Everus Construction Group, Inc.

Hello everyone, thank you for joining us and welcome to the Everest Construction Group first quarter 2026 earnings call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. I will now hand the conference over to Paul Bartolai. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Everest Construction Group's first quarter 2026 results conference call. Leading the call today are CEO Jeff Thede and CFO Max Marcy. We issued a news release yesterday detailing our first quarter 2026 operational and financial results. This release and the accompanying presentation materials are available on our website at investors.everest.com. I would like to remind you that management's commentary and responses to questions on today's conference call may include forward-looking statements, which by their nature are uncertain and outside of the company's control. Although these forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs, actual results could differ materially. For a discussion of some of the factors that could cause actual results to differ, please refer to the risk factors section of our latest filings with the SEC. Additionally, please note that you can find reconciliations with historical, non-GAAP financial measures in the news release issued yesterday and in the appendix of today's presentation. Today's call will begin with prepared remarks from Jeff, who will provide a review of our recent business performance and an update on the progress against our strategic priorities. Followed by Max, who will provide a more detailed financial update before wrapping up with guidance. the conclusion of these prepared remarks we will open the line for your questions with that i'll turn the call over to jeff thank you paul and good morning to everyone joining us today

We are very pleased with our strong start to the year as we delivered another quarter of record revenues, maintained our strong execution, and made important progress against our strategic priorities, highlighted by the acquisition of SENM, our first transaction as a standalone public company. Turning to our quarterly highlights, beginning with slide four, we delivered first quarter revenues of $1 billion, up 25% from the prior year period, driven by growth across both our E&M and T&D segments. Our strong top line performance was complimented by another quarter of solid execution as first quarter EBITDA increased 44% from the prior year period and EBITDA margin was up 110 basis points. I'm extremely proud of our track record of strong project execution. It is a direct reflection of our commitment to our operational playbook and our team's focus on executing jobs safely on time and on budget. I would like to thank all of our team members across the organization. None of this would be possible without their hard work and dedication. Our backlog at the end of the first quarter was a record $3.7 billion, up 20% from the same period last year, with strong growth across both T&D and E&M. We continue to benefit from favorable end market trends across diverse markets, including data center, hospitality, high-tech, transmission, and undergrounding. I'm also excited to report that our backlog included the first award related to the new geography we recently entered in support of a new high-tech client. This is a perfect example of what we look for when we decide to move forward into a new geographic location. We see strong long-term opportunities in this region, have an exciting anchor project to build from, and are working alongside a general contractor with whom we have a successful long-term partnership. We are excited by the opportunities in this market and will look to repeat this type of growth as we focus on expanding our geographic reach through both acquisitions, and organic expansion. Our strong financial results reflect our discipline focus on our strategic priorities. And I'd like to highlight some of our recent progress on our key initiatives. As a reminder, our value creation framework is based on targeted commercial growth, operational excellence, and disciplined capital allocation. In terms of commercial growth, We have clearly benefited from strong end market trends, notably the data center sub-market. However, our growth isn't just data center work as we continue to benefit from our diversified end markets with solid trends in hospitality, high-tech and utility. I just mentioned the high-tech project award in our new geography, which is another example of our diversification and highlights our position in the attractive high-tech market. In addition to our organic growth, a key aspect of our acquisition of SCNM is their expertise in pharma and healthcare, which are areas we expect to be strong growth drivers for years to come. We remain committed to a diversified approach to growth and believe we are very well positioned to benefit from favorable trends across our end markets given our strong customer relationships, track record of execution, and our highly skilled workforce. Now turning to operational excellence, we continue to benefit