WSP Global Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the WSP Global Inc. second quarter 2026 results conference call and webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, please press star 1 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 1 again. Please note that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to invite the conference over to your first speaker, Quentin Weber, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good day and thank you for joining our call. Today we will discuss our Q2 2026 results and performance, followed by a Q&A session. Alexandre L'Heureux, our President and CEO, and Alain Michaud, our CFO, are joining us this morning. Please note that this call is also accessible via webcast on our website. During the call, we make forward-looking statements. 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 in the forward-looking statements are listed in the MD&A for the quarter ended June 26, 2026, and the financial year ended December 31, 2025, which can be found on CEDAR Plus and on our website. During the call, we may refer to specific non-IFRS financial measures. These measures are defined in the MB&A for the quarter ended June 26, 2026. Our MB&A includes reconciliations of non-IFRS financial measures to the most directly comparable IFRS measures. Management believes that these non-IFRS measures and other financial measures provide useful information to investors regarding the corporation's financial conditions and results of operation as they provide additional key metrics of its performance. These non-IFRS measures are not recognized under IFRS, do not have any standardized meaning prescribed under IFRS and may differ from similarly named measures reported by other issuers and accordingly may not be comparable. These measures should not be considered as a substitute for the related financial information prepared by IFRS. With that, I will now turn the call over to Alexandre.

