Kodiak Gas Services Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Q2 adjusted EBITDA reached a record $217 million, up 22% year over year, while revenue increased 21% to $391 million. Management raised its 2026 adjusted EBITDA guidance to $830 million–$860 million and discretionary cash flow guidance to $570 million–$600 million.
  • Positive Sentiment: Compression Infrastructure continued to perform strongly, with utilization rising to 98.2%, pricing up 4.5% year over year to $23.80 per revenue-generating horsepower, and adjusted gross margin holding at 70% despite higher lube oil costs. Kodiak also said it is 50% contracted for 2027 compression deliveries.
  • Positive Sentiment: The Power Infrastructure pipeline is expanding rapidly, including a limited notice to proceed for a West Texas data center project tied to a hyperscaler and an initial equipment deposit. Existing power assets were approximately 90% utilized, while preliminary customer discussions generally involve 10- to 15-year contracts and targeted returns above 15%.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Kodiak secured approximately 1.8 gigawatts of power-generation equipment for delivery by 2030, including a Baker Hughes agreement for 1 gigawatt of turbines, and remains committed to a 2-gigawatt fleet target. The company reduced 2026 Power Infrastructure growth CapEx guidance to $400 million–$450 million due to improved equipment-cost and delivery visibility, while total net debt stood at approximately $2.6 billion and leverage at 3.1 times.
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Earnings Conference Call
Kodiak Gas Services Q2 2026
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Greetings. Welcome to the Kodiak Gas Services second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Graham Sones, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Graham Sones
Graham Sones
SVP of Investor Relations at Kodiak Gas Services

Good morning. Thanks for joining us for the Kodiak Gas Services conference call and webcast to review our second quarter 2026 results. Joining me from the company today are Mickey McKee, President and Chief Executive Officer, and John Griggs, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. After my remarks, Mickey and John will discuss the steps we've taken towards our 2030 goals, share an update on the commercial progress in our Power Infrastructure segment, and walk through our quarterly results and updated 2026 outlook. We'll open it up for Q&A. Replay of today's call will be available by webcast and phone through August 21st, 2026. Replay details are on the investors tab of our website at kodiakgas.com.

Graham Sones
Graham Sones
SVP of Investor Relations at Kodiak Gas Services

As a reminder, the information discussed today speaks only as of August 7th, 2026, and may no longer be accurate by the time you listen to a replay or read a transcript. The comments made by management during this call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of U.S. federal securities laws. These statements reflect management's current views, beliefs, and assumptions based on information currently available. Although we believe the expectations referenced in these forward-looking statements are reasonable, various risks, uncertainties, and contingencies could cause the company's actual results, performance, or achievements to differ materially from those expressed in the statements made by management. Management can give no assurance that such statements or expectations will prove to be correct. Comments will also include certain non-GAAP financial measures.

Graham Sones
Graham Sones
SVP of Investor Relations at Kodiak Gas Services

Details and reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP measures are included in our earnings release, which can be found on our website. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Kodiak's President and CEO, Mr. Mickey McKee. Mickey?

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

Thanks, Graham. Thanks to everybody joining us today. I want to start, as we do in all meetings at Kodiak, with safety. August is historically the hottest month of the year. A large portion of Kodiak's workforce is called upon to work outside nearly every day, either in the Permian Basin or West Texas, or any other area where we operate. I'd like to remind everyone to be thoughtful when working outside in the summer heat. Studies have shown that you can become dehydrated in as little as 30-60 minutes when working outdoors in hot, humid conditions, which we often face in our operating areas. Dealing with the unrelenting summer heat, it is important to drink plenty of water and take breaks in the shade to give yourself time to recover and cool off.

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

Be sure to let someone know if you start to feel dizzy or dehydrated. These are important steps to maintain a safety-first mindset. It is during the hot summer months that people tend to become intensively focused on power reliability and electricity consumption. Recent examples of grid instability due to swings in data center-related demand have once again demonstrated how critically the U.S. needs behind-the-meter power solutions. A few weeks ago, a transmission line in northern Virginia went out of service, resulting in approximately 3 GW of data center demand disconnecting from the grid, stressing the grid and causing a voltage disruption that was felt in surrounding states. This summer, we have seen the electric grid strain to maintain reliability as the combination of summer heat and the increase in data center power needs stresses the system.

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

More than half of the U.S.'s 50 states have had to declare emergency alerts this summer, asking consumers to conserve power. PJM even had to take it a step further, receiving permission from the U.S. Department of Energy to require data centers and other large customers to turn on backup generation to help support the grid. This dynamic will further intensify in the coming years as data center power demand is expected to more than double over the next five years. This spike in demand is happening at the same time grid operators are increasingly running low on power reserves, as reflected by PJM's consecutive power capacity auctions where they failed to acquire enough power to cover their reliability requirement. Behind-the-meter power solutions are going to have to be a part of the solution to solve our nation's growing power crisis.

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

Judging by the depth and strength of Kodiak's rapidly growing commercial power project pipeline, which I will discuss later, the industry fully understands this dynamic and is eager to engage to contract workable solutions. Now I'd like to update you on the progress we're making on our five-year plan. Given the highly divisible demand for natural gas, plus the long lead times for new large horsepower compression equipment, we laid out a target to organically grow our compression fleet to approximately 5.2 million horsepower by year-end 2030. I'm happy to report that we are well on our way to achieving that goal. For the first six months of this year, we added approximately 80,000 hp of fleet additions. Factoring in the new units we expect to receive through year-end, we're on pace to hit about 170,000 hp for the year.

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

Further, through our strong vendor relationships, we've secured new large horsepower compressor packages for 2027, 2028, and 2029 deliveries to meet our growth goals and expected customer demand. Bottom line, we remain confident in our ability to achieve our targeted annual horsepower growth of 150,000 hp per year, resulting in a compression fleet of at least 5.2 million horsepower by the end of the decade. Shifting to power, we recently announced a multi-year gas turbine supply agreement with Baker Hughes that will deliver Kodiak 1 GW of turbine power by 2030, with an option to increase that order of up to 1.8 GW. There are a lot of reasons why we're excited about this transaction. First, it gives us price certainty for new turbine equipment for the next five years. Additionally, Baker Hughes has a long track record of producing durable equipment that is well-known across the world.

