Earnings Labs

Tetra Tech, Inc. (TTEK)

Q1 2016 Earnings Call· Thu, Jan 28, 2016

$31.44

-0.35%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, and thank you for joining the Tetra Tech earnings call. By now, you should have received a copy of the press release. If you have not, please contact the company's corporate office at (626) 351-4664. With us from management are Dan Batrack, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Steve Burdick, Chief Financial Officer. They will provide a brief overview of the results and will then open up the call for questions. During the course of the conference call, Tetra Tech's management may make forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These include statements concerning future events and Tetra Tech's future financial performance. The statements are only predictions and may differ materially from actual future events or results. Tetra Tech's Forms 10-K and 10-Q reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission identify certain risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. Tetra Tech undertakes no duty to update forward-looking statements. In addition, since management will be presenting some non-GAAP financial measures as references, the appropriate GAAP financial reconciliations are posted in the Investor Relations section of Tetra Tech's website. At this time, I would like to inform you that all participants are in a listen-only mode. At the request of the company, we will open up the conference for questions and answers after the presentation. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Dan Batrack. Please go ahead, Mr. Batrack. Dan L. Batrack - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Great. Thank you very much, Tia, and good morning, and welcome to our first quarter fiscal year 2016 earnings conference call. While Steve Burdick, our Chief Financial Officer, will present the specifics of our financials, I'll start with a brief overview of…

Operator

Operator

The first question will come from Tahira Afzal with KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Tahira Afzal - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Management

Good morning, gentlemen. Dan L. Batrack - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Good morning, Tahira.

Tahira Afzal - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Management

Congrats on the good quarter. Dan L. Batrack - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Thank you.

Tahira Afzal - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Management

So, the first question I had was, it seems like, thankfully, federal activity is picking up again on the backlog side. Nevertheless, the book-to-bill was 0.9 times. So, would love to get a sense, as I look at your guidance and what you've embedded in it, what you expect from backlog growth for this year. And number two, I'm seeing, if I look at what the activity levels were, clearly, the federal looks strong but something else might not have been, would love to get a sense of that. Dan L. Batrack - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yes. The book-to-bill of slightly under 1, I believe, does not take into account foreign exchange, which is a component from Canada. So, it actually has been quite noteworthy to us that the Canadian exchange rate has come down to – in fact, touched just quite below 0.7. And so, it's about a 10% change just in this last quarter almost from it was about 0.8, just slightly under that. And so, I think when you adjust for that and actually take out the RCM amount that we burned off this last quarter, I think we're actually a bit up and in fact what we said is for 5% year-over-year up on our, what I would call, our ongoing business. Now, I will say that we have seen strength, and I mentioned this a few times in our prepared remarks, that the federal is up. The work that we're doing for the federal government are projects that are not for a specific platform or an asset that can be canceled. This is typically environmental consulting work, as cleanup of projects or sites that have regulatory mandates or something that has to proceed. So, it's possible and we have seen this moved…

Tahira Afzal - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Management

Got it. That's actually very helpful, Dan. And second question, you did talk a lot about climate change. And obviously, we've just very recently had some very visible world summits that happened. There seemed to be a lot of targets that are being pushed forward to help manage it. But really, looking at it outside of the international component within the U.S., we've seen a lot of flooding, et cetera, and droughts as well. I would love to get your thoughts on, if you look at the opportunities in the U.S. from climate change, what those would be for you as well for the next couple of years. And then, outside of the climate change opportunity, we've been hearing about – I'm sure you have heard as well about the lead poisoning in pipes. Is that an opportunity for you as well, Dan? Dan L. Batrack - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Well, let me – I'll answer both of those. I'll keep them succinct. With respect to climate change opportunities in the United States, there's no doubt in the drought areas we've had great opportunities with respect to water supply. We were a participant in one of the, sort of, consortium of design firms for desalination plants out here in California. We're doing brand new pilot programs for smart water, which is anticipating flood and snow melt, so it can divert the water into different holding basins and retention reservoirs to recharge the groundwater. Those are actually very promising programs and in areas where there's enormous floods in the Midwest, the work for our levee system designs and actually flood protection is actually is up and we've run a few new programs there. So, I think those are both at sort of the municipal and state level for the most part. There has been a new directive at the Federal Department of Defense, which is to evaluate the different programs for impact to climate change. And so, we're looking very carefully at how that's going to be translated into actual project tasks and planning activities which is right up the alley for us. And we do believe we are the leader with respect to – and this is work done overseas, but contracted here in the U.S. for the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development and we are a leader in that, particularly in the marine environment where you have the interaction between the coast and the land, and that's everything from impacts to communities and those are funded by U.S. dollars. So, I think all of those represent incremental upsides for us; it's not replacing, we're taking market share from anyone. These are new programs that don't exist today and I think we're at the forefront of all of those markets. So it's an area we're really excited about here at the company.

