Dycom Industries - Earnings Call - Q1 2026

Executive Summary

• Q1 FY26 delivered solid top-line growth with contract revenues up 10.2% to $1.259B and non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA up 14.9% to $150.4M; diluted EPS was $2.09. Management also reported a record backlog of $8.127B and raised the FY26 revenue outlook to $5.29–$5.425B (+12.5%–15.4% y/y).
• Results exceeded the company’s prior Q1 guidance across revenue ($1.16–$1.20B), adjusted EBITDA ($130.6–$140.6M), and diluted EPS ($1.50–$1.73) provided in February.
• Management cited accelerating fiber-to-the-home programs, stronger maintenance/O&M activity, initial hyperscaler-related fiber infrastructure revenue, and above-expectation ramp from the acquired wireless business as drivers; they see negligible margin impact from recent tariff actions.
• Stock-reaction catalysts: raised FY26 revenue outlook, strong next-12-month backlog ($4.685B), and Q2 FY26 guide calling for $1.38–$1.43B revenue, $185–$200M adjusted EBITDA, and diluted EPS $2.74–$3.05.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

• What Went Well

  • “We exceeded the high end of our guidance for the quarter on all metrics, including revenue, adjusted EBITDA and EPS,” highlighting operational execution and demand strength.
  • Record backlog ($8.127B) and diversification (AT&T $325.1M; multiple customers >5% revenue) support visibility; next-12-month backlog was $4.685B.
  • Raised FY26 revenue outlook to $5.29–$5.425B (was +10%–13%), reflecting strengthening demand across fiber-to-the-home, wireless modernization, and hyperscaler-related builds.

• What Went Wrong

  • GAAP diluted EPS of $2.09 declined modestly y/y versus $2.12 in Q1 FY25, partly reflecting lower tax benefits from share-based awards ($2.2M vs $5.9M y/y).
  • Operating cash flow was seasonally negative (-$54M) and net CapEx stepped up; management reiterated focus on improving free cash flow and DSOs (111 days, down 3 days q/q).
  • Organic revenue growth was only +0.7% y/y as acquisitions contributed $111.9M to revenue; underlying growth will need further acceleration despite strong headline results.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Dycom Industries first quarter 2026 results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star when wanting your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Ms. Callie Tomasso, Dycom's Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Callie Tomasso (VP of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Operator, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Dycom's first quarter fiscal 2026 results conference call. Joining me today are Dan Peyovich, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Drew DeFerrari, our Chief Financial Officer. Earlier this morning, we released our fiscal 2026 first quarter results, along with certain outlook information. The press release and accompanying materials are available in the Investor Relations section of our website. Today's discussion will include forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements reflect our expectations, assumptions, and beliefs regarding future events and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. A detailed discussion of these risks and uncertainties is included in our filings with the SEC. Forward-looking statements are made as of today's date, and we undertake no obligation to update them.

Additionally, we will reference certain non-GAAP financial measures during today's call. Explanations of these measures and reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found in our press release and accompanying materials. With that, I will turn the call over to Dan Peyovich. Dan?

Dan Peyovich (President and CEO)

Thank you, Callie, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. We delivered a strong start to fiscal 2026 and continued to make progress against the goals I outlined at the start of the year. I am pleased to report that we exceeded the high end of our guidance for the quarter on all metrics, including revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and EPS. Our first quarter revenue was $1.259 billion, a 10.2% increase over Q1 2025. Our adjusted EBITDA was $150.4 million, representing 11.9% of revenues and an increase of 14.9% over Q1 2025. In addition, we repurchased 200,000 shares for $30.2 million during the quarter. As a result of our strong performance and our view of the market today, we are increasing our revenue expectations for the year to a range of $5.29 billion-$5.425 billion.

Despite the current macroeconomic uncertainty, we remain confident in the drivers of our industry and our ability to capitalize on the opportunities. This is evident in our record backlog of $8.1 billion, including a record $4.7 billion of next 12-month backlog. We've worked hard to diversify our customer base and the services we offer within the telecommunications and digital infrastructure space. This diversification buffers us from the impact of any single customer or program. Underpinning each of these drivers and build programs is our service and maintenance business, which has grown significantly along with our revenue in recent years. These services provide consistency and stability as other customers' programs ebb and flow.

