Okay, great. All right, on to our next panel. Very happy to have Quanta Services here, with both, CEO Duke Austin and CFO Jayshree Desai. Happy that we actually picked up coverage, just a couple weeks ago, too. So, so a lot of, you know, a lot of connection to a lot of the other things that we, that we work on as well. So I think, Duke, it'd be great to get an intro, a quick intro of the company-
Sure.
Quick intro of the investment case, since most of the folks here are investors, and then we'll go into a discussion.
Gotcha.
Yeah.
Yeah, thanks for having us, Steve.
You bet.
First, we have a lot of people in the storm out there, so, loss of life and pretty tragic. So, you know, I think we all are. I'm watching them, make sure they get home safely and, wish them well here and, all of our people out there. It's certainly something that we value with the industry, is to get this up and fixed and minimize life and everything else out there. So, it's hard to talk great about something when, when I know what's going on and, and-
Yeah back out there. But anyways, Quanta in itself really is based upon craft skilled labor. That was the nucleus of the company, my background, and much of how we built the business and the strategy. So that, and when you look at our macro markets and the things we do, it's really utility back to the capital, the OpEx, CapEx of utility customers, that you can see it's visible. Technology, as you see, data centers and our ability to, the capital within the technology space with data centers and things like that, with the Cupertino acquisition, and then our generation business, which is a renewable business around solar, wind batteries. So those macro drivers are really what's driving the business today. And all that's built around craft. Yes, we have technology in the business.
We self-perform 85% of our business, which I believe is a differentiator in what we do, is that self-perform capabilities. It allows us to look at, you know, complex projects and give certainty to the client and ourselves. And those solutions matter. I think, you know, when you look at supply chains today, they're different than they were before. You need to move in early. We're in the projects early, so we can help with the ultimate client, whether it be technology, utility, developer, the early nature of us being in the business. We are not an E&C, we are a solution provider, and that's a, it's a big difference in the way we look at it. And so I think we can play both sides of that. We don't really.
When you look at a combined cycle plant or a nuclear plant, that's not us. But we can certainly build one, not with risk. We just don't like output risk to them, so it's certainly something we'll stay away from as a company. You know, I think that lastly, why you invest in Quanta, really the macro markets, our ability to execute on strategies that we've done in the past, and then how we deploy free cash. And I think much of you know, the top growth, the future growth will be how well we deploy that free cash into the macro markets that we see and follow the strategies that we've laid out. And that's us, Steve, and happy to answer any questions.
Yeah. No, that's pretty clear and simple description of the company. I know, Jayshree, maybe you just want to do a quick kind of financial view as well, of kind of, you know, the history of performance and just kind of what you're expecting going forward.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think, you know, we have been, we've been a company that over the last twenty-plus years have been growing our bottom line double digits. Our, we're in the right macro market space, where we think going forward, we put this out in our investor deck in 2022, and we stand behind those growth rates in each of our segments, our electric power segment, and our renewable segment, and as well as our UU&I segment. We do feel that some of the macro trends have actually just gotten better since we put those numbers out there. We do also believe very strongly that our return on invested capital will continue to improve. We've been focused on that, especially since Duke took over CEO in 2016.
Our ROIC has doubled in that time frame. We see opportunities to continue improving that. The Cupertino acquisition, the Blattner acquisition, are all part of those strategies to drive that ROIC. We're also very-- Oh, sorry.
Oh, it's all right.
Is that better?
Yeah.
We're also. Our balance sheet is a critical part of our growth story. We've kept a flexible balance sheet throughout our history, and that will continue to be a focus for us. Our leverage, we look at our leverage profile, and we want to remain investment grade. As Duke talked about, the next few years, we do think the free cash flow generation of the company will be significant, and we see opportunities to deploy that, but we're gonna be very disciplined how we do that. The organic opportunities in front of us are significant, but we also see a good M&A pipeline of the type of companies that we like, which are strong management teams with family founders, who have a history and track record of being in the space.
And then, you know, depending on what drives the highest ROIC, there's also opportunities if we wanted to reinvest in ourselves. So those are our three categories of the deployment of capital, and given the strategies in front of us, we think that's gonna be a true advantage for us going forward.
