USA Compression Partners, LP (USAC) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Good morning. Welcome to USA Compression Partners 4th Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. During today's call, all parties will be in a listen-only mode. At the conclusion of management's prepared remarks, the call will be opened for Q&A. At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, please press star, then the number 1 on your telephone keypad. This conference is being recorded today, February 17, 2026. I now would like to turn the call over to Clint Green, President and Chief Executive Officer.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. With me today is Chris Paulson, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Chris Watson, Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, and other members of our leadership team. This morning we released our operational and financial results for the year and quarter ending December 31st, 2025. Today's call will contain forward-looking statements based on our current beliefs and certain non-GAAP measures. Please refer to our earnings release and SEC filings for reconciliations, definitions of non-GAAP measures, and related risk factors. Please note that the historical information presented excludes the results of JW Power Acquisition, which closed on January 12th. With that, I would like to congratulate the team for closing the JW transaction. With this transaction, we are leaning into the USA Compression name, with broader reach all across this great country. The transaction makes us a clear choice for operators who want a provider with a reputation of high quality, reliable service in every major oil and gas basin in the U.S. and across all horsepower classes. I want to highlight the tremendous year we had across our operations, commercial, and finance organizations. On the safety front, we recorded a TRIR of 0.39, which is approximately half of the industry average. We delivered full-year adjusted EBITDA of 613.8 million dollars and dcf of 385.7 million dollars both are records for the company we maintained high average utilization in excess of 94 throughout the year and end of the year at 94.5 finally we refinanced our abl and one of our senior notes significantly reducing our weighted average borrowing costs and improving strategic flexibility. These accomplishments occurred as the company embraced a new leadership team, a change in headquarters, a new shared services model, and new ERP platform. The resilience and grit showcased across our organization in 2025 gave us confidence to pursue and now integrate the JW acquisition in 2026. Last year, the energy macro environment stabilized following early tariff discussions. But the development pace slowed in the Permian as rigs continued to reduce throughout the year in response to lower oil prices. Of note, while oil production flattened in the last half of the year, natural gas continued to move upward, ending approximately 9% higher year over year. We continue to be bullish on the Permian longer term. With the acquisition of JW, we maintain a large presence and have increased our active horsepower in the Permian to around 1.7 million. We have also increased our horsepower in oil and liquids-rich basins, as well as major gas basins like the Marcellus, Utica, and Hainesville, which returned to growth in 2025. This growth was tied to increased local demand, additional infrastructure debottlenecking, and a higher average natural gas price of $3.52 per MMBTU. This is a 56% increase from the prior year. We are encouraged by these fundamentals and believe that acquisition of JW strengthens our leadership within these natural gas bases. The broader compression industry continues to forge ahead with strong margins and a disciplined approach to new compression capital, and USA compression is no different. Of note, lead times for new equipment have increased to over two years, which presents a new set of opportunities and challenges that our team continues to work through. In 2026, we have budgeted approximately 105,000 new horsepower, representing a two percent increase in active horsepower, with half of that new horsepower under contract. We also have new units contracted for the first half of 2027 and are in active discussions to procure additional horsepower in 2027.

With that, I will turn the call over to Chris Wasson, our Chief Operating officer thanks Clint since the close of the transaction on January 12th we have begun planning to optimize route management inventory contracts and operational structures to begin to realize synergies as early as this year as we have previously noted we moved forward with the go-live of a new ERP system in q1 of 2026 for the legacy USA compression assets and now plan to integrate the JW assets during 2026. We will have modest one-time costs associated with the transaction in 2026, but expect to lay the groundwork for substantial synergy capture by 2027. Our assessment is still ongoing, but at this time we anticipate approximately 10 to 20 million in annual run rate synergies that will be achieved by the end of 2027. We expect these synergies to create improvements in both operating margins and GNA, with the additional potential for commercial synergies as we better serve our combined customer base. As we discussed in our announcement, we are excited about increasing the extent and depth of our asset offering and customer base. Customer retention and review of existing contracts are top of mind, and we have already begun moving contracts under USA Compression MSAs and will work to extend average contract duration throughout this year. We hope our customers will realize the best of both organizations. I am personally excited to see the strength of our organization grow, especially across the Mid-Continent, the Rock East, and Northeast with the addition of the JW assets. We will focus on continuing to be the operator of choice across these basins and others providing customers commercial and operational consistency across the U.S. No other contract compression company in the market can support its customers diverse horsepower and geographic needs like USA compression can today. Finally, with the acquisition of JW, we acquired approximately 200,000 idle horsepower that will undergo significant review over the course of the next year. As we indicated in December's JW acquisition call, we believe approximately 50,000 horsepower is readily deployable with limited capital spend. As it relates to the remainder, we will analyze best path including potential monetization of a portion of the horsepower. We also acquired a manufacturing business that provides strong optionality for third-party sales and internal reconfigurations. I will now turn it over to Chris Paulson to discuss our 2025 financial results in detail and our 2026 guidance.

