Orion Group Holdings Inc (ORN) 2026 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Good morning and welcome to the Orion Group Holdings Third Quarter 2026 Financial Results Conference Call.

(Operator Instructions)

Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Margaret Boyce, Investor Relations for Orion. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and thank you all for joining us today to discuss Orion Group Holdings third quarter 2026 financial results. We issued our earnings release after market last night. It's available in the Investor Relations section of our website at oriongroupholdingsinc.com.

I'm here today with Travis Boone, Chief Executive Officer of Orion and Allison Vasquez, Chief Financial Officer. On today's call, management will provide prepared remarks and then we'll open up the call for your questions. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that today's comments will include forward-looking statements under the Federal Securities Laws.

Forward-looking statements are identified by words such as will, be, intend, believe, expect, anticipate or other comparable words and phrases. Statements that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. Our actual financial condition and results of operations may vary materially from those contemplated by such forward-looking statements. Discussion of the factors that could cause our results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements are contained in our SEC filings, including our reports on Form 10-Q and 10-K.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Travis. Travis, please go ahead.

Thanks, Margaret. Before we review the quarter, I'd like to recognize two recent honors. Orion was named one of the Houston Business Journal's best places to work, reflecting the strong culture our team has built and the progress we have made as an organization. Orion was also ranked the number three contractor in marine and port facilities and number 12 in specialty concrete by E&R Magazine. These recognitions reflect our commitment to safety, accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement. I commend every member of the Orion team for their contributions.

Turning to the quarter, we delivered a strong third quarter. Our consolidated revenues grew 14%, adjusted EBITDA margin expanded 120 basis points and adjusted EBITDA increased 37% compared with the third quarter of 2025. Allison will provide more details shortly, but our results reflect highly active projects. Strong equipment utilization, favorable operating conditions and disciplined execution across the business. I'm pleased to report that our Pacific Rock and Dredge team, or McKamus, made significant contributions in the quarter, supporting strategic pursuits and also delivering revenue with highly accretive margins and positive cash conversion.

We've successfully integrated this business onto our platform, retaining the entire workforce, and we couldn't be more pleased with this acquisition and the work they do.

On to the market outlook. Customer activity remains strong across both operating segments, with a broad range of opportunities active or coming into focus across our end markets and geographies. We are in the early stages of a multi-year infrastructure investment cycle spanning national defense. Energy security, port modernization, coastal resilience, industrial and manufacturing reshoring and mission critical investments. While our backlog isn't yet reflecting it, bid activity has increased across our business and our opportunity pipeline remains strong, including a sizable $2 billion of submitted bids awaiting award compared with just over $1 billion at the beginning of the year. The $2 billion is split roughly evenly between concrete and marine.

Our win rate is strong and has remained steady and the increasing volume of submitted bids is indicative of owners being slow to award projects. Award timing can vary by quarter, but the scale and breadth of the pipeline in both operating segments and across all geographies reinforce our confidence in the outlook for our business. The work is there and we are positioned well to win it and deliver it.

During the third quarter, we booked $179 million of new contract wins and were awarded competitive positions on two additional Navy MACCs, which I'll discuss shortly. In Marine, demand remains strong, while the path from opportunity to award continues to evolve. We are pursuing larger, more complex projects through alternative delivery methods that involve contractors earlier in the project life cycle. Early engagement allows us to support design. Execution planning and scope to budget decisions, improve risk management and build stronger client partnerships from planning through delivery.

In September, we were selected as the marine contractor on a fully funded federal design to budget contract in the Pacific Northwest with an expected value to Orion of about $200 million. We expect the project to convert to backlog in mid to late 2027. We were also selected to reconstruct a wharf on a naval base project in Florida, a couple of smaller projects in Hawaii and for the next phase of reconstruction of the north jetty of the Columbia River. We were also recently selected as a prime contractor on two significant NAVFAC Northwest multiple award construction contract or MACC vehicles.

