Jacobs Engineering Group Inc.

Jacobs Engineering Group Inc.

$137.36
1.93 (1.43%)
New York Stock Exchange
USD, US
Engineering & Construction

Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. (J) Q2 2010 Earnings Call Transcript

Published at 2010-04-27 20:09:09
Executives
Patty Bruner – IR John Prosser – CFO, EVP of Finance & Administration, and Treasurer Craig Martin – President and CEO Noel Watson – Chairman
Analysts
Alex Rygiel – FBR Capital Markets Michael Dudas – Jefferies Andrew Kaplowitz – Barclays Capital Andrew Obin – Merrill Lynch Scott Levine – JPMorgan Tahira Afzal – KeyBanc Richard Paget – Morgan Joseph Barry Bannister – Stifel Nicolaus Steven Fisher – UBS Avram Fisher – BMO Capital Markets John Rogers – D.A. Davidson Will Gabrielski – Broadpoint AmTech Chase Jacobsen – Sterne Agee Justin Hauke – Robert W. Baird Jamie Cook – Credit Suisse
Operator
Good morning. My name is Kelly and I will be your conference operator for today. At this time I would like to welcome everyone to the Jacob's second quarter 2010 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers remarks, there will be a question and answer session. (Operator Instructions) Ms. Bruner, you may begin your conference.
Patty Bruner
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 Conditions and Results of Operations contained therein in the most recent Form 10-Q for the period ending January 1st 2010 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 discuss the financial results.
John Prosser
Thank you, Patty, and good morning. I will briefly go over the financial highlights for the quarter and then I'll turn it over to Craig Martin, our CEO to go through the overview of the business and what we are seeing out there in the marketplace. We go to slide 4, the financial highlights. As was covered in our press release, the diluted EPS for the quarter was $0.62, net earnings of $77.5 million and for the year-to-date, that brings us to $1.20 and net earnings of $149.9 million. Our backlog was at $14.7 billion, down a couple of hundred million sequentially from last quarter and we continue to have a very strong sheet. Our Q will be filed by the end of the week. So you'll be able to see the details of the financial statements at that point. The net cash at the end of the quarter was $743 million. This compares to $941 million last quarter and the decrease really is a result of a couple of acquisitions that we've made since the beginning of the year. We have revised our guidance. Our fiscal year 10 guidance is now at $2.15 to $2.65. So it's up slightly from the previous range. Moving on to slide 5 a track of our earnings history. Obviously we've been disappointed the last two [ph] years with the downturn. We have still shown, as you see the bars at the bottom of the graph that even with this downturn we still are averaging well above the 15% compounded growth rates that we talk about as our long term target. Now if you look through the end this last quarter, our last 10 year growth rate is at 18%. Looking at our backlog, which is slide 6, again the backlog came in at $14.7 billion for the total backlog but which is down slightly from last quarter but the professional services backlog at $8.3 billion is actually up about $100 million from last quarter when we had a backlog of $8.2 billion. So we are seeing a pickup in good activity on the professional services as we still see some weakness as we work through some of the – particularly one large project that we have in backlog on the field services side. We have the one acquisition this quarter and it actually added less than $100 million in backlog because it was relatively small in all of professional services. So with that I will turn it over to Craig to go through the overview of the quarter.
Craig Martin
Thank you, John, and good morning everyone. I'm on slide 7 now. I want to take just a minute or two to talk about how we're going to continue to grow at that 15% compound rate that John mentioned. We've got five bullets here, the first two bullets remaining committed to our business model and our focus on market diversity. I'll talk about it in a little bit more detail later. So for now, we'll move on to the next three bullets and let me talk first about growth through our multi domestic strategy. As we've told you many times, we believe that it is important for us to be local to our customers and we believe there's significant opportunity to drive growth through continuing geographic expansion. We're particularly excited about opportunities to grow in the Middle East and in China. Particularly the Middle East chose opportunities in both the public sector and the private sector. I ran across the data point just the other day about Middle East CapEx in the process, the private sector side of the business and there is something like $178 billion to be spent in the next five years just in that area alone. So we think our expansion in the Middle East area is important to us. We're making good progress there and we're going to continue to keep pressure on the system to expand our Middle East presence and grow domestically. Remember that we'd like to be local because that's what drives our base load work and that base load is very important. I'll talk about that more in a minute. Our next bullet here is drive down costs continuously. We have had another good quarter in terms of cost control, from the perspective, maybe the way we look at it, you may not entirely agree when you look at the numbers but we feel pretty good about the cost control we've demonstrated and we think of it as a pretty positive trend going forward. So we continue to see benefits from our aggressive approach to controlling costs. Frankly margin pressure continues to be an issue. I'll talk more about that in a little bit and so we need to continue to drive our cost down in order to maintain the good strong profitable position in this market. And then finally the bullet on acquisitions. We've always made acquisitions a part of our growth strategy. We continue to believe that this is a great time for acquisitions. We've just finished the JJG deal this last quarter. That's a water and waste water acquisition, the first of what we think will be a series of those. We think there's lots of growth in that business and lots of opportunity to grow. As we sit here today we're focusing on acquisitions in about five or six areas, geographic acquisitions in the Middle-East and to a lesser extent in China, market acquisitions in the upstream business, in the water and waste water business, in Aerospace and Defense are all areas of focus for us. We're also looking at opportunities in other markets, particularly power and mining and minerals but that would be on an opportunistic basis. Frankly we're doing pretty well on growing our power business on a bootstrap basis but an acquisition would still be nice. Moving now to slide 8, let me talk in a little more detail about our business model. You can see that we have divided the types of business companies in our industries to three categories, transactional projects, discreet projects and preferred relationships. Transactional projects are those projects that are lump sum turnkey. They are big events in faraway places for the most part, tend to be very competitive, lots of pricing pressure, fairly significantly amount of risk associated with transactional projects in one form or another and that's a big part of the industry likes to do. The second aspect or second category that we talk about a lot is discreet projects. These are project events that don't have that big event ROA place quality or the big lump sum turnkey qualities but are still fairly competitive. So a number of engineering or construction companies like Jacobs could be competing for a piece of work. Pricing could well be factor in the selection process along with the qualifications and capabilities but the projects won't have the transactional risk of the big transactional projects. We continue to see a lot of discreet project work out there but it's another area where pricing pressure is pretty significant. And then we have the preferred relationship category and as you can see from comparing the two pie charts, ours and what we categorize as the industry model, that's our preferred area of business. So we're quite different than most of the industry in that regard. Preferred relationships are those relationships where we work with a customer on a continuous basis for a very long period of time. We usually have some sort of standing agreement with the customer, could be called a basic ordering agreement, an alliance of partnership, a supplier choice agreement. There's a million different names for it. But it really involves a very level of repeat business on established terms and conditions and where the competition, if there is any at all that tends to limited to who has the best team for the work at that time. That preferred relationship bottle results in a high level repeat business. Our repeat business right now is running more than 90%. It is a big part of our core and key client strategy and they tend to have the biggest spend, both in good times and bad. So the concentration of those clients is a positive and it also includes a lot of base load work and we think that base load business is particularly key right now. More than 40% of our business is what we would characterize as base load and what makes that important is