ITG Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
August 13, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Second-quarter revenue rose 38% year over year and adjusted EBITDA increased 21% to $52.2 million, exceeding management’s plan. Free cash flow was $44.8 million, up from $27.2 million a year earlier.
  • Positive Sentiment: Backlog increased to $1.5 billion for the next 12 months, up 6% sequentially and 21% year over year, while longer-dated backlog reached approximately $3.3 billion. New or expanded MSAs with eight customers, including Ziply Fiber and Intrepid Fiber Networks, supported the increase.
  • Positive Sentiment: Management introduced a strong 2026 outlook calling for approximately 35% revenue growth and 36% adjusted EBITDA growth. The forecast assumes a second-half pickup in infrastructure deployment and data-center activity and excludes contributions from future acquisitions.
  • Positive Sentiment: Data-center revenue is expected to exceed $65 million in 2026, versus minimal revenue last year, with management anticipating multiple growth over the next several years. Activity is expected to accelerate in the second half, supported by long-haul and regional interconnect projects.
  • Negative Sentiment: Adjusted EBITDA margin declined to 12.9% from 14.7% a year earlier, primarily due to startup costs and mix changes from recent acquisitions. Infrastructure deployment also experienced a slower-than-planned spring ramp tied to winter weather and project timing, while near-term operating cash flow was negative despite management expecting stronger working-capital performance later in the year.
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Earnings Conference Call
ITG Q2 2026
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the ITG second quarter conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I will now hand the conference over to your speaker today, Chris Mecray, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Chris Mecray
CFO at ITG

Good morning, and thank you for joining us for today's second quarter 2026 financial results webcast. Joining us today are myself, Chris Mecray, Chief Financial Officer, and Andy Parrott, Chief Executive Officer. Yesterday after the market closed, we issued a quarterly results press release, which can be found in the investor relations section of our website at itgcomm.com. We also posted a separate shareholder letter with more detailed operational and financial commentary to accompany our earnings release. The commentary is intended to provide much of the detail typically included in management's prepared remarks. Accordingly, we will provide an overview of ITG, discuss the principal drivers of our second quarter performance and initial outlook, and then turn the call over to Q&A.

Chris Mecray
CFO at ITG

Please be advised that information shared on this webcast is current as of today's date and may no longer be accurate as of any replay of this event at a later date. This webcast will include forward-looking statements qualified under the safe harbor rules established by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements reflecting expectations, intentions, assumptions, or beliefs about future events or financial performance. These statements involve certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict or beyond ITG's control, and actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied on this webcast. We will also discuss historical and forecasted non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of these historical financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are included in our earnings release and accompanying shareholder letter. Please refer to these statements for additional information regarding our forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial measures.

Chris Mecray
CFO at ITG

With that, I'll turn the call over to Andy.

Andy Parrott
CEO at ITG

Thank you, Chris, and good morning. We're pleased to be with you today for ITG's first earnings call as a public company. Our second quarter performance reinforced our confidence in the strategy we outlined during the IPO process and demonstrated continued progress against our long-term growth objectives. As you know, on July 2nd, we concluded our IPO, which raised $323 million in net proceeds we used to repay debt and strengthen our capital structure. Completing the IPO was an important milestone for ITG, and I want to thank everybody involved for their dedication and commitment. We have been building and executing ITG's growth strategy for more than a decade as a company, and our transition to the public market provides additional financial flexibility as we enter the next phase of our development.

Andy Parrott
CEO at ITG

We remain focused on disciplined organic growth, strategic acquisitions, operational execution, and long-term value creation, and we welcome our new public market shareholders. I'd like to briefly introduce ITG and explain what differentiates our platform before discussing the quarter. We believe ITG is well-positioned to benefit from our customers' interest to outsource more of their infrastructure requirements because we can provide a broad range of services across geographies through a scaled operating platform. Our ability to support customers across the infrastructure lifecycle is a differentiator that can create multiple entry points for future work. Our scaled platform leverages technology through FUSE 360, our proprietary ERP and operating system. FUSE 360 helps us manage the entire business, enabling consistent execution and visibility. Our operating model is predominantly MSA contract based, supporting durable customer relationships and providing meaningful visibility to our future activity.

