See if it turns on.
Are we live yet?
Yes.
All right. We're live. All right, excellent. All righty. Well, folks just getting themselves settled in. It's nice to see everyone here again. Julien Dumoulin-Smith, Jefferies. We are on the webcast here, so good afternoon everyone online. With that said, thank you team for joining us here again.
Thank you.
It's nice to have you guys back.
Thank you.
Another year.
Thank you for having us.
Of course. Absolutely. Well look, again, as usual, folks across the crowd here can chime in later with questions. Maybe at the outset, do you guys wanna open up any comments, questions or comments, reactions, post four Q thoughts, perspectives? By all means. Otherwise, you know I'm ready. Again, I'll give you an open shot here.
No, thanks. look, I think from our standpoint, we had a good 25. We set up 26 nicely. We see long-term growth in our businesses and adjustable markets, that are all growing and, you know, I think for us, you pinch yourself to be in this business with these growth, adjustable markets in front of us, and, super happy to execute on them.
Thanks. Awesome. All right. Well, look, let's get right after it. You guys have had an incredible year. One of the points seem poised to have an incredible year prospectively here. You guys have a little bit of an update coming ahead. I know I pressed you guys a little bit on this call, but, any thoughts you'd care to share as to like, you know, what's the point of doing the Analyst Day here, right? Again, I ask a little facetiously because I get that it's been a few years, but why are you getting everyone together, right? If you wanna put it that way, put it initially here.
Yeah. I mean, I think for us, we wouldn't do it if we didn't think the company had fundamentally changed over, you know, a five-year period. We do believe we've fundamentally changed, where we're going is much different than where we've been. As we see that, you know, we need to lay it out properly and, you know, show you the opportunity set that we see. You know, I think it's important for us is internally that when we give goals, like, we intend to hit them. So it's not something that we take lightly either as a management team. We're not just saying it. I mean, we have a plan. We want you to see it, we want you to see the opportunities above the plan. I don't think we can do that, you know, with numbers.
I think we need to address it and address it in a public forum and hold ourselves accountable to what we say. You know, I think it's time 'cause it, like, if you look at what we've built and where we go forward, I don't think you'd see it until we can just show it to you and outline it. You know, we've got to do a good job of that, and all the pressure's on Jayshree.
No pressure.
Not feeling it.
Not feeling it. Cool, calm, and collected as always. Par for the course. I mean, serious. Nothing gets you off, right?
Yeah.
Uh.
That's it.
There you go.
I wish.
Maybe let's talk about, like, how do you think about a data center strategy here? Again, I'd love to hear how you guys think about this. You guys have been evolving, you know, your approach to the market for a little bit. Folks, look, I wasn't shocked one iota by your announcement with NIPSCO. Like, it felt very much like on brand with your expansion. How do you frame or scope out this data center strategy and tackling it from all its different avenues? You guys have been very careful and diligent in building this out on a multi-year basis already.
Yeah. I mean, I think when you look at it, Julien, I mean, the industry's short generation. We know this. You know, I think the things that, you know, the very, what I would consider critical paths we can help solve. If you look at the addressable markets of technology and utilities, we're kind of in the middle of that. We're seeing all the issues on both sides. I think when we, when we think about it, can we address generation from all kinds of forms? Yes. Can we build it all? Yes. How do we connect, you know, going back to the grid or not, or whatever they're trying to accomplish to our customer base, and our job is to collaborate with both sides and then bring someone to the middle.
I do think if you look at our utility companies, they're all like moving forward and addressing the market differently than they have over the, you know, the last decade because they have to, just like we've had to. When that comes together, we have a lot of solutions to provide both sides. The main thing I think we offer is certainty, like, you know, with our vertical supply chains, with the way we look at craft, we self-perform capabilities well above 85%, or let's call it 80%-85% at this point. That's important to both sides that we do what we say we're gonna do.
We do think, you know, that with craft being where it's at, that having someone like Quanta that you can point to and say, "That's who's building my projects," that's a sense of responsibility for us to go and deliver it, and that's what we've set the company up to do, is deliver those solutions that are necessary to power America in the future and AI.
