Parsons Corporation

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Parson's fourth quarter in fiscal year 2024 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you would need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hands raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would like now to turn the conference over to your speaker today, Dave Spilley, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thanks, Michelle. Good morning, and thank you for joining us today to discuss our fourth quarter in fiscal year 2024 financial results. Please note that we provide a presentation slides on the Investor Relations section of our website. On the call with me today are Kerry Smith, Chair, President, and CEO, and Matt Ophilus, CFO. Today, Kerry will discuss our corporate strategy and operational highlights, and then Matt will provide an overview of our fourth quarter in fiscal year financial results, as well as a review of our 2025 guidance and long-term growth targets. We then will close with a question and answer session. Management may also make forward-looking statements during the call regarding future events and anticipated future trends and the anticipated future performance of the company. We caution you that such statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. Actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements due to a variety of factors. These risk factors are described in our form 10-K for fiscal year ended December 31, 2024 and other SEC filings. Please refer to our earnings press release for Parsons' complete forward-looking statement disclosure. We do not undertake any obligation to update forward-looking statements. Management will also make reference to non-GAAP financial measures during this call. We remind you that these non-GAAP financial measures are not a substitute for the comparable GAAP measures. I now will turn the call over to Kerry.

Thank you, Dave. Good morning, and welcome to Parsons' fiscal year 2024 and fourth quarter earnings call. Before I summarize our operating results, Matt and I wanna express our deepest sympathies to everyone affected by the devastating California wildfires. Parsons was founded in Southern California over 80 years ago and has a significant presence there today, so the fires are impactful to our team and our communities. The safety and wellbeing of our employees is our top priority, and we continue to offer our assistance to help them move forward. In parallel, we are committed to supporting the expeditious recovery and rebuild of Southern California. Moving to our fourth quarter in 2024 results, I wanna thank our nearly 20,000 employees for their contributions to yet another exceptional year. Our team's strong execution and focus on our six growing end markets enables us to capitalize on the tailwinds that are positively impacting both our critical infrastructure and federal solutions segments. Parsons is well positioned with a unique portfolio in two complementary, high growth, enduring, and profitable business segments. Our federal portfolio is aligned to the new administration's priorities, including renewed and increased focus on missile defense, offensive cyber, electronic warfare, border security, and an emphasis on the Indo-Pacific region. We are an agile and innovative company that can deliver operationally relevant and differentiated solutions to protect our nation's security at a time when it is needed most. As a firm that has both government and commercial businesses, we have a proven track record of being able to move with speed and apply commercial business models. Additionally, our North America infrastructure portfolio includes transportation, environmental remediation, and water wastewater treatment, as well as capabilities to rebuild our communities, manage major events, and provide critical infrastructure protection, which positions us for our country's needs today and into the future. The United States and Middle East relations are strengthening, and as the premier program management consultant in the Middle East, we look forward to continuing our accelerated growth in the region. Turning to financial results. For both the fourth quarter and the full year, we achieved record results for total revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and contract awards. For the full year, we also had record adjusted EBITDA margin and operating cashflow since our IPO. We delivered organic revenue growth of 22% and adjusted EBITDA growth of 30% in fiscal year 2024. We now have delivered organic revenue growth of more than 20% and adjusted EBITDA growth of more than 30% for the second consecutive year, demonstrating our commitment to above market growth and while efficiently managing the business to drive margin expansion. This discipline and creative growth enabled us to expand our adjusted EBITDA margin by 50 basis points in 2024. We ended the year with a strong balance sheet, which will enable us to continue to invest ahead of demand in high growth areas such as artificial intelligence, cyber, biometrics, counter unmanned air systems, signals intelligence, assured position, navigation and timing, and PFAS, PFAS remediation. For the full year, we exceeded $6.7 billion in revenue for the first time. Our organic revenue growth of 22% enabled us to continue to be an organic revenue growth leader in both of our business segments. Throughout the year, we delivered consistent results and now have reported double digit organic growth in every quarter for the last two years. Winning and ramping up new business, delivering on contract growth, and strong hiring and retention were drivers to achieving these outstanding results. For the full year, our record contract awards of $7 billion increased 17% over 2023, including over 15% growth in both segments, demonstrating the broad-based demand we're experiencing across our portfolio. This record contract award activity was driven by our overall win rates of 71%. The highest level our company has ever achieved. Our strategy is working to move up the value chain and differentiate with advanced technology, software, and digital enablement. Our acquisitions have also played a key role in helping win new business. During the fourth quarter, record contract awards increased to $1.7 billion or 34%. This quarter, we won six single award contracts worth more than $100 million each. This brings our total to 15 contract wins worth more than $100 million for the full year, matching our quarterly and annual records from last year. I'm proud of our team's ability to win work spanning both business segments, all four business units, and all six core end markets. Significant fourth quarter contract wins included two new three-year contracts in Saudi Arabia, totaling over $275 million. The company booked the first option period on both awards for a value of $81 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. Once our customer is ready, we look forward to announcing these very strategic wins that further strengthen our position in the Middle East. We booked a portion of a second option year contract with a confidential customer for $242 million, which runs through February, 2026. However, a related program performed by others has recently been paused, which impacts our ability to complete the