Trican Well Service Q2 2026 Earnings Report

Trican Well Service EPS Results

• Actual EPS: -C$0.01
• Consensus EPS: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Trican Well Service Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $214.60 million
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Trican Well Service Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q2 2026
• Date: 7/28/2026
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Wednesday, July 29, 2026
• Conference Call Time: 12:00PM ET

Headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Trican supplies oil and natural gas well servicing equipment and solutions to our customers through the drilling, completion, and production cycles. Our team of technical experts provide state of the art equipment, engineering support, reservoir expertise and laboratory services through the delivery of hydraulic fracturing, cementing, coiled tubing, nitrogen services and chemical sales for the oil and gas industry in Western Canada. Trican is the largest pressure pumping service company in Canada.

Trican Well Service Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Negative Sentiment: Q2 profitability declined sharply: Revenue was broadly flat at CAD 214.6 million, but adjusted EBITDA fell to CAD 22.6 million from CAD 44.9 million a year earlier, while the company posted a CAD 2.3 million net loss. Management attributed the decline to seasonal breakup, record June rainfall, lower utilization, and continued pricing pressure.
• Positive Sentiment: Management expects a stronger second half, saying Q2 is not representative of the year and that activity in Q3 and Q4 should benefit from deferred work, solid customer demand, and improved performance from the Iron Horse oil-services division.
• Positive Sentiment: Natural-gas and electric equipment investments are gaining traction: Trican expects its first 10-pump, 100%-natural-gas fracturing fleet to be operational in Q4, with potential customer fuel savings of up to CAD 200,000 per day and strong demand for the limited available equipment.
• Positive Sentiment: The company generated CAD 13 million of free cash flow, ended the quarter debt-free with CAD 15.4 million in cash, repurchased shares, and declared a CAD 0.055-per-share dividend. Management also said its clean balance sheet provides capacity for acquisitions and additional buybacks.
• Neutral Sentiment: Pricing appears to have bottomed, but increases are currently only offsetting inflation from higher diesel and operating costs, while lost sand-margin revenue remains a headwind. Management expects capital spending in 2027 to be roughly flat with the CAD 122 million 2026 budget, subject to board approval.

Presentation

[Operator]

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 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 one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star one again. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Brad Fedora. Please go ahead.

[Brad Fedora, President and CEO at Trican Well Service]

Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us. We will start off with Scott Matson, our Chief Financial Officer. He will give an overview of the quarter, and then I will provide some comments with respect to the quarter, the current operating conditions, and our outlook for the near future. Then we will 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 will now turn over the call to Scott.

[Scott Matson, CFO at Trican Well Service]

Thanks, Brad. Before we begin, I would 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 31st, 2025 for a more complete description of business risks and uncertainties facing Trican. Document is available both on our website and on SEDAR. 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.

[Scott Matson, CFO at Trican Well Service]

Our quarterly results were released after close of market last night and are available both on SEDAR and on our website. With that, a brief summary of the quarter. My comments will draw comparisons to the second quarter of last year, and I will provide some comments about our current activity levels and expectations going forward as well. Before getting into the details of the quarter, it is 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 frack 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.

[Scott Matson, CFO at Trican Well Service]

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 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 operation scale, the contribution reflected its seasonally weaker second quarter operating profile, with seasonal softness further weighing on profitability. Overall revenues for the quarter came in at CAD 214.6 million, compared to the CAD 213.8 million we generated in Q2 of 2025.

[Scott Matson, CFO at Trican Well Service]

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 CAD 22.6 million or 11% of revenue, compared to the adjusted EBITDA of CAD 44.9 million or 21% of revenue in Q2 2025. This was driven by lower activity, again in utilization levels, and compounded by continued pricing pressure across our service lines, as recovering the full impact of freight, fuel, and other operating cost increases remains challenging in a very competitive environment. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter came in at CAD 25.2 million or 12% of revenue, compared to the CAD 47.3 million or 22% of revenue in Q2 of last year.

[Scott Matson, CFO at Trican Well Service]

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 in our share price between the operating dates. On a consolidated basis, this resulted in a loss of CAD 2.3 million during the quarter. That translates to CAD 0.01 per share on both a basic and fully diluted basis, compared to earnings of CAD 19.5 million or CAD 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.

[Scott Matson, CFO at Trican Well Service]

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 CAD 13 million during the quarter. Our definition of free cash flow is essentially EBITDA less nondiscretionary cash expenditures. You can see more details on this in the non-GAAP measures section of our MD&A. CapEx for the quarter totaled CAD 20.8 million, split between maintenance capital of CAD 9.5 million and upgrade capital of CAD 11.3 million. Our upgrade capital was dedicated primarily to the electrification of our fourth set of ancillary frack 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.

