L.B. Foster Company

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Q1, 2026 LB Foster earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising that your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Lisa Durante, Director of Financial Reporting and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to LB Foster's first quarter of 2026 earnings call. My name is Lisa Durante, the company's Director of Financial Reporting and Investor Relations. Our president and CEO, John Castle, and our chief financial officer, Bill Tallman, will be presenting our first quarter operating results, market outlook, and business developments this morning. We'll start the call with John providing his perspective on the company's first quarter performance. Bill will then review the company's first quarter financial results. John will provide perspective on market developments and company outlook in his closing comments. We will then open up the session for questions. Today's slide presentation, along with our earnings release and financial disclosures, were posted on our website this morning and can be accessed on our investor relations page at lbfoster.com. Our comments this morning will follow the slides in the earnings presentation. Some statements we are making are forward-looking and represent our current view of our markets and business today. These forward-looking statements reflect our opinions only as of the date of this presentation, and we undertake no obligation to revise or publicly release the results of any revisions to these statements in light of new information, except as required by securities laws. For more detailed risks, uncertainties, and assumptions relating to our forward-looking statements, please see the disclosures in our earnings release and presentations. We will also discuss non-GAAP financial metrics and encourage you to carefully read our disclosures and reconciliation tables provided within today's earnings release and presentation as you consider these metrics. So with that, let me turn the call over to John.

Thanks, Lisa, and hello, everybody. Thanks for joining us today for our first quarter earnings call. I'll begin with slide five, covering the key drivers for our results of the quarter. As you can see from earnings release, we carry positive momentum generated at the end of last year into the first quarter, delivering strong results across the board. The robust sales growth in Q1 was as expected, up 23.9% over last year. The growth was highest in the rail group, which was up 38.4% over last year, with all business units delivering significant improvements. Sales for infrastructure segment were also up 5.9%, driven by continuing demand on our precast concrete business. The strong sales growth translates into significant improvement in profitability, with EBITDA up 183% over last year. Improved profitability was realized within our margins, with gross profit up 27.5%, and gross margins improving 60 basis points to 21.2%. We also continue to leverage our operating structure, with SG&A as a percent of sales declining 240 basis points compared to last year. Our normal working capital cycle increased total debt $16.9 million during the quarter as we prepared to support our customers' construction season. However, our disciplined capital allocation approach reduced total debt $22.8 million compared to last year. Coupled with significant improvement in profitability in the quarter, our gross leverage was cut in half from 2.5 times last year to 1.2 times at quarter end. So, in summary, we're really pleased with a strong start to the year and remain optimistic about our prospects for continued progress in 2026. I'll cover the market outlook and our financial guidance for the year after Bill runs through the financial details for the quarter. Over to you, Bill.