Enerflex Ltd. ($EFX)

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Enerflex Investor Update Call. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Paul Mahoney, President and CEO of Enerflex. Sir, please begin.

Welcome, everyone. I'm Paul Mahoney. Over 8 months ago, I joined as Enerflex's President and CEO. At the time, I was believing I was joining a strong company with untapped potential. Over the last 8 months, I've gone on an exhaustive tour. I've had a wonderful opportunity to meet well over 2,400 Enerflex employees all around the world. I've visited factories in Calgary, in Broken era, Oklahoma in Houston at our Telge Road facility. I visited field locations in the Permian Basin both Odessa and Delaware Basin facilities, employees and customers. I've had the opportunity to travel to the Middle East and visit with our Oman operation, our Omani employees, and an opportunity to visit at our headquarters in the Middle East and Abu Dhabi. Most recently, I've had an opportunity to visit our Brazil and Argentinian operations in the Southern Cone. On top of all of that, I've added relationship development with our major OEM equipment vendors. I've had an opportunity to build relationships with the likes of Caterpillar, Lakeshore, Jenbacher and Aerial Corporation. In fact, I visited factories. I visited the Caterpillar large engine factory in Lafayette, Indiana, I've had an opportunity to visit the Ariel Corporation in Mount Vernon, Ohio as well as build relations and meet personnel with Neo with the 2 brands of Waukesha and Jenbacher. Further, I've had an opportunity to engage with outside consultants. We've had 2 main outside consultants working with Enerflex over the last 8 months. One, very strategically to embed a new economic metric around an economic value-add ability, what we call internally Flex E. It gives us a wonderful opportunity to evaluate our portfolio, our products, our services and our geographical locations country by country in terms of shareholder value creation. More importantly, we've engaged in a long-term exercise with a management consultant on our strategy. We've evaluated our markets, our products, main trends, and current issues where Enerflex is involved with. With that, we've been able to tighten our strategic clarity -- where can we prioritize our growth investments as well as evaluate and discuss internally some inorganic expansion within Enerflex. So as I've gone on this 8-month tour, I found that there's actually 2 incremental elements than what I originally thought. One, the untapped potential is quite large. There's beautiful opportunities to embed operational excellence, continuous improvement lean processes and build solid process foundation from the bottom up. More importantly, as we've evaluated our markets, our strength, our weaknesses and our opportunities and threats, I see some fantastic prioritized growth opportunities for us organically and like I said, inorganically. So I stand here today very excited about Enerflex's future. I'm super excited about our potential and what we've been able to accomplish in just a short 8 months. As global events and accelerating innovation, reshape our energy landscape, Enerflex is uniquely positioned to deliver a combination of our products, services and technical expertise needed to sustain customers both today and support the energy systems of tomorrow. So let's get started. Today, what you'll find is 2 main areas that we will cover. Preet Dhindsa, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, will join me today, and we'll talk about those strategic priorities that I had mentioned. But more importantly, is the mantra. The mantra of competing intentionally and improving daily, improving relentlessly. That is a beautiful mantra that Enerflex employees smile, get excited and energized and believe in the direction of the corporation. Secondly, we'll follow our financial and capital allocation framework, we'll talk specifically about shareholder value creation. You will also find in the appendix other details about our operating priorities and strengths around our business should you choose to peruse. So let's get started on our strategy. Enerflex is a compelling investment opportunity capable of delivering value across the full life cycle. What you're going to hear today is that Enerflex is positioned as a leader. What you're going to hear today that our business model combines resilient recurring revenue streams with a differentiated technical capability and operational strength. You'll also hear very clear strategy that's focused on accretive, profitable growth with operational excellence and a disciplined capital allocation. So as we look at Enerflex today, it's a scaled global platform with meaningful operating breadth and recurring earnings power, well over 100 years of operating history $3.8 billion in scale with 4,400 employees, 17 operating countries with 7 being core to the operation. You could see the revenue recurring metrics and the solid financial stability and flexibility that the organization has as we move forward. I'm going to start with something that's very near and dear to my heart. Not only is capital allocation and framework important that's tied to an unbelievable strategy is really around building a culture, a culture that is purpose-driven. At Enerflex, we firmly believe that we're building the energy future and driving progress and empowering lives. That gets us up in the morning. That is our purpose. That is our purpose to a balanced set of stakeholders, whether it's investors, whether it's customers, whether it's our suppliers, whether it's the communities that we operate in. And to have this lofty purpose around powering lives is built on a solid foundation, a solid foundation that exists within Enerflex for decades, built on integrity, commitment, creativity and success in delivering on its promises. Incrementally, in the foundation is this unbelievable support and commitment to the safety of our employees, to the safety of our partners, our contractors and those in the facilities that we operate. So what is it that we actually do -- what does Enerflex do? What is the economic engine of Enerflex stated quite simply. We are the leading modular gas, power and water technology solutions provider. That's what we do. That enables us to live our purpose. But to do that, you can't be everything to everyone. So we have toiled over what is it that we want to be exceptional at. Do we want to be low cost? Do we want to be R&D-driven, do we want to be customer focused -- and we've settled on our company characteristics, both today and tomorrow. That is around an exceptional team. That's not only our employees around development. It's not only about our partners, our contractors, our suppliers. It's about the entire ecosystem to really execute on our purpose and our economic engine, it requires all elements of our team. So commitment to an exceptional team is a differentiating aspect. On top of that, in our markets and with the opportunities that we can see driving operational excellence gives us the flexibility and the decision-making ability to go after things that are attractive. There is a beautiful opportunity to embed continuous improvement and lean in our organization, a beautiful opportunity to act as an integrated organization and really professionalized processes. It all starts and ends with focus on customers, anticipating needs, not only transacting business, but anticipating needs being in front of our customers' desires, building relationships, building connectivity, so that we can deliver to the best of our abilities for our customers. And like I said, it all starts with improving relentlessly, driving a continuous improvement environment that ultimately allows our employees to do their best work. So that's it. This displays our purpose Prism, as we say internally to Enerflex. It's the building blocks for a sustainable future. Equally exciting is to describe Enerflex in terms of how we meet customers. So what you see is an integrated model, an integrated model that allows engineered modular technology solutions and natural gas compression, natural gas processing, electric power generation, including the emerging opportunity in data centers as well as water technology. What you see is that we'll meet customers where they are. Our go-to-market strategy is quite broad. In terms of equipment sales, with our Engineered Systems business unit or whether it's owning and operating or renting infrastructure for the energy future. All of this quite simply to leverage the technology and the go-to-market is to wrap all of this with ongoing aftermarket support. With a growing base of installed equipment is a beautiful opportunity to help our customers get the most out of what they do with Enerflex. What you see here is an integrated life cycle capability. You could see the tight nature of the value system between designing, engineering, manufacturing, fabrication, operating and servicing our equipment. We're a very diversified company in terms of its geographical focus, in terms of its customer base. But you'll also notice high-quality counterparties that support the resiliency of our business. We've built leadership positions across key regions and business line through operational capability and long-standing customer relationships. So our roots run deep. What this slide shows is over 100 years of technical and operating debt. This slide often catches our employees and our customers somewhat by a surprise. You could see some of the industry names that have been part of the fabric that has built Enerflex of today. Often, we hear Exterran, Hanover or Universal Compression or Toromont or Enerflex -- but the company history goes as far back as 1913 in refrigeration processing with CIMCO, the early days of a Halliburton, Jesse ran, Weatherford, Schlumberger, so on and so forth, compression businesses are part of the fabric that today represents 100 gears and technical expertise within Enerflex. As we take a look at performance. Performance on a global scale -- these numbers excite our employees. They're proud of these numbers. They stand behind these numbers. And when you take a step back and we walk through them from left to right, top to bottom, you get a better feel for -- what is that history, that depth of Enerflex. Enerflex has over 60 million-horsepower of gas compression ever since 1913. That equates roughly to 30% of the world's reciprocating gas compression. It's been built by Enerflex. Additionally, there's over 600-plus gas processing plants in over 30 countries around the world. Within that slice of gas processing, is this focus, this intense unique focus on cryogenic gas processing where we have over 139 plants, where we move over 19 billion cubic feet of gas a day. On top of that, there's 100-plus power generating units installed. And what catches people typically by surprise is that we have over 400 intelligent, bright astute engineers. We're committed to our engineering depth. We're committed to our excellence in engineering. We commit to recruiting and development and building best practice around staying current globally with our engineering base. So how do we think about our next phase in sharpening the business to unlock additional value. Let's start with reflections as the CEO over the last 8 months. I mentioned the opportunity that I had to engage exhaustively around the world with customers, suppliers, factories, employees and so on and partners. But let me highlight some specific strengths and opportunities that really stood out over the last 8 months. Strengths, the team is amazing. The amount of grit and focus on meeting commitments that true foundational values of success were very evident in my travels. We do have a leadership position in operating capabilities in our core business lines, a lot of learning, a lot of exposure, a lot of history. -- fantastic market, strong market demand on our business lines as well as what people don't necessarily realize how well -- our business lines are complementary with 1 another. They do fit nicely with 1 another between energy infrastructure, engineered systems and aftermarket services. And then lastly, really nice financial foundation the flexibility and the ability afforded to make decisions is fantastic as we look to the next phase of our journey. A cash engine with this flexibility is a strength that allows us to move forward. So where are the opportunities? As you think about the 100 years of formation of Enerflex, what you have is a compilation of business units and locations and historical perspectives. To some degree, it's come together, but there's far more we can be doing and leveraging the size and the scale of Enerflex as a $2.6 billion entity. I do believe that there is meaningful earnings health potential in driving operational excellence. Driving productivity programs, allowing people to reach their full potential under holistic enterprise-wide continuous improvement program. I'm really, really excited about data and digital. When you think about the handoffs to the curve between sales, applications, design, detailed design, fabrication, installation, operate and maintain, being able to connect all those value systems under 1 backbone of digital data allows us an opportunity to operate far more efficiently. That's internally. Externally with a digital backbone we have a wonderful opportunity to harness all the data that we collect off these complex systems to maintain them smarter, maintain them more efficiently to really drive a preventative and a predictive maintenance program, digital and the backbone will allow us to do this more efficiently. Additionally, with