Participants

J. Marc Lewis; Vice President - Investor Relations; MasTec Inc

Jose Mas; Chief Executive Officer, Director; MasTec Inc

Paul Dimarco; Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President; MasTec Inc

Jamie Cook; Analyst; Truist Securitie

Sangita Jain; Analyst; KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc.

Andy Kaplowitz; Analyst; $Citigroup Inc(C-N)$

Justin Hauke; Analyst; Robert W. Baird & Co. Inc

Adam Thalhimer; Analyst; Thompson, Davis & Company

Atidrip Modak; Analyst; Goldman Sachs

Brian Brophy; Analyst; Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Inc

Brent Thielman; Analyst; D.A. Davidson & Co.

Drew Chamberlain; Analyst; J.P. Morgan Securities LLC

Presentation

Operator

Please stand by. Welcome to the MasTech's fourth quarter 2024 earnings conference call initially broadcast on Friday, February 28, 2025. Let me remind participants that today's call is being recorded.
At this time I'd like to turn on the call over to our host Marc Lewis, MasTech's Vice President of Investor Relations. Marc.

J. Marc Lewis

Thanks Jennifer, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to MasTech's fourth quarter call. The following statement is made pursuant to the safe harbor for forward-looking statements described in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.
In these communications, we may make certain statements that are forward-looking, such as statements regarding MasTech's future results, plans, and anticipated trends in the industries where we operate. These forward-looking statements of the company's expectations on the day of the initial broadcast of this conference call, and the company does not undertake to update these expectations based on subsequent events or knowledge. Various risks, uncertainties, and assumptions are detailed in our press releases and filings with the SEC.
Should one or more of these risks or uncertainty materialize or should any of our underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may differ significantly from results expressed or implied in this communication today.
In today's remarks by management, we'll be discussing adjusted financial metrics reconciled in yesterday's press release with the sporting schedules. In addition, we may use certain non-GAAP financial measures in this conference call. For reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial measures, not reconciled these comments to the most comparable GAAP financial measure can be found in our press release. Please note that we have two documents associated with today's webcast on the Investor, Events and Presentations page of our website at mastech.com.
There is companion document information analytics on the quarter just ended and a guidance summary for 2025 to assist you in developing your financial models going forward. Both PDF files are available for download.
With us today, we have Jose Mas, our CEO, and Paul Dimarco, our EVP and Chief Financial Officer. The format of the call will be opening remarks and sis by Jose, followed by financial review from Paul. These discussions will be followed by a Q&A period, and we expect the call to last about 60 minutes. We had another great quarter ahead of expectations and another important thing to talk about today.
So I'll turn the call over to Jose. Jose?