The nature of the work within this business, that is, day-to-day maintenance, restoration, as well as accommodating road moves and other infrastructure work, and extending networks into greenfield developments, when taken at scale, creates consistency in the volume of work and associated revenue and margin. Our growth in this business comes from maintaining newly installed plants from the fiber-to-the-home builds, as well as securing additional markets from our customers. The work is sustainable as the agreements are typically two to four years in duration, and as a reminder, we only include contracts up to their current expiration dates in our backlog. In short, our service and maintenance business provides a stable base of recurring revenue.

Our strategy is to build on our service and maintenance business while also capitalizing on other drivers, whether that's fiber-to-the-home deployments in urban, suburban, and rural America, long-haul and middle-mile networks, hyperscaler work inside the fence, wireless equipment replacements, or other drivers. We continue to layer these programs into our business in alignment with our growth strategy. It's visible in the results from last year. It's visible in the results this quarter, and it's visible in the revised outlook we're providing for Fiscal 2026. We've built Dycom to be resilient and nimble, and we believe we've differentiated ourselves in the industry. The increasing TAM in our industry, combined with the speed and commitment with which our customers are planning and executing their strategic plans, means complexity has increased, and complexity favors Dycom. Our customers demand certainty of delivery.

They demand certainty of quality, and they want a partner they can trust every step of the way. Many customers have and continue to consolidate their vendors, shifting more and more work to proven partners with national reach. This shift, just like the increasing complexity of the work they need done, favors Dycom. Transitioning to the broader economy. While recent tariff and international trade actions have created volatility and market uncertainty, we believe that the impact to Dycom and to our customers' current build plans will be negligible. We continue to track this closely and have discussed it with many customers, telecommunications equipment manufacturers, and our equipment suppliers. While there will be cost increases in some equipment components that come from offshore, the bulk of the components in these builds are produced in the United States.

Since labor represents the majority of build costs, tariff implications are diluted as a percentage of the overall build, and as such, we are not anticipating an impact to our current builds. Specific to our equipment suppliers, while there are some tariff implications, we believe that the percentage increases are manageable without impacting our margins or our customers' programs. Of course, the policies and actions around tariffs and international trade are fluid, and there could be impacts different from what we anticipate today. Importantly, against this backdrop, demand drivers in our business remain robust. First, many of our customers recently reconfirmed or increased their fiber-to-the-home targets. As I shared during our last call, the increase in fiber-to-the-home passings is a key driver for our revenue growth, and we delivered on that during the first quarter. We continue to see fiber-to-the-home ramping as many of these programs accelerate.

While we added a number of new projects to our backlog this quarter, I would point to several notable awards, with Verizon for both fiber-to-the-home and maintenance work, with Windstream for both fiber-to-the-home and maintenance work, as well as fiber-to-the-home awards with Lumos. Second, fiber demand related to data centers continues to grow. Opportunities to build long-haul and middle-mile routes to meet the needs of AI infrastructure are increasing, and we are underway and executing well on the Lumen overpull project. All the hyperscalers reiterated or increased their CapEx budgets and commitment to AI infrastructure on their most recent calls, and we continue to see these long-haul and middle-mile networks as a significant addressable market over the long term. While this driver is still in its early days, we are pleased to have received a substantial multi-year award from an ISP for middle-mile networks.

We expect this recently awarded work to commence later this fiscal year, with revenue ramping in fiscal 2027. Beyond the opportunities for long-haul and middle-mile routes, we are seeing and have been in discussions to move inside the fence to work directly with hyperscalers. Generally, this work brings fiber from the meet-me vaults in the right-of-way directly into the data centers and includes connecting data centers via underground networks within clusters. These meet-me vaults are typically where the backhaul work we perform for our ISP customers terminates. We were notified of an award from a hyperscaler related to this work that will commence this year but is not yet in backlog. Entry into this scope further expands our TAM and provides another opportunity for us to leverage our skill set, add value directly for the hyperscalers, and further diversify our capabilities as a provider of digital infrastructure services.

