Centuri Holdings Inc (CTRI) 2025 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Greetings and welcome to Century's second quarter 2025 earnings call.

(Operator Instructions)

As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Jason Wilcock, Century's Chief legal and administrative officer and corporate secretary. Please, you may begin.

Hello, everyone. We appreciate you joining our call. This morning we issued and posted the Century Holdings website, our second quarter 2025 earnings release. The slides accompanying today's call are also available on Century Holdings' website.

Please note that on today's call we will address certain factors that may impact this year's earnings and some longer term guidance.

Some of the information that will be discussed today contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act.

These statements are as of today's date and based on management assumptions on what the future holds, are subject to several risks and uncertainties, including uncertainties surrounding the impacts of future economic conditions and regulatory approvals.

The cautionary note as well as a note regarding non-gap measures is included on slides 2 and 16 of this presentation, today's press release, and our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which we encourage you to review.

These risks and uncertainties may cause actual results to differ materially from statements made today. We caution against placing undue reliance on any forward-looking statements, and we assume no obligation to update any such statements.

Today's call is also being webcast live and will be available for replay in the investor relations section of our website shortly after the completion of this call. On today's call, we have from Century Holdings the following members of the leadership team Christian Brown, President and Chief Executive Officer, Gregory Izenstark, Chief Financial Officer. I'll now turn the call over to.

Chris.

Thank you, Jason, and good day to all of you. We thank you for attending our second quarter to 2025 earnings call.

First of all, I'd like to sincerely thank our hardworking employees across the US and Canada who deliver the highest service quality to our customers in a safe and productive manner. Without them, we wouldn't be here today.

We're pleased with our performance in the second quarter, which delivered higher profitability year year over year across all of our four business segments.

On a consolidated basis, gross profit was 12% higher than last year this time, and nearly 20% improved year-to-date. We drove strong revenue growth across our union and non-union electric operations and also within our our Canadian gas segments.

US gas also performed well and continues to make good progress in margin improvement initiatives and delivering predictable performance.

Our sales and business development strategic initiative, underpinned by a data-driven approach in a robust project pipeline, along with our shift towards an organizational wide growth mindset, drove another strong quarter in commercial performance.

This is evidenced by $1.8 billion in new awards in the quarter, which materially tops our Q1 record performance of $1.2 billion in new orders.

With $3 billion in total bookings through the first half of the year, we've already achieved a book to build through H1 of 2.3 times and are on track to exceed our targeted book to build ratio of 1.1 times for the full year 2025.

Further, our strong bookings performance, our backlog, and near term opportunities give us confidence to increase our full year revenue guidance. I'll expand on this success in Q2 shortly, but first, Equally, if not more compelling than our current bookings are the strong end markets that we serve.

As a result of our shift to get closer to our customers and better understand their needs, we've been able to increase the near term addressable market of differentiated opportunities to which we will pursue. These opportunities span all core end markets, including gas, electric, and distributed power, including data centers.

Since the first quarter of this year we've added over $2 billion of new differentiated opportunities into the pipeline, which now stands at almost $14 billion. Our sales strategy is twofold.

Improve alignment of our focus, resources, and capability in capturing a larger share of the wallet from our existing customer relationships.

And delivering our core services into new differentiated opportunities. The latter includes migrating our resource delivery to mitigate seasonality in our business, particularly on the US gas side.

Central to executing this strategy is our one century approach which has fundamentally transformed how we engage with our customers in the broader market.

The century approach requires the entire organization to engage with our customers to not only safely deliver quality services, but to identify how we can increase the scope of what we do to deliver future customer needs.

In addition, we have identified approximately 20 customers that we currently underserve and which have afford us over $200 billion of opportunity over the next five years.

We've created specific plans to engage more closely with these customers, aligning, building capability and resource delivery to ensure we meet their needs and successfully maximize this opportunity.

Over the last 90 days, I've been able to engage with almost all of these 20 customers to discuss their plans and challenges, and share how Century will align our business to ensure we meet their needs.

So drilling further into our commercial success in the second quarter.

