Earnings call transcript: Dexterra Group misses Q1 2025 EPS forecast

Dexterra Group Inc. (DXT) reported its financial results for the first quarter of 2025, revealing earnings per share (EPS) of $0.14, slightly below the forecasted $0.145. Revenue also fell short of expectations, coming in at $239.73 million against a forecast of $252.59 million. Despite the miss, the company’s stock saw a modest 1.2% increase in after-hours trading, closing at $8.43, indicating a mixed market reaction. According to InvestingPro, the company maintains a "GREAT" financial health score of 3.29, with strong profitability and momentum metrics.

Key Takeaways

• Dexterra Group’s Q1 2025 EPS was $0.14, missing the forecast by a small margin.
• Revenue for the quarter was $239.73 million, below the anticipated $252.59 million.
• The stock price rose by 1.2% in after-hours trading, suggesting cautious optimism among investors.
• The company achieved a 28% year-over-year increase in adjusted EBITDA to $25 million.
• Dexterra continues to focus on technology investments and diversification across sectors.

Company Performance

Dexterra Group’s performance in Q1 2025 showed resilience despite missing earnings expectations. The company reported a 28% year-over-year increase in adjusted EBITDA, reaching $25 million. Revenues from support services rose by 7% year-over-year to $199 million, while asset-based services brought in CAD 41 million. The company returned $13 million to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks, maintaining an attractive 4.15% dividend yield. With an EV/EBITDA ratio of 5.98 and a P/E ratio of 14.55, InvestingPro analysis suggests the stock is currently undervalued relative to its Fair Value.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $239.73 million, below the forecast of $252.59 million.
• Earnings per share: $0.14, slightly under the forecast of $0.145.
• Adjusted EBITDA: $25 million, a 28% increase year-over-year.
• Free cash flow: Just over $1 million, impacted by a delayed $20 million receivable.
• Net debt: Approximately $82 million, less than 1x trailing twelve-month EBITDA.

Earnings vs. Forecast

Dexterra Group’s EPS of $0.14 missed the forecast of $0.145 by approximately 3.4%. This minor shortfall marks a deviation from the company’s historical trend of meeting or exceeding earnings expectations. Revenue also fell short, missing the forecast by $12.86 million, indicating challenges in achieving anticipated sales growth.

Market Reaction

Despite missing earnings forecasts, Dexterra’s stock price increased by 1.2% in after-hours trading, closing at $8.43. This movement suggests that investors remain cautiously optimistic about the company’s future prospects, possibly influenced by its strong EBITDA growth and strategic focus on technology investments. The stock has demonstrated remarkable strength with a 50.92% return over the past year and is currently trading near its 52-week high of $6.27. InvestingPro subscribers have access to 10 additional exclusive insights about Dexterra’s performance and potential, including detailed analysis of its growth trajectory and market position.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking ahead, Dexterra Group remains focused on maintaining an 8%+ EBITDA margin in the long term. The company plans to continue its emphasis on profitable organic growth, accretive acquisitions, and expanding its integrated facility management services. Forward guidance projects EPS of $0.13 for Q2 2025 and revenue of $190.79 million, reflecting cautious expectations amid economic uncertainties.

Executive Commentary

"We have a more focused and streamlined business, a very strong balance sheet and strong free cash flow," stated Bill McFarlane, Board Chair. CEO Mark Becker emphasized the company’s strategic focus on delivering strong profitability and consistent results, noting, "Our strategic focus remains the delivery of strong profitability, consistent and predictable results."

Risks and Challenges

• Economic uncertainty could impact client spending and project timelines.
• Potential trade tariffs may affect supply chain costs and operations.
• Fluctuations in oil prices could influence revenue from the oil and gas segment.
• Delayed receivables may continue to impact cash flow.
• Inflationary pressures could affect cost structures and margins.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about Dexterra’s technology investment strategy and its potential impacts on future growth. The company addressed concerns regarding oil price fluctuations and how contract flexibility could mitigate economic uncertainties. Executives reiterated their commitment to a prudent approach in technology investments, highlighting a controlled strategy to enhance operational efficiency and client engagement.

