Everus Construction Group, Inc.

Thank you for standing by. My name is Ian, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Everest Q1 2025 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, again, press star one. Thank you. I will now turn a call over to Paul Bartoli, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Everest Construction Group's first quarter 2025 results conference call. Leading the call today are CEO Jeff Seed and CFO Max Marcy. We issued a news release yesterday detailing our first quarter 2025 operational and financial results. This release, together with the accompanying presentation materials, are publicly available on our website at investors.everest.com. I would like to remind you that management's commentary and responses to questions on today's conference call may include forward-looking statements, which by their nature are uncertain and outside of the company's control. Although these forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs, actual results could differ materially. For a discussion of some of the factors that could cause actual results to differ, please refer to the risk factor section of our latest filings with the SEC. Additionally, please note that you can find reconciliations of historical non-GAAP financial measures in the news release issued yesterday and in the appendix of today's presentation. Today's call will begin with prepared marks from Jeff, who will provide a review of our recent business performance, followed by a financial update from Max. At the conclusion of these prepared remarks, we will open the line for your questions. With that, I'll turn the call over to Jeff.

Thank you, Paul, and good morning to everyone joining us on the call today. We are very excited to be here with you all today as we report our first quarter 2025 results. During my prepared remarks, I will provide a brief overview of our strong first quarter results, give an update on our end market trends, and highlight some of our key accomplishments against our strategic priorities. Beginning with slide four, we are off to a strong start in 2025 with our first quarter results. Our performance reflects the drive and determination of our team, the ongoing favorable trends in key markets, and our continued focus on our forever strategy. Our first quarter revenue increased 32% driven by continued strength in our electrical and mechanical segment. The diversification of our business was on full display as we generated revenue growth across each of our E&M end markets, highlighted by the continued strength in key submarkets, including our data center business. While revenues declined slightly in our transmission and distribution segment, as we faced some weather-related delays in certain markets, our T&D project execution was solid enabling us to grow our T&D segment EBITDA during the quarter, even with the revenue decline. Our first quarter EBITDA increased 32% with margins consistent to last year, even with the incremental standalone operating costs, highlighting our strong project execution during the quarter and our ability to operate effectively, even during uneven market environments. The tariff and trade uncertainties are creating very dynamic operating conditions but we are well equipped to manage through these challenges. During times like these, it is critical we remain disciplined and stick to our Everest playbook, which has helped us successfully execute during economic volatility in the past, such as during the COVID pandemic. In these market environments, we increase our dialogue with our customers. We look to early material procurement and lock in pricing when possible. And we ensure our contracts include terms that enable us to successfully execute on our commitments to our customers. We have processes in place to manage through these conditions, and we are confident that we will successfully navigate the uncertainties and continue to safely and efficiently execute for our clients. We are very pleased to see momentum from favorable secular demand trends continuing into 2025. Our total backlog at the end of the first quarter was up 10% from year end and up 41% from the prior year period, with growth in both E&M and T&D. Our strong backlog growth is a direct reflection of our track record of successful execution and the trust that our customers place in Everest to complete jobs on time, on budget, and consistent with the exacting specification that our partners demand. Importantly, our E&M backlog, which increased 46% from the prior year period, was driven by growth in several of our key submarkets, including data center, manufacturing, government, and hospitality. This broad strength highlights the diversity in our business and the attractive industry fundamentals across many of our key end markets. While there will likely continue to be quarter-to-quarter fluctuations, We have a demonstrated track record of successfully growing our backlog over time, which we highlight on the bottom of slide four. We are confident we can continue this trend moving forward. While there is a lot of macro uncertainty in the broader economy, we remain encouraged by the trends in several of our key end markets, and we are well positioned to benefit from several favorable sector drivers. Our positioning within these markets is a critical aspect of our strategy, ensuring we are identifying the next growth drivers and favorable market