Okay, excellent. Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining the Sidoti May 2024 Microcap Conference. My name is Julio Romero, and I'm the Building Products and Industrials Analyst here at Sidoti. Really pleased to be able to host L.B. Foster. Their ticker is FSTR. With us today, we have John Kasel, President and Chief Executive Officer; Bill Thalman, EVP and Chief Financial Officer; Stephanie Schmidt, Manager of Financial Reporting and Investor Relations; and Sean Riley, Corporate Controller. The format of this is going to be a presentation followed by some Q&A towards the very end. If you have any questions for L.B. Foster, feel free to type them into the bottom of the screen at the Q&A section, and I'm more than happy to ask on your behalf. With that, John, Bill, Stephanie, Sean, thanks so much for being here, and the floor is yours.
Thank you, Julio. Much appreciated. Again, thanks to Sidoti for pulling this together for us, as well as the opportunity to talk about L.B. Foster. We just came off our earnings call yesterday, so we're ready to roll and talk about things that have happened through last year and probably, more importantly, through the first quarter.
A little bit, Stephanie, thank you. So again, I'm John Kasel, President and CEO of the company. I've been with the company this my 22nd year. My last role was Chief Operating Officer, and before that, I basically rolled up all the different product segments and product groups over the prior 18 years with the company, so operations, production, quality, safety background, and then eventually moved into the role I'm in today. Next.
So good company, a lot going on.
The prices you see here were earlier as far as our stock price. It's kind of exciting times with the company, so Bill and I are going to kind of shape this for you, what the landscape looks like today. Rich history, but we've really been also trying to clean up our message and really make our investment thesis clear to the investors, who we are, more importantly, where we go. Now, we appreciate we're a small market cap, but at the end of the day, I think we have a lot of power to get things done and provide some returns to the shareholders. So today, we're going to talk to you about the business segments, what we've done over the last couple of years, and probably, more importantly, where we're taking the company in the future. Next.
So first and foremost, our thesis, what we've been doing.
So in the last couple of years, we've done 2.5 years, we've done 9 different portfolio moves, really focusing on who we are and, more importantly, where we can add value to the market and make a differentiation and continue to grow the company year in and year out. We feel very good about where we're at today because the fact is, much of what we're going to get done, we're managing internally. We got some really good growth programs that are organic in nature. In the past, the company kind of went off and did some things and a lot of M&A work and bringing in kind of risky acquisition-type stuff. That's the way of the past.
We really understand what it is, who we are now, and we're going to be spending our money and continue growth, looking internally and growing in markets that we know are going to be good places to be. Cash generation is everything. We really look at cash. This company has had a nice history of generating cash. We got some really good things that are going on right now related to continuing upgrowing cash. We did a great job last year. We're putting guidance out there this year what our cash generation is going to be, as well as we're giving kind of insight what 2025 and beyond looks like as well.
Very little of what we do is actually capital. We try to think our way through things, so only 2%-2.5% of revenue goes actually into capital.
So much of what we do is try to organically work through things, but also do it with process in mind, people in mind, and trying to scale up without spending a lot of cap to get there. Next.
So I mentioned this earlier, been around now, coming up on 125 years. It started with Four Brothers here in Pennsylvania. Four Brothers took rail, relayed the rail, or sold the rail to the coal mines back in 1902. That's how the company started. Company went private in 1981. We've done a number of acquisitions since then, and the company went public. Recently, it's really been about strategic transformation that Bill and I are going to share with you today, understanding the rich history, but more importantly, where we're going to take this company into the future. Next.
So this is my favorite chart because it really talks in what we're doing and the value that we're generating. Not necessarily always on top line, but definitely on margin. So over the last couple of years, you can see we have moved the business up related to top line, but we've really been focusing on making profit. We had to do that through a number of investors that you see on the left-hand side. We had a number of businesses that, honestly, we had no business being in. They were in the energy space. And we also had some businesses that were commoditized. A good part of what the company was in the past, but being commoditized and became kind of widgets, if you will, and a lot of buying power from our customers. So the pivot's been towards innovation. It's been towards technology.
