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

Operator: Our next question comes from a line of Alan Mitrani with Sylvan Lake Asset Management.

Alan Mitrani: Hi. Thank you. I have a couple just quick housekeeping questions. And then the main question, Drew, can you talk about tax rate for the year as opposed to just the quarter? Where do you expect that to be?

Andrew DeFerrari: Hi, Alan, I mean, we provide it for the quarter, but typically, that’s based on annual analysis. So if you look back at this past year, we did have some credits that came through that’s why it came in lower. But I think that 26% range has generally been the planning target.

Alan Mitrani: Okay, that’s there. And then Brightspeed, the contracts were for one year contracts versus three years for Lumen, is this more than nature of the ownership? Or the kind of assets they have? Can you just talk about the durations of the contracts you highlighted?

Steven Nielsen: Yes, Alan, I’m not going to get into characterize any individual customer’s behavior. But it’s not unusual when you have an ownership change. And there are a lot of things that they’re working on, for them just to extend the agreements that we have with them, as they work on other things that are a priority. And I wouldn’t read a lot into that one way or another, just anytime there’s a transaction, there’s a lot of things for the customer to work on.

Alan Mitrani: And then, thank you, and then wireless revenues in the quarter.

Steven Nielsen: Yes, it was a little bit less than 5% of total, and growth rate of about 4% year-over-year. I think this is a year Alan in €˜23, that we see a solid year, but we are seeing much less small sale activity. And so that’s having some impact on the growth rate.

Alan Mitrani: Okay, and then to understand you’re spending CapEx like 20 plus percent year-over-year on a net basis this year at play this coming year, and your back end, your revenues grew 20 plus percent, but it seems like you’re seemingly guiding to and where the street is, and all the rest and backlog is only growing as well, mid-single digits, and yet your revenues are up 20 plus percent, can you help us with that disconnect? And where revenues are going to because it sounds like the way it should be hearing competitors and customers think should be building through the year. Given all the money coming from the government as these results come out? Although mindful of Alex’s question as it relates to customer cadence and a higher cost of capital and all the rest of the economic slowdown.

I’m just trying to reconcile the 20 plus percent revenue growth in CapEx spends with the single digit backlog growth and seemingly single digit guidance as it heads out. So I’m, can you help us with that?

Steven Nielsen: Yes, I mean, with respect to the revenue guidance, again, on the April quarter, Alan, as we mentioned earlier, anytime you have a growth year, like we did last year, the comps get a little bit harder. As we talked about before, there can be fluctuation amongst customers, as programs come in, and then other programs moderate. And so we’re trying to give you a kind of a reasonable view of where we see the business. And then with respect to backlog, as we’ve always talked about before, the way we calculate backlog, total backlog is loosely correlated with the next 12 months of revenue. I’d probably point you more to the growth that we’ve seen in the next 12 months backlog which I think is consistent with a view that we have some good opportunities this year.