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MasTec, Inc. (MTZ)

Q2 2013 Earnings Call· Fri, Aug 2, 2013

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the MasTec Second Quarter 2013 Earnings Conference Call, initially broadcast on August 2, 2013. Let me remind participants that today's call is being recorded. And at this time, I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Marc Lewis, MasTec's Vice President of Investor Relations. Marc, please go ahead.

J. Marc Lewis

Management

Thank you, Mary, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to MasTec's second quarter earnings conference call. The following statement is made pursuant to the Safe Harbor for forward-looking statements described in the Private Litigation Reform Act of 1995. In these communications, we may make certain statements that are forward-looking, such as statements regarding MasTec's future results, plans and anticipated trends in the industries where we operate. These forward-looking statements are the company's expectations on the day of the initial broadcast of this conference call, and the company will make no effort to update these expectations based on subsequent events or knowledge. Various risks, uncertainties and assumptions are detailed in our press releases and filings with the SEC. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize or should any of our underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may differ significantly from results expressed or implied in these communications. In today's remarks by management, we will be discussing continuing operations adjusted financial metrics as discussed and reconciled in yesterday's press release and supporting schedules. In addition, we may use certain non-GAAP financial measures in this conference call. A reconciliation of any non-GAAP financial measure not reconciled in these comments to the most comparable GAAP financial measure can be found in our earnings release, our 10-K or in the Investors and News sections of our website located at mastec.com. With us today, we have Jose Mas, our Chief Executive Officer; and Bob Campbell, our Executive Vice President and CFO. The format of the call will be opening remarks and analysis by Jose, followed by a financial review from Bob. These discussions will be followed by a Q&A period, and we expect the call to last about 60 minutes. We had another great quarter and a lot of good things to talk about today, so I'd like to turn over to Jose. Jose?

Jose Ramon Mas

Management

Thanks, Marc. Good morning, and welcome to MasTec's 2013 second quarter call. Today, I will be reviewing our second quarter results, as well as providing my outlook for the markets we serve. First, some second quarter highlights. Revenue for the quarter was $978 million. Adjusted EBITDA was $110 million, an increase of 31% over the prior year second quarter. Adjusted EBITDA margins were 11.2%, a 280 basis point improvement. Adjusted earnings per share were $0.47, and backlog was up nearly $700 million sequentially on a number of large awards that I'll cover later. In summary, we had an excellent quarter. Revenue was up double digits across all of our segments, with the exception of our renewable power generation business, which was, as expected, down considerably. Adjusted EBITDA margins were up 280 basis points year-over-year and up 230 basis points sequentially. The improvement in margins were driven by increased profitability in both our pipeline and wireless markets. In spite of our strong financial performance for the quarter, the highlight of the second quarter was the number of large projects we were awarded. Our pipeline group was awarded an approximately $400 million project from our largest pipeline customer. The project starts in the third quarter and should complete in early 2014. Our Electrical Transmission group was awarded 2 large projects during the quarter, which totaled over $400 million in value. The first project is from MidAmerican Energy in Iowa called the Multi-Value Projects 3 and 4. These lines cover 191 miles, traversing portions of 9 Iowa counties. The second project was a 112-mile line for Arizona Public Service in Arizona. While only the expected 18-month revenue burn-off is included in backlog, these projects helped drive a nearly $700 million sequential increase to backlog. As we have previously stated, we are in the…