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

Baker Hughes' efficient power generation turbine assets are designed to work on long-term projects, enabling us to deliver dependable power for growing data center and energy infrastructure development. Beyond the equipment, the strategic agreement also covers technician training and parts supply, positioning Kodiak to provide the high-quality service our customers have come to expect. Combining our previously announced power generation purchases with Baker Hughes, plus some additional opportunistic purchases, we have secured approximately 1.8 GW of power generation for our fleet, of which approximately 66% will be turbines, and all of it, which will be available by the end of 2030. Further, we're in discussions to incrementally add to our reset fleet, which would align with our goal of achieving 2 GW of power-producing assets by the end of the decade.

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

Now I would like to discuss the subject that comes up the most in our meetings with investors, the commercial landscape as it relates to power. Since closing the DPS acquisition just four short months ago, we have quickly integrated and retooled our commercial power team to focus on larger scale projects with long-term contracts and attractive returns. With that focused mandate, the team has been meeting with potential customers while high-grading a large, rapidly growing pipeline of projects that significantly exceeds our future power capacity. To give you a sense of how dynamic this industry is, we've added about 2 GW of potential projects in the last month, while at the same time, moving on from opportunities that either don't fit our timeline or aren't the right kind of counterparties for us to commit resources.

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

We feel as confident as ever that the commercial opportunities are real and progressing quickly. As evidence of this, we recently executed a limited notice to proceed with detailed engineering and design work for a data center in West Texas, whose capacity is leased out to a hyperscaler. We've then invoiced them for an initial deposit to reserve power equipment for the project while we negotiate a long-term contract to start supplying power in early 2027, with the ability to scale over time. We'll have more to share on that before the end of the year. Our existing power assets remain in high demand, with our current fleet about 90% utilized as we make ready much of our idle fleet. Power assets that we have on contract continue to be extended as customers are wary of releasing equipment.

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

We recently extended one of our data center commissioning contracts and received an increase in the rate. As we look forward to the second half of 2026, we expect to receive approximately 50 MW of new gen sets before deliveries ramp up in 2027. In preparation for a sizable increase in our Power Infrastructure operations, we've been diligently increasing our technician training program and adding a new power curriculum, further boosting our operational advantage over our peers. Starting this fall, Kodiak's Bears Academy training facility will become one of the only two facilities in the U.S. that are certified to offer a Waukesha electrical mechanical certification on both compressors and gen sets. This certification provides our technicians with the knowledge needed to fully operate and maintain electrical equipment, as well as perform troubleshooting and maintenance on the mechanical equipment.

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

The skilled workforce will be helpful as we start undertaking on-site engine overhauls of power assets and other field-level operations in the second half of the year. This is just one example of where Kodiak is investing in training programs to help create opportunities for our workforce to grow and develop into new, more skilled labor roles. Another example is our internal development of an AI-enabled technical monitoring solutions that not only require us to hire software engineers, but we also need field technicians to help monitor and assess the information. As we've rolled out new technology, we have reallocated experienced technicians into positions in our industry-leading fleet reliability center and our fleet telemetry group. Kodiak's investment in artificial intelligence and machine learning is creating new roles and opportunities, allowing our workforce to grow and develop. Yesterday afternoon, we released our second quarter 2026 financial results.

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

I'll hit a few highlights. Then I'll let John go into more detail. In the Compression Infrastructure segment, we ended the second quarter with 4.4 million revenue-generating horsepower. Average horsepower per revenue-generating unit was 991, the highest among our contract compression peers, and a figure we expect to keep moving higher given our large horsepower focus. Our investments to grow the fleet, along with the divestiture of some small non-core units, drove yet another increase in fleet utilization to 98.2%, another industry-leading metric. In Q2, we delivered strong year-over-year growth in Compression Infrastructure revenue and adjusted gross margin. We realized a 4.5% year-over-year price increase to $23.80 per ending revenue generating horsepower. The strong pricing performance reflects the positive progress we've made recontracting our existing fleet and the underlying demand for contract compression in this tight market with highly visible gas growth.

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

Compression Infrastructure adjusted gross margin was 70%, marking consecutive quarters at or above 70%. The margin gains continue to be driven by strong operational execution and returns on our technology investments. This quarter's margin results were especially impressive considering the negative headwind we faced late in the quarter from higher lube oil prices. Our supply chain team has done a tremendous job planning ahead and negotiating favorable contracts to help us source cost-efficient supplies and reduce price risk. For Power Infrastructure, we exited the quarter with a fleet of 405 MW. We generated revenues of $33 million and an adjusted gross margin of 64.5%. Both were in line with our expectations. As we reprice our legacy business and align our operational philosophies, we look for those margins to increase.

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

In our other services segment, second quarter revenue increased by 47% year-over-year as this quarter's results were positively impacted by station revenue and the addition of some other ancillary services related to power. Strong results from each segment drove adjusted EBITDA of $217 million for the quarter, up 22% year-over-year and a new company record. In summary, our Compression Infrastructure segment continues to deliver solid top-line growth and great margins. We've secured new large horsepower compression packages for 2027, 2028, and 2029 deliveries, and we are already 50% contracted for our 2027 deliveries. We've already started the process of contracting our 2028 deliveries. Technology companies remain focused on a historic build-out in data centers, with the top four hyperscalers increasing capital spending by roughly 80% year-over-year in the second quarter. Total cloud CapEx is tracking to close to $1 trillion in 2026.

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

Given this robust construction boom, our backlog of high-quality commercial opportunities is growing by the day. It's very exciting times for Kodiak, and our energized outlook has never been better. In light of the great results in Q2, and as John will discuss, we are raising the midpoint of our full year adjusted EBITDA, Compression Infrastructure gross margin, and discretionary cash flow guidance to reflect our increased visibility for the second half of the year. We remain excited about the investments we are making today that will drive growth and enhance Kodiak's margins in the years to come. Now I'll pass the call to John to further discuss our financial results and our revised outlook for 2026. John?

John Griggs
John Griggs
EVP and CFO at Kodiak Gas Services

Thanks, Mickey. Our Compression Infrastructure business continues to fire on all cylinders, and we're out of the gate strong in our new Power Infrastructure segment. I'm excited about our near, medium, and long-term future. Let's review the quarter. We reported revenue of $391 million, up 21% year-over-year. The growth can be primarily attributed to the addition of DPS alongside increases in Compression Infrastructure revenue, which itself was driven by continued investments in new horsepower, price increases on legacy equipment, and strong operational execution. In Compression Infrastructure, revenues increased 7% year-over-year and 3% sequentially. Revenue-generating horsepower increased by approximately 24,000 sequentially. We exited the quarter at $23.80 for ending horsepower, up 4.5% year-over-year, reflecting strong underlying industry fundamentals and a great customer value proposition. Along with top-line growth, we continue to deliver on segment margins.

