Everus Construction Group, Inc. (ECG) Earnings Call Transcript

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to Everus Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand the conference over to Paul Bartolai. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Everus Construction Group's Third Quarter 2026 Results Conference Call. Leading the call today are CEO, Jeff Thiede and CFO, Max Marcy. We issued a news release yesterday detailing our third quarter 2026 operational and financial results. This release and the accompanying presentation materials are available on our website at investors.everus.com. I would like to remind you that management's commentary and responses to questions on today's conference call may include forward-looking statements, which, by their nature, are uncertain and outside of the company's control. Although these forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs, actual results could differ materially. For a discussion of some of the factors that could cause actual results to differ, please refer to the Risk Factors section of our latest filings with the SEC. Additionally, please note that you can find reconciliations of historical non-GAAP financial measures in the news release issued yesterday and in the appendix of today's presentation. Today's call will begin with prepared remarks from Jeff, who will provide a review of our recent business performance and an update on the progress against our strategic priorities followed by Max who will provide a more detailed financial update before wrapping up with our guidance. At the conclusion of these prepared remarks, we will open the line for your questions. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Jeff.

Thank you, Paul, and good morning to everyone joining us today. Everus delivered another quarter of strong financial results, achieving due quarterly revenue, earnings and backlog records. Our results reflect the robust demand we are seeing across our diverse end markets. as well as our team's disciplined execution and ongoing focus on our 4 ever strategic priorities. We continue to see sustained demand across our business, as demonstrated by our strong backlog growth. The trends are broad-based with growth across each of our E&M markets. We are experiencing robust bidding activity, strong order patterns and continued positive tone from our customers. keeping us on pace for a strong finish to the year and continued momentum into 2027. Turning to our quarterly highlights, beginning with Slide 4. We delivered record third quarter revenues of $1.4 billion, up 40% from the prior year, with growth across both our E&M and T&D segments. Our strong top line performance was complemented by another quarter of excellent execution, resulting in a 58% increase in third quarter EBITDA compared to last year, with EBITDA margin up 110 basis points. Our record results underscore the strength of our position in the industry, our disciplined focus on our operational playbook, and the deep long-standing relationships we have with our customers. Our backlog at the end of the third quarter was $5.5 billion, up 86% from the same period last year driven by continued strength in E&M and including contributions from our recent acquisitions of SE&M and Epsilon. The outlook for our data center business remains robust and this was a key driver of our backlog growth in the quarter. Our data center and customers tend to be large hyperscalers, and we remain deeply involved in the project planning process for these customers. These plans can extend beyond our backlog burn, giving us good visibility into the continued momentum in the industry. Our long track record of successful project execution our deeply talented and experienced workforce and our geographic footprint positions us very well for these attractive industry trends. That said, we also continue to see strong demand trends across other areas of our business, and we are strategically positioned to benefit from our diverse end markets. Within Industrial, we continue to see strong trends in the high-tech submarket, mainly semiconductor, including the ongoing ramp-up of work in the new geography we entered around this time last year. The initial project for this new customer is progressing nicely, and we remain encouraged by the multiyear opportunity we see in this geographic region. The institutional market also generated solid backlog growth, building on momentum we saw during the second quarter. We've seen strong growth in our government and health care submarkets to industries where we have a long history of success. After having some large projects finished up in 2025, we are excited to see the renewed activity in these 2 key submarkets. Our recent acquisitions of SE&M and Epsilon are also contributing to the diversity of our growth drivers. SE&M significantly expanded our presence in the pharma and health care submarkets and increased our volume and mechanical work. Momentum remains strong in SE&M's business, and the integration process is progressing extremely well. We remain excited by the opportunities in the attractive Mid-Atlantic market. We are very pleased to welcome the Epsilon team to Everus with the acquisition closing on September 1, and off-site construction is clearly a critical driver of success in our business. So we are excited by the expanded modular construction capabilities that Epsilon brings to our company. It also enhances our business diversification by broadening our geographic footprint into several attractive regions. And we expect to have meaningful cross-selling opportunities with the customer relationships that Epsilon has. We look forward to keeping you updated as we make progress on integrating Epsilon into our operations. Epsilon has strong business momentum, and we are excited about the contributions it will make to our growth strategy. I'd like to wrap up my comments with an update on our key strategic initiatives. As a reminder, our value creation framework is based on targeted growth, operational excellence and disciplined capital allocation. In terms of growth, I already highlighted the sustained momentum we are experiencing across our E&M business. While E&M has been the primary growth driver recently, we remain encouraged by the favorable outlook in our T&D business. We are experiencing solid backlog momentum across our utility submarkets and we are optimistic about the growth outlook for our T&D business in the coming years. Utility investment to address aging infrastructure and support projected load growth will provide opportunities in the coming years. We have long-term relationships with utility customers in our key geographies, and we are well positioned through our long-standing master service agreements to benefit from the expected ramp in transmission and distribution spending. Now turning to operational excellence. Efficient project execution is contributing to our outstanding results, including EBITDA margin of 9.8% through the first 9 months of 2026, which is up 120 basis points compared to last year. Our strong performance is a direct result of our disciplined focus on the Everus operational platelet, the use of modular construction and prefabrication services and the hard work and dedication of our team members across the company. Our commitment to our 4 ever strategic framework that focuses on employees, value, execution and relationships remains a driving force behind our continued success. And the last initiative I wanted to update you on is our disciplined capital allocation. As we have stated since our spin-off almost exactly 2 years ago, our capital allocation framework prioritizes investments that support our growth, both organic opportunities and through acquisitions. Our 2 acquisitions this year align with the acquisition strategy that we've described which is to expand our geographic footprint, diversify our business and deepen our market presence. Our corporate development team remains busy, and we are excited about the opportunities we are evaluating in our acquisition pipeline. Even with the recent transactions, our net leverage is well below our 1.5 to 2x targeted range. So we have continued flexibility to execute on our growth strategy. In summary, we remain committed to our strategic priorities and are encouraged by the continued momentum across our business. We expect a strong finish to the year and are pleased to once again be raising our full year outlook, which Max will discuss in more detail. I would like to thank our stockholders for their ongoing support our employees for their dedication to safely building America's future and our customers for their trust and ongoing partnership. With that, I'll turn it over to Max.

