My name is Jack Greenberg with the Southwest IDEAS Conference, hosted by Three Part Advisors. Thank you all for coming. Our next presentation will begin with Select Water Solutions, traded on the NYSE under the symbol WTTR. Presenting on their behalf is John Schmitz, Chairman and CEO, and with that, I'll hand it over to John. Thank you.
Good morning, everybody. My name is John Schmitz. I'm the Chairman, CEO of the company. Founded the company in 2007. The common public company disclaimer: I ain't gonna go over it. Wouldn't be good at it anyways. The company is built on sustainable water application. We're born in the oil and gas industry. Most of the revenue and concentration is in the oil and gas industry today. But what we do every day and in a meaningful way is we source water. We treat that water. We store it, gather it, distribute it, and dispose of it. We also are now very focused on taking waste stream. So the water that's getting disposed in the oil and gas industry and doing beneficial reuse programs with it to make it usable again or introduce it back into the environment.
If you look at the makeup of the company today, across the oil and gas space, we will be the leader in integrated water, and along with our integrated water position that we got, we'll talk about today, we introduce chemistry, so chemistry is a big position, both in making the water usable for what we do with it, as well as putting it in the water to actually frac the well or complete the well and bring it online. This company is a very good profile and sustainable free cash flow. There's three reporting segments we'll go through. Two of them are, you know, 80% plus conversion, and one of them is the growth area, which is the infrastructure. Company has a very strong balance sheet. We'll go over it real quick today.
But a conservative position, both in the balance sheet and the attitude of debt as it relates to the company. We're very disciplined in what we're doing with the M&A side, as well as the projects that we're investing in. These are very driven toward water infrastructure, long-term contracts, high gross margin, and the production life of the well. We have a strong commitment to shareholders' return. We just increased the dividend again, and we've returned about $182 million, $188 million since 2018, either through share buybacks or through a regular way dividend that we put in place and have raised twice now. We have a very big focus on sustainability, being a water company and trying to convert waste streams of disposed water into beneficial reuse water. We fit that slot very well. As I said, we report in three segments.
The first segment on the left is where all the growth is. That's the acquisitions that we've done and all the projects that we've announced and the projects that we continue to negotiate. This is the growth area. It is fixed assets with long-term contracts, high gross margin, low employee count, high automation and technology application. And it's through the production life of the well. So the water that actually comes out of the reservoir with the oil and gas and what we do with that water. The water services business is more like a last mile logistics. It's a temporary piping system primarily that is laid out to do the completion work around the well. And that is one of the high gross margin, I mean, high free cash flow conversion out of profitability. It's about an 80% free cash flow conversion out of its profits.
And then, as I said, our chemistry is chemistry that's used in and around making the water usable. So the treatment side of the water, as well as the chemistry used to actually perform the completion job for the well. This slide really shows you the life of water throughout an oil and gas application. You know, if we back up and look at ourselves coming out of the COVID pandemic, this company would have been 90% plus in completion activity. So simply the dollars that are being spent by our customers to drill and complete wells, we would have been 90-plus% in the completion side in our revenue base. We have converted that.
Now you can see at the top there, it's about 64% more driven to completions and 36% now in the production life of the well, the water again that comes out with the oil and gas and what we do with that water. But we're going to be leaders in all these buckets throughout the Lower 48. Any place there's horizontal application of completions going from, you know, the Canadian line to Mexico, this company is going to have a position, and it's going to have a position of a leading position in all these different buckets, except the white bucket in the middle. You can see that's hydraulic fracturing. We do not do that. We deliver the water to it, to the frac horsepower that does what it does. We pick the water back up.
We treat it, recycle it, store it, move it, and dispose of it on the right side. This slide is very important in the position that we put together now. As I said, this used to be a callout service business, 90% plus around the completion side. We have really changed the footprint of the company since coming out of COVID. There's a couple of these systems. These are pipelines and rights of way and plants and disposal wells and storage across the United States. But the upper left-hand, that's Eddy and Lea County, New Mexico. All the blue lines across there, that's our right of way across those two counties. This is some of the most prolific rock in the United States. And we got a really favorable position really early.
This is an area that is converting very quickly from off of freshwater sources to produced water recycling or fracking purpose, as well as this is an area that the water growth is outstripping the infrastructure, and that infrastructure has to be put in place. And that's those long-term contracts I talked about. The bottom right is a really important piece of the slide, too. That's the Haynesville Shale. So this is the DeSoto Parish, Louisiana. That blue line is the only trunk line coming out of Louisiana into Joaquin, Texas. There's 160,000 barrels a day of produced water on that system. And that is the only system in that very important play in the United States that can gather, transport, and dispose of water out of Louisiana into Texas. Our customer base is primarily going to be the upstream players.
