WSP Global Inc.

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to WSP's fourth quarter and fiscal 2023 results conference call. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Quentin Weber, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Mr. Weber.

Thank you for attending the call today. We will be discussing our Q4 and fiscal 2023 performance, followed by a Q&A session. Joining us this morning are Alexandre Le Rue, our President and CEO, and Alain Michaud, our CFO. please note that this call is also accessible on our website via webcast. During the call, we will be making some forward-looking statements, and actual results could differ from those expressed or implied. We undertake no obligation to update or revise any of these statements. Relevant factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those forward-looking statements are listed in RMDNA for the year that ended December 31, 2023, which can be found on CDAR and on our website. In addition, during the call, we may refer to certain non-IFRS measures. These measures are also defined in RMDNA for the year that ended December 31, 2023. RMDNA includes reconciliations of non-IFRS measures for the most directly comparable IFRS measures. Management believes that these non-IFRS measures provide useful information to investors regarding the corporation's financial condition and results of operation as they provide additional key metrics of its performance. These non-IFRS measures are not recognized under FRS, do not have any standardized meaning prescribed under FRS, and may differ from similarly named measures as reported by other issuers, and accordingly, may not be comparable. These measures should not be viewed as a substitute for the related financial information prepared in accordance with IFRS. I will now turn the call over to Alexandre.

