Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to SNC-Lavalin's first quarter 2021 conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there'll be an opportunity to ask questions. To join the question queue you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call you may signal operator by pressing star and zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to Denis Jasmin, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining the call. Our Q1 earnings announcement was released this morning, and we have posted a corresponding slide presentation on the Investors section of our website. The recording of today's call and its transcript will also be available on our website within 24 hours. With me today are Ian Edwards, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Jeff Bell, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to ask everyone to limit themselves to one or two questions to ensure that all analysts have an opportunity to participate. You are welcome to return to the queue for any follow-up questions. I would like to draw your attention to slide two. Comments made on today's call may contain forward-looking information.
This information, by its nature, is subject to risks and uncertainties, and as such, actual results may differ materially from the views expressed today. For further information on these risks and uncertainties, please consult the company's relevant filings on SEDAR. These documents are also available on our website. During the call, we may refer to certain non-IFRS measures. These measures are defined and reconciled with comparable IFRS measures in our MD&A, which can be found on SEDAR in our website. Management believes that these non-IFRS measures provide additional insight into the company's financial results, certain investors may use this information to evaluate the company's performance from period to period. I'll pass the call over to Ian Edwards. Ian?
Thank you, Denis, and good afternoon, everyone. First, turning to slide four. We're off to a good start in the year with solid performance across all three segments of Engineering Services. Engineering Services generated revenues of CAD 1.5 billion and a segment adjusted EBIT margin of 8.8%. Revenues are essentially on par with Q1 2020, while margins have rebounded to their traditional levels. The backlog also remains robust, with CAD 1.7 billion in new bookings in the quarter. On SNCL Projects, we continue to make good progress reducing the LSTK backlog, bringing the total outstanding backlog down to CAD 1.6 billion. Overall, it was a really solid quarter. Turning to slide five and the Q1 results for EDPM. EDPM had a strong quarter, generating CAD 81 million in segment adjusted EBIT. Margins increased year-over-year to 8.6%.
The strong performance was due to a combination of factors, which include strong revenue growth in the U.K. in project management, transport, and defense, successful efforts to rightsize the business and reduce costs in the Middle East, and recovery in certain markets impacted by COVID in Q1 2020. The backlog also continued to grow at a really impressive pace. In Q1, EDPM added CAD 1 billion in new wins, an increase of just over 10%. This is in addition to the nearly 9% growth in Q4 2020 and puts the EDPM backlog at a three-year high of just under CAD 3 billion. New wins include rail, road, water projects in the core geographies of U.K., Canada, and the U.S. This includes engineering services for the U.S. State of Georgia Department of Transportation and the long-term renewal of a master services agreement with Intel for project and program management.
Looking ahead, the pipeline remains strong at CAD 27 billion. We remain optimistic across our core markets as governments look to invest in infrastructure to support the twin goals of economic recovery and carbon net zero targets. Turning to slide six and the nuclear segment. Nuclear revenues were broadly in line with last year, with the EBIT in line with expectations, albeit lower year-on-year due to a lower contribution from our Canadian refurbishment works. We continue to see good demand for reactor engineering, for field service work, waste management, as well as for our proprietary tools and technologies, including robotics and digital twins. Having completed our work on the first reactor at Darlington, we now ramped up and are progressing well on the second unit. We're moving into 2021 with several really significant opportunities and growth catalysts on the horizon.
These include continued demand for reactor support and decommissioning, intensified tendering by the U.S. Department of Energy for environmental management work across a number of nuclear sites, and continued momentum in the U.K. with the Hinkley power station and the proposed new nuclear Sizewell C project. Moving to slide seven on infrastructure services. The segment had a solid quarter and a segment adjusted EBIT margin ratio of 5.8%, an increase compared to Q1 2020, resulting from improved profitability and increased activity in O&M and health services. Infrastructure services won a number of new mandates in the quarter, including a first-of-its-kind contract to retrofit a 100-year-old dam in Pennsylvania with three hydroelectric power stations to generate renewable energy. It also won an additional five-year renewal of a logistics and project management program in Canada.
At just over CAD 7 billion, backlog remains strong, underscoring both the long-term and essential nature of infrastructure services. Looking ahead, we see a number of opportunities in Canada and the U.S. in rail and transit and social infrastructure. Major projects will be a key focus as we pursue new collaborative liability-capped contracts and models like the East West Rail project in the U.K. that we were awarded in February. We also see a strong pipeline of opportunities for Linxon in transportation and offshore wind. Turning to slide eight and the capital segment. The segment continued to be impacted by the lockdown in Ontario, which has resulted in reduced traffic volume on the Highway 407 ETR. As a result, there was no dividend payment in the quarter. Our other concessions continue to perform well.
