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

November 29, 2023

New York Stock Exchange US Industrials Construction and Engineering conference_presentation 36 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Steven Fisher

analyst
#1

Okay. Good morning. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for listening into the webcast. I'm Steve Fisher, UBS machinery engineering and construction analyst. Welcome to the UBS Industrial Summit. We are really pleased to have management of MasTec with us. We have CEO, Jose Mas; and CFO, Paul Dimarco. There's a lot of topics to cover. So we're going to get right into it. But just before we get started, as a research analyst, I'm required to provide certain disclosures relating to the nature of my own relationship and that of UBS with any company on which we express the view on this call today. These disclosures are available at ubs.com/disclosure or you can reach out to me any time and I can provide them to you after this call. So welcome, Jose and Paul. I want to give you an opportunity just to offer some background or opening remarks. You can really take this in whatever direction you'd like. But maybe to frame it, it's been about a month since you released your Q3 results and guided to Q4 and with your preliminary outlook on 2024. How are you feeling about the message you provided back then? Is there any other message you just want to make sure you get across today.

Jose Mas

executive
#2

Sure. So Steve, thank you very much for having us. We're happy to be here. It's been about a month. I think a couple of things, right? We talked a lot about as we gave guidance for 2024. Historically, we think we've done a really good job at hitting our numbers, beating our numbers over time being very consistent. We know that, that hasn't been where we've been. So as we reset outlook for the balance of this year into next year, we wanted to make sure we gave ourselves the ability to be as conservative as we could so that we could get back to being a company that's considered to be consistent relative to its earnings and its profile. So that's very important to us. I think in the last month, I think we have a lot of confidence around our plan on a go-forward basis. I think if anything, I think the market has improved over the course of last month and we're feeling comfortable relative to the guidance that we've given and we're looking forward to get in the balance of this year done in 2024 started. 2023 was challenging for us for a bunch of reasons that I know we'll get into, but very encouraged about early signs for 2024 and what we're seeing.

Steven Fisher

analyst
#3

Excellent. So I wanted to just ask a general question. I know there's a lot that you have going on in the near term. But really, as we think about medium to long term, wondering how you feel about the mix of your revenues versus what your long-term ideal is. And I'm thinking really more about kind of discrete projects versus recurring revenue sources. What do you think the right mix is? And have you kind of factored even this question into your planning?

Jose Mas

executive
#4

Yes, we have. I think, a, I think we're blessed to be in the markets that we're in. I think the markets afford us tremendous opportunity across all the businesses that we operate in. So if you think about the long-term trends in communications, long-term trends in the pipeline business with some of the alternative energy sources that we think are going to flow through pipelines. When we think about power delivery, when we think about our clean energy and infrastructure business have tremendous tailwinds behind all of them. So we're really encouraged that from a market perspective, we're in good industries that afford us the opportunity for growth. I think one of the big changes of MasTec since 2020 has been the fact that whether we call them MSAs or not, I think that the level of recurring revenues that the company has substantially increased. So if you think about our Comms business, it's predominantly a recurring revenue business. If you think about what we're doing in oil and gas today, we have a lot less project work. We have a lot less project work going forward, a lot of relationship-based work. I think recurring nature of that business has substantially increased. I think our Power Delivery business today, which we're bigger in distribution in substations that we are in transmission is also predominantly a recurring revenue model business. And even when you think about our Clean Energy and Infrastructure business, right, we've got a several component that for all intents and purposes, has worked that happens every single year for the same customer sets. And from a renewable side, we worked really hard at building relationships with customers that hopefully mean recurring projects. So while they may be different projects, there are going to be relationships that we think generate business over the long term. So we think we've done a great job at really focusing our revenue growth on consistency, which is really important for us on being able to measure and understand the growth opportunity we're going to have. And then I think our real focus as a company needs to be around the execution on the project, right? It's how do we mine the highest level of margins out of the business as we can with the opportunities that were given, and that's our focus today.