Great. So maybe Duke or Jayshree, you could talk to a little bit the, what you're hearing, I guess from your customer base in terms of capital deployment. We're seeing, I think, obviously, you know, data center focus and, resiliency. So just, I know we're heading into typically the utility capital refreshment season, CapEx plan season the next, quarter or two. Just what are the areas that you're seeing the most focus for new, for new investment? And then just, is there anything utilities are pulling back on to help kinda manage all this? Because it just. I mean, maybe they can do everything, but it, you know, you wonder, do they need to kind of pull back on something?
Yeah, I mean, when we look at it, I kinda get to say anything 'cause it's regulatory and I just. You know, from my standpoint, what we see is just the demand. It's a demand issue, supply issue. More demand than supply. And the one thing that I don't think as an industry that we can do is sit and wait. You can't have selective urgency, just sit. Technologies, when you look at that, the capital there is $200 billion or so a year. A lot of that is getting deployed in infrastructure and how we see that.
And so when I'm looking at it, it's breathing down the necks of all of us to build, and I think we can stop and start, and stop and start, and go in a circle, but I don't think that's gonna work. And so what we see is utility CapEx budgets are moving up across the board. You may have one that's flatter, an area that's regulatory issues, but they're moving up, and they're moving up on just a traditional sense. I don't think you've seen the demand of data centers at the macro level, the gigs, the hyperscalers really hit yet in the budgets. That's how I see it. As that stacks on what you already see, you'll continue to see these budgets move up.
That's against a regulatory environment that wants, you know, parity at the rate where you know, look, you still have to be cognizant of the consumer. And if you can build it where the consumer benefits, or the ultimate consumer benefits, or there's no degradation in rates or anything around it, that's the trick. And it's not easy to change something that's been done the same way for decades. And so rate bases are gonna look different, I think, when you start adding in scale, hyperscale, because you don't want assets that are sitting out and, you know, not producing revenue. I mean, you're not gonna spend the capital. So that, that's the dilemma, Steve, that everyone's faced and why you've seen a stop and start.
I do think there's rate structures being, you know, talked about that are, you know, beneficial to the ratepayer, or at least that parity to the ratepayer, where it doesn't... The redundancy of a data center, they want uptime 100%, causes some issues, and you could get stranded assets. Yes, I mean, that's something that's a risk. But much like when you look at the pipeline midstream, you have a take or pay, or there's ways that you can get around, you know, some of the risk. And I think as you see the regulatory environment de-risk the utilities, and everyone gets their head around how to build these rate bases that make sense to technology, it'll fall really nicely. We're seeing signs of that today. And certainly talking on both sides of that as we.
The Cupertino acquisition allowed us, really, to have conversations at the technology level as well as at the utility level, and, you know, collaborate with both for the right outcome. And that collaboration, for us, is key, as we play in that median between the two. But I see nothing but more demand and less supply, so, the one thing we can't do is sit. And even if you get something that's off grid, even if you were to build, you know, take a, you know, nuke and say, "That's my nuke" which I don't believe you'll see, I think it'll be more virtual. But if you do that, it doesn't do anything for the supply. It just means it moved, and, you still got way more demand, so in the gigs in most areas.
We continue to see, you know, robust macro markets.
And so from your company's standpoint, just on the demand opportunity, maybe you could just talk to, you know, how that benefits Quanta, and then talk a little more about the opportunity at on the Cupertino deal.
Yeah. Thanks, Steve. Yeah, when we look at the demand from technology, it's primarily they want renewables. You might see some gas, even nuke, but, but they want renewables behind that, where it's you're continuing to. You might use it for, oh, backup generation and things like that. But the, but solar and wind, batteries are certainly something that technology wants, to supply to these data centers. We build about 25% of renewables in North America as it stands, so the generation piece of it for us is, is big. Then all the interconnections along with that, the transmission that's involved with all these interconnection substations, every battery, almost, I would say 90%, maybe even bigger, of batteries as well as solar and wind, have an interconnection with a substation and a line to some degree.
