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EMCOR Group, Inc. (EME)

Q1 2012 Earnings Call· Thu, Apr 26, 2012

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. My name is Laura, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the EMCOR Group First Quarter 2012 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Gordon McCoun of FTI Consulting. Sir, please go ahead.

Gordon McCoun

Analyst

Thank you, Laura, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to the EMCOR Group conference call. We're here to discuss the company's 2012 first quarter results, which we reported this morning. I'd like to now turn the call over to Kevin Matz, Executive Vice President, Shared Services, who will introduce management. Kevin, please go ahead.

R. Matz

Analyst

Thank you, Gordon, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to EMCOR Group Earnings Conference Call for the First Quarter 2012. For those of you who are accessing the call via the Internet on our website, welcome, and we hope you have arrived at the beginning of the slide presentation that will accompany our remarks today. Please advance to Slide 2. Slide 2 depicts the executives who are with me to discuss the quarter's results. They are Tony Guzzi, President and Chief Executive Officer; Mark Pompa, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; Mava Heffler, Vice President Marketing and Communication; and our Executive Vice President and General Counsel, Sheldon Cammaker. For those of you who don't know, today is Shelly's birthday, so I'd like to offer him a warm happy birthday. We'll sing but with time constraints, we'll do it after the call. For call participants who are not accessing the conference call via the Internet, this presentation including the slides will be archived in the Investor Relations section of our website under Presentations. You can get to it by getting to emcorgroup.com. Before we begin, I want to remind you that this discussion may contain certain forward-looking statements. Any such statements are based upon information available to EMCOR's management's perception as of this date, and EMCOR assumes no obligation to update any such forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. Accordingly, these statements are no guarantee of future performance. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, adverse effects of general economic conditions, changes in the political environment, changes in the specific markets or EMCOR services, adverse business conditions, increased competition, mix -- I'm sorry -- of business and risks associated with foreign operations. Certain other risks and factors associated with EMCOR's business our also discussed in the company's 2011 Form 10-K and in other reports filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. With that being said, please let me turn the call over to Tony. Tony?

Anthony Guzzi

Analyst

Thanks, Kevin, and we should be on Page 3 and 4 will be my discussion. Good morning, and thanks for calling in. We're off to a good start this year. Actually it's a little better than we expected. We earned $0.40 per diluted share on revenues of $1.54 billion, and our results today show that our diversity of markets and expanded construction service capabilities and product offerings are working for EMCOR. We've built these offerings and capabilities through organic investments and acquisitions, and they have helped transform EMCOR to operate well in these uncertain and uneven times. Revenues were a little better than we expected this quarter. We have gained a little help from the good weather and our construction operations but we surely gave back more in our Mechanical Services and site-based particularly USM operations. We grew 21.6% in the quarter and 11.1% organically. It was led by our Mechanical Construction segment at 20% organic growth. The markets are still far less robust, and our growth shows we are willing -- winning our share of decent work. Our growth was really in 2 areas, commercial and industrial. I spoke at the beginning of the year that we were working on some jobs that would be fast-paced and technically complicated. We are executing that work now and still do not have 100% of it in backlog, but we are gaining good growth as we have begun executing this work. We've had growth across all our reporting segments that show broad support for our products and services. We expected some slowing at Facilities Services segment as our industrial service work had come from such a low base in 2011 versus 2010, and we had some growth in a significant site-based account last year that was not reputable in the near term…