Jose Mas

Thanks, Marc. Good morning and welcome to MasTech's 2024 fourth quarter and year-end call. Today, I'll be reviewing our fourth quarter and full year results as well as providing my outlook for 2025, and the markets we serve.
First, some fourth quarter highlights. Revenue was $3.4 billion. Fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA was $271 million a 20% year-over-year increase, and fourth quarter adjusted EPS was $1.44 more than double last year's fourth quarter.
For the full year, 2024 revenue was $12.3 billion, 2024 adjusted EBITDA was [$1.6 billion], and almost 20% year-over-year increase. 2024 full year adjusted earnings per share was $3.95 and full year cash flow from operations was $1.1 billion and net debt was reduced by over $700 million for the year.
In summary, fourth quarter performance was strong. For the quarter, revenue, EBITDA, and EPS were all above guidance and backlog grew sequentially in every segment. I'd like to highlight that fourth quarter, non-pipeline revenue increased 21% year-over-year, and fourth quarter non-pipeline EBITDA improved 57% year-over-year.
Combined with solid third quarter results, we enter 2025 with great momentum. For full year 2025, we expect about 9% revenue in EBITDA growth, but taking into account that we expect our pipeline infrastructure business to decline versus 2024 because of the completion of the Mountain Valley pipeline, we expect our nine pipeline businesses to grow revenues 14% and EBITDA by over 25%.
I'd like to repeat that for 2025, we expect our non-pipeline revenues to increase 14% and non-pipeline EBITDA to grow over 25%. That growth is supported by our backlog and strong customer demand. Couple that with an improving landscape in our gas pipeline business, and I believe MasTech has never been better positioned.
Let me elaborate, I've had the privilege and honor of being Mastech's CEO now for just over 17 years. I've never seen the demand, momentum, and the number of opportunities for our collective business. I wanted to emphasize this today because over the last month, we've seen investor uncertainty related to announcements like Deep seek or the concerns of political shifts related to our business.
While we definitely need to understand potential disruptions to our business and how any action may affect us, the overarching theme is the unprecedented level of demand on our communication, power delivery, generation, civil, and pipeline infrastructure customers.
In every segment we operate, our customers are facing increased demand for their services. More importantly, this isn't a bubble of short-term demand, but a fundamental need to support our country's fastest growing industries.
While our backlog today is at record levels, opportunities with our customers are accelerating. Customers are talking about multi-year and decade-long plans. As a result, MasTech has invested in continually cultivating the industry's best talent.
With over 30 dedicated trading facilities throughout the country, we are preparing the workforce of tomorrow. Now I'd like to cover some segment highlights.
In our communication segment. Fourth quarter revenues were up 28% over last year's fourth quarter, and also upsequentially, even though the third quarter is usually our strongest. EBITDA for the segment was up 67% versus last year's fourth quarter.
Backlog was up sequentially, and year-over-year backlog increased by nearly $400 million. We continue to enjoy strong demand in virtually every aspect of telecom infrastructure. Our wireless business successfully started on its new contracts in the second half of the year with both growth in geography and services.
Funding and buildouts of broadband infrastructure is growing, supported by Federal Investment. Middle mile activity and the demand created by hyperscalers is creating a new wave of long haul build out, and we're seeing great optimism from our customers as there is a race to build fiber throughout the country.
In our Power Delivery segment, fourth quarter revenues were up about 16% over last year's fourth quarter. That was the highest level of growth for any quarter compared to last year. We expect double-digit revenue growth for this segment in 2025, with revenues for the segment increasing by over $500 million.
While our customers have been planning for significant investments to the grid for years, there has been a lot of political focus on grid reliability. Terms like unleashing American energy and national energy emergency are top of mind in Washington.
But more importantly, what is driving the need for investment isn't politics, but rather demands. Our customers are focused on meeting this increased demand, and we expect significant opportunities related to the transmission grid. Substations, distribution, and new generation.
Backlog was up about $150 million sequentially and up about $900 million year-over-year for the segment. We're excited about our opportunities for 2025 and beyond.
In our Pipeline segment, fourth quarter revenue, as expected, was down both year-over-year and sequentially. Today, we provided revenue guidance of $1.8 billion for the segment versus the just over $2.1 billion we achieved this year.
As we've previously discussed, the completion of the Mountain Valley Pipeline is impacting 2025 revenues as large project activity had slowed. With that said, today, there is significant optimism for the future on behalf of our customers. As gas-fired generation enjoys a sort of renaissance, the pipelines built to support that will have a meaningful impact on our business.
We are increasingly bullish not only in potentially outperforming our guidance for 2025, but more importantly, we now expect revenues in 2026 and beyond to exceed 2024 levels.
Finally, in our Clean Energy and Infrastructure segment, fourth quarter revenue was the highest revenue quarter in the segment's history, and EBITDA was also at record levels. Revenue was up 18% and EBITDA was up over 100% year-over-year for the quarter.
Backlog was up sequentially by over $100 million, and book-to-bill was about $1.1 million. Considering this is the highest revenue quarter in segment history, we're both proud of this backlog growth, but also bullish about what it means for 2025.
Backlog is up over $1.1 billion versus last year's fourth quarter. Our business is enjoying really strong demand. And despite concern around the political landscape, we expect continued backlog growth for this segment in 2025.
Our efforts around customer and project selection and the effort we put around truly understanding project timing starts and risks has really started to pay off. We've significantly grown the scale of our execution teams, and we are beginning to see the financial improvements of our collective efforts.
In summary, we had an excellent fourth quarter. While the financial metrics exceeded guidance, our biggest success, both for the quarter and the year is how we position MasTech. We are on the front lines helping our customers modernize and rebuild America's infrastructure.
The diversity of our business is our strength. For example, today, MasTech is connecting people and technologies through our communication business. We're helping our country reach energy independence. We're modernizing the electrical grid. We're generating energy through renewable sources and building the associated energy storage.
We're building the pipelines that will allow us to use our nation's significant supply of natural gas. We're on the front end of providing civil resources to data center developers and helping them meet their power and communication needs.
We're building the roads and bridges that connect our communities. These skill sets and expertise provide MasTech with endless opportunities for future growth. We are pleased with our market position, our diversified business model, and our ability to offer our customers integrated solutions at scale.
I believe that the most successful companies in our space are those that have the scale to meet our customers' demands. Our customers' projects have significantly increased in size, scope, and complexity, and there is no question that our customers need strong partners.
There is a lot to be excited about. With that said, we also need to keep improving. While our financial metrics in 2024 were much improved, we also have the ability to meaningfully improve margins. That opportunity for improvement is actually what I'm most excited about.
Our margin improvement opportunity, coupled with strong revenue growth should lead to significant value creation for our stakeholders. I'm confident that the MasTech team will deliver. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the men and women of MasTech. I'm honored and privileged to lead such a great group.
The men and women of MasTech are committed to the valleys of safety, environmental stewardship, integrity, honesty, and in providing our customers a great quality project at the best value. These traits have been recognized by our customers, and it's because of our people's great work that we've been able to position ourselves for continued growth and success.
I'll now turn the call over to Paul for our financial review. Paul?

