Orion Group Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
March 5, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Strong FY 2024 Results: Revenue rose 12% to $796 M, gross profit jumped 48% to $91 M, and adjusted EBITDA increased 76% to $42 M with a 200 basis-point margin improvement to 5.3%.
  • Backlog & Pipeline Expansion: Year-end backlog reached $729 M and the bidding pipeline grew from $3 B to $16 B over two years, enabling disciplined selection of high-value, low-risk projects.
  • Balanced Segment Growth: Marine projects benefit from port expansions, coastal rehabilitation and upcoming Navy work in the Pacific, while Concrete has transformed from a Texas-focused player to a national data-center and distribution-center contractor.
  • 2025 Outlook & 2026 Build-up: Guidance calls for $800 M–$850 M in revenue, $42 M–$46 M in adjusted EBITDA and $25 M–$35 M in CapEx, with backlog growth as the key indicator for a “big year” in 2026.
  • Operational & Risk Initiatives: New ERP and project-management tools, disciplined bidding with built-in contingencies and preemptive steel-tariff planning have driven improved pricing, execution and margin leverage.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Orion Group Q4 2024
00:00 / 00:00

Transcript Sections

Skip to Participants
Operator

Good day, and welcome to the Orion Group Holdings Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2024 Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then one, on a touch-tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Margaret Boyce, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Margaret Boyce
Margaret Boyce
Head of Investor Relations at Orion Group Holdings

Thank you, Operator, and thank you all for joining us today to discuss Orion Group Holdings fourth quarter and full year 2024 financial results. We issued our earnings release after market last night. It's available in the Investor Relations section of our website at oriongroupholdings.com. I'm here today with Travis Boone, Chief Executive Officer of Orion, and Scott Thanisch, Chief Financial Officer. On today's call, management will provide prepared remarks, and then we'll open up the call for your questions. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that today's comments will include forward-looking statements under the Federal Securities Laws. Forward-looking statements are identified by words such as will, be, intend, believe, expect, anticipate, or other comparable words and phrases. Statements that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. Our actual financial condition and results of operations may vary materially from those contemplated by such forward-looking statements.

Margaret Boyce
Margaret Boyce
Head of Investor Relations at Orion Group Holdings

Discussion of the factors that could cause our results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements are contained in our SEC filings, including our reports on Form 10-Q and 10-K. With that, I'd now like to turn the call over to Travis. Travis, please go ahead.

Travis Boone
Travis Boone
CEO at Orion Group Holdings

Thank you, Margaret, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2024 Conference Call. I'll start with an overview of our Fourth Quarter results and market update, then I'll turn it over to Scott to cover our financial results. It has been an incredible two years since we put our strategic plan into action. I am proud to say we did what we said we would do, and our focus on business development and disciplined execution by our team is now delivering strong results. From the outset, our goal was to drive sustainable growth and profitability, enhance operational efficiency, and create long-term value for all our stakeholders. Today, we have not only met but exceeded those objectives in many areas. To summarize our full-year performance, revenue was up 12% to $796 million year-over-year. Gross profit improved 48% to $91 million.

Travis Boone
Travis Boone
CEO at Orion Group Holdings

Adjusted EBITDA increased 76%, and adjusted EBITDA margin was up 200 basis points to 5.3%. While we have made great progress, we are far from finished. We still have work ahead to reach the profitability and growth that Orion is capable of achieving. Throughout 2025, we will continue to emphasize executing with predictable excellence, and we will be focused on growing our backlog to realize our planned growth in 2026. Most importantly, we have set ourselves up to address the huge market opportunity in front of us. Over the past two years, we have assembled an outstanding team whose expertise, hard work, and commitment to safety have been the driving force behind our success. We appreciate all their efforts to make us a safer, stronger, and more profitable company.