Thank you Quentin and thank you all for joining us this morning. Today I'm very excited that this was an excellent quarter for WSP. WSP exited the second quarter with stronger momentum than when it entered the year. Organic growth accelerated, backlog reached a record level, margin expanded by 90 basis point and TRC is performing as expected. Together, these leading indicators increased our confidence in the outlook for the balance of 2026 and beyond. Let me recap a few highlights from the quarter. First, organic net revenue growth of 5% brought us to the high end of our quarterly outlook range with every reportable segment contributing. We added roughly $800 million of net revenues year-over-year A 23% increase largely reflecting a contribution of our recent highly strategic acquisitions. Second, backlog reached a new record of 20.1 billion at quarter end with organic growth of 5.7% over the last 12 months. Beyond the absolute number, what matters most is that organic backlog growth accelerated to its strongest pace since 2022. In a market where investors are increasingly focused on long-term visibility, we believe our backlog, soft backlog, and pipeline of opportunities provide a clear indication of future growth potential. Our pipeline tells the same story. WSP is involved in some of the largest and more complex projects globally. For example, our top 20 opportunities alone represent more than $4 billion in potential revenue. Importantly, the strongest areas of demand we see today are directly linked to long-term duration investment teams, including AI-enabled digital infrastructure, power generation and transmission, data centers, critical minerals, defense, and nuclear energy. These are complex engineering intensive programs that require multidisciplinary expertise, regulatory capabilities, and large-scale project delivery capacity. Third, our adjusted EBITDA margin expanded by 90 basis points year over year to 19.1%, reflecting our continued and disciplined focus on margin improvement. Adjusted EBITDA grew by 28.8% year over year and exceeded our quarterly outlook range. As we continue our journey on margin expansion, it is becoming increasingly apparent to us that scale creates operational leverage. And fourth, our power and energy platform delivered another quarter of double digit organic growth with global net revenues from our top 40 global power clients rising 30% year over year. TRC's integration remains on plan for completion within the next six months. The acquisition is doing exactly what we acquired it to do strengthened a position in one of the fast-growing and most strategic end markets globally. Let me now provide you with a few comments on our regions, starting with Canada, which delivered on every measure this quarter. Organic growth reached 5.1% and backlog grew by a robust 14.2% over the last 12 months, an outstanding performance. The pipeline in Canada is exceptionally deep and the momentum is broad-based. In defense, we hold a position few can match. WSP is the leading direct provider of engineering and environmental services to Defense Construction Canada with hundreds of projects underway nationwide and over 25 active master service agreements. Our pipeline has doubled in the past year, positioning us as a strategic partner on major current and upcoming opportunities. In mining, our recognized global leadership with more than 5,000 professionals worldwide helped us convert several major opportunities. Capital keeps moving toward critical minerals driven by AI, electrification, grid expansion, and energy transition. This high-margin business has averaged double-digit organic growth over five years, with hard backlog up roughly 25% in the past 12 months. In power and energy, we see a significant increase in demand for our engineering services. Our energy subsector is well ahead of budget, delivering 70% growth year over year. We expect market conditions to remain strong for the remainder of 2026 and into 2027 when increased investment across the energy market in Canada. And in nuclear, WSB is Canada's leader in citing and permitting consulting. We are leading or supporting every impact assessment for proposed new nuclear generation in Canada. Nuclear-related revenue has tripled year-over-year and backlog in this market is at a record. Defence, mining, transportation, power and energy and nuclear together make up one of the most compelling growth profiles in our portfolio in Canada and globally, and we expect that to continue. Turning to the Americas, the depth of our accessible hard and soft backlog together with a robust opportunity pipeline position us well for accelerated growth in the second half and beyond. For example, our U.S. soft backlog on net revenue basis reached $10 billion and is up approximately 9% versus Q1 Pointing to substantial potential for future revenue, and a meaningful portion is expected to convert to accessible work by year-end. In addition, approximately 86% of that sub-backlog sits in framework agreements, which are pre-approved contract vehicles that let task order convert quickly to revenue once client authorized funding. Power and Energy continues to expand rapidly in the U.S., supported by heightened bid and proposal activity with investor-owned utilities. In this market, net revenues and hard backlog from our top 40 global power clients in the U.S. increased 15% and 20% year-over-year, respectively. Our portfolio of clients now include the top 60 U.S. investor-owned utilities, or IOUs, covering the vast majority of the US market. TRC continues to deliver with its hard backlog and sub backlog up 30% and 35% year over year respectively. We have also identified more than 100 collaboration opportunities where WSP and TRC teams are combining expertise, resources, and client relationship to better serve clients. One of them resulted in a significant award from a large IOU to support its $78 billion five-year capital plan with line of sight to more than $10 billion of potential future work. This highlights the scale and the opportunity in power and energy where our expanded platform positioned WSP to capture larger, longer duration mandates. Data centers delivered another period of rapid expansion with revenues up more than 20% year-over-year in the first half of 2026. Our data center sales pipeline is approximately 30% higher than a year ago, reflecting deeper client relationship, broader account penetration, and rising demand for integrated delivery solutions. Ranked number one in data center design by engineering dues record, WSP now support more than six sites with more than one gigawatt of compute power capacity and is a trusted partner to the 70 clients we serve in this sector, which has doubled in the last year. In advanced manufacturing, clients are engaging us across the entire project lifecycle from early planning through design, delivery, and operational readiness, drawing on our integrated multidisciplinary capabilities. WSB is supporting over 200 industrial clients and the backlog is up 29% year over year. The platform continues to deliver strong momentum with revenue growth of more than 20% year over year. Nuclear in the U.S. is scaling just as quickly. We are now supporting 22 new sites across the U.S. spanning site selection, licensing, design and construction support and we recently won a role in the primary design of an industry-first gas-to-nuclear SMR project with Blue Energy at the Port of Victoria site in Texas. Few firms can operate across the full cycle of nuclear program, and that is precisely where the market is heading. Lastly, on water, business is up 20% year over year and is another fast-scaling part of our portfolio. Climbing demand for water infrastructure shows no signs of slowing, with WSP water pipeline up 61% year-over-year as communities invest in aging infrastructure, PFAS, water quality mandates, and climate resilience. In Q2, WSP captured a major program contract with Seattle public utilities worth $100 million. Taking together our hard backlog and soft backlog pipeline of opportunities and newly secure mandates, set us up to grow faster in that market. The CAD $7 billion we deployed in power and energy in recent years to position our U.S. business strategically is really starting to pay off. Turning to AMIA, we delivered organic growth in net revenues of 8.1%, and the future is bright as our backlog grew organically by 10.4%. A special interest, the quarter saw another standout performance from our UK business, which delivered yet another quarter of double-digit net revenue organic growth. Elevated growth is supported by strategic targeted markets such as power and energy, nuclear, defense and security, aviation, and healthcare. EMEA is increasingly winning on the breadth of what it can offer, and with a healthy organic backlog growth profile, The region has the visibility to sustain this trajectory. Finally, in APAC, the region returned to growth for the first time in six quarters, right on plan, powered by a notable turnaround in Australia. In New Zealand, the government's National Land Transport Plan has reduced project investment. While this is expected to have some impact on our business, we are taking steps to mitigate its effects. Overall, the efforts we deployed to recalibrate the business in APAC are showing up in the numbers. In summary, this was an exceptional quarter, and more importantly, clear evidence that our strategy is working and momentum is accelerating. With that, I will now turn it over to Alain, who will walk you through our financial results.