It's about global reach, specifically in Western Europe and Asia and some points in South America. So we brought in acquisitions to help us do that and grow specifically in rail and as we're doing in infrastructure and really clean up the portfolio to where we're making money and where we can show continued growth and expansion in margins. Next.
So I'm going to talk about the big business segments. Coming in this year, we, again, streamlined the business, moving from three segments to two segments. That came naturally because of all the portfolio moves that we made.
I wanted to really start driving the back office, which we have more work to do, start leveraging the costs as well as our SG&A and really have one face of the customer versus a lot of little different business segments that we had in the past and really clean up our message, not just to the investment community, but also to our customers and how we do business here at L.B. Foster. Next, Stephanie.
With that, we have two segments, rail, technologies, and services. And we're really honing in on the words technologies and services because that's really been an expansion of our portfolio, really focused on technology and then bringing a service offering to our customer all through rail. I'll talk more specifically what these are in a few minutes. The second piece is infrastructure solutions.
The big piece of that is precast and concrete today. This is where companies have really been growing, specifically in the East Coast and now in the Southeast United States. Everything we do primarily is all U.S. here. We have had other things, but this is where a lot of our portfolio work has been done over the last couple of years. Again, I was talking about the energy space and so many other things we used to have is kind of not part of our portfolio anymore. But you can see how we feel good about this. If you look at these margins here on this table, we got respectable margins for the type of work we do and consistent across the two segments. Rail is still significantly a larger piece, but infrastructure is growing, and of the two, it's growing more than rail.
The margins are coming with it as well. So we feel pretty good about where we're at related to streamlining the business, having two segments, changing leadership, one face to the customer, and really starting to leverage our business. So let's talk a little bit more about these segments. Stephanie.
So rail, this is a business I ran back in 2012. It was a good business, but it was really heavy, heavy focused on products at that time. So if you see this box called Rail Products, over on the chart there, it was over $200 million of the $330 million of sales, so a significant part. This is the component piece of the business. This is what the trains run on, the freight trains, the transit trains. So it's the running rail. It's the ties below. At that time, we had ties. We used to do wood ties.
We used to do concrete ties. We don't do that anymore. But it's also the track fasteners, which we still do today, and some significant track components like it, insulated joints and other things that we still do today. So it's a really important part of our business because it continues to just give off cash. And they come to us. Each and every year, railroads need to be buying for maintenance work as well as some of the capital programs, these components that they need to run their trains on. But we knew we needed to do more, and then that was to help manage those assets, not just for us, but for our customer. So back in 2010, we bought a company called Portec Rail, and this is global friction management. This is where it really gave us the opportunity to become a global company literally overnight.
So we picked up operations in North America, specifically in Canada. We also picked up locations in the United Kingdom and Germany. So overnight, it became kind of a global focus and became much more of a moving off of freight onto transit because of the markets that this business is serving. We love this business because you see $62 million in sales, but the profitability that comes with it. Customers want to buy product from us. It's not about just running the rail on the ground anymore. It's about providing a good ride. It's about managing your fuel efficiency. It's about making sure trains need to stop when they stop. Global Friction Management is a product and a solution and service that we provide that gives our customers the ability to do that. So it's a very good product for us and an opportunity to continue to grow.
The third piece of our transition in rail that we're very excited about again, remember, I talked about the technologies, is this technology, services, and solution. So think of the rail. You think about how we're managing the rail assets for Friction Management. Think now about all the things that ride on this track and how you manage those assets and looking at it from outside in on the track itself. And that's what this is. So railroads need the opportunity to see how that relationship between that train and that track is occurring. And that's where this business comes into play. It gives them the opportunity to know how they're running their equipment if they got possible.
We call it foul track, meaning if there's something on the track ahead that they need to manage, we give them an opportunity to do something about it or stop the train before it becomes an issue or a problem, as well as really understanding the type of equipment because railroads really don't own a lot of equipment. They bring it on from other people. They lease it. This equipment then tells how those people are operating those cars on their assets. So if it's overweight, if the weight's not properly balanced, all those things that we now have those solutions in place now with the company. It's a small piece. It's $50 million. You see there the $330 million, but it's also a nice profitable piece as well as this is where we're continuing to see growth and expansion because it's not a question of if.
