BrightView - Q4 2023
November 16, 2023
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the BrightView Q4 fiscal year 2023 earnings call. My name is Bruno, and I'll be operating your call today. During the presentation, you can press to ask a question by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypad. I will now hand it over to your host, Chris Stoczko. Please go ahead.
Chris Stoczko (VP of Finance and Investor Relations)
Good morning, and thank you for joining BrightView's Q4 and full year 2023 earnings call. Dale Asplund, BrightView's President and Chief Executive Officer, and Brett Urban, Chief Financial Officer, are on the call. I will now refer you to slide two of the presentation, which can also be found on our Investor Relations website, and which contains our safe harbor disclaimer. This call may include forward-looking statements subject to certain risks and uncertainties. In addition, during this call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please see our 8-K issued earlier this morning the reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures. I will now turn the call over to Dale.
Dale Asplund (President and CEO)
Thank you, Chris, and good morning, everyone. I'm honored to join my first earnings call since being appointed BrightView's CEO in October. First, I want to thank all of our employees for their effort this past year. I'm proud to be joining a team that is motivated and committed to continuous improvement. In my first 45 days, I've spent a lot of time in the field and at branches, meeting with employees and customers, immersing myself in all aspects of BrightView's business. I have benefited a great deal from these interactions as they are opportunities to listen, to learn, and to build relationships. I look forward to meeting many more of our associates and partners in weeks and months to come. I will begin today's call on slide four by sharing some initial observations about the areas I'm focused on and some of my initial priorities.
I will then provide some highlights for fiscal year 2023 before handing it over to Brett to discuss our results in more detail and provide our initial outlook for fiscal 2024. By way of background, I spent the past 25 years at United Rentals, the world's largest equipment rental company. In my most recent role as COO, I was focused on relentless execution and delivering an exceptional customer experience. This was accomplished by prioritizing our employees so they are equipped with appropriate resources to serve our customers, all while leveraging the size and scale of the business. By doing this, we increased shareholder value significantly. What attracted me to BrightView was the opportunity to lead a group of talented employees through their next phase of profitable growth and operational improvement by leveraging my experience as an operator and a leader.
At BrightView, we have a tremendous opportunity ahead of us to become great operators of our business and partners to our customers. In order to capitalize on these opportunities and send BrightView into the next phase of growth, we must invest in our employees and prioritize our relationships with our customers while delivering consistent execution and service. We will do this by everyone working together to operate as One BrightView. As CEO, I am focused on establishing a unified BrightView, a company that prioritizes its employees, the customer, and a winning culture. This renewed commitment and investment in the business will be critical to our ability to drive profitable growth. It will also allow us to leverage our vast branch network to drive operational efficiency.
Another key area of focus will be the strategic allocation of capital, ensuring that our investments in the business, both organic and inorganic, are creating value and generating attractive returns for our stakeholders. Moving to slide five. The initial goal of operating as One BrightView is to become the employer of choice. We do that by putting our employees first and by delivering a culture where people seek to achieve individual and group success. By prioritizing our employees, we are ensuring that they have the capabilities and tools required to do their jobs at a high level. Doing this materially impacts the level of service provided to customers and leads to an exceptional customer experience. This includes investing in employee safety, fleet, and systems, all of which will allow us to better serve our customers.
By making these investments in our employees, and in turn, employees taking care of our customers, this will allow us to become the partner of choice in our industry. These investments are aimed at improving customer retention and accelerating profitable growth. Creating a customer-centric focus for our employees is critical to our objective under One BrightView. As you can tell, we are highly focused and committed to One BrightView and building a stronger foundation. There's a lot of work ahead of us on these initiatives, but I firmly believe these are the areas we must prioritize. Once we have established this foundation, we will have earned the right to expand strategically. M&A can be a powerful lever for growth and generating meaningful returns on capital, but only when it fits strategically, culturally, and financially.
In order to have that fit, we must be a better owner that accelerates revenue, increases operational efficiencies, and creates significant synergy so that one plus one equals three. As One BrightView, we have to be the best at what we do for our customers, and I'm confident that we can deliver on these goals. Now, moving to our results. As you can see on slide six, fiscal 2023 was a successful year for BrightView. As we achieved solid execution and delivered results in line with expectations. During the year, we focused on targeting profitable growth, driving consistent EBITDA margin expansion, and improving our cash flow. We were pleased with the results for the year, considering the challenging economic environment, consisting of elevated inflation, higher interest rates, and a winter with very little snow. Despite these challenges, we executed our plan for the year.
