ICF International, Inc.

Welcome to the first quarter 2025 ICF earnings conference call. My name is Corinne and I will be your operator for today's call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Lynn Morgan of advisory partners. Lynn, you may begin.

Thank you, Corinne. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us to review ICF's first quarter 2025 performance. With us today from ICF are John Watson, Chair and CEO, and Barry Brutus, CEO. Joining them is James Morgan, Chief Operating Officer. During this conference call, we will make forward-looking statements to assist you in understanding ICF management's expectations about our future performance. These statements are subject to a number of risks that could cause actual events and results to differ materially. As I refer you to our May 1st 2025 press release and our SEC filings for discussions of those risks. In addition, our statements during this call are based on our views as of today. We anticipate that future developments will cause our views to change. Please consider the information presented in that light. You may at some point elect to update the forward-looking statements made today, but specifically disclaim any obligation to do so. I will now turn the call over to ICF CEO John Watson to discuss first quarter 2025 performance. John?

Thank you Lynn, and thank you all for joining us this afternoon to review our first quarter results and discuss our business outlook. We are pleased to report that our first quarter revenues were in line with our expectations, reflecting the strength of our diversified business model and supporting the 2025 guidance framework we discussed during our February 27th earnings call. There are several key takeaways worth noting. First, our revenues from commercial, state, and local and international government clients. In the aggregate, it counted for 51% of our first quarter revenues, up from about 45% one year ago. Second, revenues from commercial energy clients increased 21% year over year, demonstrating continued strong demand from utility clients. Third, adjusted EBITDA margin on total revenues expanded 10 basis points to 11.3%, reflecting mixed benefits and careful cost management. And lastly, our non-GAAP EPS was up almost 10%, considerably ahead of our first quarter revenue comparisons, and we do expect non-GAAP EPS to outpace revenue performance for the full year as well. I'll now review additional first quarter business trends and then provide further insight into ICF federal government business in the context of the new administration's directives and spending priorities. To begin, revenues from commercial clients increased .1% to account for .5% of total first quarter revenues, up from .9% from last year's first quarter. Commercial energy was the key driver of this strong performance, with revenues of 21% to represent 87% of the commercial client category. This growth was driven by new and expanded energy efficiency, electrification, and customer engagement programs for utility clients. We are experiencing continued demand from utilities for energy efficiency, demand response, customer engagement, and flexible load management programs as our clients seek to accommodate rapid load growth. The vast majority of these programs are funded by ratepayers, as public service commissions in over 30 states recognize the benefits of reducing energy usage over building new power plants. ICF is the market leader in developing and implementing residential energy efficiency programs, having earned this position by meeting or exceeding our clients' energy savings goals over the last 20 years. And we are progressively gaining share in commercial energy efficiency as well. We also saw a solid demand for environment and planning services in the first quarter, with notable increases in work associated with utility infrastructure replacement after the California wildfires, and work for solar and wind developers for projects that are not on federal land, which more than offset the softening and offshore wind projects. And our Energy Advisory Group, one new business that included a diverse portfolio of projects that includes natural gas market analysis, transmission and wholesale price assessments, engineering and technical advisory services, and grid engineering projects, including planning for new utility substations to meet demand from data centers. In the first quarter, we also completed the integration of AEG, the leading energy technology and advisory firm we acquired at the end of 2024. AEG provides a suite of integrated technology and solutions to electric and gas utilities, state and local governments, and state energy offices nationwide, and our teams are working together to find opportunities for synergistic growth. ICF has deep domain expertise and experience across the energy landscape, and we are very confident in the growth prospects for our commercial energy business. Many of our utility clients are increasing budgets, resisting energy efficiency and flexible load management programs, and are seeking permission from regulators to add new programs. We're also experiencing greater demand for resource adequacy planning, renewable integration, transmission and distribution engineering, and demand-side planning, especially since generation alternatives are facing increasing supply chain and tariff concerns. And there's been enough take-in requests for transactions and due diligence services, all of this pointing to the continuation of strong demand for ICF's capabilities. Revenues from state and local government clients