Shimmick Corporation Common Stock Price & Performance (SHIM)

With that, it's my pleasure to turn the call over to Yuriel Yal, Cimic's CEO. Good afternoon, and thank you all for joining us on today's call.

I'm joined by Amanda Mobley, Sheehy's Shimmick CFO.

I'm excited to be speaking with you today on my first earnings call as Schumich's new CEO. Over the last three months, I've had the opportunity to visit almost all of our active projects meet our project and corporate staff, talk to our clients and our industry partners and understand the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead of us. Building on these insights, I'm going to outline our strategy to make Shimmick the leading premier infrastructure contractor. This strategy is designed around three strategic pillars: sustainable backlog, operational excellence and people and culture. I will explain each of these in detail but first let me address some of the key points of our operational and financial results. For the fourth quarter twenty twenty four and full year, we delivered revenues of $104,000,000 and $480,000,000 with an adjusted EBITDA of negative 27,000,000 and full year 2024 EBITDA of negative $61,000,000 Of the fourth quarter revenues, nearly 77% came [indiscernible] which we define as the projects we won after we became an independent company after Aecom ownership. Shimmick projects also continues to report positive gross margin despite weather impacts and delays and cost increases during the closeout phases on certain projects. We also achieved significant improvements in our SG and A cost in 2024.

Now trending towards the industry benchmarks. Our backlog stands at $822,000,000 reflecting a twenty month runway to put our new strategy in motion. We also finished the year with a total liquidity of $100,000,000 a good sign of our forward momentum. We had some strong wins in the fourth quarter that aligned well very well with our forward strategy. These wins include the wins in the City Of Santa Cruz, the Murray Street Bridge project, and wastewater treatment plant headworks rehabilitation. North Hollywood bus rapid transit project in Los Angeles, and our work at the California Palisades fire debris removal effort. These projects span water, climate resilience and transportation markets, and are delivered through a range of project delivery methods and support our continued transformation into profitability and consistent results. Amanda will get deeper detail on the numbers shortly, but before I start the strategy discussion, I want to touch on the state of Schumich today. We are at the tail end of completing what we call legacy projects which have continued to negatively impact our results in 2024. We see very positive market conditions ahead at a bus that align with our offering but we also recognize the need to move quickly as we look to replace the revenues and margins from divested businesses as we simplify our operations in 2024.

We have a well known and respected brand which is critical to our backlog expansion strategy a rare set of capabilities that make us competitive and provide turnkey delivery options and a better value for our clients, and most importantly, an impressive technically savvy staff committed to the future of our company. There are a lot to offer to our clients in both public and private markets. While we have traditionally been more public client focused, moving forward, we have an opportunity to balance our client portfolio. Continuing our long and successful relationships with municipal, state and federal government agencies while winning new clients in the utility, manufacturing, hyperscale and industrial space. What I've heard from our customers through many conversations since I joined Shimmick is that they've come to know us for our competitiveness, our delivery excellence and our dependability. I'm confident that in today's construction market, challenged with skilled labor shortages and budget and time constraints, These are skills that will differentiate us and that we can build on. I would like to now do a deeper dive into our focused markets. To take the most advantage of this value we provide will expand our focus on delivering sustainable infrastructure solutions across four key end markets, water resources, climate resilience, energy transition and technology, [indiscernible] transportation.

I will briefly discuss our approach on each of these markets. Water infrastructure is what we are known for and love. It includes water and wastewater treatment as well as storage access and hydropower projects. The robust market across The U. S. And consistently sees predictable funding even with changing administration. Priorities. Major drivers of water projects continue to be the needs to upgrade aging infrastructure, treatment of new pollutants in water as technology develops as we've seen in the emergence of PFAS treatment across the nation water scarcity across the West that requires more water recycling and storage options and migration patterns that require construction and upgrading of new treatment to We are very comfortable in this market and will continue to look for opportunities across the West Coast as well as in select growth markets where we can leverage our expertise. Second is climate adaptation and resilience. As the intensity and the frequency of weather events change and sea level rise continues, not only do we need to respond to emergencies and unexpected events, but the nation's infrastructure has to adapt to maintain our quality of life our community's well-being. We recently started working on the debris removal efforts from the devastating LA fires and we have already completed several flood mitigation projects in California.

