Everus Construction Group, Inc.

Hello everyone, thank you for joining us and welcome to the Everest Construction Group first quarter 2026 earnings call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. I will now hand the conference over to Paul Bartolai. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Everest Construction Group's first quarter 2026 results conference call. Leading the call today are CEO Jeff Thede and CFO Max Marcy. We issued a news release yesterday detailing our first quarter 2026 operational and financial results. This release and the accompanying presentation materials are 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 factors section of our latest filings with the SEC. Additionally, please note that you can find reconciliations with 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 remarks from Jeff, who will provide a review of our recent business performance and an update on the progress against our strategic priorities. Followed by Max, who will provide a more detailed financial update before wrapping up with guidance. 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 today

We are very pleased with our strong start to the year as we delivered another quarter of record revenues, maintained our strong execution, and made important progress against our strategic priorities, highlighted by the acquisition of SENM, our first transaction as a standalone public company. Turning to our quarterly highlights, beginning with slide four, we delivered first quarter revenues of $1 billion, up 25% from the prior year period, driven by growth across both our E&M and T&D segments. Our strong top line performance was complimented by another quarter of solid execution as first quarter EBITDA increased 44% from the prior year period and EBITDA margin was up 110 basis points. I'm extremely proud of our track record of strong project execution. It is a direct reflection of our commitment to our operational playbook and our team's focus on executing jobs safely on time and on budget. I would like to thank all of our team members across the organization. None of this would be possible without their hard work and dedication. Our backlog at the end of the first quarter was a record $3.7 billion, up 20% from the same period last year, with strong growth across both T&D and E&M. We continue to benefit from favorable end market trends across diverse markets, including data center, hospitality, high-tech, transmission, and undergrounding. I'm also excited to report that our backlog included the first award related to the new geography we recently entered in support of a new high-tech client. This is a perfect example of what we look for when we decide to move forward into a new geographic location. We see strong long-term opportunities in this region, have an exciting anchor project to build from, and are working alongside a general contractor with whom we have a successful long-term partnership. We are excited by the opportunities in this market and will look to repeat this type of growth as we focus on expanding our geographic reach through both acquisitions, and organic expansion. Our strong financial results reflect our discipline focus on our strategic priorities. And I'd like to highlight some of our recent progress on our key initiatives. As a reminder, our value creation framework is based on targeted commercial growth, operational excellence, and disciplined capital allocation. In terms of commercial growth, We have clearly benefited from strong end market trends, notably the data center sub-market. However, our growth isn't just data center work as we continue to benefit from our diversified end markets with solid trends in hospitality, high-tech and utility. I just mentioned the high-tech project award in our new geography, which is another example of our diversification and highlights our position in the attractive high-tech market. In addition to our organic growth, a key aspect of our acquisition of SCNM is their expertise in pharma and healthcare, which are areas we expect to be strong growth drivers for years to come. We remain committed to a diversified approach to growth and believe we are very well positioned to benefit from favorable trends across our end markets given our strong customer relationships, track record of execution, and our highly skilled workforce. Now turning to operational excellence, we continue to benefit from execution upside with our first quarter performance further building on our strong 2025 results. While the positive project closeouts get attention, it is our broader execution across all 40,000 plus projects we do in a year that enables us to deliver execution outside. This means it is just as important, if not more important, to avoid problem contracts as it is to deliver closeout benefits. We take great pride in our ability to exercise disciplined project selection and successful execution represented by the stability in our margins over time. There are a lot of factors that go into our ability to deliver consistent execution over the long term, such as our focus on our operational playbook and the dedication of our team. Another key factor driving our performance is our diversified and balanced approach to project size and type. As we have discussed in the past, we are evenly balanced across project sizes and by contract type, with about half of our projects being fixed price and about half being cost plus. We like to maintain this balance throughout our company. We often get asked, why don't we do more fixed price work to enable margin upside? When we have an opportunity to do a project on a fixed price basis that is in the area of our expertise with a customer we know, and where we are confident in the details of the contract, we will certainly look to pursue and win additional fixed price work. But in general, we like to maintain a balance between fixed price and cost plus because on large, complex projects, there could be more risk. Cost plus contracts, especially on very large, complex projects, help mitigate that risk. Also, as we have discussed in recent quarters, we are often being brought into project discussions very early before the ultimate scope and design of the project is fully known, which makes it difficult to bid at a fixed price. Being selected early on a project before design is completed provides a great opportunity to execute work at a high level and build relationships. We will always look to convert cost plus projects to fixed price when it makes sense, but generally, we will look to execute large complex projects on a cost plus basis. We have a long track record of delivering stable margins that increase modestly over time. We are always looking to deliver execution upside, but our primary focus is steady margin improvement and no surprises. End markets are strong right now, and perhaps there are opportunities to be more aggressive with customers in the near term to drive margins. That is not our objective. Our strategy is to build long-term relationships, win the next project and the next one, and deliver steady, modestly higher margins over time. This is what we have done successfully, and we remain confident in our ability to continue going forward. And finally, our focus on disciplined capital allocation. Clearly, the highlight so far this year has been our acquisition of SENM. Acquisitions are a critical part of our capital allocation and growth strategy, so we are very excited to have completed our first transaction as a standalone company. As we have detailed, our acquisition strategy is focused on expanding our geographic footprint, diversifying our business, and deepening our market presence. We think SENM checks all these boxes. SCNM is headquartered in North Carolina and expands our footprint in the very attractive Southeast region. This is a geography that is experiencing strong growth across a wide range of end markets that SCNM serves, including pharma, healthcare, and complex industrial. SCNM is a leading provider of mechanical, electrical, and plumbing services with about two thirds of its revenues coming from mechanical services. Additionally, the company generates more than 60% of its revenue from service work and renovation and retrofit work, which provides a stable and profitable revenue stream. SC&M is led by an experienced management team, and importantly, their current leaders, Zach Bynum, Patrick Rogers, and Alex Bynum, as well as other key members of their team, are remaining with the company. We are very excited to have SCNM as part of the Everest family. While it has only been a few weeks since the deal closed, integration is on track and they're fitting in nicely with our team. After the SCNM transaction, our pro forma net leverage as of April 2nd was approximately 0.5 times, which gives us ample flexibility to continue executing on our growth strategy. Our acquisition pipeline remains active. and we are hard at work looking for the next company to add to the Everest family. In summary, we are encouraged to see the strong momentum from 2025 carry into this year, and we are certainly very excited to get our first acquisition completed. Based on our strong start to the year and with the inclusion of SENM, we are pleased to be raising our 2026 guidance, which Max will discuss in more detail. we remain committed to our forever strategic priorities and remain highly confident in our ability to deliver on our long-term financial goals. With that, I'll turn it over to Max.