CES Energy Solutions Corp.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for attending today's call. I'd like to note that in our commentary today, there will be forward-looking financial information and that our actual results may differ materially from the expected results due to various risk factors and assumptions. These risk factors and assumptions are summarized in our second quarter MD&A and press release dated August 6, 2026, and in our annual information form dated March 10, 2026. In addition, certain financial measures that we will refer to today are not recognized under current generally accepted accounting principles. And for a description and definition of these, please see our second quarter MD&A and investor presentation posted on our website. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Ken Zinger, our president and CEO.

Thank you, Tony, and welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our second quarter 2026 earnings call. As always, I will start my comments today by highlighting some of our major financial accomplishments that we achieved in Q2 of 2026. Our quarterly highlights include our third consecutive all-time record quarterly revenue of $714.1 million, which was an improvement of 24.4% over last year's Q2. It was also our highest quarterly EBITDA ever at $119.2 million, which marked a massive improvement of about 35% over last year's Q2. Q2 EBITDA margin of 16.7%, which was above our stated guidance range of 15.5% to 16.5%. Total debt to trailing 12 months EBITDA of 1.15 times. Our sixth consecutive quarter of record-setting U.S. quarterly revenue with $497 million. Our best ever Q2 Canadian quarterly revenue of $217.1 million. With regard to our capital allocation plans, I am pleased to report the following. Consistent with our prior messaging, we intend to address the dividend once per year while reporting Q4 or Q1 of each year. We will continue to support the business with the necessary investments required to provide acceptable growth and returns. This includes the updated CapEx plan for 2026 of $100 million spread equally between maintenance and growth. We will continue to research and execute on strategic acquisition opportunities which support vertical integration or interrelated business lines or geographies where we believe we can add value and grow returns. We will continue repurchasing shares while staying within our current debt to trailing 12 month EBITDA range of one to one and a half times as previously communicated. Now for a quick summary of our Q2 performance overall and by division. Today our rig count in North American land stands at 235 rigs out of the 791 currently listed as operating. This represents an industry-leading 29.7% market share. During Q2, 70% of CES revenue was generated in the United States and 30% in Canada, which is typical for a Q2 due to breakup in Canada. Cost pressures and supply chain challenges due to the fallout from the Iran conflict were felt across the business throughout Q2. As evidenced by our Q2 margins of 16.7%, our entire team has worked tirelessly along with our customers and suppliers to find common ground on pricing. This effort included procuring reliable replacements and redundant sources for all affected products and inputs. I cannot emphasize enough the tremendous job done by everyone in the company to achieve the current results. in light of all the pricing headwinds currently impacting our industry. We continue to not expect these fluctuations to cause meaningful or sustained margin erosion. We are actively managing the challenges as we have during previous cost escalation periods, and we do not expect any material impact to our margins going forward. We remain very confident in our stated margin guidance of 15.5% to 16.5%. In Canada, the Canadian Drilling Fluids Division continues to lead the WCSB in market share. Today, we are providing service to 89 of the 219 jobs listed as underway in Canada for a 40.6% market share. As everyone is aware, the overall active drilling rig count in Canada in Q2 was considerably higher year over year as commodity prices and industry optimism spiked due to the current Middle East situation. Now that we are through breakup in Canada and well into the summer drilling season, we remain very optimistic about WCSB activity levels. This is evidenced by the current WCSB rig count in August, which is at its highest level for this time of year since 2014. We anticipate these higher activity levels will continue throughout Q3, Q4, and Q1 2027 due to recently added takeaway capacity from infrastructure projects as well as vastly improved futures pricing for energy products due to the aforementioned Iran conflict and its associated fallout. Purechem, our Canadian production chemical division, continued its run of strong results in Q2. Purechem continues to grow as all of the business lines continued to perform at record levels. We anticipate experiencing further revenue and earnings growth at Pure Chem due to our consistent market penetration and higher activity levels that we expect to continue in the near future. The previously announced trial in the heavy oil sector of the market continued throughout Q2 and will progress well into the second half of 2026. In the United States, AES, our U.S. drilling fluids group, is currently providing chemistries and service to 146 of the 572 rigs listed as active in the USA land market today, including a basin leading 39.5% of the rigs in the Permian. This combines for a continued number one market share of U.S. land rigs at 25.5%. Our U.S. customers remain busy and our outlook is constructive for the remainder of 2026 and into 2027. At AES Completion Services, which is what we renamed our HydroLite acquisition, the revenue and market share continues to grow at a level exceeding expectations. This division is now operating at a very high level and has grown revenue by over five times since we acquired