Granite Construction - Q1 2021

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good day! My name is Ailey, and I will be your conference facilitator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Granite Construction Investor Relations First Quarter 2021 conference call. This call is being recorded. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise, and after the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer period. To ask a question, please press star one. Please note, we will take one question and one follow-up question from each participant today. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Granite Construction Incorporated, Vice President of Investor Relations, Mike Barker. Sir, the floor is yours.

Mike Barker (VP of Investor Relations)

Good morning, and thank you for joining us. I'm pleased to be here today with Granite President Kyle Larkin, and Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Lisa Curtis. Please note that today's earnings presentation will be available on the Events and Presentations page of Granite's Investor Relations website. We begin today with an overview of the company's safe harbor language. Some of the discussion today may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are estimates reflecting the current expectations and best judgment of senior management regarding future events, occurrences, growth, demand, strategic plans, circumstances, activities, performance, outcomes, outlook, guidance, backlog, committed and awarded projects, and results. Actual results could differ materially from statements made today.

Please refer to Granite's most recent 10-K and 10-Q filings for a more complete description of risk factors that could affect these forward-looking statements. The company assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements, whether they are results of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required by law. Certain non-GAAP measures may be discussed during today's call and from time to time by the company's executives. These include, but are not limited to, Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA margin, adjusted net income or loss, and adjusted earnings or loss per share. Reconciliations of non-GAAP measures are included as part of our earnings press releases and in company presentations, which are available on our investor relations website. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Granite President, Kyle Larkin.

Kyle Larkin (President)

Thank you, Mike. Good morning, and thank you all for joining us on our call today. To start off the call, I would like to comment on our press release, where we announced that we have reached a settlement to resolve securities litigation subject to court approval. Although it was a difficult decision, we concluded that it was in the best interest of the company as well as our shareholders to move forward. Following court approval, we will be able to put this litigation behind us and focus on our business and people. Granite's portion of the settlement, excluding insurance, is $66 million, and we expect it to be paid from existing cash on hand. As Lisa will explain in further detail later in the call, despite this event, our liquidity and cash position remains strong.

As I've discussed in previous calls, our core values guide us in our day-to-day operations and are serving as the foundation of our cultural reinvigoration. On the last call, I provided an overview of our sustainability core value and the efforts that are underway to drive sustainability forward at Granite. Today, I will touch on two more of our core values, safety and inclusion, and how we are integrating them into our day-to-day operations to drive desired behaviors. Granite's choice to continue to include safety as a core value is embedded in our culture and reflects our belief that the safety and well-being of our people, our partners, and the public is our greatest responsibility. Every level of our organization supports our safety culture with training, planning, and engagement.

We approach every task with safety built into the process, and we do not sacrifice anyone's safety to get the job done. While safety is front of mind every day at Granite, it is particularly timely to talk about our safety commitment on the heels of Safety Week, which is just concluding today. Safety Week is an industry-wide national event, and Granite was one of the founding members almost a decade ago. Across the country, on Granite projects and in our offices, we conduct daily activities to reinforce and strengthen our commitment to safety. This week, I had the opportunity to visit Granite project teams and take part in safety meetings across the country. The planning and attention to detail that our teams put into these safety meetings are impressive and demonstrate our focus on safety.

Inclusion is a core value that was added this year, but it has been an important focus since 2019. Since it's a new core value, we want to provide additional detail to why we chose to recognize the importance of inclusion. Inclusion is how we build value in our company by welcoming contributions from all of our employees. Our differences enhance creativity and innovation to create a high-performance culture and have a positive impact on how we achieve our business goals and objectives. At Granite, when we build the value of inclusion, we value and respect a workforce diverse in perspective, experience, knowledge, and culture, and we are committed to an inclusive environment in which everyone feels a sense of belonging and can grow. To live this value, we must understand a couple of things.

