This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.
spk00: Greetings and welcome to the Construction Partners fourth quarter fiscal year 2020 results call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Mr. Rick Black, Investor Relations for Construction Partners. Thank you. You may begin.
spk10: Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us for the Construction Partners conference call to review fourth quarter and fiscal year 2020 results. This call is also being webcast and can be accessed through the audio link on the events and presentations page of the investor relations section of constructionpartners.net. Information recorded on this call speaks only as of today, December 11, 2020, so please be advised that any time-sensitive information may no longer be accurate as of the date of any replay. I would also like to remind you that the statements made in today's discussion that are not historical facts, including statements or expectations of future events or future financial performance, are considered forward-looking statements made pursuant to the Safe Harbors Provision Act of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. We will be making forward-looking statements as part of today's call that by their nature are uncertain and outside of the company's control. Actual results may differ materially. Please refer to the earnings press release that was issued this morning for our disclosures on forward-looking statements. These factors, as well as other risks and uncertainties, are described in detail in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Management will refer to non-GAAP measures today including adjusted EBITDA. Reconciliations to the nearest gap measures can be found at the end of our earnings press release. Construction Partners assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. And now I would like to turn the call over to Construction Partners CEO, Charles Owens. Charles?
spk01: Thank you, Rick, and good morning, everyone. With me on the call today are Jewel Smith, our Chief Operating Officer, Alan Palmer, our Chief Financial Officer, and Ned Fleming, our Executive Chairman. We are pleased with our strong physical 2020 profitability. These results were driven primarily by disciplined project productivity and bidding, effective utilization of crews and equipment, vertically integrated synergies, and lower cost of fuel. While we face challenges in 2020 primarily from the global pandemic, I am extremely proud of our organization's response and our people-focused culture during this tough year. As an essential business during this pandemic, our leadership team, managers, and employees adapted and overcame many challenges while continuing to execute on our strategy and deliver great results. Heading into fiscal year 2021, our organization is well positioned for organic and acquisitive growth. We see strength in state funding programs across our geographic footprint where the demand for road repairs and maintenance work remains constant. Over the past 10 months, we have acquired 13 hot mix asphalt plants, and we now operate 46 hot mix asphalt plants company-wide. In addition, we continue to have many conversations both in our existing states and adjacent states regarding future acquisition opportunities. From a federal infrastructure funding perspective, we remain optimistic that a new bill could get passed in 2021. We are confident that our nation's infrastructure will continue to be a primary focus for our country to improve and maintain the safety of the traveling public and economic development. Beyond these positive external factors, we are also very pleased with the transition over the past several months with the promotion of Jewel Smith to Chief Operating Officer. As a former owner, Jewel led our Fred Smith Company subsidiary for nearly a decade before becoming COO. He is now effectively driving the continued development of the organization and overseeing day-to-day operations. He has also taken a lead in executing our recent acquisitions and their successful integration into the CPI organization. It is clear that Jules' leadership, experience, and vision are positively impacting our company. Finally, Based on our current backlog and near-term visibility of the business, we are pleased with our outlook for fiscal 2021, which indicates strong growth for CPI in the coming year. Before turning the call over to Jewel, I'd like to thank our leadership team and approximately 2,500 employees for their commitment, dedication, and hard work that enables us to successfully execute our strategy. I'll now turn the call over to Jewel to talk about our recent acquisitions and to comment on operations. Jewel. Thank you, Charles.
