MasTec, Inc.

Welcome to Mass Tech's first quarter 2024 earnings conference call, initially broadcast on Friday, May 3rd, 2024. Let me remind participants that today's call is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to our host, Mark Lewis, Mass Tech's Vice President of Investor Relations. Mark?

Thanks, Maddie, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Mass Tech's first quarter call. The following statement is made pursuant to the safe harbor for forward-looking statements described in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. In these communications, we may make certain statements that are forward-looking, such as statements regarding MOSDEC's future results, plans, and anticipated trends in the industries where we operate. These forward-looking statements are the company's expectations on the day of the initial broadcast of this conference call, and the company does not undertake to update these expectations based on subsequent events or knowledge. Various risks, uncertainties, and assumptions are detailed in our press releases and filings with the SEC. Should one or more of our risks or uncertainties materialize, or should any of our underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may differ significantly from results expressed or implied in this call. In today's remarks by management, we will be discussing adjusted financial metrics reconciled in yesterday's press releases and supporting schedules. In addition, we may use certain non-GAAP financial measures in this call. A reconciliation of any non-GAAP financial measures not reconciled in these comments to the most comparable GAAP measure can be found in our earnings press release. Please note that we have two additional documents associated with today's webcast, which along with our earnings press release can be found on the investors' events and presentations page of our website at mystack.com. There is a companion presentation with information and analytics on the quarter you're standing in and a guidance summary to assist in developing your financial models going forward. Both PDF files are available for download. With us today, we have Jose Mas, our CEO, and Paul DeMarco, our EVP and Chief Financial Officer. The format of the call will be opening remarks and analysis by Jose, followed by a detailed financial review from Paul. The discussion will be followed by a question and answer period, and we expect the call to last about 60 minutes. We have a lot of important things to talk about today, so I'll turn the call over to Jose so we can get going.

