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

Next discussion here with MasTec. Really excited to have Jose Mas, CEO of the company, here to talk to us today. Jose, thanks for being here.

I thought a great starting point. So sort of take -- again, get a feel for where you feel like the business is today, especially, Jose, versus a year ago. And how and why you think the company is better off today to take advantage of all the opportunities that are out there in the markets. I know you've had very internal focus here in the last year. And so where do you come from, and where are you now?

Sure. So Brent, thank you for having me. Thank you all for joining. I'd maybe even take a step a little further back because I think it's important to understand the MasTec story. And I think there's slides somewhere online. But if I go all the way back to 2019, 2019 was a record year for MasTec. We were coming off of a really strong year. Oil and Gas was a big driver of our business back then. Pandemic starts, oil prices go negative, a lot of negativity around the oil and gas markets, the pipeline markets, there's a thought that we're never going to need another pipeline built in the U.S. again. And the challenge for us at the time was 55% of our earnings were coming from Oil and Gas. So while it wasn't 55% of revenues, it was a huge chunk of our earnings. And at the time, we identified the need to really have to rediversify the business yet again. And obviously, in the middle of an energy transition, that market wasn't huge at the time, but it was picking up aggressively. And we were kind of a fringe player, so we really decided to double down on that business and figure out a way how we could help within the energy transition story. At the beginning of 2021, we acquired, at the time, the biggest acquisition in MasTec's history, which was a distribution player in the Midwest. Large scale, really expanded our distribution resources, it was an important deal and acquisition for us. 7, 8 months later, we make another acquisition of a company called Henkels & McCoy. That was a 100-year-old brand, really across the country, big player in distribution and transmission. At that time, that became the largest transaction that MasTec had ever done. It was a good company, about $1.5 billion in revenue, a challenge in margins. It was about a 5% margin business when we bought it. Ten months later, we had the opportunity to really double down in our renewable business and we acquired another company called IEA, yet again, MasTec's largest acquisition in its history. So in a very short period, over 18 months, we made 3 large acquisitions, each one the largest transaction we'd ever made. And you fast forward to '22 and '23, significant challenges in integration as we did that, right? We acquired IEA, which was the renewable business at the end of '22. That business had a lot of challenges, had done $2.4 billion in '22, ended up '23 doing $1.7 billion, so it was down 30%. So I think that we went through a lot in a short period of time. I think we stretched, management put a lot of stress on the company, which really challenged us in '23. The IEA deal was one that we didn't expect revenues to decrease; it did. We found ourselves having to really manage out of that throughout last year, which made last year a difficult year for us. But I think a lot of the decisions and the things we did in '23 to really position us for '24 make us a completely different company. And so to your question, how are you different now than you were a year ago, I feel like we're a completely different business. One, I think that the reputation of MasTec and the way people view MasTec throughout the energy industry has radically changed within a year. I think that's evident by the fact that we were just awarded the largest project that we've ever built on the transmission side. We were awarded a $1.5 billion transmission build. I think we're well on our way to having record backlog going into 2025 on the renewable side. So I think we've really taken '24 to deliver to get back to being a company that consistently delivers and does what it says it's going to do. But more importantly, to really set ourselves up for the future, which I think is probably our greatest achievement in '24.

Appreciate that, Jose. And look, you've been really transparent. You're not really in the market for any big transactions right now. You've done those. Maybe you'll look at bolt-ons, tuck-in M&A, et cetera. Is that a function of you like where you're at with the business? Is it you have other identifiable sort of deployment opportunities internally, you don't like valuations you're seeing, maybe yes to all? What do you think there?

