EMCOR Group Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
February 26, 2025

There are 8 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good morning. My name is Betsy, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the EMCORE Group Fourth Quarter and Full Year twenty twenty four Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session.

Operator

I would now like to turn the call over to Andy Bachman, Vice President of Investor Relations. Mr. Bachman, you may begin.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Betsy, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to EMCOR's fourth quarter and full year twenty twenty four earnings conference call. For those of you joining us by webcast, we are at the beginning of our slide presentation that will accompany our remarks today. This presentation will be archived in the Investor Relations section of our website at emcorgroup.com. With me today are Tony Guzzi, our Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer Jason Albandian, Senior Vice President and EMCORE's Chief Financial Officer and Maxine Mauricio, Executive Vice President, Chief Administrative Officer and General Counsel. For today's call, Tony will provide comments on our fourth quarter and the full year 2024.

Speaker 1

Jason will then review our fourth quarter and full year numbers. Before turning it back to Tony to discuss our recent acquisition of Miller Electric Company, our RPOs, as well as reviewing our 2025 guidance before we open it up for Q and A. Before we begin, as a reminder, this presentation and discussion contains certain forward looking statements and may contain certain non GAAP financial information. Slide two of our presentation describes in detail these forward looking statements and the non GAAP financial information disclosures. I encourage everyone to review both disclosures in conjunction with our discussion and accompanying slides.

Speaker 1

And finally, as a reminder, all financial information discussed during this morning's call is included in our consolidated financial statements within both our earnings press release issued this morning and in our Form 10 K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. With that, let me turn the call over to Tony. Tony?

Speaker 2

Yes. Thanks, Andy. And good morning and welcome to our fourth quarter twenty twenty four earnings call. In my opening comments today, I will primarily highlight our performance in 2024. I'll discuss what went well and the challenges we face.

Speaker 2

I'll also provide some brief remarks on the quarter before turning it over to Jason, who's going to cover the quarter in detail. I'll then close by outlining our 2025 outlook and guidance. And for my initial comments, I'd ask you to turn to pages four and five. For the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four, we again had record performance on nearly every relevant financial metric, including diluted earnings per share of $6.32 operating income of $389,000,000 operating margin of 10.3% operating cash flow of $469,000,000 and revenues of $3,770,000,000 a 9.6% year over year increase. It was a great quarter finishing an exceptional year.

Speaker 2

For 2024, we are at $14,600,000,000 in revenues, achieving year over year revenue growth of 15.8%. We had diluted earnings per share of 21.52 operating income of $1,300,000,000 and we had an operating margin of 9.2%. We had operating cash flow of $1,400,000,000 It was a terrific year with strong execution across our business, supported by well timed long term investments that positioned us to serve growing, diverse and technically sophisticated end markets. Our performance culture centered on mission first people always enables us to attract, develop, retain and reward an exceptional workforce, which in turn drives our strong performance for both our customers and our shareholders. So this morning rather than providing a segment by segment recap of the year, what I thought I'd do is I'd provide an overview of what well in 2024 and really what has gone well over the last three to five years, as well as some of the challenges we overcame to deliver an exceptional 2024.

Speaker 2

First, we operate in growing markets that offer long term opportunities for success. However, to perform well in these markets, you must have the ability to attract, develop and retain exceptionally skilled labor. You must exhibit excellence in project planning and development, virtual design and construction, and I'll refer to that as BDC. And VDC includes BIM or Building Information Modeling that then leads to pre fabrication and then automation of some of our pre fabrication operations. You also need to have experienced leaders down through the segment and subsidiary levels who can manage the performance of the work and earn and maintain the confidence of our customers, highlighting that we have the ability to efficiently execute projects under the most demanding conditions without compromising safety.

Speaker 2

As we have demonstrated again in 2024 and really over many years, our ability to perform well in growing markets like data centers, high-tech and traditional manufacturing, healthcare, energy retrofits and water and wastewater projects, they provide us the opportunities to generate above market growth. At EMCOR, we pivot to sectors where growth and opportunity exists. And we deploy our skilled workforce and leadership teams to tackle the most difficult projects for customers who value our capabilities, experience and strong balance sheet. Further, we have a broad service offering and the trade depth to effectively execute that offering. Our extensive capabilities across the mechanical and electrical trades allow us to provide a more comprehensive scope and give us the desired scale for our customers.

Speaker 2

In the electrical trades, we can offer the full range of medium and low voltage solutions across geographies, end markets and customers. Our mechanical capabilities span large complex mechanical and piping systems and high-tech and traditional manufacturing, industrial, oil and gas, healthcare and water and wastewater projects that often require superior BDC and prefabrication capabilities to ensure efficient, precise and safe execution. Our mechanical capabilities extend to fire life safety where we design, install and service some of the most complex fire suppression and alarm systems. Beyond construction, our capabilities extend to the aftermarket where we have the skills and scale to meet our customers' needs with HVAC and building control service and retrofit projects, as well as electrical retrofits, low voltage work, as well as the Fire Life Safety Service solutions mentioned above. And finally, we invested in the long term for our people and we are disciplined capital allocators.

Speaker 2

At our core, we are a company that succeeds because of excellence and field leadership and skilled labor united by our M core values of mission first people always. We have a comprehensive leadership development program from project managers and foreman to segment and corporate leadership. We train extensively across the skills that enable our success. We also have leading succession management as evidenced by the fact that 80% of our subsidiary and segment promotions are internal and well planned. Our voluntary turnover rates at the subsidiary and segment leadership levels are near zero as we have a pay for performance culture and we work collectively as a team to achieve superior results for our customers.

Speaker 2

Our capital allocation model is balanced and effective, focused on building the business first through organic investment. For example, over the past three years, we have more than doubled our capital investment in the business with CapEx now in 2024 of $75,000,000 dollars We have a very successful acquisition program and we returned cash to our shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. In 2024, we completed seven acquisitions for approximately $230,000,000 and we returned $43,000,000 in cash through dividends to our shareholders and $500,000,000 to our shareholders through share repurchases. The Miller acquisition, which we will discuss later in this presentation, closed on 02/03/2025, and is a great example of our capital and discipline in action. As we have said in the past, deals happen when they happen and we are disciplined acquirers focused on building our overall business to better serve the demands of our customers through offering of diverse services across markets and geographies.

Speaker 2

While 2024 was an exceptional year, we did have some challenges. These include ongoing supply chain issues. We finished some pre COVID work that we have now finished that was not the greatest and the intense competition we faced in our U. S. And UK site based services business.

Speaker 2

Building and maintaining our skilled workforce is always a challenge, but our field leaders are best in class in labor planning, sourcing, training and retention. We anticipate facing some macro and other potential challenges in 2025, but as we've done in the past, we will work to protect ourselves with excessive planning and where appropriate prefabrication and automation coupled with the right contractual terms and structures. As contractors, it is in our DNA and training to adapt and improvise to achieve acceptable results. We exit 2024 with RPO growth of 14% year over year and aggregate our RPOs of $10,100,000,000 another record for the company. Miller added over $700,000,000 in RPOs as of our February 3 closing that is not in the $10,100,000,000 20 20 4 year end number discussed above.

