Construction Partners Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
May 9, 2025
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Operator

Greetings, and welcome to Construction Partners Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Investor Relations with Rick Black.

Operator

Thank you. You may now proceed.

Rick Black
Rick Black
Investor Relations at Construction Partners

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us for the Construction Partners conference call to review second quarter results for fiscal twenty twenty five. This call is also being webcast and can be accessed through the audio link on the Events and Presentations page of the Investor Relations section of constructionpartners.net. Information recorded on this call speaks only as of today, 05/09/2025. Please be advised that any time sensitive information may no longer be accurate as of the date of any replay listening or transcript reading.

Rick Black
Rick Black
Investor Relations at Construction Partners

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 provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. We will be making forward looking statements as part of today's call that by their nature are uncertain and outside of the company's control. Actual results may differ materially. Please refer to our earnings press release from this morning for our disclosure on forward looking statements. These factors as well as other risks and uncertainties are described in detail in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Rick Black
Rick Black
Investor Relations at Construction Partners

Management will also refer to non GAAP measures, including adjusted net income, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin. Reconciliations to the nearest GAAP measures can be found at the end of the earnings press release. Construction Partners assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward looking statements. And now, I would like

Rick Black
Rick Black
Investor Relations at Construction Partners

to turn the call over to Construction Partners' CEO, Jewel Smith. Jewel?

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

Thank you, Rick, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us on the call today. With me this morning are Greg Hoffman, our Chief Financial Officer and Ned Fleming, our Executive Chairman.

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

I want to begin today's call by focusing on our organizational model and how important people are to our strategy at CPI as we surpassed 6,000 employees this month. The core of our business happens in our local markets, now numbering approximately 100 distinct market areas in eight states. In each of these, our local management team and workforce perform higher margin, lower risk projects and generate recurring revenue for repeat customers each year. Our people are the crucial element as we seek to take great care of our valuable customers and operate profitably. This local market model also provides a stable and predictable environment for our teams to bid, win, and build work in their communities.

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

In our family of companies structure, nowhere are character, experience, and talent more important than in the management teams at our platform companies. In each state, these management teams steward our company culture, drive operational excellence, and cultivate both organic and acquisitive growth opportunities. This is why last week we were so excited to have PRI join us as our platform company in Tennessee. PRI instantly expands our coverage the full length of the state and will include our pre existing operations in the Nashville Metro Area. A key strategic criterion in our platform acquisitions is an established and deeply experienced leadership team that fits our culture, our focus on safety, and our relative market share growth strategy for further expansion.

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

Under the leadership of John Hargett, Greg Elshie, and PRI's entire management team, our new platform company will benefit from decades of collective experience and the technical expertise of seasoned industry veterans. Tennessee is growing and we see excellent organic and acquisitive growth opportunities within the state driven by strong economic expansion, favorable demographic trends, and a healthy transportation funding program. Turning now to the quarter, outstanding operational performance led to Q2 year over year revenue growth of 54% and adjusted EBITDA growth of 135%. In addition, this marked our highest Q2 adjusted EBITDA margin in CPI's history at 12.1%. This strong margin expansion during the winter quarter was driven by great project and plant performance.

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

The company's vertical integration assets and aggregates, services and AC terminals performed well. We continue to focus on building a great organization and as we build scale, the benefits contribute to higher margins. For CPI, tariffs have not and are not expected to be a significant issue for the business, as most of our supply chain and raw material inputs are sourced domestically. Our Sunbelt states continue to benefit from healthy federal and state project funding, in addition to a population migration that is driving steady workflow of commercial projects. We are not currently seeing any sign of degradation to these fundamental factors that have been supporting healthy and growing markets to our footprint for years.

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

Our backlog is evidence of this continued steady demand for our services as it grew to a record $2,840,000,000 Heading into the heavy work season of our fiscal year, we are raising our outlook ranges, which Greg will discuss in his remarks. Taking a closer look at market conditions in our Sunbelt states, local markets are growing and states remain focused on maintaining and improving the quality of their roads as well as increasing capacity to handle the significant migration to their states. For CPI customers in our public markets, the IIJA and state funding will continue to provide healthy bidding environments. The IIJA provides for significant funds that have not yet been deployed and Congress is focused on the next five year reauthorization of the Surface Transportation Bill now. Secretary Duffy's comments in the past few weeks were positive on reauthorization that continues to focus spending on hard infrastructure, which is a positive for CPI.