Travis Boone
Travis Boone
CEO at Orion Group Holdings

I've always said that winning high-value, long-term projects with the right pricing is critical to driving profitability, and now we have better organization-wide discipline than it takes to successfully bid on large projects with the appropriate evaluation of risks and built-in contingencies. The contracts we were awarded throughout 2024 and the wins we announced in February reflect the quality, complexity, and diversity of the projects we can win. This gives us confidence that our backlog of quality projects will continue to grow. Our year-end backlog stood at $729 million, and over the past two years, our pipeline increased from $3 billion-$16 billion. The depth and breadth of these projects lets us be very selective and disciplined in the projects we choose to pursue. Orion has greatly improved its reputation in our markets, and we are attracting new partners as well as strengthening our position with long-standing relationships.

Travis Boone
Travis Boone
CEO at Orion Group Holdings

I can't emphasize enough how important it is to have the right partners with mutual trust to deliver complex projects. I credit a lot of the momentum to our focus on business development, which was a key initiative that we started two years ago. We now have experienced leaders who are driving our growth. The marine market has some very favorable tailwinds. We continue to see great developments for 2025 and beyond: infrastructure projects, port expansion and maintenance, coastal rehabilitation, and downstream energy projects. We see a strong pipeline of opportunities in the Atlantic and Gulf regions. In the Pacific, we see opportunities for large Navy projects toward the end of the year into next year. There are very few marine contractors that have the skill, experience, and the logistical capacity to work in the Pacific as we do.

Travis Boone
Travis Boone
CEO at Orion Group Holdings

Based on Orion Concrete's strong reputation, we have the name recognition that creates real currency in the marketplace. Concrete is no longer just a Texas concrete company. There are really no geographic limitations to where our concrete team can operate effectively with our reputation for quality work and our trusted relationships with tier-one contractors. Our reputation and partnerships are why we are building or have completed 35 data center projects to date for top hyperscalers and are building Costco's largest ever distribution center in Florida. We're winning work in multiple states with our best partners. These partnerships with world-class construction companies and our ability to deliver are important factors in most of our recent project wins. We just completed a 43-story high-rise project for Hanover Company, who gave us very positive reviews and have already awarded us their next project.

Travis Boone
Travis Boone
CEO at Orion Group Holdings

Another example is Laredo, Texas, which is the largest inland port on the border. Last year, we were awarded a large project, and based on our strong performance, we recently won two more projects in Laredo. We have established great partnerships, and this has led to significant repeat business, which is always our goal. We remain confident that we can continue to grow our concrete business. We see a lot of untapped market opportunity as well as projects that had been dormant and are now moving forward. Concrete is a great turnaround story. The business has found its footing, and it's really starting to move. This is what I envisioned when I took this job. I knew the issues were fixable. Now it's not just healthier; it's thriving.

Travis Boone
Travis Boone
CEO at Orion Group Holdings

Finally, we have fielded a lot of questions related to the new administration in D.C., mostly questions about tariffs and government spending pauses. We're not anticipating negative impacts to any projects or pursuits. Since the middle of last year, we were planning for potential steel tariffs during the bidding process and have mitigated our minimal exposure. We haven't had any projects impacted by government spending changes and don't anticipate changes to our pipeline or our opportunities. Additionally, the appetite for increased energy production in oil and gas will likely drive additional capital project opportunities in the Gulf. The political landscape is quite favorable for us to continue our plans for growth in the years ahead. Looking forward, our team is focused on making investments that will help us capture and deliver the large volume of projects in our pipeline of opportunities.

Travis Boone
Travis Boone
CEO at Orion Group Holdings

The key metric to watch this year is the increase in backlog. This will give an indication of future revenue. We expect to make continued progress, improving our financial performance and are focused on growing our backlog through the year. As we enter 2025, I am confident in our strong foundation, the exceptional capabilities of our people, and their total commitment to both quality and safe execution. As I've said before, we're planning to have a big year in 2026. I'll now turn it over to Scott to discuss our financial results. Scott.

