Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. We've got Paul DiMarco from MasTec here with us. Paul, thank you for taking the time.
Thank you, Ati.
Paul, maybe we start high-level strategic. 2024 obviously has been a very interesting year for the stock. The company's done really well. Stock's done really well. As you think about transitioning into 2025, what are the key things that you are focused on, both in terms of macro, and how does your business planning play into that macro setup across all the end markets that you touch on?
Sure. Well, thank you all for being here, and I appreciate Goldman Sachs for hosting us. 2024 was really about integration, right? We did a number of large acquisitions in 2021 and 2022, and we had some missteps in 2023 from an integration perspective, and so we're really focused on correcting those and getting the business operating effectively as a consolidated platform. And we think we've made a lot of really positive developments over the course of the year. And I think that's what's indicative of the performance in Q3 and overall the rebound of the stock. As we look at 2025, the goal is really to build off of the foundation that we've laid. We think margin expansion in our non-oil and gas segments is critically important.
We have, I think, a really meaningful opportunity in our clean energy and our power delivery segment to show incremental performance towards our longer-term objectives of double-digit margins in those segments in 2025. And we've built a really good foundation from a backlog perspective. So our revenue visibility going into 2025 is very strong, much improved versus where it was coming into 2024. So the key focus for us is around margin expansion, continuing to deliver quality products and value for our customers, and progressing in 2026 where we think we can really start hitting our stride across the totality of the end markets, including the oil and gas business.
Paul, for the clean energy business, as you think of the aspects of IRA that still need to come through, whether it's tax credits and other such factors, I mean, the administration's changing as well. What do you think your customers are focused on? Are they worried about anything? Are you worried about anything? How are you seeing that play out in terms of the risk profile to the business and maybe the potential volume that you might see at the back half of the year?
Yeah, I think for 2025, we feel good about the projects that are in backlog and their path forward. The industry just needs a decision, right? I mean, the demand for power is real. I think there's room over the value chain to absorb a different level of cost or inputs, whether it's from different government incentives or tariffs on different parts of the supply chain. But it's really about understanding what the inputs are so that projects can be priced accordingly and power can be priced accordingly. But renewables are the quickest path to incremental power generation for our country. So they're a critical component of the expanded data center and AI investment that is at the forefront of that technological evolution and adoption. So I think we're confident that the administration will provide the right support, but it's really just about getting the decision done.
I think that's the biggest risk: a prolonged period of flux.
Right.
As we think about the clean energy business beyond 2025, what are some of the growth opportunities? I think you've previously talked about battery storage being an opportunity for you. Kind of talk about how you're framing. How should we be thinking about that?
Yeah, beyond just core renewable power generation, I think we do have an ability to grow the battery storage component faster. We're probably. On, someone asked this earlier. It's probably a third of our projects today have a battery storage component. So I think that'll be a growing piece of the business faster than the overall segment and just renewable generation component. We've really been focused on aligning with customers that have good visibility towards long-term project activity, and our growth in 2025 is largely based on more volume with the customers that we've built the relationships with and have the confidence in their ability to execute on those projects versus a further diversification of our customer base, so I think there's an opportunity for us to expand further. I think we could grow faster in 2025 with further customer diversification.
But as I mentioned, margin expansion is really the priority for us. So we'll have healthy top-line growth. We've talked about double-digit growth for our clean energy segment in 2025. We could push that more, but I think the margin expansion is more important. Beyond that, I think customer diversification is definitely another on top of further penetration of the battery storage market are two drivers of incremental opportunity for us.
Paul, as you think of the renewable projects that get awarded, I think the market and we, in general, we don't really understand how the bid process actually works. Does it actually go into bids? Are customers coming to you with designs? How does the whole process work from the customer wanting to do a project to them coming to you and giving you an award?
