Liberty Energy Inc. (NYSE:LBRT) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Chris Wright: Yes sorry, ’23 so for 2023 cash tax is around 10% of pretax net income obviously we see CapEx around about 50% of EBITDA, interest is relatively diminimis, because we got – it’s relatively small amount of debt and those and we’re going to have slight build of working capital as revenue is going to increase from Q4 levels through the end of the year, but that will be relatively small.

Atidrip Modak: Thanks guys. I’ll turn it over.

Chris Wright: Thanks Ati.

Operator: The next question is from Arun Jayaram with JPMorgan Chase. Please go ahead.

Arun Jayaram: Hi Chris, I had some questions on kind of the rollout of digiFrac, you’re taking kind of a modular approach, which makes sense. But I was just wondering if you could comment on how performance has been in the field and what you’re seeing in terms of that technology? And just perhaps to clarify, so you’ll be adding three fleets, did you say at the end of the 1Q, but your overall guide is for relatively flat fleet activities. So are you taking some diesel fleets out of the – out of the working fleet?

Chris Wright: Yes, our plans for digiFrac rollout this year will dominantly been replacement fleets and get. Market conditions are pending, but that’s the plan right now, dominantly replacement capacity, basically an upgrade, which is an upgrade both in the performance of the fleet. It’s an upgrade of reducing our cost of operating that fleet. And of course, it’s an upgrade in that the pricing port is better. We bring something better for our customers with a lower all-in cost to us. I’ll turn it over to Ron to make any more technical comments about that.

Ron Gusek: Look, as far as performance going well, we always expect when we put new technology in the field. We got a bit of a learning curve with that, but things are going well. We’re actually in between pads right now with the operator. We had wrapped up pumping consistently on the last 45 or 50 stages on that with all the pumps that were on location at that point in time. We’ll begin with a slightly bigger fleet on the next pad and excited about getting the rest of that fleet out likely by the middle of February. And then we’ll have the other ones follow on quickly after that.

Arun Jayaram: Great, thanks a lot Ron. And another question for Chris is, given the retrenchment in natural gas prices, including Waha, are you seeing – do you expect this perhaps to accelerate the attrition of diesel fleets just given the cost competitive benefits of running dual fuel plus the emissions benefits?

Chris Wright: So yes, that – very low Waha prices and outlook, they may stay there for a year or two. Certainly, that grows the arbitrage between the two, but the arbitrage was large already. And it’s a lot of capital and investment to bring out a new fleet and swap them over. So it makes it incrementally more positive, but I don’t think it’s a big enough move to speed investment contracting decisions any meaningful amount.

Arun Jayaram: Great, thank you.

Ron Gusek: Yes, thanks to Chris and Arun.

Operator: The next question is from Waqar Syed with ATB Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Waqar Syed: Thank you, a great quarter. So my question is – with respect to Canada versus U.S. margins. In Q4, what were the margins like between Canada and U.S. were they par or one was higher than the other?

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