MasTec, Inc. (NYSE:MTZ) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Jose Mas: Yes. Hi, Justin, so I think a couple of things. First, when you think about project activity, I think one of the issues in Q1 was, project starts being pushed relative to some customers knowing what supply was available and deciding to start their projects a little bit later and what that means to overall absorptions. With all that said, revenue was good. So there was other project activity that either accelerated or came towards the end of projects. I think there were a number of projects at IEA that they started construction on, especially some solar farms that were customer started projects without panels, expected panels to arrive by this time and haven’t. So those are other complexities that we’re managing through for different projects.

I do think there is a portion of the business in both the renewables and the civil that obviously needs to work itself off. I think we’ve built that into our modeling all the way back to last year. I don’t think there’s been any significant changes related to that. And again, based on — we’re in a year where, customers that have panels, customers that have all their suppliers know that they have some leverage over the business because their projects are obviously going to get built. So I think that as the supply chain improves as the demand for the service continues to increase and as projects actually make it into constructability I think across the industry you’re going to see a pretty significant improvement in margins. And I think we start seeing it in the second quarter.

Justin Hauke: Okay. Fair enough. And, I guess, my second question is just the higher interest expense that you have that’s going through here and the lower-than-expected cash flow. Can you just comment on kind of your rate sensitivity from here in terms of what’s variable and how much sensitivity you have if rates continue to go higher?

Paul Dimarco: Yes, Justin. So, I mean, about $1 billion of — about $1.3 billion is probably fixed today and I think we’re looking at as I mentioned in the comments we’re looking at the as the bond markets and other ways to impact the interest rate profile. So we’ll continue to evaluate that. So roughly probably 40% of it is fixed today. And we’ll look at our forward-looking assessment of the interest rate environment and take that into account as we look at other path forward from a capital markets perspective.

Justin Hauke: Right. Thank you.

Operator: Next question comes from Neil Mehta with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Neil Mehta: Thank you. And I’d also like to reiterate the additional guidance super helpful here. I want to shift the conversation to the Communications segment as this area sometimes where we have less visibility. And Jose, if you could just talk about customer conversations, and how you’re thinking about the progression of both revenue and margins over the course of the year? Thank you.

Jose Mas: Sure. So Neil, we’ve had obviously, I think, now a lot of quarters where that business has performed really well where we’ve seen nice year-over-year growth for what feels like a couple of years now. And the reality is I think we’re just starting to see the beginning of it, right? I think the only federal dollars that have really impacted the business in any significant way is RDOF. Significant capital going to come into the business relative to all of the other government legislation in the past that dealt with broadband. So we have a — we’re in constant dialogue with our customers. We have a lot of customers that have massive plans on a go-forward basis. I think you’re going to see continued overbuild the fiber all over the country by different carriers competing with each other.

And I think it’s great for not just the industry, but for MasTec tremendous demand. We’ve geared up for it. We continue to gear up. We’re really comfortable with what our numbers are for 2023. And again, I truly believe that we’re just starting to see the beginning of what the opportunity there is going to be.