They can take many different forms. And this is really true across the end markets that we're in. It varies by customer. Some projects are negotiated. Some projects are a competitive bid. Other projects or other relationships take more of an alliance agreement, which is much more similar to an MSA where we're agreeing to provide construction services for a certain percentage of a customer's portfolio. Sometimes those projects are pre-identified to help with planning and sequencing of resource needs. But it's really, particularly in a higher-demand environment like we're in today, there are various contracting and procurement methodologies that our customers will use. Some are very methodical and keep that very consistent. Other ones are much more relationship-based and focused on the certainty of capacity that they feel is prudent for their strategic investment objectives. So there's no one-size-fits-all, right?
More and more to my point about further market share with existing clients, we're trying to leverage those deeper relationships across a broader pool of projects, better visibility, better and earlier collaboration with the client around constructability, ways to drive value out of the project. Those are things that we think we can bring to our clients to provide incremental benefit beyond just the actual construction of the work. So every client's different, and it kind of runs the gamut of procurement methodologies.
Second follow-up on that. So when you think that every client has a different model, is there a preference for you in terms of what those models are? Because it could impact your operational capabilities, your execution capabilities, your margin capabilities, and whatnot. And is there an interest or expectation that you would gravitate towards those kinds of models with your customers? Is there anything or any comments there you can make?
I mean, we've talked a lot about the alliance agreement. So obviously, that's been a developing aspect where those are deeper, more negotiated arrangements. It's not a competitive bid. And that's only because we've made the investment to build the trust between the client and contractor that they know that we're going to provide, be there with the services and a cost-effective solution. So that's been a big piece of the growth for us from a backlog perspective in 2024, going into next year. That being said, if a customer determines they want to do a competitive bid, we're obviously not going to shy away from that either. It's really about the relationship with the customer, right? If a customer is predisposed based on their procurement practices to handle one way or another, I don't think we're not going to not participate because one form or another.
We're going to gravitate towards the procurement opportunities where we see the best long-term opportunities with clients.
Makes sense.
Just one more on clean energy, and then we'll switch to some of your other businesses, but you've talked a good bit about margin expansion really being focused. Can you talk a little about what are the key drivers there? Are you seeing opportunities to push pricing at all, or how are those conversations evolving?
So the margin expansion opportunities that we've laid out of high single digits in the near term are really under the current pricing environment. So our biggest opportunities are first around operating leverage. So we've had outsized seasonality the past couple of years. Our first quarter has been really light with margins well below the full-year average. And that's just a hole that we've had to dig out of because of the work that we had going into each of the last two years. We think we correct that in a big way in 2025. There'll still be some seasonality in the first quarter just with normal course weather and coming out of the holidays. But margins should be much closer to the full-year segment expectations. And that helps with the operating leverage over the whole course of the year. We did 7.5% EBITDA margins in the segment for Q3.
That was good progress, but we expect to be able to perform at or above those levels from a year-over-year perspective in 2025 just through operating leverage. The other big benefit that we have now is around the consistency of the end-to-end life cycle of a project. Through the integrations in the segment, we're now bidding, estimating, contracting, and executing the projects under a common framework. So we know the risks we're taking. We know how projects are being estimated on the front end and transitioned over to execution. And we know from a contract perspective what the terms and conditions are and what we need to be prepared for as the project evolves through execution. So over the last year, that wasn't as integrated, right? We had some things that were acquired that maybe had different risk profiles than our legacy business. Things were estimated under different groups.
So as they were handed off to execution, there were some inefficiencies. We think the third quarter really starts to show the benefits of the integration that's been achieved, and we expect to build on that going forward. So between operating leverage and being able to execute under this consolidated framework, we think those are the two biggest drivers for us to achieve that high single-digit margin opportunity in the near term.
Paul, how are you thinking about the power delivery business? Obviously, it's been very topical. We've seen a lot of estimate changes come from that segment in particular as investors have spent a lot of time on it. Your customers have spent a lot of time talking about their CapEx expectations. As we sit today and we think about the potential from here on, how much incremental increase do you think that the market is going to see and that's going to accrue to you?
