Welcome to MasTec's First Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call, initially broadcast on May 1st, 2020. Let me remind participants that today's call is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Mark Lewis, MasTec's Vice President of Investor Relations. Mark?
Thanks, Ian. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to MasTec's first quarter call. The following statement is made pursuant to Safe Harbor for forward-looking statements described in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. In these communications, we may make certain statements that are forward-looking, such as statements regarding MasTec's future results, plans, and anticipated trends in the industry before we operate. These forward-looking statements are the company's expectations on the date of issue broadcast of this call, and the company does not undertake to update these expectations based on subsequent events or knowledge.
Various risks, uncertainties, and assumptions are detailed in our press releases and filings with the SEC. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should any of our underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may differ significantly from results expressed or implied in today's communication.
In today's remarks by management, we will be discussing adjusted financial metrics as discussed and reconciling yesterday's press release and supporting schedules. A reconciliation of any non-GAAP financial measures, not reconciling these comments to the most comparable GAAP financial measures, can be found in our earnings press release, our 10-Q, or in the posted PowerPoint presentations located in the Investors and News sections of our website located at mastec.com. With us today, we have Jose Mas, our Chief Executive Officer, and George Pita, our EVP and Chief Financial Officer. The format of the call will be opening remarks by Jose, followed by a financial review from George. These discussions will then be followed by a Q&A period. We expect the call to last about an hour.
We had another great quarter and a lot of things to talk about today, so I'll go ahead and turn it over to Jose. Jose?
Thanks, Mark. Good morning, and welcome to MasTec's 2020 first quarter call. I hope and pray that everyone's family is healthy and safe. We are truly in challenging and unprecedented times. Just a few months ago, on February 28th, we reported record 2019 results, combined with record guidance. While the COVID-19 virus came up during our year-end call, little did we know that a few weeks later, much of the country would be shut down and quarantined. During this time, the safety of our team members has been our top priority. I have to say, I'm so proud of the men and women of MasTec. Their sacrifices, resilience, creativity, and commitment have been inspiring. Millions of families throughout the U.S. rely on the power, communications, entertainment, and other services we help our customers provide.
Our team has delivered. I'd like to thank the men and women of MasTec for their sacrifices and hard work. First, a recap of our first quarter. Revenue for the quarter was $1.417 billion. Adjusted EBITDA was $118 million. Adjusted EPS was $0.60. Cash flow from operations was $203 million. Backlog at quarter end was $8.3 billion, a new record level. We had a solid first quarter, exceeding our previous financial guidance for revenue, EBITDA, and EPS. It's important to keep in mind that most of our services have been deemed essential under state and local pandemic mitigation orders. All of our business segments have continued to operate. While there was some disruption to the last couple weeks of the quarter, March was an excellent month.
As we think about the balance of the year, we felt we have enough visibility to provide guidance. Since most of our work is ongoing, the biggest risks to our guidance are around governmental permitting, crew social distancing mitigation and the impact they may have on project schedules, and any potential project delays. Our 2020 guidance, which George will cover in detail, assumes the impact of these risks based on the best information we have today. I'd like to cover some industry specifics. Our communications revenue for the quarter was $644 million versus $613 million last year, and margins were up about 50 basis points year-over-year. Our wireline and wireless business was up 10%, offset by about a 20% decline in our installation business.
As we think about the COVID-19 impacts on our communication segment, our install business is predominantly only doing service-related work with strict mitigation efforts in place as it relates to entering customers' homes. Most of our outdoor work, like fiber installation and wireless deployment, have continued, with the exception of a few markets where we are currently shut down. Our customers are working hard to ensure their internet connectivity is strong and available for their customers. This has created a spike in work activity levels associated with these services.
Our customers are also committed to rapidly deploying technology, including 5G. As the world reopens, our day-to-day lives may be temporarily or more permanently impacted. If you think about social distancing requirements on a go-forward basis, access to information will be key. I can easily envision apps that will effectively be queues for public spaces.
Long lines are gonna be replaced by just-in-time access, as things like restaurants limit seating and public venues require testing and temperature readings. Deploying 5G networks are an enabler for these potential technologies. We are confident that our customers are committed to these deployments. With that said, we anticipate potential impacts to our business for the balance of the year. We're concerned with governmental permitting delays. We have been working with cities and municipalities to bolster remote permitting capabilities and have seen improvements since the start of the shutdowns. Our customers are looking for solutions and creative ideas to speed up deployments. Revenue in our electrical transmission segment was $128 million, versus $95 million in last year's first quarter. Margins for the first quarter improved 250 basis points year-over-year.
Backlog was up year-over-year, but down sequentially, and does not include a number of verbal awards. We're very excited about the progress we've made in this segment and feel we are very well positioned for the long-term growth. As it relates to recent impacts, we have a number of projects that have seen some recent delays in permitting, and project starts have been pushed out a couple of months. While there is a large amount of work to be awarded in the industry, we believe some of the stay-at-home orders have impacted bidding schedule. Despite these impacts, we expect revenues and earnings in 2020 to exceed 2019 levels, and believe we are very well positioned for 2021 and beyond, as the drivers for this segment remain intact, which include aging infrastructure, reliability, renewables, and system hardening.
Moving to our power generation and industrial segment, revenue was $286 million for the first quarter, versus $189 million in the prior year. We continue to achieve significant growth rates in this segment, and backlog at quarter end was a record at $1.3 billion. We expect this segment to grow somewhere between 30%-50% this year, and margins to improve over 2019 by over 100 basis points. COVID-19 impacts to the segment have been minimal, as most of our jobs are located in rural areas. We continue to see strong demand for renewables, with significant growth in solar activity along with distributed generation. Our oil and gas pipeline segment revenue was down as expected.
First quarter revenue was $359 million, compared to revenue of $621 million in last year's first quarter. We ended first quarter with backlog of $2.6 billion, a significant increase from year-end levels. We have been in constant communications with our customers, and we're confident in our backlog levels. We're closely monitoring the impact that COVID-19 is having on commodity prices and how it's affecting world demand. We expect a significant decline in US oil production as a result. It's important to note that over the last three years of MasTec's roughly $10 billion of oil and gas segment revenue, only 6% of that revenue came from oil pipelines. Based on current backlog levels and discussions with our customers on future projects, we are comfortable with the revenue levels provided in our updated guidance.
