Okay. Good morning. We're back here. I'm Steve Fisher, UBS Machinery Engineering Construction and U.S. Building Materials Analyst. We're really thrilled to have the management of Parsons with us. We have Carey Smith, CEO. We have Matt Ofilos, CFO. And we have Dave Spille from Investor Relations. We're going to do this as a fireside chat, but we'll pause at some point in case anyone wants to ask a question. You can either use the QR code or just raise your hand, and we'll get a microphone to you.
So welcome. Thanks for being here. Maybe just for those not as familiar, if you could just provide a quick profile overview of the company and then maybe lead that into some color on your operating performance, which has been really strong over the last couple of years. Q3, recent quarter, really no exception to that. Maybe you can just elaborate on really what's been driving your strong financial performance over the last couple of years?
Great. Thanks, Steve. Thanks for having us here today. So Parsons is about 19,500 people. We're located in over 25 countries around the world, all 50 states. We report in two segments: Federal Solutions, which comprise about 60% of the revenue, and Critical Infrastructure, which makes up about 40% of the revenue. We have six end market areas that we're focused on. Those include cyber and intelligence, space and missile defense, Critical Infrastructure protection, transportation, environmental remediation, and urban development. And one thing I think that's particularly exciting is that across those six markets, the compounding growth rate is 5%-12% projected over the next three years. So we're in a fortunate position where we have a lot of tailwinds across all of our core market spaces. Our revenue is about 85% in North America. It's about 76% in the U.S., the rest in Canada.
Then we have about 15% of our business that's based in the Middle East. When you look at the federal portion, about 58% of the federal business would be fixed price, time, and material. About 42% is cost reimbursable. Whereas in the Critical Infrastructure part of the business, it's about 71% fixed price, time, and material, and 29% cost reimbursable. Our focus in the federal business area has been focused on outpacing near-peer threats and being able to provide integrated deterrence to enhance the United States' national security. With that, we've purpose-built a federal portfolio that's focused on cyber, electronic warfare, space, and information operations.
Within the Critical Infrastructure segment, our focus is on providing program management capabilities, owner's engineer capabilities, and design engineering. As you mentioned, Steve, we're really pleased with the growth that we've had. We've had six consecutive quarters of greater than 20% organic growth. This is really driven by all four of our business units, profit and loss centers growing double digits, as well as our major geographies going double digits. Likewise, we've had a very strong competitive win rate. We're at 75% year to date.
Wow, that's great. Yeah, it's hard to achieve that 20% plus over that many quarters. You mentioned 16% in the Middle East. I think that's one of the unique characteristics and focus areas for your company, and it's been very strong lately. Maybe you can just talk a little bit about what has contributed to that success in the Middle East for you.
Sure. So we've been in the Middle East for six decades, which is hard to believe. Very deep roots there, and we've been in Saudi Arabia for five decades. We have a 50/50 joint venture partnership with a Saudi Arabian firm, and the joint venture is called Saudi Arabia Parsons Limited. That JV has been in place for five decades, so very deep roots. We provide predominantly program management consulting capabilities, and we're also heavily involved in transportation and urban development areas. I would say the growth most recently has come from Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia signed Saudi Vision 2030, which basically is how do you diversify the country away from dependence on oil. They set up different sectors which are managed by the Public Investment Fund.
The focus is on how do you do infrastructure, transportation, but then they also have sectors like e-gaming and some others where we don't participate. I would say for us, tourism, entertainment, transportation, and infrastructure are the main drivers. They have all these giga projects in preparation for being on the world stage. In 2029, they're going to be hosting the Asian Games. In 2030, they're going to be hosting the World Expo. In 2034, they're going to be hosting the World Cup. We're in a fortunate position where we're involved in many of those giga projects. We're involved in NEOM. NEOM is comprised of many projects. One of them is The Line, which is going to be a city as tall as Empire State Building, as long as Long Island. We're one of the delivery partners there.
We're the program manager for NEOM Oxagon, which is going to be a floating city on the Red Sea, basically a technology hub. We're one of the delivery partners for Qiddiya, which will be the world's largest entertainment center. We're the program manager for King Salman Park, which is five times the size of Central Park. We're working on King Abdullah Financial District. We're working on Al Soudah. We're doing Riyadh Rings and Roads. So we're really excited to be at the forefront of helping Saudi achieve its vision of diversifying away from oil and basically transforming the country to be on the world stage.
