I am Louie DiPalma. I cover smart infrastructure on William Blair's equity research team. We have an over capacity crowd on hand here for this session of day two for the 46th Annual William Blair Growth Stock Conference. We are very pleased to be hosting a presentation with Cardinal Infrastructure's management team. Joining me today are Chairman and CEO, Jeremy Spivey, Chief Operating Officer, Benji Wood, and Director of Investor Relations, Emily Lear. Cardinal IPO'd in December and it has been an auspicious start to shares.
As your CFO, Mike Rowe would say, "Knock on wood." Jeremy, Benji, and Emily, thank you for joining me. Following the session, there will be a breakout in the Burnham B room. I am also required to inform the audience that a complete list of research disclosures and potential conflicts of interest are available on our website. Jeremy, thanks for joining us. Please take it away.
Thank you, Louie. Appreciate you guys joining us here today. That's me. I'm Jeremy Spivey. I'm CEO and Chairman of Cardinal Infrastructure Group. As Louie indicated, we had a successful IPO in December of 2025. We are a turnkey infrastructure services platform serving and rolling up in the Southeast. What we are is we are a comprehensive infrastructure service platform. What we do and what we deliver is all the civil services, turnkey, that are provided for all end markets within the development world.
What we do is we lead with residential development in all the markets that we enter. We vertically integrate services, get to scale, and then we diversify to all the other end markets. S tarting with residential, t he reason we do that is because it has very sticky relationships. It is a service that is led with wet utilities due to the complexity. Schedule always drives the success of these projects, and we lead with schedule, and in turn, we also get unmatched quality. I'll go through some of these services real quick.
What we do is we deliver all the services. It's clearing and grubbing. We do surveying. We do erosion control. We do drilling and blasting of rock, which is specific to certain regions of the Southeast. We do grading and mass earthwork. We do retaining walls. We do wet utility installation, which is water, sewer, and storm drain, and then f inally, we do stone curb and paving. We grow the platform in a few different ways. First, we enter new states through M&A. Next, we advance the vertical integration advantage that we've developed across our footprint, both organically and through tuck-in opportunities. Finally, we diversify end markets as we scale into new MSAs.
Again, we lead with residential. We start off in new markets. Benji's here with us. ALGC was our first acquisition as a public company. They provided a few of the services, but not all the services, and led with residential development. That was their primary end market. Once we get into these new markets and we start to integrate and add all the services that provides for a complete turnkey package, we can then go off into other end markets and be not only competitive, but provide a host of solutions and services that those end markets aren't used to.
Typically, when you see end markets that are outside of the residential world, it involves general contractors who are sourcing a number of different services and then kind of compiling them to deliver a finished product. What that does is that provides and creates pain points through handoffs, right? You have a service, the service comes in, you have a master schedule. That service requires a handoff to a new trade provider, if they're busy doing another project or they don't have the resources to come step in at that handoff point, you have an issue because you have a gap in schedule and so t hat has downstream impacts all the way down to the completion of the project.
What we do is we solve for that. When you hand the project to Cardinal Infrastructure Group or one of their platforms underneath it, the handoff is one time, then we are facilitating all the resources required to execute all the services to deliver a final product. The handoff is seamless. There's no gaps in schedule. We're able to move and reallocate resources as needed to provide, not only schedule completion on time, if not on time expedited, but also we're solving the quality issues. When you have different trades and different service providers executing the different work, you never know kind of what you're going to get.
There's different eyes on the product. Once you go to get your final acceptance and approvals from whatever municipality or engineering third party who's doing the certification, you oftentimes, due to the handoffs and the change of the guard, if you will, with the service providers, there's issues with either not being fully completed or not being completed to the municipality's standards and specifications and then y ou have to go back and find out who's responsible, get that work repaired, and then move on throughout the completion and warranty process.
When that's seamless, when there's only one handoff and one service provider, there's one set of eyes on the project from start to finish. You know, when we hand off a project to a customer or a developer at the end of the project, there's been no gap. That's part of the value add prop that we deliver to all the end markets. That specifically becomes very important with respect to the commercial, the industrial, the manufacturing, the infrastructure, or retail end markets, because they're used to the multi-trades providing the service.
Slide eight here. We're going to continue rolling up in the Southeast. Cardinal has a proven M&A engine. We've done eight acquisitions. We have a discipline playbook with both the companies we're looking to bring in and the multiples for which we're willing to pay. We start, when we're entering a new market, we're focusing on service providers in that market. We're meeting with them. We have multiple ways that we source and identify potential M&A targets. We do that through friends and family. We do it through equipment providers. We do it through material providers. We do it through insurance agents. We do it through a whole network of connections that we have in those markets to be able to identify and get introduced to potential fits for our company.