Looking ahead, we see an interesting pipeline of new public-private partnership opportunities where we can leverage our engineering and O&M capabilities. These include several PPPs in Canada and the U.K. in the sewage and water treatment and hospital space. Moving to slide nine on infrastructure EPC projects. We continue to make good progress reducing the LSTK construction backlog by over CAD 200 million in the quarter. The LSTK backlog, which is comprised of the three remaining Canadian LRT projects, is CAD 1.5 billion at the end of March. The segment recorded a negative adjusted EBIT for the quarter of CAD 11 million. Turning to slide 10 and the resources segment. We continue to target completion of the sale of our oil and gas business in Q2. Our M&M services business is performing well.
We are seeing growth in revenue and profitability, which is really being driven by increased demand for the materials used in clean energy storage, including electric vehicles. Moving to slide 11. As you may have seen earlier today, we released our ESG targets and commitments, including a commitment to reaching carbon net zero by 2030. We've developed a detailed plan to achieve this ambitious target, which brings a low carbon lens to everything we do, from our travel policy and electric vehicle leasing to reduced energy consumption within our real estate footprint. To reach our goal, we have set annual targets that will be verified by third parties and published to the Carbon Disclosure Project. Overall, we've identified 12 ESG priority areas, including protecting and enhancing human rights, corporate integrity, and diversity and inclusion.
With regard to ED&I specifically, we've set clear targets to increase the representation of women at all levels of the company. As you can tell from our commitments, we see ESG as an integral part of the company's future growth and sustainability. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Jeff.
Thank you, Ian, and good afternoon, everyone. Turning to slide 13, total revenues for the quarter amounted to CAD 1.8 billion, which is slightly lower than the corresponding quarter in 2020. SNCL Engineering Services revenue was lower by 1.3% and at the low end of our outlook range for the quarter, as the COVID-19 pandemic did not significantly impact Q1 2020. Segment adjusted EBIT for the quarter was CAD 143 million, which included a segment adjusted EBIT of CAD 133 million for SNCL Engineering Services, CAD 19 million for Capital, and negative CAD 8 million for SNCL Projects. This latter negative EBIT was mainly due to the infrastructure EPC project segment, which had a reduction in gross margin as the first quarter of 2021 included costs in closing out certain projects nearing completion and the impact of COVID-19, partially offset by a reduction in overhead expenses.
Corporate SG&A expenses totaled CAD 16 million in Q1 2021 compared to CAD 37 million in the first quarter of 2020. This quarter included a revision to certain estimates and cost accruals that reduced the expense in the quarter, while Q1 2020 included a CAD 10 million additional provision adjustment for the Project Type litigation. The adjusted net income from PS&PM in Q1 2021 amounted to CAD 83 million or CAD 0.48 per diluted share, representing a 37% increase compared with Q1 2020. Both periods benefited from a lower than normal effective quarterly tax rate. Q1 2021's low tax rate was primarily driven by the reversal of certain provisions for tax liabilities, which had an impact of CAD 0.07 per share. Backlog ended the quarter at CAD 13.2 billion, compared to CAD 13.9 billion at the same time last year.
The decrease was primarily due to the continued runoff of the SNCL project backlog related to LSTK Projects, which decreased by CAD 824 million. SNCL Engineering Services backlog, on the other hand, increased by 1% during the same period, with an increase 10% year-over-year in EDPM to CAD 2.9 billion. In nuclear, backlog decreased by 17% over the last 12 months, mainly due to the progress on the company's major long-term refurbishment contracts in Canada. The business continued to be awarded extensions to ongoing contracts in Canada and other long-term contracts in the U.S. and U.K. regions. As for infrastructure services, the backlog remains solid at CAD 7 billion, in line with the end of March 2020, mainly due to strong contract wins over the 12-month period.
Turning now to slide 14, our day sales outstanding reached 61 days at the end of the quarter for EDPM, a 12-day improvement as compared to Q1 2020. This improvement is mainly the result of our continued focus on cash collection and early government payment programs related to COVID-19. For full year 2021, the strong operating cash flow attributes of SNCL Engineering Services are expected to be partially offset by our return to a more normalized DSO level later in the year. At the end of March 2021, the company had CAD 703 million of cash. The recourse debt decreased by CAD 175 million compared with December 2020, as we repaid in full the series 3 debentures which reached maturity during the quarter.
