John Hewitt
Analyst · John Franzreb of Sidoti. Your line is open
Thank you, Kevin, good morning everyone and thank you for joining us. We have a lot of business results and strategic information to cover this morning, so I want to apologize to you ahead of time to today's prepared remarks will be slightly longer than normal. First, I would like to extend our heartfelt thoughts and prayers to all those impacted by Hurricane Harvey and as of those in the path of Irma after heed those warnings. The catastrophic damage infected by Harvey along the Gulf will be felt for some time to come and the people affected by it including our own employees and customers will all need our help and support. As they began the path to recovery, it is also heartwarming to experience the resiliency of the human spirit and to see our people from across the country have come together to help so many in need. That's all joined together to do what we can. On a positive note, I want to congratulate our team at the Matrix Service fabrication facility at the Port of Catoosa outside of Tulsa for achieving OSHA's Voluntary Protection Program or VPP star designation. This designation which is the highest designation given by OSHA is reserved for employers and for employees who demonstrate exemplary achievement in the prevention and control of Occupational safety and healthy, and health hazards. Finally, I would like to take a moment to also congratulate all of our employees for achieving a consolidated total recordable incident rate of 0.49 in fiscal 2017. This is a record for our company and represents [audio gap] for our diverse portfolio of businesses. Thanks to all of our employees for putting our core value of safety first. It differentiates us from our competitors and in turn results in greater long-term value for everyone. Turning to our results, I want to discuss as it is the last quarter two key issues that had negative impact on our fiscal 2017 results. Related to the project in Electrical Infrastructure segment, we appreciate the concerns everyone had over this project. As we said on the last earnings call, we were confident in our ability to work through these issues in an equitable affordable fashion for both parties. Accordingly, I'm pleased to report that we have reached a resolution that has resolved all open claims and modified our contract terms so that all costs and overheads on the remainder of the work we performed will be recovered. As such, no additional project charges are anticipated. Our work on the project is expected to be substantially complete by the end of this calendar year. The greater impact to our financial results was the cumulative effect of continuing end market softness as a result of volatility and slowness in commodity price recovery, modest global GDP growth, and the complex and uncertain federal regulatory and legislative environment. Against this backdrop those we serve in the energy and industrial markets have deepen due diligence and extended the process for approval of capital projects and customers have spread maintenance expenditures over longer periods. These delays have resulted in a lower revenue volume for Matrix in this fiscal year. We do see our opportunity to generate direct gross profits and fully recover construction overhead cost. With that said, many large capital projects that we have been developing over the past year are forthcoming and in fact some are already in contract negotiations. Kevin will provide more detail during his comments but the impact of this lower revenue not the charge on the Electrical Infrastructure project is the primary reason for the Company's fiscal 2017 breakeven EPS. While we cannot control industry and macroeconomic headwinds that impact maintenance spending, project rewards and starts, we can control our cost structure. However, the speed at which we can make mid-course adjustments to align this structure to revenue will lag. Keep in mind that the challenges to manage our construction overhead cost in a way that ensures we have the resources necessary to develop, propose and execute on our contractual commitments as markets improve. We've taken numerous affirmative steps to right size portions on the business to reduce our cost structure that meets the forecasted project opportunity pipeline. On a consolidated basis and fiscal 2017, we adjusted our business plan for market softness and as a result reduce total overhead cost by over 10%. We're continuing to align our cost structure with anticipated business volume for fiscal 2018. Overall, project direct profit margin performance was strong throughout the business on the available revenue with the exception of the power generation project that negatively impacted margins in the Electrical Infrastructure segment. Direct profit margins in our Oil Gas & Chemical, Storage Solutions and Industrial segments were in line with or exceeded expectations. On a consolidated basis, the execution of our projects has been very strong. Additionally, our consolidated book to bill was solid at 0.90 and as noted in our earnings release project awards were up 34% for both the quarter and the full fiscal year when compared to fiscal 2016. This is indicated in our opinion of improving market dynamics which while we remain cautious is evident across all of our operating segments. It also stands as evidence to the value of our strategic objective to transition from tank contractor to full terminal delivery model across both flat bottom and specialty vessel storage. Examples of this include the Vopak expansion award in March of 2017 and the Southwest Gas award made in July. In Oil Gas & Chemical, our book to bill was very strong at 1.7 as capital construction projects, maintenance and repair work inside refineries and petrochemical processing facilities begin to trend up. This trend is further demonstrated by already booked fiscal 2018 turnaround work accounted for in this segment, which is 47% higher than that book and completed in fiscal 2017. Our groups will also see more requests for multiyear service agreements as refiners look to lock in needed labor resources. This segment is also being bolstered by additional projects awards and higher margin work resulting from our enhanced Matrix PDM Engineering group especially in the areas of gas processing and solve the recovering in handling. In our Industrial segment, our book to bill was also strong at 1.4, included in this work are two thermal vacuum chambers, a niche specialty area for Matrix as well as increased project work brought by our enhanced Matrix PDM Engineering. Current frontend development work on projects being executed by the subsidiary in the cement, agriculture and fertilizer markets as well as other material handling applications, all had EPC project opportunities connected to their completion. In the iron and steel market which is suffering from soft global demand and international dumping in North America, we saw improving volume and better absorption and construction overhead in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2017 which we also believe represents a turning point as capital spending begins to resume. As it relates to our mining and minerals services with the recent improvement in commodity prices, specifically as copper has reached over $3 per pound, we anticipate increased maintenance spending and capital project opportunities. Book to bill in Storage Solutions was low at 0.55; however, we expect this to improve dramatically in the near term. As we have discussed on prior calls, the supply of affordable North American energy