Tetra Tech Inc (TTEK) 2014 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Good morning. And thank you for joining the Tetra Tech earnings call. By now you should have received a copy of the press release. If you have not, please contact the Company's corporate office at 626-351-4664.

With us today from Management are Dan Batrack, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Steve Burdick, Chief Financial Officer. They will provide a brief overview of the results and will then open up the call for questions.

During the course of the conference call, Tetra Tech Management may make forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These include statements concerning future events and Tetra Tech's future financial performance. The statements are only predictions and may differ materially from actual future events or results. Tetra Tech's Form 10-K and 10-Q reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission identify security risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. Tetra Tech undertakes no duty to update forward-looking statements. In addition, since Management will be presenting some non-GAAP financial measures as references, the appropriate non-GAAP financial reconciliations are posted in the Investor Relations section of Tetra Tech's website. (Operator Instructions). With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Dan Batrack. Please go ahead, Mr. Batrack.

Great. Thank you very much and good morning, and welcome to our fiscal year 2014 second quarter earnings conference call. While Steve Burdick, our Chief Financial Officer, will present the specifics of our financials, I will start this morning's call with a brief overview of some of our key financial metrics.

Overall the quarter came in just about as we expected. The revenue was at the lower end of the guidance, which was directly attributable to the weather-related impacts on our business this past quarter. The operating income came in within our guidance range if you backed out the earn-out related gain that we had, and Steve Burdick, our Chief Financial Officer, will talk about this a bit more in the conference call this morning.

As we expected, backlog dropped as we worked toward completing some of the large fixed-price contracts that are in the non-core businesses that we are exiting, and I will speak a bit more detail on this during the call this morning. In the second quarter, our revenue was $586 million with an associated net revenue of $456 million for the quarter. Our operating income was $46 million, which is up 24% from the prior year; and the EBITDA was $59 million or up 12% from the last year.

As a result of this operating income and EBITDA, we delivered an earnings-per-share of $0.48, which was up 29% year-over-year. And I am glad to announce that based on our consistent performance, we have initiated a quarterly dividend for the first time in Tetra Tech's history. I feel quite good about that here.

I would now like to review our performance by customer. Taking into account the foreign exchange translation, our total revenue for international work was actually up 1% from last year. We did subcontract more of the work that we performed this last quarter. So our net revenue was down 8% year-over-year. That was mostly due to the difficult comparisons we had with the second quarter of last year, or 2013, when our mining work and Eastern Canadian activities were still extremely strong.

In the United States our work for our commercial clients was essentially equal to last year, which I actually feel pretty good about considering the impact of weather on our operations this past quarter. Our federal work was down 17%, primarily due to two factors. The first is we are completing and not replacing a number of fixed-price construction projects that are not in our core business, and an example of this would be fixed-price construction projects that we have in Afghanistan. We are not bidding, and we are not replacing this work. So as we do complete this activity, it is affecting our year-on-year comparisons on our revenue in the federal sector.

The second area is we have continued to see slow release of task orders from the federal government -- including, and a little bit unusual for us, the US State Department and USAID, who typically are our most consistent clients in funding the task orders that we have under contract vehicles that they have issued.

And finally, our US state and local work, with 13% of our business this quarter, which was down due to the substantial completion of a couple of large transportation projects we have on the East Coast. All three of our business groups felt the effects of winter weather this past quarter. The ECS business group was down 8%, primarily due to its comparison to stronger mining and Eastern Canadian revenues last year that I spoke of a moment ago, but that was also exacerbated by the weather-related impacts in the Eastern and Central regions of both the United States and Canada. So it did have an impact.

The TSS or Technical Support Services business group, which has the highest percentage of our US federal work, was down 6% year-on-year. In addition to their revenue being impacted by weather, the revenue is also being impacted by the slow federal contracting environment that we are seeing, and all of the USAID work we have is actually contained in this group. So this is where we saw the impact.

However, I will note that the TSS business group is increasingly being influenced by the higher margin commercial work they have. That is primarily the US oil and gas activities. I also give them credit for excellent operational management. And the TSS business group delivered the highest operating income of all three of our business segments this past quarter at almost 15%. That was helped by some favorable project closeouts, but I do give them credit both for increasing the commercial business mix and excellent operational performance.

Finally, our RCM, or our construction management group, was down 17% due to the completion of some of the large US transportation projects and fixed-price projects in Afghanistan. They were also impacted this quarter by the unusually cold and persistent winter conditions that were present at many of our project construction sites across both the US and Canada.

Our backlog finished this last quarter at just over $1.8 billion and was impacted by a couple of factors. The first, the strengthening US Dollar resulted in a lower reported backlog from our international operations, and that was associated with the foreign exchange translation. If we added back the impact of the foreign exchange translation, our backlog would have been closer to $1.9 billion for the quarter.

But the second item affecting our backlog is that we do continue to burn up backlog from select fixed-price contracts, such as projects in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the US transportation construction projects. It is these projects and markets that we are continuing to exit, and based on the low margins and high risks that are contained in these types of projects, we are looking not to replace this type of work and put it back into our backlog. But what we are actually putting into our backlog is work of much higher value and much lower risk.