Additionally, during the year, we achieved a transformational reduction in our leverage, driven by the strategic investment from One Rock Capital and our improved profitability. As shown on slide seven, prior to One Rock, our leverage profile and interest expense payments were restricting our growth and cash flow and reducing the overall financial flexibility of the business. By partnering with One Rock, we were able to use those proceeds to pay down debt, resulting in a significant reduction in our leverage and interest expense. This added flexibility, ability allows us to invest in the business with an emphasis on profitable growth. In addition to the financial benefits of this partnership, we are also leveraging One Rock's operational expertise, including previous experience in our industry, which will allow us to accelerate the execution of our strategy.
The investment also reflects a strong vote of confidence in BrightView's strategy and potential to drive profitable growth for years to come. With that, I'll turn it over to Brett, who will discuss our financial performance and outlook in more detail. Brett?
Brett Urban (CFO)
Thank you, Dale, and good morning to everyone. I'll start on slide nine. I am pleased to report on another solid quarter. We grew total revenues by 2.8%, increased EBITDA by $10 million, delivered margin expansion in all segments, and generated significantly more cash despite an increase in interest expense. Our ability to achieve these results reflects BrightView's attractive business model and gives us confidence as we pursue new opportunities to drive further financial and operational improvement. Moving to slide 10. Total revenue during the quarter increased 2.8% year-over-year to $744 million, reflecting 2.1% year-over-year organic revenue growth. Revenue during the quarter benefited from demand in our core businesses, favorable pricing, and M&A contributions.
In our maintenance business, total revenue decreased 1.5% to $521 million as we continue to pursue higher quality contracts, which reflects our relentless focus on profitable growth and margin expansion, as we discussed last quarter. We grew our development business a robust 13.5% organically due to our ability to convert our strong backlog into higher project volume. We remain very optimistic about the pipeline of projects and the momentum of our development business headed into fiscal 2024. Turning now to profitability and the details on slide 11. Total Adjusted EBITDA for the Q4 was $101.6 million, an increase of $10 million, driven by both land and development growth, margin expansion in all segments, and a strategic asset sale, which came in above expectations.
In the maintenance segment, total Adjusted EBITDA of $81.7 million was up slightly year-over-year. This resulted in margin expansion of 30 basis points and marked the fourth consecutive quarter of margin expansion in our core land business. As I mentioned, our focus on higher quality contracts led to a modest near-term impact on land revenue, but as evidenced throughout this year, this strategy led to continued profitability growth and margin expansion. In the development segment, Adjusted EBITDA for the Q4 was $29.1 million, an increase of approximately 14% compared to the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded 10 basis points, which marks our fifth consecutive quarter of development margin expansion, and we expect this trend to continue as we head into fiscal 2024.
As part of our ongoing initiatives, we executed a strategic sale of our corporate airplane that generated both cash and future cost savings. This sale benefited profitability and cash flow, which allowed us to immediately reinvest back into the business by replacing some of our oldest construction vehicles. Important to note, in our previous guidance, we assumed an approximate $4 million EBITDA benefit from selling the airplane in our corporate segment. Through a favorable negotiation, we were able to secure an approximate $7 million benefit to EBITDA on the sale of this asset. Lastly, the sale had both a positive impact on our corporate and environmental initiatives. Turning to slide 12, I'll provide a review of our full fiscal year 2023 results. Total revenue for the year was $2.82 billion, which represented a 1.5% increase compared to the prior year.
Total land services increased 1.7% to $1.86 billion, reflecting healthy growth despite the contraction in our non-core business. Additionally, snow represented a year-over-year headwind of $47 million due to the absence of material snowfall. Revenue in the development segment increased a meaningful 8.5%, with a robust 6.8% organic growth for the full year. As you can see on slide 13, we delivered EBITDA growth and margin expansion throughout the year. We committed to growing profitability and expanding margins in fiscal 2023, and we are proud to report that we delivered on these commitments. I am extremely delighted with the team's ability to execute this growth and margin expansion despite the challenging operating environment. Let's now turn to slide 14 to review our free cash flow, debt, and capital expenditures for the year.
We committed to improving our cash flow in fiscal 2023 and delivered upon this commitment. This improvement was a result of higher profitability, a strategic reduction to capital expenditures, favorable working capital, and benefit from our tax planning, which more than offset the higher cash interest expense in the year. The reduction in capital expenditures reflects the resiliency and flexibility of our balance sheet in a year with low snowfall. For the full year, we generated $80 million in free cash flow compared to $7 million last year. These levels of cash generation reflect the improvements in our business and lay the foundation for continued momentum going into fiscal 2024. In addition to the improved cash levels in the business, we announced a strategic investment from One Rock Capital that contributed to a significant reduction of our leverage profile.