Full transcript - Dexterra Group Inc (DXT) Q1 2025:

Chuck, Conference Operator: Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Dexterra Group’s First Quarter twenty twenty five Results Conference Call. As a reminder, all participants are in a listen only mode and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Ms. Denise Achalnew, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead, ma’am.

Denise Achanu, Chief Financial Officer, Dexterra Group Inc.: Thank you, Chuck, and good morning. My name is Denise Achanu, Chief Financial Officer of Dexterra Group Inc. With me today on the call are Mark Becker, our CEO and our Board Chair, Bill McFarlane, who will provide some brief introductory comments. After a brief presentation, we will take questions with the call ending by 09:15 Eastern Time. We will be commenting on our Q1 twenty twenty five results with the assumption that you have read the Q1 earnings press release, MD and A and financial statements.

The slide presentation, which supports today’s comments, is posted on our website, and we encourage participants to access the slides and follow along with our presentation. Before we begin, I would like to make some comments about forward looking information. In yesterday’s news release and on Slide two of the presentation that we have posted on our website, you’ll find cautionary notes in that regard. I will not cover the content of the cautionary notes in any detail. However, we do claim their protection for any forward looking information that we might disclose on this conference call today.

I will now turn it over to Bill McFarlane for his introductory comments.

Bill McFarlane, Board Chair, Dexterra Group Inc.: Good morning. Thank you, Denise, and thank you to everyone for joining the call. Q1 twenty twenty five saw continued strong execution of Dexterra’s business plan. Management also spent time meeting with investors in Q1 to communicate our story and the feedback was very positive. We have a more focused and streamlined business, a very strong balance sheet and strong free cash flow, a resilient business which is important in light of tariff uncertainty and other global economic risks, which gives us future flexibility to take advantage of market opportunities.

It was also good to see our share price continue to react positively with an increase from 12/31/2024 of 10% despite lots of market volatility. With that overview, I would like to now pass it over to Mark Becker for some detailed comments on the Q1 twenty twenty five results. And we are also hoping you will be able to attend our AGM later this morning where we’ll be presenting more information on our strategy. Mark, over to you.

Mark Becker, CEO, Dexterra Group Inc.: Great. Thanks very much, Bill and a good morning to everyone. Always pleased to report another good quarter in Q1, another strong quarter for Dexterra with robust activity levels, strong margins all across the business, including over $25,000,000 in adjusted EBITDA, which is a 28% increase over Q1 in twenty twenty four. Our results in the quarter were driven primarily by high occupancy at new camps that were mobilized in the second quarter of last year and a full quarter contribution of CMI Management, which is our IFM Services acquisition in The U. S.

That we closed in February of last year. Cold weather early in the quarter this year resulted in slightly lower demand for Axis Matting that partially offset these positive increases. Our strong operating performance allowed us to achieve our target return on equity of 15% in Q1. Also in the quarter, we returned $13,000,000 to our shareholders through our dividend of about CAD5 million and share buybacks of about CAD8 million. As Bill noted, our continued positive performance as well as the shareholder returns has been positively reflected in our share price in Q1 despite what we’ve seen as a lot of recent market turbulence.

All of this is consistent with our business strategy and focus on building a sustainable business for the long term while delivering strong returns to shareholders and all stakeholders. So turning to slide six and speaking in more detail on the business segments, starting with Support Services. For Q1 twenty twenty five, revenues from Support Services were $199,000,000 which is an increase of 7% over Q1 of twenty twenty four. And adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $19,000,000 which is 24% higher than Q1 of twenty twenty four. The increase in revenue and profitability is attributable to higher occupancy at camps mobilized in Q2 of last year, as I mentioned, and a full quarter contribution from CMI as well as the continued strength of facilities management at margins above 6%.

These increases were offset by lower project activity compared to the same period last year. Adjusted EBITDA margins in Q1 of 9.5% compared to 8.2% in Q1 of last year and was a result of business mix with higher camp occupancy in Q1 of this year contributing to this improvement. The Q1 margins were consistent with Q4 of twenty twenty four of 8.8% and over the long term, expect margins in this business to continue to exceed 8% as the IFM business grows. Compared to Q4 of twenty twenty four, support services revenue decreased by four percent as certain facility management project activity that we had in Q4 was completed. Adjusted EBITDA increased by 4% in Q1 over Q4 of last year as a result of the business mix with higher occupancy at camps offsetting lower facilities management product activity.

