MDU Resources Group, Inc. (MDU) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hi. Good afternoon. My name is Brian Russo I'm an equity research analyst at Sidoti. Joining us today is MDU Resources' CEO, David Goodin; and CFO, Jason Vollmer. We'll start off with a 20 to 25 minute presentation, then open up for Q&A. Participants can enter questions using the Q&A function at the bottom of their screen. And with that, I'll hand it over to David and Jason for the MDU presentation.

Well, thank you, Brian, and welcome, everyone, to the MDU Resources presentation. Again, I'm Dave Goodin, President and CEO of MDU Resources. As Brian noted, also joining here is our Vice President and Chief Finance Officer, Jason Vollmer, as well. You can see our overview slide there. I'll have you turn to our next slide. Thank you, Emily. Our forward-looking statements. Certainly, our comments here today are based on certain forward-looking statements, and I think probably everyone is familiar with this, but understand results may and potentially could vary from what our forward-looking statements may look like, but they're based on the best belief that we have as to what our view of the future would be. Next slide. So an overview of MDU Resources, if I think of MDU Resources, we are building a strong America. That's our tag line, has been our tag line for the last 15-plus years, particularly of emphasis over this last 5 years, and I'll get into some of those reasons why. We're truly an infrastructure business, and we do that through 4 branded businesses that really span 2 platforms of business. And the brands are at the bottom of this slide. There are our utility business, where we do electricity and natural gas over an 8-state footprint serving about 1.15 million customers. We also do that through a FERC regulated pipeline business called WBI that serves parts of those same 5 states that our utility serves but also helps get processed natural gas to market through a long-term take-or-pay contracts with third-party producers. We also run a platform of business that's really construction focused. And it's in 2 segments there. It's construction materials under the brand of Knife River. Knife River is certainly a top 10 aggregate provider in the United States. We serve 15 Western markets, inclusive of Hawaii and Alaska and we do sand, gravel, ready-mix, road construction, asphalt, asphalt oil, bridge corridors, kind of everything associated with the transportation sector and the heavy materials industries. And in Construction Services, our other business and our construction platform tends to do those construction activities that tend to surround the electrical industry, both from an outside serving utilities and a T&D manner to inside electrical work to major industrial and large commercial customers that typically are Fortune 50 or Fortune 100 customers. Next slide, Emily. A little bit of what we summarize is our investment thesis in MDU Resources. I mentioned us being an infrastructure business. We really centered on these 2 platforms of business 5 years ago or so. So starting here in 2015, we gave some 5-year metrics, whether it's earnings per share, compounded annual growth, EBITDA basis, but you -- I won't repeat all these numbers, you can certainly look at these at your leisure. But you could see there's -- in our opinion, and I think shown here quite strong financial performance over these last 5 years in these lines of business. And you can also see that we have a strong balance sheet, BBB+ rated at both Fitch and S&P with stable outlooks on those as well. And we also have been paying a dividend actually for 83 consecutive years, increasing that dividend over the past 30 years. And certainly, I will touch on our proven management team. Myself, I've been part of the MD organization for now over 38-plus years. and Jason has been with us for over 15 years, and I'll touch on our CEOs here in a little bit. Next slide, Emily. A quick snapshot of where we're at year-to-date as through June 30 of this year, you would see both operating revenues have ticked up some $90 million on a year-over-year basis. EBITDA contribution is also up on a year-over-year basis about $47 million. Net income up roughly $27 million year-over-year, and then that translates to about $0.14 per share on a year-to-date basis, 2020 versus 2021. Next slide, Emily. Certainly, some of our key story on these 2 platforms of business that we centered on, like I mentioned, as we really exited our oil and gas business that we've been into for almost since the late 1920s actually, we formally exited that in early 2016, we felt that was -- could be a good business. It was a large consumer of capital and also it really subjected us to quite a bit of commodity exposure. And those that invested in us for a utility for some predictable returns and kind of expectations of cash flow, quite different than the oil and gas business, where we could be highly successful 1 year due to the drill bit and maybe not as successful but next year because of commodity price downturns. And so we formally exited the oil and gas -- And obviously, we got out of our gas processing business at the same time and just overall reduction to commodity exposure. And so the 3 pie charts on the bottom of this page shows some of an evolution of our business just since 2007, taking us to our still oil and gas in 2013, you could see oil and gas actually, at that time, contributed 40% of our net income and over $350 million of EBITDA. And you can see today as we really expanded, if you will, both regulated energy and construction