Archrock, Inc. Q4 FY2022 Earnings Call

Good morning, and welcome to the Archrock Fourth Quarter 2022 Conference Call. Your host for today's call is Megan Repine, Vice President of Investor Relations at Archrock. I will now turn the call over to Ms. Repine. You may begin.

Thank you, Regina. 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 fourth quarter and full year 2022 as well as annual guidance for 2023. If you have not had a chance to receive a copy, you can find the information on the company's website at www.archrock.com. During this call, we will make forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E 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's management team. Although 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 see 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's fourth quarter and full year results and to provide an update of our business.

Thank you, Megan, and good morning, everyone. I'm happy to be with you today to discuss our strong fourth quarter and 2022 results and our extremely promising outlook for 2023 and beyond. We closed out 2022 with solid operating momentum and financial performance. I'm proud of what our team achieved from a financial, operational and most significantly strategic perspective. Among the accomplishments for the year, we grew our revenue by 8% and delivered meaningful net income growth compared to 2021. Our teams worked tirelessly to meet our customers' sharp increase in demand. We grew our contract compression operating fleet by approximately 375,000 horsepower excluding non-strategic active asset sales. And we increased our exit fleet utilization by 900 basis points to an all-time high for Archrock of 93%. In this exceptionally busy environment, we maintained excellent safety performance. In 2022, we exceeded our annual safety targets and achieved zero lost time incidents. We advanced our fleet high-grading efforts, selling non-strategic assets, totaling 341,000 horsepower during 2022, including 176,000 active horsepower. Large horsepower, the more stable segment of the compression market now represents 84% of our total fleet compared to 74% at the end of 2019. I want to take a moment to thank our employees for their hard work, leadership and dedicated customer service, which helped to deliver a great result in 2022 and to set us up for what we believe will be an even better 2023. Looking at the year ahead, we're at an exciting inflection point for Archrock. Our outlook reflects the intersection of robust compression market fundamentals with Archrock's radically transformed and differentiated platform. Fundamentals for the industry are as exciting as I've ever seen, and demand for our large midstream horsepower exceeds available equipment. We expect 2023 performance to benefit from a full year of record-high utilization and pricing. In the near-term, WTI prices continue to support healthy economics for oil-directed drilling. The resulting associated gas volumes need to be transported and therefore compressed, driving strong demand for our midstream horsepower even in the lower gas price environment. While this dynamic has been most notable in the Permian Basin, we've been pleased with customer activity and growth across several liquids-rich shale plays. Some analysts forecast a supply response in dry gas plays during 2023 to balance the market. However, we've yet to see and experience and do not expect a material impact to our business, given the current tight and undersupplied compression market and the LNG demand growth expected in 2024 and beyond. In the long-term, we believe the growing demand for energy generally and natural gas in particular, alongside constraints in the supply of compression equipment as well as disciplined capital spending by the oil and gas sector, support the strong and growing demand for the compression services of Archrock. Furthermore, we believe two factors that have impacted profitability in the most recent two years are improving in 2023. First, inflation appears to be slowing, which will better enable us to stabilize and continue to improve our operating costs. Second, we expect the level of spending required to make ready existing units for redeployment will reduce, given the current high utilization of our fleet. Against the supportive economic backdrop, we will also continue to reap the benefits of the fleet high-grading efforts and technology investments that have been central to our strategy for the last few years, including during a severe market downturn. Through these efforts, our goal has been to improve utilization and profitability through market cycles. We've repositioned our fleet, focusing on unit standardization, the large horsepower segment of the midstream market, high-grading customer relationships and enhancing leverage to growth places. On the technology front, we've integrated fleet telematics and equipped our field service technicians with mobile-enabled communication and service tools. We expect this to drive increased asset uptime, improve the efficiency of our field service technicians, improve the supply chain and inventory management at Archrock, reduce the miles driven by our field service technicians and lower our emissions and carbon footprint. Although the heavy lifting is never truly done, 2023 should offer a more normalized environment where we can begin to demonstrate our improved earnings power and focus