North American Construction Group Ltd. (NYSE:NOA) Q2 2023 Earnings Conference Call July 27, 2023 8:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Joe Lambert – President and Chief Executive Officer

Jason Veenstra – Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Aaron MacNeil – TD Cowen

Kevin Gainey – Thompson Davis

Tim Monachello – ATB Capital Markets

Maxim Sytchev – National Bank

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the North American Construction Group Earnings Call.

At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the management's prepared remarks, there will be an opportunity for analysts, shareholders, and bondholders to ask questions. The media may monitor this call in 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 a conclusion, forecast or projection contained in that 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 the company's website at nacg.ca.

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

Joe Lambert

Thanks, Joanna. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining our call today. Today's call is clearly different than ones in the past, given the share repurchase agreement we signed yesterday, and we fully expect the majority of the discussion to involve the transformational acquisition of MacKellar Group. Therefore, we’ll do things a bit different this morning. I have asked Jason to summarize our Q2 performance and then I'll jump right into the commentary and context on MacKellar. At the end of the prepared remarks, we are happy to address Q&A on either Q2 or MacKellar.

With that, I will hand it over to Jason.

Jason Veenstra

Thanks, Joe. And good morning everyone. As mentioned, the focus on MacKellar, the quarterly comments this morning will be brief.

On Slide 3, as a standard practice here we start with safety and everyone gets home safe commitment. Our trailing 12-month recordable rate is now at 0.27 and represents a significant improvement from last year, which ended above our company target. We are primarily focused on leading indicator initiatives with several outlined on the slide, but are encouraged by the lagging indicator trend.