Good to speak with during the tour, and that are going to be here for the duration of the day and the lunch afterwards. We'd also like to welcome everyone who is joining us via the livestream on our website. Just a reminder, with the webcast, that will be archived on our website, and you can access that later. We'll also post a PDF of today's presentation after we're done here today. Just a programming note, if we have the agenda slide up, I just want to note that we will have a short break that will occur after Greg Hoffman, our CFO, gives his presentation. We'll have a quick break there. If you don't mind, please save your questions; we're going to do Q&A at the end. That'll be the most expedient for everyone's time.
After we do our little panel discussion near the end of our agenda, then we'll do a Q&A session. Now, just to make sure that everyone is Mirandized, I am going to talk about our disclosure here before we get started. We'd like to remind everyone that this information today is being recorded. It only speaks as of today, October 22, 2025. Please be advised that any time-sensitive information may no longer be accurate as of the date of any replay or transcript reading. I would also like to remind you that the statements made in today's discussion that are not historical facts, including statements of expectations or future events or future financial performance, are considered forward-looking statements made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.
We will be making forward-looking statements in today's presentation that are, by their nature, beyond our control in certain matters. Actual results may differ materially. Please refer to our press release that we put out yesterday afternoon that has all of our disclosures on forward-looking statements. Those factors and other risks and uncertainties are also described in detail in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Management will also be referring today to non-GAAP measures, including adjusted net income, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, and net debt. Reconciliations to the nearest GAAP measures, again, can be found at the end of our press release. Please note that references made to the company's fiscal year also represent that we're a September 30 year-end company. All of this information will be on our website after this.
Now, without further ado, I would like to introduce our Founder and Executive Chairman, Ned Fleming. Ned?
Thank you, Rick. Good morning. For construction people, this is afternoon because they've been up working since about 5:00 A.M. I just want everybody to be reminded. I see all the construction guys nodding. Welcome to Road 2030. It's a terrific day. We're going to talk about how we're moving from a three-lane road that crosses the Sun Belt to a six-lane interstate. It seems like just yesterday, the other founder, Charles Owens, and I were talking about this on the way home from losing out on bidding for the company that he had run. It was a Danish company we had talked about last night called Superfoss. I said, "Charles, can we build another business like this?" I'll never forget, we're on the airplane, we're flying home, we've lost out, we're both disappointed.
He grabs his wallet out of his pocket and he picks it up and he says a little sheet of paper and he says, "Absolutely, these are our next 10 acquisitions." I think we bought six or seven of those businesses as we built this business. It has been better than we ever imagined, and the future is brighter today than it has ever been. That's what we're going to talk about today, the future. We go to the next slide. We talked about this slide when they brought it to me, and I said, "Can't we just use the one from the last meeting?" The strategy has not changed. Today, we still look at a market that is large and growing in the asphalt business. We still see a market that is highly, highly fragmented. It's a relative market share business. Consolidation makes for a stronger, better business.
That comes through in the profits and the revenues and the people. It's exactly the same today as it was 25 years ago when we were riding on that airplane talking about doing this. I will say, though, as you'll learn in this presentation, we are better prepared today to take advantage of that market strategically, organizationally, and financially. We'll talk through that. Infrastructure services continue to need to grow. I don't go anywhere in the country where somebody says, "Our roads are great. We don't need to invest any more capital." Nowhere. Does anybody live in that spot? I haven't seen it. They need to be done. That demand is growing, and the voters are tired. They want their roads to be better, and they want them to be bigger and broader so they don't have to spend as much time in traffic.
We focus not just in a highly fragmented industry, but on specific places that you'll see where we are doing recurring maintenance work. If we turn to the next slide, it'll amaze people, but 94% of all the roads in America are asphalt. Even when you're riding on a concrete road, it has underlayment that is asphalt. Kind of odd. That's why they're so much more expensive than asphalt roads. 94%. If you're on a road, it's going to probably be asphalt. The roadways are in poor condition. I don't know about you all, but in my family, when I grew up, if I came home with a D, I was in trouble. Our country has had a D on the roads for a long, long time. It's something that we need to focus on. It's something that our elected officials know that we need to focus on.
You're hearing more and more about it as we move forward in this. One of the things that's happening is our roadway system is deteriorating. A road needs to be redone, replaced, repaved every 10 to 15 years. I'm going to talk about why the cycle time for that is actually increasing in a moment. If you think about it, that's why maintaining the roads is recurring revenue for this business. This is a business that is going to continue to pave roads. There are roads we have paved in the Florida area two and three times since we started this company. That's going to continue. As we grow the roads, if we move to the next slide, what you're going to see is lane miles are expanding. They're up. One of the things we're going to talk about today is organic growth.
You're going to learn why the organic growth in this business is so dynamic. We get that question all the time. Got it last night as I was sitting at dinner with one of the analysts. One of the reasons is the lanes are expanding all over. We have more roads. We also have new roads because we're growing, particularly in the Sun Belt part of the United States. The other piece of it is we're traveling more. People are getting in their cars and traveling more, which means the roads are getting used more, which means we have to replace the pavement. Those reasons, along with the fact that, yeah, we have electric vehicles. They weigh more. They're heavier. More people, believe it or not, are driving trucks and SUVs. Heavier vehicles beat up the road more. Let's just think about that. You've got more lanes increasing.
Gosh, that's growth. You've got cycle times increasing. That's growth. You've got new roads increasing, and that's growth. The reason we have organic growth is because of all of those things. We're doing it in a part of the country. We moved to the next one. That is growing five times faster than the rest of the part of the country. Five times faster. On this chart, it's interesting. We had an interesting discussion about it because we're in six of the top seven states, not six of the top ten, but six of the top seven states. We're investing in places like Houston, Texas, with Jack Wheeler, who's here today. I mean, Austin, Texas, with Jack, and Brad Green that's here today in Houston for a reason. It's where the demographic growth for our country is growing. It's speeding up. It's where young people want to be.
It's where businesses are. It's where BMW is building plants. It's where Tesla built a plant in Austin, Texas, that Jack and his crew at Lone Star Paving did all the paving work for. That's where the growth in our country is. This is a chart that we've been showing for the last 25 years. Yes, we've expanded it, but our focus has always been on the Sun Belt. As you walk in, you saw a chart today that shows all the dots. When we started, we had two dots. Today, as we've grown this business, what's great about growth here is I've talked about organic growth, but we also have acquisitive growth, and we're going to talk about that too. As you leave today, you could do all of us a favor. One of the founders, Charles Owens, is not here today, but he loved maps.
If you ever went in Charles's office, he had a map of every single state we were in. He would have people put dots where all the different asphalt plants were, and he would look about where he's about. As you leave, there is a Sharpie pen out there. I want everybody to write him a note. If you know him, write him a note. If not, just sign your name. I'm going to then fold that up, and Jule and I will present that to him at one of the company meetings. Would you please do that? This chart is not going to change. The growth in our country is really moving in this direction. We're going to continue to stay focused on the Sun Belt. Don't expect us to do anything else. We can double the size of this business and not leave the stage we're in.
That's how much opportunity there is for us. Move to the next one. This is my favorite chart. Today, this team is better. They continue to work harder. They have more opportunity, and they're 10 years younger than they were when we started this business. Think about that. We're smarter, better, working harder, and we're younger. That creates opportunity for the business. They are better prepared financially with the partners we have with our financial structure. They understand the strategy better than any team we've ever had. They understand how to execute it better than any team we've ever had. Jule Smith is doing the best job of anybody I've ever worked with. I started to count how many different management teams I've worked with and all the different things they've done, and I stopped counting at 36. He has built an organization that has kept culture.
We talked about it last night. Culture is a strategic advantage for this company. It's one of the reasons we're able to buy the businesses we're able to buy. It's one of the reasons we're able to attract the talent we're able to attract. He does that better than anybody I've ever worked with. He builds the organization ahead of the growth, and he keeps the culture. I'm not sure what the secret sauce is, but if I could get him to write a book, I would have him write a book. This team is not only are they prepared, but they're led well. It's an important piece of this. We don't talk about it enough, but Jule's the quarterback, and he knows which player is open to throw the ball to. He throws it to the open player.
As we move forward, what really excites me is not only is the opportunity better than it's ever been, but the team that we have is better than it's ever been, and the leadership of that team is as good as it's ever been. For me, it is always a pleasure to get to introduce the Chief Executive Officer of Construction Partners, Jule Smith. Jule. You know, I don't know why, but my picture, I look older in my picture, and you still look young. Thank you.
