Sterling Infrastructure, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Sterling Construction Company's fourth quarter and year-end 2021 earnings conference call and webcast. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded and all participants are in a listen-only mode. There are company slides on the investor relations section of the company's website. Before turning the call over to Joe Cotillo, Sterling's chief executive officer, I will read the safe harbor statement. Some discussions made today may include forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from the statements made today. Please refer to Sterling's most recent 10-K and 10-Q filings for a more complete description of risk factors that could affect these projections and assumptions. The company assumes no obligations to update forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Please also note that management may reference EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted net income, or adjusted earnings per share on this call, which are all financial measures not recognized under U.S. GAAP. As required by SEC rules and regulations, these non-GAAP financial measures are reconciled to their most comparable GAAP financial measures in our earnings release issued yesterday afternoon. I'll now turn the call over to Mr. Joe Cotillo. Thank you, sir. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Kyle. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Sterling's fourth quarter and full year 2021 earnings call. Sterling recorded another record fourth quarter in another record year. exceeding our expectations. Our people and our strategy continue to deliver exceptional performance time and time again, even during a year with significant challenges. This morning, I will cover the highlights for our fourth quarter and full year, then turn the call over to Ron for his financial commentary. Before I discuss our highlights, I will speak briefly about our journey and reflect on the strategic elements that transformed Sterling from a heavy highway construction company to a leading specialty infrastructure provider with expertise in e-infrastructure, building, and transportation solutions. Since 2016, Sterling has been on a transformational journey, born of a strategy and vision that levers our entrepreneurial spirit and our customer-centric culture. This blueprint for reducing our risk, improving our margins, building a platform for future growth, and consistently outperforming our peers is made up of three fundamental elements. Solidifying our base, growing high margin products, and expanding into higher margin, higher growth adjacent markets. This vision and strategy has not changed and will remain the same in 2022 and beyond. In 2021, we continued to make significant progress towards our vision. Our e-infrastructure solution segment generated 60% of our profits in 2021 and remains our highest margin, fastest growing segment as it grew 18%. With the acquisition of Kimes and Petillo, both closing in December, We now have an even broader portfolio of capabilities and geographic coverage for 2022. The Petillo acquisition now expands our e-infrastructure footprint to cover all the major markets on the East Coast and bring several new large e-infrastructure customers to our portfolio. Our building solution segment generated over 24% of our profits in 2021. and is our second highest margin and second fastest growing segment as it grew 15%. In 2021, we continued our expansion in the Houston market and began the additional expansion effort into Phoenix. With the addition of Phoenix, we are now currently in three of the top four housing markets in the U.S. In our transportation solution segment, we continued our shift away from hard bid highway projects to alternative delivery transportation and aviation projects. Now less than 20% of Sterling's total revenue is from hard heavy highway. This shift along with continued improvements in execution and productivity enabled us to improve our operating income as a percentage of revenue by 500 basis points. This improvement would be impressive in any year but is even more impressive in a year of hyperinflation. Turning to the fourth quarter and full year results, we continue to be an industry leader in safety with our incident rates at approximately one-fifth the industry average. Last year, we once again received recognition and accolades for numerous safety awards. We finished second for the Associated General Contractors of America National Safety Award, and we had one of our employees named the AGC's 2021 Construction Safety Champion of the Year. Turning to the financial front, we closed the year with a record fourth quarter, despite the ongoing supply chain and inflation challenges. Versus prior year, our revenue increased 11%. Our gross margin increased to 13.6%, our operating income increased 13%, and our earnings per share increased 43% to $2.15 per share. Our backlog increased to $1.49 billion, with $211 million attributed to the Petillo acquisition. Our strong cash generation continued. resulting in $152 million of cash flow from operations. We used this cash to pay down debt and funded a portion of the Petillo and Kimes acquisitions, enabling us to reduce our leverage to 2.4 times EBITDA. As we look forward to 2022, our e-infrastructure solution segment enters 2022 with robust markets throughout the East Coast. The recent pandemic has accelerated demand and increased the size and scope of projects for e-commerce distribution and data centers. This aligns well with our strategy and competitive advantages. During the quarter, we booked new business, including Plateau and Petillo, bringing our total e-infrastructure solution backlog to $433 billion. In addition to the strong markets, we believe we will begin recovering some of the lost margin related to inflation back in 2022. For our building solution segment, we expect the demand in our markets from our top customers to grow at double-digit rates in 2022. In addition, we believe we have the opportunity to double our growth in Phoenix in 2022 versus 2021. Our transportation solution segment will remain disciplined and focused on margin growth and the continued shift of our portfolio towards alternative delivery highway and aviation projects. Our diverse portfolio continues to position Sterling in the right markets with the right solutions for our customers at the right time. Our strategic actions in 2021 along with the strong end markets in our e-infrastructure and building solution segments, have positioned us for yet another record year in 2022. In 2022, our revenues will be between $1,825,000 and $1,875,000. And our net income will be between $83 million and $89 million. With that, I'd like to turn it over to Ron to give you more details on the quarter and the full year.