Yeah, it's amazing to see this area develop. However, there have been certain geopolitical dynamics going on in the region for sure. How does that impact your ability to kind of work in the region, if it does at all?
Yeah, so we don't see any impact. I think everybody would agree that Saudi's vision is terrific. It's great for the world, and it's great for the economy, and so we're very supportive of that. I would also say the relationships between Saudi and the U.S. really have never been better, as well as with the UAE. I didn't talk about the UAE, but I'll just mention a few of the things that we're doing there. We're involved right now. They had the unfortunate floods over the last few years, so we're involved in doing wastewater treatment work, as well as sewage work, and then in Abu Dhabi, there's a lot of movement. So we're actually involved in helping create manmade islands and modernizing it for mixed-use development as people start to move from other countries into the UAE.
Interesting. Obviously, there's what goes along with some of this geopolitical activity, is potential for rebuilding. Can you talk a little bit about whether this is something that you're even thinking about or being involved in?
Yeah, it's a great question. And we certainly are. Parsons was very heavily involved in the rebuild of Iraq. And so if the Russia-Ukraine conflict comes to an end and the Israel-Gaza conflict comes to an end, we anticipate being involved in the rebuild of those countries. In addition to what we can do on the rebuild, the first step within Ukraine will be to provide demining because about 40% of the country is covered in mines. So we have a system where we have export approval to Directed Energy Laser System that can accomplish the demining. We also do environmental remediation work. And then we would go in and help develop a master concept plan and be able to help with the rebuild. So we do see that as an opportunity for the company.
Yeah, fascinating. So maybe shifting gears a little bit here to something else that's fairly topical around the federal government area with the potential or the expected change in administration. Not a lot of details yet, but curious how you're thinking about this DOGE topic and how that might potentially impact your businesses and the segments?
Yeah, I think it's our most frequently asked question right now. So the Department of Government Efficiency is basically going to be an advisory board that's set up. And they will come up with recommendations in several areas. One is how do you improve the efficiency of the government? The second one is how do you reduce cost? And the third area is eliminating regulations that may be unnecessary or unneeded. So I would say we think all those three objectives are very important and all very worthy. Currently, with Parsons Portfolio, 40% of our portfolio is immune from the federal government because it's international and state and local. So 60% of our business falls under the federal government. The agencies that have been talked about so far being looked at are like the Department of Education, the Veterans Affairs, the IRS, and the FBI.
Parsons has no work with those agencies. But I will say what we are looking at is how we can come up with ideas and recommendations to help DOGE achieve its objectives. Because we think, particularly on the efficiency side, if you apply artificial intelligence, automation technologies, you can make the government more efficient. And as you look at cost reduction areas, are there areas that might be better privatized versus done by the government? Or are there programs that have been procured that perhaps are losing money? And you can look at different procurement strategies. So we're really looking forward to coming up with ideas to help DOGE achieve their objectives.
Do you sense that there's kind of a receptive maybe it's too early, but is there receptivity to input from the industry?
Yeah, I would say it is at early stages, but I believe based on the group that's being formed, that they will be very receptive to ideas from private industry.
That's great. Another general federal government topic is around the budget. And we have Continuing Resolution right now. So I'm just curious what your expectations are for how long this might continue and if there's any risk in terms of your kind of guidance and framework for 2024 and 2025 if we have a prolonged Continuing Resolution.
Yes, right now the Continuing Resolution will run until December 20th. There's an expectation that that'll continue until the March timeframe. I've been in the industry almost four decades. We've dealt with Continuing Resolutions since 2005. On average, there's been four CRs per year since then. They've averaged about 163 days. I kind of look at it almost as noise in the system. It's unfortunate noise in the system. From a Parsons perspective, we have $8.8 billion in backlog. 66% of that is funded, which is very high. We also have another $13 billion of awarded not booked. So that's work that Parsons has won that we haven't yet reflected in our bookings or backlog. So we're in a fortunate position of being able to run a long time without seeing an impact.