Third, while the final construct of the BEAD program remains unknown, additional states have published subgrantee awards with a heavy lean toward fiber infrastructure. We continue to believe that there will be considerable opportunities for us in fiscal 2027, with the possibility of awards in the second half of this year. As we noted during our last call, we have not included revenue from BEAD in our updated financial outlook for fiscal 2026. Importantly, while the BEAD opportunity is significant, we believe the other drivers in our space provide robust, ongoing opportunities to support our continued growth in the years to come. Fourth, we maintain our focus on our service and maintenance business and added meaningful awards this quarter. The day-to-day connection with our customers and our national footprint to serve these contracts enables further differentiation in the depth of our relationships and the scope and scale of our operations.

Lastly, our wireless equipment replacement work, both organic and from our acquisition last year, continues to deliver above expectations. While we are not updating specific wireless guidance for the fiscal 2026 outlook, we believe this work will well outperform the original expectations we gave at the close of the transaction, and we have included this in our Q2 guidance and full-year outlook. I'd like to shift to discussing our progress on the goals I outlined at the start of the fiscal year. We remain focused on providing long-term value for our shareholders and long-term opportunities for our people. Our approach to pursuits is consistent and disciplined, with backlog that properly balances risk and return profile to create value for our shareholders.

We've proven our ability to capitalize on the opportunity set and that our customers' value with Dycom brings, with record backlog this quarter and the new market awards across drivers I mentioned earlier. Our teams continue their focus on improving free cash flow, and while our progress may not be linear, we expect to continue to improve our cash flow throughout the year. In summary, we have a well-defined strategy, clear objectives, and explicit metrics to track our progress along the way. We are investing with intention and getting the outcomes and returns we expect. We've demonstrated our ability to execute and capitalize on our strategy and on the increasing TAM in our industry. Despite some tariff and macroeconomic uncertainty, our customers are steadfast in their fiber-to-the-home and hyperscaler build programs, and we continue to see multi-year opportunities for growth.

We've expanded our services inside the fence with hyperscalers, opening us up to entirely new opportunities and further demonstrating the broad diversification of telecommunication and digital infrastructure verticals we serve. We continue to deliver at a level that allows us to increase our revenue expectations for the year, and we believe raises the bar in the industry. I'd like to thank our nearly 16,000 teammates for their commitment to working safely every day and for delivering another strong quarter. We believe our customers recognize the difference in working with Dycom, and we continue to work hard to earn their business every day as we pursue our vision to be the people connecting America. With that, I'll pass the call to Drew.

Drew DeFerrari (CFO)

Thanks, Dan, and good morning, everyone.

We are pleased that we outperformed the high end of our expectations for Q1, delivering solid top-line and adjusted EBITDA growth and margin expansion while also returning capital to our shareholders through share repurchases. First quarter total contract revenues of $1.259 billion grew 10.2% over Q1 of last year. Revenues in the quarter were driven by continued execution of fiber-to-the-home programs, wireless activity, higher maintenance and operation services, and initial revenue contribution from fiber infrastructure programs for hyperscalers. Adjusted EBITDA of $150.4 million, or 11.9% of contract revenues, increased 49 basis points as a percentage of contract revenues over Q1 2025 and exceeded the high end of our expectations for the quarter. Net income was $61 million, and diluted EPS was $2.09 per share, also exceeding the high end of our expectations.

Results for the quarter included income tax benefits resulting from the vesting and exercise of share-based awards of $2.2 million, or $0.08 per share, compared to $5.9 million, or $0.20 per share in Q1 last year. We are pleased with the strength of our relationships and diversification across our customer base. We had one customer, AT&T, that exceeded 10% of total revenues. AT&T was at $325.1 million for the quarter. Customers exceeding 5% of total revenues for the quarter were Brightspeed, Charter, Comcast, Frontier, Lumen, Verizon, and an unnamed customer. This presentation of our customer base, combined with our annual revenue outlook, provides insight into our performance, balanced with attention to customer preferences and competitive considerations. We had solid bookings across a broad range of customers in the quarter.

Backlog at the end of Q1 was $8.127 billion, including $4.685 billion that is expected to be completed in the next 12 months. Operating cash flows used in the quarter were $54 million, supporting the growth in revenue and reflected seasonal uses of cash. The combined BSOs of accounts receivable and contract assets net were 111 days, a reduction of three days sequentially from Q4 2025. Strong cash flows remain a key focus area for the company, and we continue to see opportunities for improvement. During the quarter, we repurchased 200,000 shares of our common stock for $30.2 million, generating solid shareholder returns as a priority, and we will remain opportunistic in our approach towards capital allocation. We are closely monitoring the recent actions on tariffs and international trade.

