Ranger Energy Services at Midwest Ideas Conference: Strategic Growth and Innovation

On Tuesday, 26 August 2025, Ranger Energy Services (NYSE:RNGR) presented at the 16th Annual Midwest Ideas Conference. The company, known for its focus on production services, highlighted its strategic initiatives, including innovations in electrified rigs and robust shareholder returns. While the company boasts a strong balance sheet and high cash flow conversion, it faces challenges in market recognition of its cash flow capabilities.

Key Takeaways

• Ranger Energy Services focuses 80% of its operations on production services, with limited exposure to completions.
• The company has a strong balance sheet with zero net debt and $120 million in liquidity.
• Introduction of "Echo Rigs," electrified workover rigs, aims to improve safety and reduce emissions.
• Ranger has repurchased over 15% of its shares since 2023, emphasizing shareholder returns.
• The company is exploring strategic acquisitions to grow its market share from 20% to 30%.

Financial Results

• Ranger reported a trailing twelve-month free cash flow conversion rate of 67%, converting $83 million of EBITDA into $56 million of free cash flow.
• The company maintains zero net debt as of June 30, with $48 million in cash on the balance sheet.
• Since 2023, Ranger has deployed $48 million in share repurchases and dividends, reducing its share count from 24.8 million to 21.8 million.
• Share repurchases were executed at an average price of $10.50, representing 15% of the company.

Operational Updates

• Ranger operates the largest active and marketable fleet of high-spec rigs in the Lower 48, catering to major oil and gas producers.
• The company has introduced "Echo Rigs," with contracts signed for two rigs. These electrified rigs are designed to enhance safety and lower emissions.
• The cost for converting an "Echo Rig" is $1.8 million, with the first two expected to be delivered by August.
• Ranger’s Torrent business, which monetizes natural gas that would otherwise be flared, doubled its EBITDA last year and continues to grow.

Future Outlook

• Ranger is committed to returning at least 25% of free cash flow to investors while exploring strategic M&A opportunities.
• The company plans to expand its core high-spec rig business and expects "Echo Rigs" to gain traction in the next 2-3 quarters.
• Aiming to grow its market share from approximately 20% to 30% through acquisitions.

Q&A Highlights

• In response to questions about acquisitions, CFO Melissa Kugel emphasized that acquisitions are a matter of "want" rather than "need," to grow market share.
• The company is open to acquiring competitors to achieve synergies and expand its market presence.
• Questions about the conversion time and cost for "Echo Rigs" revealed a conversion cost of $1.8 million, with a delivery timeline of about seven months.

For a detailed understanding of Ranger Energy Services’ strategic initiatives and financial performance, refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - 16th Annual Midwest Ideas Conference:

John McNamara, Account Manager, Three Part Advisors: My name is John McNamara. I’m one of the account managers here at three part advisors. And with us today, the next up is Ranger Energy Services. Ranger provides high spec well service rigs, wireline, and ancillary oilfield services across The US. Trades on the NASDAQ under the symbol r n g r.

With us today are Chief Financial Officer, Melissa Kugel and VP of Finance, Joe Meiss. With that, I’ll turn it over to Melissa. Thank you. Sorry.

Melissa Kugel, Chief Financial Officer, Ranger Energy Services: That’s okay.

Joe Meese, VP of Finance, Ranger Energy Services: It’s all good. Thank you for the introduction. As mentioned, my name is Joe Meese. I am the vice president of finance with Ranger Energy. Ranger Energy was founded in 2014 by a former army ranger, hence the name.

Despite my haircut, I am not former military, but deep respect amongst our organization for our military. We trade on the NYSE. We’re also one of the founding members of NYSE Texas. We were there last week. Very exciting.

In 2017, Ranger went public. As part of that, we, rolled up a group of well service providers specializing in high specification rigs. What is a high spec rig? A high spec rig is, not a drilling rig. That’s something that that we often hear or we often get compared to.

If you think about it as an analogy of a car, a drilling rig is the manufacturer of that vehicle. We like to think of ourselves as the mechanic of the well. High spec rigs go into a well after it’s already been drilled and perform workover services. In 2017, we went public. We, after that, built internally a wireline business.