C. Robert Campbell

Management

Thank you, Jose, and good morning. Today, I'm going to cover second quarter financial results and our revised 2013 guidance. And I'll also cover our liquidity, cash flow and our capital structure. As in previous calls, when we discuss our financial results and our guidance, we will be discussing non-GAAP continuing operations adjusted EBITDA and earnings. A full reconciliation from GAAP results to continuing operations adjusted results is included in our 10-Q and our press release and on our website. We have made 2 adjustments to our second quarter 2013 continuing operations GAAP results. Our non-GAAP continuing operations adjusted results exclude the final legacy Sintel Spanish litigation charge, and also, they exclude noncash stock compensation expense, which is also excluded for all prior periods. We finally settled and closed out the legacy Sintel litigation in Spain, which dates back to 2001. And we had a final second quarter pre-tax charge of $2.8 million, primarily to cover subsequent foreign currency translation changes related to the original $9.6 million pre-tax settlement charge incurred in the third quarter of 2012. The impact of the second quarter Sintel litigation charge was $0.02 per diluted share. Also during the second quarter, the company entered into an agreement with the previous owners of EC Source to establish an incentive plan for the employees of EC Source, our large project electrical transmission company. In connection with this program, the previous owners contributed cash and common stock from the original purchase transaction back to MasTec. Under applicable accounting rules, MasTec must expense the seller-contributed stock issued under the incentive plan, even though it has no real economic cost to the company. We currently expect total noncash stock compensation expense to increase from about $4 million in 2012 up to about $13 million in 2013, primarily driven by the…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And we'll take our first question from William Bremer with Maxim Group.

William D. Bremer - Maxim Group LLC, Research Division

Analyst

My first question, subsequent to the quarter, in Electrical Transmission, have you been selected for any material large-scale transmission projects? And a follow-up to that is, has there been any leadership change on the transmission side?

Jose Ramon Mas

Management

So we announced 2 major projects during the quarter that we were awarded. Those are the 2 projects I specifically spoke about. Those projects were signed during the quarter. Only a portion that's in 18 months of backlog. The revenue is in backlog, but both of those projects, in their entirety, are in our total backlog. So those are the 2 major wins that we had. We have not been awarded any further large transmission project since the end of the quarter, and there have not been any changes in transmission management.

William D. Bremer - Maxim Group LLC, Research Division

Analyst

Okay, great. My second question is regarding pricing. And we could -- this is mostly in the transmission and pipeline side. Is it safe to assume that the pricing in the backlog that was seen and stellar growth on both sides is better and is better than it was, say, since the first quarter of this year?

Jose Ramon Mas

Management

I wouldn't say it's better from the first quarter. I think over time, the market has tightened up. Competition has probably tightened up a little bit from a pricing perspective, which has made it better for everyone. And it's just an issue of supply and demand. We've got a number of projects, obviously, that we're winning now, that we're beginning construction on. We think, over time, pricing continues to tighten. I think we've seen some tightening but not all that we'll end up seeing.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Tahira Afzal with KeyBanc.

Tahira Afzal - KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc., Research Division

Analyst · KeyBanc.

If you were to look at your CapEx plans now for this year, Jose, how much -- if there was an infinite demand flow on the pipeline side, how much could you grow your revenue by, hypothetically speaking, for next year from this $1.5 billion?

Jose Ramon Mas

Management

We're pretty excited to be growing it to $1.5 billion this year. Obviously, we're going to look at the market and look at the opportunities for us to continue to grow our business. We are very excited about the acquisition of Big Country and the opportunities that it opens up for us in Canada. We think there's a lot of potential growth for us, especially where we were in that market versus where we are today from a competitive sense. We've made a lot of investments this year in equipment and people, so we're hoping to grow. I don't know that we're going to lock ourselves up to a number today because we're not ready to give guidance for 2014 yet. But we're excited about the future. We think there's further growth potential. We're pretty busy from hereon out. For the rest of '13, we're pretty booked in our pipeline business. And we're going to work hard to find ways to continue to grow and continue to put ourselves in the position to get bigger. Obviously, when you look at our first 6 months run rate and where we think we can end the year, we've got acceleration in that business in the second half, we think pretty good acceleration in the second half. So hopefully, we can start that at that same pace in '14 and grow from there.

Tahira Afzal - KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc., Research Division

Analyst · KeyBanc.

Got it, okay. That's helpful. And second question, it's pretty interesting when you're talking about the home security business. Clearly, the housing market is coming back, and it seems like a good idea to always have a diversified business as you grow. So if you look at it not from a 2013, 2014 perspective, but, let's say, from a 3-year-plus perspective, what markets are you excited about outside of, clearly, pipeline and transmission?