activities. You can see they each take in somewhat balanced from year-to-year, approximately half, some years more one or the other. But from an EBITDA perspective, roughly half each year and income tends to vary given higher depreciation that we have at the utility business. Next slide, please. This slide shows our capital expenditures. Again, going back to the 2015 time frame, we get a sense of where we've been putting our invested dollar. You can see there's really a baseline of regulated investments here shown by the utility. The pipeline would be stacked on top of that. And then the earlier years of this, 10-year period would show a lighter touch on CapEx, particularly in our construction businesses. And then you can see we increased our capital investment in the latter years of this and then looking forward into 2023, where we're increasing some of that capital investment at both construction services and construction materials. We've got a 5-year CapEx budget out in the public markets. We refresh that every November. Our most recent one, which dates back to last November, would show a $3 billion, a 5-year CapEx plan with about 70% of that earmarked to the regulated electric and gas business along with the pipeline and then the 30% remaining would be primarily for construction materials with a smaller portion of that being in construction services. And you can see some of the kind of key projects associated with each of those business lines on this chart. Next slide, Emily. So our construction businesses are really a roll-up strategy. We originated this strategy you can see back in 1992. So it's 29 years in the making for construction materials. 1997 was the first year that we acquired a business in the construction service industry. A short backdrop. I know we're short on time today, but how did we get into construction materials in the first place? Well, in 1992, we actually had a coal mining business within MDU Resources, providing fuel for some of our coal-fired power generation plants. Well, we took that expertise and pivoted into the aggregates business with our first acquisition in '92 and then roll forward some 85-plus acquisitions to date. Now we become a top 10 producer of aggregate -- and aggregate-related materials. Similarly, Construction Services started '97, first acquisition there really spawned out of our utility operations. And that what do we know how to do? We know how to build power lines. We know how to build pipelines. Let's look to do those for others. And so it started as an outside T&D rollout strategy. We added inside electrical services along the way, and we do some other related products around the inside electric business. We do a little bit of mechanical. We do a little bit of fire suppression. We also manufacture equipment for the outside transmission distribution work. And so roll forward, 25 plus or minus acquisitions over -- since 1997 as to what we have today is construction services. We'll get into some details of what each of these businesses and kind of some of their key metrics are here in just a minute. Next slide, Emily. Very good. Well, let's dive right into the segment overview. Next slide. So I've touched a little bit about the regulated energy delivery business. It's really primarily organic growth driven, rate base driven at both electric and natural gas business. And then finding organic pipeline opportunities, if you will, in the interstate pipeline business for large industrial commercial businesses and/or finding ways to get natural gas processing plants, get their residue gas, their pipeline quality gas to markets. Those tend to be our primary ways in which we grow our regulated footprint. And you can see some of the breakdown here between both electric gas, pipeline business. On the construction side of the business, really, it throws off oftentimes a lot of cash. And that cash that can be deployed back into those construction businesses, maybe through organic needs and/or M&A opportunities or they can be used to offset, if you will, equity needs at a growing rate base that we've got in our regulated set of businesses as well. We do look for continued M&A activity in both of our construction businesses. Our business development teams are quite active in that area. And since about 2017, we've seen kind of a steady asset addition through M&A at both services and materials. Next slide, please. I'll start with Construction Services. You can see we're in nearly a national footprint, all but the far, I'll say almost Northeast, 43 states of operation. We've got a relatively large workforce here, just under 8,000 employees at peak season, a split between that inside and outside electrical business and other construction specialty contract-related businesses, but you can see the mix there are 6 outside 12 inside businesses. Particularly of notice, I think, is that we're #5 in the US from an electrical contractor perspective. And so I think that helps others to understand that we do have scale in this business, and we do have some national reach. We've got some charts on the bottom of this page. You can take a look at, but you can see quite nicely how we have grown, both from a revenue perspective last year, just shy of $2.1 billion in revenue, and that then generated about $173 million of EBITDA. Next slide. This business is truly on a record pace. In fact, the last -- I'll get to a slide here a little bit, but it talks about the last 5 years of both growth on a topline and a bottom line basis. The second quarter was no exception to that, with record second quarter earnings just shy of $29 