ABM Industries Inc (ABM) 2025 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Greetings. Welcome to ABM Industries Incorporated fourth-quarter 2025 earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions) Please note that this conference is being recorded.

At this time, I'll now turn the conference over to Paul Goldberg, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Thank you, Paul. You may now begin.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to ABM's fourth-quarter 2025 earnings call. My name is Paul Goldberg and I'm the Senior Vice President of Investor Relations at ABM. With me today are Scott Salmirs, our President and Chief Executive Officer; and David Orr, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

Please note that earlier this morning, we issued our press release announcing our fourth-quarter 2025 financial results and outlook, as well as the press release announcing our planned acquisition of WGNSTAR. A copy of those releases and an accompanying slide presentation can be found on our website, abm.com. After Scott and David's prepared remarks, we will host a Q&A session.

Before we begin today, I would like to remind you that our call and presentation contain predictions, estimates, and other forward-looking statements. Our use of the words estimate, expect, and similar expressions are intended to identify these statements, and they represent our current judgment of what the future holds. While we believe them to be reasonable, these statements are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially. These factors are described in the slide that accompanies our presentation, as well as our filings with the SEC.

During the course of this call, certain non-GAAP financial information will be presented. A reconciliation of historical non-GAAP numbers to GAAP financial measures is available at the end of the presentation, and on the company's website under the Investor tab.

And with that, I would now like to turn the call over to Scott.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us to discuss ABM's fourth-quarter and full-year fiscal 2025 results, as well as our 2026 outlook. I appreciate you taking the time, and I'll get right into our performance and the progress we're making as a company.

We finished the year on a strong note posting record quarterly revenue supported by 4.8% organic growth. Encouragingly, if you exclude the impact of the prior year self-insurance adjustment, our adjusted EPS and adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin were all ahead of our expectations heading into the quarter. This performance reflects strong volume, favorable mix, disciplined cost management, and the benefits from our restructuring actions.

Across the portfolio, our teams executed exceptionally well. Technical Solutions delivered another standout quarter, completing a significant number of complex projects, particularly in microgrids and mission-critical infrastructure.

We also saw strong revenue growth in Aviation and Manufacturing & Distribution, fueled by recent client wins and customer expansions. Meanwhile, in Business & Industry and Education, margins improved year over year, demonstrating the resiliency of these segments and our continued focus on operational efficiency.

Our fourth-quarter results capped an outstanding year for ABM highlighted by record annual revenue of $8.7 billion, an increase of 5% over last year. We also generated record new sales bookings of $1.9 billion, a 12% increase over 2024. Those bookings are diversified across the business and provide confidence in our growth trajectory entering fiscal 2026.

On top of the strong 2025 bookings, I'm pleased to announce 2026 is off to a great start for us with a major new contract in Aviation. Specifically, we won a significant passenger services contract at a leading global gateway airport, set to ramp up in the first quarter of calendar 2026. This win highlights our continued focus on the aviation sector, the strength of our team, and the value of technology-driven solutions.

I'm confident in our team's ability to deliver an outstanding experience for our clients and their passengers. This is one of the largest single aviation awards in ABM's history, and it reflects the reputation our teams have built in delivering industry-leading service and operational excellence. I'll also note that our pipeline across the enterprise remains strong, and we are targeting another bookings record in 2026.

2025 was a year defined by progress in several strategic areas. We invested in the AI capabilities that are already improving our internal processes, including enhanced RFP automation, more intelligent HR support tools, and early exploration of agentic AI to enhance client-facing operations. These investments are expected to provide greater efficiency, scalability, and differentiation, and position ABM to unlock new revenue streams in the years ahead.

We also made substantial progress in our ERP implementation. As you know, the transition created working capital friction earlier in the year, but the team worked relentlessly to stabilize and scale the system, and we saw a meaningful improvement in cash performance in the back half of the year. This sets us up well for continued progress in 2026 and normalization. I'd like to thank David Orr for taking a leadership position in this area and helping to deliver a significantly better outcome than we had at the beginning of the year.

Also exciting is today's announcement of our agreement to acquire WGNSTAR, a leading provider of managed technical workforce solutions and equipment support services for the semiconductor and high-technology manufacturing sectors. This is a highly strategic transaction for ABM that is expected to close in the first calendar quarter of 2026.

