Nine Energy Service, Inc. (NYSE:NINE) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Waqar Syed: Okay. Great. Well, thank you very much. Appreciate the answers.

Ann Fox: Thank you, Waqar.

Guy Sirkes: Thanks, Waqar.

Operator: Our next question comes from Tim Moore with EF Hutton. Please proceed with your questions.

Timothy Moore: Great. Thanks and I have two questions. Ann, I was just wondering maybe if you can provide some examples of tactics or maybe some details or even an example of how you’re really pursuing more of the growth of completion tools as you want to maybe get that to 40% of sales and maybe away from the more CapEx-intensive service lines. Can you just maybe give us some more examples of how you’re talking to customers or demonstrating things and such?

Ann Fox: Yes, it’s a great question, Tim. So we, of course, are very keen to start doing our own internal R&D, and you’ve seen this done very effectively, as I said, through the Norway team. We designed a tool specific for — can be run, of course, in other unconventional markets, but specifically for one of our Middle Eastern customers, ADNOC, where we won a contract with the tool that they did design. So one of the ways in which we’re approaching this is organically with our own engineering teams and figuring out where to address the market, where perhaps the larger gas customers are contracting that work out may not have those tools or we may see a way to engineer something that creates efficiency. The other way certainly that we are working on is through M&A, and there are a bunch of wonderful inventors and entrepreneurs out there that have designed certain tools that are very interesting.

And then oftentimes, as you know, they find it — they find that it really accelerates our potential growth and profitability to partner with larger companies. And so I think our traction in the Middle East now is not just with plugs, but it’s with a couple of other tools. And so that can then also be alluring to potential would be M&A candidates. So it’s going to be a dual-pronged strategy of both organic growth as well as M&A.

Timothy Moore: That’s great color. And it seems like a terrific approach for the three prongs there. Maybe just my other question, dissolvable plugs, the frac plugs and — maybe can you elaborate a little bit just for me to understand maybe some of the investors a little bit more. Just Nine seems to have a materials and science edge. I mean you can kind of track how long the formation takes to warn back up after it’s fracked. Can you maybe just talk about that? Because my estimate is you’re probably gaining some market share from two of the other peers. And just love to hear a little bit more story on that.

Ann Fox: Yes, sure. Another great question. So this is — was all kind of an example of using our wireline, service line as well as our coiled tubing service lines in the development of what we call the low-temperature dissolvable, and what we really put forward is that we have dissolvable materials that we design in concert with our operators that can really address temperatures that are very cold room temperature type situations all the way through the very natural hot markets that have always loved dissolvables. So we think we really differentiate on the materials science in so far as understanding the predictability of dissolution. So the operators are so highly specialized now in exactly the amount of time that they want to spend completing a lateral foot, and we are now very good at saying, well, you’re operating in this formation, at this depth, at this bottom hole temperature, you’re going to frac for this long, and you’re also, by the way, using these fluids those may be freshwater, those may have high salinity.