Good day, everyone, and welcome to Stantec's Fourth Quarter twenty twenty Earnings Results Conference Call. Leading the call today are Gord Johnston, President and Chief Executive Officer and Theresa Jeng, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Stantec invites those dialing in to view the slide presentation, which is available in the Investors section at stantec.com. Today's call is also webcast. Please be advised that if you have dialed in while also viewing the webcast, you should mute your computer as there is a twenty second delay between the call and the webcast.
All information provided during the conference call is subject to the forward looking statement qualification set out on Slide two detailed in Stantec's management's discussion and analysis and incorporated in full for the purposes of today's call. Dollar amounts discussed in today's call are expressed in Canadian dollars and are generally rounded. With that, I am pleased to turn the call over to Mr. Gord Johnston. Please go ahead, sir.
Good morning, and thank you for joining us. I'll begin our call today with a look back at 2020, review our progress over the year and provide an update on fourth quarter business performance. Theresa will then delve deeper into the financial results and review our 2021 targets, and then I'll return to provide closing remarks. In 2020, a year marked by unprecedented business disruption caused by the COVID-nineteen pandemic, Stantec continued to demonstrate our operational resilience. The diversity of our business, our global reach, and our deep connections to our employees, clients and communities served as strengths as we weathered the storm.
The world has changed over the past year, and there's been a shift in priorities. Sustainable development is now even more of a priority for governments, organizations, and investors around the world. And that's why I'm so proud that Stantec was named the fifth most sustainable company in the world and the first in North America by Corporate Knights. Operating sustainably is good for our employees, good for the environment and good for the bottom line. With our continued focus on operational performance, we came into 2020 well positioned, and our focused execution throughout 2020 drove the best financial performance in Stantec's sixty five year history.
We've also laid the foundation for future earnings growth the value creators of excellence, people, innovation and growth, which are the cornerstones of the strategic plan we rolled out at the end of twenty nineteen. Despite the disruption caused by the pandemic, we were able to deliver revenues that were consistent with 2019 as a result of the dedication of our employees and our focus on efficient project delivery. Through solid project execution and exceptional cost management, we delivered a strong 15.7% adjusted EBITDA margin. Lower interest costs resulting from strong cash flow management and tax recoveries recognized in the fourth quarter further contributed to a 10% year over year increase in adjusted diluted earnings per share to make 2020 a record year. We exited 2020 with an enviable backlog that grew organically by 3.1% year over year to GBP 4,400,000,000.0, representing approximately eleven months of work.
We've resumed growing through acquisition after a pause early in the pandemic. We completed three transactions in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty. And last week, we entered into an agreement to acquire GTA Consultants, which grows our presence in Australia by more than 10%. These strategic acquisitions have added almost 600 employees to the Stantec family in the last four months. Our balance sheet and M and A pipeline remain strong, and we remain well positioned to grow through acquisition in 2021.
We also achieved a key milestone in the fourth quarter by establishing and defining our 2022 real estate strategy. Informed by our sustainability targets and our desire to be an employer of choice, our objective is to design the workplace of the future. This includes offering flexible work arrangements, leveraging our top tier in house workplace design talent and embracing new tools to facilitate distributed work. Our strategy is informed by both a survey of our employees' preferred work arrangements and a detailed review of our entire office lease portfolio. Our 2023 real estate strategy has two major components.
The first component is the lease space no longer required by the business, and we expect this to drive an increase in EPS of approximately $0.1 per share in 2021. The second component of our strategy is to implement our flexible workplace model as leases naturally expire over the next three years. Approximately half of our office space portfolio expires over this three year period. And with this further reduction in our occupancy footprint, we expect to increase EPS by an additional $0.25 to $0.3 by the end of twenty twenty three. And from a square footage perspective, this translates to an approximate 30% reduction in our existing real estate footprint by 2023.
So you can see why we're so excited about this initiative. It supports our objective to design the workplace for the future. It provides our employees with the opportunity for a more flexible work arrangement. It helps to achieve our sustainability objective, and it delivers real value to shareholders, adding EPS of $0.35 to $0.40 over the next three years. Our real estate strategy will play an important role in lowering office based emissions in support of our commitment to achieve carbon neutrality for 2022 and net zero for 'twenty three two thousand and thirty.
The efficiency of our operations, our profitability and our sustainability are all woven into our long term strategy. We consistently come out on top in sustainability ratings across multiple independent third parties. In addition to our Corporate Knights ranking, Stantec is rated as a climate leader with an A minus score by CDP, and we're the only firm in our space that has achieved that rating for the last three years. And this illustrates that sustainability isn't something new for Stantec. It's been part of our DNA for decades.
Our ISS ESG quality score continues to outperform our peers year after year, and our Sustainalytics ranked our ESG score as low, which again is top of class. Now turning to the performance of the business. Revenue held up quite well in The United States for both the quarter and the year. We saw a modest growth in our water business through expansion efforts into our Pacific and US markets in particular. Growing urban populations and climate change are resulting in significant water scarcity situations.
And as an example, we estimate a spend of $15,000,000,000 to $20,000,000,000 over the next fifteen years in Southern California alone to address water scarcity. In October, we announced that we're leading the Pure Water San Diego program, a multibillion dollar initiative to supply local, sustainable water to San Diego's 1,400,000 residents. And in addition to this, Stantec is the prime consultant for the treatment related works on the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California's Regional Recycled Water Program. And we've also been selected as a key sub consultant on the City of Los Angeles' Hyperion 2035 program. Stantec is the only consultant with a leading role in these three ongoing flagship projects.
