Q2 2022 Archrock Inc Earnings Call
Good morning, welcome to the Archrock second quarter 2022 conference calls.
Your host for today is Megan Repine, Vice President of Investor Relations at Archrock I will now turn the call over to Missouri Pine you may begin.
Thank you Brent Hello, everyone and thanks for joining us on today's call with me today are Brad Childers, President and Chief Executive Officer of Archrock, and Doug Aron Chief Financial Officer of Archrock Yesterday, Archrock released its financial and operating results for the second quarter 2022.
If you've not received a copy you can find the information on the company's website at Www Dot Archrock dotcom.
During the call we will make forward looking statements within the meaning of section 21 E of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934 based on our current beliefs and expectations as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to Archrock management team.
<unk> management believes that the expectations reflected in such forward looking statements are reasonable it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Please refer to our latest filings with the SEC for a list of factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward looking statements made during.
This call. In addition, our discussion today will reference certain non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted EBITDA gross margin gross margin percentage free cash flow free cash flow after dividend and cash available for dividend for reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to our GAAP financial results. Please.
Yesterday's press release, and our form 8-K furnished to the SEC I'll now turn the call over to Brad to discuss Archrock second quarter results and to provide an update of our business.
Thank you Megan and good morning, everyone.
During the second quarter, we continued to see a significant acceleration of customer activity and the strengthening of supply demand dynamics for large midstream compression.
Our focus in the quarter was converting this growing customer demand and a high return bookings delivering profitable growth and maintaining capital discipline.
Second quarter highlights include that we generated adjusted EBITDA of $99 million, reflecting solid underlying business performance. It was generally in line with our internal expectations.
In addition quarterly results.
<unk> benefited from a net gain on the sale of assets as we continue to advance our fleet high grading strategy.
Strong customer demand and are well positioned and configure fleet of large horsepower compression equipment drove an increase in operating horsepower of 100000 horsepower excluding asset sales.
And and and an increase in our exit utilization of 300 basis points to 87%.
This improving utilization of our fleet and the extremely limited supply of available horsepower in the market are also allowing us to drive spot prices to record levels broadly across asset classes.
Year to date bookings have doubled compared to the first half of 2021.
This is providing us great visibility into new starts for the remainder of the year and into 2023.
Last Ams revenue increased nearly 50% on a sequential basis due to a welcome resurgence and overhaul and maintenance activity by our customers after years of deferrals.
Moving onto the market backdrop U S oil and gas production continued to tick higher.
And for both 2022 and 2023, the EIA projects solid annual increases of 3% to 4% for natural gas and 6% to 7% for oil.
More recently uncertainties around a potential for recession have emerged sending oil and gas prices lower albeit to levels that continue to stimulate increased investment by producers.
Although impossible to handicap the risk of a recession, we think several mitigating factors are worth noting.
For oil OPEC spare capacity remains limited and its willingness and ability to use it in question.
For gas Europe is now facing severe natural gas shortages due to its dependence on Russian supplies.
And the global tightness, we're seeing in oil and gas markets is largely the result of years of structural underinvestment and issue without an immediate solution.
The energy industry, and our business may not be entirely recession proof, but commodity demand has historically remained resilient in periods of economic weakness.
Current supply constraints for oil and gas are likely to persist.
As we navigate through this cyclical noise, we've become more excited about the longer term outlook for our business.
We expect that U S natural gas will play a vital role in meeting <unk> clean energy demands.
Our mission to help our customers deliver abundant affordable and cleaner natural gas.
A variety of critical industries to generate electricity.
Electricity and to directly heat and power our homes is more critical than ever.
Further recent geopolitical events, how quickly driven the realization.
A more diverse energy mix as needed to satisfy global energy demand and preserve energy security.
In particular, we remain encouraged by the growing potential for another wave of LNG projects in the middle of this decade that would result in a meaningful call on U S natural gas production and therefore, our natural gas compression services.
The powerful combination of these secular forces lays the foundation for a robust and sustained upturn.
Now turning to our operations in our contract operations segment demand for our large midstream compression accelerated across geographies customers and horsepower categories during the second quarter.
You can see the positive impacts of this demand and our results through increased horsepower growth increased utilization and.
