Earnings Call Transcript - BV Q2 2025

Operator, Operator

Good day, everyone, and welcome to today's BrightView Earnings Call. Please note, this call may be recorded. It is now my pleasure to turn the conference over to Mr. Chris Stoczko, Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Chris Stoczko, Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations

Good morning, and thank you for joining BrightView's Second Quarter Earnings Call. Dale Asplund, BrightView's President and Chief Executive Officer; and Brett Urban, Chief Financial Officer, are on the call. I will now refer you to Slides 2 and 3 of the presentation, which can also be found on our website and contains our safe harbor disclaimer. Our presentation includes forward-looking statements subject to risks and uncertainties. In addition, during the call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please see our press release and 8-K issued yesterday for a reconciliation of these measures. With that, I will now turn the call over to Dale.

Dale Asplund, President and CEO

Thank you, Chris, and good morning, everyone. Starting on Slide 5. We're off to a very strong start in fiscal 2025, in fact, a record for both Q2 and year-to-date adjusted EBITDA. As we continue to transform this business, we believe our resilient business model and momentum in key underlying metrics has us well positioned to deliver another record year of adjusted EBITDA while continuing to reinvest in our business to support long-term profitable growth. As a result, we are raising our full year guidance on adjusted EBITDA, margins, and free cash flow. None of this would be possible without the unwavering focus of our approximately 20,000 team members, who deliver best-in-class service to our customers on a daily basis. Our outlook, both near and long-term, is underpinned by the multiple initiatives underway, which we outlined in detail during our Investor Day back in February. These initiatives continue to be our North Star and are the key to delivering long-term sustainable profitable growth and creating meaningful shareholder value. I want to make it clear, while we've come such a long way, we are still early in our transformation and have only just begun to unlock some of the significant opportunities that lie ahead of us to drive this business forward, both near and long-term. As I've said from day one, this all begins with prioritizing our employees so they feel valued and are proud of the company they work for. We've reinvested into areas like consistent service hours, safety, refreshing our fleet, and launching a frontline paid time-off program, which I'll unpack in a minute, all of which continue to lead to reduced turnover and higher tenure. This translates into taking better care of our customers as we continue to see the momentum build across areas like customer retention and development-to-maintenance conversion, both key growth levers. It's simple: the happier our employees are, the better care they take of our customers and the more likely they are to partner with us long-term. On top of positioning ourselves as both the employer and service provider of choice, we have significant untapped opportunities to better leverage our size and scale as the number one player in the commercial landscape industry. We continue to progress on our fleet and procurement initiatives while centralizing key support functions and reinvesting into technology, which enables our branches to focus on their employees, customers, and growth. Executing on these initiatives while strategically deploying our capital to support long-term profitable growth will further differentiate us from our competitors and ultimately position us as the investment of choice. Given all the macroeconomic dynamics, I'd like to remind everybody of how well our business is positioned against these uncertainties. At the core of our business is a resilient diversified customer base largely with recurring revenue. Complementing this is our development business with a strong backlog, which presents future recurring maintenance conversion opportunities. Turning to labor, we believe we are the only national company in our industry with an E-Verified workforce, which is a significant competitive advantage. We have seen another quarter of improved frontline turnover. And because of that, our hiring and training needs continue to decrease. Our business is well positioned against inflationary dynamics. In both our maintenance and development segments, our pricing strategy mitigates against inflation of both commodities and wages. Additionally, 80% of our debt and a portion of our annual fuel consumption are hedged. Regarding tariffs and trade, we believe our business is largely insulated, but it's a fluid situation that changes daily and can take months to unfold. While there's a lot of uncertainty in the macro backdrop, we believe we are very well positioned due to our resilient business model and remain focused on executing our strategy. We continue to see sequential improvement in both frontline turnover and customer retention. This all starts with prioritizing and investing in our most important asset: our people. Another example of this is the launch of our paid time off program for our frontline team members, which will raise the bar for the industry standard and further set us apart from our competitors. Making sure all team members can spend time taking care of their families is an important part of our One BrightView culture. Additionally, customer retention rates continue to trend in the right direction, increasing 170 basis points on a trailing 12-month basis. We know that improved employee turnover drives higher customer retention and are encouraged by the improvement in these metrics as we position ourselves as a service provider of choice. As we look ahead, I'd like to remind everyone of our simple winning formula: prioritize our frontline employees, which drives lower employee turnover, leading to improved customer retention and ultimately resulting in larger, more profitable branches. While we are still early in our transformation, I am more confident than ever that our winning formula is in motion and is key to driving long-term profitable growth and meaningful shareholder value.