Speaker 2

Our balance sheet remains liquid and strong even after the $865,000,000 acquisition of Miller. With that, Jason, I'll turn the discussion over to you.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Tony, and good morning, everyone. Starting on Slide six, I'm going to review our operating performance for each of our segments as well as some of the key financial data for the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four as compared to the fourth quarter of twenty twenty three.

Speaker 2

I'll also touch on some

Speaker 3

of the highlights for our full year performance in in addition to our acquisition of Miller Electric and the impact on our guidance for 2025. As Tony mentioned, consolidated revenues were a record $3,770,000,000 an increase of $330,800,000 or 9.6%, which was led by our construction segments as we continue to execute well and demand remains strong across most of the key sectors that we serve. On an organic basis, revenues grew 7.4%. If we look at each of our segments, revenues of U. S.

Speaker 3

Electrical Construction were $933,200,000 an increase of just over 22%. The most significant growth in this segment was experienced in the network and communications market sector due to a number of data center projects. But beyond data centers, demand within this segment continues to be broad based with notable revenue increases within high-tech and traditional manufacturing, transportation and institutional. U. S.

Speaker 3

Mechanical Construction generated revenues of $1,660,000,000 increasing 12.8%. Similar to Electrical Construction, the largest growth during the quarter was seen within Network and Communications. In addition, this segment experienced revenue increases within a number of the other sectors in which we operate, including high-tech manufacturing and healthcare. Revenues of the mechanical segment also benefited from higher levels of service work as we continue to grow our mechanical and fire protection maintenance base. As expected and consistent with my comments the last several quarters, partially offsetting the growth in both of our construction segments was a decrease in revenues from the commercial market sector due to either reduced demand across the commercial real estate industry or the completion of various warehousing and distribution projects.

Speaker 3

Further, within the Mechanical segment, we did experience a quarterly decrease in revenues from the manufacturing and industrial sector due in part to the timing of project startups. With a robust pipeline of traditional manufacturing and food processing projects along with a 7% year over year increase in manufacturing RPOs, we remain confident in the underlying demand drivers of this sector. On a combined basis, our construction segments generated revenues of $2,600,000,000 an increase of 16% year over year. Looking at U. S.

Speaker 3

Building Services, revenues were $755,600,000 representing a decrease of 5.8 due to the non renewal of certain facilities maintenance contracts discussed on prior calls. An $89,000,000 reduction in revenues from our commercial and government site based operations more than offset the continued strength of our Mechanical Services division, which grew revenues by 42,500,000 We experienced revenue growth across each of our mechanical service lines. And just as a reminder, we began to see the impact of the lost site based contracts in the second quarter of twenty twenty four. As such, when we look forward, we do anticipate a revenue headwind of $60,000,000 to $70,000,000 within U. S.

Speaker 3

Building Services for the first quarter of twenty twenty five. If we move to Industrial Services, revenues were $312,700,000 an increase of 6.9% driven by the segment's Field Services division inclusive of an acquisition made by us during the year. And lastly, UK Building Services delivered revenues of $107,900,000 generally in line with that of the year ago period. Let's turn to Slide seven. With operating income of $388,600,000 or 10.3% of revenues, our performance established new quarterly records for both operating income and operating margin.

Speaker 3

When compared against the fourth quarter of twenty twenty three, this represents a 34.4% or nearly $100,000,000 increase in operating income and operating margin has expanded by 190 basis points. Once again turning to each of our segments, U. S. Electrical Construction generated operating income of $147,900,000 which represents a 94% increase. Operating margin was an outstanding 15.8%, a five eighty basis point improvement.

Speaker 3

In addition to a more favorable mix of work, this performance is a true testament to the exceptional execution by our operating companies and project teams. Operating income for U. S. Mechanical Construction was $220,600,000 an increase of 18.6% year over year and operating margin of 13.3% expanded by 70 basis points. Electrical Construction, a more favorable mix of work and excellent project execution were the primary drivers of this performance.

Speaker 3

From a market sector perspective, our construction segments generated greater gross profit from the majority of the sectors in which we operate with the largest increases generally tracking the growth in revenues. And together, our construction segments reported an operating margin of 14.2%, is a two fifty basis point improvement year over year. Operating income for U. S. Building Services was $40,900,000 a slight decline year over year.

Speaker 3

However, operating margin remains strong at 5.4%. With the loss of the previously referenced site based contracts, the composition of this segment's revenues has shifted to a greater proportion of Mechanical Services resulting in an increase in gross profit and operating margins. Moving to Industrial Services, operating income was $10,200,000 a decrease of $2,400,000 and operating margin was 3.3%, a reduction of 100 basis points. Despite the increase in revenues, this segment experienced a decrease in gross profit and gross profit margin given a less favorable mix of work due in part to lower revenue contribution from our shop services division. And lastly, UK Building Services earned operating income of $4,800,000 In addition to the impact of slightly lower revenues, operating margins in The UK have declined by 50 basis points as the segment's project portfolio in last year's fourth quarter included a greater number of higher margin opportunities.

Speaker 3

As we move to Slide eight, a few quarterly highlights on this slide starting with gross profit driven by our Electrical and Mechanical Construction segments as well as our U. S. Building Services segment, gross profit margin has expanded by two ten basis points with gross profit increasing by 22.5%. Our fourth quarter SG and A increased by just under $40,000,000 which includes $9,500,000 of incremental expenses from acquired companies. The remainder of this increase is largely due to employment costs given both greater headcount to support our organic growth as well as higher levels of incentive compensation expense across our operating companies due to their improved performance.

Speaker 3

SG and A margin for the quarter of 9.8% compares to 9.6% a year ago. The 20 basis point increase is a direct result of the expansion in gross profit margin and a corresponding increase in subsidiary incentive compensation that I just referenced. And finally on this page, diluted earnings per share was $6.32 compared to $4.47 an increase of 41.4%. If we briefly turn to Slide nine, this page summarizes our performance for the full year. Tony touched on much of this already in his opening commentary.

Speaker 3

So rather than walk through these results in detail, I simply want to highlight that our performance for 2024 sets new company records for virtually every metric that we track including annual revenues, gross profit and gross profit margin, operating income and operating margin, net income and diluted earnings per share. Notably for 2024, we are at a full year operating margin of 9.2%. As we look ahead, we remain confident in the underlying fundamentals of our business. When Tony outlines guidance for 2025, you will see that we are once again projecting a year of strong operating margins with a range of 8.5% to 9.2%. When looking at this range though, it is important to note that we anticipate a 25 to 30 basis point impact from incremental intangible asset amortization stemming from the Miller Electric acquisition.