And increased pricing.
The 101000 horsepower.
Organic horsepower growth that we delivered in the quarter was driven by several factors, including strong customer demand as seen in our bookings in start activity as well as low levels of stop activity.
Demonstrating how quickly the market has recovered and is growing we started a total of 155000 horsepower during the second quarter the highest level of quarterly start activity that we've seen since 2019.
And more than 80% of that start activity during the quarter was met by our idle fleet.
Similarly equipment stop activity has fallen to historically low levels as customers take advantage of higher commodity prices and as the market supply of available horsepower is extremely limited.
Looking ahead with year to date bookings up 100% compared to the first half of last year, we have good visibility into accelerating start activity over the next several quarters.
Our horsepower utilization exited the quarter at 87% up from 84% at the end of last quarter.
We're effectively sold out of several horsepower categories and based on our assessment of the market today, we expect to test new highs in total fleet utilization by the end of the year.
During the quarter, we continued to transform and standardize our fleet with additional non core asset sales totaling 97000 horsepower, creating significant long term value for archrock.
We're selling horsepower at attractive multiples and redeploying the proceeds to help advance our strategic priorities and to fund our investment in new standardized large horsepower.
This new horsepower will be deployed in the more stable midstream segment of the market for decades to come.
These strategic divestitures are accretive to our leverage have improved our returns and position us well to continue to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from our fleet.
Okay.
During the quarter, we incurred higher costs, primarily due to two dynamics.
First the steepness of the current recovery is requiring significant make ready and labor expense to meet higher customer demands.
This short term dynamic of incurring higher costs to reactivate the idle fleet is completely consistent with what we've experienced during the redeployment phase in past cycles.
However, this has been a particularly difficult environment to quickly and efficiently shift into growth as we've only recently emerged from a downturn a period, where our field organization was operating as lean lean as possible and as labor availability across the industry is exceptionally tight.
Second U S inflation hit a 40 year high during the quarter and we experienced the impact of higher prices across our major cost categories of labor.
Parts and lube oil.
The due to the pace and magnitude of this current high inflation, we experienced margin compression in the quarter. We are confident in our ability to mitigate these impacts.
We expect capacity across the industry will remain limited in light of continued capital discipline and extending lead times for new large horsepower units, which has already allowed us to increase spot prices to record levels.
In the coming quarters, we intend to reclaim the increasing costs. We're currently experiencing as we raised pricing on our installed base of operating horsepower, which we expect to translate into improved financial performance in 2023.
As the current upcycle unfolds I remain confident that our investments in our customer base, our fleet, our technology and our talent will continue to pay dividends and differentiate archrock.
Moving to our aftermarket services segment second quarter performance with sharply improved.
With parts and service revenue increased to levels not experienced since 2019 due to customers catching up on deferred maintenance work as well as a seasonal uptick in demand.
Of note, we believe industry wide labor scarcity is driving more outsourcing of maintenance.
Which is typically higher margin work for our Ams segment.
In addition, given the nature of our Ams business, we're able to pass through cost inflation to our customers more quickly to protect our margins.
We believe this trend should continue for the foreseeable future.
Yeah.
Turning to new ventures, the second quarter was busy for the team as you know we acquired a 25% minority stake in Ecotec accompany with impressive and tested technology for continuous methane emissions monitoring and management.
The partnership is off to a good start as we began the work to introduce <unk> suite of solutions to our customer base in support of their methane emission reduction goals.
I am excited to share that we have agreements in place to demonstrate <unk> proven technology in oil and gas applications with multiple customers and in multiple basins. This year.
The first installation for demonstration was recently completed and look forward to sharing additional progress later in the year.
Beyond Ecotec, our internal team has been tasked with exploring potential improvements and compressor operations and design as well as evaluating potential partnerships with additional third parties with the goal of assisting our customers to achieve improvements in emission performance.
These efforts to develop solutions to help our customers Decarbonize further solidify our commitment to and support of the role we expect natural gas will continue to play as an environmentally economically and strategically sound energy source for America and for the World.
Turning to capital allocation, we intend to make high return investments in our fleet to grow prudently and profitably with our customers.
Continue our dividend commitment.
All while maintaining a healthy balance sheet and financial flexibility.
