ICF International - Q4 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Welcome to the Q4 and full year 2023 ICF Earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there'll be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star one one on your telephone, and you'll hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Lynn Morgen of AdvisIRy Partners. Please go ahead.

Lynn Morgen (Partner)

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us to review ICF's fourth quarter and full year 2023 performance. With us today from ICF are John Wasson, Chair and CEO, and Barry Broadus, CFO. Joining them is James Morgan, Chief Operating Officer. During this conference call, we will make forward-looking statements to assist you in understanding ICF management's expectations about our future performance. These statements are subject to a number of risks that could cause actual events and results to differ materially, and I refer you to our February 27, 2024, press release and our SEC filings for discussions of those risks. In addition, our statements during this call are based on our views as of today. We anticipate that future developments will cause our views to change. Please consider the information presented in that light.

We may, at some point, elect to update the forward-looking statements made today, but specifically disclaim any obligation to do so. I will now turn the call over to ICF's CEO, John Wasson, to discuss fourth quarter and full year 2023 performance. John?

John Wasson (Chair and CEO)

Thank you, Lynn, and thank you all for joining us this afternoon to review our fourth quarter results and discuss our outlook for 2024. Our solid fourth quarter results capped another record year for ICF. Key takeaways from 2023 include full year growth in revenues from continuing operations of 12%, further margin expansion, driven by higher utilization, lower facility costs, and the overall benefits of ICF's increased scale. ICF's considerable contract wins, reaching over $2.3 billion for the year, of which 70% represented new business, indicating how well-positioned we are in areas of increased spending. Lastly, the substantial runway ahead for ICF. As we ended the year with a $3.8 billion backlog, a book-to-bill ratio of 1.2, and a $9.7 billion business development pipeline, pointing to considerable growth opportunities for ICF over the next several years.

Our investments in key growth markets continue to yield positive results and returns in 2023. These markets, namely utility consulting, disaster management, climate, environmental, and infrastructure services, together with public health and IT modernization digital transformation, accounted for approximately 80% of our revenues from continuing operations in 2023, up from 75% on the same basis last year and approximately 55% in 2020. A clear indication of the successful implementation of our strategic intent, with which we have built out our capabilities over the past several years. ICF's performance in these growth areas is primarily captured in our two major market categories: energy, environment, infrastructure, and disaster management, and health and social programs.

Revenues from continuing operations in our energy, environment, infrastructure, and disaster management market increased 10.3% in the fourth quarter and were up 13.4% for the full year, reflecting positive momentum across our portfolio of programs and services. Highlights included double-digit revenue growth and energy efficiency program revenue in 2023, thanks to a continued expansion of existing programs and the capture of several new utility clients. As you can see from our earnings release, contract awards in this area were quite strong in the fourth quarter, with 45% of the dollar amount awarded to us representing new clients or expanded scopes of work.

Our energy advisory work, which saw very strong growth in the fourth quarter and for the full year, benefiting from the addition of power engineering firm CMY in May last year, which comprises the core of our Grid Engineering and Analytics capability or GEA team, as well as increased demand for our power and technical advisory services around renewable development and the impact of the IRA and the IIJA. Also, we are pleased to note that we were recently selected as engineer of choice for a large East Coast utility, and we are seeing a significant number of revenue synergy opportunities with our GEA team and our disaster management, environmental, and electrification teams.

Our environmental and planning work for commercial clients also was a strong performer in the fourth quarter and full year, driven by ongoing work for renewable developers, as well as increasing resilience work for utilities and undergrounding power lines. IRA tax credits are supporting private development of renewables, and despite a few cancellations, we are seeing strong demand for our services in these areas, mostly for pro-projects offshore in New York, New Jersey, and Northern California, and future lease auctions, auctions in additional geographies are scheduled for this year. In disaster management, we continue to execute on our large multi-year contracts in Puerto Rico and Texas and are working on mitigation projects in over 15 states. We recently were awarded a small but strategic project in Virginia and in the County of Maui, where we are providing technical and training assistance for HUD compliance.