Speaker 3

With that being said, if we look first to the high end of this range, we are projecting an operating margin, which would match the record margin we earned in 2024 despite the incremental amortization. Under this scenario, we're essentially forecasting a level of margin expansion within the underlying business. At the midpoint of our margin range, we have assumed a full year operating margin of approximately 8.9%, which when accounting for the incremental amortization is essentially in line with a 9.2% operating margin we earned in 2024. And finally, at the low end of our margin range, we've assumed a full year operating margin of 8.5%, which includes some measured assumptions due to macroeconomic and other uncertainties. When looking at margins, it's also important to remember that we are a project based business and our margins can and will move around from quarter to quarter based on the mix and timing of our work.

Speaker 3

Let's turn now to Slide 10, which is our balance sheet. As we've previously stated, our balance sheet remains strong and liquid and when combined with our history of operating cash flow generation provides us the flexibility we need to invest in organic growth, pursue strategic acquisitions and return capital to our shareholders. Although not shown on this slide, operating cash flow for the fourth quarter was $470,000,000 and for the full year we generated over $1,400,000,000 of operating cash equivalent to nearly 105% of operating income. We remain committed to our philosophy of balanced capital allocation and believe this is reflected both through our acquisition of Miller Electric, which Tony and I will speak to on the next slide, and our announcement today that our Board of Directors has approved a $500,000,000 increase to our share repurchase program. So let's turn to Slide 11, where we highlight the Miller acquisition.

Speaker 3

Based in Jacksonville, Florida, Miller Electric expands our presence in the Southeast where we previously had limited electrical operations. For full year 2024, the company generated estimated revenues of $8.00 $5,000,000 and $80,000,000 in adjusted EBITDA. With RPOs as of December 31 of just over $700,000,000 dollars we anticipate that Miller will contribute meaningfully to our projected revenue growth in 2025 with approximately 35% to 50% of our growth coming from Miller's contribution beginning in February of twenty twenty five. We also anticipate that the acquisition will be modestly accretive to diluted earnings per share in 2025 with further accretion in future years as backlog amortization runs off. When we reference EPS accretion, there's three factors which need to be considered.

Speaker 3

Those include the underlying operating contribution from the business, the incremental intangible asset amortization, which we estimate to be approximately $45,000,000 in the first year and a reduction in interest income resulting from the all cash purchase. When you consider all three of those factors, we estimate EPS accretion in 2025 of between 0.1 and $0.15 With that, I'll turn the call back to Tony, who I know wants to say a few words about the acquisition before we continue.

Speaker 2

Yes. Thank you, Jason. And look, we couldn't be more excited than to finally got into a deal with the team from Miller Electric, Henry Brown, his brother and family and the ESOP shareholders of that company. We first started talking to each other almost six years ago just to get to know each other because they're a leader in our space and we're a leader in the space. And they've always had this unbelievable reputation for professionalism, care for their employees and excellent execution for their customers and also disciplined capital allocators much like we are.

Speaker 2

It is really an acquisition that positions us to serve our customers better throughout the Southeast and also provide opportunity to expand opportunity for the team at Miller and grow the business substantially. It was already grown substantially over the past five to ten years, but to even grow more. I think when Henry and I talked about the acquisition, it was not an acquisition based on big changes in their operation because quite frankly, they already look a lot like a M Corporation. They're an IBEW leader and contractor. They run their company very much like a public company with the care and fiduciary responsibility or what a public company does.

Speaker 2

They have training programs. They have an inclusive culture. Their values almost identically match our values of mission first people always. And you've heard me talk in the past about when EMCOR does an acquisition, we first look is our excellence and acceptable field execution. Without a question, the folks at Miller Electric and the team there are excellent in field execution and really deliver for the customers in a safe productive manner.

Speaker 2

Then we also go back to the main office and said, do they share our values? And we can say conclusively that the values of Miller Electric and EMCOR align specifically, especially around the values of discipline and integrity and trust and transparency and safety and teamwork. And then they also add to that the embrace of the community, which they would like many of our local companies do. There's nothing we really want to change at Miller. What we want to do is take the best of Miller and bring it into EMCOR and take the best of EMCOR and bring it to Miller.

Speaker 2

And we expect a long and prosperous future. We're excited that Henry and his team are going to be leading that business into the future and it will report under our Electrical segment to Dan Fitzgibbons, who I'll modestly say is one of the top data center people in the country. So their mix of work actually brings more diversity to us. They're about 24% data centers, 23% healthcare, fifteen % commercial. They know how to do the hardest industrial work.

Speaker 2

And they also know how to work in the sports and entertainment market, which is a growing part of the Florida market. They will be based in Jacksonville, Florida, and we look to grow the Miller footprint from Jacksonville, Florida throughout the Southeast through both organic growth and acquisition. So Henry Brown and his team will be key parts of the EMCOR leadership going forward and it's about as near perfect match of how a company is run as what we've seen at EMCOR. You take the best subsidiaries at EMCOR, you can lay it alongside how Miller's run and they're almost identical. With that being said, I'll now move on to RPOs, which will be pages twelve and thirteen.

Speaker 2

And I'd ask you to turn your attention there and I'd actually pull those pages out or look at them side by side like we have the last couple of times. And what you'll see on Page 12 is some key trends in market sectors where we continue to see growth. If you look at data centers and connectivity, we continue to see strong demand for hyperscale data center growth, which we include in our network and communications sector. At the end of twenty twenty four, RPOs in this sector were a record $2,800,000,000 up $1,250,000,000 or 80% year over year, 31% sequentially from the end of the third quarter. As I said on prior calls, we continue to believe we're in the early innings of the overall data center expansion and we have successfully positioned ourselves in key data center geographies over the last several years.

Speaker 2

Miller even brings us more geography to serve the data center market. And we do that by expanding our capabilities both through organic capability building and acquisition and Windows acquisitions building more capability. I also believe we're in the early innings of reshoring and near shoring. And it will continue to provide us opportunities for both the high-tech manufacturing and the manufacturing industrial sectors. We expect this to even strengthen more as customers invest more in capital in these sectors as well as in oil and gas projects.

Speaker 2

Look, a lot of talk will go around tariffs. We believe long term the equalization of trade is a plus for Empor. There will be some near term hiccups that we will work through like we always do. But long term, the equalization of trade is a good thing for Empor as reassuring and near shoring will be part of that. High-tech manufacturing, we had just over $1,000,000,000 at the end of the quarter and that includes semiconductor, pharma, biotech, life sciences and electric vehicle value chain.