spk05: Good morning, everyone. The operations of our business are doing well, and we finished our fiscal year with great project work productivity across our markets and states. I want to thank all of our employees for their dedication to staying safe and their hard work. As an essential business, we have continued to operate through the COVID-19 pandemic without significant delays. The flexibility of our employees and the effectiveness of our safety protocols have helped us to manage the pandemic-related challenges in our day-to-day operations. Now let's take a look at the demand and funding for our services. Overall, in the states where we currently operate, demand remains strong for the road repair and maintenance projects that comprise the public side of our business. State budgets and gas tax collections are stabilizing. We currently view potential 2021 upside in infrastructure spending in Florida, Alabama, and North Carolina, while we expect Georgia to remain relatively flat. In North Carolina, as we discussed in the past, the DOT has overcome its spending issues and has now resumed project lettings and is returning to a normal program. In addition, the state passed a new law that requires a higher percentage of the DOT budget to be spent on maintenance of their current infrastructure. Commercial work throughout our states has remained constant, and we do not currently see downward pressure or pullback on project bidding in the private market. Lastly, I'd like to provide an update on our acquisitions. In Florida, we are very pleased with the hot mix asphalt plants we acquired in fiscal 2020 and the synergies provided by our market concentration in the parts of the state where we currently operate. In the past two months, we have also completed three strategic acquisitions in North Carolina, adding 11 hot mix asphalt plants, further expanding our footprint in several growth-oriented markets. And as Charles mentioned, we continue to have conversations throughout our existing states and some adjacent states with potential acquisition candidates. Our leadership team is actively working on identifying and engaging with companies that fit well with our future growth plans. I'd now like to turn the call over to Alan to discuss our financial results.
spk04: Thank you, Jewel, and good morning, everyone. I want to start by highlighting our key performance metrics in the fiscal 2020 results. Compared to the fiscal 2019, revenue was 785.7 million, up three-tenths of a percent. Gross profit was 122.2 million, up 50 basis points. Net income was 40.3 million compared to 43.1 million last year. Our adjusted EBITDA was 98.4 million, up 6.6%, and our adjusted EBITDA margin was 12.5%, up 70 basis points. Although the pandemic has been challenging for everyone, we have adapted to necessary protocols. Our managers, crews, and corporate support all did a great job of managing our business while we continued to work, grow our company, and maintain margins. We also managed through the downward pressure on top line revenue, especially in the second half of the year, that resulted from less book and burn high revenue projects that typically occur in the second half of each year. Importantly, while the competitive bidding environment was quite aggressive, we maintained our focus for project work margin rather than trying to achieve increased revenue at a detriment to margin. In the last few weeks of the fourth quarter, we also experienced higher than usual weather-related delays due to a continuous line of hurricanes and storms in the states where we operate. From a profitability perspective during the quarter, we benefited from lower diesel costs and pricing at our liquid asphalt terminal. We also increased our self-performed work during the quarter, where we used our own crews to do work we'd typically subcontract out and we experienced less overtime costs. All of these factors led to solid margins that expanded year over year. Turning now to the balance sheet, at September 30th, we had $148.3 million of cash and $39.3 million of availability under our existing revolving credit facility after the reduction for outstanding letters of credit. As of the end of the quarter, our debt to trailing 12 months EBITDA ratio was 1.08. This liquidity provides financial flexibility in today's uncertain economic environment and provides capital for potential future acquisitions, allowing us to respond quickly to growth opportunities when they arise. Cash provided by operating activities was $105.2 million for the 12 months ended September 30th 2020 compared to $55.3 million for the same period last year. Capital expenditures for fiscal 2020 were $41.1 million, excluding expenditures of $11.5 million in the first quarter of this fiscal year to purchase equipment previously subject to operating leases. Project backlog at September 30, 2020 was $608.1 million compared to $531.6 million at September 30, 2019. Approximately 90% of the backlog will be completed in fiscal year 2021. This does not include any backlog for the three recent acquisitions. Turning now to our outlook for fiscal year 2021, we project revenue of $950 million to $1 billion, net income of $42 to $46.5 million, and adjusted EBITDA of $109 to $118 million. Approximately half of the revenue increase for 2021 is coming from acquisitions, and approximately half of the revenue increase comes from organic growth in fiscal year 2021. In summary, we are pleased with fiscal 2020 results and the organization's resilience and rapid responses. despite the many challenges we faced in this new world. We look forward to fiscal 2021 as we plan to continue to grow the company. I'll now turn the call over to our Executive Chairman, Ned Fleming. Ned? Thank you, Alan.