scope of our mission. Our confidential program is continuing, but at a reduced volume today, and the long-term continuation of our contract is contingent on the related work restarting. As developments occur, we will continue to be transparent and provide updates. We were awarded a new lead design contract for the Newark Air-Train Replacement Program Guideway and Stations Project. Parsons is a subcontractor in this $1.2 billion project. As the lead designer, we will be responsible for designing 2.5 miles of elevated guideway along with three new stations. We also were awarded an option period totaling $122 million by the Department of State, of which we booked $84 million. On this contract, Parsons installs integrated security systems for 270 United States overseas diplomatic missions. Also includes counter-imand aircraft systems, biometrics, mass notification, and alarm annunciation systems. We were awarded an option year totaling $104 million on the company's General Services Administration C5ISR Exercise Operations and Information Services contract, or C-OS. On this program, Parsons designs, develops, trains, and deploys scalable machine learning solutions to extract actionable intelligence from vast amounts of data and delivers it to intelligent analysts and war fighters. We were awarded a two-year follow-on cybersecurity contract valued at $96 million, of which we booked $78 million. On this contract, we provide a wide range of services focused on identifying, mitigating, and reducing cyber risks to ensure mission resilience and operational readiness. And finally, after the fourth quarter ended, we were awarded two more contracts exceeding $100 million. The first is a follow-on program and construction management contract in Dubai valued at over $200 million. This win highlights the strength of our entire Middle East portfolio and the acceleration in our UAE business. The second contract's an additional 125 million ceiling value modification that was added to our Cyber Threat Hunt Forward program, which came to us through our ceiling tech acquisition. In 2024, we acquired two preeminent companies, one in our Federal Solutions segment and one in the Critical Infrastructure segment. The first acquisition, BlackSignal, significantly strengthens persons positioning within offensive cyber operations and electronic warfare while adding new capabilities in the counter space radio frequency domain. BlackSignal, which was built to counter near-peer threats, uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to create innovative signal processing techniques that detect and disrupt difficult to access and adversary command and control systems. The second acquisition, BCC Engineering, which we completed in the fourth quarter, strengthens our position as an infrastructure leader in program management and design engineering and positions us as the number one consultant in South Florida and doubles our presence with the Georgia Department of Transportation. This is consistent with our strategy to expand our presence in high-growth regions. We are very happy with the performance and successful integration of both companies and we have already realized revenue synergies with each. After the fourth quarter ended, we acquired TRS Group. TRS is an industry leader in PFAS, thermal and holistic environmental remediation, having cleaned hazardous and toxic substances from soil, groundwater and fire suppression systems for global clients. This $36 million acquisition enhances persons' environmental remediation capabilities in both of our operating segments and serves as a force multiplier for our industry-leading PFAS remediation solutions. Our discipline M&A program has been very successful and we will continue to acquire companies to enhance our capabilities, expand our customer base and drive growth and margin expansion. We have a robust candidate pipeline and anticipate acquiring two to three companies in 2025. As noted in today's earnings press release, Parsons was named one of America's most trusted companies by Forbes and our Kicking Horse Canyon project was awarded the prestigious 2024 Best Project Award in the road highway category by Engineering News Record. In summary, we are executing on our strategy and delivering our customers' missions as we continue to post record results and strong growth rates across all key financial metrics. We also significantly expanded margins and generated exceptional cashflow and contract awards. Finally, we closed two accretive acquisitions in 2024 that exceeded our strict financial metrics, fit Parsons' culture and share our passion for delivering innovative solutions for the national security and critical infrastructure markets. As we enter 2025 and my fourth year as Parsons CEO, I am even more enthused about our future. We operate in six growing, enduring and profitable end markets and we have long-term tailwinds that span both segments. In critical infrastructure, global demand is strong in all major geographies where Parsons operates. The United States, Canada and the Middle East and is not expected to peak until the 2028 to 2030 timeframe. We continue to see increased worldwide infrastructure spending given the benefits modern infrastructure provides including helping countries grow economically, increasing productivity, creating jobs and improving living standards. We are leveraging our core competencies in engineering design, program management and owners representative to win and deliver on large complex programs, whether it's designing the world's largest entertainment center in the Middle East, serving as the delivery partner for the Hudson Tunnel Project, the largest investment for a mass transit project in modern history or being the lead designer on the $4.6 billion Georgia State Route 400 express lane project, implementing -the-art traffic, incident management and digital twin systems. Parsons is ready to deliver on our customers' missions. As an industry pioneer and applying digital transformation to infrastructure, we look forward to continuing to transform this industry and drive efficiencies. In our federal solution segment, we are operating in a dynamic environment. Parsons will continue to take advantage of our speed and agility, commercial business mindset and operating models in a national security business that is aligned with the new administration's priorities to improve efficiency, reduce costs and most importantly, protect our nation. The threats to our nation have never been more concerning. Our purpose-built federal portfolio was engineered through internal research and development and accretive acquisitions to specifically address priority threat areas, including cyber, space, missile defense, electronic warfare, signals intelligence and critical infrastructure protection solutions. Our focus remains on outpacing our nation's near-peer threats with differentiated solutions to support the new administration in defending our nation, war fighters and intelligence communities to deter adversaries and protect our homeland. We have the right company, the right portfolio and the right team at the right time to continue to drive results. With that, I'll turn the call over to Matt to provide more details on our 2024 financial results, 2025 guidance and our long-term financial targets.

