Okay, we'll get started. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for Quanta Services 2026 Investor Day. My name's Kip Rupp. I'm Vice President of Investor Relations for Quanta. I'm joined by Sean Eastman, our Director of Investor Relations, who's seated over there. Before we get started, I wanted to welcome Matt Compher, Quanta's Senior Vice President of Safety, Health & Environmental for a safety briefing.
Good morning. Here at Quanta Services, our people and their safe return home is essential to our success. We demonstrate that through world-class training programs, industry-leading safety systems, and our goal of having an AED with every crew, and most recently, our collaboration with MATES in Construction, our mental health and suicide prevention program. Essentially, our measurement of success each day is a safe return home of the men and women out there doing the work to their families. Today is no different. What we really want is a safe return home for all of us in this room. With that, a quick review of the emergency procedures. If we need to leave, there'll be a voice of God come over the screen to give us instructions or overhead speakers to give us the instructions. The exits are out this main door right by the elevator.
There's also one off to my right, down at the end of the hall. They will tell us and greet us and shepherd us down those way. If there is a need for an AED, out the hall by the exit to the right, there's an AED. I have the emergency contact for the New York Stock Exchange. I will make the emergency call. If for some reason I can't make that call, my backup is Kenny Mercado sitting in the back of the room. He will make the call. If you see something, please say something. I'll be around all day. If there's something I can do to support you or help you, please don't hesitate. Thank you and have a safe day.
Thanks, Matt. We were last here in 2022, and since then, Quanta has delivered on our goals and accomplished a great deal. Today, we're excited to take a deeper dive into our operating model, addressable markets, and the strategic initiatives we have in place to continue to differentiate Quanta from the competition, capitalize on the opportunities to profitably grow and meet the financial targets we intend to achieve over the next five years. For those of you joining us today who may be newer to the Quanta story, Quanta Services is North America's premier critical infrastructure solutions provider to some of the most exciting, visible, and long-term secular growth markets. From an investment perspective, we believe Quanta is a unique company, not just domestically but globally.
We believe Quanta is the industry leader with a notable competitive moat and differentiated solutions offerings that are highly sought after and valued by our customers. This slide presents some of the key characteristics that we feel differentiate Quanta from our competition in the eyes of our customers, employees, and the investment community. As you'll hear today, we remain focused on providing solutions to our customers through collaboration and continuing to advance our capabilities to meet their needs and to provide them certainty. As our customers' capital programs increase in size, scope, and complexity, many are seeking a longer-term and enhanced relationship with Quanta to deliver programs and projects for them safely, on time, and on budget. As you can see from the agenda, our discussion today will be led by Duke Austin, Quanta's President and CEO.
Duke will also be joined by Karl Studer, Quanta's President of Electric Power, and Jayshree Desai, Quanta's CFO. We also have a number of senior executives joining us in the room today. Quanta has a strong and experienced corporate and operational leadership team, many of whom you've met over the years, with decades of experience in the industry and many with several generations of family involvement in our industry. Duke will start the presentation with a reflection of the last decade and will then discuss key elements of our operating model. Karl will join Duke to discuss portions of the operating model, and Duke will dive into our total addressable market opportunities. Jayshree will discuss our long-term financial targets and capital allocation strategy. We'll then have a Q&A session to address any of the topics that we've discussed during the morning.
If you'd like to ask a question during the Q&A period, please raise your hand, and we'll get a microphone over to you to ask a question. Please identify yourself and the firm you work for prior to asking your question. Additionally, those joining us through the webcast have the ability to submit questions during the Q&A session, and I'll try to balance questions coming in through that system with the questions in the room. We expect to conclude the formal and webcasted portion of the event between 11:00 A .M. and 11:30 A.M. Eastern Time. For those in attendance that would like to join the Quanta team informally for lunch, that will take place just outside this room in the lobby area.
This event is being webcast from our Investor Relations website, and the presentation materials that we'll be discussing today will be available shortly after the conclusion of the event in the Investor Relations section of our website at quantaservices.com. Finally, a brief housekeeping item. Please remember that information discussed during this investor day speaks only as of today, March 31st, 2026, and therefore, you're advised that any time-sensitive information may no longer be accurate as of any replay of this call. This Investor Day will include forward-looking statements and information intended to qualify under the Safe Harbor from liability. You should not place undue reliance on these statements as they involve certain risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that are difficult to predict.
Or are beyond Quanta's control, and actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied. For more information, please refer to the appendix of the presentation. Lastly, please sign up for email alerts through the Investor Relations section of quantaservices.com to receive notifications of news releases and other information, and follow Quanta IR and Quanta Services on the social media channels listed on our website. Before I turn this stage over to Duke, I'd like to get things started with an opening video.
It feels like ooh. All day like ooh. All night like ooh. It sounds like ooh. Ooh, ooh, ooh. Up in the mountains or in the valley. We work. Through the mud and in the mission. We work. Drop our load all over the ground. We work. How do we keep rolling up to you? We work. We work. We work. We work. Oh yeah. The job is done for free. We work. We work hard with no defeat. We work. We get our poles and shins for better. We work. Protecting the territory we treat our brothers. We work. Who's down? Wildcat. Who's down? Wildcat. One tribe. Earth tribe. One tribe. Earth tribe.
Morning, everyone. How are you? Thanks for being here. We don't take it for granted to have our investors, our stakeholders here. I think it's really important for us to come out today. I've been in this role 10 years. Sometimes it's like dog years, but it's certainly been 10. It's. I'm still in awe of where we're at in this institution and what we get to do. It's super fun sometimes, but what I would say is our families, my family, I start everything we do internally and even externally with a picture of my family, two reasons. One, because it keeps growing. I'm having grandbabies and so does Quanta, and those little ones there is why I'm here. Asher there in the middle, he's my reason. He's.
I think it's my duty. If you think I'm not invested in this, you're wrong. It's my duty to make sure that he has the opportunity to work for the greatest infrastructure company in the world. That's my job. That's how I see it. I think when we look at it, when we think about where we're going, all the people in the room, I think about this management team. I would like for you guys to stand up, if you don't mind. Just do it. It's an honor today for us. You can sit back down. It's an honor today for us to be here. It is. I think we underestimate the gravity of it sometimes and where we're at as a company.
Many of us are underdogs, and our mentality. The culture of this company, people ask all the time, "What's the culture? What's the culture?" It's very hard to explain. What I would say is, you can't buy it, you can't bottle it, and you can't copy it. That's what I would tell you. It's just who we are. In many ways, it's underdogs. 90% of the time we're mad, 8% of the time we can't figure out what's going on, and 2% of the time we're happy. You get all these things where you're just frustrated 8% of the time mainly. I think it's just that mindset of just getting better.
I thought about it, I've got a video that explains it a little bit better, but it's absolute performance and I'll talk about it because that is our culture. That's what we're looking for. It's many things that really are who we are, and I'll play a video so you can kind of see it. Years ago, when we first acquired Irby, I was young in the business and always admired what Irby had done, and on the back of their truck it said, "Absolute performance." Getting things done on time, done right, making everyone else around us better. Performing at a higher level than anyone else can. That's the expectation that you set for yourself. No matter how bad the day is, no matter if the market's bad, no matter if someone left.
We're gonna deploy best-in-class resources, our craft-skill labor workforce from the field that can deliver with certainty again and again and again.
I was thinking about it all morning, what am I gonna do today to make a difference? What am I gonna tell you today that will get you off your ass and move? Go. I don't know, but I'm gonna give it hell. I'm gonna give you everything I got.
It's in everything we do, no matter what size we become or who we are viewed as, we're still core to who we are, core to that craft, labor which brought us here.
We have to stay humble and we have to stay hungry. No matter how big we are, the same mentality has to come in. We're the underdog. They care about what they do every day, and they care about their quality and who they are as a person, and they care about the name on their hat. You're at the very tip of that spear. America can't go where it said it's gonna go without every single one of you. You are no longer a contractor. You are providing a solution to that transition.
We just wanna have the same grit, wake up and go.
They wanna know when they call that we're gonna show up and get it done on time. I would not ever underestimate what Quanta can do.
We gotta go, we gotta go fast.
We just gotta move. We gotta go. We gotta think different.
Against every financial metric that we laid out in front of our investors, we're either meeting or exceeding those expectations. Every one.
It's not just words, it's actually putting things in action that gets us ahead.
I'd say we're not done yet.
To me, that's absolute performance. When we think about it, I mean, it starts with the 70,000 people that we have in the field, and it just reverberates up. It's a mindset top to bottom. You can see it. That's the culture. I think it's really important that you understand the culture of this company, and that's it. It's absolute performance. We're known for certainty, and that's how our customers see it. They want us to get it done, and they want us to get it done on time, and that's us. Now you know the culture. Before we get started on strategy, there's some certain points that I wanna make sure that we get to you.
Number one, we self-perform about 85% of our business. I think it's really important. It's a differentiator for us. It's something that allows us for that certainty. So we need to be able to do that. Second, we've compounded earnings over time. We have a good track record. I'm gonna go through some of it so you can see it and see what we've done over a decade. That compounding of earnings is something that you should think about Quanta when you're thinking about it. You know, we also, I would say our addressable markets are double what they have been, what they were in 2022. It's not just a utility infrastructure company supporting utility. We also support technology. We also have a big TAM in the middle with generation.
Those three things are extremely important when you think about Quanta and our markets and where we're going. You know, look, that's part of what we're gonna say today. I wanna make sure you see it. We're a solution company. We're not a contractor. I think that when we look at this is our history. It's what we've delivered. When you look back at 2020, I remember it vividly. I think, you know, we were coming off COVID. We were talking about strategies that we had, but you can see our track record. When we think about this, I think about it, how far back it goes, but I also think about what we're able to do today, because I think that's really important when you think through this.
You have a strategy that lasts five years, really a lot longer than that, 10+. My job right now is really to be thinking about what are we doing in 2031, 2032, 2033. This strategy we're doing today, it's baked. It's there. We have the things and the tools to do it. So my job is to think out farther than that. But you can see what we've done, so I like our chances and our goals. Our track record would tell you should believe us. Your choice. This is kind of the things that we said we would deliver. When I go back here, we were talking about 3,000 employees, and in 2025, we added 11,000 employees. So you can see what we've done with earnings.
You can see the improvements we made in return on invested capital. I think, you know, everything we said we would do, we did it. When we were looking at this plan, we had plenty of time. Kip would get me in the room and Jayshree, and we'd quiz, and quiz and quiz, we took it serious. We would not put a plan up here that we didn't believe in. Anything you see today, the numbers you see today, I know Kip said it was just for today, and everything's gonna go away after today. Look, to me, it's personal, okay? I view this as personal. I don't view it goes away today. I view it lasts, so I want you to know that as well. These are the numbers.
We're always asked about margin expansion, things of that nature, but we've given a consistent track record. You can see 23+ Adjusted EBITDA. You can see all the things we've done. It doesn't just happen. I mean, I think we struggle with it because sometimes I feel like we make it look easy. It's very difficult to put these numbers up. You know, we want the visibility of the earning streams that you see here, and we wanna improve our financial metrics. It's important to us. Like, I think all these things matter, and we'll continue to deliver on this. This is what we've done. I do think, you know, not a lot of people can say they've delivered things like this that look like this over this timeframe.
The management team has some credibility, and the people in this room make it happen. Okay. These are the numbers you really want, and I'm messing around. I agree. Look, we're only as good as what we do tomorrow, and I feel like when we talk about these numbers that you see now, they're big numbers. I'm looking at them. You got 7%-10% kind of organic growth. You have 12%-15% return on invested capital. I think when you start looking at that, and you're doubling the size of the company over the timeframe. You can see the numbers. [2021 $2.60, 2026 $7.5] Adjusted EPS. Big numbers here for me. I think that this is something the strategy has to be here to deliver that.
You know, Jayshree will get more into the numbers, talk about cash flows. She's super prudent, so give her, if not, make sure you ask her a lot of questions. But when you say that, I think their acquisition strategy as well, we're gonna talk a lot about that. We're gonna talk about how we're getting here. I don't think you can just believe us. We have to get here. So when we talk about the model, I think the industry that we're in is transforming. Why are we here today? It's transforming. Utility business, many of our clients, they're doubling the size of their companies all over. You can see it because their capital would tell you it's bigger than their market caps. They're a growth company. We're sitting in front of that.
