Nathan Elwell - R. Kevin Matz - Executive Vice President of Shared Services Anthony J. Guzzi - Chief Executive Officer, President and Director Mark A. Pompa - Chief Financial Officer, Principal Accounting Officer and Executive Vice President.

Alexander J. Rygiel - FBR Capital Markets & Co., Research Division John B. Rogers - D.A. Davidson & Co., Research Division Tahira Afzal - KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc., Research Division Adam R. Thalhimer - BB&T Capital Markets, Research Division Noelle C.

Dilts - Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Incorporated, Research Division Glenn Wortman - Sidoti & Company, Inc. Nicholas A. Coppola - Thompson Research Group, LLC.

Good morning. My name is Kelly, and I will be your conference operator at this time. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the EMCOR Group Third Quarter 2014 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Nathan Elwell, FTI Consulting. Sir, you may begin your conference..

Thank you, Kelly, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to the EMCOR Group conference call. We are here today to discuss the company's 2014 third quarter results, which were reported this morning. I would like to turn the call over to Kevin Matz, Executive Vice President of Shared Services, who will introduce the rest of the team. Thank you..

Thank you, Nathan, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to EMCOR Group's Earnings Conference Call for the Third Quarter of 2014. For those of you who are accessing the call via the Internet and our website, welcome, and we hope you have arrived at the beginning of the slide presentation that will accompany our remarks today. Please advance to Slide 2.

Slide 2 depicts the executives who are with me to discuss the quarter and 9 months results.

They are Tony Guzzi, President and Chief Executive Officer; Mark Pompa, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; Mava Heffler, Vice President of Marketing and Communications; and our Executive Vice President and General Counsel, Sheldon Cammaker.

For call participants not accessing the conference call via the Internet, this presentation including the slides will be archived in the Investor Relations section of our website under Presentations. You can find this at emcorgroup.com. Before we begin, I want to remind you that this discussion may contain certain forward-looking statements.

Any such statements are based upon information available to EMCOR management's perception as of this date, and EMCOR assumes no obligation to update any such forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements.

Accordingly, these statements are no guarantee of future performance.

Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, adverse effects of general economic conditions, changes in the political environment, changes in the specific market for Emcor Services, adverse business conditions, increased competition, mix of business and risks associated with foreign operations.

Certain of the risks and factors associated with EMCOR's business are also discussed in the company's 2013 Form 10-K and in other reports filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. With that over, please let me turn the call over to Tony.

Tony?.

Thanks, Kevin, and good morning, and thanks for your interest in EMCOR. I'm going to be covering pages 3 to 5. Now before I delve into the quarter, I want to cover some high-level trends and foundations in the business.

On a year-to-date basis, we have a strong operating margin base underlying the business at 4.3%, and that excludes the gain on our building sale. We are executing well in a slowly growing market. Cash flow is strong, balance sheet is strong, and you can see that by our recently announced $215 million share buyback authorization.

We've got very good backlog growth, almost 10% from the year-ago period, and we're seeing that growth buoyed by record commercial backlog, strong transportation backlog and strong growth in our small project business and our mechanical services business. This backlog growth should start to foreshadow revenue growth in the next quarter.

Additionally, we have ceased operations in our U.K. Construction business during the third quarter and it is now reflected as a discontinued operation. This marks a successful exit from a nonperforming business for EMCOR. This restructuring and exit was well executed by our U.K. team.

Our Mechanical Construction segment has now recovered from 2013's projects challenge as we had expected. Our Electrical Construction business continues to perform at a very high level of profitability.

Our Building Services business has year-to-date margins up over 4% and is strengthened by strong Mechanical Services and improving government services operating profit performance. Our continuing U.K. Service business generated 3% to 3.5% quarterly operating margins, which is in line with the expectations that we had previously outlined.

Our Industrial business is performing well. And the integration of RepconStrickland is on track and in the quarter performed very well, working in concert with our legacy Industrial business. Our cash flow, again, is strong and we are well positioned to continue to deliver on all sources of capital allocation.

The nonresidential market that drives at least 65% of our revenues is improving, but on a year-to-date basis has not been as strong as many had expected. However, as demonstrated by our backlog growth, we are winning our fair share of opportunities here at EMCOR. We continued to execute with discipline on -- and focus on what we control.

And speaking to the quarter, I would like to discuss what drove our performance and what will be driving future performance. Mark's going to cover the financials in detail, and I don't want to be redundant, but I would like to set the framework for our quarterly results. As I speak to the quarterly numbers, note that the U.K.

Construction results are now in discontinued operations. For the quarter, we had revenues of $1.56 billion, which were down 4% organically from the prior year. We did decline in 3 of our 5 segments on the revenue side but had revenue growth in both Industrial and the U.K., and that was organic.

Our Industrial revenue growth was a result of stronger performance on our welding business, as well as other field Services business. We had expected some revenue declines at both the Mechanical Construction and the Building Services segment.

You may recall that we have deemphasized some Department of Energy work on our Mechanical Construction segment, and in the Building Services segment, we are still being negatively impacted by the portfolio shaping we was -- we undertook 12 to 15 months ago in our site-based business.

We believe that EMCOR's year-to-date revenue trajectory will start to change in the fourth quarter as our backlog additions during 2014 bode well for future revenue growth as long as the nonresidential market does not experience a contraction.

