David Schorlemer. He can say his last name for me. I'm gonna hand it over to David, and thank you. Appreciate it.
All right, thanks, Sandy, and thanks everyone for being here. Appreciate Three Part Advisors for inviting us up, and it's good to be at a conference that's focused on small cap companies and more generalist investors. We get a lot of opportunity to speak with a lot of folks that have had energy service experience in the past, and sometimes they're just looking for the next trade. But seems like we're having more thoughtful conversations with long-term investors here, and that's what we're looking for. One of the things I want to start off with is the company name. If you don't know ProPetro, we are pro, in favor of petroleum products, and that's something that we've shared in our sustainability report last year, which we call ProPetro, ProEnergy, ProPeople.
And we think that it promotes human flourishing across the globe, and that we play a significant part in that effort. So just to talk a little bit about the investment thesis for ProPetro, as Sandy mentioned, we're seeing our company being positioned to see increasing free cash flows. That is a big focus for us. Not necessarily EBITDA, but free cash flow. We think that's more important. We've invested over $1 billion across our company in recapitalizing our asset base. We think that that makes this investment actually a low-risk investment for investors coming in. We also have had a significant discount to our valuation relative to some of our peers and also relative to other industries for a variety of reasons. We'll talk about that in a moment.
We also have no net debt, exposure to the world's most prolific oil field in the Permian Basin in West Texas and New Mexico, and superior field performance, along with the deployment of new electric fleet technology, which we'll talk about in a moment. Quick company snapshot. These are our numbers for the first quarter. Very strong performance, coming out of a little bit of a weaker fourth- quarter. In terms of our business, we are in premium completion solutions, and what I mean by that, when we in the oil and gas industry look to develop hydrocarbons, you first have to drill that well. There are other companies that are involved in that drilling effort, companies like H&P, Helmerich & Payne, others, Nabors. And then there's the completion side of that.
Once you've drilled that well, you then need to complete it so that it can start producing oil and gas, and we're a big part of that. We have three different service lines: hydraulic fracturing, wireline, and cementing. Our strategy is something that we've been highlighting over the last eighteen months and is essentially pretty new to the company. The company started off many years ago as a very entrepreneurial, high growth-oriented business, had private equity backing, and in some respects, was probably a bit undisciplined as it relates to new capital in the business. However, it served the company well during that time, which was pre-2020. Since that time, there's been a management change-out, and there were some challenges there that the company dealt with.
But we have compiled what we believe is a strategy appropriate for the environment that we're in, and what we're seeing in the oil and gas sector is an industrializing of that business. I think many of you, if you've thought about energy investing, you've heard of the boom and bust. Well, we think that is really in our past. There's much more discipline around capital. There's less private equity that's been involved, which we think is sometimes undisciplined capital, and that is changing our business. And so this strategy really started with optimize and industrialize the business, bring industrial solutions to industrial problems, and then do more with less.
When you run a piece of equipment to failure and just hit it with a money gun over and over, you're gonna destroy a lot of capital, and that was really the industry of the past, and we're changing that. The other part is fleet transition, bringing industrial solutions to industrial problems, as I mentioned, bringing electric technologies, bringing dual fuel technologies that can utilize not only diesel, but natural gas to power them. And then also look at opportunistic transactions. Private equity has not been in the market, as I mentioned, so there's really no bid in the marketplace for otherwise very good businesses that are in our space, and so we feel like we're a natural acquirer of some of those businesses.
We, we've had quite a few achievements over the last 18 months, and those are listed here, some of which include our share repurchase program, which we started 18 months ago, and added an additional $100 million to make that a total of $200 million. And so, we believe that is... Ultimately, executing on these three pillars of our strategy will build a more durable earning stream and generate increasing cash flow, which we've seen. First quarter, as I mentioned, very strong performance. You can see on all of these metrics, a lot of green, on that third line. Significant improvement, also year-over-year... This slide we're particularly proud of, and we think it is what is the story of 2024, which is a decreasing capital spend.