Where we installed seawalls, gates and levees to protect adjacent communities and businesses from severe weather events. We expect a strong pipeline of projects in this field such as raising Blip Bridge elevations, upgrading storm drain systems and weatherproofing existing facilities. Next is technology and energy transition. It is well known that the computing power needs driven by rapid developments in AI tech have created an exponential increase in data center infrastructure investments. This work is spread out across the country as robust funding and has the potential to generate sizable revenue streams in short periods of time. And the building shell generally is only a fraction of the cost of the facility. Where Shimmick can provide value is necessary water treatment, cooling and electrical work associated with these facilities which often represent 30% or more of the overall project cost and are well within our capability. In 2025, we will be looking to expand in this market and utilize our expertise and resources either in a specialty contracting role to general contractors that are undertaking this [indiscernible] or directly to the facility owners. While an amount of uncertainty has been introduced to the energy market with the new administration, energy security and efficient use of all leading sources of energy remains a national priority.

And we still see a robust growth opportunity here. For example, clients have already started upgrading their bus and work vehicle fleets to electric and are upgrading their facilities to service these new fleets. Also, electrification at seaports and airports is continuing and we see good opportunities for our turnkey offering in the battery storage sector. We are currently completing projects in this field at the Fort Of Tacoma in Washington and have done similar ones at LAX, and at the Port Of Long Beach.

And finally, sustainable transportation. Shimmick has a long history of delivering transportation solutions across The United States. And we're seeing the merging of technology demand for public transportation creating a steady stream of opportunities. These are once again opportunities where we can offer value to our clients with our turnkey solutions. We have a robust list of projects we will be targeting in 2025 in this [indiscernible] Mostly delivered through lower risk alternative delivery contracts and see this field as a key part of our diverse strategy.

And the good news is that none of these markets are entirely new to us. We have delivered projects successfully and have good client relationship in many of these markets. With a strategic focus and an expanded bidding capacity, we have the opportunity to see growth in each of these markets. We are very optimistic about our addressable market for the next few years. The size of nonresidential U. S. Construction market is upwards of $1,000,000,000,000 a year Shimmick addressable market within that is about $269,000,000,000 Adjusted for our market presence, we view the addressable at roughly $106,000,000,000 per year. Now with that backdrop, let me shift over to discuss our newly implemented strategic pillars and our key initiatives for 2025. Our first pillar is a sustainable risk balanced backlog and a book of work. We are very focused on increasing our backlog as a percentage of our revenues while reducing its risk profile through marketing geographic diversification, project profile insights, and use of alternative project delivery methods. We are making investments in a reorganized estimating and bidding department and plan to substantially increase our bid volume and improve our win rate. In the past, we focused on projects in California and California will absolutely continue to be a major part of our business.

But given the market opportunity and our capabilities as I discussed earlier, our core presence moving forward will expand along the West Coast. In particular, the State of Washington, where we have a strong history and existing market relationships. We're also targeting selective national expansion in growth markets especially in water and electrical work where we have Along with this expanded geographical focus and other strategic initiatives to pursue and win collaborative delivery projects which align to industry trends.

We believe that delivery methods such as progressive design build and construction management at risk also known as alternative delivery methods, are going to be used in increasing frequency in the market. In fact, Design Building Institute of America is estimating majority of the volume in our to be delivered through alternative delivery methods by 2020 Our goal is to achieve a balanced portfolio between collaborative and fixed price delivery methods by 2028 as well. As a recent win, we secured the North Hollywood Bus Rapid Transit project, a collaborative delivery contract with Los Angeles Metro, a long time client of ours, giving us a running start with this initiative. This balanced approach of collaborative delivery and bidding aims to maintain our target margins while reducing project execution risk and allowing better management of our backlog through market fluctuation. Additionally, these projects are commonly delivered through joint ventures and strategic partnerships allowing us to pursue larger, Overall, this strategy provides more predictable project outcomes and sustained client relationships which in turn enhance the stakeholder value. For long term. On a third initiative, one I'm particularly excited about is our electrical and technology driven infrastructure market expansion. Across the construction industry, we are seeing electric [indiscernible] along with growing needs of water, transit, data centers and other segments.

We believe our self performing electrical capabilities offer an advantage in the market and a great value to our clients. We will expand our Electrical division and position it to pursue and win projects on its own, rather than just supporting the Civil business as they had in the past. We also see subcontracting opportunities in new markets such as manufacturing and data centers energy transition, industrial, transit and healthcare. Electrical construction will grow to be a much larger contributor to our results than it is today. With an expected growth from 15% of our revenues today to target of over 30% in 2027. The market continues to be competitive and it's critical that we continue to improve our operations consistent results. Therefore, our second strategic pillar is our operational excellence. In 2025, we're implementing several initiatives that we see as low hanging fruit designed to make immediate impact on our operations such as upgrades to our ERP and ERP and sales and bidding systems and efficiency improvements to our IT technology. Another area we're focused on is risk management. Fiscal twenty twenty four was a successful year for Shimmick as far as resolving ongoing disputes on legacy projects. But we still have work to do.

While it's not unusual for construction projects to experience scope growth, changes and disputes, this year we're putting in place processes and measures that allow for early identification and resolution of these issues and a stronger and more structured collaboration with our clients which we believe will have a positive impact on our cash flows and operating margins 2025 into the future.

And finally, we are continuing our disciplined focus on rightsizing our SG and A after making great progress in 2024. We are continuing to make improvements in insurance, IT, equipment, procurement, human resources and other corporate departments and will continue to closely manage our SG and A as a function of our revenues. Gurdon final strategic pillar has to do with people and culture. I'm impressed every day with our employees' broad based technical talent strong commitment to the mission of Shimmick. Our performance and safety is impressive with a record debt significantly better than industry averages We have a strong safety program. We are not in the market as a contractor that delivers technically challenging and complex projects is a good partner to our clients.

With the near completion of legacy projects, settling of old issues and a bright outlook on expanding our backlog, I'm focused on ensuring our people are taken care of to do what they do best. This year, we will continue to work on improvements in employee benefits. We have already introduced a new performance feedback process and we're aligning our incentive program to reward strong financial performance as well as contribution to the company goals and mission.

We are retooling our title structure to ensure clear and achievable career paths for our employees and finally introducing a high potential employee retention program to reward and support our top performance. Performers, another initiative I'm very excited about. To wrap up this part of the presentation, I see 2025 as our year for setting building blocks of our future. We have a strong foundation to grow from with a wide base of existing and potential clients a well funded market that aligns with our skills, and we are finally in a position to emerge from the negative impacts of our challenging legacy project. With recent wins and a solid backlog, we have a great opportunity to implement our new strategy. I'm extremely optimistic about our future. Our guidance for 2025, which Amanda is going to talk about in a minute, is informed by this positive outlook and our opportunity to get back to profitability replace legacy revenue with lower risk new work and build our backlog for the future. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Amanda.

Thanks, Raul. [indiscernible] All comparisons made today will be on a year over year basis compared to the same For the fourth quarter, we reported revenue of $104,000,000 compared to $138,000,000 for the prior year period. For revenue on Shimmick projects, which focus on water infrastructure or other critical infrastructure, we recognized revenue of $80,000,000 in the fourth quarter twenty twenty four compared to $85,000,000 a year ago. The decrease was primarily the result of a decrease from lower activity on existing jobs, and jobs winding down partially offset by revenue from a new water infrastructure job.

Gross margin recognized on Shimmick projects in the fourth quarter was $2,000,000 compared to $9,000,000 of margin recognized a year ago. The decrease in gross margin was primarily the result of a $15,000,000 increase in cost of revenue schedule extensions and a decrease in revenue from existing projects that are winding down. Partially offset by an aggregate of $8,000,000 of gross gross margin from a new water infrastructure project and ramp up of a transportation project. Legacy project revenue was $18,000,000 for the three months ended 01/03/2025, a decline of $28,000,000 as compared to the three months ended December 29, 2023. As the company works to complete these projects. Legacy projects gross margin was a negative $12,000,000 in the fourth quarter compared to negative $8,000,000 a year ago. The negative gross margin was primarily the result of continued impacts of legacy project winding down as well as additional legal fees to to pursue contract modifications and recovery. And additional cost overruns on other legacy loss projects. As a reminder, as these legacy loss projects continue to wind down to completion, no further gross margin will be recognized and in some cases there may be additional costs associated with these projects which will be recognized in the period.

We continue to actively pursue all opportunities to offset these costs. Revenue recognized on the foundation projects was $5,000,000 in the fourth quarter twenty twenty four, compared to $7,000,000 a year ago. Driven by the result of timing of jobs winding down. Gross margin recognized on foundation projects was a $10,000,000 loss in the fourth quarter twenty twenty four compared to a $2,000,000 loss a year ago.

Our net loss for the fourth quarter twenty twenty four was $38,000,000 compared to a net loss of $17,000,000 for the prior year period. Primarily due to a decrease in gross margin of $20,000,000 as a result of gross margin declines in the foundation business. Fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA negative $27,000,000 compared to negative $9,000,000 in the prior year period.

Turning to the balance sheet.

Unrestricted cash and cash equivalents at 01/03/2025 totaled to $34,000,000 and availability under the revolving credit facility and the credit facility totaled $15,000,000 and $51,000,000 respectively. Resulting in total liquidity of $100,000,000 which provides ample runway to carry out our strategic and operational priorities 2025 and beyond. Our backlog remains strong and was $822,000,000 at the end of the fourth quarter. The mix of our backlog continues to improve as Shimmick projects represent 87% of the backlog at the end of the fourth quarter, versus 85% a quarter ago. This reinforces our team's commitment to be selected during the bidding process and focus on more profitable projects that will drive margins higher in our business. For the full twenty twenty five to we expect shipment projects revenue to increase 10% to 15% with overall gross margin between 912%. Legacy projects and foundation projects revenue between $50,000,000 with gross margin between negative 5% and negative 15% as we complete these projects. Adjusted EBITDA between With that, I'd like to turn it over now to you all for some closing remarks. Thank you, Amanda. In conclusion, I'm simply excited about the future. We believe the next five plus years to be banner years in the infrastructure construction business.

And having resolved our legacy challenges in 2024, we are ready to take advantage of these healthy market conditions. We have strong liquidity a backlog largely free of past challenges We have tailored our growth strategy of backlog growth operational excellence and people and culture to play to our strengths and deliver consistent results. Our talented staff, strong reputation and client relationships and the substantial positive value of services we are able to offer our customers put us in a great position for growth and strong financial outcomes over the next two to three years. I want to once again thank all of our team for tireless efforts as we work to make Shimmick one of America's best sustainable infrastructure companies. Operator, you may now open the line for questions.

We will now begin the question and answer session. The first question comes from Jerry Sweeney with ROTH Capital Partners. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my call. [indiscernible] I don't want to take away from the growth strategy that we went through, the the backlog of risk balance work and operational excellence of people and culture. But I did want to talk a little bit about just the guidance very happy with, I think you said, I think in total $15,000,000 to $25,000,000 on the EBITDA front.

Just looking at the legacy Shimmick work coming out of the fourth quarter, that was 2.5%, I think, gross margin. Targeting gross margins of 9% to 12% on the Shimmick work. [indiscernible] Can you bridge how we go from the results in fourth quarter to some of that guidance that you gave conversely, similarly, I should say, even with the AECOM work, some of the gross margin seem to be better than they have been in the past. So just want to understand how we're going to move from the fourth quarter to some of this guidance?

Thanks, Gary, for the question. Yes, definitely. So as we look at as since I joined, as we look at the performance of active active projects on the Shimmick side, leaving the legacy side aside for for a second. [indiscernible] That's right. Yes. What I see is what I see in the backlog is profitable work. And where we are with a lot of the projects. Every [indiscernible] Every company, every every portfolio of projects have some challenging ones. This is some really good ones. And based on our view of where the projects are and remaining backlog on the active projects, I'm feeling comfortable with the 9% to 12% There's some the remaining work appears low risk and profitable. And we have some ongoing discussions with our clients for scope growth, etcetera, that we would be able to add to those margins in 2025. So while the 2% on Shimmick Shimmick project performance obviously does not think we're going to do do better in 2025. [indiscernible] remaining backlog. And then the other part of it is obviously looking at winning A portion of that 9% to 12% would come from high margin work that we would win this year and burn as well.

Got it. Have you been able I know you've only been there I think three months but have you been able to come in and make institute any changes that you thought that you may think could drive improvement with existing work or is the existing contract sort of they're baked in the risk and margins are what they are?

No, I think there is opportunity there. A lot of our projects are somewhat matured. So maybe I would say it's a big opportunity, but there's opportunity around risk management improvements that we're doing looking at identifying issues a little bit earlier getting with our with our clients a little bit earlier and resolving those issues before they impact the bottom line. That's I've been focused on over the last three months. There's as we go through the year, I'm continuing to review the operations and look for improvements there. But that's what we're focused on. That's where I see I guess, most bang for the buck in developing the bottom line.

Got it. And then just maybe even cadence maybe I should have asked, as a follow-up, but maybe the cadence on on gross margin on the revenue as we go through the year. I would assume that it's a little bit more second half loaded. It's sort of trends upward from Q1 Obviously, there's some seasonality in Q1, but Q1, Q2 better, Q3 better than Q2, etcetera, as we move through the year is more better projects enter the the work base. Is that a fair assumption?

That is a fair assumption. I think I would say it's probably third quarter heavy generally. That tends to to track pretty well with general construction [indiscernible] Tracking. But yes, I would say second quarter better, third quarter best, probably flat in Q4, something along those lines.

That's fair. And then finally, you and I have spoken a little bit maybe transitioning from bid work to more negotiated work. And obviously, that that takes time Any thoughts on that or is it still a little bit too early to sort of delve into that?

No, I think it's probably good to talk about it. The way those projects work is you win them today and then you have to go through a twelve to somewhere between nine and eighteen months of prep work, preconstruction work where you negotiate the contract costs and mitigate the risks and negotiate contract terms with the clients. So winning projects this year, which we've started with this North Hollywood project that I mentioned, those will become for example, that one becomes a based on declines estimates, dollars 190,000,000 construction contract sometime next year. So we're setting the stage for being able to winning those projects where we negotiate the contracts construction contract and book the backlog, 'twenty six and 'twenty seven. So that work has already started. We've already made quite a bit of investment in that side of the business. The sale of the early side of the business. And we feel we're going to see some great progress this year and set us up really well for 'twenty six and 'twenty seven.

Got you. And I mean, am I correct? It does take some time to sort of turn that that backlog over. So this is, I think, even as you were saying, '26 will be the start, '27 higher than '28 even even higher than '27 per se?

Se? Yes. My goal yes, that's exactly right. My goal is to get to a balanced portfolio between that type of work and our traditional fixed price work and even balanced by end of twenty twenty seven, probably 2028.

Is that the goal in general just even balance or would it be is that just a target to get to fifty-fifty by the end of twenty twenty seven and may [indiscernible] Or do you see fifty-fifty is the right sort of level for bid work and negotiated work? I believe that's the right balance. There are benefits to fixed price work. Margins tend to be higher. They get into construction faster. So they help the backlog faster. So fifty-fifty balance, I'd be very Got it. That makes sense. Okay. That's it for me. I'll jump back in queue.

But really appreciate it and look forward to working with you more over the next year.

Thank you.

The next question is from Aaron Spachala with Craig Hallum Capital. Please go ahead. Yes. Good afternoon, you all and Amanda. Thanks for taking the question. Questions. Maybe first for me, obviously, sounding optimistic on the pipeline can kind of hear that. Can you just kind of talk about some of the federal budget issue issues kind of IIJA uncertainty kind of spending. Are you seeing any impact from that? Anything going on kind of in the local California market that's given you any pause or timeline issues or anything like that?

Yes, great question. Aaron. Thank you. So we have not seen any impact in our projects so far. Everything is going as planned and there hasn't been any funding pulling or anything like that.

And that's largely true for the bids that we have kind of in the immediate pipeline. If I look at federal funding overall, our portfolio is probably more reliant on the IRA funding, than the IJA And I think even though there's some uncertainty there, the the ultimate result there is going to be just different priorities, but still work within our within our realm or within our capabilities. So I don't see the money necessarily going away maybe changing direction a little bit under what's already been approved. And water tends to be from a general EPA funding perspective, a lot of our projects are funded from the state revolving fund managed by the EPA. And over the first Trump administration into the Biden administration and now we don't expect a whole lot of change because the need is always there and it's very well supported by the communities. These lot of these projects So overall, we're we're not overly concerned. I think there may be that maybe it's more of a pause than rollback. And I think so far our projects have been on track in continuing. Good. That's good to hear. And then maybe second for me, can you just maybe talk a little bit more about the bid activity in pipe [indiscernible] sounds like confidence in good margins in that pipe [indiscernible] availability and things like that as you kind of go after these projects?

Yes. Thank you. I do feel good about the pipeline. I think the money may get shipped in some different ways, but generally we expect the funding to stay at the levels that it currently is. And a lot of the areas that we're growing in and that I we would like to grow in our strategy, which is heavily heavy on water and electrical a lot of that a lot of those markets remain well funded. I think one of the things that we're going to really look to do this this year is to diversify our client portfolio. So we're not overly reliant on one type of client. And break into or improve our backlog towards private clients as well and find a better balance That gives us a lot more resiliency over the long term. On the labor side, I think the West Coast is still in pretty good shape. We We are getting the qualified labor we need. Our staff We have some capacity. In fact, I believe based on what I've seen so far, I think we have some capacity to grow As you go towards some of the other markets, maybe less so, this data center AI improvements in the the labor force that's been attracting has impacted other projects.

So there's there's it's probably a little bit more challenging on projects outside of California and Washington But generally, not we're not seeing a huge impact just yet.

All right. Understood. And then maybe last can you just kind of talk about the outlook for kind of free cash flow based on that guidance as we kind of think about [indiscernible] As well. [indiscernible] we started the year really in a really great place at $100,000,000 liquidity and we are [indiscernible] done in 2024 is to put in controls that are much more stringent and detailed than watching our cash flow. So we have a really good view of where throughout the year where we're going to be. And generally, we are between our free cash flow and our credit facilities, we feel we are in a really good place fund our operations, staying some of this growth that we're planning and still finish the year in a similar strong cash position. Amanda, did you have anything to add to that?

Yes. No, just to expand on that a little, as you were saying, we continue to heavily focus on our cash position and make sure we are tracking against what we're budgeting in the for 2025? And then additionally, we've also been able to secure a a revolving credit facility for that would replace the mid cap facility that we currently have. So for the same $15,000,000 commitment, so going forward, we would have that availability in the next three years as well. All right.

I appreciate you taking the questions. I'll turn it over.

I would like to turn the conference back over to Yuriyal for any closing remarks.

Thank you everyone for the questions. Like I stated in my earlier, we are very optimistic about 2025. And looking forward to talking to you all again in Q1. Thank you.