Participants

Michael Sabella; Vice President - Investor Relations; Patterson-UTI Energy Inc

William Hendricks; President, Chief Executive Officer, Director; Patterson-UTI Energy Inc

C. Andrew Smith; Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President; Patterson-UTI Energy Inc

Jim Rollyson; Analyst; Raymond James

Waqar Syed; Analyst; ATB Capital Markets Inc

Keith Mackey; Analyst; RBC Capital Markets

Saurabh Pant; Analyst; BofA Global Research

Eddie Kim; Analyst; Barclays Capital Inc

Kurt Hallead; Analyst; The Benchmark Company LLC

Douglas Becker; Analyst; Capital One Securities, Inc.

Presentation

Operator

Thank you for standing by. My name is Rebecca, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time. I would like to welcome everyone to the Patterson-UTI fourth quarter earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions). I would now like to turn the call over to Michael Sabella, Vice President of Investor relations. Please go ahead.

Michael Sabella

Thank you, Rebecca. Good morning and welcome to Patterson-UTIs earnings conference call to discuss our fourth quarter 2024 results with me today are Andy Hendricks, President and Chief Executive Officer and Andy Smith, Chief Financial Officer. As a reminder statement that are made in this conference call that refer to the companies or manage plans, intentions, targets, beliefs, expectations or predictions for the future are considered forward-looking statements.
These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties as disclosed in the company's sec filings which could cause the company's actual results to differ. Materially, the company takes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements made in this conference call include non-GAAP financial measures.
The required reconciliation to GAAP financial measures is included on our website at Pat Energy dotcom. And in the company's press release issued prior to this conference call, I will now turn the call over to Andy Hendricks. Patterson UTI's Chief Executive Officer.