spk09: Before we open the call to your questions, I'd like to make a few comments about the outstanding performance by all of our leaders, managers, and all the employees at CPI. The team successfully adapted to the challenges 2020 presented and continued to manage the business for growth and profitability while simultaneously building backlog for 2021. In addition, the recent acquisitions demonstrate CPI's continued strategic focus as the premier consolidator in a very fragmented industry. As the company moves into 2021, we are very pleased with Jules' transition into the COO role, his leadership, vision, and operational experience are invaluable to our organization and are essential to our continued consolidation and growth. The future is brighter now for CPI than at any point in our company's history. The company is well positioned both organizationally and financially, and we are confident about the opportunities to continue to consolidate within our five states and possibly move to new states. As evidenced by the 2021 outlook, we are also extremely bullish about organic growth opportunities with this proven strategy. With that, we'll now take questions. Operator?
spk00: Thank you. We'll now be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star key. Please ask one question and one follow-up question and then re-queue for any additional questions. Our first question comes from the line of Andrew Whitman with Baird. Please proceed with your question. Mr. Whitman, your line is live.
spk08: I apologize for that. I apologize. Thanks for taking my questions, guys, and good morning. I wanted to ask a couple of these questions here. I guess I'm just going to kind of play dumb a little bit, but, you know, the revenues were light of what we expected, but the profit margins were really, really great. You guys talked about lower diesel prices, self-perform, and less overtime. I guess that second one of greater self-perform is where my question really resides. And with the margins as good as they were, it kind of suggests that maybe you should keep doing more of whatever you did, including maybe self-perform. So again, can you just talk about how much of a benefit that was in the quarter? If you can continue to do that, and if you choose not to, which has never been the company's strategy in the past, why not do that?
spk04: Yeah, Andy, this year, because in some of our markets we did not have as much work to do as we typically would in the third and fourth quarter, then we chose on some of those projects to utilize our own crews to self-perform Typically, we try to staff for 12 months, but in the summer, that second half of the year, you often have surges where you've got more work than your crews and equipment can do, and so we use subcontractors to do some of that work, and we just find generally it's not efficient to staff for peaks all year round, and we've got a stable workforce We don't want to be hiring and laying off people. So this year, because of the lower volume of work that we had in a number of our markets, North Carolina being a very specific one, some of the work that subcontractors could do that we also do, we just chose to have their people not be working and ours to be working. And when you do that, whatever their profit margin was on that subcontracted work, we capture it. but it's really not efficient with some of the seasonality that we have to have permanent crews that in the first six months of the year are not being able to get in four work weeks because you've just got a lot lower volume.
spk08: That makes sense. I knew there had to be an explanation, so thank you for that. I guess for my follow-up question, I wanted to ask about the 21 guidance in particular. And then we heard you clearly here that half of the growth year over year is organic. The other half is from acquisitions. But specific to the acquisitions portion of the revenue growth, I was wondering if there's any inclusion of acquisitions that maybe have not been yet announced publicly in that guidance or if the guidance includes only deals that have been announced publicly at this point.
spk04: Yeah, good question. I mean, we've always followed the pattern of when we provide our guidance at any point in time, whether it's the beginning of the year or the updated guidance that we include in our basic guidance or say the midpoint of our guidance, that's going to be for things that we know as far as what markets we're in and also what we see as far as the future for backlog that we're going to book and burn. So if you take this year's guidance, the 50-50 applies to that guidance. The upside of that guidance, the higher revenue, would be other growth from either greenfields, acquisitions, or higher than what we currently anticipate organic growth. The downside on the lower side would be if the acquisitions we've made or the markets that we're already in organic markets don't get quite the organic growth that we think they will. So, you know, there are no unknown acquisitions built in to the basic guidance, but on the upside, any one of the three levers for growth that we talk about, greenfields, acquisitions, or higher than anticipated organic growth could push us to that upside.
