Parsons Corporation (PSN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Brian Gesuale, Senior Analyst. I cover Parsons. Really happy to have the company here to take us through the story. There hasn't been a lot going on in the government services space, so there's probably not a lot to talk about. Just kidding, of course. We have the company's Chief Executive Officer, Carey Smith; as well as the Chief Financial Officer, Matt Ofilos, to take us through the presentation and the story. It's going to be a fireside chat. We may reference a few slides here. But we've got a lot of nitty-gritty to get to. So with that, thank you so much for joining us, Carey and Matt.

Thanks for having us, Brian. Appreciate it. So I'll fairly quickly go through the slides for those of you that may be new to the story, so we can get to the questions and answers. First, our forward-looking disclosure statement. And let me jump into 2024. 2024 was an excellent year. We had over 20% organic growth, also achieved 30% growth on EBITDA, so growing our margin faster than our revenue. And this is our second consecutive year that we've experienced such growth. We have 2 business segments within the company. First is Federal Solutions. This is a purpose-built segment that we designed to outpace near-peer threats. We basically -- at the end of 2016, we only had a missile defense contract. And we started getting into other critical areas like cyber, electronic warfare and space to be able to put together full-spectrum capabilities, again, against a near-peer threat. It's seldom you have the luxury of putting together a purpose-built business. On the Critical Infrastructure side of the house, we're very focused on areas such as transportation, urban development and environmental remediation, seeing unprecedented growth in a marketplace of $1.2 trillion in the United States, $1.5 trillion in the Middle East. You can see our statistics on the bottom. I do want to highlight, we've had a 1.0x trailing 12-month book-to-bill since we IPO-ed back in May of 2019. So as our revenue grew $2.5 billion over the last 2 years, we've been able to keep ahead of that with record awards. Investment thesis. First and most importantly, an experienced management team that delivers on commitments. I talked about the growth. We also pride ourselves on making sure that we focus on beating and raising guidance. We have a people-first culture and a mission orientation. We develop solutions in our business. We are not a services company, a consulting firm. We are a solutions-based business, which is very important. And we're focused on our customers' most critical emerging missions. We have 6 end markets that I'll talk about. Those are all growing, sustainable, profitable. And their CAGRs are about 5% to 12% as you look out over the next 3 years. I talked about our purpose-built portfolio, and I'd say it's very distinguished within the industry. Global infrastructure spending and then finally, a favorable financial outlook. If you look after our last acquisition, TRS Group, our pro forma leverage ratio is 1.4x, enabling us to continue to do M&A. We've bought 14 companies over -- since 2017. We've acquired 11 of those within the Federal space, 3 of those within Critical Infrastructure. As you look at the macro environment, I would say the trends are really showing why we have such strong tailwinds within our business. Looking in the center, those are areas that affect both of our segments. Cybersecurity becoming increasingly important as cyber threats continue to evolve, not just in our defense area and our intelligence community area, but also affecting our critical infrastructure, in areas like water, utilities, transportation and health care. Digital transformation is everywhere. On the federal side, we're very focused in areas like artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, cloud computing. And on the infrastructure side, how do we build back infrastructure smarter so that we're designing and building it so it can last 100 years, not 35 years. And environmental remediation. I'll talk more about PFOA, PFAS, but PFOA, PFAS is a significant growth driver for the business. We have some very unique patents there, and we see that as a $40 billion addressable market for the company. That spans both segments. On the Federal Solutions, focused on the near-peer nation state and then the America-first approach. And I would say that benefits our business when you start to look at areas like the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program, which can be restructured, where Parsons has designed every launch center and control center since inception back in the 1950s. So we look forward to being part of that critical program. Also, when you look at a program like Iron Dome for America, now called Golden Dome for America, we've been involved with Missile