Earnings call transcript: Northwest Pipe Q4 2024 beats EPS but stock falls

Northwest Pipe Company (NASDAQ:NWPX) reported its Q4 2024 earnings, surpassing EPS expectations but falling short on revenue. The company posted an EPS of $1.00, beating the forecast of $0.91, while revenue came in at $119.6 million, slightly below the anticipated $120.43 million. Despite the earnings beat, the stock dropped 9.18% in post-earnings trading, closing at $43.61 from a previous close of $48.02. According to InvestingPro analysis, NWPX maintains a perfect Piotroski Score of 9, indicating strong financial health and operational efficiency. The company’s current P/E ratio of 15.13 suggests attractive valuation relative to its growth prospects.

Key Takeaways

• EPS surpassed expectations by $0.09, indicating strong profitability.
• Revenue fell short of forecasts by $0.83 million, raising concerns.
• Stock price declined by 9.18% post-earnings, reflecting investor caution.
• Record gross profit and margin improvements highlight operational success.
• Strong market position in key segments continues to drive performance.

Company Performance

Northwest Pipe Company demonstrated robust performance in Q4 2024, with significant improvements in profitability and operational efficiency. The company achieved record gross profit and margins, reflecting its strong market position and effective cost management. With a market capitalization of $432.55 million and revenue growth of 9.54% over the last twelve months, NWPX shows solid fundamental strength. InvestingPro analysis indicates the stock is currently undervalued, with several more exclusive insights available to subscribers.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $119.6 million, slightly below the forecast.
• Earnings per share: $1.00, surpassing the forecast of $0.91.
• Gross margin improved to 19.4% from 17.5% in the previous year.
• Annual net sales increased to $492.5 million, up 10.8% year-over-year.

Earnings vs. Forecast

Northwest Pipe’s EPS of $1.00 exceeded the forecast by $0.09, marking a positive earnings surprise. However, revenue missed expectations by $0.83 million, which may have contributed to the negative market reaction.

Market Reaction

Despite the EPS beat, Northwest Pipe’s stock fell by 9.18% in post-earnings trading. The decline suggests investor concerns over the revenue miss and broader market conditions. The stock is now trading closer to its 52-week low of $28.75, compared to its high of $57.76. Notable financial metrics from InvestingPro show a strong current ratio of 3.2 and impressive one-year return of 66.85%, suggesting robust financial health despite market volatility. Get access to the comprehensive Pro Research Report, part of the coverage of 1,400+ top US stocks, for deeper insights into NWPX’s valuation and growth potential.

Outlook & Guidance

The company anticipates continued growth, with strategic investments in organic growth and capacity expansion. It aims to reach a $100 million run rate at its Geneva and Park facilities by the end of 2026. Guidance for 2025 includes SG&A expenses of $47-$50 million and anticipated free cash flow of $23-$30 million.

Executive Commentary

CEO Scott Montross stated, "We delivered strong results in 2024, achieving record financial and operational performance." He emphasized the company’s focus on evaluating M&A opportunities and adapting to market changes.

Risks and Challenges

• Potential demand issues, as indicated by the revenue miss.
• Market saturation or competition in key segments.
• Macroeconomic factors, such as steel tariffs, impacting costs.
• Broader market volatility affecting stock performance.
• Continued need for operational efficiencies to maintain margins.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the impact of potential steel tariffs and the company’s strategy for growth in the precast segment. The management addressed these concerns by highlighting their flexible production capabilities and ongoing evaluation of market opportunities.

Full transcript - Northwest Pipe Company (NWPX) Q4 2024:

Conference Operator: Greetings, and welcome to the North West Pipe Company Fourth Quarter and Full Year twenty twenty four Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Scott Montross, Chief Executive Officer for North West Pipe Company.

Please go ahead, sir.

Scott Montross, President and CEO, North West Pipe Company: Good morning, and welcome to North West Pipe Company’s fourth quarter and full year twenty twenty four earnings conference call. My name is Scott Montross, and I am President and CEO of the company. I’m joined today by Aaron Wilkins, our Chief Financial Officer. By now, all of you should have access to our earnings press release, which was issued yesterday, 02/26/2025 at approximately 4PM Eastern Time. This call is being webcast and it is available for replay.

As we begin, I would like to remind everyone that statements made on this call regarding our expectations for the future are forward looking statements and actual results could differ materially. Please refer to our most recent Form 10 K for the year ended 12/31/2023, and in our other SEC filings for a discussion of such risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations. We undertake no obligation to update any forward looking statements. Thank you all for joining us today. I’ll begin with a review of our 2024 performance and outlook for 2025.

Aaron will then walk you through our financials in greater detail. We delivered strong results in 2024, achieving record financial and operational performance in a complex market environment. Our annual net sales of $492,500,000 were one of the highest in our company’s history, increasing 10.8% over 2024 and what I would call a decent, but not remarkable SPP bidding market environment with an added element of depressed market conditions on the non residential side of our precast business impacting our volumes. However, our strategy led us to produce record consolidated gross profit dollars as well as record profitability that was consistent with our free cash flow generation, both of which translated to $3.4 per share, demonstrating the strength and quality of our earnings. Most importantly, we achieved record safety performance in 2024 with a total recordable incident rate of 1.25 underscoring our unwavering commitment to the well-being of our employees, as well as demonstrating a stable operating environment.

To further break down our segment level results, revenue from our SPP segment totaled a record $337,900,000 in 2024, up 14% year over year. Our performance reflected higher production levels resulting from ongoing strength in our backlog due to the consistent level of bidding as well as changes in project timing. Our SPP backlog including confirmed orders increased to $310,000,000 as of December 31 from $282,000,000 as of 09/30/2024 and was down slightly from $319,000,000 dollars as of 12/31/2023. The bidding environment is expected to remain fairly consistent in 2025. Our SPP team has continued to do a great job executing on bids and projects.

