Concrete Pumping Holdings, Inc.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for participating in today's conference call to discuss Concrete Pumping Holdings financial results for the first quarter ended January 31st, 2023. Joining us today are Concrete Pumping Holdings CEO Bruce Young, CFO Ian Humphreys, and Company's External Director of Investor Relations, Cody Slaw. Before we go further, I'd like to turn the call over to Mr. Slough to read the company's safe harbor statement within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that provides important cautions regarding forward-looking statements. Cody, please go ahead. Thank you.

I'd like to remind everyone that in the course of this call, to give you a better understanding of our operations, we will be making certain forward-looking statements regarding our business and outlook. These statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from such statements. For information concerning these risks and uncertainties, see Concrete Pumping Holdings Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, and other publicly available filings with the SEC. The company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. On today's call, we will also reference certain non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted EBITDA, net debt, and free cash flow, which we believe provide useful information for investors. We provide further information about these non-GAAP financial measures and reconciliations to the comparable GAAP measures in our press release issued today or the investor presentation posted on the company's website. I would like to remind everyone that this call will be available for replay later this evening. A webcast replay will also be available via the link provided in today's press release, as well as on the company's website. Additionally, we have posted an updated investor presentation on the company's website. Now, I would like to turn the call over to the CEO of Concrete Pumping Holdings, Bruce Young. Bruce?

Thank you, Cody, and good afternoon, everyone. I am pleased to report that our first quarter of 2023 is off to a strong start with 10% revenue growth, which marks our sixth consecutive quarter of double digit consolidated revenue growth. This consisted of growth across all segments and was driven by continued market share gains through organic growth and contributions from accretive acquisitions. Our results were in line with our expectations for the quarter. and would have exceeded expectations if we had not experienced abnormally severe winter weather in the US and UK markets. Now turning to our individual reporting segments, our US pumping business increased 7% in the first quarter driven by our recent strategic acquisitions and strong performance in our commercial and market. We were successful in growing our commercial market share through continued organic growth and successful successfully integrating our acquisitions completed in 2022. Of note, our national footprint and breadth of service offerings continues to position us well to win large complex projects with our customers. Some examples of these projects include office buildings, data centers, chip plants, electric vehicle facilities, battery plants, warehouses, and distribution centers within our commercial and market. For reference, in the construction of an average-sized battery plant, there is as much concrete as two 50-story buildings. And similarly, in an average-sized chip plant, there is as much concrete as four 50-story buildings. Turning to infrastructure, our expanded US national footprint continued to drive results as it allowed us to capture more revenue from public project investments. We will continue to work to win projects in the state, and local levels and look forward to renewed investment in the US with the enactment of the federal statutes regarding the CHIPS Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. However, at this time, we have yet to see any meaningful new projects emerge that are directly related to the new legislation and projected outlook is somewhat difficult to estimate. During the first quarter, our residential end market remained relatively stable due to the ongoing structural supply-demand imbalance that continues to unwind. We recognize the affordability-driven challenges come from the housing market, and as expected, the moderate change in residential volume in the first quarter was absorbed by other higher margin work. For example, as a percentage of our total revenue, our residential work volumes traded 300 basis points with the growth in our commercial market, which typically carries higher margins compared to other end markets. The change in the distribution of our revenue by end market illustrates the advantages of our diverse offering and agility in our fleet management approach. In our UK segment, despite foreign exchange headwinds, U.S. dollar revenues increased 6% compared to the prior year quarter, and excluding the FX translation impact, revenue grew by 18%. Our team continues to secure energy, road, and rail projects in addition to the work we have previously announced with the concrete-intensive high-speed railway project, HS2, which is expected to last beyond 2030. In Ecopan, our concrete waste management business, we continue to deliver exceptional organic revenue with growth of 32% in Q1 2023-2022. compared to the same year-ago quarter driven by our expanded sales team and the value of our enhanced service offering. Going forward, we expect to maintain Ecopan's double-digit organic revenue growth given our continued investment in our team and equipment, its penetration in the market, and the continued evolution of the methods used in the concrete construction projects to contain concrete washout material. Shifting to the cost side of the business, As was the case last quarter, our team continues to recalibrate our rates successfully across all business segments. Consequently, we have largely offset higher input costs that remain persistent in our margin dollars that are in line with our expectations if we remove the inflationary pressures. As a result, we continue to realize the expected equipment return on investment for the same volume of work performed. So in summary, we had another great quarter that continues to show the strength of our business. I will let Ian walk through more details on our financial results before I return to provide some concluding remarks. Ian?