million. Again, strong work really throughout the economy. We find that the electrification of the economy is happening and that provides more and more opportunities, whether it's on the T&D side for our outside crews or whether it's in the high tech, the mission-critical, social media, search engine companies, e-commerce-related businesses that all require more and more sophisticated electronics and computing power. We also had record second quarter revenues at $525 million. That was up from the record pace that we were at last year. And then I think from a forward look perspective, the backlog at $1.32 billion is also a record. Next slide, Emily. So I touched earlier about the 25 acquisitions to date. A recent example would be literally a couple of weeks before the pandemic was declared. This was in February of 2020, we acquired PerLectric. They're based in Fairfax, Virginia. It added another solid footprint for us on the mid-Atlantic area. It's just outside of DC. One of the large retailers, e-commerce businesses, H2Q is located in that general area in the process of. And so we just saw that as a nice growth market for us that, again, adds to more of our national footprint and ability to kind of reach nationally focused companies kind of around the US as well. And you can see the chart here on segment revenue and how nicely we've grown that business revenue-wise as well. Next slide, Emily. When I think of infrastructure, I think here's an example that really cuts across to both of our construction businesses, both in service transportation. I mean airport work, we do both runway work. We'll do terminal work so far as electrical related with that. You can see, I mean, electricity is a broad category. It could be T&D work of our own at our own utility, but it also could be, again, building power lines for third parties that, again, we're in many, many states that we aren't able to do that as well. And then you get a sense too of kind of the expected CapEx spending, just to give you a sense, I think, of the runway of opportunity sets that we see in the infrastructure business, both in the construction space and obviously, even on our regulated companies as well. And so I think it gives you a sense of what the potential here is particularly on the construction side. Next slide, Emily. Our other construction business is the one that we pivoted from being a coal mining company to an aggregate business. Here's our footprint, kind of think of the Mississippi River and then look west. There's a handful of states we're not in. There's more states than that we're not, and don't forget Hawaii and also Alaska. We have very strong presence in those states, in particular, in the aggregate space and cement and ready-mix space as well. Key to this business is having access to aggregates. And you can see we have got 1.1 billion tons under reserve. And so that really starts the value chain for us here. And having a source of aggregates allows us an opportunity that we do have some vertical integration in a number of our markets where we're not only a seller of that aggregate, but we may also be providing the lay down and the construction services that surround that, whether it's [ bridge work ], whether that's road work, whether that's subdivision work, whether that's selling ready-mix to contractors and housing developers for foundations and driveways and sidewalks and curb and gutter. We do all of those things in addition to that subdivision road and base work and asphalt work as well. And then you can see a couple of charts in the bottom revenue along with EBITDA growth that we've seen last year, a little over $300 million of EBITDA on -- just shy of $2.2 billion in revenue. Next slide, please. Construction Materials second quarter, we had very strong earnings, 51.4%. It was just a little bit shy of the record second quarter than we had the year prior. We did have some additional expenses mostly in some of the medical related plans that we had. And also there was some stock benefit plans because of the strong company performance came in a little bit higher as well. And partially offsetting that was some lower interest with Jason and his crew finding lower interest rates in this current environment as well. Strong second quarter revenues at almost $634 million, certainly up from a year ago as well. And in particular, our backlog here was at really a strong level, up slightly from the year before at a little over $912 million. Next slide, please. I mentioned earlier that it all starts with the aggregates for this business. It is really key. We do not want to be in the construction business without having a source of our own aggregates. Now we may purchase from ourselves. We may purchase from other parties if we find that advantageous in certain situations, but we need to have our own source of aggregate, certainly is an option for us to -- from our laydown services. The bottom part there kind of talks about the overall aggregates industry. You can see it's a $27 billion plus or minus addressable market in the US. And there really is not alternatives that are currently available. And so it's very much has a competitive advantage when you're able to site and permit reserves that are within a readily available transportation distance to a given markets. And you get some pricing strength there that really in and out of recessions while demand may slow down at times during recessions, pricing power still really continues. And so we've seen that to be true even throughout the 2008/2009 time frame. And then you get a sense of our volume growth on aggregates on the right