Global Water Resources, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Global Water Resources Incorporated 2021 first quarter conference call. At this time, participants are in a listen only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. Instructions will be provided at that time for you to queue up for questions. If anyone has any difficulties hearing the conference, please press star then zero for operator assistance at any time. I would like to remind everyone that this call is being recorded on May 6, 2021, at 1 p.m. Eastern Time. I would now like to turn the conference over to Joanne Ellsworth, Vice President, Corporate and Regulatory Affairs. Please go ahead.

Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's call. Yesterday, we issued our 2021 first quarter financial results by press release, a copy of which is available on our website at www.gwresources.com. Speaking today is Ron Fleming, President and Chief Executive Officer, Mike Liebman, Chief Financial Officer, and Chris Krieger, Chief Strategy Officer. Mr. Fleming will summarize the key operational events of the quarter. Mr. Liebman will review the financial results for the quarter. and Mr. Krieger will review strategic initiatives and business development for the quarter. Mr. Fleming, Mr. Liebman, and Mr. Krieger will be available for questions at the end of the call. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that certain information presented today may include forward-looking statements. Such statements reflect the company's current expectations, estimates, projections, and assumptions regarding future events. These forward-looking statements involve a number of assumptions, risks, uncertainties, estimates, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Accordingly, investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements which reflect management's views as of the date hereof and are not guarantees of future performance. For additional information regarding risk factors that may affect future results, please read the sections Risk Factors and Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations, included within our latest Form 10-Q filed with the SEC. Such filings are available at www.sec.gov. Certain non-GAAP measures may be included within today's call. For a reconciliation of these measures to the comparable GAAP financial measures, please see the tables included in yesterday's earnings release, which is available on our website. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Ron Fleming.

Thank you, Joanne. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We are very pleased to report the results for the first quarter of 2021. Before handing the call over to Mike to review financial highlights, I will review a few operational highlights. Operational highlights for the quarter include, in accordance with our top priority, we continue to perform at an extremely high level on employee safety and regulatory compliance non-recordable incidents. Within the quarter, we experienced no recordable events, injuries, or expenses related to employee safety. And as of today, our staff has only experienced two minor OSHA recordable incidents in 1,345 days. We have incurred only $2,500 in nearly five years on OSHA recordable-related incidents, resulting in an extremely low loss ratio and experience modifier, or EMOD, of 0.62. As a reminder, an EMOD of 1 is considered to be industry average. So, said another way, we are performing 38% better than the industry average, which results in lower actual costs and workers' comp insurance costs. Also, having incurred no significant compliance violations in the quarter, there's now been 1,868 days since our last significant compliance violation, or over five years. These impressive track records clearly demonstrate our performance on our top mandate customer and employee safety. I now want to highlight customer growth. On the organic growth front, total active service connections increased 8.5% as compared to the end of Q1 2020, bringing total connections to 50,162. Development and housing activity remained very strong in Metro Phoenix and our service areas. As a reminder, single-family dwelling permits for Metro Phoenix totaled 28,704 up 18% in 2020. According to local real estate consensus, single-family permits increased by another 28% in Q1 2021 year-over-year. Local real estate consensus projections indicate that growth will continue throughout 2021 and 2022. Specific to our largest service area, the City of Maricopa, has already issued 825 housing permits through April of 2021, a 215% increase over the same period the prior year. Beyond housing growth and our core existing utilities, as noted in our earnings release, we also are making excellent progress on our engineering, permitting, and construction of new service areas, including for the Nicola Mordecorp project and the surrounding Inland Port Arizona project. amongst other areas within our large service areas. It is important to note that we have accelerated capital investments as required to prudently manage this type of growth, including the new areas requiring service. Those of you that have been following our company for a while know this is what we've been preparing for and speaking about as a company really since the beginning. This was the strategy to buy or build utilities in the path of growth along growth corridors. This is, again, accelerating, and in short, we are well positioned to benefit from rapid growth throughout our large service areas in Pinal County and Maricopa County. Chris Krieger will discuss acquisitions and our in-process rate application later in the call. Putting all these elements together, Global Water is well positioned from an operational, safety, compliance, and financial perspective with notable growth in the years to come. And we'll now turn the call over to Mike for financial highlights.