Itron, Inc.

Good day. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to ITRON's second quarter 2024 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automatic message advising your hand is raised. Please note that today's conference is being recorded. I will now hand the conference over to your speaker host, Paul Vincent, Vice President of Investillations. Please go ahead.

Good morning and welcome to ITRON's second quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Tom Dietrich, ITRON's president and chief executive officer, and Joan Hooper, senior vice president and chief financial officer, will review ITRON's second quarter results and provide a general business update and outlook. Earlier today, the company issued a press release announcing its results. This release also includes details related to the conference call and webcast replay information. Accompanying today's call is a presentation that is available through the webcast and on our corporate website under the investor relations tab. Following prepared remarks, the call will open for questions using the process the operator described. Before Tom begins, a reminder that our earnings release and financial presentation include non-GAAP financial information that we believe enhances the overall understanding of our current and future performance. Reconciliations of differences between GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures are available in our earnings release and on our investor relations website. We will be making statements during this call that are forward-looking. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from these expectations because of factors that were presented in today's earnings release, and comments made during this conference call, as well as those presented in the Risk Factors section of our Form 10-K and other reports and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. All company comments, estimates, or forward-looking statements are made in a good faith attempt to provide appropriate insight to our current and future operating and financial environment. Materials discussed today, August 1, 2024, may materially change, and we do not undertake any duty to update any of our forward-looking statements. Now, please turn to page four of our presentation as our CEO, Tom Dietrich, begins his remarks.

Thank you, Paul. Good morning to everyone, and thank you for joining our call. Nitron's second quarter results reflect strong execution and operational discipline by the team. Revenue growth of 13% over the second quarter of last year marks the seventh consecutive quarter of growth with record quarterly revenue in our network solutions and outcomes segments, operating leverage supported by continued improvements in profitability and free cash flow against a backdrop of stable market demand. Financial highlights for the second quarter are shown on slide five and include revenue of $609 million, adjusted EBITDA of $77 million, non-GAAP earnings per share of $1.21, free cash flow of $45 million. Turning to slide six, our backlog at the end of second quarter was $4.1 billion. Bookings for the second quarter were $447 million. Although the second quarter book to bill is below our four year target of one to one, we currently have more than $1 billion of customer awards that are working through the appropriate processes to support our bookings discipline. These processes are progressing at a measured pace, resulting in larger pending bookings than typical. The timing of these bookings will likely be skewed to later in the second half of the year with our expectation for an annual book-to-bill ratio of one-to-one or better, assuming progress on the regulatory and governmental funding processes. The pipeline of new opportunities continues to be strong, driven by our infrastructure, environmental, and consumer megatrends. Our global customers face challenges and increasing complexity in power generation and distribution, which is driving an all of the above approach when it comes to technology deployment use cases. ITRON's great edge intelligence platform provides a forward thinking agile solution that addresses these critical needs. Examples of customer adoption of high value technology are highlighted by notable additions to our backlog during the second quarter. Rochester Public Utilities in Minnesota committed to upgrade from an existing drive-by system to our latest grid edge intelligence solution that will address numerous key challenges in their territory, including grid management for the increased adoption of renewable energy resources and electric vehicles, enhanced consumer service through real-time data access and personalized energy management tools, optimize grid operations and grid planning through edge compute for decision-making and asset management, Enhanced safety with automated remote disconnects and anomaly alerts. Deployment of a scalable communication network to support future needs. In Ohio, we will be working with First Energy to support their expansion of advanced metering infrastructure and continued moves towards First Energy's grid edge strategy for the deployment of more advanced use cases. Also during the quarter, Spire Energy committed to adding 100,000 IntelliGas endpoints to their active deployment of ITRON ultrasonic technology. This adds to the more than 700,000 installed endpoints and continues the ongoing conversion to ITRON technology. Now Joan will provide details of our second quarter and an update on our full year guidance.