ideas than there are compelling ideas.
You've got to dig into all these ideas and sort of run them to the ground to figure out which ones are the most compelling in today's economics, in future competitive advantage, and in the right humans and right technologies to bring something differential to the marketplace. You know, we're not gonna add seven business lines and, you know, we're sort of a slow, steady company. Will we continue to evolve? Absolutely. Will we continue to grow our competitive advantage versus our peers? Yes. Will we broaden our base of business? Yes. Will we always be driven by delivering above industry, all industries, returns on capital and trying to grow earnings per share as fast as possible? Yes. Sorry, I'm not giving you many more specifics, but we, you know, we just don't really re-release those until we're doing them.
Great. No. Thank you.
Good question. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question will be from Keith Mackey, RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Hey, thanks. Good morning. Maybe if we could just start off on customer or E&P consolidation. We've seen recently, some public E&Ps buying private E&Ps and talking about, you know, slowing down their, you know, the rig activity on the acquired lands. There's been stories written in The Wall Street Journal about larger consolidation. Can you just, Chris, give us some thoughts on where you think or what you think that more E&P consolidation would mean ultimately for Liberty versus competitors, perhaps?
Yeah, look, I would say in general, I think it's healthy. It's a normal business, part of the business cycle, and there's periods where there's less consolidation, there's periods where it's more active. With stable, strong prices right now, we're probably in a fruitful environment for more consolidation. We're aware a lot of those dialogues that are going on before you hear about them. We think it's. Again, we think it's healthy. We think it's good for Liberty as you get more and fewer stronger players. We mentioned, I think in our opening comments, there's sort of a move to upgrade service partners, whether you're a big company or a mid-sized company in today's world. you know, it's changed. In general, it's a positive trend for the industry. It's certainly a positive trend for Liberty.
Okay. Thank you. Just to follow up, how should we take stable pricing to mean in the context of inflation? Does that mean there's gonna be some pressure on margins or you can pass through pricing or cost increases in pricing?
It's gonna be a little bit of both. You know, if it's just straight inputs we're buying that are inflation driven, we're passing those through. There's inflation with many different ways. There's also a sort of a backdrop of efficiency that we're always trying to get better. A little more efficiency can outrun a lot of sort of organic inflation. Yeah, I think we're viewing it sort of flattish across the board.
Thank you. If I could just sneak one more clarification in. Michael, I think you said it, but can you just clarify? The guidance you talked about last quarter for 40%-50% year-over-year adjusted EBITDA growth, are you sticking with that?
Yes.
Got it. Okay. Thanks very much. Appreciate the comments.
Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question will be from Luke Lemoine, Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning. Chris, you talked about how you plan to pair the digiPrime pumps with your digiFrac pumps. I guess could you talk a little bit about more about your digiPrime pumps and how these fold into conventional fleets over time, maybe as replacement pumps, and how you think about these relative to Tier IV DGB along with the performance characteristics versus Tier IV DGB.
Luke, it's Ron. Yeah. Like Chris said in his remarks, you have to think of digiPrime as baseload power. For us, that means that you could really pair it with anything in our fleet. The digiFrac electric pumps, of course, would lead to entirely next generation, but it pairs equally well with Tier IV DGB or even Tier II dual fuel if we were gonna do that. Really just something to manage the transient load, kind of those peaks and troughs that come along with the world of fracking. You just wanna think of that as baseload power that we put in place that delivers the first 80% of the horsepower we require on a location, and then something on top of that to absorb the ebbs and flows of a day-to-day job.
As you think about it, really, it just brings some benefits in terms of the efficiency it delivers. Obviously, we're moving to natural gas, but when you have that mechanical drive set up, you just get incredible efficiency in terms of use of the fuel. When you compare that to something like Tier IV DGB, a 25%-30% reduction in emissions profile and a significant improvement in effectively what we'd call fuel economy. Big step forward for us.
Okay, great. Thanks, Ron. I'll turn it back.
Thanks, Luke.
Thank you. Next question will be from Scott Gruber, Citigroup. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Chris, your supply demand. Good morning. I just wanna come back to the macro and ask about how it kind of, you know, could relate to your pricing. Obviously, your supply to math sounds, you know, pretty compelling on the market staying tight. If the spot market, you know, does weaken from here, I'm curious, you know, the impact really when it would impact dedicated pricing. I assume spot would have to drop to some reasonably healthy spread, you know, to your pricing, just given your superior efficiency.
Be curious if you had any color on, you know, kind of from past cycles, you know, what spreads could be tolerated and sustained without pressuring your pricing and at what level of spot deflation, if it does happen, you know, would start to concern you.
You know, I think it's not possible to quantify 'cause there's spot pricing, you know, it depends on the customer. It depends how fast they're gonna move to get stuff done. It depends on the service provider. Some companies have to provide huge discounts to other providers just to get the same job. You know, there's different players in the spot. Yeah, I, you know, we don't have enough visibility or, you know, specific insight into that. You know, it's a factor, but yeah, it's not impacting Liberty today.