this information, building on digital twins and having the opportunity to have real-time optimization, change operating parameters as they occur allows us to get after productivity and drive the machine more efficiently for our customers. On top of that, we've done a really nice job of simplifying and optimize the portfolio. There are further opportunities to optimize our business and really drive that level of simplification as 1 Enerflex. And then lastly, jeez, this embryonic growing dynamic environment around data centers that's emerging in the power generation industry being quick to form and being strategic in our approach and being disciplined on our investment such that we credibly address this growing beautiful market in a holistic way that's accretive with discipline and effective risk management. So how do we really boil this all down to a very disciplined strategy. Number 1 is to be very succinct. What exactly is our growth thesis. We are driving to be the leader provider of modularized gas, power and water technology solutions. That is our thesis. Daily we intend to compete, compete intentionally and improve relentlessly. That's our guiding strength. That's the guiding element of our strategy. We see 3 main buckets within the strategy. One starts with operational excellence. To drive the earnings health of the organization gives us the opportunity to be flexible, make growth decisions. We're earning it. We're earning it by leading with operational excellence. Second, let's focus on those prioritized opportunities. We don't intend to be everything to everybody everywhere. We intend to be very disciplined on the highest growth, highest levels of impact to customers that is accretive to our portfolio. And lastly, you'll see a very disciplined organization around allocating capital to drive growth and overall shareholder returns. So what you see here in this slide is really a summary of what we believe are the main thrusts behind our strategy. As I mentioned before, it starts with productivity. In North America, there are afforded beautiful opportunities to expand our EI business, our energy infrastructure business with our contract compression opportunity. We're afforded fantastic opportunities in our Engineered Systems business. gas processing, cryogenic processing and perhaps other gas processing as we evolve. All of that with a very, very strong committed field tech organization that helps our customers extract the value out of what they engage with Enerflex. And that's our aftermarket service. Additionally, there are some fantastic opportunities internationally. And LatAm, having visited Brazil and Argentina was blown away by the operational excellence, the continuous improvement, lean that already exists in Argentina, really optimizing our footprint, optimizing our leading footprint and really driving focus on where we see accretive returns in energy infrastructure and aftermarket services is our opportunity in LatAm. Similarly, in the Middle East, we do have 17 boom facilities, boom, build, own, operate and maintain facilities in the Middle East, principally in Oman and Bahrain -- but we have a wonderful opportunity to leverage that expertise to broaden that field of portfolio to more transactional as well as evaluating more EI opportunities in region. And again, this wraparound of consulting, assessment services, parts, retrofits, field service exists in our aftermarket service business. So let me talk a little bit deeper about operational excellence. You could see that the company has been on a nice journey. You could see the improvement in earnings, earnings quality, earnings health over the period here from 2023. You could see in Q1 of '26, we continue to increase 70 basis points of improvement in quarter 1. As we look forward to the planning period, we believe we can improve adjusted EBITDA margin by 200-plus basis points. And how are we going to do that? Where are we going to prioritize? I mentioned leveraging our scale and optimizing based on our size, it affords us some structural opportunities in front of us. Secondly, professionalizing the supply chain. Enerflex has $1.9 billion of material buy. In fragmented ways, so a beautiful opportunity to professionalize build a world-class supply chain organization affords us an opportunity to continue driving operational excellence. On top of that, a bottoms-up side-to-side and top-down approach to lean and continuous improvement, enabling our employees to reach their full potential, will drive further engagement, will drive further productivity and Enerflex. And lastly, an area that gets me quite excited as well is around modernizing our IT and our automation systems. It's a beautiful opportunity internally and externally. So let me talk a little bit about that on our next slide. RelyCore is the name of the digital backbone. RelyCore is the name that's going to allow us to harness the power of all the data that we collect in the field. And so what does that mean? At the end of the day, what's the business purpose that we're going to solve? What's the business outcome that we're going to solve with our digital backbone called RelyCore. What you see today in action and Bahrain and Argentina in the Permian Basin is a beautiful collection of data, beautiful collection of data and a data lake that sits there that is just a beautiful opportunity for AI and ML processing and algorithms. It will allow us to really power our maintenance and our field tech organization to be working in a reliability system around predictive types of alerts to have the right part at the right time to take care of customers in a speedy and effective way. Additionally, as you own and operate complex systems, having a real-time optimizer that's built off the RelyCore digital backbone will allow operations to reach heights that haven't been achieved before. So I'm really excited about ReyCore. I'm really excited about bringing digital technologies to the field to a whole another level within Enerflex, and I see that as a beautiful strategic lever for us. So our next stage of growth. It's focused on long-term secular trends. You could see here we're participating in very large markets. We're participating in a $20 billion plus size market. We do so with our 3 business components and aftermarket services and energy infrastructure and energy systems. All of the market data, all of our internal management estimates, all are colliding around a similar number. And what we should expect and see over the next 5 years in our planning period is a 6% compound annual growth rate. On top of that, is this number on the bottom of the slide, $15 billion estimate of what powering data centers could generate for reciprocating engine solutions, super exciting, super exciting for a company like Enerflex that has been in the power generation business for decades and has well over 100 units around the world. When you dig a little bit deeper into North America, that same consistent 6% CAGR, a little bit different when you get down into the basin realities of the Permian Basin, Haynesville, so on and so forth. But overall, we see a 6% compound annual growth rate. Really nice opportunity for infrastructure that is needed and required to support the LNG export needs, the power generation needs and all the associated gas that's being produced in the U.S. market. More gas processing plants, more cryogenic plants, beautiful opportunity where we bring operational excellence and our technical depth to a growing market in Engineered Systems. Our contract compression business is very attractive, very, very strong position and growing position, and we'll talk a little bit more about that. And then lastly, aftermarket service, sizable business, sizable opportunity, an opportunity to embed digital technologies that I described earlier to really go after this 6% annual compound annual growth. So let me talk about the drivers in North American gas production. You can see on the slide here on the left, wonderful growth from 2018 and the projected growth through 2030 in the United States and Canada. And what that really translates to in terms of installed compression horsepower 18 Bcf a day of North American LNG export capacity through 2030, 15 Bcf a day of incremental gas takeaway capacity just in the Permian Basin through 2030. And then lastly, an estimate of 8 Bcf a day for the U.S. gas power demand growth through 2030, including that of data centers is a very, very exciting, strong, constructive market for Enerflex. A little bit deeper on contract compression. It's quite remarkable. When you look at 2017, all the way to 2025, you see a business that has grown steadily year after year. That's a 15% compound annual growth rate over a 10-year period. That's quite a story. We're excited. Last year, we grew 13%, just under 500,000 horsepower in compression in our contract compression business in the United States. We invested organic capital in 2024 and 2025. We're investing organic capital in 2026 to grow beyond the 13%. We're super excited. And you could see all the metrics here on the slide, typical contract length. You can see typical utilization north of 90%, 94% utilization is a very, very strong number. Really, really nice opportunity that we continue to stay focused on and lead with organic investment. On the slide, you'll see the power opportunity. It's quite embryonic. It changes daily. We have had a beautiful opportunity to be engaged by the equipment, OEM equipment providers as well as the independent power producers that are providing solutions for the likes of the hyperscalers. We have been in this business for multiple decades, not quite around the technical needs of a data center, but we've been in power generation for quite a long while. We've been very careful, very strategic in our approach. -- we've started with a very small set of opportunities to learn, to engage, to try to understand the technical requirements, to try to understand the operational needs to really scale this business opportunity. This behind the meter power generation opportunity today and what we see and what Enerflex sees in the market is over 5 gigawatts. Five gigawatt of opportunity through which we've put through a very strategic filter. So we're approaching this market in a very disciplined and a very long-term return-focused way. Let me touch on Latin America. Latin America, Enerflex has a very, very strong market share position. Let's start with what has history provided Enerflex a very, very strong market share position. A very, very strong aftermarket service and technical depth position our Net Promoter Score would tell us, we're leading in field service in some of the faster-growing regions in Latin America. It's strategically important to Enerflex, strategically important to Enerflex to leverage this installed base. We see opportunities to optimize. We're optimizing our equipment. We're driving higher utilization. We're driving depth with our customers. Our customers are desiring more and more engagement with us. So we're being very disciplined in our investment. We're looking for accretive opportunities. We're optimizing our fleet. And we also were reminded of the realities of the region, the macroeconomic realities of the region and all of the political elements as we consider pursuing this growing wonderful asset in Argentina and the Vaca Muerta. Vaca Muerta is 1 of the world-class unconventional reservoirs. You can see record production. I've had the wonderful opportunity of working on Vaca Muerta since 2012, and 2012 were the first 10 wells. And from 10 wells to what it represents today is remarkable. You could see the investment that Vaca Muerta with YPF is making -- you could see the quality of the reservoir. You can see the estimated gas recovery of the Vaca Muerta relative to some well-known Permian Montney, Eagle Ford and Haynesville basins. We remain focused on disciplined growth and execution as the market continues to develop in Argentina. Let's move to the Middle East. But first, I do want to recognize our employees of the Middle East. They've been resilient. They've been focused. They've been centered on our customers. We have 17 unique locations in Oman and Bahrain, 17 different facilities that we operate, uninterrupted, uninterrupted. Our teams remain connected collaborating, communicating and taking care of 1 another. And I just want to say thank you to our employees for that. As we look at what does this really mean? What are the considerations given the conflict -- we are engaging in some opportunities for our aftermarket services capabilities. As the area looks to debottleneck, as the area looks to recover, as the area looks to invest -- we have been engaged with customers. We do see some incremental opportunities on Engineered Systems, energy, infrastructure and our aftermarket services. When we dive deeper into the Middle East, I mentioned we have 17 facilities in Oman and Bahrain. The brand equity of Enerflex and Exterran from a legacy standpoint is quite strong. You could see our estimate of market size and our addressable markets in Bahrain and Oman and others, but you'll also notice focus. Focus in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. ADNOC and Saudi Aramco offer a company like Enerflex, a really nice opportunity for meaningful long-term value creation. And so building relationships, building this opportunity set is a key piece of our strategy as we go forward. So now I'd like to turn it over to Preet Dhindsa. Preet Dhindsa, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and we'll talk about some of our financial stability and flexibility as well as our capital allocation framework.

