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USAC, USA Compression Partners LP Common

Pipelines & Midstream capital-intensive Distress / turnaroundCyclical

We are one of the largest independent providers of natural gas compression services in the U.S. in terms of total compression fleet horsepower.

We provide compression services to our customers primarily in connection with infrastructure applications, including both allowing for the processing and transportation of natural gas through the domestic pipeline system and enhancing crude oil production through artificial lift processes.

As such, our compression services play a critical role in the production, processing, and transportation of both natural gas and crude oil.

Latest annual: FY2025 10-K

USAC · USA Compression Partners LP Common

The business

What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.

Revenue · FY2025

$998M

+5.0% YoY · 8% 5-yr CAGR

Vital signs · TTM, with 5-yr average

Revenue $1.1B 5-yr avg $826M

Operating margin 30.3% 5-yr avg 27.1%

Owner-earnings margin 28% 5-yr avg 20%

Free cash flow margin 28% 5-yr avg 20%

The business in brief

read the 10-K →

What this business is and what moves its needle, from its own SEC filings.

Situation: Distress / turnaround. Thin interest coverage, or operating cash burned against real debt, across the record. The balance sheet carries this situation; the debt schedule sets the clock. Cyclical. Margins collapse and recover repeatedly across the record; a single year, good or bad, misstates the through-cycle earning power.
What moves the needle: Operating margin has run about 22% through the cycle, a solid margin the cost base and competition set as much as the price does. The margin is cyclical, swinging between −95% and 31% over the years, so the through-cycle figure carries more than any single year — and the balance sheet at the trough more than the peak. Capital spending runs about 22% of sales, below what it charges for depreciation, so the return earned on what it sinks into that plant weighs as much as the margin. Read this kind of business on rate base and the allowed return. On its own account, the filing leans hardest on customer concentration, set against the numbers in what the filing emphasizes, below.

Every line is arithmetic on the company's filings, shown in full in the sections below.

The record

Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.

