Primoris Services Corporation (PRIM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

April 3, 2024

New York Stock Exchange US Industrials Construction and Engineering investor_day 115 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Blake Holcomb

executive
#1

[Presentation] All right. Cool video there. Hopefully, guys got you excited about what we do at Primoris. I want to thank everybody for being here this morning and braving the New York wet and chilly weather. Glad to have all of you here. I know some of you, I've probably met through virtually more than in person, but -- so it's great to connect some of the faces away from the screen and talk to you. Those who don't know, my name is Blake Holcomb. I'm our Vice President of Investor Relations here at Primoris. Today, you're going to hear from several members of our management team, talking about the strategic direction of our company, how each of our business will help fulfill that strategic direction and then also give you some operational, financial targets that we aim to achieve over the next several years with the company. Before we begin, I want to make everyone aware of some language contained in our safe harbor statement. I know you have probably heard a lot of these before, but the company just cautions that certain statements made during today's presentations are forward-looking and are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from our projections and expectations. These risks and uncertainties are discussed in our reports filed with the SEC. Our forward-looking statements represent only as of today, April 3, 2024. We disclaim any obligation to update these statements, except as may be required by law. In addition, during today's event, we will make certain references to non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures are available in our earnings press release and presentations that can be found at the Investors section of our website. Now I'd like to turn it over to Tom McCormick, President and CEO of Primoris.

Thomas McCormick

executive
#2

All right. All right. Having been a contractor all my life, in my opinion, if you don't get excited by watching a video like that, then you don't have a heart. I want to welcome everybody for being here this morning and those that are on our webcast and obviously, certainly those of you that brave the weather. We brought this from Texas with us, so I hope you appreciate it. I hope you guys needed some rain. My name is Tom McCormick. I'm the President and CEO of Primoris. I've been with the company for 8 years now, almost to the day. Prior to that, I spent my first 28 years in my career in all in heavy industrial engineering construction, designing and building industrial facilities, like LNG, petrochemical, refining, pulp and paper, which is a really old industry, all across the U.S. and in multiple countries. I've lived in 5 different countries. I've probably work in 50 different countries. As I said, I joined Primoris in 2016 as the COO. In 2019, November, about September of 2019, I was named President and COO, and I became the CEO in November of 2019, right before the pandemic, which was actually a really thrilling experience to become a CEO and then try to figure that mess out. I am very excited to be here at the New York Stock Exchange to talk about our company, how it's evolved in recent years, and where we're going in the future. I believe the strategic priorities that I will outline this morning here, I'm going to grab me water, will put us on a path that will continue to unlock value for our shareholders and build upon the solid foundation we've established over the last 15 years as a public company. So these are a few of the key messages that I'll speak on today. You'll also hear from others on our leadership team on how our company's strategic priorities fit within their respective businesses. Many of you are familiar with Primoris and our history, but others here or maybe on the webcast are less familiar with the company and what we do. Primoris is an industry leader in infrastructure solutions. We provide engineering, construction and maintenance services in Utilities, Energy, Industrial and Renewables markets. Our core markets are levered to large and growing infrastructure investment and modernization trends that we believe will persist over a multiyear, if not a multi-decade period. In addition to market tailwinds, we see a lot of opportunity to look inward to our organization to improve our operational performance, share best practices and increase our profit margins. I will also speak on our M&A strategy, and how it could fit into our future plans to compound value, gain scale in key or emerging businesses. So we'll talk about that here shortly. All right. As said, we spent a lot of time and effort over the past several years of changing the company. We'll talk about that a little bit more today. But we've also taken a lot of time and effort building a great team. We built a great team here now, many of whom are here today. You'll get to hear a number of our presidents speak. Several of the individuals here are recent additions to Primoris, but they all have extensive experience in their respective fields, working for both private and public companies. They've served as leaders in their respective roles and in leading organizational change to drive growth and profitability. You're going to hear from Stephen Jones today, who runs our Renewables group. Stephen has been with us for about 5 years. Stephen and that business have been on a great growth trajectory since we -- since he came to the company and brought in his leadership team. When he started, I'm guessing it was probably $100 million a year. It was $1.3 billion last year. So you guys can figure out what that CAGR is. You'll also hear from Colt Moedl. Colt's been with us for about a year. He runs our Utilities segment. Colt's background is primarily Power Delivery, project type Power Delivery projects, which is a skill set that we had some of, but we didn't have it at the level that we have now with Colt and the team that he's brought in. So we're really looking forward to seeing what they can continue to do, what they've done in this past year and what they're going to continue to do as we grow and as we execute to this plan and these strategies. And I'll tell you, having all these individuals on our team gives me confidence that we have the right people in the right role, and I like to call it the right butts in the right seats, who are qualified to take the company to the next level. I think you'll enjoy meeting and hearing from each of these gentlemen today. We also have John Perisich, our Chief Legal and Administrative Officer; and Travis Stricker here today. You guys raise your hand, please. Neither John or Travis are going to speak today. We don't have time for all of Travis' jokes. But if you get a chance to sit down and talk to them and get to meet them, they're great people. John is one of the best attorneys I've ever met in my life. He does a lot more than just as our COO. He does -- he runs our whole administrative part of our business, and he does a fantastic job. So look forward to -- you guys take find some time to get to meet them. All right. So the last time we held an event like this for our analysts, investors was back in 2017. I don't know if any of you participated in that. We held that meeting near a pipeline project that we executed in the -- through the swamps of Florida. So the venue is a lot different today. We'll accept if you're outside than it was in Florida. At that time, I was new to the company. I was in a different role. And with the exception of a few of our speakers here today, the rest of this team had not even joined the company. So a lot of the people in this room have -- that our Primoris employees have a shorter tenure than I do. Now since 2017, we've made a lot of progress as a company. We made a series of acquisitions that strengthen our Utilities segment in Power Delivery and Communications as well as adding some key markets in our Energy segment. We've been recognized as a top contractor for our industry by ENR, and we've taken steps to improve our MSCI rating from BB to an A for the past 2 years. We also achieved a long-term goal of listing on the New York Stock Exchange, which we did almost a year ago today, where many of our peers are competitors trade, and we surpassed $2 billion this year in market cap reaching an all-time high for us. All these highlight the progress we've made as a company in the past several years and have put us in a position to achieve new milestones and targets in the coming years that will benefit our employees, our customers and our shareholders. Now another area of success for us, for Primoris over the past several years has been our safety record. Safety is a top priority at our company, and it's something our employees take great pride in doing well. In 2023, we lowered our total recordable incident rate to 0.46, which is roughly 80% below the industry average based on current data. That's our -- that's basically all of our peers. Our more than 260 HSE professionals work each and every day to equip our employees in the field and in our offices with the skills they need to do their job safely. Our Visualize, Implement, Verify and Assess, or VIVA campaign has been a key driver of our success in recognizing the potential hazards in providing workplace injuries. We believe that our employees are our most valuable asset, and we tell them that all the time. So we lead with safety and emphasize it in our culture because it is critical to the well-being of our employees. Keeping our employees and clients and the public safe is both a moral and professional obligation that we take seriously. Furthermore, great safety performance also helps us attract talented people, who want to work for a company that cares about their well-being, and it helps foster the development of long-term relationships with our clients who also value safety in their operations. Trust me, with our several clients that we have that if safety were not a priority of ours that we would not be working with them today. All right. So let's get to where we come -- where we were and where we've been. So since going public in 2008, Primoris has gone through several stages of development and strategic transformation that positioned us for our next chapter. Early on, the company was primarily focused on gaining scale, adding service lines and expanding our geographies. From 2011 to 2017, the company made 16 acquisitions of different sizes across a variety of construction services, including Pipeline, industrial, engineering and gas utility. At the end of 2017, our 4 main businesses were Industrial Construction, Heavy Civil, Pipeline and gas utility. Beginning in 2018 and through 2023, the company established its presence in emerging high-growth markets through acquisitions in Power Delivery, Communications and Renewables. And that's really -- that's about the time Stephen joined the company. As we turn the page to 2024 and beyond, we're steering the company toward accelerated value creation through focused capital allocation, purposeful growth and consistent execution. We've gotten into the markets we need to be and now we just need to do what we say we're going to do and continue to perform, which is what we've been doing for the last 6 quarters. So here we illustrate how we've transformed our end markets from the last time we held an Investor Day. So in 2017, all the company revenue and backlog was in the 4 foundational end markets of Pipeline, Industrial, Heavy Civil and gas utility. Today, most -- almost half of our revenue and more than half of our backlog comes from our high-growth markets of Renewables, Power Delivery and Communications. Company has changed tremendously. In addition to transforming our end markets, we've also brought in strong leadership across our business lines to make both our foundational and high-growth markets maximize their potential. As I touched on earlier, we also worked hard to transform the company's culture, which has improved our safety performance and our operational consistency. And lastly, we've transformed our commercial focus to reorient our attention on growing profitably and improving cash flow. You're going to hear me say the words and some of our leadership teams say the words meant focused multiple times during today's presentations. We tell our teams constantly, and we've been doing this for the last couple of years, focus on what we do well, and let's do what we say we're going to do. So now where do we go? As we look forward, we believe our company is well positioned to take advantage of strong tailwinds driving increased investment in infrastructure solutions in North America. These include the energy transition, the electrification and modernization of the grid and the reindustrialization and reshoring of the supply chain. The transition to less carbon-intensive sources of energy is driving increased adoption of renewable energy sources, like solar, battery, wind and utilizing natural gas in the place of coal to help bridge the transition. This new generation capacity will need to be connected to a grid that is already aged and stressed and needs to be upgraded and modernized in order to keep up with the growing demand of energy from emerging technologies, like data centers and cryptocurrency mining. Further driving the need for power generation connection is the ongoing shifting of the supply chain closer to home that is requiring new facilities construction and infrastructure investment to bring them online. All these themes are connected and enabled by emerging technologies, state and federal legislative priorities and economic growth. We believe these themes will be sustained for multiple years, if not decades. Once again, I believe that we are in all the right markets to benefit from these investments. You'll hear from our business presidents as to how each of these will impact the future of their respective businesses during their presentations today. This brings us to the strategy that we'll execute in the years ahead. Our objective is to grow gross profit at a 9% to 12% compound annual rate through 2026 by investing in our growth engines, while sustaining foundational business performance and consistent execution, focused capital allocation and purposeful customer growth. Breaking down these elements, we want to prioritize profitability over revenue. Being bigger is not necessarily better. If we have to -- we've had to shrink down some of our business and then grow from strength, we've done that, and we're doing that. We plan to accomplish this by investing in our growth engines, while sustaining our foundation business performance. This means that we'll allocate our time and financial resources toward our Renewables and Power Delivery businesses while continuing to get strong results in our foundational businesses to support reinvestment in growth markets. Consistent execution means that we'll continue to do what we say we're going to do for our clients, our employees and our shareholders. Focused allocation means that our human capital resources will be deployed to the best returns in our portfolio. And lastly, purposeful customer growth means that we will be selective in working with relationship-oriented customers who value mutually beneficial partnerships and getting work they need done safely with high quality and on time. This slide shows a road map for how we plan to achieve our 2026 goals that you'll hear about throughout the remainder of the presentations. First, we must deliver consistent performance in our foundation businesses. They need to continue to do what they've been doing for the last 6 quarters at a minimum and continue to perform for us. These businesses will serve as a vehicle to get us where we want to go, remaining selective and disciplined in bidding work and as well as in sound project execution, prioritizing markets and client cash flow and steady mature markets with long-term customer relationships. While the foundation of businesses will serve as a vehicle, the next 2 priorities will be the engine. It begins with driving continued operational improvements and efficiencies in the Utilities segment to enhance margins and more quickly convert revenue to cash. Operational improvement could also mean that we may look to divest certain businesses that we currently operate that are either subscale or a less fit to our strategic direction than they were when we acquired them back during our game scale period. This will allow us to reinvest our cash toward the high growth and margin opportunities, including Solar, Communications and Power Delivery. Our goal is not to be the largest service provider in our field, but to aim to be the best allocators of capital to generate the best returns. Again, being the biggest is not necessarily the best. Our capital allocation strategy has included acquisitions in the past, as you all know and I spoke about earlier. Another acquisition could serve as a way to accelerate or surpass some of our goals with respect to margin and cash goals. We have a long track record of acquisitions that have served as entry ports in the growth markets that provided scale or to helping us strengthen some of our businesses. Having done numerous acquisitions in the past and having a veteran team with experience gives us a wealth of knowledge as well as lessons learned with respect to acquisitions. While some of our acquisitions have proven themselves to be exactly what they thought they were when we bought them, others have not performed up to our expectations. But where they haven't, they created valuable lessons learned for us. We've also had a number of acquisitions that have far exceeded what we thought they could do. In all 3 experiences, that has made us more selective and disciplined in our evaluation of potential targets to be sure that it's the best fit for the company and the best use of our shareholders' capital. We've established clear strategic and financial metrics around margin, cash flow, synergies and rate of return hurdles that Ken will speak of in more detail later. We believe these have better equipped us for the success in the future if the right opportunities present themselves. But now at the moment, we're confident the goals we're setting out today are not -- can be achieved without acquisitions. But if we were to find a business that could be a bolt-on to one of our growth businesses that help expand their capabilities, their geographies or their customer wallet share, we would evaluate it based on our selection criteria. All right. Turning to purposeful growth with our customers. We've had 5 key components we believe will lead to better outcomes for Primoris and our customers. It begins with targeting and prioritizing the customers that are less transactional and place a higher value on our partnership with them. We have relationships with customers that have -- that span decades and understand the value of what both parties bring to the table, and we value those customers. We want to deepen these relationships and focus more of our attention on them as well as new customers that view us as more of a solutions partner than just a service provider. Next, we want to better understand their needs and objectives to determine if there's a mutual fit between our expertise and their goals. We want to again focus on what we do well, don't get outside of our expertise, and there's no reason we're not going to be all things to all people. For the customers we do work for, we want to be sure that we are being selective in the way we bid and deliver on our commitments with discipline in meeting our clients' objectives. Just do what we say we're going to do. I never want the first time that I'm meeting with the client to be we're trying to win a project and we're not the low bidder or worse, when there's a problem on the project that's been elevated and now it's been brought to executives to resolve. If that's the first time I meeting my client or these gentlemen are meeting their clients, it's not going to bode well for us. Given our finite human and financial resources, we aim to expand opportunities with customers that align with our goals and objectives. Most importantly, for all the clients we work for, we want to execute with safety, quality and productivity and in that very order. It is our view that this is the very best way toward building long-term, collaborative and mutually beneficial customer relationships. All right. All right. So before I turn it over to these guys, I want to talk about the lay out, some of the key reasons we believe Primoris' best days are ahead of us. First, we have a great opportunity to expand our profit margins as we benefit from long-term high-growth markets. Second, we are on track to improving our cash flow generation profile and continue to lower our debt level as we grow the business and expand margins. And third, we are focused on being the best in our industry at allocating resources towards the highest returns in our service portfolio. We believe that we are having an attractive valuation compared to other companies in our lines of business and that through the execution of our strategy, we have the potential to generate long-term value to our shareholders. So in conclusion, Primoris is a different company than we were in 2017, and we've become a leader in Utilities, Energy and Renewables and Infrastructure solutions. Our core markets are levered to large and growing end markets with a multiyear growth runways, and we have significant opportunity to enhance our margins as we grow through implementing operational excellence and best practices to accelerate our earnings potential. Finally, we're committed to allocating our capital to the best returns with the potential to compound our value through selective acquisitions that align with our strategy and acquisition criteria. And with that, I'll pass it over to Colt Moedl, President of our Utilities segment, to share more on the outlook for his businesses in relation to the strategy. Thank you.

