Medpace Holdings, Inc.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to MedPace's first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. As a reminder, this call may be recorded. I would like to introduce your host for today's conference, Lauren Morris, MedPace's Director of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Good morning, and thank you for joining MedPace's first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Also on the call today is our CEO, August Trundle, 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 actual 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 replacement for the comparable gap measures, but we believe these measures help investors gain a more complete understanding of results. A reconciliation of such non-gap financial measures to the most directly comparable gap 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.medface.com. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to August Trundle.

Good day everyone. Revenue for the first quarter came in a bit lower than our internal projections and this was driven entirely by reimbursable costs coming in lower than anticipated. Reimbursable costs are difficult to model and it is unclear if this will impact our full year revenue numbers. Direct revenue drivers remain in line with plan and we have not altered our revenue guidance. Net awards came in below our internal projections. This was driven by increased cancellations, which were above our usual range of below 4.5%. By and large, the cancellations were not related to funding problems. The funding environment remains guarded but stable and improved from last year. We believe the current environment is strong enough for us to grow backlog nicely and generate accelerating revenue growth next year. RFP dollar value and quality remain stable to improving from Q4. Our profit margin was strong in the first quarter, and we have raised our full year guidance for EBITDA and therefore our implied margin for 2024. We are committed to delivering year-over-year margin improvement on a full year basis. This past year, we've increased our investment productivity through automation, process improvements, and optimizing geographic distribution of staff. Last quarter, we were anticipating approximately 10% employee growth to achieve our 2024 revenue, but now expect 5% to 7% employee growth this year, while maintaining direct revenue growth of roughly 15% as previously planned. With that, I'll turn the call over to Jesse for his comments on the quarter.