That wireline business, grew through 2017 all the way into COVID. And then from there, we ultimately, made some acquisitions in 2021. In 2021, we acquired two wireline companies. We also acquired Basic Energy Services assets out of bankruptcy, which was really a defining point for our business. Basic had three main businesses.

They had a water business, they had a California business, and they had everything else. Ranger bought everything else, that really propelled us into the growth that we saw from 2021 to today. When we think about our business, we like to think of ourselves as a production focused, well service company. And that is distinct among us, and and that’s something that we’ll focus on a little bit more here going forward. But we we have limited exposure to the completion space.

About 80% of our work is related to production services. Only about 20% of our work is related to completions, and we think that’s very important for us as a through cycle service provider. The ability to weather tranches and troughs in the cyclical oil and gas industry is something that we show up with every day and that’s proven out through both our EBITDA and our free cash flow. When you look at us, we’ve got high free cash flow conversion. The numbers up here we’ve on a trailing twelve month basis converted about 67% of our EBITDA into free cash flow, 83,000,000 down to 56,000,000 there.

We also have a very, very sterling balance sheet, which again, we think is extremely important in the oilfield services space. It’s also important for us as a growth and M and A driver in the future. One of the other things that we’ve done as an oilfield services company, you’ll see up here, we’ve got dividend program. One of our biggest things is our capital returns framework. We have a commitment to our investors to return capital and that free cash flow that we generate to our shareholders.

That’s done in two ways. We’ve done the strategic share repurchase program. We started that again here in the first quarter of this year the second quarter of this year. And we also offer that dividend. Right now, it’s about 1.9%.

So when we think about our business, the big priorities that we’ve got for shareholder value, we’re gonna try to maximize that free cash flow generation. Those high spec rigs that we talked about are very long lived assets, which means that there’s low capital expenditures associated with them on a go forward basis. So once we’ve got that fleet in place, which we already do, there’s a lot of opportunity for us to then turn our our EBITDA into that free cash flow. We also wanna grow our leading market position. We think of ourselves as the largest well service provider here in The United States.

We operate the largest active and marketable fleet of high specification rigs here in the Lower 48. Going back to the last slide actually, when we think about where our business is located, it’s really down that center of The United States. So we don’t have exposure in California. We don’t have exposure in the Appalachians. Really, we have a lot of exposure here in Texas.

We operate in South Texas, Haynesville, all the way up through ScoopStack in Oklahoma. We have a huge presence in the Permian Basin, which is obviously the premier oil and gas basin in The United States. We operate up into the Denver Julesburg through Colorado and then up into the Bakken. Our client base is, one of our, major leading market positions as well. We do work for all of the major oil and gas producers in The United States.

Our top four customers, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Oxy, ConocoPhillips, that offers a lot of stability to our business and again provides that through cycle return that I talked about earlier. I already mentioned it prioritizing shareholder returns, that committed framework that we’ve got calls for at least 25% return of our free cash flow to our investor base, whether it be through share repurchases or through our dividend program. We returned 33% of cash flow year to date and historically, we’ve returned over 40%. Maintain financial flexibility, I mentioned our balance sheet. As of June 30, we had zero net debt.

We’ve got a $120,000,000 of total liquidity. And all that, we’ve got about $48,000,000 in cash on our balance sheet, which again allows for us that through cycle capability as well as strategic m and a opportunities as they present themselves. What do we do? So I talked about high spec rigs a little bit. High spec rigs are are interesting.

You can see them driving over the road. They’re almost like transformers. They’re trucks. They go to a well site, rig up. A high spec rig is different than a traditional conventional oil field services rig.

As part of the Shell revolution, there was a thesis that Ranger was built upon that longer laterals, longer wells in the shale plays are going to require these high specification rigs. What a high spec rig is? What makes it high spec? That it’s got higher mast heights. It’s able to clear higher levels on the well site.

It’s also got stronger horsepower to be able to pull and push in those longer laterals. High Spec Rigs is our anchor business. We’ve got, again, those top four customers here in The United States. We operate in the premier plays across The United States as far as oil and gas basins are concerned. We also have excess capacity in our rig fleet.

