BrightView Holdings, Inc.

Good morning, and thank you for joining Brightview's fourth quarter and full year 2023 running call. Dale Laughlin, Brightview's president and chief executive officer, and Brett Irvin, chief financial officer, are on the call. I will now refer you to slide two of the presentation, which will also be found on our investor relations website, and which contains our State Barber's explainer. This call may include a little information that is subject to certain risks and uncertainties. In addition, during the call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please see our 8K issue earlier this morning for reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures. I will now turn the call over to Dale.

Thank you, Chris, and good morning, everyone. I'm honored to join my first hearing call since being appointed Brightview's CEO in October. First,

I want to thank all of our employees for their efforts this past year. I'm proud to be joining a team that is motivated and committed to continuous improvement. In my first 45 days, I've spent a lot of time in the field and at the branches, meeting with employees and customers, immersing myself in all aspects of my review business. I have benefited a great deal from these interactions as they are opportunities to listen, to learn, and to build relationships. I look forward to meeting many more of our associates and partners in weeks and months to come. I will begin today's call on slide four by sharing some initial observations about the areas I'm focused on and some of my initial priorities.

I will then provide some highlights for fiscal year 2023

before handing it over to Brett to discuss our results in more detail and provide our initial outlook for fiscal 2024. By way of background, I spent the past 25 years at United Rental. We're the largest equipment rental company. In my most recent role as DOO, I was focused on relentless execution and delivering an exceptional customer experience. This was accomplished by prioritizing our employees so they are equipped with the appropriate resources to serve our customers, all while leveraging the size and scale of their business. By doing this, we can increase shareholder value significantly. What attracted me to Brightview was the opportunity to lead a group of talented employees through their next phase of profitable growth and operational improvement by leveraging my experience as an operator and a leader.

At Brightview,

We have a tremendous opportunity to become great operators of our business and partners to our customers. In order to capitalize on these opportunities and send Brightview into the next phase of growth, we must invest in our employees and prioritize our relationships with our customers while delivering consistent execution and service. We will do this by everyone working together to operate as one Brightview. As CEO, I am focused on establishing a unified Brightview, a company that prioritizes its employees, the customer, and a winning culture. This renewed commitment and investment in the business will be critical to our ability to drive profitable growth. It will also allow us to leverage our vast branch network to drive operational efficiency. Another key area of focus would be the strategic allocation of capital. ensuring that our investments in the business, both organic and inorganic, are creating value and generating attractive returns for our stakeholders. Moving to slide five. The initial goal of operating as One Bright View is to become the employer of choice. We do that by putting our employees first and by delivering a culture where people seek to achieve individual and group success. By prioritizing our employees, we are ensuring that they have the capabilities and tools required to do their jobs at a high level. Doing this materially impacts the level of service provided to customers and leads to an exceptional customer experience. This includes investing in employee safety, fleet, and systems, all of which will allow us to better serve our customers. By making these investments in our employees, and in turn employees taking care of our customers, This will allow us to become the partner of choice in our industry. These investments are aimed at improving customer retention and accelerating profitable growth. Creating a customer-centric focus for our employees is critical to our objective under One Bright View. As you can tell, we are highly focused and committed to One Bright View and building a stronger foundation. There's a lot of work ahead of us on these initiatives, but I firmly believe these are the areas we must prioritize. Once we have established this foundation, we will have earned the right to expand strategically. M&A can be a powerful lever for growth and generating meaningful returns on capital, but only when it fits strategically, culturally, and financially. And in order to have that fit, we must be a better owner that accelerates revenue, increases operational efficiencies, and creates significant synergy so that one plus one equals three. As one Brightview, we have to be the best at what we do for our customers, and I'm confident that we can deliver on these goals. Now moving to our results. As you can see on slide six, fiscal 2023 was a successful year for Brightview. as we achieve solid execution and deliver results in line with expectations. During the year, we focused on targeting profitable growth, driving consistent EBITDA margin expansion, and improving our cash flow. We were pleased with the results for the year considering the challenging economic environment consisting of elevated inflation, higher interest rates, and a winter with very little snow. Despite these challenges, we executed our plan for the year. Additionally, during the year, we achieved a transformational reduction in our leverage, driven by the strategic investment from One Rock Capital in our improved profitability. As shown on slide seven, prior to One Rock, our leverage profile and interest expense payments were restricting our growth in cash flow and reducing the overall financial flexibility of the business. By partnering with One Rock, we were able to use those proceeds to pay down debt, resulting in a significant reduction in our leverage and interest expense. This added flexibility allows us to invest in the business with an emphasis on profitable growth. In addition to the financial benefits of this partnership, we are also leveraging One Rock's operational expertise, including previous experience in our industry. which will allow us to accelerate the execution of our strategy. The investment also reflects a strong vote of confidence in Brightview's strategy and potential to drive profitable growth for years to come. With that, I'll turn over to Brett, who will discuss our financial performance and outlook in more detail.

