NWPX Infrastructure, Inc. (NWPX) Q1 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Greetings, and welcome to the NWPX Infrastructure First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] It is now my pleasure to introduce Scott Montross, President and CEO. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, and welcome to NWPX's First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Scott Montross, and I'm President and CEO of the company. I'm joined today by Aaron Wilkins, our Chief Financial Officer. By now, all of you should have access to our earnings press release, which was issued yesterday, April 29, at approximately 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time. This call is being webcast, and it is available for replay. As we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that statements made on this call regarding our expectations for the future are forward-looking statements, and actual results could differ materially. Please refer to our most recent Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025, and in our other SEC filings for a discussion of such risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. Thank you all for joining us today. I'll begin with a review of our first quarter performance and our outlook for the second quarter of 2026, and then Aaron will walk you through our financials in more detail. We delivered a strong start to 2026. Net sales were up 19% year-over-year to $138.3 million, reflecting meaningful growth across both our Water Transmission systems and precast businesses. Our strategy delivered record first quarter consolidated gross profit of $26.7 million, up 38% from last year, with our gross margin expanding 260 basis points year-over-year to 19.3% -- that strength carried through to the bottom line, highlighting the operating leverage in our model and continued execution across the organization. We generated record first quarter profitability with earnings of $1.08 per share and produced strong free cash flow of $25.7 million or $2.62 per share, reinforcing the strength and consistency of our earnings profile and the resilience of our cash flows. Turning to our WTS segment. Revenue reached a first quarter record of $93.5 million, up 19% year-over-year with strong margin improvement. Our performance reflected higher production volume with tons produced up 18%, supported by strong project execution. This growth came despite adverse weather that caused unscheduled downtime across 3 WTS facilities early in the quarter. Selling prices were up 1% year-over-year, driven by changes in product mix, and we also benefited from favorable project timing across several large water transmission jobs. In addition, we saw one of our strongest booking quarters to date with robust bidding activity and the emergence of a significant previously unplanned project that is under NDA, which will contribute positively to our 2026 results, all of which contributed to a substantial increase in our backlog, reinforcing the strength of demand across our markets. WTS backlog, including confirmed orders, ended the quarter at a record $430 million. up from $346 million at year-end and well above the $289 million level we reported this time last year. Looking ahead, we expect the 2026 bidding environment to be moderately stronger than 2025. WTS gross profit increased 42% year-over-year to $17.3 million, resulting in a gross margin of 18.5%, up 300 basis points from last year. This improvement reflects higher volumes supported by strong customer demand and the related efficiency gains and higher overhead absorption that come with that level of production, favorable product mix and the overall solid operational execution across the segment. Now turning to our precast segment. Precast revenue increased 19% year-over-year to a new record first quarter level of $44.8 million. Our performance was driven by a 14% increase in selling prices from a favorable change in product mix and increased sales volume, reflecting continued growth in the nonresidential portion of our business. At Park, production increased 30% year-over-year with strong growth in revenue per yard shipped despite borrowing costs that remain elevated as the Fed held interest rates steady in 2026. We are continuing to see signs of improvement in the nonresidential demand trajectory as we progress through 2026, specifically related to data center projects that have been instrumental in buoying the commercial construction demand. At Geneva, production and shipments had a solid year-over-year gains of 7% and 8%, respectively, despite seeing a moderate slowdown in the residential construction market, which has more than been offset by growth in Geneva's nonresidential business. Leading indicators remained solid early in 2026 with the Dodge Momentum Index up 26% in March of this year versus March of 2025. The commercial sector was up 29% and institutional