Northwest Pipe Co

NASDAQ:NWPX

Greetings, and welcome to the Northwest Pipe Company Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2024 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Scott Montross, Chief Executive Officer for Northwest Pipe Company. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, and welcome to Northwest Pipe Company's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2024 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Scott Montross, and I am President and CEO of the company. I'm joined today by Aaron Wilkins, Chief Financial Officer.

By now, all of you should have access to our earnings press release, which was issued yesterday February 26, 2025, at approximately 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time.

This call is being webcast and it is available for replay. As we begin, I would like to remind everyone that statements made on this call regarding our expectations for the future are forward-looking statements, and actual results could differ materially. Please refer to our most recent Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2023, and our other SEC filings for a discussion of such risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations.

We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. Thank you all for joining us today. I'll begin with a review of our 2024 performance and outlook for 2025. Aaron will then walk you through our financials in greater detail. We delivered strong results in 2024, achieving record financial and operational performance in a complex market environment. Our annual net sales of $492.5 million were one of the highest in our company's history, increasing 10.8% over 2024 and what I would call a decent but not remarkable SPP bidding the market environment. With an added element of depressed market conditions on the nonresidential side of our precast business impacting our volumes.

However, our strategy led us to produce record consolidated gross profit dollars as well as record profitability that was consistent with our free cash flow generation, both of which translated to $3.40 per share, demonstrating the strength and quality of our earnings. Most importantly, we achieved record safety performance in 2024 with a total recordable incident rate of 1.25, underscoring our unwavering commitment to the well-being of our employees as well as demonstrating a stable operating environment.

To further break down our segment level results, revenue from our SPP segment totaled a record $337.9 million in 2024, up 14% year-over-year. Our performance reflected higher production levels resulting from ongoing strength in our backlog due to the consistent level of bidding as well as changes in project timing. Our SPP backlog, including confirmed orders, increased to $310 million as of December 31, from $282 million as of September 30, 2024, and was down slightly from $319 million as of December 31, 2023.

The bidding environment is expected to remain fairly consistent in 2025. Our SPP team has continued to do a great job executing on bids and projects. However, our 2024 performance was partially offset by lower realized selling prices due primarily to lower raw material costs. While steel prices declined throughout 2024, they have been on the rise in 2025, now in the $850 per ton range, up approximately $125 from the end of January. With lead times standing at about 6 to 8 weeks, though still well below levels from a year ago, we believe the recent steel tariff overtures will help support higher steel pricing in 2025 and in turn, support higher SPP project pricing. In general, we are in favor of higher steel prices, which are positive for our SPP business.

Now turning to our Precast segment. Precast revenue increased 4.5% year-over-year to a new annual record of $154.6 million despite ongoing challenges in the nonresidential construction market. Our performance was driven by continued strength on the residential side of our Geneva business as strong demand led to higher production and shipment levels. While our volumes were very healthy, reduced shipments on the nonresidential construction [indiscernible] of our precast business at Park partially offset some of this strength. As the current higher interest rate environment has continued to affect the market for commercial construction. However, Dodge Momentum Index was 19% higher in December of '24 than it was the previous year, indicated growing strength in the nonresidential construction market for 2025.

The commercial sector was up 30% versus the prior year period, while the institutional sectors remained fairly flat. On the pricing side, while the residential portion of our Precast business benefited from multiple price increases throughout 2024, driven by strong demand at the Geneva locations, low demand and downward pricing pressure on our nonresidential Precast business more than offset these benefits. As of December 31, our Precast order book surged to $61 million, which was up from $57 million as of September 30, 2024, and a significant increase from $46 million as of December 31, 2023, indicating strong momentum heading into 2025.

Importantly, a fairly large portion of the year-end Precast order book surge was on the Park nonresidential side of our Precast business. The order book on the residential side of our Precast business in Geneva remained stable at strong levels. Our consolidated gross profit in 2024 was another record at $95.4 million, up 22.9% year-over-year and resulted in strong gross margin of 19.4%, up from [ 17.5% ] in 2023. This is the strongest annual gross margin we reported for the current SPP and Precast configuration of the company. Our SPP gross margin of 18.5% was also strong, increasing by approximately 420 basis points over 2023, primarily due to higher production volumes with strong overhead absorption as well as changes in product mix.

Our Precast gross margin of 21.2% declined by approximately 260 basis points from 2023, primarily resulting from changes in product mix, while margins on the residential construction side of the Geneva location strengthened versus last year, lackluster demand in the nonresidential commercial construction portion of our business resulting from higher interest rates has led to some margin compression. Next, I would like to provide an update on our Precast Product Spread strategy, which has been a crucial element of our top strategic priority to grow the business.

