Primoris builds the unglamorous backbone of the electricity build-out — gas and electric utility distribution, transmission, communications, and the EPC work behind power plants and data centers — and ran nearly 3x to a $205 peak before one botched renewables-execution quarter cut the stock in half in a single day. The durable Utilities engine kept growing; a fixed-price solar portfolio blew up. The question is whether a contained, fixable problem just handed you a grid-and-data-center franchise at ~13x EBITDA.
Primoris (PRIM) is an infrastructure services contractor with two engines: a steady, MSA-driven Utilities segment (gas and electric distribution, transmission, communications) and a lumpier Energy segment (EPC for power, petrochemical, renewables, and storage). The stock was one of 2025-26's great power-demand momentum trades, running from ~$72 to a $205 May 5 peak — then it fell ~50% in a single day on May 6 when management cut 2026 guidance and quantified a ~$110M renewables-execution hit from solar cost overruns. At ~$101 the shares trade near ~13x EV/EBITDA and ~20x earnings against an $11.6B backlog and two structural tailwinds (the grid build-out and data-center power demand) that are entirely intact. The bull case is that the renewables stumble is contained and the durable franchise is now cheap; the bear case is that a fixed-price contractor just proved it can lose a year of profit on one bad project portfolio. The Street's ~$146 consensus implies ~45% upside; this analysis lands more cautiously at ~$120.
Full thesis
Primoris is a pick-and-shovel play on the two biggest infrastructure tailwinds of the decade — the electric-grid build-out and the data-center power-demand supercycle — wrapped around a fixed-price construction business whose execution risk just announced itself loudly. Revenue grew 19% to $7.6B in FY2025 with record EBITDA, the Utilities segment grew 12% with expanding margins into Q1 2026, the $11.6B backlog gives multi-year visibility, and the $399.5M PayneCrest acquisition deepens exactly the electrical and data-center capability the market is paying up for elsewhere. Then on May 6, 2026 the stock halved in a day: Q1 missed, and management cut full-year guidance, pinning roughly $110M of EBITDA on solar cost overruns, redesigns, weather, and poor labor productivity in renewables. That is the core risk of an EPC contractor — one mispriced fixed-price portfolio can erase a year of profit — and it is real, not cosmetic. But it landed on the lumpier, lower-quality Energy segment, not the Utilities franchise or the data-center thesis, and the stock now trades at ~13x EV/EBITDA and ~0.85x sales for a business compounding off non-discretionary infrastructure demand. Probability-weighted fair value lands near $120 — about 19% above the current price and deliberately below the Street's ~$146 consensus, because a freshly-demonstrated execution stumble deserves a cautious weighting until management proves the overruns are contained. The level where the risk/reward turns decisively favorable is near the ~$94 post-crash low; the catalyst to size up is one clean quarter, not just a cheaper multiple.
Primoris: A Power-Demand Compounder, Halved in a Day
One of 2025-26's great infrastructure momentum trades ran nearly 3x to a $205 peak — then fell ~50% in a single session when a botched renewables-execution quarter forced a guidance cut. The grid-and-data-center franchise didn't break; a fixed-price solar portfolio did. The question is what that's worth after the crash.
The Bottom Line
The simplest version of the Primoris thesis: this is a contractor, not a software compounder, and the market briefly forgot the difference. For eleven months PRIM traded like a pure-play call option on American electricity demand — the grid that has to be rebuilt, the gas distribution that has to be maintained, and the power and data-center construction the AI build-out requires — and it ran from ~$72 to a $205 peak on that story. All of that demand is still there. What the May print revealed is the other half of the business: a fixed-price EPC contractor that, when it misprices labor, weather, and an unfamiliar solar market, can hand back a year of earnings growth in a single quarter.
The two variables that actually matter over the next 12-18 months are: (1) whether the renewables overruns are a contained, one-portfolio event that washes through by year-end — which is what management is guiding to — or the first of several surprises from fixed-price risk; and (2) whether the Utilities segment plus the data-center/electrical push (deepened by the $399.5M PayneCrest acquisition) keeps compounding fast enough to carry the company while renewables is cleaned up. Everything else — the exact 2026 EPS number, the quarter-to-quarter backlog wiggle, the modest dividend — is noise around those two questions.
