20260806 wsp global inc q2 2026 transcript

Quentin Weber

Good day, and thank you for joining our call. Today we will discuss our Q2 2026 results and performance, followed by a question-and-answer session. Alexandre L’Heureux, our

President and Chief Executive Officer, and Alain Michaud, our Chief Financial Officer, are joining us this morning. Please note that this call is also accessible via webcast on our website.

During the call we may make forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ from those expressed or implied. We undertake no obligation to update or revise any of these statements.

Relevant factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements are listed in the MD&A for the quarter ended June 26, 2026, and the financial year ended

December 31, 2025, which can be found on SEDAR+ and on our website.

In addition, during the call we may refer to specific non-IFRS financial measures. These measures are defined in the MD&A for the quarter ended June 26, 2026.

Our MD&A includes reconciliations of non-IFRS financial measures to the most directly comparable

IFRS measures. Management believes that these non-IFRS measures and other financial measures provide useful information to investors regarding the corporation's financial condition and results of operation as they provide additional key metrics of its performance.

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

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

Alexandre L’Heureux: Thank you, Quentin, and thank you all for joining us this morning.

This was an excellent quarter for WSP. The company exited the second quarter with stronger momentum than when it entered the year.

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

Let me recap a few highlights from the quarter.

First, organic net revenue growth of 5% brought us to the high-end of our quarterly outlook range with every reportable segment contributing.

We added roughly $800 million of net revenues year-over-year, a 23% increase, largely reflecting the contribution of our recent highly strategic acquisitions.

Second, backlog reached a new record of $20.1 billion at quarter-end, with organic growth of 5.7% over the last 12 months. Beyond the absolute number, what matters most is that organic backlog growth accelerated to its strongest pace since 2022.

In a market where investors are increasingly focused on long-term visibility, we believe our backlog, sub-backlog and pipeline of opportunities provide a clear indication of future growth potential.

Our pipeline tells the same story. WSP is involved in some of the largest and most complex projects globally. For example, our top 20 opportunities alone represent more than $4 billion in potential revenue.

Importantly, the strongest areas of demand we see today are directly linked to long-duration investment themes, including AI-enabled digital infrastructure, power generation and transmission, data centers, critical minerals, defense and nuclear energy. These are complex, engineering-intensive programs that require multidisciplinary expertise, regulatory capabilities and large-scale project delivery capacity.

Third, our adjusted EBITDA margin expanded by 90 basis points year-over-year to 19.1%, reflecting our continued and disciplined focus on margin improvement. Adjusted EBITDA grew by 28.8% year- over-year and exceeded our quarterly outlook range.

As we continue our journey on margin expansion, it is becoming increasingly apparent to us that scale creates operational leverage. And fourth, our Power & Energy platform delivered another quarter of double-digit organic growth, with global net revenues from our top 40 global power clients rising 30% year-over-year. TRC's integration remains on plan for completion within the next six months. The acquisition is doing exactly what we acquired it to do: strengthening our position in one of the fastest- growing and most strategic end markets globally.

Let me now provide you with a few comments on our regions.

Starting with Canada, which delivered on every measure this quarter. Organic growth reached 5.1% and backlog grew by a robust 14.2% over the last 12 months, an outstanding performance. The pipeline in Canada is exceptionally deep and the momentum is broad-based.

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

Our pipeline has doubled in the past year, positioning us as a strategic partner on major current and upcoming opportunities.

In Mining, our recognized global leadership with more than 5,000 professionals worldwide, helped us convert several major opportunities. Capital keeps moving toward critical minerals, driven by AI, electrification, grid expansion and energy transition. This high-margin business has averaged double- digit organic growth over five years with hard backlog up roughly 25% in the past 12 months.

In Power & Energy, we see a significant increase in demand for our Engineering Services. Our energy subsector is well ahead of budget delivering 70% growth year-over-year. We expect market conditions to remain strong for the remainder of 2026 and into 2027 with increased investment across the energy market in Canada.