Growth in our energy and resources business was driven by a continued ramp up of renewable power projects. And we see significant opportunities for Stantec Energy and Resources and Environmental Services business going forward, with U. S. Officially rejoining the Paris Climate Accord. Partly offsetting this growth was the continued wind down of several major transportation projects.
In addition, our buildings business is still being impacted by the pandemic, but we're beginning to see growing momentum in the pivot towards e commerce, health care and other sectors, including The U. S. Federal Government. Our business development pipeline was very active during the fourth quarter. And in addition to the Pure Water contract I just touched on, we also announced that we're the prime consultant as part of a P3 team for six public schools in Maryland.
We were awarded the design and rehab of nine key bridge projects. And earlier this week, we announced our lead designer role for a heavy repair and overhaul facility design build project for the Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority. Revenue generation in Canada was solid due to our strong focus on our clients and account management programs. We saw organic growth in our water and environmental services businesses during the fourth quarter, partly offsetting a contraction in energy and resources, buildings and infrastructure. We've seen a growing focus on water infrastructure, particularly around irrigation and improved water management, and our teams have recently been awarded two large irrigation projects in Western Canada.
We signed three major hospital contracts in the quarter, including our role on the St. Paul's Hospital project in Vancouver, demonstrating our growing momentum around the pivot to health care currently taking place in our Canadian buildings group. We also announced our participation in the three sixty Transit Alliance joint venture during the quarter, which will oversee an estimated GBP 28,500,000,000.0 in capital investment for Toronto's transit infrastructure. Organic growth in our UK water business was driven by the ramp up of the AMP7 frameworks through 2020. We've increased our market share of these five plus year frameworks, winning most of the key water utilities in The UK, including Thames Water, which is the largest UK utility and serves roughly 15,000,000 customers.
The AMP7 frameworks we have secured totaled approximately £120,000,000 a year across The UK business, securing our backlog in 2025 and beyond. Australia and New Zealand have also begun to adopt the service delivery model. And in 2020, we won key programs with utilities like Sydney Water, Melbourne Water and Brisbane Water in Australia and with Christchurch, Wellington And Water Care in New Zealand, securing our backlog in 2023 and beyond and totaling roughly $70,000,000 a year. Transportation stimulus funding in The UK and New Zealand are fueling the infrastructure business in these regions, And our recent acquisitions have strengthened our ability to participate in these key projects. In addition, growth in our global power and dams and mining business also helped to offset a pandemic related weakness in our global environmental services and buildings businesses.
During the quarter, we signed several projects funded by European development agencies, including a contract for the conceptual design of the multipurpose port on Kiramati Island and on West Africa's regional transportation governance project. And we're also awarded the Somerset Dam Improvement Project in Queensland, Australia. And with this award, we are currently working on virtually every major dam improvement project in Australia. Overall, our business performed very well in 2020, and we entered 2021 with growing optimism, thanks to the strength of our client relationships, solid backlog and the positive trends impacting many of our business operating units. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Theresa for a review of our financial performance and our outlook.
Thanks, Gord, and good morning, everyone. Adjusted net income from continuing operations for the fourth quarter increased 28% to $67,000,000 which represented 7.8% of net revenue. Adjusted earnings per share also increased 28% to zero six zero dollars per share. Q4 earnings exceeded our expectations with net revenue generation slightly stronger and discretionary costs significantly lower than anticipated. Our solid adjusted EBITDA margin of 16.1% was bolstered by approximately 50 basis points as a result of the recovery of claim costs on a historical project.
But even excluding this nonrecurring item, adjusted EBITDA was very solid, reflecting our success in mitigating COVID-nineteen's impact on organic net revenue growth and gross margin. Also in Q4, strong cash flow generation led to lower than expected interest expense. Earnings were further augmented by the favorable resolution of certain tax matters recorded in the quarter. As Gord mentioned earlier, we've initiated our 2023 real estate strategy. And as a result, we recorded a noncash impairment charge of GBP66.7 million.
Turning to full year 2020 results. Adjusted net income from continuing operations increased 11 to $249,000,000 in 2020 or 6.8% as a percentage of net revenue. Adjusted earnings per share increased 10% to $2.22 per share. Earnings for the year exceeded our expectations on the strength of our fourth quarter performance and the nonrecurring items previously discussed, which collectively contributed approximately CAD0.10 to our EPS. As a result of reduced discretionary spending, adjusted EBITDA increased year over year to GBP $579,000,000.
Adjusted EBITDA margin increased to 15.7% in 2020 compared with 15.5 in 2019. The claim cost recovery recorded in Q4 contributed approximately 10 basis points to our 2020 adjusted EBITDA margin. Our balance sheet remains in great shape as result of strong cash flow generation and cash management. We closed out the year with net debt to adjusted EBITDA below our targeted range at 0.7x. Days sales outstanding was seventy five days at the end of the year, a four day year over year reduction.
And it's worth noting that over the last two years, we've reduced DSO by thirteen days. And while there will always be factors outside our control that can move DSO in either direction, much of the improvements over the past two years is the result of our increased focus on timely billings and collections as well as proactive management on contract payment terms. Moving on to liquidity and capital allocation. We generated $191,000,000 in free cash flow in the fourth quarter. Annual free cash flow improved 60% year over year to $440,000,000 During the year, we returned GBP 148,000,000 to shareholders, 68,000,000 through the payment of our dividend and GBP 80,000,000 through share buybacks.
On October 8, we strengthened our capital structure through our inaugural bond offering, issuing GBP 300,000,000 of seven year notes. And we continue to focus on disciplined capital allocation, balancing the returns of capital to shareholders with opportunities to deploy capital towards acquisition activity. Yesterday, we announced that our Board has increased our dividend by 6.5%, reflecting our ongoing confidence in our long term profitability. Our performance in 2020, along with the progress of our strategic initiatives, has increased our earnings expectations for 2021 from the outlook we established in November 2020. The main driver is the cost savings we'll garner from reduced occupancy costs, which, as Gord mentioned, will add approximately $0.10 per share to 2021 EPS.
