C. Campbell
Analyst · Maxim Group
Thank you, Jose, and good morning. Today, I'm going to cover three areas: Fourth quarter and full year 2010 financial results, 2011 guidance, and cash flow liquidity and our capital structure. The fourth quarter and the 2010 full year were record periods for MasTec, records in terms of revenue, EBITDA and cash flow from operations. We had terrific results for just about anything worth measuring. Therefore, I have a pretty long list of highlights. Q4 revenue was up $235 million, or 47%, versus last year, and total revenue of $731 million was our highest quarter ever. Q4 organic revenue growth was 36%. That's after adjusting for the Precision acquisition. Let me say two things about our 36% organic growth. First, it reflects a partial payback of our investment in business development capabilities. As we have mentioned in the past, we've been beefing up in investing in our business development area in order to grow and diversify our customer base. And second, the organic growth was very broad-based. Q4 EBITDA was up 75% versus Q4 a year ago, and it was gratifying to see it continue to grow at a much higher rate than our revenue. In dollars, EBITDA was $88 million compared to $50 million a year ago, and our best quarter ever. We said that 2010 would be heavily back-end loaded, and the $88 million of Q4 EBITDA compares to $80 million for the entire first half of the year. Q4 EBITDA margin was 12.1% compared to 10.1% a year ago, and Q4 was our best margin quarter since 2000. Q4 EPS of $0.44 per diluted share was well above our guidance of $0.37 and double last year's $0.22. Year-over-year EPS comparisons are complicated because of a dramatically higher book tax rate this year. I'll walk you through the EPS details a little later. Q4 cash flow from operations was huge at $117 million, and our liquidity grew to $284 million at the end of the quarter. For the 2010 full year, revenue increased by $685 million or a 42% increase. Organic revenue growth was 24%. EBITDA of $241 million was up 57%, and EBITDA margin of 10.4% was 100 basis points better than 2009. 2010 cash flow from operations was up dramatically at $218 million compared to $124 million a year ago. 2011 guidance reflects double-digit revenue, EBITDA and EPS growth, and I'll cover the numbers in detail later. Now for the Q4 details. Q4 revenue increased by $235 million or 47% year-over-year to $731 million for a new all-time quarterly record. We had double-digit increases in Transmission and Substation; Pipeline; Renewables; and Install to the Home, which is primarily DIRECTV. Also, our Wireless business doubled compared to Q4 a year ago. These increases were partly offset by continued weakness in our electrical utility distribution market. While having three months of Precision Pipeline in Q4 2010 versus only two months in '09, that certainly helped our 47% growth rate. We nevertheless did have 36% organic growth for the quarter with broad-based growth. I'll talk about increases with specific customers a little later. Q4 gross profit margin increased to 17.3% from 15% last year, reflecting increased productivity, scale and a better business mix. Gross profit in dollars was up $52 million, which is what drove Q4 results. Q4 depreciation and amortization of $14.8 million was down $2.6 million from Q4 last year, primarily reflecting a $3.1 million decrease in acquisition and amortization. Depreciation and amortization as a percent of revenue dropped from 3.5% down to 2%. Net interest expense for Q4 was $7.2 million compared to $7.4 million a year ago. As a percent of revenue, interest dropped from 1.5% down to 1%. I'll talk about our capital structure a little later. Our Q4 general and administrative expense was $37 million compared to $25 million a year ago. The largest parts of the increase was the bonus expense related to dramatically higher earnings and increases in payroll and fringe benefits to handle the growth. As a percent of revenue, Q4 G&A of 5.1% was flat with last year. The book tax rate for Q4 was 41.9% compared to 28.9% a year ago. The increase in the tax rate for this year's fourth quarter was a $0.09 negative drag on EPS. Because of our NOLs, the majority of last year's tax expense was non-cash. MasTec believes that EBITDA is a very usual measure of our 2010 financial performance because of the big year-over-year increase in mostly non-cash book tax rate. Going forward, the year-over-year tax rates are going to be similar; therefore, EPS comparisons will be more comparable. I'll cover taxes in more detail later. For the fourth quarter of 2010, the 10 largest customers were AT&T was 22% of total revenue. Our Q4 year-over-year growth was 88%, which was driven by wireless growth. Our Wireless business actually doubled versus a year ago. Q4 was the first time in many years that DIRECTV was