Well, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm Jerry Revich from Goldman Sachs, and I'm really delighted to have with us the senior management team from Jacobs Solutions. We have immediately to my right, Bob Pragada, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Venk Nathamuni, Chief Financial Officer in the middle, and we have, Patrick Hill, President of Global Operations, opposite from me. Gentlemen, thank you so much for making the trip and joining us.
Thank you, Jerry. Thanks for having us.
It's a really exciting time for Jacobs. You folks closed the separation of the Critical Mission Solutions business. Bob, for those that are less familiar with Jacobs, can you just talk about how the simplification unlocks value from Jacobs and allows you folks to streamline and drive growth going forward?
Yeah. Maybe, Jerry, just to put a little bit of context on why the separation was so important in unlocking that value. Gotta go back a bit of time. Just the background real quickly. Jacobs, 75-year-old company that started with deep roots in the engineering space, pretty much based in the hydrocarbons as well as pharmaceutical and other chemical process industries. And over the course of the first almost 50 years of existence, really kind of ended up becoming an industry leader in that space all the way up to going public in 1989. During the 1990s and 2000s, diversified from an end market standpoint as well as in services and geographies. Before that, pretty much a U.S.-based exclusive company.
Coming out of the recession, for the first time, Jacobs was not growing, when we should have been growing, and kind of did some real deep introspective reflection on what's our strategy, what's our purpose, kind of where we are. T he first time ever in history, did an actual corporate strategy. Before then, it was, "Hey, take care of our client's business and all will be fine," and in that strategy, and the reason why this is important is that we paid a lot of money to McKinsey, and this is pretty much what it deduced to. You're in great markets, you're in great geographies, you've got great services, you're also in markets that aren't growing, geographies aren't growing, and services that you're not really good at.
Get out of that, double down on, on where you are. O ne of the areas that came out that we felt that we were under-indexed in but was critical as we looked forward, in the infrastructure space was the water sector, the water and environmental sector. W e kind of made it a point to, to organically, do our best to grow in that area as well as, if there was an opportunity to accelerate that strategy, do so. And then a year later had the great opportunity to, to come together with, the world leader in water and environmental, CH2M, and made that acquisition back in 2017. The reason why I took you through that history up to that point is because it's very critical as you look forward on, you know, where we, we ended up.
A year later, we were approached by WorleyParsons to exit the oil and gas sector. They wanted to buy our energy and chemicals business. Ironically enough, it was for the same price as what we paid for CH2M. So we ended up transacting on that. F rom 2017 up until about a year and a half ago, we were strong in the, we are still strong, in the infrastructure and advanced facility space, as a result of the acquisition and organically there, and had a pretty strong aerospace and defense work, what we call government services, which is the CMS business. But we, you know, our growth rate and our margin expansion within our infrastructure and advanced facilities business was really, really strong.
The secular tailwinds that we were seeing in the market with all the global disruptors continued to be a really strong growth trajectory. Go back one second. That business that we merged with CH2M to create that infrastructure and advanced facilities business now at this point was two and a half times the size it was when we started. K nowing that the deployment of capital was critical, prioritization between two businesses that really didn't have a lot of synergies together, we made the decision to separate knowing that our CMS business was a good business but needed investment in order to continue to grow. We made the separation.
A long way of answering the question, as a result of that separation put CMS into a place with momentum where it is a pure play government services company with a really nice growth trajectory and could get the investment that it required, and really focusing in on our infrastructure. When I say infrastructure, I mean transportation, water, environmental, energy, and power. Then our advanced facilities business, which is our life sciences and semiconductor and data center work. The focus has been tremendous. Just two months out of the chute, great sales performance the last two quarters of the year, and with double-digit growth in our backlog. We are positioned extremely well to really take it to optimize all that's happening in the world.
You know, really helpful recap for those newer to the Jacobs story on the way the company's compounded historically. You know, to put some numbers around what Bob spoke about, the company's compounded earnings at a 14%-15% CAGR before that M&A transactions. Bob, going forward, what's the growth algorithm for new Jacobs? Historically, roughly half of that really impressive growth was organic, half was via acquisitions. What's the new growth algorithm?
