Global Water Resources, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Global Water Resources, Inc. 2022 first 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 May 5, 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. Yesterday, we issued our first quarter 2022 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 first 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 statement. 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 see the section Risk Factors in 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. 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 2022. 2022 is off to a positive start 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 produce 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. For the three months ended March 31st, 2022, And even through today, we've 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 1,732 days. We've incurred only 2,500 in expenses in over five years on OSHA recordable related incidents, resulting in an extremely low loss ratio and experience modifier, or EMOD, of 0.63. As a reminder, an EMOD of one is considered to be industry average. So said another way, we are performing 37% better than the industry average, which results in lower actual costs and workman's comp insurance costs. We have only incurred one significant compliance event in 2,229 days, which is almost six years. These impressive track records clearly demonstrate our performance on our top mandate, customer and employee safety. We expanded our footprint in Q1 2022 by acquiring the assets of Rincon Water Company with a service area in Pinal County, Arizona, and Twin Hawks Utility with a service area in Pima County, Arizona. The acquisitions added a total of 91 connections and approximately 9.1 square miles of service area to our regional and growing footprints. On April 18, 2022, we announced that we signed a definitive agreement to acquire Farmers Water Company, a water utility with service area located in Pima County, Arizona, subject to customary closing conditions and Arizona Corporation Commission approval. The acquisition, when completed, would add approximately 3,300 active water service connections and approximately 21.5 square miles of service area. I now want to highlight customer growth, with total active connections growing by 9.7%, of which 7.1% was organic growth and 2.6% was primarily related to our acquisition of La Quinta Serena. When compared to the end of Q1 2021, this brings our total active connections to 55,012. 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 9,329 in Q1 of 2022, a 7.3% increase compared to 8,692 in Q1 of 2021. And this number is expected to remain strong throughout 2022 and forecasted to be approximately 36,000 in 2023, as most recent local real estate consensus projections indicate. We are also making excellent progress on the engineering, permitting, and construction of new service areas, which includes the Nikola Motor Corp manufacturing facility and the surrounding future inland port Arizona, amongst other areas in our large service territories. We believe that we will continue to see large-scale commercial and industrial growth in addition to our strong organic housing growth. It is also important to note that we've accelerated capital investments as required to prudently manage this type of growth, including the new areas requiring service. We invested $6.2 million in infrastructure projects during the quarter to continue to fulfill our ongoing commitment to strategic capital expansions. Those of you that 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 and 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 and acquisition activity in more detail 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.