spk08: Okay. That's helpful. Thanks, guys. Have a good day. Thank you, Andy.
spk00: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Josh Wilson with Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.
spk11: Thanks. Good morning, gentlemen. Congrats on the quarter.
spk04: Thank you.
spk11: A couple items for me also on the acquisition front. First, could you quantify what the acquired sales were in the September quarter you just reported?
spk04: It would have been approximately $13 million in Because I think through September it was 33.8, and through June it's 33.8, and now it's 49.6.
spk11: And then as we think about the contribution of the new acquisitions, given that they're in North Carolina, which has been a more pressured market, both from a volume and margin perspective, Should we assume that their EBITDA contribution is below fleet average and that maybe your ultimate expectations for these businesses are higher than what might be reflected in the 21 guidance because they might be more depressed from that environment?
spk04: Yeah, I mean, that's a good question. I mean, as we say every time, we build our guidance from the ground up in all 46 markets. The new acquisitions that we made, both the people at Fred Smith and the management at those companies helped us put that together. As you know, because they're in North Carolina, that's been a very tight market. The DOT did not let any really resurfacing projects for the last 18 months, so while We've seen that recover starting in October, and I think Jewel talked about that some in his remarks. Typically, when that pipe opens back up, it's very competitive on those jobs that are being bid in those first few months, but we see a more normalized margin in that whole market, not just the acquisitions, but our existing markets in that state more in the spring when the work gets back to a more normal letting size. But, you know, those acquisitions had some backlog when we acquired them, and while it's not in our September 30th numbers, you know, we've taken that into consideration in putting together our overall guidance.
spk11: Then if I could just squeeze in one more housekeeping item. Given the cadence of letting, are you still expecting the normal – 40-60 seasonality, or is that going to be different this year because of the letting differences?
spk04: No, our budget as it currently stands is just about back on target with the 40-60. This current year was more 42-58, but next year, quarter-wise, it should return to the 40-60 cadence.
spk11: Thanks. I'll get back to you.
spk04: Thank you.
spk00: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Michael Feniger with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.
spk06: Hey, guys. Thank you for taking my questions. I was hoping you'd kind of break down the buckets of the margin guidance. Obviously, you guys had a great year of margin in 2020. I'm sure 2021, there's a bit of conservatism. But I was hoping you'd kind of break down the buckets of why the guidance with seeing that decline of margins? Is it like you're referring to more subcontracting out? Is it, you know, diesel prices? Is it the acquisition mixing it down? Just hoping we could get a feel for what are the big reasons why we see the margins kind of have a great 2020 and then come back down a little bit in 2021?
spk04: Yeah, good question, Michael. I mean, in 2020, as we've said, starting in our Q3 and then we said in our revised guidance that we put out for this year. We benefited from the dropping prices in petroleum products, primarily diesel and the price of liquid asphalt. And when we gave our fourth quarter, original fourth quarter, our full year updated guidance at the end of the third quarter, we were beginning to see diesel and liquid rise, but that rise stopped and it actually dropped a little bit and we benefited from that. The way I like to say it is in 2020, we had a little bit of a tailwind from dropping prices. It's not so much that it's that significant, but it is a little bit of a tailwind. In 2021, we have seen, since the end of September, significant increase in the price of crude. We've already seen our diesel prices going up, our liquid asphalt prices going up. We don't see with the vaccines coming online that that's going to change. So while we pass along a lot of those costs and we've got indexes, there's always a little headwind. So if you take the lack of tailwind or the tailwind we had this year and the headwind we're going to have next year, the amount there, that's probably 40 to 50 basis points in margin. So that's a large part of that margin difference. is between having a little bit of tailwind and a little bit of headwind. And then when we do the higher volumes, just like we said with the subcontracting, the higher percentage of the work, that's going to be a little bit of margin that we're going to give to subcontractors that we got this year. And then certainly historically, we've always had acquisitions that come in that generally don't have the same margin profile that we do. And the fact that, as someone mentioned earlier, that these are in North Carolina where there are some particular dynamics that we've got to work through, that's part of what's doing that. Got it.