John Griggs
John Griggs
EVP and CFO at Kodiak Gas Services

Compression Infrastructure adjusted gross margin for the quarter came in at 70%, up 170 basis points year-over-year. That's two consecutive quarters of 70% margins. This quarter's results overcame the absorption of a significant increase in lube oil costs driven by the spike in oil prices and crack spreads caused by the war in Iran. As we have highlighted in the past, lube oil is a significant component of the cost of goods sold in the compression business. Given that significance, we've historically been very intentional about closely managing that aspect of our supply chain via preferred supplier relationships. In today's volatile market, that strategy is paying off as we've been able to materially blunt the impact of price spikes in lube oil prices and, in fact, actually raise our guidance for compression adjusted gross margins. Now turning to our new Power Infrastructure segment.

John Griggs
John Griggs
EVP and CFO at Kodiak Gas Services

For the quarter, we generated revenues of $33 million and an adjusted gross margin of 65%, the midpoint of our guidance. We fully expect to see margin expansion as we scale the business and increase efficiency by aligning our distributed power operations with compression. As an example, consider that today, more than half of our power fleet runs on Caterpillar 3500 Series engines, an engine class that our compression field technicians know well since we use essentially the same engine in a significant number of our compression packages. This commonality yields a lot of operational efficiency. This is a competitive advantage and one of the many reasons why we expanded our infrastructure platform into this business. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter of $217 million was yet another new company record, and adjusted net income was $54 million, or $0.55 per diluted share. Let's turn to capital expenditures.

John Griggs
John Griggs
EVP and CFO at Kodiak Gas Services

Maintenance CapEx was approximately $20 million in Q2, right in line with our expectations. Other CapEx, excluding a $43 million non-cash long-term capital lease for a new Midland super center, was $11 million. We are excluding the Midland lease expenditure from our CapEx guidance, given its non-cash nature. Compression Infrastructure growth CapEx was in line with expectations at $67 million, the vast majority of which was for new units. Power Infrastructure growth CapEx was $134 million, a portion of which was related to power generation orders that we spoke to last quarter, as well as initial down payments on the Baker Hughes turbine framework agreement. Our multi-year agreement with Baker Hughes provides us with many benefits, not the least of which is enhanced certainty on the cost to achieve our 2-GW fleet goal by the end of the decade.

John Griggs
John Griggs
EVP and CFO at Kodiak Gas Services

We think an average cost across our fleet build program of about $1.2 million per megawatt before balance of plant is still the right figure. Discretionary cash flow for the quarter was $163 million, substantially higher than what we've seen in the past. This was driven by record adjusted EBITDA, alongside lower interest expense following May's equity offering, as well as a $13 million tax benefit. Moving to the balance sheet, net debt was approximately $2.6 billion at quarter end. In May, we raised approximately $836 million after expenses in primary equity, allowing us to fully fund our power business plan while protecting our balance sheet. Our leverage ratio at quarter end, after netting out cash, was 3.1x, the lowest in our company's history.

John Griggs
John Griggs
EVP and CFO at Kodiak Gas Services

Going forward, we think that the strength of our balance sheet, plus our access to multiple sources of relatively low-cost capital, provides us with yet another meaningful competitive advantage as we build out the power franchise of our energy infrastructure business. Finally, our board declared a dividend of $0.49 per share that would be paid later this month. Based on our second quarter discretionary cash flow, our dividend remains well covered at north of 3x. Turning to our updated 2026 guidance, we raised our Compression Infrastructure adjusted gross margin range to 69%-70.5%. We expect pricing improvements alongside technology and training-induced operational efficiency to enable us to overcome continued lube oil and fuel headwinds. We're also increasing the outlook for adjusted EBITDA to a range of $830 million-$860 million. Our outlook for discretionary cash flow has increased to a range of $570 million-$600 million.

John Griggs
John Griggs
EVP and CFO at Kodiak Gas Services

The sizable increase is due to a lot of the factors we previously discussed, including higher adjusted EBITDA, lower interest expense, and lower taxes. Moving to CapEx, we're increasing our Compression Infrastructure CapEx to a range of $280 million-$300 million. Following our equity offering, we just recently seized the opportunity to spend $33 million to terminate operating leases on 43,000 hp of high-quality, contracted large horsepower units. Essentially, we're adding large horsepower compression to less than a six times multiple at a substantial discount to replacement cost and using our favorable ABL interest rate to do so. That explains the updated guidance. For Power Infrastructure, we're reducing our capital expenditure forecast to $400 million-$450 million. The reduction is a reflection of the tremendous progress we've made in securing power to get to our 2 GW by 2030 goal.

John Griggs
John Griggs
EVP and CFO at Kodiak Gas Services

We've got markedly increased certainty on cost plus timing, and our partnership with Baker Hughes facilitates better cash flow management on our turbine purchases. Also, we now expect to receive approximately 50 MW of new power gen sets in the second half of 2026. Our outlook for other CapEx remains unchanged and excludes the previously discussed $43 million non-cash Midland facility capital lease that I mentioned earlier. I'll hand it back to Mickey.

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

Thanks, John. I'd like to finish by saying that I'm extremely excited about the direction of the company. Our financial performance continues to exceed expectations. The contract gas compression market fundamentals remain strong with demand continuing to ramp up. Our right to win in the Power Infrastructure segment is highly visible with clear operational, supply chain, and financial advantages.

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

Our future customers realize this too, as we're building a lot of positive momentum in our Power Infrastructure segment, which I'm eager to share with you at the appropriate time. Thanks for your participation today, and now we're happy to open the line up for questions. Operator?

Operator

Thank you. At this time, we'll conduct the Q&A session. To ask a question, press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we pull for questions. Our first question comes from Eli Jossen with JPMorgan. Please state your question.

Eli Jossen
Eli Jossen
Analyst at JPMorgan

Howdy, everyone. Appreciate the update regarding an NTP with the West Texas data center linked to the hyperscaler, just maybe a little bit of color on what differentiates you from your peers, which are clearly working towards the same goal? Then what milestones should we expect prior to a contract targeted before year-end?

