Tetra Technologies, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to Tetra Technologies' third quarter 2024 results conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. after today's presentation there will be an opportunity to ask questions to ask a question you may press star then one on your touchstone phone to withdraw your question please press star then two please note that this event is being recorded i will now turn the conference over to julian higuera please go ahead thank you vincent good morning and thank you for joining tetra's third quarter 2024 results call

The speakers for today's call are Brady Murphy, Chief Executive Officer, and Elegio Serrano, Chief Financial Officer. I would like to remind you that this conference call may contain statements that are or may be deemed to be forward-looking, including projections, financial guidance, profitability, and estimated earnings. These statements are based on certain assumptions and analysis made by Tetra and are based on several factors. These statements are subject to several risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the control of the companies. You are cautioned that such statements are not guarantees of future performance and that actual results may differ materially from these projected in the forward-looking statements. In addition, in the course of the call, we may refer to EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA market, free cash flow, net debt, net leverage ratio, liquidity, returns on net capital employed, and other non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to yesterday's press release or to our public website for reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures to the nearest GAAP measures. These reconciliations are not a subject for financial information preferred in accordance with GAAP and should be considered within the context of our complete financial resource for the period. In addition to our press release announcement, we encourage you to refer to our tank queue that we also filed yesterday. I will now turn it over to Brady.

