Dycom Industries, Inc. (NYSE:DY) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Brent Thielman: Yes, okay, and then, I guess, a question on cash flow, I guess, to the extent that you do see growth, moderate from 20% to 5% to 10% and correct me what the guidance is suggesting, what should there be any change to potential sequence of cash flows in fiscal 2024? Maybe compared to what we saw on 2023? And then also, is there a maintenance CapEx level to think about for your business as we think about what you’re putting in here in €˜24, versus past?

Brent Thielman: So let me take the second question. And that’ll pass it to Drew. I think historically, maintenance CapEx is somewhere around 40% of the spend, it’s a little harder to identify in the current environment, Brent, because we did extend useful lives of some of our assets. Just because we couldn’t get replacements, we’ve always had a pretty, we’ve had, we have a well maintained fleet. So we were able to do that. And so I think it may be a little bit higher number now, but still there’s a substantial portion of the CapEx that is for growth. And then Drew?

Andrew DeFerrari: Yes, Brent, so if you look at the balance sheet, and where we’re thinking the outlook is on revenue, so we do see some growth there. But with DSOs, they got better this quarter, they were at 108 days, we continue to work on that as a factor. But this is after a year where we had 20% organic growth, and that we €“

Steven Nielsen: Put a point on it, $677.8 million of organic growth.

Andrew DeFerrari: Yes, that can certainly put some demands on working capital. But we finished the year strong in terms of cash collections, we were able to improve on the DSOs sequentially, so pleased with that.

Brent Thielman: Okay, so do you anticipate those DSOs continue to come down.

Steven Nielsen: Look, in a business that’s grown as rapidly as we have, and with customers that are growing their own infrastructure to support kind of these growth rates, we’re all working hard to get the bills and to get the cash in and so we can always do better.

Operator: Our next question comes from a line of Noelle Dilts with Stifel.

Noelle Dilts: Hi, thanks. So, Steve, this conference call has a, seems to me to have a decidedly more positive tone than you did at the third quarter. And it turned out that your fourth quarter guidance was conservative from both a revenue standpoint and a margin improvement standpoint. So can you kind of help me understand the key factors that sort of changed and that a lot that drove some of the outperformance relative to the time of the third quarter call and what’s driving some of that confidence? I understand you said, several of your customers reiterated, have reiterated plans, but I’m curious if there’s anything a little bit more specific that helped to drive the up performance. Thanks.

Steven Nielsen: Well, I think Noelle, first, as we talked about with respect to the weather it year-over-year, the weather was a bigger factor as we got deeper into the quarter. As we’ve always said, our fourth quarter is hard to forecast because January has two holidays in our calendar, the week between Christmas and New Year’s as well as the potential risks if you get a bunch of bad weather broadly across the country in the back half of January. So I would tell you that the revenue got on a year-over-year and against expectation was really outperformed the deeper we got into the quarter. I think we were encouraged, as the quarter went by with some Analysts Day presentations from some customers, as well as their comments on their calls.

And specifically for example, with Lumen as they reassessed the program and then disclose that they expect to spend $200 million or $250 million incremental this year over last on the quantum fiber program. So I just think we had a number of data points that came in either late in the quarter or more subsequent to the end of the quarter.