This will completely offset the absence of the $0.10 we generated from the nonrecurring claim costs and tax recoveries in 2020. And we expect to grow 2021 earnings further, driving to an overall year over year increase on a percentage basis in the low to mid single digits. We're also today increasing our 2021 targets by raising the top end of our adjusted EBITDA margin by 50 basis points to 16%. This is driven by our continued strong operating performance and our expectation that discretionary spending will stay lower for longer given current travel restrictions. However, given the ongoing uncertainties associated with the pandemic, we've left the low end of the range at 14.5%.
We're now expecting adjusted net income to be greater than 6.5% of net revenue, a 50 basis point increase in our target. And we've also raised our adjusted return on invested capital target by 50 basis points to be greater than 9.5%. And with that, I'll turn it back to Gord for his concluding remarks.
Thanks, Theresa. Through 2020, we made excellent progress on the strategic plan we launched in December 2019 despite the challenges posed by the pandemic. And I encourage you to review our annual report for a more in-depth review of our key accomplishments. As Therese and I spoke about earlier, our 2023 real estate strategy with the goal of reducing our office lease footprint by 30% over the next three years will result in a material increase to net income and EPS growth. We're also affirming today that we intend to meet our long term financial targets, as set out in our strategic plan, by the end of twenty twenty three.
We entered this year with a solid backlog of GBP 4,400,000,000.0 and expect to return to low to mid single digit organic growth over the balance of 2021. We're back in the full swing of our M and A program, and we're ready to continue down this path in 2021 with the benefit of our strong balance sheet and a robust M and A pipeline. I want to close by thanking our employees for remaining steadfast through the pandemic. It's their hard work in continuing to execute our strategic plan and serving our clients that drove record earnings in 2020 while achieving best in class sustainability rankings. And we're gonna continue to to lean on our core values of doing what's right and putting people first as we move forward into 2021 and beyond.
And with that, we'll open up the call to questions. Operator?
Thank take our first question from Jacob Bout with CIBC. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Just had a question. I had a question about the the plan to reduce your office footprint by 30%. Have have you pulled your employees to to understand how they're feeling about it? You know, the girl getting a little tired of working from home, especially during this pandemic?
Yeah, Jacob. In fact, we've we've surveyed our employees a couple times through the pandemic. And we found that their thoughts on working at home versus the office has changed a bit throughout. Early in the pandemic, looking back in March and April, as we talked to people what they thought they might want to do, the response was, this is great. We want to work from home forever.
But what we found that we didn't think that, that would be an accurate reflection of the long term perspective. And so as we've talked to folks throughout, others in the industry as well, we found that what people are looking for is a little bit more flexibility where they could perhaps be in the office a couple days a week, but also have the flexibility to work at home one or two days a week. And that's sort of how we're redesigning our office footprint. We have a workplace design group in our buildings group within SanTech. And so we're working very closely with that group on what we might do within our company as well as advising other clients.
And so we really think it's important to have those people not work at home exclusively because we have a very collaborative design presence. And so it is important for us to still be able to bring people together. So as we looked at our longer term footprint with a certain percent still being full time in the office, Another percentage being part time office with maybe some flexibility working at home once in a while. But there will be a small subset that we will allow to work at home full time. And based upon that design, that's where we looked at that, roughly a 30% reduction in our occupancy footprint.
And you said there's a $0.10 impact for 2021 and $0.35 to $0.40 over the next three years?
Yes. The zero one zero dollars is part of the $0.35 to $0.40 that we expect over the next three years.
Okay. My second question here is just on the longer term targets you have. I think you said your net revenue CAGR greater than 10%. So clearly, M and A is playing a key role here. Talk a bit about how your pipeline is looking and how valuation is looking, assuming in this market, multiples are getting a little stretched?
Yes. So the M and A pipeline is very, very robust. And you can see, of course, we've mentioned we closed three, announced another one here just in the last three or four months. What we're finding is that while the pipeline was robust going into the pandemic, slowed a little bit, as we've talked about before, through last March, April, little bit into June, but really has strengthened. And we've reinvigorated all the discussions that we had ongoing previously, but there's just been a lot of new conversations that we've initiated really just over the last couple of quarters.
So pipeline very, very strong across all of the geographies where we're active. It's interesting. Initially, in the pandemic, we had hoped that we'd see some a reduction in multiples. But certainly, we haven't seen that. In the firms that we're talking to, we've seen multiples stay reasonably consistent.
You've seen some of the larger public transactions that have been announced recently that have had higher multiples. But we really haven't seen that significance of an increase in the firms that we're talking with.
Sorry. And where are those multiples? And is the focus still small and mid size?
Yeah. A lot of the firms that we're talking to are seeing the multiples still in that six to nine kind of times range. And our main focus is still in that sub-one thousand person firm because that gives us the opportunity to select the exact type of firm we want in the geography that we want to specialize in. But that said, our balance sheet is very, very strong. The our organization has really matured in the various footprint outside of North America where we're residents.
And so we are as larger opportunities come along, we'd absolutely look at them. But I wouldn't call it a change in our strategy. Our strategy is still that 1,000 person and less. But I think we now we've got a little bit more flexibility to look at some of these larger ones, if they're appropriate for what we see for our long term goal. Thank you.
I'll leave it there. Great. Thanks, Jacob.
We'll take our next question from Chris Murray with ATB Capital Markets.