First, we know that diversity is the mix of our employees, our clients, and our community, and inclusion is how we make that mix work... We have made significant progress in our inclusive diversity journey, starting with our employee resource groups, Granite Resources and Opportunities for Women, or GROW, and supporting and recognizing the veteran community or SERVICE. GROW advocates for and supports women through mentoring, networking, and career development. SERVICE supports and recognizes employees that have served, and friends and family members and employees that have served in all branches of the military. We have also established executive inclusive diversity and multicultural councils, conducted leadership training, and established relationships with Historically Black Colleges and Universities. In 2020, we had over 200 interns, and more than half were diverse. In addition, one-third of our executive team and nearly half of our board of directors are diverse.

Looking forward, we will continue to create clarity around inclusive diversity by having dialogue concerning how we can be more inclusive. We will continue to develop talent and strengthen our talent pipeline at all levels, with a focus on women and people of color, and we will continue to build capability through training leaders and employees to challenge ourselves to be more inclusive. We know that having an inclusive environment doesn't happen overnight. It happens over time. I am proud of our inclusion efforts, and I am excited about the culture we are creating here at Granite. Okay, let's switch gears and talk about our business segments, starting with transportation. The first quarter is typically our slowest quarter, with cold and wet weather regularly hampering work in many of our markets.

Even with the challenges of weather, I'm pleased with the performance of the segment, not only on the top line, but also at the gross profit level, due to good execution across our operating groups. Some good news to share, we continued to burn through the backlog of the Heavy Civil Operating Group, Old Risk Portfolio, with a minimal impact to gross profit during the quarter. This was a marked improvement over the last two years. The remainder of the segment, which is primarily comprised of vertically integrated projects, also completed a solid first quarter, setting the stage for a busy remainder of the year. The bidding environment is strong, with robust opportunities in our markets, resulting in an increase in our bid volume year-over-year.

While we routinely share information about our larger project wins, we also continue to have success in winning the smaller to medium-sized projects that are the foundation of our portfolio. The first quarter of the year is historically a very competitive bid environment, with contractors more aggressively bidding to build backlog early in the year. We have seen this dynamic in the first quarter of 2021, with increased bid volume and strong competition. As anticipated, transportation committed and awarded projects, or CAP, decreased year-over-year, with a shift in the portfolio as Heavy Civil Operating Group CAP is burned and replaced with CAP from our vertically integrated businesses, including Best Value Procurement work.

The extension of the FAST Act, the $13.6 billion infusion to the Highway Trust Fund for 2021, and the enactment of coronavirus relief bills have combined to provide direct and indirect support for transportation funding. Funding is positive across our markets, and we are hopeful that a federal infrastructure bill will be signed into law this year. Turning to the water segment, in the first quarter, we continued to see a recovery from the pandemic, but the deep freeze in Texas during the quarter interrupted the supply chain, resulting in a spike in resin costs. Resin is a product used in our trenchless cured-in-place pipe rehabilitation business, Granite Inliner. Although this segment was hardest hit by the pandemic, we are seeing an increase in bid opportunities, a positive indication for the remainder of the year.

As a result, water segment CAP remains strong as of the end of the first quarter at $339 million. This figure does not include the recently awarded Leon Hurse Dam project in Texas for approximately $160 million, which will be included in our second quarter CAP. This award is a component of the overall Lake Ralph Hall project, which will be one of Texas' newest lakes and one of the state's biggest water projects in the last 30 years. Granite has a long history of working on complex dam projects, and we are proud to continue this work on the Leon Hurse Dam. All levels of the government recognize the critical need to repair and support water infrastructure across the country, as seen in the ongoing discussion with the federal infrastructure bill and the Senate's recently passed $35 billion water infrastructure bill.