Our pipeline of new sales opportunities remain strong in all areas of support services, including integrated facilities management opportunities on both sides of the border. Additionally, we remain active on identification and evaluation of IFM acquisition targets. Moving on to Asset Based Services on Slide seven. Revenue from this business segment for Q1 of twenty twenty five was CAD41 million, which was similar to Q4 of last year and compared to CAD46 million for the same period Q1 of twenty twenty four. This increase in Q1 revenue compared to last year is primarily a result of lower access matting activity due to cold regional temperatures early in the quarter as I previously mentioned.

Matting utilization has returned to more typical levels in Q2 of about 90% as we’ve transitioned now into spring breakout. Our access matting business is focused on the Montney Duvernay region, which is an active area in liquid rich natural gas production supporting West Coast LNG. Camp equipment utilization also remained strong in Q1 at over 90% and all indications point to that continuing through the balance of the year. Q1 twenty twenty five adjusted EBITDA of CAD 13,000,000 and margin of 33% was similar to Q4 of twenty twenty four and higher compared to $10,000,000 and about 22% respectively for Q1 of twenty twenty four. This increase is primarily the result of the margin differential between higher camp asset utilization in Q1 compared to project mobilization related work in Q1 of twenty twenty four.

Looking forward, we expect adjusted EBITDA margins in 2025 in this segment to be in the middle of the range of 30% to 40% as our mix of business is likely to have less project activity in 2025. With that, I’ll now turn it back over to Vimis.

Denise Achanu, Chief Financial Officer, Dexterra Group Inc.: Thank you, Mark. I’ll speak about our financial position and the capital markets on Slide nine. Free cash flow for Q1 twenty twenty five of just over $1,000,000 was impacted by the delayed collection of a $20,000,000 customer receivable that is being funded by the Canadian federal government, which we expect to collect in May. This will have a positive impact on free cash flow in Q2. On a normalized basis, cash taxes are approximately $15,000,000 and our 2025 tax liability will not be payable until early twenty twenty six.

Adjusted EBITDA conversion to free cash flow is expected to continue to be above 50% going forward, with Q3 and Q4 experiencing the highest conversions to free cash flow as a result of the seasonality of the support services business. Management of working capital remains a key focus area for us and we believe that absent the delayed receivable, they are at optimal levels. Net debt at 03/31/2025 of just around $82,000,000 was less than one times trailing twelve month EBITDA and will be lower in Q2 following receipt of the delayed receivable payment. We are managing our balance sheet prudently and have significant unused debt capacity and flexibility under our credit facility for share buybacks and acquisition opportunities. We’re currently renegotiating our credit facility agreement and expect to receive more favorable terms, which will support our growth strategy.

In Q1, we repurchased just under 1,000,000 common shares for total consideration of about $8,000,000 under the terms of the NCIB. The Board has also approved the extension of our NCIB program subject to TSX approval. This will allow us to repurchase up to an additional 3,000,000 shares over the next twelve months. We plan to remain opportunistic with share buybacks in 2025, as we believe our shares are still significantly undervalued. Finally, Dexterra declared a dividend for Q2 twenty twenty five of $0.08 $75 per share for shareholders of record at 06/30/2025.

I will now turn it back to Mark for closing comments.

Mark Becker, CEO, Dexterra Group Inc.: Great. Thanks very much, Denise. Turning now to our outlook and plans forward. Q1 has definitely been a positive momentum build for the start of the year this year. The impact of trade tariffs is something that we have been closely monitoring and working to proactively mitigate the potential impacts.

