CA - North American Construction Group Ltd. (NOA) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

2024-05-04 17:37:08 ET

North American Construction Group Ltd. (NOA)

Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call

May 2, 2024 09:00 ET

Company Participants

Joe Lambert - President & Chief Executive Officer

Jason Veenstra - Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Tim Monachello - ATB Capital Markets

Aaron MacNeil - TD Cowen

Jacob Bout - CIBC

Maxim Sytchev - National Bank Financial

Frederic Bastien - Raymond James

Adam Thalhimer - Thompson Davis

Phil Goodrich - Goodrich & Company

Presentation

Operator

Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the North American Construction Group Conference Call regarding the First Quarter ended March 31, 2024. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following management's prepared remarks, there will be an opportunity for analysts, shareholders and bondholders to ask questions. The media may monitor this call in a listen-only mode. They are free to quote any member of management but they are asked not to quote remarks from any other participant without the participant's permission.

The company wishes to confirm that today's comments contain forward-looking information and that actual results could differ materially from conclusions, forecasts or projections contained in the forward-looking information. Certain material factors or assumptions were applied in drawing conclusions or in making forecasts or projections that are reflected in the forward-looking information. Additional information about those material factors is contained in the company's most recent management's discussion and analysis which is available on SEDAR and EDGAR as well as on the company's website at nacg.ca.

I will now turn the conference over to Joe Lambert, President and CEO.

Joe Lambert

Thanks, Enrico. Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining our call today. I'm going to start with a few slides showing our Q1 operational performance before handing it over to Jason for the financial overview and then I will conclude with our 2024 operational priorities, bid pipeline, backlog, outlook for 2024 and finish up with our capital allocation plans before taking your questions.

On Slide 3, our Q1 safety performance remains well below our industry-leading target frequency of 0.5 and we have reduced our lifesaving rules violations by 50% from Q1 last year. These statistics now include our Australian incidents and work hours. We currently are focusing our safety efforts on frontline leadership training, improving our peer-to-peer recognition program and increasing leadership visibility in the field.

On Slide 4, we highlight some of the major achievements of Q1. Our recently acquired Australian business continues to deliver strong and consistent results even after some heavy rain impacted summer months and the backlog down under increased significantly with the award of a $500 million 5-year contract extension with our long-term metallurgical coal producing client. With our integration team now resident and our Australian bid pipeline showing continued strong demand, we remain confident that the Australian market will play a dominant role in maximizing our fleet utilization and return on assets....

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