First customer demand is robust and we are responsibly, increasing our investment in our fleet as planned so that we will have equipment available in configurations desired by our customers.
We're doing so at high returns and believe returns on our new build investments are poised to strengthen further as utilization increases.
Capital discipline in the industry persists and lead times extend.
Second we remain committed to returning capital to our investors.
As shareholders ourselves the board directly denies that our dividend is an important component to the overall value equation.
And today, our yield is a compelling 7%.
Finally, maintaining a strong balance sheet and liquidity underpins our ability to execute on our plans.
Over the last three years strategic divestments of older noncore assets have allowed us to effectively manage our leverage through the downturn.
And now with a much improved investment environment, we've essentially pre funded our growth investments and higher profit large midstream compression units.
Okay.
In summary.
We're seeing levels of horsepower start activity in bookings not seen since the 2018 through 2019 phase and.
And we achieved solid second quarter results.
And we achieved this with and despite the pressures of a tight labor market and significant inflationary pressures.
We're in an enviable position in the industry.
With the largest fleet of high demand large horsepower units.
The highest liquidity and the lowest leverage among public outsourced compression providers.
In the short term.
We will be focused on navigating this reactivation feed phase of the up cycle with disciplined cost management and by continuing to use price increases to gain ground against the inflation driven cost increases we're experiencing.
In the medium term, we expect to see the full top line benefit of higher horsepower a.
The decline in reactivation costs and pricing to catch up with our cost basis.
And as we've done in the past we will also continue to drive efficiency improvements to enhance the profitability of our business.
In the long term the market setup is strong.
We believe the growing demand for energy generally and natural gas in particular.
Constraints in the supply of compression equipment as well as disciplined capital spending by the oil and gas sector support well the strong and growing demand for our compression services of Archrock.
Against any economic backdrop will continue leveraging our best in class customer service and operational execution.
<unk> the benefits of digitalization and advancing our de carbonization strategy.
The strength of long term natural gas fundamentals and the investments we've made to our to differentiate our compression franchise gives us continued confidence in our ability to generate compelling returns for our stockholders.
With that I'd like to turn the call over to Doug for a review of our second quarter performance and to provide color on our updated 2022 guidance.
Thanks, Brad and good morning, let's look at a summary of our second quarter results and then cover our financial outlook net.
Net income for the second quarter of 2022 was $17 million and included a noncash 5 million long lived asset impairment.
We reported adjusted EBITDA of $99 million for the second quarter, 2022% compared to the first quarter, we increased our total gross margin by $2 million.
Largely consistent with our internal expectations. We also held our SG&A flat sequentially and benefited from our previously disclosed net gain on asset sales of $19 million.
Turning to our business segments contract operations revenue came in at $166 million in the second quarter up $3 million or 2% compared to the first quarter.
Operating horsepower and pricing both increased sequentially.
Our second quarter contract operations gross margin percentage was 59%.
This reflects incremental costs associated with the increased revenue and operating horsepower growth that we delivered in the quarter as well as higher parts labor and lube oil prices.
In our aftermarket services segment, we reported second quarter 2022 revenue of $50 million up $16 million from last quarter and $18 million compared to the year ago period.
Quarter Ams gross margin of 16% was up 100 basis points from the first quarter and was 300 basis points higher year over year as revenue drove better cost absorption.
Growth capital expenditures in the second quarter totaled $38 million up from $29 million last quarter as we invested in new equipment to meet customer demand.
Maintenance and other Capex was $23 million and was up from the $16 million last quarter due to higher overhaul and make ready activity.
This brought total capital spend for the quarter to $61 million.
We exited the quarter with total debt of $1 5 billion and had available liquidity of $477 million as of June 30.
Our leverage ratio at quarter end was four four times.
The $55 million in asset sale proceeds during the second quarter essentially pre funds a third of our growth capital this year.
Managing our debt during this period of investment in our fleet continues to be a primary focus for Archrock and we are committed to bringing our leverage down to our long to our long term target of three five to four times.
We recently declared a second quarter dividend of $14 five per share or 58 on an annualized basis. Today. This dividend level represents an attractive yield of 7%.
