Jacobs Engineering Group Inc.

Jacobs Engineering Group Inc.

$135.64
2.88 (2.17%)
London Stock Exchange
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Software - Services

Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. (0JOI.L) Q1 2010 Earnings Call Transcript

Published at 2010-01-26 18:02:07
Executives
Patty Bruner - Director of Investor Relations Craig L. Martin - President, Chief Executive Officer, Director Gregory J. Landry - Executive Vice President - Operations John W. Prosser Jr. - Executive Vice President - Finance and Administration, Treasurer Andrew F. Kremer - Senior Vice President - Global Sales
Analysts
Andrea Wirth - Robert Baird Michael Dudas - Jefferies Tahira Afzal - KeyBanc Scott Levine - JP Morgan Andrew Kaplowitz - Barclays Capital Steven Fisher - UBS Joe Ritchie - Goldman Sachs Jamie Cook – Credit Suisse John Rogers – D.A. Davidson Jeff Spittel - Pritchard Capital Partners Avram Fisher - BMO Capital Markets Will Gabrielski - Broadpoint David Yuschak - Madison Williams Chase Jacobsen - Sterne Agee
Operator
Good morning, my name is Christie and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Jacobs first quarter 2010 conference call. (Operator’s Instructions) I will now turn today’s conference over to Ms. Patty Bruner.
Patty Bruner
Good morning. The company requests that we point out that any statements that the company makes today that are not based on historical fact are forward-looking statements. Although such statements are based on management’s current estimates and expectations, and currently available competitive financial and economic data, forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results of the company to differ materially from what may be inferred from the forward-looking statements. For a description of some of the factors which may occur that could cause or contribute to such differences, the company requests that you read its most recent annual report on form 10-K for the period entered October 2, 2009, including item 1A - Risk Factors, item 3 - Legal proceedings, and item 7 – Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations contained therein. For a description of our business, legal proceedings, and other information that describes the factors that could cause actual results to differ from such forward-looking statements. The company undertakes no obligation to release publicly any revisions or updates to any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Now, John Prosser, CFO of Jacobs will begin the discussion. John W. Prosser Jr.: Thank you, Patty, and good morning everyone. I will spend just a few minutes going over the financial highlights, and then I will turn it over to Craig Martin, our CEO, to give a business overview for the quarter. If you turn to slide four, first quarter highlights, we did report this morning a diluted EPS of $0.58, net earnings of $72.4 million. These results included a $5.8 million, or $0.04 per share, charge for some consolidation of real estate done in Houston, Texas. That charge actually shows up in our SG&A line for those who are interested. The backlog for the quarter ended at a $14.9 billion, down slightly from last quarter and a year ago. We have continued to have a very strong balance sheet. Our net cash ended at $941 million. Now, that is in light of the fact that we did have cash going out for the acquisition of TYBRIN, and the final payment on AWE in the United Kingdom. So, we still had a good quarter for generation of operating cash. We are reconfirming our fiscal year ‘10 guidance of $2.00 to $2.60 a share. Turning to slide five, while the overall chart is a little disappointing in that we are seeing a downturn in last year and this first quarter, if you look at the bars underneath the graph which give us a ten year compounded growth rate, you still see that we continue to have a very good track record as far as our longer term growth rates and meeting our long-term goal of providing a 15% return and growth to our shareholders. Turning to slide six, our backlog. The overall backlog as I said was at $14.9 billion. The professional services backlog was at $8.2 billion. While the overall backlog was done a little bit from last quarter, the professional services was flat with last quarter. With that, I will turn it over to Craig to talk about the details of the quarter. Craig L. Martin: Thank you, John. Good morning, everyone. I am going to take a few minutes to talk about our strategies for growth. I am on slide seven now. I am going to take time to talk about our business model in more detail in a minute, as well as the selective market diversity, but I want to take a minute here to talk about the other three key strategies that we are employing. We continue to focus on growing our business through our multi-domestic strategy. We want to be local to our clients, and then apply our global know-how to the clients projects in the locations we serve. That is a strategy that served us very well over the years, and we will continue to serve this very well in the markets to come. Our focus right now is expanding our domestic position in India, improving our position in China, and probably most aggressively, expanding in the Middle East. I am going to talk more about the markets in the Middle East later on into this call, but we see lots of real opportunity to strengthen our geographic position, become multi-domestic in more places, and serve our clients better. So we think our multi-domestic strategy would be an area where we can continue to support our growth. The next element is to drive down costs continuously. I think you have heard us say many times that we are committed to being the lowest cost to produce kind of company that we can be in our company. I think we have been very successful in doing that up to now, and I think we can continue to do that. We had an excellent effort from our team in the first quarter of fiscal ’10. Without that Houston write-off we showed good reduction in costs, and we think we are going to be able to continue to improve our cost posture over the next three quarters. It is a great position to be in as a company, to have that lowest cost to produce position, because in times of market pressure, and we think we are going to continue to see some pressure on pricing, that allows us to maintain higher profitability then perhaps some of our competition will be able to do. Black bull (ph) here is acquisitions as part of our mix. They continue to be very important to us. We had a great quarter from an acquisition point of view. We closed on the second part of the atomic weapons establishment deal in the defense and air space arena — really good contract for us with a lot of long term potential. And we were able to make the acquisition of TYBRIN, which is about a 1500 person professional services company, also in the defense and air business, one of those acquisitions we have been telling you for some time we thought would be doable in this market that might not have been doable in markets in the past. That is a strong business for us, and again I will talk more about the market potential as we go into the markets themselves. We are still in the strong cash position with respect to acquisitions. We did both those deals and had very little impact on our cash balance. And we see lots of opportunity for activity going forward. Marketwise there is certainly more opportunity in defense and air space. We think there is opportunity for us to start into water and waste water business, which we think is going to be a good business going forward. We continue to have a lot of interests in Upstream, and we are making some progress in a couple of areas there. And then of course, we have talked off and on about the possibilities of power and mining as businesses we might get into. I think those potentials are out there. We will see whether they are attractive enough to make them interesting. From the geography point of view, the Middle East is an area of real strong focus for us right now, as well as China and India. So, acquisitions look like a great time in the industry to be doing those. We are in a great position to do them, and we think we could drive some significant rope as a result. Moving on now to slide eight. I want to talk a little bit about our relationship-based business model. I know many of you on this call have heard this over and over and over again, and I am afraid you are constrained to hear it over and over and over again some more. Because we are going to stick to our business model and try to continue to be the company we have established and positioned across the marketplace. Let me take a minute to contrast our model to the industry. We have broken the business up into three kinds of projects, transactional projects, discrete projects, and preferred relationships. For the most part, if you look at the industry model on the right, our competition and our industry focuses first and foremost on what we think of as transactional projects. These are lump sum, turnkey jobs. These are very price competitive. They are generally big event, often in faraway places. It is a tough part of the business to be in. There is usually some pretty big time risk associated with these projects. It is very competitive because the majority of the industry focuses here, and right now there is significant pricing pressure. Everybody in our business also does discrete projects and that makes