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spk01: Greetings. Welcome to the Hill International fourth quarter 2021 financial results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Devin Sullivan of the Equity Group. Thank you. You may begin.
spk07: Thank you, Alex. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for Hill International's fourth quarter and full year 2021 financial results conference call. Our speakers for today's call are Raul Fugali, Chief Executive Officer, and Todd Weintraub, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that certain statements made during this call may be considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and and it is our intent that any such statements be protected by the safe harbor created thereby. Except for historical information, the matters set forth herein, including but not limited to any statements of belief or intent, any statements concerning financial projections, our plans, strategies, and objectives for future operations are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on our current expectations, estimates, and assumptions, and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, including the but not limited to, risks and uncertainties related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the willingness and ability of governments and other clients to undertake and complete infrastructure projects, and our ability to maintain and support business development activities. Although we believe that the expectations, estimates, and assumptions reflected in our forward-looking statements are reasonable, actual results could differ materially from those projected or assumed in any of our forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause Our actual results do differ materially from estimates or projections contained in our forward-looking statements are set forth in the risk factor section and elsewhere in the reports we have filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including that unfavorable global economic conditions may adversely impact our business, our backlog may not be fully realized as revenue, and our expenses may be higher than anticipated. We do not intend and undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statement. We have prepared a slide presentation for today's call, which is available for your reference at our website, www.hillintl.com, in the events and presentation section. The safe harbor applies to the information contained in those slides. Those slides also include definitions of the non-GAAP measures that we will be discussing today. And now I'd like to turn the call over to Rauf Ghali, Hill's Chief Executive Officer. Rauf, please go ahead.
spk03: Thank you, Devin. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today to discuss our 2021 financial results. We ended the year in very strong fashion across several metrics. Consultant fee revenue rose to $305 million from $297 million in 2020, achieving our previous guidance. CFR for 2021 was driven in large by infrastructure projects in the U.S., especially in roads and highways and transit program and projects. We believe that the COVID-related headwinds we experienced those past two years are beginning to subside, and that belief is validated by our success in business development during the year. Although we are still in early recovery, we do believe that Hill is well-positioned to capture significant growth opportunities in 2022 and beyond, driven by U.S. infrastructure investments and the commencement of new and delayed projects internationally. New contracts award for 2021 rose by 21% to $437 million from $335 million $61 million last year, producing a book-to-burn of 143 percent compared to 122 percent last year. These new awards covered multiple geographies and end markets, particularly in the U.S. and Europe. Backlog at December 31, 2021, rose 9 percent to $730 million from year-end 2020 and represented the highest backlog since 2019. We narrowed our net loss, improved EBITDA by more than 37%, and ended the year with an adjusted EBITDA of $16.3 million. Our adjusted EBITDA for the year was below our previous guidance due to a one-time unusual expenses related to our response to COVID-19 pandemic. Todd will provide additional details. However, I want to stress that these one-time costs were confined to 2021 and are not expected to repeat in 2022 or any future periods. Our 2021 fourth quarter results were also largely encouraging, with CFR rising 8% to $78 million from last year's fourth quarter, and new contracts increasing 95% to $162 million from $83 million. With respect to new awards in Q4 2021, our project wins encompassed each of our global regions and focused primarily on infrastructure projects and programs. They included serving as lead technical consultant for current and future Athens Metro and tramway projects in the Attica region in Greece, managing the delivery of John Hopkins Medicine and Health Systems' new 126,000 square foot health and care and surgery center project on the 138-acre site in Maryland. Selected as program management consultant for a five-year contract for the Texas Department of Transportation's alternate delivery program. Serving as owner's engineers for the development of the new power plant in eastern Macedonia and Thraki, Greece. and providing PMCM services for two new task orders under the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority's ongoing $6.5 billion capital program in California. We continue to expect that Hill's project management services will be in high demand by agencies and owners who will be securing funds associated with the infrastructure bill. For all of 2021, 45% of our total new awards were infrastructure related. We believe this success makes Hill an ideal partner. As we sit here today, our expectation is that we will begin to realize these awards in late 2022. We're also pleased to have made further progress in collecting our outstanding receivables from our client, the Organization for the Development of Administrative administrative centers, or ODAC, an agency of the Libyan national government. Earlier this month, we received $500,000 cash payment against our outstanding balance and expect more to come. Before turning things over to Todd, I want to address a question that we have been hearing regarding the ongoing war in Ukraine. Hale has no exposure Two, and no operation in Ukraine or Russia. We do not plan on pursuing work in these regions. And of course, we are praying for a swift and peaceful resolution to this conflict. That said, thank you for your attention, and I will now turn things over to Todd Weintraub, Hill's Chief Financial Officer. Todd, please go ahead.