So it's going to be both large, integrated, large, publicly traded, PE backed independents. You'll see a couple of pressure pumpers there. That's our chemistry. It sells some of its chemistry into the fracking companies like Halliburton or Liberty and Patterson. Not all that chemistry is spec'd out by the horsepower. It's spec'd out by the E&P company, even though it's still sold through the horsepower. But the rest of the page you can see is primarily going to be, you know, the producers in the United States that's drilling, completing, and producing these wells as we develop this unconventional play. Yeah, this is the revenue stream coming out of COVID, as well as the earnings. I would point out a couple of things here, so the revenue ramp was meaningful, as you can see on the left side.
But most importantly, you can also see on the left side, the revenue mix. So as we started building revenue back, we changed the profile of the company, as I described, more callout completions, very cyclical in nature, and started really investing in the production life or the produced water out of the wellbore and what we do with it. So the revenue mix was very important. You can see on the right side the actual earnings growth, and a lot of that growth comes out of that infrastructure space. So if you look at that infrastructure space, it's had a very big ramp, and it's where all the projects are that we'll discuss a little bit. This slide just demonstrates the two reporting segments of the company that has high free cash flow conversion. You know, this is 70%-80% of conversion since 2022.
It's in our water services and our chemicals, and that money is helping us completely invest in our water infrastructure, where all the contracts are, where all the production life is, high gross margin on it, so we have, in that infrastructure, we have done $160 million of transactions this year. We have got today about $120 million of announced projects of new build in recycling pipelines, storage, disposal, contracted application, and that's on the right side, and that's where all the investment's going. Very disciplined about it. This is what we think it'll cause. You can see in 2018, the company ran about $1.6 billion in revenue, but you know, 80% of it was water services, very cyclical. It's all services applications to the completing of wells, so exposed to commodity prices and, you know, customer spend.
Then the gross profit and the way that it's starting to change in nature. And then where we're headed to in 2025 over there on the right side, we think more than 50% of the gross margins of the company is going to come out of chemicals and infrastructure. But most importantly, the projects that we got in place, we've announced, and the projects in the backlog that we haven't announced, water infrastructure actually is going to be greater than 50% of the earnings power of the company short term. This is what's going on in the market. So these are recycled barrels. So as I said, in Eddy and Lea County, the most prolific rock in the United States, the state of New Mexico is very focused to quit using freshwater to frac wells with and start recycling produced water to do that.
So this is the growth of recycled produced water in our company over a very short period of time. We are the leader in fixed recycling facilities, primarily in the Permian Basin. We were the first recycled fixed recycling facility or plant in the Permian Basin, and we're probably number one by three in volume capacity. This is how we got here, really. We did a lot of acquisitions coming out of COVID. A lot of companies had bad balance sheets, had broken business model. There was a full transition inside the industry from fresh to produced fixed assets for high volumes, very complex jobs that are intense, engineered, and three times in volume in a very short period of time. So we did a lot of transactions to give us an asset and a footprint across the United States in that infrastructure opportunity.
And then we started doing individual assets, not companies, as an add-on to that. So fill it in to basically take the companies we bought that were broken, added the assets that were meaningful assets to fit within those acquisitions. And then we created the systems, the full life cycle water systems that we apply today and have contracts around. But these are the transactions we did that allowed us to put that opportunity together. As I said, the balance sheet is very conservative. You know, this company, we just had third quarter earnings. It was about a $72 million EBITDA quarter. This company has a net debt of about $70 million coming out of the quarter. You know, we're very conservative in the management of the debt profile of the company.
But as I said, we're also very disciplined in what we're doing, both in M&A and project work. It's going to be contracted. It's going to have a 3-year cash on cash. It's going to have a 50% gross margin. It's going to be in the production life of the well. And that conversion is happening, and we're going to protect the balance sheet as we do that. As I said, we're, you know, we are committed to shareholders' returns. We put a regular way dividend in place. We just raised it again. It was about a 17% increase. We have been known to do stock buybacks. Currently, we are very focused on the opportunity in the infrastructure space because those opportunities are very meaningful returns and very meaningful in shareholder value creation.