Andy Parrott
CEO at ITG

Individual work orders and timing remain subject to customer authorization and project schedules, so backlog should not be viewed as guaranteed revenue, but our relationship, reoccurring service activity, and backlog provide a strong foundation for growth and revenue visibility. We operate two complementary service lines, engineering and maintenance, or E&M, and infrastructure deployment. In E&M, we are the national leader in offering fulfillment, maintenance, engineering, design, consulting, and adjacent market services to our customers, such as wireless. This business leans towards high volume, smaller reoccurring service orders. The business can be operationally complex, requiring effective scheduling, work order coordination, geographic density, and consistent execution. Our scale, local presence, and FUSE 360 platform enable us to manage that complexity well, which we believe differentiates ITG from smaller regional providers. In infrastructure deployment, we help customers expand and upgrade their broadband networks through fiber deployment and network expansion services.

Andy Parrott
CEO at ITG

This business benefits from continued investment in fiber to the home, network expansion, and increased bandwidth requirements. Data centers and hyperscale computing offer significant growth opportunities for ITG. Cloud computing and AI are increasing the need for high capacity fiber connectivity between data centers as well as across broader support networks. ITG helps build the fiber backbone and related infrastructure connecting data center campuses, network routes, and end markets. During the quarter, we saw a significant increase in activity and revenue with data center customers. We believe our fiber deployment capabilities, geographic reach, and ability to execute complex projects position us well to support data center customers. Our customer new wins during the quarter also illustrate the breadth of the platform. We received new or extended MSA awards from eight customers, including a significant award from Ziply Fiber, a leading fiber broadband provider serving markets across the Pacific Northwest.

Andy Parrott
CEO at ITG

Intrepid Fiber Networks, a developer and operator of next-generation fiber broadband infrastructure. The awards support large-scale network expansion initiatives by these customers and their respective service areas. They also reflect both new opportunities and existing relationship expansion and demonstrate how ITG supports customers across multiple phases of network deployment. Digital connectivity is increasingly essential to the public infrastructure of daily life. Our customers investing to improve network reliability, expand broadband access, and support growing bandwidth requirements. We believe ITG is very well positioned to support those investments. Before Chris comments on second quarter, I'd like to note that we completed our first acquisition post-IPO this week. We have purchased certain assets of a company very much in our wheelhouse of digital broadband services called Full Circle Fiber.

Andy Parrott
CEO at ITG

We are pleased to have completed this tuck-in transaction in a very short timeframe and expect the business to contribute positively to ITG out of the gate, including a rapid integration of their people, assets, and contracts into our system. Chris will now comment on the quarter and outlook.

Chris Mecray
CFO at ITG

Good morning, everyone, and thanks for listening. Regarding second quarter results and key drivers, second quarter revenue increased 38% year-over-year ahead of our plan, driven primarily by contribution from acquisitions as well as double-digit core growth in E&M, offset partly by slower core infrastructure deployment activity. E&M benefited from higher core customer volumes, new customer expansion, and growth in new service lines. Infrastructure deployment reflected some impact from a slower spring ramp-up after a cold winter and timing around the ramp of new awards and projects, all of which was anticipated in our plan. Adjusted EBITDA was $52.2 million, ahead of our plan for the period and up 21% from the prior year period. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 12.9%, compared with 14.7% a year earlier and 10.9% in the first quarter.

Chris Mecray
CFO at ITG

Their year-over-year margin decline reflected new business startup costs and revenue mix changes related to acquisitions completed in the second half of 2025. The sequential lift was driven principally by increased volumes, including the normal seasonal pickup. Free cash flow under the adjusted EBITDA minus CapEx definition was $44.8 million, compared with $27.2 million in the prior year period. This year-over-year change primarily reflected earnings growth. The timing of growth and ramping volumes, coupled with the pre-IPO capitalization impact, translated to a use of cash from operating activities in second quarter. Looking ahead, we continue to expect positive cash flow and also anticipate stronger working capital outcomes in the second half of the year, including seasonal increases in cash collection. Next 12-month backlog was $1.5 billion at quarter end, increasing 6% sequentially and 21% year-over-year.