Mark Pompa

Analyst

Great. Thank you, Tony, and good morning to everyone on the call. For those participating by the webcast, we are now on Slide 5. I will begin with certain highlights of our first quarter 2012 results before moving to key financial data derived from our consolidated financial statements included in both our earnings release announcement and Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this morning. Consolidated revenues of $1.54 billion in the quarter are up 21.6% from 2011. Organic revenue growth in the quarter is 11.1% and all reporting segments reported positive revenue growth during our first quarter. Revenues attributable to businesses acquired of $132.5 million positively impacted our U.S. Mechanical Construction Services and U.S. Facility Services segments during the quarter. Domestic electrical revenues increased 8.2%. Domestic mechanical quarterly revenues increased 30%. Our Facility Services revenues increased 24.1% in the quarter and our U.K. segment revenues increased 12.8%. Selling, general and administrative expenses increased $20.6 million within the quarter, inclusive of $11.2 million of incremental SG&A from those acquisitions completed subsequent to March 31, 2011. As a percentage of revenue, SG&A in quarter one is 8.7%, which represents a 30 basis point reduction from last year's quarter one percentage of 9% as we continue to leverage our overhead structure as Tony commented on just a few moments ago. Please turn to Slide 6. Operating income of $46.2 million represents 3% of revenues and compares to $41.8 million of operating income and 3.3% of revenues in 2011 first quarter. Operating margins by reporting segment are as follows: U.S. electrical generated 8.1% of margins in this quarter compared to 5.4% in the quarter a year ago. The U.S. mechanical produced 3.9% margins in first quarter '12 versus 5.5% in the quarter a year ago, which arrives at total U.S.…

Anthony Guzzi

Analyst

Thanks, Mark, and we're on Page 9 and I'd pick up on his comments which is reflected our risk management as reflected on our balance sheet and how it has remained strong. I think it's reflected in our backlog also. And it shows that we've able to move between markets, invest in the right places and acquire in the right places to weather what has been a significant downturn in the current nonresidential markets especially in hospitality. So let's talk about backlog. Backlog at the end of the quarter is about $3.4 billion, an increase of almost $100 million over the backlog at the end of March 2011 with in-period acquisitions accounting for all the increase. Organic backlog decreased $200 million year-over-year, but it improved sequentially from year end 2011. With our strong organic growth, we're pleased to see the growth in sequential backlog. We are seeing what we call growth straight through backlog in the sales over the last 3 quarters, as we've had strong organic growth in near flat backlog through that period. That's typically a service dynamic. It's what we see in our service operations, but it's also occurring more our project work as we're getting more to the front end of the decision cycle especially in the industrial work and also happens when you are in the industrial work close to the owner and also happens early in a construction upcycle. Like we said, it's encouraging that the backlog is holding its own despite the strong organic growth over the last 3 quarters and 11% here in the quarter. Though impossible to measure, moderate temperature helped that organic growth and accelerated the revenues, but backlog again kept pace. Now we've spoken about EMCOR being a late cycle company in previous calls. And while it is still…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from the line of Alex Rygiel of FBR.

Alexander Rygiel

Analyst

First for Mark, can you quantify the favorable resolution of the construction claim that you have on the health care project in the first quarter?

Mark Pompa

Analyst

We said that it went up because we saw things do happen quite often. But from a materiality perspective, it's less than 50 basis points for that segment margins.

Alexander Rygiel

Analyst

And then, Tony, in the first quarter, the mechanical revenue was very, very strong exceeding $550 million. Is that a new sort of level that we should think about each quarter for the next couple of quarters or was there some sort of onetime revenue kind of embedded in that number that might tail off in the coming quarters?

Anthony Guzzi

Analyst

It won't tail off in the near term, Alex. We have good momentum in that business. We're doing some nice work in the industrial sector that we have a pretty good line of sight on for the next 2 or 3 quarters.

Alexander Rygiel

Analyst

Helpful. You mentioned the refinery turnaround business. I'm a little confused because it sounds like backlog is good but in the first quarter may be revenue wasn't good but your profit is strong. Can you kind of circle back and help us to reexplain the refinery turnaround market in the first quarter and then your outlook?

