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spk04: and welcome everyone to the Q1 2021 Comfort Systems USA Earnings Conference Call. My name is Matt, and I will be your operator today. During the presentation, your lines will remain on listen only. If you require assistance at any time, please press star zero on your telephone, and the coordinator will be happy to assist you. I'd like to advise all parties, this conference is being recorded. And with that, I'd like to hand over to Julie Shafe, Chief Accounting Officer. Julie, please go ahead.
spk00: Thanks, Matt. Good morning. Welcome to Comfort Systems USA's first quarter earnings call. Our comments this morning as well as our press releases contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Act of 1995. What we will say today is based on the current plans and expectations of Comfort Systems USA. Those plans and expectations include risks and uncertainties that might cause actual future activities and results of our operations to be materially different from those set forth in our comments. You can read a detailed listing and commentary concerning our specific risk factors in our most recent Form 10-K and Form 10-Q, as well as in our press release covering these earnings. A slide presentation has been provided as a companion to our remarks. The presentation is posted on the investor relations section of the company's website found at ComfortSystemsUSA.com. Joining me on the call today are Brian Lane, President and Chief Executive Officer, Trent McKenna, Chief Operating Officer, and Bill George, Chief Financial Officer. Brian will open our remarks.
spk03: Okay, thanks, Julie. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on the call today. We are pleased to report a strong start to 2021. Earnings improved substantially with earnings per share of 73 cents compared to 48 cents in the pandemic-impacted first quarter of last year. This quarter, we achieved unprecedented first quarter cash generation thanks to strong execution, as well as the receipt of large advance payments for certain orders in projects. Our backlog has also strengthened sequentially, and we see good trends in underlying activity levels, especially in our industrial, technology, and modular markets. Overall, we are optimistic about our prospects for the next several quarters. I will discuss our business and outlook in more detail in a few minutes, but first, let me turn this call over to Bill to review our financial performance.
spk02: Bill? Thanks, Brian. Good morning, everyone. As Brian said, our results were, again, very strong. First quarter revenue was $670 million, a decrease of $30 million compared to the same quarter last year. Our same store revenue declined by $83 million. However, our recent acquisitions added approximately $53 million in revenue this quarter. You may recall that last year we had large data center work ongoing in Texas, and that created high revenue in the comparable period. We will continue to face a tough revenue comparison in the second quarter of 2021, but to a lesser extent than this quarter. Gross profit was $123 million for the first quarter of 2021, an increase of $6 million, and gross profit as a percentage of revenue rose to 18.4% in the first quarter of 2021, compared to 16.7% for the first quarter of 2020. The improvement in gross margin results from stronger margins in electrical. SG&A expense was $88 million, or 13.2% of revenue for the first quarter of 2021, compared to $93 million, or 13.3% of revenue for the first quarter of 2020. On a same store basis, SG&A declined by $11 million. That decrease included a $6 million reduction in bad debt expense, as last year's collectability concerns for retail and other customers are trending better than we predicted. The remainder of the decline in SG&A was the result of cost discipline. Our 2021 tax rate was 24.8% compared to 27.6% in 2020. Our current year tax rate benefited from permanent differences related to stock-based compensation, and we expected to trend upwards into our normal range for the full year. Overall net income for the first quarter of 2021 was $26 million, or 73 cents per share, as compared to 18 million, or 48 cents per share in 2020. For our first quarter, EBITDA was 51 million, a 39% improvement over last year, and our trailing 12-month EBITDA is a record 264 million. Free cash flow in the first quarter was 80 million, as compared to 15 million in Q1 2020. This quarter's free cash flow is far higher than we've ever achieved in the first quarter, as we received advance payments on large projects that are commencing, and our lower same-store revenue led to some temporary harvesting of working capital. As we execute these projects over the next few quarters, and if organic revenue improves in the second half as expected, we will see some absorption of working capital. Our free cash flow over the trailing 12-month period is $330 million. And that strong performance has returned our leverage to well under what times even despite our many ongoing and recent acquisitions. That's all I have, Brian, for financials.