Steven Fisher

analyst
#5

Great. Well, maybe we'll dig into that point right now. MasTec is obviously a much bigger company than it was just a few years ago. And so with that in mind, has your operating structure changed? Can you manage the business in the same way you did before? Or do you need to implement different sort of operating procedures?

Jose Mas

executive
#6

So look, I think the company always evolves. I don't Think you stay stagnant relative to how you operate. Today, we've got 4 segments that we report into each of those segments has a group president, has its own leadership teams, its own financial teams. I think we've done a lot at improving the talent within all of those segments grow on a deeper bench. We focus a lot on our people. So we feel really good about the leadership that we have in the field. We are a larger business, no question about it. At the end of the day, we still think we manage projects well. We understand our business well. And I think we've just got to continue to do that. We're always in search of adding talent to the organization at all different levels, and we'll continue to do that.

Steven Fisher

analyst
#7

Okay. As we talked about or alluded to before, 2023 has been tough. What would you say kind of the main thing do you think need to be improved to kind of reestablish consistency of performance and rebuild investor confidence. I mean is it just a different approach to guidance? Is it a number of other things?

Jose Mas

executive
#8

Well, I think 2023 was unique in that -- we had a lot of issues across the business, right? And I think many of them, unfortunately, weren't in our control, some were in our control. We take responsibility for everything that we could have and should have done better. But I do think when I think about '23, unfortunately, it's a year where just about everything you think could have been wrong went wrong for us. With that said, there was a lot of positives in the year, right? I think that today, even with the acquisition of IEA with the challenges we had with IEA, I think the relationships that we've been able to build with the new customer base that we brought on has been tremendous. I think that -- I think irrespective of the financial challenges we've had versus expectations. The reality is that the market, our customers view us very favorably. So I think the work that we do on a day-in, day-out basis for our customers and on the field is highly regarded. And because of that, I think we've been able to grow and establish really strong relationships that are going to pay dividends over the long term. There's been a lot of questions about the customer base that we bought at IEA. And one of the things that we've been trying to explain is, we're actually really comfortable with the IEA customer base. We think that it's some of the top-tier developers and utilities in the country relative to renewables. And again, with the challenges that we've had, we've gotten to spend a lot of face time with those customers. We've spent a lot of time talking about the challenges that we had in '23, the challenges that specific projects had in '23 and how the business for us needed to change in '24. And we found our customers to be incredibly receptive. We found our customers to really want us to succeed and have really worked with us to set up a plan in '24 that we think is highly achievable. So with all the negativity, a lot of good things are happening in our business. We've been very bullish about what's been happening in our pipeline business relative to the growth that we're seeing, especially in the southern sales. The growth that we're seeing, albeit a little further out on alternative fuels and some of the alternative pipeline activity that we expect to see in the coming years that we think is going to be really added into our business. In telecom, the wireline business remains really strong. We announced a relatively large maintenance award in our wireless business that I think really shows the precedent for a lot of our customers looking to consolidate their vendors, especially as they navigate through these times. I think that's going to be a tremendous opportunity for MasTec. And then on the Power Delivery side, right, 2 years into the integration of Internet Henkels and McCoy, we think we've -- we're at a great base level. We're at a base level where the contracts that we felt we needed to exit or move on from what we've done. We think we have tremendous growth opportunities that have come to us from both of those acquisitions and '24 is all about executing on that, taking advantage of that and mining margins out of that. So again, while we've had tremendous challenges in '23, we think we're set up really well for '24 and beyond. As we think about '24, it's important to note that the guidance levels that we have put out there aren't by any stretch of the imagination, what we think is optimal for MasTec. We think we've got a tremendous amount of opportunity to significantly increase our earnings base, but we think it was a good place to kind of level set, but we've got our long-term goals relative to the goals that we've laid out over the last couple of years are completely unchanged. And I think that's important because I think it speaks to the strength of the markets that we're in and our belief of the ability that we have to grow those markets into more profitable.

Steven Fisher

analyst
#9

Step by step.

Jose Mas

executive
#10

Step by step.