William Hendricks

Thank you, Mike and welcome to our fourth quarter earnings conference call in 2024 Patterson UT I delivered on our goal to differentiate ourselves amongst the shale service peer group by using our broad service and product portfolio to deliver value accretive results for our customers and strong free cash flow for our investors.
We balance the return of capital to shareholders with organic investments that position the company to extend our sustainable operating advantage over much of our competition and demonstrated the durable cash conversion profile of our company as us shale continues to evolve. We believe service companies that deliver value accretive solutions to the customer, not just the lowest price will continue to lead the industry in long term returns with our high-quality assets and skilled operating and commercial teams. We are confident in our ability to deliver industry leading performance.
Ultimately, this should allow us to deliver improving returns for our own shareholders in the coming years. Even if us onshore activity remains steady at current levels. In the fourth quarter, we delivered relatively steady adjusted gross profit per day in our US contract drilling business, effectively managed year end operator slowdowns across the entire US completions market and we delivered results in the drilling product segment that outperformed industry activity for the year.
We concluded 2024 with very strong free cash flow for Patterson UTI, we returned significant capital to our shareholders which reduced our total share count by more than 6%. We paid a cumulative dividend equal to 4% of our current market cap. In addition, we reduced our net debt including leases by almost $100 million. Our long-term strategy to create shareholder value will continue to focus on three key pillars.
First, on the commercial side, our goal is to monetize our value-based solutions. We believe our integration strategies within the drilling and completions business can drive significant efficiencies helping to reduce well costs and elevate returns for our customers while also benefiting our own returns. As a leader across multiple service and product lines, our offering is difficult to replicate which should deliver a sustainable competitive advantage.
Second, internally, we are focused on managing our own cost structure over the past year. Both our industry and our company have seen a slowdown in activity as we prepare for a relatively steady market in the coming year. We are streamlining our costs to better align with current activity levels and finally, capital allocation, we expect significant free cash flow generation in 2025 we remain committed to return at least 50% of our adjusted free cash flow to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks. Beyond this, we expect to allocate the remainder of the free cash flow into the higher returning projects. While protecting our strong capital structure.
Our strategy to deliver unique value-based services for our customers is driving deeper integration of our core assets. This approach is paving the way for a commercial model that will allow us to capture more of the performance driven upside. Last year, we disclosed our first fully integrated drilling and completion arrangement with performance incentives. We recently completed the drilling portion of this program delivering well significantly faster than historical averages.
This success resulted in performance bonuses for Patterson UTI while also delivering a significantly better outcome for the customer including bringing production forward. This project only marks the beginning of a strategy that should have good growth potential because we touch more of the well site than we have historically. We believe we have reduced the risk of relying on third parties which should allow us to more closely control our own deity and operations.
Moving forward, our commercial strategy will emphasize more integrated and performance-based agreements which we believe will drive enhanced margins in the years ahead. During 2025 the macro environment should remain relatively supportive for our business, and we continue to expect steady drilling activity through most of the year. On the oil front, commodity prices are supportive of continued drilling and completion activity in the major us oil basins. Our oil directed customers are increasingly focused on value drivers resulting in a high grading of our service providers and equipment.
Our position as a high-quality service provider with top tier assets allows us to outperform on the natural gas side. We see a positive outlook over the next several years with a clear need for more natural gas directed drilling and completion activity to satisfy growing natural gas demand. We could potentially start to see natural gas activity come back late this year and definitely into 2026 our us contract drilling business continues to deliver strong adjusted gross margins per day driven by the efficiencies of our tier one apex rigs and the quality of the service that we offer.
Over the past several years, we have invested to develop a very technical drilling team that integrates automation and performance data analysis into the process and strives for continuous improvement to drill a more efficient shale. Well, for our customers, these people and investments have set our company apart, making it uniquely capable of handling the complexities of the modern sale. Well, such as extended laterals and faster drilling speed. We are positioned to monetize these investments and unlock the value of our advanced rig technology.
We are transitioning more of our drilling services to an integrated commercial and operating model, combining our tier one apex drilling rigs with directional drilling downhole tools like our drill bits and mud motors, well placement, data, analytics and ancillary services such as drill pipe rentals and electrical engineering. This approach helps us to capture a greater share of the drilling spin while also enabling our customers to deliver faster, more efficient wells for Patterson UTI, this will likely result in our company adopting more performance-based agreements. We see potential for margin. A creative growth. With this approach in the US, we are currently operating 107 rigs with activity expected to remain relatively steady across both oil and natural gas basins through the rest of the year.
Our completion services segment navigated year end slowdowns with several of our customers by securing work with a few new customers during the quarter while also managing costs. This effort was complemented by expansion of our well site integration services, particularly profit sourcing and logistics in our C&G power and fuelling business. We've successfully launched our new fuel gas technology delivering excellent results by allowing customers to use more of their trapped fuel gas through our patented technology that improves gas quality and blending.
This innovation addresses historical challenges in using fuel gas to fuel frac fleets such as reduced diesel displacement and increased downtime because of inconsistent fuel gas quality or volume. The industry continues to transition to natural gas powered frac fleets and our completion scheme has led the way in adopting and deploying new solutions. While electric frac is a great option for some of our customers. Tier four, dual fuel can be more cost effective for others. As the high capital cost of power generation electric frac remains a significant hurdle.
As each customer evaluates their own needs. Our full suite of offerings will fit essentially every situation as we expand our fleet of Emerald 100% natural gas-powered equipment. We've decided to support multiple technologies to retain flexibility and maximize the service offering for our customers. This is the prudent approach when technology options are expanding, and this gives us the ability to offer the best technical solution for 100% natural gas depending on specific customer applications.
In 2024 we worked with our OEM engine supplier to field test direct drive technologies, and we intend to deploy more of this new technology into our Emerald fleet. This year direct Drive systems offer a breakthrough by enabling fleets to run entirely on natural gas without requiring large capital investments for external power generation. These systems are generating strong commercial interest from our customers, and we anticipate these direct drive technologies will gain market share in the coming years.
Our flexible approach to technology deployment enables us to adapt quickly to the changing market demands. We operated more than 150,000 horsepower Emerald 100% natural gas-powered completion equipment to start the year, and we expect to surpass 200,000 horsepower by mid 2025 across the industry. We believe all equipment that can be powered by natural gas is effectively sold out including our dual fuel assets. Roughly 80% of our active fleet can be powered by natural gas.
Our drilling product segment concluded a very successful year in 2024 that saw the business outperform industry activity both in the US and internationally in the US. Revenue was down less than 5% year over year despite a more than 10% decline in the industry recount demonstrating the resiliency of a business driven by superior technology and a laser focus on customer service revenue improved year over year in our international markets as the company continues to do a great job penetrating new geographies.
While our drilling product segment is mostly known for our Ultera drill bits. The team has also done a great job developing new products, our downhill tools and product innovation revenue, which is essentially everything besides the drill bits, more than doubled in 2024 at very strong margins.
We have been very pleased with the entrepreneurial spirit, our drilling products business and we expect to continue to outperform the industry when speaking with investors and analysts. One of the most frequent topics is the outlook for power, both inside and outside the oil field. And Patterson U TS role in this evolving market with power demand expected to grow exponentially over the next decade, the oilfield services industry is well positioned to capitalize through rising natural gas demand and our capabilities as a provider of power generation assets, Patterson UTI is a long history in oilfield power generation.
The drilling industry transitioned to electrification decades before the frac sector and each of our rigs operates with over four megawatts of our own power generation. At peak times. Our drilling operations alone have utilized more than a total of 500 megawatts of mobile power. Today, we also operate nearly 150 megawatts of power alongside our electric frac fleets.
Mobile power generation is already a core competency of Patterson UTI, and we are prepared to deploy capital to satisfy increasing power demand but only when opportunities align with return thresholds for our investors. We see significant potential to support our customers as they continue to electrify their compression systems and production pads that cannot be reached by the grid combined with our ability to supply natural gas to these systems. Our expertise positions us to expand this business profitably as the industry evolves. I'll now turn it over to Andy Smith who will review the financial results for the fourth quarter.