In Nuclear, WSP is Canada's leader in siting and permitting consulting. We are leading or supporting every impact assessment for proposed new nuclear generation in Canada.

Nuclear-related revenue has tripled year-over-year, and backlog in this market is at a record.

Defense, Mining, Transportation, Power & Energy and Nuclear together make up one of the most compelling growth profiles in our portfolio in Canada and globally, and we expect that to continue.

Turning to the Americas. The depth of our accessible hard backlog and sub-backlog, together with a robust opportunity pipeline, positions us well for accelerated growth in the second half and beyond.

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

In addition, approximately 86% of that sub-backlog sits in framework agreements, which are pre- approved contract vehicles that let task orders convert quickly to revenue once clients authorize funding.

Power & Energy continues to expand rapidly in the U.S., supported by bid and proposal activity with investor-owned utilities. In this market, net revenues and hard backlog from our top 40 global power clients in the U.S. increased 15% and 20% year-over-year, respectively.

Our portfolio of clients now includes the top 60 U.S. investor-owned utilities or IOUs covering the vast majority of the U.S. market.

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

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

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

Ranked number one in data center design, WSP now supports more than six sites with more than one gigawatt of compute power capacity and is a trusted partner to the 70 clients we serve in this sector, a number that has doubled in the last year.

In Advanced Manufacturing, clients are engaging us across the entire project life cycle, from early planning through design, delivery and operational readiness, drawing on our integrated multidisciplinary capabilities. WSP is supporting over 200 industrial clients, and the backlog is up 29% year-over-year. The platform continues to deliver strong momentum, with revenue growth of more than 20% year-over-year.

Nuclear in the U.S. is scaling just as quickly. We are now supporting 22 new sites across the U.S., spanning site selection, licensing, design and construction support and we recently won a role in the primary design of an industry-first gas-to-nuclear SMR project with Blue Energy at the Port of Victoria site in Texas. Few firms can operate across the full cycle of nuclear programs, and that is precisely where the market is heading.

Lastly, on Water, the business is up 20% year-over-year and is another fast-scaling part of our portfolio. Client demand for water infrastructure shows no signs of slowing, with the WSP Water pipeline up 61% year-over-year as communities invest in aging infrastructure, PFAS, water quality mandates and climate resilience.

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

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

Nuclear, Defense & Security, Aviation and Healthcare.

EMEIA is increasingly winning on the breadth of what it can offer and with a healthy organic backlog growth profile, the region has the visibility to sustain this trajectory.

Finally, in APAC, the region returned to growth for the first time in six quarters right on plan powered by a notable turnaround in Australia.

In New Zealand, the Government's National Land Transport Plan has reduced project investment.

While this is expected to have some impact on our business, we are taking steps to mitigate its effects. Overall, the efforts we deploy to recalibrate the business in APAC are showing up in the numbers.

In summary, this was an exceptional quarter and more importantly, clear evidence that our strategy is working and momentum is accelerating.

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

Alain Michaud

Thank you, Alex, and hello, everyone.

I'm pleased to report this morning on our strong financial results for the quarter, and let's start with growth.

For the second quarter, revenues increased by approximately 20% year-over-year, while net revenue increased by approximately 23%.

Organic net revenue growth reached 5% with all reportable segments contributing. The U.K. posted double-digit organic growth. EMEIA outperformed expectations, APAC returned to growth a quarter ahead of plan, and the outlook for the U.S. business improved in the quarter. Backlog reached a new record level of $20 billion as of the end of June, up 23% over the last 12 months, representing 11.6 months of revenue with organic growth standing at 5.7% over the same period.

Moving on to profitability. Adjusted EBITDA in the quarter grew to $815 million, compared to $633 million in the second quarter of 2025, representing an increase of 29% and exceeding management's quarterly outlook range of $770 million to $810 million. Adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter increased 90 basis points, reaching 19.1% compared to 18.2% in the second quarter of 2025. The improvement was driven equally by productivity gains and lower rightsizing costs versus the prior year. 19.1% is the best WSP Q2 margin ever recorded.

