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Jacobs Solutions Inc. (J)

Q4 2015 Earnings Call· Mon, Nov 23, 2015

$126.41

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning and welcome to the Jacobs Engineering's Fourth Quarter 2015 Results Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today’s presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions] Please also note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Kevin Berryman, Executive Vice President and CFO. Please go ahead, sir.

Kevin Berryman

Analyst

Thank you, Laura and good morning and good afternoon to all. We welcome everyone to Jacob’s fourth quarter fiscal year 2015 earnings call. I will be joined on the call today by Steve Demetriou, our new President and CEO. And as you know, our earnings announcement was released this morning and we have posted a copy of the slide presentation to our website which we will reference in our prepared remarks. I would also like to remind everyone that Jacobs is hosting a webcast presentation to the financial community tomorrow beginning at 08:00 AM Eastern Standard Time where management will discuss our fiscal year 2016 initiatives in more detail. Of course we invite you to join this event to hear more about the important changes that we are making in the company going forward. Before starting I would like to refer you to our forward-looking statement which is summarized on Slide 2. I will provide our customary review of our forward-looking statement. The company requests that we point out that any statements that the company makes today that are not based on historical facts are forward-looking statements. Although such statements are based on management’s current estimates and expectations and currently available competitive, financial, and economic data, forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain, and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results of the company to differ materially from what may be inferred from the forward-looking statements. For a description of some of the factors, which may occur that could cause or contribute to such differences, the company requests that you read its most recent earnings release and its annual report on Form 10-K for the period ended October 02, 2015 including Item 1-A, risk factors, Item 3, legal proceedings and Item 7 management’s discussion and analysis of financial conditions and results of operations contained therein, for a description of our business, legal proceedings and other information that describes the factors that could cause actual results to differ from such forward-looking statements. The company undertakes no obligation to release publicly any revisions or updates to any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. With that, I will now turn to the agenda for today which is shown on Slide 3. Steve will begin with a discussion on his first impressions since joining Jacobs three months ago, followed by his thoughts on our 2015 performance. I will then present the financial details for the fourth quarter and the full year of fiscal year 2015 including an update on our restructuring initiative, our share buyback program and our backlog. Steve will continue with the market update for each of the business sectors, provide his thoughts on our outlook for the 2016 fiscal year and also discuss the recent reorganization that we announced. He will then conclude with some closing thoughts before we open it up for some Q&A. With that, I will now turn the call back over to Steve.

Steven Demetriou

Analyst

All right, thank you Kevin. I'm now on Slide 4 and I want to welcome all of you to our 2015 fiscal year end and fourth quarter earnings call, my first since joining Jacobs. As Kevin mentioned, we will also be hosting our annual investor presentations in New York and Boston tomorrow and hope that many of you can join us. Kevin and I will be accompanied by the four lines of business Presidents; Terry Hagen, President of Aerospace & Technology; Andy Kremer, President of Industrial; Gary Mandel, President of Petroleum & Chemicals, and Phil Stassi, President of Buildings & Infrastructure. And all four of these gentlemen are here this morning to assist during the Q&A session. When offered this leadership position by the Board of Directors to become the next CEO of Jacobs, I knew I had an opportunity to join and lead a great company. What I've learned in my first few months have exceeded the expectations as it relates to both the strengths of Jacobs and the opportunities to improve and grow. For most of my first three months I travelled across the globe to meet numerous Jacobs' employees and customers across many of our market sectors. I have experienced the safety commitments that's best-in-class built off a Beyond Zero program that our customers value and which demonstrates a true culture of caring for and commitment to our employees. I’m excited about the talent that exists at Jacobs and the superior engineering, construction and technical services capabilities. And our portfolio of customers and in markets served is among the best and most diverse in the industry, a huge strength that we need to do a better job of leveraging for growth and demonstrating the benefits to our shareholders. What has also been exciting to learn during my…