Steven Fisher

analyst
#11

Okay. Another macro question perhaps the 10-year treasury yields have come down over the last month really since the time of your earnings. And I know cost of capital pressure was something you had cited within your utility customer base. I'm curious if over this past handful of weeks, if you've heard any customers sounding a little bit more positive as a result of changing cost of capital dynamics? Or is that soon and not enough of an impact?

Jose Mas

executive
#12

No, I do think there's been a -- there's more optimism in the market today than there's been. I think also with the challenges that we've seen across renewable projects, people were starting to figure out other ways to get their projects financed. I think transferability in the last couple of months has made a huge impact in the industry. But look, we were of the belief that the interest rate environment is going to improve in 2024. We've been sitting on a lot of floating debt, which is going to be important for us to kind of manage through. I think we're going to have an opportunity to significantly lower our interest cost as we think about the other coming quarters. So we're pretty excited about what's happening with interest and what it means to our customers, right, because I think they're going to see the same impact. Paul, do you want to talk a little bit about transferability.

Paul Dimarco

executive
#13

Yes. Well, I think 1 -- we talked a lot about the tax equity environment and the impact we are seeing from customers. And I think this is indicative of broader trends in the renewable space as they collectively are dealing with the influx of a lot of new project development activity. The support services and the ancillary activities that go into any project moving to construction, all have to reset to the right level of activity, whether that's construction financing or the tax equity side, interconnect, permitting, procurement, it's all kind of the same reset in underlying support and capacity. What we're seeing on the tax equity side is the market was waiting for some clarity on certain provisions of the IRA they were comfortable doing that for a finite period of time. That clarity is still not there, right? There's turmoil in Washington. Hopefully, we're moving through that. But with that uncertainty, the market has found ways to structure deals with more runway around that finalization, right? One of those is transferability. So we're talking with players in the industry, large providers of tax equity financing, utilizing transferability on the back end of a traditional tax equity investment to provide something on capital as an alternative that's becoming a much common model and even structuring the provisions of the investment to give more flexibility as to the ultimate valuation are solutions that the industry is putting together to solve for any continued period of uncertainty. So rather than over the summer, we were hearing from customers, "hey, we're going to wait this out into the fall." We're not really hearing that anymore. Now it's -- we found solutions with providers that are going to help move projects forward. There are still challenges, right? There is an unprecedented level of development activity that has stressed the system. But again, we're seeing continued efforts to mitigate that, which we think will now have a little bit of noise in '24, but they will rightsize as we get to the level of -- the balance level of demand, and then we'll be much more effective cadence going forward.

Steven Fisher

analyst
#14

Great. So maybe kind of sticking with the solar side and renewables and IEA, I wanted to just talk a little bit about the integration. Can you just give us a little bit of an update on what's going on right now. In Q3, your integration costs went up again. So I guess I'm curious what your kind of stage you're up to on that? And have we seen the last of -- what would drove that next step level up? And have we seen the last of the material increases in those integration costs?

Paul Dimarco

executive
#15

Yes. So to the last question, yes, right? We think we're largely past to maybe a little bit that bleeds into Q4. But Q3, frankly, was when we really brought together the ultimate structure and effects of the most change from an integration perspective, which is kind of commensurate with what you saw from a cost perspective. Some things have a little bit of a longer tail as they're being wound out of the system. But by and large, the costs that we've identified to exit or properly integrate the business have been incurred. Again, there might be a little bit in Q4, but we expect it to be down meaningfully from the third quarter level.