It significantly expands our technical capability set and fabrication environments, adds a skilled workforce of more than 1,300 employees, and strengthens our position in a sector that is experiencing multiyear growth from US semiconductor onshore. With only about 15% of the market currently outsourced, WGNSTAR gives us a meaningful foothold in a space with substantial runway.

Combined with our existing energy resiliency, mission-critical, and engineering strength, this acquisition positions ABM to be one of the largest integrated service providers to semiconductor facilities in North America. I also want to take a moment to highlight the continued efforts across ABM to improve margin and strengthen earnings power.

The initial components of our restructuring program launched in Q4 are now largely complete. The program was designed to better align our core structure and operating model with our growth priorities. As mentioned last quarter, the annualized savings related to the initiatives already undertaken is $35 million, with over three-quarters of the savings to be realized in fiscal 2026.

These benefits combined with disciplined cost management and improved labor efficiency, plays an important role in our performance in the fourth quarter, and will continue to do so in 2026. As we look across the business, I'm proud of how our teams navigated a complex and dynamic operating environment.

Not only did we win important new business and strengthen key client relationships, we did so while modernizing our systems, advancing our use of AI, and integrating new tools and processes into the way we work. It speaks to the commitment and adaptability of our people, and these efforts position ABM for long-term success.

Turning now to the year ahead. We are confident in ABM's momentum heading into fiscal 2026. Demand across our key end markets remain healthy, especially within Technical Solutions, Aviation and Manufacturing & Distribution. Combined with a record year of new sales bookings, the major aviation contract win and a strong backlog, we expect another year of solid organic revenue growth.

Our recent agreement to acquire WGNSTAR will strengthen our position in the fast-growing semiconductor market and will complement our growth in the strategic space. In addition, our restructuring actions, disciplined cost management, and our 2025 share repurchases enhance the earning power of the enterprise. With these tailwinds, we expect fiscal 2026 organic revenue growth of 3% to 4%, and adjusted EPS to be in the range of $3.85 to $4.15 before any potential positive or negative impact from prior year self-insurance adjustments.

With that, I'll turn it over to David to walk through the financial results in more detail.

Before we get into the results, I want to take a moment to clarify how to think about prior year self-insurance adjustments, because they're an important factor in our fourth-quarter and full-year performance.

As a reminder, starting in our second quarter earnings release, and following discussions with the SEC, we updated the definition of all our non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted net income, adjusted EPS, adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted EBITDA margin. Under the revised definition, we no longer exclude the positive or negative impact of prior year self-insurance adjustments from our non-GAAP results.

Prior year self-insurance adjustments represent the net changes to our reserves for general liability, workers' compensation, automobile, and health insurance claims that relate to incidents that occurred in prior years. These programs involve numerous claims across many years and some have very long tails, which makes them inherently difficult and, in many cases, impossible to predict or forecast with any precision.

For this reason, our forward-looking outlook does not include any potential positive or negative impact from these prior year adjustments. With that context, it's important to note that prior year self-insurance adjustments had no impact on our Q2 results, and an immaterial impact on Q3. They did, however, have a significant impact on our Q4 results, and therefore, on the full year as well.

To help you interpret the numbers, we've included a table on page 4 of our earnings presentation that breaks out the specific impact. For example, in the fourth quarter, the adjustment created a $0.26 headwind to adjusted EPS. So while our reported adjusted EPS was $0.88, to reflect and truly understand the underlying performance of the business, you would need to add back the $0.26 insurance-related headwind.

And as Scott noted, that core performance was above our expectations heading into the quarter. As I'll walk through the P&L this morning, I'll call out the impact of prior year self-insurance adjustments were relevant, so you have a clear picture of our core operating performance. Let's start on slide 7. Revenue grew 5.4% year over year to $2.3 billion, a new quarterly record, driven by 4.8% organic growth, and a modest contribution from our recent acquisition in Ireland.

Similar to last quarter, we saw organic revenue growth across all segments with the strongest contributions coming from Technical Solutions, Manufacturing & Distribution and Aviation. Both B&I and Education delivered 2% growth in the quarter, reflecting stable demand and solid execution. Overall, we're very pleased with the growth trajectory of the business and our end markets remain constructive as we head into fiscal 2026.