Lastly, our climate, environmental, and infrastructure services, which cut across all of our client categories, continued to show significant year-on-year growth in both the fourth quarter and full year. We saw expansion of climate programs for federal government agencies, and increasing urgency at the federal level to disperse IRA and IIJA funding. ICF is currently working with a number of applicants on climate priority plans, which should provide additional opportunities for us as the years progresses. To date, ICF has been awarded just north of $110 million in contracts related to the IIJA and IRA, primarily from federal and state government clients, and our current pipeline is over $215 million. This does not include all the related work that we are doing for commercial clients, where it's more difficult to associate our engagements with specific legislation.

Turning to our health and social programs market, revenues from continuing operations were up 2.4% in the fourth quarter and 15.9% for the full year. Fourth quarter comparisons were impacted by the anticipated roll-off of certain small business contracts held by companies we acquired, as well as the significant reduction in pass-through revenues associated with a large international development public health contract. As you know, we had substantial federal government contract awards in the third quarter, followed by additional wins in the fourth quarter, and our federal government pipeline was over $6.6 billion at the end of the year.

Thus, we are confident that our federal government revenue comparisons will improve substantially in the second half of this year as new contracts ramp up, and we expect our federal government revenues to grow at a high single-digit rate for full year 2024. Notable in the fourth quarter was the receipt of the Excellence in Frontline Public Health Award, given to the BioSense project, which we support at the Centers for Disease Control. This project was recognized for its efforts to collect data for more than 75% of the nation's emergency rooms. Additionally, we expanded our conventional AI capabilities and our federal health work to introduce new strategies for data collection and processing that enhance the speed and accuracy of health information monitoring and response systems.

Also, we won several awards for new or expanded work in the fourth quarter, including at the Environmental Protection Agency, to assess the risk of chemical exposure to human health, at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to support mental health programs, and at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to support overdose prevention programs. In the IT modernization digital transformation arena, we followed strong third quarter contract awards of over $150 million, with another $150 million awards in the fourth quarter, including a $33 million dollar recompete win the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to continue our modernization of their system for kidney dialysis data, a $58 million dollar expanded recompete with a Western U.S. state lottery to support the operation of its cloud-based website, and new contracts from the FDIC and the U.S. Department of Treasury.

Additionally, we continue to pursue new opportunities to drive synergies between SemanticBits' strong footprint at CMS, and ICF's platform capabilities with ServiceNow. We are increasingly showcasing SemanticBits open source and cloud-native capabilities to our longstanding clients at the CDC, the NIH, and the FDA. Both public health and IT modernization are areas of bipartisan support, and we believe ICF's deep domain expertise in health and our broad technology capabilities across the key platforms of choice in the federal government positions us for growth in 2024. Before ending my review of the 2023 business highlights, I wanna mention a unique item. As you may know, we have an aviation consulting business that works with airlines, airports, and other aviation entities, and we have particular expertise in the sustainable aviation fuels area.

In fact, ICF proudly supported Virgin Atlantic Flight 100, the first commercial aircraft flown on 100% sustainable aviation fuel from London Heathrow, landing at New York JFK on November 29th, 2023. We had several team members on board that flight. With that, I'll now turn the call over to our CFO, Barry Broadus, for his financial review. Barry?

Barry Broadus (CFO)

Thank you, John. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm pleased to provide you with additional details on our 2023 fourth quarter and full year financial performance. Total revenues in the quarter were $478.4 million, comparable to the reported revenues for the fourth quarter of 2022. Adjusting for the divestiture of our commercial marketing business in 2023, total revenues increased 4.9%, led by strong 8.8% growth from our commercial energy clients and 16.9% growth from our state and local and international government clients. Subcontractor and other direct costs totaled $129 million or 27% of total revenue, as compared to 28.7% of total revenue in the fourth quarter of 2022.