However, our 2024 performance was partially offset by lower realized selling prices due primarily to lower raw material costs. While steel prices declined throughout 2024, they have been on the rise in 2025, now in the $850 per ton range, up approximately $125 from the January. With lead time standing at about six to eight weeks, though still well below levels from a year ago, we believe the recent steel tariff overtures will help support higher steel pricing in 2025 and in turn support higher SPP project pricing. In general, we are in favor of higher steel prices, which are positive for our SPP business. Now turning to our Precast segment.

Precast revenue increased 4.5% year over year to a new annual record of $154,600,000 despite ongoing challenges in the non residential construction market. Our performance was driven by continued strength on the residential side of our Geneva business as strong demand led to higher production and shipment levels. While our volumes were very healthy, reduced shipments on the non residential construction related portion of our precast business at Park partially offset some of this strength. As the current higher interest rate environment has continued to affect the market for commercial construction. However, Dodge Momentum Index was 19% higher in December of twenty twenty four than it was the previous year indicated growing strength in the non residential construction market for 2025.

The commercial sector was up 30% versus the prior year period, while the institutional sectors remain fairly flat. On the pricing side, while the residential portion of our precast business benefited from multiple price increases throughout 2024, driven by strong demand at the Geneva locations, low demand and downward pricing pressure on our nonresidential precast business more than offset these benefits. As of December 31, our precast order book surged to $61,000,000 which was up from $57,000,000 as of 09/30/2024 and a significant increase from $46,000,000 as of 12/31/2023, indicating strong momentum heading into 2025. Importantly, a fairly large portion of the year end precast order book surge was on the park non residential side of our precast business. The order book on the residential side of our precast business at Geneva remains stable at strong levels.

Our consolidated gross profit in 2024 was another record at $95,400,000 up 22.9% year over year and resulted in strong gross margin of 19.4% up from 17.5% in 2023. This is the strongest annual gross margin we have reported for the current SPP and precast configuration of the company. Our SPP gross margin of 18.5% was also strong, increasing by approximately four twenty basis points over 2023, primarily due to higher production volumes with strong overhead absorption as well as changes in product mix. Our pre cash gross margin of 21.2% declined by approximately two sixty basis points from 2023, primarily resulting from changes in product mix, while margins on the residential construction side of the Geneva location strengthened versus last year, lackluster demand on the non residential commercial construction portion of our business resulting from higher interest rates has led to some margin compression. Next (LON:NXT), I would like to provide an update on our free cash product spread strategy, which has been a crucial element of our top strategic priority to grow the business.

As part of level one product spread, we bid over $57,000,000 worth of projects outside of Texas in 2024 and booked approximately $10,000,000 worth of orders achieving our goals for the year. This endeavor enhanced capacity utilization at our Texas based precast plants to help maximize overall efficiency and production volume. As part of our level two, we gained additional traction on product spread at the Geneva plant in Utah by booking approximately $2,300,000 of park related projects in 2024. And finally, as part of level three product spread, we’re in the process of expanding park and other precast related products to additional Northwest Pipe legacy locations now that the park precast products are more comfortably established at the Utah Geneva locations. Our new goal for 2025 is to book in excess of $12,000,000 worth of park related projects outside of Texas.

We expect level three will be put into place by mid year and will begin to benefit our results more in 2026 and beyond. Additionally, we are continuing to organically invest in our footprint and equipment to drive capacity expansion and greater efficiencies. We are pleased to complete the reinforced concrete pipe and manhole mill at our Salt Lake City, Utah facility and are in the process of commissioning. As a reminder, this investment provides the rapidly growing Geneva operations with additional production capacity and capabilities. It is our intention to continue to invest in our precast facilities to drive organic growth.

We are also investing to maximize efficiencies in our other Northwest Pipe legacy SPP plants. In addition to our focus on organic growth, we are actively evaluating M and A opportunities in the pre cash related space that would help accelerate progress on our pre cash strategy by increasing our manufacturing capabilities and production efficiencies and expanding our geographic reach and product portfolio. Concurrent with our growth plans, we are actively repaying the debt we incurred to finance the 2021 acquisition of Park USA. In 2024, we repaid $26,000,000 of our debt and our balance sheet remains healthy with ample liquidity. As I’ve mentioned, we will opt to repurchase shares of our common stock as we did this past year in the absence of a viable M and A opportunity.

Before I conclude, I’d like to summarize our outlook for the first quarter of twenty twenty five. In our SPP business, we anticipate modestly lower revenue versus the first quarter of last year related to product mix and the continuing impact of nationwide weather events. Due to typical seasonality and severe weather conditions that have led to unscheduled downtime at our various SPP facilities. However, we expect margins to be similar to the first quarter of last year. That said, we enter 2025 with a strong SPP backlog.

And while we expect late bidding environment in the first quarter, we anticipate strong bidding activity in the second and third quarter with full year bidding levels aligning closely with 2024. We continue to remain encouraged by the amount of activity we’re seeing on our current and upcoming water transmission projects. For a more complete view of these projects, please review our investor The residential business remains strong and we are now seeing a strong 2025. The residential business remains strong and we are now seeing a surge in the non residential order book indicating improved strength in 2025. For the first quarter of twenty twenty five, our pre cash revenue and margins are expected to be as good or higher than the first quarter of twenty twenty four due to higher production levels and associated better absorption as well as the growing strength of our order book.