That's great. One other question that I get a lot relates in combination to DOGE and also to continuing resolutions, so maybe now is a good time to ask it, is about the trickle-down from federal government to state and local, given that you do a lot of infrastructure work. Is there any connection that you see out there between those and any impact at the state and local level from federal dynamics?
No, we really don't. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act was passed in November 2021 and put into law. If you look at the progress up through May of this year, it was reported by ARTBA and other groups that about 40% of the projects have been announced, and that's about 60,000 projects, and about 80% of the funding still remains to be allocated. Our expectation is that that funding won't peak until the 2027 timeframe. It's going to have about a six to eight-year runway. Fortunately, both administrations it was a bipartisan bill, and both administrations are very supportive of infrastructure. Incoming President Trump has indicated the importance of modernizing our roads, our highways, our bridges. So we remain very excited about the prospects for the IIJA.
Okay, terrific. So now that we're on to the Critical Infrastructure area, you've had some very good success in that business. But maybe operationally, there's been a few write-downs here and there. Maybe you can just give us a little bit of an update on some of the legacy programs that have contributed to that and kind of where you stand on those legacy programs.
Yeah, so Matt talked about our margins as well and the projected future for Critical Infrastructure. But if you look going into this year, the company previously had gotten involved in construction. That's a market that we have since exited. When I took over as Chief Operating Officer in 2018, we had about 10 to 15 of those programs. We were down to two as we started this year. We're now down to one, which we think is hopefully going to close out within days, but definitely this month. And Matt, why don't you talk a little bit about the margins?
Yeah, so the Critical Infrastructure business is performing quite well. If you think about the hundreds, if not thousands, of programs we're performing on, the underlying, if you normalize for just those two programs, the actual margin is closer to 10%. Let's call it high nines, low tens at this point in time. So Carey and I have a lot of confidence that we'll trend toward double digits over time. This year will probably be in the low-to-mid sevens, which is kind of the midpoint of the guide. But all in all, we're really confident in the business. There's lots of programs that are performing quite well in the backlog and the new business that's being performed. The acquisitions that we've done are all kind of that double-digit range. So we're confident that that Critical Infrastructure business is a great opportunity for us to expand margins.
Awesome. Shifting back to the growth element of it, we talked in the beginning about being able to grow 20% or more than 20% organically over the last one to two years. Maybe people always kind of look at growth rates relative to book-to-bill and maybe a little bit of a disconnect. Can you just sort of reconcile that growth rate relative to sort of the book-to-bill?
Yes, we're pleased that we've maintained over a 1.0 times book to bill since we IPO'd back in May of 2019. Everybody reports bookings a little bit different. I'd say we're perhaps a little more conservative than other companies, and that's why when we cite our backlog, it's $8.8 billion. We also mentioned the $13 billion that's awarded not booked. So if you take the combination of those nearly $22 billion, if you look back at the end two years ago, that number was in the $14 billion range. So we've indeed grown quite a bit, and what we do is we put the awarded not booked. Once we get to like the base period, then we will book the follow-on option period. It's perhaps just a little more conservative.
Okay, got it. And you talked about contract win rate over 70%. Obviously, that's very high. Can you talk a little bit about the factors contributing to the success there and how much of that is technical ability, availability of labor, pricing, something else? What contributes to that high win rate?
Yeah, so we win or lose on technical, and that's the same in federal as well as it is in Critical Infrastructure, and I think what you've seen is the culmination of our strategy coming to effect over the last couple of years. We've really been focused on acquiring companies that give us end-to-end capabilities, whether that's cyber operations, electronic warfare, space, or information operations. What that's enabled us to do on the federal side is move up the value chain, so we've been priming, bidding, and winning much larger contracts, and that's contributed substantially to the win rate.
I would say on the Critical Infrastructure side, it's really driven by unprecedented infrastructure spend. We have obviously a unique position in the Middle East being the number one program management consultant and a very trusted, reliable partner. And then when you look in the U.S., we're fortunate over the last 16 months that we've won perhaps the six biggest jobs in our company's history. So just doing a great job, I'd say, across. And then our hiring and retention is very strong. And so the ability to be able to retain people and particularly have the right business development team has contributed.
