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Liberty Oilfield Services Inc. (LBRT 0.42%)
Q3Â 2019 Earnings Call
Oct 30, 2019, 10:00 a.m. ET
Contents:
- Prepared Remarks
- Questions and Answers
- Call Participants
Prepared Remarks:
Operator
Good morning and welcome to the Liberty Oilfield Services' Third Quarter 2019 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this event is being recorded.
Some of our comments today may include forward-looking statements reflecting the company's views about future prospects revenues, expenses, or profits. These matters involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements. These statements reflect the company's beliefs based on current conditions that are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that are detailed in the company's earnings release and other public filings. Our comments today also include non-GAAP financial and operational measures.
These non-GAAP measures including EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA and pre-tax return on capital employed another substitute for GAAP measures may not be comparable to similar measures of other companies. A reconciliation of net income to EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA and the calculation of pre-tax return on capital employed as discussed on this call are presented in the company's earnings release, which is available on its website.
I would now like to turn the conference over to Liberty's CEO Chris Wright. Please go ahead.
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. We're pleased to discuss with you today our third quarter 2019 results. We're happy to have delivered another solid quarter of operational results in the face of macro headwinds that started to impact Liberty's market midway through the quarter. The year-end slowdown is starting earlier this year.
Liberty fully diluted earnings per share in the third quarter of $0.15 were down compared to the $0.32 in the second quarter of 2019. Revenue in the quarter decreased 5% to $515 million and adjusted EBITDA decreased 24% to $70 million, each as compared to the second quarter of 2019. Strong free cash flow generation for the quarter drove a $107 million increase in cash on hand to $140 million at end of Q3. Available liquidity at quarter end was $344 million and we had a positive net cash position, as our cash balance was greater than our long-term debt by $34 million. We were able to deliver this financial performance despite a slowdown of the completions market and an oversupply of frac fleets, both of which resulted in downward pricing pressure. Continued executional excellence of our operations and supply chain teams plus close coordination with our customers on scheduling enables Liberty to navigate the challenging marketplace, while maintaining our ability to drive returns on capital.
Central to achieving long-term success are through cycle superior returns on invested capital, maintaining a strong balance sheet and prudently investing for the future. For the 12 months ended September 30, 2019, we achieved pre-tax return on capital employed of 17%, generated significant free cash flow and returned approximately $75 million to our shareholders. As always, the Liberty team continues to focus on driving technology innovations and high efficiency operations which are a win for Liberty and a win for our customers. This cements the strong relationships that we have built with our customers and helps them bring the most cost-effective barrel of production to market.
One example of this is our new well watch service, which allows real-time pressure sensing in offset wells to monitor impending frac hits. Real-time data monitoring combined with rigged in pumps on offset wells helps reduce frac hits in the short-term and provides the necessary data to develop optimal strategies for well spacing and frac sizing for efficient pad development and managing parent child well interactions. Our results for the first nine months of 2019 reflect the strong demand for Liberty's differential frac services. In the first nine months of 2019, we pump the same volume of sand that we did throughout the full year of 2018. Total industry frac stages in North America are projected to be up only marginally year-over-year. However, efficiency gains across the industry have raised the number of frac stages completed by each fleet by 10% to 20%, which implies a 10% or so decrease in the required active frac fleets. The slowing pace of frac activity in the second half of 2019 is leading to a further reduction of demand for frac fleets, resulting in pricing pressure on services.
We expect that the industry slowdown in Q4 completions may be more severe this year than it was last year, as operators face capital constraints and managed completions to fix capital expenditure budgets. This will cause gaps in the completion schedule and negatively affect overall fleet utilization. Future activity projections in the industry are dependent on multiple factors including commodity price, availability of capital and offtake capacity in each basin. Based on visibility into our customers initial thoughts for the activity pipeline for 2020, we believe demand for Liberty fleets will be strong in the start of the new budget year. However, we currently have no plans to expand our fleet count.
We are seeing reduction in the supply of staffed frac fleets in the market and even announcements of permanent retirement of older equipment. This is helpful, but 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 supply of actively staffed frac equipment better balances with demand. Liberty is focused on ESG issues from day one, governance and compensation practices at Liberty have always been focused on transparency and maximizing alignment. Liberty is also a first mover in driving an environmental and socially conscious approach to hydraulic fracturing.
We have partnered with our customers to advance ESG solutions from the start, as demonstrated by our market leading low emission quiet fleets. Every Liberty newbuild fleet since 2013 have been either able to run on natural gas or is the latest generation Tier 4 clean diesel engine with dramatically reduced emissions. We are in constant dialog with our customers about how to move the ESG profile of frac operations forward and, as such, we are looking to upgrade some existing fleets as part of the normal maintenance cycle in 2020 to Tier-4 DGB dual fuel engines. These dual [Phonetic] will provide the latest in natural gas driven power technology available in the Oilfield.
Being a leader in ESG goes beyond emissions and Liberty is focused on leading the industry in all aspects. These include safe and efficient operations, dust and noise mitigation, traffic management and environmentally safe fluid systems to name just a few. The partnerships that we have developed with the communities that we live and work in are unique and provide the necessary insight into how best to provide solutions to specific challenges that our operator partner's face.
Our DNA drives investment in people, technology and systems to grow our competitive advantage. We believe that our premium service quality coupled with basin and customer diversity provides the company the opportunity to continue generating strong returns on capital employed. Liberty continues to focus on driving technology innovations in both fracture design and operational execution which are a win for Liberty and a win for our customers.
Our comprehensive analysis efforts on parent child well relationships with our proprietary database and multivariate analysis techniques has expanded to include the well watch field data collection and monitoring efforts mentioned earlier. Liberty's financial results, favorable long-term outlook and strong balance sheet position us well in today's challenging environment. Liberty is committed to compounding shareholder value by reinvesting cash flow at high rates of return and returning cash to shareholders as appropriate. We are excited by the opportunities in front of us as the shale revolution matures and the benefits that this brings to our industry and the country as a whole.