We continue to believe in the strength of the pre cash business in the mid to long term given the significant level of pent up demand specifically for residential housing and a growing need for infrastructure spending in The U. S. And our growing market position. On a consolidated basis, we expect the first quarter of twenty twenty five to be relatively similar to the first quarter of twenty twenty four as weather events in various locations across the country continue to have an impact. In summary, I’m very pleased with our record 2024 performance across various metrics.

I’d like to thank our talented team at Northwest Pipe for their strong execution of our growth strategy in a highly complex market environment and for executing another record safety year. We look forward to benefiting from a solid bidding market and pre cash order book in 2025. Looking ahead, our priorities are to one, maintain a safe workplace where our employees are proud to work two, focus on margin over volume three, implement continued cost reductions and efficiencies at all levels of the company four, intensify our focus on strategic acquisition opportunities to grow the company and number five, in the absence of M and A opportunities return value to our shareholders through opportunistic share repurchases. I will now turn the call over to Aaron who will walk through our financial results in greater detail.

Aaron Wilkins, Chief Financial Officer, North West Pipe Company: Thank you, Scott, and good morning, everyone. I’d like to echo Scott’s sentiments surrounding the company’s back to back record safety year. We hold safety as the core value most important to our corporate culture. We believe our team success with workplace health and safety as a direct correlation to the financial performance I’m about to take you through. Again, congratulations to the entire company on this outstanding accomplishment.

Now I’ll discuss our record year and fourth quarter profitability. Consolidated net income for the quarter was $10,100,000 or $1 per diluted share compared to $5,400,000 or $0.54 per diluted share in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty three. I’d also note that our profitability benefited from the realization of previously uncertain tax positions. As anticipated, this reduced our effective income tax rate and resulted in a favorable impact of approximately $2,300,000 on our net income in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four. Without this unique item, our consolidated net income for the quarter would have been approximately $7,800,000 or $0.77 per diluted share.

There was no like item included in our earnings per share for the fourth quarter or full year of 2023. For full year 2024, consolidated net income was a record $34,200,000 or $3.4 per diluted share compared to $21,100,000 or $2.09 per diluted share in 2023. Our fourth quarter consolidated net sales increased 8.6% to $119,600,000 compared to $110,200,000 in the year ago quarter. Steel Pressure Pipe segment sales in the quarter increased 9.9% to $82,500,000 compared to $75,100,000 in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty three. The improvement was primarily driven by an 11% increase in tons produced resulting from improved market demand and a continued solid bidding environment as well as changes in project timing.

Recast segment sales in the fourth quarter increased 5.9% to $37,100,000 compared to $35,100,000 a year ago. This was driven by a 23% increase in volume shift as demand at our Geneva operations in Utah remained strong, which was partly offset by continued softness in commercial construction demand in Texas. Additionally, our precast sales were negatively impacted by a 14% decrease in selling prices resulting from changes in product mix. As a reminder, the products we manufacture are unique. Shipment volumes in the case of precast, production volumes in the case of steel pressure pipe and the corresponding average sales prices for both segments do not always provide comparable metrics between periods, which are highly dependent on the composition of each segment’s product mix.

Our fourth quarter consolidated gross profit increased 16.3%, twenty two point four million dollars or 18.8% of sales compared to $19,300,000 or 17.5% of sales in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty three. STP gross profit increased 32.2, 14 point eight million dollars or 17.9% of segment sales compared to gross profit of $11,200,000 or 14.9% of segment sales in the fourth quarter twenty twenty three, primarily due to higher production volume resulting from improved market conditions as well as changes in product mix. Further, our steel pressure pipe margins were negatively impacted by tariffs enacted on foreign steel starting in July 2024. Regardless of our ongoing dispute over the applicability of these tariffs and their retroactive application, our gross profit was reduced by $800,000 during the quarter. If we are unsuccessful in disputing the merits of our steel sourcing for the handful of jobs affected, we expect the future incremental cost associated with these previously enacted tariffs to be approximately $800,000 and realized over the next two quarters.

We intend to work vigorously to defend the company’s position regarding this matter. Precast gross profit decreased 5.4% to to $7,700,000 or 20.7% of pre cat sales from $8,100,000 or 23.2 percent of segment sales in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty three, primarily due to changes in product mix, specifically with a higher proportion of shipment volume derived from lower margin commercial products. Selling, general and administrative expenses for the quarter increased 12% to 11,900,000 or 10% of sales compared to $10,700,000 in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty three or 9.7% of sales. The increase was primarily due to higher incentive compensation expense including for both cash based and share based programs. Our non cash share based compensation expense in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four was $1,200,000 compared to $600,000 in the year ago quarter.

For the full year, our selling, general and administrative expenses increased 7.7% to 47,200,000 or 9.6% of consolidated net sales compared to $43,800,000 or 9.9% of sales in 2023, also due predominantly to higher performance based incentive compensation program costs. For the full year 2025, we estimate our consolidated SG and A expenses to be in the range of $47,000,000 to $50,000,000 Depreciation and amortization expense in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four was $4,800,000 compared to $4,000,000 in the year ago quarter. For the full year, depreciation and amortization expense was $19,100,000 compared to $15,800,000 in 2023. We expect depreciation and amortization expense to be approximately $18,000,000 to $20,000,000 for the full year 2025. Interest expense decreased to $900,000 from $1,100,000 in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty three due to a decrease in average daily borrowings.