We lead with culture, so that's the first thing we're looking for. We're looking for a cultural fit, not only with management, but all the way down the line to the skilled labor workforce out in the field. ALGC is a perfect example of this. Out of the eight acquisitions that you've seen us done, we've probably looked at 100 different companies, so i t's not that we're just looking at a company and trying to figure out a way to make it work. We're very deliberate in finding the exact right fit. We partner with great management who shares in the vision, who wants to be part of the team, who wants to be a part of the success, who's always wanted to do what we've done, never had the resources, or never wanted to take the risk to get it done.
This is a very fragmented industry we operate in. Mom- and -pop, multi-generational operations who have grown their company to a level and provided a number of services where they're just comfortable. Either they have multiple family members or they're the sole founder operating partner of the company, and they've reached a level to where they're making comfortable distributions. They know what the revenue is going to be on an annual level or on an annual runway, and they know what they're going to be distributed at the end of the year and so t hey're not looking to take the risk to reinvest that cash back into the business in order to try to accomplish what we've done.
There was nobody in the market when we started doing acquisitions in the Carolinas. There was nobody in that space doing it at the time, which is kind of a testament to the vision, but also signals that nobody's willing to take that risk. The integration process has to be flawless. You're dealing with employees and skilled labor and management who run the engine.
If they're not comfortable, if you're not letting these individuals know that day two's going to be better than the day one, then you run the risk of having some attrition. Making sure that that integration process, that letting the employee base know that the culture that you're trying to create is better at or better than what they're used to is key. There's just not a lot of people out there who have the experience or the willingness to take that step to try to figure it out.
Jeremy, on the subject of M&A and culture, I think it'd be great to hear from Benji in terms of how you connected with Jeremy and Cardinal, and how the culture fit has been for your company.
My brother and I owned our business and been in Atlanta for over 30 years. We've been approached over the years several times from different PE groups and so forth. I'm 51, and we're at a point of maybe exploring that option. We'd gone through the process, had our book out, and there were deals on the table to be had, right? To what Jeremy's touched on, you spend your whole life building a business, and those options are just never were really what you're looking for. If you want to throw the keys at it and go away, maybe, you can do that, but it wasn't the best option that we were looking for. We have a lot of people we've built our business with, really important to us and our culture.
Fortunately, we met with Jeremy and the team late in our process, but once we got to know each other, spend a little time together, like Jeremy had touched on, the cultures fit, the interest aligned and t hat's the key. The people are everything in a company, right? If you get aligned with the right people at the table, a lot of great things happen. That's the way we felt, and we were excited about what Jeremy's done in Raleigh and in the Carolinas. No one's done it in Atlanta. Atlanta's a larger, a little bit more mature, super efficient market. People tend to stay narrow-focused in their lane versus the vertical integration. It is high risk, it's high capital.
Our business is capital intensive naturally. That was the path my brother and I had been on. We thought about it, just never crossed those lanes. When we sat down with Jeremy and the team and seeing what they've done. The opportunities were obvious, and they're kind of in front of you. No one else was doing it, so we didn't feel like we were missing it or behind the ball in Atlanta. We're one of the top four contractors in Atlanta without question. It just really brought some exciting opportunities and ideas to the table. It's been really exciting thus far just to have, again, the people at the table with aligned interest, aligned expertise, and background, just really bringing these ideas together. It's exciting to see what's happened so far.
What you see here is you see the eight acquisitions that we've done, and the strategy kind of looks like this. There's a platform and then there's a tuck-in and what I'll call the hybrid tuck-in, and I'll go through a little bit here. Our platform is our expansion into a new market. ALGC is a perfect example. We acquired that company, we started to integrate it, not only in the back office and with the management team, but then we're focusing on integrating vertically with services. What can we do organically right off the bat to grow this business?
In Atlanta, there was a few services that they didn't already provide in-house, drilling and blasting, retaining walls, asphalt paving, curb and gutter. What we were able to do off the bat was bring our drilling and blasting resources into that market and help facilitate getting that work done in-house. Now the remaining services that we're looking at are the asphalt paving and curb and gutter, then the retaining walls. Then from there, we'll start to scale that business and then look at tuck-in opportunities if needed with the wet utility installation component and you'll see there are several tuck-ins here. All but one was a wet utility company.
The reason that we do these tuck-ins is not only, one, to facilitate roll-up in that space, but this is the most complex portion, service that we provide from a civil contracting standpoint. It is the most complex work. It requires the most skilled labor. It is very hard to train these individuals. There's no school, no trade school to teach these individuals. They learn in the field real-time. What we've seen through the execution of our initial platform in Raleigh is that you reach an inflection point with your growth where you can't organically acquire and train the utility service providers, those crews fast enough to keep up with the backlog. That's where we first stepped into our M&A, was with the Haralson Utility Repair acquisition in 2021.
