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

November 8, 2022

New York Stock Exchange US Industrials Construction and Engineering conference_presentation 32 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Justin Hauke

analyst
#1

All right. Good afternoon or good evening, I guess, everyone. Thanks for sticking around to the last session on day 1 of Baird's Industrial Conference. My name is Justin Hauke. I'm the senior associate covering facility industrial services for Baird. And presenting X, we're going to have the management team from MasTec. So MasTec is a leading specialized contractor, delivering comprehensive infrastructure solutions across a variety of end markets. They've been a rapid growth company over the years. They've diversified into a lot of different verticals over time. And here to talk about MasTec, we've got Jose Mas, company CEO. We've got George Pita, the company's CFO. I guess we're going to let Jose do maybe 5 minutes to just talk about the company, and then we'll do some fireside chat just kind of wash out the story. So I'll turn it over to Jose.

Jose Mas

executive
#2

Awesome. Thank you. Thank you for joining us this evening. I want to thank Justin and Baird. We moved our formal presentation from tomorrow to today. We've got a storm. We live in Miami, and we've got a storm that's coming to the East Coast of Florida. So it gave us the ability to get back in time tomorrow before the storm hit, so we appreciate it. A little bit about MasTec. For those of you that aren't as familiar, we are an infrastructure construction company, really focused on telecom and power. So on the telecom side, we do both wireless and wireline construction. So for example, on the wireless side, we build the networks on behalf of the carriers. So if you think about AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, we're the ones that build towers, we put the equipment on the towers, the antennas, run the cabling, maintain them, whether or not the sites are owned by the carrier or they're owned by a third party. So the third-party tower companies could own a site. We still do the work on behalf of the carrier on those sites. On the wireline side, which is really the history of the company, we build terrestrial networks for our customers. So if you think about fiber expansions, conduit systems, now aerial, so in the telephone poles and stuff that goes up on telephone to the kind of things that we build. And then on the power side, we do everything from power generation, which would include renewables in a big way. We do some gas-fired peaker plants and then we are very heavy on the transmission distribution substation side of the business. And in addition to our power business, we've got a pipeline business that historically has done a lot of oil and gas work. I think today, we'll talk about some of the really exciting things that are happening in that market as well, and that kind of rounds out our portfolio. We've got within our clean energy and renewable business, which is part of our generation business. We also have a civil business where we do some civil work across the country that we'll get into. We've had an amazing ride. I got the opportunity to become CEO of this business in 2007. So it's just 15 years ago now. When I started, we were about a $900 million business. Next year, we've guided or guided our revenues at or above $13 billion. So we've had an amazing run. We're up to about 35,000 people at the company, which is extremely rewarding. And with all the success that we've had over the last 15 years, the reality is that with where our industry stands today with the end markets, with the opportunities that we have, we're really bullish about the future and what the next 15 year hold. With that said, I didn't mention it earlier, but we've got our forward-looking statements slide that was part of our earnings. I just want to mention it out to say that on that slide.

Justin Hauke

analyst
#3

No one's ever read it before. Great. No, that's a good overview I guess. Before -- because there are a lot of end markets here in, I guess, maybe to level set everyone, with the 15 years that you've been with -- how did you get to where you are now? Maybe just talk about the last couple of years in the transition that you guys have been making for your current...

