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

Okay. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Steve Fisher, UBS machinery engineering & construction and U.S. building materials analyst. We are really excited to have MasTec with us. We have Jose Mas, CEO. We have Paul Dimarco, CFO. We have Marc Lewis here as well. So we're going to do this as a fireside chat. And if anyone has any questions, we'll pause a couple of times and you can raise your hand if you have any questions, and we'll give you a microphone. So great to have you here. Thanks for being with us. Maybe just Jose to start off. What's the key message you want investors to kind of take away about where you are today, how 2024 has evolved and kind of where you're heading?

Sure. So first, Steve, thank you for having us. Excited to be here. 2024 for us has been a good year. We came off of a very difficult 2023, where we were living through really the integration of IEA, which was the acquisition that we had done at the end of 2022. So a challenging year at this time last year. We had come off of a year where we had a lot of project issues, understanding what projects we were going to work, had a lot of revenue shortfalls from our expectations were. And '24 for us was a year, where we were really trying to rebuild our credibility, understand the markets that we were in, the opportunities that were in front of us. And fast forward to our third quarter performance, and I think it really was the first time where we were able to demonstrate significant growth across our different segments, strength in margins across our different segments, which I think position us really well into '25 and beyond. We're blessed that today, we sit in a bunch of end markets that are incredibly strong. I'm sure we're going to talk about all of them, but whether it's Communications, Power Delivery or Clean Energy and Infrastructure, we feel really good about where we stand in the industry with the opportunity for us are and what our margin improvement opportunities are. And even in Oil and Gas, which we think will be slightly down next year because of the -- really the work off of MVP in 2024. The reality is that we've got excellent visibility. We got good visibility in '26 and '27 in future years in that market as well. So -- and with the current election, we think that's one area that the current administration will be very helpful in. So we're really excited about the opportunities that are in front of us. We're really excited about our growth potential for '25, not only on a top line basis, but again, on our ability to improve our margins across the board.

Great. Maybe just to keep it at a high level first. Talk a little bit about the company's strategy. Do you think -- you've obviously just explained that you have some really good growth opportunities out here for the next few years. Is this a time where bigger picture strategy is really not as much in the forefront for you? Or how are you describing the company's strategy today? And how far out are you thinking about with the strategy view?

Sure. I think that right now is the culmination of a lot of things that we've done over the course of the last 3 or 4 years, which I think it's important to keep talking about because we've come a long way. When you think about the pandemic, MasTec was just under $6.5 billion company. The biggest piece of our business at the time was the pipeline business. So we had a lot of exposure to gas, especially. And the pandemic came, obviously, it really impacted the oil and gas business. The thought was there's never going to be another pipeline needed again. We had a lot of the pivoting that happened in the energy industry as people were really moving to a carbon-neutral footprint. So we decided that we needed to pivot as a business. And when you think about 2021, where we made 2 large acquisitions, we started the year making an acquisition of a distribution transmission contractor in the Midwest, which at the time was the largest deal we had ever done. At the end of that year, in '21, we acquired a company called Henkels & McCoy, which was a 100-year-old company, $1.5 billion in revenue. At that time, the largest deal we had ever done. And then a year later, we acquired IEA, which became the largest deal we had ever done. So we made 3 concurrent record-size deals within a period of 1.5 years, 2 years. And then we had to integrate it, build the go-to-market strategy around the businesses. And I think fast forward here where we are 2, 3 years later, and I think we've been really successful with that. So one of the things that we're most excited about as we think about '24 is our positioning within the markets, right? Telecom has been our legacy business. But today, our positioning in Power Delivery and how customers view us, which was an aggregation of MasTec legacy with a number of acquisitions. Today, we go to market as one entity. We go to market across the country. In the second quarter, we were awarded the largest transmission job in our history, and one that we hope to replicate and we think that will be a big driver of our business over the long term. In Clean Energy and Infrastructure, I think in the third quarter you finally saw what that business is capable of doing as we've come together. So we think we've made really a lot of strategic decisions over the last 2 or 3 years that we're kind of starting to enjoy the fruits of that labor. So from a strategic perspective, I think we're in the right places. I think we have great opportunities in front of us. Obviously, what's happening with power demand load growth and the generation is going to come with it and our involvement in those businesses to support that is very exciting. So -- as I think about the future, I think we have an opportunity to get a lot larger in the businesses that we're in. We have probably the best organic growth opportunities that we've ever had as a business. And for us, it's all about executing on those today. So we've been able to significantly lower our leverage. We're in a good place on our balance sheet today. We have the ability to do some tuck-on acquisitions. We have the ability to really do whatever type of acquisition we wanted, but I think we're going to be really focused on organic growth, taking advantage of those opportunities and really trying to find a way to ultimately execute on that and execute it at the best margin profile we can. I think that's where strategically where we're really focused today and for the next few years.