Well, again, I think we put a lot of stress on the business in the last couple of years. I think we really need to digest and really monetize what we've done and drive margins because I think the biggest opportunity in MasTec, we have tremendous growth opportunities, tremendous revenue growth opportunities, but there's no doubt in my mind that our biggest opportunity is our ability to improve margins and what that means to the valuation. We're happy with the end markets that we're in. So for those of you that aren't as familiar with our story, we're in telecom. We've got a very large wireless and wireline piece. We're in power delivery. And when we talk about power delivery, we talk about distribution, transmission and substation. That business has grown incredible for us, especially through the acquisitions. We've got a large, what we call, Clean Energy and Infrastructure business, where we do predominantly renewables. We're one of the largest builders of wind and solar farms in the country, along with battery storage. And within that group, we've got a nice infrastructure piece that does everything from civil to some road and bridges. And then we've got our pipeline business, which really focuses on the gas side. So we feel like the legs of the stool are in place across all of those. We can get into a lot of detail, but we think that the growth dynamics in each one of those, we think, are fantastic. We think we're in very early stages across all those sectors. So again, tremendous growth opportunities, but the reality is that we lag on a margin perspective from some of our peers. That's where our opportunity is. We don't think there's anything structurally different with our business. We think it has a lot to do with the issues that we faced as we went through these acquisitions and as we manage through them. I think our ability to improve those margins, and then on top of that, have the ability to grow the business is really where value creation is going to come from in MasTec. If we can attain the growth that we think we can and we can drive the margins that we've kind of set out, and we've put out publicly a margin profile for each of those businesses, then we think we've got a ton of appreciation within our company.

Jose, maybe -- yes, that's great. Maybe on -- just on communications. It seems like you're at an inflection point after some softer conditions here in the last year or so. The extended territory with AT&T, and it's a really nice addition to your business, maybe how is that progressing so far? I know it's anticipated to progressively ramp.

Yes. We got a big award at the end of 2023, where we significantly expanded our market share with our largest wireless customer, which was AT&T. It was a great award because of -- we're obviously picking up new markets. But more importantly, they're also in the middle of a transition where they announced that they were going to convert their Nokia markets or their markets where they use Nokia products to deliver their wireless services, that we're going to convert them to Ericsson. When you actually think about that, right, they've been building out these networks for 30, 35 years, putting a ton of equipment on the ground and all of a sudden, they're going to rip and replace an entire market. It takes time. It doesn't happen overnight, but it's a massive project and it falls within the scope of what we do. So in the geographies that we have, we're -- in any Nokia market that we're in, we're going to ultimately replace that to be Ericsson equipment. And then in the Ericsson markets that we're in, they're actually doing a lot to improve those networks. So for us, it's a really important account. It's been our biggest wireless customer for a long time. It will considerably grow our relationship with them. The transition of that, the market share gain started in the third quarter of this year. So it was about a 6- or 9-month window before we could start. That's now in play. It's going as we expected. We expect to finish the year really strong in the second half and actually to have a really nice uplift in '25 because of that. So a great relationship, a big part of our wireless business. On top of that, we do a lot of work for T-Mobile and Verizon. Little bit differen, we don't have the same level of relationship and size that we do with AT&T. But both of them, obviously, big needs, big network needs. I think T-Mobile has been a lot more vocal lately about what they're planning to do for '25 and beyond and increases in their CapEx cycle. So we're pretty excited about what's happening in that market. And maybe just around about telecom, the rest of our business is on the wireline side, and the wireline business today is a business that is in an incredible growth cycle. We've got a lot of people overbuilding each other across the country for broadband expansion, both from the large traditional carriers to a lot of new entrants. What makes that business really interesting is the fact that there was an enormous amount of funding that got approved through the infrastructure bill called BEADs, which is going to be an influx of about $55 billion into the market, largest federal investment in telecom ever in the history of the country. We think that, that starts impacting the business at the end of next year. So when we put into -- when you look at all of the growth drivers, we're in a great spot, great momentum behind us. Margins are really lifting in the business. We expect to finish the second half of this year at roughly 11%, which is about 100, 150 basis point improvement from where we were in the second quarter. So margins are trending nicely. Work is trending nicely and we're pretty excited about what '25 and beyond brings.

Jose, maybe just back on the turf capture that you had here. Are there other similar opportunities that seem to be of scale out there, and what's the frequency of these sorts of opportunities? And your success with this, does that potentially play into T-Mobile as well in terms of winning more work?