Excluding subcontractor and other direct costs, revenue from continuing operations increased 7.9% in the fourth quarter. Gross margin for the fourth quarter was 36.5% of total revenues, up 100 basis points from the third quarter of this year. Our fourth quarter indirect and selling expenses decreased 9.8% year-over-year to $123.4 million. On an adjusted basis, indirect and selling expenses were 24.4% of total revenues for the fourth quarter and 24.6% for the full year, representing a year-over-year decrease of 50 and 80 basis points, respectively, as we continue to benefit from reduced facility-related expenses, the increased efficiency and scale of the business, and the sale of the commercial marketing business....

Fourth quarter EBITDA was $53.9 million, an increase of 46% from the fourth quarter of 2022, due in part to non-recurring expenses incurred during the fourth quarter of last year. Our adjusted EBITDA was $57 million, a 3.3% increase from the fourth quarter of 2022, as our year-over-year growth was impacted by the CMG divestiture, which occurred in the third quarter of 2023. Interest expense of $9.5 million, increased from $9.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2022, reflecting higher interest rates and the impact of non-cash accounting charges. As we mentioned throughout 2023, we continued to successfully offset a significant portion of the bottom line impact of our higher interest expense through various cost reduction initiatives and tax efficiency strategies.

Net income was $22.2 million, or $1.16 per diluted share in the fourth quarter, compared to net income of $8.9 million or 47 cents per diluted share in the comparable period last year. Fourth quarter net income included $4.4 million or 18 cents per share in net tax-affected special charges related to facility reduction and severance costs, partially offset by the net gain on the sale of a remaining portion of the commercial marketing business. Moving forward, we will continue to evaluate facilities as appropriate, but we would expect any facility-related charges to be considerably less than what we incurred in 2023. Fourth quarter non-GAAP EPS was $1.68, an increase of 7.7% compared to the $1.56 per share reported in last year's fourth quarter.

Our fourth quarter non-GAAP EPS was also impacted by the divestiture of the commercial marketing business. I will now briefly review our 2023 results. Total revenue was $1.96 billion, representing an increase of 10.3% from the prior year and 12.3% from continuing operations. Our strong top-line performance for the full year was led by our growth markets, which drove double-digit revenue growth from both government and commercial clients, highlighted by a 15.7% growth in our commercial energy business and a 10.5% increase in our U.S. government revenues. Subcontractor and other direct costs were $534.7 million, or 27.2% of total revenue, compared to 27.8% of total revenue in 2022.

Adjusted EBITDA increased 11.2% to $213 million, compared to $192 million reported in 2022. Full year GAAP EPS was $4.35 per diluted share, including $17.6 million or $0.71 per share in net tax-affected special charges, which primarily consisted of facility-related, severance, and M&A costs, which were partially offset by the gain on the sale of CMG. In 2022, GAAP EPS was $3.38 per diluted share, including $1.31 of tax-affected special charges. For the full year, our non-GAAP EPS was $6.50, representing a 12.7% increase year over year. We're very pleased with our success in optimizing profitability.

In addition to the actions I mentioned earlier, we have implemented multi-year tax strategies that enabled us to realize a 14.4% tax rate in 2023. Going forward, we anticipate our tax strategies will allow us to maintain an annual tax rate of approximately 23.5% in 2024 and in 2025. Shifting to cash flows and our balance sheet, our full year operating cash flow totaled $152.4 million. This compares to $162.2 million in the prior year, which benefited from approximately $30 million related to the timing of collections and disbursements. Our days sales outstanding was 72 days, as compared to 71 days in last year's fourth quarter.

Capital expenditures for 2023 totaled $22.3 million, down from $24.5 million in the prior year. We made significant progress on our debt reduction, paying down $104 million in debt during the fourth quarter. Paydown was primarily driven by our cash flow from operations. We reduced our total debt by nearly $130 million since the end of last year, inclusive of the acquisition of CMY Solutions. Our adjusted net leverage ratio was 2.16x at quarter end, compared to 2.7 at the end of the third quarter, ahead of the guidance we provided on our previous call. In 2024, we will continue to focus on debt reduction. Absent an acquisition, we expect to delever in a similar manner as we did in 2023.

