Interview with CEO of Stantec

An interesting read - and to think we used to call him "Bobbie Baby" and now he's the CEO...ha ha.  The bolding is NOT mine, it was done by "the Wall Street Transcript".  GO buy stock...I have some...57 years of continuous profits!

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President And CEO Interview: Stantec Inc. (STN) - Bob Gomes

On Tuesday May 31, 2011, 11:12 am EDT from The Wall Street Transcript

 

67 WALL STREET, New York - May 31, 2011 - This Special feature contains expert industry commentary through in-depth interviews with public company CEOs, Equity Analysts and Money Managers.

Bob Gomes is the President and CEO of Stantec Inc. Mr. Gomes holds a degree in civil engineering from the University of Alberta. Prior to joining Stantec in 1988, he began his career working with a land development engineering firm. In 1991, he was appointed Principal Engineer in charge of the Edmonton office, and in 1998 he was appointed Vice President of Stantec's Edmonton urban land group. In 1999, Mr. Gomes was appointed Vice President of Alberta North, a role in which he was responsible for all Stantec Consulting Ltd. activities in the Edmonton office and in northern Alberta.

TWST: Please start with a brief history of the company and an overview of your primary business lines.
Mr. Gomes: We're a professional services firm. We just sell our employees' expertise and time. We provide consulting services in engineering, architecture, environmental management and environmental sciences over a varied diverse number of sectors, primarily in North America. We have some small international operations, and we service the infrastructure and facilities marketplace. We started here in Edmonton, Alberta, in Canada, 57 years ago as a one-man consulting firm. Today, we now have 160 offices across North America, about 10,700 staff and are a public firm. So certainly there have been a lot of changes over the last 57 years. In those 57 years, we've been profitable every year, so have never lost money as a company.

So a very profitable organization.We went public on the Toronto Stock Exchange in 1994, and then went on the New York exchange in 2005. So we're the only firm in our space to trade off both exchanges, both in Canada and New York. So we're unique that way. We have about 10,700 staff. About 6,000 of those staff are in Canada, about 4,500 staff in the United States and about 200 staff internationally. As I said before, we're very focused in North America and only have about 4% of our revenue outside of the North American continent, and with only about five permanent offices outside of North America, in Dubai, India, United Kingdom, Panama City and the Caribbean. And those are all relatively small offices.

Dubai is over 100 people, so a little bit larger.The offices all came to us through acquisitions we've done. Stantec (STN) is a very acquisitive company, which is perhaps a very efficient way for a professional services firm to grow because you're so dependent upon not only the staff, but you're dependent upon the client relationships those acquisitions bring you. To try and develop or build a company like ours organically would take a very long time, because you'd have to have that history and relationship in a certain community. And certainly an acquisition gets you that instantaneously.

About two-thirds of our growth over the last 20 years has been through acquisitions and about a third of it organically. So we are very unique in the way we do acquisitions, and think we're very good at it - done probably over 80 acquisitions in the last 20 years. We did 10 just last year, so very acquisitive from that perspective. We still see ourselves continuing that strategy. We feel that we have lots of opportunity left still in North America, specifically in the United States, for growth. And then after that we'll start looking more globally for our growth opportunities. So the strategy we have had, we just see continuing over the next 10 years.

TWST: In the first quarter your revenue increased by 10%. What factors contributed to that growth?
Mr. Gomes: Most of our revenue growth last year was as a result of the acquisitions we did. As I mentioned earlier, we did 10 acquisitions in 2010, and so most of that increase in revenue that we recorded in Q1 was as a result of those 10 acquisitions that we added last year. The rest of the organization, organically we're relatively flat over 2010, which is not surprising given the economy right now in North America and specifically in the U.S. Canada is recovering a little quicker than the U.S. from the recession in 2008 and 2009. So it was basically a relatively stable year for us organically, and the increase that you referenced was mainly due to the acquisitions we did.
 
The Wall Street Transcript is a unique service for investors and industry researchers - providing fresh commentary and insight through verbatim interviews with CEOs and research analysts. This Special issue is available by calling (212) 952-7433 or via The Wall Street Transcript Online .  The Wall Street Transcript does not endorse the views of any interviewees nor does it make stock recommendations.

 

Top Design Firm in California - pretty good for a company based in little EDMONTON!

Another article about the company I worked for before PJ arrived:

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Strategic Mergers Drive Stantec’s Plan

With 23 offices in California and two key acquisitions in the state last year, Stantec is seeking to expand in diversified market sectors

June 6, 2011 by ENR California

Thanks to a wave of California acquisitions plus internal growth, Stantec, headquartered in Edmonton, Alberta, has achieved a position as one of the state’s major design firms, working in a range of markets.  