Okay. You know, just on the, you know, latest, you know, portfolio expansion here, you know, can you, can you speak to kind of that next level of efficiency that you're able to bring? I mean, you guys, you know, do a pretty good job of tracking, you know, stage counts for yourself and others. Just commentary on kind of what you're seeing at present and as you continue to, you know, kind of expand the portfolio, how you think, you know, that delta could continue to widen.
Again, you know, hard to quantify, but just incredibly proud of our teams. You know, look, we're high record revenue, record profitability. We're as big as we've ever been today, obviously, since we started the company. Yet the average performance of every fleet we have, the average across all the fleets was a record last quarter. I think the biggest piece of that is humans, is culture, you know, and passion for what people believe, you know. We continue to enhance training. We mentioned with LPI, I mean, the gas supply has been a little bit of a headwind to efficiency. Mostly, it just means more diesel is burned than needs to be burned, so we're gonna switch more of that to natural gas. On the software technology training, there's just so many factors there.
People keep always asking, they asked us five years ago, "What do you think that's plateaued?" We've said maybe we've picked some of the low-hanging fruit, but it continues to drive up. That's the people, the humans, and the culture of Liberty. I don't know where it goes, but I'm reasonably confident it's gonna continue to go up.
With LPI, do you think there's an ability to incorporate terms into the contracts where you can more directly benefit from a wide gas diesel spread?
Absolutely. Look, the biggest driver of these next-generation fleets is that huge delta between diesel and gas cost. You can't just snap your fingers and get it. You have to have different equipment, different engines, different fleet that can burn it. You gotta supply it. You gotta look at the most efficient way to supply it. That's a thing that, of course, wins for both us and our customers. The majority of that benefit obviously goes to us 'cause we're bringing the technologies, the equipment, the people to do it. It's a win for both sides.
Okay, great. Thanks, Chris.
Thanks.
Thank you. Next question will be from Roger Read, Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you. Good morning. gonna do kind of a good cop, bad cop question for you in the same question. You gave your outlook for natural gas, so one question or the first part is: What if the downturn is a little bit worse, say, a, you know, 30%-50% decline in gas drilling instead of a one-third decline, how you might react to that? The second part of it is follow-up to a question asked earlier, you know, about E&P consolidation. Ironically, this morning, we saw a large Japanese company buying into some gas assets in the U.S.
Maybe as a, you know, the rest of the world tries to integrate its way through the LNG chain, how do you think that might affect positively, you know, as we get beyond the sort of near-term issues related to low gas prices?
Well, look, I'll take the second one first. Ourselves, and we're not outliers here, but, you know, the outlook for natural gas over the coming decades is just simply tremendous. It's tremendous for a number of reasons. You know, it's cleaner burning, and what I mean when I say clean, I mean clean, not lower greenhouse gas emissions. It's also lower greenhouse gas emissions. That's a big driver of it, but it's cleaner burning as well for sort of air quality. The air quality in the United States is the cleanest it's ever been, and the greatest in the last say in the last 80 years, and the greatest risk to that is emissions that are blown in from Asia and Latin America. That's the biggest source of smog in the Western United States.
As more of that industry and power that's coal slowly switches over to natural gas, that brings clean air. Everybody's pro clean air. Yeah, natural gas has a great long run. Japan, obviously reliable you know, source of electricity. You will see natural gas in the last 10 years is the fastest growing source of energy, bar none. We hear things about percentage-wise small sources that again, ultimately don't add a lot of value. They're growing wider on percentage-wise. Where is the world getting more energy from? Gas is the by far winner in that race, and likely is in the next few decades. You know, obviously the U.S. is a tremendous place to produce more gas. Obviously, our exports are gonna grow meaningfully. I think all of that is happening, all of that is positive.
Some will be pipelined to Mexico. The bigger chunk will be LNG. For gas producers, I think they're in a great position, but just productivity just got ahead of export capacity. You know, that happened. That may take as long as the early 2025, where we're gonna see a significant growth in demand for gas for growing export markets in the U.S. The markets may firm meaningfully before that as well. We don't know. Again, for us, it's less than 20% of our activity, easily deployable elsewhere, and we've got great gas customers. You know, it's not nothing, but it's not hugely significant to the outlook for Liberty's business over the next, you know, one quarter or two years.
Thanks. Appreciate it.
Thanks, Roger.
Yeah. Thanks, Roger.
Thank you. Next question will be from Tom Curran, B. Riley Securities. Please go ahead.
Good morning. I've just got two questions left related to LPI. First, Chris, you've just spoken to that business' potential future acquisition activity. On the organic side, is LPI undertaking any R&D of its own or expected to pursue internal technology development, including perhaps venturing into other types of alternative fuels? Strategically, do you expect LPI's growth to help solidify natural gas fueled reciprocating engines as the power source of choice for electric horsepower across the industry?
