Sterling Infrastructure Inc (STRL) 2020 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Greetings, and welcome to the Sterling Construction Company's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2020 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 Mr. Joe Cutillo, Sterling Construction'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, all of which are financial measures not recognized under U.S. GAAP. As required by SEC rules and regulations, these non-GAAP financial measures are reconciled to the most comparable GAAP financial measures in our earnings release issued yesterday afternoon.

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

Thank you, Donna, and good morning. I would like to start by thanking everyone for joining today's call.

Well, 2020 is over, but will not soon be forgotten. All of our market studies, all of our operational planning and all of our risk assessments were thrown out the window. Never in our wildest dreams did we imagine a global pandemic and the impacts it would have on all of us as we saw our everyday lives change overnight. We were banished to our homes. We closed our offices, our schools and our stores. The everyday things we took for granted like stocked grocery shelves, restaurants and toilet paper were gone. No travel, no sports and no entertainment. In the blink of an eye, we went from executing a well-thought out plan to navigating a ship in unchartered waters, dealing with something completely unknown.

It is in these times that leaders find out the true strength of their business and their people. We got to see firsthand how nimble our teams were, how they would react in new and abnormal conditions and how they would continue to take care of our customers. We watched them go above and beyond to keep their fellow employees safe as well as take care of those in need in their communities. For all leaders, 2020 was a year you either walked away proud or you walked away hoping to fight another day.

I'm happy to say I'm walking away from 2020 prouder than ever of the 3,000 Sterling employees and their ability to band together, keep each other safe, take care of our customers, give back to our communities and deliver another record year. So instead of spending any more time talking about the challenges we faced, I would like to focus on the victories we had.

Let's start with the most important one, the safety of our people. In 2020, we had the safest work environment in our history. In addition to implementing all new COVID-related protocols to prevent or minimize the risk of transmittal, we reduced our recordable incident rate by over 40% and our lost time incident rate by over 20%, making our lost time incident rate over 75% better than the industry average. We ranked #15 on Forbes America's Best Small Companies list. We were #26 on ENR's top 50 domestic heavy contractors. And we won the American Road and Transportation Builders 2020 National Safety Award.

We continued to build out and strengthen our team by driving diversity of thought and added new members with various backgrounds, genders and race at all levels. As a result, over 60% of our total workforce and our independent directors are gender or ethnically diverse.

Now let's talk about some of our operational successes. In the year, we were able to fully integrate our most recent acquisition, Plateau, while the business exceeded its highest revenue year by over 20%. This would normally be a great accomplishment on its own, but it's even more amazing when you take into account that most of our office employees were working from home and were doing most of the integration virtually.

In our residential sector, 13% of our slabs are now coming from our expansion into the Houston market, and our total slabs poured in 2020 were up 14%. In our heavy civil sector, less than 30% of our consolidated revenues is now coming from low-bid heavy highway work.

On the financial front, it was a great year for both our employees and our shareholders as we continued to demonstrate the value of our strategy focused on bottom line growth while reducing risk.

Let me first start with the fourth quarter of 2020 versus the fourth quarter prior year. In the quarter, our revenues were flat, our gross margins increased over 370 basis points, our operating income improved 115% and our EBITDA grew 60%.

For the year, our revenues were up 27%, our gross margin improved over 380 basis points and our operating income grew 151%. We generated $119 million in cash from operations, and our stock price increased over 32%.

This was truly an amazing year in some very difficult times. As proud as I am of 2020 accomplishments, I am just as proud of what we have done to position ourselves for another record year in 2021.

In 2021, our revenues will grow to over $1.46 billion, our net income will be between $52 million and $55 million and our EBITDA will be between $134 million and $144 million.

With that, I would like to turn it over to Ron to give you more details on the full year and the 2021 outlook. Ron?

Thanks, Joe, and good morning. I am pleased to discuss our strong fourth quarter results, and by almost all measures, our record full year performance. Our slide presentation, which has been posted to our website includes additional financial details to help understand our 2020 financial results. The presentation also provides modeling considerations, which underpin our 2021 revenue and earnings guidance. Also, as you likely recall, our fourth quarter of 2019 included several significant onetime items related to the acquisition and the significant onetime income tax accounting adjustments.

Our earnings release includes several non-GAAP financial presentations to help provide a better understanding of our year-over-year fourth quarter and full year results.

