AECOM - Earnings Call - Q3 2025

Executive Summary

• Q3 FY25 delivered record adjusted EPS ($1.34) and adjusted EBITDA ($312.8M), with segment adjusted operating margin at 17.1% and adjusted EBITDA margin at 17.6% on NSR, as backlog and pipeline reached all‑time highs.
• EPS beat Wall Street consensus while revenue missed: EPS $1.34 vs $1.26*; revenue $4.18B vs $4.33B*; management raised FY25 guidance for adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EPS, and margins for the third straight quarter.
• Americas NSR grew 8% with a 20.5% adjusted operating margin; International NSR grew 3% with 11.9% margin; both segments maintained 1.0x book‑to‑burn and backlog records, underscoring visibility.
• Cash conversion remained strong (FCF $262M), net leverage at 0.6x, and YTD capital returns nearly $240M; a $0.26 quarterly dividend was declared payable July 18, 2025.
• Call tone: confident on sustained margin expansion (AI adoption, capability centers, advisory/program management mix), but Q4 will carry elevated BD expense to pursue record pipeline—watch for near‑term margin phasing.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

• What Went Well

  • Record profitability: adjusted EPS ($1.34) and adjusted EBITDA ($312.8M) set quarterly highs; segment adjusted operating margin reached 17.1% on NSR and adjusted EBITDA margin 17.6% on NSR. “We set new records for NSR, margins, EBITDA, EPS, backlog and pipeline.” — CEO Troy Rudd.
  • Americas strength and mix: NSR +8% Y/Y; adjusted operating margin rose 120 bps to 20.5%, driven by high‑return organic investments and growing advisory contributions.
  • Visibility and conversion: backlog and pipeline at all‑time highs; 19th consecutive >1.0x book‑to‑burn; YTD FCF +27% with $262M in Q3; net leverage 0.6x.

• What Went Wrong

  • Top‑line vs consensus: Q3 revenue of $4.18B came in below Street ($4.33B*), continuing a pattern of revenue underperforming estimates even as EPS beats persist [GetEstimates].
  • International mixed: NSR +3% with U.K./Middle East strength, but Australia decline weighed on regional revenue; management flagged near‑term transport pauses in Australia and budget challenges in U.K. transportation.
  • Q4 margin phasing: management signaled higher business development spend in Q4 to pursue record pipeline, implying a typical seasonal step‑down vs Q3 at the midpoint.

Transcript

Speaker 8

Thank you for standing by. My name is Jael and I will be your conference operator today. At this time I would like to welcome everyone to the AECOM third quarter 2025 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press STAR followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press STAR one again. Now I'd like to turn the conference over to Will Gabrielski, Senior Vice President, Finance and Investor Relations. You may begin.

Speaker 5

Thank you, Operator. I would like to direct your attention to the Safe Harbor statement on page one of today's presentation. Today's discussion contains forward-looking statements about future business and financial expectations. Actual results may differ significantly from those projected in today's forward-looking statements due to various risks and uncertainties, including the risks described in our periodic reports filed with the SEC. Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update our forward-looking statements. We use certain non-GAAP financial measures in our presentation. The appropriate GAAP reconciliations are incorporated into our materials, which are posted to our website.

Speaker 3

Growth rates are presented on a year.