Paul Dimarco

Thank you, Jose, and good morning, everyone. As we reflect on 2024, we are proud of the meaningful progress made across several key initiatives that are critical to our long-term success.
Over the past year, we have successfully advanced our acquisition integration efforts, strengthened our balance sheet through debt reduction and capital structure improvements, and enhance the accuracy of our forecasting and guidance.
Most importantly, we have delivered improved operational and financial performance. While our 2024 results mark an important step in the right direction, we firmly believe there is still significant room to build on this momentum and generate even stronger results in the years ahead.
We remain focused on executing our strategic priorities with discipline and look forward to sharing more details with you today. I'll start with some 2024 highlights.
Fourth quarter revenue was above expectations at $3.4 billion and adjusted IBITDA was $271 million exceeding guidance by approximately $12 million. Clean energy and infrastructure drove the fourth quarter results with $104 million EBITDA, or 8.3% of revenue, exceeding guidance by 140 basis points.
Adjusted earnings per share was $1.44 more than doubling year-over-year. 2024 full year revenue was $12.3 billion while adjusted EBITDA of [$1.6 billion] and adjusted earnings per share of $3.95 both exceeded our annual guidance expectations, with annual adjusted EPS also doubling year-over-year.
Our fourth quarter cash flow from operations performance remained very strong at approximately $470 million bringing the total for 2024 to $1.1 billion a MasTech record. DSO continued its positive trend, ending at 60 days for the quarter, down from 68 days at the third quarter and 74 days for the prior year.
Net debt at year end is $1.8 billion, down over $700 million for the year. Net leverage now stands at 1.8 times in line with our financial policy. We have proactively engaged with the rating agencies and expect their outlooks to be re-evaluated in the near future to account for MasTech's strong performance.
18 month backlog at year end totals $14.3 billion an increase of over $400 million sequentially and almost $2 billion year-over-year. This represents a record level for MasTech and all three non-pipeline segments.
The growth and backlog is even more impressive when you consider it came despite a record quarterly revenue level for MasTech collectively and for our Communications, Power Delivery, and Clean Energy segments individually.
We have very good visibility to support our 2025 outlook, and dialogue with customers across all of our end markets continues to indicate strong demand into 2026 and beyond. Turning now to our segment performance and outlook, fourth quarter communications revenue was $975 million ahead of our estimates and up 20% year-over-year.
Adjusted EBITDA margin was 9.9%, expanding 230 basis points year-over-year. We continued the efficient transition into our expanded wireless territories, and the pace of activity on wireline projects remained strong.
Annual 2024 communications segment revenue was $3.46 billion up 6% year-over-year, with adjusted EBITDA margins expanding 70 basis points to 9.6%. As disclosed in yesterday's press release, beginning in 2025, results related to certain utility operations previously reported in our Communications segment will be reported in power delivery to better align with how we manage the business.
Our Communication segment guidance reflecting this realignment calls for annual revenue of $2.8 billion 11% growth year-over-year, with adjusted EBITDA margins in the low double digits compared to 8.7% for 2024.
Revenue for the first quarter of 2025 is expected to be $600 million representing 19% growth year-over-year, with adjusted EBITDA margins of 6.5% to 7%, increasing over 150 basis points from last year's first quarter. We have provided recast quarterly and full year 2024 results reflecting the realigned segments in our guidance summary.
Fourth quarter, Clean Energy and Infrastructure segment revenue was $1.26 billion 18% growth year-over-year, with adjusted EBITDA margins of 8.3%, increasing 80 basis points from our strong third quarter and over 340 basis points year-over-year.
Once again, we had strong performance across all three segment verticals with renewables, infrastructure, and industrial all posting their highest margins of the year. Full year segment revenue was approximately $4.1 billion with adjusted EBITDA margins of 6.3%, up 200 basis points from 2023.
Backlog for the segment now stands at $4.2 billion up 36% year-over-year. Our revenue visibility continues to improve for this segment. For 2025, we expect Clean Energy segment revenue to approximate $4.75 billion approximately 16% growth.
Adjusted EBITDA margins are expected to be approximately 7%. Q1 revenue is expected to be $950 million representing 26% growth year-over-year, with adjusted even down margins in the mid-single digits, 250 basis points to 300 basis points higher versus last year.
Fourth quarter pipeline infrastructure revenue was $430 million with adjusted EBITDA margins of 13.6%. For the full year, revenue was $2.1 billion and adjusted EBITDA margins were 18.3%. Please note that we formally renamed this segment to better reflect the nature of our activity in the space, but there were no changes in the segment's composition or historical results.
We anticipate 2025 pipeline infrastructure revenue to be approximately $1.8 billion with adjusted EBITDA margins in the mid-teens. The revenue reduction versus 2024 is driven by last year's completion of MVP and timing of upcoming projects, which we expect to start in the latter half of the year.
First quarter revenue is forecasted at $325 million with mid-teens adjusted EBITDA margins. Most, if not all, of the year-over-year revenue contraction should occur in the first half. Our customers' planned project activity continues to improve, both in terms of the number of new projects and timing of previously announced awards. We expect a multi-year expansion cycle for this segment that we are uniquely positioned to capitalize on.
Fourth quarter Power Delivery segment revenue was $762 million and adjusted EBITDA margin was 7.1%, both in line with our expectations. Annual 2024 Power Delivery segment revenue was approximately $2.7 billion with annual adjusted EBITDA margin of 7%.
Two important developments occurred in the fourth quarter. First, we began construction of the Greenlink transmission line, which is moving along well.
Second, two Midwest utility clients resolved the Ray case appeals, and it indicated a path to increased capital expenditures in 2025.
Our 2025 outlook incorporating the realigned utility operations previously reported in communications calls for revenue of $4.15 billion 15% growth year-over-year, and high single digit adjusted EBITDA margins, 50 basis points to 100 basis points higher than last year's 8.3%. First quarter revenue is expected to be $850 million with adjusted EBITDA margins in the mid-single digits.
The year is starting off at a slower production rate than previously anticipated due to severe winter weather in a number of markets, pushing project activity into subsequent quarters. Q1 should be the lowest margin quarter of the year. Again, recast 2024 results for the revised segment can be found in the guidance summary.
From a consolidated perspective, we are projecting 2025 annual revenue of $13.45 billion with adjusted EBITDA ranging from $1,100 billion to $1,150 billion. Adjusted earnings per share is expected to range between $5.35 and $5.84.
We expect Q1 revenue of $2,700 billion, adjusted EBITDA of $160 million and adjusted earnings per share of $0.34. Our 2025 expectations include the significant year-over-year improvements laid out for our non-pipeline segments partially upset by the reduced outlook for pipeline activity.
We expect to generate approximately $700 million of cash flow from operations in 2025, assuming DSOs average in the mid-60s over the course of the year. At our current leverage, we have full flexibility around capital allocation, and we'll continue to drive our decisions based on maximizing return on investment.
Supporting organic growth will be a priority, complemented by acquisitions and strategic investments. Share purchases will remain opportunistic.
And now I'll turn the call over to the operator for Q&A.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Jamie Cook, Truist.

