Jacobs Solutions Inc. (NYSE:J) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Operator: Your next question is from the line of Andy Wittmann with Baird.

Andy Wittmann: Great. And Bob, congratulations on promotion, Steve yours as well. Kevin, I just thought maybe a question for you. I wanted to understand the fourth quarter results here a little bit clear. I guess your corporate unallocated expense was $28 million. I think you were kind of suggesting it was going to be higher than that for the quarter as well as your guidance for ’23 is implying a run rate of about $50 million per quarter. So I was wondering, I guess you called out incentive comp. You also mentioned an FX impact, keeping that number down this quarter. So could you comment on the size of the FX impact? And was that — what the nature of that was? Is that like a noncash accounting thing for some hedges that you had in FX? Or was there something else in there that was driving that benefit to the quarter?

Kevin Berryman: No. Look, the dynamic — I don’t have the FX dynamic specifically outlined but certainly, we can follow up with you, Andy, on that. But if you think about it, our corporate-related costs that support costs are embedded around the world. And so effectively, if you have U.K., for example, corporate-related costs, they’re getting translated into a lower rate effectively. So the value of those costs go down and that effectively had some benefits associated with us because it’s all — it’s effectively corporate costs and not corporate revenue. So if you get the difference between the two. And then look, we have known that the constant currency dynamic was still robust but we knew that the reported currency continued to be a challenge and we are very proactive in terms of taking steps to ensure that we reach the commitment levels that we had established for the company.

So we pay attention to this and very, very proactive in terms of the management of our cost structure during Q4.

Operator: Your final question comes from the line of Sabahat Khan with RBC Capital Markets.

Sabahat Khan: Just, I guess, the earlier commentary around how much the pipeline is building up, including the IIJA. Kind of if we think about that bill and the other ones starting to flow through, maybe some offset with pricing maybe moderating, how do you expect, I guess, backlog just to trend over the course of the next 12 to 18 months? I guess is it fair to assume with that extra government funding it could continue to grow? I just want to understand what you have embedded in the guidance that you’ve provided today?

Kevin Berryman: Well, I will tell you that, as you may know, backlog is one of our incentive metrics. And I can assure you that our incentives are based on backlog continuing to show very strong growth year-over-year.

Bob Pragada: Maybe I could you like to add one more thing, just on what drives backlog which is sales at, we’ve put a tremendous amount we’ve been a sales-driven company for since inception. I think Dr. Jacob started that mantra. Our sales-driven growth and the investments we’ve made, now our new Chief Growth Officer as well, has been very, very specific as our portfolio has developed over the period — this most recent period of time. So we’re putting the full force effort on our sales effort as the pipeline continues to grow; so timing is good.

Operator: There are no further questions. I will now turn the call back to Mr. Bob Pragada.

Bob Pragada: Yes. Thank you. Thank you, everyone, for joining our earnings call. I’m looking forward to providing further updates on our progress and upcoming events and calls. Have a — for those of you in the U.S., have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Steve Demetriou: Thank you.

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating. This concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.

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