Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Argan, Inc. Earnings Release Conference Call for the Second Fiscal Quarter Ended July 31, 2024. This call is being recorded. All participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. Following management's remarks, the call will be open for questions. There is a slide presentation that accompanies today's remarks, which can be accessed via the webcast. At this time, it is my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host for today, Jennifer Belodeau, of IMS Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Ma'am.

Thank you. Good evening, and welcome to our conference call to discuss Argan's results for the second fiscal quarter ended July 31, 2024. On the call today we have David Watson, Chief Executive Officer; and Hank Deily, Chief Financial Officer. I will take a moment to read the Safe Harbor statement. Statements made during this conference call and presented in the presentation that are not based on historical facts are forward-looking statements. Such statements include but are not limited to projections or statements of future goals and targets regarding the company's revenues and profits. These statements are subject to known and unknown factors and risks. The company's actual results, performance or achievements may differ materially from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements and some of the factors and risks that could cause or contribute to such material differences have been described in this afternoon's press release and in Argan's filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. These statements are based on information and understandings that are believed to be accurate as of today and we do not undertake any duty to update such forward-looking statements. Earlier this afternoon, the company issued a press release announcing its second quarter fiscal 2025 financial results and filed its corresponding Form 10-Q report with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Okay. I will now turn the call over to David Watson, CEO of Argan. Go ahead, David.

Thanks, Jennifer, and thank you, everyone for joining today. I'll start by reviewing some of the highlights of our operations and activities and Hank Deily, our CFO will go over our financial results for the second fiscal quarter ended July 31, 2024. Then we'll open up the call for a brief Q&A. But before we jump into the call, as many of you already know, today will be Hank's last time taking us through the financials as he is set to retire in just a few weeks. Hank has had a distinguished 40-year career as a Senior Finance Executive and has been with Argan for the past 17 years, so I think we can all agree that his retirement is well earned. So, on behalf of all of us here at Argan, I'd like to thank Hank for his many contributions and his counsel reduced role to ensure a successful transition. Josh Baugher, who has worked directly with Hank and myself for the [indiscernible], Josh has nearly 20 years experience in strategic financial positions and he joined Argan a few years ago from Charles River Associates, a NASDAQ traded international consulting firm. He has been a valuable member of our finance team and we're pleased to have him take this leadership role. So now on to the operational review of our fiscal 2025 second quarter. We drove continued momentum in the second quarter achieving consolidated revenues growth of 61% to $227 million, significantly enhanced profitability with net income of $18 million or $1.31 per diluted share, and EBITDA of $25 million. Both our quarterly revenues and EBITDA performances were the strongest we've seen since 2017. Notably, we achieved revenue growth in all of our business segments this quarter, highlighted by a 65% increase in revenues from Power Services and a…

Thanks, David, and good afternoon, everyone. On Slide 11, we present our consolidated statements of earnings for the second quarter of fiscal 2025. Second quarter revenues increased 61% to $227 million, reflecting an increase in revenues from all of our operating segments as compared to the second quarter of fiscal 2024. In the second quarter, our Power Industry Services segment achieved a 65% increase in revenues primarily related to increased quarterly construction activities for the Midwest Solar and Battery Projects, the Trumbull Energy Center, the 405-megawatt Midwest Solar Project, and the Louisiana LNG Facility. In our Industrial Construction Services segment, TRC achieved revenue growth of 52%, driven by increased field services activity. For the 3 months period ended July 31, 2024, Argan reported consolidated gross profit of approximately $31.1 million, which represented a gross profit percentage of approximately 13.7% and reflected positive contributions from all three reportable business segments. Consolidated gross profit for the comparative quarter ended July 31, 2023 was $23.7 million representing a gross profit percentage of 16.8%. The decline in the gross profit during the current period was primarily due to a change in the mix of projects and contract types. Selling, general and administrative expenses of $12.4 million for the second quarter of fiscal 2025, increased as compared to SG&A of $10.5 million for the comparable prior year period. But these expenses decreased as a percentage of revenues to 5.5% in the second quarter of fiscal 2025 as compared to 7.4% in the second quarter of fiscal 2024. Net income for the second quarter of fiscal 2025 was $18.2 million or $1.31 per diluted share compared to $12.8 million or $0.94 per diluted share for last year's comparable quarter. EBITDA, or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, for the quarter ended July 31, 2024 was $24.8 million compared to $17.9 million reported for the same period of last year. Net income for the first 6 months of fiscal 2025 was $26.1 million or $1.90 per diluted share compared to $14.9 million or $1.10 per diluted share for the first 6 months of last fiscal year. And EBITDA was $36.7 million for the 6 months ended July 31, 2024 compared with EBITDA of $21.6 million for the first 6 months of fiscal 2024. With that, I'll turn the call back to David.