Turning to slide 8. Net income from the quarter increased to $34.8 million, or $0.56 per diluted share, compared to a loss of $11.7 million, or $0.19 per share last year. The year-over-year improvement primarily reflects $61.3 million benefit from the absence of the large contingent consideration adjustment related to the RavenVolt acquisition that was recorded in the prior year, as well as higher segment operating earnings, largely driven by strong ATS performance.

These benefits were partially offset by a $15.8 million negative impact from prior year self-insurance adjustments recognized in the current period, and $9.5 million in previously communicated restructuring costs. Adjusted net income was $54.7 million, or $0.88 per diluted share, compared to $55.8 million, or $0.88 per diluted share last year.

The year-over-year change largely reflects the $15.8 million, or $0.26 per share, negative impact from prior year self-insurance adjustments and higher interest expense, largely offset by higher segment earnings including the benefits of restructuring actions. Importantly, when adding back the prior year self-insurance adjustment, our adjusted EPS would have been significantly higher than last year and reflects the strong underlying operating performance of the business.

Adjusted EBITDA was $124.2 million, and adjusted EBITDA margin was 5.6%, compared to $125.6 million and 6% in the prior year. Taking into account the prior year self-insurance adjustments had a $22.2 million pretax negative impact on EBITDA, and a 100 basis points impact on adjusted margin, provides a much clearer view of our core operational performance in the quarter.

Now let's turn to segment performance, beginning with slide 9. B&I revenue surpassed $1 billion for the quarter, up 2% from last year. This performance was driven by higher work orders, expansions with existing clients, and continued strength in the UK, partially offset by certain client exits. Markets remain largely unchanged from last quarter, and we expect modest, steady growth in 2026.

Operating profit was $80.6 million and margin was 7.7%, as compared to $72 million and 7%, respectively, last year. The improvements were mainly due to restructuring benefits and the absence of $4 million to $5 million of the street costs incurred in the prior year.

Aviation revenue grew 7% to $296.7 million, supported by positive travel trends and several new wins ramping up, which carried some frictional upfront costs as these programs came online. Operating profit was $16.8 million with a margin of 5.7%. These results primarily reflect the timing of escalations in mix, including some frictional costs in the quarter.

As Scott mentioned, we're very excited about the large new passenger services contract we won after the quarter closed, which is expected to begin ramping in our fiscal second quarter. This win, combined with a robust pipeline of new opportunities, positions our Aviation business well for healthy organic growth in 2026.

Turning to slide 10. M&D generated $417.4 million in revenue, an 8% increase year over year. This strong organic growth was driven by recent contract wins, particularly in the technology sector and continued client expansions across the segment. Based on the momentum we've seen in the back half of fiscal 2025, we believe these growth rates are sustainable as we move into 2026.

Operating profit was $35.8 million with a margin of 8.6%, compared to $40.4 million and 10.4% last year. As we discussed last quarter, the year-over-year margin change is largely a result of strategic pricing on select new contracts that offer meaningful long-term growth opportunities, as well as ongoing investments in technical sales talent and sector-specific capabilities. Education revenue rose 2% to $233.7 million, supported by escalations and stable retention rates.

Our Education team delivered an excellent quarter, increasing operating profit 44% to $18.8 million, and expanding margins by 230 basis points to 8%. This performance was driven by improved labor efficiencies and escalations, as well as the benefits of our strategic mix shift towards colleges and universities where the scope of opportunities and economics continue to be particularly attractive.

Technical Solutions had a phenomenal quarter with revenue increasing 16% to $298.7 million, including 11% organic growth and 5% from acquisitions. Growth was once again driven by robust demands for microgrids where we completed a large number of projects in what is typically a seasonally strong fourth quarter. Our Data Center and Power Services businesses also performed well.

Operating profit rose 32% to $37.1 million, and margin was 12.4%, up 150 basis points from last year. This strong performance reflects excellent execution, higher volume, and a favorable mix, all consistent with what we anticipated heading into the quarter.

Now turning to slide 11. We ended the year with total indebtedness of $1.6 billion, including $23.5 million in standby letters of credit. Our total debt to pro forma adjusted EBITDA ratio was 2.7 times. Available liquidity stood at $681.6 million, including $104.1 million in cash and cash equivalents.

Fourth-quarter cash from operations was $133.4 million, and free cash flow was $112.7 million, a significant improvement compared to $30.3 million and $15.5 million, respectively, in the prior year. This strong performance was driven by continued progress with our ERP conversion and tight working capital management during the quarter.

