Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the ARCOSA, Inc. fourth quarter and full year 2024 earnings conference call. My name is Brittany, and I will be your conference call coordinator today. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. Now, I would like to turn the call over to your host, Erin Drabeck, Vice President of Investor Relations for ARCOSA. Ms. Drabeck, you may begin.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining ARCOSA's fourth quarter and full year 2024 earnings call. With me today are Antonio Carrillo, President and CEO, and Gail Peck, CFO. The question and answer session will follow their prepared remarks. A copy of the press release issued yesterday and the slide presentation for this morning's call are posted on our Investor Relations website, ir.arcosa.com. A replay of today's call will be available for the next two weeks. Instructions for accessing the replay number are included in the press release. A replay of the webcast will be available for one year on our website under the News and Events tab. Today's comments and presentation slides contain financial measures that have not been prepared in accordance with GAAP. Reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures to the closest GAAP measure are included in the appendix of the slide presentation. In addition, today's conference call contains forward-looking statements as defined by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from such forward-looking statements. Please refer to the company's SEC filings for more information on these risks and uncertainties, including the press release we filed yesterday and our Form 10-K, expected to be filed later today. I would now like to turn the call over to Antonio.

Thank you, Erin. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for a discussion on our fourth quarter and full year 2024 results and our outlook for 2025. I am pleased with the strong financial results we delivered in both the fourth quarter and full year. Let me start with a few key highlights on page four. First, in a word, 2024 was about transformation. It was a A pivotal year for our co-sales, we successfully executed on our strategy of optimizing our portfolio by expanding our growth businesses while reducing our overall complexity and cyclicality. Next, we delivered double-digit organic growth, which underscores the strength of our infrastructure-led portfolio. Third, significant margin expansion was driven by a balanced contribution from higher margin businesses we acquired and organic improvements, helped in part by the divestiture of non-core assets and other initiatives we have undertaken over the past few years and finally we generated robust free cash flow which demonstrates our commitment to reducing leverage in 2025 and sets up our cost of our continued growth in 2026 and beyond please turn to slide seven there were a number of important strategic initiatives that drove our performance the acquisition of stavola was game-changing for our construction materials business expanding our aggregate footprint into the nation's largest MSA with increased exposure to less cyclical infrastructure-led markets. The acquisition of Ameron earlier in the year established our foothold in the attractive lighting poles and traffic signals markets, complementing our existing product offerings within engineer structures. Both Stavola and Ameron are contributing positively to margin expansion. We also progressed on several important organic initiatives, which include in utility structures, the production ramp up in our new concrete pole plant in Florida. Also, we produced our first towers from our new wind tower facility in New Mexico, which we expect will have a positive impact on margins in 2025. In our construction materials business, we fully ramped up our greenfield aggregates operation in Texas and our specialty plaster expansion in Oklahoma. We also started several recycled aggregate facilities adjacent to our current operational footprint. These organic projects together with Stavola and Ameron will support our growth in 2025 and beyond. On the divestiture side, during 2024 we continued to simplify our portfolio by completing the sale of the steel components business. Also during the year we focused on pruning underperforming assets resulting in the sale of a subscale asphalt operation and the closure of some small aggregate locations which were not in our strategic geographies. Today, we're a larger, more resilient, less cyclical company with construction products accounting for about 62% of our adjusted EBITDA, nearly double the one-third it contributed in 2018. Please turn to slide nine. Consistently executing against our strategy of combining solid organic investments with discipline acquisitions and portfolio optimization combined to deliver record full-year revenues adjusted EBITDA and margin in 2024. Equally important, full-year 2024 EBITDA growth, normalizing forest steel components divestiture and the large land sale gain in 2023, was split evenly between organic and inorganic drivers, underscoring the strength of our core business. In the fourth quarter, we saw significant adjusted EBITDA growth, margin expanded by 408 points, excluding the impact of steel components. Stavola performed well during our first quarter of ownership, adding a creative EBITDA contribution. We finished the year strong with fourth quarter free cash flow of nearly $200 million, enabling the full repayment of our revolver, resulting in net leverage of 2.9 times. As a reminder, we intend to return to our long-term leverage target of two to two and a half times within 18 months of the closing of Stavola. Thus far, we're making excellent progress and we'll continue to prioritize debt repayment and finishing the organic projects we have underway to prepare the balance sheet for continued growth. Overall, I'm extremely proud of our accomplishments in 2024. I will now turn the call over to Gail to discuss our fourth quarter segment results in more Thank you, Antonio, and good morning, everyone.