Looking ahead into 2021, we now expect a considerable amount of revenue from these projects to move into next year, as we expect both permitting and crew distance requirements will limit the number of people on one project and thus will extend schedules. While we're not in a position to provide guidance for 2021 in our oil and gas segment, between current backlog levels and potential future awards, we think we're in a good position as the market ultimately recovers and demand increases. To recap, we've had a good first quarter and are confident we are mitigating the effects and impacts of the COVID-19 virus.
While times are challenging and uncertain, opportunity always arises from these challenges. Our company was built around our response to Hurricane Andrew in 1992, and again reinvented itself after the dot-com crash in the early 2000s.
Our customers will be looking for ways to change and improve their business model as the world reopens. In that lies our opportunity. Our greatest strength has been to understand the trends in our industry and our customers' needs. Our ability to provide services, whether existing or new, has always been a strength. I'm excited for what the future holds for MasTec. I'd like to again thank the men and women of MasTec for their commitment to safety, their hard work, and their sacrifices. Keep up the good work. I'll now turn the call over to George for our financial review. George?
Thanks, Jose. Good morning, everyone. Today, I'll cover first quarter 2020 results, our current guidance expectations for the balance of 2020, including potential impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as our strong cash flow profile, capital structure, and liquidity. As Mark indicated at the beginning of our call, our discussion of financial results and guidance will include non-GAAP adjusted earnings and adjusted EBITDA. Reconciliation and details of non-GAAP measures can be found in our press release, on our website, or in our SEC filings. In summary, our first quarter 2020 results were better than expected, with adjusted EBITDA exceeding our expectation by $10 million and adjusted diluted earnings exceeding our expectation by $0.12 per share.
We also generated record cash flow from operations during the quarter of $203 million, a $250 million increase over the same period last year. This strong cash flow allowed us to invest approximately $119 million in opportunistic share repurchases, totaling approximately 5% of our outstanding share base, while still decreasing our overall net debt level on a sequential basis. I will make further remarks on our capital structure later. Suffice it to say that our cash flow, capital structure, and liquidity are in excellent shape, this combination affords us a strong advantage as we navigate through the uncertain economic climate resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Lastly, our first quarter 2020 backlog grew significantly, both sequentially and over the same period last year, to a new record level of $8.3 billion.
This includes record level power generation and industrial segment backlog, as well as a strong sequential increase in oil and gas segment backlog. I will cover highlights regarding our first quarter segment results and guidance expectations for the balance of 2020. As expected and previously communicated, first quarter 2020 oil and gas segment revenue of $359 million decreased 42% compared to the same period last year based on project timing. First quarter 2020 oil and gas segment adjusted EBITDA margin rate was 20.7% of revenue, continuing our strong performance trend, with this performance including the benefit of project mix, comprised of reduced levels of lower margin, large project cost plus activity, and continued strong project productivity on numerous smaller pipeline projects.
During the first quarter, we were awarded approximately $1 billion in new oil and gas project awards for work to be started in the back half of 2020, with estimated completion dates in 2021. With a combination of these awards, as well as visibility into additional 2021 project activity, our project work profile for the foreseeable future remains clear. That said, we expect regulatory and judicial challenges will continue to impact the timing, size, scope, and duration of our oil and gas project activity in 2020. Coupled with the impacts of crew pandemic mitigation efforts, we currently expect that a greater level of awarded oil and gas segment project activity will move from 2020 into 2021.
Accordingly, our guidance expectation for oil and gas segment revenue assumes that 2Q 2020 revenue will modestly increase sequentially over first quarter 2020 levels, and second half 2020 project activity and revenue will increase significantly on a year-over-year basis as large project activity initiates. This project timing and mix result in an annual 2020 oil and gas segment revenue expected to decrease in the low to mid-single digit range compared to last year. We continue to expect the oil and gas segment annual 2020 adjusted EBITDA margin rate will be in the high teens range, including the expectation that second half 2020 adjusted EBITDA margin rate will be slightly lower than the annual rate expectation due to project mix, with an increased mix of lower margin, large project cost plus activity during the second half 2020.
First quarter 2020 communication segment revenue of $644 million increased approximately 5% compared to the same period last year. First quarter 2020 communication segment adjusted EBITDA margin rate was 7.9% of revenue. The U.S. telecommunications market is continuing its rapid evolution, which we believe will drive significant and long-term demand for our wireless and wireline fiber services. COVID-19 nationwide stay-at-home orders have resulted in a surge in network usage, resulting from telework and homeschooling activities, further highlighting the importance of developing and expanding our nation's telecommunications infrastructure.
While the services we provide in the communication segment are considered critical infrastructure and are largely proceeding, we are seeing and expecting some disruption during the balance of 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, including lost revenue and crew productivity from local municipality permitting delays, coupled with crew-level pandemic mitigation impacts. We also expect larger decreases over the balance of 2020 in install-to-home services due to consumer COVID-19 pandemic social distancing concerns. As a result, we expect second quarter 2020 communication segment revenue will approximate first quarter 2020 levels, and we expect second half 2020 revenue will approximate last year's second half levels. Inclusive of anticipated COVID-19 pandemic-related revenue and productivity impacts, we continue to expect that annual 2020 communication segment adjusted EBITDA margin rate will improve compared to last year by approximately 100 basis points.
Importantly, we believe as the pandemic effects begin to normalize, 5G market trends will afford us the potential for significant revenue, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin rate improvements in 2021 and beyond. First quarter 2020 electrical transmission segment revenue increased approximately 35% compared to the same period last year to approximately $128 million. First quarter 2020 electrical transmission segment adjusted EBITDA margin rate was 6.5% of revenue. We anticipate some level of COVID-19 pandemic-related project starter delays in 2020, with annual 2020 electrical transmission segment revenue expected to grow in the high single-digit to high teens range compared to last year. We also expect a slight improvement in annual adjusted EBITDA margin rate when compared to 2019.