We have been successful in winning water infrastructure projects, and there are multiple opportunities in the water market that Granite is currently pursuing. We believe we are well positioned to continue to procure work in this area. Moving on to the specialty segment. Our teams turned in a solid quarter and ended with a record CAP of over $1 billion. In the first quarter, we added to CAP a significant new $267 million tunnel project in Columbus, Ohio. We are excited to continue our relationship with the city of Columbus, where we successfully completed a large tunnel project just a couple years ago. Additionally, operating groups continue to foster new relationships as well as build upon existing relationships to expand our footprint with both public and private clients.

Recent project wins include several projects with a variety of mining clients in different geographies across our business, a project to establish a new rail yard in the Port of Stockton, California, and a federal project to expand a military facility in Guam. Both the private and public markets within the diverse specialty segment continue to be strong, with investment driven by the overall positive economic outlook. The segment is a growing area of our business, and we look for that to continue in 2021 and beyond. Moving on to the materials segment. The first quarter results were terrific in our seasonally slowest quarter.

We entered the quarter with significantly higher material orders compared to the prior year, which resulted in higher sales volumes in 2021, led by the California Operating Group. As of the end of the quarter, materials orders continued to outpace the prior year, with strong demand in both the California and Northwest Operating Groups. This demand is a positive indicator for the remainder of 2021, not only in the materials segment, but also for our vertically integrated construction businesses. As of the end of the first quarter, our consolidated CAP is $4.5 billion, an increase during the quarter of over $170 million compared to year-end levels. CAP in our Specialty and Water segments continues to grow as we pursue end market diversification. The old risk portfolio, design-build CAP, continues to decline as our risk profile is transformed following our new project selection criteria.

Finally, our CAP portfolio is more evenly distributed across operating group geographies. As I had mentioned on previous calls, we have been transforming our CAP portfolio focused on reducing risk. Our teams have made significant progress and continue to execute on our plan. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Lisa to discuss our financial results. Lisa?

Lisa Curtis (EVP and CFO)

Thank you, Kyle. Starting with revenue and gross profit, the first quarter delivered strong results on both measures. First quarter consolidated revenue grew 5% year-over-year to $670 million, with gross profit increasing 166% year-over-year to $63 million, with a gross profit margin of just under 10%. Within our transportation segment, revenue was up slightly year-over-year to $351 million, led by an increase from the California Operating Group, which offset a revenue decrease from the Heavy Civil Operating Group. Transportation gross profit for the quarter increased 41% to $36 million, resulting in a gross profit margin of 10%. The increase in gross profit was primarily due to a decrease in project losses from the Heavy Civil Operating Group Old Risk Portfolio.

Losses from the Old Risk Portfolio in the first quarter of 2021 were under $1 million, compared to losses of $13 million in the first quarter of 2020. The Old Risk Portfolio backlog decreased by nearly $100 million during the quarter, which is on pace to meet our estimated project burn of $425 million-$475 million during 2021 that I mentioned in our last call. Our team's execution in the first quarter served to mitigate exposure in the Old Risk Portfolio, and we are optimistic this will continue in the future. In our water segment, first quarter revenue was down 2% year-over-year as the segment continued its recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Water gross profit for the first quarter decreased 8% to $9 million, resulting in a gross profit margin of 9%.

This decrease in gross profit was primarily due to temporarily higher resin costs in Granite Inliner associated with supply chain disruptions due to winter weather events in Texas. Moving on to the specialty segment. First quarter revenue increased 17% year-over-year to $156 million. Specialty gross profit increased 262% to $17 million, with a gross profit margin of 11%. As a reminder, there was a significant write-down during the first quarter of 2020 related to a dispute on a tunneling project, which reduced gross profit in the prior year. Finally, the materials segment completed an exceptional first quarter with a revenue increase of 26% year-over-year to $63 million in 2021. This increase was largely due to strong sales volumes in the West.