Speaker 5

Over year basis unless otherwise noted. Any reference to segment margins or segment adjusted operating margins will reflect the performance for the Americas and international segments. When discussing revenue and revenue growth, we will refer to net service revenue or NSR, which is defined as revenue excluding pass-through revenue. NSR growth rates are presented on a constant currency basis unless otherwise noted. Today's remarks will focus on continuing operations. On today's call, Troy Rudd, our Chief Executive Officer, will review our key accomplishments, our strategy, and our outlook for the business. Lara Poloni, our President, will discuss key operational successes and priorities, and Gaurav Kapoor, our Chief Financial and Operations Officer, will review our financial performance and outlook in greater detail. We will conclude with a question and answer session. With that, I will turn the call over to Troy.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Will, and thank you all for joining us today. Our third quarter financial results surpassed our expectations. This performance stems from the dedication of our professionals, unmatched technical expertise, high-returning organic growth investments, trusted client relationships, and strong market trends. We set new records for NSR margins, EBITDA, EPS, backlog, and pipeline. As a result, we are confident in raising our annual financial guidance for the third consecutive time this year. Turning to the details of our results, organic NSR growth accelerated to 6%, led by 8% growth in the Americas. Our highest margin segment growth increased in most of our large international markets as well. Importantly, we delivered a 17.1% segment adjusted operating margin, which is a new record for the organization. This performance reflects three key elements of our strategy.

First, we have demonstrated consistently that through our returns-based capital allocation policy, investments in organic growth initiatives have the highest returns. This includes not only standing up and accelerating the growth of our program management and advisory businesses, but also the record level of business development investment we make quarter after quarter. Second, we continue to make organic investments in our technical capabilities to drive the highest level of productivity and quality in our industry. This investment also includes the development of advanced technical solutions that drive greater client value, which allows for us to excel in the marketplace and add to our record backlog position. Third, we build trusted client relationships and offer the broadest and deepest capability set in the industry, which gives us an advantage on our pursuits.

Looking ahead, we have line of sight to several drivers of continued margin expansion as we continue to make critical investments that are consistent with our long-term margin objectives. Our third quarter adjusted EBITDA and EPS increased by 10% and 16%, and on our year-to-date basis are up 9% and 20%. Cash flow was also ahead of our expectations in the quarter, and on a year-to-date basis we convert earnings to cash flow at an industry-leading rate, and year-to-date our free cash flow increased by 27%. We have also returned nearly $240 million to shareholders this year. Importantly, we have an unprecedented level of visibility for continued growth. Backlog increased both sequentially and year over year to a new all-time high, and we delivered a 19th consecutive quarter with a book-to-burn ratio in excess of 1. Two factors drive the strength.

First, we continue to win work at an all-time high rate. This included another quarter where we won more than 50% of the value we bid. Embedded within this result is a more than 80% success rate on our largest pursuits, where our competitive advantage is greatest and where our focus on winning what matters is evident. Second, the multi-decade secular mega trends that are driving our markets are accelerating. This includes global investments in infrastructure, sustainability and resilience, and energy. As the number one ranked transportation, water, environment, and facilities firm in the world by ENR, we are ideally suited to benefit. These megatrends are apparent in our pipeline, which also achieved a new all-time high for the fifth consecutive quarter.

Within the pipeline, growth remains fastest in the earliest stages, which indicates several years of continued strong market conditions as our clients plan for a future of higher spending. For example, in the UK, the government recently released its 10-year infrastructure strategy committing to invest £725 billion, including substantial investments in transportation, water, and energy. Our leading positions on key frameworks position us to ideally benefit. In the Middle East, where we maintain a market-leading position, we have successfully navigated a reprioritization of investment dollars to emerging areas to support the World Expo and World Cup infrastructure in Saudi Arabia. Our revenue growth also picked up this quarter, and our contracted backlog was up by double digits. We are also experiencing strong growth in the UAE, another key market in the region for us. In Australia and Asia, long-term demand drivers are firmly in place.

However, near-term budgetary constraints have led us to a pause in larger transportation awards, which has weighed on the near-term revenue trends. The water market is strong, but these projects tend to be longer in duration and therefore less impactful to near-term revenue as compared to large civil projects that we completed during the last cycle. Finally, in the U.S., market environment continues to be one of the best in the world. Only 36% of IIJA funding targeted to our markets has been spent, which provides for continued growth opportunities as evident in our pipeline. Furthermore, state and local budgets remain robust, with state DOT budgets forecasted to achieve another record high in 2026. Our state and local clients continue to prioritize infrastructure spending to maximize available federal matching funds. The passage of the Big Beautiful Bill only enhances this opportunity. The U.S.