So as the opportunity presents itself to grow, and we’ll talk about this a little bit more as Melissa gets into some of the rig construction work that we’re doing right now, there is opportunity for us to continue to expand our core business in that flagship high spec rig business. In addition to high spec rigs, I already mentioned wireline. Wireline was a core business for us from 2017 when it was first built through 2020. Over the last couple of quarters, we’ve spoken about this at length in some of our investor presentations and our earnings calls, wireline has been challenged as the market has become extremely fragmented and there’s been a much lower barrier to entry than there historically had been previously. Back in the day, you needed an ATF license in order to operate some of the explosives that are associated with wireline, but the prevalence of some on demand perf guns and the ability to deliver those to the site really lowered that barrier to entry.

And in doing so, it’s been a a difficult and challenged service line for us, but it’s something that we continue to push forward on as it does offer complimentary services to us and it is something that we think has some optionality for us in the future. In addition to wireline and high spec rigs that I’ve already mentioned, we’ve got a processing and ancillary services solution. And really what that is is complementary to our flagship high spec rigs business. Within the ancillary services, we’ve got a rental and fishing tools. So these are assets that we will rent along with the high spec rigs that we’ve got.

We’ve got a coil tubing business that operates primarily in the DenverJulesburg Basin. It’s a very good business, kicks off free cash flow and EBITDA for us. It’s really something that we acquired as part of the basic transaction. And then within ancillary, we’ve also got Torrent, which is a bit of a unique service line for us. Torrent operates a fleet of mechanical refrigeration units.

These are rented by customers. They go out to sites where you would otherwise flare the natural gas that is a byproduct of crude oil production. We offer an opportunity for oil and gas producers to monetize that gas that would otherwise be wasted. We take the natural gas. We knock out the liquids.

We sell those back out into the marketplace. The remaining gas process actually goes into generators that are out there on-site, offers a lot of opportunity for infield power solutions. There’s been some interesting opportunities in the AI boom and crypto space with some Bitcoin mining and things like that. That business doubled its EBITDA last year. It’s on track to continue to grow this year, and we think that it’s got some really great opportunity ahead of it.

And those are really our three main complimentary service segments. I mentioned that we’ve got a production thesis. And when we look at this chart here, this is from Spears and some management estimates. There’s several parts of a well’s life cycle. And the drilling is only one part of it, but that’s often what people think of.

They see the Baker Hughes drilling rig counts, and they think, hey. Rigs. That’s like what Ranger does. But in reality, our rigs are completely different than that. We work in that production oriented space there in the middle.

What that really allows for is that through cycle return, the ability to weather the storm. Our exposure is significantly less volatile as far as oil and gas price is concerned because when we look at this next chart, most spending in The United States in the lower 48 has been on those production dollars. It’s the lowest cost of oil for a producer. The well’s already drilled. It’s already producing.

So sending us in there on our workover rigs to improve the well’s performance is really the lowest cost dollar a barrel for an oil and gas producer. That’s where a lot of the dollars get spent first. And with that, I will turn it over to Melissa to talk a little bit more about what we’re doing in technology.

Melissa Kugel, Chief Financial Officer, Ranger Energy Services: Thanks, Joe. Joe mentioned earlier and for those of us that have followed I don’t know if you guys can hear me. For those of us that, we’ve met with before that we’ve talked about Ranger, we’ve talked about the fact that we have idle asset capacity. We’ve also talked about sort of technology. We’ll frequently get the question from investors about like, okay, so what’s next?

Are you scared of technology, electrification that it’s taken place in Frac? And we worked a lot, started this sort of labor of love, I would say, in 2024 of what would it look like to try to electrify a workover rig. We worked with several different service providers, and what we thought was imperative was actually using existing asset capacity. So we still have, I think, Joe might be able to correct me here, over 100 idle rigs that we have inherited through acquisitions that are not deployed actively in the field and generating returns. So we thought, well, rather than build new, which you’ve seen a lot happen in the frac space, we have to find a way to convert our existing rig fleet and these idle rigs await in a path towards monetization.