Anthony Guzzi

Analyst

Sure. Our business serving refineries is about flat year-over-year, and it came back remember '10 to '11 from a pretty big deficit. And the way I got there was really good shop performance, not so good field performance. And the field performance wasn't that we weren't executing on the contracts we had. We expect to do a rather significant turnaround for our customer. We mobilized all the resources and the turnaround ended up being about quarter of the size. So in our field operations with refinery specifically, we did less volume than we expected and we had more cost than we should have. Now that being said, based on what we did in our shops, it was a pretty good turnaround season because in our shops, it's not only the turnarounds we get to execute for people which we do with our field business is we support a lot of other turn around contractors in their field businesses. So I can't say that it was a market issue. For us, it was a customer issue and if we -- now, that being said, I'm glad we have some of those resources because now here in the second quarter, we're executing pretty well on some of the turnarounds and it looks like a little bit for us in elongated season. Nothing to spike the ball in the end zone about because we're only in April but we will see. Now for the outlook for the year, I have no reason to believe that it won't be at least just a strong as last year was for the back half of the year, which was pretty good. Nothing near what it was in 2007, but it was still pretty good. And we're winning some important new customers. What you see in turnarounds in general used to be able to look at these like I said in the past like clockwork and even though the scope. With the dynamic pricing the dynamic mix they're putting in refineries now. It's a lot more realtime decision and we got caught a little short on that in the first quarter.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Rich Wesolowski of Sidoti & Company.

Richard Wesolowski

Analyst

Regarding the organic facilities margin you touched on the refinery piece, but you also cited a couple of contracts that started up. I'm wondering how large these jobs are where they would materially get the margin on organic business doing $450 million a quarter?

Anthony Guzzi

Analyst

Well, again, think about where margins. Are it doesn't take much. $4 million of expense where you didn't want it between industrial and the startups that's a point of margin, right? They're going to be significant. I mean, they're not there yet, but full run rate, they can be some of the largest contracts we have north of $20 million. It takes a lot to get there and we're going through the expense to get there. What we're doing, Rich, is we're starting up plants, individual plants. And so we expect them to be starting 2 plants. We're starting 4 plants for each of these customers because the first 3 plants we did on the performance of the savings were so significantly accelerated, and it cost a lot of expense do that.

Richard Wesolowski

Analyst

Okay. Last quarter -- in speaking about USM, you spoke a greater difficulty in the initial sales process with USM's customers than you first envisioned and now the backlog seems to have turned around. From an outsiders perspective it makes sense to consolidate the trades and USM's service lines. What are the common objections that you have heard and what turned around the business development?

Anthony Guzzi

Analyst

Well, I think first thing is we took some of our trusted people that had fantastic reputations in that sector and put them in charge and that paid dividends immediately and they were able to leverage their relationship to get things done. And we quickly stopped listening to the nonsense that the last people leading business development had to say to us. The second thing is EMCOR has a great reputation of servicing its customers. USM had damaged its reputation through its sales process as it became less focused on serving its customers and more focused on selling its company. It was a big distraction to management and customers voted not to participate in that sale. And when it got bought by EMCOR, we got off to tell the story. And the objection was well just go off and perform. I was at the trade show last week. Our booth was full. And last year they had to trade show, their booth was empty. And you can just see by the signing sheets added and the kind of information people took from us. We're a long way from home yet. These things don't turn overnight, but if there's a tunnel we've been moving through here and we're about 9 or 12 months off. It looks like there's light on the other end of it and we're pretty sure we're not in a railroad tunnel. We're actually seeing the other side.

Richard Wesolowski

Analyst

Okay. Then lastly I've always viewed 5% as maybe the bottom of a good range for EFS and now you've layered in a business USM that historically has performed even above that. Over what time period is it reasonable to expect the company to raise EFS operating margin about 5%.

Anthony Guzzi

Analyst

We're getting impatient with it. So we got to get there sooner than later and better start get the run rate basis, and we need a little help from normal operating conditions to do that. But certainly I don't want to be having this discussion 12 months from now and tell you that I'm still hoping to get 4%.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Adam Thalhimer of BB&T.

Adam Thalhimer

Analyst

First question I wanted to ask about pricing. What does the pricing environment look like today and how long will the recessionary pricing environment continue to impact results?