Jamie Cook

Good morning, and congratulations on a nice quarter, in particular the cash flow. I guess my first question, Jose, I feel like I heard you say for the pipeline business that revenues in 2026 and beyond can exceed 2024 revenue levels.
So can you just confirm that, and I guess what gives you that confidence? I thought that was interesting just because that's not. In the consensus estimates that that are out there. So just why so confident if that's true and color around that.
And then I guess my second question, just given the strong free cash flow and where your net leverage is, Jose, how are we thinking about M&A, just given the organic growth opportunity you have out there. Thank you.

Jose Mas

Sure. Good morning, Jamie. Thank you for the questions. There's no question that we've seen a significant shift in the mindset of our pipeline customers. There is more optimism today than there's been in years.
That's going to translate into a lot of projects coming in line that we didn't expect, and that will create a lot of growth in our pipeline business, so you are correct. We expect 2026 revenues to exceed 2024 revenues in our pipeline segment, and we think that trend's going to continue for a number of years.
The market is incredibly active right now, and I think we're in an incredible position based on our history there and the fact that we've kind of stayed with it for a long time, so we feel great about our positioning there.
On the M&A question, look, we've never, we never stopped looking. Obviously, we were in a very difficult position relative to be able to do anything that was meaningful. Today, the organic growth opportunities in front of us are awesome. That is where we will focus first.
We will look at potentially some tuckins across the country to help us meet some of our goals and objectives quicker. So that's, it's there. It's potentially there, but we are focused on organic growth first.

Operator

Sangita Jain, KeyBanc Capital Market

Sangita Jain

Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. So I was looking at your clean energy margins for the quarter and they surprise us to the upside. I know 4Q can be tricky with weather. So wondering what you may have seen during the quarter, whether there were close outs or it's just structural improvements that you guys have been working on.

Jose Mas

So thank you. The margins were driven by execution. I think going into the quarter, our internal projections were higher than what we put out in guidance. Obviously the third quarter was a strong quarter. We hadn't had a quarter like that in a long time, so we didn't want to get ahead of ourselves in Q4.
So I think we built Q4 with a lot of conservatism. The team delivered what it said it was going to deliver and thus the margins were driven by execution in the business. I think that as we look at 2026, -- as we look at 2025. We've modeled somewhat conservatively as well, right? We think we've got a lot of potential to be both in top line and bottom line. I think that's probably one of the areas that if we exceed our guidance, it's one of the areas where we probably have the most opportunity to do so.

Sangita Jain

Good. And if I can ask one more on the Clean Energy segment, I know that you've been talking about RFP out to data center type work, so can you give us an update on how that may have looked and if there's any backlog that you ended up booking in the 4Q because you book-to- bill was again pretty strong.

Jose Mas

Sure, we've got a significant number of opportunities out, I'd say we probably did somewhere in the $200 million plus range in data center activities for 2024. We expect that number to increase significantly in '25, but still not to the levels of what we ultimately think we can achieve. We're probably shooting for about a $300 million number in '25.
The opportunity there is multiples of that, and I think the bidding for that kind of supports it. It was not a big driver of the backlog growth in the fourth quarter.

