Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Parsons Corporation Second Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Dave Spille, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, and thank you for joining us today to discuss our second quarter 2021 financial results. Please note that we provided presentation slides on the Investor Relations section of our website. On the call with me today are Carey Smith, President and CEO; and George Ball, CFO. Today, Carey will discuss our corporate strategy and operational highlights, and then George will provide an overview of our second quarter financial results and revised 2021 guidance. We then will close with a question-and-answer session. Management may also make forward-looking statements during the call regarding future events, anticipated future trends and the anticipated future performance of the company. We caution you that such statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. Actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements due to a variety of factors. These risk factors are described in our Form 10-K for fiscal year ended December 31, 2020, and other SEC filings. Please refer to our earnings press release for Parsons' complete forward-looking statement disclosure. We do not undertake any obligation to update forward-looking statements. Management will also make reference to non-GAAP financial measures during this call, and we remind you that these non-GAAP financial measures are not a substitute for the comparable GAAP measures. I now will turn the call over to Carey.

Thank you, Dave. I want to welcome everyone to Persons' Second Quarter 2021 Earnings Call. At the outset, let me say how excited I am to be in the role of Parsons CEO. It's an honor and privilege to lead a business that has two complementary segments with increasing demand. We're in all the right markets with all the right capabilities across both our Critical Infrastructure and Federal Solutions segments. I also want to take this opportunity to again thank our Executive Chairman, Chuck Harrington, for his leadership as our CEO for the past 13 years. Given my new role as the CEO of Parsons, I thought it would be helpful to start with my assessment of the business as well as some thoughts on what's going well and areas we are focused on improving. As you will hear throughout today's call, our immediate priorities are to deliver our customers' critical missions, drive organic growth and complete legacy Critical Infrastructure programs. In Federal Solutions, we are well positioned in attractive, high-growth markets where our capabilities are closely aligned to our customers' highest national security priorities. We have a long and successful M&A track record that's enabled large prime contract wins. We offer differentiated technology-rich solutions focused on near-peer threats. And as a result, we continue to win new work, which, together with our existing base provides a solid foundation for growth. That said, we have experienced procurement and funding delays, and we faced a competitive hiring environment. As I will discuss this morning, our executive leadership team is focused on addressing these issues. Moving to Critical Infrastructure. World-renowned design firm for projects across multiple disciplines, including bridges, dams, roads and highways, smart cities, airports and rail and transit. We have truly differentiated capabilities in environmental remediation, including water and wastewater…

Thank you, Carey. As Carey indicated, second quarter results were highlighted by strong cash flow, robust awards and M&A activity. Total revenue for the second quarter decreased 10% from the prior year period and was down 13%, excluding $29 million of revenue from our Braxton acquisition. These decreases were driven by delayed procurements and funding, two contract reserves and a competitive hiring environment. SG&A expenses were relatively flat from the second quarter of 2020. Adjusted EBITDA of $66 million represents a decrease of $25 million from last year and adjusted EBITDA margin decreased to 7.5%. These decreases were primarily driven by the two reserves as well as contract delays and a competitive hiring environment. I would like to address the two reserves we recorded in the second quarter. The first was a $6.9 million reserve on a Federal Solutions contract, where we are a subcontractor and share incentive fees with the prime. The program has suffered delays beyond the control of the prime contractor, and we've determined that previously recognized performance fees may now be partially impaired. The prime contractor plans to issue a request for equitable adjustment for fee recovery. This type of reserve is highly unusual in our Federal portfolio. The second reserve in the amount of $15.4 million is associated with a legacy critical infrastructure program. Extensive discussions with the customer during the second quarter were unsuccessful in resolving issues associated with cost escalation and schedule delays, and we have submitted a claim to seek recovery for these damages. I'll turn now to our operating segments, starting first with Federal Solutions, where second quarter revenue decreased by $40 million or 8% year-over-year. The decrease in revenue was driven by procurement and funding delays, a competitive hiring environment and the aforementioned program reserve. This was partially offset by…

