ABM Industries - Earnings Call - Q1 2025

Executive Summary

• Q1 FY25 delivered modest top-line growth and stable profitability: revenue rose 2.2% to $2.11B, adjusted EPS was $0.87 (vs. $0.86 LY), and adjusted EBITDA was $120.6M with a 5.9% margin, while GAAP EPS was $0.69 (vs. $0.70 LY).
• Management raised the lower end of FY25 adjusted EPS guidance to $3.65–$3.80 (from $3.60–$3.80) and maintained adjusted EBITDA margin at 6.3%–6.5%; interest expense guidance increased to $80–$84M (from $76–$80M).
• Segment mix was favorable: Technical Solutions revenue +22% and Aviation +8% offset slight declines in B&I and M&D; Education grew 2%; ATS strength was driven by microgrids and a $490M backlog cited on the call.
• Free cash flow was temporarily negative ($123M) due to ERP-related invoicing reviews in B&I and M&D, with management expecting collections normalization and catching up during the year.
• Potential stock catalysts: guidance raise (lower end), ATS momentum/backlog, Aviation new wins, and ERP benefits as cash conversion normalizes; offsets include higher interest expense guide and lingering B&I/M&D softness early in the year.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

• What Went Well

  • ATS and Aviation led growth; ATS revenue +22% YoY on strong microgrids, Aviation +8% on healthy demand and new wins; Education +2%.
  • Adjusted EPS and adjusted EBITDA improved YoY: $0.87 vs. $0.86 and $120.6M vs. $116.7M; management lifted the lower end of FY25 EPS guidance.
  • Strategic execution: ERP rollout to B&I and M&D, ABM Connect data platform, and a refreshed brand; management expects efficiency and analytics benefits post-implementation.

• What Went Wrong

  • Free cash flow was -$122.9M on ERP-driven invoicing delays; net cash from operations -$106.2M.
  • Slight revenue declines persisted in B&I (-1.0%) and M&D (-1.6%) as market headwinds and selective contract decisions weighed on growth.
  • Higher interest outlook: FY25 interest expense guidance increased by $4M to $80–$84M, which modestly tightens the P&L outlook despite stronger segments.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Greetings and welcome to the ABM Industries first quarter 2025 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. The question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone during today's conference should require operator assistance, please press star zero from your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. At this time, it is now my pleasure to introduce Paul Goldberg, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Thank you, Paul. You may now begin.

Paul Goldberg (Senior VP of Investor Relations)

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to ABM's first quarter 2025 earnings call. My name is Paul Goldberg, and I'm the Senior Vice President of Investor Relations at ABM. With me today are Scott Salmirs, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Earl Ellis, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Please note that earlier this morning, we issued our press release announcing our first quarter 2025 financial results and outlook. A copy of that release and an accompanying slide presentation can be found on our website, abm.com. After Scott and Earl's prepared remarks, we will host a Q&A session. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that our call and presentation today contains predictions, estimates, and other forward-looking statements. Our use of the words estimate, expect, and similar expressions is intended to identify these statements, and they represent our current judgment of what the future holds.

While we believe them to be reasonable, these statements are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially. These factors are described in the slide that accompanies our presentation, as well as our filings with the SEC. During the course of this call, certain non-GAAP financial information will be presented. A reconciliation of historical non-GAAP numbers to GAAP financial measures is available at the end of the presentation and on the company's website under the Investor tab. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Scott.

Scott Salmirs (CEO)

Thanks, Paul. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us to go over our first quarter results. We're pleased with how the quarter shaped up, reflecting a continuation of the same key trends we saw in the back half of 2024: strong momentum in Technical Solutions in aviation, stability in education, and some lingering challenges in business & industry. We posted 2% organic revenue growth and delivered adjusted EPS of $0.87. We're off to a great start, and we're firmly on track to hit our full-year financial goals. We're also confident that commercial real estate markets, especially the high-quality office buildings we service in BNI, will return to growth in 2025 while our other end markets continue to remain constructive. With that, we are raising the lower end of our full-year adjusted EPS guidance and now see adjusted EPS between $3.65 and $3.80.