Thank you, Jeff, and good morning, everyone. I will provide additional details on the quarter, give an update on our liquidity and balance sheet and wrap up with our updated guidance. Beginning on Slide 10 of the presentation, revenues for the third quarter were $1.38 billion, an increase of 40% compared to the same period last year. The increase was driven by growth in both E&M and T&D segments including contributions from the acquisitions of SE&M and Epsilon. Excluding the acquisitions, third quarter revenues were up 36% on an organic basis. Total EBITDA was $140.2 million during the third quarter, an increase of 57.5% from the same period in 2025 driven by robust revenue growth and continued excellent project execution. In addition, results included a onetime net gain of $7.6 million related to the settlement of outstanding billings on a past project. Our third quarter EBITDA margin was 10.1%, up 110 basis points from 9.0% in the prior year period. At September 30, total backlog was $5.48 billion, up 86% from September 30 of last year. The increase was driven by strong growth in our E&M backlog, which was up about 100% and as Jeff detailed, the robust backlog growth reflects increases across each of our E&M markets as well as roughly $742 million in contributions from SE&M and Epsilon at quarter end versus the prior year. Now turning to our segment results. Let's first look at E&M, where our third quarter revenues increased 48% to $1.14 billion. The increase was driven primarily by growth in our commercial and industrial end markets as well as contributions from our recent acquisitions. Excluding acquisition revenue, our E&M revenue was up 42% organically. Our EBITDA was $119.8 million in the third quarter, an increase of 79% compared to the third quarter of 2025. The increase was driven by our strong revenue growth and higher gross margin due to strong project execution. As a result, our E&M segment EBITDA margin was 10.5% and up 180 basis points compared to 8.7% in the third quarter of 2025. Our third quarter T&D revenues were $255.6 million up 14% from the third quarter of last year, driven by growth in our utility end market. T&D segment EBITDA was $38.3 million in the third quarter, up 13.3% from the prior year period due to higher revenues. T&D segment EBITDA margin was 15% during the third quarter, on par with the same period last year. Turning now to our balance sheet and liquidity. As of September 30, we had $245 million of unrestricted cash and cash equivalents, $572 million of gross debt and $248 million available under the credit facility. Our net debt increased sequentially, reflecting the closing of the Epsilon acquisition, partially offset by our strong operating results. Net leverage, defined as net debt to trailing 12-month EBITDA was 0.7x as of September 30, well below our 1.5 to 2x targeted range. Operating cash flows were $267.3 million for the first 9 months of 2026 compared to $108.6 million in the same period last year, due to our strong operating results and favorable working capital timing. Capital expenditures were $53.4 million for the first 9 months of 2026 and up modestly from $42.1 million in the prior year period. Our capital expenditures for the first 9 months represented 1.5% of revenues below our targeted 2% to 2.5% of revenues due in part to our strong revenue growth and timing of investments. We continue to see significant opportunities to invest in our business to support our organic growth initiatives and we remain committed to our long-term capital spending targeted range. For the 2026 fiscal year, we continue to expect that we will invest $90 million to $100 million in capital expenditures. Combined with the acquisitions of Epsilon and SE&M, we have deployed over $500 million of capital in support of our growth initiatives thus far in 2026. Even with these investments, our net leverage remains modest giving us significant balance sheet capacity and ample flexibility to continue investing in our strategic growth initiatives. We generated free cash flow of $221.2 million for the first 9 months of 2026 up from $74.8 million in the same period last year. While our 2026 free cash flow had some timing benefits, our teams are managing the working capital dynamics very effectively as we grow with customers. Wrapping up with guidance. Based on our strong results and the inclusion of Epsilon, combined with the continued momentum we see across our business, we are raising our full year 2026 guidance. We are now forecasting revenues in the range of $5 billion to $5.1 billion and EBITDA in the range of $485 million to $495 million. At the midpoint of our range, our guidance implies EBITDA margins of around 9.7% for the year, essentially in line with our year-to-date performance which reflects the execution upside as well as the margin accretion from SE&M and Epsilon. That completes our prepared remarks. Operator, we are now ready for the question-and-answer portion of our call.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question is from the line of Brent Thielman with Oppenheimer & Co. Please go ahead.