Thank you, George. 2021 is an important year for Parsons. We've won a significant amount of new business. However, we reduced our guidance for the reasons George described. For the remainder of this year, our executive leadership team is intensely focused on achieving the updated 2021 guidance by driving organic growth and successfully executing on our contracts. The good news is that we've already won a significant amount of new and repeat business. We're also driving funding to existing contracts, and we believe our retention and recruiting will improve, driven by recent strategic leadership changes in our assessment of critical human resources initiatives. Going forward, I'm very confident in the business, and I'm excited about our growth prospects. Over the past 4 years, we successfully pivoted to a balanced Federal Solutions and Critical Infrastructure portfolio, which proved to be timely and is expected to generate significant demand for our solutions for the foreseeable future. We are well positioned in these attractive, high-growth national security and critical infrastructure markets with differentiated technology solutions. With that, we will now open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Tobey Sommer with Truist Securities.

If I could ask a question about sort of labor? What is your anticipated labor expense growth on sort of an apples-to-apples basis? I understand you could add heads that would change that in the pace of new additions would be impactful and variable? And then could you also describe how potential pickup in wage inflation, could impact both segments?

Our expected growth a bit -- from the first half to the second half of this year is 4%. And this is based upon what we've been able to achieve in proven historicals. So we feel very comfortable with that. As far as inflation and most of our contracts, the cost reimbursable on the federal side, we do include a wage adjustment clause. So that is reimbursed through the rates on the fixed price and the time material, we don't -- but we usually budget in the escalation when we bid the programs.

And in the Critical Infrastructure, is there any difference of mechanism or experience that you've had historically relative to wage inflation? Or is it really just based on contract type across both units?

It's really based on contract type across both units. I will say it's much easier to recruit in the Critical Infrastructure segment.

And then in Critical Infrastructure, what's the historic frequency for reserves and situations such as this? You did mention, I think, in the prepared remarks that on the Federal Solutions side, a reserve such as this is a relatively infrequent occurrence.

Federal Solutions, it's very infrequent. And on the Federal Solutions reserve, the prime contractor is going to submit a request for equitable adjustment, as the delays were not their responsibility, it was delays in getting a permit that was the responsibility of a third party. And on the Critical Infrastructure side, they can be more common. We do go through, obviously, every quarter and update our reserves, assess our programs and you need to have a triggering event to take a reserve, and we did have the triggering event this quarter.

So how far back we have to go in Critical Infrastructure to have a triggering event for a reserve that would need to be sort of quantified in a forum like this with earnings?

George, do you want to take that?

The last event we had like this, Tobey, was actually last year on a different project. It was a project on which we were a minority partner. You might recall there was a write-down taken late in 2020 that affected equity and earnings.

And prior to that, can you recall how far back? So just to get a sense...

And prior to that, Tobey, it would be well before we went public. You might recall, when we went public, we actually had a large increase related to the resolution of a legal matter, which we had taken a very conservative reserve, and we had a substantial pickup. So we've unfortunately had two since we went public. But as Carey indicated in her prepared remarks, they all go back to prior bids before we went public. We think we do a great job managing risk, but we are working through a number of these legacy programs, and we've unfortunately had two of them result in reserves over the last year.

We put some different processes in place a couple of years ago before going public that have helped that situation. First, we are very selective on what we bid and don't bid. We have bid guidelines. For example, we no longer bid prime construction work. We've shifted our focus to design engineering work and owner's engineering work. We also are selective on the type of partners that we work with. We have a list of partners that we will and we will not work with based on past proven results and experience. And we've strengthened our participation on joint venture boards, whether or not we're managing or a minority partner. And we strengthened the position of our Chief Risk Officer in the organization. So I think as a result of these, we believe that we've been able to mitigate further.

If I may sneak one more in? What sort of changes are you making to improve your ability to attract talent? Is it money? Is it benefits? Is it a posture as an employer? If you could give us some examples, that would be helpful?