All of Dycom's business operations are based in the United States, and while these actions have created volatility and market uncertainty, we believe the impact to Dycom and to the customers' current build plans will be negligible. We're observing increasing momentum across industry drivers, creating significant opportunities for our company. Building on our strong first quarter results and a favorable demand outlook, we are increasing our full-year fiscal 2026 expected range of contract revenues. We now expect total contract revenues to range from $5.29 billion-$5.425 billion, representing a range of 12.5%-15.4% total growth over the prior year. For our Q2 of fiscal 2026 outlook, we expect contract revenues of $1.38 billion-$1.43 billion, adjusted EBITDA of $185 million-$200 million, and diluted EPS of $2.74-$3.05 per share.

Additional financial outlook metrics can be found in the presentation materials posted to our IR website. Operator, this concludes our prepared remarks. You may now open the call for questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question will come from Alex Waters from BofA. Your line is open.

Alex Waters (VP of Equity Research)

Hey, good morning. Thanks so much for taking my question. Maybe first off, Dan, you noted the kind of strong performance of Black & Veatch. Is this more of a pull-forward activity, or have you seen kind of a larger opportunity set here?

Then secondly, just on the maintenance side, you've noted it a couple of times in your opening remarks, but could you help size that business for us for Dycom?

Dan Peyovich (President and CEO)

Good morning, Alex. On Black & Veatch, the wireless acquisition, that's a little bit of both. A little bit of a pull-forward, but mostly ramping much quicker than expected. The work's going extremely well. The business is well-integrated into our overall operations and excited about how they've done this quarter and the projection ahead. On the maintenance side, absolutely. As I talked about, service and maintenance underpins the drivers in our business. Certainly, a core part of our strategy that goes back a long way. It really enables the other drivers, as you've seen. If you look at our backlog, that growth is not only in service and maintenance, but across many drivers.

Very different today than maybe a few years ago. Recurring revenue, I think that's a very important point. Longer-term contracts. Even though in our backlog, we only project them until the end of the current agreement, it's quite common that we get to renew those. That consistency, when you take it at scale and the scale that we have across the entirety of the United States and across many, many customers, really gives us the embedded operations. We can leverage that. We can leverage that in the customer builds. We can certainly leverage that in opportunities. We leverage it in how we look at our labor and our labor forces and our ability to respond ultimately to our customers' increasing demands. Yeah, specifically about size, what I would say, we don't give specifics, Alex, but it's historically been over 50% of our business.

Alex Waters (VP of Equity Research)

Perfect. Thank you so much.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question will come from Richard Choe from JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Richard Choe (VP)

Hi. I wanted to follow up a little bit on the second quarter guidance. Is that the continuation of the strength from the wireless side, or do you see new projects kind of ramping up and helping contribute to that?

Dan Peyovich (President and CEO)

Good morning, Richard. First, I talked last quarter about fiber-to-the-home builds and how they're ramping. Our customers now, I think the total, if you look back a little over a year, the total is over 45 million incremental passings that they've added. As you've heard on many of our calls, we've been fortunate to be part of those programs that are increasing and also win new markets.

Richard, as we look out over the years, certainly for Q1, those programs went a little bit quicker than we expected. As we look towards the rest of the year, that's certainly what we included in our outlook. The second part is absolutely the wireless business. As I mentioned, it's going very well, integrating very well, and ramping more quickly. That very much helped in our Q1 results. It's very much a part of our Q2 outlook and certainly the outlook for the full year.

Richard Choe (VP)

You mentioned a little bit on the CapEx from your equipment suppliers and that being manageable. I know it could be a little confusing given all the changes we've kind of seen. Is there any potential or idea of maybe pulling forward some of the spending before the tariffs hit? Maybe it's too late. Any kind of thoughts there?