Chris Mecray
CFO at ITG

E&M next 12-month backlog increased 11% sequentially and 24% year-over-year, while infrastructure deployment backlog increased 5% sequentially and 42% year-over-year. The sequential increases reflected new and extended MSA awards from eight separate customers, including the Ziply and Intrepid awards discussed earlier. Just to frame our overall visibility, which we believe extends well beyond the 12-month period, total backlog beyond the next 12 months was approximately $3.3 billion, up some 33% from the prior year period level of $2.4 billion. We have introduced guidance for the third quarter and full-year 2026, the details of which are in our releases, but clearly are reflective of strong growth expectations, including 35% full-year revenue growth and 36% adjusted EBITDA growth. Our outlook reflects customer activity we anticipate as of today, the expected timing of project ramps, and normal seasonality in the business.

Chris Mecray
CFO at ITG

It also incorporates the expected ramp in data center activity and continued new work awarded in infrastructure deployment, which is expected to grow faster than E&M in the second half. As always, the pace of customer authorizations, permit issuance, project timing, weather, labor availability, and business mix can be factors within a quarter that drive variable outcomes. Back to Andy.

Andy Parrott
CEO at ITG

To conclude, as we begin life as a public company, our priorities remain consistent. Execute for our customers, convert backlog into profitable revenue, expand relationships across our service portfolio, maintain disciplined capital allocation, and continue investing in the people and technology that support our growth. We are excited about the opportunities ahead of us, and we look forward to reporting on our progress. With that, Chris and I are happy to answer your questions.

Operator

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Andy Kaplowitz with Citigroup. Your line is now open.

Andy Kaplowitz
Andy Kaplowitz
Analyst at Citigroup

Good morning, everyone. Congrats on your first quarter as a public company.

Chris Mecray
CFO at ITG

Thanks, Andy.

Andy Kaplowitz
Andy Kaplowitz
Analyst at Citigroup

Andy and Chris, during the IPO process, I think you talked about the potential to sustain teens organic growth. Obviously you had strong new wireline awards. You mentioned Ziply and Intrepid. As you know, there's been some market noise recently, particularly from a large competitor lowering its communication sales guide. Can you talk about your visibility toward that teens growth algorithm? Did the wireline market outlook change at all in the quarter? Maybe you just took share in Q2. I think more color would be helpful.

Chris Mecray
CFO at ITG

Yeah, Andy. What I would point out there is that we did see 6% sequential backlog growth in the second quarter to $1.5 billion in total. That's, by the way, up 21% year-over-year. I think the best gauge of our expectation for future results is going to come from the steady and visible backlog that we have in the business, and the number of contracts that we're accruing there to provide that runway for growth. I'd probably acknowledge that there are individual areas or pockets in the business that might slow at a given point. You do have customers that work on a big build-out, and then that gets finished, and you can see that transpire. It's very normal in the business. I think, with ITG, we're very focused on growth. We're very focused on accumulating new logos, new customers.

Chris Mecray
CFO at ITG

We've developed a business model here that is broadening and creating opportunity in various pockets all around the country. I guess, what I would say right now is that we've been fortunate enough to continue to look at a runway of growth, despite the lumpiness that you see with any individual pocket in a period of time.

Andy Kaplowitz
Andy Kaplowitz
Analyst at Citigroup

It's helpful color. Maybe just on data centers, I know you talked about revenue from existing data centers beginning to ramp in Q2, but maybe you could give us more color on what you're seeing in that market. Did data center backlog grow from what you told us during the IPO? I think growth was around $540 million. How are you thinking about either data center revenue or backlog acceleration moving forward? How's the pipeline there?

Chris Mecray
CFO at ITG

Yeah. We talked about an over $500 million backlog with data center customers exiting last year. Those contracts specifically, by the way, they do go out several years. It's not all immediate backlog. That trends out over two to three years. But the early phases of that backlog began to really roll out and start to grow earlier and into the middle of this year. Really, the back half of the year is expected to be substantively stronger than the first half from data center work. I think that'll continue as we get into 2027 and beyond. I wouldn't say that we got any major data center new awards in the second quarter, but I will point out that we have outstanding bids in multiple contracts related to data center that are out there now and that could be decided in coming months.