on excellent operating execution. This means efficiently and profitably capturing robust demand for compression, continuing to deliver a first-rate customer experience, harnessing our upgraded technology platform and high-graded asset base, and prioritizing opportunities to help our customers with emissions management. Moving to our segments. We built significant momentum in our contract operations business throughout 2022. Utilization, committed backlog total and idle fleet bookings all reached record highs during the year, exit fleet utilization increased to an all-time high of 93% and our operating horsepower grew by approximately 375,000 horsepower, excluding the 176 active horsepower we chose to sell as part of our fleet high-grading strategy. Our sales team did a fantastic job of getting our idle equipment back to work quickly to more than replace these non-strategic active horsepower sales with higher quality EBITDA. During 2022, we took swift action to proactively align pricing with the market and combat inflation. Pricing across several key asset categories set record highs for spot prices, and we also continued to move pricing higher on our installed base as contracts were renewed throughout the year. We will benefit from a full year's impact of these rate increases and also expect to maintain the pricing prerogative and capture additional meaningful increments during 2023. I'm proud to say that we delivered gross margin dollars for the year of $399 million, essentially flat year-over-year despite the reduction in gross margin dollars for non-strategic asset sales as well as record inflation and elevated reactivation costs to put our idle fleet back to work, which are customary in the early stages of an upcycle. And as Doug will cover later in his review of guidance, we expect to resume margin expansion for our contract operations segment during 2023. Moving to our aftermarket services segment, fourth quarter and full year 2022 activity and performance improved meaningfully compared to 2021 with parts and service revenue running at levels not experienced since 2019 as customers catch up on deferred maintenance work. We expect healthy levels of activity to continue into 2023. Shifting to our capital allocation framework for 2023, we remain committed to maximizing the returns for Archrock shareholders with a balanced approach. First, capital returns to shareholders are front and center. As recently announced, our conviction in a multi-year upcycle for compression and Archrock's strategy drove the decision to resume dividend growth, beginning with the February 2023 payment. We recently announced a 3% increase in dividends per share, which is a meaningful step in our goal to deliver a leading return of capital strategy for shareholders and is supported by our expectation for dividend coverage of approximately two times for 2023. Future increases to shareholder return will be evaluated and determined by management and the Board based on our investment opportunities, balance sheet and cash flows, as well as dividend coverage. We're confident in the future cash generation profile of our business and anticipate significant and growing returns of capital to our shareholders over time. Second, we have the opportunity in 2023 to redeploy asset sales proceeds into an undersupplied market at returns well in excess of our cost of capital. Furthermore, customers have already begun planning for compression needs to support 2024 programs given the limited supply and long lead times for equipment. Our assets will be needed to meet growing production energy needs, and as we indicated on our third quarter call, incrementally higher growth capital will be deployed in 2023 compared to 2022 to meet these demands. As such, yesterday, we announced a growth capital budget of between $180 million and $200 million. We're focused on growing responsibly with our strategic growth-oriented customers in key basins. Our commitment to strong returns and helping our customers reduce their emissions footprint are driving our investment strategy. As such, we expect approximately $30 million of our growth CapEx budget to fund the expansion of our electric motor drive horsepower. Finally, maintaining a strong balance sheet and liquidity underpins our ability to execute our plans. We've completed $285 million in strategic divestments of older, nonstrategic assets over the last three years. This allowed us to effectively manage our leverage through the downturn. And now with a much-improved investment environment, we've essentially prefunded our growth investments in higher profit, large midstream compression units. In addition, proactive debt reduction and a visible expected increase in future earnings give us line of sight to achieving a leverage ratio of below four times this year, with our current near-term target debt-to-EBITDA ratio of 3.5 to four times. In summary, the positive momentum built in 2022 is carrying over into 2023. We have an exciting year ahead of us. And as we profitably capture market opportunities and execute our strategy, we are set up for a banner year, which will serve as a foundation for what I believe to be a lucrative and multiyear run for our compression business and our shareholders. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Doug for a review of our fourth quarter and full year performance and to provide additional color on our 2023 guidance.

