Stantec Inc. (STN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Audio Gap] Dive into our plan for how we intend to achieve the vision and deliver purpose-driven growth. And we'll share the metrics that we're going to use to share our success. But before we look ahead, though, I'd like to reflect on the journey that Stantec has been on that brought us to this point. While we still have 1 month left before completing our 2020 strategic plan, we can confidently say that we have successfully delivered. By leaning into our 4 value creators, growth, innovation, excellence in people, Stantec today is a top-tier global design firm. Through both organic hires and acquisitions, we are now over 28,000 people strong, approaching 29,000 when ZETCON joins us in January. And as measured through our financial performance, we have delivered exceptional value. Over the last 4 years, we've grown net revenue by 33%, adjusted EBITDA by 44% and adjusted EPS by 82% and the relentless pursuit of operational excellence by each and every Stantec employee has resulted in the expansion of our EBITDA margin by over 100 basis points, and adjusted net income as a percentage of net revenue has grown by over 200 basis points. Over this period, we've delivered a total shareholder return of over 275% and as our market cap has exceeded $11 billion. In executing our strategy, we have maintained our discipline in allocating capital to the highest and best use, while protecting the strength of our balance sheet. I'm particularly proud that in achieving these incredible results, Stantec has stayed true to our identity as a people-centric organization. We've solidified our position as a global leader in sustainability through our authentic approach to environmental, social and governance matters. ESG is not a stand-alone initiative at Stantec, and we have never been about using quotas to drive ESG performance. Rather, our commitment to driving business excellence through doing what is right, remains deeply ingrained in everything that we do. And we've demonstrated that if you focus on doing what's right, excellent business and financial outcomes will follow. We have been named in Corporate Knights Global 100 most sustainable corporations in the world for the last 4 years and have consistently been ranked first among our industry peer group. And since 2019, when we first began measuring, our revenue that's aligned with the UN sustainable development goals has grown from $2.1 billion or 43% of gross revenue to $3.4 billion, representing 60% of gross revenue. And I'm so proud of what we've accomplished and importantly, that we've done it by remaining true to our values. But importantly, there is still so much more to come. Stantec is truly firing on all cylinders, and that's why we are so excited to share where we are going over the next 3 years and the continued value that we will create through our bold new strategic plan. As I noted earlier, Stantec is a people company, and we are collectively driven by the visceral sense of purpose to empower people to rise to the world's challenges. In charting the course for the next phase of the Stantec journey, we sought to revalidate our understanding of the challenges that our clients and communities are facing and the drivers that are behind them. The insight that we gained from this analysis informs the actions that we will undertake as we help our communities to redefine what's possible in the face of unprecedented challenges. Our new strategic plan represents our response through which we aim to achieve our greatest ambition, which is to facilitate the success of our clients, our communities and our people. And we will continue to lean into our value creators of growth, innovation, excellence and people to deliver on this ambition. So let's jump into the specifics. There are a number of key global trends that are reshaping our world, and we've summarized them into these 4 broad categories: climate change and resource security, demographic, social and urbanization changes, incremental and breakthrough technology and geopolitical, economic and industry shifts. The trend towards addressing climate change and resource security is driving our industry development and catalyzing actions, for example, around the global energy transition, adaptation and electrification. Loss of biodiversity and ecosystem stress, coupled with extreme weather and food security represents a connected set of critical challenges to navigate. And this creates multifold opportunities for Stantec around making existing systems cleaner and greener while improving performance and reducing inefficiency. Demographic, social and urbanization changes are being driven by people shifting priorities linked to demographic and generational change alongside embracing societal value such as equity, equality and diversity. We see a spotlight on health and well-being as both a choice and a necessity. All of these things are evolving the fabric of infrastructure, buildings in the urban form. For Stantec, this leads to immense opportunities around our social value and community benefit services. And as a people-led business, our culture continues to attract the best in the industry. Our focus on equity, diversity and the client experience and all that we do sets us apart from our peers and aligns us really well to client demands. Incremental and breakthrough technology is being driven by Industry 5.0 and the digital revolution, and it is radically changing how problems are solved and decisions are made. And the proliferation of technology is driving significant demand for critical minerals and major technology shifts for electrification. We recognize the need to stay on the digital front foot as we evolve our commercial models and develop automated, connected, smart solutions. Artificial intelligence and machine learning decision intelligence is a key area for Stantec, and we lead and will continue to lead in digital ecosystems and integration efforts. And finally, geopolitical, economic and industry shifts are being driven by the increased frequency of global disruption, which can have complex and interconnected consequences. A number of our clients are at the heart of reshaped and reshaping markets linked to this disruption, including deglobalization and near shoring and global food and energy security. This has accelerated change in 2 attractive growing market spaces for Stantec, advanced manufacturing and food processing and production. Related issues around labor and material constraints, cost escalation and affordability concerns mean our advisory services linked to reinvented supply chains and energy security solutions are directly tackling key global challenges. So with this understanding of the challenges that our clients and communities are facing and the key trends shaping these challenges, we focused our go-forward plan on 3 broad strategic growth initiatives, or SGIs, that we intend to pursue. And they are climate solutions, communities and infrastructure of the future and future technology. These SGIs form the foundation of our organic growth plans for the next 3 years and inform the opportunities that we're going to pursue. Later in this presentation, John Take, our Chief Growth and Innovation Officer, will delve deeper into the opportunities that arise from each of these strategic growth initiatives. And then after the break, our business leaders will provide further color on how they see these opportunities unfolding in their respective markets. From an end market perspective, we're confident that we have the right mix between our 5 business operating units to fully address each of these strategic growth initiatives. Each of our BOUs is a very strong and competitive business in its own right. But Stantec's strategic advantage and differentiator is our ability to integrate all 5 of our BOUs to offer clients around the world unparalleled solutions to their most difficult challenges. Our 5 BOUs and their work in multiple subsectors provides a very high level of diversification for Stantec. This business mix creates great resiliency within our business when faced with disruptions like the COVID pandemic, a slowing economy or rising interest rates. And we've been very thoughtful about this diversification, and we've achieved excellent results with it. We intend to maintain this diversified portfolio and do not anticipate making any major shifts. What you will see, however, that as we continue to grow, the percentage that each business unit represents as a part of Stantec's overall revenues will just naturally ebb and flow, and we're not targeting specific percentages. That said, we do continue to expect a nice overall balance will be maintained given the vast opportunities that we see for each of our BOUs. From a geographic perspective, we have refreshed our evaluation of country attractiveness. First and foremost, our analysis validates that our current core geographies continue to provide significant opportunities for growth. In the United States, where we have about 11,500 people, we intend to continue to grow our top-tier market position as a full-service multi-sector business. The U.S. market remains very fragmented with the largest engineering firm accounting for only 6% of overall market share. This provides significant opportunity for Stantec to double our presence here. There are a significant number of multisector firms as well as more specialized firms, which would fit well within our business operating units. And so we can easily grow here in all 5 of our BOUs. In Canada, we look to retain and enhance our top-tier position. While it would be difficult for us to double our size in Canada due to having 8,500 people there already, there certainly are good opportunities for growth in the transportation, buildings and water sectors. In the U.K., where we have 2,500 people, we are dominant in water and have a very strong community development practice. We can double or even triple the size of our footprint in the U.K. as we pursue growth in environmental services, transportation and buildings to build out our full-service multi-sector business. In Australia and New Zealand, where we now have 3,000 people, we have a very strong water, buildings, environmental and mining practices, and we continue to see opportunities to broaden our service offerings with the potential to double in size. And of course, you'll have seen our recent announcement of ZETCON and our expansion into the German market. Expansion across Western Europe has long been a goal of ours, and ZETCON now positions us within the top 5 international firms within Germany. Germany's economy is the fourth largest in the world, and they have significant infrastructure needs. ZETCON is a firm that's grown by over 10% annually for the last number of years and continues to have significant prospects in front of it. Furthermore, the German market is also very fragmented and ZETCON provides us with a strong platform for continued M&A in the region. Combined with our presence in the Netherlands and Belgium, we now have a strong position in Europe and are poised for significant further growth. We'll continue to focus on growing our high-value integrated delivery centers in Pune and Manila and see an opportunity to double the collective size of those operations. And as I've said before, when we look at different geographies, the most important thing for us is to ensure ethics are of the highest standard and that the region is benefiting from geopolitical stability. And we continue to look to expand into additional countries with these as our key parameters. M&A remains a key growth strategy for us at Stantec. And we are in a position of tremendous opportunity as the industry continues to consolidate. As projects become larger and more complex, and the investment in digital technologies to lead in the future becomes more significant, we're finding that small and middle market firms are beginning to struggle to find their footing and remain competitive. And this has driven several recent discussions that we've had with firms who are considering their path forward, and I believe represents a significant opportunity for an acquirer of choice like Stantec. We have a great track record of delivering value through smart acquisitions of all sizes. While small to medium-sized firms remain in our sweet spot, as we've shown with Cardno, we are very capable of making larger acquisitions and growing synergistically. But strategic growth is what it's all about for us. And we will not make acquisitions simply for the sake of getting bigger. Being prudent and highly disciplined continues to be the cornerstone of our philosophy when it comes to M&A. Our criteria for screening acquisitions has not changed. First and foremost, there must be a strong cultural alignment. There must be a compelling strategic fit and they must be accretive to earnings and cash flow. And as we said on recent quarterly calls, the pipeline of potential firms who could join with Stantec has never been this full. We are laser focused on continuing to be the consolidator of choice for firms around the world who are looking to evolve their ownership structure. And Theresa is going to provide an overview of our capital allocation strategy and how that will support our continued M&A growth in her financial presentation later this morning. So in summary, these are exciting times for Stantec. Supported by a strong demand environment for our services, we are well positioned to take advantage of both the organic growth and M&A opportunities ahead of us. While we're operating very well, we have further levers to expand our EBITDA margin and earnings, and we will deliver superior financial performance through our greatest asset, which continues to be our people. And I'm going to invite members of our executive team to walk you through the details of the plan before Theresa presents our 3-year financial targets. And with that, I'll turn it over to John Take, our Chief Growth and Innovation Officer.