Ron? Thanks, Joe, and good morning. I am pleased to discuss our record fourth quarter and full year performance. Our updated investor relation presentation and the December 31st 2021 earnings release has been posted to our website and includes additional financial details to help further understand our 2021 financial results. The presentation also provides additional modeling considerations, which underpin our 2022 revenue and earnings guidance. Additionally, as you may recall, we closed on Patello and Kimes acquisitions on December 30th and December 28th, respectively. Given the proximity to the year end, these acquisitions had minimal impact on our 2021 income statement. With these acquisitions, we realigned our operating groups into three reportable segments, transportation, e-infrastructure, and building solutions. Our new segment presentation also breaks out corporate-related costs. For a better understanding of our realigned segment reporting, we have included the historical quarterly segment information for both 2020 and 2021 in the updated investor relations presentation and in our 2020 one earnings release, both of which are available on our website. Let me take you through our financial highlights, starting with our backlog metrics. At December 31st, 2021, our backlog totaled a year-end record high of $1,493,000,000, up $318,000,000 over the beginning of the year. The end of the year 2020 backlog includes $211 million relating to the December 2021 acquisitions. The gross margin of our December 2021 backlog was 12.2%, a 20 basis point increase over 2020. Unsigned low bid awards at the end of 2021 were $23 million, and our full year 2021 book-to-burn factor for backlog was 123%. Note that residential slab revenue is excluded from this computation, as it is not a backlog-driven business. Revenues for the quarter were $401 million, up $54 million, or 16%, over our 2020 comparable quarter. Each of our three reporting segments reported increased revenues and segment operating income for both the current quarter and the full year. Consolidated segment operating income increased by 21% in the current quarter, reflecting the continued revenue mix improvements driven by our higher growth rates from our highest return segments. Our full year 2021 revenues totaled $1,582,000,000, up $154,000,000, or 11% over 2020. Transportation solutions revenues increased $19 million in the current quarter and $42 million or 5.5% for the year. The increases were primarily due to the ramp up of large design build contracts and offset by an $80 million strategic reduction of our low bid heavy highway revenues in 2021. This revenue shift was a principal driver of the improved current year operating margins. E-Infrastructure Solutions revenues increased $27 million in the current quarter and $72 million or 18% for the year. The increases were driven by the continued high demand for large scale site development opportunities within the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic region. Both E-Infrastructure Solutions current quarter and full year operating margins declined by 210 basis points. These reductions were driven by continued headwinds from supply chain issues and related impact on productivity and efficiencies, as well as a lower project mix in the periods. Building solution revenues increased $19 million in the current quarter and $42 million, or 14.9%, for the year. Residential revenues increased 27%, while commercial revenues declined by 3%. The number of residential slabs completed during 2021 increased 24% over 2020. The increase in slabs was primarily attributable to the continued market strength in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and continued expansion into the Houston and Arizona markets. Building