Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the Bird Construction Third Quarter 2024 Results conference call and webcast. We will begin with Teri McKibbon, President and Chief Executive Officer’s presentation, which will be followed by a question-and-answer session. Analysts who wish to ask a question should have their webcast muted when dialing into the conference number provided. At any time during the presentation today, you may press the star, then one, on your telephone keypad to be placed in the question queue. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. When we are ready for questions, you will be introduced into the conference in the order that you were received. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star, then two. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode, and the webcast is being recorded. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, they may signal an operator by pressing star, then zero. Before commencing with the conference call, the company reminds those present that certain statements which are made express management's expectations or estimates of future performance and thereby constitute forward-looking information. Forward-looking information is necessarily based on a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by management, are inherently subject to significant business, economic, and competitive uncertainties and contingencies. Management's formal comments and responses to any questions that you might ask may include forward-looking information. Therefore, the company cautions today's participants that such forward-looking information involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause the actual financial results, performance, or achievements of the company to be materially different from the company's estimated future results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking information. Forward-looking information does not guarantee future performance. The company expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, events, or otherwise. In addition, our presentation today includes references to a number of financial measures which do not have standardized meanings under IFRS and may not be comparable with similar measures presented by other companies and are therefore considered non-GAAP measures. I would like to turn the call over to Teri McKibbon, President and CEO of Bird Construction. Please go ahead. Thank you, Operator. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our Third Quarter 2024 Conference Call. With me today is Wayne Gingrich, Bird's Chief Financial Officer. Turning to today's presentation, Bird continues to build off its track record of sustainable growth, margin accretion, and delivering strong shareholder returns. In the third quarter, Bird was honored as a 2024 TSX 30 winner by the Toronto Stock Exchange, ranking seventh of the 30 top-performing companies on the TSX. This recognition, along with the announcement that Bird's common shares were added to the TSX Composite Index in September, highlights the success of our strategic focus on being a leading collaborative construction company and the strength of our balance sheet, which positions us to invest in profitable organic growth and pursue attractive acquisitions in today's active market. Turning to our third quarter financial highlights, Bird had another great quarter of strong revenue growth and margin accretion. Revenue grew 15% compared to last year, supported by two months of Jacob Bros' revenues included in the quarter. Bird's adjusted EBITDA margin of 7.8% was 1.5% higher than a year ago and drove 42% growth in adjusted EBITDA and 27% growth in adjusted EPS for the quarter, fueled by higher embedded margins in the company's combined backlog and discipline execution. Operational cash flow generation remained strong, and the company's diverse and well-balanced combined backlog of work continued to grow, reflecting the robust demand environment and healthy pipeline of opportunities with agreed margins. With significant traction from our strategic focus on key sectors, as outlined in the company's 2025-2027 strategic plan that was presented at our Investor Day in October, Bird is poised for continued revenue and profitability growth in 2025 and beyond. Bird's combined backlog continued to grow in third quarter, reaching a record CAD 7.9 billion at September 30th. The company's backlog of contracted work remains highly collaborative in nature and continues to reflect higher embedded margins and grew to CAD 3.8 billion at quarter end. The acquisition of Jacob Bros added approximately CAD 360 million to backlog in the quarter, bringing total securements in addition to almost CAD 1.3 billion. Pending backlog of awarded but not yet contracted work grew to CAD 4.1 billion, a 36% increase year to date, and continues to include over CAD 900 million of MSA and other recurring revenue contracts to be earned over the next six years. Profitability, discipline, diversification, and growth. These foundations of Bird's strategy have delivered substantial growth and margin accretion throughout the company's 2022-2024 strategic plan cycle and created considerable momentum as we head into our next three-year