ITG (ITG) Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

DATE

Thursday, Aug. 13, 2026 at 8:00 a.m. ET

CALL PARTICIPANTS

• Chief Financial Officer - Chris Mecray
• Chief Executive Officer - Andy Parrott

TAKEAWAYS

• Revenue -- $404.6 million, increasing 38% year over year driven by contributions from acquisitions and double-digit core growth in engineering and maintenance.
• Adjusted EBITDA -- $52.2 million, representing a 21% increase year over year and exceeding internal plans for the period.
• Next 12-Month Backlog -- $1.5 billion, reflecting a 21% increase year over year supported by eight new or extended MSA awards during the quarter.
• Total Backlog -- $3.3 billion, up 33% from $2.4 billion in the prior year period, providing revenue visibility beyond the immediate 12-month horizon.
• Data Center Revenue -- Projected to exceed $65 million for full year 2026, compared to nominal revenue levels in the prior fiscal year.
• Full Year Revenue Guidance -- $1.6 billion, representing 35% growth for the 2026 fiscal year.
• Full Year Adjusted EBITDA Guidance -- $202 million, representing 36% growth and an anticipated Adjusted EBITDA margin of 13%.
• Q3 Revenue Guidance -- $440 million, reflecting 42% year-over-year growth and the seasonal peak of construction activity.
• IPO Net Proceeds -- $323 million, utilized to repay debt and strengthen the corporate capital structure following the July 2 conclusion of the offering.
• Adjusted EBITDA Margin -- 12.9%, compared with 14.7% in the prior year period due to new business start-up costs and changes in revenue mix from 2025 acquisitions.
• Free Cash Flow -- $44.8 million, increasing from $27.2 million in the prior year period primarily due to earnings growth.
• Engineering & Maintenance NTM Backlog -- grew 24% year over year, benefiting from higher core customer volumes and new service line expansion.
• Infrastructure Deployment NTM Backlog -- increased 42% year over year, driven by network expansion awards including contracts with Ziply Fiber and Intrepid Fiber Networks.
• Capital Expenditures Guidance -- approximately 2.6% of revenue for the full year, supporting continued workforce and fleet investments.
• Net Interest Expense Guidance -- approximately $62 million for the full year, reflecting the post-IPO debt structure.
• Diluted Shares Outstanding -- approximately 124.4 million weighted average shares for the full year 2026.
• Net Income -- $1.8 million for the quarter, compared to $11.6 million in the prior year period.
• Full Circle Fiber Acquisition -- completed the week of Aug. 13, adding hundreds of employees and existing customer contracts to the company's regional footprint.
• Operating Cash Flow -- reported as a use of cash during the second quarter, reflecting the timing of growth and pre-IPO capitalization impacts.
• Effective Tax Rate Guidance -- approximately 19% for the 2026 fiscal year.

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RISKS

• Mecray stated, "March, April was very, very chilly up north and a lot of construction was really like 3-plus weeks delayed from normal in this winter," noting the impact of weather on the pace of core growth.
• Mecray warned, "You lose whatever it is, 2 to even 3 weeks of construction days in the fourth quarter around the holidays," indicating seasonal headwinds expected in the latter part of the year.

SUMMARY

ITG, Inc. (NASDAQ:ITG) reported increased revenue and backlog following its initial public offering, citing growth in data center connectivity and broadband expansion projects. Management reported that the company utilized $323 million in IPO proceeds to reduce debt while pursuing a strategy of organic growth and tuck-in acquisitions. The company stated that its business model relies on long-term master service agreements that provide recurring revenue visibility across engineering and infrastructure deployment segments. Management indicated that investments in proprietary technology and fleet expansion are intended to support rising demand for high-capacity fiber and utility infrastructure as digital connectivity becomes essential to public infrastructure.

• CEO Parrott stated, "Our operating model is predominantly MSA contract-based, supporting durable customer relationships and providing meaningful visibility to our future activity."
• CFO Mecray noted that the company saw a significant increase in activity and revenue with data center customers, with results expected to be substantively stronger in the second half of the year.
• CEO Parrott indicated that cloud computing and artificial intelligence are increasing the requirement for high-capacity fiber connectivity between data centers and across broader support networks.
• The company reported that it is increasingly serving as a strategic partner for large customers looking to simplify operations by condensing their vendor lists to a few select partners.
• CEO Parrott noted that ITG's workforce is fungible, allowing the company to serve legacy telecom, cable, and new fiber overbuilders simultaneously within the same geographic markets.