I will now hand the call over to Michael Stock, our CFO to discuss our financial results.
Michael Stock -- Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer
Good morning, everyone. We're pleased with the performance of our team in the third quarter during one of the challenging times for the industry. The Liberty team continues to execute at unparalleled level that drives customers to one Liberty as their partner. The third quarter 2019 revenue decreased 5% to $515 million from $542 million in the second quarter of 2019. Net income after tax decreased 54% to $19 million in the third quarter compared to $41 million in the second quarter. Fully diluted earnings per share decreased 47% to $0.15 a share in the third quarter compared to $0.32 in the second quarter of 2019.
Third quarter adjusted EBITDA decreased 24% to $70 million from $92 million in the second quarter and annualized adjusted EBITDA per fleet was $12.1 million in the third quarter compared to $16.1 million in the second quarter. The major driver in the quarterly decline and EBITDA per fleet was a 3 percentage point drop in gross margin. The reduction in gross margin was driven by slower utilization in the second half of the quarter and pricing pressure due to an oversupply of equipment in the market.
General and administrative expense totaled $25 million for the quarter or 5% of revenues and included non-cash stock-based compensation of $2.4 million. Interest expense associated fees totaled $3.7 million for the quarter compared to $3.6 million in the prior quarter.
Third quarter income tax expense totaled $4 million compared to $7.1 million in the second quarter. We ended the quarter with the cash balance of $140 million and a net cash position of $34 million. At quarter-end, we had no borrowings drawn on the ABL facility, and total liquidity, including the $204 million available under that credit facility was $344 million. Liberty is a returns focused company and at the end of the day, sustaining cash flows from investment will drive returns. Sustaining cash flow per fleet is a metric we use to meet a through cycle fleet profitability. We define sustaining cash flow [Indecipherable] as expected annualized adjusted EBITDA per fleet less our expected annual maintenance capex per fleet. During the third quarter, our year-to-date annualized adjusted EBITDA per fleet was $14.5 million. As previously announced, our expected annual maintenance capital for this year is approximately $3 million per fleet.
As we have discussed previously in order to seek the best long-term returns for our shareholders, we will follow a prudent strategy of maintaining a strong balance sheet, investing in compelling growth opportunities and returning capital to shareholders where appropriate. In the third quarter, we paid a dividend to our shareholders and distributions to unitholders of $0.05 per share for total dividends and distributions of $5.6 million. Our Board of Directors announced on October 22, 2019 a cash dividend of $0.05 per share of Class A common stock to be paid on December 20, 2019 to holders of record as of December 6, 2019. A distribution of $0.05 per unit has also been approved for holders of units at Liberty LLC, which we use the same record of payment date.
As we look forward, we are very positive about how Liberty is positioned to continue its mission to drive best in class returns. We're a company that's laser-focused on efficiency and delivering cost effective solutions and services to our customers. This singular focus and our application of technology to all aspects of our operations empowers us to reduce our cost of delivery in multiple areas, such as unique equipment solutions to provide improved pumping efficiency and reduce the cost of repairs and maintenance. Significant operational fuel savings due to our ability to build natural gas, close customer coordination combined with advanced logistics management that enable us to more accurately forecast same requirements and optimize logistics. This allows us to work with our partners to deliver the lowest cost sustain to the well site for our clients. Liberty's innovation powers our ability to deliver industry-leading returns.
And with that, I'll turn the call back to Chris before we open to Q&A.
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
While the market is currently oversupplied with frac capacity, positive trends are emerging, many of our competitors have idled significant capacity and announced permanent disposal of older frac equipment. Both of these trends are necessary for the frac market to balance. The biggest driver of the current oversupply of frac capacity has been increased efficiency of active frac fleets. Liberty has been a leader in efficiency, less efficient fleets and crews are being driven from the marketplace.
The U.S. rig count has declined roughly 20% over the last year, not surprisingly, the rate of growth in U.S. oil production has also declined significantly. With this trend, we may see U.S. oil production plateau in early 2020, which could help tighten oil markets and provide upward bias on oil prices. While timing is uncertain, we appear to be making progress toward a healthier U.S. oil and gas industry, as supply of frac fleets and oil are both facing significant downward pressure. As I said last quarter, the cure is twofold more disciplined investing and time. Liberty was built from day one, not only to survive the tough times but to take advantage of the inevitable market cycles. During the top 2015-2016 downturn Liberty significantly grow our market share, took advantage of market dislocations to grow our capacity and deepened our customer and supplier relationships. These actions played to our advantage during the subsequent recovery. In short, market cycles can present unique opportunities as well as challenges.
I'll now open it up for Q&A.
Questions and Answers:
Operator
[Operator Instructions] First question is from John Daniel with Simmons Energy. Please go ahead.
John Daniel -- Simmons Energy -- Analyst
Hey, guys. First around -- just want to dig into the Tier 4 DGB comment you made earlier about adding more -- it's basically doing engine conversion. Can you quantify for us how many fleets might be outfitted with these engines? And then secondly, will you convert Tier 2 fleets to Tier 4 DGB or Tier 4 to Tier 4 DGB?
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
So John there is trade-offs in all of those. So the short answer is it all depends on circumstances. I'd say we'll convert at least one fleet could be one or two more than that. But it depends on market. It depends on demand. And then the actual with which you transition to which depends on the circumstances, but all very likely, what we'll be converting to Tier 4 DGB will be older Tier 2 fleets.
John Daniel -- Simmons Energy -- Analyst
Got it. And then is it possible to give some color on effective utilization of the fleets in Q3 and Q2. [Indecipherable] active was 23 but if I look that at effective utilization?
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
I would say through Q2, it was quite solid. There is always schedule changes and slip. So there's -- as it enables certain amount of white space, we're not guys who sort of take theoretical limits and then come lower numbers from there. And I would say, it was quite strong through most of Q3 as well. And then starting to struggle later in the quarter with full utilization.
