John R. Hewitt
Analyst · Global Hunter Securities
Thank you, Kevin, and good morning, everyone. We've had a practice of starting our earnings calls with a discussion on safety, and our journey to zero-incident has many ups and downs. But nothing is more important to us than the safety and well-being of our employees. Unfortunately, during the month of January, we suffered a loss of an employee to a job site incident. While the investigation of the root cause of this incident is ongoing, this tragedy serves to further strengthen our resolve, expectations and leadership as we move forward on this journey. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family -- to this employee's family and friends. While this tragedy is at the forefront of our minds as we continue our relentless focus on safety, it is also important to recognize positive achievements our employees are making across the company. Collectively, through the first 6 months of this year, our recordable incident rate is 0.59, improved from 0.85 at the end of fiscal 2014. We also received several important safety awards, including a significant milestone at the BP Cherry Point Refinery in Washington State, where our team surpassed 5 million hours without a lost-time injury and 1.1 million hours without an OSHA recordable. Our Site Manager, Frank Capristo, was also chosen by BP Cherry Point Refinery from over 2,000 contractors as their 2014 Contractor Safety Person of the Year for his commitment to safety and to ensuring a safe work environment for all personnel at the refinery. This is the second consecutive year this award has been given to a Matrix employee, with Alec Brooks, Site Foreman, having received it in 2013. Additionally, the National Maintenance Agreements Policy Committee also recognized Matrix with 8 separate ZISA, or Zero Injury Safety Awards commendations for a combined 1.1 million work hours without injury. ZISA is the union construction industry's premiere safety recognition, honoring efforts of owners, clients, contractors and union workers to achieve what we know is possible: 0 injuries on the job site. In spite of the tragedy we talked about earlier, given our overall safety performance and culture, we expect our clients to continue their trust in Matrix's ability to provide a safe work environment on our project sites. I'd like to thank all Matrix employees for their dedication to a zero-incident mindset and fostering safe environments at work and at home. Before I discuss our segments in a little more detail, I want to pick up where we left off on our last call, specifically as it relates to the market and regulatory environment. In the second quarter, we reached out to over 30 of our largest customers to discuss commodity prices and the impact lower oil prices have on their business and capital spending plans. Across the board, our customers have indicated that material impacts to their long-term strategies are unlikely. In upstream, which represents a small portion of our consolidated revenue, our upstream customers will delay some projects but other approved or planned projects will continue. In the midstream space, which we generally equate to our Storage Solutions segment, our customers noted that logistic issues continue to persist. Solving these issues is key to closing the cost gap between rail and pipeline shipping as well as dealing with continued production growth. Specifically, our key midstream clients, such as TransCanada and Enbridge, have a long-term view on their capital infrastructure investments and are more concerned with the resolution of regulatory issues than short-term market pressure. Regarding natural gas and gas liquids, also part of our Storage Solutions segment, our clients see their NGL projects as critical infrastructure elements. These projects remain viable in the current price atmosphere and from a long-term prospective. Domestic LNG projects may be delayed as existing global contracts are typically indexed to crude prices. However, we continue to see several viable project opportunities throughout North America. Downstream, turnarounds, maintenance and repair, as well as environmental and regulatory projects will continue for our refinery and petrochemical customers. Historically, low natural gas prices and other feedstocks create greater opportunity in our Electrical Infrastructure and Industrial segments. New power generation projects continue to move forward as well as power delivery projects critical to updating the North American electrical grid. In our discussions, one of the consistent points our clients shared with us is that permitting and federal regulations are of much greater concern to them than the fluctuation of oil and gas prices. In summary, as we discussed on our last call, our clients generally take a longer-term view to making project decisions. Long-term pricing over multiple years is what will determine any significant impact to our business. Moving on into our segments. For Electrical Infrastructure segment, the quarter was negatively impacted by a charge on an acquired EPC joint venture project, which Matrix is providing construction services. The charge is primarily a result of engineering and client-supplied equipment issues, which created a significant amount of rework and schedule compression in order for us to meet our delivery obligations by the end of this fiscal year. Exclusive of this project issue, this segment continues to perform well and our view of the significant opportunities ahead remains unchanged. On that note, following the completion of the second quarter, we were awarded the construction work on a new 900-megawatt combined cycle power generation station for TransCanada Energy. The facility, to be constructed in Napanee, Ontario, builds on a long history of constructing these type of facilities in North America and will be the second major gas-fired power generation project with TransCanada for Matrix North America Construction in the past 5 years. We look forward to working with TransCanada Energy on this important project to support Ontario's electricity demand. Performance in our Oil, Gas & Chemical segment remains robust as strong proposal and bidding activity translated into solid revenue growth both quarter-over-quarter and versus the prior year. Strong bookings have also lifted backlog for this segment to an all-time high of $148 million. While backlog is not necessarily a perfect indicator for the strength of this segment, it does demonstrate the demand for our services in the current market environment. In the Storage Solutions segment, backlog of $447 million, while up 27% year-over-year, is down from an all-time high set last quarter. In the current oil price environment, we continue to see significant opportunities for new storage tanks and terminals throughout our service territory. The contango oil market may be creating additional storage opportunities in many of the traditional storage geographies, such as Cushing, Oklahoma. In our tank maintenance and repair business, opportunities have been strong. And we believe that growth in this business line will continue. Matrix PDM Engineering is creating cryogenic EPC opportunities in LNG and NGL projects. This is starting to create backlog enhancement and visibility for future project awards. Overall, we remain very bullish on the direction of our Storage Solutions segment and foresee long-term growth. Lastly, performance in our Industrial segment was solid this quarter due to strong project execution, including positive project closeouts. This helped lift gross margins to 13.2% for the quarter, an all-time high for the segment. This segment is currently made up of, made up by 3 key markets, which I would like to address individually. First, we are continuing to successfully execute our fertilizer work with Orascom in Southeast Ohio -- Southeast Iowa. Due to our high-quality execution on this project, we have received a number of additional awards with this client, nearly doubling our initial contract value. As we complete the work at this facility, we are actively bidding additional fertilizer plant-related projects. This market is maturing. And while the number of potential projects is diminishing, those that are left provide better opportunities for our business. In the mining and minerals sector, low copper prices are reducing the capital spending of our clients. However, Matrix's market focus is principally on small cap and maintenance work, which we will continue to find, win and execute. Finally, the iron & steel sector has produced very strong results the first 6 months of this fiscal year, and we believe this strength will continue. The strong U.S. economy with cheap feedstocks, low energy prices and import price protection is creating capital project and maintenance opportunities for our business. As always, in all of our segments, we continue to look for acquisition opportunities that bring added bench strength, market penetration or a unique specialty component to complement our existing services. In closing, we are disappointed in the negative impact of the quarter and full year that the previously mentioned project has had on the business financial results. However, the performance in the balance of the business is on track with our expectations, and we remain excited about our position in the marketplace. I'll now turn the call back to Kevin to discuss details of our financial performance. Kevin?