Sterling Infrastructure, Inc. (NASDAQ:STRL) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Sterling Infrastructure, Inc. (NASDAQ:STRL) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript May 7, 2024

Sterling Infrastructure, Inc.  isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).

Operator: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. And welcome to the Sterling Infrastructure First Quarter 2024 Webcast and Conference Call. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. This call is being recorded Tuesday, May 7, 2024. I would like to turn the conference over to Noelle Dilts. Please go ahead.

Noelle Dilts: Thank you, Jonah. Good morning to everyone joining us and welcome to Sterling Infrastructure’s 2024 first quarter earnings conference call and webcast. I’m pleased to be here today to discuss our results with Joe Cutillo, Sterling’s Chief Executive Officer; and Ron Ballschmiede, Sterling’s Chief Financial Officer. Joe will open the call with an overview of the company and its performance in the quarter. Ron will then discuss our financial results and guidance, after which Joe will provide a market and full year outlook. We will then open the call up for questions. As a reminder, there are accompanying slides on the Investor Relations section of our website. These slides include details on our updated financial guidance.

Before turning the call over to Joe, I’ll read the Safe Harbor statement. The discussion today may include forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from the statements made today. Please refer to Sterling’s most recent 10-K and 10-Q filings for a more complete description of risk factors that could affect these projections and assumptions. The company assumes no obligations to update forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Please also note that management may reference EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted net income or adjusted earnings per share on this call, which are all financial measures not recognized under U.S. GAAP. As required by SEC rules and regulations, these non-GAAP financial measures are reconciled to their most comparable GAAP measures in our earnings release issued yesterday afternoon.

I’ll now turn the call over to our CEO, Joe Cutillo.

Joe Cutillo: Thanks, Noelle. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining Sterling’s first quarter 2024 earnings call. Despite challenging weather in January and February, the Sterling team was able to deliver $1 of earnings per share to its shareholders, which was a new first quarter record. This represents a 56% increase over prior year. We grew operating income 30% on revenue growth of 9%, reflecting our continued focus on driving margin expansion and maximizing returns. Demand trends across all our end markets remain strong. We ended the quarter with a backlog of $2.35 billion, which is up 45% from the first quarter of 2023. Additionally, we generated operating cash flow of $50 million and our balance sheet remains in great shape.

We’re working hard to find the right deals that will complement our strong platform and accelerate growth even further. I want to personally thank each of our employees for helping us deliver another fantastic quarter. Safety is a key element of the Sterling way, which is our commitment to take care of our people, our environment, our investors and our communities while we build America’s infrastructure. This week is National Safety Week. At Sterling, we believe safety is a critical element of any great company. We know that our people are what makes our company great and we’re committed to getting everyone home safe every day. In the quarter, we had zero lost time incidents and only one recordable incident in over a 1.5 million hours’ work.

We are proud that we have achieved one of the best safety records in the industry and are always focused on what more we can do to protect our people. Now, I’d like to discuss our results for the first quarter of 2024. With the strong start of the year, our backlog position and our balance sheet firepower, we are in a great position to deliver strong earnings growth and execute additional acquisitions. We are seeing incredible opportunities across each of our business segments and could not be more excited about the future. In E-Infrastructure, our largest and highest margin segment, operating income grew 12% relative to the prior year, driven by operating margin expansion of 290 basis points to 14.7%. This reflects the normalization of the supply chain and our mixed shift towards large mission-critical projects.

We achieved this profitability growth in spite of a 10% revenue decline in the quarter, which was predominantly driven by weather and the schedule of large project starts. At the time we issued full year guidance in February, we anticipated the first quarter revenue decline in E-Infrastructure. We continue to expect high-single to low double-digit revenue growth in this segment for the year based on our current backlog. This could go higher if we are successful at winning additional large projects that start in 2024. The infrastructure awards were $332 million, driving a backlog to $961 million, a 32% increase over the first quarter of 2023. The data center market was again the largest driver of awards, as customers are racing to build the capacity needed for technology advancements, including AI.

