Orion Group Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:ORN) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Alex Rygiel: Very helpful, thank you good luck.

Scott Thanisch: Thanks, Alex.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Dave Storms from Stonegate Capital Markets. Please proceed.

Dave Storms: Good morning, gentlemen, and thank you for taking my call. Just hoping we could start with how you’re bringing some marine leadership over to concrete. And if you could talk a little bit more about any other synergies you see between the two segments that you might be able to take advantage of going forward?

Travis Boone: Sure, yes. So – you heard us mention we recently moved over our kind of our number two person on the marine side of the business over to lead the concrete business. And that that happened actually fairly naturally. It was – he was already kind of leaning in and working with the concrete team and it was going very well. And so and we’ve decided we’re going to leverage his kind of expertise in establishing rigor and discipline on the marine side of things that he’s done over the last few years into the concrete side of the business and he had great report with the team. And so, we moved him over and he’s done a – he’s off to a great start, has done a great job of working with the team on the concrete side of the business.

And bringing some of the, as I said, the rigor and discipline that he had hoped to establish on the marine side of the business into the concrete side of the business. So, I think we’re going to see great results there. Some of the issues, we had in concrete its tweaks here and there with how we were delivering projects. How we were doing some things. And I think, we’re well on our way to seeing results from him being in concrete.

Scott Thanisch: Yes and I’ll add just in terms of other synergies, we see as opportunities in that, business probably one of the most exciting ones is revenue synergies, because those businesses have historically not really pursued joint projects or been working together a lot. And certainly the marine business does have projects where a lot of concrete is laid. And so, more opportunity to grow our concrete business with those joint explorations and pursuits. And on the cost side, there’s a lot of opportunity for us to do things more efficiently in our corporate offices as we start to standardize and use the same systems and processes between the two segments. There’s opportunities to leverage a better mix of our equipment as we – with our equipment team manage two businesses instead of just the marine business, which is where most of their attention is focused today.

And we see plenty of opportunity for us to identify additional cost savings within our concrete and our marine business by joining up our procurement function and really driving material and input savings through better procurement practices. So I think it’s a pretty large set of opportunities and we’ll be going after all of them.

Dave Storms: That’s very helpful. One follow-up, if I could just with those cost savings, is there a role where that helps drive your bids to be more competitive and secure more wins or is that kind of – by translating more to just strictly margin enhancement?

Scott Thanisch: I think it will be able to contribute to both. We’re out there really pricing our bids based on market dynamics, and the services that we’re offering. It’s not just a cost plus view. So when we achieve cost savings in our delivery cost, then there’s a margin benefit that we can realize from that. But it does also give us the flexibility to at the same margin, give a lower price to the customer and there are certainly ways which we can leverage that ability in the marketplace in certain situations. So, I think you’ll see some of both, and there’s an opportunity for us to really push forward with those cost savings really quickly. We’ve got ideas and plans to execute.