So during the second quarter, we received a significant number of commercial orders, including oil and gas and industrial water projects. We also received a significant number of awards from our long-term federal customers, like the US Navy, US State Department, USAID, and the National Guard. I would like to note one item here on this backlog slide, if you are following along on the webcast. We did add $1 billion dollars in new contract capacity since this last conference call, including $700 million contract with USAID, a $243 million contract with the National Guard, and many others, which collectively exceeded more than $1 billion dollars this past 90 days.

These new contract vehicles demonstrate the strength of our relationships and the contract capacity that we have with the US Government. This will continue to be a very strong contributor to the Company. I would now like to turn the presentation over to Steve Burdick, who will provide a more detailed discussion of the financial results for the second quarter. Steve.

Well, thank you, Dan. Like Dan said, I will begin the fiscal 2014 second quarter financial results, and I will look at those in a bit more detail with you. So overall, our second quarter results met the guidance ranges that we provided for both net revenue and EPS, as I will explain later in this presentation.

Comparing the second quarter results this year to last year, revenue decreased by about $56 million or 9% to $586.3 million, primarily as a result of a slowdown in operations focused on Eastern Canada, global mining, and the US Government markets, as Dan had previously discussed.

In addition, we were negatively impacted by extreme weather conditions both in North America that were beyond our seasonal expectations. The year-over-year comparisons were also negatively impacted by the foreign exchange rates due to the strengthening of the US dollar. Now, these decreases were partially offset by increases in our North American commercial markets, which focus primarily on oil and gas activities.

Similar to revenue, our net revenue also decreased to $456 million or about 12%. The net revenue results were consistent with our expectations and towards the lower end of the guidance range provided due to the lower revenues both in Canada and for the weather factors, as I noted, in the US.

Our operating income was up $8.5 million or about 23% to $46.2 million. This represents a margin of about 10.1%. The higher operating income was primarily driven by project execution and favorable closeouts, a reduction in overhead costs due in part to the right-sizing actions we took in the second half of fiscal 2013, and non-operating net gains on revaluing acquisition-related earn-out liabilities that were partially offset by a project charge related to a relatively new business acquisition.

We did achieve a 9% increase in our EBITDA. Now, our EBITDA increased for the same reasons as our operating income, but at a lower percentage due to the intangible amortization and depreciation, which was about $3.2 million less in the current year compared to last year. Now, in order to provide a bit more clarity to our operating income and earnings-per-share, we have provided a reconciliation on this next slide for those following on the webcast.

As Dan mentioned earlier in this presentation, without the adjustments, our pro forma operations posted operating income of about $39 million or EPS of $0.38. This EPS is within our estimated range, albeit at the lower end of our guidance because of weather, and is consistent with the lower end of our net revenue results. As previously noted, we had one RCM project in Canada in which the results differed from our expectations. These changes were caused by differing site conditions and scope of effort plus schedule and cost impacts. As a result, and as the accounting rules require, we wrote down the project margin to zero and our income was negatively impacted by about $14 million versus our previous expectations.

I do want to point out that we are currently negotiating changes to the contract whereby we expect to recoup this lost amount in the very near term. This project was performed by a recently acquired company in Canada that has an earn-out provision as part of the purchase. Because of the lower operating income, we have calculated a lower earn-out potential and thus reduced this liability.

Virtually all of the earn-out gain resulted from this single operating unit, and as such, we recognized a $21 million gain as -- that was included in this operating income. So in aggregate, our GAAP based financial results total about $46 million of operating income or about $0.48 per share.

Now, our SG&A was about $44.2 million for the quarter. This is a decrease from the prior-year quarter of about 9%. The net decrease was due to lower intangible amortization, which was down about $2.3 million from last year.

In addition, we realized a reduction in overhead expenses as a result of the actions taken in fiscal 2013 in response to our decreased revenues in certain weaker markets. The tax provision resulted in a net expense of about $11.8 million. The effective tax rate is 27% for the quarter, and the lower rate is due to the non-taxable nature of our earn-out charges or changes in earn-outs. The expected rate was about 33.5% without these earn-outs, but this could decrease even further if US Congress extends the R&E credits during our fiscal year.

Earnings-per-share was about $0.48, which exceeded guidance; but also, as I discussed earlier, without the aforementioned non-operating net gains from revaluing the acquisition-related earn-out contingencies less this one project charge, we would have recognized EPS of about $0.38. And this resulting pro forma EPS of $0.38 is within the guidance that we had previously given of $0.37 to $0.42 per share.

Now, I would like to point out a -- I guess a few more of the significant balance sheet items. As a result of our lower revenue, we experienced a decrease in our net accounts receivable balances. Also, the Accounts Payable balances increased due to higher subcontracting activities when comparing the current year to the prior year. We did experience a decrease in our net debt compared to the prior year. The primary driver for higher debt last year was the borrowings used for our fiscal 2013 acquisitions.

Now, we have taken down our net debt over the last 12 months as we have generated about $132 million in cash from operations. Offsetting this, we implemented a stock repurchase program in fiscal 2013 which so far has utilized about $27 million of cash. In our net debt -- our net debt cash position was also impacted by CapEx purchases of about $26 million over the last four quarters. So as noted in our balance sheet -- or the discussion of our balance sheet, we have had cash flows from operations.

Although the second quarter was less than the prior year, on a year-to-date basis, we are on plan and similar to last year at this time. We do still anticipate our fiscal 2014 cash from operations to be in the range of $150 million to about $170 million. So the mid-point for our 2014 results on a cash EPS basis is about $2.50. CapEx is less than prior year, but in line with our previous guidance that we had given for 2014.