This investment resulted in leverage coming down by approximately two turns and reaching a historical low of 2.9x, compared to the 4.8x in the prior year. This strengthens our balance sheet and provides us with flexibility and the opportunity to reinvest in the business, specifically towards customer and employee satisfaction, which, as Dale mentioned, will lead to profitable growth and operational improvement. Let's now turn to slide 15 to provide an update on Project Liberty. As a refresher, on our Q3 earnings call, we announced an expanded strategic review of our business beyond just cost initiatives. These initiatives include areas such as branch performance, customer growth and retention, procurement, and capital allocation, with a collective goal of expanding profitable growth and generating higher returns.
We have seen the early successes of these initiatives reflected in our EBITDA margin and cash flow performance in the back half of the year. Under Dale's leadership, Project Liberty continues to take shape across the business and has aligned with our goal of becoming a collaborative and unified One BrightView. Branch performance will be driven by investing in our employees, while also aligning sales and operations to better service our customers. Profitable growth, led by new sales and improved customer retention, will be driven by prioritizing the customer and aligning incentives for our employees. We will continue to focus on high-quality business, strategic pricing efforts, and deliberate capital allocation, underscoring our prioritization of profitable growth. Taken together, continuous execution of these initiatives will create higher returns and lead to shareholder value. Let's now turn to slide 16 to review our outlook for fiscal 2024.
Profitable growth will continue to be our guiding factor and key focus. We are now providing full year guidance for fiscal 2024, with expected total revenue of $2.825 billion-$2.975 billion, reflecting a range of relatively flat to 5% revenue growth. This assumes the following: In maintenance, we expect our focus on profitable growth to continue to have a near-term impact, but we remain encouraged by the underlying health of the market and recent trends within our business. For snow, our fiscal 2024 guidance range assumes flat at the low end, and a return to 5-year historical averages at the high end. For development, the conversion of our strong backlog of projects will continue to benefit revenue and margin growth. Moving to Adjusted EBITDA, One BrightView will be the key driver to growing profit and expanding our margins.
In fiscal 2024, we expect margin expansion in both maintenance and development segments, benefiting from One BrightView key initiatives and disciplined management of the business. We expect these improvements to generate margin expansion of 40-80 basis points and Adjusted EBITDA of $310 million-$340 million. In fiscal 2024, we expect a continuation of healthy cash flow generation, driven by profitable growth and improved operating performance. Our outlook on slide 17 reflects the commitment to growth as we expect an increase in capital intensity to support our strategy. These higher levels are consistent with historical requirements to support the business and reflect a more normal snowfall this year.
Contributions from reduced interest expense will be managed alongside the ongoing requirement to optimize the business.... Altogether, we expect to generate Free Cash Flow of $45 million-$75 million, supporting the financial flexibility we maintain today while enhancing our ability to generate future profitable growth. With that, let me now turn the call back to Dale to wrap up on slide 18.
Dale Asplund (President and CEO)
Thank you, Brett. Before we open the call for questions, I'd like to provide a few final thoughts. It's an exciting time at BrightView, and I'm honored to be leading such a talented team. There are tremendous opportunities ahead of us. We are moving this business forward with a clear strategy and vision for One BrightView. We are strategically positioned to accelerate profitable growth and to create meaningful value for our shareholders. We will now open the call for questions.
Operator (participant)
Ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. That's star one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, star, star followed by two, and please also remember to unmute your microphone when it's your turn to speak. We do have our first question. Comes from Bob Labick from CJS Securities. Bob, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Bob Labick (President and Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Thank you. Good morning, and Dale, congratulations
Dale Asplund (President and CEO)
Good morning, Bob.
Bob Labick (President and Senior Equity Research Analyst)
on your new role, on your new position.
Dale Asplund (President and CEO)
Thanks.
Bob Labick (President and Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Thanks.
Dale Asplund (President and CEO)
Thank you very much, Bob.
Bob Labick (President and Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Yeah, I wanted to start. Oh, absolutely, no, very excited for you, for sure. I wanted to start, and I think you began the call this way, so, you know, reiterate it. Your employee-first focus, you know, will drive customer satisfaction and improve retention and all that kind of good stuff. So that all makes a lot of sense. Can you, like, take it one level further and talk about, you know, what you've seen so far? I know it's 45 days, but, you know, thoughts on how to improve branch operations and, you know, change things, tweak things. What are your intentions operationally to do to grow organically from here?
Dale Asplund (President and CEO)
Yeah, yeah. Great question, Bob. First, I think you're right. 45 days, I've had a chance to, as I said, visit many of our associates, some of our customers in different parts of the country. And what I've seen, to start with, is we have a very talented group of people that service our customers every day. We have a development group, we have a tree care business, we have a turf business, we have an irrigation business, we have a golf course maintenance business, and of course, our primary business, the maintenance group. All these groups service customers at extremely high levels. Our biggest opportunity, like I said in my statement, is gonna be to get everybody operating as One BrightView, getting all these people to leverage their skills together to service our customers.
