HispanicBusiness

FTS International Services, formerly Frac Tech, swung from a hefty profit in 2011 to a loss of $29.8 million as revenues slid 18 percent to $1.9 billion, the Fort Worth-based hydraulic fracturing service company reported.

The company said it kept its 34 fleets of fracking equipment busy all year, doing more fracturing stages even though the number of wells fractured declined slightly. But the revenue from each of those stages fell from $136,335 to $101,905, the lowest since 2009.

In 2011, it earned $644 million on revenues of $2.3 billion, according to its disclosure.

In November, FTS replaced its CEO, naming Greg Lanham to the post. Lanham previously was managing director for energy investments at Temasek, Singapore's sovereign wealth fund, which acquired a majority stake in FTS in May 2011.

Lanham's predecessor was Marc Rowland, a longtime Chesapeake Energy financial executive who had served on the company's board since 2006, when Chesapeake invested in FTS. Rowland had served as CEO since late 2010.

On Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Chesapeake, FTS' biggest customer and owner of about 30 percent of the company, was no longer considering selling its stake. Citing unnamed sources, the newspaper said Chesapeake's stake, which the Oklahoma City-based producer had estimated at about $2 billion earlier, was worth less than $1 billion under common evaluation methods using its most recent earnings before interest taxes, depreciation and amortization.

In a prepared statement issued Monday, FTS said its corporate parent, FTS International Inc., has reduced its corporate debt from $2 billion at the time Temasek acquired it to about $1.5 billion currently.

It also said it has $175 million in cash and $110 million available on a line of credit.

FTS has not released first-quarter financials, but the statement said that in March it completed 2,051 fracturing stages, which it called a company record for a single month. The company is privately held but posts quarterly earnings reports on its website.