WSP Global Aktie

Good morning. [Foreign Language]. It's a pleasure to have you today present with us. Thank you for joining us virtually for today's Power & Energy Teach-in session. I'm Quentin Weber, Global Head of Investor Relations, and we appreciate your flexibility as we had to pivot to a virtual setting today.

Today's agenda is very exciting. We have a great roster today. And the agenda will be split between 2 main blocks of presentation with one Q&A period. For reference, you can access the supporting presentation in the Investors section of WSP's website. You can submit questions at any time during the presentation via the Lumi platform. We will do our best to address as many questions as possible and any questions we do not get to will be addressed after the event. We will have a small break after the first block of presentations. All the associated materials, transcripts and replay will be available after today's event.

During the teach-in, we will make forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ from those expressed or implied. We undertake no obligation to update or revise any of these statements. Relevant factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those forward-looking statements are listed in our latest MD&A, which can be found on SEDAR+ and on the website. Additionally, we may refer to specific non-IFRS measures during the Investor Day. These measures are also defined in our latest MD&A. Our MD&A includes reconciliations of non-IFRS measures to the most directly comparable IFRS measures. Management believes that these non-IFRS measures provide useful information to investors regarding the corporation's financial condition and results of operations as they provide additional critical metrics of its performance.

These non-IFRS measures are not recognized under IFRS, do not have any standardized meaning prescribed under IFRS and may differ from similar-named measures reported by other issuers and accordingly, may not be comparable. These measures should not be considered as a substitute for the related financial information prepared under IFRS.

With that, I would like now to welcome to the stage, Alexandre L'Heureux, President and CEO. Thank you.

Thank you, Quentin, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for our Power & Energy Teach-in. Today, I want to talk about one of the important strategic decisions we have made in WSP's recent history. And a little more than 3 years ago, we came to a simple conclusion. The world was entering a period of infrastructure investment unlike anything we had seen in generation. Not just an energy transition, not just a digital transformation, but the convergence of both. On one side, you are seeing the electrification of economies around the world, transportation, buildings, industry and entire cities are becoming increasingly dependent on electricity.

On the other side, AI, cloud computing and digital infrastructure are creating entirely new sources of demand that require unprecedented quantities of reliable power. Neither can exists without the other, every data center, every semiconductor facility, every advanced manufacturing plant, every AI application ultimately depends on a resilient, expandable and intelligent energy system.

We believe this conversion would become one of the defining economic forces of the 21st century. And we believe WSP had an opportunity not simply to participate in it, but to active -- actively shape it. Today, we believe WSP has built the most complete Power & Energy practice among our global engineering and design peers. We saw this opportunity developing, build differentiated expertise against it. We can now apply that expertise at scale and integration across WSP makes the model difficult to replicate. That matters because our clients are not asking for isolated services. They are asking for integrated solutions across generation, delivery, energy strategy, digital grid, permitting, program management and execution.

Today, I want to explain why our integrated platform gives WSP a distinctive right to win. We cover the full life cycle, bring specialized know-how under one roof and help clients move from strategy through energization when execution capacity has become the constraint. If there is one idea I would like you to take from this morning, it is this: integrated services, global scale, full value chain. That is the thesis, that is the advantage.

Let me anchor us briefly. WSP is one of the world's leading engineering, science and infrastructure solution firms operating in 50 countries with approximately 85,000 professionals. Within that platform, Power & Energy is one of WSP's defining global businesses and in our view, the most complete integrated power and energy practice amongst our global competitors. That is the point I would like -- I would ask you to hold in mind.

Power & Energy is no longer a promising adjacency. It is a global leadership platform for WSP, integrated services deliver at scale across the entire power value chain. And it happened for a reason. We saw structural opportunity early, we invested in a deliberate way and we built the platform before the market demanded it. So why Power & Energy and why now? For roughly 2 decades, electricity demand in mature economies was essentially flat. Efficiency gains offset economic growth and that era has ended. Global demand for electric power is expected to increase by 20% to 25% over current levels. The equivalent of adding 100 New York cities of demand to the world by 2030. That demand is being driven by 4 forces that reinforce one another. AI and data centers, industrial reshoring, electrification of transport and buildings and energy security. But the larger challenge is not demand. It is infrastructure.

Much of the grid serving North America and Europe was built for a different world, a world before AI, a world before mass electrification, a world with entirely different expectation around resilience and reliability. Today, the bottleneck is no longer generational alone. The bottleneck is permitting. It's transmission, it's distribution, it's grid modernization, program execution, taken all together, infrastructure and that is exactly where WSP operates. And the capital response is already underway. U.S. utility capital expenditures are expected to reach approximately $1.3 trillion over the next 5 years. To put that in perspective, that is roughly comparable in magnitude to the entire U.S. Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, a landmark federal infrastructure program often referred to as IIJA. That is the opportunity we saw and that is why we invested.

Of course, seeing the opportunity was important, but building the capability to capture it was even more critical. Today, WSP's Power & Energy business include approximately 10,000 professionals across 6 continents. More than 7,000 are located in the United States, currently the most active power market in the world. And in the United States, this is not a marginal exposure. Power & Energy represent approximately 35% of WSP's U.S. net revenues, making it one of the largest and most strategically important parts of our U.S. business. We believe we have assembled one of the most comprehensive Power & Energy platform anywhere in the industry, and that position was built in a deliberate way: through organic growth, through disciplined M&A, through decades of technical excellence and more importantly, it was built with intention. Our objective was never to become bigger. Our objective was to become more valuable to clients.

The slide behind me is about the architecture of the platform. When you look at our journey, you see a consistent pattern. Each acquisition address a specific strategic objective. POWER Engineers strengthened our engineering depth across power generation, transmission and distribution. Ricardo expanded our Advisory and Energy Consulting capabilities and TRC enhanced our distribution, digital grid, environmental and program management capabilities. Each transaction expanded our relevance, each transactions deepen our expertise and each transactions increase our ability to solve more complex client challenges. The result is something significantly greater than any individual acquisition. It is a platform, one capable of supporting clients across every major phase of the energy transition and digital transformation. And it means WSP can integrate services globally at scale across the entire value chain. That distinction matters because power infrastructure is becoming too complex, too interdependent and too mission-critical to be managed in silos.

Clients increasingly need a partner who can help them define the strategy, secure approvals, align stakeholders, design the system, manage program, deploy digital tools and support execution. And this is what we mean by One WSP Umbrella. One global platform, one client relationship and the ability to bring the right expertise from anywhere in the world to the right problem at the right moment in the life cycle. For investors, that matters because integrated platforms capture more of the client relationship, participate earlier in capital planning and are better positioned for larger programmatic mandates. It also makes the platform more difficult to replicate. A competitor can build scale in one discipline, it is much harder to build cross-discipline depth, regulatory credibility, client trust and delivery capacity across the full life cycle.

Unlike many participants in this sector, our opportunity is not dependent on a specific energy outcome. We are not making a bet on one generation technology versus another. We are participating in the infrastructure required regardless of which path ultimately prevails, and that is the strategic architecture. And let me show you what it covers in practice. Our platform covers 5 areas that together span a full power life cycle: power generation, thermal, wind, solar, hydro, battery storage and nuclear supported by advisory, feasibility, owner's engineers, balance of plan design and interconnection expertise. There is a perception that only a handful of firms matter in nuclear. In fact, we are involved in many of the industry's most important projects across siting, permitting, licensing, program management and delivery, which makes us a much more unique participant than many investors realize.

Power delivery, transmission, distribution, substation, HVDC, underground and underwater transmission, grid modernization, microgrids, reliability and resilience. If I move to Energy Solutions, electrification, hydrogen, carbon capture, district energy, distributed energy resources, demand side programs, energy efficiency and decarbonization.

Moving on to digital and intelligent grid. Automation, analytics, grid technology, load management, asset intelligence and AI-enabled tools that help clients operate increasingly complex system.

And finally, program management, the governance, controls, sequencing, stakeholder coordination and delivery discipline required to execute multiyear capital programs at scale. What we have built is unique because it expands that entire life cycle from advisory and planning all the way through operations. And our clients are responding to that breadth. Our client portfolio now includes the top 60 investor-owned utilities in the U.S. covering the vast majority of the market. And outside the U.S., our utility client base continues to grow; 15 in the U.K., 10 in Canada and Continental Europe and 15 more across Latin America, Australia and the Middle East. These clients are not coming to us for engineering alone. That matters because increasingly, the greatest challenges are not technical. They are strategic, regulatory, environmental, social, commercial. And the most valuable partner is often not the firm that design a project, it is the firm that makes a project possible and can then design and deliver it.

When you assess WSP, I would encourage you to look beyond size. Scale alone does not create competitive advantage. Our advantage begins with expertise. It continues with institutional knowledge accumulated through decades of project delivery. It is reinforced by trusted relationship with clients, regulators, communities and governments. And when you compare us with other large engineering firms, including those with strong infrastructure or nuclear credential, our differentiation is simple. It is the combination. It is the integration of all of these capabilities at scale around the world, across the entire Power & Energy value chain. Some companies are very strong in select part of that chain. What makes WSP different is our ability to connect it end to end from strategy, siting and approvals to engineering, grid integration, digital enablement and program delivery. These skills cannot easily be replicated. And increasingly, they are becoming more valuable.

Then scale amplifies every one of those strengths. It allows us to combine global expertise with trusted local execution. It allows us to deploy specialists across disciplines, geographies and sectors. It allows us to embed advanced digital tools and artificial intelligence in our workflows. But the impact goes well behind operational leverage. Scale changes the economics of the client relationship. When clients undertake multibillion dollar capital programs, they increasingly seek partners capable of supporting them across multiple phases of the investment cycle. From strategy and permitting through design, program management and execution, our platform enabled us to participate more broadly, engage earlier and remain involved longer. As a result, we are often competing for individual projects and increasingly for programs, portfolios and long-term strategic relationship. And that distinction matters.

Programmatic mandates tend to provide greater visibility, deeper client engagement and more opportunities to deploy the breadth of our expertise across the full WSP platform. And the benefit extends far beyond Power & Energy. A transmission investment will require environmental permitting, Earth sciences, transportation infrastructure, advisory services and program management. A data center project will require power, buildings, water, transportation and environmental expertise. A nuclear program will require geotechnical buildings, transportation, environmental, advisory and delivery capabilities. These are not separate opportunities. There are different dimensions of the same client challenge and that is where scale becomes a strategic advantage. It allows us to capture a larger share of client spending, deepen relationship and create stronger opportunities for sustained growth over time. Above all, scale allows us to deliver with certainty.

In today's environment, certainty has become one of the most valuable outcomes we can offer. Clients are being asked to execute increasingly complex multibillion-dollar programs, while skilled labor remains scarce. Supply chains remain constrained and regulatory requirements continue to grow. The widening execution gap is precisely what this platform was built to address. In other words, expertise create the advantage and scale multiplies it. Integration makes it very difficult to replicate.

So let me close where I began. This morning is not simply about Power & Energy. It is about strategy. It is about recognizing profound change before it becomes obvious, and it is about having the conviction to invest ahead of that change. Several years ago, we concluded that electrification, energy security and digital infrastructure were not independent trends. They were converging to create one of the most significant infrastructure investment cycle of our generation. We believe the future would require more than power generation, more than transmission, more resilient grids, more digital infrastructure and far greater execution capacity. So we acted. We invested $6 billion and the EBITDA of WSP increased by 50% in the last 36 months. We expanded our capabilities. We strengthened our expertise and we built a platform designed for the opportunity we saw ahead.

Today, we believe WSP is uniquely positioned at the intersection of those powerful sources or forces, I should say, not because we are making a bet on a particular technology, not because we are dependent on one market. But because we help clients build the infrastructure that enables progress regardless of which technologies ultimately prevail. The next decade will be defined by the rebuilding of energy system, the modernization of grids, the expansion of digital infrastructure and the pursuit of grid resilience across economies around the world. These investments will influence how societies grow, how industries compete and how innovation advances.

Our conviction is straightforward. Organizations that combine deep technical expertise, trusted relationship, multidisciplinary capabilities and global scale will help shape that future. We believe WSP is one of those organizations, and we believe the decision we made years ago have positioned us to create durable value for our clients, our people and our shareholders. We are positioning WSP for the next decade.

Thank you very much. And with that, I'll turn it over to Mike.

All right. Thank you, Alex. Good morning, and thank you for joining us. I'm Mike Case, U.S. Power & Energy Business Line Executive at WSP. Over the past 2 decades with WSP, I've had the privilege of building my career in the power sector and help shaping the transformation of our Power & Energy business, including the integration of POWER Engineers and most recently, TRC. I'm pleased to be joined today by leaders from both organizations as we discuss the exciting future of our business.

Before we begin our discussion, I'd like to frame what we believe is one of the most compelling infrastructure investment opportunities in North America: the transformation of the U.S. power sector and WSP's unique position to capitalize on it. Simply put, the United States is entering a once-in-a-generation electric infrastructure super cycle. With our expanded platform that Alex just shared, deep technical expertise and market-leading client relationships, WSP is exceptionally well positioned to be the long-term leader in this market.

So to set the scene, what is driving this super cycle? For decades, power demand in the U.S. was relatively flat. That dynamic has fundamentally changed. The rapid growth of data centers fueling AI, reshoring of manufacturing, electrification of transit and buildings, grid modernization and energy security initiatives are driving unprecedented demand for new generation, transmission, distribution and large-scale program delivery services. As Alex mentioned, industry forecasts point to more than $1 trillion of utility capital investment through the end of the decade, creating sustained demand for engineering, advisory, environmental, digital and program management services.

Starting with the grid itself. Much of the U.S. transmission and distribution network was built for a different load profile and a different climate. Grid modernization and expansion isn't discretionary spend. It's a multi-decade rate-based back investment cycle, and it's the most visible driver of utility capital plans today.

Second, back to that demand growth. Data centers and energy-intensive industry are adding loads faster than the interconnection queue can absorb it. These are creditworthy, round-the-clock customers willing to sign long-duration contracts and increasingly to pay for speed. The constraint has shifted from finding demand to finding deliverable power and whoever controls interconnect position, land and firm capacity controls the economics.

Third, the generation mix is being reoptimized around location and dispatchability, not just cost per megawatt hour. Intermittent resources, while still vital to meet the demand alone can't serve a 24/7 load, which is why gas, storage, nuclear and behind-the-meter generation are all back in the investable set.

Fourth, balancing affordability, reliability and economic growth are all factors that continue to fuel capital expenditures for utilities and developers in both the regulated and competitive landscape, a fundamental that is driving partnerships and long-term commitments to meet these increasingly challenging variables in the equation.

The challenge facing the market is not simply building more infrastructure, it's delivering increasingly complex capital portfolios faster with greater certainty while navigating regulatory, environmental, workforce and supply chain constraints. That challenge plays directly to WSP's strengths.

With approximately 7,000 Power & Energy professionals across the United States, WSP has the scale, technical depth of expertise and geographical reach to capitalize on the accelerating investment in energy infrastructure and to meet this challenge. Together, WSP and TRC achieved the #1 position in U.S. ENR power rankings, establishing a clear leadership position in the largest and fastest-growing power infrastructure market globally.

Given the scale and duration of the U.S. power demand build-out, this creates a stronger platform for sustained growth and market share expansion. This position, combined with our leading position in Earth and Environment provides a platform to deliver integrated solutions that are difficult to replicate and increasingly valuable to clients, such as a few trusted partners shown here. They're navigating this complex multiyear programs, and this position will help our clients meet the challenges of this power sector super cycle.

Leveraging that integrated solutions platform, let's turn to whom we serve because the strength of our platform is matched by the attractiveness of this client base. Our core clients fall into 4 groups. First, utilities, which are largely the top 60 investor-owned utilities with significant sustained capital programs.

Second, project developers or independent power producers who pair real estate, finance, construction or utility expertise with investor capital to bring projects to life. With competitive transmission solicitations across various regional transmission operators underway as well as the need for additional generation capacity to support the demand growth, the long-term investments to support these developments are strong.

Third, grid and market operators, the entities that run the grid and the wholesale markets, but don't own generation or serve customers directly. And finally, EPC contractors who are often not the asset owner, but control design execution, delivery risk, schedule and subcontractor selection on major power projects, making them a gateway to large complex opportunities in many regions.

What makes this client base so attractive is the nature of the work itself. These are large, complex, locally-infused projects with long-duration capital spends, immediate needs paired with a 5-plus year investment horizon. And critically, we can engage across the entire asset life cycle: advisory, development, preconstruction, construction, operations and maintenance and ultimately, decommissioning and asset transition. That life cycle view is where our opportunity really compounds. Every entry point becomes a platform for the next, the chance to scale, to cross-sell and to link WSP's broader capabilities to our core power offering. That means faster delivery, real project synergies and more value for our clients, positioning us to lead with a truly integrated platform that matches what these clients actually need.

With that backdrop, we'll now dive into our fireside chat, where I'm joined by Holger Peller, Global Director of our Power & Energy for WSP and former POWER Engineers President as well as Matt Green, Senior Vice President of Integrated Planning and Advisory with TRC.

Holger, Matt, welcome.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mike. Good to be here.

To start, you both have lengthy careers in different spaces within Power & Energy. If you could please briefly share your background and what are you most excited about with regard to what WSP has assembled. Holger?

Yes. Thanks, Mike, for that overview of the WSP platform. That summary really put it into perspective. A little bit about me. I've been in the T&D space my entire career. I started out as an engineer and did work hundreds of projects across the U.S. and internationally, primarily focused on substations, distribution, transmission line as well as some hydro generation, natural gas generation and solar and wind. My focus has been large transmission line build-out, always on the consultant side, working with our clients to deliver the significant infrastructure build-out required to support the expansion of the grid.

What excites me most is less about the size and more about the capabilities that mirror the way utility executives think about their business. Utilities don't experience transmission, generation, customer programs, digital transformation, permitting or program delivery as separate challenges. They experience them as one interconnected challenge. WSP is now one of the few firms that can bring all those capabilities under one single roof.

Great. Thanks, Mike. My background is a bit different than Holger, but similarly, I've spent my entire career in T&D. I spent about 20 years on the utility side, working for a major U.S. utility. And I've had the opportunity to see the business from many different seats. I started as an engineer in transmission and grid planning, working on everything from connecting new load to major 500 kV transmission projects. From there, I led across planning, engineering and operations, energy procurement, strategy and technology and ultimately served as Chief Information and Digital Officer.

For most of my career, I was the client, deciding what we needed to build, how we justified it and which partners we trusted to help us do it. Today, I lead our Energy Planning & Advisory Services business for TRC, a member of WSP. What excites me most about what we've assembled here is that we can help clients decide what to build, where, when and why and then bring engineering, environmental permitting and program delivery capabilities to execute it. That's exactly the kind of partner I would have wanted when I was sitting on the client side.

Great. Thank you both. Holger, what can WSP offer a major utility today that none of WSP Power or TRC could have offered independently 3 years ago? How are clients expressing their needs right now? And how are we proactively responding?

Yes. The real differentiator is really not simply size. It's the ability to deliver the utility's entire transformation agenda through one partner. Three years ago, a utility might have hired one firm to do transmission engineering, another for customer programs, another for environmental and permitting, another for digital modernization and another for program management. Today, WSP can bring those capabilities together under a single accountable team, reducing interfaces, accelerating delivery and helping utilities respond to load growth, grid modernization, electrification and data center demand at enterprise scale. We evolved from being a leading engineering consultant to becoming a strategic utility transformation partner.

I completely agree, Holger. And I'll add, it's not just what we can offer that's changed. The problems our clients are trying to solve have become increasingly more complex. Utilities are being asked to add enormous amounts of capacity, improve reliability and resilience and deal with real affordability pressure as customer bills rise faster than many customers can absorb. And those aren't independent problems. The obvious answer to capacity or resilience can make affordability worse. The lowest cost answer today may not provide the flexibility that's needed 5 or 10 years from now. So increasingly, clients are looking for help to understand the trade-offs and finding the investments that can solve multiple problems at once.

At the same time, entirely new buyers are entering the market. Data centers, manufacturers and other large energy users are making decisions around siting, power supply, generation and grid infrastructure that has historically sat with large -- largely with utilities. That combination of more complex decisions and new decision makers creates a much bigger role for advisory, particularly when it's connected directly to the engineering and delivery capabilities that Holger discussed.

Great. Matt, where have you already seen the combination change the conversation with clients or open opportunities that weren't previously accessible?

That's a great question, Mike, and I'm really excited about this. The biggest difference I've seen is that we're really being invited into a broader conversation with the client. Historically, we may have entered through a specific need, such as a transmission line or a planning study. Increasingly, though, we can engage while the client is still trying to understand the problem itself and the range of solutions that may be available, looking across transmission, distribution, generation, customer programs and even technology solutions rather than starting with a predetermined answer. That's becoming particularly important because of the sheer scale and complexity of the programs our clients are trying to deliver. They may have multiple engineering firms, environmental and permitting teams, program managers and internal organizations, all working on different pieces of the same problem. At some point, what we've seen is that the client's own capacity to integrate all of this becomes the constraint itself.

Where I think the combination really changes the conversation is in this intersection. The value isn't simply having more capabilities. It's that we can take responsibility for connecting more of those pieces together rather than asking the client to serve as the integrator. And then we can bring those capabilities needed to actually execute the solution.

I agree with you, Matt. We can now engage utilities on questions such as how do I use technology, customer programs and grid investments together to manage explosive load growth. That's a broader and more strategic conversation than a traditional engineering scope.

Fantastic. Holger, as you look at what clients need over the next 5-plus years, which capabilities are hardest to replicate? And where does the combined WSP platform provide the greatest advantage?

Over the next decade, as Alex mentioned, the hardest capability for competitors is to replicate not just engineering talent alone. It will be the ability to integrate planning, regulatory strategy, environmental permitting, customer programs, digital grid modernization, program delivery, all into a single utility transformational platform. Most firms can excel in 1 or maybe 2 of these areas, very few can credibly bring all of that together at scale.

I completely agree Holger on the breadth of our capability and how critical that is. The second lens I would add is judgment. So theoretically, a utility may have 10 technically viable investments in front of it. And the harder question we're seeing lately is which of those, say, 3 out of the 10 should it actually build, in which sequence and why? Increasingly, those investments aren't solving one problem at a time. A project may need to address capacity, reliability and resilience simultaneously, and it may need to perform across multiple possible futures rather than a single forecast. So the differentiator isn't simply having all of these capabilities. It's having the experience and judgment to connect them, understanding the trade-offs and then having the technical depth that, that advice can actually be used to deliver. And that combination is really difficult to replicate.

Fantastic. I'd like to thank you both for a great conversation here this morning. I know it was brief, but if I may summarize what I've heard from you both as to what's next for WSP. We've assembled the capabilities to address what is a complex utility grid. We've matched our large program capabilities with our deep technical expertise. We've enhanced our capabilities to engage clients at an earlier, more strategic level. And finally, leveraging WSP's platform, we've truly created an end-to-end full life cycle platform for the industry and our clients. I can confidently share that is truly what excites the 3 of us about WSP's future.

Again, thank you, Holger. Thank you, Matt. I'll now turn it back over to Quentin.

Thank you, Mike. Thank you, Holger. Thank you, Matt. Much appreciated. I think it was a good fireside chat here. So we're approaching the end of the first section of today's teach-in. So we will actually take a short break, a 10-minute break. We will be back at 9:50 Eastern Time, 9:50 a.m. So thank you for tuning in, and we will be right back.

[Break]

Thank you all. So welcome back. So we'll be kicking off with the second section of today's teach-in. As a reminder, if you have any questions, please submit them through the Lumi platform. We will address these during the Q&A session that we will hold after the series of presentations. And because a couple of people ask, there is a recording that will be made available and a transcript. So all documents will be on the Investor Section on WSP's website.

So now we'll kick it off. So I'll pass it off to Steven (sic) [ Steve ]. Thank you.

Thank you, Quentin, and good morning. My name is Steve Kiser, Senior Vice President, WSP's Global Energy Sector Lead for our Global Client Program. I've been with WSP and serving the power market my entire career, nearly 30 years in the industry. And I'd like to share a little bit about my role as the Energy Sector Lead for our Global Client Program because it shapes everything I'm going to share with you over the next few minutes. The Global Client Program is how WSP manages its most strategic relationships, the largest grid owners, utilities and energy companies in the world as a single global relationship rather than a collection of local projects.

As the Energy Sector Lead for that program, my job is client-facing. I spend my time with the executives who own these capital plans, in their boardrooms, at their planning sessions and on their projects. That gives me something I think is generally valuable to this audience. I don't have to speculate about what our clients care about. I hear it directly, and I hear it consistently across markets. I hear where they see growth. I hear what's keeping them awake at night. And I hear very candidly what they need from WSP that they aren't getting from anyone today. That feedback loop is how we decide where to invest, what capabilities to add and where the acquisitions of POWER Engineers and TRC fit into the picture.

So what I want to do in this section is take you on to the grid. You've heard the market drivers and the platform story. This section is about the hardest part of the energy transition, moving the electrons. As we say, you can't have energy transition without transmission. The grid is where demand growth meets physical constraint and it is where the capital is going. So I'll cover 4 things. First, the growth engines expanding our addressable market. Second, our combined platform lets us enter earlier in the project life cycle and stay longer. Third, how we leverage global relationships and global capability to deliver locally. And fourth is the proof who our clients are and what we're delivering for them right now.

So let's start with the addressable market and how it's expanding, not just growing, but broadening. As I mentioned, I've been in this market for nearly 30 years, and I've never seen a market with this many expansion areas progressing simultaneously. First is new generation, every gas plant, every solar and wind farm, every new nuclear unit has to be connected. Generation gets the headlines. The grid work is the necessary condition for any of it to deliver a single megawatt hour.

Second is the 765 kV backbone. This is the ultra-high voltage and it's reemerging as the answer to moving bulk power across long distances and relieving constrained regions. This is highly specialized work. Very few firms in the world have genuine 765 kV designed depth.

Third is grid resiliency. As extreme weather, wildfire risks and simply aging assets are driving sustained hardening, replacement and modernization programs heavily weighted to distribution. This is the most durable spend on the page because it's largely rate recoverable and doesn't depend on any one technology winning.

Fourth is digital and security. Automation gives grid operators visibility and control they've never had, but every sensor and every control point expands the attack surface. Cyber resilient design is no longer a bolt-on, it's an integrated part of our engineering scope. But here's the important part. None of these is a stand-alone project type. Each one creates interconnected needs across planning, permitting, engineering, delivery and operations. Growth is moving beyond simply adding more assets toward building a stronger, smarter and more secure power system. And that shift favors firms who can work across the whole chain in highly specialized areas.

As mentioned this morning, the combination of POWER Engineers, TRC and WSP has transformed our Power business, and here's where it changes. It is tempting to describe it as simply scale, and scale clearly matters in a power grid market facing unprecedented investment. But as important for investors is that this combination changes WSP's position on the project life cycle.

Many competitors participate in 1 or 2 parts of that chain, WSP can now compete differently. We can enter at the needs analysis stage before a route exists, before a budget is fixed and then stay with the client through commissioning and into operations. That early entry is a real differentiator. For the client, that means risk is identified and priced into the project at feasibility, not discovered in year 3. For WSP, it means we are positioned before the major capital decisions are locked-in.

Early entry also creates relationships with the people that matter most over the long term. Trust earned during feasibility, routing, community engagement and permitting is often what converts a single-line project into a broader program level seat at the table. And this is where our combined delivery platform is especially powerful together. So that is the growth thesis. Early entry raises capture rates on every phase that follows. Broader scope increases revenue per relationship and longer participation makes that revenue more durable, leading parts uniquely integrated. That is what is hard to replicate.

The message is clear, early entry, broader scope, longer participation and a more advantaged position in one of the world's most attractive infrastructure markets. But integration only matters if the client feels it locally. So this is the operating model that carries that capability to the job site: local delivery, enhanced by global expertise. It's the same local staff in front of the regulator consistently over time with the depth of a global firm standing behind them. Now layer on what almost no one else can bring. Through our strategic partnership with Power Grid India, we have genuine 765 kV ultra-high-voltage depth drawn from one of the largest 765 networks in the world. That shows up as a technical credential edge, peer reviews, standards refinement and first-of-a-kind problem solving on the projects where getting it wrong is expensive. Only a handful of firms can offer that, and we bring it without sending the work away.

Behind that sits our global Subject Matter Expert Network and our global capability centers, or GCCs. In a constrained talent market, they give us surge capacity, specialty expertise, independent peer review and standards assurance on demand. And critically, they are an owned, integrated part of WSP, not a subcontracted vendor bench. Same system, same standards, same quality system. So let me be direct about the question this usually raises. This is not offshoring. Execution, design, leadership and accountability stay local. Global team support and augment and the GCC model improves our win rates by making us both faster and more competitively priced. We have the ability to take on and win more work given that ability to scale quickly. As one of our clients put it, "an electron in the U.S. is the same as electron in Paris, London or Sydney, the physics travel". So we bring proven global solutions to local problems.

That differentiated offering has positioned WSP strongly with the largest grid owners in the world. So what you're looking at is the top 15 power delivery companies globally ranked by 5-year planned capital expenditure shown by their home country and development territory, client names removed for confidentiality. The largest runs to roughly $100 billion and every one of them is above USD 45 billion. Taken together, these 15 capital plans represent more than $1 trillion of planned spend over the next 5 years, effectively where the world's grid capital is being deployed. Notably, 14 of these 15 companies are WSP clients. So we are already well positioned inside more than $950 billion of that $1 trillion opportunity. And these are not transactional relationships. Every one of these 14 sits within WSP's Global Client Program, meaning the relationship is strategic, governed at the executive level, with account leadership and a coordinated global team rather than project by project.

The majority of these relationships span 15 years or more through multiple rate cases, multiple capital plans and multiple leadership teams. And that combination is the differentiator. Being in the Global Client Program gives us visibility into these programs long before the work goes to market, a seat in the planning conversation and an incumbent position that is genuinely hard for a competitor to displace. Depth of relationship is what converts a published capital plan and to booked repeatable work. And note that this client base spans North America, United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Spain and beyond, and we serve them with global scale but deliver locally.

So what does that position actually look like in practice? These 3 programs are where it becomes real, multibillion-dollar capital plans and 15-year client relationships translated into named, funded work on the ground. In each one, an incumbent relationship got us in early and our full life cycle capability kept us there for the life of the program rather than a single phase. First on the list is the Propel New York Energy project. This is a $3.3 billion program with permitting, engineering, program management and community outreach for 90 miles of underground and submarine cables plus 3 new substations. This is the full arc I described earlier on one of the most complex urban corridors in North America.

Second is the Champlain Hudson Power Express where WSP provided environmental, permitting and delivery support for a 339-mile HVDC link, bringing Québec Hydropower into Astoria, Queens. This project provides almost 20% of the power to New York City and was just energized this year.

Third is Svenska kraftnät in Sweden. This is a framework agreement across 5 expertise areas with cross-border WSP delivery across 5 different countries and running up to 11 years. Long duration frameworks like this are the shape of things to come, the client isn't buying a project, they're buying capacity.

So let me leave you with the 4 things that position WSP strongly for growth in the power grid market. First is the spending environment. We're seeing record-setting capital spend across the grid. And critically, this sits inside a cost recovery framework. This is durable, multiyear demand with visibility we rarely get in this industry.

Second, this is not a generic infrastructure market. It is a highly specialized one, and that specialization is exactly where WSP wins, whether it's a 765 transmission, digital solutions, intelligent grid or distribution resilience.

Third is our integrated platform. We enter earlier and we stay longer from planning, siting and permitting all the way through engineering, hardening and operations. Getting into the front end shapes the scope; and the back end gives us recurring work long after the build. That is how a single project becomes a decade-long client relationship.

And fourth, we can deliver it at scale. The Power Grid 765 partnership and our GCC ramp-up give us global capacity to convert demand into repeatable multiyear client programs without capacity becoming a constraint on growth.

So the takeaway is simple: funded visible demand, a specialized market that plays to our strengths, a platform that extends revenue per client across the full life cycle and the delivery capacity to scale it profitably. That combination is what underpins our confidence in a durable above-market growth in Power & Energy.

And with that, I thank you for listening, and I'll turn it over to Paul Compton.

Thank you, Steve. Good morning, and welcome. I'm Paul Compton. I'm Senior Vice President of Project Development for WSP's Generation team. Over the past 35 years, I've had the opportunity to work across the engineering, the procurement and construction of major power generation facilities. And throughout my career, I have never seen a market with a level of opportunity and the investment and transformation that we're experiencing today. It is truly a special time to be in our industry, working on projects that move the needle, supporting the next generation of power projects.

As mentioned previously, WSP is uniquely advancing these technologies and projects forward. Power sector is entering a multi-decade growth cycle by AI, data centers, electrification with electricity demand expected to grow at approximately 3.6% annually through 2030. Meeting that demand will require significant investment across multiple technologies from generation, storage, transmission, grid modernization, creating an estimated $4 trillion in global market opportunity.

Now reliability remains a critical focus, driving continued investment in thermal generation, nuclear, energy storage alongside of renewables. Increasingly, these utilities aren't the only ones having to own their own power delivery and reliable uptime. Customers are managing their own power mix and building complex behind-the-meter, all-of-the-above strategies. Ultimately, market availability of small nuclear technologies will be a significant disruptor for the Power & Energy business. For WSP, these market dynamics align directly with our capabilities across engineering, project delivery, grid modernization and strategic consulting, positioning us to participate across a full spectrum of power infrastructure investments worldwide.