That's all things that, whether we build the plant or not, we're typically building the interconnections in the substation. The cheapest form of generation, I mean, and we talk a lot about generation, the cheapest form of generation is transmission. The more transmission you can build, the cheaper generation is, because you move it, and it allows more capacity to move. I continue to say, with anything, you need a lot of transmission in this country. Europe is certainly something that they have big corridors that move across large territories. We continue to struggle building transmission, both from regulatory environments, and states, and things like that, but we need transmission significantly in this country in order to get where we wanna go with the transition.
And then at Cupertino, just talk to the opportunity there, and kind of is it. You know, a company like that, you kind of say to yourself, "Well, why did they sell?".
Like, what seems like the market's coming to them, but maybe it's just the market's getting too big.
Yeah. I mean, a family business, you know, you get it to a point, and then it's risk on the back side of it. I come from a family business myself, and you see the opportunities and your people underneath you. It's a you know, almost 100-year-old company that just sees you know, the opportunity after opportunity, especially when technology's driving they grew up with technology. And much like, Blattner, it was a 100-year-old business that grew up with renewables. And so as you grow up in these environments, there's a lot of trust that goes into this. And technology trust, that skill set of craft skill labor around the electrification, the low-voltage piece of it anyway, embedded in that whole environment.
And when you start talking about the capital budget of $200 billion, and how much of it, you know, that we think end-to-end solutions that we can provide to both on the utility side as well, is that it just allowed us a different customer base, I believe. There are a lot of synergies we haven't talked about, a lot of things that we believe we can do in the future, where we can help both our current clients, as well as technology. Where you site, where you. How you think about building transmission, what kind of generation, all those things that, you know, we. I feel like that's our competency. I'm not sure that it was getting met at that level, at the data center level, both to help the client, too.
So I liked it. I think, for us, craft skill, something we know well. Known the business for a decade or better. The management team that's in there now, known the family a long time. So I. It's just one where if we were gonna build a platform out on data center capabilities, electric is certainly something critical path for both the high-voltage side, the interconnections, the generation, and then on into the center, is the electric piece of it. It allows us, you know, what I consider just an end-to-end solution. We can move it farther right if we want to. A lot of opportunity there, and-
When you say farther right, meaning?
It's not.. ou know, you could see a point where you move into mechanical, you take more of the center. I'm not saying we're doing that, but it certainly provides verticals that when you get asked by a client: "Can you do this? Will you do this?" And then you keep on, you keep on, you keep on, you find yourself trying to deliver. And, you know, I. To me, it's like, how many times am I gonna say no? So I think for us, it's like, we should be hitting the yes button a lot more. I mean, it's exciting times. The industry's exciting, and for me, I see decades.
I think our growth and our strategies really have to, you know, say yes in many ways, and get ourselves and get our heads different than it's ever been before, to where we're able to execute on different things, and see the markets much, much different than we've ever seen before. The whole industry- we have to.
Just on Cupertino and just the data center opportunity, in terms of the craft, the skills to scale that up further, and the people, is that something that would take a while to kind of build further? Or, you know, how quickly can you scale that up, I guess, the question.
Yeah. I mean, they had a nice solar business inside Cupertino. It was battery, solar in the West, and different client bases, some different client bases. So it'll allow us to scale up fairly quickly, 'cause of the supply chain and the things that we do internally. The inside electric piece of the business, low-voltage piece of the business, I think we had, you know, 700, 800 people as well there, that were, you know, probably inefficient, and I think we'll be able to take their platform, take our some of our internal resources and put with the platform. So I think that'll help us a bunch. It is a place where in the past we've said we're not concerned on labor, we're not concerned. We can. Our colleagues, all the things that we can do, allow us to scale.
I'm still not worried about the high-voltage piece, and I hope we get more. I hope you hear me one day say we're at capacity. I doubt it. I still think that business, if we take the same approach with the colleges, with the things that we've done there, the apprentices, how we've done it, and take that curriculum, some of the things, and build that into the Cupertino business, it'll allow greater expansion. We'll invest in it quicker. We'll do some things there, the same way we've done on the craft in other areas. You know, right now, yes, it's constrained. I do believe we can certainly mitigate some of that constraint.