John Daniel -- Simmons Energy -- Analyst
Okay. Got it. I'll keep it to two and jump back in.
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
Thanks, John.
Michael Stock -- Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer
Thanks, John.
Operator
The next question is from Sean Meakim with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
Sean Meakim -- JP Morgan -- Analyst
Thank you. Good morning.
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
Good morning.
Michael Stock -- Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer
Good morning, Sean.
Sean Meakim -- JP Morgan -- Analyst
So Chris to your point on -- in your opening remarks, efficiencies are creating phantom capacity within the active frac fleets. So looking forward, how much room is there to run and I suppose specifically in the Permian where there seems to be the most still opportunity for service efficiency. How much more of that cycle do you see out there?
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
Yeah, I would say, we're definitely coming into a period of diminishing returns. The low hanging fruit, frankly to stop, people should have been doing years ago. Most of that is gone, I think growth in efficiency from here going forward is certainly at a significantly slower rate than it's been in the past few years. We've got a huge run up in that. We pushed out a lot of the older less confident fleets. That in itself with no operational changes raises the average efficiency of frac fleets. So now you've got a leaner number of fleets running that are higher quality, you've got customers that are almost across the board. Now more focused on efficiency and throughput. I would say, our throughput in the Permian has been outstanding, in fact, it's probably the highest of any basin we have today. So yeah, look, we're always going to strive to get better. I think you'll see Liberty get a little better, but I don't think you'll see the huge increases in average frac efficiency the next two years that you've seen in the last two years.
Sean Meakim -- JP Morgan -- Analyst
Thank you, and I think that makes a lot of sense. And then just curious, how much confidence you have in the strong demand comment in the release for 1Q '20. Is that in comparison to 1Q '19 or made it is just kind of relative comment compared to what may be a worse exit of 4Q '19 and just how should we think about operating leverage and the influence on EBITDA per fleet in the next couple of quarters here?
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
With the comment of strong demand in Q1 2020 that's based on where we are today, based on Q4. We had significant slowdown at the end of this year just as we did last year. We don't think that's a new normal. We think we'll be meaningfully fleet busier in Q1 than we are in the current quarter. But then marketplace is tough. Our goal is to keep our relationships with our customer live, strengthen, grow market share as we see opportunities for the right customers' we want to add to keep all the fleets busy in a softening market.
Michael Stock -- Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer
Yeah. Sean, I think what we're seeing here is, I think you're going to see utilization pick up of all of the same way that it did last year kind of it's been definitely a soft we've got kind of different budget exhaustion that everybody is fighting. Have a little bit of capital constraints as well on the private side. So that's also causing a problem to Q4. So we're going to see the same utilization pick up, I think the wildcard at the moment is probably at what is the price. Price at the moment is something that is sort of under negotiation and that's really dependent on how much supply links to market, we're sort of like in the market dynamics rollout through this kind of pricing negotiation phase during Q4 for all the clients. So hopefully, we'll see it across the industry. We're not seeing every single -- too much looseness at the moment, but we shall see where that ends up. But yes, as far as activity, I think we're going to see a very similar drop in activity in Q4 -- from Q4 to -- in Q4 from Q3 like last year, maybe a little bit more, and I think we'll probably see a same pickup in activity. Q1 next year, by the looks of it, from Q4. The only question there is what's the relative price [Indecipherable] will be coming into the earning side.
Sean Meakim -- JP Morgan -- Analyst
Thank you for that. And one last [Indecipherable] if I could is just -- is there a scenario next year and what you see all stacking fleets?
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
I think it's unlikely, Sean, we've not done that before. So I'd say it's unlikely we get our goal in soft markets and downturn is to grow market share, build our customer relationships and get better at what we do. We don't control the macro pricing of the marketplace and we take up full through cycle view of our earnings, our return on capital and hence we fall -- we follow a meaningfully different downturn strategies in the marketplace as a whole. And I wouldn't expect that to change here.
Sean Meakim -- JP Morgan -- Analyst
Very helpful. Thanks a lot.
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
You bet, John.
Operator
The next question is from Blake Gendron with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.
Blake Gendron -- Wolfe Research -- Analyst
Hey, thanks. Good morning. Just want to follow up on your comments about capital allocation at downturn, where do buybacks now compete in terms of returns. Just given the visibility that you have in the free cash flow next year outside of perhaps the seasonality that we're going to expect over the coming years in the back half. Do buybacks make sense, just given that we're kind of in a retrenchment wait and see mode for E&P spending next year?
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
Yeah, I think you're adding the right qualifier there at the end. On a valuation perspective, buybacks look highly attractive right now. But we're in a mode right now where it's not unclear exactly how this cycle unfolds. So in the face of significant uncertainty usually better to air on the cautious side.
Blake Gendron -- Wolfe Research -- Analyst
Okay that makes sense. And you've been a pretty vocal consolidator in the past and you made comments recently about the availability of horsepower in the market now. I'm just wondering, we've heard from your peers about scrapping and disposing of equipment. I would imagine a lot of horsepower has come to market. When you evaluate that horsepower, can you give us an idea of how much is viable either from a Tier 4 perspective or dual fuel perspective? And then also to -- given the intensity that we're seeing across all of the major shale basins?
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
We -- I would say, we have significantly higher than industry as a whole proportion of dual fuel -- probably the highest. Our Tier 4 percentage is pretty high as well, so pretty much everything we look at is meaningfully lower on those two spectrums. And so you've got to look at what's the total value of the equipment going forward and that's in different profile for different asset sets. But you're right, there is a lot of equipment out there. We engage, we look at most of everything that potentially has appeal, but it -- yeah it takes unique circumstances as we're getting close to those, but things that make sense. But yes, it's not a single number, it's the whole package, the whole -- how it fits in the future and what makes sense or what doesn't.