What's fundamentally different about today's power market is the composition of load growth. This isn't being driven by a single sector or speculative generation development like we saw in 2000s. We're seeing multi-demand drivers occurring simultaneously. AI and data centers are certainly the most visible. They're bringing very large concentrated loads with extraordinary requirements for reliability and speed to power. But that's only one part of the story. At the same time, we're seeing reshoring, advanced manufacturing, semiconductors, LNG and other industrial loads, along with continued electrification and transportation, buildings and industrial processes.

And then there's the fourth driver that is equally important, grid reliability, coal retirements, the continued addition of intermittent renewable generation, our aging infrastructure and extreme weather are creating the need for additional firm capacity before we account for new load growth. So the key takeaway is that it's -- this is no longer simply a generation market. It is becoming a much broader power infrastructure investment cycle, requiring utility scale generation, behind-the-meter power, renewables, storage, transmission, grid modernization and controls. The breadth is what makes this current market, particularly significant for WSP. We can participate across virtually the entire power value chain from early development and permitting through engineering, owner's engineering services, transmission and ultimately, execution.

So what differentiates WSP is the breadth of our power generation capabilities. Our ability to support a project from concept to commissioning. We operate across virtually every major segment of the generation market, firm dispatchable thermal generation, renewables, energy storage, nuclear and carbon capture. That breadth is increasingly important because of the future power systems. It's not going to be built around a single technology. Our clients are developing integrated portfolios that combine gas generation, renewables, storage, increasingly nuclear and carbon capture to deliver affordable low carbon power.

Equally important is the breadth of the services we bring to these markets. We can engage at the very beginning of a project, helping a client evaluate a site, we can select the technology, establish cost and schedule, assess feasibility and develop the project strategy. As the project advances, we transition into an owner's engineer, procurement and EPC support. We act as engineer of record and detailed engineering program and project management and ultimately construction and commissioning support.

So rather than participating in just one piece of that value chain, WSP has the capability to remain with our clients throughout the entire investment life cycle from concept to commissioning. That creates opportunities for long-duration client relationships, larger and more diverse scopes of work and the ability to bring expertise from across WSP to increasingly complex generation projects.

This illustrates how the power solution for large data centers are changing. Increasingly, these facilities are being developed with their own behind-the-meter ecosystem rather than just relying solely on the utility grid. Firm thermal generation provides reliable baseload while solar and renewable and battery storage add flexibility and resiliency. The key is the energy management system, which allows these technologies to work together continuously balancing generation, storage and data center loads and the connection to the utility grid.

For WSP, this represents a very important evolution in our market. The opportunity is shifting from designing individual assets to designing, integrating entire power ecosystems. We bring together our generation, our renewables, storage, transmission, controls, environmental and mission-critical capabilities into an integrated solution. And more importantly, this isn't conceptual. We're already working on leading edge of this market.

This project, WSP continues to incorporate technologies such as carbon capture to meet today's generation requirements as illustrated here in one of the largest combined cycle, carbon capture projects in North America using Mitsubishi Advanced Gas Turbines and Mitsubishi Carbon Capture technology.

Blue Energy, WSP has been supporting Blue Energy in a first-of-a-kind gas-to-nuclear modularized power plant near the Port of Victoria. The project will utilize GE Vernova HA.02 gas turbine technology and GE Vernova Hitachi BWRX-300 small nuclear reactors. Again, this is leading-edge project showcases WSP's full complement of technology expertise when it comes to power generation.

Guernsey Project. WSP provided complete detailed design for this 3-unit combined cycle power project, one of the largest at 1,875 megawatts using highly efficient advanced gas turbine technology. Additionally, WSP's power delivery team designed and executed a 765 kV transmission line and substation. This project received Power Magazine's Top Plant of the Year at the time of execution.

So let me close with 4 key takeaways. First, unprecedented demand growth and technology diversification supports WSP's full complement of services. Second, WSP brings extensive thermal expertise to programs powering both data center energy parks and utility scale generation. Third, our ability to design and deliver complex energy management schemes aligns closely with the evolving needs of behind-the-meter applications. And finally, the generation expansion we are seeing today in the United States is a leading indicator of the broader growth we expect across global power markets. Taken together, this is a significant long duration opportunity for WSP, one that plays directly to our breadth of our capabilities and our ability to support clients from concept to commissioning.

With that, I'll turn it over to Sara.

Thank you, Paul. Good morning. I'm Sara Michaels, and I lead our program management sector for Power & Energy. Paul, I really like that second to the last takeaway you had about how WSP's ability to design and deliver complex solutions for our clients. That's exactly what I'm here to talk about, how we deliver complex programs at scale for our clients.

I'm excited to share with you how we are seeing the needs of our clients evolving and how WSP is well positioned to help our clients with the challenges they are facing. Before we dive in here, though, I thought I'd share a story with you. Earlier this year, we hosted our annual Power Delivery Design Conference that draws attendees for many of the large utilities. For the first time this year, we added a program management focused workshop to give our clients a chance to meet with their peers and share what they're seeing ahead as it relates to project delivery. Some of the visuals in the presentations they gave were telling.

One client had a visual of a Post-it note monster chasing him in his dreams and the other a visual of a cart at the top of a roller coaster about to drop. This is how our clients described they felt until they engaged WSP for program management services. My colleagues have done a great job sharing how the capital spend in our industry is increasing. But it's not just the fact that the spend is increasing, it's that the spend is taking the form of large multiyear capital programs and mega projects. Even small execution errors can materially impact company performance when you're dealing with multibillion-dollar portfolios. Not every capital project is created equal. Small routine projects can use light touch oversight with exception-based governance. Midsize projects need centralized functional support and standard stage gate reviews. But these major multi-billion dollar projects demand a dedicated integrated team with a multi-tiered governance structure.

These are first-of-kind programs for our clients, and the governance to run them doesn't exist yet. That's the gap. Our clients need a structure that protects their investment without slowing delivery and building that is where we come in. Here on the right, you can see that in April, S&P increased their CapEx forecast to roughly $1.3 trillion. You've heard that statistic earlier today. But that was an 11% increase in the prior forecast they had developed just 4 months earlier. Capital plans are growing and shifting faster than utility organizations can adapt and the projects are at a scale that most utilities have not seen before, creating a widening execution gap. Greater complexity coupled with greater urgency increases the value of an integrated proven execution partner.

In addition to scale, schedule compression is adding complexity to project delivery. Our clients are being tasked with delivering projects faster than ever before. You can see here a comparison of the traditional linear execution model compared to becoming -- compared to what is becoming the new normal, the nonlinear model. In the traditional model, everything runs in sequence. But in the nonlinear model, activities overlap throughout the life cycle, finishing in this case, 25% faster, but introducing 2 key risks to the project. This new execution model requires more execution planning and governance, coordination, strategic contracting, proactive risk management, documented change management, early stakeholder involvement and digital tools that keep everyone aligned and enabled to make critical decisions.

These fundamentals aren't yet standard at even mature utility PMOs and it's causing them to seek partners for help. This is exactly why we built POWER360. It's our AI-enabled program management platform, purpose-built for this nonlinear world, surfacing risks like these before they hit the schedule and keeping every parallel work stream in sync. It's how we help clients capture that 25% faster delivery without inheriting the risk that comes with it.

So let's do a quick recap of the industry forces that are driving the shift in project delivery for our clients. Capital plans are shifting from predictable, normative growth to rapidly evolving double-digit growth with first-of-kind projects in terms of complexity and scale.

Utilities, even those that have mature PMOs, don't have the resources to do this work in-house and can't keep up with how quickly their capital plans are evolving. Project in-service dates are pushing the need to complete projects and time lines that have never been done before to meet demand. These complexities are breaking the traditional procurement models and forcing utilities to look for partners that can deliver end-to-end solutions.

The integrated delivery partner model. This is a model that started in the U.K. on large infrastructure projects. Following its success, it spread to the U.S. initially through the transportation industry. This model gained traction because it shifted relationships from traditional adversarial vendor contracts to fully integrated collaborative teams. We're now seeing this model be deployed within the Power & Energy industry with the largest utilities.

This diagram here is meant to illustrate how in this model we integrate with our client to fill the gaps in the program life cycle and work as a team. Each client is a little different and will want their resources engage where they have strengths, but we'll need support in others. And oftentimes, what we find, we see these engagements evolve over the life of a program and some of those gray boxes start to turn red. The good news here is that this model is not new to WSP. We've been doing it for decades with our T&I business, and we have expertise and resources throughout the entire life cycle from planning to close out, so we can be a one-stop shop for our clients.

This map here illustrates the program management engagement WSP has or is currently delivering. As noted on the past slide, WSP has decades of program management experience in transportation and infrastructure, the dark red bubbles on this map. Our Power & Energy engagements are in the lighter red. If you had looked at this map just 1 year to 2 years ago, the number and scale of the P&E programs would have been less prevalent on the map. The takeaway is simple. This isn't a capability we're building. It's a capability we already have, proven at scale. With decades of major program delivery behind us and a rapidly growing P&E footprint, WSP is positioned today to step in as a delivery partner for our clients' largest and most complex programs.

So why is this so exciting? Program management engagements like this delivery partner model evolve our relationships with our clients. It changes our engagements from transactional project by project awards to engagements across the full asset life cycle from early planning through construction and operations. Instead of getting engaged after key planning decisions are already made, we have a seat at the table. Instead of competitively bidding each phase of work, we have long-term engagements. And instead of our scope being limited to only design and engineering deliverables, we now have expanded scope and it can include higher-value services like advisory and planning. This shift expands WSP's addressable revenue per program, trading transactional design fees for long-term partnerships. So our key takeaways, this is exciting.

Utility capital spend is outrunning their ability to execute projects. The scale and complexity of the projects on the horizon have grown beyond what traditional execution models can handle. The integrated delivery partner model will help close the gap that utilities have in project execution and presents an attractive revenue stream for WSP. WSP is uniquely positioned to support our clients due to our extensive program management experience, the scale of our team and our breadth of expertise throughout the entire project life cycle.

And now I'd like to hand it over to Karen.

Good morning, and thanks to Sara for that great overview on program management, and that leads perfectly into our discussion on nuclear power projects, of which many -- most of them are large projects or mega projects. I'm Karen Fritz, Senior Vice President of the nuclear market in Canada. I could not be more thrilled to be speaking to you today about the growth of nuclear around the world. I spent the last 27 years in the industry, 25 of those with the utility. And at the end of the day, my job was to make clean electricity and do a lot of fun projects with a large team of nuclear professionals, and I truly love doing that every day.

But I remember in the early years of my career, I almost left the industry altogether with aging plants and reactor layups and little funding to invest in asset management. How times have changed. I hear all the time from my peers working in nuclear that we wish we were in our 20s again and just starting out, so we could spend the next 25 years building the next generation of power plants. I'm so envious of the young people getting into the industry now. At WSP, I'm proud to be leading this market in Canada as we grow in this space to meet global demand for the future.

The global growth in nuclear power happening right now and expected to continue through the coming decades is unlike anything we've seen in 50 years, the restarts, refurbishments, new builds and exploration of new technologies is moving forward with the support of government, private investments and first-of-a-kind mega project successes being delivered ahead of schedule and under budget. The first SMR in Canada is currently under construction, building on the foundation of a lessons learned and robust readiness processes. And countries all over the world, even in regions where nuclear has never been deployed are exploring new sites, and they're working with experienced regulators and putting plans in place to eventually operate their own generating stations.

Nuclear is a carbon-free energy solution that provides reliable baseload power needed not only for energy security, but to support future economic growth across industries and we are seeing regulatory bodies and governments making changes to shorten the time to deployment, and we see private industries challenging the way nuclear has always been deployed in the past. And they are also getting ready to help with engineering, mega project management, innovative data solutions and supply chain certainty.

WSP has over 1,000 professionals working directly to support the nuclear industry. Our strong Nuclear Centers of Excellence are in 4 regions: the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Sweden. Our teams in these 4 regions work closely together to create a global service for clients who are at different phases in their nuclear development. In fact, I don't think there's a week that goes by where I'm not talking to leaders in those 4 countries. As part of our nuclear growth, our regions are moving to secure robust nuclear quality engineering programs that are required to support nuclear safety-related scope and build out our skill sets and capabilities. In the U.S., our team operates under an established NQA-1 program. Canada is developing a CSA N299 program, and the U.K. is beginning to stand up their program. Our Swedish team has worked with nuclear utilities as a long-term partner as well. This growth will further solidify our future in the nuclear industry with nuclear engineering and training academies to embed nuclear safety culture securely in our company.

As large new greenfield projects are developed, cross-sector skills are needed that are not necessarily nuclear-specific. Together with our team of nuclear experienced leaders, WSP can deliver commercially viable solutions that contribute to the cost effectiveness that is required in future nuclear deployment. As the nuclear industry readies itself for construction of both large and small modular reactors around the world with a large focus right here in North America, WSP is well suited to be a partner in these projects. In North America alone, we are involved in siting and environmental support for over 25 new small and large reactor development projects. And in the U.K., a WSP team has been embedded with our client to lead the Sizewell C consents and permits with a team of professionals embedded with the client for over the last 10 years to manage this complex process.

When you look at a new nuclear power plant site, whether it's 50 acres or 1,500 acres, WSP provides core services related to greenfield and brownfield development for these large civil nuclear projects. Every power plant needs transmission connection and switchyards with emergency power systems. WSP through the acquisition of POWER Engineers is the leading engineer in North America providing these services. Every nuclear generating station needs buildings, infrastructure, water treatment and water intake. These are all core services for us in our nuclear, industrial, Power & Energy, transportation and environment teams. And aside from the reactor island, nuclear power plants are like any other power plant that uses steam, water, air and hydraulic systems.

WSP designs these balance of plant systems and energy projects all over the world. With WSP's growth strategy to strengthen our Nuclear Engineering Service, we can be a key integrator on these sites. And with global collaboration across sectors, WSP is well suited to partner with nuclear deployment leaders.

Looking at our 4 sectors, they contribute significantly to the industry. Earth & Environment leads our environmental support, licensing, site due diligence, geotechnic and seismic work. Power & Energy delivers balance of plant design, owner's engineering and program management. Property & Building Specialty is large greenfield master planning, modular designed through a kit of parts and design of buildings. And Transportation & Infrastructure covers water, surveying and transportation logistics. Some new power plants may need new ports and marine work and equipment delivery by barge. Some may need rail lines to deliver large equipment and that's commonly used in the nuclear industry. Our Advisory & Planning team also covers technology evaluation, site selection and planning, and that will help our clients meet the best investment decisions.

Let's talk about why we win work. WSP is successful in leading the start of the nuclear life cycle. And as we sit at the front end, we're citing, licensing and permitting decisions are being made. Front-end positions convert into multiyear design and construction support programs. NQA-1 qualification and world-class seismic and geotechnical expertise limit the competitor set. One integrated offer across the full life cycle, repeatable across every client, program management and the ability to deliver large capital infrastructure projects is what sets WSP apart.

So Alex showed a similar diagram at the beginning of today. In addition to WSP's involvement in new nuclear site development, we are also engaged in services to -- directly to the power generating stations and ancillary facilities clients. Nuclear fuel production, of course, is incredibly important for power plant operation, and we are seeing growth in this area with expansions and advanced fuel production to meet future demand.

We support the development and maintenance of these fuel production sites with design, permitting and ongoing environmental support and monitoring. Inside the power plant and the protected area of these stations, WSP supports design optimization through our kit of parts design team and can support design of balance of plant systems with expertise in steam turbines, water systems, mechanical and control design and structural design.

WSP also carries out significant scope related to source surveillance globally, supporting the manufacturing quality requirements for nuclear materials, including turbine and generator systems, reactor components and steam generators. As the demand for nuclear components increases and manufacturing shops increased their output, nuclear quality professionals are a key role in the supply chain process.

WSP has long been involved as a trusted adviser and consultant in radioactive waste management, particularly in remediation and environmental support for these facilities, including long-term used fuel storage in deep geological repositories. We are the engineering integrator on the Canadian DGR in Ontario, having worked with the Nuclear Waste Management Organization in Canada for over 20 years.

The nuclear industry's vital contribution to health care is not always widely recognized or even known. Nuclear technology enables the production of medical isotopes used to sterilize hospital equipment and for diagnostic imaging and treatment of cancer through targeted radiation therapies. WSP supports clients across the medical isotope value chain by engineering the specialized facilities and infrastructure required to deliver these life-saving treatments.

Outside the regulated area of the station, WSP is a leading provider of switchyards, substations and transmission lines and has supported power and transmission clients all over the world in the areas of advisory, design and owner's engineer.

And lastly, let's talk about the M in SMR, modularization or building a kit of parts. A kit of parts is exactly what it sounds like. Instead of designing every nuclear facility as a one-off, we design a catalog of standardized, repeatable building blocks, 3D modules, 2D assemblies and components that are designed, proven and then implemented across a program. So we don't simply design a building for one project. We design with the goal of deploying multiple buildings from a first of a kind to the nth of a kind.

And at WSP, this work lives in our kit of parts center of excellence in the U.K. That team is connected to our teams globally. So we're designing for manufacturing and assembly rather than designing for construction on a single site. And why does that matter for nuclear? There are 3 reasons. First off, it shifts the work. Labor hours move off the construction site and into a controlled manufacturing shop where quality, safety and schedule are managed differently and repeatability is achievable.

Second, it shifts the mindset from project to program. When the design is standardize across regions, you stop reengineering the same thing over and over. Fewer changes, fewer approvals, less risk and a learning curve that compounds. Unit 5 is less expensive than Unit 1. Unit 10 sees more efficiencies in cost and schedule.

Third, this is what the industry needs. The nuclear build-out ahead of us, SMRs in particular, depends on mass deployment and proof that nuclear can be built on time and on budget. You cannot deploy at that scale with bespoke design. Standardization is the path to credible, repeatable cost and schedule. In short, the kit of parts is how we turn nuclear from a series of mega projects into a manufacturing program.

Thank you for listening today about how WSP is growing in nuclear. And with that, I'll turn it over to Quentin.

Thank you, Karen, and thank you to the whole team for the great presentations. So in terms of where we are in the agenda today, so we will now take a 15-minute break, and then we will follow by the financial update from Alain Michaud, our CFO; and then closing remarks by our CEO, Alexandre L'Heureux. So in terms of logistics, it's 10:40 right now. So we will be back at 10:55 a.m. Eastern. And as a reminder, we will also have our Q&A session. So if you have any questions, please submit them through the Lumi platform, and we will do our best to answer all the questions. Of course, there's going to be more questions than the allotted time. So we will be circling back for the unanswered question during the Q&A period.

So again, we will be back at 10:55 a.m. Eastern. Thank you.

[Break]

All right. Welcome back, everyone, and thank you again for participating to our Power & Energy Teach-in today. Before I get into the financial update, let me start with the broader context. We are operating in a dynamic environment, geopolitically, economically and technologically. For WSP, this environment reinforces the value of our model, our scale, diversification and exposure to long-term structural trends matter even more in this evolving landscape. We are not dependent on one geography, one client group or one end market, and that gives us resilience, flexibility and confidence as we look ahead. With that context, as we are about to close today's event, I want to leave you with the message that matters most.

WSP is performing from a stronger base, scaling in a high-growth market, expanding margin, and we are confident in our ability to deliver our 2027 financial targets.

The opportunity we discussed this morning are not theoretical or emerging opportunities. They are already deeply embedded within WSP. Throughout today's presentations, you've heard about the unprecedented investments taking place across power generation, nuclear, transmission, distribution, grid modernization, energy security and electrification.

Power & Energy is a great source of opportunity for WSP and it's gaining more relevance across WSP as well. In fact, as electrification becomes increasingly central to how assets are designed, built and operated, it broadens the opportunity set across our market and discipline, reinforcing the unique advantage of WSP's multidisciplinary platform.

Financially, Power & Energy is generating double-digit organic growth and is contributing positively to our overall adjusted EBITDA margin. Based on the depth of client demand, the scale of investment underway and the strength of our integrated platform, we do not see that momentum changing.

When we combine Power & Energy with mining, digital, water, data centers, advanced manufacturing and health care, we see a strong portfolio of high-growth area. These businesses are delivering strong organic growth today and positioning WSP well for the future.

Turning to our overall business. Looking at the first half of the year, 2 things stands out versus a year ago, the momentum is better and our confidence is stronger. And this is still true today. For example, Q2 was marked by several positives, an acceleration in organic growth versus 2025, significant recruitment effort aligned with demand, backlog at a record level of $20 billion, growing organically by 6%, the highest level we've seen since 2022. And it was also marked by a solid execution with 90 basis points of margin improvement.

Let me now take you through what we are seeing across our region. In Canada, demand remains healthy across transportation, energy, building, mining and critical infrastructure, including defense. The recent Canada Investment Summit, where we were an active contributor, points to the level of ambition and opportunity we continue to see in the Canadian market. In the Americas, starting with the United States, market conditions are strong across our priority sectors. That includes many of the themes discussed today as well as data center, water and advanced manufacturing, for example.

Emergency Response Services have not contributed at the same level as in prior years, and with September almost behind us, historical trends indicate what to expect for the balance of the year. Our market-leading Infrastructure & Environmental businesses are well anchored in structural demand and recruitment remains active. However, project conversion is progressing at a more measured pace than anticipated, reflecting timing rather than any change in demand, strategy, competitiveness or long-term earnings power. In Latin America, our Mining business, which represent a sizable portion of our operation, is performing well, supported in part by strong demand around copper mining.

Turning to EMEIA. The business continues to perform ahead of expectations, led by the U.K., which represent about half of the region. In the Nordics, markets have improved, and we feel better about the outlook than we did a year ago. In the Middle East, despite the geopolitical environment and its related effects, the impact on our overall business has been limited. Lastly, in APAC, Australia is performing slightly ahead of plan with a healthy backlog, partially offsetting lower public spending in New Zealand.

So in summary, our diversified business is delivering, and we are comfortably tracking within our most recent outlook. The fundamentals of the business are strong. Our expertise and client relationships are solid, and our strategic positioning is increasingly relevant.

In early 2025, we set ambitious financial goals. Net revenue growth of 40%, EBITDA growth of 50%, EPS growth of 60% and free cash flow growth of 70%. Today, we remain on track to meet each of those targets by the end of '27. And based on our execution so far in 2025 and 2026, we see a path to reach our 19% to 20% EBITDA margin target range 1 year earlier than planned.

Thank you for your continued confidence. And with that, over to you, Alex.

Thank you, Alain. Let me bring this back to where we started this morning. I opened by telling you that a little more than 3 years ago, we reached a simple conclusion that the world was entering a period of infrastructure investment unlike anything we had seen in generation. Not just an energy transition, not just a digital transformation, but the conversion of both. Everything you have heard since is evidence. Mike showed you the market for decades, power demand in the United States was flat. That era is over, data centers, reshoring, electrification, grid modernization, energy security, all of it arriving at once. More than $1 trillion of utility capital investment through the end of the decade.

And WSP is entering that market with approximately 7,000 Power & Energy professionals in the U.S., the #1 position in the ENR rankings. Steve took you on to the grid because you cannot have an energy transition without transmission. He showed you the top 15 grid owners in the world and more than $1 trillion of planned grid capital between them. And 14 of those 15 are WSP clients. The majority of those relationships running 15 years or more. That is not a pipeline, that is a position.

Paul showed you our power generation capabilities, a market growing at roughly 4% a year through 2030, a $4 trillion global opportunity and a structural change in how power gets built, behind the meter, co-located, integrated. This is not a forecast, that is happening now.

Sara showed you the execution gap. Capital plans are growing faster than utilities can absorb them. The projects are first of kind for our clients. The schedules are compressed and the traditional delivery models are breaking. That is precisely the gap, the integrated delivery partner model closes and it is a model we have been running in transportation for decades.

And Karen showed you our nuclear capabilities, a generational growth cycle, unlike anything in 50 years, over 1,000 WSP professionals, 4 centers of excellence, more than 25 reactors development projects in North America and the kit-of-parts approach that turns nuclear from a series of mega projects into a manufacturing program.

Now step back and look at what those 5 sections have in common. None of them is a bet on the technology. Every one of them is a bet on infrastructure. The infrastructure that has to be built regardless of which generational technology ultimately prevails. That is the point I ask you to hold on from the beginning, integrated services, global scale, full value chain. Expertise create the advantage, scale multiplies it. Integration is what makes it very difficult to replicate. A competitor can build depth in one discipline. It is far harder to build cross-discipline expertise, regulatory credibility, client trust and delivery capacity across the entire life cycle, from needs, analysis and permitting through engineering and program management all the way through energization and operation. We invested $6 billion.

The amount is not the key. The timing is. And today, that platform sits inside the capital plans that are funding the grid, the generation fleet and the nuclear build-out for the next decade. The next decade will be defined by the rebuilding of energy systems, the modernization of grids, the expansion of digital infrastructure and the pursuit of resilience across economies around the world. We are positioning WSP for the next decade.

Thank you very much. And we will now move on to the Q&A period. Thank you.

Thank you, Alex. We will just set up for the Q&A session. Again, if you want to submit a question, please do it through the Lumi platform. It's a pretty straightforward process, and we will do our best to address all the questions. I think we received a long list of questions. So we also combine a couple of them just for efficiency. So we'll kick it off. So thank you, everyone, for being present and joining the Q&A session.

So the first question is related to really the concept of integrated services and what it entails? That concept of everything under one roof to support the power sector and also the relationship in terms of procurement, dealing with clients, their behavior, their expectations. So I think it would be great to provide some color there.

Alex, maybe you want to redirect the question?

Well, maybe Holger, Matt and Mike, you want to take this one?

Yes, sure. I don't think we're everything to every client. I think every client is in a different place in their journey. So some clients are coming to us for just one specialty that we have, but others really have a much bigger platform and program that they have to execute, and that model doesn't work anymore. It's not efficient enough. It doesn't give the scale and the speed that they need. So those clients are the ones that we now can offer the entire platform too. So it's -- each client is kind of in a different part of their journey. And so I think what they're asking from us for is a little different.

Yes. From a procurement strategy perspective, obviously, that entire full life cycle service offering is not built for everyone, but we are seeing a fundamental shift in our clients looking at that delivery partnership and looking at opportunities to really bring together everything that the WSP platform can entail. And ultimately, we met with the utility executive shortly after the TRC acquisition. And yes, you could look at that as a potential risk, but they actually looked at it as an opportunity to really lock in the engineering resources that are necessary to build and engineer what's coming ahead of us in the super cycle that we talked about. So really, those executives are changing their mindset when it comes to how they procure. And ultimately, to your point, Holger, it doesn't mean they have to procure at all, and we have those various end points into the organization and the delivery services that we can offer.

Yes. And maybe to add to that, Mike and Holger. My other observation, and I know we spoke about this a bit earlier today is that the industry is experiencing unprecedented growth, once in a generation really growth in energy infrastructure. And our clients are not necessarily wired to be able to meet the moment of that type of scale. And so for us, integration means a single point of accountability, a combined data model and fewer handoffs and really simplified transactions for our clients. And oftentimes, that's exactly what our clients really need because they have not yet reorganized around the nature of the scale that they're dealing with.

The other reality is that not every client needs every service, and that's completely fine and advantage of having such a comprehensive platform is even our functional services we offer are able to look upstream and downstream, providing better insights into how they fit in the complex programs. And ultimately, if you're looking for just a single service, you're going to end up with better specialists on that program.

Yes. And if I could just add to what was said, it's -- we're not trying to be at every stage of the life cycle. So we are in permitting and planning, we are in geotech work, but we do not take construction risk, we do not operate assets. So I think that for an investment thesis standpoint, that's important to remember, WSP, we don't aspire to play in every step of the way.

Having said all that and to add --to echo what you just said, and I also -- in a time where capacity is constrained and speed and certainty are what's probably one of the most crucial aspect of a project, having an integrated approach is a great solution to provide that certainty to our clients.

Thank you all. Very informative. So we'll move to the second question. So regarding larger and more integrated client mandates, how has the addition of TRC changed the nature of conversations you're having with utilities and infrastructure owners?

I'll go ahead and start that conversation. So ultimately, with the addition of TRC, we're seeing an expanded service offering to mainly our utility and developer clients around distribution, additional services around testing and commissioning, really that full end-to-end, Paul said earlier concept to commissioning. As well within the TRC, we're adding capabilities of intelligent grid solutions, so more of a digital offering in that space as well that ultimately, our clients are looking at that. And that opens up the buyers within our clients and really our ability as an organization to really kind of marry those service offerings across the buyers within our clients as well, too. But Matt, what have you been hearing on your side relative to the addition?

Yes, Mike, I totally agree everything that you said. And the breadth and depth of our capabilities are incredible and truly unmatched in the industry. And it's just exciting to be able to have these kind of conversations now with clients. Actually, I was speaking with a client just last month about our new combined platform and all the services that we could offer. And the client basically said that they're choosing firms that have these types of capabilities exclusively going forward because they just don't have the capacity to be able to pick and choose amongst different service offerings. So it's just really exciting.

The other observation that I've seen is that we now have access to some new markets and clients where we didn't otherwise engage, including, say, transportation clients that are dealing with a tremendous amount of aging energy infrastructure that we're able to now help them serve.

Matt, as you're talking, you keep going like this. And in that workshop that I talked about at the conference we had, that's what our client said, they've got to close the seams to deliver these programs. And so I just thought it was fun. You're visually showing what that delivery model provides.

Good. Thank you all. We'll move on to the next question on nuclear, which is a very popular topic today. So Karen, most likely for you. So nuclear feature prominently today, I'd like to know how we see nuclear fitting within the broader power landscape over the next decade.

Yes. Thank you, Quentin. Thanks for the question. So nuclear is baseload power. So baseload power is important because the economic drivers that we're seeing with data centers, but also not only keeping the lights on, but keeping the most important services on in every country is important throughout weather events and energy security. People rely on electricity from nuclear power plants. Nuclear power plants are designed not to cycle up and down, they're not reactive to the market. They are designed for baseload power. So all the other energy solutions that are on the market and will come on the market, they will play their part, and they will cycle up and down and they will all provide what we need. But in terms of nuclear, it is baseload.

The second thing is that it's clean. So it is a carbon-free power generating solution. And that will contribute to countries, global and climate goals around the world.

The third thing is that for nuclear, they have some unique solutions. So we have large nuclear maybe, call it, over 1,000 megawatts. We have small, which could be 300 megawatts, and then we have micro. So micro 5 megawatts to 10 megawatts. And so deployment once modularized or once deployable at a mass scale becomes a very different solution. And communities, say, isolated communities in north or isolated remote resource projects and resource operations, they now have different options than they had before. So I think that the landscape will look different with continued investment and continued innovation to build these power plants.

Steve, anything to add?

Yes, if I can add to that. I think Karen and I have talked a lot and share the excitement and the enthusiasm for the new nuclear program. And I started my career in the early 2000s. And some of the earliest products I worked on was the large-scale reactors. And definitely had some challenges. This market is different for a number of reasons that Karen you articulated, the baseload power, the carbon-free. The modularization work that WSP is doing with our kit of parts is absolutely critical to that scalability and repeatability of new nuclear. So it's a different environment that we're in and certainly has a lot of excitement and enthusiasm, and I think WSP fits very well with that new nuclear landscape.

Thank you, Steve. Thank you, Karen. Moving on to the next question. So it's a combined question here, so on M&A. So first part of the question is if we still have a desire to grow in power or if we're at scale? And related to M&A, what is the likelihood of WSP expanding its exposure to nuclear power technologies through M&A? Or would management prefer to grow organically?

I'll take this one up, Quentin. So clearly, we -- when you look at our Power & Energy sector, as I said in my opening address and my commentary, Power & Energy is no longer an adjacency. This is a sector on its own and one of the most prominent sector of our group. Today Power & Energy in the U.S., this sector represents 35% of our top line. And when I look at on a global scale, now Power & Energy represent approximately 20% of our business. So you can see that in the rest of world compared to our U.S. business, we are in some geographies, subscale, Quentin. So yes, in the right circumstances, we would like to continue to use inorganic growth to grow our Power & Energy sector in Canada, Australia and many other parts of Europe. So at the right time in the right circumstances, we would like to do that.

And on nuclear power, M&A, I'm sure Karen would like me to say yes. And the answer is we are definitely open to it. Again, at the right time, the right circumstances, if we could find an opportunity to accelerate the deployment of our services in that sector, we would certainly be open to review the opportunity.

Thanks, Alex, for the good insights here. Next question is related here, and I'll read the question. So you mentioned creditworthy customers. What indicators are you tracking to assess the long-term viability of projects in the rising rate environment and hyperinflation in select areas across the electrification super cycle? And I believe this is a question for maybe Matt that will tackle it.

Yes. I'll get started on this one. Well, first of all, we use certainly standard financial metrics to determine worthiness for clients who are considering a major project or development. But an area that we serve as one of our main energy advisory areas is to help clients get energy projects built. And so that provides us a really unique lens on the projects that are likely to ultimately get constructed. And that includes energy markets and have they procured and have long-term contracts for the energy that they actually need to access.

Interconnection processes with utilities are a substantial portion of risk and a substantial portion of work where we help to serve developers and large load builders in determining what the time lines look like for interconnection. Equipment is another major area. And of course, regulatory processes, cost of service and recovery models and then ultimately, stakeholder sentiment. So we work with clients every day to help address these challenges and work through them for them. And it really gives us unique insights into the type of projects that we see in the market as being successful.

I think if I could just add, maybe, Paul, you could touch on this as well, too. But in the generation space, as Matt just mentioned, there's a lot of criteria that you can look at relative to the viability of the project and truly where they stand in that development cycle. One of those is really talking with the OEMs and appreciating and understanding Paul's favorite term is kind of following the turbines when it comes to power generation and that ability to track that from a viability perspective with our clients.

