Eric Long
Analyst · Raymond James
Thank you, Chris. Good morning everyone and thanks for joining our call. Also with me is Matt Liuzzi, our CFO. This morning we released our financial and operational results for the first quarter of 2019. With this quarter in the books, we've now own the CDM assets or four full quarters and the integration is substantially complete. We continue to be pleased with how the acquisition has turned out. Earlier this year, I discussed the positive outlook for 2019 and our focuses we kicked off the year. I'm happy to say that the market strength has continued through the first quarter and the outlook continues to be attractive. While natural gas prices have been volatile of late due to specific circumstances in West Texas, the natural gas sector as a whole continues to move forward driven by the same strong drivers we discussed before. As we walk through our comments today, there are a couple of fundamental drivers that differentiate contract compression and specifically large horsepower infrastructure-focused compression from those that drive the business of E&P companies or service suppliers tied to the drilling phase. Their business is directly driven by commodity prices, which are basin specific and their ability to economically move incremental volumes out of their producing basins to the marketplace. Compression demand is driven by volumes of natural gas and corresponding regional pipeline pressures. Gas volumes are up; way up across the basins the USA Compression operates in. Due to limited pipeline takeaway capacity existing pipes are in many cases running full and in capacity, which means they are operating at higher than normal pressures requiring more compression horsepower to move those volumes. Many of USA's customers have firm transportation contractual arrangements on existing pipelines, which allows them to receive market pricing rather than to experience substantial basis differential reductions and they continue to develop and produce their oil and gas projects. So USA's base business remain stable and strong. Over the next several years multiple regional -- multiple major regional pipeline expansions are occurring across the basins in which USA Compression operates for both oil and natural gas, which will de-bottleneck the areas most likely improving basin specific commodity pricing and further stimulating an increase in development activity. USA is well positioned to capitalize on continued measured growth alongside of our long-term core customers as well as major oil companies, as they continue ramping up their activities in the Permian and Delaware Basin of West Texas in Southeast New Mexico. Now turning to the first quarter of 2019. First, our fleet utilization and pricing both increased from fourth quarter levels, reflecting continuing efforts to deploy idle equipment. Second operating margins were consistent with where we have operated our core compression services business over time. Third, we prudently spent growth capital during the quarter and we'll continue to self-fund our 2019 CapEx program with no equity issuance anticipated. And last, while committed to operational excellence for our customers, we continue to be focused on the balance sheet and distribution coverage both of which remain at levels acceptable for our stable business model. Last month, we declared our quarterly distribution of 52.5 per unit. Even at today's unit price, this equates to over a 12% yield. While we all know, the MLP equity market has had its challenges even going back to our IPO in 2013 then followed by the collapse in oil prices in late 2014, we continue to believe as we always have that the USA Compression business model was and is capable of producing stable cash flows and rewarding our unit holders appropriately. Our large horsepower infrastructure-focused demand driven business model provides the long-term stability across commodity price cycles. And we are managing the business in a focused manner with prudent capital spending, focused revenue enhancement, and effective expense controls. Given the financial market environment, we continue to play out for future well where self funding is the norm and additional equity is not required for our CapEx program. Our 2019 CapEx program will reflects modest growth, focused on high-return assets in order to balance customer demand in our balance sheet capabilities, resulting in attractive financial returns for USA's unit holders. Our business is driven by the production of natural gas in the midland through pipeline systems and processing plants. Demand for natural gas continues due to its relative abundance, attractive price and brand users in the environmentally friendly characteristics. We don't see this changing anytime soon, and as we said, the more gas moving through the system, the more the demand for our compression services. The EIA continuously still increasing production in the US. It estimates 91 Bcf per day in 2019, reflecting almost a 10% increase over 2018 levels. This increase in production which is transported through the US and far beyond our shores is requiring our customers to continue to invest in infrastructure to move process and ultimately deliver that gas. As I mentioned the increases in