Blake Gendron -- Wolfe Research -- Analyst
Okay. Thanks for taking my questions.
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
Thanks, Blake.
Operator
The next question is from David Anderson with Barclays. Please go ahead.
David Anderson -- Barclays -- Analyst
Hey, good morning, Chris. You talked about your comments just a few minutes ago about kind of managing through the cycles and kind of your approach to this. Second year in a row now we're seeing kind of a big kind of change from first half to second half in terms of spending from the E&Ps. It looks like we're going to see that again next year. How does that sort of two years ago seem to be making a trend here? How does that changed sort of your approach as you think about the market and how do you kind of smooth this out? Is there any way to sort of smooth out this kind of which seems to be kind of crazy spending pattern which is -- which we're seeing at the E&Ps?
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
It's a great question. We have -- just to get -- different incentives is set for E&Ps, right. If you're going to spend smaller amount of budget, you're going to be rewarded on production growth. It's just logical to frontload your spending a little bit. And you're right that causes dislocations later in the year that industry has not historically had or certainly not had to the degree we have today. I think with time, you'll see some offsetting factors. There's still large amount of activity that's among the privates -- if you're a private company, I think if you see this as a pattern, I'll go do the opposite. I'm going to backload my activity because equipment's available and it's easier to get on schedules. So I think you'll see some offset there you've also got the majors that are not a giant part of spending right now, but they're growing rapidly. They're going to become a larger percent of the total development capex and they don't have the same mentality. They have a balance sheet and the size and the scale that has led to flatter more constant activity levels. I think they also recognize the efficiency and safety benefits for running continuous operations.
I would say, I think everyone recognizes that but there is a suite of companies that sort of mid-size or smaller publics that know that's true, that have historically done that, but are struggling with it right now. Some of that probably gets -- probably becomes to a little bit better with time, but I think there is a basic challenge there, but you've got majors and privates that I think -- after the industry as in another year or two to adapt to this. I think probably mitigates the magnitude of the dislocation we saw last year and that we're seeing this year.
David Anderson -- Barclays -- Analyst
Great. Thanks. Interesting answer. You're no stranger to the regulatory environment, that's for sure being out there in Colorado. Lot of talk, of course lately, about potential change in Administration what could happen. Certain women out there, says, she wants to be in fracing and kind of looking at Federal lands. Can you just talk about your exposure to customers on -- working on federal lands? And maybe how do you think this could potentially play out over the next kind of 12 months. Do you think things start moving around? Are operators kind of even thinking about that yet or was it too premature?
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
No, everybody consider -- certainly our customers consider what could happen? What wildcards are out there? And certainly, that is one of them. I would say, actively considered. The places with meaningful federal lands, Powder River Basin in the New Mexico part of the Delaware. Fortunately, certainly in the Delaware and in the vast majority of the shale basins, they're dominantly on private land. So there are federal land, they're not trivial in scope, but they're not -- there is nowhere. There are large part of activity except in the Powder River Basin, even the Powder, of course, has tons of private and state land. And then there is large long-term plan these federal units that get created.
So certainly, it would be a negative -- certainly it would be a sentiment problem and certainly planning would have to evolve around that. But we saw a meaningful change on federal lands, I think that takes some time to come and people will shift to their activity on to non-federal land. It opens up a big battle, but does it cause collapsing industry activity soon after election, I think that's highly unlikely.
David Anderson -- Barclays -- Analyst
Good. It'll certainly cause dislocation, but I guess what you're saying is you think it'll settle out. I was just curious, are you seeing any of your customers kind of already making changes to their plans yet?
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
I think, I don't know, probably no one's changing which locations there are going to drill today, but I would say, many are considering, if this happens, how do we pivot? I mean you get more federal permits now you have a buffer you'd have a plan that if that thing dried up, I've got to have an ability to keep my capital expenditures and my rigs running in my other areas. But I think it would be very little that could not navigate that. It would be a negative. It would put locations on long-term hold and all that, but I don't think it would be massive disruption to most people's meaningless plans.
David Anderson -- Barclays -- Analyst
All right. So they're coming up with a plan B. So all right. Thanks, Chris. Appreciate it.
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
Yeah. You bet.
Operator
Next question is from Chris Voie with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.
Chris Voie -- Wells Fargo -- Analyst
Good morning, guys.
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
Good morning.
Chris Voie -- Wells Fargo -- Analyst
Just curious, so it sounds like 3Q utilization was kind of decent little bit weaker at the end, but not that bad. EBITDA per fleet came out at about 12 million, so GD per fleet probably 16 million to 16.5 million. If you think about the pricing environment that you've got right now for work starting in 2020. Can you give a sense of where EBITDA per fleet might shake out, I imagine it's going to be somewhat lower and maybe you got a rebound in utilization that'll take it a bit higher, but if utilization was similar to 3Q and pricing kind of landed where discussions are currently, how much lower would EBITDA per fleet likely be?
Michael Stock -- Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer
Yeah, Chris, I think this is something that we'll probably comment on as we get toward the beginning of next year as we get through these discussions. I think there's still lot of moving parts as far as pricing goes. I think you're right and we've seen a bit of a bigger and relatively negative price environment as we sort of move through this year. So there's a bit of a downward pressure on pricing all the way through Q3. What you're seeing in Q4 is, as we have sort of budget exhaustion refilling some of the utilization rates. As you're refilling some of the utilization [Indecipherable] not a particularly great pricing, but that's sort of a just a fact there is a fill up and you're sort of doing some work with them. So that pricing will rebound a little bit for -- maybe into Q1, but we'll have to see. There's a lot of moving parts at the moment that's probably ongoing discussions on to provide [Indecipherable] the majority of fleets going on at the moment.
Chris Voie -- Wells Fargo -- Analyst
Okay. And then in terms of the 24th fleet your previous commentary around that was that you wanted to hold it off the market until pricing improved. It seems like the odds of that taking place and especially pricing that would have been higher than the first half of 2019. It's hard to picture that in the foreseeable future. Are you likely to put that fleet to work now in 2020?