Chris Mecray
CFO at ITG

There's plenty of work that is out there and that we're bidding on.

Andy Kaplowitz
Andy Kaplowitz
Analyst at Citigroup

Helpful, guys. Good quarter.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jamie Cook with Truist Securities. Your line is now open.

Jamie Cook
Jamie Cook
Analyst at Truist Securities

Good morning. Congratulations on a nice quarter. I guess just my first question, nice success with diversifying your customer base with Ziply and Intrepid. As you think about future bookings into the back half of the year, do you see more opportunities to diversify your customer base? I guess just my second question, Chris, as it relates to the guidance you provided, which was helpful. It looks like, relative to the IPO, at least the implied fourth quarter is a little stronger, in particular on the margin side and on the EBITDA side. If you could help us just understand what the drivers behind that are. Thank you.

Andy Parrott
CEO at ITG

Yeah. Thanks, Jamie. This is Andy. To speak about the back half and the future logos, obviously, we're continuing to add incremental logos to our story, and it's been an amazing journey so far. I can tell you that I've even signed some MSAs this week. With our recent tuck-in acquisition of Full Circle Fiber that we did this week, it also allowed us to add some incremental logos where we believe we can land and expand strategy and continue to grow those relationships, as I've reached out to a lot of the CEOs of some other companies out there that are excited about this future venture that we have together.

Andy Parrott
CEO at ITG

And then, obviously, word on the street, as long as we continue to execute very well, we actually have a lot of logos that are actually proactively reaching out to us with excitement to partner with us. So we're very optimistic on our logo growth. And then, obviously, as we do a new logo, we have that continuous land and expand strategy where we're continuing to grow that organic activity within those logos, either through geographic areas of expansion on incremental lines of business or service lines that these companies are asking us to partner with.

Chris Mecray
CFO at ITG

And Jamie, to your second question around the implied back half, I think the punchline there is really we kind of maintain our view that we expressed during the IPO. We took the beat, the slight increase versus plan in the second quarter and flowed that through the year.

Chris Mecray
CFO at ITG

But I don't really see any meaningfully different outlook in our initial guide here from what we shared with folks during the IPO process. But it's a strong outlook for this year with $1.5 billion, $1.6 billion top line and a growth rate in the mid-30s. And that's relatively evenly split between the two service lines. We've got mid-30s growth in E&M and even mid-30s plus on infrastructure deployment for the full-year. And again, I think those are very much on track to what we've been anticipating. And seasonally, the third quarter is the biggest, so it's a bigger hill to climb in the current quarter. But a lot of what you see in that slightly lower fourth quarter is just pure seasonality. You lose whatever it is, two to even three weeks of construction days in the fourth quarter around the holidays. So that's baked in.

Chris Mecray
CFO at ITG

But hopefully as we go, we'll see, but we'd like to do even better than that. But obviously, we have to see how things click along the way here. So, thanks for your question.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Steven Fisher with UBS. Your line is now open.

Steven Fisher
Steven Fisher
Analyst at UBS

Thanks. Good morning, and congrats on the first release here. Can you just give us a little more color on the kind of data center work you expect to pick up in the second half? Is that more long haul or more local connectivity kind of work? Just on the revenue trajectory on data centers, I think you had been assuming pretty significant growth there over the next couple of years, like kind of multiples of what you are doing now. Is that still the framework to think about?

Andy Parrott
CEO at ITG

Steven, this is Andy. Yes, and would probably be my answer on the long haul and more regional interconnect activity. We are seeing trends where some of these massive data centers out in the rural areas are getting a little bit of maybe headwinds, if you will. We are seeing other kind of tactical things where people are looking at data centers in existing locations and repurposing them and potentially leveraging more of a scattered outlay that allows ITG to do a lot more interconnect activity in between multiple data centers instead of a mega hyper data center location that is being built out. So we are well-positioned to do both, and we are excited. As we said, we have got really great relationships. We are going to continue to do those relationships, and we are in great conversations with a handful of other hyperscalers to look out.