spk03: Okay, thanks, Bill. I'm going to spend a few minutes discussing our backlog and markets. I will also comment on our outlook for the remainder of 2021. Backlog at the end of the first quarter of 2021 was $1.66 billion. We believe that the effects of the pandemic are beginning to subside as same-store backlog increased sequentially by nearly 150 million by 10%. Although we expect some delays in bookings will continue through the second quarter, we remain optimistic about trends for the second half of the year. Overall, we are very comfortable with the backlog we have across our operating locations. We are seeing good trends in the underlying activity level, especially in our industrial technology and modular markets. Our industrial revenue was 40% of total revenue in the first quarter. We expect this sector to continue to grow as the majority of the revenues at our newer companies of TAS and TEC are industrial, and industrial is heavily represented in new backlogs. Institutional markets, which include education, healthcare, and government, were 35% of our revenue, and that is roughly consistent with what we saw in 2020. The commercial sector is now about 25% of our revenue. For the first quarter of 2021, construction was 77% of our revenue, with 45% from construction projects for new buildings and 32% on construction projects in existing buildings. Service was 23% of our first quarter 2021 revenue, with service projects providing 9% of revenue and pure service, including hourly work, providing 14% of revenue. Year-over-year service revenue is up approximately 4% with improved profitability. We are seeing good opportunities in indoor air quality, which has helped many of our service departments return to pre-pandemic volumes. The heightened interest in IHU plays to our strength of solving problems for our customers, and air quality considerations help us differentiate ourselves in both service and construction. Our mechanical segment continues to perform extremely well. Our electrical gross margins improved from 5.5% in the first quarter of 2020 to 14.7% this year. Finally, our outlook. Our backlog strengthened this quarter and the effects of the pandemic are fading. We expect some continued organic revenue declines in the second quarter of 2021, but less than we experienced in the current quarter. We continue to see strong project development and planning activities among our customers, especially in technology and other industrial verticals. Our large operations are in places where companies continue to invest, such as Texas, North Carolina, Florida, and Virginia. It was one year ago that we reported our first quarter at a time when everyone was adjusting to the risk and uncertainty of the pandemic. Looking back at our success over the last year, I am more grateful than ever for how our people overcame unprecedented challenges and for their undaunted courage and perseverance on customer sites across our nation. I really thank them. We will continue to work hard to keep our workforce and our community healthy and safe. We look forward to continued strong profitability and good cash flow in 2021. And our strong pipeline makes us optimistic about activity levels in the second half of this year and into 2022. We will continue to invest in our workforce and to improve our formidable mechanical and electrical businesses in existing and new geographies. Thank you once again to all our employees for their hard work and dedication. I will now turn it back over to Matt for questions. Thank you.
spk04: Thank you very much. So, everyone, if you wish to ask a question, please press star, then one on your telephone. If you don't decide to withdraw the question, simply press star, too. Thank you. And the first question is coming from Adam Thalheimer. Adam, please go ahead.
spk06: Hey, good morning, guys. Great quarter.
spk03: Hey, good morning, Adam. Thanks a lot.
spk06: Bill, how do you see SG&A trending this year?
spk02: So I think that if there's a slight upward pressure, it will be because travel starts to resume and we begin to do more We continued our training, but it was online. We'll get back to some more in-person training. But in general, I'm really, really happy with our SG&A. If you had told me we'd have this kind of thing, store revenue decline, and still get SG&A leverage, I would have been, you know, I am thrilled. And I actually think we've got good control on our SG&A. Now, it will stay in that 13%, a little above that level most likely. until revenue starts to, you know, pick up later in the year. But, yeah, no, we feel great about it.
spk03: Just to add on to that, Adam, it just goes to show you the great job that, you know, that the operating companies do do in monitoring the overhead and not bringing it back until we really need it. So they've done a terrific job. Okay.
spk06: And then I kind of hate when people ask companies this question because what are you going to say? But on acquisitions, you guys have done such a great, job. And you usually don't do big acquisitions during the construction season, so is the best chance for something kind of next winter? What are you seeing out there, I guess, is the question.