Yes, sir. Thank you, Ned. I'm not sure what to think about that analogy. There's a lot of pressure on quarterbacks these days. I'd just like to start by talking about a competitive advantage at CPI that we don't talk about a lot. If I was an investor, it would certainly mean a lot to me. That's our board of directors. I don't know many companies that can say we're 23 years old, and five of our board of directors, the majority of our board, including the two founders, have been there the entire time. They've been there since the beginning. That is great because there's a lot of wisdom and experience when we're in that room. They also think long term, and they make sure that we're thinking long term, not quarter to quarter, not short-term fixes.
That is a real blessing for Greg and I and the leadership team that we can focus on what creates value in the long run. Ned is the leader of that, and he does a great job. I'll tell you, back in the summer of 2024, I called Ned. I said, "Ned, I have found our Texas platform company. All we've got to do is we got to find a billion dollars." After a couple-second pause, Ned said, he jumped right in and said, "Okay, let's find a way to get it done." That is the attitude that we're led with. Ned, thank you. We did it quickly. We did it quickly. For those that were in New York two years ago, you remember I spoke at this slide. I said, "Hey, that picture, I remember exactly when it was taken.
It was two years ago at the time, the week before I stepped into this role." I made a joke that that guy looked so relaxed and naive. I remember while I was talking about that, I was thinking in the back of my mind, "Okay, Jule, in four years, when we come back to New York and do this again, you cannot use that same picture. You have got to get a new picture." There is some small benefit to accomplishing your plan two years early. No one's had time to think about getting a new picture. We'll see what happens in the next five years. Clicker. Is this it? All right, great. This was the map that we showed you two years ago in New York at our analyst day. We were in six states. We had 67 asphalt plants and 4,000 employees.
We said, "Hey, we're getting together five years after our IPO. We want to go over the things we said on the roadshow back in 2018. We've accomplished those." I want to lay out a long-term plan of where the company was going using the same strategy on how we grow the top line and the bottom line. I just want to review what we told you back in 2023. The first bar is the year we had just finished. It's sort of our trailing 12 months. We were about a $1.6 billion company in October 2023. We said, "We're going to grow 15 to 20% annually. That'll get us to be somewhere between $2.7 and $3.2 billion." The first year, we had a typical CPI year. We grew 17%. Last year, this year we're finishing up with a transformational year, we grew 54%.
We also said, "We're going to expand the bottom line." We were at 11% EBITDA margins. We said, "We're going to expand EBITDA about 50 basis points a year, and we're going to be between 13 and 14% by 2027." I have to tell you, that week in New York, my son Gabriel, who was a ninth grader at the time, that was his fall break. I talked to him and my wife, Alisa, who's here today. I said, "Hey, don't you want to go to New York for fall break?" They came to the presentation. Gabriel was sitting in the very back of the room. I wasn't sure how much he was paying attention to this corporate presentation.
That night at dinner, I said, "Gabriel, what do you think?" He said, "Dad," he said, "when you were talking about revenue, that made sense." He said, "But when you started talking about EBITDA margins getting to between 13 and 14%, these two guys sitting in front of me looked at each other and said, 'Yeah, that's not happening.'" I immediately knew what Wall Street thought would be the heavier lift for us. I want to tell you to relax. There's no Smith kids planted in the audience today. We were able the first year to grow over 100 basis points. Last year, this year we were able to expand EBITDA margins almost 300 basis points. I will say this yellow bar, we just pre-released our earnings yesterday. That is the midpoint to illustrate. We're using the midpoint there.
As we expanded the top line and the EBITDA margin, the cash flow has expanded as well. We said we'd get to between $350 and $440 million of EBITDA. This year, we're at $423 million. As Greg and I, just a year ago yesterday, as we announced our outlook for 2024, clearly we indicated that with the Lone Star Paving acquisition, we were entering a transformational year. Each quarter, as those dollars went from outlook to actual, we have started to get the question, "Where do you go from here? What's next?" That is why we're here today to answer what comes next for Construction Partners. As Ned introduced, we're going to roll out today Road 2030, which is a five-year plan of where the company's going.
We also want to tell you how we plan on getting there and some of the things we're going to use to do that. We're excited about this. Road 2030 in five years, CPI will be at another level in terms of size and scale, but also profitability and cash flow. This is our map today as we get started. The yellow dots are what the map was in 2023. The blue dots are everything that's happened in the last 24 months. We've been busy. Since 2023, we've added 53 new facilities, whether it's a hot mix asphalt plant, a quarry, or a liquid asphalt terminal. We've added three new platform companies in Texas, Oklahoma, and Tennessee that expand our map and start to create more conversations with potential sellers in those states. We've added seven new brands.
In addition to the three platform companies, we have four subsidiaries that give us another growth engine within a state in a geographic region. I'm going to be going over one example, and Nelson's going to be going over another where those subsidiary companies allow us to grow. As we start 2030, we're now in eight states, have 109 asphalt plants, 17 quarries. As we get started, we also have more growth engines, these platform companies and subsidiaries, more management teams to handle the growth to come. What's the environment that we're operating in as we get started? There are four macro trends that you've heard us talk about, but they're still powerful. What's been driving our growth, they're going to continue to drive our growth. The first is the migration to the Sun Belt. That started during COVID to accelerate.
It's continued to accelerate, both people and businesses moving to the states we're in. That drives demand not only for private construction, but also for public investment to keep up with the growth. Reshoring. We talked about that a lot since COVID. Companies moving their manufacturing facilities and businesses to the Sun Belt because they wanted to strengthen their supply chain. We believe that with this administration and the tariffs that are being implemented, that's going to continue that trend of companies saying, "I want to move to the United States to manufacture my product," and the Sun Belt is going to get more than its fair share of those companies. That is a trend driving growth. As Ned said, the federal and the state governments are saying, "We've got to invest in infrastructure." That is going to continue. I'll talk a little more about that here in a minute.
Part of our acquisition strategy, and it's been the same since Charles and Ned founded the company, is our industry is going through a generational industry consolidation. A lot of the private owners are getting to retirement age, and that's driving the chance to talk to them. CPI is seen as the major consolidator in our industry, and a lot of sellers would like to talk to us about joining our family of companies. Just a minute on federal infrastructure funding. I want to focus for a minute on what is the main part of that for us, and that is the Surface Transportation Program. Contrary to a popular misconception, that did not start with the IJA. It started decades ago. As you can see here, it was MAP21, FASTAC, then it was part of the IJA. It was really only a third of that at $350 billion.
2026 is the last year of that program, and they are now on Capitol Hill talking about a five-year reauthorization. We are very confident that there's going to be a reauthorization, and we're very confident that it's going to be at a higher level than the previous five years. Why do we have confidence in that? Because that's what's always happened. The program's never gone down. It's never not been reauthorized. That is because infrastructure is the most bipartisan thing in Washington. Republicans and Democrats agree. We've got to invest in our infrastructure, and they know that it also grows the economy and creates jobs. We are in the process. This administration is very focused on hard infrastructure, which is good for Construction Partners. We had one of our own, Ty Johnson, just a couple of months ago.
The President of Fred Smith Company was on Capitol Hill testifying about the reauthorization. That is the main funding mechanism for what Construction Partners does. Our strategy is we get started on Road 2030. We on purpose use the same slide we showed two years ago. Two years ago, we got up there and said, Greg and I, the big news today is there's no new news. What we were trying to say is, hey, we know you've got a fairly new CEO and a fairly new CFO. What we're communicating is we're not here today to announce some brand new strategy or big ideas. The strategy that CPI was founded upon 20 years ago is even more powerful today. Why would we try to change that? We're going to continue to execute on that strategy. That is the same thing we're communicating today.
We're going to continue to be an asphalt-centered infrastructure company in the Sun Belt region of the United States. We organize in our local markets. We're going to do repeat revenue for recurring customers. We're going to focus on small projects that are six to nine months in duration that have higher margins and lower risk. In doing that, we're going to generate a lot of cash. We're going to take that cash and we're going to invest it in high-return growth initiatives. That's the strategy, and it's not changing. I want to make sure today I want to communicate that the fact that the strategy is not changing doesn't mean that CPI is not changing. We are always changing on how we execute that strategy.
To illustrate that, I want to show you something that we use internally to help keep us dialed in on how we execute that strategy. We call it the CPI way. It's a simple acronym that we use. The C is for culture of the local company. P stands for power of the parent. The I stands for innovative mindset. I want to focus on the third point here. We're going to talk about the first two in a minute. Innovative mindset. Jim Collins defines innovation as a good idea done. That's the mindset we want to have. What are the good ideas? How do we improve? How do we get better? That drives us to use technology, like in our fleet.