Anthony Guzzi

Analyst

Well, I mean, we're working through some works so that usually take us 9 to 12 months. And you see that reflected in our margin guidance. And you've seen it reflected in our margin guidance throughout this recession if you think about it. We've been giving guidance the margins have come down and the actual margins have come down over the last 3 years. And we've been offsetting that with cost reductions and productivity, and we kept pace with it a little bit behind it because you can't possibly make up the good operating conditions we had in 2007 and early '08 versus what we faced in '09 '10 and early '11. I think pricing has stabilized. I think the real issue is decision-making takes longer and ends quicker. And it's a weird phenomenon. I mean, examples of what we're doing in industrial, some of these we have talked about for 3 to 6 months, 9 months with our customers. And when they start the starting gate, okay let's get this done and let's get it done now. Let's continue to work on the scope. The contractual terms are okay. They make sure they protect as they do that. But once we make the decision we wanted go to private owners because now we got approval and we see the opportunity because they're trying to compress the uncertainty period as much as they can. And you're also seeing people I think on the small project side, we still have a bit of a hangover there. And look, we caused some of the hangover ourselves. I've talked about this. We probably went a little too broader with some of our capability and try to bring fast-paced resolution like we do in the commercial and private world to some municipalities and other people that don't value it. So we'll get through that hangover. But I'd say a little better and I think it's a little better in the midsized market, which is encouraging to see because you see that in our backlog and you see that in our gross margins we reported.

Adam Thalhimer

Analyst

Great. And the 45% organic growth in your commercial backlog, does -- are we seeing the benefits from that organic commercial backlog growth in your result to date? And if not, when do we see that?

Anthony Guzzi

Analyst

No, you're not seeing it yet. It's hard for me to call when that's going to happen because some of the service work they start up over time. They clearly go back to the earlier question, that's how you start to see EFS margins expand and construction margins stay where they are.

Adam Thalhimer

Analyst

Let me throw this out. So one of the large HVAC OEMs noted that orders for commercial HVAC equipment were up 20% in Q1. They were forecasting 5%. What's your reaction to that?

Anthony Guzzi

Analyst

Well, I'll have to know where they were talking about, what parts of the product line. I listen to the same calls.

Adam Thalhimer

Analyst

They said it was energy -- largely energy retrofits and replacement work.

Anthony Guzzi

Analyst

I mean, again, you'd have to know what product lines. So some of that would be applied products, some of it maybe just rooftops. The other side is some of is just stock product. And distributing inventory is low as a get to the larger rooftop equipment, that could be an anomaly that they have caused. We are seeing customers return to the market for energy savings projects and that is a true statement. We'll see how sustained that is, and we'll see as we get through the summer months, if we just get a little bit of heat, customers should not be rewarded like they were last year for their consistent and continual deferrals of their maintenance.

Adam Thalhimer

Analyst

Okay. Great. And last question for me. I wanted to ask you about the buyback, so the absolute dollar amount spent was about half of what you spent in Q4. And I'm just wondering why you tapped on the brakes a little bit there?

Anthony Guzzi

Analyst

Well, I mean, the stock has performed reasonably well during the quarter. So I mean price is obviously a function of it. The window of time that we actually could be in the market was also limited between the ending of 2011, and then obviously when we got into a restricted period for the first quarter. The window wasn't as open pursuant to us being able to make open market purchases as opposed to us being restricted by a pre-file plan.

Adam Thalhimer

Analyst

But not -- for instance, I mean, no changes in your philosophy on cash management?

Anthony Guzzi

Analyst

No.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of John Rogers of Davidson.

John Rogers

Analyst

Tony, I wanted -- you seem to indicate -- I mean, we've got better market activity in the industrial market as opposed to the commercial markets in the hospitality which grew last cycle. Are the projects larger for you now and does that imply greater lumpiness in margin potential especially with your 80-20 rule just the nature of large construction?