Adjusted net earnings for the quarter reached $389 million, or $2.88 per share, up $82 million or

$0.53 per share compared to the second quarter of 2025. This represents a 23% increase over the prior year.

As for our cash position, cash inflows from operating activities were $554 million for the six-month period ended June 26, 2026, compared to $822 million in the corresponding period of 2025. This mainly reflects timing. The prior year period benefited from $195 million of inflow related to the sale of eligible trade receivables under the factoring arrangement and, in addition, a portion of the POWER

Engineers incentive awards were paid during the quarter. Adjusted for those two items, cash generation is in line with last year, and we expect historical levels of conversion over the balance of

2026, consistent with our usual seasonality.

Free cash flow was $255 million for the six-month period ended June 26, 2026, and trailing 12-month free cash flow amounted to $1.4 billion, representing 1.5x net earnings attributable to shareholders.

DSO at the end of the quarter stood at 71 days, compared to 69 days last year, and is in line with our expectations.

While the leverage ratio remains slightly above our target range following the recent acquisition of

TRC, we generated approximately $1.4 billion of trailing 12-month free cash flow and remain confident in our ability to deliver through earnings growth and cash generation with a return to our target range by year-end.

Turning to our 2026 outlook. The financial outlook issued in February 2026 and revised on May 6,

2026, is reiterated, except for the increased net revenue and adjusted EBITDA ranges, which are now expected to range between $16.2 billion and $17 billion for net revenue, and between $3.1 billion and

$3.18 billion for adjusted EBITDA.

In the 2025 to 2027 Global Strategic Action Plan, we set an ambition to reach an adjusted EBITDA margin of 19% to 20% by 2027, and given the progress achieved to date, we continue to see a path to get to that target range as early as 2026.

For Q3 2026, we expect net revenue to range from $4.15 billion to $4.35 billion and adjusted EBITDA to range from $850 million to $890 million.

Lastly, our acquisition, integration and reorganization costs are now expected to range between $285 million and $305 million, mainly due to non-cash accounting impacts following the disposal of non- core activities, as well as costs related to ongoing M&A and integration activities.

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

Actual results may differ, and such differences may be material. Also, our selected financial outlook does not include any acquisition, transaction or disposal that may occur after today.

Overall, this quarter's results — organic growth across all segments, a record backlog, expanded margin and increased outlook — give us real confidence for the remainder of 2026 and beyond. Our financial position remains healthy and provides a solid foundation to support our priorities going forward.

On that, back to you, Alex.

Alexandre L’Heureux: Thank you, Alain.

To close, we delivered an excellent second quarter. Net revenue grew 23%. Adjusted EBITDA rose nearly 29%, margins expanded by 90 basis points to 19.1%, our best second quarter ever since our

IPO, all while delivering 5% organic growth with every segment contributing.

What excites us most is not any single number in isolation. It is the direction of travel.

Organic growth accelerated, organic backlog growth accelerated, margins expanded, TRC is performing as expected. Bottom line, our confidence increased.

Taken together, these results reinforce our belief that WSP is uniquely positioned at the intersection of some of the world's largest investment themes: energy sovereignty, AI infrastructure, critical minerals, defense resilience, water, and power and energy. When we look across the portfolio today, we see a business with stronger momentum exiting the second quarter than when it entered the year.

Before taking questions, I would like to briefly now address Arcadis.

As previously disclosed, we have submitted two friendly, non-binding proposals to Arcadis. As outlined in our 2025-2027 Global Strategic Action Plan, M&A remains an important component of our long- term strategy to deliver shareholder value and continues to be part of the fabric of WSP. Consistent with that strategy, we continue to believe that a combination with Arcadis would be highly strategic, would create substantial value for the stakeholders of both companies and would accelerate the growth ambitions of the combined organization.

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

Importantly, regardless of the outcome, WSP's growth outlook, strategic priorities, financial objectives and capital allocation framework remain unchanged.