As a service based company, Dexterra is largely naturally insulated from the direct impacts of trade tariffs as our labor and a large majority of our supply commodities are domestically sourced. For food, chemicals, other commodities that we’ve historically been sourced cross border, we’ve been active over the last few months addressing our supply chain sourcing, domestic alternatives among other mitigation strategies. In sum, we expect that we can substantially mitigate the direct impact of trade tariffs on the direct impact to the Dxterra business on the assumption that North American economy does not experience a significant recession or significant broad inflationary pressure. We continue to monitor economic and industry indicators very closely, as well as staying closely connected to our clients. At this time, we’re not seeing indications of changes to industry activity levels or client plans for the balance of 2025.

We have a strong pipeline of new sales opportunities in all areas of our business. We have seen some delays in contract awards that has moderated the pace of new sales growth so far this year. We expect these delays may continue until business uncertainty subsides. Our focus is to manage what we can control and we’ll continue to invest in our sales and pursuit teams, expand our sales pipelines and marketing approaches as well as continuing to deliver value and operational excellence for our clients. In spite of the near term market uncertainties, we are excited and confident about our path forward.

Our strategic focus remains the delivery of strong profitability, consistent and predictable results and a return on equity for shareholders of 15% or greater. The key to achieving this return on equity will be through continuing to deliver profitable organic growth and identifying accretive acquisitions that provide integrated facility management capability, technology and scale for the long term growth of the business. Our capital allocation priorities remain intact, each of which is an important pillar in our long term strategy. This includes maintaining our current dividend level, supporting sustaining and selective high return capital investments, staying opportunistic in share buybacks under the NCIB and identifying accretive acquisitions that are consistent with our strategy of building a larger capital light support services business for the long term, while continuing to support our market leading asset based services business. This concludes our prepared remarks and I will turn the call back to Chuck for the Q and A portion of our call.

Chuck, Conference Operator: Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. And the first question will come from Chris Murray with ATB Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Chris Murray, Analyst, ATB Capital Markets: Yes. Thanks, folks. Good morning. Mark, very strong performance in the Support Services group despite what would be maybe a kind of a cold quarter, things like that. And in the MD and A, you also talked about keeping that EBITDA margin above 8% on a go forward basis.

Can you guys talk about the sustainability of that margin at this particular point, if there’s anything in the quarter that maybe skewed it higher than normal? Because above 8%, when you’re 150 basis points above it, it just feels like there’s a pretty big gap there. So just maybe some color on how you’re thinking about that on a

Mark Becker, CEO, Dexterra Group Inc.: go forward basis as we

Chris Murray, Analyst, ATB Capital Markets: get used to the new segmentation?

Mark Becker, CEO, Dexterra Group Inc.: Yes. Thanks for the question, Chris. And I think we’ve seen, as you said, margins in support services were pretty strong in Q1. And a lot of that, as we talked about, really related to high temp occupancy that we had in Q1. We had some large contracts mobilized in Q2 of last year.

Those are all fully on stream in Q1. So that tends to contribute to kind of stronger margins that we saw in Q1. I think as we’ve talked about, mix of business definitely ties in. And I think what we could probably see for the balance of the year is probably it’s a good start to the year on that front. And I think what we’re probably seeing is some continued strength perhaps short term in the 9% range plus or minus, if we can say it that way.

And then vitally important, guess, Chris, as you say, as we get used to the re segmented model, long term, we’re still seeing 8% plus and we want to kind of stick to that as we add more kind of IFM business to our current mix of business that offsets sort of the asset based business. But I think short term kind of 9% plus or minus is probably not a bad target.

Chris Murray, Analyst, ATB Capital Markets: Okay. And then the other question I had and you sort of talked to it a little bit is a lot of the business leaders we’ve been talking to, there’s a lot of uncertainty out there, almost record levels. And certainly, it seems to be changing day by day. Can you talk a little bit about what you’re hearing from some of your customers in terms of their expectations and how they’re thinking about the world? And can you also maybe walk us through sort of lessons learned and what might be different this time if we do get into a recessionary scenario or a higher inflation scenario and what to expect, the levers that you can pull in order to kind of maintain margins as we go through something like that?

Mark Becker, CEO, Dexterra Group Inc.: Yes, for sure. And pretty active for us. As I mentioned in my remarks, we stay very close to our clients, obviously industry indicators, but staying very close to our clients. I think what we’re seeing is a product of our diversity and our diversification within the business. If you look at where we’ve been in the last few years in terms of, not to call it natural resources, energy, but now expanding into mining almost on the same significant basis as energy infrastructure, our power infrastructure projects, other infrastructure projects that we’re doing.