up a significant portfolio of everybody’s business including ours. It is a good business. It is generally for customers you know. It is generally medium sized and moderate sized projects. A good business to be in, but again, a business where there is a fair amount of pricing pressure right now and the competition is fairly stiff. So the discrete projects require a sharp pencil, as well as great skills, to be successful. And the customer relationships factor into the equation. And then you have your preferred relationships. These are long term relationships with clients that are ongoing from year to year. There is still some opportunity for pricing pressure in that part of the business, but it is probably the lowest pricing pressure of the industry. It is also a business where there is a good sustaining base capital that can keep your business going. As you can see from comparing our model to the industry one, we focus very strongly on the preferred relationships. And as a result, we have very high levels of repeat business, greater than 90%. We have a set of core clients that contribute 50% or more of our business at any given time and who are still the biggest spenders, even in this down cycle, even though they are spending on a reduced basis. And then we have a bunch of base load work here, some for core clients, some for other clients, that contributes about 40% of our business that is very, very steady work. We like base load work because it is associated with maintenance of assets more so than it is with new events. And the maintenance of assets is something that needs to go on year in and year out, good times or bad. And while you can turn down your maintenance capital spending in the small asset work, you cannot turn it off in the long run or you find yourselves with plants that do not run and assets that are not returning any money. So, we think this base load is solid. We think there is lots of opportunity to continue to expand that for us as a company. We see that as an increasing part of our portfolio. Today, it is probably just a little over 40% of the business we do. So the main message here is, we are sticking to our business model. We are executing well. We did a very nice job in the first quarter of this year. We are continuing to build relationships and strengthen those relationships, and we are going to continue to avoid sort of high risk events that we might regret in a year or two when they come home to roost. Moving on now to slide nine. This is our market slide. Let me just start by giving an overall characterization of the market. I would characterize the market as still slow. We have not seen CapEx restored to anywhere near previous levels and do not see it being restored in anywhere near previously levels in the near term. We do think though we may be at or near the bottom. The next two quarters are certainly going to show us the bottom absence some event that drives up into a double dip recession or some other kind of bad news. So slow business but probably close to the bottom or there. Still waiting to see the real CapEx expansion that will drive a recovery. Let me go through this market by market now. I will start at the top of the pie with the food consumer products, pulp and paper high tech business. Business there is actually pretty good and improving. We're seeing a fair amount of activity in packaged foods and in beverages, and interestingly enough the uptick in pulp and paper and consumer products, specifically towel and tissue that I talked about last quarter, is coming to roost. We are starting to see more activity and more investment in that area than we've seen in some time. It's 4% of our business so it's not going to be a big mover in terms of moving the needle, but it's a nice positive and very good for our businesses here in North America in particular. Moving on around the pie chart now to chemicals, the only real new CapEx in chemicals is in the Middle East and to a lesser extent in Asia. The Middle East is particularly good right now in terms of projects and potential projects and we're doing well in terms of being able to grow our business there. More importantly though, the chemicals business has a significant fraction of small projects work, that maintenance capital work. In fact, if you think about it we've maintained 11%-13% of our revenue forever in that business on the back frankly of lots of little projects and a few big projects now and then and we think we're going to be able to continue to do that. So we're not negative about chemicals except to the extent we don't think there'll be a whole lot of giant projects around the world in the near term. Going into oil and gas, the upstream business, we told you last quarter that the oil sands business was strengthening, it has continued to strengthen. We think there's a lot of opportunity yet to come there, but it's been a nice positive last quarter. There's significant pent-up investment, we think something north of $200 billion, and we believe that the upstream business in the oil sands will be one of the areas that leads as we come out of this downturn. We're also seeing a lot of activity in gas production and storage. There's a lot going on there. We had a number of significant wins last quarter in that area so it's been a real plus for us as we look forward and we think that's going to continue. Our relationships with key customers in that area are very positive so that's an area where we suspect we'll see additional share for Jacobs. This is still a very strong market. Just our key and core clients spend more than $100 billion a year in this area so we still have a lot of opportunity to take market share in that market and we're going to work hard to continue to do either through organic growth or through acquisition or both. Moving down to refining, refining is a relatively slow business right now. Frankly, the refiners are all losing money. I don't know that they've reported earnings for the fourth quarter yet, but I don't think it's going to be pretty when they do, and as a result their CapEx is down. It's down outside of environmental and maintenance capital and of course environmental maintenance capital is where we're most active so we've been able to sustain a pretty good refining business in spite of a relatively slow marketplace. The maintenance capital looks like it's going to continue to be good, there's a fair amount of spending on safety. Again, the kind of spending that won't get deferred because it's right down to the question of can we keep people safe on our refiners, can we keep them running and avoid problems? And we think there's going to continue to be environmental work. Air emissions are going to continue to be a factor. We've still got Marpol 6 out there in terms of it coming toward us, another positive. And we think maybe the administration will also help us here as we expect to see environmental legislation start to roll forward once we get passed the hang-ups with things like health care. We don't think there'll be any new capacity in refining anywhere except maybe a little bit of work in the Middle East where we're well positioned to try to take advantage of some of that, and part of what we'll see going on here is Motiva as it works its way through the system, big passthrough costs on Motiva that are obviously a factor in these numbers. But if you had to characterize refining generally, it's a slow business but we're well positioned for what business there is. Moving on around the bottom to infrastructure, remember that for us that's a transportation and transit business for the most part. Stimulus has been a positive for us and we've done pretty well in the part of the world that is driven by stimulus. Unfortunately it just doesn't offset the shortfall in tax revenues both from gas taxes and federal and safety tax expenditures and we're going to continue to see some struggle with that business in terms of the volume of work that's out there. We need some action from Capitol Hill, the Jobs Bill will help a little bit, we need to get the transportation business kicked off and running a little more aggressively and I think that business could come back. We're certainly seeing a slight uptick in our business there that I think could get stronger over time. In the UK we're in a better position. We certainly have a larger market share there and therefore are able to take advantage of that. The big question mark in the UK will be what the elections uncertainty does to the market going forward. Because certainly when we get a new government in the UK it's going to impact spending. We're also kind of excited about what we see in the water and wastewater business. That's a small business for Jacob today, but we think there's a lot of opportunity there. We've had really good success in water and wastewater in the UK generating some nice growth there and we think the US represents a fairly big opportunity for us as we go forward. Moving now to buildings; buildings is another bright spot in the markets overall. Remember that our business tends to be high tech and national security type buildings, buildings where what's on the inside and technical complexity is what really drives the project so it's schools, jails, hospitals, national security centers, data centers, mission critical facilities, those kinds of things. This business is very good. We've done extremely well off the back of stimulus and