were stable -on-year in the first quarter. Disaster management, which accounts for about 45% of this client category, experienced lower pass-through revenues in the first quarter, although revenues less pass-throughs in this market were actually up 3% -on-year. We were awarded two new contracts and two additional states, bringing to 95 the number of active disaster recovery contracts we are executing in 22 states and territories. Additionally, we are responding to several competitive opportunities to support wildfire recovery efforts in California, and we're currently operating and supporting Oregon's ReOrgan program to help homeowners, renters, and communities recover from the wildfires. Our climate, environment, and infrastructure services for state and local clients represents about 40% of our state and local government client category, and revenues in this area were stable as last year's first quarter, following the completion of a large infrastructure project in the state of Maryland. This market area continues to be attractive, as the general increase in large infrastructure projects is providing enhanced opportunities for planning, permitting, and construction monitoring services. We are seeing increased activity among many state and local governments in spending approval, approved IRA, and bipartisan infrastructure legislative funds, and filling the gap that has been left after reductions in federal climate programs. States like California and New York are doubling down on their climate commitments, and many state and local entities are investing in climate resilience and adaptation strategies in order to mitigate the impact and recovery costs of future potential disasters and providing opportunities for ICF's planning and program administration services. Also, our revenues from international government clients increased .2% in the first quarter. After a slower start than expected, we are beginning to execute task orders related to recent sizable contract blends with the European Union and the UK government. And we are finding opportunities to leverage our technology solutions and AI capabilities to bid on an expanded universe of task order opportunities. To sum up, ICF's first quarter revenues, an outlook from commercial energy, state and local, and international government clients support our expectation that for the full year, revenues from these three client categories in that aggregate are forecasted to grow at least 15%, and will account for over 55% of our 2025 total revenues. Now to our revenues from federal clients, which declined .6% compared to last year's first quarter. -on-year comparisons were impacted by contract funding for tailments and the slower pace of new RFPs, as well as a decline in subcontractor and other direct costs estimated at $12 million. The good news is that a government shutdown was averted in March, and we are beginning to see a flow of contract extensions and modifications in RFPs, not at a normalized pace, but still an improvement from earlier in the year. As we noted last quarter, we continue to take a hard look at all of our federal government contracts and pipeline of opportunities to determine where there is a likelihood for additional stop orders, terminations, or opportunities to be delayed or fall out of the pipeline through the shift in priorities associated with the new administration. Our evaluation of the risk to our revenues is based on a conservative auto-up analysis and is updated regularly based on market and client feedback. -to-day through May 1st, approximately $115 million of our estimated 2025 revenues have been affected by stop orders and by contract terminations. While we expect the environment to remain fluid, we reaffirm our revenue guidance for 2025, a flat to 10% down from last year. As a reminder, the 10% reduction in total revenues from the 2024 levels represents the floor we foresee for our 2025 revenue performance from the loss of primarily federal government revenues. As Barry will discuss in his remarks, we plan to maintain our adjusted EBITDA margins on 2025 revenues at levels comparable to our 2024 margins, and the caveats remain the same. This guidance framework does not contemplate an extensive governance shutdown this year or a prolonged period of pauses in funding modifications to existing contracts or new procurements. This estimate also does not consider any additional work that ICF may gain as a result of the changes underway. For example, ICF performs work for the federal government focused on prevention of fraud, waste, and abuse, and we have extensive public health expertise and experience in key areas such as nutrition, obesity, suicide prevention, cancer risk research, health risks associated with use of pesticides, chemicals, and plastics, and food additives that we expect will be areas of focus under the new administration at HHS. Also, over 80% of our IT modernization digital transformation work for federal government clients is in agile scrums and sprints, and at least half is under fixed price outcome-based contracts, which represent the administration's preferred approach for procuring services and solutions. So, we are well prepared to respond to federal proposals which require fixed price outcome-based solutions. ICF has a proven track record of effectively managing through difficult business environments, and we believe our broad capabilities and diversified client base will serve us well in 2025 and position us for return to growth in 2026. Now I'll turn the call over to our CFO Barry Bras. We're financial review. Barry?