Ted Jackson, Analyst, Northland Securities: For the

Aaron Wilkins, Chief Financial Officer, North West Pipe Company: full year, interest expense increased to $5,700,000 compared to $4,900,000 in 2023. And for the full year 2025, we expect interest expense to be approximately $3,000,000 Our 2024 income tax expense was $8,200,000 resulting in an effective income tax rate of 19.3% compared to 8,200,000 in the prior year or an effective income tax rate of 28%. As previously discussed, our effective income tax rate for 2024 was significantly impacted by the realization of uncertain income tax positions due to a lapse in statute of limitations from the year the tax attribute originated. This resulted in a favorable impact on our fourth quarter and full year provisions of approximately $2,300,000 In 2023, the effective income tax rate was primarily impacted by non deductible permanent differences, accrued interest on uncertain income tax positions and state income tax rates. We expect our tax rate for the full year 2025 be within the range of 24% to 26%.

Now I’ll transition to our financial condition. We generated strong cash flows in 2024. For the quarter, net cash provided by operating activities was $36,100,000 compared to $9,000,000 in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty three. For the full year, we generated net cash provided by operating activities of $55,100,000 a modest increase from $53,500,000 in 2023 due to our improved profitability, partially offset by a reduction in cash provided from working capital. Additionally, our full year free cash flow of $34,000,000 was better than anticipated due largely to shifting working capital needs in our steel pressure pipe business, which will vary quarter to quarter.

For the full year 2025, we anticipate free cash flow to range between $23,000,000 and $30,000,000 As we previously emphasized, enhanced cash generation remains a key focus of our leadership team. Our capital expenditures for the fourth quarter were $4,200,000 compared to $5,000,000 in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty three. For the full year 2025, we anticipate our CapEx to be in the range of $19,000,000 to $22,000,000 including about $5,000,000 in various investment projects, most notably to support the precast product spread as well as initiatives to grow revenues at both our Park and Geneva businesses to $100,000,000 in the near term. As of 12/31/2024, we had 24,700,000 of outstanding borrowings on our credit facility, leaving approximately $99,000,000 additional borrowing capacity on our credit line. We remain committed to our capital allocation strategy is duly focused on both growth and providing stockholder returns, including our anticipated adoption of a new share repurchase program from which we expect to start transacting early in the second quarter.

In summary, we are extremely pleased that we have achieved new annual performance records in safety, revenues, gross profit and earnings per share. We believe our sealed pressure pipe and precast businesses remain well positioned in 2025 and beyond the new level of through cycle resiliency achieved through our growth into precast. Thank you again for dedicated employees who made these achievements possible and to our shareholders for their continued trust and support Northwest Pipe Company. I will now turn it over to the operator to begin the question and answer session.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Julio Romero with Sidoti and Company. Please proceed with your question.

Julio Romero, Analyst, Sidoti and Company: Thanks. Hey, good morning, Scott and Aaron. Hey, you guys had a pretty strong free cash flow year in 2024, very similar and impressive with 2023 free cash flow. Just talk about your expectations for 2025 on the free cash flow front and how you’re thinking about managing the variability of cash flow between quarters, especially as Aaron you alluded to in your comments that the shifting working capital needs of the SPP portion, especially as that becomes kind of a stronger portion of the business?

Scott Montross, President and CEO, North West Pipe Company: Julio, what I would tell you is I think a big part of the focus on the cash flow has been a focus on mining the cash that’s tied up in current assets, specifically related to the SPP business. And ultimately, as we said last year, we made that an item for everybody’s variable compensation that’s in the management group. So there’s a lot of attention on cash flow all the time. In fact, we get a report every day that tells us how much cash has been has come into the company, where we are for every month. And it’s always a focus and a goal to try to make sure we’re getting more cash in than revenue we’re recognizing in a specific month or time period.

So it’s really the focus on that. And I think that and I’ll let Aaron talk about the first quarter a little bit. I think we’re coming into a first quarter cash flow wise. It’s going to be a little bit different than what we saw last year with the negative cash flow in the first quarter. But there’s so much focus on that.

The belief is that our cash flow should either be as good or improve versus where we were in 2024. So it’s a big focus. It’s looked at every day and it’s part of everybody’s goals in the company. So you want to talk a little bit of the first quarter?

: Yes. At the end of twenty twenty three, we really didn’t have the billings that we needed to have a strong cash flow in the first quarter of twenty twenty four, which is why we started the year so slow and came on through the course of the year. This year is shaped up to be much different due to a lot of things that Scott just talked about. We really had a strong billings performance for our Steel Pressure Pipe business in the last quarter of the year and things have proceeded pretty well into the first quarter, which will set us up for I think better performance than you saw. And I would guess, Julio, that we’d probably pretty ratable to my estimate in the first quarter and maybe have a little bit of a softer second quarter, but then progress up and kind of see things improve through the balance of the year with the cash flows to get into that $23,000,000 to $30,000,000 range that we talked about.

Julio Romero, Analyst, Sidoti and Company: Got it. Very helpful there. And then, you guys mentioned you expect the bidding environment for SPP to remain on balance fairly consistent for the full year of 2025. But can you also kind of talk about the industry capacity as it currently stands for additional work, especially given less industry participants compared to previous cycles and what that means for your your profit outlook for 2025 and maybe even beyond that even though the bidding environment is kind of fairly stable?

Scott Montross, President and CEO, North West Pipe Company: Yes. And Julio, we haven’t talked about capacity in quite a while. But we as far as having a rated capacity on just our SPP business probably have the ability to do about 180,000 tons of rated capacity a year. Now when you start looking at that and saying, well, that’s rated capacity, that’s if you’re running the optimum mix of whether it’s 72 to 96 in certain gauge ranges to be able to produce a certain amount of tons. And then you look down and say, well, okay, what is practical capacity?

So practical capacity for us is probably about somewhere in the area of 135,000 to 140,000 tons. And we have approximately half of the capacity in the marketplace. So total market capacity is likely someplace in the area of about 625,000 or 330,000 tonnes. And even with what the expectations are coming with IJA, I think that there is more than enough capacity in the market to be able to do that. Now for us, remember, in most instances, we’re only running one shift at these steel pressure pipe plants.

