Maizer Ouijdani, Vice President The Voice Newsletter January 2024

As I reflect on the year 2023, I’m trying to figure out how I can summarize the year from a business perspective, and the best word I could come up with is “PENDING”.

Throughout the year, most of the terms I heard from our private clients were:

"The project is shelved for now."

"We are raising more capital."

"We are discussing new term sheets with the lender."

"We are watching the 10-year Treasury bond yield."

"We are still on hold waiting for financing."

As some financial institutions failed throughout the year and the fed rates increased an additional 100 basis points, I could feel the commercial construction market changing rapidly (at least in my state – California). Accurately predicting our end-of-year revenue projections became a little more challenging.

Meanwhile, to remain competitive in this new market, we had to roll up our sleeves and help our partners get creative with value engineering, assist them in forecasting potential future escalations, and assess risks associated with building now, versus down the road. All things considered, it appears that demand for commercial construction is still strong. With a little help from any potential fed interest rate drops in 2024, we will likely see pending projects back online.

So, for Christmas, I asked Santa for a 200-basis point rate drop for 2024 - I hope everyone had a happy holiday season, see you all at World of Concrete 2024!