Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Trican Well Service second quarter 2023 earnings results conference call and webcast. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Mr. Brad Fedora, President and Chief Executive Officer of Trican Well Service Limited. Please go ahead, Mr. Fedora. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for attending the Trican second quarter results conference call. To start the call, Scott Matson, our Chief Financial Officer, overview of the quarterly results. I will then provide some comments with quarter, the operating conditions, and the near. I will try to get through my comments as fast as possible. I know there's lots of calls, so we're hoping to wrap this up within 20 minutes or so, and then we will then open the call for questions. Several members of our executive team are here today on the call and are available for questions, and I'd now like to turn the call over to Scott to start things off. Thanks, Brad. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that this conference call may contain forward-looking statements and other information based on current expectations or results for the company. Certain material factors or assumptions that were applied in drawing conclusions or making projections are reflected in the forward-looking information section of our MD&A for Q2 of 2023. A number of business risks and uncertainties could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements and our financial outlook. Please refer to our 2022 Annual Information Form and the business risks section of our Q2 2023 MD&A and our MD&A for the year ended December 31st, 2022, for a more complete description of the business risks and uncertainties facing Trican. These documents are available both on our website and on SEDAR. During this call, we will refer to several common industry terms and use certain non-GAAP measures, which are more fully described in our Q2 2023 MD&A. Our quarterly results were released after close of market last night and are available both on SEDAR and on our website. With that, let's move on to the results for the quarter. Trican's results were significantly improved, with continued solid industry activity levels and a more moderate inflationary environment, which led to a more sustainable margin profile and improvements across virtually all major financial categories. Revenue for the quarter was CAD 168.2 million, about a 10% increase compared to the same period in last year. This was mostly attributable to a more constructive pricing environment, which allowed us to offset some of the inflationary pressures we were facing at this time last year. Adjusted EBITDA came in at CAD 31.9 million, a significant improvement over the CAD 19.2 million we generated in Q2 of 2022. I would note that our Adjusted EBITDA figure includes expenditures related to fluid end replacements, which totaled CAD 1 million in the quarter and were expensed in the period. Adjusted EBITDAS for the quarter came in at CAD 32.9 million or 20% of revenues, which is stronger when compared to the CAD 23.6 million and 15% of revenues we printed last year. To arrive at EBITDAS, we add back the effects of cash-settled, share-based compensation costs recognized in the quarter to more clearly outline the results of our actual operations and remove some of the financial noise associated with changes in our share price as we mark to market these items. We recognized approximately CAD 1 million in expense related to those items in the quarter. On a consolidated basis, we generated positive earnings of CAD 9.8 million in the quarter, which translates to about five cents a share basic and four cents per share on a fully diluted basis. We generated free cash flow of CAD 22.7 million during the quarter, as compared to the CAD 14.6 million we printed last year. Again, our definition of free cash flow is effectively EBITDAS, less non-discretionary cash expenditures, maintenance, capital, interest, cash taxes paid, and cash-settled stock-based comp. CapEx for the quarter totaled CAD 14.4 million, split between our maintenance capital program. About CAD 8.8 million of that was maintenance capital and upgrade capital of CAD 5.6 million. The upgrade capital was dedicated mainly to our Tier 4 capital refurbishment program and the ongoing electrification of some of the ancillary frac and frac support equipment, which Brad will touch on later. Balance sheet remains in excellent shape. We exited the quarter with positive working capital of approximately CAD 128 million, including cash of about CAD 40 million. Finally, in terms of return of capital, we were quite active in our NCIB program during the quarter and repurchased and canceled 7.5 million shares at an average price of about CAD 3.24 per share during the quarter. We remained active in July and repurchased and canceled an additional 2.7 million shares, which successfully concluded our 2022-2023 program. As noted in our press release, the Board of Directors yesterday declared a dividend of CAD 0.04 per share to be paid on September 30th, 2023, to shareholders of record as of close of business on September 15th, 2023. I would note that the dividends are designated as eligible dividends for Canadian tax purposes. With that, I'll turn things back to Brad for some