spk06: And you guys mentioned before, I mean, there seems like there's some hopeful consensus on infrastructure. on the federal side. What are you assuming that can get passed this year? Hopefully you can kind of talk about that, what you guys are kind of hoping for, you know, within the next 12 months on the federal side.
spk01: You know, from the federal side, as you know, there's always been discussions, been a very bipartisan conversation. In fact, The Senate side basically has put a proposal on the table with a 28% increase and the House has put one on 42% increase. So we feel very confident in 2021 that this will Something will happen in 2021. We look forward to expecting a bill, but nothing is baked in the deal because who knows how long it could take to get everything taken care of. But we're very optimistic that something is going to take place to get the economy rolling again. And even though the traffic's been down, the areas we operate in, the traffic count has kind of come back, and we're seeing tax receipts come in strong. So in that market, but when you hear about all over the country, you know, there's a lot of weakness in the – of the receipts coming in so you know we anticipate that this is a good mechanism to get the economy rolling again and this is something that I think both parties can agree on and you know because it is a major asset of our country to make sure the traveling public is out there traveling safely and it's a huge economic development engine.
spk06: Makes sense. If I could just squeeze one last one in. I think in your comments you guys were talking about the acquisition, the pipeline. I heard you guys mention adjacent states. So are you guys looking to maybe expand outside of those five core states? That would be great if you guys could kind of brush that out. Thank you.
spk05: Yes. We are always having conversations. in the southeast, and we continue to have that, not only in the states that we're currently in, but in states within our footprint, adjacent to where we are currently. And so those are ongoing conversations that we are having and will continue to have.
spk01: And Michael, this is Charles. Just adding to that, like Jewel said, that we're having conversations inside the markets, when and outside the markets. You know, we've been very pleased in the way we've grown the company in the footprint, and we still have plenty of opportunities. But as we look out, there's just a very large number of just excellent candidates out there that's looking at different options of exit strategies. for retirement and family issues and things like that. But there's a lot of companies adjacent to us that we have had some conversations with and they are some excellent companies with excellent opportunities for us one day in these other markets.
spk00: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Stanley Elliott with CFO. Please proceed with your question.
spk02: Hey, good morning, everyone. Thank you all for taking the question. You talked about the M&A. It sounds like there's a fair amount of capacity, a fair amount of activity going on. What is the capacity that you all potentially could see into next year? And then I'm curious if maybe you'd be willing to be maybe a little more aggressive than what you would historically if there are changes in the tax codes and things like that that are looking at some of these family businesses to look at other options?
spk01: Well, you know, as we've always said, there's plenty of opportunities. You know, we're going to try to speed up our pace. You know, we're going to take this growth as very profitable type growth, and we're not going to get out over our skis. And we have a lot of opportunities, and, you know, we really – are going to just take care of each one of these one at a time and handle them. And we've got opportunities in all the states that we operate in. And the great thing is that we have a management team in each one of our companies, in our IT, in our accounting, that we can fully integrate these programs acquisitions as they come on and doing these deals, the seller is the one that's in control of the deals because it's their company and they know what their goals are and they know how they want their company and their employees to end up when they leave the company. That's why it's always interesting and good to have several targets out there to be talking to because the sellers sometimes they don't all come together at the same time and it's worked out very well for us and so we don't see anything that's going to go different than what our normal business is because we are a growth company and we're going to grow by organic growth in Greenfield and acquisitive growth. And acquisitive growth is a very, very key part of our growth strategy and we'll continue to execute when the timing is right and the culture is right.
