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EMCOR Group, Inc. (EME)

Q4 2013 Earnings Call· Tue, Feb 25, 2014

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. My name is Tunisia, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the EMCOR Group's Fourth Quarter 2013 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Mr. Nathan Elwell, you may begin your conference.

Nathan Elwell

Analyst

Thank you, Tunisia, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to the EMCOR Group conference call. We are here today to discuss the company's 2013 fourth quarter and full year results, which were reported this morning. I would like to turn the call over to Kevin Matz, Executive Vice President of Shared Services, who will introduce management. Kevin, please go ahead.

R. Kevin Matz

Analyst

Thank you, Nathan, and good morning, everyone. For those of you guys that listened last quarter, I believe we started the quarter with our fire alarm going off, and we were expecting the fire marshal to come in and probably tell us to muster somewhere else. Well, about less than an hour ago, 45 minutes ago, our power went down. A local substation blew up, and so we're on battery backup. We believe we have enough time to be able to finish the call, but we've assembled in the different areas, so everything's a little bit out of sorts. But if we do go down, Sheila Patten, my assistant, will come on the phone, and we will move to another area. So if we do go down, don't hang up, and we'll be able to get you back in about 15 seconds. So let's muscle on through this. For those of you who are accessing the call via the Internet and our website, welcome, and we hope you have arrived at the beginning of our slide presentation that will accompany our remarks today. Please go to Slide 2. On Slide 2, you'll see the executives with me to discuss the quarter and 12 months results. They are Tony Guzzi, our President and Chief Executive Officer; Mark Pompa, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; Mava Heffler, Vice President of Marketing & Communications; and our Executive Vice President and General Counsel, Sheldon Cammaker. For call participants 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 find us at 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 include 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 for EMCOR's services, adverse business conditions, increased competition, mix of business and risks associated with foreign operations. Certain of the risks and factors associated with EMCOR's business are also discussed in the company's 2013 Form 10-K, which was issued this morning, and in other reports filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. With that said, let me please turn the call over to Tony. Tony?

Anthony J. Guzzi

Analyst

Thanks, Kevin, and good morning, and thanks for joining us. I'll first be covering Pages 3 to 5. To be clear, I'll be speaking to pro forma numbers, and to remind everyone, the pro forma adjustments are the add backs with respect to the closure of our U.K. construction business and a deal costs associated with our acquisition of RepconStrickland. What I'm going to do is I'm going to briefly discuss Q4 2013, and then I'm going to let Mark cover the details of our quarter and the year during his section of today's call. What I'm going to do then is focus the remaining of my introductory comments on full year 2013. At the end, after I do backlog, I'll give you a color on guidance for 2014, and that will follow Mark's detailed financial review and my discussion returning to backlog. For Q4 here, let me hit some high points so not to be redundant with Mark. We had very strong electrical growth in the quarter, and did okay for the year. We made very good operating margins for the quarter against a very tough compare. So we feel good about where the electrical business is coming out of the quarter. And we had good mechanical operating margins at 6.3%, and we showed the kind of sequential improvement that we told investors that we should see, as you look through the year after the write-downs on the DOE job and the manufacturing job that we've discussed throughout the year in the Southeast. Unfortunately, we did have another $1.9 million in Q4 write-downs on these jobs. The manufacturing job is finished, we're off the job. And the DOE job will have physical -- the installation will be physically complete, which means we'll have it installed here sometime in Q2…

Mark A. Pompa

Analyst

Thank you, Tony, and good morning to everyone participating on the call today. For those accessing this presentation via the webcast, we are now on Slide 6. As Tony indicated, I will begin with a detailed discussion of our fourth quarter 2013 results before moving to our year-to-date financial results derived from our consolidated financial statements included in both our earnings release announcement and Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this morning. So let's get started. Consolidated revenues of $1.66 billion in the quarter are up 3.2% from 2012. Revenues attributable to businesses acquired of $90.4 million positively impacted our U.S. Industrial Services and U.S. Mechanical Construction Services segments during quarter 4. Excluding the impact of businesses acquired, fourth quarter revenues declined organically $39.3 million or 2.4%. Domestic Electrical Construction revenues increased 17.9%. Domestic Mechanical Construction revenues decreased less than 1%. U.S. Building Services revenues decreased 7%, and U.S. Industrial Services revenues increased 62.6%, while our U.K. segment revenues declined 28.7%. The substantial revenue growth within the domestic Electrical Construction segment can be attributed to increased project activity within the quarter in the commercial manufacturing, institutional health care and transportation market sectors, predominantly within Western, Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic geographies. The revenue decline within the U.S. Mechanical Construction segment can be attributed to decreased project activities within the institutional health care and transportation market sectors, predominantly in the same geographies that Electrical expanded. U.S. Building Services revenues declines within the quarter were due to revenue decreases within both government and commercial site-based services, as a result of reduced levels of indefinite duration, indefinite quantity project opportunities due to sequestration, as well as the strategic reshaping of our commercial site business project portfolio, which we have referenced in each of the last 3 quarters. The revenue growth within…

