Matrix Service Company - Q2 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good day, and thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Matrix Service Company conference call to discuss results for the second quarter fiscal 2023. At this time, all participants on 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. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press the 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 speaker today, Kellie Smythe, Senior Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Kellie Smythe (Senior Director of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Justin. Good morning and welcome to Matrix Service Company's second quarter fiscal 2023 earnings call. Participants on today's call will include John Hewitt, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Kevin Cavanah, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. The presentation materials we will be referring to during the webcast today can be found under Events and Presentations on the Investor Relations section of matrixservicecompany.com. Before we begin, please let me remind you that on today's call, we may make various remarks about future expectations, plans and prospects for Matrix Service Company that constitute forward-looking statements for the purposes of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, including those discussed in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and in subsequent filings made by the company with the SEC. To the extent we utilize non-GAAP measures, re-reconciliations will be provided in various press releases, periodic SEC filings, and on our website. I will now turn the call over to John Hewitt, President and CEO of Matrix Service Company.

John Hewitt (President and CEO)

Thank you, Kellie. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. I'd like to open today's call with a reminder that we are all accountable for safety. Responsibility for the safety of ourselves and each other does not stop when we work. We carry that responsibility into our personal lives as well. This personal safety responsibility is about accountability, communication, and training, or in short, ACT. We use this acronym to focus our leadership and drive a culture of safety across the organization. It reminds us to be accountable to ourselves and each other and live up to the leadership expectations we each carry. It says we must communicate directly with purpose, the expectations, and risks to execute better. It reminds us that training improves outcomes, skills, and leadership.

Our road to zero injuries never ends at work or at home. Each of us have a personal role to play in that journey. Now for our business update. As we've discussed on previous calls, some projects that we took into backlog during the pandemic were lower in overall margins and were affected by the operating dynamics over the last several years. As noted previously, we have one of these mid-sized legacy projects left in the portfolio, which we are in the midst of completing. This project at Midstream Gas Processing Facility, which is in the Process and Industrial segment, was awarded in calendar 2021.

Due to a breakdown in commercial negotiations concerning the extensive scope changes that impacted our ability to progress the project work according to forecast, as well as the impact of global supply chain issues and inflation, we have taken a charge of $9.6 million in the quarter related to the forecasted outcome. The project is expected to be mechanically complete in the fourth quarter of this fiscal year. We continue to manage our forecasted cost to complete and work with our client to negotiate a reasonable outcome. This project aside, we continue to see strong momentum driven by the recovery in our end markets, our focused business development approach, a streamlined organization, and our strong brand across the operating segments. In addition, our strong execution performance continues to create repeat business with several major energy and utility clients.

Our momentum is clearly reflected by the ongoing increase in project awards that I spoke about on our last call. This trend continued into our second fiscal quarter with total awards of $319 million. This was our highest award total since the first fiscal quarter of 2020. Second quarter awards resulted in a consolidated book-to-bill of 1.6, and we had a book-to-bill of 1.3 or greater in each of our segments. Year to date, we have received project awards totaling $553 million and achieved a book-to-bill of 1.0 or greater in each of our segments and a consolidated book-to-bill of 1.4. Bidding activity remains robust across all segments, and we're confident the strong award cycle will continue for the balance of the year.

In Storage and Terminal Solutions, where we are seeing the largest individual opportunities, our second quarter book-to-bill was 1.8 on awards of $115 million. Included in these awards is another large ethane storage project, which is in addition to the Enterprise Products award we recently announced. In our Utility and Power Infrastructure segment, our book-to-bill was 1.9 on awards of $98 million, including an upgrade project for an existing LNG peak shaving facility. Finally, in Process and Industrial Facilities, our book-to-bill was 1.3 on awards of $105 million, which included a new fixed-based maintenance contract, an additional spring turnaround for a larger refiner, and a scope expansion of a previously awarded renewable fuels project.

At the end of the quarter, project backlog was $740 million, a 26% increase from the start of the fiscal year and backlog up across each of our segments. Our capital projects opportunity pipeline, which is comprised of projects greater than $5 million, remains strong and includes $5.5 billion worth of quality opportunities. This pipeline does not include our normal day-to-day and recurring maintenance activities. The capital projects pipeline value can fluctuate from quarter to quarter given award progression, opportunity changes, and our continuous evaluation of project quality. We expect the pipeline to remain healthy for the foreseeable future. The vast majority of our opportunities are in clean energy and energy transition projects. In addition to the broader shift that is occurring in the energy markets, client spending decisions are being driven by concerns about energy security globally, aging infrastructure, and energy reliability domestically.

