Williams Industrial Services Group Inc.

Hello, and welcome to the Williams Industrial Services Group first quarter 2022 financial results conference call and webcast. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Chris Witte, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Williams First Quarter Conference Call. With me on the call today are Tracy Palliera, President and CEO, Randy Lay, Executive Vice President and COO, and Damian Vassell, Vice President and CFO. After Tracy and Damian provide their prepared remarks, we'll open the call for questions. Our first quarter results were issued yesterday afternoon, and a slide presentation is available on the company's website at www.wizgroup.com. If you'd like to turn to slide two in our presentation, I review the Safe Harbor Statement. This conference call may include forward-looking statements that represent the company's expectations and beliefs concerning future events that involve risks and uncertainties and may cause the company's actual performance to be materially different from the performance indicated or implied by such statements. All statements other than statements of historical facts included in this conference call are forward-looking statements. Although the company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to have been correct. Important factors that can cause actual results to differ materially from the company's expectations are disclosed in this conference call, as well as with the other documents filed with the SEC. You can find all these documents on our website or at www.sec.gov. During today's call, we will also discuss some non-GAAP financial measures. We believe these are useful in evaluating the company's performance. However, you should not consider this additional information in isolation or as a substitute for results prepared in accordance with GAAP. When applicable, we will provide a reconciliation of non-GAAP measures with comparable GAAP results in the tables that accompany today's press release and slides. Please note that our conversation today will be about continuing operations unless noted otherwise. Starting with slide three, I'll now turn the call over to Tracy Palliera. Please go ahead, Tracy.

Thanks, Chris, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our call today. Williams posted first quarter revenue of $69.6 million, which, while up 14% year over year, was down sequentially from Q4 due to normal seasonal patterns. As we previously said, our first quarter typically reflects reduced business levels related to slower activity to start the year. We posted a gross margin of 8.2% for the quarter, reflecting continued challenges from our Florida water business and startup costs associated with new locations to serve our energy delivery and market. Damien will speak a little bit further about gross margin in a minute. Operating expenses declined to $6.5 million, which included $700,000 of litigation expense. As previously discussed, these legal fees and costs are tied to action being taken against a former employee and competitor relating to the wrongful loss of Williams' business. Reflecting all these factors, adjusted EBITDA was $100,000 for the quarter. We finished the period with $257 million of backlog, which includes $38 million of new contract wins. As I'll discuss in a moment, we expect greater award activity in the months to come, and in addition, are reiterating our guidance for fiscal 2022. Now turning to slide four, I'd like to discuss the state of the business and current outlook. While it's been a relatively short period of time since reporting Q4 results, a few things have changed that positively altered the landscape going forward. In March, Congress and the administration finally passed the $1.5 trillion omnibus spending bill for fiscal 2022, thus ending months of operating in their purgatory under continuing resolution, which slowed decision-making and stymied implementation of programs outlined under the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The Multi-Year Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will add more than $45 billion of supplemental investments to enhance water and power grid infrastructure, and includes $6 billion of funding designed to extend the life of existing nuclear facility. Thus, the Act provides supplemental funding for many critical areas we serve, addressing infrastructure in dire need of upgrade. At the same time, we're focusing on new business development activities to win contracts with the necessary people and facilities in place, all of which impacted our gross profit this quarter. We view the remainder of 2022 as having strong potential to build our backlog given overall market trends, increasing demand, and improving bid activity. We're dedicated to diversifying the business and moving into higher margin areas that can lead to sustained, solid results in the quarters and years to come. I'll have more comments at the end, but we'll now hand it over to Damien to discuss our quarterly financial results in greater detail. Damien?