Our fixed debt was approximately 60% of our total debt at year-end, which is consistent with our target. Our average interest rate for 2023 was 5.6%. We remain committed to our balanced approach for capital allocation, which includes organic growth initiatives, acquisitions, debt reductions, and share repurchases to offset the dilution of our employee incentive programs and quarterly dividends. Today, we announced a quarterly cash dividend of $0.14 per share, payable on April 12, 2024 to shareholders of record on March 22, 2024. I will conclude my remarks by providing additional guidance metrics for 2024 to assist you with your modeling.

Looking at the cadence of 2024, we expect to generate approximately 48% of our revenue guidance in the first half of the year, with a balance in the second half. Depreciation and amortization expense is expected to range from $24 million-26 million. Amortization of intangibles should be approximately $32 million-33 million. Interest expense will range from $32 million-34 million. And as I mentioned, our full year tax rate will be approximately 23.5%. We expect a fully diluted weighted average share count of approximately 19 million. Operating cash flow is expected to be $155 million, and our capital expenditures are anticipated to be between $25 million-28 million. And with that, I will turn the call back over to John for his closing remarks.

John Wasson (Chair and CEO)

Thanks, Barry. In 2023, we took several strategic actions to streamline ICF's business and strengthen our positioning in the key growth markets we have identified. These included the integration of the SemanticBits acquisition, providing us with critical open-source capability, the divestiture of our commercial marketing business lines, and the addition of CMY, which brought us new competencies in the fast-growing areas of grid modernization and electrical engineering. In doing so, we further focused our portfolio towards high-growth verticals. This served us well in 2023 and will continue to drive ICF's profitable growth in 2024 and beyond. As Barry noted, we substantially reduced our net leverage ratio in 2023, providing ICF with additional financial flexibility to execute on our acquisition growth strategy, which has been a key element of our success to date.

Based on our current strong backlog and visibility, together with the ongoing positive trends on our key growth markets, we expect 2024 organic revenues from continuing operations to range from $2.03 billion-$2.1 billion, representing year-on-year growth of 8.5% at the midpoint, and 5.2% growth at the midpoint when compared to reported 2023 results. EBITDA is expected to range from $220 million-$230 million, reflecting year-on-year growth of 14.2% at the midpoint. Our guidance range for GAAP EPS is $5.25-$5.55, excluding special charges, and for non-GAAP EPS is $6.60-$6.90.

As a reminder, assuming similar margins to the rest of the business, our commercial marketing business lines are estimated to have contributed $0.20 of Non-GAAP EPS in 2023, which will not recur in 2024. Thus, on a continuing operations basis, estimated Non-GAAP EPS growth in 2024 will be 7% at the midpoint. In addition to this very positive outlook, we're also encouraged by the many recognitions that ICF received in 2023, highlighting our commitment to a corporate culture predicated on investing in our people, minimizing our environmental footprint, supporting our communities, and serving clients with integrity. And with that, operator, I would like to open the call to questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. At this time, we'll conduct the question-and-answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, you'll need to 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 our Q&A roster. Our first question comes to the line of Joe Vafi with Canaccord. Your line is now open.

Joe Vafi (Managing Director)

Hey, guys, good afternoon. Hope everybody's doing well. Just, if we could kind of drill down on the organic federal outlook for this year. It sounds like there were, you know, a couple moving parts here with some SBA business that is going away and then some pass-throughs. Just give me your thought process here on, you know, the cadence of that, federal organic, you know, you know, moving forward here through 2024, and then I'll follow up.

John Wasson (Chair and CEO)

Well, sure. I mean, I think as, you know, we noted in the remarks, and I think you did a nice job of summarizing, Joe. I mean, I think we, you know, we are rolling off a few of the small business contracts that we acquired in 2022. And I think when we made those acquisitions, we indicated that we would, you know, roll off of certain contracts towards the end of 2023. And so we did that. We've done that in the third and fourth quarter here at the end of the year. And so, you know, that, you know, so that has occurred. And then as we also noted, we, you know, had some reduction in pass-throughs on some USAID work.

