James Haddox
Analyst · Tahira Afzal with KeyBanc Capital Markets
Thank you, John, and good morning, everyone. In the first quarter of 2011, revenues from our Electric Power segment were approximately $567 million, an increase of 24% compared to approximately $457 million in revenue for the first quarter of 2010. The increase in this segment's revenues was primarily related to the acquisition of Valard. Excluding Valard's revenues, this segment achieved 15% revenue growth for the quarter. 12-month backlog in the Electric Power segment was $1.88 billion at March 31, 2011. This is a 47% increase over 12-month backlog at March 31, 2010. Total backlog was up 19.8% to $4.34 billion at March 31, 2011, compared to the same period last year. We expect Electric Power segment revenues to increase approximately 34% for the full year of 2011 compared to 2010, despite the late starts on 3 major transmission projects this year. Northeast Utilities expects required permits for the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection for the Greater Springfield Reliability Project to be issued in the third quarter of this year. This project is the first of 3 major transmission programs for Northeast Utility's portion of the New England East-West Solution, or NEEWS project. This delay has not impacted specialized energized services and limited construction activity is provided to support end-use infrastructure upgrade initiatives throughout their service area. Southern California Edison anticipates required environmental permits to now be issued in the July time frame at the earliest. These are primarily the water quality permits for that Tehachapi project Segment 6, which will be constructed in the Angeles National Forest. We are currently engaged in limited construction activities on this project and construction of Segment 11 is scheduled to start in November of this year. San Diego Gas & Electric now anticipates required environmental permits for the Sunrise PowerLink project to be issued in September of this year. We have initiated work on the underground portion of this project. While certain power transmission projects have been delayed, others are moving forward on schedule. Our work for Central Maine Power Company on the Maine Reliability Project is now moving into the early construction phase. We currently have about 70 personnel on this project, and this project is expected to complete in 2015. During the first quarter, construction continued on National Grid's Rhode Island Reliability Project, which is also part of a NEEWS initiative. This work is focused primarily in North Smithfield and will continue southward. This project is approximately 20% complete, with completion expected in early 2013. In addition, our alliance is performing substation renovation for this project. Construction remains scheduled to begin this summer on the Rockdale, Wisconsin project under our contract with American Transmission Co. This project includes construction of a new 32-mile, 345,000-volt transmission line standing from Rockdale to West Middleton. For ITC, we continue to work on several transmission lines in substation projects in the Michigan and Iowa area. We have also received notification to construct the 18-mile Hugo-to-Valliant 345,000-volt line in Oklahoma. In Canada, we continue to work on the 108-mile double-circuit, 500,000-volt Bruce to Milton transmission reinforcement project for Hydro One, which is expected to complete in the summer of 2012. Looking forward, we expect other projects to gain momentum later in 2011. Our work for CapX2020 should begin in the second half of 2011 and continue into 2015. CapX2020 is a joint initiative of 11 transmission owning utilities, proposing to build infrastructure under what is expected to be the largest transmission expansion in the upper Midwest in 30 years. We expect to realize revenues of approximately $330 million associated with this project. We recently finalized the first contract under this agreement. Construction on the Bemidji to Grand Rapids project is expected to begin in July of this year. We also expect BC Hydro to announce their construction partner on the Northwest Transmission Line and the interior lower demand online in the next 2 months. During our fourth quarter conference call, we announced that we were awarded contracts for [audio gap] transmission line and substation work for Lone Star Transmission related to the Texas Competitive Renewable Energy Zone, or CREZ. Construction activities are expected to begin in July of this year. LCRA sales phase to Kendall line is expected to begin construction in the fourth quarter of this year, and the Buttes [ph] to Bighill [ph]line in the first quarter of 2012. In addition, we continue to perform smaller CREZ and non-CREZ transmission projects for LCRA throughout this year. CREZ utilities, EPC, West and Sharyland are in the final stages of determining their construction partners for the remaining CREZ transmission projects, and we expect contract awards in the coming weeks. Portions of this work are expected to begin later this year. As we enter into the second half of this year, we anticipate a transmission construction market unlike anything the industry has ever experienced. By the end of this year, we should be performing work on no less than 10 major electric transmission projects, barring any unforeseen regulatory hurdles or other delays. We are currently forecasting electric distribution revenues to be flat for the year of 2011 compared to the full year 2010. Today, we have not seen any meaningful indicators that our customers will increase distribution spending this year. We continue to see momentum in the Renewable Energy portion of our business during the quarter. Revenues from Renewable Energy Services for the first quarter of 2011 totaled $65 million, compared to $27 million during the same period last year. Of this total, Solar accounted for approximately $50 million and Wind Energy accounted for approximately $15 million. We are scheduled to accomplish our renewable energy goal of $350 million for the full year of 2011. Recently, Lincoln Renewable Energy announced that it has selected Quanta Services subsidiary for the construction of the 10-megawatt Oak Solar facility in New Jersey. Under this agreement, Quanta will provide engineering, procurement and construction services, as well as operate and maintain the facility once the project is commissioned. Construction is projected to begin in June with an estimated project completion date of December of 2011. During the quarter, we continued to work under 3 EPC contracts for utility-scale solar installations, jointly owned by U.S. Energy America and NRG Solar. We expect to substantially complete these projects by the end of the second quarter, nearly one month ahead of schedule. Also during the quarter, we continued work on our third utility-scale solar project at the Denver International Airport under our contract with Constellation Energy. This project is expected to be completed in the second quarter. We continue to expect double-digit growth in Renewable Energy revenues for the full year of 2011 compared to 2010, with Solar opportunities contributing significantly to the increase. Although we remain very active in Wind Construction, we do not expect significant momentum in this market throughout 2011. During the quarter, revenues from our Natural Gas and Pipeline segment were approximately $177 million. This compares to approximately $189 million for the first quarter of 2010. 