C. Andrew Smith

Thanks Andy and Good morning. Total reported revenue for the quarter was 1 billion $162 million. We reported a net loss attributable to common shareholders of $52 million or $0.13 per share in the fourth quarter adjusted EBITA for the quarter total $225 million. Our weighted average share count was 389 million shares during Q4, and we exited the quarter with 387 million shares outstanding during 2024 we generated $523 million of adjusted free cash flow.
During the fourth quarter, we returned $52 million to shareholders including an $0.08 per share dividends and $20 million used to repurchase approximately 2.6 million shares for the full year. We used approximately $290 million to repurchase shares and we reduced our share count during the year by over 6%. This is in addition to reducing net debt including leases by nearly $100 million and paying a steady dividend in our drilling services segment.
Fourth quarter revenue was $408 million and adjusted gross profit totalled $163 million in us contract drilling. We totalled 9,617 operating days. Average rig revenue per day was $35,300 with average rig operating cost per day of $19,600. The average adjusted rig gross profit per day was $15,700. On 31st December, we had term contracts for drilling rigs in the US providing for approximately $426 million of future day rate.
Drilling revenue based on contracts currently in place. We expect an average of 64 rigs operating under term contracts during the first quarter of 2025 and an average of 40 rigs operating under term contracts over the four quarters ending December 31st, 2025, in our other drilling services businesses which is mostly international contract drilling and directional drilling.
Fourth quarter revenue was $69 million with an adjusted gross profit of $12 million for the first quarter in us contract drilling. We expect to average 106 active rigs with adjusted gross profit per operating day of approximately $15,250 adjusted gross profit per day. Expectations are expected to start to see some benefit from performance bonuses. We expect other drilling services just gross profit to be flat compared to the fourth quarter revenue for the fourth quarter. In our completion services segment totalled $651 million with an adjusted gross profit of $95 million.
As expected,. We saw, we saw white space of several of our customers slow completion activity sequentially. However, our team did an outstanding job securing work with multiple new customers and controlling costs. Additionally, the segment benefited from greater well side integration of our ancillary services, most notably from our profit sourcing and logistics.
During the first quarter, we expect completion activity will seasonally recover from the year end slowdown as customer budgets reset and We continue to see traction from our integrated completion services as an summary revenue improves, this is partially offset by some inefficiencies early in the quarter as crews restarted following the extended slowdown in the fourth quarter for the first quarter. We expect completion services adjusted gross profit to be approximately $100 million. We expect equipment that can be powered by natural gas will remain effectively sold out into the second quarter.
Fourth quarter, drilling products revenue totalled $87 million with an adjusted gross profit of $37 million in the US. We again saw revenue outperform the overall recount a credit to the strong market position driven by what we believe to be superior product performance. The segment adjusted gross profit was impacted by a sequential increase in a non-cash charge associated with the step up to fair value of our drill bits in accordance with purchase price accounting which increased $2 million compared to the prior quarter.
For the first quarter. We expect drilling products adjusted gross profit to be flat compared to the fourth quarter. Other revenues totalled $16 million for the quarter with $7 million in adjusted gross profit. We expect other revenue and adjust gross profit in the first quarter to be flat. With the fourth quarter reported selling general and administrative expenses in the fourth quarter were $73 million.
For Q1. We expect SG&A expenses of approximately $67 million a consolidated basis for the fourth quarter. Total depreciation, depletion, amortization and impairment expense totalled $255 million. For the first quarter. We expect total depreciation, depletion amortization and impairment expense of approximately $235 million. During Q4 total CapEx was $140 million including $54 million in drilling services, $61 million in completion services, $60 million in drilling products and $9 million in other corporate as 2024 unfolded. We showed that we were nimble in our ability to adjust our spending to reflect the changing environment.
Our initial CapEx budget for 2024 was $740 million. So, we reduced our spending and end of the year with total capital expenditures of $678 million or more than 60 million lower than we initially anti anticipated. We also received $26 million in proceeds from asset sales. This demonstrates our ability to quickly respond to the changing market.
While we lowered our CapEx, we still exited the year with more natural gas-powered horsepower than we initially planned. And we have one of the highest quality drilling rig and completion fleets in the industry for 2025. We expect CapEx of approximately $600 million with capital spend at each of our segments, with capital spend at each of our segments to be lowered compared to 2024.
We will continue to invest in next generation upgrades to our drilling rigs and natural gas powered frac horsepower. Even with a smaller CapEx budget relative to last year, we expect to have more than 200,000 horsepower of our Emerald line of 100% natural gas-powered completion assets. By mid-year, we closed Q4 with $241 million in cash on hand. We do not have any senior note maturities until 2028 subsequent to the close of the quarter, we have successfully refinanced our revolving credit facility into a new five-year $500 million unsecured credit facility that expires in January 2030.
We expect to generate significant free cash flow again 2025 and we again expect to return at least half of our adjusted free cash flow to investors through share buybacks and dividends. Our board has approved an $0.08 per share dividend for the first quarter of 2025 payable on March 17th to holders of record as of 3rd March. I'll now turn it back to Andy Hendricks for closing remarks.