Now turning to capital allocation. During the fourth quarter, we repurchased 1.6 million shares at an average price of $45.84 for a total cost of $73 million. For the full fiscal year, we repurchased 2.6 million shares at an average price of $47.35, totaling $121.3 million and reduced our outstanding share count by 4%. At year end, we had $183 million of remaining availability under our share repurchase authorization.

Looking ahead to next year, we remain committed to covering annual dilution at a minimum, and we'll weigh additional repurchase activity against the opportunities in our M&A pipeline to drive long-term value creation. Interest expense in the quarter was $24.3 million, up $2.4 million from last year, driven by larger average debt balances.

Turning to our fiscal 2026 outlook on slide 12, we're excited about our 2026 plan, and expect meaningful revenue growth, adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted EPS, all before any positive or negative impacts from prior year self-insurance adjustment. Specifically, we expect full-year organic revenue growth of 3% to 4%.

Aviation, M&D, and Technical Solutions are all expected to grow above that range, while B&I and Education are expected to deliver low-single digit growth. The WGNSTAR acquisition will contribute roughly 1 additional point of revenue growth, bringing total growth to 4% to 5% for the year.

We're also introducing a new metric this year, segment operating margin, which we believe better reflects the core operational health of the business as it removes the noise created by prior year self-insurance adjustments. Segment operating margin is defined as segment operating profit divided by total revenue, and we expect it to be between 7.8% and 8% for fiscal 2026.

Interest expense is forecast to be $95 million to $105 million, and our normalized tax rate before any discrete items is expected to be 29% to 30%. With regard to cash, we expect free cash flow before the impact of transformation and integration costs, the RavenVolt earn-out, and any incremental restructuring to be about $250 million in 2026. Putting this all together, we expect full-year adjusted EPS in the range of $3.85 to $4.15.

And as a reminder, our outlook does not include any future positive or negative prior year self-insurance adjustments. Going forward, we'll continue to highlight any material impacts resulting from the inclusion of prior year self-insurance adjustments in our non-GAAP results.

Moving to our fiscal 2026 adjusted EPS bridge on slide 13. We start by adding back the full-year 2025 prior year self-insurance adjustment of $0.27 to get to our core adjusted EPS for the year. From there, we layer in the net benefits of price, volume, mix, and restructuring savings. Interest expense before the WGNSTAR acquisition is anticipated to be a small tailwind in 2026.

As we discussed earlier, we'll continue investing for the long term in 2026, including adding talent, expanding our AI capabilities, and building out our technology stack. After taking into account both the performance gains and these planned investments, we expect to grow our core EPS by more than 10% on 4% to 5% revenue growth. From that number, we then back out the first-year impact of WGNSTAR, including associated acquisition-related amortization and interest expense, which gets us to our adjusted EPS guidance range of $3.85 to $4.15 before any potential positive or negative impact from prior year self-insurance adjustments.

With that, I'll hand it back to Scott for closing remarks.

Thanks, David. Before we open the line for questions, I want to take a moment to reflect on the year and acknowledge the tremendous work of our team. Fiscal 2025 was a year of real accomplishment for ABM. We delivered record revenue and record new sales [bookings] even as we navigate an uncertain macro environment and work through a significant ERP system upgrade that touched every part of our business.

These achievements speak to the resilience, adaptability, and professionalism of our people. I'm incredibly proud of how our team showed up this year, meeting challenges head on, staying focused on our clients, and executing with discipline. Whether it was delivering complex technical solutions projects, ramping major new contracts, or advancing and adapting to our AI and technology capabilities across our operations, our team rose to the occasion. Their efforts position ABM very well for the future.

Looking ahead, I'm excited about what 2026 holds for ABM. We have large new clients ramping early in the year. The WGNSTAR acquisition will be contributing to our growth and our pipeline across the portfolio remains strong. These elements give us confidence in our ability to drive another year of solid organic revenue growth and continued earnings expansion. And as we think about the longer term, we will continue to evolve ABM into a higher growth organization.

That means enhancing our portfolio, pushing further up the value stream with our clients, expanding our technical and data-enabled capabilities, and being disciplined allocators of capital. We will do this with the same focus on clients, people, and operational excellence that has guided us this year. To everyone at ABM, thank you for your hard work and commitment, it's made all the difference.