Brett. Thank you, Dale, and good morning to everyone. I'll start on slide nine. I am pleased to report on another solid quarter. We grew total revenues by 2.8%, increased EBITDA by $10 million, delivered margin expansion in all segments, and generated significantly more cash despite increased interest expense. Our ability to achieve these results reflects Brightly's attractive business model and gives us confidence as we pursue new opportunities to drive further financial and operational improvements. Moving to slide 10, total revenue during the quarter increased 2.8% year over year to $744 million, reflecting 2.1% year over year organic revenue growth. Revenue during the quarter benefited from demand in our core businesses, favorable pricing, and M&A contributions. In our maintenance business, total revenue decreased 1.5% to $521 million, as we continue to pursue higher quality contracts, which reflects our relentless focus on profitable growth and margin expansion as we discussed last quarter. We grew our development business a robust 13.5% organically due to our ability to convert our strong backlog into higher project volume. We remain very optimistic about the pipeline of projects and the momentum of our development business headed into fiscal 24. Turning now to profitability and the details on slide 11. Total adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter was $101.6 million, an increase of $10 million driven by both land and development growth, margin expansion in all segments, and a strategic asset sale which came in above expectations. In the maintenance segment, total adjusted EBITDA of $81.7 million was up slightly year over year. This resulted in margin expansion of 30 basis points and marked the fourth consecutive quarter of margin expansion in our core land business. As I mentioned, our focus on higher quality contracts led to a modest near-term impact on land revenue, but as evidenced throughout this year, this strategy led to continued profitability growth and margin expansion. In the development segment, adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter was $29.1 million, an increase of approximately 14% compared to the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded 10 basis points, which marks our fifth consecutive quarter of development margin expansion, and we expect this trend to continue as we head into fiscal 24. As part of our ongoing initiatives, we executed a strategic sale of our corporate airplanes that generated both cash and future cost savings. This sale benefited profitability and cash flow, which allowed us to immediately reinvest back into the business by replacing some of our oldest production vehicles. Important to note in our previous guidance, we assumed an approximate $4 million EBITDA benefit from selling the airplane in our corporate segment. Through favorable negotiations, we were able to secure an approximate $7 million benefit to EBITDA on the sale of this asset. Lastly, the sale had both a positive impact on our corporate and environmental initiatives. Turning to slide 12, I'll provide a review of our full fiscal year 23 results. Total revenue for the year was $2.82 billion, which represented a 1.5% increase compared to the prior year. Total land services increased 1.7% to $1.86 billion, reflecting healthy growth despite the contraction in our non-core business. Additionally, snow represented a year-over-year headwind of $47 million due to the absence of material snowfall. Revenue in the development segment increased a meaningful 8.5%, with a robust 6.8% organic growth for the full year. As you can see on slide 13, we delivered EBITDA growth and margin expansion throughout the year. We committed to growing profitability and expanding margins in fiscal 23, and we are proud to report that we delivered on these commitments. I am extremely delighted with the team's ability to execute this growth and margin expansion despite the challenging operating environment. Let's now turn to slide 14, to review our free cash flow debt and capital expenditures for the year. We committed to improving our cash flow in fiscal 23 and delivered upon this commitment. This improvement was a result of higher profitability, a strategic reduction to capital expenditures, favorable working capital, and benefits from our