Centuri Holding - Earnings Call - Q2 2025

Executive Summary

• Q2 2025 delivered solid top-line growth and improved gross margin: revenue rose 7.7% year over year to $724.1M and gross margin expanded 40 bps to 9.4% on strength in both Union and Non‑Union Electric; GAAP diluted EPS was $0.09 and adjusted EPS was $0.19.
• Guidance raised: FY25 revenue up to $2.70–$2.85B (from $2.60–$2.80B) and adjusted EBITDA narrowed to $250–$270M; net capex increased to $75–$90M, reflecting growth investments and fleet optimization initiatives.
• Commercial momentum remains robust: ~$1.8B of bookings in Q2 and $3.0B in H1; backlog increased to ~$5.3B; book‑to‑bill was 2.3x in H1 2025.
• Capital structure and liquidity enhanced post‑quarter: revolver extended to 2030 and increased to $450M; Term Loan B extended to 2032 at improved pricing; net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio was 3.7x at quarter‑end.

Potential stock reaction catalysts: revenue guidance raise, large bookings/backlog build, and balance sheet refinancings; near‑term debates center on EPS quality vs consensus, US Gas margin trajectory, and capex/fleet efficiency ramp.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Strong electric performance: Union Electric revenue +11% YoY, non‑union +24% YoY; consolidated gross profit +12% YoY, with margin improvement in Union Electric to 8.4%.
• Bookings/backlog momentum: ~$1.8B Q2 bookings and $3.0B H1 bookings; backlog up to $5.3B; management expects to exceed 2025 book‑to‑bill target of 1.1x.
• Management quote: “Strong momentum from our integrated commercial strategy resulted in approximately $1.8 billion in new awards during the quarter… Based on our strong commercial momentum… we are increasing our full‑year revenue guidance.” — CEO Christian Brown.

What Went Wrong

• US Gas still mixed: Q2 US Gas revenue down 1.1% YoY; segment margin modest at 7.8%; H1 margin 2.2% impacted by Q1 weather and ramp timing, though management expects normalization.
• Lower storm contribution and offshore wind wind‑down: non‑union margins diluted by lower storm restoration mix; offshore wind revenue decreased as projects wind down.
• Higher SG&A: +39.9% YoY from separation and one‑time professional fees, incremental public company costs, and higher stock‑based compensation.

Transcript

Speaker 3

Greetings and welcome to Centuri Holdings Inc.'s second quarter 2025 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Jason Wilcock, Centuri Holdings Inc.'s Chief Legal and Administrative Officer and Corporate Secretary. Please, you may begin.

Thank you, John, and hello, everyone. We appreciate you joining our call. This morning, we issued and posted to Centuri Holdings Inc.'s website our second quarter 2025 earnings release. The slides accompanying today's call are also available on Centuri Holdings Inc.'s website. Please note that on today's call, we will address certain factors that may impact this year's earnings and provide some longer-term guidance. Some of the information that will be discussed today contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. These statements are as of today's date and based on management's assumptions on what the future holds, but are subject to several risks and uncertainties, including uncertainties surrounding the impacts of future economic conditions and regulatory approvals.

A cautionary note, as well as a note regarding non-GAAP measures, is included on slides 2 and 16 of this presentation, today's press release, and our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which we encourage you to review. These risks and uncertainties may cause actual results to differ materially from statements made today. We caution against placing undue reliance on any forward-looking statements, and we assume no obligation to update any such statements. Today's call is also being webcast live and will be available for replay in the Investor Relations section of our website shortly after the completion of this call. On today's call, we have from Centuri Holdings Inc. the following members of the leadership team: Christian Brown, President and Chief Executive Officer; Gregory Izenstark, Chief Financial Officer. I'll now turn the call over to Chris.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Jason, and good day to all of you. We thank you for attending our second quarter 2025 earnings call. First of all, I'd like to sincerely thank our hardworking employees across the U.S. and Canada who deliver the highest service quality to our customers in a safe and productive manner. Without them, we wouldn't be here today. We're pleased with our performance in the second quarter, which delivered higher profitability year over year across all of our four business segments. On a consolidated basis, gross profit was 12% higher than last year this time, and nearly 20% improved year to date. We drove strong revenue growth across our union and non-union electric operations, and also within our Canadian gas segments. U.S. gas also performed well and continues to make good progress in margin improvement initiatives and delivering predictable performance.