We continue to remain disciplined in our spending, and as a result, we have decreased the top end of our CapEx estimate. So we are now in the range of about $25 million to $30 million for 2014. This amount continues to represent about 1% of our annual revenue. Days sales outstanding of 88.6 days are higher when compared to last year at this point.

Our DSO is higher due to the lower revenue in the second quarter used to calculate the DSO as well as the timing of collections on a few large receivables that slipped from March into the third quarter. The DSO result is not in line with our expectations, but we have already taken corrective actions and put those in place to improve that for the rest of this year. So our expectations for fiscal 2014 continues to be a range of about 75 days to 80 days with an ultimate goal to get back below 75 days.

Now, for those following on the webcast, this next graphic shows you how our net debt has changed over the last five years. As you can see on the graphic, our previous net cash position in part of last year has transitioned to a net debt position due to the borrowings for acquisitions in the second quarter of fiscal 2013. But it also shows what I mentioned earlier -- that we have reduced our debt by a substantial amount. Our operating cash flow in the first half of fiscal 2014 has allowed us to decrease our net debt by almost $60 million since the end of the last fiscal year.

In fact, our experience has been that we are generating cash at a faster and more consistent pace compared to our net income. And so as I look back over the last five years, we have historically outperformed our own estimates on cash generation. As a result of that performance, we have enhanced our capital allocation program, for which I would like to give you all an update.

Today, and as Dan had previously mentioned, I would like to announce that -- our further commitment to provide value to our shareholders going forward. So the Board of Directors has approved the declaration of Tetra Tech's first-ever quarterly dividend. The initial quarterly dividend is $0.07 per share.

This amount on an annualized basis represents about 15% of our estimated annual free cash flow. This amount further equates to about a 1% yield of our current market value. The dividend will be paid on June 4th of this year to shareholders of record as of May 16th.

An important aspect to understand is that this cash dividend will not impact our growth strategy from either an organic or acquisitive standpoint. Now, due to the many changes over the last year, I would like to summarize for you all our capital allocation strategy and the decisions we have implemented to further provide for long-term shareholder value. The goals we have established are two-fold.

First, our strategy is to maximize our shareholder return; and, second, we have determined that the optimal leverage to be about one to two times net debt compared to our EBITDA. So we address these goals in three ways -- or these goals and our strategy in three ways. First, return to shareholders. These are delivered through the mix of both buybacks and dividends, and we are targeting about 33% of our free cash flow to be returned to the shareholders.

We have in place a $100 million stock buyback program, of which we have incurred about $27 million through the second quarter of fiscal 2014. And as I mentioned, we have instituted a quarterly dividend of $0.07 per share. Relative to organic growth, we will continue to invest in growth opportunities with long-term markets.

Throughout the organization is the financial discipline to increase utilization and project margins, and we will not lose sight of our focus in managing both our CapEx and reducing our days sales outstanding on our receivables. And finally, acquisition. We must pursue a disciplined pricing in order to realize accretive acquisitions on a GAAP basis, and we will push our whole efforts to expand geographic and service offerings in water, environment, and energy. So with that said, I will now hand the presentation back over to Dan to discuss our outlook and business strategy in a bit more detail.

Great. Thank you, Steve. I would like to just add to Steve's comments on our use of cash. As Steve just stated, based on our track record of cash generation, I am very pleased that we can initiate a shareholder's dividend program and reiterate just what Steve said -- while continuing to invest both in organic and acquisitive growth that is going to benefit the Company's long-term -- in the long-term in strength and in profitability for the Company.

Our growth investments, where we are going to put that cash to work, are focused on our core water, environment, and energy related services in three major high growth areas that are highlighted on this slide, if you are following along with the webcast. They are oil and gas, solid waste, and industrial water. Each of these three markets have higher profitability and will support our goal to deliver 13% margins for the entire Company and provide a long-term growth potential which is supported by very specific new regulatory and industry drivers. And these markets are very large, and we plan that on a collective basis they will comprise over $2 billion of our business within the next three to five years.

I would like to go into a bit of detail on each of the three of these and explain a few of the specific drivers and our expectations for these markets. In oil and gas, we are primarily focused on supporting our clients in the rapidly expanding midstream markets across North America. That is both the US and Canada. Two-thirds of our oil and gas revenues are in the midstream market, and it?s growing quickly in Canada across the Western regions -- Alberta and British Columbia -- and throughout the oil and gas producing areas of the United States. Those are very many different shale producing regions.

Across the midstream area, we are currently providing early studies and permitting; and increasingly, we are now providing design services to our clients. We also think that the future expansion opportunities for this, and if you are following again along the webcast, you can see this, especially in the United States include construction management and working for our clients as their owner's engineer. We are currently growing this market at a pace of over 20% and expect our oil and gas revenues to be over $400 million for the year of fiscal year of 2014.

