Orion Marine Group (NYSE: ORN) reported Q3 EPS of ($0.18), $0.24 worse than the analyst estimate of $0.06. Revenue for the quarter came in at $128.4 million versus the consensus estimate of $165.38 million.

Outlook

Comments from Mark Stauffer, President and Chief Executive Officer"As we look ahead, we will continue executing on our strategic vision of being the premier specialty contractor in the infrastructure, industrial, and building sectors, while building our market share and enhancing shareholder value. Our continued strong backlog and the ongoing operational improvements we have made, provide long-term visibility to support our future success.

The infrastructure sector, which today is made up of our marine segment, continues to provide both public and private opportunities to maintain and expand marine facilities on and over U.S. waterways. Throughout our operating areas, market fundamentals remain positive, and we are seeing pockets of margin expansion in certain areas. The weather events of the third quarter will provide additional opportunities for marine segment projects in the near term. Private sector bid opportunities from downstream energy customers continue as they expand their waterside facilities associated with refining and storage. Recreational demand continues from private customers as local marinas are being expanded and remodeled, while business opportunities from cruise lines remain promising as we track opportunities related to new destinations, or refurbishment of existing destinations in the Caribbean.

The building sector, which today houses our concrete segment, is in solid shape as its three major metropolitan markets continuously retain their positions as leading destinations for families and businesses to reside. Population growth throughout our markets continues to drive new distribution centers, office expansion, retail and grocery establishments, new multi-family housing units, educational facilities and medical facilities. In Houston, we are experiencing some tightening in the market but we expect to continue to maintain market share. We are focused on expanding our market share in the Dallas-Fort Worth market, including adding structural opportunities. Finally, we expect to continue to see solid growth in the Central Texas market as we continue to expand with fundamentally strong end market drivers.

In the industrial sector, we will continue our greenfield expansion by combining talent and resources from the marine segment and concrete segment to continue to pursue concrete foundation work inside the industrial environment. The massive, long-term petrochemical driven opportunities along the Gulf Coast provides significant potential to expand our addressable project opportunities. In fact, the U.S. is on pace to become a net exporter of natural gas by 2018 as a result of the shale revolution, which has led to increased domestic production of natural gas. This will lead to outpaced growth in the petrochemical industry that should account for more than half of the construction spending in the manufacturing sector.”

Comments from Chris DeAlmeida, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer:"Each of the Company’s business sectors continued to experience solid demand for services, and we placed competitive bids for projects throughout the third quarter. We remain encouraged by the volume and mix of projects scheduled or anticipated within our operating areas and the additional opportunities the third quarter weather events will create in the future.

As mentioned, the third quarter weather events greatly impacted our results due to the timing of project execution. Unfortunately, making up this impact during 2017 will be difficult, even though these events provide opportunities for the future. As a result of the weather impacts during the third quarter, we are discontinuing our EBITDA guidance for 2017. Our goal is, and will always be, to deliver profitable returns to shareholders. Expansion of our existing operations or future operations in the infrastructure, industrial, or building sectors could provide further catalysts for EBITDA growth. We believe Orion has a strong future and we are adapting to reduce the volatility in our earnings and results. As we look toward 2018, we will continue to adjust the business to reduce volatility. As a result, we expect to see some bottom line improvement in 2018 as compared to 2017. This bottom line improvement should expand more significantly in 2019 and beyond."

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