Conference Transcript - LMB 2026-05-07

Brent Thielman, Analyst — Oppenheimer

Okay, great. Thanks all. Welcome to the Limbach Fireside for the Oppenheimer Industrials Virtual Conference. My name is Brent Thielman, Equity Research Analyst with Oppenheimer. Really pleased to have Mike McCann, CEO, and Jamie Brooks, CFO, here to have an open discussion. You know, Mike, maybe just to kick it off with you, if you could just give us kind of a short overview of your business. And in particular, just for folks dialing in, how do we think about comparing your business to some of your public peers out there? Kind of what are the main differentiators investors ought to be considering there?

Speaker 3

Yeah, I appreciate that. Thanks very much for having me. So we're a building system solutions firm focused on mission-critical facilities. So we perform mechanical, electrical, and plumbing infrastructure work. We have a geographic footprint that is northeast, southeast, and midwest. Our primary vertical markets, really, we have six vertical markets that we work in, healthcare, industrial, manufacturing, data centers, life science, higher ed, and culture entertainment. And I think the key common characteristic is the ability for us to work in that super mission critical environment where they absolutely have to have to have us. We've got two segments, owner-direct relationship, think existing building, and general contractor relationships, traditionally new construction. And over the last four or five years, we've been really focused on shifting the business from a traditional E&C large construction to more of an owner-direct model. As we go into 2026, we feel like we've reached a relative mixed stabilization, and we think we're in a position to really grow the company. So when it comes to differentiators, I would think about it really in three different buckets. One is our ability to have a connected footprint, especially when you think about us acquiring companies. Everybody's on an interconnected platform working together, and I think about it from a customer experience perspective. We want the experience to be the same in Tampa that is in Boston, that is in Columbus, Ohio. So that's number one. Number two is our expertise is really providing creative solutions that we can install. So we don't necessarily have a separate engineering company and a separate installation company. Our ability is to provide the integrated offerings on each location as well, too. And when I think about the third piece of it, I really think our ability to be nimble quick. And when we go speed to market, we're providing a different level of expectation and experience than maybe somebody who's much more of a generalist that's a transactional type contractor they're working for. So I would think about us not necessarily as a contractor. I would think about us as a solutions partner that can do anything from front end integrative facility planning, service maintenance through complex installations.

Brent Thielman, Analyst — Oppenheimer

That's great. And Mike, just as a clarification on ODR, owner direct, is effectively all of that in something that's existing? There's no new construction engaged in that?

Speaker 3

Yeah, primarily. When we do the breakouts of owner direct relationship, general contract relationship, that segment is defined by who we're working for and who our relationship is. So it's more defined there than it is necessarily existing or new. Traditionally, though, our owner direct work tends to be more existing from that perspective. And just to add a little bit to, our goal is to stick with accounts over the long term. We want to deploy our six customer solutions. When we make a move to go with a customer or put additional focus on a vertical market, we think building a 10, 20, 30-year relationship, we don't think about this as we're going to build one project and leave. That's just a different approach that we have.

Brent Thielman, Analyst — Oppenheimer

Okay, great. Well, Mike or Jamie, I guess as you kind of look at the performance to start the year and know we're already approaching mid-year, but I think you'd mentioned certain customers, especially in healthcare, and seeing some delays in spending, maybe some things you thought to do didn't come to fruition. Maybe just walk us through what's happened and if you're starting to see some of those delays abate and why.

Speaker 3

I think we had a lot of lessons learned from 2025. I think there's a couple of things that we've learned is we want to make sure we're really diversified. Health care is our strongest vertical market focus. There was a lot of different things last year that made some of our verticals more challenging. And I would say that really popped up in the middle of 2025, whether that was Big Beautiful Bill or NIH spending with higher ed or terrorists with manufacturing. Some of our verticals got it's not like necessarily they stopped spending, but they weren't spending as aggressively. and coming off an election year, just some challenges for those. So this year, I think we're really focused on having good vertical market diversity between industrial, institutional, think about higher ed and health care, as well as data centers. So we want to make sure we have strong diversity. So the last couple quarters, we've really been able to build our bookings. So we've sold $225 million in Q4 and $209 million in Q1, $434 million of bookings, probably our strongest couple quarters that we've had. So we've really rebuilt the demand. Diversification has helped, but also I think from our core vertical markets, just getting some level of stability and certainty has helped as well too. So we feel like we've definitely got some momentum. A challenge for us, I think, as we've learned through our mixed shift and as well as kind of our strategy is sales are really, really important to us. We've got two of our top executives on it. We've got sales processes that we've put in place, And I think we're excited to see the last couple of quarters where that's finally coming to fruition. You sell it, then a revenue. So I think Q1 is kind of an air pocket to kind of some momentum that we see building over the course of 26 into 27.