Andy Parrott
CEO at ITG

But as you know, these are two, three years sometimes backlog activities as we are at the table, and we appreciate being at the table, but it is a bit early to go in and count our chickens before all of our eggs are hatched, and that is an exciting thing for us. But yes, and is really the answer because we absolutely prefer doing both long haul, and we are good at it, and then we are really great at those regional rings that the current customers are asking us to fulfill for them.

Chris Mecray
CFO at ITG

I will just jump in. From an actual revenue production standpoint, we are going from small change last year in data center work to something that I would say should be north of $65 million this year in revenue production. We see that growing by multiples over the next few years.

Steven Fisher
Steven Fisher
Analyst at UBS

Very helpful. Then maybe just in terms of the acquisition, you mentioned a couple of times, Full Circle is a tuck-in. Can you maybe just scale that for us? How material is it? Just curious why those assets were for sale in the first place.

Chris Mecray
CFO at ITG

We are really excited about the acquisition. We are really excited about bringing them into the fold. It is a company that we knew previously. They are very much in our markets and have a lot of respect from the customer base that they serve, some of whom are also customers that we serve. They did run into some challenges recently, and we are very excited that we were able to step in and help them resolve those challenges. We are bringing in a lot of assets, people, and fleet from the organization. Because it literally came together very quickly, we are getting our heads around right now what the business model, business plan is going to be for this year, next year, in terms of how many folks we bring in, how many contracts we do bring in, and so on.

Chris Mecray
CFO at ITG

I would just beg patience, and we will be able to bake it in a bit more detail by the end of this quarter into our model. But we are just getting our heads around the fine point of what we actually expect. But it is a reasonably sized business. It is hundreds of people coming into the organization, and it is going to produce, I think, a good lever for us. I think it will have potentially strong returns for the business. It is very much along the lines of some of the transactions that we have done historically, where you are taking folks in the business that could do much better under our umbrella, and we expect that.

Steven Fisher
Steven Fisher
Analyst at UBS

Thank you very much.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Angel Castillo with Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

Angel Castillo
Angel Castillo
Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Good morning. Thanks for taking my question, and just to echo everybody's congrats on being public now. Just a quick question on the utility side, I guess. Can you just remind us on the magnitude of the investments you're making in the utilities locate opportunity? Just how should we think about the cost rolling off? How should we think about the opportunity set going forward from that end market in terms of revenue timing? Just what you're seeing as you continue to drive that investment would be helpful.

Andy Parrott
CEO at ITG

Yeah, happy to do that. Obviously, we've got multiple different. We have a civil division that is on the utility side, helping with water, gas, et cetera, primarily in Florida. Then on the locate side, we're starting to see a lot of positive trends as we had a lot of ramp-up costs that we've been still absorbing in 2026 that we believe will continue to drive and also help with our EBITDA and more importantly, our operational margin as we get more efficiencies. In the locate business, as we get more density, and when I say that, I'm not just painting the ground for one customer, but I'm painting the ground for two or three customers and continue to see that growth. It's just going to continue to drive greater operational margin in that business. But we're getting good, I would say.

Andy Parrott
CEO at ITG

When you're going out and starting something really as an aggressive ramp that we did in 2026 to really get that operational efficiency and more importantly, just operational excellence in that business. So we're optimistic to continue to see that be a great contributor to our success story.

Chris Mecray
CFO at ITG

In terms of financial impact, there have been some add backs in the second quarter associated with startup businesses and restructuring and so on. There is some of that from this area included in that. We do expect that those add backs will abate as we get through the back half of the year. So those should not persist much longer. There may be some residual in the third quarter, but probably not much beyond that in our current thinking.

Angel Castillo
Angel Castillo
Analyst at Morgan Stanley

That's very helpful. Thank you. Just wanted to ask about, one of the factors that I think has made it difficult, I guess, for you to diversify, has generally just been continued growth from Comcast and Charter or some of these key customers. Just curious if you could talk about, what you're hearing from those customers, what they're telling you about future spend. I think we often hear concerns around lower CapEx, but from what we can see at least right now, it continues to look like sequential growth in some of the spend from some of these key customers, which again, seems like a maybe high-quality problem to have, but ultimately, just curious what you're hearing in terms of future spend from those customers.