I'll begin with construction products on slide 11. fourth quarter segment revenues increased 31% while adjusted segment EBITDA grew 52% resulting in 370 basis points of margin expansion the segment performance was largely attributable to the accretive impacts of Stavola which contributed 25% of segment revenues 34% of adjusted segment EBITDA and 290 basis points of segment margin expansion in the quarter the integration of Stavola is progressing well, and fourth-quarter financial results were in line with our overall expectations. On an organic basis, segment revenues declined 4%, primarily due to lower freight revenue, which is a pass-through, and the divestiture of underperforming operations earlier in the year. This decrease was partially offset by strong pricing gains across our aggregate and specialty materials businesses. Although adjusted segment EBITDA on an organic basis declined roughly 3%, organic margin improved 20 basis points year over year. Turning to our aggregates business, which includes both natural and recycled aggregates, average organic pricing was up low double digits from the prior year. Total fourth quarter volume was up mid-single digits due to the contribution of Stavola, while organic volume decreased due to our focused strategy on pricing, a higher number of heavy rainfall days, and the closure of our West Texas aggregates operations earlier in the year. Strong organic pricing, lower fuel costs, and actions to optimize operations resulted in mid-teen organic unit profitability gains and drove 50 basis points of segment margin expansion during the quarter. For the full year, pricing grew approximately 10%, and volumes decreased roughly 8% on an organic basis. Total volume, inclusive of acquisitions, was about flat for the year, with pricing growth similar to the organic showing. Within specialty materials, revenues were roughly flat as strong pricing gains were mostly offset by lower freight revenue. Adjusted EBITDA for the business declined compared to the prior year quarter, primarily due to planned downtime at one of our lightweight aggregate facilities for a required equipment upgrade. This work has been completed and operations returned to normal in January. Finally, revenues and adjusted EBITDA for our trench shoring business were roughly flat, and adjusted EBITDA margin for the business was slightly diluted to the segment primarily due to product mix in the quarter. Moving to engineered structures on slide 12, revenues for our utility, wind and related structures businesses increased 11% largely due to higher wind tower volumes and the inorganic impact from Ameron, which was acquired last April. Revenues in our utility structures business declined in the quarter due to reduced steel prices, which impacted average selling prices, and lower volumes. Adjusted segment EBITDA increased 41% and margins expanded 380 basis points. The segment growth was predominantly organic, resulting from the ramp in our new wind tower facility in New Mexico, which was accretive to the segment in the quarter, and favorable product mix and operating improvements in our utility structures business. This growth was enhanced by the positive contribution from Ameron. We ended the year with combined backlog for utility wind and related structures of $1.2 billion and expected deliver 64% during 2025. Turning to transportation products on slide 13, revenues were up 28% and adjusted segment EBITDA doubled, excluding steel components from the prior year period. Higher tank barge volumes and improved plant efficiencies resulted in almost 700 basis points of margin improvement year-over-year for the barge business. We received barge orders of $128 million during the quarter, representing a book-to-bill of 1.4. We ended the year with a backlog of $280 million, up 10% year-over-year. I'll now provide some comments on our strong cash flow and improved balance sheet position, as shown on slide 15. During the quarter, we generated $248 million of operating cash flow, up from $62 million in last year's fourth quarter. The increase was largely driven by a $180 million reduction in working capital due to lower receivables and increased advanced billings, primarily for our wind tower and barge businesses. During the quarter, we sold $45 million of 2024 AMP wind tower tax credits, which contributed to the decrease in receivables. The credits were sold at a small discount, resulting in a $3 million reduction to fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA. CapEx for the fourth quarter was $53 million, down $6 million from the prior period. This translated to $199 million of free cash flow for the quarter, which we used to fully repay our revolver. For the full year, free cash flow was $330 million, up from $94 million last year. We are pleased to end the year with net debt to adjusted EBITDA of 2.9 times, down from 3.4 times at the start of the quarter. we are being disciplined with respect to capital deployment, prioritizing debt reduction in the near term. For full year 2025, we expect CapEx of between $145 million to $165 million, down from $190 million in 2024, as we predominantly invest for maintenance needs across our portfolio and finish growth projects in plight. We anticipate additional deleveraging during the second half of the year. I'll wrap up with a few final comments for modeling purposes. It is important to highlight that Stavola, whose operations are located in the Northeast, brings more seasonality to our portfolio. Stavola is roughly a break-even business in the first quarter and seasonally strongest in the second and third quarters. While Stavola is accretive to construction product segment for the full year, we expect their operations to dilute adjusted segment EBITDA margin by approximately 200 basis points in the first quarter. In the fourth quarter of 2024, depreciation, depletion, and amortization expense increased approximately 50% year-over-year, primarily due to recent acquisition activity, including the required fair value markup for long-lived assets. For full year 2025, we expect depreciation, depletion and amortization expense to range from 230 to 235 million dollars for 2025 we expect a more normalized effective tax rate of 19 to 20 percent and last we see corporate expenses of approximately 60 million dollars up about three and a half percent year over year i will now turn the call back over to antonio for more discussion on our 2025 outlook thank you gail the actions we took in 2024 position as well as we entered 2025.

