Limbach Holdings Inc (LMB) 2022 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Greetings, and welcome to the Limbach Holdings First Quarter 2022 Earnings. (Operator Instructions)

I will now turn the conference over to our host Jeremy Hellman of The Equity Group.

Thank you very much, and good morning, everyone. Yesterday, Limbach Holdings announced its first quarter 2022 results and filed its Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2022. During this call, the company will be reviewing those results and providing an update on current market conditions.

Today's discussion may contain forward-looking statements, and actual results may differ from any forecasts, projections, or similar statements made during the earnings call. Listeners are reminded to review the company's annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q for risk factors that may cause the actual results to differ from forward-looking statements made during the earnings call.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Charlie Bacon, the President and Chief Executive Officer of Limbach Holdings.

Good morning, and welcome, everyone, and thanks for joining us. Joining me today is our Chief Financial Officer, Jayme Brooks; and our Chief Operating Officer, Mike McCann. Matthew Katz, our Executive Vice President of Acquisitions and Capital Markets, had a late personal conflict and won’t join us for the call this morning. He will be available later today and this week if there are any follow-up questions.

I'll be covering our business highlights and business conditions and will provide our financial guidance for 2022. Jayme and Mike will discuss our financial and operating results. I will also provide an update on the continued integration of Jake Marshall and discuss the current acquisition environment and pipeline. We have many employees joining us for these calls, and I want to start off by thanking them.

Collectively, we've worked our way through the past 2 COVID-impacted years while improving our operations across the board. From our strategy of moving to higher-margin ODR services to improving our GCR execution, I want to recognize all of you for an incredible effort. All of this has been occurring while we uphold our We Care core value, which led to another period of terrific safety performance.

We closed out 2021 in a strong fashion, highlighted by solid execution, which we saw us deliver on financial guidance that we provided earlier in the year, therefore, 2 years of achieving our financial goals, all while successfully executing a transformational strategic change in our business and dealing with the impacts of the pandemic. We firmly believe that the results of the last 2 years confirm the validity of the strategic shift to ODR and our ability to successfully execute on that plan. Plain and simple, the ODR business has more predictable revenue, higher margins, and less risk of execution.

As such, a business that fits this profile should trade at much higher multiples of revenue and cash flow than a GCR-focused business. Quarter-to-quarter results will reflect the volatility that is characteristic to our industry, but we firmly believe that the long-term trend of moving to the owner-direct model while improving GCR execution will continue to improve results. On our last call, we also noted that we expected 2022 to be similar to 2021 with a decidedly stronger second half, and that continues to be our expectation.

On guidance for the year, we currently expect revenue to be in the range of $510 million to $540 million and adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $25 million to $29 million. Our goal is to close on at least one acquisition this year. However, this '22 guidance does not include the financial impact of that transaction since the timing of any acquisition within the calendar year is uncertain.

Before I hand the call over to Jayme and Mike to address finance and operations, I want to touch on the general economic picture impacting the business. We think the demand picture of our primary market sectors remains positive. Based on the recent FMI second quarter outlook, along with the American Institute of Architects' Billing Index report, and what we're seeing on the ground, health care is forecasted for steady expenditures, but there could be a shift of capital from Greenfield construction to retrofitting facilities due to rising utility costs, which should be positive for us.

Data center spend is expected to accelerate, and we are continuing to enjoy a solid relationship with one of the major data center operators. Our Boston Area operation has seen good levels of research and facility demand from the biotech and pharmaceutical industry. We also have greater opportunities in manufacturing and the industrial sector through the acquisition of Jake Marshall, and we expect there to be a steady increase in activity alongside onshoring of manufacturing investment.

In the near term, tight supply chains appear to be driving more building owners to devote capital to maintaining the upside of existing assets. That's positive for our ODR business, especially with our T&M work, which is a small of a growing part of our business. We realized a 46.8% improvement over the same quarter of last year with these T&M services. We expect that trend to continue while supply chain issues delayed equipment replacements.

While we've been impacted by supply chain driven equipment delays, these high-margin T&M services offset some of the equipment delay impacts. As I've stated in the past, our services are essential. Humans need what we do: heat, air conditioning, water, power, and building automation that control the environment we create. We are diverse. We have built a diverse business, allowing us to shift assets to where the opportunities exist from sectors to geographies. We move where the business opportunities are present. The pandemic response back in 2020 and how we executed is great proof of that.