Fantastic. Maybe one more to kind of keep it at a high level before we really dig into the sort of the end markets. Interesting to hear you talk about already 2026 and 2027 and the visibility that you have. What visibility do you have to that? Where -- how do you kind of frame what you know today already about 2026 and '27 at sort of a high level?

It's worth going through every segment on that, right, because I think it's important. But in the comms world, we did a really good job last year of expanding our key relationship with AT&T, where we provide wireless services. We expanded our, not just our geographic footprint, but they were also going -- they're starting to go through their big integration of converting the Nokia gear to Ericsson, which we're a big part of. That's -- we're just starting that now. So that really ramps up in a big way in '25 and goes into '26 and beyond. When you think about the wireline side of that business, a lot of the projects that we've been awarded to date are really in their infancy, so a lot of engineering and design work that's gone in, some of the construction starting. Some of it will start midyear. As you get to '26, that stuff starts maturing, you get a lot more construction activity on a full year basis. So we think revenues are actually a lot bigger for the work that we've already got in '26 versus '25, even '24. And then you've got BEAD funding and what that's ultimately going to bring to the table, which is going to drive that business for years and years to come. When you look at power delivery, for us, '25 will be the beginning of our first big transmission job. That job continues over the next 3 to 4 years. We think we have the ability of winning more of those. We think that utilities understand the issues that are coming relative to load growth and the need for them to expand their footprint. So we think CapEx in the utility space is going to significantly increase in the coming years, which is also going to drive the business again, not only in '25, but we think more importantly in '26 and beyond. When we think about Clean Energy, we had our own issues in '23. We fixed a lot of them in '24. I think '25 will be the first year where you see us get to the levels of work activity that we think we should have been at it, quite frankly, in '24. We feel like we're a year behind. I think that only grows in '26 and beyond. And in our pipeline segment, what we're seeing is we're still seeing a lot of constraints of activity that are happening in the Southern Shales. There's a lot of projects that have been announced that are going to be built in '26 and '27. I wish they could be built earlier, but some of the permitting issues or constraints that they have just projects through we're expecting to launch in '26 and '27. So we actually have really good visibility in that business for multiyears, where we haven't had that in a long time. So across our portfolio, again, one of the benefits that we have is not only are we seeing strength as we head into '25, but we're seeing long-term viability and really the opportunity to grow across all of our segments. The big theme around it being load growth, power generation, what has to happen with the grid, and we feel like we're in the perfect spot in the market today.

Fantastic. So maybe we can start digging into that a little bit more. And starting with the Clean Energy business. Maybe starting near term, in the third quarter, a little bit of a revenue slow start, I guess, I would say, to this next ramp of solar projects that you -- or renewables projects that you have going. Is there anything in your mind that's sort of holding back the revenue growth on that part of the business at this point? Or is that now sort of really to kind of release its potential?