It's a nice way to say it. I gotta say, I mean, let's talk about this 'cause you've started to really own this. This NIPSCO announcement, I mean, look, it's thoughtful beyond just the obvious like, look, you guys have been very diligent in wading into incremental risk. I think it's really thoughtful in approaching a midcap utility and saying, "We will help you in particular." Right? Because being a midcap utility, like, that's probably where they're taking the counterparty risk. They you say like, "Look, we want Quanta because we don't have the ability to absorb as a more modest-sized balance sheet the risk of development either." So I think it's really intriguing. Can you talk about taking that paradigm, the structure that you've employed there? Transposing it to other examples here.
How swiftly can you pull that off? Because it seems like the GenCo structure for NIPSCO itself is novel, and people want to follow that too.
I mean, look, I think MCAPS are obviously something most of the utilities that are in that space, yeah, we can help them. It doesn't, like, we're talking to all utilities around, you know, different models and model sets around this. It doesn't necessarily have to look like exactly like NIPSCO. I mean, there's behind-the-meter solutions that get to, eventually to the meter, that, you know, you have opportunity sets that are with there. We're talking to our clients about on any given day. I think in general, we're facilitating. It's more like a technology customer saying, "I wanna be in this city. Can you help me?" Or, "I wanna go faster. Can you help me? Do you have transformers? Do you have? What's the interconnection queue look like?
Do you..." So I think that facilitation to try to move the industry forward, and it's broad base. I would say, yeah, oh, Indiana, but you have multiple utilities in Indiana that we work for all of them. Not only just there, but it doesn't matter where you're at. I think all of our, you know, top 10, top 20 clients have the same issue. Some of them wanna move faster than others. Some of them don't wanna get out of territory. Some of them do. Everyone's different. So I think how we approach it is certainty. What are you trying to accomplish? If people wanna come into your territory, what do you want us to say?
Totally. Do you wanna speak a little? Actually, that's a good point you brought up on BTM, right? Like, I think you guys have been somewhere hidden in filings talking about you guys doing some BTM stuff. It's not just focused on traditional utility constructs, right? We should be expecting you guys to show up across the power development landscape, right? In different-
For sure. I mean, I do think there's other ways that, you know, we're happy to be behind the meter. We can build it.
Yeah. Different but... As long as it's a good balance sheet counterparty, right?
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah. There we go. Yeah, absolutely, versus. With that said, let's. You know, one of the issues that comes up. One of the questions, not issues, that comes up a lot is, you know, your outlook. People are worried at times. Well, how much is inorganic versus organic? I'm sure you get this a lot. People even today are saying, "Well, even in spite of the more robust set of outlook," people are still asking constantly and prodding. What do you say back to this? To be fair, you guys have done a string of acquisitions. I mean, the quantity of people you added to the organization last year was enormous at the same time.
Yeah, I mean, I'd push back a little bit on it because a lot of it has to do with we're outpacing those acquisitions or outpacing the models significantly, and we're also pushing work over into those models that would normally be done inside and taking on other work. I don't, I don't necessarily think that's accurate, and that's why you see me push back on it going, "That's not exactly how to look at it." When you look how we consolidate, we consolidate. We don't consolidate. We consolidate in this segment, so the segment's already got the consolidation in it, any segment you're looking at. You know, and then that's an issue as far as how you, how you think through it.
In general, if we can throw the free cash that we think we can throw, we can invest it appropriately on a go-forward basis. Wouldn't you want to have a business like Quanta with a private equity model there that you could just invest in and you don't have to worry that we can go out and acquire and integrate and build the solution base that we've built? I mean, I think it's a great way to look at the company, and you get two for one as far as I'm concerned. I, you know, look, I'm not saying we'll acquire like we have in the past either, but I do see a good pipeline of great businesses that wanna be a part of our organization and the platforms that we're in and, you know, the opportunity sets there.
I do believe we can repeat it.
Yeah, I think there's... Well, I mean, there's not much more to add to that. I totally agree with Duke. I think there's a maybe a little bit underappreciated or misunderstanding about our capital allocation approach. We very much are focused on our strategies first. We have a strong filter around the types of companies that we wanna bring into the fold. There's. We work years around this. This isn't about trying to fill a niche in any one quarter or any one year. These are things that we've been thinking about for years. I mean, Cupertino is a great example. It was a company that was identified.