I think you have to. I mean, there's a couple of components in that business, right? So we'll look at kind of the base business on kind of just distribution and substation first. We think that business should have that part of the business kind of across the country. CapEx is generally expected to grow kind of high single digits. We think we probably exceed that a little bit in 2025 because of some of the catch-up that we have from some of the deferrals that we saw in the Midwest last year. But we think that's a consistent pattern for that part of the business to grow. In 2024, that's probably about 60% of the segment. And then on top of that, it's the cadence of large projects, right? So we announced the award of a large project in the second quarter.
It's a 700-mile transmission line that we'll execute on over the next three and a half or four years. We started work on that in the fourth quarter, but it will really kick off in earnest here in Q1, and we think we've got capacity to do another similar annual revenue contribution, which we said was about $300-$500 million of annual revenue contribution. We think we've got capacity today to do another project of similar annual revenue burn, which is obviously a good incremental growth driver for the segment. Beyond that, we'd be looking to build capacity either through M&A or obviously looking at continuing to build internal capabilities, so we would depend on the cadence of kind of a third large project of that size. But the pipeline on those types of awards is pretty robust. They have a very long permitting and development time frame.
We're not counting on any meaningful change from permit reform that accelerates that. But we've seen kind of one award roughly every couple of quarters, every three quarters or so has been the cadence over the last year and a half. And that probably is a reasonable expectation, one or two a year. So I think between those two, that's a really healthy top-line environment. Obviously, that really facilitates operating leverage as well for that segment. And we need to execute consistently across our different regions. We have an east, central, and west region. There's a little bit of margin dispersion. And we're putting some of those practices in place from our better-performing operations across the rest of the regions. And I think we should start to see good progress on that in 2025.
Now, when we think about projects, I mean, of this scale, like 700 mi transmission line, what's the bidding process like? What's the competitive landscape like for projects of that size? And then you touched on it, but if you could elaborate on some of these other opportunities you're seeing of similar scale, potentially.
Yeah. I mean, the competitive landscape is pretty limited. There's only a couple of alternative service providers that could handle that project on their own. And there's a couple of others that would bid on that type of opportunity under a joint venture amongst a couple of firms. So it is pretty limited. It is a longer procurement process. As I mentioned, the development time frame for these projects and permitting time frame for these projects is extended. We were awarded this project in the second quarter of 2024. We were pursuing it a year in advance of that, at least. And we'll start executing in earnest in the first quarter of 2025. So there is more time involved, right? It is a more complex environment. There's a lot more vetting of the service providers and capabilities. And there's a lot of relationship establishment well in advance of that.
It is generally a pretty comprehensive process. I mean, the good thing about these projects from an investor perspective is they're all tracked with FERC. You can see all the projects in various stages of development. Utilities talk about their major project developments as well. So where we see it, there's mid-teens billions of opportunities that are in various stages of procurement tracking for us. That doesn't mean they're happening in 2025 or 2026, but there's discussion with customers. There is some level of engagement, right, to ensure that we're determining which are best suited for our services and our resource availability. We'll narrow those down as we get closer to the RFP time frames.
That's helpful. I guess switching gears to the communications business, there seem to be some attractive opportunities just given all these data center fiber opportunities. Can you talk a little about that and what your expectations are for MasTec in regard to these opportunities?
Sure. So it's a new development for the industry. So the award that Lumen received from Microsoft earlier in 2024 was kind of the first major interconnection play for a hyperscaler. I think it set off a wake-up call for the industry that this is a real opportunity for other competitors of firms like Lumen. And so there's been really increased dialogue across the industry for how we can help other providers construct similar interconnectivity for other hyperscalers, other data center developers. So I think it's going to be a significant driver of incremental opportunity for the segment for the foreseeable future. I think it's going to start with leveraging third-party infrastructure like the Lumen deal. There's been some discussion around independent networks as well as data needs continue to grow for individual hyperscalers.