comments on our current operating conditions and our outlook. Okay, thanks. I'll try to get through this as fast as possible. Overall, Q2 pretty much went as forecast. We're happy with the quarter. We always budget for bad weather and activity interruptions. The fires, I believe it or not, some of the floods did not have a material impact on our quarter. You know, some of the work was delayed until the summer, but that's to. On the cost side, we are still experiencing inflation on certain items. Overall, I would say inflation has really slowed down. With the improving exchange rate, some of the removal of some of the fuel surcharges, you know, some of our items like sand, actually went down in price, so that's a refreshing change for our customer base. On the pricing side, although the pricing has generally been stable, for the last year or so, we did experience some pricing pressure during bid season late in the quarter. It's always disappointing to see, but it feels like it's sort of stabilized here now that the bids are over, and I wouldn't expect there to be a lot of pricing changes for the remainder of this year. Everybody is sort of, I would say, overall, fairly full. I think pricing pretty much stable here, year of 2023. On the fracturing side, we're still operating seven frac crews. It's important to note this means that we're operating about 60% of our equipment. We have sort of a maximum capacity of 11-12 crews, depending on the size of the crews. You know, comparison to our competitors, who are operating basically at capacity, Trican is still at a stage where I wouldn't say our business is operating maximum efficiency with, with respect to revenue costs, and we can still improve our situation as we add crews to the basin. You know, we will not add those crews to the basin unless there is incremental. Certainly, I, I would say even quite profitable or in our space, we can definitely improve on that as we bring more field. The cementing side, really happy with that division. That's our cementing. Our cementing really speaks to how, how activity has built the year. As I've made reference to in prior, you know, I think this will get better and better as the years go by. See more of a material slowdown in December, just for the Christmas season, like sort of every other business in Canada. I think that's a welcome change, and certainly something I hope continues along this trend. Our, our market share in cementing is about 30%-35% overall, but 50% in the Montney in the deep basin. You know, we feel we have the most value to add with our technical abilities and our, our story of blends and our laboratory, so full service product offering. We're looking to add more into plays like Clearwater and heavy oil. We've previously pulled out of the, the labor shortages, so we're looking to get back into those, to those areas as we think they will be a continued focus of the, the next, you know, five to 10 years. Our, our ability to add in those spaces is really only limited by our ability to add staff. As everybody knows, addition for good quality labor is tough. People have lots of choices, we'll just high-quality labor so that we can continue on with our best-in-class service. On the coil side, we had a fairly slow quarter in coil, you know, so far, Q3 has started with a bang, so we're not discouraged by. We're operating sort of coil units, and although it's not a significant portion of our sales, we're still working to improve that division. I think I've mentioned in the past, it's not operating at a level that we're happy with, so we'll just continue to spend time on that. We've hired people, you know, that are dedicated full-time to getting that vision operating in a level that we're happy and it's keeping up with internally, with fracturing firms perspective. We'll just continue to grind away on that to make improvements. Outlook for the second half of this year, I think is pretty similar to last year. The rig count, although it was much higher in Q1, it seems to be basically tracking so far in Q3 similar to last year's levels. I think the second half of this year looks a lot like last year. You know, maybe Q3 is slightly higher and maybe Q4 is even maybe slightly lower. Overall, I would say, should be kind of a repeat of last year to a large extent. Even though our revenue is up 25% year to date, like the second half is great, like you said, to last year. I would say the pressure, I don't think we're undersupplied, and I don't think we're oversupplied. You know, and it seems like, it's sort of steady as she goes here. Our customers, their capital budget is very thoughtful in the way they're allocating capital, and even just the timing of the completions, I think, industry is getting more and more sophisticated. So, you know, they're spending less than free cash flow on completions, and so, you know, as commodity prices will always have volatilities, that sort of percentage of cash provides a really good shock absorber. I don't think you'll see big activity reactions to changes in, in commodity prices and like marketing in the U.S. They were sort of surprised how stable Canada can be. You know, one of our answers was, "Hey, you know, last year when, when we had CAD 100 oil in late 22, you know, you didn't see a drop wants to that." They