Colt Moedl

executive
#3

Thanks, Tom. It's an honor to be here, in front of you all. My name is Colt Moedl. I'm the President of the Utilities segment of Primoris. I joined in 2023. I have 19 years' experience in managing billion dollar P&Ls in the Utilities segment and specific to Power Delivery markets. More importantly, I'm a cowboy at heart. So I am proof that you can bring a kid to grow up with more horses and cattle to the big city here today. So it's an honor to be at the stock exchange and in front of you all. So there's 5 things that I want you to remember today about the Utilities segment. And as we go through these things in detail, I'll walk you through them. Number one, we got the right businesses. We're positioned to take advantage of our foundational investments in Power Delivery and Communications. Number two, we've got the right people focused on what Tom alluded to earlier, safety, quality and productivity, or simply SQP, and we see it in order of importance, with safety being at the top. Number three, we're driving towards higher-margin project work, improving our diversity of work, as you'll see. Number four, we're partnering with our clients that ultimately view us as a partner versus a commodity in areas we know we can improve our cash conversion while also supporting our market margins. And number five, we're going to continue to look for one plus one and equals three opportunities in the acquisition space. Specifically, areas that support our major projects or add strategic customer relationships. So with that, let's go. All right. Let's start with our history. Why is the evolution important? Positioning. We're positioned to take advantage of the power delivery and broadband growth megatrends that we see today in the market. In 2017, really the last time we had an investor conference, standing here before you all we had was gas operations. By 2018, we'd entered the Power Delivery market, establishing a foothold of work with the Willbros acquisition. Then in 2021, we entered the communications market with Future. Finally, in 2022, we massively expanded our power delivery capacity and capabilities with the PLH acquisition. At the end of the day, know this, we've been preparing for these market opportunities. We're ultimately positioned to take advantage of electrification and the grid investments, combined with the broadband growth megatrends that we're going to talk about today. So let's get into what we had to do. To position, we had to reorganize, upgrade some talent and optimize our client management efforts. To do that, we focused on our people, by bringing in world-class talent like you see here, James Pratt and Scott Comley, both excellent operators with Power Delivery and Communications background, specifically helping us align to our customers and ultimately optimize our productivity. We've hired over 1,700 employees in Power Delivery alone, with over 50 of them focused exclusively on major project delivery. Our major projects team has been developed to balance our work and execute large-scale projects. Then we focused on our strategic client management approach, optimizing our value to our customers, who view us as partners. Bottom line from this slide that I want you to take away is we're ready with world-class talent to take full advantage of the market opportunities ahead of us. So let's break down the segment. I'm extremely proud of the hard work our 7,000 employees put in every day in the Utilities group. We operate under 3 distinct lines of business that we're proud to be organized under Power Delivery, Gas Operations and Communications. This alignment allows us to effectively and efficiently attack the market and serve our clients. What I'd like to do now is walk you through each one individually. Let's start with Power Delivery. Electrification is a megatrend. Generation capacity is expected to grow by 53%. And if you just take a second and look at the 5-year energy demand forecast from FERC filings in 2022, we expect a 3.8% growth in energy demand over a 5-year period just in 2022. Take that same amount of FERC filings in 2023 and you see that from the same forecast, the 5-year energy demand forecast, we more than doubled that to 7.8% in '23. We expect that to continue. With load growth coming from data centers and our hyperscalers, the reshoring and reindustrialization of the supply chain to the U.S. with specific areas, like chip factories and EV charging and vehicle electrification being the primary drivers behind the opportunities that we see in this market. The way we generate use and deliver power is continuing to change and will rapidly over the next decade. With these changes, comes a need to deliver reliable electricity to the grid, including more high-voltage lines and electrical substations and ultimately upgrades to the existing infrastructure. All services that our Power Delivery group provides today. In addition, many of our customers are working diligently to deliver grid hardened infrastructure to mitigate impacts from extreme weather events. We're supporting those efforts as we speak today. Our top 10 customers have already identified $105 billion over the next 3 years. Let me say that one again. Our top 10 customers have already identified $105 billion over the next 3 years for T&D spend, specifically markets that our Power Delivery group is willing and ready to support. My kid's kids will be able to work in this industry. And believe me, if they don't go to college, they're going to line school. We're uniquely positioned to take advantage of these trends. And I want you to remember this. Number one, we have a world-class safety record, combined with our premier craft labor resources that we hold to the highest standard. Number two, we have a strong foundation built on our MSA work with client partners. Number three, we've deployed and established a world-class major projects organization and team that can execute engineer, procure, construct contracts and turnkey solutions effectively and efficiently. So let's move to talk through a few real-life examples. We had an existing client that introduced us to a client in need of a large-scale, critical substation in the South Central United States to support a large-scale manufacturing facility. You have to understand the size and magnitude of the substation. It's on about a 14-acre site. There's 5,600 -- 56, excuse me, H-frame dead ends, 24 gas circuit breakers, 60 switches and 12 transformers, and all this had to be done in a year. This is a big substation. We deployed our major projects team to build, develop and -- to develop and build a detailed project execution plan. We established a strong bond between our major projects team and the client and completed the very difficult project ahead of schedule within budget, but most importantly, with 0 incidents on the site, no safety incidents for our team. We set ourselves up to gain additional market opportunities with a multitude of projects coming from the same client in the near future. At the end of the day, our major projects organization can execute well. Next example. Let me be frank. We weren't always great. One year ago, we were misaligned with our client and didn't understand each other. We were really on the brink of being released from their system. We had to deploy our strategic client management program to realign our commercial teams and leadership to better serve our clients on a foundation of safety, quality and productivity. We had to provide better craft labor training and mentorship by standing up an in-house lineman training facility and increase our reporting structure, getting better data from our craft labor resources and our operations team and providing that data to our clients, so they could understand the position we were in. The outcome has been improved. We've improved from being a bottom tier provider to a top tier with our client. I recently had lunch with -- last week, I had lunch with an executive from this group, and he told me he was shocked how fast we were able to move to a preferred status. Ultimately, we've gained market share, and we see tremendous opportunities with this client. In the second quarter, we were projected to be their largest utility customer on their system now. A testament to the great work of our strategic client management process and our operations team's hard work and efforts. Our backlog is more -- is now more than it has been with them in the previous 3 years. So we're excited about the opportunities. Simply put, our strategic client management programs work. All right. Let's switch gears and talk about our gas operations team. We're excited to see continued efforts with integrity and asset replacement programs, and we are uniquely positioned to support our clients' electric side of the business with strategic undergrounding. If you think about the gas work that we perform, we have crews and equipment and resources available to support strategic undergrounding in our gas operations team. That gives us a great avenue to utilize those resources, supporting strategic undergrounding efforts, specifically with our existing client base. We have emerging opportunities with that very concept in the West, South Central and Southeast markets and are utilizing that today. We have decades of experience successfully executing gas work for some of the largest utilities in the country, and we see that as an important piece of our continued success. At the end of the day, our gas operations provide a steady and consistent margin and most importantly, they do it safely. In closing, I'm excited that we are uniquely positioned to capitalize on the emerging trends in the underground electric space with resources from our gas operations group who also provide us a great foundation of work. Moving into our third line of business, the Communications group. We continue to see the market evolve as additional revenue from [ RDOF ] and the [ BEAD ] programs begin to ramp. We are a key partner to hyperscalers who are building and connecting large data centers in major cities throughout the United States. We're well positioned to execute this work as our key clients have asked recently to expand our footprints into new regions, excuse me, and markets in the Central and Western United States. We're actively working to improve our cash conversion cycle with our largest clients, while maintaining our margins. At the end of the day, our Communications group doesn't have to take bad projects or bad clients, as Tom alluded to earlier. We are very selective about where we go, where we know we can be successful. Specific to our Communications group, we're in a great position to deliver a higher ROI based on our world-class safety record, best-in-class training and subcontractor management systems, while improving our overall cash conversion cycle within this group. All right. Let's close this out, talking about our segment as a whole again. We see ourselves as a premier world-class partner to our clients and our shareholders. We're simply going to allocate capital to the right opportunities and improve our segment gross margins to double digits. The initiatives to do that are driven by strong customer tailwinds in the power delivery market, number one; number two, foundational cash flow from gas operations; and number three, growth in the right broadband communications markets. So again, tailwinds from power delivery, foundational cash flow from gas and growth in the right broadband communications market. We see sustained margin improvements from better allocation of craft labor and equipment to strategically important customers. We value our craft labor and equipment very highly, and we want to go in areas where we can be successful with partners. The implementation of MSA rate increases in 2024 also will help improve our margins, combined with our increased mix of major project revenue. Today, we see a funnel of over $2 billion in major projects alone and have been recently awarded $150 million of that already. As I stated before, Power Delivery is poised to outperform our other Utilities business with growth tailwinds, and I'm excited about the future. In closing, the 5 things I started this with, I want to remind you about. Number one, our business has the right -- we have the right businesses. We're positioned to take advantage of our foundational investments in Power Delivery and Communications. Number two, we've got the right people focused on safety, quality and productivity. Number three, we're driving towards higher-margin project work, improving our overall work mix. Number four, we're partnering with our clients that view us as a partner versus a commodity in areas we know we can improve our cash conversion. And number five, we're going to continue to look for one plus one equals three opportunities in the acquisition space. Now I'm excited to introduce Stephen Jones, the President of Primoris Renewables. Thank you.