Materials gross profit increased to $2 million, resulting in a gross profit margin of just under 3% as compared to breakeven in the prior year. This increase in the gross profit was also primarily related to higher volumes across the business. Turning now to our non-GAAP financial metrics. Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter increased $35 million year-over-year to $17 million, resulting in an Adjusted EBITDA margin of over 2% for the quarter. The increase in Adjusted EBITDA was driven in part by improvement in project execution as we continued to burn through the Heavy Civil Operating Group Old Risk Portfolio during the first quarter of 2021. In addition, we also benefited from improvements in gross profit in the specialty and material segments year-over-year.

Our first quarter resulted in an adjusted net loss of $5 million, which was a $27 million improvement from an adjusted net loss of $32 million in the prior year. As a reminder, these non-GAAP financial metrics are adjusted to exclude other costs, which includes the impact of the legal settlement and legal and accounting fees, non-cash impairments of goodwill, transaction costs, and amortization of debt discount. Now, turning to cash and liquidity. We had another strong cash quarter with cash from operations of $38 million and a net increase in cash during the quarter of $17 million compared to year-end. This was an outstanding result for the first quarter of the year. We ended the first quarter with cash and marketable securities of over $464 million, and our teams remain focused on working capital management....

Upon court approval and finalization of the securities litigation settlement, we expect to pay our portion from existing cash on hand. While we anticipate seasonal cash trends to be consistent with prior year patterns, our 2021 cash projections for the remainder of the year remain solid. With the completion of the first quarter, we are reiterating our guidance for the full fiscal year 2021. There are opportunities within each of our markets and very active bid schedules across the company. We believe we can capitalize on these opportunities to achieve low- to mid-single-digit revenue growth. SG&A increased $2.5 million year-over-year to $76 million, which was 11.3% of revenue for the first quarter. This increase was primarily attributable to a change in the fair market value of our non-qualified deferred compensation plan liability of $5 million year-over-year.

This increase is offset by corresponding investment gains and other income and expense net. For the full year, our guidance is unchanged, with an expected SG&A expense of 8.5%-9% of revenue. During the first quarter, we had solid execution across all groups and segments. We expect this execution will allow us to achieve an Adjusted EBITDA margin range of 5.5%-7.5%. With that, I will turn it back over to Kyle for closing remarks.

Kyle Larkin (President)

Thanks, Lisa. Let me close with the following points. In what is typically a seasonally tough quarter, we are pleased with our first quarter performance across the company. Our teams have done a great job of maintaining focus on execution, particularly in the Old Risk Portfolio. We believe the securities litigation settlement is in the best interest of the company and our shareholders. This will allow us to focus on execution in 2021 as we work to refresh our longer-term strategic plan. Across our markets, we are seeing a healthy bidding environment, where we have opportunities to continue the transformation of our portfolio and build quality CAP. Finally, we are optimistic about the funding environment. The economy appears to be strong, with continued investment from the private market.

The public funding environment has been supported by direct and indirect infrastructure legislation from several different measures, and we remain hopeful the enactment of a federal infrastructure bill will occur this year and will serve to further strengthen the environment in 2021-2022 and beyond. Operator, I will now turn it back to you for questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. To ask a question, please press star then one. Please limit yourselves to one question and one follow-up question, and feel free to jump back in the queue if you have additional questions. Our first question comes from Brent Thielman with D.A. Davidson.

Brent Thielman (Analyst)

Hey, thank you. Good morning.

Lisa Curtis (EVP and CFO)

Good morning, Brent.

Brent Thielman (Analyst)

I guess first question is pretty significant growth in cap within the specialty and water segments in the first quarter, even on a sequential basis. Can you help us think about the sort of the timing of conversion of that awarded work? I know water tends to be a little faster burn, but, you know, could we see the majority of that work in specialty move through this year?

Kyle Larkin (President)

Yeah. So this is Kyle. And we can talk a little bit about that. Now, certainly, we anticipate in the specialty segment that that's gonna convert relatively quickly. A big piece of that was the specialty segment was the project in Ohio for the tunnel group. And that job's been awarded. We anticipate that'll get kicked off, and that'll convert relatively quickly. In general, a lot of the specialty work is site development projects, data centers, supporting commercial builders, and that work converts relatively quickly as well.