Michael Stock -- Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer
We can't do that 2020 in total, but yeah, I mean, if you look at the general market conditions, no. The more likely than not at the start of last year if you asked us four months ago we're likely that it was going to be starting in January, I think where currently the market is the more likely event is that it'll start next year, we're running 23 -- as 23 staffed fleets, and just leave it at that. But we'll see as we go, I mean, there could be as we have discussions with some key clients and some potential new clients, if we've got demand from somebody who we've been wanting to work for a long period of time and they need some expansion capacity, we could bring that to market, but better long-term pricing discussion we'd have with that client.
Chris Voie -- Wells Fargo -- Analyst
Okay. And if I could just squeeze one more quick one and it seems like the industry might drop, I mean based on companies that have reported thus far up to 15% of fleets -- maybe 10% to 15% in 4Q which means they'll probably be a decent rebound in 1Q. Is there a set of your customer base that you'd potentially like to upgrade by poaching work from incumbents that have had fleets go down? Or are you, in general, think you have the optimal investor base currently?
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
There's always room for improvement. If the whole pie shrinks, then that means there's market share to be taken. So we're always thinking about things like that. We're talking about things like that, that's why and it's also a strategic not what's the best today but where do you want to be, how do you want to position yourself through the whole cycle? At the bottom of the 2016 cycle, we were aggressively putting out fleets into what was then bad economics, but we were looking ahead to what was coming down the road not what today was. Now today it's nowhere near at the bottom in 2016 where we got a clear view of where we are. I'm not saying we're there now, but it's always a collection of things. Current pricing is one of those things, but there is other ones -- there's other trade-offs as well, but right now, I think you will see Liberty be pretty cautious. We don't have any -- we're not going to grow our fleet and we're not going to build new fleets, we're not going to expand meaningfully from where we are today in that current crystal ball we have.
Chris Voie -- Wells Fargo -- Analyst
Okay. Thank you.
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
You bet, Chris. Thanks.
Operator
Next question is from George O'Leary with Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. Please go ahead.
George O'Leary -- Tudor, Pickering, Holt -- Analyst
Good morning, Chris. Morning, Michael.
Michael Stock -- Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer
Good morning, George.
George O'Leary -- Tudor, Pickering, Holt -- Analyst
You guys are always kind of on top of leading-edge completion trends and changes in well design. Of late, we started to hear and these are not necessarily new but just hearing increasing chatter around more folks looking at using them or revisiting using them once again. Heard a little bit more about kind of monoline frac jobs whereby you reduce the number of connections associated with the iron on the frac jobs. And then two some folks revisiting using simul frac and Chris, I know you're very familiar with that one. Are you guys seeing either of those items crop up more? And then two, anything else notable on just well design or completion change that you guys are seeing E&Ps trying to push?
Ron Gusek -- President
Good morning, George. This is Ron. Yeah, I'll take the monoline question and then I'll let Chris maybe throw in some thoughts about simul frac. Certainly, the monoline idea is something we've been focused on for a little while now. We started down that road earlier this year, and I think we see that as a good innovation going forward. We love to see more of on our locations. I think when you look at the R&M cost of frac fleet treating iron is no small part of that. And there is also a significant HSE piece to that as well, reducing number of connections and things like that are all things that we like to look at. And certainly, when you think about efficiency, our ability to continue to find ways to spend more maintenance pumping every day. We see this as an opportunity to improve there as well. So yes certainly expect to see from Liberty continued focus on deployment of monoline in the field. We're still working through exactly what that solution is going to look like for us. We've tried a number of different scenarios there, but I think we feel that that together with the system for interfacing with the well heads together with the wireline guys is going to be the right solution going forward.
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
Yes, and some exciting stuff there also on simul frac. You're right, we have a long history in that area, and there is stuff going on today in fact as we speak on that as well. When you're developing pads and frac interaction or frac growth patterns are central. That is definitely one of the tools to impact frac interactions. We've done a very different kind of simul frac. I don't think we've talked about publicly and probably get confirmation with a customer before we'll elaborate more on that. But yes, customers in this -- in the world today are definitely very innovative overall we're bouncing ideas back and forth about what might be a next step forward technology, how do we more optimize deploying underground and develop the resources we've got. So it's funny area, but you're right, George there's still a lot going on in that area and I'm sure you'll hear more about that as time goes on.
George O'Leary -- Tudor, Pickering, Holt -- Analyst
Okay, great. Thanks very much for the color, Ron and Chris. And then maybe just one numbers question from me, as you think about capex in 2020, it seems given all the comments you guys have provided that something closer to maintenance capex than what it has been the last few years is a reasonable way to think about it, but there are still some growth initiatives or fleet upgrade initiatives as you mentioned with the DGB Tier 4 engine. So just not wanting to get out over my skis here is a $100 million in capex for the 2020 timeframe a decent place holder to have in our models for now or should we be thinking about that differently?
Michael Stock -- Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer
No, George, we're probably all the time we're talking about that. As we said this year, we probably average around about $3 million of fleet in maintenance capex and we're always working on ideas to try and drive that lower hovering the long-term design. But we also do, as you said, we're investing for the future. We're investing in whether there's monolines or the quick connect or the DGB upgrades. So yes, sort of in that range of somewhere between $3 million of fleet maintenance capex and then $100 million which we spent -- which when we announced this year which was maintenance capex plus technology investments is probably a good range of baseline unless we see the market change.
George O'Leary -- Tudor, Pickering, Holt -- Analyst
Great. Thanks for the color, Michael and guys.
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
Thank you.
Operator
The next question is from Chase Mulvehill with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
Chase, you might be on mute. Chase, we're still not hearing you, I don't know, if you've dropped off or if you're on mute. If well we just move to the next question if you like and then Chase can call back in.