With respect to quarterly operating margin, we're at 3.9%, which is essentially flat versus prior year when adjusting for both the building gain and the 2013 RepconStrickland acquisition costs. Operating income earned also is essentially flat when compared to the year-ago period when adjusting for the 2 items I had mentioned.

We did have significant improvement in our Industrial Services business in both operating margin and dollars. Essentially flat performance in the U.K., improved performance in Mechanical and Construction and a reduction, albeit strong -- still strong performance from Electrical Construction.

Building Services had decent quarterly performance, but not as strong as last year's third quarter, which, we stated during the year-ago period, was driven by exceptional performance in our plant services business as well as favorable contractual closeout in our site-based business, which was part of that portfolio reshaping.

Continuing with Building Services, we had strong performance in both our Mechanical Services and Government Services business in the quarter, but we did lose about $0.03 a share in the quarter from the lack of hot weather this past summer.

Backlog is up almost 10% from the year-ago period at $3.695 billion, and we are bolstered by record commercial backlog, which is supported by strong overall growth in our Electrical and Mechanical Construction segments and strong growth in Building Services within their Mechanical Services division project backlog.

Cash flow was strong at $69.3 million in the quarter. And we believe this trend will continue as demonstrated by our authorization of more share repurchase activity and our recently announced increased authorization of $250 million.

Our balance sheet is liquid and strong and will support all of our capital allocation plans from organic growth to opportunistic acquisitions to returning cash to shareholders through both dividends and share repurchases. And with that, I'll turn it over to Mark..

Thank you, Tony, and good morning to everyone participating on our call today. For those participating via the webcast, we are now on Slide 6.

As Tony indicated in his opening commentary, I will provide a detailed discussion of our third quarter 2014 results before moving to year-to-date key financial data derived from our consolidated financial statements, which were included in both our earnings release announcement and Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this morning.

With the introduction concluded, let's begin. Consolidated revenues of $1.57 billion in quarter 3, or down $38.6 million or 2.4%.

Revenues attributable to businesses acquired pertaining to the period of time that such businesses were not owned by EMCOR in last year's third quarter impacted the current year's quarter by $25.5 million and positively impacted both our U.S. Industrial Services and U.S. Mechanical Construction Services segments.

Excluding the impact of businesses acquired, third quarter revenues declined organically $64.2 million or 4%. All reportable segments other than U.S. Industrial Services and U.K. Building Services reported revenue declines during the most recent quarter.

Domestic Electrical Construction revenues declined $25.8 million from last year's third quarter, primarily as a result of declines in current project activity within the institutional and industrial market sectors that masked revenue gains within both the transportation and health care market sectors where we have experienced revenue growth. U.S.

Mechanical Construction revenues decreased approximately $51 million or 8.3% from last year's third quarter as a result of a decline in revenues from industrial and transportation construction projects, some of which was attributable to a planned reduction in the scope of activities for a subsidiary that reported significant losses in 2013.

Consistent with my second quarter Mechanical Construction commentary, the majority of project volume declines are within the power generation, food processing and high-tech sub-industry sectors due to several large projects that were in process at this time last year.

Despite the overall revenue decline experienced in the segment, we did see revenue growth quarter-over-quarter within the commercial, institutional, and water and wastewater treatment market sectors. U.S.

Building Services revenues of $427.5 million decreased $30.3 million quarter-over-quarter due to revenue declines within their Energy Services division as a result of a reduction in the volume of energy-related services projects performed in 2014 as compared to the same time frame in 2013.

Additionally, the Building Services segment's commercial site-based services division experienced a quarterly revenue decline, as we are still targeting new opportunities to replace lost revenues due to our contract portfolio reshaping that occurred in 2013. U.S.

Industrial revenues increased $61.6 million or 55.5%, which is attributable to revenues of $22.8 million from RepconStrickland, the stub period in July that preceded our July 2013 closing date as well as strong revenue growth of 34.9% from all of our field services operations within both our Ohmstede and RepconStrickland businesses during the quarter.

As I'm sure everyone noticed in both our press release and Form 10-Q filing as well as Tony's opening commentary, we ceased construction and engineering operations in the United Kingdom during the quarter. And as a result, those activities are now reflected as a discontinued operation. Therefore, the U.K.

revenues reflected on Slide 6 and all succeeding slides in this presentation are representative of our U.K. Building Services operations.

And as you can see, their quarterly revenues of $86.8 million increased 8.9% over 2013's corresponding period due to increased commercial site-based activities as well as the impact of favorable exchange-rate movement quarter-over-quarter. Please turn to Slide 7.

Selling, general and administrative expenses of $160 million represent 10.2% of revenues and reflect an increase of $12.1 million from quarter 3 2013. The current quarter's SG&A is inclusive of $3.7 million of incremental expenses related to acquisitions for the time period not owned during last year's third quarter.

As a reminder, 2013's third quarter selling, general and administrative expenses included $4.7 million of transaction costs pertaining to our acquisition of RepconStrickland as well as $3.1 million of income attributable to the reversal of contingent consideration accruals relating to acquisitions made prior to 2012.

Therefore, our organic increase of SG&A expense quarter-over-quarter is $10 million, which is attributable to an increase in employee-related costs, primarily due to incentive compensation as a result of our improved profitability year-over-year as well as increased costs pertaining to our medical insurance claims experience.