So if you start running multiple shifts at these steel pressure pipe plants, you can scale up pretty quickly to be able to handle way more than the markets ever going to be able to give to us. So we don’t have any concerns at all about our ability to handle the higher tonnage production levels that we expect the IIJA funded projects out in 2026, ’20 ’20 ’7, ’20 ’20 ’8, ’20 ’20 ’9 are going to put forward. So we don’t think we have any issue with that. In fact, we welcome that.

Julio Romero, Analyst, Sidoti and Company: Very helpful there. And then on the precast side, you talked about the surge in the precast order book that you experienced at year end and that being weighed towards the park non res side. Just if you could just speak to how that translates to the non res portion maybe in the cadence of that as we progress throughout 2025?

Scott Montross, President and CEO, North West Pipe Company: I think we start with a reference to watching the Dodge momentum index. And that’s really it’s non residential related commercial institutional stuff. And that really is held relatively strong through 2024. And why that’s important is these generally are representative of projects that go in planning generally about twelve months before they start getting produced, right. So ultimately projects start going into planning and then there’s a gap of time before orders start getting placed and then they start getting shipped to the customer and produced.

So we saw this bubble coming through, not a bubble or the surge coming through the pipeline in the Dodge momentum index through 2024. And it just so happens that it started to translate into the order book at really the non residential facilities that we have for Park USA and the order book has grown to relatively strong levels through year end, which normally doesn’t happen, which bodes well for the production and shipment of non residential projects in 2025. And we’re starting to see that because when you look at Park, I mean, they suffered through a little bit of a rough non residential market. That business was probably off between 1520% in 2024 because of the interest rates and impact on the non residential business. We are seeing that order book grow.

So the production levels, the shipment levels and the revenue levels appear to be coming back relatively strong in 2025. And

Ted Jackson, Analyst, Northland Securities: on

Scott Montross, President and CEO, North West Pipe Company: the residential side, you didn’t ask about this, but I’m going to put this in anyway. It’s the unique business has stayed pretty stable at very strong levels. And we for the Geneva business, they’re more than double the size of the revenue of when we acquired them in 2020. So that is just stayed wrong or very, very strong even in the face of the higher interest rates. And really I think that kind of speaks to the net migration into the state of Utah and the demand for single family and multifamily houses and facilities to live in.

So we’re seeing a pretty strong pre cash market going into 2025. And like you asked at the beginning with the steel pressure pipe business, we’re seeing bidding that is going to be similar to what it was in 2024. Now the first quarter is a little slower in the steel pressure pipe bidding this year, just by way the project bidding falls, but we’re expecting really strong second and third quarters and finishing the year pretty similar to what we did in 2024.

Julio Romero, Analyst, Sidoti and Company: Really helpful. Thanks so much for holding the color.

Scott Montross, President and CEO, North West Pipe Company: There, Julio. So I’m not sure you wanted all that, but you got it.

Julio Romero, Analyst, Sidoti and Company: I’ll take it. Thanks so much, guys.

Scott Montross, President and CEO, North West Pipe Company: No problem.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ted Jackson with Northland Securities. Please proceed with your question.

Ted Jackson, Analyst, Northland Securities: Thanks. Good morning guys.

Scott Montross, President and CEO, North West Pipe Company: Hey, Ted.

Ted Jackson, Analyst, Northland Securities: Hey, I wanted to start out and maybe get a more color on the tariff thing that you brought up that was news to me. So if you could provide a little color on kind of what happened and I assume what you’re talking about with regards to the potential in the first half is that you will have to, I guess, for lack of a better term, pay these tariffs for a product that was for steel that was brought in, in the back half of twenty twenty four. First of all, did I read that correct? And then secondly, can you just kind of explain kind of what that was and what the situation was? And then maybe if there’s any ramifications for things going forward?

That’s my first question.

Scott Montross, President and CEO, North West Pipe Company: Ted, that’s really a twofold question. When you look at the tariff issue that Aaron brought up in the part of the script, that was really a tariff that’s a proclamation 10/1983 from the previous administration. And what happened in July of twenty twenty four, the administration basically said, hey, you got to we’re going to put a 25% tariff on anything that’s not been poured and melted in The U. S, Canada and Mexico. Okay.

So that was kind of a retroactive tariff. And we have basically we were shipped coils by one of our producer or steel producers that were produced from Brazilian slabs and that happens on a regular basis. But those Brazilian slabs actually came in under the quota before it reached the quota and the administration decided to kind of slap on this retroactive tax or tariff. And ultimately what that did is it hit us in the fourth quarter to the tune of I think about $800,000 and probably hits us to a similar amount in the first quarter, which we’ve already built into our forecast and things like that. But that’s a previous administration impact.

So I’m going to stop there, Ted, and see if you want to talk about the one that’s on the table now

Ted Jackson, Analyst, Northland Securities: and how we’re looking at all that. That’s where I was going.

Scott Montross, President and CEO, North West Pipe Company: I wanted to looking at all that.

Ted Jackson, Analyst, Northland Securities: That’s kind of where I was going. I wanted to start with this. So, but it’s like, if you have paid, is there a chance that you would contest this and actually get a million and 6 back or is it

Scott Montross, President and CEO, North West Pipe Company: We’ve been fighting this. We have attorneys fighting this right now. But the problem is this is something that’s going to we would fight this for a long time, right? Because there’s a lot of confusion over the tariff things right now, especially since the new administration has a different proclamation and which basically wipes out anything from the old proclamation. So this is going to be a long and ongoing process to be able to fight through this thing.

