Overview
We are a pure-play, low-cost producer of high-quality Northern White raw frac sand, which is a preferred proppant used to enhance hydrocarbon recovery rates in the hydraulic fracturing of oil and natural gas wells. We sell our products primarily to oil and natural gas exploration and production companies and oilfield service companies under a combination of long-term take-or-pay contracts and spot sales in the open market. We believe that the size and favorable geologic characteristics of our sand reserves, the strategic location and logistical advantages of our facilities and the industry experience of our senior management team have positioned us as a highly attractive source of raw frac sand to the oil and natural gas industry.
We own and operate a raw frac sand mine and related processing facility near Oakdale, Wisconsin, at which we have approximately 332 million tons of proven recoverable sand reserves as of December 31, 2016. We began operations with 1.1 million tons of processing capacity in July 2012, expanded to 2.2 million tons capacity in August 2014, and increased to 3.3 million tons in September 2015. Our integrated Oakdale facility, with on-site rail infrastructure and wet and dry sand processing facilities, has access to two Class I rail lines and enables us to process and cost-effectively deliver up to approximately 3.3 million tons of raw frac sand per year.
On November 9, 2016, we completed our initial public offering (the “IPO”) of 11,700,000 shares of our common stock at a price to the public of $11.00 per share ($10.34 per share, net of the underwriting discount) pursuant to a Registration Statement on Form S-1, as amended (File No. 333-213692), initially filed with the SEC on September 19, 2016 pursuant to the Securities Act. The material provisions of the IPO are described in the IPO prospectus. We granted the underwriters an option for a period of 30 days to purchase up to an additional 877,500 shares of Common Stock at the initial offering price, and the Selling Shareholders granted the underwriters an option for a period of 30 days to purchase up to an aggregate additional 877,500 shares of Common Stock at the initial offering price. On November 23, 2016, the underwriters exercised in full their option to purchase additional shares of common stock from us and the Selling Shareholders.
On February 1, 2017, we entered into an Underwriting Agreement providing for the offer and sale of 1,500,000 shares of common stock at a price of $17.50 per share, generating net proceeds to us of $24.3 million before underwriting discounts and expenses. We intend to use the net proceeds from this offering for future capital projects and general corporate services. The offering closed on February 7, 2017. Additionally, the Selling Shareholders sold 4,450,000 shares of common stock at a price of $17.50 per share. We received no proceeds from the sale of common stock by the Selling Shareholders. The Selling Shareholders granted the underwriters an option for a period of 30 days to purchase up to an additional 892,500 shares of common stock. On February 10, 2017, the underwriters exercised in full their option to purchase additional shares of common stock from the Selling Shareholders. We received no proceeds from the sale of common stock to the underwriters by the Selling Shareholders.
Our Assets and Operations
Our sand reserves include a balanced concentration of coarse (20/40, 30/50 and 40/70 gradation) sands and fine (60/140 gradation, which we refer to in this annual report as “100 mesh”) sand. Our reserves contain deposits of approximately 19% of 20/40 and coarser substrate, 41% of 40/70 mesh substrate and approximately 40% of 100 mesh substrate. Our 30/50 gradation is a derivative of the 20/40 and 40/70 blends. We believe that this mix of coarse and fine sand reserves, combined with contractual demand for our products across a range of mesh sizes, provides us with relatively higher mining yields and lower processing costs than frac sand mines with predominantly coarse sand reserves. In addition, our approximate 332 million tons of proven recoverable reserves implies a reserve life of approximately 102 years based on our current annual processing capacity of 3.3 million tons per year. This long reserve life enables us to better serve demand for different types of raw frac sand as compared to mines with shorter reserve lives. We currently have plans to increase our wet and dry plant processing capacity in order to produce up to approximately 4.4 million tons of raw frac sand per year. We currently have one wet plant and one dryer in storage at Oakdale that will utilized as part of this capacity expansion.
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Our Oakdale facility is purpose-built to exploit the reserve profile in place and produce high-quality raw frac sand. Unlike some of our competitors, our primary processing and rail loading facilities are located in close proximity at the mine site, which eliminates the need for us to truck sand on public roads between the mine and the production facility or between wet and dry processing facilities. Our on-site transportation assets include approximately seven miles of rail track in a double-loop configuration and three rail car loading facilities that are connected to a Class I rail line owned by Canadian Pacific. This enables us to simultaneously accommodate multiple unit trains and significantly increases our efficiency in meeting our customers’ raw frac sand transportation needs. Our Oakdale facility is dual served with connections to the Canadian Pacific and Union Pacific networks. In addition, we have a transload facility approximately 3.5 miles from the Oakdale facility in Byron Township, Wisconsin that provides us with the ability to ship sand to our customers on the Union Pacific network. We believe that we are the only sand facility in Wisconsin that has dual served rail capabilities, which should create competition among our rail carriers and allow us to provide more competitive logistics options for our customers. Most of our product is shipped via unit trains, which we believe should yield lower operating and transportation costs compared to manifest train or single-unit train facilities due to our higher rail car utilization, more efficient use of locomotive power and more predictable movement of products between mine and destination. We believe that the combination of efficient production and processing, our well-designed plant, our dual served rail access and our focus on shipping sand in unit trains offer a considerable economic advantage to our customers.
