MasTec, Inc. (MTZ) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Terrific. Well, for our next session, we have MasTec. We're going to have a great conversation here today on enabling the energy transition and the 5G build-out. With us today, we've got Jose Mas, Chief Executive Officer; and George Pita, the Chief Financial Officer. Thank you both for being here today. So much going on in the business, and we appreciate you taking some time.

Thank you for having us.

Jose, I want to turn the floor over to you to share some perspective of what's top of mind for you as you think about '22 and building long-term value.

Sure. So for those that aren't as familiar with MasTec, we are an infrastructure construction company, and we specialize really on the communications and the power side of the business. So on communications, as Neil mentioned, we've got a very big presence in the 5G market and what is it that we do in 5G. We build the networks on behalf of the carriers. So we work for AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, DISH, building out their 5G network. So you have the tower owners, but we're the ones that build the towers, we're the ones that put the equipment on the towers, run the cabling, we do all the small cells, the intercity work, laying the fiber. So we've got a very vast communications business that really was since the inception of the company. And then we got into the Power business 10, 15 years ago. And today, we've got a pretty broad base of services that we offer from generation, predominantly in renewables. So we build wind and solar. We also do a little bit of gas-fired work in some of the advanced class turbines that are burning both gas and hydrogen. We've got a very large transmission and distribution business. I see you have a transmission tower right behind your head there, Neil. So I think it fits well for this conversation. But we work for utilities all over the country and private developers building out their networks. And then we've got an oil and gas business where we build pipelines predominantly for gas companies and obviously, very excited about what's coming from carbon capture and hydrogen possibilities there. As we look at '22, we're expecting a great year. We expect just shy of $10 billion of revenue, $950 million of EBITDA should be a record year for us in both. And that's on the backdrop of a difficult oil and gas environment where we saw a significant amount of revenue drop based on what's happened over the course of the last 2 years. So very excited about 2022, excited about all the growth available to us across all of our different markets and segments that I know we're going to talk about in detail.

Thanks, Jose. Yes, I put out this transmission tariff for you. So let's talk -- start on backlog. You achieved almost $10 billion in consolidated 18-month backlog at the end of the last year. And that was supported by organic growth, but also you had the addition of H&M's backlog. How should investors think about backlog growth and conversion quarter-by-quarter as MasTec grows to its mid-cycle revenue targets. And any factors we should consider that will cause some noise or seasonality as we recognize there can be some lumpiness to this stuff.

It's a great question. When we think about some of our bigger businesses, right? If we think about the Communications segment and the wireless work that we're doing, even a lot of the fiber work that we're doing, we're doing that under a lot of MSAs, which are contracts that give you some sort of exclusivity within a certain geographic area to build things. And there, the backlog is very steady, right? So you've got multiyear programs. They're priced on a job-by-job basis, which guarantee the work. So backlog is very sticky. Doesn't change radically from quarter-to-quarter, but it will, as you win awards, but very sticky. When you look at some of our project work and some of our project businesses, it's a little different. For example, when we talk about our Clean Energy business, we're expecting a very, very strong organic growth year but yet backlog looks kind of flattish with where it was historically, right? And the reason for that is what we're seeing in that business is we're starting to work under a lot of what they call LNTP or limited notice to proceeds where you've won a contract, but for whatever reason and a lot of it has to do with supply chain and getting real date pricing right before you start construction versus locking in pricing long before you get released for certain portions of the project. So it may be for engineering, it may be for a material procurement before you actually finalize all your prices and get a full contract. So while we -- while our Clean Energy backlog sits at a certain number, the reality is the visibility in our business is much greater because we know what the difference is between those limited notice to proceeds in total backlog. So as we think about our business, we expect backlog growth through the balance of 2022. It is a little chunky because you don't necessarily know if a project is going to get awarded at the end of a quarter or at the beginning of the next quarter. But overall, what I think you should expect from MasTec throughout '22 is a gradual increase in backlog growth, especially in those project segments. Ending the year much stronger than I think the way we started from a backlog perspective, leading into what we think is going to be a really, really strong 2023.

Thanks, Jose. So sitting with supply chain, some supply chain issues and materials availability, they have been headwinds for just the broader industry in general. So looking across your segments whether Clean Energy, Communications, Power, Oil and Gas. Can you provide any update on the availability situation and outlook and if it's evolved since the 4Q call, I know it's not been that long.

