We're really pleased to be able to host Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Corporation. Their ticker is GLDD. We did a relaunch on Great Lakes yesterday, so if you would like to read our report, please contact your Sidoti representative. With us today, we have Lasse Petterson, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Scott Kornblau, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. So we're going to go through the presentation. We'll have some Q&A at the end. If you have some questions, please type them into the Q&A box. With that, Lasse and Scott, thanks so much for being here. Thank you. Thank you so much. Happy to be here. We'll take through some of the events that we have had over the last year. We have had some really great developments over the last two years. We entered this year, 2024, with a record backlog of $1.04 billion. Also good is that 71% of that backlog is capital projects, which carries better margins than what we do generate on what we call maintenance contracts. We also had a financing event just recently where we got secured a $150 million second lien agreement with a lot of flexibility. Scott is going to go through that later on. We took delivery of a new dredge this year with the Galveston Island. It came out in January, and she has been put into very successful production here in the first quarter of 2024. As a consequence, the first quarter, we had the highest EBITDA in a quarter that we had in four years with a $43 million quarter. Great news on that side as well. On offshore wind, we have two contracts in place, firm contracts, Empire Wind 1, which we are going to execute in the latter part of 2025, and Ørsted Sunrise Wind contract, which we're going to execute in 2026. Backlog continues to be strong. After After the record backlog we had entering into the year, we have added some projects to the backlog, but at the same time, we are burning off the backlog to some degree. So it stands now at $879 million. The Acadia, a new rock installation vessel, is moving forward, and we are looking to take delivery of her mid-next year to maybe into the third quarter and then be ready to go to work for Equinor. We had the keel laying done here in May of 2024. Our largest client, the Corps of Engineers, had their budget for this year approved, record budget of $8.7 billion, which then bodes well for the bidding market that we are now in the midst of. Most of our projects bid in Q2 and Q3, and it has been very active up to now. Next slide. Very quickly, we're a publicly traded company on Nasdaq. We have 134 years in business. We are the leading dredger in the United States by quite a large margin. Most of our work is in port deepenings, coastal protection, barrier islands, and land reclamation. We are rapidly expanding our core business into offshore wind energy, or should I rather call it rock placement for the foundations for the wind towers, but also rock placements for pipelines and telecommunication. As I said, our clients are mostly the Corps of Engineers for, on average, 75% of our revenues. We are trying hard to diversify that client base now with offshore wind, but also with LNG clients that we do have a large backlog for, which we'll come back to. Next slide. What we do, what we love to do is high margin capital and coastal protection projects where we can utilize our very diverse fleet and our strong organization of capable engineers to execute these challenging projects. In the capital projects market, we have a high bid market share, and we sometimes also do maintenance projects. It's 32% of revenues, as you can see here. Those projects we typically use in between the capital and coastal protection projects. We have been working internationally for over 20 years. Had our base in Bahrain. We worked in Australia. We participated in the Suez Canal widening and deepening, and we've done a lot of land reclamations in the Middle East. Next one. Our large diverse fleet consists mainly of what we call hopper dredges, which is a self-propelled vessel. Then we have mechanical dredges that are cranes on a barge. We have hydraulic dredges that are a cutter dredge, which have a cutter head that sucks up the sand from the bottom of the ocean, and we pump it through the dredge and into a pipeline to shore. We have five hopper dredges in operations today, which is the largest hopper fleet in the United States, four mechanical and five hydraulics. Next one. The competitive market is us. We are on average between 33% and 40% of the overall market. Our next competitor is Weeks Marine, and they are roughly half our size. And then we have Manson that is roughly the size, half or less than half the size of Weeks again. And then we have a lot of regional competitors that have access to one or two or three dredges, and they typically do regional work. Next one. Scott, I think this is where I hand over to you. Yeah, sure. And thanks, everybody. I'm Scott Kornblau, CFO at Great Lakes. So I want to rewind before I talk about the current bid market. 