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

Hey, Eli. How are you doing? Thanks for the question this morning. This is Mickey. I think that in just the short amount of time that we've owned the power platform here, I think it's pretty obvious to a lot of the customers that we're talking to and potential customers that we're talking to here that we bring a level of expertise with operating rotating equipment, right? One of the reasons why we thought DPS was such an attractive platform was their engineering capabilities and their commercial capabilities as well. I think that's playing out in real-time and backing those capabilities with Kodiak's operational expertise and balance sheet is resonating well with potential customers. It's exciting times here. As far as milestones to get into a contract, I'd like to be able to give you some firm timeline there, we're working towards a solution right now.

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

Looking at potentially starting to install equipment in the first quarter and, hopefully, have something to be able to announce more firm to you before the end of the year.

Eli Jossen
Eli Jossen
Analyst at JPMorgan

Great. Then maybe pivoting over to the compression business. I think we've seen some headwinds across the space for your peers and maybe with respect to lube oil costs. Can you just talk about kind of operationally what you guys are doing that allows you to avoid those types of headwinds and raise the guide? Thanks.

John Griggs
John Griggs
EVP and CFO at Kodiak Gas Services

Sure, Eli, it's John. We're proud of the performance we had in the quarter, and it kind of caused us to bump the guide from a Compression Infrastructure perspective. Really, the answer is multifaceted. I'd say the biggest driver that allows us to overcome high lube oil prices, which are real, is it's the continued incremental gains from pouring this next-level training in operational artificial intelligence and machine learning across the fleet. As we scale that out and roll it out, we're seeing true results. I say it all the time, what we see is we truthfully break things less. We fix things when they need to be fixed, not just based on hours and time, and we have higher labor productivity. The combination of those things allows us to continue to eke out modest gains as time rolls on.

John Griggs
John Griggs
EVP and CFO at Kodiak Gas Services

As I pivot to the lube oil piece, one of the big strategies that Kodiak's deployed, that Mickey and Chad and the team kind of started to implement years ago, is to really think about partnering with vendors. The examples of that would be Caterpillar, some of our dealers that we work with. Now going forward, some Baker Hughes. We've done the same thing in our lube oil contracts, and we use our scale to our advantage. We get a lot of benefits, and one of them is that we think we've got favorable pricing on lube oil. Look, it's a real issue. We're going to continue to overcome it, but we're pretty confident as we look to the rest of the year in terms of the guidance that we gave.

Eli Jossen
Eli Jossen
Analyst at JPMorgan

Great. Appreciate the color, guys.

John Griggs
John Griggs
EVP and CFO at Kodiak Gas Services

Thank you, Eli.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from Jim Rollyson with Raymond James. Please state your question.

Jim Rollyson
Jim Rollyson
Analyst at Raymond James

Hey, good morning, guys. Nice solid results again, as usual. I guess, Mickey, maybe spend a minute on power here. Obviously, you've got a lot of equipment secured. You kind of talked about the 50 MW coming in this year. Can you kind of elaborate on the delivery timeline when we get into 2027 through 2030 based on the 1.8 GW you've got secured, just to kind of understand how that scales up?

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

Hey, good morning, Jim. Appreciate you listening in this morning. We've got the 50 MW coming at the end of the year. Like I said, we've only owned this business for four months, and one of our early priorities was securing the power we needed to grow the business. We've kind of told everybody that the megawatts over the next four years comes in pretty ratably at about 400 MW a year, give or take a little bit. It's pretty consistent with that, but I would say that the 2027 deliveries are probably a little bit more back-end loaded in 2027, just because that's when the first of the kind of the big Baker Hughes turbines start coming in and kind of early in the fourth quarter.

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

Like I said, we'll take delivery of another 400 MW next year. It's mostly back-end loaded for next year, and then it starts to level out through 2028 through 2030.

Jim Rollyson
Jim Rollyson
Analyst at Raymond James

Got it. That's very helpful. As a follow-up, I guess, John, you talked about kind of being on track from an equipment standpoint of around $1.2 million a megawatt before balance of plant. I'm curious, maybe Mickey, as you're talking to some of these data center guys and hyperscalers, what kind of balance of plant requirements are you looking at? What kind of reliability do they need? Just trying to understand where this overall capital needs goes that you will, I presume, price into your return equation.

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

Yeah, we'll absolutely price it into our return equations. Typical projects are all going to have basically the same kind of balance of plant that'll be associated with the transformers, switch gears, SCRs for emissions reduction, and that kind of thing. It's a little bit grayer on the battery and the best backup systems. Some people need them, some people don't. Some are handling them themselves, some want us to handle them. The standard balance of plant of the projects that we've looked at will end up in that $1.6 million per megawatt range. Then if we need, give or take a little bit, and if we need battery backup on top of that the customer is looking for, then it'll be a little bit higher from there.

Jim Rollyson
Jim Rollyson
Analyst at Raymond James

Appreciate the context. Thank you.

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

Yeah, thanks, Jim.

Operator

Your next question comes from Neal Dingmann with William Blair. Please state your question.

Neal Dingmann
Neal Dingmann
Analyst at William Blair

Morning, guys, and Mickey, John, great update. My first question is just, again, I want to turn to compression specifically. John, you announced and talked about today that strategic announcement of acquiring those previously leased horsepower. Could you remind me, besides now that, is there still potential for accretive purchases of compression, either owned by your customers both on the E&P and midstream side or just other E&Ps and midstream out there?

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

Hey, good morning, Neal. This is Mickey. We opportunistically exercised this capital lease buyout this quarter. That was something that really made sense for the company and using our lower cost capital than what we were paying from some previous capital leases that we had inherited from CSI. After the equity offering with a little bit lower leverage and some dry powder, we thought that was a prudent thing to do. Looking forward, there's definitely some other opportunities out there that we're looking at for some additional purchase lease backs. I don't know that they're imminent or not. There's definitely some discussions going on and certainly we'll look to jump on those opportunistically if they materialize.

John Griggs
John Griggs
EVP and CFO at Kodiak Gas Services

I will just chime in just to avoid confusion because this topic has had some people already ask us questions about it. We bought out operating leases, in effect, converted them into owned assets. We didn't buy out capital leases. Just a simple financial transaction.