I forgot to mention, for folks who haven't been in here, we will do, open up for questions at the end, so I think I've got two more. So on the renewables business, so there's been a number of companies that have had some execution issues in renewables. You've had, you know, very little, and just maybe you give some color on how you've been able to do that, and just how are you feeling about continuing to do that going forward? And maybe Jayshree, I know that's an area where you're trying to get the margins up. You know, do you have line of sight of, of achieving that?
You go first.
The short answer is yes, we have line of sight in improving that. I think, we, Blattner, Cupertino, they're leaders in the renewable space. They've had long history, especially Blattner, long history with very strong developers understand how developers think, how projects move forward, how projects don't move forward. I think as a result of that knowledge, they're able to manage their resources and equipment very smartly. We did have, as we talked about earlier this year, a hiccup on a couple of projects. This sort of ramp-up in growth that happened from 2022, 2023, 2024, it was a lot.
And it's. There's obviously good things about it, and sometimes there's not so good things about it, and that sudden rapid growth did cause us to be inefficient in certain areas. But, sitting here today, our expectation is things are gonna get better. They will get better. There's no reason why going into 2025 and beyond that, we won't be reaching the margin targets that we told, that we laid out in the Investor Day in 2022.
Yeah, Steve, I think it's really important with Quanta is it's a portfolio of... It's a portfolio of projects. Look, I, 90% of them outperform how we think about it. We operate through contingencies. Every once in a while, you'll hear us call something out. Typically, I don't know, we'll call it out. But in general, we performed that quarter, we performed the year like we thought we would, but it's all about the scale and the way the portfolio works to de-risk the investor and ourselves against these kind of issues. Because, you know, we're out, we're in inclement weather at times. We have imbalances at times, but the company's able just to operate right through that, and the first quarter is always a little light, and, you know, that's when some of these projects happen.
I typically, we'll operate through, and I continue to believe our execution capabilities are better than they've ever been. Our engineering capacity, the front end of it, continues to get better as we become more ingrained with the client and can talk about all the risk. As long as we can control those risk, I think, look, we love it. I've just seen, like, the farther, the more that we can take on and control our own destiny, our vertical supply chain that we've built, I think certainly helps us as well, in these environments. And so all those things matter to de-risk company, and you have to look at it in a holistic manner in order to understand it.
And just one related question on the. And generally, you don't have any mega projects, except SunZia is kind of somewhat of a big project. Just how's that one going, and just how do you think about the ability to kind of replace that business as you execute on it with more?
Yeah. We get a lot of questions about that. I'm not concerned at all. I think 2025, 2026, 2027 are the magnitude of larger projects that you see in the queues in MISO, SPP, all of them, the West. I think there's more projects, $1 billion+ projects than we've ever seen in our career.
Yep
Exponentially. So if you believe all those move forward, which I do believe they will, you know, we'll replace it fairly easily, and I'm not concerned with the top line growth. I will say, SunZia, the amount of wind and what we've done there and the stations as well, is just how we've looked at it holistically with the client, is somewhat proof of concept of what can be done.
It can be done on data centers, it can be done across the board for us. When you start talking about data centers, things like that, gigs of power and generation, and how you do that, and can you do that? Can someone do that in a holistic manner? I think we can. And we didn't build any of those synergies, and we don't talk about them because I think we have to go out and prove that we can do this, and do this in a way that's meaningful to the investor. And when we do one, I'll be the first one to jump up and down and say, "Hoorah, we did it!" But I'm confident in our ability and our capabilities to deliver those things on time, on budget.
Okay, well, last one for me before we open it up. Just one thing on the utility capital, you didn't mention, which you know maybe better than anybody, is the kind of resiliency and system issues. Obviously, you're part of implementing resiliency plans of different sorts, and also dealing with the storms like we have now, and managing that. So just curious, your perspectives on just what really works, what needs to be done to the utility systems to make them more resilient? Or, you know, you see, I'm sure, utilities doing different things.
Yeah.
You know, is there some perspective you have that, what could make a real difference there, and-
Sure
How much more needs to be spent to make the grids more resilient?