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

For commercial and private customers, we continue to experience steady bidding availability. Manufacturing moving back to The United States and specifically the Sunbelt is also a positive for CPI. Turning now to our strategic growth model, we remain focused on both organic and acquisitive growth. Organic growth and our revised guidance envisions a strong second half of the year, and we continue to have an extremely active acquisition pipeline. Our Southeastern states have great opportunities, and as we enter new states in the Southwest, the map expands and even more opportunities present themselves.

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

In the past year, we have entered into two new states, Texas and Oklahoma with platform acquisitions. And through PRI, we now have a platform company in Tennessee. As with our existing platforms, these new companies service growth engines for CPI to both expand into new areas through bolt on acquisitions and to increase market share organically. In both cases, we're able to grow revenues and more importantly expand margins in what remains an extremely fragmented industry. Moving forward, we continue to focus daily on our CPI strategy and delivering on our roadmap 2027 goals of top line growth of 15% to 20% annually and EBITDA expansion of 50 basis points per year through our three margin levers: building better markets, vertical integration, and scale.

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

In closing, we are very pleased with the second quarter results and we're excited and ready for the busy spring and summer work season ahead. I'd now like to turn the call over to Greg.

Greg Hoffman
Greg Hoffman
SVP & CFO at Construction Partners

Thank you, Joel. Good morning everyone. I'll begin with a review of our key performance metrics for the second quarter of fiscal twenty twenty five compared to the second quarter a year ago. I'll then discuss our revised outlook for fiscal twenty twenty five. Revenue was $571,700,000 an increase of 54% compared to the same quarter a year ago.

Greg Hoffman
Greg Hoffman
SVP & CFO at Construction Partners

The mix of our total revenue growth for the quarter was 7% organic revenue and 47% from recent acquisitions. As a reminder, we began presenting acquisition related expenses last quarter as a separate line item from general and administrative expenses on our income statement. G and A expenses are now presented in a manner that differentiates spend incurred to support day to day operations from those expenses associated with acquisitive activity within the quarter. The prior year quarter also reflects this presentation. Reflecting these changes, G and A expenses as a percentage of the total revenue in the second quarter of fiscal twenty twenty five were 8.2%, compared to 9.7% in the second quarter last year.

Greg Hoffman
Greg Hoffman
SVP & CFO at Construction Partners

As we continue to build scale, we are targeting G and A expenses for the fiscal year to be approximately 7.2% to 7.3 of revenue. As a reminder, FY24 gs and A expenses were 8.3%. Net income was $4,200,000 in the second quarter and $08 per diluted share compared to a net loss of $1,100,000 and diluted loss per share of $02 in the same quarter last year. Adjusted EBITDA was $69,300,000 an increase of 135% compared to the second quarter of fiscal twenty four. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 12.1% compared to 7.9 in the second quarter of last year.

Greg Hoffman
Greg Hoffman
SVP & CFO at Construction Partners

In addition, as Jewel mentioned, we are reporting a project backlog of $2,840,000,000 at 03/31/2025. As a reminder, historically, CPI's backlog has declined sequentially during our heavy spring and summer work seasons. If this were to occur this year, we would not view it as a cause for concern. Rather, we would view it as a return to more seasonal patterns, albeit at a much higher percentage of the next twelve months contract revenue and backlog than in prior years. Turning now to the balance sheet, we had $101,900,000 of cash and cash equivalents and $248,400,000 available under our credit facility at quarter end, net of reduction for outstanding letters of credit.

Greg Hoffman
Greg Hoffman
SVP & CFO at Construction Partners

As of the end of the quarter, our debt to trailing twelve months EBITDA ratio was 3.23 times. We remain on pace with our strategy of reducing the leverage ratio to approximately 2.5 times in the next four quarters to support sustained profitable growth. Cash provided by operating activities was $55,600,000 compared to $18,200,000 in the same quarter a year ago. As discussed last quarter, the higher than expected level of billings and revenue in Q1 was realized as improved cash flow in this quarter. We remain on pace for FY25 to convert 80% to 85% of EBITDA to cash flow from operations.