Yes. Look, I think the -- if you look at the business case behind what we've been able to accomplish with AT&T on the wireless side, it makes an enormous amount of sense for them from a cost perspective and having a large vendor that can deploy, especially on big programs like they're doing. Everybody has a different procurement strategy, so every carrier is a little bit different. In addition to the wireless win last year, we did announce another win with AT&T, which was on the maintenance side of their business. So you think about RT sites, cell sites, potentially data centers. They have things like HVAC systems, they have things -- everything from cutting the grass to painting a building to fixing an HVAC system, they consider the maintenance of their plant. And last year, they awarded the entire maintenance across the country to 2 entities. Although it was a business that for all intents and purposes we didn't participate in, we were awarded half the country. That started in March of this year. So we've now been 6 to 9 months into that. A little bit different business than what we've generally been in, but it's gone really well. And I think that has tremendous opportunities to sell across every single carrier and any asset-heavy entity, really. So pretty excited about that as well.

Okay. And when do you think this Open RAN transformation really starts to accelerate for you, because the second half ramp, it's hard to tell what's the turf capture versus that sort of work picking up?

Yes, it's all the same, right, the -- well, what's driving the business in the turf capture is going to be Open RAN, right? So what's driving the increased volume levels is Open RAN. We're going to get a benefit from both, but I don't know that -- I think we'll talk a lot more about it as we begin delivering the results in the third and fourth quarter about how much came from each.

Okay. Fair enough. You talked a little bit about it, the public capital flow BEAD. I mean it goes beyond that into data center proliferation and especially in the wireline. And I mean, I guess one question would be, are you starting to have any preliminary discussions with hyperscalers around what they may potentially want to do on the wireline side. And I guess, just more broadly, can you provide the full spectrum of services in wireline that you think is needed out there right now?

Yes. There's a lot in that question. I think for us, maybe to go in a little different direction, data centers presents a whole slew of opportunities that we probably didn't expect a year ago. We entered the data center space through a different business. We actually entered the data center space through our civil business. We were doing mass creating work for a hyperscaler on a big swath of land that they bought, basically preparing the land for them to build data centers. As we learned more about that and learned more about what was going to happen in the data center world, we've become a lot more diligent about how are we going to attack that space. We've actually brought on a team at MasTec that has data center history and experience. We brought some developers in that all they did was work on the real estate side of data centers where they bought the land, they built the data center, whether it was co-located or ultimately sell it to a hyperscaler and have them identify what are all the different services that MasTec provides and how do we sell into the data center space. So what's interesting about MasTec is we really have the opportunity to provide some sort of turnkey to whether it's a hyperscaler or a real estate developer who's building on behalf of data centers. The biggest issue today in the space is everybody wants LAN, that has power -- [ readible ] power available, which is nonexistent. So every hyperscaler data center builder has to figure out how can I provide power to my data center. That's going to be a combination of things like renewables, solar with batteries. It's going to entail natural gas. It could potentially entail nuclear, some on-grid, some off-grid. So our involvement in that has dramatically escalated from being just a provider of civil services to one that can help them on the power side and ultimately, with our customers, build for them. Then that's evolved into our telecom business and what do we do on the telecom side and how do we integrate what we do in telecom as these data center buildouts happen. So you have everything from large hyperscalers announcing deals with fiber builders to build fiber on their behalf. That's easy for us. That's something that we obviously want to engage outside of a hyperscaler or a data center company, but then the on-prem work, right? Because there's an enormous amount of on-prem work, everything from building a substation on site to the electrical utilities that have to go from that substation to the building, from the telco that has to come from some demarc point into the building, water, sewer, all of the trades, right? So for us, that's all in our sweet spot. And what we've tried to do is we try to incorporate our entire portfolio and the entire opportunity set as we're selling in. So yes, we're super focused on telecom, but it isn't just about telecom, it's about everything else we can bring to the table. And to the extent that we can package a lot more of this together, we think we're going to be a lot more successful in winning. So telecom is a big piece of it, but it's going to be incorporated in the total package of what we're trying to do.

Very good. Maybe go to Clean Energy, Jose. I mean what -- certainly one of the concerns, and I'm sure you've gotten a little bit of this, is just around the timing of solar projects. Whether that's investigations, IRS guidance, permitting, et cetera, how are you navigating that?