And when we do that, Bob, we will accelerate our organic growth internally because we have talented people with the right focus of customers. We just haven't leveraged the ability for them to really act as one team when they go to market to the customer. So that, that upside is there within our own control of working as One BrightView, one group to drive profitable growth. So I will tell you, I am more optimistic than ever by talking to the people in the field, because the closer I get to the customer, the more our team is engaged to service the customer. So that's a great way to start when you're gonna focus on how, how can we grow the business, and that starts and ends with those people that touch our customer every day.
We, as a leadership team, have to find a way to provide them all the tools they need to be able to do it efficiently and make our customers feel the choice they made to choose BrightView is the obvious choice.
Bob Labick (President and Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Okay, great. I appreciate that. And it sounds obviously, with the employee and therefore customer focus, you know, that's, that's the direction you're gonna you start with. How does this align with, you know, investing in the employees, align with margin enhancements? And is there, you know, a lull period where you invest more in the employees, you get your improved retention, and then later, margins start improving? Is it like, how do those connect if you're gonna continue to really invest in employees first? Because obviously, the goal being lower churn, higher retention, and therefore better growth, you know, the, the investment comes before the improved retention, right? It can't be simultaneous. So how do you think about that as it relates to margins over the year or, you know, next one, two, three years?
Dale Asplund (President and CEO)
Yeah, I would, I would just say in our business, we have obviously a lot of seasonality, but even the number of employees that we're tasked with hiring to service our customers, training and onboarding every year, is a significant number. And the more we put those employees as our primary focus, to give them the tools, the safety equipment, the systems, the vehicles to operate their jobs the right way, the more their job satisfaction will go up and the more we'll see that valuable resource of our employees' turnover come down. So that will, Bob, drive margin expansion just by being able to reduce the costs we pay to recruit and onboard employees.
So that is our first step, and by doing that, that translates to them being able to serve the customer better and help us in that retention, as you said, to drive additional organic growth in the business. But our, our efforts to onboard and train customers right now are too high. That's why we have to prioritize our employees, so we can make sure those employees are embracing a customer-centric focused business, and they know the importance they play in that journey.
Bob Labick (President and Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Super. That sounds great. Good luck, and thank you. I'll get back in queue.
Dale Asplund (President and CEO)
Thanks, Bob.
Operator (participant)
Our next question comes from Tim Mulrooney from William Blair. Tim, your line's now open.
Luke McFadden (Equity Research Associate)
Hi, this is Luke-
Dale Asplund (President and CEO)
Morning, Tim.
Luke McFadden (Equity Research Associate)
For Tim. Thanks for taking our questions today. Hey, good morning.
Dale Asplund (President and CEO)
You're welcome.
Luke McFadden (Equity Research Associate)
It looks like land organic growth was down about 2.5% in the Q4. I think you had previously expected it to be flat. Could you share what drove that decline? Was it primarily attributable to lower contract renewals or lower enhancement revenue, or maybe something else?
Dale Asplund (President and CEO)
Yeah, so I'll, I'll start off, and then I'll kick it over to Brett. I'd-- I just remind everybody, our focus was profitable growth and margin expansion. So the team has been focused to make sure the customers that we're going after are the customers that fit that profile. And the businesses that we're focused on growing are businesses that are focused in that area, more of our core businesses you heard Brett mention on the call. So let me, let me let Brett kind of decompose it for you, but just remember, our focus is not just chasing revenue, it's gonna be make sure the revenue we bring is accretive to our base business as we bring in new customers. So, Brett, why don't you give them a little more detail on the financial side?
Brett Urban (CFO)
Yeah. Hey, Luke. Hey, how are you doing this morning? I appreciate the question. Yeah, as Dale mentioned, you know, profitable growth is going to be our, our guiding factor moving forward. And I think as you heard in, in previous calls, previous quarters, we were, we were growing, but margin was not. And I think as you look at this year, and you, you normalize for snow, which we've talked about quite a bit, and the margin profile has improved significantly, not only in development business and our maintenance business, and corporate segment as well. And if you think about organic growth for the quarter, look, I think that, that drive towards profitable growth and high-quality business will continue as, as in the near term as we move forward. We're still getting favorable benefits from pricing.
We're still being strategic in those efforts of about 50 basis points with our pricing efforts. We did last year with heightened fuel have, you know, fuel surcharges that were in our top line of about 50 basis points as well. So those two things sort of offset from a jump-off point, Q4-over-Q4. And then, as Dale mentioned, you know, there's a, there's a heightened focus on One BrightView, bringing all of our businesses together, whether it be golf or aggregator business, et cetera. And I think, I think if you look at our core underlying land business, we saw very stable demand and growth in that business, offset by maybe some contraction in our non-core businesses.
As we move forward under Dale's leadership and really toward One BrightView, you'll see that alignment of the businesses, especially over the medium to long term.
