BrightView Holdings, Inc.

Hello and welcome to Brightview Boarding Third Quarter 2024 Earnings School. My name is Ezra and I will be coordinating your call today. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. If you change your mind, please press star followed by two. I will now hand over to your host, Chris Cosco, Vice President, Finance and Investor Relations to begin. Chris, Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining Brightview's third quarter earnings call. Gail Asplen, Brightview's president and chief executive officer, and Brett Urban, chief financial officer, are on the call. I will now refer you to slide two of the presentation, which can also be found on our website, which contains our safe harbor disclaimer. Our presentation includes forward-looking statements subject to risks and uncertainties. In addition, during the call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please see our press release in 8K issued yesterday for reconciliation of these measures. With that, I will now turn the call over to Dale.

Thanks, Chris, and good morning, everyone. As I reflect on my time here, which is approaching the one-year mark, my conviction in the incredible opportunities, both near and long-term, continue to increase significantly. as we are on pace to deliver a breakout year. We are doing this by operating as a unified one Brightview and leveraging our size and scale to drive profitable growth. Both will lead to meaningful shareholder value creation. As I have said from day one, this begins with taking better care of our employees who will, in turn, provide better service to our customers. I am extremely grateful for our employees and their increased commitment for putting our customers at the center of everything we do. I will start on slide four by emphasizing our achievements and ongoing progress, along with strategic updates that will enhance our position to accomplish our objectives. First, we delivered a record Q3 and year-to-date EBITDA with margin improvement across all segments. We are reaffirming full year 24 revenue, EBITDA, and margin guidance, all while raising free cash flow for the second time this year. Brett will get into more details on the financials in a few minutes. I want to focus my comments on the tremendous progress being made towards One Bright View. As I have said from day one, our goal is to become the employer of choice, and this is the first step in our journey. Investing in our frontline employees will be the core to our future success. By making these investments, it will translate to improved employee turnover and customer retention. More on this in a minute. We have also streamlined our operating structure, integrated our business lines to promote cross-selling, and are enhancing our technology offering to ensure optimal market coverage and route density. By reducing legacy and efficiencies, it brings us closer to our customers. On slide five, I will discuss some of the initiatives we are taking to become the employer of choice and the impact it is having. As I said earlier, our objective is to build a winning culture. So our employees take greater pride in being part of the Brightview team and have unwavering confidence in the fact that they are our single most important asset. While this requires upfront investment, this will result in reduced employee turnover and increased customer retention and ultimately drive sustainable, profitable growth. To remind you of a few examples of these investments, we are refreshing our fleet of trucks and mowers. And in March, we launched the boost program to ensure our employees are not only safe, but comfortable, enabling them to better service our customers. While this is a snapshot of a few of the changes underway, we are already seeing positive momentum in employee turnover. For instance, the past seven months, the turnover rate for our frontline employees has improved an impressive 1,900 basis points, including six consecutive monthly improvements. This shows unequivocally that if we take care of our employees, they'll become more engaged and more likely to stay. The first step in our One Bright View journey has always been employees first, as they are the key to providing best-in-class service. On slide six, similar to investing in our employees, the goal to significantly improve customer retention requires a commitment to provide best-in-class service levels. This will translate to the momentum towards growth. as you can see on the chart we have seen a steady increase in retention rate specifically over my first nine months we have delivered 150 basis points improvement with significant opportunity remaining while these trends may not be linear as we continue to transform brightview i am confident that we'll experience incremental benefit as a more consistent employee base delivers efficient collaborative, and unified service to our customers. Continued progress on employee turnover and customer retention will fundamentally change the way Brightview operates and have the greatest impact to delivering long-term profitable growth. On slide seven, I'll further highlight the benefit of operating as a unified one Brightview. As we have broken down silos, we are gaining traction in cross-selling Brightview's full suite of services. As an example, we recently concluded a $4 million development project in the Southwest on behalf of a prominent corporate client and converted this relationship into a $400,000 annual reoccurring maintenance contract. This is one example of the significant underleveraged opportunity that will create meaningful future growth. Additionally, As we seek to optimize our total addressable market, we have equipped our branches with a prospecting tool that enables more deliberate customer targeting. The combination of incorporating our sales force into our branches and leveraging enhanced technology is expected to improve route density, reduce windshield time, and improve margins. As you can see on the map on the right, the legacy sales strategy was to win new accounts with limited consideration for customer location relative to existing accounts. In turn, our crew spent too much wasted time behind the windshield instead of servicing our customers. The increased route density, funded with increased cross-selling between the development and maintenance business, will drive sustainable long-term profitable growth and margin expansion. Before turning the call over to Brett to discuss our financial results for the quarter, I'll remind everyone that the investments we are making in our employees today are crucial to positioning us for sustainable success over the long term. As the nation's largest provider in our industry, there is tremendous opportunity to leverage our size and scale and capitalize on cross-selling opportunities to unlock growth in our business and gain market share. As I visit our branches, it's refreshing to see a whole new mindset and sense of teamwork across the integrated business. This gives me an added level of confidence that the work we have done in strengthening our culture will translate to continued improvement in employee turnover and client retention while delivering best-in-class services to our customers. While there's more work to be done, we have successfully taken the initial steps to instill a more disciplined strategy to the customers we approach and the pride we take in servicing them. We are increasingly confident in our ability to capitalize on the significant opportunities that lie ahead. A physical 2024 is on track to be a breakthrough year. Our enthusiasm is truly unbridled as we think about the long term when we reflect on our earnings power, cash flows, and value we can deliver to our employees, customers, and shareholders. With that, I'll turn it over to Brett, who will discuss our strong results in our financial guidance. Brett?