Great. Thank you, everyone, for joining us. We're happy to have Scott Kornblau today, CFO of Great Lakes Dredge & Dock, joining us. Great Lakes is a leading provider of dredging services in the United States, with about 40% market share. Our rating is a market outperform, with a $15 price target. They are entering 2025 with an incredible, I think, record backlog. A lot of opportunity in front of them. Scott is going to give you a short introduction to the company, and then after that, we'll go into a fireside chat Q&A portion of the presentation, and with that, Scott, go ahead and take it away. Great, John. Appreciate you having us. So I'm going to give a brief overview of the company and then get into some of the numbers, and then I know there's questions after that. 2024 has been a really, really good year for us. We entered the year with, at the time, a record backlog of $1 billion. At the beginning of the year, we did take delivery of our newest hopper dredge, the Galveston Island. She is working and doing very, very well. Throughout the year, we had strong performance across the fleet on projects and continued to add to backlog while we're doing that. We ended the third quarter of 2024 with a new record backlog of $1.2 billion, and post-quarter-end, we've added another $182 million to backlog. We're also making progress on our new line of business, the scour protection vessel, the Acadia, which is being built. We do have two contracts in backlog right now. In the fourth quarter, we did sign a reservation agreement with an offshore wind developer in the U.S. to give us exclusive negotiating rights for a third contract, and we are negotiating a second reservation agreement with a different wind developer for also work in the U.S. that could keep us with utilization in the U.S. at various times through 2029. So a company overview: Great Lakes is the leading dredger in the United States. We've been doing this a very long time. The company was established in 1890. The work we do is to improve and protect our nation's infrastructure and coastlines, and that's done through port deepenings and beach restoration and coastal protection. As I mentioned, we are moving into the scour protection business to support offshore wind, oil, and gas communication to help those industries with subsea infrastructure. We have a diverse client base, but our largest client on the dredging side is the federal government, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, but we also work for state and local governments along with private companies, utilities, energy, LNG, and offshore wind. Then I'll get to some of the successes that we have down here on the numbers later on in the deck. There are three major types of projects that we execute: capital projects, that is, the port deepening and widenings, that also includes deepening of LNG facilities. Those are complex projects. They therefore come with higher margin. These are the projects that we like to execute and do very well on those. The next type of project is coastal protection, that is, the creating and rebuilding of beaches. We've seen a large number of work in 2024 and expect that to continue in 2025, doing a lot of cleanup from the storms that hit the East Coast pretty hard in 2022, 2023, and 2024. Then finally, the last major type of project is maintenance. The deepening and widening projects that we do, there is natural sediment that occurs, and those waterways need to be maintained, and the water depth. It is a recurring revenue stream that keeps coming. You can see down on the bottom, there is foreign. We have historically worked internationally, but as strong as the U.S. dredging market is, our focus has been fully on the U.S., but that's always an option where we can deploy some of the dredging fleet overseas. Typically, we have a pretty even mix of the three kinds of projects. 2024 was a different story in a good way. We saw a large number of capital projects come out, and we were successful in winning a large number of those. So our '24 and we expect our 2025 mix of revenue will be much more heavily skewed toward the higher margin capital projects. One of the things that sets Great Lakes apart from the competition is the fleet that we have. There are three major types of dredges, and we have best in class in all three types. First is a hopper dredge. We have the best and youngest hopper fleet in the industry. These are ships, so they're self-propelled and able to work on a lot of complex projects. Mechanical dredges, these are really, you can think of it as a bucket or a backhoe on a barge, and these are really good on getting into tight areas. Then hydraulics, they have teeth at the bottom, and they're very, very capable of digging challenging soils. When we go on a project, we have the ability to move different vessels in and out. So by having this diverse fleet, we can complete a project in the most efficient manner. Not only do we have the most dredges in the industry, we also have the largest market share and are typically sitting in the mid-30%, and our market share is equivalent to our next three largest competitors combined. As I mentioned earlier, our largest customer is the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The 2024 budget and bid market was extremely strong. It was a new record budget for the Army Corps of Engineers. In addition, I mentioned the storms that hit the East Coast pretty hard. In addition to the normal budget, there was an additional $1.5 billion approved as supplemental funds for disaster relief. We are seeing those projects starting to execute, so a combination of both of those, coming off a very strong 2023 bid market. 