Tetra Tech Inc. Q3 2008 Earnings Call Transcript

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2008-11-13 13:53:14.0

Tags: Revenue, Headcount, Call Transcript, Earnings, Resource Management, Tetra Tech Inc., Operational Accounting, Finance, Seeking Alpha, Revenue, Headcount, Call Transcript, Earnings, Resource Management, Tetra Tech Inc., Operational Accounting, Finance, Seeking Alpha

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from John Quealy – Canaccord Adams

John Quealy – Canaccord Adams

Couple of questions, first on resource management margins ended the full year at 10% can you talk about some of your expectations for that moving forward or some assumptions? How sustainable that number is given your outlook?

Dan Batrack

Well our forecast for the resource management group has been arranged between 9 to 10% typically the fourth quarter is the strongest. We do have some seasonality utilization that’s higher our revenue is higher, so we have more leverage on our indirect costs in the fourth quarter.

We see our resource management group continuing at 9 to 10%. As we add a bit more commercial work as we did this last quarter it'll be at the upper end of that range, and we’d expect that during the early quarters of the year Q1, Q2, during the winter months. Particularly for us, January, February, March we’ll probably be at the lower end of that range, and in the summer months, which is Q3, Q4, we’d expect it to be at the upper range or even above this as you saw this last quarter.

John Quealy – Canaccord Adams

And with regards to headcount, it looks like it was up pretty decently in Q4. Is that roughly the range ahead that you’re planning on keeping to hit this guidance?

Dan Batrack

Yes it is. We will see and we’re watching this carefully, but we typically see a headcount be slightly higher in the late summer months. So the high headcount typically is September 30 to Q4. If you look historically you’ll see a slightly lower headcount in the winter months because field construction activities are a little bit slower, but it’ll move at just a few hundred heads, but we expect it to be at this level.

John Quealy – Canaccord Adams

Lastly, on that alternative energy organic growth expectation between 15 and 25 %, can you give us a little bit more indication of your assumptions behind that given the credit market that we’re in, and some of the concerns in the commercial markets? Can you give us a little bit more detail about how you’re coming up to those numbers?

Dan Batrack

Well let me give you some specifics on one area that we have very high visibility in. Let me give you an example of some wind projects. We had a strong wind revenue contribution in 2008. We went from about $60 million, $50, $60 million to about $160 million in 2008, and we’re forecasting $160 million of wind projects to go up to about $200 million. Of that $200 million as I indicated earlier, we have about 90% of that already in backlog.

 

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