Medpace Holdings, Inc.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the MedPace first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in the listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session, and instructions will follow at this time. As a reminder, this call may be recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's conference call, Lauren Morris, MedPace's Director of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Good morning, and thank you for joining MedPace's first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Also on the call today is our CEO, August Trendle, our President, Jesse Geiger, and our CFO, Kevin Brady. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that our remarks and responses to your questions during this teleconference may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements involve inherent assumptions with known and unknown risks and uncertainties as well as other important factors that could cause accurate results to differ materially from our current expectations. These factors are discussed in our Form 10-K and other filings with the SEC. Please note that we assume no obligation to update forward-looking statements even if estimates change. Accordingly, you should not rely on any of today's forward-looking statements as representing our views as of any date after today. During this call, we will also be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP measures are not superior to or at least not more than comparable GAAP measures, but we believe these measures help investors gain a more complete understanding of results. A reconciliation of such non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is available in the earnings press release and earnings call presentation slides provided in connection with today's call. The slides are available in the investor relations section of our website at investor.medpace.com. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to August Trendle.

Thank you, Lauren. The business environment improved in Q1 with RFP flow up on a sequential and year-over-year basis. The total dollar value of pending RFPs also improved significantly. Although award notifications were down on the quarter, They showed sequential improvement January to February to March, and have improved even further to a relatively strong level in the first three weeks of April. Total pipeline cancellations were down over 50% on a sequential basis in Q1. The trends at this point look favorable, and we are cautiously optimistic about our backlog build toward 2024. We are raising 2023 guidance in line with our strong financial performance in Q1 and greater visibility we now have into the full year results. Jesse and Kevin will now review Q1 financial results in detail and our updated 2023 guidance.