Solutions operating margins increased in the fourth quarter by 260 basis points. reflecting progress in recouping the 2021 cost increases experienced in the first three quarters of 2021. Full-year operating margins declined by 70 basis points to 10.3%. The full-year operating margin decrease was driven by temporary price concessions due to COVID and an increase in lumber, concrete, and steel costs earlier in the year. General and administrative expenses for 2021 and 22 were 5% of revenues consistent with our expectations. The dollar increase over the prior year was attributed to higher employee and insurance-related costs. We also incurred acquisition-related costs of $3.9 million, or 10 cents per share, relating to the Petillo and Kynes transactions. For comparative purposes, we have added back expense in our quote-unquote as-adjusted results. Our current quarter operating income was $19.8 million, down slightly from 2020 operating income of $20.9 million. As adjusted, operating income was $23.7 million compared to $28.9 million in the prior year. For the year ended December 31st, 2021, operating income was $107 million compared to $95 million in the prior year. Adjusted operating income was $111 million, or an increase of 16% for the year ended December 31, 2021, compared to $96 million in 2020. Interest expense for 2021 was $19.3 million compared to $29.4 million in 2020. The 2021 $10 million decline in interest expense reflects lowered average debt balances during 2021 and the reduced interest provided by the June 2021 debt amendment. We expect our full year of 2022 interest expense to be in the $19 to $21 million range. Our effective income tax rate for 2021 and 2020 were 27.7% and 34.4%, respectively. The net decline was driven by more favorable 2021 permanent tax differences. Of our full year 2021 income tax expense of $24.9 million, $21.5 million was non-cash as taxable income was absorbed by our net operating loss carry forwards. Cash income tax expense totaled $3.4 million in the current quarter, principally for state income tax payments. We expect to have approximately the same non-cash cash income tax expense relationship in 2022. The net effect of all these items resulted in current year net income of $62.6 million or an EPS of $2.15 and a fourth quarter net income of $10.9 million with earnings per share of $0.37. Adjusted net income and adjusted EPS in the current year were $65.6 million and $2.25 per share. Moving to our balance sheet liquidity. Our year-end cash totaled $82 million compared to $66 million at the beginning of the year. Our debt at the end of 2021 totaled $462 million compared to $375 million at the end of 2020, or an increase of $87 million. During 2021, we repaid $48 million of debt and borrowed $140 million through a new term loan to fund part of our December 2021 acquisitions. At the end of 2021, our forward-looking coverage ratio was 2.7 times EBITDA compared to 2.4 times at the beginning of 2022. We remain comfortable with a target ratio range of plus or minus 2.5 times EBITDA At the end of 2021, we had no borrowings on our revolver credit facility, and accordingly, we have full availability of the $75 million line. Our current year adjusted EBITDA was $143 million, an increase of 12% over 2020 adjusted EBITDA of $128 million. In addition, our 2021 cash flow from operating activities totaled a record $157 million. an improvement of $31 million, or 25%, for the current year. This strong operating cash flow provided us with the opportunity to make debt repayments of $48 million, while investing $43 million in net capital expenditures, investing $45 million of cash for acquisitions, and finally, it enabled us to grow our cash balance by $16 million. With that, I'll turn it back over to Joe.