Arcos is a company focused on growing in the U.S. market, which is supported by attractive long-term infrastructure-led investment. Of the over 140 locations Arcos operates, only one mine is in Canada and two manufacturing plants are in Mexico. Everything else is in the U.S. Almost every steel product we make, even in Mexico, is made with U.S. melted and rolled steel. So we believe the company is well prepared against the current trade and tariff uncertainties. However, there are many unknowns surrounding the trade policies that are being discussed and the risk of potential retaliatory impacts, including by Mexico. So we will be watching developments closely and making the adjustments needed as the details come out. We're also optimistic about the potential impact of reduced regulation could have in many of our markets. Like with trade, it's too early to estimate any future benefit but if any in many of our markets heavy regulatory burdens are bottlenecks for infrastructure growth the 2025 guidance that i'll review in a moment does not incorporate any impacts from potential regulatory changes either positive or negative turning to our outlook on slide 17. we expect growth to come from four different sources in 2025. first our growth businesses construction materials and utility and related structures enter the year with solid underlying demand fundamentals. Second, the backlogs in our cyclical businesses, barge and wind towers, support solid growth for 2025. Third, several organic projects we finished in 2024 should contribute positively to our results in 2025. And finally, the important acquisitions we did last year should bring solid growth for the company this year. For 2025, we anticipate revenues to be in the range of $2.8 to $3 billion and adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of 545 to 595 million, which implies 30% growth at the midpoint. Our guidance incorporates double-digit organic and inorganic growth, with a slightly higher weight to inorganic as we benefit from nine additional months of Stavola in 2025. Please turn to slide 18 for a discussion on our business outlook by segment. In construction products, our outlook is positive. We expect increased spending on infrastructure, AI, data centers, as well as a continuation of heavy manufacturing investment in selected markets. Additionally, we're optimistic about regarding a possible recovery in the single-family housing sector later in the year. Our commercial strategy is a balance between growing volume and pricing initiatives. For 2025, we anticipate strong double-digit increasing volumes in our aggregates business benefiting from Stavola. With respect to aggregates pricing, we expect mid-single-digit price increases in 2025. As we start the year, we are very well set up given last year's pricing actions, and we expect additional pricing opportunities during 2025. For the full year, we expect significant adjusted EBITDA growth in the construction segment stinging from Stavola and high single-digit organic growth. Margin expansion will be led by the accretive impact of Stavola, as well as solid organic contribution from higher unit profitability cold and wet weather has impacted operations in january and february not unusually in our season in lowest quarter but creating a slow start to the year as a result year over year growth for the segment is more weighted towards the second and third quarters moving to engineer structures grid hardening initiatives increased electrification data center growth and connecting renewable energy to the grid continue to drive healthy demand Road infrastructure spending continues to support our traffic structures business and a return to more normalized carrier spending should positively impact our telecom business. With a more favorable customer mix in the backlog and the accretive impact of Ameron, we expect double-digit adjusted EBITDA growth and solid margin expansion for our utility structures and related businesses. For wind towers, our backlog supports another year of significant and growth driven by the production ramp-up in the New Mexico facility. Our guidance assumes we sell 2025 AMP tax credits at a small discount, which is slightly diluted to the segment margin, but will accelerate our deleveraging. We continue discussions with our customers about additional orders for wind towers in 2026 and beyond. We remain confident that further investment in wind energy is needed to meet the load growth demand in the U.S. As we have discussed in the past, this is not a business that receives orders every quarter. Our customers have historically placed large multi-year, multi-plant orders with us when they have good visibility on projects. Therefore, we expect that as the year goes by and the regulatory environment impacting the wind industry becomes more clear, we will be able to have constructive conversations with our customers. What's important to remember is that the current backlog provides good visibility for 2025, so we have time for the regulatory environment to settle down. Last in transportation products, the inland river barge fleet has experienced underinvestment over the past several years. As a result, the fleet is aging, creating pent-up replacement needs. Our current backlog of 280 million at the end of the year has us well positioned for 2025. On hopper barges, we have backlogs through the third quarter. On tank barges, were sold out for 2025, and with some additional loaders booked since the end of the quarter, at the current production rate, our delivery time for a new tank barge order goes deep into 2026. It is important to mention that customer inquiries continue to be strong, especially for tank barges. With steel tariffs as a possibility on the horizon, the message we're giving our customers is that steel prices will probably go up, so continuing to wait to replace an aging fleet will get more expensive over time. For our barge business, we expect that adjusted EBITDA growth will be more half-weighted as we go through some product mixed headwinds in the first part of the year. In closing, even though there is some short-term regulatory uncertainty, we believe our cost is well-positioned for continued growth, and I'm excited about what we're seeing for 2025 and beyond. I want to thank all our employees and tell them how proud I am of what they accomplished in 2024. We're now ready to answer your question.