Finally, we continue to evolve. We keep evolving the business, which has supported the 120-plus years of operation, and right now, we're indicating that through our ODR transformation as well as a digital strategy. In the context of all these trends and how we operate the business, Limbach is well positioned, and we expect to see improving operating results.

With that, I'll hand it over to Jayme.

Thanks, Charlie. Our earnings press release and our Form 10-Q contain a detailed review of our financials. With that in mind, I will focus my discussion on the key areas. I'll start with gross margins. For the first quarter, ODR gross margin was 23.3% and GCR gross margin was 11.6% for a consolidated gross margin of 16%. This compared to 15.2% in Q1 of last year and 20.1% in Q4 of 2021.

As we noted on our last call, the consolidated gross margin for Q4 ended for an ideal mix of job cycle timing and the positive impact from a disputed claim settlement. The GCR margin of 11.6% in Q1 increased 50 basis points year-over-year due to generally improving execution. The GCR margin was solidly in the middle of the 11% to 12% range that we talked about on the Q4 call as being appropriate for modeling long term. The LDR gross margin will fluctuate based on mix of services provided in any given period. For example, project work is delivered at a lower gross profit percentage compared to T&M work. So the relative mix of work will impact the gross profit percentage in any given quarter. That was the case this quarter, which is why the ODR gross margin was below the long-term range of being between 25% and 28%.

Our SG&A expense for the quarter was $18.7 million. First quarter SG&A was approximately level with the fourth quarter and increased $1.6 million from the prior year quarter. Similar to the fourth quarter, the high SG&A level was due to an overall normalization of operations compared with the prior year that was infected by COVID. In addition, we incurred a full quarter of Jake Marshall SG&A expense this quarter, as well as certain expenses related to the restructuring of several business units. During the quarter, the continued assessment of our operational expenses identified a number of areas to target for cost reductions.

These include further centralization of certain services, a reduction in our real estate footprint, and an evaluation of areas where we believe we can further streamline certain corporate management services. For the full year, we expect to incur approximately $4 million to $5 million of costs related to several improvement initiatives, which includes the wind-down of our Southern California operation and the GCR business segment in our Eastern Pennsylvania branch, as well as other nonrecurring costs associated with these cost-saving initiatives. These costs will be included in the add backs of adjusted EBITDA, and those incurred for the first quarter are in the adjusted EBITDA reconciliation table, which is found in our earnings release.

A significant portion of these nonrecurring expenses will run through SG&A. To cite one cost savings example, we have been assessing our real estate needs in light of flexible remote work schedules. We have focused on markets where we can reduce our throughput and are actively taking steps to right-size those spaces. During the quarter, we determined the lease of our corporate office in Pittsburgh to be combined with our operational office.

The total cash and noncash termination expense for the quarter was approximately $0.8 million, but this will save us just under $0.5 million per year of lease expense going forward. These expected cost savings and the add-backs to EBITDA are reflected in the guidance Charlie presented earlier. We currently have other cost reduction issues in play and expect to see further cost savings from these initiatives during the year, but will not realize a full year effect of those reductions until 2023. As such, we believe using Q1 as a quarterly run rate for SG&A should be reasonable, as there will be some fluctuation over the full year as we incur these one-time related costs to our cost reduction initiatives, as well as realizing long-term impact of those cost savings.

Turning to the balance sheet and cash flow. At March 31, our balance sheet continues to be strong. We ended the quarter with cash of $18.1 million and had outstanding debt, including the short-term portion of $47.7 million. The senior leverage ratio continued to be under 2x our adjusted EBITDA. Our net underbilled position declined $13.3 million from December 31 to $7.9 million, and we are confident that the significant reduction in our underbilled position shows that we are making progress working towards a neutral billing position. As we do so, we expect working capital to be positively impacted in the long term. We consumed $3 million of cash from operating activities during the first quarter, which was a dramatic improvement from the first quarter a year ago when we used $17.4 million of cash.

During the first quarter, if we start with the net loss, add back primary noncash operating activities of $4.7 million and then subtract $200,000 for capital expenditures during the quarter, the business generated $3 million of cash flow before taking working capital changes into account. As we suggested in Q4, this is a reasonable way to view cash generated from the operation of the business.