Luke McFadden (Equity Research Associate)
Great. Thanks so, so much for that color there. And then, you know, maybe switching gears here, just on your guidance for 2024, it looks like you're assuming maintenance landscape organic growth, somewhere between, you know, down 2% to up 2%. Can you share what you're assuming in both those situations? And maybe if you could give, give us a sense, breakdown just between pricing and volume expectations, as we head into next year.
Dale Asplund (President and CEO)
Yeah, I think obviously, it's a good question. I think if you look at what we've done for guidance, we gave a full annual guide on revenue, and really in that annual revenue guide of $2,825 million-$2,975 million, we've also given a range for where we believe our snow revenue will come out, which is $210 million-$270 million. Our development business, which had an outstanding year last year, we think will continue to grow slightly. So we give a range because we don't want to really break down exactly each component. We think potentially as we go through Q1 here, we'll see a similar trend to what we saw in Q4 as we focus our employees, so that we can look to enhance our employees, so they can make sure they drive retention with our customers.
So I know that the change to giving an annual guide is a little different. So one way I think everybody should think about those numbers is, our Q1 would normally be roughly about 22.5% of our total revenue, and then that snow business, you could consider roughly about 25% of it coming in Q1, 75% coming in Q2. And that probably would allow you to kind of back into your assumptions, looking at last year's development by quarter, of where we think revenue will grow over the next couple of months on maintenance. I hope that gives you enough on the pieces, but Brett, do you got anything you want to add or?
Brett Urban (CFO)
No, I'm just, you know, look, it's a change in guidance. We're going from prior years where we would only provide Q1 guidance at this point in time. We would not provide Q2 or full year. So now we're going out and providing a full year guide. And I think in that land guide, as you can see it on slide 16 in the presentation, it's -2 to +2. And like as Dale mentioned, you know, we are working through our guiding factor of profitable growth and through that profitable growth mantra and bringing together as One BrightView. What we experienced in Q4 of a revenue impact, we'll probably experience in landing in Q1 in the early half of 2024.
But as One BrightView gains traction, as we take care of our employees, and in turn, they take care of our customers, we're gonna get back to that profitable growth over the medium and longer term in this business.
Dale Asplund (President and CEO)
Just important to note, too, just one last factor. You know, Q1 of last year, Luke, we did have a hurricane impact in the business of about $7 million. You know, we don't see any type of unusual events like that happening right now for this quarter.
Luke McFadden (Equity Research Associate)
Great. Thanks so much.
Operator (participant)
Our next question comes from Phil Ng from Jefferies. Phil, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Maggie Miller (Equity Research Associate)
Hey, guys, this is Maggie on for Phil.
Dale Asplund (President and CEO)
Good morning, Maggie.
Maggie Miller (Equity Research Associate)
Wanted to start out on free cash flow. You know, you had a really impressive step up this year. Can you talk about the non-recurring benefit from this year and any of the other moving pieces that kind of gets you to that fiscal 2024 guidance? And then on the CapEx side, the guide implies, you know, a pretty big increase next year. Is that more of a catch-up for the business, or is this a reasonable level to assume going forward?
Dale Asplund (President and CEO)
Yeah, Maggie, let me start. I'll take the back half of your question with the capital, and then I'll kick it over to Brett on the free cash flow. I think, as Brett had commented, the business did the right things in 2023 when we made strategic decisions to manage the capital down, when we saw the snow business with the record level of reduced snow that we saw last year, and the business reacted very well, thus demonstrating our ability to flex the business up or down and drive it by our CapEx and produce the free cash flow that we did. As far as the future guide on that free cash flow, I think a healthy range is probably closer.
Maybe 3.5% that Brett mentioned is a little elevated, but I do think there's a plan for us to drive maybe a little shorter term use of our vehicles and get a little more residual value as we go through the process. And we're gonna have a little catch-up on that, because don't forget, these vehicles that our employees operated in, they are our billboard that goes out and visits our customers. So the appearance of those that our employees work in every day is critical for our brand that we represent the customers. But let me, let me kick it over to Brett, and he can give you some on the non-recurring.
Brett Urban (CFO)
Yeah, Maggie, great question. Look, first of all, I'll say we are extremely pleased with our cash flow performance this year. Coming off the year in FY 2022, where we generated $7 million of free cash flow, and then we went and bought acquisitions after that and essentially took out debt to do so. That was not the game plan coming into 2023. We were very clear with that early in our conversations on earnings calls, and just really excited to report we delivered great cash flow performance of $80 million in the year. And we actually put money into the bank to keep on the sidelines for future strategic investments in the business. So extremely pleased about that.