spk05: Thank you, Raoulf. CFR in the fourth quarter increased to approximately $78 million from approximately $72 million in last year's fourth quarter, primarily reflecting return to pre-COVID business activities. For the quarter, the majority of our revenue was generated in the Americas, followed by Middle East APAC, Europe, and then Africa. As Roof noted, despite generating higher CFR, our results for the fourth quarter and the full year periods of 2021 were negatively impacted by unapplied labor costs and higher than normal paid time off, resulting from a one-time allowance for our employees to carry over unused 2020 PTO into 2021 as an accommodation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite this negative impact, we felt strongly that it was important to support our employees during an unprecedented time. These costs were confined to 21 and are not expected to repeat in 22 or future periods. Gross profit was approximately $33 million or 42% of CFR compared to $33 million or 46% of CFR in last year's fourth quarter. The $6 million CFR improvement quarter over quarter was offset by a decrease in gross profit as a percentage of CFR due primarily to a credit from one of our partners in 2020 that did not reoccur in 2021. SG&A was approximately 31 million or 39% of CFR compared to approximately 29 million or 40% of CFR in last year's fourth quarter. The increase in SG&A for the quarter was related to the unapplied labor costs and one-time PTO allowance that I mentioned earlier. The effects of our lower gross profit as a percentage of CFR and the SG&A increases impacted our operating income of approximately $2 million as compared to operating profit of approximately $6 million last year's fourth quarter. Net loss for the quarter was $2.3 million or $0.04 per share compared to a net loss of $1.8 million or $0.03 per share last year. Adjusted net loss for the quarter was $257,000 compared to an adjusted net loss of $699,000 in last year's fourth quarter. The fourth quarter of 2020 included a $1.4 million expense related to the closing of the company's Brazil operations. Adjusted EBITDA for the 2021 fourth quarter was $5.2 million compared to $5.7 million in last year's fourth quarter. For the year, CFR improved to approximately $305 million from approximately $297 million the year before. Gross profit improved to approximately 124 million or 40.5% of CFR from approximately 119 million or 40.3% of CFR last year. SG&A was 114 million or 37% of CFR compared to approximately 109 million or 36.8% of CFR last year. Operating income was 9.3 million in 2021 compared to $10.5 million for the full year 2020. On an adjusted basis, operating income for 2021 was approximately $14 million compared to approximately $17 million last year. In 2020, adjusted operating income included a $2.6 million unrealized FX loss as compared to just under $700,000 in 2021, as well as a $1.6 million right off of the leasehold improvement as opposed to no such item in 2021. Adjusted income for 21 included $2 million of non-recurring activity, which includes the partial collection of the fully reserved Libyan receivable on a net basis. Net loss for the year narrowed to approximately $4 million or $0.07 per share from approximately $8 million or $0.14 per share last year. Adjusted net income for 2021 was $700,000 as compared to adjusted net income of approximately $4 million in 2020. Our unrestricted cash position at December 31, 2021, was approximately $22 million and total liquidity was $31 million. Cash flow for the year turned negative, reflecting payment during 2021 of certain items deferred from 2020, including employer taxes and rent, increased working capital due to CFR growth, as well as slower billing due to resource shortages and the timing of collections on certain clients. We are now current on the deferred items. Our billing function is fully staffed, and we expect to have positive cash flow for 2022. As Rauf noted, we received a payment of over $500,000 from ODAC, our client in Libya. The remaining balance owed to Hill is a little over $20 million against the original accounts receivable balance of approximately $60 million at the time when the Libyan civil unrest began in 2011. The company fully reserved the net accounts receivable from ODAC at the time and remains in discussions with the appropriate authorities in Libya regarding the receipt of additional payments. Our full year 21 EBITDA rose 38% to approximately $11 million from approximately $8 million last year. Adjusted EBITDA was $16.3 million as compared to $19 million in 2020 due primarily to the unapplied labor and paid time off items discussed above. We have amended our main revolving and term loan facilities to extend the maturity of the revolving facilities to May 2023 and the term loan to October 2023. We paid a 1% fee on the term loan portion and a half percent fee on the revolving portion, and we'll pay an additional half percent on the revolving portion only at the end of the second, third, and fourth quarters of 22. The interest spreads on both facilities will increase by 1%. As Rauf noted, our total backlog goes 9% to approximately $730 million from $667 million at December 31st, 2020. Backlog also increased 10.4% from backlog of $661 million at September 30th, 2021, reflecting our positive book to burn during the quarter. Our 12-month backlog at December 31st, 2021 was $260 million. From a geographic perspective, our backlog remained concentrated in the Americas with nearly 48%, followed by the Middle East, APAC, Africa, and Europe. Thanks very much for your time, and I'll now turn the conversation back to Rauf.
