VIQ Solutions Inc.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Today we are hosting a conference call to discuss the first quarter 2021 financial results for VIQ Solutions, Inc. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. For those that dialed in, should you require any assistance during the call, please press star then zero on your touchtone phone. You will have a question and answer session at the end of the call. at which time all participants wishing to ask a question will be instructed to press star one and identify themselves before asking a question. Please limit yourself to one or two questions so that others may have a chance to ask questions. You may re-enter the queue. Your host for today is Ms. Lauren Kiernan, Head of Investor Relations for VIQ. Please go ahead.

Thank you so much. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to VIQ Solutions 2021 First Quarter Results Conference Call. Before we begin, I would like to point out that certain statements made on today's call contain forward-looking information subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors. for a complete discussion of the risks and uncertainties facing VIQ, we refer you to the company's MD&A and other disclosure filings, which are available on CDAR at cdar.com and the OTC in the United States. As a reminder, all dollar amounts are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise stated. Certain Q1 numbers, Q1 2020 numbers, have been adjusted to reflect changes which were implemented in the company's amended filings in November 2020. With us today, we have Sebastian Paré, CEO, Alexi Edwards, CFO, and Susan Sumner, President and Chief Operating Officer of BIQ, all of whom will be available for questions following the presentation. Following comments from each of them, we will do a Q&A session. So I will now turn the call over to Sebastian Paré to begin.

Thank you, Laura. Welcome everyone to our first quarter 2021 earning call. We deliver strong first quarter results driven by substantial gross margin improvement, steady increase in total revenue and exponential growth in Australia. The positive response to our unique approach to transform an industry using AI power solution has clearly accelerated the digital transformation in our markets. Our product portfolio is gaining momentum and we're keenly focused on strategy and execution. This is a pivotal year for VIQ as we increase our investments in infrastructure to propel VIQ 3.0 to greater heights using our technology to broaden our portfolio and support a transformation and a monetization of the vast amount of digital content recorded within our expanding global markets. We continue to see tangible results from our comprehensive strategy that is starting to flow to our financial statements. We started to react and reactivate and recognize the backlog revenue as we enter a post-pandemic environment. We have experienced positive proof of this in Australia, where revenue increased 22.5% in the quarter to 2.4 million versus the prior year. Additionally, we're very excited about our SaaS technology and related sales, which have started to influence the margin profile with 1.4 million in sales, representing an increase of 108% from Q1 of 2020. Importantly, growth in our technology portfolio provides the highest gross margin as compared to a technology services segment, which includes a human workforce component. As we continue to execute against our plan, we're confident in our ability to not only increase our market share and our average revenue per customer, but also to deliver revenue growth, higher margins, and higher EBITDA. Now I will hand over to Alexi to speak to our financial results. He will be followed by Susan, who will provide some insight into our operation. She will hand it back to me when we receive some questions. Alexi? Thank you, Sebastian. And good morning, good afternoon, and good evening to everyone. This quarter's results indicate that we're following through with our strategy. We continue to improve quality of revenue, moving towards recurring staff accounts, support acquisition strategy through the most effective low-cost liquidity, and improve productivity by migrating our clients onto our NetScribe platform that is powered by AI SS. Additionally, we continue to improve our balance sheet and capitalization as we progress towards our uplisting to a senior exchange in the United States. Our first quarter 2021 financial highlights include the following. We generated revenue of $8.3 million in the quarter, which increased 9.4% compared to the same quarter of 2020. Importantly, revenues increased by 22.5% in Australia versus the prior year, while our U.S. revenues decreased by 8.6%. Gross profits of $4 million represented 48.7% of revenue compared to $3.2 million or 42.8% of revenue in the same quarter of 2020. The increase in gross profit is primarily due to a combination of factors. Firstly, higher software license and software support revenue, which yield a higher gross margin. productivity gains from the conversion of the company's technology service clients to the NetScribe platform. And thirdly, the company benefited from approximately 0.1 million in COVID-19 rate subsidies. This was partially offset by costs associated with the onboarding of the company's new Queensland contract, which is expected to be operational in the second half of 2021. Our adjusted EBITDA was $0.3 million versus the same period of the prior year adjusted EBITDA of $0.6 million. The decrease in adjusted EBITDA was driven primarily by higher professional service fees associated with corporate initiatives that were undertaken in Q1 and TSX uplifting fees. This was partially offset by approximately 0.3 million in COVID-19 wage subsidies, of which 115,000 of the subsidies flowed through cost of sales and 169,000 flowed through SG&A. In the first quarter, we generated 59% of our revenue in the United States, 29% in Australia, and 12% in EMEA and Canada. Now, I would like to hand over to Susan to speak to our operational highlights. Susan?