them in June of 2024. Finally, our U.S. Production Chemical Division, J-CAM Catalyst, continues a steady trend of growing market share and profitability. The division remains focused on further market penetration, in all the areas in which they operate on land in the United States, as well as in the offshore market. As a follow-up to the previously announced land-based RFP awards, I will confirm that we have now fully taken over all of the awarded locations associated with the large RFP referred to last year, and the business is now seamlessly operating at this much higher revenue run rate level. As well, progress continues in the offshore Gulf of America markets. As previously noted, this is a long and slow growth opportunity that we continue to make progress on. We believe our Q4, Q1, and Q2 results are indicative of the tremendous torque we have continually building in our business. We also believe that North American upstream activity will continue to accelerate throughout 2026 and 2027 based on current industry conditions and expected activity levels. We now believe that 2027 is looking stronger than previously anticipated for North America and for CES as the oil market has achieved economically attractive futures pricing and natural gas demand accelerates through the LNG and AI development. With regard to USA tariffs and the suggested Canadian counter tariffs, these continue to have little to no direct effect on our business in their current state. However, over the last couple of years, we have taken significant steps to restructure our manufacturing and supply chains in order to minimize future exposures as much as possible. I will state once again that as clearly noted a year ago on our Q1 2025 earnings call, the impact from tariffs to date continues to be immaterial to our overall business. By way of update, I would now like to remind investors of our targeted growth opportunities for the business in the coming years. USA Production Chemicals. Based on third party reports and our own internal research, estimated USA land production chemical market is currently worth approximately four to four and a half billion dollars Canadian annually. According to the Kimberlite report from last fall, we are the second biggest production chemical company in USA land and we held approximately 21% of this market. We are waiting to see what they say about the market share in the USA production chemicals next month when the 2026 report is published. Our goal remains to expand this market share and become the dominant number one supplier in this space. Canadian heavy oil production treating. Third-party reports suggest that this segment of the Canadian market is approximately $800 million Canadian annually. Today, we have a very minor share of this business, and we have spent the last 10 years making slow, steady progress on penetrating this technical, sticky, high-margin profile market. We continue to make steady progress at the two smaller facilities we are servicing, which we have previously mentioned, as well as we have recently been awarded two additional small facilities, where we are also treating with a complete line of chemistries. As mentioned on the past couple of calls, we are continuing the live testing trials on one of the larger facilities in the province. In addition to this trial, we are now just starting trials with two more opportunities at larger heavy oil production facilities. Like the existing trials, these additional trials will be ongoing and complicated, and I want to note that timelines to successful award will be measured in months and years, not days and weeks. Our goal remains to attain a meaningful market share in this space over time, much like we have in the broader Canadian production chemical space. And recent progress suggests that successful penetration is starting to accelerate. Next up is offshore Gulf of American production chemicals. Third-party reports suggest that this market size is approximately 1 billion Canadian annually. We are in the very early innings of a very long cycle time to penetrate this business in a meaningful way. Today we are a very small player in the space. However, since buying Crowflow in 2022, we have been hiring experts, building out manufacturing capabilities, and we also recently built an offshore focused lab in the woodlands in Houston. We have been experiencing more and more trial opportunity flow due to these initiatives. We are focused on someday holding a meaningful market share in the Deepwater Gulf of America production chemicals market and have a focused team who are dedicated to and actively pursuing this result. Also, international markets. We continue to have very minimal exposure to these markets. Today, we generate a small amount of revenue and earnings from a minor presence in a half a dozen countries, which we have targeted specifically as having the characteristics best suited for us to compete. We also have participated in a couple of RFPs in the Middle East over the past year, which yielded very promising results. As can be appreciated, the issues around the Iran war have caused these opportunities to be delayed indefinitely. In spite of this setback, we are continuing undeterred in our efforts to expand geographically. And last but not least, North American macro growth. This is something that is obviously beyond our control, but as the past few months have shown, when the market gets busier, we are rewarded with significant growth and earnings. As a final thought, I want to extend appreciation to each and every one of our employees for their commitment to the business, culture, and success of CES, Due to the growth we are still experiencing as well as anticipated experiencing, we have increased our total number of employees at CES by 6.5% since the start of the year, from 2,707 employees on January 1st to 2,882 employees at the end of Q2. I will now pass the call to Tony for the financial update.