Neal Dingmann
Neal Dingmann
Analyst at William Blair

Helpful, John. John, maybe sticking with you, just quick one on shareholder return. Is it fair to assume obviously we'll pay again, a lot of the money you talked about the upcoming, or you and Mickey talked about the upcoming CapEx for power, is that I would call it until you hit that inflection, most of the dollars would be going that or debt repayment, and then at some point you would increase shareholder return? Or how actively are you looking at watching the shares and potentially thinking about opportunistic buybacks?

John Griggs
John Griggs
EVP and CFO at Kodiak Gas Services

Sure. I'll kind of cover that. It's a wide-ranging topic. Obviously, it involves a lot of conversations with our board. Before we bought the DPS business, we were pretty aggressive about buying back some shares. Some of that was because we thought it was the right thing to do and our shares were undervalued. Some of it was to support EQT as they were selling their way down over the last 18 months or so. From a dividend perspective, we always kind of thought, look, let's pay out about 35% of our discretionary cash flow in the form of a dividend. Given our growth algorithm and how predictable our business was, that all kind of translated into about upper single digits annual growth for several years in dividend growth. With the addition of the power business, A, we're going to have a lot of CapEx to spend.

John Griggs
John Griggs
EVP and CFO at Kodiak Gas Services

We think it's great high returning CapEx that builds that infrastructure platform and power. B, we're going to grow faster, and so we can't tie the DCF to the dividend anymore. The way that we've articulated it internally, and I think the right answer from a capital allocation perspective is we think we want to pay an attractive dividend that grows. We want to manage the balance sheet. We want to fund the growth in the power business. You saw that we announced kind of an equivalent or a flat dividend this quarter. As we kind of grow the business over time, we'd like to think that we can grow it on an annual basis at an attractive level. Kind of leave it at that. From a share repurchase perspective, we'll always be opportunistic.

John Griggs
John Griggs
EVP and CFO at Kodiak Gas Services

Now that we of course, got lower leverage, like that affords us the ability to do so. We do have a lot of CapEx to spend to execute on our business plan in power, so we're going to be leaning into that.

Neal Dingmann
Neal Dingmann
Analyst at William Blair

Very helpful. Thanks, guys.

John Griggs
John Griggs
EVP and CFO at Kodiak Gas Services

You bet.

Operator

Your next question comes from Theresa Chen with Barclays. Please state your question.

Theresa Chen
Theresa Chen
Analyst at Barclays

Morning. Going back to your comments, Mickey, on high grading the power generation commercial pipeline, can you walk us through your process here? What criteria are you using to prioritize opportunities? How has that evolved over the past few months? More specifically, what are the key trade-offs you consider when deciding which projects to advance versus which to deprioritize?

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

Good morning, Theresa. Thanks for the question. Really the two big criteria that we're looking at, number one is the creditworthiness of the counterparty, and who the contract will be with. We want to make sure as we're making pretty sizable investments right here, that we're protecting any downside risk here for the business and our shareholders. The other one is just how close is the data center basically to securing a tenant and how serious those conversations are ongoing. We obviously want to make sure that we're not getting in a situation where we're putting a lot of time and effort into a project that is more of a kind of a kick in the tires type of project and something that's real and it's got legs and has the ability to accelerate and contract quickly.

Theresa Chen
Theresa Chen
Analyst at Barclays

Understood. You previously discussed unlevered returns above 15% and build multiples of roughly 5x EBITDA. As customer conversations have advanced and project designs have become more defined, has your view on those economics changed at all? Any early indication of expected contractual terms in terms of duration or other important factors to keep in mind?

John Griggs
John Griggs
EVP and CFO at Kodiak Gas Services

Theresa, it's John. I'll answer the first part and then hand it back to Mickey for the second part. We spent a lot of time in the last four months refining, I'll call it, the unit/project economic model, as well as kind of pressure testing that model with conversations with customers. The short answer is what we said before, we stand behind. The five-year paybacks, 15%+ internal rates of return with the ability to kind of think about it differently depending upon duration and customer type, et cetera. Those all still hold.

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

As far as contract duration here, we're focusing on the longer-term contract duration. We're seeing pretty typically 10-15-year type contract terms in the preliminary discussions that we're having with customers. There might be some instances where we would agree to a seven or eight-year contract, just depending on the kind of deal it is and the terms of the agreement.

Theresa Chen
Theresa Chen
Analyst at Barclays

Thank you very much.

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

Thanks, Theresa.

Operator

Your next question comes from Doug Irwin with Citi. Please state your question.

Doug Irwin
Doug Irwin
Analyst at Citi

Hey, team. Thanks for the question. Maybe a quick follow-up on Theresa's question there. Just curious how we should think about the size of some of these deals you're working through right now? Just curious where you see yourself having the biggest competitive advantage in the market? I guess in general, should we expect just a couple larger chunky deals for this gigawatt of equipment you've secured or maybe a handful of smaller contracts?

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

Hey, good morning, Doug, it's Mickey. It is a pretty wide spectrum of type deals that we're looking at here. This first one on the limited notice to proceed that we have in place is relatively small because we don't have that much power to put to work in the first quarter, being 90% utilized. It's kind of a sub-100 MW type deal, but with the ability to scale over time. We like that as a kind of a first bite-sized chunk to get on the board here. After that, like I said, the other opportunities we're looking at are a pretty wide spectrum of different things.

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

Anywhere from a couple hundred megawatts of long-term kind of contracted commissioning equipment that would be kind of a 10-15-year deal that would be more mobile in nature to permanent primary islanded behind-the-meter solutions for up to a gigawatt scaled over time. Like I said, it's pretty typical. There's a lot of opportunities out there, and as we high-grade these, we're looking at several different things here. With the commonality being, hey, we want to make sure we lock this stuff in for long term, and we want to make sure that it's with the right counterparty.

Doug Irwin
Doug Irwin
Analyst at Citi

Got it. That's helpful. Maybe a follow-up on compression contract and saw one of your peers this quarter announce a pretty large eight-year contract. You've also announced a few longer-term deals so far this year. Just curious if you could talk about what kind of demand you're seeing for longer duration contracts and whether you might be in a position to keep terming out your fleet a bit.

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

Yeah, we absolutely would love to do that and are in some conversations with some other customers. It's really a kind of a customer-by-customer preference here. Some want to keep them a little shorter to preserve some optionality, which in our minds is not a bad thing either because it gives us the ability to churn the fleet a little bit and kind of high-grade customers there if we want to do that. With the right customers in the right place, we certainly are talking about longer-term deals with them too.