Jose Mas

executive
#4

Sure. So one of the most exciting things and most interesting things about MasTec, in my opinion, the predecessor company to MasTec was founded by my father. He was an immigrant from Cuba, came here in 1960, built the construction business from scratch and started on the telecom side. And one of the most fascinating things about our company is we live in cycles, right? We live in industries that are driven by technology and those businesses over time change. And I think one of the things that we've done best historically is position ourselves along those markets where the future is headed relative to dollar flow. So if you think about our history, we started as a telecom contractor. If you think back a ways ago, we all used to have fax machines at home, people had second lines. The telecom industry was driven by a lot of cabling basically second lines being put into homes that was a big driver of our revenue. As that shifted, we were able to really transition into the wireless side of the business. And when I became CEO in '07, 95% of our revenues were based on telecom. And we knew that we needed to get into businesses that offered us the opportunity to grow our revenues and more importantly, grow our margins, and it led to the expansion in the wireless business, which was obviously a very easy transition from what we were doing on wireline. We got into the renewal business because we started building conduit systems for the original -- some of the original wind farms that were built in the country. As we learned about that industry, which was really starting in the late 2000s, we figured, wow, this is a lot of the same things that we do. This is about clearing land. It's about building foundations, putting up towers, putting up turbines on these towers. So we started slowly moving into those. When we got into wind early on, in the early days, wind was based on really what was driving PPA prices was the price of natural gas, natural gas prices or the price of oil, which was direct correlator at that time, the prices of the natural gas. The Barnett Shale had been discovered. We got into the Barnett Shale doing the same thing, building pipelines, right? Digging a ditch, putting in a pipeline, and that grew our pipeline business to where we became the largest pipeline contractor in North America. And then we started to grow and evolve within the industry in our power business. Today, we're, I think, one of the most robust end-to-end service providers in the country from generation all the way to distribution at a home of business. We still have to decline a lot of fully integrated clients that still exist in this country today that are responsible for generation and distribution. And in many cases, they've also split companies that are solely focused on generation and companies that are solely focused on the power delivery side of the business, and I think we've been able to focus on both. So one of the strategic initiatives that we always have of our company is really trying to identify what are the trends in [Technical Difficulty] and how do we build and meet those needs. And I think in the last couple of years, post pandemic, we were sitting at in 2020, our oil and gas business was the biggest piece of our business, our pipeline business generating roughly 60% of our EBITDA, come the pandemic, the demand for these products basically goes away, and we're left in 2020 trying to figure out what is our company going to like in the future. We felt really good about the industries that we were starting to serve and grow, the clean energy business, the power delivery business. And we talked about and we set a $10 billion revenue goal at the end of 2020 at a time where we were doing roughly $6 billion of revenue with a good chunk of that coming from our pipeline business. We made some acquisitions in '21. We made another acquisition in '22. And today, when you look at our power delivery and clean energy business, we think we're, if not the leading, one of the leading contractors in the country in both of those fields. I think we're incredibly well-positioned in that market. And when you look at what have happened in the trends, right, which is we're investing in a carbon-neutral economy, which is going to drive a lot of renewable power and the grid to service that, be it the renewables that are coming or the electric vehicle usage of the future. The grid is changing for the first time, at least in my lifetime, the way that electric companies are building their grid, the way they're upgrading their grids is changing before our eyes, and we're in the middle of that. So again, we feel great about the industries that we serve today and the opportunities that it creates. And I think it's all about positioning our portfolio to be able to service those opportunities as they come.

Justin Hauke

analyst
#5

I want to get to all the new markets. I guess let's go through all, but let's start with kind of the legacy communications business. I think obviously, there's been a lot of funding that's gone into there and a lot of initiatives that -- from the carriers on 5G investment. But last couple of years, it's -- the margins have been a little bit more pressured. Until recently, it seems like some of the investments are starting to come to fruition. So maybe just talk about what's changed that's really started to drive the margins higher?

