John Hewitt
Analyst · D.A. Davidson. Your line is open
Thank you, Kellie. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Before I begin, I would like to once again express my thanks to all of our employees. This has been a very tough environment to work in, and our team has truly outperformed. Our project execution has not suffered, and our strict adherence to health and safety protocols has ensured our first priority, the wellbeing of our employees. We reacted quickly to the health and safety conditions brought about by COVID-19 to protect our employees, suppliers, and clients. We also made significant changes to our organizational design and cost structure to improve our business performance. And finally, recognizing the generational transformation that pandemic has and will continue to have in our markets, the economy, and our lives. We began to reshape our end-market strategy to find growth opportunities, sustainable work activity, and improved bottom line results. I am exceptionally proud of our leadership teams and diverse employee base as they demonstrated flexibility, resolve, innovation, and foresight in the face of the most challenging global market conditions of our time. While Kevin will review the details of our fiscal 2020 fourth quarter and full-year financial results, I would like to share my perspectives on the year as well as more about what we see for the future. Fiscal 2020 was a challenging year for Matrix Service Company, our industry, and our clients. Throughout the year and despite significant challenges, Matrix Service Company achieved strong direct margin performance across most of our operating segments. We grew our market share in LNG peak shaving facilities and bunkering, natural gas processing and renewable energy like hydrogen and ethanol storage, strengthening the Matrix brand in these markets. Further, we continue to dominate in crude-related storage and terminal markets. We also made important business and strategic decisions to better position the company for the future. We restructured our power delivery business, which led to improved performance and solid direct margin results in the fourth quarter despite the dramatic impact of COVID-19 in our Northeast service territory. The organizational restructuring of our engineering subsidiary resulted in above plan earnings as supported internal EPC projects for our construction subsidiaries as well as independent third-party contracts in various markets. Finally, we exited the iron and steel business in United States, eliminating 70% of our annual Industrial segment revenue, but also substantially reducing the risk related to the cyclical nature of this business, which typically produced the lowest margins enterprise-wide and also demanded the highest working capital in our portfolio. All of these changes were positive and are delivering as planned, however, the full benefits will be reflected over time due to the severe end market impacts created by the COVID-19 pandemic. This pandemic caused severe energy demand destruction, which affected many of our end markets. The environment and our end markets has been volatile. We experienced delayed project awards and starts as well as significantly reduced near-term capital and maintenance spending by our clients. While most of our capital projects that were already in process, continued, maintenance and turnaround work was severely impacted. Bidding activity also slowed considerably as clients navigated the turbulent energy markets and focused on pandemic-related and overall economic restrictions. Finally, both delays and logistical issues were present as our clients focused on implementation of new health and safety protocols. Despite the turbulence in fiscal 2020, I want to highlight accomplishments that not only demonstrate our control of near-term outcomes that have also set the table for a strong future. In fiscal 2020, our employees achieved strong safety performance with a consolidated total recordable incident rate of 0.50, while also implementing and adhering to increased health and safety protocols to help mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Our project site teams implemented specific health and safety protocols, and in doing so, were recognized by multiple clients providing a comprehensive approach that allowed us to return to site often ahead of any other contractors. We took a heightened approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion across the company as we expand bias training, provide data transparency, engage our communities, and set expectations across the organization. Matrix Service Company and its employees take seriously our role in our communities to deal with the social and racial injustices that we believe are embedded in the society. We will do our part as business leaders and community supporters to help affect positive change. Recognizing the critical importance of environmental, social, and governance to the overall company performance and long-term strategy, we also commenced formalization of our ESG reporting framework with oversight by the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee of our Board of Directors. The company also quickly and efficiently streamlined the business and reduced costs. As a result of the reduced business volume, the uncertainty regarding the recovery from COVID-19 and the transformational changes happening across our markets, we performed a comprehensive cost structure review. The outcome of that review reduced our planned overhead costs by approximately $45 million or 18% through reductions in force, elimination of planned headcount additions, closure or consolidation of facilities, organization consolidation, reduction of capital spending, and significant reductions of other discretionary spending, including travel. While these reductions were significant and many of them permanent, we do not believe they impact our capabilities or ability to grow our revenue and execute work. In fact, while we have reduced costs in many areas, we have increased our investment in other aspects such as business and corporate development. For example, we have created a new position in corporate for a Vice President of Business Development and Chief Strategy Officer, which has been filled internally by a subsidiary executive. This position will coordinate all the company's sales and strategic planning efforts in order to bring the full strength and diversity of the enterprise to the market. We expect these changes will contribute to a more competitive, expanding, and profitable business in the future. Our work on a number of very important infrastructure projects continued, including EPC execution of the Piedmont LNG facility for Duke Energy, construction of the first ever alkylation unit in the U.S. providing for a non-hazardous and environmentally friendly alkylation process at Chevron's Salt Lake City Refinery; turnkey EPC work