William Hendricks

Thanks Andy. I want to close with a few key takeaways. First. I would like to thank our teams across all of Patterson, for their outstanding achievements. In 2024 we successfully completed the operational integration of our company with next year an altera, and we have turned our attention to streamlining costs and enhancing efficiencies.
On the cost side, we're in the process of integrating back-office functions, which is a key step to maximizing enterprise-wide value. The merged company, we are also advancing toward a more integrated commercial model at both our drilling and completions businesses designed to further extract value from our expanded footprint.
Technology advancement continues to be a core competency of the company, and we continue to deliver exceptional service quality in both our drilling and completions businesses in drilling. A number of our apex tier one rigs have enhanced load capacities to meet the demands of deeper natural gas plays in the Haynesville while improving efficiency for longer laterals in the Permian, we are combining our tier one rigs with our downhole technology such as our impact mud motors and the new ultra Maverick drill bits and we have seen a significant increase in demand for our cortex automation systems.
Together, we think this offering delivers the most cost-effective wells for our customer. In completions. We expanded our Emerald line of 100% natural gas powered frac equipment while working with one of our engine suppliers to field test and commercialize their new natural gas reciprocating direct drive system. We plan to deploy additional technology in 2025.
We're in the early stages of realizing the full benefits of our scale across the entire well construction process. Our world class P 10 performance centre is nearing completion at our Houston headquarters where we will centralize data management across all our businesses to drive improved performance for both our customers. And for Patterson, UTI, our peach and advantage commercial model is focused on delivering integrated drilling and completions packages. And based on customer feedback is likely to become a bigger part of our business.
Our ability to deliver this full suite of services and products sets us apart in the industry, reducing reliance on third parties and enhancing operational efficiency. Given the strong feedback we've received so far, we think there is a significant upside for our shareholders through a performance based commercial model while also benefiting our customers. On the topic of power, our expertise in power generation has been demonstrated over decades beginning with the electrification of our drilling rigs. We have leveraged our technical capabilities to generate power from a variety of sources including diesel natural gas, reciprocating generators and gas turbine generators.
Today, our power assets generate over half a gigawatt per day of electricity, and we supply enough C&G and fuel gas to support around one gigawatt of constant power generation. Power is already a core competency of our company. From our perspective, electrical power as a service can be divided into three distinct markets where grid power is not currently positioned to meet demand.
You have power for frac operations, you have power for E&P production and midstream facilities as a subset of industrial and power for the largest potential future consumers. Hyper scalar data centres. Each of these end markets presents unique opportunities and specific technology requirements.
For example, an electric track our current preferred option is a high-capacity turbine. Currently, the power for our frac fleets is financed through operating leases. But we recognize that in the future, we may choose to deploy capital to own these assets. Given the fast-paced evolution of the market, we have chosen to be measured with our capital before committing to a particular solution.
This prudent investing strategy is proven effective in our emerald investments within our frac business, and we are focused on ensuring that we make the right investments to optimize the long-term capital efficiency of our fleet. The site power requirements for our E&P customers are significantly less as they develop production pads and midstream compression facilities through discussions with suppliers, we have found that the capital cost per megawatt for these smaller units is roughly half the cost of the larger units used to power our frac fleets.
Data centres require another level of power consumption, requiring half a gigawatt or more capacity depending on the size of the project. The capital cost here appears to range from 600,000 to $1 million per megawatt. Data centre power demand will continue to grow. Despite recent news on A I with new data centres required for the private sector, government and military applications, the power demand for new data centres is now tripled out of the older facilities with additional increases driven by the growing need for A I infrastructure.
So where is our focus at Patterson UTI? Based on discussions with our suppliers, we know that large gas turbine manufacturers are already in direct discussions with the data centre companies. While there's keen interest in how companies like ours could provide power to data centres. We believe that given the competitive landscape and the enormous capital requirements to meet the power demand for this market, the data centre in market does not appear to be a likely high return path for Patterson UTI.
We're instead focusing our efforts on the areas where we can most effectively leverage our strengths and deliver value to our customers within oil and gas. We have the right relationships, geographic support and experience to offer an integrated power solution for our own E&P customers.
We have currently, we currently have more than 15 megawatts of idle natural gas power generation capacity that we can repurpose. This gives us the opportunity to assess potential returns before deciding whether this is a market where we want to deploy significant incremental capital.
What we do not want to create is a commoditized generator rental business that competes with the existing rental companies. Our value proposition lies in combining power generation with other products and services that we have in our portfolio such as our real time monitoring, our micro grid engineering and manufacturing, our battery backup systems that are rated for well side environments and C&G delivery and field gas blending. By integrating these offerings, we can deliver an integrated power solution that is hard to replicate, leveraging our broader Patterson et I capabilities.
From what we see right now, if we choose to deploy capital in the space, we are more likely to do so through organic investment rather than acquisition, we've seen several potential acquisitions in the oil field power generation sector, but we have found the prices to be too high. Some of the valuations we have seen are multiples of the capital cost of purchasing new generators and the acquired assets have significant hours already on them.
While these acquisitions might be accretive to current EBITDA multiples, the replacement and maintenance costs associated with these assets could limit their accretive potential on a return on capital basis, which is our primary valuation metric. We recognize the potential market growth for off grid utility power solutions within the oil and gas space particularly in the Permian and we are actively exploring opportunities in this market. Third party source estimates that the demand for off grid power in remote areas of the Permian will grow by more than four gigawatts over the next 10 years driven by midstream and production system needs.
We intend to stay disciplined in our capital approach to this market, aiming to generate strong returns for our investors. We do not believe that deploying capital just to buy and rent commoditized generators with low cash flow margins is in the interest of our shareholders. However, we are well positioned to offer integrated power solutions to our customers, and we will continue to explore these opportunities over the past couple of years, we acknowledge that we've seen a steady decline in demand for oilfield services in the US as evidenced by the declining rig count.
A portion of this can be attributed to increasing efficiencies with additional impact from the mergers of various E MP S which has resulted in lower activity at the newly combined entity compared to the pre-merger operations. However, we are seeing evidence that these mergers while they are a headwind for overall industry activity could be a relative tailwind for the high-end service providers such as Patterson UTI.
Our well side integration across our drilling and completions businesses is driving value for both our customers and our shareholders. We are increasing product sales into international target markets, and we are actively seeking to balance our company size for the anticipated activity this year in the US. This offers upside for our investors and even in a steady oil field services market in the US. Patterson UTI is positioned favourably to create significant value for our shareholders and drive improving EPS over multiple years.
Looking past 2025 there is a discussion about the need for more natural gas production in the US to supply LNG takeaway at the Gulf coast for gas exports to Mexico and also for further baseload, electricity demand in the US including for data centres. One major midstream company estimates natural gas production will need to grow by 28 BCF per day between now and 2030.
We are bullish on the long-term prospects for natural gas and what that means for more potential activity in natural gas basins. And for Patterson UTI am upbeat about our company's position in 2025 and beyond. And we expect to continue to generate significant free cash flow, and we will continue to return at least 50% of our adjusted free cash flow to our investors through buybacks and dividends.
With that. We'd like to thank all of our employees for their hard work efforts and successes both in our industry and in general in 2024. And we look forward to a strong 2025 Rebecca. We'd now like to open the lines for the Q&A.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions)
Your first question comes from the line of Jim Rollyson with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Jim Rollyson