Brett Urban, CFO

Thank you, Dale, and good morning, everyone. Before I start with my prepared remarks, I share Dale's conviction, energy, and enthusiasm in our transformation. We remain disciplined in executing our strategy and managing our business for the long term. Total revenue for the second quarter was $663 million, which is an increase of approximately 3% when adjusting for the unwinding of BES and the sale of US Lawns in the prior year. As a reminder, this is the last quarter we will back out the results from these two non-core assets. We remain optimistic that we will return to land growth in the near term and remain highly encouraged by the underlying trends in our land business, notably the improvements in both employee turnover and customer retention, as Dale outlined earlier. Core snow in the quarter increased $22 million or 15% driven mainly by increased snowfall in our East Coast markets. Total snow is approximately flat when considering the unwind of the BES business last year. Revenue increased 5% in the development business as a result of the ongoing conversion of our high-quality backlog. As we continue to further align our One BrightView culture, we remain highly encouraged by the momentum in our conversion rates as this serves as one of the many levers that will contribute to sustainable top-line land growth. Approximately 60% of our revenue is extremely resilient and predictable, underpinned by our recurring contract revenue and a portion of our ancillary work. We also have price and scope flexibility, which gives us the ability to work with our customers to ensure we meet their needs while also covering any inflationary pressure. The more discretionary piece of our business is a portion of our ancillary revenue, which represents approximately 10% of our total revenue, excluding snow, of which we have already recognized roughly one-third through the first half of fiscal '25. Given our resilient revenue mix, we feel extremely confident that we will deliver results within our guidance ranges despite macro uncertainties. We delivered record total adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter of $73.5 million, an increase of $8.6 million, an impressive 13% higher versus the prior year period. Adjusted EBITDA margins of 11.1% were also a Q2 record and expanded by 150 basis points, marking another consecutive quarter of year-over-year margin expansion on a company-wide basis as we continue to transform this business for the long term. The adjusted EBITDA margin in our maintenance segment expanded 60 basis points driven by a more streamlined operating structure and the added benefit from core snow, partially offset by our reinvestments and prioritization of our frontline team members. In the development segment, adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter was $17.1 million, representing a record Q2 for this segment. The adjusted EBITDA margin expanded 410 basis points, driven by continued success in converting our high-quality backlog and further cost efficiencies from operating as One BrightView. Overall, we feel extremely confident that we will continue to deliver strong results while continuing to invest in key areas of the business. Our capital allocation strategy emphasizes rebounding through disciplined and strategic investments, which will further enhance our capability to drive sustained growth.

Dale Asplund, President and CEO

As I reflect on my first 18 months, I am so proud of how far we've come and even more encouraged than ever in how much opportunity we still have ahead. Our One BrightView culture is resonating, and our focus on becoming the employer and service provider of choice has made significant strides. Coupled with our focus on unlocking size and scale and allocating our capital strategically, we will position ourselves as the investment of choice.

Operator, Operator

We'll go first this morning to Greg Palm of Craig-Hallum Capital Group.

Greg Palm, Analyst

Congrats on the results here.

Dale Asplund, President and CEO

Thanks, Greg.

Greg Palm, Analyst

It's been a while since we've been talking about a positive impact from snow, but it looks like that's kind of what drove a big portion of the revenue upside in the quarter. I guess the question is, did this take away some of the expected revenue from core land? Maybe unpack this if you can help us out with that.

