Shimmick Corporation Q4 2025 Earnings Call - Margin Turnaround Driven by Non-Core Wind Down and Backlog Growth

Ural Akbulut, Chief Executive Officer, Shimmick Corporation: Good afternoon, and thank you all for joining us on today’s call. I’m joined by Todd Yoder, Shimmick’s CFO. Before I get started, I would like to recognize the women and men who work at Shimmick, safely and effectively delivering the projects we take on as good stewards of the communities where we work. Our work is supporting our nation’s infrastructure, and we are all very proud of it. With that, I’m going to start by discussing our financial results for 2025. We finished 2025 strong and in line with our expectations in what was largely a transformational year for Shimmick. We made meaningful progress on the strategic priorities we introduced at the beginning of the year. As a reminder, our strategy remains centered on three pillars. One, growing the top line by bidding, winning, and strategic risk-balanced work aligned with our expertise.

Two, completing and winding down legacy low-margin non-core projects. Three, driving operational improvements to deliver consistent margins and improve G&A leverage. We made substantial progress across all three pillars throughout the year and still believe we are in the early stages of the new Shimmick we’re building. These priorities have strengthened our business fundamentally, evident by our 2025 results. As we turn to our 2025 results for the full year, we delivered a consolidated revenue of $493 million, 7% gross margin, and Adjusted EBITDA of $5 million. Full year 2025, Shimmick projects’ revenue was $395 million, a 12% increase year-over-year. These projects now represented 75% of our total revenue in 2025, highlighting the concentration of activity on more strategic work.

In turn, we expanded our gross margin on Shimmick projects to 10%, a 400 basis point improvement over last year. For our non-core projects, 2025 revenue was $96 million compared to $125 million in 2024, reflecting our focus on effectively advancing the wind down of these projects. We also maintain a strong liquidity position, finishing the year with a total liquidity of $44 million. As you can see from our fiscal year results, we’ve made substantial progress executing our plan, specifically narrowing our focus to projects that leverage our core strengths. Now, I’d like to spend some time speaking about that progress, providing an update on our wins, what are we seeing in the market, and the operational improvements we are making. As we look at the market today, our momentum continues to build.

Our core markets are continuing to see consistent investment, and we’re able to selectively bid projects that advance our strategy. This means we’re increasingly able to improve our resilience by diversifying our customer base, focusing on growth markets geographically, and lowering the risk profile of our book of work. Our backlog has grown meaningfully and remains well above a 1-to-1 book-to-burn ratio, which is an important indicator of the underlying strength in demand and our ability to win. We expect our book-to-burn ratio in the first quarter of 2026 to remain well above 1 as well, reinforcing the trajectory we’ve been on. Looking ahead to 2026, our pipeline volumes continue to be a real strength, allowing us to grow our revenues and margins while being strategic about what we pursue.

Our wins in this quarter, some of which you’re seeing on the screen, continue to be aligned with our strategy and reflect the strength of the market. Our bidding activity has translated directly into backlog growth, which has increased to $793 million at the end of our fiscal year, with $139 million in new awards and ended up near the numbers we started the year with, which shows the stabilization of our backlog as we continue to complete non-core projects. Additionally, we’ve been awarded contracts worth $128 million that added to our backlog so far in 2026.

Lastly, after the year concluded, we have been selected as preferred bidder on projects totaling $234 million, with projects that are predominantly in our core sectors of water and electrical construction and are mostly located in California and Texas. We are currently negotiating these contracts or waiting for awards from our clients, which we expect to happen over the upcoming weeks and months. From a commercial standpoint, the market environment looks relatively unchanged from last quarter, with a strong and growing backlog, a healthy pipeline of new work, and several pending items we expect to convert over the next quarter or two. Our overall 24-month pipeline remains robust, supporting $600 million-$1 billion of bidding volumes per month. Last year, we explained our approach to position Shimmick to compete and win in collaborative delivery markets.

Those efforts are now paying off. This quarter, we expect to announce our first progressive design-build award since I joined Shimmick, a milestone that reflects the credibility built and the value we bring to owners through early engagement and partnership. This project is valued at approximately $55 million, located in Southern California, and will allow us to bring our expertise in wastewater treatment as well as specialty electrical work. Instead of competing through low bid contracting, we will be working with the client to provide value through the pre-construction phase, building trust and alignment before construction begins. We expect to negotiate the construction contract at the end of 2026, with the construction beginning in 2027. This is exactly the kind of work we wanna be doing. It de-risks the business, improves predictability, and aligns our interests with the client from day one.