spk03: Thank you, Todd. To close, for 2022, we are forecasting CFRs of $340 to $350 million, an increase of 11% to 15% from 2021. 12-month backlog of $260 million represents 74 to 77% of our projected CFR for 2022. Our adjusted EBITDA guidance for 2022 is expected to range between $22 to $24 million, up from adjusted EBITDA of $16.3 million and representing a growth of 35 to 47%. Thank you for your time today. And I will now ask the operator to open the call to questions.
spk01: Thank you. At this time, we'll be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Our first question comes from the line of Peter Enderlin with MAZ Partners. Please proceed with your question.
spk00: Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one is you obviously had a very sharp pickup in contract awards in the fourth quarter. Can you give us a little more color on how that suddenly wrapped up when the overall economic environment didn't seem to improve very much, and was it mostly due to projects that had been deferred or The granting of awards had been delayed because of COVID, or were there some other things involved?
spk03: Sure. Thank you for the question. We had very strong contracts awards in several regions, but mainly the U.S. was very strong for us. We had a couple of major contracts. awards, one of them is in California on the infrastructure and utilities with Southern California Edison Company, which has been a client for us for 15 years. So we were extended with a major contract, and I believe that has been announced already. Other major assignments we had, again, in the infrastructure, in the U.S., as well as a couple of large awards in Europe on infrastructure programs in southern Europe, to be exact.
spk00: You mentioned, by the way, I think, Europe awards in your comments. And on the slides, I saw, you know, Greece and southern Europe. But do you have anything significant going on in, you know, mainstream or northern Europe?
spk03: We continue having a lot of business in Northern Europe, one of them in Switzerland, being with the United Nations, the revamping of the entire United Nations campus in Geneva, which is a 10-year contract that continues to be very strong for us. That's one of our major programs. We also have the headquarters of the IT, which is another UN-owned nonprofit organization. We're in Germany doing several major projects for commercial contracts such as Nike, and we are on several of the major programs with different projects for the data centers and other critical projects that were given to us by major corporations, such as Microsoft, Intel, and so forth.
spk00: Okay, thank you. And, Todd, can I try to pin you down a little bit on the one-time costs for deferred? time off. Was that about equal to the difference in SG&A for the year, or can you give us some better idea of how significant that was?
spk05: Yeah, it was significant. There's actually not an exact quantification. Some of it is an estimation on what we thought would happen versus what did happen with time off and the impact. But what I can say is that Absent that, we would have been fairly close to the lower end of our previous guidance. And our previous guidance, I think, for EBITDA was $20 million to $22 million, you know, toward the lower end of that. So, you know, I think absent that, without giving an exact quantification, it would have put us fairly close to that range.
spk00: Okay. Thank you. Fair enough. And, you know, the whole idea of the company, I think, really is to – leverage the growth in CFR, and the plan was to keep SG&A basically flat. If you go looking forward, are you going to get more leverage from continuing to hold that flat, or can you get some improvements in the direct labor impact on gross margin? In other words, is it more SG&A or more gross margin? to provide leverage going forward?
spk05: It's SG&A. I don't expect that the gross margin is going to vary much. That's been pretty consistent over the years. And the direct labor, you know, it is what it is. And that's, you know, for the most part passed through in terms of margin. So the leverage really comes from the SG&A. And, you know, holding that as flat as possible or, you know, I mean, I think it's safe to say that SG&A will increase a little bit, but it will increase at a much slower rate than the CFR will increase.
spk00: Okay. Well, thanks very much. Good work on the top line. We need to see more on the bottom line, obviously.
spk03: Thank you, Peter. We're working on it. I think you'll start seeing that starting from next year. Okay, great. Thanks. For this year. Thank you.
spk01: Our next question comes from the line of Matt Dane with Titan Capital Management. Please proceed with your question.
spk02: Thank you. I was curious, are you starting to see any of the benefits yet from the infrastructure bill both in the United States as well as I know Europe has in place some infrastructure related additional spending as well. Are you starting to see any of that flow into backlog yet or are you having discussions around that at this point in time? Just curious and update there.
spk03: Sure. We are starting to see signs that things are coming down. I think the impacts of the bill and the money flowing, we're expecting to see that towards the end of this year where really the procurement comes in. But what we're starting to see is in particular in New York and East Coast is the budgets and state budgets have been and there's a lot more funding for the infrastructure that was held up in the last 18 months to two years because of the political standstill that happened in those states. So it's not particularly related to the infrastructure bill, but because they're anticipating of that coming in, The budgets have been released, and there's a lot more money that we're seeing being awarded to us and flowing in the market.