Good morning, everyone. I'm really excited this morning to share with you the next plans for the next chapter in Stantec story, particularly the growth and innovation side. Some of water resources engineer by training. That was sort of my home room at Stantec. So I deal with too much water or not enough water, spent 7 years after Katrina in New Orleans. Now I'm in the deserts of Arizona, where we have an emerging water opportunity to drive further industrial growth in Arizona. So having been with Stantec for a little over 29 years have been really honored to have an amazing career at Stantec. And with that history, I've never been more passionate about where we are in these next chapters as we continue to see Stantec grow and succeed. As Gord has noted in our comments, our 2024 to 2026 strategic plan, it does chart a very bold course for us. It's targeted at building on our technical excellence and responding to the global megatrends that are both shaping and challenging our world. We're going to boost our total shareholder return in the long run by delivering value-creating growth in conjunction with our M&A strategy. We're going to expand our market share by delivering top quartile organic growth and also simultaneously, we're going to improve our marketing efficiency and our productivity. All of these are key to achieving our financial targets. As we've been preparing our strategic plan, it's been absolutely inspiring to see the whole planning team and senior leadership and starting today, all 29,000 of our colleagues rallying around our strategic growth initiatives, which Gord has laid out for us. We've done a lot of research, independently verified that looks in detail at the projected total and serviceable addressable market statistics, which for the next 3 years, outline and support the path ahead for Stantec. While we're already very active in each of these areas, we palpably sense the potential in seizing additional opportunities in what are sure to be high-growth markets. Each of our initiatives are very big and they're broad. They create tremendous opportunities for organic growth with our clients and very importantly for all of our colleagues. So let's look at them in more detail. The impacts of climate change and the need for both mitigation and adaptation are enormous. I think we're still figuring this as a civilization. It's becoming more apparent that through our Climate Solutions, SGI, Stantec will have the ability to continue to provide and further grow a very broad range of innovative solutions to help our clients achieve their net zero goals, protect their valuable assets from climate change impacts and create increased resiliency through adaptation and hazard event, preplanning and management and unfortunately, response after disasters. All while creating more equitable, sustainable, green and resilient infrastructure. Our second SGI is ubiquitous. The nature of our SGI is evident in our community-based work. Everywhere you look in Stantec, every office, every desk, every laptop, you're going to find our subject matter experts working to redefine what's possible for the future of their communities and all of the supporting infrastructure, whether it's our building stock or our water supplies, the environment we live in, the roads we drive on, we're very clearly hearing our clients ask for a whole new class and generation of infrastructure, for new policy, for new funding vehicles. And very importantly, creative new ways of thinking about better solutions for the world going forward. Through this SGI, Stantec is going to reimagine and create new approaches to buildings and infrastructure to meet the future needs of society. We're going to embrace technology. We're going to integrate the natural and built environments and build that sense of place that Stantec is so good at creating. Our third strategic growth initiative, future technology is an incredible runway stretching ahead of us. In this SGI, we're going to further embrace the strategic development of both physical hard technologies and digital technologies. This is going to enable new service offerings in the first two strategic growth initiatives as well, while also critically driving efficiencies in our processes, project management, product delivery, how we do design, how we collaborate. And it will create exciting new avenues for growth. This is the intersection of the innovation value creator with our business. Innovation is a key enabler at Stantec. We're going to stretch it across all of our SGI's. It's critical for the execution of our strategy and an essential ingredient for our continued market competitiveness, given the rapid pace and investment towards the global digital transformation. The recent creation of our Chief Technology Officer role, our Director of AI and other positions reflects our very strong commitment to developing and commercializing digital solutions to both meet our client needs and grow higher-margin nonlabor revenue. The digital landscape continues to evolve. Tools like artificial intelligence and machine learning will play an increased role in our industry. Our CTO in partnership with our Chief Information and Security Officer will ensure that Stantec continues to be a leader in digital technology, both to drive further efficiencies and increase that productivity that's so important for our growing employee base and also to further develop our digital product offerings that will provide the solutions that our clients will require in their future challenges. With respect to artificial intelligence, we have an active AI task force at work at Stantec, which is responsible for investigating very specific use cases at Stantec, where AI can be used to improve its internal efficiencies in our support functions and project development and delivery, as I mentioned. We have hundreds of petabytes, and petabytes, that's 1 million gigs. So hundreds of millions of gigabytes of data, proprietary data that's stored in a library of proposals, report, design drawings. Since 2006, all of our proposals are sitting and digitally available. We're exploring the use of AI models on our Stantec data, not publicly available data on the Internet, to improve proposal and report generation, as you can imagine, by having tools that can prepare first passes of documents. Our engineers will avoid having to go out and find what they need. The tools will get them a template for a report or a proposal and use those archives to give them a leg up as they get started within minutes. We're investigating other uses of AI as a component of our overall digital enablement strategy, and we certainly see that it has the potential to increase efficiency and increase the amount of net revenue and profit we generate per employee and per our labor and benefits investment going forward. So the strong global megatrends, there are no secret. Gord described them in detail. They're well known to everybody. We, along with all of our competitors, see what our communities are facing. So it's really important that you understand why we are truly different and why we will win. Asifa will address this in more detail, but the short answer is very simple. It's our people and how they work together. The degree to which we collaborate across our strong businesses and our broad geographies at Stantec, it really is a differentiator. We all believe in a 1 Stantec philosophy, and we incentivize collaboration through components that are very intentional within our compensation program. They're designed for this purpose. So you take that underlying structure, you couple it with strong account management and corporate campaign programs where everyone comes together as all of our business lines to enter new markets. I'll talk about that in a bit. That ensures that to the maximum extent possible, we're cross-selling all of our services to all of our clients. The results speak for themselves. Just think about our top 25 clients and how they have evolved over the course of our last strategic plan. Currently, our top 25 clients represent more than 15% of our total net revenue. On average, they've been with us for more than 20 years. Some of them are now partners, not just clients. Most of these client relationships began predominantly through 1 or maybe 2 business lines. But because of our focus on cross-selling all of our top 25 clients, and you can see it in the image, all of them use at least 2 of our business lines and more than half are serviced by 4 or more of our business lines. This is a remarkable trend and it's growing. And now our challenge is to take our top 50 clients and replicate this as we continue to go forward. So I want to talk now a bit about our strategic growth programs. So we have a multi-disciplined approach to driving organic revenue growth. You'll hear from our business leaders later on how all of their businesses are working together and we have a well-developed suite of marketing and business development programs. So through these growth programs, we have targeted approaches for pursuing those strategic transformational projects that change us forever. We have programs to nurture our key accounts, support our top clients and enter new markets through those corporate campaigns I mentioned, and we have a great track record in this area. You've seen us build industry-leading positions in electrical grid modernization, coastal resiliency, renewable energy and most recently, our advanced manufacturing success in some very complex facilities, some of the most sophisticated technology on earth is being supported by Stantec projects. This suite of strategic growth programs that our team works on currently contributes about 50% of Stantec's total net revenue. By 2026, we aim to grow this to 60%. We're going to do that by further developing our global sales force, by advancing more full-time account managers at Stantec to target and land brand-new accounts for Stantec, to further advance the breadth of our services offered to our top 50 clients, to complete additional strategic hires and as we grow, we will continue to increase our overall program investment in strategic organic growth. That's not all though, but wait, there's more. At the same time, our core base business will also grow organically. We intend to innovate and improve the core areas of our business including that nontraditional digital channel area, the AI and ML tool area. We intend to leverage our expertise to expand our digital applications to drive nonlabor revenue growth and expand the nature of our services towards upstream higher-end advisory services. So we're going to grow and we're going to increase our margins very intentionally and strategically. So the growth opportunities from pursuing our 3 strategic growth initiatives are vast. Later this morning, our business leaders will address very specifically how they see opportunities materializing in the end markets of our SGIs. Our organic growth strategy is very simple. We're going to deploy Stantec's exceptional subject matters experts in high-growth areas. We're going to provide an unparalleled breadth of services to our clients and communities and it's their situations as they encounter the impacts from these persistent global megatrends that are going to lead to strong organic growth. This strategy is going to deliver top quartile net revenue organic growth rates. A CAGR of over 7% over the next 3 years. So as our Chief Growth and Innovation Officer, I've never -- and this is -- I've been at Stantec, 29 years, I've had an amazing career here. I have never been more excited about where we are and where we're going and the future potential of Stantec. I'm going to turn things over now to Asifa Samji, who's going to give you greater insights into what makes our corporate culture so special, so exceptional and how it drives our outperformance.

A single thread connects our achievements that Gord mentioned in his early remarks, and every ambition we have for the future. That thread is our people. Good morning. I'm Asifa Samji, Chief People and Inclusion Officer. Stantec's community has grown to 28,000 professionals, and we've accomplished incredible things for our clients and communities around the world. How we've done this? Great people need a great workplace, and we built a culture that is best-in-class. We know this because it was evidenced from our -- from the feedback we received from our 2023 engagement survey. Despite the challenges brought on by the global pandemic, our employee engagement has steadily risen year after year, and here's what we heard. Our people have more optimism about career opportunities at Stantec than ever before. And our people told us that inclusion, safety and our ESG leadership are our top 3 strengths. We are walking the talk. We know that when you build a strong culture, strong candidates will come and they will stay. This is vital to our ability to address the remarkably strong demand environment we are in and to achieve our revenue growth targets. And so as an employer of choice, we're hiring at nearly twice our pre-pandemic rate. And our voluntary turnover is down 2% in just 1 year. Our voluntary turnover rate has returned to pre-pandemic levels and continues to be one of the lowest among peers of our size, as evidenced by 2 industry-specific surveys conducted by AEC advisers over the last year. We are also a leader in gender equity. We've made great strides in hiring, retaining and promoting more women than ever before. Women now represent a larger portion of our headcount and represent a smaller portion of our voluntary turnover. Gender balance is reflected at the highest levels of our company with women representing 50% of our Board of Directors and 43% of our C-suite team. In North America, where our data is most mature, we are steadily moving towards pay equity. Our pay gap for women and minorities is 3% and 1%, respectively, on a comp per ratio basis. The best part we've achieved all of this without any incentives or quotas, we are simply doing the right thing. We are also securing the next generation of diverse top talent in our industry. One avenue unique to Stantec is our equity and diversity scholarship. Since we created this in 2021, we've awarded $800,000 worth of scholarships to 116 students around the world and have offered 25 internships across our organization to reward -- award recipients. Not only are we supporting equity and diversity in STEAM fields, we're prepositioning Stantec as an employer of choice. In fact, in our second year of an internship program in North America, over 600 interns gained real-life work experience working alongside our talented teams. Through our internship programs, we are securing future top talent to develop and help us deliver extraordinary results for our clients. The results we are achieving stem from our commitment to doing what is right and we're recognized for it. These accolades really resonate with our people, bringing them immense pride and further deepening their engagement. Looking ahead, the work world has changed, expectations have shifted. Inclusion, diversity, equity, compensation and benefits are considered table stakes. People want to work for companies that align with their values and offer a meaningful employee experience. We've proved that we can deliver on that, and we'll continue to focus on creating impactful experiences for our people. We'll focus on total well-being, including physical, social, emotional and financial elements with programs and resources that enable our people to do their best work. We'll continue to offer flexibility, knowing this contributes to positive well-being. We'll enhance our learning and development programs to enable more upskilling and cross-skilling opportunities, to help our people develop global credentials. We are committed to closing our pay gaps in North America, and we'll expand the analysis to geographies outside of North America. We expect to continue to attract top talent and keep our voluntary turnover lower than 12%, yielding top quartile engagement and inclusion, diversity and equity results. As our greatest asset, when our people are inspired and engaged, we deliver unmatched solutions to our clients around the world. At Stantec, we don't just know this. We live it. My colleagues, Stu Lerner, is up next, and he will outline how we intend to raise the bar on our already top-tier operational performance.

So a lot has changed since we last met with our investment community back in 2019. Hi, everyone. I'm Stu Lerner, I'm the Chief Operating Officer for North America based in Midtown, Manhattan, probably figured that out by the accent. I'm here with my colleagues, Cath Schefer, based in the U.K., she's our Head of our Global Operations, the COO there; and Steve Fleck, who is our Chief Practice Officer based in Vancouver. Collectively, the 3 of us, our goal is to drive operational excellence through optimizing our performance on everything we do. There's no silver bullets. There's only -- I should probably say, there's only green bullets in 2023. That didn't matter is that we need to day in and day out, streamline everything we do, while maintaining our best-in-class work culture with the people that we have. First, let's start with where we have gone since 2019. Gord spoke of the fact that we're at 28,000 people. We're 400 people across 400 locations. People no longer say, who's Stantec. They say, "How do I get to work for Stantec." It happened to be just the other night at an industry event in Lower Manhattan. Our global standing, we can now -- with our global standing, we can now influence the market in many ways. We can influence industry insurance coverage. We can influence terms and conditions that we take on with our private clients and even some of our public sector clients. We can also influence the industry standards through our work with our professional organizations such as the American Council of Engineering companies. We also have a substantive presence in most North American locations and are embedded in our various communities throughout North America and actually throughout the globe. We are now the preeminent partner to selectively take on virtually any project regardless of scope or size and let me emphasize the point about the size that is a true differentiator at Stantec. When we overlay Stantec's stature in the market and the overall market itself, we believe we are very well positioned to drive excellence throughout the organization. With all these market drivers, we can be more selective, which will lead to further margin increases. Additionally, through our global step presence, and the ever-evolving technology, we were able to price projects more competitively, thereby increasing our win and capture rates. In addition to being more selective on project pursuits in this robust market, we're going to be able to take advantage of our geographic and technical reach that has expanded. We'll be able to self-perform more work. We envision being able to self-perform 5% to 10% more of the work than we have traditionally done, subbed out in the past. This will mean more net revenue dollars with the same expenditure on marketing and business development. Additionally, as a result of our stature in the marketplace, we will be able to influence our subs to higher performance and we will also be able to shed some of the riskier project components that we've had in the past and make sure that we can really drive and optimize our performance. When executing projects, our continuous evolving technology tools, such as automated and parametric design will allow us to deliver projects more efficiently. Examples of Parametric design include a design of a pump station or a design of a bridge. It varies all over the place. The point is, is we can optimize our performance. These tools will not only allow us to optimize their performance, but they will also allow us to evaluate a multitude of options with respect to sustainability. And it will allow our clients to achieve better overall environmental outcomes with respect to the natural and built environment in which they are delivering their projects. And while we have achieved carbon neutrality in our internal operations, quite frankly, our bigger impact is on the project work that we do externally with our clients. By integrating sustainability into all of that we do, we're really having a much greater outcome with respect to the environment, globally. Furthermore, with the tremendous opportunity to leverage our technical staff in Pune and Manila, a broader global pool, it will obviously take on a greater breadth of projects and deliver them with more time and cost efficiencies. This all will lead to greater project margins. We're shooting for 53% to 56% versus what we had said in the past, 53% to 55%. There's optimization of the work that we're going to do and the optimization that we have achieved in the past as a result of -- be quite frank, the pandemic has changed the way people work these days and we're going to leverage what we've learned from the pandemic to optimize their performance. Something as simple as traveling. We're going to reduce the amount of travel, our carbon footprint associated with that travel and the inefficiencies and the grinds of travel by taking advantage of the hybrid work model. We will also implement the use of virtual connections to -- and the protocols of interaction between our staff and with our clients and with our communities to optimize that performance as well. We will further lean into the virtual tools to increase the labor sharing of the 28,000 people across the globe to deliver our projects with a greater breadth of technical expertise and also drive up utilization. Concurrent with our frontline optimization, we're also going to be optimizing our support operations through the use of technology. We'll be enhancing our technology, and we'll be expanding our technology to reduce the amount of support operations necessary to deliver our projects. Over the last 4 years, we have reduced the cost of our overhead by 2% of net revenue. In the next 3 years, we anticipate achieving further efficiencies in that regard. Through these initiatives, we expect to drive down our administration and marketing costs. Furthermore, with the use of the technology and the hybrid work model, we have been able to achieve a 30% office space reduction over the last couple of years and we envision another 10% going forward, 500,000 square feet or roughly $0.10 per share. The office space reduction, however, will not come at a loss of productivity. We are going to a preprogram how people interacting the office face-to-face, to optimize their face-to-face time but also optimize their individual work time as well. Now with respect to advancing towards net zero. Along with a series of energy efficiency initiatives that we've taken on, the core of which is the component of real estate, reducing our real estate footprint, which will allow us to achieve our emissions reduction strategy to achieve our operational net zero goal because we believe operational excellence and environmental stewardship go hand in hand. We need to walk the talk. Over the next 3 years, we will continue to drive towards achieving our validated near-term science-based target. We are committed to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, scope reduction, Scopes 1 and 2 as well as Scope 3, which is travel, we're going to reduce our travel expense by 47% by 2030 from the base year of 2019. Other things that we're going to be doing with respect to sustainability, include how we evaluate leases going forward, their energy consumption as far as the building occupancy that we take on will be rolled into the lease evaluation as well as we will be influencing landlords with respect to how they go about procuring their energy from the outside market. Lastly, we are going to be obviously, reducing our business travel. There's other initiatives that we're taking on with respect to sustainability. Those can be found in our sustainability report. In summary, we envision substantive global growth, both organically and through acquisitions due to the expanded robust marketplace and our position in that marketplace. Gordon and John have described how that growth is going to be achieved. Steve, Cath and I will be optimizing the performance through a variety of things. So you have 5 takeaways that you should -- or what's on the screen, 5% to 10% reduction in subconsultant use. Net revenue increase, the same cost; number two would be commanded use of Pune and Manila, doubling our operations there from the current 1,000; number three is going to be increasing our project margins up to 56% versus 55% in the past. We will also reduce our overhead cost by another 50 basis points of net revenue as compared to where we are today; and then last, we're going to achieve another 10% real estate reduction achieving another $0.10 per share savings. Over the last several years, we have been able to deliver on ambitious targets, 2 of those years were during COVID, tough times. The market is really actually much more robust than it's been in quite some time, and we are well positioned to do that. The forward-looking indicators are all positive. We have defined the steps for a top-tier performance, and we are confident that our 5 business operating units that you will see later will be able to allow our clients, communities and people achieve the success while retaining our grounded culture, which is the true differentiator for Stantec. At this point in time, I'd like to turn it over to Theresa, who is going to give you all the financial perspective on how this all works.