base load business is the first business to recover in a down cycle and so if the down cycle ends, the business comes back, it will come back in the area of base load before it comes back in big projects and well before it comes back in the big events world. There is only limited pricing competition as I mentioned earlier in the preferred relationships part of the business but there is pricing pressure. The customers expect that you will provide market pricing for the work you're doing those preferred contracts and our departments are pretty effective in making sure that they get that market pricing. So there is some pricing pressure there although it's not as severe as it is, say in the lump sum turnkey arena. Basically our message here is that we're sticking to our business model. We're executing well right now. We had a good quarter from an execution standpoint last quarter. We're continuing to expand our relationships through these core and key customers. We're going to continue to avoid the high risk transactional projects events and obviously as I mentioned earlier we're going to stay focused on cost control. So we think our business model is the right one for today and the future and we're sticking to it. Moving on now to slide 9. These are the markets we serve. One of the things we've tried to do as a company is to diversify our markets. Let me talk about each of these markets in a little detail but let me characterize them first broadly. Overall the market is slow but I would say marginally better. We think we're seeing a little bit stronger marketplace out there than we saw six months ago or even three months ago and that we may be seeing or have seen the bottom of the cycle at least from Jacobs's perspective. By no means has CapEx been restored. The strength of the market is not, I wouldn't characterize it in any way as robust but it is fractionally better and that's a positive. It's sort of a little glimmer of hope if you want for where the markets are going from here. Let me talk about the markets in detail and I'll start sort of at the top of the chart there with the pulp and paper high tech food and consumer products category. That's sort of our all other segments. That business actually is pretty good. There continues to be continued improvement in that arena. We're seeing lots of activity in the packaged food and beverage business where we're pretty active and have a significant share plus some real opportunities for growth and pleasantly for us at least, there is a very significant amount of increasing activity in the towel and tissue part of consumer products and in pulp and paper generally. I think I told you last quarter that was looking up. It continues to look up. Investments are growing in that arena after a very long dry spell. So we're a little more positive about this sector of our business than we have been in the past. Moving on now to chemicals, our chemicals business is growing. It is mostly based on fairly significant small project work. So it is base load in the way that I described it early for the large part. There is a lot of pent up CapEx that has yet to be released and then there is a fairly good flow of major project activity and the Middle East, India and Singapore are all places where we're very positioned today or are increasing our position as we go forward. So we think the chemicals business is going to be a little bit better as we look forward to the next few quarters. Moving on to upstream oil and gas, that's really for us two areas of focus, oil sands and gas processing in the form of both gas storage, gas production and treatment. Both those businesses, in the upstream business for us continues to improve, although a little more slowly than I would, particularly in the area of the oil sands. Oil Sands has been a little slow to come out of the block compared to the investment levels and the oil prices that we're seeing today but the forecast for investment of the oil sands is for CapEx to triple in the next two or three years and there is something like $178 billion of potential backlog in the oil sands alone. We're in a terrific position to take advantage. It's just a matter of how fast will it come. But we do think that's going to be an area that will help lead the recover from the oil and gas business. Our gas side is also doing well. This is the part of the upstream business where we have some real strength. If you looked at the last quarter, we announced four major projects in the upstream business and not all of our customers are willing to let us announce their projects. They're both in gas storage and gas production and treatment facilities. It's a good strong business for us with lots of opportunity for growth. As I said, this is an area where acquisitions would make good sense as well. So we'll continue to look at acquisitions as a possibility. And then we move on to refining. The refining business is just slow. There is no other way to describe it. Crude prices continue to drift up. The spread between heavy crudes and sweet crudes has opened up again and crack spreads have improved. So there are some good signs for the business but I don't think we're going to see any major new investment in refining outside the Middle East and maybe those projects that are driven by national governments in the near term. For us, that's probably not such bad news because we're focused mostly on environmental capital, maintenance capital, crude slight changes, those kinds of projects and there we're seeing increasing spend in a number of areas. Particularly maintenance capital is coming back nicely and that's a positive as we see it today. We've got a lot of environmental spending both coming out of the administration and through things like Marpol 6 that we can see coming as well. And so that's a plus and obviously with the crack – the spread between heavy and sweet crudes opening up and in fact in general the world is getting heavier and sourer, we think that will also continue to drive a number of small projects in the crude slight change we're in. So we're certainly not (inaudible) optimistic about refining but in our segment of the refining business we think things are going to be reasonably good. If you look at just a couple of other data points, I want to back to the Middle East for a just a second. If you go across these markets, chemicals, upstream and refining, Aramco for example has announced they're going to spend $90 billion over the next five years in these areas, particularly in the gas part of the business. So we think there is again real opportunity for us to drive our growth. Moving around to the bottom of the chart now to the infrastructure business. It's about 9% of our business today. Most of that for us is transportation related infrastructure, planes, trains, automobiles, shipping, ports. It's a huge market with significant backhaul in demand. We think that business is going to get better here over the next couple of quarters. The stimulus as I've told you before didn't do a lot for the industry. It didn't fill-up the hole created by the shortfall in gas tax and sales tax, local revenues and the state local level. But that appears to be changing for the better a bit. We see some evidence now that state tax revenues are starting to go back up. We got a higher act passed which will help in terms of funding for safety at least the historic $40 billion. We could still use more support from the government in the infrastructure arena but at least in the U.S. that's a positive. In the U.K. we have similar challenges right now with the elections and what that will mean to the business going forward. But overall we're a little more positive about infrastructure today than we have been in the last couple of quarters. Still not the market we think it could be or should be because of the lack of support from the tax side of the world but I think a little better than maybe we were saying it was a quarter ago. And then of course, the water and waste water business where we're relatively new is a huge business with lot of pent up CapEx. I think our opportunity to grow there is pretty significant. We'll do that by taking share in the near term and then finding additional acquisitions. Moving around the chart now to buildings, you'll see a little anomaly here in that we have two colors for building, sort of a – I guess you'd call that pink or polka dot and regular red. We've changed the way we're going to represent the buildings business forward and would take in the part of our buildings business that supports the federal government, particularly the U.S. federal government but national governments generally and taken it out of national governments and included it in buildings to give you a better sense of how that compares to the rest of the company. When we do that it goes from about 5% to about 8% round numbers and so you can see that it's an 8% plus or minus business for us today and as we go forward we'll report it that way. So all of our buildings business will be in buildings, not mixed into national government. Still, a really strong business for us right now, particularly because of the part of the market that we serve. As you recall we're in the healthcare business. We're in the mission critical facilities business. Both those businesses are very strong, lots of activity. This business is also a beneficiary of very significant stimulus money. So that's been a positive