We're sitting in front of that market, and you can't just go into the market like you were before, so they're transforming. I believe our company has already transformed. This is not a transformational meeting for Quanta. We've done that. We've already done that. We'll show you the solutions, we'll show you the TAMs, we'll show you all the addressable markets that we can go do, but this company has transformed already. Craft skill labor. Look, we've invested in this for decades. It's who we are. There's shortages in areas. You know, I hear all the time that about how much someone's gonna give to craft. $100 million here, $100 million there. You can't buy craft. Craft builds craft. Journeymen build journeymen. We've been doing this for a decade. We spent $100 million-$200 million on the average for a decade.
We continue to do that. Anyone that tells you you can go throw money at craft and it's gonna cure it, they're just wrong. It doesn't do it. You have to understand it. You have to build it. You have to build with the partners here, and you can see what we've done, and we'll continue to do it. It takes a journeyman to make a journeyman. It just does. I think when you look at us, we got this. We understand it, and if you have that issue, and you need craft skill, and you need to be certain, you need to call Quanta. That's what you need to do. That's how we see it, and then you can be certain.
When we think about, like, all of our capabilities and what we've done, I think supply chain is huge here when you look at this. Supply chain started kinda during COVID, and we kinda leaned into it there. Our model and the things that we're doing and how we're going through it, the supply chain's a big piece of this. This model, the service line piece of the model continues here. You can see all the things that we've done against the utilities. On the 30% we weren't taking advantage of, we're taking advantage of it now. I think for us, this is a model that we've built. It's something integrated, but you've seen us go $300 million-$500 million in our supply chain, that investment. That investment differentiates us now.
We're in front of that. The service lines are coming through. They're coming through at this integrated model, and each one is doing things, a little percentage of the business. When you put it all together, you can get the solution that the client needs, and this crosses both addressable markets. I think that's it's big because we started this at utilities, but that same model permeates all throughout this organization, and anything we're getting into, any addressable market, we're able to take these the very foundations, which differentiates us in the marketplace. You can see the kind of an evolution of where we were, so I think this is really an important point, that when we look at this, it's saying that every person that we have, we've increased revenue against it.
What I'll say, it's illustrative. Don't get me mark to market. If I go 7 - 5, don't try to do the math. Don't. It You can't do it that way because it'll be different all the time. It's illustrative, and I do think you'll start to see it continue to move upward. I mean, that's how I believe it'll work out, and it's because of all these investments that we've made in supply chain. We're using technology. We're getting a generation. It's all the things that we've done to expand our revenue per employee. So that expansion will continue, but I don't think it's something that you can put in a financial model. I don't. For a lot of reasons. West Coast different than Texas. Just different.
Don't try to do that, but I do think it says a lot about where the company's gone and how much we have expanded our addressable markets. When we look at it and we think about it, how do we, has this changed? Has our market changed? Has we fundamentally changed to the customer? We talk about a solution all the time. I do think SunZia was a great example of how we changed backward. I think as we talk about NiSource and some other things that we're doing now later in the presentation, I think you'll see how it's gonna change going forward. We had 20 companies on SunZia. It was unique. It was a large project, and we're energized in 90% of it. When I look at it, you know, that was a huge undertaking for the company.
We had 20 operating units on it. We integrated nicely, but it continues to evolve, and we've got to work with our customer in a collaborative way. We did here, we'll continue that in the utility model, which we'll talk about. It, it's really, really important that you see that we can put all these things together and go and build large projects and be certain for the customer. We did that. When I think about it, and we look at all the things that we're doing, it's to really be certain. It's that certainty. Why are we doing it? Why do we think that's important? Well, if a utility goes out tomorrow and they're given their earning streams and where they're going, they're doing it against capital. They are not gonna go to someone that doesn't have the capabilities to be certain.
Labor certainty, cost certainty, supply chain certainty, all those things that we're talking about, and I think that's the answer. We have those answers. We can do that. We can solve those very issues that they have, whether it's technology or our utility customers. We can solve the issues. We can't do it with one thing, with one piece of the business, so you need them all. You need all things like that. I'll go back to that supply chain. I think it's really important, and I'll talk more about it later. It gives the certainty of our customers on what they're saying against their model. We'll talk more about the model here in a second, but I think it's important that when we look at it's much like a flywheel in many ways, but I say it's our operating model.
It allows us to really go out and compound things, earnings, earning streams, customers, all things. But at the very core of it's those people. When I think about that hasn't changed. That will never change in this company. That craft skill labor, that investment makes us certain. It makes this company move, and everything feeds off of it. You'll continue to see this model evolve. Karl's gonna get up and talk about craft and what we're doing there. I think it's probably at the epicenter of everyone's mind at this point. It should be if it's not. We got a little video, and then Karl's gonna come up and talk about it, super excited. That hasn't changed.
When I think of Quanta, I think of it as the difference between good and greatness. That is only by waking up with that grit in the morning that it's just not good enough. I want it to be great. I don't want our people in the field to be good. I want them to be great. Everything we do, the pressure we put on each other, is pushing for greatness.
There's not a lot of people that can endure the sun beating them in the back of the head all day long, you know, sloshing in the rain, working in the snow. We are a rare people.
It's just a true testament to what kind of people we have here at Quanta. The commitment, the pride, the quality of work put out, and the sacrifices they make.
It's not work to me. This is home. I'm in here sometimes seven days a week. I'm in here 'cause I enjoy what I do. I love it.
To come out here in this setting, in these mountains, it's pretty impressive every day to have this as your office. Boy, we enjoy this work.
It's my therapy.
This job doesn't get done without everybody.
Sometimes we don't see each other for months or years at a time, but we come together on a storm like this, everybody's one big family.
If you're not in the field, you're working for the field.
We watch each other's back, and that's just the way we do it.
We're in the middle of solving all these tough problems. We're not just solving them for ourselves, we're solving them for a bigger cause. We're building that very infrastructure that we're using on the backside to better the country, to protect the country, to do a lot of different things, to provide a certain outcome because we've made the investments.
Good morning. Look, Karl Studer. I work with Duke, Jayshree, help oversee the operations for the business, President of Electric Power. Thought I'd take just a little bit of a minute to introduce myself. First time up in front of all of you. Look, I had the opportunity to join Quanta a little around 15 years ago when our businesses were acquired. I'll lean into a little bit of the why that does connect to the culture and the core of what the business is.
I'm a journeyman lineman by trade, and what I felt like at a young age, in my young 20s, I felt like I wanted to be part of something bigger and better than where I was working at the time. I had the opportunity to start my own business, and we grew that business. We hit a point, this inflection point that took us to this place of we couldn't continue to scale the business. What we didn't like about it, my partner and I, is that we couldn't continue to offer to our employees the advancement of what they were trained for and what they were capable of.
When I speak to craft labor and what I mean by that, I mean, I talk to the men and the women in the field, those that are out there in it every day, the linemen, the electricians, the operators, the welders, the boilermakers. The list goes on of the trades that are out there and what they do and the infrastructure they build that powers everything for us to benefit from. They're the ones that make the decisions, thousands of decisions out there in the field when things don't go right. When I say culture, what it really means to me is this is the environment that we create for our employees. This is where we show them the value that we appreciate of them and where we
Invest into what they do. We're behind what they do. We create this culture that allows them to go farther in any other condition or atmosphere in their career than they would without us. You know, and the reality is you really cannot scale your craft labor without the culture behind it, and that's really what made the decision for us that we wanted to be part of this business. We wanted the opportunity for our employees to sit down in a family of companies and have the chance to continue to grow. You know, Duke will talk later about how the M&A takes place, that core acquisition strategy. It still holds true 15 years later. I continue to get to be a part of that and now is on the other side of the fence than then. These businesses hit this inflection point.
We hit this inflection point. It's either you go out and take someone else's money or you put yourself into an atmosphere that you're gonna allow your company to grow and be cared for. It's not a yearly decision. This is a decade decision, and we demand, as owners of our businesses, that our employees are taken care of, the culture will continue, and the training will be there, that every one of them gets the opportunity. With Quanta, those businesses have now grown year-over-year at the same growth rates as the rest. Well over 3,500 people now. Well into the billions. It's pretty remarkable when you think of when we started the business and how we got there. We wouldn't have done that without Quanta.
Quanta demands that we listen to the craft from the bottom up, that we understand what they go through, and that we participate from the top down and build an environment and that culture around what they're capable of. The flywheel, the craft is the engine that drives that. Our culture is the fuel that continues to allow the growth to take place year over year. Duke talked about what the business means to him. I wanna tell you what it means to me. This is my son, Celt. He just graduated from line school last week, actually Thursday. Full circle opportunity for me. His smile says it all. I just love seeing it.
He just graduated from Boise State in December with a finance degree and knew that he understood that he wanted to go into something that was bigger and he wanted to be part of changing something that was very special, and he knew he could do it inside of Quanta. Just yesterday, he called me. He was on his way to his first job out in the right of way, and he was reporting to employee number three, employee number four, and employee number five that we started well over 20 years ago. All of this through the same opportunity in the line school that I went through, that I was able to be a part of, this same NLC. We acquired that business years ago. Why?
Because we believed in it, and if you watch that chant that Duke plays all the time, you can feel that. It teaches that craft and what that's about. You should all remember, that's how they show up every day and the power behind that. Look, the business is built on the strategy that we continue to differentiate ourselves. This is around our culture, the capacity, the capability, and accelerators that we put on this, all set on the foundation of safety and training. Look, our culture is what allows us to retain the 28,000 journeymen and foremen that we have in the field every day. They continue to build thousands of journeymen through our training programs day in, day out.
The capacity is where we take our training platforms and we continue to scale them, push them into different markets, and continue to allow the advancement of our trades, men and women in the field as they grow across all of our campuses and training centers. Look, our capability is based on developing our leaders in the field, not only professionally, but also, personally, and we believe that we will continue to offer that success and which will lead to those leaders that one day sitting in this room with us here. The accelerators, the enhancements that we continue to scale our workforce without more people is really around what we do specifically with our integrated fabrication solutions and everything technology and how we use AI to continue to advance that training. Look, we will take advantage of all of these things.
We will find the way into this younger generation that learns faster, smarter, quicker, and we will continue to build all on the core of our safety and training that's around us. This is our operating model. This is not something you replicate overnight. This started 20+ years ago. Look, here's a timeline that shows you the dedication over decades to training. Some key points in this. Look, the Lazy Q, NLC, they really are a benchmark of our campuses across the country. What we do inside those campuses is world-class. Live line simulations. Everything we do, pressurized. We're working right inside the substations in our training environments. We're creating the environment to train at a pace that no one else understands too. We understand that it takes craft to train the craft.
Craft leaders understand the craft, and we will continue to develop our craft into the business leaders and those that will run the businesses for decades to come. Last year, the Lazy Q, one simple fact, trained over 16,000 students days in the seats training, 3,000 days of instructor-led curriculum. That's just one of our campuses. We continue to evolve those. Duke hit on the numbers. Over $100 million annually is what we spend on our workforce development. We take this incredibly seriously, and we will continue. Look, we train our trainers. We make sure that as we bring the craft out of the field, they possess the skills of what it takes, that they actually understand how to tap into the minds of who they're training. This is important.
Not everyone is a born trainer. What we've learned and understand is we need the curriculum to sit into the minds. We understand that craft won't sit in the seat for very long. You have to find ways to go to them to advance the training and keep up with the pace that we need them. Look, Sherman+Reilly was an M&A acquisition that we did a few years ago around high voltage stringing equipment. One would say it was a successful business. Gave us a synergy going forward into the transmission build that's coming at us. What we knew existed inside of that business was a very foundational platform of training with this equipment into the field. We will continue to advance that and use that against our platforms. This is our 25-year head start on where we're going. You don't replicate it overnight.
Safety, as Matt talked, this is everything we do. It's who we are. He talked about the AED. I wanna hit on a few stats on this. It's important to understand this is where the culture starts. Safety isn't a cost for us. Safety is just simply the right thing to do when we make the investment, and this continues to allow our craft to feel safe and trained to respond when the incidents happened. Look, the AEDs. We've spent over $40 million in putting AEDs out there. The stat you should see there is over 50 lives saved that weren't just our employees. This was the public. This was those that were in the area of our crews.
Not only that, it does give witness to what we do with our training and how we teach our teams to respond. I could give you stories of crews going into burning homes and bringing families out safely. I could give you a story of crews responding at a hotel room after hours, saving a drowning child in a pool and resuscitating them. All that is fundamentally based on how seriously we take training and how we value that. The Lytx cameras, this is a forward and rear-facing technology inside of all of our vehicles. Uses AI to talk to the drivers. It trains behavior. What we found with it is we take that data, it clearly reduces cost by reducing claims and things of that effect, but we take that information and we build curriculum around to train against.