The company's net recourse debt to EBITDA ratio on the revolver credit facility, calculated in accordance with the terms of the company's credit agreement, was 1.8x , well below the required covenant level of 3.75x . Moving on to slide 15. Net cash generated from operating activities was CAD 6 million in Q1 2021, compared to CAD 23 million in the same period last year. SNCL Engineering Services continued to generate strong cash flow from operations with CAD 118 million in the quarter due to strong EBIT conversion and a low DSO in the EDPM segment, while capital generated CAD 21 million. After cash taxes, interest, and corporate items, you can see that we generated CAD 97 million of operating cash flow in the quarter, which was offset by CAD 124 million cash usage from SNCL projects.
Note that the cash profile of SNCL Projects can be very lumpy during a year, depending on the progress and specific milestones achieved for each project, compared to the more consistent quarterly cash flow profile in Engineering Services. We don't consider SNCL Projects cash flow usage in Q1 representative of the remaining quarters in the year. For 2021, we continue to expect the company's operating cash flow to be largely breakeven as a result of a return to a more normal DSO profile in Engineering Services by the end of the year, and a usage of cash in SNCL Projects. Finally, turning to slide 16. The company is maintaining its SNCL Engineering Services revenue growth and segment adjusted EBIT to revenue ratio outlook. We also continue to target the same long-term EBIT margin percentage for each segment. This concludes my presentation. I'll hand it back to you, Ian.
Thanks, Jeff. Turning to slide 18, I'd like to conclude my remarks with a few key takeaways. We're really encouraged by the strong start to the year. We continue to make important progress on our two main priorities, which are to de-risk the business and accelerate growth in Engineering Services. We're seeing a strong pipeline of new business opportunities across all our core markets as governments invest in new infrastructure and green initiatives. We're doing our part, both as a company and as a partner to governments and private clients through our Engineering Net Zero offering, which provides a broad range of sustainable solutions in energy, transport, and infrastructure. We see this as an integral part to our future growth. We look forward to sharing more about those growth opportunities at our Investor Day in September. Thank you. I'll now open the call to questions.
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To join the question queue, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. We will pause for a moment as callers join the queue. Our first question comes from Jacob Bout of CIBC. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon.
Hi, Jacob.
A question on your engineering service, the low single-digit revenue growth guidance. Given that revenue was down just 1% in Q1, would point out it appears that you've outperformed your peers on an organic revenue growth perspective. Are you building in a level of conservatism? I guess secondly, how backend loaded is this guidance for the year?
Well, I don't know if we're building in an extra level of conservatism. Clearly, we are being prudent because we still see that although we've had a very strong book to bill in Q4 and Q1, we're still in the pandemic. We're also seeing very strong indications of kind of future commitment, and we really expect those to kind of hit the revenues probably more in 2022 than 2021. We've looked at it, obviously. We've thought about this, and we've looked at the pipeline, and we felt keeping the guidance outlook at the same was prudent at this time. Obviously, we'll keep kind of looking at that as we progress through the year.
I guess my second question here, just about the rapid rise in material costs. Maybe is this changing client behavior at all?
Yeah, that's a good question. I think the answer is no. The activity that we see in our core markets, and in our kind of core end markets as well as geographies, commitment is still there. I think the supply chain and the flow of materials and demand could be short term once we get back to normal post-COVID. Absolutely not, we're not seeing any kind of downturn from that.
Okay. That's my two. Thank you.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Yuri Lynk of Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.
Good quarter, guys. Ian, wondering how you're feeling with regards to looking to pivot more to growth, and when you think SNC would be ready to do that, especially as it pertains to potential acquisitions like a lot of your peers are involved in?
Thanks, Yuri. We still are very aware we have two priorities here. We still have the LSTK backlog to work our way through, which we're highly focused to do that successfully. However, we've spent a lot of time in the last few months looking at our strategic plan and building on the decisions that we've already made. You've seen the decisions we've made around our core geographies, around the focus around our end markets. Geographies being U.S., Canada, then U.K., our end markets being transport infrastructure, social infrastructure, and nuclear. We're really focused on how do we grow those. What are the growth drivers? Where do we put the energy, both organically and inorganically? What does our capital allocation look like over a longer period of time? We're going to share all of that in the Investor Day in September.