INDUSTRY GLOSSARY

• E&M: Engineering and Maintenance; a service line focused on fulfillment, design, and recurring maintenance for communications infrastructure.
• FTTH: Fiber-to-the-home; the installation of optical fiber from a central point directly to individual buildings to provide high-speed internet access.
• FUSE360: ITG's proprietary enterprise resource planning (ERP) and operating system used to manage business workflows and execution.
• Hyperscale: Large-scale data centers typically operated by major cloud service providers or technology companies requiring significant fiber connectivity.
• MSA: Master Service Agreement; a contract that establishes the terms for recurring work orders over a multiyear period.
• NTM Backlog: Next Twelve Month backlog; the total committed future revenue supported by contracts or customer guidance over the coming year.

Full Conference Call Transcript

Operator: Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the ITG Second Quarter Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Chris Mecray, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Christopher Mecray: Good morning, and thank you for joining us for today's second quarter 2026 financial results webcast. Joining us today are myself, Chris Mecray, Chief Financial Officer; and Andy Parrott, Chief Executive Officer. Yesterday, after the market closed, we issued a quarterly results press release, which can be found in the Investor Relations section of our website at itgcom.com. We also posted a separate shareholder letter with more detailed operational and financial commentary to accompany our earnings release. The commentary is intended to provide much of the detail typically included in management's prepared remarks.

Accordingly, we will provide an overview of ITG, discuss the principal drivers of our second quarter performance and initial outlook and then turn the call over to Q&A. Please be advised that information shared on this webcast is currently -- is current as of today's date and may no longer be accurate as of any replay of this event at a later date. This webcast will include forward-looking statements qualified under the safe harbor rules established by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements reflecting expectations, intentions, assumptions or beliefs about future events or financial performance.

These statements involve certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict or beyond ITG's control, and actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied on this webcast. We will also discuss historical and forecasted non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of these historical financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are included in our earnings release and accompanying shareholder letter. Please refer to these statements for additional information regarding our forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial measures. With that, I'll turn the call over to Andy.

Andrew Parrott: Thank you, Chris, and good morning. We're pleased to be with you today for ITG's first earnings call as a public company. Our second quarter performance reinforced our confidence in the strategy we outlined during the IPO process and demonstrated continued progress against our long-term growth objectives. As you know, on July 2, we concluded our IPO, which raised $323 million in net proceeds, we used to repay debt and strengthen our capital structure. Completing the IPO was an important milestone for ITG, and I want to thank everybody involved for their dedication and commitment.

We have been building and executing ITG's growth strategy for more than a decade as a company, and our transition to the public market provides additional financial flexibility as we enter the next phase of our development. We remain focused on disciplined organic growth, strategic acquisitions, operational execution and long-term value creation, and we welcome our new public market shareholders. I'd like to briefly introduce ITG and explain what differentiates our platform before discussing the quarter. We believe ITG is well positioned to benefit from our customers' interest to outsource more of their infrastructure requirements because we can provide a broad range of services across geographies through a scaled operating platform.

Our ability to support customers across the infrastructure life cycle is a differentiator that can create multiple entry points for future work. Our scaled platform leverages technology through FUSE360, our proprietary ERP and operating system. FUSE360 helps us manage the entire business, enabling consistent execution and visibility. Our operating model is predominantly MSA contract-based, supporting durable customer relationships and providing meaningful visibility to our future activity. Individual work orders and timing remain subject to customer authorization and project schedules. So, backlog should not be viewed as guaranteed revenue, but our relationship, reoccurring service activity and backlog provide a strong foundation for growth and revenue visibility. We operate 2 complementary service lines, engineering and maintenance, or E&M, and infrastructure deployment.