As part of Level 1 product spread, we bid over $57 million worth of projects outside of Texas in 2024 and booked approximately $10 million worth of orders, achieving our goals for the year. This endeavor enhanced capacity utilization at our Texas-based Precast plants to help maximize overall efficiency and production volume. As part of our Level 2, we gained additional traction on product spread at the Geneva plant in Utah by booking approximately $2.3 million of Park-related projects in 2024.

And finally, as part of Level 3 product spread, we're in the process of expanding Park and other Precast-related products to additional Northwest Pipe legacy locations now that the Park Precast products are more comfortably established at the Utah, Geneva locations. Our new goal for 2025 is to book in excess of $12 million worth of Park-related projects outside of Texas. We expect Level 3 will be put into place by midyear and will begin to benefit our results more in 2026 and beyond. Additionally, we are continuing to organically invest in our footprint and equipment to drive capacity expansion and greater efficiencies. We are pleased to complete the reinforced concrete pipe and manhole mill at our Salt Lake City, Utah facility and are in the process of commissioning.

As a reminder, this investment provides the rapidly growing Geneva operations with additional production capacity and capabilities. It is our intention to continue to invest in our Precast facilities to drive organic growth. We are also investing to maximize efficiencies in our other Northwest Pipe legacy SPP plants. In addition to our focus on organic growth, we are actively evaluating M&A opportunities in the Precast-related space that would help accelerate progress on our Precast strategy by increasing our manufacturing capabilities and production efficiencies and expanding our geographic reach and product portfolio.

Concurrent with our growth plans, we are actively repaying the debt we incurred to finance the 2021 acquisition of ParkUSA. In 2024, we repaid $26 million of our debt, and our balance sheet remains healthy with ample liquidity. As I've mentioned, we will opt to repurchase shares of our common stock as we did this past year in the absence of a viable M&A opportunity.

Before I conclude, I'd like to summarize our outlook for the first quarter of 2025. In our SPP business, we anticipate modestly lower revenue versus the first quarter of last year related to product mix and the continuing impact of nationwide weather events. Due to typical seasonality and severe weather conditions that have led to unscheduled downtime at our various SPP facilities. However, we expect margins to be similar to the first quarter of last year. That said, we entered 2025 with a strong SPP backlog. And while we expect light bidding environment in the first quarter, we anticipate strong bidding activity in the second and third quarter with full year bidding levels aligning closely with 2024.

We continue to remain encouraged by the amount of activity we're seeing on our current and upcoming water transmission projects. For a more complete view of these projects, please review our investor presentation, which can be found on the Investor tab of our website within the Events & Presentations section. In our Precast business, we entered the year with a robust order book and are projecting a strong 2025. The residential business remains strong, and we are now seeing a surge in the nonresidential order book, indicating improved strength in 2025. For the first quarter of 2025, our Precast revenue and margins are expected to be as good or higher than the first quarter of 2024, due to higher production levels and associated better absorption as well as the growing strength of our order book.

We continue to believe in the strength of the Precast business in the mid- to long term given the significant level of pent-up demand specifically for residential housing and a growing need for infrastructure spending in the U.S. and our growing market position. On a consolidated basis, we expect the first quarter of 2025 to be relatively similar to the first quarter of 2024. As weather events in various locations across the country continue to have an impact.

In summary, I'm very pleased with our record 2024 performance across various metrics. I'd like to thank our talented team at Northwest Pipe for their strong execution of our growth strategy in a highly complex market environment and for executing another record safety year. We look forward to benefiting from a solid bidding market and Precast order book in 2025. Looking ahead, our priorities are to: one, maintain a safe workplace where our employees are proud to work; two, focus on margin over volume; three, implement continued cost reductions and efficiencies at all levels of the company; four, intensify our focus on strategic acquisition opportunities to grow the company; and number five, in the absence of M&A opportunities, return value to our shareholders through opportunistic share repurchases.

I will now turn the call over to Aaron, who will walk through our financial results in greater detail.

Thank you, Scott, and good morning, everyone. I'd like to echo Scott's sentiment surrounding the company's back-to-back record safety year. We hold safety as the core value most important to our corporate culture. We believe our team's success with workplace health and safety has a direct correlation to the financial performance I'm about to take you through. Again, congratulations to the entire company on this outstanding accomplishment. Now I'll discuss our record year and fourth quarter profitability. Consolidated net income for the quarter was $10.1 million or $1 per diluted share, compared to $5.4 million or $0.54 per diluted share in the fourth quarter of 2023. I'd also note that our profitability benefited from the realization of previously uncertain tax positions.