Thanks, Chris. In Q4, we increased pricing to an all-time high, averaging $21.69 per horsepower, a 1% increase in sequential quarters, and a 4% increase compared to the year-ago period. Average active horsepower increased approximately 1% relative to Q3 to $3.579 million. Our fourth quarter adjusted gross margins came in at 66.8% right on historical trend. Regarding the consolidated financial results, our fourth quarter 2025 net income was $27.8 million, operating income was $76.6 million, net cash provided by operating activities was $139.5 million, and cash interest expense net was $43.4 million. Our leverage ratio at the end of the fourth quarter was 4.0 times. Turning to operational results, our total fleet horsepower at the end of the quarter was approximately 3.9 million horsepower, adding approximately 21,000 horsepower as compared to the prior quarter. Our average utilization for the fourth quarter was 94.5%, a slight increase compared to the prior quarter. Fourth quarter 2025, expansion capital expenditures were $40 million, and our maintenance capital expenditures were $7.8 million. Expansion capital spending in Q4 primarily consisted of new units. Turning to 2025 full-year results, we ended the year with adjusted EBITDA of $613.8 million. We also ended the year with distributable cash flow of $385.7 million above the recently increased guidance, in part due to the final preferred unit conversion in December. Maintenance capital ended at $39.4 million and expansion capital was $117.6 million, both towards the lower end of previously provided guidance. Looking ahead and with the contribution full year of JW, we are forecasting adjusted EBITDA of $770 to $800 million and distributable cash flow of $480 to $510 million. Maintenance capital range is forecasted to be $60 to $70 million, allowing for consistent preventative maintenance intervals across our combined fleet. Expansion capital range is $230 to $250 million, which includes just over 100,000 new horsepower or over two percent of our active fleet being added and panel upgrades for improved to limit expansion capital range also includes approximately 40 million of other capital including vehicles tools investments in technology and other items this expanded growth capital budget relative to prior years will enable us to better respond to the needs of our broader customer base and enable us to get new horsepower in both the Permian and the Northeast the The net result of our budget should enable us to improve upon our debt metrics, with our near-term targets at 3.75 times debt to EBITDA, a quarter-term improvement over the next 12 months. We remain committed to managing debt levels and will remain open to transactions that can further delever the balance sheet and are accretive to unit holders. We also continue to evaluate our capital structure and its fixed versus floating proportion as it relates to DCF and business certainty. Today, at current Fed rates, our borrowing costs are improved by approximately 50 basis points by utilizing our ABL relative to our most recent Node 3 refinance. We also have approximately a half a billion capacity, not including the $300 million of additional accordions. Overall, I'm very pleased with the operational momentum we carry into the 2026 with the legacy USA compression business and the JW power assets. In the near term, the addition of JW assets will reduce our aggregate gross margins for the contract compression business. Our clear goal is to more closely align those margins with our own over the next two years, contributing to the synergies Chris Wasson spoke of earlier. And with that, I will turn the call back to Clint for concluding remarks.

Clint Wasson Thank you, Chris. I want to thank all of our employees for the advanced planning and early integration efforts that have taken place across the two companies. We are honored to be part of the JW Power legacy and are confident it will be improved going forward given the broader reach and resources of USA Compression. It is our goal to provide the same level of excellence throughout every region in the U.S., something that continues to set us apart. I will now open the call up to questions.

At this time, I would like to remind everyone in order to ask a question, please press start then the number one on your telephone keypad. We request that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. We will pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Doug Irwin with CD Group. Your line is open.

