Tracy K. Price
Analyst · Baird
Thank you, Henrik. Continuing on Slide 7 and 8, I will provide an update on our Building & Energy Solutions segment, which includes ABES, Government Services and our recent acquisition of HHA Services. Revenues increased over $7 million or 8.4% to $91.5 million, as we benefited from the acquisitions of HHA and Calvert-Jones and organic growth in our ABES business. Combined, our 2 acquisitions contributed $17.9 million to the revenue for the quarter. Sales for our Government operations year-over-year was approximately $32 million, down 27%, while revenue from ABES was $50.4 million. We've recently won a number of significant contracts, including 2 of the largest energy jobs in our history. I'm very pleased that our signed contract backlog for energy-related projects is at record levels, exceeding $35 million. This is up over $20 million compared to the prior-year period. In addition, business sold year-to-date for ABES is 220% higher than the comparable period for fiscal 2012. While some of this has already been converted to revenue, our expectation is for additional conversions and continued sales trends to contribute to organic growth in the second half of the year, with the fourth quarter benefiting most as projects ramp up, along with seasonally warmer temperatures, which benefits our HVAC business. I also want to highlight that during the quarter, our Government group entered into a joint venture with Building Energy, an Italian based independent power producer, significantly expanding our solar and distributed energy capabilities in large-scale commercial and utility scale solar power markets. And we will be executing our first contract later this week. Moving to operating profit. In the second quarter, we experienced slightly higher sales costs and an increase in amortization expenses, which kept operating profit essentially flat at $2.5 million year-over-year. We continue to make good progress integrating the HHA acquisition and are pleased with their strong pipeline of new business and client retention rate, both of which are exceeding initial expectations. Turning to Slide 9, I want to mention a couple of the sales and marketing highlights that are in addition to the solar joint venture. In April, we announced ABM Building Services was selected by Orange County, Virginia public schools to implement division-wide energy and infrastructure upgrades. This project, the third largest won by the ABES team, along with previous announced Wright State, our largest deal ever, are reasons why the backlog is so strong. We continue making good progress on our sales initiative and in particular, are pleased with the initial results of our Solve One More program. With Solve One More, we're encouraging employees to learn more about ABM service offerings so they can tell clients about our capabilities and help address their facility challenges. When a client needs a solution, the employee enters or calls in the lead to our Solve One More portal, which then flows to the appropriate local sales resource. We're about 3 months into the program and today, we have over 450 Solve One More leads. More importantly, we've closed approximately 50 new contracts, generating more than $5 million in sales while incurring no additional SG&A. A very solid start, and it's great to see the level of enthusiasm and collaboration taking place at the point-of-service level company-wide. And with that, I'll turn the call back to Henrik.