Matrix Service Co (MTRX) 2022 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Good day, and thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Matrix Service Company conference call to discuss results for the second quarter fiscal 2022. (Operator Instructions) Please be advised that this call is being recorded. (Operator Instructions)

I would now like to hand the conference over to your host today, Kellie Smythe, Senior Director of Investor Relations. You may go ahead.

Thank you, Justin. Good morning, and welcome to Matrix Service Company's Second Quarter of Fiscal 2022 Earnings Call. Participants on today's call will include John Hewitt, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Kevin Cavanah, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. The presentation materials we will be referring to during the webcast today can be found under Events and Presentations on the Investor Relations section of matrixservicecompany.com.

Before we begin, please let me remind you that on today's call, we may make various remarks about future expectations, plans and prospects for Matrix Service Company that constitute forward-looking statements for the purposes of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, including those discussed in our annual report on Form 10-K for our fiscal year ended June 30, 2021, and in subsequent filings made by the company with the SEC. To the extent that we utilize non-GAAP measures, reconciliations will be provided in various press releases, periodic SEC filings and on our website.

I will now turn the call over to John Hewitt, President and CEO of Matrix Service Company.

Thank you, Kellie, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I want to kick off today's call with a thank you to our employees across the business. Whether you're a tradesperson, an administrative team member on our project or in an office or a member of our engineering team, we appreciate that the past 2 years have been challenging for you in both your personal and professional lives.

At a company level, these challenges have been a catalyst to make us better. It has caused us to rethink strategies, markets and structure and we are changing the business. But one thing that will not change is our values. And while many difficult decisions have had to be made, we will always stay grounded by our values of integrity, caring and stewardship while delivering the best with a high level of quality and superior safety, thanks to all of you, as we build a foundation for success and sustainability.

Now before I turn the call to Kevin to discuss our second quarter results, I want to briefly highlight how the recovery in our end markets is resulting in an acceleration in awards from our opportunity pipeline. As noted in our earnings release, this is our second consecutive quarter with a book-to-bill of over 1. Through the first half of our fiscal year, we achieved a book-to-bill of 1.4 on awards of $459 million. To put this into perspective, first half awards were more than twice as high as awards in the same period last year and now already exceed total awards for the entire fiscal 2021.

These awards come as we see further market recovery and returning confidence from our clients, whose infrastructure assets span North America and beyond. Positive market dynamics, combined with a more focused and total solutions approach by our centralized business development organization, is resulting in the rebuilding of our backlog.

Remember, however, there is an inherent lag between the time a project is awarded and when it begins to have a material impact on revenue. In some cases, this lag can be upwards of 3 months, depending on the finalization of scopes, contracts, permits and facility process requirements. Our growing backlog, which now stands at $592 million, will deliver sequential improvements in our quarterly results as we progress through the year and ultimately lead to profitability in our fourth fiscal quarter.

I'll discuss our market outlook and the progress we are making to take advantage of the opportunities in front of us shortly. But first, let me hand the call over to Kevin to discuss our segment and consolidated results.

Thanks, John. I'll start with consolidated results. Revenue was $162 million for the second quarter, which was in the range of our expectations. Gross margins were 2% in the quarter. The most significant impact to margins was the under-recovery of construction overhead costs which negatively impacted gross margins over 500 basis points for all 3 segments. We expect this to improve as revenue volume increases through the last half of the fiscal year. Gross margins were also impacted by a lower than previously forecasted margin on a repair project.

Consolidated SG&A expenses were $15.9 million in the 3 months ended December 31, 2021, which is the lowest quarterly SG&A in over 8 years. We also incurred $700,000 of restructuring costs in the quarter related to additional cost-reduction efforts.

One other item impacting earnings in the quarter was a $14.2 million noncash valuation allowance placed on deferred tax assets, comprised primarily of federal and state NOLs. Although the majority of these assets do not expire and the company expects to utilize the assets when it returns to profitability, the valuation allowance was required by U.S. GAAP and impacted earnings per share by $0.53. Utilizing NOLs in future periods will have a positive impact on earnings by significantly lowering our effective tax rate. As a result, we now expect our effective tax rate to be in the single digits.

For the 3 months ended December 31, 2021, we had an adjusted net loss of $10.2 million and adjusted earnings per share of $0.38. Including the impact of the tax asset valuation allowance and restructuring cost, the quarterly net loss was $24.9 million and the loss per share was $0.93.