Thanks, Paul. Let me speak about our financial and capital allocation framework focused on additional shareholder value creation. Over the last 3.5 years, we've solidified our financial foundation. We've delevered with excellent operational execution, which creates an environment where a resilient business model that produces 65% of adjusted gross margin from recurring revenue sources. We've generated strong free cash flow over the last 3 years, $562 million, primarily focused on debt reduction. And we've executed a disciplined capital allocation framework that puts us in a position of financial flexibility from a leverage and liquidity perspective, also demonstrating high-quality attractive returns. Since the end of 2023, we significantly reduced debt from about $800 million down to about $500 million as at Q1 2026. We've also improved leverage from 2.3x to 0.9x during the same period with significant liquidity that provides optionality and flexibility to continue to grow in key markets. In addition, return on capital employed has improved from low single digits 3 years ago to 17.3% as recently reported in our Q1 results. And overall, we've done that through significant debt reduction. Since the beginning of 2023, $562 million of free cash flow is generated largely focused on debt reduction, which puts us in a position with a strong balance sheet to pivot towards a growth agenda. 2026 growth capital largely earmarked for the U.S. contract compression fleet with highly constructive economics. We continue to be active in the Middle East focused on organic opportunities that have excellent long-term economics. In our Latin America business, we continue to put capital into that business, which is allocated to our maintenance capital buckets. Our capital allocation framework is disciplined, deliberate and long-term returns focused. We have focused over the last few years on improving our balance sheet, solidifying our financial foundation, and now we're at 0.9x levered, and we'll continue to maintain a healthy, prudent balance sheet. Inorganic growth spending, as Paul mentioned earlier, we are looking for opportunities with strong life cycle economics in markets where we continue to have a competitive advantage. Our U.S. contract compression fleet is where we're allocating 2026 capital. However, we have many more opportunities as referenced earlier. Inorganic bolt-ons, tuck-under acquisitions to increase scale and capabilities and provide a strategic focus on expansion in the North American market across our main 3 product lines. In addition, direct shareholder returns dividend increases in a sustainable, growing manner to give returns to further returns to shareholders and opportunistically repurchase common shares in an accretive manner relative to other uses of capital. With that, let me turn it over to Paul.

