Are we good? Thanks. Thank you. So I'm Stephen Gengaro, and I'm the oil service analyst here at Stifel. We have Brady Murphy and Elijio Serrano from TETRA for our next conversation. So TETRA's got, and we'll go into this in a lot of detail, but they have two core sort of traditional oil service businesses that I followed probably for 20 years. And then they have some really exciting kind of low carbon growth initiatives that we're going to dig into. But maybe we start, we just start with an overview of the business. Maybe give us just a couple minutes on your sort of core segments. Yeah, sure. Thanks, Stephen. So, so TETRA's been around since 1981. So over, over 40 years we've been in business. We started around the completion fluids business, and the aqueous chemistry is the, the core competency that the company started that completion fluids business. And it's even to this day is, is really one of the strengths of the company. We've been in and out of a lot of businesses over the years, like many oil field services companies. But a few years ago, Elijio and myself took a, a strategy to the board to really refocus the company around the, the, the core competency of, of aqueous fluids chemistry. We divested our compression business at the time and laid out a strategy that Stephen had mentioned that allows us to ultimately transition from our core oil and gas services business into low carbon energy segments, higher growth, we believe higher returns businesses of the future. But today our two core segments are completion fluids business, where we have a, a very strong market share position, some leading technology. It's still very much related to the deep water offshore part of the business. And then our water management business in North America supporting the, the unconventional business, really shifting more from water transfer, water sourcing, which in the early days started to now more of a produced water focus for, for treatment and recycling. And really where we want to move that business is into the, the recycling and desalination for beneficial reuse. I'm sure we'll talk a little bit more about that. So both businesses doing very well. I think we had $640 million of revenue, $107 million of EBITDA last year. We feel very, very good about, you know, where we're positioned and where we're heading. Maybe we start on the fluid side. You know, we've seen good margin progression, and you've kind of been hovering kind of mid-20s% with some quarters, I think a little bit actually north of 30%. Can you just talk about sort of the drivers of fluids margins and sort of how we should think about kind of a normalized level going forward? Yeah. So our fluids business runs typically in the mid-20s to high 20s. As you mentioned, there will be the quarter or two, particularly if we do a Neptune job, where we will leap over the 30%, you know, even as high as I think it's 34% to 35% when we do a large Neptune job. So yeah, that business is very solid. I think we feel like those margins will continue to improve over time, especially as we start to bring on our own bromine supply and we can lower the cost that we're currently paying through a long-term contract for bromine. We'll also be layering on additional demand without really a lot of additional infrastructure costs on top of that as the deep water market grows and as we bring on our electrolyte supply for Eos and others that we see in the future. So that business is extremely healthy, and we feel like we'll continue to advance the margin progression over the coming years. When we think about TETRA and deep water, there's probably two parts of this question. Sort of one is, is there a key region or is it sort of the kind of like quote unquote golden triangle plus Guyana that's sort of your key end market? Yeah. No, those are the traditional deep water markets. We've positioned ourselves very well in the Gulf of Mexico. We've actually increased capacity the last couple of years through some expansion investments in the Gulf of Mexico, in Brazil, and the North Sea. Then the Middle East is becoming a bigger, not necessarily deep water, but certainly an offshore market where TETRA is able to sell its higher value completion fluids. So those four offshore segments are where we actually have our own services and we're able to deliver services to the operators. Other markets we participate in, West Africa, Asia, other offshore deep water markets, but typically through our relationships with the big service companies in those markets. Who are you competing with on the deep water and offshore fluids side? So we're the only completion fluids company that's vertically integrated. We manufacture, produce our own completion fluids products. So from a services side, we compete with the likes of Halliburton, Schlumberger, and Baker. The and for deep water, that's really the only four companies that would be considered for deep water completion fluids today. However, since we're the only one vertically integrated, we also sell some oftentimes to those parties who have to buy from a third party a completion fluid. So we feel that gives us a really unique and strong position to be in. In addition, we have some technology that those guys don't have, Neptune being an example, where they'll come to us for some of their technical solutions. And one more on the fluid side. You've mentioned Neptune a few times. I