Our sales and business development strategic initiative, underpinned by a data-driven approach and a robust project pipeline, along with our shift towards an organizational-wide growth mindset, drove another strong quarter in commercial performance. This is evidenced by $1.8 billion in new awards in the quarter, which materially tops our Q1 record performance of $1.2 billion in new orders. With $3 billion in total bookings through the first half of the year, we've already achieved a book-to-build through H1 of 2.3 times and are on track to exceed our targeted book-to-build ratio of 1.1 times for the full year 2025. Further, our strong bookings performance, our backlog, and near-term opportunities give us confidence to increase our full-year revenue guidance. I'll expand on this subset in Q2 shortly, but first. Equally, if not more compelling than our current bookings, are the strong end markets that we serve.

As a result of our shift to get closer to our customers and better understand their needs, we've been able to increase the near-term addressable market of differentiated opportunities for which we will pursue. These opportunities span all core end markets, including gas, electric, and distributed power, including data centers. Since the first quarter of this year, we've added over $2 billion of new differentiated opportunities into the pipeline, which now stands at almost $14 billion. Our sales strategy is twofold: improved alignment of our focus, resources, and capability in capturing a larger share of the wallet from our existing customer relationships and delivering our core services into new differentiated opportunities. The latter includes migrating our resource delivery to mitigate seasonality in our business, particularly on the U.S. gas side.

Central to executing this strategy is our one-Centuri approach, which has fundamentally transformed how we engage with our customers in the broader market. The Centuri approach requires the entire organization to engage with our customers to not only safely deliver quality services, but to identify how we can increase the scope of what we do to deliver future customer needs. In addition, we have identified approximately 20 customers that we currently underserve, and which afford us over $200 billion of opportunity over the next five years. We've created specific plans to engage more closely with these customers, aligning building capability and resource delivery to ensure we meet their needs and successfully maximize this opportunity.

Over the last 90 days, I've been able to engage with almost all of these 20 customers to discuss their plans and challenges and share how Centuri will align our business to ensure we meet their needs. Drilling further into our commercial success in the second quarter, as outlined in February, we began 2025 targeting over $3 billion in bookings, comprised of $1.8 billion from Master Framework Agreement (MFA) renewals and over $1.2 billion from expanded scope, new MFAs, and strategic bid projects. Through the first half, we are effectively already there on that target. I'm proud that over one-third of our new awards are additive work above our existing MFAs, which will underpin our future growth.

Of the total bookings in the quarter, nearly $1.2 billion represent MFA renewals, primarily from a few hundred million dollar agreements with long-standing gas utility customers in the Northeast and Midwest, including one relationship that spans over 40 years. In one of these cases, the award came sooner in the year than we had previously anticipated. A key focus of ours in the renewal process has been ensuring that we generate adequate returns so as to support the achievement of our historical norm of 7%+ gross margin in our gas business. We've also secured nearly $250 million from incremental MFA work, primarily comprised of adding new service territories through these gas-focused MFA renewals. Lastly, we won $375 million in strategic project awards in Q2, heavily concentrated in our union electric segment in the Northeast.

These awards are comprised of core electrical work, including utility transmission projects with both 345 kV high voltage lines and 115 kV LAN projects won during the period, as well as work in adjacent and emerging markets such as water infrastructure, distributed power, and, of course, data centers. Notable wins in this category included our second water infrastructure project win this year and two awards related to R&D infrastructure. You'll recall that we secured an award related to data center electrical infrastructure in Q1 and have over 20 data center projects currently in our pipeline that we are pursuing. We anticipate the second half of 2025 to be focused on client engagement, positioning, and tendering for 2026. We anticipate bookings to moderate during the remainder of 2025, with the exception of some Master Framework Agreement renewals and planned project awards.