As outlined in February, we began 2025 targeting over $3 billion in bookings comprised of $1.8 billion from MSA renewals and over $1.2 billion from expanded scope, new MSAs, and strategic bid projects. Through the first half we we are effectively already there on that target. I'm proud that over third of our new awards are additive work above our existing MSAs, which will underpin our future growth.

Of the total bookings in the quarter, nearly $1.2 billion represents MSA renewals, primarily from a few $100 million dollar agreements that long standing gas utility customers in the Northeast and Midwest, including one relationship that spans over 40 years.

In one of these cases, the award came sooner in the year than we had previously anticipated.

A key focus of ours in the renewal process has been ensuring that we generate adequate returns so as to achieve the, so as to support the achievement of our historical norm of 7% plus gross margin in our gas business.

We've also secured nearly $250 million from incremental MSA work, primarily primarily comprised of adding new service territories to these gas-focused MSA renewals.

Lastly, we won a $375 million in strategic project Award in Q2, heavily concentrated in our Union electric business in the Northeast.

These awards are comprised of core electrical work, including utility transmission projects with both 345 kV high voltage lines and 115 kV line projects, one during the period, as well as working in adjacent and emerging markets such as water infrastructure, distributed power, and of course data centers.

Notable wins in this category included our second water infrastructure project win this year and two awards related to RNG infrastructure.

You'll recall that we secured an award award related to data center electrical infrastructure in Q1 and have over 20 data center projects currently in our pipeline that we are pursuing.

We anticipate the second half of 2025 to be focused on client engagement, positioning, and tendering for 2026, and we anticipate bookings to moderate during the remainder of 2025 with the exception of some MSA renewals and planned project awards.

I reiterate, we anticipate that we will exceed our full year book to build target of one.

It's also worth noting that we are already positioning and tendering for 2026 opportunities, yet more evidence of the impact of our forward-thinking sales initiative and growth oriented mindset.

Now a few words on another important factor about strategy capital efficiency. We remain focused on improving the efficiency of the fleet.

An area where we can see meaningful opportunities to drive balance sheet strength. I'm confident that we can make significant strides. As announced in July, we hired a senior Vice President of fleet and procurement.

With almost 30, almost three decades of experience in the energy and construction sectors to drive our enterprise-wide fleet and resourcing strategy, coming to us from one of North America's largest utility and infrastructure contractors, where he managed 17,000 fleet assets globally, he will also focus on maximizing equipment utilization and improving capital efficiency across our $1 billion of fleet portfolio.

Further, as part of our strategic initiative to optimize our asset management approach, I'm pleased to report that we've made meaningful progress in establishing a more balanced equipment financing model.

This hybrid approach to asset financing provides us greater flexibility in managing our fleet of service vehicles and equipment whilst maintaining our ability to efficiently deploy resources across all of our extensive operations.

Now to an overview of our business trends for the second quarter.

In our gas, our US gas segment and as expected, our revenue was stable year over year, and we focused on executing our substantial backlog of awarded work to begin demonstrating year over year over year growth in the second half of 2025.

The strength of our recent MSA renewals and improved commercial terms is providing better profitability. We've seen improvement in gross margins year over year, supported by better resource utilization, and work is ongoing as we continue to performance manage and identify further opportunities to drive further margin enhancement.

We remain confident that our focus on operational excellence. Combined with our stronger commercial terms, we will create sustainable marginal improvement in the months and quarters ahead.

Our Canadian gas operations delivered exceptional results, with strong revenue growth and marginal expansion, demonstrating the effectiveness of our operating model within that market.

Turning to our electric business, we're seeing excellent momentum across both segments. Our union electrical operations delivered robust growth and profitability in core business activities.

Particularly in industrial focused markets where we play a role in executing on complex infrastructure projects. In our non-union electric segment, we've sustained the positive trajectory that began last year, with significant revenue growth driven by increased MSA volumes and crude deployment.

To further elaborate on these trends, let me now turn over to Greg for more specific details on the financial results.

Thank you, Chris, and good morning to everyone joining us.

Second quarter of 2025 consolidated revenues totaled $724.1 million a 7.7% increase from the second quarter of 2024. And consolidated gross profit was $67.8 billion which is 12.1% higher than the prior year period.