Brent Thielman (Analyst)

Okay. I guess my follow-up, I mean, the 10% growth margin in transportation in a first quarter is particularly good for this time of the year, and I, you know, I don't think weather was entirely in your favor this period. So I guess just looking for any additional color. Is it the work that you're pursuing, Kyle? You know, just the execution. Love to just get some more color on that, that margin this quarter.

Kyle Larkin (President)

Yeah, I would say the weather was actually pretty good in the West, and so we saw similar weather this year in Q1 than we saw in 2020. So that certainly helped that segment. If I look just in general, I think our teams executed very well in Q1, which they've kind of building on some really strong momentum coming from 2020.

Brent Thielman (Analyst)

Okay. Thank you.

Kyle Larkin (President)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Michael Dudas with Vertical Research Partners.

Michael Dudas (Analyst)

Good morning, gentlemen, Lisa.

Lisa Curtis (EVP and CFO)

Hey, good morning, Mike.

Kyle Larkin (President)

Morning.

Michael Dudas (Analyst)

Kyle, you mentioned about the first quarter competitive nature on bidding from the competitors and such. As you've gotten through April, looking into May, are you still able to be more selective? Have competitors' backlogs been filling up rather quickly? And maybe as you know, talk about, as you indicated, your range between 5.5% and 7.5% EBITDA for 2021, what are some of the drivers that might move you from one end of the range to the other?

Kyle Larkin (President)

... Okay, so we'll start with the first question is around the bid environment. We are seeing a really nice bid environment across our entire portfolio. Certainly, that's being led with our BI business. We're actually increasing the amount of work we're bidding, even on some of the large projects under our new risk portfolio profile, and even in the water segment, as you've seen. So we're really pleased with the amount of work that's out in front of us, and our bid schedule is stronger than it was last year at this time, which is really good news. In terms of the competition, I think it's a little bit different everywhere.

We're still seeing a lot of competitors on bid day, but we are seeing opportunities in certain markets where we've been able to start raising prices, moving forward. That said, you know, we are being selective on some of the larger projects. We certainly don't wanna go backwards. We wanna really drive our business towards the new risk profile. And so that Leon Hurse Dam project was a nice representation of that. The second part of your question is around the key drivers in terms of the guidance, and there's really three components that we would probably put that into. One is around project execution. So we've been acutely focused on execution across all parts of our business, and primarily in the Heavy Civil Group, around that whole risk portfolio.

So we're actually really, really pleased with the performance. Our burn rate is right on target with what we shared with everybody in the last couple of calls. And the margins, although there's a little bit of some, say, margin fade, there's also some margin gain within those projects. So we haven't seen that for quite some time. And all in all, it had little, little effect on our gross profit for the quarter. So execution is obviously a big piece, and so we're quite pleased with our execution in Q1. The second is weather. You know, obviously, weather is a factor primarily in Q1 and Q4, and so we got through Q1 with nice weather, very comparable to 2020.

And then, obviously, we don't know what Q4 is gonna look like, but we're hopeful that, it will, it will work out well for us. And really, the third is just our ability to, to win work and, and put work in place, in 2021. So that's something that our teams are, are focused on. As I mentioned, the, the opportunities are out there in front of us, so that's really good news. And now our teams just have to go out and, and capture the work and then, deliver on it in 2021. And if we can do that, then, with those, if those three, three things line up, that would move us to the upper end of our guidance.

Michael Dudas (Analyst)

So it sounds like you feel comfortable-

Lisa Curtis (EVP and CFO)

Yeah.

Michael Dudas (Analyst)

with your revenue coverage or, like, what you have in the pipeline relative to your revenue targets that you set out for 2021.

Kyle Larkin (President)

Yeah. Yeah, I think we feel, we feel, we feel good.