spk02: Great. Thank you.
spk01: Thank you. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from the line of Zach Liggett with Desmond Liggett. Please proceed with your question.
spk06: Hi, thanks for taking the questions. My first question is on the internal controls, and I'm just hoping you can give us an update on when you expect that to be remediated.
spk05: Absolutely, it will be remediated over the next couple months. And, you know, we're disappointed that, you know, that we still have this, you know, that we have this material weakness, notwithstanding we were able to clear the existing ones. And, you know, we have put in, we're very confident that at this point, and after a lot of work over the last couple years, that the design control structure is in place and very effective. But, you know, You know, there was some change in personnel throughout the year that unfortunately contributed to some of those controls that we had put in place just not being performed on a consistent basis throughout the year, which is really the basis that you see for the material weakness. So, you know, we will be dealing with that in terms of and already have taken steps to in terms of retraining, strengthening the personnel, be bringing on some additional personnel to ensure that that gets executed on a consistent basis. So, you know, it's never good news, but I think to put everything in perspective, you know, the really heavy lifting is putting the control structure into place, which has been done, and along with that it has to be executed. The execution part is a little bit of the less heavy lifting, I would say. So we've already taken steps to address that. I will say that we saw a much better performance of the controls in the fourth quarter, and most of these issues that popped up were earlier in the year. And although we did have a strong performance in the fourth quarter over the controls, it just, you know, because of the inconsistent performance throughout the year, that's really the reason for material weaknesses. So we're on our way to remediating that.
spk06: All right. Fair enough. And then my second question is on the free cash flow expected in June. 22, you have a pretty big, um, improvement guided on adjusted EBITDA. I'm curious, um, how you guys see that flowing through to free cash and, and then what your priorities are with the cash. Um, you know, we're looking at a share price that's, that's back near all time lows. And, um, I'm just curious if you're I don't think I've seen you guys ever do a buyback. I'm curious if the board is discussing that with either the free cash you expect in 22 and or whatever comes from Libya. Just if you could give us. some thoughts on, I guess, capital allocation in general and your expectations for free cash flow in 22. Thank you.
spk05: In terms of expectations for free cash flow, what we've said is we expect it to be positive and with no further quantification of that other than I think that we're Probably, if you look at historically, our first quarter is a pretty down quarter generally for cash flow. I mean, we usually have negative cash flow in the first quarter. We're sitting here, and I don't have quarter numbers yet, but I think we'll see better performance during the first quarter than we have for the full year. All I would say is that we expect that we're going to be somewhat positive based on the view that we have right now. And I don't think that that's going to give rise to a big pool of capital to be allocated. If you look at our guidance for the year on the top line, which is 11% to 15% top line growth, there is a working capital component of that that's required in order to achieve that. And we have sort of a minimum level of unrestricted cash that we need just to operate the business day to day. So I'm not sure that on just a regular basis there's going to be this big pool of cash that we have to figure out what to do with. uh, in terms of your question about, um, about if we're to get a, you know, another chunk of money from, uh, from Libya and, and, you know, what to do with that. I think that's pretty speculative. Um, and, uh, I'll, I'll let Rauf address, um, you know, any, any questions about, um, about board activities. I think the answer is probably going to be, you know, I'm not really going to discuss that, but I'll leave that to Rauf to discuss.
spk03: Thank you, Todd. As far as that, I mean, we look at these. Let's first get the money out of Libya. Once we get the cash in, we're going to be looking from a board point of view what is the best use of the cash, whether it's a buyback or reinvest it in the business, or potentially pay dividends. I mean, this is a board decision that we need to discuss it, but let's first get the cash in, make sure that we have the working capital that we need to run the business, and then obviously we want to do what's best for shareholders and what's going to give the best value for shareholders going forward.
spk05: Okay, thank you. I will note, too, it is important to note that to the extent that we do get Libya cash in, and this will be in the agreements that were filed, so you can look at the details, but there is a requirement that will, in the first instance, we are going to use that to pay down debt. um you know some of the outstanding debt um so that'll be the first um the first use of the uh you know any any libyan money that we uh you know that we do get in uh you know to a certain extent before we you know before we will you know kind of be free to allocate that to other other uses okay i guess just one follow-up there then i mean do you have a targeted um
spk06: I guess, leverage ratio or other debt metrics you're looking at? I mean, it seems like you've got variable rate debt. You've got an increasing interest rate environment. I guess, what are you thinking in terms of appropriate leverage for the business?