Stephen Jones

executive
#4

Thank you, Colt. Good morning, everyone. I'm really excited to be here today at the NYSE. After 24 years in the Renewable Energy sector, I've never witnessed a more promising opportunity for Primoris to maximize the solar potential in the market. The opportunity for the next several years is among the strongest I've seen, and Primoris is a strategic plan in place to capitalize on this opportunity for the benefit of our shareholders. My name is Stephen Jones. As the President of our Renewables business, I've dedicated my career to working inside of this business. I started in the trades, grew up at the project level, at the business levels and now lead one of the most successful renewable energy firms in the market. I'm honored to work alongside a high-performing renewables team that consistently delivers results, manages risks effectively and drives profitability in this fast-paced market. My goal will be to highlight several key points about renewables. Number one, I'll talk about the achievements in the solar market for the past 5 years. Two, I'm going to talk about some of the reasons behind our success in this -- in our business model in renewables. Number three, I'm going to talk about adjacent and cross-selling business opportunities inside of our business. Four, how we focus on and enhance profitability through internal self-performed capabilities. And number five, I just want to highlight our customer relationships, resulting in a multibillion dollar backlog and project pipeline exceeding more than $8 billion, extending well into 2028. I would like to start out by just briefly highlighting our business lines of Renewables. These are solar EPC, battery energy storage, operations, maintenance and asset management. And then we've got high voltage services contracted through our Utilities, Power Delivery group, Colt's group. Over the last 5 years, we've completed or initiated over 50 projects nationwide, totaling approximately 11 gigawatts of power. We prioritize repeat clients, but we ensure we maintain a good balance and diversity of these clients. We are a nationwide company. With a strong foothold in key states like Texas, California and Louisiana, our strategy focuses on expanding more of our presence into the Southwest, the Midwest and the Northeast. Since 2019, our solar revenue has surged nearly 10x, far outpacing the market's growth rate of just 2x. We began with serving one strategic customer and that has grown in over 14 quality -- key clients or quality relationships that we have today. This expansion is owed to our dedicated employees, vendors and key clients. However, a crucial factor setting us apart is our commitment to self-performing much of our work. By performing every aspect from design to construction, we maintain tight control over safety, quality, procurement and execution. This approach not only fulfills our commitments, but also mitigates the risks and instills confidence in our customers. Despite market fluctuations, tariffs and regulatory uncertainty, we have consistently delivered predictable results over the past 5 years. Our success stems from a combination of great leadership, skilled team members and a winning team that consistently delivers these results. We select team members based upon their fit, their skills and their ability to grow with the company. We teach our people the fundamentals or the basics of our business. Central to our approach is the development and implementation of standardized work processes. Our team members are expected to uphold these standards, exhibiting the right characteristics and skills to maintain the quality of our operations. The main idea to all of this is our team brings extensive experience. I think we've also proven that. They understand our strategy, and they know how they need to operate to achieve the business outcomes this company needs. Our team has proven this over the last 5 years, and they will going forward. Listen, when I speak with our clients regularly, they always highlight the trust and confidence that they have in us. We listen and serve their needs. Most of our strategic client relationships are 10-plus years old, which says they trust us. While we see 75% to 80% of repeat business, our growth model demands that we continue to add 1 to 3 new customers annually through our qualification process. This works well to ensure we are not investing in a relationship that induces unnecessary risk or consumes our resources inefficiently. Our renewables clients are large, well-capitalized IPPs and developers that invest in other infrastructure outside of solar, like power delivery, battery, wind, conventional gas, hydrogen and geothermal energy. They have robust financial backing, larger pipelines, and they are better equipped to navigate market disruptions and delays better than most. Our greatest resource is our people, and we do not consider assigning a team to a client unless we know the opportunity is good for our business and utilizes our teams efficiently. Our people, vendors and clients have consistently created -- for all stakeholders -- created value for all of our stakeholders, and we plan this trend to continue. I would like to share some of the reasons why, starting at the top here. We self-perform and this method ensures thorough control over the safety of our personnel, the quality of our work and the productivity of our execution, all while maintaining our standards. This approach effectively manages risk and yields consistent and predictable outcomes for our business and customers, just as you've seen. We qualify our clients based on many different metrics. We do this to ensure that when we deploy our resources, as I said before, our clients have the necessary resources to fulfill their obligations, yielding a mutual benefit for both parties. EPC has inherently been known to until risk, particularly in the engineering and cost fluctuation side of the equation. To mitigate these risks, we take ownership of all preliminary design aspects to prevent cost overruns, late delivery and claims. Our dedicated supply chain and procurement group continuously monitors material and equipment availability, lead times, pricing and market trends. We ensure our supply chain is locked down before we finalize engineering and our contracts. We make down payments to secure pricing and lead times. Lastly, we established our project teams early and develop them through veteran team members. While this entails upfront investment, this pays off in the long run. The investment ensures our people are familiar with our culture, our standards, our systems and our processes. This minimizes potential issues and conflicts thereby safeguarding relationships and project success. So I want you to remember that we can design and build a solar asset from start to finish, complete. Commissioned, turned on, started up delivering energy to the grid. We are a one-stop shop. We manage our risk profile, I believe, to the best of class. We invest and prepare our people early so they can best serve our customers. Solar is and will continue to be the largest focus within the Renewables business. However, our strategy also includes energy storage and some of these other business lines that I mentioned earlier. This market is projected to significantly grow year-over-year, and we are well positioned to rapidly grow that the energy storage adjacent business. Power delivery plays a big part in every generation and storage project that we build. Our projects will continue to be rural -- built in rural areas where transmission lines and substations will be required to move power. Our Utilities business will build and support that need, or Colt's group will build and support that need. As the market continues to build more power plants, they must be operated and maintained for 30 to 40 years. Our O&M team, operations and maintenance will be managing our customer assets and maintaining them. The bottom line is we will continue to invest in delivering more solutions to our customers and self-performing more of each project. We have a winning mindset and we want to be the best. Our leadership and teams will continue to drive efficiency into our business, and that has historically led to best-in-class margin outcomes for us. I want to share just a brief business case study on why cross-selling a One Primoris approach is really good for us. Every solar and battery project is connected to the transmission and distribution grid. These projects have components of work our PSC segments and businesses are good at. Colt and Jeremy's businesses are brothers and sisters to us. We all work for and represent One Primoris. If Colt's group can come in and perform the high voltage, we will keep it in-house. If Jeremy's group can come in and perform other aspects of the work, we will go that way. As long as we can all be competitive in this market, we will keep these services in-house and be margin efficient towards a One Primoris approach. Our customers prefer having all services bundled under one EPC contract with all of these services inside of that. As I said before, the outlook for the Renewables business is extremely promising. I was having a conversation with a client here in New York about 2 weeks ago. And they stated comparatively, Stephen, to other technologies, they believe solar will continue to dominate annual capacity additions. This sentiment is echoed certainly by the market data, further solidifying our commitment to this business. We are fully dedicated to the solar industry, recognizing it as our highest return on capital. Our ongoing investments in solar will maintain robust growth, targeting an annual expansion of approximately $300 million to $400 million per year over the next 3 years. We plan to add 3 to 5 teams annually inside of solar and several teams dedicated just to battery storage, along with continuing to build teams in O&M, all by the end of 2026. This growth trajectory surpasses market projections for these businesses, underpinning our commitment to expansion However, we will always stay disciplined in our growth program. In our Renewables business, supply chain plays a pivotal role as we have one of the industry's leading supply chain teams. I'm extremely proud of them. This team has successfully navigated all of the supply chain challenges in the recent years. Our project management teams consistently tell me that our materials are always there and never late. Moving forward, we remain steadfast in enhancing both our international and domestic supply chains to ensure operational resilience. Over the past 25 years, policy and regulatory frameworks have significantly influenced the adoption and the advancement of renewables. The current form of the IRA serves as a catalyst for progress enjoying bipartisan support and stimulating rural economies across the United States. Again, when I speak with our customers, they highlight the importance of the IRA and certainly have strong belief in it, as some have stated publicly, the IRA, but -- and they believe the IRA, and we believe it will remain in effect into the next decade. So to sum it all up, here are some of the key takeaways. We will continue organically growing and staying focused on solar, while growing adjacent businesses. We have built a best-in-class business model, and we will continue building highly capable teams and customer partnerships. Our strategy includes maintaining excellence in our execution and growing profitably. We think the company strategy to cross-sell and deliver end-to-end services creates substantial revenue and profit efficiency in the coming years. Lastly, our client relationships have created backlog well into 2026, and these relationships are responsible for over an $8 billion pipeline for the next 3 to 4 years. In conclusion, the Renewables business has never been better for Primoris. Thank you to our employees, customers and vendors. Ultimately, the choice for renewables is driven by economics and power -- and demand for power. Primoris is poised to capitalize on this momentum and deliver long-term value to our shareholders. And with that, I will invite Jeremy Kinch up to speak about Energy. Thank you.