Lisa Curtis (EVP and CFO)

We do. And Mike, this is Lisa, just to add a little bit on the, on cap. You know, we're we're continuing to see the shift in mix that started last year. So, you know, while heavy civil group, that portion in the portfolio continues to decrease as expected, we're still maintaining our overall cap balance. So we're seeing increase in the vertically integrated business, in our water business. And then that, what we have in the end of Q1, does not even include the $160 million Leon Hurse Dam project. Of course, specialty is up, and then we're still seeing a good market for the CMGC work. And when we look at the pipeline for heavy civil group, a large component of that is the CMGC kind of best value procurement work.

So it's nice to see that strategy continuing to play out for us.

Michael Dudas (Analyst)

I appreciate it. Then just on my quick follow-up, the, on the material side, certainly very good start, Q1. We've been, you know, hearing from other, building products providers of good pricing, good volume expectations. Do you see that in your worlds, but, you know, on the asphalt side, and any price-cost issues that we might see roll through? But I would think that given your opportunities for the bidding and for, the good start, that that materials segment could, could see some upside as we move through 2021.

Kyle Larkin (President)

Yeah, we think that we were encouraged by what we saw in Q1. I think that's more indicative of overall better market. And we do think that there's gonna be opportunities for us to push pricing in certain markets in this year.

Michael Dudas (Analyst)

Excellent.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Steven Ramsey with Thompson Research Group.

Steven Ramsey (Analyst)

Hey, good morning.

Lisa Curtis (EVP and CFO)

Hey, good morning, Steven.

Steven Ramsey (Analyst)

Maybe to start with, I guess just to think about winning work in a competitive bidding environment. I know it's always competitive. I mean, is the bidding environment now similar to the past, all in, and in what ways is it different in maybe a good or a bad way? And then lastly there, in what segment is bidding most challenging?

Kyle Larkin (President)

Okay. Well, I would say that I've mentioned before that the bidding environment typically goes through different stages throughout a year, where contractors have backlog, maybe mid-year, they burn through it, and they get a little more aggressive in Q4, Q1. And we're seeing that normal pattern today, although I'd say it maybe is a little bit more intensified in transportation today, just because a lot of contractors burn through backlog, and with the pandemic, some agencies just held back on lettings. So we are seeing competition in many of our markets extend a little further than typical, but our teams have done a really nice job of continuing to capture work.

Some markets have already shown improvement, and so we're able to be a little more selective and building the right backlog in our business in those markets. I would say, again, though, transportation is where we see the most competition in our segments today.

Lisa Curtis (EVP and CFO)

... But overall, lettings, you know, what the states and municipalities are putting out is very strong.

Steven Ramsey (Analyst)

Okay. Okay, good. And then, thinking about the materials segment, maybe to ask a little bit differently than it was. You know, orders up in materials, and how much of that is due to the vertically integrated business being up strongly? How much of that is external customers? And trying to kinda combine your thoughts on the last question, a tough bidding environment in transportation combined with rising costs, does that present, you know, price cost challenges down the road, or do you-- are you factoring that into your positive pricing outlook?

Kyle Larkin (President)

Okay. Let me, let me start with the materials question. The sales volumes are up and demand's up, external and internal, so part of our VI business as well as our external sales. So we're seeing it, we're seeing it on, on both sides, so I think that's even, even better news as we look at our materials business. In terms of rising costs, we, we do, we do have the ability to price that into our work. Certainly the one that, that jumps out today would be more around diesel, and, and we, we anticipated that we would see diesel increases in 2021. So, so our work that we're pursuing today, has, has those anticipated increases already built in for the most part. And then a lot of our customers have escalation clauses, certainly around things like, steel.

As we've seen, there's some steel increases out there, cement, and others, as applicable.

Steven Ramsey (Analyst)

Great, thank you.

Kyle Larkin (President)

Thank you.

Lisa Curtis (EVP and CFO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

And again, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star and then one to join our queue. Our next question comes from Jerry Revich with Goldman Sachs.