Thanks, Brad. Let's look at a summary of our fourth quarter and full year results and then cover our financial outlook. Net income for the fourth quarter of 2022 was $10.5 million. This included a noncash $5 million long-lived asset impairment as well as a noncash $2 million reduction in the fair value of our investment in Ecotec. We reported adjusted EBITDA of $89 million for the fourth quarter of 2022. Underlying business performance was strong in the fourth quarter as we delivered higher total gross margin dollars. We also would have reported a sequential increase in adjusted EBITDA, both for the $13 million in third quarter asset sale gains. Turning to our business segments, contract operations revenue came in at $177 million in the fourth quarter, up 4% compared to the third quarter. Operating horsepower and pricing both increased sequentially. Compared to the third quarter, we grew our gross margin dollars 4%, resulting in a gross margin percentage of 58%. This was consistent with the third quarter and in line with our annual guidance. In our aftermarket services segment, we reported fourth quarter 2022 revenue of $42 million, down slightly compared to the third quarter due to seasonal softness, but up 16% on a year-over-year basis. Fourth quarter AMS gross margin of 17% was consistent with guidance and third quarter performance. Growth capital expenditures in the fourth quarter totaled $40 million and reflected elevated customer demand. Our full year growth CapEx of $146 million came in slightly below our full year guidance of $150 million, mainly due to timing. Maintenance and other CapEx for the fourth quarter of 2022 was $29 million, bringing the full year total to $94 million. Utilization increased faster than we forecasted in the year. And although great for earnings, this resulted in reactivation costs coming in higher than planned for the year. We exited the year with total debt of $1.5 billion and available liquidity of $488 million. In addition, variable rate debt continued to represent approximately 15% of our total long-term debt. Our leverage ratio at year-end was 4.4 times, just a small uptick compared to 4.3 times in the fourth quarter of 2021. As Brad mentioned earlier, as we execute our plan and our earnings inflect sharply higher this year, we expect to achieve a leverage ratio below four times by year-end 2023. We recently declared an increased fourth quarter dividend of $0.15 per share or $0.60 on an annualized basis. Our latest dividend represents a compelling yield of 6% based on yesterday's closing price, especially given the protection provided by our industry-leading dividend coverage. Cash available for dividend for the fourth quarter of 2022 totaled $35 million and for the full year totaled $171 million, leading to an impressive 2022 dividend coverage of 1.9 times. Archrock introduced 2023 annual guidance with our earnings release yesterday. All of the customary detail can be found in the materials published last night, and for the purposes of this call, I will keep my comments high level. We announced a 2023 adjusted EBITDA guidance range of $400 million to $430 million. At the midpoint, this represents an increase of more than $50 million compared to the $363 million in 2022. And after normalizing for 2022 net gains on asset sales totaling $41 million, 2023 adjusted EBITDA is projected to increase over $90 million at the midpoint of our guidance, or nearly 30% year-over-year. As we realize meaningful increases in horsepower and pricing in the coming quarters, we expect the momentum in our adjusted EBITDA to build throughout the year. In contract operations, we expect full year revenue to be in the range of $775 million to $800 million, a year-over-year increase of 14% to 20%, driven by significantly higher horsepower utilization and pricing. We expect margin expansion to a range between 60% and 62% for the year. This reflects not only top line growth but also continued efforts to maximize our profitability by leveraging technology and focusing on controlling expenses, even during an up cycle. In comparing 2023 contract operations gross margin and SG&A expectations with 2022 performance, please note that guidance reflects the change in tax compliance for approximately $10 million of sales tax associated with contract operations cost of sales. Going forward, these costs will now be accounted for in contract operations cost of sales rather than in SG&A. In our AMS business, we forecast full year revenue of $170 million to $180 million, up from $168 million during 2022. Higher revenue should translate into better cost absorption and we will continue to prioritize higher margin activity. This results in our expectation of an annual increase in gross margin percentage of between 100 and 150 basis points. Turning to capital, on a full year basis, we expect total 2023 capital expenditures to be approximately $270 million to $295 million. Of that, we expect growth CapEx to total between $180 million and $200 million to support investment in new build horsepower and repackaged CapEx to meet continued customer demand. Maintenance CapEx is forecasted to be approximately $75 million to $80 million, down slightly compared to 2022. With a more fully utilized fleet, we anticipate lower levels of make-ready CapEx, which we expect to be partially offset by higher spending per unit overhauls. We also anticipate approximately $15 million in other CapEx, primarily for new vehicles as well as building and shop repairs and upgrades. Before we open up the lines for questions, I'd like to take just a moment to reflect on the bigger picture. The company's transformation since I joined it in 2018 puts us in an enviable position during an exciting time for the compression industry. We've made fantastic progress on our strategic objectives, including significant optimization of our fleet, and our 2023 plan highlights Archrock's compelling and increasing value proposition through enhanced earnings power, deleveraging capacity, and growing return of capital to shareholders. With that, Regina, I'd now like to open up the line to questions.