Tahira Afzal - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Management

Thanks, Dan. Dan L. Batrack - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Thank you very much, Tahira.

Operator

Operator

The next question will come from Andy Wittmann with Robert W. Baird. Andrew John Wittmann - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. (Broker): Hi, guys. Good morning. I guess, I wanted to follow up a little bit on Tahira's first question on the backlog. I think in your prepared remarks, Dan, you said the backlog in the public sector is up. You talked about federal. You said the commercial – I think you called it steady overall. You said oil and gas is steady. I think commercial was generally steady. I guess, given that commercial has been the area of relative revenue strength and federal has been the area of relative revenue weakness, do you see that the growth rates in these two businesses will start converging to federal picking up and maybe if the backlog isn't growing in commercial, does that maybe slow down? I'd like to get your thoughts and the outlook for those segments. Dan L. Batrack - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Well, I think that what we've seen is that the funding, I won't call it habits, but the funding activities of our commercial clients have changed a little bit in this environment. We've actually seen the funding not be for as long a project. So, for instance, some of the larger pipeline projects, in fact, our largest pipeline project, was funded and gives visibility out for, oh, a year and a half to two years, so let's call it two years. We're actually seeing most of the projects are much shorter duration and move to studies, so engineering work, environmental work. So, a decrease in the size of them doesn't necessarily mean a decrease in the amount of work. So, there can be a discontinuity there. You'll do work shorter, quicker, book and…

Operator

Operator

The next question will come from Corey Greendale with First Analysis. Dan L. Batrack - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Hello, Corey.

Operator

Operator

Corey, your line is open.

Corey Greendale - First Analysis Securities Corp.

Management

I apologize. I had you mute. Sorry about that. So, I just have a few questions about Coffey, primarily. So, first of all, just to kind of benchmark with the new guidance, can you give us some sense of how much net revenue you're including from Coffey in the Q2 net revenue guidance? Steven M. Burdick - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Executive VP: It's about – Corey, it's about $25 million.

Corey Greendale - First Analysis Securities Corp.

Management

Okay. And then, on the synergies, is that all cost? Are you anticipating any revenue synergies in that $10 million and what are the kinds of sources of upside or risk to the synergy target? Steven M. Burdick - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Executive VP: That is all cost side, not revenue side. And by the way, I want to be very clear, it doesn't mean that we don't believe that there are revenue synergies that will drive opportunities. In fact, I covered some of them in the prepared remarks. I think they're quite significant, but we've not factored any of that into that $10 million. It's all on the cost side.

Corey Greendale - First Analysis Securities Corp.

Management

Okay. And sources of potential upside to the $10 million or is that kind of you're pretty confident that's going to be the number? Steven M. Burdick - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Executive VP: Well, I know we're long ways into this. We just hit 10 days yesterday so...

Corey Greendale - First Analysis Securities Corp.

Management

Sure, sure. Steven M. Burdick - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Executive VP: But I think there is opportunity, and I will feel much better about getting into details on the progress and the timing of it here in the next quarter. But that is – I will say that is not a plug number just to be clear, it is not a plug number. We have identified areas where we think that we can save cost and some of those are just classic public filing costs and items that Coffey was for those not familiar – as much familiar with Coffey. They were a publicly traded company, and I will say they are a publicly traded company because we still have about three or four weeks to go before that concludes and we take them off the Australian Exchange. So you do have the classic filing cost, you have some of the management reporting time, some of the other items that are just classically required as part of being a public company. And we'll take that on here, Tetra Tech. So, there is no any reduction anything other than just cost there, so that we actually have a very good number on. But some of the other items, we actually think that outsourced services that they have for IT and other things, I do think that Tetra Tech has one of the best in-house IT systems for platforms, for getting our project managers real-time status on the progress of reports, of their technical performance on their activities and the cost associated with it. So, I think that we can actually deliver more product, more information, quicker information at a much lower price point by joining the Tetra Tech platform. We would look for the Coffey to join our IT, our accounting and our other information platforms fully by the end of the year. Now, we do need to fine tune exactly what that dollar is. So, I would say, Corey, we will be able to give you more details on that $10 million on perhaps some of the components and actually an update on what that looks like here probably on the next call.