Andy Parrott
CEO at ITG

Yeah. To begin, we absolutely love those relationships. We love those anchor customers that we have. We absolutely are at the table with them every single day. As I think about the capital total addressable market, our key customers are looking to simplify their operations as they're having a lot of pressure, obviously with ARPU and maintaining their margins. So condensing into just a handful of strategic partners has been really the message that we've been hearing from those customers, and we are getting a larger percentage of the total spend, even if the capital allocation is actually reducing for them collectively. They have a handful of strategic partners, and that's where a lot of our growth is coming from.

Andy Parrott
CEO at ITG

It's going in and actually partnering with those core customers and going, "We really want to simplify the amount of human bandwidth it takes to manage these large projects by having 30 individual partners, where we can be more successful if we have four to eight customers," and obviously ITG being on that list. The other benefit ITG has is really, as you think about capital allocation, but we are absolutely the E&M partners of these large customers that continue to drive just ongoing reoccurring OpEx activity with. They're seeing a higher churn cycle in customers, which is actually driving a bit more OpEx to the business to maintain the same level of relationships that they have. So think about every customer that switches from, now that has more choices than ever, the life cycle of those customers are actually shrinking and driving more repetitive connect, disconnect maintenance activity.

Andy Parrott
CEO at ITG

From a maintenance side, even if you have a little bit less of a capital spend, the operating maintenance of those networks really have no bearing on, unfortunately, how many customers you actually have connected. So it is really based on plant miles, and us being those strategic partners continue to drive that level of the capital spend, which is a large percentage of our total revenue from these two core customers.

Angel Castillo
Angel Castillo
Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Very helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Justin Hauke with Baird. Your line is now open.

Justin Hauke
Justin Hauke
Analyst at Baird

Great. Thanks. Nice to talk to you guys again. I have two questions, but they are kind of combined, so I am going to put it as one here. I wanted to ask on the organic growth. It looked like it accelerated. Last quarter was mid to high teens, which is what you are talking about as the outlook, but it was low single digits here in the second quarter. I guess if I look at the revenue from Charter specifically, it looks like it was flat year-over-year. The offset is that the inorganic was higher than we were expecting. So I wanted to ask if you could address that point. The second part of the question was just to confirm in the guidance, it does not include any inorganic contribution from future acquisitions that you might do.

Justin Hauke
Justin Hauke
Analyst at Baird

I just wanted to make sure that that was the case. Thank you.

Chris Mecray
CFO at ITG

Thanks for the question, Justin, and a couple of items there to cover. Absolutely we do not bake in future M&A into our plan or the plan that we discussed during the IPO. The second quarter, I would probably first of all just note that in our plan, the second quarter is the slowest growth quarter of the year, and that was anticipated. Baked into the plan, and obviously we beat the top line in the quarter, but everything that transpired there was essentially as expected. I would say, maybe on the core growth side, it was a little slower than expected just because of the pace of startup of construction coming out of this winter.

Chris Mecray
CFO at ITG

It feels like a long time ago now, and I am sitting here in the 90s in Florida, but March, April was very chilly up north, and a lot of construction was really 3+ weeks delayed from normal in this winter. I hate to point to weather. That is no excuse. Of course, we do not need an excuse because we made and beat the quarter. But I do point that out nonetheless as a factor in terms of the pace of core growth. It was a little bit of a pinch quarter because what you saw was we were accumulating a lot of contracts and a lot of work that we knew was going to start around the middle of the year. But you are also sort of finishing a bunch of other work.

Chris Mecray
CFO at ITG

You had stuff coming off in some areas, and then you knew stuff was coming on, but it was not really planned to come on until June, July, and August. We kind of knew in that plan that there was going to be a little bit of a pinch in the middle or second quarter of the year. Our plan for the back half of the year is for double-digit growth before any acquisition activity. We still feel comfortable with that. We have seen a pickup of new work in a variety of locations during the course of the summer here. Again, acknowledging second quarter was the slowest quarter of the year, but we feel good about where we are headed there and on track for our full-year guide here.