Our first question comes from T.J. Schultz with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Hi, everyone. Good morning.

Good morning.

Appreciate it. The EBITDA guide makes sense given where utilization and pricing have trended. And it sounds like you are insulated from the recent gas price weakness within that EBITDA guide. But for growth capital this year, can you just provide a little more color on where you are pointing those assets to by basin, what is contracted already, what may be could be turned on or off if lower gas prices impact customer activity levels, or are you just comfortable with that level of capital spend and customer commitment even at these gas prices? Thanks.

Thanks, T.J. It's Brad. To start with, the market for compression equipment is just we've never seen it as tight as it is today, which is translating into both high utilization and long lead times. The overall demand picture for natural gas really on a medium and long-term basis has not changed. So this short air pocket that we're seeing in nat gas prices has not as of yet shown up or impacted our customers' decision-making candidly at all. If it does show up, we expect it to be very incremental and short-lived. That said, to answer your question very directly, the bulk of our new equipment that we're putting to work is going to the Permian, which as you know, is an associated gas play. So it's an oil play with associated gas, very insulated from natural gas pricing impacts. And for our 2023 capital, greater than 80% of our capital and equipment we delivered in 2023 is already contracted and booked. The remaining 20% is booked based upon strong leads and indications of commitments that will be forthcoming with customers. We expect all of that capital to be contracted in the year. We don't expect to see a reduction in that.

Okay, perfect. And what are you seeing on contract terms right now? Typically, what are you contracting for? What do you keep on contract versus on month-to-month?

Sure. So in entering into new contracts right now for large horsepower equipment, the tenders that we're executing are in the three to five-year range. We haven't seen a radical change in the length of tender of those contracts. We do, however, see a continuing change in the length of time equipment will remain on location well beyond those initial contract terms. For the active fleet or for the current installed base, we have about 30% to 40% of our units that are on contracts for greater than a year and about 60% that are available for renewal within the next 12 months.

Okay, great. Regarding the distribution increase, this happened sooner than we anticipated and our debt leverage is still slightly over four times. While four times isn't a specific threshold for starting distribution growth, it clearly signals your outlook on the compression cycle. Moving forward, should we anticipate that you will evaluate future distribution growth annually? Is there a specific target for distribution growth? And could the pace of growth potentially pick up as debt leverage decreases? Thanks.

Sure. First off, look, we have tremendous confidence in the cash generation ability of our asset base and our operation. That confidence and what we are experiencing in the combination of utilization, increase in pricing and also our optimism around how long-term we expect this current up cycle to run, gave us confidence to both increase our returns to shareholders on a near-term basis and achieve the leverage target that we've laid out for quite some time. We do expect that the Board will revisit our mechanism and our use of capital with a focus on keeping capital returns to our investors a high priority, but balanced against our other cash flow objectives, including investing in the business and supporting our customers' growth with great high-return investments. The potential to look at anything else that can enhance returns, including share buybacks, as well as our desire to balance achieving our balance sheet objectives. So all of those are on the table. We expect to revisit all of that with our Board periodically. Looking at it annually is probably a fair way to think of it, though that's something we're here every quarter.

Got it. Make sense. Thank you.

Your next question will come from the line of Jim Rollyson with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, guys. Great results.

Good morning.

And outlook. Brad, I have a question for you. When it comes to capital allocation, it appears that your growth capital expenditures might be a bit lower than last year based on the numbers. I'm curious how you balance the need for growth capital expenditures with your targets for balance sheet leverage and dividend growth as we look ahead. We have your target for 2023 in mind, but moving forward, how do you manage these factors? It seems that once you reach your leverage targets, you might have more opportunities to either invest in growth or increase dividend growth.

You raised a good question about how we balance various factors. While I can't provide extensive insight, we evaluate the returns on our capital deployment across all categories. Currently, our short-term focus is on reducing our leverage to below 4x, which we believe we can achieve based on the cash flow generation expected in 2023, even after considering the dividend increase and capital investments planned for the year. When it comes to capital investments in the business, we consider two main factors. The first is the attractive rates we can obtain, which are quite good at the moment. The second involves a longer-term perspective on whether we are building the franchise and meeting the critical growth needs of our franchise-level customers. Failing to address these needs could undermine the long-term value of our cash flow. Thus, we assess returns from all categories while also prioritizing the preservation and enhancement of our franchise's value over time.

Yes, this is Doug. I want to emphasize that our management team and board are very aware of the expectations from investors to generate free cash flow in the energy sector. We successfully achieved this during the downturn by pre-funding a significant portion of what might be considered excess capital expenditures this year. We are reinvesting the proceeds from asset sales into high-demand equipment for investment-grade customers, which is the right decision for 2023. As we plan for 2024 and beyond, we understand that stakeholders don't want this industry to repeat past mistakes, and free cash flow will remain a top priority. Currently, we have the opportunity to invest in both growth and sustainability, and you can expect Archrock to continue along this path in the future.

It makes perfect sense. Just a reminder that you might be running out of assets to sell and redeploy the capital. Could you outline what you might have targeted for potential asset sales for the remainder of this year?