Federal government is prioritizing investments in critical infrastructure to attract investment and secure a leadership position in growth industries such as AI. To that end, the bill includes tax incentives such as bonus depreciation that attract investment to onshore manufacturing, expand data center capacity, and build energy infrastructure necessary to meet unprecedented demand growth. This bill also allocates $150 billion of mandatory defense spending. The DoD is our largest single client and activity is gaining momentum. It also includes substantial funding for aviation and the Coast Guard, both markets where we have a leading presence across the business. We built a track record of delivering on and exceeding our financial and strategic commitments. As a result of our outperformance this year, we are raising our fiscal 2025 financial guidance for the third consecutive quarter.

At the new midpoints, we expect full year adjusted EBITDA and EPS to increase by 10% and 16% and we remain confident in delivering further growth and value for shareholders long into the future. With that, I will turn the call over to Lara.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Troy. We're excited about the significant growth opportunities ahead, particularly in the U.S., our largest and most profitable market. Government initiatives are driving infrastructure investment with a focus on advancing U.S. leadership in key markets. This is especially true regarding AI, with U.S. data center investment projected to triple by 2030, and alongside it, demand is also expected to grow substantially for electricity and supporting infrastructure. We can address this demand holistically like no other firm in our industry through our advisory, program management, and design capabilities. In fact, we are ideally suited for the complexities of this growth and the new challenges facing our clients, including scarce resources like land, power, and water. Looking at data centers specifically, we have supported some of the most complex projects in over 40 countries around the world, establishing us as a global leader.

Our scale and expertise in environmental permitting, siting, stakeholder engagement, energy, and water give us a significant advantage. In fact, our global data centers practice doubled NSR in the last two years, and we're confident growth will continue to accelerate. Moreover, supportive government policies are critical to sustaining this growth, and recent actions in several of our largest markets demonstrate the progress being made. In the U.S., a recent Supreme Court ruling and several executive orders are streamlining the NEPA permitting process, while Transportation Secretary Duffy's America is Building Again agenda focuses on removing investment barriers. Similarly, the UK's ten-year strategy prioritizes efficient project delivery, and Canada is centralizing permitting with the goal of approving projects 60% faster. These are bold steps that will deliver better outcomes for our clients and attract more capital to our market.

Within this accelerating demand environment and global push for more efficient infrastructure delivery, three key areas give us a competitive edge. First, our advisory business, informed by our technical expertise, helps clients plan dynamically for their investments and solve complex challenges faster than ever. This business grew at a double-digit pace this quarter, and we aim to double advisory to $400 million of NSR within three years, positioning it as our next $1 billion growth platform. Second, our program management business excels in delivering our clients' largest and most complex projects. We have won nearly 90% of our largest program management pursuits this year, and we remain on track with our long-term target of delivering at least 50% of revenue from program management and advisory over time. Finally, our competitive advantage would not be possible without our inspired and engaged professionals.

As Troy noted, we're continuing to invest in leadership and technical development as well as our AI capabilities, which provide our clients with the best technical solutions and generate high returns. In fact, we had record high satisfaction in our most recent employee survey, and voluntary attrition remains well ahead of industry expectations. Taken together, we stand in a very strong position through the first three quarters of the year and are continuing to build momentum as an organization. With that, I'll turn the call over to Gaurav.

Speaker 9

Thanks, Lara. Our third quarter results continue to reflect strong operational performance across the company. NSR growth, accelerated margins, and profitability reached new records. Our backlog and pipeline are at all-time high and our cash flow was very strong. Of note, our segment adjusted operating margin achieved a major milestone of 17.9%, a 90 basis point improvement over the prior year and exceeded our long-term target more than a year ahead of our prior expectations. There were no extraordinary items in our margin. Leading our industry in margins has been a hallmark of our performance over the past years. Our record business development expense continued to increase over the prior year and is ahead of our plan for the year, which has been the case for many quarters.