Thanks, folks. Good morning. And so just maybe going back to thinking about the real estate, part of the equation. So just to confirm, so you're talking kinda $0.25 to $0.35 a a couple of years out. That's correct?
Yeah. Yeah. And what we said is we expect about $0.10 in 2021, and on top of that, $0.02 5 to $0.30, by the end of 2023.
Okay. On top of that. Okay. So I'm just trying
to understand the cadence of it. And then just thinking about that, there's the earnings piece of it, but there's also, I guess, the liability side of the leases. Can you talk a little bit about how this plays into your longer term return on invested capital metrics?
Yes. I mean, it absolutely will lift our return on invested capital because the ability to redeploy capital towards other things that otherwise would have been servicing these leases is what the opportunity a part of the opportunity. So with as Gord described, there are these kind of two prongs to the strategy. One is we've looked at space that we have determined we don't need any longer, and that's where we took an impairment charge. So all of those leases have sort of been bundled and modeled, and we took about a $67,000,000 impairment charge in the fourth quarter.
And so now as we go forward, one, we don't have to incur those lease costs through our P and L and two, the opportunity to sublease that space will provide sublease income to offset. And then the second element is, again, that there's it's pretty opportune for us in that roughly 50% of our existing lease space is naturally going to expire over the next three years. And so that gives us just a really great opportunity then to not have to impair that space, but as they expire, to be able to change and reduce our footprint going forward. And so that's where that opportunity for the $0.25 to $0.30 comes from over the next three years. So those are really the two key components and the way that the math works.
Okay. Now that's interesting. Gord, just I guess the other question I have for you is just thinking about your longer term net revenue growth. Interesting part about putting in a CAGR number, when you change the timing, is that it moves around. But if I go back historically, and you talked a little bit to, I think, to an earlier question about that 1,000 person.
I mean, there were years that you guys were doing fifteen, sixteen acquisitions a year of various sizes and then a platform every couple of years. Is that how we should be thinking about the way you think that
this unfolds over the next few years
to hit that 10 number?
Yes. I would think so, Chris. That sort of we're going to continue with our we call it the sort of the base hits, infilling of the right firm in the right locations. And when the timing is right, the opportunity is right, we might look at doing something a little bit larger, as you say, from a platform perspective. Okay.
That's all my questions.
I'll pass the line. Thanks very much.
Thanks, Chris.
We'll take our next question from Frederic Bastien with Raymond James.
Hi, good morning.
Quick question for you. Are you comfortable with
hi. Can you can you tell me if you're comfortable with the relative weighting of your five operating units right now? I believe, you know, infrastructure is close to 30%. I mean, you've got you've got environmental services and energy at both 15%. Is this sort of a place where you're comfortable being at at an equilibrium, or is there are there opportunities to to grow some of these business units further or at a more aggressive pace on a go forward basis?
Yes. I do think that in particular, our water business, which is currently about 21%, we'll see continued opportunities for growth there, both from an organic perspective. For the year, our water business grew organically by just a little bit over 4%. So it's going to continue to grow organically. But I do see continued opportunities for us to invest in the water space from an M and A perspective.
So I see particularly that area. Our environmental services, we're continually looking for ways to continue to grow that as well. So I think over time, the type of firms that we're looking at are water firms, environmental services firms, and also a little bit into transportation and building. So I think those you'll see those as being the primary areas of focus for us. So over time, I would like to see the water business and the environmental business grow a little bit more.
And so we're putting a particular focus on those areas right now.
Okay. Great. That's helpful. And in terms of high level kind of priorities for this year, would you mind kind of maybe flagging or highlighting your top two priorities?
Sure. We after spending a couple hard years looking at the back office and getting the sort of the back of house taken care of from an organizational structure perspective and leading the organization and so on, 2020 is really the year where we're focusing on growth 2021, sorry. And so we're really focusing on our organic growth programs. And we've had great success over those the last couple of years. We're going to continue to focus on that.
We're going to continue to focus on M and A because, as we talked earlier, our balance sheet is in great shape. We've got the maturity and the appetite to continue with that. And then also, we want to continue to focus on our innovation programs that we had just rolled out in really in a formalized way at the start of last year. We see that as a differentiator as we move forward, both in terms of new service offerings, new technology offerings that we can bring to market. So growth and innovation, absolutely.
We will continue to focus on the back of house operational, without question, but that's always there. But I think you'll really see a focus for 2021 for us on growth and supporting innovation.
Our
next question comes from Mona Nazir with Laurentian Bank.
Good morning, and thank you for taking my question. When I'm just thinking about your organic good morning. Firstly, when I'm just thinking about your the organic contraction that you had in the quarter and even the year. It's ahead of a number of peers, in spite of you guys having greater Canadian exposure and greater energy mix. I'm just wondering, looking back, what do
you
think helped shield or insulate the business? I mean, you mentioned in your opening remarks, three new hospital contracts awarded. I'm just wondering if you had to pivot the business to new areas or bulk up expertise in other areas or really was it due to mix? Thank you.
Yes. So thanks, Mona. So I think the real focus for us was on our organic growth programs. We've really been focusing hard the last couple of years, but really through twenty twenty one twenty twenty as well. So that not only did our backlog grow organically by over 3% through the year, but I think that also was a big driver why our organic retraction was point 8% for the year.
But to your point about pivoting, I think that's exactly right as well. Nowhere do we see that as evident is in our buildings business, where the commercial work that we were doing, restaurant fit ups, new retail, a lot of those projects have pushed off to the right. But we really pivoted to health care, particularly in Canada and Australia. And we pivoted towards e commerce facilities and doing a lot of great support. We have some global MSAs, master services agreements with those firms.