The record, 2016–2025

realized figures from each filing · older years to the left

2016’16	2017’17	2018’18	2019’19	2020’20	2021’21	2022’22	2023’23	2024’24	2025’25	TTMTTMMar 2026
											Income statement
$264M	$277M	$584M	$698M	$668M	$633M	$705M	$846M	$950M	$998M	$1.1B	RevenueRevenue
9%	9%	12%	9%	9%	9%	9%	9%	8%	7%	8%	SG&A / revenueSG&A/rev
($27M)	($263M)	$65M	$168M	($465M)	$141M	$169M	$232M	$294M	$307M	$329M	Operating incomeOp. inc.
−10.2%	−94.9%	11.2%	24.1%	−69.6%	22.3%	24.0%	27.4%	31.0%	30.7%	30.3%	Operating marginOp. mgn
($27M)	($265M)	($11M)	$39M	($595M)	$10M	$30M	$68M	$100M	$111M	$129M	Net incomeNet inc.
—	—	—	5%	—	8%	3%	2%	2%	4%	5%	Effective tax rateTax rate
											Cash flow & returns
$130M	$136M	$226M	$301M	$293M	$265M	$261M	$272M	$341M	$394M	$426M	Operating cash flowOp. cash
$155M	$167M	$214M	$231M	$239M	$239M	$237M	$246M	$265M	$285M	$302M	DepreciationDeprec.
($2M)	$230M	$11M	$19M	$641M	$854K	($22M)	($65M)	($40M)	($6M)	($8M)	Working capital & otherWC & other
$62M	$157M	$267M	$171M	$109M	$45M	$134M	$239M	$205M	$117M	$123M	CapexCapex
23.3%	56.9%	45.6%	24.5%	16.3%	7.1%	19.0%	28.2%	21.6%	11.8%	11.4%	Capex / revenueCapex/rev
$68M	($21M)	($40M)	$129M	$184M	$220M	$126M	$33M	$136M	$277M	$303M	Owner earningsOwner earn.
25.9%	−7.7%	−6.9%	18.5%	27.6%	34.8%	17.9%	3.9%	14.4%	27.8%	27.9%	Owner earnings marginOE mgn
$68M	($21M)	($40M)	$129M	$184M	$220M	$126M	$33M	$136M	$277M	$303M	Free cash flowFCF
25.9%	−7.7%	−6.9%	18.5%	27.6%	34.8%	17.9%	3.9%	14.4%	27.8%	27.9%	Free cash flow marginFCF mgn
											Balance sheet
$14M	$4M	$99K	$10K	$2K	$0	$35K	$11K	$14K	$9M	$15M	Cash & investmentsCash+inv
$32M	$33M	$76M	$80M	$64M	$68M	$84M	—	—	—	$80M	ReceivablesReceiv.
$30M	$33M	$89M	$92M	$85M	$86M	$94M	$115M	$134M	$134M	$154M	InventoryInvent.
$13M	$1M	$24M	$22M	$14M	$23M	$35M	$40M	—	—	$32M	Accounts payablePayables
$49M	$65M	$140M	$150M	$135M	$131M	$142M	$75M	$134M	$134M	$203M	Operating working capitalOper. WC
$73M	$74M	$218M	$231M	$200M	$205M	$186M	$226M	$235M	$237M	$347M	Current assetsCur. assets
$56M	$47M	$150M	$189M	$170M	$188M	$174M	$188M	$191M	$187M	$224M	Current liabilitiesCur. liab.
1.3×	1.6×	1.5×	1.2×	1.2×	1.1×	1.1×	1.2×	1.2×	1.3×	1.5×	Current ratioCurr. ratio
$36M	$253M	$619M	$619M	$0	—	—	—	—	—	$117M	GoodwillGoodwill
$1.5B	$1.7B	$3.8B	$3.7B	$2.9B	$2.8B	$2.7B	$2.7B	$2.7B	$2.6B	$3.7B	Total assetsAssets
$685M	$783M	$1.8B	$1.9B	$1.9B	$2.0B	$2.1B	$2.3B	$2.5B	$2.5B	$3.0B	Total debtDebt
$671M	$779M	$1.8B	$1.9B	$1.9B	$2.0B	$2.1B	$2.3B	$2.5B	$2.5B	$3.0B	Net debt / (cash)Net debt
-1.3×	—	0.8×	1.3×	-3.6×	1.1×	1.2×	1.4×	1.5×	1.6×	1.7×	Interest coverageInt. cov.
1.3%	1.5%	2.0%	1.5%	1.3%	2.5%	2.3%	2.6%	1.7%	0.4%	0.3%	Stock comp / revenueSBC/rev
											Per share
—	—	—	—	96.8M	97.1M	97.8M	101M	115M	121M	143M	Shares out (diluted)Shares
—	—	—	—	$6.90	$6.52	$7.21	$8.41	$8.30	$8.23	$7.57	Revenue / shareRev/sh
—	—	—	—	$-6.14	$0.11	$0.31	$0.68	$0.87	$0.92	$0.90	EPS (diluted)EPS
—	—	—	—	$1.90	$2.27	$1.29	$0.33	$1.19	$2.28	$2.11	Owner earnings / shareOE/sh
—	—	—	—	$1.90	$2.27	$1.29	$0.33	$1.19	$2.28	$2.11	Free cash flow / shareFCF/sh
—	—	—	—	$1.13	$0.47	$1.37	$2.37	$1.79	$0.97	$0.86	Cap. spending / shareCapex/sh

Per-share growththe realized rate an owner's share compounded

	9-yr	5-yr
Revenue / share	+3.6%/yr (5-yr)	+3.6%/yr
Owner earnings / share	+3.7%/yr (5-yr)	+3.7%/yr
Capital spending / share	−3.0%/yr (5-yr)	−3.0%/yr

The record, charted

FY2016–2025

Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked.