These margins also continue to include record investment in organic growth initiatives such as in our advisory business and in our technical capabilities, underpinning the high returns we earn on our investments and the continued opportunity to expand our margins over time. Turning to our segment results, beginning with Americas, NSR grew by 8%. The adjusted operating margin increased by 120 basis points to 20.5%, a new quarterly record that reflects growth in our largest market and the benefits from high returning organic growth. Investments in the business backlog in the Americas design business grew by 4%. We expect business development expense to increase as a share of revenue in the fourth quarter as we will continue to capitalize on a record pipeline. Turning to the international segment, NSR grew by 3% driven by the UK and the Middle East, which was partially offset by a decline in Australia.

The adjusted operating margin increased by 20 basis points to 11.9% as we continue to execute across our largest and highest returning geographies. Backlog grew by 8% in the international segment and contracted backlog was even stronger at 15% growth, which underpins our expectation for growth accelerating in the fourth quarter. Turning to our cash flow and capital.

Speaker 3

Allocation.

Speaker 9

We delivered $262 million of free cash flow in the quarter, contributing to a 27% increase for the year-to-date period. $2.0 billion, new all-time high. We are on track with our guidance for at least 100% free cash flow conversion for the full year, which would mark the fifth year in a row we have delivered at or better than this level. We returned nearly $240 million to shareholders year to date and $2.7 billion of capital since September 2020. We maintain excellent balance sheet strength with net leverage of 0.6, a low cost of debt, and no maturities until 2029. Our returns-based capital allocation policy remains unchanged. This includes our high-returning organic growth investments and capital returns to shareholders through repurchases and dividends.

While the timing of cash flow within the year and within a quarter can influence the pace of returns from period to period, importantly, all capital allocation decisions are returns-based to ensure we build on our industry-leading return on capital performance. Concluding with the details of our guidance, we are raising our financial guidance for a third consecutive quarter. This is driven by our year-to-date outperformance, our record backlog, and a strong end market environment. We now expect adjusted EPS and EBITDA to increase by 10% and 16%, respectively, at the midpoint of ranges. We are also raising our full-year margin guidance, including our expectation for a 16.5% segment adjusted operating margin, a 70 basis point increase over the prior year. This improvement is more than double the 20 to 30 basis point annual improvement we have in our long-term financial framework. With that, operator, we Questions?

Speaker 8

Thank you. The floor is now open for questions. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press Star one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press Star one again. If you're called upon to ask a question and are listening via a loudspeaker on your device, please pick up your handset and ensure that your phone is not on mute. Your first question comes from the line of Sabahat Khan of RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Great, thanks and good morning. Just wanted to get, you know, with evolving backdrop, if you could just share some thoughts specifically on the U.S. market. I'm more curious on sort of how the private sector is evolving and just given some of the noise during calendar Q1, did things sort of change or stabilize during calendar Q2?

Just curious sort of specifics on.

The U.S. market across private and public please.

Speaker 3

Yeah, good morning Saba, it's Troy here. Just to clarify your question, when you say Q1 and Q2, I think you are referring to the calendar year. I'll focus on that. First of all, I think these comments actually apply to the U.S. market and to our large international markets, which is, so start with the backdrop is that there were a lot of elections that took place over the last year and it has taken time for those governments to get into place and for their agendas and the funding of those agendas to become clear. We've actually seen that now in the U.S., we're seeing that in Canada, we're seeing that in the UK, and we're starting to see that at the very beginning of that in Australia. With respect to the U.S.

market, I think inherent in your question, you said that there was some stability and there's no doubt there is stability in terms of the agenda of the new U.S. administration and the U.S. federal government. We're seeing the funding now come behind that and it's becoming quite clear that there's a very important agenda, which is investing in infrastructure in the United States. There's a lot of support to do that and encouragement to do that. Encouragement through, first of all, funding coming from the Big Beautiful Bill, encouragement coming through reducing the regulation to get infrastructure into the market faster, and encouragement in terms of the environment for focused investment in the U.S. in the long term. All those things seem to be coming together and are supporting a more stable market and a much clearer picture in terms of the long-term investment infrastructure in the U.S.