We are trying to put in the hands of our superintendents as they're on a paving crew to be able to see in real time where their trucks are so they can plan their work and know when that truck will get through the current traffic to get there. When we're running our asphalt plants, we're building right now a platform that you can see in real time exactly what's happening at every asphalt plant across the company. A superintendent can see, is the plant keeping up with my crew? We've said before, we're in the process now of implementing an artificial intelligence tool to help us be able to bid better and to leave less money on the table and to make more margin. It's not just technology. We're also looking for innovation in how we create employee benefits and incentive systems to attract and retain the best workforce.
We're constantly changing on how we execute a strategy that's not changing. As you would imagine, if the strategy is not changing the next five years, the levers we use to grow the top line and bottom line aren't changing either. Our top line levers will continue to be organic growth. That's what we focus on the most. Part of that is greenfield facilities, which you'll hear about that later today. Finally, acquisitions. Nelson's going to cover those more. I'm going to focus a little more on the bottom line levers. The first is scale. As we're growing the top line, how do we keep fixed costs growing slower and capture more of that on the bottom line? That's powerful over time.
Clearly, this year was a huge step forward in scale, but each year as we grow normally, we hope to collect 5 to 10 basis points on the bottom line just through building scale. Vertical integration. Nelson's going to show you on his map, there's over 1,000 service companies in our states that do grading and utilities. It can be acquisitions that expand our construction service capabilities. We can also build it organically, like we're doing in an upstate of South Carolina, building grading capabilities. We can also capture through construction materials, through aggregates and liquid asphalt. You're going to hear later today how we're expanding a liquid asphalt terminal to capture more margin as we grow our volumes. I want to focus today with you on the most powerful of the three levers, and that's building better markets.
We've already talked about, I just told you, part of that is using technology to bid better, to be a better player in that market. The most powerful aspect of building better markets is simply getting to the right markets with the right partner. Getting to the right markets with the right partner. This is the markets we've entered and the partners we've been with just in the last 12 months. We've been able to study these markets, study the growth that's happening there, and say, can we create organic growth there? Are there opportunities to make value-added acquisitions there? Are these the right partners, their character, their people? Are these the right partners for us? As we build better markets, we have to get to the right markets with the right partners. I have lived this, and this is where the C and the P come in.
In 2011, when my family business joined CPI, they were able to get to Raleigh-Durham, a dynamic growing market. They were able to partner with a management team that knew Raleigh-Durham intimately. The company had been operating at that time for over 80 years in this market. They were smart. They did not come in and change everything. They said, "We want you to continue being who you are. Keep your culture. You know this market." They brought the power of the parent. They said, "Here are some tools and some technology to help you know your business better. We are going to put that in your hands. Where there are opportunities to bid more work, we are going to increase your bonding capacity.
Where there is value in growing organically, here is the capital to do that." When they brought those tools to us, the power of the parent, and we were able to keep our culture, it was like rocket fuel. We grew organically double digits every year for a decade. At the same time, we were able to expand our margins. That is what we mean as a margin lever by building better markets, getting to the right markets with the right people. I want to go over two examples just in the last 60 days. Monday, we announced the acquisition of P&S Paving, who has a dominant market share in a very fast-growing part of our country, the East Coast of Florida. They are headquartered in Daytona Beach. They are led by a great management team, Tim Phillips, who is with us today, and Curtis Long.
They have a great management team, and that is what sets the stage for growing. Now they will be our East Coast division in Florida, and that creates opportunities to grow organically north into Jacksonville and south toward Palm Beach, getting in the right markets with the right partner. Going back 60 days ago, we entered Houston with Durwood Green. Houston, and I really did not know this a year and a half ago as much as I do now, is an incredible part of our country. The metro area of Houston is bigger than three of our entire states. Not only is it a huge metropolitan area, both in population and geography, it has a faster growth rate than almost everywhere in the country. That is clearly a place that we wanted to be. We don't want to be there if we can't have the right partner.
For us to be able to partner with Durwood Green, Brad Green is with us today. A third-generation business with three Greens, Brad, his brother Jonathan, his brother Daniel, and his cousin Jonathan, all in their 40s that have grown up in this business, who have a great management team underneath them, that sets the stage for us not only being to Houston, but grow organically and grow margins. Sixty days later, we were able to bolt on and expand in Houston. We were able to buy the construction assets, the equipment, the plants, and hire the people from Bulk and Materials. That immediately built scale into the market. It immediately gave us the ability to have throughput, even more so than when we first went to Houston, through the Pelican Asphalt Terminal, the yellow dot, to capture all that margin.
If you look at the dots on the page, you see it tripled the relative market share for Durwood Green. That creates the ability to really grow margins in that market. Let's talk now about Road 2030, the numbers. The first three bars we've already gone over, that was Roadmap 27. The blue bars are the beginning of Road 2030. The first bar is the guidance, our initial outlook for this year. Again, we're using the midpoint for illustration. Our first year for Road 2030, we're going to grow 26% over the year we just finished. That includes the two acquisitions we announced this month. We've set the table for a great growth year in 2026. Moving forward through the other four years, we're modeling in this model 15% growth, which by 2030 would make CPI over $6 billion in revenue.
Continuing to do exactly what we do, this growth rate, those next four years, like always, is going to be a combination of organic growth, which you'll hear more about today, and acquisitions. It does not need or include in this model another transformative acquisition such as Lone Star. This just assumes we're doing our normal bolt-on small and medium-sized acquisitions. There are numerous other transformative acquisitions out there that might happen, but we're not modeling that because we don't know when those would happen. That's our revenue to get to $6 billion by 2030. Our EBITDA margins. This year, we accomplished achieving over 15% EBITDA margins. What we want to do is grow margins over 30 basis points in 2026, and then continue to grow them between 30 to 50 basis points over the next four years after that to achieve an EBITDA margin in 2030 of 17%.
If we're growing the top line and we're expanding margins, as you can imagine, that creates a really nice growing cash flow. Our adjusted EBITDA after getting to $423 million this year, our guidance for 2026, the midpoint is to be at $530 million, a growth of about 25%. As you can see, the next four years, if we're growing the top line 15%, but we're expanding margins, that creates a compounded annual growth rate of 18%. By 2030, Construction Partners, Inc. would have an EBITDA of over $1 billion. That's a good thing. That cash starts to really fund, as Greg Hoffman is going to go over, fund more and more by growth initiatives through the use of cash. That's the five-year plan. More than double the size of the company on the top and bottom line to be at $6 billion of revenue and $1 billion of EBITDA.
Now, today, just like two years ago, we're not going to put a slide up there that says this is what we expect our market cap to be or our share price to be. We know that you guys are smart and can do math. We did say two years ago, if we can accomplish Roadmap 2027, that's going to create a lot of shareholder value. I think that's come true. The same holds true today. If we can accomplish Road 2030, that's going to create enormous shareholder value. Four big picture things to take away as I wrap up today. Road 2030 really is another five years of CPI operating as CPI. There's really nothing new. There's nothing that really is any different than CPI being who we are. We're going to continue to operate the same strategy. We're going to continue to generate a lot of cash.
We're going to invest those back in growth opportunities that create shareholder value. We're going to continue to focus on our culture as a competitive advantage. Even with the scale in 2030, these numbers predict that our employee count will be over 11,000 people in 2030. We're going to focus on our culture as a way to attract and retain the best workforce. Finally, we've got a management team, a leadership team that's established to execute on this. As Ned said, one of the things you'll notice when these five operating companies get up here at the end, you'll notice not only are they experienced, they're great leaders, but they're young. Before them, Nelson's going to talk. He's one of the most hardworking, important people in the company. The thing you'll notice is he's young. Before him, Greg's going to talk. Greg's blessed to just look really young.
Greg, come on up here. I just want to tell you, it is a real blessing to this company to have a Chief Financial Officer that understands operations as much as Greg does and understands the mindset of our operating companies. That is a blessing to me. Greg, I'm going to turn it over to you. Thank you, Jule.
Morning, everyone. Yeah, so the picture, if you physically are unable to see the color gray in my hair, this looks just like me. Thank you for being here today. It's really great to be in front of you. It's great to talk about Construction Partners and what we have done and what we expect to do. Let's talk about what we have done. Some of these will be a little bit of repeat, but I'll put a little color in them that maybe you can take some nuggets away from Jule's high-level view. Transformational year, record year. I mean, I think we all knew that was going to happen when we talked about the Lone Star acquisition. It just wasn't Lone Star. I'll get into that in a minute. A 54% revenue increase year over year is tremendous.