Kevin Berryman

Analyst

Thanks Steve. So let's split forward to Slide 7 where I will first discuss our financial performance for the 2015 fourth quarter. Revenue for the fourth quarter was $3.1 billion and earnings per share was $0.80 which was as Steve noted at the higher end of the guidance we provided at our Q3 earnings call and comfortable ahead of consensus. While we continue to see macroeconomic headwinds and continued commodity weakness that has impacted certain of our end markets this quarter, it is important to note that on a constant currency basis our revenues actually grew at a rate of 2%. That is benefiting from the previously disclosed additional week on our Q4 results in 2015. During a year of volatile end market dynamics the company was again able to leverage the strengths of its diversity and simultaneously manage costs resulting in one of the strongest underlying absolute levels of quarterly adjusted EPS performance during 2015 with our Q4 adjusted EPS coming in at $0.80 per share. Please also note that the quarter adjusted EPS figure also includes a negative foreign exchange impact of 4% from the year ago comparable figure. One of the key messages that we would like to convey to you this morning is to note that this year ended up being a year of stable results for the company. While certain of our end markets continued to face challenges, our diversity and cost reduction initiatives allowed us ultimately to deliver consistent results. In the first instance, our diverse portfolio and specifically the stronger elements associated with those less challenged end markets helped to mitigate some of the pressure on our revenues and gross margins associated with some of the more challenged markets. In the second instance our lower SG&A cost was supported by the increased benefits…

Steven Demetriou

Analyst

Thank you, Kevin. I'm now on Slide 13. As we move into the 2016 outlook, I'd first like to update you on our end market diversity and give you a brief overview on how these markets are impacting Jacobs as we start the new fiscal year. As you know, we are one of the most diverse E & C companies and our cost reimbursable contracts continue to represent 83% of our revenues. As I referenced in my opening comments our revenue mix continues to evolve with total fiscal year 2015 oil and gas refining and chemicals represented approximately 43% of total revenues down from 48% in fiscal year 2014. But within that group of businesses, chemicals increased. Buildings and infrastructure grew from 17% to 21% of total revenues and national government grew from 18% to 22%, both being notable increases that offset the declines in upstream oil and gas and certain mining sectors. Starting with next quarter's earnings call, we'll discuss our end markets by the new four lines of global businesses consistent with our new organization structure. This new segmentation will be consistent with the way we'll prioritize and focus growth initiatives while also providing shareholders better clarity on the performance and benefits of our diverse portfolio. However, for today consistent with how we've previously discussed our markets, I'll now provide an update on how we see things trending in fiscal year 2016. This next slide starts with our processed segment which includes the Oil & Gas Refining and Chemical sectors. As we look to fiscal year 2016 the outlook continues to present a mixed bag. As you all know, the significant decline in oil prices has had a major impact on our customers' cash flows and capital spend, especially in the upstream side of the oil and gas…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And our first question will come from Jerry Revich of Goldman Sachs.

Jerry Revich

Analyst

Thank you. Good morning. I’m wondering if you folks can talk about the range of your expectations embedded within your guidance for revenue burn and margins, Kevin, if you could just frame that for us? And maybe secondly, there are number of moving pieces between the cost reduction efforts on one hand and the pricing pressure that you cited in the prepared remarks, can you flush out for us how we should be thinking about gross margins and SG&A to sales on a run rate basis post the restructuring?

Kevin Berryman

Analyst

Thanks for the question Jerry and good morning to you as well. Look, I think, we won’t go into a lot of details here, but I will tell you clearly that our efforts on the restructuring and resulting in what we believe will be some fundamental changes and our SG&A cost going forward. By default if we're successful in doing that which obviously we are assuming and we are telling you we feel good about that that implies given our guidance that there is some pressure on our gross margin. And I think that clearly the dynamics as it relates to certain of the end markets that are under pressure or those places we see at most and so effectively at the end of the day, the guidance would suggest that we’re able to maintain our kind of EPS levels given the fact that we’re able to reduce our SG&A which offsets some of the gross margin pressure.

Jerry Revich

Analyst

Okay. Thank you. And a follow-up on the chemicals business, your business picked up well ahead of your peers and has been good growth driver over the past couple of years, it obviously slowed this year, can you talk about how much visibility you have on that picking up in the back half of fiscal 2016 as I think the prepared remarks describe, is it the timing of a couple of major projects or can you just give us some more color on what you’re seeing in that end market?

Kevin Berryman

Analyst

Yes, why don’t we ask Gary Mandel to answer that question?