Share count

121Mpeak FY2025

Net debt ÷ owner earnings

9.1×peak FY2023

Owner earnings vs. net income

Owner earningsNet income

The accountant's number, and the cash an owner can take; the gap is the tell.

$277Mowner earningsvs.$111Mnet incomelow FY2018

Where the cash went

ReinvestBuybacksDividendsAcquisitionsRetained

Each year's operating cash, by what management did with it: the mix, and how it drifts.

FY2016FY2025

Owner-earnings bridge

FY2021–FY2025cash-flow statement, SEC EDGAR →

Net income is the accountant's number; owner earnings is the cash an owner could take out. The walk between them, off the cash-flow statement, and whether the gap is widening or holding.

In fiscal 2025 the business turned $111M of profit into $277M of owner earnings: more cash than the profit line showed, after the non-cash charges and the capital it put back in.

Reported net income$111M

Owner earnings$277M · 28% of revenue

	FY2025	FY2024	FY2023	FY2022	FY2021
Reported net income	$111M	$100M	$68M	$30M	$10M
Depreciation & amortizationnon-cash charge added back	+$285M	+$265M	+$246M	+$237M	+$239M
Stock-based compensationreal costnon-cash, but a real cost	+$4M	+$17M	+$22M	+$16M	+$16M
Working capital & othertiming of cash in and out, other non-cash items	−$6M	−$40M	−$65M	−$22M	+$854K
Cash from operations	$394M	$341M	$272M	$261M	$265M
Capital expenditurecash put back in to keep running and to grow	−$117M	−$205M	−$239M	−$134M	−$45M
Owner earnings	$277M	$136M	$33M	$126M	$220M
Owner-earnings marginowner earnings ÷ revenue	28%	14%	4%	18%	35%

Owner earnings is the cash an owner could pull out without starving the business: operating cash less the capital it must spend to hold its position . The cash-flow statement also adds stock comp back as non-cash, but it is a real cost paid in shares; counted as the expense it is (less $4M), owner earnings is nearer $273M.

Maintenance capex is estimated as depreciation where a growing business invests above it; free cash flow is the figure the scorecard's free-cash margin reads.

III

Quality & stewardship

Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.

Owner’s Scorecard

FY2025 10-K · source on SEC EDGAR →

Will it survive?

Can it pay its interest? 1.6×

Thin

Operating income $307M ÷ interest expense $187M

What this means
Operating profit covers interest, but with little room. A bad year, a refinancing at higher rates, or a revenue wobble closes the gap fast.
How heavy is the debt, net of cash? $2.5B · 8.2× operating profit

Heavy net debt

Cash $9M − debt $2.5B

What this means
Netting $9M of cash and short-term investments against $2.5B of debt leaves $2.5B owed, about 8.2× a year's operating profit. Net debt is the leverage figure that matters: the cash is already set against the debt. Strategic or illiquid investments aren't counted here.
How long is cash tied up? —

Not enough data

What this means
The filing data didn't include the inputs for this check.

Is it a good business?

Return on invested capital —

Not enough data

Industry peers: median 6%

What this means
The filing data didn't include the inputs for this check.
Owner-earnings margin 18%

High through the cycle

10-yr median margin, range -8%–35%; latest $277M = operating cash $394M − maintenance capex $117M

Industry peers: median 16%

What this means
What an owner could take out without starving the business: operating cash less the maintenance capital it must spend to hold its position — Buffett's owner earnings. That's 28% of revenue this year, a 18% median across 10 years. Treating stock comp as the real expense it is (less $4M of SBC) leaves $273M.
Are earnings backed by cash? 3.54×

Cash-backed

Cash from ops $394M ÷ net income $111M

What this means
How much of reported profit showed up as operating cash. Above 1× is reassuring; well below suggests earnings lean on accruals. One year is noisy, growth and working-capital swings distort it, and this is operating cash, not free cash. Watch the multi-year trend.