Happy holidays to everyone. And with that, we'll open up the line for questions.

(Operator Instructions) Josh Chan, UBS.

I guess I was -- I'm going to ask about the margin trajectory of the business. I think you introduced the segment operating margin metric. I was just wondering, I guess, what are the drivers between what seems like a relatively flat margin outlook for '26 despite some restructuring savings coming into the business?

Josh, thanks for the question. Yeah, we did introduce a new metric next year in segment operating profit margin. And we just feel like that's a really clean metric for us, and it reflects, call it, the operating health of the business, and removes some of the noise created by the prior year self-insurance adjustments. So we do have some benefit from the restructuring built into those margins. Some of that restructuring, as we spoke about in Q3 was baked into the field and operating profit numbers.

And then we have some mix rolling into those numbers in 2026 as well that we're working through, some of which from some of the pricing decisions we talked about in the Q3 call. So it's just a blend of those two things, really, ultimately, but we're excited to introduce this metric. And as I said, it just gives us a real clear picture, and it mirrors actually how we measure and manage the business internally.

Okay. Great. Thank you for that. And then maybe a question on the deal. Could you just talk about sort of the strategic attraction of the deal, kind of why you pursue the deal? And then also from a financial perspective, the switch from being dilutive in '26 to accretive in '27. Could you just kind of talk a little bit about whether that's because amortization goes down or whether that's just pure business growth and margin expansion?

That's great. So look, the strategic imperative with this acquisition is just really compelling. I mean, I guess, we don't have to talk a lot about the semiconductor space, right? Like it's one of the hottest and fastest-growing segments in the economy right now. And we have a big portfolio, already over $300 million in business in that space. And for us it's incredibly exciting.

And the best way to think about this is -- and maybe this will help when you think about this acquisition and what they do. What I want you to kind of visualize is a picture of bull's eye, right? And if you look at the outer ring of a bull's eye, think of that as a semiconductor facility and the inner ring as the fabrication center, where they're actually doing all the fab. We operate from the outside of the ring to the inside of the ring before you get to the fabrication facility.

That's what ABM's core has been doing cleaning, doing technical service, doing support service for staff, but we've never been able to get inside the fabrication facility. Because to get inside there, it's typically sensitive materials, it's restricted. You need certifications. And that's what WGNSTAR brings to the table.

And when you think about the fact that they have over 30 clients in the semiconductor space and we have over 50, and you put those together, I think it's just going to be fabulous because now we can go to our clients and say, we can now broach the fabrication center with our skills.

So it's just going to open up a whole universe for us. So the strategic possibilities are just fabulous. And I'll let David answer the dilution question.

Yeah. And Josh, thanks for the other question. So from a dilution perspective, as we noted, we expect some nominal dilution in the first year, and that's really, largely, because of the factoring in the amortization and interest cost of the deal. But I think the good news is based on the growth trajectory, we expect a real path to accretion in year two. And ultimately, if you step back and look at this thing on a forward-looking basis, we see a multiple between 12 and 13 times.

So we're extremely excited about the acquisition. It's got a great margin profile, a great growth profile. Those growth profile helps us propel in the '26 and '27, and we see a lot of actual cross-selling synergies opportunities, as Scott just mentioned, with the shared accounts that we have. So really exciting opportunity for us.

Yeah. And we feel that there's a lot of parallels between this and what we did with RavenVolt, where we picked a specific segment of an industry, in this case, microgrids with RavenVolt and said, we see this as a point of acceleration. And just for context, RavenVolt did over [$350 million] (corrected by the company after the call) in revenue this year, from -- and think about that from where it started with the acquisition. So we feel like WGNSTAR has same principles as RavenVolt, and it's just as exciting for us.

Very clear. Thank you, both, for the color and the time.

Jasper Bibb, Truist Securities.

I wanted to ask about your experience with pricing concessions and some of the more challenged US office markets you talked about last quarter. Just hoping you could clarify if you've seen any more customer concessions in the B&I business? Or has that slowed down?

Yeah. So I think it's stabilized. And we did say last quarter that we thought it was more episodic. We're always having pricing discussions. We continue to have pricing discussions in the fourth quarter, but they weren't as kind of dramatic and didn't add up to what it did in Q3.

So we see that stabilizing right now and feel really good about it. And I guess if you would think about what we talked about with M&D last quarter, we said those pricing discussions were about capturing market. And specifically for us, it was in the semiconductor space. We knew about WGNSTAR. We knew it was coming.