Based on the projected earnings this year, less capital expenditures, we expect positive cash generation from the business in 2022 before working capital changes in our debt amortization payments. I want to emphasize the nature of our business is such that working capital will fluctuate in the short term due to project timing among other things. Over time, we do expect working capital to have a modestly positive impact on the business, as we shift our model to ODR work in smaller projects.

I'll now pass the call to Mike.

Thanks, Jayme, and good morning. Continuing with Charlie's early comments about market activity, we see 2 primary themes in the market. The first is short-term repair work and retrofit work. Our customers are well aware of the current supply chain issues, so they know they simply can't afford to have their equipment bill. Due to that fact, we've been focused on direct building owner relationships, and we are in a good position to capitalize on this lack of optionality in our trust and relationships. Second is that our customers are starting to realize that deferred capital expenditures on building systems infrastructure that accrued during the pandemic can't continue. At some point, existing systems cannot be repaired any further and need to be replaced. Given the overall strength and demand in the market, building owners know they are effectively in competition with each other to lock down commitments for scarce capital equipment. The net result for us is an active sales pipeline, where we're seeing both increased backlog from larger infrastructure projects and quick hitting revenue from repairs and maintenance.

Of note, first quarter project sales were up 74.4% from last year's first quarter, which is really great to see. At March 31, ODR segment backlog was $106.9 million, up from $52.9 million a year ago, a 102% increase. Additionally, ODR backlog grew sequentially by 9.1%, which reflects a continuing focus on consistent sales activity. We think we're well positioned to deliver a solid year-on-year growth in ODR revenue in 2022. For the full year, we expect to see ODR account for an increasing portion of overall revenues as we track towards our 2025 goal of a 50-50 segment revenue split.

Recall that in 2021, the ODR segment contributed 28.6% of revenues, up from 22.4% in the prior year. So, we feel good about the overall trend. We expect the percentage split in 2022 to be in the range of 32% to 37%. While our backlog has benefited from an active sales pipeline, I also want to note that due to supply chain delays that backlog has taken more time than normal to convert to revenue. That is a primary driver behind our second half weighted outlook for the year, but we have the business in hand, and we continue to see good evidence of our strategy becoming reality.

Our local branches are continuing to look to maximize the return on the resources that has naturally driven them towards ODR revenue and its comparative attractive margins. There is ample demand for those small projects across many of our market segments and in many of our branches. First quarter GCR segment margin was 11.6%, up from 11.1% a year ago. Keeping with our emphasis that longer time periods offer the best lens with what to evaluate our business, trailing 12-month segment gross margin is 13.2% compared with 10.5% at this time a year ago. When we merge these 2 themes of ODR expansion and improved GCR execution, we have confidence we will continue to deliver growth in revenue and generate improved bottom line contributions. The ODR sales momentum and market demand will continue to drive the company close to a 50-50 ODR-GCR revenue mix.

Let me hand this over to Charlie for comments on our acquisition activities, then wrap up for Q&A.

Thanks, Mike. Let me move on to Jake Marshall and how that's going. The integration is proceeding well and is on schedule, which is a testament to the focus, the termination of everyone involved inside both organizations. The partnership gets stronger every day, and we continue to find new ways to work together as one company. We've really only just started to exploit the potential sales, marketing, and operational opportunities. The Jake Marshall leadership team has also been invaluable from our perspective of offering advice on industrial markets and fabrication capabilities. So with special thanks to the team in Chattanooga and our colleagues at Limbach, it's been a great team effort. The industrial and institutional markets continue to strengthen in the Tennessee region.

As you've seen elsewhere, Jake Marshall’s backlog conversion to revenues experienced a modest shift to the right, mostly on one larger project, but we're seeing quick replenishment of sales pipeline overall and a steady growing base of bread-and-butter industrial maintenance activity. There's a lot of upside in those markets. And over the next several years, we expect that we have the right team to capture it. We'd love to find a local and regional tuck-in acquisition type opportunity of both product and service providers to further expand Jake Marshall's capabilities, and we'll see what the market has to offer. We continue to evaluate a steady stream of acquisition opportunities of locally dominant privately-owned businesses. As we've said before, we're discriminating buyers, and I don't think that's materially impacted opportunity set. If we're going to spend capital, we want to do it thoughtfully and with maximum impact. While I would like to get more in one deal done this year from a planning perspective, ultimate target company quality will be a key determinant of our success there.