spk04: Stanley, just to give this out on the comment, in an ideal world, we've made four acquisitions in the last, I guess, nine to ten months. In a perfect world, we would have done one every three months, but as Charles said, the sellers are more the determinant of when those close and when they're ready to actually sell their company. I think we've demonstrated with three of those four being in the last 60 or 75 days that we can close them We've got plenty of capacity to close them quickly if those opportunities present themselves. And as Charles said, that's why we have a lot of conversations going on at any one time and why, you know, our flexibility to be able to close quickly when they're ready to sell makes us one of the preferred buyers out there because we can keep it confidential and that's very important to these family-owned businesses. and we can close when they're ready to. Great.
spk02: And then hypothetically, let's assume we do get a new highway bill in the first quarter, first half of 21. When do you start to see that in your numbers? Is that 12 months? Is it 18 months? Is it sooner than that? Any color would be great.
spk04: I mean, typically, if you use the states, which in our states have raised taxes in the last few years, Generally, from the time it's enacted, not when it's passed because it may be a delayed enactment, but typically from the time it's enacted, it's about six months before they start letting projects. Now, the good thing for us is that usually the early projects are maintenance and repair projects, so those end up on the front end, and those are usually quick starts. But I would say conservatively, before it starts showing up in our revenue numbers, it's probably about nine months. Perfect, guys. Thank you very much. Happy holidays. You too. Thanks, Stanley.
spk00: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Adam Thalheimer with Thompson Davis. Please proceed with your question.
spk03: Hey, good morning, guys. Congrats on the strong quarter and strong outlook. Thank you. Hey, can we start with private construction trends, kind of broadly what you're seeing in your states?
spk05: Adam, this is Jewel. Yeah, we continue to see strong activity in our markets throughout our states in the private markets and lots of projects to bid on. And we monitor that closely. But right now, the economy seems to continue to have a lot of private market activity.
spk03: Does it feel like that's more housing related than commercial or are you seeing both, Joel?
spk05: Well, we're seeing both. I think, obviously, the low interest rates, the housing market is clearly strong. But, you know, with a strong housing market, the commercial activity follows that. We're also seeing a lot of warehouse projects with just the growth in online shopping. There's just a lot of demand for warehouse space and industrial development. So it's really several different things that are making up the private market right now.
spk04: And Adam, part of that's being driven, like Jewel said, with really the changing economy and how people get goods and so the warehouses. But we're also seeing, because we're in the southeast, there's a lot of relocation of both businesses and people to these areas because they're not wanting to get quarantined and in places where they can't get out and enjoy things. So we're just seeing a lot of notices of companies that are relocating to more open areas, offices that are being designed and built that are going to accommodate what may become more of a norm than an exception of what we had this year where people can still work and be safe so okay good i think that's consistent and then one for you alan wanted to ask about 2021 cash flow expectations free cash flow uh yeah well you know basically uh our outlook as far as depreciation i mean excuse me as far as uh capital expenditures, you know, in 2020 we cut back on our capital expenditures when the pandemic hit and cut a substantial amount out. So our CapEx for next year, our maintenance CapEx is going to be probably 20 or 30 basis points higher than normal. We say that normally it's about three and a quarter to 3.75% of our revenue. It'll be a little bit higher than that. What we've got budgeted is about 3.9% of revenue. And part of that's due to catching up. It's also typically when we make acquisitions, their fleet is not going to be quite as up to date as ours is. So we're going to have some additional capital expenditures to kind of get it up to what we want. Since we're replacing items, even though it's in an acquisition, we treat that as maintenance capex. And then with the growth that we see organically for next year and the fact that we held off on some of that growth capex that we've cut out of 2020, I think we're going to be probably around 1%, just a tad over 1% of our revenue. So overall, 2021 will be right around 5% total capex for the year.
spk03: Okay. Any idea how working capital might swing? I mean, it's pretty good organic revenue growth.