We continue with the belief that end market conditions for this segment are supportive and expect continued strong revenue and adjusted EBITDA growth for this segment in the coming years. First quarter 2020 power generation and industrial segment revenue increased approximately 51% compared to the same period last year to $286 million. First quarter 2020 adjusted EBITDA margin rate was 1.7% of revenue due to the combination of some project inefficiencies and higher fixed cost levels on a seasonally slow revenue quarter. We continue to experience a very active market in renewable project activity, as evidenced by record power generation and industrial segment first quarter 2020 backlog levels of $1.3 billion.
As we look towards the balance of 2020, Jose already mentioned that we expect this segment will show both strong annual 2020 revenue growth and improved adjusted EBITDA margin rate performance when compared to last year. I will discuss a summary of our top 10 largest customers for the first quarter 2020 period as a result, as a percentage of revenue. AT&T revenue derived from wireless and wireline fiber services was approximately 19%, and installed to the home services was approximately 5%. On a combined basis, these three separate service offerings totaled approximately 24% of our total revenue. As a reminder, it is important to note that these offerings, while falling under one AT&T corporate umbrella, are managed and budgeted independently within that organization, giving us diversification within that corporate universe. Verizon, comprised of both wireline, fiber, and wireless services, was 7%.
Energy Transfer was 6%. Enterprise Products, NextEra Energy, Duke Energy, and Comcast Corporation were each at 4%. Xcel Energy, Permian Highway Pipeline, and ENGIE were each at 3%. Individual construction projects comprise 58% of our revenue, with master service agreements comprising 42%. This mix highlights that we have a substantial portion of our revenue derived on a recurring basis. Lastly, it is also worth noting, as we head into a potential COVID-19-induced period of macroeconomic uncertainty, that all of our top 10 customers, which represent over 60% of our first quarter revenue, have investment-grade credit profiles. At first quarter-end 2020, our backlog of approximately $8.3 billion represented the highest level in MasTec history.
That said, it is worth noting that our current record backlog level includes the negative impact of approximately $350 million in reduced backlog levels compared to the same period last year for installs of the home services within our communication segment. This decrease accounts for virtually all of the year-over-year decline in backlog for this segment. I'll discuss our cash flow, liquidity, working capital usage, and capital investments. During the first quarter of 2020, we generated a record level, $203 million, in cash flow from operations and ended the quarter with net debt, defined as total debt less cash, of $1.35 billion, which equates to a book leverage ratio of 1.6 times.
We ended the quarter with DSOs at 104 days, compared to 91 days last quarter, with the increase primarily due to administrative delays in ordinary course collections from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic nationwide stay-at-home orders enacted near quarter-end. We are fortunate that our business operations profile typically generates significant cash flow from operations, affording us the flexibility to invest strategically in efforts to maximize shareholder value. Our first quarter 2020 results highlight this fact as we opportunistically repurchased 3.6 million shares at a cost of $119 million and still reduced our overall net debt level during the quarter. We look forward towards the balance of 2020, we believe our strong cash flow profile will continue.
While potential macroeconomic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic over the balance of 2020 are still developing, and we are closely monitoring conditions during this uncertain time, we expect annual 2020 cash flow from operations to range at levels that will approach or slightly exceed 2019's record level of $550 million. This cash flow expectation, coupled with a solid long-term capital structure with low rates, no significant near-term maturities, and ample liquidity of approximately $950 million, places MasTec in an extremely strong balance sheet position. Regarding our share repurchase program, we will opportunistically invest in this program if conditions warrant it, while also prudently managing our balance sheet. We currently have $159 million in open repurchase authorizations, and as of today, have not executed any share repurchases during the second quarter.
Regarding capital spending, during the first quarter, we incurred net cash CapEx, defined as cash CapEx net of equipment disposals, of approximately $52 million, and we incurred an additional $27 million in equipment purchases under finance leases. We currently anticipate incurring approximately $150 million in net cash CapEx in 2020, with an additional $140 million-$160 million to be incurred under finance leases. Moving to our current 2020 guidance, inclusive of potential COVID-19 pandemic impacts, we are projecting annual 2020 revenue to range between $7.3 billion-$7.7 billion, with adjusted EBITDA expected to range between $775 million and $825 million.
This equates to an adjusted EBITDA margin rate between 10.6% and 10.7% of revenue, and adjusted diluted earnings ranging between $4.50 and $5.00 per share. As we have previously provided some color as to 2020 segment expectations, I will briefly cover other guidance expectations as highlighted in our release yesterday. Based on our expected strong cash flow and lower nominal interest rates, we expect annual 2020 interest levels to approximate $69 million. For EPS purposes, our weighted average annual 2020 share count is 73.6 million shares, including our first quarter share repurchase activity.
It should be noted, for valuation modeling purposes, that our year-end 2020 share count will approximate 73 million shares, which is approximately 600,000 shares lower than the 2020 weighted average annual share count. This is due to the timing of first quarter share repurchases. We expect annual 2020 depreciation expense to range between 3.5%-3.7% of revenue, due to the combination of lower expected 2020 revenue levels and the timing impact of 2019 and 2020 capital additions and acquisition activity. Lastly, we continue to expect that our annual 2020 adjusted income tax rate will approximate 24%.
This expectation includes our existing first quarter adjusted tax rate, as well as the expectation that quarterly adjusted income tax rates for the balance of 2020 will approximate 26%. This blend leads to an annual 2020 adjusted tax rate that approximates 24%. Our second quarter 2020 revenue expectation range is $1.5 billion-$1.6 billion, with adjusted EBITDA ranging between $150 million-$160 million, or 10% of revenue, and adjusted earnings ranging between $0.78-$0.89 per adjusted diluted share. This guidance expectation includes expected revenue and productivity impacts related to the COVID-19 pandemic. With that, this concludes our prepared remarks. Now we'll turn the call back to the operator for Q&A. Operator?
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. We ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up, and again, that is star one to ask a question. We'll pause for just a moment to allow everyone an opportunity to signal for questions. We'll now take our first question from Brent Thielman of D.A. Davidson.
Great, thank you. On communication, appreciate the color on some of the delays in permitting and the COVID disruptions in terms of what that has on near-term growth rates. You know, just given the carrier plan, the stress on the networks, your general dialogue with those customers, can you talk about how you think these backlogs and bookings could trend as we move through the year and start to think about some, you know, some potential normalcy later this year and into 2021?