Anthony Guzzi

Analyst

Yes, John, and they are also more where we're part of the decision. We're further upstream. So the answer is yes. The answer is yes and no. The margins will be lumpier. That happens on any large work, right, as you get into it? Especially with the 20% rule as you know. And I think it happens as you go through scope definition. It's a little bit of same phenomenon in the service side. I mean, we first start up the service customer you have a lot to learn and especially on the industrial side, right. Safety is paramount. You go through all the training cost. You go through all the crew cost. You get through all the testing in your crew. You learn the rhythm of the customer and then the margins start to come. So yes, I think in both places that is a different phenomenon than what you experience in typical commercial customer because once you do the equipment inspection and understand your task, it goes relatively quickly on the commercial side.

John Rogers

Analyst

So I mean, should we be concerned about the lack of organic backlog growth at this point?

Anthony Guzzi

Analyst

If I were sitting here with no organic growth in revenue, no organic growth in backlog, I'd be a little more concerned. But now with really 4 strong quarters in a row of decent organic growth at least for this period of time with the capabilities we've built, we're in a different phase that we've been in before. I would have expected, look, I said this in the discussion piece. We typically expect 2 or 3 quarters before, we see at least one quarter before revenue growth we see backlog growth. I think as we move closer to the owner and the end-user in this industrial work, we're seeing it a lot earlier. And we're seeing revenue growth and backlog growth. We see revenue growth things passing straight through backlog for lack of a better word. Everything goes in to backlog. It passes straight through.

John Rogers

Analyst

Right. And is that just the function of just excess capacity in the industry that the owners don't have to order as far as…

Anthony Guzzi

Analyst

No. I think it's less I do with excess capacity and more to do with wanting to compress the time of uncertainty as much as you can.

John Rogers

Analyst

Okay. And lastly, any comments on acquisition markets, what it looks like, thoughts there?

Anthony Guzzi

Analyst

Yes, we've been fairly active over the last 18 months. And we've done both kind of deals for EMCOR. For us to do something where private equity is playing or it's a broad option. You look at the 4 major things we've done over 12 years, they were all special circumstances. They were either something that happened in the capital market or something that happened to our property that created the opportunity for us to be able to buy versus someone that wanted to play a crazy value. You go back to more of the private market, tight deals we do. We did, what, 5 deals here in the last 18 months. Four of them were EMCOR sourced, EMCOR negotiated, EMCOR done. And the other one was an auction we started to bust down and you really have to understand how things are going to fit together and that was USM and what was causing the issues. We thought we understood them all. Like we said, we were about 9 months off. It doesn't change our long-term outlook. The acquisition market is okay. You're seeing a little more activity. We're seeing a little more activity on our private side, and I don't expect we're going to run out tomorrow morning and do something that would occupy unless it's just a tuck-in deal in our Mechanical Services or site-based team. They're fully engaged between contract start-up and integration of USM and repairing the small projects work they were doing. Look at the industrial side, you look to just our core mechanical and electrical business and you look to the government side. I mean, there are other areas that we would consider. I mean, we would get into government typically we look at an acquisition it becomes hard to pull off either because of a small business rules or the lack of visibility beyond the current contract sort of each time we've done that we went out and build our own capability. That's why we've grown so strong organically there.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Avram Fisher from BMO Capital Markets.

Avram Fisher

Analyst

You mentioned that weather was about $0.05 that comes out to about, by my estimate, about $5 million or $6 million of EBITDA which gets to about 5% margin that made USM attractive. And I just want to clarify that. Some have already asked about how long it would take to get to the 5% margin that as you said you would hope to ramp there. But even with the growth of the turnaround work and the improvements there, you're still running at EBIT margins below 4%, maybe in the 3% range. Is that a function of pricing, as well as underutilization?

Anthony Guzzi

Analyst

I think for us in the first quarter, it was cost. Some of it good cost, right, starting up contracts that are going to pay dividends in the long term. Some of the cost in a place like USM as you staff up. After the winter and a bit of materialized the good news is we have a different way we're going to handle that next year so we don't have to build up the fixed cost. Necessity is the mother of all invention. And so it got this cost. I don't want to blame pricing from this cost. I think the second thing is small project handover carried a little bit in the quarter. I mean, never big quarter for Mechanical Service anyway. So I think it's those 2 major factors we would have been where we wanted to be in USM had we had a normal winter in the quarter.