So I think it's really the focus on organic growth through we've got a number of solid programs, our account management program, We have a corporate campaigns program, a strategic growth initiatives program. So I think those are very, very important, and we'll continue to drive growth through 2021.
K. That's helpful. Thank you. And when I'm just going through the MD and A, the head count is stated in there at 22,000. I just wanted to, you know, ask.
Since year end, have you taken any steps to right size the business in any areas, Or are there plans to in the future? And just related to that, how is utilization sitting?
Yeah. So from a headcount perspective, absolutely, we've had to manage our headcount throughout the year. We've addressed that proactively and managing utilization. We actually saw our utilization rates early in the pandemic spike by three percent to 4%, and then they've sort of come down to more normal type seasonally adjusted levels. But what we really tried to do, in addition, was to not go too far from a headcount reduction perspective because we see the work is there, as you can see from our growth in our backlog.
We see the opportunity for good stimulus, from a number of different government locations coming, here in 2021. And so as a result of that, we wanted to make sure that we had the right team to drive us forward into the future as well.
Okay. So would it be fair to say, though, that any rightsizing that did occur in the year? Because the 2019 headcount was twenty two thousand as well. So any rightsizing that did occur in the year was largely offset by m and a?
Yeah. I think that's that's a fair fair statement, Lauren.
Okay. Perfect. And just lastly for me, and going back to the m and a, it's just really more of a confirmation. I understand you have made a number of smaller size tuck ins, and you did speak about a number of new conversations occurring with targeted firms. But given current leverage levels, is it feasible that we could see a number of medium sized transactions, call it, four to five transactions kind of simultaneously or within a shorter time frame that could bring in a potential, like, combined 3,000 people over, you know, five or six transactions, or would be that be outside of the targeted pace?
I think our balance sheet would certainly support that, but it really all depends on the opportunities. We have to find the right firms in the right geographies that are selling for the have the right motivation to sell. So if the opportunities were there, we certainly could drive that forward. But we're not trying to hit a particular quota. We want to stay continued to be disciplined in our M and A strategy is what we're paying so that we can see that long term accretion to our share price.
But if the right firms come along, you're right. We've got the balance sheet room to do it.
Okay. Perfect. So we're to be outside of the realm of possibility. Okay. That's great.
Thank you. I'll leave it there.
Great. Thanks, Mohan. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Michael Tupholme with TD Securities.
Thanks. Good morning.
Good morning, Michael.
My first question relates to your organic revenue growth guidance. You've talked about or you've reiterated your expectation for low to mid single digit organic growth in 2021, which is consistent with what you had talked about last quarter. I'm just wondering how we should think about that as we progress through the year, including whether or not we should be thinking about year over year organic growth in the first quarter being negative? Or is that a positive?
Yes, that's exactly where our thoughts are as well, Michael. Q1 of this year is comparing against the pre pandemic Q1 of 'twenty. So we do still foresee some overall organic retraction in Q1. But really, that low to mid single digits is sort of where we expect to be with through Q2, Q3 and Q4, particularly loaded towards the back half. But we that's sort of an annualized number that we would see in that low to mid single digits.
Okay, perfect. And then just sticking with organic growth. You provided some detail around your expectations for your geographic regions. On that front, can you talk a little bit about the thinking behind muted organic growth in The U. S?
I know your guidance doesn't incorporate any U. S. Infrastructure that may come, but it seems as though expectations for overall general growth in The U. S. Are fairly upbeat.
So wondering just what's driving the muted outlook there? And I know that isn't any different than you talked about last quarter, but just some thoughts there. And then secondly, any commentary on growth expectations by business operating unit as well?
Sure. In The U. S, we were just sort of being consistent and cautious. We do believe that there will be a US infrastructure stimulus package coming out. You know, the industry thoughts were that President Biden would announce it in February.
There was some speculation he might have done it yesterday, but I think we're working through some other you know, he's working through some other things first, of course. So we do see that stimulus program coming. But again, there's probably going to be it could be a quarter or two lag from when it's announced to when our industry in general will begin to start generating some revenue from it. So I think we're just being cautious there. But as we look at the various business operating units, to your second question, buildings overall, as an example, the commercial market remains challenged, but we've really seen this pivot to health care coming in the building segment.
And we talked about the St. Paul's project in Vancouver, but we were also awarded two additional projects with Trillium Health Partners there in the Toronto area, the Mississauga Hospital, Queensway Health Centre, the Footscray Hospital in Australia. So we're seeing a lot of work in health care and buildings. We're seeing a lot of pivot to e commerce, as many of us, people are buying more and more things from e commerce. So we do see some good tailwinds for building coming.
Particularly, we'll I think we'll see that revenue generation coming in the second half of the year as these projects get ramped up. In our energy and resources business, we're seeing great opportunities in the pivot to renewables, solar, wind, hydropower and so on. A lot of good opportunities there. Of course, because copper and iron ore prices are so high, those present really good tailwinds for our mining business. In our Environmental Services business, 2020 was a very solid year for that business.
Revenue was roughly flat from 2019. But we're seeing really solid backlog in that group and great opportunities to come see that happening as well. Just finishing off the walk around the business operating units. In infrastructure, our transportation market is very, very strong. And of course, we see that group being a net beneficiary of various stimulus programs that will be announced around the globe.
But we've got a really solid backlog into 2021 already for that group. And of course, our community development group is part of infrastructure as well. And we see the housing market strengthening in both Canada and The U. S. And it was interesting talking with the lead of one of our land development clients recently.
He described the market in the Southern U. S. As almost frothy because it was so busy. And then finally, looking at water. We had really solid organic growth in the water segment in 2020 even despite the pandemic.