We spent a lot of capital that that I talked about before in recapitalizing our fleet. In 2022, our incurred CapEx was over 350 million. 2023, that red bar there, over 300 million. In 2024, that number's gonna be between 200 million and 250 million, which is our, our guidance range. We believe it's gonna be on the lower side of that guidance range. And so what we've been showing in this green bar is how we're diverting capital from what we see as lower quality capital allocations, things like CapEx, to more higher quality, capital allocations, such as capital returns or acquisition consideration. And we think that green bar is gonna be growing while the red bar is shrinking.
We've invested over $1 billion in the course of 2022 and 2023, and what that means is that we have one of the youngest fleets in the industry, and we're bringing relevant technologies to our business, along with new businesses in the form of acquisitions. This reflects the transformation of our fleet. If you look at the bar chart, the stacked bar chart in the middle of the page, it shows the configuration of our fleet, which is Tier 2 diesel only. In 2021, it was almost entirely diesel equipment. We now introduced Tier 4 dual fuel equipment, so it's still a diesel engine, but it can be run with natural gas as well, and that is more useful to the customers because they can reduce their costs and reduce their emissions as well.
In 2024, we started introducing electric equipment, where you can eliminate all of the diesel and run it with all natural gas or on the grid with electric. So you can see we've completely transformed our asset base to assets that our customers value more so than our competitors' equipment. That puts us in a very unique position to deliver value to our customers and also reduce emissions profiles. This slide here talks about our Tier 4 DGB dual-fuel equipment, and again, what you see here is a pumping unit that has a diesel engine in the middle of it. It has ports on it that can take natural gas, and so now you're beginning to reduce the diesel gallons that are burned on location and replace them with clean-burning natural gas.
You can see, our substitution rates have continued to increase, and we're delivering industry-leading levels of substitution at the well site. This next slide here is something that we're really excited about, our FORCE electric-powered equipment that has been introduced starting last year. We now have three fleets that are operating, that are electric. And so when you think about electric, you think, "Well, what does that mean?" Take that diesel equipment that I talked about in that big diesel engine. A lot of moving parts, over 3,000 parts in a diesel engine, many of which are moving every second. This electric equipment, if you take a look at some of those pumping units, the two black boxes that you see there, one's a transformer, one's a variable frequency drive.
There's virtually no moving parts in those two boxes. They are low to no touch, and what we're finding is our mechanics that are on-site to support that diesel equipment every day, every hour, they're walking around picking up trash, cleaning out their pickups, 'cause there's nothing to do. We're excited about the change in OpEx intensity and capital intensity that that transition is gonna take as we continue to transform that equipment over time. The third leg of the stool that we talked about is M&A, and I think we've been very disciplined in our approach to M&A. It's been about one transaction per year over the last three years. Silvertip was really our first acquisition in what I would call ProPetro 2.0. We did that acquisition in November of 2022.
We acquired it for about $150 million. We issued 10 million shares. The stock was trading a little over $10 at that time, and you can see we acquired a company that was generating recurring free cash flow of about, you know, $40 million. Very high EBITDA to free cash flow conversion ratio. Over the last 18 months, we've purchased back those 10 million shares at about a 15% discount to what we issued. So I think what it shows is that we can do this, and we can increase and enhance our overall corporate free cash flow for investors. Par Five was a little bit smaller acquisition. We completed that in December of 2023.
We used all cash, 'cause we started to generate free cash flow in our business, and you can see here, very favorable acquisition multiple here. It was additive to our business by giving us a Western Permian Basin, what we call the Delaware Basin Service Center for our cementing business. We also announced an acquisition recently, before I move on, Aqua Prop. There's a press release out that included that, it enhances our capability on location. If you think about ProPetro, what do we do? What do companies that are involved in hydraulic fracturing do? They take sand and water and mix it together and pressurize that and pump it down into the wellbore and into the fractures of the formation.
That sand props up the formation and enables the hydrocarbons to flow to the surface, and you get water and oil and gas, natural gas as well. So, Aqua Prop is a company that provides sand logistics and sand containment, and we think that's gonna be very additive to our business. And so what happens at the end of the day is you execute on this strategy. We believe that the thing that is compelling to investors is capital returns. And so I talked about our share repurchase program. We've executed, as of the first quarter, 74 million on the total repurchase. We increased it by 100 million in April, so it's a total of 200 million.