The exercise is somewhat ongoing still, but we'll be pretty fixed on it and give you quite a bit more detail then.
Okay. My second question is for Jeff. I guess if I had to nitpick on the quarter, it looks like much lower than expected SG&A. Certainly didn't hurt the EBITDA. Can you explain in a little more detail what drove that? Is there anything that you can do to make that line item a little more predictable, going forward? You have to admit, it's kind of all over the place quarter- to- quarter.
Yeah. I think my first observation would be, there were a few items in there. Now, to be fair, it's particularly with our investment in digital transformation, which we're holding as a central cost, so we can keep an eye on that and deploy it most appropriately. That does give us a run rate per quarter of probably in the CAD 25 million range. It doesn't take much in one given quarter, a few million CAD one way or the other, just in terms of timing or in the case of the first quarter this year, as we looked further at some of the provisions that we had, there were some true ups to that which, in the quarter, were a credit. It's essentially one-off. It's not something we would expect to repeat as part of that cleanup.
Yes, you're right, it was about CAD 7 million or CAD 8 million, therefore lower than what we think the kind of normal run rate would be for this year anyways.
I'll turn it over. Thanks.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Chris Murray of ATB Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Thanks, guys. Just a couple quick ones here. First of all, just for the close of the oil and gas sale. Anything that we should be expecting that will change? I know you indicated that we'll probably see some one-time gains in Q2 just to clean that all up. But any other color or update you can provide would be great.
Well, certainly on the timing, we're focused on trying to get this done in Q2. Highly motivated buyer, and we're highly motivated to get it done. These things are somewhat getting consents and approvals, depends on some third parties, so it wouldn't be beyond the bounds of possibility that it slips into Q3, but no red flags. Just on the financials, the mechanics of the deal itself, Jeff, do you want to just talk to that?
Yeah, I would say nothing material has changed at all. We still expect a significant non-cash revaluation of the currency translation accounts in particular. The rest of the kind of net assets and our view of the business is largely the same as it was a few months ago.
Okay. That's helpful. Thank you. I don't know who wants to take this one, but one of the questions I've been getting asked a lot is, as you've been transitioning away from being constructors of assets, and being more designers of assets, is the thought process around the capital group. I know you've got some good assets there, and we've talked about the 407 in the past as being a good use of capital. Just the question is about creating additional assets and I guess the non-407 capital business. How do you think about that fitting into the company on a go-forward basis?
Yeah. That's a really good question, Chris, hopefully I can help. Certainly we see ourselves as partners of customers to deliver an asset. That means, to me, designing the asset, it means consulting and advising on what assets should look like. It means overseeing the construction of an asset, and it means operating an asset as well. All of those capabilities, as you know, have historically been very strong in SNC-Lavalin, and we're not about to stop doing those things. We don't do lump sum construction anymore, but we do all the other things to help our customers realize their kind of aspirations to deliver efficient assets. Interestingly, the kind of PPP market is changing a little bit. What we see in the middle portion of the construction element, in some countries, they're more collaborative contracts even.
If we see that, then for sure, we're going to leverage our capital capability, and invest in assets so that we can obtain the design, project management oversight, and operation work from it. Here in Canada, for example, we're now partnering with construction companies so that we can be the designer and the operator, and we can hold part of the concession as an investor and obviously leverage again all the capability that we've built over many years at actually being pretty good at financially engineering these things and delivering the whole project. We've thought about that quite a bit since we exit on LSTK, so it's a good question.
Okay, thanks. That's helpful.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Benoit Poirier of Desjardins Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you very much, and good quarter. Just on the nuclear side, there's been a lot of discussion around nuclear energy in the context of the green transition. Could you talk about the pipeline of opportunities in front of you across key geographies?
Thanks, Benoit Poirier. I think the first thing I'd say is our strategy on nuclear doesn't see new nuclear as kind of the focal point of the strategy. If that happens, that's a plus, and perhaps I'll come back to that. Where we play obviously is in support to the kinds of reactors around the world. That's an important part of the business. Extending the life of reactors such as Darlington and Bruce, but also in decommissioning and waste cleanup. Actually, where we see the biggest kind of short-term growth, short-term three years, is in actually the waste and environmental management, environmental cleanup of nuclear waste, particularly in the U.S. The U.S. Department of Energy is really pumping a lot of funds into that with some very big programs to clean that up.