Brent Thielman, Analyst — Oppenheimer

Yeah. Okay. Well, Mike, I mean, maybe just on the data center front because relatively newer in some respects to the story, I guess, even though you've done these a long time or been involved a long time in these, but I think you've picked up a couple of new centers here the last few quarters. Seems like you're more than just dipping your toes in the market here. You're here to stay. You've been really careful since you've come into the business and just in terms of de-risking the company. Can you talk about the risk profile on these recent wins and what gets you comfortable with that market as you go out for more business?

Speaker 3

Yeah, I think there's a couple things that have really changed. And like you said, we've been doing data center work for probably eight or 10 years. And a lot of that's been our Columbus, Ohio market. So we have relationships. These aren't necessarily new relationships, an expansion of existing relationships, I I think the spend is there and the supply and demand curves are certainly in our favor. And I could think about all six of our customer solutions as real opportunities. So as you pointed out, we're risk managers as much as maybe anybody in the space. And we've learned that through things that haven't worked as well in the past. And we want to have a good optimistic outlook, but we don't want to be caught to the point where we think, you know, it's too rosy from that perspective. So for us, we want to mitigate risk. As an example, we sold a $30 million fabrication project, and that's probably the fifth or sixth project that we've sold direct to owner. 2 million 5 million 10 million we really we don't like to take a huge chunk we really like to grow um and this opportunity it's a very fast moving and it will not be we're actually dropping it off on site it'd be more like a product at that point um so we look at schedule scope risk and we try to evaluate that we have some capacity too we have some capacity from a fabrication perspective i would say some i'd say a lot of capacity we have 14 acres fabrication facility in chattanooga that's barely been underutilized. We have some labor capabilities as well, too. So there's a number of different aspects where I think we can be opportunistic and be smart about the way that we deploy that. But we always take all our lessons learned. Sometimes those lessons learned hurt us, by the way, because we know too much. But we apply those going forward. And I think we're going to be able, the exciting part to me is we're going to be able to deploy our six customer solutions, service and maintenance, rentals, retrofits, infrastructure, et cetera, et cetera. I think those are avenues. The other thing that excites me in the space, too, is I think there's going to be a lot of day two work, and I think the advent of liquid cooling is going to be something that's very interesting for us as well, too. We're a really good fit for that, to go into an existing campus, and typically these campuses have new builds and existing. It's just a massive site that ends up happening, but we are a great candidate to go into those and retrofit those locations as well, too. So various entry points that we're excited about, and it just felt like the right time to a little bit more focus on it.

Brent Thielman, Analyst — Oppenheimer

And, Mike, I mean, you hit on something that I wanted to ask. Is the data center stuff all ODR business and existing facilities?

Speaker 3

It's a mix. You know, like the $30 million fabrication was an owner-direct project or contractor-direct with the owner. We've put some contract vehicles in place over the last couple years to make this a little bit easier for us. We've been kind of planning a little bit for this and trying to figure out, okay, when do we essentially accelerate that? So contract vehicles and mechanisms are important to work for the owner whenever possible. There's going to be some GCR work with this. I think this year, as an example, our guide includes 20% to 25% GCR. So if we can get the best return on data center work, we're going to be smart about that. But we always still rather work for the owner. And we don't want to make it so difficult to work for us, but we'd always rather work for the owner. So we push that whenever possible. So it's got to be a mix, but we're going to be smart about that too.

Brent Thielman, Analyst — Oppenheimer

Presumably, as more of these go to retrofits, you're in a good spot there.

Speaker 3

I mean, the last stat I showed, it was 92% of spend or 93% spend goes to new construction. But that changes to 10% or 20%. That's plenty of work.

Brent Thielman, Analyst — Oppenheimer

And out of curiosity, is there a, you know, kind of a future maintenance contract program opportunity here for you?