Dale Asplund, President and CEO

Yes. Thanks, Greg. Good question. We made a commitment that our message behind snow is going to be only good news from snow. So I think in our guidance this year that we issued earlier, we set realistic ranges and we didn't need it to snow a lot. Where we saw some snow, it created some positive momentum. In fact, we're down here doing this call from our Destin branch in Florida, and we actually saw up to 6 inches of snow in this market as well. So it's snow in areas, Greg, that it doesn't typically snow. But let me let Brett unpack it a little bit because snow did impact, but it wasn't the only driver of all the improvements we've seen.

Brett Urban, CFO

Yes, Greg, that's a great question. On page 10 of the presentation, you'll see that we experienced a $22 million increase in core snowfall. This primarily affected the East Coast markets, stretching from Boston down to the Carolinas and even into Florida. The snowfall on the ground, particularly in the Carolinas, limited our ability to develop land, resulting in about a 2% impact on our land business for the quarter, which equates to approximately $6 million. This marks our fifth consecutive quarter of improvement in core land, dating back to last Q1 through this second quarter, where we've noticed the overall land shrink continues to decrease when normalizing for the impact of snow.

Greg Palm, Analyst

Okay. Yes, perfect. That's what I was looking at. And then secondly, you announced this buyback. It looks like you already repurchased some stock in the quarter. How aggressive do you expect to be? I mean as it relates to M&A, is it more attractive to buy your own stock back at these levels versus M&A? What are your thoughts there?

Dale Asplund, President and CEO

Yes, I'll begin and then let Brett provide the details. We included our activity in the appendix of the deck we shared. We launched the program in mid-March, and in the last 11 days of March, we bought approximately $1.7 million worth of stock at an average price of $13.11. If our stock continues to trade at these significantly undervalued levels, we will remain proactive in buying back our shares. Regarding M&A, we understand the value of this company, as we demonstrated during our Investor Day in February. We have a plan for the next several years to enhance the company further, so we will continue repurchasing our stock as long as it is not in line with the market. When the market reacts to the noise we've seen, we will view that as an opportunity. There will be positive outcomes from the administration's changes. While there's a lot of discussion about trade and tariffs currently, we believe we will eventually see more advantages related to goodwill and bonus depreciation. These potential cash flow benefits will influence how we manage our spending. The good news is that we can pursue both options. We can continue to buy back our shares when appropriate and also consider M&A if the right opportunity arises. We have positioned our business strongly. As we finish Q2, we have $140 million in cash on our balance sheet, giving us the flexibility to make decisions without pressure. If the stock remains undervalued, we will continue to buy. We firmly believe the stock should be valued well above $20. If a suitable deal comes along, our operations team is ready to take it on. Brett, do you have anything to add?

Brett Urban, CFO

No, I was just going to add that our balance sheet is in the best spot it's ever been. Our leverage is at 2.1x. As Dale mentioned, we have cash available to do both the share repurchase and, if the right deal came across our desk, cash to do acquisitions. And in our guidance or updated guidance for cash flow, we're assuming we're going to spend a record amount of capital this year at about $190 million net capital to continue our fleet refresh strategy, which is critical to making sure our employees are taken care of, and then in turn, they can take care of our customers. We can continue to buy back our shares, as Dale said, at significantly undervalued prices. And when the right deal comes across our plate and it makes sense for us to do it, we have cash to do M&A as well.

Bob Labick, Analyst

My congratulations as well on a great quarter.

Dale Asplund, President and CEO

Thanks, Bob.

Bob Labick, Analyst

Sure. Yes. So one question. You touched on this briefly in your prepared remarks as well. I think it was Slide 7. But one question we're constantly getting is, what is the impact on availability of labor and cost of labor given this political environment, deportations, whatever you want to call it? Can you talk more to like kind of real-time labor trends and how you're dealing with it? Obviously, you're doing a lot for your employees and your retention is improving, but maybe a little more color around how the macro is impacting availability and cost.

