Right. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Jason Tilchen, senior research analyst at Canaccord Genuity. It's my pleasure to welcome the team from ICF International, including John Wasson, Chairman and CEO, and Anne Choate, President. John's been with ICF for almost four decades, which is quite a long time, and was appointed to the CEO role back in 2019, prior to which he was Chief Operating Officer. Anne was promoted to President last year, previously led the company's energy environment and infrastructure group. Thank you both so much for joining us today. Great to be here. Thank you. Yeah, thanks for having us. I have one for John to start. I just mentioned you have a wealth of experience with the company, so no better person to maybe walk us through a little bit of background on the history of the company, what type of services the business provides, and who it's providing those services to. Okay, sure. Well, thanks again for inviting us. ICF, we are a global advisory and technology services company, about $2 billion of revenue, 9,500 employees. We've been publicly traded on NASDAQ for 20 years. We'll have our 20th anniversary this September. In terms of the company, what we do, we provide front-end advisory services to our clients in the domains we serve. We do that leveraging deep subject matter expertise within the company. Those advisory services include strategy and program design and policy and economic analysis and research. We also then stick with our clients into the implementation. Once we've designed their strategy, designed their program, we then help them implement that. That we do through leveraging a set of cross-cutting, industry-leading implementation services, including IT technology, complex program management, and change management. In terms of the markets we serve, first, we are diversified. We serve a balanced roster of both government and commercial clients. About two-thirds is for governments, one-third is commercial, primarily energy. The vertical markets we serve are basically two pillars. About half the business is in energy, environment, infrastructure, and disaster recovery. About 35% is in public health, education, housing, and other social programs. Then 15% is in defense and a few other cats and dogs. I think at a high level, that's kind of who we are and the markets we serve. Okay, perfect. It's a great overview. If you just think about where the business is today versus where it's been, you look at the stock chart for a company that's been publicly listed for so long, and for most of that period, it was up and to the right, very consistent, steady growth story. Then you look at what happened at the beginning of last year, and there was a disruption to the business. Revenue declined, and now you're sort of working back from that. Maybe just give a little bit of background on what caused that decline, and then what you've been doing to help. Yeah put the business in a stronger footing going forward. Sure. I think, as you know, in the period we've been a publicly traded company, I think we've been a strong growth company. If you run a CAGR on revenue for that period, I think it's 12% or 13% growth, about half organic, half inorganic, with even higher earnings growth in that period. And so consistent growth company. 2025 was, we call it, a transition year with the new administration, the Department of Government Efficiency impacts in the market with respect to our portfolio. Our federal business was down about 25% in 2025. But that's behind us. I think we managed through that. We maintained our profitability. This year, we will return to growth. The midpoint of our guidance is 3% revenue growth, 5% growth on non-GAAP EPS, and we'll accelerate that growth as we go forward. I think that the impacts of 2025 are behind us, and I think we're executing on our growth strategy and are confident in our return to growth. Perfect. We're going to get into that growth strategy in a bit- Sure and then sort of walk through each segment. Maybe before we do that, Anne, your new role as President that you moved into last year, maybe talk about the prior experience in the energy practice, which has been a growth engine for the company for some time, and how that prepared you to sort of move into this new role and responsibility. Okay, sure. Also, thanks for having us. Of course. I've been at ICF about 30 years, so not as long as John, but I have had an opportunity to work in a lot of corners of the business. Over time, I did have the responsibility for various parts of the company. But I had stayed very tight to the infrastructure, energy, transportation pieces. In my former role as the group leader for the energy environment infrastructure group, I was very focused on growth. When I took that job, the goal was to see if we could double the energy environment infrastructure group in five years, and we did a pretty good job of that. Our focus was first on organic growth and then obviously looking for areas where we could grow inorganically as well, where it made sense, where we found the synergies, and I think that was pretty successful as well. We were patient. I think in the end, we added both services, clients, contracts, et cetera, in a way that was really easy to find the synergies and where we were able to integrate those companies effectively. So now they really, in all three cases, I think that they feel very core to ICF's mission now. They're not sort of satellite-type parts of the company. When I moved into this new role, I think that now I'm thinking about growth for the whole company, and I think I'm taking some of the lessons from having led other pieces of ICF's portfolio. Social programs at one point was under me. There's some other aspects of our health business that used to sit with me because they were environmentally oriented. Having an opportunity to sort of now step back, understand with this technology business that we've built over the last several years, how does that change our value proposition? One of the things we were very successful in doing in EEI was cross-selling. Cross-selling a specific service to state and local commercial energy and federal clients, we are taking that same approach now. Obviously, as you pivot in the context of the new administration, that pivot means moving from one agency to another agency, but also thinking about what services we were providing to the federal government that may be relevant in a state and local context or