Thank you, Julian. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Tetra's third quarter 2020 for earnings call. I'll summarize some highlights from our third quarter results and provide an update on our strategic initiatives before turning the call over to Aligio to discuss more details on third quarter financials and additional perspectives looking forward with some views on 2025. For the third quarter, despite considerable headwinds due to three Gulf of Mexico hurricane disruptions, as well as lower customer completion activity on U.S. land, Third quarter earnings, free cash flow, and adjusted EBITDA of $23.5 million came in consistent with our expectations. We achieved adjusted EBITDA margins of 31.7% for completion fluids and products and 14.6% for water and flowback services. Because of the second quarter seasonal peak in our northern European industrials chemicals business, the underlying performance of our business is highlighted by our year-on-year and first quarter comparisons. Third quarter revenue of $142 million was down 6% for both year-on-year and from first quarter 2024, while adjusted EBITDA was down $2.5 million from Q3 23, but up $700,000 from Q1 of 2024. Although revenue was lower, we achieved some very good wins in the quarter that is helping us build significant momentum for 2025. First is a major deepwater completions fluid award in Brazil. This is a multi-well, multi-year deepwater award for our high value, higher density bromine-based completion fluids. This is our second major deep water fluid award in Brazil in the last three years and establishes us as the clear deep water heavy fluids market leader in Brazil. The first well for this award is scheduled to start in late Q1 2025. Another important milestone for the third quarter was establishing an all-time record for produced water recycling for frac reuse. With additional recent customer wins, this third quarter record will again be eclipsed in the fourth quarter by another record that is a step change over Q3. Although U.S. completion activity has drifted down for the past 18 months, produced water is increasing and will continue to increase for many years to come. At the same time, seismicity events are driving more rapid adoption of recycling for frack reuse to avoid more overpressuring of disposal waste. Our strategy to focus our technology and investments into the produced water side of the business is paying off. and has been a key part of our success developing solutions for produced water beneficial reuse, which I'll discuss a bit later. A third highlight for the quarter was the recognition by Kimberlite, a leading oil and gas research company, that conducted a study on the completion of fluids and services segment in arguably the most technically challenging deep water market in the world, the Gulf of Mexico. The Kimberlite study concluded that, quotes, Tetra Technology stands out as the performance leader Tetra excels in technical support and service, responsiveness, and availability, aligning well with its pricing strategy to create differentiation in the market, unquote. As future wells in production in the Gulf of Mexico will come from very challenging lower tertiary with extreme high pressures and temperatures, Tetra is very well positioned to benefit as validated by the Kimberlite report. Coming back to the financials, at the end of the third quarter, Our trailing 12 months adjusted EBITDA was $101 million. We generated over $7 million of trailing 12 months total adjusted free cash flow, even after investing $23 million in Arkansas. Our current liquidity is approximately $197 million, inclusive of the $75 million delay draw feature to fund our future Arkansas bromine project. Now turning to the segment results, completion fluids and products third quarter adjusted EBITDA margin, excluding unrealized gains or losses on investments, was 32.1%, up to 180 basis points compared to Q1. The increase in margin was driven by a very favorable mix of higher-value completion fluid sales and our industrial chemicals business that continues its very strong financial performance. In the third quarter, we announced the introduction of Tetra-X, a new corrosion inhibitor for high-temperature downhole well environments that is a step-change improvement from what is available in the market today. We will market Tetra-X as a blend with our current completion fluids as a premium product and service for high temperature wells and to expand our market share further for this segment, including CS Neptune. We're also evaluating other non-completion fluids market to potentially market Tetra-X as a standalone corrosion inhibitor. Looking ahead for completion fluids and services, the fourth quarter will be comparable to slightly down from the third quarter, as the third quarter hurricanes in a fourth and early October has had an impact on our customers' deepwater completion schedules. The three-well CS Neptune project that we announced previously is now scheduled to start in early 2025. For the water and flowback segment, third quarter adjusted EBITDA margins for 14.6%, consistent with the goals that we have set. The decline in U.S. onshore frack crew activity, which according to Riestead Energy, is down close to 25% over the past 18 months, has lowered our completion-related revenues for our U.S. business with some pressure on margins, But we are accounting that with a more aggressive deployment of automation and new technology that allows us to get better or similar pricing, but with much lower labor costs, which is today the highest cost in this segment. Our strategy for water and pullback services remains a multi-pronged approach, automating all aspects of the service aimed at enhancing efficiency and safety, but with a goal of bridging us to water recycling for beneficial reuse, such as agriculture and industrial applications. While we've made significant progress in deploying blue links and water transfer automation, we're still in the early stages of rolling out automated systems for sandstorm and auto drill out. The early results have been exceptional, and customer feedback has been very positive. Even in this lower activity environment, we're near maximum utilization for our automated sandstorms, which today is only 20% of the fleet. We will be upgrading another 20% in 2025. This strategy linked with our growing recycling for frack reuse business will provide good cash flows to bridge us to the longer term goal of recycling for beneficial reuse, which will be a much larger market with higher returns. With regards to water desalination and beneficial reuse, we're making good progress advancing the commercial terms for our first field pilot project in the Permian Basin. In addition, we're processing a second customer's Permian Basin water with a pilot unit at our R&D center to a very high quality level. We're in discussions with other major customers for projects that, in addition to West Texas and South Texas, include mid-continent and Appalachia regions. We currently have nondisclosure agreements with seven customers and are in discussions with two additional major operators. Moving on to our strategic initiatives, we continue a very close and collaborative relationship and dialogue with EOS Energy for their long-duration energy storage electrolyte. We're confident EOS is on the verge of materially higher production volumes, requiring materially materially higher electrolyte. In the third quarter, we manufactured, qualified, and delivered our first full order of the EOS electrolyte. We have also increased our manufacturing and blending capacity in West Memphis to meet the planned EOS demand. As EOS ramps and brings the automated lineup, the volumes of pure flow and electrolyte they require will increase materially over the minimal volumes we will ship this year. This is adding to our confidence for a very strong year in 2025. On the Arkansas bromine side, we completed the SK-1300 Definitive Feasibility Report earlier in the quarter, highlighting very compelling economics, with a CapEx investment of $270 million, yielding an annual adjusted EBITDA increase of $90 to $115 million. The adjusted EBITDA increase is a result of higher sales volumes from a mix of both deepwater projects and long-duration battery needs, and lower production costs from the vertical integration. While we are confident we can fund the project from free cash flow and current liquidity while keeping below 2.5 net leverage ratio, we are evaluating a decision to fund the project in stages. The first stage would be a considerable reduction in the CAPEX from the $270 million and would target initial bromine production of 66% of DFS published volumes. We're still evaluating the revised CAPEX investment for this stage one, while also in discussions with multiple bromine suppliers to bridge our bromine supply needs until the full plant capacity is funded and realized. For our lithium opportunity and project, we're continuing the engineering work to define the project economics. But in the meantime, we're prioritizing our strategic initiatives on projects that can immediately impact our near-term results. With a focus on Tetra CS Neptune fluids in the Gulf of Mexico, such a pure flow electrolyte shipments to EOS Energy, further advancing our water desalination commercial pilots. Long term, we believe that lithium prices will rebound to levels that support increased investment in supply, especially from the U.S. And we and our Evergreen unit partner remain focused on completing all the engineering studies required to define the lithium project economics. With that, I'll turn it over to Alijo to provide some additional commentary on our financial results, and then we'll open it up for questions.