spk02: So here's what we're seeing. We're seeing really good activity, people who really value what it would mean to be a part of comfort systems, the fact that their company is not put up for sale the day after they sell it, and that we are going to bring their balance sheet into our balance sheet and make them a part of us and that we're a forever buyer. So that's very attractive to people. At the same time, there are some corners of the market where if you're willing to let your company be levered up and endangered, you can get really, really good sort of sticker pricing. The structure might have some drawbacks, but the sticker, the pricing that they'll give you is pretty high. So to boil that down, I really like our chance of buying some of the kind of companies that really fit with us, that value the same things that we value. And as far as the timing for that, we do tend to do our standalones in the winter, but sometimes they happen in the summer. You have to take them when they're ready to sell. And the biggest variable right now is what people think is happening with tax rates, right? A lot of that may be dependent on whether they backdate the capital gains tax. Because when we buy companies, they're usually people we've been talking to for a long time. We don't try to work somebody into a frenzy. We buy them when it makes sense for them and for us because it's a long game.
spk06: Okay, and then just a quick one on... kind of how you guys see EPS shaken out this year? Because there was some language last quarter about not matching a very strong 2020, and that was removed.
spk02: Yeah, so this is a hard year to comment on because there were a lot of moving pieces last year, right? So we had the first quarter where really we were very conservative when we closed our books because we thought, oh, productivity is about to be destroyed by COVID considerations. So we had a very easy comparable in the first quarter. By the end of the second quarter, it was clear that the productivity loss was less than we had feared, and we had room in a lot of our guaranteed maximum jobs. So we had a really strong, we earned $1.08 last year in the second quarter. That's a tough comparable, if you're being honest. And then in the second half, how you would view that would depend on we had two discrete items, one in each of the last two quarters. Everybody knows this. They're in last year's press releases. You can dig them up all over the place. But we got 17 cents in the third quarter of last year when we settled an R&D tax audit from the 2014 and 2015 calendar years. So that was 17 cents. That's just really, really discrete. And in the fourth quarter, in part because COVID had affected the results of some of our bigger recent acquisitions. We had pickups from our earnouts where when it became clear we might not be paying out quite as much as we had expected, and that was 18 cents. So I know the analysts took those off. We think we have a good chance of being in the range of sort of the numbers we earned last year not counting those extraordinary, in some cases, in one case, non-cash items. but obviously really tough comparables if you add in those extraordinary pickups. Is that clear? I know there's a lot.
spk06: Well, it sounds like a tweak better than before. You're not telling us to go nuts, but it's not firmly down the way you might have thought a couple months ago.
spk03: It turns out we still have to go put in some pipe. No, but in general, we are optimistic about the year, Pat. Got it. Okay. Thanks, guys. All right. Take care.
spk04: The next question is coming from Brent Thielman. Brent, please go ahead.
spk05: Hey, thanks. Good morning. Good morning, Brent. Brent, the industrial bucket is a percentage of the revenue pie as large as I can remember. I'd love to just get some flavor what the bigger drivers of that are. in terms of the markets and sort of make up that bucket.
spk03: Yeah, I'll go first and then I'll see if Bill wants to follow on. But yeah, it's the biggest we've ever had it. You know, we've talked a lot about the recent acquisitions, heavy industrial focus. Obviously data centers right now and technology is a big component of that today. But also including that, we're seeing a lot of good farmer and food processing opportunities as well. Brent, so I think those would be the three, you know, the three largest areas that we're looking at at the moment. Bill, anything else to add on that?
spk02: Our strength in the Mid-Atlantic and in the Southeast is very geographically tied with where people are, companies are investing that money. And they also, there's another little just structural issue, which is we bought this great company, TEC, in Tennessee on December 31st of last year. That company is 100% industrial. It's a company in the roughly $100 million revenue range. So the full year of those guys we'll bring in, that's going to add industrial just as they age in, as they same store their way into those numbers.
spk03: And, Brent, in terms of that sector going forward, we're still seeing plenty of opportunities. And as I mentioned in the script, I think it's got a lot of legs to it in the industrial sector going forward.
spk02: You know commercial is the section that's been shrinking for us right but I just want to mention on an absolute basis it stayed pretty constant for us it's just that the other sectors have gotten bigger. I will also say a lot of commercial especially office building is built by developers and they are very sensitive to first cost right like we'll build a office space for pharma companies, but it's incorporated into something that has mixed use. But true office building is often built by developers and they will frequently, they may not plan to own the asset after they build it, after they develop it, they will frequently really be bid oriented and a lot of our guys would much rather negotiate work right now. So there's some natural structural things that are making commercial be a little bit better fit for our competitors maybe than for us.