Sangita Jain

Okay, thank you so much.

Operator

Andy Kaplowitz, Citigroup.

Andy Kaplowitz

Good morning, everyone. Nice quarter. You grew backlog sequentially, as you said, in all segments in Q4, which is good to see, and you are obviously sound extremely confident in the environment moving forward. But do you think MasTech can continue to grow backlog in all segments in '25? I know you said you'll grow in clean energy. Have you seen any change in the project environment markets such as renewables or any delays? Did you incorporate a period of award lumpiness in your guidance at all?

Jose Mas

Andy, it's a good question, and we've talked about lumpinesss and backlog for a long time. We actually went back the last time that we had every segment in the company grow backlog was in the first quarter of 2018.
And subsequent to that we had two amazing years of growth and earnings. So I feel really good about where we sit. I know there's a lot of concern out there relative to especially renewables and what is potentially could happen.
In the administration, we talk to our customers a lot about that, and we are unbelievably optimistic. So as I think about the end of '25, I would expect every segment to have higher backlog than it has today.
I would love to be able to say that for every quarter, but again, backlog is lumpy, and you don't necessarily know when awards are coming in. But generally we expect backlog growth in every segment during 2025.

Andy Kaplowitz

Helpful. And then could you give more color into the growth profile in communications? You've got communications upload double digits in '25. How much of that growth is call it, your own self-help with the new contracts, looming, new wireless, versus what the overall wireline or wireless market is growing at, and is there any beads of money that you're counting on in '25 at all?

Jose Mas

So Beads makes up a very small negligible piece of what we're thinking about for '25. We do think that it'll have significant impact in '26 and beyond.
Obviously the contract with AT&T that we discussed at the end of '23, which kind of took effect in the second half of '24, we saw that come through our numbers in the second half of '24. It's part of what drove our revenue and earnings beat.
With that said, we've been awarded, a number of new contracts. Obviously, we spoke about the Lumen One in the last quarter. There's a lot of other customers that were either in late negotiations with or projects that have actually been awarded. A lot of that work, quite frankly, we won't even start until the second half of '25.
So I think, what we're talking about '25 is a lot about what we've already announced. I think what's yet to come is the build-up in the '26. I expect '26 to be a really good year, another further year of growth. So we're really bullish about where we stand today, what the opportunities in that business are.
Just this week there's a show called [MetroCect]. It's one of the largest US digital infrastructure telecom conferences in the country, and the level of optimism there was just incredible. There was a number of new entrants to the market. All of our existing customers were there.
And just the how upbeat and you know what they're seeing from fiber builds and the requirement of demand that their customers are placing on them that will ultimately make it to us, it's just a fantastic market.

Andy Kaplowitz

Sounds great, Jose. Thanks.

Jose Mas

Thanks, Andy.

Operator

Justin Hauke, Robert W. Baird.

Justin Hauke

Great. A lot of my questions have been answered either from your prepared remarks or people have already asked about it. I just did one, obviously the cash flow was excellent here, as you guys have already, talked about the.
The factoring in the quarter or the selling of receivables that looks like you sold about $350 million quarter over quarter and I guess I was just curious if that's ahead as we think about 2025, and just maybe the economics on that decision because, relative to your $700 million guide for the year it looks like that was kind of the factor here in 4Q.

Paul Dimarco

So just remember with the with the AR programs you have to look at the amount that's outstanding in the period. So in the in the quarter in the year had a $20 million impact so it's really negligible, so it's not a factor in the in the capital generation. The capital generation was driven by reduction in whip from as a day of sale standing and an increase in mobilization payments associated with renewable and DOT projects those are really the drivers, the AR programs negligible.

Justin Hauke

Okay great. Thank you. And I guess my other question was just, now that you guys are, naming the large transmission contractor, the Greenleaf contract, can you give, the amount of backlog, 18 month backlog attributed to that that contract specifically?

Jose Mas

Well, there wouldn't have been a change in the fourth quarter because that was booked prior to, so it didn't really have a significant impact in the fourth quarter backlog.

Justin Hauke

No, I know I was just curious about the amount of it. How much is it?

Paul Dimarco

About the annual revenue contribution, so I think you know we said $300 million to $500 million annually and there's 1.5 years of it, so I think that's a reasonable estimate.

Justin Hauke

Okay. All right.

Jose Mas

That makes -- that does make up, a significant portion of the $900 million growth that we had from beginning of year to end of the year. So of the $900 million, you could assume about half of it came from that one project.

Operator

Adam Talhimer, Thompson, Davis.

Adam Thalhimer

Hey, good morning, guys, nice quarter, nice outlook. Hey, Jose, I wanted to zero in on your margin improvement commentary. I was curious what gives you the confidence there. Is it tight resources and industry pricing or is it more about process improvement that you can do internally?