Dale Asplund, President and CEO

Yes, that's a great question and it's a significant topic right now. We've observed another improvement in our employee turnover reduction, which benefits us in many areas including onboarding and training, ensuring our customers receive consistent service. One of the highlights of my day is starting with our frontline teams during Stretch and Flex in the morning. This morning, we had no employees wearing orange vests, visually illustrating the positive impact of reduced turnover on our business. We’ve provided numerous benefits to our employees, acknowledging their need for time with family during critical situations. We are enhancing our support for them. Additionally, employees recognize their value beyond just their wages. As we've just completed our annual merit cycle, wages have stabilized from previous years of high inflation to a more standard increase of 2% to 3%. We are very satisfied with our labor situation and our overall needs. We just put in place our seasonal workers with our typical H-2B employees that we bring in for the season. But this year, because of our employee turnover reductions, we were able to get a record-low level of those employees. In fact, we had the opportunity to bring even more in, but we didn't need all the employees. So we are positioned so well, and all the levers we've said we pull are continuing to show value. But Brett, do you want to add anything?

Brett Urban, CFO

No, I would agree. We got awarded the most H-2Bs that we have in the last three years, and we took the least in the last three years. And that's really a testament to what Dale just mentioned, the investments back into our front line, whether it was boots last year or making sure we can work four 10-hour shifts, getting them new trucks, mowers, equipment that's reliable and they can take out on the job. We feel great about where we're positioned. From a labor cost perspective, Bob, we've said historically, we're in the 3% to 5% annual range of increases. We're actually seeing increases at or below the low end of that range right now. So real-time, we're not really seeing any significant labor uptick, really at the low end of our historic range.

Bob Labick, Analyst

That's great. I really appreciate that insight. It looks like you're seeing some really positive outcomes from the early stages of the programs you're implementing. There's certainly more good news ahead. I also have a question regarding the Analyst Day; you presented a chart showing that 40% of your branches had customer retention below 80%, while 60% were above that threshold. You've just begun to improve that metric, but can you explain the differences between the branches below 80% and those above it? Is there a structural difference, and what steps will you take to improve the performance of the lower-retention branches?

Dale Asplund, President and CEO

Yes. So as you saw in the deck, once again, we showed momentum in our customer retention across the business. On a trailing 12-month basis, we're up 170 basis points. Like I said at Investor Day, anything between 100 and 200 basis points for the year will be considered a success again. So continued momentum. It's not seasonal; it's not geographical, Bob. It comes down to our branch leader. The stronger our branch manager is, the more engaged they are with our customers, the more our teams take care of them and the more that we see customer retention rise. We're going to continue to focus on making sure every one of our leaders that runs one of our facilities understands how important communicating with our customers, good and bad, and working with our employees to communicate with our customers is so that we can drive retention.

Brett Urban, CFO

No, I would just add that we're excited over here on this side of the table. Like Dale said, we're early in the journey. We still have a lot of room to go for customer retention improvements. Even with that in the early stages, we're posting a record Q2, a record first half of the year. This will be a record full year EBITDA, EBITDA margin for us. Free cash flow conversions are north of 30%. So we feel great. We're hyper focused, like Dale said, to make the right long-term decisions for this business that will drive that customer retention and other metrics back in the right spot for long-term sustainable growth.

Luke McFadden, Analyst

This is Luke McFadden on for Tim. Maybe I want to start out here on the guide. Can you talk about how much of the $10 million increase in your EBITDA outlook was driven by the stronger-than-expected snow revenue in the quarter versus a stronger outlook for the second half of the year?

Dale Asplund, President and CEO

I'll start off, and then I'll kick it over to Brett, Luke. As Brett said, we had a good snow year, and snow news is good news now. So we were up $22 million. And if you translate that, it should be about $4 million to $5 million of incremental EBITDA. For the quarter, we reinvested most of that back into our frontline team. So when you look at the increase that we're putting out there for EBITDA for the year, it's really driven off the overall margin expansion that we're seeing in the business. In fact, when you look at everything we've done on a trailing 12-month basis right now, we're at $339 million of EBITDA. So we feel that's a $15 million improvement in the first 6 months. There's no reason we're not going to get that same $15 million benefit.