I reiterate, we anticipate that we will exceed our full-year book-to-build target of 1.1. It's also worth noting that we are already positioning and tendering for 2026 opportunities, yet more evidence of the impact of our forward-thinking sales initiative and growth-oriented mindset. Now a few words on another important facet of our strategy: capital efficiency. We remain focused on improving the efficiency of the fleet, an area where we can see meaningful opportunity to drive balance sheet strength and are confident that we can make significant strides. As announced in July, we hired a Senior Vice President of Fleet and Procurement with almost three decades of experience in the energy and construction sectors to drive our enterprise-wide fleet and resourcing strategy.

Coming to us from one of North America's largest utility infrastructure contractors, where he managed 17,000 fleet assets globally, he will also focus on maximizing equipment utilization and improving capital efficiency across our $1 billion fleet portfolio. Further, as part of our strategic initiative to optimize our asset management approach, I'm pleased to report that we've made meaningful progress in establishing a more balanced equipment financing model. This hybrid approach to asset financing provides us greater flexibility in managing our fleet of service vehicles and equipment, while maintaining our ability to efficiently deploy resources across all of our extensive operations. Now to an overview of our business trends for the second quarter. In our U.S. gas segment, and as expected, our revenue was stable year over year, and we focused on executing our substantial backlog of awarded work to begin demonstrating year-over-year growth in the second half of 2025.

The strength of our recent Master Framework Agreement renewals and improved commercial terms is providing better profitability. We've seen improvement in gross margins year over year, supported by better resource utilization, and work is ongoing as we continue to performance manage and identify further opportunities to drive further margin enhancement. We remain confident that our focus on operational excellence, combined with our stronger commercial terms, will create sustainable margin improvement in the months and quarters ahead. Our Canadian gas operations delivered exceptional results with strong revenue growth and margin expansion, demonstrating the effectiveness of our operating model within that market. Turning to our electric business, we're seeing excellent momentum across both segments. Our union electric operations delivered robust growth and profitability in core business activities, particularly in industrial-focused markets where we play a role in executing on complex infrastructure projects.

In our non-union electric segment, we've sustained the positive trajectory that began last year with significant revenue growth driven by increased Master Framework Agreement volumes and crew deployment. To further elaborate on these trends, let me now turn over to Gregory Izenstark for more specific details on the financial results.

Speaker 0

Thank you, Chris, and good morning to everyone joining us. Second quarter 2025 consolidated revenues total $724.1 million, a 7.7% increase from the second quarter of 2024. Consolidated gross profit was $67.8 million, which is 12.1% higher than the prior year period. Gross profit margin of 9.4% in the second quarter of 2025 was approximately 40 basis points higher than the 9% we reported in the second quarter of 2024. On a GAAP basis, net income attributable to common stock in the second quarter was $8.1 million or $0.09 per share, compared to net income attributable to common stock of $11.7 million or $0.14 on a per share basis in the same period of last year. In the second quarter of 2025, total company adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP figure, was $71.8 million, or approximately 5% higher than prior year quarter's $68.6 million.

Aligned with our internal expectation, adjusted EBITDA margin was 9.9%, which compares with the 10.2% in the second quarter of 2024. Non-GAAP adjusted net income in the second quarter came in at $16.9 million or $0.19 on a per share basis, compared to $17 million or $0.20 per share in the prior year period. The difference between our GAAP and non-GAAP adjusted net income primarily reflects the after-tax impact, the amortization of intangible assets, certain non-recurring costs, and non-cash stock-based compensation. Now to our reportable segments. U.S. gas segment revenue was $338.8 million, flat compared to the prior year. With the backlog driven by recent successful awards, we anticipate that both revenue and profitability improvements will continue into the second half of 2025. Gross profit margin was 7.8% in the second quarter of 2025 and above prior year period 7.4%.

