Yahoo Finance

John Regan

Thanks, Jim, and good morning, everyone. Today, I'll review the results for the first quarter and go over guidance for the balance of the year. Please turn to slide 12.
Jim already referenced revenue and new awards for the quarter, but our consolidated segment profit for Q1 was $131 million. Our GAAP results notably reflect four items: first, a $15 million reduction in Urban Solutions margin due to 4x between the US and Canada on the Gordie Howe project; second, the Mission Solutions item from 2019 that Jim talked about, which amounted to $28 million. This matter still requires another hearing to determine an award amount, so results reflect our current best estimate.
Third, the $22 million reserve that Jim also mentioned related to a long completed project at our joint venture in Mexico. And fourth, the $14 million were other negative income impacts of FX, including the embedded derivative in Mexico.
Adjusted EBITDA for Q1 was $155 million compared to $88 million a year ago. Our adjusted EPS was $0.73 compared to $0.47 in '24. Adjusted results for '25 exclude those four items I mentioned, except for Gordie Howe. Now all of that is detailed in the tables to our earnings release issued earlier today. G&A for the quarter was $36 million, down from $59 million a year ago. This reduction was primarily driven by compensation that is stock price sensitive.
Net interest income in Q1 was $17 million compared to $35 million in Q4 and $39 million a year ago. This results from lower cash balances for projects nearing completion as the advanced payments we had collected were used to fund our obligations to subcontractors. This is especially relevant for a couple of our JVs.
Moving to slide 13. We had $2.5 billion of cash and marketable securities at March 31, a decrease of just over $400 million from year-end, which is mostly attributable to our share repurchase program, increased working capital on a couple of our larger projects, and the typical cash flows for the first quarter, including incentive payments for the prior year.
Operating cash flow for the quarter was an outflow of $286 million compared to an outflow of $111 million a year ago. This results from the working capital growth on the projects that I mentioned, though some of that has normalized in April, the incentive payments and separately, timing of AR collections and mission solutions. Also, 2024 cash flow included a $40 million positive effect from NuScale, which was still consolidated at that time.
For our legacy infra projects, in Q1, we provided $70 million in funding. As a reminder, due to our JV ownership structure, most of this is reflected as an investing activity and not in operating cash flow. Our expectation of funding about $200 million on legacy projects for all of 2025 remains unchanged. During the quarter, we recognized an $84 million positive benefit related to the settlement of a jury verdict that had been rendered against an infra JV in Q4. As a reminder, this project was completed over 12 years ago. With this settlement, we consider our remaining P&L exposure to be closed.
As you may recall, this item is reflected in equity method results in our P&L. Separately, equity method also reflects the mark-to-market of our investment in NuScale, which was a $477 million negative in Q1 as their stock price slipped from approximately $18 to just over $14, though they have recovered to around $17 through yesterday. Finally, as a point of reference, our adjusted results exclude both of the equity method item.
Switching to capital returns. Our organic cash flow generation continues to underpin our objectives in this area. In line with our previously announced share repurchase program, we seized upon the dip in our share price by repurchasing 3.6 million shares during Q1, spending $142 million.
We now anticipate up to $600 million in repurchases for all of 2025, including approximately $150 million in Q2. We'll continue to leverage our robust financial foundation to pursue the most advantageous capital allocation opportunities for our shareholders, whether that is through reinvestment in the business, repurchasing shares, executing bolt-on acquisitions, or other forms of capital return.
Moving to guidance on slide 14. We are holding to our 2025 adjusted EBITDA guidance of $575 million to $675 million and our adjusted EPS guidance of $2.25 to $2.75. However, EPS may be impacted by the ultimate tempo of our share repurchase activity.
Our expectations for operating cash flow remain between $450 million and $500 million. Key assumptions for '25 continue to include a new awards book-to-burn ratio above 1, revenue growth of approximately 15%, as well as the other guidance listed on the slide. We also maintained our [Cal '25] segment margins of approximately 4% to 5% in Urban, approximately 3.5% to 4.5% in Energy, and approximately 5% to 6% in Mission.
As a final modeling note, through our lens, the effective tax rate in Q1 was approximately 20%. This is illustrated on page 20 of the 10-Q. Over the course of 2025, we expect this rate to decline closer to 30% for the full year based on where we execute the projects in our backlog.
And with that, Ian, we're ready for our first question.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Michael Dudas, Vertical Research Partners.

