Trican Well Service Ltd.

Thank you for standing by. My name is Tina and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Trican Well Service's second quarter 2026 results call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question, simply press star 1 on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Brad Fedora. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us. We'll start off with Scott Matson, our Chief Financial Officer. He'll give an overview of the corridor, and then I will provide some comments with respect to the corridor, the current operating conditions, and our outlook for the near future. And then we'll open up the call for questions. As usual, we have several members from our executive team in the room today and are available to answer any questions anyone may have. I'll now turn over the call to Scott. Thanks, Brad.

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 Q2 of 2026. 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 2025 Annual Information Form for the year ended December 31, 2025 for a more complete description of business risks and uncertainties facing Trican. The document is available both on our website and on CDAR. During this call, we will refer to several common industry terms and use certain non-GAAP measures. which are more fully described in our Q4 2025 MD&A. Our quarterly results were released after close of market last night and are available both on CDAR and on our website. So with that brief summary of the quarter, my comments will draw comparisons to the second quarter of last year and I'll provide some comments about our current active levels and expectations going forward as well. And before getting into the details of the quarter, it's important to recognize that Q2 of 2025 was an exceptionally strong period for Trican. During that time, there was significant concern across the industry regarding operators' abilities to secure sufficient water resources to support planned frac programs heading into the fall. In addition, Alberta and British Columbia experienced an active wildfire season with operators anticipating access challenges at completion locations as we moved into Q3. Both of these items had resulted in demand for available service capacity being pulled forward into Q2. As a result, Trican benefited from an unusually strong activity level throughout Q2 2025, culminating in a very, very busy June. In contrast, Q2 of 2026 reflected a more typical spring breakup period with reduced operating activity and lower equipment utilization across much of our business lines. While the acquisition of Iron Horse in August of 2025 expanded our service offering and increased our operations scale, The contribution reflected its seasonally weaker second quarter operating profile with seasonal softness further weighing on profitability. So with that, overall revenues for the quarter came in at $214.6 million compared to the $213.8 million we generated in Q2 of 2025. Again, lower activity and utilization levels throughout breakup together with the wet weather conditions in certain operating areas during June. were largely offset by the contribution from Iron Horse resulting in revenues that were broadly consistent with last year. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $22.6 million or 11% of revenue compared to the adjusted EBITDA of $44.9 million or 21% of revenue in Q2 of 2025. This was driven by lower activity and utilization levels compounded by continued pricing pressure across our service lines as recovering the full impact of freight, fuel and other operating costs Increases remains challenging in a very competitive environment. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter came in at $25.2 million or 12% of revenue compared to the $47.3 million or 22% of revenue in Q2 of last year. To arrive at EBITDA we add back the effects of our cash settled share based comp recognized in the quarter to more clearly show the results of operations and remove some of the mark to market impact of movements and our share price between the operating dates. On a consolidated basis, this resulted in a loss of $2.3 million during the quarter, translates to $0.01 per share on both a basic and fully diluted basis, compared to earnings of $19.5 million or $0.11 per share on a basic and fully diluted basis in Q2 of last year. Net earnings and earnings per share were also impacted by higher depreciation and amortization costs with Iron Horse, technology initiative expenses, and some higher share-based comp costs. While profitability was below prior year, we continue to be encouraged by the underlying customer activity levels, our market position, and ability to generate free cash flow and further strengthen the balance sheet. We generated free cash flow of $13 million during the quarter. Again, our definition of free cash flow is essentially EBITDA plus non-discretionary cash expenditures. You can see more details on this in the non-GAAP measures section of our MD&A. CapEx for the quarter totaled $20.8 million. We split between maintenance capital of $9.5 million and upgrade capital of $11.3 million. Our upgrade capital was dedicated primarily to the electrification of our fourth set of ancillary frac support equipment, construction of Canada's first 100% natural gas-fueled continuous heavy-duty hydraulic fracturing fleet, and ongoing investments to maintain the productive capability of our active equipment. We continue to maintain a very strong balance sheet, exiting the quarter with positive non-cash working capital of $81 million. and a cash balance of $15.4 million with no outstanding debt. During the quarter, we harvested significant working capital as receivables were collected following an active winter season and inventory levels reduced accordingly. Those proceeds were used to repay our outstanding borrowings and further strengthen our balance sheet. With respect to our return of capital strategy, we repurchased and cancelled 885,000 shares under our NCFE program during the quarter. at a weighted average cost of $7.28 per share. Subsequent to quarter end, we repurchased and canceled 305,000 shares and will continue to be active with our buyback program when market prices are at levels that provide for a favorable investment opportunity. As noted in our press release, the Board of Directors approved a dividend of 5.5 cents per share, reflecting approximately $11.5 million in aggregate return to shareholders. This distribution is scheduled to be made on September 30th, 2026. To shareholders of record as of the close of business on September 15th, 2026. And I would note that the dividends are designated as eligible dividends for Canadian tax purposes. So with that, I'll turn things back to Brad. Okay, thanks.