Great. Yeah, I thought it was very impressive, those major wins in Critical Infrastructure. And I'm wondering if there's like a context that you can provide for how it is that those big programs kind of came about at this last since you started booking them. Was this out of sort of like a delayed impact from the IIJA being passed? Is it these were on the board a couple of years ago, but we had an inflation period, and so maybe they were taking a little extra time to be rethought? How is it that these such big programs have now all kind of come out at one time? And how do we put them in context of what's still ahead?
Yeah, so I would say it's been part of the long-term capital planning process. A combination of states started contributing and funding projects once they saw the certainty of the IIJA and a combination of IIJA projects. We're particularly pleased to see a program like the Gateway go forward and get full federal funding as it did in the last quarter because that's going to be the U.S.'s largest infrastructure project, and we're really proud to be program management consultant on that. Also, another one I had mentioned is public-private partnerships are coming back in favor within the U.S. So if you look at the Georgia State Route 400, that's a private partnership. So again, to be participating on the ground floor of a P3 and an important project like that is key.
Fantastic. Maybe we talk a little bit about sort of longer-term revenue growth and margin expectations. There's a way to talk about that for kind of each of your segments and then Parsons overall.
Yeah, so 2024 is a really strong year. We're looking at about 50 basis points of margin expansion, strong growth, 20+% , as you mentioned, at the midpoint. And so 2025, we have said mid-single digit or better, top-line growth, obviously a little bit tougher comps, specifically within the federal segment. Suspect that the CI business will outperform in terms of growth rate, the federal business, but both businesses continue to perform quite well, we believe. On the federal side, we have margins this year in kind of the mid-10s. Given the structure of the company and a lot of cost-type work, you think about the cyber, the space, the kind of early phase R&D type work, a lot of that is cost-type in nature. And so you're kind of structurally limited in terms of margin expansion technically within federal.
So we're pretty comfortable that kind of high nines, low tens is a great place for that federal business to be with additional accretion coming from acquisitions and kind of strength of the business growth. But on the infrastructure side, as I mentioned before, again, we kind of say we saw 30% growth in May of last year, north of 10% this year, kind of 15% from Saudi. We're expecting kind of still double-digit growth out of the Middle East next year.
As Carey mentioned, a lot of these new awards, so really strong growth out of infrastructure next year. But the real opportunity from a margin perspective is if we're in kind of the low to mid-sevens this year, trending toward that 10% over time, getting out from underneath these programs, wrapping up these negotiations with customers on closeout and things. And so seeing the 20-30 basis points of margin expansion at the company level, with the majority coming from infrastructure, so call it 40-60, if not better, margin expansion from infrastructure per year.
Got it. Great. Can't talk about federal businesses without the concept of recompete. So I think an option extension, you mentioned recently that one of your customers for one of your larger contracts could exercise an option year or recompete the contract. Can you just elaborate on this contract and how much of your revenue is up for recompete in 2024 and 2025?
Yes, so it is, unfortunately, a confidential customer, and so we're not allowed to disclose any information. But we're currently working through with that customer to try and provide some suggestions for where they might get some cost savings by changing some requirements and continuing forward with the option year. And actually, something like that, I think it falls under like a DOGE concept where if you can get some better money savings for your customer, it gives them more money to apply to other important missions. And we think as a company, that's part of our job is to help get the best dollar spent across the important missions we're performing.
Steve, just to give some numbers on the recompete value. So in a typical year, we'll see about 10% of revenue from recompetes. Next year, we're kind of trending toward that 5%-ish. Depending on whether this is a recompete or an option year award, you could see something more toward the 10%-15% or as low as 5%. So kind of a little bit of a range next year, but we're hoping to have finalization in the next few weeks.
Got it. Very helpful. Maybe shifting gears a little bit to M&A, and you've had an active M&A program since you've been a publicly traded company over the last handful of years. Maybe you can just give us an update on some of these recent acquisitions that you've done and sort of what your capital allocation priorities are from here.