Speaker 2

RPOs in this sector were down sequentially year over year by 18.229.6% respectively. Look, driving this is the episodic nature of these projects, especially in the semiconductor space. You go through initial phases of multi year projects, multi phase locations, and then they reload and get ready for the next phase. Also it's defined as we completed, especially in the fire protection side, certain electric vehicle manufacturing or EV value chain projects. Look, I continue to believe, we continue to believe, our customers continue to believe in the long term fundamentals of high-tech manufacturing.

Speaker 2

That's especially true on certain semiconductor sites and that's especially true in bio life and pharma. And on EVs, we're going to have more share in EVs than we have today. There's going to be hybrids and they're all going to need battery plants and the value chain built to do that. We remain positive long term in expansion each one of these sectors in high-tech manufacturing. In addition, we continue to see a healthy base of RPOs within a traditional manufacturing industrial market sector.

Speaker 2

Go back to that reshoring near shoring trend, which I believe we're in the early innings in. And RPOs there are $863,000,000 at the end of the quarter, up nearly 7% year over year. And then finally, looking at energy efficiency and sustainability, good long term market for us for as long as I can remember. We continue to excel with retrofit project work, especially within the Mechanical Services division of our U. S.

Speaker 2

Building Services segment, where we had RPOs of over $1,100,000,000 As a reminder, this is focused on tenant fit, retrofitting outdated equipment, integrating building controls and it's really focused on making the space better, more efficient and also reducing usage and costs. These projects also increase overall system performance. Go to Page 13, you're going to continue to see strong demand in healthcare. We ended the quarter with another record $1,300,000,000 in RPOs, up 26% from the year ago period and 8% from the third quarter. Our water and wastewater RPOs were $683,000,000 at the end of the quarter, up approximately 6% year over year.

Speaker 2

These projects are episodic in nature. These are big size of scope projects for us and this is mostly a Florida market for us. RPOs in the institutional sector, which include project where schools, universities and local, state and federal buildings were up 18% year over year coming in at a record $1,100,000,000 Spending on research facilities, new classroom space, technology upgrades across campuses, renovation and retrofits with indoor air quality and reduced energy consumption is really what's driving demand in this market sector. Transportation RPOs grew 12% year over year to two ninety four million dollars largely driven by airport construction. And then finally, we had short duration projects of $457,000,000 go back to all the retrofit projects we talked about.

Speaker 2

This is about energy efficient, smarter, cleaner and more productive buildings. Partially setting our RPO increases were expected declines in commercial and there's no surprises there. Although, I will say, we'll see what happens now at the back half of 2025 into 2026 as return to office mandates become more prevalent and then buildings will be needed retrofitted because they really have some of them haven't been occupied for five or six years. As I mentioned earlier, total company RPOs at the end of the fourth quarter were $10,100,000,000 up $1,250,000,000 or 14.2% year over year. Miller will add another $700,000,000 sort of December 31, sort of similar number and that will be additive to that $10,100,000,000 We're pleased with the RPO performance, particularly in light of that strong revenue growth we had through the year and in the fourth quarter, which demonstrates continued strong demand for our services and we are pleased with our project pipeline, which remains strong and diverse.

Speaker 2

I'll get ahead of you on the question on this. Obviously with the margins Jason talked about, we believe what we have in RPOs is very similar to what we executed over the past year. And we also believe what we're bidding on now is very similar with our outlook we gave you to what we've done over the last two years. So So in closing, I'm going to go to Page 14. Obviously, 2024 was another great year for EMCOR, another record year.

Speaker 2

Our team accomplished much and with the addition of Miller Electric on February 3, and I talked about this, we already added another great team to our already solid foundation for future growth for 2025 and beyond. As we set our 2025 guidance, obviously we remain optimistic about our growth prospects and margin profile. While acknowledging, you know what, there's challenges in the broader economic environment. You could copy and paste this from year to year. There's always challenges in the broader economic environment.

Speaker 2

And in order to adjust these challenges, we will do what we always have done. You focus on what you control and you execute well, you continuously plan for what you don't control, you don't overcommit your resources and you continue to develop great leaders and you continue to recurring, train and develop leaders and also the best skilled workforce the industry. If you do that, things tend to work out okay. What we do know is these things. We should continue to earn our customers' confidence to build and service their most project challenging campuses, buildings and manufacturing plants.

Speaker 2

As such, we believe that our diverse market sectors provide the opportunity for us to grow our business to $16,100,000,000 to $16,900,000,000 in revenues and that's inclusive of the Miller acquisition. And we expect to earn diluted earnings per share between $22.25 and $24 We expect our operating margins pre Miller to continue to be strong and anticipate Miller will perform well, But intangible asset amortization, Jason went through all this in the first year of acquisition. You take EMCOR overall, he talked about this. It's going to nick us between '25 to 30 basis points for the full year. Also, just to be clear, and I think I've said this nine out of the last ten years, and I might have missed one.

Speaker 2

It's always important for people to remember this is not a quarter to quarter business. Project timing and customer releases do not always go as planned, right? And so you guys plan quarterly, we don't. We recognize that we may need to overcome headwinds from potential tariffs, which may be negative in the short term. And I said this, I believe long term that will be positive for us as it may more drive more reshoring.

Speaker 2

We also see volatility around supply chains. I just think that's a constant state of business now and a global supply chain will continue to face challenges and uncertainty. Further, we understand that the new administration may delay our end funding under certain legislation and it probably benefited our customers. Overall, we will manage these uncertainties as we always have. We're going to be vigilant on cost, vigilant on planning and vigilant on pricing and contractual terms.

Speaker 2

We're going to bring prefabrication and automation to bear to keep our costs under control. We'll keep our SG and A costs under controls and we won't overcommit to either contracts or schedule. We will continue to be balanced capital allocators. We will allocate more capital acquisitions. We allocated more than $20.24 and we will continue to allocate to acquisitions for the remainder of 2025 and we expect to remain the acquisition market to remain active.

Speaker 2

We'll continue to invest organically and we'll continue to return cash to shareholders as evidenced by the expansion of our share repurchase program. Finally, and not last, I want to thank all our M4 teammates for taking care of each other, living our values as a mission first people always and continuing to work in a safe and productive way to deliver exceptional value to our customers. And with that, I'll take questions. Betsy, over to you.

Operator

We will now begin the question and answer session. The first question today comes from Brent Thielman with D. A. Davidson. Please go ahead.

Speaker 4

Thanks. Good morning. Congrats on the strong year in the Noah deal.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Brent. Appreciate

Speaker 4

it. Yes. Hey, Tony, maybe just on Miller. I mean, take from your comments, it sounds like a really well run business. I guess, more so wondering if there are opportunities or future revenue synergies to gain when you can sort of combine it with some of your existing operations in the Southeast?

Speaker 2

Yes. We really only have overlap in two markets of any size and we think it's net additive in both. We have some overlap in Texas. We have some overlap in Mid To Southern Virginia. And in both places, we think that's additive.