strategic plan. Bird has built a reputation for operational excellence as a partner of choice on complex projects. Our expanding capabilities to participate in greater scopes of work on large capital investment projects have driven profitable and sustainable growth, and we expect this trend to accelerate in the future as the number of these types of projects grow in our portfolio. We are clear in our strategic direction, focusing on growth, key markets, and sectors that present robust opportunities over the long term, including nuclear, mechanical, and electrical, civil infrastructure, and utilities, with an emphasis on energy transition and data-related infrastructure. During Q3 of 2024, Bird announced the award of five projects with a combined total value exceeding CAD 575 million. These projects include civil site works and foundations at two industrial projects in Alberta and Saskatchewan, a multi-year MSA in a strategic growth sector, an expansion and scope of an existing multi-year task order in the nuclear sector in Ontario, and a long-term care project in British Columbia. Bird also announced the completion of the Jacob Bros acquisition in August, which added approximately CAD 360 million of contracted work with agreed margins to Bird's extensive backlog. We continue to be intentional in our project selection as we increase our self-performed capabilities and cross-selling opportunities throughout our organization and remain focused on long-term value creation. Several key trends continue to fuel significant growth within the energy transition market. This market is expansive, presenting substantial growth opportunities for Bird. There are a limited number of large, sophisticated companies that can successfully take on these complex projects, and we believe Bird is uniquely suited to participate in these large projects with significant capital investment. The company has already established a successful track record within key markets such as wind, hydroelectric, nuclear, critical mineral mining, battery manufacturing, and EV supply chain support infrastructure. These sectors all contribute to Canada's clean energy system and 2050 net- zero goals. As we continue to support Tier 1 clients in their energy transition projects, Bird's outlook for future opportunities across all divisions remains bright as we expand our work programs, attain additional nuclear certifications, and continue to develop our deep electrical expertise. We continue to prioritize sectors that have longer cycle demand trends and substantial capital investment commitments from both public and private sectors across infrastructure, buildings, and industrial markets, supporting future growth for years to come. The infrastructure market in Canada is attractive to Bird for several reasons. Current market research indicates that Canada's infrastructure demand will remain strong due to government commitments to address significant infrastructure deficits estimated to be between CAD 110 billion and CAD 270 billion. Demand in our building markets is substantial, with macro pressures driving extensive demand for healthcare facilities due to population growth and an aging population, and a growing demand for data centers to respond to the growth of digital services and generative AI. All of these present major growth opportunities for Bird. Bird's proven expertise and collaborative innovative solutions make us uniquely positioned to respond not only to this level of demand but to the complexity and sophistication of these types of projects. In our industrial business, the total addressable market is significant and being driven by the growth of electrification, emissions reductions, and decarbonization efforts. Bird is already a highly sought-after partner of choice in all scopes of work throughout the entire project lifecycle, and it is positioned to win within our strategic markets due to our consistent execution and operational excellence. Wayne will now cover the financial highlights for the quarter. Thank you, Teri. Excuse me. Bird's third quarter continued to deliver revenue growth and margin accretion, building upon the strong performance of the first half of the year. Construction revenue for the third quarter of CAD 898.9 million represented a 15% increase compared to the same period in 2023. On a year-to-date basis, revenues of CAD 2.46 billion for the first nine months of 2024 were CAD 454 million, or 23% higher than 2023. The growth for the quarter was approximately 60% organic. In year-to-date, the growth was over 80% organic. The company's gross profit margin improved to 11.4% in the quarter compared to 9.3% in 2023. The improvement continues to be driven by the company's highly collaborative work program, with higher embedded margins in backlog and pending backlog resulting from Bird's strategic focus on higher margin sectors, disciplined project selection, and the benefits of leveraging Bird's self-performed capabilities and cross-selling opportunities across our business units. On a year-to-date basis, gross profit margin was 9.4%, up 110 basis points from the 8.3% margin in 2023. General and Administrative expenses were CAD 51.6 million, or 5.7% of revenue for the quarter, compared to CAD 34.5 million, or 