2022, despite our largest client, the Army Corps of Engineers, having a record budget, was a very disappointing bid market, one in the cadence and number of jobs, but two in the type of work that came out. As Lasse mentioned, we like to focus on the larger projects that come with higher margins, and that is not what came out in 2022. Despite that, we were very, very bullish going into 2023. The work that was supposed to be executed in 2022 did not go away. And as we had predicted, 2023 turned out to be a fantastic bid market. There were seven large capital projects that came out. In addition, there were two very large private LNG projects that came out, both of which Great Lakes won. 2023 was a recovery of the bid market, and it is fortunately continuing into 2024. A new record budget. We entered the year in the Army Corps, $8.7 billion, and we're seeing that pay off right now. The first five months of 2024, we have seen over $1.1 billion of bids come out. As Lasse mentioned, Q2 and Q3 are typically the strongest, and we see a very big pipeline over the next handful of months of projects coming out. We believe that the 2024 market is going to be at least as large as the $2.7 billion that we saw last year, and it's going to be constructed of not only capital work, but a lot of beach work. In addition to the record budget, there was in 2023 an additional $1.5 billion approved for supplemental appropriations for the storms that decimated the East Coast in 2022 and 2023. We're seeing that work starting to come out to bid now. It looks like 2024 is going to be as strong, if not stronger, than 2023. That's how we got to over $1 billion of backlog in 2023. The bid market of $2.7 billion last year, including the LNG, Great Lakes won 44% of that work. On the bottom of this slide are the large projects that came out in 2023. The ones denoted in red are the ones that we were successful in winning. We won the three largest projects that came out last year, including Rio Grande LNG, which is NextDecade's LNG facility. That's the largest project ever won or executed by Great Lakes. Subcontractor work has started on that job, on both LNG jobs, and we'll be executing the dredging. We'll commence in the next couple of weeks, and we'll take us through 2025 and into 2026. Just as important than the number that we have in backlog, entered the year with $1 billion, and now we're sitting over $900 million with some recent wins that we had. It's the construct of that backlog, with over 3/4 of it being in the higher margin work, the capital projects, and that's inclusive of the LNG work. We are also a little more than halfway through on our new build program. We are investing not only in our hopper fleet. Lasse mentioned the Galveston Island, which we just took delivery of and doing very well. We are also building a sister to the Galveston Island, the Amelia Island, which we'll take delivery of the second half of next year. We will have the largest and the youngest hopper fleet. The hopper fleet is typically the ones that drive the largest margins. In addition, during this new build cycle, we have been investing in support equipment. I will call out the two Multi-Cats, which you can see pictures on the bottom. Those not only help drive efficiency, they also help drive safety on laying pipeline on a number of these projects. Then the final new build that we're currently underway, Lasse mentioned the Acadia. We just had the keel laying to service the offshore wind industry. The Acadia will be delivered in the second half of next year. I guess with that, Lasse, I can flip it back to you if you want to talk a little bit more about the offshore wind industry. Yeah. So as I mentioned, the offshore wind industry is coming to the United States. It is a mature industry in Europe where they have been installing offshore wind turbines for the last 15 years. But now we're starting to do the same in the United States. And it's a great opportunity for us to enter a new industry that is growing, and it provides client diversification for us, and it also provides us with a great opportunity for growth. I can tell you that the international dredging contractors, 15 years ago, most of the revenues was in dredging. And today, half of the revenues and half of the profits are coming from offshore wind. So a great development for them in this industry, and we are looking to target the same. We have already contracted with Equinor to do the rock foundations for the Empire Wind 1 contract executed in 2025, and with Ørsted for their Sunrise project to be executed in 2026. There is also a very large rock placement requirements around oil and gas for pipelines. And there is for telecommunications, rock to protect cables that are being laid on the sea bottom, and for utilities for power cables that are connecting different countries with power. So we have great outlooks for the use of this vessel, both in offshore wind, but also in the oil and gas, telecommunication, and power generation industries. The Acadia is now being constructed at the Philly Shipyard, ready next year. With the Acadia, she's Jones Act compliant, which means that we can take U.S. rock from quarries in New York State or other U.S. states and put them out in U.S. waters, and thereby generating a very large local content for the developers on these projects, which then gives them opportunity for tax credits. So we have a high demand for the use of Acadia on new projects that are coming out. Next one. So as you can see, the projects that are being considered in the United States are mainly on the East Coast, where the depth, the water depth facilitates placement of monopiles and then as a foundation for the turbine. The water depths are typically around 50 feet, and that facilitates the use of bottom-fixed turbines. On the West Coast of the United States, there is being considered floating