Thank you, Quentin, and good day, everyone. I am pleased to present our fourth quarter and strong annual results. I will also use the opportunity to provide an update on key milestones we achieved in the second year of our 2022-2024 global strategic plan. Starting with our fourth quarter performance, our core operations continue to deliver solid net revenue growth and our margin profile improved by a very robust 150 basis points to reach 19% compared to the fourth quarter of 2022. We have also seen a good level of cash flows in our business continue to capture many strategic wins, which I will cover later. Turning to fiscal 2023, the consistency and rigor we applied in our operations have translated into strong financial performance. Net revenues are up 22% or nearly $2 billion resulting from strategic acquisitions and healthy organic growth of 7.3%. This was achieved with the contribution of all of our reportable segments. Also, a record high order intake of $15.1 billion continues to reflect positive market conditions. Adjusted EBITDA is up 26%, or nearly $400 million. Adjusted EBITDA margin stands at 17.6%, up 55 basis points, surpassing our yearly margin expansion ambition of 30 to 50 basis points. We delivered beyond expectations and remain laser-focused on profitability as we pursue our ambitious target of reaching a 20% adjusted EBITDA margin. Third, adjusted net earnings are up 24%, or $1.15 per share, stemming from accretive acquisitions and continued significant productivity gains. We are proud of these results as they demonstrate our strong execution in a year of significant consolidation and transformation activities. Overall, we delivered robust results at the high end of our financial outlook range, which, as you will remember, was revised upwards significantly in August 2023. Let me now make a few remarks on each of our four strategic pillars, namely people, expertise, clients, and operational excellence. On people, we are now one of the largest engineering and professional services firms with close to 67,000 deeply talented employees who are positioned globally to solve the world's most complex challenges. We persist in advancing on several initiatives to become an even more unified WSP and deliver an even better employee experience. We are transforming our organization with a new ERP that has been deployed in some of our key segments and is now being leveraged by approximately 30,000 employees in Canada, and in the U.S., and we are planning its implementation in other regions. On expertise, we strengthened our presence in key markets. Our proven experience identifying and integrating industry-leading brands led to the creation of a nearly 20,000-people strong earth and environment franchise, most of it in the last two years, as we welcome new colleagues from Woody and I and Golder, amongst others. Our global platform is positioned favorably to address clients' future needs as water, energy transition, net zero commitments, smart infrastructure, and climate change remain critical area of focus. On clients, we increase our volume of business by over 20% through a combination of organic and strategic acquisitions. This growth is attributable to a discipline and focus execution of business plans across all our sectors and the substantial focus we put on our global client care program. Lastly, on operational excellence, we drove stellar performance and efficiency through our multiple margin expansion initiatives. We own in our productivity metrics while ensuring our organization remains agile leverages our excellent centers, and efficiently delivers on our projects. On top of strengthening our platform, we are future-proving WSP to support our growth ambitions. WSP is uniquely diversified with top-tier sectors built through our S3. The first transportation infrastructure delivered double-digit organic activity levels in the U.S., U.K., Canada, the Middle East, Australia, and New Zealand. This is a testament to our leading expertise in bridges, mass transit, highways, and rail. WSP continues to be exceptionally well positioned to benefit from the various stimulus programs being deployed globally. On that, we continue to see positive momentum stemming from the bipartisan infrastructure bill in the U.S., The biggest opportunities for this build and other stimulus programs globally are in roads, bridges, and major transportation projects. This is fully aligned with WSB's leading transportation and infrastructure sector. Moving on to our property and building sector, our focus in the recent past has been on diversification, and we see high demand for our services in Canada, the US, UK, and Australia. more so in hyper-growth sectors such as healthcare, hospitality, entertainment, data centers, mission critical, and in manufacturing. Lastly, and as I mentioned earlier, we have efficiently created our strategic earth and environment sector, which is benefiting from robust momentum across all our geographies. We have the privilege of providing expertise and advice to clients on most ESG-related matters, including water scarcity, biodiversity, earth sciences, biomass, environmental permitting, and social acceptability, just to name a few. Our future is not short of growth opportunities as global trends point to higher demand in all these fields of expertise, a good example of that being the energy transition and the drive toward carbon neutrality for power generators and consumers. Across our portfolio, we are awarded projects to support wind and solar generation, as well as planning, designing, and managing programs for the build-out and upgrade of transmission and distribution lines. For example, in the U.S., we want to projects known as Propel New York Energy a collaboration between the New York Power Authority and New York Transco. The project entails building out the transmission grid in New York, contributing to the achievement of the city's clean energy transition goal of having a zero-emission electric grid by 2040. WSP's scope of work includes environmental planning and permitting, stakeholder engagement, civil and electrical design, and overall project management. This adds to the work WSP is delivering for Champlain, Hudson, Power Express, and Cleve Path, New York. Combined, these represent nearly $20 billion of new electric grid infrastructure investment in New York in less than two years, with WSP playing a pivotal role in the delivery of all three projects. In the UK, WSP has been appointed by National Gas to develop best practice guidelines on the design and build of a new hydrogen network. In Sweden, we are supporting clients to develop hybrid energy solutions combining wind, solar, and hydrogen for more reliable and carbon-free energy systems. We are also helping with the expansion of offshore wind development in Taiwan to reach a target of five gigawatt of renewable generation. The energy transition provides a broad range of opportunities. Just recently, we were awarded the entire multidisciplinary design for Volkswagen, largest facility worldwide and their only plant in North America. This is one of the largest battery facilities globally, and we are leveraging our global expertise from active electric battery projects in Sweden, Italy, and Southeast Asia to deliver. I would now like to share a few of our recent accolades. WSP has been included in Corporate Night's prestigious Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporation in the World for 2024 and ranked the 12th most sustainable corporation. This acknowledgement is a testament of WSP commitment to sustainable business practices as well as gender diversity. We earned placement on the Dow Jones Sustainability North America Index for the first time. This industry standard recognizes the top 20 sustainability performers amongst the 600 largest companies in the U.S. and Canada based on long-term economic, environmental, and social criteria. WSB's inclusion is an additional tribute to our dedication to build a more sustainable world. WSP was also recognized as the world's leading environmental and sustainability consulting firm and environment analyst annual state of the industry report. We are proud of our ongoing progress on the sustainability journey, and I congratulate all of our teams for these achievements. On that note, let me turn it over to Alain, who will go over our results in more detail.