was up 20%, indicating positive signals for nonresidential construction activity this year and into 2027. Our precast order book ended the quarter at $55 million, down modestly from the $57 million at year-end and below the $64 million level at March 31 of last year. The precast order book has remained stable for the last several quarters and continues to keep pace with higher levels of production and customer shipments. Stronger volumes and pricing contributed to a 30% year-over-year increase in precast gross profit to $9.3 million, resulting in a gross margin of 20.9%, up from 19.1% last year. These results show that absorption rates are improving with higher throughput. We expect margins to continue recovering as nonresidential demand builds. Now turning to our strategic growth initiatives. As previously discussed, we are making solid progress expanding precast capabilities across our network. We're also looking at where it makes sense to bring precast into additional WTS facilities through our product spread strategy, which remains an integral part of our long-term growth plan. As part of that endeavor, we are seeing better capacity utilization at our precast plants, strong momentum at our Geneva operations in Utah and steady progress as we introduce Park and other precast-related products into more WTS locations. At the same time, we continue to evaluate M&A opportunities in the precast-related space that can accelerate our strategy, expand our manufacturing capabilities and efficiencies and broaden our geographic reach and product portfolio. Consistent with this approach, we are looking at both single plant acquisitions and larger opportunities that can support long-term growth and help us advance our precast expansion as previously announced, we completed the acquisition of Boughton Precast, a single-site producer in the high-growth Colorado market during the first quarter of 2026. The integration is off to a strong start, and we're encouraged by the long-term growth potential we see in the Colorado market. I'll now turn to our outlook for the second quarter of 2026. In our Water Transmission Systems segment, we expect higher revenue and margins compared to both the second quarter of 2025 and the prior quarter, driven by more favorable volume and product mix and the emergence of a significant previously unplanned project. We entered 2026 with a robust WTS backlog and elevated bidding levels and both strengthened further in the first quarter, providing even greater visibility into near-term demand. Based on what we are seeing today, we expect full year bidding levels to be stronger than what we saw in 2025, and we expect backlog to stay elevated throughout 2026. We remain encouraged by the level of activity across current and upcoming water transmission projects, which continue to come with improved economics and margins. For a more complete view of these projects, please refer to our investor presentation on our website. Turning to precast. We maintained a stable and healthy order book in the first quarter of 2026, and we expect a stronger year for the precast business overall. Demand remains healthy in the nonresidential market, supporting continued momentum across our Park and Geneva platforms. For the second quarter, we expect precast revenue to be higher than the second quarter of last year and the prior quarter with stable margins driven by solid demand, higher production levels with improved absorption and a strengthening order book. On a consolidated basis, we expect the second quarter to be stronger than we've seen in recent years. We believe 2026 is shaping up to be a historic year for NWPX. Continued momentum in our precast business, combined with strong bidding activity in our WTS business is indicating the potential for another record year. In addition, the significant previously unplanned WTS project noted earlier is additive to what we already expected for a record year. In closing, I'm very pleased with our results, which set new first quarter records across nearly every metric. Our teams delivered exceptional execution throughout the quarter, and I want to thank everyone at MWPX for their commitment to our strategy and to maintaining a strong safety culture. With a WTS backlog that is stronger than ever, a healthy bidding environment and solid momentum in our precast order book, we feel well positioned to carry this performance forward and continue building on the progress we've made across both segments. As we look ahead, our near-term priorities remain: one, maintaining a safe and rewarding workplace; two, focusing on margin over volume; three, intensifying our pursuit of strategic acquisitions; four, implementing cost efficiencies across the organization; and five, returning value to our shareholders when M&A opportunities are limited. I will now turn the call over to Aaron, who will walk through our financials in greater detail.