Editors of ENR regional publications have chosen Stantec as the Top Design Firm of California for 2010 based on the company’s performance and volume of work last year and its focus on such environmental innovations as net-zero design, sustainable transparency and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum achievements.

The editors’ choice also was influenced by the firm’s community outreach and work-force diversity programs.
Eric Nielsen, Stantec’s senior vice president, western U.S., Irvine, links the firm’s success to the company’s ability to adjust to global economic changes and to “working on the best projects with the best employees.”
Stantec has expanded greatly since Don Stanley founded the firm in 1954 as a one-person consulting engineering company. Worldwide, Stantec now employs more than 10,500 people in more than 160 offices, including 23 in California. It ranks No. 25 on Engineering News-Record’s latest Top 500 Design Firms list. Even with Stantec’s substantial expansion, Nielsen says, “Our message, vision and philosophy has not changed.”

Large-Scale Projects
The tough California construction market has had an impact on Stantec. The company’s revenue on ENR California’s list of leading design firms was down $15 million in 2010 from the previous year, and its rank dropped to No. 8, from No. 5. But Nielsen says 2010 “brought us a considerable increase in contract activity with clients on large-scale projects,” which included engineering and architectural work on the Sacramento Municipal Utility District’s new fleet-operations campus (in coordination with RNL Design), the largest U.S. net-zero project of its kind.

The project includes photovoltaic and thermal solar panels for onsite renewable energy, displacement and evaporative cooling, geothermal energy storage, radiant slab heating and cooling, and a heat-recovery pump system.

Nielsen adds, “Across the statewide landscape, it’s also encouraging to see ongoing transportation and transit work as well as some renewed activity in California’s real estate market.”

Other major California contracts last year include: the recently opened 472,000-sq-ft UC Davis Medical Center Emergency Services and Surgery Pavilion, one of the state’s largest level-one trauma centers; Laguna Honda Hospital in San Francisco, which opened last June; and a Federal Transit Administration project-management contract with operational direction coming from the firm’s Los Angeles office.
The list also includes a two-year, on-call civil engineering contract with Southern California Edison Co.; an Intelligent Transportation System strategy contract from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission for the Interstate 880 corridor in the San Francisco Bay Area; and a prime transportation engineering consulting contract from the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority.

Eighty Companies in 35 Years
Stantec has expanded over the years primarily through strategic acquisitions, purchasing more than 80 companies since 1976. Two key California additions last year were Anshen + Allen Architects, San Francisco, and ECO:LOGIC, Rocklin.

The 2010 acquisitions “have positioned us very competitively for several target sectors,” Nielsen says. He says Anshen + Allen brought expertise in health-care and higher education design, and operations in the United Kingdom to serve international clients. Nielsen says ECO:LOGIC’s expertise in working with public water agencies, meanwhile, helped strengthen the firm’s competitive position.

Other major California acquisitions since 2005 include: The Keith Cos., Irvine; ACEx, Oakland; Chong Partners Architecture, San Francisco; and RHL Design Group, Petaluma.

Stantec also has given back to the community. In 2009, the firm became a national sponsor of the Architectural, Construction and Engineering (ACE) Mentor program, with 22 offices and 41 mentor volunteers participating. Stantec donated $55,000 for Japan earthquake relief through employee contributions and company matching funds and raised more than $100,000 in a campaign to increase awareness about prostate cancer and to fund related research.

Stantec has focused on work-force and supplier diversity. This year it named George Powell from its San Francisco office as the director of diversity and inclusion and initiated a formal supplier-diversity program to provide opportunities for qualified minority- and women-owned firms and disadvantaged businesses.

Industry awards have come regularly for Stantec. Last year it received the Award of Excellence from the American Council of Engineering Companies’ California chapter and McGraw-Hill Construction’s Best of the Best Award, Green Building, for the net-zero National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo.
Though California and worldwide construction markets remain difficult, Nielsen says Stantec’s diversified roster of engineering disciplines keeps it successful. “Our pipeline always varies based on discipline,” he says. “Some [sectors] are noticeably better than in previous years and some of our disciplines are hiring, which is encouraging.” Nielsen adds that Stantec’s transportation, water, retail, environmental consultation and compliance, and power segments are “clearly taking an enhanced position as our stronger segments in California as we look ahead.”

Article about the company I worked for before PJ arrived.