We have continued to leverage our resources across our business segments to expand the E-Infrastructure business into the Rocky Mountain region. We now have three sizable data center projects. Data centers now represent 40% of our E-Infrastructure backlog. Additionally, activity in the Northeast is beginning to pick up with awards accelerating in the second quarter. Moving to Transportation Solutions, revenue was up 34% and margins expanded 68 basis points, driving 53% growth in operating profit. We ended the quarter with $1.31 billion in Transportation Solutions backlog, a 64% increase from first quarter 2023. We continue to see strong broad-based demand and margin growth entire our — across our entire geographic footprint. First quarter awards of $270 million reflect strong levels of aviation work, accounting for about 60% of the new awards.

We expect continued momentum in aviation through the year. Building Solutions, revenue grew 23% in the quarter. This reflects a 56% growth in our residential business, including 26% organic growth. This strong growth is particularly notable given the heavy rainfall in the quarter. Our commercial business declined $10 million, which was in line with our expectations. On a pro forma basis, PPG, our latest acquisition grew 27%. The mixed shift towards residential slabs and plumbing had a favorable impact on the segment’s operating margin, which expanded 377 basis points to 13.8% and drove operating income growth of 70%. In residential, we remain bullish on our key markets. Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, and Phoenix are all population growth markets and continue to outperform the national averages.

The PPG operation is off to a great start and we’re very excited about the opportunities ahead. With that, I’d like to turn it over to Ron to give you more details on the quarter and our full year guidance. Ron?

Ron Ballschmiede: Thanks, Joe, and good morning. I am pleased to discuss our very strong and record first quarter performance. Let me take you through our financial highlights, starting with our consolidated backlog metrics. Our first quarter record backlog totaled $2,352 million, up $285 million or 14% from the beginning of the year. The gross margin of this backlog was 15.6%, a 40-basis-point improvement over the end of 2023. A higher level of E-Infrastructure backlog and an increase in both the amount of the Transportation Backlog and its backlog margin drove this improvement. Unsigned low bid awards totaled $68 million at the end of the quarter, as several previously unsigned contracts were executed in the first quarter.

We closed the quarter with a combined backlog of $2,420 million. Gross profit and combined backlog was 15.5%, the highest in our history, compared to 15.4% at the beginning of the year. First quarter of 2024, book-to-burn ratios were 1.8 times for revenue, I’m sorry, for backlog and 1.14 times for combined backlog. Our March 31, 2024 combined backlog of $2.4 billion represented an approximate average of 16 months of prospective backlog revenues. The comparable 2023 computation was approximately 12 months of backlog revenues. This represents a 25% in our prospective backlog duration at the end of the first quarter. As a reminder, our residential revenues, which represent approximately 20% of our consolidated revenues, are not included in backlog statistics as revenue is recognized upon the completion of each slab or plumbing phase.

Turning to our first quarter income statement, revenue was $440 million, up $37 million over the prior year quarter. Consistent with our past seasonal characteristics in our first quarter, historically, company’s lowest revenue quarter. The quarter was further negatively impacted by unusually severe weather in the Southeast and East Coast geographies. Current quarter consolidated gross profit was $77 million, an increase of $15 million over the 2023 period. Gross margin increased to 17.5% for 220 basis points over 20 — over the 2023 quarter. This margin increase reflects organic margin improvements from each of our three segments in the quarter and the positive contribution from our mid-November 2023 PPG acquisition. General and administrative expenses increased in the quarter by $4 million to $27.3 million.

The increase reflects the PPG acquisition and cost increases driven by higher volume related incremental costs and general inflation. We continue to expect our full year G&A expense to be approximately 5% of revenues. Operating income for the first quarter was $42 million and increased from $33 million over the prior year quarter. Our operating margin increased to 9.6%, compared to 8.1% in the 2023 quarter. Our effective income tax rate for the first quarter was 18.4%. The favorable tax rate in the quarter primarily resulted from stock-based compensation tax deductions in excess of GAAP expense driven by the higher stock price at the vesting dates. We expect our updated full year effective income tax rate to be approximately 25% and improvement over our prior expectations of 27%.

The net effect of all these resulted in a record first quarter with net income of $31 million or $1 per diluted year, an improvement of 58% and 56% compared to the first quarter of 2023 respectively. First quarter EBITDA totaled $55.7 million, an increase of 21% over the prior year quarter. As a percent of revenues EBITDA improved to 12.6%, up from 11.4% in the prior year quarter. Cash flow from operating activities for Q1 2024 was a record $49.6 million, compared to $49.1 million in the 2023 quarter. Cash flow used in investing activities included $20 million of net CapEx which is consistent with our expectations. Our cash flow for financing activities was a $19.7 million outflow, primarily driven by $13 million for stock-based related withholding taxes and $6.6 million for scheduled payments of our term loan facility.