Gross profit margin of 9.4% in the second quarter of 2025 was approximately 40 basis points higher than the 9% we reported in the second quarter of 2024.

On a GAAP basis, net income attributable to common stock in the second quarter was $8.1 billion or $0.09 per share. Compared to net income attributable to common stock of $11.7 million or $0.14 on a per share basis in the same period last year.

In the second quarter of 2025, total company adjusted EIDA, a non-gap figure was $71.8 million or approximately 5% higher than prior year quarters, $68.6 million.

Aligned with our internal expectations, adjusted even a margin was 9.9%, which compares with the 10.2% in the second quarter of 2024. Non-GAAP adjusted net income in the second quarter came in at $16.9 million or $0.19 on a per share basis compared to $17 million or $0.20 per share in the prior year period.

The difference between our GAAP and non-gap adjusted net income primarily reflects the after-tax impact of the amortization of intangible assets, certain non-recurring costs, and non-cash stock-based compensation.

Now to our reportable segments.

US gas segment revenue was $338.8 million.

Flat compared to the prior year.

With the backlog driven by recent successful awards, we anticipate that both revenue and profitability improvements will continue into the second half of 2025.

Gross profit margin was 7.8% in the second quarter of 2025 and above prior year period 7.4%. This increase was due to better resource utilization under MSAs compared to the second quarter of last year.

Following on from Chris's comments, we remain focused on marginal improvement in our US gas business through enhanced performance management. We've strengthened our foundations through strategic hiring and improved processes and saw improvement throughout the quarter.

Our initiatives and achievements remain a a work in progress, but with strong market demand, we are confident in our ability to return to historical margin levels.

Canadian gas segment revenues were $55.1 million up 18.1% from the prior year period, while segment margin of 17.2% was approximately 210 basis points improved over the prior year period as we continue to execute very well against the backdrop of steady, strong demand.

Union Electric revenue was $182.2 million an improvement of 11% year over year.

Our core Union Electric segment, which excludes offshore wind and storm restoration services, grew by 26.4% over the same period in 2024, driven by continued strength and project work centered around industrial focused and markets which we perform substation infrastructure and inside electric work.

Within this segment, offshore wind revenues was $18.7 million an expected decrease of approximately 41%, or approximately $13 billion as project work winds down in line with our expectations. Growth profit in the Union Electric segment was 8.4% in the second quarter of 25.

100 basis points ahead of the 7.4% we reported in the second quarter of 24. Due to the improvement in activity in our core business. Non-union electric segment revenue in the second quarter of 2025 was $149.9 million a 24.4% increase year over year.

Core non-union were increased by more than 50% versus the prior year period, primarily due to an increase in volumes of our MSA as we deployed deployed significantly more crews and have and had higher workout.

Segment gross profit was 11% in the current quarter, which compares to 13.5% in the prior year period.

This reflects the unfavorable impact of the decline in storm work which carries much higher margins than our core electric work in this segment.

And more than offset what was a strong performance in core margins from the favorable impact of more efficient utilization of fixed costs to the much higher volume of work.

Company-wide, our GNA expenses, excluding one time and certain non-cash charges, increased $2 million year over year due to costs associated with our sales and business development activities and improved performance.

Turning to capital expenditures.

Net capexts was $19.4 million compared to $17.7 million in the prior year period, and our free cash flow in the second quarter of 2025 improved by $27.1 million compared to the second quarter of 2024.

As we typically see each year, working capital increase in the 2nd quarter do our higher activity levels compared to the 1st quarter. This seasonal pattern is normal for our business, and we remain confident that our leverage ratio will improve from year 2024 to year-end 2025.

We we get some balance sheet highlights.

On a trailing 12 month basis, our net debt to adjust the bidder ratio was 3.7 times at June 29, 2025 compared to 3.5 times at March 30th, 2025 as amounts drawn under our revolver increased by $74.4 million during the period.

We ended the quarter with $28.3 million in cash and cash equivalents on the balance sheet.

Near the end of the second quarter, we initiated a refinancing of our debt arrangements, which was successfully completed in early July.

