North American Construction Group Ltd. (NYSE:NOA) Q1 2023 Earnings Conference Call April 27, 2023 9:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Joe Lambert - President and Chief Executive Officer

Jason Veenstra - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Tim Monachello - ATB Capital Markets

Bryan Fast - Raymond James

Devin Schilling - PI Financial

Maxim Sytchev - National Bank Financial

Yuri Lynk - Canaccord Genuity

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. Please go ahead.

Joe Lambert

Thanks, Joanna. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining our call today.

I'm going to start with some of our high-level operational performance metrics, do a brief look back as we recently celebrated our 70th year in business, and then delve into our competitive advantages and barriers to entry before handing it over to Jason for a brief financial overview. And then I will conclude with the operational priorities, bid pipeline, updated outlook for 2023 and our capital allocation before taking your questions.

On Slide 3, I'll start with a safety update. Our trailing 12-month total recordable rate of 0.36 represents a significant improvement from last year and the Q1 rate of 0.30 matches our Q4 best last year. The 0.36 achieved gets us back below our industry-leading target frequency of 0.5, and we'll be focusing our efforts in 2023 on continuing improvements. I often refer to us as a safe, low-cost contractor, and I'm happy to report that on the safety front, we have made significant improvements, and we will always work towards our model of everyone gets home safe.