Yes. Sure. A couple of things, right? One is all of the major materials that we usually work with and there's a lot of them, right? So if you think about the pipeline business, it's the pipe, if you look at the communications business, a lot of it is either the fiber, the radios that go into 5G or in transmission, it could be everything from towers to cabling. So for the most part the majority of the materials are provided by our customers. So if you think about solar panels, wind turbines, those are things that our customers procure. And normally, our customers are large. They have great procurement departments. They're way ahead of it. They've been working really hard on supply chain over the course of the last year. So there are issues that pop up from project to project, but overall, we think that's a very manageable situation. And we've kind of built our year, our 2022 outlook around those projects that we think have the best opportunity to ultimately get those materials versus ones that maybe have issues, we've either pushed them out or we pushed them back or we've really taken that into account as we think about our year. What we're more responsible for. And again, there are some projects that are full EPC where we provide materials, but for the most part, we're not providing the big materials, we're buying a lot of the ancillary products, right? So if you think about the wireless business, it's jumpers. If you think about the wireline business, it could be it could be anvils, it could be pedestals , right? So the things you normally wouldn't even think about as being big issues on a project, we've gotten in as far in front of that as we possibly can. We think some of those have been bigger issues. Again, we've taken a very conservative view as we think about '22. We've really highlighted the fact that we think the second half is going to be a lot better than the first half, that has a lot to do with the ordering pattern and what we expect delivery patterns to look like on some of the supply chain that we've been working on for a long time. Definitely in issues -- definitely something that over the last 9 months, we've been much more focused on than I think we've ever had to be historically as a business. We're hoping it gets better in '23, but definitely in '22, it's got to be something that's managed closely. And while I think we've done a great job at truly identifying those things that are the key milestones for every one of our projects. I'm sure there's going to be issues where something is delayed where we're going to have to work on backup plans. We've done a lot to preorder. So to the extent that we can, we're actually ordering products that we use a lot in greater quantities so that if we've got to move them from one project to another, at least we've got availability to them. But something that we've worked on hard. We've got a lot of professionals that have been working on the procurement department. We think we're doing a really good job, but definitely something that we've got to keep an eye on and it impacts productivity and it impacts really the amount of labor that we think we need to have on any particular project.

It's a great point, Jose, on labor. And it's certainly been availability constraint across the broader economy. But given the long-term revenue growth at MasTec it's so important. So how -- talk about your strategy around scaling your labor force to support that mid-cycle revenue target. How do you increase your headcount given the current labor pool? And talk about how H&M fits into that. Because one of the things we liked about that acquisition is it provided a lot of accessible labor that you could scale throughout your business?

First, I think it's probably the key point of our entire business and even our industry, right? It's -- our business is a people business. At the end of the day, there's lots of barriers to entry and equipment is expensive and equipment is hard to get and relationships are difficult to build, and the resume is really important. But what keeps you going, and what keeps customers coming back to us for -- to hopefully grow our business year in, year out is the quality of our people, right? Our people really -- we hope they really care about their jobs. They work safely. They understand the financial situation of every project, making sure the projects are on budget and on time. So the people are the lifeblood of our company. And it's because of that reason that we really tried to build our culture around that. And I think that's one of the key things, right, is we started as a family business. We've obviously been publicly traded for a long time. But we really try to create that family environment and that spirit of entrepreneurship across our entire organization, which we think is key. It's all about bringing people into the company and giving them a career path, so they may start off in a position of some sort of skilled labor. But at the end of the day, we want to make sure that we can give them the training and the path that they need to ultimately achieve whatever else they want. It's particularly something very personal to me. My father was an immigrant to this country from Cuba, came with nothing but the shirt on his back, started this company. And he got a lot of opportunities around the way to help build themselves and make the company what it is. And one of the things that I'm proudest of is that every single day, we're giving the same opportunity to people to start their career here and hopefully build their career and provide a better future with their families -- for their families, which I think is ultimately every single person's common goal. Every single one of us wants to leave our families better off than we were, and I think that's a common goal that we really embrace at MasTec and try to perpetuate. So it's the most important thing because of that, we've worked really hard on training for years. We've spent a lot of money on adding resources across all of our different segments. We hire in anticipation of cycles, which I think we've been doing for the last 2 years. So there's 2 ways, right? There's inorganic and there's organic growth within our own resources. I think we've done a great job organically but there are inorganic opportunities that present themselves. You mentioned Henkels & McCoy. For us, it was a fantastic organization that had 100 years of history, it had its issues, it has its challenges that we need to fix, but it comes with an incredible workforce, an incredible reputation. And that workforce that we picked up with Henkels is almost impossible to recreate, right? The sheer size, the scale of what they do was critically important to us. We're now almost up to 30,000 team members across the company. So we've got unbelievable scale within our industry. And we think that's critical and really important. And we think customers are looking for that. So as customers think about the challenges that they're going to face over the course of the next couple of years, supply chain is one, but labor's the other big one. And to the extent that they can sign up contractors that they have confidence and trust that are going to complete their projects, it's a huge leg up for us and very important for our business.