This is an exciting time for the company as we extend our expertise into projects that support the development of the infrastructure needed to enable the transition to a lower carbon energy mix and energy security. In fact, about 70% of the projects in our pipeline support this transition, with traditional energy, industrial, and chemical projects making up the balance. Over the years, Matrix Brand has been synonymous with best-in-class storage solutions. Building storage tanks has been an important driver of our revenue. What's less well known to some investors is that our storage expertise extends far beyond the traditional flat-bottom storage tanks used to store crude oil. The storage projects we are working on today are comprised of complex, single and double-walled cryogenic spheres and tanks.

As an example, you may have seen our recent announcement that we were awarded the greenfield engineering, procurement, and construction of a 600,000-barrel cryogenic ethane storage tank for Enterprise Products along the Texas Gulf Coast. We are fielding a growing number of downstream project opportunities, including those for both ethane and ethylene. These types of projects require the high degree of technical expertise and experience Matrix can offer. These specialty vessels, as we call them, are used for a variety of applications, including LNG, hydrogen, ammonia, ethane, and other NGLs. In many applications, a storage tank is the critical construction path of an overall terminal project, thus giving us a competitive advantage to provide a complete facility to our energy clients.

With that said, before I hand the call over to Kevin Cavanah to discuss our operating results for the quarter, I wanna emphasize that the amendment our business is not yet reflected in our operating results, nor did we expect that it would be. We expect that the larger projects will positively impact our results starting in our fourth fiscal quarter. I'd like to express my gratitude to our shareholders for their patience they have shown as we worked hard to optimize and protect our business following a rapid deterioration of our end markets during the first two years of the pandemic. We are seeing positive trends in our business as we win projects, build backlog, and execute with our transformed organization. As is normal in our business, the timing of awards and starts of projects can have an impact on our quarter-to-quarter operating performance.

That being said, our expectation is that we will achieve a revenue level in the fourth quarter that returns the business to profitable performance with gross margins at or near our target range of 10%-12%. I'll now turn the call over to Kevin to discuss our results, and then we will open for questions.

Kevin Cavanah (VP and CFO)

Thank you, John. The second quarter was shaping up to be in line with our expectations. As John discussed, project award activity was strong across all three segments. Our liquidity improved during the quarter, and operating results for the second quarter were similar to the first quarter with one exception. Unfortunately, the outlook for a change order recovery and an increase in the forecasted cost to complete a midstream gas processing project in the Process and Industrial Facilities segment changed significantly just prior to our original plan release of earnings. As a result of that change, we recorded a significant adjustment to the project forecast and put the project into a loss position. We reported a quarterly charge of $9.6 million, or approximately $0.36 per share. The project is scheduled to be mechanically complete in the fourth fiscal quarter.

We will continue efforts to manage the forecasted cost and negotiate a reasonable outcome of our claims with the client. This adjustment also triggered a goodwill impairment analysis for the impacted business unit in the Process and Industrial Facilities segment. To be clear, the long-term prospects of the Process and Industrial Facilities segment are strong across multiple markets, including thermal vacuum chambers, refining, renewable fuels, chemicals, and mining and minerals. However, our recent project performance and near-term prospects in the gas processing portion of this segment required us to reevaluate the fair value of the related goodwill. We determined an impairment of goodwill was required for one of the business units serving this market and recorded a non-cash charge of $12.3 million, or approximately $0.46 per share in the quarter.

Our second quarter revenue was $194 million, compared to $208 million in the first quarter. Consolidated gross profit decreased to a loss of $1.3 million in the quarter, including the project adjustment. Excluding the adjustment, our gross profit was $8.3 million in the quarter, and our gross margin was 4.3%, which was somewhat lower than our expectations due to underrecovered overhead costs at this revenue level, which impacted gross margins by 230 basis points. We expect underrecovery to improve as revenue levels increase in the fourth quarter. Consolidated SG&A expenses were $17.5 million in the second quarter, compared to $16.8 million in the first quarter. The increase is primarily related to project pursuit costs as we continue our efforts to increase our backlog of quality projects.