Scott Thanisch
Scott Thanisch
CFO at Orion Group Holdings

Thanks, Travis. Good morning, everyone. Our fourth quarter was a strong contributor to our full-year results. Revenue increased 7.6% to $217 million. Adjusted EBITDA grew 15.3% to $17.1 million. We generated $13.4 million of cash flow from operations. As we indicated early in 2024, the Pearl Harbor and Grand Bahama projects ramped up in both the third and fourth quarters, driving improved second-half results. For the full year, we generated $41.9 million of adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS of $0.15 per share, squarely in our 2024 earnings guidance. While our full-year revenue of $796 million was lower than our expected revenue range, this was due to the timing of execution of projects, not softness in our markets. We continue to be excited about our growth opportunities, as evidenced by the significant increase in backlog plus jobs awarded so far this year.

Scott Thanisch
Scott Thanisch
CFO at Orion Group Holdings

In the fourth quarter, marine revenue was up 6.5%, and concrete revenue increased 9.8%. As Travis mentioned, today, our concrete business is now healthy and growing after implementing our disciplined bidding standards and refined business development approach. While we see our concrete opportunity expanding, our opportunity in marine continues to be immense and will be the major driver in the growth ahead. Consolidated fourth-quarter gross profit margin increased to $30.3 million, or 14% of revenue, up from $23 million, or 11.4% of revenue in the same period last year. The 260 basis point increase in consolidated gross margins reflects both improved pricing and improved execution in both segments. SG&A expenses were $21.6 million, up from $17.2 million in the comparable period. As a percentage of total contract revenues, SG&A expenses increased to 9.9% from 8.5%.

Scott Thanisch
Scott Thanisch
CFO at Orion Group Holdings

Compensation, IT implementations, business development spending, and legal expense largely accounted for the increase in SG&A expenses. Turning to profitability, adjusted net income was $6.4 million, or $0.16 per diluted share in the fourth quarter, compared to adjusted net income of $2.3 million, or $0.07 per diluted share in the prior year period. The fourth quarter net income included $400,000, or $0.01 per diluted loss per share of adjusted items. GAAP net income for the fourth quarter of 2024 was $6.8 million, or $0.17 per diluted share. EBITDA for the fourth quarter increased to $14.9 million, and adjusted EBITDA grew to $17.1 million. Adjusted EBITDA margin improved 60 basis points to 7.9%, up from 7.3% last year.

Scott Thanisch
Scott Thanisch
CFO at Orion Group Holdings

During the fourth quarter, adjusted EBITDA margin in the marine segment was 9.2% compared to 8.4% last year, and adjusted EBITDA margin in our concrete segment was 5.3%, consistent with the prior year period. As a reminder, as we continue to build scale in our business, our medium-term goal is to generate adjusted EBITDA margins in the low double digits for the marine segment and high single digits for our concrete segment. Moving on to bidding metrics, in the fourth quarter, we bid on approximately $994 million worth of opportunities, of which we won $256 million. This resulted in a contract value-weighted win rate of 25.7% and a book-to-bill ratio of 1.18 times in the fourth quarter.

Scott Thanisch
Scott Thanisch
CFO at Orion Group Holdings

We expect to continue to see progress capturing our opportunities, and given the timing of project wins in particular quarters, there may be some variability in our win rate from one quarter to the next. As of December 31st, our backlog was $729.1 million compared to $690.5 million at the end of the prior quarter and $762.2 million at the end of the prior year. Breaking out our fourth-quarter backlog, $582.8 million was related to our marine segment, and another $146.3 million was related to our concrete segment. As Travis mentioned, we are off to a strong start in 2025, and our end-of-year backlog plus awards so far this year is $977 million, up 16% over the prior year. The business generated $13.4 million of cash flow from operations during the fourth quarter compared to $45.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2023.

