James H. Roberts
Analyst · D.A
Thank you, Jacque, and good morning, everyone. During today's call, I will present an overview of the quarter and spend a few minutes summarizing the year, and then Laurel will walk you through the fourth quarter numbers, and then I will wrap up with some comments around our outlook for 2013. Overall, we finished the year strong, as our team successfully worked to complete several Large Projects throughout the country, as well as secured 2 megaprojects, the Tappan Zee Bridge project in New York and the IH-35E highway project in Texas. Offsetting that positive impact are the challenges we continue to face in the West, as reflected in our Construction and Construction Materials gross margins. The traditional public sector work remains very competitive, especially in California. In alignment with our stated strategic plan, we are also actively pursuing work in the federal, the mining, oil and gas, and power-end markets. Our teams are also successfully securing work in the local, commercial and industrial markets. While encouraged by the positive indicators as they relate to the residential market, we are cautiously optimistic that we will see a benefit to our business in late 2013 or early 2014. Additionally, we are continuing to grow our Large Projects business across the country, as shown by our recent bid success announcements. As I've noted before, these projects tend to have shorter bid lists due to their complexity and balance sheet requirements. Once again, we have a strong backlog of quality projects to bid in 2013. Of the Large Projects on our radar screen, we are committed and have teaming arrangements to build over $13 billion with the work during the next 12 months, of which Granite's portion is about $6 billion. A sample of the projects bidding this year include the Goethals and Bayonne bridges in New York, the South Capitol Street Bridge and Dulles Metrorail extension in Washington D.C., and the I-4 ULTIMATE highway project in Orlando. We have excellent teams assembled on each of these projects and continue to be very confident that we will get our share of the work. We recently turned in our bids for the next phase of the Folsom Dam Project in California, the second phase of the US 36 project in Colorado, first package of the California High-Speed Rail, as well as the I-440 rehabilitation project in North Carolina. We intend to bid 3 more packages of the California High-Speed Rail project before the end of this year. The successful bidder is typically informed within about 120 days of the proposal date, so we look forward to hearing bid results on Folsom, US 36, I-440 and California High-Speed Rail, no later than June of this year. On December 31, we acquired Kenny Construction Company, making Kenny a wholly-owned subsidiary of Granite. This was an exciting step in our strategic diversification effort, as well as in our plan to grow our Large Projects business. Together with Kenny, our plan is to expand our presence into targeted end-markets, such as power, delivery, and water and wastewater infrastructure, both of which have attractive long-term fundamentals. Additionally, the combined company has the balance sheet, bonding capacity and expertise to pursue larger and typically more profitable projects in all markets. There are also opportunities for Kenny to self perform more heavy civil work in the power sector or utilize one of Granite's heavy civil units to perform this work, which Kenny has historically subcontracted. Also compelling is the opportunity to expand the existing underground Inliner business beyond its current Midwest and Mountain region presence, especially in the geographic markets where Granite currently operates. Another element of the strategic rationale is the expansion of the combined companies' heavy civil business and attractive Large Project opportunities in the Midwest. Pursuing larger projects in the broader geographic area will allow us to leverage existing relationships with contractors and engineers, and increase the margin potential of the civil portfolio. In fact, the Kenny team was a low bidder around its first civil projects since the combination of the firms, an $18.5 million grade separation and railroad bridge for the Illinois Department of Transportation, as well as an $18 million sewer construction project for the City of Chicago. Okay. Let's shift gears a bit here and address the current infrastructure funding situation. We continue to see fiscal constraints at the state and local levels driving increased interest into alternative project delivery, such as public private partnerships or better known PPP. Underpinning this interest is the increase in TIFIA funds, which were authorizing the recent Federal Highway Bill, MAP-21, and will serve as a critical source of sub-debt. Given the fact that historically, these loans have outpaced supply nearly 107 to 1, we are quite confident that TIFIA loans will provide a meaningful benefit to our business over both the short and long-term and conceivably free up additional funds for traditional projects. With regard to state budgets, while our revenues across the country have been improving, funding levels remain relatively low. As evidenced from recent budget proposals, states are looking at ways to either maintain their existing transportation budgets or raise taxes and/or fees to fund much-needed improvements. The need for infrastructure investment continues to outpace funding in all parts of the country and at all levels of government. We will continue to work closely with our representatives in Washington and in our local states to close this huge gap, by increasing revenue, as well as through the use of innovative financing to support public private partnerships. With that, let me turn the call over to Laurel. Laurel?