Jose Mas

executive
#6

Well, we've been really vocal about the investments that we've made in that business to organically grow it. Again, 2 big drivers in that industry today. Obviously, 5G evolution in wireless and what's happening with 5G. And then more importantly, today, quite frankly, is what's happening with just broadband and Internet delivery to homes and businesses. So there is an enormous amount of fiber being installed across the country. It's there to support both broadband growth as well as the growth of 5G, every wireless connection point in the future, every touch point within that network is going to require power and fiber. So there's a huge requirement for expansion of fiber. We're seeing that. And quite frankly, we're in the very early innings of that. So we started building resources around that as far back as the end of 2020, we were vocal about it. We ran a lot of people through training. We did a lot of hiring throughout '21, things got better, but we were still hiring in a pretty significant way. At the beginning of this year, we opened a ton of new offices across the country for opportunities and jobs that we had won and I think we're starting to see the benefits of that. We're still investing heavily in that business today. We still think that, that business is going to grow really nicely in the coming years. One of the things that's most shocking is the amount of activity that exists today with the little amount of funding that's actually made it to our customers. So the reality is of the federal spending that exists in that industry, which goes from RDOF, which is a rural digital opportunity fund to the infrastructure bill, there's $60 billion, $70 billion that are going to be spent. There's probably been $9 billion to $10 billion that have been awarded at this point. But there's an enormous amount of federal dollars that they're going to continue to go into really pushing broadband across the country. That's going to be driven predominantly by fiber. And I think the opportunities are quite frankly, endless in that industry, and we're just getting started. So it's nice to see our margins ticking up, but we're going to continue to grow. We're going to continue to invest in that business. And I think we'll continue to see slow progression of margins, but not significant progression until we somewhat stabilize on the gross side.

Justin Hauke

analyst
#7

Yes. Well, and in that investment, I mean, just for perspective on the AT&T, which used to be by far your largest customer, but it's still obviously an important one. I mean they spend $20 billion a year in their CapEx. And so 3 or 4 times just on this rural broadband initiative. Okay. Let's talk about the newer businesses, and then maybe we'll circle back to oil and gas. But I guess the one that you really seem to pick up this last quarter was the electric transmission business. You guys made an acquisition of Henkels & McCoy there end of last year. I think you were pretty clear that there was some costs and some wood to chop through with some legacy projects. Maybe just give an update on kind of what you guys have done there and how sustainable the margin is that you showed in 3Q could be...

Jose Mas

executive
#8

Yes. Again, we're incredibly bullish about the power delivery business from transmission, distribution, substations, right? Again, the grid is somewhat changing before our eyes. Enormous amount of hardenings happening throughout the country to both deal with storms and fires and on top of all of the other initiatives that are being driven by renewables. So it's a great market. It's a market that we've been in for a long time, but we knew we needed to bolster our scale, bolster our capabilities, which is what led to our first acquisition at the beginning of '21 of a company called INTREN. We added Henkels & McCoy at the end of the year. We think today, again, we think we're a strong #2 in that industry relative to the market size. -- opportunities are great. When we bought Henkels, we were very clear about the fact that it was a company that had depressed margins. We bought it at a very attractive multiple because the margin profile was significantly less than what the industry was. We talked about our ability to fix it and our ability to turn margins. And the more we got into it, the faster we felt we could achieve that. I think in the third quarter, we demonstrated the strength of the market and the potential of margins. It was a good quarter. It's a busy quarter. We'll see a little bit of a margin downtick in Q4 is our expectation. But I think Q3 really shows what the potential in that market is and what we should strive to achieve on a full year basis. I think we still have work to do at Henkel. So I actually still think there's further margin improvement capabilities available in the business above and beyond what we delivered in Q3. But again, it will take time. So I think we're ahead of schedule, quite frankly, on what we've been able to accomplish there, but we're not where we need to be. We've done a good job of integrating where we can across our businesses of creating geographical hubs to really service the largest amount of customers that we can. I think today, our customer base is as expansive and as diversified within that business as it's ever been. And I think that the opportunity subset with them continues to grow. I do think that it's important to mention the IEA acquisition, which I'm sure we're going to talk about on the clean energy side, because it really does increase the presence we have with a lot of those utilities. So both INTREN and Henkels we're union -- we're more on the union side of the business. Historically, we were more on the union side -- in the nonunion side, with the clean energy capabilities and the fact that all of these companies are focused on multiple things at the same time. They're worried about renewables, they're worried about the project mix that they have coming and their ability to execute those, that budget safely. And at the same time, they've got the same issues with distribution transmission and substations related to this. So our ability to really cross-sell, be a single point of contact, offer our customers value as we get more of the pie and more of the work is resonating very well in the sales channel. I think that's important.

