Kyle Ramachandran joined Solaris Oilfield Infrastructure Inc. in 2014 at its inception and quickly became a key player in the growth of the company. In just three and a half years, Solaris, an oilfield service provider that delivers innovative products, services and infrastructure in North American shale plays, went public in May 2017. As the CFO, he oversees all equity and debt capital markets activity, investor relations and financial planning for the company.
Ramachandran grew up in Greenwich, Conn., and graduated with honors from Boston College in 2007 with a degree in finance and accounting.
In 2006, he interned at Citigroup, and went full time after graduation as an analyst in its M&A group in New York. There, he worked on transactions mainly in the energy space. He later joined private-equity firm First Reserve as an associate, focusing on new and existing investments in the oilfield service sector.
After two years in private equity, Ramachandran decided it was time to get hands-on operating experience and took the opportunity to join Brazilian company Barra Energia, a start-up, pre-salt E&P based in Rio De Janeiro and sponsored by Riverstone Holdings and First Reserve. There, he learned the fundamentals of the E&P sector from the ground up. He spent time with the management team building a new business around developing assets offshore Brazil.
In his spare time, Ramachandran enjoys traveling and exploring Texas with his wife and dog.
Investor How involved were you with Solaris’ IPO?
Ramachandran I was effectively the project manager for the entire process. I was heavily involved in all the capital that we raised in the business early on and transitioned to lead the public offering effort. That started with taking the first shot at drafting a description of the business for what is called the S-1 or the offering prospectus. That’s sort of where it started in December 2016 all the way to May 2017, putting together all the pieces of it. It was an incredible learning experience. I had actually never been involved in an IPO and couldn’t find a better place to do it in a business that I helped start.
Investor What cost advantages does Solaris have to offer for E&Ps?
Ramachandran As the industry has shifted from exploration and delineation to large scale development of resources, a new series of challenges are created. We are now taking more of a manufacturing approach to developing resource – Solaris helps by providing new ways of improving proppant logistics. Our well site storage and delivery systems provide increase inventory buffer at the demand point and remote real-time inventory data that helps the supply chain operate more efficiently. We’re able to help our customers drive down the cost of delivering sand to a well site and also ensure supply is there when they need it, so they can complete their wells on time or even faster than they expected. We tie right into the classic manufacturing themes of getting your supply chain as efficient as possible and making sure you’re delivering product on time. For the oil and gas companies, that means producing hydrocarbons when you expect to. Those are two big things we are doing for customers.
Investor What is the company’s outlook for 2018?
Ramachandran Since going public in May, we have effectively doubled our asset base. We expect to continue to grow at a very rapid rate into 2018. In addition to what we’re doing at the well site, we’re also developing a large rail transloading facility in Oklahoma that will serve the Stack/Scoop plays. The facility will provide high-efficiency transloading – we will offload sand from railcars into storage and then load trucks to deliver sand to the well site. This will be integrated with the storage we’re providing at the well site.
Investor What career advice would you give the younger generation?
Ramachandran First and foremost, nothing can replace hard work, grit and determination. Those are three really critical characteristics--I think I tend to characterize them as the price of entry. When I look at one’s career, I think a good perspective to take is that of a batter in baseball, and what I mean by that is, not every at bat is going to be a homerun but you better learn something at each at bat. That’s the value of stepping up and getting to the plate. You may not hit a homerun but you will definitely learn something. You don’t want to get down on an experience that doesn’t go as planned because there’s likely a lot you can learn from that experience. But ultimately, if you keep getting yourself to the plate, you should find yourself in a position where you do hit that homerun, or you do have that great experience you’ve been looking for.
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