4.4% of revenue in the third quarter of 2023. G&A for the quarter includes an additional CAD 1.9 million of acquisition costs related to Jacob Bros, as well as two months of Jacob Bros' G&A costs. Adjusted EBITDA in the third quarter was CAD 70.1 million compared to CAD 49.3 million reported a year ago, representing a 42% increase. Adjusted EBITDA margins continued to increase on a year-over-year basis, increasing 1.5% to 7.8% in the third quarter compared to 6.3% in the same period last year. Turning to earnings, net income and earnings per share were CAD 36.2 million and CAD 0.66 compared to CAD 28.8 million and CAD 0.54 in 2023. Adjusted earnings and adjusted earnings per share were CAD 37.7 million and CAD 0.69 compared to CAD 29 million and CAD 0.54 in 2023. The weighted average shares outstanding for the third quarter of 2024 was 1.1 million shares higher than 2023 due to the acquisitions of Jacob Bros and NorCan in the current year. Bird's healthy balance sheet and strong operating cash flow generation remain a differentiator for the company, supporting our strategic growth initiatives and balanced capital allocation approach. The company's liquidity position remained strong at the end of the third quarter, with CAD 117 million in cash and cash equivalents and an additional CAD 232 million available under our revolving credit facility. Bird's operating cash flow generation is expected to remain strong for the remainder of the year, commensurate with the significant revenue and profitability growth being delivered. Excluding seasonal and growth-related investments in non-cash working capital, operating cash flow generation for the quarter was up 44% compared to last year and up 56% year-to-date. We continue to expect operating cash flows, inclusive of growth-related investments in non-cash working capital, to be positive for the full year. At the end of the third quarter, the company had working capital of CAD 269.8 million compared with CAD 234 million at December 31st, 2023. The company's acquisition of Jacob Bros reduced working capital by approximately CAD 7.1 million in the quarter, as Bird used cash on hand to partially fund the transaction. That being said, the company's overall working capital, along with liquidity available under a syndicated credit facility, remained more than sufficient to allow the company to execute its backlog and support the expected growth in its diversified work program. The company's current ratio is 1.25x, and our adjusted net debt to trailing 12-month Adjusted EBITDA ratio stands at 1.12x. Bird's long-term debt-to-equity ratio is 34%. As we noted in prior presentations, Bird's revenue, Adjusted EBITDA, and Adjusted EBITDA margins have experienced a period of sustained growth over the past several years. The third quarter of 2024 continued the trend, bringing our trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA margin to 5.7% on TTM revenue of almost CAD 3.3 billion, reflecting management's ongoing strategic focus on margin accretion, with further opportunity to expand through 2024 and beyond. The company's margins continue to improve in our backlog and pending backlog, driven by efforts over the past several years to diversify into higher margin sectors, our disciplined project selection, and our appropriately risk-balanced work program, and greater use of collaborative contracting, which Bird believes delivers better outcomes for all stakeholders. Bird's expanding self-performed capabilities and increased cross-selling opportunities between our business units also contribute to the company's margin accretion. Bird's capital allocation strategy remains balanced, supporting the company's business growth, profitability, and enhanced long-term shareholder value through a combination of M&A, smart capital investments, and returning capital to shareholders through dividends. In the current year, this balance is evident in the company's investment in equipment to support our growing work programs, our acquisitions of NorCan Electric and Jacob Bros so far this year, and our expectation to return approximately CAD 30 million to shareholders through our monthly dividends in 2024, including the 50% dividend increase announced in October and effective for the November and December dividends. I will now turn the call back to Teri to comment on the outlook for the company. Bird has a proven foundation of operational excellence and safe execution, which has resulted in considerable growth and the expected achievement of the company's 2022 to 2024 strategic plan targets. We are pleased with our third quarter results, with significant improvements in gross profit and adjusted EBITDA margins despite revenues being lower than anticipated due to minor delays to the start of a small number of new projects in the quarter, pushing some of the work into early 2025. With the considerable visibility provided by Bird's combined backlog, which continues to reflect higher embedded margins, the company expects whole-year revenues of approximately CAD 3.4 billion, with an adjusted EBITDA margin exceeding 6%. At Bird's recent Investor Day on October 9th, we laid out our progress against our current 2022 to 2024 strategic plan targets, which we are happy to say are