Kodiak Gas Services, Inc. (NYSE:KGS) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Longer term, the world needs the U.S. to further increase LNG capacity. Europe has been the largest beneficiary of U.S. LNG as a U.S. source natural gas to help meet its environmental goals and reduce its dependence on Russia. The next wave of U.S. LNG projects is likely to supply Asian markets, many of which are largely dependent on coal and are struggling with energy security and reliability. Without a doubt, the fastest and most cost effective way to reduce ongoing worldwide emissions is to unleash low cost U.S. LNG exports to allow Asian economies to displace their use of coal fired power to fuel their growth and increase the quality of life for their people. Supplying the world with affordable, reliable and clean natural gas is not only good for the U.S. economy, but it will also help the environment and humanity.

Now I’ll hand the call over to John, to discuss our financial results for the fourth quarter and full year and 2024 outlook. John?

John Griggs: Thanks, Mickey. It was truly historic year for Kodiak, and we look to continue to building on our positive momentum in ’24. In my remarks, I’ll review our fourth quarter and full year results and then I’ll turn to our outlook for the year. Total revenues for the fourth quarter were approximately $226 million up about 26% when compared to last year. Revenues for the full year increased 20% to approximately $850 million in ’23. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $114 million, up 4% from Q3 and up over 10% versus the same quarter of last year. Our fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA excludes $2.5 million of non-cash stock comp expense and $4.3 million related to non-recurring items, such as transaction related fees. I’d be remiss to not point out that included in the quarters and years adjusted EBITDA specifically within SG&A was about $5 million and $7 million respectively, in reserved for bad debts associated with the challenged customer.

We’ve talked about this before, record low gas prices and put them in a tough spot. And it’s a clear reminder of why we have strategically positioned 95% plus of our assets and revenues in liquid rich associated gas basins. In line with our expectations, adjusted EBITDA for the full year increased nearly 10% to over $438 million in 2023. Looking at our segments, compression operations, revenues for the quarter were nearly $190 million, up about 11% when compared to the same quarter a year ago. Compression operations revenues for the full year ’23 total approximately $736 million, an increase of 12% over ’22. Revenue generating horsepower increased by over 48,000 sequentially, and 127,000 for the year. Consistent with prior periods revenue growth in this segment was a function of mid-single digit percentage growth in revenue generating horsepower alongside higher overall fleet pricing.

In our other services segment, fourth quarter revenues were approximately $36 million, up substantially compared to approximately $9 million in last year’s fourth quarter, but now nearly $8 million sequentially. This segments revenues and margins are positively impacted by the award and accelerated progress the two large projects in the second half of ’23. Finishing the year well in excess of what we originally forecast. From an overall adjusted gross margin perspective, our operations team continues to focus on the smarter application of people processes and systems, in order to contain costs and offset inflationary pressures. We saw the benefits of that in Q4, as evidenced by compression operations costs declining sequentially by $1.6 million while revenues grew.

The focus on cost and efficiency allowed our compressions operation segment to generate a 66% plus margin, a nice bump in the prior quarter. From the dollar basis for the quarter, our adjusted gross margin in the other services segment was approximately $8.5 million up substantially sequentially and over the fourth quarter of last year. On a percentage basis, the quarter came in at 23%. As we’ve highlighted previously, our fourth quarter reflects what we believe to be an abnormally strong, realizing above average margins as we completed in advance on a few meaningful projects and better than expected markets. The other services segment is lumpy but valuable segment. Station construction projects are synergistic with our compression business and require no capital.

Every dollar of incremental cash flow adds to both our overall return on capital employed and discretionary cash flow, which in turn allows us to pay more dividends and invest in high return growth capital projects. Over the medium term, we continue to expect to realize gross margins for this segment between 15% to 20%. In terms of CapEx, for the quarter, our maintenance CapEx was about $9 million. For the full year maintenance CapEx was $37 million, which was approximately $11 million less than what we had spent in ’22. As a reminder, our maintenance is a function of the hours and age of our equipment, and will vary by year depending upon when units were added to the fleet. Growth CapEx was $60 million for the quarter and $15 million of that was non new unit CapEx. We mentioned in Q3 that we had some opportunistic real estate purchases, and those closed in Q4.

Going forward we expect more normalized levels of non-unit growth CapEx. Overall growth CapEx for ’23 totaled approximately $184 million. As we previously mentioned, CapEx was expected to be back and loaded and you saw that in the fourth quarter. Moving to the balance sheet. As of year-end, we had debt of $1.8 billion consisting entirely of borrowings on our ABL facility. Our credit agreement, leverage ratio was just shy of four times and we exited the year with approximately $355 million of availability on the facility. As most of you know, last month, we issued $750 million of 7.25% senior unsecured notes due 2029. As a debut issuer, we were very pleased with both the credit ratings we achieved and the pricing. It’s clear that ratings agencies and debt investors wholly subscribed to the current strength and future outlook of the U.S. compression market, as well as the durability and quality of Kodiak’s cash flows.