[Scott Matson, CFO at Trican Well Service]

Continue to maintain a very strong balance sheet, exiting the quarter with positive non-cash working capital of CAD 81 million and a cash balance of CAD 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 canceled 885,000 shares under our NCIB program during the quarter at a weighted average cost of CAD 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.

[Scott Matson, CFO at Trican Well Service]

As noted in our press release, the board of directors approved a dividend of CAD 0.055 per share, reflecting approximately CAD 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. I would note that the dividends are designated as eligible dividends for Canadian tax purposes. With that, I'll turn things back to Brad.

[Brad Fedora, President and CEO at Trican Well Service]

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. That has a huge impact on our operations, don't worry about Q2.

[Brad Fedora, President and CEO at Trican Well Service]

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 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 opportunity to burn natural gas versus diesel. At these fuel prices, this is becoming more and more important every day.

[Brad Fedora, President and CEO at Trican Well Service]

The arbitrage between natural gas prices and diesel has never been higher. You're buying gas at CAD 3 a GJ. It's like buying diesel at CAD 0.12 a liter, not the CAD 2 a liter that we're currently paying throughout the basin. 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. That stuff is really starting to pay off. Wells like Duvernay, as an example, in Duvernay play, burning natural gas versus diesel can save CAD 200,000 a day in fuel costs. All of those investments that we've made, turning our backside equipment to electric, replacing our diesel-burning frac pumps, replacing them with natural gas engines, that stuff is all really paying off and is becoming basically the standard for the industry. The oil work is obviously going well.

[Brad Fedora, President and CEO at Trican Well Service]

I think you'll see Iron Horse really perform well in the second half of this year. We've got good oil pricing, but we had a lot of volatility in Q2. It really didn't shake through from an activity perspective. I think you'll see that division really perform well in the second half. We're still focused Montney, Duvernay, and the shallower oil plays. 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. Now almost 30% of our work is in the Duvernay, which is a very pressure pumping-intensive play.

[Brad Fedora, President and CEO at Trican Well Service]

A couple of years ago, we built sort of customized equipment just for the Duvernay play, given the pumping pressures and durations. That is bearing fruit with lower maintenance costs, lower downtime, and the ability to take less equipment onto locations because we're not having to take a bunch of spare equipment for breakdowns. There's this trend in sand consumption or placement continues. I think post-COVID in 2021, the basin consumed about 4.5 million tons of sand. This year, it's going to be 8.5 million-9 million tons, and there's lots of forecasts for it to grow as high as 12 million-15 million tons per year. We've been making investments in our last-mile logistics. We expect that to basically run at 100% utilization for the foreseeable future. Efficient logistics are absolutely critical for success on a pad.

[Brad Fedora, President and CEO at Trican Well Service]

I think we do the best job of this in the basin. We have one of the largest sand truck fleets in Western Canada. Our customers really value that service offering. We received our first 100% natural gas Cat engine. It's been in the field now for a while, performing very well, actually a little bit better than expected. It will replace two of our conventional pumps. We'll have less people, less equipment, ability to pump at higher pressures for longer. When you combine those 100% natural gas pumps with the electric backside equipment, we're basically almost consuming 100% natural gas on location, giving savings of up to CAD 200,000 a day. It's a huge win for the operator. It's great for maintenance. It's lower footprint on location. It's a win-win for both us and our customers.

[Brad Fedora, President and CEO at Trican Well Service]

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. We'll have a 10-pump fleet of those 100% natural gas engines in Q4 operating. 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 long range. Currently, we'll operate those in the Grande Prairie area in northwest Alberta. Running CNG in a semi-trailer or semi-truck is about a 60% reduction in fuel costs and lower maintenance. 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.

[Brad Fedora, President and CEO at Trican Well Service]

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 experiences a traditional breakup. They're not additive to EBITDA in Q2. They're negative to flat at best. That's not an addition. You'll really see the impact of that division in Q3 and Q4 of this year. Their customers are messaging higher activity levels as long as oil prices stay high. Obviously, we've got crack spreads over CAD 70, so there's a lot incentive for people to develop their oil plays right now. They're experiencing the same issues as the other frack division with higher intensity on a per-well basis. The stages and sand volumes are growing, but that just means more time on location. That's good for us in the long-term.

[Brad Fedora, President and CEO at Trican Well Service]

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 in the heavy oil sands area. They had a great Q2 from an activity revenue perspective, but unfortunately, their costs are going up just as high as the activity is. 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. That basically plugs right into the rig for power, reduces hydraulics, less breakdowns, less R&M, less fuel costs. Again, it's a win for us and we continue to outperform our competitors in this space.

