Jule Smith: There’s nothing structurally preventing us from getting back there. And as I’ve said for a while now, we’re on the road back to there. And the best indicator of our future is our backlog and our backlog margin. And so we had another good quarter of adding backlog at healthy margins. And so that blend is continuing to move in the right direction. So that’s a good indicator of it. And then we continue to vertically integrate. The terminal in Panama City continues to add really good margin and we’re looking forward to getting the new terminal in Northern Alabama online in late spring. So when you take the backlog margin, the vertical integration that adds to it and you get a normal external environment where our guys have a fair shot at every job to grow margin, you’re going to see those margins return.
Something I saw that was very positive in the first quarter is more jobs finished higher margin than lower than I’ve seen in a while. They finished at a higher than bid margin. And that’s throughout CPI’s history, more jobs have finished better than bid margin than lower. But as you could expect in the last two years with inflation hitting, it’s like asking a football team to score a touch down, but every drive you’ve got to start first in 20. And so now as this newer backlog gets worked on, we’re starting to see it revert to normal where we can actually execute in the field, find ways to gain margin. Those are the things — all those things add up to where those margins could get back to that range.
Alan Palmer: And I’d say one thing structurally, because you asked, is there anything structurally. One thing that we believe structurally that helps us to respond much quicker to things even as abnormal as what this cost inflation was, is our shorter duration projects that turnover quicker. So we’re not sitting here talking about we’ve got $1 billion worth of projects that were being — the faster turnover allows us to respond quicker to positive things, but even more important to negative things, because we’re rebidding jobs. We’re bidding jobs on a continuous basis and burning off backlog and replacing it with backlog that’s got those factors built into it. So that’s the structural thing that we feel like distinguishes us from companies that do significant number of four, five year long term design build type projects, which we just found is not the way we do our business.
Operator: Our next question is from Brian Russo with Sidoti & Company.
Brian Russo: Just one question or two. What is the M&A environment like? You did two acquisitions in early December, you’re at about 2.9 times leverage up from 2.79 times last quarter. What are your thoughts as you move through the year? Are you — should we expect more active level of acquisitions relative to the last couple of years, maybe the type of profile now that you’re in six different states?
Jule Smith: Brian, I’ll give the answer for the short term, and then I’m going to let Ned give sort of a bigger picture outlook. We continue to have really good conversations, as we always have had throughout our footprint in some adjacent states. We’re continuing to build relationships and talk to potential sellers, and we’re looking at opportunities. We feel like our leverage ratio is going to moderate down through the course of the year as we execute and deliver on the year that we’ve put forward in our annual guidance. I look more to making sure our organization can handle the acquisitions, and they fit well strategically. So Ned?