Yes. Follow the turbines has been kind of a mantra of ours because the significant investment and long lead times on the OEM equipment. We have constant interaction with the major OEMs out there. So we definitely understand where the projects and the viability of these projects as one clear indicator that they're moving forward. So that insight is critical.

Thank you, team. Moving on to the next. So, yes, there will be a recording available after the broadcast on WSP's website as mentioned previously.

Next question most likely for Alex and Alain here. So without discussing guidance, what characteristics make the Power & Energy market particularly attractive from a long-term shareholder value perspective?

Well, I can take this one up. I mean, clearly, a few years ago, we decided to deploy a significant amount of capital in that sector for a variety of different reasons, the fundamental trends supporting this sector are buoyant and strong, and they will continue to be very strong, even if for a variety of reasons, we would see a slowdown in AI technology development. The need for power is so big at the moment that I see this sector to be very, very attractive from a shareholder value perspective.

And again, for a variety of reasons, you asked me not to provide guidance. But I can talk about the past, Quentin. And if you look at our POWER Engineer acquisition and also TRC acquisition, both firms have had double-digit CAGR organic growth rate for the last decade. So this was before AI. So we see this sector as being extremely and very promising for WSP as a whole. And we continue to believe that the margins will go up because of what we've discussed all day today, the capacity constraint and the speed at which we need to deliver services. And clients want to get at the top of the list, and they want their projects to be delivered. So we see this as an incredible opportunity, and we see WSP to be uniquely positioned in that regard.

Thanks, Alex. Anybody wanted to add anything there? No, we're good. Good.

Moving on to the next question, a popular topic. I'll read the question for everybody. So every week, there seems to be a new opposition or roadblocks to the build-out of data centers across many state and local markets in the U.S. While demand is very strong, how much have these delays and extended review periods impacted the ramp-up of activity levels from a WSP perspective? So I think the whole team can probably chime in. I'm not sure who wants to tackle it first.

Yes, I'll take a shot first. So I think, first and foremost, I don't think it has impacted any ramp-up activities relative to those delays. Ultimately, given our pipeline and the service offering that we have in this space, yes, maybe due to some of the delays or some of the market conditions that we're seeing today, we might actually shift those services to more of the advisory upfront services to support the communities that are struggling to understand the impacts relative to water, relative to environmental permitting for data centers. So really just, again, our ability to bring that strategic nature forward on that to really help inform the communities to get the buy-in to get the support of those projects moving forward long term.

So Matt, I don't know if you wanted to pile on to that from that ability to just leverage the full services.

Yes. Mike, I mean, I think you nailed it on the fact that we really aren't seeing any slowness as a result of this. I think the thing I want to put a point on is, when you brought up considerations around land, around noise, around water. And most importantly, I would say, around really who's paying these costs and how are they socialized through communities, including local communities, these are solvable challenges. And so we have experts that have tremendous domain depth and expertise in these areas, and we work with clients every day to help solve these challenges. And it really reinforces how successful really WSP has been in bringing together all of the skill sets that are required to ultimately solve these challenges.

Yes. I think the other major kind of area is that while data centers and AI gets a lot of visibility out there, this demand cycle is broad-based. There is a lot of demand out there outside of the data centers that we're serving right now. So that is all part of the equation.

I think the other piece maybe that we can speak to that we haven't said much about today is just the aging infrastructure. So even if we just let the data centers cool down a little bit, there's still so much aging infrastructure that needs to be replaced that's driving this. So again, to that multifaceted super cycle that we're in, it's not just one thing. It's not just what's in the news today. It's much, much broader.

Can you just give a few examples, like transmission line, typically, the useful life of a transmission line?

Sure. Yes. Most of our design is for 40 years, but much of that is 50 years, 60 years already in service. And so over 70% of the circuit breakers on the system today are past their age, right? So everybody is -- and then we have asset management, which will happen to also be involved in our portfolio. And so we help clients try to manage their assets longer, keep them in the system working well, right? So each piece has a challenge, and we're up for that challenge and we can offer some services. But yes, there's -- not only is it the expansion when we talked 765 earlier today, that's really about getting power to new areas. Even the existing 345, 230, 115 network is old and needs to be replaced.

Yes, all the way down to the distribution network as well, too, which is really where that load profile irregardless of data centers, whether that's electrification of buildings or transit, we're seeing that all the way down through the distribution network as well, too, that, again, the full service that TRC adds in distribution now from that 765 kV that you talked about, the ability to unlock the generation, whether it be gas-fired or renewable power to where those load pockets are will remain instrumental in the growth that's necessary on the grid.

Yes. And Holger, I think you brought up a great point of just the aging infrastructure. And even the infrastructure model is starting to shift from where it was 20, 30, 50 years ago where you had large generation to transmission to distribution getting power where it needs to go. And now you've got a significant amount of renewables, intermittent power generation that's on. We're talking behind the meter nuclear that 5 years ago was an unheard of phrase. Batteries are going on, off the grid. So you've got all these different changes that fundamentally shift the grid model itself from the large power generation, transmission, distribution. So that in and of itself is another major driver in what's going on in the grid.

I'll just add. I think when you combine all these together, what I've been seeing, and I think we've been seeing collectively is opportunities to help solve some of these challenges in a way that actually addresses both aging infrastructure and resiliency and all the new capacity. And in fact, we're working with the client right now where we're helping them to site a new large load in area where the transmission infrastructure needs to be upgraded anyway. And so finding these combined solutions to challenges is really the unique offering that we're able to provide.

Steve, one thing you kind of alluded to is the bidirectionality of the system, right? It wasn't designed for that originally and now that's required every day.

Thank you. Thank you. Moving on to the next question. So Slide 33. I think that's your section, Paul, on a project. So Slide 33 highlighted new gas-fire base load can be paired with carbon capture. Have you seen many of the proposed generation proceed with a focus on lowering the carbon footprint of the overall project? And how does the intensity of WSP services for carbon capture compared to the more direct power-related opportunities?

Yes. Certainly, our clients still ask for how we can reduce our carbon footprint on our thermal projects, and that's why I brought that slide up in 33. We are actively looking at combined cycle and carbon capture integrated. And the other aspect of it is that these energy parks incorporate different technologies, whether it's carbon capture, battery storage, solar and the importance of all of those technologies playing well in the sandbox is what I call it.

The other part of that is that on carbon capture or anything else, the importance of WSP's involvement or anybody's involvement early on, so we can plan for these different technologies, both in site selection, technology selection and the ultimate end game. So we are actively looking at and most of our clients ask for us to design for either carbon capture or other solutions.

Yes. I would just like to add there as well, too, not to get lost in the technical too deep, but the expertise and the niche capability of bringing together all of those various generation assets. So again, looking to be a steward of our sustainability with our clients, pairing thermal generation with solar or battery energy storage and all behind the meter with future interconnection to the grid really does take quite a bit of technical expertise to bring all of that together, that is not lost upon us and our ability to draw upon really kind of the advanced energy and the integrated grid solutions to bring that all together ultimately to be successful.

Great. Thank you. Next question is for a newly build nuclear reactor, what is the total addressable market opportunity across all of WSP services? So that's a big question. So I think, Karen, you probably can tackle it, even though providing figures might be a bit of a challenge there.

Yes. Thanks, Quentin. I would say it's really difficult to define the total addressable market. But what I would say is that 2 things. The sheer volume, number of projects that are on, on the capital investment plans for companies around the world is, like we've talked about before, unlike we've seen in -- since the '70s and the '80s, so well over 50 years since we've seen this amount of growth. The cost of a nuclear power plant -- a new greenfield nuclear power plant is in the billions. I think that's well known in socially. And in terms of capacity would be the second thing I would note.

The capacity of engineering companies or companies in general to address what these new nuclear power plants need is falling short right now. So it is an area where new nuclear engineering and companies with the engineering quality program are needed. But in addition to that, we haven't built many large greenfield nuclear power generating stations in decades. So companies are looking for new players in the market to work with to do the things that they have not done. They have not built internal expertise, like program management would be one. And they haven't done these things in decades, if they were a self-performing company at all in the past. So I would say the opportunity is huge. The numbers are huge. We're looking forward to working with these companies.

Thank you, Karen. Next question is related to program management. So has program management become a bigger piece of the pie with global infrastructure in recent years as projects have directionally become larger and more complex? Can you talk about how your -- I assume market share has evolved or which type of program management WSP is more dominant in?

Before we turn to Sara, which I would like Sara to talk about our capabilities in that regard, for WSP, more broadly, clearly, we have increased our percentage of net revenue generated from program management for the reasons that you just described. The programs are larger, more complex, more integrated, and at the sake of repeating myself, speed is of premier importance. It's very, very critical. And that's one area.

And when we unveil our plan, our strategic plan in early '25, we said that this would be for WSP over the next 3 years, an area where we would like to grow and make significant strides. And we have done that with the acquisition of POWER Engineer and TRC. We have now one of the largest program management team, and perhaps, Sara, I'd like to turn to you to talk about it.

Sure. Thanks. So the short answer is, yes. If I look back about 5 years ago, our utility clients were seeing their baseload capital work 2x, 3x, 4x. And they didn't have the project management staff to execute those projects. So that was this project, if you remember that scale I showed earlier, that's kind of that medium range projects. So largely just providing qualified staff that could utilize their processes and tools, their procedures to help deliver their projects. And maybe we would be involved in 1 or 2 of these mega projects over a 4- or 5-year cycle.

Now there's more of these mega projects coming down the pipeline, and they break that model. The processes that were -- the go-to processes before don't work anymore, as Alex mentioned, schedule compression, the scale and complexity of these projects. And so we're evolving now into more of the large complex projects as our portfolio. And so I think I showed that map earlier that showed how many of these mega projects we're involved in today, especially with the -- with TRC coming on board, we're definitely touching most of the mega projects that are happening in the U.S. today.

So I guess also like where we kind of see opportunity in the future, as Karen and Paul both noted, we're seeing program management opportunities in generation. And so kind of pivoting there to build our capabilities and be ready to address the market needs there.

Yes. And Sara, I think that's the interesting part of the equation is the diversity of our client base with PMO. I'm sure you've probably seen has grown in the last 10 years or so from utilities. I was actually meeting with a transmission developer recently who in your talk, you described the roller coaster getting to the top of the crest. He was actually describing a tidal wave coming, but a similar concept. So we've got transmission developers that are looking for PMO support. We're supporting nuclear clients. These are large infrastructure projects, and they need a lot of help. So that client diversity has been an interesting evolution over the last few years.

Thank you, team. Moving to a bit of a different topic, but we'll be discussing adjusted EBITDA margin. So Alain, you're probably next. So what has developed well since the introduction of the '25, '27 strategic plan that has given WSP a path to achieve in the 19% to 20% margin target in '26, so 1 year ahead of plan? And then what has been the main contributor there?

When we presented our strategic plan for '25 to '27, we had put together kind of the path to get to that 19%, 20% EBITDA margin by '27 and also putting forward an indication of our long-term vision of even being able to push a little more the boundaries to a 22% EBITDA margin. So we're extremely proud of the progress we've made. Our execution continued to be strong. You've seen our Q2 results, 90 basis points in the first half of the year.

And in terms of contributor, I mean, it's hard to generalize because every business, every region, every end market will have its own reality. But it's all the -- if you were to think about a few, you would say, pricing, of course, will have an impact on our margin. We talked about the market in Power & Energy and the unique positioning that we have and the fact that POWER Engineers and TRC are already contributing to our margin globally is an example of that.

We are modernizing our -- the back end of the business. We've involved -- invested a lot in the new ERP. We're investing in digital. So that supports margins as well. Productivity is key in the way we manage our resources. And obviously, the way we deliver a project, the main source of margin is really our people day in, day out that deliver quality project on time, on budget and makes our customer happy. So that's -- those are the big driver. And we are extremely pleased with where we are and we keep on pushing to achieve our long-term vision target statement.

Thank you, Alain. The next question, so it's very topical in the sense that there's a lot of questions submitted on that same theme. So we will assemble them together. But essentially, the question is from Michael from TD.

With strong growth and expansion expected in the broader Power & Energy sector over the coming years, how is WSP positioned from a capacity perspective to address this growth opportunity? And how should investors think about potentially needed capacity additions at WSP? And here, the reference is specifically to headcount, the war on talent in the industry, having enough resources to deliver on the backlog and the projects. So Maybe, Alex, I'll kick it off with you.

Yes. I'll start, and I can turn to the team. I think this is a very -- it's a fascinating question because on one end, we talked about capacity additions, capacity constraint. And on the other, we talked about the AI threat. And that's what's really interesting. We live in a world where capacity is an issue. We're not living in the world where we operate in a saturated market. To the contrary, in Power & Energy, but also in all of our other sectors, if I take Transportation, for instance, or Property & Building or Earth & Environment. We live in the world that -- where the infrastructure needs and the infrastructure spend, I mean, the gap is widening every year. So we need capacity, and we need to use technology. We're going to need to incorporate AI in what we do to continue to deliver all of the work that we will need to deliver in the coming years.

I think we have an incredible brand. We are in a position to attract the best and brightest in our industry. We have a 90% acceptance rate when we submit a letter of employment to candidates, and we're proud of that. And we also have an incredible resource center around the world. So perhaps I could turn to some of you to talk about those topics that I just discussed and highlighted.

Well, I was going to pick up on the global complementary centers, Alex, right? So obviously, that partnership that we talk about with our clients, there's obviously that war on talent and our partners are also looking to grow and expand. And I think something unique to the WSP global platform is our ability to leverage our global scale, whether it be in the complementary centers of offshoring and our clients have adapted and begun to allow that, but also leveraging our colleagues in the North in Canada, our colleagues in the U.K., South Africa has 765 kV experience, where that's been built in that geography, and we're being able to bring that expertise here to the United States. So ultimately, I do feel that, that global platform and our ability to not only attract global talent, but leverage that global talent in the U.S. market is a key differentiator for us as well.

I think I'll even say that the depth of our capabilities and our expertise helps us expand. So there's definitely a war on talent as it's named, and there's only so many people that have the experience today. But with our platform, with the amount of experience that we have, the number of projects we have, I think we can scale that. When you have 1,000 people and you add 100, that's 10%. If you have 100 people and you add 100, that's twice as many, right?

So our ability to take that knowledge that we have earned over the years and all the projects that we've done and get that into training programs, which we have our own university, and we're training that next generation of people. So I think our breadth of expertise and across the globe really, our experience allows us to do more than maybe a smaller organization could. And so that's another place where scale, I think, really helps us in the future.

Thank you, everyone. Anything else? No?

I can add for nuclear, Quentin. So 2 years ago, when I joined WSP, we have this platform called Professional Area Network. So every country in the world can use this platform and there is one for nuclear. There are probably several for nuclear. And so almost immediately, I started receiving queries from people around the world who have either worked in nuclear before or are very interested in moving into that space. And so I would say, organically, internally, the interest is there. Of course, getting -- going after our nuclear qualification and engineering and nuclear safety culture academies and everything that you need to be a very Tier 1 leading engineering nuclear service provider, we are doing all of those things.

So because WSP has such a deep bench in our countries and especially in our Power & Energy teams, I think that the growth there is really powered -- excuse the pun, by a lot of interest in what the nuclear industry is doing and other parts the company like we have teams who do automation. They can contribute to a lot of nuclear solutions. They have -- we have teams who do equipment monitoring, data analysis, all of those skill sets are needed in nuclear. So I think that across WSP, with the interest in moving into this industry, our deep bench will help us a lot.

Thanks, Karen. Thanks, team. Moving on to the next question from Andrew here. So you provided a helpful overview of all the different services WSP can provide to Power & Energy customers from scope management to engineering studies to environmental and regulatory work. Are there any attractive service types that are missing at WSP today that you would like to add over the next couple of years? Alex?

Well, I'd be tempted to say everything we discussed today would like to continue to grow. Generation comes to mind. Power gen would like to do more. I think program management, Sara, we have now a formidable team, a big team now, probably one of the largest, if not the largest in the U.S. And I think we have capacity to double it, if we wanted to in the next few years. So I'd like to turn to the team perhaps to add to what I just said. I know, for instance, substation design, transmission, we have one of the largest team in the U.S. now, but I'm sure, Holger, you would like to continue to grow that presence.

Definitely growth in capability and in the digital, right? We mentioned that a little bit today. And I think that's where this concern about AI is not really where I like to play. I really like to think about how AI is going to augment our capabilities and do things that maybe are rote or routine, right? And so in that way, expanding our capacity and capability, right, through digital transformation, whether that's helping our clients come to their -- have a digital platform, right, and getting their assets into a digital model or just us providing more digital services, I think that -- so yes, those are areas that I'm focusing on now.

And perhaps you could talk about the change or the -- how the journey has evolved from a digital point of view over the last few years. I'm looking at major bids right now that are being procured and I look at the size of digital services that we need now to offer compared to what it was just 5 years ago. And I see a huge gap or a big difference. So could -- perhaps you could explain....

Well, I'll start out, but yes, then definitely have everybody chime in. Yes, I think 5 years ago, there probably wasn't a digital chapter in bids, right? And today, that's -- every major bid we respond to, that's the big question is how are you going to help us? Are you going to help the utility become more digital, be more efficient, right? Again, better reliability, cost effectiveness for the clients and so -- or for the customers. So yes, definitely, it's a big piece, and I think nobody has got it figured out. Everybody is approaching it in different areas. And I think collectively, as an industry, we're going to find the right way as we go through this. But absolutely, there's a focus now and a need really to do more with less, right? So I'm sure you're seeing it, Matt, in what you're doing.

An incredible amount. Yes. And I know we've talked a little bit about, say, the volatility of some of the data center projects emerging. And really, that's the market we're experiencing right now that decisions are increasingly more complicated to make. And so not only digital, in the form of helping to support a smooth execution and make sure we're executing but making sure that we're fundamentally building the right thing. Technologies are providing us opportunities to probabilistically model multiple futures. Our clients are expecting a deterministic future to help them make a binary decision, should this be built now and how do we build it. And so certainly, all the technologies in support of that are critical.

Better and deeper understanding, we are experts and continue to develop additional expertise in energy markets where they're increasingly complex as well. So technology and supportive integration and execution, complex program management. And then the reality, I know there's been a lot of data center conversation, but as Holger mentioned, we're dealing with substantial aging infrastructure in almost every market we serve. And so just continuing to grow organically in the core business lines we offer.

Yes, I want to just kind of address these energy parks and the EMS system and the digital component of that. We are on the leading edge of these energy parks and how these technologies play well together. So digital is going to be a big, big component of these complex power projects that serve not only data centers but other industries. And I think WSP is certainly writing the book on that right now.

Thank you for the color here. Next question is from Maxim from National Bank. So when looking at a map of large-scale power projects, it feels like there's an opportunity in Texas. Is that the case? I think we can also step back and look at where can we grow in the U.S.

So I'd like to turn to the team on that. Yes, go ahead.

I can certainly answer, the team, on this. Yes, there is just a lot of activity in the ERCOT area in Texas. WSP is certainly involved in a lot of those major projects out there one way or the other. So that growth is certainly something we're seeing, and they rely upon WSP, again, those energy parks and our capabilities to fully integrate them.

Yes. We touched on ultimately the competitive landscape of transmission assets. There's quite a bit of that ongoing right now in Texas, specifically relative to 765 kV developments that are billions of dollars of investments that are being made by some of our key clients in that region. And then also, I would just tap into the fact that, obviously, we're seeing oil and gas really transition their portfolio into more of a power generation space, leveraging their resources, obviously, to help support this demand on the grid, which are all obviously based in Texas as well, too. So definitely a tremendous amount of opportunity in Texas specifically.

Great. Thank you. We'll move to the next question, and I see we're -- I see the time. There's about 10 minutes left, and there's a billion questions left. So I'll get back to everyone. So more work for me, but that's good. It just shows the interest for today's team. So thank you for being very active on submitting the questions.

Next question is from Saba from RBC Capital Markets. I think an interesting one. Can you please walk us through the go-to-market strategy with legacy WSP, POWER Engineers, TRC when you bid for major projects? Thinking more about branding, how do you approach clients? Do you use each of the different brands? Or are you showing up as one WSP?

Yes, sure. I'll start, and then chime in, please. Yes. So really, our goal is One WSP ultimately, but there's a transition, there's a plan, right? There's a legacy market position that you have, whether it's POWER or TRC. And so you have to take a little bit of time and convert that to the WSP brand. But ultimately, our goal is to operate as one. So probably before we're in the market as one, we're already operating as one behind the scenes. We aren't going after projects or competing where TRC personnel is competing against legacy WSP or legacy POWER folks. That's not our approach. To us, that doesn't serve the client in the best way possible. So we want to take all of our capabilities from the entire platform and bring that to the client and that comes under a WSP brand for sure.

Yes. POWER has been fully integrated into WSP as of January of this year. So ultimately, the 2 of us are fully a one WSP and in that transition right now relative to the integration of TRC. So it's really been a fantastic story when we talk about really leveraging the client relationship. So TRC obviously brought in quite a few of those that were able to leverage that relationship under the TRC brand and now obviously transition that to WSP's brand as well here as we close out this year and look to their integration coming up shortly.

Great. Thank you all. Moving on. Next question from [ Troy from Walleye Capital ]. So can you please talk about the pipeline for 765 lines work in the U.S.? Any projects near term that you're tracking closely?

Mike? Holger?

Sure. I'll kick off, Mike, and then please join in. Yes, so there is 765 work going on already in the U.S. And really just with these large loads, we need extra capacity to move the large amounts of energy from one place geographically to another. So the 765 market is here. It's been very small. I think we have maybe 2,000 miles of 765 in the U.S. That was built several decades ago, but the demand now and the activity in the market is there. Our utility clients, they've ordered the equipment. I mean it will be built.

So yes, it's an up and coming. And it's not for every place, right? 765 takes a lot of real estate. And it really -- it only pays off when you're really moving a large amount of power to long distances. So 345, 500, 765, they all have their place, and we'll be using, I think we'll see development of all those voltages in the right places.

Yes. I would just say, specifically in ERCOT, we touched on that already in Texas. There's ongoing activity. PJM, we've got opportunities that are in flight right now in a lot of the early upfront planning, development and permitting stages of 765 kV, the MISO Tranche II in the Midwest Independent System Operator, a bevy of 765 kV opportunities in that space as well. We're also seeing HVDC as a technology that's obviously trusted and trued having completed the Champlain Hudson project. Again, another opportunity in PJM that we're working on currently right now from an HVDC perspective really, again, to help move large amounts of power most efficiently through both 765 kV and HVDC.

A lot of acronym.

Thank you.

That's good.

So we only have 5 minutes left. So I took the liberty of keeping that question last because I think it's going to be a good way to end the Q&A. And thanks, Hunter, for the question here.

So if you had to say there was one competitive advantage for WSP to win Power business work in the U.S., what would this be? And why WSP over maybe competitors? So I think it will be a good way to conclude the Q&A. So I think the whole team can provide perspective.

Yes, I'd like to turn to the team in a second, but I think what we've said, Quentin, most -- during most of the morning session, the Power and Energy story is not just about the electron. It's a story about infrastructure. All of our services are required to make this a possibility and to deal with this generational change and cycle in our industry. So I do feel in that regard that WSP is uniquely positioned to service its clients. And also given the capacity constraint that we talked about, we do have one of the largest team, and we do have probably some of the best expertise out there. So as I said earlier this morning, expertise is the differentiator, but scale will multiply that differentiator. So I don't know if someone else would like to...

Yes. I love this question. I love that. It's one of the last questions here because it reminds me of the story of one of the major oil and gas producers that came to us for a power generation facility and said, "Listen, Paul, we have never built a power plant, certainly not to this scale. And we need you to move quickly." And the ability for WSP to not only rally the right technical expertise at scale, at the speed to market was essential to them. And they said, we need to stay out of our own way. We hired you for a reason. And that resonates with me today because that's the market we're in today. It's speed to market and hire the best of the best. And that story from them just seems to resonate as -- with that question.

Very powerful.

I'll maybe weigh in. I've been in the Power & Energy sector for my entire career, largely as a client. And now on the services side, and Alex covered the scale and breadth of our capabilities, and Paul talked about speed. I think we have also just such a unique set of challenges in the industry that we're facing right now. And WSP's combination of services really makes us unmatched in our ability to solve these complex challenges at the scale and speed that's necessary.

Yes. For me, I would just say, having been with WSP for over 2 decades now, it's really the people. It's really gaining a trusted partner in not only the technical expertise, but the scale, but really having that trusted partnership in WSP to help you solve some of your most complex challenges.

To me, it's a powerful thing to be able to walk into a customer's office and confidently say that yes, we can deliver whatever services they might need. And they might not buy everything as an integrated solution, maybe it's a permitting or siting and routing activity. But more importantly, we also have the proof points and the people to back that up and start small and then ramp it up at a significant scale. But that ability to walk into a customer's office, they say, "Hey, we have a challenge. Can you help" We've got the people, we've got the proof points and the experience to do it.

I'll just add to that, Steve. In terms of also being a former client, having a trusted partner who understands your challenges and has done them before or been through them before with other clients and can maybe not right away, but at some point, be embedded with you to solve those problems, that is very valuable for a client. And I see us embedded with clients all over the world. And we have the capacity and the deep bench to address the challenges they have.

And just to echo what Karen said, when we conduct client survey, I think the best compliment that we can receive as a company, as an engineering firm is when clients describe us as an "extension of their team." That to me is the best compliment you can think of. When a client sees WSP as an extension of their own team, that's because we have done our job and we have been able to solve problems. And that's how I would conclude it.

Sara, I see you, you want to add?

Yes. I think part of what allows us to do that is the passion that our people have for what we do. It's their passion that allows them to get integrated with the client and feel like they're one team to reach out to the peers that we have globally for help when they need it. It's that passion and excitement that we have and that we're proud of what we're doing for our industry and being on the groundbreaking edge of these projects and the complexities that we're solving every day.

Thank you, Sara and team. And I mean, we're at time. I hope you could feel the passion and the energy from our folks today. I think it's a very good testament of WSP. So as I said, there's a lot of remaining questions. I'll be following up with everyone who submitted questions. If there's a desire to push the conversation further, please reach out. We're accessible, so happy to dig deeper if interested. So thanks a lot for attending today's session. I'll just pass it off to Alex for maybe final remarks.

Well, thank you, Quentin. Thank you to all of you who have attended our Power & Energy Teach-in this morning. I think we had material for a full day. We tried to condense it in 2, 3 hours. But we see incredible underlying trends in this sector, and we see work for years to come. And we think that we're uniquely positioned to tackle those challenges. So I know, Quentin, that we have not been in a position to answer all of the questions, but I want to tell our audience that they should rest assured that we will be communicating separately and make sure that we answer each and every question today. So thank you very much and look forward to updating you at our next quarterly earnings.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the WSP Global Inc. Second Quarter 2026 Results Conference Call and Webcast. [Operator Instructions] Please note that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker, Quentin Weber, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good day, and thank you for joining our call. Today, we will discuss our Q2 2026 results and performance, followed by a Q&A session. Alexandre L'Heureux, our President and CEO; and Alain Michaud, our CFO, are joining us this morning.

Please note that this call is also accessible via webcast on our website. During the call, we may make forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ from those expressed or implied. We undertake no obligation to update or revise any of these statements. Relevant factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements are listed in the MD&A for the quarter ended June 26, 2026, and the financial year ended December 31, 2025, which can be found on SEDAR+ and on our website.

In addition, during the call, we may refer to specific non-IFRS financial measures. These measures are defined in the MD&A for the quarter ended June 26, 2026. Our MD&A includes reconciliations of non-IFRS financial measures to the most directly comparable IFRS measures. Management believes that these non-IFRS measures and other financial measures provide useful information to investors regarding the corporation's financial condition and results of operation as they provide additional key metrics of its performance.

These non-IFRS measures are not recognized under IFRS, do not have any standardized meaning prescribed under IFRS and may differ from similarly named measures reported by other issuers and accordingly may not be comparable. These measures should not be considered as a substitute for the related financial information prepared by IFRS -- with that, I will now turn the call over to Alexandre.

Thank you, Quentin, and thank you all for joining us this morning. Today, I'm very excited that this was an excellent quarter for WSP. WSP exited the second quarter with stronger momentum than when it entered the year.

Organic growth accelerated, backlog reached a record level, margin expanded by 90 basis points and TRC is performing as expected. Together, these leading indicators increased our confidence in the outlook for the balance of 2026 and beyond.

Let me recap a few highlights from the quarter. First, organic net revenue growth of 5% brought us to the high end of our quarterly outlook range with every reportable segment contributing. We added roughly $800 million of net revenues year-over-year, a 23% increase, largely reflecting the contribution of our recent highly strategic acquisitions.

Second, backlog reached a new record of $20.1 billion at quarter end with organic growth of 5.7% over the last 12 months. Beyond the absolute number, what matters most is that organic backlog growth accelerated to its strongest pace since 2022. In a market where investors are increasingly focused on long-term visibility, we believe our backlog, soft backlog and pipeline of opportunities provide a clear indication of future growth potential. Our pipeline tells the same story. WSP is involved in some of the largest and more complex projects globally.

For example, our top 20 opportunities alone represent more than $4 billion in potential revenue. Importantly, the strongest areas of demand we see today are directly linked to long-term duration investment themes, including AI-enabled digital infrastructure, power generation and transmission, data centers, critical minerals, defense and nuclear energy.

These are complex engineering-intensive programs that require multidisciplinary expertise, regulatory capabilities and large-scale project delivery capacity. Third, our adjusted EBITDA margin expanded by 90 basis points year-over-year to 19.1%, reflecting our continued and disciplined focus on margin improvement.

Adjusted EBITDA grew by 28.8% year-over-year and exceeded our quarterly outlook range. As we continue our journey on margin expansion, it is becoming increasingly apparent to us that scale creates operational leverage. And fourth, our Power & Energy platform delivered another quarter of double-digit organic growth with global net revenues from our top 40 global power clients rising 30% year-over-year. TRC's integration remains on plan for completion within the next 6 months.

The acquisition is doing exactly what we acquired it to do, strengthen a position in one of the fast-growing and most strategic end markets globally. Let me now provide you with a few comments on our regions, starting with Canada, which delivered on every measure this quarter.

Organic growth reached 5.1% and backlog grew by a robust 14.2% over the last 12 months, an outstanding performance. The pipeline in Canada is exceptionally deep and the momentum is broad-based.

In defense, we hold a position few can match. WSP is the leading direct provider of engineering and environmental services to defense construction in Canada with hundreds of projects underway nationwide and over 25 active master service agreements.

Our pipeline has doubled in the past year, positioning us as a strategic partner on major current and upcoming opportunities. In mining, our recognized global leadership with more than 5,000 professionals worldwide, I'm sorry, helped us convert several major opportunities. Capital keeps moving toward critical minerals driven by AI, electrification, grid expansion and energy transition.

This high-margin business has averaged double-digit organic growth over 5 years with hard backlog up roughly 25% in the past 12 months. In Power & Energy, we see a significant increase in demand for our engineering services. Our energy subsector is well ahead of budget, delivering 70% growth year-over-year.

We expect market conditions to remain strong for the remainder of 2026 and into 2027 with increased investment across the energy market in Canada. And in nuclear, WSP is Canada's leader in siting and permitting consulting. We are leading or supporting or supporting every impact assessment for proposed new nuclear generation in Canada.

Nuclear-related revenue has tripled year-over-year and backlog in this market is at a record. Defense, mining, transportation, Power & Energy and nuclear together make up of one of the most compelling growth profiles in our portfolio in Canada and globally, and we expect that to continue. Turning to the Americas. The depth of our accessible hard and soft backlog, together with a robust opportunity pipeline position us well for accelerated growth in the second half and beyond.

For example, our U.S. soft backlog on a net revenue basis reached $10 billion and is up approximately 9% versus Q1 2026, pointing to substantial potential for future revenue and a meaningful portion is expected to convert to accessible work by year-end.

In addition, approximately 86% of that soft backlog sits in framework agreements, which are preapproved contract vehicles that let task order convert quickly to revenue once clients authorize funding. Power & Energy continues to expand rapidly in the U.S., supported by heightened bid and proposal activity with investor-owned utilities.

In this market, net revenues and hard backlog from our top 40 global power clients in the U.S. increased 15% and 20% year-over-year, respectively. Our portfolio of clients now include the top 60 U.S. investor-owned utilities or IOUs, covering the vast majority of the U.S. market.

TRC continues to deliver with its hard backlog and soft backlog up 30% and 35% year-over-year, respectively. We have also identified more than 100 collaboration opportunities where WSP and TRC teams are combining expertise, resources and client relationship to better serve clients.

One of them resulted in a significant award from a large IOU to support its $78 billion 5-year capital plan with line of sight to more than $10 billion of potential future work. This highlights the scale and the opportunity in Power & Energy, where our expanded platform positions WSP to capture larger, longer duration mandates.

Data centers delivered another period of rapid expansion with revenues up more than 20% year-over-year in the first half of 2026. Our data center sales pipeline is approximately 30% higher than a year ago, reflecting deeper client relationship, broader account penetration and rising demand for integrated delivery solutions.

Ranked #1 in data center design by Engineering News-Record, WSP now support more than 6 sites with more than 1 gigawatt of compute power capacity and is a trusted partner to the 70 clients we serve in this sector, which has doubled in the last year. In advanced manufacturing, clients are engaging us across the entire project life cycle from early planning through design, delivery and operational readiness drawing on our integrated multidisciplinary capabilities. WSP supporting over 200 industrial clients and the backlog is up 29% year-over-year.

The platform continues to deliver strong momentum with revenue growth of more than 20% year-over-year. Nuclear in the U.S. is scaling just as quickly. We are now supporting 22 new sites across the U.S., spanning site selection, licensing, design and construction support, and we recently won a role in the primary design of an industry-first gas to nuclear SMR project with Blue Energy at the Port of Victoria site in Texas.