Michael Dudas

Jim, maybe to further elaborate on your prepared remarks on your discussion with clients, so relative to maybe the fourth-quarter conference call, our meeting in Indiana in April and today, the change of sentiment tender amongst the clients, maybe you can -- which clients are more sensitive relative to ones they are more time to market? I assume it's much of the Urban Solutions area, but maybe a little bit more sense on that.
And your comment about your new business award opportunities and you're working for that 90%, how that would reflect relative to maybe other periods of time in Fluor's history? Thanks.

James Breuer

Thank you, Michael. Yeah. We have been engaging with our clients at various levels, including the very senior levels of our key clients, and I would say that most of the projects in the markets we're tracking, the fundamentals of those projects are still there, whether it's the time to market projects. And you're correct, they're mostly in the urban space, particularly in the ATLS space. Those, for sure, are moving forward.
But even the other ones that are more price-sensitive and GDP growth and market certainty. Those still have very sound fundamentals behind them. What those clients are looking for is certainty in the environment. I think you -- I mean, it's no surprise that the entire business community is watching very carefully what's happened with the trade negotiations, and we're hopeful that there's going to be some good news on certain fronts in the coming days and weeks, so that we can start seeing some clarity in the broader picture.
But projects in energy, projects in copper, I would say, are requiring a little bit more certainty, whereas projects in the ATLS arena and project in the Mission Solutions space, I would say, I have greater clarity today and are proceeding as planned. As far as our pipeline of prospects for the near term, the 90% comment on the underlying awards, Mike, it's similar to previous cycles in Fluor. I would -- maybe it's perhaps a little bit higher. We have spent a lot of effort in the last few quarters or a couple of years in the strategy to really focus on quality pursuits and bet on feeds that we think have a high conversion to EPCM, EPC.
So we feel good about that 90%. Some of that already materialized in, and we expect that trend to continue in the coming quarters.

John Regan

Maybe on the clients that are a little more price sensitive I'm not sure our procurement group has ever been busier in terms of price refreshing on the projects. So we are there alongside our customers as they're trying to put a finer point on project estimates and moving towards their FIDs.

Michael Dudas

Excellent. Thanks, gentlemen.

Operator

Jamie Cook, Truist Securities.

Jamie Cook

Thank you for the additional disclosure on the earnings call and in the press release. It was helpful. I guess my first question, I can't believe I'm asking this, but if I look at your EBITDA for the first quarter, it was $155 million. If we just multiply that by four years at the high end of -- I mean your EBITDA guidance for the year. And I guess how much conservative would you say there is in your numbers? I mean, I'm just looking at your revenue has (inaudible) growth has to accelerate in the remaining three quarters for you to make your 15% top-line guide, you know what I mean, so it implies your EBITDA should be growing from the first quarter level. So I guess I'll start that with my first question.

John Regan

Yeah, we got some sage counsel on how to improve our earnings release. So thank you for that. So I think as you're thinking about the shape of the EBITDA curve, the one thing that we couldn't have predicted was the behavior of our stock price. And so as I mentioned in the prepared remarks, we had a significant tailwind, unfortunately, for us, in terms of the executive compensation results associated with our share price.
And so you should think about roughly $0.08 or $0.09 of adjusted earnings or EPS attributable to that. So that kind of distorts the shape of the curve. And so I don't know that it's conservatism. I think we remain confident in the outlook for the year. And I would say when you probably normalize for the share price impact puts us a little more squarely in the midpoint of that.

Jamie Cook

Okay. And I guess just my second question on the (technical difficulty) started out sort of in the hole on cash flow for the first quarter, but you increased your -- you doubled your share repurchase authorization maintained your cash flow guide. I'm just wondering if there's opportunities on upside on the cash flow guide, whether it's coming from funding less of those legacy projects, if you could just characterize.

John Regan

Yeah, I'll tackle that, Jamie. I think you've cracked up a little bit on our end. But in terms of where the cash flow guide is, Q1 performance and ultimately, the impact on share repurchases. Again, we're signaling some confidence in where cash flow generation is, as I suggested in the prepared remarks. We did see a little bit of an uptick in April in terms of working capital conversion to cash.
And so underpinning kind of the uplift from the $300 million to the $600 million of share repo, you should consider our confidence in the outlook as part and parcel to that. Yeah, I don't know if -- you cut off for a few seconds, Jamie. So I'm not sure we caught the whole question.