Well, we've talked a lot about it, right, especially last year. I think when you think about the deal we did with IEA, again, their revenue was down 30% in a year where we thought the revenues would be up. One of the things we learned very early on in this business is project identification and project selection are the keys to the business. It's not even about customers. You could have really good customers that have good projects and bad projects. Understanding where our project lies, from panel availability to interconnect to financing, is the key as to when that project is going to get built and does it fit into the time frame that you expected from a construction cycle. I think we've gotten really, really good at that. I think that's what we kind of learned in '23. We lived through the circumvention agreement. We lived through all the financing challenges that a lot of our customers were having, the panel availability issues. Today, we think that the materials and the supply chain side of that business have greatly improved. We think if you're a developer today and you've got a project that's ready, whatever supplies you need, you can find them. Hopefully, you've ordered them a long time ago. Hopefully, you've got that in queue. But even if you don't, we think there's availability on the spot market today for just about anything you would need to build. Not really how it's happening because most of those guys have planned it out, but it's available there. When we think about financing, transferability as part of the IRA, it's been probably the most important aspect that's really taken impact to the business today. Transferability is real. Our customers are able to monetize their tax credits without necessarily having to go through the banking relationships that they had in the past. The banks used to control that market. Transferability has opened that market to become available to any corporate taxpayer. A lot of third parties have been created to kind of be a marketplace within that industry. That's having a huge impact on the ability of our customers to finance projects. So both of those are really positive. I think the big challenge that still exists in the market today is interconnect. We have a lot of customers that are challenged with their interconnection agreements. Some of them are delayed. Some of them are having to take 2- to 3-year windows before they can get a time slot on interconnect, which is delaying some of their projects. So I think all of those are incredibly important as we think about the work that we're going to perform. So when we're signing up to a project, we want to know about all of that to make sure that if we think that project is going to start in November or in May or whenever it may be, that we have a really good line of sight to that actually happening because it's what gives us revenue consistency in our ability to kind of plan our workforce accordingly. So I think we've gotten a lot better at it. There are still issues in the market. You've got some people that are doing really well in the market and generating really high margins. You have others that are really struggling. I think we're somewhere in the middle. I think we're still managing out of the issues that we had coming through our integration efforts. But I think we're past that tipping point, and I actually think you're going to see a lot of improvement in our business. As it relates to revenue and growth, I'm super optimistic about '25. I see the project portfolio we have. I know what customers it's with, and I have incredible confidence in our ability to significantly grow our business in '25 in renewables.

And Jose, a clarification on that [ excess ] for my questions, does that go beyond the backlog that you've already got in place today when you think about that visibility into 2025?

I, unfortunately, think that the way we determine what goes into our backlog doesn't give our investors the right visibility into our business. We've tried to talk a lot about it in our calls. For us to put something in backlog, we've got rules, right? So we only put 18 months' worth of revenue in backlog regardless of how big or how long the project is, and we only put something into backlog when we've signed a full contract and financing has been completed on that project. What's happening is that, that doesn't give you the full visibility of the project profiles that we're working on. So there's another leg to the stool that we call LNTPs. It's a limited notice to proceed. When a customer is planning to build a project, the first thing that they do is they issue a limited notice to proceed to get us to buy the long lead items. So it's not for everything. So if you've got -- just to pick numbers, if you had a $100 million project, your first LNTP might only be for $2 million or $3 million to secure a specific product that you need. But once a customer issues you an LNTP, it does say a few things, right? It says you should be in line to get the contract because they wouldn't be giving you the LNTP if you weren't going to be the builder. Doesn't guarantee it, but it gives you a very high assurance. Two, it gives you some assurances that, that project is going to move forward because that developer is putting equity, equity capital, not debt because they haven't closed their financing yet, to actually begin to fund that project. It's the first use of equity on that project. So for us, as that LNTP moves to a full contract, and usually it goes from one LNTP to a second LNTP to a third LNTP to a full contract, when that moves into a full contract is when we call it backlog. And when it's hit and when it hits, we expect to finish 2024 at record backlog levels, which gives us tremendous visibility into '25, but as importantly, our LNTP business continues to grow, right? So the amount of projects that we're in discussions with, the amount of projects that we're negotiating, the amount of projects that we expect to be in that conversion cycle is also increasing, which gives us not just great visibility for the short term or even for just 2025, but into a much longer nature in the business. And we think that's really important.

That's great. You talked about this investment theme, I mean the margin profile and continuing to work towards that. Clean Energy is one component of that. Is there anything you can tell us in terms of some of the underlying awards you're starting to see in the business and the progress that you think you're making on the bid margins on those awards?