Thank you, Brady, and good morning, everybody. We expect the first of the three Neptune wells that we previously announced to begin in the first quarter and the other two wells in the subsequent quarters. We believe additional Neptune opportunities in the Gulf of Mexico are likely in 2025 based on projects that are under discussion with operators. These Neptune projects, the Brazil Deepwater Award, and the very steady and predictable calcium chloride industrial business that has a seasonal peak in the second quarter, plus the progress it is making with their automation and its related backlog is preparing us for what we believe to be a very strong first half of 2025. This is the most visibility we've had for our completion fluids and product segment in many years. And the actions we've taken to expand blending and storage capacity in the UK, Gulf of Mexico, and Brazil, plus sourcing additional bromine volumes in open market purchases, is expected to allow us to capitalize on these opportunities. Ahead of next year, we will be building inventory to deliver on these projects. Then in the fourth quarter, we'll add to working capital. but will be monetized in the first half of next year. In addition, recall that we previously expanded our production capacity in Coca-Cola Finland for additional volumes of calcium chloride for the industrial sector. Our industrial chloride business, calcium chloride business, is approximately $140 million per year, or just below 25% of our total revenue, with EBITDA margins of approximately 30%. And this represents a very steady and solid source of revenue, EBITDA, and cash flow for us when there is uncertainty in certain oil and gas markets. And we've recently expanded our capacity in West Memphis to produce the required volumes, pure flow, but also the full electrolyte to meet EOS's demands. The fourth quarter is expected to mirror the third quarter for revenue and adjusted EBITDA As the first CS Neptune project that we expected in the fourth quarter was pushed into the first quarter due to the hurricanes that came to the Gulf of Mexico in the past few months. We expect a material ramp up in this segment in the first quarter from the Gulf of Mexico Neptune project, plus the benefit of the Brazil award and the electrolyte shipments to EOS. Then another step up in the second quarter on the back of the European industrial calcium chloride seasonality. The second quarter should be very strong for us. Shifting to water and flow back services, we expect revenues to be down in the fourth quarter in anticipation of a fourth quarter slowdown and without the third quarter EPF expansion sale. However, as Brady mentioned, we expect fourth quarter margins for water and flow back services to remain in the mid-teens, driven by increasing volumes of recycled produced water for frack reuse and the automation efforts that we're implementing. If operators continue to transfer and utilize more produced water in their frac operations through treatment recycling, the risk profile of produced water spills increases and the value of automation technology allows us to gain stronger margins in this segment. Overall, fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA will be modestly below the third quarter that included the benefit of EPF sale in Argentina. And while we won't be providing 2025 guidance, we believe that the step up next year in expected earnings coming from Neptune The Brazil Deepwater Award and the expected ramp up of shipments to EOS plus our strong focus on cost controls position us for a very solid 2025, unlike what others in the industry might be expecting or projecting. Third quarter adjusted free cash flow for continuing operations was $19.9 million, including the impact of $8.7 million of capital expenditures for the Arkansas bromine and lithium projects. Net of reimbursements by our partner. Let's expect that working capital came down materially in the third quarter as we monetize the receivables in Northern Europe during the quarter. We continue to work on cash flow from the base business funding the immediate capital requirements in Arkansas, both for this and next year. We continue to be reimbursed by our evergreen unit partner for their agreed upon share of costs we're incurring. Our objective remains to keep our net leverage ratio low and not issue any equity-linked securities to fund our Arkansas bromine investments. We will instead space out the project before over-levering Tetra or before diluting shareholders. In addition to the no-lead liquidity, we are also holding slightly over $14 million of marketable securities. This includes our holdings in Standard Lithium and Kodiak gas services. The marked market gains week Our recognizing can quickly be converted into cash given the trading activity of these two entities. At the end of the third quarter, our net leverage ratio was 1.5 times. Our return on capital is 16.6% for the trading 12 months into September 30, and compares to our weighted average cost of capital of between 11 and 12%. Let me close out by summarizing what I believe are key terms that everyone should focus on. First, our completion fluids and product performance performed quite well. with adjusted EBITDA margins of 31.7% without mark-to-market gains. We're going into the fourth quarter when we expect margins for this segment to remain in the high 20% range and improve to the low 30% range when the Neptune projects kick in. We have the best backlog in many years going into next year. We remain confident that between our borrowing capacity and free cash flow that we can fund our roaming projects. I have no plans to issue any equity-linked securities. As I mentioned, we have around $14 million of marketable securities completely at our discretion as to when we can monetize that. I'll remind everyone that the last time we did this, we raised $18 million by selling our prior holdings in standard lithium. Additionally, as we continue to deploy automation technology across all our water and flow back services to maintain margins in the mid-teens, even in a down market, and in the third quarter, we set the all-time volume for produced water that Brady mentioned. It is anticipated that U.S. onshore activity will remain slower throughout the fourth quarter, and as a result, we initiated in the third quarter a series of cost reduction actions, including a slightly over 6% reduction in SG&A headcount, and we'll continue to rise our U.S. operations. I'll return this back to Brady for closing comments.