Gary Mandel

Analyst

Yes, our pipeline of chemical prospects is probably more robust than we’ve seen in several years; through Q4 and through November of this year we've picked up some wins, some of which we can announce, some Steve mentioned we’ll announce in Q1. We see a lot more opportunities and we’re able to leverage with the new line of business structure those opportunities globally. So there is a lot more communication and focus on that since we have a single Head of chemicals globally. And so we feel some of those are in the pre-feed feed stage, but we will convert in the second half of the year and that’s why we told you we believe the second half will be more robust.

Jerry Revich

Analyst

Great, thank you.

Operator

Operator

And the next question will come from Steven Fisher of UBS.

Steven Fisher

Analyst

Great, thanks. Just a quick follow-up on the chemicals question first. Just thinking back to 2013, 2014, you had a number of chemicals prospects as well and some came through, but others lost to or lost to competition. So I guess, I’m curious how you think things might be different this time around and how the confidence you have that that business will actually start picking back up in the second half of the year? Thanks.

Gary Mandel

Analyst

Yes, this is Gary again. Yes, there was a lot of competing projects a couple of years ago and if you remember we had some project cancellations as well. We’re seeing a different environment here. There is more pure play chemical companies that are pursuing these projects with the low feedstock and the pricing improvement and supply chain we see them going forward. Our estimates are matching the customers' estimates. We believe they will get sanctioned and move forward. Especially looking at the U.S., the Middle East and Asia, we see a lot more projects in those three areas and the dynamics are such that we believe they will move forward.

Steven Fisher

Analyst

Okay. And then just a question on the guidance, I mean can you just give us a sense for the overall direction of revenues in fiscal 2016? And then perhaps the cadence and I’m assuming is going to be negative in the first half of the year, year-over-year and then pick up positive? And maybe if you could just talk a little bit about the mix how that might be different 2016 versus 2015 and how that specifically might be playing into your margin trajectory?

Kevin Berryman

Analyst

So Steve, then let me take that, this is Kevin. So a couple of things, I think what we would suggest is, certainly at the gross margin line there is going to be some pressure that would imply that there will be some pressure on the top line. But as you know, we focus more on the gross margin because of the pass-through dynamics and what not relative to how that flows through revenues. But certainly there will be downward pressure on revenues as well and I would suggest to you in the first part of the year, we’re still comparing to the first part of 2014 which was still on a downward trajectory as it relates to some of the businesses. So yes, the pressure will be larger in the first half of the year. To the point that Gary has been alluding to and responding to the first few questions, certainly there are differences in mix that we’ll be developing longer term over the course of the year and certainly we’re expecting that chemicals will be stronger. We also believe that some of the other businesses will be more stable and have upward trends as well, but that will offset some of the continued challenges that we think we will have certainly in the first part of the year in mining and minerals. And remember, we’re still comparing to our mining and minerals number in the first quarter a year ago that was still on a downward trajectory. So yes, there is some mixed dynamics going on, but all in all, I would suggest that there is going to be some pressure on gross margins and on the revenue side and probably largest in the first quarter, first half of the year.

Steven Fisher

Analyst

But how about on the field services versus professional services is that - obviously your backlog in field services picked up, is that going to be associated with some margin pressure as well?

Kevin Berryman

Analyst

Well, the good news is that some of the field service work is in the pharma-bio space which is generally a little bit better in terms of the field service margin, but yes there will be some impact there as well.

Steven Fisher

Analyst

Okay, thanks a lot.

Operator

Operator

And the next question is from Tahira Afzal of KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Tahira Afzal

Analyst

Good morning, folks.

Kevin Berryman

Analyst

Good morning.

Tahira Afzal

Analyst

You know if I look at the biotech and pharma side, clearly there is a lot of momentum there. I would love to get an idea if you’re seeing any competitive pressures there, it is one of the market that I think there seems to be sustainable momentum and I’m curious if you’re seeing some of your more - we have a pretty strong position there, but would love to get a sense competitively how that is holding out?

Steven Demetriou

Analyst

Yes, this is Steve here. You’re right, it is I’d say on the top end of the exciting and growth markets that we’re experiencing right now and as a result I would say it’s the least of our concerns from a margin standpoint and more, we’re more focused on how we properly resource and make sure we capitalize and capture all the growth that is in front of us.

Tahira Afzal

Analyst

Got it, okay. And from the incremental savings you’re generating Kevin, most of those sort of being pass through to investors, how should we think about the visibility of those on the margin line?