Backlog really strong. Mentioned a couple of those irrigation projects in Canada, the long term AMP projects in The U. K, the long term frameworks awards in Australia and New Zealand, and certainly, of the opportunities in Southern California. So great opportunities in water. There's a lot.
When we look at some of the emerging technologies in water, like PFAS and other advanced tech treatments, we're already leading the charge on a lot of those things. So we see opportunities in water scarcity and reuse and coastal resilience and responsive to sea level rise. So in general, as we kind of look across the business, we see positive long term prospects in virtually all of our opportunities, and it's just going to be a slower ramp up in some groups rather than others. So that's where we feel pretty comfortable with our over the year low to mid single digit organic growth.
Great. That's very good color. Thank you, Gord. I'll just sneak in one additional question. Maybe this is for Theresa.
Just on the real estate occupancy cost savings opportunity, can you talk about where those savings will actually show up on the income statement? Just wondering if this is all through in the minute admitted marketing. And and if that is the case, I'm a bit surprised that there was no adjustment to the admitted marketing expenses as a percentage of revenue guidance, which is still in the 37% to 39% range.
Yes. Well, thank you for asking that question because it's actually it's a really important one that we should have highlighted. The unfortunate part of IFRS 16 is that this is really going to show up below the EBITDA line now that all of your leasing activities get reflected in depreciation and interest line items. So this is there's going to be a minimal impact on EBITDA on a post IFRS 16 basis, but it does drop to the bottom line. It is still positive to cash flow ultimately, but unfortunately, does not really move the needle on EBITDA.
Great. Thanks, Michael.
All right. We'll take our next question from Sabahat Khan with RBC Capital Markets.
Thanks and good morning. Just kind of building off of the last question around the savings and the three year targets. I guess, how should we think about the drivers of this EBITDA margin improvement? I guess, this real sounds like it's a relatively large contributor, but what else is driving, I guess, EBITDA margin improvement if this is sort of below the line as you think over the next three years?
Sure. As we mentioned in our 2021 outlook, some of that is going to be driven, we expect, by continued discipline around our discretionary spending. We had expected it to start to ramp up a little sooner in 2021. But as we pointed to, the ongoing travel restrictions means that we will likely be able to push that out a little bit farther into the year, if not beyond that. We've also said, though, that we don't intend to go back to the level of spending that we were incurring pre pandemic.
We've got all of these fantastic collaboration tools. So we know that the need for travel can be addressed through these virtual meetings in a large degree. So the direction we've given to people is that when things do open up, we expect cost savings to continue, but certainly not to the level that we've enjoyed in 2020. Beyond that, we continue to look at ability to leverage our Pune India operations, which is delivers just excellent delivery for us on both the design side and in our back office. And so we are driving commitments throughout our business for how we can increase our footprint there.
We're still currently in that 400 people range. And so there is a lot of opportunity for us to scale that up. And so that is really effective beyond cost, but from just an efficiency standpoint of having that twenty four hour clock to be able to use with the time zone differences. And beyond that, then it's continued focus on discipline, leveraging our Oracle back end systems that we continue to integrate all of our operations that, again, drive efficiency. And those are really the main things that we'll be focused on.
Okay. So I guess some of the stuff that's on the discretionary side that's going up, some of that may be
offsetting the real estate savings. If I look at the net revenue CAGR greater than 10% and net earnings CAGR or EPS CAGR of about 11% or more, I guess, is
there been some puts and takes with the real estate savings maybe being offset by some of the the discretionary spend that you were mentioning that might come back?
Yeah. I think so. I think that's that's that's a a reasonable assumption.
Okay. Great.
And then I guess just looking at
your the three year target, the ones that you've got rest for a few years, but you did mention that organic growth CAGR in there as well. I know you're mentioning the 2021 organic growth will be there. I guess how are you thinking about 2022 and beyond? Is it just maybe the lack of visibility that's keeping you from putting those targets? How are you thinking about organic growth over that three year period?
We've always talked about our net revenue CAGR of greater than 10% sort of as the number. We haven't really split our organic growth. We typically provide our targets for organic growth for the current year, for 2021. So we haven't really looked at providing organic growth numbers for 2022 and 2023. There's a little bit of my crystal ball isn't completely clear as I'm not sure anyone is about what's going to happen during the latter part of the year when the opportunities will come.
But if what we've seen even through the pandemic is any indication, we're just going to keep focusing on our clients, focusing on the various organic growth programs we have and hope just to continue with growth in that area in the years to come.
Okay. Great. And then just kind of one last one on a little bit more Canada. Guess I guess based on what you've seen coming out of Q4 with the improving commodity environment, what's your kind of directional view on some of the end markets specifically in Canada? Is there is demand picking up directionally as the commodity environment improving in Western Canada?
Or are people still taking a bit of a cautious view until they have a bit more visibility into current year?
Yes. Great, great question. So directionally, on some of the things, we did talk about in our building segment and some of the health care projects that we've got, St. Paul's, two with Trillium there in Toronto. So we're seeing those health care projects continuing to move forward on the building side, e commerce as well.
Solid opportunities in transportation as well. We talked about our work on the 28,500,000,000 public transit initiative in Toronto, which will provide good long term opportunities. And as well, water. We did talk about those two water irrigation projects that we recently were awarded here in Western Canada. Those are significant projects that are in part funded by some of the recent last fall, the Government of Canada, the some of the infrastructure stimulus programs that they've talked about.
So we see good opportunities in water as well. Environment looks good for us. And really, from an energy and resources perspective, our the work that we do in the oil and gas segment, as we've talked about before, is really midstream pipeline work. And those projects that we've been working on are continuing. So we just see while we don't see significant growth in those areas, it's just long term, longer duration contracts.