Reported operating income of $73.6 million represents 4.7% of revenues and is inclusive of a gain on the sale of building of $11.7 million. We experienced improved overall operating margin performance within our U.S. Construction business. The slight reduction in the U.S.

Electrical Construction segment's quarterly operating margin of 40 basis points is due to a reduction in gross profit as a result of lower volume and changes in project mix. The -- this operating margin decrease within the U.S. Electrical Construction operations was offset by a 90-basis-point improvement reported by our U.S.

Mechanical Construction segment during the quarter. The Mechanical operating margin improvement was generated across projects executed within multiple market sectors, and our Mechanical segment management has done a good job rebounding from 2013's subpar operating performance despite the lack of revenue growth generated to date.

Operating income for U.S. Building Services decreased approximately $3.9 million to $19.4 million or 4.5% of revenues.

The quarter-over-quarter reduction is due to lower maintenance contract volume in their commercial site-based services division due to the reshaping of our project portfolio, which resulted in certain contract terminations that have yet to be replaced.

Additionally, their Energy Services division has lower operating income as they were in the process of completing several large projects during 2013's third quarter.

Consistent with my second quarter commentary, the aforementioned Building Services operating income reductions offset continued improvement -- offset continued improved operating income and operating margin performance within their mechanical services and government site-based services divisions during the quarter, which was due to increased small project activity inclusive of higher IDIQ activities for our Government business.

Our Industrial Services segment is reporting $7.4 million of operating income or 4.3% of revenues. The third quarter increase is due to higher revenues and corresponding operating income within the field services operations due to greater turnaround activity during what is typically a seasonally weak quarter.

RepconStrickland contributed $5.7 million of operating income net of intangible amortization expense during the third quarter, which equates to approximately $0.05 per diluted share. U.K. Building Services operating income was essentially flat quarter-over-quarter at $3.1 million.

The 40-basis-point reduction in their operating margin of 3.6% is due to reduced project activity within the transportation market sector. We are now on Slide 8.

Consistent with prior quarters, the table on Slide 8 weighs out those items impacting our third quarter and year-to-date results, which we believe should be excluded from EMCOR's reported operating income to provide clearer comparability.

With the U.K.'s construction operations now reflected as a discontinued operation, there was only 1 item impacting each year presented. For the 2013 periods, we are adding back the transaction expenses related to RepconStrickland, which is consistent with our 2013 pro forma reporting.

With regard to 2014, the $11.7 million gain related to the disposition of a subsidiary's owned building and land is deducted from reported operating income.

The effect of the aforementioned adjustments amounts to adjusted operating income of approximately $61.9 million or 3.9% of revenues for the quarter ended September 30, 2014, as compared to $62.7 million or 3.9% of revenues for the corresponding 2013 period. Cash provided by operations for the third quarter was $69.4 million.

And for the 9-month period ended September 30, cash provided by operations of $109 million compared to cash provided by operations of $68 million for the year-to-date 2013 period. Please turn to Slide 9. Additional key financial data on Slide 9 not addressed during my highlight summary are as follows.

Quarter 3 gross profit of $222.2 million represents 14.2% of revenues, which is improved from the comparable 2013 quarter by $15.7 million and 130 basis points of gross margin. Our quarter 3 gross profit and gross margin are also up on a sequential basis from our quarter 2 results.

Total restructuring costs of $398,000 compares to approximately $600,000 of activity in 2013's third quarter and relates to domestic restructuring activities only, as U.K. construction restructuring expenses are now included within discontinued operations.

Diluted earnings per common share from continuing operations for the quarter is $0.68 compared to $0.43 per diluted share a year ago.

On an adjusted basis, reflecting the add-back of the gain on sale of building and 2013 transaction costs incurred in connection with our acquisition of RepconStrickland, diluted earnings per common share from continuing operations would be $0.57 per share for 2014 as compared to $0.48 per diluted share on 2013's third quarter, an improvement of 18.8% quarter-over-quarter.

We are now on Slide 10. With the quarterly discussion out of the way, I will now discuss the results for the 9-month period ended September 30. Revenues of $4.71 billion were up $25.9 million as compared to $4.68 billion of revenues in 2013's 9-month-to-date period. All of our reportable segments other than the U.S.

Industrial Services are reporting organic revenue declines year-over-year. Acquisitions contributed $230.2 million of incremental revenues for the periods not owned during last year's 9-month period -- I'm sorry, during last year's third quarter, resulting in an organic revenue decline of 4.4%.

Year-to-date gross profit of $658.7 million is greater than the representative 2013 period by $73.9 million, and is 150 basis points higher on a gross margin basis at 14% of revenues. All reportable segments are reporting increased gross profits on a year-to-date basis as well as higher gross margins on an organic basis year-over-year.

Selling, general and administrative expenses of $454.2 million represent 9.6% of revenues compared to $419.7 million or 9% of revenues. Incremental SG&A pertaining to 2013 acquisitions is $26.3 million, inclusive of intangible asset amortization.

Year-to-date operating income is $215.4 million or 4.6% of revenues and represents a $50.9 million increase over 2014's year-to-date performance. All reportable segments are reporting higher operating income year-over-year, except for our U.S. Electrical Construction operations, which have declined by approximately 1%.

As previously disclosed on Slide 8, adjusted operating income, excluding the impact of the gain on building sale and transaction costs incurred in 2013 associated with the RepconStrickland acquisition, would be $203.6 million for 2014 as compared to $170.5 million for 2013, which represents a 19.4% increase year-over-year.