from execution upside with our first quarter performance further building on our strong 2025 results. While the positive project closeouts get attention, it is our broader execution across all 40,000 plus projects we do in a year that enables us to deliver execution outside. This means it is just as important, if not more important, to avoid problem contracts as it is to deliver closeout benefits. We take great pride in our ability to exercise disciplined project selection and successful execution represented by the stability in our margins over time. There are a lot of factors that go into our ability to deliver consistent execution over the long term, such as our focus on our operational playbook and the dedication of our team. Another key factor driving our performance is our diversified and balanced approach to project size and type. As we have discussed in the past, we are evenly balanced across project sizes and by contract type, with about half of our projects being fixed price and about half being cost plus. We like to maintain this balance throughout our company. We often get asked, why don't we do more fixed price work to enable margin upside? When we have an opportunity to do a project on a fixed price basis that is in the area of our expertise with a customer we know, and where we are confident in the details of the contract, we will certainly look to pursue and win additional fixed price work. But in general, we like to maintain a balance between fixed price and cost plus because on large, complex projects, there could be more risk. Cost plus contracts, especially on very large, complex projects, help mitigate that risk. Also, as we have discussed in recent quarters, we are often being brought into project discussions very early before the ultimate scope and design of the project is fully known, which makes it difficult to bid at a fixed price. Being selected early on a project before design is completed provides a great opportunity to execute work at a high level and build relationships. We will always look to convert cost plus projects to fixed price when it makes sense, but generally, we will look to execute large complex projects on a cost plus basis. We have a long track record of delivering stable margins that increase modestly over time. We are always looking to deliver execution upside, but our primary focus is steady margin improvement and no surprises. End markets are strong right now, and perhaps there are opportunities to be more aggressive with customers in the near term to drive margins. That is not our objective. Our strategy is to build long-term relationships, win the next project and the next one, and deliver steady, modestly higher margins over time. This is what we have done successfully, and we remain confident in our ability to continue going forward. And finally, our focus on disciplined capital allocation. Clearly, the highlight so far this year has been our acquisition of SENM. Acquisitions are a critical part of our capital allocation and growth strategy, so we are very excited to have completed our first transaction as a standalone company. As we have detailed, our acquisition strategy is focused on expanding our geographic footprint, diversifying our business, and deepening our market presence. We think SENM checks all these boxes. SCNM is headquartered in North Carolina and expands our footprint in the very attractive Southeast region. This is a geography that is experiencing strong growth across a wide range of end markets that SCNM serves, including pharma, healthcare, and complex industrial. SCNM is a leading provider of mechanical, electrical, and plumbing services with about two thirds of its revenues coming from mechanical services. Additionally, the company generates more than 60% of its revenue from service work and renovation and retrofit work, which provides a stable and profitable revenue stream. SC&M is led by an experienced management team, and importantly, their current leaders, Zach Bynum, Patrick Rogers, and Alex Bynum, as well as other key members of their team, are remaining with the company. We are very excited to have SCNM as part of the Everest family. While it has only been a few weeks since the deal closed, integration is on track and they're fitting in nicely with our team. After the SCNM transaction, our pro forma net leverage as of April 2nd was approximately 0.5 times, which gives us ample flexibility to continue executing on our growth strategy. Our acquisition pipeline remains active. and we are hard at work looking for the next company to add to the Everest family. In summary, we are encouraged to see the strong momentum from 2025 carry into this year, and we are certainly very excited to get our first acquisition completed. Based on our strong start to the year and with the inclusion of SENM, we are pleased to be raising our 2026 guidance, which Max will discuss in more detail. we remain committed to our forever strategic priorities and remain highly confident in our ability to deliver on our long-term financial goals. With that, I'll turn it over to Max.