So we started working on this project last year, found a vendor that was able to work with us for a brand that we actually acquired through the basic asset acquisition, it’s called the Taylor Rig brand. We these these rigs are exclusively because the basic basic bought Taylor, so consequently Ranger owns Taylor. We have these licensed rigs that are Ranger rigs that we can send to a vendor and they’ll actually convert these rigs into electrifying them. What does that actually do? Well, our customers are really keen on electrification not for the same reasons as frac electrification.

So when frac spreads began to get electrified, there was a huge economic driver. There was millions of dollars of frankly just fuel savings in that electrification path. Our rigs and one of the reasons they’ve not been electrified yet is because they don’t consume the same amount of energy. Because we’re not destroying rock, because we’re not operating in extremely high pressure, we’re more just pushing and pulling into existing wells where those mechanics, right, we just don’t consume the same amount of energy. So there hasn’t been the same drive.

Nonetheless, what we’ve realized over the past couple of years is operating a rig in an electric fashion actually provides for tremendous safety improvements. So so the drums and the crown going up and down and is responding to electric is is a much safer profile than hydraulic systems and mechanical systems that have historically been used. There is fuel savings. It’s less, but the electrification of the rig provides for not only an emissions profile, not only some fuel savings profile, but also a much safer operation and a much quicker operation we think ultimately because of the safety profile. So we have developed and branded what’s called an echo rig and this is unique to Ranger.

So, we have a vendor that is exclusively working with us for this conversion program for this. It was a huge moment for us earlier this year. We signed two contracts that are really first of their kind in the space for two rigs that we committed to converting this year. Both of those contracting contracts include provisions for guaranteed returns from customers, effectively giving us an uplift and a payback on that capital investment required for converting these rigs. This is a path to growth that Ranger frankly didn’t have a year ago.

We’ve been acquiring and growing market share on the back of a lot of our E and P consolidation that we’ve seen in the space. This is a new path of growth to us that allows us to use a lot of existing asset capacity and do it in a way where returns are really, really supported by our customers who are helping us pay for this electrification. We see demand and we’re having conversations with customers for lots of these rigs. So when I say lots, I don’t mean it in the saying in the saying of a lot of rigs, I mean it in I want five, I want 10 of these rigs. And so we’re really excited when we look to the future.

The demand signals are strong, the customer conversations are deep, we’ve already set a benchmark by signing two of these contracts and when we look forward two and three quarters from now, we see a world where this starts to really take hold and electrification in this space really starts to move forward. Alongside that, sort of a lesser known is we have what we call our Tango system. This has actually been built out for several years now, but truly no competitor really has it. And it’s an electric ticketing system which may not sound that exciting, but this allows us on a well site to track what’s happening operationally in a way that none of our competitor base can. And it’s been in place for several years.

Our customers really like it. They allow data analytics in a platform. That’s given us the basis to continue to build and bolt on from there. So we talk about our overwatch system, you can kind of see our logo in the bottom, but this is using AI. So it’s using a new technology brought to bear where we’re actually setting up camera systems.

What this allows us to do when we’re on a well site is actually be able to see is that crew member wearing his hard hat. Is this other crew member going into a zone that’s been blocked off electronically and digitally speaking, it’ll send an alarm. We had a situation just in the past several weeks where there was a gentleman who actually walked through what we call a red zone or an exclusion zone, walked into harm’s path. The camera caught it and it set off an alarm. They were well intentioned, they were actually bringing water over to their supervisor completely unaware of the harm they had put themselves in.

And what this camera allows us to do is go to those crews and say, hey, you put yourself in harm’s way and provide for a new coaching and, learning opportunity creating for a safer overall environment. It makes our employees like working for Ranger and it like our customers really feel better about the service that they’re getting from us and the safety. On on sort of high spec rigs, I’ll spend one more slide talking about it because it really is our we call our bread and butter our core business. Joe mentioned earlier declining rig count and I’m not sure if I have a pointer here. I’m gonna come out a little bit.

Oh, I might not because I have a webcast. But if you look at the white line across the graphed on the left, you’ll actually see drilling rig count. And I was talking to an investor earlier today and he said, well, what’s your benchmark? We frequently get compared to your benchmark and your trend line should follow drilling rig count. And Joe spent a lot of time telling you where there’s a little bit of truth to that, but it’s not all truth and we don’t swing as hard.