I'll make a few comments about the quarter and just how we're viewing the world, which really hasn't changed much since our last call. Obviously Q2 came in a little lower than expected. I really caution you, we don't get too fussed by Q2 results and I would caution you not to extrapolate Q2 into the rest of the year as it just isn't relevant. If you go back to our call from Q1, at that time we talked about Q2 is really dependent on June and how wet it is. As it turned out, June was the wettest June on record in history and is the second wettest month ever in the history of central Alberta so that has a huge impact on our operations and so don't worry about Q2. It's not a quarter that is indicative of how the rest of the year is going to go. It stands out in particular to last year, which was unusually good. A bunch of work had been pulled forward due to fears for forest fires and water access. Again, I wouldn't get too fussed by how Q2 shook out. We don't go to work at any price. This equipment has a certain number of hours of life, and we're not afraid to say, no, that's not good enough, and we'll save those hours for for a different customer at a different time at a more attractive return. I would say the market overall feels good. Customers are still very focused on technology and efficiency, particularly the opportunity to burn natural gas versus diesel. At these fuel prices, this is becoming more and more important every day. The arbitrage between natural gas prices and diesel has never been higher. You know, you're buying gas at $3 a GJ. It's like buying diesel at $0.12 a litre, not the $2 a litre that we're currently paying throughout the basin. So all of the investments that we've made over the past few years have all been generally focused towards getting our equipment to run on natural gas versus diesel. And that stuff is really starting to pay off. You know, in wells like Duvernay, as an example of Duvernay play, burning natural gas versus diesel can save So all of those investments that we made, turning our equipment, our backside equipment to electric, you know, replacing our diesel burning natural gas pumps with, or our diesel burning frac pumps, replacing them with natural gas engines, you know, those are, that stuff is all really paying off and it's becoming basically the standard for the industry. You know, the oil work is obviously going well. You know, I think you'll see Iron Horse really perform well in the second half of this year. You know, we've got good oil pricing, but we had a lot of volatility in Q2, and so it really didn't shake through from an activity perspective. But I think you'll see that division really perform well in the second half. You know, we're still focused Montney, Duvernay, and the shallower oil plays, so nothing's changed from a strategy perspective. In the TRICAN deep frac division, where we're making the natural gas investments, everything's going very well. We're viewed as a technical leader in the industry. Wells are getting longer, more stages, more sand in the wells. That means longer time on location. And now almost 30% of our work is in the duvernay, which is a very pressure pumping intensive play. And a couple of years ago, we built sort of customized equipment The pumping pressures and durations and so that is bearing fruit with you know lower maintenance costs, lower downtime and the ability to take less equipment onto locations because we're not you know we're not having to take a bunch of spare equipment for breakdowns. You know there's this trend in sand consumption or placement continues. I think post COVID in 2021 the basin The basin consumed about 4.5 million tons of sand. This year it's going to be 8.5 to 9 million tons and there's lots of forecasts for it to grow as high as 12 to 15 million tons per year. So we've been making investments in our last mile logistics and we expect that to basically run at 100% utilization for the foreseeable future. And efficient logistics are absolutely critical for success on a pad. I think we do the best job of this in the basin. We have one of the largest sand truck fleets in Western Canada and our customers really value that service offering. We received our first 100% natural gas cat engine and it's been in the field now for a while, performing