Hey, good morning, everyone. Andy, if we circle back on the performance based contracts, you first kind of started talking about this early last year if I recall correctly. And now you've had a bit of time to kind of work through some of those early contracts and the evolution of that and it sounds like it's gaining traction from your comments earlier.
Maybe if you could just provide a little bit of colour, kind of on the financial benefits, we obviously look at the way you report things in terms of rig margins and margins in the completion service businesses, etcetera. But as you think about this over the next, 23 years or beyond, how maybe just talk about the financial benefits, does this end up driving more activity but just kind of put numbers to the concept here if that makes sense.

William Hendricks

Yeah, sure. So let me just start by saying, we've participated in various types of performance contracts for individual service lines for years, some of that based on, increasing efficiencies or full production for. And we've even had some contracts at times that are tied to commodity prices. And so we've participated in these various, risk award scenarios for years.
But what's, with the, with the mergers and acquisitions that we've done over the last couple of years now and the integration of the operations in 2024 you know, we offer a large number of different products and services, across the value chain and drilling and completions that allows us to be able to do more control, more and improve efficiencies in various aspects of the operation. Lower some of the costs for the customer and well construction. And then also last but not least, just pull production forward.
And so combining all these elements like we started doing across drilling and completions in 2024 with P 10 advantage. You know, it's been exciting to see how the teams have come together across, our different segments and pulled in their service and products to work for, improving these types of efficiency. What's interesting is, and then, particular case for the project that we've been on where, we talk about how we've completed the drilling and now we're moving on to the completion phase is not just the upside that we have on the performance through the arrangement that we have, but also the pull through on services that may not have been part of that package.
But when we come together and print, present a more holistic, operational solution for some of these customers, then they're very interested to look at services, maybe they wouldn't have used in the first place. You have pull through on services as well as a potential upside that we may get in the arrangement as well. You know, the types of E&P customers that this is, really set up for is not necessarily the large, multinationals that you buy, gas from at the corner station, those companies have large teams of people that are focused on performance. But when you get into more of the mid-tier EMPs that probably have a lot of acreage, maybe smaller staffs, we can step in and help them and bridge the gaps there and help them look at their performance and see what we can do to improve it.
And you asked about putting numbers to it. I think it's still early days but certainly based on the feedback that we're getting today, it has the potential to grow to be a more significant part of what we do.

Jim Rollyson

Appreciate all that colour and as a follow up when we were sitting here about this time last year, I think there was some, kind of hopeful expectation gas activity and, and, and maybe the winter didn't play out quite like we thought then and, and LNG projects kind of slid to the right a bit. You know, we're getting closer to that day.
And curious with your comments and, and just basically what you're seeing from customers, is it too early to start seeing guys giving you calls on activity potential at this point or maybe just a little bit colour what you're hearing from your customers?

William Hendricks

Yeah, I think today, you know, we're hearing various things from customers. We have some very large E&P customers that have, wells behind pipe behind the well head ready to go. What they're telling us is they're going to be measured on how they bring those wells online. So, it doesn't negatively affect, natural gas commodity prices.
We also have customers that are expanding what they do in some of the deeper, more prolific plays of the Haynesville and they're excited about that, over on the Western flank. And so, there's various things that are, that are going on. But we're also looking at the macro and the demand and not just what, you're hearing from the L&G companies as they, prepare, prepare their facilities on the Gulf Coast. But also, you know what the midstream companies are talking about in total natural gas demand that they're seeing from the deliveries that they're going to have to make over the next couple of years.
And so, while we think 2025 will be relatively steady in the natural gas, there is some potential for upside. But if you're looking at the macro, with the L&G commentary, with the midstream commentary, then it really looks like there's some upside, in the natural gas demand in 26, 27. And so, we're looking at it from the macro standpoint while our customers are managing their budgets. This year, but the macro is very favourable longer term.