But we have been and are currently active in shareholders' returns and continue to have a heavy focus there. As I said, the dividend we increased this last to $0.07. That's a 17% increase. As I said early in the presentation, we have had about $188 million of shareholder returns, either through share repurchases or regular way dividends since 2018. And it's an area that we actually think we're building a franchise and a thesis that is going to be more favorable to shareholder returns and regular way dividends because it's predictable in nature. It's life of well. It's produced water. It's contracted. It's high gross margin. So we feel like the profile of the company is going to actually support this thesis go forward. As I said, Water Solutions Leader across the United States. We were the first to apply fixed recycling.
We have the biggest network of storage of recycling capacity. We are very much focused on water balancing. So taking multiple sources and being able to manage those sources through gathering, through storage, through recycling, and through disposal has our customers' need to deal with their water that they're producing, as well as deal with the water needed to actually complete the well. Free cash flow is in two of the segments is very good to support the infrastructure segment, and we're very focused on that. As I commented, we're going to protect the balance sheet as we go forward. We're going to be very disciplined on the M&A, and we are committed to shareholders' return. Sustainability just fits a company that's trying to take waste streams and convert it back into usable streams.
So our sustainability and our sustainability report that's on our website is very much around water recycling safety metrics and how we apply that through our company. So with that, I'll stop and see if there's any questions you'd like to ask.
Your early slide, you showed the percentage or the revenue per well completion. Is that a function of adding chemicals, et cetera, et cetera, or is there some other dynamic there that's, I guess the question is, what is driving that increase?
Yeah, the most of it is intensity around the completion. So water volumes used to complete these wells, both in the conversion of the transition from a hybrid gel system frac fluids to a slickwater frac. That volume of water went from 60,000 barrels per completion to 600,000-800,000 barrels per completion. And then the longer laterals.
So we're drilling four-mile laterals in the industry today. That's reservoir rock that they're exposing. The more reservoir rock, the more water per completion is needed. And the more water completion, either through just volumes or through bigger jobs, because the longer laterals means engineered, very complex, multi-source, you know, frac jobs. So to give you an idea, we announced this. We did one job for Endeavor Energy Resources in the Permian. This was six different sources of produced water from six different operators that had to be brought together through some kind of logistics agreement. We went through one of our fixed recycling facilities, 300,000 barrels a day of produced water going through that recycling facility to make it usable to frac. And then we delivered that to four frac crews on one pad for 40 days in a row, 24 hours a day without interruption.
So they become very complex, but just the size itself is driving the revenue grab. And then we capture more of the revenue because as you got complexity, as you got networks, as you got systems, it turned into one company instead of six companies, and you add the chemistry in it. So we capture more of the wallet because we actually make it capacity availability to pull the job off. Yes, sir. The chemistry that is kind of the secret sauce is an engineering. I guess my question is, what keeps Halliburton out of this business? As it compares to Halliburton, it is a very different company. So Halliburton's a frac company. And frac companies, you know, go to location, set up, perform the frac job, and then rig down and move off. This company is contracted. It's through the life cycle of the well.
So it's very different in that nature. What's the secret sauce, if you will? Chemistry is really, really important, but that's not necessarily the secret sauce. The secret sauce really is being able to water balance. So these are large, large water systems that it takes a lot of knowledge base through, you know, actual reservoirs to contain the water, be able to store it and have flexibility in that storage, be able to recycle it and store it, or be able to dispose of it when it's not needed and your storage is getting full. There's not frac jobs. Business is shifted. So the real secret sauce is actually the automation and being able to run these systems across the United States through that automation and balance that water on it. Logically, the difference in this company is we have contracted that right.
Our surface use agreements, our pipes, our fixed facilities, our disposal, these contracts through the production life of the well are 10-15 years of nature. And that's a real big difference. When you're moving 300,000 barrels a day for 40 days in a row, and you're doing it from six sources, you're doing it through a recycling facility, and you're doing it in storage, and then you're delivering it, you're constantly pulling from one, storing in another, sending back to a different one, making sure that you can balance that water, that it's there when they need it, and that you can dispose of it when they don't. And you're the mechanisms that allows that to happen. You know, the Permian Basin is a very big challenge within the Permian Basin on water.
And Permian Basin is, you know, roughly half of the United States Lower 48 production today. But those wells out there produce three barrels to six barrels of water with every barrel of oil. So you read about those wells that are making 2,000 and 3,000 barrels of oil. Times six is the water that's coming out of the reservoir. And that is a complex problem that needs a solution. And this company is really built to be the solution, whether it's beneficial reuse, taking that water and making it usable for agriculture purposes, industrial purposes, municipality purposes, disposing of it properly without environmental concerns, moving it out of basin, moving it from one area that it's not needed to another area that it is needed. So it's a very complex problem that has transitioned to a very sizable project problem and heavily weighted to the Permian Basin.
