Stantec Inc

Welcome to Stantec's second quarter 2023 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 investor 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 qualifications set out on slide two, detailed in Stantec's management's discussion and analysis, and incorporated in full for the purpose 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. Gord Johnston. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today.

Stantec has delivered another quarter of strong performance. We continue to execute on our strategy and drive excellent results with solid project execution across all areas of the business. We're delivering some of our highest organic growth rates ever with market fundamentals and demand for our services as strong as I've ever seen them in my 35-year career. It's the expertise and commitment of our employees that drive Stantec's ability to capitalize on the favorable market environment. As we continue to lead into our core value of putting people first, I'm very pleased that our recent employee survey shows that Stantec's employee engagement continues to strengthen. Corresponding with this is the continued downward trend for voluntary turnover, which is settling back to normalize pre-pandemic levels. Similar to the first quarter, Q2 was one of our busiest quarters ever for hiring, and we are now at over 28,000 employees strong. With a highly engaged workforce and robust outlook in our markets, I'm very excited about the second half of this year and beyond. And I'd also like to make special mention of two other highlights from the quarter. On June 30th, we continue to execute on our growth strategy as we close the acquisition of environmental systems design. And I'd like to welcome our new colleagues to the Stantec team. ESD brings their expertise in mission-critical facilities and data center design to Stantec, deepening our strength in smart building engineering capabilities that support the workplace of the future and the emerging trends of decarbonization, building repositioning, and adaptive reuse. Next, I want to say how proud I am of Santec's continued recognition as one of the best corporate citizens in Canada. This stems from our commitment to doing what's right and continuously advancing our environmental, social, and governance practices. We've been recognized by Corporate Knights for the 14th time being ranked first in the engineering and construction category and fifth overall for Canada's best 50 corporate citizens. Turning to our second quarter results, I'm very pleased to report that we've outperformed our expectations as we continue to capitalize on strong drivers while delivering disciplined project execution and operational efficiency. We grew our net revenue by 15% to $1.3 billion, with organic growth of 11%. Our teams across the entire business continue to deliver significant value with solid double digit growth in water, environmental services and energy and resources, and high single digit growth in infrastructure and buildings. We've now grown organic net revenue in each of our regions and business operating units for six consecutive quarters. We also continue to drive solid margins resulting in a 19% increase in adjusted EPS. On the strength of our performance to date and our expectations of continued favorable tailwinds, we've raised our guidance for net revenue and adjusted EPS for the year, and Teresa will speak more about this a little later on in the presentation. Looking at the U.S., our teams delivered net revenue growth of 18% in the quarter, with 12% organic growth. and we achieved organic growth in each business line. Water, buildings and energy and resources all delivered solid double digit organic growth. Water was driven by projects related to advanced manufacturing, drought resilience planning, water security and water reuse. And we're also seeing a ramp up of PFAS projects supporting water utilities as they proactively work towards solutions to the upcoming US EPA regulations. In buildings, Organic growth was driven by strong demand in healthcare, industrial, and advanced manufacturing. Work in the commercial and science and technology subsectors also helped drive strong results in buildings. And our energy and resources business continues to see significant activity related to power transmission and reservoir and dam projects. So our US business continues to perform extremely well. In Q2, Canada achieves 10% organic net revenue growth with double digit growth in environmental services, infrastructure, and water. Environmental work accelerated for permitting and archaeological services to support energy midstream and transportation projects, while significant bridge and highway work in British Columbia and major roadworks in Alberta were the primary drivers for the growth in infrastructure. In water, Growth was driven by major projects like the Iona Island Wastewater Treatment Plant in BC and the Basement Flooding Program in Toronto. Energy and resources continue to see growth, driven by work related to power transmission and distribution projects and renewable energy. Year-to-date, Canada has had higher growth than expected, and our teams have been able to capitalize on this dynamic. Our global operations also delivered another quarter of solid revenue growth. Net revenue increased 12%, with almost 11% from organic growth. Double-digit organic growth was achieved in water and energy and resources. Our leading global water team continues to deliver significant value, supporting long-term framework agreements and investment in water infrastructure in the UK, New Zealand, and Australia. Energy and resources increased their net revenue through work on the Corey Glass Pump Storage Project in the UK, as well as through mining activities for copper and other metals in Latin America, which will support the energy transition. And now, I'll turn the call over to Teresa to review our financial results in more detail.