Okay. So now that my colleagues have set out for you our intended path for the next 3 years. Let's talk about how that shapes our financial outlook. We're so confident that this strategic plan will keep us on a trajectory of continued growth and that we will be able to continue to deliver compelling shareholder value. And of course, this plan is underpinned with a sound and prudent capital allocation strategy. And our philosophy around capital allocation really hasn't changed. Our first priority continues to be to ensure that our core commitments are looked after. So this means maintaining a strong balance sheet, investing in our core systems to ensure that we can continue to operate well and returning capital to our shareholders in the form of our base dividend. Our excess cash flow then is deployed toward generating for our investors the best risk-adjusted return that we can deliver relative to what our investors might be able to achieve on a different basis or elsewhere. And so growth opportunities, share buybacks, increasing our dividend, all factor into that competition for capital. And so we intend to continue to use our share buyback program as we have in the last couple of years, where we see a dislocation in the market and have an opportunity to buy our shares back where we have a different internal view of our own company's standing and value. We believe that continuing to increase our dividend on a sustained, consistent basis while maintaining a payout ratio of 20% to 25% is an important way for us to demonstrate to our shareholders our confidence in our financial outlook. But by far, we believe the best way for us to create value for our investors is to deploy our capital towards growth and you've seen from our recent performance that we've been striking a good balance with that. So over the last number of years, we have successfully funded our growth on our balance sheet while staying within our internal leverage target of 1 to 2x net debt to adjusted EBITDA, and you've heard me say, and I continue to be comfortable going over that and going over 2 times for the right acquisition as long as we see a path toward bringing our leverage back to the middle of our range in a 12- to 18-month period. When we funded Cardno, we did that on our balance sheet, and that was in Q4 of 2021. So that was USD 500 million that we funded on our balance sheet. And Cardno was a really great template for us because even though what took our leverage up to 1.8x, it showed us that we could integrate a large firm really well, not easy for everyone on our team, but we did it and we did it well. We found synergies faster than we thought that we would and we're able to bring our leverage back down in a reasonable period of time. So that at the end of Q3 2023, even after funding ESD at the end of June, our leverage stood at 1.5x. And so now with ZETCON coming in January, we're very comfortably able to fund this acquisition through our credit facility and not overstress our balance sheet. But as you've heard Gord say many times now including this morning, the opportunity for acquisitions continues to be so robust, and we've been really active in evaluating multiple firms and trying to assess and pursue those that meet our strategic criteria. And so with the potential that we might need to fund successive acquisitions on a more compressed time frame than we've had to in the past, we took the opportunity with a very supportive market backdrop to tap the equity markets a couple of weeks ago. And so now we feel that with this added capacity, we're really well positioned to address the growth and the opportunities that we see ahead of us. So our strategic plan overlaid with this capital allocation strategy drives us to these financial targets. By the end of 2026, we aim to deliver $7.5 billion in net revenue. Through the pursuit of the opportunities and the strategic growth initiatives that Gord and John set out for you earlier today, we're anticipating delivering organic net revenue growth at a CAGR of more than 7% for the next 3 years. And embedded in that $7.5 billion is growth that we intend to achieve through acquisitions. Through the multiple levers that Stu just talked about that will advance our pursuit of operational excellence, we aim to achieve a project margin of 53% to 56% and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 17% to 18%. The impact of revenue growth and operating leverage will be compounded by the real estate strategy that Stu also laid out, and we'll aim to deliver adjusted net income above 8.5% of net revenue and an adjusted EPS CAGR of 15% to 18%. And in doing so, we anticipate delivering adjusted ROIC above 11%, demonstrating our ability to maintain and grow ROIC while continuing to deploy capital towards M&A and continued strong cash flow generation will drive to a free cash flow to net income ratio of more than 1x. So then zooming in on 2024, let's get down to the nitty-gritty of the year that's coming. Our expectation for total net growth -- net revenue is in the range of 7% to 12%. And within this, we expect to deliver organic growth in the mid- to high single digits even after 2 years of very robust organic growth. We expect momentum in the U.S. and global to continue to build, driving to an organic net revenue growth in the mid- to high single digits while Canada is expected to moderate slightly to mid-single-digit growth. We expect acquisition net revenue growth to be in the low single digits from ZETCON and ESD. And of course, as usual, we don't include assumptions around acquisitions that we haven't announced or completed yet. And so that will be, as I said, in the low single digits, and we're assuming no material change in foreign exchange. Adjusted EBITDA, we expect to be in the range of 16.2% to 17.2% for the year as we continue to drive for operational efficiency and adjusted net income is expected to be more than 8% as a percentage of net revenue. So even with our expectation of record adjusted EPS for this year for 2023, we're expecting to continue to drive further EPS growth next year in the range of 11% to 16% and adjusted ROIC is expected to be greater than 11%. So we've provided other assumptions like our tax rate, our capital expenditures, seasonality. All of that is in an appendix because I think you'd rather read it than have me rattle off all of those stats. It's in the slide pack that is in your booklets here in Boston and also on the website in the broader package there. So these targets are really ambitious but they're achievable. And every one of my colleagues here today is really excited and enthusiastic about pursuing and achieving these targets. They might be a little bit uncomfortable, but I think targets should be stretchy. I think that's a good thing. It's all good, right? Yes. Thanks Stu. I've got Stu's vote on this because I think what it tells you is that collectively, as an organization, as a leadership team, we're prepared to stretch and to lean into our value creators to deliver the targets of our strategic plan. So with that, I'm going to turn it back to Gord.

Great. Well, thanks, Theresa. As I said earlier, and as you've heard from everyone today, these are really exciting times for us here at Stantec. The global megatrends that we talked about are driving a significant and very, very strong demand environment for our services. John talked about our proven marketing and business development and growth programs. And combined with our strong expertise and our exceptional cross-collaboration, position us very well to take advantage of both the organic and the consolidating M&A opportunities that we see ahead of us. But underpinning those plans, as Asifa said, is our greatest asset, which continues to be our people. And so as we're confident as that we continue to put them first, they'll continue to rise to the challenge and deliver. Our industry and specifically, Stantec is at the early stages of an incredible growth cycle. And we believe the global trends that we've discussed here continue to drive opportunities well beyond the next 3 years of our current strategic planning and while we haven't set a time frame for it, aspirationally, we do see a path forward in the longer term to double our net revenue to over $10 billion through a combination of organic and disciplined M&A growth. And with continued operational efficiency, increased productivity driven by AI and other digital transformation tools and further expansion of our high-value centers amongst other levers, we believe the eventual expansion of our EBITDA margin to 20% is achievable. And we're really excited for the journey ahead over the next several years. And with that, we'll open up to questions that you might have for any of the presenters who are with us in the room today. What we've got is we have a microphone. [Operator Instructions].

So looks like Chris Murray has the first question.

Chris Murray from ATB Capital Markets. John or Stu, you guys talked a little bit about AI tools and about more internalization of employees, doing more work. How should we be thinking about net revenue per employee trends as we go forward because it's been fairly stagnant for a while. It's been more of a kind of a linear growth per employee type business. And then I guess the second piece of this question, which of these tools or practices that you guys are bringing in are transferable as you go and acquire other companies? And can you take that and drive above-average kind of returns on M&A?

Okay. So sorry, [indiscernible], you're saying to restate the question? Okay. I thought -- but it didn't get picked up on the webcast. Okay. So the first question that we had from Chris was related to what sort of programs that we'll be using? And maybe, John, you could take this one to start with, and we can pass it to Stu. Talking about some of the tools and efficiency, some of the digital tools that we might use to increase net revenue per full-time employee. And then maybe we could dovetail that into, then how does that transfer to some of the companies that we are looking to acquire and build on. So John, maybe you could take that one to start with?

That's a great question. And so we're already using and deploying AI, machine learning internally and in our products that we're selling to our clients. We're adapting all of the tools that you've heard about chatGPT and CoPilot, and other tools. And you're correct, for a long time, net revenue at Stantec was very closely associated with headcount and employees and our complement of staff, we are starting to see an accelerating departure. We're looking at productivity, both net revenue creation and profit creation per labor dollar not per headcount. And so that's something that we're definitely looked at -- looking at increasing and optimizing at Stantec. And those tools are absolutely transferable as we bring in new acquisitions. We're always looking for the best bits of corporate DNA at Stantec if they have a better mouse trap, we will use it. If we have a better mouse trap, we'll use the Stantec mouse trap, but our intent as part of the integration process is to always take those tools, fit-for-purpose tools and get it to all of Stantec as quickly as possible.

Great. Thanks, John. And so just to confirm, we just have 1 microphone that we'll use for right now. Okay. Saba has a question at the...

Saba Khan from RBC. Just on the 5% to 10% of work related to subconsultants that you're going to reduce. So maybe if you can provide some color on kind of what you identified there that you were maybe outsourcing that you want to bring maybe in-house?

Okay. We'll pass that one to Stu, we have to get the microphones to Stu.

So this has been a particular pet peeve means -- of mine, Saba. Quite frankly, we do sub out a lot of our work. Some of that is mandated by some of our clients with respect to [ DBs, MBs, ]et cetera. There's a fair amount of work that we sub out specifically on the [ MEP ] side and on the specialty services and the building front that we can bring back internally. We just acquired ESD as an example, who is very proficient with respect to data centers and generally mission-critical facilities. So those are the places that we certainly anticipate being able to do more of our own work and even on some of the other building -- business operating units, we quite frankly, will be able to keep more of it in house because now we have a larger global workforce with more technical expertise that we can easily tap into more easily.

Great. Jacob?

Jacob Bout, CIBC. On your 20% EBITDA margin long-term target. Maybe just talk about some of the steps that are necessary to get from the 17%, 18% to that 20% long term?

I feel like that's a question for me. It's -- I think -- as we think about the next 3 years and all of the levers that Stu described, probably most of them aren't new to you. They're all things that we've been talking about for a long time. And what we are discovering now is the extent to which we can flex to expand our margins through all of those multiple levers. As we think about then beyond that and what takes us to a 20% EBITDA margin beyond continuing to do what we're doing and doing it right and doing it well very consistently, it is around this notion of really leaning into digital tools and using AI, which, quite frankly, we have no idea how efficient that will make us in the near and the long term. And so what we are anticipating is that as we continue to investigate and test different tools and processes that we'll be able to leverage that on top of everything else we're doing to get us to that 20%.

That's great. And in addition to that, as John spoke about some of the nonlabor revenue tools that we're beginning to create. Now, we're not going to break out and provide information on software sales, software-as-a-service type than what we're generating there. But that's also a very high-margin products once you begin to [indiscernible] them. So I think there's a combination of all those things will get us there.

There's a question from the webcast. Can you expand on the opportunities for enhanced risk management as a way of driving improved project margins?

So with respect to risk, I spoke about it during my presentation, we are very focused on reducing certain project components that represent more risk. We are actually more selective on who we team with. We actually do a pretty rigid valuation. We -- I spoke about being more selective, quite frankly, should any of the risk involved who you get we teamed with as a simple example. And then there are certain components of a project, whether it's [indiscernible] and/or other types of more -- art is part of the decision. It's not just all science. There's a bit of art to some of these technical disciplines. And the point is where necessary, we will shed certain project components that present more risk opportunities to us.