Brett Urban, CFO

No, I would agree. Look, snow was good for us. It did come with a little bit of an offset with land, as we spoke about earlier in the call, about $6 million land impact. But overall, it's really the unlocking of the size and scale of the business. It's our fleet strategy that's starting to go into practice. It's centralizing our procurement initiatives that we talked about during Investor Day. We're putting technology into the business. We've streamlined our operating structure. We've done a lot of really underlying things in the business, Luke, that's driving margin expansion in both our maintenance and development segments, not only in the first half of the year but in the back half of the year.

Luke McFadden, Analyst

That makes sense and great to hear. And then maybe just switching gears here, with all the recent headline news related to tariffs and a more uncertain macro outlook, I was hoping you could just update us on how your conversations with clients have been trending, and maybe any color as it pertains to discretionary spending levels like enhancement revenue just given the current macro environment that we're in.

Dale Asplund, President and CEO

What I would say is we put a big focus on driving more customer engagement. In fact, as we sit at the end of Q1, we have more paper out on the street for quotes for customers to do work, both enhancement work and ancillary work than we've had any time in the history of the business. Obviously, there's a lot of unknown. We left our revenue range wide at this time of the year. But right now, we feel great. There is hesitation. There's a lot of companies that may be impacted much greater than what BrightView will be impacted by trade and tariffs. But right now, we feel great about what's out there. Every day, this seems to change.

Brett Urban, CFO

On Page 11 of our presentation, we showed our resilient revenue mix, Luke, and that's where we feel like we're better positioned than most companies out there right now amidst a lot of uncertain times. But if you think about our revenue mix, 60% of it is a very predictable recurring contract revenue base of our business. From a development standpoint, we're selling work now that's going to be performed in 2026. So we're off and running into 2026 filling that backlog. And we've got a small piece of the pie that is more discretionary in nature. And could our clients feel a little impact from tariffs or something going on in the macro? Sure. This is our selling season for that 10% of the pie. Dale mentioned, we have more paper on the street than we've ever had in the past.

Dale Asplund, President and CEO

We feel good that we're taking the right steps to drive growth in that little piece of the pie, but we'll see how it plays out over the next 90 days and what our clients choose to do. And from a tariff standpoint specifically, very minimal impact on our business right now. We got well ahead of our fleet strategy. We already ordered our trucks and mowers and trailers and other equipment well before any tariffs were announced. So minimal impact there.

Stephanie Moore, Analyst

I wanted to go back and maybe discuss on the snow side of your business. Obviously, a good year for that, and you were very clear about continuing that trend going forward. But maybe if you could give us an update in terms of shifting some of those contracts to more of a fixed model that could further reduce volatility in the future, so maybe any update there would be helpful.

Dale Asplund, President and CEO

I think where we saw snow this year, we saw snow in markets that we're probably not going to see snow on a regular basis. So let's just use Georgia or maybe South Carolina as examples. Those are markets that are probably always going to be more time-and-material markets. But I think in those markets that are more on the border of getting snow annually, we're going to have great progress as we go into the 2026 sales cycle for snow next year. That will happen over the summer, and we'll work through it. But Brett?

Brett Urban, CFO

In our guidance, Page 16, we put $205 million of snow this year. So two-thirds of that this year is essentially variable snow. But we said we are going to be diligent when years where it did snow, like this year on the East Coast, that we would be diligent in going back to our customers and getting more fixed. So we're in the middle of our sales cycle really starting now through the end of the summer for snow. We'll be able to provide a much better detailed update on that probably on our Q4 earnings call.

Stephanie Moore, Analyst

Absolutely. Understood. And then maybe I think the conversations around inflationary pressures has picked up a little bit from here. So if you could talk a little bit about what you're seeing from an overall inflationary standpoint, particularly on the labor front, and expectations kind of going forward in terms of inflationary pressures and any kind of mitigating efforts that you have.