combined with the growing global demand and fuel switching is driving the build out of North American pipelines for crude oil and natural gas. This in turn has created demand for significant infrastructure including storage terminals for pipeline logistics and energy exports as well as storage and storage terminals related to bunkering, fixating facilities and chemical product distribution. Part of our long-term strategy is to ensure we win a significant portion of this project work has been to broaden our capabilities to offer complete lifecycle solutions which was strengthened by the acquisition in fiscal '17 of Houston Interests. This acquisition brought among other things greater capacity and technical expertise in not only our core markets that has opened up other critical infrastructure markets to the Company. Additionally, Matrix PDM Engineering has expanded frontend design work further strengthens our ability to generate project opportunities and build strong and lasting client relationships. As of today, Matrix PDM Engineering is performing speed work on projects for crude oil, refined products LNG and other natural gas liquids that have an ultimate EPC value in excess of 1.6 billion. Let’s not forget that our industry leading position in flat bottom storage tanks and specialty vessels for both new-build as well as repair and maintenance are also seeing a strengthening in demand. And finally, in the Electrical Infrastructure segment, book to bill was 0.70. In power generation, we made the decision in early fiscal 2017 to not pursue projects as the EPC or general contractor on new-build gas fired generating facilities. This strategic shift has temporary impacted our book to bill in this segment. Considering this strategic shift, the remaining balance of the work in this segment which represented over half the segment’s revenue volume in fiscal 2017 had a book to bill of 1. This redirected strategy is underpinned by our market leading position in the Northeast. At the same time, the immense infrastructure needs that exists across all of North America for substation, transmission and distribution creates additional significant opportunity for Matrix through continued organic growth and strategic tuck-in acquisitions. In addition, significant project opportunities also exist for Matrix as a subcontractor for individual system packages on gas-fired power plant construction. I would like to make a few comments now about the impact of Hurricane Harvey to our operating segments. This storm has impacted many of our customers Gulf Coast energy, midstream and chemical infrastructure facilities. The extent of this impact is still undetermined however many of our customers were well prepared for its landfall. While the storm’s effect has been impactful to energy pricing, we do not believe this is a long-term event. For Matrix, our primary focus will be to support our customers' needs and our keep our employees safe. We've had some demand from our core clients provide industrial cleaning and maintenance and repair services as they work to get the facilities back online. In fact, we've already have teams from our industrial cleaning and turnaround plant services group that mobilized to provide assistance as requested by our customers along the gulf. While these services may create some incremental revenue for our company, currently booked and anticipated projects in Storage and Oil Gas & Chemical segments could be temporarily delayed as facilities are restarted and storm effects are mitigated. In addition, there could be some collateral impact at facilities outside the Gulf region, who choose to delay plant turnaround work in order to make a part of that capacity there has been temporary loss along the gulf. We view the overall impact of the business in the year to be positive, however, the storm may have the effect in moving some revenue in the later quarters. Now I'd like to talk more about our strategy for generating long-term shareholder value and returns. Looking back over the past five years, we've accomplished a lot. These accomplishments of the result in strong execution of our strategic plan which nearly double the Company's revenue while we conversely managed our balance sheet, we grew organically in the markets we serve. We transformed our industry-leading Storage Solutions brand from tanks to full terminals and extended our expertise from flat bottom tanks to specialty vessels. We expanded into new markets, added to our skill set and service offerings. We augmented our growth and geographic reach through multiple acquisitions and significantly enhanced our engineering and construction expertise. We've transformed the organization from primarily construction and maintenance to full EPC status and today, offer our clients complete lifecycle solutions. The strategic plan for the coming five years builds on this strong foundation. As we look forward, we believe our project pipeline and strategic objectives over the next five years will allow us to again double the size of our company and realized top tier Matrix to maximize the long-term shareholder value. This strategy can be categorized into these main focus areas safety, people and communications, clients and growth, and execution. Safety is first and for most, it is among the top reasons our field and perhaps people choose to work with Matrix and is also among the top reasons our customers choose Matrix. In fiscal 2017, we achieved a record TRIR safety performance of 0.49. However, our focus remains on achieving zero incidents. And we will do so by staying focused on safety leadership, training and development, and on the use tools and technology to achieve continuous improvements. Our clients have high expectations for the contractors to provide their capital and maintenance services. It is fundamental to our ability to bid and win work and therefore this strategic focus is critical to our future. Our ongoing growth and success is also dependent on attracting, developing and retaining high performing employees. We do so through strong leadership, succession planning and ongoing career development in an open and collaborative environment. Our culture, core values and performance management systems are all integrated to attract and retain top talent and achieve higher performance. In addition, we continue to deepen and broaden our communication both internally and externally through multiple channels to ensure our employees, customers and shareholders understand our culture and are kept current on our strategy and business performance. We will grow by continuing to build strong long-standing relationship to our customers and we will do so by staying true to our core values. We will also grow organically and through a series of strategic acquisitions, build a sustained international presence, take advantage of new market opportunities, leverage the strength of our enhanced engineering subsidiary across the enterprise and the application of technologies. And finally, we will continue to improve our organization effectiveness and efficiency and achieve consistent sustainable earnings by maintaining strong project performance, continuing our conserved approach to managing our balance sheet and focusing on achieving our key metrics. For long-term opportunities on end market are substantial and while fiscal 2017 has been both challenging and disappointing we remain confident in our strategy and the long-term opportunities within the market we serve and our ability to capitalize on those opportunities. I'll now turn the call over to Kevin Cavanah.