mean, we've seen it like when there's a Neptune job, I mean, like you can just look at the margin profile and it just spikes. Just the differentiation between a normal deep water job and a CS Neptune job. Why do you use CS Neptune? And is it something that can kind of, is there a path to sort of a sustainable level of CS Neptune versus regular work given what we're seeing in the deep water markets being so strong? Sure. Yeah. I don't wanna get too technical, but you know, Neptune is a zinc-free bromine-based completion fluid. Zinc bromide is used in very high density, high pressure, formations, but zinc is banned. It's, it's a marine pollutant in many markets around the world. So that creates an opportunity for a zinc-free completion fluid. Now, in the Gulf of Mexico, operators can still use zinc, but the problem with zinc also is when you get to higher temperatures, 275 degrees or higher, it's extremely corrosive. So that affects the, you know, the tubulars of the operator. So that's a new, another opportunity for Neptune to step in because we can operate at much higher temperatures. And these Gulf of Mexico wells now are getting into the Lower Tertiary, the Wilcox Formation. These are all very high pressure, very high temperature, which is a real sweet spot for our Neptune business. Okay. So if we move onto land and we sort of talk about the, the water and flowback business, just what's, what's the update? Kind of, I mean, the U.S. activity has been unexciting to be, to be maybe that's a euphemism. I mean, we've sort of slid for 4, 5, 6, 6 straight quarters. There seems to be a path to stabilization and growth next year, but what's happening kind of the water business and your margins have actually performed pretty well and your outlook, I think it's pretty positive on the margin side. But how do we think about the, the activity drivers and the margin drivers and, and on the water business? Yeah, that business has shifted for us as well. When, like I said, when early days we started with providing water for the fracks, water transfer, those types of services. To now we're very much focused on the produced water side of the business. And obviously water production in the U.S., regardless of the activity, continues to increase. So we're taking produced water today, handling the flowback with our desanding, you know, technology or the SandStorm and then treating that produced water both for frac, you know, purposes, primarily for frac purposes today, but now moving into the desalinating and treating that water for beneficial reuse. That's really the next big market opportunity for TETRA and quite frankly, the industry, 'cause that's going to happen. Before we sort of dig into the desal side, on the land water and flowback business, you've seemed to outgrow and outpace just kind of general market activity. What allows you to do that? Yeah. So if you look at the rig count in 2018, in 2023, we had similar revenue, as we did in 2018 when the rig count, I think it was probably about 30% or 40% lower than what it was in 2018. And the way that we have achieved that is, first of all, introducing some technology into the water space, SandStorm being one of 'em, some of our treatment and recycling technology, but also, as I said, focusing more on the produced water side, you know, which is not as dependent on the drill bit in terms of numbers of wells that get drilled. And so that's helped us actually grow revenues at a time when completion activity has been flattish or down. Right. Probably one of the two biggest topics that we are being asked about with you is on the desal side, right? And you guys have talked about this a lot, I think, with investors as far as kind of the potential opportunity, but just maybe from a high level, and then maybe we can go into some more detail. What exactly is it, and what does it achieve? Yeah. That's beneficial? And why are people, why is it such a sought after technology? So, when you think about the produced water in the U.S. today from oil and gas basins, the U.S. produces about 23 billion barrels of produced water per year. And the way you think about it in terms of, for every barrel of oil, you're producing about four to five barrels of water with that oil. And of course that's across the U.S. as an average. Today, the operators are doing two things with that water. One is they're treating it for refracking. So that's a service that we do today. And the other thing, about half of that water they're disposing. That's been the traditional way to treat of produced water. Well, the problem is today that reinjecting all of that produced water, whether it's Oklahoma, whether it's in the Permian Basin and even in South Texas, they're overpressuring these old formations that can no longer take any more, you know, any additional produced water. And so that's causing these seismicity events. That's got the regulatory agencies involved, setting up restricted zones for disposal. Operators now have to truck their produced water that used to be very inexpensive now to other locations. But eventually it's all gonna fill up because there's just so much produced water that is being, you know, produced here in the United States. A different solution is needed. And I think the operators all realize that. I think you're seeing a very strong push across the board from all of our customers to come up with what's called a