These refinancing actions extended our revolver maturity to 2030 and increased the facility size to $450 million and extended our $800 million term loan fee maturity to 2032 at a modestly improved interest rate.

These actions, along with the elimination of legacy change of control provisions from our time as the Southwest Gas Holdings subsidiary, enhance our financial flexibility going forward.

During the 2nd quarter, our free flow significantly increased following two independent secondary offerings by Southwest, which as of today owns approximately 52% of our shares outstanding.

Finally turning to our 2025 outlook on revenue, we are increasing our range, now expecting to deliver between 2.7 and $2.85 billion up from $2.6 to $2.8 billion previously given the strong bookings.

For adjusted, we narrowed our outlook to $250 million to $270 million from $240 million to $275 million. We continue to execute on our margin improvement initiatives, notably in US gas.

As we consistently review our business, we are investing in strategic planning initiatives and strengthening our talent acquisition efforts to support future growth, which will result in a slight uptick in our DNA expenses.

Lastly, CapEx. The growth we're experiencing, especially in our electric business, is creating opportunities for strategic investment.

To capitalize on this momentum and support our expanding operations, we, we're increasing our planned investment to $75 to $90 million up from our previous range of $65 to $80 million.

This enhanced capital employment reflects our confidence in the business, positions us to capture even more growth opportunities ahead, and importantly, does not inflate their ongoing efforts to ensure capital efficiency and transition our fleet financing this.

And now back to Chris to conclude our prepared remark.

Greg Century continues to execute on our strategic plans of delivering sustainable, profitable growth.

To summarize, our one century approach is driving meaningful commercial momentum, as evidenced by our $3 billion in first half bookings and the growth in our pipeline to nearly 14 billion. This is underpinned by our robust end markets.

Our second quarter performance demonstrates the strength of our diversified platform. We're seeing excellent momentum in our electric operations, particularly strong performance in our Canadian business, and we're making steady progress in our US gas segment.

The broad-based execution gives us the confidence to increase our full year revenue guidance. We're also advancing our strategic initiatives around capital efficiency, including good progress on our equipment financing model and fleet management optimization.

These efforts combined with our enhanced commercial capabilities, positioned as well for continued growth.

The fundamental drivers of our business remain robust, supported by increasing utility infrastructure spending and our expanding relationships with key customers across North America, and we look forward to updating you on our continued progress in the next quarter.

Thank you very much for your time and support.

opera if you may start the Q&A session.

Yes sir, thank you, ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session and if you wish to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced.

Please limit your question for one question and one follow up.

Please stand by while we compile the Q&AQ.

Thank you. And we now have our first question. And this comes from Steve Fisher from UBS. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Thanks, good morning and congratulations on the progress you've been making. I just wanted to get a sense of, with all the nice bookings you've added into the backlog here, if you can just give us a sense of the margins embedded there.

And what what's the ramp up in these projects and the confidence in the execution is now that the business development efforts are starting to pay off, the focus will shift to to execution and margins. So what kind of confidence do you have in sort of the margins outlook from there? Thanks.

Maybe I'll answer that one, Steve. Good morning to you, and then Greg possibly add something to it.

.Your assessment's good, we, we've had a very strong 6 months to get the backlog up to give us more volume into the business.

That allows us to also be in better control and more predictable. So what I would say is the backlog that we we have as we go into the second half of the year is at a higher margin than what we've delivered in the first half of the year. The Q3, Q4 internal forecast demonstrate that we'll see an improvement across all the businesses.

In terms of margins, so the union and non-union electorate of their projects mobilized during the first half of the year, we'll get into full flight as we hit the summer months now and as we go into the later part of the year, and we should, and we expect to see further improved margins in the second half of the year, which is given us ultimately confidence on the full year forecast.

You see the same in the MSA work, January, February, March, there was some weather impacts as we as we discussed on the last call. The MSA now work is now customers are now releasing more and more work to us, and we'll start to peak in the coming weeks and months ahead, and inevitably we should see and expect to see greater margins in Q3 and even into Q4.

I guess the last part of the margins is that I think as we've built more volume into the pipeline. We've we've increased our booking levels.