Matt. Thank you, Kari. As Kari indicated, 2024 was an exceptional year for Parsons. We raised all three guidance metrics every quarter, delivered over 20% organic revenue growth, expanded margins by 50 basis points, delivered record cash flow and free cash flow conversion rate of 116% of adjusted net income. We also reported record win rates and contract awards for the year. We're very pleased with our results, particularly against tougher comparable periods given the significant growth we've realized over the last two years. During the two-year period, we've added over $2.5 billion or 61% to our top line with $1.3 billion coming in 2024. Our growth continues to be strong across the company with double-digit organic growth in all four business units in both segments in 2024. We are benefiting from unprecedented global infrastructure spending and we have a federal portfolio built to counter near-peer threats and align to the new administration's priorities. Turning to the details of our results, total revenue of $1.7 billion for the fourth quarter of 2024 increased 16% from the prior year period and was up 14% on an organic basis. Organic growth was primarily driven by strong growth in our critical infrastructure protection and cyber markets, which grew 31% and 24% respectively during the quarter. Adjusted EBITDA of $147 million increased 14% from the fourth quarter of 2023 and adjusted EBITDA margin decreased 10 basis points to 8.5%. The adjusted EBITDA increase was driven by the ramp-up of recent contract wins and growth on existing contracts with effective cost control. Our adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter was negatively impacted by $29 million of adjustments on two critical infrastructure programs. The first program was our last remaining legacy contract, which achieved substantial completion on December 31st. The scheduled delay realized in the quarter drove additional costs. The second program impact was a claim settlement on a joint venture. While the final value did not achieve our booked position, it did allow for favorable schedule relief and cash flow. Normalized margin excluding these two adjustments would have been 10% in the fourth quarter, supporting our long-term target of double-digit margins. Total revenue for fiscal year 2024 increased 24% from the prior year and was up 22% on an organic basis. The strong organic growth throughout the year was driven by the ramp-up of recent contract wins and growth on existing contracts. S-UNIA expenses for 2024 were .1% of total revenue compared to 16% in 2023 and .5% in 2022. Fiscal year 2024 adjusted EBITDA of $605 million increased 30% from 2023 and adjusted EBITDA margin increased 50 basis points to 9%. The adjusted EBITDA increases outperformed our investor day goal of 20 to 30 basis points per year and were driven by growth on accretive contracts, contributions from acquisitions and continuing to effectively manage costs. Before I discuss our operating segments, I wanna mention that during the fourth quarter, we early adopted a new accounting standard that retroactively changes the partial repurchase of our convertible senior notes, which occurred in the first quarter of 2024. The new accounting standard resulted in reversing the $162 million net loss we originally reported in the first quarter to a $14 million net loss under the new accounting rules. As a result of this change, gap diluted earnings per share for the first quarter of 2024 is now 37 cents compared to a loss per share of $1.01 previously reported. The impacts from this transaction continue to be excluded from our adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS calculations. We included a revised first quarter income statement in today's earnings press release. I'll turn now to our operating segments, starting first with Federal Solutions, where fourth quarter revenue increased by $160 million, or 19% from the fourth quarter of 2023. This increase was driven by organic growth of 17% and the contribution from our black signal acquisition. Organic growth was driven primarily by the ramp up of recent contract wins and growth on existing contracts. Federal Solutions adjusted EBITDA increased by 21% from the fourth quarter of 2023, and adjusted EBITDA margin increased 20 basis points to 10%. These increases were driven primarily by higher volume and improved mix with effective indirect cost control. For the full year, Federal Solutions revenue increased by $986 million, or 33% from 2023. This increase was driven by organic growth of 30% and contributions from our ceiling tech and black signal acquisitions. A strong organic growth was led by our critical infrastructure protection in cyber markets. Federal Solutions adjusted EBITDA for the full year increased $126 million, or 43% from 2023, and adjusted EBITDA margin increased 80 basis points to 10.4%. These increases were driven primarily by increased volume on accretive contracts and contributions from high margin acquisitions. Moving now to our critical infrastructure segment. Fourth quarter revenue increased by $80 million, or 12% from the fourth quarter of 2023. This increase was driven by organic growth of 9% and inorganic revenue contributions from our BCC and IS engineers acquisitions. Organic growth was driven by higher volume of new awards in both our Middle East and North America infrastructure markets. Critical infrastructure adjusted EBITDA increased by 2% from the fourth quarter of 2023. Adjusted EBITDA margin decreased 60 basis points to 6.4%. Our adjusted EBITDA figures were impacted by the $29 million of adjustments previously discussed, partially offset by profits from accretive organic growth on both new and existing contracts. Excluding these adjustments, Q4 critical infrastructure margins were 10.2%. For the full year, critical infrastructure's revenue increased by $321 million, or 13%, almost all of which was organic. Organic growth was driven by expansion in both the Middle East and North America. Critical infrastructure's adjusted EBITDA for the full year increased by $14 million, or 8% from 2023. An adjusted EBITDA margin decreased 30 basis points to 6.9%. The adjusted EBITDA increase was driven primarily by organic growth and operating leverage. The lower margin for the year was the result of adjustments on two programs previously discussed. Excluding these impacts, critical infrastructure margins were .1% for the total year. Next, I'll discuss cashflow and balance sheet metrics. Our net DSO at the end of Q4, 2024, was 55 days, down four days from the prior year period and down 14 days from the fourth quarter of 2022. Our fourth quarter operating cashflow totaled $127 million, compared to $190 million in the prior year period. Operating cashflow for the full year increased 28% to $524 million. Our strong cashflow for the year was driven by higher profitability and improved working capital. Our free cashflow conversion rate for the year was 116%. Capital expenditures totaled $19 million in the fourth quarter of 2024 and $49 million for the full year. CAPEx spend was in line with our plan of less than 1% of annual revenue. Our balance sheet remained strong as we ended the fourth quarter with a net debt leverage ratio of 1.3 times, even after closing two strategic acquisitions worth $430 million in 2024. Including the cash acquisition of TRS and Q1, performance leverage would be approximately 1.4 times based on Q4 results. As part of our $100 million share repurchase program, we repurchased approximately 156,000 shares for an aggregate purchase price of $15 million during the fourth quarter. For the full year, we repurchased approximately 287,000 shares for an aggregate purchase price of $25 million. Turning next to bookings for the fourth quarter, -over-year contract award activity increased 34% to a record $1.7 billion, driven by growth of 26% in federal solutions and 41% in our critical infrastructure segment. Our trailing 12-month -to-bill ratio at the end of the fourth quarter was 1.0 times, which continues our quarterly streak with a trailing 12-month -to-bill ratio of 1.0 or better since our IPO in 2019. In our critical infrastructure segment, we achieved a quarterly -to-bill ratio of 1.2 in the fourth quarter, marking the 17th consecutive quarter with a -to-bill ratio of 1.0 or greater. In our federal solutions segment, we achieved a quarterly -to-bill ratio of 0.8 in the fourth quarter, which is the best Q4 -to-bill ratio in the last four years. For fiscal year 2024, contract awards increased 17%, and our -to-bill ratio was 1.0 times. In our critical infrastructure segment, contract awards increased 15% in 2024, and our -to-bill ratio was 1.2 times. In federal solutions, contract awards increased 19% over fiscal year 2023, and our -to-bill ratio was 1.0 times, even with revenue growth of nearly a billion dollars in 2024. Our backlog at the end of the fourth quarter totaled $8.9 billion, up 4% from the fourth quarter of 2023. Additionally, our funded backlog is the highest since our IPO at 66%. Now let's turn to guidance. For 2025, we expect revenue to be between 7.0 and $7.5 billion. This represents approximately .5% growth at the midpoint of the range, and 5% growth on an organic basis. As previously discussed, we are expecting lower volumes on our confidential contract, as well as transitioning programs. Excluding these contracts, the rest of the portfolio is projected to grow double digits organically. It is worth noting that our 2025 growth rates are off a total revenue base that has increased more than $3 billion, or nearly 85% since the end of 2021. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between $640 and $710 million, with a margin of .3% at the midpoint of our revenue, and Adjusted EBITDA guidance ranges. This represents Adjusted EBITDA growth of 12% and margin expansion of approximately 30 basis points from 2024. The growth in Adjusted EBITDA and associated margins is expected to be driven by completion of our legacy programs and improved execution. Cash flow from operating activities is expected to be between $420 and $480 million. At the midpoint of the guidance range, we expect free cash flow conversion to be approximately 86% of adjusted net income. 2025 cash flow is expected to be down year over year due to the timing of incentive fees collected in 2024, and a change in our 401k match benefit, which results in a one-time impact of approximately $30 million for the year, as we shift from an annual to a quarterly match. Our 2025 guidance contemplates domestic budget uncertainty, a competitive labor market, and current estimates related to government procurements. These macro conditions are offset by significant tailwinds, including the unprecedented global infrastructure spend, a federal portfolio that is closely aligned to the new administration's priorities, recompete risk of less than 5% of 2025 total revenue, $8.9 billion of total backlog, including record funded backlog, and over $12 billion of contracts awarded to Parsons, but not yet booked into backlog. Other key assumptions in connection with our 2025 guidance and our quarterly cadence are outlined on slide 16 in today's PowerPoint presentation, located on our investor relations website. In terms of our long-term financial targets, our outlook continues to support mid-single digit or better organic revenue growth, with the 20 to 30 basis points of margin expansion each year and a free cash flow conversion rate of at least 100% of adjusted net income. We also expect to supplement our organic growth with two to three acquisitions per year. In summary, I couldn't be more excited about where the company is headed. We are aligned to markets with growing demand and have clear line of sight to delivering expanded margins. Our balance sheet is in great shape and allows us to continue to deploy capital on strategic internal investments, acquisitions, and share buybacks, which create long-term value for the company and our shareholders. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Carrie.