Thank you, Ken. The second quarter represented an important continuation of a steady march to achieving a record revenue run rate of approximately $2.9 billion bolstered by strong EBITDAQ margins above our 15.5% to 16.5% targeted range and record funds flow from operations collectively demonstrating the attractive financial attributes of our unique business model. These results underpin the resilience of CES's consumable chemicals business model and sustained profitable growth as our customers continue to adopt chemical-related improved efficiencies and require higher treatment levels for increasingly prolific wells. In Q2, CES generated record revenue of $714 million, representing an annualized run rate of approximately $2.9 billion and a 24% increase over the prior year's $574 million. I would also note that this is the third consecutive quarter that has generated an annualized revenue run rate of approximately 2.7 billion or greater, and the first quarter achieving the $2.9 billion range, demonstrating the impacts of market share gains, large new business wins, and prudent deployment of capital to realize attractive organic growth. Revenue generated in the U.S. set a new record at $497 million, representing 70% of total consolidated revenue. These results compare to revenue of $438 million in Q1 2026 and $406 million in Q2 2025. Revenue generated in Canada also set a new second quarter record at $217 million compared to $168 million in Q2 2025, and sequentially below the $244 million in Q1, 2026 as expected on a seasonal basis. Revenue levels benefited primarily from increased market shares and elevated service intensity and production chemical volumes driven by increasingly complex curling programs. Customer emphasis on optimizing production through effective chemical treatments benefited both countries and illustrated the resilience and attractiveness of our business model. Adjusted EBITDA in Q2 came in at $119.2 million compared to $111.7 million in Q1 and $88.3 million in Q2 2025. Q2's adjusted EBITDA margin of 16.7% came in just above the high end of our targeted 15.5% to 16.5% range. and compared to 16.4% in Q1 and 15.4% in Q2 2025. These results were primarily driven by record revenue levels combined with strong margins, continued increased service intensity and a single short-term project. Funds flow from operations, which isolates the effect of working capital fluctuations and is a key barometer of the cash flow generating capability of the company. was a record $97 million in Q2 compared to $62 million in Q1 and $77 million in Q2 2025. CS generated $60 million in cash flow from operations compared to $69 million in Q1 and $66 million in Q2 2025. The decreases in cash flow from operations relative to comparable periods were driven primarily by significant strategic working capital investments to support record revenue levels. Free cash flow was $25 million in Q2 compared to $33 million in Q1 and $35 million in Q2 2025. As measured by a free cash flow to adjusted EBITDA conversion rate, this equates to approximately 21% in the current quarter and 37% for the trailing 12 months. including the impact of changes in working capital. These figures would have been 51% and 46% respectively. CES maintained a prudent approach to capital spending through the quarter with CapEx spend net of disposals of $24 million, representing 4% of revenue. We will continue to adjust plans as required to support existing business and attractive growth throughout our divisions. For 2026, we expect cash capex to be approximately $100 million, split evenly between maintenance and expansion capital. The modest increase in estimated 2026 capex spend is earmarked to support incremental accretive business development opportunities and current record revenue levels. During the quarter, the company continued with its measured pace for share buyback. thanks to consistently strong current and projected free cash flow. This shift reflects a disciplined response to increased volatility on the macro front and targeted acceleration of buybacks as opportunities present themselves. While remaining committed to its NCIB, CS is ensuring that repurchases are executed strategically to maximize long-term shareholder value. Consequently, during Q2, we repurchased 780,000 common shares at an average price of $17 per share for a total investment of $13.3 million, representing 0.4% of the shares outstanding as of April 1st, 2026. Subsequent to the quarter, we have