Sterling Construction Company Inc

NASDAQ:STRL

Earnings Call Analysis

Strong Quarter with Record EPS and Raised Guidance

Sterling Infrastructure delivered a strong second quarter of 2024, achieving record EPS of $1.67, up 31% from the previous year driven by a 12% revenue growth. Gross profit margins expanded to over 19% due to a strategic shift to higher margin services. Their backlog grew to $2.1 billion, a 21% increase. Cash generation was robust with $121 million in operating cash flow and a net cash position of $211 million. The company raised its full-year guidance, expecting revenue between $2.15 billion and $2.225 billion, and EPS between $5.60 and $5.75, reflecting confidence in sustained market strength and strategic growth .

Introduction and Financial Performance

Sterling Infrastructure had a remarkable second quarter in 2024, showcasing a commitment to delivering strong bottom-line growth and robust cash flow. The company set a new second-quarter record with an earnings per share (EPS) of $1.67, up 31% from the prior year. This growth was driven by a 12% increase in revenue, reaching $582.8 million, and a 20% rise in operating income. The focus on margin expansion was evident as the gross profit margin climbed to 19.3%, a 160 basis point improvement over the previous year. The company's operating cash flow also remained strong at $121 million, contributing to a healthy net cash position of $211 million .

E-Infrastructure Dominance

E-Infrastructure, the largest and highest-margin segment for Sterling, experienced substantial growth. Operating profit surged by 20%, and operating margins expanded over 480 basis points to reach 21.4%. This segment's revenue increased by 7%, with significant contributions from data center projects, which now constitute over 40% of the E-Infrastructure backlog. The demand for data centers, driven by advancements in AI and other technologies, resulted in more than 100% growth in data center revenue .

Transportation Solutions Growth

Sterling's Transportation Solutions segment saw a phenomenal 54% increase in revenue, all of which was organic growth, leading to a 57% rise in operating profit. Margins in this segment expanded by 11 basis points to 6.6%. The backlog for Transportation Solutions reached $1.5 billion, a 5% increase from the previous year. The company also reported strong bidding activity and a book-to-burn ratio above 1 for the quarter .

Building Solutions Performance

The Building Solutions segment had a mixed quarter with a slight 2% decline in revenue; however, operating income grew by 2%. The residential concrete lab business faced challenges due to heavy rainfall in Texas, resulting in a 7% revenue drop. Despite these challenges, the segment benefited from a favorable mix shift towards residential slabs and plumbing, which boosted operating margins by 57 basis points to 12.7% .

Strong Backlog and Future Outlook

Sterling ended the quarter with a total backlog of $2.1 billion, reflecting a 21% increase from the previous year. The combined backlog, providing a more comprehensive view of awarded projects, stood at $2.45 billion, a 2.2% increase year-over-year. The company remains optimistic about its future pipeline, particularly in E-Infrastructure and Transportation projects, which are expected to bring significant growth opportunities over the next few years .

Updated Financial Guidance

Given the strong performance in the first half of 2024, Sterling raised its full-year financial guidance. The new projections include revenue ranging from $2.15 billion to $2.225 billion, a gross profit margin between 18.5% to 19%, net income of $175 million to $180 million, and diluted EPS of $5.60 to $5.75. The EBITDA is expected to be between $300 million to $310 million. These upgraded numbers underscore the company's robust financial health and its capability to generate significant shareholder value in 2024 and beyond .

Strategic Initiatives and Challenges

Sterling is actively seeking acquisitions to complement its strong platform and accelerate growth, particularly in the E-Infrastructure market, which remains a top priority. The company is also taking an opportunistic approach to share repurchases, having deployed $30 million in the second quarter. However, challenges such as fluctuating interest rates and availability of developed land, particularly in housing markets like Texas, remain. Sterling's approach to managing these challenges includes shifting focus to large projects and maintaining pricing strategies that ensure profitability .

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q2

[Operator]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Sterling Infrastructure Second Quarter 2024 Conference Call and Webcast. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this call is being recorded on Tuesday, August 6, 2024. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Noelle Dilts, Vice President in Investor Relations and Corporate Strategy. Please go ahead.

