Global Water Resources, Inc.

Greetings, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Global Water Resources, Inc. 2025 year-end 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 March 5th, 2026 at 1 p.m. Eastern Time. I would now 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 year-end financial results by press release. a copy of which is available on our website at gwresources.com. Speaking today, we have 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 year-end, and Chris will review Arizona Corporation Commission activity. Ron, Mike and Chris will be available for questions at the end of today's 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 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 will now turn the call over to Ron.

Thank you, Kyle. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. we are pleased to report the results for year-end 2025. First, before jumping to normal operating highlights, I would like to get straight to the main points on 2025. This year included many large and successful initiatives that will materially grow rate base. In fact, including 2024 and 2025, the test year and post-test year for our Santa Cruz Water Company and Palo Verde Utilities Company rate case, we have increased the collective rate-baseable assets of our company by $70 million, or 59%. With respect to these initiatives, we've had a near-record year for capital investments that were critical to complete within 2025. These investments spanned everything from recommissioning the previously mothballed water reclamation facility in Pinal County, south of the city of Maricopa, which is part of the system we refer to as our Southwest Plant, to our capital improvements to stay in front of our fast-growing communities and the acquisition of the City of Tucson water systems. All of these investments inure to long-term value creation and also benefit customers and communities we have the privilege to serve. However, these investments increased expenses across the board, including much larger depreciation and a one-time asset write-off related to the Southwest plant, which all impact income and earnings per share. This regulatory lag is an unfortunate part of the historical test year environment here in Arizona, but it is necessary to make investments upfront and seek recovery thereafter. Additionally, certain company expenses, such as medical costs, continue to grow at an unprecedented pace. As I've been saying for many quarters now, we need new rates to keep up with all the investment and inflation that has occurred in our utilities. Chris will discuss these rate cases and our regulatory activity later in the call. In the meantime, I want to make it clear. 2026 is about working hard to control expenses, and we have reduced the pace of capital investments. Now, as a reminder of many other positive announcements from 2025 that underpin our goal of long-term value creation and our ability to deliver total returns to our shareholders in the years and decades to come. First, we announced that the Arizona governor signed meaningful water legislation known as Ag to Urban, which became law in 2025. We believe this 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. Second, full funding of the Highway 347 expansion connecting Interstate 10 and Metro Phoenix to the City of Maricopa and the entire western part of Pinal County was approved in 2025. 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 in summer 2026. This project should go a long way to ensure that the City of Maricopa continue to be one of the fastest growing communities in the country, and it helps meet our population projections of growing nearly 90% by 2040. As evidence to the potential of this population projection, on July 1st of 2025, the US Census Bureau released its population projections from 2024 data. And the City of Maricopa was once again in the top 10 of the fastest growing large municipalities in the country. coming in at number six. 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%. Below I will discuss connection growth rates and permit growth rates that have begun to slow. But it is important to keep this population growth that I just discussed in mind. as it is now more closely correlates with consumption and revenue growth based on the amount of multifamily housing and commercial growth that is occurring. Finally, if you think about everything just mentioned from rate-based accumulation to water and transportation that are the two fundamental elements of economic development, you can see that even more than ever, we have the foundation of sustainable growth for the years and decades to come. Now I'll provide a few operational highlights. Total active service connections increased 6.3% to 68,577 at December 31st, 2025 from the 12 months prior. In 2025, we achieved a 3.2% total active service connection growth rate, excluding the recent acquisition of the 7 Tucson water system. And specifically, We invested $67.3 million into infrastructure improvements and existing utilities to provide safe and reliable service. The majority of our investments in 2025 were post-test year projects in Santa Cruz Water Company and Palo Verde Utilities Company, our two largest utilities located in Pinal County, and are included 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 even further. The single-family dwelling unit market ended 2024 with approximately 27,156 building permits issued in the Phoenix Greater Metro area. In 2025, this market realized 21,815 building permits, and this did represent a nearly 20% decrease of 2024. In 2025, the Maricopa market realized 600 building permits, representing a 39% decrease from the same period in 2024. The 2025 permit data showing a bit of a pullback from the prior year is not surprising considering the uncertainty in the market today. While new permit activity has slowed in 2025, growth in the Phoenix MSA, particularly in the city of Maricopa, is reflected. and the company's 3.2% year-over-year organic increase in active connections. We believe the decline in permits is temporary, especially considering that mortgage rates continue to drop, and we remain well-positioned to benefit from the anticipated long-term growth of the Phoenix MSA. I will now turn the call over to Mike for financial highlights.