In E&M, we are the national leader in offering fulfillment, maintenance, engineering, design, consulting and adjacent market services to our customers such as wireless. This business leans towards high-volume, smaller reoccurring service orders. The business can be operationally complex, requiring effective scheduling, work order coordination, geographic density and consistent execution. Our scale, local presence and FUSE360 platform enable us to manage that complexity well, which we believe differentiates ITG from smaller regional providers. In infrastructure deployment, we help customers expand and upgrade their broadband networks through fiber deployment and network expansion services. This business benefits from continued investment in fiber-to-the-home network expansion and increased bandwidth requirements. Data centers and hyperscale computing offer significant growth opportunities for ITG.

Cloud computing and AI are increasing the need for high-capacity fiber connectivity between data centers, as well as across broader support networks. ITG helps build the fiber backbone and related infrastructure connecting data center campuses, network routes and end markets. During the quarter, we saw a significant increase in activity and revenue with data center customers. We believe our fiber deployment capabilities, geographic reach and ability to execute complex projects position us well to support data center customers. Our customer new wins during the quarter also illustrate the breadth of the platform.

We received new or extended MSA awards from 8 customers, including a significant award from Ziply Fiber, a leading fiber broadband provider serving markets across the Pacific Northwest and Intrepid Fiber Networks, a developer and operator of next-generation fiber broadband infrastructure. The awards support large-scale network expansion initiatives by these customers and their respective service areas. They also reflect both new opportunities and existing relationship expansion and demonstrates how ITG supports customers across multiple phases of network deployment. Digital connectivity is increasingly essential to the public infrastructure and daily life. Our customers investing to improve network reliability, expand broadband access and support growing bandwidth requirements, we believe ITG is very well positioned to support those investments.

Before Chris comments on second quarter, I'd like to note that we completed our first acquisition post IPO this week. We have purchased certain assets of a company very much in our wheelhouse of digital broadband services called Full Circle Fiber. We are pleased to have completed this tuck-in transaction in a very short time frame and expect the business to contribute positively to ITG out of the gate, including a rapid integration of their people, assets and contracts into our system. Chris will now comment on the quarter and the outlook.

Christopher Mecray: Good morning, everyone, and thanks for listening. Regarding second quarter results and key drivers, second quarter revenue increased 38% year-over-year, ahead of our plan, driven primarily by contribution from acquisitions, as well as double-digit core growth in E&M, offset partly by slower core infrastructure deployment activity. E&M benefited from higher core customer volumes, new customer expansion and growth in new service lines. Infrastructure deployment reflected some impact from a slower spring ramp-up after a cold winter and timing around the ramp of new awards and projects, all of which was anticipated in our plan. Adjusted EBITDA was $52.2 million, ahead of our plan for the period and up 21% from the prior year period.

Adjusted EBITDA margin was 12.9% compared with 14.7% a year earlier and 10.9% in the first quarter. The year-over-year margin decline reflected new business start-up costs and revenue mix changes related to acquisitions completed in the second half of 2025. The sequential lift was driven principally by increased volumes, including the normal seasonal pickup. Free cash flow under the adjusted EBITDA minus CapEx definition was $44.8 million compared with $27.2 million in the prior year period. This year-over-year change primarily reflected earnings growth. The timing of growth and ramping volumes, coupled with the pre-IPO capitalization impact translated to a use of cash from operating activities in the second quarter.

Looking ahead, we continue to expect positive cash flow and also anticipate stronger working capital outcomes in the second half of the year, including seasonal increases in cash collection. Next 12-month backlog was $1.5 billion at quarter end, increasing 6% sequentially and 21% year-over-year. E&M next 12-month backlog increased 11% sequentially and 24% year-over-year, while infrastructure deployment backlog increased 5% sequentially and 42% year-over-year. The sequential increases reflected new and extended MSA awards from 8 separate customers, including the Ziply and Intrepid awards discussed earlier.

Just to frame our overall visibility, which we believe extends well beyond the 12-month period, total backlog beyond the next 12 months was approximately $3.3 billion, up some 33% from the prior year period level of $2.4 billion. We've introduced guidance for the third quarter and full year 2026, the details of which are in our releases, but clearly are reflective of strong growth expectations, including 35% full year revenue growth and 36% adjusted EBITDA growth. Our outlook reflects customer activity we anticipate as of today, the expected timing of project ramps and normal seasonality in the business.

It also incorporates the expected ramp in data center activity and continued new work awarded in infrastructure deployment, which is expected to grow faster than E&M in the second half. As always, the pace of customer authorizations, permit issuance, project timing, weather, labor availability and business mix can be factors within a quarter that drive variable outcomes. Back to Andy.