sort of activity, you know, through these ups and downs in the commodity cycle. You know, we've got a hot summer in the U.S. and Europe, helping to clear out some of the gas storage to more normal levels. If we get a normal winter, I would expect we'll see gas prices go high. Incrementally. We're very encouraged with the advancements of the industry's relationship. We, we look at the LNG facilities being over 7 Bcf. Two, you know, two of which is very near term. You know, LNG drilling activity has started. This project is a very long life, you know, 50+ years, something the First Nations are very happy to be involved with. It, you know, very much aligns with their investment profile and timeline. With, you know, various facilities, whether it's, you know, in Squamish, B.C., at, you know, Woodfibre or LNG Canada in Kitimat, you know, we expect this to build over time, really underpins long-term stability in this basin. Of course, the Montney Deep Basin, you know, primarily gas-focused, which means they're very fraction intensive. We think this is, again, Western Canada is a great place to invest in and do business with over the long term. We think our product offering, in particular, is really well suited to this incremental LNG demand. You know, high-pressure wells, customers want low emissions. You know, both the customer and the First Nations want small footprints. They want less water consumption, clean air, you know, all of that, all of the technology that we've been investing in. On the supply chain, you know, we are seeing just as the amount of the tons of sand per well is growing, and we have some, you know, some big numbers in the Montney in particular. We are seeing what we will believe are current and future constraints within the, the logistics of sand. You know, we think the whole transloading system, rail system, trucking industry is basically running at capacity, and we've already seen instances where there's a sand, sand shortage in certain areas of Western Canada. We don't think this will get anything but worse, frankly. Third-party trucks and just the logistics system in general is very tight. It's not that well built out as we expand into Northeast BC. You know, there's less and less Class 1 drivers who want to drive in the oilfield today. You know, this, of course, we see as an opportunity. We're looking at lots of different stuff. We want to invest in sand logistics and making sure that the last-mile logistics is as low as possible, which, you know, has a drastic impact on cost. Our product offering. Again, we're very bullish on Western Canada. We think we're going to play a growing role in the overall global natural gas picture. We want. We're invested for the long term and make sure that we can deliver our services as efficiently as possible. You know, we believe plays like the Montney, combined with LNG exports, will long-term base of activity. You know, we're in, you know, we still have a pristine balance sheet. We exited the quarter with about CAD 40 million of cash, lots of positive working capital. That just gives us the, you know, frankly, the luxury of looking at anything and everything to improve our business. We're going to invest predictable long-term returns and making sure that, you know, good for our shareholders. Continue on with our differentiation and modernization strategy. You know, state-of-the-art equipment, making sure our systems are leading-edge, you know, really focusing on the ESG side of the business, developing out our, you know, partnerships with in Alberta. You know, that'll play a role as we go forward, this is all under the guiding principle of clean air and clean water, and we're making sure that our investments align with, with all of those, with all of those principles. We rolled out our first low emissions spread last year. We're really happy with how that technology is performing. We get our fifth Tier 4 fleet in late Q4 of this year. Five out of seven crews will be, you know, state-of-the-art, brand new Tier 4 spreads with low emissions, low footprint, less people able to withstand the pumping times. Since we started this program, 38 million liters of diesel with natural gas, so you know, something we're really proud of. It's something that our customers and the communities really want to see more the lines in oil and gas, activity and development with, with what the public wants, smaller footprint, less carbon emissions, etcetera. You know, we, we expect this technology will continue. We expect it'll become the standard in the industry, and so as a result, you know, we need to continue to look at ways to differentiate ourselves. As Scott was mentioning, you know, starting in Q1, we've electrified the ancillary equipment on the fleet, which means, you know, that means it is operation. Enables us to reduce the number of people that we have in what we call the hot zone, where the pressurized pipe is laid out. And it also, combined with Tier 4 technology, allows us to have gas substitution rates of over 90%. Again, our, you know, our goal is to have 100% natural gas on location, to pump no, no diesel at all, and this is just the next step in that, in that overall goal. We'll continue to invest in that electrified equipment as forward, as we think it's, you know, it's a win for us and for