I'll give you a couple of examples. First, we hired a Chief Human Resources Officer. She comes with federal experience, which we feel is very important because recruiting in federal is different than recruiting in critical infrastructure, and it kind of sets the high bar. So she has three decades of experience there. She's also co-located with me in Centerville, which I believe will help. We brought in a new Chief Communications Officer as well that will help on recruiting efforts. We've also ensuring that we've got competitive HR programs across the board salary benefits. We do feel that being a public company and having an ESOP is an unique benefit that we bring. We have a dual career path offering for technical folks that can go up in parallel with program management, all the way up to our Chief Technology Officer position. And along with that, we have a technical fellows program, which we feel is innovative. We're recruiting outside the D.C., Maryland, Virginia areas. Specifically, we set up an office down Augusta, Georgia that was several years ago, co-located with Army Cyber expand. We also have an office in San Antonio, we're co-located with the Air Force Cyber Command. And we're doing -- hiring out the Danbury and Huntsville area as well. So how do we get outside of the space that's kind of difficult. We're working with our customers. What COVID showed us is that you can do a lot of development in an unclassified environment, often to the point of about 90% on programs. So we're working with our customers to do software development in an unclassified environment. We developed a system that was called FEDNET. It's a DevSecOps system that allows people to develop software virtually from anywhere that they reside. And then finally, we have a program post COVID, we're letting people if they want to continue to work remote, they can work remote; if they want to work hybrid, they can work hybrid; or if they want to be back in the office, they can come back in the office, provided that their customer agrees with that. This gives people the maximum flexibility. When we did a survey, we found out that people really wanted that flexibility. I think all those initiatives will drive us to be employer of choice.

Our next question comes from Josh Sullivan with Benchmark.

Just as you leverage those wage inflation features, you just mentioned, how are the dollar values of the contracts? Is the government customer cognizant of the labor market? Are they adjusting budgets knowing that you're going to be seeking to raise the level of compensation for talent?

I do believe that they are cognizant of it. Again, on the cost reimbursable, which represents roughly 3/4 of our federal work, we do get reimbursed for those rates, and we have escalation clauses. And then the fixed price markets, really the onus is on us to make sure that we properly price in that inflation.

And then is there any way to quantify the hiring environment impact, is having on the overall headcount? Is there a number of open positions today versus the beginning of the year that you could provide us?

We do not share that information. What I will share with you is on the retention front. We're pleased with our retention. Once we do get people here, they stay with Parsons. And we've compared against PwC surveys, and we are running on industry average on retention.

And then just one last one. You had the acquisition of BlackHorse and your growth in the space vertical. What's your appetite versus technology versus advisory? Does the labor market make technology more attractive in the M&A market at this point?

We're definitely focused on technology versus advisory. If you see the acquisitions that we've acquired, they've all been focused on integrated solutions. How do we have technology differentiation that provides integrated solutions? I'm really happy with our acquisitions. And I think what you'll see from BlackHorse is our further ability to win new business. If you look at the new business that we've won as a result of our acquisitions, combatant commander for $590 million. We won the C5ISR opportunity, I spoke about earlier today for $618 million. More recently, we were awarded the Air Base Air Defense opportunity for $953 million. All of these are a result of the acquisitions that we've been able to do. BlackHorse further enables us and particularly positions us in the joint-all domain arena.

Our next question comes from Joe DeNardi with Stifel.

George, I wonder if you could just talk about the charge at infrastructure, how complete is the program? And then I understand you all are trying to, I guess, deemphasize or exit construction in that line of business. Can you talk about how much of the portfolio is still in construction, either directly or indirectly with partners? Just trying to understand how much more risk exists there.

