DIRTT Environmental Solutions Ltd.

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the DIRT Environmental Solutions first quarter 2023 financial results conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in a listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To join the question queue, you may press star then 11 on your telephone keypad. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. I would now like to turn the call over to Shawna Mason, Director of Corporate Affairs. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to today's call to discuss DIRT's first quarter 2023 results. Joining me on the call today will be DIRT CEO and CFO, Benjamin Urban and Brad Little. Today's prepared remarks are accompanied by presentation slides. To access the slides, please view them from the webpage of this webcast or on our website at DIRT.com. Today's call will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable Canadian and United States securities laws. These statements are based on the company's current intent, expectations, and projections. They are not guarantees of future performance. In addition, this call will reference non-GAAP results, excluding special items. Please reference our Form 10-Q as filed on May 9, 2023 with the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, and other reports and filings with the SEC for information regarding forward-looking statements and reconciliations of non-GAAP results to GAAP results. I will also remind you that this webcast is being recorded, and a replay will be available tomorrow. I now turn the call over to Benjamin.

Thank you, Shauna, and good morning, everyone. Before I begin, I want to start by thanking all of our team members, our approximately 70 partners, and numerous end customers. Approaching the completion of my first full year with DIRT, I'm amazed to see the progress we are making in nearly every facet of our business. I'm also encouraged by the level of enthusiasm from our partners regarding the future of DIRT. We are seeing more and more partners investing in their own design centers. our partner advisory council, and numerous other partners are giving us valuable feedback regarding what is and isn't working in their markets and how we can best address those items. We are preparing to have our sales team in Calgary this week, and next month we will host Connext, our annual open house in Chicago that coincides with Neocon. I feel confident in saying that DIRT is in a significantly better place than we were at this time last year. To that end, We are in the midst of a challenging macroeconomic environment with recessionary concerns and uncertainty across many fronts, especially the technology and finance sectors to which we clearly have exposure. As an example, one large project with a technology company with projected revenue of nearly $5 million was scheduled to order in the first quarter, then pushed to the second quarter, and now expected to be delivered in 2024. We look forward to delivering that project, but it certainly impacted our first quarter results and our 2023 pipeline. While we have seen improvement in our order pace during April and into May and believe we have good line of sight to our second and third quarter orders, there is still uncertainty in our addressable markets. As Brad will discuss, we continue to proactively remove unnecessary costs from the business and focus on cash-generating initiatives. all things we have control over regardless of whatever comes our way from the economy. In the meantime, we haven't slowed down our focus on strengthening our pipeline, our commercial organization, and creating value for our partners and customers. Beginning in late Q4, we also restructured our commercial organization and refined our growth strategy centered around the following core elements. Expansion and diversification of our construction partner network, increasing scope on projects as well as short-cycle sales opportunities, adding sales representatives, including vertical market specialists, and entering into new agreements with third-party integrators, new purchasing programs, manufacturing partnerships, and negotiating standardization programs within our key customer base. We are experiencing success with these initiatives and expect to see organic pipeline growth as a result within 2023 and into 2024. Just within the last month, we've been awarded large projects with Bechtel, Apache, and Visa on projects expected to deliver this year. We are seeing an increase in quoting activity within the healthcare and education vertical markets. However, these are longer lead sales cycles and will take time to be realized as sales. As I mentioned, our construction partners also continue to invest in their own DIRT experience centers and organizations, bolstering our commercial efforts to continue to drive revenue growth. We talked about it in the Q4 earnings call, but we had a decrease in construction partners from 2019 to 2022. We have added more than 16 either new or partners whom have had their geographical territories expanded in the last nine months. However, it takes time for them to get up to speed in generating revenue. DIRT is known for innovation, not only within our solutions, but also in our approach to manufacturing, and that continues to prove beneficial with removing costs from the business while simultaneously improving our manufacturing efficiencies. Q1 has demonstrated that we have excelled in continuing to move the needle within manufacturing operations, showing the highest on-time and full production balanced with the lowest efficiency rates we have seen in years, layered with our lowest overtime labor costs. While accomplishing this, we also implemented the cost reduction measures we commented on in February, decreasing the distance to EBITDA and cash flow breakeven. We will continue to optimize our business to be prepared for a variety of market conditions. The pace of innovation and product development has also increased as we roll out new enhancements in Q3 and Q4 to specific product lines, such as Inspire, but also with solutions that are universal across our product lines, with new door systems and acoustical enhancements, some of which have already been released with select Premier customers, further enhancing our value proposition. We are also exploring opportunities for further development of innovative solutions with our manufacturing partners. As you have heard us talk about for the last couple of quarters, we have been continuing to further develop our proprietary ICE software with additional libraries and features supporting many of our existing solutions while adding in the aforementioned innovations. Some of our commercial initiatives also overlap with our technology solutions. For example, I'm happy to announce our partnership with Armstrong World Industries, who also utilize the ICE platform for their Project Works software. This partnership not only provides a commercial opportunity for both of our companies to leverage our complementary solutions, but also drives direct revenue to DIRT and our partners. And with that, I'll hand it over to Brad to comment on our financials, as well as further elaborate on the cash initiatives in play.