Thank you, Jeff, and good morning, everyone. I will provide additional details on the quarter, give an update on our liquidity and balance sheet, and wrap up with our updated guidance. Beginning on slide 11 in the presentation, Revenues for the first quarter were $1.04 billion, an increase of 25% compared to the same period last year. The increase was driven by growth in both E&M and T&D segments. Total EBITDA was $88.9 million during the first quarter, an increase of 44% from the same period in 2025, driven by solid revenue growth, continued strong project As a result, our first quarter EBITDA margin was 8.6%, up 110 basis points from 7.5% in the prior year period. At March 31st, total backlog was $3.68 billion, up 20% from March 31st of last year. Our T&D backlog was up 10% compared to last year due to increases in the utility end markets, specifically transmission and undergrounding work. While our E&M backlog was up 22%, reflecting growth in data center and hospitality, as well as the first large award relating to the new geography we entered last year. We remain encouraged by the favorable trends in several of our key end markets, and we remain confident in our ability to generate continued backlog growth. Now turning to our segment results, let's first look at E&M, where our first quarter revenues increased 29% to $835.1 million. The increase was driven primarily by growth in our commercial market, with continued strength in our data center sub-market. Our E&M EBITDA was $75.3 million in the first quarter, an increase of 52% compared to the first quarter of 2025. The increase was driven by our strong revenue growth and higher gross margin due to project timing and efficient project execution. As a result, our E&M segment EBITDA margin was 9%, up 140 basis points compared to 7.6% in the first quarter of 2025. Our first quarter T&D revenues were $204.4 million, up 10.5% from the first quarter of last year, driven by growth in utility and market and more favorable weather as we had a limited weather disruptions in the early part of the year. T&D segment EBITDA was $27.1 million in the first quarter, up 35% from the prior year period due to the higher revenues and strong execution. As a result, T&D's segment EBITDA margin was 13.3%, up 240 basis points, compared to 10.9% in the same grade last year. Turning to our balance sheet and liquidity. As of March 31st, we had $275 million of unrestricted cash and cash equivalents, $281.2 million of gross debt, and $222.8 million available under the credit facility. we had virtually no net debt at the end of the first quarter. However, our pro forma net leverage defined as net debt to trillion 12 month EBITDA as of April 2nd, after completing the SCNM transaction was approximately 0.5. Operating cash flows were $143.7 million for the first quarter of 2026, compared to $7.1 million in the same grade last year. due to the strong operating results and favorable working capital timing. CapEx was $15.5 million for the first quarter, down slightly from $18.5 million in the prior year period. While we continue to expect higher capital spending to support our organic growth strategy for the whole year, the comparison during the first quarter reflects the purchase of the new Kansas City FreeFab facility in the first quarter of last year. We generated free cash flow of $131.9 million in the first quarter of 2026, up from a use of cash of $8.1 million in the first quarter of 2025. Our first quarter free cash flow reflects some timing benefits. We still expect a more normalized free cash flow conversion for the whole year, with our forecasted growth and operating results largely offset by our higher levels of growth investments. Now, wrapping up with guidance, we are encouraged by the solid start to the year, which included another quarter of strong execution and some favorable weather. It is also worth highlighting that given our shift in revenue mix due to the strong growth in E&M, we should see more muted seasonal patterns to operating results in 2026. We did not really see any seasonal dip in the first quarter, so we don't really expect much of a seasonal step up through the year. Based on our strong first quarter results, as well as the inclusion of SCNM, which closed in the second quarter, we are raising our full year 2026 guidance. We are not providing explicit guidance on SCNM, but as a reminder, in 2025, the business generated $109 million in revenues with high teams even the margin. As a whole for Everest, we are now forecasting 2026 revenues in the range of 4.3 to $4.4 billion and EBITDA in the range of $345 to $360 million. At the midpoint of our range, our guidance implies EBITDA margins of 8.1%, which reflects the execution upside from Q1, as well as the margin accretion from SC&M. For the balance of the year, our guidance continues to assume EBITDA margins of right around 8% for the legacy business. That completes our prepared remarks. Operator of our law.

We will now begin the question and answer session. Please limit yourself to one question and re-enter the queue for any additional follow-ups. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand and to withdraw your question, press star one again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from Brian Brophy with Stifel. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thanks. Good morning. I appreciate you taking the question. Nice margin this quarter. Jeff, you mentioned in your opening comments that this was the first award associated with the new geographic expansion. Does that imply some visibility into additional awards with this high-tech customer that you're referencing today? Or are you just kind of expecting more awards in that new geographic region with other customers? Thanks.