Let me take you through our financial highlights, starting with our backlog metrics on Slide #6. At December 31, 2020, our backlog totaled a year-end record high of $1.175 billion, a 10% increase over the beginning of the year. The gross margin of our December 31, 2020, backlog was 12%, a 50% increase over 2019. Unsigned low-bid awards totaled $357 million at the end of 2020 compared to $273 million at the beginning of the year. Importantly, we expect the majority of the year-end unsigned awards to be under contract in the first quarter of 2021.

We finished the -- we finished 2020 with a record combined backlog of $1.532 billion, a 14% increase over the beginning of the year. The gross margin of our combined backlog was 11.8%, an 80 basis point increase from 11% at the beginning of the year. Our full year 2020 book-to-burn factors for backlog and combined backlog were 109% and 115%, respectively. Note that the book-to-burn computations include heavy civil and specialty services revenue only. Residential revenue is excluded from these computations as it is not a backlog-driven business.

Please flip to Slide 7 for a summary of our consolidated results. Revenues for the fourth quarter of 2020 were $347 million, up slightly over our 2019 comparable quarter. Our full year 2020 revenues totaled $1.427 billion, up just over $300 million from 2019. This increase primarily reflects the inclusion of Plateau's revenues for all of 2020 compared to only the fourth quarter of 2019.

Consistent with our expectations, fourth quarter and full year 2020 heavy civil revenues were down approximately 7% and 1%, respectively. The decline primarily reflects lower aviation revenues in 2020. We expect our aviation revenues to rebound reflecting a higher aviation backlog entering 2021.

Heavy highway revenues were up approximately 10% for the fourth quarter and the full year of 2020. This increase reflects our multiyear strategic intent to increase heavy highway alternative delivery-related revenues, while significantly reducing our low-bid revenues. Our 2020 heavy highway revenues accounted for 42% of our heavy civil and specialty services revenues compared to 50% in 2019 and 58% in -- I'm sorry, 50% in 2019 and 58% in 2018. This metric reflects our significant and strategic progress in reducing heavy highway revenues portion of our total civil activities.

Residential revenues for the fourth quarter of 2020 were $42 million and $164.7 million for the full year, reflecting increases over the comparable periods of 22% and 8%, respectively. The number of residential slabs completed during 2020 increased by 14% over 2019. The increase in slab was primarily attributable to continued market strength in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and the expansion into the Houston market.

Revenue operating margins declined in both the fourth quarter of 2020 and the full year. The decrease was driven by temporary price concessions due to COVID and an increase in lumber, concrete and steel costs. We were generally able to recoup the price concessions in late 2020, and we continued to make progress of passing on the recent material cost increases in 2021.

Consolidated gross profit was $46.6 million in the 2020 fourth quarter, an increase of $13 million from the comparable 2019 quarter.

The gross margin increased 3.7% to 13.4% in the fourth quarter. Approximately half of this improvement was driven by a heavy civil project charge in the fourth quarter of 2019. For the full year, gross margin improved to 13.4% from 9.6% in 2019 as a result of the inclusion of Plateau for all 4 quarters.

General and administrative expense for 2020 was 5% of revenues, consistent with our expectations. The dollar increase over the prior periods were attributable to the inclusion of Plateau for the full year and higher stock-based compensation expense. Intangible asset amortization increased $6.7 million to $11.4 million in 2020 as a result of the acquisition.

Fourth quarter operating income was $20.9 million compared to $9.7 million in the prior year quarter. For the full year, operating income totaled $94.9 million, an increase of $57 million.

The full year increase in interest expense reflects the acquisition-related financing costs put in place in the fourth quarter of 2019.

Our effective income tax rate for the 2020 fourth quarter and full year was approximately 56% and 34%, respectively. The increased tax rate in both periods reflect an incremental income tax expense of approximately $4 million in the fourth quarter. The increase was driven by higher-than-expected federal income taxes related to nondeductible compensation and other permanent tax differences and increased state income taxes. Importantly, of our full year 2020 income tax expense of $22.5 million, $19.3 million was noncash as it was absorbed by our operating loss carryforwards.

Cash interest expense totaled $33.2 million, primarily for state income tax payments. We expect to have approximately the same noncash cash income tax relationship in 2021.