Look, a lot of all of the apprenticeship programs that exist out, have been out there for 40, 50, 60 years. Little is known about the most hazardous thing that we ask our employees to do, and that is driving. We've changed that. We will continue to stay up with what's important and use the technology. Look, this is the issue that no one wants to talk about. For us, we ask our craft in the field, we ask the men and women that go out, we work long hours, we travel a long ways from home, a lot of time from their families, and in conditions that are hard. More than 5x the deaths from construction-related incidents on site. 46 out of 100,000 employees will fall to this.
It's important for us that we care not only at the job site, but also after hours and give them a chance to connect to something that they can get this solved. It's important for us. Look, we supply and we drive every day the largest craft-skilled workforce in North America. How do we do this? We continue to focus on the training. We advance the training. We have a new hybrid apprenticeship program that's designed around competency-based, not only time, and that allows us to train journeymen up to 30% faster. You know, our apprenticeship programs enrollments are up over 120% for the year. Our trade partners that you see here lean on us because of our size and our scale. The IBEW, the UA, the operators, LIUNA, Boilermakers, plumbers, all of the unions come to us.
We collaborate with them to drive forward together so that we can create an advantage into the marketplace, and we continue to compound on our training environments that we've created. Our Northwest Lineman College and the Lazy Q, it's 10 world-class campuses across the country. All of this continues to compound time over time. We bring our veterans in. We offer them entry into our pre-apprentice classes. From that, we direct hire them right into our programs, into our apprenticeships. Over 20% of our pre-apprentice students are made up by veterans. We're proud of that statement. Look, this is simply about certainty. As we train 10,000-20,000 people internally, we're simply running a large institution of training. We are a training organization. This is what we do. In the tight labor markets, what you'll find is preferred employer status will draw attraction.
That's what Quanta is. We will draw in the training, and we will draw in the best leaders that are out there, those that wanna be trained, excuse me. You know, these capabilities, the strategies, all of this is to make our workforce more efficient. I like to look at it in the way of our solutions-based approach gives us the ability that we're sitting in front of our clients early and often. As these programs and these projects continue to come out on a larger scale than they ever had, our clients all across our markets need help. We often I refer to it in a way as don't ask me that you need 100 employees. Ask me what we can do with 100 employees. Give us the opportunity to find ways to spread our labor in a more efficient, more effective way.
Give us the opportunity to use our service lines and all of our integrated solutions, our supply chain, different methods that we can scale this workforce without just number of bodies. This is a multiplier for us. It sets us apart. Look, our integrated fabrication solutions, as this grows over 4 million sq ft, looking to grow to over 5 million this year. This is not only for our MEP business, this is across all of our trades.
We will continue to enhance this not only for the cost predictabilities, not only for the schedule condensing that we can create on projects, not only for those efficiencies of what the trade can do in the field, the weather environments, but we will use this as a landing spot for our new hires into our programs, and we will eventually turn these into small training centers that send out into the workforce.
Our AI technology. Look, we're using this in a way to de-risk the business. We are, and we will continue to find ways out on large projects, programs that scale our workforce and allow us to move faster out there. We've shown that we can reduce cost. You know, the human mind just simply cannot keep up with how fast AI can transmit and organize data. We will lean into this. We're doing it now, and we will continue to do this. As we self-perform 85% of our work, it's important that we continue to de-risk the business against that. As we do more, we'll use these technologies. With all of this, let me be very clear, you cannot replace physical craft labor in the field with technology. We can make it incredibly efficient, and we will.
Look, I believe this is probably the most underrated, underestimated, value of Quanta right here, our ability to use our workforce as diverse as it is. As we sit down and we solve these solutions with our customers and the convergence of what is taking place out with a large load customer that needs the generation and needs the utility interface, these programs are getting larger. The capital budget's getting larger. For us, as we can move and deploy this labor across, it's powerful. It's certainly a competitive advantage. Five years ago, stood up here, Duke stood up here and said, "We will execute all of our labor across all the markets and our trades." I can tell you we've done that. We will take our transmission resources and deploy them into a solar project.
We will take our subsurface teams and move them from horizontal to vertical drilling methods. We will use them to install large duct bank, depending on the customer's demands. We will use mechanical and industrial resources inside of wind turbines we have. We can take an electrician that is low voltage wireman out that is doing a large load center one day. We will move him to a generation facility. We can put them in a solar facility, and we can put them in a substation, all by our integrated approach to how we go about using this diverse labor force. Our SunZia transmission line, the 600 mi of transmission line was actually led by large pipe management team. About 80% of them was.
Almost the majority of all of the civil that was completed on that SunZia project was done by our pipe and gas crews. This is how we move across the markets, and we can be flexible with our craft. This is also a powerful retention tool when you understand craft. Projects start and stop. The craft likes to understand that the future is there. They understand it's out of our culture. We will take them from one project to the next. We will cross-train them across the work and give them opportunity to stay in geographical areas, to travel more hours, any part of what they're after. Look, this does give us the strategic positioning against everything that Duke will talk about. This is how we handle the convergence of our markets to our customers.
We are allowed to check all these boxes because we have that flexibility. We've created that. We've stayed core to our craft labor and development of them, and we will continue to use that vibrant workforce across our flywheel, our operating model, and to create the durable results. With that, I'll turn it back over to Duke to talk about the markets. Thank you.
Thanks, Karl. As you can see, our commitment to labor is unwavering. That's going nowhere. I'll also say that the company does a nice job with our employees being on the road. We're all on the roads a lot, you know, 200- days a year, and many of us. It's lonely at times, and I do think the MATES, the programs that we can do for mental health that goes unnoticed is something that we need to do as a leader in the industry, and we do. Also, we have a lot of significant others at home that support us. I've got one that's 33 years and going, I think five months. I keep track of that, guys. You should do that.
We could not do that without the support we have from our families. It wouldn't work. I think none of us take that. It doesn't go unnoticed. All right. Let's get to the markets. Super fun to be up here talking about these markets that we have. I look at them, and I'm thinking, "Wow, it's twice as big as it was in 2020." It's so different, one from the other. We have a utility model, technology model. They're moving super fast on one side, and the other one's starting to move super fast. It's great. I think when I hear this, one of the things that I heard, I keep hearing, so I'm gonna talk about it a little bit. We talk about grid constraint.
I keep hearing that the transmission system is 50% utilized. I wanna talk about that just a second. That's right. How many hours do you sleep at night? Eight? 33% of the time, there's not very much load on that system. Are you only gonna run large load customers at night? Are you only gonna prepare for night? No. In the summer or in the winter when it's real cold, real hot, same thing, you get load variations. In totality, that's what it looks like, 50%. 50% is roughly 90% of what the grid. Unless you want a blackout, and I can tell you, running the grid in Puerto Rico where it happens because lack of infrastructure, it is not fun. It is not where you wanna be as a country. We're not going there.
It's a fallacy and it is. Do you know what the national highway system is? You know how utilized that is? 30%. Do you know how congested these streets are out here? Like, you should walk. Okay. It's easy to say. It's not how the system works. It makes for good press. All right. We talk about the TAMs. I think they're significant. Look, you can see, we think it's around $2.4 trillion. It's twice as big as it was before. Large loads are pushing in. Look, I think when we think about it, all the things you heard about labor, all those things, it's really to address this market, and we're addressing it across both sides with our service lines.
With all of our capabilities, all of our companies are addressing both sides. I think about, like, when you look at the utility partner, that's really core. That's what we've had. That's how we've historically been there. But it's something that the other side starts from technology. You really gotta think about this market, where it's going, and how they converge with generation, things like that, so our utility customers are extremely important in how the other TAM moves. So they work in unison in many ways, but this part of it, the electrification, our load growth here is significant. We've seen many of our customers double their budgets, even their market caps, with the amount of capitalization we've seen. We've got great visibility here.
This is, like, for us, there is this imbalance at the generation side, so I think you've seen us lean into our generation business, start to do more here, but it's what both sides need, so it's creating that growth in both sectors, and it converges right there at generation. This is talking about really what we need for a large load customer. I do believe it's not just data centers. When we talk about these large load customers, it's also onshoring, it's also pharmaceutical, many other things. I think when you look at our backlog while we talk about this, it's only 10%. Did I show you? Correct me.
Okay. Close. CEO math. It's very close, but that's the fastest growing thing we have is that large load customer technology. It, it's not just that. They are complex. These builds are complex. We sit in the center of it. You're hearing many things about it, where you're having off grid solutions, on grid solutions. We'll get more into that later. I think in reality, the best way of that most people will, the large majority, will eventually connect to the utility grid. It's certainly something that needs to happen. I believe it's the way to do it and, you know, but it doesn't mean that these builds aren't complex. Our expanded capabilities and how we're looking at the loads and where we're going, I think we're just getting started here. The momentum's building. We're talking about it.
We've had Cupertino for less than two years, and we talked about when we acquired Cupertino. Tom's in the back. We'll talk more about it later. What I would say is we're just learning this customer, and we're just starting to understand everything they need, and the speed and our certainty means everything to them. Our amount of discussions with technology is significant. I mean, it's daily. It's just about as much as we do or more than we do with our utility customers. Then we're talking to both of them at the same time in many ways. It is converging, and we are seeing our position, how we're differentiated in it is that certainty means everything. We gotta. They wanna go faster. You heard me on the video. Let's go fast. I mean, that's us saying, "We gotta go.
We gotta move. Fast doesn't mean quality moves down or certainty moves down. It means go faster. We get a lot on a data center, and I think trying to explain well how much of your addressable market is a data center. How much? What can you do? What's the scope? I mean, we think about it like MEP. That's how you see it, mechanical, electrical, high voltage side of it. But it's around. When you look at the market we can address, it's about 50%-60% of that, which you can see the numbers up there. It's $13.5 million per meg when you look at it. That's kind of what's possible. I think when we look at it, while we are.
I mean, we're on jobs today where we're self-performing full scope. Less chips, but full scope. We're on multiple jobs, actually. We don't talk a lot about it. We're down there doing it. We can go full scope, but I think it doesn't include the generation, and it doesn't include the high voltage interconnects that we have from our utility. It's almost double that if you really think about it from a generation standpoint, if it's off grid or you're connecting generation or we're connecting into the high voltage side, which is not in that scope. We wanted to give you some context. I think it's important that you see it. Many times these jobs press on our supply chain, so that's another opportunity where our supply chain shows up here, in these markets.
You know, I do think we gotta talk about this 'cause that we've gotta give you more visibility in it. We want you to see it. We want you to see those opportunities. I'll go back one more time and say it's only 10% of our backlog. It is moving up though, and it will be the big driver that you see going forward. When we think about these programmatic spends, we really want you to see the visibility that we have in 'em. What I would say is, while we're talking 2030, this goes well beyond 2030. We're talking to customers today about 2032, 2034, all the way out today. The programmatic spends that move well beyond that. This business is not stopped at 2030.
Actually, I think, you know, our job is to set this up to continue the compounded growth that you've seen in the past, to continue that on a go-forward basis. You know, some will grow faster than others, some will grow way past what we ever thought. That's why the beauty of this company is the portfolio that we put together, and so that portfolio allows us to operate all the way across these markets that keep moving forward. I do believe you're seeing growth in all of them, and it's well beyond 2030, even though we kinda stop at some here in a five year plan, but it's certainly longer. When we talk about our supply chain, we've done a lot here.
To take you back in time, we started this in our people strategy, which if you look at the room and look how young everyone is, I'm the oldest one probably, or getting close to one of our management team. I mean, I'm older than Jayshree. Anyways, we've done a really nice job with both of those things. Supply chain, one of the things that when we thought about it, you could see it during COVID. You could see it stop. You could see, like, all of our crews and everything, it was so hard, and the customer was driving us to be different here. That's the why. That's why we got into it, because they asked us to. They asked us to lean into this. Well, what's your critical components? Transformers, breakers, poles, wire.
It was the biggest part of our utility business. Also technology. That's what we leaned into. The strategy, it was simple. We were listening to the customer. They were asking us to do it, and we delivered it. We're delivering it today. When I think about it, we talked about what we had, what we've done with labor. You can see the investment. Karl talked about it. Extremely important. The same investment's here. We're just getting started. We'll continue to invest in this solution. We're the top five purchaser in the top five of high-voltage equipment today. We have partnerships. We have, you know, vertical supply chain with transformers. We announced a $300 million-$500 million, billion dollar.