This increase was due to better resource utilization under Master Framework Agreements compared to the second quarter of last year. Following on from Chris's comments, we remain focused on margin improvement in our U.S. gas business through enhanced performance management. We have strengthened our foundation through strategic hiring and improved processes and saw improvement throughout the quarter. Our initiatives and achievements remain a work in progress, but with strong market demand, we are confident in our ability to return to historical margin levels. Canadian gas segment revenues were $55.1 million, up 18.1% from the prior year period. While segment margin of 17.2% was approximately 210 basis points improved over the prior year period, as we continue to execute very well against a backdrop of steady, strong demand. Union electric revenue was $182.2 million, an improvement of 11% year over year.

Our core union electric segment, which excludes offshore wind and storm restoration services, grew by 26.4% over the same period in 2024, driven by continued strength in project work centered around industrial-focused end markets, which we perform substation infrastructure and inside electric work. Within the segment, offshore wind revenues were $18.7 million, an expected decrease of approximately 41% or approximately $13 million, and the project work winds down in line with our expectations. Gross profit in the union electric segment was 8.4% in the second quarter of 2025, 100 basis points ahead of the 7.4% we reported in the second quarter of 2024 due to the improvement in activity in our core business. Non-union electric segment revenue in the second quarter of 2025 was $149.9 million, a 24.4% increase year over year.

Core non-union work increased by more than 50% versus the prior year period, primarily due to an increase in volumes under Master Framework Agreements, as we deployed significantly more crews and had higher work hours. Segment gross profit was 11% in the current quarter, which compares to 13.5% in the prior year period. This reflects the unfavorable impact of the decline in storm work, which carries much higher margins than our core electric work in this segment, and more than offsets what was a strong performance in core margins from the favorable impact of more efficient utilization of fixed costs due to the much higher volume of work. Company-wide, our G&A expense, excluding one-time and certain non-cash charges, increased $2 million year over year due to costs associated with our sales and business development activities and improved performance.

Turning to capital expenditures, net CapEx was $19.4 million compared to $17.7 million in the prior year period, and our free cash flow in the second quarter of 2025 improved by $27.1 million compared to the second quarter of 2024. As we typically see each year, working capital increased in the second quarter due to our higher activity levels compared to the first quarter. This seasonal pattern is normal for our business, and we remain confident that our leverage ratio will improve from year-end 2024 to year-end 2025. Moving to some balance sheet highlights. On a trailing 12-month basis, our net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio was 3.7 times at June 29, 2025, compared to 3.5 times at March 30, 2025, as amounts drawn under our revolver increased by $74.4 million during the period. We ended the quarter with $28.3 million in cash and cash equivalents on the balance sheet.

Near the end of the second quarter, we initiated a refinancing of our debt arrangements, which was successfully completed in early July. These refinancing actions extended our revolver maturity to 2030 and increased the facility size to $450 million and extended our $800 million term loan maturity to 2032 at a modestly improved interest rate. These actions, along with the elimination of legacy change in control provisions from our time as a Southwest Gas Holdings subsidiary, enhance our financial flexibility going forward. During the second quarter, our free float significantly increased following two independent secondary offerings by Southwest Gas Holdings, which as of today owns approximately 52% of our shares outstanding. Finally, turning to our 2025 outlook. On revenue, we are increasing our range, now expecting to deliver between $2.7 and $2.85 billion, up from $2.6 to $2.8 billion previously, given the strong bookings.