Kevin Berryman

Analyst

As we’ve communicated in the past Tahira, we will give you a perspective of what the savings are. We also have said to you that not all of those savings are going to actually be seen on the P&L, but we will reinvest some of it back into our business, certainly some of our investments in our people, in our systems or some of the things that we’ve talked about will be required to be done. But we will provide that clarity as we work through the course of the year to give you a little bit better sense. The good news is, is that the savings are coming through and it provides us the flexibility to do some of those things that we need to do and at the same time offset some of the pressure points that we’ve talked about.

Tahira Afzal

Analyst

Got it, thank you folks.

Operator

Operator

And next we have a question from Andrew Kaplowitz of Citigroup.

Andrew Kaplowitz

Analyst

Good morning guys. Nice quarter.

Kevin Berryman

Analyst

Thank you.

Andrew Kaplowitz

Analyst

Kevin, can you talk about Jacobs' backlog as we go through 2016? You actually maintained sequential backlog on the strength of the pharma-bio stuff that you talked about in 4Q, given an increased currency headwind, so when you look at 2016 can you maintain or grow backlog on the strength of the industrial or government or pharma-bio portfolio or maybe the downstream that you talked about trying to improve?

Kevin Berryman

Analyst

Let me start off and just give you my perspective of the backlog. When you look at our backlog or I analyzed our backlog over the course of the last year, it’s basically in the flattish side up slightly and the major story is a significant reduction in our backlog on upstream, on the petroleum side and a significant increase in the specialty industrial side of our business led by the pharma-bio. And in between all that, I would say is a good solid performance of backlog from the rest of our business including some of the refining and chemicals side of our process, building and infrastructure, solid performance in our technology, aerospace and technology group showing good strength. The mining decline actually had occurred starting a year ago. So when you look at our backlog it’s not that heavily impacted because we felt the lot of that deterioration in the past. And so, right now it’s all about winning new business and I think we gave you a flavor in our opening remarks there is lot of energy, excitement around all four of these sectors that we’re focusing on. And yes, we do believe that we have excellent prospects to continue to strengthen our backlog over the near term. So that is my perspective of the backlog.

Andrew Kaplowitz

Analyst

Okay, Steve so could you give a fresh advice as you look at the company, you guys have honestly talked about restructuring, you’ve upped your cost and benefits there, but the Jacobs have been a company over a long period of time there has been a lot of acquisitions with arguably some people think not as much integration as may be union to take place, so when you step back and look at the business and you talk about the strategic review that you guys are doing, is that one of the areas where you could take significant cost out over the next year or just sort of consolidating internally and moving forward how do you look at that?

Steven Demetriou

Analyst

It’s a good question and my personally – much I have been doing a lot of digging into the acquisitions and since the beginning of the company there has been approximately 70 acquisitions over the course of the many decades and that’s been a lot of work is makes up Jacobs today. And when you look at the most recent acquisitions they were among our largest and I do believe that there is still meat on the bone with regard to driving efficiencies and synergies. The company was very focused on aggressive growth. Frankly, as we all, the leadership team looked back at the acquisitions we feel like they were excellent strategic acquisitions, and but we could probably have done better on the integration side and driving the full benefits of cost synergies. And so the good news is some of that is still there and were focused on those and as part of our strategic review will be if and when as when we get back into the acquisition initiatives to have a much more robust best-in-class integration process in the company.

Andrew Kaplowitz

Analyst

That’s it. Kevin just one clarification, the $100 million in restructuring costs you had in the quarter is that all in SG&A or the vast majority could you give us that number of that $100 million is it all SG&A?

Kevin Berryman

Analyst

Yes, just think of it basically as SG&A. It's almost entirely SG&A. There is a piece that probably goes up in the gross margin, but for your modeling purposes is not worth talking about.

Andrew Kaplowitz

Analyst

Great, thanks guys.

Operator

Operator

And the next question comes from Brian Konigsberg of Vertical Research.

Brian Konigsberg

Analyst

Yes, hi good morning.

Kevin Berryman

Analyst

Good morning.