In solid waste -- and this includes primarily landfills and the manage of the solid waste -- we are advising our clients on cost effective solutions across North America and providing full-service both to municipal clients, municipal landfills, and private sector clients. For us, the solid waste market has two emerging regulatory drivers that are creating this as a new market and a growing market. The first is for municipal landfill gas markets, and there are new federal and state programs that are incentivising -- and in some instances, regulating -- the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, and that is essentially methane from landfills. So not only is there incentives and regulatory requirements to reduce the greenhouse gas, capture of this greenhouse gas is allowing a new market for waste to energy systems to be installed at these landfill gas systems, and we see this as an opportunity both to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions and convert it to energy producing facilities at these landfills. So really we get two opportunities for one with respect to addressing greenhouse gas emissions.

For waste generated by coal-fired power plants, there are new regulations that are coming out. They are expected to be issued in December of this year by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. There is a couple different possibilities that these regulations could go, whether or not it would regulate this as either hazardous or non-hazardous waste; but regardless of which decision is made, these new regulations will create more than $1 billion a year new market to design and build specialty landfills to receive this waste. These are areas that we are well-positioned for. We are experts, and we expect to participate materially in this new market as it emerges.

In industrial water new regulatory requirements, whether or not they were recently enacted or under development, will drive demand for our specialty water services. Efficient and innovative water management services is what we do here at Tetra Tech, both for the public and private sectors. And increasingly, we are providing Engineering Solutions that are recycling and reusing this water, reducing the demand for this water, increasing the efficiency of its application, and minimizing disposal requirements for water -- all of which are growing in importance and in market requirements.

Just a few of the drivers that are going to continue to this drive this market include: the development of standards for chemicals -- and this is to address an ever-increasing list of potential toxins that are either poorly understood or currently poorly regulated. There is ongoing updates to water quality criteria or standards that are going to increase the treatment requirements for wastewater or recycled water from municipalities and public sectors. And even new reporting requirements by the Securities and Exchange Commission is requiring that they recognize the significance of water and climate change related impacts to the financial health and viability of many of these businesses.

Now, our segment outlook for fiscal year 2014 shows an EBITDA margin of -- in the range of 11% to 13% for the year, with a slightly lower range for the third quarter of 10% to 12%. Our ECS business segment is expected to be in the 9% to 11% range for both the third quarter and fourth quarter. Our TSS business segment, which now represents over a third of our business -- it?s at 34% of the Company's revenues -- is expected to continue to have very strong margin performance, in the range of 11% to 13% throughout the remainder of fiscal year 2014. And our RCM, our construction management business segment, we expect to trends up to a 7% to 9% range for the third quarter and complete the year in the 8% to 10% range, which would be the fourth quarter of this fiscal year. And with a larger percentage of our overall revenues now coming from commercial clients and the improved performance in all three of our segments, I expect 2014 to keep us on track to our longer-term goal of achieving a 13% EBITDA margin for the Company.

I would now like to present our guidance for the third quarter and for all of fiscal year 2014. As you will note, we are raising our earnings-per-share guidance range. We are increasing the bottom by $0.10, and we are increasing the top end of our range by 15% -- $0.15, I am sorry -- $0.15, primarily due to the earn-out that we recognized this quarter that Steve Burdick spoke to and our year-to-date performance.

We are also adjusting our revenue range for the full year due to three primary reasons. The first, and we spoke to this in a number of the portions during this call, the foreign exchange translation, which -- the international work of Tetra Tech now is 30% of our business, and with the strengthening dollar we announced roughly a $50 million on the revenue side impact to our revenues for the year. We also expect about $100 million reduction in the amount of renewable energy and wind related work that we expected to perform this year. So we have incorporated that into our annual revenue guidance. We have also seen about a $50 million impact associated with delays in federal orders that we expected to receive prior to the second half of fiscal year 2014.

So our updated guidance is as follows. For the third quarter, our net revenue guidance is a range of $475 million to $525 million, with an associated diluted earnings-per-share of $0.39 to $0.44. For the entire fiscal year of 2014, our net revenue guidance range is from $1.9 billion to $2 billion, US dollars, and with an associated diluted earnings-per-share of $1.75 to $1.85.

The one item that hasn't changed at all is our cash earnings-per-share. That has remained unchanged at a range of $2.30 to $2.60. Some of the fundamentalist functions in these guidance that we have provided, we do anticipate an intangible amortization of $0.28 per share. We do expect roughly 65 million in diluted shares outstanding for the Company; that excludes contributions from any acquisitions that would take place in the second half of this year.

In summary, we delivered a second quarter results in line with the guidance, and our EPS exceeded the high end of our forecast for the quarter. We initiated a quarterly dividend as part of the capital allocation strategy that emphasizes returning value to the shareholders, while still supporting and not affecting the long-term growth of the Company, and investment both in organic and acquisitive growth. We continue to invest in high growth markets while we are exiting some of the lower value, high risk fixed-price construction projects, as I spoke to earlier on this call. And we continue to generate cash with our strong balance sheet, positioning us very well for continued investment in the highest value opportunities in the markets, both here in the United States and internationally all around the world. And with that, I would like to open the call up for questions.

(Operator Instructions). The first question comes from Will Gabrielski for Stephens.

Thank you. Good morning, guys.

Morning, Will.

Can you touch on organic growth in your assumptions in the back half of the year? What is your conviction, now that it sounds like you are exiting some select markets, that organic growth is still a possibility for fiscal 2015?

Will, I think that the organic growth for 2015 should actually be a much easier threshold to achieve. I will say for all of fiscal year 2014, the first half of the year on a year-on-year comparison for some of our markets was extremely difficult; and, in fact, mining -- I would say that the second quarter is a very large headwind. A year ago, it was really at the top both in revenue and margin. So that is -- it was a difficult headwind for this quarter compared to last year.