spk04: Yeah. You know, as I've said before, some of that is timing of when we close out the year. This year, I think I mentioned in my comments that the last couple of weeks of our fiscal year, we have a lot of inclement weather. So that really helps when your revenue at the end of a quarter kind of is where you fall short. It helps your cash flow in that quarter. But I think that we should be able to have cash flow from operations similar to what we've had in the last, in 19, and when we added the asphalt terminal, we had a huge inventory we had to build and things like that, but a lot of that's behind us. You know, we've said before during the pandemic, the DOTs have done a great job of making sure that we're getting paid timely, and we've gone through some issues where they were kind of because of some outsourcing they were doing in 18 and 19, that got us, you know, slowed down some payments. But I think we should have a very strong cash flow from operations in 2021 like we did in 2020. Great.
spk03: Okay. Thanks, guys. Good luck. All right.
spk04: Thank you.
spk00: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Brent Thielman with D.A. Davidson. Please proceed with your question.
spk07: Hey, thanks. Congrats on a great quarter, great finish to the year. Hey, thank you. Hey, Alan, you guys have completed a couple of deals since the end of the quarter. Is there any way you can provide the cumulative value for those deals? Just trying to get kind of a pro forma sense for cash and debt since September.
spk04: Well, we did not incur any debt to acquire them, so we did not, we had sufficient cash to do that. So there was no, our debt to EBITDA on a pro forma would have gone down. And then the cash for those would have been in the, I'm trying to think, some of them happened so quickly. you know, in the $50 to $60 million range of cash that we spent for them. That would be before inventories. I'm just speaking of hard assets and goodwill.
spk07: Okay. Okay. And then are you, I mean, are you guys still able to find deals in the multiple ranges you've historically talked about, kind of this mid to upper single-digit range? You know, I wonder how the pandemic and Funding uncertainty, later on top of that, what's been going on in North Carolina, how that's impacted expectations out there.
spk04: I mean, Brett, it really hasn't changed how we buy companies. We get fair market value appraisals of the property, plant, and equipment. We look at their historicals as far as what kind of potential there is in the market and and base the goodwill that we pay on top of the fair market value on that. So it really hasn't changed. I mean, as far as a multiple of trailing EBITDA, it's still in that 4.5 to 5.5 times trailing EBITDA with about 30%, 35% of the total purchase price being goodwill. It really is not affected directly by what's going on economically or in these cases in North Carolina. And these are very well-run companies, just like we were able to pivot and do some good things even during the pandemic. They're good managers that know how to manage their backlog and keep the business going. And so we really weren't taking advantage of some kind of big downturn because of the you know, the letting situation. So really just, you know, pretty much the same.
spk07: Okay. Okay. And then one more, Joel, you talked about, you know, the four core markets and that Alabama, Florida, North Carolina, you know, makes sense. They should see it, you know, probably pick up here in 21. Georgia has been a really strong market. It seems like here in 2020 is the comments. you know, that, that, that, that market might be flat just a function of, you know, the fact that it's been so strong this year. Is there anything more to that?
spk04: Well, you know, when we look at it, we look at the markets that we're in. And so we're looking at it from the ground up and, you know, and the ones we've got in Georgia, uh, may not have been the ones that saw some of the big dollars that you might've seen. So we're not really basing it on what the state as a whole is doing. We're seeing what projects they're going to be letting in our particular markets. And those profit centers, one of those 46, the ones that are in Georgia, at the end of the day, we add up what each of those comes to. And for us, we're seeing that those markets are going to be flat. So there's differences throughout those. you know, throughout the state. And I don't know what all has gone in in Georgia, but I do know in our markets we're not seeing, you know, a huge increase in the number of projects that are available to be in. Okay.
spk07: Okay, I appreciate it. Thanks, guys.
spk00: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our question and answer session. I'll turn the floor back over to management for any final comments.
spk01: Okay, thank you very much. This is Charles, and I just want to thank you all for your time and your patience, and thank you so much for those questions, and we were just excited to give you good answers on those, and I just want to wish everyone a safe and prosperous new year.
spk00: Thank you. This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for
Disclaimer