But we’ve been doing that already. We have trade attorneys and we’re fighting through that from the Brazilian slab piece of this thing. So we can Let’s transition to that because I think

Ted Jackson, Analyst, Northland Securities: in my pre kind of the questions I wrote out pre call, the number one question was really around the Trump administration and two parts. And the first thing was, the proposed tariffs on steel and kind of how does that impact your business? How does that go into the guidance and your thought process? And if they put those kind of tariffs in place? I mean, at some point, I mean, I know you, for lack of a better term, you pass this kind of stuff on to your customers, but it brings up the cost of things and if things get more expensive, basic economics, it does hurt demand.

So maybe a discussion with regards to what’s going on with the Trump administration’s efforts on tariffs and how you see that playing out for your business.

Scott Montross, President and CEO, North West Pipe Company: I think that’s a good thing to kind of discuss a little bit because obviously the this trade policy with the new administration has had things influx with the tariffs for a relatively, I guess, that hasn’t been a long period yet. But there’s a bunch of things that are interesting about it. One is what’s the long term impact of tariffs on the GDP. And there’s a lot of information out there that says, hey, if you’re putting these tariffs on Mexico, Canada, China, it could really impact the GDP and lower the GDP well below the 2.2% growth rate that they’re looking at. And at the same time, it could obviously influence inflation as you just mentioned and how much is that?

Is that by 100 basis points? So the thing is, is it runs a little bit counter to the platform of this new administration, which makes you think, okay, if this is just a long term thing, but the way we look at it, because we’ve had to do a risk analysis around this because of where we are. So we have our biggest thing is we have a plant in Mexico, right? The large Sea Mexico. So there’s some ambiguity right now.

And what we’re understanding is that because we buy steel in The United States, ship it into Mexico, a steel that’s mined and melted in The United States and ship it back, we should be able to get an exclusion for that, right? Because that’s what we’re discussing and basically got three scenarios. The first is, if the request for exclusion is denied for SLRC, we have obviously we have a lot of steel pressure pipe plants. We have six of them. We basically take forecasted work and move it to the Tracy and Adelanto facilities as needed.

And the overall impact on that could be several million dollars of revenue and a little bit of a hit to the gross profit, but we have five other steel pressure pipe plants. So that’s one scenario. The second scenario is The U. S. Mined and melted thing.

We get the exclusion and basically we just load plants for our business plan because what that means is we’re buying steel in The United States, shipping it into the Mexican on the Maquilador and then shipping it back into The United States. So there wouldn’t be any tariff that would apply to that. And basically, we would just produce per plan as we’re doing right now. So the other thing that’s interesting about this, which probably is going to draw more questions is that just say that the situation is that tariffs go on and Canada retaliates with retaliatory tariffs against The United States. And obviously we have a lot of product that we produce and ship to British Columbia for their water transmission needs in British Columbia.

And there are no steel pressure pipe plants in Canada. So that kind of creates a little bit of an issue. But the fact of that is that if they retaliate, we can actually produce the Canadian products at SLRC, assuming that Canada doesn’t produce or file a tariff against Mexico and ship into Canada from SLRC without missing a beat. So SLRC can be and there’s a lot of information here that’s got to be sorted out. But the fact that the tariff could be filed against SLRC if we’re not given exclusion is obviously a negative.

But if the exclusion exists in the and there’s retroactive tariffs or not retroactive, but retaliatory tariffs filed, we can also ship into Canada from SLRC. So I think the fact that we have six plants that we can move things around between and that there’s some utility between those plants really means that we can probably work around without a whole lot of damage to the steel pressure pipe business. So I’ve said a lot in this and you’re probably going to have some questions and ask someone to shut up for a minute and let you go.

Ted Jackson, Analyst, Northland Securities: Well, I don’t have any more than that, but that was actually, I guess I asked Scott that was super interesting. So thanks for the answer. I do want to shift over just finishing off some of the things with the Trump administration. A big driver with regards to the bidding activity is the infrastructure funding. And there’s all kinds of discussion of whether Trump’s trying to reel a lot of that back in.

I mean, it seems like most of what he’s trying to do is a little more on the renewable side. But as you look into your bidding environment, I mean, is there any kind of concern with regards to the market that the Trump administration will pull back on funding for some of the things that you were expecting?

Scott Montross, President and CEO, North West Pipe Company: Well, obviously, there’s nothing that we see affected really in 2025. Probably the concern would be more related to the IJA funded projects are ’26, ’20 ’7, ’20 ’8, ’20 ’9. But I think one of the things that they learned out of the tragedy in California with the fires and the lack of water and water infrastructure to be able to fight fires like that is they really have to be careful with not replacing infrastructure that is aged out in a lot of cases because we have more extreme weather events going on all the time, droughts and things like that and there is risk to those things. And the administration was pretty hard on or pretty, I guess they really were pointing at Gavin Newsom and the things that they didn’t do in the State of California to make sure that they had the ability to offset or to control things like this and preventing from happen. So I think things like that start to take more precedence.

And could it affect some of that stuff out in the future with the IIJ funding? Well, it may be, but I think they’re going to be really careful with doing that because this is really infrastructure out there that needs to be placed, it needs to be put in place, not only for safety, but for supportive of growing communities all across the country. So we don’t see that happening at this point, Ted.

Ted Jackson, Analyst, Northland Securities: Okay. A couple of kind of just smaller ones. The SPP business is clearly humming. It’s super strong. You’ve got you’re in a fabulous macro environment for it.