It's only a question of when the customers in the rail space, both on freight and transit, will be required to use these to run their railroad, these devices. Next.
So why today? You can see in the news, but rail's really we're spending $ billions each and every year, the Class 1s, as well as what's going on in the Class 2 industrial rails. They're spending money each and every year. It doesn't matter how much is going over the tracks. They're spending money. And there's really a competition now. And there always has been a competition, but rail's starting to win a little bit more. And that's between what's going on over the roads, trucks, and what's going on the rail. When you look at the entire transportation network, rail is only 2% of the emissions of the entire transportation.
So when you look at trucks and barges and everything else, planes, that represents the other 98%. So rail has a significant advantage where they're starting to figure out how to move products across the nation and do it very, very efficiently and do it with ESG and other safety goals in mind. And so we're starting to see a real push to moving products on rail. And I think our solutions that I talked about earlier on the page really help give rail the opportunity in the railroads, both on freight and transit, to be more efficient in what they do and provide more value to their shareholders. And I think we're going to be a great extension of that for years to come. Next.
So the second segment, smaller between the rail, but this one is the one that I mentioned earlier, growing and growing significantly.
We really, really like. We started with a small precast business back in 1998. Today, we have multiple precast locations across North America. We started with these little buildings that you see there to go to state, federal, national parks. From there, we're moving into civil-type water distribution-type works. And now we're into doing exciting things related to putting up walls related to residential homes or light industrial parks or multiple family dwellings or sound wall barriers or types like that across the networks or the road systems across America. The smaller two pieces, we've been coating pipe for a long time. This is ID and OD pipe. We've partnered with ACIPCO down in Birmingham. We like this business. It's starting to come back now with a little more focus on the pipelines activity.
And then we have a smaller business that we've had for years doing bridge work and that we pivoted that business into a different type of bridge form business that the markets are really moving towards. So we feel good about really having strong infrastructure. So as the monies come through IIJA and they're coming through the federal programs, as they're coming because of the state of the infrastructure itself, we have what the markets are looking for. And we're in the good locations. So we're in Texas. We're in Florida. We're in Tennessee and those areas and West Virginia and Pittsburgh, areas Pennsylvania, excuse me, that areas that are going to continue to see quite a bit of infrastructure play and monies coming through. So we feel good about this business where we're at and more importantly, where we're heading. Next.
So infrastructure advantages, I mentioned a few of these earlier. This was an acquisition we did with VanHooseCo. And then we've done a small little one, a bolt-on called Cougar Mountain, which is a Redi-Rock licensee out of Boise, Idaho. But this EnviroCast, EnviroKeeper, are engineered products that the market really is excited about where we build a product in our factory versus going and building something at a job site, using walls, and then from the walls, pouring concrete. We build these walls in our factory or build the water retention systems in our factory. So it's pre-designed, engineered, brought to a job site, and then erected in a very short period of time, very short period of time, be it a home, be it a light industrial park, be it multiple family dwelling. We're seeing more and more of this.
It's something that we're really excited about. We're going to continue, as I mentioned, the organic programs. This is something we're going to continue to really build off in the coming months and quarters, honestly, years. It's a good platform for us and our growth, and specifically in infrastructure solutions. Next.
So from here, I'll turn it back to Bill with financial review, and then I'll come with some closing remarks. Bill.
Great. Thanks, John. You hear me okay? Everything coming through okay?
You're good.
Great. Thanks. So yeah, on the next slide, I'm going to start off my comments with just some of the highlights from the most recent quarter that we completed Q1, March 31st, and we just announced results yesterday. So as was mentioned early on, we were off to a solid start, a very strong start to the year. We're up 16.9% on our organic growth, and EBITDA was up 32.4% on a year-over-year basis. So really nice, strong growth on those two metrics. We made progress on our leverage and our net debt. We were able to improve both of those metrics on a year-over-year basis. And we reaffirmed our guidance for the year, which at the midpoints are reflecting modest growth in terms of top line, about 3% at a midpoint level, organic growth, but very strong profitability growth.
EBITDA growth at that midpoint of the range would be about 15% on a year-over-year basis. And as John mentioned earlier, strong cash generation. We see that being solid this year as well as improving outlook for 2025, which I'll cover in a minute. Next slide, please, Steph.