Our business continues to perform very well as demonstrated by the results we reported today including accelerated organic growth, record backlog and expanding margins. Beyond that, we do not intend to comment further on Arcadis today so that we can keep our focus on WSP's second quarter results and outlook.

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

Questions and Answers

Operator

(Operator Instructions) And the question comes from the line of Frederic Bastien from

Raymond James.

Frederic Bastien

Good quarter, and I appreciate the level of granularity you provided around your target markets. I was under the impression that Americas margins would be down slightly year-over- year as you fold in the TRC business, but instead we saw a pretty impressive gain. Can you elaborate on what drove this — strength in the underlying business, a better-than-expected performance from

TRC, or both?

Alain Michaud

It's a bit of everything, Fred. As you know, we have been pushing hard on continued improvement in efficiency, productivity and project performance, and we have made good progress with TRC as well. We are very proud of the margin expansion in the U.S., in Canada and across the patch.

Frederic Bastien

How should we think about the potential for margin improvement in the back half in the Americas specifically?

Alain Michaud

The outlook we put together indicates, at the midpoint, a 60-basis-point improvement versus last year, and as stated before, we see a path to deliver a bit better and get into our 2027 target range of 19% to 20%. As it relates to the U.S., which will be 50% of the business, we will continue to push hard, and you can imagine that this will be part of the story supporting that 60-basis- point to 70-basis-point improvement over the prior year.

Frederic Bastien

Alex, you started and finished your prepared remarks by saying WSP is in a better place today than it was six months ago. Should we interpret that as a broadly based improvement across the organization, or are there still certain countries or markets where conditions remain more mixed?

Alexandre L’Heureux: New Zealand remains a little more mixed, although it is doing better than a year ago. With that exception, every geography and every sector in our portfolio is contributing positively, so I feel very good about where we are today compared with six months ago.

Coming back to the U.S. business, Frederic: five years ago we had 9,000 people there; today we have 28,000. Sometimes you need to pause and reflect on what we have accomplished over the last

60 months and on the amount of capital we have deployed in the country. As Alain indicated, it is now

50% of our business, and we are starting to reap the benefits of what we built with the POWER

Engineers and TRC acquisitions. Earlier in the decade we also acquired Golder and Wood E&I. Five years ago, 80% of our U.S. revenue was generated in Transport & Infrastructure; today, 35% to 40% of that business is in Power. We needed a bit of time to digest that transformation.

Now, when I look at the pipeline of opportunities, the sub-backlog and the collaboration between our sectors, I am very excited about the future prospects of WSP in the U.S. and globally. Then you look at Canada, with backlog growth of 14.2% — I have not seen that in a long, long time. I am quite pleased with the results, and I think they bode well for the future.

Operator

And the question comes from the line of Sabahat Khan from RBC Capital Markets.

Sabahat Khan

My question is on organic growth in the U.S. market, which was pretty good this quarter. How has that evolved since last year, and what is your view looking into the back half of the year?

Alain Michaud

We are very pleased with the performance in the quarter. An important point about

the U.S. business

if you look at the underlying business and take TRC as an organic contribution, it is delivering roughly 6% in the first half, which is a pretty good performance. We continue to see accelerating momentum in the U.S. Our recruitment engine is firing on all cylinders and we have been growing headcount, and the backlog growth and pipeline of opportunities in key areas of growth, including Power & Energy, are all pointing in the right direction. So beyond any specific quarter, we feel increasingly comfortable with the pace of the U.S. business, and the leading indicators are all pointing in the right direction.

Operator

And the question comes from the line of Benoit Poirier from Desjardins.

Benoit Poirier

Alex, Alain, congratulations on the solid quarter. First, on APAC: it was nice to see you turn positive on organic growth. What should we expect in the second half in terms of organic growth for the region, in light of your backlog?