Operator
The next question is from Waqar Syed of AltaCorp Capital. Please go ahead.
Waqar Syed -- AltaCorp Capital -- Analyst
Hey good morning and thanks for taking the call. Could you help us with the stages per quarter that you did in the third quarter? How does that compare with the second quarter?
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
Waqar, I think we don't really -- as you know, we don't release stage numbers just because I think we find it gets a little bit confusing out there in the world at stage sizes and links different you can go from an area anything from a one air pump stage to four air pump state. So just to say, I would say, a general activity was of what a flat to likely or probably just slightly lower as we see Q2 was a very, very efficient quarter. And as we guide at the end of Q2, I think with that slowdown at the back end, we were just slightly lower on activity in Q3 than we were working for.
Waqar Syed -- AltaCorp Capital -- Analyst
And now -- and then in terms of [Indecipherable] when we're looking at the first quarter of next year, is it going to look similar to the third quarter this year, you think you can do better or worse than that?
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
Look, I think probably, you will see activity levels probably similar Q3 to Q1. We also again you've obviously got the winter slope, a little harsher in winter, but yeah, I'd say in general we had the slowdown at the back end of Q3. So actual sort of air pumps could be fairly similar Q1 to Q3 as well there is just kind of where on average pricing is.
Waqar Syed -- AltaCorp Capital -- Analyst
Okay. And so how much pricing so far in the fourth quarter, what you know about in the fourth quarter is below the -- in third quarter levels?
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
Yes, so obviously prior year pricing pressure as we've seen because of the oversupply of frac fleets and again Q4 is a tough once we would look at because we've got budget exhaustion for long-term clients. You've got -- as I discussed at the Barclays conference, we had some issues on a couple of clients who just ran into a surprise on takeaway issues, which meant we had to kind of like to move a couple of fleets and at least one of them is starting back up in December. So let's start on all of the work that just filling in therefore it's kind of a different pricing much lower than kind of like you're fully utilized fleets. So did sort of like apples and pears as far as comparing those two quarters as fast average pricing goes.
Waqar Syed -- AltaCorp Capital -- Analyst
Thanks. That's helpful.
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
Thanks, Waqar.
Operator
Next question is from Chase Mulvehill with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Chase Mulvehill -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Analyst
Hey. Can you all hear me now?
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
Yeah. Chase we are giving you phone again, you can't take in tournaments or in competition, but you [Indecipherable].
Chase Mulvehill -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Analyst
Yes, sorry I had to dial back in. I don't know what happened. So I guess if we think about 4Q, can you maybe just help better frame 4Q, you said that sequentially, it will be worse than the fourth quarter of last year, but do you think it'll be twice as bad, when we think about a sequential decline just kind of help us understand from a top line perspective, what it means in the from a profitability like how bad do you think you could get?
Michael Stock -- Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer
Chase, this is Michael. Yeah, I think I commented in our prepared remarks really was that I think the whole industry turned down reverse, it will be slightly worst Q4 than Q3. But I think you're right, I mean last I wanted it could be similar for us. I mean last time we were down from Q3 to Q4 about 15 points on the top line. You've got a little bit of change there year as we moved to more [Indecipherable] sands, it could be a little higher. And then on the EBITDA, it was down 40% just Q-over-Q and then rebounded in Q1. That's if you're using that is dry post it's not a bad dry post.
Chase Mulvehill -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Analyst
Okay, all right. I guess, maybe if I just try to delve in a little bit on the EBITDA per fleet if we just kind of look at 3Q. The release kind of talked about the first half being pretty good and things tapering off in the back half. If you want to look at profitability, your EBITDA per fleet in the back half. If I kind of do some math, it looks like maybe it was about $8 million of annualized EBITDA is that the right number and is that kind of how we should be framing things as we get into the fourth quarter?
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
It's really not something we got to discuss, I mean, everything moves about -- I think we've done in prepared remarks before I think if we go back a year or so, when we look at -- when we tried to kind of like I talked a little bit about that $28 million a fleet that we owned at the high point. It can vary quarter-to-quarter right, I mean it can -- one it can be the total demand that goes up or it can you just be operational issues, right. You're going to have a number of times where everything goes right and everything goes wrong. So sort of -- even on a quarterly basis it's not honestly the way we look at results very much. We really like to look at them on a longer period of time than that. So we don't just a long way saying we really don't -- we wouldn't discuss in the quarter results.
Chase Mulvehill -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Analyst
Okay. All right. Understood. And then I guess coming back to your questions around DGB fleets. I may have missed it, I dropped off but did you talk about the cost that it is to convert a Tier 2 engine to a Tier 4 DGB? And then maybe the visibility do you have to put the one to two fleets back to work and maybe the paybacks?
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
Right. So really, I mean a DGB Tier 4 engine compared to brand new sort of like known DGB engine is not a major uptick in prices probably go 10% -- just a bit over 10% more than the standard engine. So what happens is part of the normal maintenance cycle, we have a number of fleets coming up to the 25,000 hours that they've run on those engines and we bring -- we always bring those fleets in and look at them proactively, now set engine is in relatively good shape and has got a relatively low rebuild cost on it. That particular pump may go back out as it gets rebuilt and go back out as a Tier 2. If it's got a crack block and it's got a significant rebuild cost. Now you're talking about something that was maybe a 350,000 rebuild now becomes a five -- just north of $500,000 rebuild on the engine side of it and then you'll upgrade it to Tier-4 DGB. So actually it happens on a pumped by pump basis I think the difference with Liberty and a lot of companies is, there's some degree -- the unique the fact that all of our equipment is Plug and Play, right. So everything works assign as gearing up a assigned line-up. So if we rebuild a specific pump that while Tier 2 and Tier-4 DGB it can roll into a Tier 4 DGB fleet just as easy as the one that was getting rebuilt as a Tier 2 rolls back into a Tier 2 fleet or you can mix and match.