Justin Hauke

analyst
#9

Yes. And I mean, the other thing too is just, I mean, that business just a couple of years ago was $400 million or $500 million in revenue, and now it's pushing $3 billion and a market that's got transmission spend is $20 billion, $25 billion -- I mean your scale has really gone up. And I guess the other thing too is it's moved from being more of, I guess, what I would have thought is more of a project-focused business to more of an MSA business and you guys have mixed shift that. So I guess that's important.

Jose Mas

executive
#10

Yes. Historically, when we got into the business, we were almost a pure transmission play, got a little bit into distribution, but we were a large project transmission player. Projects had issues getting out of the gates with permitting and the environmental issues that surrounded that a few years back. The market is much more robust today. But today, we're much more diversified. We obviously are going to go after the large projects, and that will be a piece of our portfolio. But we're pretty happy with the fact that we think we have a very consistent platform. A large chunk of that is MSA-driven which is very repeatable, very predictable, which we also think is important in the market.

Justin Hauke

analyst
#11

Okay. Let's -- yes. No, please...

Jose Mas

executive
#12

And maybe to add one more thing about that business. I think it's important is we're heading into what could be difficult times, right? We all see it, we see the inflation prints that are happening. We see what's happening potentially in the housing market. We've talked about the telecom business. We're not talking about the power delivery business. We think both of those are incredibly resilient. Because of the federal dollars coming into the telecom business because the utilities have laid out these plans, they've gotten them approved by the public service commissions. They get included in rate base. These are trends that they're not going to pull back, right? They're not going to stop. We think these are incredibly resilient businesses in a time where not all businesses have the same platform. So we feel very fortunate to be in a position that we're in.

Justin Hauke

analyst
#13

Yes, I mean it's a market where you're able to kind of sequence things out. It's not -- we're just waiting for this. You know there's 3, 5, 6 years or more of investment spend that you can kind of plan around. Okay. So clean energy and infrastructure, another new business that you're in, another one where you made a large platform acquisition that just closed with IEA. I guess that one, I don't think there's any question on the demand for renewables, but I think there is some hesitancy on the profitability of that business. You guys have laid out some targets, not quite there yet. But what is it that's holding that back today? And kind of how do you close the gap to get that to be a double-digit margin comparable to some of your other businesses?

Jose Mas

executive
#14

So look, it's a much bigger business today for us. It's not necessarily a new business, right? We got into the wind business in 2009, 2010 time frame. But when we started in wind because that's where renewables started. We were a very early adopter in the wind process. So we were one of the first contractors that was building wind at scale. It's a business that for years was driven on tax equity, right? So when the tax legislation for the business was good, the market was really hot and then it would soften. The fact that we've got an Inflation Reduction Act that gives us an enormous amount of room relative to how long those tax credits are going to exist for is very positive for the industry. It gives us great confidence. It has been a double-digit margin business in the past. We've invested an enormous amount of money diversifying that business as well. So where we were very strong in wind. We organically started an internal solar division. We organically started a piece of industrial and smaller projects, a lot of them tied to renewables. We invested heavily in the civil business because we thought it made a lot of sense even from a cross-section -- from a cross-selling opportunity around renewables. So we've -- in the last 2, 3 years, we've pumped a lot of money, hired a lot of people, made significant investments in the business. That's certain margins, right? We've had our hiccups. The start of solar was difficult for us. We lost a lot of money on our first couple of projects. We had some issues on industrial projects early on. I think we're through most of that today when you look at our new business and the business that we've been able to deliver in 2022 in both of those areas, our newer projects are performing significantly better. We put -- we changed the way we bid the projects. We've changed the way we manage those projects. So we feel really good about where we're headed. We've looked at a lot of different companies to acquire over the course of the last couple of years to really speed up the solar side of the business, which is one that's growing tremendously. We saw a lot of the targets that we looked at, had the same issues at inception of their solar business. So we felt good that we had our lessons learned. We've been able to learn from them. We've been able to build that into our pricing models going forward. And the demand for that industry today is just off the charts for both sides, right? So you're absolutely right. It's not a demand issue. It's all going to be about how do we drive margins up and how do we execute our margins over a long period of time. We feel good about our renewable margins. We think our renewable margins exceed the overall segment margin profile. We've laid out a margin profile for 2023, that's still in a growth phase. We've laid out a mid-single-digit margin, which we think is very attainable. It's a huge improvement from where we've been in the last 2 years, but we think it's achievable, and we still believe it to double our -- double-digit margin business over the course of the next few years.