2024 was even higher, and we saw the largest bid market we have seen in 2024. Early indications are that the 2025 budget will be a record budget. It has been approved by the House and Senate and is awaiting the president's signature. One thing to note on here, I have this WRDA 2022. That's the Water Resources Development Act. It's an act that is passed every two years, and it really authorizes the study of what the next large projects are going to be. The WRDA that was passed at the end of 2022 authorized the study of the New York Ship Channel deepening, which is estimated to be a $6 billion project, probably over a 10-year period. So those studies are ongoing, but we believe in the second half of this decade, we could see this large project kick off. And then lastly, in addition to the core business with the government, there were two large LNG projects awarded in 2023, and Great Lakes won both of those, Rio Grande LNG being one of them. It's the largest project we have ever executed in our history. Dredging commenced on both of those in 2024 and is ongoing right now. I mentioned record backlog of $1.2 billion. In addition, another $460 million of jobs that we were low bidder and is just awaiting award, and as I mentioned, $180 million of those have been awarded in the fourth quarter. The chart on the right is one that I focus on a lot. I said not all backlog is created equal. The capital projects is what we go after, and not only do we have a record backlog, a large proportion of that is capital, and that really sets us up for the foreseeable future to have some very, very strong quarters. For the first nine months of 2024, there's a list of all the large projects that came out. Great Lakes was successful in securing three of the top four and five of the top eight, and we're able to maintain our mid-30% market share. At Great Lakes, we are winding down the largest new build program we have ever done in our company's history. It was overall about a $500 million program. I mentioned the first of those vessels that we took delivery of earlier in 2024, the Galveston Island. We are building a sister to the Galveston Island named the Amelia Island, and she will be delivered in the second half of this year, and she will go straight from the shipyard to the job site. We also, over the last couple of years, have invested in emissions improvements, in support equipment. I do want to briefly mention the Multi Cats. These two vessels were built not only to increase efficiencies, as they have done that, but also to increase safety, and at the end of 2024, at the WorkBoat Convention, these vessels were named Vessel of the Year. And then finally, as I mentioned, we are entering into a new space, and we are currently building the Acadia, which is the first and only Jones Act-compliant subsea rock installation vessel, so the Acadia is designed to deposit rock on the seabed, and that is to protect infrastructure, so that can be from oil and gas pipelines, that can be from offshore wind facilities, and that could be telecommunication cables as well, and built to all of the latest emission standards, all with Tier 4 engines. There are really four markets that we're targeting for the Acadia. The first is U.S. offshore wind, and there's been some negative headlines recently around it, but there's also been a lot of positive momentum. There are two wind farms that are producing power on the East Coast right now. In 2024, we saw a number of offtake agreements or power purchase agreements between the states and the wind developers where the power has been sold. So there has been momentum. We do have two contracts in the U.S. for offshore wind farms. The first is with Equinor on Empire Wind 1, and then after that is with Ørsted Sunrise Wind. As I mentioned, we're making progress on some other reservation agreements and contracts as well. And while we believe U.S. offshore power will play an important part in the growing power needs, as I mentioned, there are other markets that we are in parallel to the U.S. offshore wind market pursuing. One is the international offshore wind market. U.S. is in the early innings, much more robust and established supply chain in Europe. This chart shows demand for our vessels for offshore wind. The lighter blue is larger rock called armor rock. There are only six vessels that target this market, including the Acadia, can do that work, and that's demonstrated by the orange horizontal line, so much more demand than supply. The green line represents all the scope of work, armor and filter, so smaller rock and bigger rock that's needed, but also an undersupply of that vessel, so we have established boots on the ground in Europe and are actively pursuing utilization for the Acadia in parallel with the U.S. in Europe. Two other non-offshore wind markets that are really interesting to us that we're also pursuing. One is the telecommunication cable protection. You may have read about a few months ago the incident in the Baltic Sea where a ship dragged an anchor for 60 nautical miles over telecommunication cables. That type of damage would be prevented if you put rock over the cable. Same with oil and gas pipelines. Those are often exposed on the seafloor. Covering those with rock would be protection. So there's a number of RFPs out there, and we are participating in some of them. We believe between the two markets, in addition to offshore wind, there probably needs seven subsea rock installation vessels to cover this need for these two markets in an already undersupplied with the offshore wind. So we think it's really promising that we do believe in the long-term viability of U.S. offshore wind, but we are not tied