We have been continuing to execute on that share repurchase plan under a 10b5-1 program, and we'll continue to do that, as we believe our current share price is well below our intrinsic value. This is a slide that Matt put together. Matt's our Director of Corporate Development and Investor Relations. I think some of you all, if you have questions, as, as you leave the conference, please feel free to reach out to either Matt or myself. But this shows our enterprise value to EBITDA multiple and in relation to some of our industry peers and also larger industry players. And you can see we're, we're on the left side, and, you know, you could see that as a positive or a negative.
I think that was something that we felt a share repurchase program was very appropriate to pursue, given that reality. We also think there's a dislocation in information. That's why we're here today at the IDEAS C onference, because we've been spending time at some of the energy conferences that we historically have attended. We don't think the message is getting out, and we think there's a real opportunity for investors. Our management team and our board does as well. That's why we've increased the share repurchase program, and we think this demonstrates one of those reasons. This is another slide that Matt put together, and I think it really tells a great story. This shows the Oil Service Index, the OIH, versus the Industrial Sector Index and where those indices have traded over time.
Since 2013, you know, those were very much in parity, if you look at the chart. Right around 2015, there began to be a differential, and that was for pretty good reason. I mentioned some of the private equity capital that flooded the oil service space. There was a lot of debt that flooded the oil service space, overbuilding capacity. And so that dislocation was created by some of those bullet points on the left side of the page. That's continued to expand over the last several years. Now, what we think is happening today is a change in the industry. There's less capital in oil and gas. There's less undisciplined capital in the sector. E&P companies, our customers, are much more disciplined and are consolidating.
There's not a boom-and-bust cycle going on in oil and gas anymore. And so what does that mean? What it means is there may be a little bit less excitement. So if you're coming here to see significant earnings leverage when the oil rig count goes up and oil prices rise dramatically, you're in the wrong meeting. That happened 10 years ago. What we're seeing today is much less volatility in the spending of our customers, much more discipline, less capital coming in, so we have less competition nipping at our heels. And the consolidation in our particular space is about six public companies represent about 70%-80% of the capacity for completions activities. And so we think that we're in a phase that is the prove-it phase for investors. Things have changed dramatically.
We're beginning to see that cash flow dramatically pivot to the positive side. But, before we see any of that, disparity in these multiples change, we think that, that investors are gonna ask us to prove it. And so we're in that proof stage, and we think we're in the beginning innings of that proof stage, but it is playing out. So again, wanting to be here in front of investors to get the opportunity to get in on the early part of that. The industry is evolving, and so when you look at pre-COVID, what were the industry dynamics? Booming global economy. We've talked to some investors today and also over the last several weeks, and the question is: Well, what's going on? Why aren't the stocks moving?
Well, we think there's still a general malaise with overall economic, macroeconomic activity going on. There was more refining capacity, relative refining capacity, more ESG pressures, current industry economics, and dynamics. Oil supply is suppressed. We think there's still disciplined investments going on. OPEC is acting like a public company, and I think they're acting very rational, which is constructive. But I think the one thing we wanted to say here is the industry, the hydrocarbon industry is here to stay. I think some people maybe have left the oil and gas sector thinking, "Well, I'm gonna go to transition energy or--" hydrocarbons are the transition fuel, and that's gonna be here for many decades to come.
We think when you look at the global macroeconomic demand for hydrocarbons, there's gonna be secular demand growth going forward in really any of the scenarios that are evaluated by analysts out there. In terms of where is the money gonna be spent in the US, these are some of the different basins in this chart on the left-hand side. The Permian is the basin where we operate. And you can see that map on the right-hand side. We're primarily in Midland. We do have some operations in a few other spots, but focused in Midland, where we believe is the honey hole for hydrocarbon production, really, in the world. We have become the Saudi Arabia of oil and gas. I'm gonna flip through to the next slide.