Thanks, Rod. It's always nice to finish with a record quarter and a record year. But what is even better is being positioned to have an even stronger year ahead. I'm proud to say we will enter 2022 in the strongest position ever with record backlog, better margins, and our highest growth coming from our lowest risk, highest margin businesses. Our strong markets, our diverse workforce, and proven strategy continue to pay off. We remain committed to the safety and wellbeing of our people, to increasing customer and shareholder value, while also protecting our communities and the environment. We enter 2022 a completely different business than we were just a few years ago. As our strategy and vision drive us forward, We are just the beginning of what we will become. To reiterate our 2022 guidance, our revenue will be between $1,825,000 and $1,875,000, and our net income will be between $83 million and $89 million. With that, I'd like to turn it over for questions. At this time, we will 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 keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Our first question is from Brent Thielman with DA Davidson. Please proceed with your question.

Great. Thanks. Good morning, Joan. Good morning, Brett. Maybe for Ron, just wondering what margins you've embedded into the guidance for the three business segments now that they are realigned here.

Sure. I think they're – so one of the things we did is to help you did eight quarters of history to match up with how we're going forward and I THINK IT HELPS A LOT ON UNDERSTANDING THE OPERATING INCOME CHARACTERISTICS OF THE UNITS BY BREAKING OUT THE CORPORATE EXPENSE. SO TAKE A LOOK AT THOSE. SO I THINK CERTAINLY A FEW THINGS BY SEGMENT HERE. I'LL START WITH THE TRANSITATION SOLUTIONS GROUP. WE WILL CONTINUE TO SEE MARGIN LEVERAGE ON THAT COMING FROM THE CONTINUED SHIFT OF moving to higher margin projects and et cetera. We've probably got one more.

We're considering to reduce the low bid side of that world.

So that continues to eke up a little bit. We've got 20 basis points in margin increase in backlog, but look, we expect more out of that than 20 basis points for the full year. On the building solutions side, A special note to the fourth quarter margins. We essentially recouped what we would have had but for the pressures on supply change and inflation for the year. Fourth quarter doesn't make a year, but we certainly had a great recovery on that. Probably for the second quarter in a row, we had revenues per slab growing faster than before. than the number of slabs done. But that means there's more price per slab, obviously. So we expect year over year to have that fourth quarter booking results continue into 2022, maybe a little bit lumpy. And last, eSolutions, obviously we'll pick up Petillo in that segment. Margin characteristics are very similar to to those of plateau. So I think the challenge will be how fast can we continue to recover from the supply chain and inflation side of it. So as time goes by, that tends to run through backlog and improve, but we expect that to get better in 2022.

The biggest shift in going from prior segments to the new one is our commercial business comes out of what used to be the specialty segment, which is now the infrastructure, and that goes into building solutions. So that margin is a little lower than our historical residential business. So you'll see that impact that to a small degree.

And that, of course, helps operating margins for the infrastructure group and reduces margins for just standalone residential in the old lease.

Okay, appreciate that. Maybe just on the outlook, question around the cash from operations expectation, just wondering why it couldn't be significantly higher this year just given the addition of the pillow.

So, you know, we start the year with a consistent belief that our cash flow from operating activities will approximate our operating income. That bounces a little bit around quarters, you know, just due to the seasonality of our work. But that's where we start every year. And I think our goal is to see if we can continue that and string them all together. Because I don't think it's reasonable to beat that number year after year after year. It's just not. you know, it beat that relationship year after year. So that's kind of where we start the year. And over the past few years, we kind of see that average out about that level. So the bandwidth we put around that in the model is, you know, really around operating income is our expectation of cash flow from ops.

Okay, that's helpful, Ron. Maybe just last one for me. You seem to offer... fairly optimistic outlook on the residential side. Maybe any other feedback you're getting from your home builder customers just regarding plans for this year? That seems to be an area that might be some worry to people out there, but it doesn't sound like things are slowing for you. So any help there would be great.

Yeah, we haven't, you know, the feedbacks. We haven't seen anything slowing. If they have any concerns around potential risks, it's more around land availability and developing land at faster rates. As you can imagine, they far exceeded their 2021 expectations on builds, which eats up land at a quicker pace than their three-year plan anticipates in a lot of cases. So I know that they're working diligently to develop that next wave of land. But as we step back and we just think of it objectively, we certainly are cognizant of the rates increase and potential rate increase on inflation. But the builders still have a lot of levers they can pull. They're making very high margins on the properties they're selling today. and they don't want that to slow down anytime soon. So we think through 2022, barring something catastrophic, everything they're telling us is we're going to see what I'll call low double-digit growth going into this year in the three markets we're in, which are really the top three markets in the U.S. right now. Phoenix bounces back and forth, but we're number one, number two, and number three.

And, of course, we would expect market share improvement for both our expansions in Houston and in Phoenix. Yep. Okay.

Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.

Our final question comes from Sean Eastman with KeyBank. Please proceed with your question.

Joe, Ron, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. It would be helpful to just get a bit more of a flavor of the kind of operating conditions you've contemplated in the initial 2022 outlook here. Seems like the residential business is sort of out of the woods in a sense based on the fourth quarter results here. And then I guess the other element is sort of that equipment lead time in the e-commerce solutions business. What did you guys see around those dynamics through exiting the fourth quarter, and how have you contemplated those potential risk factors in the guidance?