That does help us. And everybody is talking about kind of uncertainty as we go along here. But again, we’re just not seeing where we’re seeing negativity around the plans or really not negativity, say it this way, a change around detailed plans or specific plans for the balance of the year. Things like being in the Montney and as we talked about, that does have an LNG focus connected to develop their feeding LNG on the West Coast. The West Coast LPG projects that we’re working on out there.

Mining is still staying very, very strong in the natural resources space. And we do see infrastructure projects continuing on. So we don’t really see kind of detailed change of plans. And then of course on the facility management side, we do still see a lot of stability and that’s kind of the nature of that business being a lot more tied to assets and maintaining assets and supporting assets. So that tends to be a bit more stable even in the face of uncertainties.

Your question around inflation lessons learned, I think I’ve mentioned this on other calls as well. I guess coming out of the post pandemic hyperinflation, did learn a lot of things about how to manage when you run into high inflationary environments. And as I think I’ve mentioned other times, certainly our contracts, would say are in good shape related to terms and conditions as much as we can possibly build in around CPI adjustments, other terms around pricing adjustments that we try to build into our contracts, a majority of which has those kinds of terms. And I would say probably since the last time we went through hyperinflation, we’ve reinforced that. And then I just think our ability and even most of our clients are long term clients and going through the conversations.

Unfortunately, they’re used to having it because we only had it two or three years ago, but that kind of protocol. So I would say our team, we feel really ready for that and we would probably take advantage of some of those lessons learned that I talked about contract terms and just being able to manage adjustments with our clients.

Chris Murray, Analyst, ATB Capital Markets: All right. Thanks. That’s helpful. I’ll leave it there. That’s my two.

Chuck, Conference Operator: The next question will come from Frederic Bastien with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Frederic Bastien, Analyst, Raymond James: Good morning and good results guys.

Mark Becker, CEO, Dexterra Group Inc.: Thanks very much, Frederic.

Frederic Bastien, Analyst, Raymond James: Just building on that earlier theme, can you remind us how big your camps business is today and how much of that is exposed to mining versus oil and gas versus infrastructure versus others? Just curious how big of a business that is now today? Thank you.

Denise Achanu, Chief Financial Officer, Dexterra Group Inc.: Sure. Good morning, Fredrik. So it’s about in terms of revenue, it’s about $500,000,000 in terms of revenue from the camps business, just speaking specifically to the support services aspect of it. Then in terms of kind of mining, mining is about, I would say about a tenth of it a tenth to 20% of it. And then oil and gas is about more in the range of 20% of our support services of that $500,000,000 And then the balance there is infrastructure, Mark mentioned as well, power lines, etcetera.

Frederic Bastien, Analyst, Raymond James: And just recognizing that you don’t really provide backlog information, how much visibility do you have on that business? Yes, just curious, are we talking about six months, twelve months, is it two years? I’m sure it’s a mix of everything, but if you could provide a bit more color on that would be great. Thanks.

Mark Becker, CEO, Dexterra Group Inc.: Yes, for sure. And I think you kind of said it right, it’s a mix of everything. And if you look at how we’re managing things these days, like we are kind of fairly diversified across segments of business and lines of business as well. So we kind of manage our pipelines. We have focused teams in different areas of the business, including a focused team, pursuit team around IFM.

I would say rather than kind of trying to quote numbers across those different approaches, Fredrik, I would say, if you kind of look at our pipelines, which does kind of go up and go down, I would say generally across all our businesses, our pipeline of opportunities is very strong. Our hit rates are achieving where we would where we’d like to be around hit rates of 30% plus. So I think if you do the math around kind of what our size of our pipeline, our hit rates and equaling kind of what we would expect in terms of organic growth across the businesses, the math kind of hangs together in terms of being able to deliver our organic growth rates that we expect.

Frederic Bastien, Analyst, Raymond James: All right, thanks. I have one more, but I’ll let others go first. Thank you.