As I noted earlier, we feel good about the continuing improvement and consistency of our overall execution. Our ODR transition has us well positioned to benefit from current market dynamics as evidenced by growth in the project sales of over 74% from last year, as Mike noted. ODR backlog was up significantly from last year and improved 9.1% from Q4 of '21. So, we are certainly feeling great that there's terrific momentum in the business. You've also heard us talk about a 50-50 segment revenue split for some time, and that continues to be our goal. We're focused on organic growth efforts on the ODR model and also continuing to hunt for acquisitions that include a significant ODR component. In ODR, we continue to expect realized gross profit margins in the 25% to 28% range. Just to be clear, that range is what we expect to see over the long term. In any given quarter, we may see margins move above or below that range due to timing of our workflows.

In GCR, we are emphasizing gross profit dollars and are allocating resources to that segment where we have proven execution. We expect to realize GCR gross margins in the 11% to 12% range. As we continue to see ODR contribute a greater portion of our revenues with the 50-50 split, we also expect to see an upward bias in our gross margins. As Jayme commented, we are working aggressively to achieve and then maintain our SG&A right-sized. Over the long term, we expect SG&A to run at approximately 13% to 13.5% of revenue, which reflects a combination of efficiencies and operating leverage from scaling up the business up to the 50-50 split.

In terms of M&A assumptions embedded in our goals, we see plenty of opportunities available to us. From an operational perspective, we feel good about our ability to integrate anywhere from 1 to 3 acquisitions per year. As our integration of Jake Marshall demonstrates our branch-based model facilitates the bolt-on of acquired businesses without any disruption to any of our other operating units, while concurrently allowing for a 2-way exchange of best practices. One last point I'd like to reiterate is that we're optimistic and confident about the business. Each one of us on the call here today, along with several board members and other executives made open market stock purchases early in the second quarter, and many of us did as well throughout 2021. We are firmly committed to executing our strategy and delivering on our financial growth targets.

With that, we'll take your questions.

(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from Rob Brown with Lake Street Capital Markets.

I wonder if you could comment a little further on the service shift in terms of what you're seeing as maybe some equipment delays flow through and how you're seeing the turn service business ramping? And how do you sort of see that playing out throughout the year?

One of the things that we've definitely seen a significant shift. I think -- I would especially sense from an internal perspective, we're really trying to make sure that from a capital allocation, we're allocating to the highest gross profit opportunity, and that's kind of led our business towards increasing resources to the owner-direct side. We're seeing really 2 different things from a market perspective, it is short-term, quick hitting T&M work built from our maintenance base that continues to increase. At the same time, from a larger project capital spend perspective, I think with the rising energy prices and inflation, it's led to our strategy as well too, because larger construction projects have taken longer. They're worried about inflationary costs, and it's pushed potentially those building owners to think about the capital expenditure and infrastructure projects, which has really helped us from that perspective.

We do have the whole energy and utility jump in expense causing owners to see the opportunity for energy retrofits. So Rob, we're pretty excited about that. I mean, we have the customer relationships. Now, we'll be able to leverage that as customers think about improvement to facility cost reduction with the utility cost spike. So, we think it's an excellent opportunity for us to take advantage of that.

And then maybe just SG&A costs, you talked a lot about some of the efforts to improve there and get some leverage. Do you see getting leverage in the SG&A costs this year over last year, or is that more of a 2023 trend line?

That's going to be more long term. The range, Charlie -- we’re talking about, the 13% to 13.5% is the long-term range, as we get closer to the 50-50 split. So we'll be realizing realize the cost savings within the full year impact will be until 2023.

Rob, It's a major focus though, I mean, we did step back over the past quarter and take a very hard look at how we're deploying SG&A, and I think we've made some great moves, both in terms of some reduction in personnel in the center, as well as looking at just how we're deploying those SG&A dollars, and I'm just going to reinforce, we're shifting GCR dollars over to ODR, which is getting much better returns as our numbers demonstrate. So, I think there's a very smart focus on leveraging that, but the 13% to 13.5%. Yes, it is long term, I'd actually refer to it as maybe midterm that we'll get there, but it's definitely actively being added to the point.

Our next question comes from Chip Moore with EF Hutton.