Thanks, Matt. 2024 was an outstanding year. Our team's strong execution enabled us to deliver record results across all major financial metrics. Our balanced portfolio and the speed and agility with which we operate has enabled us to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and protect our nation from adversaries, as well as to take advantage of unprecedented global infrastructure spending. Parsons is well aligned with market growth drivers, and I'm extremely excited about our long-term future. And we look forward to continuing to deliver consistent results and drive long-term shareholder value.

Thank

you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. And our first question will come from Toby Sommer with Truist. Your line is now open.

Thank you. I was hoping you could give us an update to the extent you can on the contours and developments with your confidential customer and project. Thank you.

Sure, thanks, Toby, and good morning. On the confidential contract, option year two has been exercised, and that option runs until February, 2026. We've booked a portion of the option that's funded for 242 million. Our 2025 plan is aligned to the negotiated value of the option year two contract. And I mentioned there's a related program that's been paused. So if you think about that, let's say you have five steps to complete in a process. Parsons performs steps one to four, other companies perform step five, but you can't complete step four without step five moving forward. That's sort of the situation we're in. So while we aggressively are working to get that related program restarted, we're also focusing in parallel on the rest of our portfolio, which has 3,400 contracts and is growing double digits. I want to take just a minute, in fact, to talk about that opportunity within the portfolio and the strong alignment to Trump administration priorities. 44% of our portfolio is not funded under the federal government. And the 56% that is funded is directly aligned with the priorities as I highlighted in my remarks. That includes missile defense and air systems, electronic warfare, cyber, counter effects for cruise missiles and hypersonics, border security, counter-unmanned air systems, and space surveillance. And as you look at the FY25 and 26 budgets, these are likely to be beneficiaries of incremental dollars. I'd like to add too, as announced this week, the ground-based infrastructure portion of the Sentinel program's being restructured. And Parsons has been involved in every intercontinental ballistic program except for Sentinel, and we look forward to being involved in that one. And then our Indo-PACOM regional alignment is very aligned with the Trump administration. Our focus on cyber, electronic warfare space, and building out our critical infrastructure and our presence that has been in Guam for over three decades, strong presence in Hawaii and Kwajalein. And then I'd say also, as we look to a potential settlement of some of the conflicts, whether it's Russia, Ukraine, or Israel, Gaza, that will benefit Parsons with the rebuild opportunity as we were heavily involved in Iraq. And we're rebuilding currently futuristic cities in Saudi, mixed-use development, residential projects in the UAE, and performing hospitality and tourism projects. So to say I'm excited about the future and the overall alignment with the Trump administration, I think our portfolio fits really well.