At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press the star and one on your telephone keypad. You may remove yourself from the queue at any time by pressing star two. Once again, that is star and one if you would like to ask a question. We'll take our first question from Ian Zafino with Oppenheimer. Your line is now open.

Hi, great. Thank you very much, and thanks for all the callers. Appreciate that. Good morning, Ian. The question would be on steel components. How much did the decline in steel prices impact revenues? And then maybe help us understand the volume decline. What drove that? Thanks.

Good morning, Ian. This is Gail. And I'm assuming you're referring to the steel-related impacts on our engineered structures segment as it relates to revenue?

I'm in steel in engineering. Sorry about that.

Sure, sure. I would say, you know, yes, we did for the full year, and really that came in the fourth quarter, we did miss our revenue guidance. We were about $25 million below the midpoint. And I would attribute that mostly to the engineered structures, and I would attribute that mostly to steel. We did see a little bit of revenue miss in construction, maybe to the tune of $5 million or so as volumes were impacted by a little bit by weather. But predominantly, the revenue miss was on the steel price side. I would say, you know, not quite a 10% decline year-over-year for transmission revenues, but I would certainly say high single-digit impact for steel prices. And, you know, we had a little bit of slowness around the border at year-end. No surprise there. That impacted revenue, but I would attribute it to the steel price.

And, Ian, I'll just give a little more color. The structures we build, they range from a very small distribution pole to very, very large transmission towers. And when you measure volume, it's hard to compare a small tower to a big tower. So sometimes you will see this volatility in volumes as the production mix changes. And there's also not only size, but the complexity of each one. So it's normal to have some volatility on the volume side.

And just to be clear, that decline in steel prices is pretty much 100% pass-through. So there's really no profit impact. And then if I was just to add another question, I'm just on general and steel. So are you seeing any type of like pre-buy activity, you know, maybe concern that steel prices might go up and then maybe they could lock in now or build something now at a lower steel price? Thanks.