So you can see drilling rig count really took a first step down in 2024 and it’s taken yet another step down this year. And Ranger’s results have been really resilient through that, where you’ve seen much of our competitor and peer group start to see more dramatic swings back because of that installed production base, because we’re the maintainers of the rig. On the other chart, what you actually see is our EBITDA and our margin. We’ve actually been able to hold margins very steady through effectively what’s been pressure in the space the past eight quarters or so and show up with very consistent EBITDA profile through that. Moving on, we’ve talked about customers and I think this has been a real needle mover for us the past two years.

In many ways, you hear E and P consolidation one plus one doesn’t equal two, it equals 1.75 And that’s really because as E and P combine as E and P companies combine, they’ll actually do less work. They’re gonna drill less well wells than they would have when they stayed as independents. That’s true. However, what Ranger has found is in a space that has been historically occupied by a lot of independents, independents are happy to work with a plus well service company. It’s cheaper, I don’t have the same risk profile, but I don’t need that.

Right? When you start to work for the likes of the super majors, when you have Exxon and Conoco and Chevron in your customer list, they expect a higher standard quality. And there’s fewer of us that can actually provide that service quality. So on the chart on the right, you can see where over 60% of our work is now with those major service providers. They’re drilling consistent wells and they’re looking for a service provider that can bring a differentiated service and we feel like that that’s been a needle mover for Ranger.

You can also see through this pressure of this most recent pressure where our rates have actually continued to improve and that’s really an acknowledgement of the value and as that consolidation has taken place, we have inherited more and more work out of those bigger E and P providers. So to move into a little bit of financial, metrics, Joe talked a little bit earlier about free cash flow conversion and we actually thought that better best way to demonstrate this is to put us up against our peer group. And we are the second highest free cash flow generation profile of anyone in our peer group. And that’s the likes of companies that are far larger than us, if you look at the highest in that peer group and the second highest in the peer group. We convert, we we openly say we convert about 60% of our cash, of our EBITDA to cash, giving us a lot of flexibility to not only return cash to shareholders, but also to grow.

We are a both story, not an either or story. So we can return cash to shareholders. We have the minimum 25% commitment that Joe referenced earlier. We can also use the remaining 75% of cash flows to either decide to buy back our shares because we still think we’re a screaming deal or we can look for growth opportunities and continue to feed stock through that. When you look at our cash multiple, I think it’s interesting.

I’m gonna actually go to the bottom slide because I think contextualize through the same lens. Frequently we’ll get what you’re fairly valued. Look at your EBITDA multiple, look at your because EBITDA multiple is such a clear, you’re sort of consistently used across the oil field services space. You’re not that far off from your peer group. And we would say, yeah, in some cases we’re actually better than some, we’re a little bit worse than others, but we’re kind of in the pack.

However, when you look at our cash flow multiple, it suggests we’re not getting credit and there’s not an acknowledge ment in the space of the amount of cash flow. And this isn’t, I would point out one time cash flow. If you go and you’re enticed by what you hear today, encourage you, go look at our cash flows the past few years. We have shown up consistently three years in a row with really strong cash flows. This isn’t a one time 60 percenter.

This is a consistent profile of cash flow generation and we have used it very wisely. We have used it to buy back a ton of shares. Right now we’re trading $13.50. We’ve bought back over 15% of the company, I’m sorry. 15 of the company at $10.50.

It’s a great return we made for our shareholders. So I strongly encourage you to look at that. It suggests we’re still not getting the value we deserve from the market. And then this just further reinforces that point in terms of numbers. You can see since we introduced our cash flow, capital return program, at the in 2023, our share count has actually declined from 24,800,000.0 shares to at the end of the most recent quarter, we’re at 21,800,000 shares and we’ve deployed over $48,000,000 at this point towards share repurchases and dividends over the past couple of years, greatly exceeding our 25% minimum commitment.

So we’re really putting our money where our mouth is. When we say we generate strong free cash flows, we don’t just say it, we actually have the evidence and we have the wise use of those cash flows behind us. So just to kind of sum it all up together, we do think we have some really compelling investment fundamentals, less sick we’re not going to oscillate as strongly. We have strong return on invested capital. We have a differentiated service profile.