296 basis points and then a 92% increase in margin dollars is an incredible, incredible year. There are lots of companies represented in this room today that had a hand in that. Certainly, Lone Star was a big part of it. As a matter of fact, contributing to the 2025 results were 12 different acquisitions that were made in 2024 and in 2025. You can see that it's some, yes, of course, Lone Star was one of those 12, but just one of those 12. Every company represented in here today had some sort of a hand in this growth, not just the acquisitive side, but as the organic side as well. We'll talk about that in just a minute. To drill into that a little bit more specifically, Lone Star is here today. Greg Morris, Dean Lundquist, Brad Green is here.
They've just made an acquisition in Houston, Vulcan's operations in Houston. They're busy integrating that, right? We just made another acquisition. Jule mentioned Tim Phillips, P&S Paving by our Florida platform company. They're busy integrating, starting as of Monday. Neither one of those companies is impacted at all by the other one's integration activities. That's the beauty Jule talked about just a minute ago, the growth engine. That's the growth engine in action. Not just finding the acquisition candidate, but then the hard work of integrating that acquisition candidate. When I look back on 2025 there was a lot going on, no question. It feels normal. I mean, we've integrated 12 companies throughout 2025. I think that's the normal cadence. Maybe not the dollars. Obviously, there was a transformational acquisition in there. The cadence of acquisitive activity feels normal to me and very manageable. Let's move to 2026.
Again, by the way, Jule mentioned this, these are implied midpoints from the revised outlook, which was tightened yesterday for 2025 as well as for 2026. This does include all acquisitions closed through Monday. P&S, Vulcan operation in Houston is in there as well. We talked about last quarter what was carrying over into fiscal 2026. We talked about that being about $250 million worth of revenue. All in now, that increase is 16%, but it's about $450 million in acquisitive revenue carrying into 2026, as well as then 7% organic growth. We'll talk a little bit about that in just a minute. I think that one thing that is consistent when we talk about outlooks is that the backlog plays such a critical role in us understanding how to have confidence to talk about these outlooks.
We've said, and it remains true, that about 80% to 85% of the next 12 months' revenue is in our backlog. It gives us a lot of confidence to put these outlooks out there and feel good about the margin piece as well as the revenue piece for purposes of discussion. The backlog, just mentioned it. We keep saying this, that there has been now 18 sequential quarters or sequential growth quarter over quarter for 18 consecutive quarters. Not normal. We keep trying to say that too, that usually as you're working through the construction season, you're burning off a tremendous amount of backlog, right? Maybe not adding back as much as you're burning off. We have seen consistent growth in backlog in more construction season quarters and not construction season quarters.
I throw that qualifier out there just to say at some point we will see probably a reduction in backlog. We are fine with backlog year over year growing at the growth of the revenue, right? Sequentially, it may dip down from time to time, but it is not a concern. Roadmap to Road 2030. Jule covered a couple of these things, but I really want to talk about just maybe a little more detail, some of the assumptions that went into Road 2030. This assumes a normal funding environment, right? Nothing crazy. Obviously, not going down, but just a normal funding environment. There's no entry into new states in Road 2030. We can do this and achieve this in the existing eight states that we're in. From a capital standpoint, we're sufficiently capitalized to be able to engage in this activity, growth activity, both acquisitive and organic.
Our bank partners are with us. Some of our bank partners are with us today. They have our back. We'll talk also about how we're helping ourselves as it relates to generating cash flow. Those two things together get us to Road 2030. Finally, we're not assuming any transformational acquisition. Jule said that, but I think it's important that this is just your rinse and repeat acquisitions that we have consistently done throughout the history of the company and can continue to do. 12 acquisitions, right, impacting 2025. We could do that all day long. Let's talk organic growth for a minute. We believe that organic growth is the key for CPI to generate shareholder value. We know that shareholders appreciate that, and we want to make sure that we deliver on that. We have said that we're going to grow 7 to 8% from fiscal 2026 to 2030.
I mean, how do we say that? And why are we confident to say that? It's because we've done it, right? 8.1% average annual organic growth since our IPO. More recently, 8.7% in 2023 and 6.8% in 2024. Now, as we announced yesterday, 8.4% organic growth in 2025. The platform companies and the bolt-ons that come after them are those engines for not only more acquisitive growth, but engines for organic growth. Nelson and some of the guys will get up and talk about that in just a second. Cash flow. This is the other engine I said that we were going to use from a capitalization or from a capital standpoint to fuel the growth. This business has a fundamental strength of generating cash. We have done it historically and will continue to do it.
If you look at just the last three years, $658 million generated over those three years as a percent of cash flow from operations. I'm sorry. Cash flow from operations is 75 to 85% of the EBITDA. That's what we're converting to cash, okay? We're using that to fund high-growth initiatives. We're also using it in our M&A activity. We expect that to continue and see that continuing through 2030. As a part of the effect of generating that cash, we can positively impact our balance sheet. The column in the middle is obviously strikingly different from the other columns. We had a significant acquisition. We felt like it was worth this short-term higher leverage ratio in order to be able to enter the state of Texas. We believe it's going to pay off handsomely. In the short term, we do have a higher leverage ratio.
I think 2024 is instructive. I think the issue is a difference in scale, okay? What I mean by that is in 2024, we entered fiscal 2024 at a sub-2x leverage ratio, 1.72x, okay? We made eight acquisitions that year, about $240–$250 million worth of purchase price, and exited the year at 1.81x. Obviously, the scale is a little bit different, but the strategy and I believe what will happen is the same. We have levered up in the short term and will delever over time. In fact, we expect to be at 2.5x to 2.75x at the end of 2026. We'll continue to talk about where we're comfortable with our leverage ratio going forward through 2030 at 1.5x to 2.5x, okay? Where's Rick? 10 minutes. We have a 10-minute break until we hear from Nelson and the Operating Company Presidents. See you guys in a minute. Hi everybody.
Let's get back. If you guys want to start to make it to your seats, we're going to get ready to start back up. Just a quick reminder, those of you that reached out to me about the bus, we've got you all booked. We'll do that at 12:30 P.M. As you can see, we're going to have lunch afterwards. We're happy to hang around for whoever has time to hang around. Now I'd like to introduce our Head of M&A, Business Development, and so many things that Nelson Fleming does.
It's a long title.
It's a long title, and he is a valued asset. Nelson Fleming.
Thank you, Rich. I feel the need to comment on my picture because everybody else has. What you cannot tell from this heavily airbrushed photo is this was one kid and a couple pant sizes ago. I still look mostly the same, but beneath the around the waist, not so much. Welcome back from break, everybody. My name is Nelson Fleming. It's a privilege that I get to take you through our growth strategy in deeper detail and expound upon some of the things that Jule and Greg have talked about, specifically those revenue growth levers of acquisitive, organic, and greenfield. This first slide, an alternate slide title, could have been "We've Been Busy" because we have. We've done 35 acquisitions since 2020. We've entered four new states with four more platform companies.
As you can imagine, we're having more conversations with owners and evaluating more businesses than we ever have before. There are two big things that we've learned in those conversations that I want to hit upon. Number one, our parent platform model, where we as the parent company are supporting our operating companies, allowing them to maintain their local leadership and way of operating in their local market, is a very different message than other buyers out there are delivering. Number two, we don't apologize for being contractors first. That's our DNA.
We're one of apparently very few people delivering that message, and it resonates with the type of companies that we talk to day in, day out that are owners of these asphalt and construction companies out there. It's an obvious outcome, but being in twice the number of states that we're in now, as we were in 2020, there's a larger opportunity set than ever before. One thing I want to point out that's important is our M&A effort, it is a team effort. It's not just Jule, it's not just myself going out there and meeting with owners and thinking strategically. We've got Regional Presidents and Operating Company Presidents that have longstanding relationships in the states that they're in, and they're great long-term strategic thinkers as well that are helping us get a seat at the table when these owners move to sell their companies.
As I think Greg mentioned earlier, every new platform company we add, it's an additional growth engine. Now we've got eight growth engines, and it's not just that expanded opportunity set I just mentioned, it's the capability of their teams to not only diligence but integrate these acquisitions. It's that added resource as we expand and add platform companies. One last point here on this accelerating generational transition. Our Founder, former CEO, current Vice Chairman Charles Owens, he used to joke that a big driver of our M&A pipeline was birthdays, which was a clever way of saying that as people get older and reach retirement age, that's really when they move to sell their business. That is truer today than ever before as you've got the baby boomer generation reaching retirement and even the older end of Gen X reaching retirement. All these owners, they want the same thing.
They want a fair price for their business. They want to sell to somebody that really knows their company and what they do, which is construction primarily. They want to sell to somebody that's going to take care of them and their people and ultimately their legacy as well. Turning the page here, we've been busy, but we still have plenty more road to hoe in our core business and in our core geography. I want to just kind of camp out on this slide over here to the right because it's a lot of dots. It kind of looks like a Verizon cell map. All of these dots on the page are all the privately owned HMA plants in those 15 states. In those 15 states, 94% of the companies that are HMA producers are privately held companies. That totals to more than 300 potential targets for us.
