Sterling Infrastructure Inc (STRL) 2022 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Greetings, and welcome to the Sterling Infrastructure's Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded (Operator Instructions). There are accompanying slides on the Investor Relations section of the company's website.

Before turning the call over to Joe Cutillo, Sterling's Chief Executive Officer, I will read the safe harbor statement. Some discussions made today may include forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from the statements made today. Please refer to Sterling's most recent 10-K and 10-Q filings for a more complete description of risk factors that could affect these projections and assumptions. The company assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Please also note that management may reference EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted net income or adjusted earnings per share on this call, which are all financial measures not recognized under U.S. GAAP. As required by SEC rules and regulations, these non-GAAP financial measures are reconciled to their most comparable GAAP financial measures in their earnings release issued yesterday afternoon.

I will now turn the call over to Mr. Joe Cutillo. Thank you, sir. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Doug. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining Sterling's Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Call. The third quarter marked the 19th quarter with period-over-period improvements since 2017 and the eighth time we have raised our guidance during that time frame. This world-class level of performance is a tribute to our people, our culture and our strategy or what we refer to as The Sterling way.

It is an honor to be part of a team of 3,000-plus colleagues. They consistently deliver best-in-class results while making sure we're always taking care of our fellow employees, our customers and our communities. The Sterling Way has not only created an exciting culture for our employees to be part of, but has delivered great results to our shareholders.

Before we talk about the results of another outstanding quarter, I'd like to spend some time talking about our end markets and what is going on in each of our segments. E-Infrastructure, which remains our largest segment and represented 46% of our revenue and 66% of our segment operating income in the quarter, saw record bookings as data center, distribution center and warehouse demand remained high. In addition, we began seeing the first wave of onshoring a new manufacturing facility activity take place.

Our recent win of the new 500-acre plus Rivian electric vehicle plant in Georgia is yet another example of our ability to do large complex jobs in almost any end market. This new manufacturing activity, along with the continued strong demand for data centers and e-commerce warehouses, continues to give us a positive outlook for 2023.

Our Transportation Solutions segment, which represented 40% of our revenue and 17% of our segment operating income in the quarter, remains extremely strong as we saw bid activity pick up and margins improve. Our current backlog has a record margin of over 11%. Federal funding from the infrastructure build continues to flow to the states and the state matching funds remain extremely strong. The combination of our multiyear backlog, along with improved margins and increased bid activity, positions us well to finish 2022 strong and go into 2023 on solid footing. We continue to be disciplined on the jobs we select and we'll continue to focus on driving margin improvements through 2023.

Our Building Solutions segment, which represented 14% of our revenue and 17% of our segment operating income in the quarter, saw a significant softening in the quarter of new housing starts. The combination of material inflation and interest rate increases has caused the market to become less affordable for buyers. We believe this trend will continue through the fourth quarter. We have begun seeing builders become more aggressive on incentive programs to help buyers overcome the affordability issue, but do not believe we will see any significant impact of these efforts until 2023.

Despite the revenue decrease in the quarter, our operating income remained flat year-over-year as the revenue drop was offset by price increases. Overall, we're still facing challenges with the supply chain as we continue to see price increases and availability issues with concrete and diesel. We believe the concrete availability issue will change significantly in the fourth quarter for the better, but are uncertain as to how long and how significant the diesel challenges will be.

Now let's talk about the great results for the quarter. Revenue versus prior year was up 20%. This strong growth was driven by our E-Infrastructure segment, whose revenue was up 111%. Our gross margin increased 220 basis points to 14.7%, with strong contributions from both Transportation and Building Solutions. Our net income increased 40%. Our earnings per share increased 35%. And our EBITDA increased 50%.

We generated over $96 million of cash from operations and finished the quarter with $146 million of cash and cash equivalents. Our combined backlog grew to an all-time high of $1.9 billion. This is a 25% increase over year-end 2021 and positions us very well for the future.

Our record results in the third quarter, coupled with our stronger-than-expected outlook for the fourth quarter, has enabled us to raise our full year guidance for the second time this year. The midpoint of our adjusted guidance improves net income 53%, our revenue by 21% and our EPS by 47% over prior year. The new revenue guidance is $1.9 billion to $1.92 billion, with a net income range from $94 million to $98 million and an EPS range of $3.08 to $3.21.

Now I'd like to turn it over to Ron to give you more details on the quarter and our results. Ron?