Million.
Million. $500 million-$700 million investment. Sorry. God, tongue-tied. Anyways, all right. It's a big number, and Jayshree's looking at me, so I knew I'd said it wrong. That, to me, every factory is expanding that we have. It's a good business on its own. Those numbers stand alone on their own. What it does for us, the pull-through is what really compounds this model that we're talking about, and it's this integrated service model that continues. Look, this is a big piece of that, and we're really proud of what we've done here. How we deliver. We have a vertical supply chain that delivers through our operating units. We have expanded what we can do here at our transformer factories, our breaker factories, so vertically, our partnerships, and then we can distribute. It's just starting to grow.
I think these, you know, full-scale capabilities are extremely important to us as we move forward. How we deliver to ourselves and the customer matters. You can see it, like, with our 765 kV expansion, which I'll talk more about it. It came from our transformer facility that had built 765 kV transformers years ago, the first series of them. That now we've advanced that up to 765 kV now. Well, that factory will double in size, double in capacity with 765 kV being the very core of why we did it. It doesn't mean we can't build 500 kV and 345 kV, but we can go all the way to 765 kV, U.S.-based in Pennsylvania. It matters. That matters. We talked about SunZia. You know, this is Kip's slide, so I'll just tell you.
It's just showing you, like, the breadth of what we can do. You know, I take it for granted that this is what we're supposed to do. We don't take commodity risk, so typically all these things are backstop or we've contracted around it. You can see how big these numbers are. That's why you're in supply chain. The numbers are big, and that's what they're asking us to conquer. Not only the labor, you got 3,000, 4,000 guys out on SunZia at any given time, men and women, but it's also this behind it. You have to facilitate this as a company to deliver. If we're going to be certain and on time, we have to deliver the supply chain along with that labor. Both of them matter. All right.
We've walked through supply chain, we've walked through labor, now let's put them together. I think when it starts, it goes all the way back to how we are at the customer level and where we're at there. When I think about it, and we're thinking about it's those relationships that we've had for 20+ years. We have 20,000+ employees that are on these systems every day. What does that do? Why are they there? We have built trust with these clients. They trust our companies. They trust us to deliver against all solutions. That is the very core of how you can put an integrated solution together, is the trust. This is like this on technology as well. I mean, Cupertino is named after the city, Cupertino. I think Apple's there.
I think a few more around there in San Jose, those areas. They've had a long-standing relationship with technology. Same. This is very much the core. It builds this trust and value. I think we talked about it when we bought Cupertino, one of the reasons was for that, not to mention the great people and the leadership, but it was also the customer base. Tom's in the room, so I had to make sure I said that. When we look at these integrated models, what does it mean? I think it depends on the customer, so you can think about them to be differently in each one. We model them around what they're asking us to do. I think that's important. It gives us flexibility, and our labor's fungible.
We can move around these models. Some might want EPC, some might want just the procurement, some might want just construction. It's okay. It's fine. What we're really trying to do is put the right team in the right position. And I think you can see, you know, I got challenged on this slide because, well, is your labor really that fungible? Can you move across every market? Can you take the service lines? Yes. I mean, we can move across all these markets. Our labor moves across these markets, so it's. They're local. And I do think that local content from our organizations also de-risks the investor and the customer. They're best in class. We're delivering.
The service lines. When we talked about it in 2020, we didn't have the 30%, the engineering, the procurement, the things that were going on, even up to 50%. We didn't have generation either on the fossil side of that utility market. Now, when you think about what a utility spends from their capital, we can pretty much, I would tell you well above 75%, probably in the 80% and 90% of that capital is addressable to us. These service lines are foundational in how we integrate them. It's extremely important. You have a lead crossing all this that allows Quanta to provide a total solution versus just a contractor locally. That gives you the solution-based approach. It's due to these service lines, it's due to us moving these across. This is SunZia.
We talked about it earlier, what we did there. It was 25 operating units. We self-performed 90% of the project. That self-performed content is something that I think separates us, and we were able to do that with SunZia. This is one of the largest or the largest renewable project in North America. The line was extremely difficult to build. The company just blew right through it, performed. We did. It wasn't that easy. But we did it, and I'm really proud of the team, Karl, some of the teams here that built it. But it's given customers certainty at scale. You know, we heard from the investor base a little bit, "What are you gonna do after SunZia? I'm really worried." Well, I don't know. We just gave guidance.
I wouldn't be too worried. We never were worried because it looks different. This is just one big job. This is just to say we can do it. There's many programmatic spends, there's many other types of jobs that we have, but I do wanna show you the breadth of the company and what is possible. This can happen on multiple fronts. This is kind of the old compounding model. All right. This is a representative of a partnership with a large utility customer. It's something that I'm proud of how we've ingrained ourselves in the very fabric of the customer. If you think about the AAP model, the announcement, it was around transformers, it was around 765 kV, it was around all the things that we're doing. That was built on longstanding trust between the two companies.
At the very top, we trust each other. They have a $70+ billion capital budget. We work together on 765 kV capabilities. We're integrated in many, many ways with them. Their success and our success are together. I think this model is way deeper in, and it also contemplates day-to-day workforce in that very base business that we believe is extremely important to have the base business to be able to perform the larger projects. We're not just contemplating the one-off project, we're contemplating the whole programmatic spend, the whole capital stream of a customer today. That was not the case five years ago. It wasn't. We weren't there yet. We're there. We're in those rooms, having those conversations around giving customers capital spends certainty. It's a differentiator. We're negotiating 75%+ of the things that we do.
When I look at it, I think we're way deeper in. This is a concept. It's not the only place we're doing it. It's multiple. It's across the board, actually. We have these deep relationships with many, many, many of our utility clients and moving that way with our large load customers in technology. That's a deep relationships, integrated, it anticipates supply chain, craft skill, labor certainty, and many other things that we do, engineering, all kinds of service lines. You've incorporated the whole thing now into the new utility model. That's how that works. All right. This is a slide I've been waiting to tell you all the whole time. I could have done this an hour ago, and we'd probably been fine.
I wanna talk to you about NiSource and what we did there 'cause I think it's where it all comes together, both sides, both TAMs, and all of our service lines. When we talk about NiSource, it's a deep relationship we had with NiSource for, I don't know, a decade at least or more. We were a contractor on their system, $50 million a year to $70 million, something like that. We built trust. As they moved into different markets, as we see them today, we had the opportunities to build generation, fossil generation with them. We're awarded those projects, not in backlog, as soon as the air permits and things come in, put them in backlog. You expect our backlog to go up.
When I look at this, that was just a start because there's also a renewable piece of this with batteries contemplated in it. There's large transmission that's contemplated in this program. The other side of this is 1 GW-3 GW of large load and another 3 GW-6 GW in the geographic area. If we have this much labor and this much concentration in a geographic area, we talked about the fungibility, and we talked about what a meg was. Now let's talk times that times 1,000, get to a gig. We're in the gigs and talking to customers about their systems on the other side, the technology, which would be load centers, data centers, all the people that you know.
I really like our chances to build the vast majority of that 50%-60% that we talked about being our tangible spend, much like we did with SunZia, very much integrated, but now it contemplates both addressable markets. When we think about it, this is a mid-size utility. There's many mid-size utilities out there that we have very good relationships and have built trust with that the other side of our customers, which is the technology piece of this, want that same discussion. We can deliver that. We are delivering it at the very highest level with them, with the customer. This has gone from $50 million to what I consider $5 billion-$7 billion type opportunity across a five- to seven- year period. That's just one customer. That's an integrated model. That's an integrated solution. It's probably much more than that.
I'm being pretty prudent about it, but I just would tell you in that geographic area around that customer, there's that much opportunity due to that concentration of flexibility and fungibility of labor. More importantly, that drives the rate payer down in Indiana for NiSource $7-$8 a month for the customer because of the load. That's what the unknown is. That's what the industry has got to talk about and do a better job talking about is driving a load that creates a negative impact or a positive impact to the rate payer of $7-$8 per month because of the load. The same thing's happening in energy with Meta. We heard it last week that large load is creating $2 billion worth of impact to the good for the rate payer.
Just not getting out there like it should. It's gotta—we've gotta do a better job as an industry talking about it, talking about that data centers are not the issue. The issue that's causing that is the lack of infrastructure. If you build more infrastructure, bills go down. Congestion in the United States is, I don't know, it's over $10 billion a year just due to congestion. We've got to build infrastructure as a country. This is an example where we've done a good job talking to the customer, talking to the customer base, and what you really see is our models coming together in this integrated customer service around supply chain and craft skill labor and what we can do with our utility customers. Super exciting for me. It's speed, certainty, where Quanta really drives home who we are.
This is it. NiSource is it. You can expect more of it. Acquisitions. When we talk about our acquisitions, I mean, many in the room, 70% of our team came from acquisitions. Much of our leadership came from acquisitions. I think this is really, really important to us, and sometimes it goes unvalued because of how we deploy free cash against this. I would tell you that we have a very good track record of acquiring great companies that allow us to do much more than may be seen just on the face of it. When we think about it's this core culture that we have, and I think you saw the absolute performance video. That's what we look for. We look for people like that.
I mean, we don't build synergies in our models to begin with, so it's not about synergies. It has to go in, has to fit the strategies we're talking about today. Anything we're talking about today, it's on the table for us to look at, from a craft to engineering to many, many other things. Our owners stay, we grow together. We've done great things with these companies. We'll show some slides in a minute to tell you how much. But I do think it's important, and nothing is more important than the culture of these businesses. If we value anything, we're valuing that leadership team. 'Cause I think when we look at it, we're there forever. We're not gonna flip it. We're staying with it. We've gotta get that right.
I've got a little video here that I want you to see.
I'm fourth generation, so we were about 114 years old at that company at that time. There was only one person that was dead set against ever selling the business, only one person, and you're talking to him.
Mom and dad both founded the business before I was born. After dad passed, you know, we kinda had to make some family decisions in terms of succession and what that might look like.
We were not looking to sell at all, but the thing that we realized is you get to a spot in every small business where you get to an inflection point. We were still running off QuickBooks and Excel and no HR and no legal.
We were hitting our ceiling with organic growth. We knew at some point out on the horizon, we were gonna need to bring in a strategic investment partner.
Do we really have what it takes to be 3x, 4x, and 5x bigger than what we currently are today? Honest reflection, we knew that it was one of those situations where to protect the company, we had to sell the company.
I knew Redgie and Karl. I did one of my first aerial power line jobs for them. Fast-forward to 2019, called Redgie and spoke to him, and he said, "Don't do anything. I'll be out there next week.
We had nearly 100 interested parties that came in. What we found from talking to others that were part of Quanta is that this was an organization that would respect what we built without disrupting operations like so many acquisitions ultimately do.
Every interaction that we had, keeping it quiet, but interacting with Quanta folks, everyone we met with, we're like, "Wow, these people feel like us." Duke very firmly but politely said, "Tom, if we don't think you can maintain your culture, we don't wanna buy you.
We knew that Quanta wasn't gonna try to flip our business. They were in it for the long haul, cared a lot about craft. They were founded by craft. That's really where Quanta became the perfect fit.
When you're going through it, you know, it's a challenge 'cause it's a lot of human emotions, and sometimes those are the hardest things to navigate.
We don't acquire businesses based on just a P&L or numbers. It's primarily around the people.
Each individual company is a living, breathing organism, and that's been Quanta's mantra since 1997.
Now being part of Quanta, we're taking on larger projects. We're bringing in a lot of other Quanta opcos underneath us to build data centers, large-scale renewables, battery storage. Our employees have more opportunity 'cause we have more needs in leadership levels, and people are seeing a better path for their career.
I wanted to show Duke, Redgie, and Karl that you made a great decision on us. If somebody took a chance on us, they bet on us, and that's still driving me five years later.
Everything that Quanta said they were gonna do, they did. They cared deeply about the families and the people that help build businesses.
By being part of Quanta, we were able to do something that I knew we weren't gonna be able to do as a standalone entity.
As I sit here today, I couldn't be more confident that we made the right decision to partner with Quanta, and I use that word specifically because it really is a partnership. To be in the spot that we're in now, I couldn't be happier.
When we look at it, I really think, you know, you can see from our standpoint the feeling that we get from being able to do this together, and it is a partnership. We owe it every bit as much to the name that are on those trucks as the management team of Quanta to them as well. We wanna permeate that same feeling. We wanna make sure it perpetuates through time, that their kids, grandkids have the opportunity to do what they did with Quanta and more. I think when we look at it, we want to make sure those acquisition candidates, everybody underneath them, has a chance to do more and be the CEO of Quanta. That's the goal, and I think we've done a nice job there. You can see the type of companies that we've bought.