Speaker 3

Absolutely. We've got a couple that we're looking at. I think the maintenance space is very interesting. I think it's really strong with the OEMs. And a lot of that is primarily due to main source cooling equipment. But I think we've had a lot of discussions where they do a good job, but that's a lot for them. So what are some avenues? Maybe it's not the main source cooling equipment where there's opportunity to reduce service and maintenance. So we do some of that already in Columbus. We've been asked to take a look at some other areas. You know, what footprint can we perform in? We've had those discussions as well, too. So various RFPs that have come out or questions or just, you know, just questions from customers as well, too, that kind of excites us. So, you know, even if the OEMs get the majority of the service and maintenance on their main chillers and cooling equipment, there's still plenty to go around.

Brent Thielman, Analyst — Oppenheimer

Yeah. Okay. And then, you know, might kind of conceptualize what this looks like for you in next few years. I mean, do you envision this market being something next to healthcare,

Speaker 3

which is obviously a huge market for you? We do. I think we anticipate kind of a good mix between institution, which includes healthcare, higher ed, industrial, and data center, And I would say kind of advanced tech and relative kind of relative work in this space. So I think we get a good mix there. We don't want to over-index, but we're probably under-indexed now. So I think we're in a good position to kind of smartly add revenue to that. And I think maybe the Q1 bookings are kind of a good indication of what this could be for us. So we sold $209 million in Q1. $56 million of that was data center. The other $155 million was not data center. it's still a 1.12 book to bill. But you can see like in this one quarter, like we can still get a good book to bill and if we, this can be really additive. So that's probably the best way to

Brent Thielman, Analyst — Oppenheimer

describe what it could look like in the future. Awesome. Okay. And then maybe just turn into like the other kind of pillars of growth here beyond some of the market opportunities, but you've been acquisitive here since you've come in, done some good deals. I mean, one thing I wonder about Mike is, I guess, one is what are you looking for in the market? I know you've done Pioneer Power. And two, does the ODR model work everywhere as you look into new geographies and trying to do M&A?

Speaker 3

So a couple of things I'd say primarily we look at, geographic footprint. And geographic footprint helps us for every vertical. I wouldn't say every. There's a couple. Higher ed and culture entertainment can be a little challenging. But the other four, there's avenues from a national customer perspective. I think that's the primary. I think the secondary is, can we enhance our customer solutions? So when I think about owner direct, I think about kind of translating that into what our vertical market and customer focus is. And that's ultimately the discussion that we have a lot with the acquisitions is, how can I enhance relationships and get to the owner as much? And I think that concept works in every geography, but it's going to be a little bit dependent on their customers. And we want to build a strong mix and improve margins as well, too. So footprint's really important. As we build our three national vertical market teams, data center, healthcare, and industrial, those are really going to help accelerate the value creation process from these acquisitions. So the three things we're looking at from acquisitions is cultural fit. Are they going to want to make some changes? What that translates to? What type of customers do they have? and what's the opportunity ultimately? And we layer that on to kind of our overall value creation process. And Pioneer is probably an example of that. We've done six since late 21, but they've got a core business in industrial and higher ed. Can we layer on healthcare and data centers? Can we get to the end user whenever possible? Those are things that we're going to look forward. And then can we raise margins as well, too? So footprint and customer solutions are the primary. We've got a pretty robust pipeline right now. It's been a little bit of time since we've done a deal, and Jamie and I want to get deals done this year. That's great.

Brent Thielman, Analyst — Oppenheimer

Maybe just on Pioneer, I know it's somewhat dilutive to margins for a period of time before you can get them higher. When do you think you'll be through that, or when does it become sort of negligible in terms of impact to corporate margins?