You know, we really like our organic play right now. It's not that we, you know, just went—I just walked through the portfolio transformation over the course of the last, well, several decades. W e don't stay awake at night thinking, "Hey, we're subscale in this area. You know, this could be a nice bolt-on." We like the organic play. We like the markets, the geographies, our service mix, really getting into the higher-end consulting and advisory work in addition to our engineering. I t's an organic play. And, Venk, I don't know if you wanna talk about kinda what that target looks like going forward.
Yeah, absolutely. A s Bob said, really well-positioned to participate in a lot of the secular mega-trends that are ahead of us, and so from a capital allocation standpoint, obviously, we wanna invest in the organic growth. F or those who are not that familiar with the story, the last quarter, we introduced this concept of having the entire business in the view of three major end markets: so water and infrastructure, call it roughly 30% of our sales. We have advanced life sciences and advanced manufacturing, another 30% of sales. T hen critical infrastructure that encompasses transportation, railroads, and others is the other 40%. W e look at it holistically from the standpoint of all these end markets and how we can capitalize on the growth opportunities there.
What we have stated publicly is that for fiscal 2025, we expect to grow our top line by mid to high single digits, but also concomitant with that is margin expansion. So, last year, fiscal 2024, which ended in September, we did about 12.8% EBITDA margin. We're now guiding to 13.8%-14% EBITDA margin for fiscal 2025. T hen we'll provide a lot more color in terms of our longer-term growth story at Investor Day that's coming up in a couple of months.
Super. In terms of the organizational performance metrics, can you gentlemen talk about how the incentives for your direct reports have changed following the completion of the successful spin?
Sure. Sure. Yeah, yeah. I'll take it in two phases. Our long-term incentive, which did not change, and our short-term incentive. Our long-term incentive, and this would be for kind of the top 100 in the company, has been and will continue to be based on EPS, and [Adjusted EPS] growth and ROIC. Our short-term incentive, though, has changed a bit. Still, a big piece of it is on our operating profit generation, our EBITDA percentage, as well as now we put in a revenue growth percentage as well. So can't get revenue unprofitably. Stick with the EBITDA percentage as well as our revenue growth. T hen 10%, that's all of that equals 90%. And then 10% is 5% on a carbon emissions goal that we have, especially tied to our sustainable. I'm sorry, your sustainability-linked bond.
and then we've entered another target with regards to our Global Integrated Delivery and the volumes that we're doing in that area.
That's interesting. What proportion of your volumes are global delivery at this point, Bob?
Right now, of the available amount of work we do, it's about 10%.
To hit the high end of the goals, what kind of performance?
If we put, probably 12%- 14%.
Yeah.
Percent.
Very interesting. And where can that go over time? How high can they get?
It's difficult to say. It's the reason why is we , we look to Poland and India and Philippines as our talent centers that are driving that metric. However, if you look at any one of our jobs in today's environment, and maybe Patrick can talk a little bit about it, there's not a single job that we do that has personnel that's exclusively based in one location, right? So we're really taking that global talent, integrating it with the expertise that we have around the world, and then delivering the solution locally.
Yeah, the only thing I'd add, Bob, is I think that we've demonstrated to ourselves that there is sort of no limit on how we deliver. If you think about some of the really large quick-burn projects with tight deadlines, whether it's in the life sciences and advanced manufacturing area, or even in some geographies where that have really ramped up quickly, you know, in some cases, over 50%, 60%, 70% of those projects are delivered from another part of the globe. And so really, we don't see any real limit on it. One of the great things about it is that those locations are a great resource base in terms of STEM graduates. And so we think that, you know, we'll see a continued trend of delivering projects in that way.
When you are successful in driving global delivery, is it fair to think about the profit per unit of labor being double to triple what they would have been compared to just local markets?
Good.
Yeah.