for us. We also see lots of opportunity for geographic expansion. As is typical of Jacob's there are some markets that most people have written off like buildings and infrastructure in the Middle East that we now think represent opportunities for us and we'll continue to see if we can leverage those opportunities as we go forward. Good business, good demographic drivers on the healthcare side. So overall I think a business that we're pretty positive about as we go forward. The next section is our national governments business. Remember that's made up of two parts. Research, development, test engineering, scientific and technical consulting is one part. Environmental is the other part. Let me talk about the environmental piece first. We've talked forever till we're practically blue in the face about the U.K's nuclear cleanup program but it is really starting to show some activity. A lot of major opportunities out there were in the – right in the hunt for a couple of particularly strong opportunities. It looks to us like that 150 billion pounds of expenditure that we've talked about for such a long time is finally going to turn into work for people like Jacobs. So we're pretty upbeat about where things are in the U.K. In addition, the U.S. environment market is benefiting both from stimulus and of course from the administration's focus on environmental. We saw another $6 billion allocated to DOE for environmental cleanup. Only about a third of that has been spent. So there is $4 billion or so and that will go to existing projects in existing sites for the most part. So we expect to see a benefit from that as well. So that part of the business I think is good and in particular we're excited about the opportunities to expand the share of that market, both here and in the U.K. On the research and development testing engineering side, that business has been pretty robust. We made an acquisition as you recall in the first quarter of this year for Tybrin. We've been adding share in that market pretty aggressively. I think we had five or six awards that we were able to announce in this last quarter amounting to more than $100 million, when a customer would like to say how much, a good business for us and some real opportunities there, great acquisition climate as well. Some things are going on that are both positives and negatives. The administration has a significant focus on organizational conflict of interest and because we don't make any other things that we test or specify or analyze, we're in a great position to benefit as the big defense contractors get pushed out of the consulting and testing side of the business and have to go back to their base businesses of making stuff. On the negative side, the administration is pushing hard for in-sourcing, what I call inherently governmental functions and that has a negative impact on our work. So far we've actually had it drive more hiring than we've lost in terms of in-sourcing of staff but that may or may not continue to – it's an interesting question, what will happen on the in-sourcing side. The other big question mark frankly in that area is what's going to happen with NASA. As you know we're a big NASA contractor. There is lots of questions about where NASA's funding is going as it goes forward and it's difficult as we sit here today to say what that means for us. In past times like this the net effect has generally been slightly positive. Whether that will be true as we go forward though is some question about that. And then finally moving to the top of the wheel here, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology. It's a business driven by drug discovery and an ageing population. There is still a fair amount of activity in things like biotech and in vaccines. The good news is the consolidations, the big mergers and acquisitions that have taken place in the industry over the last couple of years seem to be behind us now. Those customers are starting to spend money. Another good news point in the caution we've had for a while now as it does not look like healthcare reform is going to be a big issue in terms of pharmaceutical CapEx. So the fact that we're positioned with the leading market share in kind of a commanding position there we think is a plus for this business long term. So overall, if you look at our markets, there is some good news spread across the markets, if not as good as we'd like it to be. But it's certainly better than it has been and we consider that a plus. Moving now to slide 10, just a quick commercial for the company. We think our business model is working and that we are in fact increasing share. We'll continue to diversify markets, geographies and services with a focus on being local. The fact that we have a great balance sheet is a plus because we still think this is a very advantaged time for making acquisitions and we're confident we can continue to deliver on that promise of 15% average compound growth over the long term. And with that I will turn it back to the operator for questions. Thank you.
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Alex Rygiel with FBR Capital Markets. Alex Rygiel – FBR Capital Markets: Thank you, gentlemen.
Craig Martin
Good morning, Alex. Alex Rygiel – FBR Capital Markets: Craig, could you comment a little bit more on pricing in the marketplace and margins that are embedded in some of the new order flow that you saw in the most recent quarter and possibly how that compares to a year ago or even how it compares to the prior quarter?
Craig Martin
Sure. The pricing pressure continues in some markets. Yet this isn't true across all of our markets today. But if you look at, particularly the heavy process markets, so refining, upstream oil and gas, chemicals, there is still a significant amount of pricing pressure out there. It probably isn't worse than it was last quarter but it isn't better either. So as we think about margin pressure going forward, we see it continuing. But at least at the moment we don't see any further deterioration of where margins might go. So what that means is what's coming in the backlog looks an awful lot like what's in backlog. Remember that I told you last quarter that for some of our big alliance agreements in that sector of our market our customers are quick to get the pricing concessions that they want and they get them effective immediately. So backlog gets adjusted for pricing concessions, more or less when it happens. So as I say, I think that the margins and backlog in the heavy process business will continue to be under pressure but the pressures are probably not significantly different than they have been. That's not to say we won't see some further deterioration overall of pricing but I'm not expecting it to be dramatic. In other sectors of the market we're not seeing significant pricing pressure at all, either because of the nature of the business model or the weakness of the competitive slate but heavy process is the area of focus which still remains about half our business. Alex Rygiel – FBR Capital Markets: And one follow-up. You mentioned you're seeing some more opportunities in the U.K. environmental marketplace. Could you comment on the margin opportunity of that business relative to the U.S. environmental work performed currently?
Craig Martin
We think that the margin opportunities there are going to be about the same, that those businesses and those projects will earn about the same sorts of margins as what we earn on similar work in the U.S. Does that answer your question? Alex Rygiel – FBR Capital Markets: Yes, it does. Thank you.
Craig Martin
Okay.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Michael Dudas with Jefferies. Michael Dudas – Jefferies: Good morning gentlemen, Patty.
Craig Martin
Hey Michael, how are you doing? Michael Dudas – Jefferies: Great, thanks. Maybe this one is for Noel. How would you characterize where we are in the cycle today relative to a like period throughout your career?
Noel Watson
Well, the way it feels, Mike, is that generally we bottom and I think a lot will depend on the shape of the curve but it does appear, the bottom is past or we're in it right now. Prospects are tipping up. It does not feel a lot different than other periods, although it does appear to me, if you go back to the real comparative period which was in the middle 80's it came out of that awfully slowly. Our company did better at the time because we were smaller. But it came out awfully slow. It feels to me like it's going to come up better this time. I think it's going to be better for Jacob because we're just a lot more diversified. So if you go back into the middle 80's we had a very narrow market. So in my mind, it feels like it's going to come out but this is not a V shaped recovery like we had – the one in the 90's, in our early 90's, 93 and the one in 2000. Those were almost V shaped recoveries. This one is going to come out slow growth. Michael Dudas – Jefferies: When you come out of this recovery, do you appreciate your business mix of public versus private sector funding? Do you anticipate given where spending cycles may go out of this recovery that you'd want to lean more towards one area or the other and I mentioned that because you talk about water and waste water as very attractive A&D, but also on the power side and maybe if you could just follow-up on power, is the model changed enough for you to get very significantly into that market?