Cash available for dividends for the second quarter of 2022 totaled $52 million, leading to healthy second quarter dividend coverage of two three times.
As we reinvest in our business or quarterly quarterly dividend will remain a fundamental pillar of our 2022 capital allocation, reflecting our confidence in archrock strong cash generation capacity.
Moving on to our updated outlook, we are tightening our full year 2022, adjusted EBITDA guidance range to $330 million and $350 million.
Revenue and gross margin detail at the segment level can be found in the earnings press release, we issued last night.
For contract operations, we are increasing our revenue expectations for the year due to a faster than anticipated activity recovery and our expectation that pricing will continue to move higher.
As we absorb the cost of higher start activity and inflationary pressures discussed today, we anticipate a temporary and modest step down in gross margin percentage during the second half of the year. However.
However, our gross profit in the second half of the year is still expected to be higher than the first half.
And we intend to reclaim margin on a percentage basis next year as we increased pricing on our installed base of horsepower and as make ready costs normalized in later stages of the recovery.
We are also revising our annual Ams revenue guidance to account for stronger year to date performance and a more optimistic view of activity for the remainder of the year.
Turning to growth Capex, we continue to hold the line on $150 million for 2022, as we remain focused on balancing appropriate levels of investment leverage and return of capital to shareholders.
Maintenance capital is expected to be within our original guidance range, but closer to the high end as we deploy additional idle horsepower.
With now with that I'd now like to open up the line for questions operator.
At this time, if you would like to ask a question. Please press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question again Press Star one we'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster.
Your first question is from the line of T. J Schultz with RBC capital markets. Your line is open.
Hey, good morning.
Hey.
On the price increases on the installed base.
How quickly can you implement.
Is that a situation where you need to reach.
All utilization first or is there any guidance.
Quantify maybe how contracts on the installed base may phase out over time.
Good morning T. J. This is Brad we we've actually.
Started increasing pricing this year.
At the end of 2021.
And.
The process, where we get to reclaim.
Yes.
Pricing overall really is driven by utilization being much more in the mid 80% range that it is by quote full.
<unk>, so as we've been with our large horsepower and that higher level of utilization, we've been increasing pricing and stepping it up.
I think issue we encountered as the steepness of this inflation curve in the immediate environment is one that we need to continue to raise pricing to compensate for we expect that takes typically 12 to 24 months with utilization in the mid eighties and since we've been at this now and throughout the year.
Give us 12 months, yes.
Four quarters, plus or minus to reclaim.
The amount of inflation and cost increases that we've seen a hit our margin.
The only other thing I would add is we're a little bit more ambitious in that potentially because utilization is ticking up so sharply.
And this reinvestment reactivation phase that we're in is also part of the cost environment. So the impact and improvement in gross margin could accelerate from that we expect to test new highs both in utilization and in the future as well as continue to drive new highs in profitability with the upgraded fleet that we offer.
Today, the upgraded systems, we've put in place.
As well as the extremely high.
I'd say robot robust and strong market, we see for compression equipment ahead.
Okay that all makes sense and then you also mentioned youre effectively.
Hold out several.
Horsepower categories can you just provide.
Some more color on that what categories are structurally and higher demand can you fill those needs of our customers with other configuration and maybe what horsepower categories.
Actively looking to spend on them and kind of what's the lead time there.
The primary categories that the market is depleted and it's across the market not just at Archrock is the largest horsepower categories.
Or what is really super tight today and that is the only place where were effectively spending capital for large which is for large horsepower gas driven engines.
So thats the area of the market to replace that and replenish that while we're investing today and where we expect it to continue to invest lead times are out 52 plus weeks.
With the engines being the primary driver on those lead times.
For completeness the other area, where we are investing and it does include some smaller horsepower is an electric motor drive.
As the industry is focused on managing and reducing their.
For greenhouse gas emissions, we are seeing a slowly up ticking in developing market for more electric motor drive horsepower across horsepower classes and in that category, we will spend for more mid size.
And smaller horsepower.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you.
Again, if you would like to ask a question press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of GMO tool with Stifel. Your line is open.
Thank you.
Good morning.
Good morning.
So little bit of a follow up you talked about your gross margin of 59%.