Justin Hauke

analyst
#15

Yes. And I guess you do still have some legacy civil projects that you guys inherited, right, that are rolling through that as well? I mean how long do those kind of weigh on the margins since that's something that's not really a market issue. It's just a project issue?

Jose Mas

executive
#16

Well, you have a combination of the business, right? We do think that based on the infrastructure build and the dollars that are going to go towards infrastructure there, the civil business is a good business. There's tons of opportunity in the civil side. There's a lot of projects today that have 1 or 2 bidders on them because both states and municipalities are having issues finding enough bidders for the amount of work that they're putting out, that's a very good place to be in the industry. With that said, it's a piece of the portfolio, right? It was a piece of MasTec's Clean Energy and Industrial business. It's going to be a piece of IEA's business. So it's -- combined, we've got roughly $1.5 billion civil business. A lot of the civil components that we do for municipalities and states happen on renewable projects. So when you first go on a renewable project and you've got to clear the land and build the roads. We have the capabilities of doing that in-house in a much broader geographic area now, which I think gives us a big competitive advantage on those projects and quite frankly, on transmission projects and pipeline projects, which require some of the same things. So it's a nice add to the portfolio. It is a lower margin business. So we do think the renewable business will outstrip that. But as a combined entity, we think it can maintain double-digit margins over time.

Justin Hauke

analyst
#17

George, I promise I'm going to ask you questions too...

George Pita

executive
#18

I'm still here. I'm waiting.

Justin Hauke

analyst
#19

Yes, I know you're chomping at a bit over there. So the last market, oil and gas, which I think a lot of people have looked at as kind of -- I mean, it was so profitable for so long and your revenues have been challenged because of the market is down 60%, 70% of where it was. But there's still some things that are coming back there. And it seems like -- I mean, your revenue outlook here for this year is $1.2 billion, $1.3 billion. That's kind of at a trough level. Just maybe talk about some of the uptick that you've seen in the backlog there, what that's coming from? I know you still do have the Mountain Valley Pipeline project. Can you still grow next year regardless of what happens with that one? Just kind of the outlook for that business.

Jose Mas

executive
#20

It's a remarkable business, right? Because we've gone from $2.1 billion in revenue last year to $1.2 billion. We're still generating double-digit margins. We're still generating low teen margins in that business. In an environment where we've held on to costs in the second half of the year because we see the business turning from a revenue perspective pretty dramatically in '23. So the quick answer is, yes, we expect to grow that business irrespective of what happens in the Mountain Valley Pipeline in '23, and we actually expect to grow it quite considerably without Mountain Valley Pipeline. With Mountain Valley Pipeline, it's going to grow even more. We think the margin profile will actually continue to improve over time and potentially get back to historical levels in the late '23, early '24 time frame. There is an enormous amount of activity happening today across a number of the gas shales. There's a lot of gas projects that are coming back. There is an enormous amount of projects related to new sources. So carbon sequestration projects and -- are growing. Hydrogen projects are growing. The pipeline construction for those are exactly the same as what we do for a liquids or a gas pipeline. And I think you're going to see our business converge more to those over time, for sure. But I still think there's a good solid base of business, especially on the gas side, that's going to continue to allow us to generate that $1.5 billion to $2 billion over a significant period of time.