I'm proud of Orion for being selected as a prime contractor on these US Navy MACCs because it shows how far we have come as a company in the last few years. The first contract is the US Navy Venti MACC, a $9 billion contract vehicle and the largest procurement action in NAVFAC Northwest history, encompassing a broad range of major construction projects across the region. The second is the $700 million NAVFAC Northwest Waterfront MACC focused on the construction repair and modernization of piers, wars and other critical waterfront infrastructure. These MACCs are strategically important because the Navy awards a few contractors to compete for task orders under large federal programs. Being a prime contractor on these MACCs gives our team greater control over pursuit and delivery strategy and access to a meaningful pipeline of future opportunities.

Together, alternative delivery methods, MACC vehicles and traditional pursuits provide multiple paths to engage clients earlier in the procurement process and better position Orion to convert attractive opportunities into backlog. In concrete, demand remains strong across mission critical and other large-scale infrastructure projects. Our geographic expansion, broader site civil capabilities and diverse project mix combine to create additional avenues for growth. Early engagement, consistent execution and strong safety performance also position us to expand our scope and participate in additional phases of large multi-phase projects.

Our geographic expansion is broadening our customer base, project mix and end market exposure, while reducing the impact of localized weather events on our overall results and strengthening the resilience of our concrete platform. As customer priorities and award timing evolved, we have increased flexibility to deploy our capabilities where demand is strongest.

During the quarter, bookings came from all four of our concrete regions and included a large concrete paving package, new phases of multiple data center campuses, a college research building and a water treatment plant. Overall activity remains strong and our customers continue to be disciplined in the selection and timing of project awards.

At quarter end, we had approximately $1 billion of outstanding concrete bids, and I'm happy to report that in October after the close of the third quarter, our team secured about $100 million of new awards, including two large mission-critical projects, site civil work for a premier tech company. A cold storage facility, a hospital and multiple commercial buildings that we will add to our backlog in the fourth quarter.

As we close out the year, we remain focused on strong execution in 2026 and positioning Orion for continued success in 2027 and beyond. Across marine and concrete, we see substantial opportunities supported by a diverse client base, a growing portfolio of MACC vehicles and healthy end markets. Our disciplined approach to project selection, risk management and predictable execution gives us confidence in our bullish outlook for the future. We are pleased to reiterate our full year 2026 financial guidance and our tracking toward the upper end of the range for each financial metric.

I'll now turn it over to Alison to review the financials. Alison.

Thanks, Travis.

We're pleased to report third quarter revenue of $256 million, which represents 14% growth over last year, gross profit of $33 million, GAAP net income of $5.5 million, adjusted EPS of $0.12 per share and adjusted EBITDA of $18 million, which represents 37% growth over last year. From an overall perspective as compared to the prior year quarter, I'll highlight that consolidated gross profit margin was generally flat, SG&A was down modestly, and borrowing costs came in higher, primarily related to the McAmis acquisition and revolver borrowings in the quarter.

Turning to our marine business, revenue grew 13% to $161 million, attributable to strong contributions from projects like our Sargent Beach Coastal Restoration Project, a port modernization project in Alabama, and a bridge construction project in Texas, as well as contributions from Pacific Rock and Dredge with the opening of their work window.

I want to call out that our Marine team delivered solid year-over-year revenue growth compared to last year when we had a couple of very large programs contributing at elevated levels, kudos to this team. Marine reported adjusted EBITDA for the quarter of $19 million or 11.6% of revenue is in line with management's expectations. Our concrete business had an excellent quarter as well with revenue growth of 16% to $95 million, primarily attributable to geographic expansion, growing service lines such as site civil and excellent execution benefited by favorable operating conditions in the quarter.

Approximately half of this quarter's concrete revenue relates to mission-critical projects. Concrete adjusted EBITDA grew to $10 million this quarter with margins of 11%. This solid performance was the result of strong demand and outstanding productivity by our teams as well as a handful of favorable project upsides that contributed about 2% of margin uplift in the quarter.