Jerry Revich (Analyst)

Yes, hi, good morning.

Lisa Curtis (EVP and CFO)

Good morning.

Kyle Larkin (President)

Good morning.

Jerry Revich (Analyst)

I'm wondering if you could talk about just the overall bid pursuit pipeline that you folks are looking at today, and just to quantify some of the prior comments on the bid environment, Kyle, if you don't mind. How does that compare today versus last year, as you look across the footprint, based on everything you're tracking?

Kyle Larkin (President)

I'd say it's up. So, just in general, on projects under about 150 million, we're up probably about $400 million-$500 million for this even this month versus what we've seen in the prior year. So quite a bit. Projects over 150 million, again, we've been a lot more selective in what we're pursuing and how we're pursuing it. As Lisa mentioned, the type of work that we're pursuing over 150 million, a lot of that is Best Value Procurement. Almost three quarters of it is Best Value Procurement. And even with the new constraints we've put on ourselves, the projects over 150 million, the pipeline is very consistent with last year, if not up slightly.

Jerry Revich (Analyst)

And in terms of, you know, with the business model transition, it's been nice to see the pipeline up with the more strict standards. Can you talk about whether that's a function of the market evolving on risk terms overall? Or are you seeing, in other words, the same level of discipline out of your competitors, or is it just a function of, you know, the market for this type of procurement is just larger than, you know, what the company has viewed as possible in the past?

Kyle Larkin (President)

Yeah, I think it's just a shift. I think instead of pursuing large, I'll call them mega projects, we're pursuing smaller, large projects that allow our teams to estimate more work and procure more projects, although the dollar amount might be smaller. Today, on the large project side, our average job size in the pursuit is around $300 million, so it's a lot less than what it used to be, and that's something that we... That was internally directed.

Lisa Curtis (EVP and CFO)

Yeah, and Jerry, this is Lisa. So those, those what we would consider higher risk projects are still out there. We're just, you know, we've made the internal decision to not pursue those, so.

Jerry Revich (Analyst)

Oh, okay, thank you. And then in terms of on the execution on the legacy projects, a really excellent performance this quarter. Can you just talk about what went right for you folks? Because, you know, obviously for these types of projects, history would dictate that there's risk of write-downs from an accounting standpoint as you progress towards project completion, and, you know, you folks were able to avoid that this quarter. So can you just talk about where productivity improved and just give us a little bit more context on what went well?

Kyle Larkin (President)

Yeah. Yeah, and you know, fortunately, we were out this week with Safety Week, and we got to meet a lot of our teams on some of these tough jobs. And, I mean, a credit to them. They're working, they're working really hard to focus and bring these jobs to completion. I think through all of our work over the last year, putting processes and controls and ultimately getting our forecast right, I think that's a contributor as well. And we're at a point now where we did have a couple of fades in terms of our forecast margin, and then we had some, the gain margin that kinda offset each other to the point we are. I do... You know, obviously, it's the whole risk portfolio.

I think that we have to recognize and respect the risk associated with that portfolio, but I do believe our teams are executing at a high level on those projects. And as I said, they're focused on bringing those things to completion.

Jerry Revich (Analyst)

Yep, thank you.

Lisa Curtis (EVP and CFO)

Yeah, and Jerry, just to add on to what Kyle was saying, you know, as just a reminder, you know, we still have approximately $600 million in our portfolio to work through. So again, great, it was a really good first quarter and, you know, we've been relentless on many fronts on dealing with these riskier projects. So, good, good to get through Q1.

Jerry Revich (Analyst)

Yep. Great. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

This will end our Q&A session. I'd like to turn the call back over to Mr. Larkin.

Kyle Larkin (President)

Okay. Well, thank you for your questions. As always, I wanna thank all of our employees for everything you do every day for Granite and for our customers. Your hard work and dedication is the cornerstone of Granite's success. And with that, thank you for your continued interest in Granite. We look forward to speaking with everyone very soon. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.