I thought the third quarter was a really strong quarter relative to the second quarter, slightly below where our initial expectations were. I think fourth quarter is going to be a really strong quarter from a revenue perspective in that business as well. And more importantly, when we look at backlog, we're at a record backlog level. So we've significantly increased backlog on a year-over-year basis of where we were in renewables. I think that's what gives us tremendous visibility and comfort as we think about '25. We expect that business to be up significantly in '25 versus where it was in '24. And we feel really good about our project mix, right? We know there's a lot of questions out there about IRA and some of the panel issues, but we feel we're really insulated from that. We think we really understand the projects that we're working on, the risks that exists within those projects and our ability to execute on those projects in the current environment. So I mean, the truth is that comparing that business today to where it was a year ago, it's like night and day. We're performing better. We've got a lot of work in front of us. We've got great relationships. We've been able to significantly expand our alliance agreements with our customers that give us multiyear outlook on the business. So I think on a comparison basis, on a year-over-year basis, I feel like we're light years ahead of where we were at this point last year in that business, which we had predominantly acquired at the end of '22. So again, that first year was rough. I think we've made great strides in the business, and I think we're sitting in the best position we've ever been in as it relates to renewables.

That's great. Maybe building on that, as we think about kind of a step function from last year, like you said to this year, great progress. And then thinking about the next handful of years on how you might grow that business, what would be the approach to growth there? Is it taking on a wider range of customers? Is it within the existing customer base you have doing more projects, more wallet share? What's the sort of the growth strategy for that over the next handful of years?

I think it's all of the above. One of the interesting things that MasTec offers is we have a lot of different customers that have different businesses, right? So especially when you think about renewables, some are utility customers, some are renewable developers. The utility customers have a lot of other business. They're built in a lot of transmission, a lot of them have distribution. So how do we cross-sell our services into a customer that we have today and not just do the activity for that one project, but how do we do multiple services for them is definitely an area that we're trying to focus on from a growth perspective as it relates to other MasTec entities. For the developers of those business, for your typical renewable developer, everybody is getting into battery storage in a much bigger way today than what's historically been the case. So we feel that, that's a huge area of growth and potential for us. So across our renewables portfolio, we view battery storage being a bigger and bigger component of that as the years go on. And then it's really just understanding the market, right? How do we help participate with them. Some of our other businesses work for the hyperscalers on the data center side. So how do we help our customers make the right connections, understand who's looking for what in what geography? How do we bridge those and then ultimately make those relationships pay off for both of our customers, which will ultimately pay off for us.

Great. Maybe understanding your customer base a little bit more. I know a lot of what you do with your customers is based on looking at their multiyear long-term plans? How much of your customer base is really having that type of discussion with you versus maybe more kind of transactional one-offs?

Yes. On the renewable side, half of our -- more than half of our work next year will come from alliance agreements. So it is really skewed towards that. If you look at the top 20 renewable developers in terms of megawatts installed in 2024, we're working for 12 of them. So I really think that we've got a really strong customer base. We're working hard to work for the rest of them. So we've got to go to work for all of them. But we view that as a really strong customer base. And again, we think that when a customer entrusts you with a multiyear opportunity. And when they're saying, we're not just talking to you about projects for '25, but we want you to be on our system for years to come, I think that speaks to the level of work performance and quality that we're doing, and we want to continue to do that. So we're encouraged, our customers -- we think there's a lot of benefits for both sides, and we're encouraging our customers to really look at alliance agreements as a way to ensure that they have the right labor to meet their demands.

And from a capacity perspective, how actively are you adding more teams for renewables work at the moment?

I think in '23, we were underutilized. So I think one of the challenges that we had post the IEA acquisition is throughout '23, we were never able to have enough work for the number of people that we collectively had. I think we've made huge inroads to that in '24. When we looked at the teams that we required for the second half of '24 versus the first half of '24, there was a huge ramp. So our second half revenues are considerably higher than our first half. We've met that ramp. When we look at '25, we have further ramps. So we are significantly increasing the number of teams that we'll have between -- by the time '25 ends from the time '25 starts. So we think that will put us in a great position as we enter '26. But we're constantly increasing the level of the capabilities that we have, both on the wind side and the solar side and the power and the battery storage side of the business as well.