Thanks, Preet. Recovering our financial details as well as our capital allocation framework. I'd like to turn our attention to driving value and the value creation formula for Enerflex. Our core objectives for value creation around improving profitability, growing the business in a thoughtful and accretive way as well as protecting our balance sheet while allocating capital in a disciplined manner. I'd like to highlight our planning period objectives and metrics. Our adjusted EBITDA margin with at least 200 basis points of improvement, similarly, 200 basis point improvement on our cash flow conversion. Investing in growth at least 6% market CAGR above market growth without fully contemplating the impact that data centers could have or any inorganic activity or bolt-on acquisitions. Lastly, strong financial position provides our flexibility to improve and to advance our ROCE over 200 basis points. We intend to have a sustainable dividend over the planning period and opportunistically repurchase common shares. Our investment is to sustain and strengthen the core business while funding high-return organic growth opportunities. Excess free cash flow will be allocated thoughtfully between debt reduction, selective bolt-on opportunities and shareholder returns. Enerflex is entering its next phase from a position of strength. I'd like to reiterate what you've heard today. Enerflex is positioned as a leader in attractive and growing markets. Our business model combines resilient recurring revenue streams with differentiated technical capabilities and operational excellence. We have a clear strategy focused on profitable growth operational execution and disciplined capital allocation. I'm confident in our ability to translate this momentum into long-term value creation for shareholders. With that, I will now turn the call over to the operator for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] While we compile the Q&A roster online, I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Jeff Fetterly, Vice President of Corporate Development and Capital Markets for any on-site questions.