Where We've Been
PRIM was a textbook momentum trade. From ~$72 in June 2025 it climbed almost without interruption — through the power-demand and data-center narrative, record earnings, and a relentless re-rating — to a $202.92 close on May 5, 2026, a near-3x run. Then, on May 6, it opened to a 47% wipeout and closed at $101.23. One day erased nine months of gains. At ~$101 it sits well below both its 50-day (~$125) and 200-day (~$135) averages — cheap relative to the peak, but in a downtrend and still digesting a broken-momentum chart.
PRIM share price · Jun 2025 → Jun 2026 (approximate)
The catalysts that moved it
| Date | Catalyst | Significance |
|---|---|---|
| Mid-2025 | Shares near $72 as the power-demand trade is still early | ~12x EBITDA — a contractor priced as a contractor, before the re-rating |
| 2H 2025 | Data-center / grid build-out narrative takes hold; record quarterly results | PRIM re-rates from a cyclical contractor to a power-demand growth name — stock to ~$140 |
| Feb 2026 | FY2025 results: revenue +19% to $7.6B, EPS $5.02, record EBITDA | Confirmed the growth story; momentum carried shares toward $150-170 |
| Apr–early May 2026 | Melt-up to a $202.92 close (May 5); 52-week high ~$205 | Priced for flawless execution across both segments — no margin for error |
| May 6, 2026 | Q1 miss + 2026 guidance cut; ~$110M renewables-execution hit quantified | Stock falls ~50% in a day to ~$101 on ~13M shares — the momentum trade unwinds at once |
| May–Jun 2026 | Dead-cat bounce to ~$130, then a fade back toward the ~$94 low | The market re-rates PRIM back to a contractor multiple and waits for proof on execution |
A Specialty Contractor That Rolled Up Into an Infrastructure Platform
Primoris traces back to a California specialty contractor and went public in 2006. Two decades of acquisitions — pipelines, electric utility services, power, and renewables — turned it into a diversified, ~$7.6B-revenue infrastructure platform headquartered in Texas. Its edge isn't a single technology; it's scale, a self-perform skilled-labor base, and decades of utility relationships.
Primoris builds and maintains the physical infrastructure that moves energy and electricity. The business is organized into two reporting segments. The Utilities segment installs and maintains natural-gas and electric utility distribution and transmission systems, plus communications infrastructure — work that is largely recurring, often performed under long-term Master Service Agreements (MSAs) with regulated utilities, and far less lumpy than big-project construction. The Energy segment is the engineering-procurement-construction (EPC) business: power generation (gas and, increasingly, the infrastructure behind data centers), pipelines, petrochemical and renewable-fuels facilities, and utility-scale solar and storage. Energy is higher-revenue but lumpier, more fixed-price, and lower-margin on average — and it's where the 2026 trouble originated.
The company grew largely by acquisition, stitching together regional specialty contractors into national scale across gas, electric, power, and renewables. That roll-up gives it breadth — it can chase the highest-demand end markets at any point in the cycle — but it also means a federation of operating units whose execution discipline isn't uniform, which is part of how a single segment's project portfolio can blow a hole in consolidated results. CEO Tom McCormick runs the company; in May 2026 Primoris also completed the all-cash, ~$399.5M acquisition of PayneCrest Electric, deepening exactly the electrical-construction and data-center capability the market prizes most.
It's recurring, MSA-driven, and demand-insulated. Utilities work — maintaining and expanding gas and electric distribution and transmission — is tied to regulated utilities' multi-year capital plans, not discretionary spending. It runs under Master Service Agreements that renew, throws off steadier margins, and grew ~12% with margin expansion into Q1 2026 even as the rest of the company stumbled. The market's bull case for PRIM rests far more on this segment (and the data-center/electrical push) than on the lumpier Energy EPC work. The irony of the May crash is that the durable engine kept running; the part that broke was the part you'd underwrite most conservatively anyway.
What changed in 2025-26 wasn't the underlying business mix — it was the multiple. A contractor that historically traded around ~12x EBITDA got re-rated toward ~18-20x as investors treated it as a clean play on grid and data-center demand. That works until execution slips. When the renewables overruns hit, the market didn't just mark down 2026 earnings; it took back the entire re-rating, snapping PRIM from a power-demand growth multiple to a contractor multiple in a single session.