Craig Martin
In terms of the balance between public and private and obviously we want to continue to sort of round out markets. So things like water and waste water are very attractive because we have a relatively small presence, good position in the U.K., getting started on our position in the U.S. and the demographics of that market, particularly the pent up capital demand suggest that the business will be good and at some point it will be great. So we're kind of looking at each market in terms of what we think the short term and long term opportunities are and where would we like to be positioned and we're also then of course looking at how those diversified and obviously the water and waste water market responds to little different CapEx cycle and taxation cycle than the transportation does for example. Those things are all considerations in how we think about diversifying our markets. I mentioned that we're keeping an eye on both power and mining and minerals, two markets that we're obviously not in. If we go into those markets it will be in the segment and the sector that matches our business model. So I'm not suggesting for a minute we're going to change we approach business or that we're going to jump out and become a leader in the lump sum turnkey power plant design and construction business. That's not Jacob's way. But I do think there are sub sets of that marketplace and customers within the marketplace that will enable our model and if the right opportunities came along on the acquisition side, we would do that. Certainly we're going to continue to work with those customers to try to bootstrap our growth in that market. Michael Dudas – Jefferies: Thank you. And my final, just follow-up is when you talk about acquisitions and the ones you've made over the last six months and in the marketplace, can you talk about where expectations are relative to multiples expected and visibility on getting transactions completed. Thank you.
Craig Martin
Sure. In terms of multiples, the multiples are down a bit from their peak. Depending on the kind of services that you're buying and the strength of the particular company, you're probably seeing multiples on the services side in the range of 7 to 9 and on the construction side in a range of 5 to 7. So those are pretty good multiples from our perspective today. We've got a pretty good pipeline of deals and we're expecting that could result and I say could result advisedly in a nice, steady flow of actual transactions. But of course, these things are subject to lots of ins and outs and back and forth and these deals get done when they're ready to be done and not before. So it isn't something you can rely on with certainty. In fact we feel good about what's out there in a way of potential transactions and our ability to close them but it's a person to person kind of an issue when you get right down to it. Michael Dudas – Jefferies: Thank you, Craig and Noel.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Kaplowitz with Barclays Capital. Andrew Kaplowitz – Barclays Capital: Good morning guys.
Craig Martin
Good morning. Andrew Kaplowitz – Barclays Capital: Craig, could you talk about the level of feed work that you're seeing. As you've sensed a little bit of recovery in your end markets, have you also seen an increase in feed activity and how do you think that bode for the larger projects? When do you think they can start to come back?
Craig Martin
We are seeing a fair amount of feed activity and that's probably a bigger piece of the business today than maybe it's ever been because a lot of other Middle East activity for us is feed work and I think it actually is indicative of why we think the market may be firming up and why things may be getting better. There are a number of projects that are in the feed stage today or are just being awarded feeds that we have every reason to think will turn into major projects and some of those represent pretty significant additions to backlog when they do. We're being pretty careful about putting those big projects into backlog as we sit here today because the customers are still a little schizophrenic about all of this and so some days their projects are on, some days they aren't. Some days they say why don't we just push this off for about a year and see what happens. I was talking to one of our competitors on the phone yesterday and that particular competitor was explaining to me that they had did a couple of jobs now and these are lump sum turnkey jobs for the third time and they couldn't seem to get the project actually get released and their view was that the procurement department was simply shopping and shopping and shopping. It was going to keep bidding the job till they got the price they like, which I asked him, is it getting cheaper with each round of bids and the answer was, yes it is. So maybe that procurement department knows what they're doing. But that's kind of indicative of the sort of the unpredictability, the market right now. It is still a little uncertain how things are going to unfold and it goes in part to Noel's comment about we don't expect a V shaped recovery here. It's going to one of those kinds of grueling climbs off the bottom as opposed to just a great leap. Does that answer your question? Andrew Kaplowitz – Barclays Capital: It does but Craig, would you say that the customer confidence materially improved even throughout the quarter, let alone versus three months ago or six months ago?
Craig Martin
Oh gosh. I don't have enough consistent customer contact with the same customer; say if any one customer's outlook improved. I would tell you that when I talked to the customers, for the most part their attitude seems to be like the one I described for us which is things are looking better. We can see that things are improving. It feels better. It looks better. The data is a little better than then they follow that with a but we're going to be careful for a while yet and so I think what you've got is the indicators are there but the confidence isn't there yet. And I think confidence is improving. It's just improving slowly. Andrew Kaplowitz – Barclays Capital: Understand. If I could ask you a follow-up actually related to your comment about cost? You mentioned that we might not like as much as you cited that you're keeping costs down. So obviously when we look sequentially, if you exclude the charge that you had last quarter, the SG&A is up on an absolute basis pretty significantly. The question that I have is how much of that is due to the acquisitions that you made over the last couple of quarters. How would we be able to see that you're managing cost?
Craig Martin
Oh and that's a problem because I don't know a good way of doing that for your benefit that wouldn't get you too far into the numbers and our competition with you. But in fact the addition of those big chunks of overhead is a big factor in the numbers and as I think I've told you guys before, when we add business, particularly in the public side of the world, their G&A costs relative to their revenues are quite high. So those are significant adds to our overall business as we go forward. There is also some effects of things like the holidays which impact our G&A's positively and so we've had a quarter now with very little holiday time in it. So that's another factor that you have to look at when you're trying to see how well we're actually controlling the real cost of the business. So there's a whole bunch of factors that make it hard for you to see that and hard for me to demonstrate it to you other than you might have to just take my word for it. Andrew Kaplowitz – Barclays Capital: That's fine but Craig, is it realistic to say that if you're doing acquisitions today and we looked at the next few quarters, we should see on an absolute basis the SG&A revel off or even go down if you're doing what you usually do.
John Prosser
Yes, I would say that our, as we said last quarter has – still that we're putting pressure in keeping control on the costs. As we start seeing an upturn which we're still looking forward to is there will be a lagging effect between when our business picks up and when the G&A starts picking up. So we would expect to see the G&A's if anything to be flat or down when you're looking at it sequentially as we go through the year. Andrew Kaplowitz – Barclays Capital: Thank you, John. Thanks guys.
John Prosser
The comparison of our first and second quarter is impacted dramatically by the holidays and well we're in the Charismas season because you get a lot of people that take vacation and such. In Europe and such there is a lot of shut down in sites like that because people just take that time off. Andrew Kaplowitz – Barclays Capital: I understand, okay.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Obin with Merrill Lynch. Andrew Obin – Merrill Lynch: Yes, good morning.
Craig Martin
Hi, Andrew. Andrew Obin – Merrill Lynch: Just to think about your downstream backlog and revenue line, how should we think about backlog progressing through the year ex-Motiva, when do you guys think it bottoms and how should we think about revenues on downstream and that's part one of the question for now?
Craig Martin
Well, I think – let's kind of break it into parts and try to talk it through. The pro service revenue we think will continue to grow but not by leaps and bounds. Now remember, we have always said that our backlog is lumpy. Projects come in the backlog in chunks sometimes and so quarter-over-quarter predictions probably aren't all that valid but I think the general trend, if you think about it over several quarters is we think our closed service backlog is going to grow. On the field service side of backlog however you do have the Motiva effect. Motiva is about half done as we sit here today. So there is a fairly significant amount of construction work that will pass through our books over the next four or five quarters that represents a significant headwind on the technical professional services backlog side. So there I think it will be a challenge to replace Motiva. We don't really expect to place Motiva into the backlog long term, at least not in a form like Motiva where you expect to replace it in more of our base load business. But I think that headwind will exist for a few more quarters and that will impact both technical professional services and backlog overall. That answers your question, Andrew? Andrew Obin – Merrill Lynch: Yes, though is it fair to say that ex-Motiva we can expect downstream backlog North America to bottom sometime over the next couple of quarters?