Thanks, Jose. So I think -- I mean, it's clear that MasTec is preparing ahead of these secular growth tailwinds, and with the scale and the preparation of the resources that you have to drive the opportunity. But let's get a little bit into the guidance. So first, delays in project timing and then ultimately revenue are a contributor to softer margin expectations for MasTec to start the year. But as activity picks up, margins should improve as well. So can you help us understand the role that like volumes and utilization play in margins across your portfolio? How does MasTec manage the balance between selecting its mix of projects, scaling equipment and labor capacity accordingly and then maintaining attractive margins while you're growing?

Sure. So a big component of that is driven by the market itself, right? So in the history of this company, when we think about all of our different cycles we're susceptible to the ups and the downs of the market. And we got to manage the things that we can manage and obviously hope that the markets around us are healthy enough that they're going to supply us the opportunities for us to respond to. I don't think there's any question when you think about our businesses, right, whether it's communications and what's happening with fiber with both private company and public investment. When you think about what's happening when you think about the entire re-electrification of America, whether it's through distribution, transmission, generation sources, we're in unbelievable sector. So I don't -- I think there's very few companies in the United States positioned as well as MasTec to benefit from long-term secular growth. So I don't think the secular growth component of our story is at question at all because the market behind us is so strong. Now when we look at '22 specific, right, there are issues that are impacting our first half of the year. Our Oil and Gas business, for example, is going to be down organically 40% from 2001 to 2022, right? A big chunk of that happens in the first part of the year. Our first quarter is down almost $600 million in revenue. If you take EBITDA and you compare our non-Oil and Gas EBITDA from the first quarter of '21 to the first quarter of '22, it's actually almost doubling, right? So despite us not having a super strong start to the year, our non-oil and gas business is actually performing better than it did in '21, albeit it needs to be better, and we've got a lot of growth plan, and it's going to significantly improve throughout the year. But as you break down the guidance there are specific things that are happening to impact us. So first is the Oil and Gas, our customers for the last 1.5 years have been focused on repaying debt versus building new projects. Obviously, everything that's happening today over the course of the last few weeks is going to have a significant impact, I think, on the ability for that business to bounce back in a bigger way than we ever expected. Then you have individual issues like AT&T with their 5G program, right? They publicly announced that they're now pushing it back to the second half of the year, because they're trying to accomplish multiple spectrum additions with a single truck roll, which isn't available to them in the first part of the year. So I think there are very specific issues that are causing some of the delays that we're having from the first half to the second half. But I think what's important is a) as a company, we performed from a margin perspective, I think we've outperformed the peer group for years in some of the different segments that we operate in. And when you think about the long-term secular growth that it's going to be available to us, I don't think anybody can question the opportunity for revenue growth. You can question our execution, you can question our ability to execute at the levels that we've laid out. But I think our track record shows what our execution has been like and what our potential is. And I think, ultimately, as we play out some of the 2022 issues, as we play out this transition that we're having as a business from being predominantly driven from an earnings basis from Oil and Gas to being a much more diversified mix within all the things we talked about, I think MasTec is truly changing before our eyes in '22, and I think we're going to be able to demonstrate that in the second half of the year going into 2023.

And before we delve into the segments, I mean, you did -- you listed out some major factors that helped drive that implied ramp in the second half of this year. Before delving into the segments, what -- can you just talk to any major risks that could sort of delay that 2H ramp or even just the major risks to that ramp?

