Calfrac Well Services Ltd.

Hey, everyone, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Calfrag Wealth Services first quarter 2024 earnings release and conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To participate, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. You will then hear a message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw the question, simply press star 1-1 again. and please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. Now it's my pleasure to hand the conference over to the Chief Financial Officer, Michael Olenek. Please proceed.

Thank you, Carmen. Good morning, and welcome to our discussion of CALFRAC Wealth Services' first quarter 2024 results. Joining me on the call today is Pat Powell, CALFRAC's CEO, This morning's conference call will be conducted as follows. Pat will provide some opening commentary, after which I will summarize the financial performance and position of the company. Pat will then provide an outlook for CALFRAC's business and some closing remarks. After the completion of these remarks, we will open the conference call to questions. In a news release issued earlier today, CALFRAC reported its first quarter 2024 results. Please note that all financial figures are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise indicated. Some of our comments today refer to non-IFRS measures such as adjusted EBITDA. Please see our news release for additional disclosure on these financial measures. Comments today will also include forward-looking statements regarding CALFRAC's future results and prospects. We caution you that these forward-looking statements are subject to a number of known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause our results to differ materially from our expectations. Please see this morning's news release and CALFRAC CEDAR filings, including our 2023 Annual Information Form, for more information on forward-looking statements and these risk factors. As we have previously disclosed, the company is committed to a plan to sell its Russian division and has designated the assets, liabilities, and operations in Russia as held for sale and discontinued operations in the financial statements. As a result, the focus of the remainder of this call will be on Calfract's continuing operations, unless otherwise specified. Now I will pass the call over to Pat.

Thanks, Mike. Good morning, and thanks for joining our call today. Before Mike provides a financial some opening remarks. Unfortunately, the first quarter that we reported this morning was not what we were expecting and was disappointing. The North American miss cannot be attributed to any one event. The lower than expected financial results during the first quarter were primarily impacted by low utilization as several North American customers chose to defer work out of the winter months into the second and third quarters. And we also felt the impact of a merger on the E&P side that didn't go our way. Finally, low natural gas prices had a negative impact on overall utilization. This was partially offset by a record quarter in Argentina. Despite the drop in utilization, we maintained our focus on providing safe, high-quality services to all our customers and continue forward with our equipment modernization program. During the quarter, we deployed a new fleet of high-capacity sand transport units in North America that increased the amount of sand per load that can be delivered to location by 38%. which will reduce our overall costs. The Tier 4 modernization program is progressing, and we're on track to operate five Tier 4 DGB cat-on-cat fleets in North America by the end of the year, providing our customers with next-generation low-emissions fracturing equipment. I'd also like to commend our team for continuing to provide safe and efficient service as we reduced our trailing 12-month TRIF from 1.05 to 0.87. It takes hard work and commitment across the organization to safely and promptly navigate the pressure-pumping market to achieve our objectives. I will now pass the call back to Mike, who will present an overview of our quarterly financial performance.