And so again, this, I think, mitigates the risk for an investor. You know, who am I investing with? Well, you're investing with a gold label company. We really set the standard for service in the Permian Basin, and the Permian Basin is the most prolific basin in the U.S., and you could argue, in the world. So, ProPetro does it well, and we're bringing the right technologies to bear. I mentioned earlier, we issued our first sustainability report. I think people were very pleased with how we named that. We stand behind our involvement in the hydrocarbon industry because we do believe it impacts very favorably human flourishing across the globe, and we're trying to tell the story that is really important for the lives of everyday Americans and folks across the world. So, capital allocation framework.
You know, investors will ask us, "Okay, are you committing to a certain allocation framework to dividends or to share repurchases?" And the answer that we give is, "We're gonna remain dynamic." We've used our stock on some deals, as I mentioned earlier. We then pivoted to share repurchases as that share relative value dislocation, we thought, expanded. And then recently, we did an M&A transaction utilizing cash. So we're gonna be dynamic with our capital allocations, and we think maintaining a very strong balance sheet is critical to that, and particularly with some of the volatility the industry has seen in the past. So when you think about ProPetro, think about strong balance sheet, unlevered balance sheet, increasing free cash flows, dislocation in the valuation multiple, and a commitment to share repurchases and disciplined management.
This is our board of directors and our management team. Sam Sledge, our CEO, will be back in New York next week at the J.P. Morgan, Barclays or J.P. Morgan? J.P. Morgan Conference, Energy Conference, so if you'd like to come up and hear him. We've also added a new member to our board recently, Alex Volkov from ExxonMobil. So Exxon took the shares that came with the Pioneer acquisition. We acquired Pioneer's pressure pumping business back in 2018. They retained 15 or 16.5 million shares of the company in that transaction. When they were acquired, and they consummated that transaction with Exxon, Exxon then filed a 13G to reflect that change in ownership.
They continued to not only remain an owner and now a board member, but also signed a three-year contract with us very recently. We announced that, where they signed up for two electric FORCE fleets on a three-year contract with the option of a third. And then, of course, they've now taken on the Pioneer assets and operations, which have six fleets, fracturing fleets, that we may have an opportunity to pursue as well. So feel like we're in a very, very good position. I think the news that came out in April reflects what's going on at ProPetro. We announced our expansion of our share repurchase program, we announced our ExxonMobil contract, and then we announced the strong earnings and free cash flow that we generated in the first quarter.
So it's a very good time to consider ProPetro as an investment, and we're happy to answer any questions. Appreciate y'all being here. Yes, sir? That's correct. Yeah, the question was on the electric equipment, was it manufactured by a third party, and it is. We believe it's a very, very strong counterparty, and they have stood behind us with their balance sheet. We talked about the lease program. It was a very elegant way for us to expand and transition very rapidly into the electric fleet technology without stressing our balance sheet. No transaction risk, no financing risk, very favorable terms, and it's something that we can pay off very quickly over about a three-year term. Next question?
I'm just wondering if that number goes up, then it could like, oh, you guys, I guess, maybe someplace else. Yeah.
Yeah. So the question is on DUCs, and for those of you who don't know, DUCs are drilled but uncompleted wells. So I mentioned the first part, you got to drill the well. The next part is you actually got to complete it, fracture that well, to begin to stimulate the production. DUCs are a metric that we follow. As DUCs increase, that means they have more inventory to frack. As DUCs go down, you have less inventory. What we've seen over the last, probably three or four years, is that larger E& P companies are becoming more prevalent in the industry, as well as in the Permian, and they are utilizing just-in-time completions, which is really a best-in-class supply chain management process.
And so, you know, as DUCs decrease, yes, that does mean that there's less of an inventory, and you're going to need to see drilling rigs increase to try and increase that DUC level. I don't think that number, or we don't think that number really is going to be changing materially. But as it continues to decrease, that's something to be mindful of. Sure. Sure. Sure. So the question was on the ExxonMobil contract. You know, we think this is exceedingly good for us, and we have been working with ExxonMobil on and off for several years. Most recently, over the last 18 months, we had transitioned them to our Tier 4 dual fuel technology, which enabled them to displace 60% of their diesel with natural gas.