So I think we're really just at the infancy of understanding how much fiber demand there could be just for this interconnectivity play on top of the traditional fiber broadband penetration that's really been driving the fiber side of the business for us for the past couple of years. So it's an exciting development. I think it makes a lot of sense based on the fiber geographic diversification. And data centers are moving to further and further, much less centralized than they've been historically. And they've got to move a lot of data in between these different facilities. So we're excited to be a part of it, but I think we're really just starting to scratch the surface. It's the first award of what we expect to be a pretty robust cycle.
Paul, obviously, you've got a very strong competitive position in the landscape when it comes to the communications business. For the fiber optic opportunity in data centers, do you think it's similar? Can you paint the picture in terms of what you are competitive?
Yeah. I think it's similar, right? The Lumen award was kind of roughly divided. They kind of took their network into, I think, three awards. I think there's only a couple of firms that can provide services beyond a regional level, so we're one of them, so I think we'll be very well positioned for any type of national procurement that Hyperscaler lets out to any fiber network owner or telecommunications firm. We really specialize in those national procurements, right? I mean, that's why we've been so successful on the wireless side with AT&T and other large, broader, more programmatic RFPs, and I think if that continues to be the trend on the data center connectivity, I think we're really well positioned there as well.
You also mentioned that we're kind of at the infancy in terms of understanding what the opportunity looks like, but given where we are and given that this does look like it's going to add a lot, is there an early thought in terms of what that opportunity set could look like, whether it's in terms of incremental growth for the revenue or absolute?
No, Ati, even on Lumen, we haven't discussed the sizing of that opportunity yet. I think we've talked about 8,000 miles, but what we'll encounter and what activities we'll have to do across those 8,000 miles are an estimate at this point. So everyone's network is going to be different. Everyone's data center locations are going to be different. So I think it's a significant opportunity for the industry, but I think it's a little premature for us to talk about sizing.
Got it. And then on the traditional side of the communications business, when you think of the 5G opportunity and where it is today versus the BEAD opportunity, RDOF is still probably a prominent piece of the business as you think of the opportunities on the broadband side. Paint us a picture of what that looks like today.
Yeah. So I mean, we're having really good growth in wireless. It's a little bit idiosyncratic for our firm because of the additional market share that we were able to take with AT&T at the end of 2023. That industry is generally kind of flat. It's more of a little bit of a maintenance mode. I think there will be another significant investment, but it probably needs to be preceded by some additional way to monetize that investment for the telcos, right? Some additional use of mobile services. So we're very comfortable with where we are today, and we'll see good growth in 2025 relative to that just based on our position with AT&T. Business with Verizon and T-Mobile is stable. And that's kind of what the rest of the industry is seeing.
On the wireline side, RDOF has driven a lot of the work over the past couple of years. That probably still continues to be the driver in 2025. We're not expecting any meaningful impact from BEAD in this year. We should probably start to see some awards in the latter half of 2025 to be executed on in the beginning of 2026. But there's a lot of, between RDOF, between some of the third-party overbuilders like Gigapower, there's a lot of. On top of the base CapEx from the telcos directly, there's a lot of good demand, a lot of healthy capital expectations going into that market. We think fiber is a good growth driver for us for the foreseeable future.
On the oil and gas business now, can you just talk to us a little about how we should be thinking about growth? What opportunities are you seeing there? And then similarly, what about margins?
Yeah, so 2025 is a little bit of an anomaly. We've talked about a pullback in revenue just based on having to replace MVP and some project timing, some jobs that pushed into 2026, but when we talk to our customers and we listen to what our customers say publicly, and our customers are generally the larger MLPs, they're very bullish on the demand environment, really aggressive on the opportunities for takeaway capacity from the Permian, moving product to the Gulf Coast, and then beyond, that's kind of what we think will drive 2026 and 2027. As you get beyond that, we think gas-fired generation and the need to supply product to those new facilities is going to be an incremental leg of demand for the industry, so we think 2025 is a little bit of an anomaly.