Alain Michaud

We are very pleased with APAC's performance, returning to growth a quarter ahead of plan. This is largely explained by Australia, which is outperforming expectations right now. On the other side, as Alex pointed out, there is a bit of softness in New Zealand, despite a much better performance than last year. All in all, we are still targeting to be in line with our outlook for the region, which assumed a flat contribution. We will continue to push, and if Australia keeps delivering we may have a good surprise, but for the time being revenue similar to last year remains our expectation.

Benoit Poirier

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

Alexandre L’Heureux: We continue, Benoit. We have a three-year plan to deliver, and we have been enormously active over the last 24 months with POWER Engineers, TRC and Ricardo, all of which are progressing extremely well. We also continue to have informal and formal discussions with smaller and midsized firms, so yes, we have a good pipeline.

I have said it in the past and I will say it again: we don't use the market as an excuse. WSP has always found ways to be opportunistic in good times and in more challenging times. The fact that our company is trading two turns below its industry peers does not mean we will stop finding opportunities to create shareholder value.

Benoit Poirier

And last one for me: could you provide an update on the number of employees you now have in India?

Alain Michaud

India continues to be a fantastic story for us. Our overall Global Capability Centre platform now stands at 6,500 people, or about 8% of our total platform; not so long ago, Benoit, we were talking about 5% to 6%. It continues to be a significant lever to grow, and we are very proud of the progress — roughly 1,000 net new people year-to-date, more than 20% growth. That does not

mean we are not hiring elsewhere

we have roughly 7,000 open technical positions right now. As I said about the U.S., and it is true across the patch, our recruitment engine is firing on all cylinders.

Operator

And the question comes from the line of Maxim Sytchev from NBC Capital Markets.

Maxim Sytchev

Alex, could you provide a bit more of an update on the TRC integration and on the operational priorities the management team is focusing on for this asset specifically?

Alexandre L’Heureux: Things are progressing extremely well, Max. The business is performing as expected, if not slightly exceeding our expectations. Our goalpost is January 1 to convert TRC onto our system, now that we have one global platform, and we are working on that. But what is more important — and where the team and I have been spending a great deal of our time — is the client- facing work. As I mentioned, we now have 100 joint pursuits underway between WSP and TRC. When we acquire a company we always start with client-facing activities: there is nothing like winning work together to bring two organizations together, and that is true of every acquisition.

Salary and benefits harmonization is substantially complete and we have a roadmap. The last milestone will be the system conversion, and there is little point in doing that midyear. We are already in August, so we might as well wait until the end of the fiscal year; that is why we chose January 1.

Otherwise, we could have done it much quicker. So it is progressing very well, Max.

Maxim Sytchev

And in terms of the opportunities by geography, on a pro forma basis, I presume the

U.K. is where you could combine and leverage both companies' expertise and relationships. Is that how we should be thinking about this?

Alexandre L’Heureux: On a pro forma basis, the most runway and the most exciting prospects will obviously be in the U.S., Max. We now work with most, if not all, of the IOUs in the U.S., so we cover the territory entirely. In Transmission & Distribution we are by far the largest player in the U.S., there is not one project we cannot tackle, and we have strong generation capabilities as well.

As I said earlier, we needed time to digest the two acquisitions we completed, but the activity level is now clearly accelerating, and the size and scale of the bids in that sector are quite exciting. I was not in a position to talk about it more officially on the call, but we secured a very important win after quarter-end, and I hope to provide more detail next quarter. In Sweden, we also secured a very important win in Power shortly after the quarter, which will be reflected in next quarter's backlog.

We are using our Center of Excellence in the U.S., and we want that domain expertise to travel across borders and around the world. We are already seeing the benefit in Sweden, but you are right to point to the U.K. and other locations.

Operator

The question comes from the line of Chris Murray from ATB Cormark Capital Markets.

Chris Murray

Turning to margins. Alain, you mentioned a baseline of 60 basis points of improvement this year, with line of sight to that 19% to 20% longer-term range. Normally we would assume a natural lift on margins from the growth rate you are seeing, so beyond volume, could you talk about pricing, particularly in the context of the debate around the impact of AI on the business and how you see pricing flowing through to margins?