I'd say, it depends obviously on the specific type of engagement that we have. But at a very high level, fair to say that the profit pool would be higher if we could implement it in a global integrated delivery location as opposed to other parts of the globe. I mean, that's part of the margin expansion story for us long-term. We've been doing this already for some time, but we think we're gonna, you know, double down on that strategy going forward. W e'll try to summarize that in the Investor Day.
Just to be clear, Jerry, this is not. We don't do this exclusively for a cost arbitrage.
Yeah.
This is a talent arbitrage right now. After the spin, even though our revenues actually are in reverse, we have 55% of our employees are outside the U.S., with over 60% of our revenues being based in the U.S. or U.S. clients doing work outside the U.S. Y ou can kinda see that global model has really been. It's not something that we started post-spin. We've been doing this for about 20 years.
Very interesting. I n terms of, Venk, just to touch on the other margin opportunities, what are the other initiatives that you folks are undertaking to drive margins higher?
Yeah. A s I said before, our EBITDA margin target for fiscal 2025 is 13.8%-14%. There are three main components to it. The first and probably the biggest impact will be the operational improvements that we made in fiscal 2024. They will now get annualized so that you'll get the full benefit of it in fiscal 2025. That's gonna be the biggest driver from an EBITDA margin expansion perspective. The second aspect of it is the Global Integrated Delivery. So to the extent that we can utilize the talent pool elsewhere and optimize the use of that talent pool for projects all around the globe, that gives us a good tailwind, a long-term tailwind for continued, you know, EBITDA margin expansion. T hen the last part of it is just the nature of our engagement with clients.
In the asset life cycle, you can start with consulting and advisory, program management, all the way down to O&M. To the extent that we are able to engage with a client at an earlier phase of the project, that gives us the opportunity to expand margins because it's more, you know, higher-end consulting, if you will. That mix has been shifting favorably for us, but we still think there's a lot more to do. Those would be the three big drivers of margin expansion on a long-term basis. In fiscal 2025, the vast majority of it will come from the annualization of operating efficiencies. In outer years, we'll continue to deliver on those other two aspects of it as well.
Very interesting. And in terms of, you know, where can margins get to, you know, for some operations that really focus on taking the highest value work, they can get as high as 17% margins. O bviously, you don't wanna say no to really profitable low-capital invested work. How should we think about, your aspirational margin opportunity relative to that 17% type S&E class number?
Yeah, we're gonna get into some detail around that Investor Day. I'm sensitive to Reg FD items right now, but I think your math is solid.
In terms of the win rates that you folks are seeing, so excellent bookings last quarter, hey, can you just talk about what win rates have been like for the organization over the past year and any notable inflection looks like based on the awards, maybe things accelerating?
Yeah. We don't disclose win rates because really, and the reason why is I'm not trying to be coy or anything. There is that a win rate is an internal metric that you can control the denominator on, on what that win rate is. I n order to be consistent across the industry, I don't know if that's necessarily a fair metric. What we do do, though, is look at, so we have that number internal, but we look at our backlog growth and the profile of our backlog as well as gross profit and gross margin in backlog. A s we disclosed in our earnings call, all of those numbers have been double-digit for consecutive quarters. T hat really gives us confidence that we're bidding the right work.
We're winning our fair share and more, and continuing to grow.
Bob, earlier in our conversation, you mentioned, you know, really significant focus is organic growth.
Yes.
For the company. In terms of your approach with M&A, so it sounds like it's gonna be opportunistic if something crosses your desk that's a really good fit to look at it. But it sounds like the outbound M&A effort is less of a focus here.
That'd be fair. W e are, we're in the mode of executing on our plan. We've been, again, like I said before, working on enhancing what we have, versus continuing to acquire. R ight now, it is about operational execution, delivering returns back to our shareholders. D own the road, if there's an opportunity to accelerate our strategy, M&A is not our strategy, but if there's a way, If there's an opportunity to accelerate our strategy similar to what we did with CH2M and PA, we'll absolutely take a look at it.
Can we dig into individual end markets? So, water and environmental to start. F or CH2M, water has been a good business. You know, for you folks, it's really accelerated over the past three to four years.