Avram Fisher

Analyst

And what I'm hearing you say is that pricing really isn't the issue. It's just the start-up costs on new projects, some management turnover cost at USM?

Anthony Guzzi

Analyst

Pricing has recovered a little bit in the industrial market and that's the major lever. We've still got some more way to go and we could use some volume there. As you know we can get more industrial work it will have an outsized impact on the margins in that segment.

Avram Fisher

Analyst

Okay. Got you. And then historically, there's been a pretty strong correlation between changes in backlog and changes in U.S. construction revenues. I'm not sure if you've discussed this already, but you're getting 15% construction revenue, organic construction revenue and kind of down organic backlog. I'm just trying to understand that disconnect and what's changed.

Anthony Guzzi

Analyst

Well, it's starting to look more like service work. As we're working alongside the owner to develop scope on these larger projects, we're burning it, building it. We're contracting it, executing and burning in a relatively short compressed time cycle from anything we've done in the past.

Avram Fisher

Analyst

And are there certain projects or types of projects you are engaged on that?

Anthony Guzzi

Analyst

Sure. I think some of the projects at the DOE site can have those characteristics. They can be smaller projects but they add up to a lot that have that characteristic. Food processing work that we're working on and some sectors that are pretty robust right now and fast paced projects have that characteristic. Data center projects can have that characteristic at times especially as you take this an existing structure and modified into a data center. High-tech projects in general always have that characteristics, because they wait forever and then say okay you guys get this done yesterday and then you mobilize quickly and get it out.

Avram Fisher

Analyst

And the DOE site work, is that Harry Pepper or [indiscernible] or...

Anthony Guzzi

Analyst

That's [indiscernible].

Avram Fisher

Analyst

And just remind me when acquisitions in Mechanical anniversary, is this the best acquired revenue?

Anthony Guzzi

Analyst

Yes, anniversaried within the first quarter. Southern obviously we just closed in the current quarter.

Avram Fisher

Analyst

Pepper is already done.

Anthony Guzzi

Analyst

Yes, Pepper has already anniversaried and...

Avram Fisher

Analyst

So it's primarily organic going forward?

Anthony Guzzi

Analyst

Yes. Other than [indiscernible], everything is organic going forward after this quarter.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Nicholas Coppola of Thompson Research.

Nicholas Coppola

Analyst

I wanted to ask a little bit about small projects business doing better throughout the year. I guess when do you expect to drive the improvement? Are there any signs in the marketplace that you can point to that can get the confidence that should occur?

Anthony Guzzi

Analyst

Well, one area it's going to better is in our control is we finished the work that wasn't so good to begin with and we get it out of our backlog and we stop kidding ourselves on what we can sell [indiscernible] our mechanical service that is in our control and we're well on the path of doing that. The second area is you need to see the energy service work return and it is and you need to see people starting to understand paybacks. And if you get a little bit of warmer weather, again, I don't want to declare victory here on first quarter on anything. But if you get a little warmer weather, I think it would be nice for customers not to be rewarded anymore for making terrible maintenance decisions over the last 3 years unless summer they have got rewarded and never got hot enough for them to stress their equipment. And so they don't need to be rewarded another season like that.

Nicholas Coppola

Analyst

Do we see -- have you seen more products out there? Have we seen last bidding pressure from your competitors? Are there -- is there...

Anthony Guzzi

Analyst

One of the things you're starting to see is some of our customers when we have long-term service agreements with which where all of this work comes from here either on a construction site or about 15% of our construction volume is a small project work too. That sort of job is $2 million or $3 million or less, is you're seeing people realize that testing the market is not so good when you need people to be able to come in and retrofit and renovate and work around your day-to-day operations. None of this is done in new buildings, right? None of these is done on new construction. So they're realizing the people that really know their operations and how to get it done are the best people to do that. So we are seeing a little bit of return to sanity in our long-term relationship customers are coming back to us to do this kind of work.

Nicholas Coppola

Analyst

Okay. And then I have another question for you about, I guess, a shift from maybe public work to private work. Are we seeing that and do you project that shift I guess continue to occur?