Jeremy R. Kinch

executive
#5

Thanks, Stephen. As Stephen said, I'm Jeremy Kinch, President of the Energy division. Just as a quick point of clarification. You'll hear Energy division versus Energy segments. So our Energy reporting segment is a combination of mine and Stephen's business. So I grew up in Canada, and I realized at a pretty early age that I wasn't any good at hockey, so I went to work in construction. I took my first job in construction in 1993, worked my way up through field engineering, project management and took over my first business unit in 2009. I worked across a few end markets, starting in Heavy Civil municipal infrastructure, Pipeline and Industrial facilities. So I came to Primoris in 2018 and now run the Energy business, basically the rest of the business that isn't covered by Stephen and Colt's group. So some more key messages for you. You heard Tom talk before about some macro trends driving the growth in the company today. And 2 of those are really important to my business. So we've got the energy transition for one and industrial reshoring for the other. So we'll talk a bit about those later in the presentation. You also heard Tom talk about foundational businesses that are responsible for building cash and providing cash for investment in our growth engines in Power Delivery and Renewables. So when you talk about foundational, that's my business. The last 2 key messages revolve around the why and why do our customers choose to hire us. And so first, everybody says you have experienced teams. We have experienced teams. What I like about our teams is we have really a skill set that's agnostic to the end market, and I'll get into more detail into what that means in a later slide. Finally, our labor strategy allows us to meet our clients' needs across our service area, we got 2 different labor strategies, and we're able to be compliant with federal incentive programs around the premiership in both. So I'll quickly give you an overview of the 3 service lines that comprise the Energy business, and those are Industrial Construction, Heavy Civil and Pipeline. You can see in the map in the bottom right there that we operate primarily in the Southern U.S. and Western Canada and top line last year was around $2 billion. So Industrial Construction, that's the light blue in the bars there, about 50% of our revenue comes from that sector, came off a low during the pandemic in 2021, and we're seeing a really strong funnel of project opportunities, in fact, probably a multi-decade high in terms of opportunity for that business right now. Our Heavy Civil group is really a regional service. It operates entirely in Texas and Louisiana. So that's characterized by DOT work and very, very strong backlog. And finally, for Pipeline, Pipeline operates really nationwide. We've seen some softening in that market coming off of 2020, but some signs of improvement last year. So just coming back to the 2 major Energy trends -- or sorry, the 2 major market trends are influencing my group, energy transition and industrial reshoring, are driving demand for our key clients' projects, which in turn drives demand for our work. So I'll talk about each of these trends in the following slides, kind of how we find to the mix and provide a case study for each. So energy transition, no secret, ambitious goals to reduce emissions even in the face of increasing global energy demand. And so it's also no secret this transition is not going to happen overnight. And we strongly believe and the data is showing that traditional sources, particularly natural gas, going to be a really important part of the supply mix well into the future. We have government incentives, particularly the IRA that are driving change in the sector and with that change comes opportunity for us. And we're seeing that today with both increased activity in traditional gas-fired power plants, new projects, and those are either coming in as a replacement of existing infrastructure, providing peak or backup power to intermittent sources like solar and wind. And we're also seeing, say, nontraditional end markets, such as biofuels, carbon capture and hydrogen. So where do we fit in? So the underlying demand is spurring investment from our key clients and many new ones. So you'll see the gold box. We're tracking right now approximately $27 billion addressable market over the next 24 months. That's not today -- to say that we're looking to increase my business by 10x over the next 2 years, but I just want to illustrate that the underlying market is really strong for our services there. I mentioned earlier that our skills are kind of end market agnostic. And what I mean by this is the basic services that we can provide, moving dirt, pouring concrete, erecting structural steel, setting equipment, laying pipe, fit across a broad range of end projects. So we're not limited to we only do power plants or whether it's an [ ASU ] or power plant, biofuel facility. We're able to apply those skills across end markets and be versatile for our clients. We have decades-long relationships with our key customers and many of whom are participating in the energy transition. So we see this as a great opportunity to increase our share of wallet with them. So as a touch point, sitting today with our current backlog, about 75% of that is held with clients with whom we worked for over 10 years. One more key message on the energy transition. So I mentioned our labor strategy. Our Industrial and Pipeline groups provide their services with both union and nonunion workforces and both of those are fully capable of complying with the apprenticeship program requirements of the IRA. So this is something our key clients raised to us, particularly in the nonunion space 12 to 18 months ago, and I'm really proud to say we've been able to respond in real time to that, and we are working nonunion projects fully compliant with IRA today. Some great work by the team there. Let's move into a little case study. This is a really cool project. We're just getting this kicked off with a long-time utility client, and it's an upgrade to an existing natural gas generation facility, providing electric power from natural gas. The existing facilities reaching the end of its useful life. So their O&M costs are going up. And in some cases, the utility is actually having to import electricity, which is at the high cost of their rate payers. So in this case, again, multi-decade clients. We're providing engineering, procurement and construction services on this repowering project. It really kind of epitomizes to me, the energy transition because not only are we talking about gas turbines, but this project also involves battery energy storage system. So best solutions combined with traditional gas-fired power plant. So we're able to capitalize on our strong resume in the power space and respond to the increasing demand for plants of this type and size. So again, we're seeing -- this is a real growth engine for my part of the business, resurgent demand for gas-fired power plants that are either replacing aging infrastructure, providing peak power or backup power to supplement intermittent sources, like wind and solar. So just I guess to underline that point again, this is a key growth area for my business, both in the union and nonunion side. So we'll move on from that and share how Primoris fits into the second major market trend of industrial reshoring. So again, no surprise, we all experienced some of the supply chain disruption that carried on through the pandemic, and some of you may be experiencing similar through current geopolitical events, disrupting supply chains and increasing costs for global supplies. Similar to energy policies, the federal government's commitment or decision to incentivize reshoring of strategic supply chains has seen an increase in investment in manufacturing, and we're able to participate in that. Just to make sure we're on the right -- okay, yes. The development of large manufacturing facilities, and I'll use semiconductors as an example, gives opportunities for multiple parts of our service lines across the business to participate on a single project. So these projects require aside from the facility itself, it requires access roads, utility infrastructures, there's supplementary industrial facilities that produce materials for the manufacturing process. And we have worked in all 3 of those scopes on existing projects, and they're ongoing today. So we have multiple service lines within my business unit participating on single large projects. So again, share of wallet increasing as we're pursuing work on these jobs. And I want to come back again. It's really a testament to the fact that, again, that our skills are applicable across a broad range of end markets. Again, whether it's moving dirt on a hydrogen site or a chip plant, we're able to fit in and be competitive on both of those. Coming into our final case study, this is kind of the opposite end of the scale from a large chip factory, but a good example. This project, for which we provided construction only, was completed last year and is now commissioned and online. It involves the construction of a graphite-based active anode plant, which was the first of its kind in the U.S. and the first large-scale plant outside of China. We worked really closely with the owner and their engineer of record to deliver a really safe and successful project on time. And even though this was a new type of facility for the United States, it was well within our skill set and really a smooth well-executed job. Client was ecstatic, and we're really proud of our result on that one. So again, whether it's the large scale where we're looking for share of wallet with numerous scopes on a single large project site or being very flexible at a small scale and responding to specific client needs, we're more than able to meet that requirement. So final key point is on really the direction of our business. I just want to underline, again, the foundational nature of my Energy business. And we're here to provide cash to support our growth engines of Power Delivery and Renewables and the tailwinds of the energy transition and industrial reshoring are providing that. So day to day, what that means for me has continued to be really disciplined in terms of our project pursuits and our bidding and to ensure that we continue to execute at a high level. So this is assurance and improvement on margin. And again, collecting, generating and collecting cash. As a group, we plan to divest or wind down some small subscale services. And while this will temper our top line growth over the planning horizon, it will improve our overall margin profile and reduce CapEx. So you can see on the chart here that we're sitting right around $2 billion in revenue last year. And through the 26 planning horizon, we've got divestitures on the order of 10% to 12%, which served to kind of offset the nominal 1% to 4% CAGR in the continuing business. So to wrap it up again with the 5 key takeaways. We have the energy transition and industrial reshoring, which are providing sustainable revenue for our foundational businesses, that's Industrial Construction, Heavy Civil and Pipeline. We have the experienced teams end market agnostic and a really successful labor strategy that allows us to participate in this. And really, we're just highly focused on keeping the margins up or improving them and collecting cash. So with that, I'll turn it over to Ken Dodgen for our final presentation before our Q&A. Thank you.