I will say, Karl mentioned it a bit, when we think about it, you know, we talked about some of them. At PTT, when we bought the transformer manufacturing capabilities and Sherman+ Reilly, really around 765 kV, nobody saw it. Nobody understood what we were doing and why we did it. There are many more things that fit our strategy. I'm just not gonna tell you. Why would I do that? But I do think the opportunities are out there, and you'll continue to see us lean into those type strategies in the future. As we talk about here, we're talking about the growth that you can see on the companies. It's substantial. We get way more growth than you would see us put into the models.
We get a lot more synergies on the other side of this. Our consolidated eliminations that we make, we don't put them back up anywhere or, you know, try to put them back into service to your different, like utility or your underground. We don't put them back up into segments. We just eliminate them. I think it's well over $2.5 billion that we're working together in synergies and internally. It's creating way more value than you can even see.
I do think that's really important when we think about it and, you know, something that, it's driving margins, and it's driving returns and doing a lot of things together and building certainty for the client, ultimately driving down the cost to the ratepayer. The compounding model, I think we've been through it. You can see how craft skill grows this, and our acquisitions and capital deployment are extremely important here. You know, what does it look like going forward? I think it looks much of the same. We will follow those markets, and it drives performance and success, and it compounds. We've talked a lot about that compound nature, and that's what allows us to do it. You will continue to see that kind of capital deployment with these acquisitions as it fits into the strategy.
It has to fit. It'll be much more of that. With that, I believe it's Jayshree. Get up here, and they've been waiting for you this whole time, so come on.
All righty. Thank you.
Yeah.
Okay. All right. Well, hopefully you've heard the enthusiasm from Duke and Karl. Hope you found those videos as inspiring as we all do. It does say a lot about who we are and what this culture is, and why we believe, with the TAM expansion that we have, that integrated solutions approach with our operating model, that dedication to craft and our culture of absolute performance, this is why we believe we can compound value over the next five years and beyond. We believe we can create durable, consistent financial results over the long run. I'm gonna get into this. I'm gonna talk first about why we believe that operating model is so critical in driving those consistent results.
I'm gonna go through it quickly 'cause I think Duke and Karl actually hit it very, very well, but I do kinda wanna bring it back to you all. I'm gonna talk about our historical track record, what we've done over the last decade, and how we performed against the last couple of five-year plans. I'll get into our five-year performance, what our expectations are going forward, talk about our cash generation profile and our capital allocation strategy, and then lastly, close with the levers we have to continue compounding Adjusted EPS and return on invested capital. Turning to the slides. As I said, right, we believe we have a very strong operating model that allows us to continue to drive consistent results and de-risk the investor base. That's very important to us.
We believe our credibility is very important, and we've tried very, very hard, we work really hard to earn that credibility, and we work really hard to try not to lose that credibility. These are the reasons why, right? Duke and Karl talked a lot about why our craft workforce and how it's been built for versatility, and the ability of our best-in-class operators to be able to flex across markets, perform through cycles, and ultimately deliver certainty to both our customers and to our investors. We have a strong balance sheet, and we're gonna keep that strong balance sheet. We firmly believe that our ability to generate cash and put that cash to work will continue to compound value for this company and for this investor base. That balance sheet, we remain patient.
We keep it flexible so that we can be strategic and opportunistic in deploying capital. We strongly believe that our balance sheet reflects that patience. Duke talked a lot about why we've invested in our supply chain. It's been a great compounder for us in driving revenues and allowing us to capture more scope, but it also allows us to de-risk the results for the customer and for our investors. That ability to have control of our supply chain, as Duke described, is very similar strategies to why we wanna self-perform our labor. Controlling our supply chain allows us to control our destiny and create consistent results over and over again. Training and safety, I mean, you heard it starting from the way Matt described how safety is important to us.
You heard it from Duke, you heard it from Karl, you're gonna hear it from every single person you talk to, after we finish this presentation, how critical that training and safety is to who we are. Those dollars that we put up there, those are significant dollars. We invest constantly in our future workforce. It's not an expense, like Karl said, it is an investment, and we treat it that way. Because we treat it that way, you're gonna continue to see us, we believe, continue to drive those consistent results that we have had a track record of doing so far. Then lastly, I wanna talk about this, right? We are getting more complex.
The size and scale of our company is increasing, and we are being asked to do a whole lot more because of the integrated solutions that we've developed and the commitment to craft that we have created. We are doing so and still making sure that we are taking the appropriate risks. We believe very strongly that not only can we grow our revenues, but we can grow the bottom line, which is how we measure ourselves against. The NiSource contract is a great example of that. Duke talked very well about what all we've been able to capture with NiSource.
As we talked to you about it when we announced it, we were able to capture so much of that scale and scope without creating risks for our customer and for you all as investors. That's very, very important to us. as a reminder, less than 15% of our revenues comes from fixed price contracts greater than $300 million. That's really important because just as Duke talked about, our base work creates our ability to capture large work, but our large work allows us to continue to grow our base, and we're very focused on continuing to grow that base work, not only because it de-risks the investors, but it allows us to continue compounding value over the next five years.
Let's go into our track record. Again, words, we said a lot of words, but at the end of the day, we gotta perform. We gotta put up the numbers for you guys to have that credibility in us. We know that. We firmly believe in that. I really like this slide because I don't have to talk much to it. The numbers speak for themselves. We've been able to grow revenue over 14%. More importantly, we grew Adjusted EBITDA faster than revenue. That's that margin expansion you've seen over that time period as we've scaled in our growth. Backlog has grown faster than revenue, giving us the visibility we see over the long run, giving you comfort that we have that visibility in the long run.
Most importantly, our Adjusted diluted EPS has grown 25% over the last 10 years. 25%. That's a testament not only to the operating performance of the company, but it's also a testament to our disciplined capital allocation approach. You're gonna hear me talk a lot about that. You heard Duke talk a lot about it. We are a company that pride ourselves in not only operating performance, but making sure that we are putting your capital to work that drives returns and drives that consistent performance. We're very proud of this, and we believe it's allowed us to earn the credibility that you all expect from us. But we also know that again, words only matter so much. We gotta keep performing it. We talked to you last couple of times about our last five year plans. We set some targets.
We know how important it is that we do what we say we will do. This slide shows you how we've done against the last two targets we've set. In 2021, we had a target Adjusted EPS of $3.98. Our actuals were $4.91. We exceeded our targets, not only in Adjusted EPS, but in return on invested capital as well. We set a target in 2026 of $12 for Adjusted EPS and greater than 10% in return on invested capital. That $12 was on the high end of our range. We now expect to exceed our targets on both Adjusted EPS and on return on invested capital.
The point of this slide, right, is just to remind you all that we, when we put something out there, like Duke said, are firmly committed to making sure we deliver what we say we're gonna do. Now let's go into the next five years. You know, what are our expectations for where we're gonna be over the next five years? As you can see, here are the numbers for the financial result, financial expectations of the consolidated level. We've also given you segment-level expectations on revenue CAGR, EBITDA margins, and operating income margins. I do ask you guys, though, and you're gonna hear me say this a couple of times, don't over-index on the segment, numbers. They're there. This is what we expect to do today.
As Duke and Karl talked about, we move our resources across segments. You may have some variations, right, as we make sure we maximize value for our customers and for our investors as we move those resources around, depending on what the work is. Let's focus on the consolidated level. Our expectations are we are going to grow organic revenue by 7%-10% CAGR. 7%-10% CAGR. Just to put that in context, last three years, we've grown revenue by a CAGR of around 10%. The 7%-10% for us, we feel is very doable, especially given all the things you heard from Duke and Karl around our TAM expansion and the stuff we're doing for all of our customers. Adjusted EBITDA Margins.
We see the ability to generate 10%-11% Adjusted EBITDA Margins. This is a 30-basis-point expansion against the midpoint of 2026 guidance and an 80-basis-point expansion against the high end of that guidance. Where we see the ability to expand margins is in a few reasons. One, we think we're gonna have performance improvements across the enterprise, but in particular from our legacy underground operations and our Canadian operations. We're gonna have growing demand for our integrated fabricated solutions and our MEP capabilities. That's gonna also help expand margins. Then lastly, operating leverage as we scale, take advantage of our supply chain capabilities, and as we self-perform across greater scope. As Duke talked about, that $2.5 billion of intra-company revenues that we have to eliminate.
Yes, we have to eliminate that, but what that means is we're doing more work for our own sister companies, which allows us to capture more margin that otherwise would have gone to someone else. For those three reasons, we think we'll be able to expand margins by 2030. Now giving you guys an overview of where we believe our growth is coming from across six key end markets. I wanna talk a little bit about this. But before I get into this, and before Duke comes in over here and takes this from me and tries to tell me to stop talking about it, I do believe that this is a good way to think about our end markets, but it is directional. Don't get hung up on any one line item.
As we have said countless times, we have the ability to move across these markets. We can be flexible. We are able to move through cycles, as we've demonstrated in the past, and we're gonna continue doing so forward. This is a nice view of where we sit today and where we think our key end market growth is gonna come from. As Duke talked about, the technology and load center is our fastest-growing market today, as the demand for data centers, for large loads, and the demand for our MEP capabilities continues to grow. That'll be our fastest-growing market as we see it today. The core of who we are, our electric grid and gas utility business, that's the you know, that's the backbone of our revenue growth and our anchor for our revenue growth.
We continue to see very good growth prospects in that as well. Our power generation and storage business. At the midpoint, we're seeing about double-digit growth over the next five years coming from both our renewable energy solutions and our gas generation solutions. We continue to see good growth from our customer base around these solutions, around generation driven by the large load needs and what our customers are demanding from us. Rounding out this slide are communications, industrial, and pipeline services. You can see here we got steady growth around these key markets as well, and a lot of potential for upside, especially from our pipeline service business as the growing demand for infrastructure to deliver that gas keeps increasing to gas generation and LNG facilities.
Stepping away for this for a minute, here's what I want you to take away from this slide. Again, don't over-index on any one line item because of the flexibility we have to move across those markets. What I do want you to see, though, is that we have great growth prospects across all of our markets. We have multiple ways to succeed here because of the end markets we're in and because of the total solutions approach that we've talked about so far. This ability, we believe, because of what we have set ourselves up, as Duke said, five years ago, we set ourselves up to meet this moment. We believe we are well-positioned to be able to capture a fast-growing market that didn't even exist five years ago. This is really what's underpinning a lot of our excitement that you're hearing today.
Now turning to cash, right? It all comes to cash, because cash, we believe very strongly, is how we will compound value over the next five years. What we do with that cash, our cash generation strength, and what we do with that cash is how we're gonna compound value over the next five years. I'm happy to say that our Free Cash Flow Adjusted EBITDA as a percentage continues to go up, continues to improve as our working capital has continued to improve. We see that trend continuing over the next five years as the demand for our integrated solutions and supply chain solutions increases. Now, sitting here today, we expect that we will be able to achieve a 55%-60% conversion ratio by 2030.
Just as a reminder, as I talked about in the fourth quarter call, there will be some pressure on our Free Cash Flow conversion given the manufacturing expansion that we will be doing. By the end of 2030, we do see the ability to get to that 55%-60% range and even better. What that means is we expect to generate $10 billion-$12 billion of Free Cash Flow in this time period. If you look at the middle of that chart, you can see what that means, that $10 billion-$12 billion. You see our bank leverage ratio coming down, trending downwards as the EBITDA grows, as the debt matures, and as we generate more cash and the cash builds.
Having said that, we are gonna maintain an investment-grade balance sheet, and you can see how we're gonna be able to do so. We're targeting a leverage ratio of about 1.5x-2x. Let me just pause here for a second. We're targeting a leverage ratio of 1.5x-2x, and we are gonna maintain an investment-grade balance sheet. We don't feel any pressure to force ourselves to stay in those leverage ratios. What I mean by that is, if we've got really great capital opportunities in front of us, and we need to lean into it like we did with Blattner, like we did with Cupertino, we may stretch above that 1.5x-2x.
If those companies, if we've done those right, and we're buying companies that drive accretive returns very quickly, we will have the ability to rapidly delever post-acquisition. That's our approach to how we think about these opportunities that may come in front of us and may push us a little bit above that leverage ratio. On the flip side, you know, as I talked about earlier, we are patient deployers of capital. We're not buying capacity. We're not buying growth. We're not buying earnings for earning's sake. We are buying companies that meet our strategic goals, that have that meet that, and adhere to that core philosophy that Duke talked about. That is very critical to how we deploy capital. In this five-year period, if, for example, we don't have enough opportunities to keep ourselves in that 1.5x, that's fine.