Thank you, Howard. Good morning, everyone. We'll start with a couple of questions that were submitted through the webcast. First off, believe for Paul. Can you speak to where you see the greatest opportunities at Enerflex. You touched on this on an earlier slide, but also what types of milestones are you looking at to achieve the strategic and financial objectives that are laid out.

Yes. Thanks, Jeff. As you've mentioned, we see several avenues specifically in 5 different directions. One is 1 that is near and dear to my heart, and that is the integrated scale of One Enerflex, really working hard on leveraging our scale and finding opportunities to drive productivity and efficiency is a project that's well under its way. It's been in place now for well over 6 months. The second area I would focus on is continued optimization of our business. I mentioned the metric of Flexi, economic profit, utilizing economic profit in line with other key KPI metrics such that we can evaluate accretive opportunities in our business demonstrate that discipline that we've talked so much about here today. Thirdly, which which I believe is kind of a new direction in some respects, is to harness all of the digital data that we have in operating and maintaining these complex machines. There's a beautiful opportunity with, with the subject matter expertise that our company has to harness the power of service technician nodes to real-time live data measurements and coupling and building good, solid prospects on AI and ML to drive productivity and maintenance and real-time optimizing of the machines. The other area which we've been very strategic and careful is to really position ourselves with our strength in the power generation markets. One being the industrial power space as peaker plants and things like that, that we normally have participated in, in the past, but also to build the competency set operationally, strategically, financially, around the whole AI boom, let's call it. The data center market offers us a really exciting green shoot opportunity for growth.

Second question on the Engineered Systems side, can you provide some color on the outlook for this business line and also touch on how the company is managing through the increasing lead times for major equipment.

Sure. I'll open up with a few comments, and maybe, Preet, you can kind of add some color here. Engineered Systems is an area that we have worked very hard in building our playbook. -- having good, solid cost controls, cost measurements, productivity programs around CI Lean affords us the opportunity to participate in this market. We do have a really nice -- we've outlined the market here today. We see the compound annual growth rate in the 6% range for gas processing, whether it's compression or other gas processing capabilities that our company engages in. And so really, we've built an operational model, supply chain model to secure 2026 as well as 2027 in light of the extended lead times that we do see from some of the equipment vendors. So very robust environment, nice environment in Engineered Systems. I believe it's 1 of those areas that may not be fully understood -- and we have been hard at work at driving costs, driving efficiency and having a good clear line of sight in managing this market. But maybe, Preet, you could add a few.

Sure. Thanks, Paul. Yes, what I would add is at the end of Q1 2026, we had bookings of $483 million, which is about 40% greater than the 8-quarter average of $340 million. We ended the quarter with $1.3 billion backlog, which generally converts to revenue, most of it over the next 12 months and our book-to-bill ratio at 1.5x. So still very constructive markets on the ES side of the business across North America. And we have been talking a lot about investment in working capital. The working capital specifically for long lead time items like engines, we've got spots in line for '26, '27 and '28. -- for those engines and now booking into '29. So our ability to execute is also going to be a function of our strategic investment in working capital and getting long lead time components as we see a very constructive market as we move forward through this year and next.

We'll turn the call back to the operator for questions from the phone line.

Our first question or comment comes from the line of Aaron MacNeil from TD Cowen.

Questions. Maybe I'll just add on the last 1 here. But can you help us connect long lead time items ordering and what's committed in the Q to near-term revenue? And specifically, how much growth can be achieved by the long lead commitments that you already have in place today? And is that the constraints on your ability to grow? .

Yes. First off, Aaron, thank you, and good morning. Thank you for joining us here today. Look, this lead time element around engines has been in place for some time now. It's grown over time, probably over the last 12 months in terms of where it is today. And it is definitely an area that needs a strategic approach. We have made a strategic approach decision. We have secured spots and manufacturing plans. We do have a solid line of sight to our '26 plan, our '27 plan. As Preet had mentioned, -- we're out securing positions in the manufacturing cycle that align with 2028 and beyond. We've put the numbers out there in the value creation slide. It supports that 6% compound annual growth rate. .

Okay. Fair enough. And then how should we think about build multiples on incremental U.S. compression in the context of your 20 basis points return on capital employed target through 2030. Are you seeing any improvement to build multiples on new horsepower? And can you frame how organic CapEx competes for capital across the other opportunities like the buyback or bolt-on M&A within the portfolio.

Just to repeat the question, there was some muffled on the phone line. The question relates to organic investments, the return expectations for U.S. contract compression and also how organic investment returns would compare or be stacked against other opportunities to deploy capital?

Yes. Let me open up, I guess, with the contract compression question. We target an upper teens type of return. It's been out in our discussion for some time now. We're maintaining that. Certainly, over an 18 month-ish type contract period, you have an opportunity to evaluate price every 18 months on contracts. Having stability on price, having a point of view to maintain and keep strong utilization as well as an upper teens return has been the focus of that business. Our company has worked quite hard on building models. We talk a lot here today. We'll talk more probably in the Q&A around discipline. And the discipline around competing factors for capital, discipline around accretive opportunities. So we've built some models -- and maybe Preet you can explain the whole football field analysis that we do. We treat all opportunities competing for cash equally and we evaluate it as objectively as we can, but maybe you can explain a little bit about the work that we've been doing.