Yeah.
Can you just talk about what happened within that business that drove that acceleration specifically, you know, over the past three to four years versus historically, and how much runway do you have for, from a growth standpoint, based on the pipeline?
Bob mentioned that, you know, one of the key things that drove Jacobs and CH2M coming together back in 2017 was really the world-leading skills that CH2M had in water and environment in particular, and so that has been a big driver for us. If you think about the global trends around the water sector, it is truly a global trend. It's not something that we would say is specific to one geography. We're seeing a lot of growth right across the board. And it's really driven by climate extremes. T hink about water scarcity, like on the West Coast of the U.S. or in arid countries like Australia, the Middle East, a lot of investment in really high levels of water treatment, desalination, things like that to mitigate water scarcity issues.
The flip side is also true where regulation for sewer spills is driving larger conveyance projects, and so when there's a lot of rainfall, making sure that sewers don't spill. Really, looking at huge expansions of large tunneling projects as well. T here's a lot of activity in the water sector. We're seeing it right across the board. D efinitely the skills that both the combination of Jacobs and CH together, I think, we feel really confident about where we're positioned for in five, 10 years and beyond.
It is interesting, Jerry. We still refer to CH2M, but it was now seven years ago. 47% of our population doesn't know what CH2M and Jacobs, Legacy This, Legacy That because they've been with the company for seven or less years, so that integration was something that we really, really focused in on back in 2017 and 2018, and we're starting to see the benefits of that.
Very interesting and, you know, last quarter, really attractive 13% growth. Can you talk about it? Was that an outlier or is that the sort of comps that you expect over the next couple of quarters based on the backlog burn?
We've if you look at the year and all the quarters of last year from memory, I think we're very strong in the water and environment sector. And so, we think it's a pretty strong trend if you look at some of the projects that we announced late in the year. Once again, very large project in California where we're looking at advanced water treatment project there. Similar types of projects in our pipeline. If you look at some of the things that are happening in Singapore, we're just about to move into the next asset management program cycle in the U.K. regulated environment. So AMP8, really large water programs being delivered there, with the likes of United Utilities and other utilities there.
Certainly, I think that we think that the trending that we saw in 2024 will continue for 2025 and beyond. Jerry, if I could add, one other advantage of some of these water projects is that they are, you know, two to three years in terms of execution. We get some good visibility beyond fiscal 2025.
In the water business specifically, so ENR data suggests that your market share has gone from 6% in 2019 to 13% in 2023. Is that consistent with what you track? Is, are you folks gaining share on an apples-to-apples basis, or is the market moving towards your products? Can you touch on your views?
I think we're gaining share. We're definitely gaining share. It's because our product is our skill set and our expertise. What has also enhanced our ability to deliver these world-class solutions has been the use of digital platforms and the use of data. I f you look at some of the, we have a partnership with Palantir. We've got proprietary software platforms that are extending the asset lifecycle for these facilities that Patrick was talking about, and reducing chemical consumption, energy consumption, and actually in one case, delivering energy back out to the grid with, you know, the biomass offshoots. So there's a lot of great stuff that's happening in the water market.
Well done. And you know, in life sciences and advanced manufacturing, so last quarter, you spoke about on the call, there was an impact from customer cancellation in the quarter, 3% net revenue growth as a result. What is the underlying level of growth that we should be thinking about for life sciences and advanced manufacturing over the next couple of quarters? W ill this headwind continue beyond the reported quarter?
The headwind will not continue beyond the reported quarter. I'd say there's two indicators of our life sciences business being right in that range that we stated for our corporate range is the growth in our pipeline and the bookings trends that we saw in Q3 and Q4 of last year are continuing on. The number of billion-dollar-plus biotech facilities in our pipeline is probably at an all-time high. T hese are clients that we've been doing work for several—I was gonna say several years, several decades. In fact, Dr. Jacobs was a former Merck employee. O ur DNA is in that space, no pun intended. But it's the future looks very bright.
Can we pull on that thread, in terms of the biomanufacturing side? So if we were to strip that piece out separately, is that a $1.5 billion, sort of?