spk03: But on that front, we're still seeing a lot of good service opportunities, and we'll have some IAQ opportunities. All right. And we're on the commercial office building.
spk02: Commercial service is great. I think that's the majority of our service business. That's a good point, Brent.
spk05: Okay. That's helpful. Yeah, I guess just thinking about some of the hesitation in the market among your customers seems to be abating. from what I take from your comments here. Maybe you could just talk a little bit about where are you seeing continued delays and what are the reasons behind that? Is it access to contractors like yourselves? Is it just the economy? What are you hearing from customers there?
spk02: I wouldn't really call it hesitation. When I talked to our guys, it was more the case that it just wasn't a good time to start stuff. In the middle of COVID, you had to go get Soil plans and county approvals and lots of offices were closed. So I would not say it was hesitation in the sense that, in general, our customers, the kind of customers we're talking about, we wanted to build stuff. And I think it was just more functionally – some air pockets were created by that. And I would say it's just a matter of this work getting started, you know, sort of in an orderly manner. It's not –
spk03: Yeah, you know, Brent, the pace has picked up in terms of what we're looking at, in terms of stuff we're reviewing here, decisions being made quicker. So you can see, at least I can feel a significant change in pace.
spk05: Okay. And then I guess the question on the electrical segment, I mean, margins is important. snapped back to the levels that you guys have talked about before a lot faster than I thought. And, you know, I'm curious what portion of that comes from the kind of refocus initiatives you've done internally for some of the acquisitions you've done and then, you know, how we ought to think about the margins going forward for that segment because it's a big change from last year.
spk03: Yeah, yeah. So I'll go first and then Bill can comment. But thanks for the question. First of all, the walkout, which we've talked about, Over a year now, WACC has always been a really elite electrical contractor in the state of Texas. That has not changed. Their work is tremendous. I just think over time, they probably refocused themselves on the customer base that they were pursuing and stopped certain sectors. Add on that, hopefully we've been able to help them with a little bit of training, some technology, etc., But at the end of the day, it comes down to the folks in the field doing the work. They've always done really good work. Probably just a touch of refocusing. They've always been a great company. So I'm really happy for them that all the work they put in over the last year really did start to come to fruition for them in the first quarter.
spk02: And Bill, you want to talk about DEC? Just that one specific question you said about how much of the improvement came from. So DEC is 100% in our electrical segment. Actually, TEC stands for Tennessee Electrical Contractors, and they have the oldest license to do electrical work in the state of Tennessee. But they do a mix of really, really complex industrial service and projects nowadays. Believe it or not, their margins were within 100 basis points of Walker's margins. So they're the two main... Parts of our electrical and walkers margins were fully back into the same range as TEC reported this quarter. So it wasn't a mixed issue. We are glad to see you.
spk05: Sure. Well, congrats on a great quarter. Best of luck here going forward.
spk03: All right. Thank you.
spk04: And the next one is coming from Julia Romero. Please go ahead. Hey, good morning, Bill. Good morning, Brian.
spk03: Hey, guys. Hey, good morning. Morning.
spk07: How do you think your service business progresses throughout the year? Should the growth rate, you know, outpace new construction or maybe, you know, how much of the overall revenue makes the service make up in 21?
spk03: You know, you know, service has been hovering around 20 to 25%. I think you'll see it outpace, you know, construction. We continue to grow it. It's very methodical. We will continue to invest in it, both hiring people and training. We're seeing some good opportunities come out of the indoor air quality front in terms of volume. And I think that will continue to be a great, steady growth and cash flow opportunity for us over a long period of time.
spk02: Yeah, you know what's interesting about service is that they – Service has, even though service has been shrinking as a percentage of revenue, it's never gone down. It's done nothing but grow for us. And, you know, it's twice as big as it was just a few years ago, but it's three or four times as profitable, which is what we really care about. And at the end of the day, it's got, you know, it's got really good prospects. If you think about it, if you think about it, it's had more organic growth than construction, right? Construction, a lot of that growth has come from acquisitions, although we've grown in construction, especially in industrial. We've really developed a new sort of level of capability. But service has done great overall. It's just that our acquisitions have been a lot of industrial project companies and things like that.
spk03: But we have a big focus on it, continue to grow it, and we will keep the pedal to the metal on service.