Another collaborative contracting method we are focused on is construction manager/general contractor, the CM/GC method. We have completed a few of these projects in the past and continue to see strong momentum in our pipeline for these lower-risk projects. One such project, an estimated $200 million effort that supports bus infrastructure as Los Angeles prepares for the 2028 Olympics, is approaching the construction phase. We expect to announce this milestone in the second quarter and start construction shortly thereafter. We’re also progressing a number of opportunities in higher growth verticals. The data center market continues to evolve quickly, and while we’re not yet in a position to announce a new contract, we are actively pursuing several meaningful opportunities. These include potential engagements with large operators in Texas, Washington, and Nevada. Should any of these materialize, they would represent significant contributions to our pipeline.

I’ve talked about pairing the pipeline improvements with operational improvements over the last year. We are making progress in that front as well. We believe we can support strong top-line growth without significant increases to our SG&A spend, and we continue to adopt and transform how we do business and use those SG&A dollars effectively. We’ve strengthened our project controls, enhanced our procurement capabilities, and expanded the use of Power BI and other AI-based analytical tools to improve visibility, decision-making, and accountability across the organization, spanning all of our critical functions like safety, quality, and human resources. In project controls, we now have the capability to manage a much larger number of contracts with a higher level of rigor. The structure we’ve put in place allows us to scale without sacrificing control, which is critical as our backlog continues to grow.

On the procurement side, we’ve added expertise and systems that significantly de-risk the business. We are improving risk management over one of the biggest cost drivers in our operations with more discipline and transparent oversight across the company. This gives us the ability to manage supplier relationships more strategically and ensure we’re extracting real value from our spend. We’ve also made real progress on the talent front. Our attrition rates continue to move in the right direction, which is a direct reflection of the work our teams are doing to strengthen employee experience and create a more supportive and performance-driven environment. Retaining top talent is critical to executing our long-term strategy, and the data we’re seeing gives us confidence that we’re on the right track. In short, the market remains healthy, our competitive position continues to strengthen, and our backlog and pipeline dynamics are moving in the right direction.

We are operating with greater efficiency, executing with more discipline, and building the foundation for sustained growth. With that, I’d like to turn to Todd, who will review our financials in more detail.

Todd Yoder, Chief Financial Officer, Shimmick Corporation: Thank you for joining us today. We’re pleased to report another solid quarter and a strong full year performance that reflects the operational improvements and disciplined execution Ural outlined earlier. Before I dive into the numbers, I wanna thank the entire Shimmick team. Your focus on safety, your commitment to quality, and your consistency in executing with excellence have all played a critical role in our results this year. Thank you for everything you do. With that, let’s jump into the financial results, beginning with slide 8. As a reminder, all comparisons made today will be on a year-over-year basis as compared to the same period in 2024, unless otherwise noted. Shimmick project revenue for Q4 2025 was $84 million, up 4% compared to $81 million in Q4 of 2024. The net increase of $3 million was primarily driven by our new projects ramping up.

Non-core project revenue for Q4 2025 was $16 million, down $24 million as compared to Q4 2024. This is reflective of the fact we have less non-core in our backlog to burn off this year versus prior year. I will point out that non-core projects in total were close to 90% complete ending 2025. Shimmick consolidated total revenue for Q4 2025 was $100 million as compared to $104 million in the prior year. Moving on to gross margin. Shimmick project gross margin was $10 million for Q4 2025 up $8 million or 400% compared to $2 million in Q4 2024. Gross margin as a percentage of revenue was 12% for Q4 2025 versus 3% in Q4 2024.

The $8 million increase in gross margin was driven by $6 million from new awards and $2 million from existing projects. Non-core project gross margin was flat for Q4 2025 as compared to negative $23 million for Q4 of 2024. The $23 million increase in gross margin was driven by cost overruns on non-core loss projects during Q4 of 2024 that did not recur this year. Shimmick consolidated total gross margin for Q4 of 2025 was $10 million, up $31 million compared to a negative $21 million gross margin in Q4 of 2024. Total gross margin as a percentage of revenue improved to 10% from a negative 20% in Q4 of 2024.

G&A expense for Q4 2025 was $11 million, favorable 32% or $5 million as compared to $16 million of G&A in Q4 of 2024. The favorable impact was the result of our continued transformation of the business. Net loss for Q4 2025 was $3 million, favorable $37 million as compared to a net loss of $38 million in Q4 of 2024. Adjusted EBITDA for Q4 2025 was $4 million, as compared to -$27 million in Q4 of 2024. The improvement was primarily driven by the increase in gross margin combined with the decrease in SG&A. Turning to liquidity, if you recall, we ended Q3 2025 with $48 million of liquidity. We ended Q4 2025 with liquidity of $44 million.