We'll be patient, and we'll wait until those opportunities are in front of us to be able to execute on them. We're gonna measure our capital deployment strategy the same way we've done for the last 10 years. What I'm about to tell you is gonna come to no surprise to those of you who've followed Quanta over the last 10 years, because we believe it's been critical to our success. We're gonna continue investing in our organic growth, in our people, in our equipment, in our capabilities. We're gonna continue to find really great family businesses that can join the Quanta family and continue to drive accretive returns for our shareholders. We'll continue to return excess capital to our shareholders in the form of dividends and opportunistically repurchase shares.
We are gonna measure our ability to buy a great company versus buying our shares back, and whatever drives a higher return is how we'll move forward. One other thing I just want to point out on this slide and just kind of giving you the context of our capital deployment strategy. In the last four years, we've generated $5 billion of Free Cash Flow, and we've bought $6 billion worth of companies. In the last 10 years, we've generated $7 billion of Free Cash Flow and have bought $10 billion of great family businesses in that time period while still increasing returns, while still keeping an investment-grade balance sheet, while still returning capital to our shareholders.
That's the power we believe of our capital deployment strategy and our ability to continue compounding value. Just so, you know, for those of you who are, this is very important, right? I want you to realize our dividend strategy. We're gonna continue to grow our dividends. We continue to see double-digit dividend growth. Our dividend growth, our dividend capital strategy is not a substitute to our investment strategy. It's a complement to it, so we are committed to continue growing our dividends. Bringing this back to what we believe is the most important metric, return on invested capital. This is what we think we are judged by, and this is what we expect our investors to judge us by and are we really creating the value that we say we're gonna be able to create.
Again, another slide I'm proud of, right? Because again, this is the testament of whether what we're saying really makes sense for you all as investors. Over the last five years, we've expanded ROIC significantly, and we believe we're gonna continue to be able to expand return on invested capital. We were able to expand that ROIC even while investing the over $6 billion of capital in great acquisitions. We know how to do this. We know how to do this while driving accretive returns. We know how to do this moving forward, and you can expect us to continue having that same philosophy. As such, we're comfortable sitting and standing in front of you saying we're gonna continue to expand return on invested capital, and we now expect 12%-15% by the end of 2030.
Now let's bring it down all the way to what our expectations are for Adjusted EPS. Like Duke said, this is probably what you've been waiting for, right? Walking you through this slide. Looking at where we are, right? Our expectations are that we will be able to grow 15%-20% compound annual growth rate against the $10.75 we achieved in 2025. Now we're targeting an EPS range, an Adjusted EPS range of $21.60-$26.75. Note, we have intentionally not given you an organic Adjusted EPS growth and organic EPS targets.
We've done that because we believe sitting here that we have the ability to deploy capital, and our 15%-20% target reflects that belief that we will be able to deploy capital and still achieve that 15%-20% compound annual growth rate. Now, having said that, with the revenue, organic revenue targets I gave you, as well as the margin expansion, we are comfortable in saying that we will be able to achieve a double-digit EPS growth organically. We want you to focus on this 15%-20% because again, when we sit here today, we are going to be deploying capital, and we believe that's a better view of understanding who we are as a company.
15%-20% is a target, but if the active market opportunities that we're really working on, the 765 kV transmission build-out, the gas generation solutions, those large load solutions that Duke described, if they all accelerate and we operate at the high end of our targets, we see the ability to grow more than 20%. That's what you're seeing in that full stack on the right. If those things come together and we execute on the high end of what we've targeted, we should see an Adjusted EPS CAGR of north of 20%. By the way, these are not pie-in-the-sky opportunities, right? As Duke said, we are actively working on, we are embedded with our customers in making every one of these market opportunities a reality as fast as possible.
If we're successful with our customers, we should be able to see that growth coming in. In conclusion, right. Wrapping it all up just here on one slide. Here's what we are telling our investors. Here's what we're signing up with our investors, what we can achieve by 2030. 7%-10% organic CAGR, organic revenue CAGR, $44 billion-$49 billion. Adjusted EBITDA Margins of 10%-11%, which at the midpoint, at the high end is margin expansion from our 2026 guidance. An Adjusted EPS with capital deployment of $21.60-$26.75. A 15%-20% CAGR off our 2025 results, and a return on invested capital of 12%-15%.
Our range of $21.60-$26.75, that's really reflecting our views of how fast that organic growth can come in and the pace of our capital deployment and reflects our views on the multiple ways we have to succeed, as I described on that revenue graph. So that was the conclusion on the numbers, but I hope from my presentation, you walk away with four key takeaways. One, like we've had a successful track record, as I've shown you. We believe very firmly that credibility matters, and we owe it to you all to continue to be credible. We hope our track record proves it, but we also are gonna do it going forward.
Our 25% CAGR that we did over the last 10 years, we believe we have the ability to continue compounding value over the next five to 10 years. The markets have never been better. The demand for our craft labor, the demand for our integrated solutions has never been stronger and giving us the confidence that's underpinning the growth numbers that I've laid in front of you all. Our workforce versatility, we keep bringing this up, not to just bore you with it, but it's really important you understand that workforce versatility is de-risk this company. It gives us the ability to expand scope, do more for our customers, and be flexible as markets can change. That's why we talk so much about it. That's why we built a portfolio of so many capabilities.
It not only allows us to grow the top line, but more importantly, it preserves that bottom line and allows us to increase our return on invested capital. It's a very critical strategy of who we are and why we do it. Then lastly, cash. Everything we're talking about, at the end of the day, if we're not delivering the cash, it's not important, right? It's not meaningful. Everything we're saying here today, we believe is gonna continue allowing us to grow our cash generation strength. What we do with that capital is very important. You have to judge us on whether you believe this management team, those people you'll meet in the room, do they have the ability to continue investing your capital smartly, driving accretive returns, and returning value for the shareholders?
Just stepping back for a second. It took us 28 years to earn a $10.75 Adjusted EPS. 28 years. What you're hearing today from me, Duke, Karl, this team, we are saying that we have the conviction that we can double that over the next five years. That's what we say. That's what we mean when we say we're compounding value, and why we believe that the next five years, we're gonna continue to be able to do so, and why we think we can do that well beyond that. I'm gonna stop there and turn it back to Duke.
All right. Thanks, Jayshree. That's the kids' cartoon, so hope y'all liked that. I'm gonna wrap this thing up here. Some takeaways from us. Look, we've taken a prudent approach to guidance like we always have. I want you to know that. From my standpoint, I've done this multiple times, three times , two times sitting in this role. This is the third. It's always been prudent. Our guidance is prudent. We're gonna grow the company 15%-20% +. There's a lot of ways we can get to the plus. I like our chances. We have a young team. I'm super proud of them. I'm super proud of what they've done. They get after it every day. I wanna be here with them through the plan.
More importantly, we're building Quanta for decades beyond, and the next time that we come up, you'll see the same thing on how we've done on a forward basis. In saying that, as we wrap this up and wrap today up, which we're gonna take some Q&A, I just want you to know that we have conviction to the plan, that we couldn't be more excited about what we're gonna do in the future to help our customers, to collaborate, and not only be a part of the market, but create markets. I think it's really important 'cause we're creating some markets here. We're creating our own business in many ways and many things that we do. You'll see us do that throughout. In wrapping up, I know my mission.
Asher, where do you wanna work?
Quanta!
That's it. I'm gonna turn it back over to Kip. Thank you.
Great. Thanks, Duke. We're gonna bring the team, Duke, Jayshree, Karl to the stage for some Q&A. We'll have a couple mics around the room. There should be.
Anybody?
Not. There should be.
I'll just yell. It's okay.
Well, okay, for Q&A, let's especially you sell-side guys, let's try to really limit it to one question, and then maybe one follow-up just to allow time for everybody to ask questions. For those on the webcast, there is the opportunity, you can kinda message or type in a question, and I'll try to scan through some of those and incorporate that into the questions as well. The mics are coming. Just bear with us for one minute. Okay. Please say your name and the company that you're with. Kenny, maybe hit Adam right here.
Thanks. Good morning, guys. Adam Thalhimer with Thompson Davis. I'm curious about the full stack scenario for 2030. What would be the organic revenue growth embedded in that target?
Me? All right. Yeah, as we talked about, right, in the five-year targets, we're targeting a 7%-10% organic growth rate. You can expect that the full stack, that we should be at the high end or higher in our organic targets if we are able to stack every one what we're talking about in that orange bar.
I mean, the full stack will be at high end of the range. I mean, it's hard to predict where that would be, but you would expect it to be in the high end of the range if you full stack it and roll it up. I mean, I do think when you look at that, you also have to say, "What's the timing?" Is the timing on all the, you know, kind of the 765 kV build there? Is, you know, our ability to take advantage of some of the strategies? How do we make acquisitions? How much expansion do we get off the acquisitions and the timing thereof? There's a lot of things to say when you're out five years and you get a full stack. It's not if, it's when, in many cases.
You know, look, we've done 20%+ in the past and you would expect it at the high end of the ranges for the-
EPS. Adjusted EPS.
Adjusted EPS. Sorry, yeah. Anyways. We've done both, but when you think through it, I do think that organic number has to be at that, you know, somewhat at the higher end of the range.
Yeah. I mean, we have opportunities, right, of definitely performing at that high end. If all that stack comes in, yeah, there's opportunities to be at the high end or greater.
Okay, great. Maybe Joe, right next to Adam. That's very honest of you, Andy.
Thanks. Joe Osha from Guggenheim Partners. Duke, you talked a lot about how capital deployment and business development is a, it's a long process, right? You don't just show up and buy a company, which is, you know, part of why the multiples have stayed at 9x-10x. Even so, people can read the newspaper, right? I'm wondering when you think about capital deployment, how much upward pressure is there on multiples for private companies right now, and how much of a challenge is that?
Yeah, look, I think we do a great job with the way we use equity to attract talent as well as acquisitions. You know, most acquisitions participate in equity, and they get the same kind of returns that we've been able to deliver as well. I think it's a double-edged sword to some degree. Yeah, you can see that, but you can also see what we've done. Really when you look at what's out there, we believe we can deploy capital at the framework that's there today with great businesses that we believe in a bigger what I would say it's bigger than just a multiple or a turn or two of multiple.
I don't, you know, see our ability to continue to acquire great companies at this kind of framework. It'll depend whether it's an engineering company or a heavy equipment company. For the most part, I mean, we all sold for a multiple. We sold our business for 5x. I don't feel bad about it at all. Like I love my job. I love what I'm doing. There's others in the room that were less or more. We've created value through equity, and we've also push about between 7,000-8,000 people with equity as well a year. It allows them to feel much like an ESOP in many ways, probably the largest ESOP you'll ever see.
I'm gonna try to buy the stock back as we see opportunities along the way to keep the shareholder at parity. I don't see an issue for us to be able to deploy capital meaningfully into things. It's not imminent to us. I can't get up here and go, "We're gonna deploy X," 'cause I don't think, you know, it's right. I just see the ability for us to do so.
Andy. Andy Kaplowitz.
Thanks. Andy Kaplowitz, Citigroup. NiSource, you announced it, you know, a little while ago now, and I would imagine there are other utilities that are gonna watch and see sort of how this is going. Like, you know, your numbers, Duke, $1 billion per year or something like that, again, rough numbers. Like, how many more of these kind of things are out there? Like, and are you making progress toward the other utilities like, "Whoa, this is really efficient. Let's do it like this"? 'Cause it's efficient for you guys too.
Yeah, look, it's not just utilities. I mean, mid-size utilities, yeah. I mean, we're talking to, you know, a bunch of mid-size utilities around different things. They're not all that big. Some of them are not contemplating generation, but some of them are. Could be renewables, it can be all forms of generation. And it's also on the other side of that with technology, trying to solve that solution of the same generation as well as, you know, the line, the interconnections, and the other side. It's not just utilities, it's also technology, co-locators, hyperscalers, as well as our traditional utility customers. All sides of that, and it's a meaningful number. I don't. Look, I'm not trying to get everyone lathered up here to say, "Oh, it's you." Look, it's a big number for us.