We also expect our effective tax rate in 2021 to be approximately $30 million -- 30%.

The net effect of all these items resulted in full year 2020 net income of $42.3 million or an EPS of $1.50, and fourth quarter net income of $5.8 million or an EPS of $0.20.

Now let's move to Slide 8, which summarizes our cash flow generation and deleveraging strategy. The graph presents our deleveraging expectations beginning with our October 2019 Plateau acquisition and the new 5-year credit facility. Our September 30, 2019, pro forma forward-looking EBITDA coverage was approximately 3.5x. At that time, we set an objective to bring the coverage ratio down to 2.5x by the end of 2021. As you can see, our consolidated coverage ratio declined to $2.7 million -- sorry, 2.7x EBITDA at December 31, 2020.

Given our more-than-expected positive cash flow since the acquisition and our 2021 financial plan, we believe our leverage ratio will continue to improve throughout 2021 and will be less than our 2.5x target at the beginning of the year.

During the fourth quarter, we repaid $25 million of term loan borrowings. The repayments included scheduled debt payments of $10 million and a voluntary early payment of $15 million. At the end of 2020, we had no borrowings on our revolver credit facility, and accordingly, we have full availability of the $75 million line.

Our 2020 adjusted EBITDA totaled $128.1 million, more than double our 2019 adjusted EBITDA of $62 million.

In addition, our cash flow from operating activities totaled $119.3 million, an improvement of almost threefold over the $41.1 million of cash flow from operations in 2019. This strong operating cash flow provided us the opportunity to make debt repayments of $77.7 million while investing $30.5 million in net capital expenditures.

Moving to our balance sheet. Our December 31, 2020, cash and cash equivalents totaled $66.2 million compared to $45.7 million at the beginning of the year. Additionally, our net -- our year-end 2020 total debt net of cash was $302 million, down from $387 million at the beginning of the year.

Now I'll turn the call back to Joe.

Thanks, Ron. As much as I'd like to continue to talk about our 2020 results, it's time to move on to 2021. As we enter 2021, we are now in our sixth year of transforming our company and our culture. Our overall strategy and the 3 core elements remain exactly the same as we continue to focus on bottom line growth while reducing risk and building a platform for accretive future growth.

We will continue to solidify the base through price and productivity in our heavy civil sector while we continue to shift away from low-bid heavy highway work to alternative delivery, aviation, rail and port. We will further grow our high-margin products through the expansion of Tealstone into Houston and begin exploring the next logical expansion market. Lastly, we will continue our expansion into adjacent markets through the growth of Plateau and the exploration of strategic acquisitions.

We entered the year with very strong end markets in our residential and specialty sectors. We believe we will see a slowdown in bid activity in the first half of 2021 in our heavy civil sector as we await the next transportation or infrastructure build, but are confident that our all-time record high combined backlog at year-end, along with some sizable first quarter wins, will sufficiently get us through 2021 even with the early lull in bid activity.

We believe 2021 revenues will be between $1.46 billion and $1.49 billion, our net income will be between $52 million and $55 million and our EBITDA will be between $134 million and $144 million.

In the end, we have the right strategy, the right people, the right end customers and the right end markets to have another record year in 2021 and solid earnings growth for many years to follow.

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

(Operator Instructions) Our first question is coming from Zane Karimi of D.A. Davidson.

I guess, first off, just how disruptive has the weather been in 1Q in Texas, in particular? Were you guys able to work through any of that? Or how is that impact looking?

Yes. So January was relatively normal. February was a disaster, to be honest. In March, we've had a couple of beautiful days. It's back in the 70s and 80s, a little bit of rain, but March is off to a great start. I think the important thing is February will hit both our Tealstone and our Plateau businesses in the month of February because the weather continued in the southeast.

However, those are the 2 best areas for us to get hit with temporary weather issues because both of them have a combination of more makeup capacity, but more importantly, their customer base is going to require them to get back on schedule and back on time. So they will run full out. And if we have a really good March, should make up the majority of any hiccups in February, if not all of them, and certainly will be there as we get into April, worst-case scenario.

So that's -- February was tough, but I will tell you, these guys are running 150 miles an hour when the weather is good and we'll catch up.

Great there. And then I guess when we're thinking then about specialty services and what that's looking like through 2021, how are those growth expectations really developing? And how much work is out there in like data centers and distribution centers? What's the visibility at this stage?