Sure. Good morning, Brent. A couple things. First, I think that all the long-term thesis in that business hasn't changed one bit. If you think about the early response to COVID-19, I think most carriers, especially the ones that have wireline networks, have really been focused on making sure that their customers have, you know, internet and high-speed availability to homes, right? Improving that. There's a lot of people that are either watching video over the top, and quite frankly, there's a lot of people that are using their home Wi-Fi networks through their phones. People get their phones, they connect to their Wi-Fi systems at home. A lot of the cellular traffic's actually going through Wi-Fi systems today.
Just anecdotally, what I'm hearing is that the wireless network traffic is actually down because so many people are in their homes using the Wi-Fi network. It's kind of interesting because that's where really the priority for a lot of the carriers and our customers has been over the course of the last couple of months. That's gonna change as people come out and the wireless networks get taxed, and I think that the carriers in general are expecting there to be a pretty rapid swing the other way on that, and it's gonna be interesting to see how the networks fare. I think overall, to date, the networks have fared extremely well. As it relates to COVID, you know, the biggest issues for us have been permitting and it...
You know, if you think about the types of jobs that we do, they're relatively small. You know, you're on a work order basis. Even though jobs may be big, they're broken up in little pieces, and each of those pieces requires a number of different permits at any given point in time. We have a significant backlog at any given point in time that we've been working off of. Obviously, we need that permitting pace to continue at a rapid rate. At first, we saw a pretty significant slowdown to that permitting. There was a lot of concerns and issues around it. It has improved. It's not where it needs to be, but it's a lot better. We've taken, you know, a moderated view as we think of the balance of the year.
We don't really know when every municipality is gonna open up and when everybody's gonna be back working. I think we've modeled that as best as we can today, and we're expecting that to lag a little bit and for us to have a tail to that's gonna take, you know, at least the next few months and maybe even in the second half of the year.
We have other cities where we're completely shut down. Some of our biggest fiber build cities, you know, we're actually not working, so some of those cities are out west, cities like San Francisco and Seattle, that are more stringent. We've got some other markets in the New York area where it's also shut down, right? We've got a handful of markets where we're not generating any revenue, and again, we've taken that into consideration as we've thought into the year. You know, from our perspective, we do expect communication revenues to be a little bit lighter than where we had expected coming into the year, and I think it's attributable to that.
I'd probably say that the areas where we're shut down are having more of an impact on that than even the permitting, but between the two of them, I think we've taken a conservative view as the year plays out.
Okay. All right, fair enough. Then on oil and gas, it's good to hear, you know, the commitment to capacity. Has all of this changed customers' approach to kind of pricing or terms, conditions? Do you still feel pretty good this tight market can support, you know, kind of generally elevated margins for the foreseeable future?
You know, we do. We think it's been a competitive market for a long time. We're not the only player in that space, so I think we're a low-cost provider, which is really important. And with that, we've been able to generate really good margins based on the things that we've done in that business over the course of the last few years to really prepare ourselves for what we knew was gonna be a very active market. I think structurally, our cost structure is very different than those of our competitors, which puts us in a, in a very amiable position, especially as the market gets a little bit tighter. We feel really good about our margin profile and our ability to continue executing on that margin profile.
The business will be a little bit different. With that, again, comes a lot of opportunity. You know, we're excited to work the work that we've got. Again, we're in a great position from a backlog perspective. I also think we're in a great position with relative to customer relationships and just understanding what the customer's needs are and our ability to be able to fill that and really meet their demands.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. We can now move to our next question. It comes from Alex Rygiel of B. Riley. Please go ahead.
Morning, guys. Nice quarter.
Thank you, Alex. Good morning.
Good morning. Your oil and gas backlog increased, nicely. Can you talk a little bit about, sort of what types of projects and what the timeline of those new projects looks like, from that recent increase in oil and gas backlog over the last three months? Then, can you touch upon-
Yep.
your thoughts on the Keystone energy pipeline opportunity ahead of you?
Yep. From an oil and gas perspective, last quarter, you know, I think we kind of gave a lot of... we kind of talked about this, it kind of played out as we expected. On our last call, we talked about having about $1 billion for projects that we expected to make it into backlog in the quarter. If you look at the way it played out, it was about $1 billion of that $1.4 billion. There's still a number of other projects where, you know, we feel we've got a verbal award, the contract just weren't signed in time for it to hit first quarter backlog.
We still have considerable amounts of other work that we feel really good about, that's not in the backlog number as of the end of the quarter, which we also think is a positive step. We also walked through, at the end of the year, you know, our project sequence through the year, and then really when we expected those projects to start and how they were gonna play in. Some of it came to fruition, right? We've had about four projects that we talked about that all started on time. We had two that were accelerated actually, from Q2 into Q1, that started in late Q1. We've had a couple that have slipped a few months based on schedule and permitting. We've had a couple that are right on schedule.
We feel really good about where we started the year, where we thought we were gonna be, and how it's playing out. We're definitely back and loaded. We've been back and loaded since we've been talking about this since probably the third or fourth quarter of last year. That was our expectation going into the year, and it's playing out like that. You know, one of the things that we're monitoring, and I think we've taken into account in our new guidance, is, you know, there are gonna be some social distancing requirements on these jobs. It, you know, we haven't done it yet, so it's gonna be interesting to see how it plays out, but we do expect, you know, some of these jobs to take longer than we had originally anticipated.
You know, some of those jobs were pushing into the 2021 in a pretty sizable way anyway. I think it's just gonna exacerbate that. Between that and other projects that we know our customers are gonna be doing in 2021, you know, we actually have better visibility than I think people give us credit for 2021. As it relates to Keystone, you know, we've what we've said all along is we feel good about our opportunity to ultimately work on that project. That project is gonna primarily be 2021 and beyond build schedule. None of that is in our backlog, so we've never actually specifically spoken about that project, but we feel good about our opportunity to compete, and it's a project that, you know, obviously, we hope to work on at some point in time.
Turning to telecom, backlog was down a little bit. Can you explain why? Could you quantify your revenue associated with 5G today and what that could look like in, say, a year or two?