very well, actually a little bit better than expected. Those new Frac pumps with those engines will replace two of our conventional pumps. So we'll have less people, less equipment, ability to pump at higher pressures for longer and when you combine those 100% natural gas pumps with the electric backside equipment, you know, we're basically almost consuming 100% natural gas on location, you know, giving savings of You know, up to $200,000 a day, so it's a huge win for the operator. It's great for maintenance. It's, you know, lower footprint on location. It's a win-win for both us and our customers. We expect the full fleet to be operational in Q4 of this year. The pumps sort of come out one at a time once you work the kinks out of the first one. And so, you know, we'll have that, and we'll have a 10-pump fleet of those 100% natural gas We expect to receive our first natural gas-fueled semi-truck for hauling sand in August of this year. We've been working with customers on how we're going to get fuel infrastructure built in the field. They have a very, very long range, so currently we'll operate those in the Grand Prairie area in northwest Alberta. and, you know, running CNG in a semi-trailer or semi-truck is about a 60% reduction in fuel costs and lower maintenance. So again, it's going to be a win for us on fuel expenses. In the Iron Horse Division, Their Q2 went pretty much as usual. I think there was a lot of chatter on the boards about why our EBITDA didn't go up given the Iron Horse division. I just want to remind everybody that Iron Horse experience is a traditional breakup. They're not additive to EBITDA in Q2. They're negative to flat at best. So that's not an addition. You'll really see the impact of that division in Q3 and Q4 this year. Their customers are are messaging higher activity levels as long as oil prices stay high. Obviously, we've got crack spreads over $70, so there's lots of incentive for people to develop their oil plays right now. And they're experiencing the same issues as the other frac division with higher intensity on a per well basis. The stages and sand volumes are growing, but that just means more time on location, so that's good for us in the long term. The Cement Division continues to operate really well. We're growing our market share in areas where we weren't currently present, which is Northeast Alberta and the heavy oil, oil sands area. You know, they had a great Q2 from an activity revenue perspective, but unfortunately, you know, their costs are going up just as high as the activity is. So, you know, they had a good activity quarter, but it's sort of as expected EBITDA quarter. We're working on electrification in that division as well, and we expect that we'll have our first hybrid cement unit delivered in Q4 this year. And that basically plugs right into the rig for power, reduces hydraulics, less breakdowns, less R&M, less fuel costs. That's, again, it's a win for us. And, you know, we continue to outperform our competitors in this space. We have basically a 50% market share in the Montney and the DuVernay. And we just recently completed the longest well in history for Canada, just over 9,600 meters. I think that was for Paramount. So everything's going very well in that division. We're making investments in our bulk blending plants to reduce blending errors, dust, dust exposure to our staff. We expect that to transfer into higher quality of service for our customers. On the coil side, everything is going well there as well. You know, as these wells get longer, and we work on technology to get our coil out to an extended reach. We continue to spend more time on location with our coil. Those jobs get bigger. We're seeing that division grow year over year and just the investments we've made in our coil string inventory to deal with these longer wells is really starting to pay off. So I'll just touch on the outlook now. Nothing's changed. Q3, the second half of this year, and Q3 and Q4, they all look good, the trends for this industry in Canada. There's no other place we'd rather be. Whether you're going to have weather impacts, whether it's Q2 in and around the winter, don't get fussed over the sort of very, very short-term hiccups that do not transfer into any long-term impacts on the business. Again, I