For adjusted EBITDA, we narrowed our outlook to $250 to $270 million from $240 to $275 million. We continue to execute on our margin improvement initiatives, notably in U.S. gas. As we consistently review our business, we are investing in strategic planning initiatives and strengthening our talent acquisition efforts to support future growth, which will result in employee uptake in our G&A expense. Lastly, to CapEx, the growth we're experiencing, especially in our electric business, is creating opportunity for strategic investment. To capitalize on this momentum and support our expanding operations, we're increasing our planned investment to $75 to $90 million, up from our previous range of $65 to $80 million. This enhanced capital deployment reflects our confidence in the business, positions us to capture even more growth opportunities ahead, and importantly, does not conflate with our ongoing efforts to ensure capital efficiency and transition our fleet financing mix.

Now back to Chris to conclude our prepared remarks.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Greg. Centuri continues to execute on our strategic plans of delivering sustainable, profitable growth. To summarize, our one-Centuri approach is driving meaningful commercial momentum, as evidenced by our $3 billion in first half bookings and the growth in our pipeline to nearly $14 billion. This is underpinned by our robust end markets. Our second quarter performance demonstrates the strength of our diversified platform. We're seeing excellent momentum in our electric operations, particularly strong performance in our Canadian business, and we're making steady progress in our U.S. gas segment. The broad-based execution gives us the confidence to increase our full-year revenue guidance. We're also advancing our strategic initiatives around capital efficiency, including good progress on our equipment financing model and fleet management optimization. These efforts, combined with our enhanced commercial capabilities, position us well for continued growth.

The fundamental drivers of our business remain robust, supported by increasing utility infrastructure spending and our expanding relationships with key customers across North America, and we look forward to updating you on our continued progress in the next quarter. Thank you very much for your time and support. Operator, you may start the Q&A session.

Speaker 4

Yes, sir. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. Please limit your question to one question and one follow-up. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A queue. Thank you. We now have our first question. This comes from Steven Fisher from UBS. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning and congratulations on the progress you've been making. I just wanted to get a sense of, you know, with all the nice bookings you've added into the backlog here, if you can just give us a sense of the margins embedded there and sort of what's the ramp-up in these projects and the confidence in the execution? Because now that the business development efforts are starting to pay off, the focus will shift to execution and margins. What kind of confidence do you have in sort of the margins outlook from there? Thanks.

Speaker 2

Maybe I'll answer that one, Steve. Good morning to you. Greg, possibly add something to it. Your assessment's good. We've had a very, very strong six months to get the backlog up to give us more volume into the business. That allows us to also be in better control and more predictable. What I would say is the backlog that we have as we go into the second half of the year is at a higher margin than what we've delivered in the first half of the year. The Q3, Q4 internal forecasts demonstrate that we'll see an improvement across all the businesses in terms of margins. The union and non-union electric, as their projects mobilize during the first half of the year, will get into full flight as we hit the summer months now and as we go into the later part of the year.

We should, and we expect to see greater improved margins in the second half of the year, which has given us ultimately confidence on the full-year forecast. You see the same in the Master Framework Agreement work. January, February, March, there were some weather impacts, as we discussed on the last call. The Master Framework Agreement work is now, customers are now releasing more and more work to us. We'll start to peak in the coming weeks and months ahead. Inevitably, we should see and expect to see greater margins in Q3 and even into Q4. The last part of the margins is that I think as we've built, we've built more volume into the pipeline, we've increased our booking levels. We're starting to get a better handle on our win rates, a better handle on pricing sensitivity.

As we build further backlog, we will no doubt start looking at how do we get better pricing improvements, how do we become a little bit more differentiated in our offerings to get better margins, whilst we'll be pretty diligent in the risk profile we take on the future work. In summary, we expect the second half of the year margins to improve from where we were in the first half. We've seen the backlog margins greater than what we've just delivered. We think it'll be across all of the segments. I think as now we've got a good and stronger handle on the data within our sales pipeline, as well as our win rates and our performance, we'll look to see if we can push our differentiation further and improve pricing in the future.

That's very helpful. This is a follow-up, I guess, from a resource perspective. To what extent now that you have this book of business do you need to go out and hire for these projects, or is it more of a utilization play? I think, Greg, you mentioned a talent acquisition effort. Could you just kind of give us some sense of how much of an effort you need to make on talent acquisition?