Max Sytchev of National Bank Financial. I have two quick questions, if I may. Do you mind maybe just delving a little bit into the -- sort of the benefits of top clients subscribing to more than 1 service from Stantec maybe from retention perspective or potential margin? So that was my first question.

Okay. So for that one, actually, maybe, John, you could take that one.

So when we can bring more of Stantec's business lines to the table, the addition of the multiple business is -- The first impact is more business lines will usually mean less subconsultant use. And so that will help drive what Stu had talked about. The other is increased efficiencies and cross-linking. When we're delivering complex projects, you think about the Lucas Museum in L.A. that's coming together, we all can't wait until it opens in 2025. That's the largest [ BIM ] model in the world. When we can -- when we can have all of our business lines inside that 1 digital environment, working on that largest model in the world, our tools when our multiple business lines are there, our productivity goes up, our efficiencies go up, our utilization goes up, our risk goes down. And so quite simply put, we feel like we've got the best people in the industry. And so the bigger the project team, the higher the percentage of Stantec people on that team that drives preferable project outcomes.

That's great. And then the second question was in relation to M&A because, obviously, the entire industry understands the growth curve quite attractive and sort of the competition for the assets as everybody is sort of adopting a similar strategy from an M&A perspective. Do you mind maybe talking about differentiation and sort of staying diligent in terms of finding the right assets at the right price?

Right. No, that's great. Thanks. Good question. And so one of the things that we are seeing, firstly, talk about the competitive environment for assets. And I think if you were to look back 2 or 3 years ago, we would have seen the financial players, private equity being very, very aggressive in our business. And you've all seen examples where there's high multiples paid by PE firms to come into the business. With the rising interest rate environment though, we're not seeing PE as active in our space. And a number of these engineering company CEO conferences that I go through, there's 2 each year. The amount of PE players who are there is significantly lower and the majority of the PE players who are there are looking to transact, not to buy, but rather to start thinking about what their transaction is out. So we're seeing -- so with that, with that environment of less competitors in the marketplace. Certainly, we're not seeing multiples increasing at all. For very, very strong assets, we're not seeing multiples come down either. But for second-tier assets, we are seeing a little compression of multiples. So as we continue to be disciplined and you've seen over 2023, certainly ESD then the announcement of ZETCON. We've been very disciplined in the marketplace about specifically looking for assets that made sense to us strategically at a price that was accretive for us. And so we'll continue with that focus going forward.

Ian Gillies, Stifel. I'm just curious as to whether with all these people working from home and reducing the real estate footprint, are you seeing any gap in skills in the middle management level or in some of your senior leadership, more junior-senior leadership employees that you're having to fill in the gaps on or course correct? Because obviously, there's some unknown takeaways from what we've done over the last 3 years of having people work from home?

Right. No, that's a great question and what we're finding and actually not just us, but our industry overall, is that it's the 0 to 10-year experienced people that are coming back to the office because they typically are looking for that comradery but also some leadership, some mentorship, some guidance. And we're seeing the senior executives coming back to the office. But what we're not seeing is we call it the missing middle. We're not seeing those folks who are the first line leaders coming back. And oftentimes, we find that when we're talking not just us, but in the industry, those are the folks who perhaps now are married. They've got maybe a child or 2. They've got a dog, they've got a house in the country. And so they say, "Well, but for me to come in, I don't need to come in. But if you're going to be -- what we're set talking to our people about is if you want to be a leader of people, or a technical leader. You have to be in the office to share that -- your expertise to share that passion that you have to continue to grow those 0 to 10-year experienced people. And so I'm not worried about where we are now. You've seen that performance is fantastic. What I'm worried about is we're, as an industry, we're going to be 3 or 5 years from now. If we don't get people at that -- the teachers back into the office. And that's really where we're working hard on it, Ian.

Mike Tupholme, TD Securities. When you were speaking about sources of organic net revenue growth, you talked about expanding Stantec's upstream, higher-end advisory services. I guess a couple of questions. One, how do you plan on doing that? Two, do you have any targets? And then three, can you speak about the margin profile of that type of work?

Sure. So a couple of things on that. One of the ones that you're going to hear about in the second set of our session today will be from Susan Reisbord talking about our ESG advisory services. And as we look at the just the full suite of experiences that we have that we're offering to our clients. The beauty of what we can do and what we're hearing from a lot of clients now is that, if you bring in a big 4 firm, they'll come in and they might probably hire us to do the -- your overall carbon -- the footprint study. And what they will say is, yes, you have to reduce your carbon intensity. These are a couple of things you could do. And then they give you the report. The difference is with Stantec is we can say, these are a couple of things you need to do. You need to look at energy efficiency increases. And this is how we will do it. If you want to design a new campus, you should design a net zero campus, and we can design that for you. So the differentiator that we have is that we -- it's an add-on to the front end of our traditional services. And what we're hearing from more and more clients is, that's what I want. I want the person who can take me from studying what the issues are to helping me through them and then come out the other side with it. And so we're seeing that as a huge differentiator that's really being beneficial to us. And from a margin perspective, that ESG advisory is higher margin. We do see that the rates are typically higher for that type of work than for the traditional design work. So it will be margin accretive for us. And in terms of targets, we haven't set targets that we're going to roll out yet, but there are some significant opportunities, and you'll hear for year-on-year growth in that space. I think Benoit? Right next door.

That's perfect. Benoit Poirier from Desjardins. Just looking at your high-value center with Pune and Manila. Back in 2019, I think you were close to 500 employees with the desire to double that number over the next 3 years. Right now, I think I've heard about 900 people. So just wondering if you could go back about the strategy, how to get to close to 2,000 people over the next 3 years. And what are the benefits that those high-value centers bring either from expertise standpoint and maybe also from a margin standpoint and how much is baked in related to the 17% to 18% target?

Great. So -- and you're exactly right, probably in 2019, we were in that 400 to 500 person range in Pune. Now we're about 900, and because we see such great growth prospects, we've actually taken another floor in the building where we are, so that we have that capability from a real estate perspective to continue to expand. Also through the acquisition of Cardno, we got 125 or 150 people in Manila. So we're also looking at Manila as that same sort of a high-value center. So a couple of key values, a couple of key things that we see there is that it's the -- and I should clarify, these people are -- the people in Pune and Manila are Stantec employees. So as we talk about sharing work between offices, whether it's Edmonton and Calgary or Boston, New York, or Pune or Manila, you're sharing work with Stantec employees who have the same value system, the same systems, back-end systems and so on. So that's very efficient. One of the real benefits that we see from these high-value centers is the use of the 24-hour clock that we can do design work in North America or in Europe, then we can feed that to our partners in Pune or Manila, go home, when you come back in the morning, that work is there for you. So it really speeds to delivery, which is a big thing for our clients, particularly if we have a compressed time frame, very attractive. We also see these as great locations for additional hiring of specialized technical staff. Now we can ask Cath later when she comes up. But the way that Pune initially was started a couple of decades ago was because we needed additional resources and hydraulic modeling in the U.K. that we couldn't find there. We were able to find them in Pune and build on that. So we've expanded now from buildings, from water, and now we're getting a lot of usage of Pune and Manila in buildings. We're beginning to get it into some of our other BOUs but they're a little bit slower to adopt. But that's really where we see the great opportunity over the next period of time is as we increase adoption in some of the other BOUs.

All right. Sam Baldwin, Guardian Capital. You talked about incentivizing collaboration. I just wondered if you could provide an example or two, about how you build it into comp plans? Is it episodic or structural? And how new is this versus something you've been doing all along?

This is something that we've done all along. And one of the most important things is that Stantec is different from every other large company that I know and that at Stantec, your annual bonus is not formulaic because that engineers, very similar to, I think, people in your business, love spreadsheets, and what you measure is what you're going to get. So in other companies, you would see the spreadsheet that we'll say if you increase net revenue by this percent, that's this much of your bonus. If you increase something else by another percent, that's a certain percentage. So what you get is people that will go out and secure a project and then wrap their arms around it. They don't necessarily bring the right people to the project because they want to maximize the revenue that they generate, that their group generates. And so that's the type of -- if you incentivize sort of it's not the right word, but if you incentivize that kind of selfish behavior, then that's what you get. So within Stantec, the overall size of our annual bonusing pool is based on a formula. But how it's distributed throughout everyone, everybody here on the C-suite, our EVPs through -- everybody in the company who is eligible for an annual bonus, it's discretionary. And it's based on, did you get some work and share it? That's what I heard. Did you get some work and hog it? then that's going to hit you negatively. And so it's subjective. And so when we get people joining us from other big companies at the executive level, sometimes that's uncomfortable for them for a year because -- so really what you're saying is I have to trust you. And the answer is, yes, you have to trust, not me, you have to trust all of us and the whole compensation philosophy that we have. So it is different. Yes. Frederic?

Frederic Bastien, Raymond James. As you grow in scale, are you becoming more agnostic as to the size of acquisition targets you're willing to pursue?

I do think that as we continue to grow, and you can see through Cardno, which was just sub-3,000. That came in pretty easy. As we're looking for firms, certainly, that -- those small to midsize firms are in our sweet spot, and we can sort of hit base hits, I think with those sorts of things every -- very frequently. But we absolutely are looking at larger opportunities as well. Because as we get larger, we want to perhaps move into a new area, and we're looking for a good platform to grow on, absolutely some larger firms are on our radar. And we do see some of those coming to market in the next 6, 12, 18 months.

Devin Dodge from BMO. Stantec is a people business. It has its own culture, Gordon, I think you described it as best-in-class. How do you make sure that, that isn't diluted or there's no dilution of the culture as you expand the workforce and capitalize on the growth opportunity available both organically and via M&A?

Right. Often will get asked that question is, when you're assessing an acquisition target, how do you assess the culture? And the interesting thing is, and talk to Susan Reisbord at the end of the day because she was CEO of Cardno, as all of the big global firms came in to court them , you have a meeting and you go out for dinner. And you can learn pretty soon as you're talking to people about how do they talk about their clients, how do they talk about their people. And you can talk -- we'll talk about business ethics and how do you recognize revenue and all those things. But it's really meeting the executive team and then meeting typically some folks a little bit further down the chain as well just to make sure that, that tone from the top really is there. But there is no spreadsheet. There is no way to -- it's sort of like when you meet people at a party and you think these people I can be friends with and these people I could not be friends with. It's not a whole lot different when you're looking at the culture of your company and the culture of firms that might want to join you.

[ Dena Bosway ], [Tremor] Price. You guys talked about doubling the hiring growth. Can you -- I don't know if you've disclosed this before, but what is the hiring growth currently? What do you expect it to be? How do you double it given the kind of the cap on graduates and so on and so forth, the challenges?

Right. Well, maybe I'll turn that over to Asifa. I don't know that we've given out the exact numbers. But certainly, we can talk about some of our recruitment programs and some of the things that we're doing.

Yes. Our pace of hiring, we will be able to sustain. So we are hiring at twice our pre-pandemic level. And it's really the various recruitment strategies we are using, looking at internship programs, apprenticeship programs in the U.K., graduate programs. We are partnering with organizations that aren't traditional. We do the colleges and universities absolutely. But there are other organizations that we partner with that gives us access to fantastic top talent, especially diverse top talent. So we will keep pace with our hiring. And to Gord's point, the use of Pune and Manila as well. That's another avenue for a source of talent as well.

Thanks, Asifa. Jess, is there any other questions from the webcast?

No, not at this point.

Okay. Any final questions from the room here in Boston?

This one is for Theresa. I just thought -- I was just curious on why you chose to include free cash flow to net income as a metric in the guidance this go around. I mean we've seen that -- you've kind of heard that talked about loosely before, but to see it in there. I'm just curious on why now?

It really felt like the right time to introduce that. It's always a measure we've had internally that we have tried to achieve is that free cash flow conversion to net income and it gets messy when you have integrations of acquisitions like Cardno and so on. But even through that, you continue to have a goal of converting your cash flow as quickly and on a solid basis relative to net income. So I think the maturity of the company gives us some confidence that we can achieve that. And I think at the end of the day, there's -- I mean you guys are there are so many measures that we pursue and we follow, I've always said that cash flow doesn't lie. Cash flow is a real indicator of how you're performing and if you can turn your cash flow relative to net income on a 1x or better basis, I think that's pretty solid. And so that's a goal we set for ourselves. I think it's achievable. And it's like all the other targets, everyone is a little uncomfortable with it. But again, I think that's -- it's important for us to be able to reach for these targets that are hard and won't necessarily be linear in terms of how we achieve it, but I think it's important for us to measure that and to hold ourselves accountable to trying to achieve it.

Saba Khan from RBC again. I guess just on the cash flow for Theresa, maybe. The CapEx guide for 1.75% to 2.25%, is that something we should -- I think it's in line with what you've done historically on CapEx, I guess, how should -- what would that look like over the next few years? And what are you spending on the CapEx of for next year?

Yes. I mean so the CapEx is largely related to leasehold work. So as we are exiting space, taking on new space, there's usually a fair bit of leasehold work that has to be done. That's the lion's share of it. There's always equipment and vehicles and that kind of thing. But it is mostly around our office space. And so I don't anticipate that changing a lot over the next 3 years. Stu talked about investing in our systems and so on. And that's always a variety of capital versus expense. And again, I think you'll -- that's all embedded in the targets that we've set. But I think it's largely that trajectory for the next 3 years.