Thanks, Hank. Turning to Slide 12, our consolidated project backlog exceeded $1 billion at July 31, 2024, and represented an increase of approximately 25% from the balance of project backlog at the close of the first quarter of fiscal 2025. Our backlog includes a healthy group of longer term, fully committed projects in both the power industry services and industrial service segments and, as mentioned earlier, approximately $570 million of the backlog is comprised of renewable projects. On Slide 13, we show certain major projects currently included in our project backlog. Earlier in the call, I mentioned our activity at the Trumbull Energy Center in Ohio. I also detailed the progress of three solar plus battery projects in Illinois, which have full notices to proceed and are full notice to proceed on a utility scale solar field in Illinois that will provide 405 megawatts of electrical power. During the quarter, as previously announced, we also entered into a full notice to proceed on a subcontract to install 5, 90-megawatt gas turbines to provide dedicated power to an LNG facility in Louisiana. This project, led by Gemma, will be a collaboration with TRC and APC and demonstrates our ability to bring comprehensive solutions to market quickly. Also included in our project backlog are two separate water treatment plant projects being performed by TRC. Over in Ireland, the three ESB FlexGen Peaker Power Plants and the Shannonbridge Thermal Plants are both in the final stages of those projects. As I mentioned, the growing urgency of power grid operators in this country to ensure that we have the infrastructure in place to meet the forecasted growth in energy demand is hastening the number of new projects coming to market. Our backlog represents a diverse group of projects that reflect our wide-ranging operational capabilities…

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Chris Moore with CJS Securities. Please proceed.

Hey, good afternoon guys. Congratulations on a terrific quarter and congratulations to Hank. Sounds exciting.

Thank you.

All right. Let me …

Thank you, Chris.

… start, certainly, start with you had referenced the 133 natural gas projects. We talked a little bit about that last quarter. It sounds like there are kind of two primary challenges. One is turbine demand is currently outstripping supply, and perhaps the bigger one is the interconnect agreements. Can you talk a little bit about those two and kind of what you’re seeing at this point.

Yes, sure. The interconnection agreements continue to be a headwind, but what folks are really doing now is you're seeing a lot of developments that are moving ahead with what they call behind the meter power generating assets. And a number of the projects that we're targeting are just that, behind the meter power generating assets that ultimately do want to be connected to the grid, but given the timeline on being able to do that, it can stretch out many years, longer than folks want to get ready now. So, that is a known issue. It's a known issue not just for natural gas, but also for renewables, and something that the grid operators are working feverishly trying to remedy with various efforts. But the show must go on and folks are planning to build with or without interconnection agreements from here and there. As it relates to the turbine manufacturing limitations, that's correct. AI is a global phenomenon. Power use is up across the globe, not just in the U.S. And so the turbine manufacturers, notably GE, Siemens, and Mitsubishi, are flat out right now. And they are obviously trying to increase their capacity, but it is something where folks are having to make commitments early in the process to, in a way, get a place in line to get a turbine. And those who do have a place in line to get a turbine, they are clearly -- can move their development forward quicker than others. So it's -- both of these items are headwinds, which is few and far between given all the tailwinds in our space.

Absolutely. Backlog a $1 billion, $570 million of that renewable, I think your record backlog was maybe $1.4 billion 10 years ago or so. So maybe two questions there. Is there such thing as a kind of an optimal backlog level that you think about and what would be that optimal mix between natural gas and renewables?

Well, the optimal backlog amount, and I'll tell all of my teams and the guys and gals that are making all the -- doing all the hard work to cover their ears, is it's got to be in the multiple of billions of dollars from my perspective. That being said, obviously there are operational capacity considerations, and while I believe we have expanded that and can work on 10 plus jobs at any given time, both gas and renewable, it is something to always be mindful of. But as it relates to the mix of the backlog, to me, it really just depends on where we are in the market. I think historically we have been a builder of a gas-fired power plant, and that is our sweet spot, but clearly we have grown our renewable business and hope to have that sustainably as a big piece of our business on a go-forward basis. What does that mix look like? I don't really have one, Chris, except that typically would be north of 50% for gas and south of that for renewables. And don't forget about our industrial business as well, which is significant as well.