We also incurred $1.3 million of restructuring costs in the second quarter, primarily related to closing an underperforming office. Our effective tax rate for the second quarter was zero as expected. We will continue to place valuation allowances on newly generated deferred tax assets, and we'll realize the benefit associated with the reserved deferred tax assets when the company returns to profitable performance later this year. For the three months ended December 31st, 2022, we had a net loss of $32.8 million, or $1.22 per fully diluted share. On an adjusted basis, we had a net loss of $14.4 million or an adjusted loss of $0.53 per fully diluted share, of which $0.36 related to the previously mentioned project loss. Turning to our segments, starting with Utility and Power Infrastructure.

Revenue for the Utility and Power Infrastructure segment increased to $51 million in the second quarter compared to $45 million in the first quarter. The higher revenue volume relates to increased power delivery work. The company is substantially complete with the previous peak shaver projects, and the newly awarded peak shaver project will not begin to positively impact revenue until the end of the fiscal year. The segment gross margin was 4.8% the second quarter of fiscal 2023, compared to 3.8% in the first quarter. The margin increase was related to improved overhead recovery. While margins are improving, the segment continued to be impacted by work on projects with previously reduced gross margins and projects that were bid in a highly competitive environment.

In Process and Industrial Facilities, revenue was $81 million in the second quarter compared to $87 million in the first quarter. The decrease was primarily related to the project adjustment previously discussed. The second gross margin was a loss of 6.4%. Excluding the $9.6 million adjustment on the gas processing project, the segment gross margin was a positive 5.6%, which improved modestly over the first quarter gross margin of 5%. The segment continued to incur under-recovered overhead costs in the second quarter, which impacted gross margins by 250 basis points at this revenue level. Finally, in Storage and Terminal Solutions, revenue decreased to $63 million in the second quarter as compared to $77 million in the first quarter.

The revenue volume was lower than expected as the award of a large storage project was delayed, and that project was previously expected to begin generating revenue in the second quarter. While the ultimate award of that project is not known, the company has successfully captured other storage project awards, as evidenced by a 1.8 book-to-bill for the first six months of the year. These award projects will generate additional revenue that have a later start date than the aforementioned project. As a result, the decline in quarterly revenue from the storage segment is temporary, and we expect to see a substantial increase in the fourth quarter. The segment gross margin was 2.6% for the second quarter, which was impacted by two issues.

Lower revenue volume negatively impacted overhead recovery, which had a 460 basis point impact in the quarter, and increased forecasted costs to complete a smaller capital storage project had a 260 basis point impact in the quarter. That project was awarded in a competitive environment and is scheduled to be completed within the fiscal year. Now turning to liquidity. As of December 31st, 2022, we had total liquidity of $80.5 million, an increase of $23.9 million during the quarter. Liquidity improved primarily as a result of an expected decrease in working capital investment resulting from the timing of cash flows on projects. Liquidity is comprised of $31.5 million of unrestricted cash and $49 million of borrowing availability. The company also has $25 million of restricted cash to support the credit facility and borrowings of $15 million.

We expect our liquidity position to continue to improve for several reasons, including expected improved operating results in the fourth fiscal quarter, the receipt of approximately $13 million of tax refunds in the third fiscal quarter, and positive cash flow from newly awarded capital projects. Overall, the operating results for the second quarter were disappointing. However, the legacy projects that have negatively impacted our results will be completed within the fiscal year, and many of the headwinds we have been facing are abating. In addition, a number of our businesses are generating improved operating performance with margins at or near targeted ranges. Combined with the strong award activity and the strength of the project funnel, we are confident that our revenue will increase, gross margins and overhead recovery will improve, resulting in significantly improved operating results and a return to profitability.

We'll now open the call up 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. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Brent Thielman from D.A. Davidson. Your line is now open.

Brent Thielman (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Hey, great. Good morning, John, Kevin.

John Hewitt (President and CEO)

Morning.

Brent Thielman (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

I guess just one question on the revenue volume. Just kind of wanted to gauge your temperature. I mean, are you surprised by the time it's taking to kind of get some of these new awards moving forward? Kind of anything unusual behind that? Then, you know, just kind of want to get your confidence, what you're seeing, you know, happen with some of these awards. You know, they again, get you confidence around a pickup in the fourth quarter as you're, as you've laid out.

John Hewitt (President and CEO)

Yeah. you know, if you look at the revenues for the quarter, they were pretty much in line with our expectations. I'd say the only exception to that was the volume within Storage and Terminal Solutions was a little bit lower than we originally expected. And that's the result of as I mentioned on my comments, a large storage project that we expected to be awarded, and we would've started during the second quarter, and it would have had a pretty decent amount of revenue in the quarter. That project is still not awarded and the timing of when it will be awarded, don't know that.

