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

And if it’s sitting on top of 25-year like production, then I feel like that unit is going to generate cash flows for 25 years as we go through multiple renewal cycles. So because of the quality and the production that we’re looking at, that we’re putting this equipment on and feel good about contract tenor and our ability to read contract within at the end of those cycles.

Neal Dingmann: Yeah, it really seems like you’re in the driver’s seat there. And then my second is kind of a little bit more on regional demand, I am just wanted something you’d said earlier today. Seems like specifically, outside the Permian, where we don’t demand is hot. You know, what are you seeing? I mean, you mentioned about LNG. And, you know, my comment, I would think a lot of those larger LNG players would be knocking hard to your door to try to make sure something’s lined up, as you know, some of these things come on, late, you know, specifically next year, and then to ’26. I’m just wondering, how much — what kind of conversations and how many conversations are you continue to have these days outside the Permian?

Mickey McKee: A few, you know, the typical LNG supply, feed gas type conversation, isn’t that a conversation that those facilities are having with us, they’re having those conversations with our customers. And then our customers are dealing with us to make sure that they have the ability to move the gas as it’s needed. So, we’re really more of a — we’re needed to make sure that the gas gets to those LNG facilities, but we’re not negotiating or dealing directly with those LNG terminals to make sure that they have gas on location. So, still a little bit of it. I think a lot of this is going to be driven by natural gas prices. With what we’ve seen with sub $2 gas driven by this LNG moratorium from this administration that I think the longer gas prices stay depressed where they’re at, the longer and more significant the requirements for feed gas is going to come out of the Permian Basin versus the Haynesville or other outside areas.

Neal Dingmann: Thanks, Mickey. Well said.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question is come from the line of Zack Van Everen with TPH. Please proceed with your questions.

Zack Van Everen : Hey, guys, thanks for taking my question. Just one on the fleet age, I know your guys’ core fleet is relatively new, I think some of the newest out of all your competitors. Can you give average I guess age of the CSI fleet once that comes into your guys’ belt?

Mickey McKee: Yes, I mean, look, I think our fleet age is in that five to six year range on an average basis for our fleet. CSI when they bring their equipment to the table, they’ve grown a lot of horsepower with new equipment in the large horsepower bases over the last several years, and they’ve done a lot of work to kind of churn some of the older stuff out of their fleet. So I think that, when you look at a kind of an average fleet age that they would roll in is about 9 to 10 years on their fleet bases, right with ours being six. So, the average in between is — the average is going to be somewhere in between. But, we don’t put a lot of stock in that fleet age. Because if you adhere to strict overhaul type of a regimen that basically you zero hour and overhaul this equipment every eight to 10 years anyways.

So an eight to 10-year old piece of equipment that has a brand new engine on it is going to — we think our maintenance cycle is going to look and act and perform just like a brand new piece of equipment.

Zack Van Everen: Okay, got it. So a lot of theirs have already been rebuilt at the age that they’re sitting at right now.

Mickey McKee: Yes.

Zack Van Everen: Perfect. So then one last quick one, you mentioned rates are still coming in well above kind of the base rate of the full fleet. Can you remind us, maybe how many of those legacy two to three-year-old contracts are rolling off in 2024 and 2025?

Mickey McKee: Yes, absolutely. We have, at the end of the year, we had about 7% of our fleet was on month to month contracts and you can expect kind of with our fleet will roll over about 30% of our contracts every year. So, because we have such a heavily contracted fleet and we have so few months to month contracts in that fleet, our fleet kind of turnover for contracts is a little slower than some of the other guys. So you won’t see kind of the spikes in revenues that you see in other prices. But like I said, we should be able to reprice kind of 30% of the fleet as those contracts roll over this year.

Zack Van Everen: Got it. Perfect. Thanks, guys.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question is coming from the line of Selman Akyol, with Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Selman Akyol: Thank you. Good morning. First of all, just the high level, we’ve seen some capacity additions in the storage market. And I’m just wondering, is that a market for you guys at all that you could play in had an opportunity?

Mickey McKee: Yes, good morning, Selman. You know, that’s another word, think, it’s kind of like the LNG terminals. We don’t really control where the gas goes after we compress it and put it in a pipe for our customers, especially on the midstream side after post processing and gas lift and that kind of thing. So, that obviously, increased capacity for storage and cycling gas in storage is definitely a demand driver for our industry. And it’s definitely something that requires additional compression on the front end. So again, that’s something as our customers are determining where they’re going to take their gas, whether it be due to residential use, or LNG terminals, or just storage is negotiations that they have in place. But they require companies like Kodiak to provide compression for all of those, all of those demand drivers.