Yes, a couple things. George talked about it in his prepared remarks. If you look at year-over-year backlog trends, the entire drop in backlog came from a new assessment on our install business. You know, COVID's had a big impact on our install business. A lot of it is demand driven, so we've reevaluated where we are there. We've dropped it about $350 million on a year-over-year basis, and that's really the significant drop to backlog, which I think puts us in a really good place as we start modeling out and as we start having comparables on a go-forward basis. That has a lot to do with the drop in backlog. As it relates to 5G, you know, I think. Every carrier is different, right?
We've got four primary carriers today, if we include Dish. You know, Verizon and AT&T have been on a cadence that is obviously gonna ramp and continue to ramp as we go into 2021. You've got T-Mobile, Sprint, that acquisition just closed. You know, that, I would say from all intents and purposes, is somewhat behind schedule, right? They closed, and then they got caught up in COVID. We're very bullish on what that means for us over the long term, but it's gonna play out. It's gonna take a little bit more time than I think anybody would have hoped. Then you've got Dish under the same circumstance, right? They've got a lot to do. They were a big beneficiary of that, of that merger as well with what they've got.
They've got significant plans, but again, I think COVID has kind of slowed that down. You know, we've said all along that we think with all the other carriers, be it, you know, Verizon, T-Mobile, or Dish, they're big opportunities for us. There's no reason why we shouldn't be doing significantly more revenue for all those. There's significant opportunity even within AT&T. You know, we hope that our wireless 5G type revenues associated with all those guys significantly increases over the course of the next couple of years. You know, we would hope to see it be multiples of what it is today. We think that's the level and size of opportunity, and it's our job to go execute on that.
Thank you very much. Good luck.
Yeah, maybe to add to that, Alex, one final thing. I do think it was nice to see Verizon as our second largest customer. It was the first time they made it there. I think that's also an important look at the quarter and a nice to have during our first quarter.
Thank you.
Thank you. We'll now move to our next question that comes from Blake Hirschman of Stephens Investment Bank.
Yeah, good morning, guys. You sound healthy, so that's good.
Yeah, good morning, Blake. Thankfully, we are.
Let's assume that oil prices don't go up from here. How long before that would, you know, start to impact the oil and gas piece of the business? Kind of along with that, what's your mix in terms of, like, maintenance or integrity pipeline work versus like, new large pipe construction work?
Yeah. A couple things, right? When we think about oil prices, we're looking at a very specific point in time. You know, most people around the world are at home. Oil demand has plummeted. When people get back to work, oil demand will increase. I don't think there's any question about it, and the questions are all around, you know, how much will production drop across the world, and how quickly will it take demand to catch up to those levels? I think we could argue all day about what the right answer to that is, and I think nobody really knows. I probably personally have a more favorable view that that's gonna catch up quicker than I think what most people think.
I think that over the course of the next year, we're gonna see a recovery to oil price. I don't think you're gonna see oil prices stay where they're at for a long period of time. With that said, right, we highlighted in our remarks, I think it's important, only 6% of our work over the last three years has been attributable to oil pipelines. There's a whole other play here, which I think is gonna be interesting and again, I don't necessarily know how it's gonna play out, with all of these, with all of the oil production comes a significant amount of gas that comes out of these same wells, right? There's been an overabundance of natural gas for a long time, for the last two years in this country.
A lot of that had to do with the amount of drilling that was happening. As that goes away, you know, I think we're gonna see a significant price increase on gas because there's just gonna be less supply of it. What I think happens because of that is you end up having big price differentials around the country, and that's gonna create a significant amount of opportunities for us, I believe. I think it's still to play out. Again, I think one of the things that's important about MasTec is we have significant runway with the backlog and projects that we have in queue that are gonna give us time to see how the industry plays out, and it gives it time to recover. I feel good about 20, I feel good about 21.
I don't think that ultimately the long-term drivers in the business that we've talked about, which is large electric utility plants that are fired on gas, whether it's LNG, I still think the long-term trends of that are gonna be positive and create a lot of opportunities for us. I think it's early. Time will tell. Integrity as a portion of our total work has significantly increased over the last couple of years. I know that's the biggest question on everybody's mind related to MasTec is what happens to the future of our oil and gas business. We feel good about it, right? Even to the extent that it does decline, we feel good about the rest of our business making that up.
That's our challenge, that's what we're here to execute on, and that's what we're gonna strive for.
Got it. That sounds great. I kind of asked two questions there, so I'll hop back into you. Thanks, guys.
All right. Thank you.
Thank you. We can now move to our next question. This comes from Noelle Dilts of Stifel. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Good morning, and congratulations on managing through all of this uncertainty as well.
Thank you. Good morning, Noelle.
Sure. I think both of my questions kind of focus a little bit more on the telecom side. You know, first, when you're looking at some of these permitting challenges, I'm curious how the degree to which you're seeing that in wireless versus wireline. You know, I think AT&T talked a bit about, you know, facing some of those challenges on this conference call, while Verizon was a bit more positive on that front. You know, kind of curious how to think about that across those markets?
...It kind of depends on the work function, right? If you, if you think about there are certain types of work where it's less important, and there are certain types of work that you can work on blanket permits, which really alleviates a lot of these concerns. I think specifically as it relates to wireless, when you think about small cells and the fact that small cells are being installed in, you know, heavily trafficked corridors, be it downtowns, be it major streets, that's where the issues arise, right? Where you might have cities or municipalities that don't want work happening in a particular area because of what's happening with the pandemic, or you need special permitting, not just from a city or municipality, but from the Department of Transportation, the state one, maybe some other state permits.
That's where it complicates a little bit more. There's functions of the work where I think it's very minimal, the impact, and then there's other functions where I think it's more important. On the underground side, it's a little bit more intrusive, right? I think there, it's a little bit more difficult. As you see the, you know, the dependence of some of the new wireless and 5G build outs with fiber, it kind of intercedes a little bit, right? It's a tough question to answer because there's a lot of intertwined stuff that happens. You know, I'll be able to say there's portions of the business that aren't impacted, and there's portions of the business that are more impacted, and it's our job to manage through that.
I think everybody understands the pace at which they wanna go. I don't think the cities or municipalities are against it. They're just trying to have a lot of things to manage right now. You know, it's our job to get it up in terms of their level of importance.