already purchased 735,000 shares at an average price of $16.60 per share for a total of $12.2 million, representing an acceleration from Q2 repurchase levels. On July 22nd, 2026, we renewed the previous NCIB to repurchase for cancellation up to 18.1 million shares, representing 10% of the public float at the time of the renewal. Since inception of the NCIB program in 2018, TES has purchased 89 million shares representing 33% of the outstanding shares at that time at an average price of $4.70 per share. On June 15th, 2026, the company completed the private placement of $300 million of five and five-eighths senior unsecured notes due on June 15th, 2033. The company used the proceeds from the issuance to repay the existing 275 million of six and seven eight senior unsecured notes due on May 24th, 2029, and partially repay amounts outstanding on the senior credit facility. The refinancing decreases CS's annual interest costs by approximately $2 million per year, extends our debt maturity profile to 2033, and provides additional financing flexibility. The resulting total debt at the end of the quarter was $513 million, representing an increase of 21 million from March 31st, 2026. Total debt was primarily comprised of the new $300 million in senior notes and that new draw on the senior facility of $98 million and $96 million in lease obligations. total debt to adjusted EBITDA of 1.15 times at the end of the quarter compared to 1.18 times at March 31st, 2026, demonstrating our continued commitment to maintaining prudent leverage levels in the one to one and a half times range. This prudent and flexible capital structure is further illustrated by our current net draw of approximately 172 million, which has increased by 74 million from the end of the quarter, driven by the settlement of the company's quarterly dividend and CIB share repurchases and the timing of annual PSU-related compensation payments. We are very comfortable with our current debt level, maturity schedule, and leverage in the one to one and a half times range, thereby enabling strong return of capital to shareholders and prioritizing a sustainable dividend and share buybacks, in addition to strategic tuck-in acquisition opportunities. Elevated activity levels combined with our continued focus on working capital optimization has led to improvements in cash conversion cycle, which ended the quarter at 95 days compared to 112 days in Q2 2025. This translates to an operating working capital as a percentage of annualized quarterly revenue of 26%. compared to our historical range of 30 to 35%. Each percentage improvement at these revenue levels represents approximately $29 million on our balance sheet. We continue to remain focused on profitable growth, acceptable margins, working capital optimization, improving capital expenditures, which drive our key metric of return on capital employed, This approach has led to a cultural adoption of these key factors allowing us to maintain a strong trailing 12-month return on average capital employed of 22% and a return on invested capital of 18% and well above our internal weighted average cost of capital. The business model continues to demonstrate its cash compounding characteristics through a combination of high return metrics, low capex levels, Thank you for joining us today. and CapEx projects that deliver IRRs above our internal hurdle rates. We remain very comfortable with our dividend, which represents a yield of approximately 1.3% at our current share price and is supported by a very prudent payout ratio of 15%, well within our target range of 10 to 20%. Through the year, we continue to plan to buy back at least enough shares to offset are modest equity compensation related dilution, be in the market on a consistent basis and consider opportunistic purchases in the context of surplus free cashflow generation, implied valuation levels and adherence to our one to one and a half times target leverage range. In the context of these guardrails and current market conditions, we intend to continue our accelerated buyback activity levels as illustrated during the last two months. We continue to explore prudence acquisitions with a continued focus on accretive opportunities that provide complimentary products, markets, geographies, and leadership in support of our strategic priorities and that can benefit from our platform to realize attractive growth. At this time, I'd like to turn the call back to the operator to allow for questions.

