Christopher Wright
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. We’re pleased to discuss with you today our second quarter 2019 results. We’re proud to have delivered $0.32 fully diluted earnings per share in the second quarter, a 23% increase compared to $0.26 in the first quarter of 2019. Revenue in the quarter increased 1% to $542 million and adjusted EBITDA increased 9% to $19 million, each as compared to the first quarter of 2019. We were able to deliver this financial performance due to the continued executional excellence of our operations and supply chain teams plus close coordination with our customers on schedule.
Liberty’s operational teams in the field continued to excel in delivering the safest and most efficient service to our clients. This cements the strong relationships that we have with our customers and helps them bring the most cost-effective barrel of production to the market. These strong financial results enable us to continue to improve service quality, grow organically and return capital to stockholders.
For the 12-months ended June 30, 2019, we achieved a pretax return on capital employed of 23%, generated significant free cash flow and returned over $130 million to stockholders. Our first half of 2019 results reflect the strong demand for Liberty’s differential frac services. Based on visibility into our customers’ activity pipeline for the year, we believe demand for Liberty fleets will remain high through the third quarter. And we are working closely with our customers to mitigate the effect of operator budget exhaustion towards the end of the year. As in the start of 2019, we expect demand for Liberty’s services to be strong at the start of 2020 when operator budgets are renewed.
Operators are managing activity to not exceed their announced budgets. And therefore, the frac market will most likely experience utilization challenges in the fourth quarter of 2019. There continues to be an oversupply of frac fleets in the market, which is holding down pricing. We would not expect pricing to improve until the supply of actively staffed frac equipment balances with demand.
- Among 4 analysts covering Liberty Oilfield Services (NYSE:LBRT), 3 have Buy rating, 0 Sell and 1 Hold. Therefore 75% are positive.