Defense Agency for 4 decades and look forward to contributing to that effort. Additionally, when you start to look at some of the rebuild efforts around the world, Parsons intends to play a role in those. Under Critical Infrastructure, the demand is great. And I'd say the tailwinds are even better. When you look U.S. market, it's not going to peak until the 2028 time frame and the Middle East market is not going to peak until after 2030. We're also focused on smart mobility, improving our intelligent transportation systems. One great example of that is we were just awarded the traffic management contract in Riyadh. So we look forward to helping Saudi appear to be -- prepared to be on the world stage for the World Cup and the Expo. This is the chart that shows our 6 markets. And I think what's an important takeaway from here is how they span across our business units. So if you look at an area like cyber or critical infrastructure protection, that hits all 4 of our business units. You can see the addressable market in a 3-year CAGR. Let me just hit on the size of each of these in terms of '25 revenue. Transportation is our largest at 23%, critical infrastructure is 21%, cyber and intelligence 16%, space and missile defense is 12%, environmental remediation also 12% and urban development 11%. So we have a good footprint in each of these. It's important to note, again, sustainable, growing and profitable with long-term tailwinds in each. Our growth strategy, continue to invest in software and integrated solutions to move up the value chain. That's really what's been key to driving our strong win rates. We had 71% win rates last year, our highest ever, that is over 66% the year before, 49% the year before that. We've also won our largest programs ever. So this year, we won 15 contracts greater than $100 million tying what we had won last year, 15 greater than $100 million. Our exquisite federal company, again, all domain solutions focused on end-to-end cyber, end-to-end space and electronic warfare. Build back smarter that gets to how do you apply digital technology to transforming our infrastructure. We have a unique portfolio in our company. So we are the company that understands the domain, but we understand how to build it back better because we have the technical component that we apply from our federal business. Critical infrastructure protection, I mentioned, how do we protect transportation, utility, health care and water from cyber threats, which are increasingly happening and then continue to be a preferred acquirer. We buy companies generally on a preemptive basis. We try and avoid auctions. We've paid about 10x to 13x multiple. And I would say we've done a great job of retaining the talent that we get from that company, which has been key to our growth. This chart just covers our 2024 financial performance where we exceeded all of our measures and this is after 3 guidance raises every quarter last year. This chart looks at our financial summary. Again, with the growth rate, you can see across the top for last year, balanced portfolio. As you look at 2025, a slight shift. We're going to have 56% in the Federal, 44% within Critical Infrastructure. Global footprint, the majority of our work in the United States, but a very nice presence in the Middle East and some in Canada, and we like to prime most of our work. At Parsons level, we have 63% fixed price time material, 37% that is cost reimbursable. And that split is 56% fixed-price T&M on the Federal side and 44% reimbursable. And then on the Critical Infrastructure, that would be 75% fixed-price T&M, 25% reimbursable. This shows our business segment summary. As you can see, Federal really outpaced in 2024, but also we're keeping up with double-digit in Critical Infrastructure. Highlight again, double-digit growth in all 4 profit and loss centers in all major geographies. This is probably the chart that I'd say we're most proud of if we look back to what we've accomplished with a very stable executive leadership team over the last 3 years and the tremendous growth that the company has seen. 2025 guidance, you can see here and what we've said is mid-single digit or better on the revenue and 20 to 30 basis points of margin expansion. And we did reiterate our guidance. And let me wrap up on our chart so we can jump to Q&A. Six end markets, all growing and durable, sustainable and profitable unprecedented global infrastructure spend, particularly in the 2 geographies where we play, $1.2 trillion in the U.S., $1.5 trillion in the Middle East, distinguished national security portfolio, purpose-built to outpace near-peer threats, demonstrated a proven M&A track record, 14 companies since 2017, experienced management team that delivers on commitments. And finally, a good balance sheet with the ability to do more M&A or share repurchases. With that, Brian, over to you.