tax planning, which more than offset the higher cash interest expense in the year. The reduction in capital expenditures reflects the resiliency and flexibility of our balance sheet in a year with low snowfall. For the full year, we generated $80 million in free cash flow compared to $7 million last year. These levels of cash generation reflect the improvement in our business and lay the foundation for continued momentum going into fiscal 24. In addition to the improved cash levels in the business, we announced a strategic investment from One Rock Capital that contributed to a significant reduction of our leverage profile. This investment resulted in leverage coming down by approximately two turns and reaching a historical low of 2.9 times compared to the 4.8 times in the prior year. This strengthens our balance sheet and provides us with flexibility and the opportunity to reinvest in the business, specifically towards customer and employee satisfaction which, as Dale mentioned, will lead to profitable growth and operational improvement. Let's now turn to slide 15 to provide an update on Project Liberty. As a refresher, on our Q3 earnings call, we announced an expanded strategic review of our business beyond just cost initiatives. These initiatives include areas such as branch performance, customer growth and retention, procurement, and capital allocation, with a collective goal of expanding profitable growth and generating higher returns. We have seen the early successes of these initiatives reflected in our EBITDA margin and cash flow performance in the back half of the year. Under Dale's leadership, Project Liberty continues to take shape across the business and has aligned with our goal of becoming a collaborative and unified One Bright Year. Branch performance will be driven by investing in our employees, while also aligning sales and operations to better service our customers. Profitable growth, led by new sales and improved customer retention, will be driven by prioritizing the customer and aligning incentives for our employees. We will continue to focus on high-quality business, strategic pricing efforts, and deliberate capital allocation, underscoring our prioritization of profitable growth. Taken together, continuous execution of these initiatives will create higher returns and lead to shareholder value. Let's now turn to slide 16 to review our outlook for fiscal 24. Profitable growth will continue to be our guiding factor and key focus. We are now providing four-year guidance for fiscal 24 with expected total revenue of $2.825 to $2.975 billion, reflecting a range of relatively flat to 5% revenue growth. This assumes the following. In maintenance, we expect our focus on profitable growth to continue to have a near-term impact, but we remain encouraged by the underlying health of the market and recent trends within our business. For snow, our fiscal 24 guidance range assumes flat at the low end and a return to five-year historical averages at the high end. And for development, the conversion of our strong backlog of projects will continue to benefit revenue and margin growth. Moving to adjusted EBITDA, One Bright View will be the key driver to growing profit and expanding our margins. In fiscal 24, we expect margin expansion in both maintenance and development segments, benefiting from One Bright View key initiatives and disciplined management of the business. We expect these improvements to generate margin expansion of 40 to 80 basis points and adjusted EBITDA of $310 to $340 million. In fiscal 24, we expect a continuation of healthy cash flow generation driven by profitable growth and improved operating performance. Our outlook on slide 17 reflects the commitment to growth as we expect an increase in capital intensity to support our strategy. These higher levels are consistent with historical requirements to support the business and reflect a more normal snowfall this year. Contributions from reduced interest expense will be managed alongside the ongoing requirements to optimize the business. Altogether, we expect to generate free cash flow of $45 to $75 million, supporting the financial flexibility we maintain today while enhancing our ability to generate future profitable growth. With that, let me now turn the call back to Dale to wrap up on slide 18.