We continue to maintain a healthy balance sheet with net leverage of about 2.2 times at the end of the quarter, leaving us with sufficient capacity to support the business. We are entering the last month of the year with good momentum and are pleased to reiterate our FY 2026 annual guidance of revenue of $900 million to $950 million, adjusted EBITDA of $50 million to $54 million, adjusted EPS of $0.23 to $0.30 per share and CapEx of $25 million to $35 million.

With that, I'll turn the call back to Travis to wrap it up.

Thanks, Alison.

We are confident in Orion's future. We are executing well, delivering safe, high-quality solutions for our clients with predictable excellence. With strong demand across our markets and a disciplined approach to project selection and risk management, we are well positioned to capture the opportunities ahead and create long-term value for our shareholders.

Operator, we'll now open the call for Q&A.

We will now begin the question-and-answer session.

(Operator Instructions) Aaron Spychalla, Craig-Hallum. Please go ahead.

Good morning, Travis and Allison. Thanks for taking the questions.

First for us, on the bid pipeline and kind of margin expectations, any changes you're seeing in kind of demand or margins just from interest rates and commodity prices? Sounds like some.

Seeing some progress given changes in kind of delivery methods and kind of reference some of the concrete awards post quarter, but just curious more broadly on any kind of changes you might be seeing?

Good morning, Aaron.

No, we haven't noticed anything yet related to interest rates impacting either margins or even bid volume.

All right.

Thanks for that. And then on the Navy MACC, good to see more progress there, especially on the prime contractor side of things.

Any thoughts on just kind of the timing of when we can maybe see some of those task orders come out and activity starting to ramp up there?

We don't have a ton of visibility into when there have been a couple of task orders.

On the VENTI MACC that we are looking at, but there's don't have a ton of visibility into exactly what or when those will be.

We just know that the one, the waterfront MACC is kind of smaller marine oriented projects. And then the other one is more larger capital projects that could include everything from buildings to marine to a variety of other things. Don't have good visibility into percentage of marine projects in there or that type of thing, but it's expected to generate a lot of work in the Pacific Northwest overtime.

And I would add that just in that. Activity and the issuance of these MACCs was a really great signal. We've been tracking these for quite some time, as and so it was nice to see them finally land. With PDIMAC getting issued late last year and then with the Venti MACC and then this Northwest Waterfront MACC, all of these MACCs have significant coastlines, which bode well for us. They were really important contracts for us to win positions on and now is really the fun part in terms. Of going after and trying to capture some of the projects that come out. But with healthy defense spending and resilience spending and national security, once we get through elections and things, we are expecting that we will see some good activity on these programs specifically.

Great. Thanks for the color there. And then maybe one last quick one if I could on free cash flow, stock contract assets kind of ticked up. Can you just kind of talk about some of the drivers there and how you're thinking about free cash flow moving forward?

Sure. So, we did have some -- we actually in the quarter made some progress with regard to converting some of the working capital and especially post quarter, we actually saw some action in terms of turning some of those numbers and getting some liquidity just kind of back into the machine, which was nice to see.

But that is an area of focus we do continue to, and especially on the concrete side of our business as we are bidding more work and work volumes go up there, we do tend to see some elevated amounts get caught up in retainage once we complete our scopes and as we await receipt of those. So those tend to tick up as that business grows, but we're starting to see some of those turn. In accordance with the schedule that we had planned for those and then on the marine side, we do see as we have projects that are building up, there is some investment on the contract asset side, most primarily on the marine side of our business. And with several of the projects that were kicking off in the quarter like late in the second quarter and then into the third quarter.

We did see some build up in some of those programs, but we do expect and we have seen good action on those through October and we'll expect to get those worked down through the fourth quarter. We did from a CapEx perspective on the other side of the equation from a free cash perspective. We did have spending associated with both the derrick barge that we acquired in late 2025, there is a modernization project that we have that we are progressing on that that is using some of that cash for CapEx and modernization on that, we expect that vessel to come out of the shipyard in the fourth quarter. We have a project for it to go to, so we're very excited about that. We're watching that and then we had a couple of other assets that we were acquiring in the quarter.