Greg Hoffman
Greg Hoffman
SVP & CFO at Construction Partners

Capital expenditures for the second quarter were $41,400,000 We continue to expect total capital expenditures for fiscal twenty twenty five to be in the range of 130,000,000 to $140,000,000 This includes maintenance CapEx of approximately 3.25% of revenue, with the remaining amount invested in new growth initiatives. Turning now to our outlook. Based on our recent outperformance and our current expectations for the remainder of this fiscal year, including the addition of PRI, we are raising all of our ranges for fiscal year twenty twenty five results. The increased ranges are as follows: revenue in the range of $2.77 to $2,830,000,000 In regard to our overall revenue mix for the year, we now expect organic revenue to be in the range of 8% to 10%, up from our prior expectation of 7% to 8%. Net income in the range of 106,000,000 to $117,000,000 adjusted net income in the range of 122,500,000.0 to $133,500,000 adjusted EBITDA in the range of $410,000,000 to $430,000,000 and adjusted EBITDA margin in the range of 14.8% to 15.2%.

Greg Hoffman
Greg Hoffman
SVP & CFO at Construction Partners

And with that, we will open the call to questions. Operator?

Operator

Thank you. We will now conduct a question and answer session. Session. The first question comes from Kathryn Thompson with Thompson Research Group. Please proceed.

Kathryn Thompson
Founding Partner & CEO at Thompson Research Group

Hi, thank you for taking my questions today. Just first focusing on just the broader macro view and understanding that you generally have more quick type projects that are completed in twelve months, and twelve month period, what if any project delays or cancellations are you seeing in your end, given just some of the broader macro uncertainty in The US market?

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

Hey, Catherine, good morning. For us, we're seeing just business as usual. We do have projects that we book and burn within a year. We continue to do a lot of those projects, but the overall macro economy, I feel like there's a little bit of a disconnect between what you might read in the news and what we're experiencing on the ground. We haven't seen any delays.

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

We still have a healthy bid sheet in the commercial markets. So, I would say we're really just business as usual.

Kathryn Thompson
Founding Partner & CEO at Thompson Research Group

That's helpful. And could you tell a little bit more about you've had two acquisitions that come on the heels of each other, one in Texas last year and then in Tennessee announced last week. And it both appears to have higher structural margins versus CPI's core. Tell us a little bit more about what you can in terms of kind of why the margin differential and what it is that you're looking for from an M and A standpoint.

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

Yeah, so we're excited about PRI joining us. And you're right, the acquisition of Lone Star helped us raise our margin profile going into this year. But what we've, as I said in our prepared remarks, what we really look for in these platform acquisitions is a great management team. That's gonna be the basis for years of future growth and performance. So PRI, we're excited.

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

They do have a nice margin profile in the mid teens. They do a great job in Knoxville, but also throughout the state and the pavement preservation expertise that they bring is something that's gonna be very valuable to CPI. As far as the overall acquisitions, I just love to let Ned weigh in a little bit on some of his thoughts from a board level.

Ned Fleming
Ned Fleming
Executive Chairman at Construction Partners

Hello, Catherine, I hope you're doing well today. I think we see a lot of opportunity. Order Jules done a great job of making sure the organization is ready. Greg's done a great job to make sure that the balance sheet is ready. But understand, we look at a lot of acquisitions and we pass on a lot of them.

Ned Fleming
Ned Fleming
Executive Chairman at Construction Partners

Because from the very start, especially when we look for platform companies, we're looking for great people, excellent markets, good assets, bolt on opportunities in growing markets. And one of the things that I think is really key and we really, I think, proved that up with the Lone Star acquisition is integration is a core competency. It has been since we founded the business. It was in the previous company that Charles ran. And so this is an organization that is prepared for and understands how to integrate companies.

Ned Fleming
Ned Fleming
Executive Chairman at Construction Partners

And interestingly enough, we see a lot of opportunities because of the culture that's been built here from the start. They want to be part of this team. And so JUUL building the organization and really having a family of companies is key to it. And Greg has done a terrific job of keeping the balance sheet. So yes, we may tip a little bit above 3% like we are today and then it will go down.