Thank you, John, and good afternoon, everybody. I'm pleased to provide additional details on our first quarter of financial performance. The change in our business mix coupled with careful cost management is evident in our first quarter results where we delivered higher gross margin, increased our adjusted dividend margin, and grew non-GAAP EPS despite a modest revenue decline. Our results reflect the actions we have taken to adapt our growth and investment strategies to the current business environment and manage the cost structure of the company. First quarter of 2025 yielded a revenue decline of .4% year over year to 487.6 million, firmly within our guidance range. Adjusting for one last workday, then in the prior year's first quarter, 2025 revenues have been flat. Revenues for commercial, state, local, and international government clients increased .6% year over year and represented 51% of our first quarter revenues, up from approximately 45% in the comparable period last year. Growth was led by continued strength in our commercial business, where revenues increased 22% year over year, led by continued significant growth in our energy efficiency business. Commercial revenues accounted for .5% of total revenues as we continue to expand our services and solutions amid sustained demand from our utility and other clients. Revenues excluding subcontractor and other direct costs increased approximately 1% versus prior year. First quarter subcontractor and other direct costs declined 170 basis points to .7% of total revenues compared to .4% in the first quarter of 2024, primarily related to a shift in our client portfolio and a decrease in our U.S. federal government pass-throughs that John noted in his remarks. The favorable mixed shift, which included an increase in our higher margin commercial business, a larger percentage of fixed price and T&M contracts, and a decrease in subcontractor revenues led to an 80 basis point expansion in gross margins to 38%. Indirect and selling expenses were 131.9 million, up .2% year over year, and represented 27% of total revenues, inclusive of 3.1 million in special charges related to severance and M&A costs. Adjusting for these charges, indirect and selling expenses would have been flat year over year. We expect to see indirect expenses as a percentage of total revenues decline over the course of the year as we continue to realize benefits from higher utilization, scale, and closely managing our indirect costs. EBITDA was 52.1 million compared to 56.4 million in the prior year period. Adjusted EBITDA was 55.2 million flat year over year, and adjusted EBITDA margin on total revenue expanded 10 basis points to 11.3%. Interest expense declined to 7.3 million from 8.2 million in the first quarter of 2024, which reflects a 50 basis point decrease in our interest rate as compared to last year's first quarter. We continue to successfully execute tax optimization strategies, which yielded a tax rate of .5% in this year's first quarter, considerably below the .4% reported in the comparable period last year. The lower tax rate in the first quarter is inclusive of one-time pickup related to tax strategies executed in connection with new IRS regulations. We now expect our full year tax rate to be in the range of 18.5%. Net income was 26.9 million, slightly below the 27.3 million reported in last year's first quarter, and GAAP EPS was $1.44, was flat year over year. Our EPS was inclusive of 12 cents in tax-affected special charges and an offsetting tax-related benefit of 13 cents associated with the one-time tax strategy pickup I previously noted. Non-GAAP EPS was $1.94, increased at .6% year on year. Backlog at the end of the first quarter was $3.4 billion, of which $1.9 billion is funded, underscoring the stability and strength of our business. The backlog has been adjusted to include the impact of our federal government contracts that have been terminated as a result of the administration's effective orders or actions by DOJ, which impacted our backlog by approximately $375 million since the beginning of the year. Similarly, we have adjusted our new business pipeline, which stood at $10.5 billion, at the end of this year's first quarter. Moving to our cash flow and balance sheet, in the first quarter we consumed $33 million of operating cash, primarily due to our seasonal working capital needs. Capital expenditures were $3.5 million, down from $5.2 million a year ago. Day sales outstanding were 81 days compared to 75 days last year, primarily reflecting the time of collections, including a temporary disruption of the pace of collections in our U.S. federal government business in the first quarter. We're pleased to report that the federal government collections have now returned to historical norms, and we expect to see a decline in our DSO forward. We ended the first quarter with a net debt of $499 million, up from $475 million at the end of last year's first quarter. The increase in debt reflects our typical seasonality, our share repurchase initiatives, and the acquisition of AEG, which closed in December of 2024. At the end of the quarter, our adjusted net leverage ratio was 2.25 versus 2.29 in the prior year period. Absent in the acquisition activity, we expect our leverage position to decrease by approximately 3 quarters of return by year end. Currently, 35% of our debt is at a fixed rate. Given the anticipated debt reduction, we expect this to increase to approximately 50% by year end. In the first quarter, we repurchased 313,000 shares for an aggregate purchase price of $35 million. We will continue to be active and opportunistic in the market, demonstrating our confidence in ICF's long-term outlook and our intention to deliver value to our shareholders. In addition to share repurchases, our capital allocation strategy remains focused on reducing debt, pursuing organic growth initiatives and strategic acquisitions in targeted markets, and maintaining our quarterly dividend payments. Today, we announced a quarterly cash dividend of 14 cents per share, payable on July 11, 2025, to shareholders of record on June 6, 2025. Now, to help you with your financial models, please note the following. Given the dynamic market conditions in our federal government business, we expect the cadence of this year to vary from historical trends. Second quarter revenues are anticipated to be similar to those of the first quarter. And as we discussed on our previous call, we expect to maintain our profitability margins at similar levels to what we reported in 2024. We are maintaining our prior expectations for the following metrics for full year 2025. Our depreciation and amortization expenses expect to range from $21 million to $23 million. Amortization of intangibles is expected to be $35 to $37 million. We anticipate interest expenses to range from $30 to $32 million. We continue to expect full year operating cash flow to be approximately $150 million. And capital expenditures are anticipated to be approximately $26 to $28 million. Additionally, we are updating our tax rate and full year share count estimates as follows. Full year tax rate is now expected to be approximately 18.5%. Due to our share repurchases in the first quarter, we expect a fully diluted weighted average share count to be approximately 18.6 million. With that, I will turn the call back over to John.