Scott Thanisch
Scott Thanisch
CFO at Orion Group Holdings

Looking at the full year, cash flow from operations in 2024 was $12.7 million compared to $17.2 million in the prior year. Cash flow can vary from quarter to quarter due to the timing of project mobilization and completion. We ended the fourth quarter with $28.3 million in cash. Total debt outstanding was $23.2 million, ending in a net cash position for the second consecutive quarter. We had no outstanding borrowings under our revolving credit facility at the end of the quarter. On March 4th, we executed an amendment to our credit agreement with White Oak. This amendment reduces our term loan and revolver pricing by 50 basis points, provides greater operational and administrative flexibility, including less restrictive financial covenants, and extends the maturity date of our agreement to May 15th of 2028.

Scott Thanisch
Scott Thanisch
CFO at Orion Group Holdings

These improvements were possible because our lenders recognize our enhanced credit profile as we continue to execute our strategic plan. Over the last several months, we have made considerable progress on our ERP initiatives. Beginning in January, we have started using our new IT tools and processes for our operations and back office. As a reminder, we have been implementing new project management systems and new procurement tools. We've also been migrating our business segments to be on the same financial platform, which will give us a clear line of sight across our entire business. These tools will share information and provide insight into the progress of our projects, which will greatly improve our oversight and effective management of our projects on the ground.

Scott Thanisch
Scott Thanisch
CFO at Orion Group Holdings

As our operational improvements gain traction, we expect to generate efficiencies that will enable the continued growth of our business while benefiting from operating leverage in our fixed cost. Looking forward, we're excited by our improving performance and expanding pipeline. As Travis mentioned, a key indicator of our continued execution of our strategic plan will be our backlog growth in 2025, which will include winning projects for delivery in 2025 and beyond. For the full year 2025, we expect revenue to be in the range of $800 million-$850 million, with adjusted EBITDA in the range of $42 million-$46 million. This translates to a range of $0.11-$0.17 for adjusted EPS. We'll also make investments to prepare for the growth ahead.

Scott Thanisch
Scott Thanisch
CFO at Orion Group Holdings

We expect 2025 CapEx to be in the range of $25 million-$35 million as we acquire equipment we will use to take advantage of our large pipeline of opportunity. As an organization seeking to establish a firm foundation for future growth, a lot of the heavy lifting is behind us. While there is still more to do, we're looking forward to more progress in 2025, and we're very excited for the years ahead. Now I'll open up the call for your questions.

Operator

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touch-tone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question today comes from Aaron Spychalla with Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Please go ahead.

Aaron Spychalla
Aaron Spychalla
Analyst at Craig-Hallum Capital Group

Yeah, good morning, Travis and Scott. Thanks for taking the questions. First, for me, can you just give some color on kind of the revenue shortfall in the fourth quarter versus guidance, some of the impacting items there? Then just talk about confidence and visibility you have into the 2025 guidance given backlog and kind of recent order activity. Also, if you could touch on, you talked about an extension timing of the marine segment. Just want to confirm that that's just typical timing and you're not really seeing much project extensions there as well. Thanks.

Travis Boone
Travis Boone
CEO at Orion Group Holdings

Good morning, Aaron. Sure. Starting off with the question on revenue, I'd say we've been saying kind of from day one, we've been focused on profitability and really getting the business healthy and the revenue based on the pipeline that we have in front of us, the revenue would come. We've been really focused on getting the business healthy, getting the business profitable, and the revenue will come. As far as kind of the shortfall last year, we started talking early in the year about a couple of major projects that there were some slippages primarily on our Hawaii project. Some of the revenue that we thought was going to come in last year ended up slipping into this year from 2024 into 2025, to be clear. There were some things slid to the right.

Travis Boone
Travis Boone
CEO at Orion Group Holdings

Not all of it came in last year like we were thinking that it would initially. Nothing vanished. It just moved a little to the right into this year. We are still feeling confident about 2025, feeling good about what we have going and the opportunities in the future that are going to lead to bigger growth in 2026. As we said, we are going to be really focused on building our backlog this year, which will turn into revenue in 2026.