Great. Carey, thank you for the rundown. And by the way, the stock has been the best-performing stock in '23 and '24. So congratulations on that. I want to kind of talk about some of the macro issues that a lot of investors are chewing on. Talk about the defense budget. Can you reconcile the Hegseth memo of cutting defense spending 8% a year for the next 5 years, the House budget which has a considerable amount of incremental defense spending that's going on? And really just what are the tea leaves out there for your expectations of defense spending overall?

Yes. So starting with the '25 budget, and we've got the budget resolutions going through both the House and the Senate. Within the House, they have added $100 billion for armed services or defense. They've added $90 billion for Homeland Security. Within the Senate, they've added $175 billion for Homeland Defense, $150 billion for Homeland Security and $150 billion for Defense. So the signs are that would be over a 10-year period that there would be an increase. Now they have to get -- bring that to resolution to get into the reconciliation process and ideally either a long-term CR or best a short-term CR or budget, but a long-term CR. We don't anticipate a shutdown at this time with everything going on in the world events today. But I would say the indications are there for a budget increase. Much of that is going into the areas that I talked about, cybersecurity, missile defense, Golden Dome for America, the Sentinel program, intercontinental ballistic missile. Border security, I didn't mention, which is an area that we've been involved in for decades. We do border security all around the world, Armenia, Georgia, Jordan Lebanon. We've also done work on the Mexico-U.S. border, supporting Customs and Border Protection and Federal Aviation Administration. There's going to be additional funding also that's going to go into the FAA modernization, and we hold the FAA's contract for the facilities. So we look forward to being involved in that as well. Fast forward to FY '26. So the goal is how do you take out 8% of the budget every year across the 5-year defense plan? And how do you take it out of areas like DEI, climate change and unnecessary or excessive bureaucracy? And the goal is not to drop the budget, but rather to shift the budget to areas of priority that align with the administration. So Pete Hegseth has outlined 17 of those areas. Parsons plays in 9 of those areas. So think about cyber space, missile defense, spending on [ MilCom ] within the Indo-Pacific region, nuclear modernization, the COCOM specifically, for us at the INDOPACOM region, Cyber Command, Space Command. So we see this budget alignment very much associated with the Parsons portfolio on the federal side. Just to hit on the infrastructure side for a minute. Any shift that would occur in the infrastructure would be under the IIJA, would be in areas like electrification, broadband or climate change. We don't have work in those areas, and the goal is to move more of that money to the hard infrastructure. And that's where we play, again, transportation areas, roads and highways, bridges, airports, but that hard infrastructure focus.

Great. Really appreciate the details on that. The other thing is, I'm sure that you're experiencing DOGE fatigue as am I and some of the people in this room. Talk about what contracts have been impacted by DOGE. I think it's been a very small portion and pretty much immaterial and maybe things that you're looking for in the future that you're just watching and weighing.

Yes. So we've only had 2 small contracts that have been impacted. Those amount to less than $3 million in revenue. They were South Africa contracts. I don't know if I call this as DOGE or not, but we threw it in that bucket. When you look at areas that DOGE has been targeting, it's been areas that we don't play. So USAID, Veterans Affairs, IRS, FBI, Department of Education, Parsons doesn't have any work with those customers. More importantly, 44% of our work is not even dependent on the federal government because it's dependent on international and state and local government. I go back again to, I think where DOGE is headed is how do you cut and improve efficiency of the government and cut in areas where it's not needed, but not necessarily you're going to drop some dollars to the bottom line, but how do you get more out in the mission capability? Parsons is a mission company. We are focused on delivering solutions for our customers. I'll also add on to that, Brian, that there was a GSA memo that came out last week that looked at consulting services. We don't do consolidating services. There was basically a search, I think, done on federal contractors and come up with a [ mixed co-consulting ]. Parsons is not a consultant. We're a solutions mission-oriented provider.

So it's a good league not to be a consultant. Let's maybe talk about some of the specifics of business. Investors generally follow backlog, right? So some of this has kind of gummed up the system and some of the uncertainty. But can you maybe talk about your expectations for a book-to-bill greater than 1 for the year? We don't care on a quarterly basis, but on a trailing 12-month basis to keep book-to-bill positive above 1 in backlog growing.

Yes. I would say, for sure, for the year, we're expecting a book-to-bill greater than 1.0. So we do expect backlog to expand within the year. Importantly, for Parsons, we have $8.9 billion worth of backlog, so greater than 1x revenue. And then on top of that, we have about $12.5 billion of IDIQ vehicles that have been awarded to Parsons, but have not yet flowed through bookings. These are typically option years or contract ceiling. And so we've really focused on those contracts as you suspect, the risk, of course, in the government side is a risk around capacity and how many new contracts they can put out. And so our focus really is to drive work to those vehicles. We have the capacity. We have the vehicles in-house. And so how do we just continue to expand opportunity, of course, to raise ceilings and extend contracts that exist today is probably going to be the easy button. So I think that's an important area for us to help drive that 1.0. But to your point, Brian, I think a book-to-bill greater than 1, some of that will flow from that awarded, not booked, and some of it will be -- will new and option years.

How do we think maybe about a full year continuing resolution and how that changes the arithmetic or geometry of that?

Yes. So I've been involved in national security and working with government for 4 decades. And since 2005, we've experienced CRs. I'd like to think it's noise in the system. On average, there's been 4 CRs a year. They last 163 days. I would say the benefit that we have is out of our backlog that Matt mentioned, $8.9 billion, 66% of that is funded, which is very high. And then that $12.4 billion that we have of awarded, not booked, those -- that's work that's singularly awarded to Parsons. So we can run for a long time with our existing portfolio without being impacted.