As anticipated, this reduced our effective income tax rate and resulted in a favorable impact of approximately $2.3 million on our net income in the fourth quarter of 2024. Without this unique item, our consolidated net income for the quarter would have been approximately $7.8 million or $0.77 per diluted share. There was no like item included in our earnings per share for the fourth quarter or full year of 2023. For full year 2024, consolidated net income was a record $34.2 million or $3.40 per diluted share compared to $21.1 million or $2.09 per diluted share in 2023.

Our fourth quarter consolidated net sales increased 8.6% to $119.6 million compared to $110.2 million in the year ago quarter. Steel Pressure Pipe segment sales in the quarter increased 9.9%, $82.5 million compared to $75.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2023. The improvement was primarily driven by an 11% increase in tons produced, resulting from improved market demand and a continued solid bidding environment as well as changes in project timing. Precast segment sales in the fourth quarter increased 5.9% to $37.1 million compared to $35.1 million a year ago. This was driven by a 23% increase in volume shipped as demand at our Geneva operations in Utah remained strong, was partly offset by continued softness in commercial construction demand in Texas.

Additionally, our Precast sales were negatively impacted by a 14% decrease in selling prices resulting from changes in product mix. As a reminder, the products we manufacture are unique. Shipment volumes in the case of Precast, production volumes in the case of Steel Pressure Pipe and the corresponding average sales prices for both segments do not always provide comparable metrics between periods, which are highly dependent on the composition of each segment's product mix. Our fourth quarter consolidated gross profit increased 16.3%, [ $22.4 million ] or 18.8% of sales compared to $19.3 million or 17.5% of sales in the fourth quarter of 2023.

SPP gross profit increased 32.2%, $14.8 million or 17.9% of segment sales compared to gross profit of $11.2 million or 14.9% of segment sales in the fourth quarter of 2023, primarily due to higher production volume resulting from improved market conditions as well as changes in product mix. Further, our Steel Pressure Pipe margins were negatively impacted by tariffs enacted on foreign steel starting in July 2024. Regardless of our ongoing dispute over the applicability of these tariffs and their retroactive application, our gross profit was reduced by $0.8 million during the quarter. If we are unsuccessful in disputing the merits of our steel sourcing for the handful of jobs affected, we expect the future incremental costs associated with these previously enacted tariffs to be approximately $0.8 million and realized over the next 2 quarters.

We intend to work vigorously to defend the company's position regarding this matter. Precast gross profit decreased 5.4% to $7.7 million or 20.7% of Precast sales from $8.1 million or 23.2% of segment sales in the fourth quarter of 2023, primarily due to changes in product mix specifically with a higher proportion of shipment volume derived from lower-margin commercial products.

Selling, general and administrative expenses for the quarter increased 12% to $11.9 million or 10% of sales compared to $10.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2023 or 9.7% of sales. The increase was primarily due to higher incentive compensation expense, including for both cash-based and share-based programs. Our noncash share-based compensation expense in the fourth quarter of 2024 was $1.2 million compared to $0.6 million in the year ago quarter. For the full year, our selling, general and administrative expenses increased 7.7% to $47.2 million or 9.6% of consolidated net sales compared to $43.8 million or 9.9% of sales in 2023, also due predominantly to higher performance-based incentive compensation program costs.

For the full year 2025, we estimate our consolidated SG&A expenses to be in the range of $47 million to $50 million. Depreciation and amortization expense in the fourth quarter of 2024 was $4.8 million compared to $4 million in the year ago quarter. For the full year, depreciation and amortization expense was $19.1 million compared to $15.8 million in 2023. We expect depreciation and amortization expense to be approximately $18 million to $20 million for the full year 2025. Interest expense decreased to $0.9 million from $1.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2023 due to a decrease in average daily borrowings.

For the full year, interest expense increased to $5.7 million compared to $4.9 million in 2023. And for the full year 2025, we expect interest expense to be approximately $3 million. Our 2024 income tax expense was $8.2 million, resulting in an effective income tax rate of 19.3% compared to $8.2 million in the prior year or an effective income tax rate of 28%. As previously discussed, our effective income tax rate for 2024 was significantly impacted by the realization of uncertain income tax positions due to a lapse in statute of limitations from the year the tax attribute originated.

This resulted in a favorable impact on our fourth quarter and full year provisions of approximately $2.3 million. In 2023, the effective income tax rate was primarily impacted by nondeductible permanent differences, accrued interest on uncertain income tax positions and state income tax rates. We expect our tax rate for the full year 2025 to be within the range of 24% to 26%. Now I'll transition to our financial condition. We generated strong cash flows in 2024. For the quarter, net cash provided by operating activities was $36.1 million compared to $9 million in the fourth quarter of 2023. For the full year, we generated net cash provided by operating activities of $55.1 million, a modest increase from $53.5 million in 2023 due to our improved profitability, partially offset by a reduction in cash provided from working capital.