Speaker 3

We're hoping to see some improvement in the back half. And I think 27, you know, is really going to be the part where we can really institute, ultimately, institute some big time margin changes for us. So ultimately, what happens in a lot of these acquisitions is kind of our differentiators, as I talked about before. One of our three is our interconnected group of people, structure, and locations. First thing we do the first six to nine months is integrate all the systems, accounting system, HR, benefits, structure. That ends up being enough. I think usually what we've learned in the first six or nine months. Don't delay it. Get it over with. An ERP transition is never fun. Faster it's done, the better. And then I think, you know, like especially right now, for example, now we're into value creation process, renegotiating contracts, focusing on one customer, not a not, bringing in solutions from the overall company. And you can see how this ultimately takes some time because you think about you're instituting changes now that you hope to fix last year. But when you think about kind of a calendar year planning cycle. 27 is almost in some sense when they're on the full footprint, when they're on our platform. Integration's done. We've made the moves from customers, and then you start to really see the benefit of it. We have an example in the investor deck that we put out, and this really was new in March from our Q4, which kind of describes the Jake Marshall transition. Now, one thing to note in the Jake Marshall transition is we took a lot of time on phase one. We figured, well, let's switch the ERP system over a year later. Well, we learned that's not going to be helpful. If you're just delaying the inevitable. So I think we're trying to shorten, obviously, phase one and get into phase two as quick as possible so we can kind of see a similar

Brent Thielman, Analyst — Oppenheimer

bump. Okay. And the majority of the transactions you're looking at, I mean, are they going to be along the lines of a Pioneer power and that they may be lower margins initially, or is that not

Speaker 3

really always the case? I mean, mostly every deal we've done, the margins have been lower. Pioneer is bigger, so obviously they're more impactful. And it's up to us, I think, to make sure we describe that at the time of the deal. Some lessons learned on that, certainly. I think it depends. And for us, the higher margins are great in one sense, but also there's less opportunity to even have the initial valuation more and more creative after two years. So I think the margins tend to be less in these deals. So I think we're going to figure out, again, we've learned a lot over six deals, and we haven't done one in a little bit, and we've learned a lot about that. Building that upfront value creation model and then giving investors as much details as we can about that margin climb is something I think we're really focused on. If we can get one with good margins, that's great. It's probably just less value in the back end that we can drive. So I think for us, a really small deal is taxing for our team. It's got to be of size and scale. And scale does matter to a point as well, too. I think one important thing from our acquisition strategy is we've got to grow, too, the company. And I always think of scale in terms of what we can do for our customers. I know some of the other stakeholders, it kind of takes care of itself. But the one thing that was good about Pioneer Power is they're a brand name in that market. It's not a small $20 million or $30 million business where you've got a few people that hold all the relationships. there's a lot it's a much stickier when you've got 40 50 people in the office and the relationships are diversified and and that's really helpful so i think some scale with the deals makes sense i think a smaller deal for us has to be you know higher margins or super super um accretive and value based on some sort of existing footprint that we have so but i we're i think footprint

Brent Thielman, Analyst — Oppenheimer

is probably the top focus. Yeah. Mike, there's been a lot of capital chasing MEP companies lately. Imagine many of the things you're looking at maybe get overlooked by some of the bigger

Speaker 3

balance sheet folks. Yeah. I mean, it's amazing. I mean, we're never shy to make a call anymore because at some point they'll pick up the phone. They're getting enough calls. I think it's leveled out a lot too. I think, you know, PE really entered the space. I would say my opinion, early 25, late 24. There's not everybody kind of, everybody's had to put their feelers out. And when I say everybody, I really am talking about these private companies. It's not a surprise they're getting a call anymore. So I think they know who we are. They know the deals that we've done. And, and Limbock still has a really good brand. I mean, this is our 125th year. So you think about that pales in comparison to most public companies in our space and even private companies. The name certainly means something. And that, I feel like, gets us calls where we can make the calls direct. I mean, if they're meetings, I'll make the calls. We have internal and external resources, but I think that strong brand is a differentiator as well, too.

Brent Thielman, Analyst — Oppenheimer

Yep. Maybe just a question on the GCR piece of the business. Mike, some of the feedback you seem to get is that the demand environment for MEP is, especially with data centers and other kind of hot sectors out there, it's sort of having a positive indirect influence, forcing better contract terms all around. I also know that can be very regional. Are you seeing any of that effect where sort of the GCR terms and conditions and I guess margin potential is getting more attractive where you're willing to go after that work and their data centers kind of fall into that, but other areas too.