I'm so glad that Bob Gomes is doing so well as the CEO - such a nice man!  Bob is on the right and the prior CEO (Tony Franceschini) is on the left.  He even signed the annual report "Bob" (rather than Bob Gomes).  Whenever I run into Bob (at a hockey game or at a shopping mall) he always sees me first, comes over and gives me a big hug and we have a wee chat.  He's one of the things I miss about not working there, but I wouldn't work WITH him any more now that he's the CEO!  Company is  Stantec.

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Edmonton's Stantec is back on track

By Gary Lamphier, Postmedia News April 29, 2011

 EDMONTON - Chalk one up for Bob Gomes.

When I sat down with Stantec's affable CEO a year ago, after his first 12 months at the helm, the consulting giant's critics were growing louder.

Pounded by recession and a horrible U.S. housing market that had decimated its urban-land (mainly subdivision-planning) division, Stantec was in a bit of a funk.

The 57-year-old firm hadn't completed a major acquisition in more than a year, its formerly high-flying shares were sputtering, and its oncesteady earnings growth had hit a brick wall.

In short, one of Edmonton's biggest homegrown corporate success stories looked like it may have finally run out of gas, a year after former CEO Tony Franceschini's timely exit.

Still, Gomes seemed serenely confident. The clouds would lift, he told me, and Stantec's ship would set sail once again. Deals would come, activity would pick up, earnings would rebound and the company's growth story would resume.

Well, guess what? Gomes was right. Stantec is back on track, and investors are starting to notice.

After completing a flurry of acquisitions last year - 10 in all, raising its total staff count to nearly 11,000 - and sharply reducing its exposure to the obliterated U.S. housing market, Stantec is getting its mojo back.

Net earnings - after accounting for one-time items that skewed yearover-year comparisons - rose about five per cent last year, to $95.3 million or $2.05 a share, handily topping the pre-recession peak of $1.52 a share.

And although annual revenues were flat, at just over $1.5 billion, that masked a major realignment of Stantec's business away from the sagging U.S. housing market and into faster-growing sectors such as mining, oil and gas, and environmental services.

All of which explains why Gomes is confident a refocused and recharged Stantec will beat analysts' consensus earnings estimates of $2.26 a share for 2011 and $2.54 for 2012 -based on the latest numbers from Zacks Investment Research -and why its shares are again on the rise.

Nine of the 13 analysts who track the stock rate it a "buy" or a "strong buy, " according to Zacks, and technical analysts say Stantec's threeyear-long slog through stock market purgatory looks like it's nearly over. Translation: The shares look poised to move higher.

With offices all across the U.S. - a market that now accounts for 40 per cent of Stantec's total revenues - and a listing on the New York Stock Exchange, the Little Company That Could is also gaining increased interest from investors.

Fidelity Investments, the Boston-based mutual fund giant, is among Stantec's three largest institutional shareholders, along with Quebec's Caisse de depot and a fund based in Geneva, Switzerland. Industry competitors are noticing Stantec, too.

"In the U.S., they know who Stantec is. We were asked to speak at the national convention of the American Council of Engineering Companies. It's a huge organization. Every engineering firm in the U.S. is a member, and Stantec was one of just four companies invited to speak," Gomes says.

"They wanted us to talk about our acquisition strategy, and how we've grown to be a large U.S. player.

"We're the only Canadian firm in our space that's done that. SNC-Lavalin would be the largest Canadian engineering firm, but they have virtually no presence in the U.S."

What really gets Gomes excited, however, are the growth opportunities he sees in areas such as Stantec's buildings group, where two key acquisitions last year - Burt Hill Inc. and Anshen & Allen Architecture - vaulted Stantec into the ranks of the Top 5 U.S. architectural firms, and the largest in Canada.

"It will probably take us until the end of 2011 to have our brand fully integrated and really get our client base in North America to understand who we are, so we're really trying to get that message out in a clear and positive fashion this year," Gomes says.

"Anshen & Allen had about 200 people in San Francisco and Burt Hill had about 600 people, mainly in Pennsylvania. But both those firms had a small international component as well, in London, Dubai and India," he adds.

"But the big winner this year is expected to be our industrial practice. We see that growing by five to six per cent, and it's being pushed by (high) commodity prices. We don't do an awful lot of work in the oilsands for companies like Suncor and Syncrude, but we do a lot of work indirectly for major contractors like Worley Parsons, Bantrel and SNC-Lavalin. So if Alberta's economy is hot, we're busy."

Mining is another hot sector. And once again, Stantec gained its toehold through a strategic acquisition.

"We actually have worldwide expertise there through a company we acquired in 2008 called McIntosh Engineering. They do deep, hardrock mining and they are world-class when it comes to doing the underground design, the shaft design and hoist system design," he says.

