Mistras Group, Inc. (NYSE:MG) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Tim Moore: Thanks, Ed and Manny. Good job with the improvements, and it’s nice to see the stock up 50% since I initiated coverage in August. So I think there’s still a ways to go on the rerating for your stock clearly, but just picking on a theme that’s pretty important for your EBITDA growth guidance, that $20 million incremental cost savings for Project Phoenix. I know it’s already been asked about a couple of times, and Manny gave some examples. What I’m wondering, just to dive in a little bit more, what would you say, Manny you’re in as far as an inning in a baseball game, fifth or sixth inning for not renewing unprofitable projects, calling some of the customers the tail end, because that’s probably some good low-hanging fruit, but they probably also have roll off timing. Do you think it’d be through a lot of that by the summer?

Manny Stamatakis: I think by the summer of this year, we’ll be through a lot of what we’ve identified in ‘23. But as you correctly pointed out, there’s still more. And I would say as it relates to Project Phoenix, we might be in the fourth or fifth inning. We still have room to go. And it’s not just making cuts, it’s identifying those areas that we should be growing and identifying the right strategy to grow them. An organized strategy with a plan that can be executed on. So there’s more work to do. And – but where our management team is today, I have utmost confidence that they can get us there. There’s a new energy in the company and it’s infectious. So that’s what really motivates me the most, to see that, I think we can get to where we’re going.

Tim Moore: That’s great, because I’m thinking of Project Phoenix as a two-pronged approach. And I mean, addition to EBITDA by subtraction of the low margin, unprofitable businesses, and then what is probably the later earnings is the revenue growth and that side. But actually, I want to ask you about your pricing strategy. I remember you mentioning it on the last call. Your company, I’m not going to put words in your mouth, but for a couple of years, pricing was hard to come by in a cost inflation environment. When do you think you might be caught up on cost inflation and taking pricing as contracts and projects get reassigned? Because that’s also a good EBITDA driver this year.

Manny Stamatakis: That’s another good question. Let me say this that working on the pricing is going to take a little bit of time. In some cases, we have multiple year contracts. As they come up for renewal, we will look at them somewhat differently than we might have in the past, because when we commit to something for three to five years, we have to make sure we price it correctly. And so, that is something that we’ll have to continue to work on over time. But I think the other approach is that, we will have a focus in our marketing efforts to be able to demonstrate to our clients that we can add value to their initiatives, that it’s not just going out and inspecting, it’s coming up with solutions that will ultimately allow them to have more uptime and more profitability by lowering their inspection costs.

And for that, we will charge a fee. But I think the combination of allowing them to save money over what they’re doing now and our focus on using our software and technology to help them better understand their choices is where we believe we’re going to be able to drive higher-margin growth.

Tim Moore: Great. I have one quick question for Ed. Any service company or project company always has delayed projects and things get shifted for weather and good reasons. That defense project that you commented on, it seemed like it started in the fourth quarter, if I remember from my estimates, and I could be completely off on this, I think that could have been worth almost $8 million in sales. I’m just wondering, Ed, did all that already get achieved in the fourth quarter? Are we going to see some good tailwind on that maybe in the March quarter?