Great. Chatting with some of the investors here at the conference, I think there are some concerns about some of the tariff-related issues. I know you're very well connected in some of the work you do on behalf of the industry in Washington, D.C. What are your thoughts in general about anything tariff related, how it may affect the solar panel opportunity and your projects in particular?

When we look at our customer base, I think the most important part of the IRA for them is on the utility scale tax credit side. And I think there's bipartisan support of that. I actually think there's a lot of Republicans in Congress that have come out very vocally in favor of that. So I actually think we're a lot safer than people think relative to that. I think there's pieces of the IRA that are going to be challenged. Luckily for us in MasTec, we don't think we're very exposed to those pieces. I think there's going to be a lot of noise. But at the end of the day, I think the things that matter to us as a business and what matters to the wind, solar market at the utility scale level is going to be pretty safe.

And from an antidumping and countervailing duties implications, anything that sort of is on your mind related to that?

You have to be aware of where your customers are buying panels. I think the big difference in our business, and I think it's really important is we've got to understand the risk that our customers are taking on their projects, right? So when we agree to build something, we need to know outside of our control, what are the risks that a customer has to bring that project to fruition. The earlier we can get engaged with that customer the more we know that. And I think that's one of the really good things that we've done in '24 today. I think we understand really well what our project -- what our customers' project portfolios are, where the risks are in their projects, what are the potential downfalls for us, and we manage through that.

Terrific. Maybe shifting gears a little bit into the Communications area. We talked a little bit about this before when we were talking about '26 and '27, maybe building on that. So it sounds like there's a few legs to the stool of the growth in this segment. I guess, starting with the wireless side, how smoothly is that part of the business sort of ramping at this point the Ericsson opportunity?

I'd say that in the third quarter, which was really the start of the ramp, it went well. We were in some of the markets that were impacted by hurricanes. So I do think that had some impact to the ramp. Obviously, the people that are in market and have to take care of their families. They have challenges. There was a lot of areas that did get heavily damaged during the storm. So I think that impacted some of the ramp for us in the third quarter relative to that. I think the fourth quarter is going smooth. And I think as we get into '25, which was our plan all along, the work is there, the product is on the ground. We don't really have any supply chain issues. But we feel like that's going to play out exactly as we expected.

And remind us what's the duration of that? And when do you sort of hit the peak revenue run rate of that?

Yes. So there's 2 pieces of that. One is the market share gains that we got. That's permanent. That will be in place forever. So those are markets that we weren't working in, that we're now working in, and we'll provide the services for AT&T in those markets in perpetuity hopefully, right until or until there's another contract change but hopefully in perpetuity. And then you have, specifically the work that they're doing around the Ericsson, Nokia changeout, and that's really just getting started, and that's probably -- we expect to be on that for 5-plus years.

Okay. Terrific. And then on the wireline side, maybe talk a little bit about the breadth of what you're doing there. I know there was some RDOF work that you were involved in. Now there's more data center related. How do you break down the wireline business? And how do you see that playing out?

I mean, the market has been incredibly active. Obviously, RDOF was a big contributor to the market, the rural digital opportunity fund. $9 billion were invested across the industry to carriers that were building out in those markets. I still think that a lot of the growth that we've seen through '24 has been driven by that or business decisions on behalf of our customers to expand their plant. That's what's been driving the business. I think that continues for the next few years. I think the RDOF projects that we've been working on, we're at the very early innings of those RDOF spend. So even though the money got allocated a while ago, those builds will take years to complete. Today, we're seeing -- we have 2 other catalysts that we see in that business that are going to hit soon. One is BEADs, which is the funding that came out of the same infrastructure build to increase -- again, disenfranchised are underserved markets relative to telecom. That's a $40 billion-plus market, which dwarfs the size of RDOF. That money is going through the states. The states are going to award. We don't really see the impact. We don't expect to see the impact of that until 2016. I think we'll see awards in '25, but not a lot of financial impact until '26. That's going to be a huge driver for the market for years to come. And then I think the other piece that kind of gets lost is, if you believe in the data center and artificial intelligence market that's coming, which we do, there's going to be an enormous amount of bandwidth needs relative to fiber. So we've seen some of it to date, right? Lumen has publicly announced a large award with a hyperscaler, where they're going to be helping that hyperscaler interconnect facilities. We're going to be a participant on that, which we've announced. But I think there's so much more of that coming. The market in general is really chasing a lot of that work from our customers' perspective. I think a lot of our customers are going to be successful in getting a piece of that market share, and we'll benefit from that.