Anthony Guzzi

Analyst

Well, they have seen some of that shift with commercial backlog doubling and half of that being organic. We are seeing that shift. We have big gap to make up there with hospitality on the private side, and we're filling some of that gap with industrial and we're finding that out with different characteristic. We've done industrial work for a long time. It's just we're much closer to the decision-maker now with some of the capabilities and acquisitions we've made and organic investments we've made. So yes, the shift to private work is always more positive we think. We've done okay through this downturn on the institutional and public sector work and some of the best work we've ever done on EMCOR has been public sector work. It's just different.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of [indiscernible].

Unknown Analyst

Analyst

I had 2 questions. I think a lot of my other questions have been answered. When you talked a bit about the strange season and clearly it's gotten off to a hot start. When I walk around the city, there are definitely more trucks out on the maintenance side. So relative to last year which as you said was tepid what do you guys assume in your guidance about sort of spring and summer in terms of weather?

Anthony Guzzi

Analyst

We assume normal weather. Good weather [indiscernible] looks like this. In May, people are really, really uncomfortable in New York, in Chicago, and Boston, Connecticut and D.C. And they're uncomfortable to the point of being irritable. And the weather is in the high 80s, low 90s and they're saying, I can't survive this summer without making sure my system works really well. In that way 3 to 5 days that May and then in June, it stays above 85 degrees. You don't have anything that cold June weather where your young son or daughter is either playing soccer or baseball wearing a knit stocking cap versus their baseball hat because it's 55 degrees the first week of June and raining. So we don't need any of that. So we didn't assume either end of that spectrum, but we would certainly take we would deal with irritable people in New York not allowing us to park our vans correct in Chicago and Boston and all those places to pick up better margins. I see it's all going to happen on the technician side. Systems will break and we'll install more equipment and will install more equipment in the fall because people will say I mandated it to get through the summer I am not doing this again. Obviously, I made some really very bad decisions in this downturn about the care and maintenance of my critical HVAC equipment.

Unknown Analyst

Analyst

Got it. And then given those fairly irritable in April on some dates, has that been enough to peak start the season?

Anthony Guzzi

Analyst

Not yet. All we know is we had to send our technicians out earlier to start up systems in late March that than we typically would do.

Unknown Analyst

Analyst

But you assumed that it's just a part was outing that in your guidance?

Anthony Guzzi

Analyst

We assume that it looks a lot more like 2010 summer and a lot less like 2011 summer.

Unknown Analyst

Analyst

Second question is on the institution side. Can you talk just a bit about that, Tony? You guys did a great job of managing into down cycle with your diversity. Now when we look at the ABI index and restocking the commercial side picked up, but we see the institution side contract. And on the health care side, we have -- there might be some delays as people as people mull over the health care bill. Can you talk about what you're assuming for 2012 really on the institutional side, it doesn't stay stable…

Anthony Guzzi

Analyst

We're assuming a stable market.

Unknown Analyst

Analyst

Got it. Okay. And you're bidding just over there remains fairly strong.

Anthony Guzzi

Analyst

Yes. I mean we're seeing opportunities there. Sure.

Unknown Analyst

Analyst

Okay, great. Last question and that's on the petrochemical industrial side. All your peers on the energy side have indicated that they're getting very, very bullish on the petrochem cycle. Given the strength that you've built on the industrial side over the last several years, where could that business go for you? Have you done any internal forecast? Or qualitatively, can you talk a bit about it too?

Anthony Guzzi

Analyst

Well, surely. Nothing -- almost nothing would be better for EMCOR. Surely, nothing would be better for Facilities Services segment than to see a return to even 85% of what we had in 2007 and 2008. Now is there a path to get there? There may be a little different way together? We've diversified our customer base some. We've invested in some new capabilities that we didn't have, both on the custom fabrication side and on the service side. We are well positioned especially on the refinery side, but even broader on the petchem side even broader supporting some of the development on the pipeline side people trying to get the wet gas and dry gas mix and you need heat exchangers to do that because it runs hot. And so we're seeing all kinds of different kind of opportunities and we clearly have a backlog that's up right now. We're seeing better pricing nowhere near what it should be for the value we add. So yes, I mean, we look at it. We know it's been a tough couple of years and I think you know us well enough to know that we don't declare a victory until we almost go up by 3 touchdowns. So we're a long way from that yet.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Jeff Beach of Stifel, Nicolaus.