So this slide covers some of the more important metrics that we're keeping an eye on over the past three years in terms of progress that's been made with the transformation of the portfolio that John mentioned early on. You can see over that three-year rise, the sales are up about 8%. That's a combination of organic and inorganic moves that have been made. And that growth has translated into significant improvement in our overall profitability.
You can see it in the gross profit expansion, which is up 37% over that time period, as well as a gross margin percent that's up 460 basis points versus what we saw in 2021. So really strong improvement in our profitability, and that dropped through in terms of growth on EBITDA as well, which was up 74% and 240 basis point improvement in our EBITDA margin. So we've simplified the portfolio, got it really focused on key infrastructure markets that are growing, and it's translated into solid results over that three-year time period. Next slide, Steph. So this slide focuses a bit more on the most recent trailing 12 months in terms of organic growth as well as the gross profit performance that we've seen.
You can see the organic growth there has averaged about 13% per quarter over the last 4 quarters, but the most recent quarter reflects a high point of about 17% growth, 16.9% in the first quarter that was realized with really strong growth within our rail segment. And then the margins, you can see on the right-hand side, the average margins have been about 21.4% over that 12-month period. And they've been up nicely over the trailing 12-month period prior, but every quarter above 21%. So we're really pleased with what we've seen in terms of that profitability profile. And we expect that to continue as the year progresses. We've really transformed the profitability components of the business.
We think the growth as well as our infrastructure solutions, the focus on precast as well as rail technology should bode well for those margin trends going into the balance of the year. Next page, please. Turning to our leverage metrics, as I mentioned earlier, we did see an improvement in leverage on a year-over-year basis, down from 2.4 times to 2.2 times this quarter. We are up a bit from the end of the year. That's due to normal working capital cycles that we experience. And we expect that number to decline as the year progresses. So we feel good with our leverage being around two times. It was at a high point of about 3.3 times back when we completed three acquisitions in 2022, but we've steadily lowered that number down.
We expect to continue to make progress by keeping it right around two times for the foreseeable future. Highlight, we've got a capital-light business model. I think John mentioned that earlier in terms of the CapEx needs in the business to support the growth that we see in front of us. We think that will translate into significant cash generation, which will cover our capital allocation priorities here in a slide coming up here. But in the next slide, Steph, I'll turn over to kind of the outlook for 2025. Our guidance this year in terms of free cash flow generation for 2024 is from $12 million-$18 million, so a midpoint of about $15 million.
We've demonstrated we've been able to generate significant cash in the business over the last number of years, a bit of a soft patch during COVID and the recovery period after COVID. But last year, we had $33 million of free cash flow. This year, we're guiding around $15 million as a midpoint. But when you look at the fact that we've got an improving profitability outlook, we have federal NOLs in place that will minimize our cash tax obligations. CapEx needs are going to be light at about 2%-2.5% of sales. And then the free cash flow in 2025 will be improved by the fact that we have our Union Pacific obligation that goes away after the end of this year. That's about $8 million per year.
We see that we have a significant improvement in free cash flow ahead of us. We think that that will improve through the balance of this year and really start to accelerate as we move into 2025. The last slide, I'll cover our capital allocation priorities, which is there we go. Thanks, Steph. So we think that cash can be deployed in a number of different ways to create value for our shareholders. As I mentioned before, we're comfortable with 2x leverage, and we look to maintain that level for the foreseeable future. We're repurchasing our shares. We had a $15 million authorization that was announced back in February of 2023. We've been active with that program with still $12.3 million available through February of 2026. Our investments are going to be focused primarily on organic opportunities.
But we will also look at small tuck-in acquisitions where that makes sense to extend a product portfolio gap or a regional coverage gap that aligns well with our strategy. And we currently don't offer a dividend, but it's something that is an option that we'll consider in the future as our Free Cash Flow prospects improve. So again, a lot of progress made over the last three years. Feel good about where we are today and also feel good about our outlook here for the balance of 2024 and beyond. So with that, I'll turn it back over to John for his closing remarks.
