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

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Chris Wright: I mean, we’re bringing the technology and the equipment that enables the realization of this arbitrage. So yes, I think it’s fair to assume that the majority of that arbitrage value will be captured by Liberty. And yes right now, that arbitrage value is growing – is growing.

Scott Gruber: Is it direct, Chris, though or is it just indirect through your ability to keep a healthy rate structure or is there a direct mechanism that wins it somehow to the gas diesel spread?

Chris Wright: We’re pretty early on in rolling out these technologies, it’s a smaller piece. So today, I would say it’s mostly indirect, but you’ll probably see an evolution of that structure going forward.

Scott Gruber: Okay, yes it will be good to see. And Michael, just real quick on the CapEx just to make sure I got the numbers right. The 40% to 50% EBITDA growth, it’s about $1.25 billion, and we think about half of that is around $600 million for CapEx for the year. Is the right way to think about it?

Michael Stock: That’s correct, reducing downward is your EBITDA as we go into 2024.

Scott Gruber: Yes, got it. Okay, I appreciate the color. Thank you.

Chris Wright: Thanks Scott.

Operator: The next question is from Marc Bianchi with Cowen. Please go ahead.

Marc Bianchi: Hi, thank you. I’d like to follow-up on that – that last point there about ’24, and I know this could get a little tricky, right, because you probably don’t want to give a financial forecast for ’24. But I’m just curious, on an absolute dollar level, do you see the CapEx going lower or going meaningfully lower kind of regardless of what the EBITDA does or how should we think about the absolute amount of CapEx as we go from ’23 to ’24?

Michael Stock: Yes, our investment in CapEx, Marc, is never ever dislocated from the amount of money we earn or the EBITDA or cash flow we earn, right? There is – sometimes in time shift where we see the market strengthening, we invest early in the cycle. And then when strengthened prices and EBITDA grow, EBITDA is the highest, we’ll do low CapEx because, obviously, if we see sort of a cycle beginning to cap out. So there’s some time shift there, but it’s always, always relates to the amount of cash flow that we are earning right? So just to sort of point that out, right? But no, in relative – terms, in the baseline business of the size and who it is an environment, yes – on a normalized – on a per dollar basis, it would be lower in ’24 and we estimate to be lower in ’24 than it would be in ’23.

Marc Bianchi: Do you think that level – so if – let’s just hypothetically say EBITDA is exactly the same in ’24. Do you think that level of CapEx is a sustaining level where you can continually pursue these digiFrac deployments and sort of handle attrition that occurs every year in the fleet at that level?

Michael Stock: Yes.

Marc Bianchi: Okay, okay, super. The other one I had was on just the digiFrac deployment. Maybe you could talk a little bit about expectations for a timeline to have a full digiFrac fleet, because it seems like we’ve just got a few pumps sort of mingled in with conventional pumps in the fleet right now?

Chris Wright: As we said in the transcript, we’re continuing operations with that first customer for it at full speed right now frac operations, which gives us the luxury to roll things in slowly and carefully, test everything, figure out how to optimize everything. So it’s a gradual roll in. But I think you’ll see around the end of the third quarter, maybe early in the second quarter, we should see three digiFrac fleets out there running in full.

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