I will say that, as we go into next year, you know, I don't think that we'll see as material roll-offs on small business contracts. We're also winning synergistic work from those acquisitions, you know, on IT modernization. And so with the synergies that we're seeing, the strong pipeline, the strong awards, I mentioned we've, I think we've last discussed the last two quarters, we've had very strong awards in the federal arena, very strong pipeline in IT modernization. We won $150 million in Q3, $150 million in Q4.

And so with that visibility, and the momentum from that, I think we're looking at, I would say, low to mid single digit government growth in the first half of the year and, you know, low double digit growth in the second half of the year, which gets us to high single digit growth for the year. And, you know, I think we have clear visibility to that from a bottom up build up of that, and so we feel quite comfortable, quite confident in it.

Joe Vafi (Managing Director)

Okay. That's helpful. Thanks, John. And then, I know you mentioned a few puts and takes on IRA and IIJA opportunities. So, you know, is this... You know, at a high level, do you see some of this work kind of rolling out as you thought? Or, you know, is it, you know, at a high level, is it a little slower, a little faster, or it's kinda the normal kinda puts and takes as this stuff evolves?

John Wasson (Chair and CEO)

... Yeah, I would say it's rolling out as we expected. You know, and I think we continue to see progress, and we continue to see more opportunities on that front. As I said in the remarks, you know, we've won $110 million worth of work to date, and the pipeline is $250 million--$215 million. And I would say both on the IIJA and the IRA, we continue to see acceleration in the opportunities and, you know, additional awards. As I mentioned in the remarks, we're seeing a lot of activity on the commercial side from the IRA, driven by, you know, the tax credits around renewables and the clean energy transition.

So I think that, you know, that's—those are key, you know, drivers for the growth we expect to see in 2024 in the energy and climate arena. I think that, as I've talked about before, I think they continue to provide potentially additional upside, particularly as we get into 2025. As I said before, you know, we're guiding to high single-digit organic growth here for all in for 2024. I think if the IRA and IIJA continue to accelerate, that's a path for us to, you know, potentially get to double-digit organic growth in 2025 and beyond. So as you can imagine, we're quite focused on identifying every single opportunity and pursuing everything that's out there. You know, that's a major focus for ICF right now.

Joe Vafi (Managing Director)

Great. Thanks for that outlook, John. Much appreciated.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment for our next question. This question comes to the line of Tobey Sommer with Truist. Your line is now open.

Tobey Sommer (Managing Director)

Thank you. With respect to the IIJA and IRA, investors recently have been asking if those could be defunded or somehow capitated as opportunities in a different political climate. How do you assess the risk, and to what degree has state and local funds, as well as private capital, already been spent in anticipation of either federal funds or the tax credits of the IRA?

John Wasson (Chair and CEO)

Yeah, you know, it's a good question, and we're hearing those same questions, Toby. I would say that, first of all, I would say on the federal and state and local side, the money is certainly flowing, and that we are seeing, you know, we have visibility to opportunities from IIJA and IRA on the federal and state and local fronts. And I think clients are quite focused on, you know, leveraging those funds and pushing forward with their efforts on climate and renewable energy and clean energy transition. And so it's full speed ahead there. And I think the tax credits are certainly, on the IRA side, on the commercial side, have shifted the cost curves and are driving, you know, very significant investment, you know, in renewables and clean energy.

We're seeing that on the commercial side of the house. And so, you know, so there's a lot of focus on leveraging those funds and, you know, taking advantage of them, both in the government and the private sector. You know, the risk of the funds being, you know, impacted by a new administration, I mean, I'm obviously not a political prognosticator. I do think, you know, on the IRA, you know, the vast majority of the funds will flow through the tax credits. You know, I think it's less likely you're gonna see those tax credits cut in a, you know... Politically, I think, I haven't seen—I mean, it would be a way of kind of potentially raising taxes.