Yeah, it depends on the regionality of the utility, too. I think you have to look at where they're located. And also states, what the, you know, whether you're looking at environmental impact or what you're looking at. So what I will say is, four generations in the business, in the utility business, I've never seen it like what I see today. And when I say that, the amount of capital that can be spent and needs to be spent on the system is insurmountable and in trillions of dollars. And I can't even tell you how many trillions, I don't know. But you're talking about doubling the size of the, you know, the transmission system over time. I mean, whether it's 2040 or 2050, it needs to double. And I.
Where you can really, really shape cost and security and all the things of the nation that's needed is through transmission and building it, and bottlenecks, and all kinds of different things that'll really, really make us more secure as a country, as well as secure and moving generation. And, you know, your generation factors are tighter than they've ever been. Maybe not ever, I don't know the history, but they're tighter for me as long as I've been in the career. I've just seen the capacity levels keep coming and sliding and, you know, you used to have 20% factors, you're down in the tens and fives in areas, and I don't know, I don't like that.
I just think we're too close to the edge, and we have to build more generation, and we have to get more transmission moving across regional authorities. But if you're a utility, you're seeing the EV penetration in the West significantly. About 70% of the EVs that are sold today are sold to the West. If that policy continues, and we believe that EV is going to continue to penetrate, you're gonna see what's happening in California, with the incremental capital that has to be spent on the systems continue to go across on a distribution level. So it depends on where. That's why I'm saying it depends on where you're at, 'cause you can defer some distribution spending if you're in other areas.
But if you're in the West, the circuitry doesn't allow you to continue to add EV, 'cause EV is going to take up, you know, capacity. And so you've got to build substations, you know, build circuits that are larger than they are today. And so all the circuitry has to move up. How fast? It depends on, you know, how fast we believe that penetration comes in. Then you have fire hardening, which you're going to do, and you have all the interconnections coming out of renewables coming to the West. So if you're in the West or... But that factor is the same if you're in New Mexico or North Louisiana, with data centers coming in.
I mean, the load and what you see coming at you just continues to come from electrification of North America. So I think you have to really plan, and you have to make sure that you plan accordingly, and then as an industry, we've got to educate that there's an NPV to this, and the total energy cost comes down. At some point, it starts to go the other way. I think that's the big thing, and that we've gotta, as an industry, keep saying it, that, like, yes, you have to spend this capital, but the returns are there long term.
Mm-hmm.
You know, that's-
Yeah
My take on it.
Great. Let's open up for questions from the audience. Question here in the middle.
Two, please.
Yeah.
If I could. First, is there any lull in your business? Is there any lull in your business project development as clients wait out the election outcome? Number one, and then longer term, as you think about operating leverage, the company has garnered operating leverage in the past. I might argue that you've improved some businesses, different divisions over time, and that has given you a lot of your operating leverage. But starting from today, as you look forward the next three to five years, do you still see operating leverage, or should we expect the majority of earnings growth to come from revenue?
Yeah, I'll take the first one. I think what we see with the election and all the things there, we're not really seeing, you know, kind of a lull at all, and normally that would be the case to some degree. I think a lot of it has to do with the push on technology against it, no matter what the election looks like. So that demand they have against, they're already behind, and so you can't sit and wait. Interest rate environment's going down, and this market is the biggest impact to the bill, to the ratepayer. So when that goes down, if we continue to see interest rates go down, you know, it'll get more robust quicker. It's already pretty robust, but you could see a more robust environment if you continue to see interest rates go down.
I already think they're down a bit, so I'm not really seeing this big lull, per se. You're seeing projects move in, some move out a little bit for different reasons. I don't, I do not think it's the election, that's driving that. We're pretty agnostic to who's in. I mean, I think if you asked me, you didn't ask me, I'm gonna tell you. You know, if it's a Democratic, you know, wins, you're going to see it be more robust, probably. But it's not to say you're not gonna get growth either way because I just think it's too much, both sides, too many red states that are in renewables, too much technology, a lot of noise in the system. Either way, it's robust.
Your policy, just the way EPA and everything else is under a Democratic environment, where you're building a new plant and only operating at 50%, it doesn't make much sense to me, so I think some of those things are, like, hard to get your head around, then you could see that change a little bit, but the amount of demand, you can't build them fast enough at this point, and the second one, operating leverage. The growth drives that a lot. You know, I tend to be a person who thinks we have 10 verticals, and we ought to be on all of them right now, and so we'll have some capacity, but we can't get to every day, something new comes in, another vertical of growth, and the way we look at it.
