Global Water Resources, Inc.

Greetings, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Global Water Resources 2021 second quarter conference call. At this time, all participants are in 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 zero for operator assistance at any time. I would like to remind everyone that this call is being recorded on August 6, 2021, at 1 p.m. Eastern Time. I would now like to turn the conference over to Heather Krupa, Vice President and Controller. Please go ahead.

Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's call. Yesterday, we issued our 2021 second quarter financial results by press releases. 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, 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 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, Heather. Good morning everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We are very pleased to report the results for the second quarter of 2021. Before handing the call over to Mike to review financial highlights, I will review a few operational highlights for the quarter. 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 1,436 days. We have incurred only $2,500 in nearly five years on OSHA recordable related incidents. This results in extremely low loss ratio and experience modifier, or EMOD, which is 0.62 today. As a reminder, an EMOD of one is considered to be an industry average. So said another way, we are performing 38% better than the industry average, which results in lower actual costs and workers' insurance costs and most importantly, a safer work environment. Also, having incurred no significant compliance violations in the quarter, it has now been 1,951 days since our last significant compliance violation for 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 10.2% as compared to the end of Q2 2020, bringing total connections to 51,314. Development and housing activity remain very strong in Metro Phoenix and our service areas. As a reminder, single family dwelling permits for Metro Phoenix totaled 28,704 in 2020. and that was up 18% over 2019. According to local real estate consensus, single-family permits increased by another 40% in 2021 through Q2 year-over-year. Local real estate consensus projections also indicate that growth will continue throughout 2021 and 2022. Specific to our largest service area, the City of Maricopa, It has already issued 1,150 housing permits through June in 2021, a 183% increase over the same period the prior year. Beyond housing growth and our core existing utilities, as noted in our earnings release, which we also are making excellent progress on the engineering, permitting, and construction of new service areas, including the Nikola Motocorp project and the surrounding Inland Port, Arizona industrial project, amongst other areas within our large service areas. In fact, we began initial service to Nikola Motocorp in the quarter. 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. As such, we've invested $3.1 million on infrastructure projects to support our existing utilities as well as the continued growth. And this brings the year-to-date total capital investments to $6.4 million. Those of you who have been following our company for a while know this is what we have 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 growth throughout the large service areas in Pinal 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. I will now turn the call over to Mike for financial highlights.