Jose Ramon Mas

Management

We're obviously excited about transmission and pipeline, and I think we're very excited about wireless. We're seeing a ton of growth in our wireless business today, and we really see no end in sight to that. We think that's going to accelerate, especially over the course of the next few years. A lot of technology changes are happening there, a lot of issues with networks that are going to take a lot of work for a long time. So we're very, very bullish in that market. We think we've got a lot of potential to continue to grow that business beyond just this year and next. We think it's got some real legs. We've always been bullish about the security business. It's a business that we've had a hard time penetrating in the last 12 months or so. We've had 2 of our major customers enter that business, AT&T and DIRECTV, which we're now working for. So we've seen a shift in the types of players that are entering the security market today. A lot of the video and voice operators are looking at security as a way to diversify and grow their business. And I think we'll naturally get a benefit from that and opportunities to grow our business related to that. So we're pretty excited about that. We think as housing changes, both the maintenance, telco and the distribution energy market are going to improve. We think that the renewable market gets a lot better next year, and we continue to diversify that business. And hopefully, that gives us a lot of long-term opportunities. So the reality is that we're excited about all of our businesses. There's not a business in our portfolio that we don't think has good long-term growth potential. So we're excited about everything.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Andy Kaplowitz with Barclays.

Andrew Kaplowitz - Barclays Capital, Research Division

Analyst · Barclays.

I want to ask you specifically about wireless and your largest customer. If I'm doing the math correctly, it looks like you're growing your AT&T business by more than 20%, and we know that their CapEx growth is a lot lower than that. So is this just the build-out in the new states that you've talked about before? And then how long can you continue these kinds of market share gains? Because, I mean, it's obviously a pretty impressive growth. And then maybe you can talk about some of the other guys that you're building out with Samsung, Ericsson, your penetration into these other customers?

Jose Ramon Mas

Management

A couple of things. First, all of our AT&T revenue at this point is not wireless. Again, they've started doing some security-type work with a product they call Digital Life, which we're working on, which is having a modest impact to revenue growth with them as well. But wireless is growing with them, and we think there's a lot of opportunities to continue to grow. There's a lot of market share opportunities that we have with that customer across the country related to their wireless build. Again, we think that irrespective of what the total CapEx numbers are, they're shifting more dollars into their wireless network and will continue to do so. So very exciting opportunities with them. We're very bullish on where we can take the business with AT&T. But aside from that, you've got a lot of other carriers. Obviously, Sprint is the big one, and they got their new investment from SoftBank. They're going to go through a very aggressive build-out over the course of the next few years, and we really worked hard trying to position ourselves to get a piece of that and hopefully, a sizable piece of that. So that's a huge and very real current opportunity that we're working on that we're hopeful plays out, which will have a significant impact to our wireless growth over the next few years.

Andrew Kaplowitz - Barclays Capital, Research Division

Analyst · Barclays.

Okay. And Jose, just shifting gears, can you talk a little bit more about the losses in the quarter in the Power Generation and Industrial business? What can you do to get that business back to breakeven or profitability, and can you do that in the context of these declines in revenues that you're talking about this year?

Jose Ramon Mas

Management

No question that it didn't perform at the levels that we wanted it to. I think that we expected it to lose a little bit of money. We probably didn't expect it to lose close to 13%. Some of it is obviously driven by just efficiency revenues. They're way down. We're still holding on to some people because we know the market's going to turn, and we're seeing that already. Aside from that, some of our projects, especially some of the newer types of projects that we've been getting into on the Power Generation side, where we're hoping to make some decent margins. They're more like -- we're getting into the business. They're more like breakeven-type projects, so we struggled a little bit on some of the projects. We're learning a lot. We're getting a lot of experience, and we're going to continue to try to grow that business. But it's been a little bit more challenging than what we expected when we got into it. So without those profits on those projects, obviously, there's less profits to cover some of the overhead. As we look at modeling out that business for the balance of the year, we're going to have another loss in Q3. We think it's, hopefully, a little bit better than what it was in Q2. And we're pretty optimistic that we can get that business pretty close to breakeven in Q4. And then going into 2014, with all the renewable work that's going to be taking place, we feel really good about seeing that entire business margin turn in 2014 to some pretty good levels vis-a-vis where they were in the past.

Andrew Kaplowitz - Barclays Capital, Research Division

Analyst · Barclays.

So it's fair to say you don't think it should get worse than here in terms of losses there?