I'll take the second part of that first. We have probably about 10% of our portfolio exposed to construction activities. As Carey remarked, we don't do prime construction. We only participate when we're doing the design and in cases where we have a design build joint venture exposure. We're basically bringing the design to those activities with trusted partners as contractors. Relative to the project on which the reserve was taken in critical infrastructure in Q2, the job is well along. Due to a variety of scope changes. Frankly, we would consider our original scope largely done. As I remarked in my discussion, we had actually very intense conversations with decline upstream and including through the end of the second quarter. We were very hopeful that those would be productive and fruitful on resolving our differences. They indicated, they proved to be unsuccessful. So we unfortunately had to submit a claim, which was just submitted last week. So we're well along in the job. I think we've marked it by discounting that claim significantly. So we believe we have it behind us, but it will likely evolve into, my guess is, litigation. So we'll take a protracted period to resolve similar to the issue we had a number of years ago that we actually had a pick up shortly before the IPO. So it will be a protracted solution, but the job is very well along at this point.

And then just on the operating cash guidance. Can you talk about kind of the moving parts there, obviously, a pretty meaningful reduction. And if you could just elaborate on the impact that the Edmonton consolidation has on that, if any?

Relative to the moving parts, you are correct, though obviously, there's an impact from the reduction in earnings guidance. There's also an impact relative to the project I described in our original plan, the legacy Critical Infrastructure reserve. We actually had in anticipation of receiving a milestone payment -- significant milestone payment in the back half of the year. Given the fact that, that will probably evolve into a litigation, we've taken that out of guidance. Those are the two big headline issues. Then in addition to that, we had a favorable resolution of a legal matter, which would result in a payment of $8 million over the second half of the year. So that's a deduct from the original guidance. The impact of Edmonton is around $5 million. It's not significant.

And then just on margins between the two segments. Can you just update us on maybe where you think both segments get to from a margin standpoint for the year? Just trying to understand kind of the impact of these two charges on go-forward margins. And do you still see getting to 10% at infrastructure next year?

So over the second half of the year, we're forecasting margins of around 9%, and that's pretty well balanced between both segments, so that will get us into the 8s by -- for the full year. And we still do believe that we can get to 10% margins across the entire portfolio, including Critical Infrastructure as we move ahead.

And Critical Infrastructure, but that, with reserve taken, would have been at 10% this quarter.

Our next question comes from Cai von Rumohr with Cowen.

So Carey, you mentioned significant leadership changes, and you mentioned the two, the HR and the communications. Are there any other leadership changes that we should know?

We've also strengthened our government relations team and that person has been hired and is on board. And we've put our Chief Risk Officer, as I mentioned, in charge of the program that we took the reserve on, and we're beefing up some of our operations. In addition, on the business development side, we've brought in some critical key strategic hires, particularly in space and cyber.

And then you had good bookings this quarter, and I think everybody has talked about delays. What are you seeing in terms of the bidding environment today? And what would we be looking for in terms of bookings and book-to-bill in this third quarter?

So the bid environment is very robust. I mentioned earlier, we did publicly announce our Air Base Air Defense win as well as our satellite prototype and integration win. That one was $139 million. The first one was $953 million. Both of those occurred right after the third quarter. This year, we will submit $22 billion of bids compared to $12 billion last year. Our pipeline is $33 billion, that split $18 billion in Federal, $15 billion in Critical Infrastructure. We have 90 opportunities that are greater than $100 million. So all that indicate, I'm quite excited about the bid opportunity in pipeline.

And one last one. George, you took your revenue guide down, when we see here, by 250 to 350. Maybe walk us through, 23 is the write-off, how big was the Edmonton in terms of revenues? And how big of the rest of that was split between FS and Critical Infrastructure?

So talking in terms of the midpoint, the first item I would cover off is the impact of BlackHorse, which is about $40 million. So then you're dealing with a delta of 340. The onetime issues are actually 26. It might have been a little bit on kind of went by in my prepared remarks, but the P&L impact was $15.4 million of the Critical Infrastructure reserve and over 19 and change. So the onetime impact is actually 26. Edmonton is only $30 million. It's not very significant. So the balance which is nominally $285 million is all related to volume.

And how is it split between the two segments?

60-40 Federal, Critical Infrastructure.

Our next question from Gavin Parsons with Goldman Sachs.