Moving to segment results. Revenue for the Utility and Power Infrastructure segment was $55 million in the second quarter, producing a segment gross margin of a negative 0.9%. The segment gross margin was impacted by 2 issues: First, low volumes led to the under-recovery of construction overhead costs; and second, we are working through projects that were marked down in previous periods and projects that were bid competitively and therefore present lower margin opportunities. We expect increased revenue volume and recovery of overhead costs as we move through the fiscal year to result in improved segment operating results.

Revenue for the Process and Industrial Facilities segment was $50 million in the quarter. Revenue volume does not yet materially reflect the strong project awards won over the last 2 quarters. We expect to begin to see that benefit later in the third quarter. As a reminder, we have booked over $210 million of awards for this segment in the first 2 quarters of fiscal 2022, resulting in a book-to-bill of 2.2. These awards include some larger capital projects that are still in preliminary stages of engineering and design.

The quarterly segment gross margin was 8.4%. Despite strong project execution, margin was impacted from the under-recovery of construction overhead costs caused by low revenue volume.

The Storage and Terminal Solutions segment produced $57 million of revenue in the second quarter. The segment had a book-to-bill of 1.3 for the first half of the year and won over $156 million of project awards. As a result, we will begin to see revenue volume benefit as recently awarded projects ramp up.

The segment gross margin was a negative 0.3% in the second quarter due to -- in part due to under-recovery of construction overhead costs. In addition, segment gross margin was impacted by a lower-than-previously forecasted margin on a thermal energy storage repair project due to unforeseen changes in repair scope and associated schedule delays, which resulted in segment gross profit -- reduced segment gross profit by $2.8 million.

Overall, the biggest issue with our operating results for all 3 segments was revenue volume which resulted in under-recovered overhead. The strong project awards in the last 2 quarters as well as the current bidding environment provide management confidence in an improving revenue outlook that will return the company to profitability within the fiscal year.

Moving on to the balance sheet and cash flow. At the start of the quarter, the company had $62 million of cash, including $28 million of cash that was restricted. During the quarter, our total cash increased $31 million to $93 million, including the same amount of restricted cash. The increase was primarily the result of cash generated from changes in working capital.

Total liquidity increased $35 million in the quarter to $102 million. The quarter end liquidity consisted of $37 million of availability under our ABL credit facility and $65 million of unrestricted cash. The improved liquidity and our debt-free balance sheet provide the company with the financial capacity necessary to support increasing revenue during the remainder of fiscal 2022 and into fiscal 2023.

I will now turn the call back to John.

Thank you, Kevin. As I said earlier, the momentum in our business is growing and we're moving closer to that inflection point I spoke about during our last earnings call. This is a result of the recovery and evolution of our end markets and how we approach those markets as well as internal initiatives that have significantly decreased our cost structure and are expected to create further efficiencies going forward.

In prior quarters, we spoke about both delays in capital project spending and how awards were shifting out in time due to the ebbs and flows of the pandemic. With that said, energy markets are stabilizing, demand is rising and client spending plans have been reestablished. Sentiment has clearly shifted. This shift is evident in our business and our already strong opportunity pipeline that has increased by over 11% since the end of the first quarter due to increased activity across our diverse end markets and how we are approaching those markets. The bidding environment is extremely active across all of our segments, and we are adding resources to handle the increase in activity.

Looking across our opportunity set, what I'm most excited about is the important role Matrix will play in the transition to clean energy and renewables while maintaining our strong market position in traditional energy markets. In our press release yesterday afternoon, we referenced recent notable awards, including the engineering, fabrication and construction of 7 renewable fuel storage tanks; upgrade projects at 2 separate refineries to allow processing of renewable diesels; and a capital project for a midstream gas processing plant.

These are the types of capital projects entering our opportunity pipeline in greater numbers as compared to this time last year. Many of these projects are captured in our Process and Industrial Facilities segment, which has a book-to-bill of 2.2 through the first 6 months of our fiscal year and accounts for north of 40% of our backlog.

There has been significant uptick in bidding in midstream gas processing, and we expect to see capital investment in natural gas-related infrastructure to continue based on the growth in global demand and recent increases in gas prices. In addition, many of our clients are planning capital expenditures to upgrade their compression and processing stations to minimize the carbon footprints of those facilities and increase capacity. Several of these projects are in our proposal pipeline today.

Natural gas has an extremely important role to play in the clean energy transition. Until other solutions are commercially viable and broadly available, natural gas will be needed to bridge the gap. In the same value chain, small-scale LNG peak shaving opportunities remain strong. We are pricing multiple FEED studies, maintenance and repair and capital projects for both new projects and several that had been on hold until recently.