would refer you back to our Q1 comments about June. When we have a record rain month, there's no way around it that's going to impact our operations, but it doesn't impact the year or any long-term perspectives on the business. We are experiencing cost inflation due to oil prices. As diesel prices go up, it just goes through everything from groceries to We're working hard to get our prices up to offset those cost increases, but that's always a challenge. You don't always get the cooperation from your competitors that you would hope you would get, but I would say generally our customers understand the issues that we're dealing with and are working with us to make sure that these cost increases don't have long-term impacts on our margins. We still view Western Canada as a great place. We're expecting increasing activity for all the reasons that we've referred to before. The oil egress has really increased. The LNG is going well. We expect this to be a growth basin for years to come. The five areas of growth that we're counting on is increased activity in the industry, market share growth, just due to the fact that we have industry-leading and most technically advanced equipment. Well intensity growth, meaning more sand, more stages, just means more time on location for us. And cement and coil expansion as those businesses are getting increased focus from the new people in place that are running those divisions. And lastly, our last mile logistics. You know, as these sand volumes grow, We expect that we're going to grow our last mile logistics fleet, trucking fleet. We're an industry leader in efficiency in that space, so we'll continue to rely on that as we go forward. I don't think anything will change. I think you'll see the DuVernay grow in significance, but the bulk of the activity will be split between the DuVernay, So just on to value for shareholders long term and return of capital. As Scott mentioned, we're debt free. We completed the Iron Horse acquisition. We paid all that debt off ahead of schedule. And so now we're sitting here with a completely clean balance sheet and a little bit of positive cash. So that will enable us to go on the hunt for attractive acquisitions and lean in a little harder on our NCIB. As everybody knows, we subscribe to a diversified return of capital strategy, which is a combination of a sustainable dividend, the NCIB, and M&A opportunities when they represent good value. We're always measuring the cost of buying our own shares with the cost of making acquisitions or theoretically what those acquisitions would cost. And so we move cash around to what we think is the best, lowest Cost Alternatives, and in the past it was buying our own shares back, but we actually are fairly excited about various M&A opportunities that seem to be available in the current market. We'll work through those, we'll be diligent, and if we find a good deal, we'll certainly act on it. We have more than enough capacity to act on any acquisitions that we feel will be additive to our company. You know, long term, we're still sort of expecting that approximately 50% of our free cash will get returned to shareholders in one form or another. And that'll vary from year to year, just based on opportunities that are available. And, you know, versus our NCIB. So we're not, we're not afraid to use our bank lines to buy our stock to buy to make acquisitions. You know, just as we did in the past, and as we did with the Iron Horse transaction. So, nothing's changed. Our priorities are build a resistant, sustainable, and technically differentiated company, invest in high-quality growth and upgrading opportunities to ensure a good service offering for our customers, and provide a consistent return of capital to our shareholders through the dividend and NCIB when appropriate. You know, we feel really good about what the next six months and the next five years brings. You know, we're the largest, most technically advanced pressure pumper in the market. with the best balance sheet and we're operating in a basin that has arguably the most offside when you compare Western Canada to all the various places in North America. We feel really good about the business and we're looking forward to showing you. I think I'll stop there and we'll go to questions.