Jose Ramon Mas

Management

It is fair to say that.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Noelle Dilts with Stifel, Nicolaus. Noelle C. Dilts - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., Research Division: First, on Oil and Gas, I was just curious to know if this sort of soft spot we saw in revenues in the quarter, if -- we've been hearing a lot about wet weather and things like that. I was just wondering if that pushed back any project timelines and if that contributed to that weakness at all.

Jose Ramon Mas

Management

Probably, the biggest impact in the quarter was the award that we were awarded from our largest customer. At one point, we had hoped to start that late in Q2, which would've had a significant impact to revenues. It kind of got pushed in the beginning of Q3. We've now started that project. So that probably had the biggest impact in why you saw revenue slightly decrease from Q1 to Q2 and why you'll see revenues ramp so rapidly in the back end of the year. Noelle C. Dilts - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., Research Division: Okay, great. And then secondly, just given the Big Country acquisition, I was hoping you could speak to the opportunities you see in Canada in pipeline at this point and how you think you're positioned now given the legacy operations that you have plus Big Country.

Jose Ramon Mas

Management

Sure. Big Country did about $30 million for the quarter. We anticipate them to do about $150 million for the year. Out of our total numbers, that number should -- will grow as the back end of the year goes. The $30 million in the second quarter was for 2 months. So they're going to ramp as the balance of 2013 goes on, and we're pretty bullish about their full year for 2014. It's a fantastic market. There's a lot of activity. There's a lot of different plays in the pipeline business in Canada. We had made an acquisition a couple of years back. We were roughly $100 million power player in Canada, so we were -- while it was a good business that we grew a lot since we acquired that first business, the reality is we didn't have a lot of size and scale in that market. And I think Big Country, with their reputation and what they've been able to accomplish, gives us a lot more credibility, gives us a lot more scale to be a much more competitive and effective player in Canada. And we're very bullish on that market. We're very bullish on everything from long-haul pipeline to midstream to even gathering lines. They are not a long-line contractor today in Canada, so we're focused more on the midstream side of the business, kind of like we got into in the U.S. And over time, we'll look at opportunities to potentially move into long-line construction but not anticipated in the next 18 months.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Vishal Shah with Deutsche Bank.

Vishal Shah - Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division

Analyst · Deutsche Bank.

Jose, I wanted to just follow up on the Communications segment. You mentioned Sprint. Can you talked about how much of the upside growth in the second quarter was from some of these new customers and share gains? And how do you think the second half as well as 2014 outlook from that particular segment looks like? And then in the Oil and Gas segment, your second half run rate implies close to $1 billion of revenues. I mean, can we assume that you hit your $2-plus billion revenue target much faster than what you were previously thinking?

Jose Ramon Mas

Management

Can you repeat the second part of that question?

Vishal Shah - Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division

Analyst · Deutsche Bank.

Well, I guess in the Oil and Gas segment, revenues for the 2014, '15 time frame, I'm assuming -- in the past, you've said $2-plus billion of revenues in that segment. Given the run rate that you're seeing in that business in the second half, can you get to that level much faster than what you were previously thinking?

Jose Ramon Mas

Management

Well, if you look at the first half of the year, we're roughly at about $600 million in revenues. Obviously, to get to the $1.5 billion, we've got to be at $900 million in the second half, so that's a pretty significant ramp, which we obviously think we can do. If you take that $900 million on the second half of the year run rate and you annualize it in '14, you get to $1.8 billion, right? So I think that's -- we can obviously perform at those levels if we have the work. So the goal of getting to $2 billion could obviously happen in the not-too-distant future. On the wireless side, the work that we're doing associated with Sprint just missed our customer cutoff. We did about 2%. They were about a 2% customer, not just Sprint, but those affiliated with Sprint. So when you back into it, it was a little bit under 10% of our total wireless revenues for the quarter, and that will be ramping and hopefully, significantly.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Will Gabrielski with Lazard.

Will Gabrielski - Lazard Capital Markets LLC, Research Division

Analyst · Lazard.

I was wondering if you can talk beyond pricing in pipeline, more on terms and conditions and how that's shaping up. And then as a follow-up to that, what type of visibility are you getting from customers about how your capacity will be allocated over the next few years within that particular market?