The $44 million consisted of unrestricted cash and cash equivalents of $20 million, and availability under our credit agreements totaled $24 million. We remain comfortable that our liquidity position provides the capital needed to continue executing on our strategic and operational priorities. New awards booked during Q4 2025 were $135 million, a sequential increase of more than $39 million from Q3 2025, giving us a book-to-burn for the quarter of 1.4 times. We ended the quarter with total backlog of $793 million. Turning to slide 9 for the 2025 full year results, Shimmick projects gross margin was $397 million for the year, up $41 million or 12% compared to $357 million in 2024.

Non-core project revenue was $96 million for the year compared to $125 million in 2024. Shimmick consolidated total revenue for 2025 was $493 million, up $13 million or 3% compared to $480 million in 2024. Shimmick project gross margin was $40 million or 10% as a percentage of revenue. This is a $28 million increase compared to $12 million or 3% in 2024. Non-core project gross margin was -$7 million or -7% as a percentage of revenue. This is a $61 million increase compared to -$68 million in 2024. Shimmick consolidated total gross margin was $34 million for 2025, making gross margin 7% of revenue overall. This is a $90 million increase compared to -$56 million gross margin in 2024.

Adjusted net loss was -$15 million in 2025 as compared to -$81 million in 2024. Adjusted EBITDA for 2025 was $5 million, favorable $66 million from -$61 million adjusted EBITDA in 2024. New awards booked during Q4 2025 were $139 million, a sequential increase of $39 million from Q3, giving us the book-to-burn of 1.4. We ended the quarter with total backlog of $793 million. Our backlog mix continues to improve, with Shimmick projects now representing close to 90% of our total backlog ending 2025.

Additionally, we have $128 million in new awards added to backlog as of the close of February 2026, and we have another $234 million of additional new awards that were pending fully executed contracts as of the end of February 2026. Turning to slide 10 and our 2026 guide. To set the stage, I want to call out that some Shimmick projects in California and Texas experienced slower burn due to unusual heavy rainfall in California and cold weather in Texas, which limited field activity. In addition, some of our newly awarded contracts have taken a bit longer to ramp up than normal. While these projects experienced some shift to the right, they are back on track.

While we anticipate a slower start to the year due to this weather, we expect quarter-over-quarter sequential improvement throughout the year as new project awards ramp up and re-represent a growing share of our project mix. We expect Shimmick consolidated revenue to grow between 12% and 22%, 17% at the midpoint, representing approximately $550 million-$600 million of work put in place for the full year of 2026. Adjusted EBITDA is projected to increase between 200% and 500%. That’s 350% at the midpoint, putting adjusted EBITDA in the range of $15 million-$30 million for the full year. With that, we are confident 2026 will be a great year for Shimmick. I thank you for joining us today and for your interest in Shimmick. Now back to you, Ural.

Ural Akbulut, Chief Executive Officer, Shimmick Corporation: 2025 was a pivotal year for Shimmick. We delivered results in line with our expectations, executed with greater discipline, and made meaningful progress on the strategic priorities we set out at the beginning of the year. Our focus on bidding and winning strategic risk balance work, winding down legacy non-core projects, and driving operational improvements is reshaping the company and setting us up for long-term success. The improvements we’re seeing in backlog growth, project execution, talent retention, procurement discipline, and project controls all point to a business that is operating with more predictability, resilience, and focus than a year ago. Our pipeline remains robust, our market backdrop is healthy, and we’re winning the right work that is aligned with our expertise and our long-term value proposition.

While we recognize there’s still more work to do, we are moving in the right direction, and our progress in 2025 gives us confidence in our ability to advance our journey to make Shimmick a top infrastructure provider in the market and delivering value to our shareholders. We look forward to updating you on our progress as we move forward in 2026. Operator, you may now open the line for questions.

Operator: We will now move to our question and answer session. At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please click on the Raise Hand button, which can be found on the black bar at the bottom of your screen. You may remove yourself from the queue at any time by lowering your hand. When it is your turn, you will receive a message on your screen asking to be promoted to panelist. Please accept, wait a moment, and once you’ve been promoted, you will hear your name called, and you may unmute your video and audio and ask your question. We will pause a moment to assemble the queue. Our first question comes from Gerard Sweeney with Roth. Gerard, is connecting now. One moment please. You may now unmute your video and audio and ask your question.

Gerard Sweeney, Analyst, Roth: Good afternoon, Todd and Ural. Thanks for taking my call.

Ural Akbulut, Chief Executive Officer, Shimmick Corporation: Hey, Jerry. How are you?