Craig Martin
Yes, I think that's fair. Andrew Obin – Merrill Lynch: And the other thing, can you talk about, just sort of more about upstream opportunities and I guess I understand if you are going to get sort of maintenance CapEx from your downstream customers but how are your customers thinking about giving you more sort of upstream work for example. Should we see more the accelerated contracts? I'm just using it as an example you've disclosed that where you're customers are giving you more upstream work and is it easy to do from a technical standpoint and there is a big difference in profitability?
Craig Martin
We think we'll be able to expand our share of the sort of maintenance small cap business on the gas side pretty significantly over the next few years, maybe not quarter-over-quarter but certainly year-over-year. It is a good business with margins that are frankly slightly better than what we see in refinery maintenance because there are fewer competitors and its complex in a different way because of the geographic distribution of the work. So we continue to believe that's a good growth area for us and that it will be a good contributor to our bottom line. Just to make sure it's clear, when I say its better margins than refineries but neither are numbers that would make investment bankers proud. They're both small but one is slightly bigger than the other. Andrew Obin – Merrill Lynch: And then final question, what about cash used in the quarter or what drove this?
Craig Martin
John?
John Prosser
Cash issued?
Craig Martin
Cash used.
John Prosser
Cash used? Primarily the cash is down because of the acquisitions. One of the acquisitions was made in the first quarter but just because of year end shuffling and some of our customers cash and such, as they were paying the bills or we were paying our bills, it didn't show up as much in the first quarter as it did right after well into the second quarter. So you see our cash year-to-date is down a couple of hundred million dollars and we saw more than that in the acquisitions. We will continue to – as Craig as said, we still see a number of opportunities out there for acquisitions and so the primary use of our cash will be and continue to be toward acquisitions and growth of the business. Andrew Obin – Merrill Lynch: Okay, let me fall off with you. Thank you very much.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Scott Levine with JPMorgan. Scott Levine – JPMorgan: Good morning guys.
Craig Martin
Good morning. Scott Levine – JPMorgan: The end market mix gave a very robust run down of the markets but if we just focus on the change in tone now versus call it six months ago when you initially provided fiscal 2010 guidance, could you isolate the areas where there has been the most significant change, either positive or disappointment versus your expectations in November, for which individual end markets would you say?
Craig Martin
Let's see. That's a good question. I would tell you that when we started the year we were pretty pessimistic about the world in general and so our expectations were – I would characterize it as low for a number of markets. Places where I think we have been pleasantly surprised, pulp and paper as a whole and food and consumer products, chemicals, another area we've been nicely surprised, buildings has turned out to be a nice positive, the Obama effect at least to now in the research and development test engineering business has a plus for us. So, those markets are probably where the positives have come in, infrastructure and refining kind of have turned out likely expected maybe not quite as bad but certainly not in order of magnitude better. Oil and gas has been a little weaker than we thought it might be on the – that was market where we weren't sure where it would go but our positive side the glass half full view was probably better than what we are actually seeing, glass half empty view is probably worst than what we are actually seeing. So, I guess that puts it kind of in the middle. Pharma is about what we expected, so that hasn't changed very much I think that covered all the markets. Scott Levine – JPMorgan: You mentioned that chemicals was maybe a pleasant surprise versus six months ago and could you talk about in a little more detail maybe we saw good numbers of the DuPont, saw press release contract with DuPont this morning, maybe a little bit of thought about what's driving the difference versus expectations in that market specifically?
Craig Martin
I put it down to sort of under spending for a very long time. When I look at the chemicals business I would have told you five years ago and probably did tell you on this call that we expect our chemicals business to grow a GDP and whether you look at U.S. GDP or global GDP. You got a growth spend okay; at least historically up I am looking at that five year kind of timeframe. But the spending didn't match that growth and I think we have finally reached that point where from a CapEx point of view the business growth driven by GDP has outstripped the ability to hold back capital and we are starting to see the capital come forward. Part of that is obviously driven by the sort of the Asian Tigers consumption issues but I think it's as much as anything it's just sort of pent-up investment and need for capacity because again remember most of our business is not giant brand new chemical plants in faraway places. It's helping our customers with their existing facilities in their sort of established venues, but the DuPont announcement yesterday was an example there. Scott Levine – JPMorgan: Got it. Thank you. One last if I may, would you characterize the UK government elections as a swing factor in your outlook for the infrastructure market or the environment clean up market or is that likely not much of an influence in the outlook in your view?
Craig Martin
Well I think it's likely we have more impact in the infrastructure market than on the environment clean up market. I really don't think it will affect the environment clean up side very significantly, but I do think that, looking forward the infrastructure market funding wise could be challenged and it will depend a lot on government's commitment in terms of how it goes forward. I think that's one of the uncertainties that that's out there that's I don't know how to handicap it frankly. So, simply we have to watch and try to understand as it unfolds.
Craig Martin
And I think probably more of an impact on 11 and beyond than on 10 or so.
John Prosser
Yeah, that's for sure. Scott Levine – JPMorgan: Understood. Thank you, either way.
Operator
: Tahira Afzal – KeyBanc: :
Craig Martin
Good morning. Tahira Afzal – KeyBanc: Congratulations on a good quarter.
Craig Martin
Thank you. Tahira Afzal – KeyBanc: Lot of the questions I have been asked, one of the questions I still had was as you start seeing revenue on some of the shortest cycle base load activity coming back. How does that offset pricing in terms of your operating margins?
Craig Martin
: Tahira Afzal – KeyBanc: Got it, okay. Second question was you talked about gas storage and gas maintenance business. What is making you so positive and excited about this? Is it the shale plays and is it something overseas as well. Would love to hear a bit more about that?
Craig Martin
Okay, it's a combination of a number of things. The gas is an energy source has been under utilized for a long time now and so what we are starting to see is a realization that there is lots of gas in the world and that is a useful thing to do to get it and either make chemicals out of it or use it for energy purposes. So, the things that are exciting us is that increased focus on gas whether its tight gas, shale gas those kinds of things and the U.S. or whether its issues like making sure that their security as a gas supply which is driving a lot of gas storage work in Europe for example. So, it's a kind of a mixed spectrum and then of course when you go to the Middle East where gas has been a waste product either been flared or pushed back down hole. It's a tremendous source of potential resource for chemical manufacture and I think we are going to see as world's power generation and I think we are going to see our Middle East customers monetize their gas assets to a much greater degree than they have in the past and so all that's driving a boom in the gas side of the upstream business. We are just well positioned for that relative to a boom in the oil production side. Tahira Afzal – KeyBanc: Okay. Thank you very much, gentlemen. That's all I had.