Additionally, our full year free cash flow of $34 million was better than anticipated due largely to shifting working capital needs in our steel pressure pipe business, which will vary quarter-to-quarter. For the full year 2025, we anticipate free cash flow to range between $23 million and $30 million. As we previously emphasized, enhanced cash generation remains a key focus of our leadership team. Our capital expenditures for the fourth quarter were $4.2 million compared to $5 million in the fourth quarter of 2023. For the full year 2025, we anticipate our CapEx to be in the range of $19 million to $22 million, including about $5 million in various investment projects, most notably to support the Precast product spread as well as initiatives to grow revenues at both our Park and Geneva businesses to $100 million in the near term.

As of December 1, 2024, we had $24.7 million of outstanding borrowings on our credit facility, leaving approximately $99 million in additional borrowing capacity on our credit line. We remain committed to our capital allocation strategy is duly focused on both growth and providing stockholder returns, including our anticipated adoption of a new share repurchase program from which we expect to start transacting early in the second quarter.

In summary, we are extremely pleased that we have achieved new annual performance records in safety, revenues, gross profit and earnings per share. We believe our steel pressure pipe and precast businesses remain well positioned in 2025 and beyond, the new level of through-cycle resiliency achieved through our growth into precast.

Thank you again to our dedicated employees who made these achievements possible and to our shareholders for their continued trust and support of Northwest Pipe Company.

I will now turn it over to the operator to begin the question-and-answer session.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Julio Romero with Sidoti & Company.

You guys had a pretty strong free cash flow year in 2024, very similar and impressive with 2023 free cash flow. Just talk about your expectations for '25 on the free cash flow front and how you're thinking about managing the variability of cash flow between quarters, especially as Aaron, you alluded to in your comments that the shifting working capital needs of the SPP portion, especially as that becomes kind of a stronger portion of the business?

Julio, what I would tell you is I think a big part of the focus on the cash flow has been a focus on mining the cash that's tied up in current assets, specifically related to the SPP business. And ultimately, as we said last year, we made that an item for everybody's variable compensation that's in the management group. So there's a lot of attention on cash flow all the time. In fact, we get a report every day that tells us how much cash has come into the company, where we are for every month. And it's always a focus and the goal to try to make sure we're getting more cash and revenue we're recognizing in a specific month or time period.

So it's really the focus on that. And I think that -- and I'll let Aaron talk about the first quarter a little bit. I think we're coming into a first quarter cash flow-wise. It's going to be a little bit different than what we saw last year with the negative cash flow in the first quarter. But there's so much focus on that. The belief is that our cash flow should either be as good or improve versus where we were in 2024. So it's a big focus. It's looked at every day, and it's part of everybody's goals in the company. So do you want to talk a little bit about the first quarter?

Yes. At the end of 2023, we really didn't have the billings that we needed to have a strong cash flow in the first quarter of 2024, which is why we started the year so slow and came on through the course of the year. This year has shaped up to be much different due to a lot of things that Scott just talked about. We really had a strong billings performance for our Steel Pressure Pipe business in the last quarter of the year, and things have proceeded pretty well into the first quarter, which will set us up for, I think, better performance than you saw. I would guess, Julio, that we'd probably be pretty ratable to my estimate in the first quarter.

And maybe have a little bit of a softer second quarter, but then progress up and kind of see things improve through the balance of the year with the cash flows to get to that [ $23 million ] to $30 million range that we talked about.

Got it. Very helpful there. And then you guys mentioned you expect the bidding environment for SPP to remain on balance fairly consistent for the full year of '25. But can you also kind of talk about the industry capacity as it currently stands for additional work, especially given less industry participants compared to previous cycles and what that means for your profit outlook for '25 and maybe even beyond that, even though the bidding environment is kind of fairly stable?

Yes. Julio, we haven't talked about capacity in quite a while. But we -- as far as having a rated capacity on just our SPP business, probably have the ability to do about 180,000 tons of rated capacity a year or now. When you start looking at that and saying, well, that's rated capacity, that's if you're running the optimum mix of whether it's [ 72 to 96 ] in certain gauge ranges to be able to produce a certain amount of tons. And then you look down and say, well, okay, so what is practical capacity?

So practical capacity for us is probably about somewhere in the area of 135,000 to 140,000 tons. And we have approximately half of the capacity in the marketplace. So total market capacity is likely some place in the area of about 325,000 or 330,000 tons. And even with what the expectations are coming with IIJA, I think that there is more than enough capacity in the market to be able to do that. Now for us, remember, in most instances, we're only one if you start running multiple ships at these Steel Pressure Pipe plants, you can scale up pretty quickly to be able to handle way more than the market is ever going to be able to give to us. So we don't have any concerns at all about our ability to handle the higher tonnage production levels that we expect that the IIJA-funded projects out in '26, '27, '28, '29 are going to put forward. So we don't think we have any issue with that. In fact, we welcome that.