have a significant amount of business. A number of our government customers were big beneficiaries of stimulus and buildings arena. We've got a very good health care business right now. We've been winning hospital work particularly right and left. We have a number of press releases last quarter about that, big positive from that standpoint. And it may be that unlike in the pharma business, health care reform here may be a positive for our business, but it's a little bit of a plus and minus situation when you start talking about what health care reform might do. But overall we feel really good about the buildings business and where we are and where we're going. Moving into national governments it's another business we're pretty excited about. It's split into two pieces as you'll recall. The first part is research and development test engineering, scientific and technical services, largely defense and aerospace related. We continue to add share and position ourselves for additional work. We're in a great position. We just had a major win at the Johnson Space Center so this business looks pretty good. The TYBRIN acquisition will allow us to leverage up as well. The administration's activities there are both a plus and a minus. There's a fair amount of in sourcing going on. That's a negative from our perspective as the government hires our people to do that, the work they were doing on the government payroll instead of hours. But the big focus on organizational conflict of interest is a plus in that it's probably driving some of our bigger aerospace and defense customers out of the business. We witnessed the sale of Northrop's septus business here last quarter so we think that part of the business is positive. On the environmental side the other part of our national government's business, the UK potential is still there. We've talked ad nausea about what we think the UK potential is. I've told you that it's going slowly, but going, and it continues to be that way. We see a number of great opportunities that are medium to short term so we're pretty positive about what could come out of the UK in the next few months and quarter. The US stimulus has been a plus for us already and we frankly think the administration will be another plus on the environmental side. So we expect to see some ongoing growth from environmental, maybe not in the short term, but certainly in the medium term and beyond. And then finally moving to the pharma bio business, that business is driven by demographics, the aging population, and by drug discovery. Right now things like vaccines and biotech are pretty active. We seem to be getting by the recent consolidations and that should release some more CapEx for us to address. The question is will it be more consolidations on top of that and what will that mean? Health care reform here we think is a risk. It's hard to judge, but we think there is some potential for the pharma companies to pull back a bit if health care reform goes through as it appears. But we continue to be pretty much the only choice in the industry, kind of the last man standing of any significance so our share remains high and we think therefore the opportunities in this business are pretty good. So that's where we see the individual markets, lots of opportunity, not the best markets in the world, but certainly things that we can capitalize on as a company. So now to Slide 10 this is the one that I characterized as our commercial every time I do this. We continue to have a customer driven business model that's working and I'm convinced, although I couldn't prove it, that we're growing our market share in almost all of our businesses as we sit here today. We have diversified markets and geographies and services and I think that drives our business from a local perspective to be more attractive and I think in the longer term, localness will count for a lot. We have a great balance sheet in an advantaged time for acquisitions so I think that's a real plus and we continue to commit to that 15% average annual EPS growth. I believe we can do that and I think that means it's a great company for the long term. So with that I will turn it back over for questions.
Operator
(Operator's Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Andrea Wirth with Robert Baird. Andrea Wirth - Robert Baird: Good morning, gentlemen. I was wondering if you could first just address TYBRIN. Did it contribute to the backlog this quarter? John W. Prosser Jr.: Yeah. TYBRIN, obviously we closed it at the end of the first quarter so it did contribute. It wasn't material in the overall sense and so it contributed about $300 million in total backlog, virtually all in professional services and just to kind of offset that we also had some continued cancellations of just under $200 million kind of offsetting so those two together kind of offset each other. Andrea Wirth - Robert Baird: Okay. And what are your expectorations for accretion for TYBRIN? Are we still expecting it to be relatively neutral for the year or do you have any update on that? John W. Prosser Jr.: Well certainly as we've been saying this is a relatively small acquisition as to our overall size and with what you have to do with amortization and tangibles there won't be any measurable accretion by 2010 and certainly as we get the synergies out of it and apply their expertise onto some of our projects and vice versa, we would expect to see some growth going forward just beyond what we acquired. Craig L. Martin: Yes. It's a good company, and to John's point, we don't do deals that aren't reasonably accretive in the near term. With the amortization of intangibles it's not a big deal as we go forward. It was also something we were pretty confident we would get done and so it was in our thinking about guidance when we issued guidance. Andrea Wirth - Robert Baird: And just one last question, obviously you posted a great quarter this quarter, but just curious why you didn't opt to narrow the guidance range at all? Why not narrow it? And then also, what are kind of the big swing factors in your opinion as the range is fairly wide? Craig L. Martin: Well, we elected not to narrow the guidance because we think it's premature to do so. We had what we think was a decent quarter under the circumstances in the first quarter, but there's still la lot of uncertainty in the marketplace out there. There's a whole issue of what's going to happen with commercial real estate and how's that going to affect funding. We've got some uncertainty with the administration and what they're going to do, and we just think it's premature to adjust our guidance so that's why we didn't narrow it. The uncertainties in the marketplace are still enough that we think that wide range is justified.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line Michael Dudas with Jefferies. Michael Dudas - Jefferies: Good morning, gentlemen. Thanks for your time today. Just two questions, one when you're looking at preliminary defense budgets for the 2011 fiscal year, does that give you some more comfort given the opportunities that you kind of talked about in your prepared remarks on the event services side? Craig L. Martin: Yeah. I would say that it does. I think our perspective on the situation with the new administration and spending in this area was initially one we were concerned about the uncertainty and it appears to us now that while the concerns were well placed, the outcome is not going to be negative or at least not to the extent it might have been. I also think that as I said in my prepared remarks, this focus on conflict of interest is a huge positive for us in terms of our ability to take share. So we're actually feeling pretty good about that business. Michael Dudas - Jefferies: My second question is looking at some of the — you mentioned the potential investment picking up in Canada in Western Canada, two things, are the quality of the projects that are coming back online or any investments that you guys are involved in, are they better than maybe the tail end of the last big cycle in the oil in '07-'08 and is there a shift towards more Site D opportunities which I still think you guys have been much more involved in? Craig L. Martin: Well, I think the answer to that question in both cases is yes. I certainly think the projects that we're dealing with today have better returns and require lower oil prices to make sense than the ones at the tail of the bubble, maybe even some of the ones that were in the middle of the bubble. And I also think the shift will be towards Site D and if obviously that's a big positive for us, although we're increasing our skills to serve the surface mining mineral site of that mineral base as well. I don't know, I've got Greg Landry who's the head of our operations for that part of the world. Greg, do you want to comment? Gregory J. Landry: Yeah. I would say at this point in time the marketplace is much more cautious and a proven project so it's at a slower pace moving forward. However, I think the marketplace can be better prepared as oil price stays in the 70-80 range. And if that stays in that range there, then there will be spending in the next few years. Craig L. Martin: I think collectively we're maybe not quite as optimistic as our guys are right up there in the middle of it so that's probably a positive when you think about it. Michael Dudas - Jefferies: I would think so, Craig. Thanks for your time.