We talk more about kind of where that business is from a historical standpoint in terms of revenue, but I’m kind of curious with regards to tons, like what’s the if you looked at, say, fourth quarter of twenty twenty four, and I’m not asking for a number full number in terms of tons, but the tons of products you produced, how does that stack up against your kind of historic highs? Where are you within you know what I’m saying? Where you know what I’m saying? Like in terms of fundamental product delivery, where are you relative to where like the best has been in the past?

Scott Montross, President and CEO, North West Pipe Company: Yes. I’d say that there are probably the overall tons are our overall tons in the fourth quarter this year on steel price pressure pipe versus the fourth quarter of last year were significantly up. And tons for the year was significantly up versus the previous year. But what I would say versus historical is we’re seeing less tons in that business. Now you say, oh my God, is that a demand thing?

But we’re really not seeing less projects. We are seeing less tons. And I think that starts to go to the grades and quality of the steel products that are being produced now, the efficiency of design of the water transmission projects, those kind of things. So I think that’s evolved too. So we’re seeing a little bit less tons in that business, but really we’re seeing a similar amount of projects.

And I think it’s really a efficiency of engineering on that side of the business that’s starting to take hold and they’re not having to put as thick of steel if you will as a thicker gauge steel on projects because they have grades that can handle higher pressures and things like that. So really, I think that’s what that is at this point. And for us, we’ve got 50%, fifty two % of the marketplace. So we just kind of evolve with the marketplace and work to be as successful as we can with the conditions as we find them. But we’re seeing that business is actually growing a little bit at this point.

I think tons are going to start to go up a little bit, but I think it’s the efficiencies of the lines that are being built, Ted, more than anything at this point.

Ted Jackson, Analyst, Northland Securities: Thanks. Two more questions. One of them very, very easy one, but just like maybe a little more color on where you are within the M and A strategy. I mean, you’ve got the STP business humming. I mean, it’s going to be hard for you to show dramatic growth in that core business given the market share you have and kind of where you’re at.

I’m not saying it won’t grow, but and then on the Geneva business, you clearly have room to run and you’re executing well with your organic strategy, but to really kind of kick, if you would, the business into the next gear, that M and A portion is it’s a pretty important side of things. So kind of where talk a bit about the process you are with M and A, like do you have any opportunities, irons in the fire that are within kind of our, for lack of a better term, like forecasting horizon? I mean, like the is there a chance that you would have something happen this year or within the next two years? How many things have you looked at? How close have you come in the past?

Whatever you can provide on that front. And then I have one follow-up after that.

Scott Montross, President and CEO, North West Pipe Company: Yes. We’re active now, Chad, the things that are going on, we’re looking at we’ve got a couple of things that we’re looking at at this point that are moving down a path. Whether they could happen this year or early next year, I think it could be something this year if everything goes the way we plan. So there are opportunities that are coming forward to for us to be able to act on and execute on. And I would say on the things that we’re looking at, we’re not on the starting line.

We’re kind of past the starting line at this point. So there are things in play. The real interesting thing is when you look at the overall strategy of the company, the strategy is to grow on the precast side of the business, right? So and we have the strategies. We want to be a $1,000,000,000 company, which we’re kind of halfway there.

So we’ve got to grow a whole lot to be able to get to $1,000,000,000 company on the precast side. And the things that we’re seeing right now are like $50,000,000 top line, $45,000,000 those kind of top lines. So similar to what we got with Geneva, right? So there’s a lot of those things that have to happen along with the organic growth that we’re looking at that have to happen to get us there. The key for us is going to be creating some kind of mass going forward, where it’s allowing us to look at a little bit bigger opportunities that might be things that are like $200,000,000 a top line to be able to grow to that level at the appropriate cadence, but at a little bit quicker pace.

So I think there’s we’re focused right now on the idea of we’ve got a couple in front of us that look pretty good. But the other piece of it is, how do we create more mass to be able to do some of these bigger ones that might be out there going forward. And that’s kind of the thing that we’re wrestling with and looking at creating our updated strategy around for the growth in the precash business, if that makes any sense.

Ted Jackson, Analyst, Northland Securities: It does. And then my last question, just kind of you just saw kind of how I look at your business, just a quick one, like if you were to look at your SPP COGS, like what percentage of your COGS was consumed by steel purchases?

Scott Montross, President and CEO, North West Pipe Company: It’s right now about 29% to 30%. It’s pretty similar to what it was last year.

Ted Jackson, Analyst, Northland Securities: All right. That’s it for me. Hey, it was a great quarter. Looks like things are continuing to Congratulations.

Scott Montross, President and CEO, North West Pipe Company: Hey, Ted. Great talking to you as always.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jean Valise with D. A. Davidson. Please proceed with your question.

Jean Valise, Analyst, D.A. Davidson: Hi, good morning and thank you.

Scott Montross, President and CEO, North West Pipe Company: Good morning.

Ted Jackson, Analyst, Northland Securities: Good

Jean Valise, Analyst, D.A. Davidson: morning. Quick clarification, and I’m sorry if I missed it, but what are your assumptions for precast margins for the first quarter of twenty twenty five?

Scott Montross, President and CEO, North West Pipe Company: Assumptions for precast margins for the first quarter of twenty twenty five, I think they’re in line with I don’t know I think they’re in line with what the first quarter of twenty twenty four was, expect to be in a similar area.

Jean Valise, Analyst, D.A. Davidson: All right. Thank you. And just looking at SDP

Julio Romero, Analyst, Sidoti and Company: backlog,

Jean Valise, Analyst, D.A. Davidson: taking all into account all you said about your assumptions on steel price and the EBITDA could be being relatively in line with 2024. How does that just carry out your margins through the year? And are we seeing levels higher than 2024 or in line with 2024?