Extreme temperature conditions in some parts of the country and the sharp increase in natural gas prices over the last 12 months has driven further interest in peak shaving facilities by most utilities. These facilities offer our utility customers significant flexibility to meet peak demand for electricity and consumer gas supply while managing their exposure to fluctuations in natural gas spot prices.

Opportunities across the Americas and the Caribbean in LNG, NGLs and LNG bunkering facilities also continue to increase. Large capital investment projects aimed at carbon reduction and renewable fuels are also being announced in the refining sector. As these investments are made, we expect our extensive refinery expertise and brand position to result in a growing number of project awards.

We are well positioned to support the evolving needs of our customers through our broad capabilities and long-standing expertise in performing capital work, turnaround, maintenance and repairs inside their facilities. Much of this work is being done under existing MSAs on a reimbursable basis. It is worth noting that over the past 2 years, we have grown our MSA-based nested maintenance operations from 1 to 5 refineries. They're providing -- therefore providing more stability and predictability to our refinery activities. This is an area of our business that we intend to grow further.

Elsewhere in the clean energy value chain, we are continuing to make good progress in hydrogen. Our expertise in cryogenic storage and liquefaction, combined with our relationship with Chart Industries, is providing a strong point of entry in this end market, which has recently resulted in the award of a FEED study that is expected to lead to multiple hydrogen processing-related projects with this client.

We are also actively tracking or pursuing further opportunities in hydrogen as well as ammonia, which facilitates transport and storage of hydrogen, particularly as a bunkering fuel. And finally, we recently joined the Hydrogen Council, a global initiative of leading companies dedicated to advancing the use of hydrogen as a global energy source.

Outside of clean energy and renewables, we continue to be active in traditional midstream crude oil infrastructure. As a brand leader in aboveground storage, we expect continued work in crude tanks and terminals as well as their maintenance and repair. Bidding activity in this market has recently accelerated to pre-pandemic levels with near-term booking opportunities growing.

In the mining sector, copper, precious metals and rare earth mineral prices are sustaining at higher levels, increasing our customers' confidence to move forward with capital spending. We have recently won awards for several projects in the U.S. Southwest that are the types of projects that are often the precursor for larger project work.

Our chemical and petrochemical strategy is beginning to pay off, with many chemical companies, both large and small, attracted to our comprehensive and diversified capabilities that include engineering, construction and maintenance. We have been successful in getting master service agreements in place with some clients and are winning small FEED and engineering projects, including the award with Chemours that was announced last month.

In aerospace, in addition to our first quarter thermal vacuum chamber award we mentioned in our last earnings call, we will be adding to backlog in the third quarter another vacuum chamber project. We hope to announce both of these by press release soon. Bidding opportunities continue to be strong in this end market, where Matrix has a niche position.

Lastly, the interconnector world of electrical and renewable generation, along with an aging infrastructure system, creates organic potential for our electrical business currently operating in the Northeast, the Ohio Valley and Mid-Atlantic. This team is winning various project types, including greenfield substations and rebuilds, transmission and distribution, relay upgrades and fiber installation.

One example is a project we announced this morning for Talent Energy Corporation's subsidiary, Cumulus Data, at their Susquehanna data center. Our subsidiary, Matrix NAC, was selected to construct a greenfield substation as well as associated transmission and distribution work. This project award was booked subsequent to the second quarter.

In short, we are highly confident in the market backdrop and continue to take proactive steps to ensure Matrix has the right internal organizational footprint and resources to deliver against it. Since the start of the pandemic, we have streamlined the organization, taking out approximately $80 million in cost, 1/3 of which came out of SG&A. This was the outcome of a business improvement plan we began to execute in 2020.

As we move on to the next phase of this work, we remain focused on increasing the efficiency of the organization and are making strategic internal enhancements to that end. Specifically, we are taking steps to consolidate certain areas of the business to further improve our shared services structure for accounting, finance and human resources. In addition, we are creating an Operational Center of Excellence that will initially be focused on optimizing safety, quality and procurement across the organization with the ultimate goal to include other operational support areas.

We are also continuously evaluating opportunities across various end markets and strategically adding and allocating resources. We recently announced the hiring of several senior people to our business development team, and in addition, have been tactically building our operational project and technical teams to support the pursuit and execution of these opportunities and recently awarded projects. These people all have extensive backgrounds and relationships in the markets where we see greatest growth opportunities for Matrix, specifically energy transition projects in LNG, renewables, hydrogen, midstream gas and chemicals.

The end result of our actions will be an optimized and efficient organization prepared to support the company's growth plan, aligned with the market opportunity and ultimately delivering better and consistent bottom line results.

With that, I now open the call for questions.

(Operator Instructions) And our first question comes from John Franzreb from Sidoti & Company.