Beyond the numbers, there's a lot of exciting progress happening across ABM that sets us up for continued success. Let me highlight a few key initiatives. First, our ERP implementation. Last year, our Education segment fully transitioned to our new cloud-based system. We took those learnings and applied them as we rolled out the system to BNI and M&D at the start of the first quarter. To support this, we set up a hypercare team and conducted invoice-by-invoice reviews to ensure accuracy and client satisfaction. This extra step minimized the usual friction that comes with a project of this scale. While the process has temporarily impacted cash flow, as we anticipated, we expect things to normalize in the coming months. More importantly, once fully implemented, we expect this new ERP system will drive cost efficiencies, improve synergy capture, and provide real-time analytics to uncover commercial growth opportunities.

We also launched our new brand platform in the first quarter with the tagline, "Driving Possibility Together." This refresh reflects our evolution into a tech-enabled solution provider focused on modernizing infrastructure and enhancing facility resilience. The rebrand highlights our commitment to operational excellence, workforce development, sustainability, and leveraging AI, machine learning, and data-driven insights. We've backed this launch with a digital marketing campaign, a revamped website, and something we call ABM Perspectives, a hub for industry insights and best practices. The response has been fantastic, energizing our team and really resonating with clients. It's a strong statement of where we're headed. On the financial side, we expanded and extended our credit facility to $2.2 billion. Earl will get into the details later, but this move reflects our strong growth over the past few years and the confidence our lenders have in our business model and long-term strategy.

Finally, we're continuing to invest in client-facing technology with ABM Connect, our real-time data intelligence platform. This tool consolidates facility, financial, equipment, IoT, and service data to provide actionable insights and proactive solutions to our clients as well as our teammates. It's already making an impact, whether it's streamlining airport operations through ABM Connect for aviation, ensuring compliance in regulated industries, or optimizing asset performance with predictive maintenance. By harnessing data intelligence, we're helping clients drive efficiency, improve user experience, and strengthen long-term facility management. Separately, we're keeping a close watch on the current administration's approach to immigration policy. While shifts in policy could affect the balance of supply and demand for qualified workers, we're confident in our ability to adapt, as we've always done. Our strong talent acquisition strategies, including technology-driven vetting and hiring, help us stay ahead.

So far, we haven't seen any disruptions or meaningful changes in labor supply or course, and we're prepared to navigate any challenges that may come as we've done time and time again. Finally, before I hand it over to Earl, let me give you a quick update on where we're going across each of our segments. In BNI, a recent CBRE report showed that leasing activity for high-quality commercial office buildings in the U.S. increased 24% in the fourth quarter compared to the previous quarter. That's a great sign for us. As these spaces start filling up, we anticipate more growth opportunities. Additionally, we're seeing employers push for greater office attendance, which should drive more work order volume for us. We're also excited about being awarded the contract for one of the most advanced corporate headquarters buildings in the world, located in Manhattan.

While our work there is in its early stages since the building is not fully operational, this achievement illustrates the power of our strategy to prioritize high-quality properties, just like the 3 million sq ft building we got in Manhattan last year, known as the MetLife Building. When combining all of that with strong performance in our U.K. and our sports and entertainment businesses, we feel confident that BNI will return to growth in the latter half of fiscal 2025. Manufacturing & Distribution remains on solid ground, thanks to a strong U.S. industrial economy and continued growth in the semiconductor and data center markets. We're continuing to renew business, including new work for a major e-commerce company and a $30 million annual contract with a major Silicon Valley tech company, which adds to the $30 million in business we already have with them.

More importantly, the new contract is an APS agreement spanning multiple service lines and is a proof point on the quality of our offering and the direction we're taking our business. For these reasons, we continue to expect mid-single-digit organic growth in the latter half of fiscal 2025 for M&D as these new deals take effect in May and we move past the impact of the previously discussed client exit, which did not meet our return hurdles. Aviation continues to be a bright spot, with strong domestic flight volumes and TSA screenings indicating mid-single-digit market growth. We expect to outpace the industry, driven by our technology advantages, especially through ABM Connect and recent contract wins, including a $40 million shuttle agreement at a major airport hub in the Southeast and a nearly $10 million cleaning contract at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. Both agreements are set to begin in May.