Speaker 2

But that's part of the opportunity. The other part of the opportunity with Miller is we share customers and they're going to want us to do more where Miller's customers have confidence in them and we may not have the relationships or we have relationships where they're going to want to bring Miller into play, especially as you expand to some of these larger projects, whether that be data centers, manufacturing plants or healthcare services, those are the places where I think we have the most synergies in the near term. And then look, Miller, in EMCOR, we think of some of our bigger companies as platform companies and Miller will serve as a platform company for us through the Southeast. We think it opens a window into acquisitions in the Southeast, not large electrical contractors, but small to mid sized ones that will allow us to build scale and serve our customers better in more Southeastern markets.

Speaker 4

And Tony, I mean, it looks like data centers may be approaching sort of 30 of your ERPOs. Maybe to what degree you're seeing the influence of new AI data centers in your bookings now? I know it hasn't really been influential to revenue yet.

Speaker 2

Yes, I think that's a fair comment. The way we think about it now, do we know exactly what our customers are going to use those data centers for? No, but the way we know that is because of the kind of systems they're putting in and the kind of megawatts they're using. I would still say based on the mix of work we expect to execute for the most of 2025, we're still building cloud storage data centers with a little AI. But the mix is starting to come in with some AI data centers.

Speaker 2

And I said the only way we know that is through the megawatt and systems they're using. They need more cooling, they need more power. It's always I always like to take a step back when I think of things and people react to up markets. There's been a couple of these through the last three years. The reality of all this is, I still believe we're in the early innings.

Speaker 2

Like most major capital expansions, nothing's ever linear. I know that where we were building on three sites and there was maybe only three or four or five sites doing data centers in the country in 2019 to any scale. Today, you would say we're building hyperscale data centers electrically in about 15 different locations geography wise. And we talked about how we did that. So clearly, and I think these are some of the smartest planning people that I've had the privilege of watching work.

Speaker 2

I don't think Deepsea caught them by surprise. I think they have a plan, they're executing. And what they've been in, if you think about that expansion of sites is two things, they're mitigating their risks and allows us to bring different labor to bear, but also they've been in the search for power, right. And there's manufacturing sites that aren't as strong as they work. You go up to the shores of Lake Michigan outside of Chicago or towards South Bend, you go to places in Iowa, you go to places in Oklahoma that were major manufacturing sites at one time.

Speaker 2

The power is there and there's excess power. And so they've been moving towards this excess power. And what would have held it up, I think in some of the more mature data center sites where they were starting to get worried about a dearth of power maybe developing somewhere around 2027, '20 '20 '8. And I think one of the positives of the new administration is the realization that you need baseload power to stabilize the grid and also to support not only reshoring and near shoring, but also any industrial expansion and also to become a leader in AI. So I do think what you'll see is more gas plants built and those gas plants will enable those existing sites to continue to flourish and develop.

Speaker 2

And I think that's a key enabler to say decent visibility, our contractors for the next two or three years. We have decent visibility into the data center build, but I think it extends far beyond that.

Speaker 4

Really helpful. Tony, last one, I guess, I have to ask on margins. Appreciate your opening comments, but I mean the move in electrical margins here has just been phenomenal here in the last few years. And I guess the question I get is, how do you build upon this? Are there still opportunities from execution, efficiencies and utilization in the field?

Speaker 4

Open ended question, but love to hear that.

Speaker 2

Yes. Look, I would be cautious to say we're going to build on these margins, right, especially the margins you saw in the fourth quarter. I will say though, we obviously believe in the stability of margins based on our guidance. And if you combine the margin profile we have with the efficiency of capital we're operating the business from a return on net asset basis right now in our construction businesses, they're doing great. And if you told me I could run a 8.5% to 10% M core forever, I would take that deal from you.

Speaker 2

And it will bounce around quarter to quarter, right? And if you could tell me I could generate cash flow between 70100% of EBITDA, I would take that deal, right. And if you told me that we're going to continue to move the mix and continue to have opportunities to expand our mechanical service business, which also has leading margins and will solidify that site based business at a smaller size, we'll take that deal. So when I look at the what we have and why we're achieving those margins, in my estimation, very little that has to do with price. We still have some of the most difficult customers in the world.

Speaker 2

They are demanding. They are not paying us one more nickel than they have to. We are being innovative in our means and methods. We are sharing those means and method how to get things done more efficiently for customers around the country. We have great data center peer groups, both mechanically, electrically and in our Fire Life Safety business.

Speaker 2

People come to us because they know they're going to get it done efficiently, safe, productively and it's going to work. And we also know how to integrate further upstream with our BDC capabilities to know that we can help get involved earlier in the design to get to design for constructability. I think our excellence in VDC and BIM and prefab and the way we share knowledge is really unmatched. And that's the investments we've made. We talked about the capital investment profile, which is still small.

Speaker 2

We talk about it has been very targeted. It's been very targeted to the software enabling tools, the VDs, the expansion of prefabrication and then the linking to that prefabrication where customers feel confident that they can link us in earlier in the design. So the design for constructability and speed happens earlier. I think all that together, especially on these large projects, have allowed us to achieve superior margins. And then it gets down to the basis of great labor management in the field and having the right crew mix assembled.

Speaker 2

And then quite frankly, the union is working with us to assemble the right crew mix and we're a destination employer whether you're union or non union in the field. You put all that together, you train the hell out of your supervision from foreman up through superintendent to project manager to CEO. You drive people to the financial metrics that matter on a project in a company and you get good results. But all of that, Brett, you have to have a good market, right? If you don't have a good market, those things are not as easy to do.

Speaker 3

The only thing I think I'd add on margins, right, we obviously provided our expectations for the full year on consolidated basis. If you think of our segments and you think quarter to quarter, I would just say if you look at trailing twelve, eighteen, twenty four months, that gives you a good look of where the margins will bounce around between quarters.

Speaker 2

Yes. Good point, Jason. I got to make a comment though. I think it was early twenty twenty two. We had some not to sort of bring up bad news, but in early twenty twenty two, we had some late starts on some data center projects.

Speaker 2

It was Switchgear specifically wasn't getting delivered on time. We held on to a little bit of excess labor and no offense Brent, but our analysts here were on fire about margins in the quarter and we said, we're pretty sure we're still the leading electric contractor that can execute better than anybody in the field. Here's what's going on. And so will that happen again? I don't think anytime soon, but there's variables of control, but you can bet we're going to always take the opportunity to hold on to our best field supervision and not react to a short term blip.

Speaker 2

That's why margins aren't I'm not foretelling anything here. This is not a quarter to quarter business with margins.

Speaker 4

Understood. Appreciate you taking all the questions. I'll pass it on.

Speaker 1

Thanks Brent. Next question, Betsy.

Operator

The next question comes from Adam Stellheimer with Thompson Davis. Please go ahead.

Speaker 2

Good morning, Adam.

Speaker 1

Hey, good morning, guys. Congrats on the year and the Miller acquisition.

