Orion Reports Loss For Fourth Quarter, Full Year

Orion Group Holdings Inc., a leading specialty construction and dredging company headquartered in Houston, Texas, reported a net loss of $8.8 million, or $0.29 per share, for the fourth quarter of 2021. That compares with net income of $3.7 million or $0.12 per share for the fourth quarter of 2020.

The fourth quarter 2021 net loss included $1.9 million ($0.06 loss per share) of non-recurring items and $1.6 million ($0.06 loss per share) of tax expense associated with the movement of certain valuation allowances. The fourth quarter 2021 adjusted net loss was $5.3 million ($0.17 loss per share), the company said.

For the full year, Orion reported a net loss of $14.6 million for 2021, compared with net income of $20.2 million in 2020.

Contract revenues declined both for the quarter ($162.3 million in 4Q 2021 vs. $170.2 million in 4Q 2020) and the full year ($601.4 million in 2021 vs. $709.9 million in 2020).

“Our fourth quarter reflects the lag effects from the COVID-19 pandemic, which reduced the volume of work in our marine business and pressured project margins in our concrete business,” said Mark Stauffer, Orion’s CEO. “Additionally, the Omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus impacted our operations during the latter part of the quarter.

“Marine segment revenues began recovering during the quarter but were still down significantly year over year. Concrete project margins, primarily in our Houston market, remained under pressure as we emerge from the pandemic.”

Things are trending upward, however, Stauffer said.

“We ended the year with backlog up sequentially and up significantly year over year,” he said. “Fueled by recent awards, the amount of work we won during 2021 was up 27 percent over the prior year, allowing us to enter 2022 with confidence that revenues will grow, leading to better capacity utilization, overhead absorption and improved results. We closed the fourth quarter with year-ending backlog of $590.0 million, up 34 percent from the end of 2020. Within that backlog figure, approximately 75 percent is due to burn in FY22.

“Overall bidding activity remains robust, with the amount of quoted work outstanding at year-end up 63 percent year over year. The recently passed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will provide a long-term tailwind, both directly in the form of funds earmarked for work in our markets and indirectly as market capacity utilization increases as it is deployed on projects funded through the act.

“We’ve worked through a period with significant challenges to the economy and our business. During this period, our team has been focused and disciplined on responsibly bidding and executing work. We are well positioned to take advantage of the improving market dynamics and tailwinds in our market drivers.”

The company’s backlog at the end of 2021 included $376.9 million for the marine segment and $213.1 million for the concrete segment. At the end of the fourth quarter, Orion had approximately $2.6 billion worth of bids outstanding, including approximately $138 million on which it was the apparent low bidder or had been awarded contracts after the end of the fourth quarter of 2021; of that amount, approximately $24 million pertains to the marine segment and approximately $114 million to the concrete segment.

“During the fourth quarter, we bid on approximately $1.6 billion of work and were successful on approximately $180 million of these bids,” Stauffer said. “This resulted in a 1.11 times book-to-bill ratio and a win rate of 11.0 percent. In the marine segment, we bid on approximately $807 million during the fourth quarter 2021 and were successful on approximately $70 million, representing a win rate of 8.7 percent and a book-to-bill ratio of 0.96 times. In the concrete segment we bid on approximately $825 million of work and were awarded approximately $110 million, representing a win rate of 13.3 percent and a book-to-bill ratio of 1.23 times.”