Brian Konigsberg

Analyst

Steve, maybe I just wanted to push a little bit more on the commentary around just the oil and gas spending you noted, do you think that we are near a bottom, when you make those comments are you kind of aggregating what you’re seeing in chemical with oil and gas or are there things, downstream that may be still offsetting upstream that might be coming down, may be give me at little more clarity on what you see your confidence you are seeing a bottom and are there kind of offsetting components to that aggregate number you are talking about?

Steven Demetriou

Analyst

Yes, that’s a good question and my comments on hitting the bottom and stabilizing is more from a Jacobs position in that industry and what gives me confidence that we are near bottom of and should see stable profile and in fact may be some momentum by the second half is that most of our activity is focused on refining and chemicals. In the upstream we’ve got a good position on sustaining capital and maintenance and most of the major project work that’s behind us and so when we look at our backlog and we look at the initiatives that are in front of us what gives me confidence is the fact is that we're well positioned in that refining and chemicals sector. We all recognized that there is a lot of uncertainty on oil prices and there is reports that things could get worse before they get better, but as we look at our mix of businesses and prospects we feel like we can operate through that uncertainty pretty successfully.

Brian Konigsberg

Analyst

Got it and secondly, you also made a comment about just working capital and thoughts on potential opportunities on that front. You are a little bit asset heavy relative to your peers from a working capital perspective, may be can you talk about what components you think you might be able to make progress on? And just in this type of environment how realistic is it to kind of push on the customer base to allow for a better working capital dynamics?

Steven Demetriou

Analyst

Yes, Brian I’ll start and let Kevin build on this, but again as I come into the company and look at what we have been focused on working capital was not at the top of the list over the last couple of years compared to some of the other key initiatives that the leadership was focused on and we were now brought that to the forefront and have put that as one of our key objectives and driving working capital improvement and really the specific component is accounts receivables. And we analyze our working capital even in this difficult environment where customers are looking to stretch, et cetera, we believe there is significant improvement opportunities over the near term and so we expect to see that be a very successful trend in 2016.

Brian Konigsberg

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Next we have a question from Michael Dudas of Sterne Agee.

Michael Dudas

Analyst

Good morning everyone.

Kevin Berryman

Analyst

Good morning.

Michael Dudas

Analyst

My question is for you Steve, the first question is, I looked on Slide 17 about the transformation and how you set up the company with division and then structure, can you just say how you look at incentivizing the management teams and structures? Are you looking at return on capital targets? Obviously safety is going to be very important, but are the earnings, margins, how they’re being viewed by success and how that’s on a bottoms up basis translate to some of the bottom line growth that you’re anticipating for the company over the next three or five years?

Steven Demetriou

Analyst

Okay. Thanks Mike for that question and again that is really a key question and something we’ve focused heavily on over the last couple of months and so when you look at Slide 17 and you see that organization led by the four business lines, one of the first key changes is that these four Presidents have P&L, balance sheet, accountability at a much more focused transparent way than we've had in the past in the company and that cascades down through their leadership teams and the organizations. And so as we look at how we’re setting up the incentives and goals for management, the short term manual incentive is going to be focused on operating profit and working capital and it will be focused where these leaders will have a component that is total company and a component that is based on their lines of business and both the terms of operating profit and working capital. And as we look at our long range incentive around equity, that current program is going to be tied to EPS and it’s going to be tied to shareholder return relative to how the market is trending. That’s the first phase of what we’ve done in implementing and I think maybe major enhancement to incentive and accountability over the near term. Once we complete the strategy work by mid-year, other than strategic plan will most likely focus on potentially an additional metric or two that we need to be accountable for and that’s where potentially a return component could be introduced to one of our team focal points and metrics that are going to drive the company and we will see what comes out of that strategy.

Michael Dudas

Analyst

My follow-up would be, as you look the first three months at the organization and in your strategic review, how do you view the risk tolerance and the risk profile of Jacobs' current book of business, and how you think it should be going forward, as the investment community and marketplace looks at a lot of cost plus, risk profile quite low. Is that something that's a core concept? Is that something that might adjust, given what's happening in the marketplace in some of your key growth driving in the market going forward?