So it gives stability for this year and following. Great. Thanks, Edwin.
We'll take our next question from Mark Neville with Scotiabank.
Hey, good morning. Morning, bud. Maybe just the Morning. Maybe just a a first question. Just on the real estate, it over the over the the three year period, will there
be any significant cash costs associated with this consolidation?
Sorry. I just missed any significant cash
Yeah. Loss?
Yeah. Would there be any cash cost associated with this?
No. I we're not anticipating that. No. If anything, it will bolster our cash flow, through, through the the subleasing of that space. So we're not expecting, you know, outflow for, you know, refitting our space and in terms of capital expenditures or or leaseholds, if that's maybe what you're asking about it.
Yeah. I just wanna say the onetime cost is when we turn the lease stuff
like that. But but but No.
No. We're not. We're in the that's not, that's not a part of our plan.
Okay. And maybe just a question. Again, on
the three year plan,
would the expectation be that your free cash flow still can grow in line with your earnings? Or do you think there's still an opportunity on stuff like DSOs where you
might be free cash flow grow at a rate above?
You know, I think there's always an opportunity. I think we've shown over the last couple of years that we can move the dial on that pretty dramatically. How much more there is, you know, we're always going to try to improve on that. So certainly, there is a continued focus on it. So I'd say, yeah, there is an opportunity.
I'm not sure that it will be as dramatic as we've seen in the last couple of years.
Okay. Thanks for taking the questions for you. Okay.
Thanks, Mark.
We'll take our next question from Yuri Lynk with Canaccord Genuity.
Good morning.
Good morning, Yuri.
Good morning. Gord, I just wanted to ask another question on real estate footprint. I mean,
it doesn't strike you as a bit early to
make a a move like this. I mean,
I know you you said you you surveyed your your employees. They've they've done that, you know, at our firm as well. And at first, I was all for it, and now I'm, you know, flip flopping back and forth.
I'd love to get back to
the office. So just wondering if, you know, it's it seems to me to be a little early. People can can change their minds. And then beyond that, I mean, how do you control talent evaluation, managing utilization, fostering collaboration, which
I think is important in the in
the industry? Maybe just a little
bit more detail on the steps you've taken.
Yes. No, it's a great question. So what we've done there is, in addition to talking to our staff about what they're looking for, we're not looking to have everyone working remotely. As an example, the way that we're looking to roll out our footprint is roughly 50% of the people would be still full time in the office. Roughly 30% ish would have that ability to be part time in the office and part time at home.
But those individuals won't have a dedicated workspace. We'll have we'll be looking at reducing footprint because some of that will be like home selling or temporary use office space. And then the remainder would be folks that could work at home full time. Those would be people who don't have the need to collaborate as much with others. So we do think it's reasonable.
It's also going to move over the three year period, as we talked about as that 50% of our office space comes available over three years. We don't anticipate that there'll be any need to adjust our program. But should we get some huge kickback or the industry changes significantly one way or the other, we still have the opportunity to respond. But I don't think that that will be the case, actually.
And the timing to do it now, is it because you feel, you know, you're you're confident that that that's what the employees want, or is it also about, you know, into Mark's question about, breaking leases and stuff like that? Because it could just line up with lease expires, so it's also cost effective from that standpoint.
Yeah. You know, it's it's timing I'm
just trying to get a sense of why, like, why why do
this now? Why not wait another couple quarters?
Right. Well, the important reason for for looking at it now is that, you know, we've actually been planning our this real estate program, actually, even from the latter part of 2019. We've been thinking about this. We've been talking to staff. We've been and so really, pandemic just advanced some of those programs, allowed us to try out people working from home.
Is that really what they want? And work through those things. So I think that's important. The other thing that's part of the reduction in the square that 30% square footage reduction is that we're also looking to reduce our average square footage per person, those overall space planning standards. Because we see our average square foot per person is lower in Europe as an example than it would be in North America.
And so as we acquire firms and we bring them on, some of these firms have larger, less efficient square footage consumption of office space per employee. So we're looking to sort of get everyone back to more of a standard on that. So that will be that's part of the square footage reduction is that part. Part of it is the flexible work arrangement part. But really, it's the fact that we announced it now is just part of our long term planning that we've been working on for likely eighteen months now.
Okay. That's fair. That's fair. Thanks for taking
the questions, and solid quarter, and happy to see if you have it.
Our next question comes from Maxim Sytchev with National Bank Financial.
Good morning.
What was wondering if I I'm not sure if, FEMA, which are already involved in the Texas situation, curious to see, you know, whether you can leverage, grid kind of analytics capabilities to help out in that geography and maybe how the business might evolve over time.
Yes. That's a great perspective. And the work that our newly acquired that we had previously within Stantec, but certainly bolstered it through the acquisition of Teshemot, really supports that sort of grid strengthening type work that will require that will need to be done in Texas. You know, the fact that the Texas grid wasn't winterized and ready for a storm like that has been known for a decade or more. I guess what will be interesting now is whether the regulator and, of course, the citizens of Texas will actually require some of that work to be done.
But we've known this work has needed to be done since, I believe, there was an ice storm in 2011, and the results of that were very similar. And really, no work was done at that point. So we've got all the skills. We've got great relationships. And so should the funding come available to actually make some adjustments this time, we're ready and willing to talk.
Oh, we've had some discussions already there, but I'm not sure that there's anything meaningful from a contract perspective at this point.
Okay. That's helpful. And Gordon, maybe just a bigger question of, obviously, as you know, the fleets are being electrified, and I'm talking about, you know, the passenger cars and, you know, some of the the, you know, buses and and things like that. Is there a a greater opportunity for you guys to, you know, benefit from that given sort of all your green credentials?
