J. Pearson
Analyst · Sidoti
Thank you, Chris, and thanks for joining us this morning. Before I begin, I would like to take a moment to thank our nearly 1,200 co-workers for all that they do. It’s because of their hard work and dedication that we were able to achieve positive gross margin and positive EBITDA for the quarter. There is no doubt our people remain our most valuable asset. We have a good team and it’s because of their efforts that we continue to move in the right direction.
Also, we’d like to extend our sympathy and concern for all of our investors, coworkers and friends who have been affected by the hurricane Sandy devastation that occurred earlier this week. Devastation from hurricanes is something Orion is all too familiar with and our thoughts are with you as you move through the recovery state.
Now turning to our results and market outlook, the plan that we laid out last year is working, and our results continue to show improvement as we move through 2012. The improvement in our results for the third quarter included a sequential increase in revenue, positive gross margins, positive EBITDA and improving bottom-line results.
Large projects booked at the beginning of 2012 have begun to materially contribute to our improved performance as we drive a larger volume of work to offset lower job margins. As we’ve said before, we believe we can achieve positive bottom line results with the current job margin levels by increasing our volume of work. As we’ve shown through the results this year, we are headed in the right direction. Still the ultimate timing of our return to profitability will be influenced by the timing and type of work and its impact on our overall fleet utilization. We’re working hard to return to profitability as soon as possible.
To do this, we’ve continued our strategy of maintaining a high level of backlog and bidding affectively and focusing on opportunities which best suit our specialized marine assets. During the quarter, we achieved a solid 20% win rate adding approximately $100 million of new orders to our backlog, and this has led to our highest backlog level in two years.
During the quarter we continued to see steady bid margin albeit at lower levels than we saw a couple of years ago, and we continue to see limited irrational bidding. As we look beyond this year, we continue to see solid long-term end market drivers and we remain positive about our future. Clearly we still have some challenges to overcome, though we believe we made the necessary changes to control our costs and move our results in the right direction.
Now let’s look at some specifics about our markets. We’re continuing to monitor pricing conditions after the two-year transportation bill was recently signed into law. As we’ve said before, this piece of legislation could provide a return to more normal bid margins on projects involving marine construction services as non-traditional contractors would return to their normal markets.
Also, it’s been reported that BP and the federal government are progressing toward a settlement on the 2010 oil spill. Reaching the settlement between the two parties is the first step in executing the RESTORE Act which dedicates about 80% of the fines collected from BP towards coastal restoration in five Gulf Coast states, and we’re optimistic that this is going to lead to increased opportunities for us in the Gulf Coast markets.
We’re also encouraged by the continued strong demand in the private sector. During the quarter we were successful in winning several private jobs, including an approximately $10 million bulkhead construction contract which we announced in August.
One of the strongest headwinds that we face today is the fact that our dredge utilization continues to be affected by inconsistent Corps lettings. As we mentioned before, this is an issue that we’ve dealt with now for several quarters. As you’re all aware, the Corps has funding under a continuing resolution through March 2013. While the length of this continuing resolution is more palatable than the series of short-term resolutions that we saw last year, it still doesn’t provide the clarity of the full year of their budget. Therefore we remain in uncertain times surrounding the pace of Corps lettings as we enter into the new fiscal year.
Still we’ve continued to believe there is a building pent-up demands for the projects that involve dredging services and ongoing demand from marine construction projects. And this was before anyone heard of Hurricane Sandy. As we’ve said before, getting our large dredges back to historic utilization levels is the quickest way for us to return to higher profit margins.
According to the most recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the United States continues to see increases in exports and imports. The first eight months of 2012 saw exports increase about 5.6% and imports increase about 4.3% as compared to the same period a year ago. In addition to domestic levels of waterborne commerce increasing, tonnage levels transiting through the Panama Canal have also set a new record. Nearly 332 million Panama Canal tons transited through the locks during the Canal’s fiscal 2012 which ended on September 30.
This breaks the previous record that was set in 2007 of nearly 313 million tons. The increase in the level of exports and imports highlights the need for continued investment in the maintenance and expansion of our vital marine infrastructure.
The importance of our nation's ports and waterways was recently highlighted in a report by the American Society of Civil Engineers, of which I am a member, and the report predicted that ports and waterways will require approximately $30 billion in investment by 2020 -- $30 billion in investment by 2020 to accommodate the anticipated growth in trade and waterborne traffic.
Today we’re tracking $6.5 billion worth of bid opportunities over the next few years and of this, 11% are federal projects, 28% are state, 19% are local and 42% is in the private sector. This higher level of activity in our tracking database gives us optimism about the overall market demand. However close attention must be paid to our pricing and funding to see how these opportunities ultimately play out.
As we announced this morning in our earnings release, yesterday we acquired substantially all the assets and the ongoing projects of West Construction Company, which is located in Anchorage, Alaska, for $9 million. The acquisition of the assets and the backlog of West Construction is another exciting development in the continued growth of Orion. These assets are going to allow us to further expand our capabilities in the Alaska and Pacific Northwest markets as well as provides us with the opportunity to expand our international presence.
We believe this acquisition positions us to take advantage of significant long-term bid opportunities in both the private and public markets throughout the Alaska region. This acquisition will add to our backlog and market tracking database. We’re excited to have the West Construction team as part of the Orion Marine Group and we share a similar philosophy in project management. We have similar capabilities in meeting the challenges of working in remote operations.
In closing, our confidence in the long-term strength of our business remains strong and the plan that we put in place has us moving in the right direction. We remain focused on returning to profitability while protecting the intrinsic value of the company and returning value to our shareholders. While we face some challenges as we wrap up 2012 and move into 2013, we believe Orion Marine Group has a strong and bright future. We’re working hard to maintain our backlog, maintain a very strong balance sheet, increase our margins, explore complementary but diversified service offerings.
And with that, I will turn the call over to Mark Stauffer to discuss our financial results in more details. Mark?