Ned Fleming
Ned Fleming
Executive Chairman at Construction Partners

When you look at our cash flow generation at 85%, it's pretty phenomenal. But we are going to always look for great platform companies that are generally led by people that we wanna bring on as part of our team. And there's a lot of those opportunities. But make no mistake about it, we pass on a lot of opportunities.

Kathryn Thompson
Founding Partner & CEO at Thompson Research Group

Very helpful. And then final question just is on the capital allocation. You have eight plus percent cash flow through and recently NASA acquisition, obviously, which you just talked about. How should we think about capital allocation priorities in 2025 and in terms of where debt to EBITDA levels and how you're managing that? Thank you.

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

Well, as Greg said, we're on track to get back within our leverage ratio, our target leverage ratio in four quarters. We're on track for what we said when we acquired Lone Star. From a capital allocation standpoint, with the cash flow that's generated, we're gonna pay down debt. But we're also gonna make good smart acquisitions and continue to run our strategy as a growth company.

Kathryn Thompson
Founding Partner & CEO at Thompson Research Group

Perfect. Thanks so much. Good luck.

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

Thank you, Kathryn.

Operator

The next question comes from Tyler Brown with Raymond James. Please proceed.

Tyler Brown
Tyler Brown
Financial Advisor at Raymond James Financial

Hey, good morning, guys.

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

Good morning, Tyler.

Tyler Brown
Tyler Brown
Financial Advisor at Raymond James Financial

Hey, Juul. I just I kind of want to come back to PRI and maybe just talk a little bit more about that business. I think it only came with maybe one HMA plant. So does that kind of imply that it's just more focused on paving crews or specialty services? Or is there something unique about Tennessee where you can just buy FOB and don't need plants?

Tyler Brown
Tyler Brown
Financial Advisor at Raymond James Financial

Maybe just a little more color there.

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

Yeah, Tyler, good question. It's a little bit of all that. So PRI, as we said, stretches almost the link to the state of Tennessee, which is a long state. And so in Knoxville, they do a lot of traditional things that, we do, in their East Division and in their Central And West Division, they do paving, but they also do a lot of pavement preservation, which we're excited about because we do that to a certain degree in Alabama and Georgia. But these guys are experts at it.

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

And so, and to your point, in the West, they have really good relationships with some producers there. And so, they've chosen to buy FOB and to maintain their market share that way. But we're going to be expanding over time just like we do with all our platform companies. We're excited to have Tennesseans taking over our Nashville operations, which is something we back in 2022, you know, we had as a goal, but we had to find the right platform management team. And so our Tennessee operation and folks led by Josh Miller, they're excited to be part of PRI.

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

And so I see PRI following the typical platform model of integrating into our family of companies and then just looking for great growth opportunities.

Ned Fleming
Ned Fleming
Executive Chairman at Construction Partners

Tyler, this is Ned. I think one of the things that Juul and the team has done terrific is this is this is just the first chess move in really the second chess move in Tennessee. This is a growing state. There's lots of opportunity there. And not only did we get a wonderful company that's got nice margins, but we got a great management team that we can grow and add bolt ons on.

Ned Fleming
Ned Fleming
Executive Chairman at Construction Partners

This is just our start in Tennessee.

Tyler Brown
Tyler Brown
Financial Advisor at Raymond James Financial

Yeah. So speaking of chest moves, I mean, it sounds like there's something unique about the pavement preservation piece. Is that something that you can replicate at the other platforms?

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

Yeah, mean, Tyler, you're right. Pavement preservation is in a sense just another way of taking care of the infrastructure and every DOT cities and counties use this as a tool in their toolkit to maintain infrastructure. And so we certainly have participated in that, but PRI does it at a different level. And so whether it's chip sealing, fog sealing, crack sealing, there's just different ways that states extend the life of their pavements.

Tyler Brown
Tyler Brown
Financial Advisor at Raymond James Financial

Interesting. Okay, great. So if I could switch gears, Greg, can you just kind of help us a little bit with the modeling? So just based on what we know today, kind of what is the implied revenue contribution from M and A? I could probably do the math and back it out, but that's always scary.