Chuck, Conference Operator: The next question will come from Zachary Evershed with National Bank Financial. Please go ahead.

Zachary Evershed, Analyst, National Bank Financial: Good morning, everyone. Congrats on the quarter.

Mark Becker, CEO, Dexterra Group Inc.: Great. Thanks so much, Zach.

Zachary Evershed, Analyst, National Bank Financial: Could you walk us through the mentioned enterprise IT strategy investments and what areas of improvement is being targeted there? And then maybe bridge that to how it’s impacting corporate costs, which have been rising for the last twenty four months?

Denise Achanu, Chief Financial Officer, Dexterra Group Inc.: Good morning, Zach. So just obviously, we’re a support services business. So people are a significant portion of our costs and it’s important we’re able to manage them efficiently, our labor costs efficiently. And so we have been looking at what we call our workforce management system, also HCM, so human capital management system. Right now, we’re in the process of scoping something out.

So it’s early days in terms of talking costs, but really this is an investment that is important for us to make in order to scale the business from an enterprise perspective. There’s another the other piece of our technology strategies around client facing technology and customer facing technology that we’re making investments in. Again, just in terms of being able to deliver better customer service, data insights for our customers. And so that’s really keen in us being able to offer operational excellence to our clients as well. So hopefully, that gives a little bit more color in terms of our costs.

Mark Becker, CEO, Dexterra Group Inc.: Well, only thing I would add to that is, this is a topic for definitely for Denise and I, we work on quite a bit. We’ve got actually within last year, we’ve hired a new technology leader that’s working across the business on the things Denise talked about. I think I would say and we’ll keep the market well informed about this as we kind of go forward. I would say we’re being we’re going to be very prudent about this. I think we’re very clear in our priorities around technology and where we’re to see the biggest bang for our buck.

And then looking at what those investments, the size of those investments, affordability within the overall size of our corporate costs, that’s going that’s a big topic and we want to take a fairly prudent and controlled approach on our technology investments. But suffice it to say, expect to see more news on that and expect to see us talking about that more in the near future for sure.

Denise Achanu, Chief Financial Officer, Dexterra Group Inc.: And just in terms of thinking about cost for the balance of 2025 right now, it would kind of be in the range that you’re seeing for Q1 as a percentage of revenue.

Zachary Evershed, Analyst, National Bank Financial: Good color. Thank you. For my second question, given what you’re seeing in the fall in oil prices, any concerns around falling demand for any of your remote support services?

Mark Becker, CEO, Dexterra Group Inc.: Yes, definitely good question, Zach. And I kind of alluded to this on one of Chris’ questions. If you look at where we play, again, I talked about Montney Gas. We work with the big players that are producers in the Montney, Northwest Alberta, Northeast BC, are providing ramp up volumes for LNG Canada, which is ramping, start ups ramping this year. They’re still planning on and we again, with all the uncertainty, talk to them quite frequently.

No plans that we’re seeing for the balance of this year. So we’re seeing strength in that area. The LPG projects, even the LNG projects, Cedar LNG, etcetera, we’re still connected into those and they’re still moving forward on West Coast. And even the oil sands space, those are large contracts for us and oil sands, big mega capital investments. And if you look at previous kind of energy cycles, you’ll tend to see our lodges really support operating the operating plants and the operating people related to those sites.

You tend to see them continue to operate and kind of on a generating cash flow basis for themselves, kind of no matter where the price is. You might see them delay a little bit in terms of activities, but they tend to continue to produce because they are kind of wanting to generate cash flow no matter what the oil price is. So I mean that would be the context I would give. I think we’re happy where we are and where we’re playing specifically because there are some good specific ties to what we’re seeing in terms of activity levels. But we’re going to kind of continue to really monitor closely and how that plays out.

Zachary Evershed, Analyst, National Bank Financial: Thank you very much. I’ll turn it over.

Chuck, Conference Operator: And as there are no further questions, this concludes the question and answer session as well as today’s conference call. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you your participation and have a pleasant day.

Denise Achanu, Chief Financial Officer, Dexterra Group Inc.: Thank you, Chuck.

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