Quanta Services, Inc. (NYSE:PWR) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

You can do some things. But we’re already behind on just in general, if you stay flat on carbon today, you can’t — we’re struggling to serve the load at the customer level on the coastlines. And that’s our duty to this industry’s duty to the consumer is to have load and if you have wells that are offshore, if you have things that don’t allow us to build generation that’s necessary to get to a carbon-free environment, we have to have more transmission. So either way you look at this on any level, the capital necessary to transform and to make sure that these countries have as a resilient grid, will require a significant amount of capital.

Operator: And the next question comes from the line of Adam Thalhimer with Thompson, Davis.

Adam Thalhimer : Great quarter. Great outlook. A quick question on electrical margins. So the guidance range for margins this year, 10.7% to 11.3%. It’s the same guidance we started last year with and we ended up at the low end, 10.7%. So my question would be, what factors drive you to the low end last year and what could drive you to the high end of this year?

Duke Austin : We talked about the segment. And when you look at it, I mean, I think in general, this year, the supply chain on the way — well, you had inflation, you had real costs rising, a bunch of different things going on, and we talked about that early on in the first half that we thought we could operate through it in the second half, and we did. So we’ve got that in our system now. We understand cadence around supply chains and things of that nature. So it gives us a great more deal of comfort that we can operate in the higher end of the range, not in the lower. So that’s just us understanding what markets we’re in. We’re still — our guide is at 12% EBITDA, something like that. A lot of people talk about EBITDA, so it’s 12% in EBITDA.

Operator: And the next question comes from the line of Chad Dillard with Bernstein.

Chad Dillard : So Duke, I want to go back to your comments about your focus on front end. And my question is, by how much does that greater focus on front end work expand your TAM? And then like would you classify this as a pull from your customers versus a push from Quanta? And then how are you thinking about building this out? To what extent do you plan to focus on inorganic acquisitions versus just organic building?

Duke Austin : When we look at the market, if you take it all, it’s 30% or so of total addressable market within our client base. And I — we continue to build that out because what was happening, and it made us less efficient and also the client less efficient. And I believe from a construction standpoint, how we approach it, how we approach the front end, we can give a lot more certainty to any project. So it was necessary, in my mind, for us to get in that business. And yes, the customer is happy with it. The projects that we have done, the programs that we are ongoing are certainly something that we’ll continue to build off as we move into the future. And that market is there. It makes us more efficient on the backside of a lot of reasons for us to like that piece of business. And we’ll continue to invest.

Chad Dillard : Got it. Okay. And then my second question is just on the supply chain. Can you talk about what’s embedded in your ’23 guide in terms of improvement maybe like versus where we are today? And then just going to the Renewables segment, how much of the revenues in ’23 what were delayed in ’22?