Few firms can operate across the full cycle of nuclear program, and that is precisely where the market is heading. Lastly, on water business is up 20% year-over-year and is another fast-scaling part of our portfolio. Client demand for water infrastructure shows no signs of slowing with WSP water pipeline up 61% year-over-year as communities invest in aging infrastructure, PFAS, water quality mandates and climate resilience.

In Q2, WSP captured a major program contract with Seattle Public Utilities worth $100 million. Taken together, our hard backlog and soft backlog pipeline of opportunities and newly secured mandates set us up to grow faster in that market. The CAD $7 billion we deployed in Power & Energy in recent years to position our U.S. business strategically is really starting to pay off.

Turning to EMEIA. We delivered organic growth in net revenues of 8.1%, and the future is bright as our backlog grew organically by 10.4%. A special interest, the quarter saw another standout performance from our U.K. business, which delivered yet another quarter of double-digit net revenue organic growth.

Elevated growth is supported by strategic targeted markets such as Power & Energy, nuclear, defense and security, aviation and health care. EMEIA is increasingly winning on the breadth of what it can offer and with a healthy organic backlog growth profile, the region has the visibility to sustain this trajectory.

Finally, in APAC, the region returned to growth for the first time in 6 quarters, right on plan powered by a notable turnaround in Australia. In New Zealand, the government's national land transport plan has reduced project investment. While this is expected to have some impact on our business, we are taking steps to mitigate its effects. Overall, the efforts we deployed to recalibrate the business in APAC are showing up in the numbers. In summary, this was an exceptional quarter and more importantly, clear evidence that our strategy is working and momentum is accelerating. With that, I will now turn it over to Alain, who will walk you through our financial results.

All right. Thank you, Alex, and hello, everyone. I'm pleased to report this morning on our strong financial results for the quarter, and let's start with growth. For the second quarter, revenues increased by approximately 20% year-over-year, while net revenue increased by approximately 23%.

Organic net revenue growth reached 5% with all reportable segments contributing. The U.K. posted double-digit organic growth. EMEIA outperformed expectation. APAC returned to growth a quarter ahead of plan and the outlook for the U.S. business improved in the quarter.

Backlog reached a new record level of $20 billion as of the end of June, up 23% over the last 12 months, representing 11.6 months of revenue with organic growth standing at 5.7% over the same period. Moving on to profitability. Adjusted EBITDA in the quarter grew to $815 million compared to $633 million in the second quarter of '25 representing an increase of 29% and exceeding management's quarterly outlook range of $770 million to $810 million.

Adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter increased 90 basis points, reaching 19.1% compared to 18.2% in the second quarter of '25. The improvement was driven equally by productivity gain and lower rightsizing costs versus the prior years. 19.1% is the best WSP Q2 margin ever recorded.

Adjusted net earnings for the quarter reached $389 million or $2.88 per share, up $82 million or $0.53 per share compared to the second quarter of '25. This represents a 23% increase over the prior year. As for our cash position, cash inflows from operating activities were $554 million for the 6-month period ended June 26, 2026, compared to $822 million in the corresponding period of '25.

This mainly reflects timing. The prior year period benefited from $195 million of inflow related to the sale of eligible trade receivable under the factoring arrangement. And in addition, sorry, a portion of the POWER Engineers incentive awards were paid during the quarter. Adjusted for those 2 items, cash generation is in line with last year and is expected historical level of conversion over the balance of '26, consistent with our usual seasonality. Free cash flow was $255 million for the 6-month period ended June 26, 2026, and trailing 12-month free cash flow amounted to $1.4 billion, representing 1.5x net earnings attributable to shareholders.

DSO at the end of the quarter stood at 71 days compared to 69 days last year and is in line with our expectation. While the leverage ratio remains slightly above our target range following the recent acquisition of TRC, we generated approximately $1.4 billion of trailing 12-month free cash flow and remain confident in our ability to deliver through earnings growth and cash generation with a return to our target range by year-end.

Turning to our 2026 outlook. The financial outlook issued in February 2026 and revised on May 6, 2026, is reiterated, except for the increased net revenue and adjusted EBITDA range, which now are expected to range between $16.2 billion and $17 billion for net revenue and between $3.1 billion and $3.18 billion for EBITDA.

In the 2025 to 2027 Global Strategic Action Plan, we set an ambition to reach an adjusted EBITDA margin of 19% to 20% by 2027. And given the progress achieved to date, we continue to see a path to get to that target range as early as 2026. For Q3 2026, we expect net revenue to range from $4.15 billion to $4.35 billion and adjusted EBITDA to range from $850 million to $890 million.

Lastly, our acquisition integration and reorg costs are now expected to range between $285 million and $305 million, mainly due to noncash accounting impact following the disposal of noncore activities as well as costs related to ongoing M&A and integration activities.

I'd like to remind you that our outlook is intended to help analysts and shareholders refine their perspective on our performance and using this information for other purposes may be inappropriate. Actual result may differ and such differences may be material.

Also, our selected financial outlook does not include any acquisition transaction or disposal that may occur after today. Overall, this quarter's result, organic growth across all segments, a record backlog, expanded margin and increased outlook gives us real confidence for the remainder of '26 and beyond. Our financial position remains healthy and provides solid foundation to support our priorities going forward. On that, back to you, Alex.

Thank you, Alain. To close, we delivered an excellent second quarter. Net revenue grew 23%. Adjusted EBITDA rose nearly 29%. Margins expanded by 90 basis points to 19.1%, our best second quarter ever since our IPO, all while delivering 5% organic growth with every segment contributing.

What excites us most is not any single number in isolation. It is the direction of travel. Organic growth accelerated, organic backlog growth accelerated, margins expanded. TRC is performing as expected. Bottom line, our confidence increased.

Taken together, these results reinforce our belief that WSP is uniquely positioned at the intersection of some of the world's largest investment themes, energy sovereignty, AI infrastructure, critical minerals, defense resilience, water and Power & Energy sectors. When we look across the portfolio today, we see a business with stronger momentum exiting the second quarter than when it entered the year. Before taking questions, I would like to briefly now address Arcadis. As previously disclosed, we have submitted 2 friendly nonbinding proposals to Arcadis.

As outlined in our 2025, 2027 Global Strategic Action plan, M&A remains an important component of our long-term strategy to deliver shareholder value and continues to be part of the fabric of WSP.

Consistent with that strategy, we continue to believe that a combination with Arcadis would be highly strategic, create substantial value for the stakeholders of both companies and accelerate the growth ambitions of the combined organization.

We have approached this dialogue in a constructive and respectful manner for many months and continue to view it as a potential friendly transaction between 2 great companies. At the same time, we remain disciplined in our approach to capital allocation and acquisitions.

Importantly, regardless of the outcome, WSP growth outlook, strategic priorities, financial objectives and capital allocation framework remain unchanged. Our business continues to perform very well as demonstrated by the results we reported today, including accelerated organic growth, record backlog and expanding margins.

Beyond that, we do not intend to comment further on Arcadis today so that we can keep our focus on WSP's second quarter results and outlook. With that, we will now open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] we are now going to proceed with our first question. And the question comes from the line of Frederic Bastien from Raymond James.

Good quarter. I do appreciate the level of granularity you provided around your target markets, quite helpful. First question, I was under the impression that the Americas margins would be down slightly year-over-year as you fold in the TRC business, but instead, we saw pretty impressive gain.

Can you elaborate on what drove this? Was it strength in the underlying business, a better-than-expected performance from TRC or both?

It's a bit of everything, Fred, to be honest. We've been -- as you know, we've been pushing hard on continued improvement in efficiency, productivity, project performance. And yes, we've made good progress with TRC as well.

So it's a bit all of the above, and we're very proud of the margin expansion in the U.S. and Canada also and across the patch.

How do you -- how do we think about sort of the potential for margin improvement in the back half in the Americas specifically?

Well, I mean, the -- as we stand right now with the outlook, Fred, that we put together, it kind of indicated at midpoint a 60 basis point improvement versus last year.

And as stated before, we even see a path to even deliver a bit better and get into our 2027 target range of 19% to 20% as it relates to the U.S. we'll continue to push hard, and that will be at 50% of the business. You could imagine that this will be part of the story to support that 60 to 70 basis point improvement over prior year.

Great. Alex, you started and finished your prepared remarks by saying WSP is in a better place today than it was 6 months ago.

Should we interpret that as a broadly based improvement across the organization? Or are there still certain countries or end markets where conditions remain more mixed?

Well, I mentioned that New Zealand is a little bit more mixed than it's doing better than a year ago, but it's still a bit more mixed. But with the exception of New Zealand right now in our portfolio, I'm looking at the contribution of all our geographies and all of our sectors, and everybody is contributing positively. So what I said, I have strong conviction. I feel very good about where we're at now compared to 6 months ago. And I would say, just going back to the U.S. business, Frederic, 5 years ago, 60 months ago, we had 9,000 people in our U.S. business. Today, we have 28,000 people, 60 months later. Sometimes you need to pause and reflect on what we've accomplished in the last 60 months and the amount of capital that we've deployed in the country.

As Alain just indicated, it's 50% of our business. And I think we are now starting to reap the benefit of what we've built over the last few years with the POWER Engineers acquisition, with the TRC acquisition, Obviously, earlier in the decade, we bought Golder, Wood E&I, but we completely transformed our U.S. business in the last 5 years.

5 years ago, 80% of our revenue was generated in transport and infrastructure. Today, 35%, 40% of our business is in power. So we needed a bit of time to digest the transformation. And now I'm looking at the pipeline of opportunities, and I'm looking at the soft backlog, and I'm looking at the collaboration between our sectors, and I'm very excited about the future prospect of WSP in the U.S. but globally for that matter.

Then you look at Canada with the backlog growth of 14.2% I have not seen that in a long, long time. So I'm quite pleased with the results, and I think it bodes well for the future.

We are now going to proceed with our next question. And the questions come from the line of Sabahat Khan from RBC Capital Markets.

This is Bhavin on the line for Saba.

Okay.

My question was more on the organic growth in the U.S. market this quarter. It was pretty good. And what I wanted to know more was about how has that evolved since last year? And do you have a view on that looking forward into the back half of the year?

Yes. Well, we're very pleased with the performance in the quarter. I'll start with that. And I think an important point to mention about the U.S. business, if you look at the underlying business in the U.S. and you take TRC as organic contribution, the business is delivering roughly 6% in the first half. So I think that's a pretty good performance.

And so we continue to see accelerating momentum in the U.S. Our recruitment engine is firing on all cylinders. And we've been growing headcount, and you've heard all the backlog growth, pipeline of opportunities in key areas of growth, including Power & Energy that are all pointing in the right direction. So that's beyond any specific quarter, I could tell you that we feel increasingly more comfortable with the U.S. increasing pace. So the leading indicators are all pointing in the right direction.

We are now going to proceed with our next question. And the questions come from the line of Benoit Poirier from Desjardins.

Congrats on the solid quarter. Maybe first question in terms of APAC. Obviously, it was nice to see that you turned positive in terms of organic growth. What could we expect in the second half in terms of organic growth for APAC in light of your backlog?

Yes. So APAC, obviously, very pleased with the performance, returning to overall growth a quarter in advance. We had called for Q3 for that. And this is largely explained by Australia that's overperforming on expectation right now.

As Alex pointed out on the flip side, there's a bit of softness, if I could say it that way, New Zealand despite being a much better performance than last year. So all in all, we're still targeting to be in line with our outlook for the region, which was a flat contribution, but we'll continue to push, obviously.

And if Australia continue to deliver like that, maybe we'll have a good surprise. But for the time being, I think similar revenue than last year is still our expectation.

Okay. That's great color. And maybe for Alex, could you provide an update on your M&A pipeline?

Yes. I mean, look, we're -- we continue, Benoit. I mean, we have a 3-year plan to deliver. We've been enormously active, I would say, in the last 24 months with POWER Engineers, with TRC, with Ricardo. All of them are progressing extremely well. But we continue to have informal discussion with smaller-sized firms, midsized firms.

And yes, the answer is yes. We have a good pipeline. And I've said it in the past, and I'll say it again, we don't use the market as an excuse, WSP.

We've always found ways to be opportunistic in good time and more challenging time. And it's not because our company is now trading at 2 turns below the industry peer that we're not finding and we're not going to find opportunities for us to create shareholder value.

Okay. That's great. And maybe last one for me. Could you provide an update on the number of employees you now have in India?

I could, yes. India is -- it continues to be a fantastic story for us. 6,500 is our overall GCC platform. So it's about 8% of our total platform. If you remember, Benoit, we -- not so long ago, we were talking about 5%, 6% of the overall platform. So it continues to be a significant lever to growth.

So very, very proud of progress. Probably 1,000 net new people came in already year-to-date, 20% plus growth. And that doesn't mean we don't hire elsewhere. We have roughly 7,000 open position right now for technical position. So as I said, in the U.S., what's relevant across the patch, our recruitment engine is firing on all cylinders right now.

We are now going to take our next question -- and the questions come from the line of Maxim Sytchev from RBC Capital Markets.

I was wondering, Alex, if you don't mind providing a bit more of an update on TRC integration and some of the operational priorities that the management team is focusing on for this asset specifically.

Yes. Max, things are progressing extremely well. I think the business is performing as expected, if not exceeding slightly our expectation. So the goalpost for us is Jan 1 to convert TRC in the system now that we have one global platform. So we are working on that.

But what is more important and what I've been spending a fair amount of my time and the team has been spending a lot of time doing is really the client-facing activities is where we have devoted most of our energy right now.

And I mentioned it, we have now 100 joint pursuits that we're pursuing, WSP and TRC. So when we acquire a company, we always start with the client-facing activities. There's nothing like winning work together to have 2 organizations coming together, and that's true for all acquisitions. So we have done that.

Salary benefits harmonization, it's substantially complete. We have a road map. So I think the last milestone will be the conversion, not really a point to do this midyear. So we're already in August. So might as well waiting at the end of the fiscal year. So that's why we chose to do it Jan 1. Otherwise, we could have done it much quicker, but there's no point in doing that. So it's progressing very well, Max.

And in terms of the opportunities, I guess, thinking about geographies, I presume it would be kind of U.K. where you could combine sort of the -- and leverage both companies' expertise and relationship. Is that how we should be thinking about this?

You mean for TRC or...

Yes, yes. Yes, kind of on a pro forma basis.

Yes, on a pro forma basis, where we're going to see the most runway and the most exciting things coming out of the company will obviously be in the U.S., Max. Now we work with most, if not all, of the IOUs in the U.S. So we cover the territory entirely. We're by far in transmission and distribution, the largest player in the U.S. territory.

There's not one project we cannot tackle. We have a strong Gen capabilities as well, generation capabilities. So I'm very excited. And as I said earlier on, we needed time to digest the 2 acquisitions that we completed. But now I'm really starting to see the activity level accelerating.

And I'm looking at the size and the scale of the bids in that sector, and it's quite exciting. I was not in a position to talk about a win more officially on the call, but we have secured a very important win after quarter end that hopefully, I'll be able to provide more detail about in the next quarter. But very excited about that. In Sweden, we have also secured a very, very important win in power in the quarter or soon after the quarter, I should say, sorry about that. So that will be reflected in the backlog next quarter. Also in power.

So obviously, we are using our center of excellence now in the U.S., and we want that domain expertise to travel borders and travel the world, and we are right now seeing the benefit in Sweden, but you're right in stating the U.K. and other locations.

We are now going to proceed with our next question. And the questions come from the line of Chris Murray from ATB Cormark Capital Markets.

Maybe turning to margins, a few pieces of this. So Alain, you had mentioned you're thinking at a baseline 60 basis points of improvement this year, but line of sight maybe to that 19% to 20% range or getting into that longer-term number.

So a couple of questions on this. I mean, normally, we'd assume just with the growth rate that you're seeing that we'd have kind of a natural lift on margins. But I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about this -- a couple of pieces.

One, how should we be thinking about cadence? Because you think year-over-year, we should see a lift in Q3, maybe come back in Q4, but 2026 has some, I guess, some timing issues into Q4. So maybe some thoughts around that.

But on top of the volume that you're seeing, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about pricing, especially in context of some of the discussions we have around the impact of AI on the business and how you're seeing pricing fall into margins, that would be helpful.

There's a lot of content in that question. Do you want to take it? There's -- look, first of all, I agree with you. We believe in scale, and we believe scale matters. And -- and I think the reason why you're seeing that our margins are expanding and are going up.

And as I said on the call, it's our best margin performance in any Q2 quarter since our IPO, including the old days. So we're proud of that. It's because we're now a leading firm in most of the geographies in which we operate.

And having scale is relevant and having scale is allowing us to make sure that we have a strong brand in the marketplace that we can better choose and select the clients we wish to work with and also the projects that we wish to pursue.

When you have a leading position, you are in a position to do that. And it's obviously affecting your pricing. There's no doubt about that in our case. As it relates to productivity and profit and increased lift in our margins, clearly, the tools that we're using, the fact that we have one platform now, the fact that we continue to transform our corporate functions, the fact that we are able to use our scale to do more with less, it's obviously assisting us.

And that's why I've always been quite vocal in our strong conviction that scale would matter at the end of the day. Anything else you want to add Alain?

I think it covers the key point.

Yes. So -- and then I guess the other piece of that question is just as we go into the second half, just thinking about the cadence, is there anything to think about...

There's a couple of things on cadence. So the first half, we need to keep in mind that the comparable figures last year included quite a bit of rightsizing activity. So this -- and there's less in in H2 of '25. So your comps are -- you don't have the same lift in H2.

So that's why the 90 bps we're expecting more like the 60 bps for the full year. And the second piece that offset that a little bit is the Ricardo acquisition, which is a great acquisition, amazing brand we should start to see an improvement on having less margin dilution from this deal going forward.

So I would say those are the 2 piece, but the biggest one is the rightsizing of last year.

Okay. Great. And then I guess if I can just sneak in kind of a modified part of this. I mean you're talking 60 basis points, but what gets you -- like what's the delta into the extra, call it, 20 to 30 basis points that gets you into that 19 range?

Is it just some things going right, some project timing? What else do you think you get there to hit that 19% number?

Yes. I wouldn't call any particular element, Chris. I think it's good old-fashioned focus on all the levers that makes us efficient and on pricing and all these things. So just we're pushing hard everywhere. So I wouldn't call anything specific.

Yes. And I would also say that I think we've made smart investments in recent years. And we have seen a great margin uplift in POWER Engineers. We are seeing a great -- already an uplift in TRC margin profile. Ricardo will take a bit more time. But sooner rather than later, I think once we're done with the transformation of our Ricardo business, I expect also a margin uplift there.

So I think this is, as Alain said, and I've said that many times in the past, increasing and expanding our margin profile is not one thing. It's multiple levers that you need to pull, and that's what we're doing right now.

We are now going to proceed with the next question. And the questions come from the line of Ian Gillies from Stifel.

Productivity seemed to be a key theme throughout the quarter, and I think everyone has been a bit myopic on being focused on AI tools. Could you elaborate maybe a little bit more on some of the other strategies you're pursuing on that front?

And the follow-on beyond that, I suppose, is if there are any updated views on whether -- or how AI tools are making your employees more proficient rather than making them redundant.

Look, to start with, AI tools are, as you just mentioned, a tool, and they are going to continue to support our engineers to hopefully, at some point in time, provide more efficient design more rapidly.

But I can tell you that at this point, the uplift in productivity, I would tell you that AI has very little to do with this. Of course, it's going to be a contributor in the future, and we continue to believe that. And we're not complacent about it. But at the same time, if you go on our website, we have right now 7,000 open positions. that we are actively pursuing. So when we talk about productivity is to make sure that we manage a very, very fluid workforce as fluid as it can be at the moment in the market. The market is quite buoyant in most of the geographies in which we operate.

So as Alain said on the previous question, we're pulling multiple levers to increase our margin profile. But more importantly, we have a culture of performance. We take great pride in what we do, and we take great pride in translating revenue and quality earnings.

I mean it starts with that. It's tone at the top, and it trickles down in the organization, and our employees are extremely proud at providing projects in time and on budget. And again, we're seeing the benefit of that in this quarter. But the reality is that we've been seeing that benefit for 5, 6 years in a row now.

WSP has consistently improving its profitability over the last 6, 7 years. During COVID, during good times, during bad times, during challenging times, during bullish time, we raised the bar. And I'm extremely proud that we reached a 19% milestone in Q2 this year. And we said in our plan that we wanted to get to 19% to 20% and we have now sight on this. And actually, we may think we may do it quicker than originally planned.

[Operator Instructions] we are now going to proceed with our next question. And the questions come from the line of Avi Jaroslawicz from UBS.

So power is continuing to drive the growth really in the United States. What are you seeing in the U.S. markets outside of power? Any sector that is more of a drag on growth at the moment? And what are your expectations for growth in the Americas in the second half? Should we be expecting an acceleration as we go through the rest of the year?

No. I would say our other sectors are performing as planned at this point. So we don't have any disappointments. Like I said, and Alain said, a lot of it has to do with the timing of the awards and accessing it. So we're feeling good about it. And WSP, we've never wanted to put all our eggs in one basket.

So we love the diversity of our offering, we love -- and I think it makes it one of the most resilient platform out there. And that's why I'm pleased that we had a laser-focused strategy to build one sector at a time. More recently, it's been Power & Energy, and we're very proud to have done those acquisitions and frankly, very timely. Sometimes you need a bit of luck.

And I feel that we've been fortunate to -- very fortunate to be in a position to welcome those 2 firms to our group. And as I said, it has taken us 2 years to really digest and assemble the team that we have.

And as I said, I'm looking at the pipeline of opportunities that we're pursuing in the power sector, and I'm excited and I'm impressed, to be honest, I'm very impressed with the scale of the bids that we're pursuing right now. So -- so more to come in that regard. But as I said, we're feeling better today than we felt when we entered the year. So it bodes well for the future.

Okay. I appreciate that. And I just want to also ask about EMEIA. It sounds like the U.K. was a main driver of the growth there. You mentioned the big win in power in Sweden. Just kind of broadly speaking, outside of the U.K., what are you seeing across the sectors? And do you think that the organic growth rate can stay at around this level through the second half?

We'll see for the second half. But definitely, the momentum in the U.K. continues to be strong. And part of our comments about feeling better than beginning of the year and a year ago is what we see in the Nordics.

It's a market that has improved still being competitive, but we're winning our, I would say, more than our fair share of the market out there. So Sweden is improving. And beyond that, across the space, Middle East is fairly stable, and it doesn't move the needle up or down at this point. So...

And U.K., we're gaining market share as we speak and have been gaining market share in the last 2, 3 years. Looking at our peer group, I'm saying that with very strong conviction that we're growing in the U.K. at a much faster rate than any of our competitors right now. So a great team and a great business. And as I said, we're gaining market share. That's the secret here in EMEIA.

We are now going to proceed with our next -- and the next questions come from the line of Yuri Lynk from Canaccord Genuity.

I've been looking at your net revenue per employee over time and it continues to grow. Wondering if you think about it that way, but how much of that growth would be just your typical fee inflation?

And then how much of that might be growth in nonlabor-derived revenue, perhaps new service offerings, data offerings, stuff like that?

Actually, I'll surprise you by what I'm going to say, but it's an important metric, but it's not -- I'm not waking up in the morning saying we need to do more per employee, but I'll explain to you why.

Had we not built our earth and environment and Geotech platform a few years ago, our fee per employee would be even higher at this point, Yuri, because in environment and water and earth sciences, typically, the fee that are being generated are typically lower.

But this is not a good reason not to be a leader in that space in that vertical. So -- but truthfully, the reason is that I think we have a much stronger brand today than we had 10 years ago. We are now in a position to select the clients we wish to work with. We are more selective also on the projects that we wish to pursue.

That undeniably is having an impact on our pricing clearly and the quality of the projects that we wish to pursue. I think I've said in the past, the more complex the assignments are, the more excited we get because we have the technical know-how and the domain expertise to tackle those projects.

And that's where we typically do extremely well, number one. Number two, I mentioned it a few times today, scale matters. As we grow as a company, we are in a position to the economy of scales. -- and are in a position to reduce our cost structure. And in any given country, if you're a dominant player or a leading firm, you are in a position to have a more effective cost structure.

So again, I feel that -- and I mentioned the word fluid workforce. I do feel that over time, as a company, we are in a position to run a very, very tight ship. And you combine that with the performing culture that we have internally. And that's why you see our fee per employee going up. That's why you see our margins going up.

And there's no real secret about it. As I said before, multiple levers that you need to pull. And that's why over time, you have seen the fee per employee going up. It's just that we -- these are probably all of the factors I just mentioned.

Okay. That's helpful. I'm asking about it because investors in the last 9 months have kind of keyed in on AI being a potential threat to fee revenue. And you would think that, that might be one of the first metrics that it would show up in, but it's not what we're seeing.

No exactly.

There are no further questions now showing. So I'll now hand back to you for closing remarks.

Well, thank you very much for attending this call today. Again, I'm very pleased with the quarter, and we look forward to updating you with our Q3 results soon. Meanwhile, we wish you a good end of the summer. Take care. Bye-bye.

This does conclude today's conference call. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.

Hello, everyone. And welcome to the 2026 Annual Shareholder Meeting of WSP. Again, this year, we are happy to hold today's meeting in a hybrid format, giving you the option to participate either in-person or virtually via live webcast.

I will introduce our speakers: Alexandre L'Heureux, President and Chief Executive Officer of WSP; Alain Michaud, Chief Financial Officer of WSP; and Joelle El-Feghali, Corporate Secretary and Deputy General Counsel of WSP. Also joining us today are the following Board members of WSP: Martine Ferland, Pascale Sourisse, Linda Smith-Galipeau, Macky Tall, Eric Lamarre and Claude Tessier.

I would like to provide you with some general remarks on the conduct of this meeting. As always, the meeting will be conducted in both English and French. You may choose to follow the meeting in the bilingual format presented in English only or in French only. And as we offer simultaneous translation for in-person and remote participants, also questions may be submitted in either language.

The meeting agenda contains 5 matters to be voted on during the business part of the meeting as set out in the corporation's Management Information Circular dated March 20, 2026.

At the meeting, shareholders will: one, receive the audited consolidated financial statements of WSP for the year ending December 31, 2025, and the independent auditor's report thereof; two, elect each of the directors nominees who will serve until the end of the next annual meeting of shareholders or until their successors are appointed; and three, appoint the independent auditor of WSP for the forthcoming year and authorize the directors to fix their remuneration; four, consider a nonbinding advisory resolution on the corporation's approach to executive compensation; five, consider such other business, if any, that may have properly come before the meeting.

Please note that we have until 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time to conclude all matters on today's agenda. We will begin with the formal part of the meeting, followed by brief presentations by our CEO and our CFO and conclude with a question period. Please note that you will be able to vote on each matter throughout the formal part of the meeting by using the voting device if you are present in the room or on the left side of your screen if you are participating through the webcast.

After we complete the formal business, the polls will close. If you have voted your shares prior to the start of the meeting, your vote has been received by the corporation's scrutineers, and there is no need to vote these shares during the meeting unless you wish to revoke or change your vote.

Duly identified registered shareholders and proxy holders can submit their questions at any time during the meeting by entering them in the appropriate tab on the webcast platform or through the voting device.

Please note, however, that questions pertaining to any item of business conducted at the meeting will be read aloud at the time such item is presented. All other general questions, including any questions relating to the annual financial statements of the company, will be addressed during the question period at the end of the meeting.

If we receive similar questions through the web portal, we will combine them into one question. If you are attending our meeting in person and would like to ask a question verbally, kindly proceed to the microphone in the center of the room when we open the floor for questions.

Please ensure that you identify yourself as a registered shareholder or a proxy holder before proceeding with your question. If you're not identified as a registered shareholder or proxy holder and would like to ask a question, please access the registration table at the entrance to the room.

Any questions that we do not answer during the time available will be addressed at our company website at wsp.com in the 2026 Annual Meeting of Shareholders page that can be found in the Investors section. To hold the formal part of the meeting in French, I've asked Alexandre to chair that part of the Annual Shareholder Meeting. Before I ask Alex to come forward, I would like to share a few reflections as your Chairman.

It's a pleasure to address you today as we look back on 2025 and the path ahead. As the first year of a new strategic cycle 2025, we set a strong tone. The results delivered by our teams show a business operating with technical and commercial expertise, discipline, confidence and real momentum.

This was achieved against a complex global backdrop, one that continues to influence our world today. Yet no matter the challenges, the work our people, our visioneers do remains essential to the well-being of communities everywhere.

The needs to future-proof the world's assets persists for our clients and our society at large across safe transport networks, reliable energy and water systems, health, education and resilient digital infrastructures. This is our mandate.

This enduring demand is driven by long-term global trends that fuel our purpose and keep our expertise relevant. It also helps guide where we invest to further strengthen our capabilities. With experienced leadership and local teams rooted in their markets, our financial and operational performance in 2025 reflects our ability to adapt and grow without losing focus.

Above all, it is the effectiveness of management and the skill and commitment of our people that turn strategy into action day in and day out. From the Board's perspective, we stayed closely engaged on strategy, performance, capital allocation and risk, knowing when to lean in and when to hold a steady course always from a perspective of support and challenge.

In doing so, the Board and management have remained attentive to the broader geopolitical context, including ongoing developments in the Middle East, where we have a clear focus on our people and the community and continuity of our operations.

The Board is also mindful of the fast-changing world of technology and its impact, and we continue to invest and support the growing scale and complexity of our work undertaken across the business to meet the clients' needs throughout the world.

We also made acquisitions. We made acquisitions such as Ricardo, recently TRC, that added strength in areas of critical importance to our clients, including advisory, the energy transition sector, water solutions and infrastructure.

The Board itself has continued to evolve alongside WSP's ambitions. We were pleased to welcome Pascale Sourisse, who is standing for election today, and has joined the Governance, Ethics and Compensation Committee, and Eric Lamarre, who was elected by shareholders last year, and serves on our Audit Committee now chaired by Claude Tessier.

Their experience brings added depth in areas central to our strategy, including digital and AI, advanced manufacturing, defense, mission-critical facilities, advisory and international operations worldwide generally.

I would like to thank all my colleagues on the Board for their insight, sound judgment, strong engagement as we continue to elevate what matters most for WSP's future. Our collective commitment to ethical leadership, sustainability and responsible corporate citizenship is unwavering. It shapes how we steward the company for the long term on behalf of our people, our clients and our shareholders.

Looking ahead, we are now firmly into the second year of our strategic cycle and building on solid momentum. The Board has strong confidence in WSP's executive team and the strategic direction, and we will maintain a steady focus on enabling disciplined growth, thoughtful capital decisions and long-term value creation for our shareholders.

We remain vigilant and forward-looking, assured that WSP's breadth of expertise, financial strength and global scale position the company to navigate uncertainty, capture opportunity and continue partnering with clients to help deliver better outcomes for the communities in which we serve.

So before I conclude, I would like to recognize 2 important milestones. Last month, WSP will mark 20 years as a publicly traded company, 2 decades on from our initial public offering. And this October will be 10 years since Alexandre became our President and Chief Executive Officer.

I have had the pleasure of working closely with Alex throughout that decade of his leadership. And I've seen firsthand the clarity of his thinking, his ambition, his vision and the strength of his leadership. During his tenure, WSP has expanded significantly in scale, capability and worldwide recognition, becoming one of the world's leading professional services companies with a presence and expertise that position us exceptionally well for long-term success.

I know I speak for the entire Board and I suspect for many of you here as well in congratulating Alex in his upcoming anniversary and thanking him for his remarkable contribution to WSP's growth and transformation. We look forward to continued success, whatever the challenges and opportunities.

In closing, I want to express our sincere gratitude to the entire WSP community, all our employees, our clients, our shareholders and all other partners. Your trust and support underpin our ongoing success. We look ahead with confidence and we do so together. Thank you. [Foreign Language].

Chris, thank you for your kind words and steadfast partnership throughout the years. It is a privilege to serve as President and CEO, and I'm inspired to continue building WSP's success alongside you, our Board and our exceptional team. Now on to the formal part of the meeting.

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[Interpreted] registered shareholders and proxy holders that the voting period is still open via the voting device or on the online platform.

Since the motion has been duly made and based on preliminary votes, I declare the motion carried and that the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers is duly appointed as WSP's independent auditor until the next annual meeting and that WSP's Board of Directors is authorized to determine its remuneration.

We'll now move on to the motion regarding the nonbinding advisory vote on executive compensation, which is detailed in the proxy circular. This proxy circular was made available to shareholders in advance of the meeting.

[ Konsta Weber ], a shareholder of the company, is prepared to make the necessary motion regarding the adoption of the nonbinding resolution on executive compensation.

[Interpreted] My name is Konsta Weber. I am a shareholder of the company. I hereby move that the following advisory resolution be adopted. Be it resolved for advisory purposes only and not to diminish the role and the responsibilities of the Board of Directors of WSP Global Group Inc., that the shareholders of the company approve the executive compensation plan outlined in the company's proxy statement dated March 20, 2026 distributed and in anticipation of the company's 2026 Annual Meeting of Shareholders.

[Interpreted] Thank you, Konsta. I remind registered shareholders and proxy holders that the period for voting is still ongoing via the voting device or online platform. Since the motion has been duly put forth and based on preliminary votes, I declare the motion carried.

There are no further items on the agenda for this meeting.

[ Brittnie Brooks ], a shareholder of the company is prepared to move to adjourn the formal portion of the meeting.

[Interpreted] My name is Brittnie Brooks, I'm a shareholder of the company. I hereby move to adjourn the formal portion of the meeting.