Thanks. If I could ask a follow-up, you mentioned sort of a lateral impact from a choice related to a different program. What is the procurement environment like for what you're bidding on? And has anything changed sort of since the quarter in the recent weeks and year to date in terms of the cadence and timing of contract awards, et cetera?

Yeah, so your first question as far as the procurement environment, again, our program has been funded and it's continuing, but it's a related program. So we're trying to work to get that program unpaused. With the exception of that, we have only seen two contracts pause for less than $3 million in our portfolio. We're fortunate that we don't have a big dependency on many of the federal civilian agencies which are seeing some disruption, such as the IRS, USAID, FEMA, Department of Energy, OSHA, or VA. We don't have work with those agencies, so it hasn't disrupted our portfolio. And I'll highlight again that 44% of our portfolio is not independent on the federal government. The cadence that we're seeing is a little slower, but I would say the offset to that is we're seeing many more extensions and ceiling increases, which is positive for our business. And as we enter 2025, we have less than 5% of our business up for repeat.

Thank you very much, Carrie, that's helpful.

Thanks, Toby.

And the next question comes from Louie DePalma with William Blair, your line is open.

Carrie, Matt, and Dave, good morning.

Good morning, Louie.

As it relates to the confidential contract, I know you're limited in what you can say, but you indicated that you received the $242 million and the funded option. And are you assuming that you recognize the $242 million in revenue this year? And is that $242 million, is that impacted by the adjacent contract such that that 242 may come in significantly lower if that adjacent contract is not resolved?

So we believe that 242 is solid for the year. What we've put into our plan is the negotiated value of the full option year with the customer since it has been exercised.

Yeah, think about the initial funding for the year.

Okay, so are you saying that the unfunded portion may not be fully realized because of the adjacent contract then?

It may not, we don't have any certainty at this time. All we know is that our option year has been exercised as we work to help the related program get restarted.

Okay, so like if it does get restarted, then that $242 million could increase then.

That's correct. And we have a negotiated contract with our customer for our work.

Great, that definitely clarifies a lot of things. Thanks, and you mentioned Sentinel. Can you discuss the role that your team's contract could play with Iron Dome in the Trump administration and past missile defense programs that you're involved with, whether it's the proliferated warfare space architecture or for other ones,

thanks. Sure, and let me just elaborate a little bit on Sentinel. So what the Air Force has announced is they're gonna be restructuring the ground infrastructure portion, so the launch facilities and the control centers. Again, Parsons has done every single intercontinental ballistic missile program infrastructure, and the only one we were not involved in was Sentinel. So we really look forward to having the opportunity to reengage in that contract. Relative to your specific question on Iron Dome, the Peer State Rogue National Cruise Missile Threat requires what's called a layered defense strategy. So you have to protect against everything from intercontinental ballistic missiles to hypersonics to cruise missiles all the way down to unmanned air systems, and that needs a multi-layered architecture that's gonna be built upon missile defense agency and space development agency space infrastructure. And it may also involve the integration and development of space-based interceptors. There's been introduced the Iron Dome Act by Republican senators, which is proposing 19.5 billion of funding in fiscal year 26 to implement the plan, and they would like to largely use existing technologies. This is beneficial for Parsons as we've worked for 40 years supporting the missile defense agency, providing system engineering and integration. We're the largest technical advisor for MDA, and we provide engineering expertise to oversee the development of missile defense platforms. We also have a role in cyber resiliency and provide warfighting capabilities to defend the US homeland, as well as our deployed forces and allies, and we're involved in defense at Guam. In addition to our partnership with MDA, we do have experience working with Israel's Iron Dome system, specifically the David Sling system on engineering assessments and data integration. Just to elaborate further on what we can bring to Iron Dome, we also have exquisite cyber and electronic warfare solutions. So if you think about it, you deliver non-kinetic effects that provide force protection for the homeland and the allies, and we're able to operate across all domains from sea, ground, air, cyber, and space. So our non-kinetic electromagnetic defeat capabilities can augment kinetic missile systems and disrupt missile kill chains both before and after launch. I'd say the final area is we have integrated counter-unmanned air systems capability, and we have a solution, it's called the Drone Armor Solution, which has a fire control and control sensor and effector architecture, and it's designed specifically to defeat cruise missiles, counter groups one to five unmanned air systems, and other advanced aerial targets. We also provide air base air defense. We have a contract over in Europe, it has a billion dollar ceiling, and that was specifically applicable when you look at Iron Dome because our contract was to defend against unmanned air systems, cruise missile systems, hypersonics, all the way up to ICBMs. So by the end of the month, we will be providing RFI responses to both MDA and SDA, and look forward to contributing to the important effort of Iron Dome for America.

Thanks, thanks, Kari. And one last one, it appears that your infrastructure business is firing on all cylinders, and you discussed the new contract wins in Saudi Arabia, and you're doing really well domestically. Do you envision any impact for your US projects as it relates to federal funding, or what is the status there?