Now we've got to convert them. We've got to do great things. These numbers are big, and they're opportunities or three, five year type opportunities. It elongates some, but you know, there's not a week that goes by that something doesn't come to us to say, "Okay, can we do this? What does it look like? How do we you know, provide a solution to this client?" They're meaningful.
Great. Let's hit Steve real quick up here. Kenny.
Thank you. Steven Fisher, UBS. Duke, you said you wanted to grow the revenue per head count over time. I'm wondering how we should think about the growth rate in the craft labor force, relative to that 7%-10% organic growth rate. Presumably, you have some embedded efficiencies in there from the integrated modular solutions, from the AI initiatives. Can you just maybe bridge us from head count growth to that 7%-10%?
Yeah, I mean, in order to get to the numbers you see, I think you need to grow, you know, 7,000-10,000 a year at least, craft, non-craft, just in general. You're gonna have to grow that. You'll get some efficiencies through AI. You'll get some efficiencies through pre-manufacturing, manufacturing capabilities that we have. But you're still gonna need that core to be growing 7,000-10,000 a year. Same. Almost the same as what we said as a percentage of organic growth. But
Uh, uh-
It doesn't equate, by the way, but it, I do believe that's the head count. There'll be some acquisitions in those numbers as well.
Sorry. I do wanna jump in, Steve. I don't want you guys to take that as a modeling exercise. It's really important. Duke talked about it. It's a trend, and we're working hard as we are expanding our scope and becoming much more efficient, as Karl described, with our labor and our capabilities. The right way to think about our business going forward are the metrics that I laid out, subsequently around our CAGRs and our expansions, possibilities around margins.
Okay, thanks. Maybe Marc up here in front.
Thanks. Marc Bianchi with TD Cowen. You had this slide with the pie chart for the craft-led spend on a data center, and I'm curious, you know, which of those categories are you extremely active in right now, and where do you think, you know, maybe there's room to improve or increase the amount of business that you're doing there? Does that involve M&A?
Look, I think when you look at it right now, as far as the electric piece inside the data center would be Cupertino and the Tri-City that we have acquired. You know, that's a big piece of it. Our mechanical business, we're early. DSI was kind of a platform acquisition we made last year. We'll continue to expand where we can against that. When you say that, I mean, those two places, your electric and your mechanical plumbing, so those are the MEP for sure. You look at, okay, well, the high voltage side internally to the plant, internally to the center of the load center, that makes, you know, we're there as well.
The interconnections, the utility piece that's not on there, and the generation, that's not on there certainly is, you know, in our scope. It's less today. I think that comes up. MEP is the where we're leaning into the most and where we're most, I would tell you, have the platform companies to build. When you think about the balance of plant, we're building those capabilities. We have those capabilities today, where we could take full scope, build it out. That wouldn't concern me at all to go build one tomorrow. I do think that we have to be prudent about it. It'd have to be the right case and, you know, look, that GC model that's there today has been there a long time, and we work for a lot of them.
I would say, look, if someone asks us to go build a balance of plant data center tomorrow, we can do it. No question. The thing is, that that has not been something that we've been doing, but before probably last year that we started building a few. We're on some today, and we built those capabilities internally to do so. It's not that big of a piece of it, but it does allow us to understand where the customer's going, to be connected to the customer. There's other models that we can work with GCs where we're connected to that make a lot of sense for us. We're really just trying to drive the cost down for the ultimate customer and by our models. But the MEP is where we're most concentrated in the high voltage piece.
Chad. Which one?
Right behind you.
Oh. Thank you.
Go ahead.
Hi. Chad Dillard, Bernstein. A question for you guys on your integrated fabrication solutions. What share of your projects use these capabilities today? Where's that going? What's driving the pace of deployment? As you go back to your margin bridge, how much does that generate?
Look, I think when you look at that, you know, we probably have 4-5 million sq ft, something like that. It's across all segments. The majority would be going towards, you know, your data center, your load center builds, and then you know, you also have a bunch of transformer capacity in there where you're doing breakers and control rooms, many other things that we do. So it's a broad-based build that continues to build out. You know, it's early for us in the mechanical side, so that's a big piece of it as well. So that mechanical side will continue to grow. Then we're seeing some, you know, what I would consider joint designs, things like that we have the capabilities to do.
If you go back in time, Cupertino's been at almost a decade, well before anyone else was in. Probably too early, Tom would say. That's okay because we have those capabilities now that really, really progress us forward. Really what we're doing there is expanding our ability at labor. It's, it's labor. We can take in a confined space, build quicker, and then go to the field with that and then, and finish up. You just really, what you do is you help yourself deliver. You can do that all across the company. We continue to see where AI plays a role in that, and we get smarter and smarter. We'll be able to do more and more of it, Chad. I do think it gives you some margin expansion, albeit small.
To answer the question earlier about acquisitions, yes, I mean, these are the type of things that we look at when we make acquisitions to enhance that strategy quicker. We're looking at all ways to do that. The capabilities that you discussed that, you know, allow some margin expansion, certainly we would lean into those if we found the right companies.
I think I have somebody up here. Nick.
Right here on this side.
Judy, Scott.
Thanks. Nick Amicucci with Evercore ISI. Duke, I just wanted to try and touch upon too with the transformer manufacturing capacity expansion too. It kinda lines up with around the timeline we're starting to see the kind of conversion to or the new deployments of 800-volt DC. Is there any capability, any kind of thought around entering that type of market? Now I know you had kinda said most things are gonna be grid tied, and so this would be more behind the meter, but just thoughts around that.
I mean, look, we're working with you know, all of our customers on designs and there's a lot of opportunities for us. Customers are asking us to build capacity or, you know, future capacity. Anything that we're building is against future capacity in our minds, and so we would need to see that. Yes, we're getting asked to do all kinds of things around that, and I do think eventually see us expand into some of those things. We're not a manufacturer. I mean, every one of those things have Jayshree, you know, she was on yesterday, 'cause I think, like, if you just take a transformer and you think about what's possible, let me just say what's possible, which I think is much probably bigger than this. It's at least five times if we built it.
If we're gonna build and manufacture, we wanna build the backside of it and we wanna, you know, really get to market quicker, get the certainty from the technologies asking us to do, and it allows us to expand into building it, the total solution. That total solution's more important to us than just the manufacturer. But anything you see us doing, it stands alone economically, but what we can do is significant from a synergy standpoint. Yes, to answer your question in a long way.
Julia, hit Justin right here, please.
Thank you. Justin Hauke at Robert W. Baird. I just wanted to ask about the M&A strategy because the last several years it seems like more of them have been about expanding the vertical integration strategy you guys have done, but you're emphasizing the craft labor and the need to grow that. I guess from here, do you have kind of all the pieces that you want from a manufacturing capacity that there'll be more organic expansions, or are there other areas that you want to expand in that you're not in right now? Just from a strategic-
Yeah. Yeah, Justin, I mean, we buy great companies. If we can build it organically fast enough, we will. If we see great family businesses or businesses that fit the model, fit the mold that we're trying to do, and then listening to our customers on the backside of that with what we believe is the business behind it, yeah, we'll lean into them. You know, we want this to be where people are fighting for capital on all sides of the business, where you have so much opportunity, and then we can decide. I mean, the beauty of our portfolio that we have today, it allows so many ways that we can deploy it.
We'll deploy the capital that we have and stay prudent to our balance sheet along the way to what acquisition make the most sense to the shareholder. I mean, if that provides the returns because of the strategy that we have, we'll lean into that side of it. But I do think it gives us flexibility on the manufacturing side to create those, what I consider, unique positions in the marketplace where you have such as, you know, the Strait today or whatever it may be. There's always something coming from overseas that's delayed. If we can do it in North America like we've done now, I like what we've done on our vertical supply chain and, you know, we would look for opportunities there.
Liam.
Thank you. I'm sorry. Liam Burke, B. Riley Securities. Karl, you mentioned in your presentation that you have a great relationship with the unions. Is there any conflict between union labor and being able to cross-train your craft force?
You know, good question. We certainly are in front collaborating with this, especially as a lot of these projects and programs have a multi-trade jurisdictional restriction with them. For us, our customers are coming to us early and helping us, asking us to help solve that out in front of that. You know, geographically, there's constraints. You know, the IBEW, LIUNA, UAs. As we try to bring them together, we believe we can stay in front of that and solve that, and that's really been our approach, is to be in front with them versus being behind it.
Great. Thank you.
Yeah, I would say, you know, just from my standpoint on the unions, you know, a family three generations before me have 50-year pins in IBEW, and those relationships are deep, but the company is 50/50 union, non-union, and we're able to really perform and have a great relationship to say the customer's asking us to do something. We either don't have the labor or geographically it doesn't make sense, but we don't back up from that. We work together with them to, you know, create. I would say easily the largest. You know, we create more jobs for unions than anyone else. We're creating jobs for them daily while growing other businesses, and sometimes we'll have non-union cross over to union.
I think it's just a full scale way to look at labor across all labor unions as well as non-union.
Kevin.
Hey, Kevin Wilson, Truist Securities. In the traditional power gen market, whether that be gas or potentially nuclear, do you think you need to do acquisitions to strengthen your position, manage risk or be able to grow with the market? Or will you continue to use the joint venture approach like with Zachry, to approach that market? Thanks.
Yeah, I mean, I think it was a way for us to enter on the combined cycle side with Zachry in a JV. I think it's all of the above, to be honest. Like I think you'll see acquisitions against some of it. I think, you know, we'll do some JVs. The simple cycles are a little different. They're not as complicated when you try to sync them up. So we have some, you know, simple cycles that we can do. And as we evolve over this five-year plan, I mean, it's a market we're in. Abby's in the room leading it. And I think when we think through it. I'll just throw all the questions on you, that'd be good.
I think when we think through it, yes, I mean, we want to be able to be full scale in it. I will tell you, in my timeframe, I've seen many companies that thought they were really good at this, have big issues in building combined cycles. I have. I'm unwilling to take those risks of the past. Simple. I mean, if a customer wants to go with this and they want certainty, I think we can build them every bit as good as bidding them, but for the same money. We don't. We can work together, we can define risk, we can do a lot of things. I just don't think the company needs to take that risk of a combined cycle as it stands today.
We'll look for acquisitions, we'll look for ways to enhance that business. I would say this, when we look at any of these acquisitions, it's never just what you see, ever. Like, if we lean into something, it's not just about data centers. In fact, if it was just data centers, we're not even looking. Because I don't—I'm not gonna buy on a hockey stick. I'm not spending your money, right? Why would I do that? Like, we're really, I'm really concerned with these hockey stick companies that are out there. That's just not something we're gonna lean into. It's not. We want tried and true 50-year-old companies that have longevity against our strategies, and mechanical and plumbing can cross from a generation station. They can build all kinds of different things besides data centers.
If we see a great heavy mechanical company that can do multiple things, yes, we'll lean into them, but it's not just gonna be like, generation or data center. It's gonna be all the above approach and, you know, a great company with great management team.
Maheep. God, like, who is that?
Hi. Maheep Mandloi from Mizuho. Maybe just to follow up on that, you talked about the risk on CCGTs and maybe new technologies here. As you kind of look for the revenue growth or EPS growth above the target for these new segments, do you anticipate a change in the revenue recognition or the contract structures from cost plus to fixed cost? Because I think most of the private peers are on the fixed cost for CCGTs, for example, right?
Yeah. I haven't seen them on fixed cost, but on the ones I'm looking at. I would just say in general, if it goes to fixed cost and the people that build them, they don't have the labor to build them. I'm not sure how they're gonna do that. You're gonna get, if you build 70 at once, everybody's building them, who's gonna build the data centers on the backside of that? They're gonna do that too. Because the people that build it, if you look at Bechtel, for example, they build them. They don't have labor. They use us or they use someone else, or they try to go to a local hiring hall to do that. They're not there. If someone's gonna take labor risk in this market to build a CCGT, I mean, let them go for it.
It's great. We got plenty of opportunity. We'll do something else. We got four ways to stack it. A huge portfolio. That's where we're going. We're not gonna take a risk on the CCGT. I've seen it. I've watched it. We're not going back. We're not doing that. Just not. You can thank me later.
Just trying to go backwards. There you go.
Hi, Brian Russo with Jefferies. Just to follow up on the M&A question. When you look at your key six markets, where are you seeing the most competition from your peers and maybe private firms that are looking to also, you know, expand and leverage their platforms to compound growth? And are there any financial criteria or guardrails we should be aware of as it relates to Quanta?