You know, I do think so, Matt. Because you're right. As as more and more people have, you know, electric cars and they all bring them home in the evening to to plug them in, you know, the grid in the majority of of our communities can't support it. And so there will be a lot of grid strengthening work required. Certainly, our so our the work that we do there from a grid perspective will be required.
We also have, through our innovation office, one of our first innovative business opportunities that relates to connected and autonomous vehicles. So we're coming at it from a number of perspectives. First, the connected and autonomous vehicle work that we're doing to consult with clients on how they would roll it out. And a lot of that is planning for the vehicles, planning for the infrastructure, looking at things like charging stations and grid strengthening requirements. And so it's all part of the overall package that we're putting together.
As you look at other areas like zero emission buses that the Canadian federal government rolled out a while ago, we've done a lot of work on zero emission buses charging stations. And in fact, on this one, we're working with the CIB to help administer that program. So lots of opportunities from numerous different perspectives. Max, whether it's on the design side, the program management side, the technology side, we're all over these opportunities from whichever way that we can service our clients.
Okay. That's helpful. And then maybe just a couple of clarification points, if I may. Gord, I think you talked about housing obviously being very robust right now. I mean, historically, your land development practice was obviously pretty prevalent in that.
I mean, are we seeing a pickup in this vertical and to which extent and how big is it right now?
Our land development practice, or we call it community development, currently is in the 8% range of overall revenue. And it's been plus or minus a little bit in that area. And while I see it strengthening a little bit over the next little bit, and I don't see it being dominant in our overall revenue mix as it was, say, back in 02/2008, 2009 before the U. S. Financial crisis, I see it being in that eight percent, 9% range, maybe up to 10%, but it was up to 35% back in 02/2008.
We'll see nothing like that again.
Right. But I guess my point is that, I mean, businesses should be pretty good right now.
Absolutely. And even locations like, you know, we're in Edmonton here today that had slowed, but we've really seen some great strengthening in the markets in Edmonton and Calgary, certainly GTA. But really in the Southern States is where we're seeing a significant pickup in opportunities.
Okay. That's super helpful. And last one, the same question in terms of mining. Obviously, the commodities aren't going to stick right now. Do you mind maybe reminding us your level of exposure and how that could be going in, let's go over the next twelve to eighteen months as producers are sharpening their pencils on greenfield and brownfield projects?
Yes. So our mining practice currently is just a little bit less than 5% of the overall revenue generation of the company. But we have early on in the pandemic, we saw mining dropped off as Peru and some of the places in South America closed the mines due to COVID. But certainly, we've seen those working around how we can get staff into the mines to continue to work. Copper prices, of course, all time highs.
Iron ore prices, very, very strong. Gold as well. So we are seeing a pickup in our mining work in South America, Western Australia and other locations as well. So I do see positive tailwinds for mining in the foreseeable future. Also, we're active in some other things like lithium.
We've been doing some work on some lithium mines in the Geppel. And as we get more and more towards battery storage, battery technology, we can see additional opportunities coming in that area as well.
We'll take our next question from Benoit Poirier with Desjardins Capital Markets.
Yes. Good morning, everyone, and congratulations for the quarter. To come back on the real estate question with respect to the optimization plan, you provide great color about the the the potential impact in the years to come. But when looking at your average square feet per person, is it kind of an is opportunity to to to get closer to your peers, or it's really leading the pack and lowering the the the average square feet per person and try to to to really make North America more comparable to Europe?
Yes. We're it's a little bit of both, actually. That certainly, the European average square footage per person is lower than we would see in North America in our industry, not just for us, but where our competitive set and overall. So we're doing what we believe is the right thing. As we've talked with our clients, we've talked with our space planning group where we can get.
We're I don't think that we're looking to lead the charge and set the lowest possible square footage per employee because that's really not our objective. We want to ensure that we're doing the right thing, balancing cost optimization with ensuring that our employees feel positive about their work environment, that they want to come to the office, they want to collaborate. So I think it's a bit of a balancing act, Benoit, as we look to optimizing that real estate footprint.
Okay. That's great color. And looking at the backlog, was there anything in particular that drove the sequential decline? I mean, you grow organically on a year over year basis. Is it purely a matter of FX here, Ward?
There are really a couple of things that in looking at our backlog that transitioned from the third to the fourth quarter. A part of it was just foreign exchange in terms of the strength of The U. S. Versus Canadian dollar. And we do typically see that book to burn that goes down from the third to the fourth quarter, the fourth quarter being a little bit of a slower season for us.
Those are the two large contributors. And we did note in our MD and A as well that we have now changed our contractual relationship on Trans Mountain, which was going to be a slightly bigger chunk of revenues within our backlog. But that relationship has changed such that now we've removed some of that out of our backlog. So that was really sort of the quarter over quarter change.
Yes. Okay. Okay. That's great color. And looking at the DSOs, obviously, strong performance over the last year.
How should we be thinking with respect to 2021, whether we should be more cautious in terms of DSOs? How should we be thinking on that front?
Yes. I think we're feeling very positive about where we're at, recognizing we left our target at ninety days, and we probably could and should have tightened that up a little bit. But truly, we feel like we're in a really good space around this sort of seventy five day mark. So we're not anticipating a large move upward in DSO. We just wanted to make sure that we left room for inevitabilities around things that are out of our control that may cause DSO to move in either direction.
And that does conclude the question and answer session. I'd like to turn the call back over to Gord Johnson for any additional or closing remarks.
Great. Well, thank you again for joining us on the call today. We look forward to speaking with you in the near future about our continued progress. So thanks again. Have a great day, and stay healthy.
Thanks, everyone.
Thank you.
And that does conclude today's presentation. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.