Thanks, Joe, and good morning. I am pleased to discuss our strong third quarter results and another record quarterly performance. Our updated Investor Relations slide presentation has been posted to our website and includes additional financial details to further understand our third quarter results. The presentation also provides additional modeling considerations, which underpin our 2022 revenue and earnings guidance.

As you may recall, we closed the Petillo acquisition on December 30, 2021, resulting with the inclusion of Petillo's financial results for all of 2022. Let me take you through our financial highlights, starting with our record backlog metrics.

At September 30, 2022, our backlog totaled $1.665 billion, up $172 million over the beginning of the year. The gross margin of this backlog was 13.1%, a 90 basis point increase over the beginning of the year. A higher proportion of E-Infrastructure backlog and improved Transportation backlog drove this margin improvement.

Unsigned low-bid awards at the end of the third quarter totaled $235 million, an increase from $23 million at the end of 2021. We finished the current quarter with a record combined backlog of $1.9 billion, a 25% increase over the end of 2021. Our gross profit in combined backlog was 12.9% compared to 12.2% at the beginning of the year.

Our current quarter book-to-burn ratios were 1.24x and (technical difficulty) for backlog and combined backlog, respectively. Our year-to-date book-to-burn ratios were 1.13x for backlog and 1.29x for combined backlog.

Revenues for the current quarter were $557 million, up $93 million or 20% over the prior year quarter. The current quarter [E-Infrastructure] revenues were $256 million, an increase over the prior-year quarter of [$134.2 million]. The current quarter increase includes revenues of $84 million from the late 2021 acquisition of Petillo and organic growth coming from Plateau of $50 million.

Including the Plateau acquisition on a pro forma basis, E-Infrastructure organic revenue growth was 40% and 36% for the 3 and 9 months ended September 30, 2022, respectively. The E-Infrastructure organic growth reflects the continuing strong demand for distribution centers, data centers, and warehouses across our expanding footprint.

Building Solutions revenues declined by $12 million (technical difficulty) period. This was primarily driven by a decline in housing demand as the ownership became less affordable due to increasing interest rates and inflation. Transportation revenues were $221 million in the current quarter, a decrease of $28.8 million or 12% from the prior-year comparable quarter. This decrease was primarily driven by lower heavy highway and aviation revenues due to the timing of backlog execution and partially offset by increases in water-related projects.

Consistent with our strategic intent, low-bid heavy highway work declined by approximately $10 million in the quarter compared to the prior year. As a result of the third quarter results, we have increased our 2022 revenue guidance to a range of $1.9 billion to $1.9 billion (sic) [$1.92 billion].

Current quarter gross profit was $82 million, an increase of $24 million over the '21 quarter. Gross margin increased to a record 14.7% or 220 basis points over the comparable '21 quarter. This margin increase resulted from an increased mix of revenues from our higher-margin E-Infrastructure segment and increased margins from both our Transportation and Building Solutions segments.

Our gross margin improvements were negatively impacted by the continuing supply challenges and inflationary pressures, which primarily impacts our E-Infrastructure and Building Solutions segments. These challenges principally began in the second quarter of 2021, and have continued to date.

General and administrative expenses increased $6.8 million in the current quarter to $26.5 million. Over 1/3 of this increase is attributable to the Petillo acquisition, with the balance driven by inflation and higher revenue-related incremental costs. We continue to expect our full year G&A guidance to be approximately 5% of revenues.

Operating income for the quarter was $47.7 million, an increase from $32 million for the 2021 quarter. Our current quarter operating margin increased to 8.6% compared to 6.9% in the prior year. Our current quarter effective income tax rate was 29%. We do continue to expect our full year effective income tax rate to approximate 28%.

The net effect of all these items resulted in a record third quarter net income of $29.5 million or $0.97 per share. The prior-year net income was -- and EPS were $21.1 million and $0.72 per share, respectively. Our increased 2022 net income guidance is now $94 million to $98 million, and our earnings per share guidance is $3.08 to $3.21.

Our third quarter EBITDA totaled $60.2 million, an increase of 50% over the prior-year quarter of $40 million. As a percent of revenues, EBITDA improved to 10.8% of revenues for the quarter, up from 8.6% in the prior-year quarter. We have increased our '22 EBITDA guidance to a range of $197 million to $205 million.

