Business Strategy

Our primary business objectives are to provide capital appreciation and returns to shareholders. We intend to accomplish this objective by executing the following strategies:

Capitalizing on compelling industry fundamentals.

We intend to continue positioning ourselves as a premier provider of proppant and logistics solutions to the North American petroleum industry, as we believe the proppant and logistics market offers attractive growth fundamentals over the long term. The innovations in horizontal drilling in the various North American shale basins and other unconventional oil and natural gas plays have resulted in greater demand for frac sand per well and per stage. The long-term growth in frac sand demand is underpinned by continued horizontal drilling, increasing frac sand use per well and cost advantages over other proppant types, including resin-coated sand and ceramics.

Building On Our Position As A High-value Producer And Distributor.

We seek to maintain and improve upon our position as a low cost provider of frac sand. We will continue to analyze and pursue organic expansion efforts that will similarly allow us to capitalize on and cost-effectively optimize our existing production and logistics assets. In addition, we seek to identify and evaluate additional terminal site locations to expand our geographic footprint allowing us to enhance our distribution network and ensure that our frac sand production is available to meet the evolving and dynamic in-basin needs of our customers. Further, we seek to find ways to reduce our customers’ cost of frac sand delivered to the blender at the wellsite regardless of the source of production. We intend to accomplish this through a combination of our efficient production, our network of owned and operated terminals or third-party operated sites, our geographic footprint, and our proppant logistics expertise, including Pronghorn logistics and wellsite operations, NexStage equipment sales and leasing, and PropDispatch proppant management and logistics platform.

We intend to continue to analyze and pursue opportunities to cost-effectively expand our geographic reach, optimize our existing assets and meet our customers’ demand for our high-quality frac sand.

Focusing On Long-Term Relationships With Key Customers.

A key component of our business model has been our contracting strategy, which seeks to secure a high percentage of volumes under long-term contracts with oil and gas exploration and production companies. Our mix of fixed price and market price in our contracts for sand sourced from our Wisconsin facilities and our fixed price contracts for sand sourced from our Kermit facility provide us with a stable base of frac sand demand and cash flows, while also providing the flexibility we and our customers desire in the event of market changes. We believe this business model serves as the foundation for our ability to serve our customers, while reliably providing the product that is a critical component to the well completion process. We intend to utilize a substantial majority of our processing capacity to fulfill our customer contracts and continue to serve our existing and new customers with frac sand delivered through our distribution network and to the blender at the wellsite.

Providing sand as a service.

As we meet our customers’ varied and evolving needs, we focus on the management of frac sand for our customers through “sand as a service.” Through Pronghorn, NexStage and PropDispatch, we leverage our capabilities to manage our customers’ frac sand and logistics needs all the way from the mine to the blender at the wellsite. Our relentless focus on execution of our operations aligns our service with their needs for quality and reliability as we handle the frac sand production, transportation and management challenges faced every day.

Pursuing accretive acquisitions.

In June 2013, we acquired D&I, the owner of the largest distribution network in the Marcellus and Utica shale plays. The foundation of this acquisition enabled us to operate through an extensive logistics network of rail-based terminals, which today, has been expanded and is strategically located throughout Colorado, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York and Texas. In separate transactions in 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2017, we acquired all of the equity interests in the Augusta, Blair and Whitehall facilities from our sponsor. In March 2017, we acquired a 1,226-acre frac sand reserve, located near Kermit, Texas from Permian Basin Sand.

In July 2018, we acquired FB Industries Inc., a leading manufacturer and marketer of silo-based frac sand management systems. The acquisition enhances our capabilities in the last mile transportation and management of frac sand, and furthers the company’s position as a leader in North American proppant logistics.

In the first quarter of 2019, we completed our acquisition of BulkTracer Holdings, the owner of the PropDispatch logistics software system. PropDispatch is the last mile proppant management software of choice for three of the largest oilfield service companies in the US and is utilized in every major shale basin in North America. We have expanded the software’s capabilities to include inventory management and better tracking of sand throughout the supply chain to optimize our customers’ sand supply needs.

In May 2019, we completed our acquisition of Proppant Logistics, owner of Pronghorn Logistics, a leading provider of end-to-end proppant logistics services to E&P companies. The acquisition expands capabilities across the supply chain and widens our area of operations to new basins.

We organized and rebranded our services in the second quarter of 2019. The change reflects our acquisitions and an integrate service offering to address customer needs that provides logistics and wellsite services, equipment rental and sales, and frac sand production. With our platform of assets in place, we will continue investing in customer-driven, incremental enhancement of our service offering.

Maintaining financial flexibility and ample liquidity.

We continue to pursue a disciplined financial policy and maintain liquidity aligned with our future financing needs and debt maturities. We believe that our borrowing capacity and ability to access debt and equity capital markets provides us with the financial flexibility necessary to achieve our organic expansion and acquisition strategy.