We're also seeing that particular in the U.K., where decommissioning of the aging fleet and waste cleanup at the Sellafield plant in the north of England is pretty big also. The real growth plan that we've got, the biggest driver, I would say, is in actually waste remediation and cleanup. Now, if, and I think it's an if, as you said, the question mark's out there. If nuclear becomes an acceptable form of clean energy in the global forum, then we will be absolutely there to sell our services and potentially even sell the CANDU technology. I think that's a little off yet.
Okay. Perfect. Specifically on LSTK project, could you talk, in particular, if there's any key elements to monitor, especially as you ramp down the resource backlog?
No. I think the three jobs we've got in Eglinton, Trillium and REM, the jobs are going well, but they're still being impacted by COVID. We were assessing that we're going to be out of COVID round about the summer. If you remember in the updates from previous quarters, we're still optimistic about that. We're hoping the vaccines in Canada will bring us back to normality and we can get people to the projects and reduce social distancing and reduce the number of outbreaks on the projects where we have to isolate part of the project. Certainly what we're seeing so far in Q2, obviously the impact is ongoing. Apart from that, we continue to negotiate with our customers to try and resolve the whole settlement around COVID. No real update there. It's going to take some time. No red flag, but these things take time to pursue.
Okay. Thank you very much for the time.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Michael Tupholme of TD Securities. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Maybe just picking up on that last question and answer regarding LSTK and how you had planned for resumption of activity more closely aligned with what you would have historically seen as it relates to COVID. To what extent do you think you will then need to take additional provisions if this does get extended?
Well, obviously there's a few unknowns, and a few things to play out here. First of all, we've kind of got to see what happens this summer in terms of productivity. We assessed that going into the summer. No issue right now. We need to see what happens in the summer. I would say that from a productivity perspective. There's the recovery of loss from our customers. As you know, we've taken a very prudent view to that recovery. We're absolutely confident we're entitled to recover that loss. We know it takes time. This is quite complex. The proof of loss is on ourselves, the burden of proof is on us. We've got to make sure that we pursue that and demonstrate the loss. We don't expect it to take weeks. It's more of a months exercise.
If we start seeing some resolution there, then that could be a positive. There's a few moving parts there, but no concerns right now.
Okay. That's helpful. Thank you. Second question is regarding the backlog in the EDPM segment. Obviously very strong backlog growth year-over-year up 10%. Can you talk about the composition of that backlog? Has the duration of that backlog extended because that's obviously very strong year-over-year growth and thinking about the fact that you're guiding to low single-digit top-line growth in EDPM for the year as well as the other parts of SNCL Engineering Services, I'm just wondering how we should think about the backlog and the composition.
Yeah. For sure, we're seeing the U.K. as a strong market, with some wins, some good wins. We're seeing the U.S. as a strong market, and some good wins in the U.S. I think if you remember, we kind of adjusted our view of what we would be able to win in the Middle East going back to Q1 last year. Actually, the Middle East is doing quite well now also. I think the majority of what you're seeing there is very strong backlog at this time will be the U.K. and the U.S. The U.S. business is up without the Biden investment. It's up just year-over-year in terms of volume in our specific end market. We're pretty focused on transport infrastructure in the U.S., and we see that as being quite strong. I think those are the key areas for me.
Right. Okay, perfect. Maybe just to clarify to your answer there, Ian, the work you've been adding, does that stretch over a longer period of time in terms of months of backlog relative to maybe what you've historically seen? Are these larger projects that will occur over longer periods of time?
Not really. The mix of business, our EDPM business is a pretty even mix between consultancy, design, and project management. Most of those backlog durations are less than a year, and we're seeing something similar to that. Not specifically, no.
Okay. That's all. Thank you.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Sabahat Khan of RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
All right. Thanks, good afternoon. You made a comment earlier around, you were thinking about how to grow in the future, quarters and years in some of your core markets, whether it's the geographies or the end markets you're in. What are your thoughts, I guess, on potentially considering some new end markets, the ones where you may not have a presence through M&A, or is the focus really on focusing on things that you already have a good presence in? Is this something you're thinking as part of your strategic plan or just longer term?
Well, I can give you a flavor of how we think about it rather than perhaps a lot of detail. We'll come to more detail in September. We've spent a lot of time simplifying our business and de-risking it from low profitable business lines and loss-making business lines, frankly. That's been a high part of our focus over the last 18 months to two years. Where we find ourselves primarily is three core geographies, U.K., Canada, U.S., highly focused on nuclear, social infrastructure, transport infrastructure, and government clients. We think the decisions we've made to get down to those are the right decisions, because that's where we see growth from the market size, but also growth from SNCL into market share.