Doug Irwin
Doug Irwin
Analyst at Citi

Got it. Thanks for the time.

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

Yeah, thanks, Doug.

Operator

Your next question comes from Jackie Colettis with Goldman Sachs. Please state your question.

Jackie Colettis
Jackie Colettis
Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Hi. Good morning. Thank you so much for the time. First, just wanted to go back to power. On the West Texas data center project where you executed the limited notice to proceed, could you provide a little bit more color on the counterparty structure there, specifically what kind of counterparty is the data center developer and the nature of their commitment with the underlying hyperscaler?

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

Jackie, we're probably not ready to divulge that publicly yet, but we're paying very close attention to making sure that the counterparty is creditworthy counterpart and it has the appropriate amount of risk for the size of the project, for sure.

Jackie Colettis
Jackie Colettis
Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Understood. Then just pivoting to compression. Given that peers are increasingly formalizing long-term spending plans, how do you view a competitive landscape for large horsepower compression? Does this multi-year visibility change your approach to securing engine supply or alter pricing leverage when negotiating those long-term contract extensions?

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

Yeah. Deliveries are still in almost 200 weeks out. We're having to plan our business in the compression much like power right now and have a much longer-term kind of strategic approach here than we have typically in the past. Yeah, we are planning out three, four, five years in advance right now, and that's what gives us the visibility into the ability to secure that equipment. Having great relationships with the vendors like Caterpillar and with our packagers that are having shop space availability and that kind of thing. We're having to plan out quite a bit further and then, with the visibility that you see into specifically Permian natural gas growth in the future is feeding LNG. We're really looking at a long-term forecast here that we feel really good about and that we can continue to execute on.

Jackie Colettis
Jackie Colettis
Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Great. Thank you so much. Appreciate the time.

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

Thanks.

Operator

Your next question comes from Julien Dumoulin-Smith with Jefferies. Please state your question.

Analyst at Jefferies

Hey, thanks, guys. This is Alex over, we're on for Julien. Just really quick back on the power CapEx. First, is all of the reduction in power CapEx purely driven by just the down payment? Separately, it sounds like maybe that $1.6 million per megawatt, including balance of plant, has come up a little bit versus your previous expectations of $1.4 million-$1.5 million. Is that fair to say?

John Griggs
John Griggs
EVP and CFO at Kodiak Gas Services

I'll take that in order. Number one, when we bought DPS and came out of the gates, we knew kind of mentally where we wanted to land in terms of how much power we wanted to acquire and when. We hadn't actually negotiated many of those deals yet. We'd had a few conversations. As we rolled through the quarter, we strategically basically gotten extremely comfortable and great visibility on our 2 GW by 2030 target, and that allowed us to say, "Okay, we can take this guidance down to a lower level because we now know what we're going to pay." I will say with the Baker Hughes agreement, I go back to the comment that I made earlier, where our supply chain strategy has always been, let's find great partners and work with them. Let's trade volume for price, so to speak, too, in that sense.

John Griggs
John Griggs
EVP and CFO at Kodiak Gas Services

We were able to kind of work with Baker Hughes, get some favorable payment terms, and that also mentally, again, probably lined up with what we hoped to achieve. That's what the second aspect allowed us to kind of tuck in that guidance in 2026. I did want to correct Mickey earlier when he said the $1.6 million. I think it's $1.5 million is probably where I would say, and he did say kind of plus or minus. The answer is, I don't think it's gone up from where we originally were last quarter.

John Griggs
John Griggs
EVP and CFO at Kodiak Gas Services

I think we're still right in that zone at call it $±1.2 million a megawatt for the raw power and kind of round up to the $1.5 million, again, plus or minus, including balance of plant with a heck of a lot of certainty because we basically locked this in through 2030. Yeah. Alex, I'd probably just say that maybe I was thinking about some specific projects that I was looking at some numbers on. I would say that if that balance of plant does come in a little higher than what we expected early on, maybe that's going to come with incremental returns, has been pretty well documented amongst us and our peers.

Analyst at Jefferies

Got it. Yeah, that's super helpful. Then just really quick, do you guys have any thoughts on this Texas moratorium on data center grid connections that was announced this week, and if you've heard anything from potential customers in the wake of that announcement?

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

Yeah, I think that that announcement of this moratorium on these data center interconnections that have been requested, that's something in the range of what, 450 GW on a system that has 95 GW of capacity today. That does nothing but benefit behind the meter power solutions providers like ourselves. I understand why they're doing it. I think it's a smart thing to do to kind of flush out what are real projects and what are more speculative projects with this audit here. I think it's a good thing, and we certainly have heard initial feedback that there is data centers and customers that are saying, "Man, behind the meter power solutions are going to be key to the future of our businesses." We think it's positive for us and our peers, to be honest with you.

Analyst at Jefferies

Awesome. Thanks, guys.

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

Yeah, thanks, Alex.

Operator

Your next question comes from Derrick Whitfield with Texas Capital. Please state your question.

Derrick Whitfield
Derrick Whitfield
Analyst at Texas Capital

Good morning, guys. Thanks for your time. I wanted to start with power for my first question. While the focus of today's discussion has been on data centers with your power offering, could you speak to how your discussions are going in other areas?

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

Yeah. Hey, Derek. Good morning. This is Mickey. We absolutely have got some other opportunities for some microgrid-type stuff in the Permian Basin, are progressing some conversations with some customers there, too. We think that's going to be a really attractive opportunity for us going forward, especially with the recent fleet that we're complementing with the turbines here as well. It leaves us that optionality to be able to chase both of those. As you're seeing more and more of the limitations on power, we're having a lot of conversations with oil and gas customers on microgrid opportunities as well.

Derrick Whitfield
Derrick Whitfield
Analyst at Texas Capital

Great. As my follow-up, I wanted to focus on compression. As you guys think about the amount of natural gas pipelines that are coming on this year and over the next couple of years in the Permian, under what circumstance would you guys consider accelerating compression build-out to meet customer demand?

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

It's a good question, Derek. I think that with engine lead times and deliveries where they're at, I wouldn't say that our capacity for future growth is locked in. We will certainly look at projects if they come to us that are incremental to that, if we have the ability to procure equipment and have the balance sheet capacity as we have to evaluate those opportunities and opportunistically jump on them if they make sense. I'd probably say in the shorter term, over the next year or two, it's going to be pretty hard to get our hands on additional equipment, just because of lead times. If those opportunities arise, we'll certainly evaluate them and certainly if a customer wants us to engage in some sort of conversation around purchase leasebacks or something like that's an opportunity for us to certainly deploy more capital in the compression side.