not our largest customer. DIRECTV was 21% of total revenue. Please note that it's down from 24% of revenue last year. The Ruby Pipeline project was 20% of revenue. That's natural gas pipeline work. Basin Electric Power Cooperative was 4% of revenue. That's wind farm work. Tenaska Energy was 3% of revenue. That's natural gas pipeline work. Edison Mission Energy was 3% of revenue. That's wind farm work. Kansas City Power & Light, TGGT, CenturyLink and Progress Energy were each 1% of revenue. Kansas City Power is wind farm work. TGGT and EXCO joint venture is natural gas pipeline work. CenturyLink is telecom work, and Progress Energy is electrical distribution work. Regarding diversification, our top 10 customers now include two telecom customers, one satellite television customer, three pipeline customers, three wind farm customers and one electrical distribution customer. Regarding concentration with DIRECTV, the concentration peaked at 47% of our revenue in Q1 2008. In Q4 2010, the revenue concentration was down to 21%. We believe that we have successfully addressed our prior DIRECTV concentration issue. Now let me talk for a minute about our revenue mix, split between one-time, non-recurring construction projects and our large base of revenue coming from what we call master service agreements and similar contracts for generally recurring services, and therefore, revenue. For 2010, 55% of our revenue came from master service agreements or similar contracts and 45% came from one-time, non-recurring construction projects. What we call master service agreements and similar contracts is briefly as follows: Generally, these contracts are for multiple years, often three to five years. And generally, they are exclusive for a certain geography or territory. Most of these contracts have some kind of price escalation language or some other price adjustment mechanism. Although these contracts did not contain revenue guarantees and they do allow cancelation under certain circumstances, in reality, the revenue from these contracts is pretty predictable. These contracts generally go to full term and are not canceled, and our renewal rate is extremely high. I just want to highlight that even though our one-time, non-recurring project revenue is growing nicely, we do enjoy a large and stable revenue base from these master service agreements and similar contracts. More disclosure about these contracts is in our 10-K. At year end, our backlog was $2.4 million. That's an 18-month backlog number. The comparable number for Q4 a year ago was $2.1 billion and $2.3 billion last quarter. Not included in the 12/31 backlog is any backlog for EC Source, the electrical transmission company of which we are currently a 1/3 owner. As Jose mentioned, EC Source recently won a large PacifiCorp transmission job, and MasTec currently intends to exercise its option to merge the rest with EC Source early in the second quarter. Therefore, the PacifiCorp job and other EC Source backlog should go into MasTec backlog in the second quarter. Also, not included in our backlog is a large biofuel plant project that one of our customers, BlueFire Renewables, announced in Q4. We excluded the project because some of our customers' financing is not yet finalized. The size of the project, which is an EPC project, is approximately $300 million. One last comment regarding backlog is that our backlog includes an estimate of the next 18 months of revenue from the master service agreements and other similar contracts. Now let me switch to a few 2010 full year numbers. Revenue was $2.3 billion compared to $1.6 billion in 2009. The full year revenue increase was $685 million or a 42% increase. Pipeline revenue tripled, partly due to the Precision acquisition, but also due to very good organic growth at Pumpco our midstream pipeline business. 2010 total organic revenue growth adjusted for the Precision acquisition was 24% in broad-based. In addition to the growth in Pipeline, Wireless doubled versus 2009, and we have strong double-digit growth in Renewables, Transmission and Substation, and Install to the Home. 2010 EBITDA of $241 million was up $88 million or a 57% increase. Fully diluted EPS was $1.05 versus $0.90 last year. It is worth noting that the 2010 full year tax rate was 41.3% compared to only 10.6% a year ago, and the mostly non-cash tax rate increase hurt our 2010 EPS by $0.52. 2010 EBITDA margin was 10.4% compared to 9.4% a year ago. Now let me talk about our cash flow, liquidity and our balance sheet. Net cash flow provided by operating activities was $117 million for the fourth quarter and $218 million for the full year of 2010. Our cash balance at December 31 was $178 million, and our liquidity was $284 million. We define liquidity as unrestricted cash plus availability on our senior credit facility. All of these amounts are dramatically higher than for 2009. For example, the 2010 full year cash provided by operating activities was $218 million, much higher than the $124 million for 2009. Regarding accounts receivable, our Q4 days sales outstanding, or DSOs, were 56 days as compared to 63 days last quarter and 60 days at year-end 2009. 