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“Calfrac anticipates that there will be a significant amount of pressure pumping equipment retired and that consolidation will occur amongst the pressure pumpers,” Aguilar said.

He added that his company would look for smaller deals rather than larger ones, partly because Calfrac doesn’t need to acquire more hydraulic fracturing equipment, given that the company has an excess of unused equipment.

“Smaller companies – with the right culture, the right geography, the right personnel and the right customer bases – is what we’ll be looking into,” Aguilar said.

Calfrac announced that it had idled 44 per cent of its Canadian fracking equipment and 40 per cent of its American fleet in the second quarter as a result of a drop in demand, and prices, for its services.

The company posted a $43 million net loss in the second quarter, which is significantly larger than the $12 million loss it posted in the same quarter last year. At the same time, the company’s revenues fell 36 per cent, to $319 million for the quarter, from $503 million last year.

AltaCorp Capital analyst Dana Benner praised Calfrac’s financial performance for its “impressive margins in a tough time,” in a Wednesday research note. He noted that Calfrac’s $0.45 net loss per share was not as bad as the $0.54 loss per share numbers his firm expected.