If you take the U.S., our market share is quite small and we've developed a pretty detailed plan on how we're going to build our market share there. If we even think about Canada, this period that we've been through to not take on LSTK work, has reduced our other services slightly. We've got runways to go back there. I think for our focus, I think we got the right focus. Do we need more capacity through inorganic growth? Yes, we're absolutely looking at that. It's more of what we've already got, I would say, at this time, rather than looking at alternative markets and capabilities.
Great. Thanks. Just a second question. A lot of your peers have been talking about the outlook for growing demand and the need to ramp up hiring. Just want to understand the efforts you're making on that front and your plans to grow your workforce as demand picks up.
Yeah, really good question because in the strategic planning that we're doing, the talent plan and the capacity plan is very important to the growth plan and to the strategy of growth. We think about it in three ways. We think about it in terms of growing the talent. What talent do we need? How do we attract more talent? Obviously, we've done a lot of work on the culture, we've done a lot of work on our purpose, and we've done a lot of work to improve the employee experience within the business, and that's paid off for us, both in not losing employees, but also being able to attract employees. We also think about it in terms of building capacity through the move to digital tools and automated design, and increasing our capacity from our digital transformation.
That's been an interesting journey over the last few years as well. Lastly, we have been quite successful in building a very capable global technology center out of India, which supports our businesses globally from a design and a 3D and a modeling perspective. We think the answer is not just more people. We think that it's actually digital tools, offshoring, and doing things more efficient as well as more people.
If I could just sneak in one, I guess just as a follow-up to your comment. I think in your ESG announcement this morning, you indicated that rationalizing buildings and facilities is part of the strategy there. Is that a review you're doing right now that we should expect an update on? Or how far along are you there?
Of the real estate? Is that-
Yeah. The real estate, yeah.
Yeah. For sure. Yeah, we started before COVID. We were moving to a more flexible work arrangement and a higher density in our offices, before COVID. In fact, two of our biggest offices in the U.K. had already transitioned to that more flexibility, more density. Like all companies, COVID's accelerated remote working, and we are going to continue to increase density in our offices, and look to work in offices that have got a greener footprint, to reduce our running costs and the overall carbon footprint of the business.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Devin Dodge of BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
All right, thanks. Just a couple of cash flow questions maybe for Jeff. First, I believe there was a favorable resolution to a claim in the legacy oil and gas division during Q1. I'm just trying to understand, does SNC get to retain that benefit, or would that payment get transferred to the buyer as part of, we'll say, working capital adjustments when the transaction closes?
Yeah, that benefit stays with us as kind of the current owner of the business. It was good to see that. It was partially offset by some continued true-ups in the remaining legacy oil and gas business. Yes, you're right, we did have a positive settlement to that project, and that benefit stays with us.
Okay. Good to hear. Okay, then another one. Last quarter you talked about roughly CAD 150 million cash flow headwind from DSOs and EDPM normalizing and the payment of deferred taxes. I think you mentioned, in Q1 we saw DSOs move even lower from where they were in Q4. Just how should we think about that cash flow headwind now versus when you guys reported Q1?
Yeah, I think we would continue to see it largely similar to how we saw it in Q4. You are right. Ended up in a good position at Q1. I would say even slightly better than our expectations. A lot of that continues to be the strong focus on cash flow and cash flow management that we have been driving into the business. We will see, whether it is the VAT reversal which is more in the remaining nine months of the year, and the natural expectation of seeing some of that DSO unwind. We do think it would end up back in the low 70s, roughly. Therefore, we think that headwind is still largely the same as it was that we talked about at the end of the year.
We'll need to see how the quarter's continuing to go forward and how governments react, but I think that would be our view currently.
Okay, thanks. I'll turn it over.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Mark Neville of Scotiabank. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon, guys.
Yeah, hi, Mark.
Nice to see all the hard work paying off. Maybe on the sale, just a few follow-up questions, actually. On the sale of the oil and gas business, I'm less concerned about timelines, but I'm just curious, is there any significant hurdles or risk or milestones that we need to be aware of before this gets done?