Alexandre L’Heureux: There is a lot in that question. First of all, I agree with you: we believe in scale, and we believe scale matters. Our margins are expanding — and, as I said, this is our best margin performance in any second quarter since our IPO — because we are now a leading firm in most of the geographies in which we operate. Scale gives us a strong brand in the marketplace and allows us to be more selective about the clients we work with and the projects we pursue. When you have a leading position, you are able to do that, and it clearly has an impact on pricing.

As it relates to productivity and the lift in our margins, the tools we are using, the fact that we now have one platform, the continued transformation of our corporate functions and our ability to use scale to do more with less are all helping. That is why I have always been quite vocal about our strong conviction that scale would matter at the end of the day.

Chris Murray

And as we go into the second half, is there anything we should be thinking about on cadence?

Alain Michaud

There are a couple of things on cadence. First, the comparable figures in the first half of last year included quite a bit of rightsizing activity, and there was less of it in the second half of

2025, so the comps do not give you the same lift in the second half. That is why, versus the 90 basis points this quarter, we expect closer to 60 basis points for the full year. The second piece, which offsets that a little, is the Ricardo acquisition — a great acquisition and an amazing brand — where we should start to see less margin dilution going forward. Those are the two pieces, but the biggest one is last year's rightsizing.

Chris Murray

You are talking about 60 basis points; what is the delta for the extra 20 to 30 basis points that gets you into that 19% range? Is it simply things going right and project timing, or something else?

Alain Michaud

I would not call out any particular element, Chris. It is a good old-fashioned focus on all the levers that make us efficient, and on pricing. We are pushing hard everywhere rather than relying on any one thing.

Alexandre L’Heureux: I would also say that we have made smart investments in recent years. We have seen a great margin uplift at POWER Engineers, and we are already seeing an uplift in TRC's margin profile. Ricardo will take a bit more time, but sooner rather than later; once we are done with the transformation of that business, I expect a margin uplift there as well. As Alain said, and as I have said many times in the past, expanding our margin profile is not one thing — it is multiple levers that you need to pull, and that is what we are doing right now.

Operator

The question comes from the line of Ian Gillies from Stifel.

Ian Gillies

Productivity seemed to be a key theme through the quarter, and I think everyone has been a bit myopic in focusing on AI tools. Could you elaborate on some of the other strategies you are pursuing on that front, and do you have any updated views on whether AI tools are making your employees more proficient rather than redundant?

Alexandre L’Heureux: To start with, AI tools are, as you just mentioned, a tool, and they will continue to support our engineers to provide more efficient design, more rapidly. But I can tell you that at this point, AI has very little to do with the uplift in productivity. Of course it will be a contributor in the future, we continue to believe that, and we are not complacent about it. At the same time, if you go on our website, we have 7,000 open positions that we are actively pursuing.

So when we talk about productivity, it is about managing a very fluid workforce, in a market that is quite buoyant in most of the geographies in which we operate. As Alain said on the previous question, we are pulling multiple levers to increase our margin profile. More importantly, we have a culture of

performance

we take great pride in what we do, and in translating revenue into quality earnings.

It starts there. It is done at the top and it trickles down through the organization, and our employees are extremely proud of delivering projects on time and on budget. We are seeing the benefit of that this quarter, but the reality is that we have been seeing it for five or six years in a row, with WSP consistently improving its profitability over the last six or seven years. Through COVID, through good times and challenging times, we have raised the bar, and I am extremely proud that we reached the

19% milestone in the second quarter this year. We said in our plan that we wanted to get to 19% to

20%; we now have that in sight, and we may get there quicker than originally planned.

Operator

(Operator Instructions) And the question comes from the line of Avi Jaroslawicz from UBS.

Avi Jaroslawicz

Power is continuing to drive the growth in the United States. What are you seeing in the U.S. market outside of Power — is any sector more of a drag on growth at the moment? And what are your expectations for growth in the Americas in the second half; should we expect an acceleration through the rest of the year?

