Gail Peck: Good morning, Alex. This is Gail. I’ll take that. That’s a good question. As we’ve said in our comments, as we look to 2024, we see the EBITDA more second half-weighted, and there’s a few things that are driving that. As you’re questioning on seasonality, that’s certainly one of them. Q1 is normally our most seasonally slow quarter for construction. We did have – we commented in the scripts that we did face some tough weather in January. So, we will have that. We’ll fight that headwind in Q1, along with the normal weather seasonality that was in construction for sure, given the outdoor nature of the business. But we felt that weather impact pretty broadly across our portfolio, with freezing temperatures in rain where we had some downtime actually in our manufacturing facilities.
But we’ll push through that. So, you have the typical seasonality with Q1. I think we’ve been pretty transparent with the large land sale that we had in Q1 last year. So, that won’t repeat in Q1. And we’ve given our guidance impacts excluding the land sale. So, kind of apart from those typical things, as I think about the businesses, utility structures is another one where we mentioned the second half stronger than the first half. Maybe I would even go so broad as to say the Engineered segment is going to be more weighted towards the second half, and there’s a few things driving that. First is the fact, as we look at our customer mix in utility structures and how the project timing and the cadence of that, we see a better mix in the second half than the first half.
Still very strong demand drivers, robust outlook for that business, but that’s the way it plays out based on the backlog visibility we have today. When you think about the other impacts to second half for the segment, I would call out the startup of our new facilities, both the Belen, New Mexico wind tower facility. That will be a drag on first half EBITDA, contributing in the second half. So, that’s going to be impactful to the cadence, as well as the new concrete pole facility within utility structures. We finished that virtually in December of last year. So, we will see positive contributions from that accretive to the overall segment in the fourth quarter, but there’s going to be a climb associated with the ramp up of that as well. I think the only other place maybe where you might see a slight second half step-up to first half would be in barge as we continue to ramp the business.
But I think those are the general view of the world as we see it here in February for 2024.
Antonio Carrillo: Let me just complement something that I think – Gail mentioned it, but I want to – if you think of Arcosa through 2024, as I mentioned, we closed 2023 strong. We enter into 2024, we’re ramping up concrete pole plant, we’re ramping up -we already have a lot of employees in Belen. They’re starting to cut plate, roll plate, well plate, but we are building a tremendous amount of cost in the plant as we go through the first half of the year until they start producing. And once they start producing, efficiency is very slow climbing. So, you have the new concrete pole plant. You have the Belen plant. You have ramp-up in both of the barge plants. You have a ramp up in another winter plant. So, Arcosa our cost is building up capacity as we go through the year and carrying all those costs and inefficiency, let’s say. As we build up and as we exit 2024, we should have a very strong manufacturing capacity and ready for the upcycle that we expect.
Alex Hantman: Thank you very much, Gail, and Antonio. Great context. And one follow-up and final question from me on the Engineered Structures segment. Curious about the customer hesitation or general sentiment around final guidelines on the 10% domestic content bonus. Curious just how you expect orders and overall demand to trend after that guidance is finalized.
Antonio Carrillo: We really don’t expect a lot of – we have not heard any pushback from our customers at the moment. So, we haven’t – we don’t expect any impact to our guidance or to our backlogs with this new guidance. So, we’re not concerned about it.
Gail Peck: Yes, and I guess would just add, Alex, as it relates to the IRA, most of the – virtually all the impacts related to wind have really played out the way we anticipated. So, we’re pleased with the way things have rolled out on that side.
Antonio Carrillo: Yes, and we – if you remember, most of our manufacturing, with the exception of two plants, is in the US. So, we are very focused on US manufacturing, and that’s been our focus.
Alex Hantman: I appreciate that. Thank you very much. And that’s all from me.
Operator: [Operator instructions]. Our next question comes from Jean Ramirez with D.A. Davidson. Please go ahead.
Jean Ramirez: Hi, good morning. Just looking at the legal challenges to the (indiscernible) project, what’s the feedback from that customer regarding plans and proposed delivery schedules going forward? How does that look?