Dan Peyovich (President and CEO)

Richard, our strategy around the equipment that we purchase in order to do the work, and of course, as you know, our customers buy the bulk of what we actually install. For our equipment manufacturers, it's always been something we've been very strategic about. As you saw coming through COVID, we were able to stay ahead of that from an equipment perspective, even when there were significant shortages. Even then, when costs increased considerably for some of those pieces of equipment, in this particular case, we feel really good about where we are. With the growth that we've had, we've been spending a lot of time projecting and working with our equipment manufacturers to make sure we can enable that growth. I would add we do that on the labor side as well, right?

We want to make sure that neither of those are going to impede our customers' big plans and aspirations. We feel good about where we're at. The tariff impacts are real, right? For things that are coming in from outside of the United States. We're in constant conversations with the manufacturers. When you look at it in the entirety, when you build up the whole model of what it costs to pass a home or to put in a foot of fiber on the long hauls, it's a very small component. We feel that it's very manageable going forward and feel good about the size of our current fleet and our ability to adapt to that.

Richard Choe (VP)

Great. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question will come from Steven Fisher from UBS. Your line is open.

Steven Fisher (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Thanks. Good morning.

Just to follow up on some of the cost angles there. It was nice to see the year-over-year margin improvement. I guess, was there anything unusual with the cost this quarter or mix or execution that was contributing to that year-over-year growth? I am just curious if there is any reason to think we will not see continued kind of year-over-year margin improvement for the balance of the year.

Dan Peyovich (President and CEO)

Good morning, Steven. First, operating leverage is what I would focus on. I talked about last quarter. We are very strategic about how we are investing in the business to make sure we can stay ahead of growth, make sure we can continue to deliver at the level that we have been delivering for our customers and the communities and certainly for our shareholders. At times, we are investing in the business, and it does not drop through.

Other times, we're able to pass that through down to the bottom line. Operating leverage is a big part of that increase. As we look forward towards the year, and I think Drew mentioned this a little bit, we do see opportunities for continued margin growth. We're working very hard to achieve that. Again, most of that would come from operating leverage. I should note, we're always working on efficiencies of the business, so I don't want that to be mistaken. We spend a lot of time on safety, a lot of time on quality, a lot of time on production. We've really upped the training rigor across the business. Again, this all comes back to making sure we can stay ahead of labor and deliver the quality for our customers.

At the end of the day, if you think about our margin opportunities right now, the bulk is going to be from operating leverage.

Steven Fisher (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Great. It sounded like you reiterated your comments and message on BEAD. No change there. It seems like this quarter and the guidance tells us that you really do not need BEAD to deliver double-digit growth since you do not have anything in your revenues for it. I am just curious what you are hearing on that program and how you see the importance of it for your business in the next couple of years, just in case as the policy landscape evolves, if it gets further diminished. I just kind of want to be curious to see how you are thinking about it for the next couple of years.

Dan Peyovich (President and CEO)

I think you hit on the key message there. It is not in our outlook today.

We think about the other drivers. We think about the growth of our service and maintenance business that we've grown along with our revenue these past few years. We feel really good about our growth prospect. We see that in the outlook for this year. I think we feel good about opportunities that go well beyond this year, regardless of BEAD. That said, we continue to believe BEAD is going to be a real opportunity. Everybody is expecting to hear something probably in mid-June or July. Hopefully, by next quarter, we can provide a little bit more clarity. We're talking to the broadband offices weekly, certainly. We're talking to many of the subgrantees and potential subgrantees constantly. There's still a lot of bullishness that a lot of fiber is going to get installed in rural America for the BEAD program.

But as I noted, really, that's going to be calendar 2026, our fiscal 2027. We'll continue to update, Steve, but I think the important takeaway is it's really not needed for our current growth curve. We'd love to have it. We still think there's going to be plenty of rural opportunities with or without BEAD.

Steven Fisher (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Terrific. Thanks very much.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question will come from Frank Louthan from Raymond James & Associates. Your line is open.

Frank Louthan (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thank you. Looking at your backlog, is the pace that you're working through the backlog changed from how it's trended historically, or are things moving any faster? And can you give us an idea of the current organic growth rate and what percentage of your backlog represents organic growth? Thanks.

Dan Peyovich (President and CEO)

Yeah. The first part, Frank, I think just touching on backlog overall that I'd like to highlight is the diversification.