We're also in discussions regarding several other multi-million dollar opportunities across both the airport and airline sectors, but decisions on those contracts are not expected until later in 2025. Education remains stable, providing a strong foundation of earnings and cash flow. We've done an excellent job managing costs, escalating pricing, and retaining more key clients, like a world-renowned private university in the Midwest, which represents an $18 million account. Our focus remains on larger school districts, colleges, and universities, and we're optimistic about winning more business as the year progresses, with a few decisions expected in the second quarter. In technical solutions, our microgrid business remains strong, supported by a $490 million backlog and a robust sales pipeline, including a significant opportunity with an existing major big-box retailer client and multiple opportunities in the energy storage system space.

In fact, we secured an $18 million win with a well-known energy storage project developer in Q1 and also booked $24 million in new infrastructure projects during the quarter, spanning multiple school districts and municipalities. Additionally, we expect continued growth in data center activity, positioning technical solutions for a strong 2025. With that, I'll hand it over to Earl to walk through the financials, and I'll be back for some closing thoughts.

Earl Ellis (EVP and CFO)

Good morning, everyone. As Scott mentioned, we are pleased with our first quarter results, and we believe we are well-positioned to achieve our full-year financial goals. For those of you following along with our earnings presentation, please turn to slide 6. First quarter revenue of $2.1 billion increased 2.2%, comprised of 1.6% organic growth, with the remainder from last year's acquisition of Quality Uptime Services. Organic revenue growth was once again led by technical solutions in Aviation, which grew 14% and 8%, respectively. Education grew 2%, while our BNI and M&D segments remained resilient. BNI continues to benefit from its focus on high-quality buildings and geographic diversification, while the impact of a planned client exit in M&D has been largely mitigated by new wins.

Moving on to slide 7, net income was $43.6 million, or $0.69 per share, as compared to net income of $44.7 million, or $0.70 per share last year. This result benefited from higher segment earnings and the absence of prior year self-insurance adjustments, which were offset by higher corporate investments as planned, higher income taxes and interest expense, as well as a legal settlement. Adjusted net income was $55.3 million, and adjusted earnings per share was $0.87, up from $54.8 million and $0.86, respectively, in the prior year. First quarter performance reflected higher segment earnings, which were partially offset by increased corporate investments, higher taxes, and interest expense. Adjusted EPS benefited from a lower share count, driven by our share repurchase activity. Adjusted EBITDA increased 3% to $120.6 million, while adjusted EBITDA margin was flat at 5.9%.

These results reflected higher segment earnings, particularly from ATS, which I'll discuss shortly, partially offset by planned increases in corporate costs. Now turning to our segment results, beginning on slide 8, BNI posted revenue of $1 billion, which was slightly below last year. This performance demonstrated resilience through our diversified portfolio, which includes exposure to sports and entertainment, healthcare, and a focus on high-quality properties. We remain confident that an improving commercial real estate market and strong sales initiatives will drive growth in the second half of fiscal 2025. Encouragingly, BNI's operating profit and margin was largely consistent with last year, on slightly lower revenue, as we benefited from tight cost controls. Aviation revenue grew 8% to $270.1 million, driven by positive travel markets and new business wins from both the airport and airline side of the business.

We have continued to win new business, including core cleaning work at the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, as well as a large transportation contract at a major Southeast hub airport, as Scott mentioned. We believe 2025 will be another record-breaking year for aviation, continuing our multi-year streak of organic growth. Aviation's operating profit was $12.2 million, up 26%, and margin was 4.5%, an increase of 60 basis points. These improvements largely reflect normalized operating results compared to the prior year and the benefit of tight cost controls. Turning to slide 9, Manufacturing & Distribution generated revenue of $394.3 million versus $400.9 million last year. This performance was due primarily to our decision to exit a contract with a sizable client, which did not meet our financial hurdles, largely offset by growth from other clients. We remain confident in our ability to achieve mid-single-digit organic growth later in 2025 in M&D.