We're ramping now. So we're ramping our personnel now based on what our customers' expectations are. We've been ramping, right? So when we think about the things that are happening early in this year for us, right? We've opened 17 new office to deal with wireline awards that we've gotten from different customers. Those are new geographies for us. We are well in the process of staffing those starting work. We've got work orders. So we see the flow, right? We understand perfectly that as we do that, the workflow comes in, revenues are going to follow. We've won a significant number of markets for DISH as they start their initial rollouts that have to happen by June, again. So we're seeing very tangible things that give us tremendous confidence in that rollout, right? There's definitely some things that are still somewhat unknown to us for our business long term, right? So do the supply chain challenges get a lot worse, again, I think we've -- it's something top of mind for everybody in the company. I think we've done a good job preparing for that, but obviously, there's a lot going on in the world today that could impact things even more than impacted. We obviously have -- one of the projects that we're working on is called the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which is an important pipeline but one that we still have revenues associated with that project in our plan for 2022. There's obviously risk that, that project pushes out. There's opportunities for that project to also accelerate. There's been a lot of activity politically on that project here recently. So aside from an individual project or some unforeseen circumstance that is going to affect more than just us. We feel really good that the things that need to happen for us to execute on our 2022 plan are happening and are in place.

Jose, let's jump into the segments and start on Power Delivery. As we talked about the H&M acquisition, it has been too long fourth quarter earnings call, but do you have any updates on the integration process? And are there any factors that can drive outperformance on revenues for H&M specifically versus the preliminary guidance. And the last point around this is, can you help us understand the actions and potential CapEx needed to increase those margins up to that targeted 8% to 10% range because when you bought H&M, part of the piece that was attractive, I think, was that there's an opportunity set to improve those margins?

So first, I'd say that we're just over 2 months in from the close of that acquisition. I think that what we found to date and really meeting the people, understanding the business better is we couldn't be more excited about the opportunity set that exists for us, right? We know that for a long time, Henkels is underinvested in its opportunities just because they didn't have the cash flow to be able to take the opportunities that were happening in the market around them. We've heard from the customers, we understand what their desires are, the opportunities that are coming into us. So that's probably the biggest surprise for us, right? The number of opportunities that we're going to see to help grow their business. So I think we're going to have a lot more growth potential off their base than what we anticipated going in. We know that there's a lot of work to do to optimize margins. So historically, their margins have been in that 4% to 5% range. When you look at -- we've talked about exiting the year at closer to an 8% run rate. So that -- there's a lot of work that has to happen during the year to do that. Again, this is a very difficult market related to personnel and people. So to the extent that we can move all of the people that they have into the most productive roles and to the highest utilized roles that we possibly can. That's the challenge, right? It's easy to go in and cut expenses and do that on day 1. But the reality is, in this environment, we're trying to save as many people as we can and make them as productive as we can to ultimately grow the base. With that said, I mean they do underperform. It's highly driven by overheads, right? So we've talked about -- we acquired INTREN earlier in the year, which was another acquisition in the same Power Delivery space. When you look at the comparison of G&A from one company to the other, it was almost a 5% difference, which is massive in our business. So it's the majority of the big chunk of the opportunity exists within that level. So we're working hard at it. But again, the scale that it adds, it doubles our power delivery business, it more than doubled our Power Delivery business. It gives us incredible geographic reach. It gives us both union and nonunion capabilities across the country. So when we think about everything that's happening relative to the transmission grid and the distribution network and even things like electric vehicles and battery storage and the projects that are associated with that, the subset of projects that it's opened up for MasTec is tremendous, right? So there's no question we're going to have to invest. There's no question that investing. They've rented a lot of equipment because they haven't had availability of capital. There's a huge opportunity in buying equipment or even entering into leases and really converting some of that into owned equipment versus rented equipment. So there's massive opportunities for savings. Again, we're 2 months in, right? So I don't know that we want to quantify them yet. But there's no reason to believe that, that business shouldn't be a strong double-digit business, quite frankly, 8% to 10% is kind of the short to midterm goal that we've set. But when you look at our other distribution transmission businesses or even within the peer group, it's an industry that performs at a higher level than that. And based on the quality of the people at Henkels and the reputation, there's no reason that they shouldn't be performing at industry levels here in the not-too-distant future.