Steven Demetriou

Analyst

One of the strengths of Jacobs over the years has clearly been our reimbursable, large reimbursable portion of our portfolio. And as I talk about preserving some of the cash that is clearly one of the things that we want to continue to be viewed by our shareholders and continue to have a smart intelligent risk profile. But I used that word intelligent risk is that as we reassess things in my first three months, we may have been overly conservative on some opportunities that we’re clearly capable of executing and still maintaining a very prudent risk profile. So I expect in the outcome of our strategy work by mid-year that we’re going to identify some additional opportunities that aren’t currently in our mix, but will still be viewed by our shareholders and our board as being prudent risk opportunities.

Michael Dudas

Analyst

That's it, look forward to seeing you today, thanks.

Steven Demetriou

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

The next question will come from Anna Kaminskaya of Bank of America.

Anna Kaminskaya

Analyst

Good morning guys. I guess this is a follow-up on the previous question, but I wanted to get more color on your announcement having dedicated field service units in the U.S., is this more to drive more synergies or cost savings – or hello, can you hear me?

Steven Demetriou

Analyst

We’re hearing.

Anna Kaminskaya

Analyst

Are you looking to grow it as a standalone business where you may be do move work as a direct high construction business, but larger construction project, I'd appreciate any more color that?

Steven Demetriou

Analyst

Yes, I’m going to start with just a quick introduction and turn it over to Gary Mandel to talk about that, that's a lot of this starts on the process side, but cuts across the entire company. There is, I hate to say this because a lot of people think you can only do one versus the other, but this is one where we clearly see first and foremost growth. It is driven by growth, but also offers us the opportunity to drive some synergies by putting it all under one leader. So, let me turn it over to Gary to enhance that.

Gary Mandel

Analyst

Thank you, Steve. Yes, it is a growth strategy as evidenced by our increasing fuel service component that Kevin talked about that. As many of you have been tracking us for a number of quarters, we had a lot of projects in prefeeding fee that are now going to the execute base where we will be delivering the construction. But it is also a strategy we talked about the headwinds in our upstream all markets including the Canadian oil sands. One of the primary drivers for us in Canada right now is sustaining services and maintenance and so it was an opportunity to put this under one leader, to synergize the resources, to take care of our sustaining services and maintenance, but also grow the construction element as we’re starting to see the projects get into the execute base.

Anna Kaminskaya

Analyst

So would that business be also doing construction part of the projects where you were not involved from the feed side of the business?

Kevin Berryman

Analyst

We actually have several of those opportunities under contract today and are pursuing others as well.

Anna Kaminskaya

Analyst

Great, and just a quick follow up on your cash flow redeployment. I think you said you would be more measured on buybacks. So does it mean you have a higher appetite for acquisitions over the next year, and if you do, where would you be focusing on? And then I guess going back to Steve on just the M&A process, besides the integration post M&A, do you envision any changes to how you source the deals or do due diligence, you do a separate kind of corporate development team to focus on M&A? Any color on that would also be appreciated.

Steven Demetriou

Analyst

Yes, so I’m going to continue to come back to the - I think we’re going to be in a much better position to explain all of this over the course of the next six months as we complete our strategy because I think you would want that to be strategically driven versus some initial opinions. But I will say that it's clear as I've coming into the company in the first three months that as we get into M&A in the future that we will want to do two things, we will want to have a very robust internal M&A capability with clearly the business is identifying the opportunities, but have a robust and experienced internal execution M&A team that takes those great ides of coming from the businesses and drive those and I think that will be an enhancement potentially from the way we've done in the past. But then marrying that is that we are going to want to haven an improved integration process in the company. And the good news about all this is, all of us have a lot of experience in this and so this is something we know and will be able to implement. And so the most important thing is let this be strategically driven coming out of our strategic plan and at that point we will have more to talk about.

Anna Kaminskaya

Analyst

And what about the just M&A appetite or is it similar that we would have to wait couple months?

Steven Demetriou

Analyst

Yes, again M&A will first of all need to be part of our long term, part of our long term portfolio of growth initiatives to complement our organic and so when will that occur we don’t know yet today. I mean we - there are some very small initiatives that we’re looking on. I think we feel comfortable that if we made some very small bolt-on initiatives that those could be easily absorbed by our company, but as far as anything that’s material that will come out of our strategic plan.

Anna Kaminskaya

Analyst

Okay and just a clarification, how much of buyback is in your 2015 outlook if any?

Kevin Berryman

Analyst

Well, Anna this is Kevin. Look as we suggested, we will be measured and kind of ratably spend against our $500 million over the three-year term.