Operating profit was $39.4 million, and operating margin was 10%, as compared to $41.3 million and 10.3%, respectively, last year. These results principally reflect increased investments in incremental sales positions and capabilities to drive growth in target markets like semiconductor and data centers. Education revenue grew 2% to $225.3 million, driven by favorable net pricing, increased work orders, and stable retention rates. Education operating profit increased 10% to $14 million, and margin was 6.2%, an increase of 40 basis points. This was largely attributable to improved labor efficiency and mix. Technical solutions had another great quarter, growing revenue 22% to $202.3 million, with roughly two-thirds representing organic growth and the remaining 8% from our acquisition of Quality Uptime Services. Organic growth was once again driven by extremely strong microgrid project activity.

Looking forward, results in this segment should remain strong, reflecting several medium-sized projects recently won, continued strong demand dynamics in our energy resiliency and data center markets, and our strong sales pipeline, all of which is supported by $490 million of backlog. Technical solutions operating profit more than doubled to $16.6 million, and operating margin increased 420 basis points to 8.2%, reflecting significantly higher volume as well as improved operating performance versus last year, which was impacted by project delays. Moving on to slide 10, we ended the first quarter with total indebtedness of $1.6 billion, including $29.7 million of standby letters of credit, resulting in a total debt-to-proforma adjusted EBITDA ratio of 2.9 times. At the end of Q1, we had available liquidity of $296.9 million, including cash and cash equivalents of $59 million.

Of note, after the quarter closed, we successfully amended and extended our senior secure credit agreement. The upsized credit facility now totals $2.2 billion, consisting of $1.6 billion of revolving credit facility and a $600 million amortizing term loan, maturing on February 26, 2030. This replaces a $1.3 billion revolving credit facility and a $650 million amortizing term loan, which had an outstanding balance of $528 million. The facility also reflects our growth as a company and the confidence our lenders have in our strategy. I'd like to thank our treasury team for successfully renewing the facility. Free cash flow in the first quarter was negative $123 million. This result largely reflected a temporary increase in working capital related to the transition to the company's new ERP system for BNI and M&D. This transition involved extended pre-planned quality control reviews for invoicing and enhanced hypercare processes to ensure client satisfaction.

First-pass automated invoicing is ramping up in the second quarter, as the first wave of manual quality control activities is being completed. As such, we expect to hit our full-year pre-cash flow targets, though there will likely be some continued choppiness near term given the scale of the implementation. As a reminder, full-year normalized pre-cash flow is anticipated to be in the range of $250 million-$290 million. This forecast is normalized for an estimated $30 million-$40 million of Elevate and integration costs and $16 million of total earn-out payments that will be recorded as the use of operating cash. Interest expense was $22.9 million, slightly higher than the prior year, largely reflecting higher debt balances. We expect the quarterly interest run rate to moderate in the second half of the year.

We purchased approximately 415,000 shares in the first quarter at an average price of $51.23 per share for a total cost of $21 million. At the quarter end, we had $133 million remaining under our share repurchase program. Now let's briefly review our full-year 2025 outlook, as shown on slide 11. As Scott mentioned, we are raising the lower end of our guidance for adjusted EPS based on our solid start to the year and our constructive outlook. We are now forecasting full-year 2025 adjusted EPS to be in the range of $3.65-$3.80. Our outlook for adjusted EBITDA margin remains unchanged at 6.3%-6.5%. Our interest expense forecast is now $4 million higher at $80 million-$84 million, reflecting higher debt, and we still expect the normalized tax rate before discrete items to be between 29%-30%.

With that, let me now turn it back to Scott for closing comments.

Scott Salmirs (CEO)

Thanks, Earl. I want to thank our team for their hard work implementing our many initiatives and delivering a great quarter while staying focused on our clients. What we're doing isn't easy, but it's setting us up for long-term success. We're building on our positioning as an industry leader, and we appreciate the trust of our clients and investors. With that, let's take some questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We'll now be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press Star 1 on your telephone keypad, and a confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press Star 2 to remove yourself from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the Star keys. In the interest of time and to allow as many as possible to ask questions, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. One moment, please, for our first question. Thank you. Our first question is from the line of Tim Lu with William Blair. Please proceed with your question.

Earl, good morning.

Scott Salmirs (CEO)

Good morning.