All right, thank you, Alex and Elo, everyone. I'm pleased to report this morning on our strong financial results for the quarter, and let's start with growth. For the second quarter, revenues increased by approximately 20% year-over-year, while net revenue increased by approximately 23%. Organic net revenue growth reached 5%, with all reportable segments contributing. The UK posted double-digit organic growth, EMEA outperformed expectations, APAC returned to growth a quarter ahead of plan, and the outlook for the US business improved in the quarter. Backlog reached a new record level of $20 billion as of the end of June, up 23% over the last 12 months, representing 11.6 months of revenue, with organic growth standing at 5.7% over the same period. Moving on to profitability, adjusted EBITDA in the quarter grew to $815 million compared to $633 million in the second quarter of 2025, representing an increase of 29%. and exceeding management's quarterly outlook range of $770 million to $810 million. Adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter increased 90 basis point, reaching 19.1% compared to 18.2 in the second quarter of 25. The improvement was driven equally by productivity gain and lower rightsizing costs versus the prior years. 19.1% is the best WSB Q2 margin ever recorded. Adjusted net earnings for the quarter reached $389 million, or $2.88 per share, up $82 million, or 53 cents per share, compared to the second quarter of 25. This represented a 23% increase over the prior year. As for our cash position, cash inflows from operating activities were $554 million for the six-month period ended June 26, 2026. compared to $822 million the corresponding period of 25. This mainly reflects timing. The prior year period benefited from $195 million of inflow related to the sale of eligible trade receivable under the factoring arrangement and in addition, sorry, a portion of the Power Engineers Incentive Awards were paid during the quarter. Adjusted for those two items, cash generation is in line with last year and is expected. Historical level of conversion over the balance of 26, consistent with our usual seasonality. Free cash flow was $255 million for the six-month period ended June 26, 2026, and trailing 12-month free cash flow amounted to $1.4 billion, representing 1.5 times net earning attributable to shareholders. DSO at the end of the quarter, so that's 71 days compared to 69 days last year and is in line with our expectation. While the leverage ratio remains slightly above our target range following the recent acquisition of TRC, we generated approximately $1.4 billion of trailing 12-month free cash flow and remain confident in our ability to deliver through earnings growth and cash generation with a return to our target range by year-end. Turning to our 2026 outlook, the financial outlook issued in February 2026 and revised on May 6, 2026 is reiterated except for the increased net revenue and adjusted EBITDA range, which now are expected to range between $16.2 and $17 billion for net revenue and between $3.1 and $3.18 billion for EBITDA. In the 2025 to 2027 Global Strategic Action Plan, we set an ambition to reach an adjusted EBITDA margin of 19% to 20% by 2027. And given the progress achieved to date, we continue to see a path to get to that target range as early as 2026. For Q3 2026, we expect net revenue to range from $4.15 billion to $4.35 billion and adjusted EBITDA to range from $850 to $890 million. Lastly, our acquisition, integration and reorg costs are now expected to range between $285 and $305 million mainly due to non-cash accounting impact following the disposal of non-core activities as well as costs related to ongoing M&A and integration activities. I'd like to remind you that our outlook is intended to help analysts and shareholders refine their perspective on our performance, and using this information for other purposes may be inappropriate. Natural results may differ, and such differences may be material. Also, our selected financial outlook does not include any acquisition, transaction, or disposal that may occur after today. Overall, this quarter's results, organic growth across all segments, a record backlog Thank you, Alain. To close, we delivered an excellent second quarter. Net revenue grew 23%, adjusted EBITDA rose nearly 29%,