Aaron Spychalla
Aaron Spychalla
Analyst at Craig-Hallum Capital Group

All right. Thanks for that. Maybe second, on the pipeline expansion to $16 billion, can you just kind of talk about some of the key drivers of expansion there and then maybe just touch on the bidding environment, how that's been with just some of the broader noise in the market? Obviously, good profitability this quarter, but just if you could touch on that, that'd be great.

Travis Boone
Travis Boone
CEO at Orion Group Holdings

Yeah. The pipeline continues to grow as more opportunities kind of come into view for us. It is continuing to look like a really good environment for us in both marine and concrete. Data centers, there is more, seems like every day, opportunities on the data center side of things. We have been bidding on and winning more and more of those projects. There is no less urgency with the Navy efforts in the Pacific with China deterrence. That is continuing to be a strong push for the Navy, albeit some of that is going to be in 2026 as opposed to 2025 like we thought a year ago. Just generally speaking, in the marine side of things, opportunities are strong. Lots of bidding efforts going on. We have been winning some great work, and we are winning with good margins and feel really good about the health of our backlog.

Travis Boone
Travis Boone
CEO at Orion Group Holdings

It's all going to be strong contributors to 2025 and 2026.

Scott Thanisch
Scott Thanisch
CFO at Orion Group Holdings

Yeah. With the pipeline expanding the way it is, we're expecting that there's going to be a nice margin environment. We can be pretty selective on which projects we pursue. With a good deal of market tailwinds for us, we expect to see a good margin environment in 2025 and beyond.

Aaron Spychalla
Aaron Spychalla
Analyst at Craig-Hallum Capital Group

All right. Thanks for that. Maybe last for me, you touched a little bit on the Navy opportunity. Can you just give us an update there with everything that's going on at a federal level from a funding standpoint? How is that opportunity shaping up? Sounds like it's maybe extending a little bit. When you talk about a transformational year in 2026, just want to make sure kind of level-setting expectations on winning some of that business as it pertains to 2026.

Travis Boone
Travis Boone
CEO at Orion Group Holdings

Yeah. We're continuing to see signs that the Navy is really continuing to—there's no slowing down or change of direction with new administration, with what's happened in the Pacific. The Navy is definitely showing signs that there's a lot of work to be done in the Pacific. We're expecting there's a fair amount of activity on the MACC procurements, multiple work construction contract procurements in the Pacific. We expect that to be turning to projects in the next year or so.

Aaron Spychalla
Aaron Spychalla
Analyst at Craig-Hallum Capital Group

All right. Thanks for taking the questions. I'll turn it over.

Travis Boone
Travis Boone
CEO at Orion Group Holdings

Thanks, Aaron.

Scott Thanisch
Scott Thanisch
CFO at Orion Group Holdings

Thanks, Aaron.

Operator

The next question comes from Julio Romero with Sidoti & Company. Please go ahead.

Julio Romero
Julio Romero
Analyst at Sidoti & Company

Thanks. Good morning, Travis and Scott. I wanted to start on the gross margin you posted at 14%. I think that's the strongest quarterly gross margin you've posted in about eight years or so. Just if you could talk about what are the key drivers of that margin, and do you think you can see leverage on the gross margin line once you see additional volumes flow through on the marine side?

Travis Boone
Travis Boone
CEO at Orion Group Holdings

Yeah. Good morning, Julio. I'll start, and then Scott can take it. As far as we've been talking since we got here a couple of years ago about really working toward having more improved margins, building the health of our backlog. We've been doing that, and you're starting to see it in our numbers. That's quite a few different projects delivering on the margin that we've been winning on these projects, whether it's marine or concrete. Both segments performed pretty well and brought a lot in the last quarter that helped the profitability.

Scott Thanisch
Scott Thanisch
CFO at Orion Group Holdings

Yeah. Just further on that, we've talked for a while about how making sure that we're priced appropriately and we've factored in contingency for risk on projects is important to making sure that we can execute them well. You see a combination of those two factors in the fourth quarter, both better pricing at the start in the bidding process as well as execution that's driven by our teams and our tools utilizing a better plan with more contingency and therefore able to deliver those projects to our customers better than our bid margins.