Anna Kaminskaya

Analyst

Okay, but it does include some assumption for buyback?

Kevin Berryman

Analyst

Yes, it does.

Anna Kaminskaya

Analyst

Thank you. Look forward to seeing you tonight.

Steven Demetriou

Analyst

Right, thank you.

Operator

Operator

And the next question comes from Jeff Volshteyn of JPMorgan.

Jeff Volshteyn

Analyst

Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Continuing on the subject of alignment, so they were senior leaders in place, how much work would you say is there a less to building out mid level management teams under the new structure? In other words, the centers of excellence that you've identified and other key functions have they been already built out or it is still an ongoing process?

Steven Demetriou

Analyst

Yes, as far as the reorganization has been completely announced and people in the company know where they fit. So I would say that we’re 90% complete and the reason why I say 90% is because we have identified that in a few areas we’re going to want to bring in some additional capabilities to enhance this reorganization. And you just, you talked about centers of excellence. The leaders have been announced, their teams are in place, but when it comes to sales center of excellence and project delivery we potentially are going to add some capabilities within those organizations to make sure we could drive the best-in-class. But for the most part we’re now completed in our reorganization and everyone is focused on executing projects of winning business.

Jeff Volshteyn

Analyst

Great, very helpful and then a question on power markets particularly in Asia-Pacific, can you comment on what type of projects are they sizable and given your kind of overall backlog and then may be a bit of color on nuclear and I know it is in a different segment, but any kind of nuclear projects that you are working on?

Steven Demetriou

Analyst

Okay, Andy Kremer is going to take that question.

Andy Kremer

Analyst

Yes, thanks Jeff. So in the Asia markets specifically our role is primarily working on the owner advisory side consulting, trying conceptual work. So it doesn’t have a huge impact on backlog because this is a professional technical services market for us. We’re not into new build construction in Asia, although the level of activity there is certainly driving a lot of professional, technical services. I’ll turn it to Phil to talk about the Nuclear new build.

Phil Stassi

Analyst

So we have, this is Phil Stassi good morning. The nuclear new build programs particularly in the UK are robust. We are heavily involved in all of the major programs that are taking place there primarily in the civil structural side of this, but certainly in the planning and the support areas those projects and we’ve been involved in those for the past year and a half or so. And in addition regarding power, general power, geothermal and hydroelectric is also an area of expertise that came out of the SKM organization and that is not only in South America, but also in Southeast Asia. So the big projects are in the UK and the nuclear new build and the other project as Andy stated is more in the consulting side.

Jeff Volshteyn

Analyst

Perfect, that's helpful. Kevin one last sort of a housekeeping question, can you share some of the assumptions for foreign exchange maybe tax rate and share count for the first quarter and perhaps throughout 2016?

Kevin Berryman

Analyst

I won’t probably give you as much as you want Jeff, but let me give you some comments. I have told you collectively that I think we can do a better job in terms of driving an ETR that is lower than it has been historically. I think that that continues to be the case. You might recall that we had a 32.5% kind of number in 2014. We are well below that in 2015. I don’t necessarily believe we’ll get to the same level of 2014 and our - 2015 numbers and 2016, but they will be below our 2014 figures absolutely. So I think there is a continuation of our efforts to drive down our effective tax rates over time. We have some tax planning initiatives in place and we believe that some of those will come to fruition maybe even in the first quarter, but that’s too premature to talk about at this particular point in time. But the ultimate message to you that we believe we can effectively drive down that rate longer term certainly from those 32.5% numbers that we saw in 2014.

Jeff Volshteyn

Analyst

And your assumptions for foreign exchange?

Kevin Berryman

Analyst

Look we are not assuming fundamental talking about the FX being a fundamental change from where it is today. So look, I think we’re envisioning foreign exchange to be some challenges perhaps in Canada, a little bit of challenges versus Australia and UK and Euro versus the year ago figures, but not materially different from where the rates are today.

Jeff Volshteyn

Analyst

Thank you very much, very helpful.

Operator

Operator

And this will conclude the question-and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to management for any closing remarks.

Steven Demetriou

Analyst

Okay. Thank you for being on the call today. I look forward to spending time with all of you in the future and seeing some of you over the next day. Take care.

Operator

Operator

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.