Thank you, Brett. Before we open the call for questions, I'd like to provide a few final thoughts. It's an exciting time at Brightview, and I'm honored to be leading such a talented team. There are tremendous opportunities ahead of us. We are moving this business forward with a clear strategy and vision for one bright view. We are strategically positioned to accelerate profitable growth and to create meaningful values for our shareholders. We will now open the call for questions.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. That's star 1 on your telephone keypad. We draw your question, star followed by 2. And please also remember to unmute your microphone when it's your turn to speak. We do have our first question. It comes from Bob Labic from CJS Securities. Bob, your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning. And, Dale, congratulations on your new role and your new position. Good morning, Bob. Thanks. Thank you very much, Bob. Yeah, I wanted to start. Oh, absolutely. No, very excited for you, for sure. I wanted to start, and I think you began the call this way, so reiterate it. Your employee first focus will drive customer satisfaction and improve retention and all that kind of good stuff. That all makes a lot of sense. Can you take it one level further and talk about what you've seen so far? I know it's 45 days, but thoughts on how to improve branch operations. change things, tweak things? What are your intentions operationally to do to grow organically from here?

Yeah, great question, Bob. First, I think you're right. 45 days, I've had a chance to, as I said, visit many of our associates, some of our customers in different parts of the country. And what I've seen to start with is we have a very talented group of people that service our customers every day. We have a development group, we have a tree care business, we have a turf business, we have an irrigation business, we have a golf course maintenance business, and of course our primary business, the maintenance group. All these groups service customers at extremely high levels. Our biggest opportunity, like I said in my statement, is going to be to get everybody operating as one Brightview. Getting all these people to leverage their skills together to service our customers. And when we do that, Bob, we will accelerate our organic growth internally because we have talented people with the right focus of customers. We just haven't leveraged the ability for them to really act as one team when they go to market to the customer. So that upside is there within our own control of working as one bright view, one group to drive profitable growth. So I would tell you, I am more optimistic than ever by talking to the people in the field. Because the closer I get to the customer, the more our team is engaged to service the customer. So that's a great way to start when you're going to focus on how can we grow the business. And that starts and ends with those people that touch our customer every day. And we, as a leadership team, have to find a way to provide them all the tools they need to be able to do it efficiently. and make our customers feel the choice they made to choose Brightview is the obvious choice.

Okay, great. I appreciate that. And it sounds obviously with the employee and therefore customer focus, you know, that's the direction you're going to start with. How does this align with, you know, investing in the employees align with margin enhancements? And is there, you know, a low period where you invest more in the employees, you get your improved retention, and then later, margins start improving? How do those connect if you're going to continue to really invest in employees first? Because obviously, the goal being lower churn, higher retention, and therefore better growth, the investment comes before the improved retention, right? It can't be simultaneous. So how do you think about that as it relates to margins over the year or next one, two, three years?

Yeah, I would just say in our business, we have obviously a lot of seasonality, but even the number of employees that we're tasked with hiring to service our customers, training and onboarding every year is a significant number. And the more we put those employees as our primary focus to give them the tools, the safety equipment, the systems, the vehicles to operate their jobs the right way, the more their job satisfaction will go up and the more we'll see that valuable resource of our employees turnover come down. So that will, Bob, drive margin expansion just by being able to reduce the cost we pay to recruit and onboard employees. So that is our first step. And by doing that, that translates to them being able to serve the customer better and help us in that retention, as you said, to drive additional organic growth in the business. But our efforts to onboard and train customers right now are too high. That's why we have to prioritize our employees so we can make sure those employees are embracing a customer-centric focused business and they know the importance they play in that journey.

That sounds great. Good luck and thank you. I'll get back in queue.

Thanks, Bob.

Our next question comes from Tim Mulroney from William Blair. Tim, your line's now open.

Hi, this is Luke. Morning, Tim. Thanks for taking our questions today. Hey, good morning. You're welcome. So it looks like land organic growth was down about 2.5% in the fourth quarter. I think you had previously expected it to be flat. Could you share what drove that decline? Was it primarily attributable to lower contract renewals or lower enhancement revenue or maybe something else?

Yeah, so I'll start off and then I'll kick it over to Brett. I just remind everybody our focus was profitable growth and margin expansion. So the team has been focused to make sure the customers that we're going after are the customers that fit that profile. and the businesses that we're focused on growing are businesses that are focused in that area, more of our core business, as you heard Brett mention on the call. So let me let Brett kind of decompose it for you. But just remember, our focus is not just chasing revenue. It's going to be make sure the revenue we bring is a creative to our base business as we bring in new customers. So Brett, why don't you give them a little more detail on the financial side?

Yeah. Hey Luke, how you doing this morning? Appreciate the question. Yeah. As Dale mentioned, you know, profitable growth is going to be our guiding factor moving forward. And I think as you heard in previous calls, previous quarters, we were, we were growing, but margin was not. And I think as you look at this year and you, you normalize for snow, which we've talked about quite a bit in the margin profile, has improved significantly, not only in development business and our maintenance business and corporate segment as well. And if you think about organic growth for the quarter, look, I think that drive towards profitable growth and high-quality business will continue in the near term as we move forward. We're still getting favorable benefits from pricing. We're still being strategic in those efforts of about 50 basis points with our pricing efforts. We did last year with heightened fuel have, you know, fuel surcharges that were in our top line of about 50 basis points as well. So those two things sort of offset from a jump off point Q4 over Q4. And then as Dale mentioned, you know, there's a heightened focus on one bright view, bringing all of our businesses together, whether it be golf or aggregator business, et cetera. And I think if you look at our core underlying land business, we saw very stable demand and growth in that business. offset by maybe some contraction in our non-core businesses. But as we move forward under Dow's leadership and really towards one bright view, you'll see that alignment of the businesses, especially over the medium to long term.