Diluted earnings per common share from continuing operations were $1.92 for the 9 months ended September 30, 2014, compared to $1.40 in the corresponding 2013 period.

On an adjusted basis, reflecting the add-backs previously discussed and also disclosed on the bottom of this slide, our year-to-date adjusted diluted earnings per share would be $1.82 as compared to $1.46 in 2013, a 24.7% increase. Please turn to Slide 11.

As Tony had mentioned earlier in his presentation, our balance sheet remains sufficiently liquid, as represented by cash in excess of $400 million; a modest leverage as represented by our debt-to-capitalization ratio of 18.2%.

Our cash balance is relatively flat from year-end 2013, as cash generated from operating activities through September 30 was offset by cash used in financing activities predominantly related to over $76 million of share repurchases made during the first 9 months of this year.

Working capital levels have increased since December 31 due to a reduction in current liabilities as a result of reduced levels of accounts payable. Goodwill has reduced slightly during the year as a result of the disposition of a subsidiary within our Building Services segment that occurred in quarter 1, which we've previously discussed.

Identifiable intangible assets are unchanged between periods other than an amortization expense of $28.5 million for the first 9 months of 2014. And total debt is approximately $340 million, with the majority of the reduction due to the mandatory quarterly repayments of approximately $4.4 million under our term loan.

We continue to do a good job of managing all of our risks that are inherent in our business. And I believe our balance sheet affords us the flexibility to take advantage of most growth opportunities as well as to continue the funding of our dividend and share repurchase programs.

With my slides concluded, I would like to return the presentation back to Tony.

Tony?.

Okay. Thanks, Mark, and I'm on Page 12, which is backlog by market sector. I want to mention upfront that in all these figures, the U.K. construction has been taken out of the periods. In short, backlog continues to improve. It continues to grow, and we're growing in a lot of the right places, with the book-to-bill, again, over 1 in the quarter.

Total backlog at the end of the second quarter is $3.7 billion, up $330 million or approximately 10% from September 2013. In fact, at $3.7 billion, backlog is higher than year-end backlog in 2008. And as you can see, that was basically fueled in '08 with hospitality and health care.

This has changed over the years, and you can't really make close comparisons because EMCOR is a company that's adept at moving with the market. But one thing we've been consistent, we've always had a good commercial presence. And our commercial backlog is up year-over-year, up from December of 2013 and up from second quarter of '14.

This entire increase is in our construction segments. And in this commercial backlog is at its highest level ever for us at 36% of total backlog or $1.3 billion. This work is across the company and includes also expanded work in our Mechanical Services business, with small project and energy efficiency work.

Market mix remains essentially the same, with backlog up in transportation and down in institutional industrial. However, I feel pretty good about where Industrial could end up over the next 2 quarters. As we're working on some significant opportunities, that should allow us to grow our backlog there and then revenues at a later date.

As you go to Page 13 and you look at it by segment. Backlog in Electrical and Mechanical Construction is up over $340 million or 14%, with a book-to-bill of 1.11.

One may ask, "How can you be up in backlog now over the last 3 quarters and not have experienced the revenue growth in those segments?" I think we're back into a more normal backlog pattern than what we may have had in 2012 when we had organic growth, where we never came into backlog or we were executing it as quick as it came in on a couple of large projects.

So I should say that we're seeing growth coming and more traditional with a 1.1 book-to-bill, growth should start to materialize over the next couple quarters in our Electrical Mechanical Construction market as long as market conditions either grow a little bit or essentially remain the same.

Mechanical Building Services is only down $11 million from the year-ago period and that effect of that portfolio reshaping should start to wind its way out over the next quarter. It is up in a significant way in our Mechanical Services business, which has a small project in energy efficiency work.

And going to Industrial Services, remember, this is only our shop business. It's the new heat exchanger business, and it's essentially flat. As I said in the last quarter, we're starting to feel real good about our backlog mix, and have for a while, just not enough of it. We are seeing an upward trajectory.

The conversion into revenue is a little -- moving a little slower than it did in '12, although we believe that revenue gap from backlog should start to close. We're well balanced executing across the business and poised for growth as the nonresidential market continues to make its way forward.

Going to Page 14 and 15, I will talk a little bit about our guidance here and the way ahead. We're going to leave EPS guidance where it is at $2.50 to $2.70 per diluted share, and that excludes the reported gain on the sale of the building. However, we will bring revenue guidance down from $6.6 billion to $6.4 billion.

Despite that reduction in revenue guidance, we still believe that EMCOR will have positive organic growth in the fourth quarter.

One may ask, "How do you move from the low end of the guidance range to the midpoint or the high end of the range with only a -- less than a quarter left?" One is, if the turnaround is stronger than expected, and it's pretty good turnaround season right now, but if we have expanded scope, even a week on some key turnarounds, or extended time, that will lead to 2 things really happening.

We get more cleaning work in our shops, which that means is we're going to clean the heat exchanger, or we're going to get more of a higher-margin repair work in our shops. It also can lead to better field utilization. It doesn't take much. Just a couple extra days on a turnaround can significantly help with our overhead absorption.

Organic revenue growth could be stronger than currently implied in the guidance. And we have project closeouts that are more favorable than contemplated in Q4.