Andrew Parrott: To conclude, as we begin life as a public company, our priorities remain consistent: execute for our customers, convert backlog into profitable revenue, expand relationships across our service portfolio, maintain disciplined capital allocation and continue investing in the people and technology that support our growth. We are excited about the opportunities ahead of us, and we look forward to reporting on our progress. With that, Chris and I are happy to answer your questions.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Andy Kaplowitz with Citigroup.

Andrew Kaplowitz: Congrats on your first quarter as a public company.

Andrew Parrott: Thanks, Andy.

Andrew Kaplowitz: Andy or Chris, during the IPO process, I think you talked about the potential to sustain teens organic growth. And obviously, you had strong new wireline awards. You mentioned Ziply and Intrepid. But as you know, there's been some market noise recently, particularly from a large competitor lowering its communication sales guidance. So, can you talk about your visibility towards that teens growth algorithm? Did the wireline market outlook change at all in the quarter? Maybe you just took share in Q2? I think more color would be helpful.

Christopher Mecray: Yes, Andy. What I would point out there is that we did see 6% sequential backlog growth in the second quarter to $1.5 billion in total. And that's by the way up 21% year-over-year. So, I think the best gauge of our expectation for future results is going to come from the steady and visible backlog that we have in the business and the number of contracts that we're accruing there to provide that runway for growth. I'd probably acknowledge that there are individual areas or pockets in the business that might slow at a given point. You do have customers that work on a big build-out and then that gets finished and you can see that transpire.

It's very normal in the business. But I think with ITG, we're very focused on growth. We're very focused on accumulating new logos, new customers. And we've developed a business model here that is broadening and creating opportunity in various pockets all around the country. And so I guess what I would say right now is that we've been fortunate enough to continue to look at a runway of growth despite the lumpiness that you see with any individual pocket in a period of time.

Andrew Kaplowitz: That's helpful color. And maybe just on data centers. I know you talked about revenue from existing data centers beginning to ramp in Q2. But maybe you could give us more color on what you're seeing in that market. The data center backlog grow from what you told us during the IPO, I think it was around $540 million? Or how are you thinking about either data center revenue or backlog acceleration moving forward? And how is the pipeline there?

Christopher Mecray: Yes. So, we talked about an over $500 million backlog with data center customers exiting last year. And those contracts specifically I guess, by the way, they do go out several years. It's not all immediate backlog. I mean that trends out over 2, 3 years. But the early phases of that backlog began to really roll out and start to grow earlier into the middle of this year. So, really, the back half of the year is expected to be substantively stronger than the first half from data center work. And I think that will continue as we get into '27 and beyond.

I wouldn't say that we've got any major data center new awards in the second quarter, but I will point out that we're -- we have outstanding bids in multiple contracts related to data center that are out there now and that could be decided in coming months. So there's plenty of work that is out there and that we're bidding on.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Jamie Cook with Truist Securities.

Jamie Cook Wisner: Congratulations on a nice quarter. I guess just my first question, nice success with diversifying your customer base with Ziply and Intrepid. So, as you think about sort of future bookings into the back half of the year, do you see more opportunities to diversify your customer base? And then I guess just my second question, Chris, as it relates to the guidance you provided, which was helpful. It looks like relative to like the IPO, at least the implied fourth quarter is a little stronger, in particular, on the margin side and the EBITDA side. So, if you could help us just understand what the drivers behind that are.

Andrew Parrott: Yes. Thanks, Jamie. This is Andy. To speak about the kind of the back half and the future logos, obviously, we're continuing to add incremental logos to our story, and it's been an amazing journey so far. I can tell you that I've even signed some MSAs this week. And then obviously, with our recent tuck-in acquisition of Full Circle Fiber that we did this week, it also allowed us to add some incremental logos where we believe we can land and expand strategy and continue to grow those relationships as I've reached out to a lot of the CEOs of some other companies out there that are excited about this future venture that we have together.

And then obviously, word on the street as long as we continue to execute very, very well, we actually have a lot of logos that are actually proactively reaching out to us with excitement to partner with us. So we're very optimistic on our logo growth. And then obviously, as we do a new logo, we have that continuous land and expand strategy, we're continuing to grow that organic activity within those logos, either through geographic areas of expansion on incremental lines of business or service lines that these companies are asking us to partner with.