Jose? Thanks, Mark. Good morning and welcome to MOSTECH's 2024 first quarter call. Today I'll be reviewing our first quarter results as well as providing my outlook for the markets we serve. First, some first quarter highlights. Revenue for the quarter was $2,687,000,000, up 4% organically year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA was $157,000,000, a 54% year-over-year increase. Adjusted earnings per share was negative 13 cents, 35 cents better than consensus. And backlog of quarter end was 12.8 billion, a 430 million sequential increase. In summary, results were better than guidance across all segments. I'm proud to say this was a very clean quarter. Segments performed as expected or better, and cash flow as expected was strong. I think this is an excellent indication of what we expect for the balance of the year. I'd like to walk through a number of positive developments that I believe will have a significant impact on our ability to grow both revenue and earnings. As we announced on our last call, in our communications segment, we significantly expanded our relationship with our biggest customer, AT&T. AT&T expanded both our scope and geographic territory on our core wireless work. This expansion, coupled with their announcement of a complete swap out of Nokia equipment to Ericsson equipment over a five-year period, is expected to significantly increase our wireless business over the next few years. While we'll see some impact during the first half of this year, it will mostly be site acquisition and engineering work. The work we are doing now is what is creating workable backlog for the second half of the year, so our visibility is excellent. In addition, we continue to see very strong demand for our wireline services. We expanded our customer base during the first quarter and are very encouraged about the optimism of our customers related to BEADS funding. Demand for connectivity and information requires a significant investment in our nation's broadband infrastructure. The advancement of data collection requires networks with low latency and high speed. We're also encouraged about T-Mobile's recent announcement of its investment in fiber infrastructure. Through a joint venture, T-Mobile will be an anchor tenant and investor in a large nationwide fiber network. This transaction demonstrates the importance of carriers owning and controlling their infrastructure as demand for moving data significantly increases. Our communications backlog total reached a record level in the first quarter and we're off to a great start this year. Our oil and gas pipeline segment overperformed as revenues and EBITDA both came in higher than estimates. While Paul will cover later, we've increased our full year expectations for this segment for both revenue and EBITDA. While backlog is down, demand is actually very strong. We expect this segment to return to a more book and burn cadence as it relies less on larger projects. We are confident in the visibility we have in this segment for the next few years and we've been surprised with the potential that gas fire generation has relative to powering industrial and manufacturing facilities as well as data centers. Having good visibility over a multi-year time frame is very different than where we've been in the last few years and it gives us a lot of confidence in our business. In power delivery, Conversations throughout the quarter centered around the long-term expected load growth our customers are beginning to experience. With the level of activity being experienced by industrial and manufacturing growth coupled with the proliferation of data centers, the ability to power these facilities is becoming the most important issue. While we've talked about some short-term pressure as utility customers manage their distribution transmission budgets based on need and the regulatory environment, our expectation is there is a need for significant investment in our country's electrical grid to meet the growing demand. We have seen a significant uptick in transmission-related opportunities and expect that trend to continue. Backlog in this segment was up slightly sequentially, and we expect strong backlog growth for the balance of the year. Finally, in our clean energy and infrastructure segment, margins were in line with our expectations for the first quarter. Backlog was up about $400 million sequentially, and projects under limited notice to proceed exceeded $2 billion, much of which we expect to convert to backlog in the coming quarters. Renewable demand is very strong, and our visibility is greatly improved versus last year. Renewables will be a key driver of added generation to help meet the needs of our country's load growth, and we believe we are very well positioned to take advantage of this growth. I've talked about load growth a lot today, and obviously one of the drivers of that is the expected growth of the data center market. While data centers will create significant opportunities for us in both our clean energy and power delivery segments in the form of increased renewables, transmission, substation, and battery storage, data centers will also have a positive impact on our communications business as more data is transmitted. But what we didn't expect was the potential that data centers have on our infrastructure business. As a reminder, with the combination of IEA and MOSTEC's legacy infrastructure business, MOSTEC has significant geographic diversity in the civil space. We spent a lot of time understanding the needs of data center builders and the potential opportunity that exists for MOSTEC. To date, we've actually completed over $150 million in data center infrastructure work, and currently have approximately $200 million in backlog to complete. In addition, we have approximately $1 billion in identified RFPs we expect to bid this year. While we won't win it all, we believe we are uniquely positioned to provide data center builders with a package that includes assistance on connecting to the power grid, infrastructure required for communications, and site and civil work on the front end of their build-outs. While we're still early in understanding the full potential of this opportunity, we recognize the potential impact. In summary, I strongly believe that the investments we've made in the last few years to build scale along our vertical offerings will translate to not only strong levels of revenue growth, but the ability to meaningfully improve margins. I want to emphasize that thought. I believe the most successful companies in our space are those that have the scale to meet our customers' demands. Our customers' projects have significantly increased in size, scope, and complexity, and there is no question that our customers want to simplify and work with less partners. I believe that over the last few years, our biggest accomplishment has been to position ourselves as one of only a few partners that's viewed throughout our industry as a partner whose workforce, size, and scale affords it the capabilities to take on any project. While I'm proud of that accomplishment, I also understand the need for this advantageous positioning to be reflected in our financial results. While I'm optimistic that today's results begin to demonstrate this, I also recognize we have great potential to improve margins. I'm excited to see what the future holds for MOSTEC. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the men and women of MOSTEC. I'm honored and privileged to lead such a great group. The men and women of MOSTEC are committed to the values of safety, environmental stewardship, integrity, honesty, and in providing our customers a great quality project at the best value. These traits have been recognized by our customers, and it's because of our people's great work that we've been able to position ourselves for continued growth and success. I'll now turn the call over to Paul for our financial review. Paul? Thank you, Jose, and good morning, everyone.