[Interpreted] Thank you, Brittnie. Since the motion to adjourn the formal portion of the meeting has been duly put forth, I declare the motion carried and the formal portion of the 2026 Meeting of Shareholders of WSP Global Group Inc. is now adjourned.

I would like to thank our shareholders for electing us as directors for another year. We will strive to meet your expectations and to honor your trust.

Before we cover WSP's recent progress, I want to recognize an important milestone for our company. As shown in today's opening video, this month marks 20 years since WSP became a publicly traded company. WSP has fundamentally transformed in scale, capability and global impact since our initial public offering on the TSX on May 25, 2006. At that time, we were an engineering company with less than 1,200 employees.

Guided by a vision rooted in our local community, we mostly operated in Quebec. While we have grown into one of the world's leading professional services firm with a team of nearly 83,000 professionals, we remain proudly headquartered in Montreal. Throughout the years, we have maintained our agile and entrepreneurial spirit, combining global reach with global expertise to advance our ambitions.

Today, we hold the #1 position across our core sectors where a collective of engineers, scientists and advisers, world shapers and visioneers dedicated to sustainable and meaningful solutions. And our brand embodies technical excellence, client focus and a relentless drive to innovate.

Building on this momentum, we are well positioned to pursue new opportunities and accelerate our impact within the professional services universe. To propel our ambitions further, we launched our 2025-2027 Global Strategic Action Plan, pioneer change for empowered growth. It reflects our unwavering commitment to challenge conventional limits, redefine possibilities and serve as catalyst of transformation, driving the modernization of our industry and shaping a more innovative, sustainable future.

In its first year, we have made strong progress. In 2025, we achieved solid net revenue growth, robust profitability and record levels of free cash flow and backlog, a testament to our diversified platform, and in year 1 of our strategic action plan, we have grown our net revenues by 14.7%, adjusted EBITDA by 17.2% and adjusted net earnings per share by 19%.

We strengthened our balance sheet and preserve our flexibility. We continue to invest in expertise that differentiates our business and systems that support high performance and in capabilities to drive future growth. Client demand is responding to structural forces reshaping economies and communities, including aging infrastructure, the energy transition, water security, urbanization and digital transformation.

Across sectors, clients are investing to increase resilience and prepare for what's next. We are well positioned to support these priorities, and clients increasingly look to WSP for the depth of understanding and leadership they require. To further broaden and strengthen our balanced portfolio, we pursue strategic acquisitions in high-growth markets.

In June 2025, we acquired Lexica, a consulting firm specializing in health care and life sciences in the United Kingdom. This transaction added 90 experts to support our growth ambitions in consulting services.

And then in October, we completed the acquisition of Ricardo, a global strategy and engineering consulting firm at the intersection of transportation, energy and the environment. Headquartered in the U.K., the company operates in more than 20 countries, including key markets for WSP such as the United Kingdom, Australia, and the Netherlands.

Ricardo's specialized teams bring distinctive experience, including in rail transportation, air quality, water management, energy resilience and policy development strategies. Together, we enhance the value that we deliver to clients operating in complex, regulated and constantly evolving environments.

In December, we welcomed Harmonic Analytics, a New Zealand firm specializing in data science, whose advanced expertise in analytics completes and enriches our digital and consulting services offerings.

At the same time, consolidating our leadership position in energy remained a strategic priority. The acquisition of POWER Engineers completed in 2024 continues to exceed our expectations with sustained organic growth last year and a pool of opportunities that generates new options for our teams and clients.

We propelled this momentum in February with a landmark transaction, the acquisition of TRC, a leading brand in the U.S. energy sector offering solutions covering the entire infrastructure life cycle. By welcoming 8,000 professionals from TRC, we are also strengthening our capacities in other high-growth areas, including water, infrastructure, the environment and digital solutions.

We have more than 26,500 professionals in the U.S. now. Thanks to POWER Engineers and TRC, WSP is ready to meet growing demand for reliable energy systems.

Digital is one of our dynamic growth drivers. By combining engineering and consulting services with advanced digital and AR capacity -- AI, sorry, capacities, we are winning new contracts and generating recurring revenues. Clients are looking to integrate technologies into their infrastructure, and they turn to us because WSP offers the expertise they trust, and because we support them securely, responsibly and at scale.

We're also developing strategic alliances with leading innovators such as Microsoft. And in the first year of this partnership alone, we co-created 2 solutions already in use by our clients and Copilot was widely deployed within WSP.

We continue to strengthen how we operate. We progress our Horizon ERP deployments, unify our service model to better support the frontline and expanded our Global Capability Centre for greater agility. Together, this sharpens execution, reinforces operational discipline and enables more seamless experiences for clients and employees.

WSP's impact starts with our people. It's their technical know-how, dedication to clients and commitment to sustainable progress that allow us to shape more resilient communities.

Empowering our workforce is integral to our success. One way we do this is through our employee share purchase plan, Own It, a plan that enables our colleagues to become WSP shareholders. This way, our nearly 20,000 employee shareholders directly benefit from the value they help create and are truly connected to the company's success.

We are very proud to offer an ownership plan with global reach, now available in 31 countries. And the number of employee shareholders continue to grow, reaching nearly 20,000 at the end of April.

Equally vital to our success is the environment we cultivate for our people, ensuring that their contributions and growth are continually supported. As we strive for operational excellence and sustainable progress, fostering a workplace where our team feels empowered and valued is at the heart of everything we do.

We remain focused on developing talent from within and becoming the preferred home for engineers, scientists and advisers. In 2025, we launched our Internal First framework, established clear pathways for advancement and invested in development programs centered on leadership, client engagement and executive readiness. This continues to strengthen a culture that values excellence, agility and innovation at every level.

As we look to the future and continue to build on our achievements, we will be sharing more on our people initiatives, environmental performance and governance progress in our sustainability report to be published on May 13. It highlights how sustainability is embedded in both our strategy and our client work, and it provides a comprehensive view of how WSP continues to advance responsibly.

Before I close, I want to directly address the rise of artificial intelligence and how we think about its role at WSP. We view AI as an enabler, not a substitute for expertise. Our work is rooted in the physical world where infrastructure decisions carry long-term implications, and in the space defined by high stakes complexity and uniqueness, we have the scale required to leverage AI fully and safely.

Clients rely on us for judgment, accountability and outcomes they can stand behind. These responsibilities cannot be outsourced to algorithms. Every projects we deliver are shaped by distinct conditions, regulatory requirements and stakeholder expectations. While AI is probabilistic by nature, our clients expect certainty, assurance and informed decision making. This is where our engineering, science and advisory expertise continues to differentiate WSP.

Applied deliberately and responsibly, AI helps us move faster, drive innovation and sharpen our solutions to complex challenges. At the same time, it is reshaping client expectations, reinforcing the value of partners who can combine advanced technologies with deep domain expertise and disciplined execution. The fundamentals and market trends underpinning our industry remain very strong, and AI is opening up new opportunities.

At WSP, AI does not displace our work, it augments it. It strengthens the value we deliver to clients and our people's expertise and creativity remain at the center. On that note, I want to thank our teams and clients for their commitment and trust, our shareholders for their confidence and our Board for its steady guidance and oversight.

We will continue to scale with discipline, execute consistently and accelerate where opportunities is strongest. And with the depth and diversity of our platform, I want to underscore my high confidence in our team's capacity to deliver on our strategic action plan objectives and to keep creating long-term value for our shareholders.

I'd now like to invite our Chief Financial Officer, Alain Michaud, to come and comment on our financial performance to date. Thank you.

[Interpreted] Thank you, Alexandre, and good morning to all. 2025 was a strong year for WSP, marked by the launch of our 3-year strategic plan. We delivered a strong full year performance, reaching the high end of our financial outlook.

Revenues and net revenues reached approximately $18 billion and $14 billion, up 13% and 15%, respectively, compared to 2024. We also reported a record high backlog of $17 billion in '25, equivalent to approximately 11 months of revenue.

Adjusted EBITDA grew to $2.6 billion, up 17% compared to '24. Adjusted EBITDA margin increased to 18.3%, up approximately 40 basis points from 2024 in line with our strategic ambition. Adjusted net earnings were up 23%, stemming from accretive acquisition and continued significant productivity gain.

As for our cash position, I'm very pleased with our performance in '25. Our full year free cash flow totaled $1.7 billion, representing 1.8x net earnings attributable to shareholders. The strong outcome reflects our ongoing focus on working capital management.

Yesterday, we published the first quarter results, marking a strong start to 2026. Net revenues were in line with our financial outlook. With regards to profitability, so EBITDA margin, it improved by 80 basis points and adjusted EBITDA reached the upper end of our forecast range.

In addition, adjusted net income increased by 26%, exceeding our expectations. We reconfirm our financial outlook for 2026, with the exception of an increase in our adjusted EBITDA range which now stands between $3.05 billion and $3.18 billion.

To finish and in conclusion, financial performance is on track driven by sustained growth and a robust order backlog. This strong start reflects a favorable outlook for our industry as well as a positive momentum to our operations. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, back to you.

Now we would like to open things up for the shareholder questions. We will start by answering the questions our shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders sent through the web portal in the order that they were received.

If you are a duly identified registered shareholder or a proxy holder and wish to ask your question verbally, you can do so by using the microphone located at the center of the room. Please note that we will answer as many questions as possible within the allocated time.

Any questions we do not get through during the time available will be addressed on our company website, wsp.com under the 2026 Annual Meeting of Shareholders page in the Investors section. If we receive similar questions, we will combine them together. Your questions should be addressed to the CEO, who will answer the questions or redirect them as needed.

So it appears that we have not received any questions through the web portal at this time. So we will take questions from shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders present in the room. So if you have a question, please come to the microphone. Before asking your question, please state your full name and confirm whether you are a shareholder or duly appointed proxy holder.

I'm [ Daniel Gauche ], a shareholder. Thank you for your presentation, and congratulations on your 20th anniversary this year of your IPO in 2006.

My question is regarding your acquisition strategy. Can you please tell us how you think about growing WSP? And do you have a dedicated team for potential -- sourcing potential acquisitions?

Thank you. Look, our acquisition strategy has always been closely linked to our organic growth strategy. I always like to say that acquisition is not a strategy. It's a mean to execute on your strategy. So we've always had a very clear vision of what we wanted to become.

We want to become the leading professional services firm in our space and in our market and what we do. And M&A has always been a mean amongst others to execute on this strategy and to access that plan. So in terms of the process that we follow in terms of M&A, I mean, frankly, it's quite simple.

I always look at 4 criteria when we look at M&A and they are as follows: First, is there strategic imperative to do this transaction? So as I said before, M&A is not a strategy, but it's a mean. So when we unveiled our plan in 2024, we said, for instance, that POWER would be at the center of our next 3-year strategy. So when POWER Engineers and TRC came into play, we believe that there was a strategic imperative to pursue those acquisitions, number one.

Number two is, is there a cultural fit between what we aspire to be and what we aspire to become, and this firm, we need to remember that, as I said before, we are led by people, and we exist because of our people. And therefore, the cultural fit is extremely important when you look into an acquisition.

The third one is, can we immediately create shareholder value and can we then, in the future, continue to create shareholder value. Again, I'm here because I've a fiduciary duty to create shareholder value for those who are entrusting us and that's something that we are going to look into very, very carefully.

And the last one, which is oftentimes overlooked by companies that are completing acquisitions and why some companies are going sideways when they do complete acquisitions is they don't ask the question, can I integrate it because it can make sense strategically. The culture and the fit on paper may be there. It can make sense on paper, and we think we are going to create shareholder values.

But at the end of the day, can you integrate the transaction? And that's always a question that we are going to review very carefully upstream before we consummate the transaction so that we don't find ourselves in a deadlock position where we have answered the first 3 criteria but have not been in a position to answer the fourth one.

And that's something that I do not alone. I'm supported by an incredible team. We have our General Counsel here that is leading the acquisition effort or the team effort, combined with our finance team and our global CFO.

And last but not least, whether I look at a transaction of $5 million or we look at one of north of $3 billion like we did last year, I always consult with our Board. They've been an incredible sounding Board to the leadership team and the management team. And because I feel our Board understand our strategy, I can consult with them and obviously, and look at what is best for the company.

Thank you, and keep up the great work.

Thank you so much. Yes.

[indiscernible], I'm a proxy. One for CFO, one for CEO. For the CFO, speaking of the AI, any change to your billing dynamic, how you charge your clients? Just give us a cut, there's nothing perfect. And for the CEO, any exposure to Germany? And how much you're exposed to Germany given the expanding fiscal policy?

Alain, you want to start?

No impact at this point. No, there's no conversation with client.

So Germany is an interesting topic. Right now, I would say that our Central European presence is subscale by our standard. We have like close to 4,000 people. We operate actually in France, we operate in the Netherlands, we operate in Spain, Italy, we operate in Belgium and a few other countries and also in Germany.

Germany is a highly, highly fragmented market. And obviously, the professional services universe in Germany is such that if you want to service a client in any given province or canton in Germany, you need to have a footprint. So for us, Germany is early days, I would say. So we have close to -- we have a few hundred people at this point in time. We do service global clients from Germany.

And obviously, Germany is such an important country in Europe that this is going to be an ongoing review of our strategy for Germany and time will tell in the years to come, whether we can look into having a better and bigger position in the country.

How much...

I would say it's like -- like I said, we have a few hundred people. So something -- anything between $20 million to $30 million. Right now, it's fairly small.

Any other questions? Okay. questions -- Alex, are there any more questions from shareholders present in the room? Sorry.

That's the question.

I'm so well prepared today. Any more question, Alex? No more question. Okay, you take one more.

Last call, you reduced organic growth...

Yes, sorry.

In the last quarter, organic growth was a little trimmed. Can you talk about your organic growth outlook for the next 12 months?

The outlook?

Yes.

Between 4% and 7%.

Versus the last year, which was?

We were more like lower than that last year.

Any other questions? Alex, others? I think that's it. So if no questions in the room, it appears that there are no questions submitted through the online platform either and none in the room anymore. So I will now turn it over to our Chairman to conclude this meeting. And I once again thank you all for your continued support. Thank you.

Well, we thank you very much for attending the 2026 Annual Shareholder Meeting of WSP. I believe we have everything it takes to build on this tremendous legacy and further deliver value for our clients, employees, communities and our shareholders. I, therefore, thank you, and I thank you very much for attending this meeting this morning. I wish you a good day. [Foreign Language].

[Portions of this transcript that are marked [Interpreted] were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the WSP Global First Quarter 2026 Results.

[Operator Instructions]

Please be advised today's conference is being recorded. I'd now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Quentin Weber. Please go ahead.

Good day. Thank you for joining our call today. Today, we will discuss our Q1 2026 results and performance, followed by a Q&A session. Alexandre L'Heureux, our President and CEO; and Alain Michaud, our CFO, are joining us this morning. Please note that this call is also accessible via webcast on our website. During the call, we may make forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ from those expressed or implied by them.

We undertake no obligation to update or revise any of these statements. Relevant factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements are listed in our MD&A for the quarter ended March 27, 2026, and for the financial year ended December 31, 2025, which can be found on SEDAR+ and on our website.

In addition, during the call, we may refer to specific non-IFRS financial measures. These measures are defined in our MD&A for the quarter ended March 27, 2026. Our MD&A includes reconciliations of non-IFRS financial measures to the most directly comparable IFRS measures. Management believes that these non-IFRS and other financial measures provide useful information to investors regarding the corporation's financial condition and results of operations as they provide additional key metrics of its performance.

These non-IFRS measures are not recognized under IFRS, do not have any standardized meaning prescribed under IFRS and may differ from similarly named measures reported by other issuers and accordingly, may not be comparable. These measures should not be considered as a substitute for the related financial information prepared by IFRS. With that, I will now turn the call over to Alexandre.

Thank you, Quentin, and thank you all for joining us today. Let me start by saying that I'm very pleased with our first quarter. Overall, we delivered a solid performance, meeting net revenue expectations, delivering at the higher end of our profitability range while maintaining strong cash flow conversion.

In summary, it's a good start to 2026. And coupled with the recent closing of TRC, a highly strategic acquisition, we are confident about the road ahead. Let me highlight a few key points regarding the quarter.

First, net revenue grew by 11% or 5% organically on a like-to-like basis. Our backlog reached a new record of nearly $20 billion during the quarter following the successful close of the TRC acquisition and the pipeline of opportunities remain strong across our key market sectors. Our growth agenda is underpinned by continued investment in talent and technology, and we scale our delivery capacity to support demand. Turning to profitability, adjusted EBITDA grew by 16.5% during the quarter and adjusted EBITDA margin stood at 16.8%, up 80 basis points year-over-year.

And finally, adjusted net earnings grew by 26% versus last year. On cash, we continue to deliver strong performance with the trailing 12 months of free cash flow, representing 160% cash conversion, significantly ahead of our target. On the M&A front, TRC delivered double-digit organic growth in the quarter, and the integration is progressing as planned.

We are already benefiting from the collaboration between our businesses and seizing opportunities across various markets. Multiple collaboration opportunities have been identified in the first 2 months of integration, where our teams are leveraging each other's expertise, resources and client relationship.

TRC's Power division is also seeing accelerated growth with nearly 20% growth in backlog, including data centers mandates with electrical engineering and commissioning work for IOUs.

With TRC and POWER Engineers, over the last 18 months, we have united 2 leading Power & Energy franchises in the United States, setting us apart as a leader in our field and uniquely positioning us to capture growth opportunities in the booming Power & Energy sector.

On the digital and technology front, we are experiencing real momentum in AI-driven projects and products. One concrete example is Nature Vista, our AI-empowered environmental management platform, co-developed with clients and enhanced through our Microsoft partnership. It can give asset owners a single live view of their biodiversity, environmental obligation across the project life cycle from impact assessment through ongoing monitoring, reporting and disclosure.

We have just wrapped up our Global Technical Excellence Conference, known as GTEC, attended by more than 300 WSP professionals globally and many clients from all over the world. The innovative ways our teams are leveraging AI to create value, were a central team throughout the event. In fact, our teams showcased hundreds of examples of how AI, automation and digital twins are embedded directly into our delivery.

The predominant use cases were improving quality and insight, reducing risk and enabling better decisions, all of which are critical to growth and productivity. With WSP Global scales, we have access to a vast repository of engineering and advisory know-how. This uniquely positions us to integrate advanced technology into complex real-world projects.

In summary, by staying client-focused, investing in our people and partnering smartly, we are harnessing AI to drive growth, augment our technical excellence and deliver value for our client. And last, but not least, WSP benefits directly from the artificial intelligence tailwind. In fact, our services in Power & Energy, data centers, mining and digital, which together represent approximately 1/3 of our net revenues are all experiencing elevated growth.

Let me now provide you with a few comments on our regions. Starting with Canada, we see strong momentum. The region is delivering robust growth and the backlog grew by almost 9% in the last 12 months. The pipeline of opportunities remains healthy with several large projects secured after the quarter, therefore, not included in the Q1 2026 backlog. These wins include the Quebec City Tramway project to deliver a new tramway across the Quebec City regions, including a 2-kilometer-long tunnel.

The project is being delivered under a progressive design build approach, and WSP will lead the design in the co-development phase, including the tramway, guideway, stations, roads, structures and urban design. Lastly, we are uniquely positioned to capture significant opportunities in the defense sector in Canada and more to come in the second quarter.

In the Americas, the U.S. market remains robust. Our hard backlog stands at approximately 13 months of revenues, reflecting sustained demand across key end markets. Our soft backlog continues to grow, reaching approximately $12 billion with the vast majority supported by MSAs and framework contracts providing strong visibility.

Our pipeline of opportunities trends positively growing by approximately 20% year-over-year with a continued strategic emphasis on large and complex pursuits, notably driven through our global client program.

These growth rates are supported by strong and consistent win rates across our businesses underscoring the strength, relevance and competitiveness of our service offering. As a typical -- as is typical for framework based awards and large programs, the timing of conversion from pipeline and awarded frameworks into hard backlog remains dependent on client award schedules and funding decisions to overall fundamentals remain very strong.

Demand for Power & Energy is strong, now accounting for approximately 1/3 of our U.S. revenues following the recent acquisition of TRC.

In addition, multiple business lines continue to drive growth in the data center markets supporting the entire value chain from site selections and due diligence to data center design then to power commissioning and construction management services. Win rates in this area are 75%, which is excellent news, especially given the fast-track nature of these projects and the constant inflow of extensions and new opportunities. Activity level across transmission and distribution, power generation, large load infrastructure and project management remain elevated, supported by utilities, hyperscale customer and energy security priorities.

New power generation technologies such as small modular reactors are driving accelerated growth during the strategic cycle, with an over 60% CAGR from 2023 through 2025 in our SMR practice, which focuses on upfront environmental, geotechnical and safety studies associated with siting and early phasing planning. We are currently working on 15 SMR sites at various stages of the siting, due diligence and licensing process and the SMR pipeline is very strong with over $100 million of opportunities for WSP.

Other markets such as transportation, ports and water are robust. WSP also has been awarded the design service multi-award task order by Sound Transit in Seattle to assist in the delivery of a new line serving the northeastern portion of the Greater Seattle area, which will feature buses every 10 to 15 minutes.

WSP will be providing multidisciplinary design, engineering services and civil geotechnical, urban planning and bridges. The mining and natural resources sector remain a core contributor, especially in Latin America. We continue to secure large-scale mandates covering environmental permitting, water and waste management and mine closure services for leading global miners, including Glencore, BHP, Codelco, Anglo American, Freeport-McMoRan and Rio Tinto.

Recent wins include new project mandates for Glencore in Argentina and infrastructure-related work in North America, including our appointment by Donlin Gold to support a key project in Alaska. Of note, over 60% of our soft backlog in mining in the U.S. has been converted to hard backlog from Q4 2025 to Q1 2026.

Moving to EMEIA. We have been carefully monitoring our operation in the Middle East. Our people remain safe, and we have not experienced significant project cancellations or delays to date. We are monitoring the solution closely, including any impact on our broader operations. In the U.K., representing approximately 50% of EMEIA, the region has delivered yet another double-digit organic growth quarter. Backlog grew by approximately double-digit year-over-year and our pipeline of opportunities remain healthy.

In the Nordics, the trend remains positive, especially in Sweden with mid-single-digit organic growth and a healthy backlog. In Central Europe, we observed healthy market conditions, especially in the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, France and Denmark. In France, we were awarded one of the largest rail projects in Europe, specifically for the Lyon-Turin rail link to design exploratory tunnels deep under the Alps and determine the best approach to constructing these main rail tunnels. This is expected to change mobility across the continent.

Turning to APAC, Australia recorded a 40% increase in backlog in the last 12 months. Property and building, transport and infrastructure growing with a strong backlog driven by the transportation, defense and aviation sectors. This bodes well for a return to organic growth early in the second half of the year, supported by strong wins.

For example, we were recently awarded the Suburban Rail Loop Stage 1 linewide package. This project is a 26-kilometer long new metro line that will provide a rail loop circling Melbourne, connecting various trains and tramlines and is being delivered as an alliance.

WSP will be providing design management, rail infrastructure, road and civil, security, building structure, utilities, geotechnical, contaminated land, noise and vibration and drainage services. Another standout achievement this quarter was our flagship win in Australia with the Sydney Metro West Underground Station project. The project was awarded the Project of the Year at the Infrastructure Partnerships Australia National Infrastructure Awards. WSP has been appointed to design 5 underground stations, a role that gives us the opportunity to help shape the future of Western Sydney communities.

Our team will take the lead on a range of engineering services, covering everything from station structures and building services to durability, fire and life safety, sustainability and traffic and pedestrian modeling. The Sydney Metro West itself is a 20-kilometer underground railway designed to boost connectivity and deliver fast, reliable and sustainable public transport for the region.

In New Zealand, our team delivered a third consecutive quarter of growth. We continue to support the growth market for WSP, with several wins in the quarter, most notably the Waitohi Ferry redevelopment project, where WSP is providing wharfside infrastructure support for the introduction of new ferries.

To conclude our tour of operation, I would like to reiterate that we are operating in a structurally capacity constrained environment, where demand for engineering and advisory expertise is robust as evidenced by a strong pipeline of opportunities. In this context, additionally, we are increasing engagement with our global capability center including the newly established location in South America as well as accessing our broader global talent pool.

From a leadership standpoint, we have welcomed new talent, including Katus Watson, an industry veteran as COO of our U.S. operation. Continued investment in talent and digital is important for expanded delivery capacity and supporting growth.

With that, I will now turn it over to Alain, who will walk you through our financial results.

Thank you, Alex, and hello, everyone. I'm pleased to report on our financial results for the quarter. Let me start with growth. For the first quarter, revenue and net revenue increased by approximately 4% and 11%, respectively. Net revenue organic growth stood at approximately 5% when normalized for fewer billable days than in the comparable period of 2025. From a modeling perspective, keep in mind that this -- that offsets will take place mostly in Q4 2026.

Backlog as of March 27, 2026, reached a new record of approximately $20 billion, up 18% over the 12-month period and representing 11.5 months of revenue.

Of interest when adjusted for billable days, Canada delivered 7.3% of organic growth, the Americas 5.3%, the U.K. delivered another quarter of double-digit organic growth, leading the way for EMEIA reporting 8.4% of organic growth. New Zealand reported a third quarter of growth in a row, and Australia is well underway to return to growth.

Moving on to profitability. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter grew to approximately $622 million, up 16.5% from Q1 2025 and near the high end of our quarterly outlook range.

Adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter increased by a strong 80 basis points, reaching 16.8%, driven by continued productivity gains and 40 bps of foreign exchange gain. Adjusted net earnings for the quarter reached $297.7 million or $2.21 per share. This represents a very strong 26% year-over-year increase.

Free cash flow improved quarter-over-quarter by $50.1 million when adjusted to exclude the benefit of the factoring arrangement concluded in the first quarter of 2025, representing a continued demonstration of our strong focus on cash management, while we deliver a 160% conversion of free cash flow to net earnings. DSO as of March 27, '26, stood at 67 days compared to 70 days as of the end of March 2025. Our leverage ratio stood at 2.3x above management's target range of 1 to 2x. The increase in the ratio is mainly due to the issuance of long-term debt used to finance the acquisition of TRC.

As previously mentioned, we expect to be back in our target range by year-end. Note that our calculation of the leverage ratio now include the annualization of the results of recent acquisition for the trailing 12-month period.

Regarding our ERP deployment, we've made significant progress this quarter. First, POWER Engineers in Lexica were both onboarded at the start of January. Australia and New Zealand went live successfully in March 2026, and Sweden just went live this week, adding another 4,000 employees to the platform.

The ERP now captures nearly 90% of our adjusted EBITDA, making it the backbone of WSP Global operation acquisitions have been integrated to date and Ricardo is scheduled to a July go-live. With a significant portion of our deployment complete, we are gradually increasing our focus on optimization, automation and business insight to enhance scalability and financial performance.

Turning to our 2026 outlook. The financial outlook issued on February 25, 2026 is reiterated, except for the adjusted EBITDA range, which is now expected to be between $3.05 billion and $3.18 billion. As a reminder, in our global strategic action plan released last year, we set an ambition to reach an adjusted EBITDA margin of 19% to 20% by 2027.

Based on our current progress, we see a path to reach this objective in 2026. For Q2 2026, we expect net revenue to range from $4.1 billion to $4.3 billion and adjusted EBITDA to range from $770 million to $810 million.

I'd like to remind you that this outlook is intended to help analysts and shareholders refine their perspective on our performance, and using this information for other purposes may not be appropriate.

Our outlook has been prepared in light of current FX rate, volatility in our full year assessment including our hedging posture. Also, our selected financial outlook does not include any acquisition transaction or disposals that may occur after today.

On that, back to you, Alex.

Thank you, Alain. To close, our first quarter delivered a solid start of 2026. Our record backlog and strong pipeline of opportunities continue to underscore the resilience of our globally diversified platform and we are investing in talent and technology to deliver in a high-demand environment.

We are very proud to have completed the strategic and timely acquisition of TRC, and our Power & Energy service offering is now second to none. Finally, we are tightening our financial outlook moving into the year with confidence and focus on long-term value creation for our shareholders.

With that, I will now open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions]

We will start with our first question. This is from Chris Murray from ATB Cormark Capital Markets.

Maybe the first question I had for you is around some of your commentary around AI. One of the things that we've been debating with a lot of folks, and I'd love your perspective on this, is the fact that as the cost of delivering some of these services come down.

There's a bit of a debate if that impacts your revenue or what you're actually seeing is clients are beginning to think about taking on more services and actually you're starting to grow the pie more as opposed to seeing it shrink? So any thoughts around how you're seeing these new tools being able to layer on to what you would call the conventional business and grow the revenue base would be helpful.

Yes. Well, let me -- good morning first and foremost. It's -- this is obviously a very current topic. My personal view on this, and it's shared by my colleague, you mentioned that the cost will go down. Well, first and foremost, I'm not sure that, that's going to be the case. What we are seeing right now is that -- and we're living in a world where I think it's suffice to say that we -- engineering and the way we design assets in today's world has not been optimized yet.

And what AI is going to help us here is to augment the quality of the design that we will be providing to our clients. We'll be able to mitigate risk by doing more scenario analysis as we are developing those tools.

And we'll be in a position to offer a more novel way of designing assets in today's world. So actually, I don't see our revenue stream shrinking. To the contrary, I see us being in a position to offer better quality assets to the world and the local communities where we live.

So I think, as I said in the last -- during the last quarter, I see AI as a tool for us to be in a position to provide more quality work as we progress in today's world. I don't see this being a disruptor in the sense that this will reduce hours or reduce the work that we need to do. There's so much to do to optimize the design that we do today that any tools will be welcome, number one.

Number two, we all know that over the next 10 years, not just in the engineering industry. But in all industries will have many baby boomers retiring.

So we will -- we are already capacity-constrained. Globally, today, this year, the company will be growing between 4% to 7% organically. But globally, in our industry in the world today only -- we are only able to grow the pool of engineers globally in the world by 1%. So we are capacity constrained.

So what if AI would not be a great tool for us to increase our capacity and be in a position to produce more. We see again that there are -- there is a major infrastructure deficit globally and having a tool that will be in a position to accelerate the design of our assets, I think it's a great thing.

So I don't see this, again, as I said in the last quarter, as a disruptor. I see this as a tool that we'll be able to augment the work that we're providing for our clients today.

That's helpful. Along those lines -- and I'm not sure who wants to take this one, but thinking about your infrastructure and your spend, I think you're getting to the end of your ERP spend or closer to the end anyway. But I think some of the discussion we've had has been around your asset pool, call it, the legacy of doing thousands of projects a year. How do you think about what you need in terms of infrastructure to be able to utilize that? And does that require perhaps additional capital or a different way of accounting for that intellectual property?

I'm not sure I follow exactly the question, Chris. But as far as just breaking it in pieces, yes, the ERP conversion is -- '26 is actually the last year, with '27 TRC in a few smaller regions. So we're nearing the end of the deployment. It's a fully integrated system, as you know, which allows us to track all of our 270,000 projects. We do globally, our sales funnel, our 85,000 employees and everything we need to do around our people. So this gives us full access to managing the entire company essentially.

So I don't foresee at this point from a backbone perspective, other large investment of the like, if that was your question, Chris, but you may want to precise if you had other...

I think what I'm trying to get at is, as we look at some of this AI development, there's -- if you think about the long legacy of what you guys have done, there's probably a lot of paper still around. So I'm just wondering about how you think about your digital infrastructure to capture literally your own history, how to secure that? And does that require additional investments in either information technology or systems over the next little while?

Well, I think if you attended our -- the unveiling of our strategic plan in February of 2024, we did specify that over the course of this cycle, we will be investing between $100 million to $200 million in R&D, in research and development, certainly to further agenda on digital. So clearly, we are well on underway on this. So in that regard, if your question is, do we have on our top of our agenda to really invest in research and development over the course of this cycle, the answer is absolutely yes.

Now I'll take the next question. This is from Frederic Bastien from Raymond James.

A key component of your AI strategy is to collaborate on new products and services with partners of all size, I think you want to obviously grow the ecosystem. You just touched on Mine Vision in your earlier remarks, which you're working on with Microsoft. But I was wondering if you could highlight some of the solutions you are developing with smaller startups, please.

Well, it's something that we're not ready yet, Frederic, to announce publicly. But I can tell you, and I mentioned that actually when we unveiled our strat plan in 2024 that you should expect WSP to announce a number of different ecosystem partnerships.

So I think it's fair to say that right now, we are working with a number of start-ups and smaller-sized firms with very exciting technology. We are also working internally with our people because you would be -- and perhaps you had the pleasure of seeing what we've done in the GTEC conference and what we presented to investors at that time.

But we are working on so many exciting value proposition for clients from an AR point of view internally at WSP. So back to my earlier point with Chris, in this plan, we have set aside $100 million to $200 million that we intend to invest organically in those ventures and those exciting developments that are taking place internally.

That's helpful. The other question revolves around APAC. I think if I look at all the -- your main regions, organic growth is trending well. Property is great. I was a little surprised -- I mean, I know we were coming out of a negative contraction, a number of quarters of contraction in APAC and you're pointing to a positive recovery starting in the second half.

Now as you think about that recovery, is the trajectory primarily dependent on stabilization in Australia? Or are there other broader regional factors that you see as equally important?

Yes. So the region, if you look at the main component, New Zealand is back on the growth trajectory. It's third quarter on growth. It's probably the last time we mentioned that. So this is New Zealand. On Australia, the contraction that we reported in Q1 was as expected. We're comparing to a business in Q1 '25, that was not completely rightsized at the time.

Things are doing good -- well in Australia. We've seen our backlog growing significantly for a few quarters. So we're feeling good about being back in growth trajectory towards the end of Q2.