And going back to your point about awards on BEAD-related work for -- in 2025, do you have any sense if you can even parse it out, this finally -- is that like a first half award or second half? And is there any sort of new uncertainties related to kind of postelection on that process?

So there's a couple of states that their awards will be sooner. We'll probably see some awards. We've already seen some, actually. We -- there's already been some announced awards in some markets. I think we'll see more of them as the first part of the '25 comes in. But again, that's -- those are awarded to potential customers of ours. And then they start network planning, engineering, design. So for real construction activity, you're looking at for a lot of the earlier awards that we see through '25.

Great. Now on the data centers is a very exciting opportunity. You've talked about $1.5 billion of opportunities related to data centers. What does that $1.5 billion represent? What does it mean in terms of services and scope would be included in that for you?

Yes. So we started working on the data center side, almost by accident about a year ago. The primary services that we've been offering today are mass rating through our civil business. So we actually think our contracts to prepare land on behalf of some hyperscalers. As that market started to evolve, we wanted to get a better understanding. So we actually hired a team that came from data center development experience. They kind of canvassed MasTec to understand what it is that we did. And then we figured out how to go to market with that. So if you think about a data center, if you think about the building, everything outside that building, we're capable of doing. So whether it's building a substation on site on behalf of the hyperscaler, whether it's doing all the underground facilities for everything from telecom to power to water, that's the infrastructure we're building. So when we talk about the opportunity set that we're chasing, we started the year working with 1 hyperscaler, being able to approve the bid for 1 hyperscaler. Today, we're approved a bid for 4. So that $1.5 billion falls within those scopes of services. I think there will be other opportunities to do different things with data center developers, but today, those are the services that we're focused on.

And what has to happen for that work to start flowing into your backlog and into your revenues?

Well, I mean we've said in 2024, we'll have about just under $200 million of data center-related work that we've actually executed on. So I'd argue we've already done. We've had really nice growth in that business in '24 versus where it's been. I think the potential is much greater. There's a lot more that we can do, which is why we highlight the $1.5 billion of pursuits.

Great. Maybe let's shift gears to power delivery. I think in earlier part of our conversation, you talked about the business or sort of having more of an integrated national footprint. I'm just kind of curious how you think this business is coming together. Like you said, it started with a transmission piece. You added interim to it. Is it now a seamless unit that goes out looking for sort of partnership relationships with utility customers in that way?

So it's definitely a national unit. We have geographical breakdown. So we do have the country broken up in a number of geographies internally as we manage it, but we go to market as one. A big piece of our business is day in, day out utility works, so it's doing the maintenance for utilities. That business is broad-based, pretty much across the country from the West Coast to the Southeast to parts of the Northeast and everywhere in between. I think we've done a really good job there of growing our customer relationships, not just with our existing customers, but actually a lot of new customers that we've been able to penetrate that work on. We've vocally talked a lot about this year about the challenges that we had in the Midwest with the public -- some of the public service commissions and the cutbacks that they put on their state utilities. ComEd was a big issue for us. We were impacted by about $200 million just in 2024 of work that was deferred because of the rate base cases and decisions. Based on that, we actually went out and started to fill that work with potentially other customers, which I think as we're looking at '25 and we're seeing some of that comment, we'll come back in addition to the other work that we've won, we're actually quite bullish that we've done a good job of materially growing the business. And then on top of that, we've had the pursuits of the larger transmission jobs. Again, of which in the second quarter, we won the biggest job in our history. So I think that will continue. I think when we think about transmission, you have very large projects and you have a lot of smaller and midsized projects. I think both of those markets are extremely healthy and both markets that we're going to grow into off really nicely.