a commercial context. So, those are the kinds of things I'm focused on. We're very focused on agency-specific account strategies and taking all of ICF to the customers where we have contract access and relationships, so. Okay. Very helpful overview. You guys just reported Q2 results last week. With that one exception from Right last year, the consistency of the business on display again. That's right. I'll maybe leave it to you in terms of if you want to talk about federal versus non-federal, or if you want to talk about some of the end markets that you're selling into. But maybe just talk about the operating environment, what drove growth in the quarter, what you're seeing on the ground, and maybe in each of those areas. Well, sure. I think we were quite pleased with our Q2 results overall. Our revenues were essentially stable, which I think demonstrated we're past the challenges of 2025 and on our way to returning to growth. I would divide the business. I think 60% of our business is non-federal, so it's commercial energy, it's state and local work with the most significant majority in disaster recovery, and it's international work. That 60% of the business grew about 7% in the quarter. That was certainly led by our commercial energy business, which is the first among equals in terms of the growth prospects in our non-federal for obvious reasons around energy demand and data centers and all the changes going on in energy. Our international business grew 20%. We've won quite a few large long-term contracts in the last year there. We expect that to continue. The state and local business is a good business. We do think that in the long run, disaster recovery will be a key component of our growth. So, strong growth in that component. The 40% that's federal, again, I think we're past the challenges of 2025. The second quarter was the second quarter in a row in which sequentially our U.S. federal government grew, primarily in the technology front, IT modernization for the federal government. We do expect that to continue. As I said, we'll deliver low single-digit growth as a company based on the performance of those two halves and expect to increase from there. We certainly, on the U.S. federal side, see the half of that business that's in technology modernization offering us significant opportunity, and we saw that in the second quarter. And we're going to touch on that opportunity Each of those, yeah. in a second. But just more broadly, you teased it there a little bit. Right You've given a framework, not formal guidance, but a framework for how to think about growth trajectory exiting this year and moving into 2027. What are the building blocks from an organic growth perspective that you rely on over the medium term? Yeah. Well, I would talk about it the same way as I talked about the Q2 results. I think, the 60% of the business that's non-federal, I think as we look at 2027 and beyond and the trends in that portion of the market, we can grow high single digit to low double digit organically for 2027 and beyond for some time. Again, that will be led by our commercial energy business, which is about a third of the total business and the tremendous opportunities there, strong growth on the international, and opportunities in the disaster recovery. That's how we look at that market. I think for 2027 and beyond in the federal business, we think that that can be a low single digit to mid-single digit growth market. That 40% of the business, that will be driven by IT modernization, where I would say the federal government is in the fourth or fifth inning of modernizing their backbone systems that are running right now on COBOL and Fortran and all kinds of ancient software. I think each of the last four or five administrations have understood the importance of making investments to address that. I think we're in a very strong position to do that, and that gives us that tailwind to drive that growth in the federal business. So net, I think as we look to 2027 beyond, mid to high single digit organic growth for ICF. Which you mentioned, we had the transition year in 2025. For the period 2020 to 2024, so the five years before that's exactly what we delivered. Mid to high single digit organic growth, strong cash flow. We were able to improve our profitability 10 to 20 basis points a year in that period. We've had the transition year 2025. We think for 2027 and beyond, for those next three or four years, we can deliver the same growth we saw in the prior period. I would just note that from 2020 to 2024, our stock went from $80 to $180 with that growth and that strategy. We are obviously hoping now that we have gotten through the transition year, if we can have the same performance, we could see the same kind of trajectory in terms of the stock. Makes sense. Yeah. You mentioned, as it relates to the IT transformation- Right there is still some innings left to be played there. Right. I think everyone expects what's going on with AI today to potentially accelerate that transition, and there's a few different ways to go with this topic. I guess one thing that stood out to me on the call you talked about as this federal business has recovered, you've seen a little bit of a shift in the way that agencies are working- Yeah the way that they're doing bidding processes and all that. A focus more on testing things out, prototyping. Yep. What are you seeing on the ground, and then how are you positioned, as a company, to operate in that changing and evolving environment? I think AI offers us an opportunity to demonstrate potential solutions faster. Where you would've had to take several weeks probably to build some sort of prototype, a less complete prototype, and then share it back with a customer, now we're able to do that very rapidly, and we can even iterate with customers almost in real time. There are ways that we would have done this in the past, but the whole procurement cycle and the way that the agencies were engaging with consultants in the past was also much more at arm's length. There were 36-month, 18-month lead times. There were procurements that were posted in the register. You would watch these procurements come down the pipe towards you. Oftentimes, you would have to go into a quiet mode, and then it would drop. There was an RFI, there was an RFP. It was mostly about writing a response in words and prose, telling how you were going to do this technology project. Then there might be some competition at the end, almost