This was done because our backlog was outstripping our ability to get that work done in-house. We did our first acquisition. We got 12 utility crews, continued to facilitate the growth in that space. Our backlog, we were able to service it and continue to vertically integrate all the remaining services. We did all that organically and t hen we did Goodwin Enterprises in 2022, same story. Now fast-forward to Charlotte, t here's our platform acquisition, Monroe Roadways.
We're growing, scaling that business, organically adding vertical services. We did the Purcell tuck-in, and that was a wet utility provider, same issue, same story. What most people don't know is that you cannot truly vertically integrate this business without having density in the wet utility portion of our services. It's the longest in duration, i t's a critical path of the project and a ll the other services are not as long. If you don't have density and scale there, you cannot facilitate all the other services efficiently because they would have gaps in schedule.
Finally, I said hybrid tuck-in. The asphalt paving and concrete work, it's the shortest in duration of all the services for a civil project, and I'll just give you a quick example. If it takes 8-12 months for a utility crew to do one project, it could take two to three weeks for a paving crew to do that same project. There is a need for a substantial amount of third-party contracts for an asphalt paver to be engaged in order to facilitate efficiency for that service and not have gaps in schedule. While they're servicing any of the Cardinal platform companies, they're also outsourcing and contracting their own contracts offline. That company flies its own flag.
In the Carolinas, it's Aviator Paving. As we recently moved into the Georgia market and we start to integrate, we will do a tuck-in, a hybrid tuck-in, which will be its own namesake, and it will continue to scale and grow third party outside of the ALGC umbrella. Next here y ou see what this shows is our multi-year track record of growth, 36% revenue CAGR and 30%+ EBITDA CAGR. This is just showing our track record from 2023- 2025. The birth of Cardinal, preparing for the platform, and then elevating our place in the industry.
2023, for reference, is when we started to scale and enter new markets outside of the Raleigh market, specifically Charlotte. Here you'll see our full year 2026 outlook. We expect revenues of $680 million, 50% increase from the prior year, and adjusted EBITDA margins of 20%+. Here, why the Southeast and why now? The reason is there's a lot of room for Cardinal. Our runway is pretty substantial.
The opportunities in front of us, and not only in the markets that we're already in, but the markets that we have yet to enter, is pretty wild, to say the least. We're in the very early innings of not only the Charlotte and Greensboro- High Point market in the Carolinas, but we're very early on in the Atlanta market. The Atlanta market is about seven times bigger than the Charlotte market, for reference. It's also about eight times bigger than the Raleigh market. We're very early on. We're supported by a convergence of a number of cyclical drivers, onshoring, net positive migration.
There's all kinds of factors that apply to the Southeast and the markets that we're yet to enter, but we're focused on entering soon and w e're excited about the road ahead, and we appreciate all the interest so far in Cardinal. I will say, this is the first time I've done this. I appreciate you guys bearing with me. I wasn't expecting this. I think that wraps it up, Louie.
Great. My first question, and that was a wonderful job for your first time. It has been very well- documented that there has been industry shortages of skilled construction labor. Has being public assisted with recruiting new talent and retaining talent?
I'll speak from my side, and then Benji can speak to now he's part of a public platform. Yes. There's been multiple iterations of when we start to attract. What you see in this industry are people get comfortable and they've worked for these families. This is multigenerational family and family-run businesses. If you have the right culture, it becomes a family. People don't move just to move.
As we scaled and have grown the business in the Carolinas, I'll speak to that, there's been iterations and points and when we start doing things differently than our competitors, where it became that tipping point that would acquire people who ordinarily wouldn't have moved. Now being public is another one of those points where, okay, well, there's sustainability. People are looking for certainty in their jobs, and that adds a new layer of certainty in the fact that we're here to stay so y es.
Great.
Yeah, I would say the same thing. It's been advantageous for us thus far. Just since the news announced and stuff, it's a great story, and a lot of people want to be a part of it. Yeah, we have people reaching out to us with interest and love the story. In our industry too, to have a public company, but to have our different platforms, but everyone's not having to travel. That's an attractive thing that hasn't been in our industry thus far to where your bigger companies, you can go with them, but you might be shipped to Kentucky or who knows where you're going to be next week. What the platforms bring into Atlanta has been exciting. Yeah.
I want to add one more thing, Louie.
Yeah.
The multigenerational mom-and-pop aspect of this industry is such that when you enter into this industry, whatever level, skilled labor, management, you tend to hit your head on the ceiling really quick. The opportunity is very limited with whatever company you're going to. One of the byproducts that I saw early on, but now I see it at scale, is opportunity that we create through how we're growing our business, through organic growth. All the levels of opportunity, not only in the market that these individuals are in, but if they want to go to a new market, there's opportunity everywhere. If you're a go-getter, an outperformer, and you want to move up the ladder, it is very unique for our industry to offer that, and we do. That's been another driver with acquiring talent, not only on the skilled labor side, but on the management side.