Well, thank you, Elegio. In closing, despite the third quarter headwinds that we discussed, our financial performance was in line with our expectations. Looking to 2025 and beyond, we're getting more clarity around the strategic initiatives that we've been working for some time. Meaningful contribution from CS Neptune of recovering deepwater market and market share winds, including Brazil. automating our water and flowback services for increased efficiency and enhanced margins, focusing on produced water treatment and recycling with record volumes, bridging us to beneficial reuse, and a steady ramp-up in electrolyte sales, all giving us more confidence in our 2025 outlook and beyond. With that, we'll open the call for questions.

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw a question, please press star then two. Your first question comes from Steven Gengaro with Stifel.

Thanks. Good morning, everybody.

Good morning.

So I guess two things for me, and I guess what I would start with is as we think about the conversation you're having on deep water projects, and I know Aliyah alluded to maybe some incremental CSNeptune projects in 2025, where do these sort of stand as far as the conversations? As we sort of think about the back half of 2025, I mean, are these projects which are underway, they're in the drilling phase, and it's just a matter of kind of who they choose from a completion perspective, or is it something else that kind of gives you that confidence?

Yeah. So, Stephen, we've talked before about the pipeline of CS Neptune projects that we've been tracking for some time. And as we came out of COVID, a lot of those projects were put on pause, on hold. We mentioned previously we've seen that pipeline starting to move forward. And obviously, we've announced our first three well award, first ever three well simultaneous award of a CS Neptune project with a super major that will start in the first quarter. There are additional projects in the pipeline. I think we're cautiously optimistic that we can secure more Neptune projects in 2025. But again, these are not projects that I would say the drilling has already started. So we want to be careful about the timing of committing to when, you know, we'll secure those orders. But, you know, we feel really good about the pipeline of opportunities for Neptune. And it's really not a case of, you know, will another solution be selected? Because really Neptune is unique in that regard and that today there's not a competing offering in the price range that we have Neptune positioned. So it's really more of project timelines and, you know, compatibility with a lot of their other technologies that they're putting in the well.

Okay, now that's helpful. The other question I had was just around the water and flow back business. And as we think about 2025 at a high level, would you expect, I mean, what we're hearing pretty consistently is kind of flat US activity from current levels. Would you expect to see growth in that business under that scenario? And do you agree with that scenario?

Yeah, I think early days for predicting the full year for 2025, I think we are anticipating a fourth quarter slowdown with the typical seasonality at the end of the year. We think Q1 will start back up fairly flattish to up from where we end in Q4. But again, we're We're really more focused on margin enhancement at this point, Stephen, than we are our growth. We've gained tremendous market share through our produced water recycling efforts, as well as Sandstorm. But we're not investing a lot of capital in growth next year. But we are investing in our automation technology to continue to bring those margins up. And if we get additional growth on top of that, that's great. But our anticipation at this point is flattish for 2025. but continuing to increase our margins as we go through the year.

Okay, great. Now, that's all for me. I'll get back in line. Thank you.

Thanks, David.

Your next question comes from the line of Kurt Holland with Benchmark.

Hey, good morning, guys. Good morning, Kurt. Hey, so, Brady, very encouraging dynamics looks like now on some of those emerging growth, you know, opportunities. And I know you guys are kind of more apt now to, you know, let the numbers speak for themselves, but in the context of, you know, how, how you think about the prospects for, let's say the, the water desalinization, you got what seven NDAs and another two more in negotiation. Like, can you walk us through just like, you know, what the, what the process is at the E&P level and what they need to go through and then, you know, how you try to kind of factor in timing.