It's a good point. I think I saw the stat that 12 of the last 18 months have been continuing resolution months.

Yes.

So you did just fine. Great. I wanted to then move to organic growth. You've been the leader in terms of organic growth over the last few years. You're guiding a nice number this year, 5-plus percent organic, which is in line with what you said your long-term goals are. The way the stocks, not just Parsons, but the group is trading, there's a belief, at least being reflected in the market, that you're going to shrink, not just you, but the entire sector. How do you think about your ability and the visibility you have into growing the top line?

Yes. So I'd say, again, reiterate that we've been over 20% for the last 2 years, which is very strong. We do have one headwind this year on a confidential contract. But setting that aside, the rest of the portfolio, all 4 businesses and both -- all major geographies are growing double digits. We've got the best pipeline we've had for 6 consecutive quarters, over $50 billion. Within there, we like to track opportunities that are greater than $100 million typically. We have over 100 of those opportunities greater than $100 million. We now have started tracking opportunities greater than $500 million. We have over 15 of those greater than $500 million. We got to keep doing what we've been doing, which is keep up those very high 71% competitive win rates. We only planed a 40%.

Only 40%.

Home yet.

Those are fantastic stats. I appreciate that. I want to double-click on the classified contract a little bit. Talk about the headwind that, that creates this year for you, maybe the long term -- maybe actually the uncertainty that you have if there's some between low end of guide to high end of guide, how you want to kind of articulate that to the group here? And then what the long-term view on that classified vehicle is?

Yes, what we indicated 2 earnings calls ago, we were asked what our recompete rate would be for this year, and we said between 5% to 15%. And the variance was this particular contract. We secured the option here on this contract. We negotiated between November and January, and we signed it. So right now, the contract runs until February 2026. We have not been stopped on our contract, but there's a related contract that was under a pause. So if you think about a mission where you have a certain number of steps to perform, just call it 5 steps, we do steps 1 through 4, but another company and the customer do step 5. So we can partially do ours until this other work gets unpaused. And that's sort of the situation that we are in. And the variance on this contract, it could actually be something that would accelerate, that would drive us to the high end, it could be slowed. We're just awaiting on the adjudication from the administration on how that's going to proceed.

And if we didn't have this headwind and that contract was status quo year-over-year, how much of -- just maybe how much of a headwind is it this year at the midpoint of guide?

Yes. So we haven't shared that because it's -- we're not allowed.

Understood.

But what we put in the midpoint of guide is what we've negotiated with the customer. We're not assuming any increase. It's just exactly what the negotiated value.

And importantly, excluding this contract, double-digit growth at the company level. Yes. So that's good.

For every -- all 4 business units.

Yes. I appreciate that. I want to talk about something that I think is a big future opportunity and that's Sentinel. That program has been under significant duress. It's been in the headlines, but it's also critical, and the timing is important. It can't be delayed too long. Can you maybe talk about the opportunity set that, that presents you to kind of come in and be a participant in that program, I guess?

Yes. So Parsons has been involved in every intercontinental ballistic missile program, ground infrastructure since the 1950s. So we did the Atlas program. We did the Titan program. We did the Minuteman program. We did the Peacekeeper program. We were the architect and the designer of record for all those programs. System out there today for the launch facilities and the control centers, that's Parsons design. So we've been welcoming the opportunity to get back involved in the Sentinel program. We've had various meetings with the customer set on how that might be restructured. They have officially come out and said it is going to be restructured. So now we're responding to RFIs, and we're waiting for the procurements on that program and look forward to getting back involved and continuing our history.

Great. One thing that we tend to do in this room and those that are watching online is kind of match this period in history to previous ones. I think a lot of people are anchoring to sequestration, where a lot of the public companies you weren't public at the time, shrank a couple of percent for a few years, right? Can you maybe talk about the visibility you have and the positioning you have? And how Parsons as a company and how sequestration is very different than what we have now because I don't think the periods are particularly comparable?

No, I agree, Brian. So sequestration was kind of across-the-board cut. What's happening now is targeted reductions, areas that are perceived as being inefficient or could be done better in different ways. And again, fortunately, our portfolio has not fallen under those areas that are being addressed by DOGE, as I mentioned earlier. So I would say the objective is how do you take the budget and get more out of it to deliver to our war fighters and our soldiers. And that's where we play. We're a mission company. We deliver solutions. And our goal is to get things out there for the war fighter. So if the budget in FY '26 takes out 8% and shifts it over to the areas that we play, that would be good for Parsons.

