Montrose Environmental Group, Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Montrose Environmental Group, Inc. First Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on Wednesday, May 8, 2024. I would now like to turn the conference over to Rodney Nazier, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Welcome to our first quarter 24 earnings call. Joining me on the call are BJ Manthri Purgata, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Alan Dix, Chief Financial Officer. During our discussion today, we will be referring to our earnings presentation, which is available on the Investors section of the website. Our earnings release is also available on the website. Moving to slide two, I would like to remind everyone that today's call will include forward-looking statements that are subject to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ in a material way due to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that should be considered in evaluating our operating performance and financial outlook. We refer you to our recent SEC filings, including our annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31st, 2023, which identify the principal risks and uncertainties that could affect any forward-looking statements, as well as future performance. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. In addition, we will be discussing or providing certain non-GAAP financial measures today, including consolidated adjusted EBITDA, adjusted net income, and adjusted net income per share. We provide these non-GAAP results for informational purposes, and they should not be considered in isolation from the most directly comparable GAAP measures. Please see the appendix to the earnings presentation or our earnings release for a discussion of why we believe these non-GAAP measures are useful to investors, certain limitations of these measures, and a reconciliation thereof to their most directly comparable GAAP measure. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Vijay, beginning on slide four.

Vijay Nadella- Thank you, Rodney, and welcome to all of you joining us today. I will provide you with business highlights Alan will provide you with financial highlights. We will then open it up to Q&A, and I will speak generally to the updated earnings presentation shared on our website. We have had and continue to have a strong start to 2024. Our results are the byproduct of that momentum, and I want to start by acknowledging the exceptional efforts of our colleagues around the world. I would also like to remind our listeners that while we discuss quarterly results, our business is best assessed on an annual basis. Demand for environmental solutions does not consistently follow quarterly patterns, and we manage our operations on an annual basis. With that, let me start by highlighting a few key themes related to our first quarter 2024 results. First, we are seeing secular tailwinds and strong performance across our segments and service lines, resulting in record first quarter revenues, and consolidated adjusted EBITDA. Second, our solid performance during the quarter is primarily attributable to strong organic growth. Our organic growth continues to be driven by cross-selling success and R&D successes. There were also a number of key regulatory updates from the US EPA that present significant opportunities for our business, and those updates have increased our confidence about our future. I'll provide additional details on that shortly. Third, M&A remains a key component of our growth strategy, and the cadence of opportunities has increased this year relative to our recent past. We are thrilled to welcome the teams from Epic, 2DOT, and ETA. The addition of these teams brings stellar talent to Montrose. They also increase our geographic and service capabilities. We have a robust acquisition pipeline and we expect continued M&A momentum in 2024. Our strong track record of successfully acquiring and integrating in complimentary businesses remains a bright spot for Montrose. Alan and I have committed to providing more details about Matrix, which are in our public presentations. Their margins have already improved significantly and the return on capital has been much stronger than we expected as the margin increases have occurred without revenue degradation. Matrix is just one example of many in terms of the value creation we're able to offer to our shareholders.