Yeah, I think in the near term, Steve, when we look at what we need to deliver from both a budget and a forecast standpoint in the next 3, 6, 9, and maybe even 12 months, appreciating that straddles into 2026, I think we've got sufficient line of sight on what resources we need and where they're going to come from. I think as we start working a little bit longer-range planning, we will need to look at the labor supply and talent supply market differently in a more structured way. Currently, we do a lot of resourcing through the opcos, and I think there'll be a lot more work we need to do centrally, but we don't foresee that needed now to meet the next 3, 6, 9, even 12 months of resources. It's well within the current resourcing capabilities and well within what we've done previously.

In the long run, we will need to look at doing things in a bit more strategic way at a group level versus through the opcos.

Terrific. Thank you very much.

Thanks for your question, Steven.

Speaker 4

Thank you. We'll now take the next question. This comes from the line of Joe O'Deer from Wells Fargo. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to start on the balanced fleet management comments and just any additional color with respect to the timeline you anticipate to achieve that targeted balance, and then how you think about that impact on EBITDA margins, maybe relative to where you're pacing this year.

Speaker 2

Greg, do you want to lead that one and the answer to that one?

Speaker 0

Yeah. Good morning, Joe. We have made really considerable progress here in the second quarter and early into the third quarter on our capital efficiency initiative, not only from the strategic hire that Chris mentioned, but also from just getting our RFP done that we alluded to in past calls. That's been completed. We actually have leasing partners signed up now and ready to execute in very short order. We are working to get those done, and you'll see some of that progress here in the second half of the year. Obviously, it'll continue to ramp up and fully be implemented over maybe a bit of a longer period of time. From a margin perspective, I wouldn't expect material changes in margin over the long term. We think that we can get to our targeted goal. It's more than achievable with the work we've done.

We'll be able to rebalance some of that potential EBITDA pressure with just increased pricing and better efficiency in our fleet utilization to largely offset any kind of impact from a margin perspective.

I wanted to ask on the core electric utility, both union and non-union, and what you're seeing versus earlier in the year expectations from customers, areas where you're seeing higher activity than you would have anticipated, as well as how much of this is the strength of underlying activity versus some areas where you've been able to pick up some share in the market.

Speaker 2

Do you want me to do that, Greg, as this one? I would say the following. All of our customers, I think I alluded to in my prepared notes, I've spent time with 19 of the 20 customers over the last 90 days, and every one of them is clear in that they're increasing their capital budgets. There's a general positive trend across all electric transmission, distribution, distributed power, data centers. It's certainly more favorable than at the early part of the year. It even extends into gas. Customers are very much focused on quality of and quantity of resource delivery and looking at maximizing outsourcing because they're ultimately resource-constrained themselves. This is as close to a seller's market than I've seen in my 35 years.

The key for us is to get closer to our customers and really align on what they need and then start planning our investment in people, equipment, and know-how and start building capability around their needs. When I speak with the customers, it isn't in many cases about displacing anybody. Although we've seen one or two of our Master Framework Agreements where we've got adjacent contractors, we've been able to go to customers and say, "Look, give us more scope and we can give efficiency to you and we can generate a better return." We have displaced and been able to capture more opportunity on some Master Framework Agreements, but that really isn't the prevalent theme. Customers are giving me the messages around, you know, keep delivering to the quality and safety standards we expect of you.

Build up a resource base that's at the same and highest quality, and we've got more work than we've got resources for.

That's great color. Thank you.

Speaker 4

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Sangeeta Jain from KeyBank Capital Markets. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Hi, Chris. Hi, Greg. If I can ask you a question on the $14 billion pipeline that you mentioned, how does that split between MFAs and bid work? Further, if there is any specific data center-type distributed energy opportunities within that?