How the Money Actually Works
This is a thin-margin, high-revenue, backlog-driven contractor — gross margins around 10-11%, not 60%. The things to understand are the role of backlog as forward visibility, why fixed-price work carries asymmetric risk, and why cash flow is lumpy and working-capital-driven rather than smooth.
Primoris recognizes revenue as it completes work, mostly on a percentage-of-completion basis, against a $11.6B total backlog (of which ~$7.5B is recurring MSA backlog and ~$5.27B is expected to convert within twelve months). Backlog is the closest thing a contractor has to deferred revenue — it gives multi-quarter visibility — but it is not a guarantee of margin: on fixed-price work, Primoris bears the risk that actual labor, materials, and schedule come in worse than bid. That is the entire story of the 2026 stumble. Revenue grew impressively — from $4.4B in 2022 to $7.57B in FY2025 (+19%) — and EBITDA marched from ~$298M to a record ~$505M over the same span.
Margins are the part investors misjudge. This is a ~10-11% gross-margin business; FY2025 gross profit was $813M on $7.57B of revenue. After ~$399M of SG&A, FY2025 operating income was ~$414M and net income was $274.9M, or $5.02 diluted EPS. So the company earns a thin slice on a very large revenue base — which is exactly why execution matters so much: a few hundred basis points of margin slippage on a multi-billion-dollar revenue line is an enormous swing in profit. The renewables overruns — management quantified ~$45M of revenue pushed out, $35-40M of Q1 cost overruns, and ~$25M of lower margins as projects complete — are how that asymmetry showed up.
Contractor cash flow swings with the timing of project billings, retainage, and working capital, so it does not track EBITDA smoothly. On a trailing basis Primoris generated only modest free cash flow relative to its ~$500M of EBITDA — operating cash flow is consumed by receivables and contract assets as revenue scales, and the company runs meaningful capital intensity on equipment. Net debt was ~$735M at year-end 2025 (~1.3x EBITDA), but the ~$399.5M all-cash PayneCrest deal pushed leverage up toward ~2x. None of that is alarming for a contractor, but it does mean two things: the "cheap on EBITDA" case rests on EBITDA, not on a fat free-cash-flow yield, and the balance sheet has less slack to absorb a second execution surprise than it did a year ago.
The dividend is a rounding error in the thesis — Primoris pays roughly $0.08 a quarter, a yield well under 0.5%. This is not an income stock; the return case is entirely earnings growth and multiple. And on earnings, 2026 is explicitly a step backward: management guided GAAP EPS to $4.05-4.25 and adjusted EPS to $4.80-5.00, both below FY2025's $5.02, with adjusted EBITDA of $480-500M roughly flat to down. That guide-down — a year of declining earnings after years of growth — is what the May crash repriced.
Revenue · FY2022–FY2026E ($M)
The 2026 stall, in one line · Adjusted EBITDA ($M)
FY2025 at a glance
| Metric | FY2025 | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $7.57B | +19.0% YoY |
| Gross margin | ~10.7% | Thin, contractor-typical |
| Adj. EBITDA | ~$505M | Record year |
| Net income | $274.9M | Diluted EPS $5.02 |
| Total backlog | $11.6B | $7.5B MSA |
| Net debt | ~$735M | ~1.3x → ~2x post-PayneCrest |
What the bull actually owns
Strip the momentum unwind and what you own is a scaled, backlog-covered infrastructure contractor levered to non-discretionary electricity demand — Utilities growing ~12% with expanding margins, an $11.6B backlog, and a deepening electrical/data-center capability — at ~13x EBITDA and ~0.85x sales.
The optionality is the data-center and grid build-out: a multi-year wave of power and electrical-construction demand that Primoris is positioned to capture, reinforced by PayneCrest. If 2026 proves to be the renewables trough and the durable segments keep compounding, the multiple re-rates and ~$101 looks like a gift — which is roughly the bet behind the Street's ~$146 consensus and ~45% implied upside.
Why a Utility Re-Hires Primoris
A contractor's moat is never a patent — it's scale, relationships, a self-perform skilled workforce, and a safety-and-execution record clean enough to keep getting awarded the work. Primoris's is real but narrower than a software incumbent's, and it's exactly the thing the renewables stumble dinged.
