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 second quarter ended April 30th, 2023. Joining us today are Concrete Pumping Holdings CEO, Bruce Young, CFO, Anne Humphreys, and the company's external director of investor relations, Cody Sloss. Before we go further, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Sloss to read the company's safe harbor statement within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that provides important caution regarding forward-looking statements. Cody, please go ahead.

Thanks, Camilla. 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'd 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 to the company's website. Now I'd 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 in our second quarter, we experienced 12% revenue growth, making our seventh consecutive quarter of double-digit revenue gains. This consisted of growth across all segments and was driven by continued market share gains and recent accretive acquisitions and organic growth. These strong results would have exceeded our expectations had we not experienced above average rainfall in most of our markets west of the Rocky Mountains, as well as in our home state of Colorado. From an end market perspective, we have seen encouraging growth primarily in large commercial projects like distribution centers, warehouses, semiconductor fabrication plants, and EV and battery manufacturing plants. We expect this demand to continue given U.S. reshoring trends as companies look to build out their domestic manufacturing footprint. While demand for large commercial projects is strong, concrete pumping demand from light commercial projects has been comparatively weaker due to higher interest rates and some impact from reduced availability of financing from smaller regional banks. Despite this, Our expectation for the commercial market in fiscal year 2023 remains strong. Opportunities with large manufacturing, particularly as we head into peak summer construction seasons. Turning to infrastructure, our expanding U.S. national footprint continued to drive strong results as it allowed us to capture more revenue from public project investments. We will continue to work to win state, and local projects and look forward to renewed investment in the US with the infrastructure investment and job X. Where we have recently seen an improved visibility of funds flowing to numerous projects, many of which are located in existing markets that we operate in. We plan to aggressively pursue these project opportunities and believe it has the potential to be a five year plus tailwind for our business. During the second quarter, our residential segment remained relatively stable due to the ongoing structural supply demand imbalance in housing. The moderate declines we experienced in Q2 were absorbed by commercial work, highlighting the value of our diverse offering and agility in our fleet management. For example, since the end of fiscal 2022, as a percentage of our total revenue, our residential work volumes have traded 400 basis points with growth in our commercial market. For the remainder of fiscal 2023, we expect residential revenue to remain relatively consistent with the 29% of revenue we are experiencing today, which is in line with historical trends. Shifting to the cost side of our business, small improvements in input costs, particularly in stabilization of diesel fuel, were mostly offset by a deleveraging effect we experienced in our labor due to an above average rainfall. that, as I discussed earlier, that impacted our equipment utilization. Our team continues to recalibrate our rates successfully across all business segments and realize the expected equipment return on investment for the same volume of work performed. In summary, we had another great quarter that continues to show the strength of our business with 12% top line growth and 7% growth in adjusted EBITDA. I will let Ian walk through more details on our financial results before I return to provide some concluding remarks. Ian?