Speaker 2

Sangeeta, thanks for your question. Let's just run through it. You know, the pipeline is, as you said, as we've stated, it's just shy of $14 billion. If you look at the mix in there, about two-thirds of it is actually new project work, and about one-third of it is near-term Master Framework Agreement renewals. That should basically tell you our addressable market is very much focused on driving growth into the business. We've also got about $2 billion of near-term opportunities that we are currently tendering now, or the bids are already in and we'd expect decisions this year, and a further $600 to $700 million of Master Framework Agreement renewals this year. The headlines are, $14 billion, two-thirds of it is new project work, one-third of it is Master Framework Agreement renewals.

In the very near term this year, we've got $2 billion of pending bids that are out there, and we've got, in addition, $600 to $700 million of Master Framework Agreement renewals that are pending this side of the Christmas break. About 20% of the project work is distributed power or data centers when you look at the mix. I think the last thing I would say is the risk profile has not changed at all. I mean, we've had questions previously about, you know, we're looking at bigger contracts. The average size of the contract is less than $20 million. It's well within our historical risk profile. We continue to deliver the same services to the same end markets as we've always done. We've just been somewhat more aggressive in actually positioning ourselves for further opportunity.

Got it. Very helpful. One question on the increase in CapEx that you guided to today. Just trying to think of how you are balancing your thinking between, let's say, your equipment needs, buying the equipment versus leasing your equipment.

I will give you some sort of strategic headlines and then let Greg go into some detail. Look, our overall objectives in the next period, next few years, is to hit a steady run rate where half of our fleet is funded from balance sheet cash and half is funded from leasing. You could calculate very quickly how much free cash flow that generates over the next three to five years. Secondly, as we look to capture further opportunity, and one of the real drivers for bringing in somebody new to lead it is we're trying to seek somewhere between a 15% up to 25% efficiency saving on the use of the fleet. That's either achieved by supply chain improvements, by looking at the five businesses and going to the market as one, or it's driven by better utilization or better life use on the assets.

The two strategic drivers are 50/50 mix and then driving between 15% and 25% efficiency across the fleet when we look at it as a whole.

Speaker 0

I would just add.

Very helpful.

I would just add, even though we're increasing our CapEx guidance, we are not deviating from our internal expectations on mix between buy and other financing needs. We haven't changed or swayed that, but we are growing, as you can see in our electric businesses, at a pretty helpful.

Got it. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2

Thank you. Thank you for the questions.

Speaker 4

Thank you. The next question comes from Justin Hock from Brave. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Speaker 0

Great. Thank you for taking my questions here. Obviously, the awards have been really strong. They were really strong last quarter and even stronger this quarter. I'm just curious on the Master Framework Agreement renewals, just given those are chunky and you book the whole amount when they come in. On those renewals, I'm just wondering, on average, what's kind of the scope addition versus the last time you kind of booked those with the same clients? Maybe just a way to quantify how that scope has changed over the last, I don't know, whatever, five years ago when you booked it before. I'm a couple of things.

Speaker 2

Yeah, you go, Greg. That's fine.

Speaker 0

What I'd say as a reminder, when we renew an MFA, we have the ability and we execute and negotiate greater price increases related to the MFA contract. I think that's one point that's important to call out as we've renewed these MFAs, we've been able to renegotiate pricing a bit higher than what we have historically had. From a mix of work, we've been able to increase our services with these customers. We've been taking, in certain cases, new territories. I'd point you to one of our slides, MFA renewals, the strategic bids. We've been able to increase the scope quite substantially in certain areas.

Speaker 2

Yeah, specifically, we've added 25% incremental growth on the volume that we, on the renewal, give or take.

Speaker 0

Great. No, that's helpful, the 25%. I guess my second question would just be on the guidance and maybe just the cadence for thinking about the back half of the year. You did almost 8% revenue growth here in the second quarter. The midpoint of the guide is kind of looking for 5% for the back half. You had some really big storm comps last year, just balancing that would be the U.S. gas operations getting better. Maybe just thinking about the cadence of how you expect 3Q and 4Q to kind of play out to get to that guidance range. Yeah. We're obviously, you pointed out last year, the second half of the year, we had some unseasonably higher storm revenues that came in. We've said in our guidance, we've looked at more of a historical average and built that into our guidance.