MSA relationships and incumbency
The most durable part of Primoris is its Master Service Agreement book with regulated gas and electric utilities. These are multi-year, often-renewing relationships where Primoris is the incumbent crew maintaining and expanding distribution and transmission systems. Switching contractors mid-program is costly and risky for a utility that needs reliable, safe, on-schedule work to meet regulatory commitments — so incumbency, once earned, tends to persist. This is the ~$7.5B MSA backlog, and it's the highest-quality revenue in the company.
Scale and self-perform labor
Primoris's scale lets it field large, skilled, self-performing crews and own the equipment fleet to execute big jobs without subcontracting away the margin. In a labor-constrained construction market, the ability to staff and self-perform is itself a competitive advantage — and a barrier to smaller rivals who can't crew a multi-state utility program or a gigawatt-scale power project. That same scale lets Primoris pivot capacity toward the hottest end markets (today, electrical and data-center work).
The double edge: execution is the moat, and the moat slipped
For a contractor, the reputation for execution is the moat — it's what wins the next award and justifies a premium bid. The renewables overruns are damaging precisely because they hit that asset: poor labor productivity, redesigns, and cost misjudgment in solar are the opposite of the disciplined-execution reputation the bull case depends on. It doesn't erase the MSA relationships or the scale, but it's a reminder that this moat is maintained quarter by quarter, not locked in by switching costs the way a software incumbent's is.
The Demand Backdrop — Why the Story Existed in the First Place
The reason PRIM tripled is that it sits in front of two of the strongest multi-year infrastructure tailwinds in the U.S. economy: the rebuild and expansion of the electric grid, and the data-center-driven surge in power demand. Those tailwinds are intact — the May crash was about execution, not demand.
The grid build-out
The U.S. electric grid is aging, congested, and being asked to carry far more load than it was designed for — from electrification, reshoring, and new generation interconnection. Utilities are raising multi-year capital plans to harden and expand distribution and transmission, and that spending is largely non-discretionary and rate-base-recoverable. Primoris's Utilities segment is a direct beneficiary: more distribution and transmission to build and maintain, under exactly the MSA structures it already holds. This is the steady, demand-insulated core of the bull case.
Data-center power demand
The AI build-out has turned electricity into the binding constraint on compute. Data centers need power generation, substations, transmission interconnection, and on-site electrical construction at unprecedented scale and speed — and that work flows to contractors who can self-perform power and electrical jobs. This is why the PayneCrest electrical acquisition matters: it deepens Primoris's ability to capture data-center and electrical-construction demand directly. The market's willingness to pay 18-20x EBITDA for PRIM in early 2026 was almost entirely this story.
The competitive field
Primoris competes with the larger and higher-quality Quanta Services and MasTec in utility and electrical infrastructure, plus a range of regional specialty contractors and EPC firms in power, pipelines, and renewables. Quanta in particular is the gold-standard comp — bigger, more diversified, with a stronger execution reputation and a premium multiple. Primoris is the smaller, cheaper, higher-beta way to play the same demand, which cuts both ways: more upside if it executes, more downside when it doesn't — as May demonstrated.
The renewables wrinkle
Utility-scale solar and storage are part of the demand story too, but they're also where the lowest-margin, most-competitive, most-execution-sensitive work lives — and where unfamiliar markets, weather exposure, and labor productivity can wreck a fixed-price bid. The 2026 stumble is a reminder that not all "infrastructure demand" is equal: the grid and data-center work is the prize; the solar EPC is the part that just proved it can bite.
The Renewables Blowup — Contained, or the First Crack?
The entire investment debate now reduces to one question: is the ~$110M renewables hit a contained, identifiable, one-portfolio problem that washes through by year-end — or the first visible symptom of a broader fixed-price-risk problem? How you weight that determines whether ~$101 is a gift or a value trap.
On the Q1 2026 call, Primoris quantified roughly $110M of negative EBITDA impact from renewables: about $45M from revenue pushed out of 2026, $35-40M from first-quarter cost overruns, and ~$25M from lower margins as the affected projects finish. Management attributed it to cost overruns, redesigns, project delays, and poor labor productivity in solar — tied to weather, labor challenges, and execution in less-familiar markets. Full-year renewables revenue was cut toward ~$2.3B, and consolidated guidance dropped to $4.80-5.00 adjusted EPS and $480-500M adjusted EBITDA.