We're starting to get a better handle on our win rates, a better handle on pricing sensitivity, and as we build further backlog, we will no doubt.

That looking at how do we get better pricing improvements, how do we become a little bit more differentiated in our offerings to get better margins whilst we'll be, pretty diligent in the risk profile we take on the future work.

So in summary, we expect the second half of the year margins to improve from where we were in the first half. We're seeing the backlog margins greater than what we've just delivered.

We think it'll be across all of the segments. And I think now we've got a good and stronger handle on the data within our sales pipeline as well as our win rates and our performance. We'll look to see if we can push push our differentiation further and improve pricing in the future.

That's very helpful. And this is a follow up from a resource perspective to what extent now that you have this book of business, do you need to go out and hire for these projects or is it more of a utilization play?

I think Greg, you mentioned a talent acquisition effort, so I just can give us some sense of how much of an effort you need to make on on talent acquisition.

Yeah, I think in the in the near term, Steve, when we look at when we look at what we Need to deliver from both a budget and a forecast standpoint in the next 369, and maybe even 12 months appreciating that straddles into 26.

I think we've got sufficient line of sight on what resources we need and where they're going to come from. I think as we start working a little bit longer range planning, we will need to do some.

We will need to look at the labor supply and talent supply market differently in a more structured way. Currently we do a lot of resourcing through the ops, and I think there'll be a lot more work we need to do centrally, but we don't foresee that needed now to meet the next 369, even 12 months of resources. It's well within.

Well within the current resourcing capabilities and well within what we've done previously, but in the long run we we will need to look at doing things in a bit more strategic way at a group level versus through the ops.

Terrific.

Thank you very much.

Thanks for your question please.

Thank you. And we'll now take the next question. And this comes from the line of Joe Odia from Wells Fargo, your airline is so open. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to start on the balance fleet management comments and just any additional color with respect to the timeline you anticipate to achieve that targeted balance and then how you think about that impact on EI margins maybe relative to where you're pacing this year.

Greg, do you want to leave that one and the answer to that?

Yeah, so good morning, Joe, and we have made a really considerable progress here in the second quarter and early into the 3rd quarter on our on our capital efficiency initiative, not only from the strategic hire that Chris mentioned, but also from just getting our RFP done that we alluded to in past calls.

That's been completed. We actually have leasing partners signed up now and ready to execute in very short order. And so we are working to get those done and you'll see some of that progress here in the second half of the year. Obviously it'll continue to ramp up and fully be implemented, over maybe a bit of a longer period of time.

From a margin perspective, I wouldn't expect material changes in margin over the long term. We think that we can get to our targeted goal. It's more than achievable with the work we've done.

We'll be able to rebalance some of that potential, even a pressure, with just increased pricing and better efficiency in our fleet utilization to largely offset any kind of impact from a margin perspective.

And then I wanted to ask on the core electric utility both union and non-union and what you're seeing versus you know earlier in the year expectations from customers, areas where you're seeing higher activity than you would have anticipated, as well as how much of this is the strength of underlying activity versus some areas where you've been able to pick up some share in the.

Market.

Maybe do you want me to do that, Greg, answer this one? I would, I would say the following, all of our customers, I think I alluded to in my prepared notes, I spent. Time with 19 of the 20 customers over the last 90 days and.

Every one of them is clear in that they're they're increasing their capital budgets. There's a general positive trend. Across all electric transmission distribution, distributed power data centers, it's certainly more favorable than than at the early part of the year. And it even extends into gas.

Customers are are very much focused on quality and quantity of resource delivery and looking at maximizing outsourcing because they're ultimately resource constrained themselves. So this is as close to a sellers' market that I've seen in my 35 years.

The key for us is to get closer to our customers and really align on what they need and then start planning our investment in people, equipment and know how and start building capability around their needs.

And as I say, when I speak with the customers, it isn't in many cases about displacing anybody, although we've seen one or two. Of our MSAs where we've got adjacent contractors we've been able to go to customers and say, look, give us more scope and we can give efficiency to you we can generate a better return.

And so we have displaced and been able to capture more opportunity on some MSAs, but that really isn't the prevalent the, customers are giving me the messages around, keep delivering to the quality and safety standards we expect of you build up a resource base that's of the same and highest quality. And we've got more work than we've got resources for.

