Accelerating the future

Fellow shareholders, It has been more than seven years since I took the helm as CEO. Since then, we focused on getting the fundamentals right, invested heavily in our culture and made some significant changes to reshape and transform the company, executing on a series of strategic portfolio moves.

With our 2022-2024 Boldly Moving Forward strategy launched in March, we continue to embrace transformation to unite our people around our purpose and values, inspire new ideas and solutions, and build on our record of industry-leading performance. Today, our clients are facing one of the most disruptive periods ever, with the challenging geo-political environment, including the war in Ukraine, socioeconomic pressures and the climate emergency. The combination of our proactive approach to strategic portfolio management and a high-performance culture has created a business that is not only positioned for resilience during these macroeconomic conditions, but better placed to help our clients navigate these challenging times.

Driving positive impact

As a purpose-led company, we know we have a pivotal role to play in addressing the world's most significant challenges, including the climate emergency. This is not only good business but our duty to channel our technology-enabled expertise and capabilities toward benefiting people and the planet. In April, we updated our Climate Action Plan with new commitments to target 100% of our projects across all sectors to contribute to climate response or include ESG scope by 2025, to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across the value chain by 2040, and to maintain carbon neutrality status and 100% low-carbon electricity for operations. The plan also details Jacobs’ commitment to accelerating a transition to net-zero that is equitable and just.

The legacy we want to create for future generations is one of betterment, and the climate response solutions that we co-create with our public and private sector clients are making a difference in building a healthier, safer, more sustainable and resilient future for all.

Dynamic, inclusive and diverse culture

Our culture is continually evolving — founded on empowerment and accountability. It encompasses all our people and the collective strength we take from their unique perspectives. I am proud that during my tenure, we have shifted our Executive Leadership Team to a team that was 64% diverse (ethnicity and gender) at the end of the fiscal year 2022. The same is true of our Board’s independent directors who were 56% diverse (ethnicity and gender) at the end of the fiscal year 2022.

In addition, more than 30% of Jacobs’ global staff employees are women — building on our aspirational 40-40-20 goal (40% men, 40% women and 20% open to any gender). In fiscal year 2022, we also invested in benefiting Black communities through targeted STEAM programs and directed more than $2.54 billion of our overall procurement spend to diverse and disadvantaged suppliers.

Investing in our people and growing our talent base

Our continued success depends on maintaining and growing our base of diverse, talented colleagues — and creating programs that are meaningful to them. Our early career programs encourage, support and retain our newest employees, and this year we welcomed our new cohort of more than 2,600 graduates, interns and apprentices to Jacobs. As part of our continued investment in our employees' learning and development, we ramped up our Jacobs Leadership Program, educating our leaders and people managers, and made more than 26,000 training programs available to our employees globally.

We listened to our employees about the things that are important to them and took several steps to broaden how we support them, including family and financial planning, increased caregiver support, more health resources and career planning programs. Whether flexible ways of working or more resources for general wellbeing, we have seen how small shifts can make a big difference for our employees and their families. And we are committed to continue listening to our employees’ needs. The values we continue to practice and the trust we have built across the organization have created an environment where we can be honest, transparent and authentic with each other. We practice accountability, keep our commitments and deliver results. And together, through a trusting, collaborative and inclusive culture, we have built a strong foundation and the confidence to try new initiatives and innovative approaches.

Boldly moving forward

Our new Boldly Moving Forward strategy was informed by a comprehensive review of global mega-trends around rapid urbanization, demographics and social change, technology advancement, climate change and water scarcity. Our analysis reinforced that Jacobs’ decades of deep domain expertise and unique capabilities align with the most attractive, high-growth end markets that will drive our vision and growth around climate response, consulting and advisory services, and data solutions. Touching all our markets, these strategy accelerators unlock tremendous opportunities with existing and new clients, while driving our focus on where we intend to deploy capital over the next several years. Through our differentiated products and solutions, operational excellence, depth of knowledge, global delivery model and digital enablement, we are well positioned to support our clients.

As part of our new strategy, we formed a new business unit, Divergent Solutions, serving as the core foundation for developing and delivering innovative, next-generation cloud, cyber, data and digital technologies. Our acquisition of StreetLight Data, Inc. and strategic relationship with Palantir also bring numerous opportunities to leverage AI, machine learning and data analytics in the transportation and water markets, growing our end-to-end digital solutions portfolio and focus on ESG, while adding high growth software businesses that offer increased value for our clients and the communities we serve.

Our majority investment in PA Consulting is proving highly successful with synergies in our advisory services accelerating our positive social impact. We are seeing significant opportunities in multiple end markets to shape and drive real value. Whether it is working together on the undergrounding of 10,000 miles of cable for Pacific Gas and Electric to mitigate forest fires in California, delivering resilient solutions in deforestation, facilitating clean energy transition, or collaborating on analyzing investments for private equity in green hydrogen.

And, in August we adopted a new holding company structure with our new parent company, Jacobs Solutions Inc., which more closely aligns with Jacobs’ public identity as a global technology-forward solutions company.

Overall, our market capitalization is up more than $11 billion — an increase of 251% since 2015. This strong performance now enables us to take advantage of these global mega-trends and significant market opportunities, particularly our alignment with the U.S. Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act — taking the company to new heights.

Accelerating the future

I continue to feel a deep sense of pride for all the achievements and positive impacts that our people have delivered for our clients, our communities and our investors. Highlights this year included our support of the historic and successful launch of Artemis I, the first test flight in a series of increasingly complex missions under Artemis, NASA's deep space human exploration endeavor, which aims to land the first woman and the first person of color on the moon and establish a sustainable human future in deep space. Unlocking socioeconomic benefits, we also supported the delivery of the Elizabeth line, the most significant addition to London’s transport network in a generation, and leveraged our digital OneWater approach to develop solutions that optimize the complete water cycle and provide social value to communities with major projects in places like California, Sydney and Miami.

We are going to move boldly forward into 2025 — continuing our aggressive shift to create a fully inclusive, technology-forward company — producing the critical solutions of tomorrow that support meaningful and long-lasting legacies for future generations and our planet. We are united by our purpose and recognize that the keys to success in the future will be different from those of today. We will remain agile, focus on where our clients need us most, address major challenges and fully leverage our data and technology solutions to be a major disruptor in our industry.

I would like to especially thank our accomplished and highly engaged Board of Directors. Our transformational journey would not have been possible without their guidance, engagement and support.

With this clear trajectory in place, now is the right time for Bob Pragada to succeed me as CEO. During Bob’s 16 years with Jacobs, including the last several years as President and COO, he has demonstrated leadership excellence and a strong track record of execution. His passion for innovation and teamwork are evident in our many achievements. As I continue as Executive Chair of the Board, the Board of Directors and I have the utmost trust in Bob, and we are confident he is the right person to serve as Jacobs’ next CEO and continue to advance our success.

Our vision of the future is exciting — and our new bold, inclusive and targeted strategy moves us further forward. We are committed to delivering on the vision we have set for our people, our clients, our communities and our shareholders as we continue to Challenge today. Reinvent tomorrow.