margins expanded by 90 basis point to 19.1%, our best second quarter ever since our IPO, all while delivering 5% organic growth with every segment contributing. What excites us most is not any single number in isolation, it is the direction of travel. Organic growth accelerated, organic backlog growth accelerated, margins expanded, TRC is performing as expected. Bottom line, our confidence increased. Taking together these results reinforce our belief that WSP is uniquely positioned at the intersection of some of the world's largest investment teams, energy sovereignty, AI infrastructure, critical minerals, defense resilience, water, and power and energy sectors. When we look across the portfolio today, we see a business with stronger momentum exiting the second quarter than when it entered the year. Before taking questions, I would like to briefly now address Arcadis. As previously disclosed, we have submitted two friendly non-binding proposals to Arcadis. As outlined in our 2025-2027 Global Strategic Action Plan M&A, remains an important component of our long-term strategy to deliver shoulder value and continues to be part of the fabric of WSP. Consistent with that strategy, we continue to believe that a combination with Arcadis would be highly strategic, create substantial value for the stakeholders of both companies, and accelerate the growth ambitions of the combined organization. We have approached this dialogue in a constructive and respectful manner for many months and continue to view it as a potential friendly transaction between two great companies. At the same time, we remain disciplined in our approach to capital allocation and acquisitions. Importantly, regardless of the outcome, WSP growth outlook, strategic priorities, financial objectives, and Capital Allocation Framework remain unchanged. Our business continues to perform very well as demonstrated by the results we reported today, including accelerated organic growth, record backlog and expanding margins. Beyond that, we do not intend to comment further on Arcadis today so that we can keep our focus on WSP second quarter results and outlook. With that, we will now open the line for questions.

Thank you. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star 1-1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. Once again, please press star 1-1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. This will take a few moments. Once again, please press star 1-1 if you have any questions or comments. Thank you. We are now going to proceed with our first question. And the question comes from Frederick Bastien from Raymond James. Please ask your question.

Good morning and good quarter. I do appreciate the level of granularity provided around your target markets. Quite helpful. First question, I was under the impression that the Americas margins would be down slightly over here as you fold in the TRC business, but instead we saw pretty impressive gain. Can you elaborate on what drove this? Was it strength in the underlying business, a better than expected performance from TRC, or both?

It's a bit of everything, Fred, to be honest. As you know, we've been pushing hard on continued improvement and efficiency, productivity, project performance. And yes, we've made good progress with TRC as well. So it's a bit all of the above, and we're very proud of the margin expansion in the U.S. and Canada also, and across the patch.

How do we think about The potential for margin improvement in the back half in the Americas specifically?

Well, I mean, as we stand right now with the outlook that we put together, it kind of indicates at midpoint a 60 basis point improvement versus last year. And as stated before, we even see a path to Thanks, Alain.

Alex, you started and finished your prepared remarks by saying WSP is in a better place today than it was six months ago. Should we interpret that as a broadly based improvement across the organization or are there still certain countries or in markets where conditions remain more mixed?

Well, I mentioned that New Zealand is a little bit more mixed than It's doing better than a year ago, but it's still a bit more mixed. But with the exception of New Zealand right now in our portfolio, I'm looking at the contribution of all our geographies and all of our sectors, and everybody is contributing positively. So what I said, I have strong conviction. I feel very good about where we're at now compared to six months ago. And I would say, just going back to the U.S. business, Frederic, Five years ago, 60 months ago, we had 9,000 people in our U.S. business. Today, we have 28,000 people 60 months later. Sometimes you need to pause and reflect on what we've accomplished in the last 60 months and the amount of capital that we've deployed in the country. As Alain just indicated, it's 50% of our business. And I think we are now starting to reap the benefit of what we've built over the last few years with the power engineer acquisition, with the TRC acquisition. Obviously, earlier in the decade, we bought Golden, Woody and I, but we completely transformed our US business in the last five years. Five years ago 80% of our revenue was generated in transport and infrastructure. Today 35-40% of our business is in power. So we needed a bit of time to digest the transformation and now I'm looking at the pipeline of opportunities and I'm looking at the self backlog. and I'm looking at the collaboration between our sectors and I'm very excited about the future prospect of WSP in the US, but globally for that matter. Then you look at Canada with the backlog growth of 14.2%, I've not seen that in a long, long time. So I'm quite pleased with the results and I think it bodes well for the future. Okay, thank you both.