Justin Hauke

analyst
#21

Yes. And MVP to the point of, I mean, you're going to grow off that base, but that's $500 million of revenue you guys have talked about that is almost kind of an option sort of come...

Jose Mas

executive
#22

We don't know when it's going to happen and that's a challenge. We're hoping it happens in '23, but we're not going to bake it in again.

Justin Hauke

analyst
#23

Right. Right. Okay. Okay, George, I will get to you. So the -- I guess -- and it's a question from the audience as well. But with these transactions, the leverage has pushed up. You guys are right around 3x or just under 3x on a pro forma basis. Just talk about maybe the cash generation that you have of the business. How it's different, maybe prospectively than it was in the past and kind of where you see leverage trending to?

George Pita

executive
#24

Sure. Thanks. Obviously, we've used our balance sheet here in the last few years strategically to expand the business. I heard Jose talk about the history of the business and how he had transitioned it over time into developing trends. I couldn't help consider and think about how that's exactly what we've done now in the last 24 months, right? With the transition of our business, with the expansion of the power delivery business to be able to handle all things related to energy transition, right, whether it be generation all the way down to distribution or transmission. We really have transformed the company into this major mega trend, if you will, and positioned it for ultimate growth. And with that, obviously, at this point, we have shift in the balance sheet some. I'd say a couple of things. I mean, one, we're an investment-grade company. We're highly committed to that rating. So we will be focusing on deleveraging the company here as we move into 2023. We have plans to significantly lower our leverage profile through a combination of improved EBITDA performance and deleveraging on the debt level side that we think will bring us down to a much -- to a lower level by the end of '23 and certainly even more into '24, back to supportive -- certainly in supportive of an investment-grade rating. When I think about the business and the transition that we're going -- undergoing, I'd say that the cash conversion profile or the working capital profile of the business, as we've morphed it from totally project-based into more MSA-driven is probably equal, maybe a little bit better, right, in terms of the working capital profile because MSAs typically have a lot of recurring billings and whatnot. But I do think then as you continue and you look at a free cash flow basis, if you look at our capital intensity, our future capital intensity will be less as we morph into a larger clean energy and power distribution and transmission and communications business compared to one that was more centered on oil and gas and pipelines, which historically has been the most capital intensive. So as we morphed the business, I mean, we're focusing clearly on deleveraging and managing the balance sheet here for the next 12 months plus. But I think the business and the cash flow and the free cash flow profile, importantly, of the business is better today in the future than it has been historically because we've transitioned the business into this -- in the end markets that we think are less capital intensive. So we're highly focused on maintaining and looking at the -- at an appropriate balance sheet and a strong balance sheet, and we'll do so as we continue to grow. I think we've done that over the years very successfully. And if we're doing that at a time. I think the one thing I would also tell you is we're pretty good stewards of capital. If you look at the acquisition prices we've paid on the things that we've purchased this year, while the dollars are big, I think they're very, very attractive multiples. We're certainly not buying on the frothy end of things. And that's no surprise or no change. That's what MasTec has done over the years, right? And when we're doing an acquisition and we're using our balance sheet, we're doing that with a very keen eye on it and a very -- we always manage the balance sheet and our investments very, very closely from that perspective.

Justin Hauke

analyst
#25

Yes. I mean your free cash flow historically has been pretty good. And the MSAs -- a year ago, I think it was 35% of your revenue and it's 55%...

George Pita

executive
#26

Over 50%.

Justin Hauke

analyst
#27

Over 50% now. So I mean, that plus the capital intensity coming down is definitely a change. Just because we're getting close here. I guess -- last thing, I guess, I would want to talk about it, just kind of the earnings power that you see at the company over the next couple of years because you talked about $13 billion plus revenue, 9 percentage margin for next year, which I don't think is the limit of where you see the margins going. But I mean maybe you can just talk about in the next couple of years, what is the real margin of the business when it's kind of a full tilt?