beneficial reuse technology. and that involves a very sophisticated pretreatment chemical process that we've developed and then combining it with traditional desalination membrane type technologies, but you have to pretreat it first to allow those membranes to actually work. And that's where our proprietary technology comes into play. So it's a huge opportunity. And when you think about the number of barrels of water that need to be treated and how it will benefit, you know, the community, certainly the Permian’s a desert, as most of us know, and provide a solution to the customers that right now is a real challenge for them. And where do we stand on sort of commercial viability? And I'm not sure how much maybe you can share on kind of like what an average project size might be and what kind of economics it might look like. Yeah, we can share some. We started a couple of years ago with a major customer in North America, when we partnered very closely with that customer to evolve our technology. We ran a pilot, two years ago in South Texas with that customer where we successfully, you know, treated about 92% of the volume of water that came our way back to surface discharge quality. After that pilot, obviously the customer was, you know, extremely pleased. We ended up going into an engineering and design phase for the first commercial plant with that customer. That's targeted for South Texas. Just as an example, that's targeted for about 24,000 barrels a day of produced water treatment and recycling for beneficial reuse. That same customer we've partnered with for a new pilot that will be run in the Permian Basin. We're in discussions with them now. That'll be a paid-for, basically a commercial pilot, so to speak. But those we believe will be the first, in a series of what we believe will be, you know, commercial projects for the, for the company. Before we leave the desal side, what is the, why TETRA? Like what is it, is it the technology? Is it, is there, is it a process? Like what differentiates you in that area? Yeah, I think, you know, again, coming back to, as I started, you know, our message about the company, the aqueous chemistry, brine chemistries is an expertise that we have. So when we, you know, obviously today we're one of the largest recyclers for frac, but that's not as sophisticated of a process obviously as completely desalinating and making water available for reuse applications. So really it was our chemistry expertise that brought customers to us for a solution. And again, that's why, why TETRA? Well, we're already one of the largest recyclers for frac applications. It's really kind of extending that now with the technology that we have for desalination. Before I move on, are there any questions from the audience? Just chime in. So one of the exciting sort of parts of the investment case for TETRA that we talk about is you have a company that's doing give or take $100 million in EBITDA and you have opportunities, desal being one of 'em, but then two other major ones we talk about, which could lead to EBITDA which is equal to that possibly three to five years out. I don't wanna put words in your mouth or guide, but there's huge opportunities. Can you just give us an update on where you stand on the first one of the two, which is PureFlow with Eos and kind of what's PureFlow, who's Eos real quickly and kind of what's that opportunity look like right now? Yeah. So one of our completion fluids that we've manufactured for many years is a zinc bromide formulation. Eos, the company that you mentioned, is one of several companies, but I think Eos is by far the furthest along from a commercial standpoint, developed a long duration energy storage battery technology using zinc bromide as a key part of its electrolyte. And so we've maintained a very good relationship over the years with Eos. We've actually expanded the relationship with Eos where we have a five-year contract. We get the opportunity to supply 75% of their electrolyte needs. And we expanded beyond just the zinc bromide to the full electrolyte. So that's another opportunity for us. If you look at their 2026 targeted plans, public plans to have, I think 8 gigawatt hours of energy storage capacity, that's a significant volume of electrolyte and bromine for the company. So that's certainly one of the biggest growth opportunities that we have in front of us. But there are additional companies now that are actually slightly behind Eos but coming along using zinc bromide as the electrolyte for long duration energy storage. Are you their sole supplier at this point? We're the sole U.S. supplier. There is another company, out of the Middle East, that can manufacture zinc bromide. But, you know, we feel well positioned given the U.S. relationship that we have. Okay. And do you have any updates? And I know, I think Eos is here. I don't know when they're presenting, but any updates on where they stand? I know they're having their manufacturing automated line being completed. It's, I think it's closed. It's gonna go into operation. But do you have any sense for when you start to see an uptick in PureFlow revenue? Yeah, our projections right now are to pretty ramp up pretty significantly for the fourth quarter for—for electrolyte orders. I think that's pretty consistent with Eos getting their line up and running and then kind of phasing the into their production. But we're