We entered the quarter with a very strong liquidity position consisting of $480 million of cash and debt of $335 million for a cash net of debt balance of $145 million. In addition, our $75 million revolving credit facility remained unused during the period. Despite fighting of mother nature, we had a very solid start of the year. The expected reduction of our income tax rate and the lower net interest expense for the balance of the year has resulted in an increase in our 2024 net income guidance to $160 million to $170 million and an increase to our diluted EPS guidance range of $5 to $5.30. Additionally, with our strong first quarter results and significant opportunities in each of our operating sectors, we expect we will deliver results toward the higher end of our financial guidance ranges.

Finally, considering the diversity and strength of our portfolio businesses, our strong liquidity position and our comfortable 1.1 times EBITDA leverage, we are well prepared to take advantage of additional opportunities that are at significant shareholder value in 2024 and beyond. Now I’ll turn back to Joe.

Joe Cutillo: Thanks, Ron. We see years of opportunity ahead associated with the revitalization of America’s infrastructure. Sterling is playing a critical role in building the manufacturing production coming back to the U.S., the data infrastructure that enables today’s way of life, the highways, the bridges and the airports that connect us and the homes we live in. In E-Infrastructure Solutions, we anticipate continued strength in data centers as current capacity only represents a fraction of what is needed to support artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies. Additionally, we continue to see a strong pipeline of large manufacturing projects tied to electric vehicles, batteries and solar. We continue to believe that in the coming years, we will see more projects emerge related to semiconductors, pharma, and food and beverage.

These projects are located in both our current footprint and other potential geographies. We expect e-commerce and small warehouse markets will remain soft through 2024, but are encouraged by some of the preliminary activities we are seeing in these areas for 2025 and beyond. We continue to track a number of new large project opportunities that we anticipate will be awarded throughout 2024 and early 2025. Additionally, our mix moves towards large multi-phase projects. We have line of sight in the future phases of work that will be awarded as we complete our current phases. These dynamics support strong growth opportunities over a multiyear period for E-Infrastructure Solutions. In Transportation Solutions, we believe we’re now in a market environment where we can accelerate growth relative to historical levels as long as margins remain at current levels for hire.

We are very confident that our Transportation business will generate strong growth and margin expansion throughout 2024. In Building Solutions, we continue to anticipate growth and margin expansion in 2024, driven by continued strength in our residential slab and plumbing businesses. On the M&A front, we’re working hard to find the right deals to grow the company and enhance our service offering. The E-Infrastructure market remains our top priority for M&A. We will remain patient and disciplined in our inorganic growth strategy. As it relates to share repurchases, we are taking an opportunistic approach. As we look forward, we are maintaining our full year revenue and EBITDA guidance and are raising our net income and EPS guidance to reflect our lower net interest expenses and tax rate expectations.

As Ron mentioned, we believe we are tracking towards the high end of our guidance, which would represent 12% revenue growth, 23% net income growth and 16% EBITDA growth. With that, I’d like to turn it over for questions.

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Q&A Session

Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Brent Thielman from D.A. Davidson. Your line is open.

Brent Thielman: Hi, there.

Joe Cutillo: Hi, Brent.

Brent Thielman: Joe or Ron, yeah, just first question on the E-Infrastructure. I guess, how do you sort of see the rest of the year playing out? Do you still anticipate having a little headwind on the topline going into the second quarter and then, obviously, the comps get easier into the second half of the year and maybe you see more robust growth, but if you could just talk to the cadence of how you see the rest of the year playing out, that’d be helpful?

Joe Cutillo: Yeah. Let’s give a little more color around the first quarter year-over-year and then when we think it comes back. Two headwinds in the first quarter, we had difficult comps. We started two of the biggest projects we had ever started in the first quarter of 2023, both in the Southeast and the Northeast. And then we had, I think, the great results we had in the quarter don’t reflect the six weeks of basic downtime we had on the East Coast and through Texas due to weather being pre-bounded significantly. So that plays into that dip in the first quarter. We think second quarter, not only do we rebound, but we will see a year-over-year growth, decent year-over-year growth in the second quarter and that trend will continue into the third quarter and into the fourth quarter.

