Tutor Perini Corporation

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Tutor Perini Corporation second quarter 2024 earnings conference call. My name is Latonya and I will be your coordinator for today. Our participants are currently in a listen only mode. Following management's prepared remarks, we will be opening the call for question and answer session. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance at that time, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host for today, Mr. Jorge Casado, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please proceed.

Hello, everyone, and thank you for your time and participation today. With us on the call are Ronald Tudor, Chairman and CEO, Gary Smalley, President, and Ryan Soroka, Senior Vice President and CFO. Before we discuss our results, I will remind everyone that during this call, we will be making forward-looking statements, which are based on management's current assessment of existing trends and information. There is an inherent risk that our actual results could differ materially. You can find our disclosures about risk factors that could potentially contribute to such differences in our Form 10-K, which we filed on February 28, 2024, and in our Form 10-Q that we are filing today. The company assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements, whether due to new information, future events, or otherwise, other than as required by law. Thank you. And with that, I will turn the call over to Ronald Tudor.

Thanks, Jorge. Good afternoon and thank you all for joining us. Our second quarter results were highlighted by 10% consolidated revenue growth, improved earnings with continued strong profitability for the civil segment, which reported a segment operating margin of 13.8%, with backlog growth of 4% compared to the first quarter of 2024, and 53 million of operating cash flow. Year-to-date, our operating cash flow of 151 million was the second highest result of any six-month period since the 2008 merger with Tudor Saliba. Our second quarter earnings were negatively impacted by 19 cents a share due to an increase in share-based compensation expense compared to the second quarter last year primarily due to the substantial increase in our stock price during the second quarter of 2024, which affected the fair value of liability classified awards, and secondarily by an unfavorable project adjustment due to the fact I settled two completed highway projects in the Northeast, which impacted earnings in the settlement by 17 cents a share. Our total debt declined by $223 million or 25% since the end of last year, and we continue to focus on further reducing our debt over the balance of the year and next. Ryan will review all the financial details in a moment. We have continued to make substantial progress in resolving various matters which contributed to strong operating cash that we generated in the second quarter of 2024. And as we've stated previously, I would expect to resolve most of the remaining legacy disputes and collect substantial amounts of associated cash during the latter part of this year and the first part of next year, which should help drive operating cash flow for both years to be a strong, if not better than last year's record cash performance. Our backlog was $10.4 billion at the end of the second quarter of 2024. The most significant new awards and contract adjustments in the second quarter included the company's proportionate share of its contract value for the $1.3 billion Connecticut River Replacement Bridge project for Amtrak, which we received in joint venture with ONG Industries, a longtime Tudor Perini partner. The $216 million airport terminal connector project at Fort Lauderdale International Airport. $144 million of additional funding for certain mass transit projects in California. The $136 million I-64 bridge and highway project in the Midwest Berlunda construction. $127 million electrical project in New York at the Hillview Reservoir. the $74 million child development center at Anderson Air Force Base in Guam for black construction, and $71 million of additional funding for various healthcare projects in California with Rudolph and Slett. As we have discussed on previous calls, we have been and continue to be in a very busy period of significant bidding activity with limited competition for many of these large megaproject opportunities, as I've mentioned in the past, and that has been consistent. This limited competition is the result of a supply-demand imbalance, as frankly, there are so many major project opportunities and a small pool of contractors with both the physical and financial resources to pre-qualify, successfully bid, bond, and execute these projects. This will continue to bode extremely well for Tudor Perini, both in terms of the probabilities of winning new projects as well as the encompassed margin potential. Last week, we announced that our public-private partnership consortium, Elevate Englewood Partners, in which we are serving as the prime CONSTRUCTION CONTRACTOR HAS BEEN SELECTED AS THE BEST VALUE PROPOSAL FOR THE ENGLEWOOD TRANSIT CONNECTOR PROJECT IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. WE'RE IN ACTIVE DISCUSSIONS AND NEGOTIATION WITH THE OWNER REGARDING THE PROJECT'S PRICING AND CONTRACTUAL TERMS AND THE CITY OF ENGLEWOOD ANTICIPATES THAT ITS CITY COUNCIL WILL BE CONSIDERING AN AWARD FOR THE PROJECT THIS FALL. SOME OF OUR OTHER SIGNIFICANT NEAR TERM PROSPECTS INCLUDE THE track South Tooth Bridges replacement project that we offered our proposal last week. The $6 billion dry dock at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in the state of Washington that we've broken up into a number of smaller jobs with bidding commencing in the mid to latter part of 2025. A multimillion dollar Manhattan jail facility, which we will tender our proposal At by the end of August or this month. The $3.8 billion Southeast Gateway Line project in Southern California. Which proposals and qualifications will be out in 2025? The $2 billion mid down bus terminal replacement project in New York bidding in December. The $2 billion Sites Reservoir project in Northern California, which likely will bid in two to three parts later this year and early next year. The $1.8 billion South Jersey Light Rail Glassboro-Camden line in New Jersey, which will be proposed next year. The $1.5 billion Newark Airtrain replacement project bidding in September, which I'll remind you we were the low bidder when it initially bid some two years ago. The $800 million Northern Bus Garage in New Jersey bidding next year. The $750 million Manhattan Tunnel project in New York bidding in October. And finally, the $500 million Raritan Bridge replacement project in New Jersey also bidding in October, and again, I'll remind you for which we were previously the low bidder. Because of these and very other significant project opportunities, we continue to anticipate that our backlog will grow substantially later this year and in 2025 as we bid and capture our share of the available work. Our previous record backlog was 11.6 billion back in the first quarter of 2019. I would expect that that backlog will climb to levels significantly beyond that prior record over the next six months. Based on our results to date and our assessment of the current market and business outlook, we are reaffirming our 2024 EPS guidance and still expect EPS to be in the range of $0.85 to $1.10. We anticipate strong earnings in the second half of this year due to the timing of large project activities as well as typical business seasonality. We also expect stronger earnings next year and in 2026 even greater. Thank you. And with that, I turn the call over to Ryan to review the financial results. Thank you, Ron.