Aimia Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the EMEA Inc. First Quarter 2021 Results Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question at that time, please press star 1 on your touchtone phone. I will now turn the call over to Tom Rand, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Christelle, and welcome, everyone, to this morning's call. Today's presentation is available on CEDA and the company's website. Before we get underway, I would like to remind everyone to review our forward-looking statements and the cautions and risk factors pertaining to the statement. With me on the call today are speakers Phil Middleman, AMIA CEO, Michael Lehman, our president, and Steve Leonard, our CFO. Phil will begin with our strategic highlights, followed by Michael, who will cover the performance of our investments, before handing the call over to Steve to take you through the results of the quarter. We will have time for your questions at the end. With that, let me hand it over to Phil.

Thanks, Tom, and good morning, everyone on the phone and webcast today. We'll begin with our strategic highlights for the first quarter. We continue to make progress in executing our strategic objectives to grow our existing investments while seeking new investment opportunities. PLM continued to perform well with signs of ongoing recovery in its operating performance. Following a deliberate pause in distributions to shareholders in the second half of 2020 due to the impacts of COVID-19, Distributions to shareholders resumed in the first quarter of this year, and AMIA received a distribution of $9.8 million, 3% higher than the same period in the prior year. Our enhanced shareholder agreement with Aeromexico, including the buyout option, as well as the extension of the CPSA between Aeromexico and PLM through 2050, continues to be honored by Aeromexico, and we expect it will be formally assumed. We are very pleased to see cognitive sales transaction and partnership agreement with IRI, a global leader in innovative solutions and services for consumer, retail, and media companies. IRI acquired the ISS business, a leading retail consumer insight provider that enables collaboration between retailers and suppliers. As evidenced by Cognitive's cash balance at the end of the quarter of over $40 million, the sale of ISS significantly strengthened Cognitive's liquidity position. Through this partnership agreement, IRI and ISS will explore opportunities for IRI's retail clients to leverage Cognitive's unique platform as a service to deliver new value to consumers through hyper-personalized experiences within their ecosystem. This partnership with IRI validates Cognitive's unique collaborative commerce technology platform and aligns Cognitive with a global leader in big data and predictive analytics. We're also pleased to see the exceptional talent added to the Cognitive leadership team to drive the commercialization of the business. including a new president and CFO, both of whom possess expertise in building commercial scale, as well as having capital market experience. Cognitive has also made several strategic senior hires across its client and product teams to foster strong business partnerships. At ClearMedia, the planned privatization of its business continues, with shares in ClearMedia remaining suspended, as expected, from trading on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. We are very excited about Clear Media, the largest outdoor advertising firm in China, which we purchased at a very attractive valuation at an opportunistic time, participating alongside a blue-chip consortium of growth-oriented investors. Since we made our investment in Clear Media, China's economy has continued to recover, and we continue to see these positive economic trends benefiting outdoor advertising sales in China. At Big Life, through the close relationship we have developed with AirAsia, we saw a unique opportunity to create value for AMIA stakeholders. AMIA entered into a binding memorandum of understanding with AirAsia to sell its 20% equity stake in AirAsia loyalty program, Big Life, for a transaction value of approximately $31 million Canadian dollars to be satisfied by 85.9 million new publicly traded ordinary shares of AirAsia. Subject to the quarter end, we signed a formal share purchase agreement and we expect this transaction to close by quarter end. We also participated in a private placement, resulting in the acquisition of 35.6 million additional shares for 9.4 million. Upon completion of the Big Life transaction, which is subject to AirAsia shareholder approval, AMEA will own a total of 121.5 million new shares in AirAsia for an approximate 3.1% equity stake in the airline. By exchanging our minority position in Big Life for publicly traded stock in AirAsia, we will enhance the value of Big Life, by allowing AirAsia to acquire full ownership and reap the strategic benefits from the many opportunities it affords the airline. At the same time, AMIA has provided liquidity while participating in what we believe will be significant upside in AirAsia's equity. We fully support the airline's efforts to strengthen its financial position and pursue its digital transformation, and we believe that AirAsia will emerge from the pandemic as a stronger airline uniquely positioned to capitalize on the sizable pent-up demand that we believe exists for low-cost air travel across Southeast Asia. Moving to our special purpose vehicle, AMIA fully funded its initial $6.4 million commitment in the quarter in a special purpose vehicle created to pursue a leveraged buyout of a target. The special purpose vehicle has continued to acquire shares of the target in the open market and has engaged the target's management team to explore opportunities to enhance and unlock shareholder value. The target is a well-established company with a long history of generating strong earnings and free cash flow. AMIA has the option to acquire a stake of up to 25% of the target, representing a cash commitment of up to $50 million upon the successful consummation of the planned LBO. Our core strategy is to seek the best investment opportunities that we can find globally to deploy our cash and potentially utilize our significant tax losses on acquisitions of free cash flow-generating businesses with taxable income, and with the ability to upstream distributions to the holding company. As we seek these private company opportunities that are attractive enough to warrant an investment, we have also been investing in public equities that we have identified as significantly undervalued businesses with discernible catalysts. At the end of the first quarter of 2021, our public securities portfolio totaled 42.6 million, including unrealized gains up until the end of the quarter of 9.8 million. To expand our global opportunity set beyond traditional public securities investing, AMIA also considers co-investment opportunities with proven investment leaders to provide a streamlined way for AMIA to invest its capital to generate new opportunities. We have a strong pipeline of potential investments, and we remain patient and disciplined. And with that, let me turn the floor over to Mike to provide you some further updates on our investment portfolio. Mike?