Anthony J. Guzzi

Analyst

Thanks, Mark, and now you can see why I didn't go to the Q4 numbers in detail. And it can be great to get this pro forma behind us, but the pro forma activity we undertook of closing that U.K. construction business were seemingly one of the best things we've done at EMCOR. And those that have been with us a long time understand that, and so it is worth the 8 pages you had to go through. I'm on Page 15 now, and, really, what I want to do is point out the highlights. You'll see this is a new slide, and it really corresponds with what you'll see in the 10-K for '13 and '12. It does it by the segment. So what's the highlight here? Well, highlight is up for a little bit, up a little bit backlog for the year. We were really up a little better than that because our U.K. backlog's down about $58 million, which when you add that to the $45 million, we're up about $100 million. We expected the U.K. to be down. In fact, if that wasn't down, you'd be a little worried about how successful we've been at the exit of the operations. Here's the key point on this slide. The Electrical, Mechanical segment, the Electrical segment's up $160 million. The Mechanical segment's down $30 million. That's just 1 or 2 projects. Electrical being up and being our most successful business over a long period of time is a good thing, right? The Mechanical's basically flat, call it, especially considering the 2 problem projects, we're probably well in excess of that $30 million. Together, these 2 domestic construction segments make up 69% of our total backlog of $2.3 billion. And they're good performers and scaled businesses with long-term records…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Cory Mitchell of D.A. Davidson. Cory Mitchell - D.A. Davidson & Co., Research Division: My first question relates to the current quarter. I was just curious to hear your thoughts on the weather benefits in the Building Services.

Anthony J. Guzzi

Analyst

Well, Building Services is a plus. I mean, we're not going to pretend, it's not. But to make it a plus, though, let's be clear. It's not just, say, let it snow and let it be cold, and things happen. First of all, you have to be operationally set up to do very complex tasks on the snow side, which is manage thousands of sites. Then you have to have sold the right kinds of contracts. And then you have to have the right performance metrics and validation metrics for the customers. It's actually a high-end service because it's mission-critical. On the -- on our Mechanical Service part, which is the other part that benefits from the weather, again, you have to have the technicians that are trained, ready to go, can work in this kind of weather. Now we do have an offset to the plus and, look, the weather has been a net plus for us here in the first quarter, is in the Construction business, it works the other way. People can't get to work. There's productivity declines. We expect to make most of it up. Most of that eats into the contingency we have on the job, and we'll see how that turns out. We don't expect to have big difficulties. But on the balance, we did better in the quarter. We think we will do better in the quarter because of the weather. Cory Mitchell - D.A. Davidson & Co., Research Division: And then on the spring turnaround, how's that shaping out compared to the last season and last year?

Anthony J. Guzzi

Analyst

Yes. I'm always cautious to do -- to talk about this because I don't prognosticate the market. I mean, some of our competitors like to speak about the whole market. I'm not sure they actually know the whole market because none of us do. Here's what I know. We're busy. We're in the middle of it right now. We have lots of guys working in the field. We have lots of guys in the field working safely, thank God. What I don't know is how scope will move over the next 5 weeks up or down. 200 or 300 guys, a week longer on a job, or not a week longer on a job can take it, okay turnaround season, turn it into a great turnaround season. The market, overall, is in pretty good shape. Sure, things slip, they come forward, they do all that. We had some particularly large turnarounds in the first quarter of last year. We have some this year. But again, it's a balancing act across it all. We do know this. We think the next couple of years are pretty strong in the refinery and petrochemical space. And the work, you have to be prepared to do it. Like I said, you have to be flexible to be able to serve the customers. Small turnarounds can turn into large turnarounds. Large turnarounds can become medium turnarounds. And it all depends on your customer mix. Cory Mitchell - D.A. Davidson & Co., Research Division: Okay. And then one last one, some housekeeping questions. I'm just curious if this current quarter's interest rate is a good run rate for 2014. And then also, if you could talk a little bit more on your expectations for intangibles in 2014.

Mark A. Pompa

Analyst

Yes, sure. With regards to the interest rate, the interest expense in the fourth quarter is a little higher than a typical because when we did a refinancing transaction, we did have 1 lender exit the syndicate. So we had to accelerate the write-off of debt issuance costs, and that's disclosed in the 10-K. With regards to the borrowing rate, we're at an all-in rate right now, I think of -- I think it's 1 42 is what we disclosed. I would be very happy if that rate held for the entirety of '12 -- I'm sorry, '14. But for purposes of planning, we're presuming we're going to see a little bit of climb in that rate in the back half of the year. And with regards to the intangible amortization amounts, those amounts are also disclosed in the K. So for 2014, we're looking at around $38 million of amortization expense of intangibles as compared to the amount that we reported this year, which I think was just over $31 million or so.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Saagar Parikh with KeyBanc.