You know, as you think about last year to this year, the $7 million to the $80 million, yeah, we saw, as it wasn't snowing in Q2, we made a strategic decision to pull back on CapEx. That benefited our cash flow year-over-year, roughly $50 million, for the CapEx year-over-year down. But look, I think that was very strategic and shows the flexibility of our balance sheet, as Dale mentioned. In a year with low snow, we're able to flex capital down a bit, and years, as we're guiding in 2024, we're expecting a more, call it, historical snowfall, we would flex that CapEx guide up a little bit.
You think about 2024 guidance, you know, a range of cash flow of $45 million-$75 million, you know, that's coming off the year where we did have about $25 million of one-time favorable impacts in our cash flow, whether it was related to tax benefits we got from our tax planning, or partial sale of our interest rate hedge we had on our collar. But regardless of that, you know, as you think about 2024 guide, we're looking at guiding to a point of, you know, $60 million to even at the high end $75 million-$80 million of free cash, which would put us back to where this year was.
That's through improved operating results and some of the savings on our interest expense, which, as you can see, we're redeploying capital back into the business. So dollars we're saving on capital, dollars we're saving. I'm sorry, dollars we're saving on interest and dollars we're saving in other areas of the balance sheet, we'll redeploy back in the capital. As Dale mentioned, we'll refresh our fleet and be able to put our employees in a much more favorable working environment every day.
Maggie Miller (Equity Research Associate)
Okay, great. That's, that's super helpful. And then, Dale, you kind of touched on this in your prepared remarks, but the guide for next year assumes minimal contribution from incremental M&A, which has previously been a bigger focus for the company. I guess, how do you think about the strategy around M&A over the near term? And should we expect a pause on deals in fiscal 2024?
Dale Asplund (President and CEO)
Yeah. Yeah, great question, Maggie. First of all, I am a absolute firm believer in M&A. I am a supportive person that when we can make an investment, when we can be a better owner of the asset, we should take advantage of that. And as being the nation's largest landscape provider, we should be able to do that. Unfortunately, I think historically, the way we've done M&A at BrightView needs to be revamped. We have to get our operators involved earlier. We have to evaluate M&A, not just on the short-term financial benefits,... We have to look at culturally and strategically as important as just the initial math. And then the day that we buy a company, we must integrate it into our business.
We are going to put our precious capital to work, deploying it for M&A, so we have to find a way to make sure our foundation's ready, that when that capital gets deployed, we grow that business and we grow it very profitably, because as the owner of that business, we can leverage our size and scale to provide it processes, provide it systems, and corporate overhead that they shouldn't need on their own. So I am a firm believer in M&A. Maybe for the next couple of quarters, we don't plan on doing much, but we have already started to revamp our process to get everybody working together, starting with our field leaders, to make sure the deals we do are the right deals.
And then as we bring them in, we find a way to make sure we're a much better owner of that asset as part of BrightView. So make no- we didn't put a lot into our guide, but make no bones about it, I am a firm believer in M&A. We just need to pause here to make sure we get ready, so once we do M&A, it creates shareholder value for all of our shareholders.
Maggie Miller (Equity Research Associate)
All right. Thanks, guys, and good luck on the next quarter.
Dale Asplund (President and CEO)
Thanks, Maggie.
Brett Urban (CFO)
Thanks, Maggie.
Operator (participant)
As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on the telephone keypad. That's star one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from George Tong from Goldman Sachs. George, your line is now open.
George Tong (Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Hi, thanks. Good morning.
Dale Asplund (President and CEO)
Good morning, George.
George Tong (Senior Equity Research Analyst)
You talked about engaging in contract optimization in your maintenance business in order to drive profitable growth. Can you elaborate on some of the initiatives there? In other words, are you pruning existing contracts? Are you turning down new business with unfavorable terms? And then when would you expect this initiative to be largely complete?
Dale Asplund (President and CEO)
Yeah, so it's, it's a good question, George. What I would say is, as Brett talked about through our price realization, our focus on every account is to make sure as we feel some of those inflationary impacts, we find a way to work with our customers to make sure that the service we're providing reflects the value they see. Sometimes that creates price increases, sometimes it's service reductions because they don't want to spend more money, and we partner with our customers to find a way to make sure it's a win-win situation. So what I can tell you is we continue to evaluate all of our businesses to make sure they're working together well, and every part of our business is accretive to our customer value that we put out there.
So after 45 days, I think the team's doing the right thing, and I also think there's a better way for us to go to market to look at new accounts that could fill out our existing route. And our partners at One Rock have really helped us start to look at ways that we can enhance the profitability of existing routes just by adding strategic customers. So I don't think that's a on/off point. I think it's going to be an evolution for us to continue to go through and continue to focus on, because that is the essence of this business: route optimization, enhancing, making sure that our people service the customers, and finding customers that can fill in those routes. And always looking at what it costs us to service the business that we're providing.
I think short term, we made some decisions, but long term, George, it's a much bigger discussion about how are we going to manage the business long term. As One BrightView, that's where we'll really see the benefit for our customers.