The good news is that the segment had a bunch of other projects that we've had awarded the last six months, the prospects for the increased revenue segment are still there. They just start a little later than the project that didn't get awarded. We're. You know, that's the only variance from the revenue standpoint. The timing on some of these projects that, you know, when we're pulling in the backlog, you know, the work generally on some of them could take up to two quarters before we get any kind of heavy revenue. There'll be some upfront engineering. Some of the projects are a little bit more complex, so there's more time taken to negotiate contracts. Owner may have some final permits to get in place.

Usually, you know, as we said in our comments, it can take a quarter or two for those things to really start impacting our revenue.

Brent Thielman (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

John, that just 'cause these are kind of more of the larger capital projects. Is that fair?

John Hewitt (President and CEO)

I mean, well, even. I mean, larger capital projects, but you know, even projects that are sometimes in the, say, $30 million-$50 million kind of range, you know, depending on who the client is and how their processes work after they select a contractor. In some terms, we could be selected, we could be able to put it in the backlog, but it could take a couple months before we really even start putting money into it. It's just kind of the sort of the nature of the business. As we return our revenue levels, it's a little bit more impactful to the business on a quarter-over-quarter basis until we get back up to a revenue run rate that's foundational for the company.

Brent Thielman (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. Okay, that's helpful. You know, just on the midstream gas processing project, just kind of curious why negotiations didn't sort of translate to the outcome you'd anticipated. You know, I think the bigger question here is probably just that, you know, there are others of this magnitude you're in negotiations with customers where, you know, maybe there's risk of a similar outcome, or is this sort of truly unusual to you?

John Hewitt (President and CEO)

Yeah, no, I think this was sort of an unusual situation. you know, this is, as we said, you know, and we've said before, you know, in other calls, you know, this is probably the last of our larger, what I'd call our COVID contracts. So the... You know, I would say we're not completed with our client discussing through some of the commercial issues, but we felt at the time of the filing here that we needed to take a position, and this is the position that, you know, that we've taken.

Brent Thielman (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Understood. I guess John or Kevin, I mean, in any context for what sort of revenue's left for that job as we work through the kind of fiscal second half?

John Hewitt (President and CEO)

Yeah. Yeah. $25 million-$30 million. A lot of that will be out in the third quarter.

Brent Thielman (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. And John, I mean, it sounds like you're pretty confident book-to-bill is gonna be pretty strong here over the next couple of quarters. I mean, any kind of highlighted sectors you'd wanna point to where you're really seeing a lot of activity?

John Hewitt (President and CEO)

Yeah. I think whole thing's storage, so there's a lot of... Those are obviously, too, where some of the bigger projects are, but, you know, a lot of activity in storage around LNG, ammonia, ethane, propane, hydrogen. You know, we continue to work in that sector. Those opportunities continue to come flowing in on FEED and pre-FEED work and hydrogen opportunities, both domestically and internationally. We're continuing to work in that market. I think, you know, what we see out in front of us, the opportunities for LNG peak shaving facilities, LNG plants related to ship or green and export is pretty big.

You know, we feel very, very comfortable where we are, that we're gonna continue to see good awards and positive bookings as we move out over the next several quarters. You know, like in all of our business, the timing of all that, when we can take it into backlog, that can move from month to month. But as, you know, as we've said before, you know, the trend in backlog growth for us is what's important in our award cycle. I think what we see out in the future is a very positive trend in awards and building our backlog.

Brent Thielman (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay, great. I appreciate that. I'll pass it on.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, that is gonna be star one one. Again, if you would like to ask a question, that is gonna be star one one. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from John Franzreb from Sidoti. Your line is now open.

John Franzreb (Senior Equity Analyst)

Hey, John and Kevin. Thanks for taking my questions. Just to circle back to the midstream processing project, was there anything unique about this contract that you didn't have to engage in before?

John Hewitt (President and CEO)

No, I don't think it's anything as far as the process, the design, the fabrication, the erection of the facility, I would say it's not. We do more complex things.

John Franzreb (Senior Equity Analyst)

What's the unusual part that the customer pushed back on the changes in scope?

John Hewitt (President and CEO)

Well, I, you know, I really don't wanna debate that in public, so we're trying to give you guys a perspective of the challenges on the project. Certainly, the supply chain issues that I think the planet has felt over the last 18 months have had an impact on that, both from us, from a delivery timeframe and inflationary pressure. As we noted in the release, the job had a lot of changes in scope from the client. When there's significant amount of changes, they can also impact our ability to perform as we had planned. Those are things that we're working through with our client and, you know, we're continuing to do that.