How is the cash used?

Where do the earnings go? —

Not enough data

What this means
The filing data didn't include the inputs for this check.
Investing or harvesting? 0.41×

Harvesting

Capex $117M ÷ depreciation $285M

What this means
Descriptive, not a grade. Above ~1× means investing faster than assets wear out (growth, or, sustained for years, today's earnings carrying less depreciation than tomorrow's will). Below means spending less than it's wearing out (efficiency, or a melting asset base). The ratio won't tell you which; the filings will.

Graham’s defensive tests · 0 of 5 met

Graham’s numerical criteria for the defensive investor (The Intelligent Investor, ch. 14), run on the filings. A floor of safety, not a buy signal; many fine modern businesses fail his strictest liquidity rules by design.

Adequate size Miss

Revenue ≥ $2B · $998M

What this means
Big enough to weather a storm. Graham's 1972 floor was ~$100M of sales (≈ $700M today); we use a $2B revenue line as a conservative modern stand-in.
Strong liquidity Miss

Current ratio ≥ 2× · 1.27×

What this means
Current assets at least twice current liabilities, near-term bills covered without touching the business. Strict by design: many cash-rich modern firms run leaner and miss it, holding their cushion in longer-dated securities.
Conservative debt Miss

Debt ≤ working capital · $2.5B vs $50M WC

What this means
Graham's rule that borrowings not exceed net current assets. Capital-heavy and buyback-heavy firms routinely fail it, read it next to interest coverage, not alone.
Earnings stability Miss

A profit every year (10-yr record) · 4 loss years

What this means
Graham wanted earnings in each of the past ten years, the stability a defensive owner leans on.
Dividend record Miss

Uninterrupted dividends · none paid

What this means
An unbroken dividend was Graham's mark of durability. He wanted twenty years; the filings show about ten, and a single suspension breaks the streak. Non-payers, many fine modern compounders, fall outside his defensive net by design.
Earnings growth —

Earnings +33% over the record · —

What this means
Earnings were negative early in the record, a growth rate isn't meaningful.
Moderate price —

P/E ≤ 15 and P/E × P/B ≤ 22.5 · decided by the price

What this means
Graham's valuation gate, the wall he kept between a sound business and a sound investment. Three-year average earnings are $0.64/share (latest year $0.77), the averaged base the calculator's gate runs on. Enter a price in “What the price implies” just below for the P/E, P/B, and whether it clears. But this is the rule Buffett outgrew: there's no hard P/E law, and a wonderful business can deserve a far richer multiple if the thesis holds, treat it as the bargain-hunter's floor, not a verdict on the price.

Durability & moat, 2016–2025

Whether the record’s returns held, and what the capital reinvested earned.

Profitable years 6 of 10

What this means
Lost money in 4 year(s), look at what happened there before trusting the average.
Operating margin −31% → 30% (3-yr avg ends)

In the filing’s words The record and the words agree: the margin widened and the filing attributes the gain to its own pricing, not volume alone.

What this means
Through the cycle the operating margin widened — about −31% early to 30% lately, median 22% — pricing power intact or improving.
Owner earnings growth +27%/yr

What this means
Owner earnings grew about 27% a year over the record.
Worst year 2017 · −94.9% op. margin

What this means
Operations went underwater in 2017, understand why before trusting the good years.
Share count +2.5%/yr

What this means
The share count is rising, dilution works against you on a per-share basis.

Does AI threaten the moat?

Low contestability

The moat is physical, regulated or balance-sheet-funded, the kind AI cuts costs within but does not contest.

In its own filing Framed as a capability

The filing positions AI as something the company uses, not something it fears.

“Growth in power demands from the development of artificial intelligence is also expected to increase demand.”

AI is unlikely to contest a moat that is physical, regulated or balance-sheet-funded; here it reads more as a cost tool than a threat, and the company is using it that way.