We’re one of only three competitors serving a space that is vital to the maintenance of wells and the installed base in The US land. We have existing asset capacity and a great path to use that existing asset capacity And we have a really focused capital return framework that we bring to bear and has had multiple years of really solid results for Ranger. So with that, I’m gonna stop and ask if anyone has any questions.

Unidentified speaker: Yes. Could you talk about the acquisition environment? Do you need to buy any more, you know, steel or any other just seems like there could be downturn in the industry and that would be a good time to acquire.

Melissa Kugel, Chief Financial Officer, Ranger Energy Services: Yeah. It’s a good question. I’m gonna repeat it because I was told for the webcast. The question was really around acquisitions and do we need to do them? I don’t know that it’s a matter of need as much as it’s a matter of want and seeing an opportunity set out there.

So we hold although we share sort of the number one spot in the space, we would tell you we hold high teens market share, maybe 20% on a good day, which means we have plenty of room to keep growing. And we think the more that we can grow and grow that market share from give take 20 up to 30%, the better off we’ll be and the more cemented our position will be. From there, we can continue to add other service lines. So I think we view acquisitions as we don’t need more steel, we have plenty of rigs. But we look at the space around us and the TAM itself although is growing is growing at a slower pace and our desires are to grow faster than that.

The last thing we need to do is build more rigs which is why we’re looking at converting existing rigs, but it absolutely makes all the sense in the world to continue to gain synergies and to grow market share to acquire, you know, the the the next competitors in the list to continue to grow that space. Yes, sir.

Unidentified speaker: How long does it take to do a conversion of one of those rigs and what is your cost to do so? Yeah. How fast can you accomplish?

Melissa Kugel, Chief Financial Officer, Ranger Energy Services: Very good question. I would say part of that we’re still solving for. So when we when we sign the contracts, we sign contracts to build two rigs and then we signed customer contracts for two rigs. The two rigs the first two rigs we build about six months. That’s turning into about seven months, maybe a bit more than that, but they’ll be delivered, we believe, by the August.

When we are talking to customers about potentially, would like five of these rigs, I would like 10 of these rigs, I would like potentially 20 of these rigs. We’ll see if that translates into real, you know, but demand signals are there for that. We are, of course, going back to the vendor saying, how quickly could you turn them. Right? And at least, you know, kind of posturing is we could get a few out per quarter.

So we could get 10 to 15 out per year is the thought right now. From a cost perspective, the rigs to convert cost about $1,400,000. It’s a total all in for Ranger of $1,800,000. So to take a rig off the fence is what we call it, it costs us about $400,000. So the electrification of then that rig is another $1,400,000.

And what we’re doing is we’re going to customers and we’re saying, we really think this is great. We really wanna do it, but we’ve gotta get a return for this. We cannot have a build it and you will come mindset. And so our customers are actually working with us to develop contract terms for uplifted premium pricing, the two contracts we’ve already signed, uplifted premium pricing for a set number of hours. So we’re gonna help you pay back and recapture that electrification cost in in a somewhat, I wanna call it guaranteed format, but in a guaranteed format.

So we need you we need you there. And in the other case, so one of them was fully sort of committed in the uplift rate. The other one actually gave us CapEx upfront and had a slightly lesser uplift rate.

Unidentified speaker: And I’m assuming this is done domestically. Right?

Melissa Kugel, Chief Financial Officer, Ranger Energy Services: This is all domestic. So all of Ranger business is domestic US land.

Unidentified speaker: Mean the conversion of the rig?

Melissa Kugel, Chief Financial Officer, Ranger Energy Services: Yes. The conversion of the rig is all domestic as well. It does use technology borrowed from so we have we have some parts coming in from Canada and other places, but but all of the assembly and manufacturing is done here in US. And I will say a lot of the electrification is borrowing from a lot of industrial electrification. So there are battery packs on the rigs.

It’s really interesting. If you might want to talk to Echo, we could talk all day long about Echo, but this is not an Echo presentation. But some of the technology is really cool that we put on the rigs. Other questions? I think that’s it for Ranger.

We really appreciate your time

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