Julio Romero
Julio Romero
Analyst at Sidoti & Company

Got it. I guess just I'm hearing better pricing, better execution. If you could just touch on the leverage aspect, can these margins sustain and perhaps grow on the gross margin line as you see increased sales?

Scott Thanisch
Scott Thanisch
CFO at Orion Group Holdings

Yeah. There's opportunity for us to increase gross margins through better equipment absorption, better labor absorption as we continue to expand the business and grow our scale. The tools that we're putting in place for project management are also going to help us to drive those efficiencies. We do see a trend in our business of improving our gross margins through leveraging those operational efficiencies as well.

Julio Romero
Julio Romero
Analyst at Sidoti & Company

Got it. That's very helpful. Maybe thinking about better equipment absorption, just wanted to ask about the CapEx guidance, the $25 million-$35 million range. Just talk about what growth projects are embedded in there.

Scott Thanisch
Scott Thanisch
CFO at Orion Group Holdings

Yeah. We have talked about our typical maintenance CapEx level being about $10 million-$15 million a year. The incremental CapEx in our guidance is really to acquire equipment that is going to help us with some of the projects that we see coming, whether that is projects in the Pacific for the Navy or projects through the Gulf and the Atlantic Coast. It is a little bit different by project as to what that equipment might look like, but it is primarily going to be marine construction equipment.

Julio Romero
Julio Romero
Analyst at Sidoti & Company

Okay. Got it. Last one for me would just be thinking about the backlog. You mentioned that was the key metric to watch as an indicator of future revenue. Just how would you have us think about the cadence of backlog growth as we progress through the quarters throughout 2025, especially as your sales mix is shifting to larger projects with longer lead times in marine?

Travis Boone
Travis Boone
CEO at Orion Group Holdings

Yeah. I mean, it's all dependent on when we have the opportunities, right? I don't know that we have a good view of exactly how it's going to play out through the year. What I know is we've had a really strong first quarter already, and the opportunities continue to come in. As far as cadence goes, I don't know if I have a great answer for you, but I expect it to be a strong year of building backlog throughout the year.

Scott Thanisch
Scott Thanisch
CFO at Orion Group Holdings

Yeah. Typically, our concrete jobs have a quicker burn, and we've had a nice number of concrete wins here at the beginning of the year. Those are going to be mostly 2025 backlog marine jobs with longer project times. We expect a lot of those opportunities to come later in the year. As we build up the marine, it'll be a little more longer dated into 2026 and beyond.

Julio Romero
Julio Romero
Analyst at Sidoti & Company

Great. I'll pass it on. Thanks very much.

Scott Thanisch
Scott Thanisch
CFO at Orion Group Holdings

Thanks, Julio.

Travis Boone
Travis Boone
CEO at Orion Group Holdings

Thanks.

Operator

As a reminder, if you have a question, please press star then one to be joined into the question queue. The next question comes from Brent Thielmann with D.A. Davidson. Please go ahead.

Brent Thielmann
Analyst at D.A. Davidson & Co.

Hey, great. Thanks. Good morning, Travis, Scott. I guess just back on the CapEx, the step-up here in 2025, does that get funded out of cash flow? I'm looking at interest costs. Looks like that's going to come down this year. Trying to figure out how you expect to fund it.

Scott Thanisch
Scott Thanisch
CFO at Orion Group Holdings

Yeah. We do expect that largely to be funded out of our operating cash flow. That's been our goal, really, is to fund our own growth through our operational improvements. That's how we anticipate most of that CapEx being spent. We do have a good relationship with our lenders, and they've indicated a willingness to provide us capital if we had the opportunity to employ more. That's always an option, but we do expect to largely fund that from operating cash flow.

Brent Thielmann
Analyst at D.A. Davidson & Co.