side of this chart last year, right around 32 million tons of sales. Next slide, please. Key to this business is continuing our M&A strategy. Again, you get a sense here of our continuation of how we started this business. So we've learned what makes good acquisitions. We know what makes good tuck-ins and bolt-ons. We on occasion to make a platform acquisition like we did in the fall of 2018 in Eastern South Dakota. A recent example here would be late in 2020. We acquired the McMurray Ready-Mix assets. They are in South Central, Southeastern Wyoming, came with 100 million tons of reserves over 9 or 10 different aggregate sites there as well. We were already in that market to some extent, but this really made us a very solid and significant player in source of material. And we also got I-29 and I-80 corridors covered there in the kind of greater Casper, Wyoming area, and it certainly complemented our existing ready-mix operations where, again, we're sourcing some of our own rock -- but this really added to and complemented. And by the way, it's in an area in the US that we'll likely see more and more wind resources being deployed and each of those towers require a fair amount of ready mix, if you think of it that way as well. You can see the revenue chart on the right side of the page, certainly nice growth over the years. You can see even 2006, some higher revenue years. 2006, I think we made about just shy of $85 million in that business. And on the revenues that we saw last year, we were not quite but close to double that, actually, when we think about on a comparative basis despite the same amount of revenue. So clearly, there's some margin expansion over that period of time. Next slide, please. Moving on to our other platform, our electric gas business, that 8-state footprint. You can see the shaded areas here shows our service territories from Western Minnesota to the Puget Sound area. We've been able to steadily grow rate base in this business from -- you can see the numbers down $1.7 billion to now $4.29 billion here as we think into the future by 2025. And certainly, our EPS growth has followed suit through 2020 as well. Next slide. Second quarter earnings in this business, you can see $9.6 million, down slightly from the year before. We do have some nonqualified defined or some benefit programs that were a little bit of a hit, given the market was so strong in 2020, rebounding off the early days of the pandemic. So those returns would have been found in 2020, where we were absent those in 2021. But also, we've had several rate case outcomes that I would say, contributed to a very solid second quarter of 2021 as well. Next slide. Really, organic rate base is kind of the key to this business, providing that safe and reliable service to our 1.15 customers. We're forecasting a 5% compounded annual growth over the next 5 years. But we're also benefited by our customer growth between 1% and 2%. You can see averaging 1.7%. Over the last 5 years, I would say it's on the high end of that 1.2%, maybe a little stronger than that on the gas side and probably on the lower side of that from our electric side of our business. Next slide. And our pipeline business, once upon a time, going back 30-ish years, actually, the pipeline and utility were one business. We separated those back in the mid-1980s. Now it's solely a FERC-regulated interstate pipeline. You can see it spans from Western Minnesota through the Dakotas and into Montana and Wyoming as well. We have the true benefit of having North America's largest storage field in Eastern Montana, which, by the way, is kind of right next door to the Bakken field as well. And it provides a very, I'll say, ready available source for natural gas for the coldest of winter nights that we do experience up here on the Northern Plains. You can see the rate base growth. Again, this is on a combined basis between electric gas and the pipeline business on the bottom. The segment EPS is solely with WBI and the Energy business. You can see we had some strong years in the mid-2000. Storage was used quite heavily. And as we continue to grow the business coming off some lows in 2013 and 2014, we're at $0.19 per share last year. Next slide. Second quarter earnings up slightly on a year-over-year basis. This business is very predictable. It's got firm customers, has firm storage revenues associated with and it does have firm take-or-pay contracts when we provide pipeline services for other third-party natural gas processing plants. In fact, we serve about 3/4 of the natural gas processing plants in and about the Bakken area. And so clearly, we have a pricing competitive advantage there. And on those projects, we expect a FERC-like return. Next slide. And you get a sense of our North Bakken expansion here, which is a keynote project for us this year. I won't read all those bullets, but it's about a $260 million investment that we're right in the midst of constructing -- And then our Wapiti expansion there as well, that will be a 2024 project at an expected investment of about $75 million. Next slide. Here's just some financial metrics. Our forward guidance all put together in kind of one convenient location. I won't go through this. I know we're running a little short of time. I tend to be proud of our businesses and talk a lot about them, but I'll let you just leave this as a homework assignment. Next slide. And then we're into the appendix. And so Brian, I turn it back to you, I apologize, but I get a little excited when I talk about our business and at the same time, trying to have a room for a question or 2 here.