So you take all of that and the timing of the new project starts, which we understand with the backlog, we feel very good. We’ll see year over year growth near double digits in the second quarter.

Brent Thielman: Okay. Really helpful. And I guess, just following on that, the comments that sounds like the Northeast is starting to get busier again, does that work against the margin profile going forward? Just considering pretty strong margins here and I know that area has been slower for you in recent quarters?

Joe Cutillo: Yeah. Depending on the mix of the job activity, generally in, overall, the Northeast margins are lower because not only the size of the projects, but the breadth of what they perform on the projects. They’re doing concrete works out walls, that sort of stuff. But one of the things we’re doing is we’re moving the Northeast further South, and we’re looking at multiple data centers in and around the Virginia area. And so far we’ve had pretty good luck as we’re entering into the second quarter already on some opportunities there.

Brent Thielman: Okay. And then just last one, I — if you have any specifics on the contributions from PPG this quarter, just wondering how much of that year on year margin expansion and Building Solutions might be associated with that business?

Joe Cutillo: Ron, do you want to handle that?

Ron Ballschmiede: I know the organic growth was pretty comparable between slabs and PPG was a little bit higher than the slab business.

Joe Cutillo: Yeah. But not by much. They both had organic growth — organic — performing organic growth, of course, for PPG of, in the mid, low-30s or high-20s or…

Ron Ballschmiede: Yeah. High-20…

Joe Cutillo: Hig-20s. Thank you. So I think that’s the critical item. The margin is slightly better than our average residential side, but it’s size — it doesn’t move the needle too much, because of course, the — it’s probably less than or about 10% of our total residential margin or a little bit of revenues or a little less.

Brent Thielman: Okay. Great. I’ll pass it on. Thank you.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Adam Thalhimer from Thompson Davis. Your line is open.

Adam Thalhimer: Hey. Good morning, guys. Congrats on a strong start to the year.

Joe Cutillo: Thanks, Adam.

Adam Thalhimer: So E-Infrastructure, Joe, you mentioned additional opportunities, semiconductors, pharma, food and beverage. Is that something you can enter organically or would you need to acquire to get into those verticals?

Joe Cutillo: Yeah. No. We can — with the beauty of the site development business is we can do all of that organically. Gets a little tougher if they’re in crazy remote places, but with the success of what we’ve been able to do in the Rocky Mountains, expanding into that area up and down the East Coast, we’ve got pretty broad geography that we can cover. As we look forward, Adam, what we’d like to add is more types of services for those, whether that’s in electrical, mechanical, could be in something around piping, it could be a litany of other things that happen inside the facilities. Those are the kinds of acquisitions that we’re looking at to broaden that portfolio. We have a fundamental premise that over the next five years to seven years, if you take the ramp up of data centers, the onshoring of manufacturing and you put all that together, that there’s really not enough high quality folks out there that can complete these big jobs and these are going to start forming mega teams and we’re already talking to several players on national contracts and long-term agreements related to helping them on their future plans.

So I think as this continues to ramp up over the next couple of years, people will see a lot more challenges in getting their projects completed on time and on budget, and that bodes extremely well for us. So if we can continue to add to that portfolio, we become a better kind of one shop to come to.

Adam Thalhimer: Okay. And then the margins in E-Infrastructure, can you kind of, in response to Brent’s question, you did a good job of breaking down how the revenue might trend. Can you also kind of help us on how the margins might trend in that segment?

Joe Cutillo: Yeah. Do you want to take that, Ron? I think we’re pretty optimistic on the margins of continuing to grow.

Ron Ballschmiede: Yeah. I think when you — I think historically the mix is about two-thirds in our original E-Infrastructure acquisition [ph] plateaus the Southeast side and the balance in New York, or New Jersey, sorry, and their margin is about 40 basis points delta difference, just in way — in the scope of which they do. That’s been pretty historical. Got a little cockeyed in the days of the supply change and et cetera. That will continue. So that math is going to be about the same. So as the first quarter was a higher percentage of our higher revenue, our higher margin territory, we had a little bit of pickup, but it’s not, it’s less than 100 basis points probably when you cut through a regular quarter there. So that will — that delta will continue.

So I think as that mix changes, that’ll move it a little bit. What we do and where doesn’t make a whole lot of difference. It’s really that mix that’s going to move it once we get picking up the productivity in the Northeast.