John Hewitt
Analyst · D.A. Davidson. Your question, please
Thank you, Kevin. With fiscal 2021 behind us, I'd like to turn your attention to the future and as mentioned earlier, I'll cover three areas with you: current business environment, our strategy; and finally, our end market opportunities and award cycle. Fiscal 2021 was a challenging and demanding year for the business, our employees, our clients and our end markets. The uncertainty around the timing and strength of an economic recovery, the course of the pandemic and long-term energy demand sustainability has delayed awards and significantly reduced spending by our clients. Today, however, the bidding environment across all segments is very strong, our business development, estimate and proposal teams are fully engaged with the robust bidding activity and in some cases, we have hired additional resources to assist with the volume. We are also beginning to see a sharp uptick in awards and spending by our clients as we move through our first quarter of fiscal 2022. This is a good sign that the pent-up demand we expected is starting to be released in our existing and new clients are moving to invest in their facilities. I will discuss this in more detail in a few minutes. Let's talk about business strategy now. During the third and fourth quarters, we worked with an independent third-party business consultant to ensure that we have appropriately assessed the market opportunities for our future and that our organization is properly designed to support these opportunities. Directionally, our strategy continues to be focused on four key areas: safety, people and communication, clients and growth and execution excellence. Our focus on safety as well as the ability to attract, retain and develop our people is critical to our success. As we achieve world-class safety performance, we know a zero incident safety performance is possible and continue to strive for that goal. We also know our people are our number one resource and our focus remains on ensuring we provide the environment, culture, training and leadership needed to ensure we have best-in-class employees. But I really want to focus your attention today is on clients and growth and execution excellence. While time limitations and competitive intelligence prevent a deeper view of our entire strategy, I will touch on key elements that will help investors appreciate our direction. First, we will continue to strengthen the core. This is fundamentally crude-related markets where we hold a strong brand and market position. These markets will continue to be a critical part of the business as the energy transition occurs over the next decade and beyond. As refining markets normalize, we will continue to work on our competitiveness, deliver high-quality services and look for more invested maintenance operations to build a steady base of revenue. We continue to feel good about our position in crude tanks and terminals and believe most of the opportunities will be Gulf Coast related with smaller targets and other key logistical places. In both crude storage and refining, the skill sets and capabilities are transferable and in some cases, already support other growth markets we are focused on. In addition, we will expand within existing end markets. These markets are where we have a strong value proposition and there is a growth opportunity for the business, driven by either our existing position or market maturity, markets in midstream gas, LNG and NGL storage terminals, thermal vacuum chambers for aerospace, electrical infrastructure, mining and minerals and international markets for our storage terminal solutions are all key focus areas. We see natural gas as a transition energy source that will continue to expand for many decades into the future. Our capabilities in midstream and storage and terminal solutions, projects create long-term growth opportunities for the company, both domestically and in select international markets. One emerging market for us is the upgrade and repair to existing LNG peak shaving facilities spread across the United States, especially given our significant skill set and long-standing expertise in cryogenics. The niche position we have in thermal vacuum chambers is a differentiator for us as the need for upgraded and expanded satellites and other related space activities will drive the need for more testing. The interconnected world of electrical, renewable generation and an aging infrastructure system creates outsized organic growth potential for our East Coast centered business. We maintain our commitment to create a coast-to-coast service delivery in support of these infrastructure investments. The demand for nonferrous and rare earth minerals as a result of growth in renewable energy and electrical infrastructure is already providing a steady stream of project opportunities and we expect to regrow our presence here through the fiscal year and well over the next decade. Finally, we are growing to new end markets. These are opportunities where we can apply our project and technical skills through the new developing or adjacent markets. Examples include renewable energy infrastructure such as hydrogen and biofuels, chemical and petrochemical facilities, carbon capture and renewable power and utility scale solar. As hydrogen, a key future energy source for transportation, heating and power generation receives more private and public investment. Our skill sets will be put to work, building a new national infrastructure. Our experience in cryogenic storage and terminal design and construction, combined with our strategic partnership with Chart Industries, is already having significant and positive impact on our opportunity pipeline. The partnership has several near-term project opportunities that our teams are progressing. In addition, we are developing standardized solutions that will provide our customers with cost-effective turnkey designs and faster implementation. Recognizing hydrogen is a key strategic growth area for the company. We have recently applied for membership to the Hydrogen Council, a global CEO-led initiative of leading companies focused on advancing hydrogen to foster the clean energy transition for a better and more resilient future. In addition, we continue to look for other partners to support the creation of infrastructure solutions for the hydrogen and carbon capture markets in chemicals and petrochemicals. We have started our market penetration by executing various master service agreements which have opened the door to provide engineering and construction