Cash flow from operating activities in the first 9 months of 2022 was $130.6 million compared to $135.7 million in the comparable '21 period. Our current quarter 2022 cash flow from operations was $96.1 million. This strong third quarter cash flow significantly recovered from the slow cash generation in the first half of 2022.

The 2022 cash flow fluctuations were primarily driven by the ramp-up of several new large alternative delivery projects awarded in the first half of 2021 and the significant 2022 organic revenue growth of our E-Infrastructure segment. Cash flow from investing activities included $44.8 million of net add CapEx, with a $3 million final acquisition-related payment of -- $3 million relating to the final working capital adjustment. The CapEx increase reflects the increased E-Infrastructure Solutions activities, including the impact of the Petillo acquisition.

Our cash flow from financing activity was $17.7 million outflow, reflecting our scheduled debt payments for the first 3 quarters of 2022. Finally, (technical difficulty) strength of our portfolio of businesses and our strong liquidity, consisting of our record cash balance of $146 million and our comfortable debt levels at approximately 2x forward-looking EBITDA.

Although we have not seen a significant economic downturn across our segments, we are prepared, if conditions worsen, to deal with these uncertainties and to take advantage of additional opportunities for the balance of 2022 and into 2023 and beyond.

Now I'll turn it over back to Joe.

Thanks, Ron. Our strategy to transform the company from a hard-bid heavy highway business to an infrastructure solution provider (technical difficulty) end customers, end markets and product solutions has and will continue to prove its ability to deliver exceptional results, even with adverse conditions in one of our segments.

There remains tremendous uncertainty in what the 2023 U.S. economy will bring, but I feel confident that Sterling is positioned better than ever to weather any storm that's thrown at us. And I expect us to continue our positive growth trends.

To reiterate, our increased year-end guidance range for revenue is $1.9 billion to $1.92 billion, with a net income range of $94 million to $98 million and an EPS range of $3.08 to $3.21.

With that, I'd like to turn it over for any questions.

(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from the line of Sean Eastman with KeyBanc.

I wanted to start on Building Solutions. Obviously, seeing the top line pressure in the third quarter, it sounds like the message is that the underlying run rate kind of continued to decline through the quarter.

I guess, two things. First, any kind of preliminary thoughts on where revenues trend in 2023 from here? And second, I'm curious what's going on under the hood. I know there was a thought that perhaps Houston and Phoenix could help cushion the softening in Dallas. So any update on kind of the underlying moving pieces there would be helpful as well.

Yes. So I think we still believe that Houston and Phoenix will cushion that. Actually, Houston was up in the quarter, and I believe Phoenix may have been as well. So -- but what will happen, Sean, is you're going to see, we believe -- you'll see a dip, and then we're beginning to see builders put incentives and different programs in place, and they're changing some of the plans for the next set of houses to be built. So they'll be a little less expensive. And they're actively moving to bring buyers in.

And we're not seeing, what I'll call, just a steady decline, it's still very lumpy. There will be good weeks and there'll be bad weeks, and it's a little more volatile than it is. But we just believe that the reality is it will take a little time for these incentives to get in, for buyers to get back interested and understanding that they can afford the homes.

And so we think, through the fourth quarter, we'll continue to see a decline. And then as we get into 2023, we think that will level off and we will start to see an increase from the bottom start to come out probably late first quarter or second quarter of '23.

Okay. That's helpful, Joe. And then on the E-Infrastructure margins, can you just refresh us on where we should be running with Petillo in the mix, kind of ex the supply chain noise? I mean is the operating environment stabilizing? Should we expect some margin expansion in this segment in '23?

Yes. So let me touch at a high level, and I'll let Ron get into the details. We've got 2 dynamics going on in E-Infrastructure. The first and the significant one is exactly what you touched upon, the mix differentiation of Petillo's margins versus Plateau's.

Remember that Petillo and Plateau side, margins are pretty much dead even. But Petillo has to do other activities -- or is driven by their customer base to do other activities, which tend to be lower margin, like some sidewalk work and sidewalls, et cetera. So we have that dynamic.

In addition, we have definitely seen some erosion overall in margin related to inflationary and supply chain issues. So we have 2 dynamics that are taking place. If you remember, we use about 700,000 gallons of diesel per month (technical difficulty) we saw a $2 increase. It started out lower, but by the end of the quarter, it was up $2 from our earlier remarks in the year.