Yeah, and so we have a great balance sheet. Pro forma, after our most recent acquisition, we'd be at 1.6 times. We're comfortable going to about a two to two and a half times. The talk about the two acquisitions that we did this year, the first one is BlackSignal, a company on the federal side we're very excited about. They enhanced our capability in cyber operations. If you look at where we were playing as Parsons and you add BlackSignal capabilities, Parsons was more focused on the operation side. BlackSignal was more on the research and development side. Also within cyber, we addressed different customers. Parsons was more focused on defense, whereas BlackSignal is more focused on the intelligence community. So it really enables us to bring full spectrum cyber operations to a broader portfolio of customers. They also brought electronic warfare capability.
We both do signals intelligence, but we were addressing different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. So now you can look at an end-to-end signals intelligence type of capability. And then within space, they have capabilities like Hack-a-Sat, Hack-A-Sat, we call it. And we do space domain awareness. So very complementary once again. And they also have the capability of having a digital twin on orbit, which we're very excited about. Moving over to another point I'll make is about 60%-70% of their business is directed sole source, which really shows their exquisite capabilities. Moving over to BCC. BCC is a company that we've been interested in for years.
So very excited to welcome them into the family. BCC is the number one consultant within South Florida, predominantly focused on transportation engineering. They participate in every district of Florida's business, headquartered out of Miami. They also have doubled our business within Georgia, which I mentioned how important Georgia is for the company. And they have a presence in Texas, North Carolina, as well as Puerto Rico. Both companies prime more than 75% of their business. So they're very used to dealing direct with the customers. Terrific companies to have as part of Parsons.
Steve, just on capital deployment, sorry to mess up, but we have about a $100 million share buyback program in place where the goal overall is to kind of buy back 20-25 million per year, kind of eliminate any ESOP dilution there. But really the focus of capital deployment will remain M&A. Carey's point at the end of Q3, 1.2 leverage and with the pro forma on BCC 1.6. Our balance sheet's in really great shape to continue down the path.
Great. I think one of the points I've heard you make before about your M&A approach is that you don't include synergies in your M&A assumptions. Just curious, on a look back of your experiences, do you get synergies in the end? How does that end up playing out?
Oh, we absolutely do. That's been the reason we've been able to move up the value chain and bid and win the larger contracts. And it's been an absolute key contributor to six consecutive quarters of greater than 20% organic growth. I'd say every bid that's going out involves all of our companies because they each have brought unique capabilities. And having the luxury to put together a purpose-built federal business pretty much from scratch to think about what are the customer's emerging challenges for the future and what type of company you need to be able to achieve those day-to-day and near-peer threats has really helped us. So it's been an extremely deliberate strategy.
And Steve, one of the things that's interesting is when we're putting together the business case, we won't put synergies in place because we really want the companies to stand on their own. We buy companies that are 10-plus%. They're delivering cash flows. We're not really betting on the come. And so we're really happy with the companies we're acquiring. But when we put them underneath one of the business units, we hold them to synergy targets, all top line, very little on the cost side. Our goal is not to acquire a company and rip a bunch of cost out.
They're all successful in their own right. And so we really just want to see top line growth. Carey mentioned that GSA FEDSIM when we had last year, $1.2 billion job. If you really look at how that came together, that was the culmination of legacy Parsons, legacy Sparta, legacy BlackHorse. So a lot of these acquisitions that we had done over time, Braxton is another one. So you kind of pull all those together. And rather than being able to pursue one and $200 million jobs, now you're competing against tier ones and capturing $1.2 billion jobs.
Fantastic. One maybe specific question about a specific topical area, which is PFAS. And just curious, how large is your PFAS-related business? And are you expecting to start material impacting your financial results and maybe have timing around that?
Yes, we expect the overall PFAS market to be about $200 billion market. The addressable portion for Parsons is about a $40 billion addressable market. It's an area that we've been involved with. We've had a water and wastewater treatment research and development laboratory up in Syracuse, New York, for over three decades. We hold patents across multiple areas of PFAS involving soil, groundwater, wastewater treatment. We're excited about one patent, which we have approval in Canada. It's pending in the U.S. It's called the Hot-ISCO technology. And what that will do is actually destroy in situ the PFAS on the spot, whereas a lot of other technologies today, you'll take a PFAS molecule and you break it into smaller parts and it requires incineration. This is a really unique approach that we're excited about.