Hey, thanks for the question. I just wanted to start with the growth CapEx guidance here. Could you maybe just help dissect a bit how much of that $250 million growth budget is tied to kind of organic base growth versus maybe the backlog inheritance? from JW Power. And then just curious if this level is kind of the right way to think about your run rate moving forward for CapEx, particularly as we kind of think about the potential impact of two-year lead times here.

Yeah, great question. Appreciate that. So just to break down the growth capital this year a little bit, you know, about 205 million of growth capital is tied in with the typical compression business, both new units, make ready and reconfigurations approximately 150 million of that uh 205 million is is tied to new units so as as we mentioned in the call approximately 105 000 new units overall then we have another um just less than 40 million in other capital tied to vehicles it tools etc we're really trying to add consistency across our fleet as it relates to that other capital, we think there's a scenario by which that can come in lower. But hopefully overall, that kind of breaks down what we call growth and expansion. Got it, that's helpful. And then on the back- And as it relates to your other question, and apologies, as it relates to your other question in terms of percentage growth going forward is, as we mentioned, this year is approximately around 2% growth. overall relative to our act as it relates to 2027 those those long lead times do make for difficult planning the beauty of our of our manufacturing entity is that it does allow us to start to dissect some of that a little bit differently than we have in the past as we've kind of been beholden to packagers today we do have manufacturing capacity in the 2027 we're trying to load up that relative capacity we have about 10 000 horsepower already contracted for that capacity we're looking to utilize probably the remainder of that capacity this next year and certainly as it relates to smaller horse so we do have some flexibility as it relates to that and frankly this year we've even packaged smaller horsepower than uh we'll continue to got it that's helpful detail um you know i just want to follow up on some of the comments

made in the prepared remarks about just some of the actions you've taken to improve the balance sheet and then change up the powers is obviously a pretty different leverage perspective as well just curious of these actions and it impacted the way you think about the right level of distribution coverage moving forward and whether they might give you some runway to start thinking about potentially growing the distribution from here yeah great question so you know last year was really about, as you noted, kind of making sure that our balance sheet trajectory was set along the right path.

You know, we were able to do that transaction and able to put the cash forward because we did go through the process of a note three finance beforehand. We went through an ABL restructuring and grew that relative ABL. And as I mentioned, you know, we also have capacity to even expand it further with our accordion feature of around 300 million. So we're on the right track as it relates to our balance sheet and the relative improvement there you know 3.75 times I think is a worthy goal in the near term you know the question is do we move down further from there to three and a half I ultimately would like to be there but we also need to balance as you noted the fact that our distribution coverage has continued to improve you know net of the dividends that were, or distribution, excuse me, that were paid in, you know, a week ago, our number on normalized basis is 1.55 times. We did pay, you know, the Westerman family some units associated with Q4 that was factored into that 1.36X, and those units were ultimately repaid. So our normalized number is about 1.55 times on Q4. We're looking for that number to be in the 1.6 plus range next year, or this coming year, that is. And, you know, as that number starts to expand beyond 1.6, you know, we need to continue to have conversations with all of our unit holders.

Your next question comes from the line of James Rellison with Raymond James. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning, everyone. um clint just to circle back to the capacity ads of 105 000 it's in the budget for this year maybe just kind of given this can can really sway how things lay out across the quarters if you could talk about the timing of delivery and when you know when you expect that capacity to actually be in the field yeah i'll start and then chris watson will probably add into that you know i I think most of what's coming on this year is in the back half of the year, you know, July forward.

Chris, do you have anything to add to that?

Yeah, so thanks, Clint. So majority of the horse fire, you know, there's a little bit that trickles in in Q3, but mainly, you know, the bulk of the horse fire comes in late Q3 into Q4. So we'll see good numbers of growth in the back half of the year.

Gotcha. And maybe just kind of following up, Clint, on your comments, seems like every call I hear on compression lately, the lead time is getting longer and longer. Wondering if that's showing up, you know, you go back two, three, four years, and obviously guys like Kat had really ramped up the cost of equipment, which was translating into higher pricing for everybody on new orders and then it seems like as we were originally kind of late last year prices were just more inflationary like typical annual cat increases but i'm curious as lead times continue to stretch out are you seeing that or do you expect to see that translate at some point into higher equipment costs again like a bigger step up i don't think that any manufacturer ever misses opportunity to increase prices but um yeah you know we the the main driver in the lead times is is uh is

caterpillar engines and and they're uh they're you know the data center demand for generation has driven that lead time out you know we still have some other options with some other manufacturers out there um they're not as sought after what have you i i expect we'll see some type of increase at some point this year i haven't heard of one yet uh but but i'm sure one one will come down later on this year.