As Jule mentioned, there's thousands more materials businesses and services-only contractors out there that fit what we're doing and could be added benefit and allow us to capture additional margin in that road construction value chain. To summarize the point of this slide, in the last 25 years, we've done around 60 acquisitions, and we've only made a very small dent in what remains a very fragmented industry. Jule touched on briefly the funding situation. I want to give a little additional color to that. There's a lot of numbers and a lot of maps on these slides. IIJA obviously set a new baseline for infrastructure spending in our markets, and states and municipalities are also stepping up and putting a lot of money towards the roads and bridges. Each of our states have very strong highway funding programs.
We've got a slide in the appendix that actually details some of the recent legislation in each of our states that increased their funding for maintaining and building the roads and bridges. I want to camp out on two of our states in particular, our two largest ones in terms of population, and that's Florida and the state of Texas. Florida, in percentage terms, is the fastest growing state in the U.S., and it has the second largest highway program. The state and local contract awards in 2024 were nearly $10 billion. In 2023, as part of its Moving Florida Forward initiative, they put forth an additional $7 billion to be spent over four years to better maintain and build the roads and really accelerate a lot of projects as you've got all the growth coming in and businesses moving to Florida.
This map here on the right, everybody loves maps. We've had a lot up here, but this is our HMA plant network in the state of Florida. We've got 10 plants spread throughout the state, and that will position us very well to capitalize on all the opportunities that's going to be happening in the state of Florida. Moving from the Sunshine State to the Lone Star State, there's the phrase, "Everything is bigger in Texas." I don't know who said it, but when it comes to a transportation program, the shoe fits. No state has more lane miles than Texas, and no state spends more money to maintain its roads and bridges than Texas does. In 2024, state and local contract awards totaled $17.4 billion. That was $7.7 billion more than second place Florida. You might be asking, where are they coming up with all of this extra money?
It's a great question. They have two funding mechanisms that are really unique to the state of Texas. It's Prop 1 and Prop 7. Prop 1 allocates a portion of oil and gas production taxes to the state highway fund, which contributes about $3 billion annually. Prop 7, which allocates a portion of sales and use taxes and vehicle taxes and rental taxes to the state highway fund, also contributes $3 billion annually. Pictured here on the right is what is known as the Texas Triangle. In that Texas Triangle are all the biggest metro areas in the state of Texas. That's Dallas-Fort Worth, beginning in the north, going down I-35, Austin, and then further south, San Antonio, and then to the east, Houston.
You can see that we've got really good strategically located assets that we're going to be able to capitalize on in a very fast-growing part of the state. Having entered the state in 2024 and having done a couple more acquisitions since then, we've got the best team in Texas to go do that. One more thing to drive home the point about being in the places we are. The big idea that I'm trying to get across here is we are positioned in markets that have some wind at their back. Cities like Atlanta, Georgia, like Nashville, like Huntsville, Alabama, Pensacola, Florida, these cities are far outpacing the national average as far as GDP growth and population growth, which is a big driver for what we do.
We've been thoughtful about executing our organic and acquisitive growth strategy and investing in places that are growing because it is greater demand for the services we offer, and it's also a tailwind for organic growth as well. Let me give you a real-world example of what I mean here. In May of 2024, the Scruggs Company, which is our Georgia platform, acquired Sunbelt Asphalt. It's a one-plant operation in Atlanta. They operate as our Atlanta subsidiary. In our industry, smaller privately held businesses are not always able to capitalize on every single bidding opportunity in their market. There are reasons for that, but that is one of the reasons that people go to sell to Construction Partners, Inc. In the case of Sunbelt, this was exactly the case.
In their first full year as part of our family, they increased revenue by 50% and their asphalt tonnage by more than two-thirds. They didn't expand into any new market. We didn't put up any new facilities. Sun Belt just grew their piece of the pie in the market they're in, and that pie is growing larger because they're in a high-growth corridor of Atlanta. They're along I-85 going northeast out of Atlanta towards South Carolina. This is a great illustration of two things: how joining CPI can unlock the opportunity for acquired companies to do more in the markets they're already in, and how being in a growing market can really fuel organic growth. No different than any other time in our company's history, organic growth remains a big strategic priority. It's been part and parcel to our success over the years.
We're going to hear from five of our Operating Company Presidents here shortly. I want to give everybody a brief refresher, if you will, of the three lanes of organic growth that we have. Greenfields, this is when we're just putting in a new facility, erecting a new facility in a new or adjacent market. We've done that over the years. We've done a lot of HMA plant greenfields. We've even done AC terminal greenfields. We did one in 2023 in Hansville, Alabama, which is just north of Birmingham. The second one we've got here is additional crews or services. We do this year in, year out. We're adding crews every single year, in some cases through the year as the need is there and the market demand is there. The last one is facility upgrades.
This is where we would be putting a meaningful investment in an asphalt plant, an AC terminal, or an aggregates facility to meaningfully increase our capacity to meet our own needs or meet market demand. All the opportunities you're going to hear about here shortly from Casey, Darin, Ty, Brandon, Greg, they're all fully funded for 2026 and offer you an example of all three of these growth levers. They're not the only ideas that are funded this year, but they're some of the best. They have some of the best return profile and just great strategic fits for what we're doing. We run a competitive process for deciding kind of how we allocate this money. You're going to hear from five of the lucky winners this year. Casey, you're up first, my friend.
If you don't mind, just introduce yourself and talk a little bit about the opportunity you're looking at in Charlotte.
Yes. Good morning. My name's Casey Schwager. I'm the Platform President for King Asphalt. We're located in South Carolina, but we also cover the Charlotte metro area, which is part of North Carolina as well. Nelson teed it up very well talking about the I-85 corridor and the high growth of the I-85 corridor with the Sun Belt and that growth towards South Carolina. The same thing is happening on the I-85 corridor in the Charlotte area as well. Atlanta and Charlotte are basically growing together, and we're well positioned along the 85 corridor in South Carolina to take advantage of that growth. Why in particular is our Gastonia greenfield that we're getting ready to be putting up important to us? There are two different reasons. There is a very heavy commercial growth that is happening in that Gastonia Kings Mountain area right now.
You can see how we're spread out with our existing facilities through the center of Charlotte, but we have a geographical barrier at the Catawba River that I'm going to talk about in a minute. From a commercial growth standpoint, there's a lot of great things happening in that area that we're accessing, but we're not accessing it quite as efficiently as we could. Kings Mountain, for instance, is a very large casino that is spurring all kinds of commercial growth around it. We're excited about the commercial growth in that market. From the public market, when you hit the Catawba River where it says Belmont right there, the interstate right now collapses from a four-lane interstate both directions to a three-lane interstate. Anytime I'm in Charlotte and I'm leaving Charlotte to go back home to Greenville, South Carolina, it is backed up for miles.
Over the next few years, you're going to have two separate projects that come out. They're estimating around $800 million total that will expand the next eight miles of interstate going towards this Gastonia facility from a three-lane interstate each direction to a four-lane interstate each direction. That bottleneck that is actually stopping our plants from getting over there and being as efficient as we want is a tremendous opportunity for us on the public side as well. We're very excited to have an opportunity to take part in those projects. We started clearing on this facility two weeks ago. We're turning dirt. We will take delivery of the asphalt plant in December, and we should be operational by March of 2026. Very excited about this opportunity. Total investment, $10 million, and we estimate the return on investment in 3.7 years.
Yeah, that's great, Casey. Can I ask you one question?
Yes, sir.
Talking about that anchor project that is in process that you guys could potentially be working on.
Yes. The first four-mile section from Belmont moving west is a design-build project, and it is under contract with the Department of Transportation already. We verbally were low on that project, and they're in the position to have the asphalt for the entire project, about 400,000 tons of asphalt that'll go in about three and a half years. Right now, we're just working through the contract details. Hopefully, we'll have that signed here shortly.
Great, great. Thank you. Thank you for taking us through the opportunity, Casey. Appreciate you.
Thank you.
Darin, you're up next, my friend. I'll put your map up here so we can orient some folks. Introduce yourself.
Yes, sir. Thank you. Good morning. It's an honor to be here. I've really enjoyed the past day and a half with all the analysts and all the investment folks that have been here. I've learned probably just as much as you all have learned as well. I appreciate you taking the time to be here on behalf of Overland. My name is Darin Rutosky. I serve as the Group President for Overland Corporation. On January 2, Construction Partners, Inc. acquired Overland Corporation of this year. We are no longer the new kid on the block, as you all can see.