Next year's work for this year will be much easier, and I expect it to be more favorable. The same is true with Eastern Canada, and the -- two of the three large US transportation projects substantially completed this past quarter. So year-on-year comparisons next year will be much easier with respect to organic growth. In addition to those having less of a headwind as we have seen here in 2014, the size and growth and now critical mass of some of the faster growing markets like oil and gas are actually making a difference.

Now, oil and gas had grown at 100% in some years, from $45 million to $90 million. So we doubled it, but it was $90 million. It was a very small number for us. Now at $400 million, it actually has the side and capacity to make a difference; and it?s growing not only at high growth margins at over 20%, but the margins in that business are double what we have in our base business. So it really has sort of a four-fold factor on the earnings side.

So I feel very good about that. I do expect -- I have talked about the federal market being a little bit slower here in the second half. They have been slower, but they are issuing more contracts, more contract capacity, and I do expect that they are going to utilize it. So I think federal -- while I do not see it as a growth market, I do see it as a very stable, flat, consistent market as we go forward.

So I think 2015 is actually looking quite good for us. We knew coming into 2014, the first half would be challenging because of the year-over-year headwinds, but I do believe that is subsiding as we go forward.

Okay. Then a follow-up. The pipeline market. Can you talk about -- I mean, oil and gas in general, but specific to pipeline. It is still a new customer base for you in a lot of ways. I am sure you've had some integration and execution issues that you alluded to so far. I am just wondering, what is your confidence that you can enter that market and successfully make money, and you have got a good handle on the commercial terms and risks and the competitive landscape, so that at that can be profitable growth in returns accretive for you over the next two or three years?

Yes. I think that -- I just want to clarify one thing on a project that we had an issue with this last quarter that Steve went into. We have not had performance issues on the projects with new acquisitions that have come in. They have actually performed very well, including the project that Steve has spoken to.

Now, I know you and others on this call would appreciate the reason why we want to keep this non-identified as either the unit or the specific project or client, because we are entering into those discussions; in fact, they are ongoing right now. But we did not have a problem with the execution of the project. We did not have an issue with respect to successful completion or substantial completion of this, and it was not multiple projects. I know that sometimes people use the word project and they mean plural, and it is a small bucket of them. This was one singular project, and it was only associated with the change in scope of services on it. And, in fact, we did complete it.

We do believe that the terms and conditions on the base contract allow us to account for it differently, not as a fixed-price, but in fact, when the scope changes so significantly it actually moves to a cost reimbursable, sometimes referred to as open book. And as Steve had mentioned, the accounting necessitates that you complete what the plus is or the fee. You set the fee aside, which we did, until it is complete, and then we would have that come back into earnings.

So now, with respect to integration, the actual integration of these new acquisitions, especially on the oil and gas side, has gone very, very well. They have contributed to backlog. They have contributed to revenue as expected, and they have actually been great contributors to the Company. So I would actually say these have gone well as expected, and I really haven't seen that as an issue.

Okay. You are comfortable, though. I guess the main question was: are you comfortable with what you?re learning about your customers and their commercial preferences and the competitive landscape -- that this is a very viable market for you to continue to put capital into via M&A and organic growth?

Yes. Very much so. Very much so.

Perfect. Thank you so much.

Thank you very much, Will.

Your next question is from Corey Greendale from First Analysis.

Hello. Good morning.

Morning, Corey.

I just wanted to clarify the unnamed RCM project. Are you still sustaining some negative impact in Q4, or is that resolved at this point?

It is resolved at this point. We are roughly 90% complete with the project; going through some final completion early in Q3, but we expect no additional financial impact on that project.

Okay. And then I appreciate the introduction of a dividend, and the fact that you have kind of framed what the free cash flow use is going forward. Within that 33% returning to shareholders, can you give us some sense how the Board is thinking about that, and whether you think the expectation is raising the dividend annually or keeping the yield flat, or how we should think about that?

Well, first of all, let me speak in the most general sense, and then I will give a little bit of -- more specifics. I sort of see the dividend initiation somewhat similar to what we started with the stock buyback. We started with a grid. We started by -- started slow, and then we added to it. Then we opened it up to a specific commitment over a time frame. It seemed that a dividend is a very specific long-term commitment to return to the shareholders.

We did link it as a Board to a percent of cash generation, so that as the Company grows and cash generation goes, it will automatically increase as we have linked it to the cash increase. I will tell you, I would look at this dividend, and the Board is looking at the dividend, similar to the stock repurchase. Let us get started. Then let us re-evaluate it at we go forward.

So we really do see both of these as sort of a one way gate valve. You cannot go back down. So you do not start too much too high at the beginning. So we will get started, and then we will re-evaluate it as we go. So that was really the thought process with the Board.

Okay, and Dan, we?d love your thoughts on a high level topic. I think one could make the case that, given how your mix has shifted, that Tetra Tech is just inherently a more cyclical business than it was four or five years ago and may become even more so, given the areas where you are looking to grow. Could you give us your thoughts on that, and whether we should be expecting kind of more boom and bust going forward?

