Phil Ng: So, Ward. I mean, you sound pretty excited about the opportunity on the public infrastructure side and I just want to make sure we don’t get carried away just because there’s always labor issues, supply chain and how this stuff could ramp up. Just the level of confidence you’re seeing from your customers whether they’re making investments on the labor side, just the visibility on how that kind of ramps up and you kind of highlighted some other longer-term acts like the IRA, CHIPS Act and then something new today, Cornyn-Padilla. Those three things, how does that kind of ramp, we generally have a better feel for IIJA.
Ward Nye: Yes. I think the others ramp very naturally throughout the year and that’s why I think going back to Jim’s point, the cadence is going to be attractive financially all the way through. The cadence from a volume perspective will likely be second-half weighted. And I think our confidence around a lot of that is driven by some of the things that we’ve seen even recently. I’m sure you saw, Phil, that Governor DeSantis has recently announced, for example, a new legislative proposal in Florida to allocate $7 billion to accelerate timing of critical road projects in that state. I was actually in Florida last week and one of the big issues that they were indicating is we’re concerned about an aggregates shortage and of course, we’re going to do all we can to make sure that they don’t have an aggregates shortage in Florida.
And as you may recall, Phil, it’s so interesting to me to see that we did 208 million tons last year. And remember, this organization did 205 million tons back in 2005, 2006, and we’ve added 15 million tons of capacity on a per annum basis to what we’ve done since then. So to your point, if there is a need, can we put it on a spec product on the ground to meet it? Absolutely we can, number one. Number two, do I think contractors over the last year have done what they needed to in varying degrees to have a labor force that’s ready for what’s coming? I think they have. Number three. I think the labor pool is moving around a bit, and what I mean by that is, even if they need to now go to the well and hire more, I think the opportunities are going to be there.
So to your point. I think the states have pretty heady expectations on what they’re going to do. Importantly, they have pretty heady budgets that can help further that. Number three, we have the capacity to feed it. And number four, contractors have seen this picture coming and I think they’ve put themselves in a position to perform, Phil. So again, I hope that’s helpful and responsive.
Phil Ng: Yes, that’s great color. And sorry to sneak one in, you’ve given some color on how to think about demand for aggregates. Texas cement. I mean, Texas is a different animal altogether, just giving the funding. How should we think about the demand backdrop for Texas cement this year?
Ward Nye: Yes. I think the demand backdrop will continue to be attractive in Texas and I think the thing that you need to remember. I think about Texas through several different lenses. Ours is primarily on cement, focused on the Metroplex, Dallas-Fort Worth, which is where the biggest single piece of our cement business is going. Secondarily, it’s going to be on Central Texas, which is let’s call it mid-30% of our cement is going. So by the time we get to South Texas or West Texas, we’re talking about markets that from a percentage perspective on the zip code of 10%. If we look overall at the way cadence has typically gone in cement. I mean, if we look at last year, for example, we sold a little bit over 1 million tons in Q1, 1.1 million tons in Q2, 1 million tons in Q3, and then in a very weather impacted Q4, 950 million tons.