Thanks Fred.

We are now going to proceed with our next question. And the questions come from the line of Saba Hadkan from RBC Capital Market. Please answer your question.

Hi, this is Bobbin on the line for Saba.

Okay. Good morning.

Good morning. My question was more on the organic growth in the U.S. market this quarter. It was pretty good. And what I wanted to know more was about How has that evolved since last year and do you have a view on that looking forward into the back half of the year?

Yeah, well, we're very pleased with the performance in the quarter. I'll start with that. And I think an important point to mention about the U.S. business is if you look at the underlying business in the U.S. and you take TRC as organic contribution, the business is delivering roughly Thank you very much. are all pointing in the right direction. So that's beyond any specific quarter. I could tell you that we feel increasingly more comfortable with the U.S. increasing pace. So the leading indicators are all pointing in the right direction.

That's helpful. I'll turn it back. Thank you.

Thank you.

We are now going to proceed with our next question. And the questions come from the line of Benoit Poirier from Desjardins. Please ask your question.

Good morning, Alex. Good morning, Alain. Congrats on the solid quarter. Maybe first question in terms of APAC. Obviously, it was nice to see that you turned positive in terms of organic growth. What could we expect in the second half in terms of organic growth for APAC in light of your backlog?

Yeah, so APAC obviously very pleased with the performance returning to overall growth a quarter in advance. We had called for Q3 for that and this is largely explained by Australia that's overperforming on on expectation right now. As Alex pointed out on the flip side, there's a bit of softness, if I could say that way, New Zealand, despite being a much better performance than last year. So all in all, we're still targeting to be in line with our outlook for the region, which was a flat contribution. But we'll continue to push, obviously. And if Australia continue to deliver like that, maybe we'll have good surprise. But for the time being, I think similar revenue than last year is still our expectation.

Okay, that's a great caller. And maybe for Alex, could you provide an update on your M&A pipeline?

Yeah, I mean, look, we continue Benoit. I mean, we have a three-year plan to deliver. We've been enormously active. I would say in the last 24 months with Power Engineer, with TRC, with Ricardo, all of them are progressing extremely well. But we continue to have informal and formal discussion with smaller-sized firms, mid-sized firms, and yes, the answer is yes, we have a good pipeline. And I've said it in the past and I'll say it again, We don't use the market as an excuse. WSB, we've always found ways to be opportunistic and good time and more challenging time. And it's not because our company is now trading at two turns below the industry period that we're not finding and we're not going to find opportunities for us to create shoulder value.

Okay, that's great. And maybe last one for me. Could you provide an update on the number of employees you now have in India?

I could, yeah. India continues to be a fantastic story for us. 6,500 is our overall GCC platform, so it's about 8% of our Total Platforms. You remember, Benoit, not so long ago we were talking about 5%, 6% of the overall platform. So it continues to be a significant lever to growth. So very, very proud of progress. Probably 1,000 net new people came in already year to date, 20% plus growth. and that doesn't mean we don't hire elsewhere. We have roughly 7,000 open position right now for technical position. So as I said, in the US, what's relevant across the patch, our recruitment engine is firing on all cylinders right now.

Thank you for the time.

Thanks, Benoit.

We are now going to take our next question. and the questions come from the line of Maxim Sichev from MBC Capital Market. Please answer your question.

Good morning, gentlemen. I was wondering, Alex, if you don't mind providing a bit more of an update on TRC integration and some of the operational priorities that the management team is focusing on for this asset specifically. Thank you.