Jose Mas

executive
#16

And I think more importantly are the changes that we've made in the business, right? So I mean, if you think about the bulk of our challenges in '23 really had to do with the revenue opportunity around our renewable business, but IEA went from $2.4 billion in revenue in '22 to $1.7 billion in '23. And that's -- when you get down to basically the majority of our issues this year have been around that, right, because it's impacted margins, it's impacted our ability to keep our workforce working and utilization rate is high. So it's been a big impact. So for us, a lot of the issues that we've talked about, whether it's tax equity issues or the financing of our customers or interconnect issues. The most important thing has been understanding our 2024 plan, the projects that we expect to work and how do we ensure ourselves successful. We're not in a similar situation in '23. And I think that we've done great planning around. Today, I think have an incredible understanding around every project that we've been awarded that we're negotiating that our customers are planning for '24. We understand every risk. We understand what the opportunity for each of those projects is. And we've built a plan around that, right? So I think we've built a level that we're really comfortable it's going to actually execute in '24 as these issues get resolved, that we've talked about at great length. I think that will definitely help the industry and will create upside opportunities for us. But I think our base business plan that we've laid out for '24 is solid. I think got -- I think we have a great understanding of the projects that are going to make that up. I think the majority of that is -- we're in deep discussions with our customers on. We know exactly the projects that will be working for them. Some have already been awarded. Some are -- will be awarded shortly. But I think we -- I think our confidence level in the last month related to that plan has also significantly increased. And I think that's important.

Steven Fisher

analyst
#17

Great. So maybe to dig into that in a few more levels of questions. You mentioned on the Q3 earnings call that have made significant changes on how you go to market and how you assess the project risk. Can you just talk about those things in more detail? How do you assess the risk differently now and market differently?

Jose Mas

executive
#18

Yes. So I think today, we have 1 MasTec renewables business, right? It doesn't matter whether it gets executed from a legacy MasTec business or IEA. For us, it's about having 1 face to the customer. It's about having a relationship with the customer and understanding their portfolio. One of the challenges in '23 wasn't that we had -- again, we get a lot of questions about the customer base at IEA, but these customers had multiple projects. There's a lot of customers where we build 1 project for but had an issue on another project. Or might have had a project that got built by somebody else or another contractor but then had projects that we were slated to build that didn't get done. So at the end of the day, this business is a lot about at the project level, understanding the specific project. Obviously, the customer is important, but customers have good projects, bad projects or projects that have potentially more issues than others. And it's truly about understanding the portfolio mix that you're working with that customer. And I think one of the big changes that we've done, right, is we've spent a lot more time with our customers, talking about the challenges that we had in 2023, talking about the challenges of specific projects and then making sure as we look to '24 and the projects that we were looking at or we are looking at is to understand -- to have a higher level of confidence in the ability for those projects to move forward. And I think we've done that. And I think we've done that with multiple customers. I think the industry and our customers have significant targets. They've got large levels of work, and I think we're going to be -- I think '24 is going to be a very different year from us than '23 relative to our revenue generation capabilities, right? And then it all comes down to how do we execute on these projects, which is just as important, right? So I think I'm not as worried anymore about the revenue side, which has been our big issue in '23. Now it's our ability to generate that revenue and execute at a high level, and I think we're well prepared to do that.

Steven Fisher

analyst
#19

Terrific. And so I know you talked about $500 million of bookings that you expected in -- I don't know if that was Q4. And then you have $2 billion of solar LNTPs, I guess -- how did you handle the $2 billion of LNTPs in your 2024 outlook? And then I assume your $500 million that you're talking about for the near term, that has gone through that whole level of filtering extra detailed process on risk assessment. Is that fair to say?

Jose Mas

executive
#20

Yes. I think one of the really important things to think about in 2023 was the work that we had in backlog outperformed, right? So when we talk about issues on projects, it wasn't projects that or in our backlog that didn't get finished, it never made into backlog. It actually never hit our backlog numbers. So I think what investors should understand is when we say something is in backlog, that project is moving forward, right? There's no risks anymore associated with those projects. Obviously, something could happen on a particular project. But for the most part, those projects are completed and done. And I think you will see a significant increase in backlog as we report Q4 in that business. we're not going to have our entire year booked by Q4. Obviously, I don't think that would be realistic. But I think we have incredible visibility onto our whole year, which is important. I think, again, if the -- if everything gets settled, all of the rules get written and whether it's year-end, whether it's first quarter, second quarter, we've built the plan, not dependent on that. So we built a plan that we think with projects that are going to go forward, irrespective of what's happening on the tax equity language. If the tax equity language gets fixed, there's going to be a lot more projects. There's going to be a lot more projects that we can hopefully build in '24. And again, we think that will be upside to what we've communicated to the street. But we've built a base level plan projects that we think move forward. I think we've got, again, great visibility into what those projects will be. It's not that every project is completely derisked, but we don't think there's a lot of risk on that we're contemplating, completing in '24.