Operation
Your next question comes from the line of Tahira Afzal of KeyBanc. Tahira Afzal - KeyBanc: Good morning, gentlemen. Nice quarter. Just wanted to get a sense of first of all if you look at fiscal first quarter, how did that play out versus your internal expectations? Craig L. Martin: I have said the quarter was a little better than I expected. I'm looking around the room here at our executives, they're mostly nodding yeah, a little bitter than we expected. Not quarter magnitude or anything like that, but it was a good quarter in a difficult market and I was very pleased with the performance of our team. Tahira Afzal - KeyBanc: Great. And would you say then that's coming more on the execution element as you mentioned in your press release or did the bookings or revenue line also surprise to the positive? Craig L. Martin: I don't think the bookings line was particularly to the positive. It's about what we thought we would do, but I do think we executed particularly well in the quarter and I think we got some good things going as we go forward so I think that was a nice positive for us. Tahira Afzal - KeyBanc: Great. And I guess last question and I'll hop back in the queue, you know I remember at your analyst day you mentioned that really the concerning elements were as we progress towards the fiscal fourth quarter which was a little lightly booked, how is that shaping up given the bookings you had in the fiscal first quarter and as you look at the prospects going forward? Craig L. Martin: Well, as you know we don't give quarter by quarter guidance so I don't want to get down to that level of detail. I think in general the fourth quarter is still an area where we have some uncertainty. It is a difficult quarter and there are a lot of things that may happen between now and then. If I had to just give a gut feeling, I'm probably a little more positive about the quarter today than I was two months ago. Tahira Afzal - KeyBanc: Super, Craig. That's very helpful and I'll jump back in queue.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Scott Levine of JP Morgan. Scott Levine - JP Morgan: Good morning, guys. Regarding the acquisition pipeline, you talk a little bit about multiples that you're seeing in the industry today and maybe elaborate a little bit more on the interest in power and mining as I moved up in terms of strategic priority in any meaningful way? Craig L. Martin: Let me start with the second part of your question first. I would not say so. I think power and mining have been areas where we've just kind of been keeping an eye on things for some time. We still haven't seen a specific opportunity that we would say was one that would make us jump into the business, but it is two pieces of business that we're obviously not in as a company today in a big way, although we're starting to organically grow a pretty decent power business, and so it's two pieces of business that we're going to continue to look at because the opportunity may be right to do that and make that move soon and the market might support that at a multiple that we could be happy with. With respect to multiples generally, multiples are off their peak probably one to two points so if the market was 9-11 times EBITDA, today it's probably 8-10, 7-9, something in that range. So we're seeing certainly some softening in pricing and obviously those lower EBITDA multiples gives us a fair amount of leverage for our shareholders when we make the deals. I kind of remind everybody that we don't pay the target for synergies. Synergies belong to our shareholders, so John's comments about our ability to improvement efficiencies in TYBRIN for example will be things that in the long run will benefit Jacob's shareholders, not things we paid TYBRIN to get. Scott Levine - JP Morgan: Would you be willing to comment regarding the multiple pay for TYBRIN? Craig L. Martin: John? John W. Prosser Jr.: We really don't give specifics on that. It wasn't that material, but it was in the market range that we've been talking about. Scott Levine - JP Morgan: Understood. And then water and wastewater, has that grown in importance in terms of strategic priority? Craig L. Martin: I think water and wastewater has become a market that is much more interesting to us. It's up there with upstream and defense and aerospace in terms of priority. I'm pretty confident we'll be able to get a deal done in the next year or so or two that will help drive us into that business. Water and wastewater is one of those businesses like transportation where pent up demand and problems with existing infrastructure are huge, and we think the real long-term of that business is a big positive for companies that are in it so we're very interested in water and waste water right now. Scott Levine - JP Morgan: Okay. One last one if I may, without asking for explicit guidance could you give some comments regarding how you see the cash flow playing out through the balance of the year? John W. Prosser Jr.: Well, certainly from the operating side we expect to continue to see positive cash flow. Basically our bottom line turns into cash from an operating standpoint and obviously if we continue to focus on acquisitions and are able to get to the point where we're closing them, those will be the major draw on the cash flows. So the inflow is probably more predictable than the outflow. Scott Levine - JP Morgan: I see, thanks.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Kaplowitz of Barclays Capital. Andrew Kaplowitz - Barclays Capital: Good morning, guys. So you talked about margin pressure again today, but if you look at your margins in the corner X the $0.04 charge they actually stabilized and even rose a little bit sequentially and that's after a year basically of margins going down. So I'm just wondering are we getting closer to where we can stabilize margins going forward or should we expect continuing margin pressure from here? Craig L. Martin: I think we're getting closer to where they'll stabilize, but I think there will be continuing pressure. So I guess that's a yes to both parts of your question. I know that's not a very helpful answer, but in fact we are still seeing a fair amount of competition for projects. The volume clearly isn't there to support the industry and the way it was a year or two years ago, and I think that's going to continue. I think it won't get a lot worse than it is today, but I think it will continue so I think you'll see some additional deterioration of margins, but not huge amounts. We told you we thought we could sustain margins at a higher level in this down cycle than we did in the previous one and we still believe that's true. Andrew Kaplowitz - Barclays Capital: Okay. So let me ask you one sort of followup to that. So the gross margin itself went up without a lot of change in mix in your businesses and so you obviously cited good execution in the quarter, but is that what it was? Is there anything that we should read into a decent uptick in the gross margins? Craig L. Martin: Oh gosh, I don't know that I would read a lot to it. I do think good execution in the quarter was a part of it. I also think that the margin pressure we're seeing was slower to be realized in the numbers and we've done a pretty good job of reducing our execution costs at the project level so I think it's a combination of all those things. Andrew Kaplowitz - Barclays Capital: Gotcha. I think it was John who mentioned that there were still some cancellations in the quarter and I know that cancellations happen even in the best of markets, but it's sort of still been a little bit of a drag on your backlog here and I'm wondering who's still canceling projects and do we think that these numbers continue to peter down over time? Craig L. Martin: That's a good question. Our sense is that we're probably close to the end or the end of cancellations for the most part. Now like I say, we have cancellations even in the best of times, but it feels like most of that is behind us. Now, having said all of that it depends a lot on what the economy does what happens to CapEx generally. With respect to who, we can't say. That would be breaching the customer confidence and releasing data they don't want out there so that part of your question will have to go unanswered. Andrew Kaplowitz - Barclays Capital: That's fair. Just one other question on the CapEx, do you see a big difference between — I mean, I know that your business is a little bit more IOC focused, but you do deal with a number of NOCs and so do you see a difference in attitude between the two types of customers and has that attitude been changing over the last six months? Craig L. Martin: I can't say that I have enough data to answer that question determinatively. I would say that some of the NOCs we deal with like those in the Middle East are clearly more positive and have a longer view perhaps than some of our other customers. But I think that to generalize beyond that would be we just don't have that much of a relationship with the NOCs frankly. Andy Kremer is our head of sales, Andy, do you want to comment? Andrew F. Kremer: Craig, I confirm what you say that I wouldn't say we've seen a material shift in the attitudes and don't really have any abetter data to give more granularity around that. Craig L. Martin: Thank you, Andy. Andrew Kaplowitz - Barclays Capital: Okay. Well that's fair. I'll get back in queue.