like an in-person test. Just show me how you're going to implement the solution. Now, we have an opportunity, partly because they don't have enough contracting officers or procurement officials, partly because there's this fatigue around the procurement activity and difficulty when large awards get protested. There's an openness on the part of the government to come in and show me what you can do. If we go in, we have these conversations with the people who are maybe in the CIO shop but trying to understand how they can service the program offices or in the program office, trying to serve the needs of the CIO or trying to basically get in the good graces of the CIO. We have an opportunity to be that bridge, and we have an opportunity in person, use our ICF Fathom's AI sandbox to demonstrate a potential solution, to hear their question, to hear their challenge, to stitch together what we think is an appropriate response, to show it to them, and then to iterate. That may drive the way that they design the procurement. It may lead to a modification. It's just a very different way of selling. It means that our BD team is less about writers and more about full stack architects. Okay. I would just- That help. We get this question a lot on AI and what is the impact on ICF and our government services technology business. In the market, obviously, government services firms with an IT focus have had those questions, commercial IT services, the SaaS providers. I just would say a couple of things with our business. One is the federal government is, and certainly the civilian federal government clients, which is our primary portfolio in the government, are very conservative. They are going to be late and very conservative adopters of AI. They are not leading. I am not going to say they are not leading in, but they are not leaning forward. I think the second thing I would say is it certainly will improve productivity, highly repeatable tasks. Some of the basic coding can be done leveraging AI, and we are doing that and using those tools. The size of the projects are coming down as you modernize because you are leveraging AI. But we are not seeing any degradation in our fees in terms of the work we are doing with AI and the value we add around AI. Our fees are holding up. With the average project size coming down, we can get it done more quickly. But given the backlog I just mentioned of we are in the fourth or fifth inning here, there is still 10 or 15 years of work to be done here with AI informed IT modernization. We just move on to the next project, and I think that will continue. We have any number of clients where we have got projects done more quickly. We just move on to the next one. It is not that it is reducing our revenues. Based on what we are seeing, and certainly in the last couple of quarters, we have been growing, we have been maintaining our fees and our view of the market. I do not see the downside at the levels that some of the reactions in the market would. Okay would suggest. That's a fair response on that subject. Two follow-ups to the comments you made there. One is, do you feel like you could end up winning more business on a go-forward basis because it's more merit-based, showing your capabilities versus a little bit more obtuse abstract writing about what you can do, which may or may not end up being provable out in the world? We've gotten pretty good at the writing. I think it is a way for us to expand. We've been trying to pivot because of the changes in the federal government over the last two years. That pivot, it's certainly easier for us to make the pivot if we can get in front of a customer who doesn't know us, who doesn't know our reputation, who hasn't seen us deliver and sort of mini deliver right in front of them. Then I think they might be willing to give us a chance more readily than they might if they just received our proposal along with several others. I think in that way it helps us. I think that's probably the best I can- I would also say that we've really built this business in the last 10 years. This administration in particular, they're very focused on efficiency gains. They want things to be AI-led. They want it all to be fixed price or performance based. They really want to focus on avoiding waste, fraud, and abuse. I think our business is highly aligned with that given it's been built in the last 10 years. 80% plus of our work is fixed price or performance based. We have a significant book of waste, fraud, and abuse business at CMS. I think we're demonstrating our innovation with our agentic AI platform, ICF Fathom that Anne mentioned. We're not running old legacy systems that are 40 years old that many of our competitors who've been in this business much longer are. I think that's helped position us as somebody who can be more agile, kind of aligned with what this administration's trying to do and is helping us win more business for sure. Okay. Last one on this subject very quickly. Can you just give an example, just sort of connect the concept of this AI sandbox to actually an example of how that would be used in a situation where you're going in and bidding for something? Sure. I'm trying to think of one. I'm assuming no actual scenarios involved in it. Yeah. Give us transportation, transit. Yeah, I was going to give you the. Because I didn't want to give one that hasn't come to the world yet. In transportation, let's just say, the Secretary of Transportation, at the department level, they're trying to integrate and update and maximize efficiency of a suite of grant management programs across all these modal agencies. Under DOT, there's modal agencies for Federal Highway Administration. Right Federal Transit Administration, et cetera. But each of them had their own way of doing this. The CIO needs this, and so we can go in, work with the CIO to understand the needs, but we also have administered grants and supported grant management under FTA and under Federal Highway Administration. We've also been supportive from the standpoint of the subject matter for these various grant programs, providing technical assistance or whatever. Connecting those two, we were able to go in, have a substantive meeting. We knew more about what the modal agencies are trying to achieve with these grant programs than the CIO could know, just on the face of it. We're connected to those program people, so we could bring basically what the CIO is trying to achieve from a modernization