Great. Thanks so much for that, Keller, there. And then, you know, maybe switching gears here, just on your guidance for 2024, it looks like you're assuming maintenance plan, organic growth, somewhere between down 2% to up 2%. Can you share what you're assuming in both those situations? And maybe if you could give us a sense, breakdown just between pricing and volume expectations as we head into next year?

Yeah, I think obviously it's a good question. I think if you look at what we've done for guidances, we gave a full annual guide on revenue. And really in that annual revenue guide of 2825 to 2975. We've also given a range for where we believe our snow revenue will come out, which is 210 to 270. Our development business, which had an outstanding year last year, we think will continue to grow slightly. So we give a range because we don't want to really break down exactly each component. We think potentially as we go through Q1 here, we'll see a similar trend to what we saw in Q4 as we focus our employees so that we can look to enhance our employees so they can make sure they drive retention with our customers. So I know that the change to give annual guides is a little different. So one way I think everybody should think about those numbers is our Q1 would normally be roughly about 22.5% of our total revenue. And then that snow business, you could consider roughly about 25% of it coming in Q1, 75% coming in Q2. And that probably would allow you to kind of back into your assumptions, looking at last year's development by quarter of where we think revenue will grow over the next couple of months on maintenance. I hope that gives you enough on the pieces, but Brett, do you got anything you want to add or?

No, I'm just, you know, look, it's a change in guidance. We're going from prior years where we would only provide Q1 guidance at this point in time. We would not provide Q2 or full year. So now we're going out and providing a full year guide. And I think in that land guide, as you can see it on slide 16 in the presentation, it's minus two to positive two. And I guess Dale mentioned, you know, we are working through our guiding factor of profitable growth. And through that profitable growth mantra and bringing together as one Brightview, what we experienced in Q4 of a revenue impact, we'll probably experience in land in Q1 and in the early half of 24. But as one Brightview gains traction, as we take care of our employees, and in turn, they take care of our customers, we're going to get back to that profitable growth over the medium and longer term in this business. Just important to note, too, just one last factor, Q1, Q1 of last year, Luke, we did have a hurricane impact in the business of about $7 million. We don't see any type of unusual events like that happening right now for this quarter.

Great. Thanks so much.

Our next question comes from Phil Angie from Jefferies. Phil, your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. This is Maggie on for Phil. Good morning, Maggie. I wanted to start out on free cash flow. You had a really impressive step up this year. Can you talk about the non-recurring benefit from this year and any of the other moving pieces that kind of get you to that fiscal 24 guidance? And then on the CapEx side, The guide implies a pretty big increase next year. Is that more of a catch-up for the business, or is this a reasonable level to assume going forward?

Yeah, Maggie, let me start. I'll take the back half of your question with the capital, and then I'll kick it over to Brett on the free cash flow. I think, as Brett had commented, the business did the right things. In 2023, when we made strategic decisions to manage the capital down, when we saw the snow business with the record level of reduced snow that we saw last year, and the business reacted very well, thus demonstrating our ability to flex the business up or down and drive it by our CapEx and produce the free cash flow that we did. As far as the future guide on that free cash flow, think a healthy range is probably closer maybe three and a half percent that brett mentioned is a little elevated but i do think there's a plan for us to drive maybe uh a little shorter term use of our vehicles and get a little more residual value as we go through the process and we're going to have a little catch up on that because don't forget these vehicles that our employees operated in they are our billboard that goes out and visits our customers so The appearance of those that our employees work in every day is critical for our brand that we represent the customers. But let me kick it over to Brett, and he can give you some on the non-reoccurring.