Overall Trends and Outlook
Industry Trends Impacting Our Business
Unless otherwise indicated, the information set forth under “—Industry Trends Impacting Our Business,” including all statistical data and related forecasts, is derived from The Freedonia Group’s Industry Study #3302, “Proppants in North America,” published in September 2015, Spears & Associates’ “Hydraulic Fracturing Market 2005-2017” published in the fourth quarter 2016, PropTester, Inc. and Kelrik, LLC’s “2015 Proppant Market Report” published in March 2016 and Baker Hughes’ “North America Rotary Rig Count” published July 2016. While we are not aware of any misstatements regarding the proppant industry data presented herein, estimates involve risks and uncertainties and are subject to change based on various factors, including those discussed under the heading “Risk Factors.”
Demand Trends
According to Spears, the U.S. proppant market, including raw frac sand, ceramic and resin-coated proppant, was approximately 35.5 million tons in 2016. Kelrik estimates that the total raw frac sand market in 2015 represented approximately 92.3% of the total proppant market by weight. Market demand in 2015 dropped by approximately 28% from 2014 record demand levels (and a further estimated decrease of 43% in 2016 from 2015) due to the downturn in commodity prices since late 2014, which led to a corresponding decline in oil and natural gas drilling and production activity. Conversely, according to the Freedonia Group, during the period from 2009 to 2014, proppant demand by weight increased by 42% annually. Spears estimates from 2016 through 2020 proppant demand is projected to grow by 37.0% per year, from 35.5 million tons per year to 125 million tons per year, representing an increase of approximately 89.5 million tons in annual proppant demand over that time period.
This change in demand has impacted contract discussions and negotiated terms with our customers as existing contracts have been adjusted resulting in a combination of reduced average selling prices per ton, adjustments to take-or-pay volumes, inclusion of monthly reservation charges and length of contract. We believe we have mitigated the short-term negative impact on revenues of some of these adjustments through contractual shortfall and reservation payments. During the market downturn, customers began to purchase more volumes on a spot basis as compared to committing to term contracts, and this trend continued until oil and natural gas drilling and completion activity began to increase beginning in the fourth quarter of 2016. However, drilling and completion activity has begun to return to higher levels, and we believe customers will begin to more actively consider contracting proppant volumes under term contracts rather than continuing to rely on buying proppant on a spot basis in the market.
While demand for proppant has declined since late 2014 in connection with the downturn in commodity prices and the corresponding decline in oil and natural gas drilling and production activity, we believe that the demand for proppant will increase over the medium and long term as commodity prices rise from their recent lows, which will lead producers to resume completion of their inventory of drilled but uncompleted wells and undertake new drilling activities. Further, we believe that demand for proppant will be amplified by the following factors:
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improved drilling rig productivity, resulting in more wells drilled per rig per year; |
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completion of exploration and production companies’ inventory of drilled but uncompleted wells; |
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increases in the percentage of rigs that are drilling horizontal wells; |
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increases in the length of the typical horizontal wellbore; |
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increases in the number of fracture stages per foot in the typical completed horizontal wellbore; |
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increases in the volume of proppant used per fracturing stage; |
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renewed focus of exploration and production companies to maximize ultimate recovery in active reservoirs through downspacing; and |
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increasing secondary hydraulic fracturing of existing wells as early shale wells age. |
Recent growth in demand for raw frac sand has outpaced growth in demand for other proppants, and industry analysts predict that this trend will continue. As well completion costs have increased as a proportion of total well costs, operators have increasingly looked for ways to improve per well economics by lowering costs without sacrificing production performance. To this end, the oil and natural gas industry is shifting away from the use of higher-cost proppants towards more cost-effective proppants, such as raw frac sand. Evolution of completion techniques and the substantial increase in activity in U.S. oil and liquids-rich resource plays has further accelerated the demand growth for raw frac sand.