Speaker 2

And then you could add on the outlook, right? It's pretty good outlook.

Speaker 1

I was trying to be brief, but

Speaker 2

congrats

Speaker 1

on the outlook. I'm trying to get your high level thoughts on capital allocation. So would you guys be willing to hold a little bit of net debt if you found another Miller or if you really wanted to lean into the buyback quickly?

Speaker 2

I think on the former, not the latter. I think we would take on net debt or look, I think we're comfortable between one and two times for a short period of time. And we're comfortable really at 0.5 to one on a sustained basis if we needed to fund the business. If we found another Miller, which I'm not sure there's another one exactly like Miller, Yes, we would lean in and do that because the synergies and the profile of that company, if you go from field execution back to the values they run that company by, it was a perfect fit. There's not that many out there like that.

Speaker 2

They don't create problems for us with too much overlap and then it's a destructive acquisition. There are still a few out there that are smaller, but still sizable. So the answer to that is yes. And I think Jason that you agree with me on this, right. Deals happen when they happen.

Speaker 2

And you just try to make sure your balance sheet is flexible enough to take advantage of that. And so the buyback for us is where excess capital goes and we're not afraid to do that. But would we lever up to do a buyback? No, I don't think that would be

Speaker 3

a good use of capital. Agreed, Tony.

Speaker 1

And then, wanted to ask about how we should think about the building services segment from a high level. I'm curious is that kind of slow growth slow growth of better margins over time?

Speaker 2

I think we still have a couple of tough compare we have a tough compare still probably through the middle of the year as that contract the year over year rolls off. I think growth will return sort of maybe fourth quarter of this coming year. I think it will be more weighted towards always been weighted towards mechanical service. I think in near term, we won't be building the site based business to the level it was. We won't win that kind of contract anytime soon.

Speaker 2

And also it's a smart management team in site based. They're not going to chase the real estate people down to the bottom. So if someone values our technical capability, our program management capability and really understanding how the equipment actually works in their buildings, then we're the right solution for them. If they want a fast buck turn with the real estate guys, they can knock themselves out.

Speaker 3

And I think that's part of the reason why even when like a quarter like this one, where we're seeing a decline in revenue, we're still seeing strength or expansion in margins, right? We're focused on higher margin work and letting revenue grow.

Speaker 2

And we still see we have quietly built out that mechanical service business to a leading position through organic growth and small tuck in acquisitions. We see still a world of opportunity in front of us to do that and we'll continue to buy mechanical service companies, which for us means real service companies, right. They do small project works, HVAC retrofits. We'll continue to look for the opportunity in every one of our markets to add building controls capability.

Speaker 1

All right. Thanks

Operator

The next question comes from Brian Gaffey with Stifel. Please go ahead.

Speaker 5

Thanks. Good morning everybody. I would extend my congratulations as well. Very nice quarter, very nice margin performance. Wanted to ask on Healthcare.

Speaker 5

That was another strong area of RPO performance in the quarter. I guess, can you talk about what you're seeing there in terms of demand dynamics here currently?

Speaker 2

Yes. The demand dynamics we're seeing there are really centered around new hospitals, new operating suites in the podium, new patient towers. And I think some of this is being accelerated a little bit because of COVID and they had outdated hospitals and outdated patient towers and they realized they didn't have enough patient rooms. And so there's a balance going on there. Expansion, the growth in places like Florida in the Southeast and in the Southwest, you're also seeing the growth there in Texas, just demographically growing.

Speaker 2

And in the Northeast, you're just seeing old hospitals being rehabbed and rebuilt. I mean, we're doing some work up in Boston right now. It's magical how they're putting this project together while they keep the hospital going of one of the leading healthcare hospitals in the world. And so we're good at that stuff. And if you think about a hospital and if you would stand at the bottom of the hospital and look up, it's a system rich environment, much like a data center, much like a semiconductor plant, much like a manufacturing plant.

Speaker 2

Hospitals tend to be a little heavier, like data centers are more electrically heavy for us sometimes. Hospitals tend to be more mechanically heavy, because you think about you're bringing med gases in, you're bringing HVAC in, you have air purification systems, you're doing positive and negative pressure rooms and you're trying to make them flexible. You have air changes that have to happen not within the patient rooms, you have to isolate things, You have to have constant humidity. I mean, there's a lot of things that go into it. And that's where working with the engineers, we don't design them, but working with the engineers to figure out what system is going to work best and then being able to commission it the right way, very complex commissioning.

Speaker 2

And then a lot of times, we usually have service operations in those markets after a year or so, maybe we can get lucky and hand it off to them.

Speaker 5

Yes, that's really helpful. Thank you. And then, wanted to also ask on the warehousing side of things. We continue to hear green shoots there. Curious if you're seeing similar and can you kind of remind us how important of an end market that is for you guys?

Speaker 2

Look, again, go back, we're contractors. And so quite frankly, when warehousing came down, we were pivoting to data centers anyway. And from our perspective, the kind of fire and warehousing for us was mainly a fire life safety. And on the margins, only where the high substation where they were trying where people like Amazon were building substations for electric vehicles, major power input where we're doing electrical work at a warehouse. So the reality is Fire Life Safety, that's an easy pivot from us from warehousing to data centers.

Speaker 2

That was underway anyway. We are seeing some green shoots in warehousing. I would offer a lot of it sort of smaller scale. Cold storage warehouses have been where it's been picking up for us lately. And secondarily, there's a lot of reracking going on in these major warehouses.

Speaker 2

They're becoming much more automated, has to become much more automated. We do some of that work. But also but when you do that, you have to bring more fire protection to bear into those projects because now there's more fire protection within the racks because the racks are stacked much closer and therefore you need more fire like safety in them.

Speaker 5

Yes, that's helpful. And then one other one for me real quickly here. You called out tariffs as a risk factor. Can you remind us how you may potentially be impacted there and talk about how you guys have managed through that in the past?

Speaker 2

Yes. So let's just rewind to 2021. Very quick price increases from just about everything we did. I don't think it'll be that unplanned and that abrupt it already isn't. And of course, we're prepared for it.

Speaker 2

So how do we think about it? Well, first, if we can get the contractual terms in place, which we've been working on since 2021 to say, hey, if there's a sudden change in prices, we're going to pass that on to you. Secondarily, if we're on a large project and think about EMCOR, I'd say it's a third, a third, a third, right. A third of our businesses, small projects and service, that's continuously getting repriced. Any pricing that goes up, that's what's going to happen.

Speaker 2

So this is material pricing is what tariffs are going to impact us. That part of the business isn't really going to be impacted at all. And if it is, we're not going to be able to find it on the income statement in any meaningful way. The second part of projects is sort of $1,000,000 to $10,000,000 projects give or take. That's about a third of Mport's business, right?