Read from the filing's own risk factors, paired with the industry's structure under its SIC code; the durability is read above, the price below.

All figures as filed; the source filing is linked above.

Current Position

as of the latest quarter, Mar 31, 2026

Can the business pay what it owes this year, off the freshest balance sheet: the quality of the assets, the debt actually coming due, and what a low ratio means here.

Current assets$347M

Cash & short-term investments$15M
Receivables$80M
Inventory$154M
Other current assets$98M

Current liabilities$224M

Accounts payable$32M
Other current liabilities$193M

Current ratio1.55×all current assets ÷ what's due · Graham looked for 2×

Quick ratio0.86×stricter: inventory excluded

Cash ratio0.06×strictest: cash alone against what's due

Working capital$123Mthe cushion left after near-term bills

Revenue, latest quarter vs. a year ago+35.1%the freshest read on whether the business is still growing

Current ratio, recent quarters1.3× → 1.5×

Deeper floors

Net current asset value($3.1B)Graham's net-net: current assets less all liabilities

Debt incl. operating leases$3.0B$18M of it operating leases

Deferred revenue$85Mcustomer cash collected before delivery; operating float

From the company's latest filing.

How the cash was used, 2016–2025

Over the record, the business generated $2.6B of operating cash; how management split it reads as a reinvestor, most operating cash is plowed back into the business.

Reinvested$1.5B · 57%
Retained (debt / cash)$1.1B · 43%

Source of fundingOperating cash
Operating cash covered reinvestment and returns; over the span debt rose $2.3B and cash and short-term investments rose $341K.
Net change in share count47.8%
The diluted count rose from 97M to 143M: issuance (stock pay, deals) outran any buybacks, so owners were diluted on net.
Dividend record—
No dividend line was reported in the filing data over the span; the record here neither confirms nor rules out a payout.

Buybacks are gross of stock issued to staff; the share-count line above is the net of that, the figure that decides whether owners gained. The average price paid blends a year of purchases (and any accelerated repurchase), so it is close, not exact. The record of where the cash went and on what terms.

Acquisitions & goodwill

from the balance sheet & the 10-year cash-flow record

Goodwill grows only when a company acquires and falls only when it concedes it overpaid. The size of that bet, the cash put into buying rather than building, and how much has already been written off.

Goodwill & intangibles$187M7% of all assets; the premium carried on the balance sheet for businesses acquired

Against book equity—goodwill is this share of book equity; the rest is the company’s own retained and paid-in capital

Cash spent acquiring$0over 10 years buying other businesses, against $1.5B of capital spent building

$842M written down across 2 years (2017, 2020): goodwill the company has already conceded it overpaid for, charged against earnings. A write-down costs no cash (the cash went out when the deal was signed), but it is management marking its own past judgment to market.

Goodwill, acquired intangibles and equity from the latest balance sheet; acquisition spend and write-downs summed across the 10-year record, from the company's own filings.

Management, ownership & pay

From the proxy: how much of the business the people running it own, and how they are paid.

Stock-based compensation$4M
The slice of the business handed to employees in shares this year, 0% of revenue, equal to 1% of operating profit. Buffett's oldest accounting fight: this is compensation, compensation is an expense, real whether or not the headline earnings admit it. One trap: the cash-flow statement adds SBC back, so the operating cash, and the owner earnings drawn from it, are flattered by exactly this amount; counted as the cost it is, what an owner keeps is lower.

Inverting the record

Invert: instead of why USA Compression Partners LP Common is a good business, the question is what would make owning it a mistake, and whether those marks are in the record. Disconfirming tests across 2016–2025.

2 of the 5 tests turned up something to look into; the other 3 came back clean.