Jim Rollyson

Got it. Appreciate that colour. Thanks Andy.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Waqar Syed with a TB Capital markets. Please go ahead.

Waqar Syed

Good morning. This is Laar. And the is that, could you provide some framework to think about how the capital is going to be? CapEx is going to be allocated between the different business lines in 2020 five.

C. Andrew Smith

Yeah. I would say that you know, let's just talk about the three major business lines you're looking at probably 35% of it between the drilling, probably about 50% of it into completions with the balance between products and other.

Waqar Syed

Okay, great. And then in terms of the US drilling business, do you think the margins at this 15 to 50? Is that the bottom or do you think that it could be for pressure as we get into the, Q2 and beyond?

William Hendricks

You know, I would say that you know, where we are in the market with a relatively steady rig count, which is our visibility for 2025 that you know, pricing for the rigs is relatively steady for the base rig itself. I think our teams have some potential to do some things to maybe slightly improve margin as we work through the year with some technology deployments and some other initiatives. So, we're relatively upbeat, on that business and, and what we can do there.

Waqar Syed

Great. And, and then, on the, on the pumping side, any thoughts beyond Q1, do you expect like some seasonal pick up and just utilization in Q3, Q4? You know, things start to look a little bit better or, change in Epal Asia, Haynesville as well during the summer months.

William Hendricks

You know, right now, I'll start by saying, Q4 hats off to the team performance was a little bit better than we thought it was going to be in the fourth quarter. Then the ramp up in Q1 is probably happening a little faster than we had planned as well. Customers who slowed down in Q4 seem to go back to work very quickly in the first quarter. And so we're seeing that ramp up in activity. You know, we're going to be deploying almost all the horsepower we've got here going into Q2 and Q3 for the projects that we're on.
We're seeing, increased percentage of simal frac and, and more complex type frac operations. A little bit more horsepower and location a per fleet basis. And you know, activity is going to be busy. The interesting thing is, in the second quarter, I think we're going to be essentially sold out, not just Patterson UTI, but the industry of equipment that can burn natural gas. And so, the market is really going to be tight in the second quarter and the third quarter in terms of, you know, what can burn natural gas.
So, if there's any, increased call on more equipment, later in the year, that's going to be a challenge for the industry. I think the Q4 is still a bit relatively unknown at this point in the year. You know, does it look like 2024, or does it stay steady through the end of the year based on gas demand? I think that's, we still don't have the visibility on yet. But, overall, that our teams are performing well and, you know, we're upbeat for 2025.

Operator

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

Keith Mackey

Hi, good morning. Just maybe to start on a, a broad question of how you see drilling your drilling versus completion segments, performance unfold through the year and when you think about the factors like demand, pricing margins, and then translating that all the way down to EBITA in a directional sense, which, which one do you think ultimately does, does a little bit stronger as the year unfolds?

William Hendricks

Well, I'll go first, and I'll let Andy Smith weigh in as well. If you look at, the business lines, drilling from an activity standpoint has stayed a little more stable, in terms of contract drilling. And you've got some relative price discipline in that sector of the market compared to others. On the completion side in 2024. You know, I would say we could have done a little bit better job and there's things that are happening now to improve that, but also, you've had some general market softening as well.
So, as we talked about earlier, we're going to be essentially sold out in Q2 and Q3 of equipment that can burn natural gas. And if there's any call on that upside, there's going to be more relative torque on what happens in that completion sector.

C. Andrew Smith

Yeah, I don't have a whole lot to add to that. I would say that, just given the nature of the business as you would expect that, or I would expect that drilling will be relatively stable throughout the year. But you have more upside potential coming out of the completion business.
Now, all of that is [caveat] it by sort of what is the fourth quarter of next year look like if it's kind of similar in our customers, behave similarly to what they did this year that could sort of affect the cadence of it. But I, but I do think that you have more upside potential in the in the completion side.

Keith Mackey

Yeah, understood. Okay. Maybe just going back to the integrated and performance-based contracts. You know, certainly Andy, he hears your comment on that some customers will want this, and some may not need it. But certainly, there has been a lot of customer consolidation, and the larger customers are doing a much more, a much higher percentage of overall activity.
So, can you just give us maybe a little bit more of a sense of what the market size could look like, like from that, from that offering, both maybe on the drilling and completion side as you, as you build it out.

William Hendricks

Yeah, we've been, kicking that around and trying to really understand what that market looks like and what we think the uptake is going to be, I think it's early days, but, you know, I think over the next few years, it certainly has the potential to be, in the range of 10% to 20% of what we do. And, you know, with the improved profitability and improved pull through of those types of projects, that's certainly material to the investment community again. It's early days and, and we're still trying to understand, but, you know, certainly the feedback has been very favourable and, we're pleased with how the teams are performing.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Saurabh Pant with Bank of America.