Justin Hauke
Justin Hauke
Analyst at Baird

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. As a reminder to ask a question at this time, please press star one one on your touchtone telephone. Our next question comes from the line of Michael Dudas with Vertical Research Partners. Your line is now open.

Michael Dudas
Analyst at Vertical Research Partners

Morning, Andy and Chris.

Chris Mecray
CFO at ITG

Hey, Michael. Thanks.

Michael Dudas
Analyst at Vertical Research Partners

Hey. Chris or Andy, maybe you could share a little bit more insight on your longer-term backlog number that you shared with us, Chris. I thought it was quite impressive. Maybe how does that translate to like end markets, customers? I'm assuming a lot of MSA, but not yet defined on what it's going to be. Is that trend surprising? Is that a number that was better than you thought? In what areas is the longer-term work being more allocated relative to what your maybe near-term type work that runs through your P&L? Thanks.

Chris Mecray
CFO at ITG

Yeah. Thanks for the question. We're not planning on reporting a total backlog figure over time or breaking that out in detail for the simple reason that I think it's misleading in the sense that 60%, almost 2/3 of the business today is on the E&M side. It's not really a traditional backlog-driven business. It's MSA contract-based, and you're really talking about rolling over existing MSA contracts over time. When you look out two to three years, if you try to identify what a backlog looks like on that more than half of our business, it becomes more of a conceptual construct than what you might think of as traditional backlog. So, if our business mix changes over time and we're doing a lot more project work instead of this MSA kind of maintenance and fulfillment type work, then maybe our thinking there changes.

Chris Mecray
CFO at ITG

I didn't want to create a reporting framework that kind of has people thinking, well, how do you grow a three-year backlog or a four-year backlog every quarter when it's mostly MSA based, right? Hopefully you understand that concept. Nonetheless, very excited about the awards that we gathered in the quarter and led to a growth rate of a total backlog that's well over $3 billion, essentially around $3.3 billion, growing year-over-year in the mid-30s and growing sequentially. A lot of those awards are focused on infrastructure deployment. Again, eight new contracts of note from different customers. We highlighted a couple of the bigger ones. Just think about fiber build-out all over the country.

Chris Mecray
CFO at ITG

We have partnered with a couple of really nice growing, kind of smaller, but growing service providers, and there's just a lot of work for them to do, and they're looking for, like Andy said, looking for core partners who they can do most of the work with. We have more opportunity with those customers as we look forward. We've by no means booked the total opportunity with them over a multi-year period. We do expect over the course of time here to see new awards, even from those customers. Hopefully that helps a little bit.

Michael Dudas
Analyst at Vertical Research Partners

That's very helpful.

Chris Mecray
CFO at ITG

We do have lots of opportunity at data center. We have lots of opportunity for the project side and utility. We look forward to winning more work as we go. I mean, our pipeline is significant, well over $1 billion of pipeline that we're looking at right now. I fully expect that our visibility and that sort of construct of total backlog, it's real in the sense that it gives us a really good sense of where we're going to be working during 2027 and even in 2028, based on contracts that we have in hand. Particularly on that 40% of the business that's infrastructure deployment, we're putting together a book that gives us a lot of planability, a lot of visibility in terms of where and what we're doing.

Michael Dudas
Analyst at Vertical Research Partners

Chris, that was very helpful, I thought, and the assessment is spot on. Thanks. I appreciate it.

Chris Mecray
CFO at ITG

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Brian Brophy with Stifel. Your line is now open.

Brian Brophy
Brian Brophy
Analyst at Stifel

Yeah. Thanks. Good morning, everybody. Just had a bigger picture question given this is the first earnings call. But wondering if you could give an overview of your fulfillment business and what kind of work you do there, and how does overbuilding impact the growth opportunity there over time? Thanks.