We believe our cash flow performance and balance sheet strength provides us the fuel to pull all levers of capital allocation from organic growth to opportunistic acquisitions to returning cash to shareholders via repurchases and dividends.

With respect to acquisitions, we continue to believe that we will see opportunities in all major segments, from Electrical Mechanical Construction to Building Services to Industrial Services. Deals are opportunistic. They happen when they happen. And we've always operated under that notion.

We are very positive about the underlying fundamentals in our business. We like the backlog growth trend. We believe it shows and -- we're not -- recovering nonresidential market that may be finally improving a little faster than it has during the last year. And with that, we'll take questions..

[Operator Instructions] Your first question will come from the line of Alex Rygiel with FBR..

Tony and Mark, you threw out a lot of data there and answered a whole bunch of my questions, so sorry if I missed something and repeat a question here. But 2 things.

First, can you -- what was the organic growth in backlog in the quarter? And then, can you expand upon why the industrial backlog was actually down a little bit? It sounds like you're bidding on a whole bunch of work here, but maybe we need to better understand that, that's going to be a lumpier business going forward. I don't know..

Organic growth year-over-year is a shade under 10%, and it's about 3% from the second quarter..

Yes..

Yes, we are a bidding on a fair amount of industrial work right now. As you know, it comes in lumpy. It's pretty broad-based. It's from food processing to manufacturing down in the Southeast, it's even a few power jobs out West.

The reason for the decline -- and really, what we've been struggling with on revenues this year, is we had a couple of large power jobs in our number in the third quarter last year and they didn't replicate themselves this year..

Your next question will come from the line of John Rogers with D.A. Davidson..

Two things.

First of all, your press release the other day talking about expanding the share repurchase program, that you were just about finished with the old program said you -- did you finish that program off in the fourth quarter?.

We came -- third quarter, we came -- yes. In the fourth quarter, we finished it off. And we're now poised to execute under the next one..

Okay.

And then, Tony, the second thing I had was, could you give us a little bit of color -- and I know some of this work in backlogs can be out into 2015, but what you're seeing from a pricing environment? I mean, the markets -- demand's getting better but, I mean, are we still a long way from seeing margin improvement there in the construction versus the call-out work? And some thoughts there..

Look, the call -- Yes. Call-out work margins are fine. They can always be better, John. I believe we have such highly skilled people, we should always earn more of a premium than we do sometimes. On the construction side, I would say, you see it in our gross margins. Some of that's mixed, but more industrial.

But underlying, you see it in our margins over -- if you take that 12-month rolling average in Electrical and even if you do the same in Mechanical, absent those couple of projects, we are seeing better pricing. It's firm, for sure. I think people are getting more logical. And I think we have sort of the opposite view.

When contractors really get in trouble, especially midsized contractors, is when the market starts to recover because they can't fund the working capital, and they're working off bad backlog.

The good news from EMCOR, we really didn't have that much bad backlog compared to others, and I think as pricing improves, we'll be able to take advantage of that..

Okay. Both in terms of better margins, but hence, your comment on acquisitions, is that....

Yes, absolutely..

Your next question will come from the line of Tahira Afzal with KeyBanc..

Several questions. The first one, I know you've taken the -- some of the U.K. business into your discontinued business. And if I look at when your guidance was issued, I assume there were a couple of pennies of losses from that.

So could you kind of give us a bit of a recap in terms of an apples-and-apples consideration of that $2.50 to $2.70 EPS guidance?.

I think, yes, T, it's right where it always was. We always did the U.K. pro forma when we gave the guidance, so it would have been out when we gave the guidance. So I think it's apples-to-apples, the same..

Awesome. And the tax rate, folks, I mean, it's coming in a little lower.

You mentioned that might as -- can we kind of get an idea of how that's playing out versus your initial activity [ph]?.

Yes. Sure, T. We're clearly trending lower year-to-date in 2014 than what our expectations were. As you know from the other companies you follow, it's hard to project what type of discrete items are going to happen within the course of the year. So our expectations now for full year 2014, full -- all in with everything is roughly 37.5%.

So that gets you to an implied rate in the fourth quarter of roughly 38.5% to get you back to there..

Got it. So it seems the underlying earnings power's pretty strong into the fourth quarter then..

Yes..

So the second question, really leading from that, and really upbeat commentary, Tony. As we look into 2015, and I know it's too early for you to sandbag your guidance, you will do that probably in March, but you're seeing basically a 1.5% revenue growth based on your potential, on your implied fourth quarter guidance.

So as you look at 2015 and we see more of this revenue growth sort of translate, are you kind of comfortable that you'll be sort of at least tracking in the low to mid-single digit organically on the revenue side? And I guess the second question wrapped into that is really the G&A rate. I guess G&A, in absolute amounts, is a little higher.

Is -- has there been any surprise over there in terms of some of the health insurance costs, et cetera, that you have seen some of companies really find that ratcheting up a little higher than they thought?.

Yes. Let me handle that in pieces, and please, Mark, come in. Go to revenue growth first, T, which I think is the big chunk of your question. We will grow better than a non-res market. We may be a little bit delayed, but when growth happens, we typically do better. Last year was a great example of that.

The market actually contracted, and we were essentially flat in the Mechanical Electrical. I mean, when I look at how the business is set up now, and I take through the pieces, and I'm not -- this isn't a 2015, this is more how we're thinking longer-term growth. Our Construction business, with the backlog growth we have, should start growing.