Ken Dodgen

executive
#6

Thanks, Jeremy. Good morning, everyone. I'm Ken Dodgen, Chief Financial Officer. I know most of you all out there. So I won't spend too long on the introductions. I've been with the company about 7 years. I've got over 35 years of experience, 18 as CFO of various companies, mostly in this industry. I also spent some time in investment banking and public -- public accounting in a previous life. I'm excited to be here as well. I've been -- I've really enjoyed being part of this transition over the course of the past few years with the company, and I'm excited about what we're going to be accomplishing as well. We discussed a lot today about the secular tailwinds in our end markets, and we're excited about the opportunity that lays ahead of us. And the good news is that we're well positioned to grow in these markets, which will generate increased profits and cash flows. Our focus is on continuing to allocate capital to growing our Renewables and Power Delivery businesses. And we -- and our balance sheet remains strong and is getting stronger as we continue to improve cash flows and reduce leverage. In combination, this will enable us to support our organic growth and pursue accretive acquisitions. M&A will continue to be disciplined, strategic and in support of our growth markets. And finally, successfully executing this strategy will drive significant value for our shareholders. You've already heard about the investments we've made in our key markets. This has driven our growth and helped us mitigate the challenges faced by some of our foundational businesses, such as the volatility in Pipeline or the slower growth in gas utilities. Looking forward, we expect revenue to grow organically at 4% to 6% compound annual growth rate through 2026, led by our Renewables and Power Delivery businesses. But the real story is profitable growth, driven by improved margins, which leads to our 9% to 12% adjusted EBITDA growth rate over the next 3 years. We are confident in our ability to outpace our top line growth by: one, growing in higher-margin businesses like solar that will improve our margin mix; two, being disciplined in bidding work, managing contracts and project execution to improve productivity and reduce operating cost across many of our businesses; and three, pruning our portfolio by some small subscale businesses that do not fit our long-term strategy, as Jeremy discussed just a few moments ago. As we've grown Utilities and shifted the mix of our revenue, this has impacted our operating cash flows over the past few years. We believe that over the next 3 years, we will continue to improve this margin to closer to 4% to 5% by 2026. This will be achieved by improving our mix of work toward higher cash conversion businesses like solar, updating contract terms when possible, to increase billing frequency and shortened payment terms, and continue to upgrade our billing processes to shorten the cycle from the completion of the work to billing. We've already started on these initiatives, and the early results were seen in 2023 when operating cash flows increased to almost 3.5% of revenue. We will continue to spend roughly $80 million to $100 million in gross CapEx and $60 million to $70 million -- and $60 million to $75 million in net CapEx annually, which reflects approximately $20 million to $25 million of asset sales annually. This is in line with our normal course of business. Our capital allocation priorities have been pretty consistent over time. First and foremost, we want to invest in the business and support organic growth. However, we are shifting to more disproportionately invest in our highest growth and most attractive end markets of Renewables and Power Delivery. This is driven by our goal to be best-in-class at allocating capital. Our foundational businesses that Jeremy highlighted are a major component of our second priority, which is to pay down debt and optimize our capital structure. The steady margin and cash flow profile of many of these businesses will enable us to accomplish this. A strong balance sheet and reduced debt will enable us to pursue tuck-in acquisitions that can help support our growth markets, expand our geography or add emerging service lines. And returning capital to shareholders is also a priority that could move up the list as we make progress on our debt reduction. The addition of PLH in 2022 drove our leverage ratio higher as you can see in the chart. But we had clear plans to delever down to the low 2x range by the end of 2024, and this chart illustrates the progress we've made ahead of our original schedule. Our goal is to maintain an average trailing 12-month net debt-to-EBITDA ratio around 1.5x as depicted by the blue dotted line going across the middle. But working capital needs, the seasonality of our business or tuck-in acquisitions could temporarily drive this leverage ratio higher in some quarters. However, as we progress with our cash flow plans, we will be able to meet our working capital needs and even complete some small acquisitions without having to flex the balance sheet significantly. We continue to believe paying down debt is the best use of cash after supporting our organic growth. We have seen plenty of acquisition opportunities over the past 18 months, but none have met our criteria. If we find a quality acquisition that meets our criteria, it will most likely be a tuck-in or bolt-on acquisition in the near term. These types of deals often have more attractive valuations, are a better strategic fit and can benefit from our scale and geographic footprint. Tom touched on our acquisition criteria, but let's go into that in a little bit more detail. This page outlines both strategic and financial requirements we look for as we evaluate acquisitions, and there should be no surprises on this page. On the left, strategic fit, it needs to align with our strategic initiatives, attractive customer base, big and growing markets with strong tailwinds and fit within our current areas of operational expertise. And on the right, you see the financial metrics, obviously, accretive to revenue and operating margins. And you can see our targets there on the right. We will evaluate cost synergies, but not revenue synergies in our decision and our cost synergies need to be realized within the first year after we complete the acquisition. And finally, internal rate of return, we're looking to achieve 12% or greater, which is our weighted average cost of capital. So let me summarize what we've discussed with you today. First, we are planning to organically grow our revenue 4% to 6% annually. In Utilities, this will mean 2% to 4% growth, driven primarily by Power Delivery. In Energy, we're looking to grow 8% to 10% annually, with solar being the primary driver, followed by Industrial. But again, we may exit some small subscale businesses that could shift these targets up or down slightly over the next 3 years. Gross profit and adjusted EBITDA, we are targeting to grow 9% to 12% during this time period, again driven by our margin improvement initiatives in Utilities, improved margin mix from solar and managing our SG&A to support growth. As we improve our revenue, gross profit and working capital, we believe we are poised to take our cash flow margin up to 4% to 5% by 2026. The results should allow us to comfortably achieve the 1.5x leverage ratio and pursue strategic acquisitions as they arrive. Our growth targets do not assume any M&A, and we believe we are setting realistic achievable goals for the next few years. And achieving these goals should be rewarded in the market. We had performed well in growing a number of key metrics in the past 3 years. Through a combination of organic growth and acquisitions, we have delivered solid results. If we meet or exceed the goals we've laid out for you here today, we should be rewarded with a valuation that is more in line with other infrastructure companies. This includes growing revenue, improving margins and cash flow and managing our leverage. In the end, we look to control what we can and operate our businesses with the highest levels of safety, quality and productivity and be the best allocators of capital in our sector. In summary, we're excited to be here today and to share our story and our goals with you. We see potential to drive margins higher, particularly by expanding in our higher-growth markets of Renewables and Power Delivery. Higher margins and better cash flows will produce a stronger balance sheet, and we will allocate capital towards the highest returns in our portfolio in order to be best in class. And lastly, we believe that we have an attractive valuation given our market exposure and by successfully executing on these strategic priorities, we can create significant value for shareholders. Thanks for joining us today. And with that, I'll turn it back over to Blake.

Blake Holcomb

executive
#7

All right. Thank you, everybody. We'll now open it up for our Q&A session here. [Operator Instructions] Yes, start back there with Jerry. Becky, thank you.

Jerry Revich

analyst
#8

Thanks, Blake. Jerry Revich, Goldman Sachs. I'm wondering if you could just unpack the EBITDA bridge a bit more, pretty impressive targets. The top line growth from solar is pretty visible. So that's about $90 million of the bridge. I'm wondering if you could just talk about the remaining $40 million. How much of that is exiting the subscale businesses and any assumptions on project completions? Can we just flesh out that remaining $40 million beyond normal operating leverage, if you don't mind?

Unknown Executive

executive
#9

Yes. The rest of it is -- so on the subscale businesses, they contribute very little right now, which is obviously back to our capital allocation goals, allocate capital more towards businesses with better margins and higher margins. And Jerry, I'm sorry, what was the other part of your question? So that was for me as much as Tom.