We'll pull back a little bit in revenue unless some projects move forward, which they could. We've just been trying to be conservative and set a floor under what the expectations could be for that business this year, but it sets us up really well for 2026 based on some projects that have been verbally awarded, and again, based on the increasing volume of opportunities our customers are bringing us to help provide indicative pricing on and work through some of the earlier stage development, things have definitely been moving in a positive direction, and we were very bullish on that segment for 2026, even before the election. We think with a more positive tone out of Washington towards the industry, we think that that really provides a nice additional tailwind for those services where we've really become the dominant provider over the last five, six years.
So we think we're really well positioned both in the near term and longer term just based on our position in that industry and what our customers are telling us they expect to put in the ground.
You mentioned 2025 is probably going to be an anomaly, but as you think of 2026 and beyond, are you talking about opportunities that will drive growth beyond the normalized level, or do you think you go back to normalize and you have a little bit of growth? What does that look like?
I mean, a lot of it depends on project timing, right, but we've said 2025 could be around $1.7 billion. If that's the case, then I think 2026 probably gets back to at least the level of 2024, which is around $2.1 billion, and based on, again, without trying to predict what the administration could do to help support further infrastructure in the pipeline sector, we think kind of mid-2's is probably a reasonable level for us, 2027 and beyond. If you add in things like carbon capture or any meaningful federal permitting assistance, I think you'd see some incremental growth from there as well. The high 2's.
So on that note, I mean, we've seen a bunch of pipelines being announced out of the Permian Basin for gas takeaway in particular. How much exposure do you have? How much of those projects are of interest? And if they are of interest, then you will get some of these projects. What kind of timeline do you think that would show up in your awards?
They are of interest. I think we generally are able to win a fair share of those, right, based on our position and just consistent execution for the industry. The timeline is more truncated than what we talked about on the power delivery side, where there is more of a lag from construction execution. I mean, some of those projects out of the Permian, we could contract and begin executing on in the same quarter. Others could span maybe a couple of months, but there's a lot of work before that, but actually, from backlog to execution is generally pretty short for those types of awards. We have verbal awards that extend out into 2026. We won't execute those contracts until they're much closer to execution. That's just kind of the normal cadence for that industry.
Paul, how are you thinking about capital allocations or CapEx for this year? And as you think of all the moving pieces that have gone into the business for the last several years, you mentioned M&A opportunities on the power delivery side for capacity building might be an area of interest. So how should we think about CapEx, M&A, free cash flow generation, return of capital?
Yeah. So I'm really proud of how the business has performed from a cash flow generation perspective, particularly in 2024. I think we had an incredible year. We've met or exceeded all of our deleveraging commitments, and from our perspective, our balance sheet is fully accessible for whatever opportunities we want to pursue. That being said, we think we've got incredible organic growth opportunities in front of us, so that's going to be the predominant focus. I think from an M&A perspective, you should expect transactions similar to the types of deals we did in that kind of 2010 timeframe, right? So they're going to be more tuck-in in nature, right? Deals to augment capacity or geography or customer diversification where we think in combination with MasTec, we've got an ability to really accelerate growth.
We've been really successful with that over a long period of time under José's tenure. I think you should expect, I mean, we'll be opportunistic. We don't think we need to buy anything. So it's going to be about the right valuation with the right company with the right management team. But a higher volume of relatively smaller deals is more likely than us going off and biting off another big transaction. And we think we've got plenty of good organic growth opportunities, as I mentioned. So M&A will be a component of the capital allocation, supporting customers in certain circumstances. If there's a working capital need, that's been an ask that's come across over the years that can be another area of opportunity. But I think we've got a really good track record around putting capital in the right allocation bucket over time.
We've got a lot of questions about, with all this free cash flow, you're going to delever too much. We've always found ways to reinvest it wisely, including with share purchase. We're a value buyer, right? We're very focused on if we're deploying capital into the stock, it's because we think there's a big dislocation in where the share price is relative to our performance. And that's what you should expect from us.
Got it. We've talked about pretty significant growth opportunities across your businesses. As you now think about fulfilling this demand, what are you seeing in the labor market, supply chains, and then how should we be thinking about it as investors?