Scott Montross, President and CEO, North West Pipe Company: No, I would say, I mean, obviously, we ended 2024 with the growth in our backlog up to a strong three ten million dollars up from about $282,000,000 the previous quarter. So the backlog was growing. I think what you’re seeing a margin level that as long as we have demand that we the way we see it right now that’s going to stay relatively steady to steady with some upward pressure on the margins as we go out through 2025. So I think you’re coming into a period and we hope we’re coming into a period where these demand levels that we’re currently seeing in SPP are okay demand levels, but they’re not great. Okay.

As we get out into the next couple of years in front of us, we think with the IIJA funding, it’s going to push those demand levels higher. And once those demand levels start coming up a little bit higher, what you’re going to do what you’re going to see is you’re going to see instances we think where the steel pressure pipe margins are starting with a two instead of a one. So I think we’re kind of coming into that realm as long as the demand hits the way we think it’s going to hit.

Jean Valise, Analyst, D.A. Davidson: Got it. Appreciate that. And looking at the residential side, I mean, you talked about in the activity being really strong. Can you talk about a little bit of how you see the business developing through 2025? And as a follow-up, do you when do you expect for that non residential to make its mark on the model here and then on the margins perspective?

Scott Montross, President and CEO, North West Pipe Company: Okay. So I’ll start with the non residential side. I think the non residential side starts to really show up probably on and the key to our business that’s mainly non residential park is really production level, right. And we think that those production levels are going to probably start raising once we get toward the end of the first quarter and into the second quarter. We think that we see the results of those order increases really hit toward the end of the first quarter and then carry through the end of the year and improve those margins back to relatively normalized levels for the non residential business.

What was the first question again? Yes, on the

Jean Valise, Analyst, D.A. Davidson: residential side. Yes, just kind of want to hear about the just the sort of cadence of work that you expect through 2025. And I guess similarly, do you see it progress and have an impact on margins possibly on the second half or are you seeing just normal steady levels through all four quarters?

Scott Montross, President and CEO, North West Pipe Company: Well, I think you see seasonality, especially in the residential side of our business because the three plants are in Utah. So they tend to get a little bit of snow in Utah. So it makes the first quarter a little bit lighter quarter and then the second and third quarters are the big ones. And then the fourth quarter start to fall off because the ground starts to freeze and a lot of the contractors and construction activity starts to slow down. But like I said, I mean, if you look at the Geneva business in 2024, I mean, Geneva was somewhere in the area of 83,000,000 worth of revenue.

And like I said, when we acquired them in 2020, they were about $41,000,000 revenue. So it’s double the size. Well, we have a plan. We put the new exact 2,500 in Salt Lake City Manhole and RCP machine. And we also have additional plans this year for investment projects in the Geneva facilities that is going to help continue to well create some new product capabilities for us.

And it helps us to continue to build that top line. We expect that we and we have a plan in place to be on by the time we get to the end of twenty twenty six to be a $100,000,000 run rate at the Geneva facilities, dollars 100,000,000 annual run rate at the Geneva facilities by the time we get to the end of twenty twenty six. So that’s going to increase absorption and it’s going to allow those margins that we get at the Geneva business to keep pressing up because the Geneva margins in 2024 increased over where they were in 2023. So by about I think about 100 basis points or so. It was the ones on the non residential side that pulled it down because of the demand on that piece of the business.

Jean Valise, Analyst, D.A. Davidson: Got it. Appreciate that color. And just a quick follow-up here. You mentioned $100,000,000 Geneva runway by the end of twenty twenty six. Could you perhaps just talk about a little bit about Park and see and just let us know do you have any sort of revenue outlooks for that in the next couple of years?

Scott Montross, President and CEO, North West Pipe Company: Well, we have the same goal for Park USA at the end of twenty twenty six as we do Geneva. We’d like to see both of those facilities each on a $100,000,000 run rate by the end of twenty twenty six.

Jean Valise, Analyst, D.A. Davidson: Okay. Appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Scott Montross, President and CEO, North West Pipe Company: No problem.

Conference Operator: Thank you. That concludes our question and answer session. I’ll turn the floor back to Mr. Matros for any final comments.

Scott Montross, President and CEO, North West Pipe Company: Just a few things before we end. As we’ve talked about, we faced some headwinds in 2024, a tough nonresidential market. We had the effect of that market on revenue and profitability for 2024, as well as the issue that we had with the previous administration’s application of ad hoc tariffs that affected revenue and profit for the fourth quarter. Yet we produced a fourth quarter that was pretty strong by historical standards and a full year that had record sales for SPP and pre cash, a record annual gross profit moving toward $100,000,000 and resulting in net income and free cash flow both to $3.4 a share demonstrating the strength and quality of the earnings that we had. And as we head into 2025, we’re facing different headwinds in 2025 really related to tariffs.

But in to be completely open in my going on thirteen years in this role, I can’t remember a time that we didn’t face headwinds with this business. I think the difference is now we’re very well positioned and geared to handle the headwinds. And we expect to be successful with the conditions as we experience them. As we go into 2025, we’re going in with a very strong steel pressure pipe backlog of $310,000,000 strong, expecting a big year like we saw in 2024. We have a surging precast order book that’s over $61,000,000 and expect a very, very strong year for the pre cash business and a pretty consistent year for the SPP business.

And we’re going to continue to focus on safety of our for our employees, improving margins, growing both organically and through M and A and focusing on driving shareholder value. As Aaron mentioned, we’re anticipating putting in place a new share buyback program here in the next couple of months. So we’re expecting a good 2025. I just like to thank you all for your attendance here and your participation and attention to this. And we look forward to talking to you again in a few months in the May timeframe when we’re doing the next earnings call.

So thanks very much. We appreciate your attention.

Conference Operator: Thank you. This concludes today’s conference call. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.

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