Jerry Revich

analyst
#10

So the incremental margins that are implied and the EBITDA growth versus the sales growth are pretty high. And so it looks like there's about $40 million of structural profit improvement beyond normal sales growth. And I was wondering if you could unpack that.

Unknown Executive

executive
#11

Yes. Look, the main driver of that is going to be our improvement in margins in Utilities. We've talked about our gross margin targets right now for Utilities this year, 2024 being 9% to 11%. We expect to be in the midpoint of that range this year. And over the course of the next couple of years, drive that up to be the same as our Energy segment, 10% to 12%, again, with the goal to be -- to continue to create up to the midpoint of that range. And then on the Energy side of the business, a little bit of margin accretion there, too, but that will be primarily as a result of the continued growth in our Renewables business and that continuing to be a larger percentage of the overall segment.

Ken Dodgen

executive
#12

Yes. One thing to add to that, I don't think I need the microphone. As you see the mix of our power delivery group is changed from more project work to -- from MSA work, those margins they drive higher margins. So you'll -- that plays the part of that as well.

Jerry Revich

analyst
#13

And I just want to ask on the free -- or operating cash flow outlook, 100 basis point improvement from 2023 levels, the margin improvement is about that level as well. But given the mix shift towards solar, what's the opportunity to drive that higher? Any headwinds keeping that number? It feels like there's an embedded receivables bill that's still built into that forecast. Can you just expand on that, please?

Ken Dodgen

executive
#14

Yes. You're exactly right. But that's the reason we're focusing on some of those initiatives in order to continue working on better terms there. Some of the best terms in our business actually are in our renewables so that continues to grow [indiscernible] as well. Our biggest challenge on renewables is in the utility side of the business because those customers love to string out and take as long as possible to pay, Jerry. We talked about this before. We are continuing to work with them to let them know that, that is structurally not the way we want to operate. It's going to be a slow process, but that's the reason it's going to be stretched out over 3 years in order to continue to do better and shorten that collections side.

Julio Romero

analyst
#15

Julio Romero from Sidoti. My question is on the utility revenue CAGR of 2% to 4% through 2026. Considering the 2023 utility guide of down segment sales year-over-year, just talk about how you expect kind of the cadence of utilities revenue growth in '25 and '26 to get to that 2% to 4% 3-year CAGR?

Thomas McCormick

executive
#16

Can you handle that one? I'm going to let Colt, and then Ken can add some color. You got to use the mic because they can't hear you on the webcast...

Colt Moedl

executive
#17

Yes. I think to answer your question, we continue to see the evolution of the power delivery market in that return, and that's a big piece of it. On the revenue side, we'll see single-digit growth pretty consistently in the business. On the gross margin side, we see that improving by double digits.

Julio Romero

analyst
#18

Okay. So mid-single-digit growth kind of steady through '25 and '26?

Colt Moedl

executive
#19

Yes. On the revenue side, on the top line, yes, right.

Julio Romero

analyst
#20

Got you. And then just my follow-up would be talking about the working capital terms a little bit more. Ken, you talked about that the terms in renewables are actually pretty good. But on the utility side, when you think about the buckets, communications and the other gas power delivery, which one of those units do you see the most opportunity to improve terms?

Ken Dodgen

executive
#21

Yes, the most opportunities in communications and in power delivery. We -- the gas terms are pretty good, but they're not -- sorry, the gas terms are better than power delivering communications. And so our goal is to get power delivering communications much closer to gas.

Steven Fisher

analyst
#22

Steve Fisher, UBS. So I just wanted to follow up on the 2% to 4% utility growth segment or segment growth. And you said that power delivery was going to be one of the faster elements of that. And I think within that, you have more kind of discrete projects driving that, which I would think would be a little bit more kind of larger projects, a little more chunky, should be driving faster growth. So I guess I'm curious, how should we think about kind of splitting out the power delivery part of that 2% to 4%? And if that, I would presume that would be either the higher end or above that? And if not -- and if it is, then what does that imply for say, communications and gas, that would be kind of a fairly low growth rate. So is there kind of a degree of conservatism in that -- embedded in that growth forecast?

Colt Moedl

executive
#23

Yes. So I would look at our gas business, specifically as pretty level flat, consistently staying about where we are with the top line. When you look at our power delivery business, as I alluded to in my presentation, we're changing the mix of work to more project work. And what I consider a healthy split of that is about 40% of our work moving towards project work versus MSA work. And so that growth is directly -- that attributes to some of that growth, which -- also there's been a lot of questions on cash and our ability that the major project work tends to give us better cash conversion as well. So those things kind of work together.

Steven Fisher

analyst
#24

So okay. So your power delivery should be -- is it above the 4%, do you think, or at the 4%?

Ken Dodgen

executive
#25

Yes. Power delivery is in the 4% to 6% range. And with power delivery being now 50% of that segment and growing faster, it will accrete up to 60%. So the power delivery is going to drive the growth. Gas is forecasted to be relatively flat, as Colt mentioned. Communications is an interesting one. It's forecasted to have some growth over the course of the next couple of years, but the industry outlook actually shows a decline in '26. And so we're watching that closely to see what that will ultimately mean for us.

Steven Fisher

analyst
#26

Got it. And then my follow-up is really on sort of implied SG&A costs. So your gross profit growth, 9% to 12%, your EBITDA growth also, 9% to 12% seems to imply that there is not a lot of SG&A leverage improvement in there. Can you just talk about why that is?

Ken Dodgen

executive
#27

Yes. Look, Steve, as we've continued to grow, we've recognized that we need to continue -- especially at the phase we're in, we need to continue to invest in a lot of SG&A-type expenses. So for the purposes of the next 3 years, no, we have not assumed any SG&A leverage. That said, we're hoping that we will see opportunities, in particular, in '25 and '26, but we have not built any of those in, correct.

Adam Thalhimer

analyst
#28

Adam Thalhimer, Thompson, Davis. I wanted to ask about your -- so your 3-year adjusted EBITDA growth target is 9% to 12% but the guidance for this year is plus 4% to 9%. So I'm just curious how we should think about the guidance for this year. Fortunately, for investors, the street is at the very low end of this year's guidance. But what would be your thoughts on the potential to raise it as we go through this year?

Ken Dodgen

executive
#29

Adam, this is no different than any other year. We try to come in and set good expectations that we think are very achievable. And as we begin executing through the year, especially by the time we get to midyear, see how we're performing, see what our customers are doing. We look for opportunities to increase guidance, but there's no guarantees of that. We've got to see how the year starts to play out. We're still relatively early in the year.

Thomas McCormick

executive
#30

Do you want me to answer that? No, I think I just can't say it's very -- look, we -- since I've been the CEO, we've shot way out there with very aggressive expectations and we got penalized for it because we didn't meet it. We've been much more conservative about that, now we're achieving and meeting our numbers year-over-year, and we've done that purposely to be conservative going in, knowing that, again, we want to be able to do what we say we're going to do and be consistent in our performance and our execution. One quarter into the year doesn't really tell us anything where we are now. Halfway into this year, we'll be able to look and assess. Our expectations are that work will pick up and we'll see some other work that we haven't necessarily that are in our -- bid funnels that we haven't necessarily built into our plans. If we win that work and it moves to the field quickly and we start burning revenue, then it allows us to look at that and then we can look at guidance and adjust if necessary later in the year.

Steven Fisher

analyst
#31

Okay. And then one for Jeremy. The industrial construction, can you -- I guess, historically, that's really been more LNG and power related. But if you could just say that the funnel is chock full of data centers for AI, we can fix the multiple tomorrow?

Jeremy R. Kinch

executive
#32

Well, we're certainly working on that. Like I said, we have participated in that I'll say, with -- I don't want to say niche services, but specific services. So whether it's foundation prep or facilities that are specific to like supporting, providing -- let me think how to frame this, providing base materials into the chip factories. For example, we have participated in the underground utilities on some data centers. I think historically, where we've had less strength has been that area in Texas, and we've really been building that up going forward. We've had good strength with power side in California and great strength on the earth moving at in Louisiana. And really, it's been within the last couple of years that we've started to make a name for ourselves in the kind of true multidisciplined industrial space. So it's been a bit of a process, but that's definitely on our targets as well.

Thomas McCormick

executive
#33

Well, what we're seeing, too, in California, the Union Industrial Group in California performs they do well most, if not all their projects, and they have a history of doing that and the experience of doing that. The clients recognize that. And they've given them work because of that because they know they will perform. We haven't always had that 5 years ago in our Industrial nonunion group, it was hit-or-miss on depending on who your project team was. Jeremy has come in and built a great team. We brought in a lot of senior people to change out the leadership in that group. And with those people come, the talent come to site supervision and the field skills that you need, and then you use success -- great success as you demonstrate to clients in the industry that you can perform well on projects. Your bid funnels go up, you're not out seeking work anymore, you're actually being asked to bid work or price work, and that's where Jeremy's business is now and has been for the last couple of years. So it makes a huge difference.

Lee Jagoda

analyst
#34

Lee Jagoda, CJS Securities. Stephen, I guess, one for you. You had mentioned 90% of the work today is self-performed. Of the 10% that's not is the opportunity for Colt's group to backfill what you're doing that's now outsourced? And to the extent that, that's part of it, is there a situation where it will ever get to 100% or you don't want that?

Stephen Jones

executive
#35

Good question. The 10% is really specialty type work. So when you put a fence around an entire solar array, for example, that's a piece of the work that we just choose not to do. But what we are focused on is certainly bringing Jeremy's group more into what I would call more specialty work. Colt's group has already built into that 90% when we think about high voltage. So to get to 100%, we'll probably never really be at 100%. It will probably fluctuate between that 90% to 100%. But there's just some very specific specialty pieces of work on a solar project that none of -- we just -- we'll choose not to do.

Thomas McCormick

executive
#36

You know those small nonstrategic businesses that we're talking about moving out of -- that's -- some of that's that type of work. It's just not real profitable work. It's lumpy. There's no reason to do that when you go get a contractor to do it. That does it much more efficiently or at much lower cost. They don't have the overhead that a company like ours does.