The bull read: contained and identifiable
The case that this is a one-time event rests on three points. First, management has named and sized the problem — specific projects, specific dollar buckets, a defined completion path — which is the opposite of a vague, open-ended deterioration. Second, it's isolated to the renewables/solar portfolio within Energy; the Utilities segment grew 12% with better margins in the same quarter, so this isn't a company-wide execution collapse. Third, the affected projects roll off as they complete, so the drag is, by construction, finite. If that read is right, 2026 is the trough year and the franchise emerges intact and cheap.
The bear read: fixed-price risk doesn't announce itself once
The skeptical case is that EPC cost overruns are rarely a single, cleanly-bounded event. Mispriced labor productivity and "less-familiar markets" describe a risk-management and bidding-discipline problem, not a weather accident — and roll-up contractors with uneven operating units have a history of serial charges that arrive one quarter at a time. The ~$110M number is management's current estimate; the bear's worry is that solar projects in trouble tend to get worse before they finish, and that there may be more in the backlog the company hasn't flagged yet. There's also some legal/uncertainty overhang around the situation. On this read, the multiple should stay at a contractor's level until several clean quarters prove otherwise.
My weighting leans toward "mostly contained, but trust-but-verify." Management's specificity and the clean Utilities quarter argue against a company-wide problem, and the most likely path is that the named projects finish roughly as guided. But a fixed-price EPC contractor that just missed this badly has not earned the benefit of the doubt for a growth multiple — which is why the base case assumes the drag washes through without a full re-rating, and why the discipline is to want a clean quarter in hand rather than to anticipate one.
SWOT
Where Primoris wins structurally, where the model leaks, where the upside lives, and what would actually break it.
Strengths
- Demand-insulated Utilities core: MSA-driven gas/electric distribution and transmission, +12% with expanding margins
- Backlog visibility: $11.6B total, $7.5B recurring MSA, $5.27B convertible within 12 months
- Scale and self-perform labor: Skilled crews and owned fleet — a barrier in a labor-constrained market
- Levered to grid + data-center build-out: Two of the strongest U.S. infrastructure tailwinds
- Cheap vs. the peak and vs. peers: ~13x EBITDA after a ~50% drawdown
Weaknesses
- Fixed-price execution risk: Just lost ~$110M of EBITDA to solar cost overruns — the core EPC vulnerability
- Thin margins: ~10-11% gross — small slippage on a huge revenue base swings profit hard
- Lumpy, weak free cash flow: Working-capital-heavy; FCF lags EBITDA materially
- Roll-up of uneven operating units: Execution discipline isn't uniform across the federation
- Rising leverage: ~2x net debt/EBITDA post-PayneCrest — less slack for a second surprise
Opportunities
- Data-center / electrical demand: PayneCrest deepens exactly the highest-value capability
- Grid capital cycle: Multi-year, rate-recoverable utility spending on distribution and transmission
- 2026 as the trough: If renewables washes through, earnings re-accelerate off a clean base
- Multiple re-rating: A clean execution year could restore a growth-contractor multiple
- Mix shift to quality: Tilting away from low-margin solar toward Utilities/electrical lifts margins
Threats
- A second renewables charge: Would validate the bear case and keep the multiple compressed
- Execution / bidding discipline: If the miss reflects a systemic risk-management gap, more surprises follow
- Stronger competitors: Quanta and MasTec are larger, higher-quality, better-executing comps
- Macro / rates: Higher-for-longer rates and project financing can slow energy and renewables work
- Legal / overhang: Uncertainty tied to the situation adds a non-fundamental risk layer
Bull · Base · Bear
Twelve-month forward scenarios off a ~$101 starting price. The variance is almost entirely about one thing — whether the renewables stumble is contained — and the multiple the market will pay once it knows the answer. The demand backdrop is the least uncertain part of the picture.
$150
What has to go right: Renewables comes in at or better than the revised guide with no new charges, Utilities and the data-center/electrical push keep compounding, the $11.6B backlog converts cleanly, and the market restores a growth-contractor multiple toward ~15x EBITDA — roughly the Street's ~$146 consensus. The "selloff overshot a quality franchise for a contained problem" outcome.
$120
The most likely path: The renewables drag washes through 2026 roughly as guided ($4.80-5.00 adjusted EPS), Utilities carries the company, and execution stabilizes without a clean re-rating. The stock recovers part of the crash on hitting guidance and a firmer 2027 outlook — a good business repriced from cheap back toward fair at ~14x adjusted EPS.
