Badger Infrastructure Solutions Ltd.

telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising you your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your speaker today, Lisa Ararte, Director of Investor Relations and Financial Planning. Ma'am, please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our second quarter 2024 earnings call. My name is Lisa Ararte, Badgers Director of Investor Relations and Financial Planning. Joining me on the call this morning are Badger's President and CEO Rob Blackadar and our CFO Rob Dawson. Badger's 2024 second quarter earnings release, MD&A, and financial statements were released after markets closed yesterday and are available in the investor section on Badger's website and on CDAR. We are required to note that some of the statements made today may contain forward-looking information In fact, all statements made today which are not statements of historical fact are considered to be forward-looking statements. We make these forward-looking statements based on certain assumptions that we consider to be reasonable. However, forward-looking statements are always subject to certain risks and uncertainties and undue reliance should not be placed on them as actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied. For more information about material assumptions, risks, and uncertainties that may be relevant to such forward-looking statements, please refer to Badger's 2023 MD&A along with the 2023 AIF. I will now turn the call over to Rob Lockadar.

Thanks, Lisa, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our 2024 second quarter earnings call. Before we get into the results, I'd like to take a moment to talk about safety which is how we start all of our team meetings here at Badger. We're in the middle of our busy summer construction season, and much of North America has been experiencing hot weather conditions in the field. Badger is mitigating this heat stress by having our operators focus on hydration, cooling periods, routine breaks, and aligning our work hours with the coolest parts of the day. By doing so, We've been able to avoid heat injuries across our employee base, and we appreciate our team's efforts to keep everyone safe. Now on to the quarter results. We had another quarter of solid growth in revenues, gross profit, and adjusted EBITDA. Our top line revenue of $186.8 million grew by 9%, driven by the strength of our U.S. operations which saw a revenue increase of 14% year over year. In the U.S., our eastern and southern regions experienced strong growth, which was offset slightly by slower levels of growth in California and the upper Midwest. We continued to experience softness in our Canadian markets, with revenue down 19% compared to 2023, due to the delayed starts of some significant projects in central Canada and lower market activity at our operating partner operations, as we discussed last quarter. We continue to expect these delayed projects, which we have been awarded, to begin later in 2024 and into early 2025, as we discussed on our previous call. Canadian revenues are likely to remain in line with this trend we experienced in the first half of the year. In my closing remarks, I will cover some of the key projects and industry sectors that Badger has been having success with across North America. We achieved RPT or revenue per truck per month of $43,161 in Q2, down slightly from the previous year due to the slowdown in the Canadian market. RPT in the U.S. for the quarter was flat compared with last year. We also added a net 114 trucks to our fleet year-over-year while holding RPT relatively stable and continued to make good progress on our commercial and pricing initiatives. We continue to see growth in adjusted EBITDA track higher than our revenue growth, up 14% year-over-year driven by improved operating leverage in our G&A support functions. Our adjusted EBITDA margin was 23.9 percent, up from 22.8 percent in 2023. The Red Deer plant manufactured 59 hydrovacs this quarter and 111 year-to-date. Beginning in Q3, we are moderating our rate of truck builds and expect to be at the lower end of our full-year guidance. which we previously announced to come in at 7% to 10% growth over the prior year. We retired five units in the quarter and 71 units year-to-date within our range of 70 to 90 units for the full year. We refurbished 10 units in the quarter and 18 units year-to-date. We ended the quarter with 1,584 hydrovacs in our fleet, growing our fleet by 8% since Q2 of last year. Also of note, we announced our intention to pursue a normal course issuer bid with the Toronto Stock Exchange to which Badger may acquire common shares for cancellation subject to approvals. I'll now turn the call over to Rob Dawson to discuss our Q2 financial results in more detail.