Yeah, Maggie, great question. Look, first off, I'll say we are extremely pleased with our cash flow performance this year. Coming off a year in FY22 where we generated $7 million of free cash flow, and then we went and bought acquisitions after that and essentially took out debt to do so. That was not the game plan coming into 23. We were very clear with that early in our conversations on earnings calls and just really excited the report. We delivered great cash flow performance of $80 million in the year, and we actually put money into the bank to keep on the sidelines for future strategic investments in the business. So extremely pleased about that. As you think about last year to this year, the $7 million to the $80 million, yeah, we saw as it wasn't snowing in Q2, we made a strategic decision to pull back on CapEx. That benefited our cash flow year over year, roughly $50 million for the CapEx year over year down. But look, I think that was very strategic and shows the flexibility of our balance sheet, as Dale mentioned. In a year with low snow, we're able to flex capital down a bit. In years as we're guiding in 24, we're expecting a more, call it historical snowfall, we would flex that CapEx guide up a little bit. And you think about 24 guidance, you know, a range of cash flow of $45 to $75 million, you know, that's coming off the year where we did have about $25 million of one-time favorable impacts in our cash flow, whether it was related to tax benefits we got from our tax planning or partial sale of our interest rate hedge we had on our collar. But regardless of that, as you think about 24 Guide, we're looking at guiding to a point of 60 to even at the high end, $75, $80 million of free cash, which has put us back to where this year was. And that's through improved operating results and some of the savings on our interest expense, which as you can see, we'll redeploy in capital back into the business. So dollars we're saving on capital, dollars we're saving, I'm sorry, dollars we're saving on interest and dollars we're saving in other areas of the balance sheet, we'll redeploy back in the capital. As Dale mentioned, we'll refresh our fleet and be able to put our employees in a much more favorable working environment every day.

Okay, great. That's super helpful. And then, Dale, you kind of touched on this in your prepared remarks, but The guide for next year assumes minimal contribution from incremental M&A, which has previously been a bigger focus for the company. I guess, how do you think about the strategy around M&A over the near term, and should we expect to pause on deals in fiscal 24?

Yeah, great question, Maggie. First of all, I am a absolute firm believer in M&A. I am a supportive person that when we can make an investment, when we can be a better owner of the asset, we should take advantage of that. And as being the nation's largest landscape provider, we should be able to do that. Unfortunately, I think historically, the way we've done M&A at Brightview needs to be revamped. We have to get our operators involved earlier. We have to evaluate M&A, not just on the short-term financial benefits. We have to look at culturally and strategically as important as just the initial math. And then the day that we buy a company, we must integrate it into our business. We are going to put our precious capital to work, deploying it for M&A. So we have to find a way to make sure our foundation's ready that when that capital gets deployed, we grow that business. And we grow it very profitably because as the owner of that business, we can leverage our size and scale to provide a processes, provided systems and corporate overhead that they shouldn't need on their own. So I am a firm believer in M&A. Maybe for the next couple of quarters, we don't plan on doing much, but we have already started to revamp our process to get everybody working together, starting with our field leaders to make sure the deals we do are the right deals, and then as we bring them in, we find a way to make sure we're a much better owner of that asset as part of Brightview. So make note, we didn't put a lot into our guide, but make no bones about it. I am a firm believer in M&A. We just need to pause here to make sure we get ready. So once we do M&A, it creates shareholder value for all of our shareholders.

All right. Thanks, guys, and good luck on the next quarter.

Thanks, Maggie. Thanks, Maggie.

As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on the telephone keypad. That's star 1 on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from George Tong from Goldman Sachs. George, your line is now open.

Hi, thanks. Good morning. Good morning, George. You talked about engaging in contract optimization in your maintenance business. Hi. in order to drive profitable growth. Can you elaborate on some of the initiatives there? In other words, are you pruning existing contracts? Are you turning down new business with unfavorable terms? And then when would you expect this initiative to be largely complete?

Yeah, so it's a good question, George. What I would say is, As Brett talked about, through our price realization, our focus on every account is to make sure, as we feel some of those inflationary impacts, we find a way to work with our customers to make sure that the service we're providing reflects the value they see. Sometimes that creates price increases. Sometimes it's service reductions because they don't want to spend more money, and we partner with our customers to find a way to make sure it's a win-win situation. So what I can tell you is we continue to evaluate all of our businesses to make sure they're working together well. And every part of our business is a creative to our customer value that we put out there. So after 45 days, I think the team's doing the right thing. And I also think there's a better way for us to go to market, to look at new accounts that could fill out our existing route. And our partners at one rock have really helped us start to look at ways that we can enhance the profitability. of existing routes just by adding strategic customers so i don't think that's a uh on off point i think it's going to be an evolution for us to continue to go through and continue to focus on because that is the essence of this business route optimization enhancing making sure that our people service the customers and finding customers that can fill in those routes and always looking at what it costs us to service the business that we're providing so I think short-term, we made some decisions, but long-term, George, it's a much bigger discussion about how are we going to manage the business long-term. And as one bright view, that's where we'll really see the benefit for our customers.