Chase Mulvehill -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Analyst
Okay. And did you weigh electric fleet versus converting to Tier 4 DGB?
Ron Gusek -- President
Yeah. Chase, this is Ron. We certainly have with that and certainly are ahead of down both roads. I think as we've already said now we have a development initiative going on the e-fleet side of things, but we've also had a significant focus on understanding the pros and cons of both of these scenarios. And so we've been out on the road probably the last four weeks now helping E&P companies to understand exactly what the benefits of an e-fleet versus a Tier 4 DGB fleet might be and what the trade-offs are there. I think there were some misconceptions out there around the emissions profile for those engines and I think we've been helping folks to understand that we can deliver a very, very compelling solution with Tier 4 DGB that has a lower greenhouse gas emissions footprint than an e-fleet would have under standard operating conditions in the places we work that can offer fuel savings that are in line with or in many cases potentially even better that at a significantly lower capital cost upfront.
And so I think what we're going to find is that we're going to have customers who maybe had thought that they only had one option in front of them now have two very viable options in front of them. Tier 4 DGB or e-fleets. And so I think you'll ultimately see both of those in Liberty's world rate of deployment probably looks different for each of those technologies, Tier 4 DGB obviously coming first and fastest but there is still work going on in our world on e-fleets and there is a reasonable possibility that sometime down the road there will be an opportunity that is the right fit for that technology as well.
Chase Mulvehill -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Analyst
Okay, perfect. I appreciate the color. I'll turn it back over.
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
Thanks, Chase.
Operator
Next question is from Stephen Gengaro with Stifel. Please go ahead.
Stephen Gengaro -- Stifel -- Analyst
Thanks. Good morning, gentlemen. You've covered a lot -- I wanted to just get your views on this. So clearly, there's been a couple of announcements of fleets being retired and one of your competitors I think noted that the equipment out there was sort of serviceable but the maintenance costs have become onerous and it was just basically hard to operate them profitably. When you look at the industry fleet and you sort of think about your positioning there, what are your expectations kind of for fleet attrition and how sort of the industry fleet kind of bleeds down over the next maybe 12 months given what looks like kind of severe under investment right now?
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
The predictions are hard particularly about the future. So I think when you look at -- if you look at just the straight math and straight logic, it actually looks pretty encouraging that a lot of fleets will leave the market in the next 12 to 24 months. But it depends on market conditions, right. I think you hit the point that if you've got a lot of the fleet but the market super strong, they put the band-aids on and spend the money and keep it running or if you're going to leave a basin it's the last fleet you got going and you fight to keep the last man standing, people will do stuff, it's maybe not economically rational, but they've got other reasons for it. I do think a softer market that we're in and going into, we actually think it could be a real positive for the marketplace because that tends to get people causing some stress and it tends to get more, more rational economic decisions.
So I would say, our guess is we'll see a relatively large amount of capacity out of the market 12 months from now, permanently and a fair now pushed out. And then there is an upgrade cycle that's new capital and frankly new technology and new system. So yes I think we're going to see like meaningful transformation of the frac marketplace and the players in the space I would suspect over the next 12 to 24 months. But that's a prediction, so don't -- I did that purposely made. So I won't be as wrong as I could have been.
Stephen Gengaro -- Stifel -- Analyst
Yeah, we have enough trouble with the fourth quarter right just trying to figure out the next 12 months. Just as a quick follow-up on that, you mentioned your kind of $3 million per year of maintenance capex. Should that number be pretty sticky over the next year or two?
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
Steve, you [Indecipherable].
Stephen Gengaro -- Stifel -- Analyst
Your maintenance capex per fleet, are you seeing that trend higher at all? Or you think it remains around $3 million. I mean, I know you referenced 2020, but as we go forward here I think that number remains right around $3 million per fleet?
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
Yeah. Stephen, I think probably remains in exit costs, right, I think as we maybe we'll take out 5% or 10% as we move forward with some technology upgrades. The technology upgrade or maintenance cap budget, but yes we hit in the same I think that's it goes about right, that's what we think is the long-term costs.
Stephen Gengaro -- Stifel -- Analyst
Very good. Thank you, gentlemen.
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
Thank you.
Operator
Next question is from Thomas Curran with B. Riley, FBR. Please go ahead.
Thomas Curran -- B Riley, FBR -- Analyst
Good morning, guys.
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
Good morning, Thomas. How are you doing?
Thomas Curran -- B Riley, FBR -- Analyst
Good. Chris, as part of the just announced fleet rationalization, one of your competitors revealed that they'll no longer have a presence in the Bakken. Have you already started to see an opportunity arise from their withdrawal or would you expect to?
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
Yeah. Different players have different customer basis. So on the margin -- it's a positive in the marketplace to see a little capacity leave in a basin. But -- Bakkens our original basin. We've been there a long time. We know the players in the basin. It's been a good basin for us. I think we have a good, very good competitive position there. So yeah, on the margin, maybe a slight positive but not a -- we're not going to change our strategy or customer targeting or anything like that.
Thomas Curran -- B Riley, FBR -- Analyst
Right. And it's in part because of your deep legacy route, I was curious. And then Ron, what percentage of your jobs in 3Q involved for economics and how did that compared to 2Q and 3Q of last year?
Ron Gusek -- President
I think year-over-year, it remains relatively flat. I think from our standpoint, we probably provide some level of engineering service for economics etc. So maybe 75%, 80% of our customers and it varies in that world from maybe we're providing a second set of eyes on work that they have done internally and would like us to review to at the other extreme we are providing the complete engineering package and the design from the ground up for them.
Thomas Curran -- B Riley, FBR -- Analyst
And then just in this ruthlessly [Indecipherable] environment of the past several months which of your technology offerings if any has conveyed the greatest competitive advantage when you're out there in actual hand to hand combat bid by bid which is consistently emerging as a real differentiator?