on Keyera's Wildhorse marketing terminal in Cushing, Oklahoma; completion of EPC work on expansion of Moda Midstream's Ingleside export terminal, which included 13 additional storage tanks as well as marine dock expansion to accommodate VLCCs; start-up of the natural gas reliability project using stored LNG for Southwest Gas in Tucson, Arizona; construction continued on the Lockheed Thermal Vacuum Chamber in Littleton, Colorado. We were also awarded EPC contract on another LNG peak shaving facility in the Western U.S., which we announced in late May 2020, further strengthening our brand position in this growing market. We were selected for FEED work on other LNG-related infrastructure projects and overall are anchoring our position as a leading EPC contractor in the small to mid-scale LNG market. And we were awarded several storage projects in the growing renewable energy space, including hydrogen, biofuels, renewable natural gas, thermal energy storage, which are additional strategic opportunities for our dominant EPC storage brand. As discussed earlier, our team's improved execution in our restructured power delivery business at the direct margin line as a result of the performance improvement plan implemented earlier in the year. Volumes continued to be light, driven mostly by the COVID-19 impact on the Northeast regions, but as the pandemic lifts its grip, combined with our enhanced business development talent, we expect volumes to increase. This area of the business remains a growth focus for the company, which we will achieve primarily through acquisitions. The exit from iron and steel business is also substantially complete. And as we discussed, while painful in the short-term, this exit should improve long-term margins, portfolio cyclicality and open the door for more focused growth opportunities in other sustainable businesses. In summary, we reorganized portions of the business, cut overheads, closed and downsized offices, added key positions and streamlined operations to align the company's cost structure with our near-term expectations. In doing so, we have created an 18% savings in our planned cost structure, which have not only help to soften the impact of the current business environment, but more importantly, prepare the organization for growth opportunities in electrical downstream markets and renewables and provides broader engineering services that will support a better margin profile for the enterprise in the long run. Against the market backdrop, as bad as we have ever experienced, the actions we took not only allowed us to come within $0.01 of breakeven adjusted earnings in the fourth quarter, but also set the table for a strong future growth. We are in a strong position to take advantage of growth opportunities, expand existing services and enter new end markets to meet the evolving business of energy, electrical and industrial clients. Moving forward as we enter the fiscal quarter – fiscal 2021, we're beginning to see improvement in some of our markets. Maintenance volume, turnaround planning and smaller capital project bidding activity are all picking up. Larger capital project bidding starts and awards are still slow to develop. That said, we are working to closure on a couple of significant opportunities in the back half of the calendar year. We expect revenue in the first half of fiscal 2021 to be relatively flat, but we are forecasting the back half of the year to show improvements in revenue and margins. Based on the opportunities we see and the timing of awards, we should exit fiscal 2021 with a book-to-bill above 1.0. As we previously announced, results in fiscal 2021 will be reported under three new operating segments. These are utility and power infrastructure, process and industrial facilities, storage and terminal solutions. Consistent with industry practice and in connection with this segment change, corporate costs will be presented separately from the operating results of these three segments. This new reporting segmentation is designed to provide greater perspective into existing and new end markets, the growth areas where we are strategically focused and to better represent our long-term vision. We believe there are significant opportunities across each of our new operating segments. Our Utility, Power and Infrastructure segment includes traditional work in power delivery and power generation, which will benefit from the significant demand for upgraded North American Electrical Infrastructure as well as engineering, procurement and construction services for utility-grade LNG peak shaving facilities across North America, where we will continue to expand our industry leading position in this portion of the clean energy market. We also intend to expand our geographic reach and provide new services to support demand for renewable power, grid upgrades and enhanced connectivity as well as battery storage. Our Process and Industrial Facilities segment will include front-end engineering design or FEED studies, EPC, maintenance and repair work across a variety of industries, including midstream natural gas, refineries, chemicals, biofuels, fertilizer and sulfur, mining and minerals and aerospace. Our Storage and Terminal Solutions segment will include work in storage, terminals, import export infrastructure. The company will benefit from the delivery of existing services as demand for crude oil recovers across North America. Additionally, the opportunities for continued growth in the demand for cleaner energy sources like LNG and hydrogen are significant and will be a continuing growth area for the business both domestically and through international expansion in select markets. As the company continues to provide critical infrastructure needs to support our client's businesses, we are also increasing resources focused on providing services to the renewable energy industry, including hydrogen, biofuels, renewable natural gas and thermal energy storage. We are already engaged in many of these areas through FEED studies, detailed engineering and construction. In the long-term, the company will continue to grow its non-crude-based businesses such that our other offerings in gas LNG, NGLs, electrical, renewable energy, chemicals and other process-related industries will represent an increasing share of our overall business portfolio. This is not to say the company will walk away from its industry-leading position in crude storage or refinery turnarounds, maintenance and capital projects or stop looking for growth opportunities, only that we will be less reliant on it in the future compared to the balance of the portfolio. Today, crude-related activities represent an increasingly smaller part of the enterprise portfolio with approximately 40% of the business in this market. We will strategically reduce this percentage in the future. I'll now turn the call over to Kevin to discuss fourth quarter and full-year results.