Your statement is correct. We've really turned over our fleet at 93% utilization and strong commitment to what we are going to deliver in 2023 through pricing. It's evidence of the fact that our fleet is and our operation is in a radically different position than it was just a few years ago. That does mean that we're running lower on non-strategic assets that we want to sell. Still, there are pockets that are available for us to consider, but they will definitely be smaller in comparison to what we've accomplished over the last two years of $285 million of asset sales is a huge target for us. We think there'll be incremental tuck-in opportunities, but there'll be smaller scale than we've achieved in the past.

Got it. And then last question for me, just on the fleet utilization now, the highest level I ever recall you guys generating and fleet mix is obviously part of that. Where can that sustainably get to? I mean, have we peaked out on that, or can that move closer to the mid-90s, or what do you all think on that?

First, we totally intend to test that hypothesis very hard. We do see the opportunity for this business to get up into the mid-90% range based on how tight the market is today, and the quality of the assets that we are operating. But we're going to test that midpoint. So we're not going to say that there's a cap on it yet. Let us prove out 2023 and see how we can drive it.

Look forward to it. Thanks, guys.

Thank you.

Your next question will come from the line of Selman Akyol with Stifel. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Congratulations on a nice quarter and a very good outlook. When I think about your growth capital budget of $180 million to $200 million, can you – since you've talked about pricing being so strong, can you kind of talk about what returns are embedded in that capital budget?

Yeah. Selman, I'd tell you that, we target certainly a mid-teens unlevered return when we model these things. We try to look at it through the cycles. As Brad enumerated, we've mentioned on this call, rates at the moment are really strong, strongest we've ever seen them. And so while I would argue that maybe those returns are even a little on the higher end of mid-teens at the moment. Again, I think through cycles, we feel confident in that longer-term, mid-teens return, unlevered.

Got it. Appreciate that. And then just sort of given the environment you're seeing, I mean, clearly, we're early in 2023. Should we expect your capital budget to go higher as you continue to have additional conversations with your customers?

For 2023, the answer is no. We really have committed to a capital budget that we think is prudent for the market. Second, we think equipment lead times are just going to make it not really feasible to pull more capital into the year. Finally, we're very confident with the ability to meet the demand of our growth range of customers in 2023, with the capital budget that we've laid out. I just want to put a cap on that by pointing out we're super excited about the returns that we're making, both at the level of utilization we're at and at pricing in this tight corporate market. This really is an exciting time to be in this business.

Understood. And then just – and you've mentioned it, and we've heard it from others as well these long lead times. Can you just talk about what that exactly is for high horsepower compression now?

Yeah. It's in the 52 weeks plus category. The drivers on those lead times are really engines and shop space. It's not really feasible for large horsepower to get delivery inside of 52 weeks at this point.

Got it. Looking at your guidance for contract operations revenue, the low end indicates about a 14% increase. In contrast, your aftermarket services revenue shows a 5% increase at the midpoint. I'm assuming you've adjusted some prices to account for the higher inflation. Could you elaborate on any expected unit activity, or is the pace of change slower than anticipated? I expected a more significant adjustment given the inflationary pressure, so I would appreciate your insights on this matter.

So just to be clear, the focus is really on the aftermarket side of it and why the revenue is not higher, I just want to make sure I answer the right question, Selman.

Yes. No, you're spot on there.

Okay. Thank you. We are ambitious around what we can do in that aftermarket service business, but inflation is continuing a bit, and that moderates a bit of our expectations. Secondly, we've definitely sought to improve the profitability in that business, which also means potentially trimming the revenue to improve that profitability. Those two dynamics are probably what you're seeing in the moderation of the revenue growth compared to what you might otherwise have as expectations. But again, this is guidance. We have an opportunity to outperform on both the revenue side and on the profitability side. I know it seems driven to do that. But that's really, I think, what you're seeing in that more moderate revenue picture.

Yes. The only thing I'd maybe add is just believe it or not, supply chain is still pretty constrained in that area, which limits, I think, the growth a bit. If we've got to choose where available parts are going to go, it's certainly going to go to the higher-margin contract compression business first. I think that's a little bit constraining to the upside on revenue for AMS as well, that in a very tight labor market. So as Brad said, not for a lack of trying, by any means, but trying to focus on higher-margin work and allocating our resources as best place as we can.

Got it. Thank you, guys, very much.

There are no further questions. Now I'd like to turn the call back over to Mr. Childers for final remarks.

Thank you, everyone, for participating in our Q4 review call today. We're entering what I believe to be a multi-year upturn in compression. I'm excited about the value our franchise can deliver today and well into the future. I look forward to updating you on our progress next quarter. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude today's meeting. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.