One thing I'd add is we talked about -- you asked about capital intensity and obviously some initial investment on Henkels, which obviously we're looking at. And I think it's a viable and very strategic investment. But I think it's important to note as you look at the transition of MasTec, and we laid out a path to a $12 billion enterprise where roughly 10% is from our Pipeline Services. The reality of that mix and that change is that the segments that are growing are serving much less capital intensive than our current mix has been. So over time, I think while we continue to have a very strong working capital profile, I think over time, as you see the mix of MasTec's operations change with an increase in the Communications side, on the Power Delivery side and the Clean Energy side, the free cash flow profile of the company certainly improves because certainly, the mix change is beneficial from a capital intensity perspective.

Thanks, George. Yes, and so just looking at the other side of the power delivery business aside from H&M, you've mentioned INTREN, also there's the organic transmission business itself. So if we looked at transmission revenues, they had a strong third quarter last year, but it looks like they declined closer to historical levels in the fourth. INTREN revenue is more stable. And so can you talk about the growth trajectory and potential for market share capture in both of those businesses relative to historical rates of growth?

Sure. So INTREN is going to have a really strong growth year, right? They're going to have -- from a top line perspective, we're expecting somewhere between a 15% to 20% growth rate in '22 versus the '21 year, which we think is -- it shows the strength of the market and what's ultimately available. When we think about Henkels our best internal comparison is what we're able to accomplish with INTREN. So we think that that's -- those are reasonable targets to lay out. When we think about our Transmission business, we've got a couple of very large projects that we are in the middle of, hopefully, starting soon, right? We've got some awards that we've announced a while ago. Some of them are under LnCP, it's a very active market. We're a relatively new entrant into that business when you compare us to the overall peer group. But I think we've done a good job competing on both small and large projects. When we first got into the business, we were really focused on the larger projects and then the business, a lot of the larger projects got stuck in permitting in cycles. So we moved into a lot of the smaller project cycle, now the large projects are really coming back in a pretty significant way. So we feel really good about our competitive position. We think we made a lot of strides in that business in 2021 in terms of really continuing to build on it and give it the capacity that it needs to take advantage of the opportunities that we're going to see in the years to come. And I think '22 is more of the same. I think '22 will be a good year, but it's still a year that we're building. We're hoping to start one of the big lines that we've recently been awarded in '22. We expect to start another one in '23. So I feel really good about the progression of that business and the opportunity subset that we're seeing.

Great. Thanks for the overview. And now I guess move to Clean Energy. So supply chain constraints have caused some timing issues in that segment, but growth potential still looks strong, especially in solar. So first, can you give us an idea of the revenue split for the business across its 4 legs, the wind, solar, industrial and then the civil piece, expected for 2022 versus 2021, so how that mix is shifting? And then second, just sort of if we think of wind revenues being down year-over-year likely and then we -- there's different views on sort of the U.S. solar capacity installations, the run rate for that this year versus last year. What factors do you think could help drive market share growth in that segment in order to achieve the 2022 revenue guidance targets.