When I joined the company six years ago, Duke and I spoke about how much he valued Cupertino and how they approach the markets and how they're thinking through their strategies. This is well before anybody was talking about an AI boom, right? But it was a highly qualified, strong management team, been around decades, that execute extremely well and have a craft-first culture. But they weren't ready to move, and that was okay. You didn't see us go chase another sort of inside electric operation just to say we have an inside electric operation. We waited very patiently when that time came, and we can't time something. We absolutely are not able to time as well as maybe some people think around when these families are willing to change ownership.
If we've been really careful about how we do it and very thoughtful around our capital allocation strategy, make sure we have the firepower and the balance sheet to move when those things come, we should be able to keep putting capital to work in a way that should be very, very accretive, obviously, to the bottom line, but more importantly, very much driving the strategies around long-term. You're hearing us saying this more and more about being a compounder, long-term, relationship-based approach with our customers. I don't think that will slow down for sure. I think we're gonna continue to do so. Part of what you guys should...
I think the investor base should understand is, to Duke's point. We are very much focused on operating, being a customer-centric service provider first, but our capital allocation strategy is one A to our long-term growth profile.
Yep, absolutely. Yeah, just to the point on this, would you say that there you should continue to expect, you know, some degree of cadence? Is there a way that you'd bucket out the, you know, the inorganic piece of this equation in any specific way to put it in a box or leave it to the side?
No, I think that's kind of my point.
Yeah.
I don't want us to be thinking about it sort of bucketizing-
Yeah. Yep.
because again, keep the firepower, keep generating the free cash flow, keep thinking about it around our strategies. We should be able to put it to work. As soon as you start saying, "Oh, I'm gonna do X dollars and X number of acquisitions," we believe that's where you start going down a bad path and a slippery slope around long-term returns.
Yeah, I do think, like, there's two separate discussions on this. EPS growth organically versus top line growth organically. One's to me, is way more important than the other. Our EPS growth organically is what I'm worried about and what does that look like? You know, you can talk about stacking on the balance sheet to that, I think that's more important to me. Like, we can grow the business double-digits plus at the top line. If you give me, like, quality earnings, all that, you know, throw all that out the window and just grow, that's easy. Like, I mean, it's the quality of earnings story that compounds over time that we're seeing out 10, 12. We have a track record of delivering that compound earnings profile.
Like, we don't talk about weather, we don't talk about... We de-risk the business so that we're able to, like, have those discussions that are long term. I think that's really important clarification of EPS growth versus top line growth, which I do believe organically, you know, look, we'll be kind of in the framework we've been talking about.
Yeah. Actually, maybe this is a good time to talk about this, right? In as much as, like, the utilities, right? You know, a lot of utilities here, you know, having increasingly long duration, their visibility, you know, exceptional, you know, duration and growth, right? Again, you guys are kind of a proxy in many ways. Do you wanna talk about your, you guys as kind of an extension of the utility model and your relationships, you know, whether MSAs or otherwise? I think it's really important to kinda lean into that. They've formally extended all their guidances already, right?
No, I think, you know, their capital budgets, we lean into what they say. I mean, we're able to do some generation now, so it's even more important in what they're saying. All that growth, I mean, they're dependent on us to deliver or someone like us to deliver that growth. They're not internally building up capacity to do that. As I'm not saying they're not growing some, but, like, we're certainly in the middle of all those programmatic spends that they have and discussing that certainty with them. You know, like, the one thing they can't do is not spend the capital that they say when they say it or they'll have a problem. It's our job to make sure that when they ask us to go build something, we understand that certainty.
You know, I've been in the for generations and understand it from rates to, you know, generation to house plug and how to, how to build it. So I think when we think about it's like, are the people that we collaborate the most with equity doing good or not? If they're not, then we're not doing our job. We want everyone that we're involved with in any significant way to have a 52-week high every week. That's our job, is to make them successful. Understanding how they work and understanding that model and growing with them, we'll grow right with them. We always have.
Coming back to that point, right, like, de-risking the utility model is one thing, right? Like, you know, a company that's had three or five years of visibility having seven or eight years is incredible. For you guys and the whole entire sector, it seems particularly relevant to get this kind of long duration and visibility, right? People at times worry about the cyclicality in your business, you know, in other sectors. You guys here, it's incredible. How do you think about, you know, kind of articulating that back to the street at times?
Well, I think it's how we build the basis of what you can look at to understand our utility rate base type c-construct growth. I mean, it's a part of a segment, but that growth is tied to capital in many ways.
Mm-hmm.