Steven Fisher

analyst
#21

Excellent. That answered my next question, which was really going to be about the expectations on the clarity of the tax incentives and my question is really going to be what if get to your Q4 earnings release and we have not had clarity yet. What does that mean for your guidance that you've given, it sounds like you're being fairly clear that it's not going to have an impact, is that what we can take away?

Jose Mas

executive
#22

That you can take away. And our hope is that you won't even hear us talking about it, right? I hope at some point that the communication around this issue -- is one of finality, right, where there completely understood. But again, I don't think you'll see us talk about a '24 plan that's dependent on that. One of the things that I'm really excited about because again, when we think about '24 and our revenue targets for '24 and our earnings targets for '24. I don't think they're representative of the business that we're building, we're trying to build. So I do think that as we continue to work '24, as these issues get resolved, what you're going to see is such a large increase to backlog that it's going to give you tremendous visibility into what 25 will look like and the growth rates that we actually think we can achieve in '25, which we think will be substantial. And I think that's not going to take to the end of '24 for you to be able to see. I think as '24 starts to roll, and we start booking work, a lot of work, which might have some tailwind work in '24, but a lot of '25 work. I think that's where you're going to see stacking of backlog happen, which is going to give you great insight as to what our future years are going to look like. And I think that's really important for our story.

Steven Fisher

analyst
#23

For sure. And to be clear, we're talking really here mostly about solar? Or how do we think about wind in 2024 in terms of bookings and backlog?

Jose Mas

executive
#24

I think we're talking about both. I think, obviously, the bigger growth opportunities are on the solar side. I think wind will have a strong '24 vis-à-vis '23. And I think the one business is growing, right? So one of the great adders of the IRA Act was what it did for wind. And obviously, we knew it wasn't going to have an immediate impact. We're starting to see the impacts of IRA on wind. But we actually think that a increase in the coming years. So '24 is going to be a good year relative to wind, but it will be improving. And again, I think as we lay out our backlog and we start winning projects and putting in the backlog, you're also going to be able to see the growth profile that wind's going to do in '25 and beyond.

Steven Fisher

analyst
#25

One other question on renewables in terms of sort of the end game on how you structure your customer relationships and how you go to market. Do you want to have a small number of customers with just a repeat amount of solar and wind business that you just sort of like keep on the same just kind of recurring nature? Or does it make sense to just identify what are the most likely projects in the marketplace and then go after those? How do you see the kind of structure.

Jose Mas

executive
#26

It's actually a great question. And I think that the answer is going to change because I think we're in a time today where our projects are highly dependent on certain things, whether it's interconnect, whether it's financing. And I think over time, as these issues resolved, that won't matter anymore. So then it will all be about customers and their long-term portfolios. That's still our focus, right? So if you were to ask me, longer term, our focus is to have a smaller subset of customers with a lot of recurring business, fully understanding what we're going to be working on an expectation of year-over-year. And by the way, a big chunk of our business is already like that. I'd say the majority of our business already falls into that bucket. But because those customers, as good as they are, still have some potentially troubled projects, we've got to understand and find projects that we don't think have any issues. And that may not come from a customer that's got consistent work over a long, long period of time. So today, we're doing a little bit of both, but the propensity of what we do today is really focused on big customers with big plans with large portfolios, large expected portfolios, and that's what's driving our business.

Steven Fisher

analyst
#27

Great. Maybe one last one on the clean energy side of the business, the industrial projects still had a little bit of noise in the last quarter. Can you just talk about the status of those projects and how we think about that particular element of your clean energy business going forward?