I also said in the prepared comments that we're also seeing this at a state level and, you know, we're seeing next year certainly in transportation infrastructure, the expectation forming around state budgets so that there'll be more money spent in transportation by the states in aggregate next year than there has been in this current year. Overall, we're seeing clarity come together and that clarity means what we think is continued long-term investment in infrastructure in the U.S.

Great.

Just for my follow up, the margins obviously trending in the right direction. Could you sort of just dig into some of the drivers there just for this year and kind of over the next little while just across maybe operating leverage and just breaking out some of the operational initiatives that might be driving some of the margin improvement. How much more juice is left there? A bit more detail on the margin side please.

Thanks. Sure, Sabahat. I'm going to turn that over to Gaurav.

Speaker 9

Morning Saba, thanks for the question. Margins were, we're very pleased with our margin performance, and thanks for acknowledging the delivery. This quarter we delivered a margin target that is almost 15 months ahead of schedule. First and foremost, the credit goes to our professionals who work hard every single day and operate not only in the marketplace with their clients from a quality delivery and being, having a DNA of always improving from a cost standpoint as well. You have to do all of those things well across the board to have this kind of performance that we've had.

For us specifically on margin, to your question, delivery in the quarter and what the trajectory opportunity looks like going forward, for us, it starts in investing in high returning organic growth opportunities starting with our traditional core end markets where business development expense is not only higher than prior year, but it's higher than what we had even planned year to date and quarter to date. We continue to make robust investments in the pipeline to make sure our book-to-burn, our backlog is very healthy. As Troy commented in the opening comments, this is now the 19th quarter in a row where we've delivered our book-to-burn at 1 or greater, a testament to that business development investment, organic investment that we make. It's also a lot of operational focus on improving our cost base.

While we're still in the early stages of benefiting from some key strategic initiatives such as our infrastructure advisory business that we launched middle of last year, solutions focus drives higher margins for us, our enterprise capability centers where we're still in the mid to high single digit in terms of total labor hours that we deliver. As we've stated before, we will get to middle digits in this delivery of our capability centers in the short to medium term. There's still a lot of opportunity left and I'm not yet going into a lot of detail, but AI is not only something in the future, but right now it has been providing us with a good lift in all facets of how we go to market, how we operate, deliver, and the opportunity to become more efficient in each one of those phases.

For us, you'll notice two years ago when we had put the target forth of 17% and said we were going to deliver it in three years. We did it earlier of course, but about a year ago the confidence we were seeing internally is why we shifted that target to 17+%. We're not, we knew the opportunity, it's not just a North Star of delivering 17% and being higher than anybody else in the industry as we have been for past few years, but the opportunity still in front of us.

Speaker 3

Thanks very much.

Speaker 8

Your next question comes from the line of Adam Bubes of Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Speaker 3

Hi, good morning. Morning.

Speaker 2

I'm wondering if you folks could just provide an update on the AI and automation initiatives. How long until these initiatives start to move the needle on utilization or margins? Just where are we in that journey?

Speaker 3

Yeah, we are already, we've already begun that journey to actually deploy AI and we've talked about this I think for about 18 months now. We started thinking about investing in AI and how we would do that about 18 months ago and we've been doing that consistently. We think about it in two ways. First of all, we think about it how we actually use AI to improve how we support or run the business. Second, we think about how it will actually change the way we deliver our work for customers. Obviously, there's a lot of discussion around the impact of AI without getting into the details of how we're deploying it. The answer to your first question is yes, it is having an impact on our margins and our results.