[Noelle Dilts, executive]

Thank you. Good morning to everyone joining us, and welcome to Sterling Infrastructure's 2024 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. I'm pleased to be here today to discuss our results with Joe Cutillo, Sterling's Chief Executive Officer; and Sharon Villaverde, Sterling's Chief Financial Officer. Joe will open the call with an overview of the company and its performance in the quarter. Sharon will then discuss our financial results and guidance, after which Joe will provide a market and full year outlook. We will then open the call up for questions. As a reminder, there are accompanying slides on the Investor Relations section of our website. These slides include details on our updated financial guidance. Before turning the call over to Joe, I will read the safe harbor statement. The discussion today may include forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from the statements made today. Please refer to Sterling's most recent 10-K and 10-Q filings for a more complete description of risk factors that could affect these projections and assumptions. The company assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Please also note that management may reference EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted net income or adjusted earnings per share on this call, which are all financial measures not recognized under U.S. GAAP. As required by SEC rules and regulations, these non-GAAP financial measures are reconciled to their most comparable GAAP financial measures in our earnings release issued yesterday afternoon. I'll now turn the call over to our CEO, Joe Cutillo.

[Joseph Cutillo, executive]

Thanks, Noelle. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining Sterling's Second Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. Our second quarter results reflect our commitment to delivering strong bottom line growth and cash flow to our shareholders. For the quarter, we delivered EPS of $1.67, up 31% over prior year and a new second quarter record. Our continued focus on margin expansion helped drive gross profit margins to over 19%. We grew operating income 20% on revenue growth of 12% as we continue to shift our mix towards higher margin services. We are seeing strong tailwinds across our markets and bidding activity remains very solid. Backlog at the end of the quarter totaled $2.1 billion, an increase of 21% over prior year and a 2% increase from the beginning of the year. Combined backlog, which reflects a more comprehensive view of our awards, was $2.45 billion, a 2.2% increase from the prior year. Our book-to-burn ratio for combined backlog was above 1 for the quarter, and we continue to have very good visibility into the opportunity pipeline ahead. Our outlook is even better than what is captured in our backlog metrics. As our work shifts towards large multi-phase projects in both Transportation and E-infrastructure, we have greater visibility into future phases of work. Though we are not guaranteed to win these future phases, we have historically had a high probability of doing so. This high probability work pipeline now totals over $0.5 billion. We had another great cash generation quarter with operating cash flow of $121 million. Our balance sheet is in great shape, and our net cash position is now $211 million. We are actively seeking acquisitions that will complement our strong platform and accelerate growth. The Sterling Way is our commitment to take care of our people, our environment, our investors and our communities, while we build America's infrastructure. This remains our [indiscernible] as we grow and diversify our business. I want to personally thank each of our employees for helping us deliver another fantastic quarter.

Now I'd like to discuss our results for the second quarter of 2024. In E-Infrastructure, our largest and highest-margin segment, operating profit grew 20% as operating margins expanded over 480 basis points to reach 21.4%. This strong margin expansion reflects our continued focus on large mission-critical projects and excellent execution. As the small commercial and warehouse markets have softened and become less attractive from a margin perspective, we have elected to shift our efforts and resources towards the large project markets, including data centers and manufacturing. While this shift is impacting top line growth, we believe it is the best and most efficient use of our resources as we strive to optimize returns.

Total E-Infrastructure revenue increased by 7% in the second quarter, reflecting this rotation. Our data center revenue, which now represents over 40% of our E-Infrastructure backlog, grew more than 100% in the quarter. Small commercial and warehouse work declined over $30 million from the second quarter of 2023. In the manufacturing market, we faced a challenging revenue comparison due to the start-up of a large project in early 2023. Activity on these types of projects tend to be front-end loaded then level out over the remainder of the project duration. Work on this project will continue through early 2026, but at moderately lower revenue levels than the peak quarters of Q2 and Q3 2023. E-Infrastructure awards were $148 million in the quarter, driving backlog to $868 million, relatively flat to prior year period and a 7% increase from the beginning of the year.

