Archrock, Inc. (AROC)

ITEM 2. MANAGEMENT’S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS

The following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations should be read in conjunction with our unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements and the notes thereto included in this Form 10-Q and in conjunction with our 2025 Form 10-K.

OVERVIEW

We are an energy infrastructure company with a primary focus on midstream natural gas compression and a commitment to helping our customers produce, compress and transport natural gas in a safe and environmentally responsible way. We are a premier provider of natural gas compression services, in terms of total compression fleet horsepower, to customers in the energy industry throughout the U.S., and a leading supplier of aftermarket services to customers that own compression equipment in the U.S. Our business supports a must-run service that is essential to the production, processing, transportation and storage of natural gas.

We operate in two business segments: contract operations and aftermarket services. Our contract operations business primarily includes designing, sourcing, owning, installing, operating, servicing, repairing and maintaining our owned fleet of natural gas compression equipment to provide natural gas compression services to our customers. Our aftermarket services business provides a full range of services to support the compression needs of our customers that own compression equipment, including operations, maintenance, overhaul and reconfiguration services and sales of parts and components.

Significant 2026 Transactions

2028 Notes Redemption

On April 1, 2026, we repurchased our 2028 Notes. The 2028 Notes were redeemed at 100% of their $800.0 million aggregate principal amount plus accrued and unpaid interest of approximately $25.0 million with borrowings under the Credit Facility. We recorded a debt extinguishment gain of $0.7 million during the second quarter of 2026 due to the write-off of unamortized debt premium of $4.0 million, which was partially offset by the write-off of unamortized debt issuance costs of $3.3 million. See Note 9 (“Long-Term Debt”) for further details.

2034 Notes

On January 21, 2026, we completed a private offering of $800.0 million aggregate principal amount of 6.0% senior notes due 2034 and received net proceeds of $789.4 million after deducting issuance costs. In January 2026, the approximately $10.6 million of issuance costs were recorded as deferred financing costs within long-term debt in our condensed consolidated balance sheets and are being amortized to interest expense in our condensed consolidated statements of operations over the term of the notes. The net proceeds were used to repay borrowings outstanding under our Credit Facility. See Note 9 (“Long-Term Debt”) for further details.

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Operating Highlights

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(1) Defined as idle and operating horsepower. Includes new compressors completed by third-party manufacturers that have been delivered to us.

(2) Defined as horsepower that is operating under contract and horsepower that is idle but under contract and generating revenue such as standby revenue.

(3) Defined as average of period end horsepower that is operating under contract and horsepower that is idle but under contract and generating revenue such as standby revenue, including operating horsepower for the compressors acquired in the NGCS Acquisition beginning May 1, 2025.

Non-GAAP Financial Measures

Management uses a variety of financial and operating metrics to analyze our performance. These metrics are significant factors in assessing our operating results and profitability and include the non-GAAP financial measure of adjusted gross margin.

We define adjusted gross margin as total revenue less cost of sales, exclusive of depreciation and amortization. Adjusted gross margin is included as a supplemental disclosure because it is a primary measure used by our management to evaluate the results of revenue and cost of sales, exclusive of depreciation and amortization, which are key components of our operations. We believe adjusted gross margin is important because it focuses on the current operating performance of our operations and excludes the impact of the prior historical costs of the assets acquired or constructed that are utilized in those operations, the indirect costs associated with our SG&A activities, our financing methods and income taxes. In addition, depreciation and amortization may not accurately reflect the costs required to maintain and replenish the operational usage of our assets and therefore may not portray the costs of current operating activity. As an indicator of our operating performance, adjusted gross margin should not be considered an alternative to, or more meaningful than, gross margin, net income or any other measure presented in accordance with GAAP. Our adjusted gross margin may not be comparable to a similarly titled measure of other entities because other entities may not calculate adjusted gross margin in the same manner.

Adjusted gross margin has certain material limitations associated with its use as compared to net income. These limitations are primarily due to the exclusion of SG&A, depreciation and amortization, long-lived and other asset impairment, restructuring charges, debt extinguishment gain, interest expense, transaction-related costs, gain on sale of assets, net, other income, net, provision for income taxes and equity in net loss of unconsolidated affiliate. Because we intend to finance a portion of our operations through borrowings, interest expense is a necessary element of our costs and our ability to generate revenue. Additionally, because we use capital assets, depreciation expense is a necessary element of our costs and our ability to generate revenue, and SG&A is necessary to support our operations and required corporate activities. To compensate for these limitations, management uses this non-GAAP measure as a supplemental measure to other GAAP results to provide a more complete understanding of our performance.