John Griggs
John Griggs
EVP and CFO at Kodiak Gas Services

I'm going to tack on there, too. After the equity offering, our leverage ratio kind of bottomed out at around 3x. We've said a lot over the course of the last quarter that we kind of have a line of sight towards peaking out in the mid threes under the base business plan as we fund the Power business. That's squarely in the middle of our long-term leverage targets. I think nothing would make us happier than to find wonderful purchase leaseback opportunities or maybe a chunky customer opportunity or two on the compression side. That's just such a wonderful business with great steady returns that we'd love to find those opportunities to fund a little more, we absolutely have the balance sheet capacity to do it.

Derrick Whitfield
Derrick Whitfield
Analyst at Texas Capital

Very helpful. Thanks for your time.

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

Thanks, Derek.

Operator

Your next question comes from Derek Podhaizer with Piper Sandler. Please state your question.

Derek Podhaizer
Derek Podhaizer
Analyst at Piper Sandler

Hey, good morning, guys. Wanted to go back to the West Texas data center conversation. You mentioned that initially it could be sub 100 MW just given your current fleet and scale that over time in line with more of your delivery schedule, appreciate you don't want to give out too much information until we get a contract here. I'm curious, for this specific project, do they have aspirations to ultimately connect to the grid and integrate with the grid? Or do you think this would always be primary power behind the meter? Just maybe a little bit more color on kind of the future generation mix as we think about this project over time.

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

I think this project, like a lot of projects that we're looking at, ends up with a mix of grid power and behind-the-meter power. There are some that are talking about exclusive behind-the-meter power for the long term here, but I think that there's a lot of thought process right now going around with some of these projects, that is, "Hey, we need behind-the-meter power, but we also, in the future, are going to supplement with some grid power." That's where a lot of people's heads are at the moment. With this recent West Texas moratorium on grid interconnects, I think that may shift more towards sole behind-the-meter power solutions going forward.

Derek Podhaizer
Derek Podhaizer
Analyst at Piper Sandler

Got it. Okay. That's helpful. I know one of the benefits to the Kodiak platform is about the technician crossover on the power generation assets, particularly for the recip side of things. Given you're leaning a bit heavy or more so into the turbine side, backed by the Baker Hughes framework agreement, how should we think about really developing your technicians leaning on Baker for their technicians and expertise, given you're going to be going more towards like 75%, 25% turbines versus recips?

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

Yeah, this is absolutely, going forward, going to be a partnership approach with Baker Hughes on developing technicians in-house for Kodiak. Part of that framework agreement expressly addresses Baker Hughes bringing in in-house training for Kodiak and Kodiak technicians, which we think is a real upside for that agreement and why we think the partnership with Baker Hughes is really quality for us going forward. We've got a little bit of time here before the first turbines start showing up, we're going to aggressively start that turbine curriculum and training program that is going to get those technicians up to speed and get those people in place early on. We think that's a huge advantage there and we'll continue to develop those people and have high-quality personnel to operate this equipment.

Derek Podhaizer
Derek Podhaizer
Analyst at Piper Sandler

Great. Thanks, Mickey. I'll send it back.

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

Thanks, Derek.

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from Elvira Scotto with RBC Capital Markets. Please state your question.

Elvira Scotto
Elvira Scotto
Analyst at RBC Capital Markets

Hey, good morning, everyone. On the power side, you talk about the 2 GW by 2030, but you also talk about there's tremendous opportunity in excess of that. Can you do more than 2 GW by 2030 or is that capped by equipment availability? Would you consider maybe other bolt-on acquisition opportunities in distributed power?

John Griggs
John Griggs
EVP and CFO at Kodiak Gas Services

Yeah. I'll take this and I suspect Mickey and I will tag team it. I don't want to go back and repeat what I said before, but we do have the balance sheet capacity to continue to scale, number one. Number two is, we're right out of the gates on this and we've gotten out of the gates strong, but at Kodiak, we pride ourselves on being great operators, kind of keeping our head down, thumbs up, and kind of trying to avoid the distractions. We've got the next little while to get our foundation underneath us to continue to operate this business successfully. Mickey says it all the time.

John Griggs
John Griggs
EVP and CFO at Kodiak Gas Services

We want to basically take this wonderful engine that we've created in the compression business and take that mental mindset and apply it to the power business so we have a well-oiled machine down the road. That truly is kind of where we're focused. That said, I have every expectation that we'll think about how can we build a moat around this power business such that we can continue to basically incrementally gain ground or build a bigger moat relative to the competition. That could involve kind of strategic tuck-in acquisitions of technologies, of capabilities, of services, of things that we need in order to service our customers day in and day out. It could include adding additional capacity.

John Griggs
John Griggs
EVP and CFO at Kodiak Gas Services

Last thing I'll say on this is what we fundamentally believe is that the power business will not have 50 or 100 different competitors. Ultimately, there's going to be a handful of people that are successful, and they're going to be successful because they know what they're doing and they take care of their customers. They've got nice balance sheets. They can scale. They're ultimately someone that the counterparties can say, "These folks can take care of my needs." We think that's what Kodiak's proven in the compression business, and it's where we're headed in the power business. I would have every expectation that over time, we'll be a consolidator in that space.

Elvira Scotto
Elvira Scotto
Analyst at RBC Capital Markets

Great. Thank you for that. Then just moving over to the contract compression side. You talked a little bit about some of the things that you're doing to mitigate the cost increases, and your contract services margin guidance moves higher. If lube oil costs hadn't been a headwind, where do you think margins could have been and just how much higher can those margins go?

John Griggs
John Griggs
EVP and CFO at Kodiak Gas Services

You're going to test my CFO math in public, which scares me. I would tell you that relative to kind of where we were at the beginning of the year, kind of to where we're going to probably land at the end of the year, it's kind of a $1.5 million a month or so uptick, in terms of the cost. It's really substantial. If you got back into a normalized market, I guess that's about, what, $18 million of annualized margin that you would benefit from had that not occurred.

Elvira Scotto
Elvira Scotto
Analyst at RBC Capital Markets

Great. Thank you very much.