The second most important thing is that we believe that AI will have a visible, a material, and a really favorable impact to our business over the next three years. Most importantly, never lose sight of the fact that the most important thing in our business is our people and what they bring to solving our clients' problems, especially from our perspective, the really complex and highly visible and important problems that our people solve. The investments that we're making in AI are absolutely going to extend their capabilities. I will just leave you with this. I'll just restate the fact that we think that AI is going to have a material impact on our business over the next two or three years. If you think about this as sort of the question around is there more juice left in margins, no question that there is. Great.

Speaker 2

I think the EBITDA margin guidance implies margin stepped down slightly sequentially at the midpoint from these really strong levels in 4Q. Looking at recent years, I think margins typically step slightly up 4Q versus 3Q. Any moving pieces that should drive margins different than normal seasonality in 4Q? Is that maybe the business development expenses in Americas that were referenced?

Speaker 9

Hey, morning Gaurav, you're exactly right. In our prepared comments, one of the things we pointed out is we're very happy and pleased with how strong our pipeline is across all end markets in all of our key regions. One thing we're not going to shy away from is making sure we put our best foot forward to take advantage of this great pipeline that we have, which means making the business development expense. As you can see with high level of confidence, anytime we've made these organic investments over the last six years, they've had an outsized organic return on that investment, including the margin trajectory growth. We're just being very balanced as we look forward into Q4, saying we're going to make all these continuing great business development investments expense because we know the outsized return it drives for us in the future.

Speaker 3

Great, thanks so much.

Speaker 8

Your next question comes from the line of Andy Whitman of Baird. Your line is open.

Yeah, Greg, thanks for taking my questions and good morning everyone. I guess I'm going to ask a margin question a little bit different way than some of the other ones have been asked. Obviously, basically this year it looks like you're on track to deliver actually more than twice the annual level. That was kind of the straight line effect. The 20 to 30 basis points should be 70-ish this year. I guess as you think about kind of the planning period, is that.

Speaker 3

Is that a pull forward of like?

Some of next year's margins or where does next year just build off a higher base than maybe was originally anticipated? I guess I just kind of want to be clear as to how the phasing of these margins go in. Obviously, this is a relevant question for the investment community with your initial guidance coming up next quarter.

It is absolutely premature for us to give guidance next year, but nevertheless, I'll say that the margins this year are not a pull forward of something from the future. They represent the run rate margins that we see in our business and in our backlog. I did try to give in the answer in the last question a preview of our expectations, which is, we see that there is significant upside still remaining in our margins based on the investments that we have been making and investments that we think we're going, that we know we're going to continue to make next year.

Yeah.

Okay, just wanted to make sure on that. I guess from my follow up question I wanted to ask on your capital deployment and specifically your buyback in the quarter was really light compared to kind of where you've been. In the past it's been, you've kind of married it up with your cash flow. Fourth quarter is always a big cash flow quarter. I understand that. You've done things to smooth out your timing of your cash flow, the seasonality of it, at least throughout the year. Your buyback has correspondingly getting a little bit more smoothed out this quarter. Pretty light. I was just wondering if there's something that we should know about that affected that. Maybe it's just as simple as you're expecting a lot more cash in 4Q, but the balance sheet here is in great spot.

Maybe Gaurav, can you just kind of talk about the buyback and how important it is and maybe the performance in the quarter, what you did there and why.

Speaker 9

Yeah, fair question, Andy. No change in our capital allocation policy. We will continue to execute that consistent with how we have acted in the past and specific to this quarter. In this business, cash always comes in end of the quarter. As we've stated before, our buybacks will follow as we generate that free cash flow. As we've generated it in Q3, we'll execute it during Q4, and as we generate more cash in Q4 consistent with our expectations, will continue on that path.

Speaker 3

Okie dokie.

Speaker 9

Thanks.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Andy.

Speaker 8

Your next question comes from the line of Andy Kaplowitz of Citigroup. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning guys. This is actually Jose on for Andy.

Speaker 3

Morning. Morning.