As a reminder, to ask a question, simply press star 1 on your telephone keypad. And our first question comes from the line of Aaron McNeil with TD Cohen. Please go ahead.

Hey, morning, all. Thanks for taking my questions. Brad, I'm hoping you give us maybe a bit more detail on the activity outlook for Q3, given your comments on the second quarter and, you know, the third quarter is often your best quarter of the year. So I guess just to clarify, are you expecting that some of the Q2 activity as a result of rain was deferred Are we setting up for maybe an outsized second half in your view?

Yeah, it's too early to make those predictions, but the answer to that is yes, depending on the division. And Iron Horse is a good example. You take activity out of Q2 and move it into Q3, it's pretty much just a one-for-one timing change, depending on the other divisions. You may get it or you may not based on the fact that we're busy. We can't get to everything now. And so you might end up losing a bit of work here and there just due to availability and, you know, the fact that sometimes customers just aren't willing to wait. So I don't want to make predictions on an outsized Q3. I mean, we think Q3 is going great. You know, you made a comment about it's typically our best quarter of the year. Like what we've seen now is Q3, Q4, Q1 are all pretty similar. I think last year we had a bunch of work bump out in September and it moved into Q4, which kind of level loaded those two quarters. So hopefully that stays like that. It's really helpful from a staffing perspective if we can kind of keep the workload level for most of the year. Breakup is breakup. There's nothing you can do about it. But from an efficiency or cost efficiency perspective, you don't want to staff up for short periods of time. you know whenever possible we're trying to we're trying to build a book of business that's fairly consistent from sort of July 1 to March 31st because it allows us to you know as as you've seen you know we're typically the most profitable pressure pumper in North America from a margin perspective so and that's one of the reasons why is you know we're not afraid to sort of put a lot of work trying to manipulate our book of business to allow us to run as efficiently as possible and not disappoint customers from a timing perspective.

Okay. Yeah, that's fair. You also mentioned in the disclosures some sustained pricing pressure. I think last quarter on the conference call, you'd sort of hoped that it had hit a trough. What's sort of your latest views on prevailing pricing given that the back half looks pretty decent and What's your ability to push through the higher diesel prices and other inflationary pressures?

I think that comment was accurate. I think that was the trough. What's not coming through in our financial results is the loss of sand. As you know, one of the trends is for our customers to supply their own sand, and so we've lost that margin just due to competitive pressures. You can't always recover that with corkage and things like that. What you haven't seen in the financial results is just how much work we've done in the background to offset that EBITDA loss over the last couple of years. Even though pricing is maybe moving up, it might not be obvious because it's getting offset with the loss of sand margin at the same time. But I think that comment is valid. just gets better from here.

Okay, great. Thanks for the time. I'll turn it back.

Your next question comes from the line of Keith McKay with RBC. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks and good morning. I know it's early, but can you just sort of talk through what you might be thinking for 2027 capital expenditures? You've got the How should we roughly be thinking about the big pieces for 2027 at this stage of the year?

If I was building your model, I would probably just hold it flat from year to year. Kind of a redo, like if that equipment performs as well as we think it will, you know, we will build more of it. Because so far, the performance of that Those new 3520 engines from Cat has been really good. I would do a repeat on CapEx. We're a long ways from a board approval on CapEx, but that's probably a good placeholder.

Okay, perfect. Can you just speak to maybe the pricing or the margin uplift? You mentioned a lot of gas savings for your customers from being able to burn natural gas. Are you at the stage where you can share in a lot of those savings or do you still see the market as balanced to slightly oversupplied given the amount of pressure pumping equipment that is out there? I know one of your peers announced a little while ago that they're also bringing a 100% gas fleet to Canada. What are you seeing on that front?

Yeah, so overall the market's balanced, but the 100% natural gas assets and the electric ancillary equipment is not, that equipment availability is not balanced. You know, there's only a couple of spreads in the basin. We're the only ones with electric ancillary equipment like blenders and things. So, you know, the fuel savings when you look at today's It's significant. It's as high as $3,500 an hour. I don't want to say how much of that we're going to capture, but it's fair to say we're going to split it. That fuel savings changes every day as diesel prices change, but certainly no customers are expecting to get the entire savings. They understand we have to get a return on What is going to be? We never disclose that.

Got it. Thanks for color.

And your next question comes from Tim Monticello with ATB Foremark. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks. Most of my questions have been asked already, but maybe You could just dive into what your white space looks like through the back half of the year and the visibility that you have for equipment utilization and what your customers are telling you on the leading edge in terms of activity levels over the next few months.