So (technical difficulty) Ron, you want to get into the kind of the, I'll call it, the normalized number, what it would be and what we see going forward?

Yes. So to the first point, just the different scopes of work that each of our E-Infrastructure folks work on. It's about -- overall, it reduces our operating income from the old days where we only had want to inclusion of Petillo. It's about somewhere between 150 and 200 basis points, and that will bounce around a little bit because of mix, but that's sort of a going-forward run rate.

It's still great margins and great opportunities, but it just has a lower margin mix of work. And I think it's hard to measure the inflation and supply chain now, but it's probably about an equal number. That's the one that will recover when -- if/when we see an improvement in the supply chain side. And obviously, inflation, particularly in this year, diesel more than anything else bouncing around and then back up again of late.

So those are the kind of the 2 things. One, sort of a permanent prospective with the current mix of businesses. The other is opportunity to claw that back in the next several quarters and we hopefully see some improvement.

Okay. Got it. And then last one for me. On the cash flows, I recall you guys took down the guidance in the second quarter. Now it looks like we're trending to the top end of the original guidance. So just curious what happened between those 2 updates?

Well, I'm never wrong, but I was wrong. I think the first 6 months with the significant organic growth and an inclusion of Petillo and just a slow start of the year and probably underestimated the recovery that we would have in the balance of the year, particularly on both the E-Infrastructure and on the Transportation side with those large jobs perking up. As you recall, we started 5 significant jobs in the first 6 months of last year, and they all usually come with very nice front-end cash flow. And then it, of course, balances out over the year. It's balanced out faster than we thought.

And I think, certainly, our -- most of the change in revenue guidance and earnings, so it was just a fantastic quarter coming out of E-Infrastructure. And of course, that's -- the profitability there is our largest gross profit we have and generate some profits. So we move the -- our guidance number or certainly our -- I'm trying to help people number to $150 million, about the same as last year.

To tell you the truth, I never thought we would beat next year, but we got a chance of being right on top of it and -- [$150 million] plus or minus right now. The last year is $151 million-ish. So it was great news and put us in a fabulous position going forward, whether it's managing...

I think the other thing not to underplay in the quarter is we saw a very nice margin improvements and continued margin improvement in Transportation. And the fact that we're able to hold our operating income in our Building Solutions with 13% or so less revenue was very nice and more than (technical difficulty)

Sorry, I lost you guys for a second there. I appreciate it, and I'll turn it over there.

Our next question comes from the line of Brent Thielman from D.A. Davidson.

Joe, how far does that E-Infrastructure backlog provides visibility for you at this point? Are you still filling in for the first half? Or are you starting to look more into the second half of '23 at this point?

Yes. Generally, we have in the difference between Transportation and E-Infrastructure. Transportation, we have multi-year backlog. In E-Infrastructure, we look at it, we generally have 6 months or so -- 6 or 7 months of backlog there. So we're starting to feel pretty full for the first half. We still have some capacity in the first half that we can bring in. And we're assuming all the projects start on time and all that stuff, obviously.

So we're starting to fill up that first half. And the stuff we're hunting for now is stuff we would start late in the first half or going into the second part of next year.

Okay. Great. And then the continuing uptick in transportation margins is great to see. I just wanted to get your thoughts as we move into '23, if that's still your expectation that you can continue to improve (inaudible)...

Yes, we're still pretty bullish. We still have room to go, and we think it's a fair amount of room, right? And every point of margin improvement there is $7 million or $8 million to us. So that's our focus, is continue to be selective on the jobs that we pick, get that margin up another point or so over the next 18 to 24 months, and reap the rewards of that instead of going crazy.

And as I've said, if for some reason, the market gets extremely tight and we see margins up north of 12%, 13%, we'll get a little more aggressive on taking on more work at those margins. We won't go down in margin, but we want to keep eking it up to that level.

But Sean, you -- Brent, you've been around this for a long time. It's -- our margins compared to the rest of the world in this business are world-class right now. And the fact that we think we got another point or two that we can get out of them is pretty impressive.

Our next question comes from the line of Brian Russo with Sidoti & Company.

Just a follow-up on the Transportation segment. You announced that large $34 million contract. You mentioned better-than-peer average margins. What gives you the competitive advantage in the bidding process to not only win these contracts, but at higher margins than what your peers are realizing?