Demand growth for raw frac sand and other proppants is primarily driven by advancements in oil and natural gas drilling and well completion technology and techniques, such as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. These advancements have made the extraction of oil and natural gas increasingly cost-effective in formations that historically would have been uneconomic to develop. While current horizontal rig counts have fallen significantly from their peak of approximately 1,370 in 2014, rig count grew at an annual rate of 18.7% from 2009 to 2014. Additionally, the percentage of active drilling rigs used to drill horizontal wells, which require greater volumes of proppant than vertical wells, has increased from 42.2% in 2009 to 68.4% in 2014, and as of July 2016 the percentage of rigs drilling horizontal wells is 77% according to the Baker Hughes Rig Count. Moreover, the increase of pad drilling has led to a more efficient use of rigs, allowing more wells to be drilled per rig. As a result of these factors, well count, and hence proppant demand, has grown at a greater rate than overall rig count. Spears estimates that in 2018, proppant demand will exceed the 2014 peak (of approximately 74.0 million tons) and reach 85 million tons even though the projection assumes approximately 10,000 fewer wells will be drilled. Spears estimates that average proppant usage per well will be approximately 5,000 tons per well by 2020. Kelrik notes that current sand-based slickwater completions use in excess of 7,500 tons per well of proppant.
In general, oil and liquids-rich wells use a higher proportion of coarser proppant while dry gas wells typically use finer grades of sand. In the past, with the majority of U.S. exploration and production spending focused on oil and liquids-rich plays, demand for coarser grades of sand exceeded demand for finer grades; however, due to innovations in completion techniques, demand for finer grade sands has also shown a considerable resurgence. According to Kelrik, a notable driver impacting demand for fine mesh sand is increased proppant loadings, specifically, larger volumes of proppant placed per frac stage. Kelrik expects the trend of using larger volumes of finer mesh materials such as 100 mesh sand and 40/70 sand, to continue.
According to The Freedonia Group, development of unconventional resources such as shale oil and natural gas has been the driving force behind growth in proppant demand over the past decade. While significant demand began with drilling in the Barnett Shale, more recent growth has been in liquids-rich plays such as the Permian and Eagle Ford Shales. Demand in these and similar formations had been driven by high oil prices, which spurred drilling activity, and by the depth and challenging geology of these wells, which require larger amounts of proppant to complete as they involve more fracturing stages. However, the drop in oil prices that began in June 2014 slowed drilling activity in liquids-rich plays and, therefore, adversely affected proppant demand. A recovery of both oil and natural gas prices should renew demand in most liquid and gas shale fields.
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Supply Trends
In recent years, customer demand for high-quality raw frac sand outpaced supply. Several factors contributed to this supply shortage, including:
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the difficulty of finding frac sand reserves that meet API specifications and satisfy the demands of customers who increasingly favor high-quality Northern White raw frac sand; |
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the difficulty of securing contiguous raw frac sand reserves large enough to justify the capital investment required to develop a processing facility; |
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the challenges of identifying reserves with the above characteristics that have rail access needed for low-cost transportation to major shale basins; |
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the hurdles to securing mining, production, water, air, refuse and other federal, state and local operating permits from the proper authorities; |
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local opposition to development of certain facilities, especially those that require the use of on-road transportation, including moratoria on raw frac sand facilities in multiple counties in Wisconsin and Minnesota that hold potential sand reserves; and |
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the long lead time required to design and construct sand processing facilities that can efficiently process large quantities of high-quality raw frac sand. |
Supplies of high-quality Northern White frac sand are limited to select areas, predominantly in western Wisconsin and limited areas of Minnesota and Illinois. The ability to obtain large contiguous reserves in these areas is a key constraint and can be an important supply consideration when assessing the economic viability of a potential raw frac sand facility. Further constraining the supply and throughput of Northern White raw frac sand, is that not all of the large reserve mines have onsite excavation and processing capability. Additionally, much of the recent capital investment in Northern White raw frac sand mines was used to develop coarser deposits in western Wisconsin. With the shift to finer sands in the liquid and oil plays, many mines may not be economically viable as their ability to produce finer grades of sand may be limited.
Pricing
We generally expect the price of raw frac sand to correlate with the level of drilling activity for oil and natural gas. The willingness of exploration and production companies to engage in new drilling is determined by a number of factors, the most important of which are the prevailing and projected prices of oil and natural gas, the cost to drill and operate a well, the availability and cost of capital and environmental and government regulations. We generally expect the level of drilling to correlate with long-term trends in commodity prices. Similarly, oil and natural gas production levels nationally and regionally generally tend to correlate with drilling activity.
Sand is sold on a contract basis or through spot market pricing. Long-term take-or-pay contracts reduce exposure to fluctuations in price and provide predictability of volumes and price over the contract term. By contrast, the spot market provides direct access to immediate prices, with accompanying exposure to price volatility and uncertainty. For sand producers operating under stable long-term contract structures, the spot market can offer an outlet to sell excess production at opportunistic times or during favorable market conditions.
How We Generate Revenue
We generate revenue by excavating and processing frac sand, which we sell to our customers under long-term price agreements or at prevailing market rates. In some instances, revenues also include a charge for transportation services provided to customers. Our transportation revenue fluctuates based on a number of factors, including the volume of product transported and the distance between the plant and our customers.