I'll give you, yes. So depending on the business, we have two types of businesses on steel. One, where we have a full pass-through with some delayed. So the transmission industry is one of them where we have pricing agreements, and if the price remains in a relatively, let's say, closed band, there's no adjustment. But once the price moves, you pass it through down or up. So what you saw when price goes down, you will see our margin increase because it's basically a pass-through. And that's what you saw in the fourth quarter. On the pre-buy, there's other businesses like barge and wind, where we have specific pricing agreements with the steel mills for specific products, and then there's no volatility on steel prices. That's both barge and wind work like that. On the pre-buy, we have seen additional, let's say, demand specifically for barges. I mentioned in my comments that we sold some additional barges, tank barges, and now our delivery time is deep into 2026. And that comes from some people saying, well, they still might go up. Let me take my orders right now. But it's not something that we expect to continue because it's not easy to get fixed prices right now with all the expectations of still going up.

Okay. Thank you very much for the color.

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Trey Grooms with Stevens. Your line is now open.

Hey, good morning, everyone. This is Ethan on for Trey. Thanks for taking the question. I just wanted to elaborate quickly on the wind outlook. What are you hearing from customers? Curious on how the current administration has impacted customer sentiment.

And we know previously you pointed to 2026 as being the year where wind kind of really picks up i'm just curious if that's still the case you know what we're hearing from customers is that the demand for for renewables specifically for wind is still there i would say that the the sentiment continues to be very optimistic and the reason behind it is you know the load growth in the u.s the demand for energy in the U.S. is growing. And the debate can be whether data centers will contribute 2% or 10% in five years or in 10 years. That's a little irrelevant. What's important, any growth will significantly increase the need for power. And if you order a gas turbine right now, you're in 2030 receiving it if you're not in the queue already. So the need for wind is there. I think we just need some additional clarity. And if you think about what's happening, if you look at the total wind installations in 2025, 2026, I think what we are seeing from customers is that they expect a relatively flat year in 26. And what we've mentioned is, no, when the growth comes, we should receive orders for additional growth in 20. Probably we expected it initially at the end of this year. Let's see where the regulatory environment ends. But I think we have the backlog to support our production this year. We have backlog in another facility that supports it for several years. So I think we're in good shape to wait and see where the regulatory environment ends up. What's important is the demand is there for wind. And we have the backlog to stay focused this year and generate strong growth.

Okay, awesome. Yeah, that's really encouraging. And then secondly, just switching gears to construction products, just curious on your outlook. You gave some good end market commentary, and the mid-single digits on pricing was really helpful. Just curious on how you're thinking about unit profitability in 2025 and how that might compare to 2024. And similarly, within the guidance you mentioned, a certain portion being tied of the implied EBITDA increase within the 2025 guidance, a certain portion of that to be tied to organic growth. So just wondering which segments you're thinking about that that might be most heavily concentrated towards.

This is Gail. I'll take that. Yeah, as we think about 25, and we said in our comments, overall we're looking at 30% EBITDA growth at the midpoint, outpacing the team's revenue growth, so strong margin growth expected for 25 in total. And we did say that that growth was split 40% organic and 60% inorganic, and that inorganic piece is primarily Stavola. We do benefit from another quarter of Ameron that we didn't have last year, but that's primarily Stavola. And so to your question on the 40% organic side, we see about 15% of that growth coming from the construction product segment. So as Antonio said in his script, you know, about high single-digit organic growth for the construction segment, we said mid-single-digit on price, so we're expecting to price ahead of inflation, and so we expect unit profitability gains on an organic basis within construction products. The other big slice of that organic growth is going to be coming from the engineered structure segment. I'd say about 20 percent of the overall growth is coming from engineered structures. Again, I think we gave some pretty good commentary in the scripts. We expect double digit adjusted EBITDA growth in utility structures and significant growth within wind tower, you know, and you heard Antonio just saying based on the strong visibility that we have in that business for 2025. And then, you know, the last piece of the organic growth will come from the barge business. That's our remaining business within the transportation product segment. And that's about 5% of the overall growth for the company.

Got it. That's super helpful. Thank you so much for the color. I'll pass it on.