The data center market was again the largest driver of awards as customers are racing to build the capacity needed for technology advancements, including AI. We continue to leverage our resources across our business segments to expand E-Infrastructure into the Rocky Mountain region, where we now have 3 sizable base of data center projects. We continue to see improvements in the Northeast and have picked up some additional data center awards in the Mid-Atlantic subsequent to quarter end. As our work continues to shift towards large projects, our pipeline of high probability future work has expanded, providing strong visibility into 2025 and 2026.

Moving to Transportation Solutions. Revenues increased 54%, which was entirely organic, and operating profit grew 57%. Margins expanded 11 basis points from the prior year to reach 6.6%. Our markets are the strongest we have seen in our company's history and margin opportunities are very attractive. We ended the quarter with Transportation Solutions combined backlog of $1.5 billion, a 5% increase from the second quarter of 2023. Second quarter awards for Transportation Solutions were $88 million and unsigned awards totaled $309 million. However, the picture is stronger than the backlog and unsigned awards reflect. During the quarter, we were awarded the initial design for multiple large progressive design-build highway projects. The design work and backlog represents only a fraction of the anticipated total value of these projects. Like in E-Infrastructure, this has very high probability work to the pipeline that is not reflected in the awards in our backlog.

Moving to Building Solutions. Total segment revenue declined 2% in the quarter, while operating income grew 2%. Results in the quarter were varied across our markets and geographies. We Revenue for our residential concrete lab business declined 7%. This decline was largely driven by heavy rainfall in Texas. In addition, the availability of developed land was challenging for the builders. Builders absorbed much of the available capacity during the very strong first quarter and now we're working to catch up. PPG continues to perform very well, with pro forma organic growth of 8% and strong margins. Our commercial business declined $14 million from the prior year period, which is in line with our expectations. The continued mix shift towards residential slabs and plumbing has a favorable impact on the segment's operating margins, which expanded 57 basis points to 12.7%. With that, I'd like to turn it over to Sharon to give you more details on the quarter and our full year guidance. Sharon?

[Sharon Villaverde, executive]

Thanks, Joe, and good morning. I'd like to take you through some of the details of our financial results, beginning with our backlog metrics. Our second quarter backlog totaled $2.1 billion, a 20.9% increase over the year ago period. The gross margin of this backlog was 16%, a 50 basis point improvement from the same quarter last year. a higher level of E-Infrastructure backlog and an increase of both the amount of Transportation backlog and its backlog margin drove this improvement. Unsigned awards totaled $347.2 million in the quarter. We closed the quarter with combined backlog of $2.4 billion, a 2.2% increase from the prior year second quarter and up modestly over the first quarter of 2024 to a new record. Second quarter 2024 book-to-burn ratios were 0.49x for backlog and 1.05x for combined backlog. Award timing is inherently lumpy in our business and is best viewed over a multi-quarter period. Year-to-date, book-to-burn ratios were 1.04x for backlog and 1.09x for combined backlog.