Jose Mas

I think it's everything, right? If you look at the third quarter of '24, margin dollars improved 28% year-over-year in our non-pipeline businesses. I think the way that we're trying to really play out the story is, obviously our pipeline business has performed great when the work is there, we perform great.
I think everybody knows that we've demonstrated that over a lot of years. I think the story about MasTech has always been. How are the non-pipeline businesses going to do? How are they going to grow both from a top line perspective and how are they going to ultimately execute the margin profiles that we've laid out over the years? And that's been a theme for a long time and I think in the third quarter of '24 we started to demonstrate that EBITDA grew in our non-pipeline businesses by 28% in the third quarter.
That was a tall order to try to beat in the fourth quarter, and yet it grew again by 57% in the fourth quarter, which we're really proud of. And if you fast forward to Q1, it's supposed to grow 47% year-over-year in the first quarter.
So I think that the trends that we're showing financially are supporting that and it's a combination of everything, right? It's a combination of improved performance. It's a combination of growth and revenues and we're with that said, with all that said, because I think it's great improvement, we still have a ton of opportunity.
And we know we've got the ability to continue to increase margins in all three of our non-pipeline segments and hopefully throughout '25 we can execute on that and demonstrate that, a long time ago we laid out a path to get $15 billion in revenue with double digit margins. That's our goal. We feel a lot more confident about our goal today and our ability to do that over the next couple of years based on the performance that we've been able to deliver in the second half of '24, and we hope we can keep demonstrating that throughout '25.

Adam Thalhimer

Okay, and then had one more on the communications segment. I was curious what's the rough mix now between wireless and wireline and maybe you can just expand on the outlook for both.

Jose Mas

Yeah, I'd say, our wireless business is just over $1 billion, and with the with the new restated kind of numbers, our coms business will be $2.8 billion in 2025. So it's about 40% of our business, and we've done a great job of growing the wireline side of that business over the last few years. It's obviously where a lot of the existing opportunities sit based on the fiber demand. With that said, I think there's a, -- there's going to be a strong wireless cycle that's coming.
It won't be in '25, but we're really bullish about that in future years, especially with increased investments by T-Mobile and Verizon. So we think that the mix is probably permanently different than what it historically had been, and for a period of time our wireline, our wireless business was bigger with the demand in wireline we expect it to be a bigger business for the foreseeable future.

Operator

Ati Modak, Goldman Sachs.

Atidrip Modak

Hi, good morning team. Jose, you talked about the growth in the pipeline business, so I was just curious if you can talk about the mix as well. It sounds like, you're talking about the base business opportunity growing around gathering lines and maintenance maybe, but are you also baking in large pipeline projects that, could potentially be incremental from the permian?

Jose Mas

Yeah, that's what will drive our revenue up, right? I think if you think about our 2025 year, a lot of it is based business. It's kind of, that's kind of the level that we've been talking about for a long time. We said $1.5 billion to $2 billion. We obviously did better in 2024 because, we had the one big project in Mountain Valley. I think we're back to a base level. There's no question that activity of larger lines is dramatically increasing.
Even for our pipeline business. We, -- we've had five quarters of shrinking backlog quarter over quarter, and this is the first quarter where we actually had an uptick in backlog and again in five quarters. So we're excited about that.
We think that throughout '25 backlog will increase significantly in the business to support growth in '26 and beyond. And again we're seeing a ton of activity, and our commentary is more towards larger projects than it is just growth in the base business.

Atidrip Modak

That's super helpful thanks. And then, on the power delivery side, I mean there's been some recent announcements for 765kV lines in the PJM market under a joint venture seems like it's a significant project. I was just curious if you have any thoughts around, your exposure to that project or those customers of the market there in general.

Jose Mas

I would say as an overarching theme, one of the things that I think that has been difficult to communicate or to get people to truly understand is the sheer size of what's going to happen in that market, our transmission grid in this country is severely underinvested in. We are going to see a dramatic growth in transmission lines across the country out of every region.
Our customers are talking about it a lot. Obviously, there's these projects take a long time to plan. I think that if there's anything that the administration, the new administration, can do in terms of infrastructure, it's actually improving the timelines around transmission lines, and I think there's hyperfocused on it.
I think that will end up being one of the biggest opportunities for MasTech and quite frankly its peers over the course of the next decade. If there's a project out there, we're chasing it, we're involved in, we think we're capable of doing any project in America, and we plan to compete for them.

Atidrip Modak

Thank you Jose.

Operator

Brian Brophy, Stifel.

Brian Brophy

Yeah thanks. Good morning, everybody for taking the question. I guess just piggybacking off that last one. Can you guys talk about how much capacity you guys have to take on more work on the large transmission side, outside of Greenlink here? Thanks.

Jose Mas

What we've said over the last few quarters is, we're ready to take on a second project, a second major project. We've been building towards that for a long time. We're hopeful that during 2025 we'll be awarded another project where we can be working two large projects simultaneously in '26, and once we get that under our belt, we're going to start working on trying to get our third large project.