To date, when you look at the PFAS market, we've been involved in over 2,000 investigations. We've done over 7,000 point-of-use systems, and we're doing a lot of firefighting foam investigation replacements, so if you look on the federal side of the house, our customers are predominantly Department of Defense, Army Corps, and Air Force Civil Engineering, and then in the Federal Aviation Administration as well. If you look on the Critical Infrastructure side of the house, it's mostly water customers as well as industrial clients, many of which are facing lawsuits as a result of PFAS. Last year, the EPA did approve the maximum contaminant levels, which was released. I would say with or without that, though, one thing is the states are moving forward, 34 states currently have regulations around PFAS, so we're approaching multiple customers, multiple states.
Like I said, we do see this as a significant market for us. We don't expect the marketplace to peak until about the 2032 timeframe.
We often get the question as it relates to PFAS, again, change of government, any federal implications around PFAS to anticipate?
I would say even if the MCL levels change, you still have a public health issue that has to be addressed. And the fact that the states are moving forward on their own, that's still going to continue. And the industrial clients are going to continue. And the FAA and Department of Defense are going to replace the firefighting foam.
Got it. Sounds good. We talked a little bit before about some of the big infrastructure programs coming out of the IIJA and how that's evolving. I wanted to ask you about program management because I know you have a capability, a core capability there. Is that becoming an increasingly relevant skill set? And if not, maybe if it's just been around a while and it's kind of the same, how do you differentiate in your program management offering?
Yeah, so in the Middle East, we're predominantly a program management consultant. And that's an intentional position we've taken because it is a lower-risk posture than doing design work. So about 85% of our business in the Middle East is PMC work and 15% is design. In the U.S., we look at it on a project-by-project basis. And we're kind of split. What we'd like to do is be program management consultant on projects that, as I say, are very prestigious, complex, difficult. Gateway is a great example of that. To be the program manager on a project that's a $16 billion infrastructure project to do the new Hudson River Tunnel is very exciting and dealing with a multitude of customers.
Another great example would be LAX Airport, where we're the program manager and helping to modernize that airport, one of the largest airport infrastructure projects. Other areas we will do design work, good example, JFK Roadways or the Newark Bay Bridge that we won or the State Route 400, or we just were awarded also the Hawaii Rail and Transit for Honolulu. So we kind of pick and choose depending on the individual project within North America.
Steve, interestingly enough, the program management area is a great place for technology insertion too. You think about artificial intelligence and whether it's inspection, quality, a lot of those things. There's really great opportunities for advancing technology there. So we're seeing a big uptick. MEA is leading the way on some projects. North America is starting to adopt as well. So good opportunities there.
Yeah, it's going to be really interesting to watch. And maybe continuing with the Critical Infrastructure area, we're talking a little bit about transportation right now. We're talking about PFAS. Can you just maybe rank some of the kind of core applications and markets within Critical Infrastructure, be it water, transportation, or anything else? Where do you see the most on a relative basis exciting opportunities?
Our largest would be transportation. Within transportation, we've designed over 10,000 miles of road and highway across six continents. We've been involved in over 400 rail and transit projects, over 450 airport projects. We do work at ports. We have an intelligent transportation system, which is one of the most globally deployed advanced traffic management systems. And we're actually using it for smart cities work in the Middle East as well. I'd say transportation is a very strong place for us. Environmental remediation, we're involved in mine reclamation. We're reclaiming two of the world's largest mines up in Canada, Faro and Giant Mine. We also do the PFAS, as we mentioned. And then we do oil well plugging and abandonment.
We have developed a patent for a technology that prevents methane leakage from oil wells. Those are kind of the areas there. Water wastewater treatment plants would be another area of environmental remediation that we participate in. Then on the urban development side, that's mostly the PMC work that we do within the Middle East. How do you develop first-of-a-kind, one-of-a-kind projects, these new cities being built, these new parks, new bridges, and accomplish these important projects on time?
Fantastic. I wanted to just come back to the idea of just the competitive landscape. I mean, like you said, you're looking for the most prestigious and kind of one of those projects. How do we think about sort of who the competitive set is that you're really kind of focused on? Is it really kind of a bifurcated approach where there's lots of infrastructure projects around the country and the world, and you've got a group of companies working on those, and then you've got sort of the premier set working on these premier projects, and you're really just kind of focusing on those? How do you see the kind of competitive landscape and evolving in your ability to differentiate?
