Global Water Resources, Inc.

greetings ladies and gentlemen and thank you for standing by welcome to the global water resource inc 2023 first 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 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 3, 2023, at 1 o'clock 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 2023 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 Operating Officer. Ron will summarize the key operational events of the quarter, Mike will review the financial results for the first quarter, and Chris will review strategic initiatives and Arizona Corporation Commission activity 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 statement. Accordingly, investors have 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-Q file 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 Ron.

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 2023. In short, 2023 is off to a great start and will be another incredible year for global water as we continue to advance our mission of growing and aggregating water and wastewater utilities so that our customers can realize the benefits of consolidation, regionalization, and environmental stewardship in the face of water scarcity, challenging regulations, and aging infrastructure. Total active service connections increased 8.7% to 59,809 at March 31, 2023, up from 55,012 from the 12 months prior. Included in these numbers is the acquisition of Farmer's Water Company that closed in February of 2023. The acquisition added a total of 3,335 active water service connections and approximately 21.5 square miles of certificate of convenience and necessity service area in the town of Salarita and the surrounding unincorporated area of Pima County. This acquisition has increased Global Water's total active water service connections in Pima County to nearly 5,000. We invested $6.5 million into infrastructure improvements and existing utilities to provide safe, reliable service and focused on increasing revenues, reducing expenses, and building rate base. And finally, with safety and compliance being our top mandate, we are very proud of our ongoing safety and compliance records. For the quarter, we had zero significant compliance events and no preventable OSHA reportable events, continuing our streaks from 2022 and prior. In fact, this means we have now surpassed six years and three months without a significant compliance event and have now gone over 1,040 days since our last preventable OSHA reportable event. I want to pause, highlight, and thank the team here at Global Water whose exceptional performance allows me to provide such wonderful updates for our company. Now I want to discuss organic customer growth. and what is going on in our core utilities. Despite the local and national slowdown, development and housing activity does continue in Metro Phoenix and in our service areas. In 2022, Metro Phoenix did experience a 23% reduction in single family home building permits over the same period of 2021. But this was still nearly 25,000 single family building permits. In Maricopa, our largest utilities, we also saw a slowdown, but the city still issued 1,157 permits in 2022. Now, year to date through April, we have seen 259 permits in Maricopa, which is more than the 245 permits we saw the entire last six months of last year. So we're seeing an uptick from last year's numbers. With that said on housing the booming economy and net in migration that Arizona continues to realize requires more and more places for people to live work and play. That is why large scale multifamily housing commercial and recreational projects continue to accelerate at an extremely high pace in Metro Phoenix and in our service areas. With a record number of multifamily units being constructed in the city of Maricopa. Additionally the industrial manufacturing boom also continues, with 2022 being the single best year for Arizona all time from an industrial economic development investment perspective. This seems to be continuing into 2023, and because of this, we continue to make excellent progress on the engineering, permitting, and construction of new service areas, including the inland port Arizona, where a Nikola Motor Corp facility is being expanded, and where Procter & Gamble recently acquired land. Based on all of these trends, we believe that in the years to come, we will continue to see considerable large-scale commercial multi-family housing and industrial growth in addition to the return of strong organic housing growth. Putting all these elements together, Global Water remains well positioned. I will now turn the call over to Mike for financial highlights. Thanks, Ron.