our customers. Just the design of the blender in particular, I think we've the reliability, still working out some gain in the design, but we think overall it'll be a much improved piece of equipment. You know, and it's important to note, you know, since we've, we've upgraded so much of our fleet, that we now actually have sort of 11 of 12 fleets that are field ready. Generally been upgrading parked equipment, and as we've been upgrading load, that equipment for, we've been sort of displacing a traditional diesel spread. Now, you know, eleven-- we have 11 fleets field ready, when you think about the spare capacity in Canada, you know, we pretty much have the bulk of it, and it is ready to go. Any more capital investment for us, when you look at the parked equipment at our competitors, it, you know, just like, to get it. You know, not only do we have the most technically advanced new fleet, but our entire fleet has basically been reworked. You look back fast to, to this industry and where we were at, you know, even just a short few years ago, you know, we've gone from an aging fleet that required a lot of capital to basically half our fleet is brand new and the other half is, is ready to go. We feel like we're in a great position to take advantage of, of increasing activity and even just increasing focus in, in, in Northeast BC, Northwest Alberta. Really happy where we're positioned. Sure. On the return of capital side, you know, our priorities are, have not changed. We want to build a resistant, sustainable, and differentiated company, invest in growth opportunities that provide, you know, returns for our shareholders and our customers long term. Of course, provide a consistent return on capital for our shareholders through dividends and buybacks. you know, we focused heavily on the NCIB this year. We finished it early, like Scott Matson was saying, we bought 23.1 million shares since last October at an average price of CAD 3.37 a share. When you roll this program back to 2017, you know, overall, we've bought over 143 million shares at an average price of CAD 2 a share, which represents just over 41%. Very successful program, you know, regardless of how the market is valuing us and our space. We look at this, at these multiples and think it's screaming buy, you can't go wrong. We expect to renew our NCIB in October and remain committed to this program for what may be the long term. you know, we now pay a quarterly. Well, just to provide some certainty and stability in our return capital strategy, but look, look for us to be active again in the fall on shares back. I think I'll stop there, and I'll turn the call over to, to the operator for questions. We will now begin the question and answer session. To join the question queue, you may press Star, then one on your telephone keypad. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To withdraw your question, please press Star, then two. The first question comes from Aaron MacNeil with TD Cowen. Please go ahead. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. As it relates to the quarter, I was a bit surprised to see proppant pump down 15% on a year-over-year basis, but revenues up 10%. I know you referenced both stronger pricing and a change in customer well designs in the disclosures, but I'm hoping you can sort of parse that out a bit more for us. Like, what was pricing, what was well design, and what specifically changed in, in well design from a, on a year-over-year basis? Oh, I don't, we don't have all of that information with us here, but I wouldn't get too fussed by those stats. You know, like, just depending on the customer base and what they're developing, what they're completing, you know, that can change quite drastically from quarter to quarter, frankly. I don't have any more detail handy here, Aaron, to give you much more than that. It's not something that we track that closely, frankly. Fair enough. You sort of touched on this at various points of your prepared remarks, you know, we've seen ARC sanction Attachie, Strathcona just went public or is-- intends to go public via Pipestone and are guiding to growth in the sort of high single digits. Logan, again, small, but also committing to more of a traditional growth model. You highlighted the parked equipment in your prepared remarks. I guess I'm just trying to understand, what do you think the likelihood is, in your view, that some of this equipment goes back to work in 2024 or another time frame that you think is reasonable? I think for sure we'll be bringing, you know, one, maybe two spreads into this basin in the next 12, 15. You know, just the momentum, it feels like there's always, you know, slowdowns and then, you know, there's always little pauses along the way, but it's in this business for the long-. The transactions that you just mentioned, I mean, those transactions, they result in increased activity, right? Like, they don't, you know, you, you've taken sort of not assets, but maybe undercapitalized into much stronger hand, you know, financially stronger hands. That just means an increase in activity. When you've got, you know, LNG is real, TMX is real, you know, the, the world wants more Canadian natural gas, in particular, more Canadian oil. As we know, it's the cleanest, it's the cleanest hydrocarbon in the