But from an overall free cash perspective, I would like to start by saying I would like free cash to be positive. That that is a given. But we are working around really just freeing up working capital more quickly in the machine all the way from the build-up of unbilled to billings to ultimately receipts.

All right. I appreciate the color. Thanks. I'll turn it over.

Tom Osano, JPMorgan.

Good morning, Tomo.

Thank you for taking questions. Maybe first on bookings and backlog, you ended the quarter with about $645 million of a backlog and then if you look at new hours relative to revenue, book-to-bill was around 0.7 times in the quarter. Could you help us understand what drove that and was this mostly timing around the hours or are you seeing any actual moderation in the pace of the new opportunities, please.

I would say what we've seen is one, continued strong win rates in both of our businesses. We've seen quite a lot of bid activity happening and a slower award cycle in generally and probably in both businesses where our kind of projects that we've bid not being awarded as quick, which is kind of see that number has gone up from around $1 billion to about $2 billion in quoted work that we're waiting to hear on. So seems like a little bit slower award cycles from clients on both sides of the business that has kind of risen that volume of quoted work that we're waiting to hear on good momentum so far in Q4, so hopefully that will continue into through the rest of the year.

And one other thing I'd highlight there, Tomo, is in the quarter, we won a position on a program that Travis talked about in the scripted remarks that and I would say it's not a more slow award it is a different award so because it has this difference associated with it our we won the contract we were on the team that won the contract we are the prime or we are the marine construction contractor on the contract and we have good visibility into the amount. The contract that we ultimately will be awarded. But based on a change in how this specific contract and we're not going to go into all the commercial details because it's somewhat sensitive, but because of a change in the commercial arrangement on this contract, we ultimately will be in a position to record it into booking sometime in mid-2027. So it's something that we have good line of sight on a real project that is fully funded under the current defense budget which is fantastic. It's just something that's not going to land in our backlog. And like Travis said, that was around $200 million is what we have that penciled in at.

And so that's something that was nice to see in the quarter that we won, but it won't show up in our backlog until sometime in mid-2027.

And to be clear, that's what we refer to kind of alternative delivery type projects in our script. That it's an alternative delivery kind of project that will be the scope and engineering will be finalized and then we can get under contract.

Thank you. That's helpful. And then on concrete margins, obviously a very strong quarter at nearly 11% adjusted EBITDA margins. Can you help us unpack how much of that improvement was structural, whether that's pricing mix or more site civil work versus favorable project timing?

I would say so 11% was phenomenal, and so I will take my hat off to the team that delivered that and I would say that it's a mix of probably all of the above, but there was about 2% of that uplift was associated with write-ups on projects that went really well. Where we have excellent execution on our programs and we have contingencies that are built in, we have opportunities to release that into the margins. That is something that we don't count on. We do try to actually book and record our projects in line with the margins that we expect. But generally, we have more favorable upsides than the other, touch wood, so that is nice to see.

But then that leaves us still at the upper end at kind of upper single-digit margins for concrete. I would say that it was an outstanding quarter this quarter for that team. They delivered really well. They had good what we call operating conditions, but they have good weather. So, we had good weather, so that was nice to see also and really just good coordination between that site civil team and the concrete team that takes over and coordination between those two is really outstanding to really see that taking off and not just building additional throughput through the machine but actually driving improved margins as we look ahead. I do expect that the normative margins in this business are going to be kind of in that upper or in that kind of like mid-single digit. So, I mean if you look at from a trailing 12-month perspective, for Concrete, they have posted margins, EBITDA margins right around 7%. I think that is a good target for them when conditions are good.

We'll some ups and some downs, but that's generally what we are gearing that team around today with the ultimate goal to continue to inch those margins up into the upper single-digits over time. But that's more of a one, two, three-year time frame where we would consistently be in that kind of upper single-digit range, but an outstanding quarter this quarter for concrete, so kudos to them.

