Dive brief:
- Granite Construction President and CEO Kyle Larkin said the surface transportation reauthorization amounts being debated in Congress are “significantly higher” than the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021.
- Larkin made his comments Thursday Granite’s fourth quarter and 2025 earnings call, where the company posted higher revenue and profit for the quarter and year. The firm also achieved a record portfolio of $6.97 billion, up 32% from a year ago.
- With the IIJA set to expire in September, Larkin said securing more public funding for infrastructure was a priority for lawmakers. “What we’re really hearing from the industry today is that there’s still bipartisan support,” Larkin said on the call. “There’s still a lot of focus on creating another investment mechanism and I think the really good news is that the amount of investment is significantly higher.”
Diving knowledge:
Larkin’s comments echoed those of other public construction companies, including Dallas-based AECOM, which said expansion of road funding it would further extend the current transportation construction cycle. Larkin said he expects draft legislation to be available in March or April.
Kyle Larkin
Permission granted by Granite Construction
But even before Congress approved new dollars, Larkin said only half of the original IIJA money had been spent as of November. The rest should provide stability to the infrastructure market for some time. “There’s still a fair bit of spending to do, so hopefully it’ll last a few more years,” Larkin said.
Beyond the road money, Larkin said Watsonville, Calif.-based Granite is also among 11 companies competing for about $40 billion in border infrastructure work on the southern border. In March, Granite won the contract for the first border wall of President Donald Trump’s second term for a $70 million job to build 7 miles of barrier in Hidalgo County, Texas.
The Trump administration has accelerated the timeline for awarding new border work, Larkin said, and expects new contracts to be announced in June or July. But this compressed schedule means that previously smaller segments of work have been bundled into larger overall jobs.
Since Granite has focused in recent years on taking on smaller work packages, which offer more near-term visibility of schedule and cost, Larkin said the company would be selective with any additional work in this area.
“These contracts are getting bigger than we originally thought, so the risk profile is changing a little bit from those to one that just gives us reason to be more disciplined in our activities and ensure that we can not only win the work, but that we’re successful in delivering it to ourselves and our clients,” Larkin said. “So we’ll see.”
Granite reported revenue of $1.17 billion and net income of $52.03 million in the fourth quarter, up 19% and 25% from a year ago. For the year, revenue reached $4.42 billion, a 10% gain over 2024. Profits of $193 million for the year were 53% higher than the company reported in 2024.
Looking ahead, Granite said it would continue to look for more acquisitions in 2026, particularly in the part of the materials of your business. In its 2025 second quarter conference call, Granite announced that it had purchased Hattiesburg, Mississippi-based Warren Paving and Arroyo Grande, California-based Papich Construction. for a combined price of $710 million. That was followed in October by an agreement to buy Cinderlite Trucking, based in Carson City, Nevada.
Executives said they expect more of the same this year as Granite continues to develop its “home market” strategy where it supplies materials from its aggregates plants for infrastructure projects in the areas surrounding those facilities.
“While we are selective in our activities, we expect to achieve our goal of completing several strategic acquisitions by 2026,” Granite Chief Financial Officer Staci Woolsey said on the call.