world. You know, I look at this and I've never felt. I've said this before, I think a few times, but never felt good, this good about the business when I look out five, 10 years. You know, I don't think it's gonna go crazy, I don't think we're gonna see these huge swings in, in activity, activity level from year to year that we were all thought was normal when you go back, you know, pre, pre-2016. No, I think it's, I think, I think all of that parked equipment that we have or, you know, those five spreads that are, some of it comes off the tier in the next year. That's great. Thanks, Brad. I'll turn it over. The next question comes from Cole Pereira with Stifel. Please go ahead. Morning, all. Just thinking about capital allocation in 2024. I mean, with your five Tier 4s, do you feel there's adequate demand and upside for more of those upgrades, or are you kind of fine with your footprint in that regard? You know, how do you kinda think about... You talked about share buybacks, but maybe further dividend increases, potentially M&A, et cetera. Yeah, I mean, we're always pausing and reviewing different technologies. So we've got 5. We're currently waiting on the results from what was a 100% natural gas engine. You know, we're still waiting to see how that works out. So we might pivot just in our, our never-ending pursuit of having a percent natural gas. I, you know, we don't feel, we don't sort of feel, we feel like we're very much ahead of the game, and that gives us the luxury of being able to pause and look around to say, "Hey, you know, let's not get too, let's not have the blinders on with our technology." You know, we'll, we'll figure out what's happening and, you know, I still think, you know, more of our fleet will be converted. I think the industry is gonna, just based on everything I've already said. You know, we have a placeholder for capital. It's very similar to this year. You know, our NCIB will be pursued. You know, this is a Board decision, not my decision, but I would expect sort of once a year, we'll recalibrate our dividend so that, you know, the absolute overall aggregate dividend payout doesn't change from year to year, but just as our share count shrinks, you would expect the dividend per share to go up. That seems like a logical approach. As far as M&A goes, nothing, nothing's changed. I mean, we're all trading at crazy low multiples, which maybe makes it hard. As with oil, you know, looking back 20 years, you know, the market for M&A in the oilfield is always different. It's, it's maybe, you know, it's a consolidated space already. You know, we continue to look at that and look at other operating divisions company. You know, we're clean balance sheet, excess cash on the, in the bank. We have a relatively well-priced, stock within us. We think we're in a, we're in a great. Okay, got it. Thanks. Just quickly, Scott, can you talk about how we should be thinking about working capital changing into Q3? Can you refresh, you know, the timeline when you think Trican goes cash taxable? Thanks. Yeah, I think we'll see a similar cadence in terms of working capital that we saw through 2022. Like, we saw a pretty big release coming out of Q1 into Q2. That'll start to build a little bit as we come through three and four, you know, as you would expect, as activity increases from there. You'll, you'll note, one of the things we did make note of is that we are now moving into a cash taxable position, so we expect to actually fund some of the current tax liability that we've got accruing on the books early next year when that goes out. So you'll see that number build through the year, and then we'll, we'll make our first payment, likely in Q1 next year, and then we'll install as normal from there. Okay, got it. Thanks. That's all for me. I'll turn it back. You bet. The next question comes from Keith Mackey with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning. Just wanted to start out on your, your, differentiation strategy, which you've been very clear on in the last, year to two, Brad. So you've got four to five DGB fleets. You're starting the electrification of the ancillary items. I imagine as you think about your competitors potentially catching up on some of those things, the differentiation strategy has to be a continuum. What is next in your view on, on where you need to differentiate in order to, you know, maintain the, the position you've got and put yourself in potentially the best position to capture some of the, emerging work, whether it's LNG or, or, or other types of work? Well, we're not gonna get... yeah, maybe I'll just say this: I absolutely agree with you that, you know, differentiation in our space is temporary. In general, you know, you can replicate or almost any technology, and so it's very, very hard to continue to say that you are going to be a leader in technology. You know, so far it's been working and we're That's why, you know, things like, okay, that's nice, but what's ancillary, right? Probably will remain, it will remain that way for some time. You know, the diff and so the differentiation gets maybe more difficult if, if technology isn't rapidly changing. And you got to obviously make sure you get a return in the near term. You know, I would say what's next for us is more on the logistics side of