Good morning. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. The 2026 annual meeting of shareholders of MasTec is now called to order. I am Jorge Mas, chairman of the board of directors of MasTec, and I cordially welcome you to today's virtual annual meeting. You may submit any questions at any time during the annual meeting using the field provided for questions in the web portal. I would like to take a moment now to introduce the other directors of the company who are present. The directors, in addition to myself, are Jose Mas, who is also our CEO, Bob Campbell, Ernst Csiszar, Bob Dwyer, Julia Johnson, Ava Parker, and Javier Palomarez. In addition to Jose Mas, I would like to introduce the other executive officers of the company who are present.
The executive officers are Bob Apple, our Chief Operating Officer, Paul DiMarco, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and Alberto de Cardenas, our Executive Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary. On behalf of all of our shareholders, I would like to thank the directors and the management team for their contributions to MasTec. Also with us today are representatives from our independent registered public accounting firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers. They are available to answer questions from shareholders after we complete the business portion of the meeting. This meeting is convened pursuant to notice dated April 9th, 2026, to all shareholders of record as of the close of business on March 13th, 2026. Alberto de Cardenas, Inspector of Elections, will now give his report.
Mr. Chairman, I have an affidavit of the manager of Broadridge Financial Solutions that a notice of availability of proxy materials was sent on or about April 9th, 2026, to each shareholder of record as of March 13th, 2026. We have available at this time a certified list of these shareholders, which is available for inspection by any shareholder of record on the annual meeting website. As of the close of business on the record date, there were 78,827,802 shares of common stock outstanding, and I have determined that a quorum is present for all matters to be voted on at the meeting.
Thank you, Albert. We have three matters to be voted on today, which are the election of Ernst Csis, Julia Johnson, and Jorge Mas as Class I directors to serve until the 2029 annual meeting of shareholders. Second matter is the ratification of the appointment of Pricewaterhouse as our independent registered public accounting firm for the 2026 fiscal year. The third matter, the approval of a non-binding advisory resolution regarding the compensation of our named executive officers, which we refer to as a say-on-pay resolution. Those shareholders who wish to vote during the meeting may vote using the annual meeting website and following the instructions found there. As indicated in the proxy statement, our board of directors has recommended that our shareholders vote for each of the nominees for director, for the ratification of the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers for the 2026 fiscal year, and for the say-on-pay resolution.
As there are no nominations for other candidates properly before the meeting, the nominations are hereby declared closed. There being no other proposals properly before the meeting, the polls are now open regarding each of the three proposals properly brought before the meeting and described in our proxy statement. Is there anyone participating, whether or not you already submitted a proxy, who now wants to vote using the online meeting website? If yes, please proceed to submit your votes pursuant to the online meeting website. If there's anyone still trying to submit votes, do so. The polls are now closed. The Inspector of Elections will now report the results. Alberto?
As Inspector of Elections, I report that our shareholders have voted to elect Ernst N. Csiszar, Julia L. Johnson, and Jorge Mas to serve as Class I directors for a three-year term, to ratify the appointment of PwC as our independent registered public accounting firm for the 2026 fiscal year, and to approve on a non-binding advisory basis the compensation paid to our named executive officers.
Thank you, Albert. Now that the business portion of the meeting has been concluded I would now like to turn the meeting over to Jose Mas, our Chief Executive Officer, for further comments. Shareholders will then have an opportunity, using the annual meeting website, to ask questions directed to management or the company's auditors. Jose?
Thank you, Jorge, good morning. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you for your support of MasTec and your participation. We're coming off of a great 2025. We've given guidance for 2026, and just recently, last week, we had our Investor Day, which was the first one that we've done in many, many years, where we laid out our initial guidance for 2028 with $22 billion in revenue, $2.2 billion of EBITDA, and over $0.15 of EPS a share. We're obviously very excited about what the market opportunities are for MasTec and our ability to execute on them. We look forward to updating you on next year's call. I'd now actually like to open it up for any questions from shareholders. It looks like we have one shareholder with us today. Mark, welcome. Thank you for joining.
We've got a handful of questions here, Mark. Give me a chance to read them. The first question is: Has the company explored any data centers or recent opportunities related to them? Mark, on our fourth quarter call, we announced our first turnkey award of a data center. It was obviously a very important event for the company. We view the data center opportunity as a very large opportunity for MasTec, not just in civil infrastructure and in power, but in the ability to fully turnkey data centers, and we think that is going to be a big part of our growth profile in the future. It was part of the guidance that we gave out during our Investor Day last week. Your second question is: Does the company have a more favorable partnership with any state or federal government?
If so, how long can this go forward? One of the beauties of MasTec is the majority of our work is not for government agency, it's for B2B. We're really only impacted by government decisions as it relates to how it impacts our customers. On the civil side of our business, we do work for state and federal governments relative to roads and bridges. We don't really have any favorable partnerships with one state or federal government. We don't really have to participate politically relative to what happens in those type of jobs. We think we're pretty insulated from any changes in government or what might happen in a particular election. Your next question, Mark, is: Congratulations to a great 2025 for MasTec. While income certainly grew free, can you explain the cash flow from operations now and going forward, if possible?
I think we've been at the top of the peer group over the course of the last decade relative to cash flow conversion. Obviously, we probably enjoyed the highest organic growth rates in the industry peer group last year. That translated into higher working capital, which did impact our cash flow from operations a bit. I think we've given really strong cash flow guidance for the full year 2026. Again, during our Investor Day, we gave good long-term cash flow guidance. We feel really strong about our ability to generate cash flow, and what it means. We actually said during our Investor Day that from now to 2028, we think we can generate $3 billion of free cash flow, which can then be deployed for company growth or other initiatives. We're pretty excited about the cash flow generation opportunity for MasTec.
Your next question is: What is the average backlog for the company, and what % do you see it increasing each year? We ended 2025 at a record level of backlog. We broke it out by each segment. On the call, we said we expect to end 2026 yet again with another record level of backlog. We don't necessarily give out what % we expect the backlog to increase, but we think backlog's headed in the right direction. It's one of the things we're really proud of is our ability to have grown backlog over the course of the last few years and what that means for our earnings growth and potential.
I guess your last question is: At this point, with an increase in geopolitical situations as well as tariffs, how confident is the company navigating this, and where do you see this for the rest of 2026? Tariffs is an important point. One of the things we really focus on is construction. We only deal with tariffs in those areas where we have to procure materials, which is somewhat limited relative to our overall portfolio. In the case that there's tariffs, we're contractually protected most of the time from any tariff changes. We think that from a contracts perspective, we're in good shape. We think our customers who buy most of the material, obviously, this is an issue for them, and we think they've implemented a lot of strategies around minimizing their tariffs.
In those areas where they have to pay tariffs, I think they're trying to figure out how it works in their business. Luckily, we haven't seen it really negatively impact our business yet. We think the worst of it is kind of passed. We're looking forward to seeing what happens over the course of the next couple of years and really where we need to focus our supply chain to lessen the risk of tariffs. With that, we've answered all of the active questions. Mark, not sure if you have any other questions. Feel free to type one in. We'll give you a few seconds here. We see no more active questions. Again, thank you for participating, and appreciate your support and your attention.
Thank you.
The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.