Okay. Any final questions from the room? All right. If there's not, we do -- the coffee has been refreshed outside. Coffee, tea and so on. And so when we will go and take a break. When we come back, we'll hear from our 5 business operating unit leaders as well as from Cath Schefer is our COO of North America. So we'll -- I believe that the break will be 15 minutes. So we'd come back at roughly 10:40 here in Boston time. Thank you. [Break]

Okay. To start the second part of our presentations today, we have each of our business leaders here who are going to take you through a look back at how their business has performed over the last strategic plan and some of the major strategic growth opportunities they are seeing today in each of their respective markets. Following that, Cath Schefer, our Global COO, will address how much our global operations have grown and further opportunities that she sees for growth globally. Following the presentations, we will open it up for questions again prior to breaking for lunch. So to kick us off, I would invite Susan Walter, our business lead for Infrastructure.

When you hear the words communities and infrastructure of the future, what comes to mind? My name is Susan Walter. Over my 30-plus year career, I've witnessed evolving thoughts of what our communities and infrastructure will look like in the future. Infrastructure of the future is being designed and built now. We're leveraging artificial intelligence, innovative technology and zero emission options to make our lives easier, healthier, safer, more economical and more sustainable. As a leader of Stantec's Infrastructure business, I'm here to tell you how Stantec is shaping the future of global infrastructure. Infrastructure is Stantec's largest business operating unit, accounting for almost 30% of Stantec's overall net revenues, and we're poised to capitalize on this very robust global infrastructure market. Our business is organized into transportation and community development practices. Transportation includes roads, bridges, transit and rail, ports and airport infrastructure; and Community Development includes residential, commercial, industrial land development, municipalities and open spaces and asset transformation. Since 2019, our revenues and staff have grown by 30% with net revenues being 2/3 in Transportation and 1/3 in Community Development. Our 6,700 global infrastructure staff touch billions of project value put in place around the world. We're proud of our ranking as #8 in Transportation on ENR's Top 500 Design Firms list. With integrated, innovative and future-focused solutions, coupled with a really robust public and private sector investment, we're positioned to move up even further. Our foundation for infrastructure growth is built on our ability to handle a diverse range of project type. We have 348 infrastructure offices, a global company with a local presence. We're recognized by our clients as a premier partner in consistently delivering creative client-based solutions that improve our communities. One example is the high-profile multibillion-dollar Long Island Railroad Third Track Project in New York in which, as the owner reported, was delivered on time, on budget and facilitated expansion into the East Side of Midtown Manhattan. We used innovative construction methodologies to increase safety and reduce the overall project time line. As we look toward 2024 and beyond, Stantec's Infrastructure business is at the forefront of the strategic growth initiatives that John described. Infrastructure's largest strategic growth opportunities include U.S. and Canadian federal government programs, program management and construction management services and smarter mobility. First, work coming from the U.S. and Canadian federal governments to address aging infrastructure. Federal government supports infrastructure build in two ways: one, indirectly through local government channels; and two, through direct funded projects. Both funding mechanisms are promising growth opportunities for Stantec. First, as you all know, funding in the U.S. is available through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, or IIJA, which will provide a total of $1.2 trillion in funding over the next several years. Over $300 billion has been awarded directly to projects. We're tracking $45 billion of that to our key transportation clients, including those in Kentucky, Illinois and New York. So this means our client base now has 40% more funding to address long overdue infrastructure needs. The second funding type is direct funding. Additional growth is expected in U.S. and Canadian federal program expansion. Our U.S. federal work includes projects for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, FEMA, the Department of Defense in the U.S. and in the Indo-Pacific region to support security, defense, resiliency and disaster recovery. In Canada, our federal work is for the Department of National Defense, Public Services and Procurement Canada, the Fraser Port Authority in Vancouver and Infrastructure Canada. Programs are focused on asset management, Greening Canada, Northern Defense Infrastructure, decarbonization and housing. Our planned expansion into different branches of both the U.S. and the Canadian federal government represents the potential growth for hundreds of millions of dollars in fees for Stantec. Overall, we anticipate a 13% year-over-year growth in our federal programs. Since 2025, we've served as a construction manager for the $8 billion Honolulu Area Rapid Transit project, the first driverless light rail transit system in the U.S. and the first transit system in Hawaii. Stantec currently has more than 100 ongoing PMCM projects in our Transportation, Water and Buildings businesses. With the major infrastructure funding and investments available, there are so many more large capital programs and projects that our clients, both on the public and private side, need our expertise to deliver. We're expanding our project delivery to include more PMCM and less alternative delivery, derisking our project portfolio. We've built a dedicated team to expand our PMCM businesses in transit, aviation, water, energy, health care and advanced manufacturing. This will represent a significant growth opportunity. Our PMCM projects range in size from $1 million to $100 million in fees, and we're expecting a 30% year-over-year growth in the next 3 years. Smart Mobility is finding that more efficient, cleaner, safer way to get around using all forms of transportation, public and private, all interconnected through technology. Stantec takes a people-first approach to mobility improvements. We integrate that technology through the lens of equity and resilience. That's the ER in Smart(ER) Mobility, and that's what differentiates us. One aspect of Smart(ER) Mobility is moving to a zero emission transportation market, a robust market with $30 billion plus in U.S. federal funding, including IRA funding and $8 billion in Canadian federal funding. We've developed a proprietary zero-emission vehicle or ZEVDecide tool, which is already helping our clients in California, Washington and Tennessee make that transition to electric vehicles by analyzing and modeling the best solutions for their specific fleet demands. Smarter solutions not only apply at the mobility level, but at the city scale as well. Buildings, transportation networks and neighborhoods are all getting smarter. Digital connections are reducing our carbon footprint, reducing costs and creating a healthier and safer way of life. In summary, unprecedented funding and the urgency to address climate change impacts will enable Stantec's growth and our future. No other firm brings together our diverse set of technical skills and local presence to deliver infrastructure projects. This is our opportunity to lead generational infrastructure improvements that will enhance communities around the world. And now I'd like to hand the podium over to my colleague, Len Castro.

Good morning. I'm Leonard Castro, the Executive Vice President and business operating unit leader for Buildings. I'm pleased to be here to share a little bit about our buildings practice, its transformation over the past few years and to highlight some key growth opportunities that we see for the future. For the past decade, Buildings has been ranked the #1 AE firm by Building Design + Construction. And we recently achieved the #2 worldwide ranking from Modern Healthcare. By securing significant health care projects from around the world, including a recent win for a cancer hospital in Dubai. From 2019 to 2023, our overall net revenue grew 11%, but most of that growth occurred in the last 12 months. And with our focus on collaboration, effective resource management and innovation, we saw a 40% increase in our profitability in North America. Government stimulus, combined with the regulatory changes and decarbonization and a demand for asset renewal, continues to drive a strong pipeline of activity. Our recent performance has been driven by a surge in health care, industrial and civic. Those 3 achieved an organic growth of 27% and grew our overall backlog by 49% since 2019. We expect this to translate into an overall organic growth of 8% for Buildings annually over the next 3 years. And while we're growing, we continue to make strategic investments in our future. We're already integrating AI and computational tools to streamline the design process even further and to help our clients achieve their business goals. We are also growing our nonlabor revenue by investing in opportunities like our newly launched indoor robot that autonomously gathers workplace air quality, acoustics, temperature and vital occupancy data that informs a design solution to deliver smarter buildings and gains operational efficiency for our clients. When we look towards the horizon, our strategic growth initiatives continue to propel us forward. I'd like to highlight 3 strategic growth opportunities that we're really excited about: repurposing and adaptive reuse, advanced manufacturing and mission-critical and data centers. For each of these opportunities, we will not only share the market potential but to ensure continued growth, we outlined our competitive response in detail on each of the slides, but I'll only highlight just a few. It seems appropriate to start with repurposing and adaptive reuse since our venue today is Southline, which is a fantastic example of this trend. Current elevated interest rates, combined with low occupancy, a flight to Class A buildings and the regulatory changes in decarbonization has destabilized the commercial market. Avison Young estimates that up to 34% of office buildings are prime candidates for adaptive reuse critical to reenergize our urban communities. The federal funding initiatives that Susan mentioned, combined with -- coming through the Department of Transportation or directly through the municipalities is fueling a conversion of vacant and underutilized space into much needed residential, education, health or civic uses. A great example of this funding support is the 111 Monroe Street in Chicago, where Stantec breathe new life into a historic landmark by repositioning a 24-story office building into 350 units of market housing and a hotel, injecting new energy into the downtown core. We believe this market will grow by at least 6% annually for the next 3 years for Buildings. Our second strategic growth opportunity is advanced manufacturing. Since 2021, over $614 billion in private investments for semiconductor, EV batteries, clean energy manufacturing and biomanufacturing has been announced in the U.S. alone. These investments translate to a 10% annual growth through 2026 for Buildings. And with Stantec's unique ability to offer holistic services from the environmental site assessments to the building design and water treatment, we can uniquely support our clients to develop these new manufacturing campuses rapidly to meet this rising demand. Stantec's expertise in this market has already realized significant growth for us in the U.S., which we are now expanding with the recent win in Canada that we announced a week ago and key pursuits in the U.K. In addition to the private funding, there is major government stimulus like the CHIPS and Science Act, the Inflation Reduction Act. One of these early projects to benefit from this investment is the Qcell project in Georgia, where we are leading a wave of domestic solar PV capacity with this new 2 million square foot facility that when complete, it will be the largest solar manufacturing facility in the Western Hemisphere. And finally, digital transformation, AI, smart buildings, cloud computing and cybersecurity is all creating a demand for mission-critical facilities and data centers. Mission-critical facilities operate 24/7 to monitor all the essential functions in every major industry. Recent market forecasts that global construction and data centers will grow by over 10% each year and $49 billion by 2030, with an increasing share of that market being what we call hyperscale and multi-tenant providers. Earlier this year, Stantec acquired ESD which is a 300-person building engineering firm that specializes in mission-critical and data centers with a full roster of industry-leading clients. With the addition of ESD, we've designed over 3,000 megawatts of data centers in the last 5 years alone, making us the top 5 data center design firm. Given the long-term demand and the investment anticipated in this space, along with our ability to offer expertise to all of our clients across all of our business units and regions, we are confident in our ability to deliver long-term growth of 15% annually to 2026. This is really an exciting time to be part of Stantec. We are a diverse and resilient business, leveraging the collective talents of our people to deliver projects that enrich the human experience. Our culture of integrated design sets us apart and drives us to seek new ideas of collaborating across regions, sectors and business units to uncover the unique design solutions to navigate any market fluctuation and deliver growth and value to our investors. I'll now hand things over to Mario.