Anyway, you know, I think that, I guess I won't predict the political future. I will say that the IIJA funding is certainly moving and moving well and moving strongly, and that was a bipartisan bill. So my own personal opinion is that's unlikely to be pulled back. You know, in the IRA, as I say, I think the funding is state and local and state and federal businesses are focused on leveraging those funds and are making significant progress spending that money. And I think that, you know, the tax credits are driving a lot of change, too.

Tobey Sommer (Managing Director)

Thanks. If I heard you right, it sounds like your federal business, the cadence in 2024 will be more like mid single digit in the first half and then, you know, double digit in the back half. Is that right? I just wanna verify that.

John Wasson (Chair and CEO)

Yeah.

Tobey Sommer (Managing Director)

And then, are there specific contracts or agencies that are driving that acceleration in the back half that you could kinda call out?

John Wasson (Chair and CEO)

Well, I think the growth in the back half of the year, you know, I think is gonna be-- it'll be driven primarily by our two major growth drivers in the federal arena. It'll be driven by our IT modernization contract wins, where, you know, we won $150 million in the third quarter, we won $150 million in the fourth quarter. We continue to have a significant pipeline there. I think we have pretty significant visibility where that's gonna come from. You know, that our largest client is HHS, so a key portion of that will come from HHS clients and then other key civilian clients that we support on the IT modernization front.

In a similar way, I think on the public health front, again, you know, between CDC, NIH, Administration for Children and Families, we have a good pipeline of opportunities, and have had awards here, you know, at the end of the year that, you know, give us visibility for how that will play out and will drive that growth. And so, you know, I think we're just in this period where we are rolling off some of these small business contracts here in the third and fourth quarter, which was expected, and we talked about when we acquired SemanticBits and gave guidance for it. So we're rolling off of those and then also, you know, continuing to win and ramp up other federal programs, particularly in IT modernization and public health.

And so, we're just in that transition, but I think we have very clear visibility on how this will play out.

Tobey Sommer (Managing Director)

Thanks. As far as the pipeline, the $215 million, I think you said, could you describe what, like, the upper bounds of what a big project looks like in that pipeline? Just trying to juxtapose what we're used to seeing in federal and in your existing commercial work with what may come from some of these other catalysts. Thanks.

John Wasson (Chair and CEO)

Yeah, you know, I would say, I mean, a big contract, a big state and local contract in the IIJ, IRA front would be, I don't know, $5 million-$10 million, $5 million a year in revenue. So, you know, 15, 20, you know, of, of total opportunities every year. You have to understand, like the rest of our business, I mean, there's a significant amount of opportunities that are more advisory, doing planning studies, you know, doing market studies, which are gonna be smaller opportunities. And then there's a handful of larger implementation opportunities, whether it's implementing, you know, energy efficiency, electrification, decarbonization programs, where you're doing more implementation. And those would be at the upper bound, you know, so, you know, you know, $10 million-$20 million dollar contracts over 3-4 years.

But, you know, again, I think it's gonna break out between advisory and implementation, like all of our business.

Tobey Sommer (Managing Director)

Thank you.

John Wasson (Chair and CEO)

Over time, as you get more deeper into the spend of that money, it'll be more larger implementation, you know.

Tobey Sommer (Managing Director)

Great. Thank you very much.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment for our next question. This question comes to the line of Tim Mulrooney with William Blair. Your line is now open.

Tim Mulrooney (Group Head–Global Services)

Yeah, thanks for taking my questions. The first one's, you know, I appreciate the color you gave unexpected organic growth in the federal business in 2024. I was hoping you could give us an idea of your expectations in the commercial business as well. There's a little noise here with the divestiture, so I was just hoping to get a little more color on how you're thinking about that business performing on a continuing operations basis in 2024.