Yeah, great question. So all of our funding comes from state and local, for federally, it's the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The area that they're looking at reducing within the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act are things that are related to social inequity and electrification and broadband. We don't receive any funds from there. They're instead looking on how do they take those funds, reapply them to what you call hard infrastructure, which is where we play. So if you think roads and highways and bridges is an example. And we, again, get no funding from the inflation and reduction act.

Awesome, thanks, Kerry. Thanks, Matt and Dave.

And our next question will come from Andrew Whitman with Bayard. Your line is open.

Oh, great, good morning. Excuse me. And thank you for taking my questions. I guess I just wanted to understand a little bit on the Federal Aviation Administration. As I understood it, I think this is a decent customer for you all. And I was just wondering, there's been some reports that the DOGE team was coming in there. Can you just remind us all what your scope and size of work is for that agency is and the types of things that you're working on and if you've seen anything from the team in terms of what they're looking at?

Yeah, thanks, Andy, and good morning. We think there's actually opportunity for us with the FAA. So we've supported the FAA for four decades and our role is to provide technical services. Those would include things like project management, how do you modernize the infrastructure, which is gonna be a big area of focus, installing systems and equipment at over 600 locations. And then we're also supporting their capital investment plan by providing engineering construction and project management services. Our contract is called the FAA Technical Support Services Contract Five. And on that we have over 500 people that are FAA cleared and qualified to be able to provide that support. So we're currently in year two of a 10-year 1.8 billion single award contract. There's obviously, due to the tragic accidents that have happened, a recent renewed emphasis on the air transportation safety. So there's gonna be opportunities to upgrade and replace the aging equipment, the systems and the infrastructure. We feel that we're well positioned to execute the assessment, the sustainment and the modernization and be able to help also with air traffic control and air traffic management needs.

Yes, Andy, just importantly, as Kari mentioned, we have over 1.6 billion worth of ceiling left on that contract, so great opportunity for us.

Got it, that's helpful context on that one. I guess, just, Matt, I just wanna make sure that everybody heard it or understands that correctly. On the $29 million here, one was a claim, so that's old and done, and the other one, it's a project that you closed out on 12-31, so that's old and done as well. There's no charges here on anything that has any future revenue expectation to it. Is that right?

No, half right. So there were two issues. The first one was a program that was our last legacy, so we're happy that we're never gonna have to talk about legacy contracts on an earnings call again. That ended on December 31st, and these contracts, again, go back to the timeframe in the company between 2010 and 2015 when these were bids, so those are kinda in the rearview mirror. The second one is a contract that we refer to where we had a supply chain issue due to COVID. We had a settlement with the customer on that. We did not achieve our booked value, but importantly, we were able to get some schedule extension and some cash flow. What I'm very pleased with on that program, it is executing very well and ahead of schedule, so now that we have that settlement on the COVID issue behind us, we can continue just to move on and execute.

Okay, that makes sense. I appreciate that context. I think I'll leave it there. Thank you very much.

Thanks,

Andy. And our next question comes from Sheila Cuyaglu with Jeffreys. Your line is open.

Good morning, guys, and thank you for the time. I carry lots of questions on the top line, and I'm sure you're prepared for it, but I kind of wanted to clarify a few things because I'm still confused. So your guidance range is 7 to 7.5 billion for 2025. It's a bit wider than normal. The bottom end suggests about 2% organic growth versus the 20% plus you've been doing over the last two years. So for that confidential contract, is it fair to assume your guidance has about 240 of the, let's say, 600 million this contract is in the guide, or does it include the full amount? And what are sort of the big drivers to get to the bottom end, given the growth you've seen?

Yes, so the guidance includes option year to negotiated amount with the customer. We always, as you're aware, Sheila, we have puts and takes any given year. We always have programs ramping down, programs ramping up. So we have some of those dynamics going on. I would say the biggest variance though between the organic growth is that confidential program. We were aware that if, you know, we had peaked last year, which we had discussed, and we had built that into our guidance. And again, we are reiterating our guidance.

Okay, and then maybe on the pipeline, if we could talk about that, just how we think about, you know, it seems like you called out 12 billion in awarded contracts that have not yet been booked in backlog. And this is a pretty good lead indicator to your organic growth, but it's down from 13 billion over the last few quarters, but yet the contract awards were quite strong up 34% year over year. So can you walk through the moving pieces there, please?

Yes, so first, I'd say we're very pleased with our pipeline. We've had a pipeline now greater than 50 billion over the last six quarters. It's currently at 54 billion. The other thing we've done is we've moved up the value chain. So now we've got 111 opportunities greater than 100 million within the pipeline. But even more importantly, we have about 15 opportunities greater than 500 million. So doing exactly as we intend to do per our strategy. Specifically on the 12.4 of awarded not booked, we moved some things. So our goal again is we will have a contract SEOS I'll use because that's an example we cited today, or the Georgia State Route 400. We will win a contract. We don't book the full value, but once we win new work and get the funded on that value, then we'll book like the next exercise option or the next phase of that program. So we have pulled a couple of things over and done exactly what we wanted to do, which was win new work and be able to pull that over. So we have 8.9 billion of backlog. Out of that our funded backlog is very high at 66% and that 12.4 billion of awarded not booked that we can leverage.

Okay, thank you so much. Thanks Sheila.

And the next question comes from Noah Poppenack with Goldman Sachs, your line is open.

Hey, good morning everyone.

Good morning Noah.

Kerry one more for you on the classified program you've been discussing here. Is there any risk in your view that if that fifth stage does not get restarted that the 242 million you're citing is zero for the year?