spk05: We kind of have been running, I mean, for this year, Right now for this quarter, and again, it wasn't a strong cash quarter, so we're running at a 2.36 net debt to EBITDA leverage. That's a little bit higher than we've been on a run rate basis. We've been kind of sub 2. I'm fine with where we are right now. The covenant is actually for three times higher. I don't think we really want to operate at a three times absent a good reason to be doing that. So, you know, I think the target, there's not a specific target, but, you know, I think around that, you know, kind of one and a half to two range is a comfortable range generally to be in. All right, great.
spk06: Thanks, guys.
spk01: Our next question comes from the line of Eric Goldberg, a private investor. Please proceed with your question. Mr. Goldberg, please proceed with your question.
spk04: Thank you very much. Thank you for the question. My question is about your comment in one of your recent filings about getting back into the claims business. Apparently, your non-compete expires in May 22nd. Can you give us some thoughts into how you approach the claims business now? When you sold the business, you sold it for about $140 million on about $160 million. You can't use the retained knowledge pill, uh, claims business to that scale. And that's number one. And number two, could you give us a sense of what the margins could be in the claims business now that you got the India facility? And I guess number three is any update on the facilities management business. Thank you. Sure.
spk03: Um, we are very excited. I'm getting a neck or something. Um, we're very excited that we are, uh, free again to go into the claims business because it's a business where we do hold a very high reputation. We retain the expertise to be able to do that. Our current approach is we're going to have a center of excellence for the claims under the existing project management business that we have. We're not going to create another unit for it. We're going to be, till now, we have been responding to certain inquiries because of our non-compete that we cannot perform and we could not service our clients for that. We will now be taking on assignments from clients in order to get back into the claims business. And we're going to be servicing these clients, existing and new ones, organically. We still have a fairly large network of experts that is required for that business. So we will be tapping into that. And we will, again, we will service, grow the business, but based on really using current staff levels and current expertise that we have in-house. And do it organically. The margins are much higher or fairly high as far as the claims business is concerned, but also the claims business, their short-term assignments, and that's why they really require a higher margin for it. So we're setting it up a little bit different than what we used to. Again, we have created the largest claims consultancy practice in the world that we invested in because of conflicts that the company was seeing. So we want to recreate some parts of that, provide it to our clients because they've been asking for it. But we're going to set it up a little bit different and it's going to be a support function rather than a complete separate function for now. Again, We're going to look at it with the minimal investment and with the highest possible returns for it. Once we're in the business, we're going to reassess and relook at it, whether that's the long-term strategy or just for now, and change it if need be. Otherwise, we're going to continue as is. As far as I believe you asked, margin-wise, project management businesses in the low 40s as far as gross margin, we expect to be at least five to eight points higher on any of our claims assignments. As for facility management, we continue drawing that service overseas, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa. We are awaiting for several large awards. um, that is anticipated this year. And I hope to be able, hopefully by, uh, when we come back on, uh, talking about our first quarter, be able to announce some of these awards, um, as they come in. Okay. Thank you.
spk01: Our next question is a follow-up from Peter Enderlin with MAZ Partners. Please proceed with your question.
spk00: Yes, thank you. You know, you've stated that you have a strong position in transportation, infrastructure, all the different pieces of that, you know, like airports and rail and highway, et cetera, and also a strong position in energy. But are there other vertical segments that you can enter project management either organically or by niche acquisitions that could open up more opportunities for CFR growth? I'm thinking of things like, you know, you do celebrate in the resorts, construction area, maybe alternative energy remediation, other environmental aspects. So are there things like that that you're looking at, and would it be more likely to be internal or through niche acquisitions?
spk03: Peter, good question. I mean, there's a lot of niches that we can look at. One of them is, for example, high-speed telecommunication networks, which, you know, with the 5G coming up, there's going to be both infrastructure that's required for it as well as on the wireless as well, a lot of upgrades. And we're looking at that of how potentially to focus on it and go on it. As far as acquisition is concerned, once we have the liquidity for acquisitions, we intend to go back into acquisitions. but it's going to be towards the end markets that we've already invested in, and mainly in the U.S. I think I've said it before. We would be looking at acquisitions that really will help us grow in the federal market in the U.S., as well as potentially for the disaster recovery, which continues to be a very strong market for us with good growth potentials. These would be the main two end markets that we would be looking at.
spk00: Okay, thank you.
spk06: Thank you.
spk01: Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of the question and answer session. I will now turn the call over to management for closing remarks.
spk03: Okay, thank you everyone for joining us today. And I look forward to speaking to you in a few months, talking about our first quarter financial results. Thank you very much.
spk01: This concludes today's conference and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation and have a wonderful day.
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