Yes. I think obviously, every learning that we have, we try to embed in how we're bidding and ultimately what we win and how we win. More importantly than what's in future backlog is how are we performing on today's projects, right? Because that's what gives us the comfort to be able to talk about it. We're still living with a lot of issues that we've had over the course of the last couple of years. It's a lot of the reasons why our margins are where they are. We started by saying we expect to do about 5.5% in this business in 2024, which is kind of what we set out to do at the beginning of the year, but we're not doing any high-fives around that because it is -- actually should be dramatically better. The important part of that is we've seen internally tremendous progress, right? We can look at the jobs that we're working on that we started 3 months ago versus the jobs that we started a year ago, and we're seeing continued substantial improvement in our project mix and our project performance on what we're doing today, not on what we booked and what we expect in the future, but what we're actually doing today. That bodes really well for our future because we've taken that into account as we bid on the new projects and the new work that we've been awarded. So again, I think we're in this transitionary phase, right? 2023 was a year where we really underperformed relative to revenues. We kept a lot of costs on that, because we expected the business to grow, we had challenged projects that we had to work through. I think a lot of that has played itself out through the first part of '24. I think you're going to see really much improved margins in the third and fourth quarter in that segment. I think that's going to play really well into '25. When you couple that with the revenue growth that we expect and the new projects that we're winning, I think '25 is going to be a much, much better year in margins to the tune of 150, 200 basis points, and I think that there's still another 150 to 200 basis points of improvement available in that market. So while we have these awesome growth opportunities around our business, and whether it's telecom or data centers or power delivery, the truth is if we can just get our Clean Energy and Infrastructure margins to where they need to be, that in and of itself creates tremendous value at MasTec just by getting us to industry averages.

That's great. Power Delivery, you mentioned interconnect is a permitting issue as well. I mean tremendous opportunity in transmission work. Obviously, I think that's known. This big project is indicative of that, that you've won. I know you've said there's more out there. We can see visibly there's a lot more out there. Maybe talk about what the bid or prospect pipeline looks like for you. And I think the question, Jose, is what's your capacity to do a lot more than what you've already signed up to do?

Yes. It's a great question. I think as we look at the market, we look at it in 2 ways, right? You've got these mega projects. You have a lot of them. They've been planned for a long time. There are a lot of them that are either on the street now or going to be in that bidding cycle within the next 12 months. A lot of projects are going to be awarded in the next 2 years, going to carry the market for a really long time. I view that as one sector of the market. And then you have smaller transmission, maybe it's tie-ins, maybe it's projects affiliated with everything we've been talking about, industrial manufacturing, data centers, everybody who needs power, right. There's this big power need of increased power demand. The only way that gets fed is through transmission because where power is being generated is different than where power was generated before, so you got to build these transmission lines. I think that segment of the business is -- and it's somewhat unexpected because I don't think going into this year, we thought there were going to be these tremendous opportunities for power demand growth. I think that business is going to take off. I think the smaller transmission job with the associated substations that go with them is going to be incredible for our industry, tremendous opportunity that I don't think people truly understand yet or understand the magnitude of what that means. On the large project side, it's key for us, right, to have our share of that for us to have hopefully multiple projects working at the same time. We've got a big project that we need to deliver on that we need to execute. That's what our focus is today, but we feel strongly that given the opportunity to win another project like that, we could do it, we could handle them and we could execute.

Jose, you've talked about these projects, including the one you've been awarded, should be accretive to your margin profile in that segment. So you think about this over time, is there sort of an optimal mix for that segment between small and large that you want to stay within? And I guess also, Jose, how do you manage individual risk, I mean steps to big programs?