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The following table reconciles net income to adjusted gross margin:

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The following table reconciles gross margin, the most directly comparable GAAP measure, to adjusted gross margin:

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RESULTS OF OPERATIONS

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Summary of Results

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Revenue was $371.2 million and $383.2 million during the three months ended June 30, 2026 and 2025, respectively. The decrease was primarily driven by decreased revenue from our aftermarket services business, partially offset by increased revenue from our contract operations business. See “Contract Operations” and “Aftermarket Services” below for further details.

Revenue was $745.0 million and $730.3 million during the six months ended June 30, 2026 and 2025, respectively. The increase was primarily driven by increased revenue from our contract operations business, partially offset by decreased revenue from our aftermarket services business. See “Contract Operations” and “Aftermarket Services” below for further details.

Net income was $66.7 million and $63.4 million during the three months ended June 30, 2026 and 2025, respectively. The increase was primarily driven by higher adjusted gross margin from our contract operations business, as well as decreases in long-lived and other asset impairment, transaction-related costs and interest expense. These increases were partially offset by increases in depreciation and amortization, SG&A

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Item 7. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations

The following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations should be read in conjunction with our Financial Statements, the notes thereto, and the other financial information appearing elsewhere in this Form 10–K. The following discussion includes forward–looking statements that involve certain risks and uncertainties. See “Forward–Looking Statements” and Part I, Item 1A. “Risk Factors” in this Form 10–K.

This section primarily discusses 2025 and 2024 items and comparisons between these years. For a discussion of changes from 2023 to 2024 and other financial information related to 2024, refer to Part II, Item 7. “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” of our Annual Report on Form 10–K for the year ended December 31, 2024 filed with the SEC on February 25, 2025.

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Overview

We are an energy infrastructure company with a primary focus on midstream natural gas compression and a commitment to helping our customers produce, compress and transport natural gas in a safe and environmentally responsible way. We are a premier provider of natural gas compression services, in terms of total compression fleet horsepower, to customers in the energy industry throughout the U.S., and a leading supplier of aftermarket services to customers that own compression equipment in the U.S. We operate in two business segments: contract operations and aftermarket services. Our contract operations business primarily includes designing, sourcing, owning, installing, operating, servicing, repairing and maintaining our owned fleet of natural gas compression equipment to provide natural gas compression services to our customers. Our aftermarket services business provides a full range of services to support the compression needs of our customers that own compression equipment, including operations, maintenance, overhaul and reconfiguration services and sales of parts and components.

Significant 2025 Transactions

Third Amendment to the Amended and Restated Credit Agreement

On December 12, 2025, we amended our Amended and Restated Credit. We did not incur any transaction costs related to the Third Amendment to the Amended and Restated Credit Agreement. See Note 15 (“Long-Term Debt”) for further details.

2027 Notes Redemption

On November 17, 2025, we repurchased our 2027 Notes. The 2027 Notes were redeemed at 100% of their $300.0 million aggregate principal amount plus accrued and unpaid interest of approximately $2.6 million with borrowings under the Credit Facility. We recorded a debt extinguishment loss of $0.9 million related to unamortized debt issuance costs during the fourth quarter of 2025.

Flowco Disposition

On August 1, 2025, we completed the sale of certain contract operations customer agreements and approximately 155 compressors, comprising approximately 47,000 horsepower, used to provide compression services under those agreements along with other supporting assets. Goodwill, customer-related intangible assets and deferred revenue were allocated based on a ratio of the horsepower sold relative to the total horsepower of the asset group. See Note 4 (“Business Transactions”) for further details.

NGCS Acquisition

On May 1, 2025, we completed the NGCS Acquisition, whereby we acquired all of the issued and outstanding equity interests in NGCS, including a fleet of approximately 326,000 operating horsepower and an 18,000 horsepower backlog of contracted new equipment, for aggregate total consideration of $349.4 million. Total consideration consisted of $296.5 million in cash, of which we paid $265.1 million to NGCSI sellers and $31.4 million to NGCSE sellers, and approximately 2.3 million shares of common stock issued to NGCSE sellers with an NGCS acquisition date fair value of $53.0 million. The cash portion of the purchase price was funded with borrowings under the Credit Facility. See Note 4 (“Business Transactions”) for further details.

Trends and Outlook

The key driver of our business is the production of U.S. oil and natural gas. Approximately 60% of our operating fleet is deployed for midstream natural gas gathering applications, with the remaining fleet being used in gas lift applications to enhance oil production. As our business is so closely aligned with production and is typically less directly impacted by commodity prices, we are not as exposed to the volatility often faced in shorter–cycle oil field service businesses.