If they're growing their capital, you can expect us to grow with them. Probably outwardly because they're not gonna. You know, they have a certain amount of internal resources that will do some capital. The incremental growth of capital, they're gonna lean more and more our way on that. You know, look, I think our job is to give them certainty that, "Go to sleep, you're okay, we got this.
Right.
Like, because we've done the investments to make sure that we can accomplish your goals as well as what we're trying to, and they line up nicely. You know, in the middle is the hyperscalers or the large load customers that wanna move really fast. You're balancing all these things at once.
Absolutely. Gonna give people a opportunity to ask questions. Yeah, go for it.
You made a comment in the earnings call about not looking to do M&A for engineering firms anymore. I'm just wondering if you could elaborate on that, what you guys are implementing on the engineering side?
Yeah, look, I think when we say that we have 2,500+ you know, engineers or that. When we look at AI, like, and what it can do, we believe that, you know, we'll continue to hire engineers. We just don't need to expand it any more than our ability to hire. AI will get up to 30%, even 50% in most cases on the things that we work on. Now, standardization goes higher. All those things matter. You gotta have really smart engineers and, you know, I think the firms are fine. For us, we engineer to build for the most part.
When you engineer to build, you want it to be highly productive, and we can build more if we can design to 30 and then get, you know, 30 to 50. Then I just don't see us needing that platform you know, to lean into some big firm that's doing that. There's nothing wrong with the ones that are out there and the guys that are acquiring them. I wish them well. For us, that's not who we are and not what we're trying to be. I think we can do everything we wanna do with AI, and we're proving it out internally. From our standpoint, we're using technology all the way through and have been for 36 months or more on AI.
Jeremiah?
Where do you see the biggest risk to the 765 build-up that's coming? Is procurement an issue? Do you have enough teams to meet this demand that we're gonna see pretty soon here?
I think it's gonna be right-of-way type discussions on it. You know, that's where it always bogs down. For the most part, it, you know, that'll be where you see delays and this and that because it'll take longer to get right-of-way. From a constructability standpoint, you know, we have a partnership to build the transformers with AP. I think, you know, we've leaned into those things from that standpoint. I think we positioned ourselves with a North American supply chain that I'm confident we're building against. We announced, you know, the capital against some of the, you know, the majority of that capital that we announced was for those initiatives.
I think we have what I would consider de-risk that build, both from an internal standpoint, so all forms of construction and supply chain has been de-risked. Now you're down to right-of-way.
Let me come back to a couple of people have pinged me on this and, you know, it's been an ongoing question. How do you think about managing labor inflation and material inflation right now? How do you think about that being part of the top line at the same time? Related, how does it differentiate you here versus peers, et cetera, right? 'Cause obviously you've got this entrenched effort to try to mitigate and address craft availability.
I mean, I think that's who we are at the core is craft, and like, tight labor markets are good for us 'cause we've invested so much in it over time. Like, I think when we look at it, labor is always kinda, My career has been between three and a half and 6% escalations always. Like, you're never gonna go below three and a half, and you can get up into sixes, but it stays in that range most normally. You know, we've got great teams. We push down equity deep in the organization, like 9,000 employees. We buy back on the backside so that being part of a bigger company and, you know, being part of the ownership is a big deal for a foreman in the field.
Many of them have done very, very well with Quanta, and I want them to. I mean, I think that's the goal, is to make everyone successful and be a part of something that's different. They're able to look at a ticker symbol and be proud of what they're accomplishing every day. You know, I'm from craft, was raised there generationally, and most of our management team is the same. They either bought family businesses or been around it. It's what we focus on. I do think they wanna be there. We're able to retain and keep, you know, craft with us because we treat them well, not necessarily because wage inflation. I'm confident we can manage that. As far as commodities, you know, we don't take a lot of commodity risk.
We usually de-risk anything from steel to gas to whatever it may be that would be outward, you know, risk for us. We work with the client on that. Usually, normally we'll build those rates into a multi-year project or it'll be a pass-through on MSAs, things like that.
Another one of the inbound questions. You've got it before, but I'd love to hear how you think about it now. Like, given the cyclicality of renewables and you guys having kind of a view on a multi-year, multi basis, how do you think about this being a contributor to growth or a detriment versus growth over time? Like, how do you think about the renewables bucket? Obviously, for years we've been focused on Blattner and what it could produce. You know, obviously there was a synonym with NextEra at times that people used as kind of a proxy for your business. But how do you think about that cyclicality here? They updated their a couple of months ago. How does that fit into your outlook at this point? Obviously, near term, it looks pretty decent.