And that means that at least the market stays flat to up in non-res, right, based on the backlog we have right now. I think it is recovering a little better than it has been. It's been pretty near 0. I think non-res looks like it's trying to get going 3% to 5%. It could be a little bit better with the starts we have. Let's just call it in there.

I think Industrial is a little harder to call. We're in the middle of a pretty good turnaround season right now. I've spoken in the past, a lot of it is so important on what customers you have, not so much the rest of the market. As of today, the first quarter looks okay. We'll know more in January. We'll know if things got pulled up.

We'll know the things that are getting pushed out. If you look at this year, we had more balanced performance from our Industrial portfolio. Things got extended in the second quarter. Things got pulled in the third quarter. But again, we only give annual guidance. I think that market -- I'm not a prognosticator on the price of oil.

I've seen just good and bad and how it will impact the refiners. All I know is it's competitive as heck for labor right now. We're in a good position to get that labor. And our customers certainly understand they want the right mix of labor on the job. If you go to Building Services, the hangover of our portfolio's reshaping should almost be through.

We do have a couple of things that are going on there. There was a couple of large government services contract that even though they weren't in backlog anymore, we -- they kept extending. They should be pretty much done by the end of the year. They've bid at really, really brutal prices, quite frankly. We're not going to be on them any more.

We were the incumbent, we had a great record of performance. They were in joint ventures, so the revenue was all there, and the segment, the earnings were all there. But we eliminate quite a bit of that below the line.

But again, that could be a little bit of a hangover as you get to revenue growth going out of the third quarter through the first quarter. And in the U.K., I think that team will now be able to focus 100% on the Services business. A lot of bidding activity right now but they're binary decisions, as you know. You either win them or lose them.

So I think, GDP grows next year, EMCOR should grow, too. I don't know whether it'll be the low end of single digits or the mid part of single digits. We'll know a lot more about that as we exit the year with the backlog we have.

And that's really the variable -- 2 variables we look for as we exit the year, right? What does the backlog look like? What does the turnaround season look like? They have the most impact on what could happen with revenue. The Building Services guys could have used a little heat this year.

And if you think about that in the macro sense of 2014, we gained in snow, we gave back in heat, we ended up basically the same place. SG&A, Mark and I, and really, our segment heads and our segment CFOs, we're focused on this like a laser. There's nothing structurally changing in the business.

It's quite remarkable working with about the same number of overhead people we have been, albeit with the addition of the acquisition. And in real dollars, it's more than -- less than 1% up. The medical claim, Mark can get into. And then we had some catch up on incentive that actually should wash itself off as the year goes on..

Yes. And I think, the only thing I would add to Tony's commentary, T, is that, clearly, we're -- we've had some revenue challenges by segment. It's been primarily in the Building side -- Building Services side of the business, which has more fixed overhead than the rest of our business.

And as Tony indicated earlier, it's not for lack of trying on the business development front. We are trying to get the right types of projects in the portfolio to replace those projects we jettisoned during 2013, but we just haven't had success yet.

But we still need those folks to get us to where the business needs to be, and we're willing to make an investment at this time. So as Tony indicated, dollars aren't so much of a concern.

From my perspective, it's the percentage is higher, a lot of that is driven by the lack of organic revenue growth, and as Tony indicated, was specifically to the quarter, we had some catch-up expenses we had to record this quarter based on a relook at what the business was going to do for the remainder of the year..

Yes. If we can grow 3% to 5%, it'll fall back into the low 9s..

Your next question will come from the line of Adam Thalhimer with BB&T Capital Markets..

Tony, you referenced in the press release the -- one of the reasons you're a bit more optimistic is the breadth of opportunities in your pipeline, and the implication there would seem to be that backlog will continue to grow. So I just wanted to get your take on that..

Well, if you take a sort of weighted average look at some of the more significant opportunities we're looking at right now, we win our fair share or they get awarded here in the next 2 quarters. These things can always delay. Not get canceled, but delay in the award. Then, yes. I would expect it to be at least marginally better.

There's no reason not to believe. And of course, the compares get easier in some ways as the portfolio reshaping gets further behind us. When we talk about the breadth of opportunities, it's really, we're at record commercial backlog.

We're doing a lot of transportation infrastructure work right now, and we're well positioned to do that, especially on the Electrical side. The Industrial segment place is not a big backlog creator. Most of that work is done, unit price or time and material.

But what we're seeing in the other parts of the Industrial business, because of the investments we've made, both organically and through acquisition, we're positioned to take advantage of some opportunities, potentially in the Southeast. We're positioned to take care of some food processing opportunities. Those things need to happen.

We believe we are in a very good position to win some of that work, but again, they tend to be binary and they tend to be sometimes more drawn out than you like them to be. So I do believe non-res is trying to really grow now, I think at least in the low single digits, 3% to 5%, and we should be part of that..

Great. And then secondly, I wanted to ask just a high-level question about the refinery business. You're having a -- it seems like you're having a good turnaround season now, and then maybe that continues into Q1.

But then, how do you think about that business? I mean, is that just a business where 1 out of every 3 turnaround seasons is good? Or is there a real catalyst there? How do you think about that?.

Well, I mean, I think part of it has to do with your product portfolio and the breadth of your offering. The way I think about our portfolio, our shop business responds to everybody, and that's both on the capital side and the repair side. It's not necessarily specific to the turnarounds that we have won on the field side.