both utilization and pricing, as everyone is aware, we are effectively sold out of available idle equipment in the large horsepower classes. But we continue to work to increase both metrics selectively pushing for rate increases and making sure our assets are achieving optimal pricing out in the field. One quarter into 2019, the market is been playing out as we expected and we continue to believe our focus on large horsepower infrastructure oriented applications will differentiate USA Compression from our peers. This year, we are taking a prudent approach to capital spending and as the year continues, we will start to make players for 2020 and beyond. Those things stand right now we believe we're in a really good position. So now for the fourth quarter results, in the first quarter the market remains strong with average utilization during the quarter of 24.2% compared to Q4 average utilization of 93.8%. As our fleet continues -- our fleet review continues, we have been purposely bringing some units back from customers and deploying them elsewhere to generate better returns. For the remainder of the year, we have approximately 133,000 new horsepower set to be delivered those units are already committed to customers with many of them fully contracted. The demand for the largest horsepower classes as continued from to remain strong. From operating perspective, our total fleet horsepower in period end was virtually unchanged and approximately 3.6 million horsepower. Active horsepower at period end increased by over 31,000 horsepower to just under 3.3 million horsepower. Our relatively small amount of bioequivalent consist primarily of the much smaller horsepower units, which actually have seen a bit of an uptick in utilization. We haven't changed our focus on the larger horsepower equipment and don't expect to acquire a meaningful amount of smaller horsepower equipment, but as we are able we have been working to get the smaller horsepower idle units out working in the field as long as the economics are right and the attractive running crude prices has helped in this regard. The average blended pricing across the fleet tick upwards during the quarter by a few cents as a result of the new delivery units and selective service rate increases on equipment already deployed and working in the field. Average monthly revenue was $16.45 per horsepower for Q1, a slight increase over the fourth quarter. This will continue to be a focus for us as we move through the year. We expect general midstream infrastructure activity levels and tight supply-demand dynamics for large horsepower equipment to continue to be positive for both utilization and pricing in the sector. Earlier, I mentioned our plan to prudently spend growth capital allocation in 2019. And we continue to expect us to spend somewhere between 140 and $150 million in expansion capital this amount has not changed. We expect Q2 to be the highest point for capital spending during the year and then things will taper off as we get into the back half of the year. Consistent with our recent history, the new unit orders are predominantly large horsepower units focused on the 2,500 horsepower Class and above. Q1 growth capital was approximately $33 million including delivery of approximately 28,000 total new horse – new unit horsepower and that total growth CapEx number about two-thirds was related to those new unit deliveries. The strength of stabilized with regards to sourcing new equipment lead times for the large horsepower equipment have been reduced to levels more in line with historical practice closer to 40 leaks. Regardless of the change, we continue to see prudent capital allocation within the industry and do not expect to see a flood of equipment into our sector. We are focused on earning an appropriate return on capital for our investments and that is why we've been prudent with our 2019 capital plan and while we are taking a cautious approach to new unit orders in 2020. Our top customers have all put in their orders for our services for the rest of the year and we remain focused on meeting those requirements in our entire remaining 2019 order book has been committed to customers. It's a little too early to provide information on our 2020 order plan, but as we move through the year we'll keep you posted. An overview of the first quarter, financial performance reflected the strong start to the year, as we reported increased horsepower metrics and improved pricing even as we have fewer active dealers deployed in the field due primarily to the removal of certain smaller horsepower units. Adjusted EBITDA of $101.4 million and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 59.4% reflected the solid operating performance by our team and continued commitment to controlling expenses. In Q1, our overall gross operating margin was 66.6% in line with USA's historical levels. Our bank covenant leverage was 4.54x for the quarter and our distributable cash flow coverage ratio was 1.16x. While slightly off from the fourth quarter metrics third quarter had benefited from some non-recurring items as we discussed at that time. Putting that aside, this quarter's performance continues to trend towards our longer-term goals for the company. Now let's switch over to