Yeah. Thanks, Bill. Yeah. Go ahead, Stephanie. We'll get through this. We only got a few minutes, Bill. Great job. So we touched on this already. We got a lot of good things, a lot of good wind in our sails right now. We feel that we're well positioned to growth. We're an investment super cycle, and we're well poised to make that happen. Next. This is where we're at for 2025. Just keep everybody's mind and focus is not about necessarily just 2024, which we shared, but these are our goals for 2025. Of course, you'll see the stock price ticker looks a little different today based upon our release yesterday. Then we also talked about it. The Russell 2000 was reconstituted and announced today. We feel that we'd be back in it. So that announcement will come later this month.
So we're excited about that opportunity. Next. So with that, I'll turn it back to Julio. Thank you for Bill and myself, Stephanie and Sean. Thank you for listening to us, and we look forward to talking to you to balance it today.
Thanks so much. Excellent rundown on the business. We'll hop right into Q&A with a few minutes left here. Number one, on the precast side, can you maybe just talk about the recovery expected for the remainder of the year and the demand you're seeing across some of your geographies, Texas, Southeast, etc.?
Yeah. We got hit very hard with the weather in that part of the world. I mean, we had snowstorms, for God's sake. So we built up quite a bit of product that's sitting on our ground, and we're starting to move it here already in April. So as things are drying out, the work still needs to be done. So we're in good shape to recover what we missed the first quarter and have a strong balance of the year in concrete.
Excellent. You talked about a coming free cash flow inflection, and you mentioned a couple of things, right? You mentioned going asset light, CapEx needs coming down, I assume also some better net income and the Union Pacific obligation going away. Any other numbers that I missed there, and how should I think about normalized free cash flow for 2025 and beyond?
As far as the levers, I think you covered them. But Bill, anything else we should add to that?
Yeah. No. I guess what I would say is we did the acquisition of VanHooseCo back in 2022, and that coupled with the other moves that we made put us in a really strong position to capture organic opportunities. So our focus in the short term has been more so on organic investment, which will get us to our goals. And we have a very clear line of sight on how we get to those 2025 goals with the portfolio that we already have in hand. Having said that, we're always continuing to look at other options to extend the portfolio. And it doesn't mean we won't do an acquisition, so. Yeah. But nothing transformative in terms of the size that would be in the order of what we did back in 2022.
I think the other thing we really focus on is our working capital management, our receivables, managing our suppliers, our vendors, and just managing that whole supply chain throughout the whole process. That's always an area of focus to continue to generate cash for our business.
I assume that anything you would look at on the inorganic side, you made it very clear it's more tuck-in likely, but it would also fit with your asset light kind of low CapEx model.
That's right. That's right. And that's why we really like precast because it's an opportunity to get in there and really protect yourself regionally. It's a fragmented market. And we know how to build the product and do it well. So we'll market it.
Gotcha. On the Russell 2000 potential to be added back, is that a sure thing, or is that likely, or how do you guys?
Bill, how would you like to answer that?
Well, if you just triangulate the numbers from where the cutoff point was last year and look at the change in the index versus the change in our market cap year-over-year, the math tells us that it should be a slam dunk, but you can never be sure. So we don't know for sure. The valuation date was last week, and the announcement will be later this month. So we'll see.
Very, very exciting. Just last one here to close it out is just what are you guys most excited about regarding the business over the next 3-5 years?
Go ahead, Bill. I'll finish.
Yeah. I would say that we're well positioned to benefit from the infrastructure investment super cycle that we expect to see in our major served markets for the coming years. We've done a lot of portfolio work. There's still some more to do, but we feel good about where we are to benefit from that investment cycle that we think will come.
Yeah. I would second that. And I think the other thing is the technology innovation. I think it's exciting. And it's really changing this company. We built up a lot of momentum. But the customers want to come to us now because we help them do their things better. And I think that's really changed in this company over the years. And we're going to be around for a while now because of the works that we've done in the last few years of continuing to reinvent ourselves and bring that value back to our shareholders.
Excellent. John, Bill, Stephanie, Sean, thank you so much for taking the time.
Our pleasure. Thank you.
Thanks. Enjoyed it.
Have a great day.
Take care.