We also had higher offshore wind last year. Those two are kind of headwinds going in year over year. Offsetting that is just improved performance, improved core business that we've already alluded to in the first six months. We'd expect that type of cadence to continue to offset year over year.

Speaker 2

Okay. Great. Thank you very much, guys. Appreciate it. Appreciate your questions.

Speaker 4

Thank you. The next question comes from Chris Ellinghaus from Seaport William Shank. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, guys.

Hey, Chris.

Christian, the bookings are fairly balanced, slightly skewed to electric. Is that a strategic choice, or is that just coincidental?

Speaker 2

I would say it's coincidental, and some of it's timing. The overall pipeline, 52/48 is, I think, the mix. It shifts from day to day because this is a dynamic situation. It is coincidental. Some customers take longer to decide, some do not. I think I even alluded to in my commentary, there was one award in the gas segment that we didn't anticipate until later in the year, and that landed in the quarter. It's not deliberate, no.

Okay. Given the increase in the backlog and sort of the balance contained within it, does that suggest to you, you know, sort of an inherent accretion to margin just due to the revenue balance?

I don't know how to answer that one other than to say, you know, we definitely see improved margins in the second half of the year. The as-booked backlog margins will and are higher than the as-delivered in the first half. Some of that is driven just by the mobilization in the early part of the year. Some of that's driven by the fact that we've got more work now into the backlog, and it's been repriced to current conditions. I think the most notable thing for the business on the amount of work we've booked in the backlog is allowing us to be more predictable, which was kind of something we were lacking last year. We've now got such a head of steam in terms of pipeline size, data analytics, and backlog that we are now looking not just 3 months ahead, we're looking 6, 9, 12 months ahead.

That's allowing us to be very much more predictable in mobilizing resources, making informed pricing decisions with our customers because we've got a really good view of where we're going to land at the end of the year. We're very predictable now because of the data and the bookings and the backlog and the market information we've got in-house. I would say yes, as I answered one of the earlier questions to Steve, and we've alluded to in our note, second half margins were better across all businesses. The volume, the bookings really helps predictability, resource planning, and gives us confidence on making decisions about the future of the business. You know, it's great to be sat here mid-year and know that you've essentially got the full 2025 backlog booked. We're now looking at seasonality.

We've now got a really good view on where we are currently for Q1 so that we can inform our decisions now to win more work in areas of the country that can help mitigate the seasonality. We're in a conversation now around where we think we'll be for the full year 2026, drive double-digit growth. Yes, margins, but more importantly for us, I think it's the predictability allowing us to make informed decisions and basically deliver what we say we're going to deliver.

Okay. That helps. Greg, you alluded to, you know, MFA escalators, and I'm not quite sure what you were saying about the increases. Let me ask the question in a slightly different way, and maybe you can add to it. Would you call the escalators within the MFA extensions sort of the historical norm or more elevated?

Speaker 0

What I was alluding to, Chris, and good morning, is while every year in a multi-year agreement, we have an annual escalator embedded into the contract. When we come up for renewal, we have historically proven, and this year is no different, that we're able to reevaluate our unit pricing in a more precise way and ask for and achieve greater price increases than what a normal kind of annual escalator would generally give you.

Okay, that helps.

It's just pricing based on actual performance.

Okay, that clarifies that. I appreciate it. Thanks for the details, guys.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Christian.

Speaker 4

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand the call over back to Christian Brown for any closing remarks. Please go ahead, sir.

Speaker 2

Just wrap up the call. I really appreciate everybody committing the time to us, to supporting us, and we'll look forward to providing updates over the coming weeks and in the next quarter. Thank you, everybody.

Speaker 4

Thank you. This concludes our conference call for today. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect.