Earnings call transcript: Badger Infrastructure sees 9% revenue growth in 2024

Badger Infrastructure Solutions Ltd (BDGI), a nearly $1 billion market cap company, reported a robust financial performance for the fiscal year 2024, with a 9% increase in full-year revenue, reaching $745 million. The company’s stock saw a notable rise of 5.47% following the earnings announcement, trading at $28.58. The positive performance was driven by strong growth in U.S. operations and improved profit margins. According to InvestingPro, the company has maintained dividend payments for 21 consecutive years and raised its dividend for 9 consecutive years, with 5 more exclusive ProTips available to subscribers.

Key Takeaways

• Full-year revenue increased by 9% to $745 million.
• Adjusted EBITDA margin improved to 23.6% from 22% in the previous year.
• U.S. operations revenue grew by 13% in Q4.
• The company plans to expand its fleet by manufacturing up to 210 new hydrovacs in 2025.

Company Performance

Badger Infrastructure Solutions demonstrated solid growth in 2024, with significant contributions from its U.S. operations, which saw an 11% increase in Q4 revenue. The company continues to hold the largest hydrovac fleet in North America, operating in 44 U.S. states and 6 Canadian provinces. Despite a 15% decline in Canadian revenue, Badger’s vertically integrated service model and national accounts program have positioned it well against competitors.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $745 million, up 9% year-over-year.
• Adjusted EBITDA margin: 23.6%, up from 22% in 2023.
• Q4 gross profit margin: 29.5%, up from 26.2%.
• Adjusted EBITDA margin in Q4: 23.5%, up from 19.9%.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking ahead, Badger Infrastructure plans to grow its fleet by 4-7% and has set a capital expenditure guidance of $95-$115 million for 2025. The company is also monitoring potential tariff impacts and election-related market uncertainties. Despite a cautious outlook for the Canadian market, opportunities in data center and infrastructure projects are expected to bolster growth. InvestingPro’s analysis indicates the company’s overall financial health score is GOOD, suggesting strong fundamentals to support its expansion plans. Based on InvestingPro’s Fair Value analysis, the stock currently appears to be trading below its intrinsic value, presenting a potential opportunity for investors.

Executive Commentary

Rob Lakhedar, CEO, emphasized the company’s unique position in the market: "We are the only vertically integrated hydrovac service provider that builds our own dedicated trucks and operates those trucks in our end markets." CFO Rob Dawson added, "We have ample capacity to manage through these tariffs in the short term," highlighting the company’s preparedness for potential challenges.

Risks and Challenges

• Potential tariff impacts could affect profitability, though the company has pre-positioned inventory to mitigate this risk.
• A decline in Canadian revenue poses a challenge, necessitating a strategic focus on U.S. and emerging markets.
• Market uncertainties related to upcoming elections may influence investor sentiment and operational planning.

Badger Infrastructure Solutions remains focused on leveraging its strong market position and operational efficiencies to drive future growth, despite potential macroeconomic and geopolitical challenges.

Full transcript - Badger Infrastructure Solutions Ltd (BDGI) Q4 2024:

Debbie, Conference Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Badger Infrastructure Solutions Limited Fourth Quarter twenty twenty four Results Call. During the presentation, all participants will be in listen only mode. For those that have dialed into the audio portion of this call to ask a question during the live question and answer session, please press star one to raise your hand. Please wait for the operator to say your name and company before asking your question.

For those listening through the webcast, attendees will be in listen only mode. If you need technical assistance, please submit your request under the Tech tab in the window on the right hand side of your computer screen. As a reminder, this event is being recorded today, 03/06/2025, and will be made available on the Investors section of Badger’s website. I would now like to turn the call over to Ann Plaster, Director of Investor Relations.

Ann Plaster, Interim Director of Investor Relations, Badger Infrastructure Solutions: Thank you, Debbie. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our fourth quarter twenty twenty four earnings call. My name is Anne Plaster, Badger’s Interim Director of Investor Relations. Joining me on the call this morning are Badger’s President and CEO, Rob Lakhedar and our CFO, Rob Dawson. Badger’s twenty twenty four fourth quarter earnings release, MD and A and financial statements were released after market close yesterday and are available on the Investor Relations section of Badger’s website and on SEDAR Plus.

We are required to note that some of the statements today may contain forward looking information. In fact, all statements made today, which are not statements of historical fact, are considered to be forward looking statements. We make these forward looking statements based on certain assumptions that we consider to be reasonable. However, forward looking statements are always subject to certain risks and uncertainties and undue reliance should not be placed on them as actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied. For more information about material assumptions, risks and uncertainties that may be relevant to such forward looking statements, please refer to Badger’s twenty twenty four MD and A along with the 2024 AIF.

I will now turn the call over to Rob Laccadar.

Rob Lakhedar, President and CEO, Badger Infrastructure Solutions: Thank you, Anne. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our twenty twenty four fourth quarter and full year earnings call. As we always do here at Badger, I want to start off with a safety moment. In 2024, our Make Safety personal campaign empowered the team to keep the focus on safety, driving record results for the year. This accomplishment reaffirms our safety commitment to our employees, our customers and our key stakeholders.

This achievement is a testament to the hard work and vigilance of every team member. It underscores our belief that a safe work environment is essential for the well-being of our employees and critical to our overall success. As we move forward, we remain committed to maintaining and improving this performance, ensuring that safety continues to be a personal and collective value for all of us. Now onto our annual results. Badger finished the year on a strong note with continued growth in revenue, gross profit and adjusted EBITDA.

Our record top line revenue of $745,000,000 grew 9% over the prior year, reflecting the results of our commercial and pricing strategies and growth in customer demand. We realized 42% flow through on this additional revenue driven by customer pricing and stability in our G and A functions. Accordingly, our full year adjusted EBITDA margin improved to 23.6% up from 22% in 2023. Our U. S.

Revenue grew 13% compared to last year as we saw consistent growth in activity and pricing gains. The deceleration of growth we experienced in the middle part of twenty twenty four in our U. S. Markets stabilized in the fourth quarter. We continue to experience sustained growth broadly in The U.

S. Both through local customer and project based work. In our Canadian markets, revenue was down 15% compared to 2023. In the first three quarters, we experienced a slowdown in large project work, softness in some of our Western provinces, as well as lower activity from our operating partners. Canadian operations began to recover in the fourth quarter, particularly in Ontario.

As a reminder, Canada represents only about 10% of the company’s revenue overall. Badger ended the year with sixteen twenty five hydrovacs growing the fleet by 7% overall in 2024 and RPT remained relatively stable. As we head into 2025, we have ample fleet available to support our customer growth initiatives through improved utilization. The Red Deer plant manufactured 190 HydraVacs, refurbished 35 and we retired 90 units during the year, all within our original build and retirement guidance. We continue to plan for stable manufacturing and stable retirement activity.

As we look ahead to 2025, our fleet plan includes manufacturing between one hundred and eighty and two ten hydrovacs, refurbishing between 50 to 60 hydrovacs and retiring between 90 to 130 units. This allows us to grow our fleet by 4% to 7% and spend between $95,000,000 to $115,000,000 in capital. Included in this capital range is our hydrovac production, our refurbishments, ancillary equipment purchases and other capital projects. In my closing remarks, I will cover our outlook for 2025 and also some comments on the current uncertainty regarding tariffs. I’ll now turn the call over to Rob Dawson to discuss our Q4 financial results in more detail.

Rob Dawson, CFO, Badger Infrastructure Solutions: Thanks, Rob. As you saw in our fourth quarter release, the team delivered another quarter of solid results. Fourth quarter revenue grew 8% continuing to be driven by our U. S. Operations, which was up 11%.

Our Canadian operations were down 11% from last year as activity in Central Canada began to improve in the late fall relative to the first three quarters of the year. Our gross profit margins increased to 29.5% compared with 26.2% last year with continued execution of our commercial and pricing strategies. The trend in our adjusted EBITDA margins continues to improve at 23.5% for the quarter compared with 19.9% the previous year and almost in line with our 2024 full year adjusted EBITDA margins of 23.6%. We are realizing the value and the efficiency and scalability changes we are making to our support and G and A functions. Overall, over 60% of our growth in revenues in the fourth quarter fell to the bottom line.

G and A expenses were $11,300,000 or 6% of revenue consistent with the $10,900,000 or 6.3% of revenue in the prior year. With revenue up 8%, adjusted EBITDA up 28 and adjusted earnings per share up 131%, we are definitely encouraged by the continued scalability and growth in margins we saw in the fourth quarter. Now onto the balance sheet. We continue to maintain a strong flexible balance sheet. Our compliance leverage ended the year at 1.1 times EBITDA compared to 1.3 times a year ago.

As well during the quarter we closed on a three year one hundred million dollars bank term loan leaving us with ample available liquidity. With the balance sheet capacity we have plenty of flexibility to continue investing in our organic growth strategy and returning capital to our shareholders through dividends and the execution of our NCIB. We were pleased to announce that the Board of Directors has approved a 4.2 increase to the quarterly cash dividend. This will be effective for the first quarter of twenty twenty five with payment to be made on or about April 15 to all shareholders of record at the close of business on 03/31/2025. Regarding the NCIB, during the fourth quarter we repurchased 196,000 shares at an average price per share of $36.88 For the year, we repurchased 240,400 common shares for about the same price.

Since the program started in late August, we have purchased $6,000,000 of Badger stock and we have continued to remain active on the NCIB in early twenty twenty five purchasing a further $6,000,000 so far this year. I will now turn things back over to Rob Lakhedar for some final comments.

Rob Lakhedar, President and CEO, Badger Infrastructure Solutions: Thanks, Rob. So before we open it up for questions, I would like to share a few last comments regarding 2025 and the current tariff environment. While we are pleased with our Q4 performance, we are continuing to drive improvements to set Badger up for success in 2025 and beyond. Our branch market coverage is the best by far in the industry and growing. We are able to support our customers in 44 states and six Canadian provinces today.

We have the largest fleet of hydrovacs across North America with one of the youngest fleets in the industry. Badger’s dedicated national accounts program is an industry first and an industry leading service offering to serve North America’s largest contractors, public utilities and infrastructure customers. We are the only vertically integrated hydrovac service provider that builds our own dedicated trucks and operates those trucks in our end markets. All of these capabilities allow Badger to capitalize on various projects including data center construction builds, the supporting power distribution and several other infrastructure projects across North America. We continue to bid and win light rail transit, wastewater treatment plant facilities and airport construction projects, just to name a few recent examples of work we’re doing across North America.

I’ll close with a comment regarding the current tariff environments in The U. S. And Canada. Badger has been preparing for where we are today with enacted tariffs from both The U. S.

And Canada. The tariff environment is unfolding real time and rapidly evolving. We feel Badger is well prepared for the short term with pre positioned manufacturing inventory at our Red Deer plant as well as our fleet levels in the field from the end of last year and the first few months of twenty twenty five. As there is more clarity with the long term impacts of the tariffs, Badger will be prepared to react. So with those questions, let’s turn it back to the operator for questions.

Or were those comments, let’s turn it back to operator for questions. Operator?

Debbie, Conference Operator: Thank you, Rob. We will now begin our question and answer session. For those that have dialed into the audio portion of this call, to ask a question during the live question and answer session, please press star one to raise your hand. Please wait for me to say your name and company before asking your question. And with that, our first caller is Yuri Link from Concord Genuity.

Go ahead, Yuri.

Yuri Link, Analyst, Concord Genuity: Thanks and good morning.

Rob Lakhedar, President and CEO, Badger Infrastructure Solutions: Good morning, Yuri.

Yuri Link, Analyst, Concord Genuity: Good morning, Rob. Can you give us a little more detail on what exactly you’ve done with positioning your trucks ahead of the tariffs. It sounds like you might have moved a few into The U. S. Just confirm that and what kind of numbers are we talking about?

Rob Lakhedar, President and CEO, Badger Infrastructure Solutions: So you can look at what the new build rate has been for the last three or four months of 2024. And it’s safe to assume that almost every single one of those trucks was being shifted into The U. S. In addition to the first few months of this year when it looked like tariffs were imminent, certainly the manufacturing plant has been up and running and we put a lot of trucks into The U. S.

Obviously to get in front of tariffs, if they were to be enacted now they are. In addition to that, Yuri, we pre positioned some chassis that come they’re built in The U. S. We pre positioned those into our facility over the Red Deer Alberta plant. So we have some chassis already there that would not be subject to tariff that we’ve already lined out there for our manufacturing for the next few months.

We don’t know nor I believe anyone knows what’s going to happen with the tariffs. And they seem to be rapidly changing like every hour we get a tweet and this is on, this is off. The automotive industry for example yesterday it was on two days ago now it’s off for some of the automotive, the main manufacturers out of The U. S. So it’s kind of back and forth real time happening.

We’re not sure if it’s going to be long term or short term Yuri, but we’re thinking about it along those lines from a short term and long term perspective. And Rob, if you want to add anything.

Rob Dawson, CFO, Badger Infrastructure Solutions: I would only add Yuri that we have a lot of time to be patient to see how this plays out. And in addition to the repositioning of our fleet that Rob just described, we’re at a seasonally low period for our business. And I think as many as we tried to make clear in our disclosures that were released yesterday, we do have ample consolidated capacity to absorb a lot of the growth here in the early part of twenty twenty five before any new production would be required to start adding to our fleet. That doesn’t mean that we’re not going to continue to produce. It just means we have a lot of flexibility to hold back on delivering new units for definitely two to three months.

So we feel we’re very well positioned. Would also point out that we’re really only talking about our capital expenditures when it comes to tariffs. And so if you think about even if you apply a full cost of 25% the current rate on our entire cost of a truck, only talking about a depreciation add of maybe between $0.01 and $0.03 a year. And really 90% of our business or more is in The United States and The United States is significantly less impacted by the tariffs than our Canadian operations would be. And then finally, we are looking at activity in The United States and project starts and we feel that a lot of the other changes that this administration is making are actually positive for our business.

So overall, while the tariff is something we’re obviously looking at very closely and we made a lot of mitigation steps, We feel that overall the business is pretty well positioned on a relative basis certainly, but in an absolute basis as well to be able to manage through this.

Yuri Link, Analyst, Concord Genuity: Okay. Can you clarify the comment you made on securing chassis ahead of the tariffs? What exactly that means and why they wouldn’t be subject to

Rob Lakhedar, President and CEO, Badger Infrastructure Solutions: Because originally when there were talks of the U. S. Administration enacting tariffs, it was going to be originally this is back before the turn of the year. The talk was that it might just be anything coming into The U. S.

And from outside and The U. S. Built chassis would not have been subject to a tariff from The United States. Now that Canada said well in twenty one days we are going to do retaliatory tariffs. We believe as it stands today, Yuri, and again it’s a moving target and we’re still working with several groups to make sure that there’s a clear understanding of what the true tariffs are and it’s not very clear at the moment.

But we believe with the retaliatory tariffs from Canada that the trucks coming into Canada have potential to get tariffed from The U. S. Coming into Canada and then the Canadian part going back into The U. S. And so that’s why Rob is kind of our worst case model is a tariff on the entire truck.

That’s what we’re modeling. And then if we got some relief, there are some potential models that you know, in structure that you could do to mitigate some of the tariffs, but we’re running all that to ground. And last thing probably Yuri, I’ll share with you. Because it’s happening in a vacuum at the moment, there’s just not a lot of clarity on are there going to be additional carve outs. There’s a lot of suggestions even this morning on the business news channels in The U.

S. There’s a lot of chatter that there could be additional carve outs for additional industries and additional adjacent things to the automotive of which we definitely would be considered adjacent to automotive. So there’s just not a lot of clarity to go beyond what we’re saying, but we feel very comfortable as Rob suggested. He said two to three months. I don’t know, maybe I’m closer to three to four, but somewhere in between there that we have plenty of work to do to keep on building the trucks.

And then over time, even if we just brought them in with the tariffs, it would not have a significant impact and definitely would have minimal impact for the full year of 2025.

Yuri Link, Analyst, Concord Genuity: Last quick one for me. Just your build rate guidance, 4% to 7% is below last year and below your long term targets. Is that a reflection of what you have to do to kind of stick handle the tariffs or is it more a reflection of end market demand?

Rob Lakhedar, President and CEO, Badger Infrastructure Solutions: It’s actually more it’s a little bit on the tariffs again because we feel we could actually drive more utilization within the business. And remember, if you think in terms of how we look at the business, we look at the utilization, the pricing and then the volume of the units. And then how many units do we need to hit the revenue targets and meet customer demand. And we feel pretty comfortable with the fleet we have. And if you notice, we are actually taking up the refurbs.

I read through my script at 35 refurbs and we took that guidance up to 50 to 60 for 25. So that helps offset some of it as well, Yuri. So you have to almost look at all the moving parts, but there’s not much to read like there’s no we don’t believe there’s softening demand or anything like that.

Rob Dawson, CFO, Badger Infrastructure Solutions: I would add, Yuri, for the same reason that we have ample capacity to manage through these tariffs in the short term, we have ample current capacity to absorb a good proportion of growth in 2025. And we’ve mentioned this quite a few times over 2024 where our utilization was perhaps a little light. So we do have the option to let utilization absorb some growth. And of course we do have the continuing impact of our ongoing commercial and pricing program. So that lower build rate is more an indication of just trying to manage our capital with some discipline as opposed to any indication of what we feel about the overall growth rate of the business.

Yuri Link, Analyst, Concord Genuity: Thanks guys.

Rob Lakhedar, President and CEO, Badger Infrastructure Solutions: Thank you, Yuri.

Debbie, Conference Operator: And the next question is from Anshul Agrawar from CIBC. Go ahead, Anshul.

Anshul Agrawar, Analyst, CIBC: Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question and congrats on the good quarter. So can you just give us a color on Canadian market and some of the larger contracts that had been put on hold, what is there any update on that? How are the overall things moving around in the Canadian market?

Rob Lakhedar, President and CEO, Badger Infrastructure Solutions: Yes. So, like I suggested, we started to see some movement in Q4 in Ontario specifically on some of the larger projects and some of them had been being delayed, some of the light rail projects and a few other projects started to get underway in Q4 for the team there and they continue into Q1 here. Some of the Western markets we saw in Q4 pretty good activity in pockets of Alberta and BC seemed to be continued softness for us and Winnipeg was soft, softer for us, good strength in Montreal. And that for us we view as a growth market because even though Montreal is one of the larger markets across Canada, Badger until just I’d say about eighteen months ago really didn’t have much of a presence there. So we view that as a growth market and we’ve certainly been chasing some opportunity and demand there.

We are cautious on Canada, if you think about Canada for ’25 on, there’s actually two things happening obviously. We have the tariff impacts and we’ve talked about that a lot and we shared some comments there with Yuri previously. But also you have the changeover on the election. And so just like there was a little bit of uncertainty in The U. S.

Prior to the presidential election, probably get some certainty on some of these projects in the funding. And Rob, I don’t know if you want to add we’ll probably get some certainty on some of these projects in the funding. And Rob, I don’t know if you want to add anything on that?

Rob Dawson, CFO, Badger Infrastructure Solutions: Yes, I’d say a little caution in 2025 certainly so far this year. Longer term, if Canada starts to seriously move towards interlinking the provincial trade and all of the longer term infrastructure projects that that might involve, there may be some longer term optimism that may come out of the current environment. But right now I think lots of caution.

Anshul Agrawar, Analyst, CIBC: So one another question from me. So now there are lots of talks around data centers recently. What are you hearing from your customers and like how much work are you doing on the data centers?

Rob Lakhedar, President and CEO, Badger Infrastructure Solutions: So we’re doing a fair amount of work on data centers. Actually I was meeting with some of our largest customers in the last seven to ten days and actually had some meetings with their executive teams and they’re marching forward with a lot of their projects. And I know there’s a lot of questioning sometimes you hear large data projects such as the I think it’s called Stargate in Abilene, Texas and you have Apple saying they want to do a significant investment down Houston and all these large, large projects, dollars 500,000,000,000 in larger projects. Some of those are more announcements, but they have not come to break ground. But there are several that are underway right now and they are, will have no problem with funding and the construction is underway and we have trucks on those projects.

Our customers who to me are the biggest barometer of the projects, they feel very confident that most of those projects are going to go forward. There’s every day it feels like the news changes regarding some of the AI and the data center build outs. For example, Microsoft, I think as an outflow of the DeepSeek phenomena that happened roughly three weeks a month ago. Microsoft is getting more cautious, but others are actually leaning in such as Meta and a few others. And so overall though, I suspect that majority of these projects are going to go and we’re definitely positioned to capture those.

Rob Dawson, CFO, Badger Infrastructure Solutions: I would only add that while we have great exposure to that build out, it’s not so outsized that we’re depending on that to continue to meet our expectations. We have broad exposure to a lot of positive trends and this is just one of them. And I think Rob’s opening comments tried to imply that we do have exposure to a lot of the other build outs. Yes.

Rob Lakhedar, President and CEO, Badger Infrastructure Solutions: Oh, yes. This is when you look at all of our customer base, while we are probably the largest hydro back provider, I suspect we definitely are the largest hydro back provider on all these data center projects. We have I mean, that’s a small portion of all the company’s business. So we’re not dependent on if the data center projects were to get canceled or something. We’re pretty diversified with our customer base.

Debbie, Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next caller is Sean Jank from Raymond James. Go ahead, Sean.

Anshul Agrawar, Analyst, CIBC: Hey, good morning, guys. I just wanted to drill in a little bit further. Hey, great to see you guys. Just wanted to drill in a little bit further. With the preemptive truck movements that happened, wondering if you had already have or if you guys already have like precise locations in line for these trucks to drive utilization right off the bat or is it going to take some time to find large amounts of work for them?

Rob Lakhedar, President and CEO, Badger Infrastructure Solutions: So great question. We know for a fact that we have competitors who listen to the calls and sometimes they’re actually on the calls real time or listen to them afterwards. So Sean, I’m not going to give like the exact markets of where the trucks are going, but we largely have on our fleet plan and our business plans, we largely have about 80% of our build out and our spend, the capital numbers that Rob Dawson always talks about and he’s very, very good at helping us manage our capital spend. 80% of that spend Sean is already predetermined before the year even starts. And so we know, we actually have ability to look at which projects are coming, which markets are growing, and the start dates.

We work with our sales leaders and our operations leaders, and we’ve identified where those assets need to go. We start to move those assets into those markets and so we feel comfortable on about 80% of the year spend right now. We always keep about 20%, The term I would use kind of dry powder. So if a large project stands up and they need an extra 20 trucks, 30 trucks, 50 trucks, we have the ability to flex up. And obviously, you look at our debt levels which are down, our borrowing capacity which is up, we have the ability to flex up even more if needed and support that.

So we feel comfortable with it. If you want to kind of figure out where those trucks are going Sean and again it’s not rocket science, I’m just not going to give it directly on this call. You can just look at where the largest growth markets are for The U. S. Construction and industrial markets and that’s where we’re feeding the trucks.

And Jeff, if you want to add something Rob?

Rob Dawson, CFO, Badger Infrastructure Solutions: It’s something that Rob’s talked a lot about over the past several quarters is our focus on getting I think more intentional with data. We stood up a new data platform last year in 2024. And one of the better tools we’ve already have live is we’ve integrated Google Maps, our CRM, all of our historical customer and revenue data, as well as Dodge, Peck and all these forecast bidding sites. And then with the map you can see where all of the past activity and all the forecast activity is on a map of like all of North American drill in. So it’s a lot more quick and easy for people looking to know where we should be looking to one focus our marketing efforts, but also where we should be putting our assets hiring for new operators and all those sorts of

Rob Lakhedar, President and CEO, Badger Infrastructure Solutions: And new locations. And new locations

Rob Dawson, CFO, Badger Infrastructure Solutions: as well if we’re getting big in a certain market and we want to split that market. So we have very, very good data and the engine is really starting to drive some value.

Anshul Agrawar, Analyst, CIBC: Okay, perfect. That’s a good color for that one. One follow-up for me. I read through the release and saw that there was some volumes from disaster work in The United States in the quarter. Just wanted to know if you could give any sort of quantification of how big of an impact that was?

Rob Lakhedar, President and CEO, Badger Infrastructure Solutions: Sure. So, it was pretty limited. The last, I think we had one or two days in Q3, like at the very end, I think we had one or two days of Q3 for some hurricane response work. And about we were actually looking at this other day about ten or eleven days business days in Q4 and it was purely Sean at the very beginning of the quarter, like ten or eleven days of hurricane response. But it was while we always thrive on doing emergency response work and normally it’s pretty good business for the company.

It did not it wasn’t like the big needle mover for the quarter for us. And again, it’s not for any other reason other than it was about a ten day event for us, ten business day event. I will share though with all the fires and everything that’s happened in Southern California, Badger is very, very active on those projects. Our team has done a phenomenal job of supporting first responders as well as some of the Army Corps of Engineers and all the utility companies in Southern California. It’s so far it’s not a big needle mover at all regarding the revenue.

We’ve done some work out there, but I wouldn’t say it’s even something that we will probably call out in a big way for Q1, but it has potential to ramp up. It really depends on how quickly the State of California and some of those specific markets want to invest in the recovery. But we stand ready to support them. And I would actually say that’s probably our theme really this quarter is Badger is ready to go to work and do whatever we can to support our customers and we feel very comfortable with that as well.

Rob Dawson, CFO, Badger Infrastructure Solutions: I’ll only add again and it’s similar to my add in on the data centers is we’re at the size and scale geographically and end market diversity where disaster work is something that we definitely get from time to time. Same with the data centers, but no one end market is so big now for Badger that it’s going to create a lot of volatility in our revenue stream. We’re exposed to all those positive trends and all of them are helping to grow the business. And in this case, this disaster work unfortunately is one of those things, but it’s not a make or break for Badger.

Anshul Agrawar, Analyst, CIBC: Perfect. Appreciate it guys.

Rob Lakhedar, President and CEO, Badger Infrastructure Solutions: All right. Thanks, Sean. Appreciate it, bud.

Debbie, Conference Operator: Our next caller is Ian Gillies from Stifel. Go ahead, Ian.

Sean Jank, Analyst, Raymond James: Good morning, everyone.

Rob Lakhedar, President and CEO, Badger Infrastructure Solutions: Hi. Good morning, Ian.

Sean Jank, Analyst, Raymond James: Some of our survey work has suggested that activity in California and the Midwest has started to pick up. I mean, I think both of which you and Robin both flagged as problem areas in 2024. Would you agree with the fact that those areas are starting to get a bit better and some of it has been a bit of a thaw on the utility spend and the like and that’s probably going to be a bit of a tailwind through this year?

Rob Lakhedar, President and CEO, Badger Infrastructure Solutions: I didn’t hear the markets you referenced. Could you like I think the phone beeped or something?

Sean Jank, Analyst, Raymond James: Oh, apologies. I specifically mentioned the Midwest and California.

Rob Lakhedar, President and CEO, Badger Infrastructure Solutions: Okay. Yes. So California is California last year and we mentioned this a few times on last year’s quarterly earnings calls, but California was really in the Midwest, but both of those markets were really tied to hesitation on what was going to happen as a result of the presidential election and the frame up that we gave last year, which actually turned out to be the case as some of our customers were telling us they were hesitant. Our renewable energies and some of those projects renewable is going to be more in favor or will oil and gas depending on who was to win the presidency in The U. S.

And so a lot of those projects started getting on hold late April, May, June and then kind of through the end of the year. Now Southern California not a little bit just slightly with the fires, but in our emergency response there, But more along the lines of what’s happening, there’s some light rail projects happening in Southern California, as well as the LA Olympics for 2028. All of those projects, they require a lot of power and they require a lot of construction. And so those have been some of the drivers for our business in Southern California. So yes, those are turning around.

Midwest surprisingly has been very strong coming out of the election. Some of the gas line work that we do in the Midwest as well as some oil and gas investments that are just starting to get underway have really started to carry the day there in the Midwest, Ian. The only hesitation I would say before we say like it’s off to the races is the month of February had around fifteen, sixteen days that were very, very hard on the weather. And it definitely affected us in the Southern half of The U. S.

Which are more temperate climate. But we were having snow in Houston, Texas and the Panhandle and it was sticking around for two, three, four days and it never does that. And so that slowed down the business, but up in the Upper Midwest, there were some very really harsh conditions. And while our teams work in the cold weather, this is even colder than normal and a lot of our customers just shut down for a couple of weeks. And we can only work if the customers are willing to let us work there.

So, but generally speaking, both those markets are definitely coming back there, Ian.

Sean Jank, Analyst, Raymond James: Understood. The EBITDA margins in the quarter were obviously a standout. I think they quite frankly almost matched the second quarter. Just want to reconfirm, even though you’ve talked about a little bit that there’s nothing unusual in there. And maybe you can talk about some of the success you’ve had on leveraging the fixed cost base through the fourth quarter and why that maybe carries on through 2025?

Rob Dawson, CFO, Badger Infrastructure Solutions: Ian, Rob has asked me to take that one. We are really happy with the progress we’ve seen on building stability and scalability and our support functional costs. Q4 is a clean quarter. There’s nothing there’s no adjustments. You might recall there are a few one timers we called out in Q4 of the previous year.

This year I think you’re looking at a clean quarter and what we feel Badger can deliver when it’s firing pretty well on its costs. We do have a very well laid out multi year project list for us to continue to build the scalability in those functions and we’re going to continue to execute on those. But we’re just starting to see I think a good result of just understanding what our needs are planning for them accordingly and then working to get our systems and our people and processes together so that we can scale the business and not have to add those costs ratably with revenue.

Sean Jank, Analyst, Raymond James: That’s helpful. And maybe the last one on capital allocation. The balance sheet is obviously in very good shape. Can you maybe outline what might prevent you from being active on the NCIB this year? Like is it solely if the share price moves or do you just expect continue to be active and prudent using it just given the free cash flow?

Rob Dawson, CFO, Badger Infrastructure Solutions: Ian, it’s Rob Dawson here again. I think on our capital allocation, you’ve seen us be moderately active in the NCIB. We feel there’s certainly opportunity to continue doing that. Our all in covenant leverage is at the very low end of our range. So we certainly have capacity to help to get us back into the midpoint of that range.

We’re not going to move there so aggressively that we would have to make that a volatile program. I think as you point out the share price moving to within what we view is a more reasonable valuation based on both historical and our own views of intrinsic value might be something that we would start to reconsider our NCIB. But in the meantime, I think you’re more likely to see what you’ve seen so far since we started it.

Sean Jank, Analyst, Raymond James: Understood. Thanks very much. I’ll turn the call back over.

Rob Lakhedar, President and CEO, Badger Infrastructure Solutions: Thanks, Ian.

Debbie, Conference Operator: And that appears to be the end of our question callers at the moment. So I will turn the floor back over to you.

Rob Lakhedar, President and CEO, Badger Infrastructure Solutions: Thank you, operator. On behalf of all of us here at Badger, we want to thank our customers, our employees, suppliers and shareholders for your ongoing support that helps to drive Badger’s success. Operator, you may end the call.

Debbie, Conference Operator: Thank you, Ram. This concludes the webinar and thank you for your time and participation today.

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