Tyler Brown
Tyler Brown
Financial Advisor at Raymond James Financial

Then how much do you think hangs over into 2026 already based on what you've already completed?

Greg Hoffman
Greg Hoffman
SVP & CFO at Construction Partners

Yeah. So, well, first of all, start with that. Hanging over into next year is about 150,000,000 to $160,000,000 in revenue. So that's part of the answer. The other part of the answer is for kind of backing into 8% to 10% organic growth for the full year, I think that kind of leads you to the breakdown of acquisitive and organic.

Tyler Brown
Tyler Brown
Financial Advisor at Raymond James Financial

Okay. Yeah, I can kind of work that math. And then just real quickly, on the enterprise value, to make sure that I have it all correct. So do you have what you've spent year to date on M and A? Basically, I'm just curious what the balance sheet looks like pro form a here into Q3.

Tyler Brown
Tyler Brown
Financial Advisor at Raymond James Financial

And was there any equity component to PRI or is it an all cash deal?

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

Was a Tyler was an all cash deal at the typical multiples that we typically pay. And we expect our leverage ratio and our balance sheet to trend back down pretty steadily toward that 2.5 over four quarters.

Tyler Brown
Tyler Brown
Financial Advisor at Raymond James Financial

Okay, that's helpful. All right, thanks guys. I appreciate it.

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

Thanks, Tyler.

Operator

The next question comes from Adam Thalhimer with Thompson Davis. Please proceed.

Adam Thalhimer
Director of Research at Thompson Davis & Co

Hey, good morning, Congrats on the quarter and the PRI acquisition. Joel, you mentioned Southwest acquisitions. Could that be

Adam Thalhimer
Director of Research at Thompson Davis & Co

a new state or are

Adam Thalhimer
Director of Research at Thompson Davis & Co

you referring to tuck ins in Oklahoma and Tennessee?

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

Yeah, Adam, what I was talking about is as we move into a new state like Texas and Oklahoma, our map expands and so we just have more conversations with, folks in those states and we see that happening. But we're also talking a lot to folks in the Southeastern states as well. So a busy time for acquisitions as Ned said. We pass on quite a number of them, but they're ones that we see as just great strategic fits. But that I was specifically referring that as we move into new states, we just have more opportunities to talk to folks in those states.

Adam Thalhimer
Director of Research at Thompson Davis & Co

Got it. And then you briefly mentioned tariffs, but I was curious, I can't remember if you said anything about whether there's any inflation related to tariffs or not. Are you seeing that?

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

We're not. Most of our supply chain is domestic, almost all of it. We've not seen anything related to inflation from tariffs. And as should things go up, we would simply put it in our pass through model and pass it on. But we just it's really been pretty much a non issue for us both on the supply chain and cost side, but also on the demand side and working with our customers.

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

It's just it's not been a real factor so far.

Adam Thalhimer
Director of Research at Thompson Davis & Co

Okay. And then lastly, can you just remind us what assets that you had in Nashville and kind of how they're gonna integrate with

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

Sure. Back in 2022, we made the deal with Bluewater and we got three asphalt plants in a construction operation. Our asphalt plants are all in the Nashville suburbs, East Of Nashville, and we've been, managing that from Huntsville and our Alabama guys have done a great job of stewarding those assets, but we always knew that we wanted to find a Tennessee management team and platform company and that's what we were able to do this month.

Adam Thalhimer
Director of Research at Thompson Davis & Co

Perfect. Thanks guys.

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

All right, Adam. Thank you.

Operator

The next question comes from Michael Finiger with Bank of America. Please proceed.

Michael Feniger
Michael Feniger
MD - Equity Research at Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Great. Hey, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. I did want to just ask, the organic growth, 11% in Q1, in Q2 '7 percent, it's clear based on the guide. Greg, you guys are going to still be doing high single digit organic growth in the second half.

Michael Feniger
Michael Feniger
MD - Equity Research at Bank of America Merrill Lynch

We're seeing the national data like construction spending, especially on the private side is slowing. Do you think it's slowing in, is it just not slowing in your regions or is it, is the underlying market slowing and you guys are gaining share because you know, you've bought some assets over time, giving them bonding capacity. They're able to kind of go out that and maybe win more work. So it's kind of just a question when we see the organic growth, how much do you kind of think is you guys gaining some share out there or how much is it just really strong markets in your core regions?

