APA Corporation

APA Corporation is an independent American oil and gas company that explores for, develops, and produces crude oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids through its principal subsidiary, Apache Corporation, generating $8.92 billion in total revenues in fiscal 2025. Headquartered in Houston and listed on Nasdaq under the ticker APA, the company operates three producing regions — the Permian Basin of West Texas, the Western Desert of Egypt, and the U.K. North Sea — and is funding a large offshore oil development in Suriname that is scheduled to begin producing in 2028.

This is a story about an old, complicated exploration-and-production company that has spent the last several years deliberately becoming a simpler one. Apache was once a sprawling global wildcatter; the APA of 2026 has sold down the periphery, absorbed a Permian acquisition, cut more than a third of a billion dollars of annual cost out of the business, and pulled net debt down by roughly $1.4 billion in a single year. What remains is two foundational cash engines — the Permian and Egypt — that management says can sustain production for a decade, a North Sea business being wound toward closure, a high-margin gas-trading operation that few peers possess, and one genuinely differentiated growth option: a half-interest in the GranMorgu field offshore Suriname, most of whose construction cost is being carried by partner and operator TotalEnergies.

The file turns on a single tension. On trailing numbers APA trades at roughly three times EBITDA and below nine times earnings — a deep-value multiple that prices the company as a melting, country-risk-laden producer. Yet underneath sits a leaner cost structure, a decade of Permian oil inventory, a re-priced Egyptian gas business, and an offshore growth engine the market appears to capitalize at close to nothing. The question is whether the combination of a durable, cheap harvester and an unpriced long-dated option ever earns a re-rating — or whether commodity beta, Egyptian and North Sea risk, and the sheer patience required keep the multiple pinned where it is.