No, it's Jeff here. Maybe I'll add a bit of color to that. I think our view on that is no. As Ian was alluding to earlier, in terms of what we said back on February 9th as well, there are clearly a number of hurdles, regulatory-wise, and filing-wise in particular, not to mention the actual operational work that we do to carve the business out. I think our view would be all of that remains on track. While it's a lot of work, we haven't seen any particular red flag or issue that we hadn't anticipated before. I think it's mostly about the amount of time, and we continue to target the end of Q2. As Ian said, part of that, in terms of those regulatory filings, aren't completely within our gift.
To the extent that because of COVID or otherwise it takes a little longer, that could slip. We and the buyer are highly focused on trying to do this during the quarter.
Okay. In terms of the cash flow, and appreciate the lumpiness within projects, but is there a period of time where we cease seeing uses of cash? Or is it going to be quarter- to- quarter kind of this lumpiness?
I think it will continue a bit lumpy here, probably certainly through 2021. Obviously, the more we reduce the backlog as effectively the remaining work narrows and gets lower and lower, then naturally in a sense the lumpiness or the variability quarter- by- quarter is likely to narrow as well. I think Q1 was, in our view, at probably the extreme end of what we would normally see in terms of lumpiness. I think going forward, while it may remain lumpy, I think we wouldn't consider Q1 to be typical of the variability to that extent. I think Q1 was a bit unique.
Okay. Maybe just on the real estate comments for the question. I appreciate the flexible work arrangement, but it just wasn't clear to me. Do you think there's going to be an opportunity to shrink your footprint in a material way or no?
Yeah. We have a plan. We have a definitive plan of moving our offices to a higher density.
Sure.
Our model office for density is actually our London office in Victoria. It's a really good office. There's flexible working and there's hot desking or save-a-seat kind of approach. It works really well. The employees love it, because it's a lot more collaborative. It's a lot denser, therefore, it's less expensive than the offices we've got around the world. Now, like I said, we've been at this for a couple of years, so it predates COVID. We've been executing on that plan as leases have come up. As we've looked to renew leases and as we've looked to replace offices, we look to go to this model, where there's a lot higher density. To some extent, COVID has accelerated that. Now, it obviously will have some impact on the SG&A, but in the whole scheme of things, it's not grossly significant.
I wouldn't put it that way, Jeff, would you?
Sorry, I was on mute. No, I would agree with that. We have seen savings. We continue to see savings in 2021, and we would expect to see savings going forward in terms of the multi-year plan we have around our office footprint. It's a good source of future cost savings, but as Ian said, it's not earth-shattering in its size.
The real benefit is the employee experience.
Yeah.
We've got such positive feedback from our employees. We're old enough to compete for talent, so these things are really important.
Great. All right. Thanks for that, and congrats again.
Thank you.
Yeah, thanks.
Our next question comes from Maxim Sytchev of National Bank Financial. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good afternoon, gentlemen.
Hi, Maxim.
Afternoon.
Just a couple of very quick cleanups for me, if I may. I don't know if in the past we discussed this topic, obviously the peers present their revenue on a gross and net basis. I'm just wondering if at some point you guys thought about harmonizing with that presentation so that investors can actually see the implied clean EBITDA margin for the business. Yeah, maybe any thoughts on that front, if it's possible.
Jeff, maybe I'll take that, Max. It is something we are aware of, and it is something that we are looking at. We think the EBITDA to gross revenue metric we have is a good one. Not the least of which is we effectively take risk and profit risk on the gross cost of the project, not just the net cost, in a sense. However, we are looking at a net revenue to EBITDA number as well, and again, would potentially come back later in the day. Around the investor day might be the right time as we start to think about multi-year financial metrics and targets, how that might play into it.
Right. Okay. No, because yeah, I think that would be obviously helpful because everybody's talking about 15%- 16%.
Mm-hmm. Yeah
different ballpark. One quick question on the free cash flow slide on page 15. The leases, are they in the consolidated free cash flow, or do I have to adjust for those?
Well, you have to, in a sense, the interest component is in the operating cash flow. Effectively, the principal element is not. It's a financing cash flow, and that's where we'd hold it.
Right. Yeah. Okay, no. It's not adjusted, therefore, for.
Yeah
the second part.
Yeah.
Okay. Okay. That's it for me. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thanks.
This concludes the question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Denis Jasmin for any closing remarks.
Thank you very much, everyone, for joining us today. If you have any more questions, please don't hesitate to contact me. I wish you a good afternoon and a very nice weekend, and stay safe all. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.
This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.