Yes. Thanks, Paul. Thanks for the question, Aaron. And so I mean we're a very different company today than we were, call it, 3.5 years ago as that Exterran deal closed Q4 2022. We're levered at 3.3x back then. We're now at 0.9x. We are now in a position of financial and operational strength. We've got ample liquidity, very good debt stack. -- good cost of funds. And from a balance sheet perspective, I mean, first of all, from a capital allocation perspective, we look at a number of factors. Visibility into our broader revenue streams are high-quality recurring in nature revenue streams, whereby we have about 2/3 gross margin before D&A from the EI and AMS business. . Highly recurring and highly predictable as well a very strong balance sheet, which allows us flexibility and optionality to pivot towards the growth agenda, as I mentioned earlier. From a balance sheet perspective, we've got the flexibility. We've got the optionality. We like 0.9x where we're levered and we'll watch this through cycles during our plan period and just make sure that we stay prudent as we have been for the last several years. And then from a growth capital perspective, organically, we put out a midpoint about $95 million for 2026. We increased the fleet size of the U.S. contract compression fleet in '25, but 13%. And opened the year at about 483,000 horsepower, expect to grow in '26 at a similar pace, call it, close to 13% also with good economics, meaning revenue dollar per month as well as utilization still very constructive. Also inorganically, as Paul mentioned, bolt-ons, tuck-unders, manageable nature, not large global transformational acquisitions in markets that we're comfortable with and in asset classes that we like either an enhanced scale or introduce new capabilities in our 3 product lines, primarily in North America. From a dividend perspective, we continue to increase the dividend last 2 years in euro as at Q3, most recently 13% increase. And we do look at the dividend as a very important core priority for direct shareholder returns and sustainable growing dividend will continue to be a priority of ours. Share buybacks, we bought back $23 million in shares in 2025, and we continue to look at those shares, share buybacks as an important vehicle when we believe our shares are undervalued, when we have a strong balance sheet and when they're accretive in nature relative to many other capital allocation priorities. And then from a debt perspective, we will grow methodically in a very disciplined and rigorous manner. We may pay down debt a little bit further, improve free cash flow by improving our interest costs and our tax expense. But we look at all capital allocation priorities, organic growth, inorganic growth, 2026, organically, largely the U.S. fleet. However, we still continue to stay active and explore opportunities in the Middle East, Oman and Bahrain primarily, where we have current assets. Also Latin America, an important market for us, 3 core countries: Brazil, Argentina, Mexico. Latin America accounts for about 20% of global EBITDA, so a meaningful portion of our contributions towards our organization's EBITDA and earnings. And so the growth capital or the capital for the Latin America business is largely embedded in our maintenance capital. So we'll look at different returns. We'll weigh the different levers against each other. We've got a very rigorous disciplined process -- and when it comes to inorganic growth, we will make sure that grow those growth targets adhere to strict diligence criteria financially, operationally as well as from an integration and incorporating into our organization perspective.

Great. Thanks, everybody. I'll turn it back. .

Our next question comes from the line of Tim Monachello from ATB Cormark Capital Markets.

I'm not sure everybody can hear me clearly. But I'm curious about what types of bolt-on acquisitions you might be looking at? And if you can provide any, I guess, time lines on when you think you might start looking more closely at these type of bolt-ons that would be helpful.

Yes. Thank you, Tim, for the question, and thanks for joining us here this morning. First off, bolt-on acquisitions is something that we've been working on for probably 6 months in earnest, building a pipeline. But I'd tell you the upfront discipline around strategic fit -- as Preet mentioned, does it expand our capability set, does this enhance our current business? Is it along the lines where we can have accretive returns to the business expand our business in a responsible manner. We've really worked hard on the strategy of staying focused on natural gas, power and water, modularized solutions. We do have this emerging green shoot, if you will, like I had mentioned in data centers. So really looking at complementary type adjacencies in that space is another area for us. So timing-wise, look, this is an imperfect science. When you're disciplined in your approach you really want to make sure that you're taking timing into consideration, you're taking strategic fit into consideration, and you're doing the best you can to ensure that you're getting attractive returns. So -- we've got a funnel that we've been working, building relationships, understanding fit, trying to really do the homework and the discipline on these businesses. Today, we're probably looking north of 10 types of opportunities, it's hard. When -- it's an imperfect science. We will walk into it with the mindset of a real strong line of sight in terms of its return. We'll have a very disciplined approach to strategy, to post-merger integration to the talent required to execute so on and so forth. So I would be surprised if something was to fall through in the near term, based on our disciplined approach, but something strategic fit close accretive in nature, advancing our main strategic thrusts.

Where in your North American portfolio, do you see gaps in I guess your ability to execute or potentially in markets you're not in is that nature?

Fundamentally, Tim, we believe our core markets are quite attractive. So compression, gas processing, could there be some tuck-in opportunities to round out some gas processing capabilities. That's an area that we constantly discuss and debate internally. Are there opportunities to expand our compression fleet. We've been very disciplined in our approach in terms of horsepower utilization and how we want to compete on the compression space. So I would say those 2 areas come to mind -- and again, the operational side, we keep very close to our planning efforts on on the data center world. That would be an area depending on scale up requirements and things like that, that we would be looking at.

Okay. And then last 1 for me. Just -- in terms of the growth outlook, it looks like you're probably going to be leading into higher capital spending as we go through the next few years. Can you help us understand maybe some bookends on where you think CapEx will land on an annual basis? And am I correct in believing that it will be within your free cash generation? .

Yes. No, that's correct. Maybe Preet you want to kind of walk.

Yes. Thanks, Tim. Clearly, I often say we want to make sure we maintain a very healthy strong balance sheet with optionality and flexibility to pivot towards our growth agenda. So we can count on a good leverage metric on or about the range we're here today and throughout a number of cycles. . And so we will not lever up, whether it's organic or inorganic growth. And overall CapEx in '26 increased by about 60% versus 2025. Let's call it, midpoint $185 million growth maintenance in PP&E versus $1.15 in the prior year 2025. But we'll continue to methodically grow. We'll look at good asset classes in good markets. And as I mentioned, continue to explore the Middle East. Obviously, LatAm, we've been putting maintenance capital but currently earmarked for the U.S. contract compression fleet, and we'll also be very disciplined in watching the economics, utilization and revenue not to get ahead of ourselves, but we do believe that's a good asset class to invest in this year and beyond. So hard to specifically say what the growth capital looks like year-over-year during the plan period, but methodical disciplined growth in context of the other capital allocation levers that I discussed earlier.

