Medpace Holdings, Inc.

fourth quarter and full year 2024 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star 11 on your phone. If your question has been answered and you'd like to remove yourself from the queue, simply press star 11 again. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. And now I'd like to introduce your host for today's conference call, Lauren Morrison. Med Pace, Director of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Good morning, and thank you for joining Med Pace's fourth quarter and full year 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 a replacement for the 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.medbase.com. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to August Trendle.

Thank you, Lauren. Good day. Backlog cancellations in Q4 were within our normal range. Our book-to-bill ratio was 0.99, influenced by prior pipeline cancellations as well as the delay of some projects previously expected to enter backlogs. RFPs were down slightly in Q4 compared to Q3 as the overall business environment weakened somewhat, but remained up relative to Q4 2023. For the 2024 calendar year, backlog increased 3%. However, total awards and outstanding unperformed work, considering both backlog and pre-backlog awards, was down slightly. This reflects the high level of cancellations we experienced in 2024. All this provides a challenging backdrop to growth in 2025. Assuming cancellations remain in our historical range and the business environment does not continue to deteriorate, we remain hopeful that we can achieve growth in bookings with a book-to-bill ratio above 1.15 in the second half of the year. Revenue growth for 2025 is expected to be in the low signal digits. I will now turn things over to Jesse for comments on Q4.