So can you talk a little bit more about that transmission project? How broadly are you targeting that market? What does this project represent as sort of a stepping stone to doing more work in that regard?

Yes. So it's a major project. We've announced it's a 3- to 4-year project at $300 million to $500 million a year. So it's sizable. Again, I think that winning that project, especially from a reputable customer gives us a lot of credibility in the marketplace. I think today, there is a number of other pursuits that are active. I think we've got a good chance to not only participate in them, but continue to win projects over time. So it's a market that -- again, it's a large important win for us. It's -- we think it's a defining win for us. But at the same time, we hopefully believe it's going to be the first of many.

Great. Just, I suppose, last year, shifting to Oil and Gas. A little bit of a light backlog at the moment, but it sounds like maybe 2025 is a bit of a transition year. What do you -- how should we think about the drivers of a future rebound of that business?

Yes. I think '25 will be a good year, just slightly under where '24 was. I think '24 was a really good year, much better than we anticipated when we gave guidance coming into '24. I think the big drop off for us is what happened with MVP. We generated a lot of revenue with MVP that won't be there in '25. But we're making some of that up. I think, again, there's a number of projects that have kind of been verbally awarded to start in '26 and '27. Our ability to kind of bring any of those to '25 would have a material impact on '25 and could potentially offset some of that shrinkage that we expect. With that said, because of those projects, we've got about as good visibility out a year or 2 than we've ever had, right? So I strongly believe '26 is going to be better than '24 or as good as '24 from a revenue perspective, which I think is a very bullish sign a year out. And I think '27 will be similar. So we're seeing a lot of activity and a lot of that is preelection. So I think that if there's any changes that this new administration can make to help with permitting, I think it makes a big impact, right? I also believe that irrespective of any legislative things that the previous administration did, it was very negative around oil and gas. And I think the biggest harm that, that did was it cut capital out to the industry. People didn't want to invest in oil and gas for lots of reasons. I think people have come to the realization that gas is going to be a significant portion of new power generation in the future. And I think capital is starting to come back into that market, which is important, which will ultimately drive our business and help our business. I don't even think we've actually modeled that into '26 to '27, but I think that can only be accretive to what we've been saying.

Terrific. Maybe we'll take a pause here to see if anyone has any questions. Anyone in the audience would like to ask a question? If not, we will just continue on here. Maybe Paul, you've been in the role for now, I guess, a couple of years. Made some very good progress on cash flow and the balance sheet. Maybe talk a little bit about kind of what are some of the core things that you've been working on that have resulted in sort of this progress on cash flow and the balance sheet.

And the biggest thing is just focus, Steve, and it's not just focus when you're trying to prepare the bills, but it's early on in the contract negotiations so that there is full visibility around what has to be provided to the customer to build timely and accurately, right? So that's where we've seen the biggest reduction in working capital is through our contract assets, which is generally unbilled receivables. And that's a big improvement in our Communications space, which performed very well. The mix has helped, both our civil business and our Clean Energy businesses typically have better working capital profiles. So as that business has grown, they've performed well. But just the contractual structures and our ability to keep those projects cash flow positive or at a minimum cash flow neutral over a big portion of the duration has been a benefit as well. But we're just really proud of the business is focused on it. We made it a priority. We made commitments around our leverage and what we expected to show the market post the strategic acquisitions we did in '21 and '22. And we did it so that we can have the flexibility around capital allocation to get back to where we are now. So if our priority is organic growth, or investments to facilitate work with customers or M&A or returning capital to shareholders. We want to get back to that place so that we can be in a position to be most strategic around what's best for us and our constituents from a return perspective. So I think we made great strides. And we think we've got the ability to continue to generate a lot of strong free cash flow with the profile and then markets that we're in today.