Lee Jagoda

analyst
#37

Sure. No, that's helpful. And then just as we think about the 50 basis points or so of margin expansion a year through the planning period, how much of that comes from just a mix towards more project work on the utility side? And what's the comfort level around when you're taking on projects, you inherently increase the risk, so you earn a higher margin? Is the risk worth the reward? I guess since you're doing it, it is in your minds, but how can you get us comfortable with the risk around increasing project work in utility?

Thomas McCormick

executive
#38

Well, it comes with, again, not chasing work that you don't have an expertise in, right? And so we have an expertise and experience in that work, and I'll let Colt touch on that here in a minute within that group. But again, it's -- our focus has been very disciplined. He's probably turned down more opportunities of work that's either too big or in areas that we can attract labor, we can't bring the resources than he's accepted and doing work with Stephen. Even in certain areas where Stephen works, he's not doing some of that substation work for those same very reasons. It's just being very disciplined about what type of work we do and for what clients. Jeremy's business would probably be a $2.5 billion business, if you bid everything that came out of it. But again, what do we do well? And let's execute and stay within that box, that sandbox.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#39

And then just on the margin where's also in terms of how much of the margin is a mix up for your project?

Colt Moedl

executive
#40

So your question is how much of the margin -- the accretion of margin that we expect to see from project work, what percentage?

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#41

Well, what part of the 50 basis points a year of consolidated gross margin improvement is coming from? We're just doing more projects and apparently that fares a higher margin...

Thomas McCormick

executive
#42

Ken, do you want to take a shot at that? Yes, I'll let Ken do that.

Ken Dodgen

executive
#43

Yes. The short answer is, this year, it will be about -- it will be about -- I want to make sure I'm saying this correctly, 25% of the 50 basis points. And then as that project works becomes larger, it will accrete up to about a 50-50 over the course of '25 and '26. Again, the other piece of that is just better operating performance, reducing costs, better productivity, which is an ongoing process that Colt has been driving ever since he walked in the door.

Colt Moedl

executive
#44

Yes. And just to give you confidence in our major products group, there's a couple of strategic advantages I talked about in our presentation. One is a substantial amount of our major projects work today is done through our Renewables group, right? So we're performing a lot of power delivery work with Stephen's group and the renewables team. That's allowed us to leverage off of that to build a world-class team and organization around how we execute and deliver EPC projects. And as Tom alluded to, we're very selective about where we go with those type of opportunities and projects.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#45

This is [ Jon Ramirez ] from D.A. Davison. Jeremy, talking about natural gas repowering, do you see more work in the pipeline going next year or at least from 2024 through 2026?

Jeremy R. Kinch

executive
#46

I feel like there's a political element to this question that I'm not going to address. Our research is showing that the demand for new pipelines is relatively flat over the next few years. And it's going to continue along similar to the trend of what we've seen the last couple of years. And within that, there may be some regional differences where there may be some more activity, say, in Texas or something like that, which again, we're positioned in markets that are likely to see more of that activity. But barring a massive change in policy, I would be surprised to see a rapid growth, specifically in the pipeline space.

Ken Dodgen

executive
#47

But I think your question was related to the pipeline of gas power plant, correct?

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#48

Right. Yes, because you mentioned you had a natural gas plant, though you brought it up...

Jeremy R. Kinch

executive
#49

So -- okay. So you're talking about, I guess, smaller lines specific to support that plant in general. Okay. So I'll broaden that out a little bit. Maybe -- I apologize. Okay. I misunderstood.

Thomas McCormick

executive
#50

He's Canadian, you got to give him a break.

Jeremy R. Kinch

executive
#51

Can you reframe that in American for me? Sorry, just to clarify, again, you're asking, are we seeing growth in the next 2 to 3 years in more...

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#52

Yes. Well, I mean, you mentioned that you had a project where you brought back to life a natural gas power plant. And I was just seeing if there were more projects like that?

Jeremy R. Kinch

executive
#53

100% yes. Yes, absolutely. So whether it's repowering or peak plants to support just population growth or if it's backup power for particularly solar and wind that are intermittent. All 3 of those, yes, and that is a growth area for us in the next 3 -- within our planning horizon and beyond. Absolutely.

Thomas McCormick

executive
#54

And that's both in our union and nonunion markets we're seeing them.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#55

Okay. And talking about your agnostic to these end markets, what sort of, I guess, synergies or cost savings? Is that built in, in your growth target?

Jeremy R. Kinch

executive
#56

Yes. I think where we get advantages from this is we can provide continuity of work for our trades people. And so they see that I know Primoris is going to keep me employed, not just for this 9-month job, but I'm going to go from job to job to job. So that allows us to keep our workforce study, which again improves performance overall. Same for our project management teams, we're able to move them more so than in the past between our business units. So we're getting our project management systems and processes aligned much more than they have been in the past. So that, again, it's overall -- so to answer your question, yes, it is baked into the numbers. But we get a lot more assurance in terms of our performance with the model that we have, where we're able to deploy people to different projects over multiple years continuously.

Thomas McCormick

executive
#57

And I think it's worth mentioning that from a risk profile, we're very careful not to pursue work that's -- we're not going to -- you're not going to see us pursue a $500 million power plant project. You may see us doing that in California because of their expertise and their history and their ability to get craft out of the unions and they've done it before. In our nonunion, it would be probably anywhere from 100 to 150 or 250 probably tops and we always look at the risk component of that labor because that's your biggest risk in those markets.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#58

Julian from [ Bamberg ]. Maybe going back to the Utilities Group margin recovery story. You've talked about some of the building blocks to get there. Is there anything incremental you can share as far as color, slope of recovery in-flight initiatives that would give us confidence because it remains a material piece of the overall EBITDA CAGR outperforming revenue CAGR. So anything incremental to help us gain confidence in that story?

Ken Dodgen

executive
#59

Yes. Julian, specifically, do you want to just understand the trajectory and where we expect to be '24, '25 and '26 or are you looking at more specifics on our drivers? I think we've already talked about the drivers. Yes. So I mean the short answer is for 2024, we're projecting to be right in the middle of the range, 10%. Range is 9% to 11%. We're expecting to be right in the middle of the range, 10%, plus or minus a little bit. For 2025, about 50 basis point accretion, 10.5%; 2026, 11%.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#60

Perfect. That's helpful. And a follow-up would be on the solar side of the business, you mentioned $8 billion in sales funnel. Can you discuss maybe historically what percentage of your funnel -- I know these are at different stages, but what percentage would eventually go forward and maybe when or conversion rates would also be helpful?

Stephen Jones

executive
#61

Yes. Really good question. So the $8 billion is relatively what we're really targeting and working on for the next 3 to 4 years, there's a much larger funnel out there. When we think about the $8 billion, we're converting. Again, kind of going back to what Tom said, a lot of these are negotiated because our customers trust us. But when we think about where we've been, we've historically been between 35% to 50% in terms of conversion, that's where we've relatively been approximately.

Thomas McCormick

executive
#62

But a lot of these also when you've gone into limited notice to proceed, you're pretty much 100%. Once we get a job to limited notice proceed, we've never had a job canceled.

Stephen Jones

executive
#63

Yes. So the process -- generally, the processes, we're working through the negotiation process. Eventually, we go into an LNTP. At that point, we're committed. The customer is committed, we're committed. So when we go into an LNTP, like Tom said, we're almost at 100% because there's just so much investment and work that's been done up to that point. But before that point, when you start talking about a project with a customer and we're both kind of measuring each other as to whether or not it's a good fit, we're in that 35% to 50% range.

Steven Fisher

analyst
#64

Just wanted to follow up on Adam's question about the data centers, and you mentioned some of the scope that you have done to date. Do you see an opportunity to sort of bring the more holistic Primoris platform or portfolio to these operations in terms of bringing the grid element to it and substations and sort of broader connectivity on some of the utilities? And if so, how would you kind of quantify that whole kind of scope opportunity for a data center, if it's possible to do that?

Thomas McCormick

executive
#65

Well, I'll let Colt take a shot at putting a price or a value on what those are. But I can tell you what we're seeing a lot -- even in cryptocurrency mining we're doing a lot of work with respect to the transmissions and the substations associated with that in the data centers. Data centers are -- I know one in Phoenix, the company is building, it's $8 billion. We're not taking on a data center, but we are taking on specific scopes and there's plenty of opportunity with respect to distribution, transmission, substations that his group is doing and can do in those facilities. So...

Colt Moedl

executive
#66

Yes. Just the way I look at data centers in our business is there's 2 distinct areas that it impacts us the most. The first is our power delivery side. So the load growth associated with that data center generally requires grid upgrades that we perform. Those can be done in 1 and 2 ways. We either do them directly for the utility provider or in some cases, we provide the developer that's generally, it's a substation and a transmission line upgrade. So that's 1 component to it. In addition to that, on the data centers, we -- our communications group also provides all the network fiber efforts associated with those data centers. So the undergrounding of the fiber networks think of that as a key component to us. And the size of the magnitude on the power delivery side vary substantially depending on the region, what grid upgrades are needed, et cetera. It can be anywhere from $5 million to $100 million of upgrades depending on what needs to happen with the grid in that area. So it's really hard to put a specific number around that. Generally, when I look at our communications group, it's much easier across the platform. Those opportunities generally run in the $30 million range per pop, if that makes sense. And so we currently see a pipeline on the communications side of about $1 billion of opportunities associated with that type of work.

Steven Fisher

analyst
#67

That's really helpful. Then I wanted to maybe shift gears to the solar side of the business. Stephen, I think you mentioned $300 million to $400 million of growth. I guess that's annually. Interesting that it's a kind of a set dollar amount which on a growing base would mean a moderating growth rate. So is there a theory or a thought behind why that specific dollar amount? Is it that you know how many teams you can add per year and that's sort of your maximum limit and how much they can generate, and you don't want to go beyond that at this point?