John Wasson (Chair and CEO)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think, I would say the commercial business on a continuing operation standpoint will be in the neighborhood of 14%-15% growth.

Tim Mulrooney (Group Head–Global Services)

Okay. And then, pivoting to your disaster management, I was just hoping to dig into that business in a little more detail. I mean, are you seeing a notable increase in demand or additional opportunities in this business lately? I'm thinking about the contract you won in Oregon recently, the issues we're seeing in Hawaii or the recent flooding that we've seen across certain parts of the country. Curious how that, how you're thinking about that business.

John Wasson (Chair and CEO)

Well, you know, I'll start at the highest level, then I'll drop down and answer your question that way, Tim. So first, I mean, at a high level, obviously, disaster management is one that's been one of our key growth drivers here over the last several years. You know, across all across those five growth drivers we've been, you know, stating we've been growing north of 10%. I would say disaster recovery, you know, over the last many years, has certainly, you know, achieved that level of growth. I think as we look forward, you know, generally, I think we're thinking high single digits for disaster recovery. You know, based on the book of business we have today, we're doing significant work in Texas and Puerto Rico.

I do think, to your point, there are, you know, material opportunities out there that potentially could play out here in 2024 or going into 2025. Typically, when there's, you know, significant hurricanes or significant natural disasters, you know, the work we do is not, typically not the immediate response. It's more the recovery work, rebuilding the public infrastructure, rebuilding homes, which typically begins about a year after the storm occurs, once Congress has got the funding in place. And so some of the opportunities you mentioned, Hawaii, others, I think, are opportunities later this year, probably more material they played out for us, you know, as we go into 2025. But certainly, the Oregon wildfires is a nice contract win for us and will drive some growth.

We're still very busy in Puerto Rico and busy in Texas. So, you know, I think, you know, we remain bullish on disaster recovery and continue to see it as an important growth area.

Tim Mulrooney (Group Head–Global Services)

Got it. Appreciate the color. Thanks, John.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment for our next question. This question comes to the line of Marc Riddick with Sidoti. Your line is now open.

Marc Riddick (Senior Equity Analyst)

Hey, good evening. So I wanted to go over to-

John Wasson (Chair and CEO)

Hi.

Marc Riddick (Senior Equity Analyst)

Sort of, maybe a few of the sort of cash flow type questions. I was sort of curious as to... You had a debt pay down a little faster with the pay down toward the end of the year, getting you. So could you maybe give us a little reminder as to comfort level as to leverage range and whether, you know, any thoughts around timing of interest rates has an impact on that?

Barry Broadus (CFO)

Yeah. Hey, Marc, thanks for the question. As we've done in the past, you know, we do have a lot of seasonality, you know, in the pace where we pay down debt. You know, most of the debt reduction, you know, happens in the second half of the year. We saw that happen in spades this particular year with about $68 million of debt reduction in Q3 and $104 million in Q4. So, you know, we expect that, you know, on a go-forward basis.

... We did see, you know, some pickup on the debt reduction, which, you know, related to the sale of the commercial marketing business. And that was offset, you know, and helped pay for the acquisition of our CMY Solutions deal that we did earlier in the year. So, you know, and we think that, you know, we baked in for 2024, some reductions of our, you know, interest rates, you know, given what, you know, what we've been hearing from our friends at the Fed.

You know, we'll see how that plays out, but, you know, we've been, you know, I would say, more conservative on, on some of that, and just to, to provide, you know, a good runway for, you know, what we think from a debt reduction perspective. But you know, we, we feel like, you know, we can continue to produce the cash flows, like we've done in the past, you know, and, and pay down debt and you know, improve the leverage position even further, in 2024, of course, barring any acquisitions.

John Wasson (Chair and CEO)

Yeah, I just would add that from my perspective, you know, as you know, I mean, over the years, there's been periods where ICF has levered up to do acquisitions and then paid down the debt. We obviously levered up given the ITG acquisition in 2020 and SemanticBits and Creative in 2022. I think we've done a good job over the last year and a half, two years, paying down that debt, really focusing on that. Our leverage ratio is back down to 2.2 here, net leverage ratio. And so, you know, we're in a position now where I think we, you know, have capacity in the balance sheet. If the right acquisition opportunities come along, we can certainly take advantage of them. Obviously, we're quite disciplined on that, as you know.