Christopher Mecray: And Jamie, to your second question around kind of the implied back half, I mean, I think the punchline there is really we kind of maintain our view that we expressed during the IPO. We took the beat, the slight increase versus plan in the second quarter and flow that through the year. But I don't really see any meaningfully different outlook in our initial guide here from what we shared with folks during the IPO process.

But I mean, it's a strong outlook for this year with $1.5 billion, $1.6 billion top line and a growth rate in the mid-30s and that's relatively evenly split between the 2 service lines and we've got mid-30s growth in E&M and even mid-30s plus on infrastructure deployment for the full year. And again, I think those are very much on track to what we've been anticipating. And seasonally, the third quarter is the biggest. So, it's a bigger hill to climb in the current quarter. But a lot of what you see in that slightly lower fourth quarter is just pure seasonality, right?

You lose whatever it is, 2 to even 3 weeks of construction days in the fourth quarter around the holidays. So that's baked in. Yes. But hopefully, as we go, we'll see, but we'd like to do even better than that. But obviously, we have to see how things click along the way here. So thanks for your question.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Steven Fisher with UBS.

Steven Fisher: Congrats on the first release here. Can you just give us a little more color on the kind of data center work you expect to pick up in the second half? Is that more long haul or more local connectivity kind of work? And then just on the revenue trajectory on data centers, and I think you've been assuming pretty significant growth there over the next couple of year, like kind of multiples of what you're doing now. Is that still kind of the framework to think about?

Andrew Parrott: Steven, this is Andy. Yes, yes, and probably be my answer on the long haul and more regional interconnect activity. We're seeing kind of trends where some of these massive data centers out in the rural areas are getting a little bit of maybe headwinds, if you will. And we're seeing other kind of tactical things where people are looking at data centers in existing locations and repurposing them and potentially leveraging more of a scattered outlay that allows ITG to do a lot more like interconnect activity in between multiple data centers instead of a mega hyper data center location that's being built out. So, we are well positioned to do both, and we're excited.

As we said, we've got really great relationships. We continue to do those relationships, and we're in great conversations with a handful of other hyperscalers to kind of look out. But as you know, these are 2, 3 years sometimes backlog activities as we're at the table, and we appreciate being at the table, but it's a bit early to kind of go in and count our chickens before all of our eggs are hatched. And that's an exciting thing for us. But yes, and is really the answer because we absolutely prefer doing both long haul, and we're good at it.

And then we're really great at those reasonable rates that the current customers are asking us for both of them.

Christopher Mecray: And I'll just jump in. I mean, from an actual revenue production standpoint, I mean we're going from small change last year in data center work to something that I would say should be north of $65 million this year in revenue production, and we see that growing by multiples over the next few years.

Steven Fisher: Very helpful. And then maybe just in terms of the acquisition, you mentioned a couple of times, Full Circle is a tuck-in. Can you maybe just scale that for us? How material is it? And just curious why those assets were for sale in the first place?

Christopher Mecray: So, we're really excited about the acquisition. We're really excited about bringing them into the fold. It's a company that we knew previously. They're very much in our markets and have a lot of respect from the customer base that they serve, some of whom are also customers that we serve. They did run into some challenges recently, and we're very excited that we were able to step in and help them resolve those challenges, and we're bringing in a lot of assets, people and fleet from the organization.

Because it literally came together very, very quickly, we are getting our heads around right now kind of what the business model business plan is going to be for this year and next year in terms of how many folks we bring in, how many contracts we do bring in and so on. So, I would just beg patience, and we'll be able to bake it in, in a bit more detail by the end of this quarter into our model, but we're just getting our heads around the fine point of what we actually expect. But it's a reasonably sized business.

It's hundreds of people coming into the organization, and it's going to produce, I think, a good lever for us. And I think it will have potentially strong returns for the business. It's very much along the lines of some of the transactions that we've done historically where you're taking folks in the business that could do much better under our umbrella, and we expect that.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Angel Castillo with Morgan Stanley.