Yeah, so this is a very interesting, you know, market. It's a brand-new market, so it's still emerging, Kurt. But the way we see it emerge, first of all, we've had, you know, one customer that we've been working with very collaboratively with now for a couple years. We've already done a field pilot trial. Two years ago, we announced the South Texas project that got somewhat put on hold due to permitting, shifted to the Permian, and we're now very close to having that one moving forward. But in the meantime, we've opened up dialogue with, as we said, seven different customers that were willing to go under NDA and look at our technology, and two more major operators that we're negotiating NDAs with. The stages as we see it is they will take their produced water samples and analyze the specifications of these waters, and they're all very different. The Permian is by far the most complex just because of the amount of constituents and organics that are in it. And then they will give us an opportunity to run those sample waters through our pilot operations at our research center. And once we show them what we're capable of doing, at the research center, then we move into field pilot operations, commercial pilot operations discussions. And that's more or less where we are right now with several of those customers. Again, we've been successful with every water treatment that we've been asked to process. And so as we go through 2025, I think you'll see multiple pilots announced, field pilots announced. And then hopefully as we get into 2026, we'll start to see kind of more scale commercial plant type operations opportunities come up.

Yeah, that's great. And then what about the context? Like it's the EMPs, right? Just kind of refresh your ear. The EMPs have to get the permits from the Texas Railroad Commission. How long is that? Do you have any sense on how long that process might take?

Yeah. It is the EMP's water. They own the water. We don't take possession of the water. We're charging a technology and servicing fee to process that water for them. So they are responsible for getting the permits with the Railroad Commission, although obviously the Railroad Commission is defining those specifications to be able to put, you know, produced water into the environment, on the ground, into industrial applications, into farming, et cetera, et cetera. That process is moving forward. I think the Railroad Commission is pretty highly motivated to get this moving. But, you know, we are obviously dependent on how fast they will approve our customers' permits to how fast we'll be able to grow with that current. So it's hard. You know, we don't control that process, but I can tell you we're seeing a lot of momentum.

Okay, appreciate that color. And maybe for Elijo, I think Elijo, you just gave us a reference point in terms of the industrial chemicals part of your business, about $140 million a year. I guess then simple math would tell us that the oil and gas completion fluids part would be about $160 million. It looks like that's going to basically hold pretty consistent going into next year with all the growth then coming from Brazil and the Neptune project. I know you've been somewhat hesitant to provide specifics on this in the past, but is there any kind of range you can potentially provide us as to what these Neptune and Brazil projects could mean in terms of revenue growth?

The Neptune projects are hard to predict, Kurt, because it really depends on how much fluid is lost in the well and how long the fluid is in the well. We've indicated that these are slightly smaller projects than what we saw with Exxon when we did the Exxon projects between 2015 and 2019, but the margins are very strong. And even smaller Gulf of Mexico projects will have a meaningful impact on EBITDA. And I did mention that when we do Neptune projects, it pushes the entire segment into the low 30 EBITDA margins.

Okay. And then the Brazil project is not a Neptune project though, right?

No, Kurt. That's not a Neptune project, but it is one of our heavy brine, bromine brine solutions. So it's similar... to a Gulf of Mexico, you know, deep water project that is non-Neptune. So it's material for us.

Okay. And then maybe just to follow up, Bray, you had mentioned, you know, staging out the bromine expansion type of dynamic. And how should we think about that? If the total investment I think you referenced was like $75 million. I know $270 was the total, but you referenced the delayed draw at $75 million potentially being earmarked. you know, for the bromine. How do you think about the staging of it?

Yeah, so we're not prepared yet to say what the stage one financials will look like. Kurt, we're still doing our evaluation on that. We will be targeting a lower initial bromine production. As I've mentioned on the call, probably over 60%, 65% of what's published in the DFS is the bromine target. But we think the capex savings will be pretty significant We're just not ready yet to publicize what that reduction in CAPEX will be for the first phase. Okay. Thanks.

Appreciate it, guys.

Thanks, Kurt.

Next question comes from Martin Malloy with Johnson Price.

Good morning. First question I wanted to ask is on the bromine project as well. You had previously talked about FID in the fourth quarter, I think, for this project. Is that still the case? And then I also wanted to find out with this project, is there the possibility of offtake agreements to de-risk the project some?

There is possibility of offtake agreements, but the reality of the situation is right now for us, Martin, between our deep water demand needs and what we anticipate from EOS, we won't have additional capacity until later years when we're fully utilizing the plant to take on too many additional offtake agreements. We've got our demand pretty well consumed. In fact, as we mentioned, we're negotiating with bromine suppliers to get additional supply to supplement the bridge that we may do if we stage this out as opposed to FID, the full 270. I would say at this point, the way we're thinking, I think it's highly likely we will execute on the staged approach with the lower capital and somewhat lower bromine supply initially from the plant. So FID-ing the full 270 in the fourth quarter will probably not happen, but I think it's very likely you'll see some announcement and approvals of a staged approach, if not in Q4, potentially in Q1.