The last several quarters your book-to-burn ratio has been at a steady greater than 1x even despite tariff uncertainty and increased volatility in international markets. Do you think you can continue to record a book-to-burn ratio over one in the current environment based on your current pipeline? I know your high win rates have been helping you out, particularly in your large pursuits. Maybe you can talk about the confidence level there and how sustainable these win rate levels are.

I guess again I'd start with saying that, you know, past is not a perfect predictor of the future, but it certainly helps having a track record of 19 quarters, you know, with a book to burn greater than one. I think that what that indicates is that we do have the underlying conditions to repeat that. Again, going back to what some of the prepared comments is, we have a very healthy pipeline and it's in the good locations where we have great strength in the marketplace. We continue to have a very high win rate, which means that we are somehow have an edge in our marketplace against the competition. I describe that edge as we focus on things where it plays to our strengths.

The strength of our team is that we have a large, very sophisticated global team with a very diverse set of experiences and qualifications. It allows us to compete on those projects and to win at a very high rate. I look at the business and say nothing has really changed. Our markets are strong and healthy. We see more clarity around the funding agendas for our governments, which allows us to preposition for the longer term. We have strength in the business that we're taking advantage of that manifests itself in our very high win rates. We have confidence that we'll keep it up. Thanks for that.

As a follow up, I wanted to ask about the water and environment advisory business you introduced in 1Q25. Curious if you could talk about how you're seeing that business progress and any development or opportunities that have made you incrementally more excited about the growth prospects of that business.

Yeah, Lara will take that.

Speaker 1

Thank you for the question. We continue to be really excited about it. During the quarter, the advisory business grew double digit, doubling the scale of this business to $400 million of NSR over the next three years. For it to be our next billion dollar platform, we continue to have such positive client feedback. We're winning great work, we're hiring great people. We've got great momentum and we're absolutely on track and really excited about the future growth of that business.

Speaker 3

Excellent comment, guys. Thank you.

Speaker 8

Your next question comes from Sangeeta Jain of KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Speaker 3

Great.

Thank you for taking my questions. One question, I want to follow up on the AI discussion that we just had earlier. How does the shifting of work to the overseas technical centers intersect with the use of AI? Do you think there could be a risk of possibly over investing in these if AI can take over some of the tasks?

I think they work well together. I think you sort of have to look at the portfolio of skills that are required to solve our, you know, to solve the problems of our customers or to deliver those projects. There is always certainly a piece that you have to spend time on the ground, you have to spend time with your customers and that goes at the beginning and throughout those projects. I don't think that part is really frankly ever going to change. You have to have, you know, again, people with really sophisticated experiences and skills and that's a combination of people that are on the ground with customers and in our enterprise capability centers. What I think you'll see is that AI will certainly supplement what both of those groups do.

We think about how AI works to support our teams and it frankly supports our teams regardless of where they are. We're very conscious in terms of how we're thinking about investing in the teams and investing across the business so that we take advantage of the existing strength of the business and supplement it by investing in AI.

Great, that's helpful. Thank you. Just on NSR growth, I know you're heading towards the end of your fiscal year. This year looks like it's going to trend towards the lower side of your guidance range. I'm just wondering how that positions you for next year. Probably easier comps in certain areas and maybe UK picks up. Any thoughts? Early thoughts there would be appreciated. Thank you.

Speaker 9

Hi Sangeetha, this is Gaurav.

Speaker 3

I'll take that question.

Speaker 9

You're right in terms of we are going to be within the range of guidance we had provided, but it is going to trend towards the lower part of it. We are expecting growth to pick up in Q4. It's historically consistent, number of work days also impacting us, gives us good strong confidence going into Q4, and we're currently in our planned process. If you look at what we have delivered in terms of backlog growth, contracted backlog growth, wins, book-to-burn, it all gives us confidence. That long term algorithm we had put out of 5 to 8%. We have high level of confidence even though we haven't completed our planning process. That continues to be a good range for us as we look into next year.

Appreciate it.

Thank you, guys.