I wondered if maybe you just firstly can expand a little bit on revenue visibility for the year. How do we think about handicapping some of the risks, whether it's supply chain for the macro-concerns that you touched on in the back half of the year? It looks like at least backlog coverage is something like 80%, so very good, and maybe indicators are good, but just about handicapping some of those potential risks in the back half.

The backlog coverage for both our segments at this point in the year are fairly strong. So we're really happy with what we see, but what I will share with you, sales for especially the ODR side of the equation are really up year-on-year, and you heard those percentages, backlog up 102% year-on-year. But I'll comment, the month of April just continue to see very strong sales on the ODR front and actually improved over what we saw in the first 3 months of the year. So, it's really good to see that our strategy around ODR is taking off. So, backlog right now is sitting fairly strong. We're satisfied with where we stand today for the year, tied back to the guidance I provided, but also sales, especially on the ODR front, continue to remain extremely strong.

Maybe for my follow-up, more so on Jake Marshall, specifically it looks like things are going very well there. I think you talked about maybe looking to add some resources there. Just give us an update on the end market. I believe there's a major automotive OEM who I think is an existing customer that's talking about building a new production site and a new battery plant in the Chattanooga area, just maybe some more end market insights from Jake Marshall.

So the Tennessee market has actually been on fire right now, similar to a couple of health markets, we're very, very busy. But what's happening with manufacturing down in Tennessee, we're thrilled that we did this deal, and I think the owner that sold to us is thrilled to, and he's working in partnership with us. He actually attended our senior management conference recently and offered a lot of insights on how he thinks he can help Limbach, which I thought was just great to hear him say. But going back to the particular market conditions down there, first of all, Jake Marshall is in very good shape backlog-wise. They are exceeding our expectations for the year already.

But when you take into account what's happening with Ford, the battery plants, I mean those are multiple millions of opportunity to us. We've had conversations with those customers. Right now, we're going to be very careful about labor and supply to make sure we don't oversell our capacity to deliver. But right now, they're in great shape and obviously, when you have those types of market dynamics, supply and demand curves are clearly in our favor.

So you can see improvement to margins happening into the future as that market continues to throw out so much opportunity to us. So we're very pleased with how things are going down there in the manufacturing and industrial side. We're pretty pumped up about it. It's not only about Tennessee, but exporting their knowledge on manufacturing and industrial, mainly in our Midwest markets, there's a lot of opportunity right now in the Ohio and Michigan markets that Jake Marshall will be helping us on especially with prefabrication of modular components.

Our next question comes from Gerard Sweeney with ROTH Capital.

I want to stay on the ODR topic. Obviously, it's a focus of yours, but I wanted to see if you could give us maybe little details or thoughts on maybe how you're going to market with that strategy and what the competitive environment looks like and how you are differentiating yourselves and from some of the competition. This is a long question, I apologize, and maybe even if some regions are better suited for the business today, as opposed to other areas, and how you can develop those areas. I apologize, long question, a lot to unpack there, but I think it's important.

I wrote down multiple components of that question, if I missed something, we will just ask again on this point. So number one, we put more feet on the street over the past number of years, and that's allowed us to go into buildings, we didn't have a presence with new customers. And we've really targeted on account management, looking for those ODR relationships with not just one building, but multiple buildings. So that's gone really, really well. Number two, expansion of what I call the wallet share. So, we have over 1,200 owner-direct relationships, and what we're looking to do is what else can we do for them? So we have our traditional core service offerings, but now we're talking to them. There's opportunity for us to actually act as what we call MEP Prime, where if there's essentially a utility upgrade, you really don't need a general contractor. We can do that for you because it's minor in the nature of steel or drywall, we're more focused on mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and building automation, and they love that. So, we're having great success at sharing those concepts with owners and they're buying it.

Finally, we're also expanding products and services that we can offer the customer. So, we are working aggressively on our digital transformation. We've talked about this in the past, predictive analytics, digital asset management. There's a lot of different things we can provide. And I'll take one step further, we risked to have a management offsite and we brainstormed. We have all these relationships. What else can we sell them? So, we started talking about different things that we do today in our business extremely well. And I'll put this out here, something like safety. We are experts at safety in so many regards, one of the leaders in the industry. Why can't we export some of those services to a building owner that needs additional safety coverage?

There's also things like program management that we started in Nashville last year. That's gone extremely well with our health care customers. Can we start offering those program management services to other types of market sectors? So there's a host of things we're doing to expand what I call wallet share. But we've more feet on the street, grabbing more market share, selling a different additional products and services. So all of that is going to continue to add up to the rapid growth of the ODR segment.

