Trican Well Service Ltd.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Trican Wealth Service first quarter 2023 earnings results conference call and webcast. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Mr. Brad Fedora, President and CEO of Trican Wealth Service Limited. Please go ahead, Mr. Fedora.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for attending the Trican Q1 2023 webinar. quarterly results call. First, Scott Mattson, our Chief Financial Officer, will give an overview of the quarterly results. I will then provide some comments with respect to the general operating conditions and the outlook for the rest of this year, and then we'll turn the call over for questions. Several members of our team are in the room with me here today and will be available to answer any questions that may come up.

I'll now turn the call back to Scott. Thanks, Brad. So before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that this conference call may contain forward-looking statements and other information based on current expectations or results for the company. Certain material factors or assumptions that were applied in drawing conclusions or making projections are reflected in the forward-looking information section of our MD&A for Q1 of 2023. A number of business risks and uncertainties could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements and our financial outlook. please refer to our 2022 annual information form, business risk section of our Q1 2023 MD&A and our MD&A for the year ended December 31st, 2022 for a more complete description of business risks and uncertainties facing Trican. These documents are available on our website and on CDAR. During this call, we will refer to several common industry terms and we use certain non-GAP, non-IFRS measures which are more fully described in our Q1 2023 MD&A. And our quarterly results were released after close of market last night and are available both on CDAR and our website. So with that, let's move on to our results for the quarter. Most of my comments will draw comparisons to the first quarter of last year, and I'll provide some general commentary about our quarterly activity and our expectations going forward. Trican's results for the quarter were significantly improved compared to Q1 of 2022. Industry conditions were quite strong, which led to solid activity levels across our business lines. Inflation is somewhat moderated, leading to a more sustainable margin profile, and that resulted in improvements across all major financial categories. Revenue for the quarter was $297 million, an increase of about 36% compared to the same period of last year. Adjusted EBITDA came in at $81.6 million, a significant improvement over the $38.9 million we generated in Q1 of 2022. I would note that our adjusted EBITDA figure includes expenditures related to good end replacements, which totaled $2.3 million in the quarter and were expensed in the period. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter came in at $82.9 million, or 28% of revenues, a significant improvement compared to the $42.0 million and 19% we printed last year. To arrive at EBITDA, we add back the effects of our cash settled share-based compensation to more clearly show the results of our operations and remove some of the financial noise associated with the changes in our share price. as we mark to market these items. On a consolidated basis, we generated positive earnings of $46 million in the quarter, or about $0.20 per share. Trican generated free cash flow of $69.5 million during the quarter, as compared to $30.4 million in Q1 of 2022. Our definition of free cash flow is essentially EBITDAs less non-discretionary cash expenditures, which include maintenance capital, interest, cash taxes paid, and cash settled stock-based comp. CapEx for the quarter was about $19.5 million, split between our maintenance capital program of $11.2 million and upgrade capital of $8.3 million. The upgrade capital mainly dedicated to our ongoing Tier 4 capital refurbishment program, which Brad will touch on later. Balance sheet remains in excellent shape. We exited the quarter with positive working capital of approximately $181 million, including cash of $25. And finally, with respect to our return of capital strategy, we were quite active with our NCIB program during the quarter. We repurchased and cancelled about 9.8 million shares at an average price of $3.31, equating to approximately 4% of the company's issued and outstanding shares based on the share count at the beginning of the year. We've remained active as we've moved into Q2, and have repurchased another 1.7 million shares or so since April 1st. As we reported yesterday, the Board of Directors declared a dividend of $0.04 per share to be paid on June 30th of 2023 to shareholders of record as of close of business on June 15th of 2023. And I would note that these dividends are designated as eligible dividends for Canadian tax purposes. So with that, I'll turn things back to Brad for some comments on our operating conditions and our outlook.