All right. Great. Thanks so much. .

Our next question or comment comes from the line of John Gibson from BMO Capital Markets.

I just wanted to clarify, I'm not sure wrong. But I think you said growth around the 6% CAGR doesn't include additional power gen or data center wins. So would this be over and above what's already on here? Could you maybe just kind of clarify maybe just to it wrong.

Yes. John, thank you for the question, and thanks for joining us here this morning. We do have a small level of industrial power, let's call it, built into our business. We've been in the power business for well over 30 years. And we do continue to participate in that. I would delineate what I've used in the past is term embryonic around the data centers. That's a very fast-changing market. We're very disciplined and strategic in our approach. And so we're treating that as such. We do have 1 order, obviously, in our backlog. We did capture a really nice data center order here in Q1, along with some of the other elements there. But we have not included that in that 6% compound annual growth rate, to your point. So you're correct.

I really appreciate that. I guess, second 1 for me, 1 of your slides talk about being the #6 player in U.S. contract compression, which I think is up from what I've seen before. Have you gained market share here? Is it based on just your fleet growth? Or are there any other market dynamics going on in the U.S. space right now?

Yes. Great question, John. We did move up, arguably, maybe even 1 more, to be honest, a 7 position up to 6. We did have a nice 2025. I think Preet had mentioned that our horsepower had improved well over 13%. And if you layer that on top of a marketplace that we believe is in the 5%-ish range, you would say that we've gained market share. We believe we gained market share when we analyze the marketplace. We go through individually who by who in the top 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8. We do believe we've gained market share in 2025. We're aiming to continue that trend in 2026 with our capital investment in contract compression -- and so yes, we do believe we've moved up a spot and maybe, again, earmarked for another

Okay. I appreciate it. Last 1 for me. looking at your goal post for growth into 2030. To me, this implies roughly $750 million of adjusted EBITDA. Is this a number you're comfortable with by 2030? And also, I guess, as we think about the margin accretion will most of it happen sort of the latter portion of those 4 years? Or are there -- is there some low hanging fruit that could get you there a little sooner?

Yes. I mean, your number is right in the ballpark, John, for sure. We've stated what our objectives are, I would say, those are objectives with the 200 basis points on growth, profitability and ROCE and cash conversion through cycle. So I don't see an abnormal shaped curve, slow to high back-end loaded type of an approach. We do have the element of engine availability in the near term. I think we've got that well accounted for in our commitments here. But that's something that is we deal with it daily and something that would maybe mute the front end a tad, but nothing to disrupt the commitments that we've made here on the objectives. Preet, if you'd add anything to. Yes. Thank you.

Two additional questions from the webcast. First, on the power generation opportunity. Can you speak to the potential earnings impact from the 5 gigawatts of opportunity set that Enerflex has identified or talked about? .

Yes, that's a great question. out there. Look, 5 gigawatts, if you still maintain this ratio that we've often talked about is a quite sizable see, I want to make sure people understand, it's a C in the market -- that's where our commercial teams are engaged with good counterparties. That's what we see. What percentage of wind that comes from that and what makes it through the strategic rigor of our process is still yet to be determined. I've mentioned many times quarterly and subsequent that we're playing this as a purchase phenomenon, number one. Number two, that it is accretive. And so it's an ever-changing environment. I would tell you that 6 months ago is very different than today. We still are playing it conservatively from a counterparty standpoint. We want to be working with the high-quality hyperscalers. We want to work with folks that are well funded, that have good engineering depth and scope behind it, and we are participating today in an accretive manner.

A follow-on question from the webcast on Power Gen. Is Enerflex looking at power gen opportunities in the scope of the Engineered Systems and AMS business or also within the energy infrastructure side of the business.

Great question. I attempted to answer that right there. Today, the data center element would have an engineered system in a purchasing commercial construct as well as a really nice longer tail opportunity in the aftermarket services business. So presently, data centers do not have a funnel or activity and discussions under a commercial construct in our energy infrastructure business line.

And back to U.S. contract compression. How does Enerflex look at organic growth relative to inorganic growth opportunities in that business?

On contract compression, there's almost a constant evaluation of fleet. And Enerflex has worked quite hard around where we engage the quality of our fleet, the percentage of higher horsepower applications, the age, the maintenance records, really, really, really diligent approach to evaluating assets that go on in the industry. So we'd like to stay close to that. If there are opportunities there. We're certainly engaging and evaluating, but waiting for the right opportunity would be my answer.

Another question from the webcast on the Middle East. Can you speak to the opportunities that you're looking at or seeing in Saudi Arabia and the UAE specifically?

Yes, great question. In the presentation, we state -- we have 17 facilities, boom facilities where we build, we own, we operate and maintain both in the gas processing space as well as the water technology space. Those reside today, those 17 plants reside principally in Oman and Bahrain. And so we have been engaging on different types of sales cycles around Abu Dhabi, UAE, ADNOC as well as maybe longer term with Saudi Aramco on some of their unconventional gas developments.

And a follow-on question on the inorganic side. Can you provide an update on the disposition of the APAC business that was announced? And with disposition? Are you content with your current geographic mix? Or do you envision potential rightsizing or further simplification of the company?

Yes. Maybe Preet, if you want to give an update on our Asia Pac divestiture, I think it's going quite nicely. It's advancing as per our schedule and maybe even a little bit faster. So that's good. Maybe you can comment on that, and then I can talk about optimization of our footprint. .

Absolutely. We announced earlier this year, monetization of a noncore asset. Asia Pacific, 3 countries in an accretive manner relative to our trading multiple at the time. And we're working through the carve-out activities, a fair bit of process and systems work that we're doing in the next a couple of months. The expectation is we close in the back half of 2026. And then we'll have the proceeds and we'll determine where to redeploy those proceeds in the capital allocation filters that we've discussed also but that brings us down to 14 countries of, call it, 27 countries 3.5 years ago, down to 17. That will be 4, and there are 7 core countries we often talk about. .