Thank you, Scott, and good morning to everyone joining the call today. Before I begin, I'd like to mention that unless otherwise stated, all financial measures in my remarks refer to the first quarter of 2026, and all comparisons will be year-over-year comparisons versus the first quarter of 2025. I'll begin with our profitability. We delivered record first quarter consolidated net income of $10.5 million or $1.08 per diluted share up from $4 million or $0.39 per diluted share, reflecting the improving operating leverage on higher revenues and the continued strength in execution across the business. On the top line, consolidated net sales grew 19.1% to $138.3 million compared to $116.1 million last year. Our Water Transmission Systems segment also posted a record first quarter with sales rising 19.1% to $93.5 million versus $78.4 million. This growth was driven by an 18% increase in tons produced due largely to project timing and a 1% improvement in selling price per ton due to product mix. Precast delivered a record first quarter as well, with sales up 18.9% to $44.8 million compared to $37.7 million. The results benefited from a 14% increase in selling prices due to product mix and a 4% increase in volume shipped. As a reminder, the products we manufacture are unique in the average sales prices for both of our operating segments as well as the precast shipment volumes and WTS production volumes cannot always be relied upon as comparable metrics due to variations in the mix between periods. We also achieved record first quarter consolidated gross profit supported by higher volume and favorable pricing and mix. Gross profit was $26.7 million, up 37.7%, representing 19.3% of sales, a 260 basis point improvement from $19.4 million or 16.7% of sales. In Water Transmission Systems, gross profit increased 42.3% to $17.3 million or 18.5% of segment sales, a 300 basis point improvement from $12.2 million or 15.5% of sales. The increase reflects higher production volume and the associated operational efficiency gains as well as favorable changes in product mix. Precast gross profit also reached a record first quarter, rising 30% to $9.3 million or 20.9% of segment sales compared to $7.2 million or 19.1% of sales. The 180 basis point improvement in gross margin was largely driven by higher selling prices tied to product mix. Selling, general and administrative expenses were $14 million, up 1.5% and represented 10.1% of net sales, a 180 basis point improvement from 11.9% of net sales a year ago, even with modest increases in incentive compensation expense. For the full year 2026, we now expect consolidated SG&A to range between $53 million and $55 million. Depreciation and amortization expense was $4.8 million compared to $4.4 million, and we continue to expect a full year expense of approximately $20 million to $22 million. Interest expense declined to $0.3 million from $0.6 million, reflecting lower average daily borrowings. Income tax expense was $2 million, resulting in an effective income tax rate of 16% compared to $1 million or a rate of 19.8% last year. The effective rates for both quarters were primarily impacted by tax windfalls recognized upon the vesting of equity awards. Our tax rate can vary based on the level of total permanent differences relative to pretax income. And for the full year, we currently expect an effective tax rate of approximately 24% to 26%. I'll now turn to our financial condition. At March 31, 2026, cash and cash equivalents improved to $14.3 million from $2.3 million at year-end. Our debt balance totaled $10.7 million, and there were no outstanding borrowings on our credit facility at March 31. This resulted in a net cash position of $3.5 million as we continue to drive cash to the balance sheet to support our growth and shareholder return priorities. Our improved profitability, coupled with favorable changes in working capital drove strong net cash provided by operating activities of $29.2 million, reflecting a more than 500% increase from $4.8 million last year. Capital expenditures were $3.5 million compared to $3.7 million last year. For the full year 2026, we continue to expect CapEx in the $20 million to $24 million range, including approximately $6 million for investment projects to support our precast product spread strategy and broader precast growth initiatives. As a result, we generated $25.7 million of free cash flow in the quarter compared to $1.2 million last year. For 2026, we are raising our full year free cash flow outlook to $50 million to $56 million, up from a prior range of $40 million to $46 million. In terms of capital deployment for the quarter, we spent $8.9 million to complete the purchase of Boughton Precast, repurchased approximately 33,000 shares of our common stock at an average price of $67.17 for a total of $2.2 million and repaid $1 million in debt. These activities highlight our ability to continue to grow the company while concurrently returning value to our shareholders. To close, we delivered a strong start to the year with first quarter records for revenue under the current configuration, gross profit and earnings. We also generated very strong free cash flow, further strengthened our balance sheet and remain disciplined in our capital deployment. Our record Water Transmission Systems backlog and our solid precast order book, coupled with the commercial team's focus on pricing and our track record of superb operational execution, position us to achieve new heights in financial performance as we move through the remainder of 2026. Thank you to our employees for their continued concentration on workplace safety and to our shareholders for their continued support. I'll now turn it over to the operator to begin the question-and-answer session.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question today will hear from Julio Romero with Sidoti & Company.