Yeah, Max, things are progressing extremely well. I think the business is performing as expected, if not exceeding slightly our expectation. So the goalpost for us is, John, first to convert TRC on a system now that we have one global platform. So we are working on that. But what is more important and what I've been spending a fair amount of my time and the team has been spending a lot of time doing is really the client facing activities is where we have devoted most of our energy right now. And I mentioned it, we have now 100 joint pursuits that we're pursuing WSP and then TRC. So when we acquire a company, we always start with the client facing activities. There's nothing like winning work together, to have two organizations coming together, and that's true for all acquisitions. So we have done that. Salary benefits, harmonization, it's substantially complete. We have a roadmap. So I think the last milestone will be the conversion. Thank you very much.

Thinking about geographies, I presume it would be kind of UK where you could combine and leverage both companies' expertise and relationship. Is that how we should be thinking about this?

You mean for TRC?

Yeah, kind of on a performer basis.

Yeah, on a pro-pharma basis where we're going to see the most runway and the most exciting things coming out of the company will obviously be in the U.S., Max. Now we work with most, if not all, of the IOUs in the U.S., so we cover the territory entirely. We're by far, in transmission and distribution, the largest player in the U.S. territory. There's not one project we cannot tackle. We have a strong gen capabilities as well, generation capabilities. So I'm very excited. And as I said earlier on, we needed time to digest the two acquisitions that we completed. But now I'm really starting to see the activity level accelerating. And I'm looking at the size and the scale of the bids. I was not in a position to talk about a win more officially on the call, but we have secured a very important win after quarter end that hopefully I'll be able to provide more detail about in the next quarter. But very excited about that. In Sweden, we have also secured a very, very important win in power in the quarter, or soon after the quarter, I should say. Sorry about that. So that will be reflected in the backlog next quarter. Also in power, so obviously we are using our center of excellence now in the U.S., and we want that domain expertise to travel borders and travel the world, and we are right now seeing the benefit in Sweden, but You're right in stating the UK and other locations.

Okay, that's great to hear. Thank you so much. That's it for me.

Thank you.

We are now going to proceed with our next question. And the questions come from the line of Chris Murray from ATB Coma Capital Markets. Please ask your question.

Thanks, folks. Good morning. Maybe turning to margins, a few pieces of this. So, Alain, you mentioned you were thinking at a baseline 60 basis points of improvement this year, but line of sight maybe to that 19 to 20 range. or getting into that longer term number. So a couple questions on this. I mean, normally we'd assume just with the growth rate that you're seeing that we'd have kind of a natural lift on margins. But I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about this with a couple of pieces. One, how should we be thinking about cadence? you would think year over year we should see a lift in Q3 maybe come back in Q4 but but 2026 has some I guess some timing issues into Q4 so maybe some thoughts around that but on top of the volume that you're seeing I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about pricing especially in context of some of the discussions we have around the impact of AI on the business and how you're seeing pricing fall into margins that would be helpful there's a lot

We believe in scale, and we believe scale matters. And I think the reason why you're seeing that our margins are expanding and are going up, and as I said on the call, it's our best margins performance in any Q2 quarter since our IPO. including the old days. So we're proud of that. It's because we're now a leading firm in most of the geographies in which we operate. And having scale is relevant and having scale is allowing us to make sure that we have a strong brand in the marketplace that we can better choose and select the clients we wish to work with. and also the projects that we wish to pursue. When you have a leading position, you are in a position to do that and it's obviously affecting your pricing. There's no doubt about that in our case. As it relates to productivity and profit and increased lift in our margins, clearly the tools that we're using, the fact that we have one platform now, The fact that we continue to transform our corporate functions, the fact that we are able to use our scale to do more with less, it's obviously assisting us. And that's why I've always been quite vocal in our strong conviction that that scale would matter at the end of the day. Anything else you want to add?

No, I think it covers the key point.

Yep.

Yeah, so and then I guess the other piece of that question, it's just as we go into the second half, just thinking about the cadence, is there anything to think about?