Yes, I'll let George cover some of the specific numbers on the breakout. When we think about the business, I'd just like to maybe lead into a little bit, right? We almost think about the industrial and the civil business, somewhat combined, right? There's components of the industrial business that require a lot of civil work. There's also pure civil when we think of the FNF acquisition that we made earlier last year, which is more of a roadway perspective, right? So there's a couple of different things we think about. Wind was obviously, was where we started. It's been the bulk of our business for a long, long time. The wind industry today is definitely down, right? You've got so many constrained availability of wind because of the transmission line, there's a number of transmission lines that are being built with the specific really goal of opening up different wind corridors that have great wind, but currently don't have the transmission capacity to take that wind and move it to where it needs to go. So some of that wind is really pending a lot of these transmission lines that are going to be built in the next couple of years. So while we expect wind to be down in '22 and probably somewhat stable in '23, starting in '24 just based on the projects that are supposed to complete, we actually think wind picks up again in a pretty meaningful way. So we're really bullish about when's long-term play and where its pricing is relative to all the different generation capacity is. But no question that the next couple of years are going to be somewhat flattish in the wind market. For us, it will be down from where it was in '21. Solar is the exact opposite, right? Our solar is a business that we more recently got into our solar business is going to double very conservatively in '22. It will probably double again in '23 from that number just based on the sheer set of opportunities and the fact that some projects are probably going to get pushed from '22, '23. And the reality is that the growth demand and what our customers are looking for is even far greater than that. So the opportunity to grow that business at scale far beyond what I just laid out is probably one of the biggest opportunities at MasTec and something that we need to figure out. When we think about pure civil, one of the things that really intrigued us was these are very stable businesses. If you think about one of the things that we're always going to spend on raw is going to spend on physical infrastructure and local communities, right? And when you throw on top of that, the added dollars coming from the infrastructure bill and the real focus that we have on infrastructure as a nation, these are businesses that for a long time, you had a large foreign presence coming into the United States. So a lot of companies where they came in and they bought a lot of American companies, and they tried to do a lot of these P3 projects and a lot of them struggled, right? And what we've seen is a lot of them impact their bags and they went back home and what's left here are local companies that have built themselves over decades, and we think it's an incredibly strong market. We think it's a market that is in dire need for more players, quite frankly. We recently were a low bidder on a job where it was a public job. We were the only bidder on the job, and we're not even sure it's going to be awarded. But we're seeing more and more of that across the country and we think that's a great opportunity to be in a business that allows you to really compete at that level. George, would you like to talk about the split a little bit?

Yes. I mean firstly, I think what Jose just mentioned, is a very important point, right? When you look at our performance on the Clean Energy side over last year, it's fair to say that the EBITDA margin profile hasn't hit what we would have liked it to be. But in large part, because we've been preparing this business for this transition and really gearing up on the solar side, transitioning people, transitioning resources and really building our capacity on the solar side. And that's because the solar side of this has the near-term potential. It's a good indicator of the way MasTec operates, right? Where we really try to morph our operations and look at our operations in a way to maximize whatever the current trend may be. When you look at our business for 2022, I'd say in high 60s, low 70% of the business is in the Renewable, Clean Energy side, right, with the rest being in the Civil side. And that's -- as Jose mentioned, I think at this point, within the renewables component, the solar side will probably be bigger than the wind side will be in 2022, slightly, right, because one is growing double and the one is declining some. But it's a business that obviously in total, we expect to see big growth in this current year. It's been somewhat capacity constrained. We're investing quite a bit in the people and the crew capacity in order to do that. and feel very good about where that's headed and feel good about our guidance. I mean there's been a lot of discussion about supply chain and issues that are there. We think we've kind of built that in, right? I mean, I would say it this way, if everything goes well, we'll be able to beat our guidance, let's put it that way, in terms of our expectation on the revenue side. So we kind [indiscernible] built in some potential slowdown delays to kind of get you down to the guidance level that we're looking at for 2022, and there's no question we expect sizable growth in '23 and thereafter. I think some of the things that we're doing that are worth noting, is not only do we do wind, do we do solar, do we do biomass, but as Jose mentioned earlier, we're doing advanced class turbines that burn a combination of natural gas and hydrogen, right? Because hydrogen as a transition fuel or as a transition to natural gas or supplement the natural gas is going to be a major trend, that we think over time will get us significant opportunity not only on the clean energy side, but frankly, also on the pipeline side, which we haven't really talked about yet. But the pipeline side, we size the hydrocarbon components, you've got the carbon capture sequestration trends and then you've got hydrogen. So we're playing that on both sides of the fence in terms of the hydrogen transition, if you will, as well.

Great. And just -- so then let's shift over to Communications. On Communications, I mean, there were some -- there's also some timing issues to start the year. But generally, a question on your CapEx plans for carriers for your customers evolve routinely over time. We've seen that even with your largest customer. And so -- but MasTec is continuing to invest in preparation for a ramp in project activity there given the significant secular growth tailwinds. So what gives you confidence that your customers, particularly our largest customer, but even just broadly, your customer base won't sort of evolve their CapEx plans materially again to the point where there may be project timing issues again or whatnot? Like how -- what gives you confidence that, that ramp is more likely to come this year than maybe what we've seen earlier?