Well, I think the first most important thing is we believe one of our first jobs and responsibilities (technical difficulty) job selection. And there's billions of dollars being bid, not all that billions of dollars is a good job. So one of the things we spend a lot of time on is understanding what are our core competencies? What are we really good at? And let's find those jobs and bid them appropriately.

We also continue to move towards more alternative delivery and continue to shrink our low-bid heavy highway to where we have much more control and much more line of sight of our destiny, which brings down our risk profile on these jobs.

So the other thing that people tend not to understand is not only are we selective on the jobs, not only is our initial margin that we're winning these at or better, but one of the next most important things is, in general, and on average, we finish slightly above our bid margins on these jobs. So that says that we have both risk mitigated and we also are executing at or better than our anticipated activities.

Okay. Great. And just another follow-up on the IIJA funding. Are you actually seeing those funds being deployed by Department of Transportation customers in your footprint? Or is your sense that there's going to be a ramp-up later in '23, '24?

It will continue to ramp up. But we started to see the activity kick off towards the end of the second quarter, continue to ramp up in the third quarter. It will stay very strong. Our crystal ball of looking at what jobs are coming out in the first half and next year, right now, looks even stronger. So as the money flows to the states, the states then determine the projects. And so we think it will continue to grow in and through 2023.

Okay. Great. And then just in the infrastructure, obviously, the Rivian award was very positive. The way to look at that, is that kind of the first phase of what could be multiyear kind of recurring work for Sterling Infrastructure?

Yes. Both the Rivian facility and the vast majority of the data centers, when we announced those jobs, that's generally just the first phase of multiple phases. The Rivian plant will be a multiyear multi-phase activity. Now we still have to win those next phases, but we have a very high percentage of win rates when we get in there and we do the first phase.

And the follow-on phases, obviously, would be upside to your combined backlog?

That is correct. And just to make sure I'm right on this, Ron. The Rivian job is not in the third quarter backlog or in the third quarter announcements for E-Infrastructure of that $300 million.

Right. That contract was ultimately signed in early October. So that will be a fourth quarter [news].

Okay. Got it. And then also, you mentioned (inaudible). Obviously, we're seeing a lot of high-tech industrial expansion, may be accelerated by the CHIPS Act and specifically Micron up in Syracuse in Europe.

And I'm just wondering, is that within Petillo's footprint? And if you're not directly involved with Micron, are -- or are you -- or are you planning to be involved in what's going to be quite a bit of regional expansion to support that new facility complex?

Yes. That one is in the very early stages. I have no idea who'll ultimately get that or where it's going. It's still very, very early. But certainly, that is within our footprint. We are watching the CHIPS Act and all of that manufacturing. There are several through that region that they're looking at very closely.

Where we have seen activities in a lot of cases, we're not allowed to announce. And in some cases, we don't even know who the end customer is, but is around the battery activity associated with electric vehicles. So -- we have our second project that we're doing on that in the East Coast. We're seeing a tremendous amount of activity around that area as well.

Okay. Great. And then one more, if I can. Strong operating cash flow year-to-date, growing cash balance and you mentioned positioning yourselves for opportunities in 2023. Maybe if you could just elaborate on kind of how you prioritize capital allocation?

The fact that -- we have built a very nice war chest if things get rough in 2023. But right now, with our backlog and everything we're seeing, we're still very optimistic of '23.

We will continue to look for the right tuck-ins. We certainly need more capacity and some capabilities in our Building Solutions segment. We will look for added tuck-ins in our E-Infrastructure segment that could add either services or goods to our existing footprint. But I think most of our focus, as we go into 2023, are going to be on what I'll call small tuck-in acquisitions.

We're not -- we have stopped looking at bigger opportunities in the fourth leg. I think we're being a little cautious at this point in time as we go into '23. And we really like the really low debt ratio and the high cash that we have right now. But we'll continue to look for those right tuck-ins, which -- they could be, call it, $5 million to $40 million, $50 million deals that we can fit right in, take advantage of quickly, can give us either a competitive advantage or product offering to our existing customer base.

There are no further questions in the queue. I'd like to hand the call back to management for closing remarks.

Thanks, Doug. I'd like to thank everyone again for joining today's call. If after this call, you have any follow-up questions or wish to set up a follow-up call with us, please feel free to contact Mary in our Investor Relations group or our partners of the Equity Group. Their contact information can be found in the earnings release posted earlier this week.

With that, thanks again, everybody, and hope you have a great day.

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