planning on the fourth quarter and then continuing ramping up through. I think two gigawatt hours is their target for next year, which again would be a significant ramp up for us. When you think about your bromine needs, right? And one of 'em is obviously PureFlow, one of 'em is for your fluids. Where do you stand on sort of the raw material access to that raw material? And how do you sort of solve the problem of basically the demand you're gonna probably need over the next couple of years? Yeah. So we have two sources of supply today. We have a long-term agreement with LANXESS out of the Smackover Formation in Arkansas. We also buy bromine on the spot market. But we know that in the coming years, as deep water market grows, we see more and more bromine fluids being used in the offshore market. And then layer on the Eos demand, we will well exceed what we can currently get in the market for our bromine. Well, it's just fortunate enough, TETRA held onto about 40,000 acres of brine leases in Arkansas since the 1980s, very rich in bromine. So that's why we're putting plans in place to develop that acreage and bring on our own supply of bromine, which is a little over 100 years of supply of bromine in those leases. So that will be more than enough. But obviously we've got to execute on that project to bring that bromine to market. Just as a segue, does the bromine development link to what you're doing on the lithium front? How are they sort of tied together from a complex perspective? You know, it absolutely is. I— I think most people are aware, ExxonMobil purchased, through Saltwerx, about 120,000 acres surrounding, you know, our acreage in Arkansas. But their purpose and focus was on the lithium side, 'cause the same brine, Smackover brine, it's in our leases and the leases they bought are, are both rich in bromine and, and lithium. And so there was an area that joins our two, areas together, that we decided to combine and form a unit, that we took the OGC and, and was approved a unit of production that will be operated as a joint venture, eventually, for both the lithium and the bromine. So we've actually bought, land. We're in the process of doing the engineering work for the bromine, bromine plant. It'll be on the same site using a lot of the same common facilities, shared facilities as the lithium plant. So, it'll be a lot of synergies both from a capital standpoint, the upstream investment standpoint, the OPEX, that will come to bear as a result of that relationship, and two-for-one minerals essentially for out of the Smackover. Okay. And we'll be, as we go through the year, we'll be publishing more of these financials since we're in a stage now of doing the engineering work. You know, we wanna be cautious about what we're communicating until we've got the engineering work far enough along to be able to communicate. But we hope in the next month or so, we'll be publishing a definitive feasibility study on just the bromine and the impact that the lithium plant relationship that we have has on it. And then as we get further along with the engineering on the lithium and finalize the JV as our intention, we'll be publishing those results hopefully by the end of the year. What is the update on the progress ExxonMobil and you are having on the acreage you control in Arkansas, and then the 35,000-ish acres that Standard Lithium has the royalty rights for the acreage you control? Where do we stand on that? And when should we think about maybe commercial development of those projects? So, the 6,138 acres, we call it the Evergreen Unit that ourselves and Exxon are involved in, we're developing plans right now for the full development of that acreage. We'll be actually starting drilling, you know, operations here in the next month or so. So that project will again be part of the eventual joint venture that we get finalized with Exxon. The other 35,000 acres, we still control all of the minerals, including bromine, except the lithium, which Standard Lithium has an option agreement to develop, the lithium and TETRA will get a royalty benefit with no investment commitment from that project. They've just recently announced their partnership with Equinor. So Equinor, Standard Lithium, ourselves and ExxonMobil, that whole 40,000 acres, over the coming years will be developed. Okay. We did a panel earlier this morning, kind of Mines to Machines on the EV supply chain. And you're clearly EV demand has been softening, right? It's been growing at a slower rate. It hasn't gone down, but slower growth. How does that, how closely does that impact the lithium development? Like, is there any impact on kind of watching EV demand growth and the investment you're willing to make on the lithium side? Yeah, I think, you know, you know, today lithium is produced exclusively almost through two different types of operations, right? Mining, spodumene mining operations and the solar ponds, evaporation in Latin America. We believe direct lithium extraction technology, the way that we are planning to produce, with Exxon and others through the DLE process is gonna be the low cost solution from an OpEx standpoint for lithium. So even at, you know, lithium prices today, which are pretty suppressed, I think most people do not feel they will stay at $15,000 per metric ton. I think, our view and most people's view that we talk to feel will be somewhere in the $20,000 