When you talk about more feet on the Street, is this a sale directly to the building manager, or is there an opportunity to sell to building owners, especially if they own a portfolio of buildings?

We really target getting into the C-suite if that's an option for us. We work hard to figure out how we get to the key decision makers, but sometimes it's a facilities engineer. Just a sort of story last night, one of our employees actually was having dinner at a restaurant in Clearwater, Florida, and they overheard at the next table somebody talking about our company and she couldn’t help herself but get over there and have a conversation with the individual and she introduced herself as an employee of the company, and what she discovered -- it turned out he was the facilities director of a major resort where we're doing some big work directly for the owner, and he was speaking out praises.

We've actually circulated that e-mail as such to our key managers of the business, as that was just a great story. But the point I'm making here is we're working at all levels, whether it's a facilities director or getting into the C-suite, and I made a comment a moment ago, we're looking to really latch on to customers that have multiple building facilities, not just a one-off opportunity. So all of that's going to continue to allow us to rapidly grow the ODR segment.

Are there areas within your sort of footprint that ODR is more better positioned for growth than certain other areas that maybe you have to make some investment in. Just curious, or you're just seeing broad across-the-board type of growth?

One of the areas that we're really seeing that and I would say really a vertical market sector, we've looked at all of our local businesses and I think from a national approach, a focus on health care. Health care is one of the sectors, and I think from one of our competitive advantages is we're able to offer our full suite of services in a connected approach. There's not multiple people showing up to sell controls or maintenance or projects.

I think we look at that health care sector, and there are a lot of other mission-critical sectors that we look at as well, but we're looking at those where we can offer those services where it's mission-critical, where the need is as important maybe even more important than price. And I think from even a bigger picture approach, we want to be in the facility. We want to be doing the smaller work. And when we're there, and we're connected and we have that trusted relationship, if there's a larger project that comes along and maybe it's on a GCR sector, then we're embedded in that facility and we can capitalize.

So we're looking for mission-critical light-type health care vertical market sectors and health care luckily is really a sector in all of our branches where we can offer those services and be there for the life of the building and especially as that facility grows as well, too. We're there and we're trusted.

That's really helpful, especially the mission-critical and pricing a secondary sort of notion on some of that business you're looking for. I'll jump back in queue, but I appreciate this has been helpful on the ODR side.

(Operator Instructions). Our next question comes from Jonathan Old with Long Meadow Investors.

First question for Jayme, real quick, just sort of a follow-up on the expense savings. You talked about one specific example on the lease costs, but if you're looking at going into '23, what do you think the total overall run rate dollar savings could be as we head into the following year.

We haven't specifically called out what ‘23 is going to look like. It's basically from the timing of the real estate is really probably the most tricky piece to factor in because we're looking to do subleases or terminations to get out of some lease space. So that's why we kind of put out more of the guidance of the long-term outlook for where SG&A could land when we get to that 50-50 split.

You just mentioned $0.5 million for your leases. You don't have the total number for all of the areas you're looking at.

We're working through that.

We're actively marketing several of our properties for either sublease or various transactions. We did a really great job out in Southern California, with getting rid of that property. I mean, that wasn't a really good outcome. And then the Pittsburgh move we just made was also terrific. I'm very, very pleased.

And then the other properties that are on the market, we're seeing interest and we're working with a group that I think has just done a terrific job at marketing the property. So that's going to help us. But John, just to be clear, the savings going to be on real estate, right? That's just a very smart play. But we're looking at other aspects of cost reduction, and we got a healthy list, and we're checking them off and I'm excited about the progress.

Your margin target is for 2025, not before that.

The 13% to 13.5%? Yes, we're working towards those numbers aggressively. We're working at it hard.

Another question, obviously, the use of the revolver is in the balance sheet. The average balance for the 10-Q was virtually nothing, it was like 0.1%. So obviously, you used it right at the end of the quarter. Is it still in place, or have you since paid that down?

We've been paid that down, and then also just an item to point out to as well on our term debt. We have a payment that came due for excess cash flow payment as well as we had some claim recovery. And per our agreement, we need to pay down our term debt with that, and that was about $5.5 million that actually took place here at the end of April. And so you'll see that come down from the term debt here when we post Q2. But then, that's where we look to leverage our revolver so that we can borrow it back based on the revolver. So that's why we're only borrowing it when we're covering off different needs of cash.