Saurabh Pant

Hi, good morning, Andy and Andy.

William Hendricks

Morning, Rob.

Saurabh Pant

Andy, maybe I would just continue with that line of questioning on completions. And like you said, it's really encouraging to see you sold out on the natural gas-powered side of the equation for 2Q or 3Q, right? If I can just continue with that logic and then take it to pricing and think about where pricing is heading from here on. How should we think about the potential and the for you to get back to, let's say roughly third quarter of 2024 kind of profitability. In fact, do you think we can get there by the summer, let's say third quarter or is that a little bit of a stretch right now?

William Hendricks

Well, certainly what you're hearing across the industry is that pricing is coming down in 25 relative to 24. You know, that our E&P customers did a good job of taking advantage of the slowdown in Q4 and pushing the pricing across the industry, not just us, but across the industry, but with, the market for natural gas equipment across the industry, appearing to be sold out in the 2nd and 3rd quarters, that is a positive place for the sector to be.
So, you know, any call on improved activity later in 25. And certainly in 26 would, shift the pricing ability back towards, the service side in that product because we'd have to go out and, you know, acquire new equipment. We're going to want to do it at a return. That makes sense for, for the shareholders. And so, you know, it's from our side, it's a good position to be in the 2nd, 3rd quarter of this year.

Saurabh Pant

No, that makes sense. You got to take one step at a time. And then maybe one on the overall cost, cutting cost rationalization kind of efforts. I'm thinking about the entire business, not just one business, but like you said, on the CapEx front, you did a really good job bringing CapEx down to $600 million this year. How should we think about Andy, maybe Andy Smithy one way in as well on the overall cost structure in the business, both the drilling and frac what efforts are you making to further optimize that cost structure?

C. Andrew Smith

Yeah, I don't want to get too specific with targets, but as you can imagine, as we've gone through these acquisitions and we've achieved a lot of operational synergies. There are still things to be done around streamlining of systems. You know, certainly, more centralization of some back-office processes and then you have the typical things that we look at just around discretionary cost spend and, where does that sit relative to the opportunity in the marketplace? We should be looking at all of those costs.
So, there's a lot of things that we're looking at, how we're organized, not necessarily from an operational standpoint, but more from like I said, the back-office functions. So, you know what there, we do this all the time. But I think right now given the kind of what I would say is that a pretty big change we've gone through as an organization with the two significant, acquisitions. You know, it will ramp up quite a bit on the back office side of things. And so we'll see that happening over the course of this year and then even in the next year.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Eddie Kim with Barclays.

Eddie Kim

Okay. Hi, good morning. Just wanted to ask if you could provide some colour on what you're seeing on just on the pricing front and in the completion business, we've heard from some of your peers that they're definitely seeing some pricing pressure on the frac side of their businesses even on kind of the tier four dual fuel fleets. Are you seeing something similar there?
And, and when do you expect pricing to kind of bottom out here? Is it a second quarter or third quarter? Event before some of the gas related activity potentially picks up in the back half of the year. Just some colour on what you're seeing on pricing dynamics in the completions business.

William Hendricks

Yeah, our EMP customers did a good job at the end of last year, especially taking advantage of the slowdown to put some pressure, not just on us but across the completions market to get more value out of us and push our pricing down. So, our pricing is coming down year over year. But I would say that 90% of those discussions are in the rearview mirror.
The pricing is what it is right now. We're ramping up activity in the Q1. So, we're it's not a steady state quarter to really see how those numbers look. So, I would say, Q2, Q3 is probably, you know, how you look at the bottom just, in the financial results, but in terms of negotiations and discussions with the customers that pretty much wrapped up, at the end of last year.
But again, the interesting thing is that, being sold out on 100% natural gas equipment, not just us, but across the industry in 2nd and 3rd quarters. Any, any uptick that we have later this year or certainly the 26 would cause pricing to move up in the completion sector.

Eddie Kim

Got it, got it. That's very helpful. My follow up is just on your comments on kind of the mobile power market. You mentioned you currently operate about 100 50 megawatts to mainly to support your electric rack fleets. One of your peers just announced kind of a big investment they'd be making the next two years to increase their power gen capacity.
But it, it's clear based on your comments that you're taking a bit of a different and more, more cautious approach. I guess with that said, could you maybe just talk in broad terms about if there's a certain type of returns threshold or, or payback period you have in mind, be it, I don't know, three years or five years at which you would consider deploying capital into the mobile power markets.