56 days sales outstanding is unusually good for MasTec and better than our current goal of 60 days. We will likely see, going forward, a little volatility in DSOs due to either the positive or negative impact of big projects with different payment patterns. Our cash flow in 2010 clearly benefited from our federal tax NOLs. However, we have now exhausted the last of our federal tax NOLs, so we will finally be a relatively normal cash taxpayer beginning in 2011. Also, our book’s tax accrual rate will finally be fairly similar year-over-year. Our 2010 book tax rate was 41.3%, and our guidance for 2011 assumes a 39% tax rate. Regarding capital spending, we spent $30 million for 2010 compared to $22 million for 2009. Our 10-K has an estimate of $40 million. That's an estimate for 2011, which includes an estimate for EC Source, our electrical transmission venture. Now let me provide some information about our earnout payments related to some of our acquisitions. MasTec, in December, made a large one-time payment to buy out or buy down most of the earnout obligation related to Nsoro, our highly successful wireless acquisition. And the Wanzek acquisition earnout expired at the end of 2010. Our estimate of cash earnout payment in 2011 is about $40 million. Generally speaking, earnouts are earned in one calendar year and then paid the following year. Our estimate of earnouts that may be earned in 2011 but paid in 2012 is just over $25 million including an estimate for EC Source. The largest portion of this estimate is for DirectStar. The earnouts for accounting purposes are treated as additional acquisition purchase price resulting in additional goodwill, and they generally do not flow through the income statement. To summarize our cash flow characteristics, I would say this. EBITDA continues to grow nicely. Guidance is $275 million to $280 million, up from $241 million. DSOs around 60 days are in good shape. CapEx of about $40 million is modest. Earnouts have been reduced. Cash interest of $29 million is reasonable; therefore, we expect that our cash flow should be very good again this year. Now let me talk for a moment about our capital structure. As a quick capital structure summary, at year end, we had $653 million in equity; $413 million of total debt; only $235 million in net debt, that's net of cash; and we expect to have $275 million to $280 million of 2011 EBITDA. Therefore, all of our balance sheet and credit ratios are in very good shape. I'd like to note two things about our capital structure. First, we have no significant debt maturities until '13, '14 and '17; and second, all of our debt has attractive interest rates. To give you a little more detail, our bank line matures in 2013, but of course, we would expect to roll it over long before maturity. The convertible notes mature in 2014, and our senior notes mature in 2017. And as I mentioned, our debt is very attractively priced. Our bank revolver interest rate is LIBOR plus 2.25, although we currently have no withdrawals on the revolver. We pay only 4% and 4 1/4% on our two convertible notes, which total $215 million of principal amount; and we pay 7 5/8% on our $150 million of senior notes. My overview today of what we've been able to accomplish over the last several years is the same as I've mentioned before. We've been able to expand into a number of new markets with excellent growth potential, grow and diversify our customer base, dramatically reduce our DIRECTV concentration, all while improving our liquidity and our capital structure. Our 2011 full year guidance is revenue of $2,650,000,000, EBITDA of $275 million to $280 million and fully diluted EPS of $1.20 to $1.23. 2011 revenue of $2,650,000,000 is an increase of 15% over $2.3 billion for 2010 and double-digit growth without EC Source. 2011 EBITDA of $275 million to $280 million is a 14% to a 16% increase over $241 million last year. The 2011 EBITDA margin implicit in our guidance is 10.4% to 10.6%, which compares to 10.4% last year, and I'll discuss margins in more detail in a minute. And EPS of $1.20 to $1.23 is a 14% to 17% increase over $1.05 last year. Now let me make a few comments about our 2011 guidance. First, our guidance assumes that we will exercise our EC Source electrical transmission option and own 100% of EC Source early in Q2. Second, we are carrying over about half of the Ruby Gas Pipeline project into 2011, which benefits both Q1 and Q2. Third, our estimated 2011 estimated tax rate is 39% compared to 41.3% for 2010. The reduction in tax