Six solar jobs erased a quarter.
Primoris Services Corporation reported a second-quarter net loss of $24.2 million on August 4, a $108.5 million swing from the $84.3 million it earned in the same quarter of 2025. Adjusted EBITDA fell 92.6% to $11.4 million. On the same day, the Dallas contractor booked the highest backlog in its history at $13.9 billion.
Where the Money Went
Revenue came in at $1.69 billion, down 10.7%. The damage wasn’t at the top line. Consolidated gross margin collapsed from 12.3% to 4.9%, and the Energy segment posted a gross loss margin of negative 0.3% against a positive 10.8% a year earlier. Energy swung to a $56.4 million operating loss.
Management pinned it on cost overruns across six renewable energy projects, citing project redesign, changes in sequencing, labor productivity, sub-surface conditions and weather. Two of the six were substantially complete during the quarter. Three should finish in Q3 and one in Q4.
The Utilities segment held up better. Revenue rose 2.8% to $712.6 million, though operating income still fell 16.8% and margin slipped from 14.1% to 11.9%.
The Backlog Contradiction
Total backlog reached $13,856.3 million at June 30, up $1.9 billion from year-end 2025. Utilities carries $7.67 billion of it; Energy carries $6.19 billion. Second-quarter awards ran about $2.0 billion, all of it in Energy. The PayneCrest acquisition contributed roughly $432.2 million of fixed backlog, part of $401.4 million in cash paid for acquisitions during the first half.
So demand isn’t the problem. Execution on fixed-price renewables is. That’s the same lesson several E&C firms learned on utility-scale solar in the last cycle, and it’s landing again just as the power buildout behind projects like the $7 billion Amkor advanced packaging campus in Peoria pulls more electrical and civil capacity into fixed-price work.
What the Guidance Implies
Primoris held its full-year outlook at the levels it set on June 22: net income of $71 million to $101 million, adjusted EBITDA of $275 million to $325 million, adjusted EPS of $2.05 to $2.60. With first-half performance where it is, essentially the entire year now has to be earned between July and December.
The balance sheet gives it room. Liquidity stood at $958.9 million, split between $218.2 million of unrestricted cash and $740.7 million of revolver availability. Long-term debt rose to $752.0 million from $409.0 million at year-end. First-half operating cash flow was negative $131.3 million against a positive $144.6 million a year ago. The company still repurchased 449,287 shares for $50.0 million at an average $111.29 and declared an $0.08 dividend on July 31.
“Despite the challenges on a limited number of renewables projects that impacted our earnings during the quarter, Primoris delivered record bookings and achieved the highest total backlog in our history,” CEO Koti Vadlamudi said in the release.
Both halves of that sentence are true, which is the problem. A record order book is worth what a contractor can execute against it, and the market will price the second half on whether the last four bad jobs close where management says they will.