We do. It's just, there's just so many spaces in which natural gas just wins. The problem, the limiter of natural gas in the United States and around the world is infrastructure. The U.S. is blessed with this awesome pipeline infrastructure that moves gas around. We're building better ways through LNG, but it's just more expensive to take it by LNG. Other countries. You see India has huge plans to build gas moving infrastructure, as do many other countries. What LPI is, it's sort of a virtual pipeline. It's a pipeline before there's a pipeline, or it's a pipeline for just transient enough consumption that it doesn't make sense to build a pipeline. So we want to, efficiently as possible, tap into nearby pipelines, transport that. It'll dominantly be in natural gas powered vehicles.
The compression technology, the storage amount of those trucks, absolutely. Are we working on technology to keep making that better and more efficient? You bet. As you said, we can obviously transport RNG and hydrogen as well. Yeah, we see natural gas as a growing business opportunity. As I said in the opening remarks, just reliable electricity, sadly, is gonna be a rapidly growing business opportunity as well. We have the highest thermal efficiency, mobile electricity generating source there is. We have a growing logistics business to supply gas to it wherever those units are.
Got it. Makes sense. Thanks for taking my question.
Thanks, Tom.
Thank you. Next question will be from Saurabh Pant, Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. I had a quick clarification on, I think you had a comment in your press release, about r obust demand in larger oilier basins likely offsetting softer conditions in the gas basins. I just wanted to clarify on that. Do you expect demand in the oil basins to go up through the remainder of the year? I'm trying to put this into the context. I think last quarter you were talking about a 10-15 fleet potential undersupply in the oil basin. I just wanna square that with that comment.
Yeah. I mean, look, our outlook right now in those basins is roughly flattish. On the margin, are you gonna see a little more private activity now that oil is above $80? Yes. There are small privates, hard to get frac fleets. Economics were, you know, maybe on the bubble. If oil is above $80 and remains above $80, is there a little more activity in the oil basins? Probably. Overall...
Okay.
Probably roughly flattish.
Okay. Okay. Okay. No, that's helpful because privates, it seems to us, were cutting a little bit of activity on the margin even before the banking crisis, right? Now oil is back to that level pre the banking crisis. I was just wondering if they add activity, they don't add activity, right? It sounds like you're thinking flattish, right? With a slight upward bias.
Yes, I think that's fair. Yeah, look, the story of the last 12 months. 12 months ago, privates were a much larger precent of activity than they are today. What's happened over the last 12 months has been a sort of a rotation, a shrinkage of activity from privates and a meaningful growth in activity from larger companies.
Right.
'Cause they were slowly ramping up multi-year plans, the larger companies.
Yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. Then another just quick clarification for me. You mentioned novel seasonality in the second quarter. Just to make sure we are all on the same page, I would normally think seasonality as is favorable as a tailwind going from 1 Q to 2 Q. Just wanna make sure that's what you meant when you said normal seasonality in the second quarter.
That's correct. You're gonna have the seasonal downturn, from the Canadian side of the world and a slight seasonal uptick in the U.S. Generally, that's usually a positive movement.
Okay. Okay. Okay, perfect. Okay, Mike, thanks for that. I'll turn it back. Thank you.
Thanks, Saurabh.
Thank you. Again, if you have a question, please press star then one. Our next question will be from John Daniel, Daniel Energy Partners. Please go ahead.
Guys, good morning. If my memory serves me correctly, on the LPI, the Siren press release, you talked about eventually providing power to industrial end users or just things outside oil and gas. Can you provide a bit of a timeline when you might be able to pursue that?
John, it's something, look, we've looked at for some time, and obviously more seriously now as we're bringing the pieces together. The demand for the assets we're building right now within our core frac business is tremendous. Look, everything that we're perceivably building right now has already got a home that's spoken for. You know, it's not short term, but it's medium to longer term. There's opportunities there. And yeah, I hesitate to give a specific timeframe, but it's not in the next few quarters.
Fair enough.
Our look and our investigation to find the right opportunity, that's happening now.
Okay. Got it. The Siren Energy, they had the two facilities. What's the optimal number of facilities across the country for you? Have you come to that decision yet or are you still evaluating?
Still evaluating. You know, it depends on volumes and location of work. You know, a simple look at the Permian is, you know, you got the Delaware and you got the Midland, and they're far enough apart...
Yeah.
-that it makes sense to have different facilities there. You don't have nearly the truck traffic bringing gas as you do sand, but you still wanna ultimately optimize, you know, delivery costs versus infrastructure costs. But, you know, a big thing for us as well is, you know, the Permian is one basin. It's the right basin to starting to do this, but it's just one basin.
Okay. If you decided to build a new facility, what's the time from the decision to actually going live?
Yeah, I'd say it's around six months.
Okay. That's all I got. Thanks for including me.
Thanks, John.
Thanks, John.
Appreciate.
Thank you. This concludes our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the call back over to Mr. Chris Wright for closing remarks. Please go ahead.
Yeah, I just wanna thank everyone for their time today and interest in Liberty's business. A broader thank you to everyone in the Liberty family, wearing Liberty jerseys, our customers, our suppliers, and everyone working in this broader energy ecosystem that makes my life and everyone's life possible. Thank you all, we look forward to talking to you in three months.