George Tong (Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Got it. That's helpful. And then in development, you had strong 7% organic revenue growth on a full year basis, and this followed pretty strong growth of 10% organic in fiscal 2022. Can you unpack the strong growth in development you've been seeing and the extent to which the development business has structurally stepped up in growth potential to something north of 5% organically?
Dale Asplund (President and CEO)
Yeah, it's a great question. First, we have a very strong backlog in our development group, and I think as many people know, the economy's been on a roll, and some of that backlog is at the end of those jobs that have occurred over the last couple of years in the construction industry. So that team's done a very good job securing a backlog of business, well north of what we would typically see at this time. But let me let Brett unpack it a little bit for you, if that would help.
Brett Urban (CFO)
Yeah, George, look, I would echo Dale's comments. The backlog is strong. We see no signs of any type of weakening in the economy. We see no signs of any type of recession looming. Our backlog in development is as high as it's ever been, to the historical high levels. In 2022, we reported revenues of $700 million. 2023 is close to $760 million, and we're guiding at the midpoint of 3.5% growth on 2023 results. So we see no slowing down of that business. We see quite the contrary. We're selling, you know, as of this point, we're selling really into Q3 and Q4 of 2024.
and then as we get through this quarter and the next quarter, we'll be selling into 2025 at that point. So just really, really robust growth in that business. We're very bullish on their ability to grow their backlog and to put the projects in the ground. And by the way, they just posted their fifth consecutive quarter of margin improvement in that business. We're extremely excited about, and we expect that margin improvement to continue, as you can see in our guidance for 2024.
George Tong (Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Got it. And just to follow up on the second half of the question, to what extent do you think structurally the growth has stepped up to maybe something north of 5%? At the midpoint, you're guiding to 3.5%. In other words, is there upside potential given the strength that you just talked about in the development business?
Brett Urban (CFO)
Yeah, I you know, George, I would say there's always potential for upside, and this business is very dependent on cycles, somewhat dependent on weather as you get into the winter months. But as you think about the business in general, it's been pretty consistent growth year-over-year on a full year basis. I think as you look at our full year guide, and you think about last year, you know, Q2 saw a small revenue decline in Q2 of 2023. But you can see for the full year basis, the business growing north of 7% organically. We feel very bullish that over a course of a full year, that business will grow. Could it grow more than 5%?
You know, that's a possibility, but I think as we stand here today and really look at margin improvement in that business as well, which has been a focus, and being more selective in projects that we sell, we still expect to grow the business revenue, but margin has to come along with it, which we showed in 2023, and we expect margin to come along with it in 2024. And that may mean not growing at 10%-15%, that may mean growing at 5% with higher margins.
Dale Asplund (President and CEO)
Yeah, and George, let me, let me jump on.
George Tong (Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Got it.
Dale Asplund (President and CEO)
I think development has been—I mean, I would just add, George, I think the development business for us has been a key area of growth. Where we need to get better as a team, is finding a way to convert that development business that we generate to new maintenance business, and that's where that One BrightView will come into play. We have one of the top 50 specialty companies in construction in North America, and they do some of the biggest development of landscaping projects in the country. We need to find a way to make sure we have a successful handoff from that development to our maintenance team as One BrightView. So this is the lead-in to help that organic growth on maintenance. So I like that it keeps growing, and our team in the field continues to enhance and beautify our communities.
Now we just need to convert that over to future maintenance revenue, so we can get the maintenance group growing just as fast as the development group.
George Tong (Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Very helpful. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Our next question comes from Andy Wittmann from Baird. Andy, your line is now open.
Andy Wittmann (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)
Great, thanks, and good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. I have several questions, but I think maybe the one I'll start with has to do with, I guess, Project Liberty and other business transformation costs. The question being, you know, obviously, Project Liberty has been in flight for some time now, and many of the actions have already been taken, and some of the cost benefits realized in 2023. I was just wondering how much cost benefit from actions already taken so far on Project Liberty are going to be benefiting your profit margins in 2024? So in other words, what hasn't been recognized in the annual run rates of those cost reductions so far?
Maybe, Brett, if you could talk about related item to that, what do you expect for the business transformation costs here in 2024?
Dale Asplund (President and CEO)
Yeah, so that's a great question, Andy. I would just say, at a high level, Project Liberty was focused on some initial benefits from cost saves, and if you go back, it started out as Project Accelerate. So I think we've seen a lot of that. We still have an area to go when it comes to the procurement initiative that we'll work through in 2024. But as you've heard, we're gonna try to transition from primarily those cost save initiatives to more of that One BrightView approach, where we can focus on customer retention and on, you know, new account conversion to make sure we're growing the business at the same time, so we can leverage that size and scale. But Brett could probably give you the, the numbers.