Ron Gusek -- President
Well, I think we probably take the approach that any technology that ultimately led to an improvement in efficiency for us on location is the one that -- are the ones that have played the biggest role and that's a bundle of technologies for sure. But I think those are the ones that continue to assist in Liberty proving our differentiation relative to our peers.
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
I think bell watch has got a lot of interest, it's a recently rolled out thing, but this is more of a long-term thing, but if you want to understand how to develop well spacing and frac size of the optimal interaction between fracs, off the Liberty engineering efforts there which customers are doing themselves as well. But now to have a technology to measure in real time how fractures approach other wells and what you might do to mitigate that. There's a lot of interest -- that's got off to a strong start.
Thomas Curran -- B Riley, FBR -- Analyst
Helpful. Thanks for taking my questions.
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
Thank you, Thomas.
Operator
The next question is a follow-up from John Daniel with Simmons Energy. Please go ahead.
John Daniel -- Simmons Energy -- Analyst
Thank you for putting me back in.
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
Hi, John.
John Daniel -- Simmons Energy -- Analyst
Just a few quick ones here. Ron, you noted, you're looking at the Dual Path of electric versus Tier 4. Can you say if you guys have leased or bought any turbines yet. And if so, how many and what type of turbine you would -- you did?
Ron Gusek -- President
I can say, we have not leased or bought any turbines yet, John. That's certainly a part of this that we are still working to understand is exactly how that piece of the world would play out for us. Right now, we're focused on the technology specific to the pump and then ultimately the backside we're thinking in parallel about what the power supply is going to look like. There obviously, a lot of questions around that from the work we've done in terms of understanding emissions profile what the demand requirements are going to look like on a pad on a day-by-day basis and over a year of operations. We've come to understand there are some important variables we want to think about in terms of selecting a power supply. And then of course ensuring that doesn't ultimately affect our efficiency that we've become known for. So lots of work going on there, but no firm decisions in that space at this point in time.
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
John, one thing that really changes the relative trade-offs on frac fleet technology is if you can run off line power, I don't think that's going to be widely available to the industry, but I think you're going to see places where we see large power electrification if you can run offline power, the advantages of electric frac these are very strong. If they run as they are today, as Ron said in many areas, the weaker and some maybe a little better it's not -- it's kind of a preference thing. But if you can be -- in areas that get line power, electric frac fleet to make a ton of sense, and we're excited about that opportunity and idea, and we think in some areas, we will be seeing that.
John Daniel -- Simmons Energy -- Analyst
Okay, big picture question for you, Chris, we're all somewhat hopeful about majors kind of E&Ps plans to continue their growth initiatives, and I think we're all hoping that that growth contributes to an eventual rebalancing of the market, but I'm just curious, are you at all concerned that these same companies haven't yet figured out the completion efficiency gains as say the independents. Thus, we might be overstating somewhat the impact of the growth plans, if that makes any sense as they get up to learning curve?
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
It's different strengths and weaknesses. There is enormous technology base in these companies they're incredibly safe and may be more judicious in their movements, but we were one of the majors right now use very efficient and way down that curve. And then the others maybe that are more cautious approach to getting there. There is no reason they can't and won't get there. So but yeah, it is a different profile, it is a different speed of changing the way things are done, but they are very strong companies with super high quality people. So I think years down the road, I think there will be a much larger percent of what's going on unconventional and I think their performance will be awesome.
John Daniel -- Simmons Energy -- Analyst
Okay. Last one just a follow-up on fleet attrition because no one's really elected to put you on the spot. So I'll try to, I guess, I'll be the guy, but when will Liberty see its first fleets get permanently retired?
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
Good question. Again, it's a gray zone there, you may see older [Indecipherable] fleets and lower technologies be so upgraded that they may not look at time like they were originally. So if you want to you could call that retired or significantly rebuilt.
Majority of that fleet, John, were built post the sort of like from the beginning of time. We worked at sort of 24 hours a day, 10,000 PSI two-mile vertical sort of horizontal laterals, right. So the majority of fleet have been really been designed for that sort of work. So if you think about it, this that was designed from 2011 onwards. Yeah, we were on the back-end of our first couple of fleets that were on the -- sort of the end of that spectrum, where we're trying to lighten up pump equipment to try and make it not a load -- permanent load, right. So the short of trial you had the Allison Transmission's etc. So I think you've got, maybe a couple of fleets there that will have to give sort of like as they move forward make it a pretty significant overall, the rest of them really we sort of move very early to the [Indecipherable] and you really don't see that really changing. You upgrade to a Tier 4, you might have -- you go upgrade the package. But the rest of the place really stays the same. So we're a little different. We're little luckier in the time that we entered the market. We entered at the right time. For the fact that we haven't got a really major, major change in the way the work happens.
John Daniel -- Simmons Energy -- Analyst
Okay, fair enough. Thank you for your time.
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
Thank you, John.
Michael Stock -- Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer
Thanks, John.
Operator
It seems there are no questions, so I would like to turn the conference back over to Chris Wright for his closing remarks.
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
I want to sincerely thank the passionate wonderful folks on team Liberty that make it happen every hour of every day. I'm proud to be your partner. Safety is the top of the list for all of us, every single day. I also wish to thank our customers, suppliers and investors who make it all possible. We look forward to talking with you in three months.
Operator
[Operator Closing Remarks]
Duration: 63 minutes
Call participants:
Chris Wright -- Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
Michael Stock -- Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer
Ron Gusek -- President
John Daniel -- Simmons Energy -- Analyst
Sean Meakim -- JP Morgan -- Analyst
Blake Gendron -- Wolfe Research -- Analyst
David Anderson -- Barclays -- Analyst
Chris Voie -- Wells Fargo -- Analyst
George O'Leary -- Tudor, Pickering, Holt -- Analyst
Waqar Syed -- AltaCorp Capital -- Analyst
Chase Mulvehill -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Analyst
Stephen Gengaro -- Stifel -- Analyst
Thomas Curran -- B Riley, FBR -- Analyst