Greg Hoffman
Greg Hoffman
SVP & CFO at Construction Partners

Yeah, that's a great point. Think you're You're right to bring that up because that's a good part of our story. And that as we make these acquisitions, they're generating new organic growth. So it is new volumes to us. We're creating essentially our own growth through some of our acquisitive growth.

Greg Hoffman
Greg Hoffman
SVP & CFO at Construction Partners

Generally though, I would say that, and I'm not sure what metric you're citing there, but we believe that in our markets they're still very strong both on the public and private side, and we're continuing to see new bidding activity every year, year over year.

Michael Feniger
Michael Feniger
MD - Equity Research at Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Great. And I just would love

Michael Feniger
Michael Feniger
MD - Equity Research at Bank of America Merrill Lynch

to talk about the price versus cost. We're seeing lower oil. I'd imagine over time that filters through to lower liquid asphalt. Just how are you seeing the pricing in the backlog that's going to come through in the back half? And just the bidding environment, just your margins have actually expanded.

Michael Feniger
Michael Feniger
MD - Equity Research at Bank of America Merrill Lynch

I'm just wondering with this price versus cost spread, how we kind of think about this as we kind of move through the year with what we're seeing right now in diesel and liquid asphalt?

Greg Hoffman
Greg Hoffman
SVP & CFO at Construction Partners

Yeah, it's interesting, Michael. So usually a barrel of crude and liquid AC correlate pretty well. Interestingly, they didn't at all in Q2 our Q2. Crude went down liquid AC basically stayed flat. It has come down a little bit in April and on into May, but not proportionally.

Greg Hoffman
Greg Hoffman
SVP & CFO at Construction Partners

And then as far as diesel, natural gas, diesel has come down. Not Q2, but since Q2, the natural gas has gone up. So everything is moving in really strange directions. But I think generally overall, when you talk about our cost environment, it's stable.

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

Michael, I

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

just wanted to circle back just for a minute on the organic growth. We give this number to you guys quarterly just to help you. But the reality is you've really got to look at organic growth sort of in an annualized basis to get a meaningful number. And that's why we try to give you an annualized basis of 8% to 10%, which was higher than we saw at the beginning of the year. And you're exactly right.

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

As you've heard us say before, today's acquisitions become tomorrow's organic growth. When we do a bolt on acquisition or platform with CPI behind them, they're going to find ways to take advantage of opportunities in their market over time. And that's really what drives organic growth.

Michael Feniger
Michael Feniger
MD - Equity Research at Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Helpful, Jules. And just if I could squeeze one last in there, just are you hearing or seeing anything on the funding side from your DOTs in terms of pauses or delays that might have occurred? And just how do you think about, you know, just going forward? It might be getting ahead of ourselves, but how do you think about that reauthorization at some point next year? Is that coming up in conversations at all?

Michael Feniger
Michael Feniger
MD - Equity Research at Bank of America Merrill Lynch

How do you guys kind of manage towards that? If that is something you kind of have to manage towards? Just kind of curious if you kind of comment on your DOTs, what they're seeing in the funding levels, any delays and how you think about that reauthorization? Thanks everyone.

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

Yeah, Michael. It's not too early to talk about it because those conversations are going on in Washington on Capitol Hill. We had one of our platform company presidents, Todd Johnson testify in front of the transportation committee last week on reauthorization. So we're very encouraged by what we're hearing from this administration. Just to speak on the current funding, when people hear that the larger grant projects got paused, I would say two things.

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

First, most of what CPI does is through the formula dollars anyway that goes the states. But even the grant projects, most of those as the administration has said is gonna continue on. They just want a chance to look at it and make sure that those dollars are being spent for the best and highest purpose. And I would say this administration's focus on hard infrastructure and making sure dollars go to hard infrastructure is good for CPI. The White House just last Friday released their budget.

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

And even though a lot of the federal spending areas were reduced, the transportation budget actually increased. And so we feel like this administration is focused on building the infrastructure needs to support economic growth, and that's a good thing for CPI.