Starting with your BNI business, the 24% improvement in commercial office leasing activity in the fourth quarter, I'm just curious how that compares to the last several quarters before that. Was that a significant acceleration in the trend line? How does that compare to the fourth quarter typically from a seasonality standpoint? In other words, can you just put in context for investors how significant that move is?

Yeah. I mean, look, there's no real seasonality in terms of leasing activity. It really goes by, in large measure, the expirations of tenants' leases, right? It represents a good cadence. I mean, this is a story that's been playing out over the last year, year and a half. We're delighted when we see the activity. We also look at something called net absorption, which is how much additional space is being taken, right? You can have good leasing activity, but if there's a lot of leases that are expiring and they're not getting renewed, you don't necessarily see that unless you look at the absorption rates. They've been really good too. Tim, I just think this is a continuing trend that has to do with, I think there's some optimism out there and return to work. You've been reading about it.

We've all been reading about it. I've been seeing this not only with clients, but in my networks. Management wants people back in the office incrementally more. We may never go back to full return five days a week, but hybrid is incrementally better. It feels like quarter after quarter.

Yeah. That all sounds very encouraging. We're certainly seeing that everywhere as well, Scott. Just one more question about this, shifting gears a little bit, but just wanted to ask about your federal exposure. Still on the BNI segment, how much of your BNI segment revenue, I guess, is generated from work being completed in federal buildings? I'm just trying to think about the potential risk here from DOGE as it relates to a footprint reduction. Maybe while you're at it, how much of your technical solutions revenue is related to projects with federal agencies or are being funded with federal dollars? Just any color there would be helpful. Thank you.

Yeah. When you look at the size of our enterprise, we have almost no risk when it comes to that. We're not in that segment where we're doing any kind of cleaning or engineering in terms of stationary engineering in the federal buildings. Where we do do a little work is mission-critical, and that's not anything that DoD is cutting right now. Our mission-critical business, which again is literally small compared to our $8-plus billion in revenue, we feel like that's highly protected because of the nature of the work we do with special clearance and working in their data centers and critical environments. We feel we're really resilient there.

Got it. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Tim.

Operator (participant)

The next questions are from the line of Josh Chan with UBS. Please proceed with your questions.

Hi. Good morning, Scott, Earl, and Paul. Thanks for taking my question.

Scott Salmirs (CEO)

Good morning.

Yeah. Good morning. Thanks for proactively addressing the labor situation. I guess, could you talk about kind of your playbook if you were to see kind of spot-rate labor costs accelerating, recognizing that you have a decent part of union labor too where maybe you have more visibility? Can you just talk to how you would react, what your exposure is to the spot-rate labor? Thank you.

Sure. We are, to your point, we feel like we're fully in command here because half of our revenues are from union labor, and those labor rates are set now for the next three-plus years, and they're at a very reasonable rate between 3% and 4%. We feel really good there. On the non-union side, one thing you guys have always seen is we passed the vast majority of the labor increases through to our clients. We have major proof points for that, so we feel good there. Even if there are potential labor shortages due to what's going on with immigration, again, if you look at our past history, we've always done really well in those times.

The only thing that's probably changed for us in the last few years when it comes to capturing labor in the field is that we've upgraded our talent acquisition team dramatically. Through Elevate, we've invested in technology to have cloud-based systems for hiring and vetting employees. Our time to hire has dramatically increased too. We feel like we're in really great shape here.

Good color. Yeah. Thank you, Scott.

Sure.

Yeah. On the ERP side of things, I guess, what does it take to kind of catch up on the free cash flow just operationally, and what's your confidence doing that kind of all within the same fiscal year?

Yeah. No, thanks for the question, Josh. As we stated, we went live this past quarter with the new system on two of our largest ERPs, our BNI and M&D, two of our largest industry groups. We did a thorough review of all of the invoices to ensure accuracy and customer satisfaction before putting them out. That actually resulted in a delay in the invoicing and obviously a delay therefore in cash collections. We anticipate that that'll actually start to pick up in Q2. For the balance of the year, we'll actually resume all of our cash collections and deliver against our committed cash flows for the year. Yeah. I'll give you some color on that too. Whether it's through our vendor that's doing the ERP or through some of our networks, we've heard horror stories about ERP conversions and how invoices go out wrong.