Dale Asplund, President and CEO

Like I said, Stephanie, earlier, our labor will be positioned to offset any sort of inflationary pressures. I think it's a good position that puts us able to offset that as we work to service our customers and renew their agreements annually. On the commodity side, one of our largest suppliers recently reported some of the deflation that they've seen in critical materials for us like PVC piping and grass seed. Those have been positive for us. And then we've seen very minimal increases in some of the other components that we need to service our customers. But I would just say, as of now, we are in a great position to be able to deliver what we've committed to our customers for the price that we've committed to them for.

Brett Urban, CFO

We rarely lose a customer due to price. We will work with our customers to stay within their budgets, to meet their needs if there's any major macro changes. And like Dale said, the more we take care of our employees, they'll take care of our customers. If there's any type of major inflationary uptick, we'll work with our customers to make sure we meet their needs.

Stephanie Moore, Analyst

Absolutely. And then just lastly for me, as you noted and we talked about on this call, there's certainly an uncertain macro environment. But at the same time, I think that you've called out a lot of your own company-specific initiatives to ultimately deliver mid-single-digit organic growth. So can you talk about just your level of confidence in your ability to achieve that target that was laid out in what might be maybe a less constructive or more negative macro environment?

Dale Asplund, President and CEO

So there's things we can control and there's things that obviously our customers have to make decisions on. We feel we're positioned to grow our business in the back half of the year, like we've commented, somewhere around 1% to 3% for our land business and 3% to 6% for our development business. I feel like we're in a good spot with development. A lot of that work is underway, and it could just be a little timing, but we feel we'll fall within that range. On the land side, like we've said a couple of times now, we are positioned well for the amount of quotes out, but it's our customers' decision. So I would just tell you, Stephanie, we're going to grow this business at some point. Whether it's in April or whether it comes down to Q4, we are focused on doing all the right things long term because our goal is what we presented for 2030. It's not just the 2025 year. It's the long-term growth that we're going to have overall for the business. And all the metrics, customer retention, development to maintenance conversion, all that is trending in the right area.

Stephanie Moore, Analyst

Really appreciate it. And just for what it's worth, based in Nashville here, we've had 3 consecutive years with snow in January. So maybe it's becoming a little less volatile on our side, but I appreciate the time.

George Tong, Analyst

Your full year guide for core land growth, excluding the impact of BES and USL, is up 1% to 3%. That implies a positive inflection in performance in the second half of the fiscal year since the first half of the fiscal year was down on a core basis. Can you elaborate on what you expect to drive this improved performance in core land over the next 2 quarters?

Dale Asplund, President and CEO

I think it goes off what we just talked to Stephanie about. Every time we continue momentum, our trailing 12-month customer retention is up 170 basis points, George, as you know, the more of our customers we keep, the more they're willing to spend money on ancillary work. We believe with all the quotes we've done for customers and the engagement our customers are showing us, we are well positioned to not only keep our book of business in the right spot for contract revenue but also drive ancillary revenue. But like everybody, we're not completely immune to the overall macro, and we have to let it play out over the next couple of months.

Brett Urban, CFO

Yes, that's right, George. We're so hyper-focused on the long-term. We're doing such good things for this business. As you think about converting that work from development into maintenance, we said this publicly before in 2023, really by dumb luck, we did about a little bit less than 10% of that conversion. Now we're looking at trends north of 20% converting that business. We're continuing to see momentum building in all the right metrics, whether it's employee turnover, customer retention, development and maintenance conversions.

George Tong, Analyst

Got it. That's very helpful. And then can you talk a little bit about how much pricing increased on a year-over-year basis this quarter and your ability to pass through any input cost increases to customers in the form of price?

Dale Asplund, President and CEO

Yes. So when we look at price, it's price and scope that we combine and we work with all of our customers. We've seen price capabilities that offset our labor inflation that we're feeling in the business. So we feel like we're in a position where we're not going to get headwinds that are greater than what we're spending on the cost side from price capability.