Okay. You know, obviously, last year we talked a lot about you guys ramping up capacity in telecom in anticipation of, you know, 5G-related spending, picking up. You know, given some of these delays this year, you know, how are you thinking about capacity, you know, utilization? You know, are you basically holding on to folks in anticipation of that, of that ramp? Kind of how do we think about the underutilization element this year?
Yeah. It's a great question. One of the things that we try to do as a company is, you know, these are very uncertain times for everybody, but I think for those people that are in the front lines, that are depending on a weekly paycheck, it's probably even more important for them. We've done everything possible to not furlough employees and to make sure that everybody's taken care of at MasTec. At the end of the day, we really view this as a family-owned business, and that's how it kind of started, and we've always tried to keep those fundamentals in place. We've tried to take care of our employees to the best of our ability, even if it's meant underutilization. There's no question that's having some impact to our margins.
We spent a lot of money gearing up and really preparing and investing in our people, you know, we're not gonna give up on that investment. There's no question there's a little bit of underutilization, especially in those markets that are either complete shutdowns or where you have limited availability to work. We're working through that. We think at the end of the day, that it's what our company is about, and it's why our employees are extremely loyal to us. Having an impact, I think the impact's gonna subside as the quarters here come and go.
You know, if we think about the year, you know, if you listen to our prepared remarks, we expect improvements in margins in our communications business, probably a little bit less than what we did coming into the year, and there's no question that that has some impact on it.
Thank you.
Thanks, Noelle
Thank you. We'll now move to our next question. This comes from Jamie Cook of Credit Suisse.
Hi, good morning. Nice quarter and glad to hear everyone's safe and well. I guess my first question, Jose, if we look at the oil and gas backlog, the $2.6 billion or so in the quarter, can you remind investors what sort of big pipe versus integrity or other less cyclical businesses and just sort of, you know, the opportunity to grow the business outside of, you know, big pipeline, which, and just the margin profile between the two? If the non- the other parts of the business became a bigger part of your portfolio, what that would do to margins?
I guess my second question on the big pipe side, while, you know, we look at the CapEx numbers and they look scary, I guess I would say, you know, MasTec is one of the, you know, players left that are probably still, you know, healthy or financially capable. I'm just wondering what you're seeing from your, you know, competitor base, if they're less healthy. Even in a declining CapEx market, you know, MasTec just continues to get a bigger portion of the overall market. Thank you.
Yeah. Jamie, you know, one of the nice things about the backlog that we've been able to book, you know, not just this quarter, but I think over the last couple of quarters, it's not driven by any single project, right? A few years back, you know, single projects were having a huge sway on our backlog, right? We, we were having projects that were, you know, north of $1 billion, and that was, you know, impacting our backlog in a pretty sizable way. We're not seeing that, right? We've got a lot more jobs that are making up our backlog than we've historically had. It's a nice mix between, you know, all types of jobs, which again, is important.
You know, I think when you look at total CapEx dollars for our customers, you kind of break it down into all the different buckets. They invest in a lot of different things, not just pipelines. Even the big pipeline operators have a lot of investments. Outside of pipeline. You almost have to break it down into, you know, what they're thinking. You know, a lot of the guidance that's been put out for 2021 and 2022, although it's very early, the directional guidance that a lot of these pipeline companies have given are strictly for approved projects. Again, we're in a very unique time where, you know, the market has taken a significant downturn. As that market improves, we're very confident that other projects are gonna make it onto their list because they're economically viable.
I already think we've seen some of it, right? Some of our customers' stock had been, you know, significantly impacted and deteriorated. A lot of those have significantly improved in the last couple of weeks, and I think that, in and of itself, has. We're already seeing some more confidence from our customers relative to they feel better about their stock price, they feel better about the business longer term, and I think over time, that's gonna show. I think you're also right about the comments of where we stand in the industry. There's a handful of larger players that are gonna be fine. There's a lot of smaller players that won't be around. Ultimately, that's, you know, that takes away capacity, and it gives, you know, us a better opportunity.
The reality is that the customer mix that we're always trying to work for isn't necessarily working with a lot of those smaller players, and a lot of the companies that will ultimately fail, or even from a customer basis, companies that won't make it, are usually using contractors that are a lot smaller. As the business consolidates with the bigger players from our customers' perspective, that's also good for MasTec.
Okay. Thank you for your insight. Goodbye.
Thanks, Amy. Goodbye.
Thank you. We'll now move to our next question. This comes from Andy Li of Citi.
Good morning. Thanks, guys. My first question is on the communications margin. Margin has been relatively sticky at roughly 8% range, and, you know, you are expecting an uptaking that going forward. Is the improvement really just higher revenue, or is it better mix of project work? Do you have any concern how social distancing measures might negatively impact that?
Yeah. I think a lot of it, and we've talked about it over the course of the last year, has been just, you know, our gearing up for the demand that we know is coming, right? You know, a couple questions ago, we talked about utilization. There's no question that utilization levels aren't where they can ultimately be, and I think we're gonna. That is a function of just having more work and putting people on jobs. Everything that's happened in the last month or so has impacted that, right? Because you just have, it's just everything's become a little bit harder, right? As things normalize, we think we're gonna start making and continue to make improvements to those utilization levels.
If you, again, in our prepared remarks, we talked about there being a margin improvement on a year-over-year basis of over, or at least 100 basis points on a full year basis. We still expect that, right? That's a lot better than that's better. It's not exactly where we wanted it to be. We think that number continues to increase, and as hopefully, when we look at 2021 on a full year basis, that number increases significantly more than that. We feel really good where we are, where we're positioned. Again, we've been building our resource base based on the work that we think is coming, something very similar to what we did in the oil and gas business a few years ago.
I think as you saw, the margins came and followed on that. I, we've talked a lot about the similarities between that and our communications business. We still expect it to be the fact and the case, obviously we need all the players in the industry to be up and running, I think we're getting really close to that.
Okay, thanks. My follow-up is on the electric transmission projects. Backlog has been bouncing around a little bit, and in the current environment, you know, there are some concerns that utility could lower CapEx. Are you seeing any incremental projects in that segment?