Well, I do think that we are -- there is no doubt that Tetra Tech is more cyclical than when we were 70% or 80% government work, US government work. There is no doubt about that. We have seen it most acutely, and when it was quite new to the Company, over this past 12 months with mining. So I tell you, I have been with this Company for many decades, and that is the first time I have seen that in the Company, but it is because mining went up to 10%, 12% of the Company's revenue. So when it moved, we had a portion move.

Now, I also will say that what is coming along with this, if you call it, cyclicality or volatility is a much higher margin. We are working very hard to reinvest in the stable federal markets we have that we think are less vulnerable, so that we can have a really strong ballast to the Company -- ballast meaning stability, predictability, something that is not going to move much. But I will say that it's become more of a portfolio approach. So mining has very different drivers than oil and gas, which has very different drivers than solid waste, which, of course, are all quite different than the government work, which is more stable.

So we are looking at it on a portfolio basis. We did need to add additional segments, which we have done, for instance, in industrial water, which is commercial; solid waste, which is a bit public and private; and then oil and gas. And I think that as we are moving this transition -- and if you think about what we have done here in the Company in the past five years, we have gone from zero or maybe 1% international to 33% this last quarter. It is the biggest sector of the Company. As we have moved from very little commercial work, or very focused commercial work, to be being much broader with much higher margins; as we have made it a more diverse portfolio business, to a certain extent it should take out the single factors and the single market causing the movement in revenues and profits.

So I actually think by this diversification of our portfolio, we will become less cyclical yet still have the benefit of the higher margins.

Are you still looking at the long-term growth rate as kind of mid-teens, half organic, half acquisition?

Yes. Absolutely.

Okay. And one question specifically about the solid waste opportunity. How are you looking at that in terms of whether -- does the opportunity shift for you depending on whether new landfills are built as opposed a bunch of that stuff going to the existing landfill operators?

That is right. We have done a couple of these, and you are right. What I am -- this is an interesting environment, because the very large waste handlers and landfill owners that do that as a profession largely take waste from cities and municipalities. These often will be built, as you have just alluded to, adjacent to the coal-fired power plants. Cheaper for transportation; they own it -- all of these benefits.

So I expect that there will be some cyclical nature on that piece. I think what will happen is you will design in the winter, and you will construct in the summer. We would factor that in as we go forward, but I do think that moving all of this waste to existing landfills, even if they expand their selves, just the transportation and handling costs make it close to prohibitive. So it really lends the market more to folks like ourselves that can make a customized solution for the energy generator at their location, which requires permitting, designing, and then -- you are right -- seasonally constructing it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Corey.

Your next question is from Andy Wittmann from Robert W. Baird.

Hello, guys. How you doing? I just wanted to get your thoughts on backlog growth from here. You mentioned that you are walking away from some larger fixed-price work; the federal outlook is a little bit more subdued. What should investors be expecting here at least over the near-term from your backlog trends?

Yes. I think that it is -- let me quantify a little bit what we have been removing from our backlog, so I can put this in some context. This past year, a little bit more than a year, we removed about $200 million from backlog.

If you put that back in or assume that we did not have it, you could either say -- you take the $2 billion from a year ago and normalize it to -- if you took that out, we would have been -- it was actually $300 million; but we took $200 million out. So if you put that back in, we would be relatively flat from last year. So if you sort of Xed that portion out, you would see that the backlog for the Company is flat, which is actually a good indicator, given that we have moved to more commercial work.

So if you actually then normalized it for commercial, you would actually say that our visibility for the projects has actually increased a bit. But what we have -- so we have taken $200 million out in the past year, roughly, of construction. And these are US transportation projects on the East Coast. These are construction projects in Afghanistan, Iraq and other portions of the Middle East. And I know I've had people ask me: why in the world did you go do construction projects in the Middle East and Afghanistan? Do you have some interesting desire to go do that?

This work is all being done for the US Army Corps of Engineers or US Department of Defense that were under our existing, very large ID/IQ contracts, or indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contracts that they have asked us to do. So we did this in response to our clients asking us to do this. It has just not been good work for us.

We have taken the charge a year ago. So it has not had an income impact to us, but it has had no margin on the revenue that we have taken out. Now, to go to your -- specifically to your question. What is it going to look like? We have about $100 million more to go. It will be roughly over the next year, year and a half, but the rest of it, then, you will actually see the impact of our underlying core business contribute. So I expect this to flatten up, flatten out and go back up, including the replacement of that $100 million that were removed. So I think if you watch from here, you will see more of what the core business and our core sectors are contributing. So I do expect it to go up.

That is helpful. Thank you, Dan. Maybe a little bit just on the capital allocation here, still underlevered today as it sits versus your one to two times. Obviously a very significant -- I would say very significant aspirations on the M&A side.

Do you feel any sense of urgency to get the leverage to your targeted levels, or do you think that phases in over time, and with a couple hundred million dollars at least just to get the leverage, plus the $125 million of annual cash flow? I don't know; it just kind of seems to us like there might be a little bit more cash that you could possibly deliver only 30% of it or 33% back -- 33% of it back to shareholders. Are we missing something here? Is there maybe more cash that needs to come back to shareholders, or is there really that much of an acquisition opportunity?