I mean, we can bond anything we can think of, so I'm not worried about that part of it. I would just say when I think about competition, part of that, it depends, but when I look at it's more about where we can scale versus competition. In some places, someone may be better for, you know, job one, and we may be better for two through 10. You'll see some of that. Like I said in the prepared remarks, I mean, we're negotiating 75% kind of what we do. We may firm them up, we may do some things, but the negotiations are around 75%. You know, we're only really competing on 25% of the business. I think when you look at the others, they're probably competing on the 75% of the business.
That's how different it is. I think for us, it's really how do we work with the customer? How do we provide prudency on the regulated side while we're doing that? Yes, there's some local competition, but not at scale.
The financial guardrails, I mean, it's no different from the way we run our business, right? The way we look at acquisitions, the way we invest in organic growth, the types of work we will enter into. It's very much focused on, is it gonna drive those returns over the long run? That's what we're focused on. We're not focused on some short-term opportunity that may be good for an instant, but then it creates some problems down the road that either we worked with the wrong customer, we have trouble collecting our cash, or it's not the right risk profile. That's not what we're focused on. We're focused very much on a long, long duration, durable story.
I think, like, look, you look at telecom, we don't have scale there in places. I mean, we're the other side of that. I mean, that's a place where I would tell you, like, there's plenty of competition everywhere out there, but we don't have scale, and so that's where it sits. Large pipe, same thing. I mean, we're doing great things there. I think there's a lot of opportunity in it. I do. But, you know, we haven't tried to scale it, we haven't invested in it, but the opportunities are there, and we'll grow that business. So there's plenty of competition there.
Questions?
I think
Manisha maybe.
Manish Somaiya.
We'll go, yeah. Go ahead, Alex. We'll go over to Manish. Sorry.
Thank you. Alex Rygiel, Texas Capital. Could we come back to the 80 basis points of Adjusted EBITDA margin expansion? Can you talk about some of the bigger primary buckets where you think that'll develop from? Then highlight any headwinds that maybe you didn't mention yet.
I mean, I think we talked about the three areas in which we see the opportunities to expand margin, right? It's performance improvements that you know we have to own up to it. We haven't performed as well as we'd like in certain parts of our operations. We absolutely do see the ability to continue improving in those. We feel good about where we're heading in that direction. Our Canadian operations, the market is getting stronger. We've done a really good job of rightsizing that part of our business to be ready for this opportunity set that's coming in front of us. Our legacy underground business, we see the ability to continue improving margins there. Again, improving our performances. And then the growth of the fabrication and MEP capabilities, right?
Depending on how quickly that can grow, depending on what our customers want, there is ability to get margin expansion from that. Again, to Duke's point, it's still a relatively small portion of our overall revenue. It is the fastest growing. If that has the ability to grow even faster, you're gonna see more margin expansion from that. Then the supply chain solutions that we've developed, our vertical supply chain, will. You know, like Duke said, we're in the top five purchaser of high voltage equipment. That gives us a lot of strength and buying power. We believe we're gonna be able to continue to use that strength very well and continue to expand those margins.
I would say those are the three big areas that allow us to get closer to that 80 basis points and hopefully even more.
Yeah, I would say as well as what Jayshree said, the two platform companies that are inside that business today, from last year, which would be DSI and our civil business, Boyer.
Butler, yeah.
There's another company in Houston called Boyer. W.T. Byler that's in there. You know, I think in general, those two are performing very nicely, giving us a lot of flexibility on multiple builds that have a lot of synergies in there. That gives us a lot of conviction on moving those underground margins up into the ranges that Jayshree talked about.
Manish Somaiya from Cantor. Two questions. One, Duke, perhaps this is an easy one for you. What percentage of the employee base is cross-trained right now, and is that a target that you have in mind?
Yeah, I mean, we don't really keep track of that now. Like, in underground, they can really cross almost all segments. There's underground business. It's significant. Where I would tell you where you're getting is where you struggle, like, a welder being a lineman is probably not gonna happen. A welder will be a welder. Where it does happen is you can have, like, high voltage come down into low voltage, so we have a lot of cross-training in some of those fields. It's more difficult to go from low voltage into high voltage just because of the complexity of some of the things that you need to do there.
It's not to say that we're not. What I would tell you even more so that's important is when people come into the pre-apprenticeships where you would not even have opportunities for 50%. Now you can say, "Oh, you. The first thing you do day one is you climb." Usually it's a 100 ft. And if you're scared, probably not your deal. And so then you go, "Hey, how about inside electric? How about mechanical?" And we can provide way more opportunities with our pre-apprenticeships and what we've done, as Karl said, with his training, so we can really cross-train early there. But not to say that we're not doing that. I would say if I just had to guess and thumb it, pure guess, it's probably 30%. Karl?
Yeah. I think it's important you gotta realize our customers, we're in front of so many things and so many of these negotiations, even not only with the unions to that question, but into this regard. We're planning years in advance of what this looks like, so we can ramp up the training programs to the scale, to the geographic areas that our customers are being asked to hit on these points from Duke. Also we'll go out with the different operating units in those areas, regions, however it looks. If you take many builds that start to stack on top of each other, we can change our linear approach to how we're building some of these projects, whether it's in the buildings, out of the buildings, many different ways to go about it.
Okay. Just on leverage, Jayshree, you mentioned 1.5-2 x. What's sort of the peak leverage you would get to for an acquisition that you would make?
I think, you know, a good example is what we did when we acquired Blattner. We got to around 2.5x-2.7x in that range. I have the number up there, but it's like that. Like, you could see us pushing closer to 3x if it's a company that we believe very firmly and that we can get behind. Also the ability to rapidly delever after that, right? That's very critical in our willingness to go beyond that 2x.
It's worth clarifying what we mean by fungibility of labor, so let's just take Indiana. If you're an electrician, journeyman electrician, you can be on a power plant, you can be on the battery, you can be on solar, you can be on the station, in the stations. You can be in a data center. If you can see all the markets and the fungibility of what one electrician, that would be apprentices, everyone around there, that they can move theirselves around. Just to give you some example of what that looks like.
Ati.
Thanks. Ati Modak from Goldman Sachs. Jayshree, maybe this question for you on the active market opportunities that you highlighted on your EPS slide deck. I just wanna make sure I understand properly. You said that that's not included in the guidance that you're providing there, but it's in the full stack. Is that going to be like the 765 kV lines? I would've imagined it's closer to the organic side of the equation versus inorganic. Can you help us understand where that lands?
I think you should look at this as we have a multiple way of getting to our targets and opportunities to grow beyond that, right? We're talking about these active market opportunities that you've heard about that we're very closely involved with our customers. The timing of those things can be still a little bit up in the air, and we're working very closely with our customers, as I was saying, as Duke was saying, to accelerate those things. We wanna take into account, we wanna give you guys prudent guidance around these larger, more exciting opportunities, but have some things that have to get through the regulatory process or you've got to get through the permitting, whatever can happen when you're building large energy infrastructure. Sure, there
I would think about it in several ways, right? There are those market opportunities, if they all come in together, allows us the ability to stack beyond what we've shown in the targets, but it also allows you to think about our targets as a way to sort of de-risk that range we're giving. I would look at it in both ways, but the way we sit here today, given the visibility we have with our target growth aspects, we believe that these are stacking opportunities, but allows us to de-risk our targets if for whatever reasons projects move. I mean, we've talked about this. We're in the infrastructure business. We're super excited about where we're going.
We have the abilities for margin expansion, but we're much more focused on that bottom line, and there may be times when we will give up some margin to ensure that we have that long-term visibility and durable earnings profile, and we recognize that things can happen, projects can move. We keep ourselves at an efficiency rate of around 80%. We plan for that, is maybe a better way of saying that, because things can happen. Things just do. You're gonna have a tariff situation. You're gonna have a political situation. You're gonna have a permitting situation. But we believe we've built a portfolio where we can manage through those cycles and give you the comfort of what we're telling you around our targets with opportunities for upside.
Like, if you think about 765, if you hear about 10 and 8 GW, it just means the other two 2500 lines that have a higher degree of likelihood of building as well. Like, I don't get too kind of enamored. It's a way that I believe we can stack. There's multiple ways, as Jayshree said, and so just to give you some context.
Chris.
Hey. Chris Tsung over at Wolfe Research. I wanted to just ask about the CAGR for key markets on the power generation and energy. Like, how many NiSource-like generation projects is embedded in that 7.5%-12.5% growth CAGR?
I mean, we've talked about what we've announced publicly with NiSource. We have that involved. That is baked into our projections. As Duke talked about, there's opportunities for more, and if those come to fruition, that'll just stack on top.
Okay. That's it? Any other questions?
I do think like.
I should say when they come to fruition.
I would say, like, if it's, we have multiple opportunities there. If it's not NiSource, then it'll be someone else. I, like, I don't want you to get, we used some examples today, and is that predicated on those examples? What happens if one doesn't happen? Well, we go to the next one. I still stand by what you're seeing with or without NiSource. Does that answer your question?
Okay, good.
Go ahead, Phil.
Philip Shen with ROTH Capital Partners. You know, there are a number of major banks right now that are on pause or partially or in full on the Section 48E ITC, so for your renewables business, this is important. You know, a lot of the volume we're seeing for 2026 is the Section 48 ITC. The 48Es really are not gonna start construction till 2027-2028, and the uncertainty is really driven by this FIOC guidance delay. I know you guys have tier one customers. They can pivot to other sources of capital. The reality is, though, a lot of supply is going away as it relates to tax equity or at least on pause. Just curious, how are you guys dealing with the situation and how do you adjust, if at all?
Are you even seeing it yet?
Yeah, no, yeah, we're well aware of those tariff complexities. I will tell you that we are working with customers who are really getting in front of this. As we sit here today, we do not see any concerns around what I've shown you as around our growth profile, around the power generation and storage side. We continue to see a lot of activity with those customers. I agree with you that that is out there and that is a risk. It's no different from the risks. It's a different type of risk, but we again if you work with the right customers who know about these things and get ahead of it, we feel it gives us the comfort on giving you the numbers that we've set in front of you.
Right now, as I see it, we still see good growth opportunities in our renewables portfolio.
Yeah. Normally, when you look at what we're giving, you know, kinda. If we give you broad-based guidance like this, you can expect about 80% of it to be right. Like, there's gonna be 20% that moves to the right or it fluctuates a little bit here or there. One thing may look different. That the portfolio of Quanta gives us that flexibility to work through that. If we get 90% right, those numbers are higher. Like, it just are. The portfolio and how we've approached it in a prudent manner, it's like 80% gets it right. You're gonna have some things that delay or all kinds of things along the way. We expect that.
Sangeeta, did you have a question? I thought I saw a hand up. Any other questions? Going once? Brian?
What's that?
Oh.
Yeah. Thanks, Brian Brophy, Stifel. Appreciate you guys doing this. You talked a lot about providing a solution. Presumably, that comes with accelerating schedules for the customer, creating a lot of certainty for the customer. When you think about pricing and the ability to command pricing, presumably that's something a customer would be willing to pay for, particularly in this environment. When you're thinking about driving pricing versus kind of revenue certainty and getting visibility, how do you think about that trade-off?
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, there's some on our regulated side of the business. I wouldn't expect anything more than what you've seen. Like it just. We're working with prudence. We're working with regulators. We already have an issue on what's the cost to ratepayer. Like, that we have to actually work with them to show them a better total cost than they would've got independently. If we can do that and create margin headroom, yeah, sure. But the total cost to ratepayer with us doing a solution should go down. Just it should. We can do that in a collaborative manner with a client, and are doing it in many cases.
In saying that, on the other side of technology, if there's something there that they want faster or we have the flexibility, or it's gonna cost more, or there's risk, it's really pricing risk in these things. As we price risk, if there's risk to it, yes, you can expect more margins. I still say it's a multi-decade compounding of earnings story with margin improvements along the way that are, you know, kind of what we've laid out in the framework. That's still how we'd look at the company. There is opportunities.
Okay. Any other questions? Okay, great. For those in the room, we've got kind of an informal lunch outside. Quanta management team will be there, so you can circulate, pick their brain, talk to them, as you will. Plenty of great swag out there, everybody. Come on.
Um, I wanna-
It's good. No, I'm just saying, like, pick it up.
I wanna-
Don't make us pack it.
I wanna say from my standpoint, this management team, Kip and Sean, they work extremely hard to make this happen for you and, I can only say they're world-class, every bit as much as our execution capabilities in the field, and the ladies, thank you for what y'all do too as well. Thank you, and thanks for being here.
Yeah. Thank you. Thanks to everybody on the webcast who joined us. We certainly appreciate it.