Turning to our second quarter income statement. Revenue was $582.8 million, an increase of 11.6% over the prior year quarter. Organic revenue growth was 8.4%. Current quarter consolidated gross profit was $112.7 million, an increase of 22.2% over the 2023 period. Gross margin increased to 19.3%, a 160 basis point improvement over the second quarter of 2023. This margin increase primarily reflects improvements in E-Infrastructure and Transportation. General and administrative expense was 4.8% of revenue in the quarter. G&A expenses increased in the quarter by $3.8 million to $27.9 million. The increase reflects the PPG acquisition, general inflation and growth. Operating income for the second quarter was $72.7 million, a 20.7% increase over the prior year quarter. Our operating margin increased 94 basis points to 12.5%. Our effective income tax rate for the second quarter was 24.8%. We continue to expect our full year effective income tax rate to be approximately 25%. The net effect of these items resulted in a record second quarter with net income of $51.9 million or $1.67 per diluted share, an improvement of 31.4% and 31.5%, respectively, compared to the second quarter of 2023. The Second quarter EBITDA totaled $87 million, an increase of 18.3% over the prior year quarter. EBITDA margin improved to 14.9%, up from 14.1% in the prior year quarter. Cash flow from operating activities for the first half of 2024 was a strong $170.6 million compared to $181.1 million in the prior year period. Cash flow used in investing activities for the first half of 2024 included $44.4 million of net CapEx. As a result of the significant growth in our Transportation segment, we are raising our expected net CapEx for the year to $60 million to $65 million. Cash flow from financing activities was $56.8 million outflow, primarily driven by share repurchases of $30.1 million at an average price of $100.70 per share. We ended the quarter with a very strong liquidity position consisting of $540 million of cash and debt of $328.9 million for a cash net of debt balance of $211.1 million. In addition, our $75 million revolving credit facility remained unused during the period. With our strong first half results and significant opportunities in each of our operating segments, we are raising our financial guidance for the year. Our updated guidance ranges are as follows: revenue of $2.15 billion to $2.225 billion, gross profit margin of 18.5% to 19%, net income of $175 million to $180 million, diluted EPS of $5.60 to $5.75, EBITDA of $300 million to $310 million. Considering the diversity and strength of our portfolio of businesses, our strong liquidity position and our comfortable onetime EBITDA leverage, we are well positioned to take advantage of additional opportunities to generate significant shareholder value in 2024 and beyond. Now I'll turn the call back to Joe.

[Joseph Cutillo, executive]

Thanks, Sharon. We see years of opportunity ahead associated with the revitalization of America's infrastructure. Sterling is playing a critical role in building the data infrastructure that enables today's way of life, the manufacturing production coming back to the U.S., the highways, the bridges and the airports that connect us and the homes we live in. In E-Infrastructure Solutions, we anticipate continued strength in data centers as current capacity represents only a fraction of what is needed to support artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies. On the manufacturing front, we anticipate that in the remainder of 2024 and 2025, we will see a fairly steady pace of mid- to large-sized onshoring related projects. As we look out to 2026 and 2027, there is a very big pool of mega projects on the horizon. This would include planned [ chip plants ]. The size and duration of these projects is staggered and will absorb a significant amount of the industry capacity. Given the complexity involved in developing these projects, we believe it will take some time before awards start to flow. We expect that e-commerce and small warehouse markets will remain soft in 2024, but are encouraged by the preliminary activity we are seeing in these markets for 2025. These dynamics support strong profitability growth opportunities over a multiyear period for E-Infrastructure. For 2024, we expect to deliver operating profit growth approaching 20%. In Transportation Solutions, we are now halfway through the current federal funding cycle, have built over 2 years of backlog and continue to see a very robust level of bid activity.

We believe we are now in a market environment where we can sustain elevated growth relative to historical levels as long as margins remain at current levels or higher. We are very confident that our transportation business will deliver strong growth and margin expansion in 2024 and 2025. In Building Solutions, the business is well positioned for growth over a multiyear period. Our key geographies of Dallas, Houston and Phoenix are expected to see continued population growth, driving demand for new homes. Additionally, there are significant runway for share gain in our Houston and Phoenix markets. In the short term, builders are facing challenges associated with affordability and land availability that may tamper activity. The biggest variable in our growth outlook is interest rates. Any future cuts could accelerate new home demand. We anticipate modest top line growth in Building Solutions in 2024 with operating profit growth of over 20%. On the M&A front, we are working hard to find the right deals to grow the company and enhance our service offering. The e-infrastructure market remains our top priority for M&A. We will remain patient and disciplined in our inorganic growth strategy. As it relates to share repurchases, we will continue to take an opportunistic approach. As a result of our strong first half performance and backlog position, we are raising full year guidance. The midpoint of our new guidance would represent 11% revenue growth, 28% diluted EPS growth and 18% EBITDA growth. With that, I'd like to turn it over for questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Brent Thielman from Davidson.