And Marty, I'll add that we've been taking steps and investing in the amount that we've expended to date to secure land, to clear the land. to make sure we've got access to power and also to advance a lot of the engineering studies. So it's not as if we've been waiting for FID to take some of the initiatives required to make sure that we bring our project online in time to meet the demands.

Okay, great. And then second question, I just wanted to ask about the desalinization technology. Could you maybe just take a moment to discuss how your technology compares to others that are out there? What the advantages are that you see with your technology?

Sure. I hope I don't get too far into the weeds in this, but since you asked, I'll try to address it. Think of it in three stages of the process. The first stage is pre-treating all of the produced water that we receive to treat it, to take out a lot of the organics, a lot of the harmful constituents in that water to allow us to run it to the second stage of the process. That first stage is very proprietary to us. It's something we've been working on for a very long time through our current recycling of produced water services that we offer today and the experience we've gained from that. But the second stage of that allows us to run this through two different types of technologies that are both membrane technologies. If it's a low Typically, if it's a low TDS, total dissolved solids type of produced water, we will run that through the HIREC unit, which is an osmotically assisted reverse osmosis. And again, that technology is used to desalinate ocean water all over the world. So it's a proven technology. It's just that no one is pre-treating produced water to the levels that allow it to run through the membranes to allow the economics of the of the technology to work through not fowling membranes every couple of weeks or so. If it's a high total dissolved solids produced water, then we will run that through typically the KMX unit. That's a different type of technology. It's a vacuum membrane distillation type of technology. What allows us to process much higher levels of salts and desalinate higher levels of salts in the water. Both of those are proprietary technologies to Tetra. We've got proprietary for oil and gas, I should clarify, proprietary for oil and gas applications, and really pleased with the relationships and the technologies that we've been able to prove out with both of those. And then the third phase is really another kind of final treatment process by Tetra, and that will depend on the specific customer specifications for certain constituents in the water, or if it's related to the permitting that ultimately the Railroad Commission will give to meet certain thresholds of minerals. And again, that will be another proprietary post-treatment process. So those three stages, the two in the middle are the two proprietary membrane technologies, and then our pre- and post-treatment on the tetracide. I hope that describes it without Too much detail.

Oh, that was great. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. And I'll turn it back.

Next question comes from the line. Bobby Brooks with Northland Capital Markets.

Hey, good morning, guys. So the AOGC ruling on lithium royalties is slated for next Monday. And you guys are in a really unique spot given you will be both, you guys are both producers of lithium at Evergreen. And then also you're going to be receiving royalties from Standard Lithium because of your aprons deal, right? So could you just take a few minutes or a couple to discuss your expectations for the ruling and maybe anything important to note from an outside perspective?

Yeah, so the November 4th, I believe, is the date for the hearing. We, again, collaborating with others in the industry, have been working really most of this year, I would say, preparing what we think is a very justifiable and optimal royalty structure that will support both investment in lithium and benefit. the residents and citizens within Arkansas for this type of technology. I can't predict how the outcome of that hearing will go, but I will say that I think the state officials are very motivated to get this royalty set and in place so that investment can move forward. I don't think until the royalty is set, you're going to be seeing any commitments for any projects until that royalty is set. It's very difficult to obviously do your economics of a project until that royalty is set. So I can't predict the outcome, but I do know the state is very motivated to get this approved and moving forward, and we're quite hopeful. I'm sorry, Bobby, was there a second part of your question? I know you were asking about our expectations for the fourth. Yeah.

I think, no, like I think you hit it there, but maybe just as a follow-up, right? So that got, it was supposed to, the wound was supposed to happen like September 26th, but then yourself as well as the other producers kind of sent in some more information to kind of make your point as, or make the point as to why it's, why it should go your way versus what the landowners were asking. And maybe just any insights of like kind of, Because, I mean, you guys are landowners as well, right? And so you guys do have that unique perspective. So maybe just, and I get, yeah, you can't, you know, you don't have, nobody has a crystal ball, right? But maybe just discuss kind of those documents that were submitted to the AOGC and maybe what you're hoping that, what that highlights to them.

The only thing I will say about our standard lithium royalties, those are already set. Those were negotiated in our option agreement with standard lithium. So Tetra, and this is public information, Tetra will be getting 2.5% royalty off of any commercial lithium production that standard lithium achieves. So in terms of documents that were submitted, really I It's really, I would say, more around the capital investment, the OPEX, the things that need to be put in play to justify where we think the optimum royalty should be, which is less than the 2.5% that we have with standard lithium. But again, we'll see how that goes. I can't predict the outcome.