Jose Mas

executive
#28

Yes. I mean one of the most exciting things we have is the earnings power potential, right? Our telecom business, we're going to end this year just over 10%. We've talked about that improving to just under 11% in '23. Longer term, we've talked about that being a 12% to 13% business. When you look at our power delivery business, we're talking about a business that will probably be right at around 10% next year. Again, a business that probably should be in a similar run rate to where the telecom is over time, and that's where some of our bigger peers are. When you look at our clean energy business, and we're talking about a percentage of 6-ish percentage next year in EBITDA, and we're talking about it growing 10% or double digits over time. When you got an oil and gas business where historically has been in the mid- to high teens and this year is in the low teens, in an improving market, right? You add all that up. That's a significant potential change in earnings power over time. It's not going to happen in '23, but it's definitely the trends that we're going to be building towards and really trying to achieve. And I think, we've historically done it. I think you see it across the industry. We have industry peers that you can compare some of those metrics to as we grow the businesses as we obviously build the scale and normalize the investment pattern that we've had to make in growing those businesses, I think we're going to be able to attain the same margin profile. One of the successes that I do think we've had historically is we have been a leader in the industry in margin, right? Historically, you compare our margins to our peers, we've outpaced peers for a long time. We didn't this year, but that's where we ultimately expect to be again.

George Pita

executive
#29

Justin, along those lines, we put out -- when we put out the IEA acquisition, and I think it's on the investor deck today, we've put out a kind of a near-term view of a $15-plus billion enterprise at a double-digit margin profile and that was not different than we did in 2020 when we put a $10 billion chart up, I think that's very achievable. And certainly, it's indicative of a view of where we think as a company we're headed in the near term, maybe not next year, but in the near term, with more opportunity in addition to that.

Justin Hauke

analyst
#30

Yes. We don't have a breakout session, but given that this is the last session of the afternoon, I was -- I do want to open it up in case there's any questions from the audience before we close everything up.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#31

Can you talk about the line opportunity [indiscernible]. I think about a contract in -- is it a matter a lot -- how much more is going to matter [indiscernible].

Justin Hauke

analyst
#32

Can you just repeat the question?

Jose Mas

executive
#33

Yes. So the question was around our pipeline business and the fact as the pipeline business converges to more carbon capture and hydrogen, how important is the resume, what you historically did to be able to win that work and what does it mean. So there's lots of answers to that question. I think the first is a lot of the people that are involved in those companies, be it carbon capture or hydrogen or people that have been in the industry. They're either coming from other pipeline companies, they're coming from utilities. They're coming from places where they built something similar. Nobody has built these before, so it's not like they're moving from one company to another, but they're coming from the industry. So there is no question that I think we have a huge advantage relative to our resume, our name and what we've done. I feel incredibly -- I feel unbelievably good about our position across all of those. I think we're going to be -- I think we're going to win a significant share of those opportunities over time. I think we will be the leader in that, just like we were the leader in oil and gas pipelines. Again, it's going to take time, a lot of new -- there's a lot of stuff coming and I'm sure it will have its ups and downs when it starts relative to permitting and timing, but we feel really comfortable that that's in the very near future, and that we'll be a significant player in that space.

Justin Hauke

analyst
#34

I think we'll probably end it up there, but thank you, everyone, for joining us and sticking to the end. Thank you guys for presenting. Good luck on getting home.

Jose Mas

executive
#35

Thank you. Thank you for joining us.

For developers and AI pipelines

Programmatic access to MasTec, Inc. earnings transcripts and 32,000+ others is available through the EarningsCalls.dev REST API. Plans from $24.99/month — full transcripts, speaker segments, full-text search, and the recently-added /api/v1/transcripts/recent polling endpoint for ETL pipelines.