William Hendricks

Yeah, let, let me start by saying, you know, we spend a lot of time looking at the power market. We spend a lot of time discussing, you know, the generators that are available from our suppliers and all the different sizes, whether it's gas recipe in the small to medium size or in gas turbines in the medium to large size. And you know, there's a lot of things that are happening when you start to segregate the market and break it down into different types.
It's, you have different generator applications So, for instance, when we look at the frac power market, we like the turbines, and we like the large capacity turbines. And so that's what we're releasing today in the future, we may decide to own those turbines if it makes, sense from a return standpoint. But the turbine is the right application. When you get into the E&P production facilities, if they're in disparate locations in the Permian, you're probably into some smaller or medium sized natural gas recipe type engine generators, which we also have some experience with.
And so, you know, that's a separate application. What as I mentioned earlier, what we're not trying to do is just be a commodity generator rental company. You have those companies that are out there already, we're not going to bring value in that sector. But if we're combining you know, a power solution for one of our customers along with services or technologies that we're already providing in other areas such as real time monitoring or engineering, a custom microgrid form and deploying that or maybe a battery storage system.
Remember our battery storage systems are designed for hazardous well, site operations so they can fit easily in a production area as well. And you've got our CNG delivery systems, you've got our fuel gas blending systems and which we have, new IP on some of that technology. And so it's really about, you know, can we find the right package that makes sense for a customer? And so we'll continue to explore these opportunities. We're in discussions and we'll continue to explore this and we'll try to do things that bring value for the investors at the end of the day.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Kurt Hallead with Benchmark.

Kurt Hallead

Hey, good morning, everybody. A lot of good colours, a lot of good contexts as always. So, I think I'm going to maybe ask a strategic question and, and you might not have specific answers that's fine. Just want to get kind of get a feel for how you're looking at the longer-term opportunities for this power business, right? And I know you gave us, some insights during the call.
But I guess, and I'm just trying to think what kind of, you know, what kind of level of investment, do you think it'll take to get you the scale that you want to capitalize on the opportunity? Again, you don't have to get too specific, but kind of curious about that. And then I guess as a follow up to that, you know, is this a situation where, at some point, this business, becomes its own standalone entity.

William Hendricks

Yeah. So, let's talk about the growing market demand. And really the permit, the permit is our backyard and there's estimates for the Permian growing power demand to be in the range of four gigawatts. You know, over the next 10 years of power demand that would be not connected to the utility grid because the utility is going to grow their power supply for our customers out there and for other applications in the Permian.
But you've also got this delta that's about, four gigawatts over the next 10 years. It is just that of demand, that's not going to be connected to the utility. And so, there's going to be multiple opportunities for multiple companies to step in and fill that demand with power generation sources. And what separates us, and our capabilities is the fact that, it wouldn't be just, us going out and buying a generator and renting it into this type of operation necessarily.
But combining it with other things that we do to where we can, provide a solution that differentiates us from just, a standalone generator rental company. And so, I think those opportunities is going to exist again, it's a longer-term play, it's over the next 10 years, you're going to have this this GAAP where you know, power demand exceeds supply from the grid. And so it's not something we're rushing into. It's something that our E&P customers are looking at over the long term as well.
And we'll see how it goes. Now, when you talk about scale, it's an interesting discussion because, it's not that we may need to have a certain number of assets to, to be efficient necessarily. We may take it on a project by project basis where, you know, we're building out in more of a project type, you know, work as opposed to just saying, hey, we need to own a large number of assets to be efficient. And so, you know, we'll keep you posted as we work through this and see how it works out. But again, we're really focused on, what we think is that we need to have a reasonable return for investors as we grow this out.
You know, will this be a separate segment someday? You know, I'm hopeful that it will, I think it's, we're a couple of years from that. Again, this is a long term play in the permian for demand for power off grid to grow. So this is not something that's going to happen right away for us to break it off as a separate segment. But hey, in a couple of years, we might be doing that because it might be material enough that we have to report it separately.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Jeff LeBlanc with TPH and Company.

Good morning, Andy and team. Thank you for taking my question. I just had one question regarding, retirements in your, in the frac business. How should we think about retirements over the next several years? And when could you move towards 100% natural gas burning equipment? Thank you.

C. Andrew Smith

Yeah, I mean, look, we will continue, we still operate some, older equipment and tier two equipment, non CGB type stuff and we'll continue to look to retire that stuff as it kind of reaches the end of its life. We're not going to take it out of service if it's working. But obviously, we're not going to invest a lot in kind of replenishing that level of equipment either.
I don't have a specific horsepower number that I want to get tied down to right now, but certainly that stuff's reaching the end of its life over the next 23 years or so. And so, we'll continue to pull that out and then replace it with something that is more fit for the current, again, opportunity set in the market, which is natural gas burning.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Douglas Becker with Capital One securities.

Douglas Becker

Thank you. I want to circle back on the US drilling margins. Andy, you characterize pricing on the base rigs is stable. You have potential upside on the technology deployments and then on the same time you're streamlining costs payroll taxes declined in the second quarter. I'm just trying to get a sense for what factors do you see keeping one Q from being the margin trough in that business?

William Hendricks

You know, there's several things that we're working on. There's the pace of, you know, as we deploy new technology out on the rig systems, there's you know, the pace that we're going to move at streamlining some cost structures there because we certainly want to protect performance and efficiency, efficiency at the same time. So we'll just see how it plays out. But overall through the year, I think that you'll see some improvements here.

Douglas Becker

That makes sense. That's all I had.

Operator

Thanks.
I will now turn the call back over to Andy, Hendricks for closing remarks.

William Hendricks

Thank you, Rebecca. I want to thank everybody that dialed in today for our call. Again, I want to thank all of our employees, our team at Patterson UTI for everything they did to make 2024 a great year and we look forward to a great 25 as well. So, thank you very much.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now.