As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question during today's call, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. We'll just take a brief moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Keith Mackey from RBC. Your line is now live.

Hey, thanks and good morning. So the margin in the quarter was quite strong at 16.7%. Certainly there were some obvious factors driving that, revenue growth, etc. You also mentioned a one-time or non-repeatable project in there. Tony, can you maybe just parse out the strength of that margin in the quarter and what led margins to reach the 16.7% this Q2 when they're normally a little bit seasonally weaker?

Yeah, for sure. We mentioned the one-time project from part of our business. It was in one of the Canadian divisions just because we provide that transparency in our financials, in our MD&A in particular. When we look at what contributed to that 16.7% margin, that was definitely one component, but it wasn't the only one. When you combine that contribution plus The fact that we had the Canadian dollar weakened quarter over quarter on average, that was a bit of a bump. We had some specific product categories increase in value, and as a result of our standard cost accounting, that leads to a debit of our inventory, credit of our cost of goods sold, so a little bit of a bump there. So those were the sort of one timers that would have otherwise had that margin be lower than the 16.7, probably somewhere squarely between the 16 to 16 and a half percent range. But just stepping back, I think the more important takeaways are the facts that all of the divisions ended up with very high revenue levels. And importantly, they grew into the, The higher SG&A that they had been building over the last year to, for example, support the big RFP win at JCAM Catalyst, for example, to support the 150 rigs on average that AES had in Q2 versus 135 in Q1. So those three items that I described were sort of one-offs that would have got us back inside the range that we said, but the bigger takeaway here is that the company continues to fire on all cylinders, and we like to expect that we'd be living in the higher end of our 15.5% to 16.5% guidance level for EBITDA margin and potentially beyond as we go forward here.

Got it. Okay. Okay, that's helpful. So just curious as a follow-up, what's keeping you from raising that margin guidance? Like you've exceeded it. I think it's around seven of the last 10 quarters exceeded the top end of that range. Sounds like you're angling or anchoring towards a 16 plus percent margin now. What's keeping you from raising the top end of that margin range to the 17 or 17 and a half percent range?

Well, it's just avoiding misleading investors to expect something at a higher level when we're still not sure that we have a clear cut Thank you very much.

When we were getting those steady 17s, it was during 2024 when the market was fairly stable for us. It was after all that shipping conflict in 22, 23 and before the Iran stuff earlier this year, which just allowed us to get everything dialed in when you have a steady market like that. But the latest conflict has us right back into the midst of shortages, shipping problems, prices fluctuating all over the place based on tweets like it's Thank you for joining us. and we were kind of thinking at the beginning of the quarter that it might be in the lower end of the 15 and a half to 16 and a half, but it was just through great work by everybody that we got higher.

Understood. Thanks very much for the color.

Thanks, Keith. The next question comes from the line of John Gibson from BMO Capital Markets. Your line is live.

Before I can stick to my questions, Obviously, the margins were stronger this quarter. How do we think about them through the back half of the year? More specifically, given some of the incremental costs in the business, it looks like you've been able to pass them through, but we see some following on into potentially lower margins in Q3 and Q4.

I think you should expect more of the same and by more of the same we mean the higher end or the higher half of our 15.5% to 16.5% EBITDA margin target range.

Okay, great. Just one more from me. You talked about timelines being months or years for some of these buckets of growth. You talked about what would be Thank you very much.

Instead of telling you where we're at, like we're still on the four platforms, instead of telling you that stuff every quarter, I'm just going to update when we have a win. We've got more trials going there today than we had three months ago. And if something clicks, we'll definitely let people know and talk about it. And then heavy oil, same thing. We've got a couple more trials going now. So we've kind of got three big projects trialing. We've picked up some more work there. The pipeline's increasing. Credibility seems to be accepted. But they're long term, right? They do contribute to revenue a little bit as you go through the trials because you are adding a product or two most of the time through the trial period. It's just that the trials, you know, I underestimated sort of how long they can run and it looks like they can run a year or more as they slowly work towards completely ensuring they're not going to have a problem when they make the transition. But same thing on those, when we get awarded, we'll make sure to let everybody know.

I could speak one more, and apologies if I've missed this. What would incremental margins be on the SAGD and U.S. offshore work relative to your sort of base business?