Yes. Thanks, Preet. The only thing I would add is we've evaluated country by country, our position through this economic profit lens, we continue to evaluate opportunities to optimize. We do see some further opportunities where taking into account local risk-adjusted returns risk factors and so on and so forth. So it's an area that we'll constantly evaluate in an area that we continue to put a lot of discipline and rigor to.

We'll turn it back to the operator for additional questions.

Thank you. Our next question or comment comes from the line of Dan Payne from National Bank Capital Markets.

Jeff asked my question, but I might press on it a little bit more here just around the data center opportunity. And can you provide any rules of some as it relates to what your expectations around revenue and margins would be for the data center opportunity, like dollar per gigawatt from a revenue standpoint or any margin profile? I'm just trying to build out towards what the impact that John was asking about as far as the increment to the stated 6% growth number.

Yes. No. Thanks, Dan, for the question and joining us here this morning. Look, we have a range within the funnel of size. Let's just start their 20 megawatts to 500 megawatts type of range and then some 1 megawatt. Typically, we would scale that 1 megawatt -- 100 megawatts, $100 million type of revenue opportunity. The 6% in the objective metric includes industrial power, but does not include data center just for clarity there. And like I said earlier, we are participating in a purchase commercial construct as well as participating from a constructive, accretive manner on our Engineered Systems business line.

One last question from the webcast on Argentina. Can you speak to the opportunities that the company is seeing in the Alberta -- and how is Enerflex pursuing those opportunities? .

Yes. Great question. I was recently visiting our teams and many customers in Argentina here recently. And I would tell you, first off, that Enerflex and its heritage has a very, very strong market share position in country. The brand equity of the legacy Exterran and Enerflex is quite high in Argentina. And that's evidenced in several different ways. We have a very robust AMS, aftermarket service business, it's valued. It has technical depth. It does have capabilities to do retrofits and things like that. The other quiet element, I would tell you is that we educate and train in the local market for field technicians. And it's an interesting way to slice this -- we do well over 10,000 hours of technical training for field techs in the Argentinian market today. And that's been going on for decades. So -- when you think about the 200 or 225,000 horsepower of installed base that we have, a really, really nice, well-recognized aftermarket service business and the technical training and the depth that our team has implemented there. We're excited about the Vaca Muerta. It's a high-quality asset. -- and we're working to participate while keeping in consideration all the risk factors from Argentina there, but it's an exciting play for us. We're being very disciplined in our approach, being careful and mindful around the risk, but we do have a nice position to leverage.

We'll pass it back to the operator for another question from the phone line.

Thank you. Our next question comment comes from the line of Tim Monachello from ATB Comark Capital Markets.. .

Follow-up. On the Engineered Systems business in North America, I'm curious if you can talk a little bit about where your market share is today? And then given the 200 basis point improvement in margins do you expect across the business, how much of that do you think is in Engineered Systems? And if you're able to reduce your cost structure structurally there, what do you think that does to your market share? And I guess, your competitive positioning? .

Yes, great follow-on question, Tim. First you asked a question about market share and then the productivity gains that we're driving towards. I would tell you that, first off, the gas processing business itself is quite varied in terms of its discipline across the spectrum of capabilities. If we start with our cryogenic business, very, very disciplined marketplace. We believe we have a really nice market share position, somewhere in the order of 20-plus percent, a very disciplined marketplace there. And we're focusing on cost, efficiency, continuous improvement in lean supply chain optimization and so on and so forth that you've seen in the presentation there. To really manage the playbook of a business that has some volatility potentially to play it to be more competitive. Obviously, to win as well as have incremental margin. So we'll see. I mean this is an earnings quality game over time. I'm quite excited about the early prospects of supply chain optimization, leveraging 1 Enerflex and some of the overhead costs and things like that. So we'll see how this plays out. But I think it's going to be an opportunity for us to grow. But it is a very disciplined marketplace. We do carry somewhere on the order of 20% market share. .

How about in gas compression packaging? .

Again, similarly, we're -- we've mentioned this beautiful opportunity to commercially rent or sell in the compression space. And so often, and it was reflected here earlier in the questions you've moved up to a #6. Well, that's in the contract compression space. We believe combined for compression market share, whether it's purchase or contract that we're somewhere around 19% market share. So a much stronger element when you consider the purchase element -- we are a fabrication shop. We do have internal vertical integration, and that affords us some flexibility to commercially rent or to sell.

Okay. And then do you think you have a cost advantage in the packaging for gas compression on a purchase basis in the U.S. versus your competitors?

It's a great question. It's 1 I've asked many times over, Tim. We're studying it. I would tell you, and that's a good marker for us when we think about lean, continuous improvement, productivity. So I'd be hesitant to say we believe we should have the right, and we're studying it quite hard, and we're working hard on improving that cost element. .

Thank you. I'm showing no additional questions in the queue at this time. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Paul Mahoney for any closing remarks. .

Thank you for everyone joining us here this morning. We spent an hour in 15, 20 minutes on Enerflex, and we really appreciate your attendance here this morning. Hopefully, you've been able to pick up some strong snippets of our strategy, our commitment to performance and earnings health as well as the discipline behind our capital allocation framework. I would like to thank all of the Enerflex employees around the world for all of their hard work. I mean, we have a compelling story to tell. We've evolved as a very strong provider of technical modularized solutions and gas, power and water, energy infrastructure. It's built on well over 100 years of specialized engineering and capability and competence as well as innovation with a clear vision towards our strategy with constructive markets with commitment and energy from all of our employees. I believe Enerflex is poised to have continued earnings health improvement and continue to drive higher returns over time. With that, again, I'd like to thank you for your time and hope everyone has a wonderful day. So thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference. This concludes the program. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a wonderful day. Speakers, stand by.