Jamie Cook

Yeah. Thank you, and nice quarter.

Operator

Andy Kaplowitz, Citigroup.

Andy Kaplowitz

I just wanted to follow up on Jamie's question in one sense. I think you said you're more comfortable -- it's obviously a big range for EBITDA and EPS, like you're more comfortable maybe with the midpoint after a strong start, but how do we think about the second half of the year, given the slow decision-making? I think, Jim, you mentioned the Dow project delay, the recompete loss in Mission Solutions. Do we need to worry about like underutilization in the second half? Or there's enough projects in terms of that book-to-bill still being over 1 that you can sort of fill the gap.

James Breuer

Andy, let me start, and maybe John can chime in later. Yeah. Let me start with the Dow project versus -- Dow came out and very clearly explained the reasons for slowing down construction activities or not slowing down engineering and procurement, and it had to do with a combination of decisions around their market, the timing of the pricing of their products, and so on.
We don't think -- we're not seeing a trend of that in our other clients, Andy. As people who are having yet FID projects are looking for further clarity and certainty. We're not seeing a trend. And because we're involved on these projects, and like John said, we're working hand-in-hand with our clients with these mitigation strategies around the tariffs and other factors, we feel pretty strongly about the quality of the backlog and our ability to convert.
The exact timing of the conversion may be a little uncertain, maybe they push out just a tad. But we're not expecting significant underutilization compared to what the baseline was a month or two ago. John, anything you'd like to add?

John Regan

Yeah. I think a couple of points. One, just part and parcel of our execution strategy is an early buyout on the procurement front. So the things that are in backlog and ongoing tend to -- it's our belief that they're going to continue moving forward. And then maybe Jim's prepared remarks was also hinting at kind of the earnings potential of the backlog.
So even as things are slowing down, we are performing work on the vast majority of the things we see coming. And so from an earnings potential kind of unmitigated there, but obviously, a little bit of disruption on the new award front.

Andy Kaplowitz

Very helpful, guys. And then you kept guidance of still book-to-bill over 1 times, as you said. Jim, maybe you talked about some things that maybe need a little bit more time to get through, but confidence level on sort of end markets that can go through the fastest? Or where do you get the confidence to continue to sort of tell us book-to-bill over 1. Is it a couple of chunky projects? Is it a couple of particular end markets? Where does the confidence come from, given the macro uncertainty?

James Breuer

Andy, the confidence comes in our close collaboration with these clients on the front-end work. And when you look at whether it's copper, whether it's further additional pharmaceutical work, whether it's data centers, there's a midstream compression project in the US. There's a sustainable chemicals project. There's a project with a power and LNG component feeding a new power plant. These are real projects with clear economic incentives. Some of it is US-based. Some of it is international. So our diversification is helping us.
There are some large opportunities out there. I'll remind you of SR PPS. That's a significant opportunity. We're tracking that. That's part of the plan. So we have high confidence that there is a compelling need for our clients to move forward with that project.
So despite the nervousness in the market, some of these key strategic pursuits, we feel are solid enough and have a compelling enough reason that we feel good about it. Of course, the tariff story, Andy, is a developing story. It's still out there. We would like to see clarity on that in the short term, one way or another. I think the market will adjust to that. But I think that there needs to be clarity coming forward.
But having said that, I think some of our key -- most of our key prospects have very strong floating underneath them.

Andy Kaplowitz

Appreciate all the color.

Operator

Andy Wittman, Baird.

Andy Whitman

Great. Thanks for taking my questions. I had several here to just help understand the quarter. And first thing I wanted to ask about was making sure that I heard something correctly related to the Urban Solutions segment and the $84 million benefit that you recognized during the quarter. Did I hear it correctly that that's an equity income and therefore, not reported in that segment profit results. Is that right, John?

John Regan

You're spot on.

Andy Whitman

And therefore, it was added back or excluded from your adjusted results. Is that right?

John Regan

Yes. The $84 million is not in the $155 million to be super clear.

Andy Whitman

Yeah. And it's not in the Urban segment either.

John Regan

Correct.