Yeah, we point to what's been said in the public before. If you go back to when ChampionX was a standalone public company, they used to talk about those margins being in the 20s, in the 20 to 30% range. So definitely higher than our current corporate average.

Thanks a lot, guys. Great quarter. I'll turn it back.

Thanks. Your next question comes from the line of Jonathan Goldman from Scotiabank.

Your line is live. Hey, good morning, Ken and Tony. Thanks for taking my questions. Ken, thanks for going through the opportunity set. Again, I appreciate that. But if you take a step back of all the trials you're on and the projects you're looking at, is there any play or project that you're particularly excited about Thank you for joining us.

We've got big chunks of business coming through all the time and that business is hitting on all cylinders right now. For sure, that's going to be the thing we see the growth in first and most steadily.

The share gains in the production chemicals business, are you able to discuss at whose expense those are coming or what do you think is driving the incremental share there?

I mean there's there's been some changes in the market right and so everybody is taking has taken another look at what they're doing and then there's just always the credibility the bigger you get the more you work for the bigger companies or even the smaller companies in some challenging areas the more credibility you get which gets you onto more bids and get you get you taken more seriously so you know in Canada we're about a third of the conventional production chem market in the Permian we think we're much higher percentage than the 21% we're ranked at overall in North America. And so I just don't see a reason we can't grow that business substantially from the already big size it is. And we're kind of proving that every day right now.

And just to put some additional numbers behind that, Jonathan, and we update this in our investor presentation every quarter, where over the years we've tracked the quantitative aspects of what A lot of what Ken just described where when you look at the winners in this industry, Canada and the US, they've been consolidators. And when you look at the way our company has performed from a technical and service-oriented perspective, we continue to work with those biggest and best companies. So as they grow, we grow. And if you look at how that's progressed, Right now, as we stand, when you look at all of our revenue and you look at public information as a proxy, public company customer information as a proxy to determine the sizes of companies that we generate our revenue from, if you were to extrapolate that, you would see that, and this is in our investor deck, about 90% of our revenue comes from companies that are sizable, market cap equivalents of Thank you for joining us.

It's just the timelines on those things are pretty extended. We're making progress, we're working towards it, and someday we're going to succeed there. Hopefully within the next year, but we'll just see how that goes. It's going really well so far. But the thing we can see, the thing we can look at every day and see the growth in is definitely U.S. lime production chemicals.

We can all see the growth as well. I guess maybe one more for you, Tony or Ken, whoever wants to take it. I appreciate you guys letting out the capital allocation priorities again. In terms of M&As, is there anything that you're missing in your portfolio, whether it's from a product perspective or region, that you think you need to fill in there? Is there anything in the pipeline that you're looking at, or do you feel that Organic Growth is probably the best avenue right now, as well as the buyback and the annual dividend consideration.

I'll start with that one. We say all the time we look at everything, and we literally do look at everything we hear about or that gets sent to us, but I don't believe we have a hole in our arsenal. We have evaluated a bunch of different businesses and opportunities, and even on the supply side, if there wasn't a company out there that we thought The other thing to reiterate that we've talked about before is if

If we were to find high-quality businesses to help us advance those three key strategic growth opportunities that we're already expanding into organically, we would take a very serious look at those, and that would be A, strategic, and B, anything that we look at that's reasonably sized would have to have similar financial attributes that we do, high ROCE and good margin potential. And if we were to check the boxes on those, and again, reiterate, if there was something that could advance our penetration of those markets that we're growing into organically, we would take a very serious look at those.

Got it. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, great work. Again, guys, nice seeing the progress over the years.

Yeah. Thank you, Jonathan. Thanks for the support.

The next question comes from the line of Tim Monticello from ATV Cormark Capital Markets.

Your line is... Hey, good morning, everyone. I want to dive in a little bit on the offshore stuff. Kind of as a follow-up to John's question, what are the incremental margins there and given that you're running four platforms and adding capabilities, is that work currently margin accretive or is that dilutive and at what scale do you think that you start to see the benefits of that business on the margin?