To be honest, I don't really fully understand the revenue declines. So I just would love a little more color there. And just the context on that is -- I appreciate the issues in hiring and funding delays. But is that also on programs that you're already executing on? Is that on new ramp-up wins? Just given the business is down 13% organically in 1Q and 2Q and in both segments. So are you not getting the growth you expected, which implies the core business is declining significantly? I would just love to hear your thoughts on that dynamic.

Yes. So it's basically looking at new ramp-ups and how quickly we feel that we can get the hiring on board. Some of the core business has declined. We had significant program completions that occurred this year, particularly on the Critical Infrastructure side of the business that we were offsetting with new business. We've received the new business, and we've got to get it staffed up and ramped up.

And I think the second half implies a lower number than you had in prior guidance. I mean how confident are you, you can actually kind of catch this up? And when do you think you catch this up? And do you need a -- when do you need to revisit your 2023 targets?

So 2021, the second half, we're confident that we will achieve those numbers. We've got quite a bit of momentum. Our CS win is starting to ramp up. We received the SPY award, which will add about additional 50 folks this year. Hidalgo is ramping up even further. We won that last year. It was a $300 million win. FAA program has restored to pre-COVID growth. The vehicle inspection and compliance program has restored to pre-COVID growth. The Middle East, I talked about a $91 million program management win, that is ramping up as we speak. And Texas 183 is another program we won in Critical Infrastructure and Giant Line. So we feel confident. And again, we have 4% growth projected over the first half without BlackHorse and the reserves.

Last one, just on book-to-bill. The 1.9 reported. If I calculate that on net change in backlog, it looks closer to 1.3. Did you have some debookings there?

Yes, we did, Gavin, probably around $550 million in total. The largest single component of that is a hair under $200 million related to the TEAMS contract, the incumbent contract that is concluding as we implement the recompete. Essentially, it was unexpended contract value that won't be burned before the new contract comes into play. Then in addition to that, there were a number of situations where due to fast approaching the end of the period of performance and just based upon burn rates, we felt it was prudent to reduce backlog for a number of programs. And that, frankly, is a byproduct of the softness on the top line in the second quarter.

Our next question comes from Ron Epstein with Bank of America.

This is actually Elizabeth on for Ron this morning. I was just wondering, now that you're in your new role, how are you thinking about the business differently than your predecessor? And where do you really see your primary focus areas coming out of the gate?

So first, I think Chuck and I were aligned on the strategy and where we've taken the company. I would say coming into the role where my focus is, is having top positions in high-growth markets in both of our segments. Those would be markets such as cyber, intelligence, C5ISR, missile defense and smart mobility. We're going to continue to drive integrated end-to-end solutions and lead with technology differentiation. This is what has really enabled us to be able to move up the value chain and be able to win larger jobs. We're focused on what I call people-first, which is having the right culture of agility, innovation, disruptiveness and obviously very focused on improving recruiting. And then we're going to be co-located as a leadership team in Centerville.

And then as you think about potential other M&A opportunities going forward, how are you thinking about, what you're comfortable with the leverage ratio? And I know you mentioned that tech is going to be your focused area, but what is sort of the pipeline looking like? Do you see a lot of potential opportunities out there or how you think…

We have a significant pipeline. We're really excited about the opportunities that we're seeing. We'll continue to stay on the technology path and the end-to-end solutions path. We've opened the aperture to federal civilian on the federal side, and we're also looking at technology-related critical infrastructure plays. But I think you continue to see us focus in areas that we have. Again, back on BlackHorse, that really differentiated us because the cyber electromagnetic conversions and information advantage is what's needed for the near-peer threats. From a leverage perspective, we would be comfortable at about 3x leverage. We're currently at 1.1 pro forma.

Our next question comes from Louie DiPalma with William Blair.

Carey, you mentioned program completions for both the Critical Infrastructure and Federal Solutions division. In terms of the guidance reduction, how much of a factor is the revenue pressure from the program completions? And I was wondering if you could quantify the contributions from program completions from the Critical Infrastructure side and the Federal Solutions side?