We were not going to do that. You guys know us to be super cautious and careful. We just said, "Rather delay getting some of these invoices out and go invoice by invoice and review to make sure that clients do not get wrong invoices." We are just going to be super, super cautious here. We feel like for a little bit of the delay on the invoices and some pressure on cash flow, it is well worth keeping our customers.

Yeah. That makes perfect sense. Thanks for the color and thanks for the time.

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Next questions are from the line of Faiza Alwy with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your questions.

Scott Salmirs (CEO)

Yes. Hi. Good morning. Thank you. Scott, just taking a step back, you sound really good about new business, about the pipeline. I'm curious if you can give us some color on maybe what your win rate is like now versus what it was historically. Maybe help us think through what you're seeing from a retention versus new business versus existing volume perspective. To the extent you're seeing higher win rates, maybe talk a little bit more about how you're differentiating yourself.

Sure. I mean, this is another area where our Elevate expenses have come through. I think there's so much to unpack here. I'll try to do it in a somewhat sensible order here. The first thing you do from win rate is you have to have business development people in the field. We've invested in business development or salespeople, if you will. We've increased the number that we have out in the field, which has been incredible. We've spent a ton of time and energy on training them up. We have all new initiatives now on how to get people into our company and up to speed quickly. We call them rookies, people in the first year or so. The win rate on new business for rookies and what they've been able to book has been at an all-time high.

Another thing that we've been doing, which has been great, is leveraging AI and working on something called our deal desk, which is where we respond to RFPs. Between upgrading the talent there over the last couple of years and adding AI, we've been so much more efficient in how we've been able to respond to RFPs. We do not publish our win rates, but I can tell you they've been incrementally better. We are feeling really good. We had incredible bookings. Half a year is when we publish our new bookings. I think for the last five years, we've had record wins and increases in new bookings. We think that trend will continue.

Just the last piece of it, and hopefully it's comforting, we're really, really selective on the accounts and the clients we pick up because, as you guys know, as you've been on the path with us, we don't work for free here. That's something we've changed culturally at ABM. We're really, I guess, decisive about the margin profile and the type of client that we bring on. I know that was a long, long diatribe here, but we're really enthusiastic about what we're doing on the new business side.

Great. Thank you. Just to follow up on the ATS business, right? We've seen some volatility, ups and downs over the last couple of years. Do you think things have stabilized at this point? How should we think about revenue growth there? I know you've talked about, historically, you've talked about sort of backlog in the business. Give us some perspective on how to think about maybe the various pieces within ATS.

Sure. One thing we have over on the, when I think about ATS right now, for purposes of that question, I'll talk about two areas. One is our microgrid business where we have a record backlog. That business has been on fire, which I know you've been following us, so you know. We're as encouraged as we've ever been. 2025 is going to be just a phenomenal year for us on the microgrid business. We're still seeing softness on the bundled energy solution, which is the project side because, as you know, that's really dependent on interest rates and finding ROIs. We actually are seeing incremental pickup versus where we were last year. That's a really good sign. In terms of overall, we'd still need to see interest rate come down a bit to have that really start taking off.

Got it. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Our next question just comes from the line of Jasper Bibb with Truist Securities. Please proceed with your questions.

Hey. Good morning, guys. M&D came in a bit better than we expected in the quarter. Just wanted to ask about the large client rebalancing impact. Curious if you have a little bit more visibility into the revenue hit there. Does that move through to additional phases? Separately, you talked about the new wins in that segment too. I'm curious if the run rate in the second half on revenue is a little bit better than the initial guidance assumption. Thanks.

Scott Salmirs (CEO)

Sure. On the large client, we've really lapped that now. It's not making a material impact. There was another large client to the tune of about $50 million in revenue where we passed on the business. It was going to be awarded to us, but it was going to be at a margin profile that was just not acceptable to us. We had the courage to not take that business, which I was really proud of the team on. That was last year. We've lapped those, and next year, we'll end up lapping that customer, the $50 million customer. You'll see some pressure. Really, we're looking for an M&D as the back half to start becoming incrementally positive on the year-over-year comparisons. That's that.

