February 2023
We closed out 2022 and began 2023 with a lot of much-needed rain. We now have reassuring green hills, and our reservoirs are filling with water, the lifeblood of our state. So despite what this rain may have done to impede projects temporarily, it brought with it new work in the form of roadway and drainage infrastructure emergencies.
In our business, if it’s going to rain, it might as well pour. So begins what should be a great year for us.
We can’t kid ourselves that 2022 will go down as a banner year for us, but on a longer-term historical basis, you could say we held our own. We finished the year at a little over $182 million in revenue, slightly over last year’s finish, and the third year hovering at the $180 million mark. Our profit was down for the second year in a row, but in light of the numerous global and local economic issues we’ve had to contend with these last few years, you could argue we did alright by hanging in there. With so much of the technology sector finishing the year extremely beat up, and the fact that these companies have made up a substantial component of our underlying client base, you might expect that we, too, would have finished 2022 with a serious decline.
Yes, we have recently felt the pain in our margins, and we can’t consider ourselves out of the woods, knowing the flush years fortified by the technology sector have been put on hold. Still, we have quickly and maybe even surprisingly found other great ways to strengthen our backlog. The hard work we have put into the front-end developing clients has us sitting on the most incredible backlog in our company history.
We have started 2023 with over $370 million in backlog. Essentially twice what we have ever started a new year with.
This doesn’t mean we will do twice the revenue in 2023 since a good deal of the work contained in this backlog will be built over several years. But what it does do is give us great foundational security and allows us to make more strategic choices about the additional projects we will continue to add to our backlog. Within this, there is much more than revenue and employment dependability. This is an opportunity for us to push the boundaries McGuire and Hester has lived within for a number of years. Starting with management, we are making plans to ensure we are aligned with where we want to push this and what opportunities this will present for all our employees to grow with the company.
So don’t just stick around for the ride; push yourselves to help make us collectively the best this industry has to offer.
Thank you!
Brock Grunt