Speaker 2

That's across the whole business. And if you look at that, that's a little quick return. We may get nicked a little bit. Again, probably not material what will happen. And then you get to the third, just the larger projects.

Speaker 2

And then let's bifurcate that third. When we're doing data center work, semiconductor work, these big manufacturing jobs, at one time rewind ten years ago, we would have bought all the major end systems. We'd have brought the chillers, the air handlers, we would have bought the switchgear. But because of the lousy lead times in the supply chain, the owners of the GCs purchase that now, mainly the owners, even if they're buying through the GCs and they basically send the equipment to us and we get a handling fee. So that's probably of that 33%, that's probably half of our or more of our material COGS.

Speaker 2

We're really not exposed much at all there. And then the balances on pipe wire and conduit, it's up to us and our local folks working with distribution to protect our prices when we've got a long term commitment. And right now, we may have a little bit of inventory uptick. I mean, we've got that small compared to the overall size of EMCOR. We may have a little bit of EMCOR inventory uptick where we lock in the price on certain pipe and conduit wire to be able to build a project.

Speaker 2

Jason, anything to add

Speaker 3

on that? I think you summarized it, Tom.

Speaker 2

So you can tell we spent a lot of time thinking about this. And our team is ready. And again, go back to more contractors, we get paid to adapt to really difficult situations and figure out a solution how to overcome it.

Speaker 5

Yes, very helpful color. I will pass it on. Congrats again.

Speaker 3

All right. Thank you.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Brian. Next question, Betsy.

Operator

The next question comes from Alex Dwyer with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Speaker 6

Hi, guys. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions.

Speaker 2

Of course.

Speaker 6

Yes. So I just wanted to start and ask about your data center business and if you're seeing any shifts in geographies where projects are being bid. I'm just wondering if data center investment moves to these more like remote areas where it could be harder to hire a labor force, if this is something you're planning for? And are there any investments that you can make ahead of this to better position EMCORE in this scenario?

Speaker 2

So the answer would be yes, yes and yes. If you were to rewind to 2019, we were serving about three data center markets electrically, 1.5 or so mechanically. Today, that's with the addition of Miller about 15 or 16 electrically. And most of the expansion has happened in secondary markets. And by secondary market means not Metro DC, not Metro Atlanta, not a market we've worked in forever in Portland, Washington and a little bit of Texas.

Speaker 2

So what happened, right? There's been this quest for power, the search for power. These are really smart planning people. And so they said, where are we going to be able to build for the next five years without having a dearth of power? That we're pretty going to have a surety of power.

Speaker 2

And so you're seeing them go to places over time over the last three years really. And I think they feel a little better because they're not as worried about cash generation. You're never going to power this expansion with renewable intermittent power. It was going to be part of the solution, but that's not a solution for something that needs to run twenty four hours a day at 50 to 100 megawatts. And so if you think you weren't going to have surety of power, you were out looking for pockets of power where you know where that we're going to be.

Speaker 2

That's why data centers were coming into parts of Indiana. That's why data centers were expanding more on Columbus, Ohio. Think about Ohio River, right? And if you didn't have coal power coming up, you still had some nuclear, but you're also going to be able to build gas generation. That's why data centers expanded Northern Virginia originally and they've moved down to the Richmond area.

Speaker 2

But why did they do that? Because you have power coming out of West Virginia, Southern Virginia and it's all sources of power, traditional power. That's why you had data centers going to Oklahoma where you did have some renewable or or let's say intermittent power. You did have some of that with wind, but you also had baseload fossil power that you could bring to bear. That's why you see them going to Charleston, South Carolina, right?

Speaker 2

That's why you see them going to Atlanta. I'll just give you an aside in Atlanta. There's a big data center being built center campus being built South Of Atlanta. That data center campus, there were three nuclear reactors are built. The first one is brought online.

Speaker 2

The give or take is about 5,000 megawatts. It's a lot of power, right? That data center campus will use one and a third and Electron doesn't care where it comes from, one and a third of one of those new nuclear reactors, one data center campus. So that's why they've expanded. So how we handled that?

Speaker 2

Well, we've done it through acquisition. We've also done it taking some of our existing capacity. And what we've learned is our teams that can build hospitals and our teams that can build manufacturing plants and service manufacturing plants, those teams have the skill and ability with some training and some cross training, right. So we take folks from places where we've built data centers, they go in on the front end and help with estimating and developing the plan of work and the means and methods. And then those teams can come in and then now we could train up what are really good electrical and mechanical teams to do more work.

Speaker 2

We've also done it through organic expansion. An example of that is what we've done in Columbus, Ohio. We took two of our best operating data center teams mechanically out of Poole and Kent and Bachelor and Kimball. They came together and formed a company called Upland that's there specifically to serve data center climate clients, but now will serve the market more broadly. And over a two or three year period, we've become one of the leading mechanical data construction companies in Columbus, Ohio and one of the leading mechanical contractors.

Speaker 2

And that's new for us. We hadn't done a lot. We did the same thing electrically in Arizona through organic growth and investment. There we started with virtually our team from Dine Portland building excellence in prefabrication in Portland, bringing that capability down to Arizona, recruiting a workforce. That workforce started with building a great prefabrication shop with a couple of low voltage jobs in the semiconductor space.

Speaker 2

Now they can pivot and do day two's data center work. And with six months to a year with the creativity of the leadership team there and the means and method know how and innovation, they'll be servicing the broader data center market in Arizona. So that's just a snippet of how we think about it. And then being able to look at now an energy policy potentially that brings more surety of power, which I believe is I said earlier, really I think it'd be significant expansion in gas plant power construction, which is clean and will also provide the base load necessary to continue both the reshoring to have a surety of power, but also the data center expansion, especially when you go from traditional cloud storage data centers, which is a 40 megawatts to 100 megawatt game or 75 megawatts to AI, which is somewhere between 150 megawatts and 200 megawatts. And just rewind the tape for people, take 200 megawatts and save 5,000 to 6,500 homes.

Speaker 2

And that'll give you an idea of the power usage needed to supply data center.

Speaker 6

Thanks, Tony. That was a super helpful answer. And then, I guess my second and last question is just on the industrial services room for the margins to continue to perform here. And how meaningful do you think of an impact it could be with a more oil and gas friendly administration over the next couple of years?

Speaker 2

I think the real benefit will be 26 and beyond. I think what you're seeing this year is a more traditional turnaround market with a caveat is the first quarter got off to a little bit of a slow start because of the snowstorm in Texas, which delayed everything a week, which means we ate a little bit of labor, nothing significant. We ate a little bit of labor for a week as we were geared up to start the turnaround season and then everything got stuck in place in Texas for a week. We see a normal turnaround season, probably a little more back half loaded than we but that happens year to year thing. But we continue to see the forced march to normal demand.