on target to be met or exceeded, and introduced our 2025 to 2027 strategic plan. We delved deeper into each of our industrial, buildings, and infrastructure divisions and reviewed the key sectors we are focused on that support our expectations for future growth. We also provided financial targets for the upcoming three years, which include 10% annual organic growth ± 2%, with 2025 receiving an additional 5% growth from the inclusion of Jacob Bros for a full year compared to 2024. This would see the company's revenue reaching CAD 4.8 billion for FY 2027, 8% Adjusted EBITDA margin for FY 2027, with organic improvements each year and an additional bump from Jacob Bros in 2025, 33% dividend payout ratio of net income, which would mean that by 2027, we would expect to have five successive years of dividend increases, including our recently announced 50% dividend increase. Over the past several years, Bird has transformed itself and built a resilient business model with unique and specialized services that will be in demand by our clients in any economic environment. Much of our work program is not subject to the same ups and downs of normal economic cycles, and the business has considerable momentum. We expect Bird to benefit from the significant tailwinds stemming from our strategic focus on margin accretion, disciplined project selection, and safe collaborative operational excellence in resilient sectors. I'll now turn the call over to the operator for questions. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Analysts who wish to ask a question may press star, then one on their telephone keypad to join the question queue. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you are using a speakerphone, please ensure you lift the handset before pressing any keys. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star, then two. Anyone who has a question may press star, then one at this time. Our first question today is from Yuri Lynk with Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead. Good morning, gentlemen. Good morning, Yuri. Teri, can you tell us if there's any commonality or common reason behind the delayed projects that you noted and maybe give us a flavor in terms of region and market? I'd say the common flavor that we see in Canada is typically permit delays that ultimately are really difficult to push through the system. I'd say that that is probably at times the elephant in the room. Difficult to predict. You try to put together, obviously, the expectations, and oftentimes municipal permits are in a system that sometimes is overloaded, and it makes it difficult to get through. I'd say that would be the, and it isn't specific necessarily to a region. We see it, I'd say, more frequently on the building side where we have delays, and in this case, we've had some delays in the building side in the third quarter. Okay. And I would have thought a delay, it might get-if it's just a permit issue, it gets delayed into the next quarter, but you're kind of pointing to 2025. Is that just to be a bit conservative there, or what? It's just catching up. Yeah, Yeah, it's just catching up, right? So you're not able to catch up on the delay. That's really what it is. Okay. Second one for me, just obviously really nice gross margin step-up, even above and beyond what I was expecting. Anything to call out on gross margin in the quarter? And also tied with that, the G&A expense was a bit higher than I expected. Are those kind of even taking into account it's only two months at Jacob Bros, but all else equal, is this kind of the rate we're at pro forma? Yeah, I can take that one, Yuri. I think for the summer months, we generally have our highest margins in third quarter and fourth quarter, particularly if you get good weather all through fourth quarter. And certainly, Jacob Bros had a contribution there. But even if you take Jacob Bros out, the strength in the industrial business and the strong work program we have there certainly was a factor as well. Teri mentioned some of the buildings projects that we're pushing to the right a bit. Well, of the three business units we have in terms of industrial infrastructure and buildings, buildings has the lower gross profit percentage, generally speaking. So when those projects shift to the right, had they not shifted to the right, certainly we would have had additional gross profit dollars, but maybe the percentage might have been a little bit lower on a combined basis. I'd say those are some of the factors. Yeah, I think for this time of year, we should think about those are the types of margins we can deliver. There really wasn't anything unusual flowing through the quarter that drove it up, just, again, kind of diversification being on multiple large capital investment projects, that type of thing. And then on the G&A side, year- over- year, we were CAD 17 million higher than a year ago. More than half of that would relate to compensation costs. And some of that is certainly we've had NorCan, we've had Jacob Bros, so those business combinations have added some overhead to the business. But we've also been making some investment hires in the business as well, business development and estimating and so forth to be able to help support the growth