And Bobby, I'll add that in the third quarter, a couple of items have been in favor of standard lithium that are very encouraging that they bring their production up. Number one, Equinor, the national oil company essentially of Norway, teamed up with them. And then second, Standard Lithium received a grant from the Department of Energy. So I think those two incremental data points is very encouraging from a Tetra perspective that Standard Lithium can produce lithium in the future. And the key part to us also, remember, is that Standard Lithium drills wells to get the brine out to get to the lithium. By default, they're bringing out the bromine. which then gives us an incremental source of bromine to feed our needs in the rolling gas and the battery storage market.

Yeah. Thank you for that clarity and reminder on that. You guys have already said I appreciate that. Then going to kind of jump to the next question, you guys have talked extensively about the factors underpinning why you guys are going to need more bromine supply, right? And I think that's pretty well understood by the investor community. And then in yesterday's release and you guys prepared remarks, you mentioned how you're now talking to bromine suppliers to expand that supply in the near term prior to evergreen getting up and producing those production volumes. So what I'm curious to hear on this, could you just give us some color as to

why that why that's happening now versus maybe nine months ago because it seems like the factors underpinning the outlook haven't changed but now it's going to now but now you guys are going out to circular supply yeah i think i think we we just want to make sure we uh we have some flexibility in in uh you know the way we look at how the market evolves over the next couple years um no nothing has changed in terms of our demand for bromine that is That is, I would say, we're probably as bullish on that as we have been since we started. But I think there are some options for us on the supply side, given where the current market is right now as it relates to bromine, to be able to secure some additional bromine supply that gives us more flexibility on how we stage the capital investment that we have with Arkansas. And so that's somewhat attractive for us to take a look at. We haven't concluded anything yet. We haven't published what the stage one of the bromine project would look like yet, but obviously we want to evaluate all of those before we make any final investment type decisions.

Okay, that makes really good sense. It's just nothing changing with the outlook. Outlook still remains as strong as it was nine months ago, but now it's hey, maybe we're doing this in a staged matter, getting the evergreen up, and so let's give ourselves some flexibility.

That's exactly right, yeah.

Yeah, got it. Thank you, Brady. And then just maybe last one for me, could you, so I guess you guys already kind of mentioned the Deepwater Brazil project. Obviously, a lot of stuff happening in that region. And could you just maybe remind us, like, you guys expanded your capacity in 2023 there by like 80%, right? Do you think winning this job is kind of a result of that capacity expansion? Because now you guys can serve it and maybe just give us some read through on if this then opens you, is this winning this job is going to then help you win other deep water jobs, you know, off other countries near Brazil.

Yeah, our investment in Brazil, you know, we had anticipated the market moving towards some of these higher density completion fluids. Again, Brazil is one of the largest, if not the largest in terms of actual rig activity, deep water markets in the world. But, you know, a lot of the traditional deep water have not been the high temperature, high pressure type wells necessarily that we see, like similar in the Gulf of Mexico. We started to see some trends of some of the higher pressure requiring heavier brines a couple of years ago when we secured the first in several years deep water contract. And so we made that investment in an additional capacity in anticipation of the market moving that way. So obviously we're very pleased that it's worked out that way. So, yeah, we see more opportunity in Brazil, especially if there's continuing shift to the heavy brines, because that's where really Tetra brings its technology and value to the completion fluids markets.

Thank you very much, guys, on the caller, and congrats on the solid quarter. I'll return to the queue. Thank you, Bobby.

Your next question comes from Josh Jane with Daniel Energy Partners.

Thanks. Good morning. First question is just around automation technology across water and flow back services. You guys alluded to this is going to be one of the driving factors behind how you can increase margins going forward. I just wondered if you could speak to the sense of urgency on behalf of your customers here wanting to move towards further automation and your outlook for sort of their sense of urgency on that front end into next year?

Yeah, so we're seeing very good customer acceptance of automation. One of the defining factors of our water and flow back business is traditionally has been a fairly labor-intensive operation. People cost... are the highest cost of this particular segment. And you're also putting people in the red zone oftentimes, wellheads under pressure, et cetera. So there's a critical safety factor involved in this. And so we realized a while back that in order for us to get the efficiency margins where we wanted to get the returns on the equipment we were putting into place as well as address customer safety, that that would be very appealing to the customers. And we're seeing that. You know, some customers will move faster on these types of things than others, but as, again, an indication we have right now is we're pretty well sold out, maximum utilization with the automation equipment that we have in the field, but we are taking a staged approach. We'll probably do 20% per year until we automate the entire flowback technology, but obviously if we see some demand from customers accelerating that or even wanting to put some money up front for some of that, we'll consider that. But that's our plan today.