Brian Brophy

That helpful. And then, wanted to ask on pipeline margins they're a little bit lower than we were expecting in the quarter I guess or anything to call out there and then your pipeline guidance for '25 assumes a little bit of decline from '24. I guess with MVP behind us now, I guess why wouldn't we expect the margins to be a little bit better in that segment in '25? Thanks.

Jose Mas

Sure. So I'll start with the last part of the question. I mean, we're going from $2.1 billion to $1.8 billion in revenue. Obviously, there's a fixed cost component of that that gets absorbed. I think, delivering, we're guiding mid-team margins. I think that's a strong guide relative to the revenue drop.
With that said, I can't remember the last year we didn't outperform guidance relative to our pipeline business, so hopefully we get to do that again in '25. When you look at the fourth quarter of '24, there was actually a lot of weather impacts in a lot of the areas where we were active on the pipeline side.
I think that business had a lot of revenue that pushed out of '24 and some increased cost to finish some of the projects that we had to finish in '24. So we're not worried about our margin capabilities in pipeline. If the work's there, we're going to do really well and the work's coming. So again, we're really bullish about what we'll deliver in that market.

Brian Brophy

Very helpful. I appreciate it. I'll pass it on.

Operator

Brent Thielman, D.A. Davidson.

Brent Thielman

Hey, thanks. Good morning. Congrats, great quarter, great year. Jose, just on the 2025 growth outlook, I just wanted to pick your brain on where else you might see kind of the most opportunity to outperform just given the strength of the businesses. I know you sound optimistic around pipeline, but if you could talk about the other segments that the stars aligned in terms of schedules, no external noise, etc. I'd just be curious there.

Jose Mas

Sure, Brian. We really tried to highlight what '25 looks like in a little bit of detail because, when we sit there and we say, 9% revenue growth for the full year, 9% margin growth for the full year, it's, -- those aren't -- those are decent numbers, but you know we're not jumping up and down about those numbers, right?
But if you dissect the year, right, we're having, -- we are having contraction in our pipeline business. I think it'll be short-lived, but it's what we're facing in '25. So when we focus on the non-pipeline businesses, our guidance is 14% revenue growth, 26% EBITDA growth. I mean those are really impressive numbers, right? I don't, -- and that's organic, right? That's not, M&A and organic growth, that's organic growth of 14% and 26% growth in earnings.
Can we do better than that? The answer is yes, right? We talked about earlier that I actually think we've got a good opportunity. If things play out, obviously there's some uncertainty in the market today, and we've got to be cognizant of that.
But I think that on the pipeline side, I think the year can be better than what we're saying. There's been a lot of activity here in the last four or five months since the administration changed. There are a lot of projects trying to be pulled into '24, but there's challenges with that, right? And I think we've been really conservative as we've guided to that.
When we look at the non-pipeline businesses, I think we took a very conservative view of what we see in renewables. I think we've got a really good opportunity to do better than what we're saying. When we look at our coms business and the acceleration of what we're seeing from our customers, we've taken, I'd say a realistic view, but it could be perceived as conservative relative to what's going to happen in the second half there with a lot of the new accounts that we've won.
And even in power delivery, right? I think we've taken a moderate view of Greenlink of what we can accomplish in year one. So I feel really good about where we stand. We were in a difficult position in '23 where we were used to hitting and beating guidance for many years and in '23 we had some challenges and we kind of swore we didn't want to be there again.
So as I look at our '25 plan again, I'm not, 14% revenue growth, 26% earnings growth in our non-pipeline businesses solid, but I do think we can do better and that's hopefully what we'll deliver in '25.

Brent Thielman

Got it. Thanks, Jose. And then, on communication, I mean, you've got some really nice momentum here in those wireless and wire line and it seems like, wire line for years to come, but could you talk about maybe the wireless side beyond 2025, the visibility you have, the confidence you have that has some sustained strength beyond this year.

Jose Mas

Sure, I think when you look at the industry as a whole, right, we've done really well with AT&T, obviously, they're going through their Nokia Ericsson swap out. I mean, for all intents and purposes that just started, right? So that is not a '25 opportunity. That is a multi-year opportunity that's going to be bigger in '26 than it is in '25.
When you look at the other carriers, whether it's Verizon or T-Mobile, I mean, everybody's so focused on fiber that, the wireless market is relatively slowed down investments, right? That's going to come back.
There's no question because capacity's going to drive it. And when that happens, we're going to be there. We're actually really pleased with the fact that we've kind of been able to build the growth within the AT&T markets that we're supporting in an environment where everything else isn't going crazy because it makes it more challenging.
So we feel good about the increase in labor that we have, the growth across the different markets in terms of our labor availability and the crews that we've put together, and that's going to position us really well as Verizon and T-Mobile start to spend again.

Operator

[Abi Jaroslawish, MasTech].

Hey, good morning. From EBS, but, on the outlook for the pipeline segment, so I know you've spoken about, some building momentum there. Do you feel like you have a line of sight to when we could see that business in effect to growth? Could that be, sometime this year, maybe early '26 or, even later than that?