Yeah, Ron talked about how we factored in some of the inflation coming back, but the good news is we saw, and we had said all through, if you remember, 2021, if we can get, I'll call it a slowdown, In rate increases, we could start catching up to recoup some of that in the price increases that we're passing through. And in the fourth quarter, we saw that. Now, we're going to continue to see some increases throughout 2022. They've already announced some concrete increases, et cetera. But we've done a much better job. So we've got some visibility to recouping that in 2022. And we also hope to start recouping on the speciality services or now the infrastructure solutions. Some of that as we get into 2022 and the new bid projects begin. So we've done that. On the equipment side and capacity side, we have factored in the equipment capacity we have. with equipment capacity that we know we're going to get for added in the quarter. But I'll be honest, you know, for the first time we're actually turning away work in the e-infrastructure segment just because we're making sure we take care of our core customers. We're making sure we've got capacity for the projects they've got on the books for the year and we're not getting over our skis. But frankly, if we had more equipment, we would be taking on more work now than we have. But we factored that into the 2022 forecast.

Yeah, I would add that for the combined backlog of the infrastructure group of just under $470 million, that's a backlog of about two-thirds our revenue expectations or our run rates that we have, including PTILO. That's pretty strong compared to history, that relationship. What that means is we have the backlog, and of course, as we roll through that backlog, we did roll through it in 2021 and into 2022, we've learned a lot about contingency planning around pricing and productivity and things like that. It's pretty simple that as we've rolled off the old backlog, we have better insights over what we think it'll be in 2022. That's going to help us, and certainly the backlog is going to provide us two-thirds of the year, give or take. So I think we're looking forward to that performance.

Got it. Okay, good stuff. And then how much revenue growth and EPS accretion is in this outlook from Petillo?

I don't have that number exactly in front of me. I want to say it's between $0.15 and $0.20. Got it. I'll have a better... I didn't bring my four formulas in, but I'll have better ones when... We can give you more detailed information on that, Sean.

Yeah, I just wanted to work out the organic growth, the underlying organic growth. Okay. And then if I look at the backlog in the fourth quarter, you know, pull out Petillo, it looks like Book to Bill was below one times. But, you know, obviously, commentary, you know, demand outlook commentary from you guys is pretty robust here. So I'm just curious how we should... anticipate the you know backlog trajectory over the next couple quarters here um you know whether there's some stuff that's getting ready to load in whether chunky you know chunky awards on the transportation side or or some some infra stuff coming in just curious how to think about that so what we'll see is i think we could continue to see backlog decline if you go back

We said this last year and coming into this year, and it's playing out pretty active.

And make sure you break out backlog.

Yeah, and backlog for transportation is declining. Backlog for the infrastructure is improving. But if you remember, Sean, at the beginning of last year, we booked several really large design-build jobs in the quarter. They had been sitting in one but not signed for a long period of time. So that skews the spike up to some degree, and we're burning that off. And there's not those mega projects to replace that. So we're still hitting singles and doubles and making sure we're focusing on the small quick-turn projects and higher margin. So I think on the transportation side, we'll see that continue to decline as we get through the first half of this year. And frankly, the results of the new infrastructure bill Bid activity, we have not seen a significant increase in bid activity, and there's yet another factor that is taking place. We've won probably a half dozen or more jobs in the last couple months, of which none of them are being awarded because our DOTs did their engineering estimates pre-inflation, have not adjusted the engineers' estimates So we're seeing all the jobs that are being won coming in anywhere from 30% to 60% higher than the original engineer's estimate. So they go back into the cycle and re-estimate those, and then they'll bring them out for rebid versus what you would normally do is just course correct the material prices because that's where all the issues are. So we think that will continue to decline. On the e-infrastructure aspect, space, again, one of the nice things that's happening as a result of COVID and some of the inflation, where we have seen, if you remember us talking about some of the big data centers and some of the big e-commerce distribution build-outs, a lot of times they would buy 100, 200, 300 acres and develop that over phases. So we'd come do the rough cut of the entire thing. We'd finish phase one. They'd build a data center. A year or two later we come back, we finish phase two, they build a data center year three. What we're seeing them do is ask us on the projects we've recently won to do all phases at one time. So they're bigger, they're more complex, which is great for us, reduces the playing field out there on the competition, but also keeps us there one location longer and bigger. So those are beneficial. And that's why, you know, candidly, we're turning away some of the mid-range and smaller work to make sure we've got the capacity for the line-of-sighted jobs we see coming out in 2022.