I'd actually like to start with the change in the cost structure from $70 million to $80 million. I guess 2 questions there. One, does that change your breakeven point?

And two, does it change your gross margin projections or targets in any particular segment?

John, it's Kevin. I'll take that. So first of all, on the gross margin targets, no, I don't think it changes those targets. I think the change just further makes us more capable of meeting those targets and enhances the earnings power.

As far as what's the level of revenue we need to breakeven, the level of revenue we need to achieve full recovery of overheads, those targets of $200 million to breakeven, $220 million or so to get full recovery, those are pretty much the same. And I think the reason I'm not changing those is just we've seen some -- we talked about this last quarter. Some of our markets that we bid in right now are pretty competitive, so the gross margin is down a little bit in some of those. So that's kind of offsetting that decreased cost.

Okay. And the $2.8 million that hit the gross margin in the quarter, can you talk a little bit about that project? And are those costs behind you? And any chance of recovery?

So I'll not get into a lot of detail on that project, John. It was a storage -- a thermal storage project that had issues in scope development post award, we've been working through those with the client, has increased our cost and increased our schedule on the project. And so we should be substantially complete by the end of April and believe that we have the cost to complete captured at this point. And that anything we're able to do commercially from here on out, I really can't or don't want to comment on.

Okay. And it's kind of hard to believe, almost anniversary-ing the 1-year announcement of the Chart agreement. But from a share value, it's a much different environment. Can you kind of talk a little bit about how that agreement has progressed over the past year relative to your expectations? And where do you see it on a go-forward basis?

Yes. We're pursuing projects both with Chart and without. We would certainly like everything to happen quicker. But that's -- unfortunately, that's not the way things work. And so, again, we're -- so we are looking at projects with them and individually without them. We continue to work on some standardized design concepts and packages with them to be able to offer standardized solutions to different clients.

As I said here in the script, we've had a recent small FEED award to a client that is intending on building 4 hydrogen processing stations in, call it, North America. We feel pretty good about that opportunity, the client's ability to finance those. And that project specifically was something that we worked together with Chart on to win the FEED. And we think we're in a good position to execute on a full project in the near term. So we think some time in this calendar year, we'll be able to flip that FEED study into a full project.

Okay. And one more question and I'll get back in the queue. What's the thoughts behind not being more aggressive on share repurchases at this level?

Yes. So John, I'll take that. Yes, we had a good quarter on cash. However, the biggest driver was really related to working capital changes and the timing of billings and receipts on some of our capital projects. When we look out to the future, I think there's primary use of cash, first of all, will be to fundamentals projects that are in a build-ahead position.

Secondly, we've talked about that we expect the revenue volume to increase. Some of that will come from reimbursable-type projects, and we'll need to be in a position to fund that growth.

And then finally, we've really decreased our capital spending in the last 2-plus years, and we're going to have to start increasing that a bit in the future. So that's our focal point right now with our -- and priorities with our cash.

And our next question comes from Zane Karimi from D.A. Davidson.

Great. And just to go off on the cash flow a little bit into more detail, but how should we think about the cash flow dynamics, as well as the working capital, as you guys move forward with this work? Because you guys are having new ramping revenues and all of that.

So it varies, and it's going to depend upon where the revenue increase comes from. So if we have increased revenue period-to-period, like when we have increased maintenance activity, that will be reimbursable. That work, we're funding upfront. And so we're funding that for a couple of months. And so that's a usage at times. Especially in the fall and the spring quarter is usually the period we see that the most.

Then we're going to have capital projects. And we try to stay ahead on -- from a cash perspective on those projects, but there are times when you will need to fund that, especially if the project gets well ahead on -- from a cash funding perspective.

So as we're thinking about the rest of this fiscal year, I think we'll be able to maintain a pretty strong cash balance, similar to what we've got right now. I think that the amount of availability on our credit facility will also increase a bit, so that will increase liquidity. I think we had $33 million of letters of credit outstanding at the end of the second quarter. That's down to just under $24 million today. So that increases availability $10 million just in January.

I'm going to change tracks a little bit here. But given the global pricing dynamics around gas, you mentioned how there is a significant uptick in bidding around infrastructure here. But could you talk a little bit more about the facility upgrades and the infrastructure in particular that you're bidding on, and the industry's willingness to spend on a carbon footprint minimization?

Okay. So there's a couple of areas related to LNG. So there are a number of utilities are looking at peak shaving facilities and storage expansion for natural gas to LNG to use to mostly protect their customers against huge spikes in natural gas prices during severe weather conditions. And so I think we're seeing a significant amount of that opportunity.