I think the business is -- is it a double-digit grower as far as the market, not the business, but is the market a double-digit grower? Probably not, but it should be a good steady grower in the low single digits. The refinery -- maintenance is driven by utilization, and utilization is very, very high right now, and it's projected to stay high.

And so we believe, with the breadth of our offering from the shops to the [indiscernible] units to the welding services, which again, respond to everybody and it usually responds to people that have a surge in demand either because something's not going so well or they want to get something done quicker and it needs more specialized stacks, to our general heat exchanger extraction which we're the largest at in the industry.

So we're broad. If you're narrow and only serve a certain refineries, in a general sense, it's a lot tougher business. We haven't had just 1 out of 3 good turnaround seasons. If you look at our core legacy business it's had a pretty good 3-year run, if you add all those numbers up.

If you look at our acquisitions, sure, we got off to a slower start last year in the third quarter and started building through the year, but it's getting close to where it needs to be. It's not quite all the way there yet. Some of that was customer mix. Some of it was the delay of service.

So with -- you can't say that it's going to just be episodic as of today because the demand for labor's higher than it's ever been, and that's not just driven by the construction side..

Your next question will come from the line of Noelle Dilts with Stifel..

First question. In the Q, you disclosed that RSI had a loss in July. I was just hoping you could maybe talk a little bit about how profitability tracks through the quarter.

And then, I know you guys talk about this a lot, but maybe just comment on how you're thinking about the seasonality of the business now that it's -- that you've kind of had it under your belt for a year..

I'll let Mark take a shot at the July and he could talk a little bit about seasonality..

Yes. Noelle, I mean, with regards to the disclosure in the Q, that's obviously just for the stub period, the first 3 or 3.5 weeks of July that we didn't own RSI last year. As far as the seasonality within the quarter, third quarter, as I mentioned in my commentary -- prepared commentary earlier, tends not to be a seasonally strong quarter.

However, depending on how the fall turnaround season shapes up, we do mobilize late in the quarter. So as far as the timing of losing money versus overall performance in the quarter, you come out of the gates relatively slow in September. And then depending on how that fall turnaround season shapes up, you can be doing quite well.

And later -- I'm sorry, moving from the end of July into August and September, which was our situation, hence, why RSI performed so well in the third quarter..

Okay, great. And then second question, just looking at the Electrical revenues, they came in a little bit below my expectation.

Can you give us just any more detail, just dig into it a little bit more in terms of particularly in the institutional market? Maybe some of the types of projects that you're not seeing this year that you were maybe participating in a bit more last year..

Our Electrical business, for the most part, hasn't been weighted towards the institutional segment or sector. For us, I think it's just a matter of project timing. It -- we're executing very well. We're in the market. It -- a couple of large projects, they had some data center work that's....

Solar..

And solar work that's been more pushed out this year. If you look at it overall, I mean, the backlog's up almost 10% from a year-ago quarter, and from the year-end, even a little bit more at 12%. So the trends are good in the business. Profitability trends are good in the business. I think it's just project timing, Noelle..

Okay. And then, I guess, just expanding on that a little bit, I guess, shifting to the backlog, your commercial backlog was quite strong.

Can you talk a bit more about, again, kind of digging in a layer deeper some of the verticals that were -- where you saw strength and also from a geographic standpoint?.

On the backlog growth, we see strength in -- on the verticals, we continue to see strength in transportation, if you look over to last year. And so we go to commercial. Data center work continues to be strong. Building retrofit continues to be strong.

Although we're not large players in the market nationally, we do have a presence in the New York City market, on high-rise residential, specifically in the mechanical side in Jersey. We're benefiting from that there. So it's not a lot of new construction on the office side but a lot of building on the office side..

Your next question will come from the line of Glenn Wortman with Sidoti..

Do you start to expect repurchasing shares on the new authorization in the fourth quarter? And then, if you could provide any guidance on a year-end share count?.

I think the way I'd answer the guidance on the share count, you can look at the Q. It'll give you an idea of the shares outstanding at the end of that period. We are likely to be active. We have been active. We don't comment on specific amounts..

Okay. And then within Industrial Services, the op margin declined sequentially on only a slight decline in revenue.

Can you just help me understand or help us understand?.

That's just mix. I think it's mix and it's really nothing. I mean, we -- you all have to look -- you have to look at those margins on a total year basis. Because this question's been asked a couple of times.

If you look in general, I mean, if you think about EMCOR, the Industrial Services business ought to be strong as in its first, in the fourth quarter.

If we get strong in the third quarter, it usually means that we've had to help a customer either earlier than they expected or something didn't go as well as they happen in their operation and so we had to come in there and get the facility up and running again.

Likewise, if we're stronger in the second quarter, it usually means the turnaround season got extended or there was a customer-end issue. On a long-term basis, we would expect the first and fourth quarter to be strongest.

And you'll hear us whine sometimes, "Oh, the second quarter is seasonally weak and the third --" that's really how the business works. And we've had good profitability in the second and third quarter this year is a good thing. It means we've been absorbing overhead better. It means we have more people to work.

We have less people on what we call guaranteed 32, which means they get their hours regardless because we want to keep them for things just like what happened. Again, Building Services had a little bit of the same phenomenon in second quarter and it used to be first quarter. The second quarter can sometimes be the seasonally weakest quarter there.

