Benjamin J. Burud
Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., Research Division
This is
Benjamin Burud on behalf of Jerry Revich. The balance sheet is projected to be in great shape post the U.S. Concrete acquisition. How would you characterize the M&A pipeline and the opportunity set from them?
James Thomas Hill
Chairman, President & CEO
Yes. I think that the M&A pipeline continues to be good, and its active. Id say, a lot more smaller targets, more bolt-ons. We have the balance sheet to be able to do what we want to do or need to do there. But as always, I think you have to be disciplined about those and what markets do you want to be in and what synergies are
unique to us, dont overpay. And when you get them, make sure you integrate them fast and accurately. So theres a lot out there, but well be disciplined how we have the firepower, but well be disciplined in how we look
at them.
Keith Brian Hughes
Truist Securities,
Inc., Research Division
Okay. And if I could sneak one more on U.S. Concrete. Any kind of narrow time frame when you think the deal will close?
James Thomas Hill
Chairman, President &
CEO
Second half, at this point. I mean its going along well, but those are hard to predict. So Id just tell you second half.
Michael Glaser Dahl
RBC Capital Markets, Research
Division
...And my second question, I guess, Tom, you made a comment about just the expected second half close and things going well with U.S.
Concrete. When you say things going well, I just wanted to ask if you could elaborate a bit more. Is that going well in terms of your conversations management to management, field team to field team or integration-wise? Or is that a comment specific
to your conversations with the DOJ? And any update you can give on the review process?
James Thomas Hill
Chairman, President & CEO
I mean short answer is
all of the above. Weve had conversations with management team to management team. Weve looked at what we have to do integration. Obviously, thats limited until we close. Theyve got to run their business independently of ours
and vice versa. Were getting to know each other better, getting to know capabilities better, how do you overlay that and how do you move quickly, but accurately. And then the DOJ process, I think, is going, at this point, quite well. And we
feel confident that well close it this year.
Adam Robert Thalhimer
Thompson, Davis & Company, Inc., Research Division
...Tom, Im just curious on the U.S. another one on the U.S. Concrete deal. Just curious how you are framing this to investors who are worried that
youre increasing downstream exposure?
James Thomas Hill
Chairman, President & CEO
Well, I think that
if you look at our history, number one, weve gone from 95% to 85% of our EBITDA coming from aggregates. When this closes, 85% of our EBITDA will come from aggregates. I think more importantly, you got to look at the how the 2
companies match up. The geographies work extremely well. California, Texas, Virginia, we match up very well.
The if you look at their technical
capabilities, theyre a very good operator in ready-mixed concrete. We think they can help us. We think we can help them with our ability to expand unit margins collectively to expand unit margins and aggregate. So we help each other. We
think their culture fits ours very well.