the business, and I'm not going to give you any more color than that. It's, you know, there are a lot of product moving around, and when you've got Montney wells with, I'm talking metric tons here, doesn't much matter, but, you know, you've got 10,000 plus tons in a well. That's an awful lot of product to get from A to B in a very. Knowing full well that you just can't store it. Every time you take it from truck to rail or rail to truck, it's, you know, you add CAD 10 a ton to the equation very quickly. You know, we're starting to look at almost turning the clock back and starting to look at the basics again. Because logistics can really have an impact on not just the quality of your service offering, but on the profitability of it, and looking for little places to squeak out little savings and, and efficiencies. You know, when you're looking at this many tons per year of sand pumped, man, you scrape a few nickels off the edges, they add up quickly. Yeah, yeah, got it. Just to follow up on that. With the, the, the potential to get into, you know, more, more logistics type of offerings or, or whatever it ends up being in general, would you see a necessity for your capital intensity to change? Like, could you continue to, to, to do those types of investments, meaningfully without spending materially different from how you're-- you know, the amount of capital you're spending, you know, today at that kind of CAD 100 million-CAD 115 million? How should we think about that? Yeah, I mean, that probably depends on the year, but I, I think it's a pretty good placeholder. You know, when you look out a few years. I mean, you know, I, I don't know the answer, and it can change every day, but feels to me, I mean, you know how it goes in this business. You can only spend so much money intelligently without overbuilding or, you know, causing a bunch of product inflation, and just the supply chain of stuff, whether it's an engine or a rail car, you know, you just can't get everything you want in the time you want it. When you think about aggregate capital spend on a per year basis, it feels like what we've been doing probably should be relatively consistent going. Yeah, maybe, you know, and there are going to be years where it's, it's less, and there's going to be more, but I think it's a pretty good placeholder from a, you know, building a cash flow model, say. Okay, thanks, Brad. I appreciate the comments. Thanks. Once again, if you have a question, please press star, then one. The next question comes from Waqar Syed with ATB Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Thanks for taking the question. Brad, as you think about building your logistics business, your thinking is mostly confined towards frac sand logistics, or you're also thinking of maybe, you know, fuels as well, distribution, like, you know, natural gas, others? Number one, and number two, the logistics business you're thinking about only to cater to your own fleets or also to be providing services to third parties as well? I don't want to answer any of those questions, Waqar. I mean, we everything. That would, and it, you know, you've, that's you've pointed out a good, you've found a good point. Like, it's not just sand, right? Our business is not just, it's not just sand that's moving around. When you have these natural gas fleets, there's an awful lot of natural gas that needs to be delivered on location in a short period of time. Not everybody has the luxury of a, you know, 10 wells that were drilled last year to tap into for gas supply, right? It could be, you know, it could be fuel, whether it's, you know, diesel and, and, and natural gas or, you know, the other big items obviously are sand, and then there's some chemicals, but that's probably tiny comparison. As far as, you know, we're going to do it for our own benefit or are these, like, sort of independently operating businesses, and the answer is we're looking at everything. You know, there's no press release coming tomorrow. Like, this is, you know, we're, we're looking at it. We're being very thoughtful, you know, very analytical. You know, we're looking at the whole, the whole sort of value chain, I guess, right from the beginning. You know, we love Canadian market, we'd much rather grow our presence here than sort of take Hail Marys in other countries. We're looking at, that means we, we, we look at everything. Yeah, makes sense. Then, in terms of the supply chain for Tier 4 DGB, how is that, you know, improved or, you know, changed? So what's kind of the earliest delivery if you were to order, you know, a new fleet today? Yeah, I'll hand that over to Todd Thue, our COO. Yeah, the supply chain has improved slightly, but it's still quite a long lead time, probably in the neighborhood of 12 to 18 months to for delivery and retrofit of equipment. Okay. Any changes on the pricing side for that equipment? Yeah. Okay. Thank you, sir. Thanks. Okay, thanks, everyone. I guess this concludes our call. There's no more questions in the queue. Thanks for joining. Thanks for taking the time. The executive team is available for the remainder of the day for questions. Please call us directly if there's any other questions you would. Thanks. We'll talk to you again next quarter. This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.