To begin, a few first quarter highlights. Revenue of $2.7 billion was a record for Q1, exceeding guidance by approximately $60 million. Adjusted EBITDA of $157 million exceeded guidance by $27 million, with margins 90 basis points ahead of expectations. We outperformed our earnings guidance in every segment, which I will cover in more detail later. Adjusted loss per share was $0.13, exceeding guidance by $0.35, driven primarily by the adjusted EBITDA beat. We generated approximately $110 million of cash flow from operations in this quarter, starting the year off on a positive pace. This brings our trailing 12-month total cash flow from operations to almost $900 million, comparable to the adjusted EBITDA earned over the same period. We reduced net debt by $70 million in Q1, and net leverage also declined to 2.7 times. 18-month backlog at Q1 totaled $12.8 billion, an increase of $430 million from year-end. despite the significant revenue earned on MVP and Q1. We saw clean energy backlog grow by almost $400 million in the quarter, while communications backlog increased by $170 million to a new record level. While year-over-year backlog decreased, normalizing for the impact of current pipeline project mix and our reduced emphasis on industrial projects would result in approximately $200 million of growth versus last year's first quarter. Lastly, as we announced yesterday, we are raising our full year outlook, which I will cover in more detail shortly. Now, I'd like to cover our segment performance and expectations. First quarter pipeline segment revenue was $634 million, with adjusted EBITDA of $93 million, or 14.6%. We continue to have strong performance in this segment, with lower than anticipated contributions of cost plus work, dropping margins higher than our guidance. We now expect 2024 pipeline segment revenue to reach $2 billion, a $100 million increase from our prior guidance. Adjusted EBITDA margins are still expected to be in the mid-teens, improving 100 to 150 basis points versus 2023. Second quarter revenue should be approximately $600 million with adjusted EBITDA margin in the high teens and likely our highest margin quarter for the year. First quarter communications revenue was $733 million, with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 6.7%, both slightly ahead of our guidance. This year is shaping up consistently with our original forecast, as we capitalize on the strong demand for both wireline and wireless construction services. Full year segment guidance remains unchanged, with revenue of $3.5 billion and adjusted EBITDA margins in the highest single digits, improving versus 2023. For the second quarter, we anticipate revenue will be approximately $825 million, with adjusted EBITDA margins in line with the full-year estimate. As we mentioned previously, we expect to begin realizing the benefits of vendor consolidation in the wireless industry during the second half of 2024 and be fully ramped in 2025, as evidenced by the continued backlog growth in this segment, which now stands at $5.8 billion, a new record. First quarter power delivery segment revenue was $571 million and adjusted EBITDA margin was 4.8%. Revenue was slightly ahead of our expectations as mild winter weather allowed for some pull forward of Q2 work, particularly in the central region. For the full year, we now expect power delivery revenue and adjusted EBITDA margins to be roughly in line with the prior year, but slightly lower revenue than our prior forecast. Full-year revenue continues to be impacted by project deferrals from our utility customers in Illinois while they await a ruling on the revised rate case proposals, and we now expect a delayed start to certain transmission projects pushing revenue into 2025. Second quarter revenue is forecasted at $650 million, with adjusted EBITDA margins in the high single digits. First quarter clean energy and infrastructure segment revenue was $753 million, slightly below our guidance, with adjusted EBITDA margins of 2.7%. Revenue in the quarter was impacted by timing on certain infrastructure projects that we expect to make up in subsequent quarters. Backlog grew by almost $400 million in Q1, and we expect strong bookings in the second quarter to continue this trend. Our full-year clean energy segment guidance remains unchanged at $4.4 billion of revenue with mid-single-digit adjusted EBITDA margins. Second quarter segment revenue is forecasted to be $1,025,000,000 with adjusted EBITDA margins in line with 2023 second quarter. On a consolidated basis, full year revenue is now expected to be $12.55 billion with adjusted EBITDA of $975 million. This incorporates the Q1 outperformance and our consistent expectations for the balance of the year. We expect second quarter revenue to be $3.1 billion with adjusted EBITDA of $260 million or 8.4%. We now expect adjusted EPS to be $2.95 for the full year and $0.88 for the second quarter. Our full year adjusted EPS outlook represents a 50% improvement versus 2023. Our Q2 guidance represents 8% revenue growth year-over-year and 15% sequentially from Q1. This sequential growth will likely drive incremental working capital investment and put pressure on cash flow in the second quarter. However, our full year outlook for cash flow from operations remains unchanged at approximately $550 million. There is no change in our outlook for the cadence of the year, with expected year-over-year growth continuing in the third quarter and Q4 roughly flat to last year without any contribution from MVP. Our due leveraging efforts remain on track, with net leverage of 2.7 times for Q1, and our outlook for year-end reaching the low two times range. As a reminder, we posted a guidance summary to the investor relations section of our website that summarizes our outlook and provides additional data points for modeling purposes. I'll now turn the call over to the operator for Q&A.

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Please ask only one question and one related follow-up question before getting back in the queue. Again, press star 1 to ask a question. We'll pause for just a moment to allow everyone an opportunity to signal for questions. We will take our first question from Andy Kaplowitz with Citigroup.

Good morning, everyone. Good morning, Andy. Jose, just focusing on the billion dollars of infrastructure opportunities within data centers from $200 million you have in backlog, did you begin to see an acceleration of this work in Q1? Will that accelerate from here? And then maybe backing up, MOSTIC has had big cycles before. you know, move to 4G or 5G, big pipeline cycles, how would you characterize the data center opportunity for Moztech versus other cycles? And to your point on margin, I think data centers' customers could drive a hard bargain. So how do you protect Moztech and deliver a good margin on this work?