[Brent Thielman, analyst]

Great quarter. Joe, I understand the shift you're making in E-Infrastructure, obviously driving significant margins here. I guess my question is, at what point do those projects in commercial, kind of warehouse start to make sense for you to pursue again, even if they are potentially dilutive to the margins you're putting up today?

[Joseph Cutillo, executive]

Yes. So the shift is what I'll call a somewhat of a temporary shift as the margins have declined on those commercial and warehouse projects. When they get back -- so there's a combination of things, Brent. There's obviously less projects coming out. Those projects are very dependent on interest rates. So we saw that starting to slow down from an activity standpoint and pricing standpoint, second quarter of last year and just continue up till now. When those margins get back to close or historical levels with the improved margins we have in the other areas, we'll start going back after those. And I'll tell you, we're encouraged -- just with the conversations around interest rates dropping and with some of the economic news, it certainly looks like it's much more probable and maybe better than greater reductions than we anticipated. We've started seeing just over the last 30 days, projects that we've known be out there coming back and having conversations about pricing and timing and those sort of things. So we think realistically, kind of first quarter next year, we'll start seeing those projects coming back. We won't go from 0 to 100 where we were overnight, but we're encouraged with what we're seeing, and that's kind of what we anticipate.

[Brent Thielman, analyst]

Yes. That's encouraging. -- helpful, Joe. As a follow-up, this $500 million pipeline framework associated with kind of these multi-phase projects. Joe, if you looked at that over time, is there a way for us to think about how quickly that converts into a signed contract. Just kind of wondering, as you've looked at it, how does that correspond with your reported backlog over time?

[Joseph Cutillo, executive]

Yes. I think what's -- here's the good and the confusing part of this. Strategically, we have been moving towards this over time. Our e-infrastructure business, the way the contracts are structured, as you know, Brent, is they have multiple phases. So we know that the total project could be multiple hundred millions of dollars, but the first phase release might be $30 million, $40 million, $50 million. And to give you an example on a data center job, it's not uncommon for the initial piece to be around $30 million, and then that grows well over $100 million through the course of the project. Why we like it, just so everybody understands, is we bid and complete a phase. And then when the next phase comes out, we did and complete that. So if there's inflation spikes or any changes in material availability or market conditions, we're locked into a very short period of time and having the ability to change that for e-infrastructure. On transportation, these progressive design build projects are even a little more confusing upfront, the design phase of a multi-hundred million dollar project might be $1 million to $2 million. And that's what we'll put in [Audio Gap] once the design is complete, we price the first phase. So let's say, if it's a $200 million project, $30 million or $40 million, maybe $50 million comes into the first phase. We execute that and another $50 million comes in. So the timing is hard to give you an exact amount of time. What ends up happening is the backlog becomes more stable in the sense when we burn it down to 0. We put another $50 million in. We've burned that $50 million, we put another $50 million in. So it doesn't look like we've got this big win. If we put $200 million in day 1, everybody would be really excited about the backlog increase, we know we have the $200 million, but it shows up is $1.5 million [Audio Gap] talk about not only why we raised guidance, but as we talk about the tailwinds and the strength that we're seeing in the markets, we certainly have more visibility into future work than we ever had. And I would tell you, 18 months ago, that $500 million number was probably $100 million. I don't have the exact number, but it's grown significantly. And I think over the next 6 to 12 months, that will grow even further.

[Brent Thielman, analyst]

Okay. That's great. Maybe just the last one, Joe. Transportation, I know can kind of be inherently a lumpy bookings business. I guess, as you look at the schedules over the regions that you predominantly serve through the rest of the year. Are there some pretty good opportunities for additions here to the backlog in the second half?

[Joseph Cutillo, executive]

Yes. I will tell you I have approved for us to bid more work in the last 30 days than we did in the whole first 6 months prior to that. So just about 6 months for Transportation. There's a lot of jobs, very good jobs coming out. We're very encouraged about don't know where our backlog is today about where that's going. And I think one of the things we forget as we talk about kind of growth and growing things, Transportation is a perfect example, and we'll see the same thing with the E-Infrastructure. Where we said all along, we were -- we had the rains on the growth of Transportation at kind of 3% to 5% until we hit a margin hurdle. We hit that margin hurdle and we grew over 50% this quarter. We can turn on the growth rates very, very quickly. I think people grossly underestimate how fast we can grow the business. When the margins are right, we will grow the business like heck transportation is there. We're going to continue growing that and take full advantage of the market. E-Infrastructure will be there again, we think, early next year, and we will accelerate the heck out of that when that time comes.