Saagar Parikh - KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc., Research Division

Analyst · KeyBanc.

First off, on your nonres commentary, 3% to 5% growth on the nonresidential market for 2014. That seems like it's a little bit better than maybe what you guys were indicating in the last 6 months in your, I hope, the comments. Can you just give us a more color on what's maybe made you guys a little bit more positive on nonres and when you expect to see that?

Anthony J. Guzzi

Analyst · KeyBanc.

Well, a couple of things. One is that the increase in our U.S. construction backlog and the increase in the commercial side of our construction backlog, those 2 things together make us a little more positive than we might have been 6 -- past 6 months ago. I think, look, I mean, we look at least 8 or 10 different sources of data. Those 8 or 10 sources of data are all over the place. We look at enough of them, though some of them we trust, some of them are a little suspect sometimes. They tend to be all more positive than we are at the low end there. And so eventually, I think you have to look at some of the trends in your own business, but also couple with outside people we're seeing, and put the 2 together and try to make sense of it.

Saagar Parikh - KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc., Research Division

Analyst · KeyBanc.

Okay. And then the second question, I know you said a couple of times on the call that in your Industrial segment, you might have some year-over-year comp issues from larger projects last year. Is there anything else that we should keep in mind in terms of large year-over-year comps, just as we forecast them?

Anthony J. Guzzi

Analyst · KeyBanc.

No.

Mark A. Pompa

Analyst · KeyBanc.

Yes. I think 4 -- Saagar, 4 -- as we go through '14, the comps back to '13...

Anthony J. Guzzi

Analyst · KeyBanc.

Are better.

Mark A. Pompa

Analyst · KeyBanc.

Are better, I'll go say, what Tony had mentioned earlier about the turnaround activity in Q1 of '13. But as far as the Mechanical and Electrical Construction business, there should be nothing unusual other than obviously the losses that we discussed with regards to the Mechanical Construction segment.

Anthony J. Guzzi

Analyst · KeyBanc.

And you guys, obviously, to get to the guidance, you -- the projection you have, you already corrected for that. I would just say that we've talked about this industrial thing. And one is we're pretty happy with where we are. We learned our business can be lumpy. We had about a 5-month run from the back half of '12 into '13, and it shows you what the power of that business can be. We fully expect a repeat that run in the future. It's a onetime event in any given period, but we're certainly set up to be able to do that for customers. And now we have more customers to be able to do that with the acquisition of RepconStrickland. But we also know the business can be a bit lumpy, and it works well for us because we have the underlying business across the rest of EMCOR to be able to handle that working capital need and to handle the ups and downs of that business, which can be our most profitable business at EMCOR.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of Charles Redding of BB&T Capital Markets. Charles E. Redding - BB&T Capital Markets, Research Division: Just a little bit of a follow-up on snow. I know you kind of mentioned that. Can you give us just a little more color on the business for the first quarter and any way kind of determine or quantify the impact from snow on Q1?

Anthony J. Guzzi

Analyst

Well, we're not going to do that. We don't give quarterly guidance. Clearly, we expect to do better. And so we don't give quarterly guidance and the tale [ph] it takes are going to be in about 8 weeks anyway. Charles E. Redding - BB&T Capital Markets, Research Division: That's fair. And then I guess on sequestration, I appreciate the color there as well. In terms of the outlook, is it safe to assume there is no negative impact in guidance?

Anthony J. Guzzi

Analyst

Well, we don't think it's going to get any worse. We don't have as many outstanding issues with the government as far as request for equitable adjustments. So we think we'll grind through those this year. And who knows, they may go into '15. They're not in a hurry to settle things that they directed us to do. With that being said, the DOE projects are coming to a close, the big one that we had issues with, and some other ones are doing quite well. So I mean, you put it all together. Like I said in my comments, we don't expect a whole lot more headwind from the government. We could win some new awards, but the start-up cost could be there, but then we'll get the benefit maybe later in the year or to '15. But it's sort of status quo, I think, there is where we're at other than new awards.

Operator

Operator

And there are no further questions. I will now turn the call back over to management for closing remarks.

Anthony J. Guzzi

Analyst

Okay. Everybody. Thanks for your interest in EMCOR. We appreciate being able to serve you, and we look to go back out and do it all over again here in '14, and continue to try to do well by our customers, our share-owners and our employees. Again, thanks for your time this morning and everybody, be safe.

Operator

Operator

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