Yeah, Andy, so a couple things. I think, you know, probably... At some point last year, we had a lot of people within MOSIC beginning to talk about what they were seeing in data centers. I don't think as an organization we truly understood what was coming. I think it became a lot clearer earlier this year as we began to see and read about what all the hyperscalers were saying and a lot of the data center builders were saying. It's still an industry that's in flux, right? The way data centers are being built and the type of data centers that are being built are changing before our eyes, right, as they go from more cloud-based data centers to AI-based data centers. Tremendous opportunities for MOSTECH. I think we've definitely seen a massive acceleration in the opportunity pipeline. I think, you know, we're looking at a lot of different areas within the data center to work in where we think the margins are acceptable and within the kind of guidelines that we've put out across our different segments of what our expectations are, and we would expect to be able to hit those kind of margins in that world as well.

Guy, maybe just focusing on communications, I know you mentioned work for the new contracts starts in the first half and ramps up in the second half, but maybe talk about your visibility to the ramp in Q2 and into the second half. Do you need the markets themselves to continue to get better, or do you kind of have enough of sort of your own contracts to sort of get to the numbers that you're giving us.

And that's what we tried to really cover in the prepared remarks, right, is to say, you know, our customers, it's actually somewhat remarkable, right? Our customers actually want us to go faster. For us, our ability to hit our second target, Half numbers are all about what we're able to engineer in the first half, right? So it's on us, right, to the extent that we can get stuff done. The work's going to be there for us in Q2 because we're almost self-generating the work based on the initial work that we're doing. That's what gives us so much confidence this year going into the second half. Historically, we haven't been in that position where we kind of control our own destiny. We're tracking it closely. We feel really good about where we're at. We feel really good about what we're going to have available to us to do in the second half. And I can tell you we've got just really strong confidence around our second half numbers in communications.

Appreciate the call, Jose.

Thanks, Andy.

We will take our next question from Alex Regal with B. Riley.

Thank you. Good morning, gentlemen. Good morning, Alex.

Jose, as it relates to EBITDA margins, can you remind us sort of what your internal targets are over the next few years on an aggregate basis, and then maybe highlight by segment where you see the greatest opportunities to see notable margin expansion?

Yeah, so let's start, I mean, with what we've historically said, some of what we're experiencing, right? I think, you know, let's start with oil and gas because it obviously outperformed in the quarter. I think our visibility around the revenue in oil and gas is actually really solidified for us, not just for the balance of 2024, but actually as we look at 25 and 26. A lot of conversations with customers about their plans. We feel really good that we're going to be in that mid-double-digit area. We've consistently been at 15 or better for a long time, and I think that we're going to be able to maintain that for a longer period of time, and that's great visibility to have versus where we've been in the last couple years. When we talked about clean energy and infrastructure, it's getting into those high single digits. This year in 24, we've got to get into the mid-single digits. A lot of things are changing in that business. Our visibility is dramatically better than it was last year. As we grow the business, as we get rid of all of the challenge projects that we've had over the years, Over the course of the last year, I think we'll begin to demonstrate that in the second half. I think margins will be a lot better in the second half than they'll be in the first half, just based on the flow of work that we see, both from a volume perspective and the types of projects we're on. Power delivery, longer term, you know, we know it's a double-digit business. Our goal is to, you know... is to be in the high single digits this year. And in telecom, you know, historically we've been in that, you know, 12% margin or better over a period of time. We think during this cycle we get back there, we'll be just at about double digits for the year within our plans in 2024. So I think, you know, look, we came off a really tough year in 23. We knew that. We're confident about our ability to show a lot of improvement in 24. But we're not celebrating 2024 here, right? We know it's kind of a building year for us and one that we think towards the tail end of the year, as we're coming out of the year, we're going to demonstrate our ability to generate much higher margins, which should bode really well for 2025 and beyond.

And secondly, obviously, there's been a lot of excitement around AI and hyperscale data centers and onshoring of energy-intensive, high-tech manufacturing technologies. And it clearly sounds like you are on the cusp of sort of a convergence of many of your service offerings to these customer categories. Can you expand a little bit upon how you are going to market to sell all those various service offerings?