Look hereDid the share count rise anyway?47.8%
Diluted shares grew 47.8% over 2016–2025. Owners were diluted on net; each share owns less of the business than it did. Read the buyback line beside this one, not on its own.
Look hereAre "one-time" charges a yearly habit?10 of 10 years
Management took an impairment or write-down in 10 of the last 10 years, $898M in all. A charge taken almost every year is not one-time; it is the business — past deals coming due, and an admission the assets were worth less than what was paid. Munger's rule: when the "one-time" keeps happening, it is the business. Read it beside the goodwill the company still carries.

And these came back clean

Is it less profitable than it was?
Did debt outgrow the business?
Did receivables and inventory outpace sales?

Each test is read from the filings and is noisy alone; a flag can mark a cyclical trough or a year of heavy investment as easily as a problem. The filing says which.

Peers, Pipelines & Midstream

The same industry, side by side on owner economics. Each figure is a through-cycle median, so a peak or trough year can’t distort it; the group median at the foot is the line to read each against.

Company	Revenue	Gross margin	Op. margin	ROIC	Owner earn. margin
KNTKKinetik Holdings Inc.	$1.8B	30%	8.1%	3%	22%
AROCArchrock	$1.5B	-25%	17.8%	6%	16%
KGSKodiak Gas Services	$1.3B	—	28.7%	6%	6%
DTMDT Midstream Inc. Common Stock	$1.2B	—	51.1%	5%	59%
EEExcelerate Energy Inc.	$1.2B	—	19.9%	7%	14%
AMAntero Midstream Corporation	$1.2B	—	56.4%	8%	70%
USACUSA Compression Partners LP Common	$998M	—	23.1%	—	18%
SMCSummit Midstream Corporation	$562M	73%	12.9%	4%	8%
Group median	—	—	21.5%	—	17%

The price

What a price has to assume.

What the price implies

reverse-DCF

Type today's close and see the owner-earnings growth you'd have to believe to justify it, beside what USA Compression Partners LP Common has delivered.

USA Compression Partners LP Common’s latest year runs above its own through-cycle margin — the reported figure may flatter a peak. So the tool opens on the through-cycle base, Graham’s averaging cutting both ways; clear the toggle below to read the latest year exactly as reported.

Today’s price $

Through the cycle, USA Compression Partners LP Common earns about $182M on its 18.2% median owner-earnings margin. This year’s 27.8% margin runs above that; the reported figure may flatter a peak you'd be paying on. Normalize, below, values the price on that through-cycle figure rather than the latest year. It comes pre-checked here for that reason, the same rule that already normalizes a trough; clear it to price the year as filed.

Base Normalize · through-cycle ($182M) Net of stock comp (−$3M)

—

The assumptions Required return 9% Years of high growth 10 Terminal growth 2.5%

9.0% = the 4.55% 10-year Treasury (Jul 15, 2026) + 4.45 points of equity premium. The rate you require is yours to set.

Enter a price above to run it.

Implied by the price—

Owner-earnings growth · ’21→’25+5%/yr

Owner-earnings growth · ’16→’25+27%/yr

Owner-earnings yield—

Against a high-grade bond: Graham’s yardstick bond yield%

Prefilled with the 10-year Treasury (4.55%, as of Jul 15, 2026). Edit it for today’s exact figure, or a AAA corporate yield.

Graham measured a stock against the bond you could own instead, the heart of his margin of safety. Enter a price above to weigh the owner-earnings yield against this bond.

Owner earnings $303M on 145M shares outstanding, per the 10-Q cover, as of 2026-05-01; net debt $3.0B. The base opens on the through-cycle figure (the latest year sits above the record’s own median, and Graham’s averaging cuts both ways); clear Normalize to use the year as filed. Net of stock comp treats option pay as the expense it is. The dials set the multiple a growth belief justifies; the price, and every dollar on this page, is yours.

Weigh USAC against another business →

Cite: Owner Scorecard, "USA Compression Partners LP Common (USAC), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/USAC, data as of 2026-07-09.

Manual order: ← URI its page in the Manual USAR →

Industry order: ← TRP the Pipelines & Midstream chapter WES →