Scott, I appreciate the significant previously unplanned project is under NDA. So to the extent that you can, could you maybe help us understand at a high level, how additive the project is to your '26 outlook, whether it goes beyond '26, potentially the '27? And then secondly, should we think of this as kind of a one-off? Or does it have the potential to lead to additional phases or repeat business with that customer?

So yes, and like I said, we're under NDA. It's a government-related project. It's being produced at multiple of our plants. What I would tell you is it looks like this piece of the project because there are, from what we understand, multiple other pieces of this project as we go forward into the future is right in the area of about $50 million, okay? So the real question is it's a relatively short fuse job that is scheduled to be produced really in the late second quarter, third quarter going into about the mid-fourth quarter of this year. And that segment is expected to be done. I think one of the challenging things is right now is there's a little bit more of a question on how quickly you can get all the steel to do it. So there is a potential that some of it could leak into next year. But the understanding we have of these projects is there's multiple phases of these things that are planned right now that go out into the future that could be additive to other years as we go into the future. And I think that's probably as clean of a look as I can give you on the thing.

Absolutely. I really appreciate the color you gave with that answer. I think you kind of hit the points I was looking for. there. On your cash flow in the quarter, it was very strong, and it looks like your net contract asset position improved pretty meaningfully driven by contract liabilities. Can you give us any more color on what drove that increase? And is it tied to that one-off that project or any other larger WCS projects?

Yes. Julio, the cash flows for the business, obviously, can be a little bit challenging to forecast because they can at times be a little lumpy, which is normal. But really what happened and what continues to be a focus for our Water Transmission system commercial teams is to drive what I call special trying to get the steel billed in advance of the project, get MOH payments and progress payments throughout the job. That is something that over the span of the last 3 years, we are seeing growing success at. It is still negotiated individually with the specific customers, but we're able to do that more often than we used to be able to do it. And really, what happened was we had a $20 million collection on one of those special billings come in, in the month -- I think it was the month of February or March. You'll notice that our accounts receivable remains elevated, which means that we're still doing a great job of billing customers. That is because we have also on a completely separate job, billed another customer for $20 million, a little over $20 million and that has since been received. So the business model really has been driven to get the cash flows as a focus. And that's why, in part, at least, I had to raise our range, our guidance for free cash for 2026. I think we're going to be more successful. I think there's more opportunities for the WTS team to do these special billings in the year compared to 2025 year, which was also a very successful year, by the way. And I think that the new job that Scott just talked to you about, those 2 elements were worthwhile for raising the range so quickly into the year. I'll tell you, though, Julio, the thing that could still come depending on the success, and there's always timing, right? You could always be paid on January 1, right, for something that really was attributed this year, which is why I may be a little bit of gun shy. But there's -- I mean, it is very possible that cash flows could go up another clip of $10 million or more in the ranges to be broadcast in the future, right? So not unheard of to think of $60 million or more for a free cash year for the company.

Understood. Very helpful there. And one more for me is you have record backlog of $430 million in WTS including confirmed orders. Can you maybe just help us think about where your capacity utilization stands for that segment? And would you be able to take on kind of additional work from here?

Yes. We don't have -- we can take on a lot more work than we have right now with capacity -- with the capacity we have spread across the C plants. Now we would have to move stuff between plants, but we have plenty more room to take on additional work as we go forward because capacity utilization, if we're much over probably 70% or 72% in the Water Transmission Systems business, that's probably about a high point for us at this point. And really, you can obviously add additional shifts, too, if we need to, which we do at certain plants at certain times when it's busy enough. So yes, we have a lot more room to produce a lot more, Julio, and are ready to do so.

And at this time, there are no further questions. I would like to turn the call back over to Scott Montrose for closing remarks.

So yes, I'd just like to wrap up by saying that thank you for everybody for joining the call like always. And obviously, we delivered a very strong start to 2026. I think we're at a point now we can say that the company is hitting on all cylinders now with the things that we are seeing. The -- the bidding outside of the -- that project, it's a special project. It's under NDA in the first quarter on Water Transmission was probably the strongest we've seen and really probably the strongest booking quarter that we've ever had on the Water Transmission side of the business. So we've got significant momentum going forward on the water transmission side. And on the precast side, again, we are seeing a lot of work around data centers. Data centers are one of the things that's really buoying the commercial construction side of the business now. And the 2 states that we're in on the precast side, primarily in Texas and in Utah are very strong data center centers. I think there's something like 140 projects going on in Texas that obviously we're taking part in and other projects going on in Utah, which is becoming more of a almost more of a gigas site for data centers where there's really, really large ones being built. Even with a little bit of the slowdown that's been discussed in the press on the residential side of the business, we're still seeing very strong precast business. And where we've seen slowdown on residential side, for example, in our Geneva businesses, where that's being picked right up on the nonresidential side and the precast business continues to grow. And I think the biggest thing is we continue to advance our strategy going forward with both organic growth and M&A, and we're going to continue to do that. Like I said, we expect a strong second quarter -- when we looked at the projections for 2026, even before we looked at a year that we had this special project that came forward, we were projecting it was going to be another record year and stronger than 2025. And this big project is just additive to that. And I think, again, we're hitting on all cylinders. We appreciate your support as shareholders and our analyst support. So thank you, and we'll see you in...

Late July.

Late July. So thank you very much.

Thank you. This does conclude today's teleconference. We thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time.