Across customers, across programs, and across drivers, we do feel like we have a really good mix across multiple opportunities. Really, as we look forward to potential growth in the future, more opportunities are out there to continue that diversification. That is the first point I would make on backlog. As far as organic growth, I will let Drew talk about that a little bit, but if I can just make a couple of points. One, we continue to see long-term opportunities for organic growth. Two, when we think about the businesses and the reason that we have really been highlighting our overall growth, when you think about the business, like the wireless business we recently acquired, we are investing huge amounts of capital into that business. We are growing it significantly. We are doing a lot of work to make that more efficient and more effective.

This isn't a situation where we're just adding another layer to the cake that came in operating at a certain level and comes into the business. I can tell you when Drew and myself and the rest of the leadership team are having conversations, we don't differentiate internally about where we're going to invest. We're looking for the right kind of opportunities with the right kind of returns for our shareholders. Whether it's organic or inorganic doesn't matter. The point is that all of those opportunities we're growing. We feel good about, obviously, the overall growth this year. We feel good about our opportunities for continued organic growth. I'll let Drew touch on any of the numbers.

Drew DeFerrari (CFO)

Yes. Frank, good morning. Organic growth was slightly positive this quarter. We did disclose it. You'll see that.

Dan Peyovich (President and CEO)

If you recall from last quarter, I had called out that last year, at the beginning of the year, we had a couple of customers that had a busier start, and then they had slowed later in the year. We are lapping those quarters in the first and second quarter of this year. We see opportunities for organic growth to continue to grow from here. Frank, I think you mentioned burn rate, too. I apologize. I did not hit that one. Still feel good about the pace of our business. We do not see any big changes there.

Frank Louthan (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. Great. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question will come from Sangita Jain from KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Sangita Jain (Senior Analyst)

Thank you. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. One, I have on your guidance raise.

If we look at one-queue results and the two-queue guide, I'm wondering if that implies some conservatism in your full-year guidance range in the sense that you may not be factoring in the full impact of the extra week or if there's something else that we are missing. I know you referenced some pull forward.

Dan Peyovich (President and CEO)

Good morning, Sangita. We certainly included the extra week in the year. It's important to note. Yes, we've included the outperformance in Q1. We certainly looked at Q2. As you look across the scope of our business, we have hundreds, in fact, thousands of projects. When we project that, we project it project by project. They don't all move at the same rate in the same direction at the same time. We spent a lot of time about that.

We feel really good about the growth and the increase in the outlook that we gave for the year and the increase in the outlook for Q2. We believe, one, it's achievable, and there's opportunities for our continued growth.

Sangita Jain (Senior Analyst)

Great. A follow-up on your commentary around your expanded O&M business. Longer time, do you think that can reduce your capital intensity and be more like a free cash flow accretion event over time? How should we think about that?

Drew DeFerrari (CFO)

Yes, Sangita. I appreciate the question. Free cash flow continues to be a priority for the company. Pleased that we had DSO improvement in the quarter. We work hard at that, and we'll continue to. We're not satisfied yet with where we're at there.

Just from a CapEx perspective, we did have a busier start to the year or an active start to the year, I should say, around that. We do still see the range of total or net CapEx for the year in that $220 million-$230 million range. We are working hard at the operating cash flow.

Sangita Jain (Senior Analyst)

Great. Appreciate that. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question will come from Adam Thalhimer from Thompson Davis. Your line is open.

Adam Thalhimer (Director of Research)

Hey, good morning, guys. Congrats on the beat.

Dan Peyovich (President and CEO)

Thanks, Adam. Good morning.

Adam Thalhimer (Director of Research)

Hey, Dan. I wanted to follow up on you were talking kind of fast. It sounded like there were two incremental awards. One was for middle-mile fiber for data centers, and one was for inside-of-the-fence work for a hyperscaler customer. Were those both awarded after the quarter, and are they in the revenue guide?

Dan Peyovich (President and CEO)

Thanks, Adam. Good point.