Thank you, Allison. Congrats on the quarter.

Brent Tillman, Oppenheimer.

Travis or Allison, just on the $2 billion in submitted bids that you mentioned, you're awaiting award, I was just curious, does that include task orders under some of these really large MACC programs that you've listed out?

Yes, it does.

Maybe -- yeah, there's actually a couple of them that are in there or maybe just one actually.

But there's -- yes, it does include generally task orders or other bids where we've put in a price for the project. That's what it includes. Variety of different things.

But just to be clear, that is a task order that we've been on earlier this year, not associated with one of these new MACCs, one of the MACCs that we have been one of the PDI MACC.

It was under the PDI MACC.

Yeah, I guess that's what I'm getting at is still sounds like it's early days given how these things are moving in terms of what you're actually. Kind of engaging right now on, so sort of future opportunity.

Yeah, up in your neighborhood, Brent, so we'll be looking to you to kind of keep us posted on what you see going up there.

Okay, I'll keep the binoculars out. I guess maybe just a follow-up.

You look at this huge pipeline of work that you've listed out, the various MACC contract vehicles and all the momentum that you have in concrete.

This might be a bit tough question to answer, but if you kind of look fast forward toward the end of next year, get $2 billion in submitted bids awaiting award right now, do you think that number grows as we get into later next year just with all of this stuff, including the fact that MACC. The MACCs aren't really showing up in the bids today.

Yeah, as far as the pipeline number, yes, I definitely.

The pipeline submitted bids, Travis, yeah, I mean, combination.

Well, I don't know, on the pipeline, I would expect that to grow as some of the task orders under these new MACCs start coming into focus. I would say that pipeline would definitely grow.

Whether the quoted work goes up, ideally, I'd like to see that number going down. We'd like to start seeing the awards come through faster and see our backlog going up and the quoted work number going down would be the ideal scenario.

But where we are right now, we can't force owners to move faster on awards. We're trying to be patient as we continue to pursue these projects, submit good bids and then hopefully get a word of the projects and build our backlog.

Understood. Okay. I'll pass it on.

Thank you.

Min Cho, Texas Capital Securities.

Thank you, Travis and Alison, congratulations on the quarter. Just going back on the concrete margins, obviously, very strong even excluding the favorable project lift. And you mentioned site civil services kind of helping there, but can you quantify the success that you're having there, maybe kind of attachment or what percentage of concrete revenue you're seeing from that part of your business?

I can't quantify it at the moment, but what I can say is we started performing site civil services a little less than a year ago and it's going very well, primarily associated with mission-critical work, but it's going very well. We're seeing lots of opportunities. We've got a great team delivering work, making clients very happy and it's been quite profitable. So, it's been a good kind of addition to the type of work that we do in our concrete business, and we expect it to continue to grow and be a bright spot for our business.

Okay, got it. Just kind of staying on concrete, you mentioned that you had new awards across all of your geographies. Can you talk a little bit about Florida and Arizona and if you're looking to expand more geographically?

Sure. We expanded into Florida, I guess, a couple of years ago. That's gone well. We did it organically and chose to kind of plant a seed and water it and help it grow. And it has started to take off, and we've been winning work and delivering great work down there. And then more recently, we moved into Arizona following some. Key clients on some projects we were doing for them and have that seed has started to sprout as well, it's a little further behind Florida just because of timing, it takes a little time to grow a business organically in a new market and so we're working our way, but feeling good about the progress we're making.

It's given us more geographies to kind of diversify weather impact from weather impacts and things like that. Before we were just in Texas and that if there was a weather event in Texas, it was a pretty hard hit. And now we've being in Arizona and Florida, fairly strong economic areas that we can leverage kind of expanded geographies and combined with our great relationship with some of our key general contractor partners can help kind of grow and diversify our business a bit.

Excellent. And then just a final question just on marine EBITDA margins. I know, Allison, you mentioned that they were in line with expectations or company expectations, still down pretty meaningfully on a year-over-year basis. I'm assuming it had to do with some project starts in the quarter and with McCamus and everything. But any reason why adjusted EBITDA margin in Q4 should not show pretty sizable sequential improvement?