Got it. That's helpful. And then in development, you had strong 7% organic revenue growth on a full-year basis, and this followed pretty strong growth of 10%. organic in fiscal 2022. Can you unpack the strong growth and development you've been seeing and the extent to which the development business has structurally stepped up in growth potential to something north of 5% organically?

Yeah, it's a great question. First, we have a very strong backlog in our development group. And I think as many people know, the economy has been on a roll and Some of that backlog is at the end of those jobs that have occurred over the last couple years in the construction industry. So that team's done a very good job securing a backlog of business well north of what we would typically see at this time. But let me let Brett unpack it a little bit for you, if that would help.

Yeah, George, look, I would echo Dal's comments. The backlog is strong. We see no signs of any type of weakening in the economy. We see no signs of any type of recession looming. Our backlog in development is as high as it's ever been, historical high levels. In 2022, we reported revenues of $700 million. 23 is close to $760 million. And we're guiding at the midpoint of 3.5% growth on 2023 results. So we see no slowing down of that business. We see quite the contrary. We're selling, you know, as of this point, we're selling really into Q3 and Q4 of 24. And then as we get through this quarter and the next quarter, we'll be selling into 25 at that point. So just really, really robust growth in that business. We're very bullish on their ability to grow their backlog and to put the projects in the ground. And by the way, they just posted their fifth consecutive quarter of margin improvement in that business. We're extremely excited about, and we expect that margin improvement to continue, as you can see in our guidance, for 24th.

Got it. And just to follow up on the second half of the question, to what extent do you think structurally the growth has stepped up to maybe something north of 5%? At the midpoint, you're getting to 3.5%. In other words, is there upside potential given the strength that you just talked about in the development business?

Yeah, George, I would say there's always potential for upside. And this business is very dependent on cycles, somewhat dependent on weather as you get into it. into the winter months. But as you think about the business in general, it's been pretty consistent growth year over year on a full year basis. I think as you look at our full year guide and you think about last year, Q2 saw a small revenue decline in Q2 of 23. But you can see for the full year basis, the business growing north of 7% organically. We feel very bullish that over a course of a full year, that business will grow. Could it grow more than 5%? You know, that's a possibility, but I think as we stand here today and really look at margin improvement in that business as well, which has been a focus, and being more selective in projects that we sell, we still expect to grow the business revenue, but margin has to come along with it, which we showed in 23, and we expect margin to come along with it in 24. And that may mean not growing at 10% to 15%. That may mean growing at 5% with higher margins.

Yeah. And George, let me, let me jump on it. I mean, I would just add George, I think the development business for us has been a key area of growth where we need to get better as a team is finding a way to convert that development business that we generate to new maintenance business. And that's where that one bright view will come into play. We have one of the top 50 specialty companies in construction in North America. and they do some of the biggest development on landscaping projects in the country. We need to find a way to make sure we have a successful handoff from that development to our maintenance team as one bright view. So this is the lead in to help that organic growth on maintenance. So I like that it keeps growing and our team in the field continues to enhance and beautify our communities. Now we just need to convert that over to future maintenance revenue so we can get the maintenance group growing just as fast as the development group.

Very helpful. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Andy Whitman from Baird. Andy, your lunch is now open.

Great. Thanks, and good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. I have several questions, but I think maybe then I'll start with has to do with, I guess, Project Liberty and other business transformation costs. The question being, you know, obviously Project Liberty has been in flight for some time now and many of the actions have already been taken and some of the cost benefits realized in 2023. I was just wondering how much cost benefit from actions already taken so far on Project Liberty are going to be benefiting your profit margins in 2024? In other words, what hasn't been recognized in the annual run rate of those cost reductions so far? Maybe, Brett, if you could talk about a related item to that. What do you expect for the business transformation costs here in 2024?

Yeah, so that's a great question, Andy. I would just say, at a high level, Project Liberty was focused on some initial benefits from cost saves. And if you go back, it started out as Project Accelerate. So I think we've seen a lot of that. We still have an area to go when it comes to the procurement initiative that we'll work through in 2024. But as you've heard, we're going to try to transition from primarily those cost save initiatives to more of that one bright new approach where we can focus on customer retention and on new account conversion to make sure we're growing the business at the same time so we can leverage that size and scale. But Brett could probably give you the numbers. Obviously, the benefit we said that would come in 2024 of 20 million is embedded in our guidance that you see coming out with a midpoint EBITDA at 325. But I'll let Brett talk to what he feels came in during 23 and where we're at towards our run rate for 24.