My perspective though is that a good portion of that will be consumed and probably was even consumed in January some portion. So I would say the 242 is unlikely to be zero.

Okay, and Matt the other contract you had talked about when you were citing five to 15% coming into the year for recompete with CCMS, can you just level set us on how that has shaken out and what's in the full year plan for that?

Yes, I would say again our recompete going into the share are less than 5%, around 4% which is very low for us. We were fortunately able to retain almost all the work 70%ish on CCMS. We were performing very important mission work for our customers and the customers wanted to stick with Parsons so we had another GSA vehicle that we have placed that work onto.

Okay, great. And then on the critical infrastructure margin, fully adjusted for the 29 million in the quarter it's pretty high. In order to get to the implied margin for 2025 it can't be where it was on a fully adjusted basis in the fourth quarter for the year and especially to have 21% of the full year in the first quarter. The first quarter can't be anywhere near the fourth quarter on a fully adjusted basis. So Matt maybe you can just talk me through how that happens and I know you've talked in the past about there's kind of some lingering close out but if you can just help me better understand the moving pieces there and maybe the progression of the CI margin through the year.

Yeah, sure, and it's kind of spot on Noah. If you look at, if I look at the Parsons as a whole, the 30 basis points of margin expansion is gonna come from kind of a mix. If we look at the federal business as the confidential contract kind of stabilized a little bit, we're probably gonna grow faster on the cost part of the business so we are expecting a little bit of margin compression on the federal side of the business. So we're kind of thinking that business will be in the high nines, it's kind of where we're planned at this point and then on the CI side, we wrapped up 2024 with a .9% margin. We're looking at 8.8 for the total year so almost 200 basis points of margin expansion within CI. Agree, it's not quite the 10% but to your point, there's just close out items, there's negotiations with customers and things so we're just kind of baking in a little bit of opportunity in case of any unexpected.

Okay, and then last one for you, Matt. If I go back to your 2023 investor day outlook, your 2025 cashflow guidance provided today actually matches the high end of your 2023 investor day cashflow, free cashflow guidance and that's despite now adding over $2 billion of revenue and over $200 million of EBITDA to that 2023 look. How can that be?

Yeah, so if I look back on the last two years, kind of exceptional cash performance in 2023 and 2024. In 2023, we had about 120% cash conversion, 2024 was 160, 117% so really strong two years in a row delivered over $100 million ahead of our initial guide for 2024 so I would say just really strong performance in the last two years and over time of course, cash conversion will transport 100% and so as I mentioned during the call, the 2025 guide is somewhat impacted by $30 million one-time impact on this 401k switch from an annual to a quarterly so in 2025 we'll pay out Q1 will be for all of 2024's 401k match and then we'll have quarterly matches after that so 10 million per quarter so a little bit of a 30, there's about a 30 million dollar head there and on the other part for 2025 is we do expect accelerating growth within the Middle East and the CI business as federal start comes down a bit in terms of the growth rate so the DSO is up a day or two in the plan but all those kind of mixed together to be confident in the guide but we've really done a great job over the last two years accelerating and closing out kind of the claims and things that have benefited cash and incentive fees over the last two years.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks,

Tom. Thank you.

And the next question will come from Mariana Perez Mora with Bank of America, your line is open.

Thank you and good morning everyone.

Morning, Mariana.

My first question is gonna be around like the new administration and how should we think about PFAS and any like environmental remediation work? How fast that could grow and like were you including your 25 expectations?

Yes, so I would say the selection of Lee Zeldin as the PFAS or the EPA administrator will be helpful, we believed at PFAS, he was originally involved in setting up the minimum or the maximum contaminant levels that went into the EPA legislation and he's been a big supporter of PFAS remediation. I'll take this opportunity just to mention the acquisition of TRS group, we're really excited about this acquisition and how it strengthens our PFAS position, they provide thermal environmental remediation solutions and it's split nicely 50-50 between the federal and the private sector so kind of at the nexus of our portfolio. They have emerging PFAS remediation capability, they've got patented technologies, they've got projects today with the Defense Innovation Unit focused on soil remediation and they've got presence at a lot of airports such as Seattle, Denver and LA just to name a few where they're working on firefighting foam change out. They have their patented remediation based technologies that basically remediate the PFAS and unsaturated soil and that complements technology that we've talked about in the past called our hot ESCO technology which is designed to destructively remediate PFAS below the water table and saturated soils so the combination of these will give us collectively, Parsons and TRS the first proven full scale destructive capability to address PFAS in both soil and ground at the same time. Really small acquisition but super exciting for us.

Thank you and following on the line of M&A, could you please discuss how is the pipeline of opportunities where is it stronger and mostly when you think about this new focus on efficiencies and incorporating commercial like technologies, how do you decide what type of skills do you wanna own versus skills you wanna partner with?

Yeah, thanks Mariana. So we always do kind of a built buyer partner and the question is we like to build internally if we can. We will buy something if we can get technology quicker at a lower cost because we do have to make market demands. I think a great example of two smaller acquisitions we made fit that category. TRS I just described and also when we acquired EchoRage data software defined radio that helped with the sure position navigation and timing capabilities quicker than we could have developed it under our own IRED. We also partner quite a bit with commercial companies and if they have kind of a secret sauce that fits well with persons, that's a great opportunity to partner. Great example, we just signed an agreement with -A-W Telecom, they're a Polish company and they're gonna be our agent to sell our deployable cyber flyaway kits and then we've also discussed in the past our partnership with Global Star for satellite communication and tested environments and we partner with Microsoft for cloud and AI and we also work with a company called OpenSpace AI which provides AI capabilities for our infrastructure business. -A-W pipeline remains very strong, both with candidates in the federal and their critical infrastructure. We continue to look at and pass on multiple companies any given month, we're still very strict with our criteria, growing greater than 10% on the top line, greater than 10% even on margin and needs to have some type of technology differentiation. So we look forward to doing two to three deals again this year.