Very helpful there. And then on the Precast side, you talked about the surge in the Precast order book that you experienced at year-end and that being weighed towards the Park, [indiscernible] side. Just if you could just speak to how that how that translates to the non-res portion, maybe the cadence of that as we progress throughout 2025?

I think I'll start with a reference to watching the Dodge Momentum Index. And that's really nonresidential related commercial institutional stuff. And that really has held relatively strong through 2024. And why that's important is these generally are representative of projects that go in planning generally about 12 months before they start getting produced, right? So ultimately, projects start going into planning and then there's a gap of time before orders start getting placed and then they start getting shipped to the customer and produced.

So we are -- we saw this bubble coming through, not a bubble or the surge coming through the pipeline in the Dodge Momentum Index through 2024. And it just so happens that it started to translate into the order book at really the nonresidential facilities that we have for ParkUSA, and the order book has grown to relatively strong levels through year-end, which normally doesn't happen, which bodes well for the production and shipment of nonresidential projects in 2025. And we're starting to see that because when you look at Park, and then they suffered through a little bit of a rough nonresidential market. That business was probably off between 15% and 20% in 2024 because of the interest rates and impact on the nonresidential business.

We are seeing that order book grow. So the production levels, the shipment levels and the revenue levels appear to be coming back relatively strong in 2025. And on the residential side, you didn't ask about this, but I'm going to put this in anyway. It's -- the Geneva business has stayed pretty stable at very strong levels. And we -- for the Geneva business, they're more than double the size of the revenue when we acquired them in 2020. So that is just stayed strong -- very, very strong even in the face of the higher interest rates. And really, I think that kind of speaks to the net migration into the state of Utah and the demand for single-family and multifamily houses and facilities to live in.

So we're seeing a pretty strong Precast market going into 2025. And like you asked at the beginning with the Steel Pressure Pipe business, we're seeing bidding that is going to be similar to what it was in 2024. Now the first quarter is a little slower in the Steel Pressure Pipe bidding this year just by way the project bidding falls, but we're expecting really strong second and third quarters and finishing the year pretty similar to what we did in '24.

Our next question comes from the line of Ted Jackson with Northland Securities.

I wanted to start out and maybe get more color on the tariff thing that you brought up that was news to me. So if you could provide a little color on kind of what happened, and I assume what you're talking about with regards to the potential in the first half is that you will have to -- I guess, for lack of a better term, paid these tariffs for product that was -- for steel that was brought in, in the back half of '24. First of all, did I read that correct? And then secondly, can you just kind of explain kind of what that was and what the situation was and then maybe if there's any ramifications for things going forward? That's my first question.

Ted, this is really a twofold question. When you look at the tariff issues that Aaron brought up in part of the script, that was really a tariff that's a proclamation [ 10783 ] from the previous administration. And what happened in July of 2024, the administration basically said, "Hey, you got to -- we're going to put a 25% tariff on anything that's not been poured and melted in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. okay? So that was kind of a retroactive tariff. And we have -- basically, we were shipped coils by one of our producers -- steel producers that were produced from Brazilian slabs, and that happens on a regular basis. But those Brazilian slabs actually came in under the quota before it reached the quota and the administration decided to kind of slap on this retroactive tax or tariff. And ultimately, what that did is it hit us in the fourth quarter to the tune of, I think --

[ $800,000 ] and probably hits us to a similar amount in the first quarter, which we've already built into our forecast and things like that. But that's the previous administration impact. So I'm going to stop there, Ted, and see if you want to talk about the one that's on the table now and how we're looking at all that.

That's kind of where I was going with this. I wanted to start with this. So [indiscernible] are paid. Is there a chance that you would contest this and actually get [ $1.6 million ] back? [indiscernible]

We've been fighting this. We have attorneys fighting this right now. But the problem is this is something that's going -- we would fight this for a long time, right? Because there's a lot of confusion over the tariff things right now, especially since the new administration has a different proclamation and which basically wipes out anything from the old proclamation. So this is going to be a long and ongoing process to be able to fight through this thing. But we've been doing that already. We have trade attorneys in and we're fighting through that from the Brazilian slab piece of this thing. So...

We must transition to that because -- in my pre -- kind of the questions I wrote out pre-call, the #1 question was really around the Trump administration and 2 parts. And the first thing was the proposed tariffs on steel and kind of how does that impact your business? How does that go into the guidance and your thought process and if they put those kind of tariffs in place? I mean, at some point, I mean, I know you -- for lack of a better term, you need to pass this kind of stuff on to your customers, but it brings up the cost of things and things get more expensive in basic economics, it does hurt demand. So maybe a discussion with regards to what's going on with the Trump administration's efforts on tariffs and how you see that playing out for your business?