We added a storage tank in first quarter for -- related to a utility's need to store more gas. There was a number of projects that were in either the bidding phase or have put proposals in for related types of infrastructure, and it's really across the U.S.

We're also seeing opportunities for LNG for ship bunkering, for export -- small-scale export into the Caribbean. And then we're seeing opportunities in NGL-related projects, both in the U.S. and into Central America, for instance, in propane terminals, ethane terminals.

And so really, a lot of activity around gas and gas liquids from a storage and storage terminalling side. And then there's been a marked uptick in just midstream gas processing work, where we've got 1 award we've announced. There's several projects in the hopper that we are in proposal stage on, probably more than we've -- more projects than we've probably seen in the last 3, 4 years, even pre-pandemic.

And I think one of the drivers there is the inability, in some cases, on midstream clients to be able to put in new long-haul pipelines. So they have cash flows to upgrade their existing systems, to increase service capacity and to upgrade their individual facilities to drive down its carbon footprint on how it operates along its pipeline. So a lot of activity there. Pretty excited about what we see.

In addition to all of this, I think we've talked about it quite a bit, but there -- our changed approach on business development, where we are fundamentally selling across the entire enterprise, across all of our clients as opposed to being a little bit more of a silo seller has really opened up the opportunity pipeline for us across all these energy markets.

Our next question comes from Noelle Dilts with Stifel.

So I was hoping, first, you could chat a little bit about how we should think about the sort of lag in terms of backlog translating into revenue. Is there -- are there any notable differences across the segments? And do you think you could start to see a benefit from some of the recent awards by the fourth quarter?

Yes, I think it's our expectation. We're going to start to see the awards in the first half of the year to start materially impacting late in the third quarter and probably more heavily into the fourth.

I think it is important to recognize that, that timing of award to revenue isn't necessarily a shot of adrenaline immediately as it happens. So it does take some time. There may be some permitting issues. They've got to get finalized. There could be some finalizing of scoping that we'll be working through with our clients. It could be the initial engineering work that gets done is a lighter percentage of actual revenue in the project before we can start procuring goods and services and start construction and move into the field.

So as we said in our prepared remarks, it can take 3 -- upwards of 3 months from the time a project gets booked to the time it gets into a position where it's going to have a material impact on our quarterly revenue. So that's kind of where we see it.

And our opportunity pipeline and award cycle, we think, continues to be strong and growing. We expect to see strong awards to continue to happen as we move through the next couple of quarters and throughout the calendar year. And so it's going to be a building of momentum from awards to revenue and that we see moving out in time here.

So it won't be a quick spike, it's going to be a slow build. But we think we're building a very strong foundation of backlog across the business that is going to support continued revenue growth.

And from a segment basis, the lag is going to happen more likely on capital projects. And we've got those throughout all 3 projects -- or all 3 segments. So it can have the same impact on all 3 of them.

Okay. And then second, sorry if I missed this. But could you just discuss how labor cost inflation and some raw material inflation is impacting the business? Are you able to get those higher costs into current bids? If you could expand upon that, that would be great.

I think probably good news -- the good news, bad news on the down markets we've been working through is that the inflation spike to materials kind of happened around us. And as in the current bidding environment we're in, we're in that -- we're feeling the pricing levels on that inflation.

And we're able to build those, for the most part, into our bids today. And there are some projects that were delayed that we had bid pre-pandemic that we're rebidding now, and to update pricing for clients. And we're seeing some pretty marked increases in the pricing of materials, steel plate certainly being one of them. And -- but we're, for the most part, have been able to catch that in our bidding program here over the last 6 months.

Projects that we already had in backlog, some of those had some material pricing issues that we were able to -- fortunately, to be able to deal with most of those with our clients because of the effects of the pandemic.

And as it relates to labor, as our work volume picks up, we do a very good job, I think, of sourcing labor across the country and have got a very good reputation with labor, both on a union and merit shop basis, and have not had extreme struggles in attracting labor to our projects. I think that will continue to get more challenging as our work volumes pick up and as -- in general, as the markets continue to improve, and that's something that we'll continue to manage..

And thank you. And I am showing no further questions. I would now like to turn the call back over to John Hewitt for closing remarks.

Yes. I want to thank everybody for joining us on today's call. And if so hopefully, you heard through the call today, the management team is very upbeat on what we see out in the future for the organization, on the return of the opportunity cycle, the award cycle, the conversion of that into revenue and the strong improvement into our bottom line as we move out in time here over the next couple of quarters.

So again, thank you, everybody, for being part of the call. And certainly, thank you, again, out to all of our employees and all the hard work they do every day to make us successful.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.