Yes. So again, if you look at our Power Delivery segment, I mean the bulk of what we do is still distribution related, right? We're a big distribution contractor across the country, pretty much everywhere geographically working for utilities. It's a great business. It's an important business. It's an important part of what we're doing. We're trying to expand that. We're growing with new customers. We're growing in new geographies. That business for us was challenged in '24, the rate cases that happened in Illinois and even what happened out in California with their undergrounding plans. We're very negative early in the year. It's had -- on a year-over-year basis, it's had north of a $200 million impact to our business. So I think we've been able to manage through that. I think that gets a lot better in '25, but that's kind of been the headwinds that we faced in '24. It's impacted margins. Our margins are down in '24 versus they are in '23. When you take into account the improvement that we expect to see there, coupled with the win that we've had in transmission, not only do I think we get the strong revenue growth in 2025, but at least I think we get back to the margin profile that we had in '23, right? And we've talked about our belief that that's a double-digit margin business over time. I don't think that we're going to guide that for 2025. But I do think that reaching the levels that we did in '23 and potentially better is what's in the cards for a short term, but there is nothing structurally about that business that doesn't allow it to be a double-digit business. From a mix of large to small projects, again, distribution, we're not deemphasizing distribution as part of our strategy. We think it's key to our business. It gives us tremendous resources. It gives us tremendous exposure to the utilities, which opens up a lot of other business opportunities for us. So the fact that we can go into the utility and not just talk about their distribution system, but talk about how they're going to meet the needs for data centers in the future, the things that they need to do, talk about their generation capacity, some are generators, some aren't. Many build their own renewables. So how do we go into a customer and get a bigger share of their total business, right? So get more distribution, get transmission, get substations, get renewable work, and that's an important part of it. So that's what we're focused on.

Okay. Last but not least, Oil and Gas. I think there's some interesting dynamics there behind the scenes. And I don't want to be overly optimistic, but there's a lot of recent announcements around gas-fired power. There's data centers talking about backup generation. Presumably, some of that's going to be fueled by gas or something else. I know you talked about this being sort of a $2 billion-ish a year business. Do you think that landscape is changing with some of the things that are starting to trickle into the market in terms of news flow from utilities and where they want to go.

Well, there's no question that the sentiment around gas has dramatically improved, right? I mean going all the way back to 2020, it was really negative, got a little bit better, but I still think there's been this cloud over that business. And I think that the realization here in the not-too-distant past that gas is going to be a part of the solution going forward no matter what, it's needed, you can't do what we want to do without natural gas has created a lot of buzz in energy within the sector. Our midstream customers are also having these same conversations with many of the same people we are. They're part of joint conversations. We think there's going to be a lot of gas-fired plants, whether it's peaker or permanent plants built. They're going to be fed through new gas pipelines. So very optimistic. Does it happen next year? No, right? These aren't projects that are going to come online from one day to the other. We're still seeing a lot of demand within the business, a lot of book and burn. One of our challenges is we just got off the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which it was dilutive to margins for the segment, but it had a lot of revenues. So when we sit there and say it's a $1.8 billion to $2 billion business on an ongoing basis, we think that's a pretty healthy clip relative to where we've been. It's still our highest margin performing business. We don't expect margins to dip. And we think there's a lot of opportunity. We think that there are some big pipelines that are still on the books that get built in the coming years. We think we can hopefully be a part of that. We think the carbon capture side of pipelines is really interesting and one that if it happens, it's going to meaningfully have an impact on our pipeline business and on the industry. And I actually think that we're closer to that than we've been in a long time. So again, it's probably the only business in our portfolio that we don't expect growth in for '25, but with that said, we're a lot more bullish now than we've been about that business over the last few years.

And very profitable.

And it's very profitable.

I mean touching on our limits here, Jose, you've given us a lot here. I appreciate that. Final thoughts, something you want to share to investors here about how we can think about the story in the next 12 to 18 months? n

Yes. Look, I mean '24 was an important year for us. We had a really tough '23, a lot of it self-imposed. Some of it was a little bit outside of our control relative to what was happening in the marketplace. We went out and we really feel like we've changed the face of this business over the last 4 years. We don't think we could be positioned any better than we are today for us to talk about execution, how do we take advantage of the organic growth opportunities that are in front of us and how do we drive margins and get the margin profile that we need in the business. And while that -- there's a lot of work behind that, and there's obviously risk and we have to deliver on that, it's a great place to be, right? It's a lot harder to be in a place where you don't know whether the revenue is going to be there, you don't know where your growth is going to come from. We have as many opportunities for growth as we want. We need to deliver and we need to deliver on margins. And we think if we can do that, then we think we're pretty undervalued relative to our peers if we can deliver, and that's what we plan to do.

Very good. Thank you.

Thank you.

Appreciate you joining us.