Craig Martin
All right. Thank you.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Richard Paget with Morgan Joseph. Richard Paget – Morgan Joseph: Hey everyone.
Craig Martin
Hey, how are you doing? Richard Paget – Morgan Joseph: Just getting back to the cost question, that previously asked, how much more could you possibly can squeeze out of your structure or at this point it's all just keeping a lid of SG&A and variable cost. I mean are there more offices to close or are you pretty much gone through that process and there might not be much more to kind squeeze out of the model.
Craig Martin
We that there are opportunities continue to drive our cost down through for example there is some additional office closures is one area. There is some ways to be a little smarter about what we spend, it will take a little time to implement, there is some restructuring that results that has to be done and managed particularly in Europe has to be managed intelligently and carefully and takes a little time to do. If you don't want to trigger all kinds of bad things and so we believe that we can continue to push in relative terms push our dollars down even further from where they are today. At some point we will probably get more to worry, it's a matter of maintenance and that will be a little bit of a function of how the markets behave because at some point if the markets aren't back you have to respond to that. There is a lag time before that results in higher G&A but it's not a long lag time. So, I think we will see continued improvement for a while yet and then I think we will be in more of a maintenance mode. Richard Paget – Morgan Joseph: Okay and then getting on the guidance mid-point suggest that the second half of the year will be more or else similar to the first half of the year. Without getting into not giving guidance within guidance, so what sort of scenarios or kind of risks or uncertainties on things the second half been less than the first half should we look at it, it is kind of timing on some of your base loads were coming in, is it something with Motiva if you could just give a little color on that?
John Prosser
It's hard to point any about one particular event or even one or two events that just how quickly we see this upturn. On the negative side we really aren't sure with all the pressure that's been put on some of the federal government for in sourcing jobs and there is a pressure on NASA and things like how that could affect us over the near term, the elections we have mentioned. Many of things we have already talked about have both pluses and minuses to them that could push us to various parts of in the range. So, it's just there is a lot of uncertainties both on the positive side and the negative side that could affect not only the longer-term growth in '11 but the balance of '10. Richard Paget – Morgan Joseph: Okay. Thanks.
John Prosser
I was not giving guidance within guidance. Richard Paget – Morgan Joseph: All right. Thanks, will get back in queue.
Operator
: Barry Bannister – Stifel Nicolaus: Barry Bannister with Stifel Nicolaus.
Craig Martin
Barry, do ever get tired of explaining how to pronounce the name of your company? It seems like you have to do that pretty often. Barry Bannister – Stifel Nicolaus: I feel Stifled by it. Anyway the thing that concerned us last quarter was when you spoke of a 4% operating margin as a theoretical bottom but we have done really well here with a four and three quarter percent margin. SG&A you have alluded to being a 9.5% peak as a percent of sales just by the TPS shift and gross margin which has lagged a little bit looks like it certainly got more upside than downside particularly as you go into TPS. So, are you willing to say here since you are starting to see bottoming your end markets that maybe four and three quarters operating margin is going to be the bottom instead of 4% this cycle?
John Prosser
I hate to discreet it but I don't think we ever said four was going to be the bottom. What we said is we didn't expect to see it to go down to what historically had been at the bottoms, we didn't give a floor but what I think we are still looking at is there is still the possibility of little bit of softness as the pricing as we go forward over the next few quarters as Craig said, we are – we expect the volume lead to pull us out of this downturn more than a pricing jump and the pricing will come after that. So, given that we could see a little bit more softening in the pricing and we are not going to call whether that's a just exactly where that is but it's or just exactly when that might happen but it certainly could, we could see it over the next couple of quarters the operating margins might still have a little bit of softness and we would hope to see that offset by volume pickups. Barry Bannister – Stifel Nicolaus: We look back at TPS going all the way to the '08 peak; the revenues, bookings and backlog all attract each other. There has been a huge divergence with falling out LTM revenues and bookings and yet backlog has remained very resilient at over $8 billion. Should we take that as a slower burn rate due to the changing mix of the TPS perhaps more long term supply contracts? What is the read on that?
Craig Martin
I don't think there is a dramatic change in the burn rate on the TPS, there might be a little bit as the federal programs have grown. They would tend to be a little bit longer term but on the O&M side we tend to book those a year at a time in anyway. So the backlog reflects just a year worth of our expectation and it kind of enrolls in quarter after quarter. I think drawing any conclusions over the last 12 to 18 months has been very difficult because of the cancellations and things like that has affected the backlog particularly the field services side of the backlog much more heavily than the professional services but they haven't impacted the professional services as well. But I think as we have always said historically as we come out of any recession or any growth cycle it is lead by professional services. I think we will see that certainly over the next three to five quarters, we are going to see the professional services leading before we see the pickup in the field service. Barry Bannister – Stifel Nicolaus: Okay. And then lastly, I don't think it gets much mentioned but you have made huge strides on operating cash flow as a percentage of cash collections from clients, your cash flow yield has been extraordinarily been good, 15 year high this cycle at the peak. Have you made progress on DPOs and DSOs where you think you can keep the ground that you gained because since the recession your DPOs have fallen from about 19 days to about 14 days while your DSOs have fallen from about 57 days to 49 days? So, will you be able to stretch out those payables and accelerate those receivables and keep the cash flow this high?
John Prosser
Certainly, that's our goal, a lot of that has to do with the mix of business as well and we actually tend to get better cash flows off of our field services business and we do have some of our professional services businesses, so but we think that we are trying very hard and we believe that we will be able to keep most of that gain going forward.
Craig Martin
There is lots of good in that too but it doesn't hurt that we are in a declining revenue cycles. So that also helps the number as well and when revenues are going the other way it will hurt the numbers.
John Prosser
Did that answer your question, Barry? Barry Bannister – Stifel Nicolaus: :
John Prosser
Okay.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Steven Fisher with UBS. Steven Fisher – UBS: Hi, good morning.
Craig Martin
Good morning. Steven Fisher – UBS: Just a follow-up on the cash, if the deals that you want to do actually get done. What do you think the cash balance goes over the next year or so? I mean do you think it mostly depletes the cash you have now or would you still do you think you are left with in the 100s of millions.
Craig Martin
Well I certainly think we are probably going to have a few 100s of million on the balance sheet anytime in anticipation of what's that in front of us. We rather not do deals with debt, so we want to have cash balance but I don't think it will continue at the kind of level that it has been. Steven Fisher – UBS: Okay and then –
Craig Martin
Just to remember that it has taken us a couple of years to build this up over a period of time when we acquisitions were too expensive and so we will take a couple of years to spend that and but even with that we will end up, we are still generating cash and we would expect to see favorable cash balance just there because we are generating cash as we go. Steven Fisher – UBS: All right now it makes sense and then what are some of the ways that you think the NASA situation could play out and how I might expect your revenues?