As the electric technology came to fruition, they really wanted to accelerate the electrification of their oil field activities. So they saw our solution as a very favorable option, particularly having the two fleets that were unaccounted for, being able to go to work very quickly. So they signed up a three-year contract with us. When you think about customers you'd want to have in the oil field, I can't think of a better one. Not to say that we don't love all of our customers, right? But when you have conversations with ExxonMobil, it's not about next quarter, it's about five years out, 10 years out. And that's the way they see the business, that's the way they treat the relationship. They use terms like value proposition long term.
We want you to make this very steady earnings stream. We think that's more durable earnings that can ultimately lead to higher multiple valuations over time. Sure. It does. Our economics are built in inside of that term. But when you think about our assets, historically, we had these diesel-focused assets, and we're needing to refurbish those every, call it three-four years. Now, we've got this electric equipment, and there's virtually no maintenance required on those two major components, 10 years. I mean, there's equipment. I was on a board of a company in the horizontal pumping industry that uses variable frequency drives and transformers, and they don't ever touch them, you know, for five, 10, 15 years.
And I think others of our competitors that have been utilizing electric technologies longer than we have have had that similar experience, equipment running for 10 years, and it's still on contract. Sure. Sure, the question was on labor availability. I think, you know, last year and the year before, we really saw some constraints there and some inflationary pressures. I think today we're in more of a low to no growth environment, and we've talked about that on our earnings calls. And that may not be as exciting as it relates to, you know, operating leverage, but it is something that's a bit easier to manage. And so that's how we're managing our business. We're looking at opportunities to grow that value chain, things like getting into sand containment, sand logistics of the last acquisition.
But, but as far as inflationary pressures, those have really diminished, this year. Question back there? It's a good question, on capacity utilization of the industry. We talk about this bifurcation of the market. If you think about the entire pressure pumping industry or hydraulic fracturing industry, you've got well-capitalized companies, public, some of those public companies. You've got a lot of, smaller, less capitalized companies, and, and so there's been a bifurcation. And that investment that we made, a lot of these companies couldn't do that, 'cause they had stressed balance sheets or just didn't have the capital. We think that that's gonna continue to occur. There is excess capacity utilization or excess capacity today. We think it's on the lower end of that market that we're really not competing for.
So when we go into Exxon, we're not competing with 10 other players. We're competing. They, they may invite five people to, to propose. They're really only looking at two or three. You know, Halliburton, ProPetro, and maybe one, one or two others. And so that's, that's the dynamics of the marketplace that we think really lean toward a company like ProPetro because of what we've done with our asset base. We have the configuration of assets that our customers value more than others.
Can you talk about the?
Sure. Yeah, so the question was on some of the different businesses, what's the interest there? You know, I think that we, we want to exploit a strength of ProPetro, and that is being in the Permian Basin with the concentration that we have. And there are things that are done in conjunction with the hydraulic fracturing at the same time. Wireline is one of those things. And yes, there is, you know, questions around more competition there, but if, if you're in a business with very high EBITDA to free cash flow conversion, that mitigates that risk, we think. And so, cementing business is another business that has very high free cash flow conversion from EBITDA. It's less capital intensive than the hydraulic fracturing business, and so we like cementing, we like wireline. You think about Schlumberger, they sold off everything except their cementing business.
You know, Halliburton really likes their cementing business, and that's because they're very low capital intensive businesses. I think that we're gonna continue to look at opportunities to lower the capital intensity of our business. Think of hydraulic fracturing with diesel, high capital intensity, hydraulic fracturing with electric, low capital intensity. So we're making that transition in the different steps that we're making from an acquisition standpoint and investment standpoint. That's correct.
Less more expensive.
Yeah.
What is-
Yeah, so, so the question is regarding, investment payback on a dual fuel technology versus electric. So it does require power capacity. You know, to run an electric frack fleet, you need a generator, and there's a generator on this slide here in the back, behind the PDU there, the power distribution unit. We can't convert to electric overnight. That power generation capability is being built out by the industry. Some are doing it internally, some third-party companies are building out that capacity. So it's gonna be a measured transition to electric over time. It's not something we can achieve overnight. The payback on the assets, number one, in the generation side, those are long-lived assets. They last 10+ years. The electric frack equipment lasts 10+ years.
So the payback economics are super as it relates to the equipment, and you have just much less capital and OpEx intensive business. Any other questions? We got nine seconds. All right, thank you.