in the business going forward. Certainly, depreciation, integration, and acquisition costs were almost CAD 2 million higher than a year ago. It was kind of a combination of a few things adding into it. Okay. And just on that line of questioning, big move up in your stock after the end of the quarter, just remind me if we should expect LTIP or stock-based comp expense in G&A to be elevated because of that, all else equal, or do you strip it out? Yeah. No, we run that through our G&A. Yeah, I'd say the run-up that we had after Investor Day was after September 30th, certainly, so in fourth quarter, the company certainly benefited from a higher share price following Investor Day. So at year-end, we'll do another quarterly analysis that we do looking at the total shareholder return, and part of the drivers of the long-term incentive plan that we have in place for performance share units is how Bird's total shareholder return compares against that of a peer group, and if Bird's total shareholder return is stronger than that peer group, then there's a multiplier that happens on those PSUs, so I would say at a CAD 30 share price or something like that, there could be an impact in Q4. It's kind of a one-time adjustment, but we won't run those calculations until probably January, until we know where share price is at the end of the year, and that's what we'll base that on. Okay. Okay. Thanks. The next question is from Chris Murray with ATB Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Yeah. Yeah, guys, thanks. So maybe just to follow on a little bit on just margins and just expectations for margins, I think you had talked about the fact that you were about 40 basis points accretive with Jacob Bros. Is 40 basis points the right way to think about the impact on EBITDA, or is it also sort of 40 basis points on the gross profit margin as well? Yeah, I think for Jacob Bros, their G&A percent of revenue is higher than, say, Bird's. So you might pick up a bit more on gross profit, but then you give a little bit back on G&A. But when you look at the impact on EBITDA, those two are netted out, so it has the 40 basis point difference. Okay. That's helpful. And then, Wayne, just kind of a quick question, I guess, on cash and capital. There's been certainly a lot of moving parts, I guess, in the credit facility, the acquisition of Jacob Bros, a lot of stuff moving around. But just looking at kind of the cash, kind of the mix between kind of what's your cash and what's in restricted cash and joint operations, it really seemed to have dropped out over the last few quarters. Just wondering, because I don't think you're in a lot of joint venture operations right now, but maybe I'm misunderstanding that, just can you kind of walk us through how you think cash is going to kind of move around period- to- period with the joint ventures in the mix? And Jacob Bros kind of changes how those work through your balance sheet? Yeah. Maybe I'll just talk a little bit about the mix of the cash. We kind of bifurcate our cash into three categories. We call it accessible cash, trust cash, and then joint venture cash. The trust cash, plus or minus CAD 5 million, kind of stays in a fairly tight range quarter- to- quarter, driven on volumes, of course, in parts of the country that have that type of legislation in place, but not much movement there. I'd say in one of our large capital investment projects, we are in a joint venture. And certainly, on that project, we have cash balances that are held in those joint venture accounts. And that's why year- over- year, you see the spike in cash held in JVs. At some point, that cash comes back to become accessible cash, if you will, because things like profits and overheads will get distributed from the joint venture accounts back to the joint venture partners over time, and then, obviously, some of that cash is used to deliver the project, certainly as well. It's accessible cash. We invested CAD 15 million in our bank account to acquire the Jacob Bros acquisition in Q3, so we have negative CAD 6 million in accessible cash now, but if you look at some of the cash we put on Jacob Bros, you'd be + 10 type thing, and then with the growth in the business, it's pretty significant year-over-year growth, so even though in Q3, we delivered positive CAD 6 million in cash from changes in non-cash working capital accounts, on a year-to-date basis, we still have CAD 148 million invested in that. Q4 is always our strongest cash-generating quarter, and we expect that trend to continue. I think in Q4 last year, we released maybe CAD 65 million in non-cash working capital. I think all things being equal, we'd expect that to occur again this year. Then all of that cash becomes accessible for the business as well. I just think with the growth of the business, you're seeing more investment in that non-cash working capital, but you're still going to see the same seasonality trends that we have over the past several years. Okay. That's helpful. Thank you. Thanks, Chris. The next question is from Atharva Zaveri with TD Cowen. Please go ahead. Good morning. Atharva Zaveri here on behalf of Michael Tupholme. So impressive margin performance in Q3, and now you're expecting FY 2024 EBITDA margin of at