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Steven Fisher of UBS. Steven Fisher - UBS: SG&A was up very slightly sequentially after you take out the real estate, but I thought there had been some year-end items in Q4 that weren't going to be present in this quarter so I guess what kept SG&A higher this quarter and can you still take it lower as the year progresses? John W. Prosser Jr.: Well, if you take the charge out it's actually down a little bit. There's also factors in there, bonus accruals, things like that, that are based on how well we do and things like that, but we continue to take action. Sometimes the action we take take a little bit longer to show up than what we anticipate be it personnel actions or like we did with Houston where we consolidated offices and things like that, but we still believe that the trend will be down and really what we're saying I think last quarter when we were talking about it was that we certainly expect by the fourth quarter this year that it'll be down below where we were last quarter or where we are today. Steven Fisher - UBS: On an absolute dollar basis? John W. Prosser Jr.: Yes, on an absolute dollar basis. Percentages on G&A when you're looking at percentages of G&A versus quarter to quarter, because of the mix and the fact that not a lot of G&A goes with the field services and as you look at our revenues this quarter versus last there was a change in mix and the field services came down a little bit as part of the mix. So it could make the percentage look higher because as the G&A really follows the professional services revenue much more than it follows the fuel services revenue. So we always look at it in absolute dollars because the percentages can just be influenced by too many other forces. Craig L. Martin: The percentages are a little misleading sometime. Steven Fisher - UBS: Yeah, sure. And on headcount, related to your comments on the SG&A reduction, but it sounds like you're still reducing fulltime headcount. How should we think about that as the year progresses and relative to where you were at 38,900 fulltime people at the end of September? Craig L. Martin: Well, I think we may see a few ongoing headcount reductions over the next few quarters. Again, that sort of relates to my question about where exactly is the bottom for the business, but it's clear that our headcount reduction has moderated significantly from where it was three quarters ago. Steven Fisher - UBS: Okay. And I assume it would pick up only coincident with backlog growth? Craig L. Martin: Headcount might pick up a bit ahead of backlog growth just because of the nature of backlog. The headcount picks up when the technical professional services business kicks in, but backlog tends to be more affected at least if you look at total backlog by the field services numbers so it could be a little bit of a leading indicator in that regard. It depends on whether you're looking at technical professional services backlog or total backlog. Steven Fisher - UBS: Right, okay. And then just lastly was the currency impact on reported backlog from September to December at all material? Craig L. Martin: No, it wasn't. Steven Fisher - UBS: Okay great, thank you.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Joe Ritchie with Goldman Sachs. Joe Ritchie - Goldman Sachs: Good morning, everyone. A couple of questions for you, on backlog we have seen backlog continue to trend down for three quarters despite the 300 million, I believe it was, that you saw from the TYBRIN acquisition this quarter. You mentioned in your commentary earlier that we're near a bottom and that we could see that bottom over the next few quarters. Can you give us a sense on when you would expect a hidden inflection point? So do you have a time estimate at this point? Craig L. Martin: I really don't, but I would caution you that we have in backlog and coming out of backlog each quarter one very substantial project in Motiva and there's a substantial amount of factory costs associated with Motiva and that's probably going to influence backlog a little bit for the next few quarters as that job goes to completion. And we don't expect to replace that passthrough backlog soon. Joe Ritchie - Goldman Sachs: Okay that's fair, but can you give us an update on Motiva and when you expect Motiva to be complete? Craig L. Martin: Let me turn to Greg. We're limited a little bit by what we're allowed to say here. Gregory J. Landry: Yeah. We'll probably have another 14-18 months on the project for total completion, plus startup. Joe Ritchie - Goldman Sachs: Okay. And can you give us a sense on the magnitude that's still left in your backlog for Motiva? Craig L. Martin: No, we wouldn't be allowed to tell you that part. Joe Ritchie - Goldman Sachs: Okay. One other question and I'm not sure if you can answer that on Motiva specifically, obviously with the backlog coming through can you give us some kind of sense on the type of margin drag that you see and because of the past nature of this project? Craig L. Martin: No, I don't think we can. Joe Ritchie - Goldman Sachs: Okay. I guess one last question on the cost side, you mentioned that over the next three quarters you'd be able to improve your cost, can you give us a sense for what initiatives you'll have in place to see the cost reduction over the next three quarters? Craig L. Martin: Well Joe, our standard approach to cost is to drive them out whenever we can drive them out, whenever we don't need them to run the business and so we're going to be looking at reductions across the board reducing corporate staff as appropriate. We've done some of that and we may have a little more to do, improving billability — I mean, there's a whole list of things that we make incremental improvements and in the aggregate that turns out to be real money. And I don't think going forward it's going to be any different than that. Joe Ritchie - Goldman Sachs: I guess in terms of — I would imagine a lot of the low-hanging fruit is already gone so I was wondering if you felt like there was still a little bit of low-hanging fruit left over the next few quarters to continue to take costs out of the system? Craig L. Martin: Well, I think there is an ongoing opportunity to take costs out of the system. I probably wouldn't characterize it as low-hanging fruit anymore. It's never that easy to do. You're talking a lot because of the nature of our business. Mostly you're talking about people and so even low hanging fruit is folks that you don't want to lose and it's painful to have to cut them out. So I think there is still opportunity for improvements in our cost position based on the kind of volumes that we're seeing going forward and we're going to go get that improvement while we try to stay sure we're positioned to really aggressively expand out of this downturn. Joe Ritchie - Goldman Sachs: Okay, thanks for answering my questions.