Dycom Industries, Inc. (NYSE:DY) Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Brent Thielman: Okay. And I guess, stepping back, Steve, I mean, you’ve been able to more than compensate for some of these customers who sort of moderated plans in the short run with the ramp-up among other customers. You’ve always said there will be some variations in spending patterns on kind of on a short-term basis. But I guess does this environment today with sort of multiple new and legacy participants spending money. Does it increase your conviction? This is sort of a sustainable trend for you, especially as we see a few of your larger customers kind of take a pause here.

Steven Nielsen: Yes. I think, Brent, it’s helpful to keep in mind that if you look at over the last 2 years, we’ve had just short of $1 billion of organic growth. So — and you don’t do that just on 1 or 2 customers. So it’s been a broad book of business that’s increased. I do think that that’s been helpful to the business as broad a growth pattern as I think that I’ve ever seen or at least maybe not since the late 1990s, a long time ago. And I do think that the drivers supporting that growth are really both private capital for which there’s been some new capital raises as well as the public capital that’s already in the industry and we expect to see a lot more in the next couple of years.

Brent Thielman: Okay. And just last on the Bigham acquisition, congrats on that. It’s now the trailing 12-month revenue of $140 million, is that appropriate to consider going forward? Is there any reason to believe it’d be lower?

Steven Nielsen: Sure. They’ve had a nice period of growth. We expect that to continue. We’re going to work hard together. We think one of the synergies of the deal is that we’ll be able to help them with acquiring more capital equipment to support their growth. So I think they’ll grow nicely. We’re not going to give you a forward forecast on one business unit but typically, we acquire things that have been growing and that we expect to continue to grow and put us in position to benefit nicely from big trends in the industry. And I think Bigham help us do that.

Operator: One moment for our next question. And that will come from the line of Sean Eastman with KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Sean Eastman: Steve, I wanted to come back to your comment about the longer-term industry financings that were secured. I assume you’re referring to the fiber securitization announced by one of your large customers earlier this month. But I just wanted to make sure we understand what you’re communicating there, what the significance of that is. And just come away with the right takeaway.

Steven Nielsen: Sure. So Sean, clearly, there was one of our very significant customers that was able to go out and raise a significant amount of additional capital to fund their fiber program. and they were able to do that with a couple of the tranches that were investment-grade rating. But I think it’s probably bigger than that. So not only did that customer access the ABS market but so did a number of others that we work for, some that are smaller but trying to grow more rapidly. And I think any time that a growth industry can gain access to investment-grade capital for a portion of its future financing needs. That’s a good thing for that industry. I was involved in the tower industry 20 years ago when it began to transition from high-yield financing to CMBS.

And I think if you look back on that industry, that was a milestone that supported its hugely successful growth [indiscernible]. So I think anytime that you see investment-grade capital meeting a growth opportunity as it does here with fiber infrastructure. That’s a good thing.