Yeah, there's a couple of things on cadence. So the first half, we need to keep in mind that the comparable figures last year included quite a bit of right-sizing activity. So So this, and there's less in Q in H2 of 25, so your comps are, you don't have the same lift in H2, so that's why the 90 bits, we're expecting more like the 60 bits for the full year. And the second piece that upset that a little bit is the Riccardo acquisition, which is a great acquisition, amazing brand. We should start to see an improvement on having less margin dilution from this bill going forward. So I would say those are the two P's, but the biggest one is the right sizing of last year.

Okay, great. And then I guess if I can just sneak in kind of a modified part of this. I mean, you're talking 60 basis points, but what gets you, like what's the delta into the extra, call it 20 to 30 basis points that gets you into that 19 range? Is it just... Some things going right, some project timing. What else do you think he gets there to hit that 19 number?

I wouldn't call any particular element, Chris. I think it's good old-fashioned focus on all the levers that makes us efficient and on pricing and all these things. We're pushing hard everywhere, so I wouldn't call anything specific.

Yeah, and I would also say that I think we've made smart investment in recent years. And we've seen a great margin uplift in power engineering. We are seeing already an uplift in TRC margin profile. Ricardo will take a bit more time, but sooner rather than later, I think once we're done With the transformation of our Ricardo business, I expect also a margin uplift there. So I think this is, as Alain said, and I've said that many times in the past, increasing and expanding our margin profile is not one thing. It's multiple levers that you need to pull, and that's what we're doing right now.

Okay, I'll leave it there. Thanks, folks.

Thank you. Thank you.

We are now going to proceed with the next question. And the questions come from the line of Ian Gillies from Stiefel. Please ask your question.

Morning, everyone. Ian. Productivity seemed to be a key theme throughout the quarter, and I think everyone's been a bit myopic on being focused on AI tools. Could you elaborate maybe a little bit more on Some of the other strategies you're pursuing on that front and the follow on beyond that, I suppose, is if there are any updated views on whether or how AI tools are making your employees more proficient rather than making them redundant.

Look, to start with, you know, AI tools are, as you just mentioned, a tool. and they are going to continue to support our engineers to hopefully at some point in time provide more efficient design more rapidly but I can tell you that at this point the uplift in productivity I would tell you that AI has very little to do with this. Of course it's going to be a contributor in the future and we continue to believe that and we're not complacent about it. But at the same time, if you go on our website, we have right now 7,000 open positions that we are actively pursuing. So when we talk about productivity, it's to make sure that we manage a very, very fluid workforce, as fluid as it can be at the moment in the market. The market is quite buoyant. and most of the geographies in which we operate. So, as Alain said on the previous question, we're pulling multiple levers to increase our margin profile. But more importantly, we have a culture of performance. We take great pride in what we do and we take great pride in translating Revenue and Quality Earnings. I mean, it starts with that. It's down at the top and it trickles down in the organization. And our employees are extremely proud of providing projects in time and on budget. And again, we're seeing the benefit of that in this quarter. But the reality is that we've been seeing that benefit for five, six years in a row now. WSP is consistently improving its profitability over the last six, seven years. During COVID, during good times, during bad times, during challenging times, during bullish time, we raised the bar. And I'm extremely proud that we reached a 19% milestone in Q2 this year. And we said in our plan that we wanted to get to 19 to 20. and we have now a site on this and actually we may think we may do it quicker than originally planned.

Understood. That's very helpful. I'll turn the call back over. Thank you. Thanks, Yann.

Thank you. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 1 again. We are now going to proceed with our next question. and the questions come from the line of Avi Jaroslavic from UBS. Please ask your question.

Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. So power is continuing to drive the growth really in the United States. What are you seeing in the U.S. markets outside of power? Any sector that is more of a drag on growth at the moment? What are your expectations for growth in the Americas in the second half? Should we be expecting an acceleration as we go through the rest of the year?