rate is primarily due to production activity deductions that we can now get because our NOLs are exhausted. Fourth, our estimate of amortization expense of intangibles related to EC Source is $7 million, bringing our total 2011 amortization expense up to $15 million compared to $13 million last year, and of course, EC Source increases our depreciation and interest numbers also. And fifth, let me give you some insight about our 2011 share count per fully diluted EPS purposes. Our full year 2010 share count per fully diluted EPS calculations was a little under 91 million shares. We currently estimate that the share count for full year 2011 fully diluted EPS calculations will be about 86 million shares. In big picture terms, the 2011 reduction in share count is due to the reduction in the dilution from our convertible notes, partly offset by issuing 5.15 million shares in Q2 in order to exercise our option to merge the rest of EC Source. You may remember that we completed an exchange offer for our converts in January, and the only significant change was going from a physical settlement payment mechanism to a net share settlement payment mechanism. Simply put, with the change to a net share settlement payment mechanism and with our current intention to pay the principal amounts in cash, we no longer have the potential dilution of paying off the principal amount in stock. In the future, we may have to add increased shares to the share count for EPS purposes related to the premium on our converts, which are now in the money. One hard-to-explain side effect of the change to net share settlement for our convertible notes is that in 2011, we will start to accrue annually over $4 million of non-cash interest over and above the cash coupon amounts. What that means is that our book interest on the converts is now at 6.7% even though the cash coupon rates are 4% and 4 1/4%. This additional non-cash interest is sometimes referred to as phantom interest by non-accountants. In dollars, we will have cash interest of roughly $29 million in 2011 and book interest of $35 million, reflecting the phantom interest and deferred financing fees. MasTec share count, non-cash interest and EPS calculations had become more complex, and I suggest that you refer to Footnote 3 in the 10-K for additional detail. And if you still struggle with share count, phantom interest and EPS calculations for your models, call Marc Lewis, our VP of Investor Relations, and he'll help you out. My final comment about our 2011 full year guidance is about margins. The EBITDA margin implicit in our guidance is 10.4% to 10.6%, flat to up a little from last year. Relative to 2011 margins, let me say three things. First and most importantly, we continue to work in mostly soft or less than robust markets. Our competition has excess capacity, and in some cases, low levels of backlog. And therefore, we are assuming that 2011 pricing will remain at today's relatively low levels. We would expect that MasTec can get a significant additional bump in margins when we and our competitors get the opportunity to return to more normal prices, meaning higher prices. We have not yet seen any shift in pricing power toward contractors. A shift in contractor pricing power could happen in 2011, and we hope we see it. But to be practical about it, if we see higher pricing in the second half of the year, most of the benefit would really be in 2012 anyway. And second, in 2011, we will have some contractual pricing erosion to overcome in our Wireless business, and we'll start paying higher commissions in our DIRECTV marketing business. And third, we may get hurt by rising fuel prices, depending on global factors outside of our control. Bottom line, we will strive for much higher margins, continue to work on the basics and productivity, and expect that someday get a significant benefit from tighter markets with better pricing. Therefore, we expect to show much more margin expansion over time, but we see flat to modestly increased margins for 2011. Now let me cover Q1 guidance. We currently expect Q1 revenue of about $575 million compared to $450 million last year. That's an increase of 28%. We expect EBITDA of $55 million compared to $34 million last year. That's an increase of 62%. We expect Q1 fully diluted EPS of $0.23 compared to $0.10 last year. That's an increase of 130%. In summary, 2010 was a record and a terrific year for MasTec in the midst of a mediocre economy and generally soft markets. Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4 were each better than our original expectations. We are encouraged by our Q4 36% organic non-acquisition revenue growth and by our broad-based revenue and EBITDA trends. We expect 2011 to be another excellent year for MasTec. That concludes my remarks. Now let me turn the call back to the conference operator for Q&A.