So the program completions were higher on the Critical Infrastructure side. Now it's a shorter cycle business than what you see on the Federal side. So that would be to be expected. Again, what we had hope to do was offset that with new business, but we just haven't gotten to ramp up as quick as we liked in the hiring as quick as we'd like. So that's where our focus is.

And for the Federal Solutions division, are you able to quantify like the magnitude of revenue that is trending off or has churned off and like has elected not to renew?

George?

It's not really a matter of electing not to renew it. So as Carey suggested, Louie, it's kind of the delta between work completing offset by work ramping up. And of the 285, I mentioned previously, 175 is inside of Federal, about 110 inside of Critical Infrastructure. So it's related to the net of those two activities as it relates to guidance. To answer your question, I think you were asking about what's the relative contribution margin on that? If you look at the walk on adjusted EBITDA, it's worth about $35 million.

And I do want to highlight also that we've had very high fee rates -- win rates approaching about 100%.

TEAMS being the obvious biggest one, which really puts us in a great position from stabilizing the book.

Going forward for 2021, we have 1.8% remaining. And if you look at 2022 and 2023, it's 5% and 6%, respectively. So we're really pleased that we've solidified our core base.

Our next question is the follow-up from Joseph DeNardi with Stifel.

Just following up on that last question, just so I understand. The runoff or the revenue pressure at the Federal business from work that's matured, does that end in second quarter? It looks like it continues at Critical Infrastructure, but is the headwind at Federal kind of over now or does that continue through the year?

We have one program that will continue and that was in our Engineered Systems group, it's called the Salt Waste Processing Facility, that's a program that completes in January of 2022.

And then Carey, I think last quarter, over the past couple of quarters, you all have talked about expecting to bid on, I think, $25 billion in contract value over the next year or so. Can you just update us where that number is now? You all have had a couple of pretty big awards over the past several months, some of those have involved a number of partners, I think. So I'm just trying to understand kind of how much of that $25 billion has been awarded and how much is yet to come?

So for the full year, we anticipate bidding $22 billion, and that's up from $12 billion last year. I think the last quarter, I said it was $24 billion. We did receive the significant Air Base Air Defense award since then.

And then maybe just on the infrastructure side, can you just provide us what kind of conversations you're having with customers there around, how they're going to handle higher infrastructure? And maybe any updated thoughts in terms of what you think all that means for your business?

So we're really excited about the Infrastructure Bill and the progress that was made this week in the Senate, and we're obviously closely monitoring that. The Infrastructure Bill would reflect $550 billion of new work, out of that $284 billion is in transportation, areas that we play; $110 billion as roads, bridges, highways; $66 billion is passenger and freight rail; $40 billion is public transit; $42 billion between airports and ports; and $11 billion for safety. Those are all Parsons' addressable markets. And then if you look at the other infrastructure in the $239 billion, there's about $105 billion that pertains to water infrastructure and western water resiliency. And again, Parsons plays there. So we think that's significant opportunity for us. I would highlight as well, we're not even dependent on the Infrastructure Bill. We're already seeing growth. Like if you look at California, they're 1 of 36 states that enacted a gas tax since 2010. So they've put in place a $54 billion program over 10 years. We're seeing similar growth in states like Illinois, Michigan and Missouri. Likewise, in Canada, Canada has a significant infrastructure plan. Quebec has upgraded to $8.5 billion. And then the Middle East as part of Saudi Vision 2030, they're investing heavily, and that's an example of the program management win that we had for a new industrial city there.

So when would you expect it to see additional awards kind of tied to the incremental funding that's coming from the infrastructure package?

So our estimate is six to nine months after the infrastructure package is approved, is when we would start to see funds flow.

That is all the time we have for questions today. I would now like to turn the call back to Dave Spille for closing remarks.

Thank you for joining us this morning. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to give me a call. We look forward to speaking with many of you over the coming weeks. And with that, we'll end today's call. Have a great day.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.