That's a great color. Thank.

You.

Thank you. And the next question comes from the line of Sangeetha Jain from Key Bank Capital Markets. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Hi Chris. Hi Greg. If I can ask you a question on the $14 billion dollar pipeline that you mentioned, how does that split between MSAs and bid work and for if there is any specific data center type distributed energy opportunities within that?

Thank you sir thanks for your question.

So let's just run through it, the pipeline is, as you said, is, as we've stated, it's just shy of $14 billion.

If you look at the mix in there, about 2/3 of it.

It's actually new project work and about 1/3 of it is near term MSA renewals. So that should basically tell you our addressable market is very much very much focused on driving growth into the business. We've also got about $2 billion.

Of near term opportunities that we are currently tendering now all the bids are already in and we'd expect decisions this year and a further $ 600 million to $ 700 million of MSA renewals this year.

So the headlines are, yeah, $ 14 billion, 2/3 of it is new project work, third of it is MSA renewals in the very near term this year, and we've got $ 2 billion of pending bids that are out there and we've got in addition $ 600 million to $700 million of MSA renewals that are pending this side of the Christmas break.

About 20% of the project work is is distributed power or data centers when you look at the mix.

I think the last thing I would say is the risk profile.

Has not changed at all, and we've had questions previously about, we're looking at bigger contracts. The average size of the contract is less than $20 million so it's well within our historical risk profile.

We continue to deliver the same services to the same in markets as we've always done. We've just been somewhat more aggressive in actually positioning ourselves for further opportunity.

Got it. Very helpful. And then, one question on the increase in CapEx that you guided today. So just trying to think of how you are balancing your thinking between, let's say your equipment needs buying the equipment versus leasing your equipment.

I will give you some sort of strategic headlines and then let Greg go into some detail. Look, our overall objectives in the, in the next period.

The next few years is to hit a steady run rate where half of our fleet is funded from balance sheet cash and half is funded from leasing.

And that and you could calculate very quickly how much free cash flow that generates over the next 3 to 5 years. Secondly, as we look to capture further opportunity, one of the real drivers for bringing in somebody new to lead it is we're trying to seek somewhere between a 15% to 25% efficiency saving on the use of the fleet.

That's either that's either achieved by supply chain improvements by looking at the five businesses and going going to the market as one or or it's driven by better utilization or better life use on the assets. So the two strategic drivers are 50/50 mix.

And then driving between 15% and 25% efficiency across the fleet when we look at it as a whole.

And I'm very helpful.

I would just add even though we're increasing our guidance, we are not deviating from our internal expectations on mix between five and other financing needs, so we haven't changed or swayed that, but we are growing as you can see in our electric businesses at at a pretty healthy clip.

Got it.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for the questions.

Thank you. And the next question comes from Justin Hock from Braid. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Yeah, great, thank you for taking my questions here.

So obviously the awards have been really strong, they're really strong last quarter and even stronger this quarter. I'm just curious on the MSA renewals, just given those are chunky and you book the whole amount when they come in.

But on those renewals, I'm just wondering on average, what's kind of the scope addition versus, the last time you kind of booked those with the same clients like maybe just a way to quantify, how that scope has changed over the last, I don't know, whatever, five years ago when you booked.

It before.

Yeah, a couple things, yeah, because you've got.

You go Greg, that's fine.

What I say, as a reminder, when we renew an MSA we have the ability and we execute and negotiate, greater price increases, related to, from the MSA contract so.

I think that's one point that's important to call out as we've renew these MSAs, we've been able to renegotiate pricing a bit higher than than what we had historically had from a mix of work, we've been able to increase our services with these customers.

We've been taking in certain cases territories, new territories, and so, I point you to one of our slides. FSA renewals, the strategic bid, we've been able to increase the scope, quite substantially in certain areas.

Yes, specifically, we've added 25% incremental growth on the volume that we on the renewal.

Give or take.

Great, no, that, that's helped with the 25%.

I guess my second question would just be on the guidance and maybe just the cadence for thinking about the back half of the year.