Well, I agree with you. If you do a calculation of 33% of the cash flow, it would take us several -- in fact, if you extend it out, it would be very difficult to get to the one or two times leverage with that type of return of capital. However, if you actually take a look at the opportunities out there in these markets, I think they are there. And I think that we will expend the remaining balance of the cash to facilitate acquisitions, and I will tell you, primarily in oil and gas and selected other areas that will help build and maintain the base business that gives us stability.

I will say just a word about acquisitions, because that is really indirectly an acquisition question. Do you have acquisitions that you can see, and that you will pay for, that will utilize your cash that will move you to a one to two times leverage position? The answer to that is absolutely yes. Now, of course, the question will be: so where are they? And I will tell you, with the process we have done through here over roughly the last six months, even nine months, so really this fiscal year and even back to late summer, is we were quite focused on middle to larger sized acquisitions -- in the oil and gas space was our primary focus. These range somewhere between $100 million and $300 million per year in annual revenues. That is what our focus was.

We were quite outspoken on this call in the past, I think in these past two quarters, that we were quite close on the altar on these -- meaning, having consummated the acquisition In fact, had debates with our own team if we should actually send out a press release saying we have made it over the wedding threshold. Absolutely not. Our practice is until it has been closed, we do not announce anything.

And sure enough, what happened was a last moment renegotiation for higher price, and we have remained disciplined. So what has caused this slight delay is our discipline to ensure that acquisitions will be accretive on a GAAP basis in the first year of their acquisition joining the Company. So what that has caused us to do is to adjust our strategy and to move the size and scale of the acquisitions down from a $100 million to $300 million range to something closer to a $25 million to $100 million, which I would call small to the lower end of middle sized for us. There is much more opportunity out there. There are more candidates. It is a lower risk from us, because it is not as big a bet.

We can be very much more focused on where we have been. It is -- whether it is in Northern Alberta or British Columbia for the natural gas in support of LNG, or in the US for the Permian, and that is exactly what we are doing. So that is what accounts for this period where we have not actually identified publicly a closed deal, but I will tell you they are out there. We are focused on them, and the pipeline looks quite good.

All right. Thank you for the comprehensive answer. Just acquisition multiples -- I appreciate that you have remained disciplined. We have heard that those multiples are moving up in the private sector relative -- just look at the public multiples. They have expanded as well. One, are you seeing that in the market; and, two, with looking at smaller deals in the capital allocation, do you need to scale-up your M&A team to evaluate all those deals in the three to five year time horizon that you are looking at? Do you have the resources to execute on that just internally?

We actually -- it is actually easier, and I will tell you why it's easier. I do not think we have to actually scale-up our M&A team, because we do not have a large dedicated corporate M&A team that is driving up our SG&A. Our deals, as we spoke to before, are mostly directly sourced from our operations, and who comprise our M&A due diligence team are actually folks in our operations in that industry, and now that we have grown our oil and gas to $400 million, we actually have a lot more folks internally that can go out and support us from a technical standpoint. We do have virtual teams that we take out of our corporate finance and accounting and legal teams that support this. So I actually do not see that as issue.

In fact, I think it is easier for us now that we have more scale in the oil and gas. Before we had just such a small team that when we looked at two of them. we were trying and figure out how we could divide these people up. So we are actually much better suited now than we were a year ago.

all right. Thank you very much.

Great. Thanks, Andy.

Next question comes from Tahira Afzal from KeyBanc.

Thank you, and congratulations on the dividend initiation. A big move and a great idea, I think.

Thank you, Tahira.

Number one, I guess, just talking about the state and local markets, you know, you have talked in the past about how healthy it is, and I know you have some completions and difficult comps coming up, but as you look forward in terms of your bidding activity and the prospects you have, could you give us some color on that market? And I guess the second question in regards to prospects as well is Canadian pipeline market, the midstream market, that?s where you could see some large EPC awards coming out in 2015. I would like to get a sense of your discussions with potential customers there.

Well, I will start with state and local. State and local -- and I have mentioned this before -- this is probably as good a quarter that would be an example of my characterization of our revenue in that space. We have three large construction turn-key transportation projects on the East Coast that are state and local projects. Two of them largely completed this past quarter.

They will -- should fully complete here in the third quarter. If you take those out -- because those are projects that each are roughly $100 million each, so the throughput is actually quite large -- but if you X that out and pro forma our numbers and take those out, our underlying business is actually quite strong. It is growing organically at mid-single-digits, and it is really quite profitable and is more in line with the margins that we have as a Company. So there is so much -- I do not want to use the word noise on it, because it is not noise, but it is being overshadowed so much by these large constructions, you cannot see the underlying numbers.

Now, we still have one project that will go out for about another 18 months. So about, oh, $50 million to $75 million left on that one. So it is not insignificant, but collectively the three of them drove the numbers up from 10% of our overall business up to a high of roughly 14%.

So you saw a 40% increase, and I had spoken over the last couple years, that is not representative of the broad-based growth in the state and local market. But I will share with you now is we are seeing mid-single-digit growth. It is broad-based. It does run from East to the West Coast, and it is actually -- we are seeing plenty of opportunities in that business. So I think that the first part of the your question -- state and local looks good. And you will start to see the underlying performance of that now, as the two projects have burned off, the last one moves toward completion over the next few quarters, that will start to become more and more visible.