Absolutely. I want to talk a little bit now just briefly on margins. You have a number of tailwinds, maybe a couple of headwinds, but the net of it is favorable. Can you maybe just talk about the margin progression as you think about the business, not only in '25, but moving forward?

Yes. When I think back to the Investor Day we held at the start of 2023, we had said 20 to 30 basis points of margin expansion per year. In 2024, we had 50 basis points. We went from an 8.5% to 9.0%, which was a really phenomenal year for us. as Carey mentioned on her slides. If you look at the company and you break up into the 2 pieces, the Critical Infrastructure and Federal, Federal ran north of 10% this year, helped with the mix shift, so some more fixed price work. In 2025, we're guiding to kind of, call it, mid- to high 9s within the federal business, mainly just that mix shift. Again, you're going to see a faster ramp on cost-plus work versus fixed price. So again, execution has been fantastic there, but just the higher -- the switch in the mix to more cost plus will put a little bit of a headwind on the federal business. When you look at the CI business, we had -- we did take some charges this year related to some programs, some legacy programs. I think Brian mentioned, but if we normalize the Critical Infrastructure business for the write-downs, it was about a 10% margin. So if you -- kind of our goal is to get to that 10% as soon as possible. Right now, the midpoint of guide assumes 8.8% on the infrastructure, which is almost 200 basis points of margin expansion for that infrastructure business in 2025 as we just wrap up these programs. We're in final checklist. When we get to substantial completion, I would say the operational impacts are kind of behind you. Now, it's kind of more of legal and contractual negotiations with customers.

So we have a lot of levers we can pull. On the infrastructure side, right now, we're seeing demand greater than supply. And we usually win on technical, not on cost, so that's important. We've been able to hold our cost constant as our revenue has gone up. So our SG&A as a percent of revenue, now it's about 14%. A year ago, it was 16%. A year prior to that, it was about 18%. Our M&A targets are all delivering greater than 10% EBITDA margin. So that's been a lift to us as well. So a lot of levers that we can pull to achieve margin expansion.

Right. Now I think the balance in your business between CI and Federal are really appealing from a bookings and growth standpoint and certainly, margin execution standpoint. Let's just talk about M&A real quickly. You've really been excellent in acquiring businesses and running them through the Parsons system and amplifying the returns. Wondering -- public valuations usually get dinged before the private ones, so I'm wondering how easy is that to do now. And is there a point where you'd say that investing in Parsons via repurchase is the better course? Maybe talk about capital deployment.

Yes. So we do -- we are authorized for up to $100 million in terms of share repurchase. We have $75 million remaining, but that is something that we're looking at using more. I would say on the M&A, there's a lot more assets becoming available now given the uncertainty in the environment. We're going to stay very focused on companies growing greater than 10% top line, greater than 10% EBITDA margin, companies that have technology differentiation. On the federal side, it'll still be focused on cyberspace, electronic warfare. On the infrastructure side will be focused a lot on geography. Those states that are going to gain the most money as a result of the IIJA, California, Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey and Georgia. And so I'd say M&A will continue to be a priority for the company. I would credit that with how we've moved up the value chain, how we've improved our win rates, how we've been able to prime bid and win larger contracts.

Makes a lot of sense. Last one for me. This is the annual drop-the-mic moment, talk directly to the investors here and digitally, take a brief moment to pitch them on Parsons stock and why they should consider you and zero follow-up for me, so you're in the clear.

Yes. So again, I would just say a consistent team that has delivered on results for the past 2.5 years, industry leader in both of our segments. We're really proud of the fact that all of our businesses have grown double digits, and all of our major geographies have grown double digits. So far in looking at the areas DOGE is targeting and the federal civilian, we are not exposed under those agencies. We don't have work under those agencies. We are not a consulting firm, so we don't also fall under that GSA. Looking forward to the future, we are looking forward ex the confidential contract to all 4 businesses growing double digits as we go into this year. We have the best pipeline we've had for 6 consecutive quarters. We've delivered greater than 1.0x trailing 12-month book-to-bill since our inception as a public company. So if anything, I always like to just say we have the right portfolio, we have the right team at the right time, very well aligned to the administration priorities and what's going on in the world events.

Carey, thank you so much. Matt, appreciate it. Everyone in the audience, thanks for joining us.

Thanks, Brian.