Corey Greendale - First Analysis Securities Corp.

Management

Okay. That's really helpful. Thank you. Next question, more broadly because of Coffey, can you just talk about overall exposure to APAC now and given kind of the volatility in that market. Anything we should be thinking about as potentially more at risk over the next several months? Dan L. Batrack - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Well, Asia-Pacific region, no doubt, is under a lot of stress. No doubt about it. We're cognizant of that, but I think that again for those that are not as familiar on this call with Coffey, let me – we did include it in one of the slides on Coffey. 60% of the revenues are for work for international development and much of that for work that's actually outside that region. So, their single biggest client in their corporation is actually USAID, United States Agency for International Development, and that's outside of the Asia-Pacific region. Another one of their largest clients is DFID which is the UK AID activity and that's outside of that area and then the work that is done for Australian Aid is actually a bit different, has different economic drivers than the commodity-driven component for Asia-Pacific. So, now, that brings you down to about 40% of the business that is much more centric to the Asia-Pacific and we're quickly moving and they themselves have moved to be a bit de-coupled with the commodity component, if you did follow Coffey's restructuring and actions that they've taken internally, they've looked to exit the front end commodity providing high-risk areas where it's not the clients, it's just the marketplace. We're looking those claims when it comes back but they look to shift that work over to municipalities, infrastructure and in fact many countries are actually looking for infrastructure stimulus programs that will help offset some of the decline on the commodity-based impacts that we've seen and that's where we're looking to see Coffey perform better. And in fact, we think that the synergies with Tetra Tech that we can offer the environmental water and other specialty engineering services that can strengthen them at both the competitor and the success that they have in that area. So, the actual impact of what you'd see as a classic Asia-Pacific exposure to engineering is actually much, much less than you might think at a headline level.

Corey Greendale - First Analysis Securities Corp.

Management

That's very helpful. And then, just one last quick one from me which is very clear that you are still potentially inquisitive in your – the lower end of your range on leverage, but how should we be thinking about the potential for large acquisitions (48:40) to digest Coffey and mostly look at smaller or tuck-in kinds of things. How you're thinking about that? Dan L. Batrack - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Well, I think that there's a great opportunity for tuck-ins. I think that we're going to continue to strengthen that area. I think there are some specialty areas that we're looking to invest in. I think in the previous conference call, I talked about the Internet of things and actually looking for some of the new fast growth areas where some of the water markets are evolving to. We're looking into that area. I mentioned in my prepared remarks and I'd hope it would not be overlooked that we're looking for big data. And some of those that work for large government agencies and IT, so that we can provide a full integrated solution, not just evaluating someone else's data, but actually running that information and managing the data sets for them on very large water data sets across both states, regions and even the entire country. So, those will be tuck-ins, but transformational acquisition of something larger is not off the table. And I will tell you that the work and the teams that we have down in Coffey, we've already deployed them, but we have plenty of additional resources and Steve indicated we have plenty of capital. But more importantly, we have the in-house staff and bandwidth to handle something substantially larger. And if the right opportunity came up that would be right for our customers and right for our investors, you'll see us move forward.

Corey Greendale - First Analysis Securities Corp.

Management

Very helpful. Thank you. Dan L. Batrack - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Thank you, Corey.

Operator

Operator

The next question will come from Mike Shlisky from Seaport Global.

Ryan Curtis Cassil - Seaport Global Securities LLC

Management

Hi, guys. This is Ryan on for Mike. Dan L. Batrack - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Hello, Ryan.