Alex, you make a great point, and it's one that we probably didn't expect, right, when you look at the differences in our business. The fact that our infrastructure and civil business could have so much overlap with what we're going to see in power delivery and even telecom, and how we bring that all together and how we sell that as a service to... You know, not just hyperscalers, but actually the builders of the data centers. There's a lot of co-locate data center builders out there as well. I think, you know, that's really what we've been working on in the first quarter is truly identifying the market, understand what the potential is for MOSTECH, where are areas in that that were currently not working that we could be working on, And I think you'll see us be a lot more deliberate about that. Today we've kind of got, you know, a lot of different people working on it, and I think you're going to see a consolidated effort on Moss Tech's part to attack the industry under one umbrella and one service offering.

Sounds great. Thank you. Thanks, Alex.

We will take our next question from Sangeeta Jain with KeyBank.

Yeah, thank you for taking my question. So I had one on communications. Jose, clearly you're seeing momentum in both the wireless and the wireline side. Does your breakdown stay 50-50 as both of these ramp up, or do you think that skews in either direction based on your conversations with your customers?

Yes, Sangeeta, good morning. I think... You know, what's changed in the last few years for Mostek is Wireline became a much bigger percentage of our total telecom business. And if you look at telecom today, Wireline is actually slightly bigger than our wireless business. I think Wireline is going to continue to grow for sure. It's where a lot of the opportunity has been for the last few years, and we see so much more going forward. But I think the acceleration of the wireless business with the specific awards that we've gotten, not necessarily because the market is getting a lot bigger, but because of our ability to win market share, I think it has the potential of getting close to a 50-50 share again.

Great. That's helpful. And if I can follow up with one on the transmission project that Paul mentioned, maybe moving to 2025, I just want to make sure I understand. Is that connected to the comet delay, or is that – different project?

No, separate projects from ComEd.

And can you elaborate on what is causing that delay? Is it just general permitting or something else?

Yeah, just the general cadence for our customer of getting that project to shovel ready.

I think you have a couple different things, right? We talked last quarter about the fact that the Illinois utilities that were impacted by the ruling were shifting dollars from distribution to transmission. We're still seeing that. As we look at our guidance for the year, we haven't made big assumptions around our ability to win on the back end of that because a lot of that hasn't come out yet or is in the process of coming out. We feel we're in a great position to win that, but we haven't included it in our in our guidance for the balance of the year. So I think Paul's referencing larger transmission projects. There's an enormous amount of smaller transmission work around the country that's becoming available, and I think we've been very conservative around our assumptions about what we're actually going to win and complete in 2024. That's so helpful.

Thank you so much. Thank you.

Thank you, Gina.

We will take our next question from Jamie Cook with Truist Securities.

Hey, good morning, guys. Nice quarter. Jose, I guess my first question, you know, you've always been good at sort of being opportunistic on M&A and, you know, identifying adjacent growth markets pretty early. And it's just interesting your comments sort of on data centers. So I'm wondering with your balance sheet, you know, by the end of the year, getting back to, you know, your leverage ratio at two times, and you look at the opportunity in data, are there ways that you could improve your competitive positioning through inorganic opportunities, or do you think, like, you can attack this market organically? And then just your, you know, your thoughts there. And then I guess just second question, just on large transmission projects, longer term in the competitive environment. Can you just talk to what you're seeing from a competitive landscape? There's not a lot of players out there that can do large transmission work. So I'm just trying to understand if you think your win rate should accelerate over time, the size of the projects that you're comfortable with, and how we should think about margins on these larger transmission projects over time. Not in 2024, Jose. I'm thinking longer term. Thank you.

Yeah, so a couple things. Let me kind of bifurcate the question. So I feel like the first part of your question was a little bit of a trap question, but I'll go ahead and answer it. I think we're really comfortable around where our leverage profile is. I think we've made drastic improvements. We feel great about our cash flow profile. We feel really good about where leverage ratios are going. So, I mean, our balance sheet, we think, is in great shape. So to the earlier question, we think we have – If we needed to or if we wanted to, we think we have the ability to do some things, although we're very committed to our capital structure and really keeping our investment-grade status and everything that we've been saying for quarters. I think that the short answer to the question is if the right opportunity came that we think positions us differently or better, within what we think is going to be just an unbelievable opportunity, then we would consider doing things. It's an active market. Part of our analysis as we've looked at what the market looks like and what the needs are, we have looked for – we have seen things that we're necessarily not fully engaged in or feel we have – all of the right resources to compete appropriately on some of those opportunities. So it's a big maybe, right? To your second question on transmission, I think the market is going to be unbelievable. I think there's going to be a ton of work. I think we will win our share, and I think the margin expectations around that work will be solidly in the double digits.

