Northwest Pipe Company (NASDAQ:NWPX) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Scott Montross : Okay. So it’s — when you’re looking at that we had obviously multiple days down. And you’re probably looking at something that’s a couple of million or better in revenue. And with the margin potential on that, generally, the margin potential, as you see, those margins are like high 20s to running up to 30% range. So you can do the math on what we missed out on those. So there was a little bit of miss, but I mean we still — the interesting thing is that when we acquired Park in 2021, they were about, I guess, about $71 million in revenue. And this year, they finished at almost $85 million even with those delays, and obviously, added a ton of gross profit to our business. So it’s just a matter of getting this thing stabilized.

And Aaron’s going to talk about the ERP system, but there was the concern right up front. During the acquisition, Aaron turned to me and said, man, I’ll tell you, this is going to be a hard one because of the complexity of the product, and he wasn’t wrong. So we spent a lot of time on that, but I think the facilities are operating very well. And I’m going to just add on to a little bit that you didn’t ask. The one thing we’re seeing with the Park business is that really has not slowed down at all. To this point, the non-residential business in Texas is very strong and we’ve got a lot of people moving to Texas, and every school and hospital and multifamily housing uses Park products, whether it’s meter vault or backflow preventers. So we’re seeing a — in fact, if you look at the Park order backlog last year 2021 December versus this year 2022 December, it’s significantly higher.

So the Park business is very strong right now.

Brent Thielman: Yes. I mean, despite the issues, the transaction has been usually accretive for you?

Scott Montross: Yes.

Brent Thielman: I guess — and understanding that, you’re going to have some lingering stuff to work through in the first quarter, got — I mean the business precast overall, it looks like ex these issues is doing close to 30% or above in gross margins. How do you think about the precast? Or how should we think about the precast margins overall in 2023? Should they abate from those levels? Or can you sustain that?

Scott Montross: Yes. It’s interesting that when you look at things like that, Brent, because obviously, the Park business is really, really strong. And we haven’t seen much impact on those margins yet. Now, the interest rate environment, if it stays like it is, could have a little impact on the margins in the Park side, the non-residential side. But in our forecast, we haven’t built a lot into it. Like you said, those margins are approaching 30%. In some cases, they’re a little bit above 30%. So they could end up being off a couple of hundred basis points just because of the interest rate environment and the cautiousness on the Park side of the business. What I would tell you about the Geneva side of the business is that, obviously, there’s a lot of negativity right now around residential housing, but we are still seeing very, very high quote volume at Geneva.

Like we saw last year, they’re just not turning into orders as quickly. And I think that the reality of it is customers are being cautious because, obviously, the residential market has slowed in Utah and across the country but we don’t see any doom and gloom. When we look at our Geneva backlog fourth quarter this year to fourth quarter last year, it’s only down about 2% right now. And I think that there’s a lot of strength in that Utah market, and a lot of momentum still based on what we saw with delays in the supply chain in 2020 and 2021. So there’s momentum buildup. And we think that even you see a little bit of a slow period in that marketplace, it’s going to come back relatively quickly. And right now, even with what’s going on, to answer your initial question on maybe being it a little bit slower, we’re not seeing any deterioration on the pricing side.