I mean, I think the growth there, it's not the outward growth, but like double-digit type growth in that business, we see it. I think, like, we're seeing things beyond 2030 already, which is a good sign that it's gonna continue. I think demand's gonna continue for one thing. You know, just we see In renewables, if you fill the lineup with batteries and renewables and things like that, and you back with gas and other things, it's the right way to look at something. I do think it's economical in a sense that if you fill the lineup with all forms of energy, and the, you know, utility business has always said, like, we need all forms.
It's the right way to look at it because of the way you think. I like it. I mean, Jayshree can comment. She's been in it longer than I have, so, I'll let her opine on my dissertation there.
No, I mean, I don't have much more to add to that. I mean, I think, as long as I've been in the renewable industry, it's been a long time.
Yeah
You see. There's always these sort of maybe one-year, two-year issues that you might have to manage and not... In general, it's been an upward trend, right? A significant upward trend, just because the economics now continue to be stronger and stronger with the demand side. We're not seeing any slowdown. We were particularly careful when we bought Blattner. If you remember, I told you, Julien, specifically, "Don't be running up the numbers on this. You know how renewables is. It's gonna be...
Yep
... nice double-digit growth." Then some folks got a little too.
Carried away.
... hyperbolic-
Yeah
on how they think about renewables. Those of us who are in the business and really understand why it's part of the mix and how developers think about it and the utilities and because of that, you know, we've been standing behind a 10% growth rate, that still continues to be the case that we're seeing right now. You know, it's too early to say what happens beyond 2030, With the customers we're having, they're not sitting here saying, "Oh no, the sky falls when the OBB expires." We've had none of those concerns at this point, because again, the backstop of demand continues to be very, very strong.
How do you think... I mean, one of the concerns out there, for you all relative to this is that the ESS business, the battery business, has less scope for you guys to be involved with, right? This is like, you know, yeah, how do you think about that? That's been one of the pushbacks here. As the composition of what's being built in the renewables space evolves, if you will.
We're involved in all of that still. I mean, that's a big part of our growth story on renewables. That's not a concern for us. I think the other thing I would also add is, you know, the flexibility of our resources. When you have sort of a dislocation in any one period because of something that happens in the renewables space, it's always subject to something, a permitting issue, supply chain issue, a tariff issue. You've seen Quanta be able to manage through those pretty comfortably because those resources are valuable in so many other parts of our business. I think as long as we are managing the growth rate at the appropriate way instead of believing some of the hyperbole, we're able to be flexible with that growth with our customers.
I mean, if it's batteries now, we're able to flex into that. If it's solar, we're obviously in it, well into it. Wind, you know, wind continues to be a part of our mix. It's not the growth story right now and probably won't be, but it's not going away, and we continue to see resources being effectively used across that as well.
I think one of the fallacies is with batteries is the big substation component. It's probably the most complicated piece of it, which, you know, I would say, like, that's our capabilities there on the substation. Big substations on the battery builds and, you know, It's nice what I see, good long-term growth.
Just to put a finer point on it, double-digit growth through the decade?
Yeah. I mean, on batteries, I think so.
no, no, not on batteries.
We're not promising.
Just the overall renewable segment. You talk about hyperbolic growth, I'm like... I'm giving you an opportunity to-
I'm saying, we see... I'm not gonna put a timeframe on it, Julien. Don't ask me to do that. We see good, solid growth in renewables.
Sorry. Good opportunity to pull it back if you want. Let's take two steps back. If you think about, like, what this company is, right? People keep pinging me here in different ways. You know, renewables is one segment of it. It's gotten a lot of attention, to your point, JC, from a segment. Fine. Put it to the side. Data centers, put it to the side. How do you think about the pillars of what this company looks like over the years here? How do you think about the composition of what this company is very? Because it's meaningfully changed, right? We talk about Blattner a few years ago. I mean, it really. Then Cupertino, et cetera. You've really seen an evolution.