Brett Urban, CFO

We feel extremely confident sitting here today. That's why we raised our guidance on EBITDA by $10 million at the midpoint that if there is any type of inflationary pressure, we have the right formula to work with our customers to mitigate that to make sure, again, we take care of their needs first and offset any type of inflationary pressures.

Andy Wittmann, Analyst

I was curious about cash flow, as it's a crucial aspect for investors considering your company. I'd like to discuss the capital budget and how you plan to allocate capital as we approach 2026.

Dale Asplund, President and CEO

What makes me feel good is when I go out to our branches. I feel today we have the fleet that we can continue to provide service to our customers, whether it's our mowers or our production vehicles. If we had to make a decision because tariffs or something happened to availability of fleet, we could do that. We have positioned this business so well. This year, we're still selling trucks that are far too old for, call it, $0.05 to $0.10 on the dollar.

Brett Urban, CFO

This business is going to generate cash. If you look on a normalized basis, we're north of 30% free cash flow conversion on our midpoint of our guide this year if you account for a little bit of timing there. We said during Investor Day that that's going to tick up to 40% free cash flow conversion over the next 5 years. We're going to spend that cash. We're going to refresh our fleet.

Andy Wittmann, Analyst

My follow-up is on development margins. They were obviously very strong. Can you just talk about how some of the projects may have closed out this year, if there were any positive adjustments there that helped the margins? And just to level-set things, obviously, you've got your margin guidance for the year. It implies a deceleration from this high level.

Dale Asplund, President and CEO

The development business has been the biggest benefactor of the One BrightView strategy and getting everybody to work together. We're going to lap that next quarter, but we still feel there's so much upside. Brett said it, we have the best development business across North America, bar none.

Brett Urban, CFO

Q2 saw some favorable job closeouts in Q2 where we were able to take some more profitability than originally anticipated, but we do expect margin improvement in the second half of the year. That won't be at the same growth rates, but we do expect that business to continue to improve margins.

Toni Kaplan, Analyst

I was hoping you could maybe elaborate on trends you're seeing within client conversations from sort of the beginning of the year versus more like what you're seeing in April, May, whether you've seen any changes in terms of demand or price pushback or just decision-making timing? Any sort of changes or if things are just still steady as they go?

Dale Asplund, President and CEO

I think what we saw as we went through Q1, right, through March was great communication with our customers. But our customers were eager for spring. We all know it's been turbulent here in the month of April, and our customers are feeling that. Many of our customers are probably just as open to having conversations with us to get quotes. But you can see there is a little more hesitation with customers to sign the deal for us to go get the work in the ground.

Brett Urban, CFO

I think we have a huge market. We haven't seen any buying patterns change yet, and I think we have a tremendous opportunity to continue to grow our development business.

Zack Pacheco, Analyst

Congrats on the strong results. Just quickly following up on development. Have you seen any shift in bidding activity? Is the backlog growth continuing to trend strong?

Dale Asplund, President and CEO

No. Customers are still asking us for quotes. Are we seeing things on locking in the contract? It's just the timing. We're working with them to when the time is right, we can get locked in.

Brett Urban, CFO

Development is that tip of the spear. Development work kicks off maintenance work. We haven't really seen any buying patterns change yet. We feel we have a huge opportunity to grow our overall development business.

Operator, Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, it appears we have no further questions this morning. Mr. Asplund, I'd like to turn things back to you, sir, for any closing comments.

Dale Asplund, President and CEO

Thank you, operator. I will close by reiterating that we have made such great progress in a short period of time. But I'll remind everybody, this is just the beginning. Our resilient and predictable business model, despite the uncertain macro, gives us the confidence to raise guidance across those three important metrics. Thank you for your interest in BrightView, and we look forward to speaking to you in 90 days.

Operator, Operator

Certainly. Thank you, Mr. Asplund. Again, ladies and gentlemen, that will conclude today's BrightView earnings conference call. Again, thanks so much for joining us, everyone, and we wish you all a great remainder of your day. Goodbye.