Your next question comes from the line of Gabe Marine with Mizuhu. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning, guys. Obviously, one of your competitors recently announced a pretty big step out into the distributed power space. Just wondering kind of your latest thinking on potentially evaluating that space, whether it's something you're looking at or reconsider.

Yeah. Hey, Gabe, it's Clint. Yeah, absolutely. You know, we believe those business You know, the distributive power business and the compression business are a lot alike. You know, you have mechanical equipment that has to run or has a guaranteed run time. Several synergies with the type of folks you need to work on it. So we've definitely evaluated several of those over the last 18 months or 12 months, what have you. You know, we put them into our model. The ones we've looked at haven't quite met the requirements that we wanted to make our model like we wanted it to be. And so we haven't jumped out there yet, but we are always evaluating that. It's a business we think that we could drive the same type of margins out of that we do in the compression business.

Gotcha. Thanks, Clint. And then maybe if I can pivot a little bit to the 50% of the new HP for 2016 place, can you just hear, you know, talk about what expectations for place in the rest of it? And sorry if I missed it, you know, is that going to be next quarter quarter after kind of what you're hearing from customers about demand from that, that HP, which you haven't signed up customers yet for.

Yeah. Hey, it's, it's Chris Watson. I'll take that one. You know, we're, We strive for kind of consistent margins, and our new unit growth has primarily been focused on our Tier 1 customers. So, I'm pretty confident that the remaining balance of what we have available will get contracted up here in the near future. So, we look forward to working through that for our customers.

Your next question comes from the line of Nate Mendleton with Texas Capital Bank. Your line is open.

Good morning. Congrats on the strong year. I wanted to go back for a moment to the new unit timelines. How do those timelines impact your longer-term horsepower growth strategy, be it organic or inorganic? And could we see the timelines impact contract compression pricing with customers in the near term?

Yeah, hey, thanks. It's Chris Lawson. You know, with the lead times pushing out for a new package at 120-plus weeks, you know, it gets challenging, right? it's not going to affect our 2026 growth, but in 2027, you know, we are working to secure that and figure that out. You know, picking up the manufacturing business with JW, that gives us a lot of optionality that Chris Paulson spoke to earlier. We do have around 10,000 horse fire already contracted in the 27.

So, we are looking at every angle to work through that and add growth. so we're going to continue to push for that as well you know i want to add that the the size of the jw manufacturing business is you know it's it's almost the exact same size as our expected growth over the next couple of years we're not we're not looking to expand that manufacturing facility or go out and try to sell a huge amount of packages but but we want to be able to fund some of our own growth internally and and give us that flexibility that we need to when when packages move out to 100 weeks that we can still provide for our customers. Got it.

I appreciate that detail. And as my follow-up, in the prepared remarks, Chris Paulson mentioned expansion CapEx, including the new telemetry being added to units. Can we get any more detail on what that can entail for customers?

Yeah, I'll take that. It's Chris Paulson. You know, one thing we're looking at is always looking for efficiencies to drive efficiencies and with that we have to invest in our in our units you know so panel upgrades unit upgrades is huge so it allows us to uh to to have some dashboards to really see what's going on without having employees out there on on site 24 7. so you know that that gives you a little color as to what that looks like but it's our eyes and ears basically um without folks on the ground I'm going to add to that, too.

You know, it also gives us the ability to manage how our folks, you know, when they leave to go work on a piece of equipment that's down, maybe it got called out in the middle of the night, they can have the right parts. You know, that's where we're trying to get to with this, with some form of AI going forward. And this is the first step in our business to move that direction. I appreciate it.

Again, if you would like to ask a question, these press are then the number one on your telephone keypad. I will turn the call back over to Clint Green, President and Chief Executive Officer, for closing the mark.

Yeah, just to add a little bit there, you know, I want to explain how happy we are with the JW acquisition, how excited we are to be able to get into all those basins, and then, you know, the excitement that we have for the overall gas industry And the way that, you know, the demand from data centers and LNG, and, you know, it's real. It's coming online. And those, you know, we're excited to be in this business at this time and look forward to creating unit holder value as we move forward. Thank you for all for joining our call, and good day.

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may know this.