Appreciate the opportunity to highlight it. The first one is for a customer other than Lumen. That is middle-mile or work to enable the AI infrastructure for hyperscalers. Different customer, great opportunity, multi-year. We are very excited to partner with the customer there. The second is separate. That one is included in our backlog. The second one, the inside-the-fence work that I talked about, the important point I was trying to make is this is a new opportunity set for us. It is work that we do all the time, but moving from the right-of-way in and inside the fence, quite literally inside the fence into these data centers and data center clusters, is a new scope. Work that we know, know well. This really comes out of the evolution of us spending years now with the hyperscalers.

Myself, personally, of course, I spent a couple of decades working with the hyperscalers building these data centers. Things that we feel really good about, but it is a good opportunity set and one that we hope to be able to expand in future years and certainly in future quarters. The reason I noted about the award itself is this one's just a little unique. We have an MSA for the work. They will not issue the PO technically until we are about to start. That work is not included in backlog, but we do anticipate that work to happen this year.

Adam Thalhimer (Director of Research)

Got it. Are you working inside of the walls of the data center, or is it more connecting? When you look at a data center campus, it is more connecting the data centers within the campus.

Dan Peyovich (President and CEO)

Absolutely.

Typically, we're going to take the work that we do for the carriers to a vault in the right-of-way that we refer to as the meet-me vault. From that point is typically where our work ends. Again, that's on the carrier side. This is work that the carriers themselves would not typically do. Now we're going to take it from that vault, actually inside the fence and ultimately inside the data centers to land. We won't be taking it in the data center halls into the racks themselves, but we will terminate inside the data center walls. A good scope opportunity. We also will connect data centers where they have multiple data centers in one cluster or on one set of sites. We have an opportunity to connect those as well.

So again, great opportunity for us, one that we're excited about and certainly appreciate the work that we've done and will continue to do for the hyperscalers.

Adam Thalhimer (Director of Research)

All right. Great. Thanks for the color.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. As a reminder to ask a question, please press star one one. Our next question will come from Jean Veliz from D.A. Davidson. Your line is open.

Jean Veliz (Senior Research Associate of Infrastructure Services and Products)

Good morning and congrats on the quarter.

Dan Peyovich (President and CEO)

Morning. Thank you.

Jean Veliz (Senior Research Associate of Infrastructure Services and Products)

Regarding the Charter Cox acquisition following the Verizon and Frontier acquisition, does further customer consolidation drive more business?

Dan Peyovich (President and CEO)

Historically, and I think you're breaking up just a little there, but I think you were talking about Verizon, Frontier, and then crossing additional milestones. Typically, when we think about customer consolidation, that's been a positive for us.

One, larger customers typically want a national player like us to be able to work across many of their locations. Two, anytime there is capital infusion and consolidation like that, generally speaking, there is going to be more opportunities, more investment overall. Generally, yes, we think that is a positive for us. Historically, it has been. Again, customers we have been working with for a long time, and we are excited about their combination.

Jean Veliz (Senior Research Associate of Infrastructure Services and Products)

Great. Thank you. Appreciate the time.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question will come from Laura Maher from B. Riley Securities. Your line is open.

Laura Maher (Equity Research Associate of Diversified Industrials)

Hi. Thanks for taking the question.

Dan Peyovich (President and CEO)

Good morning.

Laura Maher (Equity Research Associate of Diversified Industrials)

I was wondering, as it relates to government layoffs, have you seen this affect the approval process at all? Are you seeing any early benefits of deregulation?

Dan Peyovich (President and CEO)

Again, something that these days is quite fluid, and we are following very closely.

If you're referring to the potential for easing permitting, that would obviously be a positive for the industry. I think there are a lot of opportunities. We talk a lot about BEAD and some of the potential pullback. To your point, there are a lot of things that could further enable expansion for our customers. If you look at bonus depreciation in the latest bill, that would obviously be a positive for our customers. They've talked about how that could increase spending. There are a lot of potential positives, and we'll see how it plays out, something we're watching closely every day.

Laura Maher (Equity Research Associate of Diversified Industrials)

Okay. Thanks. I'll pass it on.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. That does conclude our question and answer session for today's call. I'd like to turn the conference back to Mr. Dan Peyovich for any closing remarks.

Dan Peyovich (President and CEO)

Yeah. I'd like to thank everyone for joining us this morning and look forward to seeing you next quarter. Be safe and be well.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. This does conclude our conference. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect. Everyone, have a wonderful day.