Thank you.

Thanks, Jamie.

we will take our next question from brian brophy with stifle yeah thanks good morning everybody uh just curious related thoughts on need funding um when when we when should we expect it to start impacting revenue are you still thinking thinking this is 2025 event or any concerns of delays there thanks

No, we expect it to definitely hit 25. We expect to see awards in 24 relative to it. We have customers that have tremendous confidence in their ability to get certain things funded, and many of those are already talking to us about specific projects that would kick off maybe as early as the latter, latter part of 24, but for sure in 25.

Got it. That's helpful. And then on the oil and gas guidance, You guys are now at the higher end of that $1.5 to $2 billion range that you've talked about. How sustainable do you think this level of revenue is? And when might we start seeing some benefits from things like carbon capture? Thanks.

We feel, again, I mean, as we look at 25 and 26, we think we can maintain current levels without much opportunity around CO2. You know, I think CO2 will play a part of it. to the extent that that grows, I think we'll have further opportunities to grow that business over time.

Great, thanks. I'll pass it on.

Thanks, Brian.

We will take our next question from Stephen Fisher with UBS.

Thanks. Good morning. Morning, Stephen.

Just curious, morning, how confident are you in the ramp-up to the $260 million of adjusted EBITDA in Q2, kind of how de-risked do you think that number is? And then thinking more broadly about the full year, you talked to Andy about communications in the second half. I'm just curious about more broadly for the whole company, what are the biggest things you need to have happen to hit the full year goals in the second half?

Sure, Steve. So I think, look, we had a solid beat in Q1. We left Q2 exactly like we had it originally. We feel very confident in our ability to hit it. I think we lived a really tough year in 2023, as everybody knows. We never want to be in that position again. And we talked extensively about being in a position to not only hit our numbers, but hopefully beat them consistently over time. And that's not just our view for what hopefully happens in Q2, but it's our view for what happens for the full year.

Okay. And then if I could just follow up on the solar side of clean energy, how smoothly would you say that piece of the business is running at this point? You know, is the work obviously had good bookings in the quarter? You know, is the whole regulatory process kind of in transitioning to execution running smoothly? And how far out are you booking work at this point?

So it's a good question, Steve. For us, I mean, it's like a different world. We feel so much better about our business. We feel so much better about what we understand, who our customers are, what our projects are, the risks. Again, 23 was a really tough year, particularly in that area. We learned a lot of lessons. I think we've applied them well in 24, so I think we have a high level of confidence there. There's no question that we're building significant backlog that not only impacts 24, but gives us tremendous opportunity for growth in 25. As we convert some of those projects we've been talking about into backlog, it's not even what it means for 24. The level of growth we're going to be able to show for 25 we think is substantial. We think we've really de-risked our customer portfolio. I know there's a lot of talk out there about, you know, potentially other investigations relative to solar and circumventions and things like that. And we think we've insulated ourselves as well as we could. So, you know, we're really confident about, again, not just what this year and the balance of this year means to our solar business, but what it means in the long term.

Terrific. Thank you. Thanks, Steve.

We will have our next question from Brent Thielman with DA Davidson.

Hey, thanks. Hey, Jose, just back on clean energy, would you ever look at the opportunity in industrial projects? Again, just considering all the low demand, seems like there should be more pull on gas facilities. Curious your thoughts there.

So, I mean, we're not out of the market. We've de-emphasized the market. So it's going to be a much smaller business for us today than it's been. I mean, if you, you know, in Paul's prepared remarks, he talked about year over year backlog in clean energy that, you know, obviously it looks down year over year. But when you normalize it for our decisions around industrial, it's actually up. The industrial work that we're doing today is predominantly it's all cost plus, so we think that, you know, we're comfortable around that contract structure because we don't have a ton of risk with the complexity of some of these projects. So to the extent that we can continue to deliver and our customers feel we can give them value doing that, we'll continue to do it. As you said, you know, we're in a – it's an incredible market today. There's a ton of activity out there, and there's, you know, the – The supply of labor is short, so to the extent that we can help our customers meet their needs, we're going to do it.

Okay. And then just on the updated view for power delivery this year, I guess I just wanted to get a sense of how much conservatism that might be factoring in, given the movement here. Is the outlook contingent still on certain things falling into place, or does this feel pretty flushed out?

Look, I think we talked about it last time on our last call. The decisions in Illinois impacted our business on the distribution side pretty significantly. It kind of ate away at the growth that we expected for the year so that the growth is compensating the slowdown there. Those companies have publicly said they're moving that distribution cap exit transmission. We have very moderate assumptions around what we will get relative to that in the numbers that we have. So we do think that if that plays out the way they've said, that's going to provide really nice upside for us in that segment. Our storm expectations for the balance of the year are very muted, and it's expected to be an active storm season. We have no idea what the reality of that will be. That provides, quite frankly, tremendous upside to that unit if that season comes in as normal, as a normal season would. Last year wasn't, so we've kind of replicated what we saw last year. So we do think that, you know, we've got a very achievable plan, and hopefully if things play out well, we, you know, hopefully we deliver a much better result than what we've set.

Very good. Thank you. Thanks, Brian.

We will take our next question from Adam Thalheimer with Thompson Davis.

Hey, good morning, guys. Nice quarter, and good to see the stock over 100 again. Thanks, Adam. The T-Mobile, I was kind of surprised you mentioned that. Can you talk about the fiber opportunity there, if you're well positioned, and when some work might start?

You know, we've been hearing rumors for a long time that T-Mobile was going to try to build their own fiber network to support their wireless business. I think we saw it in their announcements. They're actually trying a couple different things, but their latest announcement is a joint venture with UQT where they're going to buy Lumos and be a key tenant and owner of that asset. We think that that further shifts the wire of this business into seeing one where all the carriers are going to own their networks. It's a very important part of the business. And when you look at their announcement, it's not just about them using that network. It's about continuing to build out that network. So we do feel we're well positioned. We have a good relationship with them. And I think it could meaningfully impact our business over a long period of time.

And then, Paul, your Q1 cash from ops was way above my forecast, but you didn't raise the annual guide. Is that some conservatism, or can you just touch on that, please?

No. Listen, last quarter I said I thought we're modeling that we stay in the high 70s from a DSO perspective. And with the growth, particularly in the middle quarters, that's what's going to drive a lot of the cash flow. So we're in that range for Q1. We're optimistic there's some opportunities for improvement there, but a lot of it's just timing. We'll probably consume some working capital in Q2 and Q3, and there should be some release in Q4, which is kind of in line with the cadence of revenue.

Okay. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Adam.

We will take our next question from Justin Hockey with Robert W. Barrett.

To ask in oil and gas, you said you're expecting it to be more kind of book and burn type work going forward, less large projects, but there are some larger kind of traditional Permian lines that have made some news and are coming to market for the first time since peak in 2014, 2015. I know you talked about newer chains like hydrogen, but I guess what's your outlook for for big pipe there. That's still something that, you know, Sue, or is it kind of intentional to move towards this more book and burn work there?

Well, Justin, we would consider that book and burn. Those aren't projects that get awarded with, you know, those projects don't get awarded, you know, a year in advance or six months in advance. Those projects are being awarded, you know, relatively close to start time. Those projects tend to be much shorter in duration because it's a lot easier to work in those areas. So that's part of what we consider our book and burn business. It's greatly enhanced from where it's been. A lot of what you're reading is what we talk to our customers about. We think we're in great positions, especially in those markets, to be very successful. So that's part of what's driving our optimism.

Second question, in the power delivery business, We've seen some of your competitors buy some manufacturing capacity in there to deal with some of the speed to market on some of these long lead time issues. Is that something your customers are looking for you to bring to market? Is that something you'd want to move into, or is that kind of outside the playing in that market?

I don't think we need to own it. I don't think it's bad to own it either. I just think it could be a different model. Right. I think what you're going to see is I think we have a lot of relationships in place. We would love to, you know, over time be able to build more exclusivity around those relationships as it relates to, you know, third party builders of stuff. But I think it's interesting. It's been an interesting dynamic in the marketplace. I think our customers are really sophisticated in how they buy and what they buy. I think they're very smart, and to the extent that we can add value, we will. But historically, especially for the majors, they've kind of bifurcated those buy decisions, and I don't expect that to change.

Thanks, Josh.

We do not have any further questions in the queue. I would like to turn the call back to Jose Mas for closing remarks.

So just like to thank everybody for participating today, and we look forward to updating you on our second quarter call in a few months. Thank you.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.