So the APAC segment, given the size of Australia within the APAC segment should be back in growth territory in Q3. So it's -- the business is progressing as planned, and we're very excited about the opportunities we're seeing hitting backlog in Australia.

And is that aligned with your comments? I think in the last conference call, Alex, you mentioned being more comfortable about or confident about the year ahead than you were 12 months prior. Has that changed with all the conflict we're seeing in the Middle East?

No. My statement stands, Frederic. We look at the pipeline. We look at -- I only talk very briefly about Canada, but there's a lot of exciting stuff that is taking place in Canada. And as I said, we have one very exciting assignment in the second quarter, which I will talk about on the next analyst call. So -- and around when I look at our company and I look at where we are at today, I look at the shape of our Asia Pacific business, I look at the strong performance in the U.K., I look at our book of business in the U.S. and Canada, I feel better today than I felt a year ago despite what we're seeing in the world right now.

Next question is from Sabahat Khan from RBC Capital Markets.

Great. So on kind of the outlook here more from the balance sheet perspective, it looks like leverage is just above the top end of the range. Can you maybe just walk us through capital allocation at this point.

Obviously, you undertook a large transaction. Maybe just talk about how actively you are engaging with your pipeline of opportunities, I know share buybacks haven't historically been a focus, but maybe just walk through your capital allocation focus areas and sort of how front and center sort of the M&A opportunities are for you at this point?

Look, I know that M&A is part of our fabric and it's part of our DNA. But I'd like to -- and I'd like to remind our audience today that we have deployed close to CAD 6 billion, CAD 7 billion in the last 2 years, so I should say, 18 months. We have now the #1 franchise in Power & Energy. We closed TRC, our largest acquisition in our history in dollar terms in February. So I think it's absolutely normal that we are at the top end of our range right now from a leverage point of view.

Having said all that, I always and continue to have informal and formal discussion with our pipeline of opportunities. That remains very much at the center of our strategy, and we intend to benefit from the current environment.

And the POWER Engineers and TRC integration is progressing extremely well. And we are starting to see the benefit of the POWER Engineers acquisition with this quarter, our margin, excluding FX, see our margin in the U.S. business growing by more than 100 basis points in this quarter alone. So we're quite excited about that.

And we are going to continue to be on the watch for potential M&A opportunities. As it relates to share buyback and dividends we've always been quite vocal that we are seeing right now, great opportunities out there. And M&A remains right now the #1 priority in terms of capital allocation.

Great. And then just on the power business, maybe hoping for a bit more color on some of the areas of the -- where the demand is coming from. We hear a lot of the thematics around data center electrification and everything. Maybe if you can just talk about where you're seeing the fastest growth in that electricity demand market across power and TRC. And then maybe if you can just update us on -- I think there was a bit of an opportunity there with the revenue synergies as well. Maybe if you can talk about whether it's a cross-sell or taking those offerings outside of the U.S.

Yes. On TRC, obviously, it's early days, but already -- I mean, first and foremost, where do we see the growth? We now work, Saba, with most, if not all of the IOUS one way or the other in the U.S. And you saw -- you know that the procurement in the U.S. is obviously more fragmented than it is in Canada, for instance.

So that's clearly where we see most of the growth on new grids, existing grid, the need for electrification. So I find that, that's certainly where in the coming years, given that we have the #1 position now in transmission and in distribution in the United States that we are going to see most of the growth.

Certainly, on the environmental side, we have seen a major shift, for instance, from sustainability studies to now really focusing most of our environmental team on the Power & Energy sector. That's obviously driven by electrification, rising load growth and data centers as we've discussed. But let's not forget the basic stuff, which is aging infrastructure.

We see that as a real opportunity in the coming years, knowing that the lines -- many of those lines are too old and then they need replacement. So that's where -- in the coming years, we are going to see most of the growth for WSP in Power & Energy.

Next question is from Krista Friesen from CIBC.

I was just wondering if you can maybe share a little bit more color on the margins. That's great that you think you'll be able to possibly hit the bottom end of your guide a year earlier, just what's coming in differently or better than what you had anticipated when you initially issued that guidance?

Yes. I'll turn it to Alain in a second, but, we are starting to benefit from the investment that we've made in technology in recent years. Alain mentioned that we have now 90% of our EBITDA converted on the new platform.

And now it's the time to benefit from the investment that we've made, obviously, number one. Number two, the integration of POWER Engineers is progressing extremely well. We have increased, for instance, utilization of that business by 400, 500 basis points since the acquisitions.

So obviously, we have seen a major uptick on profitability of this acquisition, notwithstanding the cost synergies that we will derive from those acquisitions in the coming quarters. And that's why we have seen a significant increase in profitability as we witnessed in the first quarter.

And you look at this and you look at the world and you look at the work that we do and the elevated brand that we have and the services that we are able to provide and that too plays into the increased margins that we are in a position to charge to our clients.

So certainly, I think the fact and the matter that we may meet and we have confidence that we may meet our margin goals probably 12 months ahead of what we had planned when we announced our strat plan is a testament of the work that is going on into the platform right now.

Yes. Not much to add, Krista, I think Alex covered everything. And if I reflect back on our 2, 3 last strategic cycle, it's good to remind ourselves that in the 2019 to 2021 cycle, we were hoping to get to 15% to 16% EBITDA margin.

And now we're talking about getting in that 19% to 20% zone a year in advance. So we're proud of that, but it's not one thing. It's not a drastic change that's happening in 1 quarter. So it's important to look at the trend. We've been consistently delivering that margin improvement every year for many, many years.

So we're continuing to be focused on that. Proud of to see the progress in Canada, in the U.S., over 100 basis points this quarter in the U.S., which is really good. EMEIA is on a good trajectory for the rest of the year.

So when you look at our platform right now, there's probably 60%, 70% of it that is driving 20% plus margin already. So we're feeling good about our targets, and we're going to continue to push. And it's multiple levers. It's not just one thing, but it's multiple levers that we're pushing day in, day out to improve our efficiency.

That's great color. And then maybe just on Canada, it sounds like you're continuing to see some pretty solid demand there. Is any of that being driven by the defense spending here in Canada? Or is it coming from elsewhere? I'll jump back in the queue.

Yes. The answer is we are in the early days of this, but to be more specific, the answer is yes. And as I said, hopefully, during the next analyst call, I'll be able to discuss more about 1 or 2 of those announcements.

Next question is from Maxim Sytchev from NBCM.

I was wondering if it's possible to get a bit of an update on the state of U.S. federal spending kind of like IIJA and how should we be thinking about sort of the pacing of that program and anything that you are tracking sort of on the back of that, maybe the Transportation Act, et cetera. So, yes, I guess sort of the pulse on the U.S. outlook.

Yes. I mean we're tracking progress, obviously, but what we're seeing is definitely a continued investment in basic infrastructure and road bridges highways. So that continues to be the narrative that we're hearing about the desire of the current administration to keep on pushing on the basic infrastructure, linear infrastructure work, which is the core of what we do in our transportation business in the U.S. IIJA is expiring in October '26. So there's the Surface Transportation Reauthorization, that's underway. So we're tracking progress. But at this point, we don't see any signs at our client level of significant slowdown on anything.

So I think it's a bit of business as usual and people are waiting to get updates on that. But our view is that, obviously, and it's well documented that the infrastructure -- the transportation infrastructure in the U.S. is in deep need for a bit of TLC. So aging infrastructure continue to drive, I think, government investment and the core transportation system. So we have no reason to see the future differently based on what we're hearing now.

That's great to hear. And maybe one last question. In terms of environmental and water space, and I guess, again, like focusing somewhat more in the U.S. If I look at the commentary from others, it seems to be a bit more subdued based on certainly kind of your growth rates in the U.S., you are doing better there.

Is it driven really by the attach rates of your environmental and water services to other verticals? Or what is kind of driving that positive delta, if you can provide a bit more color?

Yes. If I look at where the growth is obviously more subdued, there are some U.S. federal agencies like EPA, for instance, that is obviously -- is really down, Max. U.S.A obviously as well, although WSP was not doing any work with U.S.A. Same with commercial clients. Some of them are demonstrating cautious -- caution, sorry. But on the flip side, I talked about energy and resources, oil and gas, LNG pipelines, power transmission, mining and minerals, this is all up, and this is all very positive.

I talked about critical mission solutions, AI, data centers, warehousing, SMR, where WSP is probably the largest -- it's not probably, it is the largest environmental service provider in the SMR space in the U.S. We work on 15 of them currently. Then you talk about water, you talk about decommissioning, remediation, cleanup. These are all very active sectors for us on the environmental side. So in the round, I think we're a very active player and feel that we're in a very good place right now.

Next question is from Jonathan Goldman from Scotiabank.

Alex, maybe we could just circle back to the mining. I think it's a couple of calls in a row now where you've talked about mining and a positive outlook there. Maybe just to level set us, could you remind us how WSP participates in the mining sector? And then maybe talk about the different opportunities you're seeing on a regional basis or commodity-wise, that's getting you particularly excited?

Look, on the mining side, I think it's been a great story since the acquisition of Golder. Just as a friendly reminder, today, our mining business is around and close to be 5,000, 6,000 people globally. So we are the largest mining consultant in the world. There's not one large mining pit in the world that WSP is not involved in. And as a differentiator, WSP is not a large EPCM provider on large mining project. We are, as I said, a mining consultant.

So in terms of cyclicality, when you have to mobilize, demobilize on large CapEx project, that's not where WSP plays. We're more on the OpEx side, on the consulting side. So you do see a lot less cyclicality in our book of business than you -- than what you would come to expect in a large EPCM provider. So it's a key differentiator for WSP, and it's one of our business with the highest margin profile and the highest growth profile double digits. So we really, really like this sector, and we really like our business in mining.

That's great color. And then maybe one for you, Alain. I think we're getting a little spoiled now seeing DSOs come down year-on-year every quarter. Obviously, you've maintained the range for the year. But maybe you can just help us understand what's driving the strong performance in Q1? And how should we think about kind of the trajectory for the rest of the year?

Yes. I'll turn to Alain in a second, but just as an opening remark, not so long ago, when we were implementing Oracle, I mean we have seen a small increase in DSOs, and we had said to you that obviously we were going through the implementation. But now we are really benefiting from our significant investment in technology. So perhaps, Alain, you want to add some color to this?

Yes. I mean the -- we're happy with the current level. We're within our range. But cash and DSO has always been core and central to the way we manage this company, right? We've been proud of our performance there, and it's one of the key metrics that we push internally because cash is king. So we're going to keep improving. I think the system will provide more visibility, more capacity to keep on driving better performance at that level. So to in my perspective, it's back on track at the right place, and we could expect continued improvement on that front in the future years.

Nice to see it is showing up in the results.

Next question is from Judah Aronovitz from UBS.

You cited in the release that you have more confidence now in the EBITDA guidance. And I think you also took up the guide by a bit more than you beat in Q1. I was curious what's driving that additional confidence? Is it additional work that's been booked or maybe projects ramping up faster? We're hearing about private sector projects, including data centers moving faster. Is it POWER Engineers? I know you mentioned some margin outperformance. So I'm just curious to hear your thoughts.

What I'm going to say we'll sound funny given the discussions that we've been having together over the last 2 quarters on AI. But at the moment, our growth is limited by the amount of people that we can hire. So we have a very strong backlog. And if we could hire faster we would be in a position to probably generate more growth. So we are -- as I said before, the world is uncertain and the world is currently unstable. So obviously, we're all going into this year with our eyes wide open. Having said all that, I look at our book of business, I look at our performance, our cash conversion, the proposal activity level, our win rate. And what I said is that I'm feeling better today than I felt 12 months ago.

It's good to hear. And then I wanted to follow up on the power discussion. Clearly, P&E has been driving growth for you in the Americas. In the power space in the Americas, how much of your work is for utilities? And specifically, how much is transmission lines given how much work we're seeing in the pipeline there? And if you could frame how meaningful a single large transmission project would be for you? And how early you start working on those ahead of construction, that would be helpful.

That's a lot of questions this morning. But look, it's power delivery represents -- power delivery being transmission distribution, and I include in there substation design, grid design and transmission line. I would say the combined business now would represent probably 60%, 80% -- 60%, 70% of our business, the other 30% being distribution or maybe 60%-40%, something like that. So that's how I would be thinking about this.

Yes, most of our work in the U.S. are done with IOUs at this point. But it's not so much the nature of the work that is exciting is the fact in the matter that we have relationship with all of the IOUs in the U.S. Now that we have acquired TRC, when you combine the client relationship that TRC had or has, and you combine it with the POWER Engineers client relationship, one way or the other, we are touching all of the IOUs in the U.S. So we're quite excited about the potential to expand the scope of services that we can offer in that regard.

This is from Devin Dodge, BMO Capital Markets.

All right. First question is on AI and more specifically on your usage. So Alex, you mentioned many of the projects that GTEC leveraged AI tools. I think that definitely came through in the sessions we attended, but are there any metrics that you can share for how much employee usage of AI has increased over the last, say, 12 to 24 months? And are there any medium-term targets for how much WSP can leverage those tools?

The answer is we could not -- we do not currently track it. I can tell you that this year, we have rolled out AI tools to more than 30,000 of our 80,000 employees. But I would tell you, and I would venture that the use of AI tools within our business is way more than 30,000 employees. Probably, I don't have a number to give you, but I can tell you that now AI -- and has been part of our working environment for quite some time now. So I would venture that the vast majority of our engineers and frontline employees are using AI in some capacity.

Question 2, I was going to ask about PFAS. So some of the environmental services companies that we speak to are excited about some recent announcements coming out of the EPA and the U.S. Department of Defense, and they've seen a pickup in interest for remediating some sites. Look, I think that optimism is mostly tied to contaminated soil and AFFF cleanup efforts. But just wondering if you're seeing momentum building for PFAS related services in your business that would be in the U.S., but also just more broadly across your regions.

Absolutely. The answer -- the straight up answer is yes, PFAS is high on our agenda, and we are certainly a major player in that regard.

Next question is from Ian Gillies from Stifel.

Just one question for me. There's obviously a lot of concern around shifting spending priorities in the U.S. from the government. Can you talk a little bit about how you're positioning yourself for defense spending in the U.S., if at all? Because it obviously comes in a variety of different forms.

Yes. The answer is absolutely. I just talked about PFAS. That's an example of us being involved in military bases and the Department of Defense. Navy cleanup would be another example of that. So yes, we are definitely involved in that regard. And if there's an increased spend in defense, we obviously WSP see this favorably from a book of business point of view in the U.S., but frankly, in Canada, in the U.K. and in Australia at this point, we see a lot of momentum building in all of those countries as we speak.

And the last question today is from Michael Tupholme from TD Cowen.

Just wanted to follow back up on the Americas region. There's a bit of noise there, obviously, with the billable days impact and then the tough comp and emergency response side. You mentioned that Power & Energy is the growth driver this quarter in terms of organic growth. Wondering if you can quantify on a normalized basis, what the Power & Energy organic growth was in Americas. And what you saw in some of the other market sectors from an organic growth perspective?

Yes. I mentioned that right now Power -- TRC is not accounted as organic growth at this point, Michael. So for the remainder of this year, TRC will be accounted as acquisition growth. So obviously, the POWER Engineers business as a total revenue of WSP as much smaller than if you normalize the acquisition of TRC. But yes, I mean, POWER Engineers is now currently generating north of 10% organic growth as we speak.

Okay. That's helpful. And then just lastly, I realize we're getting on in the call here, but Alex, you did mention briefly defense and said you maybe have more to say about that, wondering if you can just a little bit elaborate on the positioning there and just how we should think about that prior to getting some more commentary.

Well, WSP, we are one of the only firm having a presence in the north -- Northern Canada, so Yellowknife and Yukon, we have a number of offices. A good total number of employees in the region. So obviously, we are involved in some capacity with the government. And we will be there when work will be tendered in the north. We are already doing some work in the defense sector. And that's something that may not be known by our investor base, but WSP is one of the largest defense sector, service provider in Canada already.

But if you allow me, Michael, I'd love to talk about it during the analyst call next quarter. I'll have more to talk about during that call.

There are no further questions. I will now hand back to the speakers for closing comments.

So thank you all for attending our Q1 2026 earnings call. You are also invited to take part in our AGM later this morning, which will be held in person and virtually at 11 a.m. Eastern Time today. So on that note, I would like to thank you and looking forward to talking to you next quarter. Thank you very much.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the WSP Global Fourth Quarter and Fiscal 2025 Results. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised today's conference is being recorded.

I'd now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Quentin Weber, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Sarah, and good day. Thank you for joining our call. Today, we will discuss our Q4 2025 results and performance, followed by a Q&A session. Alexandre L'Heureux, our President and CEO; Alain Michaud, our CFO; and Chadi Habib, our CTO, are joining us this morning. Please note that this call is also accessible via webcast on the website.

During the call, we will make forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ from those expressed or implied. We undertake no obligation to update or revise any of these statements. Relevant factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those forward-looking statements are listed in our MD&A for the quarter ended December 31, 2025, which can be found on SEDAR+ and on our website.

In addition, during the call, we may refer to specific non-IFRS measures. These measures are also defined in our MD&A for the year ending December 31, 2025. Our MD&A includes reconciliations of non-IFRS measures to the most directly comparable IFRS measures. Management believes that these non-IFRS measures provide useful information to investors regarding the corporation's financial condition and results of operation as they provide additional critical metrics of its performance. These non-IFRS measures are not recognized under IFRS, do not have any standardized meaning prescribed under IFRS and may differ from similarly measures reported by other issuers and accordingly, may not be comparable. These measures should not be considered as a substitute for the related financial information prepared by IFRS.

With that, I will now turn the call over to Alexandre.

Thank you, Quentin, and thank you all for joining us today. This quarter marks the end of a year of strong execution for the company. In early 2025, we unveiled a 3-year strategic plan called Pioneering Change for Empowered Growth. We completed strategic acquisitions, including Ricardo and TRC and delivered margin improvements with organic growth and strong cash flow generation.

Let me highlight key points relating to our performance for the fourth quarter and the year 2025. First, as outlined on Page 5 of the investor presentation, Net revenue organic growth for the quarter stood at 5.9%, when excluding the impact of much lower volume of emergency response services in the U.S. versus the prior year and revision to significant projects in Canada in 2024. For the year, net revenues reached the high end of our outlook. And referring to Page 5 again, we delivered strong performance with combined mid- to high single-digit organic net revenue growth in Canada, the Americas, EMEIA, while the APAC regions continued to improve throughout 2025. Celebrating the first year of POWER Engineers under WSP, we are also very pleased with the company's performance with organic growth in the mid-teens in 2025.

Second, on profitability, adjusted EBITDA for the year exceeded the high end of our revised outlook range for the year. We continue to execute on our margin expansion journey, delivering approximately 40 basis point improvement for the year. Third, I'm especially pleased with our cash performance. We delivered a record high free cash flow of $1.7 billion in 2025, representing 1.8x net earnings attributable to shareholders and significantly exceeding our 100% conversion target. Additionally, DSO at year-end stood at a record low level of 63 days, well below the lower end of our outlook.

Before I turn to 2026, let me state how excited I am about welcoming TRC, a premier U.S. power and energy brand founded in 1969, long recognized for technical excellence and one of the most significant players in the U.S. with approximately 8,000 professionals. This combination will supercharge our Power & Energy sector by expanding our offerings across the entire value chain, adding amongst others, significant advisory, digital and program management capabilities and providing unmatched leadership in the U.S.

Now turning to 2026. Let me start by saying that we entered the year with more optimism and confidence than when we entered 2025. This statement is supported by a few key factors and our strong outlook for 2026. First, with the closing of TRC and the recent acquisition of POWER Engineers, we have deployed approximately CAD 7 billion over the last 15 months in the high-growth, high profitability Power & Energy sector, making us the leading pure-play firm in that space in the U.S. and globally.

Second, the market trends continue to provide a strong tailwind and demand for our services. Governments around the world continue to spend extensively on infrastructure, mass transit, airports, ports, water and environmental services, data centers, health care, power generation, transmission, distribution, and we expect the demand for our services to be robust in 2026.

Third, and to complement my comments on market trends, we have finished the year 2025 in better shape than we started. The proposal activity level is strong across the business and our backlog, master service agreement and sub backlog are growing steadily.

Let me now give you a few comments on our regions, further supporting our sentiment about 2026. Starting with Canada, we expect the region to remain an important growth driver in 2026, supported by strong market fundamentals and federal strategic investment that will all contribute to an already healthy backlog, which grew by 13.5% in 2025, an equally strong pipeline of opportunity in the year ahead. We are well positioned to execute on the broad mix of mandates with major clients such Hydro-Quebec, Toronto Hydro-Electric, Rio Tinto, Ontario Power, Agnico Eagle Mines while continuing to capitalize on significant transportation assignments, including our role on the Bradford Bypass expressway project and the recent announcement of the federal government and defense. With that foundation, Canada is positioned to deliver solid performance with mid- to high single-digit organic growth expected in 2026.

In the Americas, we expect strong growth in 2026, supported by robust activity across the U.S. We are very pleased with the closing of the TRC acquisition on Tuesday this week, which combined with our existing Power & Energy business offers continued high growth, high profitability potential in the sector, which now represent approximately 1/3 of our U.S. presence. Overall, our sentiment towards our U.S. is positive. Our hard backlog stand at approximately 10 months of revenues, and our sub backlog amounts to approximately $8 billion, of which 85% comes from MSAs and framework contracts. Our pipeline of opportunities is also trending positively, up approximately 15%, 1-5, I said, versus last year.

We continue to strongly focus on our global client program, which is developing a healthy pipeline of opportunities, up more than 50% versus last year. Of interest, our win rates increased by approximately 10% year-over-year, especially on top opportunities with the highest impact, reflecting a clear focus on securing high-quality needle mover mandates.

We also see AI and cloud infrastructure as a durable multiyear tailwind. Here, our global footprint and breadth of services are positioning WSP as a preferred partner, notably for campus master planning, permitting, design and data center delivery. According to the most Engineering News-Record Global, Sourcebook, WSP holds the #1 position globally in data center design.

Separately, in Latin America, the mining industry is providing healthy growth opportunities as well. Overall, the Americas is positioned to be a key contributor with mid- to high single-digit organic growth expected in 2026.

Moving to EMEIA. We expect the region to continue contributing solid growth in '26. supported by healthy backlog and ongoing demand across priority markets, specifically in the U.K. Our pipeline of opportunities is also growing significantly, representing an increase of more than 25% since the beginning of 2025. Book-to-burn in the U.K. ended above 1, even as the regions delivered robust growth. Our win rate increased by about 25% versus '24 with new work secured in energy, water and defense, in line with our strategic ambitions. Our global client program also demonstrated success in the regions, especially in energy and more specifically, in the transmission space in electric and gas.

Our backlog is supported by a steady flow of mandates, including major programs with National Grid in the U.K., recent win with EirGrid and EFG Energy in Europe and a growing backlog in the Nordics. With healthy momentum across the regions, EMEIA is well positioned to deliver continued success in the year with mid-single-digit organic growth expected in '26.

Turning to APAC. We continue to see improving market condition in '25 and healthy backlog growth, especially in Australia and New Zealand, and our focus is on a return to growth as we progress through the year. We are entering '26 with tangible catalysts, including the Sydney Metro West Linewide contract, the Anderson precinct infrastructure mandate in Western Australia and momentum in New Zealand under the Roads of National Significance program. Taken together, the pipelines in Australia and New Zealand support a gradual return to organic growth in '26, and we expect APAC to provide an improving contribution to overall performance as the year progresses.

In summary, we are confident about '26. And just after the first year of our 2025, 2027 strategic cycle, we are already on track to meet or exceed several of our '27 targets. This early progress reinforces our confidence in the strategy, the strength of our platform and our ability to deliver leading financial performance across the cycle.

With that, I will now turn it over to Alain, who will talk you through our financial results and our 2026 outlook in more detail.

Thank you, Alex, and hello, everyone. I'm pleased to report on our strong financial results marked by several achievements. Let me start with the top line. For the fourth quarter, net revenue displayed a solid performance and healthy underlying fundamentals. As Alex mentioned earlier, the organic growth for the underlying business in 2025 brought us to the high end of our financial outlook range provided in early '25. For the full year, revenue and net revenue increased by 13% and 15%, respectively, compared to 2024, growing to $18 billion and $14 billion, respectively. Canada, the Americas and EMEIA delivered a solid performance, and APAC is showing positive sequential increase in results. Backlog reached a record high of $17 billion, up 10% in the last 12-month period. Our pipeline of opportunities is strong as evidenced by Alex earlier.

Moving on to profitability. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $694 million, up approximately 9% compared to Q4 2024. Adjusted EBITDA margin stood at 18.9% from 18.7% in Q4 2024, driven by continued productivity gain. For the full year, adjusted EBITDA grew to $2.5 billion, up 17% compared to $2.2 billion in 2024. Adjusted EBITDA margin increased to 18.3%, up approximately 40 bps from 2024, in line with our strategic ambition. Of interest, we absorbed in our margin rightsizing and restructuring costs incurred to further strengthen our business, which reduced our margin by approximately 40 basis points. Accordingly, our margin growth in 2025 is actually 80 basis points.

Adjusted net earnings in the quarter reached approximately $346 million or $2.65 per share, up 14% compared to the fourth quarter of '24. The increase was mainly attributable to higher adjusted EBITDA. And for the full year, adjusted net earnings reached $1.25 billion or $9.58 per share, up 23% and 19% from '24, respectively.

As for our cash position, I'm very, very pleased with our cash flow generation in '25. Cash inflow from operating activities increased to $2.25 billion in '25, an improvement of $865 million versus '24. Full year free cash flow totaled $1.7 billion, representing 180% of our net earnings attributable to shareholders. This strong outcome reflects our ongoing focus on working capital management and optimization under our new ERP platform.

DSO stood at 63 days as of December 31, 9 days lower than at the same time last year, marking a record low level. Net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio was at 0.9x, slightly below our target range of 1x to 2x. The decline in our net debt to adjusted EBITDA reflects the higher cash balance from common share issuance, which has been used to fund a portion of the TRC acquisition. And following the closing this week, our pro forma net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio stands at approximately 2.3x.

As part of our ongoing review of our operation, we have disposed of a few non-core businesses in the last 12 months, including an underground storage business in the U.S. and our rail business in Germany. We have also, in the same context, discontinued operation in various areas in Asia and EMEIA notably. These activities represent approximately 1% of our 2025 net revenue.

Regarding our ERP deployment, platform adoption continued its upward momentum in 2025 and early '26 with POWER Engineers now onboarded on the platform as of Jan 1, '26. We now have accordingly 80% of our EBITDA on a new platform with key regions to be onboarded in '26, including Australia and New Zealand next week, Sweden, Central Europe and the Ricardo. With a significant portion of our deployment completed, we are gradually increasing our focus on optimization, automation and deep business insights to enhance scalability and financial performance.

Turning to our '26 outlook. We expect net revenue to range between $16 billion and $17 billion, which represents a total growth in net revenue of over 18% at midpoint of the guidance, adding $3 billion of net revenue in one single year. Also, as you assess our guidance, please keep in mind the recent disposal we just completed in the U.S. and the annualization impact of our various disposal and discontinued operation of '25, which had an impact of approximately $150 million on net revenue.

We also expect EBITDA to range between $3 billion and $3.18 billion, which represented a growth of 21% versus '24 and both calculated at midpoint. Organic net revenue growth is expected to range between 4% and 7%. At midpoint, our EBITDA target range, we expect to deliver 40 basis points of margin improvement in '26. We expect Canada and the Americas to deliver mid- to high single digit, EMEIA to deliver mid-single digit, and APAC to deliver stable net revenue versus '25.

For Q1 '26, we expect net revenue to range between $3.575 billion and $3.775 billion and adjusted EBITDA to range from $590 million to $630 million. From a modeling perspective, Q1 '26 is expected to have fewer billable days, which is expected to have an impact of approximately 1.5% on organic growth with offsets taking place in Q2 and Q4 '26. Emergency response services in the Americas reportable segment are expected to be consistent with the historical average level of inspection. And I would like to remind you that this outlook is intended to help analysts and shareholders refine their perspective on our performance, and it's been prepared in light of current foreign exchange rate volatility and our full year assessment, including our hedging posture. And also, our selected financial outlook does not include any acquisition transaction or disposal that may occur after today. The financial outlook includes a contribution from recent acquisitions, notably TRC and Ricardo.

And on that, back to you, Alex.

Thank you, Alain. To sum it up, we are confident in our 2026 outlook and the opportunities ahead. We entered the year from a position of strength. We run a resilient and diversified platform. We have a healthy backlog and pipeline of opportunities, and we remain focused on quality growth, operational efficiency and disciplined capital allocation. Today, I also wish to take a few moments with you to provide context on the topic that's top of mind for many of our investors and analysts.

The rise of AI address the many speculative research reports being published almost daily and specifically its implication for WSP. While we acknowledge market sentiment, we feel clarification and perspectives are needed. In recent months, many actors have painted all professional services firm with the same AI brush, worrying that we are entering an era where advanced AI will replace firms like WSP. WSP recent share price performance was not immune to that sentiment. Artificial intelligence is changing the way we all work, and WSP is proactively embracing it as a productivity enhancer, but more importantly, as a value driver for clients.

First, let's contrast WSP's business model with other consultancies and industries. Lumping all industries together is, in our opinion, an inaccurate way of considering the impact of AI. Our 83,000 experts design and manage complex physical projects, including bridges, transit systems, water treatment plants, energy facilities, environmental remediation and so much more. This work inherently involves the real world, physical material, on-site construction supervision, safety critical decisions, regulatory compliance and public stakeholder engagements. It represents service work that blends advanced domain expertise, inherent know-how, technical analysis, field execution, and professional judgment along with massive amounts of proprietary data, knowledge and experience that is not publicly available.

In contrast, other industries to which WSP may be compared to largely operate in the virtual sphere. For instance, software-focused companies, organizations specializing in business process management and system integration. Their core activities typically center on programming, configuring systems, handling data and streamlining workflows. Much of their code, operational processes and consulting frameworks are accessible to advanced AI models. These distinctions are crucial when discussing AI impact and exposure. Large language models today are far better at automating digital, virtual and repetitive tasks such as coding, data entry and document generation that are performing deterministic tasks and providing guaranteed correctness in the physical world. In the engineering world, that simply cannot occur.

Now let's discuss why scale and domain expertise matter. Our competitive moat is built on profound expertise in the physical sciences and engineering, coupled with decades of proprietary intellectual property and design standards and best practices that are not publicly accessible. Additionally, our professional accreditation, legal standards and obligation foster a high level of trust and establish significant barriers to entry. Projects often require collaboration with public agencies, communities and countless stakeholders while WSP reputation and relationship are crucial.

In fact, technology often complement our services. Let me now delve into 3 aspects of our services where our scale and deep domain expertise set us apart and provide significant advantages. First, on the human expertise and the physical world front. Every project WSP tackles is unique.

Today, WSP is the largest platform globally in its industry with the highest level of diversification and expertise. WSP works on 250,000 live projects, each different. Whether it's a transit line or coastal erosion protection program, our work is fundamentally rooted in understanding countless local and physical variables, geotechnical constraint, site conditions, materials, vibration, seismic factors, climate, community priorities, safety regulation, even politics and historical context. We must earn social license by engaging with communities and stakeholders, holding town halls, consulting indigenous partners and addressing public concerns. No algorithm can navigate city politics and replace these human dynamics. And AI can negotiate with the city council and a construction permit, and it certainly can take accountability in front of a professional board if something goes wrong. These are unique WSP roles that define our leadership.

Second, every site and project is unique. By nature, infrastructure environmental projects don't lend themselves to one-size-fits-all solutions. We can't simply feed a prompt into a computer and get a turnkey design for a new highway interchange or climate adaptation plan, because the answers depends on the specific terrain, traffic patterns, stakeholder inputs, regulatory reviews, river flows and hundreds of other factors that most of the time, AI models do not have access to.

In practice, our engineers must continuously adapt, be agile and use judgment. Unlike AI, they do not simply predict the most likely output based on data patterns. If a geotechnical survey reveals unexpected soil condition, something that AI models do not have access to, we redesign the foundation. If stakeholders raise concerns about a heritage site, we adjust the project plan, and if needed, collaborate on a redesign to protect what matters to the communities. Again, this type of information is not accessible in the database.

AI can assist and support with scenario analysis, stress testing. For example, scanning through geotechnical data or suggesting design optimization, assuming the quality of the data is reliable, which is often, not the case. What it does not have is the situational awareness or mandate to make judgment calls. WSP does. Our expert combine technical data, sometimes with AI assistance with on-the-ground observation and stakeholder dialogue to get it right. This is why we say AI augments our capabilities, but is not a decision-maker in our field. It's an enabler to our expert, not a replacement.

And third, safety and accountability are simply not negotiable in our industry. Our projects often involve public safety in a very direct sense. We must comply with building codes and environmental laws that differ from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. License engineers are those who can certify that a design meets all those specific codes and can be built safely. This is not just a policy, it's the law and the core value of our profession. AI-generated outputs are always subject to rigorous human oversight, thorough quality control and professional accountability.

Our clients require us to stand behind our advice and design with substantial professional liability insurance and the financial strength of a strong balance sheet. Our machine in the middle approach means that while AI can support design or reports, our engineers review, validate and take responsibility for every outcome. This approach ensures we harness AI efficiency and applied strict quality management and risk oversight.

To make this even more tangible, let's consider a few actual WSP projects and how they illustrate the indispensable human element in our work with AI as an enabler, not a replacement.