Obviously, the benefit we said that would come in 2024 of $20 million is embedded in our guidance that you see coming out with a midpoint EBITDA of $325 million. But I'll let Brett talk to what he feels came in during 2023 and where we're at towards our run rate for 2024.
Brett Urban (CFO)
Yeah, Andy, look, as you think about 2023, you know, we said on our last call, we saw about $2 million or so realization from Project Accelerate, which was just a cost-cutting initiative, essentially. And then as we morphed into Project Liberty on our Q3 call, we mentioned that we would see $20 million+ of savings related to the entire project. We saw roughly another $2 million-$3 million dollar savings come through, in Q4, related to the original Accelerate and some early signs of Liberty. But as you think about our guidance for 2024 and Liberty now morphs into One BrightView. One BrightView is just gonna be the way we operate the business. We're gonna take care of our customers, who in turn take care of our employees, who in turn take care of our customers.
And if you think about our guide for 2024, we're guiding at a midpoint of 60 basis points of margin expansion. We're guiding at a midpoint of $26 million of EBITDA growth. That's inclusive of One BrightView, or as previously talked about as Project Liberty. And to be able to get to that transformational cost, you know, to get to Project Liberty, AKA One BrightView, and move that needle forward, we don't expect any significant increase in transformational costs above what we had this year, right? This year, we went through a CEO change. We had some business transformation costs that was related to that and some
... transition to the new CEO, we don't expect the transformation of getting from Liberty to One BrightView and the way we operate the business to have any type of significant impact on our cash flow that hasn't been already included in our guidance.
Andy Wittmann (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)
Okay, that's really clear on the transformation cost. So I heard a couple $ million in 3Q saved, maybe $3 million in 4Q saved. So the, the implication mean that if you're going for 20, you've got about 15 coming, benefiting the 2024 EBITDA. Is that the quick summary?
Brett Urban (CFO)
Yeah, that's a quick summary, but you know, as we think about moving forward and we get on our next call and we talk about, you know, One BrightView, this is the way we're gonna operate the business. So we are morphing a project that had a sticker tag on it of $20 million to the way we operate the business, and the way we operate the business will be included in our future guides. And we did our best to include that in our full year guide this go around, the $310 million-$340 million. So yeah, I would say that includes somewhere around $15 million of, call it, legacy Project Accelerate, Project Liberty, but the remainder of the improvement in that guide is gonna just be the way we run the business.
Andy Wittmann (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)
Yeah. Okay.
Sure, quite.
That's helpful. And I guess stepping way back, I guess just philosophically, Dale, being the new leader of this company, it's always such an opportune time when things can use a change to kinda step back and take, you know, take stock of the situation. As it comes to the guidance philosophy, I guess, you know, it seems like this would be a time where you guys put out a guidance which, you know, has very little expectations or low bar, knowing that you've got the opportunity to kinda clear the decks and reset things. Is that the way we should kinda think about this guidance from here, or is this, is there a different approach in terms of how you formulated the approach in putting this guidance together?
Dale Asplund (President and CEO)
No. I, I definitely think our guidance is a guidance that we feel comfortable with, with an EBITDA range that's well above the 299 we delivered this year. So I don't see by any means it being a conservative range. Going from 310 to 345 is, 340 is very realistic, or 345 is very realistic. So I think somewhere around that 325 is, is a good starting point for us. Now, to be fair, we don't know how much it's gonna snow, and we don't know when it's gonna snow, and we gave you a guide on that range. If it snows at the high end of that expected 210 to 270, we can come in at the high end of that range.
If it doesn't snow like it didn't snow last year, there's a chance we'll come in towards the low end. But I wouldn't look at the guide as a complete, you know, we're trying to be conservative as we come out. We feel that where our plan is this year, with what we felt in Q4, we're realistic to get into this range where we came out with to start the year. And shifting from giving quarterly guidance to giving an annual guidance, that's a big shift. I think we are going to start helping people, you know, see what we plan on doing for the full year versus just running the business tactically quarter-by-quarter.
Andy Wittmann (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)
Okay. That's helpful context. Thank you very much.
Dale Asplund (President and CEO)
Thanks, Andy.
Operator (participant)
Currently, I have no further questions, so I'd like to hand the call back to Dale Asplund for closing remarks. Please go ahead.
Dale Asplund (President and CEO)
Thank you, operator, and thank you to everyone for your interest in BrightView. As you can tell by our tone, we are very excited about the opportunity ahead for BrightView, and I'm thrilled to be leading this great company through this improvement period. Our objectives are clear: We are committed to becoming One BrightView, growing profitably and creating meaningful shareholder value. I look forward to getting to know many of you in the weeks and months to come. There's a lot of work ahead of us, but, the future is bright for BrightView. Thank you. Operator, you can now end the call.
Operator (participant)
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.