Gerard Sweeney, Analyst, Roth: I forgot I was gonna be on video, otherwise I would have dressed up a little nicer.

Ural Akbulut, Chief Executive Officer, Shimmick Corporation: All good.

Gerard Sweeney, Analyst, Roth: Congratulation, obviously, making nice progress as you know, continuously push some of the legacy business behind you. There’s a lot of initiatives on the forefront. A couple questions around, you know, I’m gonna use gross margin as sort of the overlying aspect, but you have some progressive design awards, I think CM/GC opportunities and electrical opportunities. You know, how does this all play through, and how does that impact margins as we go through 2026?

Ural Akbulut, Chief Executive Officer, Shimmick Corporation: Yeah. No, I think overall, gross margins are gonna go up. We expect them to go up. It’s always a function of the mix of projects, obviously. Some projects tend to be closer in the high teens, some projects tend to be in the lower teens. We’re watching that balance very carefully to make sure that we’re continuously making improvement on the gross margin. What you’ll also see at the bottom line is, as we grow the revenues, we’re very focused on controlling the SG&A around the levels that it is today for 2026, and that’s also going to be contributing.

It’s not just top gross margin, but it’s the more efficient SG&A running a larger book of business.

Gerard Sweeney, Analyst, Roth: Got it. Now I had a question on SG&A, but before I get there, what about just the, I think you mentioned you were bidding $600 million-$1 billion a month, but you know, how does the backlog look? Obviously, I think Texas has been very strong with some of our other companies. I mean, there’s always water projects to do in California, but you know, what’s your visibility and feeling on just the overall spend and sort of the macro environment across your territories?

Ural Akbulut, Chief Executive Officer, Shimmick Corporation: Yeah. It’s great. Actually, great question. Really very focused in California and Texas, like we’ve been, along with the Pacific Northwest. Water, water-wise, Texas is very active. California is always active, like you mentioned. We’re seeing opportunities. Like, there’s really no shortage of opportunities going in the next 12-24 months in that kind of volume, which then we don’t need all of it with our win rates. That gets us to be more selective, more strategic about we really wanna be California, Texas, Pacific Northwest, and focus on those markets and grow from there. Really allows us to pick the right jobs with lower competition, maybe higher margins, more strategic for the future.

It’s, as far as kind of overall pipeline perspective, it hasn’t let up in the last six months at all.

Gerard Sweeney, Analyst, Roth: Gotcha. Circling back, SG&A came in just shy of $11 million. I think you indicated that, you know, maybe that’s a good number to use on a, at least for 2026. 1, I wanna see if that’s accurate. Then 2, how much more revenue can you add prior to maybe starting to invest a little bit more in the SG&A front?

Ural Akbulut, Chief Executive Officer, Shimmick Corporation: I think what we had in 2025 is a reasonable number to assume for 2026. Approximately

Gerard Sweeney, Analyst, Roth: Okay, so the 54.5 million-

Ural Akbulut, Chief Executive Officer, Shimmick Corporation: Yeah, somewhere around there. I think, you know, as we do that, the revenues are gonna go up. That’s what we’re guiding. To the second part of your question, I think we’re gonna be fine kind of in that range, plus or minus, in that mid-$50s range up until about $750, honestly.

Gerard Sweeney, Analyst, Roth: Okay, great. All right. Well, I appreciate it. I’ll jump back to you.

Todd Yoder, Chief Financial Officer, Shimmick Corporation: Just to add, Gerard Sweeney.

Gerard Sweeney, Analyst, Roth: No, yeah.

Todd Yoder, Chief Financial Officer, Shimmick Corporation: At 26%, in the G&A for the fourth quarter, right? It was a little lower than you know.

Gerard Sweeney, Analyst, Roth: Yeah

Todd Yoder, Chief Financial Officer, Shimmick Corporation: You saw in previous quarters, as you model that out for 2026, I think that 14, you know, number is a good number. Good run, right?

Gerard Sweeney, Analyst, Roth: Got it. Understood. Okay. Thanks, Todd Yoder.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Gerard Sweeney with Roth. Please unmute your audio and video and ask your question. Apologies, this question comes from Aaron Spychalla with Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Please unmute your audio and video and ask your question.

Aaron Spychalla, Analyst, Craig-Hallum Capital Group: Yeah, hi, Ural and Todd. Thanks for taking the questions. You know, maybe first for me on the guidance for 2026, can you just kinda talk about some of the puts or takes there, you know, especially on like the EBITDA range? Then just maybe how much of non-core you know revenue and kinda margin you know gross profit are you looking for for the year?