John Franzreb (Senior Equity Analyst)

John, do you feel there's any, you know, in hindsight I guess, any operational changes that you should make in order to prevent this kind of, you know, incident to happen again?

John Hewitt (President and CEO)

I mean, we'll do what we normally do. We will do a lessons learned and we will do a lessons learned with the client if that's afforded to us when we're done. To talk about how we interacted. There, you know, there's continues to be possibility for future work with this client, and certainly that would be an outcome that we would like. You know, we have a lot of clients we build complex projects with over and over and over again. So they're, you know, they're obviously happy with our performance.

I would say this is just a bit of a unique situation and, but we're, you know, we're always honest with ourselves, and we'll look at the areas where we think we could have done something differently or better and we'll make those adjustments.

John Franzreb (Senior Equity Analyst)

Yeah. It sounded like during the quarter you made some, a minor structural change, closed down an office. It makes me wonder if the break-even point for the company has changed at all, either positively or negatively in light of, you know, recent operating environment.

John Hewitt (President and CEO)

I don't think it's changed significantly from what we talked about in the last quarter. you know, a year and a half ago, we were talking about $200 billion was kind of a quarterly breakeven, and that's gone up a bit to probably $215 billion-$220 billion based on inflation.

John Franzreb (Senior Equity Analyst)

Mm-hmm.

John Hewitt (President and CEO)

There's not a big change in what we need to either fully recover or breakeven.

John Franzreb (Senior Equity Analyst)

Okay. The revenue that was pushed out of storage, you said you expected it, you know, to close and be working on it in the quarter. That job hasn't closed. Is there any expectation it will close by year-end or do you think it's firmly pushed out for now?

John Hewitt (President and CEO)

Yeah, I, you know that we've sort of taken the position here that this project will not be in this fiscal year as we look at our.

John Franzreb (Senior Equity Analyst)

Mm-hmm.

John Hewitt (President and CEO)

forecasting going forward. So it was a fairly sizable storage related project, but the owner has had issues getting to financial close and permitting. So we've kinda taken the position we've been working with them for a while, doing some FEED work and that we were working towards converting that into a full contract. We're kind of out of that process right now until they get their situations together and straightened out and make a decision on how they're gonna proceed with the project. So we've fundamentally taken it out. The, you know, and it came out in the middle of the second quarter, basically, and so that's why you've had this impact in the second quarter.

John Franzreb (Senior Equity Analyst)

Got it. Got it. John, you said that the jobs in the backlog are closer to historic norms on the gross margin side. How far away, I don't know, across the whole business profile, do you think you are from getting normalized gross margins, and what kind of timing do you see on realizing that?

John Hewitt (President and CEO)

We're driving the averages up in the backlog. A lot of some of these newer projects that are, you know, in this, you know, $300 plus million of awards in a quarter are in that range. They're driving those averages, the averages for the organization back up into that range. Plus the opportunity, you know, the, you know, that average range, you know, from a historical perspective, you know, might be on the low side, but we generally have good performance across our projects on a quarter to quarter basis, and we're able to upsize our direct margins because we're either underrun our costs or we're able to convert other contingencies and things that are built into the projects to the bottom line.

That's our historical operating environment, you know, is that we've got, you know, more, we have more opportunities to drive the margins up than to drive the margins down. So that also contributes to keeping those margins in that range.

John Franzreb (Senior Equity Analyst)

Okay. I guess one last question and I'll jump back in. There was once a time that you talked about exiting fiscal 2023 with a billion-dollar backlog. Is that number still on the table or has that been pushed to, I'll give you to the left or the right, either way?

John Hewitt (President and CEO)

It's still on the table for me.

John Franzreb (Senior Equity Analyst)

Okay. All right. Thanks a lot, John. Good luck.

John Hewitt (President and CEO)

Thanks.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. I am showing no further questions. I would now like to turn the call back over to John Hewitt, President and CEO, for closing remarks.

John Hewitt (President and CEO)

Thank you, everybody, for joining us today. Certainly a challenging quarter for us, but we are making progress with the organization, all the things that we've done and we've invested in. We feel very strongly about the direction of the organization and where we're going, and we're gonna continue to build backlog, and we're gonna continue to improve operating results here over the next couple of quarters. We look forward to speaking with everybody in May.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.