efficiency standpoint, together what we know with the mission that we know that these modal agencies are trying to achieve. We have the conversation, we put together a prototype, we brought it back. We were able to basically demonstrate what are the pros and cons. How is Federal Highway Administration going to view this? How is Federal Transit Administration going to view this? How is Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration going to view this? Where are they going to gain, where are they going to lose from the standpoint of what they currently have? It was just that kind of insight, and then an actual prototype that could show them where they would gain the efficiency and how. That's- Very helpful. We are running a little bit low on time, and I want to make sure to spend a few minutes talking about the commercial energy part of the business, given the growth there. On a recent earnings call, I do not think it was this last one, but the one before, I believe, you talked a little bit about the market share gains you are seeing with your energy efficiency programs. Maybe just talk to what that work is at a high level, and then what is driving those share gains. Our growth in the energy efficiency part of our business has been outgrowing what we think the growth in the market is. I think that the share gains come from takeaways, where we have competitors in regions of the country or working with a particular utility customer where we did not have much relationship, but where we think that there might be an opportunity for us to come in because we have a different solution or because we have performed well for a sister operating company. We will go in; we have these conversations. We are very strategic about where we are going to focus our efforts there. We just put out a press release about one example like that, where we won a large project in Louisiana. That is one way. Another way is adding services. We, a couple of five years ago, said we were going to add some non-traditional energy programs. They were pilots, they were small, and you could really only do it with the utility customers who we had the long, 15-year relationships with. Now we have a lot of our utility customers across the country are open to those pilots on things like electrification, battery storage. Even some of the work that we are doing in behavioral, how they can run behavioral programs that will actually achieve their goals. Those are the kinds of opportunities that will expand the service offering. Okay. Last, I would say, we often provide marketing support to these programs, and sometimes the marketing support is an umbrella over the full portfolio, even though ICF might only have residential or the commercial piece. That gives us a window into how we might expand our way into programs that might currently be run by a competitor, but where we think we could, if they are not performing or whatever, where we think we could add value. Okay. Very helpful. On that commercial energy side of things, there has also been a lot of talk about data centers. Maybe just help us frame the opportunity in two different ways. One, the capabilities you have internally today, and whether you think you can attack this opportunity in completion with what you have versus maybe going out and having to add something through M&A or things like that. Then also across the different stakeholders in this ecosystem, where you see the most opportunity today, and then maybe where you see it moving down the road. So, the clients related to data centers are utilities, who obviously have needs as it relates to data centers and the demand, hyperscalers, and then developers. Of those three, the hyperscalers are the only ones who are kind of new customers to ICF. In the other two cases, for utilities and for developers, we have been working for them for years. The range of services that we provide, like M&A, technical and financial due diligence for M&A, technical and financial diligence for siting, doing analyses of whether it is environmental factors, demand, interconnection, all of that work is totally relevant to that audience. The utilities, I think, need help in a different way. The modeling work that we do to help support them and figure out how can we design demand side management programs that are going to basically complement their demand, what they see as challenges from data centers and other reasons. That is a place where we have been able to leverage our expertise and basically take what we do for integrated resource planning, combine that with what we do for demand side management program administration, and what we understand about the data centers to be more useful to those utility customers. In terms of what we need, we did a tiny acquisition a few years ago, and we gained some engineering, like substation design and other, that have been very helpful in this data center surge, as you will. I think that that kind of expertise has allowed us to expand into areas that five years ago we couldn't have. Okay and play a role here. Okay. Very exciting. I'm sure you're going to be- I got nervous about the time very busy. Oh, no, don't worry. That's good. We're basically out of time, but just one quick last one for John. The capital allocation, the board just approved a big increase in the share purchase program. How are you thinking about that going forward? Yeah, we have balanced capital allocation. I think capital allocation, we certainly have been buying, for us, a historical amount of stock back in the past two quarters, given that we thought the stock was undervalued, and I think we'll continue to consider that. As you said, the board added $100 million of authorization for that recently. We've also been acquisitive. M&A has been part of our strategic strategy over the years. In the 20 years we've been public, I think we've done 32 or 33 acquisitions. We have a very strong balance sheet right now, very strong cash flow. I think we'll also continue to be in the market, particularly around our commercial energy market. We pay a small dividend. We always buy back enough stock to avoid dilution from our employee stock programs. I think it's balanced, but the focus is balancing share buybacks versus M&A. Perfect. All right. That's a great place to stop. Thank you both very much for being here today, and good luck on the second half. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, everybody, for coming. Sorry we ran over. Oh, no, don't worry.