Yes. Market continues to be very strong on, I'll call it, all 3 levels: the smaller local warehousing and distribution, the larger e-commerce warehouse and distribution and data centers. Frankly, the market is bigger today than we can take up in the growth rates. As we said, as we're exiting 2020, the great news is Plateau had a barn burner year in 2020. When we bought the business, we took a look at kind of the growth rates over the next 3 years. And we anticipated, what I'll call, 6% to 8% growth of that business. They grew over 20% top line last year versus their best year ever and ate up a lot of the human capital capacity they had in project management.

So we very rapidly put in place a program not only to recruit, but to train new project managers. They're going to be adding a fair number of project managers in 2021. And as those project managers come on, think of it as somewhat of a program to bring them in and work under their best project managers so that they learn firsthand how to execute in the Plateau way, is that capacity continues to increase, they will be able to increase.

But we think we're going to see kind of mid-single-digit growth in that business this year. The market would allow us to grow faster than that. Our biggest challenge is how fast can we ramp up human capital to go after more of that market. So no concerns on the market right now, more of an internal, what I'll call, resource capability issue and we're working diligently on that.

Great. I guess last one for me then. Think about cash flow, can it be as strong as in 2020 or near the same levels?

Well, one of the problems we have is that we're going to have to use some capital this year for brake struts. We're going to have a very strong cash flow this year. Ron, you can speak more about it, but no reason to think that it wouldn't be any significantly different from prior year.

Yes. I think that's the bottom line. I think the -- certainly, the cash flow from operations and EBITDA are up -- certainly starting with EBITDA, up about almost -- in the mid-single digits, a little bit higher than that. So that obviously will help. As we've increased the activities of our land development business, it comes with the continuing need to always refresh our fleet. So just over $30 million we spent in 2020. We think we'll up that to be in the -- probably close in the $35 million range, which is fine. It's over half of that -- well over half of that is driven by our land development side of our specialty services group.

But also, we have -- the duration of our backlog is longer than it's ever been. And what that means is we have at least 4 or probably 5 projects still within north of $100 million in each with backlog. And the nice thing is that sets us up nicely for not only revenues and certainly achieving our plan -- expectations to meet our plans, but also puts us in good shape for entering 2022.

So that all would cut all through that, we have a bit of capital to meet demand for the start-up of these projects. But $35 million is sort of our -- at the tail end.

(Operator Instructions) Our next question is coming from Sean Eastman of KeyBanc.

This is Alex on for Sean. Congrats on a great year. So the heavy civil margins came in as a no surprise relative to our model. I just wanted to get a sense on how you see these margins in 2021 in the segment shaping up and maybe compare it back to the levels we saw a couple of years ago.

And then maybe what is the overall margin expansion potential within this segment as it stands today?

Yes. I'll start at a high level. I'll let Ron give you some more details. But we anticipate the margins will continue to tick up and get better as we go into 2021 on the heavy civil for a combination of a multitude of reasons. One is that low-bid shift, Sean (sic) [Alex], that we've been working on diligently continues to shrink the lion's share of our projects in backlog, not only our multiyear but our alternative delivery. And the margins on those are usually 3 to 4 points higher in general.

So we will see those start to kick in. We'll continue to shrink from the low-bid, and you get the, I'll call it, the product mix impact of that will continue to grow as we go into 2021. Ron, do you want to give any more detail on that?

Yes. I think it's, like Joe said, pretty much a movement in mix, which is consistent with what we've been trying to do. And I think to head off questions on growth in that side, as we continue to shrink our low-bid revenues, so give or take about 5% or $30 million -- $30 million and some change lower low-bid revenues expected in 2021 than 2020. Obviously, that reduces our lowest-margin returns type of work. And then with the start-up and continued ramp of these large jobs, they're all alternative delivery type -- delivery projects. So that, by itself, will continue to help that mix improve.

And I think the other thing -- the one last thing I'll say is we saw a little bit of lull in the back half of last year on some of the aviation. And we've got some nice projects that we've won and that's picking up as we go into 2021. And that margin is obviously much better than the heavy highway across the board. So we've got some good tailwinds in multiple areas to continue that trend into 2021, Sean (sic) [Alex].