I mean, we, you know, we certainly want to find opportunities in our key growth markets, good cultural fit, good strategic fit that is accretive, you know, in year one, which, you know, is, you know, which gets to kind of what's the state of valuations right now. But, you know, I think we are in a position where we, you know, we have paid down the debt, and we have a strong balance sheet, and acquisitions have been part of our strategy. So it's... So I think we've done a good job of paying down the debt and getting ourself in a position where we can, you know, leverage the balance sheet again going forward.

Marc Riddick (Senior Equity Analyst)

Great. And then I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the pricing environment and maybe what you're thinking about as far as rate increases during the course of the year. Are there any particular areas of concern as far as pushback, or how are we thinking about the pricing environment generally?

John Wasson (Chair and CEO)

I would say—well, I guess I would say from a pricing perspective for acquisitions, I would say that, you know, it's still a bit of a frosty market. I don't think—you know, pricing on acquisitions is, you know, fully, you know, fully come down, given the, you know, ongoing interest rate environment. But having said that, you know, we're starting to see some interesting deals and some interesting deal flow. Barry, I don't know, you want to talk about interest rates and those types of issues?

Barry Broadus (CFO)

Yeah, you know, second that. You know, I'm not sure that, you know, we've seen the real balance come through from a valuation perspective just yet, you know-

Marc Riddick (Senior Equity Analyst)

Mm-hmm.

Barry Broadus (CFO)

With the interest rates at the levels that they are. But you know, we are starting to see a little bit more deal flow, which is good. You know, and you know, but we'll see, you know, how the Fed reacts to the economic data that we've seen. You know, and hopefully, we'll see some rate reductions, you know, coming soon.

Marc Riddick (Senior Equity Analyst)

Great. And then I would be remiss if I didn't sort of ask if how we should be thinking about any changes or what you're seeing from customers as they sort of make their adjustments or evolve their thoughts around AI and what they want to do. Can you get a little bit of a color as to maybe the progress that or any changes that you've seen maybe over the last few months that might drive near-term and longer-term demand as far as AI-driven opportunities? Thanks.

John Wasson (Chair and CEO)

I mean, I would say that, you know, we're certainly seeing increased interest on AI from our clients. And we have a number of clients who have reached out and are interested in doing pilot projects or, you know, exploring various use cases, you know, with an AI focus to help support, you know, the mission of our federal agencies or our commercial clients. And so we're certainly seeing more interest there in doing more work, our domain experts, our technology experts, in partnership with the client.

On the AI front, you know, as we've talked about before, certainly within ICF, we continue to take a hard look at approaches to use AI to, you know, improve the efficiency of our business development, our marketing, our proposal preparation, to improve the productivity of our coders in the IT modernization and in our IT business. I think there's some real opportunities for productivity improvement there. And so, you know, I think in the long run, certainly, I think it's gonna be a net positive for ICF. I think it's still very early, but we're pleased to see our clients reaching out and looking for help and assistance from us.

And so we're, you know, we're watching it carefully and you know, undertaking activities, both for clients and internal, evaluating internal approaches to leverage AI to improve productivity and add value for our clients. So certainly an area of focus for us.

Marc Riddick (Senior Equity Analyst)

Great. Thank you very much.

Operator (participant)

Thank you.

John Wasson (Chair and CEO)

Thanks, Marc.

Operator (participant)

I'm showing no further questions at this time and would now like to turn the call back to John Wasson for closing remarks.

John Wasson (Chair and CEO)

Well, thank you for participating in today's call. We look forward to connecting with you at upcoming conferences and events. Take care.

Operator (participant)

Okay. Again, thank you. This does conclude the program, and you may now disconnect.