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Jamie Cook of Credit Suisse. Jamie Cook – Credit Suisse: Hi, good morning. Nice quarter. I guess my first question, again not to dwell on the guidance, but as I look at a good first quarter which was slightly better than you thought, if I think about sort of what gets us to the lower end, I mean from your opinion do you see the risk more on the revenue side or on the margin side if the low end is where we end up? Because your order trends in your backlog, they're down a little bit. Even with cancellations they haven't been horrible. They've been somewhat good so I'm just wondering if it's more margin or top line? Craig L. Martin: I think it's a little bit of both. I know that's not the answer that makes it easy for you, but I think the continued margin pressure will have some impact on the out quarters. I also think that there could be some additional pressure on billable hours as we look forward, and the combination of the two is part of what creates the uncertainty about the out quarters and part of what creates that wide range. Jamie Cook – Credit Suisse: And then the orders this quarter that went into backlog, were those margins down sequentially from the fourth quarter? Craig L. Martin: Yeah, I would say they were. Jamie Cook – Credit Suisse: And would you care to give a range for? Craig L. Martin: No, sorry. Nice try though. Jamie Cook – Credit Suisse: I guess my other question is one of the other — you guys tended — the good and bad news is when we go into a recession you guys seem to experience it first, but coming out of it you guys tend to benefit. One of the areas I think, and I don't know if we should more optimistic on it, but if you think about sort of turnaround maintenance work on the refining type side, can you — I know maintenance work is probably 35%-40% of your business, is refining a big part of that and can you sort of help us think about how much that is down sort of from the peak and traditionally when that business turns because it seems to be more economically sensitive what type of recovery we would usually see. Craig L. Martin: I probably couldn't give you a percentage down from the peak or anything like that. Certainly a significant chunk of our maintenance capital type business is in refining and chemicals and so we certainly are seeing the effects and part of the challenge for the recessions' been turn downs in those areas, but I agree with your assessment that as we come out of this cycle we'll see a fair amount of turn-up in those investments first and like I say I believe we're taking share in that part of the business as we speak so I think that's going to be a plus for us when the time comes. Jamie Cook – Credit Suisse: And have you seen any change yet in the customers' patterns? I'm assuming no, but some people I speak to expect to see it sort of late this calendar year, would that be in line with when you would expect some sort of recovery? Craig L. Martin: Well, it's certainly when I'd like to see it. My conversations with customers aren't quite that optimistic or that definitive. Jamie Cook – Credit Suisse: Okay. Don't they always tend to be depressed though? Craig L. Martin: You know how it is with a lot of customers in our industry, when things aren't going good they project that they're going to go worse and when things are going to go great they think it's always going to get better. And so with refining margins in particular where they are the customers are sort of all in a depressed mood and they're tending to say negative things about the future. That's just the opposite of what happened. Refining margins were good and obviously neither one of them is necessarily determinative of the future. So like I say, I think they're being pretty pessimistic about the future, maybe more so than they need to be, maybe not, and so that causes me to respond to your question by saying maybe not quite so soon as you think based on what our customers are saying. Jamie Cook – Credit Suisse: Okay, thank you. I'll get back in queue.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of John Rogers of D.A. Davidson. John Rogers – D.A. Davidson: Hi, good morning. I just want to followup for a second on some of the cash flow numbers. Your CapEx in the quarter, if you include acquisitions, and I think this will be in the Q, but what was the total spending in the quarter? John W. Prosser Jr.: Well, for the acquisition we spent close to $330 million and the capital spend, I think that was actually in the press release for just the routine stuff which was relatively modest which it always is. And particularly in this case of an environment. So we also ended up borrowing a little bit so our debt went up about $100 million so that added into the financing had to do with some overseas stuff. So that kind of is the parameters of the acquisitions. John Rogers – D.A. Davidson: Okay. And John, as far as amortization now going forward, you give us the depreciation number, but with some of the things that can be written off more quickly, what's that look like then for the quarter and for this year? John W. Prosser Jr.: Well, there was really nothing in the quarter for TYBRIN so it'll be as we go forward, the amortization number will pick up and be higher over the next three quarters related to the TYBRIN acquisition. We're not ready at this point to get any definitive numbers because we're still working on the evaluation. John Rogers – D.A. Davidson: Okay. But last, the fourth fiscal quarter was like $10 million, was that right? And will it stay at that level? John W. Prosser Jr.: Well, the amortization for the first quarter was — let me just get the number to make sure. It was $17 million. John Rogers – D.A. Davidson: That was deprecation or amortization? John W. Prosser Jr.: I think it's both. John Rogers – D.A. Davidson: Okay. John W. Prosser Jr.: The capital spending for the first quarter was $7.7 million excluding acquisition. John Rogers – D.A. Davidson: Okay. And I'm sorry, so capital spending for the whole year ex-acquisitions, what kind of run rate are you at now? John W. Prosser Jr.: Well, it's probably going to be in that rate so I would expect it to be plus or minus $40 million. John Rogers – D.A. Davidson: Okay, great. Thank you, that's all I needed.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Jeff Spittel with Pritchard Capital Partners. Jeff Spittel - Pritchard Capital Partners: Good morning, guys. Just a question about the Middle East; you talked about the growth prospects there, certainly I guess there was a lot of competitively bid transactional work going on there. As you assess that marketplace, do you think that's closer to running its course or the opportunity in projects that are more in your sweet spot on the discrete and preferred relationship side large enough where independent of kind of a mix shift you could see some nice growth out of that business? Craig L. Martin: I think we'll see nice growth out of the business for a couple of reasons. I think we're well positioned on feed and PMC work on the bigger programs. Because we're not a lump sum turnkey bidder so we're not affecting the bidding slate so to speak and that creates opportunity for us with the customers on the front end and program management side. And then as I think I've mentioned on this call a couple of times there's a gigantic installed asset base in the Middle East and that's a piece of business that we are just starting to serve and we think there's very significant growth in that maintenance capital small project business relative to the big event projects that have the international APC contractor community all bidding against each other. So we see the Middle East as a great growth engine for us as a company as we go forward driven on the back of using our business model. Jeff Spittel - Pritchard Capital Partners: Okay. And then shifting over to the oil sands, sounds like things are certainly starting to ramp up a little bit there, but people are being a little bit more cautious. In your mind what does that imply in terms of kind of the ramp up period from going to the front end of these projects to getting in to kind of the higher revenue burn projects? Is that still more of a 2011 inventory do you think that maybe pushes it out into 2012? Craig L. Martin: No. I think we'll start to see the higher revenue piece of this business in 2011. We may even see a little bit of it start to show up in backlog by the fourth quarter of '10. I think you're looking at 6-12 month kind of lead time on these projects before they start to move into detail design and construction. Jeff Spittel - Pritchard Capital Partners: Okay. So sounds like no material change from that standpoint? Craig L. Martin: Right. Jeff Spittel - Pritchard Capital Partners: Okay, thanks very much. John W. Prosser Jr.: Just before we move on I want to clarify the answer I gave to John on the amortization. The $17 million that's in the press release is only on normal assets. The number that is for intangibles for the first quarter was about $5.5 million and that number will be increasing as we go through the year because of this most recent acquisition. So I'm sorry I misspoke on the numbers.