Great quarter. Jeff, I guess, just the first question, any anecdotes or visibility you can share in the potential new business and the overall pipeline that maybe goes beyond the robust backlog you reported this quarter? And I guess any risks that you see as a result of the outcome of the elections?

Yes. If you think about the history of our company over 30 years, we've been able to navigate successfully through a strategy to take advantage of opportunities in the current market, but also looking ahead in the future. We're really proud of our team to be able to grow our record backlog and our backlog increases in many of our markets and submarkets is encouraging to us to be able to further diversify our business and capture the opportunities today. But meanwhile, looking ahead, I think that's also demonstrated by our most recent acquisitions from SE&M closed in April and also Epsilon closed in September.

Okay. And then yes, it looks like Epsilon added a pretty significant backlog here in the quarter. I think you had some capacity plans underway for that business. Just your thoughts on ability to convert that in 2027, does some of that work extend beyond next year? Just how we should think about that?

Yes. Brent, it's Max. So the modular activity that Epsilon has typically has the longer backlog burn than we see in our business. So we feel very confident in our ability to continue to generate good opportunities and solid backlog, but it will convert at a slower pace, just given the nature of the business.

And adding to that, Brent, we look at this every -- at least every quarter, every month, our backlog burn, as we've reported previously, is about 80% over a 12-month period.

Your next question is from the line of Brian Brophy with Stifel. Your next question is from the line of Kurt Yinger with D.A. Davidson.

Great. I just wanted to go, I guess, high level. I mean, obviously, refresh from an election perspective, but would just love to kind of hear high-level thoughts, just less data center-friendly rhetoric talking about potential moratoriums or new construction positives. I guess, how do you think big picture around that may be impacting your business? And maybe more specifically, whether that has any impact in terms of things you have in backlog? Just high-level thoughts would be much appreciated.

Yes. Thanks for the question. We haven't seen any change in behavior from our customers. Our outlook for data centers is strong. It's as we've reported previously, and the same for this quarter. It's the largest part of our backlog. If you look at the increases in the other submarkets we have in our backlog, we have an increase in hospitality and warehouse, our industrial work, semiconductor work within industrial in addition to manufacturing is also up on a year-over-year basis for our backlog. Our institutional government and health care, which include -- also includes pharmaceutical, is up year-over-year and even renewables and our special projects and service work is on a year-over-year backlog basis. Our utility work is up as well, most notably in the substation, transmission and utility work. So, the diversification strategy of our business is working. So today, we have a lot of data center work, and we're executing that work incredibly well, which is reflected in some of the margin uplift that we've had in this quarter and year-to-date.

Okay. Okay. That's helpful. And I guess, maybe sticking to that kind of diversification theme and looking ahead at future opportunities. I mean, if we were to kind of take today as a representation of maybe greater project risk or more uncertainty around how certain projects might progress I guess does that change your appetite to continue to pursue more opportunities in that data center area if that strength continues. I guess, I get it's a new jerk reaction, but would just love any thoughts there.

We're very involved in the planning stages with the hyperscalers, which we're working mostly for, and we're confident that we're going to continue to see opportunities with data centers. And then throughout our organization to be able to exercise our diversification strategy. We're anticipatory on making sure that we are looking ahead to be able to optimize the opportunities that we see coming up like pharmaceuticals, like manufacturing, industrial and health care and some of our institutional workers.

Okay. Okay. I appreciate that. And maybe just lastly on Epsilon. You mentioned some opportunities for cross-sell. I was hoping we own that business for 2 months now, if there are maybe any specific examples or specific areas where you really see an opportunity to scale that business or areas where you've been able to kind of leverage it to a greater extent as part of the -- your larger platform?

We see a lot of opportunity for cross-selling. Epsilon had its own customers before we acquired them. And for Everus, we had our own customers as well. We have visited their plant and got our presidents together, and we have got the discussions moving forward with being able to cross-sell. Epsilon is pretty well diversified too. They, of course, do some data center work, but they also have experience in automotive and in the health care industry. So we think it's a great complement to our business. We think that the cross-selling opportunities are going to provide an expansion, and we're going to support that business through capital in our CapEx program.

Your next question is from the line of Michael [indiscernible] with Golden Securities.

Sorry, my connection was cutting out a bit, so I hope this wasn't asked already. But looking past integration with Epsilon, how much of the E&M backlog do you think could realistically shift to offsite prefab preset work? And if that is the case, would that potentially increase the CapEx going forward in the out years?