Yeah, Andy, look, as you think about 2023, you know, we said on our last call we saw about $2 million or so realization from Project Accelerate, which was just a cost-cutting initiative, essentially. And then as we morphed into Project Liberty on our Q3 call, we mentioned that we would see $20 million plus of savings related to the entire project. We saw roughly another $2 to $3 million savings come through in Q4 related to the original Accelerate and some early signs of Liberty. But you think about our guidance for 24, and Liberty now morphs into One Bright View. One Bright View is just going to be the way we operate the business. We're going to take care of our customers, who in turn take care of our employees, who in turn take care of our customers. And if you think about our guide for 2024, we're guiding at a midpoint of 60 basis points of margin expansion. We're guiding at a midpoint of $26 million of EBITDA growth. That's inclusive of One Bright View. or as previously talked about as project Liberty, uh, and to able to get to that transformational cost, able to get to that, you know, uh, to get to get to project, uh, Liberty, AKA one bright view and, and, and move that needle forward. Um, we don't expect any significant increase in transformational costs above what we had this year, right? This year we went through a CEO change. We had some, um, business transformation costs that was related to that and some, um, transition to the new CEO, we don't expect the transformation of getting from Liberty to One Brightview and the way we operate the business to have any type of significant impact on our cash flow that hasn't been already included in our guidance.

Okay, that's really clear on the transformation cost. So I heard a couple million dollars in 3Q saved, maybe $3 million in 4Q saved. So the implication being that if you're going for $20 million, you've got about 15 coming benefiting the 24 EBITDA. Is that the quick summary?

Yeah, that's a quick summary, but just, you know, as you, as we think about moving forward and we get on our next call and we talk about, you know, one bright view, this is the way we're going to operate the business. So we are, we are morphing a project that had a, had a sticker tag on it of 20 million to the way we operate the business and the way we operate their business will be included in our future guides. And, We did our best to include that in our full-year guide this go-around, the 310 to 340. So, yeah, I would say that includes somewhere around $15 million of, call it, legacy Project Accelerate, Project Liberty. But the remainder of the improvement in that guide is going to just be the way we run the business.

Yeah, okay. That's helpful. And I guess stepping way back, I guess just philosophically, Dale, being the new leader of this company, It's always such an opportune time when things can use a change to kind of step back and take stock of the situation. As it comes to the guidance philosophy, I guess it seems like this would be a time where you guys put out a guidance which has very little expectations or low bar, knowing that you've got the opportunity to kind of clear the decks and reset things. Is that the way we should kind of think about this guidance from here, or is there a different approach in terms of how you formulated the approach in putting this guidance together?

No. I definitely think our guidance is a guidance that we feel comfortable with, with an EBITDA range that's well above the 299 we delivered this year. So I don't see by any means it being a conservative range. Going from 310 to 340 is very realistic, or 345 is very realistic. So I think somewhere around that 325 is a good starting point for us. Now, to be fair, we don't know how much it's going to snow, and we don't know when it's going to snow. And we gave you a guide on that range. If it snows at the high end of that expected 210 to 270, we can come in at the high end of that range. If it doesn't snow like it didn't snow last year, there's a chance we'll come in towards the low end. But I wouldn't look at the guide as a complete, you know, we're trying to be conservative as we come out. We feel that where our plan is this year with what we felt in Q4, we're realistic to get into this range where we came out with to start the year. And shifting from giving quarterly guidance to giving an annual guidance, that's a big shift. I think we are going to start helping people you know see what we plan on doing for the full year versus just running the business tactically quarter by quarter okay that's helpful context thank you very much currently have no further questions so i'd like to hand the call back to dale asplen for closing remarks please go ahead thank you operator And thank you to everyone for your interest in Brightview. As you can tell by our tone, we are very excited about the opportunity ahead for Brightview, and I'm thrilled to be leading this great company through this improvement period. Our objectives are clear. We are committed to becoming one Brightview, growing profitably, and creating meaningful shareholder value. I look forward to getting to know many of you in the weeks and months to come. There's a lot of work ahead of us. but for the future, is bright for BrightView. Thank you. Operator, you can now end the call.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.