offshore wind, but that is some years out, and it's being studied today what is required to build out floating offshore wind on the West Coast, but it's probably from 2030 and onwards. There has been some turbulence around the power purchase agreements that were entered into before COVID. That has been now adjusted. The old power purchase agreements for New York and New Jersey were canceled and have now been rebid in further licensing rounds. The developers have been, which includes Ørsted and Equinor, have been successful in renewing those power purchase agreements to be able to then execute their projects, which they have planned. Next one. We were very fortunate last year to get President Biden to come to the Philly Shipyard when we did the first steel cutting for the Acadia. And it was a great event for us, and it also generated a lot of publicity around our investment into the offshore wind and rock placement industry. Next one. So what we do is a commitment to leaving where we work in a better or equally good state as when we came and arrived to the site. We do a lot of work with the environmental protection, coastal protection projects. We are building wetlands. We are improving the beaches to protect communities from rising sea levels and increasing strong winter storms. And we are also on board all our vessels, dredging vessels. We have observers that 24/7 are observing for wildlife and to protect the marine wildlife that is around our projects. We have a very strong safety culture in the company. We are a safety leader. Our total recordable incident rates are below one, and this helps us when we execute projects safely and well planned. My focus has been on man-overboard situations. We do work on the water, and it happens that people fall overboard. We always use lifesaving equipment, but these incidents lead potentially to injuries, and we are very focused on preventing those. Next one. The executive team here consists of myself, Scott Kornblau as our Chief Financial Officer. Both Scott and I and Eleni Beyko, heading up offshore wind as oil and gas offshore background. That sets us up nicely for what is happening now with the offshore wind market. Dave Johanson, Chris Gunsten, Senior Vice Presidents, they are heading up each their part of our dredging operations. Bill Hanson is our Senior Vice President for Government Relations, and we have Lee Schiffer as our Senior Vice President, Chief Legal Officer. Very experienced management team, and I'm happy to be part of this operation. Next one. What's yours, Scott? Yeah, thanks, Lasse. I just want to spend the last couple of minutes looking at some historical financials. I'll focus on the top right, the EBITDA. 2020 and 2021 are what I would call normalized years. When we have a good mix of capital projects, that's what the fleet that we have is capable of. I mentioned the difficulties of 2022. In addition to this very unusual bidding activity, there was also inflation, supply chain, and weather events that absolutely negatively impacted 2022. We entered 2023, calling 2023 a transition year. The work that we truly believed was going to come out and did in 2023, we said we really wouldn't start executing that work until the fourth quarter of 2023. So we said the beginning of 2023, the first three quarters would be improved, but still marginal. The fourth quarter of 2023 will begin the look of normalcy again. That's exactly how it played out. In 2023, we ended the year with a $40 million EBITDA quarter in the fourth quarter. Then, of course, followed it up with the $43 million. I do want to just quickly talk about CapEx. As I mentioned, we are in the latter half of a big new build phase. We will have roughly $150 million-$180 million of total CapEx in 2024 as the new build program comes to completion, and another 60 or so in 2025. The timing could change a little as milestone payments shift to the left or the right. But to complete the new build program, we have roughly $200 million left between now and the end of the year. I do want to just look at the first quarter real quickly and what a difference a year can make. Buoyed by that backlog, revenue approached $200 million, a big increase from the prior quarter. But because we were executing high-margin projects that we did very, very well on, we were able to get gross profit and EBITDA margins into the 20%. And we're definitely setting ourselves up for this return to normalcy. This year will be a strong year in return. By design, the second quarter will be a little softer than the first quarter and the second half of the year. We have three vessels that will be under regulatory dry docking. One we pulled forward in order to start executing the LNG work, which will start in the next few weeks. A third one, we will actually be reactivating a vessel that was previously cold stacked for some work that we had won earlier this year that we'll start executing in the second half of the year. We will be able to put a dredge to work that has been on the sideline for the next couple of weeks. She'll be utilized the latter part of this year and for well over half of next year. Setting ourselves up for not only 2024, but 2025 is looking very strong as well. In order to help facilitate this new build program, we did two months ago execute a second lien, $150 million loan. $100 million of it was funded at closing. At Great Lakes' option, we have a year to exercise a $50 million delayed draw