Yeah, we're seeing, there's a huge pent-up demand, right? There's a lot of projects that are currently in the bid cycle. Some bids have been delayed because of the, you know, you've got people that are just at home, and so we've seen a number of bids that we thought would come out in this period that are now being delayed a month or two. Not huge delays, but obviously, we think there's gonna be a huge pent-up demand, and when everything opens up, there's gonna be a lot of bids that are gonna be coming out at the same time. There's a lot of work in that industry. I don't. I think all the fundamentals for the industry are really solid.
If you think about storm, just system hardening for storms, fires and everything, that's not going away. You've got the renewable aspect with all the renewables that are being built that require significant build-out. You got reliability issues. I don't think it's a very strong market and one that I don't think we're gonna see any change to the investment profile of that market in anytime soon.
Okay, thanks.
Thank you. We can now move to our next question. This comes from Andrew Wittmann of Baird.
Yeah, great. Thanks. I wanted to ask a couple more questions here on the pipeline oil and gas segment here, and specifically, just thinking about the fact that you are expecting the work to ramp in the second half of the year with so many things changing in the customer side. I guess I wanted to understand how much, what percentage, or how you're thinking about the level of fully permitted and fully authorized to proceed jobs that you're banking on here in the second half of the year. If you could just talk about that, I think that'd be helpful.
Sure, Andy. We've got a couple of jobs slated to start late in the second quarter. We've actually mobilized on a number of them already. We're doing very early work. It's not a lot of people, but it's obviously a great indicator as to when these projects are gonna start. Again, a lot of this has to do with just permitting and time, and a lot of that's been right to schedule, so we feel really good about the start dates that we've got planned. I think we've been conservative around what we think the productivity on those jobs are gonna be for the balance of the year.
We've built some room in there in case there's some slips, but we feel really good across our different jobs of when the start dates are, where we're headed to, what's required to start them. Again, you know, it's not inconceivable that one could slip a month or two, but we feel really good about where we are and how we've kind of modeled that out.
You just mentioned the productivity. It's kind of the second time you've referred to that. You mentioned that maybe some of the social distancing requirements are gonna make some of these jobs, you know, run out, take a little bit longer. That, that sounds like it also could mean that they're more expensive. I was wondering how this factors into the margins that you expect to realize off of these jobs, or if you're starting to price this in on jobs where the RFP is in your hands and is coming back?
I think, you know, I think we've alluded to it on the call as well, right? Our jobs are a mix of, you know, project, whether it's unit cost or fixed price, and then cost plus, right? On the cost plus jobs, they tend to have a little bit less of a margin than the rest of our business. As our cost plus jobs ramp up, the overall margins of the business, the profile drops a little bit, which is why we go from, you know, being in the 20s to the high teens. I don't think that any of these issues or social distancing requirements are gonna impact the fundamental belief of where our different margin profiles are. We still expect the same thing, right?
There will be a larger mix of cost plus in the second half of the year, because some of the jobs that we start will be cost plus. We'll see a little bit of drop in margin second half of the year versus first half. The fundamental margin profile, the different pieces of work, shouldn't be materially different.
Great. Thanks.
Thank you. We'll move to our next question. This comes from Adam Thalhimer of Thompson Davis.
Hey, good morning, guys.
Good morning, Adam.
Jose, has COVID impacted your long-term outlook for telecom at all?
Not at all, right? I think it's interesting. It doesn't change any of the pieces we've been talking about, right? Our customers are still very committed to the technologies they wanna deploy. I think if anything, it's, they wanna do it more rapidly, right? I think with everything that we've seen, we've seen how important technology is in just about everything we do. Our customers understand that. I do think there's gonna be opportunities, as our customers look at their business, I think they're gonna look at their business different. They're gonna look at, you know, how they do the things that they do, and I think there's gonna be a great opportunity for further outsourcing as they think about their cost structure. Again, I think they're...
The fundamentals are in place, nothing's changing, but quite frankly, I think there's gonna be some really good opportunities that arise because of the lessons learned from this pandemic.
Okay. Second question on oil and gas. That revenue ramp, you're going from, like, $450 million in revenue in Q2 to, you know, well over $1 billion in Q3. Logistically speaking, is that daunting at all, or is that's just the way these companies are set up to operate?
Well, I think if you look at our historical, right, it's not much different than what we've historically done.
Adam, that's pretty you know, typically third quarter is a big period for us. We've done, you know, well north of those amounts over the years. It depends on project timing and whatnot. You know, second half of this year will certainly be bigger. I think the third and fourth quarter will both be big. I think when you look at it year-over-year, our fourth quarter in 2019 was a little bit muted because we had some, you know, some delays on projects we broke early for winter. We'll have a bigger growth in the fourth quarter. They're gonna be both very strong in terms of revenue. That level of revenue is not, you know, it's something that we've done, you know, multiple times over the years.
We did about $1.2 billion in the third quarter of 2017, Adam. You know, if you look at our... You know, it's not really, we're expecting to do less than that in this third quarter. It'll still be a significant ramp from Q2. We won't have to get to the levels we got to in 2017.
Perfect. Okay. Thanks, guys.
Thanks.
Thank you. We'll now move to our next question. This comes from Sean Eastman of KeyBanc Capital Markets.
Thanks, team. Thanks for taking my questions. First one for me, I'm just curious, as the Sprint, T-Mobile, and Dish, you know, deployment plans start to ramp up, you know, it seems like there's a couple options. You know, they can do some stuff in-house, you know, they could go with these program manager-type companies, or local operators. I'm just curious how you think Nsoro's capabilities are being viewed relative to some of those other options, and, you know, just how you're thinking about Nsoro's addressable scope, as those deployment plans start to firm up.
Sure. I think today, we're the largest wireless contractor in the United States. I think every one of those carriers knows that. I think they understand what our strengths are. I think they understand what we bring to the table. I think we have tremendous opportunity with all of them.
Okay. Just higher level, Jose, you know, clearly just with this backdrop, the oil and gas exposure is really in focus, you know, arguably a drag on the valuation you guys are getting. I'm just curious, you know, if you're spending a lot of your time looking at new growth ventures outside of oil and gas, or, you know, whether you just let the numbers speak for themselves with the business mix you have today? If you are looking at expanding, I'm just curious if, you know, it's more, you know, new end markets, new geographies, or just capturing more out of the supply chain in your existing end markets like you did with QuadGen? Any thoughts on, you know, the business development, how you're thinking about it would be really helpful.