Jose Ramon Mas

Management

So first, on contract structure, really not a lot of changes. We've been working under the same contract structures for the last few years, so you obviously have a mix between fixed-price and cost-plus. We saw a movement to more fixed-price over the last few years, and we think that continues. There'll be some cost-plus, but we think the business will be driven by fixed-price. As far as allocation of resources, what we hear from our customers today is there's going to be an acceleration of work over the course of the next few years. It's going to be very busy. And most of the customers are looking to their partners and trying to figure out how much capacity everybody can allocate to them. So we're not worried about the amount of work that's going to be available in the market. We think there's going to be plenty of work. We think everybody in the industry should do pretty well, us included.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Jason Wangler with Blue Coast [ph] Securities.

Unknown Analyst

Analyst

Just curious as far as on the financial side. You talked about the $100 million of net debt reduction. Do you see paying some of the line off or keeping that cash on the balance sheet? And I guess as a follow-up to that, as you look at the acquisition market, which kind of dovetails into that, what are you seeing from that perspective across all segments?

Jose Ramon Mas

Management

Obviously, as we get cash in the line, we'll get paid off. We've got 2 fixed structures of debt, the bonds, which we redid in the second quarter this year, which were roughly $400 million. And then we've got some equipment debt out there that is very favorable in financial terms, which we probably won't pay off early. So we expect and hope to build our cash balances as time goes on. We've seen, in the acquisition market, a relatively robust market. We've seen a lot of activity. There's a lot of interesting plays out there. Again, we're pretty different when it comes to our acquisition strategy, the types of companies that we look for. We're fairly conservative. We're looking for companies that we can get at a, what we think is a modest valuation but with a lot of upside in the back end and with good management teams. We still think they're out there. There's plenty of opportunities, some that we feel that we'll be able to execute on and some that we'll pass on. But it's a very active market, and we'll probably be looking at as many opportunities today as we have in a long time. So I don't think it's a huge part of our strategy, but there's no question that as we look at our markets and tuck-in capabilities and trying to fill the needs for our growth strategies, there'll be some interesting acquisition opportunities for us.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Liam Burke with Janney Capital Markets.

Liam D. Burke - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC, Research Division

Analyst · Janney Capital Markets.

Distribution, construction and engineering is starting to show signs of life. A lot of the contracts you announced are in the higher -- or longer-haul, higher-voltage area transmission. Are you consciously moving away from the shorter-haul transmission and distribution to move to the high end?

Jose Ramon Mas

Management

There's no question that we've been focused on growing the higher end side of the business, which is a business that we weren't in. So a lot of our focus for the last couple of years has been how do we grow that. We think that the bigger opportunities are there, and I think that's proven out. We're still in the distribution market in energy and the maintenance business in telco. They're obviously a much smaller part of our portfolio than what they historically were. We still like those businesses. We think those businesses improve over time, especially with the turn of housing. We're not seeing -- it's going to be tough for those businesses to move the needle for us because they're relatively small, but we're in those businesses. We have -- we're excited about those businesses and think there's opportunities for us as well.

Liam D. Burke - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC, Research Division

Analyst · Janney Capital Markets.

Great. And you touched on the renewables. Obviously, wind farm construction has slowed down considerably. When you talked about other projects in renewables, are they solar, or what types of projects are they?

Jose Ramon Mas

Management

What we think comes back in 2014 in a pretty big way is wind, so we are currently bidding and in the RFP stages of a lot of projects for 2014. We think '14 is gonna be an excellent year related to wind. We've obviously done some solar projects historically, and the solar market has been somewhat spotty. I think wind, from a competitive perspective, has had a lot more legs, and there's been a lot more wind constructed. So to the extent that the tax credits are available in the renewable wind side, I think wind is going to be a lot more active than solar.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Adam Thalhimer with BB&T Capital Markets. Adam R. Thalhimer - BB&T Capital Markets, Research Division: The margins in the Communications segment, let's call it -- let's call them 13%. You did a 17% margin, EBITDA margin in pipe this quarter. Can we ever see a 17% margin in Communications, or is the business just structurally different than pipeline?