We think when you look at M&D and you think about what's going on right now with the push towards onshoring manufacturing and semiconductor business, which are our big segments within the M&D space, we are really, really excited. Our pipeline is strong. We had one of our highest quarters in terms of new sales this quarter. It is going to be one of our big stories for 2025, the M&D segment.

Operator (participant)

Thanks. Apologies if I missed it, but hoping you could specifically quantify the collections that were deferred out of the first quarter into the balance of the year. I guess more broadly, wondering how you're thinking about the opportunity to generate cost savings from ERP as you've now migrated, I think, most of the revenue based onto the new platform.

Earl Ellis (EVP and CFO)

Yeah. As we stated, we did a very manual process reviewing all the invoices. We anticipate that Q2 will actually have a significant increase in cash flow versus Q1, and that in the back half, we will actually catch up in order to actually resume our committed full-year cash flows. We feel very comfortable and confident on that. With regards to Elevate, we are well through kind of the Elevate program now that we actually have three of our industry groups on there. When we look at the benefits, we have now realized probably close to two-thirds of the total benefit case. The balance will actually come as we get the full enterprise on the new suite of systems. Because as you can see right now, we are actually still maintaining legacy systems. Now, once we actually have the full enterprise on the new suite, we'll actually get rid of the legacy systems and actually get to the full optimization of the implementation. That should come through in the next fiscal.

Operator (participant)

Great. Thank you, guys.

Scott Salmirs (CEO)

Thanks.

Operator (participant)

Next question from the line of David Silver with CLK. Please proceed with your questions.

Scott Salmirs (CEO)

Yeah. Hi. Thank you. Just a couple of questions, I think, for Earl. Firstly, with ATS growing 22%, I'm just kind of scratching my head. There was not an incremental accrual for contingent consideration or anything on RavenVolt. Is it—I know you took a larger accrual last year, but are you fully accrued on that, or should we be looking for some incremental charges as maybe fiscal 2025 goes on? Separately, just to comment on the $21 million of share repurchase, would you characterize that as opportunistic and maybe a permanent reduction in share count, or is that really designed to offset new issuance this year? Thank you.

Earl Ellis (EVP and CFO)

Yeah. No. Thanks, David, for the question. First of all, on the ATS, you're absolutely right. We're very pleased with RavenVolt's performance over the last number of quarters. As you recall, last quarter, we actually took that contingent liability up. If you recall, the earnout was really based on three years on a calendar year: 2023, 2024, 2025. We are in that last year. We feel that we are adequately reserved. Now, having said that, there is still potential for higher earnouts based on higher levels of performance. We look at this on a quarterly basis. We will continue to look at this for the balance of the year. Provided that they continue to perform high, we will accrue accordingly. Remember, the good news is that any incremental accrual obviously comes with higher EBITDA and actually has a very attractive payout.We will continue to look at that on a quarterly basis. With regards to the share purchases that we did in this last quarter, we're always committed to buy back shares against the antedilutive share-based compensation. That's what we actually did this past quarter. Provided that we continue to see opportunistic opportunities, we will evaluate those accordingly and look to do more if it makes sense from an economic perspective.

Scott Salmirs (CEO)

Okay. Great. Then one more question, I think, on the M&D side. That previous questioner covered off most of what I was going to ask. Scott, I was wondering if you could just comment on kind of the success with new business there in terms of your value proposition. I mean, I'm guessing M&D is a category where there's larger spaces. There's probably more automation or digitalization in your product offering apart from growth in this segment in terms of the customer base. Maybe if you could just touch on your go-to-market strategy or your value proposition there and why you're very optimistic about it for the balance of the year and the win rates and whatnot. Thank you.

Yeah. I think there's a couple of things. I appreciate the question. One, we had record Q1 bookings this year, which was great. Our pipeline is fantastic, as I said on the last call. Super optimistic. I think what makes us so special in this space is that we do not attack the segment as we would an office building or just as a straight janitorial job. We look at these as almost like an APS account, like a bundled offering, meaning we may get in with a janitorial assignment, but we're really good about being in the facility, taking on additional work, production support, working in clean rooms, everything from that to constructing boxes, right?