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Avram Fisher of BMO Capital Markets. Avram Fisher - BMO Capital Markets: Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Could you specify please where were the cancellations? Were they mostly in field services? Craig L. Martin: Yeah. Avram Fisher - BMO Capital Markets: They're all in field services? Craig L. Martin: No, not at all. John W. Prosser Jr.: Actually, the majority was in professional services. Craig L. Martin: Yeah, you're right. I stand corrected, you're right. Avram Fisher - BMO Capital Markets: Okay, so 60-40 roughly you think about it that way? Craig L. Martin: Oh no, probably a little more than that. I was thinking of a different cancellation that was in a previous quarter. John W. Prosser Jr.: It was actually about 90% that was in the professional services. Avram Fisher - BMO Capital Markets: And was it oil gas refining or was it similar to what we see in the past? Craig L. Martin: Yeah, it was in the heavy process business. Avram Fisher - BMO Capital Markets: Okay, thank you for that. And also just to clarify something you said before, you talked about I think in Andy's question, margins won't be down like they were the last time, and I remember hearing from prior quarters the last time you talked about the 1990 recession, 1991 recession, how will it compare in your view to the 2001 recession or is that what you're referring to? Craig L. Martin: Well, the one I was referring to is the '91-'92 timeframe and I think it will be better than that for sure. In the 2001 timeframe we weren't impacted as significantly just because of our mix of business so I don't think a comparison there is particularly relevant. Avram Fisher - BMO Capital Markets: In the 2001 recession your margins were in a 3.5%-4% range I think. Craig L. Martin: Right. And remember our business mix has changed quite a bit since then. Avram Fisher - BMO Capital Markets: Okay, in what way? Craig L. Martin: Well, with a lot more public sector business today than was there in 2001. Avram Fisher - BMO Capital Markets: Okay, and speaking of business mix, I'm trying to reconcile also you have the passthrough costs of Motiva coming through and yet your direct cost line's coming down as a percent of revenue and I'm just wondering if you could explain why? Craig L. Martin: Well, the mix we are getting a little bit higher professional services in the mix. Avram Fisher - BMO Capital Markets: So it reflects just the better mix towards the TPS side? Craig L. Martin: Yes. Avram Fisher - BMO Capital Markets: Okay, and then offsetting the passthrough costs on Motiva in some way, shape, or form, okay. And then finally you talk about competition for projects, how does that fir with the relationship-based business model? I mean, how does one work with the other, I'm trying to understand that. Craig L. Martin: Well for example, customers will use the existence of the potential for competition as a way to negotiate lower rates. So you often get the sort of well, we really like you guys and we want to continue to make this work, but your pricing is above market and so either reduce your pricing to what we think of as a market rate or we'll have to put it out on the street for competition. Avram Fisher - BMO Capital Markets: And does this mean you're clients are paying market prices for your services? Are you still getting a premium? Craig L. Martin: Well, as a result of that we can usually get a very modest premium, but modest is the operative word here, and I don't think we've ever claimed that our relationship base really gives us a big premium on the margin side. What it does is it gives us a better control of the cost side which helps us make more on tho operating margin side because it gives us a better handle and better control of our selling costs and our staffing costs because of the consistency we get from that model rather than getting a premium on the multiplier itself. I mean, the customers we're dealing with are very sophisticated and very smart buyers so they know what the market is. Avram Fisher - BMO Capital Markets: All right, I actually appreciate that color because it explains when you talk about the lowest cost to produce in the industry. I guess that's what you mean, keeping the selling and staffing costs low? Craig L. Martin: Yeah, it's the matter of having the lowest cost posture for a unit of work so that we can maximize whatever profit's available against the market price. Avram Fisher - BMO Capital Markets: Okay. Thanks for the color. I appreciate it.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Will Gabrielski of Broadpoint. Will Gabrielski - Broadpoint: Thank you. Just a couple of short questions, you mentioned with TYBRIN that that was the deal you were expecting to close when you formulated your guidance, were there others that you had expected to close in your guidance that are still out there that we should look for in the near term? Craig L. Martin: There are number that we are working on or that we will be working on that we think will close. I don't think any of those are material to our guidance as we sit here today. Will Gabrielski - Broadpoint: Okay. Quick oil sands question — Craig L. Martin: Just one amplification, when we build our plan for the year for any year, acquisitions are always a part of our strategy and so whatever expectation we might have in terms of what we'll do in acquisitions, we try to always have that built into our guidance. Will Gabrielski - Broadpoint: Okay, fair enough absolutely. The question I had on the oil sands, it strikes me that some of these bigger oil sands projects are coming back a little more quickly and obviously there was Husky, Imperial, et cetera. Any reason why you see some of the major or independent oil companies moving on oil sands before we even see them move and bring back some projects internationally given obviously the cost (inaudible) between producing there and internationally? Craig L. Martin: I'm not sure I can give you an insight into what they're thinking. I think the oil sands investments are pretty attractive right now in terms of the opportunity. I can't speak so much for big oil projects in faraway places because we really don't touch that stuff. Will Gabrielski - Broadpoint: Do you get a sense that there's a geopolitical component or that there's, because of scarcity of international reserve and these companies are sort of chasing their reserve to replace what their losing internationally with some of these different international deals we've seen struck over the past few months? Craig L. Martin: It could be. I think you're certainly seeing a move toward taking and making reserve investments where they look the most attractive. If you believe the Canadian assessment of the oil sands, it's a 300 billion plus barrel reserve which makes it a pretty attractive area to participate. I'm not sure there's many places you can point to that have that same sort of reserve capacity and the technology to extract. So it may be as simple as that, but we struggled with running our business, let alone understanding the mines of our customers' long-term investment decisions so I'm not sure I can speak