Thanks, Barry. ICS diversified business model is enabling us to match through a dynamic federal government business environment while remaining agile to capture future business opportunities, which we expect to evolve given the substantial reduction in the federal workforce. We are maintaining the guidance framework we provided at the time of our fourth quarter 2024 earnings release, namely for ICS 2025 total revenues, gap EPS, and non-gap EPS, who see a range from flat to down 10% from last year's levels. The 10% decline representing the floor we foresee in the loss of business primarily from federal government clients during this first year of the new administration. Underpaying this framework is our projection that ICS revenues from commercial energy, state and local and international government clients will grow at least 15% in the aggregate for the year, offsetting or partially offsetting lower revenues from our federal government clients due to potential funding containments and our solar pace of new RFPs. Our first quarter margin performance demonstrates careful expense management, supporting our expectation that we can manage expenses in 2025 to maintain adjusted EBITDA margins similar to those of 2024. Our gap and non-gap EPS framework for 2025 is exclusive of the special one-time tax benefit accrued in this year's first quarter, which benefited EPS by 13 cents. We appreciate the support of our professional staff, who have shown a strong commitment to ICF and our clients, who helped us navigate during this period. The ICF corporate culture has been a key differentiator for us, and takes on even greater importance in times of challenging business conditions. With that, operator, I'd like to open the call for questions.

Thank you. At this time, we will conduct the question and answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Tim Mulrooney of William Blair. Your line is now open.

Good job, Barry. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. I've got a few here. The first is on the guide. Please do correct me if I'm wrong. I believe when you provided your guide last quarter, it was your expectation that the second quarter would kind of be peak-doge impact, so to speak, with the potential for that to lessen in the back half of the year. With the visibility into the business today, was that still your expectation or are you thinking about that a little bit differently now?

I would say, first, I think the environment in the federal arena remains fluid and unsettled. I would say that I would expect to see continued activity from Doge over the next several quarters. But Q2, I think, would still... Q2 and Q3, with the TGTC activity, I don't think they're going to be... It's hard to say that there will be significantly more impact or impact is more in Q2 relative to Q1. I would say that we'll see Q similar to Q1, but not be more impactful from Doge.