Alexandre L’Heureux: Our other sectors are performing as planned at this point, so we have no disappointments, as Alain and I have said, on the awards or on accessing them. We feel good about it. At WSP we have never wanted to put all our eggs in one basket, so we value the diversity of our offering, and I think it makes ours one of the most resilient platforms out there.

That is why I am pleased that we have had a laser-focused strategy of building one sector at a time.

Most recently that has been Power & Energy, and we are very proud to have completed those acquisitions — frankly, they were very timely. Sometimes you need a bit of luck, and I feel we were very fortunate to be in a position to welcome those two firms into our group.

As I said, it has taken us two years to really digest and assemble the team we have. Looking at the pipeline of opportunities we are pursuing in the power sector, I am excited and, honestly, impressed by the scale of the bids we are working on. More to come in that regard, but as I said, we feel better today than we did when we entered the year, and it bodes well for the future.

Avi Jaroslawicz

I also wanted to ask about EMEIA. It sounds like the U.K. was the main driver of growth there, and you mentioned a big win in Power in Sweden. Broadly speaking, outside the U.K., what are you seeing across the region, and can the organic growth rate stay at around this level through the second half?

Alain Michaud

We will see for the second half, but the momentum in the U.K. definitely continues to be strong. Part of our comment about feeling better than at the beginning of the year, and than a year ago, is what we see in the Nordics: the market has improved and, while still competitive, we are winning more than our fair share out there. Sweden is improving, and beyond that, across the space, the Middle East is fairly stable and does not move the needle up or down at this point.

Alexandre L’Heureux: In the U.K. we are gaining market share as we speak, and we have been gaining market share over the last two or three years. Looking at our peer group, I say with strong conviction that we are growing in the U.K. at a much faster rate than any of our competitors right now.

It is a great team and a great business, and that market share gain is the secret in EMEIA.

Operator

And the next question comes from the line of Yuri Lynk from Canaccord Genuity.

Yuri Lynk

I have been looking at your net revenue per employee over time, and it continues to grow.

How much of that growth would be your typical fee inflation, and how much might be growth in non- labor-derived revenue, such as new service offerings or data offerings?

Alexandre L’Heureux: I may surprise you with my answer: it is an important metric, but I do not wake up in the morning saying we need to do more per employee. Let me explain why. Had we not built our Earth & Environment and Geotechnical platform a few years ago, our fee per employee would be even higher at this point, Yuri, because the fees generated in environment, water and earth sciences are typically lower. But that is not a good reason not to be a leader in that vertical.

Truthfully, the reason is that we have a much stronger brand today than we had 10 years ago. We are now in a position to select the clients we wish to work with, and we are more selective about the projects we pursue. That undeniably has an impact on our pricing and on the quality of the projects we take on. I have said in the past that the more complex the assignment, the more excited we get, because we have the technical know-how and the domain expertise to tackle those projects — that is where we typically do extremely well. That is the first factor.

Second, as I have mentioned a few times today, scale matters. As we grow as a company, we benefit from economies of scale and can reduce our cost structure; in any given country, a dominant or leading firm is in a position to run a more effective cost structure. Combine that with the fluid workforce I mentioned and the performance culture we have internally, and that is why you see our fee per employee going up and our margins going up. There is no real secret about it: as I said before, it is multiple levers that you need to pull.

Yuri Lynk

That's helpful. I ask because over the last nine months investors have keyed in on AI as a potential threat to fee revenue. You would think that would be one of the first metrics where it would show up, but that is not what we are seeing.

Alexandre L’Heureux: Exactly. And that is consistent with everything we are seeing in the business today.

Operator

There are no further questions, so I will now hand back to you for closing remarks.

Alexandre L’Heureux: Thank you very much for attending this call today. I am very pleased with the quarter, and we look forward to updating you with our Q3 results. In the meantime, we wish you a good end of the summer. Take care.

Operator

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