Jeffrey Beach

Analyst

Can you give us an idea of where the split is between private and public right now either in revenues or in backlog?

Anthony Guzzi

Analyst

We can get you that exact number. Let's think about this a little bit.

R. Matz

Analyst

Yes, it all depends -- Jeff, this is Kevin. Some of it depends on definition of what you think private sector work is. Let me define it as one way right now. If you take commercial hospitality and industrial together. In 2010 in the first quarter, that was 30% of our backlog. It's currently 44% of our backlog now with the biggest growth driver being the commercial work. And as Tony mentioned, USM is in there for about $260 million or so. The hospitality is down between those 2 between those 2x although it's a very small number and industrial as Tony mentioned we have about 85%. But again, sometimes in the health care side, there's some private sector money in health care as well but these numbers are sort of probably your biggest lump sum number. If you want to call me later, I can talk you through them.

Anthony Guzzi

Analyst

If you think about the industrial work, that's what we're seeing the more robust revenue growth. We're at least 50-50, Jeff, probably leaning more on the revenue side towards private sector versus public sector maybe even as high as 55% for either 45% of public which is at least a swing of 10% to 15% of where it was 2 years ago. So it's moving in the right direction.

Jeffrey Beach

Analyst

Okay. And then my follow-up regarding that I think in the last cycle, your private got to be higher than where it is. So it sounds like that still has some momentum and the way to go. But can you discuss specifically some of the trends within the key public-sector markets and whether this is giving you at this point stable opportunities, growth or whether that's shrinking our attractive opportunities partly on a relative basis?

Anthony Guzzi

Analyst

I don't think we have seen much change over the past 12 to 18 months. I would say it's stable. It's not a growth market, but that being said, if we win a significant opportunity even in a declining market for us It becomes a growth market, right. So when I think institutional federal government for some of the things we're doing, there are pretty attractive maintenance contracts and they become binary, right, we are either going to win them or not win them, if we win them it makes is look pretty attractive in the institutional space because there will be project work that will have fallen off that. We're bidding them. We expect to be down selected. We're be 1 of 3 and will see how it happens there's couple of significant ones. I think in transportation. I think for us it's been pretty steady, and we're looking at a couple of jobs right now that may take up a little bit these jobs will move pretty quick in the backlog. And water and wastewater we have been doing about the same levels of stuff plus or minus 15% to 20% for long time. And we see that continuing because there's a lot of old plants out there and some projects that have to be done just from safety and also to keep water supply where it should be like other things. So for us it's stable. I would not want to be a small projects guy counting on that in the government space or someone that could really offer broad capabilities and couldn't do significant projects I think you're going to do well maintenance or construction.

Operator

Operator

Our last question comes from the line of Rich Wesolowski of Sidoti & Company.

Richard Wesolowski

Analyst

Mark, would you mind reminding us how much the related amortization is expected for 2012 and whether that number drops in '13?

Mark Pompa

Analyst

Sure, give me one second on that. Believe it or not, I don't have that number. The expectations for fall 2012 are just under $30 million, and it will tail off to $25 million in 2013.

Operator

Operator

I would like to turn the call back over to management for closing remarks.

Anthony Guzzi

Analyst

Look, thank you all for calling in and thanks for what I thought was a pretty good question-and-answer session today. Look, good first quarter. We got a lot of work to do this year. One quarter does not make a trend. We got a couple of good quarters of organic growth here. We got to go out and execute and let's hope for some normal weather patterns. And let's hope that everybody in the EMCOR world and all of you stay safe. We got a lot of tough work to do. Thanks. Bye.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.