Craig Martin
Well the scenario is sort of run from business as usual which would be a positive for our company, or a shift in spend to other not the sort of Mars world but a continuing support of NASAs mission that probably also be a positive toward a complete reversal of NASA spending to strictly what I will characterize as the science function which would be a relatively big negative for our business and there it has got I don't know 18 zillion alternatives in between. So long as there is – I will say it as a more positively than I think it's probably should be said but as long as there is a flight component to NASA we will do pretty well because not only do we support things like man space flight but all forms of NASA support to the aerospace world. If NASAs mission became purely science, we don't have nearly as big a rule. Does that make sense? Steven Fisher – UBS: Does the constellation cancellation, does that have any immediate effect on revenues over the next several quarters?
Craig Martin
Not that we see yet. Steven Fisher – UBS: Okay. When might you know about that?
Craig Martin
I think I said it's a more or less big uncertainties and it's an involving factor. If you stop and talk to one of our NASA customers on any given day, you will get responses that range from the sky as following and there is not going to be anybody working here in six months to – it doesn't mean anything at all. We have got all this stuff we still have to get done to put it in laymen's terms since I am not a rocket scientist. And you can even get that, those two different responses from the same customer on two different days and so it's really hard to say when this thing is going get sort out and what it's going to mean. It is one of those places of pretty significant uncertainty as we sit here today. Steven Fisher – UBS: Okay, that's fine, just last quickly. Did you have any cancellations in the quarter?
Craig Martin
There were no significant cancellations there is always a little stuff but there was nothing significant. Steven Fisher – UBS: Okay, great. Thanks a lot.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of AV Fisher with BMO Capital Markets. Avram Fisher – BMO Capital Markets: Hi, thanks for taking questions I don't have too many. You had said the JJG acquisition was less than a $100 million I backlog. I was wondering if you could specific a little more closely what that was?
John Prosser
Well, I think that's pretty close; I think that was like $96 million or something like that. Avram Fisher – BMO Capital Markets: It's roughly $100 million and a lot of people have asked that SG&A, I am just trying to get a sense of sort of where is the SG&A. Is it in the selling side, is it the G&A from the acquisition side or are you seeing a pick up in the selling cost of selling?
Craig Martin
No we are not. I mean right now the cost of selling, remember our business model pretty stable from a sales cost point of view, so if anything or cost of selling are at a relative low given the volume of sales. Now as we start to see more energy in the market, more opportunity we will probably dial that particular G&A cost up first to take advantage of the market opportunities as we see them. That will be the first piece of G&A to start to rise the, operating G&A will be the last piece. But at least right now that's not, we are not there yet. Avram Fisher – BMO Capital Markets: So, I guess I am just trying to find a difference between sort of SG&A flat is slightly down the remainder of the year or was that slightly more optimistic view of revenues. Is it the offset of the G&A, is it I am just trying to figure out that difference.
Craig Martin
I am not sure I understand the question. Avram Fisher – BMO Capital Markets: It sounds like you said that SG&A would be flat to slightly down for the reminder of the year. It sounds like selling cost will increase with revenues. So, I am just trying to understand why SG&A isn't going up despite and – or if it implies that revenues are going to be flat to slightly down which I don't think you are seeing.
John Prosser
I don't think he said that the selling cost was going to up immediately. I think they will track as business activity picks up a little bit but selling cost is still relatively small part of our overall SG&A. The big component is that all of the labor is everything from Craig's and my salary and down to through the support services and regional management and things like that but second biggest piece is facilities and as business picks up we won't be adding facilities immediately because we do have, you know, some added capacity in there and so and as business picks up some of the folks that are maybe our SG&A now will also get little bit more billable and we will get some benefits there but the selling part of the business, we don't have big selling cards like big transactional folks do. I mean we don't go out and have these huge project specific selling cost for the most part of the year. The only place that tends to, you know be a little bit larger is when you get into the federal government because of on some of their multi-year programs they tend to the proposal process tends to be a little bit bigger but in our normal sales activity it's just it is a fairly constant and steady cost.
Craig Martin
And it's a smaller number, less 1% of revenue. Avram Fisher – BMO Capital Markets: Okay, I appreciate the color on that.
John Prosser
Okay. Avram Fisher – BMO Capital Markets: Thanks for your questions.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of John Rogers with D.A. Davidson. John Rogers – D.A. Davidson: Thanks for me at the end. Craig if you look at the potential for your various segments over the next couple of few years and assuming the refining cycle is down for a while, what – I mean do you have a potential for another large Motiva type project come through, just want to understand I mean could big surge in field surge again. I am telling about the chemicals or the some of the infrastructure segment.
Craig Martin
Well, have to say, John, that we wouldn't see a Motiva come through but we are certainly not planning on it, when I talk about Motiva is a head win and the fact we are not planning to replace Motiva I don't think we will replace in kind. Now I say all that and yet there is the occasional opportunity comes along where we are particularly positioned and the numbers are still big and we could easily win a piece or even all of the major project like that but it isn't something that we are going to base our model around and I certainly don't think we need that in order to continue to grow the business. Does that answer your question? John Rogers – D.A. Davidson: : :
Craig Martin
No I think that's absolutely right. John Rogers – D.A. Davidson: So, does it also suggest in that the field services is large, again then we will continuous growth on the PPC side?
John Prosser
I don't think the contribution of field services from big EPC projects will be a big growth factor relative to where we are. I do think there is a lots of mid-sized field services projects out there that in the aggregate some of it will be significant. But I also think that the base load capital is still a huge opportunity for us from a growth perspective. I think there is opportunity for us to take significantly more share in the base load world and that will bring fair amount of field services dollars with it. John Rogers – D.A. Davidson: Okay and Craig does that also due to the infrastructure side because I had always assumed that you had to get larger in the field services side of that.
Craig Martin
The infrastructure least in the near future or the future I can see is as I sit here, bill services revenue from infrastructure is non-started, that business is still for the most part hard money and so we are really not going to participate and so I don't expect much contribution at all on field sides from the services side from the infrastructure business. John Rogers – D.A. Davidson: Okay fair enough. Thanks I appreciate the help.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Will Gabrielski with Broadpoint AmTech. Will Gabrielski – Broadpoint AmTech: :
Craig Martin
Good morning. How are you doing Will? Will Gabrielski – Broadpoint AmTech: One question with ten parts, I am just kidding but as margins improve quarter-to-quarter and you guys have talked about (inaudible) burning through at higher rates through completion. So, can you update your completion target for that, will the burn be linear from here on out because if I assume the past revenues was flat quarter-to-quarter your scope margin or your margin on your non-pass through work was actually up about 30 bits and I am wondering if that – as that pass through number declines or else been equal and discontinue to book at the same margin and if we won't see margin get back up to high fours closer to 5%.
Craig Martin
Well all these projects, big projects like Motive following and S-curve. And if an S-curve is a cumulative curve, you can think of it as a bell curve on spending if you want to look at it on a piece by piece basis. We are kind of at the peak of the bell as we sit there today and so being a half done means we have got about half of the construction spend that in front of us, half of its behind us. So, each quarter there will be a little smaller increment comes out of backlog, and the last probably it could be very little because it will be very little out of that. So, if not a linear thing for the next five or six quarters, it's more in the coming quarter than in the quarter after that one and so on. Will Gabrielski – Broadpoint AmTech: Okay. So, which quarter would be see the peak and pass through out that project.