Thank you so much.

Thanks Mariana.

As a reminder to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and the next question comes from Gwana with Cohen. Your line is open. Gwana, your line is now open.

Oh, I apologize, something was going on with my headset. Hey, I got two questions related to the confidential contract. First I was wondering, can you say whether it was the current administration that extended it that earlier in January or was it the former administration?

So the option here was the current administration was exercised during the transition.

During the transition means under the Trump administration?

From Biden to Trump administration is the time period in which it was exercised.

So it was authorized by Biden's administration, not the Trump administration. I just technically asked before January 20th or after?

It was before.

Okay. And then the related contract, why is that being paused? Is it a funding issue or is it a policy issue related to executive orders or something else?

It's a policy issue related to the executive orders.

Okay, and I think in the past you guys have sized the recompete, you know, five to 15% or something of that nature, which allowed people to triangulate that that work scope was somewhere in the $500 million range annually. Is that, so the 240 that you're assuming, is that basically, that would be half of what the work was last year?

Yeah, unfortunately the customer's confidential, the work scope's confidential and they do not permit us to share the value on the contract due to national security reasons.

Okay. But I did hear it correctly to think that if in fact the work was fully unleashed and the related work was unleashed, allowed to happen, the 240 would grow, right? That's what you were saying?

In order to get to the midpoint of guide, we need the 240 to grow to the full value. That's the initial funding allotment.

Gotcha, and you're just not willing to tell us what the full value is, but we can make- We're not

permitted, unfortunately. We try and be very transparent, but we are not allowed by the customer.

And so then I do wonder, because they're interrelated, what gives you the confidence that if the policy shift has impacted the related contract and put it on pause, why that won't bleed over into the, work scope that Parsons is responsible for? Like what gives you, is there enough buy-in that senior administration people who have looked at the work scope that Parsons is doing to give you that assurance, or is that just, yeah, thank you.

Yeah, I would say it's an extremely important mission for the nation.

Great, thanks guys, it's all I have.

Thanks. Thanks, got

them.

And the next question comes from Alex DeWire with KeyBank. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning, thanks for taking my questions.

Yeah, hi Alex.

Hi. So it sounds like there was some award momentum that continued into the first quarter. There was a couple hundred million dollar wins, but then it also seems like the cadence of like, procurements and new awards is a bit slower now. Do you think we should expect some softness in the book to bills in the first quarter or the second quarter, or do you think this, your exposure to where the new awards is slow, do you think it's not meaningful enough to see it impact the backlog?

Yeah, so we have planned for 1.0 times for the year. Again, 44% of our business, it's a relevant fork, that's the 44% that's had 17 executive quarters greater than 1.0 booked a bill. For the federal business, we have 12.4 billion of awarded not booked, so what our priority is right now is to continue to push and drive that work onto those vehicles as we have been.

Yeah, Alex, the way I'm thinking about it is, I think the government officials are going through a capacity story and trying to figure out how many, take a new pursuit as an example, there's a lot that goes into that, long time to get these things through acquisition process. I think from a capacity perspective, we're expecting that, well, total activity will probably be similar. Some of it may end up being more kind of ceiling raised and extensions versus new business. That's kind of where our heads at today.

Now, the one thing we didn't talk about is the budget, and if you look at the budget resolution, right now the House has 100 billion plan for armed services, 90 billion for Homeland Security, and that's largely going towards border security that's in their budget resolution. That's over a 10 year period. The Senate has 150 billion cap for armed services, 175 billion for Homeland. That's within, again, their budget resolution, so we'll see how that all shakes out once they get to conference. The other thing I would highlight, we're looking ahead to FY26 and what's going on there, and Department of Defense has preliminary indicated that they're looking to reduce spending, but shift the funds to -a-ligne priorities. So what they're gonna do is basically look at areas such as DEI, anything that was there for climate, and those funds are gonna get shifted to areas that benefit Parsons, specifically the areas I talked about earlier, cyber, missile defense, border security, we didn't have a chance to get to that, but I'll counter on MEDEA systems and other areas that align well with our federal portfolio.

Okay, got it, thank you. And then I just wanted to follow up on this GSA contract that you had mentioned in the response to a question earlier. It seems like the GSA is another agency that the Trump administration or DOJ is coming after in terms of budget cuts. I was just wondering if you're seeing any impacts to this contract or do you think this one is kind of well insulated from these budget cuts that are being discussed?

Yeah, so this contract's already awarded and they have to have line of sight to 75% of the funding before they can award a contract. So this was already awarded for 1.2 billion, so we've got the work. We're seeing most of the targeting thus far within GSA is more around the facilities type of areas and how they reduce footprint.

Yeah, and Alex, I would just say if there were a threat to some of these GSA contracts, we have other vehicles outside of GSA where the important part is maintaining the relationship and the capability with the end users and we can steer them toward other vehicles.

Yeah, it's a great point, Matt, because we hold about somewhere over 50, less than 100 vehicles, so we have a lot of room to move.

Thank you.

Thanks. Thanks, Alex.

This is all the time that we have for questions. I would now like to turn the call back over to Dave Spilley for closing remarks.

Thank you and thank you for joining us this morning. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to give me a call. We look forward to speaking with many of you over the coming weeks. And with that, we'll end today's call. Have a great day.

This does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.