Interesting. Yeah, definitely. It helps massively. And then last one from me, I think you guys are exiting the year here around 2.4 times leverage. you know, not crazy there. So, you know, I'm just curious what's next here. Do we just focus on organic funding, organic growth and, and de-lever or do you stay on the offensive? Um, what's the message there?

Yeah, I think both, um, you know, right now, uh, we'll continue to buy down debt, right? Yep. I want to tell you that we're not out looking for, uh, that fit for strategic ads in the three segments that we have. And at some point in time, I mean, we're looking. We just haven't found that right fourth leg to broaden it. So, you know, today, as we sit here, we're buying down the deck. But I will tell you, we are constantly and actively beating the bushes. The other nice thing that is starting to happen is we are in a lot of cases, the first or earliest look at a lot of deals. So that gives us kind of a first chance at some deals that we may not have had a few years ago. So that's a nice position to be in.

Yeah, and in my comments, I hope it was helpful from the standpoint of we've been very clear now on we are very comfortable with a 2.5 kind of plus or minus future EBITDA kind of calculation. And I think one of the reasons we are is because the cash flow that we've enjoyed since transforming the business has been consistent and strong. So the other interesting point is with the Petillo acquisition being funded $20 million worth of our stock, but the majority of it by some debt and almost $50 million of cash we had on our balance sheet, it's immediately accretive and it reduced our leverage ratio. So we can find more transactions like that. We won't be slow at taking advantage of premier economics, if you will.

I think the one thing, John, that I'm sure you get it and Brad gets it, but we spend a lot of time on The cash flow that we are throwing off from this business, the fact that we're going to take, you know, kind of, I call it the third, a third, a third, buy down debt, buy capital and buy businesses last year and bring down the total debt leverage is really, really an impressive part of what we've been able to do and is something we're going to continue to do as part of the acquisition strategy, looking for those businesses that either continue that trend or help it even more.

Okay, again, very helpful. I'm going to sneak one more in here. Just in the spirit of, you know, kind of setting up appropriate numbers early in the year, you know, is there anything you'd point out from an EPS cadence perspective within this full year outlook? I mean, you know, particularly, I don't know, maybe first half, back half waiting or, you know, any, you know, strange comp nuances early in the year you'd point out here?

Not really. I mean, our first quarter is always our slowest quarter, right? If you look through history, our fourth quarters, as we've kind of transformed the company, have become stronger than they were early on. But we don't see any significant changes in seasonality. To me, as I look at it, as we get to the back half, if we continue to pick up pricing and and continue to see normalization of inflation. That's where we kind of have, I think, some potential upside through the year as we go forward. But nothing of significance from a quarter or back half loaded. It's loaded just like our other plans.

I think the shift that we saw in 2021 becomes a new norm by quarter of how that lays out because it's changed pretty significantly from the risk of the transportation solutions business being lumpy and weather and things like that. I think with the mix of operating earnings, it'll probably look similar to what we had in 2021. Should it theoretically improve a little bit smoother because Petillo and Plateau would expect the same kind of more, less seasonality in the business, but still feel some in that first quarter.

All right, all really solid responses. I'll let you guys get back to business. Thanks very, very much.

Thanks, Sean. Appreciate it. We have reached the end of the question and answer session, and I will now turn the call over to Mr. Joe Cotillo for closing remarks.

Thanks, Kyle. I'd like to thank everyone again for joining today's call. If you have any follow-up questions, please refer to the information provided in the press release related to our investor relations group at Sterling or our partners at the Equity Group. I hope everyone has a great day, and thanks again for joining the call. This concludes today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time.

Thank you for your participation.