Global Water Resources, Inc.

Greetings, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Global Water Resources, Inc. 2025 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 0 for operator assistance at any time. I would like to remind everyone that this call is being recorded on August 14, 2025 at 1 p.m. Eastern Time. I would like to turn the conference over to Kyle Upchurch. Controller, please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us on today's call. Yesterday, we issued our 2025 second 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 year, Mike will review the financial results for the second quarter, and Chris will review strategic initiatives and Arizona Corporation Commission activity. Ron, Mike, and Chris will be available for questions at the end of the call. Before we begin, I'd 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 which reflect management's view 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 risk factors and MD&A sections of our periodic SEC filings. Additionally, certain non-GAAP measures may be included within today's call. For a reconciliation of those measures to the comparable GAAP measures please see the tables included in yesterday's earnings release, which is available on our website. I'll now turn the call over to Ron.

Thank you, Kyle. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We are very pleased to report the results for the second quarter of 2025. First, before jumping to normal operating highlights, I would like to start by attempting to capture the significance of numerous recent announcements that underpin our goal of long-term value creation and our ability to deliver strong total returns to our shareholders in the years and decades to come. First, subsequent to the quarter, we closed the Tucson acquisition, which consisted of seven separate public water systems, adding approximately 2,200 connections and approximately 7.7 million in rate base at a multiple of only 1.05 times that rate base. This is beyond an attractive price. It is immediately accretive from a share price perspective, considering our peer groups trade by our estimates between 1.5 to 2 times rate base. We expect the systems to generate around $1.5 million in annual revenue. Until such time, we can consolidate these systems into the rest of our Saguaro rate division. which is in Pima County, to ensure that all those utilities are captured in that regional rate plan, earning their full authorized rate of return. Second, we recently announced that the Arizona governor has signed meaningful water legislation known as Ag to Urban. What we believe will result in many benefits that will be applicable for global water in our service areas, improving aquifer sustainability while creating a new groundwater supply to support additional growth. Based on Global Water's established service areas created through buying and building utilities in the path of growth, our regional areas coincide with land that has considerable historical farming operations just outside densely populated Metro Phoenix. Thus, we believe the new law will drive even more growth to our service areas. Third, as announced in the quarter, Full funding of the Highway 347 expansion connecting Interstate 10 and Metro Phoenix to the City of Maricopa was approved. As the stakeholders had already begun engineering on certain long-term elements of the 13-mile road widening project, it is estimated that the construction will begin as soon as fiscal year 2026. This project should go a long way to ensure the City of Maricopa will continue to be one of the fastest-growing communities in the country and meet its population projections of growing nearly 90% by 2040. As evidence to the potential of this population projection, on July 1st, the U.S. Census Bureau released its population projections from 2024, and the City of Maricopa was once again in the top 10 fastest-growing large municipalities in the country, coming in at number 6. Even more telling was that population growth in 2024 was even stronger than 2023, as the city realized 7.4% growth compared to 7.1% the year prior. Below, I will discuss connection growth rates and permit growth rates that have begun to slow. But it's important to keep population growth in mind. It is now more closely correlates with consumption and revenue growth based on the amount of multifamily housing and commercial growth that is occurring. Beyond these long-term wins, we're also executing our capital investment and rate case strategies to drive near-term earnings growth, which are moving along as planned with an expectation of a fair outcome in mid-2026. Chris will provide more detail on the rate case later on the call. So finally, if you think about everything just mentioned, from rate-based accumulation and new rates to water and transportation that are the two fundamental elements of economic development, As you can see, even more than ever, we have the foundation of sustainable, above-average growth for years and decades to come. I will now provide a few operational highlights. Total active service connections increased 3.8% to 65,639 as of June 30, 2025, from the 12 months prior. In Q2, we achieved an annualized 3.5% total active service connection growth rate. Year to date, we've invested $35.4 million into infrastructure improvements in our existing utilities to provide safe and reliable service. A majority of our planned investments in 2025 relate to our post-test year projects in Santa Cruz Water Company and Palo Verde Utilities Company, our two largest utilities located in Pinal County, for planned inclusion in our already filed 2024 test year rate application. Now I want to discuss organic customer growth and what is going on in our core utilities a bit further. The single-family dwelling unit market ended 2024 with approximately 27,156 building permits issued in the Phoenix Greater Metropolitan Statistical Area. For Q2 2025, this market realized 5,929 building permits. This represents a 14% decrease from Q2 of 2024. In 2024, the City of Maricopa issued 986 single-family building permits. For Q2 of 2025, this Maricopa market released 177 building permits, representing a 24% decrease from the same period in 2024. So the 2025 permit data shows a bit of a pullback from prior year, and this is not surprising considering the uncertainty around tariffs, and other macroeconomic drivers, most notably the stubborn interest rates. We believe this is temporary, and as these things continue to cool, there are very strong drivers for our normal growth rate to continue or even pick up. As I mentioned in our last earnings release, yes, high inflation and other cost drivers have caught up with us and are impacting our earnings growth. However, it's important to recognize that 2024 was a test year for our largest utilities whose last test year was over five years ago in 2019. We need new rates to address all the cost increases over that time and the significant investments we have made, including in 2025. As you can see from related announcements, we have an additional $6.5 million in annual rate increase proposed and under consideration at the ACC. I will now turn the call over to Mike for financial highlights.