Michael Feniger
Michael Feniger
MD - Equity Research at Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Thank you, everyone.

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

Thanks, Michael.

Operator

The next question comes from Andy Wittmann with Robert W. Baird. Please proceed.

Andrew Wittmann
Senior Research Analyst at Baird

Great, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to start with some questions on the backlog. And specifically, if you could comment on how the margins, the implied as bid margins in your backlog today compare to the profit margins that you've recognized over the last year or so? And then secondly, I guess maybe for Greg, a technical question, but I'm just kind of curious as to how much of your backlog that was reported this quarter was due to acquisitions?

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

Andy, I'll answer the first part and Greg can answer the second. Our backlog margins continue to be healthy as is shown by our raised guide for EBITDA. But I would also say CPI over is typical that as our crews and our teams go build the projects, they find ways to win and grow margin in the backlog and that creates good quarters like the one we just reported. So we're seeing a lot of bid opportunities and so that creates a healthy bidding environment, but then we find ways to go grow the margin and that's typical for CPI. I'll let Greg answer on the breakdown of that backlog add.

Greg Hoffman
Greg Hoffman
SVP & CFO at Construction Partners

Yeah, of the add, Andy, about 133,000,000 1 hundred and 30 4 million dollars were due to acquisitions and 50,000,000 to $60,000,000 due to just organic growth sequentially quarter over quarter.

Andrew Wittmann
Senior Research Analyst at Baird

Very helpful. Then just for my follow-up, wanted to ask a little bit, Joel, about I'm thinking back to the Analyst Day, actually, and you about becoming increasingly vertically integrated. This has always been part of something you've done, but I thought at that date, seemed like there was other areas that you were thinking about. It always seemed to me like these would be areas for really good tuck in acquisitions inside your platform companies. I would just like to hear you talk about that a little bit in terms of progress on that initiative to kind of fill in other services around the platform companies that you already have.

Andrew Wittmann
Senior Research Analyst at Baird

What you've done, if any, there or what you see as potentially happening here inside of your M and A pipeline?

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

Yeah. Andy, you're right. Part of our vertical integration strategy is services and as well as liquid asphalt terminals and aggregates, which as I said in our remarks, those facilities really contributed very much to this quarter. And so that's part of our strategy is working well. But on the services side, as we've said before, two of the most value added acquisitions we've done in the last few years didn't have any asphalt plants.

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

They were in our existing markets services. And so we continue to look for those kind of opportunities. But I will say we can also grow those services organically. We just this month were awarded our first project in the Upstate Of South Carolina in Greenville that has a significant grading component. Our platform company King Asphalt is gonna be growing those services organically in house with some grading and utility crews.

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

And so that's an example of being able to vertically integrate more services, whether we do it organically or make a good acquisition. It's a way to capture more margin.

Greg Hoffman
Greg Hoffman
SVP & CFO at Construction Partners

Yeah, and Angela, let me add to that, that some of those to Jules point, don't show up in the M and A side. They show up in the we talk a lot about our organic CapEx, right? So if we're spending 5%, five point five % CapEx, 3.5% of that is maintenance CapEx. Other that other percentage to get to that 5% to 5.5% is focused often on those adding services in the various companies.

Andrew Wittmann
Senior Research Analyst at Baird

Okay, great. Those are all my questions for today. Thank you so much.

Greg Hoffman
Greg Hoffman
SVP & CFO at Construction Partners

Thanks, Andy.

Operator

The

Operator

next question comes from Brent Thielman with D. A. Davidson. Please proceed.

Brent Thielman
MD & Senior Research Analyst at D.A. Davidson

Hey, thanks. Good morning. Great quarter, guys. Just a follow-up and Greg, I'm not sure if you said it, but your CapEx expectations for this year just with PRI added now?

Greg Hoffman
Greg Hoffman
SVP & CFO at Construction Partners

Yes, around 130,000,000 1 hundred 40 million dollars 1 hundred and 30, 1 hundred and 40 million,

Greg Hoffman
Greg Hoffman
SVP & CFO at Construction Partners

sorry.

