George Kunberger
Analyst · Vertical Research Partners. Please go ahead
Good morning everyone. Well certainly it’s a tragedy that Jerry is off dealing with the emergency that he is dealing with today. But on top of that, I am disappointed that you are not getting a chance to meet Terry [indiscernible] a phone, my young protege who have turned this sales department over to. I have lots of confidence in him and leaving the go to a very nice retirement, very confident in my backfill. But for now you will have to deal with the old guy coming out of the bullpen. So let me try and adequately fill in for Terry. As we look at the process area, we find oil and gas and chemicals as we traditionally make it up. I would characterize that area as good. The market, not robust and euphoric certainly, but good, and more importantly I would say stabilized. An indicator of the stability of the marketplace say as compared to last quarter and the quarter before is that all of the major projects we had in all of these areas going into the third quarter of this year have not been canceled. They have all progressed through major financial reviews within their own organizations and have gone on to the next step. And so that’s a very good sign that our client base is starting to get comfortable and understand the current economic conditions globally in this area. And indeed, there have actually been projects that were put on hold back a quarter or two ago that clients are calling us to restart and to think about get going and that’s particularly notable in the refinery states. Quickly jumping down to the refinery area, you know, there is a general uptick in that area. Those refining margins around the world are up as I’m sure you are well aware. There is a number of economic factors that are driving that. There is some growth and demand overall. There is certainly some opportunities in spot markets and taking advantage of low crude and track crude around the world particularly in the independent refineries, but also to a large degree even in the integrated oil company. So we’re starting to see projects that are being put on the floor, to work off of, from a prospect perspective, that are going to drive I think continued growth in this area over the next certainly year. So I am pretty bullish about that. In addition, there is some ongoing stuff that our refiners have to face relative to safety, energy efficiency, et cetera that are continuing to drive project. So that space is good I would say and we will continue to relatively good going forward. The oil and gas, which we basically put in upstream and midstream type of projects, obviously we all understand the economics of oil prices, but again those are starting to stabilize. And one important area for us, of course, is in Saudi Arabia and so the Kingdom has continued to invest in their social economic programs. And so they’re producing oil at a rapid pace and they are committed to – continuing to do that which is of course driving lots of midstream projects for us with Saudi Aramco. Even though areas like Canada and the oil sands continue to be very weak from a pricing perspective and large capital projects are certainly going to be few and far between, the sustaining capital markets for us is continue to be good. And more importantly being a very strong maintenance provider and craft service provider in Canada. We are actually growing that marketplace and continue to take market share. It’s not going to move the needle tremendously, but it’s certainly provides good stability in that marketplace for us. And of course of the fundamentals of the chemical business, despite Kevin talking about a little bit temporary softness in the marketplace, quite frankly the underlying fundamentals have not changed globally, driven by gas prices, they continue to be there. We’re going into, as you well know, under the third – third round of methane crackers. There is a lot of ammonia and those type of projects out there. Now, Jacobs, as you well aware, plays secondarily in those things in OSDLs and derivative type of projects, which I will tell you those projects are pretty ample on our prospects slate. And actually while we have not announced some of them. We have actually been successful in – some fairly large projects in that space even in the last couple of weeks. So in the secondary chemical space, things like our Montana project that we did announced this last quarter, which is a significant project, the fundamental economics of those projects are very, very strong. And so we expect, certainly that the stuff we have not backlog, to continue to go through and – again as Kevin said, to drive the mostly construction type of revenues in 2016, but our prospect list continues to also be refad. And so I am pretty bullish overall in the process sector. I’m not euphoric, but I am also pretty comfortable that it is going to be a strong part of our business for the next years to come.