You did, almost 8% revenue growth here in the second quarter. The the midpoint of the guide is kind of looking for, 5% for the back half.

You had some really, big storm coms last year, but just, I guess balancing that would be the US gas operations getting better, but maybe just, thinking about the cadence of how you expect 3Q and 4Q to kind of play out to get to that guidance range.

Yeah, I mean, we're obviously you pointed out last year, the second half of the year, we had some unseasonably higher storm revenues that came in.

We, we've said in our guidance, we've looked at more of a historical, average and then built that into our guidance.

We also had higher offshore wind last year, so those two are kind of headwinds going in year over year, but offsetting that is just improved performance, improved core business that we've already alluded to in the first six months. We'd expect that type of cadence to continue to offset, year over year.

Okay, great.

Thank you very much I appreciate it.

Appreciate your questions.

Thank you. And the next question comes from Chris Ellinghaus from Saybrook William Shank. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, guys. Christian, the bookings are fairly balanced, slightly skewed to electric. Is that a strategic choice or is that just coincidental?

I would say coincidental.

And and some of its timing, but the overall pipeline.

[5,248] is I think that makes it shift from day to day because this is a dynamic situation, but it is coincidental. Some customers take longer to decide some do not.

I think I even alluded to in my commentary, there was one award in the gas side that we didn't anticipate till later in the year and that landed in the quarter. So it's not deliberate, no.

Okay, so given the increase in the backlog and sort of the balance contained within it.

Does that suggest to you, sort of an inherent, accretion to margin just due to the revenue balance?

I I don't know how to answer that one other than to say.

We definitely see improved margins in the second half of the year.

The the book backlog margins and are higher than the as delivered in the first half. Some of that is driven just by the mobilization in the early part of the year. Some of that's driven by the fact that we've got more work now into the backlog and it's been repriced the current conditions.

I think the most notable thing for for the business.

On the amount of work we've booked and the backlog is allowing us to be more predictable, which was kind of something we were lacking last year. We've now got such a head of steam in terms of pipeline size, data analytics and backlog that we are now looking not not just three months ahead, we're looking [69], 12 months ahead.

So the, that's allowing us to be very much more predictable in mobilizing resources, making informed pricing decisions with our customers because we've got a really good view of where we're going to land at the end of the year, and we're very predictable now.

Because of the data and the bookings and the backlog and the market information we've got in house. So I would say yes, as I answered one of the earlier questions to Steve, and we've alluded to in our notes, second half margins were better across all businesses.

But the volume, the bookings really helps predictability, resource planning, and gives us confidence on making decisions about the future of the business and it's great to be sat here at mid-year and know that you've essentially got the full 26, 2025 backlog booked and then we're now looking at seasonality.

So we've now got a really good view on where we are currently for Q1 so that we can inform our decisions now to win more work in areas of the country that can help mitigate the seasonality, and we're in a conversation around where we think we'll be for the full year 26 to drive double digit growth.

So, I, yes margins, but more importantly for us, I think it's the predictability, allowing us to make informed decisions and basically deliver what we say we're going to deliver.

Okay, that helps.

Greg.

You alluded to, MSA escalators, and I'm not quite sure what you were saying about the increases, but let me ask the question in a slightly different way and maybe you can add to it, but would you call the escalators within the MSA extensions sort of the historical norm or more elevated?

What I was what I was alluding to, Chris, and good morning is while every year in a multi-year agreement we have an annual escalator embedded into the contract. When we come up for renewal, we have historically proven, and this year is no different, that we're able to re-evaluate our unit pricing.

In a more precise way and ask for and achieve greater prices than what a normal kind of annual escalator would would would generally give you. So that helps adjust pricing based on actual performance.

Okay, that clarifies that. I appreciate it. Thanks for the details, guys.

Thank you, Chris.

And.

Thank you. And there are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand the call over back to Christian Brown for any closing remarks. Please go ahead, sir.

I just wrap up the call. I really appreciate everybody committing the time to us, to supporting us and we look forward to providing updates over the coming weeks and in the next quarter. So thank you everybody.

Thank you. This concludes our conference call for today.

Thank you all for participating. Give me now disconnect.