And good morning, Brian, we're expecting more awards as the project continues to develop and design develops. The key is, is that we had line of sight and working with a long term general contractor customer in a new geography with a new end user. This was exciting to us. We were able to plan for core resources to be able to mobilize. and to be able to take on and ramp up slowly so we could execute successfully. So we continue to see more opportunity on that site as we focus on that project and the backlog that we've generated and the backlog that we see in the near future. In addition, we're looking for additional businesses as it becomes available in that new geography.

Got it. That's helpful. And then just on the strong cash flow, Curious to what extent, you know, better payment terms here are driving some of the strength. And I guess just outside of the quarter and bigger picture, to the extent you're seeing better payment terms generally and the extent we should expect that to sustain itself into the future. Thanks.

So through our contract reviews and our selection of projects and contract terms and conditions, those are the top of the list items for us to be able to negotiate good payment terms. And in addition to other T's and C's, as we've seen improvement on and movement on from our customers over the last several years, but billing ahead on cost plus jobs, making sure that we're anticipating when those costs hit our books is something that we operational excellence initiative. And we're seeing the results on that.

Yeah. And Brian, I would just add, you know, obviously it's a very, very strong cashflow quarter. I think it's a lot due to timing rather than a persistent result like that in every single quarter. So more timing this quarter and maybe more normalized as the year progresses.

Appreciate it. I'll pass it on.

Your next question comes from Joseph Osha with Guggenheim. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hey, this is Mike on for Joe. Just a question on the backlog. So that obviously grew pretty nicely. Are you able to provide a little bit more color on the composition in terms of the percent for data centers versus hospitality and high tech?

Yes. Thanks for the question. Tom Greene, The delivery of our services and their ability to be able to execute at a high level puts us in a great position for future work we're still seeing a similar level of competition that we've seen over the last couple of years. Tom Greene, And our ability to target and select projects in a disciplined manner. uh of our safety and production metrics is something that we've gotten better and better at so the competition is still about the same it has been for the last couple years but as we continue to get better and build and strengthen our relationships through execution we see a lot of opportunity to be able to achieve the backlog that we need to be able to support the growth of our business

Yeah, and it was, so we don't break out the percentage of data center in the backlog, but the growth did come across a number of markets, right? It wasn't just data center, it was across our commercial segment and our industrial segment. So we have good growth in our backlog across our business.

Great, thank you.

Your next question comes from Swetha Rakecha with Cantor. Your line is open, please go ahead.

Good morning, Jeff, Max, and team. This is Shweta here on behalf of Manish Samaya. Congrats on a very strong quarter and the very first acquisition. Jeff, a question for you on the contract mix and the risk discipline. As customers bring a risk in earlier on large complex work, should we now expect cost plus to remain a larger share of major projects? And does that cap margin sort of upside improve margin consistency?

Yeah, well, I think, you know, so we really appreciate our mix of contract type, right? I think, you know, we really want to manage that cost plus versus fixed price. As Jeff said in his comments, I think it helps us manage the downside and that along with project selection, I think really helps to manage our margins incrementally up as we go forward. So I don't think, you know, our goal isn't to really change that mix. Our goal is to grow with our customers and continue to balance that mix.

yeah i'd like to add that if you think about the medium and small size projects which have generally speaking a higher margin those are incredibly important to us and sequentially our service group which is a smaller part of our business yet a very important part of our business that backlog has increased from this past quarter to the previous quarter right definitely that makes sense

Just one more question. I know you're not giving explicit guidance in regards to SENM, but the business generated $109 million of revenue in 25 at a high team EBITDA margin. Should investors now assume a similar annualized revenue base post-close? And sort of wanted to ask you about the integration cost and sort of seasonality that we should consider for 2026 contribution.