Yeah. The labor market's adequate for now. But as we get into 2026 and beyond, if this growth materializes as we expect, there will be constraints. We've invested heavily in training and onboarding new people into the industry. And this is across the board, right? In some cases, we're partnering with the unions in the industry. In other cases, where it's a union business, it's much more bootstrapping with ourselves. But we have over 30 training facilities across the country, across all the different end markets that we participate in. And it's a really big initiative and need, right? I mean, I think, as I said, we're okay now. It's a pretty rational market in terms of competition, right? In past years, we've seen a lot more price competition on labor. It's balanced today.
Us and the other leaders of the industry have to invest in talent to continue to satisfy the needs of our customers. It's a big focus for us across the industry. I think we've got a really good foundation for it. It's a great career. Part of it is just still the normalization of getting into the trade that has been an ongoing battle for our country for a long time. The jobs that we can provide are careers where people can have really long, successful, life-changing opportunities. We're trying to promote that. We work with veterans programs. We try to move people across industries as well when there's ebbs and flows in demand.
So it's a big concerted effort that we're trying to stay ahead of because, as I mentioned, we're sufficient today, but there will be constraints if demand progresses at the level that's expected today. Supply chain as well is balanced. I think our customers have done a good job of getting ahead of major procurement items, right? So we're not seeing a lot of projects delayed because of lead times, right? People know what lead times are. So some things, major items our customers generally procure, like we're not buying panels, but we may buy racking, we may buy cabling systems. Every customer has a different mix of procurement that they'd like us to do. Similarly, on a pipeline, we're not buying the steel pipe. It's a telecommunications space. We're not buying the fiber.
Our customers, they've become much more sophisticated across the end markets in, "Okay, this is what we need. This is what's going in the ground. We're going to build the right level of inventory or lead time into our procurement to accommodate for that." So as of now, our customers are well-equipped for the projects going through 2025. I think that's an area that, again, we have to stay ahead of and make sure that our customers are keeping on the forefront. But they've been very proactive to date.
As you think about where the company is now and then think about it in five, 10 years, any areas you think you'll really expand into, whether it's organic or inorganic? As in, recently, you've done a lot more on the renewable side. You've historically been more communications. How do you see the business evolving?
I mean, I think we'll see the most growth in communications and power delivery over the next five years. So we're pretty broadly diversified today. I think those two businesses will outpace the growth in communications and oil and gas outside of some change in, like on the 5G side, if there is some technological advance that provides that financial motivation for the wireless providers to really invest in what 5G was imagined as with a broadly distributed antenna network, small cells. That's a much different build than what we're doing today. So that could change that. But with the expectations for load growth in our country, it's going to be driven by renewables in the near term. Transmission is a linchpin in that and getting that product in the ground.
And then on top of that, even before the AI boom, storm, fire hardening, resiliency were all big drivers of capital investment for our utility clients. And that's not going away either. So we see a lot of capital flowing into that space to meet the needs of these adjacent industries. So I think you should expect that to be a continued area of outsized growth.
Paul, as you think about how the investor conversations have gone all day today and as you're talking to other investors throughout the last couple of months here, do you feel like there's anything that is underappreciated or not as well understood that you would want investors to focus on for this year as the year rolls through?
I don't think so. We're still really focused on rebuilding credibility from some challenging guidance environments in 2023, and I think we did a good job on that in 2024, but that's from an external-facing message. That's our goal, right? To have confidence in the numbers that we're putting forth. I think we don't get a lot of pushback on the end market demand. I think that's pretty well established, so our goal is to show that we can get the margin expansion that we're putting out there, so I think we'll continue to try to communicate effectively and conservatively with our expectations, and when we see a change, we'll try to make sure that's known, so that's what you should expect from us, but we're really excited about the business. All the end markets have levels of anticipated demand that we haven't seen collectively ever.
So we have a really unique opportunity to execute on that and create a lot of value. So we think we're incredibly well positioned, and it's on us to execute. And we think we've got the teams in place to do that. And we're really excited about the next couple of years.
That's all the time we have, Paul. Thank you for the conversation.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
Thank you.
Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
Thank you.
Good job.