Craig Martin
Probably either last quarter or the one in front of us. Will Gabrielski – Broadpoint AmTech: Okay. Last question, any reason why you think?
Craig Martin
: : Will Gabrielski – Broadpoint AmTech: Any particular reason why you think that might be taking a little bit longer to comeback given the amount of activity we are seeing in terms of projection sanctioning targets and FID target, they think that.
John Prosser
Let me ask Noel to comment. Noel was just in Canada last week, and so he has the most current information. Will Gabrielski – Broadpoint AmTech: All right.
Noel Watson
What I would say is that and I think I have told Craig this afternoon I got back was $85 oil or whatever it is today but it's in that range. I was a little surprised at the – what I would call the slowness of the rebound, people are been quite conscious, I my own mind I think it's good because it doesn't look like we are going to go throw this hyperventilation we went through last time. So people are been cautious but they're certainly talking about the pickup. I think that's the encouraging thing I got out of meeting last week and I met I guess 10 different CEO's when I was up there. There is more commitment to the long term of the sands today by more of the super majors and the other oil companies than there has been reformed and so most people that are in the oil discovery business are seeing this as a long-term, secure reservoir I think they are all convinced that the price of oil is going to probably stay to the point where it will be economic. So, I come out of it very positive for the long-term but people are been careful. I think Craig said it before that they are not going to go back to the boom cycle at least they are going to try not to go back to the boom cycle we looked at couple of years what has been the historic boom cycle for us. Does that answer your question? Will Gabrielski – Broadpoint AmTech: I appreciate it guys. Thank you.
Operator
: Chase Jacobsen – Sterne Agee: How are you?
Craig Martin
Good. Chase Jacobsen – Sterne Agee: Just wanted to talk about the water-waste-water a little bit, we have heard a lot of the ENC companies talking about getting more involved in this market given the growth potential, I was just trying to get a little bit more color on what your strategy is other than acquisition and really going after sharing and keeping your margin and gaining traction with the customers on that side. If you could just give a little color on that?
Craig Martin
Well couple of things, a little bit of background, for a long time we were resistant to being in the water and waste water business and the rationale for that as a time was that it's a very local business and many of the people who are in it feel the need to be in every little town in the United States waiting for their once every 20 year water treatment plant and so they have eight people in Wichita, Kansas for 20 years and they do a big job and then they have eight people in Wichita, Kansas for another 8 years and lose money eighteen of those years and make money two of them and that's not the business model we were interested in. As we have grown scale wise but what we have found is that we had a significant presence in about 20 or 25 major cities and we were building relationships and engaging in the community to support a transportation infrastructure businesses, some of the other businesses that we do in those communities and in those communities the leverage is pretty significant but also be in the water and waste water business. And so we are taking on these big cities like core clients treating them just like we would treat a core client and we believe that as we do that we'll be able to take a significant share of water and waste water community and we don't ever have to be in Wichita, Kansas and I love Wichita years of there that's why I pick on it right but its just not a 250,000 people doesn't represent a market for Jacobs business and so that's kinds of our overall strategy and we will do that by acquisition as we have already pointed out and by leveraging expertise we acquire through JJG and that we already had in the company through acquisitions and that we have in the UK through the Babtie acquisition into those businesses because technically it's a significant factor in the selection process. Remember there is no price selection to speak of and so that's where the leverage comes for us. One of the things that made the JJG acquisition so attractive was their huge concentration in Atlanta, that's very unusual in our experience and it's exactly the model that we are trying to follow as we develop that business. Does that answer your question? Chase Jacobsen – Sterne Agee: Yes I mean if you could take a little bit more of a conservative approach penetrating the customer deeper and the business will come to you eventually.
Craig Martin
That's it. Chase Jacobsen – Sterne Agee: Thanks.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Justin Hauke of Robert W. Baird. Justin Hauke – Robert W. Baird: Good morning just quick question I know we are running a little long here, can you just tell me about your infrastructure business. I was wondering if you would comment a little bit on the municipal bond market and kind of the infusion you have seen in the Build America Bonds and if that's doing anything to kind of build your confidence, it seems like your little more positive this quarter than you have had.
Craig Martin
It is and it is more impart for the reasons you have just described, I think as we – when we were pretty upbeat on infrastructure we talked about the municipal bond market and the support that the local community add for solving their infrastructure problems with or without the federal government. We went through a cycle that was pretty hard even if you passed the sales tax revenue bond program to get the bonds and start the work and we are now starting to see through the Build America Program and otherwise people actually going and trying to turn those sales tax revenues in the bond so they have got CapEx money and that's one of the positives. Also I just saw a report here last week I am going to say that shows that where the tax revenues are staying at local level are filling on the uptick they have turned back up, that's another positive as we sit here today and then as you may recall we were pushing hard for the federal government to do something about the transportation bill and the jobs bill both got done together and I think that's another positive. So, federal is what contributes to what is definitely a little more positive outlook at infrastructure than what we had three months ago. Justin Hauke – Robert W. Baird: Great. That's very helpful. Thank you.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Jamie Cook of Credit Suisse. Jamie Cook – Credit Suisse: Well I got in there, how are you? Just quick question, it sounds like we are getting back to the more historical sort of Jacobs margin, sorry Jacobs business strategy and acquisition. Is there enough in the pipeline in 2010 and that by 2011 we can start thinking about Jacobs getting half of their EPS growth or third from acquisition coming from and the rest organic. Are we getting to that point where you have done enough or there is enough in the pipeline?
Craig Martin
John, do you want to comment?
John Prosser
Unlike historically it takes a while for us to really realize the acquisition growth that we acquire because of the intangible amortization. So, while we will acquire and I think the acquisition will contribute though it takes maybe two or three years before we actually start seeing that and maybe ever little longer and in some cases depending just the nature of it, but now we don't expect to see the longer term mix change that much we will still have that third coming from plus or minus coming acquisitions, and the balance coming from the organic growth and what we do with those acquisitions, we get them. Jamie Cook – Credit Suisse: Thanks.
Craig Martin
Yeah I think one thing to think about here is that the actual acquisition, the earnings we buy are feeling the impacted by the amortization and intangibles especially as John points out on first two three years. Usually with these acquisitions we are able to make some things happen fairly quickly in terms of reducing their cost and expanding their market share, and those things tend to be positive in the shorter term, so as you look to the out years, I believe this acquisitions are going to be contributors to be in the ‘011 and ‘012, but probably not as the half kind of number that I think you mentioned in your question. Jamie Cook – Credit Suisse: Okay. Thanks. I'll get back in queue if there are any more questions.
Operator
There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Prosser.
John Prosser
I'll turn it over to Craig.
Craig Martin
Nothing much to add. We appreciate all of your interest in the business. We think we are finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel I guess it's a use of various tried and true kind of praise. Things are going to get better. We are confident, it will get better, and actually it could better faster, so we would all be happy with the results. And with that everybody have a good week.
Operator
This concludes today's conference. You may now disconnect.