Now, with respect to midstream in Canada, it sounds like you are as excited as we are. I think that is a great market. Our Canadian folks think that also is a great market. We have a good presence in Alberta. We are doing more than $200 million a year in Alberta from upstream in the oil sands to midstream, which is how do you move that material and natural gas. We are very focused in British Columbia, to add to that. And we do know the clients. We are working with TransCanada. We are working with Canadian Enbridge. We are working with all the major -- or many of the major midstream firms in Canada, and I expect that as we add more capability and bring the rest of the resources we have as a Company to bear on that, it will be even better. So it is -- if I had to pick one area -- if you said, out of all the things Tetra Tech has, what is at the top of your list to invest in and the thing that you are most excited about? I would say Canada midstream oil and gas.

Got it. Thank you. That is all I had.

Thank you, Tahira.

Our final question comes from David Rose from Wedbush Securities.

Good morning. I just had a few follow-up questions. I was wondering if you could kind of break it up for us, and we had a lot of discussion about the backlog. So maybe to look at it a little differently is if you can provide us -- you talked about contract capacity added in this quarter. Can you provide us a year-over-year comparison in contract capacity and maybe break that out into a couple of key markets?

I would say that our contract capacity a year ago was roughly $12 billion, and most of that -- of course, large contract capacity largely comes from the US federal government. And I would say that we are up -- to approaching $15 billion. So over the past -- let me take a look at my notes here. Over the past five quarters, it is up almost $3 billion.

Meaning the year-over-year increase, as if it were new orders. So the addition to contract capacity. Does that make sense?

Well, what we had was -- a year ago in aggregate, we had roughly $12 billion in contract capacity, and today we have roughly $15 billion.

So you added $3 billion this year. And what did you add last year at this time?

Well, it doesn't -- it is -- actually, the year before was actually less, and so the federal government was actually more constricted to new contracts. So the year before it would have only gone up perhaps $1 billion to $1.5 billion.

So what I am trying to get at is sort of a bookings number.

Bookings is different than -- let me just clarify. Booking is different than -- at Tetra Tech -- is different than contract capacity. And in fact, I did not spend any time on our backlog chart, but just for the other listeners on this call, let me just clarify one item. We at Tetra Tech track one number, and we actually track it with a great level of specificity for backlog. So when we receive an order, it only goes into our backlog if it is contracted for -- obviously, you have to have a signed, legal binding contract. The client has funded it. They actually have the money, and they put the money aside for it for us, or for our execution.

Number three, they have authorized us to go spend it now. That is the -- just over $1.8 billion in our backlog. We track every single one of those. They come in. They come in with a booking rate, and it is the first step before turning into revenue. I believe we are the only ones who track our backlog in this manner.

Others, and this is a broad industry, certainly, including the E&C industry, take the contract capacity. So for instance, the $700 million new contract that we were awarded by USAID in the past 90 days -- they currently, since it is a brand new contract, have not committed any dollars to the contract. The first task orders are coming out, so the amount that is included in our backlog from that contract is zero. So what we track and do a year-over-year flex analysis on is with specificity our backlog, or contracted, funded, and authorized tasks.

We did not factor anything with respect to contract vehicle, and I do know that many in this industry -- and it is somewhat of a common practice -- is to take the contract capacity. Say that I -- they call it factoring -- and say well, let?s get 80% of that. So that $700 million -- if I get 80%, I am just going to book $560 million in backlog, drop it, and then tell our shareholders our backlog is up by $500 million. You cannot spend that money until it is actually funded and authorized.

So with respect to bookings on backlog, year-over-year, we are down close to 10% on the amount of new awards. That $1.8 billion we have right now, most of that will burn off in this next year. So we will book over the next 12 months most of that $1.8 billion in new bookings.

So the new bookings is number is down 10%?

Yes.

Okay. So -- and then if we can talk about the commercial business. Given that it was impacted by weather in the quarter, what should we expect for the growth year-on-year in Q3 for commercial? So when we look at the slide presentation next quarter, what do you think your commercial business is going to look like year-on-year in terms of growth?

We are thinking it is going to be up sort of mid-single-digits.

Okay. And then lastly, this goes to Steve's comment earlier about actions the Company has taken to improve the DSOs. Can you outline a couple of those so that we can get in the 70's range from the 80's?

Yes.

Yes. So I think our -- our higher DSO has been affected by some claims and milestone billings in the second quarter. I think, also, our second quarter revenue was a bit lower. So the way we do that calculation, it brought the DSO up a little bit. But in addition, there were some collections that we expected in March that slipped into April. We have actually received those here in the last couple of weeks, and that has actually had and impact of about four days to our DSO almost immediately. So we have gotten it down closer to the 80 days. But in addition, we are working towards resolution of a lot of these different claims. We expect to collect our fair amount, and we expect to get a lot of those things resolved and have a much greater focus on our working capital between now and the end of the year such that we get down to that 75 to 80 day range that I had talked about earlier.

Is there a new billing system or a new set of processes or procedures that need to be implemented?

No. There is just more focus on managing our working capital to get those amounts selected and bring the cash in-house.

Okay. Great. Thank you very much.

Sure.

This will conclude the Q&A session. I will now turn the conference back over to Dan Batrack to conclude.

Great. thank you very much, Ginger. I would like to thank all of you for your questions and interest in Tetra Tech, and I look forward very much to speaking with you all again next quarter. Have a good rest of the week and good-bye.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the conference for today. Thank you all for participating and have a nice day. All parties may disconnect now.