John Griggs
John Griggs
EVP and CFO at Kodiak Gas Services

Thanks, Elvira.

Operator

Your next question comes from James Larkin with Bank of America. Please state your question.

James Larkin
James Larkin
Analyst at Bank of America

Hi, yes. Thanks for taking my question. I guess, first question here is just on the total 2 GW supply. It seems like right now we're a little more tilted towards engines than I think maybe the long-term goal was, and I think, with an additional kind of reset deal maybe coming down the pipeline, maybe we're going to be a little more engine-weighted. I wonder if you could just talk about that, and kind of how you're seeing maybe data center developers talk about the difference between engines and turbines? Thanks.

John Griggs
John Griggs
EVP and CFO at Kodiak Gas Services

I'll answer the first point, then I'll turn it back to Mickey to kind of comment on what the customers are telling us. The 2 GW target, we still think we're going to stand by and it'll be about three-quarters turbines and about one-quarter recips. Obviously the Baker Hughes is a big chunk of the turbine orders. We've also got some Solar Turbines equipment as well too. Then on the recips side, I think, I'm not sure if we publicly announced kind of who all we're buying from, but we clearly have a whole bunch of CAT stuff and we're looking at other parties too. We are hoping to kind of lock into some agreements as we roll through this year to secure the balance of the recips power by 2030.

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

As far as customer kind of preference there, right now, speed to power is one of the most important things that our customers and potential conversations are having. Quite frankly, at this point, customers are relatively agnostic to turbine versus recips power.

James Larkin
James Larkin
Analyst at Bank of America

Great. Thank you. I guess my second question here is, a lot of developers now are kind of purchasing their own equipment or have purchased their own equipment. Is there an opportunity maybe outside of the 2 GW target that you guys have to operate some of that equipment for them?

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

Yes. Absolutely. There definitely is. There's a lot of these folks that have procured equipment that they've got coming in. They can hire somebody to help them install it. On a day-to-day operational piece, that's something that Kodiak brings a lot of credibility to the table on, there's a lot of ongoing conversations about us taking care of other people's equipment alongside ours.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from Sunil Sibal with Seaport Global Securities. Please state your question.

Sunil Sibal
Sunil Sibal
Analyst at Seaport Global Securities

Yeah. Hi. Good morning, everybody, and thanks for squeezing me in. A lot of good discussion today. I wanted to understand a little bit on the gas infrastructure part of the distributed power business. Is that something that you guys are looking at or responsible for when you're looking at these projects? Is that something that the data center client is bringing on? Obviously, based on the location at which you are looking at these projects, how do you see that part of the business kind of playing out?

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

Yeah. Hey, good morning, Sunil. Thanks for the question. We absolutely have the expertise in-house to do that. I will tell you that the projects that we're looking at right now, especially in the short term, most of the customers that we're talking to have already procured that and already have that covered. We're not looking at any projects right now where we would have to procure fuel for the generation equipment. Like I said, we certainly have the expertise in-house to do so and some relationships with some partners that would want to partner up to do that if need be.

Sunil Sibal
Sunil Sibal
Analyst at Seaport Global Securities

Got it. Thank you.

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from Sebastian Erskine with Rothschild & Co Redburn. Please state your question.

Sebastian Erskine
Sebastian Erskine
Analyst at Rothschild & Co Redburn

Yes, good morning. Thanks for squeezing me in. A lot has been asked, but just to follow up on the opportunity around balance of plant. It seems like that's an area of great interest. In terms of your communications, is that something that the majority of your prospective customers are inquiring about? I guess how easy is it for you to procure that additional equipment, whether it's battery energy storage systems or switchgears or transformers, how easy is that to procure? Then potentially, I appreciate it's early, but is there any sort of way of quantifying that potential kind of uplift on the potential EBITDA profile of those contracts?

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

As far as the second part first, Sebastian. Hey, good morning. It's hard to quantify the potential EBITDA uplift right there just because every one of these projects are very different. There is a baseline of balance of plant that's going to be needed in basically every one of these projects with transformers, switchgears, and SCR with emissions reduction capabilities. We've already begun procuring that balance of plant to line up with the orders that we've got. Then to make sure that we've got some batteries in inventory basically, for lack of a better word, to go after some of these projects as well. John hit earlier on our supply chain strategy.

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

We're going to take the same sort of strategy to make sure that we've got the things that we need to be successful in the business, and make sure that we have all the long lead items ordered and taken care of on the balance of plant that would line up with turbine and recip deliveries there. We've already begun procuring that stuff. That balance of plant stuff could be anywhere between four months and 18-24 months lead time. We're working with suppliers on that and make sure that we've got everything we need to execute on these projects when they materialize.

Sebastian Erskine
Sebastian Erskine
Analyst at Rothschild & Co Redburn

Perfect. No, that makes total sense. The second question is just on the customer mix. Do you get a sense of sort of is it predominantly you're communicating and speaking with hyperscalers or potentially partnering with powered land developers and data center builders? I guess one of your peers announced a JV with a land developer, and a relationship with a sort of builder. Just get a sense of kind of the customer mix, who you're communicating with, where the interest is, and how diverse that potential pipeline is.

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

It's kind of a mixed bag there, Sebastian. We're talking to directly the hyperscalers right now. We're talking to data center developers, and we're also talking to some powered land developers as well. Obviously, we're going to handicap each of those opportunities based on how far progressed their projects are and who the counterparties are that we'll end up contracting with. Like I said, it's a mixed bag right now. We're talking to several in each of those parties that we discussed all of the above is probably the answer.

Sebastian Erskine
Sebastian Erskine
Analyst at Rothschild & Co Redburn

Perfect. Thanks very much for the color, Mickey, and congrats on the results today. Thank you.

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

Yeah. Thanks, Sebastian.

Operator

Thank you. We have reached the end of the question and answer session. I'll turn the call over to Mickey McKee for closing remarks.

Mickey McKee
Mickey McKee
President and CEO at Kodiak Gas Services

Thanks, operator, and thanks for everyone participating in today's call. We look forward to speaking with you again after we report our results for the third quarter.

Operator

Thank you. This concludes today's call. All parties may disconnect. Have a good day.

Executives
    • Graham Sones
      Graham Sones
      SVP of Investor Relations
    • Mickey McKee
      Mickey McKee
      President and CEO
    • John Griggs
      John Griggs
      EVP and CFO
Analysts