Okay. That's really helpful, John. I know it's difficult to say exactly, so I just appreciate the color at all. Along those lines, I think you gave an update on stop work orders. I noticed in your K, which I think was published on February 25th, that you'd received notice for termination of convenience of approximately $276 million. Can you update us on where that figure stands today?

Yes. The number is now about $375 million.

$375 million. Okay. Thank you. Did you give an estimate for how much Applied Energy Group contributed to the quarter to revenues?

I don't think we broke Applied Energy Revenues out separately. I think we...

We don't split that separately, but suffice it to say we're very pleased with the integration and the performance of AEG, and they're performing very well.

I think we said at the time of the deal that they were about $13 million of revenue and would grow about 15%. So, you know, that... You can do the math and get to what we'd expect. Okay.

Yep. And, Jim, I would

like to clarify one point on the $375 million. You know, that is a number that is over a long period of time. It's not a one-year impact from a backlog perspective. So, typically, you know, our contracts will range from anywhere from three to five years. So, you know, that number would be spread over a number of periods, not just this year.

Okay. That's helpful, Coller. Thank you. One more from me, and then I'll hop back in queue. I just wanted to touch on your IT modernization business. I mean, I believe your guidance called for growth for the year. Please correct me if I'm wrong on that as well. But since you last reported, you know, there's been news that Doge has taken a more critical eye towards some of the more broader software and IT contracts that the government centered into. So I'm wondering if you've been impacted at all by that focus and if you could just remind me what your expectation is for that business for this year. Thank you.

Sure. So the IT modernization business, I think, actually, what we said last quarter is that, you know, we expected that business to be down 5 to 10% before the year, primarily driven by delays in awards due to the fact that Doge was obviously doing projects reviews on the existing contract base in the federal government. And that that, you know, would lead to delays in performance. So I think we're thinking 5 to 10% down for this year. We really haven't seen material cuts in our IT modernization contracts to date. And so I think there is more an issue of the pace

and speed of new opportunities.

Okay, got it. It's very helpful. Thank you. Thank you very much for the time.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Joe Vavi of Canaccord Genuities. Your line is now open.

Hey, guys. Good afternoon. Thanks for the opportunity for the questions here. Just first, I know, John, you provided some good color on what's implied in the guidance for the commercial business. I just wanted to double click on that a bit and focus on commercial energy in there. Would you say that, you know, the guide for the year implies the kind of metrics for energy we saw in this quarter in terms of revenue and margins, or is there anything else there that we should be aware of and then I'll have a few follow-ups?

No, I think it assumes that commercial energy will continue to be the outstanding performer, you know, in that half of the business and that the margins there are very strong. And so we certainly expect to continue that throughout the remainder of the year on the energy side. I think as we reported, we had 21%, 22% growth there in commercial energy. As you know, Joe, that's our highest mortgage business.

Sure. Absolutely. And then kind of switching over, I know we kind of talked about some of these, you know, the stop works and the contract terminations. It might be helpful to get your view on the stop work orders and if you believe that those stop work orders in any way, shape or form could be temporary or do you, how do you kind of look at the difference between a termination and a stop work order relative to why they weren't actually terminated? The stop works weren't terminated and if there's an outlook for, you know, the future on those.

Sure. I think that maybe if you look at the number of terminations for a community and for stop work orders, I think the stop work orders are a much smaller number. I'll tell you that we've had a few posts turned on and off, you know, in the last several weeks and months and some more than once. But at the end of the day, I think in our guidance, Joe, we're assuming that the stop work orders will ultimately result in termination and will not come back this year. Sure, if they do, that would be great and that would be upside. And as I say, the vast majority of the contract impacts are in the termination for the needs

category.

Got it. And then maybe just one other quick one. Might be interesting to get a little more insight into the pace of award activity. Obviously, I believe there would be no surprise if it's down here in Q1 as well as through the month of April. I was just wondering if you could provide color on the kind of work that is actually getting awarded or renewed and, you know, kind of how is that pace of activity versus, you know, pre-doge? Thanks a lot.