Stephen Jones

executive
#68

Yes, that's correct. It's a really good question. It's tied to teams. I mean resources, as Tom said and we've said here, we have to be able to hire really good quality people, resources. We can go buy the equipment, we can go buy the materials, but getting the right people. So it's really built around our developing a team. And we really do believe that we -- and we have proven this that we can build at least 3 good, really good solid teams a year. Again, we're giving you a range because we do believe that we can also build up to 5, but it really comes down to the interview process, the hiring process, making sure that we got really good people. We just don't want to jeopardize that. So it is a 3 to 5 team, and that's what that dollar value is tied around.

Thomas McCormick

executive
#69

Stephen, talk about how you -- what you do with these teams and how do you have them shadow other teams and how you develop them so they're ready to go on to a project when they come because that's really what's helped you be successful, the discipline you have around bringing those people in and how you develop them and they understand our tools, our systems and our expectations.

Stephen Jones

executive
#70

Yes. As I said during the presentation, we bring -- when we bring somebody in, we're bringing them in because these projects have a fairly long gestation period when we talk about the engine -- the LNTP period, the engineering cycle. So what we will do is we will hire ahead bring them in, we will shadow them with existing team members on existing projects. They will work with those team members. They will learn our system, our company, our culture. And frankly, during that time, we get to evaluate them, too, before we send them out and take on their own projects. So that's, in a sense, our system. We make that investment up front it really has paid off for us. And again, it's not perfect in every situation, but that's in a sense how we do it, and that's how we build teams. And we have to evaluate those people. They've got to be able to prove to us that they can go run a $200 million, $300 million, $400 million project. And we're not just going to get the work and then go find a team for it. That's not how we're running this business.

Adam Thalhimer

analyst
#71

Also for Stephen and continuing on Steve's question, what's the variability of solar project margins? So is the business -- do you typically hit the 10%, 12% margin on every job? Or do you have some jobs at a loss and some jobs that just knock it out of the park and do 30%? And for the jobs, if you have underperforming jobs, what's typically the reason for this?

Stephen Jones

executive
#72

Good question, Adam. We -- you're going to have -- yes, I mean in a sense, you're going to have those underperforming jobs. But I think we've done a really, really good job sifting those out. So I think what you've seen year-to-year is really good consistency. And I think we do a really good job saying no to some of the customers and the projects that we see inherent risk in it. When we're going into a new area, or a new region or a new state, we really evaluate. We take a really, really hard look at that. Number one, we're going to tie a qualified team to that area that understands that, but we're also going to evaluate whether or not we can be successful with the customer and make a good margin. So I think the answer really to your question is, we are very consistent in our margins. Yes, you will have the -- you will perform better on certain projects. And yes, there is some underperformance. You get into a really tough area like Michigan, for example, in the winter time, sometimes you do underperform your -- from your -- on the productivity standpoint. But generally, we've been very consistent at the margins that we've stated. And what we're really going to be working on now into the future is driving efficiency. It's really getting incrementally better each and every day and year by year.

Thomas McCormick

executive
#73

But to give a range, you're somewhere in that the lower end maybe 8%, 9%, but the upper end could be as high as 14%. It certainly was in the past when you had the benefit of buydowns and gaining from buydowns, maybe even is 16% on some jobs. But it's up and down, depends on the region of the country, the time of the year, a number of different factors.

Stephen Jones

executive
#74

Correct. Yes. That's a really good range that Tom stated.

Lee Jagoda

analyst
#75

Colt, you had mentioned about $100-plus billion of T&D spend for your top 10 customers over the next 3 years. Can you give us some context in terms of what was spent in the last 3 years versus that $100-plus billion? And how much of that $100-plus billion is actually Primoris' addressable market?

Colt Moedl

executive
#76

Yes. I don't have the data on the last 3 years, just to answer that. But as far as our addressable market in that T&D spend, well over half of that is addressable to us. Now the reality of what we stated is that we're going to grow smart and with our craft labor resources and optimization of our equipment. And so the availability of that spend is there. It's -- for us, it's more about aligning strategically to the right clients where we can be very efficient and productive.

Stefan Mykytiuk

analyst
#77

Stefan Mykytiuk from Grays Lane Capital. Just can you -- Tom, you talked earlier about this focus on setting expectations, you can hit and open, you can beat them. When we look at the 9% to 12% EBITDA growth goals, what are some of the big swing factors that would lead you to be -- come in at the higher end of 12% growth? And if -- when you lie in bed at night and think about all the things that can go right, what are the things that could lead you to do better than that?

Thomas McCormick

executive
#78

Well, part of that is political because I can't. So a lot of it -- some of it is political, right? It's going to be the administration. What happens in this next election, we'll have some impact on that. But we're in a position because of the markets we're in to benefit either way. I think a Republican going into the White House would accelerate probably more -- we'll see more pipeline work, more oil and gas work come back. You'll see refineries start reinvesting because they feel like the government is not wanting them to go out of business. That's just part of it. There's geopolitical issues that could affect that supply chain issues, the issues that we see happening in the Red Sea, just even the issue that happens in Baltimore, you can't necessarily predict. But I think the fact that the end markets that we're in, there's investment being made, as Colt said $105 billion of opportunities in power delivery and utilities. There's a tremendous amount of money being spent in renewables. And as long as Stephen and his team continue to stay close to those clients, I think there is a very good potential for him to have an upside on his numbers and Colt as well. What we want to do here today is lay out, hey, we're -- this is -- it is an ambitious goal, but it is a very achievable goal. If we find some acquisitions that we can buy and that tuck into some of our growth markets, that's not in this plan. We have no acquisitions baked into this plan at all, so we could see some benefit there. To be quite frank, this is not necessarily the right thing to say, but we don't build any storm work into our renewables. I mean our utilities -- power delivery business at all. There are storm events, and there are always storm events, sometimes we get to work and sometimes we don't. But some -- that's a very lumpy business or market for us. If there are -- you have a season where there's an unusual number of storms that we benefit from that. We end up doing a lot of that work for our customers, and it's something we don't bake into our plan because you can't predict it. I tried to do it on a 5-year average when I first got here, it was a failure -- flop. So we don't do that anymore, but there's -- all those things drive that.

Colt Moedl

executive
#79

I would just -- no, I was going to add the other interesting one now is that you've heard a lot about hyperscalers and data centers. We're seeing emerging opportunities for our major projects teams supporting those in the communications space that could provide some pretty potential upside to us. So good opportunities there that -- to be frank, we didn't forecast the magnitude of those hyperscalers and those opportunities that we're seeing now.

Stefan Mykytiuk

analyst
#80

Okay. And sticking with you, Colt, would there be an opportunity to take project work to a higher percentage of your business? And do you need to do some tuck-ins to get certain capabilities? Do you just need to build customer relationships or the internal -- like how do you -- what would drive that?

Colt Moedl

executive
#81

Yes. So the primary drivers behind our drive towards additional major project revenue is conversion of our existing craft labor. We've already established our major projects team and organization. Now it's going out and gaining those additional EPC contracts that, by the way, our clients are asking us to be a single source for them in these markets. So what we're doing is being very selective with where those major project opportunities are in client -- in regions with clients we're already doing work for. So we're calculating where we know we can perform the best and optimize our region because I've ultimately got to be really protective of my craft labor and my equipment. And I want to optimize the return on those assets as much as I possibly can. So we're strategically optimizing our ROIC with those assets in those areas. And so you'll see, as we evolve over the next 3 years, that piece continues to grow, if that makes sense. And that will be driven by taking existing regions where we're doing MSA work, distribution, transmission and substation work specifically, driving more into the project level opportunities as our clients come out and offer those solutions as packages, which is working with the client and the strategic client management programs that we're talking about.

Thomas McCormick

executive
#82

And to go to your comment about a tuck-in and the tuck-in would -- all that would do is add resources to it, capabilities, equipment to that. So it would definitely be an upside.

Stephen Jones

executive
#83

And I would just add that kind of going back to what we said during our conversation -- our presentation is that I think the 3 of us are really, really aligned around leveraging through each other in our businesses and those skills. And I think those are going to bring, as we said, efficiencies to our bottom line. But again, forecasting that and projecting that now is certainly very difficult. So realizing that along the way here over the next 3 years, I think this company has the potential to do that. The other thing is when we think about Colt's business, every solar asset that we build has a high-voltage component. A year ago or 2 years ago, we were not building that component of the work. We now are -- battery storage is coming. We're part of our strategy, certainly that you -- that we talked about was energy storage. That brings another high-voltage component. It brings civil infrastructure. It brings boring, it brings all kinds -- it brings coms, it brings -- there's lots of these synergies inside of the renewable energy market. So we're going to -- I believe, and I think we've discussed it, we're going to see those.

Colt Moedl

executive
#84

Yes. We're doing it today until a large scale. So it's helped a lot.

Blake Holcomb

executive
#85

I think that's the questions we have. Tom will give some brief comments, and then we hope you are available to grab a lunch and stick around and chat with us after that. But Tom, do you want to close with a couple of remarks.

Thomas McCormick

executive
#86

No. Yes. Thank you all very much for coming. And those in person, obviously, it's great to see you and those on the webcast, and we appreciate you taking the time. I'm excited about where we're going. I think this team is excited about where we're going. I hope that we showed you today that we -- and that you have confidence in this group of guys, they have the experience. They have the right backgrounds. They had the right new intent. Then they have teams underneath them -- beneath them that they're really excited about where the company is going and are focused on what we're doing to continue to be consistent in our execution of our projects. And with that consistency and continued successful performance, it creates other opportunities will help us not only achieve these goals but probably surpass them. And that's our expectation. So our focus is going to continue to stay on doing what we do well, not getting overstretched and not chasing things, not trying to be all things to all people. We want to stay in our lane, so to speak. And I'm looking forward to talking to you. I know I'll see you in every quarter, so we'll talk about it. We'll give you guys an update and we'll -- thank you again for coming. Great time.

This call discussed

For developers and AI pipelines

Programmatic access to Primoris Services Corporation earnings transcripts and 32,000+ others is available through the EarningsCalls.dev REST API. Plans from $24.99/month — full transcripts, speaker segments, full-text search, and the recently-added /api/v1/transcripts/recent polling endpoint for ETL pipelines.