$78
What breaks it: A second renewables charge or fresh project surprise lands, the legal overhang lingers, backlog or margins soften, and the market keeps PRIM at a punished ~10x EBITDA. The stock gives back the bounce and retests the pre-run-up base. The demand story stays intact, but the execution credibility doesn't come back this year.
Price scenarios · Jun 2026 → Jun 2027
Time-Horizon Outlook
The near-term is about whether the stock bases or retests the low. The medium-term is about whether renewables washes through and the durable segments carry. The long-term is about whether Primoris compounds as a grid-and-data-center contractor — or stays a cheaper, higher-beta also-ran to Quanta and MasTec.
Jun-Sep 2026
The stock is consolidating in the ~$94-130 post-crash range. The near-term question is technical-meets-fundamental: does it base around $95-105, or retest the ~$94 low? The Q2 print is the first real test of whether the renewables guide is holding.
- Whether the ~$94 low holds as support
- Q2 renewables results vs. the revised guide — any new charge
- Risk: a broad industrials/momentum unwind drags it lower regardless
Sep-Dec 2026
The window where the renewables drag either washes through as guided or reveals more. Watch the affected projects completing, Utilities margin progression, backlog stability, and any commentary on data-center/electrical awards from the PayneCrest integration.
- Renewables projects completing on the revised math
- Utilities growth and margin holding up
- Risk: a second charge or a backlog decline that signals demand softening
The proof year
If the thesis holds: earnings re-accelerate off a clean 2026 base, adjusted EPS pushes back above the FY2025 $5.02 high, margins benefit from a mix shift toward Utilities and electrical, and the market restores something closer to a growth-contractor multiple.
- EPS re-acceleration off the renewables trough
- Data-center / electrical revenue scaling via PayneCrest
- Risk: execution credibility doesn't fully return; multiple stays at ~10-12x
The endgame
The long-run bull case: Primoris is an established, well-run beneficiary of a decade-long grid and data-center build-out — compounding revenue and EPS with a higher-quality mix — at which point a ~$5.5B cap looks like an early entry. The bear: it stays the lumpier, lower-quality contractor that periodically gives back a year to fixed-price risk.
- Grid + data-center demand as a multi-year revenue engine
- A re-earned execution reputation and a normalized multiple
- Tail risk: recurring project charges cap the quality re-rating for good
Risk Matrix
Ranked by what would actually move the stock 15%+ in either direction.
The Bottom Line, Revisited
Strip away the momentum unwind and what's left is a scaled, backlog-covered infrastructure contractor levered to non-discretionary electricity demand — repriced from a growth multiple to a contractor multiple in a day, for a real but most-likely-contained execution stumble in its lowest-quality segment.
Primoris is two businesses under one ticker: a steady, MSA-driven Utilities franchise that grew 12% with expanding margins straight through the storm, and a lumpier fixed-price Energy/EPC business whose solar portfolio just cost the company ~$110M of EBITDA and a year of earnings growth. For eleven months the market paid a power-demand growth multiple on the whole thing as the stock ran from $72 to $205. On May 6 it took the entire re-rating back at once. The demand backdrop that justified the run — the grid build-out and the data-center power surge — never changed; the execution did.
The honest hesitation is about execution and the contractor's asymmetry, not the demand. This is a ~10-11% gross-margin business where small slippage on a huge revenue base swings profit violently, cash flow is lumpy, leverage rose with PayneCrest, and the company just demonstrated it can misprice fixed-price work. After a ~50% fall to ~$101 — near the post-crash range and well below both moving averages — a great deal of that pessimism is in the price at ~13x EBITDA. Probability-weighted fair value lands near $120, roughly 19% upside, with a credible bull toward the Street's $146 and a bear that retests the low.
This is a quality-demand franchise on sale after a self-inflicted wound. The setup that turns it from "cheap" into "compelling" is evidence the renewables stumble is behind it — a clean quarter or two with no new charges and the durable segments still compounding — or a price near the ~$94 low, where you're handed a backlog-covered grid-and-data-center contractor at ~12x EBITDA. At ~$101 the value is real but unconfirmed; the discipline is to want the proof of contained execution before paying up, not to anticipate it.