Speaker 2

We do see hopefully somewhere around back half of '25 going into '26. We have a great electrical business, the team at Arden down in Louisiana through Texas up into North Dakota and the Mid Continent area. There are some of the best upstream and midstream people. That is really where we have the exposure. And if there's opportunity there, they'll take advantage of it.

Speaker 2

And that should come in the form of more compressor stations and also bringing electrical services to the well site. Yes.

Speaker 3

The only thing I would say in terms of what's baked into guidance, I would say there's nothing extreme in terms of growth assumptions for 2025. The one thing I'd point out is we did have an acquisition in industrial services this year. So some of the growth we saw this year came from an acquisition. So we would expect the more normal level of organic growth next year.

Speaker 2

And that acquisition was focused on upstream and it was focused on really helping control solutions around methane. And that's why we bought it. It expands our services and it puts it with a great team down at Arden. And I will say as we look from middle of twenty six through the middle of twenty eight point five, we're hoping that I'll be glad we own that asset in the out years. I mean the whole Industrial Services segment in the out years coming up.

Speaker 6

Got it. Thank you. I'll turn it over.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Alex. That's the next question.

Operator

The last question today comes from Adam Buffs with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Speaker 7

Hi, good morning.

Speaker 2

Good morning, Adam.

Speaker 7

I think the midpoint of your guide assumes around 7.5% organic growth. Can you just help us bifurcate 2025% organic growth between your highest growth end markets data centers and high-tech manufacturing and how that compares to the balance of the business?

Speaker 2

Yes. I'm going to kick us over to Jason. I don't think we see significant growth because we have to get it into RPOs first. We'll see the growth there first before we have growth in revenues and high-tech manufacturing. We do see data center growth, but Jason, I'll throw it over to you, but it's sort of fiftyfifty, isn't it?

Speaker 3

I think that's fair, Tony. I mean, I think when you look at this year and you look at our growth against traditional non res, we probably grew 100 basis points to 150 basis points in excess of non res. And so when we think about next year and we say what's the assumptions for the high growth sectors versus what's the assumptions for the rest of the business, I think we'll continue to grow somewhere between 100 to 200 basis points in excess of non res. That's M core overall. M core overall, but in our Electrical Mechanical segment, it's almost twice that, right?

Speaker 7

Got it. Appreciate the color there. And then how are you thinking about your ability to continue to grow employee count in 2025? And how much of that 7.5% organic growth would be driven by employee capacity versus room for further utilization improvements?

Speaker 2

Our headcount clearly hasn't been growing as fast as our revenues, right? Our man hours grew 8% or 9% in 2024 and they've been growing probably man hours, if you take it over a three or four year period, has been growing about 60% to 65% of our revenue growth. And we expect to be able to continue to that trend going and that goes to what our folks are doing in prefab, what they're doing in planning, what they're doing in estimating and all those things. I don't we always complain in the field about not being able to find the people, but our folks do a wonderful job of finding the people. And I always go back to what I always say, right?

Speaker 2

At the end of the day, how do you attract great tradespeople to come and want to work for you, sometime for a project, but some of them for a career? I think it gets down to four or five things, right? I think these are no particular order. First, they want to know they're going to get paid every week. And if they're union employees, they want to know that also you're paying into the benefits fund.

Speaker 2

The second thing, right, again, no particular order. They want to know that you're going to make the investments to keep them safe. That's not only in the means and methods to make sure the job is well planned, but also they have the equipment they need to be successful. In my 20 at EMCOR, we have never turned down a safety investment and then we never will. The third thing they really care about, am I being led by people at the local level and above, but mainly the local level from the foreman through the superintendent to the project manager to that CEO and VP of Operations that would know what I'm doing and know what the challenge is on the job and that they can come in and help me if they need to get through a tough situation on a job site.

Speaker 2

I think another thing that someone that want to build a career with us, if I do a good job for you, will you make me part of your permanent team? We have if you take our trade workforce, about two thirds of it give or take are with us from project to project to project, they build a career with us. And I think finally, I think a lot of them want to be with a company that quite frankly does some of the most interesting work in the space. Tradespeople don't like to do a lot of rework. They like well planned jobs.

Speaker 2

And quite frankly, they like to point to the skyline or point to the market and said, I built that. And I was part of the team that built that. I'm part of the team that takes care of that. And they take a lot of pride in that. So I think, EMCOR emphatically goes check, check, check, check, check.

Speaker 2

We talked about Miller earlier. Miller can do the same thing in their markets. It's check, check, check, check, check, right? They also provide that environment for the tradespeople to build long term success with them.

Speaker 3

And just to add on to Tony's comment about headcount not growing as fast as revenues. If you look over a ten year period, our revenue CAGR's round number is 10%, our headcount CAGR is 3%, three point five %, right? And kind of a three to one ratio. And if you look at even just this year alone, headcount's up 5%, five point five % and revenue growth is up almost 16%. So that ratio is holding true even today and we expect

Speaker 2

Yes, those are the 65% we go back, right? We expect to only have to grow headcount a third to half as much as we grow revenue.

Speaker 3

And we see no reason why that would be different.

Speaker 2

Yes. We're trying to say 65% sort of gets covered.

Speaker 7

And then last one for me, really strong margins in the quarter and understand margins can bounce around quarter to quarter, but any specific driver of the positive variance in margins versus your expectation heading into the quarter? And any other major puts and takes driving the margin outlook? You mentioned incremental intangible amortization, but any other moving pieces we should keep in mind in terms of mix or any other pieces in 2025?

Speaker 3

Yes. I think in terms of the quarter, there's really no anomalies. I think we beat our expectations when it came to execution, particularly in the Electrical segment, right, which had a north of 15% margin. When we look to 2025, outside of the intangible asset amortization, I don't think there's any anomalies or any one offs to be considered.

Speaker 2

No. I think also, at these levels of margin and you heard me say before, if I could run EMCORE forever between August to 10% combined margins with good growth, where we are right now, we are very cognizant of keeping good margins, but also we're more worried about margin dollars right now than margin percentages, right? At these levels, we want to grow margin dollars. And if we had to give up 10 basis points to do that, we would do that.

Speaker 7

Great. Appreciate all the color.

Operator

This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Guzzi for any closing remarks.

Speaker 2

Look, thank you all for your interest in EMCOR. I know there's a lot more than the analysts that asked questions. Hopefully, you got most of your questions answered. We expect another good year. We're excited about the future.

Speaker 2

And to our team, let's work safe and productively in 2025 even better than we did in 2024. With that, Andy, I'll throw it back to you to close out the call.

Speaker 3

Great.

Speaker 1

Thanks. Thanks, Tony. Thanks, Jason. And thank you all for joining us today. If you should have any follow-up questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to me directly.

Speaker 1

Thank you all again and have a great day. And Betsy, will you please close the call?

Operator

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

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Earnings Conference Call
EMCOR Group Q4 2024
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