Exponent, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the Exponent in first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. All participants will be in the listen-only mode. Should you be listening during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing the star key followed by zero. After your presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star and then one on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, you may press star and then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Joni Constantello. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us on Exponent's first quarter 2026 financial results conference call. Please note that this call will be simultaneously webcast on the investor relations section of the company's corporate website at investors.exponent.com. This conference call is the property of Exponent, and any taping or other reproduction is expressly prohibited without prior written consent. Joining me on the call today are Dr. Katherine Corrigan, President and Chief Executive Officer, Rich Schlenker, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, John Pye, Incoming President, and Eric Anderson, Incoming Chief Financial Officer. Before we start, I would like to remind you that the following discussion contains forward-looking statements including, but not limited to, exponents' market opportunities and future financial results that involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed here. Additional information that could cause actual results to differ from forward-looking statements can be found in exponents' periodic SEC filings including those factors discussed under the caption risk factor in Exponent's most recent Form 10-K. The forward-looking statements and risks in this conference call are based on current expectations as of today, and Exponent assumes no obligation to update or revise them, whether as a result of new developments or otherwise. And now I will turn the call over to Dr. Katherine Corrigan, Chief Executive Officer. Katherine?

Thank you, Joni, and thank you everyone for joining us today. I will start off by reviewing our first quarter 2026 business performance and strategic positioning. Rich will then provide a more detailed review of our financial results and outlook, and we will then open the call for questions. Exponent delivered double digit revenue growth, growth in net revenues and earnings in the first quarter, reflecting the strength of our multidisciplinary portfolio and continued demand for our specialized expertise across a range of industries. Growth was driven by user research studies for consumer electronics clients who are integrating artificial intelligence into their devices. We are continuing to see diversification of this work, not only across our client base, but also across the breadth of products and underlying technologies we support. Growth was also driven by risk management work for utility clients evaluating asset performance under extreme weather conditions. Reactive engagements also contributed to our growth with increased dispute related and failure analysis demand across construction projects, energy facilities, and medical devices. We saw increased activity from both domestic and international clients related to complex construction challenges and disputes. In energy, demand increased for work involving critical facilities where reliability, performance, and the consequences of failure are paramount. We also saw increased activity involving medical devices with particular scrutiny of product safety, quality, and performance. Trends in energy demand, infrastructure risk, and technological innovation continue to support demand for our deep technical capabilities, reinforcing Exponent's essential role in helping clients navigate complex, high-stakes decisions. The integration of AI and other advanced technologies into performance-critical and physical systems combined with the rising expectations for safety and reliability is increasing reliance on exponents' specialized expertise, both proactively and in response to failures. This is evident across a wide range of applications, from automated vehicles that must interpret complex, real-world environments to avoid collisions, to health-related devices, such as automated insulin delivery systems, where performance directly affects patient safety, to utility systems using AI to anticipate asset risk and prevent wildfires and other high-consequence hazards. Engagements like these underscore the growing sophistication and interconnectedness of modern technologies as they move from concept to market. As a result, clients rely on Exponent to evaluate failure modes, product performance, usability, and risk as they work to develop and deploy these systems quickly and responsibly. In these contexts, the question is no longer simply whether a system functions, but whether it can be trusted to perform reliably in high-stakes, real-world conditions, raising the bar for performance across not just expected conditions, but also in edge cases, novel conditions, and complex interactions that fall outside of prior experience. As clients accelerate development timelines, they increasingly rely on exponent not only for the systems themselves, but also for the underlying data, testing, and evaluation strategies that support them. This includes assessing training data and potential bias, evaluating system performance in both laboratory and in the wild environments, and supporting the reliability of adjacent infrastructure, such as battery energy storage systems and data centers. Across these efforts, the common threads are rising technical complexity and the increasing consequences of failure. This is where Exponent stands apart. Our teams combine expertise in engineering, data science, human factors, health, and the physical sciences to help clients navigate challenges that do not fit neatly within a single discipline. As these technologies continue to evolve, we expect demand for Exponent's independent, multidisciplinary expertise to continue to grow. I'll now turn the call over to Rich to provide more detail on our first quarter results as well as discuss our outlook for the second quarter and the full year.