We're at a unique time in the energy industry. Societal pressures are demanding change, and those changes are driving the need for the expertise that we have on our Energy & Resources team. A lower-carbon future starts with and depends on Energy & Resources. I'm Mario Finis, Executive Vice President for Energy & Resources. Pleased to be here today with you to talk about our operation and the tremendous opportunities that we have ahead of us. Energy & Resources is comprised of 4 reporting sectors. We have strong market positions in many of our markets, including a top 3 ranking from Engineering News-Record in mining, in dams and reservoirs and in hydropower. And while we do have strong positions in these markets already, we still have a lot of room to grow, and we have been growing. Our revenues since 2019 have grown 22%, and our backlog has grown 36%. But we need to continue to achieve the success going forward, and we've been transforming our business in order to be able to do that. You can see on the slide here that our oil and gas revenues have decreased a bit since 2019, but we've made that up and more through growth in our other sectors. Not only have we transformed the business, but we've doubled our profitability over the last 3 years. We've done this through improved utilization, increasing our efficiency gains and through better contract terms and conditions. While we've had strong performance over these last few years, we also think that the outlook ahead is even better. Climate change and energy and resource security are some of the global trends that are driving change in the Energy business and also driving the opportunity for growth. Half of our revenues are now aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. We are perfectly positioned to capitalize on these trends going forward as we have been over the last few years. We're going to do that by focusing on 3 strategic growth opportunities. These are critical minerals and metals. We help our clients mine these materials that are essential to the energy transition. Renewable energy and energy storage, we help our clients build these projects that will provide clean power for our cities and our vehicles. And then grid modernization and expansion. We're going to take that clean energy and deliver it to where it's needed, when it's needed, safely and reliably. The energy transition and the lower-carbon future all starts with the mining of critical minerals and metals. These are things like cobalt, lithium, iron, nickel, copper, all things that go into things like solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, the green energy infrastructure of the future. Demand here has grown -- has doubled over the last 5 years and is expected to continue to grow at this pace or better going forward. An electric vehicle, for example, needs 6x the amount of used materials as a conventional car. A wind turbine -- wind project needs 9x the amount of these materials as an equivalent gas plant, and we're also seeing demand come from a little bit different sources these days. Energy and resource security is driving companies like auto manufacturers to actually invest in mines to make sure that they have a secure source of materials for their operations. We've seen 84% growth in our Mining sector over these last 3 years, and we expect to continue to see that grow at a 15% or better pace coming -- in the coming years. A major contributor to our success in this area is being able to partner across our Stantec operations to be a single-source global provider to our major clients like BHP, Rio Tinto, Freeport-McMoran. And those clients are looking for a single-source provider. We're able to do this, for example, with Freeport by serving their needs in Australia, in Asia, in Africa, in North America, Latin America, all through our single-source provider services. In Latin America, for example, in Peru, we're working with Freeport-McMoran on the Cerro Verde copper mine. This is one of the largest copper reserves in the world. We've been helping them out for decades on this project. And it's not just in mining services. We've been able to help them with their renewable energy needs, with their electrification of their vehicles and with their sustainable water practices at these mines, all things that they need to get to their net zero goals. And by bringing these sustainable practices to our clients, we can continue our success as we move forward. A project that exemplifies what we've been able to do for our clients here is this Northern Goldfields Solar Project that you see on the slide here. We were recently awarded the ESG Mining Project of the Year by Mining Magazine for this project. This is a great example where we brought together our ESG consulting services, our renewable energy practices and our mining services across multiple continents to be able to deliver this sustainable solution for our client. After we mine those critical materials and metals, they're used to help build renewable energy projects, and we're going to be building an awful lot. Various estimates are that we're going to see electricity demand double or even triple by 2050. The International Energy Agency expects that renewables are going to comprise 90% of all electric generation that's constructed in the next 5 years. So annual spend in this area is also going to double from current rates. We're already deeply entrenched with our clients in providing renewable energy services for the energy transition. We recently completed design of the largest solar project in Canada, and we designed the last 5 major hydroelectric projects in the United States. Energy storage is also a critical element to integrating these renewables into the economies these days. We are the world leader in utility-scale energy storage through the expertise that we have in our pumped storage hydropower group. Our revenues here have grown 38% over the last 3 years, but we really expect that we can see these double in the next 3 years. After we mine those materials and build these renewable energy projects, then we can help our clients deliver that power to where it's needed, when it's needed. Our electric grid today is simply not capable of integrating all this renewable energy that's going to be needed to meet the demand or to withstand extreme weather events as we've seen across the country. We're seeing more opportunity in this space than we ever have. Bloomberg estimates that we're going to see 3x the current annual spend on grid transmission and expansion going forward. We see -- we expect to see growth in our business of about 20% over these next 3 years. And it's not just the expansion that's driving the growth, but also the hardening of these existing systems for these extreme weather events due to climate change. In California, we're helping our clients mitigate their fire risk, undergrounding their lines and replacing wood poles with steel poles, for example. In Puerto Rico, we're helping the island completely rebuild the entire grid to be more resistant to hurricanes. We have decades of experience working with these utility clients, and those relationships are going to provide the foundation for our growth in this sector. Energy & Resources at Stantec has been on an upward trend these past couple of years. We expect our revenues will grow at a double-digit pace going forward. We're in the perfect position as the world moves to a lower-carbon future, with the right expertise in our group to help mine those critical minerals and metals to build that renewable generation and energy storage and to deliver that clean power safely and reliably. By partnering with our other operations across Stantec though, we can provide everything that our clients need for an integrated and comprehensive solution. This ability to be a single-source provider for all of their needs really is a competitive advantage, is going to drive growth not just in Energy & Resources, but across all of our operations at Stantec. So I'd like to introduce Ryan Roberts to come up and speak about our Water business.

It couldn't be a better time to be in the water industry. I'm Ryan Roberts, Executive Vice President of Water for Stantec. I'm excited to share with you today the unique positioning that Stantec has for the growth opportunity coming ahead of us in the water industry. But before I talk about the growth trends ahead of us, let's take a look back at some of the positive trends that we've seen in our business thus far. We're experiencing growth across all geographies, markets and client types. Since 2019, we've realized a 39% increase in net revenue and a 61% increase in our backlog. And our strong brand as an employer of choice has grown our team to over 5,500 people with turnover rates that are near half of the industry average. In just the last 12 months, we've realized an 18% organic growth rate globally, with a 26% organic growth rate in the U.S., and this makes for 18 consecutive quarters of positive organic growth for our Water business. The results are simply incredible, and I couldn't be more proud of our team. And it's because of these results that ENR has us ranked as the #1 Wastewater and the #2 Water International Design Firm. Growth in the water industry is being driven by multiple tailwinds. As Susan Walter mentioned, we're definitely seeing strong influences through government stimulus programs such as IIJA and IRA, but it's much, much more than that. Climate impacts and new regulations such as PFAS and the latest lead and copper rule that was released last week is driving increased need for investment in resilient infrastructure. We're seeing equipment prices starting to stabilize as compared to the last 12 to 18 months, and this is spurring renewed project starts. In the U.K., AMP8 is forecasted to potentially double its infrastructure investment over this next 5-year period, and Cath will speak more to this in her section. And we're seeing an increased activity in the semiconductor space with forecast that it could potentially double its forecasted spend over the next 5 years. Any one of these makes for good business, but all of these together creates an immense opportunity and leads to our optimism for the future. With all these driving forces, the industry on average is forecasted to grow at a 4% to 5% rate over the next 3 years. But over the next few slides, I'm going to share with you how Stantec is not only going to capture this opportunity, but how we're going to outperform the market. To showcase our strong market position, I'm going to highlight just 3 strategic growth opportunities with you today: coastal resilience and system hardening; disaster preparedness, response and infrastructure recovery; and water reuse, desalination and supply resiliency. And I should note that there are other growth opportunities that are very important to the water industry. So please stop by our showcase afterwards. You could talk more with our team about those. In the coastal resilience and system hardening space, the World Bank estimates that by 2030, that we could see a total addressable market for just the A/E consulting piece to be as high as $50 billion, and a tripling in the annual investment required by 2050. Stantec brings considerable expertise in this space, starting with our experience in delivering the $730 million pumping station project that we did in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. At the time that this was delivered, this was the largest pumping station project in the world, and as a matter of scale would fill an Olympic-size swimming pool in just about 3 seconds. I personally had an opportunity to work on part of this project. And as a water engineer, it was one of my career highlights. We're also currently delivering design for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Project Orange in East Texas. And this is going to provide flood resiliency efforts through miles of new floodwall and 15 new pumping stations. This project has a capital value upwards of $6 billion. So we're really building off of our expertise there in the Gulf, and we're expanding across 6 global mega coastal zones across the U.S., U.K., Australia and New Zealand. And this is a big part of our growth strategy moving forward here over these next 3 years. We differentiate our service offering through parametric design capability in the floodwall and pumping station space as well as with proprietary Flood Predictor software. We currently have over $1 billion in contracted revenue capacity in this area through open MSAs and IDIQs, and we're on track to double the size of this business over the next 3 years. The next strategic growth opportunity I'll talk to is disaster preparedness, response and infrastructure recovery. This market is being driven by the increasing frequency and intensity of climate-related events. World Economic Forum estimates that the cost of climate-related damage globally is as high as $3 trillion by 2050 and that there is an annual adaptation need of upwards of $415 billion by 2030. Stantec is a leader in this space, having provided preparedness, response and recovery efforts to over 400 federal, state, local and tribal entities. An example of our expertise is demonstrated through our involvement in such recovery efforts from major disasters such as Hurricanes Sandy, Harvey, Irma, wildfires in Colorado, California, Western Canada and most recently in Maui. And one recent example of our capability is our involvement in the response efforts to the community of Jackson, Mississippi. Jackson, Mississippi faced emergency event last summer, where their water utility was no longer able to provide potable water drinking to the community of over 150,000 people, and they had to start trucking it in on a daily basis. What's important about this one is that Stantec was specifically invited and brought to the table to be part of the programmatic effort to deliver this recovery effort. And the reason we were invited was because of the trusted name and brand recognition that we had in this space as well as our national agency partnerships through such groups as the North American Clean Water Association and EPA. We're currently on track to grow this part of our business by 10% annually over this next 3-year period. The last strategic growth opportunity I'll speak to is water reuse, desalination and supply resiliency. Estimates are that over the next couple of years, as much as half of the global population will face some level of water scarcity, and this is driving increased need for adaptive and resilient water supply. Global Water Intelligence estimates that there is as much as $35 billion in capital investment required in just the next 5 years in only the reuse and desalination space. And if you add new regulations to that, it could easily double the size of this market. Stantec brings global expertise and proven project capability across multiple markets in this area. We are a leader in water reuse. One example is our involvement over the last decade in delivering the San Diego Pure Water program. This is the state of California's first water augmentation project through wastewater reuse. And by 2035, it will provide 1/3 of the drinking water to that community. We have a global desalination footprint that spans the U.S., U.K., Middle East and Australia. We're currently delivering over 20 PFAS facilities across the U.S. Some of those are currently operational, and we really differentiate ourselves in this space through our Institute for Research and Policy. And we're a leader in zero liquid discharge for advanced manufacturing facilities. And when you take our water supply expertise teamed with our facilities expertise that Len spoke to earlier, it really differentiates Stantec as a full-service provider to these industries and positions us as a leading consultant in the semiconductor, EV battery and solar panel manufacturing spaces. We're profiling one of our projects that's water supply for one of the largest treatment facilities of its type in the semiconductor space down at our showcase afterwards, so please stop by and take a look. But you have to promise and not get too close to the fan because it's on a hologram and we don't want to have a safety incident here. So there is a barricade to not go and try to touch it. Our strong position in this space has us on track to grow by over 10% annually over the next 3-year period. I've been with Stantec for nearly 23 years, and it's truly never been a better time to be part of the water industry. Our Stantec Water business is excelling and we're on a strong upward trajectory. We have industry-leading expertise and market position across all megatrends that are facing the global water industry. And our strong brand as an employer of choice has us with turnover levels near half of the industry average, and we're on track to grow our Water team by 2,000 people by 2026. So all these differentiators mean that we're not going to just ride the tailwinds in the water industry, but that we're gaining market share and it's continuing to position us to outperform the market. And with that, our estimate is that we're going to grow our business over the next 3-year period at an average of high single digits. With that, I'll hand the podium over to Susan Reisbord, who's going to come and talk to our Environmental Services business.