Got it. That's helpful. Just on the gas side, what's the likelihood of closing, beginning work on a relatively large natural gas project calendar in 2025. I was just trying to get a sense, as I know you had talked about some at the end of Q4. Any further thoughts there on how those projects are progressing?

Yes, so we just got above a $1 billion in backlog and you're already asking for more, Chris.

I was. Natural gas, exactly.

Understood. So, yes, we do continue to have visibility. We clearly are in a strong market and given our capabilities around natural gas builds. So, given the support that we're seeing, say, in ERCOT with the Texas Energy Fund, given the support that we're seeing actually in the PJM with the strong capacity price signal that was just sent out, which was about 270 per megawatt, which is a 900% increase from the last one. So there is a lot of positive data points out there that support natural gas build outs. And I know we already talked about some of those headwinds earlier on this call. But for us, we do expect to have multiple gas power plants under contract working on generating revenue over the next 5 to 10 months.

Got it. Last one for me. Anything worth mentioning on Kilroot situation at this point in time.

Well, I mean, it had very minimal P&L impact during Q2 since the operational phase has concluded. As you know, we have a $12.8 million loss on the project, which is significant and disappointing, but we consider all things and make our best efforts to get to. At the end of the day, not a whole lot to add there. We are going to continue to vigorously go after our claims, which are in excess of $25 million, and continue to pursue all the rights under the contract.

Sounds good. I'll leave it there. Thanks, guys.

Absolutely.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Rob Brown with Lake Street Capital. Please proceed.

Hi. Good afternoon and congratulations on the progress.

Thanks, Rob.

Just sort of following up on the TRC business, it was very strong this quarter. Could you give us a sense of sort of how that business is, the environment is there and what the opportunity pipeline is in that market?

Yes, absolutely. And it was a record quarter, and I guess I really didn't stress that enough in the prepared remarks. I mean, revenues of almost $50 million in Q2, and Rob, they've generated over $170 million of revenue and over $16 million of EBITDA over the last 12 months. So it's just been a tremendous growth and success story. And with that, there has been a conversion of backlog to revenue. So TRC, I believe, is positioned with the right leadership team to grow. I do think that there might be a little bit of a slight dip over the next quarter or two in their backlog, given the amount of revenues that they're generating, and given my visibility and our visibility in the timing of future project awards, which you know is always difficult for us to predict, both for our industrial business as well as for our power business.

Okay. So it sounds like it's a little hard to predict, but do you see a strengthening pipeline there [indiscernible] and the gas side?

I do. I do. It's perfectly positioned in the Southeast. I guess I was talking a little bit to the very short-term nature of things, but from a long-term standpoint TRC should continue to generate this growth in their revenues, and we're really excited about that.

Okay, great. And then on the solar battery projects that you have going now, could you remind us again on the timeline of those, how long those sort of burn off revenue, and how long does it take to complete, roughly?

Yes, so there's three solar battery projects, and not all projects are in the same phase of construction, but we are -- a couple of the projects are targeted to be completed by the end of this fiscal year, and then one of them is a little bit after that. So the timing of those projects is, again, most of the solar jobs are pretty quick burns, and these are no exceptions.

Okay, good. And then, I guess, looking back to your comments on the gas projects with multiple projects in the next sort of 5 to 10 months, I think you said, are those seeing some of these project delay issues that you talked about earlier, or are those really just going through their own process at about the timeline you expected?

We're seeing them continue to check off all the milestone efforts in the developmental process, right, those are EPA air permits. Those are getting gas to the site. It's land acquisition, it's raising capital and a myriad of other things, including securing a turbine. So we do feel really good about the number of projects that we've been tracking and been working with potential customers on to be able to make the statement that we expect multiple projects over the next 5 to 10 months.

Okay, great. Thank you. I'll turn it over.

Excellent.

Okay. We have no further questions in queue. We've reached the end of the question-and-answer session. I will now turn the call back over to David Watson for closing remarks.

Well, thank you all for participating in today's call. And, Hank, thank you for all that you have done for Argan. I have cherished working with you over the years. So thank you.

Well, David, you're welcome. I thank Argan and the listeners out there are Argan. I thank them for giving me this opportunity to work for almost 17 years doing what I love to do. This has been a great opportunity for me. One of the best things that ever happened to me in my professional career Is having the opportunity to work with David. He's taught me or did teach me much and it's been a great ride. So thank you for the opportunity and good luck to Argan going forward and I'll be around.

Thanks, Hank. With that, we look forward to speaking with you again when we report our third quarter fiscal 2025 results and have a great evening everybody.

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