Jose Ramon Mas

Management

I think the 17% in pipeline was obviously a very strong quarter. As we model out the balance of the year, we probably tone that down a little bit. We're probably looking more at like 15% for the balance of the year. Just because we had some good closeouts, I think 17% is achievable. But it's a very good quarter, so I wouldn't necessarily model 17% for the balance of the year. We think Communications can get better. Obviously, I don't know that it gets hundreds of basis points better, but it can definitely get better. Over time, can it reach 17%? I don't know, but I think it could reach 15%. Adam R. Thalhimer - BB&T Capital Markets, Research Division: Okay, good color. And then, Jose, from a capital allocation standpoint, would you ever consider selling the wind business?

Jose Ramon Mas

Management

I would consider selling any business for the right price will probably be the right answer.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from John Rogers with D.A. Davidson. John B. Rogers - D.A. Davidson & Co., Research Division: Two follow-up things. First of all, Bob, you've talked about CapEx being higher this year. And then does it come down a lot in 2014? I mean, how much is being pulled forward in [indiscernible] sort of a normal rate there?

C. Robert Campbell

Management

You know what? It depends on our growth. I mean, I'm not trying to duck the question We clearly are going through a ramp-up given the awards and the prospects that we see. Will it subside next year? It might. I'm not sure I'm ready to say that until we have a better view of awards and continued growth. Until we see the growth subsiding, I'm not sure I'm ready to sign up for lower, but maybe lower.

Jose Ramon Mas

Management

There's no question, though, in a normalized environment, we're not seeing massive growth in pipeline and transmission, which is where a lot of our CapEx is going. There's no question it's a lot lower. John B. Rogers - D.A. Davidson & Co., Research Division: Okay. And then, Jose, just on the -- in terms of the margins in the transmission business, when you've talked about the project timing and ramp-up and ramp-down, what is the expectations for margins in that business for EC Source -- or sorry, for all of MasTec?

Jose Ramon Mas

Management

Our expectation is margins will, over time, be a lot better than they were in '12, and our margins in '12 were about 12.5%. So we definitely think that long term, we'd beat those margins. The challenge for us in that business is we -- if you go back 18 months, 2 years, we were a very small player in transmission. We had a -- we won 1 big project. That's where we kind of started from. We built ourselves to 2. We kind of won some smaller ones. So the challenge for us is we don't have 20 projects. So when we have 2 or 3 projects ending simultaneously and we're starting 2 or 3 projects, there's a lot of expenses associated with mobilizing the new projects, demobilizing off of old projects. So as we grow and we don't only have 1 project, but we have 5 or 6 projects, that issue goes away because we're never going to have all of our projects transitioning at the same time. And I think that when you look at the projects that we've won and you look at the rollout schedule for those, and some of those projects will be 3- and 4-year projects, we won't see that again in the near term. So the challenge has been as we've gotten bigger, we face that issue. So now we've won a number of new projects. We're beginning to mobilize on those jobs, so I think that issue that we had -- or that we're having in the first part of '13 will be slowly a beginning of '13 issue. And as we continue to grow and get bigger, we're going to have a lot more projects. And while margins might move a little bit, they're not going to move to the extent that you saw them move early in 2013. And as we get all of our projects ramped and going, again, our expectation is that over time, we're gonna be a lot better than the margins that we delivered in 2012.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Min Cho with FBR Capital Markets. Min Cho - FBR Capital Markets & Co., Research Division: Just one question for you. It sounded you have plenty of growth opportunities, obviously, in North America. And I know, Jose, in the past, you've talked about having wireless opportunities in Mexico and Brazil and some pipeline opportunities in Mexico. If you could just provide any update on those international opportunities.

Jose Ramon Mas

Management

Again, we're pretty busy in the U.S., so there's no question that we're focused on the U.S. and Canada. When we look at North America, obviously, North America also includes Mexico. And we're very bullish on what's going to happen on the pipeline side in Mexico. PEMEX, the state-owned gas monopoly there, is undergoing a lot of changes. And we're keeping our ear to the ground. We're seeing a lot of the changes that are happening. So over time, and I'm not saying that it happens in the next 18 months, but over time, I think we're going to see a very active and robust pipeline market in that country, and which I don't think there's a lot of players that can handle the work that's going to happen. So there's going to be opportunity for American companies to penetrate in that market and do very well, and we're looking at it. And over time, we think there's a play for us there.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Noelle Dilts with Stifel, Nicolaus. Noelle C. Dilts - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., Research Division: I just had a quick follow-up on investments in equipment. And pretty much, what I'm wondering is to what extent should we be thinking about this equipment that you're bringing on as incremental versus how much is replacing equipment that you've been renting in the past.