Brent Thielman
MD & Senior Research Analyst at D.A. Davidson

Got it. And then, yeah, obviously you've done PRI, Jewel. I'd love

Brent Thielman
MD & Senior Research Analyst at D.A. Davidson

to

Brent Thielman
MD & Senior Research Analyst at D.A. Davidson

hear what are the attitudes of sellers right now? I mean, obviously a lot of noise in the world, in the market, maybe in your corner of the country things are great. But have you sensed any shift in attitude maybe that's encouraged the pipeline to grow a little bit more because folks getting a little bit nervous about the environment. Just be curious what you're hearing from potential targets.

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

Yeah, Brent, good question. I would say that we have a very active pipeline and sellers are reaching out and talking to us, but it feels very much like it's still the typical things that drive them, which is their family's planning, their life planning. I really don't think any sellers that I've talked to and we've talked to a lot recently are being driven by the headlines of today. They're more focused on what's long term best for their business and their families. And a lot of them think that getting their employees and their businesses to be a part of CPI will be a good thing for their organization.

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

And so that's helping us get to sit down in front of a lot of them.

Brent Thielman
MD & Senior Research Analyst at D.A. Davidson

Okay. Maybe just the last question, maybe from just a balance sheet management perspective. I mean, you've scaled the business a ton here in the last twelve months. I guess part of the question is with that scaling up, is there a certain level of cash you want to maintain on the balance sheet? And I guess the second part of it would be obviously you want to maintain leverage targets.

Brent Thielman
MD & Senior Research Analyst at D.A. Davidson

You're going to grow EBITDA. Is there any appetite to reduce debt levels here in the next twelve months?

Greg Hoffman
Greg Hoffman
SVP & CFO at Construction Partners

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we said in the remarks that we're going to generate from EBITDA about 85% of that would turn into cash from operations. Sure, we're going to use whatever makes sense to pay down debt there. And certainly that's factored into our discussion of leverage ratio over the next four quarters and getting back down to that 2.5 times. As far as cash on balance sheet, I guess we're always thinking somewhere in the neighborhood of 3% to 5% of revenue just as a way to keep our operations rolling every day.

Brent Thielman
MD & Senior Research Analyst at D.A. Davidson

Got it. If I could slip one more in, think I'm batting clean up here. On

Brent Thielman
MD & Senior Research Analyst at D.A. Davidson

when

Brent Thielman
MD & Senior Research Analyst at D.A. Davidson

you look across the platform and state budgets, are there some markets like you're particularly excited about when you look at those budgets and what you see coming here in the next six to twelve months in terms of funding for infrastructure projects?

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

Yeah, Brent, you know, I read, an industry report a couple weeks ago that talked about how with the federal infrastructure increase that IJA created with the Surface Transportation Bill and the states doing their own initiatives, certainly in our footprint, there's been a sort of a snowball effect in contract awards and I agree with that. We're seeing that. So all of our states, we have healthy bid list. Clearly being in Texas and Florida. Those are just outsized programs because of the outsized growth of those states.

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

But when you look at Tennessee and South Carolina and Georgia and North Carolina, it's just a healthy environment right now. All of those states have taken initiatives to supplement the increased federal funding. So we feel like 2026 is going to be a very you know continue to be a significant increase in transportation funding. In 2025 contract awards in our states are up around 15 to 16% just over last year. So, you know, just as we've been saying for a while now, it's a it's a healthy bidding

Brent Thielman
MD & Senior Research Analyst at D.A. Davidson

Yep. All right. Very good.

Brent Thielman
MD & Senior Research Analyst at D.A. Davidson

Thanks for taking the questions. Best of luck here.

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

All right. Thank you, Brent.

Operator

Thank you. At this time, I would like to turn the call back over to management for closing comments.

Fred Smith
Fred Smith
President & CEO at Construction Partners

I'd like to thank everyone for joining us today and we look forward to talking next quarter.

Operator

Thank you. This does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation and have a great day.

Executives
    • Rick Black
      Rick Black
      Investor Relations
    • Fred Smith
      Fred Smith
      President & CEO
    • Greg Hoffman
      Greg Hoffman
      SVP & CFO
    • Ned Fleming
      Ned Fleming
      Executive Chairman
Analysts
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Earnings Conference Call
Construction Partners Q2 2025
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