the market dynamics for a few minutes. At the end of 2018, West Texas Intermediate was $45 per barrel and Henry Hub gas was trading at $3.25 per Mcf. By the time we reported 2018 earnings in mid-February crude had moved up to $56 per barrel and gas has moved down to $2.60 per Mcf. And now in early May crude is continue to climb up to over $60 per barrel, while gas stabilized around the 250 to 260 per Mcf level. As we've discussed before, our business is the demand driven business driving that demand is the demand for and corresponding production of natural gas. Now I mentioned both crude oil and natural gas prices for a reason as everyone does where we don't lose crude oil but West Texas and New Mexico economics of crude oil are driving the activity and a lot of gas is being produced alongside that crude oil. To put it simply, you can't produce oil unless you produce the natural gas as well. And that associated gas dynamic has been driving a lot of our growth in the region. Turning to natural gas, the price of natural gas is generally been behaving the way everybody expected outside of the occasional weather related price spikes and pipeline related basis pull-outs, the tremendous production levels have kept the price relatively range bound. But consider what this does for the end user, natural gas is becoming very plentiful and economical fuel source that can be transported all over the world. Close to home, you're seeing new petrochemical plants being built and power generation switching to cleaner burning natural gas beyond our borders Mexico continues to build out their gas import infrastructure to access that gas coming out of places like Texas, New Mexico and others in and around the Gulf Coast and perhaps the biggest sea change over the coming years are the plans for LNG exports. At the end of 2017, the US could export around 2.75 bcf per day of LNG by the end of 2018 that number growth of just under 5 bcf a day and by the end of 2019 the EIA expects the export capacity to be nearing 9 bcf per day, putting in the U.S. into third place globally behind Australia and Qatar. That's a pretty big deal and that kind of investment will naturally have purple that effects to guys like us to help move that gas from producing regions to the areas where it can be chilled, liquefied and ultimately exported. And so our view of the market is that demand for domestically produced gas will continue to increase over the coming years. More gas moving around the country and now to other parts of the world requires more gas infrastructure and thereby increasing demand for compression. On a more regional basis the Permian and Delaware Basins continued to show the most activity and talked before about the majors the larger producers positioning themselves for years have been investment as we with this bidding for Anadarko taking place, the Delaware Basin is taking center stage. As I mentioned the associated gas being produced alongside, the crude oil is something the producers must deal with. Several weeks back some unexpected maintenance issues on some of the large takeaway pipes drove the basis for gas out there into negative territory, and this news seem to create a bit of panic. Things have recovered back to normal. We see the bigger producer still moving full-steam ahead with our investments and did not see any meaningful change in production levels. Remember our large horsepower units out there serve existing production, so rig count may move up and down, but overall trend is increasing levels of natural gas production they need to find a way out of the basin. And the SCOOP/STACK merge plays, it has developed into more of a haves and have not situation and depends on the producer and their exact location in acreage geology. This is an area where we have historically operated and as we move forward that we are aligning USA Compression in our assets with those operators in the more favorable periods. We would much rather have equipment out to the better operators who value our runtime and level of service and are willing to pay for it and to spread ourselves thin with projects that don't earn the returns that we feel are adequate. Our other operating regions the Marcellus and Utica shales, South Texas, the Eagle Ford Shale, Louisiana as well as Colorado are each performing. We continue to witness the market dynamics at play in each region adding to the overall stability of our business. With our diversified footprint and young asset fleet, we've been able to focus our efforts and capital on my areas where we get the best returns. We are not just growing just to grow, but rather in this environment making sure that the projects we take on are worthwhile with customers who value our services and appreciate the long-term relationship the USA Compression has maintained with them. Through the rest of the year, I expect that you'll see a similar pattern. The business strategy works and as we manage our capital structure, we are focused on strong operational performance, expense controls and prudent capital spending all while staying true to our strategy of large horsepower infrastructure-based applications. I will now turn the call over to Matt to walk through some of the financial highlights of the quarter. Matt?