When you get to Construction and the seasonality, a lot of it has to do with the project closeouts on large projects. It's become a much more level business through the years than it historically had been. Some of that's really the kind of work we're doing.

And also, just the change in contractual terms that we've experienced over the last 4 or 5 years. It's no longer -- we're less Northeast focused than we had been. So I'm just always cautious, but it's very difficult in our business to read things quarter-to-quarter.

It's why we don't give quarterly guidance, and it's why we don't really respond to it much. You really have to look at it on a trailing 12 month of what the projection is going forward..

Next question will come from the line of Nick Coppola with Thompson Research..

So you guys talked about the Industrial Services business quite a bit, but I want to follow up on, I guess, this idea of lower energy prices and how that impacts your refinery customers and how that impacts your business.

Should we be thinking about this just as long as prices stay over some type of a breakeven number or utilization continues and turnarounds continue to occur? I mean, is there -- I guess just what kind of impacts do you think about in that regard?.

I am far from a prognosticator on the price of oil. Here is what I know. Right now, in the fourth quarter, we are very busy and no one's talking real negatively about the fourth quarter or the first quarter. There is a draw on labor that if you look at the long-term funnel of the U.S.

energy market, I don't think there's thinking that oil is going to stay $70 forever, I don't think they think it's going to be $120 forever. I think, they think it's somewhere in that range and they can make money in that range. Could it curtail capital spending for a short period of time? It could, especially for the integrateds.

But these guys have plenty of cash. Should refinery utilization remain strong? Sure, as long as the export market for refined product remains strong, which we believe it's going to be, because refineries aren't working any better in Brazil today. They're not working any better in Venezuela today. They're not working any much better in Mexico today.

So there is great demand for U.S. refined products, specifically diesel. Utilization is very high and is projected to remain high. All those things are true. Could there be a short-term dislocation in the next 6 to 12 months? Maybe there will be. I don't really know that.

And we respond to what our customers have for demand, and we are well positioned for broad-based demand. And so that, I would never opine on below this number, they're x, or above this number, they're y. I just -- our level of analysis isn't sophisticated enough to do that..

Okay, fair enough. And then I guess just a follow-up question, shifting gears a bit. It sounds like the small project business is improving for you guys.

In the past, you talked about that as a leading indicator, and so I guess, what does improvement in small projects tell us about your business? And I guess what are your expectations in that piece?.

Here's what it tells me. That owners are spending more money again, more money again on replacement versus repairs, as it didn't make a lot of sense, right? Does it make sense -- we didn't -- it did not make sense, some of the things we were repairing in 2009 and '10. So we're now back to replacing.

It also tells me with the mix of companies we have doing that work is people have come back home. And what I mean by that is they've tried other contractors, they've tried larger contractors in trying to do service work that didn't do it particularly well. Or they tried low-ball contractors and that didn't go particularly well.

A small project job can be some of the most complex work we do at EMCOR. The logistics on those jobs, the size of the crews are small, but logistics on those jobs to keep a building exist -- an existing building operating while you're changing out a mechanical room or an air hammer or a control system is very complex.

And I think people realize having great service contractors, like the EMCOR companies are, do that work will pay much better dividends then trying to spread the work around with people that do not belong in that market..

Our final question will come from the line of Noelle Dilts with Stifel..

I was just hoping you could comment a little bit on -- your thoughts on where you stand on acquisitions right now, what you're seeing in terms of opportunities in the market and how pricing is trending of potential candidates..

Look, the pricing has been high. Now we haven't really bid on anything of size in 14 months. We made a small fire protection acquisition. We always do those kind of consolidating acquisitions. They either give us a footprint or allow us to take care of labor -- to gain labor in a market that we know we're going to be doing work.

We think that there'll be opportunities that will present themselves over the next 2 to 3 years -- 0 to 3 years in our core Electrical Mechanical business. We will continue to like to gain more footprint in the industrial side. We would like to gain more footprint in manufacturing industrial in general. We think that will happen.

We also think that we still have places in our mechanical service footprint that we'd love to fill out. We're always in active discussions with private owners or private companies that built these companies, not necessarily private equity guys.

We also believe that there'll be places we can fill out our industrial footprint from other lines of service to an expanded heat exchanger shop network. And again, those deals happen when they happen. We built 2 businesses over 10 years in Building Services and Industrial Services.

As of today, with the portfolio of businesses we have, we think we can do acquisitions that add any of those 4 major segments, from Building Services to Electrical, Mechanical to Industrial Services without having to step too far afield from there. Private equity has driven up pricing. Again, we haven't been active.

We haven't seen anything that would make us want to get into that market in the last year after RepconStrickland. That was a perfect fit for us to compete against private equity on an asset, it almost has to be a perfect fit for those kinds of assets because they will drive the price high.

If they're borrowing money at 6x EBITDA, leverage that they can put on an asset, that makes it very difficult for a strategic buyer to come in and jump above that.

So pricing's still competitive on those kind of assets, but we think there will be opportunities to continue to do consolidating acquisitions and product line extensions for what we already do. I think that's it. Thank you, everybody, for coming on the call today. As you can tell, we're poised to have a very good year here at EMCOR.

Earnings are up over 20% year-to-date, and the business has a very solid foundation and we continue to generate great cash and have a good balance sheet. And with that, we look forward to talking to you in February..

This does conclude today's conference call. You may now disconnect..