Jose Ramon Mas

Management

Well, it's all incremental, right? Because these are equipment we didn't have. Obviously, there's some change-outs or some equipment that we're changing out that maybe we have some older pieces that -- so basically, some maintenance CapEx. But maintenance CapEx is a very low percentage of that total number. Most of that number is what we would call growth CapEx. There's no question that some of that growth CapEx is offsetting some of the rentals. So as we begin our process of growing our CapEx, part of the analysis was we're running x amount of equipment today, and the rentals cost is x. We can save a significant amount of money by buying that equipment versus renting it. Now as we were going through that, growth accelerated. So we continue to rent. So all of the new CapEx purchases are not offsetting rentals. We've been forced to go back into the rental market because of the amount of activity levels that we're having. But what we're going to buy to and what we're going to manage our CapEx to is an amount of equipment that we feel that we can operate and have at a very high utilization level for a long period of time. Outside of that, we're going to continue to be in the rental market for ebbs and flows and peaks and valleys, and rentals will continue to be a significant part of our equipment allocation probably forever. Noelle C. Dilts - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., Research Division: Okay. And are you depreciating the new equipment over 6 years?

Jose Ramon Mas

Management

No. Each type of equipment is depreciated over different lives, so there's some equipment that last 3 years. There's some equipment that last 5. There are some that last 7. So it all depends on the type of equipment and the useful life of that equipment. And we do a lot of studies around that, and then we depreciate to those levels.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from John Rogers with D.A. Davidson. John B. Rogers - D.A. Davidson & Co., Research Division: Just one more question. Jose, you talked a little bit about the home security business through DIRECTV and then mentioned AT&T. Are you working for AT&T now in home security? And if so, what market?

Jose Ramon Mas

Management

We are working for AT&T on a project they call Digital Life, which is a project they recently rolled out in a number of markets. And we're probably -- we're not ready to talk about the specific markets that we're in yet, but we are working for them. We think we're a sizable piece of their installation business for that product. Again, it's a very new product. Volumes and the anticipated demand for that product is yet to play out. So as that becomes more meaningful, we'll probably spend more time talking about it.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our last question from Will Gabrielski with Lazard.

Will Gabrielski - Lazard Capital Markets LLC, Research Division

Analyst

Just on the CapEx, when you started the year and took the number up, it sounded like that was in anticipation of some bigger wins. And then you got these bigger wins, but the number is going up again. And I'm wondering, is part of that related to Big Country in any way, or are we doing more CapEx right now in anticipation of yet more wins? Or did you just under-appreciate how much capital needed to be spent, given the size of the wins you've already booked? Just kind of put some color around that topic.

Jose Ramon Mas

Management

It's not associated with Big Country. And I think that we've ended up having more wins more rapidly than we expected. So in other words, there's no question that we expected to win some big projects. I think we're winning more big projects than we had originally included in our CapEx guidance. And as we've won them, we've been forced, obviously, to invest in those businesses to be able to execute on those projects and hopefully, on other projects to come in the future.

Will Gabrielski - Lazard Capital Markets LLC, Research Division

Analyst

So this CapEx then gives you, hopefully, enough comfort that if you were to continue growing backlog over a 12-month period now, you'd be in pretty good shape to not have to increase the number materially from here?

Jose Ramon Mas

Management

Again, to Bob's comment, it kind of depends on how much we win, right? We're always going to be winning to replace work. If there's another significant growth cycle in any of those businesses, it may require some additional CapEx.

Operator

Operator

And that does conclude our question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Joe Mas for any additional or closing remarks.

Jose Ramon Mas

Management

I'd like to thank everybody for participating on our call today, and we look forward to updating you on our third quarter call in a couple of months. So thank you.

Operator

Operator

And that does conclude our conference. Thank you for your participation.