John Hewitt
Analyst · Sidoti and Company
Thank you, Kellie. Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining us. As many of you know, we often begin each of our earnings calls with a focus on health and safety as a way to draw our awareness to our top priority and number one core value. This quarter, COVID-19, an unprecedented pandemic that has swiftly and dramatically impacted communities and businesses all over the world, has demanded an even greater focus on health and safety at every level of society. At Matrix, our leadership team and our employees acted quickly to implement business continuity measures and develop and implement a COVID-19 specific mitigation plan. Our plans and programs consider guidance issued by local governments and agencies in the areas in which we operate as well as guidelines issued by the CDC and United States and Canadian governments. We transitioned the majority of our 1,000 administrative and engineering employees from our offices to working remotely and we did so in less than a week with minimal disruption and providing support services to meet client and project site needs. Most of our projects and maintenance sites continue to work or experience limited suspensions, staffing reductions or significant supply chain disruptions. In all cases, we worked collaboratively with our clients as they made decisions about their project sites and accordingly, our field and craft employees have taken extraordinary steps to keep everyone safe. I want to take this opportunity to thank our employees for continuing to support our customers in their critical ongoing work at project sites across the country. I cannot be prouder of your commitment to always doing the right thing, particularly considering the significant challenges we are facing. Through this period, we are creating new habits, workflows and communication techniques that will positively impact our environmental and social efforts, keep us even more connected and make our organization more efficient and competitive going forward. Turning now to a more specific discussion about the business and our outlook. In addition to dramatically impacting economic activity on a global basis, COVID-19 has also been the driving force behind energy demand dislocation. As Matrix was founded over 35 years ago, the company has operated in some very challenging times. We have been able to persevere and grow the business over that time period. This is due in part to our conservative approach to managing our balance sheet. Our approach is simple. We always look to maintain a good cash balance with minimal debt and aggressively manage our working capital demands. This approach serves our company and our stakeholders well and provides the financial strength needed to weather the frequent variabilities common in our industry as well as uncommon events like this pandemic. While we are in a strong financial position today, we continue to review our business to ensure our cost structure is appropriate for the current market environment. We have already made adjustments and expect to make others before the end of the fiscal year, among them, our organizational changes and cost reduction programs enterprise-wide; elimination of all noncritical capital expenditures for the remainder of the fiscal year, which is a 40% decrease compared to our budget and to freeze the haul hiring, except for project chargeable personnel and key organization improvement requirements. In summary, these measures and others will result in an annual decrease in SG&A and construction overhead costs of approximately $40 million. These actions will make us leaner and more efficient and protect our already strong liquidity position. We will continue to be sharply focused on managing working capital to execute on existing and new contracts. Our financial strength supports our ability to manage the business over the short-term and gives us the flexibility to take advantage of the opportunities in the market that will present themselves over the next 12 months. While the next several quarters will be challenging, especially for our Oil Gas and Chemical segment, I am confident about the long-term outlook for our business, the opportunities in front of us and our ability to achieve our strategic growth initiatives. Moving on to our operating segments. We continue to see heavy activity in the Storage Solutions segment in North America and select international locations across crude, small to mid-scale LNG and NGLs with significant near term booking opportunities. For example, we were recently awarded the limited notice to proceed on an LNG peak shaving facility, similar in scope to the facility we are currently constructing for Piedmont Natural Gas. With client approval, we anticipate making formal announcement on that award soon. While the project for Eagle LNG mid-scale export facility in Jacksonville, Florida, has yet to commence, we are finalizing the terms of the limited notice to proceed. I should note that neither of these projects are currently included in our backlog. And finally, with an immediate need for additional storage created by the oversupply of crude oil, our inspection, maintenance and repair teams are also seeing increased bidding opportunities by customers who have previously idled storage assets. While we feel good about the activity in the storage solutions market, recent macro events could impact start dates on awarded projects and award dates for proposals in progress and our extensive opportunity pipeline. In our Electrical Infrastructure segment, as communicated last quarter, we implemented a performance improvement plan for the power delivery services portion of this segment with expectations that we will increase revenue volume, gross margins and overall performance as the changes from plan take hold. The geographic footprint of most work in this segment is concentrated in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern US, which has been severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, we have experienced suspensions of work at certain job sites and client proposal activity has slowed as they manage other pandemic related challenges. This environment has impacted volumes in the quarter and will most likely persist in the near term. We are pleased, however, that despite lower volume, we are seeing better execution with improved direct margins and increased project opportunities from existing and expanded clients. We believe this is indicative that the corrective actions we have taken are having a positive impact. On the generation side, we continue to find quality opportunities to support the construction of new gas fired power assets with other EPC contractors. The growth of the Electrical Infrastructure segment remains an important part of our long-term diversification strategy. Our Oil Gas and Chemical segment performed at a high level with strong direct margins in the quarter, but the segment has suffered from refinery project postponements and temporary delays as a result of the crude oil supply/demand dislocation discussed earlier. Under absorption and construction overhead costs impacted the gross margin performance as we prepared for what was traditionally a busy March and fourth quarter. Demand deterioration as well as precautionary measures related to COVID-19 reduced, delayed or suspended a considerable amount of the planned seasonal refinery turnaround and maintenance activities. Other projects such as the capital construction work on the ISO alkylation unit and Chevron Salt Lake City refinery continues, as does our work in the midstream gas processing space, including the EPC cryogenic natural gas processing facilities. Our teams are also hard at work growing brand awareness and gaining more bidding opportunities in the chemical and petrochemical markets, a key growth area for the segment. Finally, as we continue to streamline the business and focus on markets where we have the greatest opportunity, I’m pleased to report that in our Industrial segment, our timely exit from having a continuous presence in the domestic iron steel market is complete. Industrial segment today consists of work for various industries, including major mining and minerals companies engaged primarily in the extraction of nonferrous metals, aerospace and defense, cement, agriculture and various industrial facilities. Given our exit from the iron and steel business, we are likely to collapse the balance of the services in this segment into the other reporting segments beginning in fiscal 2021. As we move forward in this disruptive environment, managing our cost base without sacrificing the quality and safety of our work for our market footprint is a critical part of our near term plan. Our ability to do so in a conservative approach to our balance sheet gives us a good deal of flexibility to execute on our plan. Next couple of quarters will certainly be challenging. We are prepared for those challenges. And Matrix Service Company continues to be in a leadership position with best-in-class employees, a strong financial foundation and diversified opportunity pipeline. We don’t know how quickly the recovery will unfold, but we are confident that when we exit this unprecedented time, Matrix Service Company will be leaner, stronger and optimally positioned to take advantage of the business opportunities that are presented to us. I’ll now turn the call over to Kevin.