Yeah, I mean, we said it earlier. I mean, that, the technology piece that came into the business and that market that's created for all of us, from utilities to ourselves, it's a huge opportunity for us to see outward growth. That takes a whole different discipline, and it takes a whole different teams, and I think we've made the right capital allocations along the way and built platforms that are exceptional at what they do. The solution-based approach to it, I think, is what we'll lay out, you know, in a month or whenever that is. It flies by us. It's probably next week.
like, whenever that, whenever we do that, I think that's the key to it is, you know, we have twice the market we had five years ago, and we're in early stages of it, and the company has to look different to capitalize on that. I don't think... If you look at everything and it's all built around craft, it stays around craft and, you know, exceptional execution in the field. On the top of that, there's way more opportunity there for us to execute on things, and we have way more what I would consider craft skill capabilities across that, from mechanical to, you know, batteries, renewables that we didn't have in the past and other things that allow us to really, you know, take off and grow with various customers across that, you know, kind of vertical.
I, you know, I don't think that slows down. I think it's actually speeding up, and our ability to, you know, obtain as much as we can of that market as we move forward will be, you know, kinda how we're thought about. I do think we've got to stay nimble. The one thing I would caution on it is, you know, you can sit there and look at, you know, $20 billion of opportunity across four or five different things, and I would caution everyone, do not stack that. That de-risk you. We do not expect to stack every one of them and say, "Okay, $60 billion and plus what you're doing today," and that's, you know, that kind of company.
It, it's, it continues to de-risk the company and floor it at a higher level while we have more opportunity sets of each one of those will have. You know, a time in the life cycle that, like, you'll hear bad press. Like, we know that already. We build on every single model we have. You never really hear us talk about a project cancellation or a weather report or whatever. I mean, I think the business is much different than that, and we move forward on it. You won't see us do that, and it's because of, like, the strength of the portfolio.
Yeah. I mean, when you talk about the business, the, like, the scope being twice as large as it was, is that principally as a function of data centers?
Mm-hmm.
Or is that, that literally-
I mean, I think it is. I mean, us in the inside business against that backdrop for sure.
Yeah.
I mean, you have onshoring, you have pharmaceuticals.
I mean, I'm almost questioning whether it's more than twice, but that's...
Well, I mean, I, yeah, I don't doubt that. It is. You know, I think in general there's a bunch of different areas that labor's fungible across, and we're not... You know, like I said, data centers is not, wasn't that big of a number in backlog. It has that potential to really ramp, and there's a lot of opportunities there. Pharmaceuticals, same way. I mean, we're seeing Eli Lilly move all across. We're seeing technology onshore. I think the more unrest you see in the world, the more you'll see onshoring. I mean, we were talking about putting data centers that had our data in it in the Middle East. I'm pretty sure that that's not gonna be, like, what we think about tomorrow. It's a risk.
I think you're gonna continue to see onshoring. That's what that's Duke's view of the world. Don't hold me to it. I mean.
No, I hear. The point is also at the same time, while the scope of the opportunity is wider, your willingness to engage in these other end markets too is there, right? Like, I think that's exactly the point.
Sure. Absolutely.
Right? It's not that you're afraid to get into these end markets. You've been adjacent to them for a bit.
Yeah. Look, a generation's just starting, and it has mechanical capabilities. We're doing some balance of plant. It has all the skill sets that we've created internally. I mean, those self-performed capabilities and how much of that... If you don't have your, like, your own superintendents, your own foreman, if you think you're gonna go to a union hall in Indiana and grab people, you're sadly mistaken.
Yeah. Well, let me ask you this, right? In as much as when we talk about the business and the risks through it, how do you think about margin expansion? You've been very consistent on this. Some of your larger, some of your other large peers are now openly talking about being concerned about margin, you know, compression on labor inflation, some of them. Others talk about, you know what, if they're engineering exposed, they talk about not being too concerned. How do you, where do you guys come out on this, right, in terms of the trajectory on this? I hear a really wide range, but I'd suppose in aggregate, the ability to pass along and the extent of the labor availability has really gotten the sector on edge.
Our utilities are on edge about it, right? It's palpable at this point. Maybe that's-
Please
an opportunity for you guys, frankly.
Yeah. I think, you know, we've always been fairly disciplined about how we think through our regulated workforce and, you know, we work together in many areas on it. We'll continue to do so.
What about the margin piece of it?
Yeah. Like, I think that's part of it. Scale allows us to move across, you know, starts and stops. I think what we do for utility is it doesn't always go as planned. The more scale we have in any given area, we can move across risks. Like if they have a problem with a piece of land or whatever it may be, we can go do something else. It's not a charge. We make the same margins on doing a 765 kV line or a 500 kV, a 345 kV. It doesn't matter. We've really given them the flexibility to move their portfolio around without exponentially charging the ratepayer, which we should all be concerned with what we charge a ratepayer.