Angel Castillo Malpica: Just echo everybody's congrats on being public now. Just a quick question on the utility side. I guess, can you just remind us on the magnitude of the investments you're making in the utility folcade opportunity? Just how should we think about the cost rolling off? How should we think about the opportunity set going forward from that end market in terms of revenue timing, just what you're seeing as you continue to drive that investment would be helpful.

Andrew Parrott: Yes, happy to do that. Obviously, we've got multiple different -- we have a civil division that is on the utility side, helping with water, gas, et cetera, primarily in Florida. And then on the locate side, we're starting to see a lot of positive trends as we had a lot of ramp-up costs that we've been still absorbing in 2026 that we believe will continue to drive and also help with our EBITDA and more importantly, our operational margin as we get more efficiencies.

And in the locate business, as we get more density, and when I say that, I'm not just painting the ground for 1 customer, but I'm painting the ground for 2 or 3 customers and continue to see that growth. It's just going to continue to drive greater operational margin in that business. But we're getting good, I would say, when you're kind of going out and start something really as an aggressive ramp that we did in 2026 to really get that operational efficiency and more importantly, just operational excellence in that business. So, we're optimistic to continue to see that be a great contributor to our success story.

Christopher Mecray: And in terms of the financial impact, I mean, there have been some add-backs in the second quarter associated with start-up businesses and restructuring and so on. And there is some of that from this area included in that. We do expect that those add-backs will abate as we get through the back half of the year. So, those should not persist much longer. There may be some residual in the third quarter, but probably not much beyond that in our current thinking.

Angel Castillo Malpica: That's very helpful. And then I just wanted to ask about one of the factors that I think has made it difficult, I guess, for you to diversify has generally just been continued growth from Comcast and Charter or some of these key customers. So, just curious if you could talk about what you're hearing from those customers, what they're telling you about kind of future spend. I think we often hear concerns around lower CapEx. But from what we can kind of see at least right now, it continues to look like sequential growth in some of the spend from some of these key customers, which again, seems like a maybe high-quality problem to have.

But ultimately, just curious what you're hearing in terms of future spend from those customers.

Andrew Parrott: Yes. So to begin, we absolutely love those relationships. We love those anchor customers that we have, and we absolutely are at the table with them every single day. So, as I think about the capital total addressable market, our key customers are looking to simplify their operations as they're having a lot of pressure, obviously, with ARPU and maintain their margins. So, condensing into just a handful of strategic partners has been really the message that we've been hearing from those customers, and we are getting a larger percentage of the total spend even if the capital allocation is actually reducing for them collectively.

They have a handful of strategic partners, and that's where a lot of our growth is coming from. It's growing in and actually partnering with those core customers and going, we really want to simplify the amount of human bandwidth it takes to manage these large projects by having 30 individual partners where we can be more successful if we have 4 to 8 customers and obviously, ITG being on that list.

The other benefit ITG has is really, as you think about capital allocation, but we are absolutely the E&M partners of these large customers that continue to drive just ongoing recurring OpEx activity with -- you're seeing a higher churn cycle in customers, which is actually driving a bit more OpEx to the business to maintain the same level of relationships that they have. So, think about every customer that switches from -- now that has more choices than ever, the life cycle of those customers are actually shrinking and driving more repetitive connect, disconnect maintenance activity.

And then from a maintenance side, even if you have a little bit less of a capital spend, the operating maintenance of those networks really have no bearing on unfortunately, how many customers you actually have connected. So, it's really based on flat miles and us being those strategic partners continue to drive that level of the capital spend, which is a large percentage of our total revenue from these 2 core customers.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Justin Hauke with Baird.

Justin Hauke: Nice to talk to you guys again. I've got 2 questions, but they're kind of combined, so I'm going to put it as one here. But I guess I just -- I wanted to ask on the organic growth. It looks like it accelerated. Last quarter, it was kind of mid to high teens, which is kind of what you're talking about as the outlook, but it was kind of low single digits here in the second quarter. And I guess if I look at the revenue from Charter specifically, it looks like it was kind of flat year-over-year. And I guess the offset is that the inorganic was higher than we were expecting.

So, I was -- I guess I wanted to ask if you could kind of address that point. And then the second part of the question was just to confirm in the guidance, it doesn't include any inorganic contribution from future acquisitions that you might do. I just wanted to make sure that, that was the case.

