Mark Stauffer
Analyst · Imperial Capital. Please go ahead
Thank you, Drew and thanks for joining us this morning. We’re holding this call this morning to provide more detail around the press release we issued this morning regarding our preliminary third quarter results. The primary goal of this call is to discuss third quarter operational issues, which we believe will have a material impact on our result. That being said, I’ll take a moment to highlight some positives from the quarter. First, we’re very pleased with the TAS acquisition, which is performing above our expectations. TAS had a strong performance during the third quarter and we expect continued strong demand for their services for the remainder of this year and for 2016. Demand for services in the marine construction segment continue to grow. Year-to-date in this segment we have bid on approximately 1.1 billion of work, which represents a 19% increase over the same period in 2014. We believe we will continue to see strong demand for our marine construction segment services and at this segment of our business will have solid returns in the future. Combined during the third quarter we bid on approximately $682 million of work and we’re successful on $161 million representing a 24% win rate. However as we announced this morning during the third quarter we experienced issues on five projects managed out of our Tampa, Florida office which has led to the significant write downs on these jobs to account for changes in managements estimate to complete the projects and to our actual cost incurred when performing and finalizing of these projects. Specifically, as a result of concerns on these projects in late September I mandated a deeper view of the associated projects forecast resulting in several changes to the forecasted cost to complete these projects. As an example of some of these issues a project involving the installation of the storm water outfall experienced increases in cost estimates to complete the project due to delays and production as the project was finalizing the surface zone [ph] phase. Further it was determined that several sections of prior placed pipe had connection issues which led to the need to remove and reinstalled six pipe sections, a time consuming and costly process. On another project incompatibility of movement connections details resulted in delays to complete the project substantially increasing cost. Fundamentally, these changes are a result of a vacuum in the Tampa offices operational leadership as a result of the passing of the company’s former Chief Operating Officer, who was based in the Tampa office and has significant influence over its operation. This led to mistakes on projects as issues arose, compounding production delays and extending time frames for these projects. In some cases we do have pending claims or change orders which we will aggressively pursue that could lead to cost recovery. We are completing these jobs to customer satisfaction as quickly as possible in order to mitigate the impacts and expect all of these projects to be completed by the end of the first quarter of 2016 if not sooner. As the CEO of a company the prides itself on successful project execution, these project performance issues in Tampa are completely unacceptable. In the history of this company we have never experience this level of problems on projects and I’m taking aggressive actions to ensure that this does not occur again. While I’m extremely disappointed with these developments it’s important to point out that these are isolated, correctible issues which are limited to our Tampa operation. I’m rectifying the situation and ensuring that these events do not recur. I’m also confident that our new COO, Dwayne Breaux has the experience and leadership skills to help resolve these issues and help prevent them from occurring. We have instituted a complete realignment of the Tampa office and have full confidence in our Tampa team going forward. As a result of these adjustments we’ve also examined our Florida differed tax asset and will be taking a $1 million valuation allowance against this asset. Also I want to take a moment to give you an update on our equipment review program. During the third quarter we completed our previously discussed asset review and have identified several non-essential or underutilized assets both equipment and property that will be disposed. Included in this we are adjusting our dreading fleet to meet anticipated future market demand and to minimize impacts from the unpredictability of the army corps of engineers lending cycle. Specifically, we will be selling one underutilized dredge internationally that we do not believe meets the future operating requirement of our business. We have also converted two other dredges into booster pumps to support ongoing and future work. Converting these dredges into booster pumps was a cost effective process and we have the capability to convert them back into a dredge configuration as the market demands in the future. This also aligns with work we currently have in backlog or anticipate working on in the future where we will be utilizing longer dredge pipelines requiring additional boosters. The disposal of the non-essential or underutilized assets along with the sale of surplus real estate in Tampa will result in a onetime non-cash charge of approximately $2.6 million that we will record in the third quarter. These disposals will not have a material impact on ongoing operations, though will result in annual cost expense reduction of approximately $1.2 million. We estimate the proceeds from the disposal of this equipment and real estate to be between $5 million and $6 million, which will be used to pay down debt. These significant steps that will better align our assets for the future. Additionally, we have develop an improved CapEx planning process, which evaluates each type and piece of equipment to ensure we are investing capital dollars were returns will be maximized. In the future, this will include replacing some equipment when it is at the end of its useful life with rental equipment, providing us with great flexibility. To be clearer, we will continue to own a significant amount of equipment. However, I will continue to ensure that we are investing capital that provides a solid return and then we have a fleet that is flexible to meet the market. I also want to touch base on the army corps of engineers and recent awards. As expected we did see an increase in corps bid opportunities during the third quarter. However, we were successful on only one of the projects led during August and September, which was subsequently cancel by the corps and will be rebid in 2016. Another project letting that was postponed in September was led during October and we are the apparent low bitter. Despite the results from the recent corps letting activities, we continue to have opportunities from the private sector and local port authority. We expect at the inconsistencies in corps lettings to abate in 2015 and have them return to a more normalized funding pattern. This did not occur and we do not expect this to occur in the near future. As a result as I just mentioned, we are making changes for the composition of the dredge fleet to meet the market we see ahead and we expect improved dredge utilization going forward irrespective of the lettings from the corps. In summary, we are confident in both our marine construction business and our recent acquisition of TAS, which is outperforming initial expectation. However, the impacts from the five projects -- the five Tampa projects along with one-time non-cash expenses related to the disposition of underutilized equipment and facilities and evaluation allowance on a portion of the companies Florida deferred tax asset will significantly affect the company’s third quarter results. We believe our third quarter 2015 results will be a loss in the range of $0.25 to $0.30 per share. Also we will be giving specific guidance for both the full year 2015 and 2016 on the formal earnings call in November. I’m focused on moving our company forward positioning us for success and delivering more predictable results in the future. I’m confident we are rectifying the issues with our Tampa operations and that 2016 will be a solid year for the company with significantly improved bottom-line performance. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Andrew to open up the call for question and answer.