Anthony J. Guzzi
Analyst · D.A
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 of success. I just like to note, since 2008, this is the highest level we've been at. We're not back to 2008 levels yet, but it's the highest level we've been at since 2008. And that's without much of a recovery yet in the nonresidential construction market especially in '13. If you go into the Building Services segment, it's exactly where we thought it would be. I think most people like revenues flat to down and profit up, a better base to build from, so when revenues start growing, you're bringing in your better mix of work. That's what this slide really is about. It's about backlog being down $79 million. So what makes that up? Well, we told you we were going through a reshaping of our site-based portfolio. That, in fact, happened. It was really 2 to 3 large contracts. One was not profitable. The other one was marginally profitable. And we said enough. Too many resource, not focused on the right thing. We served our customers great. We saluted and said, we'd love serving you, let's go serve people, to have a better profile for us. And the Government business is down also, but it's a little different story. We have a couple large contracts that we may or may not win, and we talked about the slow decision-making. The way we do backlog, unless we have the signed agreement on a go-forward basis, we don't put that 1 year of base service agreement in there. That's all we ever put in anyway. So now that we're month-to-month, because they haven't done a new award or haven't told us we don't have it, we're month-to-month, so all the time. That's basically a $30 million or $40 million contract we're waiting to hear on. And then we're waiting for new awards that we are in very good position to win, and they haven't been awarded. And then, of course, any significant IDIQ work would go in there, but most of it doesn't, and that's been slowed down. So again, Building Service is where we thought, and the good news is the small project work is up, and it's a better mix of work. If you go to Industrial, that's basically our shop work, and that's the newbuild in the shop work, very little of repair work. I would call that essentially flat. That's basically the difference in an order and a difference of timing. We feel good about where that business is, and we think it will be busy through the year. And like I said before, that's more a function of what's coming in on the front end there that's more of a capital play in this kind of backlog. So I like to go by market sector on Page 16. A real simple slide here, and this is the one you've seen from us forever. The positive on this slide is $110 million up in Commercial, and that's up to its highest level since Q2 2008, and that seems like ancient history, almost 6 years later now. That's really when the business started to turn down in a significant way. Now most third-party prognosticators think that nonres construction will be up. Some have low single-digits, some have mid single-digits, and some are even higher. We're sort of in the 3% to 5% bandwagon, I'll talk about that later. But again, it's still below the 2007 peak. So what this says is less backlog that we have overall, reporting on numbers, and then we've made some acquisitions, and we backlogged in the right places, and we feel good about that. And we withstood, really, the federal government screeching to a halt on new awards as far as the kind of things we do whether it be maintenance or a construction. So it's well positioned. We think we have a very good mix right now, and we feel good about where we're going for '14 and forward. Now let's go to Page 17 and 18, and probably the only reason most of you called into the call. Let's talk about '14. We expect to earn $2.40 to $2.70 a share, exclusive of this costs associated with the withdrawal for the U.K. construction market. Right now, if we had to put a number on this cost, we'd peg it at about $5 million. We expect to do at about $6.8 billion in revenue. Again, I just said the nonresidential market that we're planning, it is expected to grow 3% to 5%. I happen to think it will be a fairly slow growth environment here in the first half of the year, and that it may pick up from there. I do believe we will have opportunities in our Electrical and Mechanical Construction businesses. And of course, we don't expect the uncharacteristic losses we had on those 2 projects in 2013. I'd always cautioned that opportunities in construction are binary. You either win them or you lose them. We usually win our share, and we actually have great success in winning our targeted projects. You go to the Industrial segment, and we should have growth beyond our RSI acquisition, and we feel good about where we are and expect a tough compare on an organic basis in Q1. Bottom line is we blew it out in Q1 of '13 on our -- in our Ohmstede business. We expect to do well, but again, it's scope and timing. It's a decent turnaround season, so we'll see. We are definitely winning our share of the market, but a lot of this depends on scope, expansion and timing. Industrial, we believe it should be a decent year. Here's what we've learned though in the refinery and petrochemical space. We have learned to be as flexible as a gymnast as our customers are constantly adjusting scope and timing. Sometimes that creates more opportunity, as what happened in Q3 and Q4 2012 and what happened in Q1 of 2013. Other times, it causes a little bit of short-term pain because you may have more resources than you need to serve. But here's what's certain. If you have the right manpower, if you have the right technical supervision, you have the right engineers and you have the right capacity in your shops and your cleaning stands and everything else, you can really do a great job for your customers. And you can do well for your shareholders. We happen to believe we're set up to do all of the above, and we think utilization should remain high in these refineries. Why? Because domestic crude production's high, and there's nowhere else for it to go. In Building Services, we expect to continue to expand margins, and certainly, the weather has helped us here in the first quarter. We continue to increase our customer penetration, but let's be clear. We need to add some quality new customers this year. We do not expect more headwinds from our government. However, I think our government is incapable of creating any tailwind either. The U.K. closure is essentially complete. I talked about the additional $5 million in expenses for the year, and I think Mark's hoping, so he doesn't have to go through that soliloquy again, that this will largely be behind us in Q3. All in all, we do see earnings growth. And if the market recovers faster than we see right now, we have a decent chance of achieving the midpoint or higher in our guidance range. And really, what drives us to the lower end is mostly macro-related. The market slows down. There's a big disruption. The refinery guys get jumpy in the fourth quarter turnaround schedule. Things slide out into '15. Unseasonably cold, unseasonably warm next December. It takes all those things or a combination of those things to get us to the low end, most of which aren't in our control. What gets you to the midpoint or the higher end of the range? Well, winning some quick term work, a sizable quick term work, and we've done that before many times. Not having limited schedule slippage -- or having limited schedule slippage within the Industrial business, basically doing the scope we expect to do on the turnarounds. Having seasonal temperatures, having everything just to be the way it's supposed to be would be fine with us. And winning new customers and expanding scope with them when we win them. We need to keep our costs in line. We're really good at that, and we'll continue to be good at that. And of course, we will be as opportunistic as ever in the pursuit of new organic growth. As far as acquisitions, I think I sound like a broken record when I say this. Deals happen when they happen. We don't set that agenda. We talk to people. To me, right now, I know that the headlines are that the M&A market's back. I think that's a high end of the market. I think that's the megadeals. The part of the market we're in, which is the mids market, to us seems slow right now, which is all right by us, as we digest RepconStrickland. We like to grow by acquisition. We think we're pretty good at it over the long term. We think any one of our segments have attractive opportunities, both to add niche services, expand our geography and continue to do consolidating acquisitions. That's in Construction, Mechanical Services, site-based, Government Services and Industrial Services. Like RepconStrickland and USM, we watched it for a while, and we'll be opportunistic when we can. And with that, I'll take your questions and turn it back over to Tunisia.