to that as the only source of utilization. Moving to the numbers, I have some historical numbers here. You can see the second on the top of the top two charts, the lined maroon bars. That's a trailing 12-month revenue in EBITDA, and we'll be reporting next month full year results. But if you looked at both of those 12 months, we'd have this high revenue on par with any revenue year we've had and the second highest EBITDA that the company has ever seen. So after a challenging 2022, we were adamant that this market would rebound. The 2023 was the transition year. We said all along we thought 2024 would look a lot more normal, and that's exactly how it's played out. I mentioned our CapEx program. We will have 2025 finishing up that new build program, so most of the spend should occur then. We will have no plans to build any other dredges once we take delivery of the Amelia Island. So we expect starting in 2026, CapEx to come down to more normal levels. And then finally, liquidity in really good shape at the end of the third quarter. We had nothing drawn on our $300 million revolver. We have no debt maturities until 2029 and a weighted average interest rate of under 7%. Just to see the year-over-year progression across the board, revenue, profit margins, EBITDA this year has been very, very good and really played out as we expected. And then finally, to see the progression of the backlog. Not only does this show total backlog, it also shows backlog by project type. As I mentioned, the capital is the most lucrative. Prior to the explosion we saw at the end of 2023, an average backlog for us was about $550 million. We're sitting well over double that, and again, very, very weighted towards these capital projects. So, 2024 very, very strong, but with this type of backlog that we have, we expect 2025 to be a very, very strong year as well. John, I'll turn it back to you. Thanks, Scott. That was informative. We're going to start the Q&A and fireside chat portion of the presentation now. If anyone in the audience has any questions, please submit it through the web interface. If you're connecting through the phone, you can email me jtanwonteng@cjs-securities.com. First one for you, Scott. You have this massive backlog. The margins appear to be very strong, both from the mix, and it seems the industry has been capacity limited. Just wondering how you think about profitability year- over- year heading into 2025, just based on what you have already on the books, number one. Number two, what the offsets to that might be, whether it's dry docking or scheduling in other ways, shapes, or form. Yeah, so we saw a progression of margin as we started replacing maintenance-type work with capital work. The last quarter of 2023, we got margin starting with a two, and that continued throughout 2024. With the makeup of the backlog that we have right now, expectations are that that will continue well into 2025. Utilization is strong. We have very little white space in 2025 to fill. You mentioned what can partially offset that. Dry docks is one of them. This is the way the calendar falls. These vessels are required to do regulatory ABS dry docking. In 2025, we have seven scheduled dry docks planned. Now, I say scheduled. Sometimes there's some flexibility, but usually we can't move those around. There's seven. There's a double whammy when you have a vessel go into dry dock, when you get a zero in the revenue line because you have to pull it off of the job to go into the shipyard to do this, and then you have the actual cost of the shipyard. So we do have that to contend with. That being said, it will still be a very, very strong year. It could be. It would obviously be much better had we had a more normal dry dock cadence of three to four, but it's the way the calendar falls, and maybe it's fortunate because it is going to be such a strong year. We can do these and still have, I think, what everybody will consider a very good year. Okay, great. Thank you. And then maybe you could drill down into the offshore wind market a little bit and the upcoming change in the U.S. administration. Do you believe there's a risk to projects already in place for permitting that might be revoked, or do you believe that permitting in the U.S. might be stopped for newer projects? Just help us understand how you're viewing that and kind of what the risk is there. I know you're working on different end markets, but there is the risk of other things as well. How are you preparing, and how are you thinking about that risk? Yeah, I mean, so we've all heard the comments that the new administration has made regarding offshore wind. But as I mentioned, there has been a lot of progress. And then one of the things too that the new administration has harped a bunch as well is focus on U.S. made, U.S. manufactured, U.S. jobs, energy independence. And that's all things that obviously check the box with alternative energy, including offshore wind. And then also the energy providers are saying they need every bit of energy that they can get their hands on. So I do think that there is a need for alternative energy. What is going to happen? I don't know. The projects that we have in backlog, those are permitted. I don't believe permitted projects are at risk. There's also a number, there's four gigawatts under construction right now. Since 2021, there's been $10 billion invested or announced to be invested into the offshore wind space. So this ball has started. So I think projects that are permitted, I think it's unlikely that we'll see anything. Do we see a pause on new permitting? That's still TBD. I really don't have any more insight than anybody else. Okay, great. Could you maybe detail what you meant a little bit more by reservations? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So by being the only Jones Act-compliant vessel in the United States or anywhere that can do this kind of work for the U.S. wind projects, we have an advantage over other competitors who are not Jones Act-compliant. And we are not going to, we're going to market this vessel everywhere. So if a U.S. wind developer wants to negotiate a contract with us by signing a reservation agreement, it puts us in exclusivity. And there is a breakup fee if we are not able to come to a contract. So we do have one signed. We are negotiating a contract right now. And then again, we're very close to executing another reservation agreement, which again, we believe likely leads to contracts on boats. Got it. That's helpful. Question from the audience here, actually, on the Acadia. Wondering if you could give an update on the Title XI financing possibility and the status of the Philly Shipyard and how you see that relationship and their operations evolving. Yeah. So we continue to talk to the Maritime Administration on the Title XI financing. I think the entire government is kind of in flux now while they're waiting for the new administration to change. But our most recent conversations with them, which was not that long ago, are positive. Our application is progressing, but I don't think we'll see a lot of movement for the next month or so until the new administration is in place. But as you're well aware, John, we took care of our liquidity needs a while ago, and this is now definitely. I'll take it and we would love to have it. It's very, very good paper, but now it becomes an enhancement as opposed to a need. As far as the Acadia, so Acadia is being built at the Philly Shipyard, which was recently acquired by Hanwha. That is a South Korean yard. They acquired the yard. So that just closed in the last handful of weeks. So we are now working with them and had introductions prior to that. There was, prior to the takeover, we were notified that there could be a little slippage to the vessel, if not by the end of this year, maybe going to the first quarter of next year. But we're working with Hanwha to get that kind of pulled back so we can get that delivered this year. So I think there's a chance it gets delivered Q1 of 2026, but we're still hopeful we can get it delivered in 2025. Got it. Does that also apply to the Amelia Island or no? No, Amelia Island is doing really well and is on schedule. The Amelia is the sister to the Galveston. We're building it in the same yard. So lessons learned from the Galveston. And we fully expect in the second part of the year to take delivery and get her right onto payroll. Got it. Okay. Offsetting the risk maybe from offshore wind permitting and the risk of maybe having to go into markets that you weren't initially preparing for. What do you think is the benefit, the potential from LNG over the next couple of years? You have two projects already underway, one in low bid. Maybe talk about the opportunity for the project in low bid to proceed to FID and what else is behind that in the pipeline, if there is any. Yeah. So the two projects we're executing now, we're not impacted by the moratorium on new permits. They weren't permitted. So those are moving along. You mentioned we do have another project that's in our low bid pending. It has been there for some time. It has always been subject to the project moving to final investment decision. This was Tellurian's old LNG property, which is now. Tellurian was acquired last year by Woodside. They renamed the project Woodside Louisiana LNG. They have publicly said they are looking to go to final investment decision the first quarter of 2026. Assuming that happens, the contract that we had that was subject to FID does transition with the acquisition. If that moves forward, we expect that to go into backlog sometime in 2025, probably start executing in 2026. As far as other opportunities, prior to the pause on permitting, we were having conversations with a number of LNG companies. Those were not permitted projects. I think conventional wisdom is that post-change of administration, the current pause on LNG permitting goes away. We expect to see some of those projects start moving forward, trying to go to permitting. It's interesting, John, the moratorium on LNG may have worked to our advantage with all of the backlog that we had. It may have been difficult if a large stream would have come out over the last 12 or 18 months for us to participate in a lot of that. Now, if it starts picking up again, work in 2026 and 2027, we'll have the ability to bid on those. Great. Thank you. Scott, you mentioned you're coming to the end of this new build project. Can you just remind investors what you've put into these new ships, the Acadia, the Galveston, the Amelia, and what your cash flow could look like by the time you're done with all of that once you take delivery of these vessels? Yeah. So both dredges, the Amelia, and the Galveston, they each cost about $100 million. Obviously, the Galveston we've taken delivery of, we have about $35 million left for the completion of the Amelia Island. Again, expectation is we'll get all that paid and take delivery of her this year. All in for the Acadia is $240 million-$245 million. That also is mostly paid. There's about $80 million-$85 million left on the Acadia. Again, either all of this year or maybe a stub piece moves into next year. Then CapEx starts looking normal. We have all the new shiny toys. And our cash, in 2026, expectation is we start becoming cash flow positive. Got it. One thing that Lasse, your CEO, has