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Garrick Schmois with Lube Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Hi, thank you. Just wanted to follow up on construction products. I was hoping you could provide some more color on what you're expecting for volumes, recognizing you're coming off of a softer year in 24. You've had some weather delays, both in the fourth quarter and in the start of this year. You know, just wondering how you're thinking more on an organic basis, how you expect construction products and specifically aggregates demand to progress this year.

Yeah, I'll take that. Good morning, Garrick. We, you know, as we said in the script, we see strong double-digit growth on a total basis for volumes within construction. I'd say from an organic basis, not too dissimilar from some of our larger peers, kind of flattish to maybe slightly up on an organic basis from a volume perspective in 2025. And, you know, as it relates to the quarter, for the fourth quarter where we exited the year, we did have some, you know, some heavy rainfall days. I wouldn't say the weather was a complete deterrent for the quarter by any means, but we did have some, you know, in the Dallas area, along the coast, in the Tennessee area, we had some heavy rainfall days, not only the number of days, but the quantity of rain So that did impact volumes in the fourth quarter. So on an organic basis, we did see volumes exiting the year down on a year-over-year basis. Okay. that's not to maybe just to add one more point that shouldn't be lost because i know you've listened to a lot of materials calls by now january and february were a little weak um from just purely cold and wet weather um so we're not it's not unusual in the first quarter but a little bit of a slower start with with some of the weather here um in january and february but that's the slattish to slightly up organic volume um outlook for the year yeah and that message has certainly been conveyed uh by others i wanted to follow up just on uh capex it looks

like it's taking a step down uh this year just wanted to to confirm that to 145 to 165. and then also um you know i think in the prepared remarks you talked about you know some projects that you wrapped up in 24 you expect them to contribute uh in 25 you know just wondering if uh you could go into a little bit more detail uh around those projects and you know the level of uh earnings contribution or accretion you expect uh this year uh from from the capital projects uh yeah i'll take that so so let me starting with the capex yes we're stepping down as as we mentioned since

we bought Stavola we were focusing on delivering so what we're cutting is not maintenance capex is the growth capex we do have some growth capex but it's really to finish projects that we have underway on a few small things and when we bought Stavola we said we felt very good about increasing our leverage at that time because we were finishing all these organic projects that were going to help us in 2026 and in my remarks i mentioned we expect growth from four different areas we expect growth from our growth businesses engineer structures and and construction growth from from our cyclical businesses because of the backlog wind and and barge we expect the growth from these organic projects that we built last last few years and they should start contributing and finally the acquisitions on the organic projects i also mentioned in my prepared remarks you know the concrete pole factory will be built in in florida and that's it though that that that that product has margin similar to our the rest of the of the um portfolio so it's it's the margin probably will be relatively flat to the to the business but it will be a but it will be increased the evita for the for the for the segment the winter plant that's ramping up as mentioned gail in her remark is being accreted to the segment. So as we ramp up the plant in New Mexico, that should help us increase the margin in engineered structures. We mentioned a few other small projects. We ramped up a small plant in aggregate that has similar margins than the rest of the business. And a few small, the plaster plant that was going to be now fully operational. It's doing very well in Oklahoma. The margins on that one is a little lower than the segment margin, but it's very, very accretive to specialty materials. Finally, the small recycled aggregates plants that we started last year are also accretive to margins. I think it's a good mix of a lot of projects that we invested over the last couple of years and now it's time to prove that they were good and start getting the returns while we deliver.

Sounds good. I appreciate all the color. Nice quarter and best of luck. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Julio Romero with Sidoti and Company. Your line is now open.

Good morning. This is Justin on for Julio. Thank you for taking questions.

Morning.

So on So on Stavola, you mentioned the seasonality impact on Stavola performance expected. So I guess, do you expect the organic recycled aggregate facilities to help offset the seasonality? And how might these facilities contribute to overall performance in the first half of 2025?

Well, the recycled facilities we have are, you know, if the recycled facilities are in the northeast, is they will have similar seasonality as natural aggregates. What happens is that the weather really shuts down construction, and that's where the seasonality comes from. So, no, I don't expect our recycled facilities to offset Stavola. They would have similar seasonality in the region.