Ryan Curtis Cassil - Seaport Global Securities LLC

Management

I guess, just on that big data question, I mean the opportunities you're seeing there is that more for revenue opportunities or would be this technology that would allow you to better service clients and be more competitive? Dan L. Batrack - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Both, both. I think that we have the opportunity to bring tuck-in acquisitions that would add revenue, and we already have an established position that holds contracts and market positions. But I think there's also those that we're looking that would be market disruptive and actually something that would bring in an opportunity for us to do things differently for the clients both we're working for them now and even add new clients. So, some of things we're looking at for Internet of Things, we're running a number of pilot programs in some of the drought states that would actually on a real-time basis identify melt off or storm water run-off that would actually change valves and move water into storage facilities. That would then recharge it. It would actually take areas that was not just being recharged move it into other areas that could be treated. And so, the contaminates aren't moving into coastal waters, whether or not that's rivers or estuaries or bays. And so, that would be technology driven. A lot of that doesn't exist in the marketplace today. And so, it's something that we're looking at moving into. So, Ryan, both, we're looking for someone who comes on and brings an established market position that already exists and maybe a more mature position on data and then also something that would be disruptive to what exist today.

Ryan Curtis Cassil - Seaport Global Securities LLC

Management

Okay, great. And then, if I could just go back to Coffey for a second. Could you update us on the bid environment there? What's the backlog? And as we move into February, is that trending up or down at this point? Dan L. Batrack - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Well, the bid environment is stable. We're going to spend some time with them to get a much better visibility on how that is. Again, I think things are quite, not only stable, but look strong in their international development component, which is more than half of their business. But I will say that the engineering and infrastructure business, even with municipalities and infrastructure activities in Asia-Pacific is very competitive, no doubt about it. So, I think we'll need a little bit more time to give you full detail on that.

Ryan Curtis Cassil - Seaport Global Securities LLC

Management

Okay, it makes sense. And then the last one from me. Could you update us on the two ongoing segments' margin expectations in your guidance, i.e., is there a really a change from prior guidance there? Are things really progressing as planned? Dan L. Batrack - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: It's still progressing as planned. In fact, I will reiterate a comment on the update of the guidance page that if Coffey had not taken place, we would have left our guidance unchanged. I do want to note that I'm aware that we outperformed our Q1. We're at the high end of our guidance. We were – and so, if you look at it in detail, we're up a few cents. But given the uncertainties just in oil and gas, we would have left our guidance unchanged and we still would have been within the range. So, the increase both from revenue and the $0.05 on top and bottom on EPS is attributable to the contribution from Coffey. And so, otherwise, I would say our business outlook remains generally unchanged from entering the year, and we feel pretty good about our business.

Ryan Curtis Cassil - Seaport Global Securities LLC

Management

Great. I'll turn it back. Thanks, guys. Dan L. Batrack - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Great. Thank you, Ryan.

Operator

Operator

Our final question will come from Noelle Dilts with Stifel. Noelle Dilts - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Hi. Dan and Steve, good morning. Dan L. Batrack - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Good morning, Noelle. Noelle Dilts - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: I know we've spoken about Coffey integration quite a bit. But I just wanted to circle back to that one more time. And I have two, I guess, slightly more detailed questions. So, if you take the $0.05 that you're guiding to this year, annualize it, you're looking about $0.08. And then, if you took the $10 million and said it was entirely incremental, you're getting to about $0.20 of accretion next year. So, first would be, if you – first question would be if you can give us just a little bit more detail on how much of that will be incremental next year. And then my second question is I think Coffey was going through as you talked about some restructuring. Have you included the cost of that restructuring in the assumed accretion this year, so some of that will be rolling off next year? If you could just extend on those two points that will be great? Dan L. Batrack - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Well, I'll take a first shot at that, and then I'll let Steve get to the detailed answers on some of the other financial components of it. But you're right, if you say $0.05 this year, you take a look at next year add another $0.10, you end up at $0.15. If you did it on annualized, you get to $0.18. So, I would say $0.18; I guess if you want to round it up to $0.20, is probably about right, that's right. So, we…

Operator

Operator

This will include the Q&A session. I will now turn the conference back over to Dan Batrack to conclude. Dan L. Batrack - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Great. Well – and thank very much, operator, Tia, and thank you, all, for your questions and interest in Tetra Tech. I very much appreciate your support. And again, I expect and hope some of the Coffey – new additions are listening to this call, and I want to welcome every one of them and look for a great integration with the company. And I look forward to speaking with every one of you next quarter. Have a great day and good bye.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our conference for today. Thank you, all, for participating, and have a nice day. All parties may now disconnect.