Obviously, the PCR segment is obviously declining and that's planned, but do you see that leveling off at some point this year, or is that just going to continue to sort of…I know as a percentage, it's going to go down, hopefully, as ODR grows rapidly. But at some point, organically does it sort of stop going down and stay flat or grow modestly?

Yes, we expect that to be flat, plus or minus a few basis points. I think we're really focused on getting the best return from a gross profit perspective and allocating our resources accordingly, and that may tend to drive each individual opportunity to the higher gross profit, but more or less, we're looking to be relatively flat.

The discipline we put into the business over the past couple of months, we had some interesting opportunities that we were pursuing, and we were given what's referred to as the last look. But we did take it for this price and we said absolutely no, and I'm so happy we did that because it's the right decision.

One, our backlog is strong to begin with, we're in good shape. But we're all about creating more bottom line off the star side. So we see the right opportunities in our markets that execute and execute well. We'll take that business on, but where we see margins low, we're going to wait, or deploy ODR. It just makes perfect sense. We've got to maximize the return of the human capital assets that we have. That's the focus.

Our next question comes from George Melas-Kyriazi with MKH Management.

I have a question on ODR. You gave us sort of some long-term gross margin range for the business of 25% to 28%, but given the fact that the business right now is quite big, right? This quarter was $43 million. I'm very puzzled by the quarter-to-quarter fluctuation in the gross margin. At some point last year, it was 29%, now it's 23%. Can you help me understand why business of that size that has so many small projects, would have that much fluctuation in gross margin?

Sometimes it's project timing because some of the projects are larger in scale. So you might have a project that's moving along. The larger projects, the margins are going to be smaller, just the nature of some of those deals. The majority of what we do though are the smaller projects that are very high margin, but it's a timing issue. So we saw the fourth quarter, all right, there was a terrific quarter. The first quarter, we saw some big work going through the books. We expect to see some write-ups as that work wraps up, but that happens in a future quarter. So the fluctuation from quarter-to-quarter will be there, but the general trend should be in the 25% to 28% range. And I've been saying that for quite some time.

But was there any special payments or special costs in the past few quarters and in this quarter that explained that fluctuation?

No, not really, Mike, do you have any further comments on that?

No. Just like you said, it's based on project mix life cycle depending on -- we have multiple sources of owner direct revenue from small projects to maintenance to larger projects. It all depends on the mix in that particular quarter.

We live in a quarter-to-quarter world and we all get that, but there's going to be some fluctuations with quarter-to-quarter. We've been demonstrating that for just couple of years, but the good news is the overall trend continues to show upward movement, which is just great to see, that's what we had expected to see.

So if you look at the $43 million this quarter, how many projects is that?

There's hundreds of small projects and there are some big ones in there, too. But it's actually hundreds, because some of the projects are or only $10,000, George. It's small, in and out.

So what would be the biggest projects that you recognize revenue in this quarter?

There is some work we're doing for the TDA, which are large-scale projects. That's on the lower end. We have some other projects out there that are probably in the like $2 million to $3 million range that might be on the lower end. When I say lower end, 15%, 18%, 20%, that type of range. So if those projects are burning and maybe some of the small projects are first is quick, that could impact going down to the 23% number that you just saw in our numbers this particular period. But we do expect, again, that range of 25% to 28%. That's the way people should be modeling on our business.

There are no further questions at this time. I'll turn it back to management for closing remarks.

I want to thank everybody for joining us today. All of us here at the company, the Board of Directors, our senior management and many of our shareholders are excited about our strategic direction and what that means for our future. We have established the proper foundation of business practices for growth in both our top line and bottom line with a continuing track record of execution, and we have a terrific trajectory. We firmly believe we are undervalued. Our peers are trading at multiples, more than twice our current multiple, and as we continue to execute our plan, we expect that gap to narrow. There is incredible value here, and that's why a number of insiders have continued to buy our shares. We look forward to speaking to you again when we report our second quarter results in August. If you have any additional questions, please reach out to Matthew Katz, who will be back in the saddle later today or our Investor Relations firm, the Equity Group. Their contact information can be found on our Investor page or on our website. Again, thank you for your interest in Limbach.