Jose Mas

So the commentary around potentially beating is obviously driven by timing, right? I think that you will see awards throughout '25. Those awards will primarily impact '26 but could impact '25. So I think that's kind of where, we've guided to the 18 to the -- If we have success and some of those projects started a little bit earlier, we feel really good about our ability to beat that. If not, through backlog growth throughout '25, you're going to get a really good sense of what we're going to achieve in '26 and beyond. Again, we fully expect 2026 to be at least at 2024 levels.

Okay, got it. And then within the renewables business, how far out are you booked there and are you hearing anything new from the customer base in terms of timing? Sounds like you're not really seeing any permit related delays or timing shifts due to the policy uncertainty but just want to confirm that. And also within the C&I segment, where do you still need to book to hit the guide?

Jose Mas

Yeah, so the reality is that we are in an incredible position relative to backlog and revenue targets for '25. For clarity's sake, and I know we've said it in the past, but when the only renewable business we have in backlog is projects that have actually fully committed, so we're not waiting on things for those projects to start.
We have another category that we term that it's not backlog. We track those projects, but it's not in backlog. So we feel really good about our '25 targets and where we sit on backlog relative to those. We have a, we're in the middle of a very active cycle of negotiations with customers. We're feeling really optimistic about '26 currently, obviously.
There's a lot of noise out there. You had the executive order on wins. You've got a lot of talk about what's going to potentially happen with the IRA or not, irrespective of those conversations and what might come out of that. We're still incredibly bullish about 2026.
If those things end up resolving in a more positive way, then I think that that optimism only grows, so we feel great. We think '25 is going to be a great year. We've got a lot of bookings currently for '26. We've got a lot of projects that will convert to backlog that are for '26 here in the near future. So our multi-year outlook in that business is really strong.

Okay. Great. I appreciate the time. Thank you.

Operator

Drew Chamberlain, JP Morgan.

Drew Chamberlain

Yeah, good morning and thanks for taking the questions. Just to follow up on that last one. Are you guys hearing any pull forward from your customers as they kind of mull potential IRA changes or any other sort of policy changes? So maybe that some projects that were once maybe slated a little bit later in the decade are pulling forward to '25, '26 time frame.

Jose Mas

Well, not '25 or '26. I don't think that that's really feasible, right? There is talk about if you shorten the period of the IRA, right, that projects that were slated for the early 2030s would move into the late 2020s. So could we see a significant increase in activity in '27, '28, '29 for people trying to get what would ultimately be a shorter time frame in the IRA to finish their projects potentially.
I don't know that we're not seeing that in '25 for sure. I don't know that we'll see that in '26, but depending on what happens with the legislation, is there an opportunity for '27, '28, and '29 to be significantly bigger because of some, pull forward of the IRA? That's, -- there is potential for that. There are conversations around that, but, at this point -- Through the end of the decade, we see an unbelievably active environment.

Drew Chamberlain

Okay, thank you. And then just click one on the data center opportunity. Are you seeing any bookings or any of that $300 million, '25 going to be in power delivery or generation or fiber, build outs or is it still all on the more of the heavy civil and more of the land preparation work.

Jose Mas

Yeah, so it's both, right, because I mean we obviously announced a large award with Lumen last quarter which is data center driven. We're not necessarily calling that out when we talk about data center revenue. So our data center revenue is more focused on data center sites.
It could be power work. It could be civil work, but it's, -- we're not trying to take dollars associated with a third party customer, for example, a big fiber network and fully attribute it to data centers. We're really not doing that as we as we speak about the commentary.
So but it's impacting all of our businesses, right? The reality is that Data centers and AI are going to consume an enormous amount of both power and fiber bandwidth that will have a very significant impact on our business, irrespective of whatever we might do for a hyper scaler or a data center developer, and I think that's important.
I know there's again, we know there's concerns out there and we know there's power concerns. When you look at every single projection of what the incremental power usage is going to be, it varies greatly right from low single digits to mid to high single digits on a yearly basis, just the real, -- the reality of any of those numbers, right, is that the amount of power that's going to be generated to help these industries over the next 10 years is just, it's absolutely incredible.
And whether you're at the low end of that spectrum or the high end of that spectrum, for us it really doesn't matter because it's so much incremental growth. That we should benefit from it. And again I say that related to multiple businesses that we have, right? It's going to impact our civil business. It's going to impact our telecom business. It's going to impact our power business. It's going to impact our clean energy generation business. So we're just, again, we just feel like we're in a great spot right now.

Drew Chamberlain

Makes sense. Thanks, Jose.

Jose Mas

Thank you, appreciate it.

Operator

At this time there are no further questions. And I'll turn the call back over to Jose for closing remarks.

Jose Mas

Just want to thank everybody for participating today and we look forward to our first quarter call in a few months. So thank you for joining us.

Operator

This does conclude today's conference. We thank you for your participation.