opportunities and ensuring we have the people and resources in place to take advantage of these opportunities. We have successfully done this throughout our history, and we are continually evaluating our markets to make sure we are positioned for growth. As we look across our business, we continue to see favorable trends in key submarkets, including data center, hospitality, and high-tech reshoring. As it relates to data center work, our message has not really changed. While there has been a lot of noise in the market, and there will likely continue to be more going forward, we continue to see very strong demand trends and have not seen any meaningful change in our customers' plans. We benefit from our diverse geographic footprint and our strong team of operating companies in key markets, which put us in a favorable position to take advantage of the favorable trends in the data center market. The demand environment is robust, and we remain well positioned as one of the small handful of service providers with the track record, expertise, and people to successfully execute on these complex jobs. As we have discussed, we are coming off a very strong few years from our hospitality business. However, we continue to see additional opportunities for growth. Through the first quarter, we continue to secure projects with a number of additional exciting opportunities in Las Vegas. We continue to be confident in our hospitality business. High-tech reshoring has been a strong submarket for Everest, and we are happy to see that momentum continue into 2025. During the first quarter, we continue to see favorable trends in the high-tech submarket. While we continue to closely monitor the macro landscape, we are optimistic about our opportunities to continue growing backlog based on the demand trends in our markets, our deep customer relationships, our diverse end market exposure, and our highly skilled team across the country. Now, let me shift gears a bit and provide an update on our forever strategy. and some of our key accomplishments during the quarter. As a quick reminder, our Forever Strategy, which is detailed on slide six of today's presentation, is focused on attracting, retaining, and training our most critical asset, our employees, creating value for our customers and shareholders, delivering safe and high-quality execution, and maintaining and growing our customer relationships. During the first quarter, we continued our focus on attracting and retaining key talent. We were able to add to our skilled labor headcount during the quarter, which is critical to supporting our long-term growth objectives. We had another quarter of strong execution, which positively impacted results during the quarter. As I already discussed, leveraging our talented workforce and long-term customer relationships is critical to execution during uneven market environments such as the one we are witnessing now. So we were extremely pleased with our positive execution during the quarter. Our forever framework forms the basis for everything we do and is designed to deliver value creation through sustained profitable growth, operational excellence, and disciplined capital allocation. Our value creation framework is highlighted on slide seven in today's presentation. I've already discussed our progress on our growth and execution initiatives, so I'd like to now highlight some of our accomplishments as it relates to our discipline capital allocation framework. As we have discussed since our spin, a key priority of our strategy is to step up our capital spending to take advantage of the attractive organic growth opportunities we see in our markets. Max will provide more detail. But a significant portion of the increase in our CapEx during the first quarter was to purchase a new prefabrication facility in Kansas City. Having a robust network of prefab facilities is critical in our business, so we are excited by the progress of our newest facility. We are consolidating several facilities into one new facility while expanding the total footprint by approximately 128,000 square feet. Another key aspect of our capital allocation strategy is strategic M&A. So, we were very excited about our recent announcement that we added Tim Snevice to our team as Vice President of Corporate Development and Strategy. Tim will play a critical role in our growth strategy, and he is uniquely positioned to help build out our M&A capabilities in partnership with our established internal team. Tim brings over 20 years of experience in middle market construction services investment banking. Tim has deep industry knowledge, relationships, and transaction experience with a particular focus on both the E&M and T&D markets. We are thrilled to have Tim on the team and look forward to his contribution to our forever strategy. As we highlight on slide eight of today's presentation, We expect our forever strategy to drive us toward a long-term financial framework of organic revenue growth in a range of 5% to 7% compound annual growth, which combined with our disciplined focus on operational excellence should drive EBITDA growth of 7% to 9% on a compound annual basis. We are encouraged by the strong start to the year. favorable backlog trends, and high performance of our team, and we are confident we will remain on track to execute on our long-term financial targets, driving value for our shareholders. With that, I'll turn it over to Max.