It's going to step down and then you think it rebuilds into 2023 and I'm. Just wondering what do you think you can get those margins back to should we anticipated getting back to the mid <unk> in 2023.
Well.
Thank you, Tim we're certainly not providing a forecast or guidance on gross margins for 2023 on this call what I would share with you is that we have experienced this level of cyclical impact where we move through our redeployment in investment phase.
And that includes spending more even while pricing is tight and tough because we haven't yet seen utilization tick up to give us enough pricing <unk>.
And then after utilization moves past the mid 80% like 85.
Pricing has reclaimed and margins improved to recapture that.
Because we have experienced this in the past with such great clarity by the way.
I'm ambitious that yes over the long term, we expect to continue to drive <unk>.
Profitability improvement in this business as we have in the past.
And we're ambitious about the gross margin levels, we can achieve in this business.
Got it.
This is this is Doug sorry to interrupt, but let me add to that.
You bet.
A little bit of the grim as brad's right, obviously, we're not ready to give guidance for next year, but as we think about that there's part of this equation thats gross margin dollars, which we absolutely see us growing price is rising, but all things equal if lube oil labor and parts cost are all increasing.
If we had revenue to offset that dollar for dollar your gross margin percentage still comes down right just the math of that equation. So.
To answer the question what I would say to you is of course, we'd love to get back into the mid <unk> and we'd like to see that as a result of both higher price and lower costs. It will be a bit of dependent on both and really what our focus on managing the cost of course, the very best we can.
And also trying to be effective in forecasting what we think those cost increases can be so that we can set that in our rates going forward.
Got it.
Also you referenced the sale of 97000 horsepower can you just remind us how much EBITDA was associated with that.
Was it totally.
Maybe we'll follow up with Megan on that one afterwards.
Okay I want to make sure that's something we've disclosed publicly to be honest I can't remember, if we have or we haven't.
Okay.
And then also.
As it relates to <unk>.
I understand you got your first installation it sounds like it's a demonstration.
What should we be thinking about in terms of potentially is sort of I guess the sales cycle for this this is something where youre going to have to deploy and demonstrate for three or six months before.
You can get some decent results our share showed the customer.
Go forward, maybe you could just talk a little bit about that.
Well, let me talk first about where we're at in the business and Doug will talk a little bit about the accounting on what the expectations might be for this but on the business itself. We do expect that in 2022, we're going to spin the year converting.
This proven technology into an oil and gas application demonstrating with our customers and we're not looking to enter.
So to the cell cycle picking up to be robust in the short term what we're trying to do is make sure. We can have a broad market introduction of this company's technology of Ecotec technology. So that we can set the stage for acceleration in that in the 2023 time frame.
That's where we're at in the business right now.
Look.
As youll see in our 10-Q or perhaps have last quarter. This is accounted for under the fair value method for us and so in terms of seeing profit and loss of that business.
It really won't be until there is a meaningful transaction or a change in the fair value of the overall <unk>.
Company level of Ecotec four for that to flow through but again as we outlined we believe we're going to be providing a really strategic service to our customers. That's ancillary to what we already do as our customers look for.
Methane emission reduction strategies and look forward to this.
Thinking about it more as a longer term investment and one where we will create value in a variety of different ways.
Okay.
And then <unk>.
If you seen any inquiries anything in terms of carbon capture hydrogen people looking for compression at all or any.
Conversations out there along those lines.
Yes.
Number one.
Both there are certainly individual projects.
Are in the market that take the application of our compression units.
On the hydrogen side I think thats a little further out we have not actively engaged in the projects.
In carbon capture I think thats, some more active discussion right now for the industry.
Our compression applications, a small amount for <unk> and a lot of that is <unk>. Some of it is outsourced.
That's likely to be a growing market, but we do not see that as either of those adds substantial.
Demands are substantial markets of high demand for our compression at this time.
Okay. Thank you very much yes.
Yes. Thank you.
There are no more questions now I would like to turn the call back over to Mr. Childers for final remarks.
Thank you everyone for participating in our call today as we noted we continued to drive strong customer activity and believe we are well positioned operationally and financially to capitalize on opportunities in our business as the demand for our services increases.
I look forward to updating you on our progress next quarter.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today's conference call you may now disconnect.
Okay.
Yes.