And maybe just to add on to that, we did say in the prepared marks that we do expect a 200 basis point headwind from Stavola in the first quarter, as they are a, you know, essentially a break-even operation, you know, contributing some revenue, but a break-even operation in the first quarter.

Great. Thanks for the color there. And then on guidance, we saw the updated depreciation, depletion, and amortization expense guide of $230 to $235 million is meaningfully higher than our expectations. So, how much of this increase is directly attributable to Stavola, and how should we consider this as the normal run rate when modeling for 2026 and beyond?

Yeah, that's a good question. That's why we wanted to be very clear on our expectations, because there is a change there, and I would attribute that really predominantly to the step-up related to Stavola, And you saw that in the fourth quarter as well of 2024 with a 50% increase in that expense line item. And that really is the write-up in the fixed assets, you know, most notably their reserves. And that is what drives our depletion expense. So I would consider that a fairly normalized run rate on a go-forward basis.

Great. Thank you. That's all for me.

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Jean Belize with DA Davidson. Your line is now open.

Thank you so much for the time. Regarding barge, could you talk about what kind of feedback you're receiving from customers when you let them know about the possibility of sealed prices and therefore the barge prices to go up?

You know, I would – very different circumstances in bank and in hopper barges. Let me start with hopper. I think Hopper is more sensitive to price, and I think people are still thinking that prices are coming down, so they're a little more, let's say, concerned about still price increases. On the tank bar side, when you look at the customer mix, for two things. On the tank barge, there's a lot more regulation involved on their certification by Coast Guard, et cetera. So they have less flexibility on how much they can let the barges age and the quality of the barges and the state of the barge that they are operating. So they have less options. Of course, there's always a concern about steel prices. But I think a lot of customers, what they're watching now, especially on the tank barge side, when you look at the amount of barges that need to be replaced over the next five years, both hoppers and tank, and you look at the production capacity that the industry players, the barge manufacturers have right now, if they don't start ordering a lot of barges right now, it's going to be a problem getting the capacity up. And when I talk to customers, I sense concern about whether there's going to be capacity to supply all these barges that need to be replaced. So I think that's what you're seeing in our barge backlog, that some people are trying to anticipate that. I think the hopper people have not taken that step. But at some point, when you look at the amount of barges that need to be replaced, there's a limit of how much you can wait. So, as I mentioned in my remarks, waiting to see if steel prices come down, especially with the tariff threat right now, it's not a very wise option, but of course, I don't buy barges.

Thank you. And pivoting to the construction products, could you provide a little more color for the sort of growth you see in specialty materials relative to your natural and recycled aggregates operations?

Yeah, so in specialty materials, I would say that the demand is a little more weighted towards infrastructure on the lightweight aggregates. It's a lot more infrastructure-driven than our natural aggregates. We have a higher mix of infrastructure projects. On the specialty material side, I mentioned we finished our plaster plant, which is mainly geared toward multifamily housing, and it's doing very, very well. The plant is basically at full capacity, running very well with very good margins, meeting the expectations we had when we invested the money to expand it. So overall, we expect solid growth in our specialty materials coming from that expansion and the other products they have. And specialty materials, you know, I think, as I said, it's more focused on infrastructure. So, you know, we're very bullish on infrastructure spending in the U.S., so it should do very well.

All right. And if I could squeeze one more. Within engineering structures, and I apologize if you already went over this, but can you talk about why utility and related structure volumes were lower in the fourth quarter?

Yeah, I mentioned a couple of things. And Gail mentioned from the sale side, on the revenue side, it was mostly steel. There were some issues at the end of the year in the border, which slowed our production a little bit. But I also mentioned that the production mix, the product mix that we go through, we make very small poles and very large poles, very simple and very complex. And it's not abnormal to see volatility in the volume because of the size and the complexity of the pole. So there was nothing special that happened. It's just, I think, it's normal volatility based on product mix.

I appreciate the comment. Thank you so much for the time. Thank you.

We have no further questions in the queue. I'll turn the program back over to Erin Draybeck for closing remarks.

Thank you for joining our COSA this morning for our fourth quarter and full year update, and we look forward to providing you another update in our first quarter call.

Thank you. This does conclude today's program. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at any time, and have a wonderful time.