Martin Marietta Materials, Inc. earnings call

… again, their budgets look very, very good. I spoke in one of the earlier questions about what we've seen at the local level relative to referendums. A lot of those got passed last November. Obviously, the one that we've spoken of in Mecklenburg County, which basically is Charlotte, is an important one for us because that's a vital market to Martin Marietta. That kind of takes me through at least the infrastructure piece of it, and I do think there's probably some modest upside there. Non-res, if we back away from it, again, 35% of our business last year It's interesting to me to look at it because if we're looking at total square footage starts, they're still 20% below the prior peak, even with the holy trinity of data centers, energy, and warehousing all moving in the right direction. But the thing that I'm taken by is what I'm seeing right now in demand for data centers simply remains really strong. We talked about what's going on with Stargate and Abilene. We talked about Google and their investments in South Carolina. Meta has recently reaffirmed their $65 billion CapEx investments in Louisiana. I mean, these are big numbers. But then what I like are stories like this. I mean, Project Jade, which is a large data center that really just got underway in Laramie County, Wyoming, in December, that's going to be an enormous project. And we've got the closest proximate quarry of size to that. So I think all that's going to be impressive for a while. But what we're seeing is what you would have imagined, and I think this may supply more upside as well. What we're seeing in energy and its needs are pretty significant. So the U.S. power demand is expected to rise 25% by 2030. And again, these are all compared with 2023 levels. If we're saying from 2023 to 2050, it's going to have to go up by 80%. So again, if you're looking at something that can be a lever in this, that's certainly one of them. As we're thinking about data centers and we're thinking about energy, Texas, which is an important state for us where we're the largest aggregates producer, is clearly a leader in that. But importantly, and Trey, you'll remember when we were talking about B.C. Sumner 10 and 15 years ago as far as the nuclear plant in South Carolina. Now you've got Brookfield Asset Management who's come in there basically in a public-private partnership with Westinghouse. And …

… earlier questions about what we've seen at the local level relative to referendums. A lot of those got passed last November. Obviously, the one that we've spoken of in Mecklenburg County, which basically is Charlotte, is an important one for us because that's a vital market to Martin Marietta. That kind of takes me through at least the infrastructure piece of it, and I do think there's probably some modest upside there. Non-res, if we back away from it, again, 35% of our business last year It's interesting to me to look at it because if we're looking at total square footage starts, they're still 20% below the prior peak, even with the holy trinity of data centers, energy, and warehousing all moving in the right direction. But the thing that I'm taken by is what I'm seeing right now in demand for data centers simply remains really strong. We talked about what's going on with Stargate and Abilene. We talked about Google and their investments in South Carolina. Meta has recently reaffirmed their $65 billion CapEx investments in Louisiana. I mean, these are big numbers. But then what I like are stories like this. I mean, Project Jade, which is a large data center that really just got underway in Laramie County, Wyoming, in December, that's going to be an enormous project. And we've got the closest proximate quarry of size to that. So I think all that's going to be impressive for a while. But what we're seeing is what you would have imagined, and I think this may supply more upside as well. What we're seeing in energy and its needs are pretty significant. So the U.S. power demand is expected to rise 25% by 2030. And again, these are all compared with 2023 levels. If we're saying from 2023 to 2050, it's going to have to go up by 80%. So again, if you're looking at something that can be a lever in this, that's certainly one of them. As we're thinking about data centers and we're thinking about energy, Texas, which is an important state for us where we're the largest aggregates producer, is clearly a leader in that. But importantly, and Trey, you'll remember when we were talking about B.C. Sumner 10 and 15 years ago as far as the nuclear plant in South Carolina. Now you've got Brookfield Asset Management who's come in there basically in a public-private partnership with Westinghouse. And they're basically looking to build large-scale nuclear reactors to support …