Yeah. I'd say, you know, if you took this piece out, it's probably around mid-single digits would have been the growth for that quarter. And then, what we've guided to for fiscal 2025 is that the life sciences and advanced manufacturing piece of our business will grow, close to mid- to high-single digits.
Do you understand what, what is the life sciences component of life sciences advanced manufacturing?
That's right.
It's 80% of it.
80% of it.
Yeah. Okay. So if we're going with that, and then in terms of the semicap side, so you folks have a really strong position in terms of your offerings. You know, what we're seeing in the data is really high level of new capacity coming online, but a lower level of capacity additions than what was planned, you know, a year ago. I'm wondering, it doesn't sound like you folks are seeing bookings slow at all. Can you just talk about what you're seeing in that market and, if that's the case, you know, what's driving your share gains?
Yeah. I'd say in the semiconductor manufacturing world, what has changed for us is the diversity in the client base as well as in geography. For decades, we were, and we still are, the engineer of record for Intel. F rom 2017 all the way up to 2023, a lot of our semiconductor design work, fab design work was specifically for Intel as they were going through a pretty significant ramp. Since that point, and obviously Intel's kind of come to the end of that CapEx cycle and looking to do some other things, our client base has diversified really on the backs of what's going on with regards to AI-enabled chips, and our AI chip sector. O n that, even more so around the high bandwidth memory, and companies like Samsung and Micron starting to amp up their production.
It sounds like you're gaining share. Are you also seeing a benefit from a content standpoint that you alluded to, Bob, in terms of the rising investment in AI? Does that drive a multiplier effect in terms of what's required from Jacobs?
It does from a capacity standpoint, so manufacturers trying to build capacity as well as the reshoring aspect back to the U.S., that is also driving that as well.
Very interesting. C an we talk about critical infrastructure? Growth was 1% in the quarter. W hat we thought up post-quarter is it's a big difference what's going on in the U.S. versus the U.K. Can you touch on the trend differential?
Yeah. Absolutely. Patrick, you want to take that one?
We've seen very strong growth in the U.S., and that's been stimulated a lot by the IIJA bill that was signed back. It's over three years ago now. We probably saw maybe a slightly slower ramp in that than what we probably would have liked. But certainly seeing a lot of committed funds for that and probably still yet to peak, we would say, in terms of the infrastructure spend. T hat's driving, I think, some nice tailwinds in the U.S. We probably saw a little bit of disruption in markets like the U.K. and Australia. U.K., changing governments, changing priorities, a bit of disruption there, probably a refocus in terms of the budget settings. W e saw probably a bit of a slowdown in the U.K., maybe similar in Australia.
The two cities that really dominate the Australian market are Melbourne and Sydney, and both of those state governments probably slowed their transportation spend a little bit. So the growth that we saw in the U.S. offset a little bit by some of those other geographies. What we're probably seeing now is a greater level of stability in the U.K., changing government set their policy, set their priorities, and similarly in Australia, probably some really good news that we had in Q4 was we were announced on a probably the largest transportation project for that country and probably one of our largest opportunities for the year, which we secured late in the year as well.
That would be a project that will be, you know, a really intensive project for us in the next couple of years in terms of delivery, but it will have a tail all the way to 2030 as well as the Torrens to Darlington project. O verall, we think strong tailwinds in the U.S. and now better, more stable base, outside of the U.S. W e feel like that critical infrastructure is pivoted now to a stronger period of growth.
Patrick, you characterized the U.S. growth as very strong. That sounds like a double-digit type cadence to me. Am I understanding you correctly in terms of performance in the quarter?
I think in critical infrastructure, I don't know whether I would sort of say that it would be double-digit. I think there are elements of it that are. So within that end market, we would include energy and power as a subcomponent of that. We definitely feel that that is a double-digit area of growth for us. Some of the other areas, I think, definitely very strong, whether it's mid to high single digits, you know, it's hard to put a figure on it. But overall, I think that, you know, in the U.S., it's a good market.