It's a great question, and it's something that we look at. It absolutely is tied to a lot of those project starts that have started in the first half of 2026 and into the third quarter. On a trailing 12 months perspective, we're right around 12% for marine, and I would expect that we'll be around that. Maybe there's some opportunity in the fourth quarter around that.

But I do think that the margins that we the coming out of the gate margins that we would expect from a marine perspective without some of those favorable upsides that we saw pretty significant benefit from in 2025 is right around that kind of low to mid double-digit range, but 12%, 13% is kind of what we have been penciled in for.

Liam Burke, B. Riley Securities. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, Travis. Good morning, Allison.

Travis, you highlighted multiple projects online on the concrete segment.

Are you seeing any diversification away from data center where you still have a fairly heavy concentration?

We're still roughly in kind of half of our revenue being in the mission-critical data center type world. It's continuing, the momentum is continuing despite what you might read on newspapers or wherever. That demand has continued, so we've continued to work on those projects and deliver those projects.

As far as diversification goes, I mean, we're still quite a bit of activity outside of mission critical and data centers as well, winning projects like cold storage projects, hospitals, higher education, kind of a variety of different types of work that are continuing to be awarded, which has been nice to see even with the interest rate.

Increase that happened and we'll see what happens today with other interest rate impacts, but so far so good with continued momentum in concrete.

Alison, for the first three quarters of the year, operating cash flow is negative. You highlighted the work that was done in the fourth quarter to reverse that trend. Anticipating positive free cash flow, is there any priority you have there or is it just going to accrue and you look at your options in 2027?

I think that for my 2020 perspective, it's going to be pretty challenging to be positive free cash from a full-year perspective, just based on the investments that we're making on the derrick barge and some of the other parts of the fleet. I do think that we'll be close from a CapEx perspective. We'll be in the range of the $25million to $35million, but based on where we're tracking, we'll probably be closer to the $30million.

So, from an overall free cash perspective. We would really be looking ahead to convert that ultimately to positive free cash flow for the corporation. But I do expect that from an operating cash flow perspective that we should have a good like we had a good third quarter. I expect that we'll also have a good fourth quarter as we start to see kind of some maturity in some of these projects and kind of getting into the flow of how these projects are executing and ultimately. Billing and then receiving from a collections perspective.

Great.

Thank you, Travis.

Thank you, Allison.

Thanks.

Gerry Sweeney, Roth Capital. Please go ahead.

Good morning, Travis and Allison. Thanks for taking my call.

Good morning, Gerry.

Most of my questions have been answered, but I'm just curious.

Obviously, we are sort of outsiders looking in, especially on some of these MACC contracts, and there is different -- maybe some geopolitical challenges, the Middle East getting a lot of focus. Does that create a little bit more friction with some of these awards being doled out and timing of those releases or any thoughts on that front?

So the U.S. Government's strategy with the Pacific is been pretty bullish for quite a number of years through multiple Presidents and we haven't seen any bullishness changes from the perspective of what's happening in the Pacific that the Navy, the infrastructure Navy is planning to build and out there. So, while I do, there will be some push for the Middle East, I don't expect that to impact what we see in the Pacific in the coming few years.

Obviously, Congress funds all DoD funding and Congress has a say in things. We'll see how that plays out, but I don't expect the strategy, the pretty bullish push in the Pacific to change.

Got it. And I didn't expect it to change longer-term, but I just spent maybe even in the short-term push things out a couple of quarters here or there. But anyhow, that was my main question. I appreciate it.

Thank you.

All right. Thanks, Jerry.

(Operator Instructions)

Showing no further questions, this will conclude our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Travis Boone for any closing remarks.

Thank you.

Thanks to everyone for joining our call today. We appreciate your time and look forward to talking to you again at the close of the next quarter.

Thank you.

The conference has now concluded.

Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.