[Brad Fedora, President and CEO at Trican Well Service]

We have basically a 50% market share in the Montney and the Duvernay, and we just recently completed the longest well in the history for Canada, just over 9,600 m. I think that was for Paramount. Everything's going very well in that division. We're making investments in our bulk blending plants to reduce blending errors, 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. 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.

[Brad Fedora, President and CEO at Trican Well Service]

I'll just touch on the outlook now. Nothing's changed. Q3, the second half of this year in Q3 and Q4, they all look good. The trends for this industry in Canada, there's no other place we'd rather be. You're gonna have weather impacts, whether it's Q2 in and around the winter. Don't get fussed over the sort of 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 goes through everything from groceries to cement products.

[Brad Fedora, President and CEO at Trican Well Service]

We're working hard to get our prices up to offset those cost increases, but that's always a challenge and it always will be. You don't always get the cooperation from your competitors that you would hope you would get. 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. Is 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.

[Brad Fedora, President and CEO at Trican Well Service]

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. Our cement and coil expansion as those businesses are getting increased focus from the new people in place that are running those divisions. Lastly, our last-mile logistics. As the sand volumes grow, we expect that we're going to grow our last-mile logistics 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, the Montney, and the Deep Basin in general.

[Brad Fedora, President and CEO at Trican Well Service]

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. Now we're sitting here with a completely clean balance sheet and a little bit of positive cash. 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 on 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. We move cash around to what we think is the best, lowest cost alternatives.

[Brad Fedora, President and CEO at Trican Well Service]

In the past, it was buying our own shares back. 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, and we have more than enough capacity to act on any acquisitions that we feel will be additive to our company. 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 versus our NCIB. We're not afraid to use our bank lines to buy our stock, to make acquisitions just as we did in the past and as we did with the Iron Horse transaction. Nothing's changed.

[Brad Fedora, President and CEO at Trican Well Service]

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. We feel really good about what the next six months and the next five years brings. 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 upside when you compare Western Canada to all the various plays 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.

[Operator]

As a reminder to ask a question, simply press star one on your telephone keypad. Our first question comes from the line of Aaron MacNeil with TD Cowen. Please go ahead.

[Aaron MacNeil, Director at TD Cowen]

Good morning, all. Thanks for taking my questions. Brad, I'm hoping you can give us maybe a bit more detail on the activity outlook for Q3, given your comments on the second quarter and the third quarter is often your best quarter of the year. I guess just to clarify, are you expecting that some of the Q2 activity as a result of rain was deferred into Q3 or Q4? Are we setting up for maybe an outsized second half in your view?

[Brad Fedora, President and CEO at Trican Well Service]

Yeah. It's too early to make those predictions, but the answer to that is yes, depending on the division. 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 the fact that sometimes customers just aren't willing to wait. I don't want to make predictions on an outsized Q3. We think Q3's going great. You made a comment about it's typically our best quarter of the year. What we've seen now is Q3, Q4, and Q1 are all pretty similar.

[Brad Fedora, President and CEO at Trican Well Service]

I think last year we had a bunch of work bump out of September and it moved into Q4, which kind of level-loaded those two quarters. Hopefully it 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, a cost efficiency perspective, you don't want to staff up for short periods of time. So, whenever possible, we're trying to March 31st, because it allows us to, as you've seen, we're typically the most profitable pressure pumper in North America from a margin perspective. That's one of the reasons why is, we're not afraid to 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.

[Aaron MacNeil, Director at TD Cowen]

Okay. Yeah, that's fair. You also mentioned in the disclosure 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 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?

[Brad Fedora, President and CEO at Trican Well Service]

You know what? 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 supply their own sand. 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. You don't 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. I think that comment is valid. I think pricing has bottomed out in the first half of the year and it just gets better from here.

[Aaron MacNeil, Director at TD Cowen]

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

[Operator]

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

[Keith Mackey, Director at RBC]

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 CAD 122 million budget for 2026, including the first 100% nat gas fleet. How should we roughly be thinking about the big pieces for 2027 at this stage of the year?

[Brad Fedora, President and CEO at Trican Well Service]

If I was building your model, I would probably just hold it flat from year to year. Kind of a redo. If that equipment performs as well as we think it will, we'll build more of it. So far, the performance of those new 35, 20 engines from Caterpillar has been really good.

[Keith Mackey, Director at RBC]

Yeah.

[Brad Fedora, President and CEO at Trican Well Service]

I would do a repeat on CapEx.

[Keith Mackey, Director at RBC]

Yeah. Got it.

[Brad Fedora, President and CEO at Trican Well Service]

We're a long ways from a board approval on CapEx, but that's probably a good placeholder.

[Keith Mackey, Director at RBC]

Okay, perfect. Can you just speak to maybe the pricing or the margin uplift you're able to get from that equipment? 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?