least 6%, which is good. So how much year-over-year margin improvement do you expect in 2025? Pardon me, this is the conference operator reporting we have lost audio with the speaker's location. Please stand by as we try to regain them. Pardon me, this is the conference operator. We've been rejoined by the speaker connection. Please go ahead. Hi there. Can you hear me okay? Yep. I'm not sure what happened there, but I'll just kind of restate my answer. I'm not sure at what point we got dropped off there. We're just talking about how can we think about EBITDA margins going into 2025? So what I was trying to say is that we said for the FY 2027, we're going to be at 8%. And each year, we were going to see an improvement just organically through improvements in the business and diversification, those types of things, but 2025 will get an additional lift in our EBITDA margins from having a full year of Jacob Bros included in there, so I think if we said in our outlook section this year that we're going to finish 2024 greater than 6% in EBITDA margin, and I think you're going to see for 2025, Bird approaching 7% for the year. And then 2026, 2027, you'll pick up another 50 basis point improvement in each of those years as just organic improvements. The next question is from Frederic Bastien with Raymond James. Please go ahead. Oh, hi guys. This is Sean on for Fred. I just had a quick question to ask on LTIPs. So these are expected to have a growing impact over the next few years embedded in the new strategic plan outlook. I want to see if anything changes around the outlook and around investment as a result of last night's election results. We certainly see continued strength in the large capital investments. We don't see any changes. We don't anticipate any changes as a result of the American election. Typically, the kinds of things that we're focused on are largely agnostic to election cycles. Like I said, we continue to see strength. The projects that we're focused on are long-term with significant investments, with significant strength by the entities that are making those investments, and they're well along. The landscape that we're in is quite exciting. Perfect. Okay. That's all for me, guys. Thanks. Thank you. Again, if you have a question, please press star, then one. The next question is from Ian Gillies with Stifel. Please go ahead. Morning, everyone. Morning. Hey. As it pertains to some of the permitting delays you alluded to, it doesn't seem to have impacted your view on 2025 whatsoever. Can you maybe just talk about how you worked in, call it, some of these slower processes as it relates to permitting into the guidance, and whether you're seeing any steps by governments to rectify some of these issues? Yeah, certainly, it's something that we're spending a tremendous amount of time on. I think it's a couple of things. I think in the percentage of projects that are larger scale are entering our business in a larger way. And those typically don't have the same challenges. They're well developed. They have a long period of, and especially in the collaborative focus that we have, we're working with our clients in the municipalities and provincial districts they're in. So the permits are further along and developed, and there's more predictability in a lot of those. So I think in that regard, because that higher percentage entering into 2025, we don't feel it'll be something that will impact us as it has. And I think there's also still an overhang post-COVID with government agencies still not fully recovered and able to deliver the permitting that we need in a timely manner. It's something we talk on a regular basis with provincial governments about how do we get more predictability and more improvements in these areas. That's helpful. And maybe a follow-on question from some of that. Is there any advantage for, call it, a large company such as yourselves versus some of the smaller private construction companies in going and obtaining these permits? Is there any moat there or competitive advantage you could point to? I'd say the larger projects tend to have a better priority or better engagement. Smaller projects sometimes don't get all parties kind of pulling in the same direction where the larger ones, especially when you're working in alliance with the government, you've got some major decision-makers at the table. And the smaller projects we do for various clients sometimes aren't the priority they need to be. So I think it's just a difference in the approach. And I think some of the larger ones have a much longer planning cycle. So it's just you can work through a lot of that, so. Maybe just one last one, just to put one final point in around this issue. Nothing's materially changed around the permitting front since the Investor Day, call it, a month ago. No. No. Understood. Thank you. I'll turn the call back over. This concludes our question- and- answer session. I will hand the call back over to Mr. McKibbon for any closing remarks. So I'd just like to thank everybody for joining our call today and have a safe balance of your year. Thank you. This brings to a close today's conference call and webcast. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating and have a pleasant day.