services in the industry. Small engineering awards have started to occur and several project opportunities are in the bid funnel. In all cases, growth will come organically as our markets improve and our business development approach to marketing the entire enterprise creates an expansion in our bidding environment. Over time, acquisitions will also be required in engineering, process design and key brands and project skills in select targeted end markets. I want touch on what we are doing to prepare the organization for market opportunities we see returning to the business. We have stated previously, we have reduced our cost structure by nearly $70 million in response to the pandemic. We now turn our attention to the efficiency and design of our organization. Again, with the help of a third-party business consultant, we've embarked on a 12-week organization review process to explore expanding shared service centers and operations centers of excellence as well as streamlining our management structure, employing lean procurement strategies and a review of our operating model and organization structure. Our objective is to be more efficient administratively and more effective with the enterprise's resources across all our reporting segments. One of the organization changes already completed is the consolidation of all the company's business development resources in one center of excellence at the Matrix Service Company level. In this way, we can apply the expertise of our business development, engineering and construction personnel across the enterprise, create more opportunities with a better risk profile, improve our overall win rate and grow the business. Our ability to capture a broader and deeper quantity of spending across our client base will be greatly enhanced by this consolidation. We are already seeing the benefit of this change in our pursuit of hydrogen, renewable fuels and LNG, NGL-related opportunities. As we complete our organization redesign and business planning activities, we expect to see positive benefits that will result in a more competitive business with improved bottom line performance and a strong foundation for growth. Now, I'd like to talk about opportunities and awards. Our opportunity pipeline across all segments is strong and supports our revenue expectations in the near term and growth aspirations for the future. Key opportunities in the bidding stage include domestic and international opportunities for new and expanded LNG tanks and terminals for peak shaving, export import and transportation fuels as well as inspection maintenance and upgrades of existing LNG facilities. NGL infrastructure is also creating positive opportunities. Midstream gas, compression and processing opportunities is gaining strength which in many cases are to improve the efficiency and carbon footprint of their legacy systems. Renewable energy in hydrogen infrastructure such as storage, process facilities, transportation hubs and distribution centers. In addition, biofuel storage terminals and processing are also building in our bid funnel. Crude oil storage tanks and terminals continue to fill our pipeline on both the domestic and international basis. While these have been slow to award and very competitive, we see the market on this infrastructure improving in the near future. Electrical and infrastructure work and maintenance, storm repair, upgrades and new builds for substations, transmission, distribution, data cabling, land-based transmission and distribution facilities for offshore wind, solar generation, battery manufacturing plants and backup battery storage facilities. Chemical and petrochemical engineering services, capital projects, maintenance and repair are starting to enter our pipeline as our strategic focus is creating opportunities. Mining and mineral projects associated with copper, lithium fluoride, silver and gold are growing in the bid funnel as the demand for these minerals is driven by renewable generation, batteries and electric infrastructure. Thermal vacuum chambers, design and construction to support satellite expansion and technology changes have been steady and is creating near-term awards. We are happy to report that following the close of our fourth quarter, award activity has accelerated. In just the first 60 days of fiscal 2022, we have formally booked or received notice of award of approximately $180 million in new contracts. This volume of awards will be the highest award level since the fourth quarter of fiscal 2020. These contracts span many of our key markets, including thermal vacuum chambers, LNG storage tanks and terminals, biofuel API 650 tanks, electrical infrastructure, midstream gas and various other industrial projects and master service agreements, including new chemical clients. We believe this award cycle acceleration represents a long awaited and important sign of client confidence returning to our markets and the beginning of an award progression that will deliver a book-to-bill in our fiscal 2022 first quarter and for the full year of greater than 1.0. The impact of revenue from this first wave of awards will follow in subsequent quarters and we expect this improved award cycle to continue as we move through the balance of the fiscal year. So in closing, we continue to actively manage the health and safety of our employees as the first order of business. The Delta variant does not appear to be having a significant impact to our client spending plans with their focus more on economic activity, energy demand sustainability, clean energy and federal policy. The award cycle is accelerated with the strong start to fiscal 2022 with the first two months already representing the highest project award activity in the last four quarters. Our strategy to protect our core markets, expand in existing end markets and grow into new markets is clear and demonstrates our commitment to not only support our clients' existing business needs but also critical infrastructure investments to be made as the world transitions to a lower carbon future. Our opportunity pipeline driven by our newly centralized business development group, is strong and supports both near-term revenue and long-term growth objectives. And finally, as we focus on continuous improvement, our organization redesign will create more consistent performance on the top and bottom line and support our long-term vision for the company. I'm extremely proud of our people and their continued commitment to safety, quality and performance during this highly challenging period. I'll now open the call for questions.