facility. We'll make that decision next year if we're going to do that. With this financing, our weighted average interest rate on all of our debt is 7%. We have no maturities until 2029. We use the proceeds of the second lien to pay down our revolver. So we're currently sitting with an undrawn $300 million revolver that doesn't mature until the third quarter of 2027. Then lastly, just a historical look at the backlog. We have, prior to last year, averaged about $600 million of backlog at any given time, obviously well exceeding that. Focus on that maroon bar at the bottom. That's the construct of the capital projects. That is a good indication of what the next six-18 months are going to look like based on the construct of this backlog. I won't go through any of the appendix. This is on our website, just some additional data on there. Just with Julio, I can flip it back to you if there's any questions. Yeah, excellent. Lasse and Scott, thanks so much for the rundown. I'll quickly go into some Q&A with a couple of minutes here. I guess first, on the base dredging business, thinking about the current bidding environment, both on the public and private side, is that going to be continuing to be a rising tide of sorts as we go into 2024, then 2025, 2026? And then secondly, do you see the overall mix of the upcoming bidding opportunities continuing to trend towards higher margin categories? I think you talked about coastal protection as one of them within dredging. Yeah, the dredging business, as I said, the Corps of Engineers have record budgets for the last seven years. We don't see that there's going to be a reduction in the focus on infrastructure in the United States. We assume that to continue. Last two years, the coastal protection projects have been delayed for various reasons. Those are now coming back very strongly. We have the LNG projects where we are executing two. There is another one that we have in low bids, but not contracted. There is a number of LNG export facilities that are coming to that are in the queue that have been now built by Biden because of his executive order on delaying the, or not delaying, but asking for further reviews of new LNG export facilities projects. We are looking for strong markets for the next years. The Corps of Engineers are back to work. Hopefully, we can get the projects out on the streets and bid on time as we have had for many, many years before 2022. Perfect. And then on the recently secured financing, which I know is a key topic recently, the second lien you did in April, can you talk about the rationale and kind of discuss the flexibility you got in regards to the terms of the loan? And then if I could squeeze into that as well, a quick update on Title XI, if you have any. Yeah, sure. As we were finishing up this new build program and coming off of the backdrop of 2022, which definitely strained the balance sheet much differently than we thought, we thought it was important to just shore up liquidity to get through this new build program. One of the things that was very important, though, was, really, we don't need long-term financing. I really wanted to find something that I would consider bridge financing. There was a lot of flexibility built into the paper that we just did. The delayed draw feature was one of them. Very favorable call provisions on there. Even though this does have a maturity in 2029, our intent is not to keep this paper anywhere close to maturity. We get through the new build program. The new assets will be on revenue and start earning cash. Our intent is to quickly pay this down. One of the features we were able to negotiate is even a more favorable call provision tied to Title XI. So to go to your question, we are very upfront with the lenders that we were looking for a bridge. We still were going to pursue the government financing. We are continuing to do that. We have very, very constant dialogues with the Maritime Administration who runs the Title XI program. There has been some delays in that program. There has not been a loan issued in a couple of years. However, we are working with them to find a path. They have committed a couple of years ago to support the offshore wind industry. The administration have as well. The vessel that we're building, the Acadia, checks all the boxes on the type of vessels that they're looking to support. I do think that there is a path forward. That's why we set up the flexibility to be able to take this out if and when Title XI does come. Excellent. And then just we went a little bit over. So if you could just elevator sum up of the value prop of Great Lakes from an investor's perspective. Yeah, we, as a dredger, have been in business for 134 years. We are going to continue to be in business for many years to come. It's a strong dredging market driven by the expansion of the Panama Canal. There are climate change happening, which impacts our marine environment. So I see this driving for investments into the coastal protection and also to maintain these ports that have been deepened. We have a great opportunity to grow the company now into offshore wind and rock placements for pipelines and telecommunication cables. Rock placement was a first step into offshore wind. There's much more to come there and opportunities for U.S. industry to participate in this really exciting new activity that is coming to our shores. Lasse, Scott, thank you guys so much for taking the time. Thank you. Thank you.