Thomas McCormick
Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets
Thank you, Kate. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today to discuss our third quarter results. This was a record quarter for Primoris and is all the more impressive given the challenges that the country is facing from the pandemic, reduced energy prices and widespread economic uncertainty.
The third quarter was a continuation of things we saw in the second quarter. Sustained strong performance in margins in our heavy civil and electric utility work demonstrating that we have definitely turned the corner in those businesses, continued strength in our gas utility markets, growth in our pipeline business, driven by nonunion field services work. And a renewables market that is driving strong performance through multiple solar and biofuel projects. We achieved these results while continuing our focus on safety. Working over 20 million work hours and keeping our total recordable incident rate below our company-wide target level.
I am incredibly grateful to all our employees across the country for their commitment to maintaining a safe work environment and executing their work successfully despite all the distractions that they have had to deal with this year. Even with record revenue burn in the quarter, we were able to maintain a healthy backlog, ending the quarter at $3 billion in total backlog, which excludes the ACP project now that we've received the formal notice of termination from our client.
Our backlog reinforces the strength of our business across our end markets as particularly in our gas and electric utilities markets as well as the renewables market. Thanks to strong project execution, project controls and continued SG&A discipline, our cash flow remains robust, and our balance sheet is stronger than ever. We're using some of that cash for internal upgrades to our IT and HR systems and tools, investments we expect will pay dividends in the long run. As part of our growth strategy, we are also actively looking at potential acquisitions.
In October, we were pleased to see Primoris be included in the ENR top 600 specialty contractors list, entering the list at #6. Moving from the more general EPC contractors list to the specialty contractors list, more closely reflects our business model and lower risk profile and confirms what we've always known that Primoris is one of the top specialty contractors in the country.
Let's take a look at the third quarter segment results, starting with the Civil segment. This segment benefited from the final resolution of the last 2 Belton area claims. But even without the settlement, we had strong results from solid execution on our current heavy civil projects. We see opportunities for heavy civil growth in asphalt paving and heavy structures, particularly in West Texas. The management team remains focused on project execution and it is paying dividends.
On the I&M side, our management team is executing extremely well in what is a challenging market, and they more than offset the revenue decline with higher margins from strong execution and project controls. The solar market is creating some positive momentum, but we expect overall demand in the industrial market will continue to face headwinds until the global pandemic subsides and the economy picks up.
Within the Power, Industrial & Engineering segment, we are facing similar headwinds. As I mentioned on the last call, we expect the Gulf industrial market to remain tight for the rest of the year, particularly in the refining and chemical markets. The impact of the pandemic has led to a glut of fuel and a sharp reduction in refinery demand. The segment has also been challenged as we work to complete some difficult projects, the largest of which should wrap up in the second quarter of next year after which I would expect to see margin improvement.
Execution on more recent awards under the new management team continues to build on the momentum we saw last quarter with positive feedback from our clients and profitable margins. We also continue to pursue smaller capital projects and maintenance awards along the Gulf Coast and in California, which will provide a more stable base level of revenue for this segment. Although work is slower in our Canadian markets, we continue to operate at profitable levels. Where we see the most opportunity for this segment is in the renewables market. We are executing well on the $200 million plus biofuels project in California that we announced earlier this year, retrofitting an existing refinery to accept vegetable oils.
We are also seeing renewable diesel and biomass opportunities for both our engineering teams and nonunion construction business in the Gulf Coast. And the solar net continues to be one of our biggest growth opportunities for this segment, with our team's exceptional performance exceeding our expectations on all of their projects to date.
In the third quarter, we completed the largest solar facility in Texas, 4 square miles containing 1.2 million double-faced panels. The facility has a generation capacity of 498 megawatts DC, which will prevent the emission of over 800,000 tons of CO2 per year.
Primoris is receiving recognition as an industry-leading EPC contractor for solar projects, and we expect this market to continue to provide opportunity for growth across multiple business units in the coming years. The pipeline in underground segment had another strong quarter, once again, led by the great performance of our nonunion pipeline projects and field services work.
The big storms largely missed these projects, allowing us to continue our outstanding project execution. As expected, the larger-diameter market faces some headwinds from energy prices and environmental challenges, but we are following through on our strategy of replacing lost revenue with multiple smaller projects and repurposing this business to increase their menu of services, including field services-type work, which is very similar to the strategy we followed during the last energy downturn. Our craftsmen are experienced with this type of work, and we have already had some success picking up work from new and existing clients.
While we have taken the ACP project out of backlog, we do have maintenance crews still on-site and are in discussions -- and discussions are ongoing as to any potential work to close out the project. The segment still needs to win work to make their 2021 plan but that's typical for this type of work as the norm for this market is for projects to be awarded and then move quickly to the field.
The Utilities & Distribution segment saw revenue continue to grow as the third quarter is traditionally our busiest quarter. The mix of work in the California market had a slight negative impact on overall margins as did costs associated with the tooling and outfitting of new gas distribution crews.
Starting in late September, we have had crews working full-time to help with wildfires in California, which has disrupted some of the normal release of work in the region. Our Midwest work benefited from good weather in the closeout of a larger lump sum project. And in the Southeast, we continue to benefit from higher-margin work, better contract terms and reduced equipment levels. That region is going to see double-digit margins this year, which is a dramatic improvement over last year and one we believe to be sustainable.
We picked up several new gas utility customers across the country during the third quarter as we expanded our national presence. We are also finding opportunities for additional work by partnering with our renewables teams as we can provide services to their projects that were previously subcontracted. This is another example of the benefit of Primoris' diverse capabilities and our ability to have multiple touch points on a project. Our Transmission & Distribution segment had another strong quarter building on the momentum from Q2. We are very pleased to now be delivering margins consistently within our target range. We had some start-up costs on a large transmission project in the quarter but that was mostly offset by the margin benefit of storm.
And while we appreciate the incremental margins that storm work can provide, we are more appreciative of the positive support and feedback we received from the impacted communities as our crews worked long in challenging conditions to restore power to regions that have been devastated by these storms.
With this quarter's strong results, we are now confident that we have rightsized the business and fully executed on our integration plan. As we move forward, we have brought the management of the Utilities & Distribution segment and the Transmission & Distribution segment under 1 senior executive and have established integrated electric and gas business processes to improve the overall performance. These are MSA-based businesses and their focus moving forward is to maximize synergies and scale, continue to improve productivity and increase our market share.
We enter the fourth quarter in a position of strength, understanding that the challenges of 2020 have not gone away, but we have learned how to successfully manage them and continue to operate safely. While we have slightly increased our guidance range to account for our third quarter results, the timing of the winter cold season is always unpredictable and can impact our fourth quarter gas utility work.
That said, we are confident that 2020 will close out as the best year in Primoris' history, and we see the strength in our utility and renewables businesses is gaining momentum in 2021.
With that, I'll turn it over to Ken for a deeper dive into the numbers.