Yes, so the SC&M is forecasted to contribute between mid-teens and high-teens of EBITDA for 2026, and that covers most of our guidance lift, our stronger core performance, and confidence in our ability to build upon our operation excellence, complete the balance of our updated guide.

All right. Thank you. Thank you so much. Sorry, Max.

No, I was just going to say, yeah, so the other part you asked about was seasonality, right? I don't think there's no seasonality factors that we're thinking of there. So, you know, we kind of gave you 2025 revenue when we did the deal. And, you know, you could assume, you know, probably some, you know, mid to high percentage growth rate on their revenue. And then, as Jeff said, maintaining those margins that we disclosed earlier.

Right. Right. Thank you. I'll get back into the queue. Thanks.

As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. Our next question comes from Chris Senyak with Wolf Research. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Yeah. Hi, guys. Greg Corder again. A couple questions. Given the very strong E&M backlog and strong data center and market, I was surprised you didn't raise your lead. EBITDA guidance beyond the actuals and the acquisition. Is that just a matter of we're early in the year, conservativeness, or is there anything else we should be thinking about as we model it for the remainder of the year?

Yeah, it's early in the year. And when you look at our line of sight of some of these projects and our record backlog and the timing of that, we're going to take another close look throughout the And so for us to be able to make sure we've got the right profile, the right model is very, very important. And we'll get more information as the quarter proceeds.

Yeah, and just yeah, just as a reminder to Chris, right? So you know, as we said in the last quarter's conference call and prepared remarks, right? We had some good visibility to some execution early on in the year. I think you can see, especially with our cash flow and the timing of that, some projects coming to a close since we had that some of that good execution did come forward. So that's why when you look at the remainder of the year and our guidance for margins kind of reverting back towards kind of more our core margins for the remainder of the year. More timing, I think, than anything, not a step change in profitability.

Gotcha. Okay. And then another question. Are you seeing incremental transmission and utility investment tied specifically to powering large data centers? In other words, is there a meaningful pull-through demand benefit in the T&D segment from the same AI infrastructure trends that are driving EMN growth?

We are seeing increased opportunities in those areas. And in fact, our, our transmission backlog has increased sequentially for the quarter. Um, we're really confident in our ability to be able to pursue medium and large size transmission projects. We're going to be very selective. It has to be in our core geographies. And also we have to have the available resources. We also don't want to abandon our customers on the MSA work, which between 55 and 60 important part of our business so we do see increased opportunities we're going to be selective so we can execute and continue with the success on our our really strong margins in our t d segment okay great uh and then if i'll sneak one more in in terms of labor availability your your revenue growth rates are exceptional there's strong end demand in em how are you seeing

Are you coming across labor availability issues as you sort of keep scaling that business, or how are you managing that specifically, given the significant growth rates you've had here over the last, since you came out of the spin?

Qualified, available labor has always been a challenge for us. We put more and more emphasis on outreach. And once we are able to bring people into our record employment levels, we focus on uh, thorough orientation training and development, uh, so we can continue to attract retain and, and build upon our record employment. And, uh, we put more emphasis on it. We are really good at it and we don't take this lightly. We want to make sure that we have a high performers being able to build upon and support our growth projections.

I guess, is there a point at which that just becomes a constraint in terms of how fast you can grow or are you confident you can continue to kind of leverage that and scale that given what you said earlier?

I'm confident that we can scale it because of our team of people that focus on our operations and our people business.

Okay, great. Thanks so much for taking my questions.

Thank you.

Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 to raise your hand. There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back to Jeff Theed for closing remarks.

Thank you, Operator, and thank you all again for joining us today. We will be attending several upcoming investor events, including the Oppenheimer Industrial Growth Conference, as well as the Stiefel and KeyBank conferences in Boston. If we are not able to connect during the next few months, we look forward to speaking with you on our next quarterly earnings call. Thank you for your time and interest in Everest. This concludes today's call.

Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.