Andy Whitman

Okay. That's helpful. Okay. So then you talked about how two projects that got descoped were allowed you to -- because you're, therefore, further along in your percentage of completion on these two projects, it allowed you to, I guess, accelerate some profit recognition into this quarter from the descoping process. We have to love E&C accounting.
Could you tell us either by segment for Urban and Energy where those, I think, two projects resided in each. Could you tell us either individually per segment or in total, how much benefit that POC change afforded you in the quarter? I think this will help all of us get at Jamie's question that she asked about the kind of underlying EBITDA run rate.

John Regan

Sure. So the first thing I'd probably point out is that we were expecting the burn across both of those projects across the balance of '25. Maybe there was a small impact to '26. So the pull forward is not -- I mean, inasmuch as you may think of it as a onetime event. It was always kind of inside of our 2025 thinking. But you should think about those as around probably $0.09 of EPS in both of the segments directionally.

Andy Whitman

Got it. Just because your tax rate is always jumpy here, what would that be on an EBITDA basis?

John Regan

So you're probably looking at around $20 million each. Okay.

Andy Whitman

So total of $40 million then.

John Regan

Yeah.

Andy Whitman

Okay. Okay. And then just on cash flow --

John Regan

Andy, let me -- so as we're thinking about it, I know you look at it through a slightly different lens. So I think about the $40 million is kind of the credit amount. A certain portion of that would have been inside the frame for even Q1 thinking. So it's probably a little bit lower than that. But --

Andy Whitman

Yeah. (inaudible) over the year? That makes sense. (inaudible) over the year. It's [$40 million]. It has been maybe [$10 million] already here and [$30 million] for the rest of the year, be straight lining it kind of (inaudible).

John Regan

Yeah. There you go. Well done.

Andy Whitman

Yes. That makes sense. Okay. Thanks for that clarification. I also wanted to ask about North Texas. It looks like that project has resolution, and you recognized it, I guess, in fourth quarter and then some offset here for a net impact.
But another complexity of E&C accounting here. It looks like the settlement was actually like $400 million to the joint venture, but you took a benefit here in the quarter that we're talking about here for the kind of $84 million.
Question is not so much on the income statement here. But I guess the question is, has the cash already been exchanged for this? Is that done as of the balance sheet that we see today? And if not, how much cash is going to be associated with this when you finally get out of that cash position and when?

John Regan

Yeah. So I was very artful in the remarks to say we've closed out the P&L, but we will need to fund that in the balance of [$25 million], and you should think about it in the $30 million range.

Andy Whitman

Okay. That's helpful. Okay. Those are my clarifying questions. Great. Thank you so much for helping me clarify those things.

John Regan

Yes. Thank you. It's certainly subsumed in the operating cash flow guidance that I rendered.

Operator

[Judah Arabits], UBS.

Thanks for taking the question. On for Steve Fisher. What exposure is left in Mexico on legacy projects and ongoing work that could cause any margin drag?

John Regan

Thank you for the question. Our joint venture in Mexico has a portfolio of projects with Pemex. Some are very close to completion. Some are in the middle of execution. We feel good about those projects. They're active under strategic projects for the country.
The LNG project we've been talking about last year, that's proceeding well, and we don't expect any additional surprises there. The announcement we made in this call around Mexico had to do with a project that was completed many, many years ago.
And so that was a decision we made to take that reserve. But other than that, I think we're in good shape in Mexico.

James Breuer

Yeah, I would agree. It's probably four major ongoing projects down there, at least half of which are probably the ninth inning and maybe late middle innings on the other. So again, to the exposure question, we don't feel like there's a lot of forward-looking exposure.

Okay. Thanks. And then just on cash. What is the cash collection potential from JV this year?

John Regan

I would say probably a little bit lower than last year. Certainly, we're sort of expecting to recoup some of the profits out of Canada with a little more confidence than we are in Mexico. But again, all of that subsumed in the cash flow guidance that we published today.

Operator

Okay. There are no further questions at this time. I'd like to hand the call back over to Jim Breuer for some closing remarks.

James Breuer

Thank you, Ian, and many thanks to all of you participating in the call today. As you can see, we had a strong first quarter and a successful launch to our grow and execute strategy. I want to take this opportunity to thank David and Joe for their service and leadership. We look forward to working with David in his new capacity as Executive Chairman and wish Joe the best going forward.
And to our audience, we appreciate your interest in Fluor, and thank you for your time.

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.