The Eglinton Crosstown light rail transit in Toronto, Canada is a 19-kilometer light rail line we've been helping deliver through the heart of Canada's largest city. Think of the complexities, coordinating with city officials on permits, relocating utilities, managing traffic disruption, engaging local communities and businesses, ensure safety and dense urban construction and meeting rigorous city building codes. We do use digital twins and simulation models, some with AI components to optimize the design and construction schedule, but all those models are overseen by experienced professionals who know how to interpret the results and make judgment calls. The project has strong curve balls. For instance, unexpected soil condition only discovered on site had to be considered and our team had to quickly redesign support structure.

Also, the Interstate Bridge Replacement in Oregon, Washington, U.S.A. is another project worth highlighting. WSP is a program manager for replacing a complex agent highway bridge between 2 states. Here, the challenges include navigating 2 states, regulatory regimes and federal approvals, designing for seismic resilience in a high earthquake zone and conducting extensive stakeholder engagement across multiple cities and transit agencies. We have, again, a digital model of the bridge that uses machine learning to stimulate -- to simulate traffic and structural performance under various scenarios. That's AI at work. But again, the use of that tool is led by our bridge engineers who ensure the design meets all safety margins and serve community needs.

Importantly, our roles involve bringing together dozens of stakeholders, including state DOTs, transit authorities, federal regulators, port authorities and local communities to forge consensus on the solution. No AI negotiator is going to do that for WSP. It takes experienced professionals with years of cultivating relationship and fostering trust to work through concerns and requirements. I could go on. The story is similar in projects after projects.

Engineers and scientific consulting in the physical world is fundamentally a domain expertise, a human creative and interactive endeavor. Consider the market drivers around us. The world is investing trillions in infrastructure renewal, energy transition and climate resilience. Those drivers are increasing demand for our deep domain expertise and scale. In fact, they often create complex problem that feed into the need for services. Governments are funding massive infrastructure and clean energy programs here in Canada, in the U.S., in Europe and in Australia, and those projects require exactly the kind of high-end consulting WSP provides. We don't see that demand diminishing due to AI. If anything, clients want to know how to incorporate AI and smart technology into their infrastructure, and they turn to us the domain expert for support and assistance.

By leveraging digital and AI solution to augment our engineering and science expertise, we help clients achieve significant value through the asset life cycle, beyond the front-end advisory, planning and design phase, which is usually accounts for 5% of our project total cost. Again, it is important to note that for most of our clients, the decision made in the first 5% design phase have a massive impact on the remaining 95% of the cost of their assets, making it an area where investment and innovation continue to grow and be very strategic.

The takeaway is clear. We're not complacent about technology impact. Instead, we are embedding digital and technology tools throughout our operation and client solutions. We fully expect that some task in design and consulting will be automated, and that is a very good thing.

To the question, can AI design an asset on its own? The answer is no. AI can help with preliminary sizing and drafting, parametric optimization, code lookups, scenario generations, but it cannot guarantee compliance, verify safety, carry legal liability, produce deterministic proofs, ensure physical correctness, explain every step with guaranteed traceability, sign, seal the drawings, engage with the physical world and all stakeholders. As we are suddenly going from AI euphoria to AI hysteria in our space, let me leave you with a few key messages.

First, I want to reassure everyone that the fundamentals and the market trends fueling our industry are intact and AI is a fantastic opportunity. We expect more work and we can now, for example, further leverage data through AI and digital enablers and generate more value for clients throughout the full life cycle of an asset. And with more value to our clients, we expect more value to our shareholders. Keep in mind that 1/3 of our platform benefits from the AI tailwind, including in the Power & Energy business, data centers, mining and advisory -- digital advisory that -- and these businesses are growing at double-digit rates right now.

Second, our work is inseparable from the physical world. We all remember that. Third, our work relies on domain expertise and knowledge that is not readily available in the public domain, creating a significant barrier to entry. And fourth, scale matters to fully and safely leverage AI in a world of high stakes, complexity and uniqueness. Lastly, AI does not displace our work, it augments it. AI is probabilistic while our clients are expecting engineers and scientific -- scientists to be deterministic. It's a matter of safety and the stake are too high. We are super excited for WSP, its engineers and scientists. We see it as an opportunity because at WSP, we are not writing a single solution and selling it 1 million times. We are solving 1 million unique problems with bespoke solutions for each client, each site across 250,000 live projects.

I would now like to open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] We'll now take our first question, and this is from Yuri Lynk from Canaccord Genuity.

Just a follow-up, Alex, on AI. Can you talk a little bit about the AI, the partnership you launched with Microsoft almost, I guess, exactly a year ago. How that's evolved over the last 12 months?

Yes. I think I've been talking a fair bit, Yuri. So I'll take a breather, and I'll turn it to Chadi, but in a nutshell, we're extremely pleased with the headway that we've made. And Chadi, perhaps you can talk about this partnership and the other ecosystem partnership that we have signed in the last 12 months.

Happy to do that. Thanks, Alex. Good morning, everyone. Let me start off on the Microsoft [ our second ] year into it. We had 3 big objectives: enable one of the largest agentic and AI deployment for our frontline to make sure that they are front and center on how they use this stuff responsibly to deliver to clients, that is exceeding expectations today; number two objective of the partnership, is continue to work with Microsoft as a client in their data center objectives and that is also beyond our target for 2025. We closed out the year really well and are very positive in the pipeline going forward; and last but not least, if you remember, we had an ambition to co-create products, not just with Microsoft, but with what we call client zeros, where we co-create the future with digital and AI with clients to solve tangible problems. Two of our solutions have gone into production now with 4 clients, and we're looking for a general availability release in March. So very, very positive for Microsoft.

But let me add, and this is part of our strategy. We talked to you about this about a year ago. Our approach is ecosystem. So beyond Microsoft, we've talked to you about start-ups that are innovating. So I'll give you some names about UrbanLogiq, Fathom. We're also working with other companies at scale. You would have -- you may have heard recently, we announced a very targeted partnership with Google in the transportation space. We're looking at offerings with Schneider in the Property & Building space, and we'll continue to expand. There's about 4 or 5 other discussions that are in progress essentially.

Okay. That's helpful. And maybe just expand a little bit on the data center work with Microsoft. I think they're looking at spending tens of billions of dollars on data centers. That's work that -- I guess you're a preferred supplier, you still have to bid on that work, but maybe just expand on how significant or not that is at this point?

Just to clarify there. Microsoft is not the only hyperscaler that is our clients, right? So the tailwind for us is across all of the major hyperscalers, we're not exclusive with them. Having said that, across the board, every single one of the hyperscalers, as Alex mentioned, we're looking at double-digit growth in the mission-critical space because the demand, frankly, is beyond the capacity of the talent in the market and what's exciting. You'll hear this a lot from me in the coming months. What's exciting by the AI, it allows us to do things we could not do before and have more opportunity to serve the clients. So the -- to answer your question on Microsoft, we have a specific objective in the alliance, and we're tracking to the objective as the contract progresses as one of their preferred supply.

And to be more specific, Yuri, there are many instances because of this partnership with Microsoft, where we are sole source and we don't have to bid for the work, obviously, because of our strategic -- being the engineer of choice with them.

Next question today is from Devin Dodge from BMO Capital Markets.

Yes. Alex, just thanks for the perspectives on AI. It's really helpful. Not surprisingly kind of sticking with the AI theme here. And maybe picking up on the last -- one of the last questions. But look, there's multiple AI start-ups looking to make inroads into the engineering consulting sector. I suspect you actually have dialogue with many of them. But WSP elected to go down the path of developing these tools internally and via those partnerships that Chadi just talked about. Just wondering if you could talk about the decision to build versus buy and why building was the right path for WSP.

Before I turn to Chadi, I think it's a very good question. And to us, the AI strategy is part of a broader digital strategy. So for us, AI is only a subset of our overall strategy, and I'm pretty sure over the course of this call, we'll have an opportunity to briefly talk about our digital posture. But I think over time, the answer is it's going to come broadly, again, from organic growth, obviously, and we have been doing that from strategic partnership that we are going to continue to sign. If you recall in February of last year, when I unveiled the plan, I said expect WSP to announce and sign more ecosystem partnership. We think it's a great way to go.

But as part of our broader digital strategy, I also said last year that, yes, you should, at some point in time, expect some acquisitions because it's a muscle that we're learning to flex right now and have been over the last 2, 3 years.

So perhaps, Chadi, you want to complement what I said.

Yes, I'd just like to also take a moment to just remind the 3 aspects of the digital posture, what Alex just mentioned. So number one is start with the clients, focus on the value that it creates for clients and proof point it with revenue. So that's our first aspect. The second lever of our digital strategy, and I'm going to answer your question in a second, is put it in the hands of our front line because why is this an exciting time for all of our engineers and scientists. Just like they've seen some massive evolution in the way they work with clients, this is another massive evolution that allows them to drive a lot more value to our clients. This is why we have one of the largest deployments across our industry in terms of putting it in the hands of the front line and investing in our proprietary models.

The third aspect is ecosystem partnerships. And yes, they are both with large and smaller firms. I do want to highlight to you that for the small firms, one of the most valuable aspects, Alex touched on this, is domain expertise at scale. I think you all know this. These models compound with knowledge, knowledge across projects, geographies and volume. The start-ups do not have that. We actually get more calls from start-ups because of our access to that domain expertise than we approach them. So we are working with several. We have a non-negotiable, which is protecting our IP. And what you've seen from our announcements like UrbanLogiq and Fathom is we'll work with the ones that are willing to work with us on protecting our domain expertise while driving value to our clients. And in another cases, we're building internally our own proprietary models that are -- that will remain within our parameters so we can retain that IP and the value we bring to our clients.

Okay. That's excellent color there. Second question, just wondering if the push to develop more AI tools and capabilities. Does that have much or any impact on your strategy for complementary resource centers? I'm just trying to get a sense of leveraging AI puts a bit less stress on the talent pools in your regions such that more work can be done locally.

Well, my straight answer straight up answer to this is for as long as we remember. And you will recall all of you on the line today, numerous occasions where we had discussed the fact that there was a war on talent. Sometimes life is done in a certain way and it's natural evolution. I mean, there are many instances and many places in our business where we don't -- we are not in a position to recruit as fast as we would like to do it. Thus enhance the GCC strategic initiatives that we've put in place 10 years ago.

But you look at Power & Energy sector right now, we are not in a position to recruit at the pace that we would like to recruit. So in that regard, the assistance of our GCC is paramount and also the assistance of technology is paramount for us to do more with less. So that's why we believe that technology augments our work. It's not displacing it and why we are feeling good about the future prospect of WSP in that regard.

Next question today is from Ian Gillies from Stifel.

Alex, I was wondering if you could talk about the interplay between revenue per employee, AI and I guess, the revenue model that you currently employ and how you see that evolving over the next 24 to 36 months or maybe not evolving at all because you're clearly comfortable with the way it is.

Yes. Let me try to [ rebuke ] a bit of a couple of themes and points that you just mentioned. First and foremost, if you look back -- and I mentioned that in past analyst calls, if you look back the last decade, you look at the fee per employee that we have been generating in the last decade and you go back, whatever, 2015 or '16 and you fast forward today, and this is all publicly available information, you'll find that we have been increasing our fee per employee steadily over the last 10 to 15 years. I don't have the data with me, but it's certainly probably 80%, 70% higher today than it was 10, 15 years ago.

So we have changed our model over time, and we have embraced technology. And we are running a tighter boats, and we are taking advantage of technology. So I do see the future to not be significantly different. We are going to continue to change. We are going to continue to embrace what's coming to us as an opportunity, not as a roadblock. And I'm highly confident that we are going to be -- we're going to continue between, as I just mentioned, our main platform, the GCC, the technology and AI to do more with less.

Second point, and that may not be known by all of our investors and analysts, more than 60% of our work is fixed price. And for as long as you've known me, I've said we prefer fixed price. I preferred fixed price 10 years ago. I prefer fixed price 5 years ago. and I still prefer fixed price because it's an opportunity for us to provide more value for clients. Although there is place for time and material and there's a need for cost plus and time material in our space, this is not where you can create and innovate. And we see that as a true opportunity.

So -- and we have seen fixed price going up over the last 10 years, not going down. Clients more and more are not looking for price. And remember that oftentimes, 80% of our qualification criteria are qualification-based or not price-based. So more and more, our clients are looking for a solution, are looking for an end product rather than a price. So we believe that this is going in the right direction. And if you ask me, I believe that it's just going to continue to evolve in that direction. So in that regard, I think this is not a revolution. This is evolution. And I think we're tracking extremely well. And our clients are looking for solution -- innovative solutions. So I expect to see fixed price going up as we progress in time.

Anything else, Chadi, you want to add?

Yes. Just to reinforce the impact of digital and AI with our clients, what we're actually seeing, think about a scenario where we're doing master planning or scenario planning for the client before we would do 5, 10 scenarios and optimize across that. Now with the technology we're leveraging, we're doing -- clients are asking us to do more scenarios, 1,000 scenarios. You have better impact on the run cost of the assets. You have better impact on optimizing the rest of the life cycle. So the reason we see in our digital posture, double-digit growth is because of these new tools and progressive clients, they're asking for more work to navigate the challenges that they have. So we're seeing a trend where it's driving more effort from our teams.

I think the very important point that we all need to -- when we leave the call that we need to remember is this perception that people are not -- because we have not access to more technology that our clients are not asking more. What's happening right now, as Chadi just mentioned, is 10 years ago, with no technology, engineers were in a position for a certain price to do 4 or 5 scenario analysis. Today, for the same price, we can do more work and provide more efficient design and a better service. So they're not asking us to do less work at a lower price. What's happening right now is they want more. They want more data. They want more output. They want more stress test analysis. They want more scenario analysis. So I think what's happening is with the arrival of technology, and that has been happening for the last 20 years, we are in a position to provide better design but our clients are looking for more output, not less in that regard.

That's very helpful. And maybe another question along different lines. The engineers you're hiring today maybe managers in 5 years' time or managing projects, larger projects 10 years down the road. And how do you manage the risk of making sure you're hiring enough people, embracing AI and balancing those things out? Because it feels like that's probably one of the more serious challenges in implementing all these items because people are a key part of your business.

Thank you, Chadi (sic) [ Ian ]. Yes. So in the second posture of our digital posture is to make sure, internally, we equip our frontline. This is why I mentioned we have one of the largest deployments in our industry to get into the hands, both of our front line, and you hit a really good point, by the way. Leadership is as important as the front line, equipping them with what these tools can do. And by the way, it's changing extremely fast and keeping them up so that it puts them in the driver's seat on how they impact the future. We can't predict all the unknowns of all the industry evolution around this. But what our posture in terms of frontline professionals and leaders is put it in their hands, get them to innovate, and we're seeing some really exciting stuff with clients. And to continue to invest, so we stay in the driver's seat rather than having to react to these evolutions. So that's our current posture in terms of making sure our folks are there.

The second thing I would tell you is we also have a lot of people moving into their well-earned retirement. Alex talked about this last year. We're building our own proprietary models that -- and this is another advantage of this technology. It allows us to take the brilliance of somebody who did a design in Toronto and spread it across the company within hours rather than historically, we would have had to have forums and meetings where they interact together. So I'll give you those two areas where we're leveraging AI to multiply our impact.

And I must say this has been a nice break from asking about M&A every other question.

Next question today is from Benoit Poirier from Desjardins.

Thanks, Alex and Chadi for the very thoughtful discussion on AI. Maybe the question for Alain. When we look at the free cash flow performance in Q4, very solid, driven by record low DSO pushing down leverage to 1.4x. So just looking at 2026, assuming DSO returns to the midpoint of your guidance, would it be fair to assume that free cash flow conversion would still be above 100%? And it looks like that you could be in a position to finish 2026 with a leverage more at the midpoint of the guidance of 1.2x, which could still open the door for M&A if conditions, permits. So just want to understand a little bit more about the potential leverage and free cash flow for 2026.

That's a neat way to get to M&A, Benoit. Just to clarify, the -- our leverage pro forma now 2.3x, absolutely right with our deleveraging profile. We don't anticipate to decline. We're still targeting far beyond the 100% conversion target. We should be in the range of 1.6x, 1.7x by year-end next year. So the ambitions remain as solid as what we've done this year. ERP is helping us. I remind you, there's a couple of conversions this year, but things are pointing -- all pointing out in the right direction to deliver strong free cash flow still in '26.

Perfect. That's my only one and congrats.

Next question today is from Maxim Sytchev, NBCM.

Alex, just continuing on sort of the AI topic. I mean some of your service providers obviously work in a fully digital environment. And I'm wondering how you think about some of the potential cost-saving opportunity from your side when you're interfacing with service providers who deal on kind of like on a per seat basis. I'm wondering if you have any thoughts there.

Just to clarify, Max, I mean, provider providing services to us?

Yes, software providers because, I mean, I assume, obviously, you pay quite a bit in terms of the outlays for their services. And again, like if AI sort of gets better from your own sort of modeling perspective, I mean, how much need is required for some of the kind of the legacy software providers if there's an opportunity to extract certain concessions over time, which would be beneficial from a margin perspective.

Chadi, you're leading the way on that front. So maybe you have a view on this.

Yes. Let me kick it off in a couple of areas. First of all, there are sort of providers that are key to delivering the end services. So think about our modeling partners, think about our partners that help us deliver those work products. And we constantly co-innovate with them to figure out how to solve for some of those solutions. There are then more back-office partners, and maybe that's what you're alluding to, where we are seeing massive simplification. We're investing to automate, putting our platform that Alain mentioned in place, harmonizing the way we grab our domain data and protect it allows us to shed some of the costs that previously would have been necessary.

Today, we can optimize and automate some of those things internally. And that will happen as we continue to optimize our functions, and there are several programs that are in play today to do that. And as we do that, if there are some software providers or providers that are giving us some services today that are not necessary, we work with them to optimize that cost structure. And that's an ongoing process, by the way, well before AI and post AI.

And if you recall, Max, when we unveiled our strategy, we talked about the different levers that we have to improve our efficiency and levers we have now in front of us with the ERP with AI coming in more tools, definitely to keep optimizing the back office to deliver better efficiency and simplify the life of our frontline people as well.

Okay. Makes sense. And then one sort of fundamental question. I think IIJA money has to be allocated by September, October time frame. Just wondering if you think actually most of that capital is going to be -- actually going out of the door and any impediments to that potentially not happening and how that could impact kind of 2027, 2028 run rates in the U.S. Any color would be helpful.

Yes. What we hear, there's more to come on that, Max, but you're right, IIJA expires third quarter of '26. But the Congress and the administration is working hard now on what's called the next surface transportation reauthorization. And what we're hearing through the grapevines there is -- there's lots of focus on the back-to-basic infrastructure program, transportation, public safety, public transit safety and the like. So it doesn't feel like less investment, but certainly more focused investment in more of the basic transportation space, which, frankly, is right in the middle of the alley for us. So more to come, but it feels like there's going to be continuation of investment as we read it right now.

Next question is from Michael Tupholme from TD Cowen.

I didn't want to just sort of pivot back to M&A, but in a different fashion than perhaps we're used to talking about it. The question ties into the AI discussion that you provided Alex and Chadi. So I'm just wondering if you can talk about how, if at all, accelerating adoption and use of AI in the engineering services industry may affect WP's M&A strategy and the types of targets you're interested in.

Look, it's a very good question. 10 years ago, I was not talking about our digital posture. I was not talking about our digital sector as a P&L. We've done that 2 years ago. And as Chadi expressed and can talk about, we are right now growing at double digit in our digital P&L, our digital sector. I think the way I would characterize what the question that you asked, Michael, and the way I would answer it is as part of my review of potential targets now and as we're entering due diligence, and TRC is a perfect example of that, we are paying way more greater attention to the complementary fit of the target digital offering.

I'll give you an example, TRC, which we announced 2 days ago. During due diligence, we spent an enormous amount of time talking about their digital posture, their digital strategy, their digital offering. Today, if I look at the TRC business, they probably have USD 150 million of digital offering in the power space, so intelligence grid solution that Chadi can talk about as an example of that. Well, it's $150 million out of $1.2 billion. So you may say, well, it's only 10% or a bit more than 10%, but we spent an enormous amount of time with the leaders there to see how we can double-digit grow that business. And with our network and the fact that we have a network around the world, how can we leverage this in Australia, in New Zealand and elsewhere. And I can tell you that we're super excited about that.

Do you want just to briefly talk about it?

Yes, I'll just add a couple of things. Again, if you consider Power & Energy, mission-critical, the growth, our digital offerings and the criteria we look at from an M&A point of view, I just want to make sure I come back to this notion, domain expertise at scale is the differentiator.

I'm going to say something controversial. The AI models are getting actually commoditized. If you listen to any of their webcast in the recent months, they're all talking about how we integrate domain expertise. We actually get more calls because of our domain expertise in order to create value. These models need that domain expertise. So if we look at the criteria of M&A going forward and what's exciting about what comes with TRC or what came in power is these folks don't master technology, just technology. They master technology in the context of transmission, distribution, generation, renewable energy, and that's where we think we drive massive value to clients.

And again, to reinforce the point, Michael, technology player coming in the power sector with no domain expertise or the Big 4 coming in or the major IT consulting firm coming in the power sector with not having the domain expertise, they're missing 75% of the solution. So again, to reinforce Chadi's point, we are getting more calls from technology players than we are making calls. to support them because they don't have what we have and the proprietary knowledge that we have in the power sector, for example.

So we honestly see this as a tremendous opportunity in the years to come for WSP. Revenue streams that 5 years ago did not exist for us. So it's a very, very exciting time, and that's why I talked about euphoria and hysteria. We need to be balanced here and compose and let us prove the point to you.

We'll now take the next question. This is from Jonathan Goldman from Scotiabank.

And Alex, thanks for setting the record straight. But maybe if we can do a diversion to maybe some less topical items. Maybe, Alex, if you could just elaborate on what gives you confidence in the U.S. business that we can see a reacceleration of growth this year. And I was also interested in the -- I think it was 10% increase in win rate. I was wondering if you can talk about what's driving that performance?

I think what gives me high confidence in the U.S. business and frankly, our business globally at the moment is really the proposal activity level that we see. And to my earlier point, though, the win rate, I think we have a very clear strategy right now on client. That has been the focus of our 3-year plan. We spent most of 2025 setting up the business for future success. We have developed a very, very strong global client program and diamond client program where we see the growth on those high-impact clients growing at a faster rate than the rest of our business, and we see this paying off.

So -- and also, we're -- we rarely talk about the brand, but the brand that WSP has developed in the U.S. and elsewhere today compared to where it was 5 years ago. I mean, clients are looking to work with WSP. They're looking for domain expertise. And they're looking for professionals to provide the service, number one.

What was the second part of your question, I'm sorry?

I think you addressed both of them, but I do have a second question. Maybe if we switch to capital allocation, Alex, you alluded to kind of the share price at the beginning of the call in your prepared remarks. How does that change your view on capital allocation and whether or not you lean into the buyback more here?

It's not changing my view because you cannot lead 83,000 people firm with a short-term view. We've always had a clear vision of who we want to be and what we don't want to be as a company. I've always had a clear strategy of where I want to take this business forward. And you cannot do this if you have -- you navigate and drive the company with a short-term view. I've always had a long-term view. We've seen the downside, the downturn in oil and gas in 2014, having a huge impact on our stock price at the time.

At the beginning of COVID, if my memory is not failing me, our stock price was at $94, it went down to $50 and went back up. We have faith that our investor base understand our business model. I have faith that our Board, our management team and our investors understand where we want to take this business forward. And in the last 2 years, we've deployed $7 billion in the high-growth, high profitability Power & Energy sector. I'd like to think we've been more opportunistic and more strategic than anyone else in our space. And I'm saying that very respectfully and very humbly. I'm just proud of what we've done.

And I remember the second part of your question, why I'm so confident about our U.S. business. Well, we've transformed our U.S. business in the last 60 months. 2 years ago, we had 350 people in the Power & Energy sector. Today, 30% of our top line in the U.S. alone and more than 20% of our business globally. I think we have deployed capital in high-growth, high profitability sector, and I don't expect that to change.

This week, I spent the week with our leader in mining. We are the largest mining consulting firm in the world. And we really think about the need when we talk about the rise of AI, the need for precious metal for copper and how uniquely positioned WSP is to cope and to service clients to deal with the world needs. So overall, I'm very, very pleased. And I think it would be a mistake to react to short-term views. We know where we're going. We're busy dealing and servicing our clients to deliver a backlog. And I feel that if we do a good job with our clients and we create an exciting time for employees, the stock price will take care of itself. So I don't have right now a desire to change our strategy and our view at this time.

Next question is from Sabahat Khan from RBC Capital Markets.

Maybe just bringing some of the color sort of together on this sort of topic around customers and how you're engaging with them. Maybe just at a high level, are you able to share some thoughts on when you sort of go into the customers, kind of their -- how is the conversation starting around AI? Is it more you bringing to the table what you can do for them? Is it them asking help with implementation or leveraging AI for projects? Just maybe you can walk through how the conversations at the customer level are going today and sort of the ask that the customers are making.

Our clients, and I think we touched base on that in numerous occasions, Saba, this morning. Our clients are looking for domain expertise and to help them support embedding technology in the assets that we design. They are not the expert. Otherwise, they wouldn't be calling us. They're calling us and say, look, we see all that technology coming to market. How should we be thinking about technology? And how do you believe we should be integrating that technology in the assets that we wish to invest in?

And perhaps, Chadi, I can turn to you.

Yes. I'll take the opportunity to make it very tangible. So if you think about the physical world coming with the virtual world, nobody knows more about the physical world than we do. And I'm giving you two examples. We are working with a country as we speak today because I think everybody knows this. AI cannot do what it needs to do if the data is not structured, if it's not understood, if the domain expertise and the context of that data is not put in place. So I'll just give you a tangible project. We just worked on client reached out to us, not any other third parties to structure data that touches 150,000 kilometers of road, 35,000 kilometers of track, trails and 5,000 kilometers of rail.

Why would they come to us, is because nobody understands that data and the architecture of that data for this entire country from a transportation point of view because before they can leverage AI to predict CapEx investments to optimize their run costs and so on, they need somebody to take that operational data and who masters that data and that context on those physical assets, and how it intertwines with the physical world around it, whether it's satellite information or geotechnical information better than WSP. And that's an active project.

I'm giving you that project as an example, before extracting value from these solutions. Clients are coming to us and saying, okay, how do we extract value? We need somebody who knows the physical environment and the designs that have been done. So that's one example. Another example I'll give you tangibly is one of the premier cities in the world, we're working with them to build a truly live digital twin that allows them to make the right investments in the right places to impact the well-being of millions of people.

So whereas historically, we do an environmental twin of physical layouts or 2, 3, 5, 100 variables. Today, we're talking about thousands of variables in 14 AI models that will cover things like air quality, that will cover things like water, biodiversity, marine, climate, putting it all together so that -- this specific city not only can manage in the short term, the outcomes, in this case, citizen well-being or optimizing capital investment, but do it over decades. And they're partnering with us because, once again, beyond the tech that underlines it, the understanding of that physical world and domain expertise is critical to them. So I want to just give you 2 examples to make it very tangible, Saba.

Great. And then maybe just sort of revisiting the commentary earlier around the U.S. and the IIJA and potential renewal. I guess just from your vantage point, are you finding particularly in the U.S., a bit more stability relative to last year and sort of these perspectives around either a renewal or some sort of an extension of the infrastructure investment program. Is that sort of based on what you're hearing from the clients either at state level or some of the federal agencies you work with?

Saba, the answer is yes. Absolutely. We feel we're operating in a more stable, more -- may sound strange what I'm going to say, but more predictable environment than perhaps a year ago.

We'll now take the next question. This is from Chris Murray from ATB Capital Markets.

And Alex, thanks again for the commentary around AI and the next generation of tools. I guess I want to maybe stay away from AI, and I've got some other questions. More about the guidance, I think, and EBITDA margin. I know it's something we've talked about. But right now, at the midpoint, we're looking at about a 40 basis point improvement. I guess a couple of pieces to this question. I mean if we look at last year, I think, Alain, you noted you really were on track for about 80 basis points year-over-year. 40 basis points seems a little thin. But can you just maybe walk us through any puts and takes that we may see about the high end versus the low end? It feels like between the IT platform, some of the AI tools, what you're seeing in backlog and the mix you would think that, that would be trending higher, but just any thoughts around how to think about the evolution of margin over the next year?

Yes. Thank you, Chris. Extremely committed to our 30 to 50 bps a year. So some of the moving parts just to keep in mind, for example, recently completed the acquisition of Ricardo. That's -- they have a much lower margin, and that's a good thing. That's an opportunity for us to bring them to our level. But for '26, it is a 15 to 20 bps drag on our margin guidance. So that's to be taken into consideration.

And for TRC, they run at a slightly lower margin than us, and we just closed the transaction. So we will now get into work and look at what we could do together better. So there's potential upside opportunity there. But for now, the 40 bps is what we feel is a realistic guide. But keep in mind the Ricardo drag. And keep in mind also, we've been -- if there's one thing that we're very proud of is you look at our margin track record for the last 3 years, it's beyond 500 basis points. So we will continue to push. You could sleep peacefully on that front. We will continue to push on making margin grow and build more efficiency in the business.

Okay. That's great. And then just one other question. And again, it's something that we haven't heard a lot of, but it seemed to come out a lot in different regions is resources. Can you just remind us or kind of maybe give us some more color on what you're seeing in the resource industry and the types of work you're doing right now? Is this sort of pre-feasibility study? Is this development work? So any additional color on how the resources business is evolving and what you expect over the next couple of years would be great.

Yes. I just talked briefly about our mining consulting offering. I think we're feeling extremely good about it given the demand that are projected in the years to come. We are seeing and have seen in the U.S., gas, for instance, also increasing. So when we think about mining and resources, we are quite bullish about the future for our sector and for our business internally, but for the industry as a whole.

Thank you. And there are no further questions at this time. So I will now hand the conference back to the speakers for closing comments. Thank you.

So again, thank you so much for attending the call. I understand that there were a lot of you attending the call. And so we look forward to updating you on the performance of the company over the course of the next 4 quarters. And again, thank you, and I wish you a great day. Bye-bye.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect.

Good afternoon and thank you for joining our webcast. Today, we are delighted to announce that we have reached an agreement to acquire TRC, which is expected to close in Q1 2026.

There will be no question-and-answer session today due to the concurrent equity offering, which we have also announced in connection with the acquisition.

Alexandre L'Heureux, our President and CEO; and Alain Michaud, our CFO, are joining us this afternoon.

During the webcast, we will make forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ from those expressed or implied. We undertake no obligation to update or revise any of these statements. Relevant factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those forward-looking statements are listed in our MD&A for the quarter that ended September 27, 2025, and in the press release issued today in connection with our proposed acquisition of TRC and related financing, each of which can be found on SEDAR+ and on our website. In addition, during the webcast, we may refer to specific non-IFRS measures.

These measures are also defined in our MD&A for the quarter that ended September 27, 2025, and in our investors presentation. Our MD&A and investor presentations include reconciliations of non-IFRS measures to the most directly comparable IFRS measures. Management believes that these non-IFRS measures provide useful information to investors regarding the corporation's financial conditions and results of operations as they provide additional critical metrics of its performance. These non-IFRS measures are not recognized under IFRS, do not have any standardized meaning prescribed under IFRS and may differ from similarly named measures reported by other issuers and accordingly, may not be comparable. These measures should not be considered as a substitute for the related financial information prepared by IFRS.

With that, I will now turn the webcast over to Alexandre.

Thank you, Quentin, and good afternoon, everyone. Today marks an exciting milestone in the execution of our 2025 2027 global strategic action plan.

With the planned acquisition of TRC, a premier brand in the U.S. power and energy market, we are cementing WSP's industry leadership in the Power & Energy sector and are becoming the largest and most diversified engineering and design firm in the United States.

This strategic move consolidates our position, broadens our reach, deepens our expertise and unlocks new growth opportunities, setting the stage for WSP to continue to thrive.

Before we discuss the TRC acquisition in greater detail, let me highlight a few reference points on WSP's historical performance.

First, we are proud to have delivered total revenue growth CAGR of approximately 13% in the last 10 years, 16% in the last 5 years and 19% in 2025, increasing our pace over time and delivering more growth than any firm in our public peer group.

Since our IPO in 2006, we have achieved positive organic growth every year, except in 2020 due to the pandemic.

Today, the fundamentals that drive our success continue to build on an even stronger platform, supporting robust organic growth.

We are also proud of our strong profitability mindset, reflected in our leading margins and our constant desire to push boundaries and set industry benchmarks.

Over the last 3 strategic cycles, we have consistently improved our efficiency and delivered a 450 basis point margin improvement, averaging 50 basis points per year. This performance demonstrates our ability to execute, lead across multiple sectors and compound shareholder value.

With leading positions in all our key sectors, we are committed to continuing to thrive on our journey to become a leading brand in the professional services universe.

Even as an industry leader, our estimated market share reflects a very fragmented market, highlighting substantial room for expansion. We deployed over $5 billion in acquisition from 2022 to 2024, a record high for any strategic cycle. With the contemplated acquisition of TRC, combined with Lexica and Ricardo, we are committing over $5 billion in 2025 alone, the first year of our new strategic cycle. This strategically driven approach to M&A, along with our ability to unlock transactions is a clear differentiator.

Since 2021, we have closed 20 acquisitions, all accretive from day 1, a testament to our pursuit of building a strong, resilient industry champion capable of delivering compounding financial performance and superior shareholder value.

Let's now turn to the transaction overview. Welcoming TRC on the WSP family will propel our platform to new heights. This combination will supercharge our power and energy sector by expanding our offerings across the entire value chain, adding, amongst others, significant advisory and program management capabilities and providing unmatched leadership in the U.S.