Obviously, we couldn't share that at that time. So part of those pricing discussions was anticipation for the WGNSTAR deal. So hopefully, that gives you a little bit more clarity. But again, we see total normalization now.

Yeah, that's helpful. And then I guess, just hoping you could provide a bit more detail on the remaining pieces of the ERP road map that are coming in '26, and how that factors and how you're thinking about the free cash flow outlook for the year?

Yeah. Thanks, Jasper. This is David. So we're really happy that we've got the vast majority of the transactions throughout the enterprise on the new ERP system. And obviously, we work through that this year, and we think we finished the year on a good note there.

We have a few groups left to go. And the good news is, I think, from a risk and complexity scale level, those groups are much less complex ultimately to get onto system. And with the advancements of AI and how we deploy AI, we're learning every day more and more about how more efficiently we can migrate those groups on the system. But having nearly 90% of the transactions on board right now is a great place for us to be.

And relative to cash flow, we're obviously really pleased with where we ended the year on cash flow. A pretty big difference between the first half of the year and the back half of the year. In fact, our DSOs at the end of this year were down 11% from their peak in Q2. And that's, by the way, a reflection of the team's effort. I mean, there's a tremendous amount of focus from the entire team at ABM to get there.

And then looking forward to next year, I do think we're entering the year from a position of strength on cash flow. Our target next year of around $250 million normalized cash flow, even includes an incremental $30 million of anticipated capital spend on buses for an airport contract that we won in 2025. So given that on an adjusted basis, we feel really strong about the cash flow number in '26.

All right. Thanks for taking my questions.

Andy Wittmann, Baird.

Maybe David, can you just keep going a little bit more on the free cash flow. The $250 million normalized, can you call out what the items that are unusual onetime items that we should be considering in the year? Obviously, some of the restructuring is going to have probably some cash cost. Although it sounds like you got to a lot of that.

Maybe if you could just bridge us to what the actual number will be [ex] fee items, just so we have an understanding of some of those ins and outs?

Got it. No problem. Yeah. So if you started at $250 million, Andy, we'll probably have about $20 million in transformation costs, another $10 million in integration and acquisition costs, and plus or minus $5 million in restructuring costs. And then the last piece of it is we do anticipate an additional payout for the RavenVolt contingent consideration. And right now, that's about $30 million.

So if you rack all of those up and back it out of $250 million, you get down to a free cash flow number of around $185 million.

Super helpful for those clarifications. Just speaking of earn-outs and payouts, does the WGNSTAR -- is this cash payout that's expected in your fiscal second quarter each or does this one also have some contingencies, earnouts, what have you associated with that? And if you can, if there are any, just -- what can you tell us about those recognizing that that deal has not yet closed?

Yeah. We anticipate the deal to close early in our second quarter of fiscal '26, Andy, and so we'll anticipate funding it at that time. And we've designed some structures on the management side to make sure that the team is motivated, and we'll go into more detail as we through the second quarter here.

Got it. Let's see. Maybe one other one. Can you -- maybe, David, just for understanding here, what is -- what was the segment operating profit in fiscal 2025? I just want to make sure that I understand kind of where you are on the metric, so I can understand the guidance.

Yeah. Thanks, Andy. It was 7.9%, so roughly right in the middle of the range of what we're calling out for fiscal '26.

Got it. And then just maybe a final question for me. Obviously, again, you said that the restructuring program has been substantially activated here already. Can you talk about -- how much is left to go and how the rest of it stays [within] during the course of fiscal 2026? And where the benefits should accrue, I guess, there's some accrual to '27 here?

Yeah. So as we spoke about in Q3, we realized about 20% of the benefits of the $35 million in Q4, essentially of 2025. And the balance of that, we still anticipate recognizing in 2026. And that restructuring is largely done essentially. And so beyond that, we continue to look at other areas like real estate footprint, optimizing our spend on subcontract in the early AI-enabled savings.

Those will be incremental as they come to anything we announced on the prior restructuring.

Got it. Okay. I think that's it. Just those clarification. Thank you so much.

Tim Mulrooney, William Blair.