Ural Akbulut, Chief Executive Officer, Shimmick Corporation: Yeah, Doug, good question. We’ve simplified the guidance a little bit this time, but it’s looking at the non-core work, we are expecting to burn through pretty much all of it. It’s right now about 11% of the backlog. There’s gonna be very little left, if any, into 2027. That’s also kinda along the lines of, we’ve booked forward losses on those, so if you’re gonna assume those at 0%, they’re gonna continue to kinda impact overall aggregate margin.

I think as far as the gross margin, the real key is how fast can we get the new work to be kinda hitting its stride, all these projects that we won and now starting, how fast can they start generating revenue and margins? That’s really the story of 2026 for us. As far as backlog goes, you know, we finished the year almost at where we started, so we’ve really stabilized very close to where we started.

Now with the wins that we’ve announced today, as those contracts come to fruition, we have a clear path to getting over $1 billion in backlog, and it’s just gonna be a matter of how do we get those jobs going quickly throughout the summer. Did I answer your question?

Aaron Spychalla, Analyst, Craig-Hallum Capital Group: Yeah. No, that was great. Thank you. Maybe on the electrical infrastructure side of things, you know, you kinda talked about, I think, in the release and the call some pending awards on the electrical side of things, sounds like you’re starting to see some traction there. You know, maybe just a little bit more color, and I think you noted, you know, significant kinda potential there. Just what types of projects and project sizes, you know, are you looking for there?

Ural Akbulut, Chief Executive Officer, Shimmick Corporation: Yeah. Our electrical business is a low voltage, medium voltage electrical business that does a variety of sizes of projects. We have projects that are very small, you know, $5-$10 million all the way to $200 million, kinda like more of the larger Shimmick projects, and we’re able to do a range up and down in that range. Texas is extremely strong. We’re bidding a lot of work in Texas. We’re continuing to bid a lot of work in California, continuing to support the larger Shimmick projects with our electrical capabilities. There’s a lot of activity.

What I’m tracking every month is that the amount of Axia work we’re bidding is becoming a higher percentage of the overall bids pretty much every month. I think it’s just a matter of time. We’re really hitting our stride now on the bidding side. We’re gonna see some serious increase in our backlog for Axia work, and then that will translate to revenue in a quarter or two.

Aaron Spychalla, Analyst, Craig-Hallum Capital Group: Good. On the legacy, you know, the non-core projects, you know, good kinda execution this quarter, and it sounds like they’re 90% wrapped up. Can you just kinda talk about it. It seems like you have a good handle on wrapping those up, but maybe just a little bit of color there would be helpful.

Ural Akbulut, Chief Executive Officer, Shimmick Corporation: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we’re moving along. You know, it’s really two projects at this point that are active that’s left, and we’re gonna get through those this year. You know, at the end of these larger, kinda more complicated projects, there are always some risk at the end of them to close them out and cost overruns, but we’re managing it and we’re pretty comfortable that that’s going to really start decreasing as part of our revenue, especially in the second half of this year.

Todd Yoder, Chief Financial Officer, Shimmick Corporation: Yeah. I would just add, it was nice to see, you know, flat gross margin, which, you know, you would expect to see outside of, you know, some minor costs related to legal and other factors. These are non-core loss projects, right, with zero margin. When you look at our total gross margin over the year, quarter-over-quarter, you know, 4%, 6%, 8%, 10%. You know, you see is that, like Ural mentioned, the mix, right? Non-core is becoming such a small percentage of the mix, and especially given the strong wins, you know, with $300 million in new awards in the second half and already starting just through February, right, with $128 million and $234 million pending. It’s a step change, right?

We’ll see that favorable mix throughout 2026.

Aaron Spychalla, Analyst, Craig-Hallum Capital Group: Right. Yeah. Looking forward to it. Great. Thanks for taking the questions. I’ll hop back in the queue.

Ural Akbulut, Chief Executive Officer, Shimmick Corporation: Thanks.

Todd Yoder, Chief Financial Officer, Shimmick Corporation: Thank you.

Ural Akbulut, Chief Executive Officer, Shimmick Corporation: See you.

Operator: There are no more questions at this time. I’d now like to turn the call over to Ural for closing remarks.

Ural Akbulut, Chief Executive Officer, Shimmick Corporation: We’ve had another strong quarter and a strong year to finish 2025. It was a year of change for Shimmick, and we’ve made a lot of operational improvements and made a lot of progress in getting through the non-core projects. We’re very optimistic about 2026 and beyond for our company. These new awards that we’ve announced and booked are a good indication of that. As we shift towards more of the work that we’ve won in a risk balanced and effective way, our margins are going to improve in both bottom line and top line.

We’re really looking forward to a great 2026. Thank you all for joining.