[Brent Thielman, analyst]

I'll get back in queue. Sorry, go ahead, Noelle.

[Noelle Dilts, executive]

The backlog for Transportation is when you look at the formal backlog or the signed backlog, the awards look lower in the quarter. But recall, we moved a lot of work from unsigned and backlog into signed backlog in the first quarter, and we're sort of rebuilding that pipeline. So really, the better metrics to look at for the quarter would be combined backlog because it's really more reflective of the core demand for that business.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Adam Thalhimer from Thompson, Davis.

[Adam Thalhimer, analyst]

Great quarter.

[Joseph Cutillo, executive]

Thanks, Adam.

[Adam Thalhimer, analyst]

All right. Joe, do you see any recovery possible in the Northeast next year?

[Joseph Cutillo, executive]

Yes. I think if you look at -- if you remember back, the margin profile of our Northeast business is lower than our Southeast business, a combination of things. They do more broader work on these jobs, being just designed walls, curb and gutter. And they tend to do more smaller -- we call smaller projects, $15 million type projects. And a lot of those are really dependent on these interest rates. We saw the Northeast slowdown, the fastest release last year. But just like the Southeast there's projects out there, we're seeing them. And as a result, we think they will be coming out as interest rates start to fall. But the other thing we did with the Northeast that's really getting ready to start paying dividends as we've moved them further down to the mid-Atlantic. If you recall, we've been asked for several years to go into the Mid-Atlantic. It's -- we haven't had the capacity for those size projects. Now that we've got freed up some capacity, we have expanded down to the Mid-Atlantic. We've won a couple of very nice jobs subsequent to the end of the quarter that are data centers and one is going to be a manufacturing [Audio Gap] is going to offset that small business, and that small business will come back next year.

[Adam Thalhimer, analyst]

Okay. And then can you just touch on the data centers that you're seeing today, are they larger in the data centers of 12, 18, 24 months ago?

[Joseph Cutillo, executive]

Yes. The trend continues. You have to think of markets. Historically, if you thought of Virginia, Dallas was another one, very strong data center markets, but they were 1 building, small footprints. Those markets are still building, okay? So when we do a data center in Virginia, it's not a multi-$100 million dollar job. It's more like a $40 million job or a $20 million drop depending on the particular one. Outside of that, the driving factors to this are power and water, which is driving these data centers to go further out to rural areas. And when they get out to rural areas, they find that they can buy larger plots of land and can build data campuses. So instead of a single data center, the stuff we generally are working on have anywhere from 3 to 5 data centers on it. I will tell you, there are some really crazy concepts out there for some really big mega projects that would be 5 to 10x bigger than any data center we've done that we're paying close attention to that probably won't happen for another year or so. But the size and scope keeps getting bigger. Yes. And that's -- for us, we couldn't ask for anything better.

[Adam Thalhimer, analyst]

That's what I was thinking. Okay. And then in Transportation, I'm trying to get a sense for what do you think your revenue capacity is in Transportation? And where do you think the margins could ultimately go?

[Joseph Cutillo, executive]

Yes. We don't have unlimited capacity in Transportation. I would tell you, what we do is we're -- we still have capacity. We still have room to grow, and we are still raising our pricing on our bids and knock on wood. So far, we've still been winning. So I still think there's 100 to 200 basis points of margin expansion [Audio Gap] over the next probably 12 to 24 months. And we will figure out how to add capacity if the margins are right. That's easy for us to do. We don't like adding capacity when margins are right, right? So we'll figure it out. We have yet to turn down work when we have really good margins on it in any of our segments.

[Adam Thalhimer, analyst]

Okay. And then just lastly, can you update us on capital allocation? Like you're seeing anything interesting on the M&A side?