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Domestic natural gas production generally occurs either in basins where natural gas is produced alongside oil, also known as “associated” gas, such as the Permian and Delaware Basins, the Eagle Ford and the Mid–Continent or in natural gas basins, such as the Marcellus, Utica and Haynesville Shales. Significant investment in domestic exploration and production and midstream infrastructure across the energy industry has been made over much of the past decade, particularly in the low–cost basins characterized by oil and associated natural gas production. The development of these basins producing both commodities has created additional incremental demand for natural gas compression over the recent past as it is a critical method to transport associated gas volumes or enhance oil production through gas lift.

Current Trends

According to the EIA Outlook, average U.S. oil and dry natural gas and production were as follows:

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During 2025, U.S. natural gas and oil production grew to record levels, resulting in strong demand for our compression services. In response, we increased our investment in new large horsepower fleet units and expanded our fleet through the NGCS Acquisition. Our contract operations revenue and period-end total operating horsepower increased 30% and 8%, respectively, in 2025.

Outlook

The EIA Outlook forecasts the following year–over–year changes:

The EIA Outlook expects natural gas production to continue to increase to all-time highs in 2026 and 2027. Natural gas consumption is expected to be largely consistent with 2025, reflecting consistent usage of natural gas in the electric power sector, as well as increased LNG exports and exports of natural gas via pipeline to Mexico, offset by lower industrial, residential, and commercial demand.

We believe the outlook for the energy industry in the U.S. is positive. While we anticipate that the combination of natural gas prices and demand may likely have a positive impact on activity levels in both the upstream and midstream sectors, we cannot predict the ultimate magnitude of that impact on our business and expect it to be varied across our operations, depending on the region, customer, nature of our services, contract term and other factors. However, we continue to believe that overall the long–term demand for our compression services will continue given the necessity of compression in facilitating the transportation and processing of natural gas.

Regarding our aftermarket services business, the base of owned compression in the U.S. has increased over the past several years, which we believe will help sustain our aftermarket services business over the long term.

Key Challenges and Uncertainties

In addition to general market conditions in the oil and natural gas industry and competition in the natural gas compression industry, we believe the following represent the key challenges and uncertainties we will face in the future.

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Labor. We believe that our ability to hire, train and retain qualified personnel will continue to be important. Although we have been able to historically satisfy our personnel needs, retaining employees in our industry continues to be a challenge. Our ability to grow and to continue our current level of service to our customers will depend in part on our success in hiring, training and retaining our employees. Further, the cost of labor has increased and may continue to increase in the future with increases in demand, which will require us to incur additional costs.

Cost Management. In order to improve our operations and further reduce operating expenses, we continue to invest significant resources into process and technology transformation that has, among other things, enhanced certain technology, supply chain and inventory management systems, replaced network infrastructure and expanded the remote monitoring capabilities of our compression fleet. Cost management continues to be challenging, however, and there is no guarantee that our efforts will result in a reduction in our operating expenses. Natural gas production growth and resulting demand for our services could cause us to experience increased operating expenses as we hire employees and incur additional expenses needed to support the rebound in market demand.

Further, we depend on suppliers for the materials, parts, equipment and lube oil necessary to our operations, which exposes us to volatility in prices. Significant price increases for these inputs, as a result of inflation, tariffs, or otherwise, could adversely affect our operating profits. Supply chain disruptions could also adversely affect our ability to obtain, or increase the cost of, such items. While we generally attempt to mitigate the impact of increased prices through strategic purchasing decisions, diversification of our supplier base, where possible, and the passing along of increased costs to customers, there may be a time delay between the increased commodity prices and the ability to increase the price of our services.

Capital Requirements, Availability of Capital Equipment and the Availability of External Sources of Capital. We funded a significant portion of our capital expenditures, the NGCS Acquisition and the 2027 Notes Redemption with borrowings under the Credit Facility. While we have successfully raised capital historically, and most recently in January 2026 with the issuance of the 2034 Notes, there is no guarantee in our ability to access the debt and equity markets to raise capital on affordable terms in 2026 and beyond. Additionally, extended lead times for newly fabricated equipment can increase near-term capital needs and create timing inconsistency between funding availability and capital expenditures. If we are not successful in raising capital within the time period required or at all, we may not be able to fund these capital expenditures or acquisitions, which could impair our ability to grow or maintain our business.

Demand for natural gas-powered compression. Demand for our services is dependent on the demand for natural gas in the markets we serve. Although the EIA currently forecasts natural gas demand will grow through 2050, technological advances and accelerated adoption of renewable sources of energy could reduce demand for natural gas in our markets and have an adverse effect on our business. In addition, increased focus of our customers on reducing emissions from, or the use of, combustion engines in compression cou

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