That's what my focus is try to keep that price pressure down on the ratepayer for our clients, and doing our job and our part of it in this industry to do that. Yeah, I think the regulated piece of the business, the margin stays kind of where it's at. I mean, you have. Your growth on it is the problem. It, like you're gonna have to add the same amount of employees as a percentage on a go-forward basis that we have you're not getting scale out of our training and all the things that we've done because it's exponential growth across multi-disciplines.
I do think our UI segment comes up, and it continues to grow because we've added mechanical in there for the most part, in our gas business, and there is some long-haul pipe opportunities, and, you know, we've talked about, you know, some in Alaska. I, you know.
All of that is margin enhancing?
Yeah.
On that front.
For sure. Yeah. It's those opportunities are all out there for us, and we still have a great relationship with those clients, and that'll enhance that margin. There's some margin enhancement, but if you look at our return on invested capital and you look at that, I mean, it grows nicely throughout our models. Like, I mean, even when I looked at that, I was like, "Oh, that, you know, it's outpacing our operating income growth.
Wow. That's excellent. Right, that is a function of mix in addition to.
It is.
... or principally mix.
It is. It's the way we're contracting as well as.
That's better.
Type of capital that's not. You gotta back out some of that plan expansion until you get moving with it. After you're moving with it and you look at the model out, it, you can see that return because of the things that we are doing and, you know, revenue per employee goes way up too, and that's also creating that same environment without. I mean, margin's a big piece of any kind of.
Return, but, like, I do think we're able to do that without increasing margin exponentially. I mean, Jayshree can comment.
Yeah, no, it's definitely a lot of that is how we the cash flow with our customers and the turns we're getting there, that's helping us quite a bit on ROIC. The other thing is just the share of wallet we're able to capture by being there earlier and working with them from the get-go around planning, the supply chain, what we can do from the procurement strategies, taking some of that work. It may not be margin accretive, but it's.
Scope
it's scope that flows to the bottom line, which helps your returns. To Duke's point, it's. We're really much more focused on the ROIC over a long run. If you can get in earlier with them and given them confidence around their capital spend over the next several years, you can help take on more of that scope, which allows for a lot more certainty around where we're gonna be over the next five-10 years, plus improving ROIC at the same time.
If-
To take a quote from someone that we just spoke to, if it's a sugar high and trying to just take price, pricing at this point, that's not gonna give you that visibility and comfort around that multi-year period that we're looking at.
I always said you guys sound like a utility. With that said, just if I come back to channel this a little bit more, I mean, it feels as if the 765 piece, people are really gravitating to it as evidenced by the question before. That's just, am I hearing you right by insinuating that's expanding the scope with your customers?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Sure.
I mean, for sure. I mean, I think we tried to do that when we looked at it. I mean, we built a factory, we built a lot of things around that knowing we could expand. I mean, I do think you're gonna see more and more 765 verse 500 get built now because that's gonna be your backbone infrastructure. It's necessary if we're gonna get the load that we have. I mean, I just continue to believe that's the right answer.
Yeah
... in many cases.
If I were to pull this all back together, you guys have an incredible, remarkable consistency in your track record, right? I mean, I Hard to find any company, even in utilities, that mirrors what you guys have done in consistency. How do you think about rolling that forward? Is this just about doing more of the same?
No. Look, I think we wanna be better, right? Like, we wanna be better at the things that we do, and it'll be craft skill, but as that craft skill spins out opportunities, we've got to execute on them, and it'll be how we deploy free cash flow. I mean, we got to make sure that we're disciplined in how we deploy free cash against great backdrops and companies, and I like our chances on it. I do believe, like, it's way more opportunity than we've ever had to execute on a plan. You know, it's exciting times for us. We're super happy to be there. Wanna compound earnings and grow them. I, you know, I think it's something the company.
You wanna do better. That's pretty, that's impressive.
Yeah.
There we go. I love it. Jayshree's laughing at me now. Love it. Guys-
Jayshree hates that, but, you know, look, that's how we should wake up, and we got to get better.
Absolutely.
That's true.
It's great to see you guys. Thank you for the time, right? As always.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you.