NV5 Global, Inc. (NASDAQ:NVEE) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Dickerson Wright: Well, the LNG business as a percent of completion business. So, they build on an estimate of where they think things are complete. And so the project – although, the projects are working on we felt a steady buildup as it gets into the third and fourth quarter, they were recognizing their percentage of completion lower than they have done traditionally.

Edward Codispoti: It’s also – Jeff, it’s also thinking about it as these are larger contracts, lower volume. And so when you compare one year to the other, just any little timing differences in terms of when things get started just kind of push things to the right, which is what happens. So there’s a lot of demand and a strong backlog for the business. It’s really more just a timing issue. And it really relates more to the first half of last year versus the first half of this year. I think the second half will be slightly up, from what it was last year. So, it’s just a timing issue.

Jeff Martin: Okay. And then on the real estate transaction side, my understanding was that the comparisons in the second half of this year gotten much easier relative to last year. Are you expecting that business to be, above last year, or are we still in that period of recovery mode, where it may take a couple more quarters before the comps become sufficiently easy to post real estate transactions growth.

Dickerson Wright: Yes. We’re not anticipating the real estate transaction business to be what it was last year, and it’s slowly coming back. But it just — it depends on interest rates and the appetite that — the one side is a very large portfolio of business, and so they are very dependent on interest rates and the other piece of the business that I said with Fannie Mae or Ginnie Mae [ph] are also very dependent on mortgage rates that they can get. So, we see a slow coming back. It’s a profitable business. It’s quite scalable, but we don’t anticipate this year to be what it was last year.

Jeff Martin: Okay. Great. And then one more, if I could. With the new geospatial ocean vessel being delivered, what is the offshore wind opportunity look like in terms of — start to see some revenue generation and some growth in geospatial related to the offshore wind opportunity. Is that a 2024 event or even further out?

Dickerson Wright: Yes. We just spoke to the people running the geo dynamics group, which has the vessel. That project has been delayed, but they’re very enthusiastic about the growth of the wind farm. And so we’re seeing much more of the revenue to be generated in 2024 than 2023.

Jeff Martin: Excellent. Thank you.

Operator: Next question comes from Tate Sullivan, Maxim Group. Tate, go ahead.

Tate Sullivan: Thank you. Dick, you mentioned for 2023 initiatives rare earth minerals geospatial work. Is that already a meaningful portion of what you do in geospatial or is it mostly US geological survey. Can you give some more background on that?

Dickerson Wright: It’s an additive to our geospatial platform. We are just positioning ourselves now to take advantage of that market. So it’s really — and it’s a very — the genesis and beginning stage of that and the contribution to revenue. But we see an increase in our defense work through Axim and we see a defense in the geospatial work from — and Alex mentioned the ambition from software and so we think that they will be more of a contributor than the rare earth for this year. We will see some revenue from that piece of the business.