Yeah, so I would say our competitors are pretty typical within the Critical Infrastructure areas, so mostly the design PMC companies. I would highlight our ability to differentiate as being very important because we are unique. We have a unique portfolio because we have a very high advanced technology group in our federal side, and we can apply that technology to the Critical Infrastructure side. So whether it's artificial intelligence and how you apply that to infrastructure, whether you're putting sensors on bridges so you can determine the predictability, or you can design and build your infrastructure to last 100 years and not 30 years, whether you're applying cybersecurity, huge marketplace.
If you think about utility companies getting attacked, there just was the telecom attack that was reported the other day, water companies getting attacked, transportation facilities, healthcare. Because we have the domain knowledge on our Critical Infrastructure business, but we also have the cyber capability to protect it, we view that Critical Infrastructure protection market as very important. So I would say kind of standard set of competitors, but we're a different company because of that technology component.
Great. Maybe we'll just pause here to see if anyone has any questions that they'd like to ask. Again, you can use the QR code or raise your hand. I think we have a question in the back.
Hi, I just wanted to ask you about with infrastructure, it seems like labor availability is always a challenge, and is there any color that you could give us, I suppose, mostly interested in the U.S., but just how you're managing that, and particularly given that projects can be complex and complicated and run over years?
Yeah, great question. Hiring and retention are one of the most important areas for our company to focus on because we are a labor-based business. So it's really key that we're able to keep good numbers in both those areas. Middle East for us is our easiest hiring ground because we recruit from over 40 countries around the world. I would say U.S. infrastructure is kind of our next easiest. Hiring program management talent, design engineering talent, our hiring has been very good, or we wouldn't be able to achieve the organic growth rates that we have. And our retention has improved a full % year- over- year for the last two years and is really low right now. And I think a lot of that is driven by our mission and our culture.
Now, the area that's the hardest to hire within our portfolio is actually on the federal side, people that are highly cleared. That's always going to be a difficult market. And what we do there is we're working with the government, the intel community, the Department of Defense on how do we reform the security clearance processing. It has improved over recent years, but still probably not where it needs to be.
I'd also add too, it's interesting. One of the important things now is with an aging workforce and things. It's important we have internship programs. It's important we have the development program so people are getting exposure to these subject matter experts, folks that have been around for 40 years doing bridge design and road design. It's really important that folks are making their way up through their career. So often Carey pitches often about Parsons isn't a one-project job. It's a career. We want people to feel that it's a great opportunity for their career so they can do work in the Middle East on NEOM, The Line, or they can do work on JFK in New York or Texas or Florida. And so I think that's the great part about Parsons is a diverse portfolio. It gives people a great opportunity to rotate around, get great experiences.
Great, great point, Matt. And I would say also key is keeping our people from acquisitions. We're known as a company. When we do acquisitions, our goal is that the people will stay with the company and they'll get promoted within the company. One-third of our executive leadership team came from acquisitions. And it's really important that you keep those founders, those CEOs, and you keep all the people from the acquisitions. That's a critical part of our labor force.
Please, Troy.
Hey, Carey and Matt. Can you maybe just talk about your thoughts on potential portfolio actions? Obviously, companies on both sides of government services and E&C have moved towards more pure play. Just curious on whether you guys are kind of thinking the same down the line and given your unique shareholder structure, whether that kind of prevents that from happening in the time being.
So first, we love our portfolio the way it is, 60-40 or 50-50, but right now it's 60-40. We've been able to capitalize on the synergies across the portfolio, and that's been very important to drive our growth. Whether it's having a common program management organization, a common design engineering organization, common subject matter experts like PFAS that service the federal market for those clients or service the Critical Infrastructure for those clients. I talked earlier about Critical Infrastructure protection, very important market area. We're unique there because we're the one company that can come in and understand the domain, but also fix the problem of cybersecurity breakage. So no, we're very happy with the portfolio. It's worked for us. We're getting synergies across the portfolio, and that's been key to driving our growth.
Great. Well, we are about out of time. So I really want to thank you very much, Carey, Matt, Dave. Thanks for being here, and best of luck for 2025.
Thank you, Steve. And thanks for hosting us.
Yeah, thank you.
Thank you.