Together, we will be poised to accelerate organic growth and capture the full spectrum of opportunities in a high-growth sector. And to top it off, WSP will become the largest engineering and design firm in the U.S.

Over the past decade, WSP has established a leading presence in each of our carefully selected sectors. In just over a year, subject to the closing of the TRC acquisition, we will have welcomed 2 U.S. powerhouses to our Power & Energy franchise, creating an unmatched offering.

Clients in the sector face increasing complexity and urgency driven by talent shortages, evolving delivery models and new partnership dynamics. They require partners with scale and comprehensive capabilities.

With today's announcement, we will, upon closing, be an even stronger partner of choice for our clients as we will become the largest engineering and design firm in the U.S.

TRC is a premier U.S. Power & Energy brand founded in 1969, long recognized for technical excellence and one of the most significant players in the U.S. with approximately 8,000 professionals.

At the crossroads of aging infrastructure and grid modernization, TRC's client base includes many blue-chip clients, and with half of its revenue derived from master services agreements, TRC's business is highly recurring and built on long-term relationships. This foundation is not just advantageous. It is essential as the industry faces growing infrastructure power needs.

Through its advanced grid solution, TRC plays a critical role in ensuring grid security, resilience and reliability, enabling clients to meet the demands of a rapidly evolving energy landscape.

TRC also leads in digital and intelligence grid solutions, advancing innovation and efficiency in the design, delivery, operation and maintenance of electrical infrastructure.

TRC will also be introducing new energy efficiency services to WSP, creating opportunities to help clients reduce electricity consumption and costs across manufacturing, health care and education.

Furthermore, TRC has delivered robust organic growth, including a 10-year revenue CAGR of 10% and a 4-year CAGR of 12% in the Power & Energy segment.

Their ability to grow backlog and leverage master services agreements, combined with the culture of cross-selling and strong client relationships has driven sustainable organic growth, delivering quality value to its client base, including many blue-chip companies.

With almost 60,000 projects delivered in 2025, TRC proudly serves a diverse range of public and private clients, seamlessly guiding complex projects from concept to completion. These projects span critical areas such as electric and power solutions, infrastructure resilience and clean transportation, demonstrating TRC's ability to deliver innovative solutions that shape the future of our communities.

The strategic rationale for this transaction is clear, and it is one centered on growth.

Together, WSP and TRC will create an integrated platform with industry-leading capabilities in advisory, engineering and program management.

Our combined highly complementary service offering will span the entire value chain, enabling us to serve all top 20 U.S. investor-owned utilities, or IOUs, covering every aspect of power generation, transmission, substation design and distribution.

While we share clients among major utilities and power developers, our services are highly complementary, which paves the way for deeper relationship across the power delivery sector.

In fact, WSP will become the largest transmission and distribution engineering company in the U.S., expanding our scale and geographic reach and significantly enhancing our testing and commissioning capabilities for utilities nationwide.

And similar to our experience with POWER Engineers, we expect significant revenue synergies. In a context where niche power expertise is in high demand across industries and sectors, the cross-selling opportunities are significant, specifically given our vast multidisciplinary offerings.

To sum it up, with this transaction, WSP will become the undisputed leader in the U.S. power and energy market. On a pro forma basis, approximately 1/3 of our net revenues in the U.S. will come from the U.S. power and energy sector with combined net revenues of $2.5 billion and a workforce of approximately 9,000 professionals. Globally, our Power & Energy workforce will total approximately 12,000 people.

Beyond Power & Energy, welcoming TRC will enhance our capabilities in water, infrastructure and environmental services. TRC will add valuable depth in water resources, storm water compliance, watershed planning and advanced water treatment, including PFAS, positioning us to capture a significant share of this growing market.

The water infrastructure capabilities, including flood control, drought preparedness and coastal restoration enhance WSP's resilience advisory portfolio.

We are also expanding our expertise in pipeline integrity, environmental, health and safety and remediation while doubling our solid waste business.

Our geographic footprint and client relationships will be broader than ever, opening up new cross-selling opportunities.

By combining WSP and TRC's environmental permitting, compliance, remediation and water capabilities, we will provide clients with end-to-end solutions, reinforcing our market leadership in the $27 billion environmental consulting space in the U.S.

TRC environmental practice is immediately synergistic with WSP. For example, we are positioned to create a leading force in environmental permitting and planning for Power & Energy projects, a critical early stage in the project life cycle with national power capital project activity expected to grow.

TRC's environmental, health and safety practice brings substantial additional capabilities to one of our smaller practice areas. As one of TRC's fastest-growing segments, it adds valuable new organic growth potential for our E&E sector. In addition, WSPs and TRCs are 2 of the nation's leading site investigation and remediation firms with unparalleled technical depth and breadth.

Finally, TRC's transportation business line is a natural addition to our leading T&I business and highly complementary in terms of geographic footprint and clients.

Now turning to the transformation orchestrated in our U.S. business in the last 5 years. Our journey to sector leadership has fundamentally reshaped our U.S. platform.

Since 2020, we have grown from 10,000 professionals and $2.4 billion in net revenue to now 27,000 professionals and $7.2 billion in 2025 on a pro forma basis.

Today, our portfolio is balanced and reflects our multidisciplinary expertise. We will soon be fulfilling our ambition to lead in each of our core sectors.

With TRC, we will have tripled our business size and diversified our offering to capitalize on high-growth sectors.

With this transaction, WSP will become the largest and most diversified engineering and design firm in the U.S. Our combined entities will now surpass all major competitors and our scales position us to capture even greater opportunities ahead.

Our growth profile will also be accelerating. An even more significant portion of our growth and profitability will now come from Canada and the U.S., capitalizing further on these regions strength within our global footprint.

Globally, Power & Energy will now represent 1/5 of our platform, a sector with a double-digit organic growth track record. We are also expanding our capabilities in water, infrastructure and environment fueled by strong fundamentals.

With that, I'll turn the presentation over to Alain, who will cover the key financial terms of this transaction.

Thank you, Alexandre, and good afternoon, everyone. Let me go through the key financial aspect of this exciting transaction.

The proposed acquisition of TRC is based on a cash offer of USD 3.3 billion, representing approximately 14.5x TRC's calendar year 2026 estimated EBITDA on a pre-IFRS 16 basis or 12.5x after including run rate synergies.

From a modeling perspective, it is worth noting that the IFRS 16 adjustment for TRC represents approximately 1.25% of net revenues.

I am thrilled to report that this acquisition will be immediately accretive to WSP's adjusted net earnings per share in the low to mid-single-digit range.

We expect cost synergies exceeding 3% of net revenues to be realized in the 24-month period following the closing of the transaction. And with fully realized cost synergies, we expect high single-digit accretion to adjusted net earnings per share.

In addition, TRC brings additional opportunities with significant margin upside potential and revenue synergies that are not considered in our stated accretion rates.

To fund the acquisition, we will be raising $850 million through the issuance of common shares composed of a new public offering on a bought deal basis and a private placement with La Caisse, our long-term cornerstone investor.

We've also secured an aggregate of USD 3.3 billion in committed term loans with a portion equivalent to the proceeds from the common share issuance to be canceled upon closing of the equity issuance.

Pro forma net debt to last 12-month adjusted EBITDA calculated as of March 31, 2026, is approximately 2.4 turns, which allows us to maintain our strong investment-grade profile, and we expect quick deleveraging based on our free cash flow generation profile and be under 2 turns within 12 months of closing.

The TRC transaction is expected to close in Q1 2026, subject to customary closing conditions, and it is not subject to a shareholders' vote.

On that note, back to you, Alexandre.

Thank you, Alain. As we conclude, let me highlight the key messages from today's announcement.

The TRC acquisition is fully aligned with our 2025, 2027 global strategic action plan released earlier this year. With this transaction, we are capitalizing on our ambitions in a priority region, the U.S. and significantly strengthening our position in the power and energy sector.

At the same time, we are amplifying the pace of our select strategic high-growth area such as the energy transition, project and program management, digital and water. In just the first year of executing our new strategic cycle, we are already on track to meet or exceed several of our 2027 targets. This progress significantly expedites the execution of our 2025-2027 Strategic Action Plan.

Following the closing of the TRC's acquisition, this transaction accelerates our organic growth rate profile, bringing together unmatched expertise and a broader service offering across the entire value chain.

We secured a #1 position in the power and energy sector and in the U.S., reinforcing our leadership in a critical and fast-growing market.

The combination is highly accretive with significant margin expansion and substantial opportunities for both cost and revenue synergies.

Thank you for your attention and continued support. We are truly excited about the prospect of combining forces with TRC as we embark on this next chapter together. Thank you.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the WSP Global, Inc. Third Quarter 2025 Results Conference Call and Webcast. [Operator Instructions] Please note that today's conference is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to your first speaker, Quentin Weber from Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and thank you for joining our call today. We will discuss our Q3 2025 performance followed by a Q&A session. Alexandre L'Heureux, our President and CEO; and Alain Michaud, our CFO are joining us this morning. Please note that this call is also accessible via webcast on our website.

During the call, we will make forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ from those expressed or implied. We undertake no obligation to update or revise any of these statements. Relevant factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those forward-looking statements are listed in the MD&A for the quarter ended September 27, 2025, which can be found on SEDAR+ and on our website. In addition, during the call, we may refer to specific non-IFRS measures. These measures are also defined in the MD&A for the year ending December 31, 2024.

Our MD&A includes reconciliations of non-IFRS measures to the most directly comparable IFRS measures. Management believes that these non-IFRS measures provide useful information to investors regarding the corporation's financial condition and results of operations as they provide additional critical metrics of its performance. These non-IFRS measures are not recognized under IFRS, do not have any standardized meaning prescribed under IFRS and may differ from similarly named measures reported by other issuers and accordingly, may not be comparable. These measures should not be considered as a substitute for the related financial information prepared by IFRS.

With that, I will now turn the call over to Alexandre.

Thank you, Quentin, and thank you all for joining us today. Let me start by saying that WSP underlying performance was strong in the quarter. Net revenues, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted net earnings increased by approximately 16%, 20% and 32%, respectively, despite continued fluid market dynamics. Among other things, our results highlight very robust margin improvement, strong free cash flow generation and exceptional performance from POWER Engineers as we celebrate the first year of the closing of the acquisition.

Let me now expand on 3 key highlights. First, a few comments on our top line performance. If you turn to Page 5 in today's investor presentation, we highlight a healthy underlying business performance with mid-single-digit organic growth for the quarter. In fact, across our 3 largest segments, Canada, the Americas and EMEA, we delivered mid- to high single-digit organic growth when isolating the impact of a significant project upside in Canada in Q3 2024 and the historical high level of storm-related assignment in the U.S. in Q3 2024 versus the historical low level of such assignments in Q3 2025. In Asia Pacific, we are observing early signals of improvement, including healthy growth in backlog and in New Zealand delivering modest organic growth in net revenue, a first in the last 5 quarters.

Second, on profitability. Adjusted EBITDA increased by almost 20% in dollar terms during the quarter. We reached a record high margin at 20.2% representing an improvement of 70 basis points for the quarter and 50 basis points over the 9-month period, supported by continued focus on productivity. In addition, our solid results reflect the absorption of optimization and rightsizing costs, which impacted margin by 30 basis points in the third quarter and 40 basis points year-to-date.

Third, I am very pleased with our cash performance, a continuation of our first 2 quarters. Free cash flow reached almost $900 million for the 9-month period, an increase of $645 million compared to last year. DSO stood at 71 days within our targeted range at historical low level for third quarter. We are well on track to exceed our 100% conversion target of annual free cash flow to net earnings.

Let's now review our regional operation. Starting with Canada. Net revenue organic growth reached 6% for the quarter when adjusted to exclude the impact of a favorable project in Q3 2024. Looking at the next -- at the year-to-date performance, the region delivered a healthy net revenue organic growth of 7%. Canada delivered an impressive margin of 27.8%, representing a 100 basis point increase compared to Q3 2024 and leading margins across our global platform. Lastly, Canada's backlog grew 15% organically since the beginning of the year.

In the Americas, net revenue organic growth stood at 6.6% when adjusting for the lower level of emergency response services in the United States, a standout contributor to our performance in the U.S. and not included in the 6.6% just stated has been POWER Engineers, which posted net revenue organic growth in the mid-teens in both the third quarter and the first 9 months of 2025.

Moving to EMEA. Performance exceeded expectations in the U.K. with 11% net revenue organic growth driven by strong positioning as a Tier 1 player in the country. The Nordics showed encouraging signs of improvement, supported by growing backlog, specifically in Sweden. Overall, EMEA delivered 6.4% net revenue organic growth for the quarter and 4.8% year-to-date.

Turning to APAC. New Zealand posted modest growth in the quarter, and the backlog has increased significantly year-to-date. In Australia, we are seeing the backlog trending upward, although some clients' decision are affecting its accessibility. Now let's move to M&A. On October 9, we closed the acquisition of Ricardo, a milestone that marks an important step that moves us closer to our strategic ambitions.

Ricardo brings world-class expertise in advisory, energy addition and transition, air quality, water solutions and rail strengthening our position in the U.K., Australia and the Netherlands. Our teams are actively engaged in integration activities, including setting up different work streams of importance, our clients' teams are coming together to assess net revenue opportunities.

Moving on to POWER Engineers, Q3 marked the first anniversary of our firms coming together, a milestone defined by exceptional results, strong execution and accelerating demand for power and energy services. Over the past year, POWER Engineers has delivered organic growth in net revenue in the mid-teens and is now contributing to WSP margin expansion. From the outset, we recognized a significant potential for revenue synergies. Since the acquisition, that potential has translated in action. Together, we have built a robust pursuit pipeline exceeding $1.4 billion, actively tracking synergies across more than 300 opportunities. One year later, we are proud of the remarkable progress we have made together.

Now let's briefly discuss our end markets. Our overall Power and Energy business is performing very well, and our backlog has grown steadily over the past 2 years, reflecting strong market demand for power and energy-related services. This momentum extends to our property and buildings business, which delivered strong results in the AI and the cloud infrastructure sectors. In Q3 2025, we secured data center project wins across the U.S.A., Canada, Chile, Sweden, Norway, Thailand, Australia and Singapore, underscoring our leadership in the global data center market.

At the same time, in the commercial real estate market, we are gaining traction in refurbishment and retrofit projects, driven by rising office occupancy and the urgent need to upgrade assets at risk of becoming stranded, further reinforcing our premier position in this space.

Meanwhile, our Earth & Environment business continues to see strong demand globally for permitting new energy assets, including power lines, nuclear facilities and hydrogen pipelines. In contrast, some clients have chosen to defer capital projects, which influence the pace of our field season, specifically in Canada and in the U.S.

On the Transportation & Infrastructure front, Aviation continues to experience a strong post-pandemic recovery with airports worldwide investing heavily in expansion program, and we recently secured a single mandate to expand Heathrow Airport, which is operating at capacity and undertaking an extensive improvement to meet the mid-21st century air transport demand.

Another key win during the quarter was WSP confirmed participation in the Toronto Pearson Airports accelerator program, which delivers vital upgrades and airport assets. Rail and transit remain in demand, and we celebrate 2 major wins this quarter. The Eglinton Crosstown West Extension Station Rail and system contract in Canada and the Uppsala light rail project in Sweden, a 17-kilometer new line valued at $1 billion that support the city climate neutral initiative. In the United States, investment in asset renewal continues highlighted by our recent mandate to modernize the Briarcliff-Peekskill Parkway in Westchester County, New York. This environmental assessment aims to enhance safety and resilience for this 13-kilometer corridor amid evolving climate requirements.

Overall, we see continued momentum and positive momentum, but let me state the obvious. We are currently evolving in fluid market dynamics, including, amongst other things, shifting client priorities and evolving geopolitical context. Despite this reality, our key markets are performing well, industry trends remain current and our performance underscores the resilience of our diversified platform and the strength of our execution.

Now over to you, Alain.

Thanks, Alex, and hello, everyone. I'm very pleased with our results this quarter. For the third quarter, revenue and net revenues increased by approximately 14% and 16%, respectively, displaying solid performance and healthy underlying fundamentals. The increase was attributable to acquisition growth of 10.1% and organic revenue growth of 3.7%.

POWER Engineers continue to demonstrate strong growth with a mid-teens organic growth rate compared to Q3 2024. And as a reminder, starting in Q4, POWER Engineers will contribute to our organic growth. Backlog reached $16.4 billion, up 10.6% in the 12-month period, representing approximately 11 months of revenue and a book-to-burn ratio above 1.

Moving on to profitability. Adjusted EBITDA in the quarter amounted to $700 million, compared to $585 million in the third quarter of 2024, an increase of approximately 20%. Of interest, we are very proud of the significant milestone reached this quarter with adjusted EBITDA margin reaching a record high of 20.2%, compared to 19.5% in Q3 2024, an increase of 70 basis points, mainly due to our continued focus on productivity. And excluding optimization and restructuring costs, our margin increased 100 basis points in the quarter.

Adjusted net earnings for the quarter reached approximately $370 million or $2.82 per share, up 32% and 26% respectively compared to the third quarter of 2024. The increase was mainly attributable to higher adjusted EBITDA and upside in tax expenses and financing costs. As for our cash position, I'm particularly pleased with our continued performance and cash flow generation.

Free cash flow was approximately $890 million for the 9-month period ended September 27, 2025, representing an improvement of $645 million compared to the corresponding period in '24. The trailing 12 months of free cash flow totaled $1.5 billion, representing 1.7x net earnings attributable to shareholders. This strong outcome reflects our ongoing focus on working capital management and optimization under our new ERP platform. DSO stood at 71 days on September 27, 2025 compared to 80 days last year, a record for a third quarter.

Net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio stood at 1.4x, which is within our target range of 1 to 2x and allow us to appropriate -- with the appropriate flexibility to deploy capital. On our ERP program, the 2025 deployment proceeded as planned, and we're now preparing for 2026, which will result in 95% of our platform under the new ERP with key regions and entities, including POWER Engineers, Ricardo, Australia, New Zealand and Sweden set to come on board. This milestone represents a critical step in the evolution of our support function. And once fully implemented, these changes will enable us to unlock further efficiencies across the organization, and serve as an additional lever for margin expansion over time.

Regarding our financial expectations for the year, we have revised and increased our 2025 financial outlook with net revenue now expected to range between $13.8 billion and $14 billion and adjusted EBITDA between $2.54 billion to $2.56 billion. We are, therefore, well aligned to reach or exceed the higher end of our initial financial outlook issued in February 2025.

As a reminder, our '25 financial outlook reflects the expected contribution for Ricardo plc in the fourth quarter. The acquisition closed 2 weeks after the start of Q4, which means we will not capture a full quarter of net revenue. Finally, with the Atlantic hurricane season now essentially behind us, we expect the condition observed this quarter in the U.S. to extend into Q4 2025. For context, these services contributed to approximately $70 million in net revenue in Q4 2024, one of the highest volume recorded in the past 3 decades. As a result, our year-over-year comparison for the Americas segment in Q4 2025 will be influenced by this exceptionally strong prior year baseline. We're also closely monitoring the current U.S. government shutdown, which adds another layer of uncertainty to the operating environment.

On that, back to you, Alex.

Thank you, Alain. As we close the third quarter, I want to emphasize that what truly stands out the resilience of our diversified platform. Despite evolving market dynamics, WSP adapted and delivered a strong performance, underpinned by disciplined execution, operational excellence and a clear focus on long-term value creation. The recent acquisition of Ricardo further strengthens our capabilities in advisory and energy transition, air quality, and rail, positioning us to capture opportunities in high-growth sectors globally.

We have the financial strength and flexibility to deploy capital for strategic acquisitions in a fragmented market, supported by a robust balance sheet and disciplined approach to M&A. Our pipelines remain healthy with opportunities aligned to our core markets and grow priorities. As 2025 draws to a close, we look ahead to 2026 with measured optimism and confident and our ability to adapt to evolving market conditions and continue delivering value to our clients and our shareholders. Our diversified platform, our strategic focus and our operational discipline position us well to navigate what lies ahead.

Thank you for your continued trust and support. With that, we can open the lines to questions -- for questions.

[Operator Instructions] And the questions come from the line of Steven Fisher from UBS.

So on POWER Engineers, congrats on the 1-year anniversary. And so now that you're into the second year of your ownership, just curious what you see as being different during the second year of ownership versus the first year? Is it kind of the main focus of capturing that $1.4 billion pipeline that you said? Is that your main priority? Or is it anything else? And do you think you can maintain this mid-teens growth rate from here?

Very, very good question. I mean in times where there's a lot of noise and things are fluid, actually consistency is oftentimes, something very, very positive and welcome. And frankly, what I expect in 2026 is hopefully something very similar to 2025 for POWER Engineer. We have a great backlog. We worked for a great blue-chip list of our clients. And with what we know today, I don't see why the growth profile of POWER Engineer would change in 2026 versus 2025.

And if you look at the overall activity in '25 with POWER, we've done a large part of the integration process. The last milestone is the ERP on Jan 1, '26 -- for most of 2026, will be a year where we're fully combined and harmonized together in our ways of working. So it makes us feel positive about 2026 for POWER Engineers.

And then I guess a bigger picture here. When you adjust the growth in the quarter for the 2024 project and the emergency work, you're still seeing maybe a little slowdown in organic growth this quarter overall. So as you look forward to next year, just curious in your confidence in any reacceleration. And if you think you can reaccelerate your organic growth, which markets do you think could become more positive versus those that might see a little bit of deceleration and thinking about mostly regionally, but curious if there's any end market color that would make it different?

Well, I would respectfully disagree with you, I think when you adjust for emergency responses. And again, let me remind everyone, I mean, last year, we've been tracking the fee revenue that we've been delivering with -- during emergency responses in the fall for the last 3 years, all the way back to the Parsons Brinckerhoff acquisition. And last year was the fourth highest in 30 years level of response and services that we delivered in Q3 and Q4 in our history.

And this year will be the fourth lowest in 30 years. So we felt that we needed to highlight that to you because once you adjust for this, I mean, I'm quite pleased given all of the noise that we hear in the marketplace right now. People don't talk much about the government shutdown, but we're past a month now, impossible to issue permitting, impossible to get anything done. And despite all of that, I mean we continue to perform in mid-single digits, high-single digits. So I'm quite pleased with that.

Going into 2026, the pipeline of opportunities is still very strong. You look at the -- our win rate, which actually in 2025 has increased as opposed to decrease. I mean if we can get the noise aside for a second and gain more stability in the marketplace, I think we'll have clients a lot more in a better position to deploy capital. So going into 2026, I actually believe that it should be a good year for WSP.

We are now going to proceed with our next question, and the questions come from the line of Chris Murray from ATB Capital Markets.

Looking at the margin profile, first of all, congratulations on getting over 20%, it's a bit of a target for a while. But one of the things that sort of stuck out to me is when I looked at the kind of the difference between organic growth and change in headcount, in almost all the regions, organic growth has outstripped the change in headcount. And I'm just starting to wonder if there's something that's a structural change in the business? I know you referenced some productivity. But just how do we think about the relationship between your ability to generate organic growth and your headcount as we go into the next couple of years?

That's a great question. I'm pleased that you're highlighting that. I think this is more of a long-term trend than a yearly trend or a change over the course of this year. If you go back the last 10 years, you'll see that the fee per employee that we have been generating over the course of the last decade has consistently increased. So in other words, we're doing more with less. And DAP is the result of many levers that we are pulling as an organization, one being more productive. WSP -- we -- you look at the margin profile and what we have been able to achieve in the last 5 years, the resulting effect of all this is obviously us being more productive, running a tighter ship.

I think we cannot exclude also technology. We are using technology. And also, we have entered sectors and markets where we are able to charge a higher rate for the work that we do. In recent years, we've entered in a big way in mining consulting. We are the largest mining consultant in the world. There's not one large mine in the world that WSP is not involved in. And we are able to have a higher charge-out rate for this. Same thing in the POWER sector more recently. So I could go on like this and on for a long time. But over the year, we've changed our project mix. But more importantly, with the use of technology, and that will continue to accelerate. And also how productive we have been, we have been able to do a lot more with less.

And then to that point, I think I hear Alain talk about like the ERP system is almost ready to go. We're seeing sort of these trends in productivity. Is it fair to think that the year-over-year growth just -- should drive margins? Like usually, there's a fairly standard kind of spread on margins, call it, 50, 60, 70 basis points, that comes as a natural absorption. Is there an ability to change that to accelerate that margin improvement?

I'm not sure I understand your question, but I think over the last few years, if I look back at our track record, I mean, over the years, we have been able to increase our margin profile, good year, bad year, around 50 basis points, Alain, something like that, which has been consistent. To move a global organization of our size by 0.5 point -- by 50 basis points every year to me is a great improvement. And I think would be -- would be leading our peer group, I would argue, in the average peer group. So I'm quite pleased with that.

Do I see ways to continue to accelerate that? I can tell you that's what we do every day. We're trying to work very hard to continue to make those improvements. And as a friendly reminder, this year, we've absorbed a lot of redundancy in structural cost, that would have increased by 40 basis points, our already increased margin profile. So if you strip that out, I think the margin improvement this year has been just extraordinary.

And then just one last one for me. The Canadian budget came down, lots of talk about infrastructure and infrastructure spend. But a lot of those announcements have already been tied to projects that have been made. How are you seeing the change in the Canadian environment with respect to federal stimulus for infrastructure and spending?

Well, I think the focus on infrastructure spending in Canada has always been there. I think where I felt past governments and current governments is, it's one thing to be focused on infrastructure, it's another to deploy the capital and accelerate the spend on infrastructure. Hopefully, this government is very focused on deploying rapidly the funding. So I think the focus on infrastructure is not the issue is to make sure that we deploy the capital rapidly. But certainly, I saw this budget very positively when it was announced.

We are now going to proceed with our next question, and the questions come from the line of Michael Tupholme from TD Cowen.

Just wanted to ask you about the APAC region, see if you can talk a little bit more about the improvements that you're seeing in that segment and how we should think about organic growth in APAC over coming quarters?

First and foremost, we see a strong growth in the backlog at this point in time. Increased growth in the backlog at this point in both New Zealand and Australia, which is an early, but positive signal. We also see our win rate increasing. And we also see the proposal activity level to slowly increasing as well. So these are our early signs. As I mentioned earlier on this morning, New Zealand recorded positive organic growth for the first time in 5 quarters. So hopefully, this will bodes well for the future. I think Australia is a few quarters behind New Zealand. How many? We'll assess that as we are entering 2026.

To me, Australia, and I've mentioned it during the last quarter, we are totally committed to the region. But if you look back at the type of organic growth that we generated in the last 5, 6 years in Australia, I think it's absolutely normal that a country goes through a period of pause after such a big spend in infrastructure. But longer term, I'm quite positive about the country. So long story short, Michael, if I'm being asked to look into my crystal ball, I think it's going to take a few quarters in Australia to see better results.

That's definitely helpful. And then just somewhat related on the...

Sorry, Michael. And by the way, I wanted to be crystal clear on this. This is not self-inflicted to WSP. This is more structural for the country. So what's true for us is true for everyone else. I can tell you that.

No, that makes sense. And then just secondly, just as it relates to the rightsizing costs in the quarter and the corresponding margin impact. Was that entirely in the APAC segments or did some other segments also experience some rightsizing costs and margin impact? And I guess, are we -- are you through those rightsizing costs? Or do you expect there to be more overcoming quarters in any regions?

There's obviously Australia and New Zealand, there have been some, but there's been some others elsewhere. I mean, in the Nordics as well in recent years, we've -- with the cooling off of the infrastructure spend, especially in the private sector with the war, Russia, which is next door neighbor to the Nordics, I think there's been a slowdown. The good news again is we're seeing a strong backlog growth now. And I talked about a large project that was awarded to us in Sweden. So I'm feeling good again around the country and the regions. And for the first time in many quarters now, I feel things are picking up. So that's positive.

But to be specific about your question, I mean, we've been rightsizing pretty much everywhere. I mentioned also the field season this summer, which was probably not as good as expected in Canada and in the U.S. because of the fluid market conditions, I think people are more in a wait-and-see approach. So we had to rightsize our field employees over the course of the summer. But again, we absorb all of that, and we're able to deliver actually, I think you would agree, fantastic EBITDA margin in Canada, for instance.

We are now going to proceed with our next question, and the questions come from the line of Frederic Bastien from Raymond James.

Super pleased with the margins. That's hats off, that's excellent. Looking back 10 years ago, I would have never imagined you could get there, but it's amazing and the fact that you're still going for more is even more encouraging. Just a question on the M&A side. Are you seeing the competitive backdrop for M&A showing signs of improvement in your -- in today's fluid environment? I would suspect so, but I don't want to make a conclusion on my own. So I would love to get your opinion.

Yes. Frederic, very good question. Look, we -- less than 12 months ago, we completed POWER Engineer. This was our largest acquisition in our history. So as you can imagine, I wanted us to do a good job at delivering the value of this acquisition. Earlier this year, we completed and announced the acquisition of Ricardo, which will contribute to the bottom line starting next quarter. And as I said, the pipeline is healthy. If my memory is not failing me, we finished the quarter with a leverage of 1.4x EBITDA. So as you can imagine, we are in a very solid position. And I would like, obviously, to continue to use our balance sheet and use the position of strength that we're in, given our diversified platform to be opportunistic and continue to grow platform.

It seems like there's not a week that goes by that there's rumors about WSP buying a company X, company Y, company Z. Would you care to comment on that?

I don't think anyone should be surprised because I'm probably the biggest supporter and avid supporter of consolidation in our industry. So I'm not surprised that our name is being thrown around with possible rumors. Obviously, I'm not going to comment on those rumors. But I was a big proponent of our model 10 years ago, and I continue to be. And as I said, if we have an opportunity to use our balance sheet, we will.

So normal course of business for you guys, basically?

Yes.

[Operator Instructions] We are now going to proceed with our next question, and the questions come from the line of Anshul Agarwal from CIBC.

So I just have one question on your APAC region. So this quarter, WSP reported a strong EBITDA margin improvement in APAC. So could you just please provide some color on what is driving these margins specifically in APAC?

Look, we have been busy since the beginning of the year to set up the business for future success. That's the way I would describe it. We want our Australian business and our New Zealand business to be as fit as possible to be in a position to take advantage when the market picks up again. And as I said, we see early signs of that with the backlog growing in the mid- to high single digit this year that the business is fit to take advantage of that.

[Operator Instructions] We have no further questions at this time. So I'll hand back to you for closing remarks.

Well, I think there's one additional question.

Yes, we just have a question that just arrived.

Okay. We'll take it.

The questions come from the line of Jonathan Goldman from Scotiabank.

Just wanted to echo the comments about the phenomenal margin performance and that was despite the restructuring. But when do you anticipate completing all the restructuring activities?

Well, we always, always streamline our business. But this year, the reason why we mentioned it, Jonathan, is because, obviously, it's been more predominant than perhaps other years. We had to do it, as I said, in the Asia Pacific region. We've done it in our Asia region. We've done it in our Nordics region. We've done it in the field for field workers in Canada and the U.S. this summer. So because of the size of it, we highlight it -- we did highlight it. Do I think it's going to slow down? I think we've done a lot of that work already. It's been done already, but we should expect to continue to have some.

And then Alex, you kind of alluded to this a bit, I think in an earlier question. But have the government shutdowns in the U.S. impacted the business significantly or at all, I guess, in Q4? And if we're not looking at organic growth, are there other metrics we can track or maybe ask for color about win rate, close activity that might be a better marker of underlying demand in the U.S.?

I would say that so far, the shutdown has had a minimal impact. But I would then finish my sentence by saying but. So the point I'm making here is that they cannot go on forever. At some point in time, I'll give you an example, the Environmental Protection Agency that are issuing permits, 90% of the staff has been referred, so nothing is being done right now. So for us, right now, no or minimal impact. But if it was to go on for another month or 2, I mean, clearly, the entire industry will suffer from this. So for now good, but more color to be provided in Q4 at the end when and if we are not seeing any further improvement in that regard.

And maybe one more for me on M&A. You talked about this earlier. And clearly, you guys are always open for business. But is there any area, region, vertical that you're looking at specifically or anyone now that you find more attractive versus other sort of sectors, whether it's power, nuclear or anything that you're looking at specifically?

Yes, we are focused on at this moment on North America. So certainly, despite all the noise that we hear and the tension between our 2 countries, Canada, U.S. WSP, we believe that, one, if not the best place to do work and business in our space is North America. So we continue to be focused on North America. And obviously, if I had an opportunity to continue to grow our platform and the sectors that we're trying to build at the moment, power, water, project management services, transportation even. I mean that obviously is something that I would like to be in a position to do.

You certainly have the platform to do it.

We are now going to proceed with our next question, and the questions come from the line of Maxim Sytchev from National Bank of Canada Capital Markets.

Just a quick one for me as most questions have been already asked. In terms of U.K. growth acceleration, do you mind maybe providing a bit more color in terms of what's happening there because the headlines overall seem to be less than bullion, but clearly, you are finding ways to grow there. So would love to hear some comments.

Well, I think you're absolutely right. We are the leading firm in the U.K., and I'm saying that very humbly and respectfully to our peer group. And you are right in saying that we're finding ways to grow at a very high rate this year. We have an incredible leadership team in the U.K. and our win rate is outstanding. And we're going into 2026 with the same ambitions. So we'll see and more to come when we discuss our outlook for 2026, but I feel we're in a good position in the U.K.

We have no further questions. I will now hand back to you for closing remarks. Thank you.

Well, thank you again for attending this call, and we look forward to updating you on our outlook in 2026 during the next conference call. In the meantime, I'd like to wish you a great day. Thank you very much.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you, and have a good rest of your day.