Paul Dimarco

executive
#28

Yes. I mean the types of projects we've been working on that, we've been vocal about over the past couple of years are out of the portfolio at this point, right? The amount of work that we're expecting from that component of the Clean Energy segment is relatively small in 2024. And the type of work we'll do is smaller projects, lower risk largely cost plus if we think there is challenges that we can't price and we don't expect to be talking about any significant impact from those going...

Steven Fisher

analyst
#29

Excellent. Before we maybe touch upon some of the other segments in a little more detail, I wanted to make sure we address cash flow. So can you just talk a little bit more about -- you did frame this on the conference call, but just to come back to it. Your expectations for free cash flow and debt reduction in Q4? And then how to think about free cash flow conversion in 2024 and debt reduction?

Paul Dimarco

executive
#30

So for the fourth quarter, we expect to generate around another $200 million of cash flow from operations. So net of CapEx, probably going to be in the $150 million range from a free cash flow perspective, which gets us to kind of $400 million or so for the full year. Relatively it is lower than we expected, really driven by the earnings impact. From a working capital perspective, we're performing well. And from a net debt reduction, we expect to be relatively in line with where we forecast at the end of the year. For '24, looking at our preliminary view on our earnings performance. We think we have a roughly $600 million opportunity for cash flow from operations. We think there's some opportunity there as we get growth in the clean energy space that has a favorable working capital profile relative to some other parts of the business. And so we think there's some opportunity to leverage that into additional free cash flow generation. And we expect CapEx, we haven't given specific guidance yet, but as we're working through the plans there, we do expect that to remain relatively low compared to recent periods. Again, really just based on where the demand is coming right, with less demand in Oil and Gas, which is our most capital-intensive business, we don't see as much need for further investment in the fleet.

Steven Fisher

analyst
#31

Okay. That's great. So...

Jose Mas

executive
#32

We really should have a strong year of pay down in '24.

Paul Dimarco

executive
#33

And structured with the seasonality of the business. So Q1 should be strong, probably a little bit flatter from a working capital investment requirement as it ramps up in Q2 and Q3 and then more cash flow generation in the fourth quarter.

Steven Fisher

analyst
#34

Okay.

Jose Mas

executive
#35

But between that and the increase in EBITDA that we're expecting, right, we get to same kind of leverage ratios that we've been talking about. So we've committed to the credit agencies that we'd be under 2.5x from an investment grade perspective, and we think we comfortably get there in 2024.

Steven Fisher

analyst
#36

Okay. I think that pretty clearly addresses that. But I suppose just as a caveat question to that. I know one of the rating agencies added you to sort of a negative outlook right after earnings again, we've talked about things that have changed since then. But what -- in the event that a downgrade would come to pass, is there any sort of practical implication to that?

Paul Dimarco

executive
#37

Not really, no. I mean, listen, we want to remain investment grade. There's no -- I'll say it differently. There's no structural implication from the various debt instruments. There's some additional reporting requirements that from there were 2 downgrades on some of the legacy IEA bonds, but nothing that can't be handled in the ordinary course. But many of our other debt instruments don't have any implications. Listen, 1 remain investment grade for access to capital, our cost of capital for the position to position with our customers, with our surety providers and we're committed to doing that. But if there is a hiccup don't feel that it will have a significant impact on us in the short term.

Jose Mas

executive
#38

We expected the outlook change as we spoke to the credit agencies. We don't expect to downgrade. So -- and we expect to deliver on our '24 plan, which kind of takes care of these issues.

Paul Dimarco

executive
#39

Yes. I think importantly...

Jose Mas

executive
#40

We were talking about an outlook upgrade.

Paul Dimarco

executive
#41

Yes. I think importantly is the runway that they cited in their credit opinion. They've kind of put out the balance of 2024 for us to get to where we need to be. And I think we've made the same commitments to them that we've said publicly a number of times and towards that.

Steven Fisher

analyst
#42

Great. We have a few minutes left. So maybe to touch upon some of the other segments. So Oil and Gas I know you've talked about kind of $1.5 billion to $2 billion range of revenues going forward. I'm just kind of curious about your confidence that you can kind of keep delivering that level? And how much of that is actual oil and gas production related versus kind of local gas distribution maintenance and kind of R&M work?