If we could, Jerry, just overall, holistically, we look at the three big end markets. What we've stated publicly is that on the water infrastructure, continue to see really strong growth with, you know, critical infrastructure is going to be more towards the mid-single digits, and then life sciences will be more towards the higher end of it. T hat's how we characterize it across the three major end markets for us.
Sure. Thank you, Mike. And, Patrick, in terms of the awards in the U.S. specifically, what we're seeing in the contract awards data at the state level, across all ranges of projects, we're seeing a slowdown in the rate of contract awards that is essentially consistent with low single-digit type revenue burn 12 months out. It sounds like you're seeing stronger demand than that.
Yeah. I think that we've seen a good level of consistency in terms of contract awards. And if you're specifically talking, Jerry, about the critical infrastructure area.
Yes.
Yeah. I think that we've seen good consistency in. If anything, we're seeing an uptick in trending there. One of the things that we are seeing is probably some of our historical government state government clients shifting their mode of delivery. is hI torically, they might have traditionally delivered projects where they would separately procure design from construction. T hey're now looking in terms of getting things delivered at pace, and for simplicity, for their own reasons, looking to bundle up design and construction in a new delivery model or an alternative delivery method. That definitely opens up opportunities for us, I think, in terms of accelerating the amount of work that happens in the industry and also sort of slightly changes the margin profile as well.
So we're definitely seeing a trend there in the way that we're looking at the last four years versus the next, next four years. There'll be a lot more alternative delivery method delivered.
Super. PA Consulting, on last call, heard more optimism from you folks from a top-line standpoint. Obviously, the execution's been good in a soft environment. C an you expand on what you're seeing in terms of the potential for growth to re-accelerate?
P oint to three metrics. The first, we track utilization within PA. It's now hitting, back to hitting marks that it had previously hit, in the 2022 timeframe, early 2022. The volume of work being done on a weekly basis, those trends are also going in the right way. T hen the backlog and the pipeline. overall, it was a soft couple of years while the business did a great job at maintaining margins, which a lot of consultancies, especially with exposure in the U.K., were not able to do that. W e think the business is really in good shape.
What gives us probably the most excitement is if we look at that same period of time. We've been an investor or we've had a position in PA. In March, it'll be four years. The number of collaborative opportunities has quintupled, so each year, you know, gone up from maybe $50 million - $100 million, stayed $100 million for a couple of years. That number now is over $500 million of collaborative opportunities in the pipeline. W e're winning. We've announced a few really key awards in the U.K. and in the U.S., both in transportation and in energy and utilities.
Relative to the annual revenue for PA, what's the revenue burn from collaborative work?
It's still, I mean, as an overall percentage, it's still less than 10%. I t's on the rise. The optimism comes from the pipeline.
Very interesting. Based on this $500 million, where does the 10% go to roughly?
Significantly higher.
Hold on.
Yeah.
Utilization for this type of business, so when utilization's up means, you know, people are billing the customer instead of Jacobs and PAC. M argins going back to 2022 levels is what I think about when I hear utilization back to those levels. Is that reasonable or any?
No, it is. T hat's where they are now, right? M aintaining those margins and then continuing to build on the top line.
Okay.
They're at 2021 now.
Off of memory, I thought 2022, you folks were a couple of points higher. Okay, and in terms of the market in the U.K. for PA Consulting, it sounds like there's been, with government stability and acceleration. Can you just expand on what you folks are seeing in the U.K.
Yeah. PA is PA's got a really strong presence with the public sector, non-DOD, or MOD, in the U.K., as well as with MOD as well. During this turn of the election and maybe a bit of instability in the parliament, that was the part that was put on hold. That has now returned. And on top of that, what government in the U.K. is doing is looking at digitization and further transformation of government, which is where PA comes into play from a consultative support standpoint. So that's building on that backlog. In the U.S., it's really been centered around energy and utilities and life sciences on the real front-end part of the life cycle of a molecule.
Super. Thank you. Please join me in thanking Bob, Venk, and Patrick, and Bob] for joining us. Thank you, gentlemen.