Scott, your guidance framework of organic revenue growth of 3% to 4% next year. What's the assumption embedded in that guidance for the B&I segment? It's your biggest segment. The business -- it's been accelerating in recent quarters, but you didn't call it out in your outlook section as a growth driver for fiscal 2026. So I'm curious where your head is at, and how you're thinking about the business for next year?

Yeah. So look, I think -- so when I think about the B&I segment, which is largely commercial real estate, I feel like from our perspective, the commercial real estate crisis is behind us now. We feel like the work from home versus work in the office has kind of stabilized at this point. So we think we're back to kind of steady state in B&I.

And typically, that's been growing at a GDP rate, and that's where we think it's going to land this year, and that's what's baked into our guidance basically normal course now, which, by the way, is a big relief, right, for -- I think, for all of us to feel like we've kind of lapped all the drama of the last few years in commercial real estate.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. No, that's good to hear. Steady state, normal course, stabilization. Those are the words that, I think, everyone wants to hear is we're turning the quarter into 2026. So that's great. Thank you, Scott.

David, I have a completely different shifting gears completely here to the self-insurance adjustment. And by the way, the bridges, the slides at the end were really helpful. So thanks for building those out. But I saw that $0.26 impact from your prior year self-insurance adjustments, and I'm wondering if you could just unpack that a little bit more?

Because I understand there's a lot of accounting estimates that go into this and you do the best that you can here. But we're trying to understand if this -- this was a discrete event, or if there's potential for a longer tail here in future quarters?

Yeah, no problem. Thanks for the question. So the context I would provide you here is this pool overall is a $500 million pool for us. And as we said in the prepared remarks, that's made up of workers' comp, general liability and auto related claims. And I think, obviously, with the healthcare environment like it is, we know there can be volatility in this space on these claims.

But I think when we take a step back and look at it from our perspective, a 4% adjustment on a $500 million pool for a workforce of over 100,000 employees, is really well within industry standards. And really, the key is nothing's really changed. We had roughly a 4% adjustment last year as well. And some years, we even had a favorable adjustment.

So it's just that after our discussions with the SEC, we're now reporting this above the line. But I think that's the key in looking at it is this is something we deal with. We just have a reported change and now it's reported differently. So it's really nothing more than that, I would say.

Yeah. And if anything -- yeah, I was just going to say, like when you think about this pool, and again, industry standard, we have such a strong safety culture here. It's just been embedded. Everyone gets a safety message every morning. And I think that's why we've been able to control this so well and keep it within a tight range, which again, as David mentioned, you know what's going on with healthcare costs with all the costs associated around these kinds of claims to keep it within 4%, we're really proud of that.

I do, and I appreciate that. Sometimes we see these larger impacts and it's just an update to a reserve because there's an ongoing court case or something like that. So I just wanted to clarify, but it sounds like if I could summarize this is well within the range that you see in a typical year, and we're just going to have to get used to the swings now that you can't exclude it from GAAP EPS correct?

Right. I think that's right. And I think that's another reason for us to give clarity in providing segment operating profit margin. Again, as I mentioned, that really just takes the noise out of that adjustment.

Completely understood. Thank you very much.

Faiza Alwy, Deutsche Bank.

I wanted to ask more about the WGNSTAR acquisition. I think, Scott, you mentioned that there's a very small level of business that is outsourced in that sector right now. I guess I'm curious why that is? And are you anticipating that there's going to be -- I assume you're anticipating that there's going to be more of a shift towards outsourcing? And so give us some color around why that is?

And I guess related to that, talk a bit about the underlying competitive environment. Is there a potential additional roll-up opportunity? How should we think about future M&A in this space?

Yeah. So I think for us, the way we look at it, from our perspective, the reason so much of the work is insource is because it's highly technical and for some of the semiconductor companies to bridge the gap of outsourcing it, it's a very, very high bar. But with WGNSTAR, so many of their clients are 20-plus-year relationships because they are so good at operating within these facilities and gaining the trust of their clients that what they've seen is in the clients, they've captured, more and more of the work that was insourced starts coming to WGNSTAR.

So it really has to do with the high level of proficiency that an employee has to have and having that trust in your provider, right? So we feel really great about that. And that's going to give us high confidence that we're going to get some really nice revenue synergies over time by introducing this capability now to our existing semiconductor clients. And frankly, we think there's crossover to pharma clients that operate in these kinds of facilities.