to $25,000 long-term range. And the OpEx that we'll be able to operate at with our DLE plant will still allow us to have a, you know, a very good returns business. And where is how far has DLE technology come last year? We had a dinner last year and Elijio was present. It was a kind of discussion about kind of where it was in the development stage. And I think some think it's farther along or it was farther along last year, but we've made a lot of progress. But where do we stand as we sit here right now? Yeah, no, the company that we will be using, we're planning to use for our direct lithium extraction on our project has commercial operations outside the U.S. There's no real commercial operation, I would say, operating in the U.S. today for direct lithium extraction, but there are plants operating outside the United States. Elijio and I have actually visited one of those plants firsthand. They've actually been running for several years. So the technology works. We've seen it firsthand. We've been running our own pilot at our research center. Last year, we ran a pilot for about 4 or 5 months, qualifying the DLE operation. So yeah, no, it's coming along, and you're gonna continue to see more advancements, I think, on the DLE front. The CapEx, and that's required over the next couple of years on some of these projects is probably the biggest question I get outside of just kind of when are we gonna see PureFlow sales, honestly, right? I'm gonna let Elijio talk now. Well, but what, when we think about sort of the CapEx requirements and then your balance sheet leverage ratios, how do you, where's the comfort level in the leverage ratio and how much CapEx should we be thinking about as necessary over the next several years as these bromine and lithium projects move ahead? So, Stephen, when we are focused on the two segments that we have right now, we started generating quite a bit of cash. And last year we generated $40 million of free cash flow, paid down debt, dropped our leverage ratio to 1.5x. And today we're going into all this initiative, sitting on over $200 million of liquidity with a base business generating in excess of $40 million of free cash flow. We believe that we've got all the capital we need to get the bromine project underway. And we believe that we will not exceed 2.5x leverage ratio. And then when we get to the lithium project, our relationship with Exxon to where we're a minority partner that we can raise capital at the project level to fund the lithium requirements. Is the deal with the relationship with Exxon, will there be a percentage of the acreage you control that's the CapEx you're responsible for? Is it how does that, or is it has not been finalized yet? So when we first formed the unit, we formed it as 65% TETRA, 35% ExxonMobil from the acreage contribution that was made. But then we also did a swap where we wanted the 100% of the bromine and we traded down our 65% of the lithium to 49%. So that Exxon will be 51% lithium and we'll be 100% bromine. So that's kind of the way, in terms of the mineral rights and leases go. So yes, for the lithium, we would be responsible for 49% of the capital, under the current structure agreement. Okay. We got about a minute left. Any questions before I? So, I'll ask one more and I'm not sure how you, how you're gonna answer this, but I'm gonna ask you, so I said earlier you did about $100 million in EBITDA. You're kind of at that run rate right now. In a really positive case scenario, if I'm thinking about 2027 or 2026, can these other business, can desal, lithium and PureFlow do $50 million of EBITDA? All of them combined without a doubt. Oh yeah. Okay. Absolutely. At least. Okay. And just to add onto that before we end it, when we think about the margin profile of PureFlow, and then maybe even to the extent on the desal side, but on PureFlow, we've modeled it kind of thinking that those margins are probably in line with where your traditional fluids margins are. Is that a reasonable base case to think about? Yeah, I would use that as a base case. You know, we wanna be consistent with our fluids pricing between our current oil and gas customers and our new electrolyte customers. Okay. And then just one final, what do you guys worry about? Like what it would outside of the macro, which we kind of can't control, right? Whether lithium prices or oil and gas, but what beyond that, what's your biggest kind of concern or what are your biggest worry that you, you kind of keep tabs on? Well, you say besides the macro, but the macro actually tends to affect our share price quite a bit. 'Cause, you know, we're still viewed as an oilfield service. We are an oilfield services company. We're still 80% of our revenue or plus is oilfield services related. And so we get wrapped up in those fluctuations, which can be a little bit distracting when you're, you know, trying to achieve what we're trying to do. So I don't know, Elijio, do you have any comments? Yeah, we're focused on shareholder value creation and we realize that the transition from the traditional oil and gas to adding more revenue and EBITDA from the initiatives we've talked about, might be a bit rocky. We wanna make sure that our shareholders understand the path that we're going to and how methodically we're executing on it to take away some of that concern. Great. Well, thank you both for joining us. This was informative and,