Well, I think a couple of points. One, if you look at what we were able to accomplish in 2021 is important, right? We went -- we built a business with T-Mobile that prior to that was virtually nonexistent. By the end of the year, we were a $200 million run rate, which is significant, right? That's a significant size customer in that space. Historically, our AT&T business has been on the pure wireless side, around the $800 million range in good years, maybe a little bit more bad years, a little bit less. But -- so T-Mobile is becoming a very important customer of ours. And it made up for a lot of the declines that we saw in AT&T. It wasn't additive because our business was flattish. When you think about Verizon, which is going through a very similar upgrade cycle, and they've got the same concerns with 5G, they had the same issues with spectrum at the end of 2020, so they were pushed out until late 2021. And we're starting to win a lot of wireless work for them for the first time in our history, right? So I think they're going to be a much more significant client for us going forward on the wireless side. When you think about DISH, I mean, DISH is -- this is from their public calls, right? They're just starting. So they've got their first targets to meet by June of this year. There are not crazy targets to meet, but the reality is that their spend on a go-forward basis is going to be dramatically higher than it is today, and I think we're well positioned to get a piece of that. So the question becomes AT&T, right? For us, AT&T had a significant decline in '21 versus what we've historically seen. And why I think it's important to just talk about it is we work that under master service agreements. So we have exclusivity in the markets that we serve. So it's not like we've lost market share. We haven't lost any market share. They've declined their spend relative to that. And they publicly talked about it. They publicly talked about the need to increase their spend, they publicly talked about their plans and when they plan to spend it. You know 5G is a reality, right? We're all frustrated that it hasn't come faster. We're all frustrated that we haven't seen the benefits maybe in our own daily lives of what 5G brings, but there's no doubt that every single carrier has massive plans around 5G and 5G rollout. T-Mobile, you could argue has been by far the most aggressive to date. But -- and I think the network impact is feeling, right? When you look at network scores across the country of the carriers, AT&T is a significant wireless carrier in this country that's going to be a big part of their business forever, and they're going to invest in their network to make themselves one of the top carriers at all times. And we recognize it. They recognize it. And I think that when they start spending in a meaningful way, we're going to be a much better business because of what happened with the other carriers, because of the opportunity that we had to build our business with T-Mobile with Verizon with DISH, right? We're going to go into 23 with the most diversified customer set we've ever had in that business. And I think that's going to bode extremely well for the long-term nature of our communications business.

Well, Jose, I want to ask one last question, recognizing we only have 1 minute left, so I'll be quick here, which is it does strike me as you distill everything in this call, where you have momentum in 5G and '23, you're going to exit '22 hot after colder first half in some of the other parts of the business, clean energy margins should improve, that '23 could be a really, really good year where the whole business comes together. I kind of want to make a quick comment on that, is that going to be really the proof point for you of the evolution of the business?

I think there'll be proof points all along the way, right? So I think there's definitely things that are happening that are very positive in the first half of the year, maybe not from a total numeric basis, but individually within different pieces of our business. I think you'll see the momentum really begin to pick up in the second half, which should give people a lot of comfort going into '23. There's no question that we're expecting a much better 2023 than we were '22. And quite frankly, we think it's the beginning of what will be a long-term cycle. And this is no different than what we've been saying for 2 years, right? Because coming out of 2020, we knew, right, in a pandemic year, right? We knew we were going to have difficulties in our oil and gas business. And we knew that difficulty was probably going to be delayed for us because we had a lot of big projects that we needed to complete in '21. So we've always known '22 is going to be our trough here in Oil and Gas. I think it's important to note, like if you look at non-Oil and Gas, right, in 2020, we did about $4 billion in non-Oil and Gas business. And this year, we're expecting to do $8 billion in non-Oil and Gas. So in the course of 1.5 years, we've doubled our non-Oil and Gas business. We've really transitioned the company. With all that said, right, I think that the trends in our pipeline business, maybe not Oil and Gas but pipeline between carbon capture, hydrogen. And even with what's happening across the globe today with the highlight of the importance of being energy independent, and it is important that fossil fuels are going to continue to play in our lives for a long time, I think it also changes the prospects of our pipeline business for a long time. So we're -- again, we're incredibly bullish. We're looking forward to really performing as the year goes on and really updating the market on our progress. Again, Neil really appreciate you having us today.

We appreciate you, Jose and George, for taking the time and sharing your insights, and we're looking forward to seeing the business play out over the course of the next couple of years. So thank you so much.

Thank you.