That doesn't last long.
Exactly. What is interesting about that is we've done so many fantastic things just in the short period of time that we've been part of Construction Partners, Inc. To give you a quick thumbnail sketch of what Overland consists of, I'll walk you through just a little bit of what Nelson has shown here. Overland Corporation is based out of Ardmore, Oklahoma. We have two primary office locations. The headquarters is in Ardmore, Oklahoma. Our area office, the second office, is located about one and a half hours west of Oklahoma City on I-40. We have eight asphalt plant assets that cover southern and western Oklahoma. Not all eight are shown on this map, but that allows us to cover 44,000 of the 66,000 square miles within the state of Oklahoma.
Of those eight assets, four of those assets are strategically located along the Oklahoma-Texas border, which allows us to do two things. Number one, we currently sell FOB asphalt to the Texas Department of Transportation for when they self-perform some of their own maintenance contracts. We're able to target the Texas market from an FOB standpoint. The other thing that we have going on currently as we speak is Overland has active projects within the North Texas market area where we are serving ourselves as we lay down that asphalt ourselves, self-performing that work. We're able to service ourselves through those strategic assets along the southern Oklahoma border. What we have found is that in addition to that, that's an underserved market in a lot of areas.
We constantly get phone calls, "Hey, can you come here and perform the work?" We have a current contractor base that's not willing to do the work or they're full, their backlogs are too high, or they can't get to the work. It's really complemented what we've done. We've had a strategic initiative for a few years now to really get into the North Texas market because of some of the information that's been presented here today. In addition to that, in this fiscal year, on June 8 specifically of this year, we expanded into an additional paving crew, an organic growth initiative that we took on with the help of CPI, but it almost took almost zero capital to do that because we were able to utilize existing assets that we had to grow into that additional paving crew.
That crew actually targets most of our southern Oklahoma work, and they go into North Texas to perform some of their work as well. We're able to leverage existing assets, which improves our utilization rate on those pieces of equipment, which is extremely important to us as Operating Presidents.
Great.
The organic growth initiative that we've brought to the table that was approved by Construction Partners, Inc. was to expand into an additional paving crew specifically targeted on Texas. Our paving crew will be based out of North Texas. We already have a pretty good idea of who that's going to be, and that will also complement other greenfield initiatives that we are currently working on as we speak. There's a little bit of foreshadowing there. I don't know if I'm allowed to say that, a little bit of foreshadowing, but it'll complement some other things that we're working on. We have that crew identified. One of the great things that probably hasn't been emphasized enough throughout the last day and a half, in my opinion, is the relationship, the power of the parent that Jule refers to.
Since Overland was acquired by Construction Partners, Inc., our phone has literally been ringing off the hook by other companies that want to be part of this fantastic journey. Crews, labor force, they see what's happening in the marketplace. They see our vehicles, they see our equipment running up and down the interstates, paving on the roads, and they understand what's happening in the market, and they want to be part of something much larger solely, I believe, because of the cultural aspect that we bring. Jule talks about the culture. We have labor and management teams always contacting us saying, "Hey, we want to be part of something that's really special." We're going to be able to capitalize on that here. Our total investment is $3.2 million. We think we're going to do much better on the payback of the $2.3 million.
We have the backlog to go ahead and execute this work. As I said, we have some other opportunities, greenfield opportunities that we're actively engaged on that'll help with that throughput. That is also going to help the benefit for us. It'll help the top line, and then being more efficient with a truly Texas-based crew will obviously help the bottom line for us as well.
That's great. Can I flip back to the slide and put you on the spot again?
Absolutely.
This is where Dallas is. Talk about just the growth and that suburban sprawl and the markets that you guys are targeting.
Absolutely. Yes, sir. Within the triangle that Nelson referenced here a moment ago, the DFW area is its own animal as well, much like Houston and Austin. The majority of the growth within the North Texas area is occurring between US 75 and I-35 heading north in a northeasterly fashion. We are well positioned to accept that growth with our two assets in Ardmore, Oklahoma, and then as you're looking at the map to your right, the Durant, Oklahoma area where we have an asset staged there as well. As the growth is coming to us, we're able to target that growth. We're well positioned to attack it. Also, as we head further south, the majority of our work that we are self-performing is within that I-35 US 75 corridor today, and that's where the majority of the growth is taking place in the DFW area.
That's terrific, Darin. Appreciate it, man. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Okay, next up, Ty.
Good morning, everybody. I'm Ty Johnson. I'm the President of Fred Smith Company. For all of you that made it out to the asphalt plant this morning, I appreciate y'all taking the time to come. It was a privilege and honor to be able to show off what we do a little bit and to educate you a little bit. Thank you for taking that time. Fred Smith Company is one of the largest asphalt paving and site work contractors in North Carolina. We operate from about Greensboro, which is about in the middle of the state, all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. You see our plants that are located up there. We're headquartered here in Raleigh. Welcome to Raleigh. One of our growth initiatives for this year is to go back to the.
Yes, sir.
Yeah, it is to increase our grading capabilities in the Greenville area. Greenville, North Carolina, right there is the economic hub for Eastern North Carolina. It's fueled by a large public university. There's a major hospital center there. A lot of Eastern North Carolina kind of centers on Greenville and it feeds off of Greenville. It's a thriving market in that area. We established ourselves there about five years ago. We acquired a company that was primarily asphalt paving and asphalt manufacturing, and one of their asphalt plants was in Greenville. It's been a really good paving market for us for about five years. We've grown that market and it's been really good to us. We were primarily paving, but Fred Smith Company has a long history of doing turnkey site work, grading, utilities, walls, just delivering the whole product.
We wanted to take that expertise and expand our opportunities in Greenville. We've done a little bit of that, but we need more resources to expand that more and take advantage of a lot of the opportunities there. Eastern North Carolina may be a little different than some parts of the country where most of our major asphalt producers also have large grading operations. They're competing in that turnkey world. We need to be able to compete there as well. We need more resources. Adding another grading crew will open up more opportunities for us in Greenville. We've got some great guys that know how to build in Eastern North Carolina. They've just routinely turned mediocre jobs into outstanding jobs.
We want to take advantage of that knowledge and those skills that we have in our employees there and expand it in Greenville to deliver more revenue and deliver more margin. The investment for a smaller grading crew for Greenville is $1.6 million. We expect a payback on that in about 3.4 years. Like I said, Fred Smith Company has done this for years and years. We want to lean on one of our strengths of site work and increase that capability here in Greenville.
Yeah, that's terrific. It is a huge strength to Fred Smith. You guys are the turnkey contractor in the state. Quick question for you. How does vertically integrating into this additional service help you at the bid table and then in the field?
The bid table, you know, if we can self-perform work, we can control our costs and we can keep our costs down, so it keeps our bids lower. We can figure out ways to do better and improve during the job, and that will increase our margins, even increase the margins from bid day.
Yeah, that's great. Thank you, Ty. This has been awesome. Okay, next up, I believe it's you, Brandon. Brandon Owens with Wiregrass Construction.
All right. Good morning. How are y'all? I'm Brandon Owens. I'm President of Wiregrass Construction. We are based in Dothan, Alabama, which you can see is in the southeast corner of the state right here. We are a site work contractor, paving contractor, and we are also an aggregates producer. I've been with the company over 20 years. I was looking at this picture. When I started, there were a lot less dots on this map 22 years ago. We do perform a special service. We actually have aggregates within Wiregrass Construction, hard rock aggregates and also sand and gravel. Today I'm going to be talking about the sand and gravel opportunity, facility upgrade that we have. Basically, the facility upgrade is we are spending almost $8 million on an aggregate sand and gravel wash plant. What does that mean?
We are digging aggregates out of the ground, washing them, cleaning them, and we are sizing them. We're sizing them. The larger aggregates get sold externally to our decorative landscape markets throughout our neighboring states. That brings a very high cost per ton, our price per ton, sales price per ton. We also have the mid-level size aggregates and the finer course or the course size sands that we're using in construction materials. That is what is important to us, to Wiregrass Construction, is those size aggregates because that is the lever we pull with a vertical integration piece of being able to use that in our hot mix asphalt facilities. If you'll go back, Nelson, to the slide before, I'll show you. The yellow is the location of this sand and gravel operation.
We are supplying most all of these blue dots in the south part of Alabama, which is where we're using 30% to 40% of this material inside of our own hot mix asphalt. Why is this facility important? The good news is it helps us put a plant in a part of the area where we've extended our reserves for the next 12 to 15 years, which is a really big deal. Just the whole vertical integration of being able to use our own aggregates and control our own aggregates. We're really excited that CPI has given us the opportunity to invest this. The additional throughput, the plant's actually got some more efficiency, so we're going to be able to add more efficiencies and the payback period is three and a half years.