Christopher Mecray: Yes. Thanks for the question, Justin and a couple of items there to cover. But absolutely, we do not bake in future M&A into our plan or the plan that we discussed during the IPO. So, the second quarter, I would probably -- first of all, just note that in our plan, the second quarter is the slowest growth quarter of the year, and that was anticipated. And so baked into the plan. And obviously, we beat the top line in the quarter, but everything that transpired there was essentially as expected.

I would say maybe on the core growth side, it was a little slower than expected just because of the pace of start-up of construction coming out of this winter. It feels like a long time ago now, I'm sitting here in the '90s in Florida, but March, April was very, very chilly up north and a lot of construction was really like 3-plus weeks delayed from normal in this winter. So, I hate to point to weather that's no excuse and of course, we don't need an excuse because we made and beat the quarter. But I do point that out nonetheless as a factor in terms of the pace of core growth.

So, there's also just -- it was a little bit of a pinch quarter because what you saw was, we were accumulating a lot of contracts and a lot of work that we knew was going to start around the middle of the year, but you're also sort of finishing a bunch of other work. So, you had stuff coming off in some areas, and then you knew stuff was coming on, but it wasn't really planned to come on until June, July and August. So, we kind of knew in that plan that there's going to be a little bit of a pinch in the middle or second quarter of the year.

Our plan for the back half of the year is for double-digit growth before any acquisition activity, and we still feel comfortable with that. And we've seen a pickup of new work in a variety of locations during the course of the summer here. So, again, yes, acknowledging second quarter was the slowest quarter of the year, but we feel good about where we're headed there and on track for our full year guide here.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Michael Dudas with Vertical Research Partners.

Michael Dudas: Chris or Andy, maybe you could share a little more insight on your longer-term backlog number that you shared with us, Chris. I thought it was quite impressive. Maybe how does that translate to like end markets, customers? I'm assuming a lot of MSA, but not yet defined on what it's going to be. Is that trend surprising? Is that a number that was better than you thought? Is that -- and in what areas is the longer-term work being more allocated relative to what your maybe near-term type work is that runs through your P&L?

Christopher Mecray: Yes. Thanks for the question. We're not planning on reporting a total backlog figure over time or breaking that out in detail for the simple reason that I think it's misleading in the sense that 60%, almost 2/3 of the business today is on the E&M side. And it's not really a traditional backlog-driven business. It's MSA contract based and you're really talking about rolling over existing MSA contracts over time. And so when you look out 2 to 3 years, if you try to identify what a backlog looks like on that more than half of our business, it becomes more of a conceptual construct than what you might think of as traditional backlog.

So, if our business mix changes over time, and we're doing a lot more project work instead of this MSA kind of maintenance and fulfillment type work, then maybe our thinking there changes. But I didn't want to create a reporting framework that kind of has people thinking, well, how do you grow a 3-year backlog or a 4-year backlog every quarter when it's mostly MSA-based? So hopefully, you understand that concept. But nonetheless, very excited about the awards that we gathered in the quarter and led to a growth rate of a total backlog that's well over $3 billion, essentially around $3.3 billion, growing year-over-year in the mid-30s and growing sequentially.

A lot of those awards are focused on infrastructure deployment. Again, 8 new contracts of note from different customers. We highlighted a couple of the bigger ones. Those are -- just think about fiber build-out all over the country, we have partnered with a couple of really nice growing kind of smaller, but growing service providers. And there's just a lot of work for them to do. And they're looking for -- like Andy said, looking for core partners who they can do most of the work with. And we have more opportunity with those customers as we look forward. So, we by no means booked the total opportunity with them over a multiyear period.

So, we do expect over the course of time here to see new awards even from those customers. Hopefully, that helps a little bit? We do have lots of opportunity in data center. We have lots of opportunity for the project side in utility, and we look forward to winning more work as we go. I mean our pipeline is significant, well over $1 billion of pipeline that we're looking at right now.

And so yes, I mean, I fully expect that, that our visibility and that sort of construct of total backlog, it does -- it's real in the sense that it gives us a really good sense of where we're going to be working during 2027 and even in 2028 based on the contracts that we have in hand. So, particularly on that 40% of the business that's infrastructure deployment, we're putting together a book that gives us a lot of planability, a lot of visibility in terms of where and what we're doing.

