Construction Partners, Inc. (NASDAQ:ROAD) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Stanley Elliott: Good morning, everybody. Thank you all for the question. Can you guys talk about kind of what you’re seeing on the labor front? I mean consistently hearing about issues there, but you guys are posting strong double-digit organic growth really throughout the year. Just trying to kind of size what’s happening versus some of the other issues we’re hearing in other parts of the market.

Jule Smith: Yes, Stanley, the labor market is still tight, there’s still not enough workers, and it’s a challenge. If you go back almost two years ago when the COVID — the economy opened up from COVID, we looked around and we saw a shortage of workers just like everyone else. If you remember, I talked about ankle weights on productivity. But we saw that. We also saw the growth opportunities coming right at us. So we just rolled up our sleeves. If you remember, I said we’re going to do what it takes to attract and retain a workforce. And so, we’ve just done a lot of work attracting workers. And so, I would say the labor market is still tight, but we’ve done a great job. Our team has done a great job in each state of putting initiatives in place, having the right culture, the right compensation initiatives and the right career opportunities to attract folks to come work it with us. And I think that’s showing up in the top line.

Stanley Elliott: That’s great. And you talked about the seasonality of the business, and I apologize if you said it, but in terms of the margin progression through the year, kind of looking at the 10% kind of midpoint. In the release, you talked about steady increases. Any more color that you could share and help us maybe kind of even with like an exit run rate in the September quarter next year? Thanks.

Jule Smith: Yes. I’ll give a high level and then let Alan maybe give more detailed numbers. But we clearly — in the first quarter, we have late November and December, including that. And in the second quarter, we have the winter months. So the margin on the job doesn’t change. But what happens is we just have under recovery at our plants and in our fleet just because you have less utilization. And then the opposite happens in the third and fourth quarter where we over recover on those fixed assets. So our gross margin profile is not even throughout the year.

Alan Palmer: Yes, Stanley. Historically, we’ve said in a normal year, and we haven’t had one of those in a couple of years because of inflation and things like that. But in a normal year, the spread between our margin due to the under and over absorption, the 40% revenue and the 60% revenue is usually in the range of 200 to 250 basis points between the what we would make in the first six months and in the last six months. And again, as Jule said, the jobs performed equally well all through that cycle. But you’ve got a lot of fixed costs that lower that margin when you’re not charging all of those out to the jobs and recovering them. And then you have overrecovery in the last six months. But that spread between the any one quarter in the first six months and the second six and normal stabilized kind of times, that’s about 250 basis points.

Stanley Elliott: Perfect, guys. Thanks for the color. Happy Thanks Giving. I’ll talk to you soon.

Jule Smith: All right, Stanley. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question is come from the line of Andy Wittmann with Baird. Please proceed with your questions.