Sure. I don't think it's changed, right? I think we're always looking at different alternatives for the company and different opportunities. We love the businesses that we're in, quite frankly, and I'll be honest, I love the oil and gas business. I think that, you know, we're gonna see it. it is, it generally tends to be a little bit more cyclical because of the commodity prices. you know, I think, we've really performed in that business. I think we've got a great brand in that business, offer some great services and product, and I think that's not gonna change, right? At some point, that market's gonna come back, irrespective of what we all think. I mean, history repeats itself, and we're gonna be super well positioned.
I know people don't want to give us any value for that business, but the reality is that I think we've built a very valuable asset in that business that over time is gonna perform extremely well. With that said, always looking for ways to improve our business and get into things that maybe we're not in today. I think as a result of this pandemic, all of our customers are gonna be looking for ways to cut costs, ways to do things differently, and in that are gonna be a ton of opportunities available to us, both in services that we provide today and, quite frankly, in new services. When I think about, the future of this country, I continue to believe strongly that at some point we're gonna see an infrastructure bill.
I think we've been positioning MasTec for years to take advantage of an ultimate infrastructure bill. I think you're gonna see that continue and ramp. I do think it's gonna come in some way, fashion or form, and I think we're gonna be a huge beneficiary of it. Not we're talking about today because we don't have anything, but as that becomes more clearer, we'll talk a lot more about our strategy and what we've done to prepare ourselves. But we're, you know, what do we know? We know that, you know, in the next 10 years, MasTec's gonna look different than what it does today, right? From 2007 to today, we're a very different company. You know, we've been able to grow revenues from just under $900 million to over $7 billion.
Over the course of the next 10 years, we hope to be able to do the same thing and grow our revenue significantly, and that's gonna take our company looking a little bit differently over that time. Quite frankly, that's what we love about our business, the fact that there's so many different things we can be involved with the customer base that we have and with, you know, customers that are similar to the ones that we have. Again, we're very bullish on our future and feel really good about where we're headed as a company.
I appreciate it. Thanks very much.
Thanks, Sean.
Thank you. We can now move to our final question. This comes from Steven Fisher of UBS.
Thanks. Good morning, guys.
Hey, good morning, Steven.
Good morning. You did beat expectations for Q1. When you had about one month left in the quarter. I guess I'm curious, as we look forward here to Q2 and the 2020 guidance, to what extent would you characterize these guidance levels as conservative, or do the market conditions that we have now just really make any sort of characterization difficult?
It's a good question, right? One that obviously we debated. I think most companies decided not to give guidance, I think most companies have withdrawn guidance across the universe. I think a lot of it has to do with, you know, there's still a lot of uncertain times ahead. We have no idea what this pandemic is gonna ultimately mean, if it's gonna come back, what impacts it'll have on society in general. You know, we felt strong enough that we have enough visibility to be able to provide guidance.
You know, at the end of the day, we thought it was important for our shareholders to get a value of what our knowledge is and what we think and where we think we're heading, so they can have some visibility into how we see 2020. By giving that visibility, obviously, we didn't want to get ahead of ourselves, so we wanted to put out numbers that we felt very comfortable with. I think we've built risk into those based on all the unknowns that exist. I think that speaks to the strength of MasTec, right? The fact that we have that visibility, the fact that we believed enough in it to be able to put out guidance when so many aren't, and put it out with confidence, right?
There's no question if things go great and, you know, this passes and there's very little impact to it, then, yeah, these numbers will probably prove out to be conservative. If it doesn't and some things happen, we still feel with high confidence that we'll be able to hit this range. That was our thought process behind the guidance. We feel good about it. We hope that, we pray that everything finishes and there's no more impacts from this, and life returns to normal as early as the next few weeks, and we forget about it. I'm not sure that that's the case either. I think we tried to come up with somewhere in the middle, and again, we feel very good about the numbers that we provided.
Well, kudos for taking a crack at it. In terms of the power gen and industrial margins, I know you talked about in the prepared remarks some of the factors that are driving some of the volatility there in terms of efficiencies and higher fixed costs. I guess I'm curious about how to think about this going forward, because as you do face some longer-term headwinds in the oil and gas business, you do, it seems like, have a robust enough revenue business there to make a difference in contributing more meaningful profitability. How should we think about the volatility in those margins? The quarterly profit rates are swinging pretty dramatically. What's the prospects for really kind of producing a larger profit base in that segment? Thank you.
Yes. Couple things. First, the business is in hypergrowth, right? I mean, the growth rates that we've been able to achieve in that business over the last couple of years, I think, have been remarkable. I think they've been as good as any growth rates we've had in any business that we've been involved with as a company. When you look at full year 2020 guidance and really the narrative that we've put out, we expect about a 150 basis point improvement in that business on a year-over-year basis from a margin profile, which is really solid. You know, with that said, you know, as the business gets to normalized growth rates, right, 50% growth rates are significant, and we've been enjoying that or better. There's inefficiencies and costs that are associated with that.
Over time, that business will appreciate from a margin profile. You know, we expect that business to be, you know, higher in the high single digits in more of the near term, in the next couple of years. We do think there's an opportunity over a longer period of time to maybe even get to low double digits. We hope to be able to speed that up and make it faster. We think those are realistic targets. We're working our way into that, and again, we're just thrilled with the pace of the business and where it's headed. We know that margins are the issue. When you look at first quarter, you know, first quarter is a tough quarter for us in that business.
We've got a lot of jobs in markets where weather's bad, where there's a lot of snow, significantly impacts, the margin profile of that business. It's generally gonna be our weakest quarter. I think you'll see quarter-over-quarter improvements in that business that trends up nicely. We understand what the risks are, we understand what the profile needs to look like, and we think we're well on our way. We're pretty excited about what that segment's gonna do for us over the long term.
Terrific. Thanks very much.
All right, thank you. I think with that, this concludes our first quarter 2020 call. We thank you all for participating, and we hope and pray that you all stay safe, and stay healthy, and we look forward to updating you on our next call. Thank you very much.
This concludes today's call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.