Yes, I think I said in my remarks, Joe, I would say that we are pleased. We have seen a pick up in activity both in terms of modifications to existing contracts and in RFPs beginning to move in the federal arena. So that's a positive sign. I would say it's not where we would like it and it's not where it was, you know, prior to this administration assuming office. So there's still a way to go there. I would say that, you know, there's more activity around modifications on existing contracts, more activity around re-competes, I would say the newer opportunities. We've seen a little activity there, but honestly, there's still very early. I think many of the key political figures are just getting into their agencies and setting the agenda. So I would say there's still a ways to go on, you know, new opportunities certainly in the federal arena.

Got it. Fair enough. Thanks for that color, John.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Toby Summer of Truist Securities. Your line is now open.

Thanks. I wanted to start with commercial energy. Years ago, the energy efficiency projects were almost exclusively the big ones that you got. But I'm curious if some of the things that you talked about at Investor Day a number of years ago have matured and increased in size so that your commercial energy customers are in some cases maybe buying multiple projects of size in different parts of their business. Maybe if you could contextualize that, that'd be great.

I would say that certainly the energy efficiency component of our utility programs continues to be the largest component. As you know, over the last three, four years, going back to our Investor Day, I think we've talked about the fact that utilities are looking at additional programs, even the ongoing changes in their business, including the shift to distributed energy, more recently including the significant spike in power demand. I think that over the last three or four years, it has driven interest in additional programs. We've talked about these, flexible load management, electrification, battery storage programs. We are now implementing those increasingly for utilities. Many of them have been in a pilot phase. I think we've talked about that, that we're running pilot programs. If we demonstrate success with those, we would expect them to scale materially over time. We're looking for many utility clients who are now supporting two or three of those types of programs in addition to the energy efficiency programs. I wouldn't say any of them are at the scale of energy efficiency, but we're growing. It's becoming a larger component of our portfolio. I think that we believe in the long run those will drive significant growth for us in the next three to five years.

Thanks. In the state and local business, you talked about lower pass-throughs. Do you still have the same growth outlook for that for the year? I know there's been some news around rejiggering the way FEMA works and perhaps even the Community Development Block Grant mechanism. I'm curious what your perspective is for the year.

I think our outlook and view of disaster recovery business remains positive. We think we'll certainly grow this year and grow to our expectations for the year. We do have a robust pipeline there. I think I talked about the wildfire opportunities in California. There's opportunities in Florida, Carolinas, and Georgia from the hurricanes more recently that should play out later this year. I think we're generally, I believe that will continue to be a growth area. As you know, there is discussion about the future role of FEMA and how these disaster recovery programs may evolve. I think we still believe that there will be the need for disaster recovery, particularly around significant disasters. I think there's a lot of discussion that whether FEMA plays the lead role or the states play a greater lead role, that business will be there. There will be opportunity for us. For this year, we're still counting on it to be a growth market. Given the pipeline, I think we feel confident with that.

Thanks. Last one for me. Could you discuss the industrial logic that ties together your federal work for the DOE and other agencies and your commercial energy business? I'm just curious with the growth rate that you have in commercial energy. I'm wondering if there's an opportunity to ever separate that or spin it off and unlock value that way.

I think that we, our energy business, we work across, obviously we work for commercial utilities. We also work for state energy agencies. We work for the federal government on energy issues, DOE, some of our energy efficiency work has been in other federal agencies. I would say that it's an integrated set of capabilities that we sell across federal, state, and local. Commercial is the largest, but state and local is the second largest component of that business. Federal is actually the smallest. I think we think there's value from that integrated portfolio. Certainly on the state energy side, we'll continue to see a growth. So that's

how we think about the business. Great. Thank you. One

moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Kevin Steinke of Barrington Research. Your line is now open.

Great. Thank you. I just wanted to follow up on IT modernization. As you noted, your expectations for a 5 to 10 percent decline this year and then in response to an earlier question you talked about, maybe it was a little too early to see new awards coming out of this administration in the federal arena. Does that also apply to IT modernization? Because I think you had kind of thought this is a transition year for that business and maybe you start to see some opportunities in IT modernization flow at some point in 2025, kind of setting up 2026 for that business.