I want to thank you, yes sir.
Yes sir. What is the average lateral length today? And then secondarily, we've heard about the takeaway has been a bit of a constraint on the Permian. Has any component of water led to constraint in production in the Permian?
First of all, I'd answer your second question. The constraint to producing, drilling, completing, or producing wells in the Permian Basin has not been affected in a meaningful way yet by the lack of ability to manage the water or dispose of the water. There have been temporary problems because of earthquakes where you could have certain production curtailed while they moved water from one area to another and got that figured out. But I would say it's not been a meaningful constraint of either bringing on new wells or producing the wells that exist today.
As far as gas is concerned, you know, the interesting thing about water is it's kind of used everywhere, right? So if you think of carbon sequestration or you think of data processing in big data centers or, you know, producing electricity for that fact, all that uses water. And most of the ability to make that water usable for various things uses energy. So having natural gas and having an oversupply to produce water in a certain area actually could be an opportunity that hasn't been harvested yet. Lateral lengths probably average three today. If you go to the DJ, it'd be probably two miles. If you go to the Haynesville, there's starting to be fours. Bakken's got some fours. So fours. Utica's got some fours. I would say if I was thinking average today, it'd probably be three. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.
With regards to the M&A activity, just thinking through pipelines on documents, specific verticals you guys are excited about, how is those processes going? You guys are called the Dallas Cowboys of the space, and there's the Cleveland Browns of the space can come and pay somebody top dollar on those developments.
Well, we win first, so I want to make sure that's right. You know, the interesting thing about it is as you started putting the transactions together, we bought Nuverra after bankruptcy, Basic bunches of these companies. What we found is isolated asset base that fit within the system, but the current ownership of those asset base don't own the system and don't have the ability to create the system. So in a way, that asset becomes very stranded. But it's a very important asset as long as it gets exposed to the system.
So that Haynesville Shale system that I showed you coming out of DeSoto Parish, Louisiana, you know, that is piped water instead of trucked. And there is a considerable amount of disposal wells that are now hooked into that pipeline system that were trucked disposal wells before they got hooked into that pipeline system. So they were, you know, impaired assets in a very transition pipeline gathering atmosphere that we bought attractively. And then once we put them in our systems, they become very part of the systems and very good assets with a different earnings profile to them.
Kind of touched on what I was going to ask about. In terms of the real value in your company that you're offering, you've got technology and you've got the system. Where do you see that going down the road in terms of your advantages as the state environmental concerns probably increase? That's an opportunity too. It's not for you.
Yeah. Yeah. Our customers are the E&P companies today. Regulatory application primarily affects them. We're primarily a solution provider. So if they get affected in a meaningful way and it curtails something, makes something harder, we're the company that figures it out and tries to come up with a solution for them. So regulatory primarily is usually a favorable position to this company. You know, if I think about where it goes, where it is and where it's going, we got, you know, the $120 million of projects that I exposed to you. We announced those. You can look at them. There's a pretty big backlog behind those, very similar that we're negotiating now.
We think this is probably a 12-month to 24-month before you start moving and recycling and gathering and systems into more of a built-out instead of our early stage, but once we get there, you can think of we now our contracts are around the water. So you have now contracted water through life of well, put it in a system in big volumes, and if you can do something with that water, extract minerals out of it, or, you know, precious material that you can use, or if you can figure out how to treat a piece of that water that you can grow crops with, or you can do something different than just disposing of it, you now have the volume, you now have the control, you have the contracts, and you can start thinking about what's the second stage.
The other thing that I would tell you is that we're really good at sourcing, moving, and, you know, storing, treating, gathering, and distributing, as well as disposal. That's what this company does, and it does it in a meaningful way. That problem has, as it relates to water, fits industries outside the oil and gas because they have the same issues. Water is an issue. So we think there's things we can do and are starting to look at things outside the oil and gas space as well.
We have not run into any legal problems, but the industry is still figuring their way out because you're taking, you know, they're very focused on taking lithium out of water now, or, you know, who actually does the water belong to, or who does the lithium belong to, or if you're going to use it in carbon capture, how does that fit in? So I'd say the industry is working their way through all that application of rights to ownership, as well as movement across state lines, as well as movements across different private property owners. But we as a company have not had legal issues.