Great. I also have another question that you can each answer. During the IPO process, I think one of the pertinent aspects to Cardinal was how, at the time, you only operated in North Carolina, and your biggest market was Raleigh, and the other markets of Charlotte and Greensboro, they were less mature, but you were noted as a company that only operated in one state.
Jeremy, you're from North Carolina and the Raleigh area, and so the question was: does Cardinal have the ability to replicate its success outside of North Carolina? A very valid question. You guys, I believe it was in February, acquired ALGC, and that's when your stock took the next major leg up, because that partially answered the question that, yes, you can expand outside of North Carolina. My question is, are there other ALGCs out there? Are there other platforms out there in the Georgia region, in the broader Southeast, so that you can rinse and repeat this strategy to take advantage of how hot the Southeast market is?
The quick answer is yes. We have a great pipeline opportunity, and you'd be shocked at how very similar to ALGC the opportunities are that are out there. Again, we are hyper-focused on who we're partnering with, and making sure that those partners are aligned in not only the vision, but the cultural aspect of what we're trying to provide for our employees. We're very unique in that the company that went public was a founder and founder in business. It wasn't sponsored. I have a different outlook and take on how I want to treat the employees and create opportunity for them.
Going to meet Benji and his brother and having that conversation early on when we weren't even public yet, and kind of saying, "H e's buying in to me as much as I'm buying into him, and h e's taking a big leap of faith, because we weren't public." You know? I would say he took a bigger risk than we did. The opportunities that are out there for us are, it's just simply a function of picking the best match for what we're trying to do and accomplish, and making sure that they have the skill set and the bandwidth to be able to go execute the vision.
Right. Yeah, Benji, are there more either platform acquisitions or tuck-in acquisitions in the Georgia region that you can see that-
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Jeremy's alluding to it. There's more opportunities than there's not. Right? There's a lot out there. Even the news of us, it's amazing how many people, how many phone calls you get of, "Hey, let's catch up and do lunch soon." There's a lot, but again, it goes back to people. Jeremy touched on this. I mean, doing it just for the sake of doing it is not the answer, right? It's the discipline of execution, which these guys have done historically, and I think we'll continue that going forward, is the key to success. The opportunities, yeah, it's more than you can shake a stick at.
That's the M&A aspect of the story. Then I think in the first quarter, you organically grew by 64%, which is a pretty staggering number in the residential market that is by all accounts struggling in a huge way. So, I guess my other question is for the more mature markets, so Raleigh and Atlanta, are the growth drivers in place for sustained double-digit growth? How are you viewing your more mature markets right now?
That number is obviously a sizable number. The way that we are currently set up and the way that we will be executing for the foreseeable future is that will be lumpy. We'll have acquisitions, they'll start to integrate, there'll be big spikes, and then kind of the standard 30%-ish+ growth. That's really where the numbers should live. You'll see some spikes and bumps in that along the way, depending on where we're at in the cycle of integration and new market. Charlotte is very early on.
We're integrated, but we're now scaling, and we're now diversifying end markets. We were focused on residential in Charlotte, and now that we're fully integrated, now we're diversifying end markets. We got our first data center. We got a large distribution facility in Fort Mill, South Carolina and so w e don't focus on end market diversification until we're fully baked on the vertical integration side.
Yeah.
And that's because of the relationships with residential. We have those relationships that are sticky, that are long, that will be there no matter where we're at in the cycle. We're able to build and integrate off that backbone because of those relationships. They know who we are, they know what we're going to deliver, and they'll be patient as we start to scale and integrate.
Right. With the final minute, you recently announced your first data center win. Are you able to, and are you currently bidding on other data center projects across both your current states of operation? Just can you generally characterize, are you seeing the data center market as hot as everybody else?
For the Carolinas, it's really the Charlotte-ish area. There's some stuff that is in the northern part of the state, kind of on the Virginia line that our Greensboro office is engaged in, I see more opportunity in the Atlanta market. It's a more mature market for data centers than Charlotte, or any other part of the Carolinas. We're doing our first. It's a multi-phase site. They're happy with what we're doing. We're looking at the second phase now. There's some other opportunities in the Charlotte market we're looking at, and I know Benji and his group are-
We have projects in Atlanta we're pursuing.
...addressing some opportunities in that market. We'll take it. We're looking for relationships. We're navigating that because that's a very transient end market. GCs travel, and we don't like the one relationship and done. We're looking for long-lasting relationships. We're navigating that at the same time.
Fantastic. Thanks Jeremy and Benji. We are going to continue the conversation in the Burnham B room as part of the breakout session. Thanks.
Thank you.