So tremendous potential for us. So I think that's really, in our mind, the key reason. And when we look at the competitor set, not a tremendous amount of big competitors. It's a lot of small competitors. We could have roll-up potential for us, but it could also be that we could just expand organically with the skill set and just hiring and training on our own.

So we have a lot of opportunity here. And I think that's why we're so excited about this.

Great. And then just wondering if you can be a bit more specific around just again, the dilution in '26 and the accretion in '27. Maybe give us a sense of what your -- like what the margins or EBITDA margins are in the business, or the segment operating margin, if you want to put it that way? And then I guess what you're assuming for interest expense and amortization for '26? And then how should we think about -- what goes into the synergies as we think about that accretion in 27?

Yeah. Thanks, Faiza. Sure thing. So on the EBITDA margin side, the margins of WGNSTAR are in the mid-teens. So it's a very healthy margin business. And for amortization and interest, on an annualized basis, we assumed roughly $13 million of amortization, and about $12 million of interest.

So obviously, for fiscal '26, you take about three-quarters of that, assuming we close the transaction in the first part of the second quarter. And then on a go-forward basis, as I mentioned earlier, we anticipate growth rate to certainly continue in the double-digit range. And even beyond that, as Scott just called out, the opportunity to drive cross-selling synergies and revenue synergies in this business is really significant given the shared portfolio and the shared vertical space.

So that's really where we see a lot of the accretion heading into fiscal '27.

Great. That's all very helpful. Maybe if I can just ask a question on Technical Solutions. Give us your -- how should we think about the lay of the land there? I know that business can be pretty lumpy. So if there's any additional perspective you can provide around the go-forward and the underlying environment and pipeline, that would be really helpful.

Yeah, the pipeline and backlog specifically is as healthy as it's ever been in Technical Solutions, Faiza. And what's exciting about that business is it's growing at a rate that we expect it to grow. And back towards the high-single digits. And then the other thing I would say is it is largely a project business. So it does tend to be a little lumpy from a forecast perspective, and there is some seasonality to it as well.

There's a lot of work goes in over the summer, for example, when schools are out. Some of the microgrid work tends to ramp up just based on award schedules towards the fourth quarter, and you saw that in our results that we just reported now. So overall, though, really, really exciting headed into '26 on the Tech Solutions business.

Great. Thank you so much.

Marc Riddick, Sidoti & Company.

I just wanted to sort of touch maybe a little bit on the potential acquisition pipeline following this purchase. Maybe what we're looking at as far as leverage levels post-transaction? I'm assuming it looks like we might be approaching around two or so. So maybe you can talk about your comfort level on leverage range and maybe what the acquisition pipeline looks like currently? And then I have a follow up on the acquisition.

Yeah. So it's something that we're always actively looking at opportunities, especially some that will accelerate the specific markets (inaudible) like semiconductor, or a data center, or pharma. So we continue to look at that, but we're also very balanced, right? This will get us to about a 3 times leverage when we close this acquisition, and that's kind of the range that we want to be in.

So, like, we'll be really balanced about how we look at acquisitions for the rest of the year. Again, have a pipeline that's building. But for us, we don't do a tremendous amount of acquisitions because it has to be a compelling strategic imperative for us with a IRR that is compelling as well. So we're going to be really balanced in '26 when we look at acquisitions.

And then the press release [said] the details as far as trailing revenue and the like. Is there any particular seasonality we should be thinking about for acquisition or whether -- or any sort of particular SKU either from a seasonality standpoint or a geographic standpoint?

No. No real seasonality because they're operating, obviously, indoors in the fabs. So we get around the seasonality. So it's pretty even from a revenue base. And we love the diversity of their clients. They really operate in nine basic regions of the country where semiconductor facilities are located.

So they have good diversity geographically as well within the US. And 85% of the business is in the US and the other 15% is in Ireland. So we get a little diversity there as well.

Okay. Thank you very much.

At this time, we've reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I'll hand the call back to Scott for closing remarks.

Well, thanks, everyone, for participating today. And I mean, I could tell you, we are so thrilled at ABM to deliver these kinds of results in Q4. Some of the results actually even exceeded our own internal expectations. So the team just came through. And we are so energized about 2026 and how we're moving forward.

And I just hope everybody has a really good holiday, and we're really excited to come back in Q1 and tell you about how we're performing. But thanks, everybody.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation. This does conclude today's teleconference. You may now disconnect your lines, and have a wonderful day.