Great. One of the things that I think is pretty important about an organization like yours, where you have a lot of different subsidiary operations doing a lot of different things around the country, sort of the flow of information and making sure you have everything at your fingertips. I think you've done some good work to really sort of improve that process over the last couple of years. Can you talk about kind of what you've done there and how that's helping you kind of manage information flow a bit better?

Yes. I think in the immediate phase post the acquisitions, like we [ run ] to the summer of last year, it was brute force. It was Jose and our COO and myself, proactively working with everyone to make sure they were bubbling up information quickly, right? And we had to do that at the time because we were working through those integrations and we clearly had a lack of visibility into what was going on, on the ground with the customer in terms of the risks they were seeing, with projects moving forward at the cadence they expected. And I think that brute force worked at the time. And now it's been institutionalized in the business, so that the way the information flows from our business development platforms into our execution tools, gives us consistent visibility in the formats that our business needs to see, so that we can digest it and then share it with The Street accordingly. There's still work to do, particularly in our Clean Energy and our power delivery businesses. They've been built through acquisition, disparate systems. So we're working on ERP standardizations in the segments as we speak. Those are big projects. They take a lot of time, but we think that's only going to enhance the flow of information, the standardization of information so that we have good comparability across time and across project types. That will only make us more effective in terms of how we're allocating resources, and pushing those resources towards opportunities to improve our performance.

Great. Maybe bringing that back to Jose in terms of overall risk management. How do you feel about sort of taking on execution risk at this point? It sounds like you've got 1 big transmission project. Do you think you could do more? How do you feel like what's the appropriate level of risk to put in the organization and at this point going forward?

I think it's a great question. As I think about the difference between, again, where we are today to where we were a year ago, I think we've dramatically derisked the portfolio. I think our businesses are more mature. So if you think about our renewables business, we've got a lot more projects under our belt. We've got a much better understanding of the industry. I think we've been able to, through the terms and conditions and contracts create a lot more protection we actually had a year ago, and understand what those risks are because I don't think we even understood them at the time. So as I look going into '25, I actually view a much more derisked portfolio. The things that we're doing, we've been doing for a long time. We've got a good expertise on. I think we've been really conservative around our approach of understanding our backlog and understanding how that's going to impact 2025 across all the segments. So I feel really good. I actually -- in going into '25, I feel like we've got not just a solid plan, but very well discussed -- if you look at the analysts' estimates that are out there today, we think they're very achievable. We haven't provided formal guidance. But we do that by building off of how we feel internally about each segment. And I think the visibility that we have gives us comfort in being able to say that.

Terrific. Maybe then -- I was going to finish with that. But since you beat me to it, maybe I'll just add one other topic here. Coming back to the idea of M&A since you do have -- you're in a better balance sheet position, cash flow has improved. How are you approaching M&A at this point? Is there any particular white space? It sounds like maybe more breadth of services. What looks interesting today? And is there anything been necessary?

I think in '22 and '23, both years because we were coming off of big acquisitions in '21 and '22. We put the organization through a lot of stress. I don't think -- I think we have so many organic growth opportunities in front of us. We have so many opportunities to execute and grow that we shouldn't put the organization under that stress in the short term. So I don't think you should expect us to do anything really large or anything that requires a lot of integration. I think there's an opportunity for some really solid tuck-in opportunities. Potentially, we could look at things that are outside of our current businesses, which make integration a little easier. But I think our focus going into '25 for sure, is on delivering on organic growth, continuing to build our balance sheet. We're in a much better position today than we were a year ago and then really creating that optionality for ourselves and then trying to see what's out in the market, what's available and be opportunistic about it.

And if you're willing to go this far in terms of kind of framing what tuck-in kind of means from a dollar perspective, are these tens of millions? Is this hundreds of millions? How do we think about what sort of tuck-in might mean?

Yes. I think that for us at our size and scale today, a tuck-in operation could be anything that has $50 million to $250 million in revenue.

Okay. Terrific. Well, thank you so much, and best wishes for a great holiday season and 2025. And thanks for coming today.

All the same to you. Thanks.

Appreciate it. Thanks, everybody.