Yeah, that's a good question and a wise observation. The answer is no, we're not achieving 20% to 30% margins in that part of our business and that's simply because We have built a world-class offshore oriented lab in the woodlands because we have hired some of the best and brightest people to help us expand into that market. So we have the benefit of the size and scale of our business to be able to support those extra costs that are higher than the current revenue levels require. Just like we did in the JCAM Catalyst business for a few quarters as we were looking to win those RFPs. So the answer is we're not there yet, Tim, for sure. And that's just not our style. We made a conscious decision to invest in the growth of that business. And that's what we're doing. And in terms of using the number of platforms as a barometer, that's not perfect, as we've explained before. There are some platforms that are very large in terms of volumetric flow rates, some that are smaller. There are some that use a vast array of specialty chemicals, some that don't. So you can't simply take four or five divided by the 55 to 60 targeted platforms, multiply that by a billion. But like Ken said, we will provide updates. And I think as we get through the next few years, like that's not 10, but it's not one or two. We should start getting to and through our corporate average EBITDA levels.

Okay, yeah, that's helpful. And then on balance currently, can you talk a little bit about what your revenue split is between production chemicals and drilling fluids roughly? And just given the fact that a lot of the growth initiatives across the platform are in The production chemical space, whether it be offshore, onshore U.S., or in heavy oil, where do you think that that mix could trend towards?

So it's currently at 53% production chemicals and 47% drilling fluids. And yeah, you're right, and Ken will elaborate, but Those opportunities that we've been talking about are more geared towards production chemicals. And Ken can talk about the strategic thoughts behind that. But from a financial perspective, that's great that the growth has been there and we've been earmarking that growth. But the guys running the drilling fluids divisions have been knocking it out of the park. They've been winning big pieces of business with very good customers. They've been penetrating new markets and new customers, and they've been very efficient and effective in increasing the specialty chemical mix on the overall product offering, especially for the complicated wells. We call it our magic number, the revenue per rig per day. Each of the drilling fluids divisions not only has grown into new opportunities, but they've been increasing that number, which which tends to allow them to keep up with the production chemical related growth.

Yeah, and I'd say on both sides of the border when it comes to drilling fluids, we're making progress on market share. There's no big projects like we're talking about on the production chem side to speak of. So if there's something that we're doing in the company that's focused on drilling fluids, it's just continuing to take market share. And it's also the international growth opportunities I talked about. All of those all but one of the half dozen countries that we're working in are drilling fluids related opportunities. And the RFPs we've been participating in, those are drilling fluid opportunities. The way we're thinking about those markets is that we would get on the ground with drilling fluids first to penetrate, establish a foothold, and then bring production chemicals in behind that.

Okay, that's helpful. And then if I can speak one more, just on the M&A front, I'm just curious if there's any other parts of the market that you're interested in getting a foothold in through M&A. And when I think about the composition of ChampionX before it was acquired by Schlumberger, it had a lot of technology, vertical IT or software platforms within it. Is there any appetite for an acquisition like that or adding a service line that's sort of new to the business?

I think we've been pretty focused on the chemical side. So if it related to what we're doing downhole with chemistry, that would be something that would be interesting. But we're aware of who's out there as far as branching off into something that's outside of the breadth of what we do. We're not spending a lot of time looking at that stuff.

Yeah, the other thing I'd say from a financial perspective is oftentimes there have been Thank you for joining us. The ROCE numbers that we put up, the ROIC numbers that we put up, the free cash flow conversion rates that we put up. And those are the things that carry the day at the end of the day where if those opportunities as interesting and as exciting and as much press as they get don't have the financial profile to to support our business model from a financial and valuation perspective. We don't spend a lot of time on them.

All right. I appreciate all the context, and I'll turn it back.

Your next question comes from the line of John Daniel from Daniel Energy Partners. Your line is live.

Hey, guys. Thanks for having me. Ken, can you walk me through what you're seeing here? with respect to volumes, your volumes on a per lateral foot basis?