I think that's a good thing to kind of to discuss a little bit because obviously, the -- this trade policy with the new administration has set things in flux with the tariffs for a relatively, I guess, it hasn't been a long period yet. But there's a bunch of things that are interesting about it. One is what's the long-term impact of tariffs on the GDP. And there's a lot of information out there that says, hey, if you're putting these tariffs on Mexico, Canada, China, it could really impact the GDP and lower the GDP well below the 2.2% growth rate that they're looking at. And at the same time, it could obviously influence inflation, as you just mentioned. And how much is that? Is that by 100 basis points? So the thing is it runs a little bit counter to the platform of this new administration, which makes you think, okay, if this is a long-term thing.

But the way we look at it because we've had to do a risk analysis around this because of where we are. So we have -- our biggest thing is we have a plant in Mexico, right, LRC Mexico. So the -- there's some ambiguities right now. And what we're understanding is that because we buy steel in the United States, ship it into Mexico, the steel that's mined and melted in the United States and ship it back, we should be able to get an exclusion for that, right? Because that's what we're discussing and being told as we sit right now.

But again, we've had to do a risk analysis around this. So we've basically got 3 scenarios. The first is if the request for exclusion is denied for SLRC, we have obviously, we have a lot of Steel Pressure Pipe plants. We have 6 of them. We basically take forecasted work and move it to the Tracy and Adalanto facilities as needed. And the overall impact on that could be several million dollars of revenue and a little bit of a hit to the gross profit, but we have 5 other Steel Pressure Pipe plants. So that's one scenario. The second scenario is the U.S. mined and melted thing. We get the exclusion. And basically, we just load plants for our business plan because what that means is we're buying steel in the United States, shipping it into the Mexican -- on the Maquillador and then shipping it back into the United States. So there wouldn't be any tariff that would apply to that.

And basically, we would just produce per plan as we're doing right now. So the other thing that's interesting about this, which probably is going to draw more questions is that, just saying that the situation is that tariffs go on and Canada retaliates with retaliatory tariffs against the United States. And obviously, we have a lot of product that we produce and ship to British Columbia for their water transmission needs in British Columbia. And there are no Steel Pressure Pipe plants in Canada. So that kind of creates a little bit of an issue. But the fact of that is, is that if they retaliate, we can actually produce the Canadian products at SLRC, assuming that Canada doesn't produce or file a tariff against Mexico and ship into Canada from SLRC without missing a beat.

So SLRC can be -- and there's a lot of information here that's got to be sorted out. But the fact that the tariff could be filed against SLRC if we're not given exclusion is obviously a negative. But if the exclusion exists in and there's retroactive tariffs or not retroactive, but retaliatory tariffs filed, we can also ship into Canada from SLRC. So I think the fact that we have 6 plants that we can move things around between and that there's some utility between those plants really means that we can probably work around without a whole lot of damage to the Steel Pressure Pipe business. So I've said a lot in this, and you have some questions and ask I'm going to shut up for a minute and let you go.

Well, I don't know -- not any more than that, but that was -- actually, I, Scott, that was super interesting. So thanks for the answer. I do want to shift over -- just finishing off some of the things with the Trump administration. A big driver with regards to the bidding activity is the infrastructure funding. And there's all kinds of discussion of whether Trump is trying to reel a lot of that back in. I mean it seems like most of what he's trying to do is a little more on the renewable side. But as you look into your bidding environment, I mean, is there any kind of concern with regards to the market that the Trump administration will pull back on funding for some of the things that you were expecting?

Well, obviously, there's nothing that we see affected really in 2025. Probably the concern would be more related to the IIJA funded projects for '26, '27, '28, '29. But I think one of the things that they learned out of the tragedy in California with the fires and the lack of water and water infrastructure to be able to fight fires like that is they really have to be careful with not replacing infrastructure that is aged out in a lot of cases because we have more extreme weather events going on all the time, droughts and things like that, and there is risk to those things.

And the administration was pretty pretty hard on or pretty -- I guess, they really were pointing at Gavin Newsom and the things that they didn't do in the state of California to make sure that they had the ability to offset or to control things like this thing from happen. So I think things like that start to take more precedence. And could it affect some of that stuff out in the future with the IIJA funding? Well, maybe. But I think they're going to be really careful with doing that because this is really infrastructure out there that needs to be replaced and needs to be put in place not only for safety for support of growing communities all across the country. So we don't see that happening at this point, Ted.