Speaker 3

It's interesting. I've had a few different conversations exactly along this lines in really this year, I would say more than any other year. Not all our markets have the data center input. I've seen that, but the markets that do, the Columbus, Ohio, the DC market, and that's a little bit of an older data center market. Maybe Columbus is probably the best example. it definitely helps. And I think, again, I mean, they need people to do the work. They understand that, you know, costs have to go up. I think it helps the overall market. And it changes the way that people look at the services that we're ultimately providing. So absolutely, even from a general contractor perspective, I think they realize that they've got to be a little bit more open than they have in the past. I think the other thing, too, that has indirectly affected the other verticals but came out of the data center, like you think about a data center, mechanical electrical is important. Building the building, it's not that complicated. Mechanical electrical are now elevated from that perspective. And you think about the package that we provided on that $30 million fabrication job. I mean, we were able to do that direct. So I think the elevation of that, it's interesting. The other thing, too, I would tell you on this and a little bit off topic is we've even some of our health care customers looking at almost talking to us in a way like a data center customers. Tell us where you can work. What's the footprint? So, you know, we're a little bit different than a lot of the other E&C companies, but our approach is different. But, you know, I think the focus on MEP being important definitely helps the overall business and overall businesses in the space.

Brent Thielman, Analyst — Oppenheimer

Yeah. Yeah. Well, maybe along those same lines, I mean, you think about some of these regions where you are seeing that, does that trickle into the ODR piece of the business too, or is it just a different

Speaker 3

model? I think it does. It's very indirect though. So Columbus is a good example. I mean, we are strong healthcare, higher ed, and we've got a pretty good diversified market. Like if I look at where Columbus is, and I think about that would be a good proxy for what the overall business could look like as it exits in these markets. But we're doing our direct work for four or five of our key verticals, maybe not industrial in Columbus, but the other ones we have. And they've got a nice diversification. So yeah, I think it does. And I think it's primarily in a positive way more than anything. And again, it just makes the customers, whether it's an owner direct customer or general contractor customer, it just makes them appreciate what we're doing a little bit more um and of course like you talked about it can also lead to terms too so um yeah i'm i'm excited you know as it leads into further expansion there's some markets where there's just no data center yet you know like florida for example but my guess is every market's going to see some impact of it and and i think it's something exciting that we're going to embrace whether we do the data center work or not within the market we're going to be smart

Brent Thielman, Analyst — Oppenheimer

about it. It still doesn't hurt though. Yeah. Okay. Maybe this one might be for Jamie, but obviously you want to keep some dry powder for deals. Any other objectives with the balance sheet or I guess kind of initiatives around cashflow to discuss here? Yeah. I mean, from a capital

Jayme Brooks, CFO

allocation perspective, our priority is acquisitions. So, you know, we do have a revolver, we expand it to $100 million. And so we do have that availability there from a liquidity perspective for as we're looking at transactions, but to, you know, this quarter was a draw on cash as expected. But as we continue to, you know, throughout the quarters, we're selling, we're generating the revenue billing and collecting that cash. So we expect the stronger

Brent Thielman, Analyst — Oppenheimer

cash flow in the back half of the year. And repurchases, is that something you all look at, or you're just really predominantly focused on growth? We do have a repurchase setup.

Jayme Brooks, CFO

We want to use it opportunistically as we see the market conditions. But our priority is

Brent Thielman, Analyst — Oppenheimer

really looking at those acquisitions. Okay. Okay. Well, you mentioned obviously acquisitions. I mean, other things, Mike or Jamie, that you want to prioritize this year, securing more data center business, kind of an open floor to you, just in terms of what else you're focused on here for this year.

Speaker 3

Yeah, I think the biggest thing for us is vertical market diversification. And I think that's going to be led locally and nationally. We have our three national vertical market teams, and they're going to explore different relationships in data center, industrial, and healthcare. I think we're going to layer that in with local sales. And then we want our acquisition strategy to be closely tied to that as well, too. We want to target these key national relationships and then add and have really good conversations with them about how the footprint would affect and extend our offering. When I think about it, we're not quite a national player yet, but I think we're going to be in a position here as we do some smart deals to really change our overall market position as we expand and grow our footprint within those diversified vertical markets. So I think that's really our biggest focus this year. And I think we've got a lot of runway here and opportunity to do so.

Brent Thielman, Analyst — Oppenheimer

Awesome. Well, I think that's a good stopping point. Mike, Jamie, really appreciate the time. Discussion here. A lot of exciting things here at Limbox. So thank you. Thank you, Brent.