Welcome. It's so nice to meet you. It's nice to meet you last night. It is great to see you here today. My name is Susan Reisbord, and I am the Executive Vice President of our Environmental Services business. Environmental Services has become a very significant part of the Stantec portfolio with net revenue growing 76% since 2019. And that growth has been based on very strong organic growth as well as acquisitions, the most significant of which was the very successful integration of Cardno. Heading into 2024 with a workforce of more than 5,600 people globally, the demand for Environmental Services is robust. It's fueled not only by the base line of workload that has always made it a very attractive part of the business, like remediating historical environmental damage. We're doing the environmental permitting that makes all of this infrastructure possible, but also now by responding to those natural disasters that Ryan just talked about and this burgeoning demand for permitting the energy, the new energy resources that we need that Mario talked to you about. So let's talk about 3 important SGOs. With the goal to get to net zero by 2050, the most significant new driver for Environmental Services is energy transition, moving economies from coal and crude oil to natural gas through to low-carbon, no-carbon energy solutions. The International Energy Agency projects renewable energy will become the world's largest electricity source in 3 years. And at the same time, noting that this exceptional growth will be cyclical because of the structural limitations that Mario talked about. To give context to this burgeoning demand, in California, PG&E states that it plans to invest $18 billion in grid hardening and Southern California plans to spend another $5.8 billion. In a meeting that I was in with Edison International leadership last month, they were predicting that electricity demand in California will increase by 80% by 2045. And that translates to requiring California alone to invest $370 billion in grid modernization and clean energy. So over the next 3 years, we believe we can more than double our Environmental Services to support energy transition. So in response to this demand, our team has honed program delivery. That means handling more complex and larger portfolios for projects for these clients that are facing just this unprecedented demand. And we're playing a leading role in energy innovation. We're on 3 of the hydrogen hub projects in the U.S. that have been most recently announced, and we've been asked to present proposals for 2 more. And time and again, we're safe hands for first-of-its-kind projects, especially in Canada, where we have done or are doing first-of-its-kind projects in carbon sequestration, hydrogen, critical minerals mining and offshore renewable energy sources. Now in order though to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, moving to low energy, no -- low carbon, no-carbon energy solutions isn't going to be enough. As a matter of fact, the UN reports that climate, biodiversity and land degradation goals will not be met unless we double our investment in nature-based solutions to $384 billion quickly by 2025. And when you think of nature-based solutions, think of them as green or nature-positive solutions. They're solutions that -- it's infrastructure that can sequester carbon, can mitigate natural disasters and pollution and can promote biodiversity, human health, food security and water security. We're currently working on nature-based solution projects that include ecosystem restoration, community health analysis and integrated water resource management. As a matter of fact, I love this project. This is a nature-based solution. This is the Clifton Wastewater Treatment Works in the U.K. It is blending of both gray and green infrastructure. This rural wastewater treatment plant needed to meet new water quality standards. And in the past, the response would have been to add just more gray infrastructure. But our team realized that this site was absolutely perfect for doing an integrated constructed wetland to meet those goals. And not only meet those goals, this is a low-energy solution. And it's not just nature based, it's nature positive. It's a remarkable project. And when we think about it, this award-winning project is providing Yorkshire Water an operational carbon reduction of 79% and an embodied carbon reduction of 50%. So we also expect our nature-based solutions revenue to double in the next 3 years. At Stantec, we're not new to this area. We have been providing nature-based solutions well before the term nature-based solutions was even coined. We have over 1,000 restoration specialists. Those are boots on the ground and boots on the water who have already restored 40,000 acres of land and 1,000 miles of rivers and streams in North America alone. To illustrate how this business is growing, just to give you one example, we have a client that is in a coastal state, that's a water management district. Our portfolio with that client has grown tenfold in just the last 2 years because they're embracing green infrastructure solutions for climate resiliency. In 1994, we established a native plant nursery. It's in Indiana in the Chicago land area so that we would have access and control of the native plant supply. And we now have 125 acres, supplying seed and native plants to projects that promote biodiversity, that support pollinators and restore our ecological value of certain lands. And like gray infrastructure solutions, green infrastructure solutions need permitting that demand cultural and paleontological assessments and protections. And Stantec has one of the largest teams of cultural resource specialists and paleontologists in North America, and that's complemented in Canada by our indigenous relations partnerships. We at Stantec are the minority partner in 11 indigenous owned businesses in Canada. And energy transition in nature-based solutions have absolutely changed the landscape of Environmental Services. And while core disciplines like geology, hydrogeology, biology haven't changed, they're absolutely the same, it's their application and integration into engineering solutions, human health solutions and socioeconomic solutions that are proving really powerful. So just about a year ago, we established an ESG advisory team. I know you were asking about that earlier. And we expect this business to double every year for the next 3 years. And for many companies, their ESG strategy, I think, Gord, you were talking about that, is a combination of aspirational goals like a high-level decarbonization strategy. And so what our advisory helps -- our advisory services helps clients do is turn those good intentions and those aspirations into practical solutions. And what's amazing about what we can do is we have this whole Stantec platform to rely on, it's Infrastructure, it's Buildings, it's Energy and Mining, it's Water and anywhere around the world, anywhere. So another dimension of our practice, by the way, is health sciences. You might not know, but we have a world-class health sciences team. And if COVID taught us anything, COVID taught us that human health is absolutely foundational to economic success, stability and security. And so we believe that ESG is actually missing an H, and that anybody's ESG strategy is incomplete if they haven't addressed an assessment of product stewardship, employee and community health in it. Finally, I'd like to highlight that we're providing client advisory services as well as tools. So we're generating labor and nonlabor revenue. And one tool that I'm very proud of is DebrisFlow Predictor, which for those of you who are in Boston can see after the session. It's part of our Geohazards suite. And DebrisFlow Predictor was developed out of a need to predict debris flow impacts and run-out. And it is used now by both government clients as well as private sector clients to plan and mitigate against the very real hazard posed by shallow landslides to communities, linear assets as well as the environment. So I'd like to conclude today by highlighting what makes our environmental services practice different from our competitors. Our difference lies in the breadth and the depth of the technical and regulatory talent that we have. And if you look at our portfolio of services, you can see our clients choose Stantec for their toughest environmental challenges. We are the safe hands for their thorniest projects, and it's because we have the right people with the right credentials, with a very well-earned respect of the regulatory agencies. And for our ES team, for many of us in this business, our jobs are more than jobs. We love what we do. It's almost vocational. And so I got to tell you, it's absolutely dynamite to be leading a team that is motivated by making a difference at the time when the world needs us the most. And with that, I'd like to turn the podium over to Cath to talk about what's going on great in the world.

Great. I love that Clifton project too. I think last time I looked, we've won 11 awards, international awards, so amazing project. So thanks, Susan. So good morning, everybody. I'm Cath Schefer, and I'm Stantec's Chief Operating Officer for the global regions. And in Stantec, global refers to the regions that are outside of North America. So you've heard about the global megatrends that are challenging our world and how we're aligning with those high-growth markets that give us the opportunity to expand our market share. And these global megatrends affect every country on earth. And our goal is that all of our clients, regardless of location, benefit from our local presence and global expertise. And whether we achieve this by collaborating globally or simply just by providing an introduction to a colleague in another geography, our goal is to use our global footprint to facilitate our clients' success. And I really do believe that this is a differentiator that Stantec has to offer. So I'm now going to talk more specifically about the global region. I'll highlight how we've evolved our geographic presence over the last 3 years and how we'll continue to leverage our wider company expertise to grow outside of North America. So I'll start with an overview of our current operations, and then I'll talk more specifically just about a few of the key opportunities for growth that we see. So as you can see on this slide here, our current operational footprint is both geographically diverse and balanced across all business lines. Today, we've got operations in the U.K. and Europe, in the Middle East, in Asia, Australia, New Zealand and in Latin America, and that's in addition to the 2 high-value centers that we've talked about earlier in Pune and Manila. And while supporting organic growth across all of our geographies, we've been highly disciplined in our acquisitive expansion and really just concentrated on core growth areas of Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. And in these regions, we've increased our presence substantially in the last few years, and we've purposefully created critical mass and multi-sector operations. And this, combined with strong market potential, really, really does give us a great platform for future growth. In terms of size, our revenue has grown some 72% from 2019. And we now have over 8,000 employees outside of North America delivering approximately 1/4 of the company's net revenue, a significant shift from where we were only 5 years ago. Over 60% of our net revenue today is generated through our Water and Infrastructure businesses, with the remaining 40% across the other business lines. And compared to Q3 2022, we've seen good organic growth across all business lines with double-digit growth in Water and energy. And further expansion into new geographies will be key to our strategy over the next 3 years. And you've heard from Gord how ZETCON, for example, will provide a great platform for further expansion into Germany in the coming months. And by providing leadership in these new geographies with untethered access to multisector expertise from across Stantec, we plan to expand our geographic presence, something we're very, very focused on. And so we'll continue to carefully explore opportunities to expand in these targeted areas that give us the best opportunities for growth. Countries in Western Europe and in the Republic of Ireland, for example, remain high on our priority list. And in addition to geographic expansion, Stu talked earlier about the continued focus on growth in our high-value centers in Pune and Manila. And I just can't emphasize enough how integral these are to successful delivery in many of our Stantec operations. In a world where skill shortages and cost pressures dominate, these centers really do provide much needed resources and the ability to harness that time zone differences Gord talked about to provide 24/7 working. Given our presence in many geographies across the world, there are numerous strategic growth opportunities for Stantec over the next few years, actually across all business operating units. Mario, for example, has already mentioned the opportunities related to critical minerals in Latin America, and Len touched on that collaboration between our health care experts in North America, the Middle East and Australia. And it's this kind of cross-regional working that leads to brilliant project wins and just make Stantec a great place to be. So I'll now talk about a number of short- to medium-term growth strategic opportunities, mainly in Australia and New Zealand and the U.K. where we've just focused our growth in recent years. And I'll highlight more specifically the opportunities in future water and in global energy transition, where we see some strong organic growth opportunities in the future. As Ryan has already said, it really is a great time to be in the water industry where our global presence and reputation is incredibly strong. This sector accounts for around 35% of our current net revenue in the global operations and around 40% of our backlog going forward. In Australia, the water sector is forecast to be the fastest-growing sector with Australian utility players and government planning a spend of over $41 billion over the next 3 years. And in New Zealand, there's some $14 billion funding planned over the same time period, driven by a government-led water reform agenda following long-standing environmental issues in the country. And following the acquisition of Cardno in 2021, which has been superb for our organization, Stantec is now one of the top consultancies in the ANZ region, and this level of funding really does give us a strong baseload of work with sustained growth going forward. And in the U.K., the water sector is poised for a significant uplift in funding across both regulated and nonregulated clients. AMP8, which is the 5-year investment program for water utilities in England and Wales, which is what Ryan referred to earlier, is set to be the biggest investment program that the U.K. has ever seen. Over $160 billion has been requested by the water utilities to meet the new regulatory standards, and that's nearly double the spend of the last regulatory cycle. And although we're widely recognized as the #1 consultant in the U.K. water sector with around 20% market share, we see this increase in funding as a great opportunity to realize further accelerated growth. And this slide here, it shows all the major water utilities across the U.K., including those in England and Wales that are funded through AMP8. Those highlighted in orange show the frameworks that we've already secured to date, and those in black indicate those utilities for which procurements are currently in progress right now. And as you can see, there's much in play. By the end of Q1 next year, we anticipate that most of the key decisions will be made, and we should be better able to confirm our AMP8 position. But to date, we estimate we've secured routes to market for around 50% of our anticipated revenue going forward. And by 2026, we're targeting a 50% increase in U.K. water sector revenue and doubling the number of staff we have in Pune and accelerating our graduate recruitment and our training in the U.K. to support our delivery, which is absolutely fundamental to our strategy. As globally recognized thought leaders in water, we've got a really strong track record of collaboration to debate and discuss solutions to many challenges our clients face. This is truly a real differentiator that we bring to the global water market. And across the world, many government organizations, and most notably, those in our core geographies, have made bold commitments to net zero through increased investment in renewable energy. In April 2022, the U.K. government issued its British Energy Strategy, setting out the plan required to achieve 95% of U.K. electricity production from low carbon sources by 2030. And most recently, Australia's Prime Minister committed to a significant increase in funding to get back on track in meeting their commitment to reduce emissions to 43% below 2005 levels also by 2030. And just facilitating these kind of ambitions really requires government recognition of the need for large-scale, long-duration electricity storage and extensive investment in both renewables and in transmission and distribution infrastructure. As Mario and Susan have mentioned, global energy transition really does give us tremendous opportunities for growth and presents a significant opportunity for Stantec. In the area of pump storage, our reputation is already very strong. In addition to the many pump storage hydro projects across the world, we're currently acting as the independent representative for the high-profile Coire Glas pump storage scheme for SSE in Scotland. This is the first large-scale pump storage scheme to be developed in the U.K. for more than 30 years and more than doubles the U.K.'s storage capacity. For those of you here in Boston, you can learn a bit more about Coire Glas and pump storage more generally in our project showcase later. And with strong backing from government in many countries, there is a great pipeline of both refurb and new build pump storage opportunities globally. The pending investment in modernization of transmission and distribution grid also poses great opportunities for growth across many regions. The U.K.'s transmission and distribution operators, for example, are in the middle of delivering their RIIO-2 capital program, where over $84 billion of funding has been approved for the period 2021 to '28. And in Australia, the government has announced an $18 billion investment in the electricity grid to facilitate the transition to renewable energy. We have key frameworks in place to capture this market. In the U.K., for example, we're delivering optioneering design for a converter station for the U.K.'s largest offshore wind farm, Berwick Bank, through our framework with National Grid. And development of wind and solar facilities also provides great opportunity for environmental permitting and engineering, particularly in Australia, where the federal government has recently expressed the desire to accelerate spend with the foundation of a number of renewable energy development zones. We were engaged by WestWind Energy to provide multidisciplinary design services for the Golden Plains Wind Farm in Sydney and have secured a role supporting the Gippsland wind farm development in Victoria. And we expect to double our revenue in the energy transition sector in the next 3 years. So in summary, there are numerous global growth opportunities that Stantec is well positioned to capture outside of North America. And we'll continue to focus on our core markets of Australia, New Zealand and U.K., Europe, where we've spent time building strong businesses in the last few years, but we'll also carefully explore opportunities for further expansion into new geographies. And we'll continue to promote this cross-business collaboration and leverage our expertise in core geographies to maximize market opportunity elsewhere. And we'll continue to tackle the challenges presented by the global skill shortage by investing in our graduates in our apprentice programs and in further growing our high-value centers in Pune and Manila. And all of this leads me to be extremely optimistic about our growth prospects in Stantec's global region as we target an organic net revenue CAGR of greater than 7% over the next 3 years. And with that, I'll turn things back to Gord. Thanks very much.

So if you wonder where we get the confidence for the next 3 years and the plans that we put out, you just heard it there. I really hope that you get a feel for the strong demand environment that we hear -- that you heard from our leaders today. I hope you'd be able to feel kind of the enthusiasm that they have for the opportunity set around the world. And we are ideally positioned to capitalize on these tailwinds through the strong leadership team that you've met here today as well as our ability to provide our clients exceptional service through our [ One ] Stantec approach and the unique cross-selling capability that John talked about a little bit earlier. So we'd be pleased to invite you to any questions you might have for our business operating unit leaders or Cath now. And similar to as we did before, we have a microphone that [ Lana ] will bring out so that we can capture your questions for the webcast. Yes, go ahead.

Yuri Lynk with Canaccord Genuity. Some very impressive growth targets for those markets that you flagged. Just wondering, thinking about how tight the labor market is, what's your ability to transfer engineering talent out of some end markets that might not be as robust, like, I don't know, community development or maybe even oil and gas into some of these faster-growing markets? How fungible are those skill sets?

Well, that is an area that we have a particular skill set, and transferring people not just from one BOU to another. I think a perfect example now is Ryan, maybe you can talk about that in a moment, but from one BOU to another, but also geographically, moving people from the United States to Canada, from Australia to the U.K., either moving physically or just moving the workload back and forth between them. But maybe, Ryan, you could address the importation of talent that you've done in your group.

