Forum Energy Technologies entered 2026 as a company that had spent several years repairing a balance sheet, and the second quarter is the first clean look at what the repaired business can earn. The story is not a boom; it is a margin rebuild. Revenue grew thirteen percent, but segment operating income more than doubled and the margin widened from the low single digits toward ten percent, which is the specific change that matters for a supplier whose customers are still spending cautiously.
The composition of the quarter is telling. The Drilling and Completions segment, which sells subsea robotics, wireline cable, coiled tubing, and drilling capital equipment, did most of the growth, while the Artificial Lift and Downhole segment, which sells valves and flow control for producing wells, grew more modestly as tariff-related noise from the prior year washed out. The mix shift toward the higher-growth, higher-margin subsea and completions franchise is the strategic thread running through the numbers.
The balance sheet is no longer the story, and that is itself the point. A company that once carried an oversized debt load now runs on forty-five million drawn against a revolver with sixty-two million of availability and thirty-four million of cash, funding a below-ten-million capital budget for the year. The question the next two quarters answer is whether the margin rebuild holds as the pricing and mix tailwinds normalize.