So we are a little heavy at times. I do think there's operating leverage we can get. I mean, the country's extremely litigious right now, for whatever reason, so your insurance rates are moving around on you pretty good, and you know, it creates some issues within the company on that. But look, yes, I always think we can get operating leverage. We certainly are striving to do so, but costs usually come in the rest of it.
Oh, no, I mean, that's, that's right. Thinking through, like, we've gotten and we'll continue to get operating leverage with our capital. We're. That's been a big driver. Working capital continues to be a push as well. So you're seeing all that in the ROIC. We are, as Duke was saying, some growth has pressured a little bit on G&A leverage, but you're gonna see that hopefully come through here. 'Cause some of the strategic initiatives we've been pushing through, we've incurred some costs as we're trying to learn through some of those and improve on those strategies, but those benefits should be coming in as well over the next couple of years.
Short answer to your question is, yes, we're gonna. I think we're gonna see more, operating leverage on different factors.
Other questions? Right up front here. Right up front, right.
Can you talk a bit about how your growth plans have changed over the last eighteen months or so, just in terms of the build-out of the large data centers? I imagine the growth plans you had eighteen months ago are probably stale relative to what they are today. That's the first question. The second is in regard to labor. Any comments on what you're seeing in terms of labor inflation and availability, and you've been, I think, pretty creative in the past about how you've sourced prospective employees? How you're thinking about that going forward would be great. Thank you.
Yeah, I'll go backwards. I think in general that the labor growth, you know, as far as we've always been about 5%-6% type escalations, and I think that's what we see today. I don't think, from my standpoint, we see any outward type labor issues. The data center piece, the low voltage piece, getting our heads around that. You could see outward stuff there maybe, but I do believe the strategy we have with the colleges and the apprentices and the things that we've done there, we can implement and create some better flexibility. You know, the company's bigger. I think it allows us to do different things from a labor standpoint that Cupertino probably couldn't do standalone.
And so going back to that, when you go back eighteen months ago, you weren't thinking Cupertino was gonna be acquired because it wasn't for sale. And so I think as these businesses. One thing I've seen in family business is that third generation just is not wanting to come into business, especially the larger ones, and every one of them are getting a little bigger. They're going more into real estate and fun things, I guess, from their standpoint. So they don't wanna be in the business as much. So I. It's gonna provide us opportunities to look at bigger businesses. Your ESOPs are struggling to, you know, so many people are retiring, when the ESOPs, they either have to take huge debts.
So you're seeing some ESOP-type transactions or big partnership-type transactions happen within the business that I wouldn't have expected. I do think the verticals, when we look at the front end of the business, the engineering capacity, always wanna make sure that we have enough engineering capacity to meet the demand. We certainly think that that's a, you know, growth areas. You know, every day, we continue to—someone's in the door on, you know, how do we look at vertical supply chain? And, you know, that creates a lot of opportunity for us. We made the acquisition of transformers. I think that has really gone well for us in that vertical supply chain, and how we've taken that and used that to build.
We're not really a manufacturer, but we are, and we can create capacity in the transformer business. But if we're gonna create capacity, we wanna build it. We wanna build what we're creating the capacity for. I, you know, we're U.S.-based manufacturing. I think it's gonna bode well, and, you know, I'm not worried too much on the ports and things like that, on the things that we're trying to accomplish. It just gives us more verticals and more synergies across the business that we continue to, you know, outpace, get our growth out of. And I. You know, honestly, I think that it, and 2024 has been a hard year in many ways 'cause it's getting ready for, what, 2025, 2026, 2027, 2028.
And that, the bounce in the system, you know, before hyperscalers came in at the level they've came in at, in hundreds of gigs, it was pretty... You could see it. You could see a path. Like, when that came in, it just disrupted, like, everyone's plans, capital plans, all kinds of plans. And as that happens with especially within the industries that we serve-
Any kind of imbalance like that creates noise in the system. So I think as that gets out into 2025 and beyond, you know, you're gonna start to see, you know, growth and predictable growth for a long period of time.