[Brad Fedora, President and CEO at Trican Well Service]

Overall, the market's balanced, but the 100% natural gas assets and the electric ancillary equipment. That equipment availability is not balanced. There's only two spreads in the basin, we're the only ones with electric ancillary equipment like blenders and things. The fuel savings, when you look at today's diesel pricing and today's gas prices, it's significant. It's as high as CAD 3,500 an hour, right? 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. Certainly, no customers are expecting to get the entire savings. They understand we have to get a return on our equipment. What exactly that split is going to be, we never disclose that.

[Keith Mackey, Director at RBC]

Got it. Thanks for the color.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from Tim Monachello with ATB Cormark. Please go ahead.

[Tim Monachello, Managing Director at ATB Cormark]

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.

[Brad Fedora, President and CEO at Trican Well Service]

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

[Tim Monachello, Managing Director at ATB Cormark]

Okay. That's helpful. In terms of market supply-demand One of your competitors talked about how the Canadian market, pretty optimistic long-term like you are, but also said that they don't think that the market's ready to absorb net equipment additions. When you bring in that 100% nat gas spread, do you expect that to be incremental to activity for Trican? Do you think that's going to be displacing a Tier 2 fleet, either within your business or outside?

[Brad Fedora, President and CEO at Trican Well Service]

Well, we hope it displaces somebody's Tier 2 fleet, hopefully not ours. We expect five times as much demand for that equipment as we have availability.

[Tim Monachello, Managing Director at ATB Cormark]

Okay.

[Brad Fedora, President and CEO at Trican Well Service]

Somebody's fleet's going to get displaced.

[Tim Monachello, Managing Director at ATB Cormark]

Okay, got it. Is pricing in the back half increasing enough to offset the cost inflation, or do you think there'll be a drag, maybe even temporarily just on margins, just given the pace of cost inflation versus price increases?

[Brad Fedora, President and CEO at Trican Well Service]

I would say it's a net zero so far.

[Tim Monachello, Managing Director at ATB Cormark]

I appreciate.

[Brad Fedora, President and CEO at Trican Well Service]

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

[Tim Monachello, Managing Director at ATB Cormark]

Okay, understood. I appreciate it. I'll turn it back. Thanks.

[Brad Fedora, President and CEO at Trican Well Service]

Okay.

[Operator]

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

[Colby Sasso, Analyst at Daniel Energy Partners]

Hi, thanks for having me on. Cost of sales for the quarter rose to 94%, up from 81 in Q2 2025. 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? Just what are your thoughts around that going forward?

[Brad Fedora, President and CEO at Trican Well Service]

Yeah. 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. You 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 U.S. 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. When you have a high fixed cost business, that impacts your percentages significantly.

[Scott Matson, CFO at Trican Well Service]

Yeah. 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 three, four and one. It'll normalize out to kind of what we've seen historically.

[Colby Sasso, Analyst at Daniel Energy Partners]

Perfect. 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.

[Brad Fedora, President and CEO at Trican Well Service]

Yeah, there's lots of interest in wet sand. 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. I don't think you're going to see that really take off. Then there's the wet sand that's coming from the actual professional frac sand mines. What we're seeing there is you're sort of skipping the last couple of stages of sorting and drying. You still have very high-quality sand, but just maybe not as refined and certainly not as dry. What we're hopeful about wet sand going forward is it's a lot nicer to handle on location. You don't get all the dust. From a staff perspective, it's a nicer product to deal with. It's really early days on wet sand, and I would say we're basically indifferent, right?

[Brad Fedora, President and CEO at Trican Well Service]

It's going to increase some trucking because the sand's heavier because it's wet. We're sort of looking at this as, look, the customers choose whatever sand you want. The nice thing about wet sand is it's cheaper, so they're probably going to pump more of it. That's good for us. More time on location and more trucking. If the customers are happy, great. We want their returns to be as high as possible so that they get busier. It's 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 field activity. In Canada, it's lumpy. There's a few sand mines spread around the basin, but you can have very long trucking distances, which can make wet sand uneconomic. Comparing wet sand in Canada to Texas, I wouldn't do that if I were you.

[Colby Sasso, Analyst at Daniel Energy Partners]

Perfect. Thank you for the color. I'll turn it back.

[Brad Fedora, President and CEO at Trican Well Service]

Okay, thanks.

[Operator]

With no further questions in queue, I will now hand the call back over to Brad Fedora for closing remarks.

[Brad Fedora, President and CEO at Trican Well Service]

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.

[Operator]

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

Participants

Executives

• Brad Fedora, President and CEO
• Scott Matson, CFO

Analysts

• Aaron MacNeil, Director at TD Cowen
• Keith Mackey, Director at RBC
• Tim Monachello, Managing Director at ATB Cormark
• Colby Sasso, Analyst at Daniel Energy Partners