Global Water Resources, Inc.

Greetings, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Global Water Resources Inc. 2021 fourth quarter conference call. At this time, all 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 here in the conference, please press star zero for operator assistance at any time. I'd like to remind everyone that this call is being recorded on March 10, 2022, at 1 p.m. Eastern Time. I would now like to turn the conference over to Joanne Ellsworth, Executive Vice President, Corporate Affairs. Please go ahead.

Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's call. Today, we issued our 2021 year-end 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. Ron will summarize the key operational events of the quarter and year end. Mike will review the financial results for the fourth quarter. and Chris will review strategic initiatives and business development for the quarter. Ron, Mike, and Chris 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 factors that may affect future results, please read the sections Risk Factors and Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Conditions and Results of Operations included within our latest Form 10-K filed with the SEC. Such filings are available at www.sec.gov. Certain non-GAAP measures may be included within today's call. For reconciliation of these measures to the comparable GAAP financial measures, please see the tables included in today's earnings release, which is available on our website. I will now turn the call over to Rod.

Thank you, Joanne. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We are very pleased to report the results for the quarter and year end of 2021. 2021 was another wonderful year for our company, and there are many highlights worth mentioning. But first, I want to thank all of our employees, partners, and shareholders for their efforts and support that together produced these results. Before handing the call over to Mike to review financial highlights, I will review a few operational highlights. In accordance with our top priority, we continue to perform at an extremely high level on employee safety and regulatory compliance. Throughout 2021, and even through today, 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 1,557 days. We have incurred only $2,500 in expenses over 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 one 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' compensation comp insurance costs. Also, having incurred no significant compliance violations in the quarter, it has now been 2,080 days since our last significant compliance violation, or almost six years. These impressive track records clearly demonstrate our performance on our top mandate, customer and employee safety. We expanded our footprint with the recent acquisition and successful integration of Las Quintas Serenas Water Company in November of 2021. The size and close proximity of Las Quintas Serenas to other utilities made it an ideal addition to our portfolio. Subsequent to year-end, we completed two smaller additional tuck-ins and acquisitions in Pinal and Pima counties. adding another 9.1 square miles of service area to our regional footprints. Including the CCNN from these acquisitions and other service area expansions granted by the ACC at the request of numerous landowners, this means we have added 15.5 square miles of service area to our growing regional footprints. 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 2020, bringing total active connections to 53,882. 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 approximately 31,000. or 8% compared to 28,704 in 2020, and this number is forecasted to increase to 35,000 and 36,000 in 2022 and 2023, respectively, as local real estate consensus projections indicate. Specific to our largest service area, the City of Maricopa issued 1,801 housing permits in 2021. a 19% increase over the same period in prior year. This increase is in addition to the 53% housing permit increase in the City of Maricopa in 2020 over 2019. So it's worth pausing to note what this data means. This data confirms we are getting more and more of the market share of new housing in the Metro Phoenix area based on affordability and availability of land and our utilities. So if you apply this expanding market share to the forecasted overall housing growth in Metro Phoenix that I previously mentioned, you can get a sense of what may occur in our utilities in the years to come. Beyond housing growth and our core existing utilities, as noted in our earnings release, we are also making excellent progress on the engineering, permitting, and construction of new service areas, including for the Nicola Motor Court project, which we began servicing last year, and the surrounding future inland port Arizona, amongst other areas within our large service territories. Based on the dozens of potential large-scale projects coming our way, there is really a transition occurring from mostly residential rooftops to significant large-scale commercial and industrial growth. It is also important to note that we have accelerated capital investments as required to prudently manage this type of growth, including the new areas requiring service. We invested $6.5 million on infrastructure projects during the quarter, bringing our year-to-date total to $18.3 million. 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 continues to accelerate, and in short, we are well positioned to benefit from rapid growth throughout our large service areas in Pinal County, Maricopa County, and now Pima County. Chris Krieger will discuss our in-process rate application, acquisition activity, and provide an update on ESG 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. Thanks, Ron.