Jose Mas

executive
#43

Well, I mean, our maintenance business is dramatically growing for the last few years big percentage of what we're doing today. Obviously, one of the concerns that we always had is we knew we have MVP, there would be a spike in revenue. The fact that MVP is kind of playing out through '23 and '24 is kind of offset by -- we're seeing a lot of demand. I mean we're currently seeing a lot of demand in that business. We feel really good about the revenue target that we've laid out. We kind of laid out a slight reduction to revenue with EBITDA being flat on a year-over-year basis, supplied EBITDA, which meant slightly better margins. If things continue to play out the way that they're playing, we feel that, that might be a conservative number, so we're actually seeing a lot more activity here recently that we've been seeing. We've been saying that for a while, too. We think we're lining up right now for '25 to be a really good year. We're actually seeing a lot of activity for '25, which -- so I feel really good about being at the upper end of that range for the next few years. So I think if anything, that $1.5 billion-- I don't think that $1.5 billion is probably the low end of the range anymore, but we've talked about a $1.8 billion number for next year, and we'll do about [ $2 billion ] this year. And I think -- so well, we could probably save a lot with this year.

Steven Fisher

analyst
#44

Great. And as we think about the next couple of years, how would you describe sort of the opportunity set? Is it more that roll on. I think you've talked about having better margins from the new work coming in. Is that LNG-related pipeline? Is it carbon capture? Is it a mix of various things?

Jose Mas

executive
#45

Yes. Look, it's a mix. We actually been thinking that our pipeline business is going to convert more to alternatives over time. With the level of activity that we're seeing, we think alternatives are going to play a much higher role and alternatives, I am talking about carbon capture and hydrogen and things like that. But we were probably expecting a little bit of the decline in our historical base business, I don't know that we're feeling that, right? So I think that as we get into some of these alternative opportunities, I think they're going to give us a lot of upside to the business. And hopefully, we see that start playing out in '25. So we're pretty encouraged by that right now.

Steven Fisher

analyst
#46

Great. And maybe one on Communications. You've talked about doing engineering work on a good amount of wireline things that you expect to move forward in the next year. What's going to determine whether those programs move forward?

Jose Mas

executive
#47

No, those programs are moving forward. Those projects are funded. So they were full awards, but we started with engineering. So engineering, while it's super important, it doesn't drive a lot of revenue. So as we complete engineering and move into construction. That's where really the revenue starts to kick in, and that's kind of how we've built our plans. So we have great visibility into that. In some cases, when we started some construction, but the reality is the bulk of the construction starts post engineering and permitting, which we expect in later half of first quarter.

Steven Fisher

analyst
#48

Okay. So there's no final investment decision that has to be made...

Jose Mas

executive
#49

It's already been there.

Steven Fisher

analyst
#50

All right. Got it. And then on the wireless side, I mean you've talked about kind of the expectation of flat next year. Can you just talk about what drives the confidence in that being flat?

Jose Mas

executive
#51

Yes. Look, we actually said flat with the award of about $100 million maintenance contract, right? So it's probably slightly down from the view we gave to the Street. I also think this is an area where our visibility is improving. I think that just like in that maintenance contract that we saw, we're seeing customers begin consolidation effort around vendors. And I think that there's opportunities for some of the wireless carriers to reinvest in their systems. And I think we'll be more of that and hear more of that in the coming months from some of the carriers. So I think we've got a very solid conservative plan as we look at '24. And hopefully, if things play out well, it's a lot better.

Steven Fisher

analyst
#52

Excellent. Well, that comes to the end of our time. I want to thank you very much. I don't know if there's any last words you want to kind of share, but...

Jose Mas

executive
#53

I appreciate being here, and we look forward to further updating everybody over the months.

Steven Fisher

analyst
#54

Terrific. Well, thanks, everyone, for listening in. And if you have any other questions, feel free to follow up with us afterwards. Thanks a lot. Have a great day.

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