There's always white space. You don't have white space. You're not charging enough. I would say the street estimates We feel really comfortable with them. So that's probably about the best way I could summarize activity levels. When we look at consensus estimates, they look very, very reasonable.

Okay. That's helpful. And then in terms of market supply-demand, one of your competitors talked about How the Canadian market, you know, pretty optimistic long term like you are, but also said that, you know, they don't think that the market's ready to absorb net equipment additions. So when you bring in that 100% net gas spread, do you expect that to be incremental to activity for TRICAN? Do you think that's going to be displacing a tier two fleet either in your, within your business or outside?

Todd William Garman Well, we hope it displaces We expect five times as much demand for that equipment as we have availability. So somebody's fleet's going to get displaced.

Okay, got it. And is pricing in the back half increasing enough to offset the cost inflation or do you think there'll be a I would say it's a net zero so far.

Our price increases are just offsetting a lot of the inflation that resulted from the oil price spike in, I guess it was March. was more significant than we actually expected. So we've been playing a bit of catch up there.

Okay. Understood. I appreciate it. I'll turn it back. Thanks. Okay.

Once again, to ask a question, simply press star 1 on your telephone keypad. And our next question comes from the line of Colby Spesso with Daniel Energy Partners. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thanks for having me on. Cost of sales for the quarter rose to 94% up from 81% in Q2-25, and it was noted that it was primarily driven by the Iron Horse integration cost. Going forward, are we to expect lower 80s run rates for total cost of sales, or is Q2 going to be seasonally a little bit higher? What are your thoughts around that going forward?

I'll turn this over to Scott, but remember Q2 in Canada is in no way similar to the other quarters. The sales are always lower, the discounts are higher, and we run a relatively high fixed cost business, so you've got to watch your percentages and your ratios there. When you look at Q2, it's not indicative of the other three quarters, it's not like In the United States where it's pretty flat, there's a huge down dip in activity in Q2 for the most part. It's way lower, that down dip is way lower than it used to be, but it's still down and when you have a high fixed cost business that impacts your percentages significantly.

The only thing I would add is I think your premise is correct that you'll see a higher than expected percentage in Q2. It'll moderate as we go through 3, 4 and 1. and it'll normalize out kind of what we've seen historically.

Perfect. And then on your call last quarter, you noted that you had just started work on your first wet sand completion. I just wanted to get an update on how the well went and if you've seen any more interest in wet sand and what any thoughts around wet sand are.

Yeah, there's lots of interest I mean, the market's sort of split in two with respect to wet sand. There's the local sort of gravel pit wet sand, which is very low quality, and I don't think you're going to see that really take off. And then there's the wet sand that's coming from the actual professional frac sand mines and what we're seeing there is you know you're sort of skipping the last couple of stages of sorting and drying and so you still have very high quality sand but just not maybe not as as refined and certainly not as as dry like what we love about what what we're hopeful about wet sand going forward is it's a lot nicer to handle on location you know you don't get all the dust and so from a staff perspective it's it's certainly a it's a nicer product to deal with It's really early days on wet sand you know and I would say we're basically indifferent right and you know it's going to increase some trucking you know because the sands heavier because it's wet and so you know we're sort of looking at this as look the customers choose whatever sand you want you know the nice thing about wet sand is it's cheaper so they're probably going to pump more of it you know that's good for us more time on location and more trucking and if the customers are happy, great. We want their returns to be as high as possible so that they get busier. But it's really, really early days. It's not like in Texas where you have really high quality, wet sort of local sand available sort of immediately adjacent to the activities, to the field activity. In Canada, it's much more, it's lumpy. There's a few sand mines. And with no further questions in queue I will now hand the call back over to Brad Fedora for closing remarks. Okay, thanks for your time, everybody. We appreciate it. The management team here is available all day, so if there's any follow-on questions, please call us, and we'd be happy to answer any questions that you have. Thanks again.

Thank you again for joining us today. This does conclude today's conference call. You may now disconnect.