Speaker 3

Thank you.

Speaker 8

Your next question comes from the line of Michael Duda, Vertical Research Partners. Your line is open.

Good morning, gentlemen.

Speaker 3

good morning. Troy, you highlighted in your prepared remarks the earlier stage of investment from your clients and you're seeing more opportunities, and I guess more access and exposure there for your company. Does that provide the longer term confidence?

In organic growth and the cycle.

Front of us, and is it your

Speaker 9

The ability to grow some of these.

Speaker 3

Advisory opportunities in infrastructure and water are where you're finding a lot of lower hanging fruit to drive the margin, also drive more wallet share amongst your clients. I think about this in two different ways. First of all, as I said earlier, we've seen a lot of our clients formulating their agendas. If you come through an election period, it takes a little while to formulate that agenda. When it is formed and the funding is made available through the legislative process, that means you typically have good line of sight for four or five years on what's going to be spent and what the focus is going to be. When you look at our earlier stage pipeline, we have a very significant portfolio of government clients.

It's a good example that when those agendas form, you start to see your early stage pipeline growing, which indicates that there's good funding and good pipeline that will take you through the next four or five years. The second point is you think about the diversity we've created in the business now, focusing on advisory or being there earlier in the process, bringing really good technical underlying skills to provide that advice to our customers, which does differentiate from the typical advisor. Then you have program management, which keeps us there throughout the process. As that pipeline forms, I think you rightly pointed out, we're going to be more exposed to that pipeline. As we said in our investor day almost two years ago, we would typically in the past have been exposed to our clients, maybe to 10% to 15% of our clients' budgets.

Now through advisory, program management, and our design business, we're exposed to 30% to 35% or 40% of our clients' budgets, and more importantly, the margin in those budgets is higher than where it is in the other places of their infrastructure spend. You line those two things up, and based on the investments we've been making, growing our at bats and the early stage pipeline continuing to grow, it gives us good visibility and confidence into the next four or five years. Thank you. Thank you.

Speaker 8

Your next question comes from the line of Nandita Nayar of Bank of America. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning guys. This is Nandita Nair on for Michael Feniger. Thanks for taking my questions. You mentioned that advisory was up double digits. If we can just pull on that thread a bit more here, how much of this would you say is the overall market and how much is this, you know, AECOM initiatives capturing more share?

Speaker 3

Thanks.

Speaker 1

Thanks for the question, Nandita. In terms of the project life cycle, I think we're capturing an earlier segment of the project life cycle because we're advising clients much earlier. I think that is additive if you look at it in total project life cycle terms. For us, obviously there is the low-hanging fruit, which is the existing clients where we can grow the share of wallet, so to speak, in terms of providing them additional advisory services, with the pull through of all of the usual technical disciplines and design work that they know us for. They're the sort of two dimensions that I would respond with, and yeah, great, that's helpful.

If I can just squeeze one more in, you mentioned margins hitting a big milestone. How much would you balance investing in the business and expanding margins going forward, and how much would you say the opportunity going forward is in the Americas versus international?

Speaker 3

I think our margins have improved not because we've been managing the costs, but we've actually been investing and generating returns from those investments. I think our belief and the strength of what we've been capable of doing is actually investing in growing margins in the business. That's not going to stop. We're going to continue to invest, and as we look forward, we actually see more opportunities to invest to drive a much better result than we have in the past. Looking back, it's a great track record. Looking forward, we actually are even more optimistic to continue to improve in the future based on what we think we can invest in.

Great. Appreciate the answers. Thank you.

Thank you.

Speaker 8

With no further questions, that concludes our Q&A session. I'll now turn the conference back over to Troy for closing remarks.

Speaker 3

Thank you, everyone, for joining us today, and we thank you for your support. Most importantly, I thank all the employees and all the people working here at AECOM for their fantastic contributions this quarter. They've continued to provide just a superior result for the work that we do for our clients. Thank you.

Speaker 8

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.