spk07: Got it. And on the IAQ opportunity, I think, I'm not sure if someone asked about education earlier, but I understand that IAQ is driving more schoolwork activity, but I did see the revenue in education declined in the quarter, so I don't know if you can help us kind of square those two things.
spk03: Yeah, I think we're in the early days of the allocation of the funds to school. We've done a lot of work researching very specifically where the money's going. We have a lot of very good relationships with school systems. So I think you'll see that continue to grow here as people get a better understanding and schools have a better understanding of what they actually want to do. But we can do anything they need us to do, and I anticipate that'll be picking up, I think, pretty soon now that they've allocated the money to it.
spk02: By the way, a little structural factor. If you're comparing the first quarter to the full year, a ton of schoolwork happens in the summer. Yeah. So that wouldn't be surprising.
spk07: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So, I mean, I guess, you know, quotation is going up in education and kind of overall activity levels as you see it and just a matter of those funds being allocated and just kind of translating the revenue over time.
spk03: Yeah, determining what they want to do.
spk07: Right. Okay, and I guess just the last question for me is a minor one, but there was a mention of a Utah acquisition within the quarter in the queue, so I don't know if you could talk about that acquisition and how it fits within the broader mechanical segment.
spk02: Yeah, so that was a plumbing company, fantastic little company with unbelievable relationships, and it was just an addition to our already very attractive business in Utah. We just wanted to get stronger in Utah And we have never regretted buying a truly good plumbing company. That's for sure. And so it's really along the lines of we love fantastic people and workforces. But I think the size of that was $20 or $30 million of revenue. So just not something we'd break out. Happy to have them, though.
spk04: Great.
spk03: Thanks for taking the questions. All right. Thank you.
spk04: And the next one is coming from Sean Eastman. Sean, please go ahead.
spk01: Hi, fellas. Thanks for taking my questions. I guess just continuing on the discussion around the funky comparables on earnings, maybe we could have the same discussion just on same-store growth. You know, anything you can point out on the cadence of...
spk02: same store growth trends as we move through the balance of the year yeah so i'm glad you asked actually so same store we were down 11.8 percent first quarter 2021 over first quarter 2020. a big part of that was very very heavy data center you know like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people on some data center jobs in the fourth and first quarter of last year so although we will face same store revenue headwind in the second quarter will not be at near the left. If it was, let's say it was 12% in the first quarter, it would be low to mid single digits, most likely best guess in the second quarter. And then for the rest of the year, we think we have manageable revenue comparables. Having said that, I would say you know, work is starting. And that can, you know, a month's delay, you know, it is a, one of the reasons we are positive about 2022, which is not like us this early in the year, is we have so much work starting in the second half of this year, that of course it has to go into 2022. But there is, like, some of that timing could matter a little bit, right? So, having said that, there are fair comparables in the second half of the year. I have a hard time telling you we'd be up much, but we shouldn't be down. Yeah, I agree.
spk01: Okay. That's helpful. And there's just a lot of discussion across the kind of industrial world these days about supply chain disruption, cost inflation. I mean, are those elements you guys are monitoring anything to point out in terms of what we should kind of track as it relates to flow through to fix?
spk03: Yep. It's a good question. Obviously, you know, we're monitoring. We have long-term great relationships with all our vendors. We work closely with them. We'll continue to do so. It's really, you know, up and down depending on where it is. So far, equipment's all been good, no problems. You know, steel and copper, you've probably heard it, I'm sure, 20 times now. Pricing up, but there is availability. but nothing that's really impacting us at the moment. We're functioning, our job sites are going, and nothing's been delayed so far. So we'll continue to monitor it, but it's healthier, but thank God we have the relationships that we do have.
spk01: Okay, terrific. Well, I'll leave it there. Thanks so much for the help.
spk03: All right, Sean, take care.
spk04: Thank you, everyone. There are no further questions, so I'd like to turn it back to Brian for closing remarks.
spk03: Okay, Matt. In closing, I want to once again thank all our wonderful employees and for everyone for joining us on the call this morning. We're looking forward to seeing you again in person soon, hopefully. But in the meanwhile, please stay safe and healthy. Thank you very much. Have a good rest of your day.
spk04: Thank you very much, Brian. Thank you, everyone. Ladies and gentlemen that concludes the call for today. You may now disconnect. Thank you for joining and enjoy the rest.
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