Comfort Systems USA, Inc. (NYSE:FIX) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Adam Thalhimer: Okay. And then I wanted to ask about specialty contractor capacity. Is it still – do you think as tight now as it was kind of a year or two ago? And are you still booking work further out?

Brian Lane: Yes. Adam, for sure, it’s still tight. We’ve been very fortunate to recruit some outstanding people on the human resource side. We’re attracting some great talent, but it is still tight. But we’re in a good place to work. We offer great compensation package, the opportunity to develop. We like to promote from within. So I think that will be a struggle for a while. But we have good work, people like working here. So I’m very optimistic about the future.

Adam Thalhimer: And Bill, just a quick modeling thing, what do you have for D&A in Q2 since we only had the acquisitions for part of Q1.

Bill George: So we had two months of those guys. I think it’s – we put – if you look in the footnotes, we actually have a table where we tell you exactly. Well, I’m on exactly what we think it’s going to be. So just you can go get the actual numbers from one of the footnotes.

Adam Thalhimer: I was being lazy. Okay.

Bill George: I have been lazy too because I have to go look at it myself. It’s big. Like you saw the pop, right? And that was only two months of those guys. But you’re only required to publish that schedule once a year, but we’ve published it, we certainly publish it every quarter after we do an acquisition because those non-cash charges, they’re so – they really – it’s crazy that we’re – that we reduced our earnings by that, right? People want to know what the asset they own is doing, but GAAP is GAAP, and so that’s what we do.

Adam Thalhimer: Okay. That’s good. Thank you, Bill.

Bill George: Yes.

Operator: And thank you. [Operator Instructions] And our next question comes from Josh Chan from UBS. Your line is now open.

Josh Chan: Hey, good morning, guys. Congrats on a really good quarter.

Bill George: Thanks, Josh.

Josh Chan: I – could you talk about the bidding environment for potential projects that even are before backlog, anything changing there? And how is pricing on those bids that you’re putting together?

Brian Lane: Yes. So in terms of the pipeline preorder, it’s still very robust, it’s still broad-based. Pricing is still reasonable for sure. It’s a great opportunity for us to work for – really good customers to be very selective in the acquisition process. We don’t chase revenue, chase new opportunities and the work that we’re good at. But in terms of the sectors that I hit on the floor, the operations – the opportunities are very consistent still today.

Bill George: No letup.

Brian Lane: No letup.

Josh Chan: Okay. That’s great to hear. And then on the data center side, could you just talk about how your conversations are like with your data center customers? And any kind of update in terms of your thinking on when you might be able to expand module capacity again?

Bill George: These are big organizations. So you’re not just talking to one part of the organization, right? You’re talking to the people who desperately need the capacity and who understand how to partner with us. And you’re also talking to parts of the organization whose job it is to purchase things and to try to get the lowest price. I would say that things are as expected. And our – what we try to do is just be a great partner for people. And if really we do our best work and get the best value for people who reciprocate that, but I don’t know that anything has changed. Essentially, we – they are in all paths to market mindset. So they love getting this stuff built modularly. They’re hiring our contractors who build it in the traditional way. I just think that the demand is so great that they’re just looking for people who can help them do what they need to do, and we love to do that for people who want to partner up.

Brian Lane: Josh, I’ll just add on a little bit to the opportunities. One of our strengths is the size of comfit and the geographic spread we have opportunity is share labor, it’s really an advantage that us in a few of our colleagues of the country have, give some of these larger opportunities that we can handle both financially and from a resource basis, including when you think about our suppliers, we’re a good company to do business with. So our size right now is really helping us.

Bill George: And we use that size to be a partner to people. Not – we don’t try to use it against people.

Brian Lane: Right.

Josh Chan: Yes. Any thoughts on whether you could expand capacity at some time later this year or into next year?

Bill George: So if you’re talking about modular, I would say that, that is not something that we are currently making plans around, but we are evaluating.

Josh Chan: Okay. All right. And then just a modeling question, so EBITDA margins usually go up from Q1 to Q2? I know, Bill, you mentioned the lack of seasonality in Q1, but I was just wondering your thoughts about whether you can see a typical sequential margin expansion into the next quarter.

Bill George: Yes. So EBITDA margins do typically go up from the first quarter to the second quarter. But first quarter are – have never been all-time highs by extraordinary amounts. So it’s a very insecure time for us to start saying, it’s going to – we’re going to have sequential uptick in margins, only because of how high they are in the first quarter. We – I’m more comfortable talking about doing better this year than last year, right? But one quarter – this is a quarter where our EBITDA was up 70% on a same-store basis. We need to adjust to that in brain.