Andy Parrott
CEO at ITG

Yeah. So our fulfillment side of the business, think about us being an extension of our partners. I always tell people ITG is the biggest company nobody's heard of because when we're standing at your door, we're likely wearing a shirt that says Comcast or Charter or any of our other 80 partners that are out there doing fulfillment work with us. As you think about whether it's maintenance of keeping the network on, somebody takes three poles out at 3:00 in the morning, we are on-call support. If your Wi-Fi's not working and you can't get the new iPad connected in your house, it's very likely an ITG technician is in there helping you with your simplistic mesh Wi-Fi 7 networks. As you think about overbuilders, that's the other thing that's very unique about ITG is the fungibility of our workforce.

Andy Parrott
CEO at ITG

We absolutely love our core customers, and we continue to be strategic partners. Yet we're also the strategic partners of others that are in there overbuilding these networks. We have the workforce and the talent to go execute these fiber builds or these fiber networks. You take a look at our customer base, and you're going to see that just about everybody that's also in the fiber business is a partner with ITG. Think about a single location, Memphis, Tennessee, for example, or Nashville, and go, not only does one of our depots, if you go into our warehouse, we may have that warehouse staged in four different sub-warehouses because we're actually serving four different customers. We're the support customer for the legacy telco or Ma Bell.

Andy Parrott
CEO at ITG

We're the cable co legacy partner, then we are the new fiber overbuilder supporter, building those networks and providing support. Even in some locations, we might be the co-op electrical partner as well that's getting into the fiber space. So we get that density. We get greater opportunities to be able to have the right resources at the right place at the right time because we have these dense markets that we're building. Then as you think about the civil side of the business and the locate side of the business, how great is that to go to one location and put four different flags on the ground versus one?

Andy Parrott
CEO at ITG

It continues to drive our abilities to serve our customers with 24/7 on-call support, complete fulfillment activity, and be able to have the latest and greatest campaign when they come and be partners with us and go, "We're scheduling a 20% lift in total connects because we've got this great offer that we're really excited about. Do you have the resources to support that activity?" So days out from an order entry to fulfillment completion is same day, next day, which a lot of these customers really need to be competitive in the communities that they're competing against each other. So all boats kind of head into ITG in those scenarios, and we're very strategic with our customers. But it's really a benefit, actually, to our business plan.

Brian Brophy
Brian Brophy
Analyst at Stifel

That's great. Appreciate the overview. Obviously, it was great to hear about the tuck-in. Curious the latest you're seeing on the M&A pipeline side, and curious how much of that pipeline includes end markets outside of communications like T&D and others. Thanks.

Andy Parrott
CEO at ITG

Yeah. We've had quite a few reviews. I've actually had boots on the ground and multiple different kind of side civil activity. The civil is just really something we're excited about. But we're going to crawl, walk, run when it comes to some of the things kind of outside of our wheelhouse. When I say outside, we may be in that space, but we're really good at that, maybe geographically. So I may want to look at more kind of the organic growth and leveraging the talent that's there. I can even tell you this week, we had people here in our corporate office in Fort Lauderdale exploring more of the civil side of the business. We will not make the hustle mistakes. We don't want to get out ahead of our skis.

Andy Parrott
CEO at ITG

If you see the story, you will see us kind of organically growing where we have the strength, where we think we can bring in great value and great margins into the business, especially as we can plug it into our ecosystem. As we think about that growth, that is exactly something we believe will be on our roadmap. I do not, unfortunately, have anything that I can announce today other than just the smile on my face that you cannot see as I think about the future and where ITG is going to be here in the near future.

Brian Brophy
Brian Brophy
Analyst at Stifel

Understood. I will pass it on. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. I am currently showing no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back over to management for closing remarks.

Chris Mecray
CFO at ITG

Okay. Thanks, everybody, for joining. As a reminder, we have our commentary file and documents posted to the website. Shortly, we should have a marketing deck also up there, which will be a nice education piece for new investors looking at the story. I look forward to chatting with you all during the course of the quarter here. Thanks for joining.

Andy Parrott
CEO at ITG

Yeah, thank you.

Operator

This concludes today's conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

Executives
    • Chris Mecray
      CFO
    • Andy Parrott
      CEO
Analysts
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