Yeah, I would say, well, first of all, I do think with the IT modernization and technology side of the house in federal that I do think this administration is going to continue to invest in that area. It's going to be AI led. They're clearly looking for additional efficiency. They're also focused on waste product abuse. And they're going to want to leverage technology more broadly across agencies and across the federal government to get additional efficiencies. But I think it will continue to be an area of opportunity. I think we're, in my assumption, so I do assume that there will be opportunities there. I think that they will certainly be more of a second half opportunity. And I think to the extent that we see them and the awards occur, I think they'll set us up. It's more about what's the potential growth for 2026. I think for 2025, we're, as I've said, we're assuming five to 10 percent reduction. We're assuming that it's going to be due to, or it's not moving as quickly. And so we're not counting on significant new contracts in

2025 together.

All right. That makes sense. Thanks for taking the question.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Mark Riddick of Tudodi. Your line is now open.

Good evening. I wanted to ask within Health and Human Services, I was wondering if you could get a sense of have you heard to this point any communication as far as shifts of priorities or kind of where, you know, are there any areas that may pick up in messaging or what have you? Where the administration wants to go that might present upside opportunities for you there?

Yeah, I think if I indicated in my remarks, I think that there are, there is a castle for new opportunities for us at HHS. I think, you know, the new administration has clearly indicated they'll focus on children's health. They're very interested in issues around pesticides and food, food additives. And so, you know, those types of issues are going to create a new organization within HHS around, you know, making America healthy, improving American health. And so I think there'll be opportunities there. I would say the same thing. I think it's those will, we hope to get clarity on those in the second half of the year, but there will certainly be, you know, opportunities. We have expertise in chronic health issues for children. We have expertise in pesticides. We have expertise in food additives. And so some of the things that have been discussed around those issues are areas that we could certainly support and we're watching it very carefully.

And do you get the sense of, I think you had prepared remarks in the last quarter's call around the acquisition pipeline. Do you get the sense that there may be some services or opportunities that might lead to you to pursue inorganic talent acquisition or how should we think about that?

I mean, obviously on the acquisition front, I mean, it's obviously been a key element of our strategy over many, many years. You know, I think that if we were going to do anything, I think it would most likely be in the energy arena. It would be, you know, similar to an AEG type acquisition where we do some smaller tuck in acquisition. You know, I think in the federal arena there's obviously a lot of uncertainty. I think we're unlikely to do anything in scale, you know, or anything at all in the federal arena for the remainder of this year. So, I mean, we certainly are looking at the opportunities out there, but I think we would focus on energy and it would be more of a tuck in acquisition if we were to pull the trigger. I don't know, Barry, if there's anything you'd

want to add. I think from a capacity perspective, if something interesting does come along, we have plenty of capacity to execute an acquisition and we're comfortable, you know, from the leverage perspective as well as the debt perspective. I think we're in good shape on that.

Do you get the sense, Barry, as far as acquisition multiples, maybe where they are -a-vis six months ago, have they changed much for some of those types of targets?

Well, I think it depends on the market. And I would say from a federal market perspective, obviously the activity has slowed and we're just not really seeing anything good from folks sending books around. I think that sellers are holding what they've got right now. They've got an interesting property. I would say that from the other parts of the business that we're interested in, as John said, the energy market and other parts of the Oregon business, I'd say that those valuations remain similar fashion to what they have been in the past. So, you know, just like any acquisition, we look at, you know, what the capabilities and the contracts and, you know, the customers that a candidate would have and, you know, if the culture fits and, you know, it'd be creative to the organization, then, you know, we certainly would take a good look at it.

Great. Thank you very much.

Thank you. This concludes the question and answer session. I would now like to turn it back to John Wassen for concluding remarks.

Thanks for participating in today's call. We appreciate everyone attending and look forward to connecting at upcoming conferences and events.

This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.