Okay. A couple of kind of the smaller ones. The SPP business is clearly humming. It's super strong. So you've got -- you're in a fabulous macro environment for -- we talk more about kind of where that business is from a historical standpoint in terms of revenue. But I'm kind of curious with regards to tons. Like what's the -- if you looked at, say, fourth quarter of 2024, and I'm not asking for a number -- full number in terms of tons, but the tons of products you produce, how does that stack up against your kind of historic highs? Where are you within saying where -- I'm saying like in terms of fundamental product delivery, where are you relative to where like the best has been in the past?

Yes. I would say that there probably the overall tons are -- our overall tons in the fourth quarter this year on Steel Price Pressure pipe versus the fourth quarter of last year were significantly up and tonnage for the year was significantly up versus the previous year. But what I would say versus historical is we're seeing less tons in that business. Now you say, "Oh my God, is that a demand thing? But we're really not seeing less projects. We are seeing less tons. And I think that starts to go to the grades and quality of the steel products that are being produced now, the efficiency of design of the water transmission projects, those kind of things.

So I think that's evolved, too. So we're seeing a little bit less tons in that business. But really, we're seeing a similar amount of projects. And I think it's really an efficiency of engineering on that side of the business that's starting to take hold and they're not having to put a thick of steel, if you will, as a stick of gauge steel on projects because they have grades that can handle higher pressures and things like that. So really, I think that's what that is at this point. And for us, we've got 50%, 52% of the marketplace. So we just kind of evolve with the marketplace and work to be as successful as we can with the conditions as we find them. But we're seeing that business as a -- is actually growing a little bit at this point. I think tons are going to start to go up a little bit, but I think it's the efficiencies of the lines that are being built, more than anything at this point.

Two more questions. One of them very, very easy ones. But just like maybe a little more color on where you are within the M&A strategy. I mean you've got the SPP business humming. I mean it's going to be hard for you to show dramatic growth in that core business given the market share you have and kind of where you're at. I'm not saying it won't grow, and then on the Geneva business, you clearly have room to run and you're executing well with your organic strategy. But to really kind of kick, if you would, the business into the next year, that M&A portion is -- it's a pretty important side of things.

So kind of where -- talk a bit about the process you are with M&A, like do you have any opportunities irons in the fire that are within kind of our for lack of a better term, like forecasting horizon. I mean, like is there a chance that you would have something happen this year or within the next 2 years? How many things have you looked at? How close have you come in the past, whatever you can provide on that front? And then I have one follow-up after that.

[indiscernible] now, Ted, the things that are going on. We're looking at -- we've got a couple of things that we're looking at, at this point that are moving down a path. Whether they could happen this year or early next year, I think it could be something this year if everything goes the way we plan. So there are opportunities that are coming forward to -- for us to be able to act on and execute on I would say on the things that we're looking at, we're not on the starting line. We're kind of past the starting line at this point. So there are things in play. The real interesting thing is when you look at the overall strategy of the company, the strategy is to grow on the Precast side of the business, right?

So -- and we have the strategy. We want to be a $1 billion company, which we're kind of halfway there. So we've got to grow a whole lot to be able to get to a $1 billion company on the Precast side. And the things that we're seeing right now are like $50 million top line, $45 million, those kind of top line. So similar to what we got with Geneva, right? So there's a lot of those things that have to happen along with the organic growth that we're looking at that have to happen to get us there. The key for us is going to be creating some kind of mass going forward where it's allowing us to look at a little bit bigger opportunities that might be things that are like $200 million of top line to be able to grow to that level at the appropriate cadence, but at a little bit quicker pace.

So I think there's -- we're focused right now on the idea of we've got a couple in front of us that look pretty good. But the other piece of it is how do we create more mass to be able to do some of these bigger ones that might be out there going forward. And that's kind of the thing that we're wrestling with and looking at creating our updated strategy around for the growth in the Precast business, if that makes any sense.

It does, and then my last question, just kind of kind of how I look at your business, just a quick one, like if you were to look at your SPP COGS, like what percentage of your COGS was consumed by steel purchases?

It's right now about 29% to 30%. It's pretty similar to what it was last year.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Jean Ramirez with D.A. Davidson.

Quick clarification, and I'm sorry if I missed it, but what are your assumptions for Precast margins for the first quarter of 2025?

Assumptions for precast margins for the first quarter of 2025. I think they're in line with -- I don't know -- I think they're in line with what the first quarter of 2024 was expect to be in a similar area.

All right. And just looking at SPP backlog, taking into account all you said about your assumptions on steel price and the bid activity being relatively in line with 2024, how does that just carry out your margins through the year? And are we seeing levels higher than 2024 or in line with 2024?

No, I would say -- I mean, obviously, we ended 2024 with the growth in our backlog up to a strong $310 million, up from about $282 million in the previous quarter. So the backlog was growing. I think what you're seeing in the margin level that as long as we have demand that we -- the way we see it right now that's going to stay relatively steady -- to steady with some upward pressure on the margins as we go out through 2025. So I think you're coming into a period, and we hope we're coming into a period where these -- demand levels that we're currently seeing in SPP are okay demand levels, but they're not great, okay?