We'll do anything that we can so that in this segment, the clients think of us as extra, really a resource in the facility that can handle things that they may have been subcontracting to four or five other vendors. Now they're consolidating under us. We've been really intentional in this segment of hiring subject matter experts. Whether it's in pharma, whether it's in semiconductor, whether it's in e-commerce, we have a suite of executives that are subject matter experts that can talk to the clients in their language. That's been the secret to our success, David. It's been taking a very focused, intentional approach with experts rather than just treating it like a janitorial assignment in an office building.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question has come from the line of Justin Hunk with Robert W. Baird. Please proceed with your questions.

Oh, great. Yeah. I mean, it seems like the story, at least going forward, is the improvement in BNI and M&D. The markets that have been really strong for you have been aviation and technical solutions. I guess first on aviation, I just wanted to ask, we saw the Delta pre-announcement on kind of demand trends and just any updated thoughts on what you're seeing there in terms of sustainability. In the technical solutions, it looks like the backlog, the $490 million, a year ago, it was $590 million. I guess, is that mostly kind of the bundled solutions and the EV charging stuff that's down, or just what's been the driver of that backlog decline? Thank you.

Scott Salmirs (CEO)

Sure. Let me start with aviation and Delta's announcement. Not an effect on us. If you think about what we're doing in that space, right, we're inside an airport. Even if demand is down incrementally, it doesn't change our scope of work. Whether you have 10,000 people in an airport at any given time or 9,000, it's not going to change a reduction in scope. We feel really good about the fact that we're resilient around the edges on any shifts in demand there. The same thing with the other things that we do, which will be like to do the cabin cleaning of a plane. If you're full or you're 90% occupied on a plane, you still have to go through and do the cleaning. We haven't seen any falloff in demand. Our bookings have been great in aviation, and our pipeline is terrific.

No real warning signs for us yet based on the Delta announcement. The RavenVolt, which has been one of the key drivers in our technical solutions group, has been just super strong. The backlog is terrific. Give us another quarter or two, I think we're going to have some really good news for you on other things that are happening. Probably as excited as we've ever been at this point in time about the offerings in ATS. I guess the last call of commentary is any client that we talk to, whether it's directly regarding our technical solutions business or it may be in aviation or BNI, everyone's talking about power resiliency right now. Everyone's talking about the grid. Everyone's talking about what's going on in the overall geopolitical spectrum around energy.

We just feel like we're the right time and the right place to have such an unbelievable offering. Really optimistic.

Operator (participant)

Okay. Thank you for the perspective. Appreciate it.

Scott Salmirs (CEO)

Got it.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our final question is from the line of Tate Sullivan with Maxim Group. Please proceed with your questions.

Okay. Great. Thanks. Scott, reviewing some of your comments about larger awards, you said you were awarded a large contract for an advanced office building in New York. I think you also mentioned $30 million in business from a large tech company. Are these two separate contracts?

Scott Salmirs (CEO)

Yes, they are. Two separate contracts. Yeah.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. The large contract for the office building in New York, is that still a building that employees are moving into? It's not fully in operation?

Scott Salmirs (CEO)

That's correct. That's correct. It's a brand new construction that's going to be occupied in full by the end of this year and first quarter of next year. We're already starting with construction cleanup, and it's going to be a wonderful project for us from a great client.

Operator (participant)

Is there opportunity for backup power work on this type of advanced building, or is that already in the engineering specs before it's—

Scott Salmirs (CEO)

Yeah, that's when they did the contract. Yeah, that happens. When you're building a new building, you don't go to a provider like ABM in the commercial space. That'll be done with a general contract when you let that contract. For us, it's more about going into data centers, schools, existing facilities.

Operator (participant)

Great. Okay. Thank you for that background.

Scott Salmirs (CEO)

Thanks.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. At this time, I'll now turn the floor back to Maxim for closing remarks.

Scott Salmirs (CEO)

Thanks, everyone. Appreciate you taking the calls today and listening in. We're really optimistic. Hopefully, you can hear that in our remarks. We feel like we're going to have a strong 2025. Looking forward to getting back to you in Q2 with our results. Have a good spring, and we'll see you soon.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. This has concluded today's teleconference. We thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines at this time.