"So wherever you find the world's deepest mines, Stantec is working on them. The world's deepest mine right now is in Mongolia. It's Ivanhoe's (Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold) project, and we're doing the shaft design.

"We do 60 per cent of our mining work outside North America, and with nickel, copper and gold prices high, the mining companies are absolutely going gangbusters at the moment."

In terms of the big picture, Stantec will remain focused over the next three to five years on the U.S. market, where Gomes still sees plenty of upside, despite America's horrendous fiscal challenges. In Texas, he notes, where the state's gross domestic product is larger than the entire Canadian economy, Stantec has just 60 staffers, versus 6,000 north of the border.

Further out, Stantec expects to focus more on international growth in fast- growing countries such as India, where the need for new infrastructure is enormous. As in its architecture practice, Stantec has already dipped its toes in international markets via the acquisition of U.S. firms with established foreign offices - an approach Gomes sees as low-risk.

"It gives us a good training ground for understanding how to do work in countries with different currencies, different cultures and different business requirements, without really being totally exposed. So it's a safe way of getting our feet wet and understanding what it's like, rather than jumping into a market cold," he says.

"In China there's always the potential for government intervention in business, so we're less interested today in China than India. But it's also partly because we have an Indian presence now, with about 70 people there.

"A lot of our competitors have opened up operations in India to do outsourcing, but that's not the case with us. Our office is a self-sustaining office doing work for Indian clients, so that's something we can grow."

Edmonton Journal

© Copyright (c) Postmedia News

Visit with friends...

I went to Don's service today. It was standing room only...and I think that there were people that couldn't even get into the room and were standing out in the foyer. I parked about 2 blocks away and ran there...and managed to get a seat (too close to the front for my liking).

All the stories were very nice and they had a really special photo montage - it was fun to see him as a little boy and with a cheesy 70's moustache! In every photo he had a big grin on his face. There were several photos of him with people that visited with him while he was sick. He looked so thin and had no hair, but he still had that big grin on his face, in each and every photo. To be so positive and so sick at the same time, that can't be easy.

I knew quite a few people there - lots of current and ex accounting staff members were there and I had some visiting with them. The CEO of Stantec gave me a hug, as did the CFO - that place drove me nuts, but the people were/are great. Several people asked if PJ was 5...HA HA...5...does it seem that long since I was there...he's not even 4 yet. One person asked if I wanted a job...and then 5 minutes later, his boss came over and asked me the same thing and said he could work out a part-time situation if I wanted. Nice to hear, since I didn't think they gave a rat's ass that I was gone (not these 2 fellows though, they were always appreciative of my effort).

The Auditor General of Alberta (aka GJA's boss) was there and I went up and chatted with him for awhile. There were a few engineers there from the Calgary office and alot of ex-employees, like me.

I'm glad I went...I had a good cry.

He called me Mitchell

WILSON, Donald Wayne It is with deep sadness that we announce the passing of Donald Wayne Wilson of St. Albert, Alberta, on Monday, January 4, 2010, at the age of 53 years, after more than a year of facing cancer with courage, love and laughter. Don was born in Unity, Saskatchewan, and attended school there and then in North Battleford. He obtained a bachelor of commerce at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon and went on to become a chartered accountant just after his 22nd birthday.

He worked as a partner in public accounting with Eaket, Menssa, Baert and Partners in North Battleford until 1990. In late 1990, Don and his family moved to St. Albert. From 1990 to 2008, he held the role of controller and then CFO at Stantec in Edmonton. Don served on many public and private boards, considering it an honour and duty to share his knowledge and experience.

Don leaves behind his loving wife of over 30 years, Vicki; one daughter, Diana, and her husband, Marc; two sons, Scott and Michael; his parents, Roy and Jean; his mother-in-law, Anne; two sisters, Sharon and Heather, and their husbands, Darryl and Daryl; brothers- and sisters-in-law, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins and friends. A Celebration of Don's life will be held on Friday, January 8, 2010, at 1:00 p.m. at St. Albert Funeral Home located at 9 Muir Drive (off St. Albert Trail) in St. Albert.

To send condolences: http://www.connelly-mckinley.com/ Don was an enthusiastic supporter of the arts in Edmonton. Donations in his memory can be made to the Mayor's Celebration of the Arts, Professional Arts Coalition of Edmonton at http://www.pacedmonton.com/ (Box 11933, Edmonton, AB T5J 3L1) or to the Fringe Theatre Adventures Society at http://www.fringetheatreadventures.ca// (10330 - 84 Avenue, Edmonton, AB T6E 2G9).