As we get out into the next couple of years in front of us, we think with the IIJA funding, it's going to push those demand levels higher. And once those demand levels start coming up a little bit higher, what you're going to see is you're going to see instances, we think, where the steel pressure pipe margins are starting with a 2 instead of 1. So I think we're kind of coming into that realm as long as the demand hits the way we think it's going to hit.

Got it. Appreciate that. And -- looking at the residential side, I mean, you talked about activity being really strong. Can you talk about a little bit of how you see that business developing through 2025? And as a follow-up, when do you expect for that nonresidential to make its mark on the model here and on the margins perspective?

Okay. So I'll start with the nonresidential side. I think the nonresidential side starts to really show up probably -- and the key to our business that's mainly nonresidential Park is really production levels, right? And we think that those production levels are going to probably start raising once we get toward the end of the first quarter and in the second quarter. We think that we see the results of those order increases really hit toward the end of the first quarter and then carry through the end of the year and improve those margins back to relatively normalized levels for the nonresidential business. What was the first question again?

The residential side. Yes, I just kind of want to hear about just the sort of cadence of work that you expect through 2025? And I guess, similarly, do you see it progress and have an impact on margins possibly on the second half? Or are you seeing just normal steady levels through all 4 quarters?

Well, I think you see -- you see seasonality, especially in the residential side of our business because the 3 plants are in Utah. So they tend to get a little bit of snow in Utah. So it makes the first quarter a little bit lighter quarter. And then the second and third quarters are the big ones. And then the fourth quarter start to fall off because the ground starts to freeze and a lot of the contractors and construction activity starts to slow down. But like I said, I mean, if you look at the Geneva business in 2024, I mean, Geneva was somewhere in the area of $83 million worth of revenue. And like I said, when we acquired them in 2020, they were about $41 million revenue. So it's double the size.

Well, we have a plan. We put the new Exact 2500 in Salt Lake City, Manhole and RCP machine. And we also have additional plans this year for investment projects in the Geneva facilities that is going to help continue to -- well, create some new product capabilities for us, and it helps us to continue to build that top line. We expect that -- and we have a plan in place to be on -- by the time we get to the end of 2026 to be at a $100 million run rate at the Geneva facilities, $100 million annual run rate at the Geneva facilities by the time we get to the end of 2026. So that's going to increase absorption and it's going to allow those margins that we get at the Geneva business to keep pressing up because the Geneva margins in 2024 increased increased over where they were in 2023. So by about -- I think by about 100 basis points or so. It was on the nonresidential side that pulled it down because of the demand on that piece of the business.

Got it. I appreciate that color. And just a quick follow-up here. You mentioned the $100 million Geneva runway by the end of 2026. Could you perhaps just talk about a little bit about -- Park and just let us know, do you have any sort of revenue outlooks for that in the next couple of years?

Well, we have the same goal for ParkUSA at the end of 2026 as we do Geneva. We'd like to see both of those facilities each on a $100 million run rate by the end of 2026.

That concludes our question-and-answer session. I'll turn the floor back to Mr. Montross for any final comments.

Just a few things before we end. As we talked about, we faced some headwinds in 2024, a tough nonresidential market. We had the effect of that market on revenue and profitability for 2024 as well as the issue that we had with the previous administration's application of ad-hoc tariffs that affected revenue and profit for the fourth quarter. Yet we produced a fourth quarter that was pretty strong by historical standards and a full year that had record sales for SPP and Precast, a record annual gross profit moving toward $100 million and resulting in net income and free cash flow, both of $3.40 a share, demonstrating the strength and quality of the earnings that we had.

And as we head into 2025, we're facing different headwinds in 2025 really related to tariffs. But to be completely open, in my going on 13 years in this role, I can't remember a time that we didn't face headwinds with this business. I think the difference is now we're very well positioned and geared to handle the headwinds, and we expect to be successful with the conditions as we experienced them. As we go into '25, we're going in with a very strong backlog of $310 million strong, expecting a big year like we saw in 2024. We have a surging Precast order book that's over $61 million and expect a very, very strong year for the Precast business and a pretty consistent year for the SPP business.

And we're going to continue to focus on safety for our employees, improving margins, growing both organically and through M&A and focusing on driving shareholder value. As Aaron mentioned, we're anticipating putting in place a new share buyback program here in the next couple of months. So we're expecting a good 2025.

I'd just like to thank you all for your attendance here and your participation and attention to this. And we look forward to talking to you again in a few months in the May time frame when we're doing the next earnings call. So thanks very much. We appreciate your attention.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.