No, that was great. Thank you, David, for the comprehensive overview of the various segments of MDU Resources. So we do have a question from the participants. What's your appetite for acquisitions near term and long term? I guess a follow-on of your discussion in the Construction Materials and Services segment outlook.

Yes. Our appetite is there. In short, we have business development teams that are quite active in both. Stay tuned in that area. I think some looming tax law changes are actually tending to spur maybe some owners to think about sooner rather than later in that area. But at the same time, we need to make sure that it's the right fit for us. So stay tuned. We have appetite in both services and materials.

Okay. And I'll just ask a quick question on the regulated utilities 8-state footprint. Can you just describe to investors what that 8-state footprint offers in terms of diversification, whether it's in terms of regulation, customer growth or demographics as well as weather and also investment opportunities.

Yes. So the 8-state footprint really affords its total of 13 jurisdictions between electric, gas, the state commissions and also the FERC, right? So there's quite a bit of regulatory diversity as we have across those 8 states. And clearly, we get -- some states are more have forward test case capability, some have pipeline tracker capabilities, all have purchased gas adjustments, whether it's monthly or annually fuel clause adjustment. So -- and we don't have all eggs in one basket, if you will, not that there'd be anything bad about having a high concentration in one particular jurisdiction. But for us, we tend -- we believe we have good relationships, solid relationships with our regulators, certainly. But we're not solely dependent on one outcome in one state and that, again, there's really some risk mitigation when you think about our diversification practice.

Thank you. I don't think we could have a presentation when talking about construction materials and services without touching on material, inflation, labor, availability. Maybe just discuss David, where -- how you're positioned there maybe for year-to-date results and what your full year outlook kind of assumes?

Sure, sure. So we started the year on a guidance of expecting revenues in both services and materials. Actually, revenue guidance is identical. It's $2.1 billion to $2.3 billion of revenue guidance there. And so that's still true in those businesses. So that we feel good about. We also -- our businesses, we also guide to margins, and we've said margins in materials, we expect to be comparable on a year-over-year basis. So that continues to be true. And also in services, our margins, we say we expect to be comparable to slightly increasing. So to your inflation question, it's first on everybody's mind. It's obviously, we're seeing it in our businesses, some more pronounced in some areas than others. But at the end of the day, we're really managing those inflationary costs as part of our bid process. And again, we expect to be margins at comparable on a year-over-year basis.

Okay. Well, it looks like we're out of time. So I want to thank David and Jason. David, if you have any closing remarks, please convey them now, and we'll conclude the presentation.

Well, first off, thanks, everybody for taking some time to hear our story. Again, we're very much an infrastructure business on these two platforms of business between construction materials and services on the construction side and regulated energy delivery on electric gas and pipeline side. Thanks for your interest. And if you like any follow-up conversations, please reach out to us by our website. And so with that, thank you, Brian. I appreciate having us on this call.

Thank you. This concludes today's presentation. Have a nice day.

Bye-bye.