Great. And then I just -- I wanted to ask about how sustainable the specialty services margins are around this 14% operating income level that you guys posted in 2020, and then ask where you see this trending over the next couple of years? And what are the biggest challenges would be?

Yes. I don't think that we're going to see them spike up or go up in any way, shape or form. Obviously, it's always challenging. It's more challenging to hold your margin than to lose it, right? But I think they're going to stay relatively consistent from what we've seen in both bid activities, projects and where they're executing them at.

So I would say kind of -- I would say status quo, right? I don't think we're going to see a big increase. I don't think we're going to see a big decrease.

And one last one for me. I'm taking a look at the EBITDA and EPS guidance ranges. And is there anything to point out that could swing the results from the high end of the range to the low end of the range? Just understanding the major swing factors would be a helpful discussion.

Well, I think a couple of things that will drive the range is when we come into the year and we put the guidance together, we don't have 100% of our year locked and loaded. Now the nice thing is we just announced a very nice job a couple of days ago. I will tell you, we're working diligently on 2 or 3 other really, really nice jobs for us in multiple sectors. And if those putts hit and we don't see any big pushes of projects or any major weather as we get into the back half of the year, that swings us up to that top end. If we -- if a couple of those putts don't hit and we got some risk in the back half of the year, that could swing us down towards that bottom end, okay.

Yes. And I would -- I mentioned that great unsigned work entering into 2021 and well over 70% of that is going to be or already is under contract, meaning that we're turning dirt already. That's faster than we thought a month ago when we finished up our planning process. So that helps us feel good about the ranges we have. And then we'll have to wait and see what this -- everything from the economy to the infrastructure builds, everything else, what it does for the balance of 2021.

But I think there are probably upsides there as opposed to downsides just because well over in the mid-60s, almost 70% of our revenues are coming out of backlog in the heavy civil side of that. And as Joe mentioned, the backlog -- or the business at Plateau continues to be strong.

Yes. I would say this, Sean (sic) [Alex], after a year of a pandemic, which I would have never thought of, knew of or even heard of, you're a little bit cautious. But I feel, by far, the best at this point in time in a year than I've ever felt since being here on our abilities and outlook for the entire year.

Our next question is a follow-up coming from Zane Karimi of D.A. Davidson.

Joe and Ron, one more time. Can we talk a little bit more about M&A and how focused are you right now pursuing acquisitions? And do you see more opportunity expanding your existing businesses organically into new territories?

A couple. We are actively getting back into the M&A business, right? And what I mean by that is we've been looking at a tremendous amount of books and deals. Unfortunately, I mean, here's the reality and hopefully you guys understand this, we're very picky. We may look at hundreds of deals before we even get to the point where we'd go to the next level. And we're going to remain really picky.

I would love for the right -- we have positioned ourselves from a balance sheet and debt perspective that we would be ready to do a nice -- either several tuck-ins or a very nice add-on. But it's about timing and it's about finding a deal. It's got to be accretive to us. It's got to be strategic to us. It's got to have great people or else we're not interested in it. But we are -- we're working, okay? And it always seems to take longer than you want, but we're actively looking.

On the expansion side, as we look, Plateau continues to kind of move what I'll call on incremental state. So they're now in Tennessee. They're looking at going into north of Virginia, into Baltimore. they'll start looking at some projects there. So they're on the one-state move, they'll continue to expand geographically.

And then Tealstone, we still have tons of runway within the Houston market. But this year, we're really looking at and evaluating 2 other markets and discussing when do we start entering those markets. And if I'm a betting person, I think that's a 2022 exercise, but we're trying to do the leg work and homework in 2021. The Austin market is really, really strong right now, which is probably an easier move for us because it's still in the state of Texas and it's a couple of hundred miles from Dallas and a couple of hundred miles from Houston. But we're also looking at some other markets that are out of state that are rapidly growing that we've had some key customers ask us to look at and tell them what it would take to expand into those markets.

Thank you. At this time, I'd like to turn the floor back over to Mr. Cutillo for closing comments.

Thank you, Donna. Thanks, again, everyone, for joining our call today. If you have any follow-up questions or wish to schedule a call, please refer to the contact information provided in the press release associated with our Investor Relations Group at Sterling or our partners at The Equity Group. Thanks again, everybody, and have a great day.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation and interest in Sterling Construction. You may now disconnect your lines or log off the webcast, and have a wonderful day.