Liberty Energy Inc. (NYSE:LBRT) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Derek Podhaizer: Yes great. Appreciate the color, guys. I’ll turn it back.

Chris Wright: Thanks.

Operator: The next question is from Stephen Gengaro with Stifel. Please go ahead.

Stephen Gengaro: Thanks. Good morning, everybody. Two things from me, just to start with, when we think about – I mean obviously, you gave some color on 2023. When we think about your positioning in the market and some of the things you’ve done on the vertical integration side, I mean, obviously, you got some frac sand from the SLB acquisition. Are you seeing – how do you see – because we’ve been hearing about tightness in the frac sand market recently? Are you seeing that as sort of a competitive advantage? And how is that kind of increasing or helping the efficiency at the well site. I’m talking of frac sand, but also the other things you’ve done so anyway to kind of give us a little more color on how those things kind of aid in your execution at the well site?

Chris Wright: Yes, the primary benefit we have by owning sand capacity, we’ve invested to expand it a little bit. The primary benefit of it is just surety of supply to our fleet. We saw the benefit of that in Q1 of last year, where there were troubles across the sand space. And we were able to navigate those with less impact than others. Vertical integration for us, sure, these are profitable businesses, but we do it predominantly to assure our core business of frac could run reliably and can keep that train on the track and run that train as fast and efficiently as possible.

Stephen Gengaro: Great, thank you.

Chris Wright: The markets are tight, but it’s – I don’t think it’s slowing down fracking wells. It’s – we’re not at a disruptive part in the sand market right now.

Stephen Gengaro: Great, thank you. And then the other question and you’ve talked a little bit about this on prior calls and how you sort of approach the use of the buyback, but you – clearly, you’ve doubled it and you’ve been utilizing it. How should we think about your – the sort of the pace of buybacks over the next 12 months and your willingness to kind of exhaust this as we go forward here, depending on valuation, et cetera?

Chris Wright: Yes, as we said, it’s just the – the pace at which we buy back the stock is proportional to the dislocation of the share value. And today, as we sit here, we’re still in an extremely dislocated share price. So we see it as an incredibly attractive investment opportunity right now to buy our stock back. You’ve seen us walk that walk the last five or six months and with share prices in this neighborhood, I think you will continue to see aggressive buybacks.

Stephen Gengaro: Okay, thank you, Chris.

Chris Wright: Thank you.

Operator: The next question is from Scott Gruber with Citigroup. Please go ahead.

Scott Gruber: Yes, good morning.

Chris Wright: Good morning, Scott.

Scott Gruber: Question here, with this backdrop of an expanding gas diesel spread, I’m curious whether there’s any mechanism within recent contracts for digiFrac or on dual fuel fleets where you can capture some of the incremental fuel savings that your customers are benefiting from. Is there any direct way that you guys can benefit from the kit that’s providing these savings is it, direct may I know?

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