Oil and gas producer Permian Resources (NYSE:PR) missed Wall Street’s revenue expectations in Q1 CY2026, with sales flat year on year at $1.39 billion. Its GAAP profit of $0.05 per share was 86.9% below analysts’ consensus estimates.
Is now the time to buy Permian Resources? Find out by accessing our full research report, it’s free.
Permian Resources (PR) Q1 CY2026 Highlights:
- Revenue: $1.39 billion vs analyst estimates of $1.40 billion (flat year on year, 0.7% miss)
- EPS (GAAP): $0.05 vs analyst expectations of $0.38 (86.9% miss)
- Adjusted EBITDA: $1.01 billion vs analyst estimates of $1.03 billion (72.7% margin, 1.9% miss)
- Operating Margin: 33.7%, down from 36.6% in the same quarter last year
- Free Cash Flow Margin: 25.1%, down from 28.7% in the same quarter last year
- Oil production: up 9.9% year on year
- Market Capitalization: $18.74 billion
Company Overview
Controlling roughly 450,000 net acres in America's most productive oil patch, Permian Resources (NYSE:PR) is an oil and natural gas producer that drills wells and extracts hydrocarbons from underground reservoirs in West Texas and New Mexico.
Revenue Growth
Cyclical sectors like Energy often flatter weaker operators during favorable price environments, but a longer-term lens separates those from businesses that can consistently perform across market cycles. Thankfully, Permian Resources’s 54.3% annualized revenue growth over the last five years was incredible. Its growth surpassed the average energy upstream and integrated energy company and shows its offerings resonate with customers, a great starting point for our analysis.
Within Energy, a singular timeframe, even if it’s quite long-term, only sheds light on how well a company rode the last commodity cycle. To better assess whether a company compounds through cycles, we validate our view with an even longer, ten-year view. Permian Resources’s annualized revenue growth of 44.4% over the last ten years is below its five-year trend, but we still think the results suggest decent demand.
While looking at revenue is important, it can also introduce noise around commodity prices and M&A. Analyzing production, on the other hand, highlights what is happening inside the asset base and whether the economic footprint of a company is expanding. Over the last two years, Permian Resources’s oil production averaged 36.2% year-on-year growth while its natural gas production
averaged 47% year-on-year growth. 
This quarter, Permian Resources’s $1.39 billion of revenue was flat year on year, falling short of Wall Street’s estimates. This quarter, Permian Resources reported year-on-year Oil production growth of 9.9%.
ONE MORE THING: The $21 AI Application Stock Wall Street Forgot. While Wall Street obsesses over who’s building AI, one company is already using it to print money. And nobody’s paying attention.
AI chip stocks trade at ridiculous valuations. This company processes a trillion consumer signals monthly using AI and trades at a third of the price. The gap won’t last. The institutions will figure it out. You need to see this first. Read the FREE Report Before They Notice.
Adjusted EBITDA Margin
Adjusted EBITDA margin strips out accounting distortions tied to depletion and historical drilling spend, providing a clearer view of the cash-generating power of the underlying asset base before financing and reinvestment decisions.
Permian Resources has been a well-oiled machine over the last five years. It demonstrated elite profitability for an upstream and integrated energy business, boasting an average EBITDA margin of 70.5%.
Analyzing the trend in its profitability, Permian Resources’s EBITDA margin rose by 16.6 percentage points over the last year, as its sales growth gave it immense operating leverage.
In Q1, Permian Resources generated an EBITDA margin profit margin of 72.7%, in line with the same quarter last year. This indicates the company’s overall cost structure has been relatively stable. This adjusted EBITDA fell short of Wall Street’s estimates.
Cash Is King
Adjusted EBITDA shows how profitable a company’s existing “rock” is before financing and reinvestment, while free cash flow shows how much value remains after paying to replace those wells. Because production declines over time, strong EBITDA can coexist with weak FCF if drilling is expensive or declines are steep. FCF therefore captures both operating efficiency and the cost of sustaining production.
Permian Resources has shown terrific cash profitability, driven by its lucrative business model that enables it to reinvest, return capital to investors, and stay ahead of the competition. The company’s free cash flow margin was among the best in the energy upstream and integrated energy sector, averaging 27.2% over the last five years.
While the level of free cash flow margins is important, their consistency matters just as much.
Permian Resources’s ratio of quarterly free cash flow volatility to WTI Crude price volatility over the past five years was 4.4 (lower is better), indicating unusually strong insulation from commodity swings. This stability supports superior capital access in downturns and positions Permian Resources to act as a consolidator when weaker peers are forced to retrench.
You may be asking why we wait until the free cash flow line to perform this stability analysis versus commodity prices. Why not compare revenue or EBITDA to WTI Crude prices in the case of Permian Resources? Because what ultimately matters is not how much revenue or profit you earn when prices are high but how much cash you can generate when prices are low. Free cash flow is the superior metric because it includes everything from hedging prowess to growth and maintenance capex to management behavior during good times and bad.
Permian Resources’s free cash flow clocked in at $348.8 million in Q1, equivalent to a 25.1% margin. The company’s cash profitability regressed as it was 3.6 percentage points lower than in the same quarter last year, but we wouldn’t read too much into the short term because investment needs can be seasonal, causing temporary swings. Long-term trends trump fluctuations.
Key Takeaways from Permian Resources’s Q1 Results
We struggled to find many positives in these results. Its EPS missed and its revenue fell slightly short of Wall Street’s estimates. Overall, this was a softer quarter. The stock traded down 2.2% to $20.73 immediately following the results.
Permian Resources’s earnings report left more to be desired. Let’s look forward to see if this quarter has created an opportunity to buy the stock. If you’re making that decision, you should consider the bigger picture of valuation, business qualities, as well as the latest earnings. We cover that in our actionable full research report which you can read here (it’s free).