Sure. I assume we're talking about drilling fluids. And if that's the case, we have a number that we track in the company that's called our magic number, which relates to the revenue per rig per day. And that number is trending up. I would say that Well, Tony, you would know those numbers better than me. What has been the trend of the number?

Yeah, that number over the last three years is up 40% revenue per rig per day.

Okay, but if you see a customer go from three-mile lateral to four-mile lateral, I know their volumes go up because the length is longer, but when you look at it on that per-foot basis, do you have a sense, and I can call back if you don't have it handy, but on a per-foot basis, is it going up or down or do they just hold it steady?

It definitely goes up as you get further out, John. You're right on that. As far as the number to give you, I don't have that handy, so we can follow up with that. For sure, the further you go, the higher the rate is and the more specialty chem, so the better margin it is for us and the more differentiation we can create between ourselves and our competitors through better products.

Okay, thank you. And then the second one, sort of the big picture one, but just increasingly you see more of the U.S. operators calling out their increased workover programs and so forth. And I'm just curious if you could just go a little bit deeper on what you're seeing in the U.S. land side of the production chemicals business.

As far as the volumes that are being produced daily?

Any changes in trends or anything along that line? I know it's strong, but just what are customers coming to and Are they looking for new formulas, rising work activity, just any additional color on production chemicals and the trends?

I think I'll start with that. I think we have divisions on both sides of the border called Stimworks where we do acid treatments primarily, but a bunch of things to help with bringing production back on from existing wells. Those businesses on both sides of the border are running at high levels. We have the workover business with AES Completions. That business, obviously, as I've talked about, the old Hydrolyte, has been growing massively. I'm not sure that the market overall is growing massively. It's just we're taking a bigger chunk of what's there. You got anything else?

Yeah, and the other thing that we've touched on before is... This is the fact that guys are doing more with less. If you look at production levels and the number of wells that are actually being drilled today, there's been a disconnect versus historical levels. And the math simply points to the fact that the wells that are being drilled in are producing now are way more prolific than they used to be. And their initial production rates are very high, much higher during that first phase than they used to be. And we like or love that because That's the time in the production phase that requires the biggest concentration of chemistry. In a lot of cases, the highest percentage shift towards the specialty chemicals. So that means two things, higher revenue and higher margins. The other thing that's production chemical related is the fact that with TI trading, I guess today in the 70s versus the... The levels that we were at earlier in the year, a lot of these wells that are the smaller volume producing wells that used to be set aside by the wayside because they weren't big producers at these levels, including where we're at right now with TI. One of our divisions called Stimworks in both Canada and the US does a really good job of speaking to intelligent operators about increasing the flow rates of those lower volume aged wells for a very modest investment that is able in a lot of cases to double their production within weeks or months and earn paybacks within three or four months and then the last one there's been a lot of talk of surfactants and our guys are doing a lot of work there to to penetrate that market and or grow in that market. And I'll leave it to Ken to provide more color on that. But we want to be careful from a competitive perspective. The one thing that I can say very openly is that the fact that that increased surfactant use does two things. Number one, opens a market for more production chemicals. But interestingly, the observation for several months has been that use of surfactant is awesome for our customers because it allows them to get more out of what they got But it does have a knock-on effect where the volume and type of chemistry needed to treat production after surfactant use is higher and higher margin when you look at the specialty chemical component to deal with the aftermath of the surfactant use, which we really love.

Yeah, I'd say on the surfactant use, we are hearing that more. Talking to customers, press releases, those sorts of things. We've been doing a lot of work on it. And what's changed? Surfactants have been around for a very long time. People have been using them for a very long time. We use them extensively at Stimworks and with the little bit of frack business that we do. We provide surfactants and have for the last 20 years. But what's changed is just how specific they're targeting those surfactants. Thanks, John.

As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. There are no further questions. I'd like to turn the call back over to Kenneth Zinger for closing remarks.

Okay. Well, thank you, everyone, for joining us today, and we look forward to speaking to everybody again during our next call on November 13th.

This concludes today's meeting. You may now disconnect.