Stantec Inc

Welcome to Stantec's fourth quarter and year-end 2022 earnings results webcast and conference call. Leading the call today are Gord Johnston, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Teresa Jang, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Stantec invites those dialing in to view the slide presentation, which is available in the Investors section at stantec.com. Today's call is also webcast. Please be advised that if you have dialed in while also viewing the webcast, you should mute your computer as there is a delay between the call and the webcast. All information provided during this conference call is subject to the forward-looking statement qualification set out on slide two, detailed in Stantec's management discussion and analysis and incorporated in full for the purposes of today's call. Unless otherwise noted, dollar amounts discussed in today's call are expressed in Canadian dollars and are generally rounded. With that, I'm pleased to turn the call over to Mr. Gore Johnston.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today.

We're very pleased to report record Q4 and full year 2022 adjusted earnings per share of $0.82 and $3.13 respectively. Our results reflect a solid execution of our multi-year strategy and clearly demonstrate the resilience, growth, and demand that we're seeing for our business. The outperformance of our guidance for the year was attributable to a very solid fourth quarter where we achieved double-digit organic net revenue growth above our expectations. For the full year, we generated an all-time high of $4.5 billion in net revenue. All of our regions and business units delivered organic net revenue growth in the high single to low double digit range, demonstrating the strength of our diversified business model. This also shows how well positioned we are to address the trends of increasing investments towards aging infrastructure, reshoring of domestic production, and climate change. Particularly notable, environmental services net revenue grew by almost 50%, primarily through acquisition but also from nearly 10% organic growth. And importantly, the top line increase of 23% was exceeded by bottom line growth of 29%. Looking at our results by region, both public and private investment continued to drive high activity levels in the US. In 2022, we grew US net revenue by 26% overall, with over 9% organic and 13% acquisition growth. Our work on large-scale water security projects in the Western U.S. helped drive double-digit organic growth in water. In buildings, we continue to see activity levels rebound with investments flowing into healthcare, civic, industrial, and the science and technology sectors. Energy and resources had strong organic growth with acceleration of activities related to renewable energy and mining projects, as well as reservoir and dam projects all related to the energy transition and energy security. We also delivered solid organic growth in infrastructure from work on projects in transportation as well as in industrial and residential land development activities. Our results reflect how well aligned our U.S. business is with the major trends and government funding sources available. Canada continued to perform very well with sustained year-over-year growth that exceeded our expectations. Net revenue was up almost 8% organically for the year. Similar to the US, both private and public spending was robust in Canada. We had solid performance in environmental services with ongoing demand for permitting work in archaeological services. Power transmission and distribution and energy transition work continued to spur growth in energy and resources. Our buildings group continued to drive growth with projects in healthcare and mixed-use commercial. and infrastructure captured opportunities in community development in Western Canada, bridge work across Canada, and in recovery efforts associated with the flooding in British Columbia in late 2021. In global, we generated over 35% net revenue growth, 11% organically, and 28% from acquisitions. Our industry-leading water business continues to be a significant pillar for us, capturing long-term framework agreements in the UK, Australia and New Zealand. We saw strong demand for our services in community development, in mining driven by strong pricing for metals, and in environmental services for field work. We are exceptionally pleased with each of our regions and business units, which are all benefiting from the themes that we've been discussing. Beyond our excellent financial results, I'd like to express how proud I am of our achievements and commitment to sustainability and enhancing our communities. We were recently provided with great recognition from Corporate Knights as we were ranked in their global 100 most sustainable corporations in the world. Out of nearly 7,000 corporations that Corporate Knights reviewed, we were ranked first among our peers and number seven overall. We've now been included in the Corporate Knights Global 100 for four consecutive years. I'll turn the call over now to Theresa to review our financial results in more detail.