Michael Dudas: Chris, that was very helpful and the assessment is spot on.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Brian Brophy with Stifel.

Brian Brophy: Just had a bigger picture question given this is the first earnings call. But wondering if you could give an overview of your fulfillment business and what kind of work you do there? And how does overbuilding impact the growth opportunity there over time?

Andrew Parrott: Yes. So, our fulfillment side of the business, think about us being an extension of our partners. I always tell people, ITG is the biggest company nobody's heard of because when we're standing at your door, we're likely wearing a shirt that says Comcast or Charter or any of our other 80 partners that are out there, doing fulfillment work with us. And as you think about whether it's maintenance of keeping the network on, somebody takes 3 poles out at 3:00 in the morning, we are on call support.

If your Wi-Fi is not working and you can't get the iPad connected in your house, it's very likely an ITG technician is in there helping you with your simplistic mesh Wi-Fi 7 networks. As you think about overbuilders, that's the other thing that's very unique about ITG is the fungibility of our workforce. So, we absolutely love our core customers, and we continue to be strategic partners. Yet we're also the strategic partners of others that are in there overbuilding these networks. We have the workforce and the talent to go execute these fiber builds in these fiber networks.

So, if you take a look at our customer base, and you're going to see that just about everybody that's also in the fiber business is a partner with ITG. So, think about a single location, Memphis, Tennessee, for example, or Nashville and go not only does one of our depots, if you go into our warehouse, we may have that warehouse staged in 4 different sub-warehouses because we're actually serving 4 different customers. We're the support customer for the legacy telco or [ Ma Bell ]. We're the Cable Co legacy partner, and then we are the new fiber overbuilder supporter building those networks and providing support.

And even in some locations, we might be the co-op electrical partner as well that's getting into the fiber space. So, we get that density. We get greater opportunities to be able to have the right resources at the right place at the right time because we have these dense markets that we're building.

And then as you think about the civil side of the business and the locate side of the business, how great is that if you go to one location and put 4 different legs on the ground versus 1, and it continues to drive our ability to serve our customers with 24/7 on-haul support, complete fulfillment activity and be able to have the latest and greatest campaign when they come and be partners with us and go. We're scheduling a 20% lift in total connects because we're -- we've got this great, great offer that we're really excited about and do you have the resources to support that activity.

So, days out from an order entry to fulfillment completion, is same day, next day, which is a lot of these customers really need to be competitive in the communities that they're competing against each other. So, all boats kind of head into ITG in those scenarios, and we're very strategic with our customers. And -- but it's really a benefit actually to our business plan.

Brian Brophy: That's great. Appreciate the overview. And obviously, it's great to hear about the tuck-in. Curious the latest you're seeing on the M&A pipeline side and curious how much of that pipeline includes end markets outside of communications like T&D and others?

Andrew Parrott: Yes. We've got -- we've had quite a few reviews. I've actually had boots on the ground and multiple different kind of side civil activity. The civil is just really something we're excited about, but we're going to crawl, walk, run when it comes to some of the things kind of outside of our wheelhouse. When I say outside, we may be in that space, but we're really good at that maybe geographically. So, I may want to look at more kind of the organic growth and leveraging the talent that's there. I can even tell you this week, we have people here in our corporate office in Fort Lauderdale, exploring more of the civil side of the business.

And we just -- we will not make the hustle mistakes. We don't want to get out ahead of our skis. So, if you see the story, you'll see us kind of organically growing where we have the strength, where we think we can bring in great value and great margins into the business, especially as we can plug it into our ecosystem. So, as we think about that growth, that's exactly something we believe will be on our road map.

But I don't unfortunately have anything that I can announce today other than just the smile on my face that you can't see as I think about the future and where ITG is going to be here in the near future.

Operator: And I'm currently showing no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back over to management for closing remarks.

Christopher Mecray: Okay. Thanks, everybody, for joining. And as a reminder, we have our commentary file and documents posted to the website. And shortly, we should have a marketing deck also up there, which will be a nice education piece for new investors looking at the story, and I look forward to chatting with you all during the course of the quarter here. Thanks for joining.

Andrew Parrott: Yes. Thank you.

Operator: This concludes today's conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

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