authoritatively for any of them. Will Gabrielski - Broadpoint: Just curious if you had any conversations about that. The last question, you're hearing a lot of noises out of DC right now and one of the things that came out yesterday was talk of a spending freeze on certain non-defense nondiscretionary pieces of the budget and one of those appears to be transportation yet transportation was a big focus in the stimulus package and viewed as a job creator. What type of cross currents do you see impacting your business there and what are your expectations for an actual transportation bill given some of the rhetoric we'll most likely hear tomorrow night during the State of the Union address? Craig L. Martin: I think that's one of those uncertainties that we're dealing with and it's very hard for us to predict what all that means. You get a job bill that looks like it might provide some additional stimulus in that area and then you get all this noise going on now. And the administration and the Congress in my view are unpredictable. I guess that's the kindest thing I could say and so I don't have a good feel for where that's going. We've tried to prepare our business in ways that let us deal with customers who we think are going to have ongoing money to spend. We're certainly seeing weakness in the transportation arena in state DOTs. That's a big challenge because they're just really struggling to figure out what they have and how to spend it. But there are others like the toll road authorities who seem to have good money to spend and that business is a pretty active one for us. So it's a mixed bag and it's hard to predict what all that will mean. Will Gabrielski - Broadpoint: I'm going to hide behind your answer for the next year then. No, I appreciate that (laughter). Craig L. Martin: I wish I could give you a better one, but I think you'll need a Ouija board to figure it out. Will Gabrielski - Broadpoint: Absolutely. I guess we'll know more when we know it. Thank you.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of David Yuschak of Madison Williams. David Yuschak - Madison Williams: Congratulations on a great quarter, guys. As far as just talking about policy and all that, your sales internationally tended to be in the last couple of years 36%-38% in a good robust spending environment. Because of some of the issues coming out of Washington and the administration do you perceive where a percentage of business internationally would materialize, and if so where may you — are you going to put more resources there or how do you see that maybe playing out if there is some frustrations with domestic policy? Craig L. Martin: I would say that the absent new markets and acquisitions like TYBRIN, certainly the balance might shift a little bit internationally. That's where a lot of our activity is, it's where a fair amount of our growth will come although we may execute a significant fraction of international work in domestic operations. When you factor in though the potential for acquisitions, new markets, I'm not sure that means there will be that much of a shift in the mix. So TYBRIN as you can imagine, their business is almost entirely domestic and so you can kind of get a feel for what that means to the numbers. So even though it would seem like the ratios should go up, I think give what we're going to do in the way of acquisition balanced by what we're going to do in the way of organic growth is probably not going to change a lot. David Yuschak - Madison Williams: Okay, good. And then as far as you're talking about pressure on margins and all that, is there any particular market segment like maybe refineries downstream where you're seeing more or could you just give us a sense as to is it isolated or particularly broad based? Craig L. Martin: It's across most of the private sector and heavily concentrated in the heavy process business. So chemicals upstream and refining probably have the most pressure in the private sector, but all of the private sector is seeing some pressure. David Yuschak - Madison Williams: Okay. And then one last question, last quarter you guys were pretty — you said something to the effect of maybe not the most (inaudible), but you might hear in that quarter, but seems to be more positive this time around. Is there anything in particular that maybe has given you maybe a little more boost in your confidence compared to some of the comments you made last quarter? Craig L. Martin: Well, we got one quarter behind us. That does color our thinking a little bit. We did better in the quarter than we thought we might, that's a positive. There is this feeling that maybe the bottom is somewhere nearby and so that's probably also a little more of a positive. I still think you will find that we were more bearish going forward than our competition, but it'll be interesting to see when they all report what they have to say. David Yuschak - Madison Williams: All right, I appreciate your answers. Thanks a lot.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Chase Jacobsen of Sterne Agee. Chase Jacobsen - Sterne Agee: Hey, guys. Good morning. Just had a quick question regarding transportation infrastructure. You had mentioned that the stimulus is having some benefit and I was just wondering if that benefit is actually coming from the real stimulus dollars that are actually being spent or is it coming from the stimulus dollars that have been allocated to the funds and the state are using it as more of a long-term view? Craig L. Martin: No. I think our response is directly a response to work that we have won and are executing. We've done, I think, very well on the backup stimulus over the last three quarters or so. I think we're going to continue to do very well in terms of getting more than our share of what business is out there for stimulus. I just wish it weren't offsetting the shortfall and state DOT work, for example. I think a stimulus has been what we intended and if the government would continue to fund transportation at "normal" levels, the outcome for us would be very noticeably positive because like I say we are doing very well on the stimulus side, but unfortunately it's that half empty cup of coffee problem. Chase Jacobsen - Sterne Agee: Okay. And I guess just since nobody touched on it, your view, I would assume is held regarding a highway bill not until early next year? Craig L. Martin: Yeah, I think we're going to see it drag out. Chase Jacobsen - Sterne Agee: Okay, thanks.
Operator
Your final question comes from the line of Andrea Wirth of Robert Baird. Andrea Wirth - Robert Baird: Just one last question, I just wonder if you could address Oak Ridge a little bit. I think in December the DOE decided that they're going to look for another contractor. I wonder if you can just give us a little bit of insight as to why that is? I think that contract's been a Jacobs' contract for over 10 years and what potential revenue impact of that would be? I'm calculating something around $200 million? Craig L. Martin: There's very little potential revenue impact going forward. We actually expect to be a competitor for that re-procurement and there are reasons to think we might be very affective as a competitor. That is a very complicated project and a very complicated situation. I can't really say a whole lot about the DOE's motives, but I think our performance as a company has been quite good and I think that'll be reflected in the potential for new work going forward. Andrea Wirth - Robert Baird: Got it, thank you.
Operator
There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the conference back over to Mr. Martin for any closing remarks. Craig L. Martin: Thank you all very much, good questions. I appreciate that you comment that we had a good quarter. Obviously it's better than we expected, but not near what we'd like to be doing and we're going to do our best to get back on the track we'd like to be on long term. I think we'll be able to do that and I think your confidence in our company will be well supported by that. So with that in mind, thank you all very much and that's the end of our call.
Operator
This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.