That's great, Brandon. Let's get into the nitty-gritty operational aspect of things. Explain what surface rock or silicious material, as you guys call it, is and why it's important as a hot mix producer.
Sure, thanks. In the state of Alabama, there is skid resistance on our surface of our roadways. We have to have certain aggregates that meet certain criteria for skid resistance. This is one of the few products in the state of Alabama that meets that skid resistance for that.
Terrific. Terrific. Thank you very much.
All right, thank you.
Greg, fellow Texan, come on up here, my friend.
All right. There's the map. I'm Greg Hoffman, President of Lone Star Paving. Our founder, Jack Wheeler, is here. I'm a little embarrassed to even say President. Jack did not do titles. There were three, four, five of us that ran the business. Jack took a lot of pride in that no one had a title, right?
Yeah.
The value was in the workers and our employees. We operate on the I-35 corridor. Basically, actually, we go a little higher on the map to Waco, come all the way to San Antonio. It's 200 miles of I-35. If you understand what's happening in Texas, it's the epicenter. Darin touched on something. Same things happen up north on the north section of I-35. Our business, we're pavers, right? We're a little bit different than some of these other businesses that we've talked about today. They do site work. They do grading. I've learned so much from these guys. Their businesses are fabulous. They're in different markets. We pave asphalt, and we go out every day and lay more asphalt than you can imagine. We'll do potholes. We're paving subdivisions today. We're paving on I-35 today.
If any of you guys watched the race last weekend, F1, we paved the F1 track. Echelon 3 pavers paving. We will pave anything that we get a call on. We're not selective. We'll take anything. We're aggressive. Jack created a company that's founded on, if it is asphalt and we can make it black, we will do it. We take a lot of pride in that.
Yeah.
Right side of the screen is Houston. We've got Dirwood Green, and we've got Vulcan. Brad Green is here. I want one last. I do have some gray hair, one of the only guys with gray hair here. It's a very young, young group. Very excited about that. I'm pumped because I think there's so much opportunity with CPI and where we can go as a company. It's rejuvenated me, and I'm really excited to be here. Thank you.
Yeah, to talk a little bit about that Lone Star Paving liquid terminal there in Channelview.
All right. We acquired this in June of 2021 from Summit Materials.
You want to go back to the map?
Our plants along this corridor were already purchasing the majority of our liquid asphalt from the Gulf. It'll either be MidCon or it'll be Gulf. We've always been Gulf-based, picking up the majority of our asphalt. It's nothing new to us to come down to the Gulf. Valero has a terminal. Martin has a terminal. Numerous suppliers have terminals in this area. We were already coming down here. It wasn't a change. When we acquired the terminal, we went from basically picking up here from here to here to picking up the asphalt. The vertical integration part of it was obviously tremendous for us. Fast forward to the acquisition we just did. Now we've got 11 more plants. There are 10 in the original legacy company, 11 more plants that will now be pulling out of Pelican. Since 2021 to now, we've almost tripled the capacity of Pelican.
There is plenty of room still. With this next initiative, which is an investment of a little over $7 million, there is a land acquisition here. We're going to add two additional tanks, which should add us 25% to 30% additional storage that will come online probably spring of 2027. With that, the cement stabilization and grading part of this project, we will also do two additional tank locations and pads that will be built for further expansion moving forward.
This investment, part of it is that land acquisition that's going to give us more opportunity in future years to add additional tanks because, heck, going from 11 plants in Austin, San Antonio, Waco to now 11 plants also in Houston, the additional demand is pretty, pretty.
It's an untapped market. Brad's business and what he's going to be able to do with Dirwood Green and adding the Vulcan assets and this circle, we currently will stretch to Gettings and LaGrange. With Brad's new plants and locations, we will, within three to four years, close this gap all the way in. There's no doubt in my mind. The growth that's going to come from this, the strategic value of having Pelican, I think is going to go a long way in supporting that initiative.
Yeah, this is really phase one.
This is phase one. Yes, sir. Yeah, it's definitely phase one. You can't tell from this drawing, this is a peninsula that comes out into the Houston Ship Channel and comes around to this side. We will now own the entire peninsula. There are some other initiatives that are planned that could go along with that.
Yeah, awesome.
A piece of property like this just on this ship channel does not come available very often.
Yep, yep. Thank you, Greg.
Appreciate it. You're welcome. Thank you.
Okay. I think Jule, Greg, Q&A, and closing remarks. Thank you guys for the time. Thank you, operating company presidents. Y'all did a fantastic job. I'm sure everybody enjoyed that.
Thank you.
Great job, Nelson.
Thank you. Okay. The way this works, I'll take the easy questions and give Greg the hard questions. See if there's better.
Yeah, that's called a partnership.
All right. Is there a microphone?
All right.
Okay, okay, Kathryn. There you go.
Thank you again for a great day. I'm going to ask a question I asked last night. I heard it from the panel. I would like to hear from your perspective. When we look at a lot of different industries, there's a magic point of a tipping point in consolidation. This is an industry that's been around for a long time, but it does seem that it's at more of a tipping point now in terms of consolidation. Why is that? Like, why is now the magic time? Along with that, there are other companies in the industry that view asphalt paving as a conduit for aggregates. How do you see this differently? How does that differentiate your view in the realm of consolidation of the industry?
Yeah.
Thank you.
I'll take the second question first because I think it provides some answer to the first. We are at Construction Partners. We're contractors first and foremost. That's, I think someone said earlier, it's part of our DNA. That's the way the company was founded by Charles and Ned. We have spent decades building up expertise in this area, our workforce, the ability to know how to do this work and communicate, as Nelson said, to sellers what we're all about. We look at aggregates as a vertical integration and a value add that we can capture margin as Brandon does it and Lone Star does it very well. We are at our core, we're contractors. We think that the growth opportunities that are going to be available to us in our industry as contractors are just great, which leads me to the first question you asked: why?
Why is this generational industry consolidation happening? I think history shows us that a lot of these contractors, these companies really got started in the road construction business in the 1950s when our federal government said, "We've got to have an interstate highway system to be able to move military assets and other things quickly." It was the beginning of the Cold War. This federal highway investment program in the 1950s with the Eisenhower program was the beginning of a lot of these family businesses starting. Those families who have done very well for three and four generations, a lot of them are reaching, as Nelson said, retirement age. They want to retire and slow down. There are some unique aspects of our industry that it's hard for them to pass the business along or split it up to their heirs.
We provide the opportunity for them to talk to CPI and to be able to move their business, turn it into cash, and take care of their employees as their legacy. I think a large part of this is just the families hitting that third and fourth generation. As you heard last night from some of the sellers and what motivated them, as we consolidate the business, the private businesses are left or faced with, "Okay, to compete, you have to have scale to be able to compete." I think something Brad Green has mentioned to me several times. He's certainly not at retirement age. I certainly hope he's not. He was competing with two major players in the Houston market, and he wanted to grow. He was looking for a partner that could come alongside him and provide capital, and that's what we can offer.
All right.
Hey, good morning, guys. Tyler Brown, Raymond James. First question for Greg. Just real quick, I didn't see it in the deck, but what is the CapEx profile through 2030?
It's the same, so no change there. We are usually talking about, and we'll continue to talk about, 3.25% of our revenue spent on maintenance CapEx. The growth CapEx that Nelson was talking about, the organic growth measures, is another 2%, 2.25%.
Okay, $3.25 plus $2, roughly.
Yeah.
Okay. I want to talk a little bit about technology. Jule, you talked about bidding better, innovation. You got some of the best pavers literally in the world maybe sitting in this room. What's the next generation for technology, and how does that apply to your business, which is obviously considered a dirty, maybe boring business, but maybe there's opportunities there?
Yeah. I can tell you just since I entered this industry 15 years ago, the way we planned work, the way we thought about what we're going to do the next day compared to the way they do it now and the technological tools they have to think through exactly how they need to stage the work and plan, it's already dramatically different. With our equipment and the ability to predict catastrophic failure at the asphalt plants, I mean, before, you just waited till it broke. Now we can actually predict. We have technology that can tell us this asphalt plant, this piece of it's vibrating too much. This is a problem. You can fix it before you have a major problem. That kind of technology is amazing.
As we talked about, the ability for AI to help us, the same things you could do in the old days with a lot of spreadsheets and research, it can tell you now this is on this project what your competitors are likely to bid. This is what you should be looking at. It's not foolproof, but it's a heck of a powerful tool to help us think this is the bid that is likely to win and not leave as much money on the table. Those are just some examples of the technology that are changing our industry. Andy.