[Joseph Cutillo, executive]

Yes, we've looked at -- if people do how many deals we looked at -- probably shocking. We look at a lot. There's a lot of businesses for sale. That's a good news. There's not as many buyers as we've seen in the past. So that's also good news. But there's not a lot of great businesses out there right now. We're looking hard. We're optimistic that we should get something done here this year, maybe multiple would be nice. But we've got enough on the horizon that I think something will come in before year-end. We seem to always push them the year-end, which is, to me, not by at least favorite time to do it, but we should get something this year.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Julio Romero from Sidoti.

[Julio Romero, analyst]

Really nice to see the margins -- sure. Really nice to see the margins in the E-Infrastructure kind of surpassed 20% in the quarter. Can you maybe talk about the drivers of that in this quarter and maybe the sustainability of the margin in E-Infrastructure going forward?

[Joseph Cutillo, executive]

Yes. So the biggest driver is this mix shift, right? Just a larger percentage of our revenue is coming from these mega centers, whether that's data centers or manufacturing or something similar. Again, it doesn't matter to us what type of [Audio Gap] like the larger it is, the better efficiencies we can get and generally, we can extract better margins out of the jobs. So we don't see anything in those markets going backwards. As a matter of fact, we think over the next couple of years, capacity gets tighter in those markets, so we should be able to maintain that margin and actually maybe pick up a little more. As the mix shift comes back with these smaller industrial projects and commercial projects, those margins are lower, right? So it's -- you just do the math on the blend. So our hope is that we can continue to grow the large projects at a rate that when the small ones come on, we maintain the total margin, right? We may not see as much increase, but we shouldn't see a significant decrease.

[Julio Romero, analyst]

Got it. That's helpful. And then -- you mentioned data centers make up about 40% of segment backlog at this point. What's your best guess as to how much of the 2024 segment sales and E-Infrastructure end up being comprised of data center sales? And then as that pool of mega projects comes to bid in '26 and '27, how do you envision that, that mix of data center-related revenue trending?

[Joseph Cutillo, executive]

Yes. So we're up over 40% now, and I think that's going to continue to grow. With the activity we're seeing, we're really confused because we keep hearing people say data centers are slowing or that. I can tell you, we have more data center activity on the horizon than we would have ever imagined. There's no way I can predict it this much. There's more players coming in from a builder perspective to do this. It is continuing to grow, and there's nothing on the capital planning, we see slowing down. As a matter of fact, we see the really big guys starting to have conversations with core contractors on what can we do to commit multiyear capacity to them because they're afraid that everybody is going to run out of capacity. And they're right. If they don't do this, they're going to have trouble. So we're excited about where this is going. So data centers will continue [Audio Gap] to of our backlog. And I think we'll probably have run the numbers, but backlog turns into revenue. So it's going to be pretty close, I would imagine you guys have any numbers on that?

[Noelle Dilts, executive]

This is rough, but we'll be about 2/3 large projects [Audio Gap] or of smaller projects for 2024 -- [indiscernible].

[Julio Romero, analyst]

Okay. That's helpful -- understood. And then it was nice to see you folks to deploy the share repurchase of $30 million in the quarter. Can you maybe just touch on how we should think about you deploying cash towards repurchases, especially with the recent pullback in the broader market?

[Joseph Cutillo, executive]

Well, I don't have the numbers, but I bet we bought something yesterday, and we will continue to buy at the rates we've been buying in the past. We've got a [indiscernible] maybe that's not the right term. But we've got price points. And at those price points, we have automatic share purchases built in. We don't -- we turned that all over. It just happens and executes. We still believe that the share price is grossly undervalued. And the best thing we can do right now is until we get an acquisition lined up and is buy back some more shares.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We don't have further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the call back to Mr. Cutillo.

[Joseph Cutillo, executive]

Thanks, Ivo. I want to thank everybody for joining today's call. If you have any follow-up questions or like to schedule a call [Audio Gap] her contact information is in the press release. Everybody, have a great day, and we appreciate you participating.

[Operator]

That concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.