No, I would say our other sectors are performing as planned at this point, so we don't have any disappointments. Like I said, and Alain said, a lot of it has to do with the timing of the awards and accessing it. So we're feeling good about it. and WSP we've never wanted to put all our eggs in one basket so we love the diversity of our offering and we love and I think it makes it one of the most resilient platform out there and that's why I'm pleased that we had a laser focused strategy to build one sector at a time more recently it's been power and energy and we're very proud to have done those acquisitions and Thank you very much. As I said, I'm looking at the pipeline of opportunities that we're pursuing in the power sector and I'm excited and I'm impressed, to be honest. I'm very impressed with the scale of the bid that we're pursuing right now. So more to come in that regard, but as I said, we're feeling better today than we felt when we entered the year, so it bodes well for the future.

I appreciate that. And I just want to also ask about EMEA. It sounds like the UK was a main driver of the growth there. You mentioned a big win in power in Sweden. Just kind of broadly speaking, outside of the UK, what are you seeing across sectors? And do you think that the organic growth rate can stay at around this level through the second half?

We'll see for the second half, but definitely the momentum in the UK continues to be strong, and part of our comments about feeling better than beginning of the year and a year ago is what we see in the Nordics. It's a market that has improved, still being competitive, but we're winning our I would say more than our fair share of the market out there. So Sweden is improving. And beyond that, across the space, Middle East is fairly stable and it doesn't move the needle up or down at this point.

And UK, we're gaining market share as we speak and have been gaining market share in the last two, three years. Looking at our peer group, I'm saying that with very strong conviction that we're growing in the UK at a much faster rate than any of our competitors right now. So a great team and a great business. And as I said, we're gaining market share. That's the secret here in AMIA.

Got it. All right. Thank you very much. Appreciate the time. Thank you, Harry.

We are now going to proceed with our next question. And the next questions come from the line of Yuri Links from Kaneko Genuity. Please ask your question.

Hey, good morning, guys. Morning, Yuri. Been looking at your net revenue per employee over time and continues to grow. Wondering if... How much of that growth would be just your typical fee inflation, and then how much of that might be growth in non-labor derived revenue, perhaps new service offerings, data offerings, stuff like that?

Actually, yeah, I'll surprise you by what I'm going to say, but... It's an important metric, but I'm not waking up in the morning saying we need to do more per employee. I'll explain to you why. Had we not built our earth and environment and geotech platform a few years ago, our fee per employee would be even higher at this point, Yuri, because in environment and water and and Earth Sciences, typically the fee that are being generated are typically lower. But this is not a good reason not to be a leader in that space and that vertical. But truthfully, the reason is that I think we have a much stronger brand today than we had 10 years ago. We are now in a position to select the clients we wish to work with. We are more selective also on the projects that we wish to pursue. That undeniably is having an impact on our pricing, clearly, and the quality of the projects that we wish to pursue. I think I've said in the past, the more complex the assignments are, the more excited we get. We have the technical know-how and the domain expertise to tackle those projects. That's where we typically do extremely well. Number two, I mentioned it a few times today, scale matters. As we grow as a company, we are in a position to the economy of scales. and are in a position to reduce our cost structure. And in any given country, if you're a dominant player or a leading firm, you are in a position to have a more effective cost structure. So again, I feel that, and I mentioned the word fluid workforce. I do feel that over time as a company, We are in a position to run a very, very tight ship. And you combine that with the performing culture that we have internally. And that's why you see our fee per employee going up. That's why you see our margins going up. And there's no real secret about it. It's, as I said before, multiple levers that you need to pull. And that's why, you know, over time you have seen The fee per employee is going up. It's just that these are probably all of the factors I just mentioned. Okay.

That's helpful. I'm asking about it because investors in the last nine months have kind of keyed in on AI being a potential threat to fee revenue, and you would think that that might be one of the first metrics that it would show up in, but it's not what we're seeing.

No, exactly.

Okay. Thanks, guys. I'll turn it over.

Thank you.

Thank you. There are no further questions now showing, so I'll now hand back to you for closing remarks.

Well, thank you very much for attending this call today. Again, I'm very pleased with the quarter, and we look forward to updating you with our Q3 results soon. Meanwhile, we wish you a good end of the summer. Take care. Bye-bye.

This does conclude today's conference call. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.