Okay, thanks. And then for my follow-up, I was hoping we could just talk about TetraX a little bit more. I thought the release last week was pretty interesting when you talked about what the total addressable market could be for oil and gas or what ultimately corrosion costs back in a study that was done in 2013. Could you just talk about when you would expect tetra x to start contributing and then maybe um give some framework around total addressable market um as a standalone corrosion inhibitor i think just would be interesting for some color thanks yeah we're uh right now we'll be marketing it blended with our completion fluids and so we think that's going to allow us to get a a premium price again in high temperature in markets and in the

Rystad is estimating, I think, 187 to 190 wells or so that would qualify for high temperature wells next year. And so that's a pretty sizable market opportunity for us. We're not prepared yet to put any dollar numbers on what that will mean to us at this point in time. We're still in the early days of commercializing it, but we'll hope to be able to announce more color on that in the future. As far as Outside of the oil and gas market, again, the attractive part of Tetra X is the high temperature. Above 275 degrees is where Tetra X value really, really comes into play. It significantly reduces corrosion compared to what else is in the market. So we have to find markets that have that type of temperature environment to where we'll benefit from Tetra X. Obviously, oil and gas wells is one of them. There are other markets that we're looking at. But we're not prepared yet to be able to quantify, you know, what we think that value would be outside of oil and gas.

Okay. Thank you. I'll turn it back.

Sure.

Next question comes from Jeff Soberson with EF Uten.

Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. Really impressive margin management this quarter. I was just wondering, could you talk more about the pure flow electrolyte business with EOS Energy? It sounds like you're all set with the processing capacity to meet anticipated demand next year. And I'm curious if you could elaborate on the solution and how these sales are anticipated to influence your margins next year.

So, Jesse, if you recall, we started selling an ultra-high purity zinc bromide to EOS last year. And we took our zinc bromide that we have historically used that in the oil and gas We find it to a much higher level of purity, parts per billion, and that was our initial engagement with EOS. Then we announced earlier this year an arrangement so that instead of just selling them pure flow, we would instead blend the full electrolyte for them, which means that we're buying products from the open market and blending it with pure flow and then shipping them the complete electrolyte. We started doing that in a small scale. in the last couple of months, and we added blending capacity in West Memphis to take on those higher volumes, and now we're set to meet EOS's demands as they complete their automation process and take it to that level. So at this point, we're prepared to meet their demands of either pure flow or the complete electrolyte once they're up and running with a fully automated line.

And then on the margin front for the business?

Yeah, we won't comment on margins for any specific customer, but assume that it's going to be consistent with what we're seeing in the oil and gas sector.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jesse.

Next question comes from Dan Weston with Westcap Management.

Yeah. Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking the questions and congrats on all the progress. Last quarter, I think you mentioned that you were deploying your first sandstorm into the Middle East for a major national oil customer. If you can give a little guidance on how that trial is progressing and when you think a reasonable timeframe for a final investment decision there would be.

Sure, Dan. I think we announced we had actually reached an agreement with a major Middle East national oil company. And we have the agreement in place. We've actually had to make some modifications to our sandstorm to meet the local requirements in that market. We've completed that. We're delivering the sandstorms this quarter. And so the actual trials in the field won't take place until the first quarter. of 2025. I hope that clarifies a little bit on the time.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Thank you. Yeah, I may have missed that. Thanks for clarifying that. And then lastly, just relating to Aligio's comments relating to standard lithium in the DOE, could you remind us, has Tetra made a formal application pre-DOE funding? And any status update you can give would be appreciative.

Yeah, we won't comment on whether we've submitted applications or not. We don't want all future calls to focus on is an application in the system or are in the process. But assume that anything that's available out there that either qualifies us for battery production on the bromine side or on the lithium side, that we'll work to try to take advantage of that. I hope that rather than try to communicate progress, that we communicate success if we can get there.

No, I get it. Yeah, thank you, Miguel. Okay, that's all for me. I appreciate it, guys.

Thank you, Dan.

Again, if you have a question, please press star, then 1. This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Murphy for any closing remarks.

Well, thank you, everyone. Really appreciate your interest in Tetra and all the great questions. For now, we'll conclude our call today. Thank you very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.