Got it. Could infer you're going to see a pretty good step-up in cash from operations this year. I know you've got the big projects contributing to that, but sounds like stepping up.

Scott Thanisch
Scott Thanisch
CFO at Orion Group Holdings

That's right.

Brent Thielmann
Analyst at D.A. Davidson & Co.

Yep. Okay. I guess just wanted to get a sense around the buildup to the outlook for the year. I know you've got seasonality in the first quarter and the first half, which is always the case. It sounds like this Pearl Harbor project slid a bit. It seems like the concrete segment has great visibility, even more so than maybe when you started 2024. Does the sequencing of the year look a little different than in years past?

Travis Boone
Travis Boone
CEO at Orion Group Holdings

Yeah. I think it looks slightly different from last year. Definitely, our first quarter tends to be lighter based on weather in Texas and things like that. First quarter seems like it's always the low point of the year. Last year was kind of a low first half and high second half. This year, we kind of see a build-up from first, second, third, and then as the Hawaii project starts wrapping up, fourth quarter, probably not quite as strong as last fourth quarter.

Brent Thielmann
Analyst at D.A. Davidson & Co.

Last question, just on concrete, since the lead times are shorter, again, it seems like you got great visibility there. Is there an opportunity to get to that high single-digit kind of margin range this year? It may not be embedded in guidance. I get that. It seems like the business, as you said, really on a good footing here. You've got pretty good visibility this year.

Travis Boone
Travis Boone
CEO at Orion Group Holdings

I think we may—I think we'll get close to it. I'm not sure if we're going to get all the way there, but I think we're going to make a lot more progress toward that. That concrete business is—a lot of good things happening there, and we feel really good about continued improvement. I think we're going to get close. I don't know if we'll get all the way there, but we'll get closer.

Scott Thanisch
Scott Thanisch
CFO at Orion Group Holdings

Yeah. We typically talk about that as being more of a medium-term goal, and it's largely going to be enabled by our growth and scale as we spread our fixed cost over those two businesses more efficiently. That'll be the real difference as we kind of make that last bridge over to those target margins.

Brent Thielmann
Analyst at D.A. Davidson & Co.

Got it. Just the last one, appreciate the comments just around, obviously, lots of questions about federal spending, but does not sound like that is necessarily affecting the opportunities in the Asia-Pacific. I guess the question is, is it causing any consternation or push-out in the timing of bidding these projects, or is that just simply just kind of typical stuff that is moving these sort of projects to the right in terms of bidding opportunities?

Scott Thanisch
Scott Thanisch
CFO at Orion Group Holdings

Yeah. I would say that we haven't really seen a delay in when we expect those bids to come to market, as Travis talked about. Those MACC contracts are starting to put out named projects that are part of that increased $16 billion in our pipeline. I don't think that any of the government pause discussion or cuts has really impacted the areas where we're seeing funding come from.

Brent Thielmann
Analyst at D.A. Davidson & Co.

Does that answer your question, Brent?

Scott Thanisch
Scott Thanisch
CFO at Orion Group Holdings

Yeah. Yeah, it does. No, I appreciate it. Thank you.

Travis Boone
Travis Boone
CEO at Orion Group Holdings

All right. Thanks, Brent.

Operator

Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star then one to be joined into the question queue. There are no further questions at this time, which concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Travis Boone, CEO, for any closing remarks.

Travis Boone
Travis Boone
CEO at Orion Group Holdings

Thank you all again for joining our call. We continue to be appreciative of our teams, and we are working hard every day out in the elements to deliver and for our clients, and work safely and get home safe at the end of every day. Thank you all for joining, and look forward to a strong year, and have a good day.

Operator

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.

Executives
    • Margaret Boyce
      Margaret Boyce
      Head of Investor Relations
    • Scott Thanisch
      Scott Thanisch
      CFO
    • Travis Boone
      Travis Boone
      CEO
Analysts
Powered by Quartr