12-month backlog in the Natural Gas segment was $669 million, down $300 million or 31% from the same period last year. Since our fourth quarter conference call, our customers have announced very few contract awards. We remain either short listed as a bidder or are in negotiations on approximately $1.8 billion in pipeline opportunities. Roughly half of these projects are scheduled to start this year. These figures do not include TransCanada's Keystone XL project where we were also one of several bidders. However, because we are now in May and we still have limited visibility of future potential awards, we are revising the revenue forecast for this segment down approximately 29% for the full year of 2011 compared to 2010. The transmission pipeline business is inherently volatile. Our ability to forecast this segment has become increasingly difficult due to the short project cycles, large project nature and delays related to increased regulatory requirements, including new restrictive rules on government land. With this said, we are well aware of these challenges and are working to minimize the volatility of this segment, as well as improve our forecasting process. We remain very bullish on the pipeline business over the medium and long term. We continue to see robust drilling activity in certain unconventional shale formations. Additionally, as all prices continue to remain substantially above $78 a barrel, activity in the Canadian oil sands is gaining momentum. The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, or PHMSA, is implementing more stringent pipeline integrity requirements that should also create pipeline replacement programs throughout the United States. We believe Quanta is well-positioned throughout Canada and the United States to capitalize on new and existing pipeline infrastructure and related facility upgrades. We continue to be optimistic that we will be awarded a meaningful project opportunity that would generate revenue this year. We expect pipeline activity to increase significantly in 2012, especially if the Keystone XL project receives regulatory approval. This project alone is expected to absorb almost half of the industry's construction capacity. During the quarter, we initiated work under our new 5-year contract with Puget Sound Energy for a Natural Gas construction and maintenance services across the utility's 6-county service area. This contract is expected to produce approximately $400 million in revenue during its 5-year term. In the first quarter of 2011, revenues from our Telecommunications segment were approximately $79 million compared to $78 million in the first quarter of 2010, a relatively flat revenue growth for the quarter. Total backlog in this segment increased approximately 82% to $534 million at March 31, 2011, compared to March 31, 2010. Although the first quarter results from the Telecom segment were seasonally challenged, we expect revenues for the full year of 2011 to increase 20% to 25% compared to 2010, with significantly improved margins. The majority of this increase should occur in the second half of this year, with the increase attributable primarily to stimulus projects, 4G network upgrades and fibers to the cell site build-outs by carriers. Our optimism is influenced partly by the growth in mobile and intelligent devices and the robust networks that support them. Mobile devices are projected to outnumber laptops and computers in only 2 years, which is expected to drive the global wireless connections to increase to $50 billion by 2020, and the carriers are reacting. Verizon recently indicated that it expects to deploy LTE services to 175 markets by year end. Our in-site plant and wireless groups are experiencing an increase in demand for their services. Since the close of the first quarter, we have been awarded a project with an original equipment manufacturer, or OEM, to provide engineering, procurement, installation and turn-up and test services to over 3,600 cell sites in support of that fiber-to-the-cell site contract for an incumbent local exchange carrier. This project is not currently included in our backlog due to the timing of the award. During the quarter, we also initiated engineering and other preconstruction activities for our KINBER, a Keystone Initiative for Network Based Education and Research, under our largest single stimulus award. Under this contract, we are providing engineering and construction for a 1,600-mile fiber range throughout 39 counties in Pennsylvania. In the first quarter of 2011, revenues from our Fiber Optic Licensing segment were approximately $26 million. This compares to approximately $24 million in revenue for the first quarter of 2010. We expect strong revenue growth in this segment based on a robust order environment for the second half of this year. For example, during the 2010 E-Rate season ending in March of this year, we realized a substantial increase in new contract orders compared to the 2008 and 2009 E-Rate seasons, which will drive revenue growth later this year and into next year. In addition, we continue to see meaningful growth in the carrier vertical driven by increased bandwidth demands, both wireline and wireless. In summary, we continue to see momentum related to electric power transmission contract awards, renewables and telecommunications spending. This momentum should start building late in the second quarter and into the second half of this year. Revenue growth on our Electric Power and Telecommunications segments should offset the revenue decline in our Natural Gas and Pipeline segment if backlog does not materialize for this year. Despite a very disappointing first quarter, we believe our overall business in the industries we serve are on the verge of substantial growth and exceptional margins. Now I will turn the call over to James Haddox, our CFO.