mentioned in prior calls is that remote work has slowed down the pace of bidding, or at least it did dramatically in 2023, maybe the early parts of 2024, as well as the awards for dredging projects. I was wondering if, with the new administration, who's been talking about return to office mandates, does that have a benefit for you, or has that business normalized already at this point? I mean, obviously, we saw an extremely good bid market in 2023 and 2024. That being said, we've been very adamant that we think to do big capital projects, whether you're planning it or executing as we are, it needs to be collaborative, and you need to be sitting around a table to do it. We do think that some of the impacts we saw to the bid market in 2022 was driven by that. So yeah, we're back in the office, and we think it's a positive if others that are in our industry go back as well. Okay, great. Sorry, just jumping back to cash flow and capital intensity. What is the maintenance CapEx going to be like once you complete all these vessels, number one? And then as you start to really have solid cash flow again, what are the priorities for that cash flow beyond paying down debt? Yeah, so normal maintenance CapEx is going to be in the mid to upper 20s, I think, on any given year. I mentioned we are done building on the dredging fleet. We are looking at doing some nominal upgrades to some of the other fleet. So we're still working through what that could look like. It would be done over like a three-year period and well within cash flow. So maybe CapEx for those three years goes from 25, add another 25-30 a year as we do some of these upgrades. We're still in the planning phases of that. Even with that, again, we'll be very, very cash flow positive. So priority would be to deliver. I mentioned we have no maturities coming up. Our balance sheet is strong. We did to shore up liquidity in 2024, put on a $100 million piece of paper that has very favorable call provisions that coincide with the end of the new build program. So I think starting in 2026, the priority would be to just take that out as quickly as possible. Okay, great. Can you talk about just the financing and how you expense, how you capitalize, I guess, the interest from your construction projects and what that does to earnings as those new fleets, ships join the fleet? Yeah. So the accounting rules do allow us to capitalize interest, and it's an accounting formula. But for 2024, rough numbers, we capitalize about half of our interest as we take delivery of the Galveston. That changes things then as the Amelia and Acadia progress. So it's not an exact science. Our cash interest is roughly $30 million. So again, you can see what we've expensed. The rest gets capitalized to the project. As we take delivery of vessels, we cannot capitalize that anymore. So the interest expense would go up, but the cash is the cash and has no impact on that. Okay, great. Thanks for that clarification. Jumping back to the Acadia vessel, I was wondering if you could talk about the margins outside of the U.S., what they look like for each of those businesses, whether it's international wind, telco production, or pipeline production, and if there's any differences there in terms of attractiveness and how you expect the returns on the vessel to evolve if there are headwinds in the U.S. wind business. Yeah. I mean, whether we're supporting the offshore wind space, oil and gas space, or telecommunication space, we're putting rock over structure. So the work is very similar, and therefore, the margins and returns are very similar regardless of which one of those that we do. Scour protection vessels have very good returns. I'm not going to give exact numbers, but I have said that the returns on a vessel like the Acadia are as lucrative, if not more, than some of the best capital projects that we see on the dredging side. International market doesn't look any different. Again, there's an undersupply of these vessels. Got it. And then you had previously, or I guess you had contracted some work done with Acadia being delivered this year. What is the impact if that gets pushed out to 2026? Kind of help us understand what was actually scheduled for this year. Yeah. So our first contract, Empire Wind 1 with Equinor, originally was scheduled to start executing in the fourth quarter of 2025. We have had a lot of conversations with Equinor about the potential slippage into the first quarter, and we're working with them on a plan to execute this project as soon as this vessel is delivered. Great. Doesn't look like we have any more questions from the audience. We're getting close to our time. I guess now would be a good time to give closing statements, Scott, if you have any to investors and the audience. Yeah. No, I mean, like I said, this year played out really how we thought it would. We knew that this market, the dredging market, even after a, I'll call it a dip in 2022, wasn't going anywhere. Infrastructure is one of the few things that both parties do agree on. We have not seen any difference in the cadence of support for infrastructure work, protecting our coastline, protecting our beaches, making our ports deeper so we could have more imports come in. That's important to both, so this is a very good business. We've been a market leader for some time. We have high-graded the fleet, best-in-class fleet, and the backlog we have. I mean, we're really set up to have a very, very strong 2025. A lot of the backlog we have is going to trail well into 2026. I think we have set ourselves up pretty good in this really, really strong market. Great. Thank you, everyone, for joining us, and thank you to Great Lakes for.