Yes. Sure thing, Gord. So I mentioned in my presentation there about the 26% organic growth that we saw in the U.S. this year. And there's no doubt that a big part of that was through hiring. And we also doubled the size of the usage of our high-value centers. But we also doubled the use of labor that we were able to import from other parts of the company. So to exactly your question, we were able to increase that by about 100 FTE just over the year, and this was bringing people from all the BOUs that are represented here because there is complementary skill sets, right? You've got a civil engineer that's in the transportation business. That's somebody that we may be able to use on a pipeline project or Mario has power engineers that we were able to integrate into some of the energy work that we need to do on our water treatment facilities. So it's something that we regularly work on together. And like Gord said, we're not necessarily transferring them between BOUs. We just -- we loan them between each other. So it gives us a really good opportunity to kind of manage ebbs and flows between the different businesses.

Great. Thanks, Ryan.

Could I sneak one more in since I have it?

Sure. You've got the mic.

Yes. The focus on PM and CM over APD, can you just talk about how we think about the margin profile of that work? I think traditionally, it's been lower margin but less risky. Can you just elaborate a little bit on what that looks like today?

Sure. Maybe I'll invite Susan to talk a little bit about that. The PMCM group that we've stood up is within Infrastructure, even though it services most of our BOUs. But Susan...

And you're absolutely right that there is less risk. One of the other benefits, although the margins might be a little bit lower, is that the utilization of the staff is greater, right? So that sort of offsets it. And with the influx of funding, our clients need more expertise that we have in hand to help them with that PMCM work. So embedding our staff in their offices and developing that trust relationship with them, I think, really gives us another advantage. And it's all about having kind of a diverse profile of the right mix of PMCM work, some APD work, some clients want to deliver that way, and then having traditional work as well.

Jacob Bout, CIBC. Maybe my first question here is for Ryan. In the Water segment, you're best-in-class in a number of areas, including sewer and wastewater. Maybe just talk through your wish list areas that you think you'd like to expand into and how much of that can be done organically versus M&A.

Yes. So if you look back, for those that have followed Stantec for a lot of years, right, kind of historically, we're more of a wastewater, water treatment type of a company. And over the last number of years, we've really been focused on diversifying that focus already. So as I mentioned, some of those strategic growth opportunities, and this is areas that we've really put energy in over the last kind of half decade, is into that coastal resilience area, which is what we talk about as water resources. So if you're looking at your investor package, right, you'll see water resources listed as a big part of our business. And that's seen substantial double-digit growth year-over-year we've had in that space. Another is into the industrial markets, right? So like advanced manufacturing, we talked to in our presentation. But I didn't even get into things that support things like hydrogen hubs, right, and power facilities, right? Mining, right, is another cross-BOU collaboration area for us. So I think a big part of our approach is just making sure that we have a really balanced portfolio across these megatrends, and it's not just balanced in like the type of growing trend that, that is, but it's in the type of client set as well. So we're balanced across federal and municipal and industrial type clients. So if there were to be a particular trend in the industry going forward where one was able to -- one grew and another one detracted, right, with that balanced portfolio, we're able to offset that with some resiliency in our business.

Maybe just to ask it in a different way, do you have scale across the portfolio in the areas that you want to be in?

I think absolutely. And to the other point, I guess, I didn't answer earlier is over the last few years, all the growth that we've seen is from an organic standpoint. And on the go-ahead, absolutely, acquisitive growth would support us in multiple geographies, as Gord mentioned earlier, particularly in the U.S. and global. But we're really focused on growing that organically with the capability that we have in-house right now.

And then my second question, maybe for Gord or Susan. Possible move to Republican government, how does that change your outlook as far as the rollout of the infrastructure spend or other programs that are available in the U.S. right now?

Well, when you think about the IIJ Act, really, that was brought forward with bipartisan support. And in fact, even in 2016, when President Trump was in power, he was looking to put forward $1 billion -- $1 trillion infrastructure bill. And then it came through under President Biden. So we've heard no concerns about the IIJA being rolled back if there were to be a change in administration. But what's interesting is when you look at the growth that we've seen over the past number of years, that's really without the impact of any IIJA in there in any event because it really hasn't started to hit in a meaningful way yet. So we feel good that it will continue. However, even if it did not, you still see the strong support that we have in the market.

Chris Murray, ATB Capital Markets. Thinking about international growth, a couple of questions here. First of all, can you maybe elaborate a little bit on ZETCON and Germany and what that gives you as a base and expansion in Europe? And then you also mentioned Ireland a little bit. And so a couple of questions around that. How much of this is about being able to do domestic work in Ireland? And how much of this is maybe being able to create a third kind of low-cost center to support the rest of the development?

Sure. Maybe, Cath, do you want to take Ireland and how we guide into that country? And then I'll circle back on ZETCON -- or actually, you can chat about ZETCON, too.

Yes. So Ireland is an interesting place for us because we already have a strong presence with our water program, both in Northern Ireland with Northern Island Water and then down in Southern Ireland with Irish Water. And so we plan to expand into Ireland using the base that we already have and the people that we already have there to expand into other areas. And then maybe -- shall I just touch on Germany?

Yes, [ please ].

The interest that we have in expanding in Europe really is in 3 areas: firstly, in the advanced manufacturing that we've talked about, and whether that's in microchips, whether it's in food processing, there's huge opportunities. And I think Len touched on some of those earlier. The second area that we're interested in is on the international development work. We already have a super business that operates out of Brussels, really, really focused on development work with the EU. But there's a massive opportunity to expand into Germany with the GIZ, which is a similar organization that we currently don't do a lot of work for. We've got huge experience in the international development with EBRD, for example, the EU. So GIZ would be a next target area for us. And then finally, the U.S. federal work that Susan talked about, the European Deterrence Initiative, that gives us a fantastic opportunity for expansion in the infrastructure space in Germany as well. So I think the ZETCON leadership are very, very focused on growth, and that's what excites them about coming to Stantec. So I think we've got some really good growth opportunities that we're focused on. And as soon as we close, we'll be working with them to get their thoughts on how we can leverage their existing staff to see what we can do.

Great. Thanks, Cath. I think Ian was...

Ian Gillies from Stifel. With the conclusion of this new 3-year plan, is there any updated views on how you intend to pursue defense spending in the U.S. and whether you do that organically? Or is there an M&A option to go about doing that? Because that's obviously a large wedge of growth that there's not a lot of exposure to today.

Right. But when -- as we think about U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that you might think is defense spending, it's really a lot of just core infrastructure. Ryan spoke about the $6 billion Orange project that we're doing down there. There's a lot of Pacific Deterrence Initiative work that we're beginning to talk about. I was in Honolulu in the summer talking with them. That's really not defense as much as hearts and minds type of work. Getting into these small island states, providing schools, airports, runways, ports, and a lot of it is hearts and minds-related. So we don't intend to get into the defense space as we think about it from weapons or we have no interest in getting involved in that space. So where we do support those partners is really just on the infrastructure side, whether it's a port, a building and so on. So yes, we have no intention, just to be clear, of getting into the weapons side or anything highly focused on that from a defense perspective. Up in the front row here.

Benoit Poirier from Desjardins. Maybe the question is for Cath. You highlight the big growth opportunities about the U.K. water, the fact that it could almost double by 2026. So very promising outlook out there. Looking at this growth -- this impressive growth rate, what about the resources or whether the people your Asifa will be able to supply enough people to make sure that you can deliver, how do you mitigate the execution going forward?

So obviously, the opportunity is huge, and we've thought long and hard about how we grow our own teams because there are not enough resources in the U.K. quite literally to deliver on the opportunities that are ahead. So what we are doing, we've already recruited 200 graduates. They joined us this year. And we have put fast-track training programs in place. We've developed something called the [ Stormwater Academy ], which is a sort of a program over a 6-week period that takes people as fast as we can do through training programs. So it's growing our own as well as continuing to attract people in. And then in addition to that, we're upsizing in Pune and Manila substantially. So we'll take on another 200 people to support the program in Pune, and we're just looking at what we could find out in Manila as well. So we have a very well thought through strategy to be able to deliver on this 50% increase.

One thing also that, if you're interested, you can chat with Cath afterwards is in the U.K., they have a really interesting apprenticeship program where you can get an engineering degree through an apprenticeship route rather than going to university full time for 4 or 5 years and then coming out. You can actually get, through work experience and coursework, get an engineering degree. And we are huge supporters of that apprenticeship program in the U.K., and we have several people who are working with us from that. So that would be a good thing to chat about at the break, if you're interested.

Mike Tupholme, TD Securities. We -- Stantec's obviously got a level of expertise in many areas, quite positive on the outlook going forward. Wondering if there are any types of expertise or technical capabilities that you feel you need to add to fully capitalize on the growth in front of you.

Yes. We actually feel really good about the diverse set of skill sets that we have. We're always looking to expand a little bit. As Ryan talked about, we're getting more into industrial water and wastewater treatment now. And we have some of the world leaders in that field. We can always use a few more because we're getting so much work in that area. But we know who those people are. There's probably 10 of them in North America. So we already know who they are. They know who we are. So we're finding opportunities. But those would be -- those are surgical, a person here, a person there. I don't see any big blind spots where we need to go out and acquire 1,000 people to support growth in an area. So just very surgical continued growth between here and there.

And then second question. I mean, obviously, you're very positive on the outlook here in the next 3 years, and that's reflected in the targets you put out. What do you see as the biggest risks or uncertainties that you're going to face in the next 3 years? And how would those compare to what you've maybe seen as risks and uncertainties historically?

The one thing -- as we always are thinking about the risk, the one thing that makes us feel very comfortable about where we are is just the wide diversification geographically of our businesses and the wide geographic -- and the wide diversity across the business lines and even within the business lines, as Ryan mentioned, the diversity amongst the different client bases. So if we see public or private begin to toughen up and trend downwards, that's okay because we pivot to another group. Perfect example is [ Lenza Group ] early in the pandemic. When some of the public -- private sector work began to turn down, we pivoted to health care. And as you can see, over the last 3 years, this group has continued to grow. So I think for us, we feel like we've really derisked the opportunity going forward by having a varied client set, varied contract set, varied throughout our business operating units and geographically varied. So it would have to be really a global -- something globally that would happen that would really -- before we think we'd see a significant impact. We probably have time for one more question. I see Saba.

Saba Khan, RBC. I guess there's been a lot of discussion about adding people and trying to shore up resources where there's demand. How do you -- like what's the philosophical perspective on how many people you add in India or kind of center versus adding people in North America or in regions where you're working? Is there a percent of mix? Or how do you think about the -- I would think you could add a lot more people in those centers immediately if you really wanted to. So how do you balance that?

Yes. We are -- and so we absolutely are focused on that. And I think one of the things that we've talked with many of you about before is that with us having roughly 1,000 people in these high-value centers, we would be subscale as a percentage of overall staff count compared to some of our other global competitors. So that gives us the additional confidence that we have -- that we can continue to scale that up. We've set -- when we were roughly 500, we said we wanted to double it to 1,000. We're at 1,000 now. We said we want to double it now to 2,000. And I think that's very, very achievable. So I think it's not one or the other. We're going to continue to hire aggressively in North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, other locations, and in addition to that, continue to hire aggressively in Pune and Manila.

I agree. And then just one quick follow-up on the Australian market. It looks like it's become pretty big for you relatively quickly. Some of the headlines we've seen is that market was supported by a lot of massive infrastructure programs like specific projects. As those are wrapping up, how do you feel about just the absolute level of sort of infrastructure spend from kind of the public perspective in that region over the next few years?

Sure. Cath, I'll turn that to you.

Yes. We still see sustained growth in Australia. There is a huge health care program, for example, that we're very focused on achieving. And the energy transition that I talked about is a major focus area for us. So I would say the high-growth areas are probably U.K., Europe and then Australia would be after that. So yes, we remain very, very optimistic about that marketplace.

Okay. Thanks, Cath. And maybe just to wrap up then, really just truly, thank you to all of you who have traveled to be with us here in person today as well as those who have joined us on the webcast. I think as you can see, we are very proud of our performance over the last few years as we successfully delivered on our 2020 strategic plan. And as you've heard here today, we have incredible opportunities in front of us. The global trends that we've discussed earlier are going to provide significant tailwinds for our businesses around the globe as we continue to grow both organically and through our disciplined M&A programs. And it's these tailwinds, coupled with our strong operational discipline, that provide us with the confidence to set our longer-term aspirational targets of achieving that 20% EBITDA margin while generating annual net revenue in excess of $10 billion. We're excited about the future of Stantec and the opportunities going forward, and we believe that we've set aggressive yet achievable financial targets for our current 3-year strategic plan that will deliver significant net revenue growth, further EBITDA margin expansion and increased EPS growth. And we have performed so well over the past number of years, and yet there is so much more to come in the Stantec story. So for those of you who are with us here in Boston, lunch will be served just outside here where we had the coffee break. And we've also invited -- and you've heard some references to it through about the showcase. So we've also invited several of our project leaders, technical experts to come and showcase a small handful of projects for you. So before you leave, please take some time to spend some good time with them. And where they are is just sort of down that one flight of stairs, the second stop on your tour, kind of by where the pool tables were and all that, that's where they are set up. So grab some lunch, go down there. They are so excited to talk to you about the projects that they're working on and some of the things that we've got ahead of us. So on behalf of the Stantec team, who is with us here today, and our 28,000 employees around the world, thank you again for joining us. Travel home safe, and goodbye.