Yep. Andy Wittmann from Baird. I wanted to build on that with just the same question in a little bit different ways. Big growth plans, you know, getting to a billion dollars of EBITDA in just five years. The benefit of scale you talked about, you know, 10, 15 basis points per year. What are the things are you looking at or can you do to even scale this further? Is it technology and systems? Is it HR systems? Is it the vertical integration? What other things can you do to scale this that you're thinking about to just help build this thing out as it really gets some horsepower behind it?
Andy, I'll answer and then I'll let Greg take that. I do believe that there are certain aspects of our business. I think someone told me, mentioned just in the last day that they heard, it might have been my wife last night, said she heard the NVIDIA CEO was getting interviewed and said, "Hey, AI is going to transform a lot of businesses. It's going to take a lot of jobs." Construction was one of the businesses that was somewhat insulated from that. I do believe that we're going to be able to continue scaling the business, but it's not going to be revolutionary. We're going to continue to build the scale running the same strategy that we have been. I do believe that I see now as we get larger, there's a certain amount of momentum to having these platform companies.
It's like there's just more people with their shoulder to the plow. It almost becomes easier for Nelson and I because you have Jack and Brad and Darin. I mean, you know, John Hargett in Tennessee and the platform presidents in our legacy states, they're also helping be able to build scale and grow. It sort of builds a momentum to it. I don't know that we're going to use technology to revolutionize our business, but I do think it will drive consolidation because the things we're investing in, and I'm sure some of the other larger companies that are doing it, some of the privately owned businesses are not going to say that's an investment worth making. I think at some point in time they say, "You know what? I don't want to try to compete with Construction Partners or some other.
This is a good time for us to exit." It's still going to be at its heart. The people in our business are going to be what's the competitive advantage. Who can hire and find the best people?
Yeah, I was going to add two points to that. I think there's a couple of things that we've talked about today that have been really instructive. Ty Johnson talked about one of them. Obviously, other than the growth CapEx that we've talked about and the M&A component of our growth, rounding out in each market different services that, yes, create new revenue, yes, create new margin, but also create new opportunities. I mean, things that maybe Ty couldn't have bid on in Greenville, he now can because now he's not just going to be quoting somebody else who won the business. He's actually able to bid it and then control who he wants to sub it out to or do the work himself. The other thing is you mentioned it is the labor. We have to win at labor.
It's the biggest inhibitor potentially, but also the biggest way we can have, or the best way we can have success. We have to win at labor.
Yeah. I do think as we scale and use technology, it is going to drive margins. I'll tell you the Road 2030 goal of 17%, that's not Ned's goal for me. You know, he thinks, "Hey, we can do much higher as we build and grow the business." I think that's something exciting.
Adam.
Great.
Adam Sider from Barclays. A couple of numerical questions here, and I appreciate the color on the backlog. Can you just talk about whether that backlog is added on an organic basis or is that including the inorganic side? How would that look if it was adjusted for organic? On the margin component, can you talk about how the gross margin and the backlog sits today? In 2026, I think you're talking about 30 basis points of margin growth. Your long-term range is 30 to 50. What drives you from the low end of the range to the high end over the period?
You want to take the first one?
Yeah. The backlog is flat, pretty much quarter over quarter without the additional acquisitive backlog that was brought in in August. What it also doesn't include is the two companies that we acquired in October. That will be added into the next distribution of that information.
I'll take the second part. Just to answer what Greg said, our backlog, we always include organic growth and inorganic growth. Sometimes, in these last four years, it's grown in the fourth quarter because of an acquisition. Sometimes it's grown just organically. It still amazes us that for four years it's grown in the work season. One day it won't, as Greg said, and we don't want everyone to think anything's wrong, but it shows that the company's growing. Specifically to the margins, that range of 30 to 50 basis points tells you it's not going to be a linear occasion. There'll be some years where it will grow faster and some years will grow slower. On an average of around 40 basis points a year, that's what gets us to 17%.
To your question about what drives it from the low end to the high end, it could be the margins of the companies we acquire. It could be, do we bring on a vertical integration initiative like Greg was talking about or Brandon with our aggregates that we capture more margin? Those kind of things are what can make it vary between that range.
Yep. Adam Thalhimer with Thompson Davis. Two questions. Number one, can you unpack organic growth? How much of that is greenfields and stuff within your control versus assumptions you've made about DOT spending? The second question is just if you can comment on acquisition multiples today versus prior periods.
The organic growth, I'll take that.
I may not be able to answer it exactly as you've asked it, but I will say the % of organic growth that we've had and that we're projecting. First of all, from a price standpoint, 3% or 4% from an inflationary standpoint, the rest would be new volume. I think, first of all, it's different every year. Every year is going to have different ways of improving or increasing the growth, but also year over year, we're going to use different methodologies to get there. I think the important thing to know is that as M&A growth moves forward and that 12-month measurement period of what's acquisitive growth, these companies are then using new capital, maybe taking off some restrictions that were related to bonding. Essentially, we're manufacturing our own growth.
I think if you think about organic growth over time, as we talked earlier, it's so consistent, not because there's been this consistent pretty growth curve from an economic standpoint or from a funding standpoint. We're generating our own organic growth as we get through that acquisitive period.
Yeah. When we were putting together this Road 2030, Adam, and we said we're going to continue to grow 7 to 8%, we didn't say for that to happen, we've got to have this federal reauthorization go up double digits. What we just need is a normal funding environment for that to happen. To your question about multiples, the multiples in our industry are largely still the same. Clearly, for companies with high-quality markets and high margins, you know, that might be on the upper end of the range that we have between five and six or six and a half. If they have aggregates, as we've said before, it's a little higher. Largely, they've stayed pretty constant.
Hey, Nandita Nair, Bank of America. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one that I had was, you know, I'm sure we can all agree you guys have had a transformational year last year. I think a really underrated part is also when it comes to the type of acquisitions you guys have done, like the step change and the fact that these acquisitions, for example, like Lone Star, PRI, are also higher margin acquisitions, right? Like around 20% mid-teens. Just curious, is this something that we can kind of expect going forward as well?
Yeah. I think Greg and I both have liked the math of the new companies averaging us up. That certainly helps. I do think that it does, as our EBITDA margins grow higher, it does make us more selective in looking and saying, "Hey, we want to add companies that are higher margin companies." There are plenty of them out there. I do think that it doesn't, the fact that 2024 was a transformational year, it doesn't make us any more eager to do a transformational, a big, large acquisition, right? What we're trying to find is what's the right market and what's the right partner, right? It could be a $50 million acquisition, $100 million, or $500 million. You know, the thing that's amazing when you look at this year, we grew 54%. Lone Star was a transformational acquisition.
If you took Lone Star Paving out, it just didn't happen. You make the assumption, and we didn't redeploy that capital in any other way, CPI would still have grown over 26% this year. Lone Star was big, but it was still a great growth year, even aside from that transformational acquisition. We're just going to keep executing the same strategy.
Yeah. I think another way to answer that question is what we saw in Lone Star, and I've said this before, ended up being a proof of concept to our building margin, right? The three levers that we pull for that. As soon as we had an investor day and an analyst day in 2023 and said those things, here comes Lone Star to essentially prove what we said, right? Yes, there are opportunities out there that you're describing at higher margins, and we can be selective. There's also confidence in knowing that we continue to drive margins higher in an existing business.
Got it. I guess just, you know, the next question I had was, you guys laid out your five-year plan out to 2030. Not to get too greedy here, but like, say we're looking at maybe 10 years, what would you say is your kind of long-term growth strategy? Just like when it comes to maybe geographic reach or just kind of, you mentioned vertical integration, like, you know, like, like CPI, you guys are thinking, you're like in pavement restoration work, right? Is there like other kind of verticals we should be looking at? Is that kind of more the focus? Geographic, vertical? Is it both? I guess the other question I just wanted to add on is when it comes to, you know, is the focus, could that be maybe dividend or like share repurchase at some point?
Is that also kind of like part of the plan, like 10 years out? Just curious.
Yeah. There's a lot to unpack there. I guess, Nandita, you know, to look into our crystal ball, I would make the prediction that in five years, we're going to do this again. You're probably going to hear very much the same growth story, the same strategy. You're going to hear the same levers still working and taking us to another level. Greg and I probably will have different pictures by then. Beyond that, it'll be exciting. The five years after that is we generate cash, how we deploy that. That's a good problem for us to think about. We appreciate all of you being here. Thank you for your attention. We look forward to executing on this strategy. I think we have lunch in the back. Thank you very much.